Classic Audiobook Collection - The Chief Legatee by Anna Katharine Green ~ Full Audiobook [mystery]

Starting point is 00:00:00 the chief legatee by anna catherine green part one a woman of mystery chapter one a bride of five hours what's up this from the manager of the hotel to his chief clerk something wrong in room eighty one yes sir i've just sent for a detective you were not to be found and the gentleman is desperate but very anxiously to have it all kept quiet very anxious i think we can oblige him there or at least we'll try am i right sir of course if oh it's nothing criminal the lady's missing that's all-the lady whose name you see here the register lay open between them the clerk's finger running along the column rested about half-way down the manager bent over the page roger j ransom and wife he read out in decided astonishment why they are you're right married to-day in gray's church a great wedding the papers are full of it well she's the lady they registered here a few minutes before five o'clock and in ten minutes the bride was missing it's a queer story mr ransom tells you'd better hear it ah there's our mann't our man perhaps you'll go up with him you may bet your last dollar on that muttered the manager and joining the newcomer he made a significant gesture which was all that passed between them till they stepped out on the second floor wanted in room eighty one the manager now asked yes by a man named ransom just so that's the door knock or rather i'll knock for i must hear his

Starting point is 00:01:59 his story as soon as you do the reputation of the hotel yes yes but the gentleman's waiting ah that's better the manager had just knocked an exclamation from within a hurried step and the door fell open the figure which met their eyes was startling distress anxiety and an impatience almost verging on frenzy distorted features naturally amiable if not handsomely my wife fell in a gasped from his writhing lips we have come to help you find her mr garridge calmly assured him mr garridge was the detective relate the circumstances sir tell us where you were when you first missed her mr ransom's glance wandered past him to the door it was partly open the manager whose name was lumae hastily closed it mr ransom showed relief and hurried into his story it was to this effect i was married to-day in grace church at the altar my bride you probably know her name miss georgian hazen were a natural look and was in all respects so far as any one could see a happy woman satisfied with her choice and pleased with the eclae in the elegancies of the occasion half-way down the aisle this all changed i remember the instant perfectly her hand was on my arm and i felt it suddenly stiffen. I was not alarmed, but I gave

Starting point is 00:03:36 her a quick look and saw that something had happened. What? I could not at the moment determine. She didn't answer when I spoke to her, and seemed to be mainly concerned in getting out of the church before her emotions overcame her.

Starting point is 00:03:52 This she succeeded in doing with my help, and once in the vestibule recovered herself so completely and met all my inquiry, with such a gay shrug of the shoulders that i should have passed the matter over as a mere attack of nerves if i had not afterwards detected in her face through all the hurry and excitement of the ensuing reception a strained expression not at all natural to her this was still more evident after the congratulations of a certain guest who i am sure whispered to her before he passed on and when the time came for her to go upstairs she was so pale and unlike herself that i became seriously alarmed and asked if she felt well enough to start upon the journey we had meditated

Starting point is 00:04:50 instantly her manner changed she turned upon me with a look i have been trying ever since to explain to myself and beg me not to take her out of town to-night but to some quiet hotel where we might rest for a few days before starting on our travels she looked me squarely in the eye as she made this request and seeing in her nothing more than a feverish ang-zell lest i should make difficulties of some kind i promise to do what she asked and bade her run away and get herself ready to go and say nothing to any one of our change of plan she smiled and turned away towards her own room but presently came hurrying back to ask if i would grant her one more favour would i be so good as not to speak to her or expect her her to speak to me till we got to the hotel she was feeling very nervous but was sure that a few minutes of complete rest would entirely restore her something had occurred she acknowledged this which she wanted to think out wouldn't i grant her this one opportunity of doing so it was a startling request but she looked so lovely pardon me i must explain my easy acquiescence that i gave her a very the assurance she wished and went about my own preparations somewhat disconcerted but still not at all prepared for what happened afterward i had absolutely no idea that she meant to leave me mr ransom paused greatly affected but upon the detective asking him how and when mrs ransom had deserted him he controlled himself sufficiently to say here immediately after that silent and unnatural ride she entered the office with me and was standing close at my side all the time i was writing our names in the register but later when i turned to ask her to enter the elevator with me she was gone

Starting point is 00:07:09 and the boy who was standing by with our two bags said that she had slipped into the reception room across the hall but i didn't find her there or in any of the adjoining rooms nor has anybody since succeeded in finding her she has left the building left me and-you want her back again this from the detective but very dryly yes for she was not followed her own inclinations, and thus abandoning me so soon, after the words which made us one were spoken. Some influence was brought to bear on her, which she felt unable to resist. I have confidence enough in her to believe that. The rest is mystery, a mystery which I am forced to ask you to untangle. I have neither the necessary calmness nor experience myself. But you surely have done, something protested garridge telephoned to her late home or oh yes i've done all that but with no result she has not returned to her old home her uncle has just been here and he is as much mystified by the whole occurrence as i am he could tell me nothing absolutely nothing indeed and the man-the one who whispered to her during the reception couldn't you learn anything about him

Starting point is 00:08:40 mr ransom's face took on an expression almost ferocious no he is a stranger to mr fulton yet mr fulton's niece introduced him to me as a relative a relative when was that at the reception he was introduced as mr hayson my wife's maiden name you know and when i saw how his presence disturbed her i said to her a cousin of yours and she answered with a very evident embarrassment a relative which you must acknowledge didn't locate him very definitely mr fulton doesn't know of any such relative and i don't believe he is a relative he didn't sit with the rest of the family in the church ah you saw him in the church yes i noticed him for two reasons first because he occupied an in seat and so came directly under my eye in our passage down the aisle secondly because his face of all those which confronted me when i looked for the cause of her sudden agitation was the only one not turned towards her in curiosity or interest his eyes were fixed and vacant his only that made him conspicuous and when i saw him again i knew him describe the man mr ransom's face lightened up with an expression of strong satisfaction i am going to astonish you said he the fellow is so plain that children must cry at him he has suffered some injury and his mouth and jaw have such a twist in them that the whole face is thrown out of shape so you see continued the unhappy bridegroom as his eyes flashed from the detective's face to that of the managers that the influence he exerts over my wife is not that of love no one could love him the secrets of another kind what kind what what what find out and i'll pay you any amount you ask she is too dear and of too sensitive a temperament to be subject to a wretch of his appearance i cannot bear the thought it stifles it chokes me and yet for

Starting point is 00:10:58 three hours i've had to endure it three hours and with no prospect of release unless you oh i'll do something was gerridge's bland reply but first i must have a few more facts a man such as you described should be easy to find easier than the lady is he a tall man unusually so dark or light dark any beard none that's why the injury to his jaw show so plainly i see is he what you would call a gentleman yes i must acknowledge that he shows the manners of good society if he did whisper words into my wife's ear which were not meant for mine and mr fulton knows nothing of him nothing well we'll drop him for the present you have a photograph of your wife her picture was in all the papers to-night i noticed but can we go by it does it resemble her only fairly she is far prettier my wife is something uncommon no picture ever does her justice she looks like a dark beauty is her hair black or brown black so black it has purple shades in it and her eyes black too no gray a deep gray which look black owing to her long lashes very good now about her dress describe it as minutely as you can it was a bride's travelling costume i suppose yes that is i presume so i know that it was all right and suitable to the occasion but i don't remember much about it i was thinking too much of the woman in the gown to notice the gown itself cannot you tell the colour

Starting point is 00:12:55 it was a dark one i am sure it was a dark one but colours are not much in my line i know she looked well they can tell you about it at the house all that i distinctly remember is the veil she had wound so tightly around her face and hat to keep the rice out of her hair that i could not get one glimpse of her features all nonsense that veil especially when i had promised not to address her or even touch her in the cab and she wore it into the office if it had not been for that i might have foreseen her intention in time to prevent it perhaps she knew that it looks as if she did which means that she was meditating flight from the first from the time she saw that man mr ransom corrected just so from the time she left her uncle's house your wife is a woman of means i believe yes unfortunately why unfortunately it makes her independent and offers a lure to irresponsible wretches like him her fortune is large then very large larger than my own everyone knew mr ransomed to be a millionaire left her by her father no by some great uncle i believe who made his fortune in the klondike and entirely under her own control entirely so who is her man of business edward harper of wall street he's a man he'll know sooner or later where she is yes but later won't do i must know to-night or if that is impossible tomorrow were it not for the mortification it would cause her i should beg you to put on all your force and ransack the city for this bride of five hours but such publicity is too shocking i should like to give her a day to reconsider her treatment of me she cannot mean to leave me for good she has too much self-respect to say nothing of her very positive and not to be questioned affection for myself

Starting point is 00:15:15 the detective looked thoughtful the problem had its difficulties are those hers he asked at last pointing to the two trunks he saw standing against the wall yes i had them brought up in the hope that she had slipped away on some foolish errand or other and would yet come back by their heft i judged them to be full how about her handbag she had only a small bag and an umbrella they are both here how's that the colored boy took them at the door she went away with nothing in her hands gerridge glanced at the bag mr ransom had pointed out fingered it then asked the young husband to open it he did so the usual articles and indispensable adjuncts of a nice woman's toilet met their eyes also a pocket-book containing considerable money and a case holding more than one valuable jewel the eyes of the officer and manager met in ill-disguised alarm she must have been under the most violent excitement to slip away without these suggested the former i'd better be at work give me two hours were his parting words to mr ransom by that time i'll either be back or telephone you you had better stay here she may return though i don't think that likely he muttered as he passed the manager at the door he stopped you can't tell me the color of that veil no look about the room sir there's lots of colors in the furniture and hangings don't you see one somewhere they remind you of her veil or even of her dress the miserable bridegroom looked up from the bag into which he was still staring and

Starting point is 00:17:11 glancing slowly around him finally pointed at a chair upholstered in brown and impulsively said the veil was like that i remember now brown isn't it a dark brown yes and the dress i can't tell you a thing about the dress but her gloves i remember something about them they were so tight they gaped open at the wrist her hands looked quite disfigured i wondered that so so that so sensible a woman should buy gloves at least two sizes too small for her i think she was ashamed of them herself for she tried to hide them after she saw me looking this was in the cab yes where you didn't speak a word not a word though she seemed so very much cut up no she didn't seem cut up only tired how tired she sat with her head pressed against the side of the cab and a little turned away yes yes as if she shrank from you a little so did she brighten when the carriage stopped she started upright did you help her out no i had promised not to touch her she jumped out after you yes and never spoke not a word garage opened the door motioned for the manager to follow and once in the hall remarked to that gentleman i should like to see the boy who took her bag and was with them when she slipped away end of chapter one chapter two of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this librovoc's recording is in the public domain recording by tony o'iva chapter two the lady is the lady is in number three the boy was soon found and proved to be more observing in matters of dress than mr ransom he described with apparent accuracy both the colour and cut of the garments worn by the lady who had flitted away so mysteriously

Starting point is 00:19:24 the former was brown all brown and the latter was of the tailor-made variety very natty and becoming what you would call swell was well was the comment if her walk hadn't spoiled the hang of it how she did walk her shoes must have hurt her most uncommon i never did see any one hobbled so how's that she hobbled and her husband didn't notice it oh he had hurried on head she was behind him and she walked like this the panda mime was highly expressive that's a point muttered gerridge then with a sharp look at the boy where were you that you didn't notice her when she slipped off oh but i did sir i was waiting for the clerk to give me the key when i saw her step back from the gentleman's side and looking quickly round to see if anyone was noticing her slide off into the reception room i thought she wanted a drink of water out of the pitcher on the center table but if she did she didn't come back after she had got it none of us ever saw her again did you follow mr ransom when he walked through those rooms no sir i stayed in the hall did the lady hobble when she slid thus mysteriously out of sight a little not so much as when she came in but she wasn't at her ease sir her shoes were certainly too small i think i will take a peep at those rooms now garage remarked to the manager mr lumus bowed and together they crossed the office to the reception-room door the diagram of this portion of the hotel will give you an idea of these connecting rooms illustration there are three of them as you will see all reception rooms mr ransom had passed through them all in looking for his wife in number one he found several ladies sitting and standing all strangers he encountered no one in number two and in number three just one person a lady in street costume evidently waiting for someone

Starting point is 00:21:35 to this lady he had addressed himself asking if she had seen any one pass that way the moment before her reply was a decided no that she had been waiting in that same room for several minutes and had seen no one this staggered him it was as if his wife had dissolved into thin air true she might have eluded him by slipping out into the hall by means of door two at the moment he entered door one and alert to this possibility he hastened back into the hall to look for her but she was nowhere visible nor had she been observed leaving the building by the man stationed at entrance but there was another exit that of b had she gone out that way mr ranson had taken pains to inquire and had been assured by the man in charge that no lady had left by that door during the last ten minutes this he had insisted on and when mr lumbus and the detective came in their turn to question him on this point he insisted on it again the mystery seemed complete at least to the manager but the detective was not quite satisfied he asked the man if at any time that day before or after mrs ransoms disappearance he had swung the door open for a lady who walked lame the answer was decisive yes one who walked as if her shoes were tight when oh a little while after the gentleman asked his questions were she dressed in brown that he didn't know he didn't look at ladies dresses unless they were something special but she walked lame and she came from room three yes he remembered that much garage with a nod to the manager stepped into the open compartment of the whirling door i'm off said he expect to hear from me in two hours at twenty minutes to ten mr ransom was called up on the telephone one question mr ransom

Starting point is 00:23:49 hello who are you garage all right go ahead did you see the face of the woman you spoke to in room number three of course she was looking directly at me you remember it could identify it if you saw it again yes that is that's all good-bye the circuit was cut off another intolerable wait then there came a knock on the door and garage entered he held a photograph in his hand which he held a photograph in his hand which he had a photograph in his hand which he had a photograph in his hand which he had a she had evidently taken from his pocket on his way up look at this said he do you recognize the face the lady just so the one who said she had seen no one come into number three on the first floor mr ransom's expression of surprised inquiry was sufficient answer well it's a pity you didn't look at her gloves instead of at her face you might have had some dim idea of having seen them before it was she who rode to the hotel with you not your wife the veil was wound around her face for a far deep purpose than to ward off rice mr ransom staggered back against the table before which he had been standing the blow was an overwhelming one who is this woman he demanded she came from mr fulton's house more than that from my wife's room what is her name and what did she mean by such an outrage her name is bella burton and she is your wife's confidential maid as for the meaning of this outrage it will take more than two hours to ferret out that i can only give you the single fact i've mentioned and mrs she left the house at the same moment you did you and miss burton only she went by the basement door she she

Starting point is 00:25:47 dressed in her maid's clothes oh you'll have to hear worse things than that before we're out of this muddle if you won't mind a bit of advice from a man of experience i would suggest that you take things easy it's the only way shocked into silence by this cold-blooded philosophy mr ransom controlled both his anger and his humiliation but he could not control his surprise what does it mean he murmured to himself what does it all mean end of chapter two chapter three of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter three he knows the word the next moment the doubt natural to the occasion asserted itself how do you know all this you state impossible explain yourself garage was only too willing to do so i have just come from mr fulton's house said he inquiries there elicited the facts which have so startled you neither mr fulton nor his wife meant to deceive inquiries there elicited the facts which have so startled you neither mr fulton nor his wife meant to deceive you they knew nothing suspected nothing of what took place and you have no cause to blame them it was all a plot between the two women but how why you see i had a fact to go upon you had noticed that your so-called bride's gloves did not fit her the boy below that-the boy below that-the her shoes were so tight she hobbled that set me thinking a woman of mrs ransom's experience and judgment would not be apt to make a mistake in two such important particulars which

Starting point is 00:27:44 taken with the veil and the promise she exacted from you not to address or touch her during your short ride to the hotel led me to point my inquiries so that i soon found out that your wife had had the assistance of another woman in getting ready for her journey and that this woman was her own maid who had been with her for a long time and had always given evidence of an especial attachment for her asking about this girl's height and general appearance for the possibility of a substitution was already in my mind i found that she was of slight figure and good carriage and that her age was not far removed from that of her young mistress this made the substitution i have mentioned feasible and when i was told that she was seen taking her hat and bonnet into the bride's room and though not expected to leave till the next morning had slid away from the house by the basement door at the same moment her mistress appeared on the front steps my suspicions became so confirmed that i asked how this girl looked in the hope that you would be able to recognize her through the description as the woman you had seen sitting in reception room number three but to my surprise mrs fulton had what was better than any description the girl's picture this has simplified matters very much but by it you have been able to identify the woman who attempted to mislead you in the reception-room and i-the person who rode here with you from mr fulton's house wasn't she dressed in brown didn't you notice a similarity in her appearance to that of the very lady you were then seeking

Starting point is 00:29:44 i did not observe her face was all i saw she was looking directly at me as i stepped into the room i see she had taken off her veil and trusted to your attention being caught by her strange features as it was but that dress was brown i'm sure of it she was the very woman otherwise the mystery is impenetrable a deep plot mr ransom one that should prove to you that mrs ransom's motive in leaving you was of a very serious character do you wish that motive probed to the bottom i cannot do it without publicity are you willing to incur that publicity i must mr ransom had risen in great excitement nothing can hide the fact that my bride left me on our wedding-day it only remains now to show that she did it under an influence which robbed her of her own will an influence from which she shrank even while succumbing to it i can show her no greater kindness and i am not afraid of the result i have perfect confidence in her integrity he hesitated then added with strong conviction and in her love. The detective hit his surprise. He could not understand this confidence,

Starting point is 00:31:09 but then he knew nothing of the memories which lay back of it. Not to him could this grievously humiliated and disappointed man reveal the secrets of a courtship which had fixed his heart on this one woman and roused in him such trust that even this uncalled-for outrage to his pride and affection had not been able to shake it such secrets are sacred but the reflection of his trust was strong on his face as he repeated perfect confidence mr gerridge whatever may have drawn mrs ransom from my side it was not lack of affection or any doubt of my sincerity or undivided attachment to herself the detective may not have been entirely convinced on the first point of my sincerity or undivided attachment to herself the detective may not have been entirely convinced on the first point point but he was discretion itself and responded quite cheerfully with an emphatic very well you still want me to find her i will do my best sir but first cannot you help me with a suggestion or two i there must be some clue to so sudden a freak on the part of a young and beautiful woman who i have taken pains to learn as not only a clean record but a reputation

Starting point is 00:32:30 for good sense the fultons cannot supply it she has lived a seemingly open and happy life in their house and the mystery is as great to them as to you but you as her lover and now her husband must have been favored with confidences not given to others cannot you recall one likely to put us on the right track some fact prior to the events of today i mean some fact connect with her past life before she went to live with the fultons no yet let me think let me think mr ransom dropped his face into his hands and set for a moment silent when he looked up again the detective perceived that the affair was hopeless so far as he was concerned no he repeated this time with unmistakable emphasis she has always appeared buoyant and untrammeled but that i have only known her six months tell me her history so far as you know it what do you know of her life previous to your meeting her it was a very simple one she had a country bringing up having been born in a small village in connecticut she was one of three children and the only one who has survived her sister who was her twin died when she was a small child and a brother some some five years ago her fortune was willed her as i've already told you by a great uncle it is entirely in her own hands left an orphan early she lived first with her brother then when he died with one relative after another till lastly she settled down with the fultons i know of no secret in her life no entanglement not even of any prior engagements yet that man

Starting point is 00:34:30 with the twisted jaw was not unknown to her and if he is a relative as she said you should have no difficulty in locating him i have a man on his track gerridge replied and one on the girls too i mean of course bella burtons they will report here up to twelve o'clock to-night it is now half-past eleven we should hear from one or the other soon and my wife a description of the clothing she wore has gone out we may hear from it but i doubt if we do to-night unless she has rejoined her maid or the man with a scar somehow i think she will join the girl but it's hard to tell yet mr ransom could hardly control his impatience and i must sit helpless here he exclaimed i who have so much at stake the detective evidently thought the occasion called for whatever comfort it was in his power to bestow yes said he for it is here she will seek you if she takes a notion to return but woman is an uncertain quantity he drily added at that moment the telephone bell rang mr ransom leaped to answer but the call was only an anxious one from the fultons who wanted to know what news he answered as best he could and was recrossing disconsolately to his chair when voices rose in the hall and a man was ushered in whom gerridge immediately introduced as mr sims a runner and with news mr ransom summoning up his courage waited for the inevitable question and reply they came quickly enough what have you got have you found the man yes and the lady's been to see him that is if the description of her togs was correct he means mrs ransom explained garrid then as he marked his client's struggle for composure he quietly asked a lady in a dark green suit with yellowish furs and a blue veil over her hat that's the ticket the clothes worn by the woman who went out of the basement door mr ransom

Starting point is 00:36:49 the latter turned sharply aside the shame of the thing was becoming intolerable and this woman wearing those yellow furs and the blue veil visited the man of the broken jaw inquired garridge yes sir when about six this afternoon and where at the hotel st denis where i have since tracked him how long did she stay about an hour in the parlor or in the parlor they had a great deal to say more than one noticed them but no one heard anything they talked very low but they meant business where's this man now at the same place he has engaged a room there and the man with a twisted jaw yes under what name hugh porter ah it was hazin only five hours ago muttered ransom porter did you say i'll have a talk with this porter at once i think not to-night put in the detective with the mingled authority and deference natural to one of his kind to-morrow perhaps but to-night it would only provoke scandal this was certainly true but mr ransom was not an easy man to dominate i must see him before i sleep he insisted a single word may solve this mystery he has the word i'd be a fool to let the night go by ah what's that the telephone bell had rung again a message from the office this time a note had just been handed in for mr ransom should they send it up garridge was at the phone instantly he shouted down and be sure you hold the messenger it may be from your lady he remarked to mr ransom stranger things than that have happened mr ransom reeled to the door opened it and stood waiting the two detectives exchanged glances what might not that note contain mr ransom opened it in the hall when he came back into the room his hand were shaking and his face looked drawn and pale

Starting point is 00:38:50 but he showed no further disposition to go out instead he sank into a chair with a motion of dismissal to the two detectives question the boy who brought this said he it is from mrs ransom written as you see at the st denise she bids me farewell for a time but does not favour me with any explanations she cannot do differently she says and asks me to trust her and wait for her-and-wainting her-and waits me to trust her and wait not very encouraging to sleep on but it's something she has not entirely forsaken me garridge with a shrug turned sharply towards the door i take it that you wouldn't object to knowing all the messenger can tell you no no question him find out whether she gave this to him with her own hand garridge obeyed this injunction but was told in reply that the note had been given him to deliver by a clerk in the hotel lobby he could tell nothing about the lady this was unsatisfactory enough but the man who had influenced her to this step had been placed under surveillance to-morrow they would question him the mystery was not without a promise of solution so gerridge felt but not mr ransom for at the end of the lines whose purport he had just communicated to the detective were these few significant words make no move to find me if you love me well enough to wait in silence for developments happiness may yet be ours end of chapter three chapter four of the chief legatee by anacabye Catherine Green. This Librovox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tony Oliva,

Starting point is 00:40:51 Chapter 4. Mr. Ransom waits. Garage rose early, primed, as he said to himself, for business. But to his great disappointment, he found Mr. Ransom in a frame of mind which precluded action. Indeed, that gentleman looked greatly changed. He not only gave evidence of a sleep-leaf, night, but showed none of the spirit of the previous evening, and hesitated quite painfully when Gereggard asked him if he did not intend to go ahead with the interview they had promised themselves. That's as it may be, was a hesitating reply. I hardly think that I shall visit the man you mean this morning. He interests me, and I hope that none of his movements will escape you,

Starting point is 00:41:40 but I'm not ready to talk to him. I prefer to wait a little to give my wife a chance i should feel better and have less to forget just as you say returned the detective stiffly he's under our thumb at present i can't tell when he may wriggle out not while your eyes on him and your eye won't leave him as long as you have confidence in the reward i've promised you perhaps not but you take the life out of me last night you were too hot there's morning you are too cold but it's not for me to complain you know where to find me when you want me and without more ado the detective went out mr ransom remained alone and in no enviable frame of mind he was distrustful of himself distrustful of the man who had made all this trouble and distrustful of her though he would not acknowledge it every baser instinct in him drove him to the meeting he declined to see the the man to force from him the truth seemed the only rational thing to do but the final words of his wife's letter stood in his way she had advised patience if patience would clear the situation and bring him the result he so ardently desired then he would be patient that is for a day he did not promise to wait longer yes he would give her a day that was time enough for a man suffering on the rack of such an intolerant suspense one day but even that day did not pass without breaks in his mood and more than one walk in the direction of the st denise hotel if garage's eye was on him as well as on the special object of his surveillance he must have smiled more than once at the restless flittings of his client about the forbidden spot in the evening it was the same but the next morning he remained steadfastly at his hotel he had laid out his future course in these words i will extend the time to three days then if i do not hear from her i will get that rye-necked fellow by the throat and twist an explanation from him but the three days passed and he found the situation unchanged then he set as his limit the end of the week but before the full time had elapsed he was advised by garridge that he himself was being followed in his turn by a couple of private detectives and while still under the agitation of this discovery was further disconcerted by having the following communication thrust into his hand in the open street by a young woman who succeeded in losing herself in the crowd before he had got so much as a good look at her

Starting point is 00:44:36 you can judge his amazement as he read the few lines it contained read the papers to-night and forget the stranger at the st denise that was all but the riding was hers the hours passed slowly till the papers were cried in the street what mr ransom read in them increased his astonishment i might say his anxiety it was a paragraph about his wife an almost incredible one running thus a strange explanation is given of the disappearance of mrs roger ransom on her wedding-day as our readers will remember she accompanied her husband to the hotel but managed to slip away and leave the house while he still stood at the desk this act for which nothing in her previous conduct has in any way prepared her friends is now said to have been due to the shock of hearing sometime during her wedding day that a sister whom she had supposed dead was really alive and in circumstances of almost degrading poverty as this sister had been her own twin the effect upon her mind was very serious to find and rescue this sister she left her newly-made husband in the surreptitious manner already recorded in the papers that she is not fully herself is shown by her continued secrecy as to her whereabouts all that she has been willing to admit to the two persons she has so far taken into her confidence her husband and the agent who conducts her affairs is that she has found her sister and cannot leave her why she does not state the case is certainly a curious one and mr ransom has the sympathy of all his friends

Starting point is 00:46:30 confused and in a state of mind bordering on frenzy mr ransom returned to the hotel and sought refuge in his own room he put no confidence in what he had just read he regarded it as a newspaper story and a great fake but she had bid him read it and this fact in itself was very disturbing for how could she have known about it if she had not been its author and if she was its author what purpose had she expected it to serve he was still debating this question when he reached his own room on the floor a little way from the sill lay a letter it had been thrust under the door during his absence lifting it in some trepidation he cast a glance at its inscription and sank staggering into the nearest chair asking himself if he had the courage to open and read it for the handwriting like that of the note handed him in the street was georgians and he felt himself in a maze concerning her which made everything in her connection seem dreamlike and unreal it was not long however before he had mastered its contents they were strange enough as this transcription of them will show you have seen what has happened to me but you cannot understand how i feel she looks exactly like me it is that which makes the world eddy about me i cannot get used to it it is like seeing my own

Starting point is 00:48:03 reflected image step from the mirror and walk about doing things two of us roger two if you saw her you would call her georgian and she says that she knows you admires you and she says it in my voice i try to shut my ears but i hear her saying it even when her lips do not move she is as ignorant as she is afflicted and i cannot leave her she cannot hear a sound though she can talk well enough about what is going on in her own mind and she is so wayward and uncertain of temper owing to her ignorance and her difficulty in understanding me that i don't know what she would do if once let out of my sight i love you i love you but i must stay right here you're affectionate and most unhappy georgian the sheet with its tear-stained lines fell from his grasp then he caught it up again and looked carefully at the signature it was his wife's without doubt then he studied the rest of the writing and compared it with that of the note which had been thrust into his hand earlier in the day. There was no difference between them, except that there were evidences of faltering in the latter, not noticeable in the earlier communication. As he noted these tokens of

Starting point is 00:49:27 weakness or suffering, he caught up the telephone receiver in good earnest and called out Gerridge's number. When the detective answered, he shouted back, have you read the evening papers? If you haven't, do so at once, then come directly to me. It's business-n't. It's business now and no mistake, and our first visit shall be on the fellow at the Saint-Denis. End of Chapter 4. Chapter 5 of the Chief Legity by Anna Catherine Green. This Libravox recording is in the public domain, recording by Tony Oliva. Chapter 5, In Corridor and in Room.

