“What door is that? You’ve opened all the others; why do you pass that one by?”
“Oh, that! That’s only Number 3. A mere closet, gentlemen,” responded the landlord in a pleasant voice. “To be sure, we sometimes use it as a sleeping-room when we are hard pushed. Jake, the clerk you saw below, used it last night. But it’s not on our regular list. Do you want a peep at it?”
“Most assuredly. As you know, it’s our duty to see every room in this house, whether it is on your regular list or not.”
“All right. I haven’t the key of this one with me. But — yes, I have. There, gentlemen!” he cried, unlocking the door and holding it open for them to look inside. “You see it no more answers the young lady’s description than the others do. And I haven’t another to show you. You have seen all those in front, and this is the last one in the rear. You’ll have to believe our story. The old lady never put foot in this tavern.”
The two men he addressed peered into the shadowy recesses before them, and one of them, a tall and uncommonly good-looking young man of stalwart build and unusually earnest manner, stepped softly inside. He was a gentleman farmer living near, recently appointed deputy sheriff on account of a recent outbreak of horse-stealing in the neighbourhood.
“I observe,” he remarked, after a hurried glance about him, “that the paper on these walls is not at all like that she describes. She was very particular about the paper; said that it was of a muddy pink colour and had big scrolls on it which seemed to move and crawl about in whirls as you looked at it. This paper is blue and striped. Otherwise ——”
“Let’s go below,” suggested his companion, who, from the deference with which his most casual word was received, was evidently a man of some authority. “It’s cold here, and there are several new questions I should like to put to the young lady. Mr. Quimby,”— this to the landlord, “I’ve no doubt you are right, but we’ll give this poor girl another chance. I believe in giving every one the utmost chance possible.”
“My reputation is in your hands, Coroner Golden,” was the quiet reply. Then, as they both turned, “my reputation against the word of an obviously demented girl.”
The words made their own echo. As the third man moved to follow the other two into the hall, he seemed to catch this echo, for he involuntarily cast another look behind him as if expectant of some contradiction reaching him from the bare and melancholy walls he was leaving. But no such contradiction came. Instead, he appeared to read confirmation there of the landlord’s plain and unembittered statement. The dull blue paper with its old-fashioned and uninteresting stripes seemed to have disfigured the walls for years. It was not only grimy with age, but showed here and there huge discoloured spots, especially around the stovepipe-hole high up on the left-hand side. Certainly he was a dreamer to doubt such plain evidences as these. Yet ——
Here his eye encountered Quimby’s, and pulling himself up short, he hastily fell into the wake of his comrade now hastening down the narrow passage to the wider hall in front. Had it occurred to him to turn again before rounding the corner — but no, I doubt if he would have learned anything even then. The closing of a door by a careful hand — the slipping up behind him of an eager and noiseless step — what is there in these to re-awaken curiosity and fix suspicion? Nothing, when the man concerned is Jacob Quimby; nothing. Better that he failed to look back; it left his judgment freer for the question confronting him in the room below.
Three Forks Tavern has been long forgotten, but at the time of which I write it was a well-known but little-frequented house, situated just back of the highway on the verge of the forest lying between the two towns of Chester and Danton in southern Ohio. It was of ancient build, and had all the picturesquesness of age and the English traditions of its original builder. Though so near two thriving towns, it retained its own quality of apparent remoteness from city life and city ways. This in a measure was made possible by the nearness of the woods which almost enveloped it; but the character of the man who ran it had still more to do with it, his sympathies being entirely with the old, and not at all with the new, as witness the old-style glazing still retained in its ancient doorway. This, while it appealed to a certain class of summer boarders, did not so much meet the wants of the casual traveller, so that while the house might from some reason or other be overfilled one night, it was just as likely to be almost empty the next, save for the faithful few who loved the woods and the ancient ways of the easy-mannered host and his attentive, soft-stepping help. The building itself was of wooden construction, high in front and low in the rear, with gables toward the highway, projecting here and there above a strip of rude old-fashioned carving. These gables were new, that is, they were only a century old; the portion now called the extension, in the passages of which we first found the men we have introduced to you, was the original house. Then it may have enjoyed the sunshine and air of the valley it overlooked, but now it was so hemmed in by yards and outbuildings as to be considered the most undesirable part of the house, and Number 3 the most undesirable of its rooms; which certainly does not speak well for it.
