iſſil HX DJ3Y X Dºº-ºº. can - º Arcº º M.ILL.BANK CASF A L (3 \ 2. 2. 325 1Albert Buſſhutſ. 15art HARWARD COLLEGE LIBRARY --~ - ºn ZY|| W ſº g ຠ（/; & U º - THE GIFT OF ALBERT BUSHNELL HART of CAMBRIDGE Class of 1880 |- ---- | - - ---- The Millbank Case A MAINE MYSTERY OF TO-DAY BY GEORGE DYRE ELDRIDGE With a Frontispiece in Colour By Eliot KEEN NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1905 AL is 2.37.s. u’ *** ***D Cº.L.E.S.E LIBRARY G!FT OF * : " . . . ii.; ELL RART Hº, if 1926 ct CopyRIGHT, 1905 BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY Published May, 1905 THE MERSHON company PRESS RAHWAY, N. J. ! chapTER I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. CONTENTS A STATEMENT of THE CASE MRs. PARLIN TESTIFIES ALIVE AT MIDNIGHT TRAFFORD GETS AN Assurance THE WEAPON is PRODUCED . MRs. MATTHEwson AND TRAFFORD HUNTING BROKEN BONEs . - - - A MAN DISAPPEARs . - - - PAGe I4 33 5.I 67 “You arr MY MOTHER ‘’ A SECOND MURDER. 2 . - - - - ALREADY ONE ATTEMPT AT THE DRIVERs’ CAMP THE PRIEST’s STORY . - - - - - A DUEL IN MATTHEwson's CHAMBERs THE RANGE 16 SCANDAL . - - - - THE STORY OF THE PAPERs - - - - THE MAN Is Found . - - - - THE LAST of THE PAPERs . - - - 85 IOI II9 I33 I53 167 185 I99 212 227 243 259 275 290 iii THE MILLBANK CASE CHAPTER I £ 6tatement Of the Ca32 HEODORE WING had no known enemy in the world. He was a man of forty; “well-to-do,” as they say in New England; a lawyer by profession, and already “mentioned ” for a county judgeship. He was unmarried, but there were those who had hopes, and there was scarce a spinster in Millbank who hadn't a kindly word and smile for him—at times. He was not a church member, but it was whispered that his clergyman was disposed to look leniently on this shortcoming, for Wing was a regu- lar attendant at service and liberal with money for church purposes, which, shrewd guessers said, some of the church members were not. Wing lived in the River Road, just at the top of & 4 Parlin's Hill. He was from “over East, some- A Statement of the Case 3 cuted with such carelessness that collection rested on the honesty of the borrower and not on sufficiency of documentary evidence. In fact, the debts out- valued the resources two to one—that is, they seemed to, until it was announced that the Parlin homestead had been sold for a sum sufficient to pay all obliga- tions and leave the widow a life income of five hun- dred dollars a year. People understood when it was learned that Wing himself was the purchaser. Mrs. Parlin was fifty years of age at the time of her husband's death—a woman to whom stateliness had come with white hairs and the growth of am- bition. From the hour of the judge's death, the devotion she had given him living turned to the pro- tection of his good name. In a distant, cold way she had always shown a regard for Wing, which changed to more marked affection, when his interposition provided the means to meet the last of her husband's debts. She harboured no suspicion that the price paid for the homestead was beyond value. Not only had it been her home throughout her married life, but the judge had always spoken of its value in the large terms that were habitual with him in dealing 6 The Millbank Case winds. In the flower-beds that border this drive, under the shelter of the house, the earliest flowers bloom in spring and the latest in autumn. Between the road and the front of the house is an enclosure of about half an acre—the “front yard,” as Millbank names it. A footpath runs from the front gate to the main door of the house, dividing the enclosure into two nearly equal parts. This enclo- sure is crowded with flower-beds and shrubbery; the paths are bordered with box hedges, while a few great evergreens tower above the roof, and make the place somewhat gloomy on dull days. In mid- summer, however, when the sun turns the corner and thrusts strongly into the enclosure, the deep shadows of the great trees are cool and inviting. From the principal door, the main hall, broad and unencumbered, makes back until it is cut by the nar- rower hall from the south-side door. This side hall carries the stairs, and east of it are the dining room, kitchens, and pantries. The main hall goes on, in narrowed estate, between the dining room on the south and kitchens on the north, to the woodsheds. To the left, as one enters the house, is the great par- A Statement of the Case 7 lour, seldom used, and a sitting room, the gloomiest room on the floor, for it has a northern outlook