The House of the Whispering Pines

"You are acquainted with Miss Carmel Cumberland's handwriting?"

"If I am not, the town is full of people who are. I believe these words to have been written by Carmel Cumberland."

Mr. Fox placed the pieces back in their envelope and laid the whole carefully away.

"For a second time we are obliged to you," said he.

"You can cancel the obligation," was the quick retort, "by discovering the identity of the man who in derby hat and a coat with a very high collar, left the grounds of The Whispering Pines just as Mr. Ranelagh drove into them. I have no facilities for the job, and no desire to undertake it."

He had endeavoured to speak naturally, if not with an off-hand air; but he failed somehow—else why the quick glance of startled inquiry which Dr. Perry sent him from under his rather shaggy eyebrows.

"Well, we'll undertake that, too," promised the district attorney.

"I can ask no more," returned Charles Clifton, arising to depart. "The confronting of that man with Ranelagh will cause the latter to unseal his lips. Before you have finished with my client, you will esteem him much more highly than you do now."

The district attorney smiled at what seemed the callow enthusiasm of a youthful lawyer; but the coroner who knew his district well, looked very thoughtfully down at the table before which he sat, and failed to raise his head until the young man had vanished from the room and his place had been taken by another of very different appearance and deportment. Then he roused himself and introduced the newcomer to the prosecuting attorney as Caleb Sweetwater, of the New York police department.

Caleb Sweetwater was no beauty. He was plain-featured to the point of ugliness; so plain-featured that not even his quick, whimsical smile could make his face agreeable to one who did not know his many valuable qualities. His receding chin and far too projecting nose were not likely to create a favourable impression on one ignorant of his cheerful, modest, winsome disposition; and the district attorney, after eyeing him for a moment with ill-concealed disfavour, abruptly suggested:

"You have brought some credentials with you, I hope."

"Here is a letter from one of the department. Mr. Gryce wrote it," he added, with just a touch of pride.

"The letter is all right," hastily remarked Dr. Perry on looking it over. "Mr. Sweetwater is commended to us as a man of sagacity and becoming reserve."

"Very good. To business, then. The sooner we get to work on this new theory, the better. Mr. Sweetwater, we have some doubts if the man we have in hand is the man we really want. But first, how much do you know about this case?"

"All that's in the papers."

"Nothing more?"

"Very little. I've not been in town above an hour."

"Are you known here?"

"I don't think so; it's my first visit this way."

"Then you are as ignorant of the people as they are of you. Well, that has its disadvantages."

"And its advantages, if you will permit me to say so, sir. I have no prejudices, no preconceived notions to struggle against. I can take persons as I find them; and if there is any deep family secret to unearth, it's mighty fortunate for a man to have nothing stand in the way of his own instincts. No likings, I mean—no leanings this way or that, for humane or other purely unprofessional reasons."

The eye of District Attorney Fox stole towards that of his brother official, but did not meet it. The coroner had turned his attention to the table again, and, while betraying no embarrassment, was not quite his usual self. The district attorney's hand stole to his chin, which he softly rubbed with his lean forefinger as he again addressed Sweetwater.

"This tragedy—the most lamentable which has ever occurred in this town—is really, and without exaggeration, a tragedy in high life. The lady who was strangled by a brute's clutch, was a woman of the highest culture and most estimable character. Her sister, who is supposed to have been the unconscious cause of the crime, is a young girl of blameless record. Of the man who was seen bending over the victim with his hands on her throat, we cannot speak so well. He has the faults and has lived the life of a social favourite. Gifted in many ways, and popular with both men and women, he has swung on his course with an easy disregard of the claims of others, which, while leaving its traces no doubt in many a humble and uncomplaining heart, did not attract notice to his inherent lack of principle, until the horrors of this tragedy lifted him into public view stripped of all his charms. He's an egotist, of the first water; there is no getting over that. But did he strangle the woman? He says not; that he was only following some extraordinary impulse of the moment in laying his thumbs on the marks he saw on Miss Cumberland's neck. A fantastic story—told too late, besides, for perfect credence, and not worthy of the least attention if—"

The reasons which followed are too well known to us for repetition. Sweetwater listened with snapping eyes to all that was said; and when he had been given the various clews indicating the presence of a third—and as yet unknown—party on the scene of crime, he rose excitedly to his feet and, declaring that it was a most promising case, begged permission to make his own investigations at The Whispering Pines, after which he would be quite ready to begin his search for the man in the derby hat and high coat-collar, whose love for wine was so great that he chose and carried off the two choicest bottles that the club-house contained.

"A hardy act for any man, gentleman or otherwise, who had just strangled the life out of a fine woman like that. If he exists and the whole story is not a pure fabrication of the entrapped Ranelagh, he shouldn't be hard to find. What do you say, gentlemen? He shouldn't be hard to find."

"We have not found him," emphasised the district attorney, with the shortest possible glance at the coroner's face.

"Then the field is all before me," smiled Sweetwater. "Wish me luck, gentlemen. It's a blind job, but that's just in my line. A map of the town, a few general instructions, and I'm off."

Mr. Fox turned towards the coroner, and opened his lips; but closed them again without speaking. Did Sweetwater notice this act of self-restraint? If he did, he failed to show it.

