The Filigree Ball

"It grew out of a misunderstanding of the situation, Mr. Jeffrey; excuse me if I supposed you would be likely to provide yourself with some means of defense in venturing alone upon the scene of so many mysterious deaths."

"I took no precaution."

"And needed none, I suppose."

"And needed none."

"When was this visit paid, Mr. Jeffrey? Before or after your wife pulled the trigger which ended her life? You need not hesitate to answer."

"I do not." The elegant gentleman before us had acquired a certain fierceness. "Why should I? Certainly, you don't think that I was there at the same time she was. It was not on the same night, even. So much the walls should have told you and probably did, or my wife's uncle, Mr. David Moore. Was he not your informant?"

"No; Mr. Moore has failed to call our attention to this fact. Did you meet Mr. Moore during the course of your visit to a neighborhood over which he seems to hold absolute sway?"

"Not to my knowledge. But his house is directly opposite, and as he has little to do but amuse himself with what he can see from his front window, I concluded that he might have observed me going in."

"You entered by the front door, then?"

"How else?"

"And on what night?"

Mr. Jeffrey made an effort. These questions were visibly harassing him.

"The night before the one—the one which ended all my earthly happiness," he added in a low voice.

Coroner Z. cast a glance at me. I remembered the lack of dust on the nest of little tables from which the upper one had been drawn forward to hold the candelabrum, and gently shook my head. The coroner's eyebrows went up, but none of his disbelief crept into his voice as he made this additional statement.

"The night on which you failed to return to your own house."

Instantly Mr. Jeffrey betrayed by a nervous action, which was quite involuntary, that his outward calm was slowly giving way under a fire of questions for which he had no ready reply.

"It was odd, your not going home that night," the coroner coldly pursued. "The misunderstanding you had with your wife immediately after breakfast must have been a very serious one; more serious than you have hitherto acknowledged."

"I had rather not discuss the subject," protested Mr. Jeffrey. Then as if he suddenly recognized the official character of his interlocutor, he hastily added: "Unless you positively request me to do so; in which case I must."

"I am afraid that I must insist upon it," returned the other. "You will find that it will be insisted upon at the inquest, and if you do not wish to subject yourself to much unnecessary unpleasantness, you had better make clear to us to-day the cause of that special quarrel which to all intents and purposes led to your wife's death."

"I will try to do so," returned Mr. Jeffrey, rising and pacing the room in his intense restlessness. "We did have some words; her conduct the night before had not pleased me. I am naturally jealous, vilely jealous, and I thought she was a little frivolous at the German ambassador's ball. But I had no idea she would take my sharp speeches so much to heart. I had no idea that she would care so much or that I should care so much. A little jealousy is certainly pardonable in a bridegroom, and if her mind had not already been upset, she would have remembered how I loved her and hopefully waited for a reconciliation."

"You did love your wife, then? It was you and not she who had a right to be jealous? I have heard the contrary stated. It is a matter of public gossip that you loved another woman previous to your acquaintance with Miss Moore; a woman whom your wife regarded with sisterly affection and subsequently took into her new home."

"Miss Tuttle?" Mr. Jeffrey stopped in his walk to fling out this ejaculation. "I admire and respect Miss Tuttle," he went on to declare, "but I never loved her. Not as I did my wife," he finished, but with a certain hard accent, apparent enough to a sensitive ear.

"Pardon me; it is as difficult for me to put these questions as it is for you to hear them. Were you and Miss Tuttle ever engaged?"

I started. This was a question which half of Washington had been asking itself for the last three months.

Would Mr. Jeffrey answer it? or, remembering that these questions were rather friendly than official, refuse to satisfy a curiosity which he might well consider intrusive? The set aspect of his features promised little in the way of information, and we were both surprised when a moment later he responded with a grim emphasis hardly to be expected from one of his impulsive temperament:

"Unhappily, no. My attentions never went so far."

Instantly the coroner pounced on the one weak word which Mr. Jeffrey had let fall.

"Unhappily?" he repeated. "Why do you say, unhappily?"

Mr. Jeffrey flushed and seemed to come out of some dream.

"Did I say unhappily?" he inquired. "Well, I repeat it; Miss Tuttle would never have given me any cause for jealousy."

The coroner bowed and for the present dropped her name out of the conversation.

