Agatha Webb (21 page)

He proceeded immediately to town. A ship was preparing to sail
that morning for the Brazils, and the wharves were alive with
bustle. He stopped a moment to contemplate the great hulk rising
and falling at her moorings, then he passed on and entered the
building where he had every reason to expect to find Dr. Talbot
and Knapp in discussion. It was very important to him that morning
to learn just how they felt concerning the great matter absorbing
him, for if suspicion was taking the direction of Frederick, or if
he saw it was at all likely to do so, then would his struggle be
cut short and all necessity for leaving town be at an end. It was
to save Frederick from this danger that he was prepared to cut all
the ties binding him to this place, and nothing short of the
prospect of accomplishing this would make him willing to undergo
such a sacrifice.

"Well, Sweetwater, any news, eh?" was the half-jeering, half-
condescending greeting he received from the coroner.

Sweetwater, who had regained entire control over his feelings as
soon as he found himself under the eye of this man and the
supercilious detective he had attempted to rival, gave a careless
shrug and passed the question on to Knapp. "Have you any news?" he
asked.

Knapp, who would probably not have acknowledged it if he had,
smiled the indulgent smile of a self-satisfied superior and
uttered a few equivocal sentences. This was gall and wormwood to
Sweetwater, but he kept his temper admirably and, with an air of
bravado entirely assumed for the occasion, said to Dr. Talbot:

"I think I shall have something to tell you soon which will
materially aid you in your search for witnesses. By to-morrow, at
least, I shall know whether I am right or wrong in thinking I have
discovered an important witness in quite an unexpected quarter."

Sweetwater knew of no new witness, but it was necessary for him
not only to have a pretext for the move he contemplated, but to so
impress these men with an idea of his extreme interest in the
approaching proceedings, that no suspicion should ever arise of
his having premeditated an escape from them. He wished to appear
the victim of accident; and this is why he took nothing from his
home which would betray any intention of leaving it.

"Ha! indeed!" ejaculated the coroner with growing interest. "And
may I ask—"

"Please," urged Sweetwater, with a side look at Knapp, "do not ask
me anything just yet. This afternoon, say, after I have had a
certain interview with—What, are they setting sails on the
Hesper already?" he burst out, with a quick glance from the window
at the great ship riding at anchor a little distance from them in
the harbour. "There is a man on her I must see. Excuse me—Oh, Mr.
Sutherland!"

He fell back in confusion. That gentleman had just entered the
room in company with Frederick.

"I beg your pardon," stammered Sweetwater, starting aside and
losing on the instant all further disposition to leave the room.

Indeed, he had not the courage to do so, even if he had had the
will. The joint appearance of these two men in this place, and at
an hour so far in advance of that which usually saw Mr. Sutherland
enter the town, was far too significant in his eyes for him to
ignore it. Had any explanation taken place between them, and had
Mr. Sutherland's integrity triumphed over personal considerations
to the point of his bringing Frederick here to confess?

Meanwhile Dr. Talbot had risen with a full and hearty greeting
which proved to Sweetwater's uneasy mind that notwithstanding
Knapp's disquieting reticence no direct suspicion had as yet
fallen on the unhappy Frederick. Then he waited for what Mr.
Sutherland had to say, for it was evident he had come there to say
something. Sweetwater waited, too, frozen almost into immobility
by the fear that it would be something injudicious, for never had
he seen any man so changed as Mr. Sutherland in these last twelve
hours, nor did it need a highly penetrating eye to detect that the
relations between him and Frederick were strained to a point that
made it almost impossible for them to more than assume their old
confidential attitude. Knapp, knowing them but superficially, did
not perceive this, but Dr. Talbot was not blind to it, as was
shown by the inquiring look he directed towards them both while
waiting.

Mr. Sutherland spoke at last.

"Pardon me for interrupting you so early," said he, with a certain
tremble in his voice which Sweetwater quaked to hear. "For certain
reasons, I should be very glad to know, WE should be very glad to
know, if during your investigations into the cause and manner of
Agatha Webb's death, you have come upon a copy of her will."

"No."

