The next instant Mr. Harper rose. "She's gone into her room," said he. "Listen and you will hear her key click in the lock."
Ransom sank into a seat; Hazen had walked to the window. Presently he turned.
"I am convinced," said he. "I will not trouble you gentlemen further. Mr. Ransom, I condole with you upon your loss. My sister was a woman of uncommon gifts."
Mr. Ransom bowed. He had no words for this man at a moment of such extreme excitement. He did not even note the latent sting hidden in the other's seeming tribute to Georgian. But the lawyer did and Hazen perceived that he did, for pausing in his act of crossing the room, he leaned for a moment on the table with his eyes down, then quickly raising them remarked to that gentleman:
"I am going to leave by the midnight train for New York. To-morrow I shall be on the ocean. Will it be transgressing all rules of propriety for me to ask the purport of my sister's will? It is a serious matter to me, sir. If she has left me anything—"
"She has not," emphasized the lawyer.
A shadow darkened the disappointed man's brow. His wound swelled and his eyes gleamed ironically as he turned them upon Ransom.
Instantly that gentleman spoke.
"I have received but a moiety," said he. "You need not envy me the amount."
"Who has it then?" briskly demanded the startled man. "Who? who? She?"
Mr. Harper never knew why he did it. He was reserved as a man and, usually, more than reserved as a lawyer, but as Hazen lifted his hands from the table and turned to leave, he quietly remarked:
"The chief legatee—the one she chose to leave the bulk of her very large fortune to—is a man we none of us know. His name is Josiah Auchincloss."
The change which the utterance of this name caused in Hazen's expression threw them both into confusion.
"Why didn't you tell me that in the beginning?" he cried. "I needn't have wasted all this time and effort."
His eyes shone, his poor lips smiled, his whole air was jubilant. Both Mr. Harper and his client surveyed him in amazement. The lines so fast disappearing from his brow were beginning to reappear on theirs.
"Mr. Harper," this hard-to-be-understood man now declared, "you may safely administer the estate of my sister. She is surely dead."
CHAPTER XXIII
A STARTLING DECISION
Before Mr. Ransom and the lawyer had recovered from their astonishment, Hazen had slipped from the room. As Mr. Harper started to follow, he saw the other's head disappearing down the staircase leading to the office. He called to him, but Hazen declined to turn.
"No time," he shouted back. "I shall have to make use of somebody's automobile now, to get to the Ferry in time."
The lawyer did not persist, not at that moment; he went back to his client and they had a few hurried words; then Mr. Harper went below and took up his stand on the portico. He was determined that Hazen should not leave the place without some further explanation.
It was light where he stood and he very soon felt that this would not do, so he slipped back into the shade of a pillar, and seeing, from the bustle, that Hazen was likely to obtain the use of the one automobile stored in the stable, he waited with reasonable patience for his reappearance in the road before him.
Meanwhile he had confidence in Ransom, who he felt sure was watching them both from the window overhead. If he should fail in getting in the word he wanted, Ransom was pledged to shout it out without regard to appearances. But this was not likely to occur. He knew his own persistency to equal Hazen's. Nothing should stop the momentary interview he had promised himself.
Ah! A well-known whirr and clatter is heard. The automobile was leaving the stable. Hazen was already in it and the man who had come up from New York was with him. This was bad; they would flash by—No; he would not be balked thus. Stepping out into the road, he stopped full in the glare of the office lights and held up his hand. They could not but see him and they did. The chauffeur reversed the lever and the machine stopped to the accompaniment of low muttered oaths from Hazen, which were rather disagreeable than otherwise to Harper's ear.
"One word," said he, approaching to the side where Hazen sat. "I thought you ought to know before leaving that we can take no proceedings in the matter we were speaking of till we have undisputed proof that your sister is dead. That we may not get for a long time, possibly never. If you are interested in having this Auchincloss receive his inheritance, you had better prepare both yourself and him for a long wait. The river seems slow to give up its dead."
The quiver of impatience which had shaken Hazen at the first word had settled into a strange rigidity.
"One moment," he said in a command to the chauffeur at his side. Then in a low, strangely sounding whisper to Harper: "They think the body's in the Devil's Cauldron. Nothing can get it out if it is. Would some proof of its presence there be sufficient to settle the fact of her death?"
"That would depend. If the proof was unmistakable, it might pass in the Surrogate's Court. What is the matter, Hazen?"
"Nothing." The tone was hollow; the whole man sat like an image of death. "I—I'm thinking—weighing—" he uttered in scattered murmurs. Then suddenly, "You're not deceiving me, Harper. Some proof will be necessary, and that very soon, for this man Auchincloss to realize the money?"
"Yes," the monosyllable was as dry as it was short. Harper's patience with this unnatural brother was about at an end.
"And who will venture to obtain this proof for us? No one. Not even Ransom would venture down into that watery hole. They say it is almost certain death," babbled Hazen.
Harper kept silence. Strange forces were at work. The head of another gruesome tragedy loomed vaguely through the shadows of this already sufficiently tragic mystery.
"Go on!" suddenly shouted Hazen, leaning forward to the chauffeur. But the next instant his hand was on the man's sleeve. "No, I have changed my mind. Here, Staples," he called out as a man came running down the steps, "take my bag and ask the landlady to prepare me a room. I'll not try for the train to-night." Then as the man at his side leaped to the ground, he turned to Harper and remarked quietly, but in no common tone:
"The steamer must sail without me. I'll stay in this place a while and prove the death of Georgian Ransom myself."
CHAPTER XXIV
THE DEVIL'S CAULDRON
The solemnity of Hazen's whole manner impressed Mr. Harper strongly. As soon as the opportunity offered he cornered the young man in the office where he had taken refuge, and giving him to understand that further explanations must pass between them before either slept, he drew him apart and put the straight question to him:
"Who is Josiah Auchincloss?"
The answer was abrupt, almost menacing in its emphasis and tone.
"A trunk-maker in St. Louis. A man she was indebted to."
"How indebted to—a trunk-maker?"
"That I cannot, do not desire to state. It is enough that she felt she owed him the bulk of her fortune. Though this eliminates me from benefits of a wealth I had some rights to share, I make no complaint. She knew her business best, and I am disposed to accept her judgment in the matter without criticism."
"You are?" The tone was sharp, the sarcasm biting. "I can understand that. For Auchincloss, in this will, read Hazen; but how about her husband? How about her friends and the general community? Do you not think they will ask why a beautiful and socially well-placed young woman like your sister should leave so large a portion of her wealth to an obscure man in another town, of whom her friends and even her business agent have never heard? It would have been better if she had left you her thousands directly."
The smile which was Hazen's only retort was very bitter.