We told you she was hot. |
A Difficult Problem
Copyright The F. M. Lupton
Publishing Company, 1900
“A LADY to see you, sir.”
I looked up and was at once
impressed by the grace and beauty of the person thus introduced to me.
“Is there anything I can do to
serve you?” I asked, rising.
She cast me a child-like look
full of trust and candor as she seated herself in the chair I pointed out to
her.
“I believe so, I hope so,” she
earnestly assured me. “I—I am in great trouble. I have just lost my husband—but
it is not that. It is the slip of paper I found on my dresser, and which—which—”
She was trembling violently and
her words were fast becoming incoherent. I calmed her and asked her to relate
her story just as it had happened; and after a few minutes of silent struggle
she succeeded in collecting herself sufficiently to respond with some degree of
connection and self-possession.
“I have been married six months.
My name is Lucy Holmes. For the last few weeks my husband and myself have been
living in an apartment house on Fifty-ninth Street, and as we had not a care in
the world, we were very happy till Mr. Holmes was called away on business to
Philadelphia. This was two weeks ago. Five days later I received an
affectionate letter from him, in which he promised to come back the next day;
and the news so delighted me that I accepted an invitation to the theater from
some intimate friends of ours. The next morning I naturally felt fatigued and
rose late; but I was very cheerful, for I expected my husband at noon. And now
comes the perplexing mystery. In the course of dressing myself I stepped to my
bureau, and seeing a small newspaper-slip attached to the cushion by a pin, I drew
it off and read it. It was a death notice, and my hair rose and my limbs failed
me as I took in its fatal and incredible words. ‘Died this day at the
Colonnade, James Forsythe De Witt Holmes. New York papers please copy.’ James
Forsythe De Witt Holmes was my husband, and his last letter, which was at that
very moment lying beside the cushion, had been dated from the Colonnade. Was I
dreaming or under the spell of some frightful hallucination which led me to
misread the name on the slip of paper before me? I could not determine. My
head, throat and chest seemed bound about with iron, so that I could neither
speak nor breathe with freedom, and, suffering thus, I stood staring at this
demoniacal bit of paper which in an instant had brought the shadow of death
upon my happy life. Nor was I at all relieved when a little later I flew with
the notice into a neighbor’s apartment, and praying her to read it for me,
found that my eyes had not deceived me and that the name was indeed my husband’s
and the notice one of death. Not from my own mind but from hers came the first
suggestion of comfort. ‘It cannot be your husband who is meant,’ said she; ‘but
some one of the same name. Your husband wrote to you yesterday, and this person
must have been dead at least two days for the printed notice of his decease to
have reached New York. Someone has remarked the striking similarity of names,
and wishing to startle you, cut the slip out and pinned it on your cushion.’ I
certainly knew of no one inconsiderate enough to do this, but the explanation
was so plausible, I at once embraced it and sobbed aloud in my relief. But in
the midst of my rejoicing I heard the bell ring in my apartment, and running
thither, encountered a telegraph boy holding in his outstretched hand the yellow
envelope which so often bespeaks death or disaster. The sight took my breath
away. Summoning my maid, whom I saw hastening towards me from an inner room, I
begged her to open the telegram for me. Sir, I saw in her face, before she had
read the first line, a confirmation of my very worst fears. My husband was—”
The young widow, choked with her
emotions, paused, recovered herself for the second time, and then went on.
“I had better show you the
telegram.” Taking it from her pocket-book, she held it towards me. I read it at
a glance. It was short, simple and direct.
“Come at once. Your husband found
dead in his room this morning. Doctors say heart disease. Please telegraph.”
“You see it says this morning,”
she explained, placing her delicate finger on the word she so eagerly quoted.
“That means a week ago Wednesday, the same day on which the printed slip
recording his death was found on my cushion. Do you not see something very
strange in this?”
I did; but, before I ventured to
express myself on this subject, I desired her to tell me what she had learned
in her visit to Philadelphia.
Her answer was simple and
straightforward.
