VII
The extraordinary thing about the Arthur Wells story was not hiskilling. For killing it was. It was the way it was solved.
Here was a young woman, Miss Jeremy, who had not known young Wells, hadnot known his wife, had, until that first meeting at Mrs. Dane's, nevermet any member of the Neighborhood Club. Yet, but for her, Arthur Wellswould have gone to his grave bearing the stigma of moral cowardice, ofsuicide.
The solution, when it came, was amazing, but remarkably simple. Likemost mysteries. I have in my own house, for instance, an example of agreat mystery, founded on mere absentmindedness.
This is what my wife terms the mystery of the fire-tongs.
I had left the Wells house as soon as I had made the discovery in thenight nursery. I carried the candle and the fire-tongs downstairs. Iwas, apparently, calm but watchful. I would have said that I had neverbeen more calm in my life. I knew quite well that I had the fire-tongsin my hand. Just when I ceased to be cognizant of them was probablywhen, on entering the library, I found that my overcoat had disappeared,and that my stiff hat, badly broken, lay on the floor. However, asI say, I was still extraordinarily composed. I picked up my hat, andmoving to the rear door, went out and closed it. When I reached thestreet, however, I had only gone a few yards when I discovered that Iwas still carrying the lighted candle, and that a man, passing by, hadstopped and was staring after me.
My composure is shown by the fact that I dropped the candle down thenext sewer opening, but the fact remains that I carried the fire-tongshome. I do not recall doing so. In fact, I knew nothing of the matteruntil morning. On the way to my house I was elaborating a story to theeffect that my overcoat had been stolen from a restaurant where I and myclient had dined. The hat offered more serious difficulties. I fanciedthat, by kissing my wife good-by at the breakfast table, I might beable to get out without her following me to the front door, which is hercustom.
But, as a matter of fact, I need not have concerned myself aboutthe hat. When I descended to breakfast the next morning I found hersurveying the umbrella-stand in the hall. The fire-tongs were standingthere, gleaming, among my sticks and umbrellas.
I lied. I lied shamelessly. She is a nervous woman, and, as we have nochildren, her attitude toward me is one of watchful waiting. Throughlong years she has expected me to commit some indiscretion--innocent,of course, such as going out without my overcoat on a cool day--andshe intends to be on hand for every emergency. I dared not confess,therefore, that on the previous evening I had burglariously entered aclosed house, had there surprised another intruder at work, had fallenand bumped my head severely, and had, finally, had my overcoat taken.
"Horace," she said coldly, "where did you get those fire-tongs?"
"Fire-tongs?" I repeated. "Why, that's so. They are fire-tongs."
"Where did you get them?"
"My dear," I expostulated, "I get them?"
"What I would like to ask," she said, with an icy calmness that I havelearned to dread, "is whether you carried them home over your head,under the impression that you had your umbrella."
"Certainly not," I said with dignity. "I assure you, my dear--"
"I am not a curious woman," she put in incisively, "but when my husbandspends an evening out, and returns minus his overcoat, with his hatmashed, a lump the size of an egg over his ear, and puts a pair offire-tongs in the umbrella stand under the impression that it is anumbrella, I have a right to ask at least if he intends to continue hislife of debauchery."
I made a mistake then. I should have told her. Instead, I took my brokenhat and jammed it on my head with a force that made the lump she hadnoticed jump like a toothache, and went out.
When, at noon and luncheon, I tried to tell her the truth, she listenedto the end: Then: "I should think you could have done better than that,"she said. "You have had all morning to think it out."
However, if things were in a state of armed neutrality at home, I hada certain compensation for them when I told my story to Sperry thatafternoon.
"You see how it is," I finished. "You can stay out of this, or come in,Sperry, but I cannot stop now. He was murdered beyond a doubt, andthere is an intelligent effort being made to eliminate every particle ofevidence."
He nodded.
"It looks like it. And this man who was there last night--"
"Why a man?"
"He took your overcoat, instead of his own, didn't he? It may havebeen--it's curious, isn't it, that we've had no suggestion of Ellinghamin all the rest of the material."
Like the other members of the Neighborhood Club, he had a copy of theproceedings at the two seances, and now he brought them out and fell tostudying them.
"She was right about the bullet in the ceiling," he reflected. "Isuppose you didn't look for the box of shells for the revolver?"
"I meant to, but it slipped my mind."
He shuffled the loose pages of the record. "Cane--washed away bythe water--a knee that is hurt--the curtain would have been safer--Hawkins--the drawing-room furniture is all over the house. That last,Horace, isn't pertinent. It refers clearly to the room we were in. Ofcourse, the point is, how much of the rest is also extraneous matter?"He re-read one of the sheets. "Of course that belongs, about Hawkins.And probably this: 'It will be terrible if the letters are found.' Theywere in the pocketbook, presumably."
