He became aware at last that the buzzing noise of the court-room had increased. There seemed to be some new excitement in the air. He brought his eyes back from the courtyard and glanced inquiringly at Dayton. But he had leaned forward in response to a curt signal from the district attorney. Every one except the jurymen was talking in low tones with some one else. In their double row of seats the twelve newly-sworn judges sat solemnly silent, freighted with a sense of their responsibility.
Whence the news came Kenwick never knew, for during the moments just preceding he had been deep in reverie and had lost connection with his surroundings. But whatever it was, it seemed all at once to be upon every one's tongue. Those who did not know were eagerly seeking information from their neighbors. Kenwick's eyes swept the room, puzzled. Dayton would doubtless tell him when he finished his conference. But before he had time to gain the knowledge from this source, it was hurled at the court-room from behind the lawyer's table. The district attorney evidently deemed this the only way to quiet the increasing tumult. He got to his feet, and flapping the fugitive eye-glasses between his fingers, faced the judge and made one brief statement, unembellished by explanation or judicial comment.
"Your Honor, news has just been received from a reliable source that the house at Rest Hollow has burned to the ground!"
The case of the people of the State of California against Roger Kenwick opened with the testimony of Richard Glover, chief witness for the prosecution. Glover took the stand quietly and told his story in lucid, clear-cut sentences, pausing occasionally to recall some obscure detail or make certain of a date. The court reporter found it easy to take down his unhurried statements. From time to time the "freckled" eyes of the narrator rested upon the man in the prisoner's box with an impersonal, dispassionate glance. And always he met those of Kenwick fixed upon his face with a sort of awed fascination. Just so might the victim of a snake-charmer watch him while he disclosed the secret of his power.
Richard Glover told how on the afternoon of February 10, 1918, he had been summoned to the home of Everett Kenwick in New York and entrusted with a commission. He was not known to the elder Kenwick, personally, he said, but had been a boyhood friend of Isabel Kenwick, his wife. Prompted by her recommendation, Mr. Kenwick had chosen him for the delicate family confidence which they imparted.
It appeared that the younger brother and only living relative of Everett had enlisted in the service, and after several months of severe fighting at the front had been wounded. He had been sent to a convalescent home in England where his physical health had been almost completely restored. But the surgeons had discovered that the blow on his head had caused a pressure upon the brain, which they deemed incurable by means of surgery, and which they said would ultimately result in some form of mental aberration. So they had sent him back to New York, diagnosed as a permanent invalid, and had recommended that a close watch be kept upon him until such time as it might be necessary to commit him to an institution.
During the first few weeks after his return it became apparent to the brother and sister-in-law that this diagnosis of the unfortunate young man's condition was correct. He was given isolated quarters upon the third floor of the house and unostentatiously watched. Letters which he wrote were intercepted and his friends notified that he had become irresponsible. Valuables and possessions which had been intimately associated with his past life were removed from his reach, since they appeared to confuse him and hasten his mental collapse. At the time when he, Glover, was summoned to the Kenwick home, prominent brain specialists had been consulted and had agreed that an operation would be extremely dangerous to the patient and might not succeed in restoring him to normality. And Mr. Kenwick, after what must have been weeks of painful pondering, had decided not to risk it but to follow the advice of the physicians and provide for his brother unremitting guardianship. Mrs. Kenwick had strongly favored a private sanitarium, but to this her husband would not consent. He was stricken with grief and was determined that Roger Kenwick's share of the family estate should be spent upon his comfort. And he refused to relinquish all hope of his brother's ultimate recovery. In spite of the consensus of professional opinion to the contrary, he still clung to the hope that the patient, aided by rest and youth, would recuperate. And he was a shrewd enough business man to realize that private sanitariums for the mentally disabled thrive in proportion to the number of incurables which they maintain. Complete recovery for his brother was the last thing that he might expect if he surrendered him to the mercies of such an asylum.
And so he had commissioned the witness to rent for him the California home of Charles Raeburn, an old family friend, who had built it for his bride about twelve years before, but had closed it and returned East following her tragic suicide there a few months after their marriage. Raeburn had offered it to the Kenwicks with the stipulation that the apartments which had been his wife's boudoir and sitting-room should not be used. And Everett Kenwick accepted the suggestion, feeling that if he were in his brother's position he would wish to be as far away as possible from the surroundings in which he had grown up, and particularly from the curious eyes of former acquaintances. Glover had undertaken the errand and departed immediately for Mont-Mer to open the house and employ a suitable caretaker.
"Just a moment, Mr. Glover." It was Dayton who interrupted him. "On the occasion of your call at the Kenwick home, did you see—the patient?"
"I did not. They had particularly chosen a time for the interview when he was undergoing treatment at a physician's office."
"Why did they object to your seeing him?"
"I don't think they did object, but they felt that it would be unwise just at that time. The young man was obsessed with the idea that the house was full of strange people; that there was a constant stream of guests coming and going. There was no reason why I should see him, so they planned to avoid a meeting."
"As a matter of fact did you ever see him while he was under your surveillance?"
"No."
"On what occasion did you first see him?"
"On a street in San Francisco about two months ago."
"On that occasion did he see you?"
"I think not."
"Proceed."
The witness went on to relate how he had departed that same evening from New York, had opened up the house at Mont-Mer, and secured the services of a man whom he chanced to meet on the train and who was able to produce evidence that he had once been head physician at a Los Angeles sanitarium.
Here Dayton cut in again. "What was the name of this man?"
"Edward Marstan."
"Proceed."
Arrangements having been made with him, the witness communicated with Everett Kenwick, according to agreement, and the patient was sent West in care of an attendant, one Thomas Bailey, now deceased. Glover himself had been in Los Angeles at the time of their arrival, but had received word from Marstan that the patient was properly installed at the Raeburn residence, and the attendant returned to New York.
Dayton's voice interposed once more. "Is the Charles Raeburn home known by any other name, Mr. Glover?"
"Yes—by the name of Rest Hollow."
"Proceed."
"My own concern in the affair was simply that of business manager," the witness continued, "so I remained in Los Angeles for I could manage the financial end of it just as well from that short distance."