Starting point is 00:50:14 Three quarters of an hour later, Mr. Ransom and Garage stood in close conference before the last-mentioned hotel the former was peremptory in what he had to say i haven't a particle of confidence in this newspaper story he declared i haven't much confidence in her letter it is this man who is working us he has a hold on her and has given her this cock and bull story to tell a sister a twin sister come to light after fifteen years of supposed burial i find this-his-lawed i find the circumstance entirely too romantic nor does an explanation of this nature fit the conditions she was happy before she saw him in the church he isn't her twin sister i tell you the game is a deep one and she is the sufferer her letters betray more than a disturbed mind they betray a disturbed brain that man is the cause and i mean to ring his secret from him you are sure of his being still in the the house he was early this morning he has lived a very quiet life these last few days the life of one waiting he has not even had visitors after that one interview he held with your wife i have kept careful watch on him though a suspected character he has done nothing suspicious while i've had him under my eye that's all right and i thank you garridge but it doesn't shake my opinion as to his being the moving power in this fraud for fraud it is and no mistake of that i am fully convinced shall we go up i want to surprise him in his own room where he cannot slip away or back out leave that business to me i'll manage it if you want to see him in his room you shall but this time the detective counted without his host mr porter was not in his room but in one of the halls they encountered him as they left the elevator he was standing reading a newspaper the disfigured jaw could not be mistaken they stopped where they were and looked at him he was intent absorbed as they watched they saw his hands close convulsively on the sheet he was holding while his lips muttered some words that made the detective look hard at his companion did you hear he cautiously inquired as mr ransom stood hesitating not knowing whether to address the man or

Starting point is 00:52:48 not no what did he say do you suppose he is reading that paragraph i haven't a doubt of it and his words were here's a damned lie very much like your own sir mr ransom drew the detective a few steps down the corridor he said that yes i heard him distinctly then my theory is all wrong this man didn't provide her with this imaginary twin sister evidently not and is as surprised as we are and about as much put out look at him nothing yellow there we shall have to go easy with him mr ransom looked and felt a recoil of more than ordinary dislike for the man the latter had put the paper in his pocket and was coming their way his face once possibly handsome for his eyes and forehead were conspicuously fine showed a distortion quite apart from that given by his physical disfigurement he was not simply angry but in a mental and moral rage and it made him more than hideous it made him appalling yet he said nothing and moved along very quietly making to all appearance for his room would he notice them as he went by it did not seem likely instinctively they had stepped to one side and mr ransom's face was in the shadow to both it had seemed better not to accost him while he was in this mood they would see he him later but this was not to be some instinct made him turn and mr ransom recognizing his opportunity stepped forward and addressed him by the name under which he had introduced himself at the reception that of his wife's family hazen the effect was startling instead of increasing his anger as the detective had naturally expected it appeared to have the contrary effect for every vestige of passion is immediately disappeared from his face leaving only its natural disfigurement to plead against him he approached them and ransom at least was conscious of a revulsion of feeling in his favor

Starting point is 00:55:04 there was such restraint and yet such undoubted power in his strange and peculiar personality you know me said he darting a keen and comprehensive look from one to the other we should like a few words with you ventured gerridge this gentleman thinks you can give him very valuable information about a person he is greatly interested in he is mistaken the words came quick and decisive in a not unmelodious voice i am a stranger in new york a stranger in this country i have few if any acquaintances you have one it was now mr ransom's turn a man with no acquaintances does not attend weddings certainly not wedding receptions i have seen you at one my own do you not recognize me mr hayson at which of surprise not even ransom could call it alarm drew his mouth still further towards his ear but his manner hardly altered and it was in the same affable tone that he replied you must pardon my short-sightedness i did not recognise you mr ransom did not want to muttered gerridge satisfied in his own mind that this man was only deterred by his marked and unmistakable physiognomy from denying the acquaintanceship just advanced your congratulations did not produce the desired effect continued mr ransom my happiness was short-lived perhaps you knew its uncertain tenure when you wished me joy i remember that your tone lacked sincerity it was a direct attack whether a wise one or not remained to be seen garridge watched the unfolding drama with interest i have reason to think proceeded mr ransom that the unhappy termination of that day's felicities were in a measure due to you you seem to know my bride very well much too well for her happiness or mine

Starting point is 00:57:24 we will argue that question in my room was the unmoved reply the open hall is quite unsuited to a conversation of this nature now said he turning upon them while they were in the privacy of this small but not uncomfortable apartment you will be kind enough to repeat what you just said i wish to thoroughly understand you you have the right returned mr ransom controlling himself under the detective's eye i said that your presence at this wedding seemed to disturb my wife which fact considering the after-recurricular of the day strikes me as important enough for discussion are you willing to discuss it affably and fairly may i ask who your companion is inquired the other with a slight inclination towards garridge a friend one who is in my confidence then i will answer you without any further hesitation my presence may have disturbed your wife it very likely did but i was not to blame for that no man is to blame for the bad effects of an unfortunate accident oh i don't mean that mr ransom hastened to protest the cause of her very evident agitation was not personal it had a deeper root than that it led or so i believe to her flight from a love she cherished at a moment when our mutual life seemed about to begin the impassive i might almost say set features of this man of violent passions but remarkable self-restraint failed to relax or give any token of the feelings with which he listened to this attack then the news given of your wife in the papers to-night is false was his quiet retort it professes to give a distinct if somewhat fantastic reason for flight a reason totally different from the one use

Starting point is 00:59:30 suggest a reason you don't believe in certainly not it is too bizarre i share your incredulity that is why i seek the truth from you rather than from the columns of a newspaper and you owe me this truth you have broken up my life i that is a strange accusation you make mr ransom possibly but it's one which strikes hard on your conscience for all that this is evident enough even if you make even if you're a-and-and-lawful but it's one which strikes hard on your conscience for all that this is evident enough even to a stranger like myself i am convinced that if you had not come into her life she would have been at my side to-day now who are you she told me you were a relative she told you the truth i am her nearest relative the story in the paper has a certain amount of truth in it her brother not her sister has come back from the grave i am that brother she was once devoid to me you are yes oh there'll be no difficulty in my proving this relationship i have evidence upon evidence of the fact right in this room with me evidence much more convincing and far less disputable than this surprising twin can bring forward if her identity is questioned georgian had a twin sister but she was buried years ago i was never buried i simply did not return from a well-known and dangerous voyage the struggle i had for life you cannot want the details now has left its indelible impress in the scar which has turned me from a personable man into what some people might call a monstrosity and it is this scar which has kept me so long from home and country it has taken me for years to me for years to me to me for years to me make up my mind to face again my family and friends and now that i have i find that it would have been better for us all if i had stayed away

Starting point is 01:01:41 georgian saw me and her mind wavered in no other way can i account for her wild behavior since that hour it is all that i had to say sir i think i am almost as much an object of pity as your son and for a moment he appeared to be so not only to garridge but to mr ransom himself then something in the man his unnatural coldness the purpose which made itself felt through all his self-restraint reawakened mr ransom's distrust and led him to say your complaint is natural if you are mrs ransom's brother there should be sympathy between us and not antagonism but i feel only antagonism why is this a shrug followed by an odd smile you should be able to account for that on very reasonable grounds said he i do not expect much mercy from strangers it is hard to make your good intentions felt through such a distorted medium as my expression has now become mrs ransom has been here ransom suddenly launched forth within two hours of your encounter under mr fulton's roof she was talking with you in this hotel i have proof positive of that sir i have no wish to deny the fact was the steady answer she did come here and we had a talk it was necessary i wanted money the last phrase was uttered with such grim determination that the exclamation which had risen to mr ransom's lips died in a conflict of feeling which forbade any rejoinder that savored of sarcasm

Starting point is 01:03:37 hazen however must have noted his first look for he added with an air of haughty apology i repeat that we were once very fond of each other ransom felt his perplexities growing with every moment he talked with this man he remembered the money which both he and gerridge had seen in her bag an amount too large for her to have retained very much on her person and following the instinct of the moment he remarked mrs ransom is not the woman to hesitate when a person she loves makes an appeal for money she handed you immediately a large sum i have no doubt she wrote me out a cheque was the simple but cold answer mr ransom felt the failure of his attempt and stole a glance at garage the doubtful smile he received was not very encouraging the same thought had evidently struck both the money in the bag was a blind she had carried her cheque-book with her and so could draw on her account for whatever she wished but under what name her maiden one or his ransom determined to find out i do not begrudge you the money said he but mrs ransom's signature had changed a few hours previous to her making out this check did she remember this she signed her married name promising to notify the bank at once and you cashed the cheque no sir i am not in such immediate need of money as that i have it still but i shall endeavour to cash it to-morrow some question may come up as to her sanity and i do not choose to lose the only money she has ever been in a position to give me

Starting point is 01:05:23 mr hayson you harp on the irresponsible condition of her mind did you see any tokens of this in the interview you had together no she seemed sane enough then a little shocked and troubled but quite sane you knew that she had stolen away from me that she had resorted to a most unworthy subterfuge in order to hold this conversation with you no i had asked her to come and on that very afternoon if possible but i never knew what mean she took for doing so i didn't ask and she didn't say but she talked of her marriage she must have said something about an event which is usually considered the greatest in a woman's life yes she spoke of it and of me yes she spoke of you and in what terms i cannot refrain from asking you mr hayson i am in such ignorance as to her real attitude towards me her conduct is so mysterious the reasons she gives for it so she said nothing against you or her marriage she mentioned both but not in a manner that would add to your or my knowledge she mentioned both but not in a manner that would add to your or my knowledge of her intentions my sister disappointed me sir she was much less open than i wished all that i could make out of her manner and conversation was the overpowering shock she felt at seeing me again and seeing me so changed she didn't even tell me when and where we might meet again when she left she was as much lost to me as she was to you and i am no less interested in finding her than you are yourself i had no idea she did not mean to return to you when she went away from this hotel mr ransom sprang upright in an agitation the other may have shared

Starting point is 01:07:18 but off which he gave no token do you mean to say he asked that you cannot tell me where the woman you call your sister is now no more than you can give me the same necessary information in regard to your wife i am waiting like yourself to hear from her and waiting with his little hope had he seen ransom's hand close convulsively over the pocket in which her few strange words to him were lying that a slight tinge of sarcasm gave edge to the last four words but this is not like my wife protested ransom hesitating to accuse the other of falsehood yet evidently doubting him from the bottom of his heart why deceive us both she was never a disingenuous woman in childhood she had her incomprehensible moments observed hazen with an ambiguous lift of his shoulders then as ransom made an impatient move added with steady composure i have candidly answered all your questions whether agreeable or otherwise and the fact that i am as much shocked as yourself by these mad and totally incredible statements of hers about a newly recovered sister should prove to you that she is not following any lead of mine in this dissemination of a barefaced falsehood there was truth in this which both mr ransom and gerridge felt obliged to own yet they were not satisfied even after mr hayson almost against mr ransom's will had established his claims to the relationship he professed by various well-attested documents he had at hand instinct could not be juggled with nor could ransom help feeling that the mystery in which he found himself entangled had been deepened rather than dispelled by the confidences of this new brother-in-law

Starting point is 01:09:18 the mazes at its thickest he remarked as he left a few minutes later with a perplexed garage how shall i settle this new question by what means and through whose aid can i gain an interview with my wife end of chapter five chapter six of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this lepervox recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter six the lawyer the answer was an unexpectedly sensible one hunt up her man of business and see what he can do for you she cannot get along without money nor could that statement of hers have got into the the papers without somebody's assistance since she did not get it from the fellow we have just left she must have had it from the only other person she would dare confide in ransom answered by immediately hailing a downtown car the interview which followed was certainly a remarkable one at first mr harper would say nothing declaring that his relations with mrs ransom were of a purely business and confidential nature but by degrees moved by the persuasive influence of mr ransom's candour and his indubitable right to consideration he allowed himself to admit that he had seen mrs ransom during the last three days and that he had every reason to believe that there was a twin sister in the case and that all mrs ransom's eccentric conduct was attributable to this fact and the overpowering sense of responsibility which it seemed to have brought to her a result which would not appear strange to those who knew the sensitiveness of her nature and the delicate balance of her mind mr ransom recalled the tenor of her strange letter on this subject

Starting point is 01:11:22 but was not convinced he inquired of mr harper if he had heard her say anything about the equally astounding fact of a returned brother and when he found that this was mere jargon to mr harper he related what he knew of hazen and left the lawyer to draw his own inferences the result was some show of embarrassment on the part of mr harper it was evident that in her consultations with him she had entirely left out all allusion to this brother either the man had advanced a false claim or else she was in an irresponsible condition of mind which made her her see a sister where there was a brother. Ransom made some remark indicative of his appreciation, of the dilemma in which they found themselves, but was quickly silenced by the other's emphatic assertion. I have seen the girl. She was with Mrs. Ransom the day she came here. She said in the adjoining room while we talked over her case in this one. You saw her, saw her face? No, not her face.

Starting point is 01:12:34 she was too heavily veiled for that mrs ransom explained why they were too absurdly alike she said it awoke comment and it gave her the creeps but their figures were identical though their dresses were different so there is some one then the girl is not absolutely a myth far from it nor is the will which mrs ransom asked me to draw up for her a myth her will she has asked you to draw up her will she has asked you to draw up her will will yes that was the object of her visit she had entered the married state she said and wished to make a legal disposition of her property before she returned to you she was very nervous when she said this very nervous through all the interview there was nothing else for me to do but comply and you have drawn up this will according to her instructions yes but she has not signed it not yet but she intends to certainly then you will see her again naturally is the time set the lawyer rose to his feet he understood the hint implied and for an instant appeared to waver there was something very wintsome about roger ransom some attribute or expression which appealed especially to men i wish i might help you out of your difficulty said he but a client's wishes are paramount mrs ransom desired secrecy she had every right to demand it of me mr ransom's face fell hope had flashed upon him only to disappear again the lawyer eyed him out of the corner of his eye his mouth working slightly as he walked to and fro between his desk and the door mrs ransom will not always feel herself hampered by a sister or if you prefer it a brother who has so inconvenient

Starting point is 01:14:34 come back from the dead you will have the pleasure of her society some day there's no doubt about her affection for you but that isn't it exclaimed the now thoroughly discouraged husband i'm afraid for her reason afraid for her life there is something decidedly wrong somewhere don't you see that i must have an immediate interview with her if only to satisfy myself that she aggravates her own danger why should she make a way will in this underhanded way does she fear opposition for me i have a fortune equal to her own it is something else she dreads what i feel that i ought to know if only to protect her against herself i would even promise not to show myself or to speak i am sorry to have to say good afternoon mr ransom have you any commands that i can execute for you none but to give her my love tell her there is not a more unhappy man in new york you may add that i trust her affection the lawyer bowed mr ransom and garridge withdrew at the foot of the stairs they were stopped by the shout of a small boy behind them say mister did you drop something he called down coming meanwhile as rapidly after them as the steepness of the flight aloud mr harper says he found this where you gentlemen were sitting mr ransom somewhat startled took the small paper offered him it was none of his property but he held to it just the same in the middle of a torn bit of paper he had read these words written in his own wife's hand hunter's tavern sitford connecticut at nine o'clock april the fifteenth by jove he exclaimed no one will ever hear me say again that lawyer are devoid of heart end of chapter six chapter seven of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this libravox recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter seven rain mr ransom had never heard of sitford but upon inquiry learned that it was a small manufacturing town some tin miles from the direct route of travel to which it was only connected by a stage-coach running once a day late in the afternoon what a spot for a meeting of this kind why chosen by her why submitted to by this busy new york lawyer

Starting point is 01:17:27 was this another mystery or had he misinterpreted mr harper's purpose in passing over to him the address of this small town he preferred to think the former he could hardly contemplate now the prospect of failing to see her again which must follow any mistake as to this being the place agreed upon for the signing of her will meantime he had said nothing to gerridge this was a hope too personal to confide in a man of his position he would go to sitford and endeavour to catch a glimpse of his wife there if successful the whole temper of his mind might change towards the situation if not toward her he would at least have the satisfaction of seeing her the detective had enough to do in new york april the fifteenth fell on tuesday he was not minded to wait so long but took the boat on monday afternoon this landed him some time before daylight at the time-worn village from which the coach ran to sitford a railway connected this village with new york necessitating no worse inconvenience than crossing the river on a squat, old-fashioned ferry boat. But he calculated that both the lawyer and Mrs. Ransom would make use of this, and felt the risk would be less for him, if he chose the slower and less convenient route. He had given his name on the boat as Roger

Starting point is 01:19:00 Johnston, which was true so far as it went, and he signed this same name at the hotel where he put up till morning. the place was an entirely unknown one to him and he was unknown to it both fortuitous facts he thought in the light of his own perplexity as to the position in which he really stood towards this mysterious wife of his the coach as i have said ran late in the afternoon this was to accommodate the passengers who came by rail but mr ransom had not planned to go by coach that would be to risk a premature encounter with his wife or at least with the lawyer he preferred to hire a team and be driven there by some indifferent livery-stable man neither prospect was pleasing it had been raining all night and bade fair to rain all day the river was clouded with mist the hills which are the glory of the place were obliterated from the landscape and the road he had never seen such a road all little pools and mud. However, there was no help for it. The journey must be made, and seeing a livery-stable sign across the road lost no time in securing the conveyance he needed. At nine o'clock he started out. The rain drove so fiercely from the northwest, the very direction in which they were traveling, that enjoyment of the scenery was impossible. Nor could any pleasure

Starting point is 01:20:36 begot out of the conversation with the man who drove him rain rain that was all and the splash of mud over the wheels which turned all too slowly for his comfort there were to be ten miles of this naturally he turned to his thoughts and they were all of her why had he not known her better before linking his fate to hers why had he never encouraged her to talk to him more about herself and her life had he but done so he might now have some clue to the mystery devouring him he might know why so rich and independent a woman had chosen this remote town on an inaccessible road for the completion of an act which was in itself a mystery why could not the will have been signed in new york but he was not inquisitive in those days he had taken her for what she seemed and on untrammeled, gay-hearted girl, ready to love and be his happy wife and lifelong companion. And he had been contented to keep all conversation along natural lines and do no probing. And now this brother, whom all had thought dead, come to life with menace in his acts and conversation, also a sister, but this sister he had no belief in.

Starting point is 01:22:04 the coincidence was too startlingly out of nature for him to accept a brother and a sister too a brother or a sister but not both not even mr harper's assurances should influence his credulity to this extent money money is at the bottom of it all was his final decision she knows it and is making her will as a possible protection but why come here thus every reflection ended suddenly a vanished half-forgotten memory came back it brought a gleam of light into the darkness which had hitherto enveloped the whole matter she had once spoken to him of her early life she had mentioned a place where she used to play as a child had mentioned it lovingly longingly there were hills she had said hills all around and woods full of chestnut trees safe woods where she could wonder at will and the roads how she loved to walk the roads no automobiles then not even bicycles one could go miles without meeting man or horse sometimes a heavily laden cart would go by drawn by a long string of oxen but they were picturesque and added to the charm oxen were necessary where there was no railroad. As he repeated these words to himself, he looked up. Through the downpour, his eyes could catch a glimpse of the road before him winding up a long hillside. Down this road was

Starting point is 01:23:49 approaching a dozen yoke of oxen, dragging a wagon piled with bales of some sort of merchandise. One question in his mind was answered. This spot was not an unknown one to her. It was connected with her childhood days. There was reason back of her choice of it, as a place of meeting between her and her lawyer, or if not reason, association, and that of the tenderest kind. He felt himself relieved of the extreme weight of his oppression and ventured upon asking a question or two about Sitford, which he took pains to say he was visiting for the first time. The information he obtained was but meager but he did learn that there was a very fair tavern there and that the manufacturers of the place were sufficient to account for a stranger's visit the articles made were mostly novelties this knowledge he meant to turn to account but changed his mind when they finally splashed into town and stopped before the tavern which had been so highly recommended by his driver the house dripping though it was from every eve had such a romantic air that he thought he could venture to cite other reasons for his stay there than the prosaic one of business

Starting point is 01:25:14 that is if the landlady should give any evidence of being at all in accord with her quaint home and picturesque surroundings she showed herself and he at once gave her credit for being all he could wish in the way of credulity and and good nature and meeting her with the smile which had done good execution in its day he asked if she had a room for a writer who was finishing a book and who only asked for quiet and regular meals before his own cozy fire this to rouse her imagination and make her amenable to his wishes for secrecy she was a simple soul and fell easily into the trap in half an hour hour mr ransom was ensconced in a pleasant room over the porch a room which he soon learned possessed many advantages for it not only overlooked the main entrance but was so placed as to command a view of all the rooms on his hall in two of those rooms he bade fair to be greatly interested mrs deal having remarked that they were being prepared for a lady who was coming that night as he had a lady who was coming that night as he had a little had no doubt who this lady was he encouraged the good woman to talk and presently had the satisfaction of hearing her say that she was very happy over this lady's coming as she was a sitford girl one of the old family of hazens and though married now and very rich was much loved by every one in town because she had never forgotten sitford or sitford people she was coming he had made no mistake and this was the place of her birth just as he had decided when he saw that long line of oxen he realized how fortunate he was or rather how indebted he was to mr harper since in this place only could he hope to gain satisfaction on the mooted point raised by that same gentleman

Starting point is 01:27:22 if she had been born here so had her twin sister so had the brother whose claims lay counter to that sisters both must have been known to these people their persons their history and the circumstances of their support supposed deaths the clues thus afforded must prove invaluable to him from them he must soon be able to ascertain in which story to place faith and which claimant to believe he might have interrogated his hostess but feared to show his interest in the supposed stranger he preferred to wait a few hours and gather his facts from other lips meantime it rained end of chapter seven chapter eight of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter eight elimination at about three o'clock in the afternoon mr ransom left his room he had been careful almost from his first arrival to sit with his door ajar he had therefore only to gore to go give it a slight push and walk out when he heard the bustle of preparation going on in the two rooms in whose future occupancy he was so vitally interested a maid stood in the hall a man within was pushing about furniture the landlady was giving orders his course downstairs did not lead him so far as those rooms so he called out pleasantly i have written till my headaches mrs deal i'm must venture out notwithstanding the rain in which direction shall i find the best walking she came to him all eagerness and smiles it's all bad such a day said she but it's muddiest down by the factories you had better climb the hill where the cemetery is he asked yes do you object to cemeteries ours is thought to be very interesting we have stones there who are

Starting point is 01:29:43 whose inscriptions are a hundred and fifty years old but it's a bad day to walk amongst graves perhaps you had better go east i'm sorry we should have such a storm on your first day must you go out he forced a suffering look into his eyes and insisting that nothing but outdoor air would help him when he had a headache hastened downstairs and so out a blinding gust seized him as he faced the hill but he drew down his umbrella and hurried on he had a purpose in following her suggestion as to a walk in this direction dark as the grasses were he meant to search the cemetery for the graves of the hazens and see what he could learn from them he met three persons on his way all of whom turned to look at him this was in the village on the hillside he met the hillside he met three persons on his way all of whom turned to look at him this was in the village on the hillside he met nobody wind and rain and mud were all desolation in the prospect and all but desolation in his heart at the brow he first caught sight of the broken stone wall which separated the old burying-place from the road there lay his path happily he could tread it unnoticed and unwatched there was no one within sight high or low he spent a half-hour among the tombs before he struck the name he was looking for another ten minutes before he found those of his wife's family then he had his reward on a low brown shaft he read the names of father and mother and beneath them the following lines sacred to the memory of anitra died june seventh eighteen eighty five aged six years and one day

Starting point is 01:31:35 of such is the kingdom of heaven the twin georgian was mad this record showed that her little sister lay here anitra yes that was the name of her other half he remembered it well georgian had mentioned it to him more than once and this child this anitra had been buried here for fifteen years deeply indignant at his wife's duplicity he took a look at the opposite side of the shaft was still another surprise awaited him here was the record of the brother the brother he had so lately talked to and who had seemingly proven his claim to the name he now read alfred francesco only son of georgian toriti afterwards georgian hazen lost at sea february eighteen ninety five aged twenty-five years an odd inscription opening up conjectures of the most curious and interesting nature but it was not this fact which struck him at the time it was the possibility underlined the simple statement lost at sea this as the rye-necked man had said admitted of a possible resurrection here was no body a mound showed where anitra had been laid away a little mound surmounted by a headstone carved with her name but only these few words gave evidence of the young man's death and inscriptions of this nature are sometimes false the conclusion was obvious it was the brother and not the sister who had reappeared georgian was not only playing him false but deceiving the general public in fact knowingly or unknowingly she was perpetrating a great fraud he was inclined to think unknowingly he began to think unknowingly he began to

Starting point is 01:33:35 regard with less incredulity, Hazen's declaration that the shock of her brother's return had unsettled her mind. Distressed, but no longer the prey of distracting doubt, he again examined the inscription before him and this time noticed its peculiarities. Alfred Francesco, only son of Georgian Toriti, afterwards Georgian Hazen. Afterwards, Georgeon Hazen, afterwards. what was meant by that afterwards that the woman had been married twice and that this alfred francesco was the son of her first husband rather than of the one whose name he bore it looked that way there was a suggestion of italian parentage in the francesco which corresponded well with the decidedly italian toriti perplexed and not altogether satisfied with his discoveries he turned to leave the place when he found himself in the presence of a man carrying a kit of tools and wearing on his face a harsh and discontented expression as this man was middle-aged and had no other protection from the rain than a rubber cape for his shoulders the cause of his discontent was easy enough to imagine though why he should come into this place with tools was more than mr ransom could understand illustration with a caption of

Starting point is 01:35:05 underneath i cut them letters there fifteen years ago now i'm to cut em out hello stranger it was this man who spoke interested in the hazen monument eh well i'll soon give you a reason to be more interested yet do you see this inscription on june seven eighteen eighty five anitra age six and the rest of it well i cut them letters there fifteen years ago now I'm to cut him out. The orders has just come. The youngster didn't die, it seems, and I'm commanded to chip the 15-year-old lie out. What do you think of that? A sweet job for a day like this. More unlikely, it'll put me under a stone myself.

Starting point is 01:35:53 But folks won't listen to reason. It's been here 15 years and 17 days, and now it must come out, rain or shine, before nightfall. before the sun sets so the telegram ran i'll be blessed but i'll ask a handsome penny for this job mr ransom controlling himself with difficulty pointed to the little mound but the child seems to have been buried here he said lord bless you yes a child was buried here but we all knew years ago that it mightn't be hazens the schoolhouse burned and a dozen children with it one of the little bodies was given to mr hayson for burial he believed it was his anitra but a good while after a bit of the dress she wore that day was found hanging to a bush where some gypsies had been there were lots of folks who remembered that them gypsies had passed the schoolhouse a half-hour before the fire and they now say found the little girl hiding behind the woodpile and carried her off no one ever

Starting point is 01:37:05 knew but her death was always thought doubtful by everyone but mr and mrs hayson they stuck to the old id and believed her to be buried under this mound where her name is but one of the children was buried here persisted ransom you must have known the number of those lost and would surely be able to tell if one were missing as must have been the case if the gipsies had carried off anitra before the fire i don't know about that objected the stone cutter there was in those days a little orphan girl almost an idiot who wondered about this town staying now in one house and now in another as folks took compassion on her she was never seen again after that fire if she was in the school-house that day as she sometimes was the number would be made up no one was left to tell us it was an awful time sir the village hasn't gone got over it yet mr ransom made some sympathetic rejoinder and withdrew towards the gateway but soon came strolling back the man had arranged his tools and was preparing to go to work it seems as it the family was pretty well represented here remarked ransom is it the girl herself anitra i believe you called her who has ordered this record of her death removed oh no you don't know them hazens there's one of em who has quite a story the twin of this anitra she lived to grow up and have a lot of money left her if you lived in sitford or lived in new york you'd know all about her for her name's been in the papers a lot this week she's a great lady who married and left her husband all in one day and for what reason do you think we know because she don't keep no secrets from her old friends she's found this sylain's found this sylain's

Starting point is 01:39:05 and it's her as has ordered me to chip away this name she wants it done to-day because she's coming here with this gal she's found folks say she ran across her in the street and knew her at once can you guess how from her name lord no from what i hear she hadn't any name from her looks she saw her own self when she looked at her how interesting how very interesting stammered mr ransom feeling his newly won conviction shaken again quite remarkable the whole story and so is this inscription he added pointing to the words georgian toriti etc did the woman have two husbands and was the alfred hayson whose death at sea is commemorated here the son of toriti or of hazen of toriety grumbled the man evidently displeased at the question a black-browed devil who it won't do to talk about here mrs hayson was only a slip of a gal when she married him and as he didn't live but a couple of months folks have sordaig forgiven her and forgotten him to us mrs hayson was always mrs hayson and alf well he was just alf hazen too a lad with too much good in him to perish in them murderous waters a thousand miles from home so they still believed hastened dead no intimation of his return had as yet reached sitford this was what ransom wanted to know but there was still much to learn should he venture an additional question no that would show more than a stranger's interest in a topic so purely local better leave well enough alone and quit the spot before he committed himself

Starting point is 01:41:02 uttering some commonplace observation about the fatality attending certain families he nodded a friendly good-bye and made for the entrance as he stepped below the brow of the hill he heard the first click of the workman's hammer on the chisel with which he proposed to eliminate the word anitra from the list of the hastened dead end of chapter eight chapter nine of the chief legate by and anna catherine green this lebervox recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter nine hunters inn when mr ransom re-entered the hotel which he did under a swoop of wind which turned his umbrella inside out and drenched him through in an instant it was to find the house in renewed turmoil happily explained by the landlady whom he ran across on the stairs oh mr johnson she cried as she edged by him with a pile of bed-linen on her arm please excuse all this fuss another guest is coming i have just got a telegram a famous lawyer from new york our house will be full to-night where will you put him inquired mr ransom with a good-natured air there seemed to be no unoccupied rooms on this hall more's the pity she sighed with a half-inquiring half-deprecatory look at this fortunate first-comer i shall have to put him below poor man i'm afraid he won't like it but mr ransom remained silent but-but she went on with a sudden cheerfulness i will make it up in the supper that shall be as good a one as our kitchen will provide four city guests all in one day that's a good many for this quiet hotel four retorted mr ransom as he turned towards his own door the number has grown by two since i went out

Starting point is 01:43:08 oh didn't i tell you the lady her name's mrs ransom brings her sister with her the little girl who yes i am coming this latter to some perplexed domestic down the hall who had already called her twice i mustn't stand talking here she apologised as she hurried away but do take care of yourself you are dreadful wet how i wish the weather would clear up mr ransom wished the same to say nothing of his own inconvenience it was a source of anxiety to him that she should have to ride these inevitable ten miles in such a chilling downpour besides a storm of this kind complicated matters gave him less sense of freedom shut him in and as it were with the mystery he was there to unravel but which for some reason hardly explainable to himself filled him with such a sense of foreboding that he had moments in which he thought only of escape but his part must be played and he prepared himself to play it well having changed his clothes and warmed himself with a draught of whisky he sat down at his table and was busy writing when the maid came in to ask if he could wait for his supper till the coach came or have it earlier and served in his own room with an air of petulance he looked up wrapped on the table and replied here here here i'm too busy to meet strangers an early supper and an early bed that's the way i get through my work the girl stared and went softly out work that sitting at the table and just putting words on paper if it was beds he had to drag around now or a dozen hungry clamoring men to feed all at once and all with the best cuts or stairs to run up fifty times a day or-but i need not

Starting point is 01:45:08 fill out her thought it made her voluble in the kitchen and secured him the privacy which his incognito demanded his supper over he waited feverishly for the coach which ordinarily was due at seven in the evening to-night it bade fair to be late owing to the bad condition of the roads and the early darkness the wind had gone down but it still rained not quite so tempestuously as when he roam the cemetery but steadily enough to keep eaves and branches dripping the sound of this ceaseless drip was eerie enough to his strange senses waiting as he was for an event which might determine the happiness or the misery of his life he tried to forget it and wrote diligently putting down words whose meaning he did not stop to consider so that he had something to show to prying eyes if such should ever glance through his papers but the sound had got on his brain and presently became so insistent that he rose again and flung his window up to see if he were deceived in thinking he heard a deep roar mingling with the incessant patter a roar which the wind had hitherto prevented him from separating from the general turmoil but which now was apparent enough to call for some explanation he had made no mistake a steady sound of rushing water filled the outside air a fall was near a fall by means of which no doubt the factories were run why had he not thought of this why had it sound held a note of menace for him awakening feelings he did not understand and from which he sought to escape a factory fall swollen by the rain what was there in this to make his hand shake and cause the deepening night to seem positively hateful to him with a bang he closed the window then he softly threw it up again surely he had heard the noise of wheels splashing through the pools of the highway the coach was coming and with it what his room was in the gable end facing the road

Starting point is 01:47:37 from it he could look directly down on the porch of entrance a fact which he had thankfully noted at his first look as he heard the bustle which now broke out below and caught the gleam of a lantern coming round the corner of the house he softly stepped to his lamp and put it out then took his stand at the window the coach was now very near he could hear the straining of the harness and the shouts of the driver in another moment it drew lumberingly up a man from the hotel advanced with an umbrella a young lady was helped out who standing one moment in the full glare of the lights thrown upon her from the open door showed him the face and form he knew so well and loved yes loved for all her mystery as he knew by the wild beating of his heart and the irresistible impulse he felt to rush down and receive her in his arms to her great terror doubtless, but to his own boundless satisfaction and delight. But strong as the temptation was, he did not yield to it. Something in her attitude, as she stood there, talking earnestly to the driver, held him spellbound and alert. All was not right.

