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Updated: May 18, 2025
Compassion took the place of curiosity, and each and all of us turned involuntary looks of pity upon the young wife pressing so eagerly to his side. "For a blind man," ventured one, "the assault was both deft and certain. Are you accustomed to Mr. Hasbrouck's house, that you found your way with so little difficulty to his bedroom?" "I am accustomed " he began.
Then Corporal Hasbrouck's bellowing voice could be heard: "Officer of the day, post number three!" Some one could be heard running down the street. A few moments passed, during which Dick, Greg and Anstey sat up on their mattresses listening eagerly. Then came the officer of the day running back.
He had been engaged to be married at the time of his illness, and when he learned what was likely to be its result, had offered to release the young lady from all obligation to him. But she would not be released, and they were married. This had taken place some five years previous to Mr. Hasbrouck's death, three of which had been spent by them in Lafayette Place.
"Ask him to inform you how he got into the house," I whispered to Inspector D , who sat nearest me. Immediately the inspector put the question which I had suggested: "By what means did you enter Mr. Hasbrouck's house at so late an hour as this murder occurred?" The blind doctor's head fell forward on his breast, and he hesitated for the first and only time.
Looking long and steadily at his agonized face, she faltered forth: "It is not you who have killed me; it is your crime. Had you been innocent of Mr. Hasbrouck's death your bullet would never have found my heart. Did you think I could survive the proof that you had killed that good man?" "I did it unwittingly. "Hush!" she commanded, with an awful look, which happily he could not see.
Hasbrouck's surmise that the intruder was simply a burglar, and that she had rather imagined than heard the words which pointed to the shooting as a deed of vengeance, soon gained general credence. But though the police worked long and arduously in this new direction their efforts were without fruit and the case bids fair to remain an unsolvable mystery. That was all.
The house in which the crime had been committed was near the centre of the row, and, long before I reached it, I had learned from more than one source that the alarm was first given to the street by a woman's shriek, and secondly by the shouts of an old man-servant who had appeared, in a half-dressed condition, at the window of Mr. Hasbrouck's room, crying "Murder! murder!"
Startled by this evidence of the existence of some hidden skeleton in her own closet, I made an immediate attempt to reassure her. "Nothing which concerns you personally," said I. "I simply wish to ask you a question in regard to a small matter connected with Mr. Hasbrouck's violent death in Lafayette Place, a couple of years ago.
It was this fact which provided you with an answer when you were asked how you succeeded in getting into Mr. Hasbrouck's house after the family had retired for the night. "Astonished at the coincidence, but hailing with gladness the deliverance which it offered, you went in and ascended at once into your wife's presence; and it was from her lips, and not from those of Mrs.
Hasbrouck, or to wait till I had given it the thought which such a stirring of dead bones rightfully demanded. You know what that question was. I shall have communicated it to you, if you have not already guessed it, before perusing these lines: "Who uttered the scream which gave the first alarm of Mr. Hasbrouck's violent death?"
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