The district attorney suddenly broke the thread of the story here. "Then you deliberately avoided an encounter with the patient?"
"I did."
"Why?"
"The maladies which are classed as mental are particularly repugnant to me. I was under no obligation to see him, and I had a business of my own to which this was merely a side issue."
"But it is true, is it not," Dayton cut in, "that you received a generous salary from Mr. Everett Kenwick for this—long distance supervision?"
"I received from him an allowance to be spent upon the upkeep of the grounds, the comfort of the patient, the wages of an attendant, and so on. I sent him a monthly statement of the bills when I had received and checked them."
"You say you had another business; what was it?"
"Publicity writer for the Golden State Land Co. of Los Angeles."
"They own large mineral spring holdings in our neighboring county on the south, do they not?"
"Yes."
"And how long had you been interested with them at the time of this interview at the Kenwick home?"
"About six months, I think."
"Did Mr. Kenwick know of this other business interest?"
"Certainly. That is one thing that led to his choosing me as his agent. He knew that I was permanently located in southern California and that I had established myself with a reputable company. It was a guarantee of permanence—and character."
"One moment longer, Mr. Glover, before you go on. Was the elder Mr. Kenwick aware of the fact that while you were in his employ you never visited Rest Hollow but once?"
"I did visit Rest Hollow. I went there every month to see that the place was properly kept up and the attendant on duty. But I always went at night. I held my interviews with Dr. Marstan alone."
"Go on."
The narrative skipped now to the following November when the witness told of having received a communication from Dr. Marstan informing him that, owing to a mechanical accident, Roger Kenwick had recovered his sanity; that he, the physician, had carefully tested him and was fully convinced of this. It had been impossible just at that time for Glover himself to go to Mont-Mer as he was ill. And before he had had time to send more than a brief note in reply, the attendant wrote again saying that his former patient was bitterly opposed to having his brother know of his recovery, and had threatened him, the doctor, if he betrayed the news. Kenwick, he said, wished to use his present position to get more money out of his brother for some investment that he was then planning, for he knew that in case his recovery were known, it would be a long time before the court would grant him the control of his property, and his father's will had provided that he was not to inherit his half of the estate until he should have reached the age of twenty-five.
The witness had not thought it expedient to notify Dr. Marstan of the elder Kenwick's death, so that he could not report this to the patient. They had evidently had hot words upon the subject of the disclosure of the patient's condition, Marstan being highly scrupulous and not being willing to retain his position as keeper when it was merely nominal, an arrangement upon which the young man himself insisted.
In order to prevent the patient from carrying out some sinister threat, Marstan had locked his charge into the house and gone into town probably to consult a lawyer upon the proper course for him to pursue. This much he could surmise from a half-written letter which the witness himself had found on the evening that he returned to Mont-Mer.
"And that was the state of things when you arrived at Rest Hollow on the evening of November 21?" Dayton asked.
"That was the state of things."
"Describe the condition of the house and grounds on the evening of the tragedy."
The witness did so, with the same unhurried attention to detail.
"And when you came upon the body of the dead man under the dining-room window, why did you conclude that it was your former charge, Roger Kenwick?"
"Every circumstance seemed to point to it. And I found upon the body possessions that seemed unmistakable evidence."
"Describe those possessions."
"A wrist-watch with the initials R.K. upon the inside; a silver match-case with the one initial K.; a linen handkerchief with that initial."
"But you said, did you not, in the early part of your testimony, that the patient's personal possessions had been taken from him when he became incompetent?"
"They had. But all of his things were in Doctor Marstan's possession. They were in his apartments, and any normal person could easily have found them, and naturally Kenwick would have demanded them."
"Had you ever seen a picture of Roger Kenwick to aid you in your identification of his body?"
"No. But I knew his age, and it seemed to correspond exactly with that of the dead man. Furthermore he looked like a person who was wasted by ill health. I hadn't a doubt that it was he."
"How did you think that he had met his death?"
"By suicide. I believed then that the doctor had been mistaken and that he had not made a complete recovery."
"When did you begin to suspect, Mr. Glover, that instead of being dead, the prisoner was a deliberate murderer?"
"Not until I discovered that he had made his escape from Rest Hollow. I saw his name on a hotel register in San Francisco and I became alarmed and put a detective on his track, for I felt responsible for him and was not convinced that he should be at large. But the detective reported to me that Kenwick showed absolutely no signs of abnormality. Then I came down here and followed the back trail. And I discovered that Marstan had been killed in an automobile accident on the day when he had come into town for legal aid. By inquiring of the gardener at Rest Hollow I learned that he had seen a young man out under the dining-room window talking to Kenwick early in the afternoon. The prisoner was entreating this stranger to let him out and——"
"Let that witness give his own testimony. That will do, Mr. Glover." Then, as he was about to leave the stand, "No, just a minute. You say it was about midnight when you discovered the body. Did you notify the coroner?"
"That was my first impulse; but I found that the telephone was out of order, so I decided to wait until it was light before going in for him. But in the morning, just as I finished dressing, he came. He told me that he had been notified by some one else."
"By whom?"
"I don't know. He said that he was out of town when the message came in, and found it awaiting him when he returned. I got the impression that he didn't know himself who had reported the tragedy."
This last testimony corresponded in every detail with that given by Annisen, who described minutely his findings upon the body, the discovery, a short distance away, of the loaded revolver with a shot fired out of it, and the haggard condition of the face, indicating long invalidism. The body, he said, had lain in the morgue until the following afternoon and been viewed by scores of the morbidly curious. Not one person had recognized it, nor apparently entertained the slightest suspicion that it was not the unfortunate inmate of Rest Hollow. And so he had felt justified in accepting Richard Glover's declaration of the dead man's identity. He knew that the patient's keeper had been killed in an automobile accident the day before, and every circumstance seemed to point to a suicidal frenzy.
