Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ Had he killed himself, or had Elinor killed him? Before me rose a picture of Elinor as I had seen her so often, cold, inscrutable, very well dressed. There are women whose coldness covers depths of unfathomed and hidden passion. Was she one of those? I thought not. She was too selfish, too calculating. Her pale eyes showed no flashes. Even her rage would be cold. She was incapable of an impassioned crime.
Sperry was waiting on his door-step, and we went on to the Wells house. ”

“ The truth was that there was too much plausibility about the whole story Elinor told. It was too simple, too uninvolved—though it would have imposed on us both, as it had on the police, but for Miss Jeremy. And there was too much caution. People neither think nor act quite rationally in great crises. They overact, overdo. The very fact that whoever had washed up the incriminating blood-stains had been over-zealous, also hidden the sponge, was irrational and suspicious.
Sperry and I stared at each other. The strop and the sponge lay between us, on the floor. ”

“ I FELT OLD AND BITTER AND TIRED. But Herbert Robinson remained the cynic. “Show me something that I can not explain,” he said, “and you will convince me.”
“You are of the type that can not be convinced,” Sperry retorted. “You would forswear the evidence of your own senses.”
“Physical phenomena!” scoffed the cynic. “I've seen it all—objects moving without visible hands, unexplained currents of cold air, voices through a trumpet—I know the whole rotten mess.”
Mrs. Dane only smiled. “I wonder!” she said quietly. “Friends, I am going to make an experiment to-night. Herbert may be right. ”

“ Living quietly, as my wife and I did, on the borderland of society, we had never felt the urge of social ambition. But, of course, Elinor was different.
Once on the street-car, the murder or suicide, whichever it was, gave way in importance in our minds to the strange fact that at the time it was occurring, or a few minutes later. Miss Jeremy had described it.
Sperry, I could see, was much impressed. “We have been going along,” be said, “all smug and contented—three meals a day and a bed at night, a few friends, a business or a profession. ”

“ AT MIDNIGHT SPERRY CALLED ME. “ARTHUR WELLS KILLED HIMSELF TO-NIGHT.”
Elinor Wells was different. Tall, blonde, with pale-blue eyes and masses of yellow hair, she was of a type that I detest. Calculating, ambitious, even avaricious, her marriage, while bringing her into prominence with the “smart” younger set, had disappointed her in a monetary way. Wells, with every opportunity to succeed, had lived beyond his means, had golfed and motored while business appointments hung fire. ”

“ Sperry was at the medium's right, Herbert at her left. We were not silent. She had said that it was not necessary. We talked quietly, but the general theme was the thing we were testing. I had put my opened watch on the table before me, a night watch with a luminous dial. At five minutes after nine I felt the top of the table waver under my fingers, a curious, fluid-like motion.
“The table is going to move,” I said quietly.
Herbert laughed, a dry little chuckle. “Sure it is,” he said. “When we all get to acting together, it will probably do considerable moving. ”

“ And then there are sinister days, when the earth is a hideous place, when immortality becomes a dream and life itself a burden, when all that is riotous and unlawful comes forth and bares itself to the light.
This was such a day.
I am fond of my friends, but I found no pleasure in the thought of meeting them that evening. I remembered the odious squeak in the wheels of Mrs. Dane's chair. I resented the way Sperry would clear his throat. I read in the morning paper Herbert Robinson's review of a book I had liked, and disagreed with him. Disagreed violently. ”

“ Of what transpired regarding the death of Arthur Wells, we have solved the mystery. We know now why and when. We know the method by which it was solved. To say that we know how it was solved is only partially accurate.
It was I who suggested keeping a record of what happened. If anything, I am a methodical person, and although, as it developed, I did not keep the record myself, I have every reason to believe that it is entirely accurate. It has, as a matter of fact, been read and passed on by the Neighborhood Club, and such parts of it as I have chosen for publication are exactly as recorded. ”

