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Leavenworth's body had been carried into the next room, asked if her mistress had anything in her hand at the time. "I don't know, sir. Faith!" she suddenly exclaimed, "I believe she did have a piece of paper. I recollect, now, seeing her put it in her pocket." The next witness was Molly, the upstairs girl.
Harwell," I reiterated, "this is no time for false delicacy. Did you read that letter?" "I did; but hastily, and with an agitated conscience." "You can, however, recall its general drift?" "It was some complaint in regard to the treatment received by him at the hand of one of Mr. Leavenworth's nieces. I remember nothing more." "Which niece?" "There were no names mentioned." "But you inferred "
Casting about in my mind for the means of doing so, I remembered that the ventilator running up through the house opened first into the passage-way connecting Mr. Leavenworth's bedroom and library, and, secondly, into the closet of the large spare room adjoining mine. Hastily unlocking the door of the communication between the rooms, I took my position in the closet.
"Why, the fact that it was found together with the key, which we know she dropped into the grate, and that there are drops of blood on it." I shook my head. "Why do you shake your head?" asked Mr. Gryce. "Because I am not satisfied with your reason for believing this to be the paper taken by her from Mr. Leavenworth's table." "And why?"
"Any reason to suppose that robbery had been attempted?" "No, sir. Mr. Leavenworth's watch and purse were both in his pockets." Being asked to mention who were in the house at the time of the discovery, he replied, "The young ladies, Miss Mary Leavenworth and Miss Eleanore, Mr. Harwell, Kate the cook, Molly the upstairs girl, and myself." "The usual members of the household?" "Yes, sir."
Leavenworth receives a letter signed by Henry Clavering, in which he complains of having been ill-used by one of that gentleman's nieces. A manifest shade falls over the family at this time. "March 4. Mr. Clavering under a false name inquires at the door of Mr. Leavenworth's house for Miss Eleanore Leavenworth. Proved by Thomas." "March 4th?" exclaimed Mr. Gryce at this point.
Leavenworth's private secretary," he explained, "and live in the family. It was a dreadful shock," he went on, "especially to the ladies." "Dreadful!" I repeated. "Mr. Veeley will be overwhelmed by it." "They are all alone," he continued in a low businesslike way I afterwards found to be inseparable from the man; "the Misses Leavenworth, I mean Mr.
"Oh, yes, I've heard about them. They are going to drive out the foreigners." "Loot them, more likely," Spear returned, disgustedly; "then us, if we don't look out. Mark my word, they'll give us trouble. Alcalde Leavenworth's too careless by half." Stanley, paying scant attention, suddenly leaned forward in his saddle.
Another short pause followed this; then, with my mind still hovering about the one point of intensest interest to me, I said: "This story, then, this account which you have just given me of Mary Leavenworth's secret marriage and the great strait it put her into a strait from which nothing but her uncle's death could relieve her together with this acknowledgment of Hannah's that she had left home and taken refuge here on the insistence of Mary Leavenworth, is the groundwork you have for the suspicions you have mentioned?"
AND now followed days in which I seemed to make little or no progress. Mr. Clavering, disturbed perhaps by my presence, forsook his usual haunts, thus depriving me of all opportunity of making his acquaintance in any natural manner, while the evenings spent at Miss Leavenworth's were productive of little else than constant suspense and uneasiness.
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