His story was followed by that of a gawky, frightened-looking boy who kept his eyes riveted upon the prosecution's chief witness while he talked. He disclaimed all knowledge of the arrangements concerning the patient's guardianship, his business being merely to care for the garden and furnace. He had never come into close contact with the patient himself; had only seen him at a distance sometimes, wandering about the grounds alone. He had always seemed perfectly quiet and harmless, but he, the gardener, had been afraid that he might some time have a "spell" such as he had heard of in similar cases, and so had kept carefully out of his way.
In the late afternoon of November 21, he reported, when he returned from a far corner of the place where he had been pruning, he had found the patient lying in a faint on the floor of the garage. With some effort he had dragged him into the house and left him in the drawing-room, after bandaging his swollen leg as well as he could and forcing part of a glass of whisky down his throat. Then he had departed, after first making sure that the doors and windows on the ground floor were securely fastened. Late the following afternoon he had seen the prisoner standing at the dining-room window and had heard him call out in a threatening way to him. A moment afterward, without the slightest warning, the patient had doubled his fist and smashed the pane of glass to fragments. Convinced that this was one of the "spells" which he had dreaded, he had waited until he thought the patient was in bed and had then returned and boarded up the window.
Here Dayton interrupted. "And you believed the man in the house to be ill and alone, and yet you felt no concern about his care?"
"I didn't think he was alone. I had seen a woman around the place that afternoon, and I thought she was his nurse."
A murmur swept around the breathless court-room. Everybody in the audience made some comment to his neighbor upon this new development. The judge rapped sharply for order. "Go on," commanded the district attorney.
The witness proceeded to relate that he had gone to bed that night feeling nervous over the patient's conduct and had resolved to give up his employment at Rest Hollow. About eleven o'clock he had been roused from a fitful sleep by a knock at his door. Upon opening it he had found Gifford, the undertaker, standing on the threshold. Here he endeavored to recollect the exact words of the night caller, and after a moment's pause, produced the greeting: "Get up, boy. Do you know that there's been murder committed on this place to-night?" With Gifford he had hurried around to the dining-room side of the house and had discovered the dead body lying there under an oleander bush, near the very window which the patient had so unaccountably broken that same afternoon. Terrified, he had not paused to give the body even a fleeting glance, but had stumbled back to his room and made a hasty bundle of his clothes, determined not to pass another hour on that place. He remembered Gifford calling after him that he was not going to touch the body until the coroner had seen it. Ten minutes later he had fled, leaving his door unlocked behind him.
He was dismissed from the stand, and after a moment of whispered parley, came the demand, "Call Arnold Rogers."
A young man wearing heavy-rimmed glasses took the stand and told of his encounter with the prisoner on the evening of November 21. He described the scene at the gate in careful detail, halting frequently to correct himself. The district attorney interrupted him in mid-sentence.
"Did it strike you at any time during the dialogue, Mr. Rogers, that the man inside the grounds might be—irrational?"
"Yes, but that idea did not occur to me until the end of the interview. Being a complete stranger in the community, I knew nothing about him, of course, but his voice and method of appeal struck me as being a little abnormal, and when I was starting away and he stretched a letter through the gate and asked me to mail it for him I was convinced that he was not rational. I was formerly a director at one our State hospitals for the insane and I know that the mania of patients to write letters and ask visitors to mail them is one of the commonest symptoms of their affliction."
"And so you paid no attention to that appeal?"
"I was escorting a lady. I planned to take her home first and then return or send somebody. My car was disabled and I felt responsible for my companion."
"Who was the lady?"
"My sister, Mrs. Paddington. I was visiting at her home. And when we had gone on our way she told me, what I had already begun to suspect, that the inmate of Rest Hollow was a mental invalid; that he was well cared for, and although the case was pathetic, we need feel under no obligation to return. His attendant, we reasoned, had already discovered him by that time and taken him back to the house. We had both dismissed him from our minds when about half an hour later a woman rushed up to our door, breathless from a long trip by foot, and told us that the inmate of Rest Hollow had killed himself; that she had found him lying dead under the dining-room window. I don't remember just who 'phoned the news in to the proper authorities, but I think it was she. My sister offered to send her into town in one of her cars, and did so. We never knew her name nor saw her again."
"And you credited the woman's story as it stood?"
"We saw no reason to doubt it. It fitted exactly with our encounter at the gate. The time was a coincidence, too. We assumed that the young man's attendant had not arrived in time to save him from suicide. And there was another reason, too, why we did not care to give the matter more intensive investigation." He stopped and glanced appealingly at his questioner, but there was no relenting in the lawyer's eyes. "My sister had a guest visiting her to whom the name of Roger Kenwick brought—unhappy associations. She was unfortunately present at the arrival of the woman from Rest Hollow, and after the shock of the announcement was over we carefully avoided all further discussion of the tragedy. The following morning, in courtesy to our guest, I went over to the Raeburn house with some flowers from the Utopia gardens, and verified the report that the patient was dead. The next day my sister's friend left for her home in San Francisco and we considered the affair a closed incident."
The testimony of the other witnesses for the prosecution was given in due order, and the case summed up against Roger Kenwick charged him with having laid a deliberate plot to murder Marstan, his former keeper, he being the only man, he thought, who could interfere with his financial plans, and prevent him from playing upon his brother's chivalric affection.
It was pointed out that only a month before his recovery the Kenwick estate had trebled its value, owing to the fact that leather goods, which were the source of the Kenwick income, had trebled in value since the beginning of the war. From newspaper accounts and discussions with Marstan himself, the recovered patient had shrewdly sized up the situation and laid his plans. It was previously stated that the elder Kenwick had, before his brother's misfortune, kept a jealous grip upon the family purse, and that during his college days at the State University, Roger Kenwick had been obliged to eke out his allowance by doing newspaper work on one of the San Francisco dailies. Only in his softened mood was Everett Kenwick to be counted upon for continued generosity.
On the day of the tragedy, the ward had watched Marstan closely and had seen him depart for town. Earlier in the afternoon he had himself shown signs of violence in order to sustain the impression that he was still irresponsible. Kenwick's plan to kill his warden was perfectly safe, for he knew that if the crime ever came to light he could be cleared on an insanity charge. His worse punishment would be commitment to an institution, from which he could later be released by proving himself cured.
