The House of the Whispering Pines Read Online Free PDF

myself—I do not feel like myself; it was enough—" Here
real emotion seized me and I almost broke down. I was in a position much
more dreadful than any they could imagine or should be allowed to.
    Their silence led me to examine their faces. Hexford's mouth had settled
into a stiff, straight line and the other man's wore a cynical smile I
did not like. At this presage of the difficulties awaiting me, I felt one
strand of the rope sustaining me above this yawning gulf of shame and
ignominy crack and give way. Oh, for a better record in the past!—a
staff on which to lean in such an hour as this! But while nothing serious
clouded my name, I had more to blush for than to pride myself upon in my
career as prince of good fellows,—and these men knew it, both of them,
and let it weigh in the scale already tipped far off its balance by
coincidences which a better man than myself would have found it
embarrassing to explain. I recognised all this, I say, in the momentary
glance I cast at their stern and unresponsive figures; but the courage
which had served me in lesser extremities did not fail me now, and,
kneeling down before my dead betrothed, I kissed her cold white hand with
sincere compunction, before attempting the garbled and probably totally
incoherent story with which I endeavoured to explain the inexplainable
situation.
    They listened—I will do them that much justice; but it was with such an
air of incredulity that my words fell with less and less continuity and
finally lost themselves in a confused stammer as I reached the point
where I pulled the cushions from the couch and made my ghastly discovery.
    "You see—see for yourselves—what confronted me. My betrothed—a dainty,
delicate woman—dead—alone—in this solitary, far-away spot—the victim
of what? I asked myself then—I ask myself now. I cannot understand
it—or those glasses yonder—or
those marks!"
They were black by
this time—unmistakable—not to be ignored by them or by me.
    "We understand those marks, and you ought to," came from the second man,
the one I did not know.
    My head fell forward; my lips refused to speak the words. I saw as in a
flash, a picture of the one woman bending over the other; terror,
reproach, anguish in the eyes whose fixed stare would never more leave
my consciousness, an access of rage or some such sadden passion
animating the other whose every curve spoke tenderness, whose every look
up to this awful day had been as an angel's look to me. The vision was a
maddening one. I shook myself free from it by starting to my feet."
It's—it's—" I gasped.
    "She has been strangled," quoth Hexford, doggedly.
    "A dog's death," mumbled the other.
    My hands came together involuntarily. At that instant, with the memory
before me of the vision I have just described, I almost wished that it
had been
my
hate,
my
anger which had brought those tell-tale marks
out upon that livid skin. I should have suffered less. I should only have
had to pay the penalty of my crime and not be forced to think of Carmel
with terrible revulsion, as I was now thinking, minute by minute, fight
with it as I would.
    "You had better sit down," Hexford suddenly suggested, pushing a chair my
way. "Clarke, look up the telephone and ask for three more men. I am
going into this matter thoroughly. Perhaps you will tell us where the
telephone is," he asked, turning my way.
    It was some little time before I took in these words. When I did, I
became conscious of his keen look, also of a change in my own expression.
I had forgotten the telephone. It had not yet been taken out. If only I
had remembered this before these men came—I might have saved—No,
nothing could have saved her or me, except the snow, except the snow.
That may already have saved her. All this time I was trying to tell where
the telephone was.
    That I succeeded at last I judged from the fact that the second man left
the room. As he did so, Hexford lit the candle. Idly watching, for
nothing now