“But little more than you find in
this telegram. He died in his room. He was found lying on the floor near the
bell button, which he had evidently risen to touch. One hand was clenched on
his chest, but his face wore a peaceful look as if death had come too suddenly
to cause him much suffering. His bed was undisturbed; he had died before
retiring, possibly in the act of packing his trunk, for it was found nearly
ready for the expressman. Indeed, there was every evidence of his intention to leave
on an early morning train. He had even desired to be awakened at six o’clock;
and it was his failure to respond to the summons of the bell-boy, which led to
so early a discovery of his death. He had never complained of any distress in
breathing, and we had always considered him a perfectly healthy man; but there
was no reason for assigning any other cause than heart-failure to his sudden
death, and so the burial certificate was made out to that effect, and I was
allowed to bring him home and bury him in our vault at Wood-lawn. But—” and
here her earnestness dried up the tears which had been flowing freely during this
recital of her husband’s lonely death and sad burial. “Do you not think an investigation should be
made into a death preceded by a false obituary notice? For I found when I was
in Philadelphia that no paragraph such as I had found pinned to my cushion had
been inserted in any paper there, nor had any other man of the same name ever
registered at the Colonnade, much less died there.”
“Have you this notice with you?”
I asked.
She immediately produced it, and
while I was glancing it over remarked:
“Some persons would give a
superstitious explanation to the whole matter; think I had received a
supernatural warning and been satisfied with what they would call a spiritual
manifestation. But I have not a bit of such folly in my composition. Living
hands set up the type and printed the words which gave me so deathly a shock;
and hands, with a real purpose in them, cut it from the paper and pinned it to
my cushion for me to see when I woke on that fatal morning. But whose hands?
That is what I want you to discover.”
I had caught the fever of her
suspicions long before this and now felt justified in showing my interest.
“First, let me ask,” said I. “Who
has access to your rooms besides your maid?”
“No one; absolutely no one.”
“And what of her?”
“She is innocence itself. She is
no common housemaid, but a girl my mother brought up, who for love of me
consents to do such work in the household as my simple needs require.”
“I should like to see her.”
“There is no objection to your
doing so; but you will gain nothing by it. I have already talked the subject
over with her a dozen times and she is as much puzzled by it as I am myself.
She says she cannot see how anyone could have found an entrance to my room
during my sleep, as the doors were all locked. Yet, as she very naturally
observes, some one must have done so, for she was in my bedroom herself just
before I returned from the theater, and can swear, if necessary, that no such slip
of paper was to be seen on my cushion, at that time, for her duties led her
directly to my bureau and kept her there for full five minutes.”
“And you believed her?” I
suggested.
“Implicitly.”
“In what direction, then, do your
suspicions turn?”
“Alas! in no direction. That is
the trouble. I don’t know whom to mistrust. It was because I was told that you
had the credit of seeing light where others can see nothing but darkness, that
I have sought your aid in this emergency. For the uncertainty surrounding this
matter is killing me and will make my sorrow quite unendurable if I cannot
obtain relief from it.”
“I do not wonder,” I began,
struck by the note of truth in her tones. “And I shall certainly do what I can
for you. But before we go any further, let us examine this scrap of newspaper
and see what we can make out of it.”
I had already noted two or three
points in connection with it, to which I now proceeded to direct her attention.
“Have you compared this notice,”
I pursued. “With such others as you find every day in the papers?”
“No,” was her eager answer. “Is
it not like them all—”
“Read,” was my quiet interruption.
“‘On this day at the Colonnade—’ on what day? The date is usually given in all
the _bona-fide_ notices I have seen.”
“Is it?” she asked, her eyes
moist with un-shed tears, opening widely in her astonishment.
“Look in the papers on your return
home and see. Then the print. Observe that the type is identical on both sides
of this make-believe clipping, while in fact there is always a perceptible
difference between that used in the obituary column and that to be found in the
columns devoted to other matter. Notice also,” I continued, holding up the
scrap of paper between her and the light, “that the alignment on one side is
not exactly parallel with that on the other; a discrepancy which would not exist
if both sides had been printed on a newspaper press. These facts lead me to
conclude, first, that the effort to match the type exactly was the mistake of a
man who tries to do too much; and secondly, that one of the sides at least,
presumably that containing the obituary notice, was printed on a hand-press, on
the blank side of a piece of galley proof picked up in some newspaper office.”
“Let me see.” And stretching out
her hand with the utmost eagerness, she took the slip and turned it over.
Instantly a change took place in her countenance. She sank back in her seat and
a blush of manifest confusion suffused her cheeks. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “what
will you think of me! I brought this scrap of print into the house _myself_ and it was _I_ who pinned it on the cushion with my own hands! I remember it now.
The sight of those words recalls the whole occurrence.”
“Then there is one mystery less
for us to solve,” I remarked, somewhat dryly.