On the way out from town the doctor's car had pitched over a cliff, killing him instantly. Kenwick, ignorant of the tragedy and lying in wait for his victim, saw a man steal in late at night through the side entrance. No callers ever came to the place, so having no doubt that it was the returning warden, he had crept up behind him in the darkness and shot him in the head with the revolver which his attendant always kept loaded for an emergency, and which the patient by spying upon his warden one night, had discovered.
A few minutes previous to the murder he had played a skilful part at the front gate, holding up the first person who passed and telling an incoherent story which he knew, coming from him, would not be believed, and which would be of valuable assistance in case it were ever necessary to prove an insanity charge.
When he discovered that he had killed the wrong man, he adopted a plan which proved him not only rational but unusually astute. From a previous conversation with the dead man, whom he now recognized as a fellow who had once come in to assist with some work on the car, he knew him to be a stranger in the community. He knew himself to be equally unknown, except by name, and it was an easy matter to exchange identities. So Kenwick had transferred to the dead man certain of his own personal possessions which he discovered after his mental recovery. He had selected these carefully and with diabolical cunning, placed them in the other man's pockets, and then made his escape from the place either by foot or in the wagon of the undertaker, which must by this time have arrived.
When he reached Mont-Mer, the testimony continued, he had given a fictitious name, gained the sympathy and credence of the doctor and undertaker, and finally, by a clever ruse, escaped from town as custodian of the body of the very man whom he had planned to kill. Knowing that Marstan was dead, he felt himself completely secure and foot-free to carry out his designs. The only person upon whom he did not reckon, because he didn't know of his existence, was Richard Glover.
The one missing link in the story was supplied by evidence which, although circumstantial, seemed undeniably convincing to the jury. The woman who had notified the coroner must also have been an inmate of Rest Hollow, the mistress of Marstan, who had lived in ease and luxury, unknown to the physician's employer or any one else. She knew that her reputation lay in Kenwick's hands. She was tired of Marstan and was eager but afraid to escape. The criminal had supplied her with the means at small cost. The time of the disclosure of the crime had been skilfully worked out between them. And it had been executed with a masterly skill. Depot authorities had reported later that a woman traveling alone had bought a ticket on the late train for San Francisco that evening. The station-agent remembered the incident perfectly. By good luck Kenwick had caught the same train. They had traveled to the city together.
Glover, who had been recalled to the stand and was giving this testimony, stated that upon dismissing the detective from his employ he had followed the case himself and was certain that Kenwick and his accomplice had lived together intermittently in San Francisco, and that he had been supplying her with funds.
It was at this point that Roger Kenwick, who had been sitting like a man frozen to his chair, suddenly electrified the court-room by springing to his feet. He had forgotten his surroundings, was contemptuous of the formalities, oblivious to everything save the insolent assurance in Richard Glover's eyes, and the steady gaze with which Marcreta Morgan's brother was regarding him. His sensitive nostrils quivered like those of a highly strung race-horse. His hands, those hands so impatient of delay, were clenched till the knuckles showed through the drawn skin like knobs of ivory. He struggled to speak but no words came. Then he became aware of the fact that the sheriff was forcing him back into his seat. Dayton leaned over and whispered sharply to him. "Sit down, man. You'll kill your case. What do you want them to think of you?"
The words recalled him to his surroundings. From sheer physical weakness he sank back into his chair. Another moment intervened while the auditors relaxed from the moment of tension. Then out of the deathly silence came Dayton's voice again, calm and with no trace of excitement.
"You say that when you first discovered the prisoner in San Francisco you employed a detective to help you on his case, Mr. Glover. Look around the court-room. Is that man present?"
"He is." There was a shade of reluctance in the reply.
"What is his name?"
"Granville Jarvis."
The next moment Glover had stepped down from the stand and resumed his place at the far end of the long table. Dayton leaned across to his client. "Jarvis?" he inquired, his pencil poised above his pad. "Granville Jarvis; is that the name?"
The light had gone out of Kenwick's eyes and the fire out of his voice. He had crumpled down in his chair like a man suddenly overcome with a spinal disease. He looked at Dayton with dead eyes.
"The name," he said bitterly, "is Judas Iscariot!"
It was two o'clock before court, which had been dismissed for lunch after Richard Glover's testimony, convened again. During the noon hour a tray containing the only tempting food which the prisoner had seen since his incarceration was brought up to his cell. It had become apparent to the jailer that he had friends, and perhaps he was moved thereby to a tardy compassion. But Kenwick, despite Dayton's admonition to "Brace up and eat a good meal," waved it indifferently aside.
"I'm done for," he said simply. "I don't see how any twelve men could hear the evidence that was presented this morning and find me innocent. And by the time Jarvis gets through telling anything he likes, and proving it——Well, it appears that every person who has been connected in any way with me since this trouble fell upon me has taken advantage of my misfortune to enrich himself. I don't care much now what they do with me. When you lose your faith in humanity it's time to die. I'm no religious fanatic, Dayton, but for these last two months I've thanked God on my knees every night of my life for having brought me back into the light. Now I wish that I had died instead."
Dayton made no further effort to rouse him from his despair. For although not of a sensitive or particularly intuitive temperament himself, he had come to realize the utter impossibility of finding this other man in his trouble. "You don't seem to have much faith in me," was all he said as he made some notes on the back of an envelope. But he finally induced his client to eat some of the food upon his tray and after the first few mouthfuls Kenwick was surprised to find that he was ravenously hungry.
"That's something like," the lawyer approved, as they made their way back through the court-house grounds. "Now you're good for another three hours."
It hadn't seemed possible to Kenwick that he was, that his nerves could stand the strain of hours and hours more of this, and there was no assurance that the ordeal would end to-day or to-morrow. But Dayton's easy assurance gave him a new grip upon himself.
They found the audience waiting and eager. None of them seemed to have moved since they had been dismissed for recess two hours before. Only the jury were absent, but five minutes after Kenwick's arrival they filed in and took their places. The district attorney appeared to have lost interest in the case. He sat staring out of the window with a sort of wistful impatience as though he were visualizing a potential game of golf. Dayton glanced at some notes on the table at his elbow and issued his first command. "Call Madeleine Marstan."
