Jamail Center for Legal Research
Tarlton Law Library

"Saint seducing gold."
            --Romeo and Juliet.

         "When our actions do not, 
Our fears do make us traitors."
                                    --Macbeth.

believes in God and prizes woman's honor, let him stop the issue of
that report." And Henry Clavering, dignified as ever, but in a state of
extreme agitation, stepped into our midst through an open door at our
right.
     But at the sight of his face, the man in our arms quivered,
shrieked, and gave one bound that would have overturned Mr. Clavering,
herculean of frame as he was, had not Mr. Gryce interposed.
     "Wait!" he cried; and holding back the secretary with one hand—
where was his rheumatism now!—he put the other in his pocket and drew
thence a document which he held up before Mr. Clavering. "It has not
gone yet," said he; "be easy. And you," he went on, turning towards
Trueman Harwell, "be quiet, or — "
     His sentence was cut short by the man springing from his grasp.
"Let me go!" he shrieked. "Let me have my revenge on him who, in face
of all I have done for Mary Leavenworth, dares to call her his wife!
Let me—" But at this point he paused, his quivering frame stiffening
into stone, and his clutching hands, outstretched for his rival's
throat, falling heavily back. "Hark!" said he, glaring over Mr.
Clavering's shoulder: "it is she! I hear her! I feel her! She is
on the stairs! she is at the door! she—" a low, shuddering sigh of
longing and despair finished the sentence: the door opened, and Mary
Leavenworth stood before us!
     It was a moment to make young hairs turn gray. To see her face, so
pale, so haggard, so wild in its fixed horror, turned towards Henry
Clavering, to the utter ignoring of the real actor in this most
horrible scene! Trueman Harwell could not stand it.
     "Ah, ah!" he cried; "look at her! cold, cold; not one glance for

me, though I have just drawn the halter from her neck and fastened it
about my own!"
     And, breaking from the clasp of the man who in his jealous rage
would now have withheld him, he fell on his knees before Mary,
clutching her dress with frenzied hands. "You shall look at
me," he cried; "you shall listen to me! I will not lose body
and soul for nothing. Mary, they said you were in peril! I could not
endure that thought, so I uttered the truth,—yes, though I knew what
the consequence would be,—and all I want now is for you to say you
believe me, when I swear that I only meant to secure to you the fortune
you so much desired; that I never dreamed it would come to this; that
it was because I loved you, and hoped to win your love in return that
I — "
     But she did not seem to see him, did not seem to hear him. Her eyes
were fixed upon Henry Clavering with an awful inquiry in their depths,
and none but he could move her.
     "You do not hear me!" shrieked the poor wretch. "Ice that you
are, you would not turn your head if I should call to you from the
depths of hell!"
     But even this cry fell unheeded. Pushing her hands down upon his
shoulders as though she would sweep some impediment from her path, she
endeavored to advance. "Why is that man here?" she cried, indicating
her husband with one quivering hand. "What has he done that he should
be brought here to confront me at this awful time?"
     '"I told her to come here to meet her uncle's murderer," whispered
Mr. Gryce into my ear.
     But before I could reply to her, before Mr. Clavering himself could
murmur a word, the guilty wretch before her had started to his feet.

     "Don't you know? then I will tell you. It is because these
gentlemen, chivalrous and honorable as they consider themselves, think
that you, the beauty and the Sybarite, committed with your own white
hand the deed of blood which has brought you freedom and fortune. Yes,
yes, this man "—turning and pointing at me—" friend as he has made
himself out to be, kindly and honorable as you have doubtless believed
him, but who in every look he has bestowed upon you, every word he has
uttered in your hearing during all these four horrible weeks, has been
weaving a cord for your neck—thinks you the assassin of your uncle,
unknowing that a man stood at your side ready to sweep half the world
from your path if that same white hand rose in bidding. That I—"
     "You?" Ah! now she could see him: now she could hear him!
     "Yes," clutching her robe again as she hastily recoiled; "didn't
you know it? When in that dreadful hour of your rejection by your
uncle, you cried aloud for some one to help you, didn't you know—"
     "Don't!" she shrieked, bursting from him with a look of unspeakable
horror. "Don't say that! Oh!" she gasped, "is the mad cry of a stricken
woman for aid and sympathy the call for a murderer?" And turning away 
in horror, she moaned: "Who that ever looks at me now will forget that a
man—such a man!—dared to think that, because I was in mortal
perplexity, I would accept the murder of my best friend as a relief from
it!" Her horror was unbounded. "Oh, what a chastisement for folly!" she
murmured. "What a punishment for the love of money which has always 
been my curse!"
     Henry Clavering could no longer restrain himself. Leaping to her

