IV
How much of Sperry's proceeding with the carpet the governess had seenI do not know. I glanced up and she was there, on the staircase to thethird floor, watching us. I did not know, then, whether she recognizedme or not, for the Wellses' servants were as oblivious of the familieson the street as their employers. But she knew Sperry, and was readyenough to talk to him.
"How is she now?" she asked.
"She is sleeping, Mademoiselle."
"The children also."
She came down the stairs, a lean young Frenchwoman in a dark dressinggown, and Sperry suggested that she too should have an opiate.She seized at the idea, but Sperry did not go down at once for hisprofessional bag.
"You were not here when it occurred, Mademoiselle?" he inquired.
"No, doctor. I had been out for a walk." She clasped her hands. "When Icame back--"
"Was he still on the floor of the dressing-room when you came in?"
"But yes. Of course. She was alone. She could not lift him."
"I see," Sperry said thoughtfully. "No, I daresay she couldn't. Was therevolver on the floor also?"
"Yes, doctor. I myself picked it up."
To Sperry she showed, I observed, a slight deference, but when sheglanced at me, as she did after each reply, I thought her expressionslightly altered. At the time this puzzled me, but it was explained whenSperry started down the stairs.
"Monsieur is of the police?" she asked, with a Frenchwoman's timidrespect for the constabulary.
I hesitated before I answered. I am a truthful man, and I hateunnecessary lying. But I ask consideration of the circumstances. Neitherthen nor at any time later was the solving of the Wells mystery theprime motive behind the course I laid out and consistently followed. Ifelt that we might be on the verge of some great psychic discovery, onewhich would revolutionize human thought and to a certain extent humanaction. And toward that end I was prepared to go to almost any length.
"I am making a few investigations," I told her. "You say Mrs. Wells wasalone in the house, except for her husband?"
"The children."
"Mr. Wells was shaving, I believe, when the--er--impulse overtook him?"
There was no doubt as to her surprise. "Shaving? I think not."
"What sort of razor did he ordinarily use?"
"A safety razor always. At least I have never seen any others around."
"There is a case of old-fashioned razors in the bathroom."
She glanced toward the room and shrugged her shoulders. "Possibly heused others. I have not seen any."
"It was you, I suppose, who cleaned up afterwards."
"Cleaned up?"
"You who washed up the stains."
"Stains? Oh, no, monsieur. Nothing of the sort has yet been done."
I felt that she was telling the truth, so far as she knew it, and I thenasked about the revolver.
"Do you know where Mr. Wells kept his revolver?"
"When I first came it was in the drawer of that table. I suggested thatit be placed beyond the children's reach. I do not know where it wasput."
"Do you recall how you left the front door when you went out? I mean,was it locked?"
"No. The servants were out, and I knew there would be no one to admitme. I left it unfastened."
But it was evident that she had broken a rule of the house by doing so,for she added: "I am afraid to use the servants' entrance. It is darkthere."
"The key is always hung on the nail when they are out?"
"Yes. If any one of them is out it is left there. There is only one key.The family is out a great deal, and it saves bringing some one down fromthe servants' rooms at the top of the house."
But I think my knowledge of the key bothered her, for some reason. Andas I read over my questions, certainly they indicated a suspicion thatthe situation was less simple than it appeared. She shot a quick glanceat me.
"Did you examine the revolver when you picked it up?"
"I, monsieur? Non!" Then her fears, whatever they were, got the best ofher. "I know nothing but what I tell you. I was out. I can prove thatthat is so. I went to a pharmacy; the clerk will remember. I will gowith you, monsieur, and he will tell you that I used the telephonethere."
I daresay my business of cross-examination, of watching evidence helpedme to my next question.
"You went out to telephone when there is a telephone in the house?"
But here again, as once or twice before, a veil dropped between us.She avoided my eyes. "There are things one does not want the family tohear," she muttered. Then, having determined on a course of action, shefollowed it. "I am looking for another position. I do not like it here.The children are spoiled. I only came for a month's trial."
"And the pharmacy?"
"Elliott's, at the corner of State Avenue and McKee Street."
I told her that it would not be necessary for her to go to the pharmacy,and she muttered something about the children and went up the stairs.When Sperry came back with the opiate she was nowhere in sight, and hewas considerably annoyed.
"She knows something," I told him. "She is frightened."
Sperry eyed me with a half frown.
