Chapter 2

No, the day
before--when young Mr. Franklin--he is the oldest son, sir, and a very
nice man, a _very_ nice man--sent me word by letter that I was to get
the house ready. It isn't the first time I have done it for them, sir,
and as soon as I could get the basement key from the agent, I came here,
and worked all day yesterday, washing up the floors and dusting. I
should have been at them again this morning if my husband hadn't been
sick. But I had to go to the infirmary for medicine, and it was noon
when I got here, and then I found this lady standing outside with a
policeman, a very nice lady, a very _nice_ lady indeed, sir, I pay my
respects to her"--and she actually dropped me a curtsey like a peasant
woman in a play--"and they took my key from me, and the policeman opens
the door, and he and me go upstairs and into all the rooms, and when we
come to this one----"

She was getting so excited as to be hardly intelligible. Stopping
herself with a jerk, she fumbled nervously with her apron, while I asked
myself how she could have been at work in this house the day before
without my knowing it. Suddenly I remembered that I was ill in the
morning and busy in the afternoon at the Orphan Asylum, and somewhat
relieved at finding so excellent an excuse for my ignorance, I looked up
to see if the detective had noticed anything odd in this woman's
behavior. Presumably he had, but having more experience than myself with
the susceptibility of ignorant persons in the presence of danger and
distress, he attached less importance to it than I did, for which I was
secretly glad, without exactly knowing my reasons for being so.

"You will be wanted as a witness by the Coroner's jury," he now remarked
to her, looking as if he were addressing the piece of china he was
turning over in his hand. "Now, no nonsense!" he protested, as she
commenced to tremble and plead. "You were the first one to see this dead
woman, and you must be on hand to say so. As I cannot tell you when the
inquest will be held, you had better stay around till the Coroner comes.
He'll be here soon. You, and this other woman too."

By other woman he meant _me_, Miss Butterworth, of Colonial ancestry and
no inconsiderable importance in the social world. But though I did not
relish this careless association of myself with this poor scrub-woman,
I was careful to show no displeasure, for I reasoned that as witnesses
we were equal before the law, and that it was solely in this light he
regarded us.

There was something in the manner of both these gentlemen which
convinced me that while my presence was considered desirable in the
house, it was not especially wanted in the room. I was therefore moving
reluctantly away, when I felt a slight but peremptory touch on the arm,
and turning, saw the detective at my side, still studying his piece of
china.

He was, as I have said, of portly build and benevolent aspect; a
fatherly-looking man, and not at all the person one would be likely to
associate with the police. Yet he could take the lead very naturally,
and when he spoke, I felt bound to answer him.

"Will you be so good, madam, as to relate over again, what you saw from
your window last night? I am likely to have charge of this matter, and
would be pleased to hear all you may have to say concerning it."

"My name is Butterworth," I politely intimated.

"And my name is Gryce."

"A detective?"

"The same."

"You must think this matter very serious," I ventured.

"Death by violence is always serious."

"You must regard this death as something more than an accident, I mean."

His smile seemed to say: "You will not know to-day how I regard it."

"And you will not know to-day what I think of it either," was my inward
rejoinder, but I said nothing aloud, for the man was seventy-five if he
was a day, and I have been taught respect for age, and have practised
the same for fifty years and more.

I must have shown what was passing in my mind, and he must have seen it
reflected on the polished surface of the porcelain he was contemplating,
for his lips showed the shadow of a smile sufficiently sarcastic for me
to see that he was far from being as easy-natured as his countenance
indicated.

"Come, come," said he, "there is the Coroner now. Say what you have to
say, like the straightforward, honest woman you appear."

"I don't like compliments," I snapped out. Indeed, they have always been
obnoxious to me. As if there was any merit in being honest and
straightforward, or any distinction in being told so!

"I am Miss Butterworth, and not in the habit of being spoken to as if I
were a simple countrywoman," I objected. "But I will repeat what I saw
last night, as it is no secret, and the telling of it won't hurt me and
may help you."

Accordingly I went over the whole story, and was much more loquacious
than I had intended to be, his manner was so insinuating and his
inquiries so pertinent. But one topic we both failed to broach, and that
was the peculiar manner of the scrub-woman. Perhaps it had not struck
him as peculiar and perhaps it should not have struck me so, but in the
silence which was preserved on the subject I felt I had acquired an
advantage over him, which might lead to consequences of no small
importance. Would I have felt thus or congratulated myself quite so much
upon my fancied superiority, if I had known he was the man who managed
the Leavenworth case, and who in his early years had experienced that
very wonderful adventure on the staircase of the Heart's Delight?
Perhaps I would; for though I have had no adventures, I feel capable of
them, and as for any peculiar acumen he may have shown in his long and
eventful career, why that is a quality which others may share with him,
as I hope to be able to prove before finishing these pages.

