A Link Supplied.

Upon his bloody finger he doth wear

A precious ring.

Titus Andronicus.

Make me to see it; or at the least so prove it,

That the probation bear no hinge nor loop

To hang a doubt on.

Othello.

MR. GRYCE did not believe that Imogene Dare had visited Mrs. Clemmens before the assault, or, indeed, had held any communication with her. Therefore, when Mansell declared that he had never told his aunt of the attachment between himself and this young lady, the astute detective at once drew the conclusion that the widow had never known of that attachment, and consequently that the words which the prisoner had overheard must have referred, not to himself, as he supposed, but to some other man, and, if to some other man — why to the only one with whom Miss Dare’s name was at that time associated; in other words, to Mr. Orcutt!

Now it was not easy to measure the importance of a conclusion like this. For whilst there would have been nothing peculiar in this solitary woman, with the few thousands in the bank, boasting of her power to separate her nephew from the lady of his choice, there was every thing that was significant in her using the same language in regard to Miss Dare and Mr. Orcutt. Nothing but the existence of some unsuspected bond between herself and the great lawyer could have accounted, first, for her feeling on the subject of his marriage; and, secondly, for the threat of interference contained in her very emphatic words — a bond which, while evidently not that of love, was still of a nature to give her control over his destiny, and make her, in spite of her lonely condition, the selfish and determined arbitrator of his fate.

What was that bond? A secret shared between them? The knowledge on her part of some fact in Mr. Orcutt’s past life, which, if revealed, might serve as an impediment to his marriage? In consideration that the great mystery to be solved was what motive Mr. Orcutt could have had for killing this woman, an answer to this question was manifestly of the first importance.

But before proceeding to take any measures to insure one, Mr. Gryce sat down and seriously asked himself whether there was any known fact, circumstantial or otherwise, which refused to fit into the theory that Mr. Orcutt actually committed this crime with his own hand, and at the time he was seen to cross the street and enter Mrs. Clemmens’ house. For, whereas the most complete chain of circumstantial evidence does not necessarily prove the suspected party to be guilty of a crime, the least break in it is fatal to his conviction. And Mr. Gryce wished to be as fair to the memory of Mr. Orcutt as he would have been to the living man.

Beginning, therefore, with the earliest incidents of the fatal day, he called up, first, the letter which the widow had commenced but never lived to finish. It was a suggestive epistle. It was addressed to her most intimate friend, and showed in the few lines written a certain foreboding or apprehension of death remarkable under the circumstances. Mr. Gryce recalled one of its expressions. “There are so many,” wrote she, “to whom my death would be more than welcome.” So many! Many is a strong word; many means more than one, more than two; many means three at least. Now where were the three? Hildreth, of course, was one, Mansell might very properly be another, but who was the third? To Mr. Gryce, but one name suggested itself in reply. So far, then, his theory stood firm. Now what was the next fact known? The milkman stopped with his milk; that was at half-past eleven. He had to wait a few minutes, from which it was concluded she was up-stairs when he rapped. Was it at this time she was interrupted in her letter-writing? If so, she probably did not go back to it, for when Mr. Hildreth called, some fifteen minutes later, she was on the spot to open the door. Their interview was short; it was also stormy. Medicine was the last thing she stood in need of; besides, her mind was evidently preoccupied. Showing him the door, she goes back to her work, and, being deaf, does not notice that he does not leave the house as she expected. Consequently her thoughts go on unhindered, and, her condition being one of anger, she mutters aloud and bitterly to herself as she flits from dining-room to kitchen in her labor of serving up her dinner. The words she made use of have been overheard, and here another point appears. For, whereas her temper must have been disturbed by the demand which had been made upon her the day before by her favorite relative and heir, her expressions of wrath at this moment were not levelled against him, but against a young lady who is said to have been a stranger to her, her language being: “You think you are going to marry him, Imogene Dare; but I tell you you never shall, not while I live.” Her chief grievance, then, and the one thing uppermost in her thoughts, even at a time when she felt that there were many who desired her death, lay in this fact that a young and beautiful woman had manifested, as she supposed, a wish to marry Mr. Orcutt, the word him which she had used, necessarily referring to the lawyer, as she knew nothing of Imogene’s passion for her nephew.

But this is not the only point into which it is necessary to inquire. For to believe Mr. Orcutt guilty of this crime one must also believe that all the other persons who had been accused of it were truthful in the explanations which they gave of the events which had seemingly connected them with it. Now, were they? Take the occurrences of that critical moment when the clock stood at five minutes to twelve. If Mr. Hildreth is to be believed, he was at that instant in the widow’s front hall musing on his disappointment and arranging his plans for the future; the tramp, if those who profess to have watched him are to be believed, was on the kitchen portico; Craik Mansell on the dining-room door-step; Imogene Dare before her telescope in Professor Darling’s observatory. Mr. Hildreth, with two doors closed between him and the back of the house, knew nothing of what was said or done there, but the tramp heard loud talking, and Craik Mansell the actual voice of the widow raised in words which were calculated to mislead him into thinking she was engaged in angry altercation with the woman he loved. What do all three do, then? Mr. Hildreth remains where he is; the tramp skulks away through the front gate; Craik Mansell rushes back to the woods. And Imogene Dare? She has turned her telescope toward Mrs. Clemmens’ cottage, and, being on the side of the dining-room door, sees the flying form of Craik Mansell, and marks it till it disappears from her sight. Is there any thing contradictory in these various statements? No. Every thing, on the contrary, that is reconcilable.

Let us proceed then. What happens a few minutes later? Mr. Hildreth, tired of seclusion and anxious to catch the train, opens the front door and steps out. The tramp, skulking round some other back door, does not see him; Imogene, with her eye on Craik Mansell, now vanishing into the woods, does not see him; nobody sees him. He goes, and the widow for a short interval is as much alone as she believed herself to be a minute or two before when three men stood, unseen by each other, at each of the three doors of her house. What does she do now?

Why, she finishes preparing her dinner, and then, observing that the clock is slow, proceeds to set it right. Fatal task! Before she has had an opportunity to finish it, the front door has opened again, Mr. Orcutt has come in, and, tempted perhaps by her defenceless position, catches up a stick of wood from the fireplace and, with one blow, strikes her down at his feet, and rushes forth again with tidings of her death.

Now, is there any thing in all this that is contradictory? No; there is only something left out. In the whole of this description of what went on in the widow’s house, there has been no mention made of the ring — the ring which it is conceded was either in Craik Mansell’s or Imogene Dare’s possession the evening before the murder, and which was found on the dining-room floor within ten minutes after the assault took place. If Mrs. Clemmens’ exclamations are to be taken as an attempt to describe her murderer, then this ring must have been on the hand which was raised against her, and how could that have been if the hand was that of Mr. Orcutt? Unimportant as it seemed, the discovery of this ring on the floor, taken with the exclamations of the widow, make a break in the chain that is fatal to Mr. Gryce’s theory. Yet does it? The consternation displayed by Mr. Orcutt when Imogene claimed the ring and put it on her finger may have had a deeper significance than was thought at the time. Was there any way in which he could have come into possession of it before she did? and could it have been that he had had it on his hand when he struck the blow? Mr. Gryce bent all his energies to inquire.

First, where was the ring when the lovers parted in the wood the day before the murder? Evidently in Mr. Mansell’s coat-pocket. Imogene had put it there, and Imogene had left it there. But Mansell did not know it was there, so took no pains to look after its safety. It accordingly slipped............