CHAPTER XL (continued).

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 67, 13 September 1884, Page 4

CHAPTER XL (continued).

IN THE PRISON. " You didn't see her strike the blow ?" Mansell roused indignantly. " No, of course not !" he cried. "You did not see her with your aunt that moment you fled from the house immediately before the murder !" "I didn't sec her. 1 ' That emphasis!, unconscious perhaps, was fatal. Gryce, who never lost anything, darted on this small gleam of advantage as a hungry pike darts upon an innocent minnow. " But you thought you heard her," he cried : "her voice, or her laugh, or perhaps merely the rustle of her dress in another room ?" " No," said Mansell, " I didn't hear her." " Of course not," was the instantaneous reply. "But something said or done by somebody — a something which amounts to nothing as evidence— gives you to understand she was there, and so you hold your tongue for fear of compromising her." "Amounts to nothing as evidence?" echoed Mansell. "How do you know that ?'' "Because Miss Dare was not in the hou^e w ith your aunt at that time. Miss Dare was in Professor Darling's observatory, a mile or so away. " " Does she say that?" " We will prove that." Aroused, excited, the prisoner turned his flashing blue eyes on the detective. "I should be glad to have you," he said. "But you must first tell me in what room you w ere when you received this intimation of Miss Dare's presence ?" " I was in no room ; 1 was on the stone step outside of the dining-room door. I did not go into the house at all that mornj ing, as I believe I have already told MiFerris."' " Vtn/ good ' It will all be simpler than I thought! You came up to the house and went away again w ithout coming in ; ran away, I may say, taking the direction of the swamp." The prisoner did not deny it. "You remembei all the incidents of that short flight?" The prisonei's lip curled. "Remember leaping the fence and stumbling a tritie when you came down?" "Yes." " Very well ; now tell me how could Miss Dare see you do that from Mrs Clemmens's house ?" ''• Did Miss Dare tell you she saw me trip after I jumped the fence ?" "She did." "And yet Mas in Professor Darling's observatory, a mile or so away ?" "Yes." A satirical laugh broke from the prisoner. " I think," said he, " that instead of my te'ling you how she could have seen this from Mrs Clemmens's house, you should tell me how she could have seen it from Professor Darling s observatory." " That is easy enough. She was looking through a telescope." "What?"' "At the moment you were turning from Mrs Clemmens's door, Miss Dare, perched in the top of Professor Darling's house, -was looking in that very direction through a telescope." "I— l would like to believe that story," said the prisoner, with suppressed emotion. "It would "' " What ?" urged the detective, calmly. " Make a new man of me," finished Mansell, with a momentary burst of feeling. "Well, then, call up your memories of the way your aunt's house is situated. Recall the hour, and acknowledge that, if Miss Dare was with her, she must have been in the dining-room." " There is no doubt about that." "Now, how many windows has the dining-room ?" " One." "How situated?" " It is on the same side as the door." " There is none, then, which looks doA\n to that place where you leaped the fence ?" "No." " How account for her seeing that little incident, then, of your stumbling ?" "She might have come to the door, stepped out, and so seen me." " Humph ! I see you have an answer for everything." Craik Mansell was silent. A look of admiration slowly spread itself over the detective's face. "We must probe the matter a little deeper," said he. " I see I have a hard head to deal with." And, bringing his glance a little nearer to the prisoner, he remarked : "If she had been standing there you: could not have turned round without seeing her?" "No." " Now, did you see her standing there?" " No." " Yet you turned round." "I did?" " Miss Dare says so." The prisoner struck his forehead with his hand. '• And it 2S so," he cried. " I remember now that some vague desire to know the time made me turn to look at the church clock. Go on. Tell me more that Miss Dare saw." His manner was so changed — his eye burned so brightly— the detective gave himself a tap of decided self-gratulation. "She saw you hurry over the bog, stop at the entrance of the wood, take a look at your watch, and plunge with renewed speed into the forest." "It is so. It is so. And to have seen that she must have had the aid of a telehcope." "Then she describes your appearance. She says you had your pants turned up at the ankles, and carried your coat on your left arm." " Left ovmV "Yes." " I think I had it on my right." " It was on the arm toward her, she declares If she was in the observatory, it was your left side that she saw." " Yes, yes ; but the coat wag on the other arm. I remember using my left hand in vaulting over the fence when I came up to the house." " It is a vital point," said Mr Gryce, with a quietness that concealed his real anxiety and chagrin. "If the coat was on the arm toward her, the fact of its being on the right " " Wait !" exclaimed Mr Mansell, with an air of sudden relief. "I recollect now that I changed it from one arm to the other after 1 vaulted the fence. It was just at the > moment I turned to come back to the side door, and, as she does not pretend to have -seen me till after I left the door, of course r the coat was, as she says, on my left arm,"