“Do you think so,” she protested,
with a deprecatory look. “For me the mystery deepens, and becomes every minute
more serious. It is true that I brought this scrap of newspaper into the house,
and that it had, then as now, the notice of my husband’s death upon it, but the
time of my bringing it in was Tuesday night, and he was not found dead till Wednesday
morning.”
“A discrepancy worth noting,” I
remarked.
“Involving a mystery of some
importance,” she concluded.
I agreed to that.
“And since we have discovered how
the slip came into your room, we can now proceed to the clearing up of this
mystery,” I observed. “You can, of course, inform me where you procured this
clipping which you say you brought into the house?”
“Yes. You may think it strange,
but when I alighted from the carriage that night, a man on the sidewalk put
this tiny scrap of paper into my hand. It was done so mechanically that it made
no more impression on my mind than the thrusting of an advertisement upon me.
Indeed, I supposed it was an advertisement, and I only wonder that I retained
it in my hand at all. But that I did do so, and that, in a moment of
abstraction I went so far as to pin it to my cushion, is evident from the fact
that a vague memory remains in my mind of having read this recipe which you see
printed on the reverse side of the paper.”
“It was the recipe, then, and not
the obituary notice which attracted your attention the night before?”
“Probably, but in pinning it to
the cushion, it was the obituary notice that chanced to come uppermost. Oh, why
should I not have remembered this till now! Can you understand my forgetting a
matter of so much importance?”
“Yes,” I allowed, after a
momentary consideration of her ingenuous countenance. “The words you read in
the morning were so startling that they disconnected themselves from those you
had carelessly glanced at the night before.”
“That is it,” she replied. “And
since then I have had eyes for the one side only. How could I think of the
other? But who could have printed this thing and who was the man who put it
into my hand? He looked like a beggar but—oh!” she suddenly exclaimed, her cheeks
flushing scarlet and her eyes flashing with a feverish, almost alarming,
glitter.
“What is it now?” I asked.
“Another recollection?”
“Yes.” She spoke so low I could
hardly hear her. “He coughed and—”
“And what?” I encouragingly
suggested, seeing that she was under some new and overwhelming emotion.
“That cough had a familiar sound,
now that I think of it. It was like that of a friend who—but no, no; I will not
wrong him by any false surmises. He would stoop to much, but not to that; yet—”
The flush on her cheeks had died
away, but the two vivid spots which remained showed the depth of her
excitement.
“Do you think,” she suddenly
asked, “that a man out of revenge might plan to frighten me by a false notice
of my husband’s death, and that God to punish him, made the notice a prophecy?”
“I think a man influenced by the
spirit of revenge might do almost anything,” I answered, purposely ignoring the
latter part of her question.
“But I always considered him a
good man. At least I never looked upon him as a wicked one. Every other beggar
we meet has a cough; and yet,” she added after a moment’s pause, “if it was not
he who gave me this mortal shock, who was it? He is the only person in the
world I ever wronged.”
“Had you not better tell me his
name?” I suggested.
“No, I am in too great doubt. I
should hate to do him a second injury.”
“You cannot injure him if he is
innocent. My methods are very safe.”
“If I could forget his cough! But
it had that peculiar catch in it that I remembered so well in the cough of John
Graham. I did not pay any especial heed to it at the time. Old days and old
troubles were far enough from my thoughts; but now that my suspicions are
raised, that low, choking sound comes back to me in a strangely persistent way,
and I seem to see a well-remembered form in the stooping figure of this beggar.
Oh, I hope the good God will forgive me if I attribute to this disappointed man
a wickedness he never com-mitted.”
“Who is John Graham?” I urged. “And
what was the nature of the wrong you did him?”
She rose, cast me one appealing
glance, and perceiving that I meant to have her whole story, turned towards the
fire and stood warming her feet before the hearth, with her face turned away
from my gaze.
“I was once engaged to marry
him,” she began. “Not because I loved him, but because we were very poor—I mean
my mother and myself—and he had a home and seemed both good and generous. The
day came when we were to be married—this was in the West, way out in Kansas—and
I was even dressed for the wedding, when a letter came from my uncle here, a
rich uncle, very rich, who had never had anything to do with my mother since
her marriage, and in it he promised me fortune and everything else desirable in
life if I would come to him, unencumbered by any foolish ties. Think of it! And
I within half an hour of marriage with a man I had never loved and now suddenly
hated. The temptation was overwhelming, and heartless as my conduct may appear
to you, I succumbed to it. Telling my lover that I had changed my mind, I
dismissed the minister when he came, and announced my intention of proceeding east
as soon as possible. Mr. Graham was simply paralyzed by his disappointment, and
during the few days which intervened before my departure, I was haunted by his
face, which was like that of a man who had died from some overwhelming shock. But
when I was once free of the town, especially after I arrived in New York, I
forgot alike his misery and himself. Everything I saw was so beautiful! Life
was so full of charm, and my uncle so delighted with me and everything I did!
