XI
In this, the final chapter of the record of these seances, I shallgive, as briefly as possible, the events of the day following the thirdsitting. I shall explain the mystery of Arthur Wells's death, and Ishall give the solution arrived at by the Neighborhood Club as to thestrange communications from the medium, Miss Jeremy, now Sperry's wife.
But there are some things I cannot explain. Do our spirits live on,on this earth plane, now and then obedient to the wills of those yetliving? Is death, then, only a gateway into higher space, from which,through the open door of a "sensitive" mind, we may be brought back onoccasion to commit the inadequate absurdities of the physical seance?
Or is Sperry right, and do certain individuals manifest powers of apurely physical nature, but powers which Sperry characterizes as thesurvival of some long-lost development by which at one time we knew howto liberate a forgotten form of energy?
Who can say? We do not know. We have had to accept these things as theyhave been accepted through the ages, and give them either a spiritual ora purely natural explanation, as our minds happen to be adventurous oranalytic in type.
But outside of the purely physical phenomena of those seances, we areprovided with an explanation which satisfies the Neighborhood Club, evenif it fails to satisfy the convinced spiritist. We have been accusedmerely of substituting one mystery for another, but I reply by sayingthat the mystery we substitute is not a mystery, but an acknowledgedfact.
On Tuesday morning I wakened after an uneasy night. I knew certainthings, knew them definitely in the clear light of morning. Hawkins hadthe letters that Arthur Wells had found; that was one thing. I had nottaken Ellingham's stick to Mrs. Dane's house; that was another. I hadnot done it. I had placed it on the table and had not touched it again.
But those were immaterial, compared with one outstanding fact. Anysupernatural solution would imply full knowledge by whatever power hadcontrolled the medium. And there was not full knowledge. There was, onthe contrary, a definite place beyond which the medium could not go.
She did not know who had killed Arthur Wells.
To my surprise, Sperry and Herbert Robinson came together to see methat morning at my office. Sperry, like myself, was pale and tired, butHerbert was restless and talkative, for all the world like a terrier onthe scent of a rat.
They had brought a newspaper account of an attempt by burglars to robthe Wells house, and the usual police formula that arrests were expectedto be made that day. There was a diagram of the house, and a picture ofthe kitchen door, with an arrow indicating the bullet-hole.
"Hawkins will be here soon," Sperry said, rather casually, after I hadread the clipping.
"Here?"
"Yes. He is bringing a letter from Miss Jeremy. The letter is merely ablind. We want to see him."
Herbert was examining the door of my office. He set the spring lock. "Hemay try to bolt," he explained. "We're in this pretty deep, you know."
"How about a record of what he says?" Sperry asked.
I pressed a button, and Miss Joyce came in. "Take the testimony of theman who is coming in, Miss Joyce," I directed. "Take everything we say,any of us. Can you tell the different voices?"
She thought she could, and took up her position in the next room, withthe door partly open.
I can still see Hawkins as Sperry let him in--a tall, cadaverous man ofgood manners and an English accent, a superior servant. He was cool butrather resentful. I judged that he considered carrying letters as in noway a part of his work, and that he was careful of his dignity. "MissJeremy sent this, sir," he said.
Then his eyes took in Sperry and Herbert, and he drew himself up.
"I see," he said. "It wasn't the letter, then?"
"Not entirely. We want to have a talk with you, Hawkins."
"Very well, sir." But his eyes went from one to the other of us.
"You were in the employ of Mr. Wells. We know that. Also we saw youthere the night he died, but some time after his death. What time didyou get in that night?"
"About midnight. I am not certain."
"Who told you of what had happened?"
"I told you that before. I met the detectives going out."
"Exactly. Now, Hawkins, you had come in, locked the door, and placed thekey outside for the other servants?"
"Yes, sir."
"How do you expect us to believe that?" Sperry demanded irritably."There was only one key. Could you lock yourself in and then place thekey outside?"
"Yes, sir," he replied impassively. "By opening the kitchen window, Icould reach out and hang it on the nail."
"You were out of the house, then, at the time Mr. Wells died?"
"I can prove it by as many witnesses as you wish to call."