"Now see here, Horace," he said, "suppose we had come in here, withoutthe thought of that seance behind us? We'd have accepted the thing as itappears to be, wouldn't we? There may be a dozen explanations for thatsponge, and for the razor strop. What in heaven's name has a razor stropto do with it anyhow? One bullet was fired, and the revolver has oneempty chamber. It may not be the custom to stop shaving in order tocommit suicide, but that's no argument that it can't be done, and as tothe key--how do I know that my own back door key isn't hung outside on anail sometimes?"
"We might look again for that hole in the ceiling."
"I won't do it. Miss Jeremy has read of something of that sort, or heardof it, and stored it in her subconscious mind."
But he glanced up at the ceiling nevertheless, and a moment later haddrawn up a chair and stepped onto it, and I did the same thing. Wepresented, I imagine, rather a strange picture, and I know that thepresence of the rigid figure on the couch gave me a sort of ghoulishfeeling.
The house was an old one, and in the center of the high ceiling aplaster ornament surrounded the chandelier. Our search graduallycentered on this ornament, but the chairs were low and our long-distanceexamination revealed nothing. It was at that time, too, that we heardsome one in the lower hall, and we had only a moment to put our chairsin place before the butler came in. He showed no surprise, but stoodlooking at the body on the couch, his thin face working.
"I met the detectives outside, doctor," he said. "It's a terrible thing,sir, a terrible thing."
"I'd keep the other servants out of this room, Hawkins."
"Yes, sir." He went over to the sheet, lifted the edge slowly, and thenreplaced it, and tip-toed to the door. "The others are not back yet.I'll admit them, and get them up quietly. How is Mrs. Wells?"
"Sleeping," Sperry said briefly, and Hawkins went out.
I realize now that Sperry was--I am sure he will forgive this--in astate of nerves that night. For example, he returned only an impatientsilence to my doubt as to whether Hawkins had really only just returnedand he quite missed something downstairs which I later proved to havean important bearing on the case. This was when we were going out, andafter Hawkins had opened the front door for us. It had been freezinghard, and Sperry, who has a bad ankle, looked about for a walking stick.He found one, and I saw Hawkins take a swift step forward, and thenstop, with no expression whatever in his face.
"This will answer, Hawkins."
"Yes, sir," said Hawkins impassively.
And if I realize that Sperry was nervous that night, I also realize thathe was fighting a battle quite his own, and with its personal problems.
"She's got to quit this sort of thing," he said savagely and apropos ofnothing, as we walked along. "It's hard on her, and besides--"
"Yes?"
"She couldn't have le
arned about it," he said, following his own trailof thought. "My car brought her from her home to the house-door. Shewas brought in to us at once. But don't you see that if there are otherdevelopments, to prove her statements she--well, she's as innocent as achild, but take Herbert, for instance. Do you suppose he'll believe shehad no outside information?"
"But it was happening while we were shut in the drawing-room."
"So Elinor claims. But if there was anything to hide, it would havetaken time. An hour or so, perhaps. You can see how Herbert would jumpon that."
We went back, I remember, to speaking of the seance itself, and to thesafer subject of the physical phenomena. As I have said, we did notthen know of those experimenters who claim that the medium can evokeso-called rods of energy, and that by its means the invisible "controls"can perform their strange feats of levitation and the movement of solidbodies. Sperry touched very lightly on the spirit side.
"At least it would mean activity," he said. "The thought of an inerteternity is not bearable."
He was inclined, however, to believe that there were laws of which wewere still in ignorance, and that we might some day find and use thefourth dimension. He seemed to be able to grasp it quite clearly. "Thecube of the cube, or hypercube," he explained. "Or get it this way: acone passed apex-downward through a plane."
"I know," I said, "that it is perfectly simple. But somehow it justsounds like words to me."
"It's perfectly clear, Horace," he insisted. "But remember this whenyou try to work it out; it is necessary to use motion as a translator oftime into space, or of space into time."
"I don't intend to work it out," I said irritably. "But I mean to usemotion as a translator of the time, which is 1:30 in the morning, totake me to a certain space, which is where I live."
But as it happened, I did not go into my house when I reached it. I waswide awake, and I perceived, on looking up at my wife's windows, thatthe lights were out. As it is her custom to wait up for me on those rareoccasions when I spend an evening away from home, I surmised that shewas comfortably asleep, and made my way to the pharmacy to which theWellses' governess had referred.
