The Complete Amelia Butterworth Mystery Series

by Anna Katharine Green

At ten o’clock I stole away from the library and the delightful company of Mr. Stone, who had insisted upon sharing my labors, and went up to Miss Oliver’s room. I met the nurse at the door.

  “You want to see her,” said she. “She’s asleep, but does not rest very easily. I don’t think I ever saw so pitiful a case. She moans continually, but not with physical pain. Yet she seems to have courage too; for now and then she starts up with a loud cry. Listen.”

  I did so, and this is what I heard:

  “I do not want to live; doctor, I do not want to live; why do you try to make me better?”

  “That is what she is saying all the time. Sad, isn’t it?”

  I acknowledged it to be so, but at the same time wondered if the girl were not right in wishing for death as a relief from her troubles.

  Early the next morning I inquired at her door again. Miss Oliver was better. Her fever had left her, and she wore a more natural look than at any time since I had seen her. But it was not an untroubled one, and it was with difficulty I met her eyes when she asked if they were coming for her that day, and if she could see Miss Althorpe before she left. As she was not yet able to leave her bed I could easily answer her first question, but I knew too little of Mr. Gryce’s intentions to be able to reply to the second. But I was easy with this suffering woman, very easy, more easy than I ever supposed I could be with any one so intimately associated with crime.

  She seemed to accept my explanations as readily as she already had my presence, and I was struck again with surprise as I considered that my name had never aroused in her the least emotion.

  “Miss Althorpe has been so good to me I should like to thank her; from my despairing heart, I should like to thank her,” she said to me as I stood by her side before leaving. “Do you know”—she went on, catching me by the dress as I was turning away—“what kind of a man she is going to marry? She has such a loving heart, and marriage is such a fearful risk.”

  “Fearful?” I repeated.

  “Is it not fearful? To give one’s whole soul to a man and be met by—I must not talk of it; I must not think of it—But is he a good man? Does he love Miss Althorpe? Will she be happy? I have no right to ask, perhaps, but my gratitude towards her is such that I wish her every joy and pleasure.”

  “Miss Althorpe has chosen well,” I rejoined. “Mr. Stone is a man in ten thousand.”

  The sigh that answered me went to my heart.

  “I will pray for her,” she murmured; “that will be something to live for.”

  I did not know what reply to make to this. Everything which this girl said and did was so unexpected and so convincing in its sincerity, I felt moved by her even against my better judgment. I pitied her and yet I dared not urge her on to speak, lest I should fail in my task of making her well. I therefore confined myself to a few haphazard expressions of sympathy and encouragement, and left her in the hands of the nurse.

  Next day Mr. Gryce called.

  “Your patient is better,” said he.

  “Much better,” was my cheerful reply. “This afternoon she will be able to leave the house.”

  “Very good; have her down at half-past three and I will be in front with a carriage.”

  “I dread it,” I cried; “but I will have her there.”

  “You are beginning to like her, Miss Butterworth. Take care! You will lose your head if your sympathies become engaged.”

  “It sits pretty firmly on my shoulders yet,” I retorted; “and as for sympathies, you are full of them yourself. I saw how you looked at her yesterday.”

  “Bah, my looks!”

  “You cannot deceive me, Mr. Gryce; you are as sorry for the girl as you can be; and so am I too. By the way, I do not think I should speak of her as a girl. From something she said yesterday I am convinced she is a married woman; and that her husband—”

  “Well, madam?”

  “I will not give him a name, at least not before your scheme has been carried out. Are you ready for the undertaking?”

  “I will be this afternoon. At half-past three she is to leave the house. Not a minute before and not a minute later. Remember.”

  CHAPTER XXXV

  A Ruse

  It was a new thing for me to enter into any scheme blindfold. But the past few weeks had taught me many lessons and among them to trust a little in the judgment of others.

  Accordingly I was on hand with my patient at the hour designated, and, as I supported her trembling steps down the stairs, I endeavored not to betray the intense interest agitating me, or to awaken by my curiosity any further dread in her mind than that involved by her departure from this home of bounty and good feeling, and her entrance upon an unknown and possibly much to be apprehended future.

  Mr. Gryce was awaiting us in the lower hall, and as he caught sight of her slender figure and anxious face his whole attitude became at once so protecting and so sympathetic, I did not wonder at her failure to associate him with the police.

  As she stepped down to his side he gave her a genial nod.

  “I am glad to see you so far on the road to recovery,” he remarked. “It shows me that my prophecy is correct and that in a few days you will be quite yourself again.”

  She looked at him wistfully.

  “You seem to know so much about me, doctor, perhaps you can tell me where they are going to take me.”

  He lifted a tassel from a curtain near by, looked at it, shook his head at it, and inquired quite irrelevantly:

  “Have you bidden good-bye to Miss Althorpe?”

  Her eyes stole towards the parlors and she whispered as if half in awe of the splendor everywhere surrounding her:

  “I have not had the opportunity. But I should be sorry to go without a word of thanks for her goodness. Is she at home?”

  The tassel slipped from his hand.

  “You will find her in a carriage at the door. She has an engagement out this afternoon, but wishes to say good-bye to you before leaving.”