only. In the angle of the two halls is the great room which Wing used as his library. It is some twenty- four by thirty-six feet, high-posted, and has a warm, sunny outlook to the south and west. It is lined with books and pictures; a great desk stands in the centre front, and lounges and easy chairs are scat- tered about in inviting confusion. The room above was his bedchamber, adjoining which is a bath- room, in its day the wonder and challenge of Mill- bank. An iron spiral stairway leads from the lower to the upper room, so that the occupant has the two rooms at his command independent of the remain- der of the house. This was Wing's special domain. Outside these two rooms, Mrs. Parlin ruled as un- disputed as during her thirty years of wifehood. Within, Wing held control, and while no small share of his personal work was done here, the great room saw much of his private life of which his everyday acquaintances had little suspicion. The cases con- tained many a volume that belongs to literature 8 The Millbank Case rather than law, and here he found that best of rest from the onerous demands of a constantly growing practice—complete change in matter and manner of thought. On the night of the Ioth of May, 1880, the light burned late in Lawyer Wing's library. It was the scandal of Millbank that this occurred often. The village was given to regarding the night as a time when no man should work. “Early to bed and early to rise ’’ was its motto, and though an opposite prac- tice had left Theodore Wing with more of health, wealth, and wisdom than most Millbankians pos- sessed, he had never succeeded in reconciling his townsmen to his methods. But to-night conditions were more outrageous than usual. Mrs. Merrick, from the bed of an ailing grandchild, glanced up the hill at midnight and saw the light still burning. Old Doctor Portus, coming villageward from a con- finement case, an hour later, saw the light as he passed the house and shook his head with dire prog- nostications. If Wing should be sick, old Doctor Portus would certainly not be called in attendance, and therefore he could measure this outrage of na- A Statement of the Case 9 ture's laws with a mind uninfluenced by personal bias. At four o'clock, however, a farmer's son, who had yielded the night to Millbank's temptations, hurry- ing farmward to his morning chores, saw no light growing dim in the first flush of the spring morning to attract his attention to a scene that later knowl- edge revealed. At six, the hired man came down the back stairs and went through the woodshed to the barns. Turning the heavy wooden bar that held the great doors fast, he swung them open and let in the soft morning air. Then, his eye travelled along the stretch of house and he saw something that startled him. The side door was standing ajar—half open—and on the stone step was a huddled mass that looked strangely like a man, half lying and half crouching. Before the hired man had passed half the distance to the door, he knew that the huddled mass was Theodore Wing. His head and right arm rested on the threshold and held the door from closing; his body was on the stone step. There was blood spattered on the white of the westerly door-post, and the left IO The Millbank Case temple of the man, which was upward as he lay, showed a spot around which the flesh was blackened as if powder-burnt, while between the head and the threshold a thin stream of blood still flowed and fell drop by drop on the stone below. The eyes were wide open and the look in them seemed to say that, sud- denly as death had come, it had not come too sud- denly for the man to realise that here had fallen the end of his hopes and ambitions, his strivings and ac- complishments, in a form that left him powerless to strike a blow in his own behalf. This murder was the most tragic event that had ever happened in the history of Millbank. It caused the more terror in that, so far as any one could un- derstand, it was absolutely without motive. It was not known that Theodore Wing had an enemy in the world. Millbank was proud of him with a whole- some, kindly pride, which found much of self-gratu- lation in having such a citizen. Yet this man had been struck down by a murderer's hand, so silently that no sound had been heard, and the murderer had gone as he had come, without leaving trace of his coming or going. I 2 The Millbank Case change made and the bell transferred to that room, so that his personal visitors could come and go with- out