"Well, as to the letter?" cried the surgeon, in the pause. "I don't say she foresaw that it would kill him."
"This would disprove your theory of its being written to damage you, Alexander."
"Not altogether. The damaging another, more or less, would be of no moment at all to Mrs. North; she would crush any one without scruple."
"I'm sure she would crush me," spoke Dr. Rane. "Heaven knows why; I don't."
"Well, if she did write the letter, I think her conscience must smite her as she looks at the poor dead man lying there. Good-day, Rane: I have not been home to see my little ones yet. Mrs. Alexander is remaining in town for a day or two."
In talking, they had walked slowly to the end of the avenue; Mr. Alexander passed through the gates, and took the road towards the Ham.
"I may as well go on at once, and see Ketler," thought Dr. Rane. "Time enough to call at the Hall as I return."
So he went on towards Dallory. Two gentlemen passed him on horseback, county magistrates, who were probably going to the Hall. The sight of them turned his thoughts to the subject of an inquest: he began speculating why Mr. North wished to evade it, and whether he would succeed in doing so. For his own part, he did not see that the case, speaking in point of law, called for one. Hepburn said it did; and he was supposed, as chief undertaker in Dallory, to understand these things.
Deep in reflection, the doctor strode on; when, in passing Mrs. Gass's house, a sharp tapping at the window saluted his ear. It came from that lady herself, and she threw up the sash.
"Just come in, will you, Dr. Rane? I want you for something very particular."
He felt sure she only wanted to question him about the death, and would a great deal rather have gone on: but with her red and smiling face inviting him in peremptorily, he did not see his way to refusing her.
"And so he is gone--that poor young man!" she began, meeting him in her smart dress and pink cap. "When I heard the death-bell ring out this morning, it sounded to me a'most like my own knell."
"Yes, he is gone--unhappily," murmured Dr. Rane.
"Well, now, doctor, the next thing is--what became of you yesterday?"
The change of subject appeared peculiar.
"Became of me?" repeated Dr. Rane. "How do you mean?"
"All the mortal day I was stuck at this parlour window, waiting to see you go by," proceeded Mrs. Gass. "You never passed once."
"Yes, I did. I passed in the morning."
"My eyes must have gone a-maying then, for they never saw you," was Mrs. Gass's answer.
"It was before my usual hour. I was called out early to a sick man in Dallory, and I took the opportunity to see Ketler at the same time."
"Then that accounts for the milk in the cocoa-nuts; and I wasted my time for nothing," was her good-tempered rejoinder.
"Why did you want to see me pass?"
Mrs. Gass paused for a moment before replying. She glanced round to see that the door was closed, and dropped her voice almost to a whisper.
"Dr. Rane, who wrote that fatal letter?"
"I cannot tell."
"Did you?"
Oliver Rane stared at her, a sudden flush of anger dyeing his brow. No wonder: the question, put with emphatic earnestness, seemed an assertion, almost like that startling reproach of Nathan to David.
"Mrs. Gass, I do not know what you mean."
"I see you don't relish it, doctor. But I am a plain body, as you know; and when in doubt about a thing, pleasant or unpleasant, I like to ask an explanation straight out."
"But why should you be in doubt about this?" he inquired wonderingly. "What can induce you to connect me with the letter?"
Mrs. Gass took her portly person across the room to a desk; unlocked it, and brought forth a folded piece of paper. She handed it to Dr. Rane.
It was not a letter; it could not be the copy of one: but it did appear to be the rough sketch of the anonymous missive that had reached Mr. North. Some of the sentences were written two or three times over; in a close hand, in a scrawling hand, in a reversed hand, as if the writer were practising different styles; in others the construction was altered, words were erased, others substituted. Oliver Rane gazed upon it as one in complete bewilderment.
"What is this, Mrs. Gass?"
"Is it not the skeleton of the letter?"
"No, certainly not. And yet----" Dr. Rane broke off and ran his eye over the lines again and again. "There is a similarity in some of the phrases," he suddenly said.
"Some of the phrases is identical," returned Mrs. Gass. "When Mr. Richard North was here yesterday, I got him to repeat over to me the words of the letter; word for word, so far as he remembered 'em, and I know 'em for these words. Whoever writ that letter to Mr. North, doctor, first of all tried his sentences and his hand, on this paper, practising how he could best do it."
"How did you come by this?"
"You left it here the night before last."
"I left it here!" repeated Dr. Rane, looking as if he mentally questioned whether Mrs. Gass was in her right senses.
"Yes. You."
"But you must be dreaming, Mrs. Gass."
"I never do dream--that sort of dreaming," replied Mrs. Gass. "Look here"--putting her stout hand, covered with costly rings, on his coat-sleeve--"didn't you upset your pocketbook here that night? Well, this piece of paper fell out of it."
"It could not have done anything of the sort," he repeated, getting flushed and angry again. "All the papers that fell out of my pocketbook I picked up and returned to it."
"You didn't pick this up; it must have fluttered away unseen. Just after you were gone I dropped my spectacle-case, and in stooping for it, I saw this piece of paper lying under the claw of the table."
"But it could not have come out of my pocketbook. Just tell me, if you please, Mrs. Gass, what should bring such a document in my possession?"
"That's just what I can't tell. The paper was not there before candle-light; I'll answer for that much; so where else could it have come from?"
The last words were not spoken as an assertion of her view, but as a question. Dr. Rane looked at her, she at him; both seeming equally puzzled.
"Had you any visitor last evening besides myself?" he asked.
"Not a soul. The only person that came into the parlour, barring my own servants, was Molly Green, under-housemaid at the Hall. She lived with me once, and calls in sometimes in passing to ask how I am. They sent her into Dallory for something wanted at the chemist's, and she looked in to tell me. The thing had just happened."
Dr. Rane's brow lost its perplexity: an easy smile, as if the mystery were solved, crossed his face. The hint recently given him by Mr. Alexander was in his mind.
"I'm glad you've told me this, Mrs. Gass. The paper was more likely to have been left by Molly Green than by me. It may have dropped from her petticoats."
"Goodness bless the man! From her petticoats! Why, she had run all the way from the Hall. And how was she likely to pick it up in that house--even though her gown had been finished off with fish-hooks?"
"What cause have I given you to suspect me of this?" retorted Dr. Rane in harsh tones.
"Only this--that I don't see where the paper could have come from but out of your own