The Dead Letter

could hardly have created a more barren space between us. Yet, now that I heard the names of the girls mentioned, a flood of old emotions broke over me, beneath which I struggled, half-suffocated. Keen pain shot through my heart at the idea of Mary, that innocent, most sweet and lovable girl, becoming the wife of James. I felt as if it ought to be prevented, yet how could I interfere? Why should I wish to? I recalled the hour when she had flown to me⁠—had said, “I believe in you, Richard; I love you!” and I knew that I had put a construction upon the tearful, passionate words of her last avowal, which was, after all, not warranted. I had feared that she did really love me, and that, in the last moment of sorrow and trouble, her feelings had betrayed themselves to her own comprehension⁠—and I had felt a hope that it was not so. My own unanswered passion⁠—my lonely, unmated life⁠—had taught me sympathy; and I was not so utterly selfish as to have my personal vanity tickled with the idea that this young creature loved me, who did not love her, except truly as a sister.

Yet now, when hearing that James had turned from Eleanor to her, I felt a pang of pity⁠—a wish that she might rather have loved me than him whose cold, deceitful bosom could never be a safe shelter for a woman as affectionate as Mary. With this regret I felt a triumph that Eleanor had remained unassailable on the sublime and solitary height of her sorrow. It was what I expected of her. I gloried in her constancy to the dead. I had loved her for this noble beauty of her nature, and should have been disappointed had the test found her wanting in any of the attributes with which my worship had invested her. She had done me a wrong too cruel for me to complain about; but I would rather, still, that she would wrong me than herself.

Lastly, Mr. Burton assured me that he had tidings of the five-hundred-dollar bill which had been stolen from Mr. Argyll’s desk. This was, indeed, important, and I showed by my looks how deeply I was absorbed in the particulars. That bill had come into the hands of Wells, Fargo & Co., about six months after the robbery, having been sold for specie to their agent in California, and forwarded to them along with the other sums which they were constantly receiving. At least, he had taken it for granted that it was the same bill, it being one of the two which left the city of New York the week of the robbery; the other he had traced to St. Louis, and ascertained that no possible suspicious circumstances attached to it.

Wells, Fargo & Co. had given him every assistance in their power to discover who had sold that bill to the California branch of their house; but an answer had been returned from there that the person who disposed of it was a stranger, on his way to the mining regions, whom they had never seen before or since, and whose name they had not taken. The clerk who transacted the brief business with him, had no distinct recollection of him, except that he was rather a thickset man, with an unpleasant expression⁠—doubtless one of the “hard cases” so frequent in the precincts of San Francisco.

Of course, it was clear to us two, who sat in company with the dead-letter, that the five-hundred-dollar bill was a part of the sum referred to by the writer; that it had come out of Mr. Argyll’s desk, and that it was blood-money paid for a murder; and the receiver was this person who, in the letter, so explicitly declared his intention of fleeing to California. We were much excited in the presence of these bold facts. In our enthusiasm, then, it seemed easy to stretch a hand across the continent and lay it upon the guilty. We scarcely realized the long and wearisome pursuit to which we were doomed⁠—the slight clue which we had to the individual whose deeds were yet so patent to us.

At this revelation of conspiracy, my mind eagerly searched about for the accessory, and again settled itself upon Miss Sullivan. It did seem to me that she had thrown a glamour over the usually clear sight of Mr. Burton; so that I resolved to keep a separate watch which should not be influenced by his decisions. While I was thinking of this, Mr. Burton was walking about the floor. Suddenly he stopped before me and looked into mine with those vivid eyes, so full of power, and said, as confidently as if a vision had revealed it to him,

“I have now made out all the meaning of the letter. In the first place, it is written ‘by contraries’⁠—that is, it means just the contrary of what it says. The contract was fulfilled. The price was expected, the emigration decided upon. The bright day was a rainy night; the picture taken was a human life. And, don’t you see it, Richard?⁠—the old friend was the hiding-place of the instrument of death, after which the accomplice is directed to look. That instrument is the broken toothpick. It was secreted in the pocket of the old friend. Now, who or what is this old friend? Richard, didn’t Leesy affirm she saw a man descending from the old oak tree at the right of the Argyll mansion, on the evening of the murder?”

“She did.”

“Then that is it. I want to know no more. The arms are the arms of that old oak. Unless it has been removed, which is not probable, since this letter was never received, the broken knife or dagger (of which I have the point which was taken from the wound), will be found in some hollow on the left side of that oak.”

I gazed at him in astonishment; but he, unconscious of my wonder,