Hello,Welcome!Log In to My AccountorCreate Account

My head turned giddy. I was obliged to wait and let myoverpowering agitation subside, before I could read any more.

Looking at the letter again, after an interval, my eyes fellaccidentally on a sentence near the end, which surprised andstartled me.

I stopped the driver of the carriage, at the entrance to thestreet in which our lodgings were situated, and told him to takeme to the beautiful park of Paris--the famous Bois de Boulogne.My object was to gain time enough, in this way, to read theletter carefully through by myself, and to ascertain whether Iought or ought not to keep the receipt of it a secret before Iconfronted my husband and his mother at home.

This precaution taken, I read the narrative which my goodBenjamin had so wisely and so thoughtfully written for me.Treating the various incidents methodically, he began with theReport which had arrived, in due course of mail, from our agentin America.

Our man had successfully traced the lodgekeeper's daughter andher husband to a small town in one of the Western States. Mr.Playmore's letter of introduction at once secured him a cordialreception from the married pair, and a patient hearing when hestated the object of his voyage across the Atlantic.

His first questions led to no very encouraging results. The womanwas confused and surprised, and was apparently quite unable toexert her memory to any useful purpose. Fortunately, her husbandproved to be a very intelligent man. He took the agent privatelyaside, and said to him, "I understand my wife, and you don't.Tell me exactly what it is you want to know, and leave it to meto discover how much she remembers and how much she forgets."

This sensible suggestion was readily accepted. The agent waitedfor events a day and a night.

Early the next morning the husband said to him, "Talk to my wifenow, and you'll find she has something to tell you. Only mindthis. Don't laugh at her when she speaks of trifles. She is halfashamed to speak of trifles, even to me. Thinks men are abovesuch matters, you know. Listen quietly, and let her talk--and youwill get at it all in that way."

The agent followed his instructions, and "got at it" as follows:

The woman remembered, perfectly well, being sent to clean thebedrooms and put them tidy, after the gentlefolks had all leftGleninch. Her mother had a bad hip at the time, and could not gowith her and help her. She did not much fancy being alone in thegreat house, after what had happened in it. On her way to herwork she passed two of the cottagers' children in theneighborhood at play in the park. Mr. Macallan was always kind tohis poor tenants, and never objected to the young ones roundabout having a run on the grass. The two children idly followedher to the house. She took them inside, along with her--notliking the place, as already mentioned, and feeling that theywould be company in the solitary rooms.

She began her work in the Guests' Corridor--leaving the room inthe other corridor, in which the death had happened, to the last.

There was very little to do in the two first rooms. There was notlitter enough, when she had swept the floors and cleaned thegrates, to even half fill the housemaid's bucket which shecarried with her. The children followed her about; and, allthings considered, were "very good company" in the lonely place.

The third room (that is to say, the bedchamber which had beenoccupied by Miserrimus Dexter was in a much worse state than theother two, and wanted a great deal of tidying. She did not muchnotice the children here, being occupied with her work. Thelitter was swept up from the carpet, and the cinders and asheswere taken out of the grate, and the whole of it was in thebucket, when her attention was recalled to the children byhearing one of them cry.

She looked about the room without at first discovering them.

A fresh outburst of crying led her in the right direction, andshowed her the children under a table in a corner of the room.The youngest of the two had got into a waste-paper basket. Theeldest had found an old bottle of gum, with a brush fixed in thecork, and was gravely painting the face of the smaller child withwhat little remained of the contents of the bottle. Some naturalstruggles, on the part of the little creature, had ended in theoverthrow of the basket, and the usual outburst of crying hadfollowed as a matter of course.

In this state of things the remedy was soon applied. The womantook the bottle away from the eldest child, and gave it a "box onthe ear." The younger one she set on its legs again, and she putthe two "in the corner" to keep them quiet. This done, she sweptup such fragments of the torn paper in the basket as had fallenon the floor; threw them back again into the basket, along withthe gum-bottle; fetched the bucket, and emptied the basket intoit; and then proceeded to the fourth and last room in thecorridor, where she finished her work for that day.

