Evening star., 1895-04-27
CHAPTER II.
Horace Preble.

There Is a police officer in West Point
who has a considerable reputation as de-
tective His name is Bernard Kelly. With
in an hour after the message was sent out
from Sunnyside Kelly arrived.
Meanwhile we had made several impor-
tant discoveries. First. we questioned the
servants. There were six. Three Of them
believed that they had heard a sound like
pistol shot about the time when the crime
must have been committed. The other
three were sure that they had not. OF the
latter, Hanley, the butler, was the most
important witness. He was nearer TO the
Long Room during the critical period than
any other person not actually within 1t.
He had heard nothing, but he had seen
something of consequence-namely, a man
whom he did not know walking hurriedly
away from the house. This person the but
Ter had seen from a window. He attached
no Importance to the circumstance at the
time indeed, he did not mention it until l
had sharply questioned him. IhiS was just
before Kelly arrived.
My first vague suspicious had centered
upon Hanley. They were founded only
and were together in the Long Room i'm
mediately after my discovery of the crime.
Certainly there could not have been a more
perfect picture Of guilty terror than ne tur,
nished then. His horror of the body, and
especially of the blood; his eagerness to
| escape from the room; his dread of Ques-
tioning, were all suggestive.
But 1 could not at first supply motiVe
for him. That came later. when, with
| Kelly's assistance, we examined more
closely my uncle's desk. Our first exami,
nation of it had but one object: we wished tle
not difiicult After passing entirely
| through my uncle's body it had penetrated
| the back Of the desk and the wall also:
but Capt Marshall was not. 1t supported
| his theory that the new explosive 1or
small arms figured in this case. he was
| an expert upon this point; indeed, he was
! at that time conducting experiments with
| a rifle intended for the army. This dread
/ full weapon when fired on a level from the
| height of mans shoulder would send a
| bullet nearly two miles, and at Z,oo yaras
| would drive it through the bodies or seven
| men.
| He stated these facts to me with profes-
| sonal calmness; he even offered TO exhlbit
| them to me if I would go some day to mis-
| laboratory and proving ground, which was
| on the outskirts of West Point. His knowl-
| edge of the subject was undoubtedly great,
| and the more l thought upon it the more
| important, in my mind, became the coinci-
| dence of the presence OF such man In
| that house at time when mysterious
| and terribly powerful weapon had been
| murderously employed.
| NY interest became horror when 1 found
| soon afterward that this circumstance i'm
| pressed itself mora strongly than any other
| upon the mind Of Bernard Kelly. Through
| Margaret he learned from Mrs Holiday
that she had left Marshall alone in the
| parlor for fully ten minutes. He seemed
| not to have moved when she returned,
| but he had had time to go to the Long
| Room and return.
Margaret told me of Kellys questions,
| despite his warning to her to keep abso-
lute silence about them. She said, frankly.
that they indicated to her his suspicion
| that Marshall had committed the crime.
THAT is not to be thought Of" said the
| girl He of all others, had most reason
| to wish my father to live"
| Perhaps; yet it is true that a living father
may change his mind about daughter S
| marriage, but the expressed desire cannot
be recalled when death has sealed the
| lips.
| Then came that other discovery relative
to the desk, and it threw all my theories
| into confusion.
on the forenoon Of that day I had seen
a pile of bank notes in a drawer of the
desk and the topnost had been of the
denomination of 500. How much was in
the pile l did not know. My uncle had
closed the drawer Immediately. had seen
only one of the bills. When we searched
the desk, under Kelly's direction, there
was no money at all in it, My uncle had
only a few dollars and a gold watch in his
pockets.
If robbery was the motive, whom should