The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин

Book II. The Windings of a Labyrinth

       XVI. Cogitations

       XVII. Butterworth Versus Gryce

       XVIII. The Little Pincushion

       XIX. A Decided Step Forward

       XX. Miss Butterworth’s Theory

       XXI. A Shrewd Conjecture

       XXII. A Blank Card

       XXIII. Ruth Oliver

       XXIV. A House of Cards

       XXV. “The Rings! Where Are the Rings?”

       XXVI. A Tilt With Mr. Gryce

       XXVII. Found

       XXVIII. Taken Aback

       Book III. The Girl in Gray

       XXIX. Amelia Becomes Peremptory

       XXX. The Matter as Stated by Mr. Gryce

       XXXI. Some Fine Work

       XXXII. Iconoclasm

       XXXIII. “Known, Known, All Known.”

       XXXIV. Exactly Half-Past Three

       XXXV. A Ruse

       Book IV. The End of a Great Mystery

       XXXVI. The Result

       XXXVII. “Two Weeks!”

       XXXVIII. A White Satin Gown

       XXXIX. The Watchful Eye

       XL. As the Clock Struck

       XLI. Secret History

       XLII. With Miss Butterworth’s Compliments

      Book I.

       Miss Butterworth’s Window

       Table of Contents

      Chapter I.

       A Discovery

       Table of Contents

      I am not an inquisitive woman, but when, in the middle of a certain warm night in September, I heard a carriage draw up at the adjoining house and stop, I could not resist the temptation of leaving my bed and taking a peep through the curtains of my window.

      First: because the house was empty, or supposed to be so, the family still being, as I had every reason to believe, in Europe; and secondly: because, not being inquisitive, I often miss in my lonely and single life much that it would be both interesting and profitable for me to know.

      Luckily I made no such mistake this evening. I rose and looked out, and though I was far from realizing it at the time, took, by so doing, my first step in a course of inquiry which has ended——

      But it is too soon to speak of the end. Rather let me tell you what I saw when I parted the curtains of my window in Gramercy Park, on the night of September 17, 1895.

      Not much at first glance, only a common hack drawn up at the neighboring curb-stone. The lamp which is supposed to light our part of the block is some rods away on the opposite side of the street, so that I obtained but a shadowy glimpse of a young man and woman standing below me on the pavement. I could see, however, that the woman—and not the man—was putting money into the driver’s hand. The next moment they were on the stoop of this long-closed house, and the coach rolled off.

      It was dark, as I have said, and I did not recognize the young people,—at least their figures were not familiar to me; but when, in another instant, I heard the click of a night-key, and saw them, after a rather tedious fumbling at the lock, disappear from the stoop, I took it for granted that the gentleman was Mr. Van Burnam’s eldest son Franklin, and the lady some relative of the family; though why this, its most punctilious member, should bring a guest at so late an hour into a house devoid of everything necessary to make the least exacting visitor comfortable, was a mystery that I retired to bed to meditate upon.

      I did not succeed in solving it, however, and after some ten minutes had elapsed, I was settling myself again to sleep when I was re-aroused by a fresh sound from the quarter mentioned. The door I had so lately heard shut, opened again, and though I had to rush for it, I succeeded in getting to my window in time to catch a glimpse of the departing figure of the young man hurrying away towards Broadway. The young woman was not with him, and as I realized that he had left her behind him in the great, empty house, without apparent light and certainly without any companion, I began to question if this was like Franklin Van Burnam. Was it not more in keeping with the recklessness of his more easy-natured and less reliable brother, Howard, who, some two or three years back, had married a young wife of no very satisfactory antecedents, and who, as I had heard, had been ostracized by the family in consequence?

      Whichever of the two it was, he had certainly shown but little consideration for his companion, and thus thinking, I fell off to sleep just as the clock struck the half hour after midnight.

      Next morning as soon as modesty would permit me to approach the window, I surveyed the neighboring house minutely. Not a blind was open, nor a shutter displaced. As I am an early riser, this did not disturb me at the time, but when after breakfast I looked again and still failed to detect any evidences of life in the great barren front beside me, I began to feel uneasy. But I did nothing till noon, when going into my rear garden and observing that the back windows of the