The House of the Whispering Pines (32 page)

The nurse, realising her responsibility (she said afterwards that it was
the most serious moment of her life), subdued her own astonishment at
this proof of her young patient's knowledge of a crime of which she was
universally supposed to be entirely ignorant, and, bestowing a reassuring
smile on the agitated girl, observed softly:

"You wore too ill to be burdened with black. You are better now and may
assume it if you will. I will help you buy your mourning."

"Yes, you look like a kind woman. What is your name, please, and are we
here alone in this great hotel?"

Now, as a matter of expediency—to save Carmel from the unendurable
curiosity of the crowd, and herself from the importunities of the New
York reporters, Miss Unwin had registered herself and her charge under
assumed names. She was, therefore, forced to reply:

"My name is Huckins, and we are here alone. But that need not worry you.
I have watched over you night and day for many weeks."

"You have? Because of this slight burn?" Again Carmel's hand went to
her cheek.

"Not on account of that only. You have had a serious illness quite apart
from that injury. But you are better; you are almost well—well enough to
go home, if you will."

"I cannot go home—not just yet. I'm—I'm not strong enough. But we
shouldn't be here alone without some man to look after us. Miss Huckins,
where is my brother
?"

At this question, uttered with emphasis, with anxiety—with indignation
even—Miss Unwin felt the emotion she had so successfully subdued up to
this moment, betray itself in her voice as she answered, with a quiet
motion towards the elevator: "Let us go up to our room. There I will
answer all your questions."

But Carmel, with the waywardness of her years—or perhaps, with deeper
reasoning powers than the other would be apt to attribute to her—broke
softly away from Miss Unwin's detaining hand, and walking directly into
the office, looked about for the newspaper stand. Miss Unwin,
over-anxious not to make a scene, followed, but did not seek to deter
her, until they were once again by themselves in the centre of the room.
Then she ventured to speak again:

"We have all the papers in our room. Come up, and let me read them to
you."

But Fate was making ready its great stroke. Just as Carmel seemed about
to yield to this persuasion, some lingering doubt drew her eyes again to
the stand, just at the very moment a boy stepped into view with the
evening bulletin, on which had just been written these words:

The Last Juror Obtained in the Trial of Arthur Cumberland for the Murder
of His Sister, Adelaide.

Carmel saw, and stood—a breathless image of horror. A couple of
gentlemen came running; but the nurse waved them back, and herself caught
Carmel and upheld her, in momentary dread of another mental, if not
physical, collapse.

But Carmel had come back into the world of consciousness to stay.
Accepting her nurse's support, but giving no sign of waning faculties or
imperfect understanding of what she had seen, she spoke quite clearly and
with her eyes fixed upon Miss Unwin:

"So that is why I am here, away from all my friends. Was I too ill to be
told? Couldn't you make me know what was happening? You or the doctors
or—or anybody?"

"You were much too ill," protested the nurse, leading her towards the
elevator and so by degrees to her room. "I tried to arouse you after the
crisis of your illness had passed; but you seemed to have forgotten
everything which took place that night and the doctors warned me not to
press you."

"And Arthur—poor Arthur, has been the sufferer! Tell me the whole story.
I can bear it," she pleaded. "I can bear anything but not knowing. Why
should he have fallen under suspicion? He was not even there. I must go
to him! Pack up our clothing, Miss Huckins. I must go to him at once."

They were in their own room now, and Carmel was standing quite by herself
in the full light of the setting sun. With the utterance of this
determination, she had turned upon her companion; and that astute and
experienced woman had every opportunity for observing her face. There was
a woman's resolution in it. With the sudden rending of the clouds which
had obscured her intellect, strange powers had awakened in this young
girl, giving her a force of expression which, in connection with her
inextinguishable beauty, formed a spectacle before which this older
woman, in spite of her long experience, hesitated in doubt.

"You shall go—" began the nurse, and stopped.

Carmel was not listening. Another change of thought had come, and her
features, as keenly alive now to every passing emotion as they had
formerly been set in a dull placidity, mirrored doubts of her own, which
had a deeper source than any which had disturbed the nurse, even in
these moments of serious perplexity.

"How can I?" fell in unconscious betrayal from her lips. "How can I!"
Then she stood silent, ghastly with lack of colour one minute, and rosy
red with its excess the next, until it was hard to tell in which extreme
her feeling spoke most truly.

What was the feeling? Nurse Unwin felt it imperative to know. Relying on
the confidence shown her by this unfortunate girl, in her lonely position
and unbearable distress, she approached Carmel, with renewed offers of
help and such expressions of sympathy as she thought might lure her into
open speech.

But discretion had come with fear, and Carmel, while not disdaining the
other's kindness, instantly made it apparent that, whatever her burden,
and however unsuited it was to her present weak condition, it was not one
she felt willing to share.

"I must think," she murmured, as she finally followed the nurse's lead
and seated herself on a lounge. "Arthur on trial for his life!
Arthur on
trial for his life!
And Adelaide was not even murdered!"

"No?" gasped the nurse, intent on every word this long-silenced
witness let fall.

"Had he no friend? Was there not some one to understand? Adelaide—" here
her head fell till her face was lost to sight—"had—a—lover—"

"Yes. Mr. Elwood Ranelagh. He was the first to be arrested for the
crime."

The soul in Carmel seemed to vanish at this word. The eyes, which had
been so far-seeing the moment before, grew blank, and the lithe young
body stiff with that death in life which is almost worse to look upon
than death itself. She did not speak; but presently she arose, as an
automaton might arise at the touch of some invisible spring, and so
stood, staring, until the nurse, frightened at the result of her words
and the complete overthrow which might follow them, sprang for a
newspaper and thrust it into her patient's unwilling hand.