But we are getting away from our new friends and their mysterious errand. As I have already intimated, this tavern with the curious name (a name totally unsuggestive, by the way, of its location on a perfectly straight road) had for its southern aspect the road and a broad expanse beyond of varied landscape which made the front rooms cheerful even on a cloudy day; but it was otherwise with those in the rear and on the north end. They were never cheerful, and especially toward night were frequently so dark that artificial light was resorted to as early as three o’clock in the afternoon. It was so to-day in the remote parlour which these three now entered. A lamp had been lit, though the daylight still struggled feebly in, and it was in this conflicting light that there rose up before them the vision of a woman, who seen at any time and in any place would have drawn, if not held, the eye, but seen in her present attitude and at such a moment of question and suspense, struck the imagination with a force likely to fix her image forever in the mind, if not in the heart, of a sympathetic observer.
I should like to picture her as she stood there, because the impression she made at this instant determined the future action of the man I have introduced to you as not quite satisfied with the appearances he had observed above. Young, slender but vigorous, with a face whose details you missed in the fire of her eye and the wonderful red of her young, fresh but determined mouth, she stood, on guard as it were, before a shrouded form on a couch at the far end of the room. An imperative Keep back! spoke in her look, her attitude, and the silent gesture of one outspread hand, but it was the Keep back! of love, not of fear, the command of an outraged soul, conscious of its rights and instinctively alert to maintain them.
The landlord at sight of the rebuke thus given to their intrusion, stepped forward with a conciliatory bow.
“I beg pardon,” said he, “but these gentlemen, Doctor Golden, the coroner from Chester, and Mr. Hammersmith, wish to ask you a few more questions about your mother’s death. You will answer them, I am sure.”
Slowly her eyes moved till they met those of the speaker.
“I am anxious to do so,” said she, in a voice rich with many emotions. But seeing the open compassion in the landlord’s face, the colour left her cheeks, almost her lips, and drawing back the hand which she had continued to hold outstretched, she threw a glance of helpless inquiry about her which touched the younger man’s heart and induced him to say:
“The truth should not be hard to find in a case like this. I’m sure the young lady can explain. Doctor Golden, are you ready for her story?”
The coroner, who had been silent up till now, probably from sheer surprise at the beauty and simple, natural elegance of the woman caught, as he believed, in a net of dreadful tragedy, roused himself at this direct question, and bowing with an assumption of dignity far from encouraging to the man and woman anxiously watching him, replied:
“We will hear what she has to say, of course, but the facts are well known. The woman she calls mother was found early this morning lying on her face in the adjoining woods quite dead. She had fallen over a half-concealed root, and with such force that she never moved again. If her daughter was with her at the time, then that daughter fled without attempting to raise her. The condition and position of the wound on the dead woman’s forehead, together with such corroborative facts as have since come to light, preclude all argument on this point. But we’ll listen to the young woman, notwithstanding; she has a right to speak, and she shall speak. Did not your mother die in the woods? No hocus-pocus, miss, but the plain unvarnished truth.”
“Sirs,”— the term was general, but her appeal appeared to be directed solely to the one sympathetic figure before her, “if my mother died in the wood — and, for all I can say, she may have done so — it was not till after she had been in this house. She arrived in my company, and was given a room. I saw the room and I saw her in it. I cannot be deceived in this. If I am, then my mind has suddenly failed me; — something which I find it hard to believe.”
“Mr. Quimby, did Mrs. Demarest come to the house with Miss Demarest?” inquired Mr. Hammersmith of the silent landlord.