In response to this summons one of the veiled women in the rear of the room rose and came forward. She was quietly dressed in a gown of clinging black silk and a black turban with a touch of amethyst. Every eye in the court-room was fixed upon her, but she took the oath with the unembarrassed self-possession of one long accustomed to the public gaze. Kenwick, turned toward her, detected a faint odor of heliotrope.
"Where do you live, Mrs. Marstan?" Dayton inquired.
She gave a street and number in San Francisco.
"What is your occupation?"
"I am an actress."
"Do you know the prisoner?"
Without glancing at him she replied, with her unruffled composure, "I do."
"How long have you known him?"
"About two months."
"Describe the occasion on which he was first brought to your notice."
She settled back slightly in her chair, like a traveler making herself comfortable for what promised to be a long journey. "It was on the afternoon of November 19 that my husband, a physician, came into our apartment in San Francisco and announced to me that he had just secured a remunerative position with a wealthy man down at Mont-Mer. He said that the work would begin immediately and we must be ready to leave the following day. I asked him for more details and he told me that the position was a secretaryship which would involve little labor and afford us a luxurious home with excellent salary. He had never been a success in his profession, owing chiefly to the fact that he was dissipated, and I had seriously considered leaving him and going back to the stage. But I had decided to give him another chance, and since he appeared to find my questions concerning this new work annoying, I agreed to go and allow him to explain more fully when we should arrive.
"We went down in our own car and arrived at Rest Hollow in mid-afternoon. My husband showed me over the house and grounds and I thought I had never seen such a beautiful place. There was no one about when we came, and after he had given me every opportunity to be favorably impressed with the new home, we went to an upstairs sitting-room in the left wing, and he told me, while he smoked one of the expensive-looking cigars that he found there, further details concerning his employer. I learned that he was an invalid, a young man by the name of Roger Kenwick, who was recuperating from too strenuous service overseas. We discussed the matter for only a few minutes before my husband announced that it was time for him to go to the depot and meet his charge, who was being brought up from Los Angeles by the previous companion, who had taken him there to be outfitted with winter clothes.
"This development in the case rather startled me, and as we walked along the upper hall and over into the right wing, which he said had been recently cleaned but was not to be used, I demanded more specific details concerning the arrangement. I wanted particularly to know why there was to be a change of 'secretaries' and whether the young man himself was willing to accept the companionship of people whom he had never seen.
"My husband had been drinking. I think he must have found a well-stocked wine-closet at Rest Hollow. And he finally grew furious at my insistence. The more angry he became the more he betrayed to me the fact that there was something to conceal. He had never told me the name of the man who had offered him this position, but I knew that there must be an intermediary. While I continued to question him he opened the door of one of the rooms in the right wing, hoping, I suppose, to distract my attention. We went on with our discussion there. And at last I refused pointblank to have anything to do with the affair, and told him that I was going to leave him and go back to the profession that would afford me an honest living. This infuriated him. He lost all self-control and confessed then, what I had already begun to suspect, that young Kenwick was a mental patient and had been in no way consulted in the arrangement. This disclosure terrified me, for I knew that my husband was not a competent person for such a responsibility. Hot words followed between us, and ended in his knocking me senseless on the floor. When I recovered consciousness, perhaps an hour later, I found myself locked into the room with no possible means of escape. The blow had dislodged a vertebra and I was in horrible pain. For a long time I lay on the bed massaging the injured place and trying to get comfortable.
"Early in the evening I heard some one being dragged into the house from the rear. I was unable to see anything, of course, but I could distinctly hear footsteps and the subsequent running around of an attendant. I concluded that my husband had returned drunk, and I was relieved to know that he had evidently not brought the patient with him. I knew that I had no recourse but to wait until the stupor had worn off and my husband came to release me. I spent a wakeful and wretched night. In the morning——"
Here a vivid and convincing description of her first encounter with the patient ensued. She drew a clear-cut picture of her own horror in hearing footsteps outside her door and of having the name "Roger Kenwick" called in through the closed portal; of her terror at finding herself unaccountably alone with a man whom she believed to be a violent maniac.
Here Dayton held up the narrative. "What evidence did he give to convince you of his insanity?'
"None at first. He seemed to talk quite rationally, and fearing that I might make him angry if I kept silence, I made evasive answers to his questions. He prepared food and sent it up to me at what I know now must have been immense physical cost to himself. I had come to the conclusion that he, like myself, was the victim of some foul conspiracy and had decided to risk confiding in him when all at once his manner changed. He began to talk wildly of finding a loaded revolver and of shooting any one who came near the place. A few minutes later, for no apparent reason, I heard him smash a window in the room just under mine. My terror increased a hundredfold, for I know absolutely nothing about the proper care of the insane. Late that same night I heard him crawl out through the broken window, and he called up to me that he was either going to get help or commit suicide.
"Almost insane myself now with terror, I waited until I heard his footsteps grow faint in the distance, then worked at the lock of my door, and at last succeeded in picking it with a pen-knife. Then I rushed downstairs, turned on the lights, and tried to make my escape. I had several of my own personal keys in my possession, and with one of these I opened the front door, which had been securely locked, I suppose by the gardener. My one frantic object was to get away and find my husband.
"But just as I got the door open I heard a shot fired from the side of the house. I hurried around there, and when I reached the spot from which the sound had come, I found just what I feared—a man lying dead under the window. I thought, of course, that it was the patient who had killed himself in a mania, as he had threatened to do. Filled with horror at the idea of leaving him there alone and uncovered in the storm, I ran back to the living-room, picked up the first thing at hand (an Indian blanket), and threw it over him. Then I hurried to the nearest house, about a mile away, and gave the alarm.
"Believing that it was my husband's neglect that had caused the tragedy, my purpose was to find him and get his version of the story before I betrayed him. So I furnished no further information to the authorities in town save that Roger Kenwick, the inmate of Rest Hollow, had committed suicide. I really knew nothing else about it but that bare fact.
