Addressing a letter to his friend in Twenty-ninth Street,he awaited reply in the shape of a small package he had ordered sent to the corner drug-store.When it came,he carried it home in a state of mingled hope and misgiving.Was he about to cap his fortnight of disappointment by another signal failure;end the matter by disclosing his hand;lose all,or win all by an experiment as daring and possibly as fanciful as were his continued suspicions of this seemingly upright and undoubtedly busy man?
He made no attempt to argue the question.The event called for the exercise of the most dogged elements in his character and upon these he must rely.He would make the effort he contemplated,simply because he was minded to do so.That was all there was to it.But any one noting him well that night,would have seen that he ate little and consulted his watch continually.Sweetwater had not yet passed the line where work becomes routine and the feelings remain totally under control.
Brotherson was unusually active and alert that evening.He was anxious to fit one delicate bit of mechanism into another,and he was continually interrupted by visitors.Some big event was on in the socialistic world,and his presence was eagerly demanded by one brotherhood after another.Sweetwater,posted at his loop-hole,heard the arguments advanced by each separate spokesman,followed by Brotherson's unvarying reply:that when his work was done and he had proved his right to approach them with a message,they might look to hear from him again;but not before.His patience was inexhaustible,but he showed himself relieved when the hour grew too late for further interruption.He began to whistle -a token that all was going well with him,and Sweetwater,who had come to understand some of his moods,looked forward to an hour or two of continuous work on Brotherson's part and of dreary and impatient waiting on his own.But,as so many times before,he misread the man.Earlier than common -much earlier,in fact,Mr.Brotherson laid down his tools and gave himself up to a restless pacing of the floor.This was not usual with him.Nor did he often indulge himself in playing on the piano as he did to-night,beginning with a few heavenly strains and ending with a bang that made the key-board jump.Certainly something was amiss in the quarter where peace had hitherto reigned undisturbed.Had the depths begun to heave,or were physical causes alone responsible for these unwonted ebullitions of feeling?
The question was immaterial.Either would form an excellent preparation for the coup planned by Sweetwater;and when,after another hour of uncertainty,perfect silence greeted him from his neighbour's room,hope had soared again on exultant wing,far above all former discouragements.
Mr.Brotherson's bed was in a remote corner from the loop-hole made by Sweetwater;but in the stillness now pervading the whole building,the latter could hear his even breathing very distinctly.He was in a deep sleep.
The young detective's moment had come.
Taking from his breast a small box,he placed it on a shelf close against the partition.An instant of quiet listening,then he touched a spring in the side of the box and laid his ear,in haste,to his loop-hole.
A strain of well-known music broke softly,from the box and sent its vibrations through the wall.
It was answered instantly by a stir within;then,as the noble air continued,awakening memories of that fatal instant when it crashed through the corridors of the Hotel Clermont,drowning Miss Challoner's cry if not the sound of her fall,a word burst from the sleeping man's lips which carried its own message to the listening detective.
It was Edith!Miss Challoner's first name,and the tone bespoke a shaken soul.
Sweetwater,gasping with excitement,caught the box from the shelf and silenced it.It had done its work and it was no part of Sweetwater's plan to have this strain located,or even to be thought real.But its echo still lingered in Brotherson's otherwise unconscious ears;for another "Edith!"escaped his lips,followed by a smothered but forceful utterance of these five words,"You know I promised you -"Promised her what?He did not say.Would he have done so had the music lasted a trifle longer?Would he yet complete his sentence?
Sweetwater trembled with eagerness and listened breathlessly for the next sound.Brotherson was awake.He was tossing in his bed.
Now he has leaped to the floor.Sweetwater hears him groan,then comes another silence,broken at last by the sound of his body falling back upon the bed and the troubled ejaculation of "Good God!"wrung from lips no torture could have forced into complaint under any daytime conditions.
Sweetwater continued to listen,but he had heard all,and after some few minutes longer of fruitless waiting,he withdrew from his post.
The episode was over.He would hear no more that night.
Was he satisfied?Certainly the event,puerile as it might seem to some,had opened up strange vistas to his aroused imagination.The words "Edith,you know I promised you -"were in themselves provocative of strange and doubtful conjectures.Had the sleeper under the influence of a strain of music indissolubly associated with the death of Miss Challoner,been so completely forced back into the circumstances and environment of that moment that his mind had taken up and his lips repeated the thoughts with which that moment of horror was charged?Sweetwater imagined the scene -saw the figure of Brotherson hesitating at the top of the stairs -saw hers advancing from the writing-room,with startled and uplifted hand -heard the music -the crash of that great finale -and decided,without hesitation,that the words he had just heard were indeed the thoughts of that moment."Edith,you know I promised you -"What had he promised?What she received was death!Had this been in his mind?Would this have been the termination of the sentence had he wakened less soon to consciousness and caution?
