"Yes, and then?"

"Your letter came, saying that you had been obliged to enter the library to look after the window repairs; you added that you would probably have to go again to finish up the job. As I have already told you, that letter reached me on Thursday morning, June the twenty-first; Chalmers and I left at once for New York. On the way down I succeeded in reading the cypher, and so got Fielding Thaneford's message in full."

"But how in the world----" I began.

"You'll know in good time," cut in Betty. "First, I want you to consider another of my sources of information. Here it is," and she held up a small book bound in tattered leather.

"This," continued my wife, "is a diary kept by Horace Hildebrand, who succeeded to the 'Hundred' in 1862, and died June 22, 1865. The notes refer chiefly to the weather, a record that many country gentlemen are fond of keeping for their own amus.e.m.e.nt. The only period which interests us is that covering those fatal June days in 1863, 1864, and 1865."

Betty thumbed over the leaves, and stopped at the latter part of June, 1863.

"You see that the twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-second are described as overcast and rainy. Now for 1864:

"'June 20, cloudy; June 21, clear. (Note: A total eclipse of the sun took place to-day, the period of partial and complete darkness lasting from 10.45 A. M. to 2.10 P. M.); June 22, cloudy.' Finally, we take 1865:

"'June 20, rainy; June twenty-first, heavy rains; June 22, fine and clear.' This is the last entry in the book as Horace Hildebrand was found dead later on in that same day.

"Just one more point. What possible hypothesis can we establish to account for Richard Hildebrand's half century of immunity? Now it happened that I had questioned Effingham on this very subject before I left the 'Hundred.' Effingham had lived, as boy and man, on the Hildebrand estate for over sixty years. Consequently, he knew Ma.r.s.e Richard, as he called him, very well, and was familiar with his habits of life.

"According to Effingham, Richard Hildebrand disliked the warm weather, and always left the 'Hundred' the first of June; he would spend the summer at the 'Old White,' returning to Maryland toward the end of September. But in 1918, the last year of his life, he was too feeble to go away from home. His favorite room was the library, and there he was found dead the evening of the twentieth of June, 1918. He was supposed to have died of heart disease; certainly there was no suspicion of foul play.

"So that was the sum total of my investigations to date," concluded Betty. "Do you make anything of it?"

"It's beyond me," I confessed frankly. "What is the answer?"

"Only Fielding Thaneford himself can give it," replied Betty. "Here is his fully decoded statement, and I'll ask Chalmers to read it aloud. As I said a moment ago, we worked it out together that long day on the train. When we reached town we had the whole story, and knew what to expect. Except one thing: Would it be a cloudy day? But it turned out fair and hot, with only a faint suggestion of thunder in the air. There was a bad wreck on the Cape Charles route, and anyhow we had missed the connection for the morning train. So we hired a car, threw away the speedometer, and made to strike the 'Hundred' by midday. We couldn't quite do it, but the tide of chance had turned at last, and it didn't matter. Now go on, Chalmers."

Warriner ruffled the dozen or more sheets of paper between his fingers and began:

Chapter XXII

_The Grapes of Wrath_

Thane Court, August third, eighteen-ninety-two. Now that a son is born to me, Fielding Thaneford of King William county, Maryland, it is fitting that I set down in order the form and measure of my vengeance upon the traitor Yardley Hildebrand; also upon those who may come after him until the end of time.

Back in 1854 I was a young man of nine-and-twenty. Yardley Hildebrand was some twenty years my senior, yet we were close friends owing to our common interest in scientific studies, he as a chemist and I as a physicist, specializing in optics. Then Evelyn Mansfield came and stood between us.

It was his wealth which turned the scale. Not that Evelyn was mercenary, but financial disaster had overtaken the Mansfields, and Yardley Hildebrand had promised to play the part of a ministering angel in rehabilitating the family fortunes, the inexorable condition being that Evelyn should favor his suit. And I was a comparatively poor man.

They were married in 1855, she a slip of a girl of barely nineteen years, and he a mature man of fifty. It is hardly necessary to say that he kept none of his lavish promises. I cared nothing about that, but when he began to mistreat his wife, to the extent of using personal violence, my half-formed plans started to take definite shape.