He folded up the papers and replaced them in a drawer.
"We'd better go back to the house," he said. "Whoever took your overcoatby mistake probably left one. The difficulty is, of course, that heprobably discovered his error and went back again last night. Confoundit, man, if you had thought of that at the time, we would have somethingto go on today."
"If I had thought of a number of things I'd have stayed out of the placealtogether," I retorted tartly. "I wish you could help me about thefire-tongs, Sperry. I don't seem able to think of any explanation thatMrs. Johnson would be willing to accept."
"Tell her the truth."
"I don't think you understand," I explained. "She simply wouldn'tbelieve it. And if she did I should have to agree to drop theinvestigation. As a matter of fact, Sperry, I had resorted to subterfugein order to remain out last evening, and I am bitterly regretting mymendacity."
But Sperry has, I am afraid, rather loose ideas.
"Every man," he said, "would rather tell the truth, but every womanmakes it necessary to lie to her. Forget the fire-tongs, Horace, andforget Mrs. Johnson to-night. He may not have dared to go back inday-light for his overcoat."
"Very well," I agreed.
But it was not very well, and I knew it. I felt that, in a way, my wholedomestic happiness was at stake. My wife is a difficult person to arguewith, and as tenacious of an opinion once formed as are all very amiablepeople. However, unfortunately for our investigation, but luckily forme, under the circumstances, Sperry was called to another city thatafternoon and did not return for two days.
It was, it will be recalled, on the Thursday night following the secondsitting that I had gone alone to the Wells house, and my interviewwith Sperry was on Friday. It was on Friday afternoon that I received atelephone message from Mrs. Dane.
It was actually from her secretary, the Clara who had recorded theseances. It was Mrs. Dane's misfortune to be almost entirely dependenton the various young women who, one after the other, were employed tolook after her. I say "one after the other" advisedly. It had long beena matter of good-natured jesting in the Neighborhood Club that Mrs. Daneconducted a matrimonial bureau, as one young woman after another wasmarried from her house. It was her kindly habit, on such occasions,to give the bride a wedding, and only a month before it had been myprivilege to give away in holy wedlock Miss Clara's predecessor.
"Mrs. Dane would like you to stop in and have a cup of tea with her thisafternoon, Mr. Johnson," said the secretary.
"At what time?"
"At four o'clock."
I hesitated. I felt that my wife was waiting at home for furtherexplanation of the coal-tongs, and that
the sooner we had it out thebetter. But, on the other hand, Mrs. Dane's invitations, by reason ofher infirmity, took on something of the nature of commands.
"Please say that I will be there at four," I replied.
I bought a new hat that afternoon, and told the clerk to destroy the oldone. Then I went to Mrs. Dane's.
She was in the drawing-room, now restored to its usual clutter offurniture and ornaments. I made my way around two tables, stepped over ahassock and under the leaves of an artificial palm, and shook her hand.
She was plainly excited. Never have I known a woman who, confined to awheel-chair, lived so hard. She did not allow life to pass her windows,if I may put it that way. She called it in, and set it moving about herchair, herself the nucleus around which were enacted all sorts of smallneighborhood dramas and romances. Her secretaries did not marry. Shemarried them.
It is curious to look back and remember how Herbert and Sperry andmyself had ignored this quality in her, in the Wells case. She was notto be ignored, as I discovered that afternoon.
"Sit down," she said. "You look half sick, Horace."
Nothing escapes her eyes, so I was careful to place myself with the lumpon my head turned away from her. But I fancy she saw it, for her eyestwinkled.
"Horace! Horace!" she said. "How I have detested you all week!"
"I? You detested me?"
"Loathed you," she said with unction. "You are cruel and ungrateful.Herbert has influenza, and does not count. And Sperry is in love--ohyes, I know it. I know a great many things. But you!"
I could only stare at her.
"The strange thing is," she went on, "that I have known you for years,and never suspected your sense of humor. You'll forgive me, I know, ifI tell you that your lack of humor was to my mind the only flaw in anotherwise perfect character."
"I am not aware--" I began stiffly. "I have always believed that Ifurnished to the Neighborhood Club its only leaven of humor."
"Don't spoil it," she begged. "Don't. If you could know how I haveenjoyed it. All afternoon I have been chuckling. The fire-tongs, Horace.The fire-tongs!"