“She says so,” was the reply, accompanied by a compassionate shrug which spoke volumes. “And I am quite sure she means it,” he added, with kindly emphasis. “But ask Jake, who was in the office all the evening. Ask my wife, who saw the young lady to her room. Ask anybody and everybody who was around the tavern last night. I’m not the only one to say that Miss Demarest came in alone. All will tell you that she arrived here without escort of any kind; declined supper, but wanted a room, and when I hesitated to give it to her, said by way of explanation of her lack of a companion that she had had trouble in Chester and had left town very hurriedly for her home. That her mother was coming to meet her and would probably arrive here very soon. That when this occurred I was to notify her; but if a gentleman called instead, I was to be very careful not to admit that any such person as herself was in the house. Indeed, to avoid any such possibility she prayed that her name might be left off the register — a favour which I was slow in granting her, but which I finally did, as you can see for yourselves.”
“Oh!” came in indignant exclamation from the young woman before them. “I understand my position now. This man has a bad conscience. He has something to hide, or he would not take to lying about little things like that. I never asked him to allow me to leave my name off the register. On the contrary I wrote my name in it and my mother’s name, too. Let him bring the book here and you will see.”
“We have seen,” responded the coroner. “We looked in the register ourselves. Your names are not there.”
The flush of indignation which had crimsoned her cheeks faded till she looked as startling and individual in her pallor as she had the moment before in her passionate bloom.
“Not there?” fell from her lips in a frozen monotone as her eyes grew fixed upon the faces before her and her hand went groping around for some support.
Mr. Hammersmith approached with a chair.
“Sit,” he whispered. Then, as she sank slowly into an attitude of repose, he added gently, “You shall have every consideration. Only tell the truth, the exact truth without any heightening from your imagination, and, above all, don’t be frightened.”
She may have heard his words, but she gave no sign of comprehending them. She was following the movements of the landlord, who had slipped out to procure the register, and now stood holding it out toward the coroner.
“Let her see for herself,” he suggested, with a bland, almost fatherly, air.
Doctor Golden took the book and approached Miss Demarest.
“Here is a name very unlike yours,” he pointed out, as her eye fell on the page he had opened to. “Annette Colvin, Lansing, Michigan.”
“That is not my name or writing,” said she.
“There is room below it for your name and that of your mother, but the space is blank, do you see?”
“Yes, yes, I see,” she admitted. “Yet I wrote my name in the book! Or is it all a monstrous dream!”
The coroner returned the book to the landlord.
“Is this your only book?” he asked.
“The only book.”
Miss Demarest’s eyes flashed. Hammersmith, who had watched this scene with intense interest, saw, or believed that he saw, in this flash the natural indignation of a candid mind face to face with arrant knavery. But when he forced himself to consider the complacent Quimby he did not know what to think. His aspect of self-confidence equalled hers. Indeed, he showed the greater poise. Yet her tones rang true as she cried:
“You made up one plausible story, and you may well make up another. I demand the privilege of relating the whole occurrence as I remember it,” she continued with an appealing look in the one sympathetic direction. “Then you can listen to him.”
“We desire nothing better,” returned the coroner.
“I shall have to mention a circumstance very mortifying to myself,” she proceeded, with a sudden effort at self-control, which commanded the admiration even of the coroner. “My one adviser is dead,” here her eyes flashed for a moment toward the silent form behind her. “If I make mistakes, if I seem unwomanly — but you have asked for the truth and you shall have it, all of it. I have no father. Since early this morning I have had no mother. But when I had, I found it my duty to work for her as well as for myself, that she might have the comforts she had been used to and could no longer afford. For this purpose I sought a situation in Chester, and found one in a family I had rather not name.” A momentary tremor, quickly suppressed, betrayed the agitation which this allusion cost her. “My mother lived in Danton (the next town to the left). Anybody there will tell you what a good woman she was. I had wished her to live in Chester (that is, at first; later, I— I was glad she didn’t), but she had been born in Danton, and could not accustom herself to strange surroundings. Once a week I went home, and once a week, usually on a Wednesday, she would come and meet me on the highroad, for a little visit. Once we met here, but this is a circumstance no one seems to remember. I was very fond of my mother and she of me. Had I loved no one else, I should have been happy still, and not been obliged to face strangers over her body and bare the secrets of my heart to preserve my good name. There is a man, he seems a thousand miles away from me now, so much have I lived since yesterday. He — he lived in the house where I did — was one of the family — always at table — always before my eyes. He fancied me. I— I might have fancied him had he been a better man. But he was far from being of the sort my mother approved, and when he urged his suit too far, I grew frightened and finally ran away. It was not so much that I could not trust him,” she bravely added after a moment of silent confusion, “but that I could not trust myself. He had an unfortunate influence over me, which I hated while I half yielded to it.”