"But that night I discovered, when I reached Mont-Mer, that my husband had been killed in an auto accident while coming out from the depot. I went to the morgue and identified his body, ordered the remains to be shipped north for interment, and left, unknown to any one, on the late northbound train. The undertaker told me that there had been no other victim of the tragedy, so I reasoned that the story which Mr. Kenwick had told me about a sprained leg was true, after all, that he had been injured in the catastrophe and had, by a curious freak of chance, found his way back alone to the very place that was awaiting him and in which he had been living for the preceding ten months."
Dayton declared himself satisfied with the testimony and turned the witness over to the prosecution. The district attorney had recovered his interest. "Mrs. Marstan," he said, groping for his glasses, "can you produce a certificate of marriage to Dr. Marstan?"
"I cannot. Important papers, including that, were among the few things that I took to Rest Hollow in November, and you have been informed that the place is completely destroyed."
"That will do."
She stepped down from the stand, and for the first time her eyes rested upon the prisoner. In them was an expression that would have given him new courage had he seen it, but Roger Kenwick sat motionless as a statue, his gaze fixed immutably upon the floor. It was only when the name of the next witness was called that he came back to a sense of his surroundings. "Call Granville Jarvis."
Dayton surveyed the Southerner sharply before he put his first question. "You are the detective whom Richard Glover employed in San Francisco to shadow the prisoner?"
"I am."
"How long were you in Mr. Glover's employ?"
"About two weeks."
"Two weeks? Why did you give up the case then?"
"Because at the end of that time I was convinced that Roger Kenwick was neither mentally unbalanced nor guilty of any crime. I communicated this opinion to Mr. Glover and resigned from further service."
"But you still continued to shadow the prisoner?"
"I still continued to cultivate his acquaintance. I considered him one of the most interesting men I had ever met."
"And your connections with him since then have been of a purely friendly character? Not in any way professional, Mr. Jarvis?"
"No, I can't say that. For a few weeks after I had resigned from Mr. Glover's service I was asked to take up the case again from a different angle; employed, I may say, by some one else."
"By whom?"
For just an instant the witness hesitated. Then, "By Mr. Clinton Morgan."
"Describe that incident, please."
Jarvis clasped his hands behind his head and stared off into space. "It was near the end of December that Professor Morgan came to my rooms one evening and asked my assistance on the case of Richard Glover."
For the first time since the beginning of the trial, the chief witness for the prosecution betrayed an unguarded emotion. The narrow slit of amber, showing between his drooping lids, widened.
"My caller," Jarvis went on, "explained to me that he and his sister, who were friends of Roger Kenwick, had stumbled upon a clue the previous day that had made them suspect that there was foul play about his death; that perhaps he might even be alive after all, and a base advantage taken of his helplessness."
Here Dayton interjected a question. "Was there any special reason why Professor Morgan should have chanced upon you as the detective for this investigation? Had you had any previous connection with him?"
"Only an academic connection. He knew, through university affiliations, that I was out here on the coast doing some research work for Columbia in my chosen profession—criminal psychology."
"Then you are not a detective?"
"Not in the strict sense of the word. The finding out of a criminal is only the introductory part of my interest."
"Proceed with your story, Mr. Jarvis."
"Well, Professor Morgan and I had lunched together several times over at the Faculty Club on the campus, so I was not greatly surprised to receive a call from him. Furthermore, having heard the other side of this case, I was much interested in the opportunity to study it from a new angle. For while I was in Mr. Glover's employ, I had, unsuspected by Kenwick himself, subjected him to a variety of exacting psychological tests. Under the pretext of making some photographic experiments in which I was at that time interested, I had enlisted his aid on several occasions and in this way had made a rather thorough examination of his five senses, his power of association, his memory (both for retentiveness and recall), and had tried him out, by means of various athletic games, for muscular coördination, endurance, poise, and many other essentials of normality. In only one of these did I find him defective. And that one was memory.
"My research was made the more interesting by the fact that shortly after I undertook the work for Mr. Glover the subject gave me, voluntarily and quite unsuspectingly, the complete story of his strange adventure at Rest Hollow, an adventure for which he frankly confessed that he could not account. It coincided exactly with the hypothesis which I had established for him; that he had at one period of his life been mentally unbalanced, and that he had in some way re-gained his sanity but not completely his memory. When I knew that there was likely to be a crime attributed to him (for Mr. Glover had hinted as much) my interest doubled. For Mr. Kenwick had on various occasions shown himself possessed of the highest ideals and a fineness of caliber which I have not often encountered. And so, in the employ of Professor Morgan, I shifted the focal point and turned the search-light of science upon the accuser. It has resulted in the most startling revelations."
There was an inarticulate stir in the crowded room. From the rear seats men and women strained forward to catch every word as it fell, clear-cut and decisive, from the scientist's lips. Jarvis sat with one hand thrust into his pocket, and his keen eyes fixed upon the group of lawyers below. A casual observer of the scene might easily have mistaken his position and assigned to him the role of prosecuting attorney.
"There was an insurmountable barrier, of course," he continued, "to my making any personal examination of Mr. Glover, as I had done with the former subject. One man was innocent and unsuspecting; the other, I felt certain, would be on his guard. And he was. Since I left his service, Richard Glover has avoided me. So a more indirect means of accomplishing my task had to be devised. After some consideration I decided to enlist the aid of an ally whom I knew to be both clever and discreet."
A long-drawn sigh swept the court-room. It was that sigh, a mixture of eagerness and satisfaction by means of which an audience at a theater indicates to the actors that the performance is living up to its advertisements.
"Mr. Kenwick himself," the witness went on in his calm, even voice, "had called my attention to a certain Madame Rosalie, a spiritualistic medium, who was taking the city by storm. He had interviewed her for his paper, and from his description I imagined that she might be able and willing to assist me. So I went to see her, and at the first mention of Mr. Kenwick's name she became intensely interested."
Here Dayton's voice, sounding a curious little note of exultation, broke in again. "You have referred to this medium as 'Madame Rosalie.' Was that her professional or her real name?"
"Her professional name. Her real name, as she disclosed it to me on the occasion of my first call, was Madeleine Marstan."