Then I knew that my wife had been to Mrs. Dane and I drew a long breath."I assure you," I said gravely, "that while doubtless I carried thewretched things home and--er--placed them where they were found, I havenot the slightest recollection of it. And it is hardly amusing, is it?"
"Amusing!" she cried. "It's delicious. It has made me a young womanagain. Horace, if I could have seen your wife's face when she foundthem, I would give cheerfully almost anything I possess."
But underneath her mirth I knew there was something else. And, afterall, she could convince my wife if she were convinced herself. I toldthe whole story--of the visit Sperry and I had made the night ArthurWells was shot, and of what we discovered; of the clerk at thepharmacy and his statement, and even of the whiskey and its unfortunateeffect--at which, I regret to say, she was vastly amused; and, last ofall, of my experience the previous night in the deserted house.
She was very serious when I finished. Tea came, but we forgot to drinkit. Her eyes flashed with excitement, her faded face flushed. And, withit all, as I look back, there was an air of suppressed excitementthat seemed to have nothing to do with my narrative. I remembered it,however, when the denouement came the following week.
She was a remarkable woman. Even then she knew, or strongly suspected,the thing that the rest of us had missed, the x of the equation. But Ithink it only fair to record that she was in possession of facts whichwe did not have, and which she did not divulge until the end.
"You have been so ungenerous with me," she said finally, "that I amtempted not to tell you why I sent for you. Of course, I know I am onlya helpless old woman, and you men are people of affairs. But now andthen I have a flash of intelligence. I'm going to tell you, but youdon't deserve it."
She went down into the black silk bag at her side which was as mucha part of her attire as the false front she wore with such carelessabandon, and which, brown in color and indifferently waved, wasinvariably parting from its mooring. She drew out a newspaper clipping.
"On going over Clara's notes," she said, "I came to the conclusion,last Tuesday, that the matter of the missing handbag and the letters wasimportant. More important, probably, than the mere record shows. Doyou recall the note of distress in Miss Jeremy's voice? It was almost awail."
I had noticed it.
"I have plenty of time to think," she added, not without pathos."There is only one Monday night in the week, and--the days are long. Itoccurred to me to try to trace that bag."
"In what way?"
"How does any one trace lost articles?" she demanded. "By advertising,of course. Last Wednesday I advertised for the bag."
I was too astonished to speak.
"I reasoned like this: If there was no such bag, there was no harm done.As a matter of fact, if there was no such bag, the chances were that wewere all wrong, anyhow. If there was such a bag, I wanted it. Here isthe advertisement as I inserted it."
She gave me a small newspaper cutting
"Lost, a handbag containing private letters, car-tickets, etc. Liberalreward paid for its return. Please write to A 31, the Daily News."
I sat with it on my palm. It was so simple, so direct. And I, a lawyer,and presumably reasonably acute, had not thought of it!
"You are wasted on us, Mrs. Dane," I acknowledged. "Well? I seesomething has come of it."
"Yes, but I'm not ready for it."
She dived again into the bag, and brought up another clipping.
"On the day that I had that inserted," she said impressively, "this alsoappeared. They were in the same column." She read the second clippingaloud, slowly, that I might gain all its significance:
"Lost on the night of Monday, November the second, between State Avenueand Park Avenue, possibly on an Eastern Line street car, a black handbagcontaining keys, car-tickets, private letters, and a small sum of money.Reward and no questions asked if returned to Daily News office."
She passed the clipping to me and I compared the two. It looked strange,and I confess to a tingling feeling that coincidence, that element somuch to be feared in any investigation, was not the solution here. Butthere was such a chance, and I spoke of it.
"Coincidence rubbish!" she retorted. "I am not through, my friend."
She went down into the bag again, and I expected nothing less than thepocketbook, letters and all, to appear. But she dragged up, among amiscellany of handkerchiefs, a bottle of smelling-salts, and a fewalmonds, of which she was inordinately fond, an envelope.
"Yesterday," she said, "I took a taxicab ride. You know my chair getstiresome, occasionally. I stopped at the newspaper office, and found thebag had not been turned in, but that there was a letter for A 31." Sheheld out the envelope to me.
"Read it," she observed. "It is a curious human document. You'llprobably be no wiser for reading it, but it shows one thing: We are onthe track of something."
I have the letter before me now. It is written on glazed paper, ruledwith blue lines. The writing is of the flowing style we used to callSpencerian, and if it lacks character I am inclined to believe that itsweakness is merely the result of infrequent use of a pen.
You know who this is from. I have the bag and the letters. In a safeplace. If you would treat me like a human being, you could have them. Iknow where the walking-stick is, also. I will tell you this. I have nowish to do her any harm. She will have to pay up in the next world, evenif she gets off in this. The way I reason is this: As long as I have thethings, I've got the whiphand. I've got you, too, although you may thinkI haven't.