Then there was James Holmes, and after I had seen him—but I cannot talk of
that. We loved each other, and under the surprise of this new delight how could
I be expected to remember the man I had left behind me in that barren region in
which I had spent my youth? But he did not forget the misery I had caused him.
He followed me to New York: and on the morning I was married found his way into
the house, and mixing with the wedding guests, suddenly appeared before me just
as I was receiving the congratulations of my friends. At sight of him I
experienced all the terror he had calculated upon causing, but remembering at
whose side I stood, I managed to hide my confusion under an aspect of apparent
haughtiness. This irritated John Graham. Flushing with anger, and ignoring my
imploring look, he cried peremptorily, ‘Present me to your husband!’ and I felt
forced to present him. But his name produced no effect upon Mr. Holmes. I had
never told him of my early experience with this man, and John Graham,
perceiving this, cast me a bitter glance of disdain and passed on, muttering
between his teeth, ‘False to me and false to him! Your punishment be upon you!’
and I felt as if I had been cursed.”
She stopped here, moved by emotions
readily to be understood. Then with quick impetuosity she caught up the thread
of her story and went on.
Hubby, previious to his unfortunate demise. |
“That was six months ago; and
again I forgot. My mother died and my husband soon absorbed my every thought.
How could I dream that this man, who was little more than a memory to me and
scarcely that, was secretly planning mischief against me? Yet this scrap about
which we have talked so much may have been the work of his hands; and even my
husband’s death—”
She did not finish, but her face,
which was turned towards me, spoke volumes.
“Your husband’s death shall be
inquired into,” I assured her. And she, exhausted by the excitement of her
discoveries, asked that she might be excused from further discussion of the
subject at that time.
As I had no wish, myself, to
enter any more fully into the matter just then, I readily acceded to her
request, and the pretty widow left me.
II.
Obviously the first fact to be
settled was whether Mr. Holmes had died from purely natural causes. I
accordingly busied myself the next few days with this question, and was
fortunate enough to so interest the proper authorities that an order was issued
for the exhumation and examination of the body.
The result was disappointing. No
traces of poison were to be, found in the stomach nor was there to be seen on
the body any mark of violence, with the exception of a minute prick upon one of
his thumbs. This speck was so small that it escaped every eye but my own.
The authorities assuring the
widow that the doctor’s certificate given her in Philadelphia was correct, he
was again interred. But I was not satisfied; neither do I think she was. I was
confident that his death was not a natural one, and entered upon one of those
secret and prolonged investigations which have constituted the pleasure of my
life for so many years. First, I visited the Colonnade in Philadelphia, and being
allowed to see the room in which Mr. Holmes died, went through it carefully. As
it had not been used since that time I had some hopes of coming upon a clue.
But it was a vain hope and the
only result of my journey to this place was the assurance I received that the
gentleman had spent the entire evening preceding his death, in his own room,
where he had been brought several letters and one small package, the latter
coming by mail. With this one point gained—if it was a point—I went back to New
York. Calling on Mrs. Holmes, I asked her if, while her husband was away she had
sent him anything besides letters, and upon her replying to the contrary, requested
to know if in her visit to Philadelphia she had noted among her husband’s
effects anything that was new or unfamiliar to her, “For he received a package
while there,” I explained. “And though its contents may have been perfectly
harmless, it is just as well for us to be assured of this, before going any
further.”
“Oh, you think, then, he was
really the victim of some secret violence.”
“We have no proof of it,” I said.
“On the contrary, we are assured that he died from natural causes. But the
incident of the newspaper slip outweighs, in my mind, the doctor’s conclusions,
and until the mystery surrounding that obituary notice has been satisfactorily
explained by its author, I shall hold to the theory that your husband has been
made away with in some strange and seemingly unaccountable manner, which it is
our duty to bring to light.”
“You are right! You are right!
Oh, John Graham!”
She was so carried away by this
plain expression of my belief that she forgot the question I had put to her.
“You have not told whether or not
you found anything among your husband’s effects that can explain this mystery,”
I suggested.
She at once became attentive.
“Nothing,” said she: “His trunks
were already packed and his bag nearly so.
