I felt that it would be cruel to delay my story longer, and so I began it. It was evidently more interesting than he expected, and as I dilated upon the special features which had led me to believe that it was a thinking, suffering mortal like ourselves who had been shut up in William’s room and afterwards buried in the cellar under the Flower Parlor, I saw his face lengthen and doubt take the place of the quiet assurance with which he had received my various intimations up to this time. The cane was laid aside, and from the action of his right forefinger on the palm of his left hand I judged that I was making no small impression on his mind. When I had finished, he sat for a minute silent; then he said:
“Thanks, Miss Butterworth; you have more than fulfilled my hopes. What we buried was undoubtedly human, and the question now is, Who was it, and of what death did he die?” Then, after a meaning pause: “You think it was Silly Rufus.”
I will astonish you with my reply. “No,” said I, “I do not. That is where you make a mistake, Mr. Gryce.”
XXVI
A Point Gained
He was surprised, for all his attempts to conceal it.
“No?” said he. “Who, then? You are becoming interesting, Miss Butterworth.”
This I thought I could afford to ignore.
“Yesterday,” I proceeded, “I would have declared it to be Silly Rufus, in the face of God and man, but after what I saw in William’s room during the hurried survey I gave it, I am inclined to doubt if the explanation we have to give to this affair is so simple as that would make it. Mr. Gryce, in one corner of that room, from which the victim had so lately been carried, was a pair of shoes that could never have been worn by any boy-tramp I have ever seen or known of.”
“They were Loreen’s, or possibly Lucetta’s.”
“No, Loreen and Lucetta both have trim feet, but these were the shoes of a child of ten, very dainty at that, and of a cut and make worn by women, or rather, I should say, by girls. Now, what do you make of that?”
He did not seem to know what to make of it. Tap, tap went his finger on his seasoned palm, and as I watched the slowness with which it fell, I said to myself, “I have proposed a problem this time that will tax even Mr. Gryce’s powers of deduction.”
And I had. It was minutes before he ventured an opinion, and then it was with a shade of doubt in his tone that I acknowledge to have felt some pride in producing.
“They were Lucetta’s shoes. The emotions under which you labored—very pardonable emotions, madam, considering the circumstances and the hour—”
“Excuse me,” said I. “We do not want to waste a moment. I was excited, suitably and duly excited, or I would have been a stone. But I never lose my head under excitement, nor do I part with my sense of proportion. The shoes were not Lucetta’s. She never wore any approaching them in smallness since her tenth year.”
“Has Simsbury a daughter? Has there not been a child about the house some time to assist the cook in errands and so on?”
“No, or I should have seen her. Besides, how would the shoes of such a person come into William’s room?”
“Easily. Secrecy was required. You were not to be disturbed; so shoes were taken off that quiet might result.”
“Was Lucetta shoeless or William or even Mother Jane? You have not told me that you were requested to walk in stocking feet up the hall. No, Mr. Gryce, the shoes were the shoes of a girl. I know it because it was matched by a dress I saw hanging up in a sort of wardrobe.”
“Ah! You looked into the wardrobe?”
“I did and felt justified in doing so. It was after I had spied the shoes.”
“Very good. And you saw a dress?”
“A little dress; a dress with a short skirt. It was of silk too; another anomaly—and the color, I think, was blue, but I cannot swear to that point. I was in great haste and took the briefest glance. But my brief glances can be trusted, Mr. Gryce. That, I think, you are beginning to know.”
“Certainly,” said he, “and as proof of it we will now act upon these two premises—that the victim in whose burial I was an innocent partaker was a human being and that this human being was a girl-child who came into the house well dressed. Now where does that lead us? Into a maze, I fear.”
“We are accustomed to mazes,” I observed.
“Yes,” he answered somewhat gloomily, “but they are not exactly desirable in this case. I want to find the Knollys family innocent.”
“And I. But William’s character, I fear, will make that impossible.”
“But this girl? Who is she, and where did she come from? No girl has been reported to us as missing from this neighborhood.”
“I supposed not.”
“A visitor—But no visitor could enter this house without it being known far and wide. Why, I heard of your arrival here before I left the train on which I followed you. Had we allowed ourselves to be influenced by what the people about here say, we would have turned the Knollys house inside out a week ago. But I don’t believe in putting too much confidence in the prejudice of country people. The idea they suggested, and which you suggest without putting it too clearly into words, is much too horrible to be acted upon without the best of reasons. Perhaps we have found those reasons, yet I still feel like asking, Where did this girl come from and how could she have become a prisoner in
