The Greatest Works of Anna Katharine Green. Анна Грин

the lady’s hair might have been very useful in establishing her identity.”

      The porter who has charge of the lady’s entrance was the last witness from this house. He had been on duty on the evening in question and had noticed this couple leaving. They both carried packages, and had attracted his attention first, by the long, old-fashioned duster which the gentleman wore, and secondly, by the pains they both took not to be observed by any one. The woman was veiled, as had already been said, and the man held his package in such a way as to shield his face entirely from observation.

      “So that you would not know him if you saw him again?” asked the Coroner.

      “Exactly, sir,” was the uncomprising answer.

      As he sat down, the Coroner observed: “You will note from this testimony, gentlemen, that this couple, signing themselves Mr. and Mrs. James Pope of Philadelphia, left this house dressed each in a long garment eminently fitted for purposes of concealment,—he in a linen duster, and she in a gossamer. Let us now follow this couple a little farther and see what became of these disguising articles of apparel. Is Seth Brown here?”

      A man, who was so evidently a hackman that it seemed superfluous to ask him what his occupation was, shuffled forward at this.

      It was in his hack that this couple had left the D——. He remembered them very well as he had good reason to. First, because the man paid him before entering the carriage, saying that he was to let them out at the northwest corner of Madison Square, and secondly——But here the Coroner interrupted him to ask if he had seen the gentleman’s face when he paid him. The answer was, as might have been expected, No. It was dark, and he had not turned his head.

      “Didn’t you think it queer to be paid before you reached your destination?”

      “Yes, but the rest was queerer. After I had taken the money—I never refuses money, sir—and was expecting him to get into the hack, he steps up to me again and says in a lower tone than before: ‘My wife is very nervous. Drive slow, if you please, and when you reach the place I have named, watch your horses carefully, for if they should move while she is getting out, the shock would throw her into a spasm.’ As she had looked very pert and lively, I thought this mighty queer, and I tried to get a peep at his face, but he was too smart for me, and was in the carriage before I could clap my eye on him.”

      “But you were more fortunate when they got out? You surely saw one or both of them then?”

      “No, sir, I didn’t. I had to watch the horses’ heads, you know. I shouldn’t like to be the cause of a young lady having a spasm.”

      “Do you know in what direction they went?”

      “East, I should say. I heard them laughing long after I had whipped up my horses. A queer couple, sir, that puzzled me some, though I should not have thought of them twice if I had not found next day——”

      “Well?”

      “The gentleman’s linen duster and the neat brown gossamer which the lady had worn, lying folded under the two back cushions of my hack; a present for which I was very much obliged to them, but which I was not long allowed to enjoy, for yesterday the police——”

      “Well, well, no matter about that. Here is a duster and here is a brown gossamer. Are these the articles you found under your cushions?”

      “If you will examine the neck of the lady’s gossamer, you can soon tell, sir. There was a small hole in the one I found, as if something had been snipped out of it; the owner’s name, most likely.”

      “Or the name of the place where it was bought,” suggested the Coroner, holding the garment up to view so as to reveal a square hole under the collar.

      “That’s it!” cried the hackman. “That’s the very one. Shame, I say, to spoil a new garment that way.”

      “Why do you call it new?” asked the Coroner.

      “Because it hasn’t a mud spot or even a mark of dust upon it. We looked it all over, my wife and I, and decided it had not been long off the shelf. A pretty good haul for a poor man like me, and if the police——”

      But here he was cut short again by an important question:

      “There is a clock but a short distance from the place where you stopped. Did you notice what time it was when you drove away?”

      “Yes, sir. I don’t know why I remember it, but I do. As I turned to go back to the hotel, I looked up at this clock. It was half-past eleven.”

      Chapter XII.

       The Keys

       Table of Contents

      We were all by this time greatly interested in the proceedings; and when another hackman was called we recognized at once that an effort was about to be made to connect this couple with the one who had alighted at Mr. Van Burnam’s door.

      The witness, who was a melancholy chap, kept his stand on the east side of the Square. At about twenty minutes to twelve, he was awakened from a nap he had been taking on the top of his coach, by a sharp rap on his whip arm, and looking down, he saw a lady and gentleman standing at the door of his vehicle.

      “We want to go to Gramercy Park,” said the lady. “Drive us there at once.”

      “I nodded, for what is the use of wasting words when it can be avoided; and they stepped at once into the coach.”

      “Can you describe them—tell us how they looked?”

      “I never notice people; besides, it was dark; but he had a swell air, and she was pert and merry, for she laughed as she closed the door.”

      “Can’t you remember how they were dressed?”

      “No, sir; she had on something that flapped about her shoulders, and he had a dark hat on his head, but that was all I saw.”

      “Didn’t you see his face?”

      “Not a bit of it; he kept it turned away. He didn’t want nobody looking at him. She did all the business.”

      “Then you saw her face?”

      “Yes, for a minute. But I wouldn’t know it again. She was young and purty, and her hand which dropped the money into mine was small, but I couldn’t say no more, not if you was to give me the town.”

      “Did you know that the house you stopped at was Mr. Van Burnam’s, and that it was supposed to be empty?”

      “No, sir, I’m not one of the swell ones. My acquaintances live in another part of the town.”

      “But you noticed that the house was dark?”

      “I may have. I don’t know.”

      “And that is all you have to tell us about them?”

      “No, sir; the next morning, which was yesterday, sir, as I was a-dusting out the coach I found under the cushions a large blue veil, folded and lying very flat. But it had been slit with a knife and could not be worn.”

      This was strange too, and while more than one person about me ventured an opinion, I muttered to myself, “James Pope, his mark!” astonished at a coincidence which so completely connected the occupants of the two coaches.

      But the Coroner was able to produce a witness whose evidence carried the matter on still farther. A policeman in full uniform testified next, and after explaining that his beat led him from Madison Avenue to Third on Twenty-seventh Street, went on to say that as he was coming up this street on Tuesday evening some few minutes before midnight, he encountered, somewhere between Lexington Avenue and Third, a man and woman walking rapidly towards the latter avenue, each carrying a parcel of some dimensions;