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The Stillwater Tragedy

T >> Thomas Bailey Aldrich >> The Stillwater Tragedy




"I am certain there was a quarrel; it was only necessary for those
two to meet to insure that. I distinctly remember the forenoon when
Richard went to Welch's Court; it was the day he discharged Torrini."

A little cloud passed over Margaret's countenance.

"They undoubtedly had angry words together," continued Mr. Slocum,
"and we are forced to accept the Hennessey girl's statement. The
reason you suggest for Richard's not saying anything on the subject
may suffice for us, but it will scarcely satisfy disinterested
persons, and doesn't at all cover another circumstance which must be
taken in the same connection."

"What circumstance?"

"His silence in regard to Lemuel Shackford's note,--a note written
the day before the murder, and making an appointment for the very
night of it."

The girl looked steadily at her father.

"Margaret!" exclaimed Mr. Slocum, his face illuminated with a
flickering hope as he met her untroubled gaze, "did Richard tell
_you?"_

"No," replied Margaret.

"Then he told no one," said Mr. Slocum, with the light fading out
of his features again. "It was madness in him to conceal the fact. He
should not have lost a moment, after the death of his cousin, in
making that letter public. It ought instantly to have been placed in
Coroner Whidden's hands. Richard's action is inconceivable,
unless--unless"--

"Do not say it!" cried Margaret. "I should never forgive you!"

In recapitulating the points of Mr. Taggett's accusation, Mr.
Slocum had treated most of them as trivial; but he had not been
sincere. He knew that that broken chisel had no duplicate in

Stillwater, and that the finding of it in Richard's closet was a
black fact. Mr. Slocum had also glossed over the quarrel; but that
letter!--the likelihood that Richard kept the appointment, and his
absolute silence concerning it,--here was a grim thing which no
sophistry could dispose of. It would be wronging Margaret to deceive
her as to the vital seriousness of Richard's position.

"Why, why did he hide it!" Mr. Slocum persisted.

"I do not see that he really hid it, papa. He shut the note in a
book lying openly on the table,--a dictionary, to which any one in
the household was likely to go. You think Mr. Taggett a person of
great acuteness."

"He is a very intelligent person, Margaret."

"He appears to me very short-sighted. If Richard were the dreadful
man Mr. Taggett supposes, that paper would have been burnt, and not
left for the first comer to pick up. I scorn myself for stooping to
the suggestion!"

"There is something in the idea," said Mr. Slocum slowly. "But why
did Richard never mention the note,--to you, or to me, or to
anybody?"

"He had a sufficient reason, you may be sure. Oh, papa, how ready
you are to believe evil of him!"

"I am not, God knows!"

"How you cling to this story of the letter! Suppose it turns out
to be some old letter, written two or three years ago? You could
never look Richard in the face again."

"Unfortunately, Shackford dated it. It is useless for us to
blindfold ourselves, Margaret. Richard has managed in some way to get
himself into a very perilous situation, and we cannot help him by
shutting our eyes. You misconceive me if you imagine I think him
capable of coolly plotting his cousin's death; but it is not outside
the limits of the possible that what has happened a thousand times
may have happened once more. Men less impulsive than Richard"--

"I will not listen to it!" interrupted Margaret, drawing herself
up. "When Richard returns he will explain the matter to you,--not to
me. If I required a word of denial from him, I should care very
little whether he was innocent or not."

Mr. Slocum threw a terrified glance at his daughter. Her lofty
faith sent a chill to his heart. What would be the result of a fall
from such a height? He almost wished Margaret had something less of
that ancestral confidence and obstinacy the lack of which in his own
composition he had so often deplored.

"We are not to speak of this to Richard," he said, after a
protracted pause; "at least not until Mr. Taggett considers it best.
I have pledged myself to something like that."

"Has Richard been informed of Mr. Taggett's singular proceeding?"
asked Margaret, freezingly.

"Not yet; nothing is to be done until Mr. Taggett returns from New
York, and then Richard will at once have an opportunity of clearing
himself."

"It would have spared us all much pain and misunderstanding if he
had been sent for in the first instance. Did he know that this person
was here in the yard?"

"The plan was talked over before Richard left; the details were
arranged afterwards. He heartily approved of the plan."

A leisurely and not altogether saint-like smile crept into the
corners of Margaret's mouth.