Starting point is 01:49:00 There was passion in her movements and in her voice. What she said drew the heads of landlady and made from, the open door and caused the man with the lantern to peer past her into the coach and backward along the road what had happened nothing that concerned the lawyer mr ransom could see him disentangling himself from the coverings in front where he had ridden with the driver but the sister was not there no other lady got out of the coach even after his young wife had finished her conversation with the driver and disappeared into the house how can i stand this thought mr ransom as the coach finally rattled and swished away towards the stable i must hear i must see i must know what is going on down there this because he heard voices in the open hall crossing to his own doorway he listened his wife and mr harper had stepped into the office close by the front door he could hear now and then a word of what they said but not all venturing a step further he leaned over the balustrade which extended almost up to his own door this was better he could now catch most of the words and sometimes a sentence they all referred to the sister temper her own way deaf would walk in all the rain and slush a strange character you can't imagine and other similar phrases uttered in a passionate and half-angry voice

Starting point is 01:50:36 then ejaculations from mrs dio and a word or two of caution or injunction in the polished tones of the lawyer followed by a sudden rush towards the staircase over which he was leaning show me my room rang up in georgian's bell-like tones then i'll tell you what to do about her she isn't easily managed but she'll get her death expostulated mrs dio to say nothing of her losing her way in this dread darkness let me send not yet broke in his young wife's voice with just a hint of asperity in it she must trudge out her tantrum first i think her idea was to show that she remembered the old place in the lane where she used to pick blackberries you needn't worry about her getting cold she's lived a gypsy life too many years to mind wind and wet but it's different with me i'm all in a shiver which is my room please she was now at the head of the stairs mr ransom had closed his door but not latched it and as she turned to go down the hall followed by the chattering landlady he swung it open for an instant and so caught one full glimpse of her beloved figure she was dressed in a long raincoat and had some sort of moddish hat on her head which in spite of its simplicity gave her a highly fashionable air a woman to draw all eyes but such a mystery to her husband such a mystery to all who knew her story or rather her actions for no one seemed to know her story evince did not halt he heard her give this and that order open a door and look in say a word of commendation ask if the key was on her side of the partition then shut the door again and open another ah this looks comfortable she exclaimed in great satisfaction is that my bag put it down please i'll open it now if you leave me a moment alone i'll soon be ready but you mustn't expect me to eat till anitra comes i couldn't do that oh she's a dreadful trial mrs dio you have a motherly face and i can tell you that the girl is just eating up my life if she weren't my very self deafened by hard

Starting point is 01:53:02 usage and rendered coarse and willful by years of a miserable and half-starved life i couldn't bear it especially after what i've sacrificed for her i've parted with my husband but i can't talk i can't i would not have said so much if you hadn't looked so kind all this her husband heard followed by a sob or two quickly checked however by a high-strained laugh and the gay remark i'm wet enough but she'll be dripping i'm afraid she'll have to have her supper in her room she got out at the new schoolhouse and started to come through the lane it must be a weltering pool if i'm dressed in time i'll come down and meet her at the door meanwhile don't wait for us give mr harper his supper her door her door closed then suddenly opened again. If she don't come in in ten minutes, let someone go to the head of the lane, but be sure it's a careful person who won't startle her.

Starting point is 01:54:03 I've got to put on another dress, so don't bother me. I'll hear her when she enters her own room and will speak to her then. If I dare, I'm not sure that I shall. And the door shut too again, this time with a snap of the lock. Quiet reigned once more in the hall,

Starting point is 01:54:22 save for Mrs. Z. Dio's muttered exclamations as she made her laborious way downstairs. Had this good woman been less disturbed and not in so much of a hurry, she might have noted that the door of her literary guest's room was ajar and stopped to ask why the lamp remained unlit. For five minutes, for ten minutes, he watched and listened, passing continually to and fro from door to window, but his vigilance remained unrewarded by any further movement in the hall or by the sight of an approaching figure up the road he began to feel odd and was asking himself what sort of foolwork this was when a clatter of voices rose below followed by heavy steps on the veranda one or two men were going out and as it seemed to him the landlady too for he heard her say just as the door closed let me on a head she must see a woman's kind face first poor child or we shall not succeed in getting her in i know all about these wild ones

Starting point is 01:55:35 end of chapter nine chapter ten of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva part two the call of the waterfall chapter x two doors the enthusiasm the expectation in mrs deo's voice were unmistakable this good woman believed in this rescued waif of turbulent caprices and gipsy ways and from this moment he began to believe in her too and consequently to share some of the excitement which had now become prevalent all through the house his suspense was destined to be short while he was straining his eyes to see what might be going on down the road a small crowd of people came round the corner of the house in their midst walked a woman with a shawl or cape over her head a fierce and willful figure which shook off the hand kind mrs deo laid on her arm and shrank as the great front door fell open sending forth a flood of light which to one less wedded to wild ways and outdoor living promised a hospitable cheer georgian's form muttered ransom involuntarily to himself and georgian's face he felt obliged to add as the light fell broadly across her but not georgian's ways and not georgian's nature he impetuously finished as she slipped out of sight then the mystery of the brother came rushing over him and he yielded himself again to the wonder of the situation till he was reawakened to realities by the shuffling feet on the stairway and the raised tones of mrs deo as she tried to make herself understood by her new and somewhat difficult

Starting point is 01:57:47 guest a maid followed in their wake and from some as yet unexplored region below there rose the sound of clattering dishes it was a trying moment for him he longed for another glimpse of the girl but feared to betray his own curiosity to the two women who accompanied her should he be forced to allow her to enter her room unseen might he not better run some small risk of detection he had escaped discovery before wasn't it possible for him to escape it again he finally compromised matters by first flinging his door wide open and then retreating to the other end of the room where the shadows appeared heavy enough to hide him from this point he cast a look down the hall which was in a direct line from his present standpoint and was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the girl with her face turned in his direction her companions on the contrary were standing with their backs to him one beside the door she had just thrown open the other at his wife's door on which she had just given a significant rap such was the picture the girl absorbed all his attention the shawl a gay one with colours in it had fallen from her head and was trailing wet and bedraggled over an equally bedraggled skirt soused with wet her hair dishevelled and all her garments awry with the passion of her movements she yet made his heart stand still as with a sullen look at those about her she rushed into the room prepared for her use and slammed the door behind her with a quick cry of mingled rage and relief for with all these drawbacks of manner and appearance she was the living picture of georgian so like her indeed that he could well understand now the shock which his darling received when in the unconsciousness of possessing a living sister she had encountered in street or store or wherever they had first met this living reproduction of herself

Starting point is 02:00:06 no wonder she became confused as to her duty he muttered i even feel myself becoming confused as to mine bring me up something to eat he now heard this latest comer shout from her doorway i don't want tea and i don't want soup i want meat meat and i shan't go down afterwards either i'm going to stay right here i've seen enough of people i don't know and of my sister too she was cross to me because i hated the coach and wanted to walk and she shan't come into my room till i tell her to don't forget it's meat i want just meat and something sweet pudding's good all shocking to mr ransom's taste but more so to his heart for notwithstanding the coarseness of the expressions the voice was georgians and laden with a hundred memories he was still struggling with the agitation of this discovery when he heard mrs deo give another tap on his wife's door this time it was unlocked and pushed softly open and through the crack thus made some whispered orders were given these seemed to satisfy mrs dio give another tap on his wife's door this time it was unlocked and pushed softly open and through the crack thus made some whispered orders were given these seemed to satisfy mrs dio for she called the maid to her and together they hurried down the hall to a rear staircase communicating with the kitchen this was fortunate for him for if they had turned his way he would have had to issue from his room and take open part in the excitement of the moment a few minutes of quiet now supervened during these he decided that if he must keep up this watch and nothing now could deter him from doing so he must take a position consistent with his assumed character detection by georgian was what he now feared whatever happened she must not get the smallest glimpse of him or be led by any indiscretion on his part

Starting point is 02:01:57 to suspect his presence under the same roof as herself yet he must see all hear all that was possible to him for this a continuance of the present conditions an open door and no light were positively requisite but how avert the comment which this unusual state of things must awaken if noticed but one expedient suggested itself he would light a cigar and sit in the window if questioned he would say that he was engaged in deciding how he would end the story he was writing that such contemplation called for darkness but above all for good air that had the weather been favorable he would have obtained the latter by opening the window but it being so bad he could only open the door certain eccentricities are allowable in authors this settled he proceeded to take a chair and envelop himself in smoke with eyes fixed on the dimly lighted vista of the hall before him he waited what would happen next would his wife reappear? No. Supper was coming up. He could hear dishes rattling on the rear stairway, and in another moment

Starting point is 02:03:20 saw the maid coming down the hall with a large tray in her hands. She stopped at Anita's door, knocked, and was answered by the harsh command, set it down. I'll get it for myself. The maid set it down. Next instant,

Starting point is 02:03:36 Mrs. Ransom's door opened. Don't be too generous with me, he heard her call softly out i can't eat i'm too upset for much food tea she whispered and some nice toast tell mrs deo that i want nothing else she will understand the maid nodded and disappeared down the hall just as a bare arm was thrust out from anitra's door and the tray drawn in a few minutes later the other tray came up and was carried into mrs ransom's room the contrast in the way the two trays had been received struck him as showing the difference between the two women especially after he had been given an opportunity as he was later of seeing the ferocious way in which the food brought to anitra had been disposed of but i anticipate the latter tray had not yet been pushed again into the hall and mr ransom was still smoking his first cigar when he heard the lawyer's voice in the office below asking to have pin and ink placed in the small reception room this recalled him to the real purpose of his wife's presence in the house and also assured him that the opportunity would soon be given him for another glimpse of her before the evening was over it was also likely to be a full face one as she would have to advance several steps directly towards him

Starting point is 02:05:09 before taking the turn leading to the front staircase he awaited the moment eagerly the hour for signing the will had been set at nine o'clock but it was surely long past that time now no the clock in the office is striking it is just nine would she recognize the summons assuredly for with the last stroke she lifts the latch of her door and comes out she has exchanged her dark dress for a light one and has arranged her hair in the manner he likes best, but he scarcely notes these changes in the interest he feels in her intentions and the manner in which she proceeds to carry out her purpose. She does not advance at once to the staircase, but creeps first to her sister's door, where she stands listening for a minute or so in an attitude of marked anxiety, then with a gesture in her gesture. expressive of repugnance and alarm she steps quickly forward and disappears down the staircase without vouchsafing one glance in his direction his vision of her as she looked in that short passage from room to staircase was momentary only but it left him shuddering never before had he seen resolve burning to a white heat in the human countenance

Starting point is 02:06:38 there was something abnormal in it, taken with his knowledge of her face in its happier and more wholesome aspects. The innocent, affectionate young girl, whose soul he had looked upon as a weeded garden, had become in a moment to his eyes, a suffering, determined, deeply concentrated woman of unsuspected power and purpose. A suggestion of wildness in her air added to the the mysterious impression she made an impression which rendered this instant memorable to him and set his pulses beating to a tune quite new to them what was she going to do sign away all her property beggar her airs for he could not say what no even such a resolution could not account for her remarkable expression of concentrated will there was in her distracted mind some of more tragic import than this and he dared not question what dared not even approach this woman who less than a week before had linked herself to him for life the uneasy light in those fixed and gleaming eyes betrayed a reason too lightly poised he feared any additional shock for her better that she should go down undisturbed to her adviser who bore a reputation which insured a judicious use of his power what if she were about to will away her fortune to the man she called brother he himself had no use for her wealth her health and happiness were all that concerned him and these possibly depended on her being allowed to go her own way without interfere

Starting point is 02:08:28 but oh for eyes to see into the room into which she had withdrawn with the lawyer for eyes to see into her heart for eyes to see into the future his suspense presently became so great that he could no longer control himself throwing up the window he thrust his head out into the rain and felt refreshed by the icy drops falling on his face and neck but the roar of the waterfall rang to persist in his ears and he hastily closed the window again there was something in the incessant boom of that tumbling water which strangely disturbed him he could better stand suspense than that if only the wind would bluster again that at least was intermittent in its fury and gave momentary relief to thoughts strained to an unbearable tension afterwards only a short time afterwards he wondered that he had given himself over to such extreme feeling at this especial moment her appearance when she came quietly back with mrs dyo chatting and smiling behind her was natural enough and though she did not speak herself the tenor of the landlady's remarks was such as to show that they had been conversing about old days when the two little girls used to ransack her cupboards for their favorite cookies and when their united pranks were the talk of the town as they passed down the hall mrs dea garrulously remarked you were never separated except on that dreadful day of the schoolhouse burning that day you were sick and please the words leaped from georgian in terror and she almost threw her hand against the other's mouth i-i can't bear it the good lady paused gurgled an apology and stooped for the tray which disfigured the sightliness of the neatly kept hall then nodding towards a maid whom she had placed on watch at the extreme end of the hall she muttered some assurance of the as to this woman's faithfulness and turned away with a cordial good-night georgian watched her go with a strange and lingering intentness or so it seemed to ransom then slowly entered her room and locked the door

Starting point is 02:11:00 the incidents of the day so far as she was concerned appeared to be at an end end of chapter ten chapter eleven of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this librovoc's recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter eleven half-past one in the morning nothing now held mr ransom to his room the two women in whose fate he was so nearly concerned his sister-in-law and his wife had both retired and there was no other eye he feared indeed he courted an interview with the lawyer if only it could be naturally obtained and he had little reason to think it could not so he went downstairs in a moment he seemed to have passed from the realm of dreams to that of reality here was no mystery here was life as he knew it walking boldly into the office he ran his eye over the half-dozen men who sat there and picking out the lawyer from the rest sauntered easily up to him and sat down my name is johnston said he i'm from new york like yourself i believe the lawyer with a twinkle in his light blue eye answered with a cordial nod and in two minutes a lively conversation had begun between them on purely impersonal subjects suited to the intelligence of the crowd they were in this did not last however an opportunity soon came to-recent for them to stroll off together and presently mr ransom found himself closeted with this man who he had reason to believe was the sole holder of the key to the secret which was devouring him a bottle of wine was on the table between them and some cigars as mr ransom filled the two glasses he spoke i have to thank you he began but saw immediately that he had made a wrong start for why what mr johnston asked the other coldly for giving me this opportunity to speak alone with you ransom explained with a nervous gesture

Starting point is 02:13:33 an hour of unrestrained gossip is so necessary to me after a day of hard work perhaps you don't know that i am an author have been one for seven whole hours i find it exhausting you could give me great relief by talking a little on some foreign subject say on the one now engrossing everyone in the house the twin ladies from new york you were in the same coach with them did they quarrel and did the most willful of the two insist on getting out at the foot of the hill and walking up through the lane i doubt if i have anything to say to mr johnston on this subject was the wary reply what if he added another name to johnston it would make no appreciable difference the driver is a loquacious fellow talk to him mr ransom felt his heart fail him he surveyed closely the mouth which had uttered this offhand sentence and saw that it was set in a line there was no mistaking little enlightenment was to be got from this man yet he made one more effort did my wife sign the will he asked all pretense aside this is a very important matter to me mr harper not on account of the money involved but because the doing of this simple act seemed to require such an effort on her part you are mistaken was the quick reply harshly accentuated she did just what she wanted to do she was not in the least coerced unless it was by circumstances circumstances but that is what i mean they seem to have been too much for her i want to understand these circumstances the lawyer honoured him with his first direct look i don't understand them myself said he you don't no mr ransoms set down the wine-glass he had raised halfway to his lips you have simply followed her orders you have said it your wife is a woman of much more character than you think she has amazed me she's amazing me i am here she is here only a few boards separate us but iron bars could not be more effectual i dare not approach her door dare not ask her to accept from me the natural protection of a lover and husband instinct holds me back or her will which may not be stronger than mine but is certainly more dominant

Starting point is 02:16:26 lawyers do not believe much in instinct as a usual thing but i should advise confidence in this one a woman with a tremendous will like that of mrs ransom should be allowed a slack tether the day will arrive when she will when she will will come to you herself this i have said before i can say nothing more to you to-night then there is nothing in the will you have drawn up to show that she has lost her affection for me the lawyer drained his glass i have not been given permission to declare its terms said he when his glass was again upon the table in other words i am to know nothing exclaimed his exasperated companion not from me and this this ended the conversation ransom withdrew immediately upstairs at ten o'clock he retired the last look he cast down the hall had shown him the drowsy figure of the maid still sitting at her watch it seemed to ensure a peaceful night but he had little expectation of sleep though the wind had quieted down and the rain fell with increasing gentleness the roar of the waterfall surged through all his thoughts which in themselves were turbulent he did sleep however slept peacefully till half-past one when he and all in the house were startled by a wild and piercing cry rising from one of the rooms terror was in the sound and in an instant every door was open save the two which were shut upon georgian and her twin sister end of chapter eleven chapter twelve of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this libervox recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter twelve georgian mr ransom was the first one in the hall he had not undressed himself expecting a totally sleepless night it was his figure then that the maid encountered as she came running from her post at the end of the corridor

Starting point is 02:18:43 which room which he gasped out ignoring every precaution in his blind terror this one i am sure it came from this one she declared knocking loudly on anitra's door there was a rustle within a cry which was half a son sob then the sound of a hand fumbling with the lock meanwhile mr ransom had bent his ear to his wife's door all still in here he cried not a sound something dreadful has happened just then anitra's door fell back and a wild image confronted him and such others as had by this time collected in the passageway with only a shawl covering her night-dress the gipsy-like creature stood clawing the air and answering the looks that appealed to her with wild gurgles till suddenly her hot glances fell on roger ransom when she instantly became rigid and stammered out she's gone i saw her black figure go by my window she called out that the waterfall drew her she went by the little balcony in the roof the roof was slippery with the rain and she fell that's why i screamed but she got up again what is she going to do at the waterfall stop her stop her she hasn't steady feet like me and i wasn't really angry i liked her i liked her sobs choked the rest her terror was infectious mr ransom reeled then flung himself at georgian's door it resisted but the silence within told him that she was not there neither was she in anitra's room they could all look in and see it bare to the window you saw her climbing past there he cried forgetting she was deaf yes yes she chattered catching his meaning from his pointing finger there's a balcony she must have jumped on it from her own window she didn't come in here see the door is locked on her side

Starting point is 02:20:45 this was true i woke and saw her my eyes are like lynxes i got out of bed to watch she fell the noise of a breaking lock snapped her-he was true i woke and saw her my eyes are like lynxes i got out of bed to watch she fell the noise of a breaking lock snapped words in two. One of the men present had flung himself against this communicating door. Immediately they all crowded into the adjoining room. It was empty and bitterly cold and wet. An open window explained why, and possibly the letter lying on the bureau inscribed with her husband's name would explain the rest. But he stopped to read no letters now. Show me the way to those falls, he cried, pocketing the letter, as he rushed by the disheveled anitra into the open hall i'm her husband roger ransom who goes with me he who does is my friend for life the clerk and one or two others rushed for their coats and lanterns he waited for nothing the roar of the waterfall had told him too many tales that day and the will her will just signed georgian they could hear his cry georgian georgian wait wait hear what i have to say thrilled back through the mist as he stumbled on followed by the men waving their lanterns and shouting words of warning he probably never heard then his cry further off and fainter

Starting point is 02:22:11 georgian georgian then silence and the slow drizzle of rain on the soggy walk and soaked roofs with the far-off boom of the waterfall which mrs deo and the trembling maids gazing at the white-eyed anitra shivering in the center of her deserted room tried to shut out by closing window and blind forgetting that she was deaf and only heard such echoes as were thundering in her own mind end of chapter twelve chapter thirteen of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this librovoc's recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter thirteen where the mill-stream runs fiercest two o'clock three o'clock two men were talking below their breaths in the otherwise empty office that air mill-stream never gives up anything it has once caught muttered one into the ear of the other its swiftest fate and in certain places deep as hell dutch jane's body was five months a the bottom of it before it came up at clark's pool the man beside him shivered and his hand roamed nervously towards his breast did jan the dutchman you speak of falling by accident or did he throw himself over from homesickness or some such cause well we don't say on account of his old mother you know we don't say it was called accident the other man rose and walked restlessly to the window half the town is up he muttered the lanterns go by like fireflies poor ransom it's a hopeless job i fear and again his hand wandered to that breast pocket where the edge of a document could be seen

Starting point is 02:24:15 i have half a mind to go out myself anything is better than sitting here but he sat down just the same mr harper was no longer a young man the storms bating observed the one but not the cold throw on a stick i'm freezing the other man obeyed then looking up stared a girl stood before them in the doorway anitra with cheeks ablaze and eyes burning her travelling dress flat tapping damp about her heels and on her head the red shawl she preferred to any hat behind her shoulder peered the anxious face of mrs i'm going out cried the former in the loud and unmodulated voice of the death he don't come back he don't come back i'm going to see why the lawyer rose and bowed then resolutely shook his head he did not know whether she had appealed to him or not she had not looked at him had not looked at any one but he felt that he must protest i beg you not to do so he began i really beg you to remain here and wait with me you can do no good and the result may be dangerous but he knew he was talking to deaf ears even before the landlady murmured she doesn't hear a word i've talked and talked to her i've used every sign and motion i could think of but it's done no good she would dress and she will go out you'll see the next minute her prophecy came true the wild thing with a quick whirl of her life body was at the front door and in another instant had flashed through it and was gone it is my duty to follow her said the lawyer help me on with my coat i'll find someone to guide me here's a lantern excuse me for not going with you pleaded mrs deal but someone must watch the house the new yorker nodded took the lantern offered him and went stoically out he met a man on the walk in front he was faced his

Starting point is 02:26:25 way and was panting heavily hello said he what news they haven't found her but there's no doubt she went over the fall the fellow who calls himself her husband has just been reading a letter they say she left on her bureau for him it was a good-bye i reckon for you can't tear him from the spot he says he'll stay there till daylight i couldn't stand the sight of his misery myself besides it's mortal cold i've just been running to get warm who was the girl who just went scurrying by out of here it's no place for women down there one lost gala's enough that's what i think muttered the lawyer hurrying on he was not a very imaginative man some of his best friends thought him a cold and prosaic one but he never forgot that walk or the sensations accompanying it dark as it still was the way would have been impassable for a stranger had it not been for the god given by the noisy passing to and fro of the awakened townspeople those coming from the river approached in a direct line from one spot those going to it advanced in the same line and to the same spot a ring of lanterns marked it it was near very near where the heavy waters fell into a deep pool no one now spoke of anitra she had evidently been warned by her first encounter to move with less precipitancy as he approached the place of central interest he moved more warily too the ground was very bad he had never walked in such slush once and again he tripped once he came down upon his face the boom of the waters was now very near he could see nothing but the flicker of the lanterns but he felt the near rush of the stream and presently was at its very edge startled by the nearness of his escape for he had almost lost his footing by his sudden halt he started back looked again at the lanterns took a turn and came upon the dozen or more men bending over the edge of the stream where the waters ran most swiftly but he did not join them another sight attracted his eyes and presently himself this was the sight of ransom crouched on the wet earth, staring down at a slip of paper he held in his hands. A lantern set in the sand at his feet,

Starting point is 02:29:04 sent its feeble rays over his face and possibly over the paper. But he was no longer reading it. He was simply so lost in its sorrowful contents that all power of movement had deserted him. Harper approached to his side, but he did not address him. Something stirred in his own breast, and kept him silent but there was another person near who was not so deterred as harper stood watching ransoms crouched almost insensible figure he perceived a slight dark form steel from the shadows and lay a hand on the stooping man's shoulder then as he failed to move or give any token of feeling this touch he heard anitra's voice say in accents almost musical you will get ill here you are not used to the cold and the night air come back to the house georgian would wish it the name roused him and he looked up their eyes met and a strange gleam a shock perhaps of sympathetic feeling flashed upon either face the lawyer saw and instinctively retreated from out the circle of light cast by the lantern but the men at the stream's edge heard nothing the flash of something white had caught their eyes and one man was reaching for it georgian came in astonished repetition from the bereaved man's lips

Starting point is 02:30:37 she would wish it persisted the other with still deeper and more urgent meaning illustration a slight dark form stole from the shadows and laid a hand on the stooping man's shoulder then in a whisper so penetrating that even mr harper caught its least inflection through all the thunder of the waterfall she loved you ah the enchantment the feminine persuasiveness the heart-moving sincerity which breathed through that simple phrase from lips so untutored it seemed marvellous ransom was not insensible to its power for he quivered under her hand and his eyes took on a look of wonder but he made no attempt to answer even by a sign he seemed content for that one instant just to listen and to look the man hanging over the stream drew back his arm he had been deceived by a bit of froth some of it clung yet to his fingers come entreated the girl her face emerging softly into the light as she stooped lower over the lantern come she had taken him by the hand and was drawing him gently upward with a leap he was on his feet and had thrown her off some memory had come to make her entreaty hateful no he cried no here is my place and here will i stay you are a stranger to me you drove her to this act and you shall not cajole me into forgetting it he had spoken loudly not so much because he remembered her affliction but because of the roar of the fall and his own overwhelming passion the result was that the lawyer caught every word possibly the workers at the water-edge did also for some of them quickly turned their heads

Starting point is 02:32:35 but she though she stopped short in the spot where he had pushed her gave no evidence of hearing his words or even of resenting his manner won't you come she falteringly pleaded pointing towards her pointing towards her towards the house with its twinkling lights you are cold you are shuddering they will do the searching who don't mind night or wet follow anitra anitra who is so sorry no he shouted his tone his look were almost those of a madman he even put out his hands towards her in repulsion he seemed to cast her away this gesture if not his words reached her understanding the lawyer's saw her sway fling back her young head with its dishevelled locks to the night and fall moaning pitifully to the ground here she lay still with the wet grass all about her and the last lingering drops of rain beating on her huddled form mr harper started to raise her for ransom stood petrified but no sooner had the lawyer made his presence known by this impetuous movement than ransom woke from his trance and darting down lifted the girl in his arms and began moving with her towards the house as he passed the lawyer he muttered between set teeth she's cost me all my misery but she looks too much like georgian for me to see another man touch her god will care for my poor darling's body and of chapter thirteen chapter fourteen of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this librovoc's recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter fourteen a detective's work morning the living household was about its tasks for all the horror of the night before and the still unrelieved suspense as to the

Starting point is 02:34:44 fate of one of its members the maid who had set on watch in the upper hall for so many hours the evening before was again at her post but this time with her eye fixed only on one door the door behind which slept the exhausted anitra ransom's room was empty he was in the sitting-room below closeted with the lawyer someone had been there before them the tray of bottles and glisted the glassed with the lawyer someone had been there before them the tray of bottles and glasses had been removed from the table and in their place were to be seen a woman's damaged hat and a small tortoise-shell comb mr harper's hand was on the former which was wound about with a wet veil i think i recognise this said he at least i have a distinct impression of having seen it before it was picked up with the veil still on it near the entrance of the lane explained ransom then there can be no doubt that it is the hat miss hayson wore during her journey she tossed it off the moment her foot touched the ground and taking the shawl from her neck pulled it over her head instead you remember that she had no hat on when they brought her in i remember this is miss hayson's hat without any doubt the lawyer eyed the speaker with curate interest there was something in his tone that he did not understand and this he ventured laying a respectful finger on the comb found in the open field between the house and the mill stream do you recognise it no georgian wore such combs but i cannot absolutely say that this is hers i can you see this little gold work at the top well i have an eye