"You speak again of the jealousy aroused in you by your wife's impetuosities. Was this increased or diminished by the tone of the few lines she left behind her?"

The response was long in coming. It was hard for this man to lie. The struggle he made at it was pitiful. As I noted what it cost him, I began to have new and curious thoughts concerning him and the whole matter under discussion.

"I shall never overcome the remorse roused in me by those few lines," he finally rejoined. "She showed a consideration for me—"

"What!"

The coroner's exclamation showed all the surprise he felt. Mr. Jeffrey tottered under it, then grew slowly pale as if only through our amazed looks he had come to realize the charge of inconsistency to which he had laid himself open.

"I mean—" he endeavored to explain, "that Mrs. Jeffrey showed an unexpected tenderness toward me by taking all the blame of our misunderstanding upon herself. It was generous of her and will do much toward making my memory of her a gentle one."

He was forgetting himself again. Indeed, his manner and attempted explanations were full of contradictions. To emphasize this fact Coroner Z. exclaimed,

"I should think so! She paid a heavy penalty for her professed lack of love. You believe that her mind was unseated?"

"Does not her action show it?"

"Unseated by the mishap occurring at her marriage?"

"Yes."

"You really think that?"

"Yes."

"By anything that passed between you?"

"Yes."

"May I ask you to tell us what passed between you on this point?"

"Yes."

He had uttered the monosyllable so often it seemed to come unconsciously from his lips. But he recognized almost as soon as we did that it was not a natural reply to the last question, and, making a gesture of apology, he added, with the same monotony of tone which had characterized these replies:

"She spoke of her strange guest's unaccountable death more than once, and whenever she did so, it was with an unnatural excitement and in an unbalanced way. This was so noticeable to us all that the subject presently was tabooed amongst us; but though she henceforth spared us all allusion to it, she continued to talk about the house itself and of the previous deaths which had occurred there till we were forced to forbid that topic also. She was never really herself after crossing the threshold of this desolate house to be married. The shadow which lurks within its walls fell at that instant upon her life. May God have mercy—"

The prayer remained unfinished. His head which had fallen on his breast sank lower.

He presented the aspect of one who is quite done with life, even its sorrows.

But men in the position of Coroner Z. can not afford to be compassionate. Everything the bereaved man said deepened the impression that he was acting a part. To make sure that this was really so, the coroner, with just the slightest touch of sarcasm, quietly observed:

"And to ease your wife's mind—the wife you were so deeply angered with—you visited this house, and, at an hour which you should have spent in reconciliation with her, went through its ancient rooms in the hope—of what?"

Mr. Jeffrey could not answer. The words which came from his lips were mere ejaculations.

"I was restless—mad—I found this adventure diverting. I had no real purpose in mind."

"Not when you looked at the old picture?"

"The old picture? What old picture?"

"The old picture in the southwest chamber. You took a look at that, didn't you? Got up on a chair on purpose to do so?"

Mr. Jeffrey winced. But he made a direct reply.

"Yes, I gave a look at that old picture; got up, as you say, on a chair to do so. Wasn't that the freak of an idle man, wandering, he hardly knows why, from room to room in an old and deserted house?"

His tormentor did not answer. Probably his mind was on his next line of inquiry. But Mr. Jeffrey did not take his silence with the calmness he had shown prior to the last attack. As no word came from his unwelcome guest, he paused in his rapid pacing and, casting aside with one impulsive gesture his hitherto imperfectly held restraint, he cried out sharply:

"Why do you ask me these questions in tones of such suspicion? Is it not plain enough that my wife took her own life under a misapprehension of my state of mind toward her, that you should feel it necessary to rake up these personal matters, which, however interesting to the world at large, are of a painful nature to me?"

"Mr. Jeffrey," retorted the other, with a sudden grave assumption of dignity not without its effect in a case of such serious import, "we do nothing without purpose. We ask these questions and show this interest because the charge of suicide which has hitherto been made against your wife is not entirely sustained by the facts. At least she was not alone when she took her life. Some one was in the house with her."

It was startling to observe the effect of this declaration upon him.

"Impossible!" he cried out in a protest as forcible as it was agonized. "You are playing with my misery. She could have had no one there; she would not. There is not a man living before whom she would have fired that deadly shot; unless it was myself,—unless it was my own wretched, miserable self."