Another moment of silence and then the witness proceeded. "Having told me her real name, she went on to describe her unexpected encounter, a few days previously, with Roger Kenwick, who she had thought was dead. It seemed that when Kenwick had come to her for a sitting, his name had been accidentally revealed to her by another client, and it had struck her with the force of a blow. For it recalled to her mind a horrible adventure at Mont-Mer, which she narrated for me then in detail. At first she had surmised that this must be some relative of the unfortunate young man, and she had done all she could, she said, to start him upon the track of the tragedy. When she discovered that it was the man himself, she was glad to place all her powers at my disposal. For she had returned to the city in November with two dominating purposes; first to find some employment which would bring in quick money and so pay her husband's debts and clear his name, and second to discover, if possible, the identity of the man who had led them both into the miserable Mont-Mer trap, which resulted so disastrously for every one concerned in it. She had not been able to make a stage contract, she said, for the season was too far advanced, and so she had turned to the occult, in which she had always felt a deep interest, and for which she knew herself to have an unaccountable talent. Fortunately her strange psychic ability had caught the attention of one of the university faculty and she had been given just the publicity which she needed.
"And so we deliberately plotted between us the scientific testing of Richard Glover. I prepared a list of apparently random words in which were mingled what I call 'dangerous terms'; that is, words which were connected with the adventure at Rest Hollow. When these and the other tests were ready, I induced Glover, by means of a casual suggestion from a mutual acquaintance, to seek the aid of 'Madame Rosalie.' I felt certain that if he were not intimately connected with the tragedy he would scorn this idea, and that if he were, it was exactly the time that he would turn to the supernatural for aid. And I was not mistaken. For almost immediately he called upon the clairvoyant. And his response to the tests for association was amazing even to me. If I may quote from the list of words——" He drew a folded paper from his pocket. "Among many perfectly irrelevant terms I had smuggled in such words as 'blanket' and 'window' and 'oleander.' Madame Rosalie reported that his gaze always returned to such suggestive words (despite her admonition to look at something else) before she could change the card. The subconscious response to evil association was almost perfect. There were many other tests, of course, and by the time he had completed them he had shown an intimate knowledge of the crime at Rest Hollow and an uneasiness from which any skilful psychologist could take his starting-point. And then, as a culminating incident, he supplied to the medium, quite of his own accord, the name 'Rest Hollow,' and put to her the unexpected question, 'Where is Ralph Regan?'
"Having been thus convinced that he was the man we sought, Mrs. Marstan and I continued our investigations together. She went out with him, upon several occasions, and once, by pre-arrangement, accompanied him to the theater. On the same evening I invited Kenwick, and, all at once, called his attention to Glover. The response was like match to powder. The visual image of his former warden restored, in large degree, his memory. He was eager to reëstablish the connection. Mrs. Marstan had been careful to point out Kenwick to her escort, and the result was just what we had foreseen. It was he who evaded the encounter, supplying a pretext upon which he and Mrs. Marstan immediately left the theater.
"But Glover now suspected that he was entrapped. He had already, I knew, put another detective upon Kenwick's track. When news was published of Mrs. Fanwell's arrival in Mont-Mer, and the subsequent demand to have the disappearance of her brother investigated, he decided that his only course was to act at once. Mrs. Marstan, aided by her unmistakable psychic ability, had advised him to follow his third plan, and this plan was to have Kenwick convicted of murder."
"And this was the report that you turned over to Professor Morgan at the end of your investigation?" Dayton inquired.
"This was the report. I was working on it with him up in San Francisco until late last night. We almost missed the train trying to fit together the final details. But I think the story, as I have given it to you, is now complete."
"Now, one other thing, Mr. Jarvis. In the first part of your testimony you said that Mr. Morgan told you that he had stumbled upon a clue that had made him suspicious of Glover. Did he disclose to you the nature of that clue?"
"Not at first. I told him that I preferred to work upon some theories of my own, unprejudiced by any evidence that he might have to offer."
"And how many times have you seen Mr. Morgan since then?"
"Only once. We came down from San Francisco together last night."
"Then you made no reports to him before?"
For the first time, the witness hesitated. Then his reply came with the customary clearness. "Not to him. I have reported to Miss Morgan on several occasions."
"Then you have been really working with her upon this case?"
"Yes, almost entirely with her."
There was a very obvious reluctance in his voice now, but Dayton went on imperturbably. "When you came down from San Francisco last night, Mr. Jarvis, was Professor Morgan's sister in your party?"
"Yes."
Dayton swept a glance over the rows of faces before him. "Is Miss Morgan in the court-room now?"
"She has just come in." The promptness with which the witness had given his earlier testimony served to make his present reluctance the more apparent.
Dayton brought his eyes back to the witness-stand. "That will do."
Jarvis stepped down. The voice of the auditors, beginning in a subdued murmur, rose in marked crescendo. No word in it could be distinguished from another. Yet upon Roger Kenwick's sensitive nerves this message from the outer world registered. It was unmistakably applause.
For the first time since the trial began, he felt his mask of graven indifference slipping from him. He was trembling in every fiber, and with one unsteady hand he made a pathetic effort to quiet the other. And then there fell upon his ears like the crash of thunder Dayton's curt command, "Call Miss Morgan."
As the men standing in the far aisle made way for the new witness, Kenwick sat with averted eyes. Through the open window he stared out at the court-house palms which grew to gigantic size and then diminished under his blistering gaze. It was a monstrous thing, he told himself, for Clinton Morgan to allow this; to permit his sister to subject herself to such a strain. What could he be thinking about? But underneath his miserable apprehension for her there was something else; something else that sent the fiery blood rioting through his veins. For she must have been willing. Over and over he repeated to himself this assurance. She must have been willing to come to his defense, for had she not been, they could have found a way to avoid it.
Marcreta Morgan, in long fur-trimmed motor-coat and dark veil, took the place which Granville Jarvis had vacated. She had none of Madeleine Marstan's calm self-assurance, but although she gave her testimony in a low voice, it was distinctly audible throughout the court-room. She sat with one gloved hand clasping the arm of the chair and her eyes resting upon Dayton. Only once, at the very end of the examination, did she raise them to meet the argus-eyed spectators. Dayton put his questions in an easy conversational tone as though he and the witness were alone in the room.
