THE
ASTOUNDING
CRIME
ON
TORRINGTON
ROAD

THE
ASTOUNDING
CRIME
ON
TORRINGTON
ROAD

BEING AN ACCOUNT OF WHAT MIGHT BE
TERMED “THE PENTECOST EPISODE” IN
A MOST AUDACIOUS CRIMINAL CAREER

BY
William Gillette

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
New York and London, Mcmxxvii

THE ASTOUNDING CRIME ON TORRINGTON ROAD
COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY WILLIAM GILLETTE
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

E-B

THIS RECITAL

—AS TAKEN DOWN AND THEN SET
FORTH HEREIN—IS DIVIDED INTO
SEVEN PARTS OR SECTIONS WHICH
MAY BE ROUGHLY DESCRIBED AS
FOLLOWS:

PART I: Leading up to the arrangement that Andrew Howard Barnes finally succeeded in making with Horace McClintock for the Reporting of the Facts in This Most Unusual Series of Events. | Page 1
PART II: Introducing Hugo Pentecost and his Partner Stephen W. Harker, with a side light thrown on the Business Methods employed by this firm. Also defining the Steps which led Mr. Pentecost to call at the House on Torrington Road. | Page 20
PART III: Dealing with old Michael Cripps and his Synthetic Family—thus making it clear how Charles Haworth came to be the Sole Occupant of the old Cripps Mansion. | Page 44
PART IV: Attempting to convey Some Idea of the Overwhelming Passion that swept upon Charles Haworth and Edith Findlay when the Findlays came to live at the House on Torrington Road. | Page 67
PART V: Wherein is set forth the Painful Predicament which soon involved the Young Couple, and the Vast Relief which ensued upon the Sale of the Haworth Machine to Harker and Pentecost. | Page 112
PART VI: Touching on the Amazing Preparations for and the Hideous Details of the Crime that took place in the Cripps Mansion and Describing the Activities of the Police in connection therewith as well as the Behavior of Others Concerned in this Appalling Affair. | Page 169
PART VII: Giving an account of the Attempts of Certain Persons no longer enjoying an Earthly Existence to take part in the Investigation of the Crime and the Final Result of this Most Amazing Interference. | Page 259

THE
ASTOUNDING
CRIME
ON
TORRINGTON
ROAD

PART I

At the request of Mr. Andrew H. Barnes I make the following statement in order to explain how it came about that I entered into the arrangement for taking down from his dictation an Account of a Certain Extraordinary Affair.

Horace McClintock

My name is signed above. I am a staff reporter on one of the town papers. New York, I mean. Several times in the past three or four years when some special work in my line—which has come to be mostly interviewing—was required there, they have sent me over to Boston.

This last time I went over—which is now, for I am there yet—I was particularly glad to get the assignment, as my friend Dudley Knapp had recently made a shift from a big Life Insurance Company in the West to a very much bigger one in Boston, and it was a great pleasure to see him.

Duds (his schoolboy name still sticks with me and I forgot to state that we were boys together in a small town in northern Ohio) has got to be quite a “high up” in the Insurance line. I don’t know exactly what they call him, but he’s an expert of some kind, and is a sharp one on any fraud or tangle that has to be attended to. I don’t mean to say he’s a detective or anything like that, but in nine cases out of ten he saves them from having to get one. He has the gift of knowing a man pretty well when he gets a good look at him—with a little conversation thrown in—and they put him on cases that have the look of being a bit off color. There’s plenty of that kind in the Life business. That’s how he happened to be in Boston, and we got ahold of each other almost the minute I arrived there.

We’d been having dinner together in the men’s café at a specially good hotel—one of the few cafés left where they hadn’t let women and dancing in and changed the name to the Wild Rose Room or something like that, and where—as Dudley put it—you could still get a feed without having girls’ legs flashed in your face with every mouthful.