There were a few things lying about
the room which were put into the latter, but I saw nothing but what was
familiar to me among them; at least, I think not; perhaps we had better look
through his trunk and see. I have not had the heart to open it since I came
back.”
As this was exactly what I
wished, I said as much, and she led me into a small room, against the wall of
which stood a trunk with a traveling-bag on top of it. Opening the latter, she
spread the contents out on the trunk.
“I know all these things,” she
sadly murmured, the tears welling in her eyes.
“This?” I inquired, lifting up a
bit of coiled wire with two or three little rings dangling from it.
“No; why, what is that?”
“It looks like a puzzle of some
kind.”
“Then it is of no consequence. My
husband was forever amusing himself over some such contrivance. All his friends
knew how well he liked these toys and frequently sent them to him. This one
evidently reached him in Philadelphia.”
Meanwhile I was eying the bit of
wire curiously. It was undoubtedly a puzzle, but it had appendages to it that I
did not understand.
“It is more than ordinarily
complicated,” I observed, moving the rings up and down in a vain endeavor to
work them off.
“The better he would like it,”
said she.
I kept on working with the rings.
Suddenly I gave a painful start. A little prong in the handle of the toy had
started out and pricked me.
“You had better not handle it,”
said I, and laid it down. But the next minute I took it up again and put it in
my pocket. The prick made by this treacherous bit of mechanism was in or near
the same place on my thumb as the one I had noticed on the hand of the deceased
Mr. Holmes.
There was a fire in the room, and
before proceeding further, I cauterized that prick with the end of a red-hot
poker. Then I made my adieux to Mrs. Holmes and went immediately to a chemist
friend of mine.
“Test the end of this bit of
steel for me,” said I. “I have reason to believe it carries with it a deadly
poison.”
He took the toy, promised to
subject it to every test possible and let me know the result. Then I went home.
I felt ill, or imagined that I did, which under the circumstances was almost as
bad.
Next day, however, I was quite
well, with the exception of a certain inconvenience in my thumb. But not till
the following week did I receive the chemist’s report. It overthrew my whole
theory. He had found nothing, and returned me the bit of steel.
But I was not convinced.
“I will hunt up this John
Graham,” thought I. “And study him.”
But this was not so easy a task
as it may appear. As Mrs. Holmes possessed no clue to the whereabouts of her
quondam lover, I had nothing to aid me in my search for him, save her rather
vague description of his personal appearance and the fact that he was
constantly interrupted in speaking by a low, choking cough. However, my natural
perseverance carried me through. After seeing and interviewing a dozen John
Grahams without result, I at last lit upon a man of that name who presented a
figure of such vivid unrest and showed such desperate hatred of his fellows,
that I began to entertain hopes of his being the person I was in search of. But
determined to be sure of this before proceeding further, I confided my
suspicions to Mrs. Holmes, and induced her to accompany me down to a certain
spot on the ‘Elevated’ from which I had more than once seen this man go by to
his usual lounging place in Printing-house Square.
She showed great courage in doing
this, for she had such a dread of him that she was in a state of nervous
excitement from the moment she left her house, feeling sure that she would
attract his attention and thus risk a disagreeable encounter. But she might
have spared herself these fears. He did not even glance up in passing us, and
it was mainly by his walk she recognized him. But she did recognize him; and
this nerved me at once to set about the formidable task of fixing upon him a
crime which was not even admitted as a fact by the authorities.
He was a man-about-town, living,
to all appearance, by his wits. He was to be seen mostly in the downtown
portions of the city, standing for hours in front of some newspaper office,
gnawing at his finger-ends, and staring at the passers-by with a hungry look
that alarmed the timid and provoked alms from the benevolent. Needless to say
that he rejected the latter expression of sympathy, with angry contempt.
His face was long and pallid, his
cheek-bones high and his mouth bitter and resolute in expression. He wore
neither beard nor mustache, but made up for their lack by an abundance of light
brown hair, which hung very nearly to his shoulders. He stooped in standing,
but as soon as he moved, showed decision and a certain sort of pride which
caused him to hold his head high and his body more than usually erect. With all
these good points his appearance was decidedly sinister, and I did not wonder that
Mrs. Holmes feared him.
My next move was to accost him.