“You ran away. When was this?”
“Yesterday afternoon at about six. He had vowed that he would see me again before the evening was over, and I took that way to prevent a meeting. There was no other so simple — or such was my thought at the time. I did not dream that sorrows awaited me in this quiet tavern, and perplexities so much greater than any which could have followed a meeting with him that I feel my reason fail when I contemplate them.”
“Go on,” urged the coroner, after a moment of uneasy silence. “Let us hear what happened after you left your home in Chester.”
“I went straight to the nearest telegraph office, and sent a message to my mother. I told her I was coming home, and for her to meet me on the road near this tavern. Then I went to Hudson’s and had supper, for I had not eaten before leaving my employer’s. The sun had set when I finally started, and I walked fast so as to reach Three Forks before dark. If my mother had got the telegram at once, which I calculated on her doing, as she lived next door to the telegraph office in Danton, she would be very near this place on my arrival here. So I began to look for her as soon as I entered the woods. But I did not see her. I came as far as the tavern door, and still I did not see her. But farther on, just where the road turns to cross the railroad-track, I spied her coming, and ran to meet her. She was glad to see me, but asked a good many questions which I had some difficulty in answering. She saw this, and held me to the matter till I had satisfied her. When this was done it was late and cold, and we decided to come to the tavern for the night. And we came! Nothing shall ever make me deny so positive a fact. We came, and this man received us.”
With her final repetition of this assertion, she rose and now stood upright, with her finger pointing straight at Quimby. Had he cringed or let his eyes waver from hers by so much as a hair’s breadth, her accusation would have stood and her cause been won. But not a flicker disturbed the steady patience of his look, and Hammersmith, who had made no effort to hide his anxiety to believe her story, showed his disappointment with equal frankness as he asked:
“Who else was in the office? Surely Mr. Quimby was not there alone?”
She reseated herself before answering. Hammersmith could see the effort she made to recall that simple scene. He found himself trying to recall it, too — the old-fashioned, smoke-begrimed office, with its one long window toward the road and the glass-paned door leading into the hall of entrance. They had come in by that door and crossed to the bar, which was also the desk in this curious old hostelry. He could see them standing there in the light of possibly a solitary lamp, the rest of the room in shadow unless a game of checkers were on, which evidently was not so on this night. Had she turned her head to peer into those shadows? It was not likely. She was supported by her mother’s presence, and this she was going to say. By some strange telepathy that he would have laughed at a few hours before, he feels confident of her words before she speaks. Yet he listens intently as she finally looks up and answers:
“There was a man, I am sure there was a man somewhere at the other end of the office. But I paid no attention to him. I was bargaining for two rooms and registering my name and that of my mother.”
“Two rooms; why two? You are not a fashionable young lady to require a room alone.”
“Gentlemen, I was tired. I had been through a wearing half-hour. I knew that if we occupied the same room or even adjoining ones that nothing could keep us from a night of useless and depressing conversation. I did not feel equal to it, so I asked for two rooms a short distance apart.”
An explanation which could at least be accepted. Mr. Hammersmith felt an increase of courage and scarcely winced as his colder-blooded companion continued this unofficial examination by asking:
“Where were you standing when making these arrangements with Mr. Quimby?”
“Right before the desk.”
“And your mother?”
“She was at my left and a little behind me. She was a shy woman. I usually took the lead when we were together.”
“Was she veiled?” the coroner continued quietly.
“I think so. She had been crying ——” The bereaved daughter paused.
“But don’t you know?”
“My impression is that her veil was down when we came into the room. She may have lifted it as she stood there. I know that it was lifted as we went upstairs. I remember feeling glad that the lamps gave so poor a light, she looked so distressed.”
“Physically, do you mean, or mentally?”