It was down to coffee and cigars—that is, cigars for Duds and cigarettes for me—and we were lolling back talking over our experiences, when I happened to think of an odd thing that occurred on my last trip over—which was before Duds had made the shift to the Boston Company; and I started in to give him an idea of it by asking if he knew anything about a suburb called Roxbury.

“No,” he said, “but for God’s sake” (lowering his voice) “don’t let anyone hear you call it a suburb—you’d be mobbed.”

“Well it looked like that to me,” I returned. “I struck a place where I thought I was out on a farm.”

“When was this?” he asked.

“About a year ago.”

“What were you doing?”

“Following a man.”

“Who was it?”

“Never found out.”

Dudley looked at me a couple of seconds; then settling back in his chair struck a match and began to light a cigar.

“Anything—er—out of the way?” he mumbled between puffs.

“No,” I told him, “just odd, that’s all. Peculiar way a couple of people acted on the train coming over got me guessing to that degree that when we arrived here about eleven o’clock at night I trailed the man through the south station till he got into a taxi, and then jumped into one myself and followed him out into that Roxbury region looking for the answer—which I never got.”

“Slipped you, did he?”

“Amounted to that. Went into an old house out there—gloomy-looking place—long way back from the road—no other houses near. I had him down for some sort of a yegg, and when I saw him go into that murky old mansion I called it a day and quit.”

“What made you think he was crooked?”

“One or two things I overheard on the train—and then he played a few queer games when I was trailing him in the taxi.”

“Get the address?”

“There wasn’t any number at the gate, but I got the name of the street on a lamp post. Not sure what it was, though. Something like Torreytown—or Torringtown—or one of those——” I broke off suddenly.

Duds gave me a quick look.

“Table behind you!” I muttered.

“What’s the matter with it?” he grunted, his voice down with mine.

“Man got a shock when I mentioned that street.”

“Maybe he lives on it.”

I shook my head slightly.

“Well, go on—what do you care?”

I was just going to speak when Duds stopped me.

“Wait a minute!” he said, his voice down several pegs more. “That street you mentioned—I’ve read about it somewhere—in some paper.”

“About the street?”

“Yes—or—or something that happened on it. Remember there was a lot of excitement—everybody guessing. What did we get from Boston along then?”

“One of their murders most likely—if it was something you read about outside.”

“Hold on—I’m getting it! It was that case the police tried to hush up—lot of queer stuff to it—everybody wondering what in God’s name it was all about. Inventor in it somewhere—don’t you remember that? It was first-page stuff all over the country.”

“No—they had me down in Panama after that Boston trip, covering a Senate Investigating Committee. Saw some headings but didn’t know what it was all about.”

“Peculiar case all right. What was it you overheard on the train?”

“Began at the Grand Central. I was running for the five-eleven Boston express—P.M. I needn’t say. Just as I got to the gate an excited old woman—poorly dressed—queer hat on sideways—dangling gray hair and all that—came hurrying across from somewhere and plunged in ahead of me trying to pass the gateman. He held her up for a ticket of course, and there was quite a time, she calling out that her son was on the train—she’d got to speak to him—he had no business to be there, and a flood of talk like that. It made a kind of a riot—for the gateman put her down as crazy and didn’t like to pass her in among the rolling stock; and in a minute there was a crowd of people about, and a station policeman coming over on the run, and the assistant station master arriving a second or two later: with the result that the two of them—the station master and the policeman—took her through and down the incline to the train, to see if she really had a son on board.

“She was a queer old thing, this dame, and kept mumbling to herself that she wasn’t going to let him (her son, I took it) go to that place—not if she could help it. The officer tried two or three times to fix her hat on straight as they walked along, one on each side of her—but it wouldn’t stay.

“Most of the passengers who came along while the old woman was blocking the left-hand passage of the gate—where I was—were passed in on the other side; there’s two ticket punchers, you know. But I hung back till they took her through, and then followed them down to the train and through the cars. Wanted to see if there was anything to it. Might be a story if I followed it up.