The night-clerk was in the prescription-room behind the shop. He hadfixed himself comfortably on two chairs, with an old table-cover overhis knee and a half-empty bottle of sarsaparilla on a wooden box besidehim. He did not waken until I spoke to him.
"Sorry to rouse you, Jim," I said.
He flung off the cover and jumped up, upsetting the bottle, whichtrickled a stale stream to the floor. "Oh, that's all right, Mr.Johnson, I wasn't asleep, anyhow."
I let that go, and went at once to the object of our visit. Yes, heremembered the governess, knew her, as a matter of fact. The Wellses'bought a good many things there. Asked as to her telephoning, he thoughtit was about nine o'clock, maybe earlier. But questioned as to what shehad telephoned about, he drew himself up.
"Oh, see here," he said. "I can't very well tell you that, can I? Thisbusiness has got ethics, all sorts of ethics."
He enlarged on that. The secrets of the city, he maintained loftily,were in the hands of the pharmacies. It was a trust that they kept."Every trouble from dope to drink, and then some," he boasted.
When I told him that Arthur Wells was dead his jaw dropped, but therewas no more argument in him. He knew very well the number the governesshad called.
"She's done it several times," he said. "I'll be frank with you. I gotcurious after the third evening, and called it myself. You know thetrick. I found out it was the Ellingham, house, up State Street."
"What was the nature of the conversations?"
"Oh, she was very careful. It's an open phone and any one could hearher. Once she said somebody was not to come. Another time she just said,'This is Suzanne Gautier. 9:30, please.'"
"And tonight?"
"That the family was going out--not to call."
When I told him it was a case of suicide, his jaw dropped.
"Can you beat it?" he said. "I ask you, can you beat it? A fellow whohad everything!"
But he was philosophical, too.
"A lot of people get the bug once in a while," he said. "They comein here for a dose of sudden death, and it takes watching. You'd besurprised the number of things that will do the trick if you takeenough. I don't know. If things get to breaking wrong--"
His voice trailed off, and he kicked at the old table cover on thefloor.
"It's a matter of the point of view," he said more cheerfully. "And mypoint of view just now is that this place is darned cold, and so's thestreet. You'd better have a little something to warm you up before yougo out, Mr. Johnson."
I was chilled through, to tell the truth, and although I rarely drinkanything I went back with him and took an ounce or two of villainouswhiskey, poured out of a jug into a graduated glass. It is with deephumiliation of spirit I record that a housemaid coming into my libraryat seven o'clock the next morning, found me, in top hat and overcoat,asleep on the library couch.
I had, however, removed my collar and tie, and my watch, carefullywound, was on the smoking-stand beside me.
The death of Arthur Wells had taken place on Monday evening. Tuesdaybrought nothing new. The coroner was apparently satisfied, and onWednesday the dead man's body was cremated.
"Thus obliterating all evidence," Sperry said, with what I felt was anote of relief.
But I think the situation was bothering him, and that he hoped todiscount in advance the second sitting by Miss Jeremy, which Mrs.Dane had already arranged for the following Monday, for on Wednesdayafternoon, following a conversation over the telephone, Sperry and I hada private sitting with Miss Jeremy in Sperry's private office. I tookmy wife into our confidence and invited her to be present, but theunfortunate coldness following the housemaid's discovery of me asleepin the library on the morning after the murder, was still noticeable andshe refused.
The sitting, however, was totally without value. There was difficultyon the medium's part in securing the trance condition, and she broke outonce rather petulantly, with the remark that we were interfering withher in some way.
I noticed that Sperry had placed Arthur Wells's stick unobtrusively onhis table, but we secured only rambling and non-pertinent replies to ourquestions, and whether it was because I knew that outside it was broadday, or because the Wells matter did not come up at all I found a totallack of that sense of the unknown which made all the evening sittings sogrisly.
I am sure she knew we had wanted something, and that she had failed togive it to us, for when she came out she was depressed and in a state oflowered vitality.
"I'm afraid I'm not helping you," she said. "I'm a little tired, Ithink."
She was tired. I felt suddenly very sorry for her. She was so pretty andso young--only twenty-six or thereabouts--to be in the grip of forcesso relentless. Sperry sent her home in his car, and took to pacing thefloor of his office.