Starting point is 02:36:44 for such things and i noticed this comb in her hair last night there were two of them just alike instinctively the two men set with their eyes fixed for a minute on this comb then equally instinctively they both looked up and gazed at each other long and hard it was the lawyer who first spoke i think that we should have no further secrets between us said he here is mrs ransom's will there is a name mentioned in it which i do not know perhaps you do here he laid the document on the table mr ransom eyed it but did not take it up instead he drew a crumed paper from his own pocket and handing it to the lawyer said first i should like you to read the letter which she left behind for me my feelings as a husband would lead me to hold it as a sacred legacy from all eyes but my own but there is a mystery hidden in it a mystery which i must penetrate and you are the only man who can assist me in doing so the lawyer lowering his eyes to hide their own suspicious glint open the paper and carefully read these lines forgive my troubles are too much for me i'm going to a place of rest the only place and the only rest possible to one in my position i don't blame anybody least of all do i blame anitra it was not her fault that she was brought up rudely or that she knows no restraint in love or in hate be kind to her for my sake and if any one else claims her or offers to take her from you resist them i give her entirely to you it's a more priceless gift than you think much more priceless than the one which i take from you by my death i could never have been happy with you you could never have been happy with me

Starting point is 02:38:46 fate stood between us a darker and more inexorable fate than you in your kindly experience of life could imagine else why do i plunge to my death with your ring on my finger and your love in my heart georgian ravings questioned ransom hoarsely as mr harper's eyes rose again to his face it would seem so assented the lawyer yet there is intelligence in all the lines and the will read the will there is no lack of intelligent purpose there little as it accords with the feeling she exhibits here for her sister's she leaves her nothing and does not even mention her name her personal belonging she bequeathes to you but her realty which comprises the bulk of her property i believe she divides somewhat unequally i own between you and a man named auchencloss it is he i want to ask you about have you ever heard her speak of him josiah aalchencloss of st louis missouri read mr ransom no the name is new to me didn't she tell you anything about him when she gave you her instructions not a word she said you will hear from him if ever this will is published he has a right to the money and i entreat you to show your respect for me by seeing that he gets it without any unnecessary trouble that was all she said or would say your wife was a woman of powerful character mr ransom my little arts counted for nothing in any difference of opinion between us

Starting point is 02:40:42 ouching-closs repeated ransom another unknown quantity in the problem of my poor girl's life what a tangle do you wonder that i'm overcome by it anitra the so-called brother and now this ouching-closs right ransom i share your confusion do you the words came very slowly penetratingly haven't you some idea some strange possibly half-formed notion or secret intuition which might afford some clue to this labyrinth i have been told that lawyers have a knack of getting at the bottom of human conduct and affairs you have had a wide experience does it not suggest some answer to this problem which will harmonize all its discordant elements and make clear its various complications mr harper shook his head but there was a restrained excitement in his manner which was not altogether the reflection of that which dominated ransom and the latter observing it leaned across the table till their faces almost touched do you guess my thought he whispered look at me and tell me if you guess my thought the lawyer hesitated eyeing well the trembling lip the changing color the wide-open deeply flushed eyes so near his own then with a slow smile of extraordinary subtlety if not of comprehension answered in a barely audible murmur i think i do i may be mad but i think i do the other sank back with a sigh charged with what the lawyer interpreted as relief mr harper receded himself and for a moment neither looked at the other and neither spoke it would almost seem as if neither breathed

Starting point is 02:42:40 then as a bird deceived by the silence hopped to the window sill and began its cheap cheap mr ransom broke the spell by saying in low but studiously business-like tones have you thought it worth while to study the ground under her window or anywhere else for footprints it might not be amiss what do you think about it let us go readily acquiesced the lawyer's rising to his feet with an honest show of alacrity after which i must telegraph to new york i was expected back to-day i know it but your duties there will keep these here cannot your hand on the promise that you will respect my secret till well till i can assure you that my intuitions are devoid of any real basis the lawyer's palm met his then they started to go out but before they had passed the door mr ransom came back lifting the comb from the table he put it in his pocket as he did this his eye flashed sideways on the other there were strange hints and present in it which brought the color to the usually imperturbable lawyer's cheek in going out they passed the office door a dozen men were hanging about smoking and talking among them was a countryman who had just swallowed open-mouthed the story of the past night's tragedy he was now speaking out his own mind concerning it and this is what these two heard him say as they went by do you know what strikes me as mighty strange that they should clear that stone of the name of anitra just in time to put georgians in its place i call that peculiar i do the lawyer and the husband exchanged a glance mrs ransom had a deep mind the lawyer remarked as the door slammed behind them she apparently thought of everything

Starting point is 02:44:53 ransom directing a look down the street towards the factories and the roaring mill-stream uttered a shuddering sigh they are still searching said he but they will never find her they will never find her the lawyer pulled him away way that's because they search the water we will search the land that's half-water too but it cannot hide every clue you have eyes for the imperceptible use them mr harper use them i will but this is a detective's work do not expect too much from me i expect nothing i do not dare to let us tread very softly that is all and be careful to talk low if we have anything to say. By this time they had rounded the corner of the house and entered a narrow walk, flagged with brick, which connected the space in front with the rear offices and garden. This walk ran close to the walls which were broken on this side by an ell, projecting, in the direction of the mill stream. It was from the roof of this l that Anitra declared Georgian to have slipped and fallen. Their first care was to glance up.

Starting point is 02:46:09 at the roof it was a sloping one and a nitrous story seemed credible enough when they noted how much easier it would be to drop upon it from the little balcony overhead than to traverse the roof itself and reach the ground beneath without slipping but as they looked longer each face betrayed doubt the descent from the balcony was easy enough but how about the passage from georgian's window to the balcony this ladder was to the one window and was surrounded by an ornamental balustrade high enough to offer a decided obstacle to the adventurous person endeavouring to leap upon it from the adjoining window-ledge however this leap made in the dark and under circumstances inducing the utmost recklessness might look practical enough from the window-ledge itself and mr harper making a remark to this effect proposed that they should examine the ground rather than the house for evidences of mrs ransom's slip and fall as related by anitra the only spot where they could hope to find such was in the one short stretch the width of the ell underlying the edge of the sloping roof but this spot was all flagged as i have already said and when their eyes strayed beyond it to the untilled fields stretching between them and the great rock at the verge of the waterfall from which she was supposed to have taken her fatal leap it was to find them as unproductive of evidence as the brick walk itself not one pair of feet but many had passed that way since early morning the ground showed a mass of impressions of all sizes and shapes amid which it would have been impossible for them without the necessary experience to have followed up the flight of any one person they had come to their task too late feudal decided the lawyer there is no use in our going that way and he turned to look again at the ground in their immediate vicinity as he did so his eye lighted

Starting point is 02:48:29 on the triangular spot where the ell met the side of the house under the kitchen windows here there was no flagging the walk taking a diagonal course from the corner of the l to the kitchen door what are those he asked pointing to two oblong impressions brimming with water which disfigured the centre of this small plot they look like footprints ventured ransom they are footprints decided mr harperts as they stooped to examine the marks and the footprints of a person dropping from a height nothing else explains their depth or general appearance couldn't they be those of a person approaching the l to converse with someone above i see others similar to these in the open place over there beyond the kitchen door it is a trail let us follow it it seems to lead anywhere but towards the water this is an important discovery mr ransom and may lead to conclusions such as we might not otherwise have presumed to entertain especially if we come upon an impression clear enough to point in which direction the person making it was going here's what you want ransom assured him in a low and curiously smothered voice he was evidently greatly excited by this result of their inquiries for all his apparent quiet and precise movements it's a woman's step and that woman was going from the l when she left these tokens of her passage behind her going and as you say not in the direction of the waterfall hush i see some one at the kitchen window let us move warily and be sure not to confound these prints with those of any other person it looks as if a great many people had passed here

Starting point is 02:50:27 yes this is the way to the chicken coops and outhouses but in the ground beyond i think i see a single line of steps again small steps like these where can they be leading they are deep like those of a person running and straggling like those of a person running in the dark see how they waver from the direct line down there turn and almost come up against that woodpile whose steps are these whose mr harper quick i must see where they go our time will not be lost the key to the labyrinth is in our hands the lawyer was in the rear and the eyes of the other were fixed far ahead for this reason perhaps the former allowed himself a quiet shake of the head which might not have encouraged the other so very much had he caught sight of it they were now on the verge of the garden or what would soon be a garden if these rains betokened spring a path ran along its edge and in this path the footsteps they were following lost themselves but they came upon them again among the hillocks of some old potato hills beyond and finally traced them quite across the garden waist to a fence along which they ran blundering from ploughed earth to spots of smoother ground and so back again till they came upon an old turnstile passing through this the two men stopped and looked about them they were in a road ridged with grass and flanked by bushes one end ran east into a wooded valley the other debushed on the highway a few feet to the right of the tavern the lane exclaimed mr harper the lead towards the waterfall was a faint it was in this direction she fled and it is from this point that search must be made for her ransom greatly perturbed for this possibility of secret flight opened vistas of as much

Starting point is 02:52:33 mystery if not of as much suffering as her death in the river glanced at the sodden ground under their feet and thus along the lane to where it lost itself from view among the trees no possible following of steps here he declared a hundred people must have come this way since early morning it's a short cut from the ferry they told me last night that it lessened the distance by fully a quarter of a mile the fairy can she be there or in the woods or on her way to some unknown place far out of our reach the thought is maddening mr harper and i feel as helpless as a child under it shall we get detectives from the county seat or start on the hunt ourselves we might hear something further on to help us we might but i should rather stay on the immediate scene at present ah there comes a fellow in a cart who should be able to tell us something stand by and a la cost him. You needn't show your face. Mr. Ransom turned aside. Mr. Harper waited till the slow-moving horse, dragging a heavily jogging wagon, came alongside, and he had caught the eye of the low, broad-faced farmer-boy who sat on a bag of potatoes and held the reins. Good morning, said he. Bad news, this way. Any better at the ferry, or down east, as you call it hey was the lumbering half-suspicious answer from the startled boy i've heard not down yonder but then a gal threw herself over the waterfall up here last night is that a fact sir i'm mighty curious to know my mother knew them hazins she used to wash for him years ago she told me to bring up these taters and learn all i could about it we don't know much more than that ourselves was the smooth cautious reply the land

Starting point is 02:54:33 lady certainly is missing and she is supposed to have drowned herself then as he noted the fellow's eyes resting with some curiosity on mr ransoms well-clad gentlemanly figure added gravely and with a slight gesture towards the latter the lady's husband the lad's jaw fell and he looked very sheepish excuse me mistress i didn't know he managed to mutter with a slash at his horse which was vainly endeavoring to pull the cart from the rut in which it had stuck. I guess I'll go along to the hotel. I have a bag of taters for Mrs. Dio. But the cart didn't budge, and the lawyer had time to say. Guess you didn't hear anything said about another lady I am interested in. No, talk down your way of a strange young woman seen anywhere on the highway

Starting point is 02:55:28 or about any of the houses between here and the landing. jerusha i did hear a neighbor of mine say something about a stranger gal he saw this very morning met her down by beardslees she was going through the mud on foot as lively as you please asked him the way to the fairy he noticed her because she was pretty and spoke in such a nice way just like a city gal he said is it any one from this hotel added the fellow with a wondering look if so she walked a mile before daylight in mud up to her ankles a girl of powerful grit that with a mighty good reason for catching the train oh there's an early train then asked the lawyer ignoring the others question with unmoved good-humor one i mean before the ten fifty express yes sir or so i've heard i never took it folks don't from here except they're in an awful hurry will you say who the young woman is not not we don't know who she is quietly objected the lawyer and you don't know who she is either he severely added holding the yopping countryman with his eye if you're the man i think you you'll not talk about her unless you're asked by the constable or someone you're you're asked by the constable or someone you're you are bound to answer. And what's more, you'll earn a $5 bill by going back the road you've come and bringing here without any talk or fuss the man you were just telling us about.

Starting point is 02:57:06 I want to have a talk with him, but I don't want anyone but you and him to know this. You can tell him it's worth money if he don't want to come. Do you understand? you bet chuckled the grinning lad a five-dollar bill is mighty clearing to the mind sir but must i turn right back before going on to the hotel and hearing the news we'll help you turn the cart grimly suggested mr harper get up there dauben or whatever your name is here ransom lend a hand there was nothing for the fellow to do but to accept the help proffered and turn his cart with one longing look towards the hotel he jerked at the rain and shouted at the horse which after a few feeble efforts pulled the cart about and started off again in the desired direction sooner done sooner paid shouted the lawyer as lad and cart went jolting off remember to ask for lawyer harper when you come back i won't be far from the office the fellow nodded gave one grinning look back and whipped up his neg the lawyer and said one another it's only a possibility emphasize the former don't lay too much stress upon it let us speak plainly urged ransom mr harper are you sure that you know just what my thought is the time has not come for discussing that question let us defer it there is a fact to be settled first whether the girl no this whether your wife could have john

Starting point is 02:58:49 from her window to the balcony as anitra said it did not look feasible from below but as i then remarked to you our opinion may change when we consider it from above will you go upstairs with me to your wife's room i will go anywhere and do anything you please so that we learn the exact truth but spare me the curiosity of these people the crowd on this side is increasing we will go in by the kitchen door or someone there will show us the way upstairs and in this manner they entered not escaping entirely all curious looks for human nature is human nature whether in the kitchen or parlor in the hall above mr ranson took the precedence as they neared the fatal room he motioned the lawyer to wait till he could ascertain if miss hazen would be disturbed by their intrusion the door which had been broken in between the two rooms could not have been put back very securely and he dreaded incommoding her he was gone but a minute almost as soon as the lawyer started to follow him he could be seen beckoning from poor georgian's door miss hayson is asleep whispered rancum as the other drew near we can look about this room with impunity they both entered and the lawyer crossed at once to the window your wife could never have taken the leap ascribed to her by the woman you call anitra he declared after a minute's careful scrutiny of the conditions the balustrade of the joining balcony is not only in the way but the distance is at least five feet from the extreme end of this window-ledge a woman accustomed to a life of adventure or to the feats of a chimneysium might do it but not a lady of mrs ransom's habits if your wife made her way from this room to the balcony outside her sister's window she did it by means of the communicating door but the door was found locked on this side there is the key in the lock now you are sure of this i was the first one to call attention to it

Starting point is 03:01:06 then began the lawyer judiciously but stopped as he noted the peculiar eagerness of ransom's expression and turned his attention instead to the interior of the room and the various articles belonging to mrs ransom which were to be seen in it the dress your wife wore when she signed her will he remarked pointing to the light green gown hanging on the inside of the door by which they had entered ransom stepped up to it but did not touch it he could see her as she looked in this gown in her memorable passage through the hall the evening before and recalling her expression wondered if they yet understood the nature of her purpose and the determination which gave it such extraordinary vigor mr harper called his attention to two other articles of dress hanging in another part of the room these were her long gray raincoat and the hat and veil she had worn on the train she went out bareheaded and in the plain-surge dress in which she arrived remarked mr harper with a side glance at ransom i wonder if the girl met on the highway was without hat and dressed in black serge. Ransom was silent. Anitra's hat is below, and here is Mrs. Ransoms. She who escaped from this house last night went out bareheaded, repeated the lawyer. Mr. Ransom, moving aside to avoid the probing of the other's eye,

Starting point is 03:02:45 merely remarked, you noticed my wife's dress very particularly, it seems. It was of surge, you say? Yes. I am learned. in stuffs i remarked it when she got into the coach possibly because i was struck by its simplicity and conventional make there was no trimming on the bottom only stitching her sisters was just like it they had the look of being ready made but anitra had no raincoat i remember that her shoulders were wet when she came in from the lane no she had no protection but her blouse black like her dress i presume that her hot blood resented every kind of rap again that sidelong glance from his keen eye she wore a checked silk handkerchief about her neck the one she afterwards put over her head you were on the same train with my wife and sister-in-law ransom now said did you sit near them converse with them that is with mrs ransom i have no reason for deceiving you in that regard replied mr harper i did not come up from new york on the same train they did they must have come up in the morning for when i arrived at the place they call the ferry i saw them standing on the hotel steps ready to step into the coach i spoke to mrs ransom then but only a word my grip-sack had been put under the driver's seat and i saw that i was expected to ride with him notwithstanding the

Starting point is 03:04:24 clemency of the weather. Mrs. Ransom saw it too, and possibly my natural hesitation, for she turned to me after she had seen her sister, safely ensconced inside, and said something about her regret at having subjected me to such inconvenience, but did not offer to make room for me in the body of the coach, though there was room enough, if the other had been the quiet lady, she was herself. but she was not and possibly this was mrs ransom's excuse for her apparent lack of consideration for me before we reached the point where the lane cuts in i became aware of some disturbance behind me and when we really got there i heard first the coach-door opening then your wife's voice raised an entreaty to the driver calling on him to stop before her sister jumped out and hurt herself she is death and very wild was all the explanation she gave after miss hayson had leaped into the wet road and darted from sight into what looked to me in the darkness like a tangled mass of bushes

Starting point is 03:05:43 then she said something about her having had hard work to keep her still till we got this far but that she was sure she would find her way to the hotel and that we mustn't bother us ourselves about it for she wasn't going to anitra and she had run this road too many times when they were children that is all i have to tell of my intercourse with these ladies prior to our appearance at the hotel i think it is right for me to clear the slate ransom who knows what we may wish to write upon it next a slight shiver on ransom's part was the sole answer he gave to this innuendo then both settle themselves to work the eyes of either flashing hither and thither from one small object to another in this seemingly deserted room in the momentary silence which followed the even breathing of the woman in the adjoining room could be distinctly heard it seemed to affect mr ransom deeply though he strove hard to maintain the business-like attitude he had assumed from the beginning of this unofficial examination she has confided nothing more to you since your return from the river bank suggested the lawyer no the word came sharply considering mr ransom's usual manner the lawyer showed surprise but no resentment and turned his attention to the beg both had noted lying open on two chairs nothing equivocal here he declared after a moment's careful scrutiny of its remaining contents the only comment i should make in regard to what i find here is that all the articles are less carefully chosen than you would expect from one of your wife's fondness for fine appointments they were collected in a hurry and possibly by telephone returned the unhappy husband after a shrinking glance into the bag the one she provided in anticipation of her wedding are at the hotel in new york

Starting point is 03:07:52 in the trunks and bags there you will find articles as elegant as you could wish here he turned to the dresser and pointed to the various objects grouped upon it these show that she arranged herself with care for her meeting with you night how did she appear at that interview natural hardly she was much too excited but i had no suspicion of what she was cherishing in her mind i thought her intentions whimsical and endeavored to edge in a little advice but she was in no mood to receive it her mind was too full of what she intended to do here's where she ate her supper he added picking up a morsel of crust from a table set against the wall and so this door was found fastened on this side he proceeded laying his hand on the broken lock it had to be burst open you see and the window was up the carpet as you can tell by look and feeling is still wet with the soaking it got mr harper's air changed to one of reluctant conviction the evidence seems conclusive of your wife having left this room and the house in the remarkable manner stated by miss hayson yet this yet showed that he was not as thoroughly convinced as the first phrase would show but he added nothing to it only stood listening apparently to the even breathing of the sleeper on the other side of this loosely hanging door as he did so his eye encountered the hot dry gaze of mr ransom fixed upon him in a suspense too cruel to prolong and with a sudden change of manner he moved from the door saying significantly as he led the way out let us have a word or two in your own room it is a principle of mine not to trust even the ears of the death with what it is desirable to keep

Starting point is 03:10:03 secret. Had the glance with which he said this lingered a moment longer on his companion's face, he would undoubtedly have been startled at the effect of his own words. But being at heart a compassionate man, or possibly understanding his new client much better than that client supposed, he had turned quite away in crossing the threshold and so missed the conscious flash, which for a moment replaced the sombre and feverish expression that had already aged by ten years the formerly open features of this deeply grieved man once in the hall it was too dark to note further niceties of expression and by the time mr ransom's room was reached purpose and purpose only remained visible in either face as they were crossing the threshold the lawyer wheeled about and cast a quick look behind him i observe said he that you have a full and unobstructed view from here of the whole hall and of the two doors where our interest is centred i presume you kept a strict watch on both last night you let nothing escape you nothing that one could see from this room with a thoughtful air the lawyer swung to the door behind them as it latched the face of mr ransom sharpened he even put out a hand and rested it on a table standing near as if to support himself in anticipation of what the lawyer would say now that they were again closeted together mr harper was not without his reasons for a corresponding agitation

Starting point is 03:11:47 but he naturally controlled himself better and it was with almost a judicial air that he made this long expected but long deferred suggestion you had better tell me now and as explicitly as possible just what is in your mind it will prevent all misunderstanding between us as well as any injudicious move on my part mr ransom hesitated leaning hard on the table then with a sudden burst he exclaimed it sounds like folly and you may think that my troubles have driven me mad but i have a feeling here a feeling here a feeling without any reason or proof to back it, that the woman now sleeping off her exhaustion in Anita's room is the woman I courted and married. Georgian Hazen, now Georgian ransom, my wife. Good, I have made no mistake. That is my thought too, responded the lawyer.

Starting point is 03:12:48 End of Chapter 14. Chapter 15 of the chief legatee by Anna Catherine Green. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. recording by Tony Oliva Chapter 15 Anitra A few minutes later they were discussing this amazing possibility

Starting point is 03:13:20 I have no reason for this conclusion this hope admitted Mr. Ransom it is instinct with me an intuition and not the result of my judgment it came to me when she first addressed me down by the mill stream if you consider me either wrong or misled i confess that i shall not be able to combat your decision with any argument plausible enough to hold your attention for a moment but i don't consider you either wrong or misled protested the other that is he warily added i am ready to accept the correctness of the possibility you mention and afterwards to note where the supposition will

Starting point is 03:14:06 lead us of course your first sensation is that of relief it will be when i am no longer the prey of doubts notwithstanding the mystery notwithstanding the mystery the one thing i have found it impossible to contemplate is her death the extinction of all hope which death alone can bring she has become so blended with my every thought since the hour she vanished from my eyes and consequently from my protection that i should lose the better part of myself in losing her anything but that mr harper even possible shame how shame some reason very strong and very vital must underlie her conduct if what we suspect is true and she has not only been willing to subject you and herself to a seeming separation by death but to burden herself with the additional misery of being obliged to assume a personality cumbered by such a drawback to happiness and even common social intercourse as this of the supposed you mean her deafness i mean that yes what could mrs ransom's motive be if the woman's sleeping yonder is mrs ransom for so tremendous a sacrifice as this you ascribe to her the rescue of her sister from some impending calamity that would argue a love of long-standing and of superhuman force one far transcending even her natural affection for the husband to whom she has just given in her hand such a love under such circumstances is not possible she has known this long-lost sister for a few days only her sense of duty towards her even her compassion for one so unfortunate might lead her to risk much but not so much as that you must look for some other explanation one more reasonable and much more personal where where i'm all at sea

Starting point is 03:16:18 see, blinded, dazed, almost at my wits' end. I can see no reason for anything she has done. I neither understand her nor understand myself. I ought to shrink from the poor creature there, sleeping off. I don't know what, but I don't. I feel drawn to her instead, irresistibly drawn, as if my place were at her bedside to comfort and protect. at this impulsive assertion springing from a depth of feeling for which the staid lawyer had no measure a perplexed frown chased all the urbanity from his face some thought not altogether welcome had come to disturb him he eyed mr ransom closely from under his clouded brows he could do this now with impunity for mr ransom's glances were turned whither his thought

Starting point is 03:17:16 and inclinations had wondered. I would advise you, came in slow comment from the watchful lawyer, not to be too certain of your conclusions till doubt becomes an absolute impossibility. Instinct is a good thing, but it must never be regarded as infallible. It may be proved that it is your wife who has fled

Starting point is 03:17:46 after all in which case it would be a great mistake to put any faith in this gypsy girl anitra mr ransom's face hardened his eyes did not leave the direction in which they were set i will remember said he his companion did not appear satisfied and continued emphatically whether the woman now here is mrs ransom or her wild and irresponsible sister she is a person of dangerous will and one not to be lightly regarded nor carelessly dealt with pray consider this mr ransom and do not allow impulse to supersede judgment if you will take my advice speak i should treat her as if she were the woman she calls herself or at least as if you thought her so nothing this word he repeated as he noted the incredulity with which the other listened would be so likely to make her betray herself as that let us go back and listen again at her door was mr ransom's emphatic but in consequent reply the lawyer desisted from further advice but sighed as he followed his new client into the hall at the turn of the staircase they were stopped by the sound of wrangling voices in the office below mr harper heard his name mentioned and hastened to interfere assuring mr ransom of his speedy return he stepped downstairs and in a few minutes reappeared with a middle-aged man of care characteristic appearance whom he introduced to mr ransom as mr good enough the sight of the uncouth head of their youthful acquaintance of the morning peering up after him from the foot of the stairs was warranty sufficient that this was the man who had met the strange young lady on the highway early that morning at sight of him mr ransom felt that inner recoil which we all experience

Starting point is 03:20:03 at the prospect of an immediate and definite termination of a long brooding doubt in another instant and with one word this uncultured and hitherto unknown man would settle for him the greatest question of his life and he did not feel prepared for it he had an impulse almost of flight as if in this way he could escape a certainty he feared what certainty perhaps he could not have answered had he been asked his mind was in a turmoil he had feelings instincts that was all the lawyer noting his condition undertook the leadership of affairs beckoning mr good enough into mr ransom's room he softly closed the door upon the many inquiring ears about and assuming the manner most likely to encourage the unsophistic but straightforward-looking man with whom he had to deal quietly observed we hear that you met this morning a young girl going towards the fairy there is a great reason why we should know just how this young girl looks a lady disappeared from here last night and though from a letter she left behind her we have every reason to believe that her body is somewhere in the river yet we don't want to overlook the possibility of her having escaped alive in another direction can you describe the person you saw well i'm not much good at talk was the embarrassed almost halting reply i saw the gal and i remember just how she looked but i couldn't put it into words to save my soul she was pretty and chipper and walked along as if she was part of the morning but that don't tell you much does it yet i don't know what else to say

Starting point is 03:22:11 perhaps you could help me by asking questions we'll see was she light complexioned yellow hair you know and blue eyes no i don't think she was not what i call light my sal's light this gal wasn't like my sal dark then very dark with a gypsy colour and snapping black eyes no not that either what i should call betweens but more dark than light harper flashed a glance at ransom before putting his next question what did she have on her head bless me if i can tell it wasn't a sun-bottet nor was it slapped all over with ribbons and flowers like my daughters but she had some sort of hat on sarton did you think she was just running to the neighbors but she wore no coat i don't remember any coat do you remember her frock no not exactly don't you remember its color no wasn't it black the skirt of it at least black well i guess not a gal of her age in black no she was as bright as the flowers in my wife's garden not a black thing on her i should sooner think her clothes were red than black harper showed his surprise not a black skirt he persisted no sir i haven't much eye for fixings but i've eye enough to know when a gal's dressed like a gal and not like some old woman harper's eyes stole again towards ransom checkmate in four moves he muttered the person we are interested in could have worn no such clothing as mr good enough describes yet clothing can be changed

Starting point is 03:24:17 how i cannot see in this instance but i will risk no mistake the trail we followed led too surely in the direction of the highway for us to drop all inquiries because of a coloured and a hat we cannot quite account for if the face is one we know and i really believe it was we can leave the other discrepancies to future explanation and turning back to the patient countryman he composedly remarked you are positive in your recollections of the young lady's features you would have no difficulty in recognizing her if you saw her again not a bit once i get a picture in my mind of a man or a woman i see it always and i can see her as plain as plain the moment i stopped to think she was pretty you see and just a little scared to speak to a stranger but that went as she saw my face and she asked me very polite if she was on the right road to the ferry and you told her she was sartin and how much time she had to get there to catch the boat i see so you would know her again if you saw her i just would the lawyer made a move towards the door which mr ransom hastened to open as the long vista of the hall disclosed itself mr harper turned upon the countryman with a quiet remark there were two ladies here you know twins their likeness was remarkable if we show you the remark if we show you the remark one who now lies asleep you surely will be able to tell if she is like the lady you saw if she looks just like her you can bet beans against potatoes on that

Starting point is 03:26:15 come then you needn't feel any embarrassment for she's not only sound asleep but so deaf she couldn't hear you if she were awake you need only take one glance and nod your head if she looks like the other it is very desirable that none of us should speak the case is a mysterious one and there's enough talk about it already without the women hiding and listening behind every shut door you see adding their gossip to the rest a knowing look a twitch at the corners of a good-natured mouth and the man followed them down the hall past one or two of the doors alluded to till they reached the one against the panel of which the one against the panel of which the man followed them down the hall past one or two of the doors alluded to till they reached the one against the panel of which mr ransom had already laid his ear still asleep his gesture seemed to signify and with a word of caution he led the way in the room was very dark mrs dio had been careful to draw down the shade when she put her strange charge to bed and at this first moment of entrance it was impossible for them to see more than the outline of a dark head upon a snowy pillow but gradually feature by feature of the sleeping woman's countenance became visible and the lawyer turning his acute gaze on the man from whose recognition he expected so much impatiently awaited the nod which was to settle their doubt but that nod did not come not even after mr ransom astonished at the long pause turned on the stranger his own haggard and inquiring eyes instead mr good enough lifted a blank stare to either face beside him and shaking his head stumbled awkwardly back in an endeavour to leave the room mr ransom taken wholly by surprise uttered some peremptory ejaculation but a glance from the lawyer quieted him and not till they were all shut up again in that convenient room at the head of the stairs did any of the three speak