III.

AMELIA DISCOVERS HERSELF.

There is a small room at the extremity of the Van Burnam mansion. In
this I took refuge after my interview with Mr. Gryce. As I picked out
the chair which best suited me and settled myself for a comfortable
communion with my own thoughts, I was astonished to find how much I was
enjoying myself, notwithstanding the thousand and one duties awaiting me
on the other side of the party-wall.

Even this very solitude was welcome, for it gave me an opportunity to
consider matters. I had not known up to this very hour that I had any
special gifts. My father, who was a shrewd man of the old New England
type, said more times than I am years old (which was not saying it as
often as some may think) that Araminta (the name I was christened by,
and the name you will find in the Bible record, though I sign myself
Amelia, and insist upon being addressed as Amelia, being, as I hope, a
sensible woman and not the piece of antiquated sentimentality suggested
by the former cognomen)--that Araminta would live to make her mark;
though in what capacity he never informed me, being, as I have observed,
a shrewd man, and thus not likely to thoughtlessly commit himself.

I now know he was right; my pretensions dating from the moment I found
that this affair, at first glance so simple, and at the next so
complicated, had aroused in me a fever of investigation which no
reasoning could allay. Though I had other and more personal matters on
my mind, my thoughts would rest nowhere but on the details of this
tragedy; and having, as I thought, noticed some few facts in connection
with it, from which conclusions might be drawn, I amused myself with
jotting them down on the back of a disputed grocer's bill I happened to
find in my pocket.

Valueless as explaining this tragedy, being founded upon insufficient
evidence, they may be interesting as showing the workings of my mind
even at this early stage of the matter. They were drawn up under three
heads.

First, was the death of this young woman an accident?

Second, was it a suicide?

Third, was it a murder?

Under the first head I wrote:

_My reasons for not thinking it an accident._

1. If it had been an accident and she had pulled the cabinet over upon
herself, she would have been found with her feet pointing towards the
wall where the cabinet had stood.

(But her feet were towards the door and her head under the cabinet.)

2. The decent, even precise, arrangement of the clothing about her feet,
which precludes any theory involving accident.

Under the second:

_Reason for not thinking it suicide._

She could not have been found in the position observed without having
lain down on the floor while living and then pulled the shelves down
upon herself.

(A theory obviously too improbable to be considered.)

Under the third:

_Reason for not thinking it murder._

She would need to have been held down on the floor while the cabinet was
being pulled over on her; something which the quiet aspect of the hands
and feet made appear impossible.

To this I added:

_Reasons for accepting the theory of murder._

1. The fact that she did not go into the house alone; that a man entered
with her, remained ten minutes, and then came out again and disappeared
up the street with every appearance of haste and an anxious desire to
leave the spot.

2. The front door, which he had unlocked on entering, was not locked by
him on his departure, the catch doing the locking. Yet, though he could
have re-entered so easily, he had shown no disposition to return.

3. The arrangement of the skirts, which show the touch of a careful hand
after death.

Nothing clear, you see. I was doubtful of all; and yet my suspicions
tended most toward murder.

I had eaten my luncheon before interfering in this matter, which was
fortunate for me, as it was three o'clock before I was summoned to meet
the Coroner, of whose arrival I had been conscious some time before.

He was in the front parlor where the dead girl lay, and as I took my way
thither I felt the same sensations of faintness which had so nearly
overcome me on the previous occasion. But I mastered them, and was
quite myself before I crossed the threshold.

There were several gentlemen present, but of them all I only noticed
two, one of whom I took to be the Coroner, while the other was my late
interlocutor, Mr. Gryce. From the animation observable in the latter, I
gathered that the case was growing in interest from the detective
standpoint.

"Ah, and is this the witness?" asked the Coroner, as I stepped into the
room.

"I am Miss Butterworth," was my calm reply. "_Amelia_ Butterworth.
Living next door and present at the discovery of this poor murdered
body."

"Murdered," he repeated. "Why do you say murdered?"

For reply I drew from my pocket the bill on which I had scribbled my
conclusions in regard to this matter.

"Read this," said I.

Evidently astonished, he took the paper from my hand, and, after some
curious glances in my direction, condescended to do as I requested. The
result was an odd but grudging look of admiration directed towards
myself and a quick passing over of the paper to the detective.

The latter, who had exchanged his bit of broken china for a very much
used and tooth-marked lead-pencil, frowned with a whimsical air at the
latter before he put it in his pocket. Then he read my hurried scrawl.

