Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ The shock set me stammering.
“My cousin is out,” said Miss Connell. “Doctor Sperry has taken her for a ride. She will be back very soon.”
I shook a cat from my trouser-leg, and my wife made an unimportant remark.
“I may as well tell you, I disapprove of what Alice is doing,” said Miss Connell. “She doesn't have to. I've offered her a good home. She was brought up an Episcopalian. I call this sort of thing playing with the powers of darkness. Only the eternally damned are doomed to walk the earth. The blessed are at rest.” ”

“ But, as a matter of fact, I need not have concerned myself about the hat. When I descended to breakfast the next morning I found her surveying the umbrella-stand in the hall. The fire-tongs were standing there, gleaming brazenly among my sticks and umbrellas.
I lied. I lied shamelessly. She is a nervous woman, and as we have no children, her attitude toward me is one of watchful waiting. Through long years she has expected me to commit some indiscretion—innocent, of course, such as going out without my overcoat on a cool day—and she in tends to be on hand for every emergency. ”

“ I left the Wells house as soon as I had made the discovery in the night nursery. I carried the candle and the fire-tongs down-stairs. I was, apparently, calm but watchful. I would have said that I had never been more calm in my life.
However, the discovery that my overcoat was gone from the library rather startled me. I knew exactly where I had left it, but it was gone. My hat I found on the floor. It had been stepped on, and was badly broken. I shall have to confess to a certain relief over the broken hat. A very human and tangible and not at all light foot had destroyed it. ”

“ I found the routine of business that week stale and annoying. I was nervous, excited. On Thursday night of that week my wife was convinced that there were burglars in the house. It was then, for the first time in my life, that I felt the terrors of darkness.
Armed with my revolver, I put up a brave front, and went down-stairs. The silence was horrible. We are old-fashioned people, and have not yet adopted electric light. I carried a box of matches, but at the foot of the stairs the one I had lighted went out. ”

“ CHAPTER EIGHT SPERRY was waiting for me in his library, a pleasant room which I have often envied him. Even the most happily married man wishes, now and then, for some quiet, dull room which is essentially his own. My own library is really the family sitting-room, and a Christmas or so ago my wife presented me with a very handsome phonograph instrument. ”

“ I expostulated, “I get them!”
“What I would like to ask,” she said, with an icy calmness that I have learned to dread, “is whether you carried them home over your head, under the impression that you had your umbrella.” ”

“ Dane had prepared for her, and at eleven o'clock Sperry took her home in his car.
The Neighborhood Club as a whole was divided between amazement and a sort of shamefaced apology. My wife voiced the sentiment of the women, I fancy, when Miss Jeremy and Sperry had gone, and we had gathered in the library for a few moments before separating.
“It's rather undignified. That's the only thing I resent,” she said. “Instead of Swinburne and Emerson we sit around a table in a dark room, and a young woman makes up a lot of stuff that ought not to impose on a ten-year-old child. ”

“ That Hawkins had certain letters which touched on the Wells affair, that all the they were probably in the Connell house, was clear enough. We had no possible authority for trying to get the letters, although Sperry was anxious to make the attempt.
“But 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 in that legal door. I think you know that, too, deep in that legal mind of yours. It is wrong to discredit her because I did a foolish thing.” He warmed to his argument. “Why, think, man,” he said. ”

“ And Sperry is in love—oh, yes, I know it. I know a great many things. But you!”
I could only stare at her.
“The strange thing is,” she went on, “that I have known you for years, and never suspected your sense of humor. You'll forgive me, I know, if I tell you that your lack of humor was to my mind the only flaw in an otherwise perfect character.”
“I am not aware—” I began stiffly. “I have always believed that I furnished to the Neighborhood Club its only leaven of humor.”
“Don't spoil it,” she begged. “Don't. If you could know how I have enjoyed it. All afternoon I have been chuckling. ”

“ I have the bag and the letters. In a safe place. If you would treat me like a human being, you could have them. I know where the walking-stick is, also. I will tell you this. I have no wish to do her any harm. She will have to pay up in the next world, even if she gets off in this. The way I reason is this: As long as I have the things, I've got the whip-hand. I've got you, too, although you may think I haven't. About the other matter I was innocent. I swear it again. I never did it. You are the only one in all the world. ”

“ I was thinking clearly now. This was the room above Arthur's. Had there been a murder and not a suicide, if there had been two shots and the hole near the chandelier was a bullet-hole, one of two things had happened. Either the bullet had embedded itself in a joist, or it had penetrated the flooring.
There was a pink-and-gray rug covering the floor, and I examined it as well as the ceiling. There was no mark, no hole, in either. It was when I was turning the rug back that conviction dawned on me. ”

“ I bought a new hat that afternoon, and told the clerk to destroy the old one. Then I went to Mrs. Dane's.
She was in the drawing-room, now restored to its usual clutter of furniture and ornaments. I made my way around two tables, stepped over a hassock and under the leaves of an artificial palm, and shook her hand.
She was plainly excited. Never have I known a woman who, confined to a wheel-chair, lived so hard. ”

“ He agreed finally, but his interest in the case had clearly switched to Miss Jeremy. Thinking it over after he had gone, I decided to make my own investigations that week. I would have called in Herbert's assistance, but he was down with the influenza. Not for a moment did I doubt Sperry's integrity, but the authenticity of the whole affair was at stake, I felt, and the most discreet man has a way of being indiscreet to the woman he loves. ”

“ Here the medium laughed. It was horrible. And the laughter made the whole thing absurd. But it died away quickly.
“If only the pocketbook was not lost,” she said. “There were so many things in it. Especially car-tickets. Walking is a nuisance.”
Mrs. Dane's secretary suddenly spoke. “Do you want me to take things like that?” she asked.
“Take everything, please,” was the answer.
“Car-tickets and letters. It will be terrible if the letters are found.”
“Where was the pocketbook lost?” Sperry asked. ”