Starting point is 03:28:27 and not even then without an embarrassed pause both the lawyer and his unhappy client had a deep and in the case of the latter a heart-rending disappointment to overcome and the clock on the stairs ticked out several seconds before the lawyer ventured to remark miss hayson's face is quite new to you i perceive evidently it was not her twin sister you met on the high road this morning nor anything like her protested the man a different face entirely prettier and more saucy such a gal as a man like me would be glad to call oh i see assented the lawyer then with the instinctive caution of his class you have made no mistake not a bit of a one emphasized the other sorry i can't give the gentleman any hope but if the sisters look alike it was not this woman's twin i met i'm ready to take my oath on that very well one catches at straws in a stress like this here's a fiver to pay for your trouble and another for the lad who brought you here good day we had no sound reason for expecting any different result from our experiment the man bowed awkwardly and went out mr harper brought down his fist heavily on the table and after a short interval of silence during which he studiously avoided meeting his companion's eye he remarked i am as much taken aback as yourself for all he had to say about her gay clothing i expected a different result the girl on the highway was neither mrs ransom nor her sister we have made a confounded mistake and mrs ransom don't say it i'm going back to the room where that woman lies sleeping i cannot yet believe that my heart is not shut up within its walls i'm going to watch for her eyes to open their expression will tell me what i want to know

Starting point is 03:30:42 the look one gives before full realization comes and the soul is bare without any thought of subterfuge very well i should probably do the same if i were you only your insight may be affected by prejudice you will excuse me if i join you in this watch the experiment is of too important a character for its results to depend upon the correct scene of one pair of eyes end of chapter fifteen chapter sixteen of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this levox recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter sixteen love exclamation point she lay in the abandonment of profound slumber one hand under her cheek the other hidden by the white spread mrs dio had been careful to draw closely about her both mr harper and mr ransom regretted this fact for each instinctively felt that in her hands if not in her sleeping face-face if not in her sleeping face they should be able to read the story of her life if that life had been a hard one such as must have befallen the waif anitra her hands should show it but her hands were covered and so or nearly so was her face the latter by her long and curling locks of whose beauty i have hitherto spoken one cheek only was visible and this cheek looked dark to ransom decidedly darker than george's but realizing that the room itself was dark he forbore to draw the attention of the lawyer to it or even to allow it to effect his own judgment to the extent it reasonably called for

Starting point is 03:32:47 his first scrutiny over mr harper crossed over to his old seat against the wall mr ransom remained by the bed and thus began their watch it was a long and solemn one a tedious waiting the gloom and quiet of the small room was so profound that both men for all their suspense and absorption in the event they awaited welcome the sound of a passing whisper or the careful stepping of feet in the corridor without if they turned to look they could just catch the outline of each other's countenance but this they did not often attempt their attention was held by the silent figure on the bed and so motionless was this figure in the profound slumber in which it lay enchained and so motionless were they in their increasing suspense and expectation that time seemed to have come to a standstill in this little room there was one break the lips which had hitherto remained mute opened in a quiet murmur and mr harper watching his client saw him clutch the headboard in sudden emotion before he finally rose and with look still fixed on the bed approached him with the startling announcement the word she whispered was love it must be georgian alas the same thought struck them both was this a proof mr ransom flushed hotly and crept softly back to his post again time seemed to stop then there came a cautious rap on the door followed by the hasty retreat of the person knocking it caused mr ransom to stir slightly but did not affect the lawyer suddenly the former rose with every evidence of renewed agitation this drew mr harper from his seat

Starting point is 03:34:47 what is it he cried softly approaching the other and whispering though after events proved that he might have spoken aloud with impunity mr ransom pointed to her temple from which her hair had just fallen away the veining here i have often studied it i recognize its every convulsion it is georgian georgian who lies there ah she is stirring waking let me go he dragged himself from mr harper's detaining hand bent over the bed and murmured softly but with the thrilling intensity of a suffering hoping heart the name which at that moment meant the whole wide world to him georgian would she greet this expression with recognition and a smile the lawyer half expected her to and stepped near enough to see but the eyes which had opened upon the white wall in front of her stared on and when they did turn as they did after one halting agonizing minute it was in response to some movement made by mr ransom and not in reply to his voice this sudden and unexpected overthrow of his secretly cherished holt's was terrible as he saw her rise on one elbow and meet his gaze with one which revealed the astonishment and resentment of a wild creature suddenly entrapped he felt or so he afterwards declared as if the viper which had hitherto clung cold and death-like about his heart had suddenly sprung to life and stung him it was the most uncanny moment of his life aghast at the effect of this upon his own mind he reeled from the room followed by the lawyer as they passed down the hall they heard her voice raised in a scream in uncontrollable shame and indignation this was followed by the snap of her key in the lock they had made a great mistake or so the lawyer decided when they again stood face to her lock they had made a great mistake or so the lawyer decided when they again stood face to her

Starting point is 03:36:56 face in mr ransom's room that the latter made no immediate answer was no proof that he did not coincide in the other's opinion indeed it was only too evident that he did for his first words when he had controlled himself sufficiently to speak were these i should have taken your advice in future i will to me she is henceforth anitra and i shall treat her as my wife's sister watch if i fail anitra anitra he reiterated the word as if he would fix it in his mind as well as accustom his lips to it then he wheeled about and faced harper whose eyes he doubtless felt on him yet i am not so thoroughly convinced as to feel absent peace here, he admitted, striking his breast with irrepressible passion. My good sense tells me I am a fool, but my heart whispers that the sweetness in her sleeping face was the sweetness which won me to love Georgian Hazen. That gentle sweetness? Did you notice it?

Starting point is 03:38:06 Yes, I noted what you mention, but don't let that influence you too much. The wildest heart has its tender moments, and her. her dreams may have been pleasant ones mr ransom remembered her unconscious whisper and felt stunned silenced the lawyer gave no evidence of observing this but remarked quite easily and with evidence sincerity i am more readily affected by proof than you are i am quite convinced myself that our wits have been wool gathering there was no mistake taking her look of outraged womanhood. It was not your wife who encountered your look, but the deaf Anitra. Of course, you won't believe me,

Starting point is 03:38:56 yet I advise you to do so. It would be too dreadful to find that this woman really is your wife. What? I know what I am saying. Nothing much worse could happen to you. Don't you see where the hypothesis to which you persist in clinging

Starting point is 03:39:15 would land you, should the woman in there prove to be your wife, Georgian? The lawyer stopped, and, in a tone the seriousness of which could not fail to impress, his agitated hearer added quietly, You remember what I said to you a short time ago about guilt? Guilt? No, the word was shame, but guilt better expresses my meaning. I repeat, should the woman prove to be, not the lovely but ignorant girl she appears, but Georgian ransom your wife. Then upon her must fall the onus of Anita's disappearance,

Starting point is 03:40:01 if not of her possible death. No, you must hear me out. The time has come for plain speaking. Your wife had her reasons. We do not know what they were, but they were no way. common ones. For wishing this intrusive sister out of the way, Anitra, on the contrary, could have desired nothing so much as the preservation of her protector. The conclusion is not an agreeable one. Let us hope that the question it involves will never be presented for any man's consideration. Mr. Ransom sank speechless into a chair. This last blow was an overwhelming one, and he sank. before it mr harper altered his tone he had real commiseration for his client and had provided himself with an antidote to the poison he had just so ruthlessly administered

Starting point is 03:40:58 courage he cried i only wished you to see that there were worse losses to consider than that of your wife's desertion even if that desertion took the form of suicide there is a reason which you have forgotten for acquitting mrs ransom of such criminal intentions and of accepting as your sister-in-law the woman who calls herself anitra recall mrs ransom's will the general terms of which i felt myself justified in confiding to you in it there are no provisions made for this anitra had mrs ransom for any inexplicable reason planned an exchange of identities with her sorely afflicted sister she would have been careful to have left that sister some portion of her great fortune but she did not remember her with a cent this fact is very significant and should give you great comfort it should it should in face of the other alternative you have suggested as possible but i fear that i am past comfort in whatever light we regard this tragedy it all means woe and disaster to me i have made a mess of my life and i have got to face the fact like a man then rising and confronting mr harper with passionate intensity he called out till the room rang again Georgian is dead. You hear me? Georgian is dead.

Starting point is 03:42:37 End of chapter 16. Chapter 17 of the chief legatee by Anna Catherine Green. This Librevox recording is in the public domain, recording by Tony Oliva. Chapter 17, I don't hear. The afternoon passed without further divest. developments mr harper who had his own imperative engagements left on the evening train for new york promising to return the next day in case his presence seemed indispensable to his client that client's final word to him had been an injunction to keep an eye on georgian's so-called brother and to report how he had been affected by the news from sitford and when in the lull following the lawyer's departure mr ransom set down in his room to look his own position resolutely in the face this brother and his possible connection with the confusing and unhappy incidents of this last fatal week regained that prominent place in his thoughts which the doubts engendered by the unusual character of these incidents had for a while dispelled

Starting point is 03:44:05 had been the hold of this strange and uncongenial man on georgian and was his reappearance at the same time with that of a supposedly long-deceased sister simply a coincidence so startling as to appear unreal he had not seen anita again and did not propose to unless the meeting came about in a natural way and without any show of desire on his part if any suspicion had been awakened in the by his peculiar conduct in the morning he meant it to be speedily dissipated by the careful way in which he now held to his role of despairing husband whose only interest in the girl left on his hands was the dutiful one of a reluctant brother-in-law who doubts the kindly feelings of his strange and unwelcome charge the landlady with a delicacy he highly appreciated cared for the young girl without making her conspicuous by any undue attention no tidings had come in of any discovery in the mill-stream or in the river into which it ran and there being nothing with which to feed gossip the townsfolk who had gathered about the hotel porches gradually began to disperse till only a few of the most persistent remained to keep up conversation till midnight finally these two left and the house sank into quiet a quiet which remained unbroken all night for everybody even poor mr ransom slept he was up however with the first beam entering his room how could he tell but that news of a definite and encouraging nature awaited him someone might have come in early from town or river. All search had not been abandoned. There were certain persistent ones who had gone as far as

Starting point is 03:46:08 Beardsleys. Some of these might have returned. He would hasten down and see, but it was only to find the office empty, and, though the household presently awoke and the great front door was thrown open to all comers no eager straggler came rushing in with the tidings he equally longed and dreaded to receive at half-past ten the representative of the county police called on mr ransom but with small result shortly after his departure the mail came in and with it the new york papers these he read with avidity but they added nothing to his knowledge georgian's death was accepted as a fact and the peculiarities of their history since their unfortunate wedding-day were laid bare with but little consideration for his feelings or the good name of his bride with a soreer heart than ever he flung the papers from him and went out to gather strength in the open air there was a corner of the veranda into which he had never ventured it was likely to be a solitary one at this hour and thither he now went but a shock awaited him there a lady was pacing its still damp boards a lady who did not turn her head at his step but whom he instantly recognized from her dress and willful but not ungraceful bearing as her whom he was determined to call nay recognize as anitra hazen his judgment counseled retreat but the fascination of her present held him and in that moment of hesitation she turned towards him and flight became impossible it was the first opportunity he had had of observing her features in broad daylight the effect was a confused one she was georgian and she was not georgian her skin was decidedly darker her eyes more lustrous her bearing less polished and at the same time

Starting point is 03:48:23 more impassioned she was not so tall or quite so elegantly proportioned or was it her rude method of dressing her hair and the awkward cut of her clothes which made the difference he could not be sure resolved as he was to consider her a nitra and excellent as his reasons were for doing so the swelling of his heart as he met her eye roused again the old doubt and gave an unnatural tone to his voice as he advanced towards her with an impetuous utterance of her name anitra she shrunk not at the word but at his movement which undoubtedly was abrupt but immediately recovered herself and meeting him half-way cried out in the unnaturally loud tones of the very deaf they don't bring my sister back she is drowned drowned but you still have anitra she exclaimed in child like triumph anitra will be good to you don't forsake the poor girl she will go where you go and be very obedient and not get angry ever again he felt his hair rise something in her look something in her manner of making evident the indefinable barrier between them even while expressing her desire to accompany him made such a disturbance in his brain that for the moment he no longer knew himself nor her nor the condition of things about him if she saw the effect she produced she gave no evidence of it she had begun to smile and her smile transformed her the wild look which was never long out of her eyes softened into a milder gleam and dimples he had been accustomed to see around lips he had kissed and called the sweetest in the world flashed for a moment in the face before him with a story of love he dared not read yet found it impossible to forget or see unmoved what trial is this into which my unhappy fate has plunged me thought he

Starting point is 03:50:38 can reason stand it can i see this woman daily hourly and not go mad between my doubts and my love his face had turned so stern that even she noticed it and in a trice the offending dimples disappeared you are angry she pouted you don't want anitra nod if it is so nod and i will go away he did not nod he could not she seemed to gather courage at this and though she did not smile again she gave him a happy look as she said i have no home now nor any friend since sister has gone i don't want any if i can stay with you and learn things i want to be like sister she was nice and wore pretty clothes she gave me some but i don't know where they are i don't like this dress it's black and all bad round the bottom where i fell into the mud she looked down at her dress it showed in spite of mrs deo's effort at cleaning it signs of her tramp through the wet lane he looked at it too but it was mechanically he looked at it too but it was mechanically he was debating in his mind a formidable question should he grasp her hand insist that she was georgian and demand her confidence and the truth or should he follow the lawyer's advice and continue to accept appearances meet her on her own ground and give her the answer called for by her lonely and forsaken position he found after a moment's thought that he had no choice that he could not do the first and must do the last you shall come with me said he quietly i will see that you have every suitable protection and care she surveyed him with the same unmoved inquiry burning in her eyes i don't hear said she he looked at her his lips set his eyes as inquiring as her own i don't believe it he muttered just above his breath the steady stare of her eyes never faltered

Starting point is 03:52:53 you love sister love me she whispered he fell back from her this was not georgian this was the untutored girl about whom georgian had written to him everything proved it even her hands upon which his eyes now fell why had he not noticed them before he had meant to look at them the first thing now that he did he saw that he might have spared himself some of the miserable uncertainties of the last few men minutes they were small and slight like georgians but very brown and only half cared for that they were cared for at all astonished him but she soon explained that seeing where his eyes were fixed she cried out don't look at my hands i know they are not real nice like sisters but i'm learning she's showed me how to rub them white and cut the nails a woman did it for me the first time and i've been doing it ever since but they don't look like hers for all the pretty rings she bought me was i foolish to want the rings i always had rings when i was with the gipsies they were not gold ones but i liked them and mother duda like dreams too and made me one once out of beads it was on my finger when my sister took me home with her that is why she brought me these she didn't think the bead one was good enough it wasn't much like hers ransom recalled the diamonds and the rich sapphires he had been accustomed to see on his bride's hand but this did not engage him long some method of communication must be found with this girl which could be both definite and unmistakable feeling in his pocket he brought out pencil and a small pad he would write what he had to say and was hesitating over the words with which to open this communication when he saw her hand thrust her hand thrust her hand thrust her hand thrusts. itself between his eyes and the pad and heard these words uttered in a resolute tone but not without a hint of sadness i cannot read i have never been taught

Starting point is 03:55:10 end of chapter seventeen chapter eighteen of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this librovoc's recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva part three money chapter eighteen god's forest then man's the pencil and pad fell from mr ransom's hands he stared at the girl who had made this astonishing statement and his brain whirled as for her she simply stooped and picked up the pad you feel badly about that said she you want me to read i'll learn that will make me more like sister but i know some things now i know what you are thinking about you are curious about my life what it has been and what kind of a girl i am i'll tell you i can talk if i cannot hear i heard up to two years ago shall i talk now shall i tell you what i told georgian when she found me cry in the street and took me home to her house he nodded blindly with a smile as beautiful as georgians for a moment he thought more beautiful she drew him to a seat she was all fire and purpose now the spark of intelligence which was not always visible in her eye burned brightly she would have looked lovely even to a stranger but he was not thinking of her looks only of the hopelessness of the situation its difficulties and possibly its perils i don't remember all that has happened to me she began speaking very fast i never tried to remember when i was little i just lived and ran wild in the roads and woods like the weasels and the chipmunks the gypsies were good to me i had not a crossword in years the wife of the king was my friend and all i knew i learned from her it was a-and-one it was a crossword in years it was a wife of the king was my friend and all i knew i learned from her it was

Starting point is 03:57:22 not much but it helped me to live in the forest and be happy as long as i was a little girl when i grew up it was different it was the king who was kind then and the woman who was fierce i didn't like his kindness but she didn't know this for after one day when she caught him staring at me across the fire she sent me off after something she wanted in a small town we were camping near and when i came back with it the band was gone i tried to follow but it was dark and i didn't know the way besides i was afraid afraid of him so i crept back to the town and slept in a straw of a barn i found open next day i sold my earrings and got bread it didn't last long and i tried to work but that meant sleeping under a roof and houses smothered me so i did my work badly and was turned out then i sold my ring it was my last trinket and when the few cents i got for it were gone i wondered about hungry this i was used to and didn't mind it first but at last i went to work again and i did better now for a little while till one evening i saw through the stable window of the inn where I was working, two black eyes staring in just as they stared across the dying embers of the gypsy camp. I did not scream, but I hid myself, and when they were gone away, stole out and got on the cars and gave the man my last dollar all the money I had earned for a ride to New York. I did not know

Starting point is 03:59:01 any better. I knew he never went to New York, and I thought I would be safe from him there. But of the difference between the woods and a forest of brick and stone i never thought of night with no shelter but the wall of some blind alley of hunger in the sight of food and wild beasts in the shape of men i didn't know where to go or who to speak to if any one stared at me long i turned and ran away i ran away once from a policeman he thought me a thief and started to run after me but people slipped in between us and i got away what happened next i don't know perhaps i was thrown down perhaps i fell i had come a long way and i was tired when i did know anything i was lying on my back in a narrow street looking up at a tall building that seemed to go right up into the sky like the great rocks i had sometimes slept under when i was with the gipsies only there were windows in the rock out of which looked faces and I got looking back at one of these faces, and the face looked at me, and I liked it, and got up on my knees, and held up my arms, and the face drew back out of sight, and I felt very sorry, and cried, and almost laid down again.

Starting point is 04:00:26 I seemed so alone, and hurt and hungry, but the children, there were crowds of children, wouldn't let me. They got in a ring and pulled at me, and someone cried, big cheeks is coming big cheeks will eat her up and i was angry and got up on my feet but i couldn't walk i screamed when i tried to which frightened the children and they all ran away but i didn't fall an arm was round me a good kind arm and though i didn't see the face of the woman who helped for she had her head wrapped up in an old shawl i felt that it was the same which had looked out of the window at me and went willingly and enough when she began to draw me toward the house and up the first flight of stairs though i could hardly help screaming every time my foot touched the ground at the top of the first flight i stopped i could go no further the woman heard me pant and pushing the covering from her eyes she turned my face towards the light and looked at it i thought she wanted to see if i was strong enough to go on but that wasn't it at all for in a minute i heard her say in a voice so sweet i thought i had never heard the like yes you're pretty i want a pretty girl to stay with me and go about selling my things i love pretty girls i never was pretty myself will you stay with me if i take you up to my room and take care of you i'll be good to you little duckling everybody about here will tell you that everybody but the children they don't like me i moaned but it was from happiness it seemed too good to hear that cooing voice in my ear. I thought of my mother, a dream, and my arms went up as they had in the street below.

Starting point is 04:02:13 I will stay, I said. She caught my hands, and that is all I remember till I found myself in bed, with my ankle bound up, and a gentle hand, smoothing my hair. It was a month before I walked again. All the time this woman tended me, but always from behind. I did not see her face, not well only by glimpses and then only partly for the shawl was always over her head covering everything but her eyes and mouth these were small the smallest eye ever saw little pig eyes and little screwed-up mouth but the look of them was kindly and that was all i cared about then that and her talk which made me cry one minute and laugh the next i have never cried so much or or laugh so much in my life as i did in that one month she told such sad things and she told such funny ones she made me glad to see her come in and sorry to see her go out she let no one else come near me i did not care i liked her too well i was never tired of listening to her praises and she praised me a great deal i even did not mind sleeping under a roof as much as i had before perhaps because we were we were so near it perhaps because of the room was so full of all sorts of things i never got tired of looking at them pretty things she called them but when i saw more things things outside in shop windows and the houses i afterwards went into

Starting point is 04:03:49 i knew they were very cheap things and not always pretty but she thought they were and used to talk about them by the hour and tell me stories she had made up about the pictures she had cut out of newspapers and I learned something, I could not help it, and even began to think a bit, something I had never done before. But when I got on my feet again and was given the choice of staying there all the time, I did not know at first whether I wanted to or not, for Mother Duda had been very honest with me, and the minute she found that I could walk again had told me that I would have to have great patience if I lived with her, and endure a very disagreeable sight then she pulled off her shawl and i saw her as she was and almost screamed she looks so horrid to me but i didn't quite for her eyes wouldn't let me they seem to ask me not to care but to love her a little though she was a fright to look at and i tried but i couldn't i could only keep from screaming she had a goiter that is what she called it and the great pocket of flesh hanging down on either side of her neck frightened me it frightened everybody she was used to that but she said she loved me and felt my fear more than she did others could i bear to live with her knowing what her shawl hid

Starting point is 04:05:19 if i could she would be good to me but if i couldn't she would do what she could to get me honest work in some other place i didn't answer at first but i did before she had put her shawl on again i told her that i would forget everything but her good smile and stay with her a little while i stayed three years helping her by going about and selling the tatting work she made she could make beautiful patterns and so neat but she couldn't sell them on account of her awful appearance so i was very useful to her and felt i was earning my meat and drink and the kind looks and words which made them taste good it taught me a lot going around i saw people and how they lived and what was nice and what wasn't i was only sorry that mother duda couldn't go too she loved pretty things so but she never went out except at a very early hour in the morning so early that it was still dark it seemed a terrible hour to me but she always came in with a smile and when one day I asked her why she said because she saw so many other poor creatures out at this same hour who were worse to look at than she was this didn't seem possible to me and once I went out with her to see but I never went again such faces as we met such deformity men who never showed themselves by day

Starting point is 04:06:56 women who loved beauty and were hideous. We saw them on street corners, coming up cellar steps, slinking in and out of blind alleys. Never were it was light, and they shrank from each other, but not from the policeman. They were not afraid of his eye.

Starting point is 04:07:15 They were used to him and he'd to them. After I had passed a dozen such miserable creatures, I felt myself one of them and never wanted to go out at this hour again. Don't you believe this part of my story? She suddenly asked, looking up into Mr. Ransom's troubled face. Ask the policeman who tramps about those streets every night. He'll tell you.

Starting point is 04:07:40 The question on Ransom's lips died. What use of asking what she could not hear? I wish I knew what you were thinking, she now murmured softly, so softly that he hardly. caught the words but i never shall i never shall i will tell you now how i became deaf she promised after a moment of wistful gazing is there anyone near can anybody hear me she continued with a suspicious look about her he shook his head it was the first movement he had made since she began her story this apparently reassured her for she proceeded at once to say mother duda had never told me anything about herself it scared me then when one morning i found sitting at the breakfast-table a man who she said was her son he was big and pale-looking and had a slight swelling on one side of his neck which made me sick but i tried to be polite though i did not like him at all and had a sudden feeling of having no home any more that was the first day

Starting point is 04:08:49 the next two were worse for he didn't hate me as i did him and wouldn't leave the house while i was there saying he could not bear to be away from his mother but he skipped out quick enough after i'd was gone so the neighbor said and sometimes i think he followed me mother duda wasn't like her old self at all she loved him he was her son but she didn't like all he did she wanted him to work he wouldn't work he sat and stared at me as the gypsy king used to stare and if i grew red and hot it was from shame and fear and horror of the great throat i saw growing from day to day and which would say that sometime be like his mothers he knew i didn't like him but he wasn't good like mother duda and told me one day that he was going to make me his wife whether i wanted him to or not and talked about a great secret and the big man he would become some day this made me angry and i said that all the bigness he would ever have would be in his neck at which he struck me right across the ear hard so hard the hard the i fell on the floor with a scream and mother duda came running he was sorry then and threw down the thing he had in his hand but the harm had been done and i was sick for a month and had doctors an awful pain and when i was well again i couldn't hear a sound with that ear hans wasn't there when i was ill i shouldn't have got well if he had been but he came back when i was up again and was very meek though he didn't stop looking at me i thought i would run away one day and went out without my basket but after i had tried two whole days to get work and couldn't i went back mother duda almost squeezed the heart out of me for joy and hans went down on his knees and promised not to do or say anything more that i didn't like he even promised to go to work but his work was of a queer kind it kept him in his little room and meant spending money and

Starting point is 04:11:03 not getting it men came to see him and were locked up with him in his little room and if he went out he locked the door and took the key away and said great times were coming and that i would be glad to marry him some day whether his neck was big or small but i knew i shouldn't and kept very close to mother duda and begged her to get me a new home and she promised and i was feeling happier when one day hans was called out by a man and went away so fast that he forgot to lock his door and mother duda and i went into the room and it was then that the thing happened which spoiled all my life i don't understand it i never did for no one could tell me anything after that day mother duda had gone up to a table and was moving things about trying to see what they were when everything turned black the room shook and i was whirling all about trying to take hold of things which were when everything turned black the room shook and i was whirling all about trying to take hold of things which seemed to be falling about me till i too fell when i knew anything there was lots of people looking at me people of the house men women and children but what was strangest of all was the awful stillness no one made any sound nothing made any sound though i saw an old bookshelf tumble down from the wall while i was looking and people moved about and opened their lips and seemed to be talking had hands struck me again? I began to think so, and got up from the floor where I was lying and tried to call out. But my voice made no noise, though people looked around as if it had, and I felt an awful fright, not only for myself but for Mother Duda, who was being carried out of the door by two men, and who did not move at all, and who never moved again. Poor Mother Duda, she was killed,

Starting point is 04:13:01 and I was deaf. I knew it after a little. I knew it after a little. a little while but i don't know what did it something that hans had something that mother duda touched a square something i had just caught a glimpse of it in mother duda's hand when the room flew into her wreck and i became what i am now dynamite murmured ransom then paused and had a small struggle with his heart for she was looking up into his face demanding sympathy with georgian's eyes and being close together on the short seat he could not help but feel her shudders and share the intense excitement which choked her oh she cried as he laid his hand a moment on her arm and then took it away again one minute to hear the next to find the world all still always still a poor girl not knowing how to read or write but you cannot care about that you cannot care about me it's sister you want to hear about how she came to find me how we came here for new and terrible things to happen always for new and terrible things to happen which i don't understand hands never came back all sorts of policemen came into the house doctors came priests came but no hands mother duda was buried i rode in a coach at the funeral but still no hands the old life was over and when the food was all gone from the shelves i took my little basket and went out not meaning to come back again and i did not i sewed my basket out got a handful of pennies and went to the market to get something to eat then i went into a park where there were benches and set down to rest i i did not know of any place to go to and began to cry when a lady stopped before me and i looked up and saw myself i thought i was dreaming or had the fever again as when i was sick with my ear and i thought it was myself as i would look in heaven for she had such beautiful clothes on and looked so happy but when she talked i could see her lips move and i couldn't hear and i knew that i was just in the park with my empty basket and my onion and bread and that the lady was a lady and no one i knew only so like what i had seen of myself in the glass

Starting point is 04:15:32 that i was shaking all over and she was shaking all over and neither of us could look away and still her lips moved and seeing her at last look frightened and angry that i didn't answer i spoke and said that i was deaf that i was very sorry that i couldn't hear because we looked so much alike though she was a great lady and i was a very poor girl who hadn't any home or any friends or anything to wear or eat but what she saw at this her eyes grew bigger even than before and she tried to talk some more and when i shook my head she took hold of my arm and began drawing me away and i went and we got on the cars and she took me to a house and into a room where she took away my basket and put me in a chair and took off first her hat than my own and showed me the two heads in a glass and then looked at me so hard that i cried out sister which made her jump up and put her hand on her heart and then look at me again harder and harder till i remembered way back in my life and i said when i was a little girl i had a sister they called my twin that was before i lived in the woods with the gipsies are you that sister grown up the place where we played together had a tall fence with points at the top there were flowers and there were bushes with currants on them all around the fence she made a sudden move and i felt her arms about my neck i think she cried a little i didn't i was too glad i knew she was of that sister the moment our faces touched and i knew she would care for me and that i needn't go back into the streets any more so i kissed her and talked a good deal and told her what i've been telling

Starting point is 04:17:34 and she tried to answer, tried as you did, to write, but all I could understand was that she meant to keep me, but not in the place where we were, and that I was to go out again, but she fixed me up a little before we went out, and she bought me some things, so that I looked different. Then we went into another house where she talked with a woman for a long time, and then sat down with me, and moved her lips very patiently, motioning me to her. watch and try to understand but i was frightened and couldn't so she gave up and kissing me made motions with her hands which i understood better she wanted me to stay there while she went away and i promised to if she would come back soon at this she took out her watch i was pleased with the watch and she let me look at it and inside against the cover i saw a picture you know whose it was the depths to which her voice sank the trembling of her tones startled ransom had she been less unfortunate he would have moved to a different seat but he could not show her a discurtesy after so pitiful a tale

Starting point is 04:18:50 but the nod he gave her was a grave one and her cheek flushed and her head fell and she softly added it was the first time i ever saw a face i liked you won't mind my saying so and i wanted to keep the watch but sister carried it away she didn't tell me what it meant her having your picture where she could see it all the time but when she came again she made me know that you and she were married by pointing at the picture and then throwing something white over her head i didn't ask for the watch after that but a far-away look a trembling of her whole body finished this ingenuous confession ransom edged himself away and then was sorry for it for her lip quivered and her hands from being quiet began that nervous interlacing of the fingers which bespeaks mental perturbation i am very ignorant she faltered perhaps i have said something wrong i don't mean to i want to be a good girl and please you so that you won't send me away now sister is gone i know what you want she suddenly broke out as he seized her by the arm and looked inquiringly at her you want me to tell why i jumped out of the carriage that night and vexed georgian and was naughty and wouldn't speak to her i can't i can't you wouldn't like it if i did but i'm sorry now and we'll never vex you but do just what you want me to shall i go upstairs now he shook his head how could he let her go with so much unsaid she had talked frankly till she had reached the very place where his greatest interest lay then she had suddenly shown shyness of her subject and leaped the gap as it were to the present moment how recall her to the hour when