Pausing before the doorway in which he stood, I addressed him some trivial
question. He answered me with sufficient politeness, but with a grudging attention
which betrayed the hold which his own thoughts had upon him. He coughed while
speaking and his eye, which for a moment rested on mine, produced upon me an impression
for which I was hardly prepared, great as was my prejudice against him. There
was such an icy composure in it; the composure of an envenomed nature conscious
of its superiority to all surprise. As I lingered to study him more closely,
the many dangerous qualities of the man became more and more apparent to me;
and convinced that to proceed further without deep and careful thought, would
be to court failure where triumph would set me up for life, I gave up all
present attempt at enlisting him in conversation, and went my way in an
inquiring and serious mood.
In fact, my position was a peculiar
one, and the problem I had set for myself one of unusual difficulty. Only by
means of some extraordinary device such as is seldom resorted to by the police
of this or any other nation, could I hope to arrive at the secret of this man’s
conduct, and triumph in a matter which to all appearance was beyond human penetration.
But what device? I knew of none,
nor through two days and nights of strenuous thought did I receive the least
light on the subject. Indeed, my mind seemed to grow more and more confused the
more I urged it into action. I failed to get inspiration indoors or out; and
feeling my health suffer from the constant irritation of my recurring disappointment,
I resolved to take a day off and carry myself and my perplexities into the
country.
I did so. Governed by an impulse
which I did not then understand, I went to a small town in New Jersey and
entered the first house on which I saw the sign ‘Room to Let.’ The result was
most fortunate. No sooner had I crossed the threshold of the neat and homely
apartment thrown open to my use, than it recalled a room in which I had slept
two years before and in which I had read a little book I was only too glad to
remember at this moment. Indeed, it seemed as if a veritable inspiration had
come to me through this recollection, for though the tale to which I allude was
a simple child’s story written for moral purposes, it contained an idea which
promised to be invaluable to me at this juncture. Indeed, by means of it, I
believed myself to have solved the problem that was puzzling me, and relieved
beyond expression, I paid for the night’s lodging I had now determined to
forego, and returned immediately to New York, having spent just fifteen minutes
in the town where I had received this happy inspiration.
My first step on entering the
city was to order a dozen steel coils made similar to the one which I still
believed answerable for James Holmes’ death. My next to learn as far as
possible all of John Graham’s haunts and habits. At a week’s end I had the
springs and knew almost as well as he did himself where he was likely to be
found at all times of the day and night. I immediately acted upon this
knowledge. Assuming a slight disguise, I repeated my former stroll through
Printing-house Square, looking into each doorway as I passed. John Graham was
in one of them, staring in his old way at the passing crowd, but evidently
seeing nothing but the images formed by his own disordered brain. A manuscript-roll
stuck out of his breast-pocket, and from the way his nervous fingers fumbled
with it, I began to understand the restless glitter of his eyes, which were as
full of wretchedness as any eyes I have ever seen.
Entering the doorway where he
stood, I dropped at his feet one of the small steel coils with which I was
provided. He did not see it. Stopping near him I directed his attention to it
by saying:
“Pardon me, but did I not see
something drop out of your hand?”
He started, glanced at the
seeming inoffensive toy at which I pointed, and altered so suddenly and so vividly
that it became instantly apparent that the surprise I had planned for him was
fully as keen and searching a one as I had anticipated. Recoiling sharply, he
gave me a quick look, then glanced down again at his feet as if half expecting
to find the object vanished which had startled him. But, perceiving it still lying
there, he crushed it viciously with his heel, and uttering some incoherent
words, dashed impetuously from the building.
Confident that he would regret
this hasty impulse and return, I withdrew a few steps and waited. And sure
enough, in less than five minutes he came slinking back. Picking up the coil
with more than one sly look about, he examined it closely. Suddenly he gave a
sharp cry and went staggering out. Had he discovered that the seeming puzzle
possessed the same invisible spring which had made the one handled by James
Holmes so dangerous?
Certain as to the place he would
be found in next, I made a short cut to an obscure little saloon in Nassau
Street, where I took up my stand in a spot convenient for seeing without being
seen. In ten minutes he was standing at the bar asking for a drink.
“Whiskey!” he cried. “Straight.”
It was given him; but as he set
the empty glass down on the counter, he saw lying before him another of the steel
springs, and was so confounded by the sight that the proprietor, who had put it
there at my instigation, thrust out his hand toward him as if half afraid he
would fall.
“Where did that—that _thing_ come from?” stammered John
Graham, ignoring the other’s gesture and pointing with a trembling hand at the seemingly
insignificant bit of wire between them.
“Didn’t it drop from your
coat-pocket?” inquired the proprietor. “It wasn’t lying here before you came
in.”