“ Sperry said. “If—perhaps the key is on a nail among the vines!”
I confess to a nervous tightening of my muscles as we made our way around the house. If the key was there, we were on the track of a revelation that might revolutionize much that we had held fundamental in science and in our knowledge of life itself. If, sitting in Mrs. Dane's quiet room, a woman could tell us what was happening in a house a mile or so away, it opened up a new earth. Almost a new heaven.
I STOPPED and touched Sperry's arm. “This Miss Jeremy—did she know Arthur, or Elinor? ”

“ I said to Sperry, “if it happened to be true. It is not true, Sperry. I'm sorry for Elinor, but—she's lying. The boy was shaving when it happened, as certainly as we found the key among the vines. I don't believe he fell where you found him.”
“Why?”
“Look at the sponge. There were stains elsewhere, stains that would in validate the suicide story, or why were they washed up?”
“I see. But why wash up the one here, where I found the body?”
“Excitement. Some one was over-zealous. He may have fallen there. I rather think not. A head wound doesn't bleed much, does it?”
“Not rapidly. It oozes.” ”

“ She was beginning to feel that the situation was more complicated than she had thought, and was anxious to clear her own skirts.
“I can prove where I was,” she said with a touch of excitement in her voice. “I went to a pharmacy and telephoned. The clerk will remember, I am sure.”
My old habit of examining testimony asserted itself. “You went out to telephone when there is a telephone in the house?”
But here again, as once or twice before, a veil dropped between us. She avoided my eyes. “There are things one does not want the family to hear,” she muttered. ”

“ If the dead man had been shaving there was nothing but the orderly array of razors to show it.
Sperry gave an exclamation of disgust. “Everything cleared up, of course!” he said. “It's rather extraordinary, if Elinor's story is true, that a wild impulse toward tidiness should seize her at such a time.”
He had got Elinor's story from the policeman. It was a connected and reasonable account of her husband's suicide. They had been going to a ball that night. The servants had all gone out immediately after dinner, and the governess had gone for a walk. ”

“ The medium was in a trance. It dawned on us rather slowly. We were all pure novices, and my wife suggested a cup of hot tea for her. “I'm afraid she's ill, poor thing!” she said.
Then, suddenly, somebody spoke. It was not Miss Jeremy's voice. It was a deep tone, almost a bass, but it came from the medium.
“Great Scott, it's a dark night,” said the voice.
Mrs. Dane eyed us with a triumph that even the twilight did not conceal. “That's her control,” she said. “Please be careful of this, Clara. If you need more light, turn it up. She says light does not bother her under these conditions.” ”

“ Sperry observed. “We've got to face a situation, Horace, and face it squarely. This is either a murder or a suicide. Elinor is bound to suffer, in any case. She has never been really popular, and the affair with young Ellingham will hurt a lot. Whether poor Arthur Wells put himself out of the way, or whether she did it, in a struggle or cold-bloodedly, a certain number of people will always think that she killed him. She knows that, too. Socially, she's dead. She'll close the house and go away. ”

“ And perhaps Sperry is right. There may be a dying sixth sense in the race. Frankly, I do not know.
This is a record of the strange case of Arthur Wells, as investigated by six earnest people who called themselves the Neighborhood Club.
The Club was organized in my house. It was too small really to be called a club, but women have a way these days of conferring a titular dignity on their activities, and it is not so bad, after all. The Neighborhood Club it really was, composed of four of our neighbors, my wife, and myself. ”

“ I said, almost irritably, “why wash up the stain? I don't understand. It's—it's idiotic.”
“Certainly,” said Sperry. “But there's a lot about the whole thing that isn't quite sane, you know. Our being here, for instance, under these circumstance.”
He walked across to the bathroom and surveyed it from the doorway. I followed him. It was as orderly as the other room. On a glass shelf over the wash-stand were his razors, a safety and, beside it, in a black case, an assortment of the other sort, long bladed and gleaming. ”

