Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ There Sperry threw them, open, and we saw that the room had been completely metamorphosed.
Mrs. Dane’s drawing-room is generally rather painful. Kindly soul that she is, she has considered it necessary to preserve and exhibit there the many gifts of a long lifetime. Photographs long outgrown, onyx tables, a clutter of odd chairs and groups of discordant bric-a-brac usually make the progress of her chair through it a precarious and perilous matter. ”

“ I had not taken Ellingham’s stick to Mrs. Dane’s house; that was another. I had not done it. I had placed it on the table and had not touched it again.
But those were immaterial, compared with one outstanding fact. Any supernatural solution would imply full knowledge by whatever power had controlled the medium. And there was not full knowledge. There was, on the 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 me that morning at my office. ”

“ I, Horace Johnson, a man of dignity and reputation, even in a small way, a successful after-dinner speaker, numbering fifty-odd years of logical living to my credit, had been running half-maddened toward a mythical danger from which I had been afraid to run away!
I sat down and mopped my face with my pocket handkerchief.
After a time I got up, and going to a window looked down at the quiet world below. The fog was lifting. Automobiles were making cautious progress along the slippery street. A woman with a basket had stopped under the street light and was rearranging her parcels. ”

“ The cousin—her name was Connell—was small and sharp, and she entered the room followed by a train of cats. All the time she was frigidly greeting us, cats were coming in at the door, one after the other. It fascinated me. I do not like cats. I am, as a matter of confession, afraid of cats. They affect me as do snakes. They trailed in in a seemingly endless procession, and one of them took a fancy to me, and leaped from behind on to my shoulder. 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.” ”

“ It was that night, the fifteenth day after the crime, that the solution came. Came as a matter of fact, to my door.
I was in the library, reading, or trying to read, a rather abstruse book on psychic phenomena. My wife, I recall, had just asked me to change a banjo 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, to answer the door myself.
To my surprise, it was Sperry, accompanied by two ladies, one of them heavily veiled. ”

“ One was a leather razor strop, old and stiff from disuse, and the other a wet bath sponge, now stained with blood to a yellowish brown.
“She is lying, Sperry,” I said. “He fell somewhere else, and she dragged him to where he was found.”
“But—why?”
“I don’t know,” I said impatiently. “From some place where a man would be unlikely to kill himself, I daresay. No one ever killed himself, for instance, in an open hallway. Or stopped shaving to do it.”
“We have only Miss Jeremy’s word for that,” he said, sullenly. “Confound it, Horace, don’t let’s bring in that stuff if we can help it.” ”

“ The psycho-analysts have taught us something about the individual mind. They have their own patter, of complexes and primal instincts, of the unconscious, which is a sort of bonded warehouse from which we clandestinely withdraw our stored thoughts and impressions. They lay to this unconscious mind of ours all phenomena that cannot otherwise be labeled, and ascribe such demonstrations of power as cannot thus be explained to trickery, to black silk threads and folding rods, to slates with false sides and a medium with chalk on his finger nail. ”

“ There were Herbert Robinson and his sister Alice—not a young woman, but clever, alert, and very alive; Sperry, the well-known heart specialist, a bachelor still in spite of much feminine activity; and there was old Mrs. Dane, hopelessly crippled as to the knees with rheumatism, but one of those glowing and kindly souls that have a way of being a neighborhood nucleus. ”

“ She was plainly excited. Never have I known a woman who, confined to a wheel-chair, lived so hard. She did not allow life to pass her windows, if I may put it that way. She called it in, and set it moving about her chair, herself the nucleus around which were enacted all sorts of small neighborhood dramas and romances. Her secretaries did not marry. She married them.
It is curious to look back and remember how Herbert and Sperry and myself had ignored this quality in her, in the Wells case. She was not to be ignored, as I discovered that afternoon. ”

“ Is death, then, only a gateway into higher space, from which, through the open door of a “sensitive” mind, we may be brought back on occasion to commit the inadequate absurdities of the physical seance?
Or is Sperry right, and do certain individuals manifest powers of a purely physical nature, but powers which Sperry characterizes as the survival of some long-lost development by which at one time we knew how to liberate a forgotten form of energy? ”

“ And if she did I should have to agree to drop the investigation. As a matter of fact, Sperry, I had resorted to subterfuge in order to remain out last evening, and I am bitterly regretting my mendacity.”
But Sperry has, I am afraid, rather loose ideas.
“Every man,” he said, “would rather tell the truth, but every woman makes it necessary to lie to her. Forget the fire-tongs, Horace, and forget Mrs. Johnson to-night. He may not have dared to go back in day-light for his overcoat.” ”

“ 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. The fire-tongs, Horace. The fire-tongs!”
Then I knew that my wife had been to Mrs. Dane and I drew a long breath. “I assure you,” I said gravely, “that while doubtless I carried the wretched things home and—er—placed them where they were found, I have not the slightest recollection of it. And it is hardly amusing, is it?”
“Amusing!” she cried. “It’s delicious. ”

“ Dane’s table on the stand, and I was more startled than the others. Then the glass prisms in the chandelier over our heads clinked together, as if they had been swept by a finger. More of the flowers came. We were pelted with them. And into the quiet that followed there came a light, fine but steady tattoo on the table in our midst. Then at last silence, and the medium in deep trance, and Mrs. Dane rapping on the floor for Clara.
When Clara came in, Mrs. Dane told her to switch on the lights. Miss Jeremy had dropped in her chair until the silk across her chest was held taut. ”

