Tarlton Law Library
Jamail Center for Legal Research

Pol. What do you read, my lord?
Ham. Words, words, words.
                                    --Hamlet.

without baggage, and altogether had the appearance of some wandering
spirit. 'Hannah' I gasped, 'what is it? what has happened? what brings you
here in this condition and at this time of night?' 'Miss Leavenworth has
sent me,' she replied, in the low, monotonous tone of one repeating a les-
son by rote. 'She told me to come here; said you would keep me. I am
not to go out of the house, and no one is to know I am here.' 'But why?'
I asked, trembling with a thousand undefined fears; 'what has occurred?'
'I dare not say,' she whispered; 'I am forbid; I am just to stay
here and keep quiet.' 'But,' I began, helping her to take off her
shawl,—the dingy blanket advertised for in the papers—'you must tell
me. She surely did not forbid you to tell me?' 'Yes she did;
every one,' the girl replied, growing white in her persistence, 'and I
never break my word; fire couldn't draw it out of me.' She looked so
determined, so utterly unlike herself, as I remembered her in the meek,
unobtrusive days of our old acquaintance, that I could do nothing but
stare at her. 'You will keep me,' she said; 'you will not turn me
away?' 'No,' I said, 'I will not turn you away.' 'And tell no one?'
she went on. 'And tell no one,' I repeated.
     "This seemed to relieve her. Thanking me, she quietly followed me
up-stairs. I put her into the room in which you found her, because it
was the most secret one in the house; and there she has remained ever
since, satisfied and contented, as far as I could see, till this very
same horrible day."
     "And is that all?" I asked. "Did you have no explanation with
her afterwards? Did she never give you any information in regard to
the transactions which led to her flight?"

     "No, sir. She kept a most persistent silence. Neither then nor when,
upon the next day, I confronted her with the papers in my hand, and the
awful question upon my lips as to whether her flight had been
occasioned by the murder which had taken place in Mr. Leavenworth's
household, did she do more than acknowledge she had run away on this
account. Some one or something had sealed her lips, and, as she said, '
Fire and torture should never make her speak.'"
     Another short pause followed this; then, with my mind still hovering
about the one point of intensest interest to me, I said:
     "This story, then, this account which you have just given me of
Mary Leavenworth's secret marriage and the great strait it put her into
—a strait from which nothing but her uncle's death could relieve her
—together with this acknowledgment of Hannah's that she had left home
and taken refuge here on the insistence of Mary Leavenworth, is the
groundwork you have for the suspicions you have mentioned?"
     "Yes, sir; that and the proof of her interest in the matter which
is given by the letter I received from her yesterday, and which you say
you have now in your possession."
     Oh, that letter!
     "I know," Mrs. Belden went on in a broken voice, "that it is
wrong, in a serious case like this, to draw hasty conclusions; but,
oh, sir, how can I help it, knowing what I do?"
     I did not answer; I was revolving in my mind the old question: was
it possible, in face of all these later developments, still to believe
Mary Leavenworth's own hand guiltless of her uncle's blood?

     "It is dreadful to come to such conclusions," proceeded Mrs. Belden,
"and nothing but her own words written in her own hand would ever have
driven me to them, but — "
     "Pardon me," I interrupted; "but you said in the beginning of
this interview that you did not believe Mary herself had any direct
hand in her uncle's murder. Are you ready to repeat that assertion?"
     "Yes, yes, indeed. Whatever I may think of her influence in
inducing it, I never could imagine her as having anything to do with
its actual performance. Oh, no! oh, no! whatever was done on that
dreadful night, Mary Leavenworth never put hand to pistol or ball, or
even stood by while they were used; that you may be sure of. Only the
man who loved her, longed for her, and felt the impossibility of
obtaining her by any other means, could have found nerve for an act so
horrible."
     "Then you think — "
     "Mr. Clavering is the man? I do: and oh, sir, when you consider
that he is her husband, is it not dreadful enough?"
     "It is, indeed," said I, rising to conceal how much I was affected
by this conclusion of hers.
     Something in my tone or appearance seemed to startle her. "I hope
and trust I have not been indiscreet," she cried, eying me with
something like an incipient distrust. "With this dead girl lying in my
house, I ought to be very careful, I know, but — "
     "You have said nothing," was my earnest assurance as I edged
towards the door in my anxiety to escape, if but for a moment, from an
atmosphere that was stifling me. "No one can blame you for anything
you have either said or done to-day. But"—and here I paused and

walked hurriedly back,—" I wish to ask one question more. Have you
any reason, beyond that of natural repugnance to believing a young
and beautiful woman guilty of a great crime, for saying what you have
of Henry Clavering, a gentleman who has hitherto been mentioned by
you with respect?"
     "No," she whispered, with a touch of her old agitation.
     I felt the reason insufficient, and turned away with something of
the same sense of suffocation with which I had heard that the missing
key had been found in Eleanore Leavenworth's possession. "You must
excuse me," I said; "I want to be a moment by myself, in order to
ponder over the facts which I have just heard; I will soon return ";
and without further ceremony, hurried from the room.
     By some indefinable impulse, I went immediately up-stairs, and took
my stand at the western window of the large room directly over Mrs.
Belden. The blinds were closed; the room was shrouded in funereal
gloom, but its sombreness and horror were for the moment unfelt; I was
engaged in a fearful debate with myself. Was Mary Leavenworth the
principal, or merely the accessory, in this crime? Did the determined
prejudice of Mr. Gryce, the convictions of Eleanore, the circumstantial
evidence even of such facts as had come to our knowledge, preclude the
possibility that Mrs. Belden's conclusions were correct? That all the
detectives interested in the affair would regard the question as
settled, I did not doubt; but need it be? Was it utterly impossible to
find evidence yet that Henry Clavering was, after all, the assassin of
Mr. Leavenworth?
     Filled with the thought, I looked across the room to the closet

where lay the body of the girl who, according to all probability, had
known the truth of the matter, and a great longing seized me. Oh, why
could not the dead be made to speak? Why should she lie there so
silent, so pulseless, so inert, when a word from her were enough to
decide the awful question? Was there no power to compel those pallid
lips to move?
     Carried away by the fervor of the moment, I made my way to her
side. Ah, God, how still! With what a mockery the closed lips and lids
confronted my demanding gaze! A stone could not have been more
unresponsive.
     With a feeling that was almost like anger, I stood there, when—
what was it I saw protruding from beneath her shoulders where they
crushed against the bed? An envelope? a letter? Yes.
     Dizzy with the sudden surprise, overcome with the wild hopes this
discovery awakened, I stooped in great agitation and drew the letter
out. It was sealed but not directed. Breaking it hastily open, I took a
glance at its contents. Good heavens! it was the work of the girl
herself!—its very appearance was enough to make that evident! Feeling
as if a miracle had happened, I hastened with it into the other room,
and set myself to decipher the awkward scrawl.
     This is what I saw, rudely printed in lead pencil on the inside of a
sheet of common writing-paper:

     "I am a wicked girl. I have knone things all the time which I had ought to 
have told but I did n't dare to he said he would kill me if I did I mene the tall 
splendud looking gentulman with the black mustash who I met coming out 
of Mister Levenworth's room with a key in his hand the night Mr. Levenworth 
was murdered. He was so scared he gave me money and made me go away 
and come here and keep every