Free The House of the Whispering Pines by Anna Katherine Green Page A

open to suspicion by one
thoughtless admission, and what was worse, it was but the beginning in
all probability of many other possible mistakes. I had never taken the
trouble to measure my words and the whole truth being impossible, I
necessarily must make a slip now and then. He had better be warned of
this. I did not wish him to undertake my cause blindfolded. He must
understand its difficulties while believing in my innocence. Then, if
he chose to draw back, well and good. I should have to face the
situation alone.
    "Charles," said I, as soon as I could perfectly control my speech, "you
are quite just in your remark. I am not and can not be perfectly open
with you. I shall tell you no lies, but beyond that I cannot promise. I
am caught in a net not altogether of my own weaving. So far I will be
frank with you. A common question may trip me up, others find me free and
ready with my defence. You have chanced upon one of the former. I was in
a turmoil of mind from the moment of my entrance into that fatal house,
but I can give no reason for it unless I am, as you hinted, a coward."
    He settled that supposition with a gesture I had rather not have seen. It
would be better for him to consider me a poltroon than to suspect my real
reasons for the agitation which I had acknowledged.
    "You say you cannot be open with me. That means you have certain memories
connected with that night which you cannot divulge."
    "Right, Charles; but not memories of guilt—of active guilt, I mean. This
I have previously insisted on, and this is what you must believe. I am
not even an accessory before the fact. I am perfectly innocent so far as
Adelaide's death is concerned. You may proceed on that basis without
fear. That is, if you continue to take an interest in my case. If not, I
shall be the last to blame you. Little honour is likely to accrue to you
from defending me."
    "I have accepted the case and I shall continue to interest myself in it,"
he assured me, with a dogged rather than genial persistence. "But I
should like to know what I am to work upon, if it cannot be shown that
her call for help came before you entered the building."
    "That would be the best defence possible, of course," I replied; "but
neither from your standpoint nor mine is it a feasible one. I have no
proof of my assertion, I never looked at my watch from the time I left
the station till I found it run down this very morning. The club-house
clock has been out of order for some time and was not running. All I know
and can swear to about the length of time I was in that building prior
to the arrival of the police, is that it could not have been very long,
since she was not only dead and buried under those accumulated cushions,
but in a room some little distance from the telephone."
    "That will do for me," said he, "but scarcely for those who are
prejudiced against you. Everything points so indisputably to your guilt.
The note which you say you wrote to Carmel to meet you at the station
looks very much more like one to Miss Cumberland to meet you at the
club-house."
    It was thus I first learned which part of this letter had been
burned off.
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    "Otherwise," he pursued, "what could have taken her there? Everybody who
knew her will ask that. Such a night! so soon after seeing you! It is a
mystery any way, but one entirely inconceivable without some such excuse
for her. These lines said 'Come!' and she went, for reasons which may be
clear to you who were acquainted with her weak as well as strong points.
Went how? No one knows. By chance or by intention on her part or yours,
every servant was out of the house by nine o'clock, and her brother, too.
Only the sister remained, the sister whom you profess to have urged to
leave the town with you that very evening; and she can tell us
nothing,—may die without ever being able to do so. Some shock to her
feelings—you may know its character and you may not—drove her from a
state of apparent health into the wildest delirium in a few