"I'm going to give it up, Horace," he said. "Perhaps you are right. Wemay be on the verge of some real discovery. But while I'm interested, sointerested that it interferes with my work, I'm frankly afraid to go on.There are several reasons."
I argued with him. There could be no question that if things were leftas they were, a number of people would go through life convinced thatElinor Wells had murdered her husband. Look at the situation. She hadsent out all the servants and the governess, surely an unusual thing inan establishment of that sort. And Miss Jeremy had been vindicated inthree points; some stains had certainly been washed up, we had found thekey where she had stated it to be, and Arthur had certainly been shavinghimself.
"In other words," I argued, "we can't stop, Sperry. You can't stop. Butmy idea would be that our investigations be purely scientific and notcriminal."
"Also, in other words," he said, "you think we will discover something,so you suggest that we compound a felony and keep it to ourselves!"
"Exactly," I said drily.
It is of course possible that my nerves were somewhat unstrung durin
gthe days that followed. I wakened one night to a terrific thump whichshook my bed, and which seemed to be the result of some one havingstruck the foot-board with a plank. Immediately following this camea sharp knocking on the antique bed-warmer which hangs beside myfireplace. When I had sufficiently recovered my self-control I turned onmy bedside lamp, but the room was empty.
Again I wakened with a feeling of intense cold. I was frozen with it,and curiously enough it was an inner cold. It seemed to have nothing todo with the surface of my body. I have no explanation to make of thesephenomena. Like the occurrences at the seance, they were, and that wasall.
But on Thursday night of that week my wife came into my bedroom, andstated flatly that there were burglars in the house.
Now it has been my contention always that if a burglar gains entrance,he should be allowed to take what he wants. Silver can be replaced,but as I said to my wife then, Horace Johnson could not. But she hadrecently acquired a tea set formerly belonging to her great-grandmother,and apprehension regarding it made her, for the nonce, less solicitousfor me than usual.
"Either you go or I go," she said. "Where's your revolver?"
I got out of bed at that, and went down the stairs. But I must confessthat I felt, the moment darkness surrounded me, considerably lesstrepidation concerning the possible burglar than I felt as to thedarkness itself. Mrs. Johnson had locked herself in my bedroom, andthere was something horrible in the black depths of the lower hall.
We are old-fashioned people, and have not yet adopted electric light.I carried a box of matches, but at the foot of the stairs the one I hadlighted went out. I was terrified. I tried to light another match, butthere was a draft from somewhere, and it too was extinguished before Ihad had time to glance about. I was immediately conscious of a sort ofsoft movement around me, as of shadowy shapes that passed and repassed.Once it seemed to me that a hand was laid on my shoulder and was notlifted, but instead dissolved into the other shadows around. The suddenstriking of the clock on the stair landing completed my demoralization.I turned and fled upstairs, pursued, to my agonized nerves, by ghostlyhands that came toward me from between the spindles of the stair-rail.
At dawn I went downstairs again, heartily ashamed of myself. I foundthat a door to the basement had been left open, and that the softmovement had probably been my overcoat, swaying in the draft.
Probably. I was not certain. Indeed, I was certain of nothing duringthose strange days. I had built up for myself a universe upheld bycertain laws, of day and night, of food and sleep and movement, of threedimensions of space. And now, it seemed to me, I had stood all my lifebut on the threshold, and, for an hour or so, the door had opened.
Sperry had, I believe, told Herbert Robinson of what we had discovered,but nothing had been said to the women. I knew through my wife that theywere wildly curious, and the night of the second seance Mrs. Dane drewme aside and I saw that she suspected, without knowing, that we had beenendeavoring to check up our revelations with the facts.
"I want you to promise me one thing," she said. "I'll not bother younow. But I'm an old woman, with not much more of life to be influencedby any disclosures. When this thing is over, and you have come toa conclusion--I'll not put it that way: you may not come to aconclusion--but when it is over, I want you to tell me the whole story.Will you?"
I promised that I would.
Miss Jeremy did not come to dinner. She never ate before a seance. Andalthough we tried to keep the conversational ball floating airily, therewas not the usual effervescence of the Neighborhood Club dinners. Oneand all, we were waiting, we knew not for what.
I am sorry to record that there were no physical phenomena of any sortat this second seance. The room was arranged as it had been at the firstsitting, except that a table with a candle and a chair had been placedbehind a screen for Mrs. Dane's secretary.
