burton had reason to congratulate himself on having formed a clear idea of the location of his new room, for he had occasion to use that knowledge in a hurry.
he had dropped into an early and heavy sleep, to make up for his wakeful adventures of the night before, when he was awakened by a succession of screams that seemed to fill the room with vibrating terror. he was on his feet and into his clothes in less time than it would have taken the average man to wake up. while he was dressing another shriek showed that the sounds came from the adjoining house which he had noticed across the driveway. he dropped at once from his window to the roof of a bay window below and thence to the ground. it was a woman shrieking. that was all he knew. he stumbled across the driveway, and found his way to the front door of the house. it was locked. even while he was trying it, a man from the street dashed up the steps and ran along the porch to a side window, which he threw up.
"lucky you thought of that," cried burton, running to the spot. on the instant he recognized henry underwood.
"for heaven's sake, if there is trouble here, keep away," he said impetuously, forgetting everything except that this was leslie's brother.
but henry had jumped in through the open window without answering, and naturally burton followed. together they sprang up the stairway, their way made plain by the low-turned light in the upper hall. at the top a girl stood, screaming in the mechanical, terrified way that he had heard. at the sight of henry, who was ahead, she shrieked and cowered.
"what is the matter?" burton demanded. and when she did not answer immediately, he added impatiently: "tell me at once what frightened you."
she pointed to an open bedroom door, and burton sprang toward it. it was a curious sight that met his eye.
in a large old-fashioned four-poster a man was lying, gagged and bound,--and not only bound, but trussed and wound about with heavy cord until he looked like a cocoon, or an enlarged indian papoose, ready to be swung from a drooping branch. his head fell sideways on the pillow in a way that would have been ludicrous, if the whole situation had not been so serious.
burton removed the gag first of all and tried to help the man to sit up, but he was so bound to the framework of the bed that nothing could be done until the cord was cut. while he was still struggling with the cord, other people began to come rushing in,--servants from the house and men from the street or the hotel, attracted, as burton had been, by the girl's cries, and a stray policeman. their exclamations and questions, rather than any recognition on his own part, told him that this absurdly undignified figure, almost too terrified to talk, was none other than his pompous friend, mr. hadley.
under their united efforts the cord was soon cut, and mr. hadley was lifted to a sitting position.
"are you hurt, mr. hadley?" some one asked.
he only groaned reproachfully in reply.
burton had for the moment forgotten about henry. now he glanced anxiously about the room, which already seemed crowded. henry was not to be seen, and burton drew a breath of relief. thank heaven he had cleared out!
ralston had been one of the first to arrive on the scene, and his practical question soon brought order into the confusion.
"now, mr. hadley, you must pull yourself together and give us all the information you can at once, so that we can take steps to discover who did this before he gets beyond reach. did some one enter your bedroom?"
"yes. oh, lord, yes!"
"did you see him come in?"
"i was asleep. then i felt some one touching me and tried to sit up. i couldn't move. i tried to call out, but my jaw was tied up with that horrible cloth. i couldn't see, because the handkerchief was tied over my eyes."
"didn't you see him at all? can you give no description?"
"how could i see, with my eyes tied up?"
"did he say anything?"
"no, but he laughed horribly under his breath, in a kind of devilish enjoyment. it made my blood run cold. i thought he was going to kill me next. oh, lord!"
"how did he get out? by the window or the door?"
"i don't know. it was quiet and i waited for what was going to happen next and waited, and waited, and it got to be more and more horrible until i thought i should die before some one came."
"he came in by the window," said a man in the crowd, who had been examining the room. "see, here are the marks of mud on the window sill. he must have pulled himself up by the vine trellis. see how it is torn loose here. was the window open when you went to bed, mr. hadley?"
"yes. oh, lord, that such things should be allowed to happen!"
"who was it gave the alarm? you, miss hadley? how did you discover what had happened to your father?"
the young woman whom burton had seen in the hall had come into the room. she was holding fast to the bedpost and staring at her father with a look of fascinated horror.
"i felt the wind blowing through the hall," she said. "i came out to see where it came from."
"had you been asleep?"
"n-no." (she was fully dressed, burton noticed.)
"had you been in your room long?" ralston persisted.
"n-yes," she hesitated, with an involuntary glance at her father. "a-all evening."
"and you heard no noise of any one entering the house or leaving it?"
"no."
"where did the wind come from? was there a door open?"
"no, it came from father's room. it was blowing so hard that i thought i ought to shut his window, so i went in and then i found him all strapped in bed."
"yes, and she just began to scream, and never thought of cutting the cord," grumbled hadley.
"was there a light in the room?" ralston pressed his questions.
"yes, the gas was lit."
"well, it seems perfectly clear that some one has climbed up by the vine to the open window, entered while you were asleep, lit the gas after first bandaging your eyes so that you could not see, and then, after tying you up, made his escape in the same way. now let's see if we can get any clue as to his identity. of course it was no burglar. a burglar doesn't indulge in fancy work of this sort. there must have been personal enmity back of it. did he leave anything in the room?"
burton had been standing by the fireplace, listening. his eye had already caught sight of a folded paper on the mantel which had a curiously familiar look. surely he had no interest in preventing the truth from being known; yet he was on the point of moving nearer and getting quiet possession of the paper when some one else noticed it and picked it up.
