"I have just learned that the man married was not the one who kept
store in Owosso, but his brother William, who afterward died in
Klondike. It is Wallace whose death you are investigating."
"What snarl is here?" asked the major.
"I think I understand," I ventured to put in. "Her husband was the
one left on the road by the brother who staggered into camp for aid.
He was a weak man - the weaker of the two she said - and probably
died, while Wallace, after seemingly collapsing, recovered. This
last she did not know, having failed to read the whole of the
newspaper slip which told about it, and so when she saw some one
with the Pfeiffer air and figure and was told later that a Mr.
Pfeiffer was waiting to see her, she took it for granted that it
was her husband, believing positively that Wallace was dead. The
latter, moreover, may have changed to look more like his brother
in the time that had elapsed."
"A possible explanation which adds greatly to the tragic aspects
of the situation. She was probably a widow when she touched the
fatal spring. Who will tell the man inside there? It will be his
crowning blow."
XXVI
RUDGE
I never saw any good reason for my changing the opinion just
expressed. Indeed, as time went on and a further investigation
was made into the life and character of these two brothers, I came
to think that not only had the unhappy Veronica mistaken the person
of Wallace Pfeiffer for that of her husband William, but also the
nature of the message he sent her and the motives which actuated
it; that the interview he so peremptorily demanded before she
descended to her nuptials would, had she but understood it properly,
have yielded her an immeasurable satisfaction instead of rousing
in her alarmed breast the criminal instincts of her race; that it
was meant to do this; that he, knowing William's secret - a secret
which the latter naturally would confide to him at a moment so
critical as that which witnessed their parting in the desolate
Klondike pass - had come, not to reproach her with her new nuptials,
but to relieve her mind in case she cherished the least doubt of
her full right to marry again, by assurances of her husband's death
and of her own complete freedom.
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