"Yes, he approved of the plan," repeated Mr. Slocum. "Perhaps
he"--Here Mr. Slocum checked himself, and left the sentence flying at
loose ends. Perhaps Richard had looked with favor upon a method of
inquiry which was so likely to lead to no result. But Mr. Slocum did
not venture to finish the suggestion. He had never seen Margaret so
imperious and intractable; it was impossible to reason or to talk
frankly with her. He remained silent, sitting with one arm thrown
dejectedly across the back of the chair.

Presently his abject attitude and expression began to touch
Margaret; there was something that appealed to her in the thin gray
hair fallowing over his forehead. Her eyes softened as they rested
upon him, and a pitying little tremor came to her under lip.

"Papa," she said, stooping to his side, with a sudden rosy bloom
in her cheeks, "I have all the proof I want that Richard knew nothing
of this dreadful business."

"You have proof!" exclaimed Mr. Slocum, starting from his seat.

"Yes. The morning Richard went to New York"--Margaret hesitated.

"Well!"

"He put his arm around me and kissed me."

"Well!"

"Well?" repeated Margaret. "Could Richard have done that,--could
he have so much as laid his hand upon me--if--if"--

Mr. Slocum sunk back in the chair with a kind of groan.

"Papa, you do not know him!"

"Oh, Margaret, I am afraid that that is not the kind of evidence
to clear Richard in Mr. Taggett's eyes."

"Then Richard's word must do it," she said haughtily. "He will be
home to-night."

"Yes, he is to return to-night," said Mr. Slocum, looking away
from her.






XXII





During the rest of the day the name of Richard Shackford was not
mentioned again by either Margaret or her father. It was a day of
suspense to both, and long before night-fall Margaret's impatience
for Richard to come had resolved itself into a pain as keen as that
with which Mr. Slocum contemplated the coming; for every hour
augmented his dread of the events that would necessarily follow the
reappearance of young Shackford in Stillwater.

On reaching his office, after the conversation with Margaret, Mr.
Slocum found Lawyer Perkins waiting for him. Lawyer Perkins, who was
as yet in ignorance of the late developments, had brought information
of his own. The mutilated document which had so grimly clung to its
secret was at last deciphered. It proved to be a recently executed
will, in which the greater part of Lemuel Shackford's estate, real
and personal, was left unconditionally to his cousin.

"That disposes of one of Mr. Taggett's theories," was Mr. Slocum's
unspoken reflection. Certainly Richard had not destroyed the will;
the old man himself had destroyed it, probably in some fit of pique.
Yet, after all, the vital question was in no way affected by this
fact; the motive for the crime remained, and the fearful evidence
against Richard still held.

After the departure of Lawyer Perkins, who had been struck by the
singular perturbation of his old friend, Mr. Slocum drew forth Mt.
Taggett's journal, and re-read it from beginning to end. Margaret's
unquestioning faith in Richard, her prompt and indignant rejection of
the whole story, had shaken her father at moments that morning; but
now his paralyzing doubts returned. This second perusal of the diary
impressed him even more strongly than the first. Richard had killed
Lemuel Shackford,--in self-defense, may be, or perhaps accidentally;
but he had killed him! As Mr. Slocum passed from page to page,
following the dark thread of narrative that darkened at each remove,
he lapsed into that illogical frame of mind when one looks half
expectantly for some providential interposition to avert the calamity
against which human means are impotent. If Richard were to drop dead
in the street! If he were to fall overboard off Point Judith in the
night! If only anything would happen to prevent his coming back! Thus
the ultimate disgrace might be spared them. But the ill thing is the
sure thing; the letter with the black seal never miscarries, and
Richard was bound to come! "There is no escape for him or for us,"
murmured Mr. Slocum, closing his finger in the book.

It was in a different mood that Margaret said to herself, "It is
nearly four o'clock; he will be here at eight!" As she stood at the
parlor window and watched the waning afternoon light making its
farewells to the flower-beds in the little square front-gardens of
the houses opposite, Margaret's heart was filled with the tenderness
of the greeting she intended to give Richard. She had never been cold
or shy in her demeanor with him, nor had she ever been quite
demonstrative; but now she meant to put her arms around his neck in a
wifely fashion, and recompense him so far as she could for all the
injustice he was to suffer. When he came to learn of the hateful
slander that had lifted its head during his absence, he should
already be in possession of the assurance of her faith.

In the mean while the hands in Slocum's Yard were much exercised
over the unaccountable disappearance of Blake. Stevens reported the
matter to Mr. Slocum.

"Ah, yes," said Mr. Slocum, who had not provided himself with an
explanation, and was puzzled to improvise one. "I discharged
him,--that is to say, I let him go. I forgot to mention it. He didn't
take to the trade."