"Two Richmonds in the field!" commented the Coroner, with a sly chuckle.
"I am afraid I shall have to yield to their allied forces. Miss
Butterworth, the cabinet is about to be raised; do you feel as if you
could endure the sight?"

"I can stand anything where the cause of justice is involved," I
replied.

"Very well, then, sit down, if you please. When the whole body is
visible I will call you."

And stepping forward he gave orders to have the clock and broken china
removed from about the body.

As the former was laid away on one end of the mantel some one observed:

"What a valuable witness that clock might have been had it been running
when the shelves fell!"

But the fact was so patent that it had not been in motion for months
that no one even answered; and Mr. Gryce did not so much as look towards
it. But then we had all seen that the hands stood at three minutes to
five.

I had been asked to sit down, but I found this impossible. Side by side
with the detective, I viewed the replacing of that heavy piece of
furniture against the wall, and the slow disclosure of the upper part of
the body which had so long lain hidden.

That I did not give way is a proof that my father's prophecy was not
without some reasonable foundation; for the sight was one to try the
stoutest nerves, as well as to awaken the compassion of the hardest
heart.

The Coroner, meeting my eye, pointed at the poor creature inquiringly.

"Is this the woman you saw enter here last night?"

I glanced down at her dress, noted the short summer cape tied to the
neck with an elaborate bow of ribbon, and nodded my head.

"I remember the cape," said I. "But where is her hat? She wore one. Let
me see if I can describe it." Closing my eyes I endeavored to recall
the dim silhouette of her figure as she stood passing up the change to
the driver; and was so far successful that I was ready to announce at
the next moment that her hat presented the effect of a soft felt with
one feather or one bow of ribbon standing upright from the side of the
crown.

"Then the identity of this woman with the one you saw enter here last
night is established," remarked the detective, stooping down and drawing
from under the poor girl's body a hat, sufficiently like the one I had
just described, to satisfy everybody that it was the same.

"As if there could be any doubt," I began.

But the Coroner, explaining that it was a mere formality, motioned me to
stand aside in favor of the doctor, who seemed anxious to approach
nearer the spot where the dead woman lay. This I was about to do when a
sudden thought struck me, and I reached out my hand for the hat.

"Let me look at it for a moment," said I.

Mr. Gryce at once handed it over, and I took a good look at it inside
and out.

"It is pretty badly crushed," I observed, "and does not present a very
fresh appearance, but for all that it has been worn but once."

"How do you know?" questioned the Coroner.

"Let the other Richmond inform you," was my grimly uttered reply, as I
gave it again into the detective's hand.

There was a murmur about me, whether of amusement or displeasure, I made
no effort to decide. I was finding out something for myself, and I did
not care what they thought of me.

"Neither has she worn this dress long," I continued; "but that is not
true of the shoes. They are not old, but they have been acquainted with
the pavement, and that is more than can be said of the hem of this gown.
There are no gloves on her hands; a few minutes elapsed then before the
assault; long enough for her to take them off."

"Smart woman!" whispered a voice in my ear; a half-admiring,
half-sarcastic voice that I had no difficulty in ascribing to Mr. Gryce.
"But are you sure she wore any? Did you notice that her hand was gloved
when she came into the house?"

"No," I answered, frankly; "but so well-dressed a woman would not enter
a house like this, without gloves."

"It was a warm night," some one suggested.

"I don't care. You will find her gloves as you have her hat; and you
will find them with the fingers turned inside out, just as she drew them
from her hand. So much I will concede to the warmth of the weather."

"Like these, for instance," broke in a quiet voice.

Startled, for a hand had appeared over my shoulder dangling a pair of
gloves before my eyes, I cried out, somewhat too triumphantly I own:

"Yes, yes, just like those! Did you pick them up here? Are they hers?"

"You say that this is the way hers should look."

"And I repeat it."

"Then allow me to pay you my compliments. These were picked up here."

"But where?" I cried. "I thought I had looked this carpet well over."

He smiled, not at me but at the gloves, and the thought crossed me that
he felt as if something more than the gloves was being turned inside
out. I therefore pursed my mouth, and determined to stand more on my
guard.

"It is of no consequence," I assured him; "all such matters will come
out at the inquest."

Mr. Gryce nodded, and put the gloves back in his pocket. With them he
seemed to pocket some of his geniality and patience.

"All these facts have been gone over before you came in," said he, which
statement I beg to consider as open to doubt.

The doctor, who had hardly moved a muscle during all this colloquy, now
rose from his kneeling position beside the girl's head.