Talbot was at once interested, so was Knapp, while Sweetwater
withdrew further into his corner in anxious endeavour to hide his
blanching cheek. "We have found nothing. We do not even know that
she has made a will."

"I ask," pursued Mr. Sutherland, with a slight glance toward
Frederick, who seemed, at least in Sweetwater's judgment, to have
braced himself up to bear this interview unmoved, "because I have
not only received intimation that she made such a will, but have
even been entrusted with a copy of it as chief executor of the
same. It came to me in a letter from Boston yesterday. Its
contents were a surprise to me. Frederick, hand me a chair. These
accumulated misfortunes—for we all suffer under the afflictions
which have beset this town—have made me feel my years."

Sweetwater drew his breath more freely. He thought he might
understand by this last sentence that Mr. Sutherland had come here
for a different cause than he had at first feared. Frederick, on
the contrary, betrayed a failing ability to hide his emotion. He
brought his father a chair, placed it, and was drawing back out of
sight when Mr. Sutherland prevented him by a mild command to hand
the paper he had brought to the coroner.

There was something in his manner that made Sweetwater lean
forward and Frederick look up, so that the father's and son's eyes
met under that young man's scrutiny. But while he saw meaning in
both their regards, there was nothing like collusion, and, baffled
by these appearances, which, while interesting, told him little or
nothing, he transferred his attention to Dr. Talbot and Knapp, who
had drawn together to see what this paper contained.

"As I have said, the contents of this will are a surprise to me,"
faltered Mr. Sutherland. "They are equally so to my son. He can
hardly be said to have been a friend even of the extraordinary
woman who thus leaves him her whole fortune."

"I never spoke with her but twice," exclaimed Frederick with a
studied coldness, which was so evidently the cloak of inner
agitation that Sweetwater trembled for its effect, notwithstanding
the state of his own thoughts, which were in a ferment. Frederick,
the inheritor of Agatha Webb's fortune! Frederick, concerning whom
his father had said on the previous night that he possessed no
motive for wishing this good woman's death! Was it the discovery
that such a motive existed which had so aged this man in the last
twelve hours? Sweetwater dared not turn again to see. His own face
might convey too much of his own fears, doubts, and struggle.

But the coroner, for whose next words Sweetwater listened with
acute expectancy, seemed to be moved simply by the unexpectedness
of the occurrence. Glancing at Frederick with more interest than
he had ever before shown him, he cried with a certain show of
enthusiasm:

"A pretty fortune! A very pretty fortune!" Then with a deprecatory
air natural to him in addressing Mr. Sutherland, "Would it be
indiscreet for me to ask to what our dear friend Agatha alludes in
her reference to your late lamented wife?" His finger was on a
clause of the will and his lips next minute mechanically repeated
what he was pointing at:

"'In remembrance of services rendered me in early life by Marietta
Sutherland, wife of Charles Sutherland of Sutherlandtown, I
bequeath to Frederick, sole child of her affection, all the
property, real and personal, of which I die possessed.' Services
rendered! They must have been very important ones," suggested Dr.
Talbot.

Mr. Sutherland's expression was one of entire perplexity and
doubt.

"I do not remember my wife ever speaking of any special act of
kindness she was enabled to show Agatha Webb. They were always
friends, but never intimate ones. However, Agatha could be trusted
to make no mistake. She doubtless knew to what she referred. Mrs.
Sutherland was fully capable of doing an extremely kind act in
secret."

For all his respect for the speaker, Dr. Talbot did not seem quite
satisfied. He glanced at Frederick and fumbled the paper uneasily.

"Perhaps you were acquainted with the reason for this legacy—this
large legacy," he emphasised.

Frederick, thus called upon, nay, forced to speak, raised his
head, and without perhaps bestowing so much as a thought on the
young man behind him who was inwardly quivering in anxious
expectancy of some betrayal on his part which would precipitate
disgrace and lifelong sorrow on all who bore the name of
Sutherland, met Dr. Talbot's inquiring glance with a simple
earnestness surprising to them all, and said:

"My record is so much against me that I am not surprised that you
wonder at my being left with Mrs. Webb's fortune. Perhaps she did
not fully realise the lack of estimation in which I am deservedly
held in this place, or perhaps, and this would be much more like
her, she hoped that the responsibility of owing my independence to
so good and so unfortunate a woman might make a man of me."

