The Dead Letter · Part I · Chapter 1 8 (2/3)

He made a few passes over her; when I saw their effect, I did not wonder that he shrunk from the experiment⁠—my surprise was rather that he could be induced to make it, under any circumstances. The lovely face became distorted as with pain; the little hands twitched⁠—so did the lips and eyelids. I turned away, not having fortitude to witness anything so jarring to my sensibilities. When I looked again, her countenance had recovered its tranquillity; the eyes were fast closed, but she appeared to ponder upon the picture which she held.

“Do you see the person now?”

“Yes, papa.”

“In what kind of a place is she?”

“She is in a small room; it has two windows. There is no carpet on the floor. There is a bed and a table, a stove and some chairs. It is in the upper story of a large brick house, I do not know in what place.”

“What is she doing?”

“She is sitting near the back window; it looks out on the roofs of other houses; she is holding a pretty little child on her lap.”

“She must be in the city,” remarked Mr. Burton, aside; “the large house and the congregated roofs would imply it. Can you not tell me the name of the street?”

“No, I can not see it. I was never in this place before. I can see water, as I look out of the window. It appears like the bay; and I see plenty of ships, but there is some green land across the water, besides distant houses.”

“It must be somewhere in the suburbs, or in Brooklyn. Are there no signs on the shops, which you can read, as you look out?”

“No, papa.”

“Well, go down the stairs, and out upon the street, and tell me the number of the house.”

“It is No. —,” she said, after a few moments’ silence.

“Go along until you come to a corner, and read me the name of the street.”

“Court Street,” she answered, presently.

“It is in Brooklyn,” exclaimed the detective, triumphantly. “There is nothing now to prevent us going straight to the spot. Lenore, go back now, to the house; tell us on which floor is this room, and how situated.”

Again there was silence while she retraced her steps.

“It is on the fourth floor, the first door to the left, as you reach the landing.”

Lenore began to look weary and exhausted; the sweat broke out on her brow, and she panted as if fatigued with climbing flights of stairs. Her father, with a regretful air, wiped her forehead, kissing it tenderly as he did so. A few more of those cabalistic touches, followed by the same painful contortions of those beautiful features, and Lenore was herself again. But she was pale and languid; she drooped against her father’s breast, as he held her in his arms, the color faded from her cheeks, too listless to smile in answer to his caresses. Placing her on the sofa, he took from a nook in his secretary a bottle of old port, poured out a tiny glassful, and gave to her. The wine revived her almost instantly; the smiles and bloom came back, though she still seemed exceedingly weary.

“She will be like a person exhausted by a long journey, or great labor, for several days,” said Mr. Burton, as I watched the child. “It cost me a pang to make such a demand upon her; I hope it will be the last time⁠—at least until she is older and stronger than now.”

“I should think the application of electricity would restore some of the vitality which has been taken from her,” I suggested.

“I shall try it this evening,” was his reply; “in the meantime, if we intend to benefit by the sacrifice of my little Lenore, let us lose no time. Something may occur to send the fugitive flying again. And now, my dear little girl, you must lie down a while this afternoon, and be careful of yourself. You shall dine with us tonight, if you are not too tired, and we shall bring you some flowers⁠—a bouquet from old John’s conservatory, sure.”

Committing his darling to the housekeeper’s charge, with many instructions and warnings, and a lingering look which betrayed his anxiety, Mr. Burton was soon ready, and we departed, taking a stage for Fulton Ferry a little after one o’clock.

About an hour and a quarter brought us to the brick house on Court Street, far out toward the suburbs, which had the number indicated upon it. No one questioned our coming, it being a tenement-house, and we ascended a long succession of stairs, until we came to the fourth floor, and stood before the door on the left-hand side. I trembled a little with excitement. My companion, laying his hand firmly on the knob, was arrested by finding the door locked. At this he knocked; but there was no answer to his summons. Amid the assortment of keys which he carried with him, he found one to fit the lock; in a moment the door stood open, and we entered to meet⁠—blank solitude!

The room had evidently been deserted but a short time, and by someone expecting to return. There was a fire covered down in the stove, and three or four potatoes in the oven to be baked for the humble supper. There was no trunk, no chest, no clothing in the room, only the scant furniture which Lenore had described, a few dishes in the cupboard, and some cooking utensils, which had been rented, probably, with the room. On the table were two things confirmatory of the occupants⁠—a bowl, containing the remains of a child’s dinner of bread-and-milk, and a piece of embroidery⁠—a half-finished collar.

