"I want Cora to read this as well as you. She must know me dead as she never knew me living. But I can not tell her that I have left a confession behind me. She must come upon it unexpectedly, just as I mean you to do. Only thus can it reach either of you with any power. If I could but think of some excuse for sending her to the book where I propose to hide it! that would give her a chance of reading it before you do, and this would be best. She may know how to prepare or comfort you—I hope so. Cora is a noble woman, but the secret which kept my thoughts in such a whirl has held us apart.
"You did what I asked. You found a place for Rancher's waiter in the volunteer corps. Surprised as you were at the interest I expressed in him, you honored my first request and said nothing. Would you have shown the same anxious eagerness if you had known why I whispered those few words to him from the carriage door? Why I could neither rest nor sleep till he and the other boy were safely out of town?
"I must leave a line for you to show to people if they should wonder why I killed myself so soon after my seemingly happy marriage. You will find it in the same book with this letter. Some one will tell you to look in the book—I can not write any more.
"I can not help writing. It is all that connects me now with life and with you. But I have nothing more to say except, forgive—forgive—
"Do you think that God looks at his wretched ones differently from what men do? That He will have tenderness for one so sorry—that He will even find place— But my mother is there! my father! Oh, that makes it fearful to go—to meet— But it was my father who led me into this—only he did not know— There! I will think only of God.
"Good by—good by—good—"
That was all. It ended, as it began, without name and without date,—the final heart-throbs of a soul, awakened to its own act when it was quite too late. A piteous memorial which daunted each one of us as we read it, and when finished, drew us all together in the hall out of the sight and hearing of the two persons most intimately concerned in it.
Possibly because all had one thought—a thrilling one, which the major was the first to give utterance to.
"The man she killed was buried under the name of Wallace. How's that, if he was her husband, William?"
An officer we had not before noted was standing near the front door. He came forward at this and placed a second telegram in the superintendent's hand. It was from the same source as the one previously received and appeared to settle this very question.
"I have just learned that the man married was not the one who kept store in Owosso, but his brother William, who afterward died in Klondike. It is Wallace whose death you are investigating."
"What snarl is here?" asked the major.
"I think I understand," I ventured to put in. "Her husband was the one left on the road by the brother who staggered into camp for aid. He was a weak man—the weaker of the two she said—and probably died, while Wallace, after seemingly collapsing, recovered. This last she did not know, having failed to read the whole of the newspaper slip which told about it, and so when she saw some one with the Pfeiffer air and figure and was told later that a Mr. Pfeiffer was waiting to see her, she took it for granted that it was her husband, believing positively that Wallace was dead. The latter, moreover, may have changed to look more like his brother in the time that had elapsed."
"A possible explanation which adds greatly to the tragic aspects of the situation. She was probably a widow when she touched the fatal spring. Who will tell the man inside there? It will be his crowning blow."
XXVI
RUDGE
I never saw any good reason for my changing the opinion just expressed. Indeed, as time went on and a further investigation was made into the life and character of these two brothers, I came to think that not only had the unhappy Veronica mistaken the person of Wallace Pfeiffer for that of her husband William, but also the nature of the message he sent her and the motives which actuated it; that the interview he so peremptorily demanded before she descended to her nuptials would, had she but understood it properly, have yielded her an immeasurable satisfaction instead of rousing in her alarmed breast the criminal instincts of her race; that it was meant to do this; that he, knowing William's secret—a secret which the latter naturally would confide to him at a moment so critical as that which witnessed their parting in the desolate Klondike pass—had come, not to reproach her with her new nuptials, but to relieve her mind in case she cherished the least doubt of her full right to marry again, by assurances of her husband's death and of her own complete freedom. To this he may have intended to add some final messages of love and confidence from the man she had been so ready to forget; but nothing worse. Wallace Pfeiffer was incapable of anything worse, and if she had only resigned herself to her seeming fate and consented to see this man—
But to return to fact and leave speculation to the now doubly wretched Jeffrey.
On the evening of the day which saw our first recognition of this crime as the work of Veronica Moore, the following notice appeared in the Star and all the other local journals:
"Any person who positively remembers passing through Waverley Avenue between N and M Streets on the evening of May the eleventh at or near the hour of a quarter past seven will confer a favor on the detective force of the District by communicating the same to F. at the police headquarters in C street."
I was "F.," and I was soon deep in business. But I was readily able to identify those who came from curiosity, and as the persons who had really fulfilled the conditions expressed in my advertisement were few, an evening and morning's work sufficed to sift the whole matter down to the one man who could tell me just what I wanted to know. With this man I went to the major, and as a result we all met later in the day at Mr. Moore's door.
This gentleman looked startled enough when he saw the number and character of his visitors; but his grand air did not forsake him and his welcome was both dignified and cordial. But I did not like the way his eye rested on me.
But the slight venom visible in it at that moment was nothing to what he afterwards displayed when at a slight growl from Rudge, who stood in an attitude of offense in the doorway beyond, I drew the attention of all to the dog by saying sharply:
"There is our witness, sirs. There is the dog who will not cross the street even when his master calls him, but crouches on the edge of the curb and waits with eager eyes but immovable body, till that master comes back. Isn't that so, Mr. Moore? Have I not heard you utter more than one complaint in this regard?"
"I can not deny it," was the stiff reply, "but what—"
I did not wait for him to finish.
"Mr. Correan," I asked, "is this the animal you gassed between the hours of seven and eight on the evening of May the eleventh, crouching in front of this house with his nose to the curbstone?"
"It is; I noted him particularly; he seemed to be watching the opposite house."
Instantly I turned upon Mr. Moore.
"Is Rudge the dog to do that," I asked, "if his master were not there? Twice have I myself seen him in the self-same place and with the self-same air of expectant attention, and both times you had crossed to the house which you acknowledge he will approach no nearer than the curb on this side of the street."
"You have me," was the short reply with which Mr. Moore gave up the struggle. "Rudge, go back to your place. When you are wanted in the court-room I will let you know."
The smile with which he said this was sarcastic enough, but it was sarcasm directed mainly against himself. We were not surprised when, after some sharp persuasion on the part of the major, he launched into the following recital of his secret relation to what he called the last tragedy ever likely to occur in the Moore family.