There was one other change. Sperry had brought the walking-stick he hadtaken from Arthur Wells's room, and after the medium was in trance heplaced it on the table before her.
The first questions were disappointing in results. Asked about thestick, there was only silence. When, however, Sperry went back to thesitting of the week before, and referred to questions and answers atthat time, the medium seemed uneasy. Her hand, held under mine, made aneffort to free itself and, released, touched the cane. She lifted it,and struck the table a hard blow with it.
"Do you know to whom that stick belongs?"
A silence. Then: "Yes."
"Will you tell us what you know about it?"
"It is writing."
"Writing?"
"It was writing, but the water washed it away."
Then, instantly and with great rapidity, followed a wild torrent ofwords and incomplete sentences. It is inarticulate, and the secretarymade no record of it. As I recall, however, it was about water,children, and the words "ten o'clock" repeated several times.
"Do you mean that something happened at ten o'clock?"
"No. Certainly not. No, indeed. The water washed it away. All of it. Nota trace."
"Where did all this happen?"
She named, without hesitation, a seaside resort about fifty miles fromour city. There was not one of us, I dare say, who did not know that theWellses had spent the preceding summer there and that Charlie Ellinghamhad been there, also.
"Do you know that Arthur Wells is dead?"
"Yes. He is dead."
"Did he kill himself?"
"You can't catch me on that. I don't know."
Here the medium laughed. It was horrible. And the laughter made thewhole thing absurd. But it died away quickly.
"If only the pocketbook was not lost," she said. "There were so manythings in it. Especially car-tickets. Walking is a nuisance."
Mrs. Dane's secretary suddenly spoke. "Do you want me to take thingslike that?" she asked.
"Take everything, please," was the answer.
"Car-tickets and letters. It will be terrible if the letters are found."
"Where was the pocketbook lost?" Sperry asked.
"If that were known, it could be found," was the reply, rather sharplygiven. "Hawkins may have it. He was always hanging around. The curtainwas much safer."
"What curtain?"
"Nobody would have thought of the curtain. First ideas are best."
She repeated this, following it, as once before, with rhymes for thefinal word, best, rest, chest, pest.
"Pest!" she said. "That's Hawkins!" And again the laughter.
"Did one of the bullets strike the ceiling?"
"Yes. But you'll never find it. It is holding well. That part's safeenough--unless it made a hole in the floor above."
"But there was only one empty chamber in the revolver. How could twoshots have been fired?"
There was no answer at all to this. And Sperry, after waiting, went onto his next question: "Who occupied the room overhead?"
But here we received the reply to the previous question: "There was abox of cartridges in the table-drawer. That's easy."
From that point, however, the interest lapsed. Either there was noanswer to questions, or we got the absurdity that we had encounteredbefore, about the drawing-room furniture. But, unsatisfactory in manyways as the seance had been, the effect on Miss Jeremy was profound--shewas longer in coming out, and greatly exhausted when it was all over.
She refused to take the supper Mrs. Dane had prepared for her, and ateleven o'clock Sperry took her home in his car.
I remember that Mrs. Dane inquired, after she had gone.
"Does any one know the name of the Wellses' butler? Is it Hawkins?"
I said nothing, and as Sperry was the only one likely to know and he hadgone, the inquiry went no further. Looking back, I realize thatHerbert, while less cynical, was still skeptical, that his sister wasnon-committal, but for some reason watching me, and that Mrs. Dane wasin a state of delightful anticipation.
My wife, however, had taken a dislike to Miss Jeremy, and said that thewhole thing bored her
.
"The men like it, of course," she said, "Horace fairly simpers withpleasure while he sits and holds her hand. But a woman doesn't impose onother women so easily. It's silly."
"My dear," Mrs. Dane said, reaching over and patting my wife's hand,"people talked that way about Columbus and Galileo. And if it isnonsense it is such thrilling nonsense!"
VI
I find that the solution of the Arthur Wells mystery--for we did solveit--takes three divisions in my mind. Each one is a sitting, followed byan investigation made by Sperry and myself.
But for some reason, after Miss Jeremy's second sitting, I found that myreasoning mind was stronger than my credulity. And as Sperry had at thattime determined to have nothing more to do with the business, I madea resolution to abandon my investigations. Nor have I any reason tobelieve that I would have altered my attitude toward the case, had itnot been that I saw in the morning paper on the Thursday followingthe second seance, that Elinor Wells had closed her house, and gone toFlorida.