The remorseful whisper in which those final words were uttered carried them to my heart, which for some strange and unaccountable reason had been gradually turning toward this man. But my less easily affected companion, seeing his opportunity and possibly considering that it was this gentleman's right to know in what a doubtful light he stood before the law, remarked with as light a touch of irony as was possible:

"You should know better than we in whose presence she would choose to die—if she did so choose. Also who would be likely to tie the pistol to her wrist and blow out the candle when the dreadful deed was over."

The laugh which seemed to be the only means of violent expression remaining to this miserable man was kept down by some amazing thought which seemed to paralyze him. Without making any attempt to refute a suggestion that fell just short of a personal accusation, he sank down in the first chair he came to and became, as it were, lost in the vision of that ghastly ribbon-tying and the solitary blowing out of the candle upon this scene of mournful death. Then with a struggling sense of having heard something which called for answer, he rose blindly to his feet and managed to let fall these words:

"You are mistaken—no one was there, or if any one was—it was not I. There is a man in this city who can prove it."

But when Mr. Jeffrey was asked to give the name of this man, he showed confusion and presently was obliged to admit that he could neither recall his name nor remember anything about him, but that he was some one whom he knew well, and who knew him well. He affirmed that the two had met and spoken near Soldiers' Home shortly after the sun went down, and that the man would be sure to remember this meeting if we could only find him.

As Soldiers' Home was several miles from the Moore house and quite out of the way of all his accustomed haunts, Coroner Z. asked him how he came to be there. He replied that he had just come from Rock Creek Cemetery. That he had been in a wretched state of mind all day, and possibly being influenced by what he had heard of the yearly vigils Mr. Moore was in the habit of keeping there, had taken a notion to stroll among the graves, in search of the rest and peace of mind he had failed to find in his aimless walks about the city. At least, that was the way he chose to account for the meeting he mentioned. Falling into reverie again, he seemed to be trying to recall the name which at this moment was of such importance to him. But it was without avail, as he presently acknowledged.

"I can not remember who it was. My brain is whirling, and I can recollect nothing but that this man and myself left the cemetery together on the night mentioned, just as the gate was being closed. As it closes at sundown, the hour can be fixed to a minute. It was somewhere near seven, I believe; near enough, I am sure, for it to have been impossible for me to be at the Moore house at the time my unhappy wife is supposed to have taken her life. There is no doubt about your believing this?" he demanded with sudden haughtiness, as, rising to his feet, he confronted us in all the pride of his exceptionally handsome person.

"We wish to believe it," assented the coroner, rising in his turn. "That our belief may become certainty, will you let us know, the instant you recall the name of the man you talked with at the cemetery gate? His testimony, far more than any word of yours, will settle this question which otherwise may prove a vexed one."

Mr. Jeffrey's hand went up to his head. Was he acting a part or did he really forget just what it was for his own best welfare to remember? If he had forgotten, it argued that he was in a state of greater disturbance on that night than would naturally be occasioned by a mere lover's quarrel with his wife.

Did the same thought strike my companion? I can not say; I can only give you his next words.

"You have said that your wife would not be likely to end her life in presence of any one but yourself. Yet you must see that some one was with her. How do you propose to reconcile your assertions with a fact so undeniable?"

"I can not reconcile them. It would madden me to try. If I thought any one was with her at that moment—"

"Well?"

Mr. Jeffrey's eyes fell; and a startling change passed over him. But before either of us could make out just what this change betokened he recovered his aspect of fixed melancholy and quietly remarked:

"It is dreadful to think of her standing there alone, aiming a pistol at her young, passionate heart; but it is worse to picture her doing this under the gaze of unsympathizing eyes. I can not and will not so picture her. You have been misled by appearances or what in police parlance is called a clue."

Evidently he did not mean to admit the possibility of the pistol having been fired by any other hand than her own. This the coroner noted. Bowing with the respect he showed every man before a jury had decided upon his guilt, he turned toward the door out of which I had already hurried.

"We hope to hear from you in the morning," he called back significantly, as he stepped down the stairs.

Mr. Jeffrey did not answer; he was having his first struggle with the new and terrible prospect awaiting him at the approaching inquest.