“ Because she is young and pretty the men take her seriously, of course. I consider it all nonsense.”
“My dear,” Mrs. Dane said, reaching over and patting my wife's hand, “people talked that way about Columbus and Galileo. And if it is nonsense, it is such thrilling nonsense!”
I find that the solution of the Arthur Wells mystery—for we did solve it—takes three divisions in my mind. Each one is a sitting, followed by an investigation made by Sperry and myself. ”

“ THIS is a record of the strange case of Arthur Wells, as investigated by six people who called themselves the Neighborhood Club. They were in the habit of dining together once a week and discussing some subject chosen by the host of the evening. One night old Mrs. Dane elected to have a séance. A Miss Jeremy, an attractive young woman, was the medium. After some trifling occurrences of the usual sort. Miss Jeremy told vivid details of a suicide—a man killed by a bullet while shaving, blood on the carpet, a hole in the ceiling, a woman, in a yellow kimono, holding a revolver ”

“ Dane will be willing. She could carry the thing on, you know. Miss Jeremy knows nothing, you think?”
“Nothing, absolutely. It's her health that worries me. She is going to give it all up.”
I was disappointed. We had got to a point where to go on seemed the only course. To stop now was to leave on Elinor Wells the stigma, in all our minds, of murder. And I was not even partly convinced of her guilt.
“Suppose you allow one more sitting,” I suggested. “The Club can be informed that it is the last. We will agree to let things stand as that finds them.” ”

“ She drew out a newspaper clipping.
“On going over Clara's notes,” she said, “I came to the conclusion, last Tuesday, that the matter of the missing hand-bag and the letters was important. More importantly, probably, than the mere record shows. Do you recall the note of distress in Miss Jeremy's voice? It was almost a wail.”
I had noticed it.
“I have plenty of time to think,” she added, not without pathos. “There is only one Monday night in the week, and—the days are long. It occurred to me to to try to trace that bag.”
“In what way?”
“How does any one trace lost articles?” she demanded. ”

“ Sperry, it was clear, was rapidly falling in love with Miss Jeremy.
In a way, I feel that this vindication is due Sperry. There has been some talk recently that he knew much that the medium revealed at that final and most amazing séance. This is not true. Sperry knew nothing of what I discovered that week. I pursued my investigations alone. There were times when I would have given a great deal to have him with me.
On Thursday I saw by the morning paper that Elinor Wells had gone to Florida with her children, and that the house was closed.
I am naturally a timid man. ”

“ We think we are living. But for the last day or two I have been seeing visions—you and I and the rest of us, living on the surface, and underneath, carefully kept down so it will not make us uncomfortable, a world of passion and crime and violence and suffering. That letter is a tragedy.”
CHAPTER SEVEN ON SATURDAY evening, Sperry having returned, I called an informal meeting of the Neighborhood Club. In deference to Herbert Robinson's recent attack of influenza, we met at the Robinson house. Sperry himself wheeled Mrs. Dane over, and made a speech. ”

“ By going through my desk I found a number of keys, mostly trunk keys and one the key to a dog-collar. But late in the afternoon I visited a client of mine who is in the hardware business, and secured quite a selection. One of them was a skeleton key.
He persisted in regarding the matter as a joke, and poked me between the shoulder-blades as I went out.
“If you're arrested with all that hardware on you,” he said, “you'll be held as a first-class burglar. You are equipped to open anything from a can of tomatoes to the missionary box in church.” ”

“ I felt that, in a way, my whole domestic happiness was at stake. My wife is a difficult person to argue with, and as tenacious of an opinion once formed as are all very amiable people.
Unfortunately for our investigation, but luckily for me, under the circumstances, Sperry was called to another city that afternoon and did not return for two days.
It was on the Thursday night following the second sitting that I had gone alone to the Wells house, and my interview with Sperry was on Friday. It was on Friday afternoon that I received a telephone message from Mrs. Dane. ”

“ Dane's secretary.
There was one other change. Sperry had brought the walking-stick he had taken from Arthur Wells's room, and after the medium was in trance he placed it on the table before her.
The first questions were disappointing in results. Asked about the stick, there was only silence. When, however, Sperry went back to the sitting of the week before, and referred to questions and answers at that time, the medium seemed uneasy. Her hand, held under mine, made an effort to free itself, and, released, touched the cane.
“It is very hard to find places for all the furniture,” she said. ”

“ She's wonderful—Miss Jeremy. But no matter what we get now she will be discredited. I see it.” He was 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 he asked for a position.”
HE was not sure. He went down to his consulting room and was gone for some time. I took the opportunity to glance over his books and over the room.
Arthur Wells's stick was standing in a corner. ”

“ At midnight, Sperry, reaching home, had found a message summoning him to the Wells house. The message had been left at 9:35. He had telephoned me, and we had gone together, arriving at approximately 12:30.
(c) We had been unable to enter, and, recalling the medium's description of a key on a nail among the vines, had searched for and found such a key, and had admitted ourselves. Mrs. Wells, a governess, a doctor, and two policemen were in the house. The dead man lay in the room in which he had died. ”

“ Whatever may come of it, the result is of psychic interest only. We are not trailing a criminal.”
“Crime is the affair of every decent-minded citizen,” his sister put in concisely.
But the general view was that Herbert was right. I am not defending our course. I am recording it. It is, I admit, open to argument.
Having decided on what to do, or not to do, we broke into animated discussion. The letter to A 31 was the rock on which all our theories foundered, that and the message the governess had sent to young Ellingham not to come to the Wells house that night. ”