The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow

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The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow, by Anna Katharine Green, Illustrated by H. R. Ballinger
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Title: The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow
Author: Anna Katharine Green

Release Date: February 12, 2006 [eBook #17763]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE MYSTERY OF THE HASTY ARROW
by
ANNA KATHARINE GREEN
Author of "The Chief Legatee," "That Affair Next Door," "A Strange Disappearance," Etc.
With Frontispiece by H. R. Ballinger

[Illustration: "Do not by any show of curiosity endanger her recovery. I would not have her body or mind sacrificed on any account."]

A. L. Burt Company Publishers New York Published by Arrangement with Dodd, Mead & Company Copyright, 1917, By Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc. Made in U.S.A.

CONTENTS
BOOK I--A PROBLEM OF THE FIRST ORDER

CHAPTER
I
"Let Some One Speak!"
II In Room B
III "I Have Something to Show You"
IV A Strategic Move
V Three Where Two Should Be
VI The Man in the Gallery
VII "You Think that of Me!"
BOOK II--MR. X
VIII On the Search
IX While the City Slept
X "And He Stood Here?"
XI Footsteps
XII "Spare Nobody! I Say, Spare Nobody!"
XIII "Write Me His Name"
XIV A Loop of Silk
XV News from France
BOOK III--STORM IN THE MOUNTAINS
XVI Friends
XVII The Cuckoo-Clock
XVIII Mrs. Davis' Strange Lodger
XIX Mr. Gryce and the Timid Child
XX Mr. Gryce and the Unwary Woman
XXI Perplexed
XXII He Remembers
XXIII Girls, Girls! Nothing but Girls!
XXIV Flight
XXV Terror
XXVI The Face in the Window
BOOK IV--NEMESIS
XXVII From Lips Long Silent
XXVIII "Romantic! Too Romantic!"
XXIX A Strong Man
XXX The Creeping Shadow
XXXI Confronted
XXXII "Why Is that Here?"
XXXIII Again the Cuckoo-Clock
XXXIV The Bud--Then the Deadly Flower

BOOK I
A PROBLEM OF THE FIRST ORDER

I
"LET SOME ONE SPEAK!"
The hour of noon had just struck, and the few visitors still lingering among the curiosities of the great museum were suddenly startled by the sight of one of the attendants running down the broad, central staircase, loudly shouting:
"Close the doors! Let no one out! An accident has occurred, and nobody's to leave the building."
There was but one person near either of the doors, and as he chanced to be a man closely connected with the museum,--being, in fact, one of its most active directors,--he immediately turned about and in obedience to a gesture made by the attendant, ran up the marble steps, followed by some dozen others.
At the top they all turned, as by common consent, toward the left-hand gallery, where in the section marked II, a tableau greeted them which few of them will ever forget.
I say "tableau" because the few persons concerned in it stood as in a picture, absolutely motionless and silent as the dead. Sense, if not feeling, was benumbed in them all, as in another moment it was benumbed in the breasts of these new arrivals. Tragedy was there in its most terrible, its most pathetic, aspect. The pathos was given by the victim,--a young and pretty girl lying face upward on the tessellated floor with an arrow in her breast and death stamped unmistakably on every feature,--the terror by the look and attitude of the woman they saw kneeling over her--a remarkable woman, no longer young, but of a presence to hold the attention, even if the circumstances had been of a far less tragic nature. Her hand was on the arrow but she had made no movement to withdraw it, and her eyes, fixed upon space, showed depths of horror hardly to be explained even by the suddenness and startling character of the untoward fatality of which she had just been made the unhappy witness.
The director, whose name was Roberts, thought as he paused on the edge of the crowd that he had never seen a countenance upon which woe had stamped so deep a mark; and greatly moved by it, he was about to seek some explanation of a scene to which appearances gave so little clue, when the tall but stooping figure of the Curator entered, and he found himself relieved from a task whose seriousness he had no difficulty in measuring.
To those who knew William Jewett well, it was evident that he had been called from some task which still occupied his thoughts and for the moment somewhat bewildered his understanding. But as he was a conscientious man and quite capable of taking the lead when once roused to the exigencies of an occasion, Mr. Roberts felt a certain interest in watching the slow