"Now, about these letters, Hawkins," Sperry said. "The letters in thebag. Have you still got them?"
He half rose--we had given him a chair facing the light--and then satdown again. "What letters?"
"Don't beat about the bush. We know you have the letters. And we wantthem."
"I don't intend to give them up, sir."
"Will you tell us how you got them?" He hesitated. "If you do not knowalready, I do not care to say."
I placed the letter to A 31 before him. "You wrote this, I think?" Isaid.
He was genuinely startled. More than that, indeed, for his facetwitched. "Suppose I did?" he said, "I'm not admitting it."
"Will you tell us for whom it was meant?"
"You know a great deal already, gentlemen. Why not find that out fromwhere you learned the rest?"
"You know, then, where we learned what we know?"
"That's easy," he said bitterly. "She's told you enough, I daresay. Shedoesn't know it all, of course. Any more than I do," he added.
"Will you give us the letters?"
"I haven't said I have them. I haven't admitted I wrote that one on thedesk. Suppose I have them, I'll not give them up except to the DistrictAttorney."
"By 'she' do you refer to Miss Jeremy?" I asked.
He stared at me, and then smiled faintly.
"You know who I mean."
We tried to assure him that we were not, in a sense, seeking to involvehim in the situation, and I even went so far as to state our position,briefly:
"I'd better explain, Hawkins. We are not doing police work. But, owingto a chain of circumstances, we have learned that Mr. Wells did not killhimself. He was murdered, or at least shot, by some one else. It may nothave been deliberate. Owing to what we have learned, certain people areunder suspicion. We want to clear things up for our own satisfaction."
"Then why is some one taking down what I say in the next room?"
He could only have guessed it, but he saw that he was right, by ourfaces. He smiled bitterly. "Go on," he said. "Take it down. It can'thurt anybody. I don't know who did it, and that's God's truth."
And, after long wrangling, that was as far as we got.
He suspected who had done it, but he did not know. He absolutely refusedto surrender the letters in his possession, and a sense of delicacy, Ithink, kept us all from pressing the question of the A 31 matter.
"That's a personal affair," he said. "I've had a good bit of trouble.I'm thinking now of going back to England."
And, as I say, we did not insist.
When he had gone, there seemed to be nothing to say. He had left thesame impression on all of us, I think--of trouble, but not of crime. Ofa man fairly driven; of wretchedness that was almost despair. He stillhad the letters. He had, after all, as much right to them as we had,which was, actually, no right at all. And, whatever it was, he still hadhis secret.
Herbert was almost childishly crestfallen. Sperry's attitude was morephilosophical.
"A woman, of course," he said. "The A 31 letter shows it. He tried toget her back, perhaps, by holding the letters over her head. And ithasn't worked out. Poor devil! Only--who is the woman?"
It was that night, the fifteenth day after the crime, that the solutioncame. Came as
a matter of fact, to my door.
I was in the library, reading, or trying to read, a rather abstruse bookon psychic phenomena. My wife, I recall, had just asked me to change abanjo record for "The End of a Pleasant Day," when the bell rang.
In our modest establishment the maids retire early, and it is my custom,on those rare occasions when the bell rings after nine o'clock, toanswer the door myself.
To my surprise, it was Sperry, accompanied by two ladies, one of themheavily veiled. It was not until I had ushered them into the receptionroom and lighted the gas that I saw who they were. It was Elinor Wells,in deep mourning, and Clara, Mrs. Dane's companion and secretary.
I am afraid I was rather excited, for I took Sperry's hat from him, andplaced it on the head of a marble bust which I had given my wife on ourlast anniversary, and Sperry says that I drew a smoking-stand up besideElinor Wells with great care. I do not know. It has, however, passedinto history in the Club, where every now and then for some time Herbertoffered one of the ladies a cigar, with my compliments.
My wife, I believe, was advancing along the corridor when Sperry closedthe door. As she had only had time to see that a woman was in the room,she was naturally resentful, and retired to the upper floor, where Ifound her considerably upset, some time later.
While I am quite sure that I was not thinking clearly at the opening ofthe interview, I know that I was puzzled at the presence of Mrs. Dane'ssecretary, but I doubtless accepted it as having some connection withClara's notes. And Sperry, at the beginning, made no comment on her atall.