"But he showed a good fist for a beginner," said Stevens. "He was
head and shoulders the best of the new lot. Shall I put Stebbins in
his place?"

"You needn't do anything until Mr. Shackford gets back."

"When will that be, sir?"

"To-night, probably."

The unceremonious departure of Blake formed the theme of endless
speculation at the tavern that evening, and for the moment obscured
the general interest in old Shackford's murder.

"Never to let on he was goin'!" said one.

"Didn't say good-by to nobody," remarked a second.

"It was devilish uncivil," added a third.

"It is kind of mysterious," said Mr. Peters.

"Some girl," suggested Mr. Willson, with an air of tender
sentiment, which he attempted further to emphasize by a capricious
wink.

"No," observed Dexter. "When a man vanishes in that sudden way his
body is generally found in a clump of blackberry bushes, months
afterwards, or left somewhere on the flats by an ebb tide."

"Two murders in Stillwater in one month would be rather crowding
it, wouldn't it?" inquired Piggott.

"Bosh!" said Durgin. "There was always something shady about
Blake. We didn't know where he hailed from, and we don't know where
he's gone to. He'll take care of himself; that kind of fellow never
lets anybody play any points on him." With this Durgin threw away the
stump of his cigar, and lounged out at the street door.

"I couldn't get anything out of the proprietor," said Stevens;
"but he never talks. May be Shackford when he"--Stevens stopped short
to listen to a low, rumbling sound like distant thunder, followed
almost instantly by two quick faint whistles. "He's aboard the train
to-night."

Mr. Peters quietly rose from his seat and left the bar-room.

The evening express, due at eight, was only a few seconds behind
time. As the screech of the approaching engine rung out from the dark
wood-land, Margaret and her father exchanged rapid glances. It would
take Richard ten minutes to walk from the railway station to the
house,--for of course he would come there directly after sending his
valise to Lime Street.

The ten minutes went by, and then twenty. Margaret bent steadily
over her work, listening with covert intentness for the click of the
street gate. Likely enough Richard had been unable to find any one to
take charge of his hand-baggage. Presently Mr. Slocum could not
resist the impulse to look at his watch. It was half past eight. He
nervously unfolded The Stillwater Gazette, and sat with his eyes
fastened on the paper.

After a seemingly interminable period the heavy bell of the South
Church sounded nine, and then tolled for a few minutes, as the dismal
custom is in New England country towns.

A long silence followed, unrelieved by any word between father and
daughter,--a silence so profound that the heart of the old-fashioned
time-piece, throbbing monotonously in its dusky case at the foot of
the stairs, made itself audible through the room. Mr. Slocum's gaze
continued fixed on the newspaper which he was not reading. Margaret's
hands lay crossed over the work on her lap.

Ten o'clock.

"What can have kept him?" murmured Margaret.

"There was only that way out of it," reflected Mr. Slocum,
pursuing his own line of thought.

Margaret's cheeks were flushed and hot, and her eyes dulled with
disappointment, as she rose from the low rocking-chair and crossed
over to kiss her father good-night. Mr. Slocum drew the girl gently
towards him, and held her for a moment in silence. But Margaret,
detecting the subtile commiseration in his manner, resented it, and
released herself coldly.

"He has been detained, papa."

"Yes, something must have detained him!"






XXIII





When the down express arrived at Stillwater, that night, two
passengers stepped from the rear car to the platform: one was Richard
Shackford, and the other a commercial traveler, whose acquaintance
Richard had made the previous evening on the Fall River boat.

There were no hacks in waiting at the station, and Richard found
his politeness put to a severe test when he saw himself obliged to
pilot his companion part of the way to the hotel, which lay--it
seemed almost maliciously--in a section of the town remote from the
Slocums'. Curbing his impatience, Richard led the stranger through
several crooked, unlighted streets, and finally left him at the
corner of the main thoroughfare, within pistol-shot of the red glass
lantern which hung over the door of the tavern. This cost Richard ten
good minutes. As he hurriedly turned into a cross-street on the left,
he fancied that he heard his name called several times from somewhere
in the darkness. A man came running towards him. It was Mr. Peters.

"Can I say a word to you, Mr. Shackford?"

"If it isn't a long one. I am rather pressed."

"It is about Torrini, sir."

"What of him?"

"He's mighty bad, sir."

"Oh, I can't stop to hear that," and Richard quickened his pace.