"I shall have to ask the presence of another physician," said he. "Will
you send for one from your office, Coroner Dahl?"

At which I stepped back and the Coroner stepped forward, saying,
however, as he passed me:

"The inquest will be held day after to-morrow in my office. Hold
yourself in readiness to be present. I regard you as one of my chief
witnesses."

I assured him I would be on hand, and, obeying a gesture of his finger,
retreated from the room; but I did not yet leave the house. A straight,
slim man, with a very small head but a very bright eye, was leaning on
the newel-post in the front hall, and when he saw me, started up so
alertly I perceived that he had business with me, and so waited for him
to speak.

"You are Miss Butterworth?" he inquired.

"I am, sir."

"And I am a reporter from the New York _World_. Will you allow me----"

Why did he stop? I had merely looked at him. But he did stop, and that
is saying considerable for a reporter from the New York _World_.

"I certainly am willing to tell you what I have told every one else," I
interposed, considering it better not to make an enemy of so judicious a
young man; and seeing him brighten up at this, I thereupon related all I
considered desirable for the general public to know.

I was about passing on, when, reflecting that one good turn deserves
another, I paused and asked him if he thought they would leave the dead
girl in that house all night.

He answered that he did not think they would. That a telegram had been
sent some time before to young Mr. Van Burnam, and that they were only
awaiting his arrival to remove her.

"Do you mean Howard?" I asked.

"Is he the elder one?"

"No."

"It is the elder one they have summoned; the one who has been staying at
Long Branch."

"How can they expect him then so soon?"

"Because he is in the city. It seems the old gentleman is going to
return on the _New York_, and as she is due here to-day, Franklin Van
Burnam has come to New York to meet him."

"Humph!" thought I, "lively times are in prospect," and for the first
time I remembered my dinner and the orders which had not been given
about some curtains which were to have been hung that day, and all the
other reasons I had for being at home.

I must have shown my feelings, much as I pride myself upon my
impassibility upon all occasions, for he immediately held out his arm,
with an offer to pilot me through the crowd to my own house; and I was
about to accept it when the door-bell rang so sharply that we
involuntarily stopped.

"A fresh witness or a telegram for the Coroner," whispered the reporter
in my ear.

I tried to look indifferent, and doubtless made out pretty well, for he
added, after a sly look in my face:

"You do not care to stay any longer?"

I made no reply, but I think he was impressed by my dignity. Could he
not see that it would be the height of ill-manners for me to rush out in
the face of any one coming in?

An officer opened the door, and when we saw who stood there, I am sure
that the reporter, as well as myself, was grateful that we listened to
the dictates of politeness. It was young Mr. Van Burnam--Franklin; I
mean the older and more respectable of the two sons.

He was flushed and agitated, and looked as if he would like to
annihilate the crowd pushing him about on his own stoop. He gave an
angry glance backward as he stepped in, and then I saw that a carriage
covered with baggage stood on the other side of the street, and gathered
that he had not returned to his father's house alone.

"What has happened? What does all this mean?" were the words he hurled
at us as the door closed behind him and he found himself face to face
with a half dozen strangers, among whom the reporter and myself stood
conspicuous.

Mr. Gryce, coming suddenly from somewhere, was the one to answer him.

"A painful occurrence, sir. A young girl has been found here, dead,
crushed under one of your parlor cabinets."

"A young girl!" he repeated. (Oh, how glad I was that I had been brought
up never to transgress the principles of politeness.) "Here! in this
shut-up house? What young girl? You mean old woman, do you not? the
house-cleaner or some one----"

"No, Mr. Van Burnam, we mean what we say, though possibly I should call
her a young lady. She is dressed quite fashionably."

"The ----" Really I cannot repeat in this public manner the word which
Mr. Van Burnam used. I excused him at the time, but I will not
perpetuate his forgetfulness in these pages.

"She is still lying as we found her," Mr. Gryce now proceeded in his
quiet, almost fatherly way. "Will you not take a look at her? Perhaps
you can tell us who she is?"

"I?" Mr. Van Burnam seemed quite shocked. "How should I know her! Some
thief probably, killed while meddling with other people's property."

"Perhaps," quoth Mr. Gryce, laconically; at which I felt so angry, as
tending to mislead my handsome young neighbor, that I irresistibly did
what I had fully made up my mind not to do, that is, stepped into view
and took a part in this conversation.

"How can you say that," I cried, "when her admittance here was due to a
young man who let her in at midnight with a key, and then left her to
eat out her heart in this great house all alone."