Evelyn died suddenly in the late summer of 1860, the same year that Yardley Hildebrand succeeded his father in the ownership of the "Hundred." As S. Saviour's was then undergoing repairs, the funeral had to take place from the house. I stood by her coffin, set up in state in the long ballroom; and, s.n.a.t.c.hing a favorable opportunity, I pushed back the loose sleeve of her gown, and saw with my own eyes the blue and purple marks of his hands on her delicate flesh.

Whereupon, I made oath that both Yardley himself and his heirs forever should pay in their own bodies for all that Evelyn had suffered and endured. Perhaps I was a little mad then; it may be that I am still of a disordered brain, and so not fully responsible for the things which I have done in making up the tale of my revenge. Whatever the legal aspects of the case, be sure of this: I am neither sorry nor ashamed.

My opportunity quickly came. Yardley determined to go abroad; the pretense was that he needed a change to divert his mind and blunt the keen edge of his grief. But I managed to keep a straight face when he mumbled out his excuses and explanations.

Yardley Hildebrand had it in mind to build an adequate library at the "Hundred"; the villain had his cultivated tastes, and he wanted something which should be unique of its kind. Since my regular profession was that of an architect he naturally consulted me. I sketched out my ideas, and they met with his approval; he offered me the commission, and I accepted with alacrity. Then he sailed away, leaving me to carry out the plans--those in my sketchbook and some others that I had not taken the trouble to show him.

Modern physicists are just now beginning to talk about the invisible heat and light rays composed of high frequency vibrations. But long before Crooks gave the X-ray to the world I had discovered and had succeeded in isolating what I choose to call the Sigma ray. Some fine day it will be rediscovered, and the lucky man will get a new lot of capital letters to tack onto his name; and perhaps a ribbon for his b.u.t.tonhole, and a pension from his grateful government. I shall not care; the Sigma ray has repaid me a thousandfold for the trouble I took to establish its existence; as a lethal agent it stands without a peer, instantaneously destructive to all forms of organic life.

Naturally, I do not propose to state the formula by means of which I was enabled to construct a filter capable of segregating my beloved Sigma ray _from ordinary sunlight_. Ah, that statement is illuminating, is it not! Suffice it to say that my filter looks like common gla.s.s. It may be moulded so as to resemble the familiar bullseye lens; and, if desirable, it can be colored. Now do you begin to appreciate the significance of the stained gla.s.s window on the right of the great fireplace in the library of "Hildebrand Hundred," the one depicting the Israelitish spies carrying their cl.u.s.ters of purple grapes?

If you choose to make an interesting experiment, arrange for the erection of a staging or an extension ladder outside the "Spy"

window, so as to bring your eye on a level with the third grape in the upper row of the largest bunch. You will find that the line of your view, through this particular bullseye, impinges upon the head of any person who may chance to be sitting in the swivel-chair before the big, teakwood desk. As the chair is immovably secured to the floor by steel bolts pa.s.sing through its mushroom base, it is evident that the relationship of the chair and of that particular bullseye will remain fixed; at any rate, one would have to go to some trouble to disturb it.

But the mere haphazard introduction of the Sigma ray into the room would not suit my purpose; my revenge would not be complete unless I could see it in operation. And so it was necessary to arrange some sort of clockwork mechanism to spring the trap. I confess to being somewhat grandiose in my conceptions, and accordingly I decided to press into my service no less an agency than the solar system itself.

If you will go into the library of "Hildebrand Hundred" on any month of the year outside of June you will see that the direct rays of the sun never reach the upper part of the "Spy" window; consequently, the Sigma ray is not brought into being. But, as the summer solstice approaches, the sun continues to rise higher and higher in the heavens until, in the three or four days around the twenty-first of June, it has reached its ultimate alt.i.tude with reference to the zenith. For the few minutes immediately before or after high noon on any of the aforesaid days the sun is in such a position that its beams will pa.s.s through the purple bullseye lens that forms the third grape in the upper row of the largest cl.u.s.ter. And in pa.s.sing through it will become decomposed into the Sigma ray, and will fall on the head of him who sits at the great desk, exercising the authority of his lordship over "Hildebrand Hundred."