Starting point is 04:20:47 she had seen Georgian for the second time. How urge her into a description of those days succeeding his wife's flight from the hotel, of which he had no account, save the feverish lines of the letter she had sent him? He was racking his brain for some method of communicating his wishes to Anita, when he heard steps behind him, and turning, saw the clerk approaching him with a telegram. He glanced at her slyly as he took it. Somehow he couldn't get used to deafness and expected her to give some evidence of surprise or curiosity but she was still studying her hands and as his eyes lingered on her downcast face he saw a tear well from her lids and wet the cheek she held partly turned from him he wanted to kiss that tear but refrained and opened his telegram instead it was from mr harper and ran thus expect a visitor the man we know had left the st denis end of chapter eighteen chapter nineteen of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this libravox recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter nineteen in mrs dio's room a prey to fresh agitation he stepped back to anitras side surely she must understand that it was

Starting point is 04:22:22 was georgian and not herself about whom he was most anxious to hear but she did not seem to the smile with which she greeted him suggested nothing of the past it spoke only of the future i will learn to be like sister she impulsively cried out rising and beaming brightly upon him i will forget the old chipsy ways and mother dudas ways and try to be nice and pretty like my sister and you shall learn me to read and write i've known death people who learned then i shall know what you think now i only know how you feel he shook his head a little sadly perhaps there were people who could teach her these arts but not he he had neither the ability the courage nor the patience then some one shall learn me she loudly insisted her cheek flushing and her eyes show an angry spark i will not be ignorant always i will not i will not and turning she fled from his side and he was left to think over her story and ask himself for the hundredth time what it all meant what his own sensations meant and what would be the outcome of conditions so complicated the possibly speedy appearance on the scene of georgian's so-called brother did not detract from his difficulty he felt helpless without the support of mr harper's presence and spent a very troubled forenoon listening to the mingled condolences and advice of people who had no interest in his concerns save such as sprang from curiosity and a morbid craving for excitement at two o'clock occurred the event of which he had been forewarned a carriage drove up to the hotel and from it stepped two travellers one of them a stranger

Starting point is 04:24:25 the other the man with a twisted jaw mr ransom advanced to meet the latter he was anxious to listen to his first inquiries and if possible be the person to answer them he was successful in this mr hayeson no sooner saw him than he accosted him without ceremony what's this i hear and read about georgian and her so-called twin he cried nothing that i can believe i want you to know georgian may have drowned herself that is credible enough but that the girl we read about in the papers and whom she evidently induced to come to this place with her should be the dead girl we called anitra why that is all barsh a tale to deceive the public and possibly you but not one to deceive me the coincidence is much too improbable there are stranger things in heaven and earth quoted ransom but hayson was already in conversation with the group of hotel idlers who had crowded up at the sound of his loud voice after a careful look which had taken in all of their faces he had approached one young fellow covering the lower part of his face as he did so hallo yates he called out don't you remember the day we tied two chickens together leg to leg and sent them tumbling down the hill back of old wiley's barn alf hazen shouted the fellow thus accosted why i thought you dead eh of course you did so did everybody else but i've come to life you see with sad marks of battle on me he continued dropping his hand you all recognize me yes yes rose in one a claim from a dozen or more throats after a moment of awkward uncertainty i know the eyes vigorously asserted one and the voice chimed in another after which rose a confused babble of ejaculations and exclamatory questions

Starting point is 04:26:31 among which one could detect how did it happen alf what took off your jaw and other equally felicitous expressions i'll tell you all about that later he replied after silence had in a measure been restored. What I want to say now is this. Is it believable that simultaneously with my own return from the grave, another member of my family should reappear before you from an older and much more certain burying? I tell you no. The riddle is one which calls for quite another solution, and I have come to assist you in finding it. Here he cast a sinister glance at ransom. The latter met the implied accusation with singular calmness. Any assistance will be welcome, said he, which will enable us to solve this very serious problem. Then, as Hazen's lip curled, he added with dignified candor,

Starting point is 04:27:29 I scorn to retort by throwing any doubt on your assertion of relationship to my lost wife or the possibility of these good people being misled by your confident, bearing, and a possible likeness about the eyes to the boy they knew. But one question, I will hazard, and that before we have gone a step further, why does it seem so credible to you that Georgian, a much-loved and loving woman, should have leaped to a watery death within a week of her marriage? You have just stated that you found no difficulty in that. Does not that statement call for some explanation all your old friends here must see that this is my due as well as hers for an instant the man hesitated but in that instant his hand slipped from his mouth over which he had again laid it and his whole face with its changed lines and the threatening almost cruel expression which these gave it appeared in all its combined eagerness and force a murmur escaped the watchful group about him but this affected him little his eyes which he had fixed on ransom sharpened a trifle perhaps and his tone grew a thought more sarcastic as he finally retorted

Starting point is 04:28:53 i will explain myself to you but not to this crowd and not to you till i am sure of the facts which as yet have reached me only through the newspapers let me hear a full account of what has transpired here since you all came to town i have an enormous interest in the matter a family interest as you are well aware for all your badly hidden insinuations follow me was the quiet reply there is a room on this very floor where we can talk undisturbed mr hayson cast a quick glance behind him at the man who had driven up with him and whom nobody had noticed till now then without a word he separated himself from the chattering group encircling him and stepped after mr ransom into the small room where the latter had held his first memorable conversation with the lawyer now said he as the door swung to behind them plain language and not too much of it i have no time to waste but the truth about georgian i must know ransom settled himself he felt bound to comply with the other's request but he wished to make sure of not saying too much or too little hazen's attack had startled him it revealed one of two things either this man of mystery had assumed the offensive to hide his own connection with this tragedy or his antagonism was an honest one springing from an utter disbelief in the circumstances reported to him by the press and such gossips as he had encountered on his way to sitford with the first possibility he felt himself unable to cope without the aid of mr harper the second might be met with candor should he then be candid with this doubter relate to his

Starting point is 04:30:53 the facts as they had unrolled themselves before his own eyes secret facts convincing ones facts which must prove to him that whether georgian did or did not lie at the bottom of the mill stream the woman now in the house was his sister anitra lost to him and the rest of the family for many years but now found again and restored to her position as a asan and georgian's twin the discovery might not prove welcome it would have a tendency to throw mr hayson's own claim into the disrepute he would cast on hers but this consideration could have no weight with mr ransom he decided upon candor at all costs it suited his nature best and it also suited the strange and doubtful situation mr harper might have concluded differently but mr harper was not there to give advice and the matter would not wait. Little as he understood this hasten, he recognized that he was not a man to trifle with. Something would have to be said or done. Meeting the latter's eye, frankly, he remarked, I have no wish to keep anything back from you. I am as much struck as you are by the mystery of this whole occurrence. I was as hard to convince. This is my story. It involves all that is known here with the exception of such facts as have been kept from us by the three parties directly concerned of which three i consider you one

Starting point is 04:32:33 as the last four words fell from his lips he looked for some change slight and hardly perceptible perhaps in the other's expression but he was doomed to disappointment the steady regard held nothing moved about the man not even the hand into which the poor disfee chin had fallen ransom suppressed a sigh his task was likely to prove a blind one he had a sense of stumbling in the dark but the gaze he had hoped to see falter compelled him to proceed and he told his story without subterfuge or suppression one thing and only one thing caused a movement in the set figure before him when he mentioned the will which georgian had made a few hours prior to her disappearance, Hazen's hand slipped aside from the wound it had sought to cover, and ransom caught sight of the sudden throb which deepened its hue. It was the one infallible sign that the man was not wholly without feeling, and it had sprung to life at an intimation involving money. When his tale was quite finished, he rose. So did Hazen. Let us see this girl, suggested the latter. It was the first word he had spoken since Ransom began his story. She is upstairs. I will go see. No, we will go see. I particularly desire to take her unawares.

Starting point is 04:34:06 Ransom offered no objection. Perhaps he felt interested in the experiment himself. Together they left the room. Together they went upstairs. A turmoil of questions followed them from the throng of men and boys gathered in the halls, but they returned no answer, and curiosity remained unsatisfied. Once in the hall above, Ransom stopped a moment to deliberate. He could not enter Anita's room unannounced, and he could not make her hereby knocking. He must find the landlady. He knew Mrs. Dio's room. He had had more than one occasion to visit it during the last two days. with a word of explanation to hasten he passed down the hall and tapped on the last door at the extreme left no one answered but the door standing ajar he pushed it quietly open being anxious to make sure that mrs deel was not there the next moment he was beckoning to hasten look said he holding the door open with one hand and pointing with the other to a young girl sitting on a low stool by the window

Starting point is 04:35:14 mending or trying to mend a rent in her skirt why that's georgian exclaimed hazen and hastily entering he approached the anxious figure laboriously pushing her needle in and out of the torn goods and pricking herself more than once in the attempt georgian he cried again and yet more emphatically as he stepped up in front of her the young girl failed to notice awkwardly drawing her thread out to its extreme length she prepared to insert her needle again when her eye caught sight of his figure bending over her and she looked up quietly and with an air of displeasure which pleased ransom he could hardly tell why this was before her eyes reached his face when they had it was touching to see how she tried to hide the shock caused by its deformity as she said with a slight gesture of dismissal i am quite deaf i cannot hear what you say if it is the landlady you want she has gone downstairs for a minute perhaps to the kitchen he did not retreat if anything he approached nearer and ransom was surprised to observe the force and persuasive power of his expression as he repeated no nonsense georgian opening and shutting his hands as he spoke in curious gesticulations which her eye mechanically followed but which seemed to convey no meaning to her though he evidently expected them to and looked surprised ransom almost thought baffled when she shook her head and in a sweet impassive way reiterated i cannot hear and i do not understand the deaf and dumb alphabet i'm sorry but you'll have to go to someone else i'm very unfortunate i have to min this dress and i don't know how

Starting point is 04:37:14 hazen who could hardly tear his eyes from her face fell slowly back as she painfully and conscientiously returned to her task good god he murmured as his eyes sought ransoms what a likeness then he looked again at the girl at the girl at the the wave of her raven black hair breaking into little curls just above her ear at the smooth forehead rendered so distinguished by the fine pencilling of her arching brows at the delicate nose with nostrils all alive to the beating of an over-anxious heart at the mouth touching in its melancholy so far beyond her years and lastly at the strong young figure huddled on the little stool and bending forward again he uttered two or three three quick sentences which ransom could not catch his persistence or the near approach of his face to hers angered her rising quickly to her feet she vehemently cried out go away from here it is not right to keep on talking to a deaf girl after she has told you she cannot hear you then catching sight of ransom who had advanced a step in his sympathy for her she gave a little sigh of relief and added querulously make this man go away this is the landlady's room i don't like to have strangers talk to me besides here her voice fell not so low as to be inaudible to the subject of her remark he's not pretty i've seen enough men and women who are at this point ransomed drew hayson out into the hall what do you think now he demanded hazen did not reply the room they had just left seemed to possess a strange fascination for him he continued to look back at it as he preceded ransom down the hall ransom did not press his questions but when they were on the point of separating at the head of the stairs he held hastened back with the words let us come to some understanding neither of us can desire to waste strength in wrong conclusions can that woman be other than your own sister no the denial was absolute she is my sister anitra emphasized ransom the smile which he received in reply was

Starting point is 04:39:31 strangely mirthless i never rush to conclusions was hazen's remark after a moment of possibly mutual heartbeat and unsettling suspense ask me that same question to-morrow perhaps by then i shall be able to answer you end of chapter nineteen chapter twenty of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this librovoc's recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter twenty between the elderberry bushes no the word came from ransom he had reached the end of his patience and was determined to have it out with this man on the spot come into my room said he if you doubt her you doubt me and in the present stress of my affairs this demands an immediate explanation i have no time to enter your room and i cannot linger here any longer talking on the subject which at the present moment is not clear to either of us was the resolute if not quite affable reply later when my conclusions are made i will see you again now i am going to eat and refresh myself don't follow me it will do you no good he turned to descend ransom had an impulse to seize him by his twisted throat and drag him from the secret which his impassive features refused to give up but ransom was no fool and stepping back out of the way of temptation he allowed him to escape without further parley then he went to his room but after an hour or two spent with his own thought his restlessness became so great that he sought the gossips below for relief he found them all clustered about hazen who was reeling off stories by the mile

Starting point is 04:41:37 this was unendurable to him and he was striding off when hazin burst away from his listeners and joining ransom whispered in his ear i saw her go by the window just now on her way up street what can she find there to interest her where is she going i don't know she doesn't consult me as to her movements probably she's gone for a walk she looks as if she needs it so do you was the unexpected retort given by hazen as he stepped back to rejoin his associates ransom paused watching him askance in doubt of the suggestion in doubt of the man in doubt of himself then he yielded to an impulse stronger than any doubt and slipped out into the highway where he turned as she had turned up street but not without a struggle he hated himself for his puppet-like acceptance of the hint given him by a man he both distrusted and disliked he felt his dignity impaired and his self-confidence shaken yet he went on following the high road eagerly and watching with wary eye for the first glimpse of the slight figure which was beginning to make every scene a lot to him it had rained heavily and persistently the last time he came this way but to-day the sun was shining with a full radiance and the trees stretching away on either side of the road were green with a tender tracery of early leafage a joy-compelling sight which may have accounted for the elasticity of his step as he ascended one small hill after another in the wake of a fluttering skirt it was the cemetery road and odd as the fancy was he felt that he should overtake her at the old gate behind which lay so many of her name here he had seen her name before its erasement from the family monument and here he should see could he say anitra if he found her bending over those graves the woman who could not hear who could not read whose childish memory if she had any in connection with this spot could not be distinct enough or sufficiently intelligent to guide her to this one plot no human credulity can go far but not so far as that he knew that all his old doubts would return if on entering the cemetery he found her under the brown shaft carved with the name of hazen the test was one he had not sought and did not welcome

Starting point is 04:44:25 them yet he felt bound now that he recognized it as such to see it through and accept its teaching for what it surely would be worth only he began to move with more precaution and studied more to hide his approach than to give any warning of it the close ranks of the elderberry bushes lining the fences on the final hilltop lent themselves to the concealment he now sought as soon as he was sure of her having left the road he drew up close to these bushes and walked under them till he was almost at the gate then he allowed himself to peer through their close branches and received an unexpected shock at seeing her figure standing very near him posed in an uncertainty which for some reason he had not expected but which restored him to himself though why he had not the courage the time nor the inclination to ask. She was babbling in a low tone to herself, an open sesame to her mind, which ransom hailed with a sense of awe. If only he might distinguish the words, but this was difficult. Not only was her head turned partly away, but she spoke in a murmur which was far from distinct. Yet, yes, that one sentence was plain enough she had muttered musingly anxiously and with a searching look among the graves it was on this side i know it was on this side

Starting point is 04:46:01 watching her closely lest some chance glance of hers should stray his way he listened still more intently and was presently rewarded by catching another sentence a single grave all by itself i fell over it and my mother scolded me saying it was my father's there was a bush near it a bush with white flowers on it i tried to pick some ransom's heart was growing lighter and lighter she did not even know that there had been placed over that grave a monument with her name on it and that of the mother who had scolded her for tripping over her father's sod only anitra could be so ignorant or expect to find a grave by means of a bush blooming with flowers fifteen years ago as she could be so ignorant or expect to find a grave by means of a bush blooming with flowers fifteen years ago as she was she went wandering on, peering to right and left, he thought of Hazen and his doubts, and wished that he were here beside him to mark her perplexity. When quite satisfied that she would never find what she sought without help, Ransom stepped from his hiding place and joined her among the grassy hillocks. The start of pleasure she gave and her almost childish look of relief warmed his heart, and it was with a smile he waited for her to speak.

Starting point is 04:47:20 my father's grave she explained i was looking for my father's grave i remember my mother taking me to it when i was little there was a bush close by it oh i see what you think the bush would be big now i forgot that and something else you are thinking of something else oh i know i know he wouldn't be lying alone any more my mother must have died or sister would have taken me to her there ought to be two graves he nodded and taking me to her and taking him her by the hand led her to the family monument she gazed at it for a moment amazed then laid her finger on one of the inscriptions my father's name she asked he nodded she hung her head thoughtfully for a moment then slipping to the other side of the stone laid her hand on another my mother's again he signified yes and this is this sister's name no she's not buried yet i had a brother is it his is ransom bowed how tell her that it was a false inscription and that the man whose death it commemorated was not only alive but had only a little while before spoken to her i didn't like my brother he was cruel and liked to hurt people i'm glad he's dead ransom drew her away her frankness was that of a child but it produced an uncomfortable feeling he didn't like this brother either and in this thoughtless estimate of hers he was that of a child he produced an uncomfortable feeling he didn't like this brother either and in this thoughtless estimate of hers he seemed to read a warning to which his own nature intuitively responded come he motioned leading the way out she followed with a smile and together they entered the highway as they did so ransom caught sight of a man speeding down the hill before them on a bicycle he had not come from the upper road or they would have seen him as he flew past the gateway where had he come from then from the people where ransom himself had stood a few minutes before no other conclusion was possible and ransom felt both angry and anxious till he could find out who the man was this he did not succeed in doing till he reached the hotel there a bicycle leaning against a tree gave point to his questions and he learned that it belonged to a clerk in one of the small stores near by

Starting point is 04:49:41 but that the man who had just ridden it up and down the road on a trial of speed was the stranger who had just come to tell with Mr. Hazen. End of chapter 20. Chapter 21 of the chief legatee by Anna Catherine Green. This Libravox recording is in the public domain, recording by Tony Oliva, Chapter 21, On the Cars.

Starting point is 04:50:13 This episode, which to ransom's mind would bear but one interpretation, gave him ample food for thought. He decided to be more circumspect in the future and to keep an eye out for inquisitive strangers not that he had anything to conceal but no man enjoys having his proceedings watched especially where a woman is concerned that hazen was antagonistic to him he had always known but that he was regarded by him with suspicion he had not realized till now hazen suspicious of him that meant what he wished that he had mr harry at his side to enlighten him it was now five o'clock and he was sitting in his room awaiting the usual report from the river when a quick tap at his door was followed by the entrance of the very man he was thinking about he rose eagerly to receive him determined however to allow no inconsiderate impulse to drive him into unnecessary speech i have already said too much he reminded himself in self-directed munition it's time he did some of the talking hayson seemed willing enough to do this taking a seat proffered him he opened the conversation as follows mr ransom i have been doing you an injustice i do not consider it necessary to tell you just how i have found this out but i am now convinced that you are as much in the dark as myself in regard to this unfortunate affair

Starting point is 04:51:57 and are as willing as i am to take all justifiable means to enlighten yourself i own that at first i thought it more than probable you were in collusion with the girl here to deceive me that i wouldn't stand i'm glad to find you as truly a victim of this mystery as myself ransom straightened himself if this is an apology he returned i am willing to accept it in the spirit in which it is proffered but i should like something more than apology from you candor for candor your whole story in return for mine i'm afraid it would be a trifle tedious my whole story smiled hazen if you mean such part of it as concerns georgian's peculiar actions and the complications with which we are at this moment struggling i can only repeat what i have already told you both at the st dennis in new york and here i am georgian's returned brother save for from the jaws of hell to see my own country again. I arrived in New York on the tenth. Naturally, after securing a room at the hotel, I took up the papers.

Starting point is 04:53:20 They were full of the approaching marriage of Miss Hazen. I recognized my sister's name, though not her splendor, for we were the sole survivors of a poor country family, and I knew nothing of the legacy I am now told she received. anxious to see her i attended the ceremony she recognized me i had not expected this and feeling old affections revive i followed her friends to the house and was presented to them and to you what i whispered to her on this occasion were my assumed name and the place where i was to be found my changed countenance called for explanations for which a

Starting point is 04:54:07 bridal reception offered no opportunity besides as i've already said i stood in sore need of a definite amount of money i meant her to come and see me but i did not expect her to play a trick on you in order to do so this had its birth in the to me unaccountable mystery embodied in the girl you call anitra but whom i'm not ready yet to name for when i do action must follow conviction and that without mercy or delay action repeated ransom with quick suspicion and a confused rush of contradictory visions in his mind what do you mean by that hayson covered his chin with his hand i will try and explain he replied if i am abrupt in my language it is owing to the exigencies of the case i have no time to wait and no disposition to whitewash a rough piece of work to speak to the point i have an intense interest in my sister georgian i have little or none in my sister anitra georgian's intelligence good-will and command of money would be of inestimable benefit to me anitra on the contrary would be nothing but a burden unless here he cast a very sharp glance at ransom unless georgian should have been sufficiently considerate to leave her a good share of her fortune in the will you say she made just before her disappearance and suppose death that i can say nothing about rejoined ransom in answer to this feeler the will is in the hands of her lawyer but if it will help your argument any we will suppose that she left her sister to the care of her friends without any especial provision for her in the way of money the steady fingers clutching the scarred neck loosed their grip to wave this supposition aside a hardly supposable case was the cold comment with which he supplemented this disclaimer

Starting point is 04:56:23 but one which would make the girl a burden indeed a burden which for many reasons i could not assume here he struck himself sharply on the neck with the first display of passion he had shown my advantages are not such as to make it easy for me to support myself it would be simply impossible for me to undertake the care of any girl least of all of one with a manifest infirmity anitra will prosper without your care replied ransom overlooking the heartlessness of the man in the mad unaccountable sense of relief with which he listened to his withdrawal from concerns for which he showed so little sympathy there are others who will be glad to do all that can be done for georgian's forsaken sister yes that is all right but here hazen squared himself across the top of the table before which he had been sitting i must be made sure that the facts have been rightly represented to me and that the girl now in this house is georgian's deserted sister i'm not yet satisfied that she is and i must be convinced not only on this point but on many others before this day is over business of great importance calls me back to the city and it may be out of the country i may never be able to see spend another day on purely personal affairs, so this one must tell. I have a scheme. It is a very simple one which, if carried out as I have planned, will satisfy me as nothing else

Starting point is 04:58:07 will as to the identity of the girl we will call from lack of positive knowledge, Anitra. Will you help me in its furtherance? It lies with you to do so. First, your reasons for doubting the girl retorted ransom they must be excellent ones for you to resist the evidence of such conclusive proofs as you have yourself been witness to since entering this house i am georgian's husband i have the strongest wish in the world to see her again at my side yet with the exception of her wonderful likeness to my wife i find nothing in this raw if beautiful girl of the polished highly trained woman I married, I have not even succeeded in startling her ear, something which I should have been able to do if she were not the totally deaf woman she appears. Confide to me then your reasons for demanding additional proofs of her identity. If they carry conviction with them, I will aid you in any scheme you can propose which will neither frighten nor afflict her.

Starting point is 04:59:15 Hazen rose to his feet. Narrow as the room was, he yielded to his restless desire to move about and began pacing up and down the restricted quarters bound by the edge of the table in the door not until he had made the second turning did he speak then it was with seeming openness it's like putting the torch to my last ship said he but this is no time to hesitate mr ransom i do not trust my eyes i do not trust my ears nor your eyes nor your ears nor those of any one here because i have talked with a man who was on the same train with my sisters he noticed them because of their similar appearance and close intimacy they were not dressed alike but they were veiled alike and one did not move without the other more than that they not only walked about the various stations where they waited arm in arm but they set thus closely joined in the cars all the way from new york this interested him especially as he noted great anxiety and incessant movement in the one and complete passiveness in the other she who sat in the outer seat was watchful busy and ready to press the other's arm at the least provocation but if either spoke it was always the other it was not till the quick rush and shrill whistle of a passing train made one start and not the other that he got the idea that one of them was deaf as this was the one by the window he felt that their peculiar actions were now accounted for and indeed thus far it all tallied with what we might expect from georgian travelling with the hapless anitra but there remained a fact to be told which rouses doubt

Starting point is 05:01:19 when they reached g and he saw from their quick rising that they were about to leave the train he naturally glanced their way again and this time he caught a glimpse of the inner one's neck her veil had become slightly disarranged exposing the whole nape. It was unexpectedly dark, almost brunette in color, and quite devoid of delicacy. Such a skin as one might look for in the gypsy Anitra, after years of outdoor living, and a long lack of nice personal attention. But not such as I saw and admired a few hours ago on the neck of the woman bending over her work in the landlady's room. Oh, I recognized the difference. I have an eye for next. He paused, coming to a standstill in the middle of the room to see what effect his words had on ransom. I have that man's name, he continued, and can produce him if I have time, and it seems to be necessary. But I had rather come to my

Starting point is 05:02:30 own decision without any outside interference. This is not an affair for public gossip. poor newspaper notoriety it is a question of justice to myself if this girl is georgian his whole face changed for a moment ransom hardly knew him the quiet self-contained man seemed to have given way to one of such unexpected power and threat that ransom rose instinctively to his feet in recognition of a superiority he could no longer deny the action seemed to recall hazen to himself he wheeled about and recommenced his quiet pacing to and fro i beg pardon he quietly finished if it is georgian she must stand my friend that is all i was going to say if it is against all reason and probability her strangely restored twin i shall leave this house by midnight never probably to see any of you again so you perceive that it is incumbent upon us to work promptly are you ready to hear what i have to propose yes hayson paused again this time in front of the door laying his hand lightly on one of the panels he glanced back at ransom you are nicely placed here for observation your door directly faces the hall she must traverse in returning to her room that's quite true she is in her room now ah you know that yes ransom seem to have no other word at his command will she come out again before night to eat or to visit

Starting point is 05:04:13 there's no telling she's very fitful no one can prophesy what she will do sometimes she eats in the landlady's room sometimes in her own sometimes not at all if you have frightened her or she has been disturbed in any way by your companion who shows such interest in her and in me she probably will not come out at all but she must i expect you to see that she does use any messenger any artifice but get her away from this hall for ten minutes even if it is only into mrs deo's room when she returns i shall be on my knees before this keyhole to watch her and observe to see what i do not mean to tell you but it will be something think which will definitely settle for me this matter of identity. Does this plan look sufficiently harmless to meet with your approval? Yes, but looks cannot always be trusted. I must know just what you mean to do. I will leave nothing to a mind and hand I do not trust any more fully than I do yours. You are too eager for Georgian's money, too little interested in herself, and you are too sly in your ways.

