The House of the Whispering Pines by Anna Katherine Green

rather, what is the general opinion on this point?"
    "I have not heard. I have seen the fact mentioned, but without comment.
It is a curious circumstance. I will make a note of it. You have no
suggestions to offer on the subject?"
    "None."
    "The clew is a small one," he smiled.
    "So is the one offered by the array of bottles found on the kitchen
table; yet the latter may lead directly to the truth. Adelaide never dug
those out of the cellar where they were locked up, and I'm sure I did
not. Yet I suppose I'm given credit for doing so."
    "Naturally. The key to the wine-vault was the only key which was lacking
from the bunch left at Miss Cumberland's. That it was used to open the
wine-vault door is evident from the fact that it was found in the lock."
    This was discouraging. Everything was against me. If the whole affair had
been planned with an intent to inculpate me and me only, it could not
have been done with more attention to detail, nor could I have found
myself more completely enmeshed. Yet I knew, both from circumstances and
my own instinct that no such planning had occurred. I was a victim, not
of malice but of blind chance, or shall I say of Providence? As to this
one key having been slipped from the rest and used to open the wine-vault
for wine which nobody wanted and nobody drank—this must be classed with
the other incongruities which might yet lead to my enlargement.
    "You may add this coincidence to the other," I conceded, after I had
gone thus far in my own mind. "I swear that I had nothing to do with
that key."
    Neither could I believe that it had been used or even carried there by
Adelaide or Carmel, though I knew that the full ring of keys had been in
their hands and that they had entered the building by means of one of
them. So assured was I of their innocence in this regard that the idea
which afterwards assumed such proportions in all our minds had, at this
moment, its first dawning in mine, as well as its first outward
expression.
    "Some other man than myself was thirsty that night," I firmly declared.
"We are getting on, Charles."
    Evidently he did not consider the pace a very fast one, but being a
cheerful fellow by nature, he simply expressed his dissatisfaction by an
imperceptible shrug.
    "Do you know exactly what the club-house's wine-vault contained?" he
asked.
    "An inventory was given me by the steward the morning we closed. It must
be in my rooms."
    "Your rooms have been examined. You expected that, didn't you? Probably
this inventory has been found. I don't suppose it will help any."
    "How should it?"
    "Very true; how should it! No thoroughfare there, of course."
    "No thoroughfare anywhere to-day," I exclaimed. "To-morrow some loop-hole
of escape may suggest itself to me. I should like to sleep on the matter.
I—I should like to sleep on it."
    He saw that I had something in mind of which I had thus far given him no
intimation, and he waited anxiously for me to reconsider my last words
before he earnestly remarked:
    "A day lost at a time like this is often a day never retrieved. Think
well before you bid me leave you, unenlightened as to the direction in
which you wish me to work."
    But I was not ready, not by any means ready, and he detected this when I
next spoke.
    "I will see you to-morrow; any time to-morrow; meantime I will give you a
commission which you are at liberty to perform yourself or to entrust to
some capable detective. The letter, of which a portion remains,
was
written to Carmel, and she sent me a reply which was handed me on the
station platform by a man who was a perfect stranger to me. I have
hardly any memory of how the man looked, but it should be an easy task to
find him and if you cannot do that, the smallest scrap of the note he
gave me, and which unfortunately I tore up and scattered to the winds,
would prove my veracity in this one particular and so make it easier for
them to believe the rest."
    His eye lightened. I presume the prospect of making any practical