“After they’d gone through nearly the whole train, including the Pullmans, she spotted the chap she was after in the first coach forward, next behind the smoker, and commenced to call out to him to get off and come home with her. He was a decent-appearing young chap, but what struck me as peculiar was that his face didn’t show the least surprise or anger or even annoyance when he saw his mother—in fact, it didn’t show anything at all. He shook his head a little when the old woman told him to get off, but he wouldn’t budge, and finally when the station master told her she’d have to leave the coach or go along with it, she plumped down in the seat with him and a few seconds later the train was under way.

“The nearest seat I could get was in with another man next behind. I’d have preferred to be in front—you know how well you can hear people sitting behind you in a car—but the whole seat was occupied. So I sat down there behind them in the aisle seat (the other man was next the window) and getting out a newspaper, leaned forward as far as I could as though trying to get a good light on it, and keeping an ear turned in the right direction to catch anything they might say.

“We must have passed Stamford before a word was spoken by either of them, but along near that place the old woman opened up suddenly and began remonstrating—I judged by the tone (her voice was too low to catch any words) with tremendous earnestness. She hadn’t been talking long though, when something he muttered got her excited and she raised her voice enough for me to hear, ‘Well you’re goin’ to get off this train the next place they stop at an’ come home—yes ye be Jamie—I won’t have you goin’ on with this—I won’t have it!’

“‘Listen here!’ Jamie said under his breath but with an earnestness that carried it over the back of the seat to me: ‘I got an A-1 situation as butler an’ general house man!’

“‘An’ don’t I know how you came by it? It’s them same people in that agency! Look at the trouble they’ve got you into, Jamie! Wasn’t you arrested twice an’ wasn’t it them who——’

“‘Aw, can that! Didn’t they push me into some o’ the finest houses there was—an’ didn’t I get recommendations that takes me anywheres?’

“‘First off they did but sense then there’s nothin’ but trouble—an’ you comin’ nigh to bein’ put in Sing Sing!’

“‘Well I wasn’t, was I?’

“‘—An’ one dreadful mess after another—an’ put with people you’d ought ter know better’n to be with! Don’t ye s’pose I know ’em, with your father what he was! I tell you I ain’t goin’ to have it!’ (Her voice rising into a loud wail.) ‘You got to stop, Jamie. You got to git off this train an’ come back home with me! You ——’

“‘Quiet down, can’t ye—people might get it!’

“There was silence between the two for a while, and I noticed, as the train was running into the Bridgeport station—the first stop after One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street—that Jamie was watching for something out of the window, his quick glance shifting up and down the west-bound tracks.

“The old woman got to her feet as the train came to a stop, and told him he must come with her and get the next train back. But he pulled her down into the seat again—not roughly but rather protectingly in a way—saying as he did, ‘Not here, Jenny! We can get a better train out of New Haven.’

“‘You’ll come then?’ the old woman asked.

“‘Sure,’ said Jamie.

“She seemed greatly relieved.

“He had a time-table, and studied it for quite a while, and as we neared New Haven (the next stop) he kept the same keen watch on the west-bound tracks as he’d done at Bridgeport. But this time he saw what he wanted, for there was a New York Express three or four tracks over, roaring and sizzling to get away. It was No. 21 from Boston, and as luck would have it, running nine minutes late. He had his mother up and at the door before our train had come to a standstill, and they were off the car in a jiffy and disappearing down the stairway—for he had to cross to the New York tracks in a subway. It was an even bet whether he made it or not, and I got off the train—keeping close to it, though, in case it started—and ran along the platform trying to find a place where I could see across into the windows of the other train—there were roofs or something that cut off the view here and there. Just as I came about opposite to the last coach of the New York Express I got a view through, and saw them in that car, walking down the aisle looking for a seat,—so I knew they’d made it. Jamie was carrying his heavy valise—the old woman close herding on him as the cattle men say.