"The doctor took off his hand last Wednesday," said Peters,
keeping alongside, "and he's been getting worse and worse."

Richard halted. "Took off his hand?"

"Didn't you know he was caught in the rolling-machine at Dana's?
Well, it was after you went away."

"This is the first I've heard of it."

"It was hard lines for him, sir, with the woman and the two
children, and nothing to eat in the house. The boys in the yard have
done what they could, but with the things from the drug-store, and so
on, we couldn't hold up our end. Mr. Dana paid the doctor's bill,
but if it hadn't been for Miss Slocum I don't know what would have
happened. I thought may be if I spoke to you, and told you how it
was"--

"Did Torrini send you?"

"Lord, no! He's too proud to send to anybody. He's been so proud
since they took off his hand that there has been no doing anything
with him. If they was to take off his leg, he would turn into one
mass of pride. No, Mr. Shackford, I came of myself."

"Where does Torrini live, now?"

"In Mitchell's Alley."

"I will go along with you," said Richard, with a dogged air. It
seemed as if the fates were determined to keep him from seeing
Margaret that night. Peters reached out a hand to take Richard's
leather bag. "No, thank you, I can carry it very well." In a small
morocco case in one of the pockets was a heavy plain gold ring for
Margaret, and not for anything in the world would Richard have
allowed any one else to carry the bag.

After a brisk five minutes' walk the two emerged upon a broad
street crossing their path at right angles. All the shops were closed
except Stubbs the provision dealer's and Dundon's drug-store. In the
window of the apothecary a great purple jar, with a spray of gas jets
behind it, was flaring on the darkness like a Bengal light. Richard
stopped at the provision store and made some purchases; a little
further on he halted at a fruit stand, kept by an old crone, who had
supplemented the feeble flicker of the corner street lamp with a
pitch-pine torch, which cast a yellow bloom over her apples and
turned them all into oranges. She had real oranges, however, and
Richard selected half a dozen, with a confused idea of providing the
little Italians with some national fruit, though both children had
been born in Stillwater.

Then the pair resumed their way, Peters acting as pioneer. They
soon passed beyond the region of sidewalks and curbstones, and began
picking their steps through a narrow, humid lane, where the water lay
in slimy pools, and the tenement houses on each side blotted out the
faint starlight. The night was sultry, and door and casement stood
wide, making pits of darkness. Few lights were visible, but a
continuous hum of voices issued from the human hives, and now and
then a transient red glow at an upper window showed that some one was
smoking a pipe. This was Mitchell's Alley.

The shadows closed behind the two men as they moved forward, and
neither was aware of the figure which had been discreetly following
them for the last ten minutes. If Richard had suddenly wheeled and
gone back a dozen paces, he would have come face to face with the
commercial traveler.

Mr. Peeters paused in front of one of the tenement houses, and
motioned with his thumb over his shoulder for Richard to follow him
through a yawning doorway. The hall was as dark as a cave, and full
of stale, moldy odors. Peters shuffled cautiously along the bare
boards until he kicked his toe against the first step of the
staircase.

"Keep close to the wall, Mr. Shackford, and feel your way up.
They've used the banisters for kindling, and the landlord says he
shan't put in any more. I went over here the other night," added Mr.
Peters reminiscentially.

After fumbling several seconds for the latch, Mr. Peters pushed
open a door, and ushered Richard into a large, gloomy rear room. A
kerosene lamp was burning dimly on the mantel-shelf, over which hung
a coarsely-colored lithograph of the Virgin in a pine frame. Under
the picture stood a small black crucifix. There was little
furniture,--a cooking-stove, two or three stools, a broken table, and
a chest of drawers. On an iron bedstead in the corner lay Torrini,
muffled to the chin in a blanket, despite the hot midsummer night.
His right arm, as if it were wholly disconnected with his body,
rested in a splint on the outside of the covering. As the visitors
entered, a tall dusky woman with blurred eyes rose from a low bench
at the foot of the bed.

"Is he awake?" asked Peters.

The woman, comprehending the glance which accompanied the words,
though not the words themselves, nodded yes.

"Here is Mr. Shackford come to see you, Torrini," Peters said.

The man slowly unclosed his eyes; they were unnaturally brilliant
and dilated, and seemed to absorb the rest of his features.

"I didn't want him."

"Let by-gones be by-gones, Torrini," said Richard, approaching the
bedside. "I am sorry about this."

"You are very good; I don't understand. I ask nothing of Slocum;
but the signorina comes every day, and I cannot help it. What would
you have? I'm a dead man," and he turned away his face.

