VIII
On Sunday I went to church. I felt, after the strange phenomena in Mrs.Dane's drawing-room, and after the contact with tragedy to which theyhad led, that I must hold with a sort of desperation to the traditionsand beliefs by which I had hitherto regulated my conduct. And thechurch did me good. Between the immortality it taught and the theory ofspiritualism as we had seen it in action there was a great gulf, andI concluded that this gulf was the soul. The conclusion that mind andcertain properties of mind survived was not enough. The thought of adisembodied intelligence was pathetic, depressing. But the thought of aglorified soul was the hope of the world.
My wife, too, was in a penitent and rather exalted mood. During thesermon she sat with her hand in mine, and I was conscious of peace and adeep thankfulness. We had been married for many years, and we had grownvery close. Of what importance was the Wells case, or what mattered itthat there were strange new-old laws in the universe, so long as we kepttogether?
That my wife had felt a certain bitterness toward Miss Jeremy, ajealousy of her powers, even of her youth, had not dawned on me. Butwhen, in her new humility, she suggested that we call on the medium thatafternoon. I realized that, in her own way, she was making a sort ofatonement.
Miss Jeremy lived with an elderly spinster cousin, a short distance outof town. It was a grim house, coldly and rigidly Calvinistic. It gave anunpleasant impression at the start, and our comfort was not increasedby the discovery, made early in the call, that the cousin regarded theNeighborhood Club and its members with suspicion.
The cousin--her name was Connell--was small and sharp, and she enteredthe room followed by a train of cats. All the time she was frigidlygreeting us, cats were coming in at the door, one after the other. Itfascinated me. I do not like cats. I am, as a matter of confession,afraid of cats. They affect me as do snakes. They trailed in in aseemingly endless procession, and one of them took a fancy to me, andleaped from behind on to my shoulder. The shock set me stammering.
"My cousin is out," said Miss Connell. "Doctor Sperry has taken her fora ride. She will be back very soon."
I shook a cat from my trouser leg, and my wife made an unimportantremark.
"I may as well tell you, I disapprove of what Alice is doing," said MissConnell. "She doesn't have to. I've offered her a good home. She wasbrought up a Presbyterian. I call this sort of thing playing with thepowers of darkness. Only the eternally damned are doomed to walk theearth. The blessed are at rest."
"But you believe in her powers, don't you?" my wife asked.
"I believe she can do extraordinary things. She saw my father's spiritin this very room last night, and described him, although she had neverseen him."
As she had said that only the eternally damned were doomed to walkthe earth, I was tempted to comment on this stricture on her departedparent, but a large cat, much scarred with fighting and named Violet,insisted at that moment on crawling into my lap, and my attention wasdistracted.
"But the whole thing is un-Christian and undignified," Miss Connellproceeded, in her cold voice. "Come, Violet, don't annoy the gentleman.I have other visions of the next life than of rapping on tables andchairs, and throwing small articles about."
It was an extraordinary visit. Even the arrival of Miss Jeremy herself,flushed with the air and looking singularly normal, was hardly a relief.Sperry, who followed, was clearly pleased to see us, however.
It was not hard to see how things were with him. He helped the girl outof her wraps with a manner that was almost proprietary, and drew a chairfor her close to the small fire which hardly affected the chill of theroom.
With their entrance a spark of hospitality seemed to kindle in the catlady's breast. It was evident that she liked Sperry. Perhaps she sawin him a method of weaning her cousin from traffic with the powers ofdarkness. She said something about tea, and went out.
Sperry looked across at the girl and smiled.
"Shall I tell them?" he said.
"I want very much to have them know."
He stood up, and with that unconscious drama which actuates a man at acrisis in his affairs, he put a hand on her shoulder. "This young ladyis going to marry me," he said. "We are very happy today."
But I thought he eyed us anxiously. We were very close friends, and hewanted our approval. I am not sure if we were wise. I do not yet know.But something of the new understanding between my wife and myself musthave found its way to our voices, for he was evidently satisfied.
"Then that's all right," he said heartily. And my wife, to my surprise,kissed the girl.
Except for the cats, sitting around, the whole thing was strangelynormal. And yet, even there, something happened that set me to thinkingafterward. Not that it was strange in itself, but that it seemed neverpossible to get very far away from the Wells mystery.
Tea was brought in by Hawkins!
I knew him immediately, but he did not at once see me. He was evidentlyaccustomed to seeing Sperry there, and he did not recognize my wife. Butwhen he had put down the tray and turned to pick up Sperry's overcoatto carry it into the hall, he saw me. The man actually started. Icannot say that he changed color. He was always a pale, anemic-lookingindividual. But it was a perceptible instant before he stooped andgathered up the coat.
