The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин
was the last to disappear from these parts, was he not?”
“Yes, madam.”
“And as such, should have left some clue to his fate in the hands of this old crone, if her motive in removing him was, as you seem to think, entirely that of gain.”
“I did not say it was entirely so. Silly Rufus would be the last person any one, even such a non compos mentis as Mother Jane, would destroy for hope of gain.”
“But what other motive could she have? And, Mr. Gryce, where could she bestow the bodies of so many unfortunate victims, even if by her great strength she could succeed in killing them?”
“There you have me,” said he. “We have not been able as yet to unearth any bodies. Have you?”
“No,” said I, with some little show of triumph showing through my disdain, “but I can show you where to unearth one.”
He should have been startled, profoundly startled. Why wasn’t he? I asked this of myself over and over in the one instant he weighed his words before answering.
“You have made some definite discoveries, then,” he declared. “You have come across a grave or a mound which you have taken for a grave.”
I shook my head.
“No mound,” said I. Why should I not play for an instant or more with his curiosity? He had with mine.
“Ah, then, why do you talk of unearthing? No one has told you where you can lay hand on Silly Rufus’ body, I take it.”
“No,” said I. “The Knollys house is not inclined to give up its secrets.”
He started, glancing almost remorsefully first at the tip, then at the head of the cane he was balancing in his hand.
“It’s too bad,” he muttered, “but you’ve been led astray, Miss Butterworth,—excusably, I acknowledge, quite excusably, but yet in a way to give you quite wrong conclusions. The secret of the Knollys house—But wait a moment. Then you were not locked up in your room last night?”
“Scarcely,” I returned, wavering between the doubts he had awakened by his first sentence and the surprise which his last could not fail to give me.
“I might have known they would not be likely to catch you in a trap,” he remarked. “So you were up and in the halls?”
“I was up,” I acknowledged, “and in the halls. May I ask where you were?”
He paid no heed to the last sentence. “This complicates matters,” said he, “and yet perhaps it is as well. I understand you now, and in a few minutes you will understand me. You thought it was Silly Rufus who was buried last night. That was rather an awful thought, Miss Butterworth. I wonder, with that in your mind, you look as well as you do this morning, madam. Truly you are a wonderful woman—a very wonderful woman.”
“A truce to compliments,” I begged. “If you know as much as your words imply of what went on in that ill-omened house last night, you ought to show some degree of emotion yourself, for if it was not Silly Rufus who was laid away under the Flower Parlor, who, then, was it? No one for whom tears could openly be shed or of whose death public acknowledgment could be made, or we would not be sitting here talking away at cross purposes the morning after his burial.”
“Tears are not shed or public acknowledgment made for the subject of a half-crazy man’s love for scientific investigation. It was no human being whom you saw buried, madam, but a victim of Mr. Knollys’ passion for vivisection.”
“You are playing with me,” was my indignant answer; “outrageously and inexcusably playing with me. Only a human being would be laid away in such secrecy and with such manifestations of feeling as I was witness to. You must think me in my dotage, or else——”
“We will take the rest of the sentence for granted,” he dryly interpolated. “You know that I can have no wish to insult your intelligence, Miss Butterworth, and that if I advance a theory on my own account I must have ample reasons for it. Now can you say the same for yours? Can you adduce irrefutable proof that the body we buried last night was that of a man? If you can, there is no more to be said, or, rather, there is everything to be said, for this would give to the transaction a very dreadful and tragic significance which at present I am not disposed to ascribe to it.”
Taken aback by his persistence, but determined not to acknowledge defeat until forced to it, I stolidly replied: “You have made an assertion, and it is for you to adduce proof. It will be time enough for me to talk when your own theory is proved untenable.”
He was not angry: fellow-feeling for my disappointment made him unusually gentle. His voice was therefore very kind when he said:
“Madam, if you know it to have been a man, say so. I do not wish to waste my time.”
“I do not know it.”
“Very well, then, I will tell you why I think my supposition true. Mr. Knollys, as you probably have already discovered, is a man with a secret passion for vivisection.”
“Yes, I have discovered that.”
“It is known to his family, and it is known to a very few others, but it is not known to the world at large, not even to his fellow-villagers.’
“I can believe it,” said I.
“His sisters, who are gentle girls, regard the matter as the gentle-hearted usually do. They have tried in every way to influence him to abandon it, but unsuccessfully so far, for he is not only entirely unamenable to persuasion, but has a nature of such brutality he could not live without some such excitement to help away his life in this dreary house. All they can do, then, is to conceal these cruelties from the eyes of the people who already execrate him for his many roughnesses and the undoubted shadow under which he lives. Time was when I thought this shadow had a substance worth our investigation, but a further knowledge of his real fault and a completer knowledge of his sisters’ virtues turned my inquiries in a new direction, where I have found, as I have told you, actual reason for arresting Mother Jane. Have you anything to say against these conclusions? Cannot you see that all your suspicions can be explained by the brother’s cruel impulses and the sisters’ horror of having those impulses known?”
I thought a moment; then I cried out boldly: “No, I cannot, Mr. Gryce. The anxiety, the fear, which I have seen depicted on these sisters’ faces for days might be explained perhaps by this theory; but the knot of crape on the window-shutter, the open Bible in the room of death—William’s room, Mr. Gryce,—proclaim that it was a human being, and nothing less, for whom Lucetta’s sobs went up.”
“I do not follow you,” he said, moved for the first time from his composure. “What do you mean by a knot of crape, and when was it you obtained entrance into William’s room?”
“Ah,” I exclaimed in dry retort; “you are beginning to see that I have something as interesting to report as yourself. Did you think me a superficial egotist, without facts to back my assertions?”
“I should not have done you that injustice.”
“I have penetrated, I think, deeper than even yourself, into William’s character. I think him capable—But do satisfy my curiosity on one point first, Mr. Gryce. How came you to know as much as you do about last night’s proceedings? You could not have been in the house. Did Mother Jane talk after she got back?”
The tip of his cane was up, and he frowned at it. Then the handle took its place, and he gave it a good-natured smile.
“Miss Butterworth,” said he, “I have not succeeded in making Mother Jane at any time go beyond her numerical monologue. But you have been more successful.” And with a sudden marvellous change of expression, pose, and manner he threw over his head my shawl, which had fallen to the floor in my astonishment, and, rocking himself to and fro before me, muttered grimly: