"It was, and I said so; but I would say no more, though she cast me little appealing looks which acquired an eery significance from the pressure of her small fingers on my arm and the wailing sound of the wind which at that moment blew down in one gust, scattering the embers and filling the house with banshee calls. I simply kissed her and advised her to go back with me to England and forget this old house and all its miserable memories. For that was the sum of the comfort at my poor command. When, after another restless night, I crept down in the early morning to peer into the dim and unused room whose story I had at last learned, I can not say but that I half expected to behold the meager ghost of the unfortunate general rise from the cushions of the prodigious bench which still kept its mysterious watch over the deserted hearthstone."
So much for the passages culled from the book itself. The newspaper excerpts, to which I next turned, bore a much later date, and read as follows:
"A strange coincidence marks the death of Albert Moore in his brother's house yesterday. He was discovered lying with his head on the identical spot where General Lloyd fell forty years before.
It is said that this sudden demise of a man hitherto regarded as a model of physical strength and endurance was preceded by a violent altercation with his elder brother. If this is so, the excitement incident upon such a break in their usually pleasant relations may account for his sudden death. Edward Moore, who, unfortunately, was out of the room when his brother succumbed - some say that he was in his grandfather's room above - was greatly unnerved by this unexpected end to what was probably merely a temporary quarrel, and now lies in a critical condition.
"The relations between him and the deceased Albert have always been of the most amicable character until they unfortunately fell in love with the same woman."
Attached to this was another slip, apparently from a later paper.
"The quarrel between the two brothers Moore, just prior to the younger one's death, turns out to have been of a more serious nature than was first supposed. It has since leaked out that an actual duel was fought at that time between these two on the floor of the old library; and that in this duel the elder one was wounded. Some even go so far as to affirm that the lady's hand was to be the reward of him who drew the first blood; it is no longer denied that the room was in great disorder when the servants first rushed in at the sound he made in falling. Everything movable had been pushed back against the wall and an open space cleared, in the center of which could be seen one drop of blood. What is certain is that Mr. Moore is held to the house by something even more serious than his deep grief, and that the young lady who was the object of this fatal dispute has left the city."
Pasted under this was the following short announcement:
"Married on the twenty-first of January, at the American consulate in Rome, Italy, Edward Moore, of Washington, D. C., United States of America, to Antoinette Sloan, daughter of Joseph Dewitt Sloan, also of that city."
With this notice my interest in the book ceased and I prepared to step down from the chair on which I had remained standing during the reading of the above passages.
As I did so I spied a slip of paper lying on the floor at my feet.
As it had not been there ten minutes before there could be little doubt that it had slipped from the book whose leaves I had been turning over so rapidly. Hastening to recover it, I found it to be a sheet of ordinary note paper partly inscribed with words in a neat and distinctive handwriting. This was a great find, for the paper was fresh and the handwriting one which could be readily identified. What I saw written there was still more remarkable.
It had the look of some of the memoranda I had myself drawn up during the most perplexing moments of this strange case. I transcribe it just as it read:
"We have here two separate accounts of how death comes to those who breathe their last on the ancestral hearthstone of the Moore house library.
"Certain facts are emphasized in both:
"Each victim was alone when he fell.
"Each death was preceded by a scene of altercation or violent controversy between the victim and the alleged master of these premises.
"In each case the master of the house reaped some benefit, real or fancied, from the other's death."
