The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow | Page 2

awakening of this self-absorbed man to the awful circumstances which in one instant had clouded the museum in an atmosphere of mysterious horror.
When the full realization came,--which was not till a way had been made for him to the side of the stricken woman crouching over the dead child,--the energy which transformed his countenance and gave character to his usually bent and inconspicuous figure was all if not more than the anxious director expected.
Finding that his attempts to meet the older woman's eye only prolonged the suspense, the Curator addressed her quietly, and in sympathetic tones inquired whose child this was and how so dreadful a thing had happened.
She did not answer. She did not even look his way. With a rapid glance into the faces about him, ending in one of deep compassion directed toward herself, he repeated his question.
Still no response--still that heavy silence, that absolute immobility of face and limb. If her faculty of hearing was dulled, possibly she would yield to that of touch. Stooping, he laid his hand on her arm.
This roused her. Slowly her eyes lost their fixed stare and took on a more human light. A shudder shook her frame, and gazing down into the countenance of the young girl lying at her feet, she broke into moans of such fathomless despair as wrung the hearts of all about her.
It was a scene to test the nerve of any man. To one of the Curator's sympathetic temperament it was well-nigh unendurable. Turning to those nearest, he begged for an explanation of what they saw before them:
"Some one here must be able to tell me. Let that some one speak."
At this the quietest and least conspicuous person present, a young man heavily spectacled and of student-like appearance, advanced a step and said:
"I was the first person to come in here after this poor young lady fell. I was looking at coins just beyond the partition there, when I heard a gasping cry. I had not heard her fall--I fear I was very much preoccupied in my search for an especial coin I had been told I should find here--but I did hear the cry she gave, and startled by the sound, left the section where I was and entered this one, only to see just what you are seeing now."
The Curator pointed at the two women.
"This? The one woman kneeling over the other with her hand on the arrow?"
"Yes, sir."
A change took place in the Curator's expression. Involuntarily his eyes rose to the walls hung closely with Indian relics, among which was a quiver in which all could see arrows similar to the one now in the breast of the young girl lying dead before them.
"This woman must be made to speak," he said in answer to the low murmur which followed this discovery. "If there is a doctor present----"
Waiting, but receiving no response, he withdrew his hand from the woman's arm and laid it on the arrow.
This roused her completely. Loosing her own grasp upon the shaft, she cried, with sudden realization of the people pressing about her:
"I could not draw it. That causes death, they say. Wait! she may still be alive. She may have a word to speak."
She was bending to listen. It was hardly a favorable moment for further questioning, but the Curator in his anxiety could not refrain from saying:
"Who is she? What is her name and what is yours?"
"Her name?" repeated the woman, rising to face him again. "How should I know? I was passing through this gallery and had just stopped to take a look into the court when this young girl bounded by me from behind and flinging up her arms, fell with a deep sigh to the floor. I saw an arrow in her breast, and----"
Emotion choked her, and when some one asked if the girl was a stranger to her, she simply bowed her head; then, letting her gaze pass from face to face till it had completed the circle of those about her, she said in her former mechanical way:
"My name is Ermentrude Taylor. I came to look at the bronzes. I should like to go now."
But the crowd which had formed about her was too compact to allow her to pass. Besides, the director, Mr. Roberts, had something to say first. Working his way forward, he waited till he had attracted her attention and then remarked in his most considerate manner:
"You will pardon these importunities, Mrs. Taylor. I am a director of this museum, and if Mr. Jewett will excuse me,"--here he bowed to the Curator,--"I should like to inquire from what direction the arrow came which ended this young girl's life?"
For a moment she stood aghast, fixing him with her eye as though to ask whither this inquiry tended. Then with