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Page 66
"It was dark," replied the man. "He rode from this door through
the gap in the mountains into Maryland."
"He rode from this door," said my father slowly, "but not through
the gap in the mountains into Maryland."
The hunchback began to twist his fingers.
"Where did he ride then? A man and a horse could not vanish."
"They did vanish," said my father.
"Now you utter fool talk!" cried Dillworth.
"I speak the living truth," replied my father. "Your brother
David and your horse disappeared out of sound and hearing -
disappeared out of the sight and knowledge of men - after he rode
away from your door on that fatal night."
"Well," said the hunchback, "since my brother David rode away
from my door - and you know that - I am free of obligation for
him."
"It is Cain's speech!" replied my father.
The hunchback put back his long hair with a swift brush of the
fingers across his forehead.
"Dillworth," cried my father, and his voice filled the empty
places of the room, "is the mark there?"
The hunchback began to curse. He walked around my father and the
girl, the hair about his lank jaws, his fingers working, his face
evil. In his front and menace he was like a weasel that would
attack some larger creature. And while he made the great turn of
his circle my father, with his arm about the girl, stepped before
the drawer of the table where the pistol lay.
"Dillworth," he said calmly, "I know where he is. And the mark
you felt for just now ought to be there."
"Fool!" cried the hunchback. "If I killed him how could he ride
away from the door?"
"It was a thing that puzzled me," replied my father, "when I
stood in this house on the morning of your pretended robbery. I
knew what had happened. But I thought it wiser to let the evil
thing remain a mystery, rather than unearth it to foul your
family name and connect this child in gossip for all her days
with a crime."
"With a thief," snarled the man.
"With a greater criminal than a thief," replied My father. "I
was not certain about this gold on that morning when you showed
me the empty boxes. They were too few to hold gold enough for
such a motive. I thought a quarrel and violent hot blood were
behind the thing; and for that reason I have been silent. But
now, when the coins turn up, I see that the thing was all
ruthless, cold-blooded love of money.
"I know what happened in that room. When your brother David
struck the old secretary with his elbow, and the dozen indigo
boxes fell and burst open on the hearth, you thought a great
hidden treasure was uncovered. You thought swiftly. You had got
the land by undue influence on your senile father, and you did
not have to share that with your brother David. But here was a
treasure you must share; you saw it in a flash. You sat at your
father's table in the room. Your brother stood by the wall
looking at the hearth. And you acted then, on the moment, with
the quickness of the Evil One. It was cunning in you to select
the body over the heart as the place to receive the imagined blow
- the head or face would require some evidential mark to affirm
your word. And it was cunning to think of the unconscious, for
in that part one could get up and scrub the hearth and lie down
again to play it."
He paused.
"But the other thing you did in that room was not so clever. A
picture was newly hung on the wall - I saw the white square on
the opposite wall from which it had been taken. It hung at the
height of a man's shoulders directly behind the spot where your
brother must have stood after he struck the secretary, and it
hung in this new spot to cover the crash of a bullet into the
mahogany panel!"
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