"Miss Morgan, how long have you known the prisoner?"
"About two years."
"Describe the occasion of your first meeting."
She did so in words that sounded carefully rehearsed.
"And after he left San Francisco to go East and visit his brother did you ever hear from him?"
"Yes. He wrote frequently, telling me about his brother's recovery from illness and other affairs, and then later that he had decided to enlist in the army."
"At that time, Miss Morgan, had you ever known the State's witness here, Richard Glover?"
"It was about that time that I first met him."
"Describe your first encounter with him."
Again the carefully prepared report. But she was gaining in self-possession now, and the veil seemed to annoy her. With steady fingers she reached up and removed it. Clinton Morgan, watching her from the front row of seats, with a hawklike vigilance, was suddenly reminded of that Sunday night in the old library when she had first broken her long silence concerning Roger Kenwick, and had seemed all at once to come into a belated heritage.
The jurymen were leaning slightly forward in their seats, their eyes fixed upon the regal, fur-coated figure with delicately flushed profile showing clear-cut as a cameo against the frosted window-pane. Dayton thought that he caught an elusive fragrance that reminded him of something growing in his mother's garden.
"And how many times," he proceeded, "how many times have you seen Richard Glover during the past year?"
"I can't say exactly. For several months after our first meeting I didn't see him at all. But during the last three months his calls have been more and more frequent."
"Has your brother known of these visits?"
"My brother was in government service in Washington until about two months ago. He didn't know of them until he returned."
"And has he approved of them?"
"No, I can't say that he has."
"Did he ever give any reason for his opposition?"
"He told me that he suspected Mr. Glover of being an adventurer who was in need of——"
Here the district attorney interrupted. "We object. The suspicions of another person are irrelevant, incompetent, and have nothing to do with the case."
"Sustained," the judge decreed. "Stick to the facts, Mr. Dayton."
"During those three months, Miss Morgan, has Richard Glover made an effort to induce you to marry him?"
Her reply was given in a very low voice, but Dayton was sure that the jury caught it and he did not ask her to repeat. It was evident that the audience heard it, too, for another murmur rose and trailed off into silence before the lawyer went on. "Is it true that you were the one who discovered the clue which led you and your brother to seek the services of Mr. Jarvis on this case?"
She acknowledged it with a single word.
"And what was that clue?"
The gloved fingers closed a little closer over the arm of the chair. And then followed a story which caused Roger Kenwick to tear his gaze away from the fantastic palm-trees and fix it upon Richard Glover's face. There was no resentment in his eyes, but only the dawning of a great light. Granville Jarvis, watching him as a physician might watch beside the bedside of an unconscious patient, knew by the leaping flame in those somber eyes that the last lap of the long journey had been covered, and that Roger Kenwick's memory had come home to him. But if that knowledge brought him a scientist's satisfaction, he gave no sign of it. After that one intent moment, his eyes returned to the witness-stand and fixed themselves upon Marcreta Morgan's face. Dayton was proceeding relentlessly.
"If you knew from the first that Richard Glover had stolen this story which he read to you as his own, why didn't you relate the circumstance to Mr. Kenwick when you saw him on the night that he was arrested for murder?"
The reply came haltingly, as though the witness were feeling her way over uneven ground. "My brother and I had consulted Mr. Jarvis about that and he had advised against it. He didn't wish to arouse any suspicions in—in the prisoner's mind just then. And—well, you see, Mr. Kenwick and I had not seen each other since his—illness and during that first meeting we both avoided everything connected with—with the tragedy as much as possible. Of course if we had known that this charge of—of crime was to be preferred against him, I suppose we would have acted differently."
This was no carefully rehearsed response, but nothing that she could have said would have disclosed more clearly the inside workings of the opposition's conspiracy. The web that had been woven around the prisoner had enmeshed with him every one who had ever been intimately associated with his past.
And now that romance had entered upon the sordid scene the whole aspect of the case was changed. The air became charged all at once with an electric current of sympathy. To every man and woman in the room Richard Glover now appeared in the guise of a baffled adventurer, and Roger Kenwick as a man who had loved, and because of cruel circumstance had lost. But had he really lost? The crux of public interest shifted with the abruptness of a weathercock, from mystery to romance.
"You assert, Miss Morgan, that you knew this story, 'A Brother of Bluebeard,' to be the one which the prisoner had read to you before he left for the East almost two years ago. What proof could you furnish of this?"
"At the time that Mr. Glover read the story to me I had in my possession the sequel to it, which Mr. Kenwick had sent me in manuscript for my criticism, just before he left for training-camp. It used many of the same characters and was rooted in the same plot."
"Could you produce that manuscript?"
"Mr. Jarvis can produce it. I turned it over to him."
The former witness leaned forward and laid a heap of pencil-written manuscript upon the table. But Dayton scarcely glanced at it. With one hand he pushed it aside, and then shifted the current of his interest into another channel. "When, and by what means, Miss Morgan, did you discover that Roger Kenwick had returned from France mentally disabled?"
Her reply to this question came in a voice that was struggling against heavy odds for composure. "It was exactly one year ago to-day that I received that news. Several letters of mine to—the prisoner were returned to me unopened. And with them came a communication from Mr. Everett Kenwick telling me that—that it had become necessary for them to send his brother to a private asylum."
"Did you know where that asylum was?"
"Not then. He told me that he was debating over several different places but that he had almost decided upon a friend's home in southern California. He didn't tell me where this home was. I think he realized that—that I would rather not know."
"And when did you discover that that place was Mont-Mer?"
"On the night that Mr. Kenwick was reported dead."
A murmur that was distinctly a wave of sympathy filled the chamber. But eagerness to catch the next question quieted it.
"After that first letter telling you about the prisoner's misfortune, did you ever hear from Mr. Everett Kenwick again?"
"Only once. Just a week before he died, he wrote again. He had just lost his wife and he seemed to have a premonition that he was not going to live very long."