“It was only a few seconds after they got aboard when No. 21, after hissing contemptuously a few times as the brakes went on and off, got under way for New York.

“The train I was on—the Boston train—left the station about five minutes later, and I was sitting down, nursing my balked curiosity and the story that didn’t pan, when it dawned on me that I had a seat reserved in one of the Pullmans, which, in the case of this train, were trailing at the rear with the dining car. So I got my bag and started back to find it.

“I had to go through several coaches before reaching the parlor cars, and as I was walking down the aisle of the last one I suddenly caught sight of Jamie sitting quietly in a seat on my left.—Sat there as if he’d never been off the train.”

“Take it that’s the man you followed?”

“The very one. Kept an eye on him through the station when we got in—South Station, not Back Bay—and when he took a taxi and drove off I skipped into another and slipped the driver a ten to keep his machine in sight but not get up too close. When Jamie’s taxi had led us six or eight blocks out Columbus or Huntington or one of those avenues, it made a sudden turn and shot around a corner to the right. Then there were more corners right and left until you couldn’t even tell where the State House was, but my man was on the job and kept behind like a shadow with a string to it.

“All of a sudden he ran up to the curb and jumped off, coming to the door. ‘If it’s the fare ye want out o’ that car, he’s payin’ off and goin’ into the station.’ ‘What station?’ I asked. ‘North,’ says he, ‘down there where all them lights is. He’s on to us, an’ he’ll wait long enough to make ye think he’s took a train, an’ then git a taxi in there where they go in—out o’ sight. I got ye where ye can keep a squint on ’em as they come out. He’s liable to stoop down or cover up his face. Ye might know him by that.’

“And sure enough that’s just what happened. In, say, half an hour (he waited inside that long) we were after him again, but this time keeping so far away that he must have thought he’d thrown us off, for we got out into a sort of country region—houses far back into grounds and that sort of thing—most of ’em dark, too—people gone to bed.

“At a corner out there, where Jamie’s taxi had made a turn to the right, my driver stopped before rounding it and listened, as he’d been doing since we’d got to where it was quiet. Rather suddenly he jumped off and hurried on to the corner, and after one look came running back and told me the other machine had pulled up near a street lamp some distance down the road and the fare was paying off. I got out and told him to wait for me—that I’d walk down a bit and look around.

“I edged along at the side of the road and could see that Jamie had gone in at a gate or entrance; and very soon the taxi that brought him went plunging by on its way back to town. After some careful work to keep in the shadow, I came to the old gate, or rather old posts—there wasn’t any gate—and looking up the weedy and overgrown drive (I could see it for a little way by the light of the street lamp) I made out the black bulk of what must have been a large house back in among trees, and gloomy as a prison. There was a pale yellowish light in one window—that was all.

“While I was trying to make out something in the dense gloom, a door of the house opened, the dim light showing through it from inside, and the form of a man—which must have been Jamie—could be seen passing in, the door closing quickly after him. That’s all there was to it. I told you the rest. Got the name of the street when I went back to the corner.”

“Taxi there all right?”

“Yes—but I didn’t see it at first. Chauffeur had backed up into some private grounds so the other driver, rattling by toward the city, wouldn’t see him.

“‘I don’t know what your man that you’re trailin’ amounts to,’ he said as I got in, ‘but that ain’t no amateur what run him out here!’”

“Strikes me you picked a pretty good one yourself,” observed Dudley.

“I sure did,” I agreed; “and his parting words put the flag on it. When I’d paid him off at the hotel he stood looking at me with a queer twist to his face and then gave a quick glance about. ‘Say, cap,’ he said, moving quite close, ‘I don’t know as it’s any use to ye, but we was shadowed too.’ And he was gone before I could——”

I stopped in the midst of what I was saying. The man who’d been sitting behind Duds—the one who’d started slightly when I mentioned the name Torringtown—was standing beside our table. I hadn’t noticed him come up.

