The other was a man of different mould, and interested me in a manner for which I could not then account. The first time I saw him did not seem like the first time. But this, perhaps, is an after-impression.
Every line of his countenance denoted character; a certain capability, I mean, but whether for good or evil was not so plain. I should have called him handsome, but for a noticeable scar which ran at right angles across his mouth, giving him a sardonic expression when he smiled.
His frame might have set an anatomist wild with delight – six feet two, deep-chested, knitted with tendons of steel. Not at all a fellow to amble on plush carpets.
“Some day,” thought I, as I saw him stride by the house, “he will throw the little Lieutenant out of that second-story window.”
I cannot tell, to this hour, which of those two men Mary Ware loved most – for I think she loved them both. A woman’s heart was the insolvable charade with which the Sphinx nipt the Egyptians. I was never good at puzzles.
The flirtation, however, was food enough for the whole neighbourhood. But faintly did the gossips dream of the strange drama that was being shaped out, as compactly as a tragedy of Sophocles, under their noses.
They were very industrious in tearing Mary Ware’s good name to pieces. Some laughed at the gay Lieutenant, and some at Julius Kenneth; but they all amiably united in condemning Mary Ware.
This state of affairs had continued for five or six months, when it was reported that Julius Kenneth and Mary Ware were affianced. The Lieutenant was less frequently seen in Crandall Street, and Julius waited upon Mary’s footsteps with the fidelity of a shadow.
Yet – though Mary went to the Sunday concerts with Julius Kenneth, she still wore the Lieutenant’s roses in her bosom.
II
One drizzly November morning – how well I remember it! – I was awakened by a series of nervous raps on my bed-room door. The noise startled me from an unpleasant dream.
“O, sir!” cried the chambermaid on the landing. “There’s been a dreadful time across the street. They’ve gone and killed Mary Ware!”
“Ah!”
That was all I could say. Cold drops of perspiration stood on my forehead.
I looked at my watch; it was eleven o’clock; I had over-slept myself, having sat up late the previous night.
I dressed hastily, and, without waiting for breakfast, pushed my way through the murky crowd that had collected in front of the house opposite, and passed up stairs, unquestioned.
When I entered the room, there were six people present: a thick-set gentleman, in black, with a bland professional air, a physician; two policemen; Adelaide Woods, an actress; Mrs Marston, the landlady; and Julius Kenneth.
In the centre of the chamber, on the bed, lay the body of Mary Ware – as pale as Seneca’s wife.
I shall never forget it. The corpse haunted me for years afterwards, the dark streaks under the eyes, and the wavy hair streaming over the pillow – the dead gold hair. I stood by her for a moment, and turned down the counterpane, which was drawn up closely to the chin.
“There was that across her throat
Which you had hardly cared to see.”
At the head of the bed sat Julius Kenneth, bending over the icy hand which he held in his own. He was kissing it.
The gentleman in black was conversing in undertones with Mrs Marston, who every now and then glanced furtively toward Mary Ware.
The two policemen were examining the doors, closets and windows of the apartment with, obviously, little success.
There was no fire in the air-tight stove, but the place was suffocatingly close. I opened a window, and leaned against the casement to get a breath of fresh air.
The physician approached me. I muttered something to him indistinctly, for I was partly sick with the peculiar mouldy smell that pervaded the room.
“Yes,” he began, scrutinizing me, “the affair looks very perplexing, as you remark. Professional man, sir? No? Bless me! – beg pardon. Never in my life saw anything that looked so exceedingly like nothing. Thought, at first, ’twas a clear case of suicide – door locked, key on the inside, place undisturbed; but then we find no instrument with which the subject could have inflicted that wound on the neck. Queer. Party must have escaped up chimney. But how? Don’t know. The windows are at least thirty feet from the ground. It would be impossible for a person to jump that far, even if he could clear the iron railing below. Which he couldn’t. Disagreeable things to jump on, those spikes, sir. Must have been done with a sharp knife. Queer, very. Party meant to make sure work of it. The carotid neatly severed, upon my word.”
The medical gentleman went on in this monologuic style for fifteen minutes, during which time Kenneth did not raise his lips from Mary’s fingers.
Approaching the bed, I spoke to him; but he only shook his head in reply.
I understood his grief.
After regaining my chamber, I sat listlessly for three or four hours, gazing into the grate. The twilight flitted in from the street; but I did not heed it. A face among the coals fascinated me. It came and went and came. Now I saw a cavern hung with lurid stalactites; now a small Vesuvius vomiting smoke and flame; now a bridge spanning some tartarean gulf; then these crumbled, each in its turn, and from out the heated fragments peered the one inevitable face.
The Evening Mirror, of that day, gave the following detailed report of the inquest:
“This morning, at eight o’clock, Mary Ware, the celebrated danseuse, was found dead in her chamber, at her late residence on the corner of Clarke and Crandall Streets. The perfect order of the room, and the fact that the door was locked on the inside, have induced many to believe that the poor girl was the victim of her own rashness. But we cannot think so. That the door was fastened on the inner side, proves nothing except, indeed, that the murderer was hidden in the apartment. That the room gave no evidence of a struggle having taken place, is also an insignificant point. Two men, or even one, grappling suddenly with the deceased, who was a slight woman, would have prevented any great resistance. The deceased was dressed in a ballet-costume, and was, as we conjecture, murdered directly after her return from the theatre. On a chair near the bed, lay several fresh bouquets, and a water-proof cloak which she was in the habit of wearing over her dancing-dress, on coming home from the theatre at night. No weapon whatever was found on the premises. We give below all the material testimony elicited by the coroner. It explains little.
“Josephine Marston deposes: I keep a boarding house at No. 131 Crandall Street. Miss Ware has boarded with me for the past two years. Has always borne a good character as far as I know. I do not think she had many visitors; certainly no male visitors, excepting a Lieutenant King, and Mr Kenneth to whom she was engaged. I do not know when King was last at the house; not within three days. I am confident. Deceased told me that he had gone away. I did not see her last night when she came home. The hall-door is never locked; each of the boarders has a latchkey. The last time I saw Miss Ware was just before she went to the theatre, when she asked me to call her at eight o’clock (this morning) as she had promised to walk with ‘Jules,’ meaning Mr Kenneth. I knocked at the door nine or ten times, but received no answer. Then I grew frightened and called one of the lady boarders, Miss Woods, who helped me to force the lock. The key fell on the floor inside as we pushed against the door. Mary Ware was lying on the bed, dressed. Some matches were scattered under the gas-burner by the bureau. The room presented the same appearance it does now.