I have made sensations in my life, but never quite so marked a one as
this. In an instant every eye was on me, with the exception of the
detective's. His was on the figure crowning the newel-post, and
bitterly severe his gaze was too, though it immediately grew wary as the
young man started towards me and impetuously demanded:

"Who talks like that? Why, it's Miss Butterworth. Madam, I fear I did
not fully understand what you said."

Whereupon I repeated my words, this time very quietly but clearly, while
Mr. Gryce continued to frown at the bronze figure he had taken into his
confidence. When I had finished, Mr. Van Burnam's countenance had
changed, so had his manner. He held himself as erect as before, but not
with as much bravado. He showed haste and impatience also, but not the
same kind of haste and not quite the same kind of impatience. The
corners of Mr. Gryce's mouth betrayed that he noted this change, but he
did not turn away from the newel-post.

"This is a remarkable circumstance which you have just told me,"
observed Mr. Van Burnam, with the first bow I had ever received from
him. "I don't know what to think of it. But I still hold that it's some
thief. Killed, did you say? Really dead? Well, I'd have given five
hundred dollars not to have had it happen in this house."

He had been moving towards the parlor door, and he now entered it.
Instantly Mr. Gryce was by his side.

"Are they going to close the door?" I whispered to the reporter, who was
taking this all in equally with myself.

"I'm afraid so," he muttered.

And they did. Mr. Gryce had evidently had enough of my interference, and
was resolved to shut me out, but I heard one word and caught one
glimpse of Mr. Van Burnam's face before the heavy door fell to. The word
was: "Oh, so bad as that! How can any one recognize her----" And the
glimpse--well, the glimpse proved to me that he was much more profoundly
agitated than he wished to appear, and any extraordinary agitation on
his part was certainly in direct contradiction to the very sentence he
was at that moment uttering.

IV.

SILAS VAN BURNAM.

"However much I may be needed at home, I cannot reconcile it with my
sense of duty to leave just yet," I confided to the reporter, with what
I meant to be a proper show of reason and self-restraint; "Mr. Van
Burnam may wish to ask me some questions."

"Of course, of course," acquiesced the other. "You are very right;
always are very right, I should judge."

As I did not know what he meant by this, I frowned, always a wise thing
to do in an uncertainty; that is,--if one wishes to maintain an air of
independence and aversion to flattery.

"Will you not sit down?" he suggested. "There is a chair at the end of
the hall."

But I had no need to sit. The front door-bell again rang, and
simultaneously with its opening, the parlor door unclosed and Mr.
Franklin Van Burnam appeared in the hall, just as Mr. Silas Van Burnam,
his father, stepped into the vestibule.

"Father!" he remonstrated, with a troubled air; "could you not wait?"

The elder gentleman, who had evidently just been driven up from the
steamer, wiped his forehead with an irascible air, that I will say I
had noticed in him before and on much less provocation.

"Wait, with a yelling crowd screaming murder in my ear, and Isabella on
one side of me calling for salts, and Caroline on the opposite seat
getting that blue look about the mouth we have learned to dread so in a
hot day like this? No, sir, when there is anything wrong going on I want
to know it, and evidently there is something wrong going on here. What
is it? Some of Howard's----"

But the son, seizing me by the hand and drawing me forward, put a quick
stop to the old gentleman's sentence. "Miss Butterworth, father! Our
next-door neighbor, you know."

"Ah! hum! ha! Miss Butterworth. How do you do, ma'am? What the ---- is
she doing here?" he grumbled, not so low but that I heard both the
profanity and the none too complimentary allusion to myself.

"If you will come into the parlor, I will tell you," urged the son. "But
what have you done with Isabella and Caroline? Left them in the carriage
with that hooting mob about them?"

"I told the coachman to drive on. They are probably half-way around the
block by this time."

"Then come in here. But don't allow yourself to be too much affected by
what you will see. A sad accident has occurred here, and you must expect
the sight of blood."

"Blood! Oh, I can stand that, if Howard----"

The rest was lost in the sound of the closing door.

And now, you will say, I ought to have gone. And you are right, but
would you have gone yourself, especially as the hall was full of people
who did not belong there?

If you would, then condemn me for lingering just a few minutes longer.

The voices in the parlor were loud, but they presently subsided; and
when the owner of the house came out again, he had a subdued look which
was as great a contrast to his angry aspect on entering, as was the
change I had observed in his son. He was so absorbed indeed that he did
not notice me, though I stood directly in his way.

"Don't let Howard come," he was saying in a thick, low voice to his son.
"Keep Howard away till we are sure----"

I am confident that his son pressed his arm at this point, for he
stopped short and looked about him in a blind and dazed way.