With a horrible oath the unhappy
man turned and fled from the place. I lost sight of him after that for three
hours, then I suddenly came upon him again. He was walking up town with a set
purpose in his face that made him look more dangerous than ever. Of course I
followed him, expecting him to turn towards Fifty-Ninth Street, but at the
corner of Madison Avenue and Forty-Seventh Street he changed his mind and
dashed toward Third Avenue. At Park Avenue he faltered and again turned north, walking
for several blocks as if the fiends were behind him. I began to think that he
was but attempting to walk off his excitement, when, at a sudden rushing sound
in the cut beside us, he stopped and trembled. An express train was shooting
by. As it disappeared in the tunnel beyond, he looked about him with a blanched
face and wandering eye; but his glance did not turn my way, or if it did, he
failed to attach any meaning to my near presence.
He began to move on again and
this time towards the bridge spanning the cut.
I followed him very closely. In
the center of it he paused and looked down at the track beneath him. Another
train was approaching. As it came near, he trembled from head to foot, and
catching at the railing against which he leaned, was about to make a quick move
forward when a puff of smoke arose from below and sent him staggering backward,
gasping with a terror I could hardly understand till I saw that the smoke had taken
the form of a spiral and was sailing away before him in what to his disordered
imagination must have looked like a gigantic image of the coil with which twice
before on this day he had found himself confronted.
It may have been chance and it
may have been providence; but whichever it was it saved him. He could not face
that semblance of his haunting thought; and turning away he cowered down on the
neighboring curbstone, where he sat for several minutes, with his head buried
in his hands; when he rose again he was his own daring and sinister self.
Knowing that he was now too much master of his faculties to ignore me any
longer, I walked quickly away and left him. I knew where he would be at six o’clock
and had already engaged a table at the same restaurant. It was seven, however,
before he put in an appearance, and by this time he was looking more composed.
There was a reckless air about him, however, which was perhaps only noticeable
to me; for none of the habitués of this especial restaurant were
entirely without it; wild eyes and unkempt hair being in the majority.
I let him eat. The dinner he
ordered was simple and I had not the heart to interrupt his enjoyment of it.
But when he had finished; and
came to pay, then I allowed the shock to come. Under the bill which the waiter
laid at the side of his plate was the inevitable steel coil; and it produced
even more than its usual effect. I own I felt sorry for him.
He did not dash from the place,
however, as he had from the liquor-saloon. A spirit of resistance had seized
him and he demanded to know where this object of his fear had come from. No one
could tell him (or would). Whereupon he began to rave and would certainly have
done himself or somebody else an injury if he had not been calmed by a man almost
as wild-looking as himself. Paying his bill, but vowing he would never enter
the place again, he went out, clay-white, but with the swaggering air of a man
who had just asserted himself.
He drooped, however, as soon as
he reached the street, and I had no difficulty in following him to a certain
gambling den where he gained three dollars and lost five. From there he went to
his lodgings in West Tenth Street.
I did not follow him in. He had
passed through many deep and wearing emotions since noon, and I had not the
heart to add another to them.
But late the next day I returned
to this house and rang the bell. It was already dusk, but there was light
enough for me to notice the unrepaired condition of the iron railings on either
side of the old stone stoop and to compare this abode of decayed grandeur with
the spacious and elegant apartment in which pretty Mrs. Holmes mourned the loss
of her young husband. Had any such comparison ever been made by the unhappy
John Graham, as he hurried up these decayed steps into the dismal halls beyond?
In answer to my summons there
came to the door a young woman to whom I had but to intimate my wish to see Mr.
Graham for her to let me in with the short announcement:
“Top floor, back room! Door open,
he’s out; door shut, he’s in.”
As an open door meant liberty to
enter, I lost no time in following the direction of her pointing finger, and
presently found myself in a low attic chamber overlooking an acre of roofs. A
fire had been lighted in the open grate, and the flickering red beams danced on
ceiling and walls with a cheeriness greatly in contrast to the nature of the
business which had led me there. As they also served to light the room I proceeded
to make myself at home; and drawing up a chair, sat down at the fireplace in
such a way as to conceal myself from any one entering the door.
In less than half an hour he came
in.
He was in a state of high
emotion. His face was flushed and his eyes burning.