"Mrs. Wells suggested that we come here, Horace," he began. "We may needa legal mind on this. I'm not sure, or rather I think it unlikely. Butjust in case--suppose you tell him, Elinor."
I have no record of the story Elinor Wells told that night in our littlereception-room, with Clara sitting in a corner, grave and white. It wasfragmentary, inco-ordinate. But I got it all at last.
Charlie Ellingham had killed Arthur Wells, but in a struggle. In partsthe story was sordid enough. She did not spare herself, or her motives.She had wanted luxury, and Arthur had not succeeded as he had promised.They were in debt, and living beyond their means. But even that, shehastened to add, would not have mattered, had he not been brutal withher. He had made her life very wretched.
But on the subject of Charlie Ellingham she was emphatic. She knew thatthere had been talk, but there had been no real basis for it. She hadturned to him for comfort, and he gave her love. She didn't know wherehe was now, and didn't greatly care, but she would like to recover anddestroy some letters he had written her.
She was looking crushed and ill, and she told her story incoordinatelyand nervously. Reduced to its elements, it was as follows:
On the night of Arthur Wells's death they were dressing for a ball. Shehad made a private arrangement with Ellingham to plead a headache at thelast moment and let Arthur go alone. But he had been so insistentthat she had been forced to go, after all. She had sent the governess,Suzanne Gautier, out to telephone Ellingham not to come, but he was notat his house, and the message was left with his valet. As it turned out,he had already started.
Elinor was dressed, all but her ball-gown, and had put on a negligee,to wait for the governess to return and help her. Arthur was in hisdressing-room, and she heard him grumbling about having no blades forhis safety razor.
He got out a case of razors and searched for the strop. When sheremembered where the strop was, it was too late. The letters had beenbeside it, and he was coming toward her, with them in his hand.
She was terrified. He had read only one, but that was enough. Hemuttered something and turned away. She saw his face as he went towardwhere the revolver had been hidden from the children, and she screamed.
Charlie Ellingham heard her. The door had been left unlocked by thegoverness, and he was in the lower hall. He ran up and the two mengrappled. The first shot was fired by Arthur. It struck the ceiling.The second she was doubtful about. She thought the revolver was stillin Arthur's hand. It was all horrible. He went down like a stone, in thehallway outside the door.
They were nearly mad, the two of them. They had dragged the body in, andthen faced each other. Ellingham was for calling the police at onceand surrendering, but she had kept him away from the telephone. Shemaintained, and I think it very possible, that her whole thought wasfor the children, and the effect on their after lives of such a scandal.And, after all, nothing could help the man on the floor.
It was while they were trying to formulate some concerted plan that theyheard footsteps below, and, thinking it was Mademoiselle Gautier, shedrove Ellingham into the rear of the house, from which later he managedto escape. But it was Clara who was coming up the stairs.
"She had been our first governess for the children," Elinor said, "andshe often came in. She had made a birthday smock for Buddy, and she hadit in her hand. She almost fainted. I couldn't tell her about CharlieEllingham. I couldn't. I told her we had been struggling, and that I wasafraid I had shot him. She is quick. She knew just what to do. We workedfast. She said a suicide would not have fired one shot into the ceiling,and she fixed that. It was terrible. And all the time he lay there, withhis eyes half open--"
The letters, it seems, were all over the place. Elinor thought of thecurtain, cut a receptacle for them, but she was afraid of the police.Finally she gave them to Clara, who was to take them away and burn them.
They did everything they could think of, all the time listening forSuzanne Gautier's return; filled the second empty chamber of therevolver, dragged the body out of the hall and washed the carpet, andcalled Doctor Sperry, knowing that he was at Mrs. Dane's and could notcome.
Clara had only a little time, and with the letters in her handbag shestarted down the stairs. There she heard some one, possibly Ellingham,on the back stairs, and in her haste, she fell, hurting her knee, andshe must have dropped the handbag at that time. They knew now thatHawkins had found it later on. But for a few days they didn't know, andhence the advertisement.
"I think we would better explain Hawkins," Sperry said. "Hawkins wasmarried to Miss Clara here, some years ago, while she was with Mrs.Wells. They had kept it a secret, and recently she has broken with him."