About the other matter I was innocent. I swear it again. I never did it.You are the only one in all the world. I would rather be dead than go onlike this.
It is unsigned.
I stared from the letter to Mrs. Dane. She was watching me, her facegrave and rather sad.
"You and I, Horace," she said, "live our orderly lives. We eat, andsleep, and talk, and ev
en labor. We think we are living. But for thelast day or two I have been seeing visions--you and I and the rest ofus, living on the surface, and underneath, carefully kept down soit will not make us uncomfortable, a world of passion and crime andviolence and suffering. That letter is a tragedy."
But if she had any suspicion then as to the writer, and I think she hadnot, she said nothing, and soon after I started for home. I knew thatone of two things would have happened there: either my wife would haveput away the fire-tongs, which would indicate a truce, or they wouldremain as they had been, which would indicate that she still waitedfor the explanation I could not give. It was with a certain tension,therefore, that I opened my front door.
The fire-tongs still stood in the stand.
In one way, however, Mrs. Johnson's refusal to speak to me that eveninghad a certain value, for it enabled me to leave the house withoutexplanation, and thus to discover that, if an overcoat had been left inplace of my own, it had been taken away. It also gave me an opportunityto return the fire-tongs, a proceeding which I had considered wouldassist in a return of the entente cordiale at home, but which mostunjustly appeared to have exactly the opposite effect. It has beenmy experience that the most innocent action may, under certaincircumstances, assume an appearance of extreme guilt.
By Saturday the condition of affairs between my wife and myself remainedin statu quo, and I had decided on a bold step. This was to call aspecial meeting of the Neighborhood Club, without Miss Jeremy, andput before them the situation as it stood at that time, with a view toformulating a future course of action, and also of publicly vindicatingmyself before my wife.
In deference to Herbert Robinson's recent attack of influenza, we metat the Robinson house. Sperry himself wheeled Mrs. Dane over, and made aspeech.
"We have called this meeting," he said, "because a rather singularsituation has developed. What was commenced purely as an interestingexperiment has gone beyond that stage. We find ourselves in the curiousposition of taking what comes very close to being a part in a domestictragedy. The affair is made more delicate by the fact that this tragedyinvolves people who, if not our friends, at least are very well knownto us. The purpose of this meeting, to be brief, is to determinewhether the Neighborhood Club, as a body, wishes to go on with theinvestigation, or to stop where we are."
He paused, but, as no one spoke, he went on again. "It is really notas simple as that," he said. "To stop now, in view of the evidence weintend to place before the Club, is to leave in all our minds certainsuspicions that may be entirely unjust. On the other hand, to go on isvery possible to place us all in a position where to keep silent is tobe an accessory after a crime."
He then proceeded, in orderly fashion, to review the first sitting andits results. He read from notes, elaborating them as he went along, forthe benefit of the women, who had not been fully informed. As all thedata of the Club is now in my possession, I copy these notes.
"I shall review briefly the first sitting, and what followed it." Heread the notes of the sitting first. "You will notice that I have madeno comment on the physical phenomena which occurred early in the seance.This is for two reasons: first, it has no bearing on the question atissue. Second, it has no quality of novelty. Certain people, undercertain conditions, are able to exert powers that we can not explain.I have no belief whatever in their spiritistic quality. They are purelyphysical, the exercise of powers we have either not yet risen highenough in our scale of development to recognize generally, or whichhave survived from some early period when our natural gifts had not beensmothered by civilization."
And, to make our position clear, that is today the attitude of theNeighborhood Club. The supernormal, as I said at the beginning, not thesupernatural, is our explanation.
Sperry's notes were alphabetical.
(a) At 9:15, or somewhat earlier, on Monday night a week ago ArthurWells killed himself, or was killed. At 9:30 on that same evening by Mr.Johnson's watch, consulted at the time, Miss Jeremy had described such acrime. (Here he elaborated, repeating the medium's account.)
(b) At midnight, Sperry, reaching home, had found a message summoninghim to the Wells house. The message had been left at 9:35. He hadtelephoned me, and we had gone together, arriving at approximately12:30.
(c) We had been unable to enter, and, recalling the medium's descriptionof a key on a nail among the vines, had searched for and found such akey, and had admitted ourselves. Mrs. Wells, a governess, a doctor, andtwo policemen were in the house. The dead man lay in the room in whichhe had died. (Here he went at length into the condition of the room,the revolver with one chamber empty, and the blood-stained sponge andrazorstrop behind the bathtub. We had made a hasty examination of theceiling, but had found no trace of a second shot.)