"I thought you could explain it," returned Mr Gryce, with an air of easy confidence. " But what do you mean when you say that you changed it at the moment you turned to come back to the side door? i Didn't you go at once to the dining-room door from the swamp ?" "No. I had gone to the front door on my former visit, and was going to it this time ; but when I got to the corner of the house I saw the tramp coming into the gate, and not wishing to encounter anyone, turned round and came back to the diningroom door." "I see. And it was then you heard i> " What I heard," completed the prisoner, grimly. "Mr Mansell," said the other, "are you not sufficiently convinced by this time that Miss Dare was not with Mrs Clemmcns, but in the observatory of Professor Darling's house, to tell me what that was ?" " Answer me a question and I will reply. Can the entrance of the woods be seen from the position which she declares herself to have occupied ?" "It can. Not two hours ago 1 tried the experiment myself, using the same telescope and kneeling in the same place where she did. I found I could not only trace the spot where you paused, but could detect quite readily every movement of my man Hickory, whom I had previously placed there to go through the motions. I should not have come here if I had not made myself certain on that point. " Yet the prisoner hesitated. "I not only made myself sure of that," resumed Mr Gryce, " but I al«o tried if I could see as much with my naked eye from Mrs Clemmens's side door. I found I could not, and my sight is very good." " Enough," said Mansell ; " hard as it is to explain, I must believe Mi&s Dare was not w here I thought her." " Then you will tell me what you heard ?' " Yes ; for in it may lie the key to this mystery, though how, I cannot see, and I doubt if you can. lam all the more ready to do it," he pursued, " because 1 can now understand how &he came to think me guilty, and, thinking so, conducted herself as she has done from the beginning of my trial. All but the fact of her denouncing herself yesterday ; that I cannot comprehend," "A woman in love can do anything," quoth Mr Ciryce. Then, admonished by the Hush of the prisoner's cheek that he was treading on dangerous ground, ho quickly added : "But she w ill explain all that herself some day. Let us hear w hat you have to tell me." Craik Man&ell drooped his head and his brow became gloomy. " Sir," said he, " it is unnecessary for me to state that your surmise in regard to my past convictions is true. If Miss Dare was not with my aunt just before the murder, I certainly had reasons tor thinking she Avas. To be sure, I did not see her cr hear her voice, but I heard my aunt address her distinctly and by name.*' "You did?'' Mr Gryce's interest in the tattoo he was playing on his knee became intense. " Yes. It was just as I pushed the door ajar. The words were these : ' You think you are going to marry him, lmogene Dare ; but I tell you you never shall, not whilo / live.'"' "Humph !"' broke involuntarily from the detective's lips, and, though his face betrayed nothing of the shock this communication occasioned him, his fingers stopped an instant in their restless play. Mr Mansell saw it, and cast him an anxious look. The detective instantly smiled with great unconcern. "Go on," said he, " what else did you hear?" " Nothing else. In the mood in which 1 was, this very plain intimation that Miss Dare had sought my aunt, had pleaded with her for me and failed, struck mo as sufficient. I did not wait to hear more, but hurried away in a state of passion that was little short of frenzy. To leave the place and return to my work was now my one wish. When I found, then, that by running I might catch the train at Monteith, I ran, and so unconsciously laid myself open to suspicion." "I see," murmured the detective; "I see." "Not that I suspected any evil then," pursued Mr Mansell, earnestly. "I was only conscious of disappointment and a desire to escape from my own thoughts. It w r as not till next day " "Yes — yes," interrupted Mr Gryce, abstractedly, " but your aunt's words ! She said : ' You think you are going to marry him, lmogene Dare ; but you never shall, not while I live.' Yet lmogene Dare was not there. Let us solve that problem." " You think you can ?" "I think I must." "How? how?" The detective did not answer. He was buried in profound thought. Suddenly he exclaimed : "It is, as you say, the key-note to the ti-agedy. It must be solved.'' But the glance he dived deep into space seemed to echo that "How? how?" cf the prisoner, with a gloomy persistence that promised little for an immediate an.swer to the enigma before them. It occurred to Mansell to offer a suggestion. "There is but one way / can explain it," ■aid he. "My aunt was speaking to herself. She was deaf and lived alone. Such people often indulge in soliloquising." Ihe slap which Mr Gryce his thigh mu&t have made it tingle for a good halfhour. "There," he cried, "who says extraordinary measures are not useful at times? You've hit the very explanation. Of course, she was speaking to herself. She was just the woman to do it. lmogene Dare was in her thoughts, so she addressed lmogene Dare. If you had opened the door you would have seen her standing there alone, venting her thoughts into empty space." "I wish I had," said the prisoner. Mr Gryce became exceedingly animated. " Well, that's settled," said he. " lmogene Dare was not there, save in Mrs Clemmens's imagination. And now for the conclusion, rfhe said : ' You think you are going to marry him, lmogene Dare ; but you never shall, not while I live.' That shows her mind was running on you." "It shows more than that. It shows that, if Miss Dare was not with her then, she must have been there earlier in the day, For when 1 left my aunt the day before, she was in entire ignorance of my attachment to Miss Dare, and the hopes it had led to." " Say that again," cried Gryce. Mr Mansell repeated himself, adding : "That would account for the ring being found on my aunt's dining-room floor " But Mr Gryce waived that question aside. " What I want to make sure of is that your aunt had not been informed of your wishes concerning Miss Dare." "Unless Miss Dare was there in the early morning and told her herself." "There were no neighbours to betray you ?" "There wasn't a neighbour who knew anything about the matter." The detective's eye brightened till it vied in brilliancy with the stray gleam of sunshine which had found its way to the cell through the narrow grating over their heads. "A clue!" he murmured ; "I have received a clue," and rose as if to leave.

The prisoner, startled, rose also. •' A clue to what?" he cried. Bufc Mr Gryce was not the man to answer such a question. "You shall hear soon. Enough that you have given me an idea that may eventually lead to the clearing up of this mystery, if not to your own acquittal from a false charge of murder." "And Miss Dare?" " Is under no charge, and never will be." "AndMrOrcutt?" " Wait," said Mr Gryce—" wait."