"here's a message from him," he shouted, and then read aloud:
"if you keep on accusing me, and slandering me in public, worse things will happen to you next.
"dr. underwood."
"i knew it was dr. underwood," gasped hadley. "oh, lord, i knew he would get even with me for saying that we would not be safe in our beds. i didn't mean it. i always knew i was perfectly safe in my bed."
ralston came quickly over and took the paper from the hand of the man who had picked it up. as he did so he glanced at burton, as though recognizing that he was the one man here who might be expected to speak for dr. underwood.
"where was it?"
"right here, on the mantel."
ralston handed it over to burton, asking in an undertone: "what do you make of it?"
burton took the paper and examined it, but merely shook his head to escape answering. it did not need a glass to show him that it was written on the same typewriter that had produced the other documents he had examined.
"but it is signed, isn't it?" exclaimed hadley. "it says dr. underwood."
"of course it is perfectly clear in the first place that dr. underwood did not write it, since he would not leave a public confession behind him, and he would not sign his name in that fashion. it is written by some one who wanted to throw suspicion on dr. underwood, and who was ignorant enough to think it could be done in this very clumsy way," said burton.
some one in the room gave an unpleasant laugh. selby, who had been standing in the background near miss hadley, now spoke up.
"if it wasn't dr. underwood himself, i guess it was some one not so very far from him."
"what do you mean?"
"henry underwood was in the hall there when i came in. he kept out of sight, but he was there. he stayed until proctor read that paper aloud. he isn't here now, is he?"
there was a sensation in the room. no one else had seen him, but no one but selby had stood where he could look into the dimly-lit hall.
"well, what of it?" said burton impatiently, though he had wondered himself what had become of henry. "it seems to me that the name of underwood sets you all off. if henry underwood chose to go home when he found his assistance was not needed, that surely is not in itself a suspicious circumstance. he probably knew his presence, if noticed, would be made the subject of vilification in some way."
selby sneered, but he exercised the unusual self-control of saying nothing. but the man who had picked up the note on the mantel had been examining the cord with which hadley had been bound and which burton had cut. he now stood up and faced the little company with a seriousness of aspect that was more impressive than any voluble excitement could have been.
"i sold henry underwood that cord, yesterday," he said. his tone and look made it seem like an affidavit.
"you are sure of it, mr. proctor?" asked ralston.
"quite sure. it is a peculiar cord. i got it in a general invoice about two years ago, and it has been lying in a drawer in the store ever since,--there has never been any call for anything of that sort. yesterday henry underwood was in and asked for some light rope that would be strong enough to bear a man's weight, and i remembered this ball and brought it out. i have never seen another piece of cord like it. it isn't likely that there is another piece in town of that same unusual make."
the men pressed about the bed to examine the cut cord,--all except selby, who crossed the room to where miss hadley had sunk into a chair. she still had a dazed look, and though selby talked to her for some time in an earnest undertone, burton could not see that she made any response. selby caught burton's eye upon them and scowled, but went on with his murmured speech.
"if you will make the charge against henry underwood, i will take him into custody," at last said the police officer who was in the room.
"oh, lord, what will happen to me if i do?" gasped hadley.
"well, if he is in jail, i guess nothing more will happen to you," said the officer dryly.
"but dr. underwood--"
"if henry underwood is at the bottom of all these tricks, then dr. underwood isn't," said ralston quickly. "we all know that the doctor and henry are not on very good terms. just what the trouble is between them, or how deep it goes, we don't know, but it may be that henry is bitter enough against his father to try to turn suspicion against him in this way, and if he did this, he did the other things. they all hang together. what do you think, mr. burton?"
"i agree with you that they all seem to hang together."
"but not that henry would seem to be the responsible person?"
"as to that, i am hardly in a position to express an opinion," he said quietly. he had been examining the curiously knotted cord that had been wound about the unfortunate mr. hadley.
the knots rather than the cord itself were what attracted his attention. they were peculiarly intricate,--the knots of a practiced weaver. what was more, they had the same peculiar twist that the woven withes of lilac had had. probably it was a knot familiar to sailors and weavers, but certainly not one man in a thousand could make it so neatly, so deftly, so exactly. the police was certainly incredibly stupid not to take note of so peculiar and distinguishing a mark, but at this moment it was not his role to offer any suggestions.
"do you wish me to arrest henry underwood?" asked the policeman. "it's up to you to say, mr. hadley."
"you won't tell him that i accused him?"
"i won't tell him anything! i only want to know if you think that there is a reasonable guess that he did this night's work. if you will say that, i'll arrest him on suspicion. i don't want to get myself into trouble by arresting a man if you are going to back down afterwards and say you have no charge to bring against him."
"i'll bring the charge, if mr. hadley won't," said selby sharply. "i demand his arrest."
"that's enough," said the policeman, slipping quietly from the room.
burton was at his heels. "if you don't mind, i'll go out with you."
"and if i do mind?"
"i'll go anyhow," said burton.
