Footprints by Kay Cleaver Strahan

I

Thursday, October 18, 1900.

Dear Judy: You are a good kid, all right, but someway or other your letters seem to rub me the wrong way. For gosh sakes, Jude, stop telling me that I didn't murder Father. If you keep on with that line, I'll think, as I thought for a while about Chris and Irene, that you are protesting too much. After all, you can't _know_ that I didn't do it, as you keep declaring with underlines. Nobody here _knows_-anything. How can you know, away off there in Colorado?

It serves me right enough, for beginning this crazy, underhanded business of writing to you. The nights were long, and I had to have something to do, I guess, and the letters gave me a good excuse for writing, as Olympe says, "at a time like this. " Funny, how we'll find excuses for ourselves. Funnier, how we'll believe what we desire to believe. I don't know what right I have to the plural. No matter; don't stop, too long, to laugh over the humour I have just presented. I have something much more amusing to give to you.

Olympe had supposed that Uncle Phineas would come with Dr. Joe from Portland this afternoon. (Dr. Joe had been out of town and hadn't got my telegram until late Wednesday.) When Uncle Phineas did not come, her fury propelled her from her bed and downstairs in her black gown-by this time fully denuded of its festive colour.

At seven this evening, Lucy came to me and asked me to come upstairs with her. She led me directly to Olympe's room. Lucy is so choice, that I am going to attempt to quote her, as nearly as I can.

"Neal," said she, "I have something to tell to someone, and I have decided that, just now, you are probably the best one of the family to tell."

Said I: "To tell what?"

Said Lucy: "To tell that I am very sure no man with a red mask came to Olympe's room on Tuesday night. Ever since I decided to be an author, Grandfather has been training me to observe closely. Now, Neal dear, will you please observe with me?"

She asked me to lie down on Olympe's bed, where Olympe had been lying on Tuesday night. She had the night lamp lighted and on the table as it had been that night. She crossed the room, stood in front of the window, and asked me whether I could see her white face.

I could not. The night lamp, shaded as it is, lights a small circle on the bedside table, and lights nothing else.

I heard her open the window. "I am sitting in the window now," she said, "with the pane pulled down between you and me. Does the glass make a difference? Can you see my white face?"

I could not.

"Then how," she asked, "could Olympe have seen a man, and the bright red mask, at this same time on Tuesday night? Now listen," she went on. "When I bang the window up hard, like this, you can hear it? But can you hear it when I raise it slowly, like this, inch by inch?"

Since it made no sound whatever, I could not.

"You see," Lucy stated, "Olympe said that the window being raised, slowly, inch by inch, was what she heard to make her look toward it. She kept on hearing it, raised inch by inch. I can't hear it myself, when I'm raising it slowly. You can't hear it, over there. Olympe is, really, a trifle deaf."

Neal shines. Neal is brilliant. "Just the same, Lucy, we all of us heard the shot. There is no arguing away from that."

Lucy grows maternal. "Yes, Neal darling, of course. But, you know, I think that Olympe fired the shot herself. You see, she always slept with Uncle Phineas's gun under her pillow when he was away from home. She kept it unloaded-or meant to. But the cartridges for it are right here in the commode drawer, where you found them the other night. Olympe could have put just one of them into the gun, and got into bed, and shot it off up there into the wall, where she knew it would stick and not hurt anyone. Then she could have jabbed it back under her pillow, and plumped right down into bed again. If we had searched for a gun, this time, and we didn't, none of us would have thought it odd if we'd found the unloaded one under her pillow where she always kept it."

"At least not as odd," I said, "as I think it is for you to accuse Olympe of this. Why are you doing it, Lucy?"

"I'll tell you my purpose in a minute or two," Lucy said. "First, I should like to get through with my thinking. I think that Olympe's reason for planning to do this was that Uncle Phineas went away and left her alone, when she kept telling him she needed his protection. Uncle Phineas, of course, will be shocked and remorseful when he finds how nearly Olympe did come to being killed. And, too, you know, Neal, Olympe has been sort of left out of things since Father was killed. Being almost killed herself, gives her an entrée. We know that is the way Olympe is made, and that she can't help it at all-not any more than she can help being rather dull.