"It is not so bad as that," said Richard.

Torrini looked up with a ghastly smile. "They have cut off the
hand that struck you, Mr. Shackford."

"I suppose it was necessary. I am very sorry. In a little while
you will be on your feet again."

"It is too late. They might have saved me by taking the arm, but I
would not allow them. I may last three or four days. The doctor says
it."

Peters, standing in the shadow, jerked his head affirmatively.

"I do not care for myself," the man continued,--"but she and the
little ones--That is what madden s me. They will starve."

"They will not be let starve in Stillwater," said Richard.

Torrini turned his eyes upon him wistfully and doubtfully. "You
will help them?"

"Yes, I and others."

"If they could be got to Italy," said Torrini, after meditating,
"it would be well. Her farther," giving a side look at the woman, "is
a fisherman of Capri." At the word Capri the woman lifted her head
quickly. "He is not rich, but he's not poor; he would take her."

"You would wish her sent to Naples?"

"Yes."

"If you do not pull through, she and the children shall go there."

"Brigida!" called Torrini; then he said something rapidly in
Italian to the woman, who buried her face in both hands, and did not
reply.

"She has no words to thank you. See, she is tired to death, with
the children all day and me all night,--these many nights."

"Tell her to go to bed in the other room," said Richard. "There's
another room, isn't there? I'll sit with you."

"You?"

"Your wife is fagged out,--that is plain. Send her to bed, and
don't talk any more. Peters, I wish you'd run and get a piece of ice
somewhere; there's no drinking-water here. Come, now, Torrini, I
can't speak Italian. Oh, I don't mind your scowling; I intend to
stay."

Torrini slowly unknitted his brows, and an irresolute expression
stole across his face; then he called Brigida, and bade her go in
with the children. She bowed her head submissively, and fixing her
melting eyes on Richard for an instant passed into the adjoining
chamber.

Peters shortly reappeared with the ice, and after setting a jug of
water on the table departed. Richard turned up the wick of the
kerosene lamp, which was sending forth a disagreeable odor, and
pinned an old newspaper around the chimney to screen the flame. He
had, by an odd chance, made his lampshade out of a copy of The
Stillwater Gazette containing the announcement of his cousin's death.
Richard gave a quick start as his eye caught the illuminated
head-lines,--Mysterious Murder of Lemuel Shackford! Perhaps a slight
exclamation escaped Richard's lips at the same time, for Torrini
turned and asked what was the matter. "Nothing at all," said Richard,
removing the paper, and placing another in its stead. Then he threw
open the blinds of the window looking on the back yard, and set his
hand-bag against the door to prevent it being blown to by the
draught. Torrini, without altering the rigid position of his head on
the pillow, followed every movement with a look of curious
insistence, like that of the eyes in a portrait. His preparations
completed for the night, Richard seated himself on a stool at the
foot of the bed.

The obscurity and stillness of the room had their effect upon the
sick man, who presently dropped into a light sleep. Richard sat
thinking of Margaret, and began to be troubled because he had
neglected to send her word of his detention, which he might have done
by Peters. It was now too l ate. The town clock struck ten in the
midst of his self-reproaches. At the first clang of the bell, Torrini
awoke with a start, and asked for water.

"If anybody comes," he said, glancing in a bewildered, anxious way
at the shadows huddled about the door, "you are not to leave me alone
with him."

"Him? Whom? Are you expecting any one?"

"No; but who knows? one might come. Then, you are not to go; you
are not to leave me for a second."

"I've no thought of it," replied Richard; "you may rest easy....
He's a trifle light in the head," was Richard's reflection.

After that Torrini dozed rather than slumbered, rousing at brief
intervals; and whenever he awoke the feverish activity of his brain
incited him to talk,--nowe of Italy, and now of matters connected
with his experiences in this country.

"Naples is a pleasant place!" he broke out in the hush of the
midnight, just as Richard was dropping off. "The band plays every
afternoon on the Chiaia. And then the _festas,_--every third day
a festa. The devil was in my body when I left there and dragged
little Brigida into all this misery. We used to walk of an evening
along the Marinella,--that's a strip of beach just beyond the Molo
Piccolo. You were never in Naples?"

"Not I," said Richard. "Here, wet your lips, and try to go to
sleep again."

"No, I can't sleep for thinking. When the Signorina came to see
me, the other day, her heart was pierced with pity. Like the blessed
Madonna's, her bosom bleeds for all! You will let her come
to-morrow?"

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