Page:Anna Katharine Green - Leavenworth Case.djvu/347

Rh sheet back to the quire of paper from which it was taken?"

"No."

"Humph! then you are more of an amateur than I thought you. Don’t you see that, as Hannah could have had no motive for concealing where the paper came from on which she wrote her dying words, this sheet must have been prepared by some one else?"

"No," said I; "I cannot say that I see all that."

"Can’t! Well then, answer me this. Why should Hannah, a girl about to commit suicide, care whether any clue was furnished, in her confession, to the actual desk, drawer, or quire of paper from which the sheet was taken, on which she wrote it?"

"She would n’t."

"Yet especial pains have been taken to destroy that clue."

"But"

"Then there is another thing. Read the confession itself, Mr. Raymond, and tell me what you gather from it."

"Why," said I, after complying, "that the girl, worn out with constant apprehension, has made up her mind to do away with herself, and that Henry Clavering"

"Henry Clavering?"

The interrogation was put with so much meaning, I looked up. "Yes," said I.

"Ah, I did n’t know that Mr. Clavering’s name was mentioned there; excuse me."

"His name is not mentioned, but a description is given so strikingly in accordance"

Here Mr. Gryce interrupted me. "Does it not seem