disturbing the house. In a little time, however, this proved very annoying, because most visitors came to this door, and he gave an order for a general bell to be put in. This he intended should also have a pull on the right-hand post, but the workman, who seemed to have no conception that one post could carry two pulls, put it on the left. Thus the post nearest Wing's room carried the general bell, and the further post his own, and neither of the bells could be heard on the premises devoted to the other. At first, this condition gave rise to troublesome mis- takes, and Wing talked often of a change, but gradu- ally the visitors to the house became accustomed to the condition and the need of a change disappeared. It was clear, therefore, that whoever the murderer was, he had rung the bell which alone could be heard by the lawyer at his desk, and therefore must have been acquainted with the peculiarity of the bell- pulls. Had the lawyer had any cause to fear? Ap- parently not, for the shade to the window nearest his desk was raised and he evidently had answered the A Statement of the Case I 3 bell as a matter of course, not even taking with him a light. But, if he was seated at his desk, as seemed clearly the case, the man must have seen him as he came up the drive and might easily have shot him through the window. Why, then, had he called him to the door? The body had not been disturbed after it fell; the watch was in the fob, and money in the pocket. Murder was evidently the murderer's pur- pose; yet he had summoned his victim, when clearly he had him in his power without so doing. CHAPTER II fºrg. Darlin Ce3tifieg N addition to the ill-fated lawyer, there were but three people in the Parlin household—the widow; a general house girl, Mary Mullin ; and the hired man, Jonathan Oldbeg, a nephew of the Mullin woman. Oldbeg was about thirty, and his aunt forty. The widow's room was in the northwest corner of the second floor, while that of the Mullin woman was over the kitchen. The hired man slept over the woodshed. All the windows of the three rooms gave to the north, excepting two in Mrs. Parlin's room, which opened to the west, overlooking the orchard and the river. Mrs. Pai'in was a tall, striking woman who car- ried her head, crowned with waves of white hair, with an air that some named queenly, and others by that terrible New England word “conceited.” The death of her husband had been a terrible blow to her soaring ambitions; but this she had outlived, at least I4 Mrs. Parlin Testifies I 5 to outward seeming. Childless, as well as husband- less, the dormant maternal instinct, which is a part of every true woman, had stirred to life under the care lavished upon her by Wing, whose years were sufficiently less than her own to give a natural tone to the pseudo relation of mother and son. Neverthe- less, there had been something of the maternal in her relationship to the judge—of that phase of the ma- ternal which gives to natural weakness courage for defence. It was not in personal finance alone that the judge was a grown-up boy. The sense of fear was so little developed as to amount scarce to cau- tion. Scrupulous in duty, he gave no thought to the enemies or enmities he created, while she saw in these not alone threats to his professional career, but as well danger of a personal nature. Even she, standing guard as she did, had not been able to save him from enemies who defeated his noble ambition and would, as she believed, as readily have destroyed him. As the intensity of her grief softened with time, the solicitude with which she had followed her husband's career, was transferred to Wing, but with less of the factor of self than it possessed of old, with I6 The Millbank Case the result that she grew more lovable and compan- ionable, and gained a friendly interest from the vil- lage which had not been hers during the judge's lifetime. To this recovered peace of mind the tragic death of Wing came as a crushing blow, the full weight of which few realised until the broken, haggard wo- man was seen of the public for the first time at the inquest. Years seemed to have left their impress upon her, and there were many who noted that the immediate physical effect was as much more marked than that following the judge's death, as Wing's death had been the more tragic. Her husband's death left to her the responsibility of protecting his name, in co-operation with his partner and friend. Wing's death snatched away the last prop and stay of her