This is all plain and straightforward, I think. It is unfortunately true that any innocent person who chances to be occupying the seat perilous at the fateful moment will have to bear the weight of the vengeance intended for the guilty. But that risk is really remote, since the great desk and chair are the natural appanage of the Master of the "Hundred"; it will not be usual for anyone else to trespa.s.s upon that prerogative. And what more natural procedure than that the Master of the "Hundred," after a tour of his hay fields on a hot June day, should go to the cool of his library and finish up his office business at his desk?

True, there are other contingencies. The Master may come to the room and yet choose to sit elsewhere. Or he may forestall the hammer stroke of doom through the chance of rising from his chair to select a book from a distant shelf; or, finding his match-safe empty, he may go over to the chimney-breast on the hunt for a vesta.

Or again, he may be away from home during the three or four days of fate, or lying ill in an upstairs room. Finally, should the period of danger be cloudy and overcast the sun may not shine at all, and the whole business must go over for another year. But my patience is very long; I have learned how to wait.

I need not go into the intricate calculations necessary to provide for all the conditions of the problem. Fortunately for my purpose the walls of the projected addition lay at a favorable angle for the carrying out of my designs, and I had only to work out the correct position for the windows and make the proper allowance for the overhang of the roof cornice. The stained gla.s.s was made from my own drawings, and I personally set the bullseye lens in its appointed place. The work was finished in May, 1861, and I should have liked to have made a test of my apparatus before Yardley's return from abroad; if there had been any error in my calculations and measurements it would be difficult, later on, to trump up an excuse for making the necessary structural alteration. But, as it turned out, I had made no mistakes.

However, Yardley forestalled my intentions by appearing at the "Hundred" early in May. I bade him welcome, and showed him my completed work. He was pleased and said so, frequently and warmly.

I could only smile in acknowledgment of his plaudits and fulsome thanks.

June the twentieth of that same year I sat in my observation post on Sugar Loaf. Through my high-powered telephoto lens I saw Yardley come into the room and sit down at his desk. It was then ten minutes of twelve o'clock. Five minutes later, what looked like a streak of purple flame leaped through the semi-darkness of the room, and Yardley Hildebrand toppled to the floor. The apparatus had worked with meticulous exactness, and Evelyn Mansfield was avenged--at least in part.

Since then I have watched two others of that black line of Hildebrands go to their doom--Randall and Horace. Poor spirited creatures, both of them, and hardly worthy to receive the accolade of my splendid Sigma ray. Randall held his sovereignty for just a year, but Horace had the devil's own luck. Cloudy days saved him, together with one quite unforeseen contingency, an eclipse of the sun on June 21, 1864. On June 20 and 21, 1865, there were heavy rains, and I was furious. But the twenty-second was clear and fine, and lo! he, too, was gathered to his fathers.

Finally, my dearly beloved brother-in-law, Richard, succeeded to the family honors, and perils. That was in 1865 and for seven-and-twenty years he has managed to evade the stroke through the annoying accident that he prefers the summer climate of "Old White." I intend to give him still further leeway now that my son John, born July 16, 1892, to me and Richard's sister, Jocelyn, is in the field. For Richard is a bachelor, and John Thaneford is the natural heir to the estate. If Richard will listen to reason and make due provision in his will, I am agreeable to allow him full usufruct of the "Hundred" until my son arrives at his majority.

Otherwise he, in his turn, shall die like the dog he is, even as the Hildebrands before him have died, alone and in silence, with none to pity and none to save. The instrument of my vengeance is very sure and very patient, and the pa.s.sage of the years is as nothing to me, sitting perdu in my secret seat on the cliff of Sugar Loaf.

October 1, 1892. Richard is not inclined to listen to my proposal to recognize John as his rightful heir; he even talks of leaving the "Hundred" to his great-nephew on the distaff side, one Francis Graeme.

Be it so; let him eat of the grapes of wrath, and let his teeth be set on edge, even to the third and fourth generation of that accursed race upon which my hate is poured out, now and for evermore.

FIELDING THANEFORD.

June 20, 1918. Richard Hildebrand died to-day, and Francis Graeme became Master of the "Hundred."

July 10, 1918. I have offered Francis Graeme his chance on the same terms. He has accepted, and John Thaneford is to be nominated the heir in his will of the residuary estate. But the Sigma ray stands on guard until I am convinced that he intends to keep his plighted word.

F. T.