Leaving the house, with the children after her, she took thefilled bucket to the dust-heap, and emptied it in a hollow placeamong the rubbish, about half-way up the mound. Then she took thechildren home; and there was an end of it for the day.

Such was the result of the appeal made to the woman's memory ofdomestic events at Gleninch.

The conclusion at which Mr. Playmore arrived, from the factssubmitted to him, was that the chances were now decidedly infavor of the recovery of the letter. Thrown in, nearly midwaybetween the contents of the housemaid's bucket, the torn morselswould be protected above as well as below, when they were emptiedon the dust-heap.

Succeeding weeks and months would add to that protection, byadding to the accumulated refuse. In the neglected condition ofthe grounds, the dust-heap had not been disturbed in search ofmanure. There it had stood, untouched, from the time when thefamily left Gleninch to the present day. And there, hidden deepsomewhere in the mound, the fragments of the letter must be.

Such were the lawyer's conclusions. He had written immediately tocommunicate them to Benjamin. And, thereupon, what had Benjamindone?

After having tried his powers of reconstruction on his owncorrespondence, the prospect of experimenting on the mysteriousletter itself had proved to be a temptation too powerful for theold man to resist. "I almost fancy, my dear, this business ofyours has bewitched me," he wrote. "You see I have the misfortuneto be an idle man. I have time to spare and money to spare. Andthe end of it is that I am here at Gleninch, engaged on my ownsole responsibility (with good Mr. Playmore's permission) insearching the dust-heap!"

Benjamin's description of his first view of the field of actionat Gleninch followed these characteristic lines of apology.

I passed over the description without ceremony. My remembrance ofthe scene was too vivid to require any prompting of that sort. Isaw again, in the dim evening light, the unsightly mound whichhad so strangely attracted my attention at Gleninch. I heardagain the words in which Mr. Playmore had explained to me thecustom of the dust-heap in Scotch country-houses. What hadBenjamin and Mr. Playmore done? What had Benjamin and Mr.Playmore found? For me, the true interest of the narrative wasthere--and to that portion of it I eagerly turned next.

They had proceeded methodically, of course, with one eye on thepounds, shillings, and pence, and the other on the object inview. In Benjamin, the lawyer had found what he had not met within me--a sympathetic mind, alive to the value of "an abstract ofthe expenses," and conscious of that most remunerative of humanvirtues, the virtue of economy.

At so much a week, they had engaged men to dig into the mound andto sift the ashes. At so much a week, they had hired a tent toshelter the open dust-heap from wind and weather. At so much aweek, they had engaged the services of a young man (pers onallyknown to Benjamin), who was employed in a laboratory under aprofessor of chemistry, and who had distinguished himself by hisskillful manipulation of paper in a recent case of forgery on awell-known London firm. Armed with these preparations, they hadbegun the work; Benjamin and the young chemist living atGleninch, and taking it in turns to superintend the proceedings.

Three days of labor with the spade and the sieve produced noresults of the slightest importance. However, the matter was inthe hands of two quietly determined men. They declined to bediscouraged. They went on.

On the fourth day the first morsels of paper were found.

Upon examination, they proved to be the fragments of atradesman's prospectus. Nothing dismayed, Benjamin and the youngchemist still persevered. At the end of the day's work morepieces of paper were turned up. These proved to be covered withwritten characters. Mr. Playmore (arriving at Gleninch, as usual,every evening on the conclusion of his labors in the law) wasconsulted as to the handwriting. After careful examination, hedeclared that the mutilated portions of sentences submitted tohim had been written, beyond all doubt, by Eustace Macallan'sfirst wife!

This discovery aroused the enthusiasm of the searchers to feverheight.

Spades and sieves were from that moment forbidden utensils.However unpleasant the task might be, hands alone were used inthe further examination of the mound. The first and foremostnecessity was to place the morsels of paper (in flat cardboardboxes prepared for the purpose) in their order as they werefound. Night came; the laborers were dismissed; Benjamin and histwo colleagues worked on by lamplight. The morsels of paper werenow turned up by dozens, instead of by ones and twos. For a whilethe search prospered in this way; and then the morsels appearedno more. Had they all been recovered? or would renewedhand-digging yield more yet? The next light layers of rubbishwere carefully removed--and the grand discovery of the dayfollowed. There (upside down) was the gum-bottle which thelodge-keeper's daughter had spoken of. And, more precious still,there, under it, were more fragments of written paper, all stucktogether in a little lump, by the last drippings from thegum-bottle dropping upon them as they lay on the dust-heap!