I tried to put the fact out of my mind that morning. After all, whatgood would it do? No discovery of mine could bring Arthur Wells backto his family, to his seat at the bridge table at the club, to his tooexpensive cars and his unpaid bills. Or to his wife who was not grievingfor him.
On the other hand, I confess to an overwhelming desire to examine againthe ceiling of the dressing room and thus to check up one degree furtherthe accuracy of our revelations. After some debate, therefore, I calledup Sperry, but he flatly refused to go on any further.
"Miss Jeremy has been ill since Monday," he said. "Mrs. Dane'srheumatism is worse, her companion is nervously upset, and your own wifecalled me up an hour ago and says you are sleeping with a light, and shethinks you ought to go away. The whole club is shot to pieces."
But, although I am a small and not a courageous man, the desire toexamine the Wells house clung to me tenaciously. Suppose there werecartridges in his table drawer? Suppose I should find the second bullethole in the ceiling? I no longer deceived myself by any argument thatmy interest was purely scientific. There is a point at which curiositybecomes unbearable, when it becomes an obsession, like hunger. I hadreached that point.
Nevertheless, I found it hard to plan the necessary deception to mywife. My habits have always been entirely orderly and regular. Mywildest dissipation was the Neighborhood Club. I could not recall anevening away from home in years, except on business. Yet now I must havea free evening, possibly an entire night.
In planning for this, I forgot my nervousness for a time. I decidedfinally to tell my wife that an out-of-town client wished to talkbusiness with me, and that day, at luncheon--I go home to luncheon--Imentioned that such a client was in town.
"It is possible," I said, as easily as I could, "that we may not getthrough this afternoon. If things should run over into the evening, I'lltelephone."
She took it calmly enough, but later on, as I was taking an electricflash from the drawer of the hall table and putting it in my overcoatpocket, she came on me, and I thought she looked surprised.
During the afternoon I was beset with doubts and uneasiness. Supposeshe called up my office and found that the client I had named was not intown? It is undoubtedly true that a tangled web we weave when first wepractise to deceive, for on my return to the office I was at once quitecertain that Mrs. Johnson would telephone and make the inquiry.
After some debate I called my secretary and told her to say, if sucha message came in, that Mr. Forbes was in town and that I had anappointment with him. As a matter of fact, no such inquiry came in, butas Miss Joyce, my secretary, knew that Mr. Forbes was in Europe, I wasconscious for some months afterwards that Miss Joyce's eyes occasionallyrested on me in a speculative and suspicious manner.
Other things also increased my uneasiness as the day wore on. There was,for instance, the matter of the back door to the Wells house. Nothingwas more unlikely than that the key would still be hanging there. Imust, therefore, get a key.
At three o'clock I sent the office-boy out for a back-door key. Helooked so surprised that I explained that we had lost our key, and thatI required an assortment of keys of all sizes.
"What sort of key?" he demanded, eyeing me, with his feet apart.
"Just an ordinary key," I said. "Not a Yale key. Nothing fancy. Justa plain back-door key." At something after four my wife called up, ingreat excitement. A boy and a man had been to the house and had fittedan extra key to the back door, which had two excellent ones already. Shewas quite hysterical, and had sent for the police, but the officer hadarrived after they had gone.
"They are burglars, of course!" she said. "Burglars often have boys withthem, to go through the pantry windows. I'm so nervous I could scream."
I tried to tell her that if the door was unlocked there was no need touse the pantry window, but she rang off quickly and, I thought, coldly.Not, however, before she had said that my plan to spend the evening outwas evidently known in the underworld!
By going through my desk I found a number of keys, mostly trunk keysand one the key to a dog-collar. But late in the afternoon I visiteda client of mine who is in the hardware business, and secured quite aselection. One of them was a skeleton key. He persisted in regardingthe matter as a joke, and poked me between the shoulder-blades as I wentout.
"If you're arrested with all that hardware on you," he said, "you'll beheld as a first-class burglar. You are equipped to open anything from acan of tomatoes to the missionary box in church."
But I felt that already, innocent as I was, I was leaving a trail ofsuspicion behind me: Miss Joyce and the office boy, the dealer and mywife. And I had not started yet.
