"In two important particulars," he answered, "I know it to be the truth. Your idea about him is the right one. His memory (as you suppose) was the least injured of his faculties, and was the last to give way under the strain of trying to tell that story. Ibelieve his memory to have been speaking to you (unconsciously to himself) in all that he said from the moment when the first reference to 'the letter' escaped him to the end.""But what does the reference to the letter mean?" I asked. "For my part, I am entirely in the dark about it.""So am I," he answered, frankly. "The chief one among the obstacles which I mentioned just now is the obstacle presented by that same 'letter.' The late Mrs. Eustace must have been connected with it in some way, or Dexter would never have spoken of it as 'a dagger in his heart'; Dexter would never have coupled her name with the words which describe the tearing up of the letter and the throwing of it away. I can arrive with some certainty at this result, and I can get no further. I have no more idea than you have of who wrote the letter, or of what was written in it. If we are ever to make that discovery--probably the most important discovery of all--we must dispatch our first inquiries a distance of three thousand miles. In plain English, my dear lady, we must send to America."This, naturally enough, took me completely by surprise. I waited eagerly to hear why we were to send to America.
"It rests with you," he proceeded, "when you hear what I have to tell you, to say whether you will go to the expense of sending a man to New York, or not. I can find the right man for the purpose; and I estimate the expense (including a telegram)--""Never mind the expense!" I interposed, losing all patience with the eminently Scotch view of the case which put my purse in the first place of importance. "I don't care for the expense; I want to know what you have discovered."He smiled. "She doesn't care for the expense," he said to himself, pleasantly. "How like a woman!"I might have retorted, "He thinks of the expense before he thinks of anything else. How like a Scotchman!" As it was, I was too anxious to be witty. I only drummed impatiently with my fingers on the table, and said, "Tell me! tell me!"He took out the fair copy from Benjamin's note-book which I had sent to him, and showed me these among Dexter's closing words:
"What about the letter? Burn it now. No fire in the grate. No matches in the box. House topsy-turvy. Servants all gone.""Do you really understand what those words mean?" I asked.
"I look back into my own experience," he answered, "and Iunderstand perfectly what the words mean."
"And can you make me understand them too?"
"Easily. In those incomprehensible sentences Dexter's memory has correctly recalled certain facts. I have only to tell you the facts, and you will be as wise as I am. At the time of the Trial, your husband surprised and distressed me by insisting on the instant dismissal of all the household servants at Gleninch. Iwas instructed to pay them a quarter's wages in advance, to give them the excellent written characters which their good conduct thoroughly deserved, and to see the house clear of them at an hour's notice. Eustace's motive for this summary proceeding was much the same motive which animated his conduct toward you. 'If Iam ever to return to Gleninch,' he said, 'I cannot face my honest servants after the infamy of having stood my trial for murder.'
There was his reason. Nothing that I could say to him, poor fellow, shook his resolution. I dismissed the servants accordingly. At an hour's notice, they quitted the house, leaving their work for the day all undone. The only persons placed in charge of Gleninch were persons who lived on the outskirts of the park--that is to say, the lodge-keeper and his wife and daughter.
On the last day of the Trial I instructed the daughter to do her best to make the rooms tidy. She was a good girl enough, but she had no experience as a housemaid: it would never enter her head to lay the bedroom fires ready for lighting, or to replenish the empty match-boxes. Those chance words that dropped from Dexter would, no doubt, exactly describe the state of his room when he returned to Gleninch, with the prisoner and his mother, from Edinburgh. That he tore up the mysterious letter in his bedroom, and (finding no means immediately at hand for burning it) that he threw the fragments into the empty grate, or into the waste-paper basket, seems to be the most reasonable conclusion that we can draw from what we know. In any case, he would not have much time to think about it. Everything was done in a hurry on that day.
