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Updated: June 4, 2025
"Tell them what you want from the window, or we will have the whole street in here." So I ran up-stairs, I had always wished to visit this house, but had never been encouraged to do so by the Misses Van Burnam, and making my way into the front room, the door of which stood wide open, I rushed to the window and hailed the crowd, which by this time extended far out beyond the curb-stone.
I, however, persisted in it as long as possible, partially because my disposition is an obstinate one, and partially because I hated to acknowledge myself a fool; but when I saw the hat, and recognized it as an indisputable proof of her presence in the Van Burnam house that night, my confidence in the attempt I was making broke down all at once.
Burnam, who had been out with his party much of the time since Charlie's accident, had come back to Blue Creek two days before, announcing that all was in readiness for their reception; so the hour for their departure was fixed upon.
"A woman whom I know; a woman whom I can lay my hands on at a half-hour's notice; a young woman, sirs; a pretty woman, the owner of one of the two hats found in the Van Burnam parlors." Had I exploded a bomb-shell the Inspector could not have looked more astounded.
Van Burnam and his sons had gone through the formality of a supper and were conversing in the haphazard way natural to men filled with a subject they dare not discuss, when the door opened and Mr. Gryce came in.
Mr. Burnam, Howard's father, was a successful civil engineer, who, in the line of his professional life, had been ordered up and down the West according to the demands of the great railroad corporation by whom he was employed. The life of a locating engineer is much like that of the soldier, in its need for strict obedience to orders, and for eighteen years Mr.
Which of the two had perished? We had been led to think, and Mr. Van Burnam had himself acknowledged, that it was his wife; but his wife had been dressed quite differently from the murdered woman, and was, as I soon began to see, much more likely to have been the assassin than the victim. Would you like to know my reasons for this extraordinary statement?
Yet he did not fail in a decent show of respect; perhaps because he did feel some sympathy for the witness's unhappy father and brother. "You then acknowledge the victim to have been your wife?" "I do." "It is a point gained, and I compliment the jury upon it. We can now proceed to settle, if possible, the identity of the person who accompanied Mrs. Van Burnam into your father's house."
"No," I returned, "I think her fever is abating." And it was, though the suffering on her face was yet heart-rendingly apparent. "Is she asleep?" "She seems to be." Miss Althorpe made an effort. "I am not going to talk any more about myself." Then as I came back and sat down by her side, she quietly asked: "What do you think of the Van Burnam murder?"
Franklin Van Burnam, if he is the murderer of his sister-in-law, is one of the subtlest villains this city has ever produced, and knowing that, if once suspected, every secret drawer and professed hiding-place within his reach would be searched, he put these dangerous evidences of his guilt in a place so conspicuous, and yet so little likely to attract attention, that even so old a hand as myself did not think of looking for them there."
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