I dined in a small chop-house where I occasionally lunch, and took alarge cup of strong black coffee. When I went out into the night againI found that a heavy fog had settled down, and I began to feel againsomething of the strange and disturbing quality of the day which hadended in Arthur Wells's death. Already a potential housebreaker, Iavoided policemen, and the very jingling of the keys in my pocketsounded loud and incriminating to my ears.
The Wells house was dark. Even the arc-lamp in the street was shroudedin fog. But the darkness, which added to my nervousness, added also tomy security.
I turned and felt my way cautiously to the rear of the house. Suddenly Iremembered the dog. But of course he was gone. As I cautiously ascendedthe steps the dead leaves on the vines rattled, as at the light touch ofa hand, and I was tempted to turn and run.
I do not like deserted houses. Even in daylight they have a sinistereffect on me. They seem, in their empty spaces, to have held andrecorded all that has happened in the dusty past. The Wells house thatnight, looming before me, silent and mysterious, seemed the embodimentof all the deserted houses I had known. Its empty and unshutteredwindows were like blind eyes, gazing in, not out.
Nevertheless, now that the time had come a certain amount of couragecame with it. I am not ashamed to confess that a certain part of it camefrom the anticipation of the Neighborhood Club's plaudits. For Herbertto have made such an investigation, or even Sperry, with his height andhis iron muscles, would not have surprised them. But I was aware thatwhile they expected intelligence and even humor, of a sort, from me,they did not anticipate any particular bravery.
The flash was working, but rather feebly. I found the nail where thedoor-key had formerly hung, but the key, as I had expected, was gone. Iwas less than five minutes, I fancy, in finding a key from my collectionthat would fit. The bolt slid back with a click, and the door opened.
It was still early in the evening, eight-thirty or thereabouts. I triedto think of that; to remember that, only a few blocks away, some of myfriends were still dining, or making their way into theaters. But thesilence of the house came out to meet me on the threshold, and itsblackness enveloped me like a wave. It was unfortunate, too, that Iremembered just then that it was, or soon would be, the very hour ofyoung Wells's death.
Nevertheless, once inside the house, the door to the outsid
e closed andfacing two alternatives, to go on with it or to cut and run, I found asort of desperate courage, clenched my teeth, and felt for the nearestlight switch.
The electric light had been cut off!
I should have expected it, but I had not. I remember standing in theback hall and debating whether to go on or to get out. I was not onlyin a highly nervous state, but I was also badly handicapped. However,as the moments wore on and I stood there, with the quiet unbroken by nomysterious sounds, I gained a certain confidence. After a short periodof readjustment, therefore, I felt my way to the library door, and intothe room. Once there, I used the flash to discover that the windows wereshuttered, and proceeded to take off my hat and coat, which I placed ona chair near the door. It was at this time that I discovered that thebattery of my lamp was very weak, and finding a candle in a tall brassstick on the mantelpiece, I lighted it.
Then I looked about. The house had evidently been hastily closed.Some of the furniture was covered with sheets, while part of it stoodunprotected. The rug had been folded into the center of the room, andcovered with heavy brown papers, and I was extremely startled to hearthe papers rustling. A mouse, however, proved to be the source of thesound, and I pulled myself together with a jerk.
It is to be remembered that I had left my hat and overcoat on a chairnear the door. There could be no mistake, as the chair was a light one,and the weight of my overcoat threw it back against the wall.
Candle in hand, I stepped out into the hail, and was immediately metby a crash which reverberated through the house. In my alarm my teethclosed on the end of my tongue, with agonizing results, but the sounddied away, and I concluded that an upper window had been left open, andthat the rising wind had slammed a door. But my morale, as we say sincethe war, had been shaken, and I recklessly lighted a second candle andplaced it on the table in the hall at the foot of the staircase, tofacilitate my exit in case I desired to make a hurried one.
Then I climbed slowly. The fog had apparently made its way into thehouse, for when, halfway up, I turned and looked down, the candlelightwas hardly more than a spark, surrounded by a luminous aura.
I do not know exactly when I began to feel that I was not alone inthe house. It was, I think, when I was on a chair on top of a table inArthur's room, with my candle upheld to the ceiling. It seemed to methat something was moving stealthily in the room overhead. I stoodthere, candle upheld, and every faculty I possessed seemed centered inmy ears. It was not a footstep. It was a soft and dragging movement. HadI not been near the ceiling I should not have heard it. Indeed, a momentlater I was not certain that I had heard it.