"He was infatuated with another woman," Clara said briefly. "That's apersonal matter. It has nothing to do with this case."
"It explains Hawkins's letter."
"It doesn't explain how that medium knew everything that happened,"Clara put in, excitedly. "She knew it all, even the library paste! I cantell you, Mr. Johnson, I was close to fainting a dozen times before Ifinally did it."
"Did you know of our seances?" I asked Mrs. Wells.
"Yes. I may as well tell you that I haven't been in Florida. How couldI? The children are there, but I--"
"Did you tell Charlie Ellingham about them?"
"After the second one I warned him, and I think he went to the house.One bullet was somewhere in the ceiling, or in the floor of the nursery.I thought it ought to be found. I don't know whether he found it or not.I've been afraid to see him."
She sat, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. She was a proudwoman, and surrender had come hard. The struggle was marked in her face.She looked as though she had not slept for days.
"You think I am frightened," she said slowly. "And I am, terriblyfrightened. But not about discovery. That has come, and cannot behelped."
"Then why?"
"How does this woman, this medium, know these things?" Her voice rose,with an unexpected hysterical catch. "It is superhuman. I am almostmad."
"We're going to get to the bottom of this," Sperry said soothingly."Be sure that it is not what you think it is, Elinor. There's a simpleexplanation, and I think I've got it. What about the stick that wastaken from my library?"
"Will you tell me how you came to have it, doctor?"
"Yes. I took it from the lower hall the night--the night it happened."
"It was Charlie Ellingham's. He had left it there. We had to have
it,doctor. Alone it might not mean much, but with the other things youknew--tell them, Clara."
"I stole it from your office," Clara said, looking straight ahead. "Wehad to have it. I knew at the second sitting that it was his."
"When did you take it?"
"On Monday morning, I went for Mrs. Dane's medicine, and you hadpromised her a book. Do you remember? I told your man, and he allowed meto go up to the library. It was there, on the table. I had expected tohave to search for it, but it was lying out. I fastened it to my belt,under my long coat."
"And placed it in the rack at Mrs. Dane's?" Sperry was watching herintently, with the same sort of grim intentness he wears when examininga chest.
"I put it in the closet in my room. I meant to get rid of it, when I hada little time. I don't know how it got downstairs, but I think--"
"Yes?"
"We are house-cleaning. A housemaid was washing closets. I suppose shefound it and, thinking it was one of Mrs. Dane's, took it downstairs.That is, unless--" It was clear that, like Elinor, she had asupernatural explanation in her mind. She looked gaunt and haggard.
"Mr. Ellingham was anxious to get it," she finished. "He had taken Mr.Johnson's overcoat by mistake one night when you were both in the house,and the notes were in it. He saw that the stick was important."
"Clara," Sperry asked, "did you see, the day you advertised for yourbag, another similar advertisement?"
"I saw it. It frightened me."
"You have no idea who inserted it?"
"None whatever."
"Did you ever see Miss Jeremy before the first sitting? Or hear of her?"
"Never."
"Or between the seances?"
Elinor rose and drew her veil down. "We must go," she said. "Surely nowyou will cease these terrible investigations. I cannot stand much more.I am going mad."
"There will be no more seances," Sperry said gravely.
"What are you going to do?" She turned to me, I daresay because Irepresented what to her was her supreme dread, the law.
"My dear girl," I said, "we are not going to do anything. TheNeighborhood Club has been doing a little amateur research work, whichis now over. That is all."
Sperry took them away in his car, but he turned on the door-step, "Waitdownstairs for me," he said, "I am coming back."
I remained in the library until he returned, uneasily pacing the floor.
For where were we, after all? We had had the medium's story elaboratedand confirmed, but the fact remained that, step by step, through herunknown "control" the Neighborhood Club had followed a tragedy from itsbeginning, or almost its beginning, to its end.
Was everything on which I had built my life to go? Its philosophy, itsscience, even its theology, before the revelations of a young woman whoknew hardly the rudiments of the very things she was destroying?
Was death, then, not peace and an awakening to new things, but awretched and dissociated clutching after the old? A wrench which onlyloosened but did not break our earthly ties?
