CHAPTER XXV.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 58, 12 July 1884, Page 4

CHAPTER XXV.

AMOXC TELESCOPES AND CHARTS. Tarry a little— thero is something elso. —Merchant ok Venice. Couverneuii Hildhetii was discharged and Craik Mansoll committed to prison to await his trial. Horace Byrd, who no longer had any motive for remaining in Sibley, had completed all his preparations to return to New York. His valise was packed, his adieus made, and nothing was left for him to do but to step around to the station, whon lie bethought him of a certain question he had not put to Hickory. Seeking him out. he propounded it. " Hickory," said ho, " have you ever discovored in the course of your inquiries where Miss Dare was on tho morning of the murder V" The stalwart detective, who was in a very contented frame of mind, answered up with great cheerines.-* : "Haven't I, though ! It was ono of the very first things I made s-ure of. She was at Professor Darling's houso on Summer Avenue." "At Professor Darling's house?" Mr Byrd felt a sensation of dismay. Professor Darling's house w as, as you remember, in almost direct communication with Mrs Clemmen&'s cottage by means of a path through the woods. As Mr Byrd recalled his tirst experience in threading those woods, and remembered with what suddenness he had emerged from them only to find himself in full view of the West Side and Profe^or Darling's spacious villa, ho stared uneasily at his colleague and said : " It is train time, Hickory, but I cannot help that. Before I leave this town I must know just what .she was doing on that morning, and whom sho was with. Can you find out?" " Can I find out ?" The hardy detective was out of tho door before the last word of this scornful repetition had left his lips. He was gone an hour. When he returned he looked very much excited. " Well •" he ejaculated, breathlessly, " I have had an experience." Mr Byrd gave him a look, saw something he did not like in his face, and moved uneasily in his chair. " You have ?" he retoited. " What is it T Speak." "Do you know," tho other resumed, "that the hardest thing lever had to do was to keep my head down in the hut the other day, and deny myself a look at the woman who could bear herself so bravely in the midst of a scene so terrible. Well," he went on, "I have to-day been rewarded for my self-control. I havo seen Miss Dare." Horace Byrd could scarcely restrain his impatience. " Where ?" he demanded. " How ? Tell a fellow, can't you ?" "I am going to," protested Hickory. " Cannot you uaita minute? /had to wait fort}'. Well," he continued more pleasantly as he saw the other frown, "I vent to Professor Darling's. There is a girl there I have talked to before, and I had no difficulty in seeing her or getting a five minutes chut with her at the back-gate. Odd how such girls will talk ! She told me in three minutes all I wanted tc know. Not that it was so much only " "Do get on," interrupted Mr Byrd. "When did Miss Dare come to the house on the morning Mrs Clemmens was murdered, and what did sho do while there?" " She came early ; by ten o'clock or so, 1 believe, and she sat, if she did sit, in an observatory they have at the top of the house ; a place where she often used to go I am told to study astronomy with Professor Darling's oldest daughter." "And was Miss Darling with her that morning ? Did they study together all the time she was in the house ?" " No ; that is, the girl said no one went up to the observatory with Miss Dare ; that Miss Darling did not happen to be at home that day, and Miss Dare had to study alone. Hearing this," pursued Hickory, answering the look of impatience in the other's face, " I had a curiosity to interview the observatory, and being— well, not a clumsy fellow at softsoaping a girl— I at last succeeding in prevailing upon her to take me up. Byrd, will you believe me when I tell you that wo did it without going into the houge ? %) "What?" " I mean," corrected tho other, "without entering the main part of the building. The professor's house has a tower, you know, at the upper ansle toward the woeds, and it is in the top of that tower he keeps his telescopes and all that kind of thing. The tower has a special staircase of its own. It is a spiral one, and opens on a door below that connects directly with tho garden. We went up theso stairs." "You dared to?" " Yes ; the girl assured me everyone was out of the house but the servants, and I believed her. Wo went up the stairs, entered the observatory " 11 It is not kept locked, then ?" "It was not locked to-day— saw the room, which is a curious one— glanced out over the view, which is well worth seeing, and i then » b> I "Well, what?" "I believe I stood still and asked the girl a question or two more, I inquired,"

