Chapter 1

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_Title:_ The Clue
_Date of first publication:_ 1909
_Author:_ Carolyn Wells
_Date first posted:_ May 25, 2017
_Date last updated:_ May 25, 2017
Faded Page eBook #20170550

This ebook was produced by: Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed
Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net

THE CLUE

SECOND EDITION

*Frontispiece: The Man pointed toward the Table. Page 41.

THE CLUE

By CAROLYN WELLS

Author of
“A Chain of Evidence,” “The Maxwell Mystery,”
“The Gold Bag,” Etc.

[Illustration]

With Frontispiece
By FRANCES ROGERS

A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York

Published by Arrangements with J. B. Lippincott Company

Copyright, 1909
By J. B. Lippincott Company

Published September, 1909

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Van Normans 9

II. Miss Morton Arrives 23

III. A Cry in the Night 38

IV. Suicide or ——? 51

V. A Case for the Coroner 65

VI. Fessenden Comes 79

VII. Mr. Benson’s Questions 94

VIII. A Soft Lead Pencil 107

IX. The Will 122

X. Some Testimony 135

XI. “I Decline to Say” 149

XII. Dorothy Burt 162

XIII. An Interview With Cicely 175

XIV. The Carleton Household 190

XV. Fessenden’s Detective Work 204

XVI. Searching for Clues 218

XVII. Miss Morton’s Statements 232

XVIII. Carleton is Frank 246

XIX. The Truth About Miss Burt 261

XX. Cicely’s Flight 274

XXI. A Successful Pursuit 288

XXII. A Talk With Miss Morton 301

XXIII. Fleming Stone 313

XXIV. A Confession 326

Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.

THE CLUE

I

THE VAN NORMANS

The old Van Norman mansion was the finest house in Mapleton. Well back
from the road, it sat proudly among its finely kept lawns and gardens,
as if with a dignified sense of its own importance, and its white,
Colonial columns gleamed through the trees, like sentinels guarding the
entrance to the stately hall.

All Mapleton was proud of the picturesque old place, and it was shown to
visiting strangers with the same pride that the native villagers pointed
out the Memorial Library and the new church.

More than a half-century old, the patrician white house seemed to glance
coldly on the upstart cottages, whose inadequate pillars supported
beetling second stories, and whose spacious, filigreed verandas left
wofully small area for rooms inside the house.

The Van Norman mansion was not like that. It was a long rectangle, and
each of its four stories was a series of commodious, well-shaped
apartments.

And its owner, the beautiful Madeleine Van Norman, was the most envied
as well as the most admired young woman in the town.

Magnificent Madeleine, as she was sometimes called, was of the haughty,
imperious type which inspires admiration and respect rather than love.
An orphan and an heiress, she had lived all of her twenty-two years of
life in the old house, and since the death of her uncle, two years
before, had continued as mistress of the place, ably assisted by a
pleasant, motherly chaperon, a clever social secretary, and a corps of
capable servants.

The mansion itself and an income amply sufficient to maintain it were
already legally her own, but by the terms of her uncle’s will she was
soon to come into possession of the bulk of the great fortune he had
left.

Madeleine was the only living descendant of old Richard Van Norman, save
for one distant cousin, a young man of a scapegrace and ne’er-do-weel
sort, who of late years had lived abroad.

This young man’s early life had been spent in Mapleton, but, his fiery
temper having brought about a serious quarrel with his uncle, he had
wisely concluded to take himself out of the way.

And yet Tom Willard was not of a quarrelsome disposition. His bad temper
was of the impulsive sort, roused suddenly, and as quickly suppressed.
Nor was it often in evidence. Good-natured, easy-going Tom would put up
with his uncle’s criticism and fault-finding for weeks at a time, and
then, perhaps goaded beyond endurance, he would fly into a rage and
express himself in fluent if rather vigorous English.

For Richard Van Norman had been by no means an easy man to live with.
And it was Tom’s general amiability that had made him the usual
scapegoat for his uncle’s ill temper. Miss Madeleine would have none of
it. Quite as dictatorial as the old man himself she allowed no
interference with her own plans and no criticism of her own actions.

This had proved the right way to manage Mr. Van Norman, and he had
always acceded to Madeleine’s requests or submitted to her decrees
without objection, though there had never been any demonstration of
affection between the two.

But demonstration was quite foreign to the nature of both uncle and
niece, and in truth they were really fond of each other in their quiet,
reserved way. Tom Willard was different. His affection was of the honest
and outspoken sort, and he made friends easily, though he often lost
them with equal rapidity.

On account, then, of his devotion to Madeleine, and his enmity toward
young Tom Willard, Richard Van Norman had willed the old place to his
niece, and had further directed that the whole of his large fortune
should be unrestrictedly bestowed upon her on her wedding-day, or on her
twenty-third birthday, should she reach that age unmarried. In event of
her death before her marriage, and also before her twenty-third
birthday, the whole estate would go to Tom Willard.

It was with the greatest reluctance that Richard Van Norman decreed
this, but a provision had to be made in case of Madeleine’s early death,
and Willard was the only other natural heir. And now, at twenty-two,
Madeleine was on the eve of marriage to Schuyler Carleton, a member of
one of the oldest and best families of Mapleton.