(d) The governess had come in at just after the death. Mr. HoraceJohnson had had a talk with her. She had left the front door unfastenedwhen she went out at eight o'clock. She said she had gone out totelephone about another position, as she was dissatisfied. She hadphoned from, Elliott's pharmacy on State Avenue. Later that night Mr.Johnson had gone to Elliott's. She had lied about the message. Shehad really telephoned to a number which the pharmacy clerk had alreadydiscovered was that of the Ellingham house. The message was that Mr.Ellingham was not to come, as Mr. and Mrs. Wells were going out. It wasnot the first time she had telephoned to that number.
There was a stir in the room. Something which we had tacitly avoided hadcome suddenly into the open. Sperry raised his hand.
"It is necessary to be explicit," he said, "that the Club may see whereit stands. It is, of course, not necessary to remind ourselves that thisevening's disclosures are of the most secret nature. I urge thatthe Club jump to no hasty conclusions, and that there shall be nointerruptions until we have finished with our records."
(e) At a private seance, which Mr. Johnson and I decided was excusableunder the circumstances, the medium was unable to give us anything. Thisin spite of the fact that we had taken with us a walking-stick belongingto the dead man.
(f) The second sitting of the Club. I need only refresh your minds asto one or two things; the medium spoke of a lost pocketbook, and ofletters. While the point is at least capable of doubt, apparently theletters were in the pocketbook. Also, she said that a curtain would havebeen better, that Hawkins was a nuisance, and that everything was allright unless the bullet had made a hole in the floor above. You willalso recall the mention of a box of cartridges in a table drawer inArthur Wells's room.
"I will now ask Mr. Horace Johnson to tell what occurred on the nightbefore last, Thursday evening."
"I do not think Horace has a very clear recollection of last Thursdaynight," my wife said, coldly. "And I wish to go on record at once thatif he claims that spirits broke his hat, stole his overcoat, bumped hishead and sent him home with a pair of fire-tongs for a walking-stick, Idon't believe him."
Which attitude Herbert, I regret to say, did not help when he said:
"Don't worry, Horace will soon be too old for the gay life. Rememberyour arteries, Horace."
I have quoted this interruption to show how little, outside of Sperry,Mrs. Dane and myself, the Neighborhood Club appreciated the seriousnessof the situation. Herbert, for instance, had been greatly amused whenSperry spoke of my finding the razorstrop and had almost chuckled overour investigation of the ceiling.
But they were very serious when I had finished my statement.
"Great Scott!" Herbert said. "Then she was right, after all! I say, Iguess I've been no end of an ass."
I was inclined to agree with him. But the real effect of my brief speechwas on my wife.
It was a real compensation for that night of terror and for theuncomfortable time since to find her gaze no longer cold, butsympathetic, and--if I may be allowed to say so--admiring. When at lastI sat down beside her, she put her hand on my arm in a way that I hadmissed since the unfortunate affair of the pharmacy whiskey.
Mrs. Dane then read and explained the two clippings and the letter,
andthe situation, so far as it had developed, was before the Club.
Were we to go on, or to stop?
Put to a vote, the women were for going on. The men were more doubtful,and Herbert voiced what I think we all felt.
"We're getting in pretty deep," he said. "We have no right to step inwhere the law has stepped out--no legal right, that is. As to moralright, it depends on what we are holding these sittings for. If weare making what we started out to make, an investigation into psychicmatters, then we can go on. But with this proviso, I think: Whatever maycome of it, the result is of psychic interest only. We are not trailinga criminal."
"Crime is the affair of every decent-minded citizen," his sister put inconcisely.
But the general view was that Herbert was right. I am not defending ourcourse. I am recording it. It is, I admit, open to argument.
Having decided on what to do, or not to do, we broke into animateddiscussion. The letter to A 31 was the rock on which all our theoriesfoundered, that and the message the governess had sent to CharlieEllingham not to come to the Wells house that night. By no stretch ofrather excited imaginations could we imagine Ellingham writing such aletter. Who had written the letter, then, and for whom was it meant?
As to the telephone message, it seemed to preclude the possibility ofEllingham's having gone to the house that night. But the fact remainedthat a man, as yet unidentified, was undoubtedly concerned in the case,had written the letter, and had probably been in the Wells house thenight I went there alone.
In the end, we decided to hold one more seance, and then, unless thefurther developments were such that we must go on, to let the affairdrop.
It is typical of the strained nervous tension which had developed inall of us during the past twelve days, that that night when, havingforgotten to let the dog in, my wife and I were roused from a soundsleep by his howling, she would not allow me to go down and admit him.