At Mr. Burton’s request I went down to the shop on the first floor, and inquired in what direction the young woman with the child had gone, and how long she had been out.

“She went, maybe, half an hour ago; she took the little girl out for a walk, I think. She told me she’d be back before supper, when she stopped to pay for a bit of coal, and to have it carried up.”

I returned with this information.

“I’m sorry, now, that we inquired,” said the detective; “that fellow will be sure to see her first, and tell her that she has had callers; that will frighten her at once. I must go below, and keep my watch from there.”

“If you do not care for a second person to watch with you, I believe I will go on to Greenwood. We are so near it, now, and I would like to visit poor Henry’s grave.”

“I do not need you at all now; only, do not be absent too long. When I meet this Leesy Sullivan, whom I have not yet seen, you remember, I want a long talk with her. The last object I have is to frighten her; I shall seek to soothe her instead. If I can once meet her face to face, and voice to voice, I believe I can tame the antelope, or the lioness, whichever she turns out to be. I do not think I shall have to coerce her⁠—not even if she is guilty. If she is guilty she will give herself up. I may even take her home to dinner with us,” he added, with a smile. “Don’t shudder, Mr. Redfield; we often dine in company with murderers⁠—sometimes when we have only our friends and neighbors with us. I assure you I have often had that honor!”

His grim humor was melancholy to me⁠—but who could wonder that a man of Mr. Burton’s peculiar experience should be touched with cynicism? Besides, I felt that there was more in the inner meaning of his words than appeared upon their outer surface. I left him, sitting in a sheltered corner of the shop below, in a position where he could command the street and the entrance-hall without being himself observed, and making himself friendly with the busy little man behind the counter, of whom he had already purchased a pint of chestnuts. It would be as well that I should be out of the way. Miss Sullivan knew me, and might take alarm at some distant glimpse of me, while Mr. Burton’s person must be unknown to her, unless she had been the better detective of the two, and marked him when he was ignorant of her vicinity.

Stepping into a passing car, in a few minutes I had gone from the city of the living to the city of the dead. Beautiful and silent city! There the costly and gleaming portals, raised at the entrance of those mansions, tell us the name and age of the inhabitants, but the inhabitants themselves we never behold. Knock as loud and long as we may at those marble doors, cry, entreat, implore, they hold themselves invisible. Nevermore are they “at home” to us. We, who once were never kept waiting, must go from the threshold now, without a word of welcome. City of the dead⁠—to which that city of the living must soon remove⁠—who is there that can walk thy silent streets without a prescience of the time when he, too, will take up his abode in thee forever? Strange city of solitude! where thousands whose homes are ranged side by side, know not one the other, and give no greeting to the pale newcomers.

With meditations like these, only far too solemn for words, I wandered through the lovely place, where, still, summer seemed to linger, as if loth to quit the graves she beautified. With Eleanor and Henry in my heart, I turned in the direction of the family burial-plot, wishing that Eleanor were with me on that glorious day, that she might first behold his grave under such gentle auspices of light, foliage and flowers⁠—for I knew that she contemplated a pilgrimage to this spot, as soon as her strength would warrant the attempt.

I approached the spot by a winding path; the soft plash of a fountain sounded through a little thicket of evergreens, and I saw the gleam of the wide basin into which it fell; a solitary bird poured forth a mournful flood of lamentation from some high branch not far away. It required but little aid of fancy to hear in that “melodious madness” the cry of some broken heart, haunting, in the form of this bird, the place of the loved one’s sleep.

There were other wanderers than myself in the cemetery; a funeral train was coming through the gate as I passed in, and I met another within a few steps; but in the secluded path where I now walked I was alone. With the slow steps of one who meditates sad things, I approached Henry’s grave. Gliding away by another devious path, I saw a female figure.

“It is some other mourner, whom I have disturbed from her vigil by some of these tombs,” I thought⁠—“or, perchance, one who was passing further on before reaching the goal of her grief,”⁠—and with this I dismissed her from my mind, having had, at the best, only an indistinct glimpse of the woman, and the momentary flutter of her garments as she passed beyond a group of tall shrubs and was lost to view.