  “Oh, how kind she is!” burst from the girl’s white lips; and with a hurried gesture she was making for the door when Mr. Gryce stepped before her and opened it.

  Two carriages were drawn up in front, neither of which seemed to possess the elegance of so rich a woman’s equipage. But Mr. Gryce appeared satisfied, and pointing to the nearest one, observed quietly:

  “You are expected. If she does not open the carriage door for you, do not hesitate to do it yourself. She has something of importance to say to you.”

  Miss Oliver looked surprised, but prepared to obey him. Steadying herself by the stone balustrade, she slowly descended the steps and advanced towards the carriage. I watched her from the doorway and Mr. Gryce from the vestibule. It seemed an ordinary situation, but something in the latter’s face convinced me that interests of no small moment depended upon the interview about to take place.

  But before I could decide upon their nature or satisfy myself as to the full meaning of Mr. Gryce’s manner, she had started back from the carriage door and was saying to him in a tone of modest embarrassment:

  “There is a gentleman in the carriage; you must have made some mistake.”

  Mr. Gryce, who had evidently expected a different result from his stratagem, hesitated for a moment, during which I felt that he read her through and through; then he responded lightly:

  “I made a mistake, eh? Oh, possibly. Look in the other carriage, my child.”

  With an unaffected air of confidence she turned to do so, and I turned to watch her, for I began to understand the “scheme” at which I was assisting, and foresaw that the emotion she had failed to betray at the door of the first carriage might not necessarily be lacking on the opening of the second.

  I was all the more assured of this from the fact that Miss Althorpe’s stately figure was very plainly to be seen at that moment, not in the coach Mis
s Oliver was approaching, but in an elegant victoria just turning the corner.

  My expectations were realized; for no sooner had the poor girl swung open the door of the second hack, than her whole body succumbed to a shock so great that I expected to see her fall in a heap on the pavement. But she steadied herself up with a determined effort, and with a sudden movement full of subdued fury, jumped into the carriage and violently shut the door just as the first carriage drove off to give place to Miss Althorpe’s turn-out.

  “Humph!” sprang from Mr. Gryce’s lips in a tone so full of varied emotions that it was with difficulty I refrained from rushing down the stoop to see for myself who was the occupant of the coach into which my late patient had so passionately precipitated herself. But the sight of Miss Althorpe being helped to the ground by her attendant lover, recalled me so suddenly to my own anomalous position on her stoop, that I let my first impulse pass and concerned myself instead with the formation of those apologies I thought necessary to the occasion. But those apologies were never uttered. Mr. Gryce, with the infinite tact he displays in all serious emergencies, came to my rescue, and so distracted Miss Althorpe’s attention that she failed to observe that she had interrupted a situation of no small moment.

  Meanwhile the coach containing Miss Oliver had, at a signal from the wary detective, drawn off in the wake of the first one, and I had the doubtful satisfaction of seeing them both roll down the street without my having penetrated the secret of either.

  A glance from Mr. Stone, who had followed Miss Althorpe up the stoop, interrupted Mr. Gryce’s flow of eloquence, and a few minutes later I found myself making those adieux which I had hoped to avoid by departing in Miss Althorpe’s absence. Another instant and I was hastening down the street in the direction taken by the two carriages, one of which had paused at the corner a few rods off.

  But, spry as I am for one of my settled habits and sedate character, I found myself passed by Mr. Gryce; and when I would have accelerated my steps, he darted forward quite like a boy and, without a word of explanation or any acknowledgment of the mutual understanding which certainly existed between us, leaped into the carriage I was endeavoring to reach, and was driven away. But not before I caught a glimpse of Miss Oliver’s gray dress inside.

  Determined not to be baffled by this man, I turned about and followed the other carriage. It was approaching a crowded part of the avenue, and in a few minutes I had the gratification of seeing it come to a standstill only a few feet from the curb-stone. The opportunity thus afforded me of satisfying my curiosity was not to be slighted. Without pausing to consider consequences or to question the propriety of my conduct, I stepped boldly up in front of its half-lowered window and looked in. There was but one person inside, and that person was Franklin Van Burnam.

  What was I to conclude from this? That the occupant of the other carriage was Howard, and that Mr. Gryce now knew with which of the two brothers Miss Oliver’s memories were associated.

  LOST MAN’S LANE

  THE SECOND EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF AMELIA BUTTERWORTH

  DEDICATION

  To Elizabeth D. Shepard, cousin and friend, this book is affectionately inscribed.

  PREFACE

  A word to my readers before they begin these pages.

  As a woman of inborn principle and strict Presbyterian training, I hate deception and cannot abide subterfuge. This is why, after a year or more of hesitation, I have felt myself constrained to put into words the true history of the events surrounding the solution of that great mystery which made Lost Man’s Lane the dread of the neighboring country. Feminine delicacy, and a natural shrinking from revealing to the world certain weaknesses on my part, inseparable from a true relation of this tale, led me to consent to the publication of that meagre and decidedly falsified account of the matter which has appeared in some of our leading papers.

