"I shall believe you," said he.
"You may," was the candid rejoinder. And the young physician did not flinch, though Etheridge continued to look at him steadily and with undoubted intention. "And now what luck with Jerry?" he suddenly inquired, with a cheerful change of tone.
"None; I shall leave town at ten."
"Is there no Harriet Smith here?"
"Not if I can believe him."
"And has been none in the last twenty years?"
"Not that he can find out."
"Then your quest here is at an end?"
"No, it has taken another turn, that is all."
"You mean – "
"That I shall come back here to-morrow. I must be sure that what Jerry says is true. Besides – But why mince the matter? I – I have become interested in that girl, Edgar, and want to know her – hear her speak. Cannot you help me to make her acquaintance? If you used to go to the house – Why do you frown? Do you not like Miss Cavanagh? "
Edgar hastily smoothed his forehead.
"Frank, I have never thought very much about her. She was young when I visited her father, and then that scar – "
"Never mind," cried Frank. He felt as if a wound in his own breast had been touched.
Edgar was astonished. He was not accustomed to display his own feelings, and did not know what to make of a man who did. But he did not finish his sentence.
"If she does not go out," he observed instead, "she may be equally unwilling to receive visitors."
"Oh, no," the other eagerly broke in; "people visit there just the same. Only they say she never likes to hear anything about her peculiarity. She wishes it accepted without words."
It was now Edgar's turn to ask a question.
"You say she lives there alone? You mean with servants, doubtless?"
"Oh, yes, she has a servant. But I did not say she lived there alone; I said she and her sister."
Edgar was silent.
"Her sister does not go out, either, they say."
"No? What does it all mean?"
"That is what I want to know."
"Not go out? Emma!"
"Do you remember Emma?"
"Yes, she is younger than Hermione."
"And what kind of a girl is she?"
"Don't ask me, Frank. I have no talent for describing beautiful women."
"She is beautiful, then?"
"If her sister is, yes."
"You mean she has no scar." It was softly said, almost reverently.
"No, she has no scar."
Frank shook his head.
"The scar appeals to me, Edgar."
Edgar smiled, but it was not naturally. The constraint in his manner had increased rather than diminished, and he seemed anxious to start upon the round of calls he had purposed to make.
"You must excuse me," said he, "I shall have to be off. You are coming back to-morrow?"
"If business does not detain me."
"You will find me in my new office by that time. I have rented the small brown house you must have noticed on the main street. Come there, and if you do not mind bachelor housekeeping, stay with me while you remain in town. I shall have a good cook, you may be sure, and as for a room, the north chamber has already been set apart for you."
Frank's face softened and he grasped the doctor's hand.
"That's good of you; it looks as if you expected me to need it."
"Have you not a Harriet Smith to find?"
Frank shrugged his shoulders. "I see that you understand lawyers."
Frank rode down to the depot with Jerry. As he passed Miss Cavanagh's house he was startled to perceive a youthful figure bending over the flower-beds on the inner side of the wall. "She is not so pretty by daylight," was his first thought. But at that moment she raised her head, and with a warm thrill he recognized the fact that it was not Hermione, but the sister he was looking at.
It gave him something to think of, for this sister was not without her attractions, though they were less brilliant and also less marred than those of the sad and stately Hermione.
When he arrived at his office his first inquiry was if anything had been heard from Flatbush, and upon being told to the contrary he immediately started for that place. He found the house a scene of some tumult. Notwithstanding the fact that the poor woman still lay unburied, the parlors and lower hall were filled with people, who stared at the walls and rapped with wary but eager knuckles on the various lintels and casements. Whispers of a treasure having been found beneath the boards of the flooring had reached the ear of the public, and the greatest curiosity had been raised in the breasts of those who up to this day had looked upon the house as a worm-eaten structure fit only for the shelter of dogs.
Mr. Dickey was in a room above, and to him Frank immediately hastened.
"Well," said he, "what news?"
"Ah," cried the jovial witness, coming forward, "glad to see you. Have you found the heirs?"
"Not yet," rejoined Frank. "Have you had any trouble? I thought I saw a police-officer below."
"Yes, we had to have some one with authority here. Even Huckins agreed to that; he is afraid the house will be run away with, I think. Did you see what a crowd has assembled in the parlors? We let them in so that Huckins won't seem to be the sole object of suspicion; but he really is, you know. He gave me plenty to do that night."
"He did, did he?"
"Yes; you had scarcely gone before he began his tactics. First he led me very politely to a room where there was a bed; then he brought me a bottle of the vilest rum you ever drank; and then he sat down to be affable. While he talked I was at ease, but when he finally got up and said he would try to get a snatch of sleep I grew suspicious, and stopped drinking the rum and set myself to listening. He went directly to a room not far from me and shut himself in. He had no light, but in a few minutes I heard him strike a match, and then another and another. 'He is searching under the boards for more treasure,' thought I, and creeping into the next room I was fortunate enough to come upon a closet so old and with such big cracks in its partition that I was enabled to look through them into the place where he was. The sight that met my eye was startling. He was, as I conjectured, peering under the boards, which he had ripped up early in the evening; and as he had only the light of a match to aid him, I would catch quick glimpses of his eager, peering face and then lose the sight of it in sudden darkness till the gleam of another match came to show it up again. He crouched upon the floor and crept along the whole length of the board, thrusting in his arm to right and left, while the sweat oozed on his forehead and fell in large drops into the long, narrow hollow beneath him. At last he seemed to grow wild with repeated disappointments, and, starting up, stood looking about him at the four surrounding walls, as if demanding them to give up their secrets. Then the match went out, and I heard him stamp his foot with rage before proceeding to put back the boards and shift them into place. Then there came silence, during which I crept on tiptoe to the place I had left, judging that he would soon leave his room and return to see if I had been watching him.
"The box was on the bed, and throwing myself beside it, I grasped it with one arm and hid my face with the other, and as I lay there I soon became conscious of his presence, and I knew he was looking from me to the box, and weighing the question as to whether I was sleeping sound enough for him to risk a blow. But I did not stir, though I almost expected a sudden crash on my head, and in another moment he crept away, awed possibly by my superior strength, for I am a much bigger man than he, as you must see. When I thought him gone I dropped my arm and looked up. The room was in total darkness. Bounding to my feet I followed him through the halls and