“ At least it spells activity. The thought of an inert eternity is much worse.”
The physical force which had thrown the objects over the screen also came up for discussion. I mentioned a theory, Lombroso's, I believe—at least, I claimed it as his—by which the medium in a trance state develops an aura with certain physical qualities, so clearly defined that a scale shows a loss of weight.
“Such an aura,” I said, “could doubtless, at the volition of the person in trance, produce phenomena of the sort we saw.”
But Sperry was off on the fourth dimension by that time. ”

“ Then, now and then something like this crops up, and destroys in a moment the illusion that we have fathomed the secrets of the universe.”
“THIS 'control' business, Sperry,” I said, “somehow I dislike it. It's a sort of Aladdin and the Spirit of the Lamp affair. I can not imagine anything more terrible than dying—'going over,' as our friends the spiritualists term it—and then being obliged to fetch and carry for all the Miss Jeremys of the earth.”
“Miss Jeremy is a very fine girl. And an honorable one,” he said. “There might be worse things. ”

“ Hold them very tight,” said Miss Jeremy. Her voice sounded faint and far away. Her head was drooped forward on her chest.
“We ought to have a record of all this,” Mrs. Dane said eagerly. “We believe it now, but to-morrow—suppose I send for Clara.”
There was some demur to this. Things were happening, and breaking the circle might be serious. Miss Jeremy, appealed to, did not reply. She had sagged down in her chair, and her hands, Sperry and Herbert reported, were very cold. Sperry felt her pulse and pronounced it slow.
There were no further demonstrations from behind the low black curtain. ”

“ Only that one spot on the carpet. Water will take that out—not hot water. Cold. Hot sets the stain.”
“Look here,” Herbert said, looking around the table, “I don't like this. It's darned grisly.”
“Oh, fudge!” Sperry put in irreverently. “Let her rave, or it, or whatever it is. Do you mean that a man is dead?”—to the medium.
“Very dead. The woman has the revolver. She needn't cry so. He was cruel to her. He was a beast. Sullen.”
“Can you see the woman?” I asked.
“Certainly. Very pretty and young. She's wearing a yellow kimono.”
“Are you getting this, Clara?” Mrs. Dane asked sharply. ”

“ She was to return at nine-thirty to fasten Elinor's gown and to be with the children.
Arthur, she said, had been depressed for several days, and at dinner had hardly spoken at all. He had not, however, objected to the ball. He had indeed, seemed strangely determined to go, although she had pled a headache. At nine o'clock he went up-stairs, apparently to dress. ”

“ But here are six of us, intelligent and mentally well-poised. One way and another, during the past year, we have touched on many things and I explained them. It occurred to me that it would be a novelty to try something we could not explain, or, at least, not explain easily. ”

“ I feel what you feel. It's flowing under my fingers.”
“Blood,” said Sperry. “You fellows feel the blood moving through the ends of your fingers. That's all.”
However, curiously enough, the table did not move. Instead, my watch, before my eyes, slid to the edge of the table and dropped to the floor, and almost instantly an object, which we recognized later as the knife, was flung over the curtain and struck the wall behind Mrs. Dane violently.
“HOLD MY HANDS VERY TIGHT.” HER VOICE SOUNDED FAINT AND FAR AWAY.
ONE of the women screamed, ending in a hysterical giggle. ”

“ Sperry asked one question, however. “Are you certain about the time when Miss Jeremy saw what looks like this thing?”
“Certainly. My watch had been knocked off the table. I picked it up. It was still going. It was nine-thirty.”
“At nine-thirty-five the Wells' nursery governess telephoned for me. As you know, my man keeps a record of the time of all calls.”
Sperry is a heart specialist, I think I have said, with offices in his house. ”

“ She dislikes intensely the occasional outside calls of my profession. She merely observed, however, that she would leave all the lights on until my return. “I should think you could arrange things better, Horace,” she added. “It's perfectly idiotic the way people die at night. ”