side, he bent over her. "Was it nothing but folly, Mary? Are you
guiltless of any deeper wrong? Is there no link of complicity between
you two? Have you nothing on your soul but an inordinate desire to
preserve your place in your uncle's will, even at the risk of breaking
my heart and wronging your noble cousin? Are you innocent in this
matter? Tell me!" placing his hand on her head, he pressed it slowly
back and gazed into her eyes; then, without a word, took her to his
breast and looked calmly around him.
     "She is innocent!" said he.
     It was the uplifting of a stifling pall. No one in the room, unless
it was the wretched criminal shivering before us, but felt a sudden
influx of hope. Even Mary's own countenance caught a glow. "Oh!" she
whispered, withdrawing from his arms to look better into his face,
"and is this the man I have trifled with, injured, and tortured, till
the very name of Mary Leavenworth might well make him shudder? Is this
he whom I married in a fit of caprice, only to forsake and deny?
Henry, do you declare me innocent in face of all you have seen and
heard; in face of that moaning, chattering wretch before us, and my
own quaking flesh and evident terror; with the remembrance on your
heart and in your mind of the letter I wrote yon the morning after the
murder, in which I prayed you to keep away from me, as I was in such
deadly danger the least hint given to the world that I had a secret to
conceal would destroy me? Do you, can you, will you, declare me
innocent before God and the world?"
     "I do," said he.
     A light such as had never visited her face before passed slowly over
it. "Then God forgive me the

wrong I have done this noble heart, for I can never forgive myself! Wait!" 
said she, as he opened his lips. "Before I accept any further tokens of your 
generous confidence, let me show you what I am. You shall know the worst 
of the woman you have taken to your heart. Mr. Raymond," she cried, turn-
ing towards me for the first time, "in those days when, with such an earnest
desire for my welfare (you see I do not believe this man's insinuations), you
sought to induce me to speak out and tell all I knew concerning this
dreadful deed, I did not do it because of my selfish fears. I knew the
case looked dark against me. Eleanore had told me so. Eleanore
herself—and it was the keenest pang I had to endure—believed me
guilty. She had her reasons. She knew first, from the directed envelope
she had found lying underneath my uncle's dead body on the library
table, that he had been engaged at the moment of death in summoning his
lawyer to make that change in his will which would transfer my claims
to her; secondly, that notwithstanding my denial of the same, I had
been down to his room the night before, for she had heard my door open
and my dress rustle as I passed out. But that was not all; the key that
every one felt to be a positive proof of guilt wherever found, had been
picked up by her from the floor of my room; the letter written by Mr.
Clavering to my uncle was found in my fire; and the handkerchief which
she had seen me take from the basket of clean clothes, was produced at
the inquest stained with pistol grease. I could not account for these
things. A web seemed tangled about my feet. I could not stir without
encountering some new toil. I knew I was innocent; but if I failed to
satisfy my cousin of this, how could I hope to convince the general

public, if once called upon to do so. Worse still, if Eleanore, with
every apparent motive for desiring long life to our uncle, was held in
such suspicion because of a few circumstantial evidences against her,
what would I not have to fear if these evidences were turned against
me, the heiress! The tone and manner of the juryman at the inquest
that asked who would be most benefited by my uncle's will showed but
too plainly. When, therefore, Eleanore, true to her heart's generous
instincts, closed her lips and refused to speak when speech would have
been my ruin, I let her do it, justifying myself with the thought that
she had deemed me capable of crime, and so must bear the consequences.
Nor, when I saw how dreadful these were likely to prove, did I relent.
Fear of the ignominy, suspense, and danger which confession would
entail sealed my lips. Only once did I hesitate. That was when, in the
last conversation we had, I saw that, notwithstanding appearances, you
believed in Eleanore's innocence, and the thought crossed me you might
be induced to believe in mine if I threw myself upon your mercy. But
just then Mr. Clavering came; and as in a flash I seemed to realize
what my future life would be, stained by suspicion, and, instead of
yielding to my impulse, went so far in the other direction as to
threaten Mr. Clavering with a denial of our marriage if he approached
me again till all danger was over.
     "Yes, he will tell you that was my welcome to him when, with heart
and brain racked by long suspense, he came to my door for one word of
assurance that the peril I was in was not of my own making. That was
the greeting I gave him after a year of silence every moment of which
was torture to him. But he forgives me; I see it in his eyes; I hear