Stepping rapidly forward, he
flung his hat on the table in the middle of the room, with a curse that was
half cry and half groan. Then he stood silent and I had an opportunity of
noting how haggard he had grown in the short time which had elapsed since I had
seen him last. But the interval of his inaction was short, and in a moment he
flung up his arms with a loud ‘Curse her!’ that rang through the narrow room
and betrayed the source of his present frenzy. Then he again stood still, grating
his teeth and working his hands in a way terribly suggestive of the murderer’s
instinct. But not for long. He saw something that attracted his attention on
the table, a something upon which my eyes had long before been fixed, and
starting forward with a fresh and quite different display of emotion, he caught
up what looked like a roll of
Manuscript and began to tear it
open.
“Back again! Always back!” wailed
from his lips; and he gave the roll a toss that sent from its midst a small
object which he no sooner saw than he became speechless and reeled back. It was
another of the steel coils.
“Good God!” fell at last from his
stiff and working lips. “Am I mad or has the devil joined in the pursuit
against me? I cannot eat, I cannot drink, but this diabolical spring starts up
before me. It is here, there, everywhere. The visible sign of my guilt; the—the—”
He had stumbled back upon my
chair, and turning, saw me.
I was on my feet at once, and
noting that he was dazed by the shock of my presence, I slid quietly between
him and the door.
The movement roused him. Turning
upon me with a sarcastic smile in which was concentrated the bitterness of
years, he briefly said:
“So, I am caught! Well, there has
to be an end to men as well as to things, and I am ready for mine. She turned
me away from her door to-day, and after the hell of that moment I don’t much
fear any other.”
You can talk to me or you can talk to the cat. But I mean to have this out of you. |
“You had better not talk,” I
admonished him. “All that falls from you now will only tell against you on your
trial.”
He broke into a harsh laugh. “And
do you think I care for that? That having been driven by a woman’s perfidy into
crime I am going to bridle my tongue and keep down the words which are my only
safeguard from insanity? No, no; while my miserable breath lasts I will curse
her, and if the halter is to cut short my words, it shall be with her name blistering
my lips.”
I attempted to speak, but he
would not give me the opportunity. The passion of weeks had found vent and he
rushed on recklessly.
“I went to her house to-day. I
wanted to see her in her widow’s weeds; I wanted to see her eyes red with
weeping over a grief which owed its bitterness to me. But she would not grant
me an admittance. She had me thrust from her door, and I shall never know how
deeply the iron has sunk into her soul. But—” and here his face showed a sudden
change, “I shall see her if I am tried for murder. She will be in the court-room,
on the witness stand—”
“Doubtless,” I interjected; but
his interruption came quickly and with vehement passion.
“Then I am ready. Welcome trial,
conviction, death, even. To confront her eye to eye is all I wish. She shall
never forget it, never!”
“Then you do not deny—” I began.
“I deny nothing,” he returned,
and held out his hands with a grim gesture. “How can I, when there falls from
everything I touch, the devilish thing which took away the life I hated?”
“Have you anything more to say or
do before you leave these rooms?” I asked.
He shook his head, and then,
bethinking himself, pointed to the roll of paper which he had flung on the
table.
“Burn that!” he cried.
I took up the roll and looked at
it. It was the manuscript of a poem in blank verse.
“I have been with it into a dozen
newspaper and magazine offices,” he explained with great bitterness. “Had I
succeeded in getting a publisher for it I might have forgotten my wrongs and
tried to build up a new life on the ruins of the old. But they would not have
it, none of them, so I say, burn it! No memory of me may remain in this miserable
world.”
“Keep to the facts!” I severely
retorted. “It was while carrying this poem from one newspaper to another that
you secured that bit of print upon the blank side of which you yourself printed
the obituary notice with which you savored your revenge upon the woman who had
disappointed you.”
“You know that? Then you know
where I got the poison with which I tipped the silly toy with which that weak
man fooled away his life?”
“No,” said I, “I do not know
where you got it. I merely know it was no common poison bought at a druggist’s,
or from any ordinary chemist.”
“It was woorali; the deadly,
secret woorali. I got it from—but that is another man’s secret. You will never
hear from me anything that will compromise a friend. I got it, that is all. One
drop, but it killed my man.”
The satisfaction, the delight,
which he threw into these words are beyond description. As they left his lips a
jet of flame from the neglected fire shot up and threw his figure for one
instant into bold relief upon the lowering ceiling; then it died out, and
nothing but the twilight dusk remained in the room and on the countenance of
this doomed and despairing man.
End
Holy, schmoley. I have no idea what just happened
there. But it sure was scary, eh, boys and girls?
Louis Shalako has a few books
and stories on iTunes.
Thank you for reading.
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