The Golden Slipper | Page 9

avowed reason for entering into this uncongenial
work. But to want it so much! He glanced at her person; it was simply
clad but very expensively--how expensively it was his business to
know. Then he took in the room in which they sat. Simplicity again, but
the simplicity of high art--the drawing-room of one rich enough to
indulge in the final luxury of a highly cultivated taste, viz.:
unostentatious elegance and the subjection of each carefully chosen
ornament to the general effect.
What did this favoured child of fortune lack that she could be reached
by such a plea, when her whole being revolted from the nature of the
task he offered her? It was a question not new to him; but one he had
never heard answered and was not likely to hear answered now. But the
fact remained that the consent he had thought dependent upon
sympathetic interest could be reached much more readily by the
promise of large emolument,--and he owned to a feeling of secret
disappointment even while he recognized the value of the discovery.
But his satisfaction in the latter, if satisfaction it were, was of very
short duration. Almost immediately he observed a change in her. The
sparkle which had shone in the eye whose depths he had never been
able to penetrate, had dissipated itself in something like a tear and she
spoke up in that vigorous tone no one but himself had ever heard, as
she said:
"No. The sum is a good one and I could use it; but I will not waste my
energy on a case I do not believe in. The man shot himself. He was a
speculator, and probably had good reason for his act. Even his wife
acknowledges that he has lately had more losses than gains."
"See her. She has something to tell you which never got into the
papers."

"You say that? You know that?"
"On my honour, Miss Strange."
Violet pondered; then suddenly succumbed.
"Let her come, then. Prompt to the hour. I will receive her at three.
Later I have a tea and two party calls to make."
Her visitor rose to leave. He had been able to subdue all evidence of his
extreme gratification, and now took on a formal air. In dismissing a
guest, Miss Strange was invariably the society belle and that only. This
he had come to recognize.
The case (well known at the time) was, in the fewest possible words, as
follows:
On a sultry night in September, a young couple living in one of the
large apartment houses in the extreme upper portion of Manhattan were
so annoyed by the incessant crying of a child in the adjoining suite, that
they got up, he to smoke, and she to sit in the window for a possible
breath of cool air. They were congratulating themselves upon the
wisdom they had shown in thus giving up all thought of sleep--for the
child's crying had not ceased--when (it may have been two o'clock and
it may have been a little later) there came from somewhere near, the
sharp and somewhat peculiar detonation of a pistol-shot.
He thought it came from above; she, from the rear, and they were
staring at each other in the helpless wonder of the moment, when they
were struck by the silence. The baby had ceased to cry. All was as still
in the adjoining apartment as in their own--too still--much too still.
Their mutual stare turned to one of horror. "It came from there!"
whispered the wife. "Some accident has occurred to Mr. or Mrs.
Hammond--we ought to go--"
Her words--very tremulous ones--were broken by a shout from below.
They were standing in their window and had evidently been seen by a
passing policeman. "Anything wrong up there?" they heard him cry. Mr.

Saunders immediately looked out. "Nothing wrong here," he called
down. (They were but two stories from the pavement.) "But I'm not so
sure about the rear apartment. We thought we heard a shot. Hadn't you
better come up, officer? My wife is nervous about it. I'll meet you at the
stair-head and show you the way."
The officer nodded and stepped in. The young couple hastily donned
some wraps, and, by the time he appeared on their floor, they were
ready to accompany him.
Meanwhile, no disturbance was apparent anywhere else in the house,
until the policeman rang the bell of the Hammond apartment. Then,
voices began to be heard, and doors to open above and below, but not
the one before which the policeman stood.
Another ring, and this time an insistent one;--and still no response. The
officer's hand was rising for the third time when there came a sound of
fluttering from behind the panels against which he had laid his