It was well that Sperry came back when he did, bringing with him abreath of fresh night air and stalwart sanity. He found me still pacingthe room.
"The thing I want to know," I said fretfully, "is where this leaves us?Where are we? For God's sake, where are we?"
"First of all," he said, "have you anything to drink? Not for me. Foryourself. You look sick."
"We do not keep intoxicants in the house."
"Oh, piffle," he said. "Where is it, Horace?"
"I have a little gin."
"Where?"
I drew a chair before the book-shelves, which in our old-fashioned housereach almost to the ceiling, and, withdrawing a volume of Josephus, Ibrought down the bottle.
"Now and then, when I have had a bad day," I explained, "I find that itmakes me sleep."
He poured out some and I drank it, being careful to rinse the glassafterward.
"Well," said Sperry, when he had lighted a cigar. "So you want to knowwhere we are."
"I would like to save something out of the wreck."
"That's easy. Horace, you should be a heart specialist, and I shouldhave taken the law. It's as plain as the alphabet." He took his notes ofthe sittings from his pocket. "I'm going to read a few things. Keep whatis left of your mind on them. This is the first sitting.
"'The knee hurts. It is very bad. Arnica will take the pain out.'
"I want to go out. I want air. If I could only go to sleep and forgetit. The drawing-room furniture is scattered all over the house."
"Now the second sitting:
"'It is writing.' (The stick.) 'It is writing, but the water washed itaway. All of it, not a trace.' 'If only the pocketbook were not lost.Car-tickets and letters. It will be terrible if the letters are found.''Hawkins may have it. The curtain was much safer.' 'That part's safeenough, unless it made a hole in the floor above.'"
"Oh, if you're going to read a lot of irrelevant material--"
"Irrelevant nothing! Wake up, Horace! But remember this. I'm notexplaining the physical phenomena. We'll never do that. It wasn'textraordinary, as such things go. Our little medium in a trancecondition has read poor Clara's mind. It's all here, all that Claraknew and nothing that she didn't know. A mind-reader, friend Horace. AndHeaven help me when I marry her!"
********
As I have said, the Neighborhood Club ended its investigations withthis conclusion, which I believe is properly reached. It is only fair tostate that there are those among us who have accepted that theory in theWells case, but who have preferred to consider that behind both it andthe physical phenomena of the seances there was an intelligence whichdirected both, an intelligence not of this world as we know it. BothHerbert and Alice Robinson are now pronounced spiritualists, althoughMiss Jeremy, now Mrs. Sperry, has definitely abandoned all investigativework.
Personally, I have evolved no theory. It seems beyond dispute thatcertain individuals can read minds, and that these same, or otherso-called "sensitives," are capable of liberating a form of invisibleenergy which, however, they turn to no further account than the uselessringing of bells, moving of small tables, and flinging about of diversobjects.
To me, I admit, the solution of the Wells case as one of mind-reading ismore satisfactory than explanatory. For mental waves remain a mystery,acknowledged, as is electricity, but of a nature yet unrevealed.Thoughts are things. That is all we know.
Mrs. Dane, I believe, had suspected the solution from the start.
The Neighborhood Club has recently disbanded. We tried other things, butwe had been spoiled. Our Kipling winter was a failure. We read a play ortwo, with Sperry's wife reading the heroine, and the rest of us takingother parts. She has a lovely voice, has Mrs. Sperry. But it was allstale and unprofitable, after the Wells affair. With Herbert on alecture tour on spirit realism, and Mrs. Dane at a sanatorium for thewinter, we have now given it up, and my wife and I spend our Mondayevenings at home.
After dinner I read, or, as lately, I have been making this record ofthe Wells case from our notes. My wife is still fond of the phonograph,and even now, as I make this last entry and complete my narrative, sheis waiting for me to change the record. I will be frank. I hate thephonograph. I hope it will be destroyed, or stolen. I am thinking veryseriously of having it stolen.
"Horace," says my wife, "whatever would we do without the phonograph?I wish you would put it in the burglar-insurance policy. I am alwaysafraid it will be stolen."
Even here, you see! Truly thoughts are things.
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