Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/49

Rh claim. When afterward she told me that this gratitude had—well, ripened into something more serious—and that she had engaged herself to marry you, and so condone your offense, why, blast it, it was womanlike and natural, and I suspected nothing! I believed her story, believed she had a case! Yes, sir! the last six months I have looked upon you as the creature of that woman's foolish magnanimity. I could see that she was soft on you, and believed that you had fooled her. I did, blast me! There! if you confess to being a blasted fool, I do to having been an infernal sight bigger one." He stopped, erased the mirthful past with his hand, and went on: "I began to suspect something when you came to me yesterday with this story of your going away, and this disposal of your property. When I heard of the murder of this stranger—one of your wife's witnesses to her claim near your house, your own flight, and the sudden disappearance of your wife, my suspicions were strengthened. And when I read this note from your wife, delivered to you last night by one of her servants and picked up early this morning near the body, my suspicions were confirmed." As he finished, he took from his pocket a folded paper and handed it to Gabriel. He received it mechanically, and opened it. It was his wife's note of the preceding night. He took out his knife, still holding the letter, and with its blade began stirring the bowl of his pipe. Then, after a pause, he asked, cautiously: "And how did ye come by this yer?" "It was found by Sal Clark, brought to Mrs. Markle, and given to me. Its existence is known only to three people, and they are your friends." There was another pause, in which Gabriel deliberately stirred the contents of his pipe. Mr. Maxwell examined him curiously. "Well," he said at last, "what is your defense?" Gabriel sat up on the bed and rapped the bowl of his pipe against the bed-post to loosen some refractory incrustation. "Wot," he asked, gravely, "would be your idee of a good defense? Axin' ye ez a lawyer havin' experiens in them things, and reck'nin' to pay ez high ez enny man fo' the same, wot would you call a good defense?" and he gravely laid himself down again in an attitude of respectful attention. "We hope to prove," said Maxwell, really smiling, "that when you left your house, and came to my office the murdered man was alive and at his hotel; that he went over to the hill long before you did; that you did not return until evening—after the murder was committed, as the 'secret' mentioned in your wife's mysterious note evidently shows. That for some reason or other it was her design to place you in a suspicious attitude. That the note shows that she refers to some fact of which she was cognizant and not yourself." "Suthin' thet she knowed, and I didn't get to hear," translated Gabriel quietly. "Exactly! Now you see the importance of that note." Gabriel did not immediately reply, but slowly lifted his huge frame from the bed, walked to the open window, still holding the paper in his hands, deliberately tore it into the minutest shreds before the lawyer could interfere and then threw it from the window. "Thet paper don't 'mount ter beans, no how!" he said quietly but explanatively, as he returned to the bed. It was Lawyer Maxwell's turn to become dumb. In his astonished abstraction he forgot to wipe his mouth, and gazed at Gabriel with his nervous smile as if his client had just perpetrated a practical joke of the first magnitude. "Ef it's the same to you, I'll just gin ye my idee of a de-fense," said Gabriel apologetically, relighting his pipe, "allowin' o' course thet you knows best, and askin' no deduckshun from your charges for advice. Well, you jess stands up afore the jedge, and you slings 'em a yarn suthin' like this: 'Yer's me, for instans,' you sez, sez you, 'ez gambols—gambols very deep—jess fights the tiger, wharever and whenever found, the same bein' unbeknownst ter folks gin'rally and spechil ter my wife, ez was, July. Yer's me bin gambolin' desprit with this yer man, Victyor Ramyirez, and gets lifted bad! and we hez, so to speak, a differculty about some pints in the game. I allows one thing, he allows another, and this yer man gives me the lie and I stabs him!'—Stop—hole your hosses!" interjected Gabriel suddenly, "thet looks bad, don't it? he bein' a small man, a little feller 'bout your size. No! Well, this yer's the way we puts it up: Seving men—seving—friends o' his comes at me, permiskis like, one down, and nex' comes on, and we hez it mighty lively thar fur an hour, until me, bein' in a tight place, hez to use a knife and cuts this