Starting point is 05:05:31 I overlooked this when you had the excuse of a possible distrust of myself. But now that your confidence is restored in me, now that you recognize the fact that I stand outside of this whole puzzling affair and have no other wish than to know the

Starting point is 05:05:47 truth about it, and do my duty to all parties concerned, secrecy on your part means more than I care to state. If you persist in it, I shall lend myself to nothing that you propose but wait for time to substantiate her claim or prove its entire falsity you will the words rang out involuntarily it almost seemed as if the man would spring with him straight at the other's throat but he controlled himself and smiling bitterly added i know the marks of human struggle i have read countenances from my birth i've had to and only one

Starting point is 05:06:29 one has baffled me hers but we are going to read that too and very soon we are going to learn you and i what lies behind that innocent manner and her rude uncultivated ways we are going to sound that deafness i say we he impressively concluded because i have reconsidered my first impulse and now propose to allow you to participate open and without the secrecy you object to and all that remains to be done to make our contemplated test a success will that please you may i count on you now yes replied ransom returning to his old monosyllable very well then see if you can make a scrawl like this pulling a piece of red shock from his pocket he drew a figure of a somewhat unusual character on the bare top of the table between them then he handed the chalk over to ransom who received it with a stare of wonder not unmixed with suspicion i'm not an adept at drawing said he but made his attempt notwithstanding and evidently to hasten's satisfaction you'll do said he that's a mystic symbol once used by georgian and myself in place of our names in all mutual correspondence and on the leaves of our school books and at the end of our exercises it meant nothing but the boys and girls we associated with thought it did and envied us the free masonry it was supposed to cover a ridiculous make-believe which i rate at its full folly now but one which cannot fail to arouse a hundred memories in georgian we will scrawl it on her door or rather

Starting point is 05:08:29 you shall and according to the way she conducts herself on seeing it we shall know in one instant what you with your patience and trust in time may not be able to arrive at in weeks ransom recalled some of the tests he had himself employed many of which have been omitted from this history and shrugged his shoulders mentally if not physically if hazen noted this evidence of his lack of faith he remained entirely unaffected by it and in a few minutes everything had been planned between them for the satisfactory exercise of what hayson evidently regarded as a crucial experiment ransom was about to proceed to take the first required step when they heard a disturbance in front and the coach came driving up with a great clatter and bang and from it stepped the lean well-groomed figure of mr harper bah exclaimed hayson with a violent gesture of disappointment there comes you're familiar now i suppose you will cry off not necessarily returned ransom but this much is certain i shall certainly consult him before hazarding this experiment i'm not so sure of myself or pardon me of yourself as to take any steps in the dark while i have at hand so responsible a guide as the man whom you choose to call my familiar end of chapter twenty one chapter twenty two of the chief legate by anna catherine green this librovoc's recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter twenty two a suspicious test let him make his experiment it will do no harm and if it rids us of him well and good such a

Starting point is 05:10:32 was mr harper's decision after hearing all that mr ransom had to tell him of the present situation his disappointment when he learns that he has nothing to hope for from his sister's generosity calls for some consideration from us proceeded the lawyer go and have your little talk with the landlady or take whatever other means suggest themselves for luring this girl from her room i will summon hazen and hold him very closely under my eye till the whole affair is over he shall get no chance for any hocus pocus business not while i have charge of your interests he shall do just what he has laid out for himself and nothing more you may rely on that ransom expressed his satisfaction and left the room with a lighter heart than he had felt since hasten came upon the scene he did not know that all he had been through was as nothing to what lay before him it was an hour before he returned when he did it was to find hasten and the lawyer awaiting him in ill-concealed impatience these two were much too incongruous in tastes and interests to be very happy in a forced and prolonged tte-a-tete have you done it exclaimed hazen leaping eagerly to his feet as the door closed softly behind ransom is she out of her room i have listened and listened for her step but could not be sure of it there seemed to be a lot of people in the house to-night too many quoth ransom that is why i couldn't get hold of mrs deo any sooner anitra is having her hair brushed or something else of each other importance done for her in one of the rear rooms so we can proceed fearlessly have you looked to see if you can get a good glimpse of her door through the keyhole of this one

Starting point is 05:12:35 haven't you already made a trial of that then do so now suggested hazen drawing out the key and laying it on the table but this was too uncongenial a task for ransom i shall be satisfied said he if mr harper tells me that it can it can asserted that gentleman falling on his knees and adjusting his eye to the keyhole or rather you can see plainly the face of anyone approaching it i don't suppose any of us expected to see the door itself no it is not the door but the woman entering the door we want to see did you ask for an extra lamp yes and saw it placed it is on a small table of almost opposite her room then everything is ready all but the mark which i am to put on the panel very good here is the chalk let us see what you mean to do with it before you risk an attempt on the door itself ransom thought a minute then with one quick twist produce the following illustration correct muttered hazen with what harper thought to be a slight but unmistakable shuddered one would think you had been making use of this very cabalistic sign all your life then one would be mistaken i have simply a true eye and a ready hand and a very remarkable memory you have recalled every little line and quirk that's possible what i have made once i can make the second time it's a peculiarity of mine there was no staking the continued intensity of hazin's gaze ransom felt his color rise but succeeded in preserving his quiet tone as he added besides this character is not a wholly new one to me my attention was called to it months ago it was when i was courting georgian she was writing a note one day when she suddenly stopped to think and i saw her pen making some marks which i considered curious but i should not have remembered them

Starting point is 05:14:53 five minutes if she had not impulsively laid her hand over them when she saw me looking that fixed the memory of them in my mind and when i saw this combination of lines again i remembered it that is why i lent myself so readily to this experiment i lent that what you said about her acquaintance with this odd arrangement of lines was true hazen's hand stole up to his neck a token of agitation which ransom should have recognized by this time and her account of the use we made of it tallied with mine she gave me no account of any use she had ever made of it that was because you didn't ask her just so why should i ask her it was a small matter to trouble her about you're right acquiesced hazen wheeling himself away towards the window then after a momentary side violence it was so then but it is likely to prove of some importance now let me see if the hall is empty as he bent to open the door the lawyer who had not moved nor spoke until now turned a quick glance on ransom and impulsively stretched out his hand but he dropped it very quickly and subsided into his old attitude of simple watchfulness as hazen glanced back with the remark there's nobody stirring now's your time ransom the moment for action had arrived ransom stepped into the hall as he passed hasten the latter whispered don't forget that last downward quirk that was the line she always emphasized ransom gave him an annoyed look his nerves as well as his feelings were on a keen stretch and this persistence of hazens was more than he could bear

Starting point is 05:16:51 i'll not forget the least detail he answered shortly and passed quickly down the hall while hazen watched him through the crack of the door and the lawyer watched hasten suddenly mr harper's brow wrinkled hazen had uttered such a sigh of relief that the lawyer was startled in another moment ransom re-entered the room she's coming said he striving to hide his extreme emotion i heard her voice in the hall beyond hasten sprang to the door which ransom had carefully closed and was about to fall on his knees before the keyhole when he suddenly stiffened himself and turning towards the lawyer cried with a new strain of loftiness in his tone you you shall do the looking only promised to be very minute in your description of her behaviour it's a great trust i reposing you see that you honour it the revulsion of feeling caused in the lawyer by this show of confidence was not perceptible but it softened his step as well as his manner as he crossed to do the other's bidding the remaining two stood at his side breathless, waiting for his first word. It came in a whisper. She's approaching her room. She looks tired. Her eyes are stealing this way. No, they are resting on her own door. She sees the sign. She stands staring at it. But not like a person who has ever seen it before.

Starting point is 05:18:32 It's the stare of an uneducated woman who runs upon something she does not understand now she touches it with one finger and glances up and down the hall with a doubtful shake of the head now she is running to another door now to another she is looking to see if this scrawl is to be found anywhere else she even casts her eye this way i feel like leaving my post if i do you may know that she's coming no she's back at her own door and gentlemen her bringing up or rather coming up asserts itself she has put her palm to her mouth and is vigorously rubbing off the marks the next instant mr harper rose she's gone into her room said he listen and you will hear her key click in the lock ransoms sank into a seat hazen had walked to the window presently he turned i am convinced said he i will not trouble you gentlemen further mr ransom i condole with you upon your loss my sister was a woman of uncommon gifts mr ransom bowed he had no words for this man at a moment of such extreme excitement he did not even note the latent sting hidden in the other seeming tribute to georgian but the lawyer did and hasten perceived that he did for he did for pausing in his act of crossing the room he leaned for a moment on the table with his eyes down then quickly raising them remarked to that gentleman i am going to leave by the midnight train for new york to-morrow i shall be on the ocean

Starting point is 05:20:21 will it be transgressing all rules of propriety for me to ask the purport of my sister's will it is a serious matter to me sir if she has left me anything she has not emphasized the lawyer a shadow darkened the disappointed man's brow his wound swelled and his eyes gleamed ironically as he turned them upon ransom instantly that gentleman spoke i have received but a moiety said he you need not end thee me the amount who has it then briskly demanded the startled man who who she mr harper never knew why he did it he was reserved as a man and usually more than reserved as a lawyer but as hasten lifted his hands from the table and turned to leave he quietly remarked the chief legatee the one she chose to leave the bulk of her very large fortune to is a man we none of us know his name is josiah the change which the utterance of this name caused in hasten's expression threw them both into confusion why didn't you tell me that in the beginning he cried i needn't have wasted all this time and effort his eyes shone his poor lips smiled his whole air was jubilant both mr harper and his client surveyed him in amazement the line so fast disappearing from his brow were beginning to reappear on theirs mr harper this hard-to-be-understood man now declared you may safely administer the estate of my sister she is surely dead end of chapter twenty two chapter two chapter two chapter two

Starting point is 05:22:26 twenty three of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this librovoc's recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter twenty three a startling decision before mr ransom and the lawyer had recovered from their astonishment hazen had slipped from the room as mr harper started to follow he saw the other's head disappearing down the staircase leading to the office he called to him but hazen declined to turn no time he shouted back i shall have to make use of somebody's automobile now to get to the ferry in time the lawyer did not persist not at that moment he went back to his client and they had a few hurried words then mr harper went below and took up his stand on the portico he was determined that hazen should not leave the place without some further explanation it was light where he stood and he very soon felt that this would not do so he slipped back into the shade of a pillar and seeing from the bustle that hazen was likely to obtain the use of the one automobile stored in the stable he waited with reasonable patience for his reappearance in the road before him meanwhile he had confidence in ransom who he felt sure was watching them both from the window overhead if he should fail in getting in the word he wanted ransom was pledged to shout it out without regard to appearances but this was not likely to occur he knew his own persistency to equal hazens nothing should stop the momentary interview he had promised himself ah a well-known whirr and clatter is heard the automobile was leaving the stable hazen was already in it and the man who had come up from new york was with him this was bad they would flash by no

Starting point is 05:24:27 he would not be balked thus stepping out into the road he stopped full in the glare of the office lights and held up his hand they could not but see him and they did the chauffeur reversed the lever and the machine stopped to the accompaniment of low muttered oaths from hazen which were rather disagreeable than otherwise to harper's ear one word said he approaching to the side where hazen set i thought you ought to know before leaving that we can take no proceedings in the matter we were speaking of till we have undisputed proof that your sister is dead that we may not get for a long time possibly never if you are interested in having this ouch and klaus receive his inheritance you had better prepare both yourself and him for a long time for a long time for a long time long wait the river seems slow to give up its dead the quiver of impatience which had shaken hazen at the first word had settled into a strange rigidity one moment he said in a command to the chauffeur at his side then in a low strangely sounding whisper to harper they think the body's in the devil's cauldron nothing can get it out if it is would some proof of its presence there be sufficient to settle the fact of her death that would depend if the proof was unmistakable it might pass in the surrogate's court what is the matter hazen nothing the tone was hollow the whole man set like an image of death i-i'm thinking weighing he uttered and scattered murmurs then suddenly you're not deceiving me harper some proof will be necessary and that very soon or this man auchencloths to realize the money yes the monosyllable was as dry as it was short harper's patience with this unnatural brother was about it an end

Starting point is 05:26:38 and who will venture to obtain this proof for us no one not even ransom would venture down into that watery hole they say it is almost certain death babbled hazens harper kept silence strange forces were at work the head of another gruesome tragedy loomed vaguely through the shadows of this already sufficiently tragic mystery gone suddenly shouted hazen leaning forward to the chauffeur but the next instant his hand was on the man's sleeve no i have changed my mind here staples he called out as a man came running down the steps take my bag and ask the landlady to prepare me a room i'll not try for the train to-night then as the man at his side leaped to the ground he turned to harper and remarked quietly but in no common tone the steamer must sail without me i'll stay in this place a while and prove the death of georgian ransom myself end of chapter twenty three chapter twenty four of this place a while and prove the death of georgian ransom myself the chief legatee by anna catherine green this libravox recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter twenty four the devil's colron the solemnity of hazen's whole manner impressed mr harper strongly as soon as the opportunity offered he cornered the young man in the office where he had taken refuge and giving him to understand that further explanation must pass between them before either slept he drew him apart and put the straight question to him who is josiah auchencloss the answer was abrupt almost menacing in its emphasis and tone

Starting point is 05:28:44 a trunk-maker in st louis a man she was indebted to how indebted to a trunk-maker desire to state it is enough that she felt she owed him the bulk of her fortune though this eliminates me from benefits of a wealth i had some rights to share i make no complaint she knew her business best and i am disposed to accept her judgment in the matter without criticism you are the tone was sharp the sarcasm biting i can understand that for auchenclas in this will read hazen but how about her husband how about her friends and the general community do you not think they will ask why a beautiful and socially well-placed young woman like your sister should leave so large a portion of her wealth to an obscure man in another town of whom her friends and even her business agent have never heard it would have been better if she had left you her thousands directly the smile which was hasten's only retort was very bitter you drew up her will said he you must have reasoned with her on this very point as you are now trying to reason with me the lawyer waved this aside i did not know at that time the social status of the legatee nor did i know her brother then as well as i do now you do not know me now i know that you are very pale that the determination you have just made has cost you more than you perhaps are willing to state that there is mystery in your past mystery in your present and possibly mystery threatening your

Starting point is 05:30:42 your future and all in connection with your great desire for this money hazen made a forcible gesture but whether of denial or depreciation it was not easy to decide would it not then be better for all parties pursued the lawyer for you to give me some idea of the great obligation under which your sister lay to this man that i may have an answer ready when when people ask me why she passed you so conspicuously by in order to enrich this stranger the story is not mine had she wished you to know it she would have confided it to you herself i must decline mr harper interrupted the other impressively do you realize what a shadow may be thrown upon your sister's memory by this reticence on your part her death was suggestive enough without the complicated you mention injustice to your relationship you should speak if as i think the money is really meant for you say so the subterfuge may be difficult of explanation but it will not hurt her memory as much as this extraordinary silence on your part i am sorry began hasten but harper cut him short you expect the money you yourself said he nothing else would force you into an attempt so perilous. You would risk death. Risk something less final. Risk your place in my esteem. You're standing among men and confess the full truth about this matter. If it involves

Starting point is 05:32:26 crime, why, I'm a lawyer and can see you through better than you can win through by your own misdirected efforts. The truth, my lad, the truth. Nothing else will serve you. The look he received, will never forget you are a man of limited experience mr harper were the words which accompanied it you would not understand the truth georgian or me ransom might but i shall not even risk ransom's discretion now this is all i'm going to say about this matter georgian's last will and testament followed though it was by suicide was a person regular one the only impediment to its being so recognized and acted upon is the doubt as to her actual decease if the body of my poor young sister has become lodged in the devil's cauldron i am going there to seek it as the project calls for courage and above all a good condition of body and mind i shall be obliged to you if you will will allow me the benefit of the sleep i most certainly need to-morrow i may have something more to say to you and i may not perhaps i shall want to make my will who knows and with a smile full of sarcastic meaning he pushed mr harper's arm aside and made for the staircase up which he presently vanished without another attempt on the lawyer's part to hold him back a few minutes later the lawyer was getting what information he could about the so-called devil's cauldron it seems that this was a very deep hole in which on account of the rocky formation surrounding it the water swept in an eddy which had the force of a whirlpool

Starting point is 05:34:31 no one had ever sounded its depths and nothing had ever been seen again which had once been sucked into its deathly hollow that georgian's body had found its everlasting grave there many had believed from the first and if the conviction had not yet been publicly expressed it was out of consideration for mr ransom to whose hopes it could but ring a final knell where is the hole how far from the waterfall queried mr harper a good mile muttered one man quite around the bend of the street it's a horrid place sir we've always been mortal careful about rowing down that side of the river children are never allowed to only a man's strength could get him free again if he once struck the eddy would anything floating down from the falls be apt to strike this eddy very apt it would be a miracle if it didn't that is why we all turned out so willingly the first day we knew that if mrs ransom's body was to be found at all it would be found then another day it would be beyond our reach you say that no one has ever sounded the depths of that hole has anyone ever tried to more than once scientific men and others did they ever emerge any of them yes one a powerful sort of chap with indian blood in him but he didn't advise anyone to try it said the knowledge wasn't worth the strain to heart and muscle what was the knowledge we can imagine the strain oh he said as how the walls of the vortex didn't he call it a vortex was all stone

Starting point is 05:36:26 and he spoke of a ledge i didn't hear what else to go down there a man would have to take his life in his hand i see well i don't think i will try dryly observed the lawyer as he left the room he could no longer hide his excitement at the thought that hazen meditated this undertaking how he must want money thought he that a man should face such a horror for another man's profit did not seem likely enough to engage his consideration for a moment lawyer harper knew the world or thought he did next day the whole town was thrown into a hubbub where it had gone out through every medium possible to so small a place that alfred hayson georgian's long-lost brother was going to dare death eddy in a final attempt to recover his sister's body end of chapter twenty four chapter twenty five of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this librovoc's recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva part four the man of mystery chapter twenty five death eddy it was a gray day chill and ominous as the three most interested in the event came together on the three most interested in the event came together on the the road facing the point from which Hazen had decided to make his desperate plunge, the dreariness of the scene was reflected in the troubled eye of the lawyer, and that of the still more profoundly

Starting point is 05:38:12 affected ransom. Only Hazen gazed unmoved, perhaps because the spot was no new one to him, perhaps because an unsympathetic sky, a stretch of rock, the swirl of churning waters, without any of the lightness and color which glancing sunlight gives, meant for him but one thing, the thing upon which he had fixed his mind, his soul. The rocky formation, into which the stream ran at this point as into a pocket, revealed itself in the bald outlines of the point which, curving halfway upon itself, held in its cold embrace, the unseen vortex. One tree and one only disturbed the skyline, stark, and twisted into an unusual shape

Starting point is 05:39:09 from the steady blowing of the prevalent east winds. It imprinted itself at once upon the eye and unconsciously upon the imagination. To some, it was the keeper of that hellgate, the contorted sentinel of bygone woes and long-buried horrors. if not the gnomish genius of others yet to come today it was the signpost to a strange deed the courting of an uncanny death that one of the many secrets hidden in that whole of miseries might be unlocked under this tree a small group of strong and determined men was already collected not as spectators but have helpers in the adventurous attempt about to be undertaken by their old friend and playmate. The spectators had been barred from the point and stood lined up in the road overlooking the eddy. They were numerous and very eager. Haysen's brows drew together in his first exhibition of feeling

Starting point is 05:40:20 as he saw women and even children in the crowd and caught the expression of morbid anticipation with which they all. turned as he stepped with his two associates over the rope which had been stretched across the base of the out-curving headline illustration cormorants escaped his lips they look for a feast of death but they will be disappointed cormorants escaped his lips they look for a feast of death but they will be disappointed he was almost bitter i shall survive this plunge i have no wish for my death to be the holiday for a hundred gloating eyes i am not handsome enough when i die it will be quietly with some hand near kind enough to cover my poor face with a napkin harper and ransom both remembered this remark a little while while later mr hayson it was harper who spoke they had passed a little thicket of brush and were drawing near the group under the tree have you duly considered what you are about to do i have talked with several men of judgment and experience about this attempt and they all say it can have but one termination i know that is because they know little or nothing of the life i have led since i left this town there is not a man amongst them so slight and seemingly frail of figure as myself but none of them not one has been so often up to the very gates of death and escaped as i have my schooling has been long and severe perhaps in preparation for this day i have been through fire i have been through water the swirling of my own native stream does not appal me

Starting point is 05:42:17 i rather welcome it it is but another experience but for money broke in ransom you acknowledge it is for no other purpose will it pay i own that in my eyes no amount of money could pay a man for so superhuman a risk as this take a few thousands from me i had rather give them to you than see you leap into that water opening beneath us like a hungry maw hazen stood silent his eye glistening his hand almost outstretched harper thought he would yield the offer must have struck him as generous and very tempting a good excuse for a hot-headed man to withdraw from a very doubtful adventure but he did not know hazen this latter advanced his hand and squeezed ransoms warmly but his answer when he was ready to give one conveyed no intention of a change of mind well your thousands amount to a clean million he smiled that is the amount i believe bequeathed by your wife to mr auchencloss nothing less will suffice yet i thank you ransom the latter bowed and fell a little behind the others the struggle in his mind had been severe it was severe yet he did not know but that it was his duty to stop this hasten from his intended action by force he was not sure but that the onus of this whole desperate undertaking would yet fall upon him certainly it would fall upon his conscience if the end was fatal he had had proof of that in the long night of waking misery he had just passed a night in which he had faced the furies in which this inexorable question had forced itself upon him despite every effort on his part to evade it why had he a humane man consented to this attempt on the part of the devoted hasen that his mind might be free to mourn his beautiful young bride whose fatal and mysterious secret he was still as far from knowing

Starting point is 05:44:37 as in the hour he turned to welcome her to their first home and found her fled from his arms and heart or had this suspense this feeling of standing now as never before at the opening door of fate a deeper significance a more active meaning was this meditated test a crucial one because it opened to him the only possible releasement of soul and conscience to the undivided care of one who had no other refuge in life save that offered by his devotion the horror of this self-probing was still upon him as he followed hazen's slight and virile figure across the rocks but it fled as he felt the spray of the tossing waters dash its chilling reminder in his face the event was upon him and he must add to his former actions that of a complete and determined opposition to the risk proposed, or possibly forfeit his peace of mind forever. Quickening his pace, he reached Hazen and the lawyer, just as the men awaiting them had advanced on their side.

Starting point is 05:45:53 Instantly he knew it was too late. There was neither time nor opportunity for any weak protests on his part now. Older men were speaking, men who knew the river, the danger, and the man. but even they said nothing to him in way of dissuasion. They only pointed out what especial points of suction were to be avoided and showed him the chain they had brought for his waist, and how he was to pull upon it the very instant he felt his senses or his strength leaving him. He answered as a courageous man might,

Starting point is 05:46:33 and making ready by taking off his coat and shoes, he gave himself into their hands for the proper fastening on of the chain then while the murmur of expectation rose from the crowd on the river bank he stepped back to mr ransom and whispered hurriedly in his ear you have a good heart a better heart than i ever gave you credit for promise that in case i never come out of those waters alive that you will put no obstacle in the way of mr ouching cross inheriting his fortune in good time he's a man worthy of all the assistance which money can bring you do not need her wealth anitra well she will be cared for but ouching cloth promise brother ransom half drew back in his amazement then started forward again this man whom he had always distrusted whom he had looked upon as georgian's possible enemy certainly his own was looking into his eyes with a gaze of trust almost of affection the money was not for himself he showed it by the noble almost grand look with which he waited for his aunt a look that carried conviction despite ransom's prejudice and great dislike you will give me that much additional nerve for the task lying before me he added and ransom could only bow his head the man's mastery was limitless it had reached and moved even him another moment and a gasp went up from fifty or more throats hazen had taken the chain in his hand walked to the edge of the rock

Starting point is 05:48:23 and slipped into the quietest water he saw there. Strike left, called out a voice, and he struck left. The eddy seized him, and they could see his head moving slowly about in the great circle which gradually grew smaller and smaller till he suddenly disappeared. A groan muffled with horror went up from the shore, but the man who held the chain lifted up his hand and silence, more pregnant of anticipation than any sound held that crowd rigid.

Starting point is 05:48:58 The man played out the chain. Harper stared at the seething, tumbling water, but ransom looked another way. The torture in his soul was taking shape, the shape of a ghost rising from those tossing waters. Suddenly the pent-in breath of fifty breasts found its way again to the lips. the men who held the chain were pulling it in with violent reaches it dragged more slowly stuck loosened itself and finally brought into sight a face white as the foam it rose amongst dead drowned the whisper went around but when hazen was dragged ashore and ransom had thrown himself at his feet he saw that he yet lived and lived triumphantly ransom could not

Starting point is 05:49:50 had told more it was for others to see and point out the smile that sweetened the wan lips and the passion with which he held against his breast some sodden and shapeless object which he had rescued from those awful depths and which when spread out and clean of sand betrayed itself as that peculiar article of woman's clothing a small side-bag i remember that bag said harper i saw it or one exactly like it in mrs ransom's hand when she got into the coach the day we all rode up from the ferry what will he have to say about it and could he have seen the body from which it has evidently been torn end of chapter twenty five chapter twenty six of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this librovoc's recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter twenty six hazen an unfathomable man grumbled mr harper entering mr ransom's room in marked disorder they say that he has not spoken yet but the coroner is with him and we shall hear something from him soon i expect here here the lawyer's voice changed and his manner took on meaning that his report will be final final you mean what his fainting face showed for all its pallor and the exhaustion it expressed there was triumph in its every feature the little bag was not all he saw in that pit of hell you must prepare yourself for no common ordeal ransom it will take all your courage to listen to his story i know the words came with difficulty but not without a certain manly courage i shall try not to make you too much trouble

Starting point is 05:52:13 then after a moment of oppressive silence did you notice when we all came in the figure of a woman disappearing up the stairway It was a nitrous, and it paused before it reached the top. And I saw her eyes staring down at Hazen's helpless figure with a wildness in its inquiry that has sapped all my courage. How are we to answer that girl when she asks us what has happened? How make her know that Hazen is her brother, and that he has just risked his life to satisfy himself and us that Georgian was really lost in that dreadful pool. The lawyer darting a keen glance at the speaker softly shook his head. I am not thinking of Miss Hazen, said he.

Starting point is 05:53:11 I'm wondering how far the proof he has obtained will go. He paused, listening, then made a gesture towards the hall. there's someone there he whispered ransom rose and with a quick turn of the wrist pulled open the door a man was standing on the threshold a ghastly figure before which ransom involuntarily stepped back hazen he cried then as the other tottered he sprang forward again and reaching out his hand to steady him drew him in with the remark we were expecting a summons from you we are happy that you find yourself able to come to us the coroner has just gone the doctors i dismissed i have something to say to you to both of you he added as he caught sight of mr harper entering slowly he sat down in the chair proffered him by the lawyer there was something strange in his air a quiet automaton-like quality which attracted the latter's notice and led him to watch him very closely ransom was busy with the door which the strong west wind blowing through the hall made difficult to close i the one word uttered hasten seemed to forget himself sitting quite still he gazed straight before him at the open window there was little to be seen there but the swaying boughs of the huge tree but his gaze never left those tossing limbs and his sentence hung suspended till the movement made by ransom recrossing the room roused him and he went on

Starting point is 05:54:55 i have made the plunge gentlemen and fortune favoured me i hear his voice failed him again but realizing the fact more quickly than before he shook off his apathy and facing the two men who awaited his slow words with inconceivable excitement continued with sudden concentration upon his subject i saw what i went to see poor georgian's body i have satisfied the coroner of this fact the little bag i tore from her side proves her identity beyond a doubt you saw it mr harper they tell me that you recognized it at once as the same you saw in her hand in the stage-coach but if you had not the initials on it are quite unmistakable g q h georgian quinlan hazen auchencloss will get his money and soon will he not answer me plainly harper such an experience merits some reward you will not make difficulties i the lawyer's query had a strange ring to it he glanced from hasten to ransom and from ransom back to hasten whose features had now become more composed though they still retained their remarkable pallor if the proof is positive he then went on you assuredly can trust both my client and myself to remember our promise to you the coroner you say is satisfied yes with a proof and my sworn statement he is obliged to be no one else least of all himself feels any desire to go down to that whirling eddy for confirmation of my story and they are wise i do not think that any man with less experience than myself could sound the depths of that vortex and come up alive

Starting point is 05:57:01 the noise the swirl the sense of being sucked down down in ever increasing fury but my purpose kept the life in me i was determined not to yield not to faint till i had seen and proved what's that the cry was from mr ransom a sudden gust of wind had torn its way through the room flinging the door wide and strewing the floor with flying papers from the lock large stand in the window nothing but the wind answered harper half rising to close the door but immediately sitting down again with a strange look at ransom let be he whispered as the other rose in his turn to restore order keep hazing talking it's important imperative i'll see to the door but it was the window he closed not the door ransom with that obedience natural to a client in presence of his most trusted adviser did as he was bid and turned his full attention back to hasten instantly that gentleman upon whom the rushing wind and the havoc it created had made little if any impression rushed again into words i've led an adventurous life he declared and in the last few years especially passed through many perils and experienced much awful suffering i have felt the pang of hunger and the pang of biting despair but nothing i have ever endured can equal the horror which beclouded my mind and rendered powerless my body as i felt myself sliding from the sight of earth and heaven into the jaws of that rapacious eddy whose bottom no man had ever sounded i went in young i've come out old

Starting point is 05:58:59 look at my hands they shake like those of a man o ninety yet yesterday they could have pulled to the ground an ox you saw mrs ransom's body down in that pool some fathoms below the surface observed the lawyer after waiting in vain for some word from the shrinking husband won't you particularize mr hayson tell us just how she was lying and where mr ransom cannot but wish to know difficult as he evidently finds it to ask you the coroner has the story hazen began with the slow painful gasp of the unwilling narrator but i will tell it again it is your right the painful duty which we cannot escape she was lying not on the bottom but in a niche of rock into which she had been thrown and wedged by the force of the current one arm was free and was washing about i tried to clutch this arm as i went down but it eluded me when i arose the rush and swirl of the water was against me and i felt my senses going but enough instinct was left for me to snatch again at the arm as i passed and though it eluded me again my fingers closed on something which i was just conscious enough to hold on to with a frenzied grip we have spoken of this thing a little bag which must have been fastened to her side for the end of its connecting strap is torn away by the wrench i gave it vivid enough but i am sure you will tell me one thing more did you see the face of this body as well as the arm it would greatly add to the strength of your testimony if you could describe it

Starting point is 06:00:58 ransom who had been watching hazen cast a sudden look back at the lawyer as he dropped these insinuating words something more than a cold-blooded desire for truth had prompted this almost brutal in inquisition he must know what it was if anything in harper's well-controlled countenance would tell him the result transfixed him for following the lawyer's gaze which was fixed not on the man he was addressing but on a small mirror hanging on the opposite wall he saw reflected in it the face and form of anitra standing in the open doorway behind them she was looking at the open doorway behind them she was looking at a little looking at Hazen and, as Ransom noted that look, he understood Harper's previous caution and all that lay behind his insistent and cold-blooded questions, for her gaze was no longer one of simple inquiry, but of horrified understanding, the gaze of one who heard. Meantime, Hazen was answering in painful gasps, the lawyer's pointed question, did you see the face of this body as well as the arm. Did I see? God help me, yes, just a glimpse, but I knew it.

Starting point is 06:02:23 Eyes that my mother had kissed, blind, staring, glast in awe, the unspeakable fright, the mouth, whose every curve I had studied in the old days of perfect affection, drawn into a revolting grin and dripping with unwholesome weeds brought down from the shallows all strange yet all familiar my sister georgian dead stark but recognizable don't ask me if i saw it i always see it it is before me now the forehead the chin the eyes Ransom sprang to his feet, Harper also. The girl in the doorway had gone white as death, and with outstretched arms and frantic, haggard eyes was striving to ward off the frightful vision conjured up by her brother's words. The movement made by the two men recalled her in an instant to herself, and she drew back, the hesitating, appealing, anxious-eyed girl whom they all knew.

Starting point is 06:03:34 But it was too late. Haysen had seen a little. as well as the others and leaping in frenzy from his chair stood confronting her a dominant and accusing figure between the quietly triumphant lawyer and the crushed almost unconscious ransom end of chapter twenty six chapter twenty seven of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this librovoc's recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter twenty seven she speaks hazen's face was frightful to see the more so that physical weakness contended with the out-sweep of passion so great and overwhelming in its power and destructive force that to the two onlookers it seemed to spring from deeper sources than ordinary life and death and have its birth as well as its culmination in the unknown and all that is most terrible in the human mind and human experience anitra's eye was spellbound by it as it dilated upon this vision of unspeakable wrath and almost superhuman denunciation her own exquisite face filled with a reflected horror almost equaling his in force and meaning till the two odd spectators saw in this moment of startled recognition and the up-gathering of two great natures the oncoming of some hideous climax for which the many strange and contradictory experiences of the last few days had not served to prepare them you hear in these words hazin loosed out his soul the keen cry of the wind running through the house was his only answer you hear he repeated advancing

Starting point is 06:05:42 and laying a determined hand upon her arm. You have made a mock of us with your pretended deafness. What does it mean? Stop! No more play-acting. He fiercely admonished her as her eyes assumed a look of startled inquiry and wandered away in vague curiosity to the papers scattered over the floor. We have had enough of that.

