The Filigree Ball | Page 7

which the rest of the room had sunk. Being anything but
anxious to subject myself further to its unhappy influence and quite
convinced that the place was indeed as empty as it looked, I turned to
leave, when my eyes fell upon something so unexpected and so
extraordinary, seen as it was under the influence of the old tragedies
with which my mind was necessarily full, that I paused, balked in my
advance, and well-nigh uncertain whether I looked upon a real thing or
on some strange and terrible fantasy of my aroused imagination.
A form lay before me, outstretched on that portion of the floor which
had hitherto been hidden from me by the half-open door - a woman's
form, which even in that first casual look impressed itself upon me as
one of aerial delicacy and extreme refinement; and this form lay as only
the dead lie; the dead! And I had been looking at the hearthstone for
just such a picture! No, not just such a picture, for this woman lay face
uppermost, and, on the floor beside her was blood.
A hand had plucked my sleeve. It was Hibbard's. Startled by my
immobility and silence, he had stepped in with quaking members,
expecting he hardly knew what. But no sooner did his eyes fall on the
prostrate form which held me spellbound, than an unforeseen change
took place in him. What had unnerved me, restored him to full
self-possession. Death in this shape was familiar to him. He had no fear
of blood. He did not show surprise at encountering it, but only at the

effect it appeared to produce on me.
"Shot!" was his laconic comment as he bent over the prostrate body.
"Shot through the heart! She must have died before she fell."
Shot!
That was a new experience for this room. No wound had ever before
disfigured those who had fallen here, nor had any of the previous
victims been found lying on any other spot than the one over which that
huge settle kept guard. As these thoughts crossed my mind, I
instinctively glanced again toward the fireplace for what I almost
refused to believe lay outstretched at my feet. When nothing more
appeared there than that old seat of sinister memory, I experienced a
thrill which poorly prepared me for the cry which I now heard raised by
Hibbard.
"Look here! What do you make of this?"
He was pointing to what, upon closer inspection, proved to be a strip of
white satin ribbon running from one of the delicate wrists of the girl
before us to the handle of a pistol which had fallen not far away from
her side. "It looks as if the pistol was attached to her. That is something
new in my experience. What do you think it means?"
Alas! there was but one thing it could mean. The shot to which she had
succumbed had been delivered by herself. This fair and delicate
creature was a suicide.
But suicide in this place! How could we account for that? Had the story
of this room's ill-acquired fame acted hypnotically on her, or had she
stumbled upon the open door in front and been glad of any refuge
where her misery might find a solitary termination? Closely scanning
her upturned face, I sought an answer to this question, and while thus
seeking received a fresh shock which I did not hesitate to communicate
to my now none-too-sensitive companion.
"Look at these features," I cried. "I seem to know them, do you?"

He growled out a dissent, but stooped at my bidding and gave the
pitiful young face a pro longed stare. When he looked up again it was
with a puzzled contraction of his eyebrows.
"I've certainly seen it somewhere," he hesitatingly admitted, edging
slowly away toward the door. "Perhaps in the papers. Isn't she like -?"
"Like!" I interrupted, "it is Veronica Moore herself; the owner of this
house and she who was married here two weeks since to Mr. Jeffrey.
Evidently her reason was unseated by the tragedy which threw so deep
a gloom over her wedding."

III
I REMAIN
Not for an instant did I doubt the correctness of this identification. All
the pictures I had seen of this well-known society belle had been
marked by an individuality of expression which fixed her face in the
memory and which I now saw repeated in the lifeless features before
me.
Greatly startled by the discovery, but quite convinced that this was but
the dreadful sequel of an already sufficiently dark tragedy, I proceeded
to take such steps as are common in these cases. Having sent the
too-willing Hibbard to notify headquarters, I was on the point of
making a memorandum of such details as seemed important,