Was it too late? For a minute it seemed to be so; then the stony eyes
softened and fell, the rigidity of her frame relaxed, and Carmel sank
back again on the sofa and tried to read the headlines on the open sheet
before her. But her eyes were unequal to the task. With a sob she dropped
the paper and entreated the nurse to relate to her from her own
knowledge, all that had passed, sparing her nothing that would make the
situation perfectly clear to one who had been asleep during the worst
crisis of her life.

Miss Unwin complied, but with reservations. She told of Adelaide having
been found dead at The Whispering Pines by the police, whom she had
evidently summoned during a moment of struggle or fear; of Ranelagh's
presence there, and of the suspicions to which it gave rise; of his
denial of the crime; of his strange reticence on certain points, which
served to keep him incarcerated till a New York detective got to work and
found so much evidence against her brother that Mr. Ranelagh was
subsequently released and Arthur Cumberland indicted. But she said
nothing about the marks on Adelaide's throat, or of the special reason
which the police had for arresting Mr. Ranelagh. She did not dare.
Strangulation was a horrible death to contemplate; and if this factor in
the crime—she was not deceived by Carmel's exclamation that there had
been no murder—was unknown as yet to her patient, as it must be from
what she had said, and the absolute impossibility, as she thought, of her
having known what went on in The Whispering Pines, then it had better
remain unknown to her until circumstances forced it on her knowledge, or
she had gotten sufficient strength to bear it.

Carmel received the account well. She started when she heard of the
discovery of Ranelagh in the club-house on the entrance of the police,
and seemed disposed to ask some questions. But though the nurse gave her
an opportunity to do so, she appeared to hunt in vain for the necessary
words, and the narrative proceeded without further interruption. When all
was done, she sat quite still; then carefully, and with a show of more
judgment than might be expected from one of her years, she propounded
certain inquiries which brought out the main causes for her brother's
arraignment. When she had these fully in mind, she looked up into the
nurse's face again and repeated, quite calmly, but with immovable
decision, the order of an hour before:

"We must return at once. You will pack up immediately."

Miss Unwin nodded, and began to open the trunks.

This, however, was a ruse. She did not intend to take her patient back
that night. She was afraid to risk it. The next day would be soon enough.
But she would calm her by making ready, and when the proper moment came,
would find some complication of trains which would interfere with their
immediate departure.

Meanwhile, she would communicate at the earliest moment with Mr. Fox. She
had been in the habit of sending him frequent telegrams as to her
patient's condition. They had been invariable so far: "No difference;
mind still a blank," or some code word significant of the same. But a new
word was necessary now. She must look it up, and formulate her telegram
before she did anything else.

The code-book was in her top tray. She hunted and hunted for it, without
being able to lay her hands on it. She grew very nervous. She was only
human; she was in a very trying position, and she realised it. Where
could that book be? Suddenly she espied it and, falling on her knees
before the trunk, with her back still to Carmel, studied out the words
she wanted. She was leaning over the tray to write these words in her
note-book, when—no one ever knew how it happened—the lid of the heavy
trunk fell forward and its iron edge struck her on the nape of the neck,
with a keen blow which laid her senseless. When Carmel reached her side,
she found herself the strong one and her stalwart nurse the patient.

When help had been summoned, the accident explained, and everything done
for the unconscious woman which medical skill could suggest, Carmel,
finding a moment to herself, stole to the trunk, and, lifting up the lid,
looked in. She had been watchful of her nurse from the first, and was
suspicious of the actions which had led to this untoward accident. Seeing
the two little books, she took them out. The note-book lay open and on
the page thus disclosed, she beheld written:

Ap Lox Fidestum Truhum

Ridiculous nonsense—until she consulted the code. Then these detached
and meaningless words took on a significance which she could not afford
to ignore:

Carmel endeavoured to find out for whom this telegram was intended. There
was nothing to inform her. A moment of indecision was followed by quick
action. She had noticed that she had been invariably addressed as Miss
Campbell by every one who had come into the room. Whether this was a
proof of the care with which she had been guarded from the curiosity of
strangers, or whether it was part of a system of deception springing from
quite different causes, she felt that in the present emergency it was a
fact to be thankful for and to be utilised.

Regaining her own room, which was on the other side of their common
sitting-room, she collected a few necessary articles, and placed them in
a bag which she thrust under her bed. Hunting for money, she found quite
an adequate amount in her own purse, which was attached to her person.
Satisfied thus far, she chose her most inconspicuous hat and coat, and
putting them on, went out by her own door into the corridor.

The time—it was the dinner-hour—favoured her attempt. She found her
way to the office unobserved, and, going frankly up to the clerk,
informed him that she had some telegrams to send and that she would be
out for some little time. Would he see that Miss Huckins was not
neglected in her absence?

The clerk, startled at these evidences of sense and self-reliance in one
he had been accustomed to see under the special protection of the very
woman she was now confiding to his care, surveyed her eloquent features
beaming with quiet resolve, and for a moment seemed at a loss how to take
this change and control the strange situation. Perhaps she understood
him, perhaps she only followed the impulses natural to her sex. She never
knew; she only remembers that she smiled, and that his hesitation
vanished at that smile.

"I will see to it," said he. Then, as she turned to go, he ventured to
add, "It is quite dark now. If you would like one of the boys to go with
you—". But he received no encouragement, and allowed his suggestion to
remain unfinished.

She looked grateful for this, and was pulling down her veil when she
perceived two or three men on the other side of the room, watching her in
evident wonder. Stepping back to the desk, she addressed the clerk again,
this time with a marked distinctness:

"I have been very ill, I know, and not always quite myself. But the
shock of this accident to my nurse has cleared my brain and made me
capable again of attending to my own affairs. You can trust me; I can
do my errands all right; but perhaps I had better have one of the boys
go with me."