There was a manliness in Frederick's words and bearing that took
them all by surprise. Mr. Sutherland's dejection visibly
lightened, while Sweetwater, conscious of the more than vital
interests hanging upon the impression which might be made by this
event upon the minds of the men present, turned slightly so as to
bring their faces into the line of his vision.

The result was a conviction that as yet no real suspicion of
Frederick had seized upon either of their minds. Knapp's face was
perfectly calm and almost indifferent, while the good coroner, who
saw this and every other circumstance connected with this affair
through the one medium of his belief in Amabel's guilt, was
surveying Frederick with something like sympathy.

"I fear," said he, "that others were not as ignorant of your
prospective good fortune as you were yourself," at which
Frederick's cheek turned a dark red, though he said nothing, and
Sweetwater, with a sudden involuntary gesture indicative of
resolve, gazed for a moment breathlessly at the ship, and then
with an unexpected and highly impetuous movement dashed from the
room crying loudly:

"I've seen him! I've seen him! he's just going on board the ship.
Wait for me, Dr. Talbot. I'll be back in fifteen minutes with such
a witness—"

Here the door slammed. But they could hear his hurrying footsteps
as he plunged down the stairs and rushed away from the building.

It was an unexpected termination to an interview fast becoming
unbearable to the two Sutherlands, but no one, not even the old
gentleman himself, took in its full significance.

He was, however, more than agitated by the occurrence and could
hardly prevent himself from repeating aloud Sweetwater's final
word, which after their interview at Mr. Halliday's gate, the
night before, seemed to convey to him at once a warning and a
threat. To keep himself from what he feared might prove a self-
betrayal, he faltered out in very evident dismay:

"What is the matter? What has come over the lad?"

"Oh!" cried Dr. Talbot, "he's been watching that ship for an hour.
He is after some man he has just seen go aboard her. Says he's a
new and important witness in this case. Perhaps he is. Sweetwater
is no man's fool, for all his small eyes and retreating chin. If
you want proof of it, wait till he comes back. He'll be sure to
have something to say."

Meanwhile they had all pressed forward to the window. Frederick,
who carefully kept his face out of his father's view, bent half-
way over the sill in his anxiety to watch the flying figure of
Sweetwater, who was making straight for the dock, while Knapp,
roused at last, leaned over his shoulder and pointed to the
sailors on the deck, who were pulling in the last ropes,
preparatory to sailing.

"He's too late: they won't let him aboard now. What a fool to hang
around here till he saw his man, instead of being at the dock to
nab him! That comes of trusting a country bumpkin. I knew he'd
fail us at the pinch. They lack training, these would-be
detectives. See, now! He's run up against the mate, and the mate
pushes him back. His cake is all dough, unless he's got a warrant.
Has he a warrant, Dr. Talbot?"

"No," said the coroner, "he didn't ask for one. He didn't even
tell me whom he wanted. Can it be one of those two passengers you
see on the forward deck, there?"

It might well be. Even from a distance these two men presented a
sinister appearance that made them quite marked figures among the
crowd of hurrying sailors and belated passengers.

"One of them is peering over the rail with a very evident air of
anxiety. His eye is on Sweetwater, who is dancing with impatience.
See, he is gesticulating like a monkey, and—By the powers, they
are going to let him go aboard!"

Mr. Sutherland, who had been leaning heavily against the window-
jamb in the agitation of doubt and suspense which Sweetwater's
unaccountable conduct had evoked, here crossed to the other side
and stole a determined look at Frederick. Was his son personally
interested in this attempt of the amateur detective? Did he know
whom Sweetwater sought, and was he suffering as much or more than
himself from the uncertainty and fearful possibilities of the
moment? He thought he knew Frederick's face, and that he read
dread there, but Frederick had changed so completely since the
commission of this crime that even his father could no longer be
sure of the correct meaning either of his words or expression.