Mr. Hammersmith asked this question. It seemed to rouse some new train of thought in the girl’s mind. For a minute she looked intently at the speaker, then she replied in a disturbed tone:
“Both. I wonder ——” Here her thought wavered and she ceased.
“Go on,” ordered the coroner impatiently. “Tell your story. It contradicts that of the landlord in almost every point, but we’ve promised to hear it out, and we will.”
Rousing, she hastened to obey him.
“Mr. Quimby told the truth when he said that he asked me if I would have supper, also when he repeated what I said about a gentleman, but not when he declared that I wished to be told if my mother should come and ask for me. My mother was at my side all the time we stood there talking, and I did not need to make any requests concerning her. When we went to our rooms a woman accompanied us. He says she is his wife. I should like to see that woman.”
“I am here, miss,” spoke up a voice from a murky corner no one had thought of looking in till now.
Miss Demarest at once rose, waiting for the woman to come forward. This she did with a quick, natural step which insensibly prepared the mind for the brisk, assertive woman who now presented herself. Mr. Hammersmith, at sight of her open, not unpleasing face, understood for the first time the decided attitude of the coroner. If this woman corroborated her husband’s account, the poor young girl, with her incongruous beauty and emotional temperament, would not have much show. He looked to see her quailing now. But instead of that she stood firm, determined, and feverishly beautiful.
“Let her tell you what took place upstairs,” she cried. “She showed us the rooms and carried water afterward to the one my mother occupied.”
“I am sorry to contradict the young lady,” came in even tones from the unembarrassed, motherly-looking woman thus appealed to. “She thinks that her mother was with her and that I conducted this mother to another room after showing her to her own. I don’t doubt in the least that she has worked herself up to the point of absolutely believing this. But the facts are these: She came alone and went to her room unattended by any one but myself. And what is more, she seemed entirely composed at the time, and I never thought of suspecting the least thing wrong. Yet her mother lay all that time in the wood ——”
“Silence!”
This word was shot at her by Miss Demarest, who had risen to her full height and now fairly flamed upon them all in her passionate indignation. “I will not listen to such words till I have finished all I have to say and put these liars to the blush. My mother was with me, and this woman witnessed our good-night embrace, and then showed my mother to her own room. I watched them going. They went down the hall to the left and around a certain corner. I stood looking after them till they turned this corner, then I closed my door and began to take off my hat. But I wasn’t quite satisfied with the good-night which had passed between my poor mother and myself, and presently I opened my door and ran down the hall and around the corner on a chance of finding her room. I don’t remember very well how that hall looked. I passed several doors seemingly shut for the night, and should have turned back, confused, if at that moment I had not spied the landlady’s figure, your figure, madam, coming out of one room on your way to another. You were carrying a pitcher, and I made haste and ran after you and reached the door just before you turned to shut it. Can you deny that, or that you stepped aside while I ran in and gave my mother another hug? If you can and do, then you are a dangerous and lying woman, or I—— But I won’t admit that I’m not all right. It is you, base and untruthful woman, who for some end I cannot fathom persist in denying facts on which my honour, if not my life, depends. Why, gentlemen, you, one of you at least, have heard me describe the very room in which I saw my mother. It is imprinted on my mind. I didn’t know at the time that I took especial notice of it, but hardly a detail escaped me. The paper on the wall ——”
“We have been looking through the rooms,” interpolated the coroner. “We do not find any papered with the muddy pink you talk about.”
She stared, drew back from them all, and finally sank into a chair. “You do not find —— But you have not been shown them all.”
“I think so.”
“You have not. There is such a room. I could not have dreamed it.”
Silence met this suggestion.
Throwing up her hands like one who realises for the first time that the battle is for life, she let an expression of her despair and desolation rush in frenzy from her lips:
“It’s a conspiracy. The whole thing is a conspiracy. If my mother had had money on her or had worn valuable jewelry, I should believe her to have been a victim of this lying man and woman. As it is, I don’t trust them. They say that my poor mother was found lying ready dressed and quite dead in the wood. That may be true, for I saw men bringing her in. But if so, what warrant have we that she was not lured there, slaughtered, and made to seem the victim of accident by this unscrupulous man and woman? Such things have been done; but for a daughter to fabricate such a plot as they impute to me is past belief, out of Nature and impossible. With all their wiles, they cannot prove it. I dare them to do so; I dare any one to do so.”
