“Why did your mother put her hand under her pillow?” he asked.
“I don’t know, unless it was to see if her big envelope was there.”
“Her big envelope?”
“Yes; for weeks now, ever since she took to her bed, she has kept a paper in a big envelope under her pillow. What is in it I don’t know, for she never seems to hear me when I inquire.”
“And have you no curiosity to find out?”
“No, sir. Why should I? It might easily be my father’s old letters sealed up, or, for that matter, be nothing more than a piece of blank paper. My mother is not herself, as I have said before.”
“I should like a peep at the contents of that envelope,” he declared.
“You?”
“Is there any name written on the outside?”
“No.”
“It would not be violating anyone’s rights, then, if you opened it.”
“Only my mother’s, sir.”
“You say she is not in her right mind?”
“All the more reason why I should respect her whims and caprices.”
“Wouldn’t you open it if she were dead?”
“Yes.”
“Will it be very different then from what it is now? A father’s letters! a blank piece of paper! What harm would there be in looking at them?”
“My mother would know it if I took them away. It might excite and injure her.”
“Put another envelope in the place of this one, with a piece of paper folded up in it.”
“It would be a trick.”
“I know it; but if Craik Mansell can be saved even by a trick, I should think you would be willing to venture on one.”
“Craik Mansell? What has he got to do with the papers under my mother’s pillow?”
“I cannot say that he has anything to do with them; but if he has—if, for instance, that envelope should contain, not a piece of blank paper, or even the letters of your father, but such a document, say, as a certificate of marriage—”
“A certificate of marriage?”
“Yes, between Mrs. Clemmens and Mr. Orcutt, it would not take much perspicacity to prophesy an acquittal for Craik Mansell.”
“Mary Ann the wife of Mr. Orcutt! Oh, that is impossible!” exclaimed the agitated spinster. But even while making this determined statement, she turned a look full of curiosity and excitement toward the door which separated them from her mother’s apartment.
Mr. Gryce smiled in his wise way.
“Less improbable things than that have been found to be true in this topsy-turvy world,” said he. “Mrs. Clemmens might very well have been Mrs. Orcutt.”
“Do you really think so?” she asked; and yielding with sudden impetuosity to the curiosity of the moment, she at once dashed from his side and disappeared in her mother’s room. Mr. Gryce’s smile took on an aspect of triumph.
It was some few moments before she returned, but when she did, her countenance was flushed with emotion.
“I have it,” she murmured, taking out a packet from under her apron and tearing it open with trembling fingers.
A number of closely written sheets fell out.
XLIV
The Widow Clemmens
Discovered
Longfellow
The secret that so long had hovered
Upon the misty verge of Truth.
“Well, and what have you to say?” It was Mr. Ferris who spoke. The week which Mr. Gryce had demanded for his inquiries had fully elapsed, and the three detectives stood before him ready with their report.
It was Mr. Gryce who replied.
“Sir,” said he, “our opinions have not been changed by the discoveries which we have made. It was Mr. Orcutt who killed Mrs. Clemmens, and for the reason already stated that she stood in the way of his marrying Miss Dare. Mrs. Clemmens was his wife.”
“His wife?”
“Yes, sir; and, what is more, she has been so for years; before either of them came to Sibley, in fact.”
The District Attorney looked stunned.
“It was while they lived West,” said Byrd. “He was a poor schoolmaster, and she a waitress in some hotel. She was pretty then, and he thought he loved her. At all events, he induced her to marry him, and then kept it secret because he was afraid she would lose her place at the hotel, where she was getting very good wages. You see, he had the makings in him of a villain even then.”
“And was it a real marriage?”
“There is a record of it,” said Hickory.
“And did he never acknowledge it?”
“Not openly,” answered Byrd. “The commonness of the woman seemed to revolt him after he was married to her, and when in a month or so he received the summons East, which opened up before him the career of a lawyer, he determined to drop her and start afresh. He accordingly left town without notifying her, and actually succeeded in reaching the railway depot twenty miles away before he was stopped. But here, a delay occurring in the departure of the train, she was enabled to overtake him, and a stormy scene ensued. What its exact nature was, we, of course, cannot say, but from the results it is evident that he told her his prospects had changed, and with them his tastes and requirements; that she was not the woman he thought her, and that he could not and would not take her East with him as his wife: while she, on her side, displayed full as much spirit as he, and replied that if he could desert her like this he wasn’t the kind of a man she could live with, and that he could go if he wished; only that he must acknowledge her claims upon him by giving her a yearly stipend, according to his income and success. At all events, some such compromise was effected, for he came East and she went back to Swanson. She did not stay there long, however; for the next we know she was in Sibley, where she set up her own little housekeeping arrangements under his very eye. More than that, she prevailed upon him to visit her daily, and even to take a meal at her house, her sense