The next moment I knelt by the sod which covered that young and noble form. Do not think me extravagant in my emotions. I was not so⁠—only overpowered, always, by intense sympathy with the sufferers by that calamity. I had so mused upon Eleanor’s sorrow that I had, as it were, made it mine. I bowed my head, breathing a prayer for her, then leaning against the trunk of a tree whose leaves no longer afforded shade to the carefully-cultivated family enclosure, my eyes fell upon the grave. There were beautiful flowers fading upon it, which some friendly hand had laid there within a week or two. Ten or fifteen minutes I may have passed in reverie; then, as I arose to depart, I took up a fading bud or two and a sprig of myrtle, placing them in my vest-pocket to give Eleanor on my return. As I stooped to gather them, I perceived the imprint of a child’s foot, here and there, all about the grave⁠—a tiny imprint, in the fresh mold, as of some toddling babe whose little feet had hardly learned to steady themselves.

There were one or two marks of a woman’s slender shoe; but it was the infant feet which impressed me. It flashed upon me what female figure it was which I had seen flitting away as I approached; now that I recalled it, I even recognized the tall, slender form, with the slight stoop of the shoulders, of which I had obtained but a half-glance. I hastily pursued the path she had taken; but my haste was behind hers by at least a quarter of an hour.

I realized that I would only lose time by looking for her in those winding avenues, every one of which might be taking me from instead of toward the fugitives; so I turned back to the gate and questioned the keeper if he had seen a tall young woman with a little child pass out in the last half-hour. He had seen several children and women go out in that time; and as I could not tell how this particular one was dressed, I could not arouse his recollection to any certainty on the point.

“She was probably carrying the child,” I said; “she had a consumptive look, and was sad-looking, though her face was doubtless hidden in her veil.”

“It’s quite likely,” he responded; “mostly the women that do come here look sad, and many of them keep their veils down. However, it’s my impression there hasn’t no child of that age been past here, lately. I noticed one going in about two o’clock, and if it’s that one, she hasn’t come out yet.”

So while Mr. Burton sat in the shop in Court Street keeping watch, I sat at the gates of Greenwood; but no Leesy Sullivan came forth; and when the gates were closed for the night, I was obliged to go away disappointed.

The girl began to grow some elusive phantom in my mind. I could almost doubt that there was any such creature, with black, wild eyes and hectic cheeks, whom I was pursuing; whom I chanced upon in strange places, at unexpected times, but could never find when I sought her⁠—who seemed to blend herself in this unwarrantable way with the tragedy which wrung some other hearts. What had she to do with Henry’s grave? A feeling of dislike, of mortal aversion, grew upon me⁠—I could not pity her any more⁠—this dark spirit who, having perchance wrought this irremediable woe, could not now sink into the depths where she belonged, but must haunt and hover on the edges of my trouble, fretting me to follow her, only to mock and elude.

Before leaving the cemetery I offered two policemen a hundred dollars if they should succeed in detaining the woman and child whose description I gave them, until word could be sent to the office of the detective-police; and I left them, with another on guard at the gates, perambulating the grounds, peering into vaults and ghostly places in search of her. When I got out at the house on Court Street, I found my friend quite tired of eating chestnuts and talking to the little man behind the counter.

“Well,” said he, “the potatoes will be roasted to death before their owner returns. We have been led another wild-goose chase.”

“I have seen her,” I answered.

“What?”

“And lost her. I believe she is a little snaky, she has such a slippery way with her.”

“Tut! tut! so has a frightened deer! But how did it happen?”

I told him, and he was quite downcast at the unlucky fortune which had sent me to the cemetery at that particular time. It was evident that she had seen me, and was afraid to return to this new retreat, for fear she was again tracked.

“However,” said he, “I’m confident we’ll have her now before long. I must go home tonight to see my Lenore; I promised her, and she will make herself sick sitting up.”

“Go; and let me remain here. I will stay until it is perfectly apparent that she does not expect to return.”

“It will spoil the dinner. But, now that we have sacrificed so much, a few hours more of inconvenience⁠—”

“Will be willingly endured. I will get some bread and cheese and a glass of beer of your friend, the penny-grocer, and remain at my post.”

“You need not stay later than twelve; which will bring you home about two, at the slow rate of midnight travel. I shall sit up for you. Au revoir.”

I changed my mind about supping at the grocer’s as the twilight deepened into night. The dim light of the hall and staircase, part of them in total darkness, enabled me to steal up to the deserted room unperceived by any one of the other inmates of the great building.