efore perusing these lines:

"Who uttered the scream which gave the first alarm of Mr. Hasbrouck's
violent death?"

I was in a state of such excitement as I walked away--for I listened
to my better judgment as to the inadvisability of my disturbing Mrs.
Hasbrouck with these new inquiries--that the perspiration stood out on
my forehead. The testimony she had given at the inquest recurred to me,
and I remembered as distinctly as if she were then speaking, that she
had expressly stated that she did not scream when confronted by the
sight of her husband's dead body. But someone had screamed and that
very loudly. Who was it, then? One of the maids, startled by the sudden
summons from below, or someone else--some involuntary witness of the
crime, whose testimony had been suppressed at the inquest, by fear or
influence?

The possibility of having come upon a clue even at this late day so
fired my ambition that I took the first opportunity of revisiting
Lafayette Place. Choosing such persons as I thought most open to my
questions, I learned that there were many who could testify to having
heard a woman's shrill scream on that memorable night, just prior to the
alarm given by old Cyrus, but no one who could tell from whose lips it
had come. One fact, however, was immediately settled. It had not been
the result of the servant-women's fears. Both of the girls were positive
that they had uttered no sound, nor had they themselves heard any
till Cyrus rushed to the window with his wild cries. As the scream,
by whomever given, was uttered before they descended the stairs, I was
convinced by these assurances that it had issued from one of the front
windows, and not from the rear of the house, where their own rooms lay.
Could it be that it had sprung from the adjoining dwelling, and that--

I remembered who had lived there and was for ringing the bell at once.
But, missing the doctor's sign, I made inquiries and found that he had
moved from the block. However, a doctor is soon found, and in less than
fifteen, minutes I was at the door of his new home, where I asked, not
for him, but for Mrs. Zabriskie.

It required some courage to do this, for I had taken particular notice
of the doctor's wife at the inquest, and her beauty, at that time, had
worn such an aspect of mingled sweetness and dignity that I hesitated
to encounter it under any circumstances likely to disturb its pure
serenity. But a clue once grasped cannot be lightly set