Sperry turned to me when he had gone out. "That was Hawkins, Horace," hesaid. "You remember, don't you? The Wellses' butler."
"I knew him at once."
"He wrote to me asking for a position, and I got him this. Looks sick,poor devil. I intend to have a go at his chest."
"How long has he been here?"
"More than a week, I think."
As I drank my tea, I pondered. After all, the Neighborhood Club mustguard against the possibility of fraud, and I felt that Sperry had beenindiscreet, to say the least. From the time of Hawkins' service in MissJeremy's home there would always be the suspicion of collusion betweenthem. I did not believe it was so, but Herbert, for instance, would beinclined to suspect her. Suppose that Hawkins knew about the crime? Orknew something and surmised the rest?
When we rose to go Sperry drew me aside.
"You think I've made a mistake?"
"I do."
He flung away with an impatient gesture, then came back to me.
"Now look here," he said, "I know what you mean, and the whole ideais absurd. Of course I never thought about it, but even allowing forconnivance--which I don't for a moment--the fellow was not in the houseat the time of the murder."
"I know he says he was not."
"Even then," he said, "how about the first sitting? I'll swear she hadnever even heard of him then."
"The fact remains that his presence here makes us all absurd."
"Do you want me to throw him out?"
"I don't see what possible good that will do now."
I was uneasy all the way home. The element of doubt, always so imminentin our dealings with psychic phenomena, had me by the throat. How muchdid Hawkins know? Was there any way, without going to the police, tofind if he had really been out of the Wellses' house that night, nowalmost two weeks ago, when Arthur Wells had been killed?
That evening I went to Sperry's house, after telephoning that I wascoming. On the way I stopped in at Mrs. Dane's and secured somethingfrom her. She was wildly curious, and made me promise to go in on my wayback, and explain. I made a compromise.
"I will come in if I have anything to tell you," I said.
But I knew, by her grim smile, that she would station herself by herwindow, and that I would stop, unless I made a detour of three blocks toavoid her. She is a very determined woman.
Sperry was waiting for me in his library, a pleasant room which I haveoften envied him. Even the most happily married man wishes, now andthen, for some quiet, dull room which is essentially his own. My ownlibrary is really the family sitting-room, and a Christmas or so agomy wife presented me with a very handsome phonograph instrument. Myreading, therefore, is done to music, and the necessity for puttingmy book dow
n to change the record at times interferes somewhat with mytrain of thought.
So I entered Sperry's library with appreciation. He was standing by thefire, with the grave face and slightly bent head of his professionalmanner. We say, in the neighborhood, that Sperry uses his professionalmanner as armor, so I was rather prepared to do battle; but heforestalled me.
"Horace," he said, "I have been a fool, a driveling idiot. We weregetting something at those sittings. Something real. She's wonderful.She's going to give it up, but the fact remains that she has some powerwe haven't, and now I've discredited her! I see it plainly enough." Hewas rather bitter about it, but not hostile. His fury was at himself."Of course," he went on, "I am sure that she got nothing from Hawkins.But the fact remains--" He was hurt in his pride of her.
"I wonder," I said, "if you kept the letter Hawkins wrote you when heasked for a position."
He was not sure. He went into his consulting room and was gone for sometime. I took the opportunity to glance over his books and over the room.
Arthur Wells's stick was standing in a corner, and I took it up andexamined it. It was an English malacca, light and strong, and had seenservice. It was long, too long for me; it occurred to me that Wells hadbeen about my height, and that it was odd that he should have carried solong a stick. There was no ease in swinging it.
From that to the memory of Hawkins's face when Sperry took it, the nightof the murder, in the hall of the Wells house, was only a step. I seemedthat day to be thinking considerably about Hawkins.
When Sperry returned I laid the stick on the table. There can be nodoubt that I did so, for I had to move a book-rack to place it. Oneend, the handle, was near the ink-well, and the ferrule lay on a copyof Gibson's "Life Beyond the Grave," which Sperry had evidently beenreading.
Sperry had found the letter. As I glanced at it I recognized the writingat once, thin and rather sexless, Spencerian.
Dear Sir: Since Mr. Wells's death I am out of employment. Before I tookthe position of butler with Mr. Wells I was valet to Mr. Ellingham, andbefore that, in England, to Lord Condray. I have a very good letter ofrecommendation from Lord Condray. If you need a servant at this time Iwould do my best to give satisfaction.