it in his accents; and you—oh, if in the long years to come you can
forget what I have made Eleanore suffer by my selfish fears; if with
the shadow of her wrong before you, you can by the grace of some sweet
hope think a little less hardly of me, do. As for this man—torture
could not be worse to me than this standing with him in the same
room—let him come forward and declare if I by look or word have given
him reason to believe I understood his passion, much less returned it."
     "Why ask!" he gasped. "Don't you see it was your indifference
which drove me mad? To stand before you, to agonize after you, to
follow you with thoughts in every move you made; to know my soul was
welded to yours with bands of steel no fire could melt, no force
destroy, no strain dissever; to sleep under the same roof, sit at the
same table, and yet meet not so much as one look to show me you
understood! It was that which made my life a hell. I was determined
you should understand. If I had to leap into a pit of flame, you should
know what I was, and what my passion for you was. And you do. You
comprehend it all now. Shrink as you will from my presence, cower as
you may to the weak man you call husband, you can never forget the love
of Trueman Harwell; never forget that love, love, love, was the force
which led me down into your uncle's room that night, and lent me will
to pull the trigger which poured all the wealth you hold this day into
your lap. Yes," he went on, towering in his preternatural despair till
even the noble form of Henry Clavering looked dwarfed beside him,
"every dollar that chinks from your purse shall talk of me. Every
gew-gaw which flashes on that haughty head, too haughty to bend to me,
shall shriek my name into your ears. Fashion, pomp, luxury,—you will

have them all; but till gold loses its glitter and ease its attraction
you will never forget the hand that gave them to you!"
     With a look whose evil triumph I cannot describe, he put his hand
into the arm of the waiting detective, and in another moment would have
been led from the room; when Mary, crushing down the swell of emotions
that was seething in her breast, lifted her head and said:
     "No, Trueman Harwell; I cannot give you even that thought for your
comfort. Wealth so laden would bring nothing but torture. I cannot
accept the torture, so must release the wealth. From this day, Mary
Clavering owns nothing but what comes to her from the husband she has
so long and so basely wronged." And raising her hands to her ears, she
tore out the diamonds which hung there, and flung them at the feet of
the unfortunate man.
     It was the final wrench of the rack. With a yell such as I never
thought to listen to from the lips of a man, he flung up his arms,
while all the lurid light of madness glared on his face. "And I have
given my soul to hell for a shadow!" he moaned, "for a shadow!"

     "Well, that is the best day's work I ever did! Your
congratulations, Mr. Raymond, upon the success of the most daring game
ever played in a detective's office."
     I looked at the triumphant countenance of Mr. Gryce in amazement.
"What do you mean?" I cried; "did you plan all this?"
     "Did I plan it?" he repeated. "Could I stand here, seeing how things
have turned out, if I had not? 

Mr. Raymond, let us be comfortable. You are a gentleman, but we can 
well shake hands over this. I have never known such a satisfactory 
conclusion to a bad piece of business in all my professional career."
     We did shake hands, long and fervently, and then I asked him to
explain himself.
     "Well," said he, "there has always been one thing that plagued me,
even in the very moment of my strongest suspicion against this woman,
and that was, the pistol-cleaning business. I could not reconcile it
with what I knew of womankind. I could not make it seem the act of a
woman. Did you ever know a woman who cleaned a pistol? No. They can
fire them, and do; but after firing them, they do not clean them. Now
it is a principle which every detective recognizes, that if of a
hundred leading circumstances connected with a crime, ninety-nine of
these are acts pointing to the suspected party with unerring certainty,
but the hundredth equally important act one which that person could not
have performed, the whole fabric of suspicion is destroyed. Recognizing
this principle, then, as I have said, I hesitated when it came to the
point of arrest. The chain was complete; the links were fastened; but
one link was of a different size and material from the rest; and in
this argued a break in the chain. I resolved to give her a final
chance. Summoning Mr. Clavering, and Mr. Harwell, two persons whom
I had no reason to suspect, but who were the only persons beside herself
who could have committed this crime, being the only persons of
intellect who were in the house or believed to be, at the time of the
murder, I notified them separately that the assassin of Mr. Leavenworth
was not only found, but was about to be arrested in my house, and that

if they wished to hear the confession which would be sure to follow,
they might have the opportunity of doing so by coming here at such an
hour. They were both too much interested, though for very different
reasons, to refuse; and I succeeded in inducing them to conceal
themselves in the two rooms from which you saw them issue, knowing that
if either of them had committed this deed, he had done it for the love
of Mary Leavenworth, and consequently could not hear her charged with
crime, and threatened with arrest, without betraying himself. I did not
hope much from the experiment; least of all did I anticipate that Mr.
Harwell would prove to be the guilty man—but live and learn, Mr.
Raymond, live and learn."