“ As I am the Horace in question, I must explain that Herbert was merely being facetious. My life is a most orderly and decorous one. But my wife, unfortunately, lacks a sense of humor, and I felt that the remark might have been more fortunate.
“Physical phenomena!” scoffed the cynic. “I’ve seen it all—objects moving without visible hands, unexplained currents of cold air, voice through a trumpet—I know the whole rotten mess, and I’ve got a book which tells how to do all the tricks. I’ll bring it along some night.”
Mrs. Dane smiled, and the discussion was dropped for a time. ”

“ I felt rather sorry for Sperry. He paced the room wretchedly, the two letters in his hand.
“But why should he tell her, if he did?” he demanded. “The writer of that anonymous letter was writing for only one person. Every effort is made to conceal his identity.”
I felt that he was right. The point was well taken.
“The question now is, to whom was it written?” We pondered that, to no effect. That Hawkins had certain letters which touched on the Wells affair, that they were probably in his possession in the Connell house, was clear enough. ”

“ 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. My reading, therefore, is done to music, and the necessity for putting my book down to change the record at times interferes somewhat with my train of thought. ”

“ There could be no question that if things were left as they were, a number of people would go through life convinced that Elinor Wells had murdered her husband. Look at the situation. She had sent out all the servants and the governess, surely an unusual thing in an establishment of that sort. And Miss Jeremy had been vindicated in three points; some stains had certainly been washed up, we had found the key where she had stated it to be, and Arthur had certainly been shaving himself.
“In other words,” I argued, “we can’t stop, Sperry. You can’t stop. ”

“ Sperry said thoughtfully. “No, I daresay she couldn’t. Was the revolver on the floor also?”
“Yes, doctor. I myself picked it up.”
To Sperry she showed, I observed, a slight deference, but when she glanced at me, as she did after each reply, I thought her expression slightly altered. At the time this puzzled me, but it was explained when Sperry started down the stairs.
“Monsieur is of the police?” she asked, with a Frenchwoman’s timid respect for the constabulary.
I hesitated before I answered. I am a truthful man, and I hate unnecessary lying. ”

“ There may be a dozen explanations for that sponge, and for the razor strop. What in heaven’s name has a razor strop to do with it anyhow? One bullet was fired, and the revolver has one empty chamber. It may not be the custom to stop shaving in order to commit suicide, but that’s no argument that it can’t be done, and as to the key—how do I know that my own back door key isn’t hung outside on a nail sometimes? ”

“ Sperry had, I believe, told Herbert Robinson of what we had discovered, but nothing had been said to the women. I knew through my wife that they were wildly curious, and the night of the second seance Mrs. Dane drew me aside and I saw that she suspected, without knowing, that we had been endeavoring to check up our revelations with the facts.
“I want you to promise me one thing,” she said. “I’ll not bother you now. But I’m an old woman, with not much more of life to be influenced by any disclosures. ”

“ Sperry, kneeling on the floor with the candle held close, examined the wood. “Not only scrubbed,” he said, “but scraped down, probably with a floor-scraper. It’s pretty clear, Horace. The poor devil fell here. There was a struggle, and he went down. He lay there for a while, too, until some plan was thought out. A man does not usually kill himself in a hallway. It’s a sort of solitary deed. He fell here, and was dragged into the room. The angle of the bullet in the ceiling would probably show it came from here, too, and went through the doorway.” ”

“ 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 a Presbyterian. 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.” ”

“ I had, it will be remembered, fallen from a chair on a table in the dressing room, and had left them thus overturned when I charged the third floor. The room, however, was now in perfect order, and when I held my candle to the ceiling, I perceived that the bullet hole had again been repaired, and this time with such skill that I could not even locate it.
“We are up against some one cleverer than we are, Sperry,” I acknowledged.
“And who has more to lose than we have to gain,” he added cheerfully. “Don’t worry about that, Horace. You’re a married man and I’m not. ”

“ Some one had started the phonograph in the library, and it was playing gloomily, “Shall we meet beyond the river?” At Sperry’s request we stopped talking and composed ourselves, and Herbert, I remember, took a tablet of some sort, to our intense annoyance, and crunched it in his teeth. Then Miss Jeremy came in.
She was not at all what we had expected. Twenty-six, I should say, and in a black dinner dress. She seemed like a perfectly normal young woman, even attractive in a fragile, delicate way. Not much personality, perhaps; the very word “medium” precludes that. ”

“ There was not one of us, I dare say, who did not know that the Wellses had spent the preceding summer there and that Charlie Ellingham had been there, also.
“Do you know that Arthur Wells is dead?”
“Yes. He is dead.”
“Did he kill himself?”
“You can’t catch me on that. I don’t know.”
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. ”

“ 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.”
But I felt that already, innocent as I was, I was leaving a trail of suspicion behind me: Miss Joyce and the office boy, the dealer and my wife. ”

“ Dane. “Perhaps it is Herbert’s.”
But I caught Sperry’s eye. We had both recognized it. It was Arthur Wells’s, the one which Sperry had taken from his room, and which, in turn, had been taken from Sperry’s library.
Sperry was watching me with a sort of cynical amusement.
“You’re an absent-minded beggar, Horace,” he said.
“You didn’t, by any chance, stop here on your way back from my place the other night, did you?”
“I did. But I didn’t bring that thing.”
“Look here, Horace,” he said, more gently, “you come in and see me some day soon. You’re not as fit as you ought to be.” ”

“ There was no answer to that, but a sort of sulky silence.
“Are you getting this, Clara?” Mrs. Dane asked sharply. “Don’t miss a word. Who knows what this may develop into?”
I looked at the secretary, and it was clear that she was terrified. I got up and took my chair to her. Coming back, I picked up my forgotten watch from the floor. It was still going, and the hands marked nine-thirty.
“Now,” Sperry said in a soothing tone, “you said there was a shot fired and a man was killed. Where was this? What house?”
“Two shots. One is in the ceiling of the dressing-room.” ”