The Filigree Ball: Being a full and true account of the solution of the mystery concerning the Jeffrey-Moore affairGreen, Anna Katharine
General
The Filigree Ball: Being a full and true account of the solution of the mystery concerning the Jeffrey-Moore affair
Green, Anna Katharine
Detective and mystery stories
shape, fearsome, vague, but persistent, which hovered in the shadows
above us, drawing a line of eternal separation between me and my wife,
was a thing which could be caught and strangled and— Oh! I rave! I
chatter like a madman; but I did not rave that night. Nor did I rave
when, in the bright, broad sunlight, her eye slowly unclosed and she
started to see me bending so near her, but not with my usual kiss or
glad good morning. I could not question her then; I dared not. The
smile which slowly rose to her lips was too piteous—it showed
confidence. I waited till after breakfast. Then, while she was seated
where she could not see my face, I whispered the question: ‘Do you know
that you have had a horrible dream?’ She shrieked and turned. _I saw
her face and knew that what she had uttered in her sleep was true._’
“I have no remembrance of what I said to her. She tried to tell me how
she had been tempted and how she had not realized her own act, till the
moment I bent down to kiss her lips as her husband. But I did not stop
to listen—I could not. I flew immediately to Miss Tuttle with the
violent demand as to whether she knew that her sister was already a
wife when she married me, and when she cried out ‘No!’ and showed great
dismay, I broke forth with the dreadful tale and cowered in unmanly
anguish at her feet, and went mad and lost myself for a little while.
Then I went back to my wretched wife and asked her how the awful deed
had been done. She told me, and again I did not believe her and began
to look upon it all as some wild dream or the distempered fancies of a
disordered brain. This thought calmed me and I spoke gently to her and
even tried to take her hand. But she herself was raving now, and clung
about my knees, murmuring words of such anguish and contrition that my
worst fears returned and, only stopping to take the key of the Moore
house from my bureau, I left the house and wandered madly—I know not
where.
“I did not go back that day. I could not face her again till I knew how
much of her confession was fancy and how much was fact. I roamed the
streets, carrying that key from one end of the city to the other, and
at night I used it to open the house which she had declared contained
so dreadful a secret.
“I had bought candles on my way there but, forgetting to take them from
the store, I had no light with which to penetrate the horrible place
that even the moon refused to illumine. I realized this when once in,
but would not go back. All I have told about using matches to light me
to the southwest chamber is true, also my coming upon the old
candelabrum there, with a candle in one of its sockets. This candle I
lit, my sole reason for seeking this room being my desire to examine
the antique sketch for the words which she had said could be found
there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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