(Signed) ARTHUR HAWKINS.
I put down the application, and took the anonymous letter about the bagfrom my pocketbook. "Read this, Sperry," I said. "You know the letter.Mrs. Dane read it to us Saturday night. But compare the writing."
He compared the two, with a slight lifting of his eyebrows. Then he putthem down. "Hawkins!" he said. "Hawkins has the letters! And the bag!"
"Exactly," I commented dryly. "In other words, Hawkins was in MissJeremy's house when, at the second sitting, she told of the letters."
I felt rather sorry for Sperry. He paced the room wretchedly, the twoletters in his hand.
"But why should he tell her, if he did?" he demanded. "The writer ofthat anonymous letter was writing for only one person. Every effort ismade to conceal his identity."
I felt that he was right. The point was well taken.
"The question now is, to whom was it written?" We pondered that, tono effect. That Hawkins had certain letters which touched on the Wellsaffair, that they were probably in his possession in the Connell house,was clear enough. But we had no possible authority for trying to get theletters, although Sperry was anxious to make the attempt.
"Although I feel," he said, "that it is too late to help her very much.She is innocent; I know that. I think you know that, too, deep inthat legal mind of yours. It is wrong to discredit her because I did afoolish thing." He warmed to his argument. "Why, think, man," he said."The whole first sitting was practically coincident with the crimeitself."
It was true enough. Whatever suspicion might be cast on the secondseance, the first at least remained inexplicable, by any laws werecognized. In a way, I felt sorry for Sperry. Here he was, on the firstday of his engagement, protesting her honesty, her complete ignorance ofthe revelations she had made and his intention to keep her in ignorance,and yet betraying his own anxiety and possible doubt in the same breath.
"She did not even know there was a family named Wells. When I said thatHawkins had been employed by the Wells, it meant nothing to her. I waswatching."
So even Sperry was watching. He was in love with her, but his scientificmind, like my legal one, was slow to accept what during the past twoweeks it had been asked to accept.
I left him at ten o'clock. Mrs. Dane was still at her window, and herfar-sighted old eyes caught me as I tried to steal past. She rapped onthe window, and I was obliged to go in. Obliged, too, to tell her of thediscovery and, at last, of Hawkins being in the Connell house.
"I want those letters, Horace," she said at last.
"So do I. I'm not going to steal them."
"The question is, where has he got them?"
"The question is, dear lady, that they are not ours to take."
"They are not his, either."
Well, that was true enough. But I had done all the private investigatingI cared to. And I told her so. She only smiled cryptically.
So far as I know, Mrs. Dane was the only one among us who had entirelyescaped certain strange phenomena during that period, and as I haveonly so far recorded my own experiences, I shall here place in orderthe various manifestations made to the other members of the NeighborhoodClub during that trying period and in their own words. As none of themhave suffered since, a certain allowance must be made for our nervousstrain. As before, I shall offer no explanation.
Alice Robinson: On night following second seance saw a light in room,not referable to any outside influence. Was an amorphous body whichglowed pallidly and moved about wall over fireplace, gradually coming tostop in a corner, where it faded and disappeared.
Clara, Mrs. Dane's secretary: Had not slept much since first seance. Wasfrequently conscious that she was not alone in room, but on turning onlight room was always empty. Wakened twice with sense of extreme cold.(I have recorded my own similar experience.)
Sperry has consistently maintained that he had no experiences whateverduring that period, but admits that he heard various knockings in hisbedroom at night, which he attributed to the lighting of his furnace,and the resulting expansion of the furniture due to heat.
Herbert Robinson: Herbert was the most difficult member of the Club fromwhom to secure data, but he has recently confessed that he was wakenedone night by the light falling on to his bed from a picture which hungon the wall over his mantelpiece, and which stood behind a clock, twoglass vases and a pair of candlesticks. The door of his room was lockedat the time.
Mrs. Johnson: Had a great many minor disturbances, so that on rousingone night to find me closing a window against a storm she thought I wasa spectre, and to this day insists that I only entered her room when Iheard her scream. For this reason I have made no record of her variousexperiences, as I felt that her nervous condition precluded accurateobservation.
As in all records of psychic phenomena, the human element must beconsidered, and I do not attempt either to analyze these variousphenomena or to explain them. Herbert, for instance, has been known towalk in his sleep. But I respectfully offer, as opposed to this, thatmy watch has never been known to walk at all, and that Mrs. Johnson'sbracelet could hardly be accused of an attack of nerves.