he went on, deprecating the other s impatience by a wavo of his nervous hand, "when Miss Dare camo down from this place on the morning you remomber. She answered that she couldn't quito tell ; thai she wouldn't have remembered anything about it at all, only that Miss Trcmainc camo to tho houso that morning, and wanti ing to seo Miss Daro, ordorod nor to go up to the observatory and tell that lady to come down, and that she went, but to het Rin-pri.se did not find Miss Dare there, though she was suro she had notgonohomo, or, at least, hadn't taken any of tho cars that start from the front of the house, for she had looked at them every one as they wont by the basemont window whoro she was at worlc." "Tho girl said thin?" " Yoa, standing in tho door of this small room, and looking me .straight in thooyo." "And did you ask hoi- nothing more? Say nothing about tho time, Hickory, or — or inquire where she supposed Miss Dare to lnive gone ?" "Yes, I asked her all this 1 . I am not without curiosity any more than you are, | Mr By id." " And she replied ?" "Oh, as to tho time, that it was somewhere before noon. Her reason for being suio of this was that Miss Tremaino doclined to \\ uit till another eflbrt had been made to find Mi*s Dare, saying sho had an engagement at twelve which she did not wish to break," " And tho girl's notions about whore Miss Dare had gone ?" "Such as you expect, Byrd. Sho said she did not know anything about it, but that Miss Dire often went strolling in the garden, or even in tliu woods \\hon sho came to Professor Dai ling's house, and that she supposed she had gone oil" on some such walk at this titno, for, at one o'clock or thereabouts, &.hc saw her pass in the horsecar on her May back to t ho town." "Hickory, I wish you had not told mo this just as I am going back to the city." " Wish I had not told it, or wish I had not gone to Professor Darling's house as you requested ?" " Wish you had not told it. I dare not wish the other. But you spoke of seeing Miss Dare ; how was that ? where did you run across her?" " Do you want to hear?" " Of course, of course." " But I thought " "Oh, never mind, old boy; toll mo tho whole now, as long as you have told me any. Was she in the house ?" " I will tell you. I had asked tho girl all tho question!?, as I have said, and was about to leave the observatory and go below when I thought I would cast another glance around the curious old place, and in doing so caught a glimpse of a huge portfolio of i charts, as I supposed, standing upright in a rack that stretched across tho further portion of the room. Somehow my heart misgave me when I saw this rack, and, scarcely conscious that it was I feared, I crossed tho floor and looked behind the portfolio. Byrd, there was a woman crouched there— a woman whose pallid cheeks and burning eyes lifted to meet my own, told me only too plainly that it was Miss Daro. I have had many experiences," Hickory allowed, after a moment, "and some of them anything but pleasant to myself, but 1 don't think I ever felt just as I did at that instant. I believe 1 attempted a bow — I don't remember ; or, at least, tried to murmur some excuse, but the look that came into her face paralysed me, and I stopped before I had gotten very far, and waited to hear what she would say. But she did not say much : she merely rose, and, turning toward mo, exclaimed: 'No apologies ; you are a detective, I suppose ?' And when I nodded, or made some other token that sho had guessed correctly, she merely remarked, flashing upon me^ howevor, in a way I do not yet understand : ' Well, you have got what you desired, and now can go.' And I went, Byrd, went ; and I felt puzzled, I don't know why, and a little bit .^ore abouttho heart, too, as if Well, I can't even tell what I moan by that if. The only thing I am sure of is, that ManselPs cause hasn't been helped by this day's job, and that if this lady is asked on the witness stand where sho was during the hour every one believed her to be safely shut up with tho telescopes and charts, wo shall hear " j "What?" " Well, that she was shut up with them, most likely. Women like her are not to be easily disconcerted even on tho witness stand."