My chair, on top of the table, was none too securely balanced. I hadfound what I was looking for, a part of the plaster ornament brokenaway, and replaced by a whitish substance, not plaster. I got out mypenknife and cut away the foreign matter, showing a small hole beneath,a bullet-hole, if I knew anything about bullet-holes.
Then I heard the dragging movement above, and what with alarm and myinsecure position, I suddenly overbalanced, chair and all. My headmust have struck on the corner of the table, for I was dazed for afew moments. The candle had gone out, of course. I felt for the chair,righted it, and sat down. I was dizzy and I was frightened. I was afraidto move, lest the dragging thing above come down and creep over me inthe darkness and smother me.
And sitting there, I remembered the very things I most wished toforget--the black curtain behind Miss Jeremy, the things flung by unseenhands into the room, the way my watch had slid over the table and fallento the floor.
Since that time I know there is a madness of courage, born of terror.Nothing could be more intolerable than to sit there and wait. It isthe same insanity that drove men out of the trenches to the charge andalmost certain death, rather than to sit and wait for what might come.
In a way, I daresay I charged the upper floor of the house. Recallingthe situation from this safe lapse of time, I think that I was in acondition close to frenzy. I know that it did not occur to me to leapdown the staircase and escape, and I believe now this was due to aconviction that I was dealing with the supernatural, and that on noaccount did I dare to turn my back on it. All children and some adults,I am sure, have known this feeling.
Whatever drove me, I know that, candle in hand, and hardly sane, I ranup the staircase, and into the room overhead. It was empty.
As suddenly as my sanity had gone, it returned to me. The sight of twosmall beds, side by side, a tiny dressing-table, a row of toys on themantelpiece, was calming. Here was the children's night nursery, a whiteand placid room which could house nothing hideous.
I was humiliated and ashamed. I, Horace Johnson, a man of dignity andreputation, even in a small way, a successful after-dinner speaker,numbering fifty-odd years of logical living to my credit, had beenrunning half-maddened toward a mythical danger from which I had beenafraid to run away!
I sat down and mopped my face with my pocket handkerchief.
After a time I got up, and going to a window looked down at the quietworld below. The fog was lifting. Automobiles were making cautiousprogress along the slippery street. A woman with a basket had stoppedunder the street light and was rearranging her parcels. The clock of thecity hall, visible over the opposite roofs, marked only twenty minutesto nine. It was still early evening--not even midnight, the magic hourof the night.
Somehow that fact reassured me, and I was able to take stock of mysurroundings. I realized, for instance, that I stood in the room overArthur's dressing room, and that it was into the ceiling under me thatthe second--or probably the first--bullet had penetrated. I know, asit happens, very little of firearms, but I did realize that a shot froma.45 Colt automatic would have considerable penetrative power. To beexact, that the bullet had probably either lodged itself in a joist, orhad penetrated through the flooring and might be somewhere over my head.
But my candle was inadequate for more than the most superficialexamination of the ceiling, which presented so far as I could see anunbroken surface. I turned my attention, therefore, to the floor. It waswhen I was turning the rug back that I recognized the natural and notsupernatural origin of the sound which had so startled me. It had beenthe soft movement of the carpet across the floor boards.
Some one, then, had been there before me--some one who knew what I knew,had reasoned as I reasoned. Some one who, in all probability, stilllurked on the upper floor.
Obeying an impulse, I stood erect and called out sharply, "Sperry!" Isaid. "Sperry!"
There was no answer. I tried again, calling Herbert. But only my ownvoice came back to me, and the whistling of the wind through the windowI had opened.
My fears, never long in abeyance that night, roused again. I hadinstantly a conviction that some human figure, sinister and dangerous,was lurking in the shadows of that empty floor, and I remember backingaway from the door and standing in the center of the room, prepared forsome stealthy, murderous assault. When none came I looked about for aweapon, and finally took the only thing in sight, a coal-tongs from thefireplace. Armed with that, I made a cursory round of the near-by roomsbut there was no one hiding in them.
I went back to the rug and examined the floor beneath it. I was right.Some one had been there before me. Bits of splintered wood lay about.The second bullet had been fired, had buried itself in the flooring, andhad, some five minutes before, been dug out.