years. Husbandless and childless, to her life had no further meaning, and while the community was whispering that she was again rich—for it was known that she was the principal legatee of the dead lawyer's will—she was looking down the years with a dread that made hope impossible. Her testimony was of the briefest. She had said Mrs. Parlin Testifies 17 “good-night” to Wing at half-past nine. She had gone to the library for that purpose, as was her cus- tom evenings when he did not sit with her in her own sitting room till her early bedtime. “Was it his custom to spend the evening in your sitting room or the library?” the coroner asked. “Two or three evenings a week he spent in my sitting room. The other evenings in the library, when he was at home.” “Was he away much, evenings?” “Only when he was at court in Augusta or Port- land. When he had cases at Norridgewock he al- ways drove home at night.” “At what time did you have supper?” “At six.” “On the night of the murder?” The witness nodded, too much affected to speak her answer. “Who was present at supper?” “Theodore and myself.” “Mary Mullin and Oldbeg did not eat with you?” This was a sore spot in Millbank's estimate of the widow Parlin. The town still held it a Christian 18 The Millbank Case duty for “help * to eat at the same table with their employers. Every departure from this primitive rule was occasion for heart-burnings and recrimina- tions. “They ate by themselves in the kitchen.” There was a slight raising of the head, a shadow, as it were, of the old self-assertive pride, which in other days would have made itself manifest in an- swering this question. So deep was Millbank in the tragedy that the audience almost lost the weight of the heinous fact confessed in this answer. “Did you go directly to your sitting room after supper?” “No, we went out into the front yard, to look at the flower-beds, and then crossed the road to the orchard and walked through that to the river- bank.” “From there you returned to the house?” “Yes.” “Where did you go on your return?” “To my sitting room. He lighted my lamp and then excused himself, because of some work he had to do.” Mrs. Parlin Testifies I9 “When did you see him again?” “At half-past nine, when I went to bid him good- night.” “Are you certain of the time?” “Yes; for I stopped to wind the clock as I went through the hall, and noticed that it was exactly half- past nine.” “There are two doors to the library, are there not—one from the main hall and one from the side?” “Yes.” “By which one did you enter the library?” “By the one from the side hall.” “Which is near the side door of the house?” Again she had to nod assent. This was the door through which Wing had passed to his death. “Did you knock at the door before entering?” “Always.” Again that slight suggestive raising of the head. “Did he open the door for you?” “Yes. He knew my knock, and always came to open the door.” 2O The Millbank Case “Did you notice anything peculiar about him or the room?” “I did not.” “Was there anything to indicate whether he was writing or reading when you knocked P’’ “He had a book in his left hand and the light was on a small table by his reading chair.” “This reading chair and table, where were they in the room?” “Before the fireplace, about the centre of the north side.” “Was there a fire in the fireplace?” “Yes; there were a few wood coals.” “Was it a cold night?” “No; but he was very fond of a wood fire and when the evening was not too warm had one, even if he had to have a window open.” “Was the window open that night?” “Yes; the one nearest the River Road, overlook- ing the driveway.” “That was the nearest window to the desk?” “The nearest of the south windows. The desk stood between the two west windows.” Mrs. Parlin Testifies 2 I “Did you notice whether the shades were drawn?” “They were drawn to the west windows, but were raised to all four of the south windows.” “Were you long in the room?” “Only long enough to say “good-night’ and ask him not to read too late.” “What did he say to this?” “Laughed, as he always did, when I spoke of his sitting up late, and,” in a voice that was almost a sob; “ said, ‘You know, mother, I can't get over my bad habits, but really to-night I'm only going to read a chapter or two more, for I must write a letter and then go to bed. I’ve got a busy day to-mor- roW.’” “Was that all he said 2 ” “Excepting ‘good-night.’” “Do you recall anything in his manner, tone, or words that indicated trouble or apprehension of any 1