The scene now shifted to the interior of the house. When thesearchers next assembled they met at the great table in thelibrary at Gleninch.

Benjamin's experience with the "Puzzles" which he had puttogether in the days of his boyhood proved to be of some use tohis companions. The fragments accidentally stuck together would,in all probability, be found to fit each other, and wouldcertainly (in any case) be the easiest fragments to reconstructas a center to start from.

The delicate business of separating these pieces of paper, and ofpreserving them in the order in which they had adhered to eachother, was assigned to the practiced fingers of the chemist. Butthe difficulties of his task did not end here. The writing was(as usual in letters) traced on both sides of the paper, and itcould only be preserved for the purpose of reconstruction bysplitting each morsel into two--so as artificially to make ablank side, on which could be spread the fine cement used forreuniting the fragments in their original form.

To Mr. Playmore and Benjamin the prospect of successfully puttingthe letter together, under these disadvantages, seemed to bealmost hopeless. Their skilled colleague soon satisfied them thatthey were wrong.

He drew their attention to the thickness of the paper--note-paperof the strongest and best quality--on which the writing wastraced. It was of more than twice the substance of the last paperon which he had operated, when he was engaged in the forgeryease; and it was, on that account, comparatively easy for him(aided by the mechanical appliances which he had brought fromLondon) to split the morsels of the torn paper, within a givenspace of time which might permit them to begin the reconstructionof the letter that night.

With these explanations, he quietly devoted himself to his work.While Benjamin and the lawyer were still poring over thescattered morsels of the letter which had been first discovered,and trying to piece them together again, the chemist had dividedthe greater part of the fragments specially confided to him intotwo halves each; and had correctly put together some five or sixsentences of the letter on the smooth sheet of cardboard preparedfor that purpose.

They looked eagerly at the reconstructed writing so far.

It was correctly done: the sense was perfect. The first resultgained by examination was remarkable enough to reward them forall their exertions. The language used plainly identified theperson to whom the late Mrs. Eustace had addressed her letter.

That person was--my husband.

And the letter thus addressed--if the plainest circumstantialevidence could be trusted--was identical with the letter whichMiserrimus Dexter had suppressed until the Trial was over, andhad then destroyed by tearing it up.

These were the discoveries that had been made at the time whenBenjamin wrote to me. He had been on the point of posting hisletter, when Mr. Playmore had suggested that he should keep it byhim for a few days longer, on the chance of having more still totell me.

"We are indebted to her for these results," the lawyer had said."But for her resolution; and her influence over MiserrimusDexter, we should never have discovered what the dust-heap washiding from us--we should never have seen so much as a glimmeringof the truth. She has the first claim to the fullest information.Let her have it."

The letter had been accordingly kept back for three days. Thatinterval being at an end, it was hurriedly resumed and concludedin terms which indescribably alarmed me.

"The chemist is advancing rapidly with his part of the work"(Benjamin wrote); "and I have succeeded in putting together aseparate portion of the torn writing which makes sense.Comparison of what he has accomplished with what I haveaccomplished has led to startling conclusions. Unless Mr.Playmore and I are entirely wrong (and God grant we may be so!),there is a serious necessity for your keeping the reconstructionof the letter strictly secret from everybody about you. Thedisclosures suggested by what has come to light are soheartrending and so dreadful that I cannot bring myself to writeabout them until I am absolutely obliged to do so. Please forgiveme for disturbing you with this news. We are bound, sooner orlater, to consult with you in the matter; and we think it rightto prepare your mind for what may be to come."

To this there was added a postscript in Mr. Playmore'shandwriting:

"Pray observe strictly the caution which Mr. Benjamin impresseson you. And bear this in mind, as a warning from _me:_ If wesucceed in reconstructing the entire letter, the last personliving who ought (in my opinion) to be allowed to see it is--yourhusband."