X

"I CAN HELP YOU"

A subtle knave; a finder out of occasions;
That has an eye can stamp and counterfeit
Advantages though true advantage never presents
Itself; A devilish knave!

    Othello.

A half hour spent with Hexford in and about the club-house, and Sweetwater was ready for the road. As he made his way through the northern gate, he cast a quick look back at the long, low building he had just left, with its tall chimneys and rows of sightless windows, half hidden, half revealed by the encroaching pines. The mystery of the place fascinated him. To his awakened imagination, there was a breathless suggestion in it—a suggestion which it was his foremost wish, just now, to understand.

And those pines—gaunt, restless, communicative! ready with their secret, if one could only interpret their language. How their heads came together as their garrulous tongues repeated the tale, which would never grow old to them until age nipped their hoary heads and laid them low in the dust, with their horror half expressed, their gruesome tale unfinished.

"Witnesses of it all," commented the young detective as he watched the swaying boughs rising and dipping before a certain window. "They were peering into that room long before Clarke stole the glimpse which has undone the unfortunate Ranelagh. If I had their knowledge, I'd do something more than whisper."

Thus musing, thus muttering, he plodded up the road, his insignificant figure an unpromising break in the monotonous white of the wintry landscape. But could the prisoner who had indirectly speeded this young detective on his present course, have read his thoughts and rightly estimated the force of his purpose, would he have viewed with so much confidence the entrance of this unprepossessing stranger upon the no-thoroughfare into which his own carefully studied admissions had blindly sent him?

As has been said before, this road was an outlying one and but little travelled save in the height of summer. Under ordinary circumstances Sweetwater would have met not more than a half-dozen carts or sledges between the club-house gates and the city streets. But to-day, the road was full of teams carrying all sorts of incongruous people, eager for a sight of the spot made forever notorious by a mysterious crime. He noted them all; the faces of the men, the gestures of the women; but he did not show any special interest till he came to that portion of the road where the long line of half-buried fences began to give way to a few scattered houses. Then his spirit woke, and be became quick, alert, and persuasive. He entered houses; he talked with the people. Though evidently not a dissipated man, he stopped at several saloons, taking his time with his glass and encouraging the chatter of all who chose to meet his advances. He was a natural talker and welcomed every topic, but his eye only sparkled at one. This he never introduced himself; he did not need to. Some one was always ready with the great theme; and once it was started, he did not let the conversation languish till every one present had given his or her quota of hearsay or opinion to the general fund.

It seemed a great waste of time, for nobody had anything to say worth the breath expended on it. But Sweetwater showed no impatience, and proceeded to engage the attention of the next man, woman, or child he encountered with undiminished zest and hopefulness.

He had left the country road behind, and had entered upon the jumble of sheds, shops, and streets which marked the beginnings of the town in this direction, when his quick and experienced eye fell on a woman standing with uncovered head in an open doorway, peering up the street in anxious expectation of some one not yet in sight. He liked the air and well-kept appearance of the woman; he appreciated the neatness of the house at her back and gauged at its proper value the interest she displayed in the expected arrival of one whom he hoped would delay that arrival long enough for him to get in the word which by this time dropped almost unconsciously from his lips.

But a second survey of the woman's face convinced him that his ordinary loquaciousness would not serve him here. There was a refinement in her aspect quite out of keeping with the locality in which she lived, and he was hesitating how to proceed, when fortune favoured him by driving against his knees a small lad on an ill-directed sled, bringing him almost to the ground and upsetting the child who began to scream vociferously.

It was the woman's child, for she made instantly for the gate which, for some reason, she found difficulty in opening. Sweetwater, seeing this, blessed his lucky stars. He was at his best with children, and catching the little fellow up, he soothed and fondled him and finally brought him with such a merry air of triumph straight to his mother's arms, that confidence between them was immediately established and conversation started.

He had in his pocket an ingenious little invention which he had exhibited all along the road as an indispensable article in every well-kept house. He wanted to show it to her, but it was too cold a day for her to stop outside. Wouldn't she allow him to step in and explain how her work could be materially lessened and her labour turned to play by a contrivance so simple that a child could run it?

It was all so ridiculous in face of this woman's quiet intelligence, that he laughed at his own words, and this laughter, echoed by the child and in another instant by the mother, made everything so pleasant for the moment that she insensibly drew back while he pulled open the gate, only remarking, as she led the way in:

"I was looking for my husband. He may come any minute and I'm afraid he won't care much about contrivances to save me work—that is, if they cost very much."

Sweetwater, whose hand was in his pocket, drew it hastily out.

"You were watching for your husband? Do you often stand in the open doorway, looking for him?"

Her surprised eyes met his with a stare that would have embarrassed the most venturesome book agent, but this man was of another ilk.

"If you do," he went on imperturbably, but with a good-humoured smile which deepened her favourable impression of him, "how much I would give if you had been standing there last Tuesday night when a certain cutter and horse went by on its way up the hill."

She was a self-contained woman, this wife of a master mechanic in one of the great shops hard by; but her jaw fell at this, and she forgot to chide or resist her child when he began to pull her towards the open kitchen door.