  But conscience has regained its sway in my breast, and with all due confidence in your forbearance, I herein take my rightful place in these annals, of whose interest and importance I now leave you to judge.

  Amelia Butterworth.

  Gramercy Park, New York.

  BOOK I: THE KNOLLYS FAMILY

  CHAPTER I

  A Visit from Mr. Gryce

  Ever since my fortunate—or shall I say unfortunate?—connection with that famous case of murder in Gramercy Park, I have had it intimated to me by many of my friends—and by some who were not my friends—that no woman who had met with such success as myself in detective work would ever be satisfied with a single display of her powers, and that sooner or later I would find myself again at work upon some other case of striking peculiarities.

  As vanity has never been my foible, and as, moreover, I never have forsaken and never am likely to forsake the plain path marked out for my sex, at any other call than that of duty, I invariably responded to these insinuations by an affable but incredulous smile, striving to excuse the presumption of my friends by remembering their ignorance of my nature and the very excellent reasons I had for my one notable interference in the police affairs of New York City.

  Besides, though I appeared to be resting quietly, if not in entire contentment, on my laurels, I was not so utterly removed from the old atmosphere of crime and its detection as the world in general considered me to be. Mr. Gryce still visited me; not on business, of course, but as a friend, for whom I had some regard; and naturally our conversation was not always confined to the weather or even to city politics, provocative as the latter subject is of wholesome controversy.

  Not that he ever betrayed any of the secrets of his office—oh no; that would have been too much to expect—but he did sometimes mention the outward aspects of some celebrated case, and though I never ventured upon advice—I know too much for that, I hope—I found my wits more or less exercised by a conversation in which he gained much without acknowledging it, and I gave much without appearing conscious of the fact.

  I was therefore finding life pleasant and full of interest, when suddenly (I had no right to expect it, and I do not blame myself for not expecting it or for holding my head so high at the prognostications of my friends) an opportunity came for a direct exercise of my detective powers in a line seemingly so laid out for me by Providence that I felt I would be slighting the Powers above if I refused to enter upon it, though now I see that the line was laid out for me by Mr. Gryce, and that I was obeying anything but the call of duty in following it.

  But this is not explicit. One night Mr. Gryce came to my house looking older and more feeble than usual. He was engaged in a perplexing case, he said, and missed his early vigor and persistency. Would I like to hear about it? It was not in the line of his usual work, yet it had points—and well!—it would do him good to talk about it to a non-professional who was capable of sympathizing with its baffling and worrisome features and yet would never have to be told to hold her peace.

  I ought to have been on my guard. I ought to have known the old fox well enough to feel certain that when he went so manifestly out of his way to take me into his confidence he did it for a purpose. But Jove nods now and then—or so I have been assured on unimpeachable authority—and if Jove has ever been caught napping, surely Amelia Butterworth may be pardoned a like inconsistency.

  “It is not a city crime,” Mr. Gryce went on to explain, and here he was base enough to sigh. “At my time of life this is an important consideration. It is no longer a simple matter for me to pack up a valise and go off to some distant village, way up in the mountains perhaps, where comforts are few and secrecy an impossibility. Comforts have become indispensable to my threescore years and ten, and secrecy—well, if ever there was an affair where one needs to go softly, it is this one; as you will see if you will allow me to give you the facts of the case as known at Headquarters today.”

  I bowed, trying not to show my surprise or my extreme satisfaction. Mr. Gryce assumed his most benignant aspect (always
a dangerous one with him), and began his story.

  CHAPTER II

  I Am Tempted

  “Some ninety miles from here, in a more or less inaccessible region, there is a small but interesting village, which has been the scene of so many unaccountable disappearances that the attention of the New York police has at last been directed to it. The village, which is at least two miles from any railroad, is one of those quiet, placid little spots found now and then among the mountains, where life is simple, and crime, to all appearance, an element so out of accord with every other characteristic of the place as to seem a complete anomaly. Yet crime, or some other hideous mystery almost equally revolting, has during the last five years been accountable for the disappearance in or about this village of four persons of various ages and occupations. Of these, three were strangers and one a well-known vagabond accustomed to tramp the hills and live on the bounty of farmers’ wives. All were of the male sex, and in no case has any clue ever come to light as to their fate. That is the matter as it stands before the police today.”

  “A serious affair,” I remarked. “Seems to me I have read of such things in novels. Is there a tumbled-down old inn in the vicinity where beds are made up over trap-doors?”

  His smile was a mild protest against my flippancy.

  “I have visited the town myself. There is no inn there, but a comfortable hotel of the most matter-of-fact sort, kept by the frankest and most open-minded of landlords. Besides, these disappearances, as a rule, did not take place at night, but in broad daylight. Imagine this street at noon. It is a short one, and you know every house on it, and you think you know every lurking-place. You see a man enter it at one end and you expect him to issue from it at the other. But suppose he never does. More than that, suppose he is never heard of again, and that this thing should happen in this one street four times during five years.”

  “I should move,” I dryly responded.

  “Would you? Many good people have moved from the place I speak of, but that has not helped matters. The disappearances go on just the same and the mystery continues.”