One of My Sons

"Was it in Mr. Gillespie's study you found this?" queried the coroner. "I thought I had thoroughly searched the study."

The answer was uttered in the lowest of low tones, but I had no difficulty in catching the gist of what he said.

"It was on the dining-room floor, under the edge of the rug. A very suspicious fact, don't you think so? Mr. Gillespie would never have thrust it there. Some other person – don't know who – not say anything yet – shrink from seeing the police in this house."

The two doctors interchanged a look which I surprised in the large mirror opposite. But I gave no sign of having seen anything extraordinary. I felt too keenly the delicacy of my own position. Next minute we were all walking towards the hall.

"Silence!" came in admonitory tones from the coroner as we paused for a moment on the threshold. "Let us not disturb the young men any further than is necessary to-night."

At that moment we heard the cry:

"Where is Miss Meredith? Has anyone seen Miss Meredith? I cannot find her in any of the rooms upstairs."

"Hope! Hope! Where are you, Hope?" called out another voice, charged with feeling.

Hope! Did my heart beat faster as this name, destined to play such a part in my future life, was sounded in my ears? I cannot say. That heart has beat often enough since at the utterance of this sweet monosyllable, but at that time – well, I think I was too interested in the alarm which this cry instantly raised, to note my personal sensations. From one end of the house to the other, men and women rushed from room to room, and I heard not only this name called out, but that of the child, which it seems was Claire.

"Cannot the child be found either?" I inquired impetuously of the coroner who still lingered in the lower hall.

"It seems not. Who is Miss Meredith?"

It was the old butler who answered him.

"She is the young gentlemen's cousin," said he. "She was a great favourite with Mr. Gillespie, and lived here like a daughter. They will find her somewhere upstairs."

But the prophecy proved to be a false one. Slowly the servants came creeping down whispering among themselves and looking very much frightened. Then we saw George descend shaking his head impatiently, and then Leighton, wild with an anxiety for which he had no name.

"She must be here!" he cried, thinking only of his child. "Claire! Claire!" And he began running through the great drawing-room where we knew she could not be.

Alfred had remained above.

Suddenly I recalled a fact connected with my own visit upstairs.

"Have they been up to the fourth floor?" I inquired of Dr. Bennett. "When I was in Mr. Alfred Gillespie's room on the third floor, I remember hearing someone rush through the hall. I supposed at that time it was someone going below. But it may have been someone going higher up."

"Let us go see!" the doctor suggested.

I followed him without a thought. As we passed Alfred's door, we could see him standing in the middle of the room in a state of rage which made him oblivious of our approach. He was tearing into morsels a piece of paper which had the same appearance as the one he had formerly thrust into the waste-paper basket, and as he tore, he muttered words amongst which I caught the following:

"Why should I write? If she loved me she would wait. She would not run away now, unless he – "

Dr. Bennett, with his finger on his lip, slid by. I hastened after him, and together we mounted the last flight.

We were now in a portion of the building as new to the doctor as to myself. When we reached the top of the stairs we found the whole place dark save for a little glimmer towards the front which proved to be a gas-jet burning low in one of the attic rooms.

Turning this up we looked around, opened a closet-door or two, then walked into the back, where the doctor struck a match. Two closed doors met our eyes. One of these upon being opened disclosed a well-furnished room, similar in appearance to those in front, the other an unfinished garret half filled with trunks and boxes.

"Well!" he ejaculated, as the match went out upon this scene. "This is a mystery."

"Hark!" I urged; "our ears rather than our eyes must do service in this emergency."

He took the hint, and together we listened till some sound – was it the breathing of a person concealed near us? – caused us both to start and the doctor to light another match.

This time we saw something, but the match went out before we could determine what.

Annoyed by these momentary flashes of light, I dashed back into one of the rooms we had left, and catching up a candle I had previously noted there, lit it at the gas-jet, and proceeded back with it to this garret room.

Instantly a sight full of the strangest interest revealed itself.

Crouched against the farther wall, with wide-extended eyes fixed full upon us, we perceived a woman, upon whose pallid face and risen locks terror or some other equally emphatic passion had so fixed its impress that she looked like some affrighted creature balked in flight by some dreadful, some unprecedented sight which held her spell-bound. That she was beautiful, in that touching, feminine way which goes to the heart, did not lessen the effect of her appearance, nor were we unmoved by the fact that the child for whom the house had just been ransacked lay curled up and asleep at her feet.

"Who is it?" I asked. "Miss Meredith?"

The doctor pressed my hand. "We must be careful," he whispered. "She seems on the verge of delirium."

"The child shows no fear," I murmured.

Meanwhile the doctor was approaching the new object of his care.

"Why choose so cold a place?" he asked, smiling on the young girl who still clung, as if fastened, to the wall against which she had drawn herself. "Claire will catch cold; had you not better come downstairs?"

With a start she looked down at the little one resting at her feet, and her eyes showed a sudden intelligence.

"How did she come here?" she asked. "I did not call her."

"And how came you to be here?" he smiled. "Your white dress looks out of place in this garret."

She lifted herself straight up, with her back to the wall. Claire, who was thus dislodged from the place at her feet woke, and began to cry.

"I heard that Mr. Gillespie was dead," came from lips so stiff with fright or some other deep emotion that I wondered they could form the words. "I loved Mr. Gillespie, and I brought my grief here."

She was still standing pressed against the wall, her hands behind her; and disguise the fact as I would, I could see that her teeth were chattering with something more than cold, or even such fear as might follow the sudden death of a near friend and benefactor.

"Will you not come below?" urged the doctor, taking up Claire to his fatherly breast.

"Never!" her lips seemed to cry; but I heard no sound, and when the doctor, giving me the child, threw his arm about her and drew her away, she yielded pliantly enough, though with a steady look into his face I did not understand then nor for a long time afterwards.

At the stair-head we met Alfred. Perhaps he had heard us go up, perhaps he had simply thought of searching the attic himself. His recoil and the exclamation he made were simultaneous.

"You have found her!" was his cry, a cry which did not refer to the child. Then in reproachful tones: "Hope, why should you give us such a scare? Had we not enough to face without having our hearts wrung with terror for you?"

Her answer was a murmur. With the first moment of encounter with this man her face had become a mask.

IV

"HE DRANK IT ALONE"

In making this statement it is not my wish to create any special prejudice against Alfred. Indeed, I have no right to do so, for when a few minutes later his brother Leighton came running up the stairs at sound of his child's voice, I noticed the same recoil on her part, followed by the same impassibility. Nor did she show a different feeling when in the hall below George came forward with the inquiries her surprising absence had naturally provoked. From one and all she involuntarily shrank, but not without suffering to herself and an obvious attempt to hide this natural impulse under a demeanour more in accordance with her near relationship to these three men. In Alfred this chilling conduct awakened emotions only too easy to read; in Leighton, surprise, and in George, a distrust bordering upon a passion so fierce that he turned from white to red and from red to white in an instant. Evanescent expressions all of them, but important as showing the feelings entertained towards her by these men among whom she had been living for more or less time as a sister.