Then she begged to be allowed to search the house for the room she so well remembered. “When I show you that,” she cried, with ringing assurance, “you will believe the rest of my story.”
“Shall I take the young lady up myself?” asked Mr. Quimby. “Or will it be enough if my wife accompanies her?”
“We will all accompany her,” said the coroner.
“Very good,” came in hearty acquiescence.
“It’s the only way to quiet her,” he whispered in Mr. Hammersmith’s ear.
The latter turned on him suddenly.
“None of your insinuations,” he cried. “She’s as far from insane as I am myself. We shall find the room.”
“You, too,” fell softly from the other’s lips as he stepped back into the coroner’s wake. Mr. Hammersmith gave his arm to Miss Demarest, and the landlady brought up the rear.
“Upstairs,” ordered the trembling girl. “We will go first to the room I occupied.”
As they reached the door, she motioned them all back, and started away from them down the hall. Quickly they followed. “It was around a corner,” she muttered broodingly, halting at the first turning. “That is all I remember. But we’ll visit every room.”
“We have already,” objected the coroner, but meeting Mr. Hammersmith’s warning look, he desisted from further interference.
“I remember its appearance perfectly. I remember it as if it were my own,” she persisted, as door after door was thrown back and as quickly shut again at a shake of her head. “Isn’t there another hall? Might I not have turned some other corner?”
“Yes, there is another hall,” acquiesced the landlord, leading the way into the passage communicating with the extension.
“Oh!” she murmured, as she noted the increased interest in both the coroner and his companion; “we shall find it here.”
“Do you recognise the hall?” asked the coroner as they stepped through a narrow opening into the old part.
“No, but I shall recognise the room.”
“Wait!” It was Hammersmith who called her back as she was starting forward. “I should like you to repeat just how much furniture this room contained and where it stood.”
She stopped, startled, and then said:
“It was awfully bare; a bed was on the left ——”
“On the left?”
“She said the left,” quoth the landlord, “though I don’t see that it matters; it’s all fancy with her.”
“Go on,” kindly urged Hammersmith.
“There was a window. I saw the dismal panes and my mother standing between them and me. I can’t describe the little things.”
“Possibly because there were none to describe,” whispered Hammersmith in his superior’s ear.
Meanwhile the landlord and his wife awaited their advance with studied patience. As Miss Demarest joined him, he handed her a bunch of keys, with the remark:
“None of these rooms are occupied to-day, so you can open them without hesitation.”
She stared at him and ran quickly forward. Mr. Hammersmith followed speedily after. Suddenly both paused. She had lost the thread of her intention before opening a single door.
“I thought I could go straight to it,” she declared. “I shall have to open all the doors, as we did in the other hall.”
“Let me help you,” proffered Mr. Hammersmith. She accepted his aid, and the search recommenced with the same results as before. Hope sank to disappointment as each door was passed. The vigour of her step was gone, and as she paused heartsick before the last and only remaining door, it was with an ashy face she watched Mr. Hammersmith stoop to insert the key.
He, on his part, as the door fell back, watched her for some token of awakened interest. But he watched in vain. The smallness of the room, its bareness, its one window, the absence of all furniture save the solitary cot drawn up on the right (not on the left, as she had said), seemed to make little or no impression on her.
“The last! the last! and I have not found it. Oh, sir,” she moaned, catching at Mr. Hammersmith’s arm, “am I then mad? Was it a dream? Or is this a dream? I feel that I no longer know.” Then, as the landlady officiously stepped up, she clung with increased frenzy to Mr. Hammersmith, crying, with positive wildness, “This is the dream! The room I remember is a real one and my story is real. Prove it, or my reason will leave me. I feel it going — going ——”
“Hush!” It was Hammersmith who sought thus to calm her. “Your story is real and I will prove it so. Meanwhile trust your reason. It will not fail you.”
He had observed the corners of the landlord’s hitherto restrained lips settle into a slightly sarcastic curl as the door of this room closed for the second time.