Starting point is 06:06:06 You cannot deceive us. You cannot deceive me twice. you played it deafness why because anitra must have some disability to distinguish her from georgian because you are not a nitra because you are georgian after all georgian the word fell like a plummet into the hollow of that great expectancy ransom shivered and even harper's hard cheek changed color hazen only stood unmoved his look his grasp the spirit behind that look and grasp implacable and determined their influence was terrible slowly she succumbed to it against her will and purpose the will and purpose of a very strong woman her eyes rose in a painful and lingering struggle to his face then with a cry her drawn and parched lips could not suppress she flashed them in agony on ransom and this long-suffering man read in them the maddening truth they were his wife's eyes the woman before him was indeed georgian speak rang out the voice of hazen as harper realizing from ransom's face what ransom had just realized from hers stepped to the door and closed it

Starting point is 06:07:38 the time is short i have much very much to do for my sake for the sake of this much abused man whom you allowed to marry you speak out tell the truth at once you are georgian yes fell in an almost inaudible whisper from her lips i am georgian then as he loosed his grasp from her arm and she was left standing there alone some instant of isolation, some realization of the mysterious pitch she had dug for herself and possibly for others. In this avowal of her identity wrought her brain into momentary madness, and flinging up her arms, she fell on her knees before Hazen as under the stroke of some unseen thunderbolt. You may me say it, she cried. On your head be the punishment, not on my nor on his then as hasten drew slowly back touched in his turn by some emotion to which neither his look nor gesture gave any clue she rose to her feet and fixing him with a look of strange defiance added in milder but no less determined tones a tongue unloosed talks long and loud you have made me give up my secret but i shall not stop at that i shall say more

Starting point is 06:09:08 tell all my dreadful history yours mine i will not be thought wicked because i undertook so great a deception i will not have this good man's opinion of me shaken not for a minute what i did i did for him and he shall know it whatever penalty it may incur he is my husband his love to me is priceless and i will hold it against you against the cause against heaven yes and against hell here was truth to ransom it came like balm and renewed life bounding across the room he strove to seize her hand and draw her to himself but hazen would not have it his anger indeterminate before was concentrated now and not the white pleading of her face nor the warning gesture of ransom could hold it back traitoress he cried traitorous to me and to the cause you thought to escape what is inescapable do you know what you have done you have the rest hung in the air a sudden weakness had seized him and he sank faltering back into a chair harper pushed towards him still denouncing her however with lifted hand and accusing eyes the image though no longer is speaking one of the implacable and determined avenger georgian shocked into silence stared at him in a frenzy of complicated emotions to which neither of them as yet had given the key capable of relieving the maddening tension it is the pool the pool she finally murmured its waters have beaten out your life but he calmly shook his head it is not in water to do that he murmured give me a moment i have a question to ask i think a drop of the

Starting point is 06:11:08 liquor harper had flask in hand almost before the word had left the other's mouth the draft revived hasten he looked up at georgian i believe you so do these men believe you but you were not alone in this plot where is anitra where is the deaf and solitary one you dragged from the streets of new york to bolster up your plot tell us and tell us quickly where is an anitra anitra do you ask that cried harper roused to speak for the first time by his boundless amazement and indignation you have described the body in the pool a description which fits either sister and yet you would make this woman tell us what you have seen with your own eyes he might as well not have spoken neither he nor she seemed to hear him certainly neither he did anitra she repeated softly and with a strange intonation i am anitra i am both georgian and anitra there have never been two of us since i came into this house end of chapter twenty seven chapter twenty eight of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by tony leva chapter twenty eight fifteen minutes there have never been but one of us since i came into this house monstrous assertion or so it seemed to ransom as the whirl of his thoughts settled and reason resumed its sway only one but he had himself seen too so had mrs deo and the maids he could even relate the differences between them on that first night

Starting point is 06:13:13 yet had he ever seen them together or even the shadow of one at the same moment he saw the person of the other no and with such an actress as she had shown herself to be these last two days such changes of appearance might be possible though why she should engage in such a deep almost incredible plot was a mystery to make the hair rise she the tender exquisite the beloved woman of his dreams she saw the maddening nature of his confusion and springing to him fell on her knees with the imploring cry patience do not try to think i will tell you it can all be said in a word i was bound to this brother of mine to do his bidding to follow his fortunes through life and up to death by promises and oaths to which those uttered by me at the marriage altar were but toys and dinty air anitra or the dream sister my misery took from the dead was not so bound so i strove to secure our joy by the seeming death of georgian and a new life as her twin you do not understand you cannot you have no measure with which to gauge such men as my brother but it will be given you there is no hope now the weakness of a moment has undone us ransom must have hurt her after events proved that he did but he gave no token of it the visions that were whirling through his mind still held it engrossed he saw her not as she stood before him now trembling and appealing but as she had looked to him in the hall that first night as she had looked to him in the hall that first night as she had looked to him

Starting point is 06:15:09 down by the mill stream as she had looked when she told her story as a nitra and later when she had faced the landlady as georgian and the confusion of it all left no room in his conscience for any other impression but mr harper though surprised as he had never been before in all his professional career lost himself in no such abyss with the freedom which long delayed insight into the truth gives to a a man of his positive nature and training he left speculation and all endeavour to reconcile events with her declaration and plunged at once to the obvious question of the moment fixing his keen gaze on hazen he observed very quietly but with an underlying note of sarcasm if this lady is your sister georgian ransom and there is no anitra save the the fast-fading memory of the child commemorated in your family's monument then your statement as to the body you saw under the ledge was false the answer came deliberately unaffected both by the manner of the accusation or by the accusation itself perfectly so said he i saw no body perhaps my description would have been less vivid if i had my my intention you know this woman had deceived me to the point of making me believe that she was indeed anitra the twin and not my millionaire sister and georgian's fortune being necessary to her heir i wished to cut short the law's delay by an apparent identification i never doubted from the moment this woman faced with such well-played ignorance the mark of great meaning we had placed upon her door that georgian was in the river as you all believed

Starting point is 06:17:14 why then not give her a positive resting-place since this would smooth out all difficulties and hasten the very end for which she had apparently sacrificed herself if there was any irony in his heart his tongue did not show it indeed his manner betrayed little immobility had again replaced all tokens of anger and immobility which only yielded now and then to a slight contortion more expressive of physical pain than of mental agitation yet in georgian's eyes he had lost none of his formidable qualities for the for the dismay with which she followed his words grew as she listened and reached its height as he added in final explanation the bag i did draw out of the pool but only because i had taken it down there in my blouse front did you think a man could see that or anything else indeed in that manning swirl of water but it was mrs ransom's bag came from harper in ill-disguised amazement even his saun foie was leaving him before these evidences of a plot so deep as to awaken awe where did you get it not from mrs ransom herself her own surprises warranty for that no i got it from the river another reason why i credited her drowning it was fished up from the sand little way from the fall my man found it i had sent him there in a vain hope that he might find evidence of the tragedy which others had overlooked he did but he told no one but me

Starting point is 06:19:06 you flung the thing too far he remarked to georgian you should have dropped it nearer the bank only such a prodder as my man ives would ever have discovered it georgian shook her head impatient at such banalities in the face of the important matters they had to discuss to the point she cried tell these men what will clear me of everything but a wild attempt at freedom i have said what i had to say returned her brother georgian's head fell for a moment her courage seemed to fail her mr harper rose and locked the door we must have no intruders here said he pausing with a certain sense of shock as he noticed the faint smile full of some sinister meaning which for an instant twisted hazen's lips at these words but the delay was but momentary with an odd sense of haste he rushed at once to the attack stepping in front of hasten he observed with force and unmistakable resolution your devotion to your devotion to your devotion to you're devotion to-reason he rushed at once to the attack stepping in front of hasten he observed with force and unmistakable resolution your devotion to the legatee auchencloss cannot possibly be explained by any ordinary feeling of obligation your sister has mentioned a cause can he by any possibility be the treasurer of that cause but hayson was as impervious to direct attack as he had been to a covert one georgian will tell you said he when a woman looks as she looks now and is so given a to her own personal longings that she forgets the most serious oaths the most binding promises nothing can hold back her speech she will talk and since this must be let her talk now and in my presence but let it be briefly he admonished her

Starting point is 06:21:04 and with discretion an unnecessary word will weigh heavily in the end you know in what scales you shall have just fifteen minutes he looked about for a clock but seeing none drew out his watch from his vest pocket and laid it on the table then he settled himself again in his chair with a look and gesture of imperative command towards georgian struck with dismay she hesitated and he had time to add i shall not interrupt unless you pass the bounds where narrative ends and disclosure begins and harper and robert ransom glancing up at this wondered at his rigidity and the almost marble-like quiet into which his restless eye and frenzied movements had now subsided georgian seemed to wonder also for she gave him a long and piercing look before she spoke but once she had begun her story she forgot to look anywhere but at the man whose forgiveness she sought and for the restoration of whose sympathy she was unconsciously pleading her first words settled one point which up to this moment had disturbed ransom greatly you must forget a nitrous story it was suggested by facts in my own life but it was not true of me or mine in any of its particulars nor must you remember what the world knows or what my relations say about my life the open facts tell little of my real history which from childhood to the day i believe my brother dead was indissolubly bound up in his though our fathers were not the same and he has old world blood in his veins while i am of full american stock

Starting point is 06:23:02 we loved each other as dearly and shared each other's life as intimately as if the bond between us had been one in blood as it was in taste and habit this was when we were both young. Later, a change came. Some old papers of his father fell into his hands. A new vision of life, sympathies quite remote from those which had hitherto engrossed him, led him further and further into strange ways and among strange companions, ignorant of what it all meant, but more alive than ever to his influence. I blindly followed him, receiving his friends as my friends, and subscribing to such of their convictions as they thought wise to express before me. Another year, and he and I were living a life apart, owning no individual existence, but devoting brain, heart, all we had and all we were, to the advancement and perpetuation of an idea. I have called this idea the cause.

Starting point is 06:24:10 that name suffice i can give you no other pausing she waited for some look of comprehension from the man she sought to enlighten but he was yet two days to respond to her mute appeal and she was forced to continue without it indicating hasten with a gesture she said with her eyes still fixed on those of her husband you see him now as he came from under the harrow but in those days i must speak of you as you were alfred he was a man to draw all eyes and win all hearts men loved him women adored him little as he cared for our sex he had but to speak for the coldest breast to heave the most indifferent item beam i felt his power as strong as the rest only differently no woman was more his slave than i but it was a sister's devotion i felt a devotion capable of being supplanted by another but i did not know this i thought him my whole world and let him engross me in his plans and share his passions for subjects i did not even seek to understand i was only seventeen and he twenty-five it was for him to think not me and he did think but to my eternal undoing the cause needed a woman's help a woman's enthusiasm without considering my motherless condition my helplessness the immaturity of my mind he drew me day by day into the secret measures of his great scheme a scheme which as i failed to understand till it had absorbed me meant the unequivocal devotion of my whole life to the exclusion of every other hope or purpose favored he called it favored to stand for liberty the advancement of men the right of every human being to an untrammeled existence

Starting point is 06:26:10 and favoured i thought myself till one awful day when my brother coming suddenly into my room found me making plans for an innocent pleasure and told me such things were no longer for me that a great and immortal duty awaited me one that had come sooner than he expected but which my youth beauty and spirit eminently fitted me to carry on to triumph i was frightened for the first time in my memory of him he looked like his italian father the man we had all tried to forget once while rummaging among my mother's treasures i had come across a miniature of signor toriti he was a handsome man but there was something terrible in his eye something to make the ordinary heart stand still alfred's burned with the same meaning at this moment and as i noted his manner which was elevated almost godlike i realized the difference in our heredity and how natural to him were the sacrifices for which my mind and temper was naturally unprepared with difficulty i asked him to explain himself and it was with terror that i listened when he did he may have been made to ask but i was not made to hear such words he saw my inner rebellion and stopped in mid harangue he has never forgiven me the disappointment of that moment i have never forgiven him for making me sign away my independence my holdings my life to a cause i did not thoroughly understand your life echoed ransom roused to involuntary expression by this word surely not your life echoed the lawyer with the slow credulity of the matter-of-fact man

Starting point is 06:28:13 i have said it she murmured her head falling on her breast at which token of weakness hasten stirred and took the words from her mouth the organization said he is a secret one and its code is a secret one and its code is is self-sacrifice to the band of noble men and women of whose integrity and far-reaching purpose you can judge little from the whinings of a love-sick girl life and all personal gratifications are as dust in the balance against the preservation and advancement of universal happiness and the great cause i thought my sister young as he was sufficiently great-minded to comprehend this and sufficiently great-hearted to do the society's bidding with joy at the sacrifice but i found her lacking and he stopped and almost lost himself again but roused and cried with sudden fire tell what i did georgian you took my duty on yourself she conceded but coldly that was brotherly that was brotherly that that was noble if you had not exacted a vow from me in return destined to lay waste my whole life released from this one great duty i was to hold myself ready to fulfil all others at the lift of a hand a finger i was to leave whatever held me and go after the one who beckoned in the name of the cause no circumstances were to be considered no other human duty or affection if it were to enter upon a fuller and more adventurous life well and good if it were to encounter death and the cessation of all earthly things that was well too and a good to be embraced with ardor obedience was all and obedience had a mere signal i took the oath and then yes then emphasized hazen in wavering but peremptory tones

Starting point is 06:30:28 he told me what had led to all this misery that as yet this compact was between us two and us two only that he considered my youth and in speaking of me to the chief had held back my name even while promising my assistance that he should continue to consider it by keeping my name in reserve till he had returned from his mission and if that mission failed or succeeded too well and he did not return i might regard guard myself as freed from the cause unless my enlarging nature led me to attach myself to it of my own free will that said he went and for a year i lived under the dread of his return and all the obligations that return would entail then came tidings of his death tidings for which he may not have been responsible but which he never contradicted and i thought myself free free to enjoy life and the fortune that had so unexpectedly come to me free to love and alas free to marry and that is why she pursued in all the anguish of a dreadful retrospect i recoiled in such horror and hung a dead weight on your arm when on turning from the altar where we had just pledged ourselves to mutual love and mutual life i saw among the faces before me that changed but still recognisable one of my brother and beheld him make the fatal sign which meant you are wanted come at once wretch issued from the frenzied lips of the half-maddened bridegroom as his glance flashed on hasten had you no mercy have you no mercy now that you should torture her young credulous soul with these fanciful obligations obligations which no human being has any right to impose upon another whatsoever the cause holy or unholy he represents mercy it is the weakness of the easy soul there is no ease here he cried touching his breast with no gentle hand

Starting point is 06:32:46 then you forget my money suggested georgian can you expect mercy from a man who sees a million just within his grasp i know she acknowledged as hazen lifted that same ungentle hand in haughty protest that it was not for himself i do not think alfred would disturb a fly for his own comfort but he would wreck a woman's hopes a good man's happiness for the cause he admitted as much to me and more in the interview we held that afternoon at the st denise i had to go to him at once and i had to employ subterfuge in order to do so she went on in rapid explanation as she said saw her husband's eye refill with doubt under a remembrance of the shame and anguish of that unhappy afternoon i had not the courage to leave you openly at the carriage door besides i hoped to work on alfred's pity in our interview together or if not that to buy my release and return to you a free woman but the wound which had changed his face for me had changed and made hard his heart he had other purposes for me than quiet living with a man who could have no real interest in the cause the money i inherited the rare and growing beauty which he declared me to have were too valuable to the brethren for me to hope for any existence in which their interests were not paramount i might return to you subject to the same authoritative beck and call which it put me in my present position or i might leave you at once and for ever no half-measures were possible was i a bride loving and beloved by my husband to listen to either of these alternatives i rebelled and then the thunder-boat fell

Starting point is 06:34:44 i was no longer on probation no longer subject to his will alone i was a fully affiliated member that day my name had been sent to the chief this meant obedience on my part or of vengeance i felt it impossible to consider while i lived i need never hope again for freedom without penalty while i lived the words rang in my ears i did not need to weigh them i knew that they were words of truth there is no power on earth so inescapable as that exercised by a secret society and this one has a terrible safeguard none but he who keeps the list knows the members you roger might be one and i never suspect it unless you chose to give me the sign knowing this i realized that my life was not worth the purchase if i sought to cross the will of my own brother nor yours either it was the last thought which held me while i dutifully listened my mind was working out the deception which was to release me and when i left him it was to take the first step in the complicated plot by which i hoped to recover my lost happiness and i nearly succeeded you have seen what i have borne what difficulties i have faced what discoveries eluded but this last this greatest ordeal was too much i could not listen unmoved to a description of my own drowned body i who had calculated on all had not calculated on this the horror overcame me i forgot perhaps because god was weary of my many deception

Starting point is 06:36:41 End of Chapter 28. Chapter 29 of the Chief Legatee by Anna Catherine Green. This Libra Vox recording is in the public domain, recording by Tony Oliva. Chapter 29, There is one way. Have you done? Hazen was on his feet, and rigid still, but oscillating from side to side, as though his strength did not suffice to hold him quite erect, was surveying them, with eyes sunk so deeply in his head that they looked like dying sparks, reanimated for an instant by some passing breath. The half-fainting woman he addressed did not answer. She was looking up at ransom, for the sympathy and pardon he was as yet two days to show. Haysen made a move. It was that of physical suffering, sternly endured let me speak he urged i have a question to ask i must ask it now who was the woman who came up from new york with you there were two of you then without turning her head georgian replied

Starting point is 06:38:03 that was bella my mate the same one who personated me on the afternoon of my wedding that accounts for the coarseness of her neck hazen explained with a certain grim humor to the lawyer who had given a slight start of surprise or humiliation then quietly to georgian was it she who threw the comb and dropped your bag where my man found it i threw the comb threw it from my window before i uttered that loud shriek it did not go very far but i had to be satisfied with the fact that it lay in the direction of the waterfall but it was to bella i entrusted the flinging of the bag i gave it to her when she left the coach i had explained to her long before just what a place she would find herself in when she was set down at the foot of the lane how she was to make her way in the darkness till she came to where there were no more trees when she was to strike across the stream led by the noise of the waterfall i was very particular in my directions because i knew the danger she incurred of slipping into the chasm it was her fear of this and the more than ordinary darkness i presume which made her throw the bag haphazard i simply wanted it dropped on the bank above the waterfall i saw the girl mr harper broke in she wore a black skirt like the one you now wear a black blouse and a red-checked handkerchief nodded about her throat but the young woman who was seen leaving these parts the next morning had on some kind of a red dress and wore a hat bella had thrown away her hat it was picked up where the coach stopped and afterwards brought here know my plans went deep i foresaw the possibility of her being recognized by her clothes to guard against this i had her skirt and blouse made double the one side black the other a bright color she had simply to turn them the extra hat she carried with her it was small and easily concealed her neckerchief she probably tucked away i had its mate in my pocket and when i left my room

Starting point is 06:40:22 by the window as I did the moment after I had locked the two rooms it was with my hair pulled down and this neckerchief about my shoulders how did I dare the risk I wonder now but it was life life I was after life and love nothing else would have made me so fearless nothing else would have given me such confidence in myself or lent such speed to my feet running as I did in the darkness you ran around the house to the lane and entered it by the turnstile yes and so quickly that i had time to splash myself with mud and lose all my natural characteristics before any one came to find me it was anitra they met panting and dishevelled at the head of the lane anitra in appearance anitra in heart i did not act apart i was anitra anitra as i had conceived her to me she was and is an active living personality whenever i faced you in her character i thought with her half-educated mind felt with her half-disciplined heart i even shut my ears to sounds i would not hear half the time i did not nor did i fall back into my old ways when i was alone from the minute george enclosed her door upon you for the last time and i darkened my skin in preparation for a permanent assumption of nietra's individuality i became the imaginary twin in thought feeling and action it was my only safeguard alas had i only gone one step further and made myself really deaf the cry was bitterness itself but it passed unheeded mr ransom could not speak and hazen had other cares in mind where is this woman bella now he asked georgian was too absorbed or too unwilling to answer he repeated the question this time with an authority she could not resist rising slowly she faced him for

Starting point is 06:42:38 for one impressive moment. My God, came from her lips and startled surprise. How pale you are. Sit down or you will fall. He shook his head impatiently. It's nothing. Answer my question. Where is this Vela now?

Starting point is 06:42:58 I don't know. She is beyond my reach and yours. I told her to lose herself. I think she is clever enough to do so. The money I pay. paid her was worth a few years spent in obscurity the spark lighting his eye brightened into baleful flame but she met it calmly an indomitable spirit confronted one equally indomitable and his was the first to succumb turning from her hazen took out pencil and paper from his pocket and crossing to the window with that same peculiar and oscillating motion of which he seemed unconscious or which he found it impossible to subdue he wrote a line folded it and before even harper was aware of his purpose threw up the sash and flung it out uttering a quick sharp whistle as he did so what's that you're up to shouted the lawyer rushing to the window and peering over the other's shoulder into the open space below from which a man was just disappearing

Starting point is 06:44:02 am i a prisoner of the police that you should ask me that returned hazen haughtily no but you should be retorted harper i don't like your ways hasten i don't like what you and your sister have said about the cause and the consciousness obedience exacted from its members i don't like any of it least of all this passing over a poor bella's name to one whose duty it will possibly be to make trouble for her hazen smiled and moved from the window no one there had ever seen such a smile before and the oppression which it brought heightened georgian's fear to terror let be she cried lifting her hands towards harper in inconceivable anxiety a quarrel with him will not help you and it may greatly injure me alfred what am i to expect something dreadful i can see your face is not the face of one who forgives or who sees in a gift of money an adequate recompense for a cowardly withdrawal you read rightly said he your fortune will be a accepted by the chief, but he will never forget the cowardice. What faith can he put in one who prefers her own happiness to general good? You must prepare for punishment. Punishment? broke scornfully from Harper's lips. She hushed him with a look before which, even he stood aghast. You will only waste words, she cried. If he says punishment,

Starting point is 06:45:40 I may expect punishment. And turning back to to ransom in a burst of longing and passion she raised her eyes to him again saying you do not forgive because you do not realize my danger but you will realize it when i am gone ransom under a sudden releasement of the tension of doubt and awe which had hitherto held him speechless gave her one wild stare then caught her to his breast she uttered a happy sigh ah she murmured in the soft to see and boundless relief of the moment how i have learned to love you during the fears and agonies of this awful week and i you was the whispered answer too deeply he impetuously added in louder tones to let any harm come to you now she smiled but desperation fought with love in that smile gently releasing herself she cast another glance at hazen upon whose gray and distorted countenance there had settled a great gloom and passionately exclaimed had law or love been able to interfere with the judgment of our chief i should not have been driven into the herculean task of deceiving you and the whole world as to my real identity then with slowly drooping head and the manner of one who has heard his doom pronounce she hoarsely whispered the death-mark was scrawled on my door last night this is never done without the consent of the chief no one can save me now not even my own brother false i scrawled those lines declared ransom it was a test which i commanded you to make put in hazen then in fainter and less strenuous tones she's right georgian ransom is doomed no one can

Starting point is 06:47:44 save her. False again. This time it was Harper who interposed. I can and will. You forget that I know the name of your chief. Conspiracy such as you hint at is indictable in this country. I am a lawyer. I shall protect not only your sister but her money. The smile he received in return evinced no ordinary scorn try it said he then with a laugh so low as to be almost inaudible yet so full of meaning that even harper's cheek lost colour he calmly declared no one knows the name of our chief auchen klaus is a member and a valuable one the only one whose name georgian positively knows but he's but a unit in a thousand you cannot reach the head or even the heart of this great organization through him and if you did and punished it the cause would grow another head and you would be as far from injuring us as you are now georgian is right not even i can save her now then with a steady look into each of their faces he smiled again and one and all shuddered but the cause will go on he cried in tones ringing with a enthusiasm mankind will drop its shackles and we we shall have unrivated one of its chains it is worth dying for aye alfred haynes say it slowly he sank back into his chair the pallor which had astounded all from the first had now become the ghastly mask of a soul whose only token of life glimmered through the orbits of his fast glazing eyes he breathed but in great pants georgian became alarmed what is it she cried forgetting her own fears and threats in the horror which his appearance excited this is something more than exhaustion from the pounding of that murderous eddy what have you done tell me alfred tell me

Starting point is 06:50:03 for the first time since his entrance into the room a suggestion of sweetness crept into his tone simply forestalled the verdict of the chief said he i was under oath to leave the country to-day on no ordinary errand i failed to keep my word believing that the interests of the cause could be better served by what i have here undertaken than by the fulfilment of my primal duty but we are not allowed the free exercise of our own judgment else what man could be depended on with us neglect means death no matter what the excuse or the causes benefit i knew this when i made my choice last night i have been dying ever since but only actually since i came into this room when the doctors decided that i had received no mortal hurt in the eddy i alfred the sister heart spoke at last not not poison that is what you may call it here said he with a return to his old imperious manner but later and to the world it will be a kindness on your part to name it exhaustion the effect of my battle with the water the doctors will reconsider their diagnosis and blame my poor heart you will have no trouble about it it is my heart i feel it failing failing he was sinking but suddenly his whole nature flared up bounding to his feet he stood before them with eyes aflame

Starting point is 06:51:56 and a passionate strength in his attitude which held them spellbound what can law what can selfish greed what can self a grim and the most pitiless ambition effect against men who own to such discipline is this nothing the world will go on you will try your little ways your petty reforms your slow-moving legislation and promise of justice to the weak but the invincible is the ready ready to act ready to suffer, ready to die so that God is justified of his children and man lifted into brotherhood and equality. You cannot strive against the unseen and the fearless. The cause will triumph, though all else fails. Georgian, I am sorry. He was tottering now, but he held them back with a stern gesture i don't think i ever knew just what love was there is one way only one but from those lips the explanation of this one way never came as they saw the change in him and rushed to his support his head fell forward on his breast and all was over

Starting point is 06:53:35 over end of chapter twenty nine chapter thirty of the chief legatee by anna catherine green this lepervox recording is in the public domain recording by tony oliva chapter thirty not yet they had laid him on the bed and mr harper in his usual practical way was hastening to rouse the house when georgian stepped before him and laid her hand up on the door not yet said she with authority he said there was a way let us find it before we give up our secret and our possible safety mr harper have you guessed that way no except the usual one of protection through the law which he scouts i do not believe mrs ransom in any other being necessary your brother's threats answered a very good purpose while he was still alive but now that he is dead they need not trouble you i'm not even sure that i believe in the organization it was mostly in your brother's brain mrs ransom there's no such band or if there is its powers are not so unlimited as he would make you believe she simply pointed to the motionless form and the distorted face which were slowly assuming an expression of great majesty there is my answer said she men of his strong attributes do not kill themselves from fancy he knew what he did and you think that i will not live a week if i pass that door under the name of georgian ransom mr harper i am sure of it roger i beg you to believe what i say it may not come here but it will come the mark has been set against my name death only will obliterate this mark but the name-but the name-the name will obliterate this mark but the name-but the name

Starting point is 06:55:42 that is already a dead one shall it not stay so it is the only way-the way he meant georgian it was a cry of infinite protest such a cry as one might expect from the long-suffering ransom it drew her from the door it brought her to his side as their eyes and hands met harper stepped back to the bedside and remembering the sensitiveness of the man before him softly covered his poor face when he turned back mrs ransom was slowly shaking her head under her husband's prolonged look and saying softly no not georgian anitra henceforth anitra always anitra can you endure the ordeal for the sake of the safety and peace of mind it will bring i endure it can you remember the deafness that marks anitra that can be cured her smile turned almost arch we will travel there are great physicians abroad a sister not a wife your wife in time ah it will mean a new courtship and anitra is a different woman from georgian she has suffered you will love her better oh god harper are we living awake sane help me at this crisis i do not know where i am or what this is she really asks she asks the impossible she asks what you can perhaps give but not what i can you forget that this deception calls for connivance on my part and whatever you may think of me or my profession deception is foreign to my nature and very repugnant to me and you refuse mrs ransom i must the hope which had held her up the life which had returned to body and spirit since this prospect of a possible future had dawned upon her

Starting point is 06:57:52 faded from glance and smile then good-bye roger we shall never have those happy days together of which we have often dreamt i may stay with you a week a month a year but the horror of a great fear will be over us and never never can we no joy she threw herself into her husband's arms she clung to him one moment she cried one moment of perfect happiness before the shadow-fall oh how i must love you roger to say such words to think such thoughts with the body of the brother i love so deeply once lying there dead before us killed by his own hand ransom softly drew her aside where her eyes could not fall upon the bed harper stopped still where he was the picture of gloom and uncertainty it must be settled now said ransom as we leave this room our relations must remain i cannot but think your fears all folly muttered harper yet the responsibility you force upon me is terrible if it were not for that will how can i present it to the surrogate when i know the testator is still alive you need not i will do that said ransom and the property given to a man we none of us know property that is not legally his i will make it so cried georgian with a burst of new and uncontrollable hope as she saw as she thought this conscientious lawyer yielding there is paper here draw up a deed of gift i will sign it and you shall hold it so that whether i live or die ouchencloss's title to his money shall be absolute thus much i wish to do that alfred's life should not have been sacrificed for nothing

Starting point is 06:59:55 let me think harper was wavering a half-hour later the door of ransom's room was flung hurriedly open and loud cries for mrs deo and the office clerk rang through the house and when they and others came running at the call it was to find mr ransom and the lawyer hanging over the recumbent figure of the dead hazen and the deaf girl anitra pointing at the group with wild and inarticulate cries end of chapter thirty end of the chief legatee by anna catherine green

Classic Audiobook Collection - The Chief Legatee by Anna Katharine Green ~ Full Audiobook [mystery]

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