“Pardon this intrusion, gentlemen,” the stranger said in a low voice and with a most courteous inflection, “but it was impossible to avoid overhearing what you were saying. I should hardly have thought it wise to trouble you with an apology for this, but it occurred to me that the very remarkable coincidence involved might possibly be of some slight interest.”

We’d both risen as he began to speak, and now assured him that the apology was unnecessary and that the coincidence would interest us in the extreme, and begged him to be seated. But he shook his head in a manner to convey that what he had to say would only take a moment.

On the first glance the man wasn’t remarkable in any way that I could see: medium height—medium weight—medium age—no particular expression to his face. But in an instant it was different, for he’d hardly begun to speak before I felt—and so did Dudley as he told me afterward—that a person of powerful or compelling character stood before us. Powerful in some peculiar way. I never took much stock in hypnotism and don’t now; at the same time I can see how things like that, carried a bit further, might put a man where he couldn’t see straight. These things occurred to me afterward—I couldn’t have got away, at the time, from what the fellow was talking about.

He went on at once, after declining our invitation to sit down: “A few moments ago I heard, from the direction of your table, the name of a street which is intimately associated with an affair I’ve been investigating for nearly two years.”

Something made me murmur, without the slightest intention of doing so, “Torringtown Road.”

“That was it—not quite the correct name, but so near that I shuddered with the fear that other parties were looking up the same case—which would, of course, head my work for the discard. With that fear in mind I was unable to prevent myself from listening. I am sorry.”

We both begged him not to speak of such a thing as no offense could possibly be taken, and I asked him to tell me the right name of the street.

“Torrington Road,” he answered. “Of course I saw in a moment—or rather heard—that although the case was the same that I’d been working on, you gentlemen were making no special drive at it. But in addition to thus dispelling my anxiety, the few words I overheard supplied me with the answer to the only question that has completely baffled me up to the present time. For two years I’ve been making fruitless efforts to find out who shadowed Jamie Dreek from the South Station in Boston to the old mansion in Roxbury on that August night, and what object he could have had in view, seeing that nothing ever came of it; and this evening I happen to drop in for dinner at a place I’ve never patronized before, and the answer comes across to me from the next table!”

We agreed that it was a strange coincidence, all right, and as he seemed to be on the point of withdrawing I asked him—more to detain him than anything else, for it seemed that he must be charged up to the muzzle with interesting stuff—if he happened to know how it was the Dreek chap was sitting in a coach on the Boston train after I’d seen him go out of New Haven on the New York express.

“Very simple,” Barnes answered. “He sat with his mother as the New York train went down through the yards, and after it got headway enough for the old woman to feel easy about him, he shoved a wad of bills into her lap, saying, ‘Hold that for me, will ye—I want to go to the smoker,’ walked back to the rear platform, and a second later let himself down by the knuckle of the coupler, which projected a few inches, and dropped off. His mother saw his valise in the rack and didn’t worry. It was somewhere along under the Cedar Street bridge and they don’t get into any speed by then, so he was up in a second or two and sprinting back for the Boston train—the one you were on” (looking at me). “Nothing much at stake you see, as he could have got No. 30 four hours later if he’d missed it. But he didn’t. You must have noted the fact that you can always make a train if there’s no special need of it.”

He was getting out a pocketbook as he talked, and laying a card on the table, murmured something about his name being Barnes and that he was taking the liberty of introducing himself; whereupon we very informally introduced each other. And the man, who appeared to be in a hurry, was just turning away as Dudley mentioned the fact (having given my name) that I was a staff reporter on a New York Daily.

Upon this Mr. Barnes rather abruptly turned back and stood looking at me.

“May I accept your recent invitation to sit down?” he asked, after a moment.

We begged him to do so, and all three seated ourselves.

“I was concerned in this West Roxbury affair,” he said in a lowered voice, “in a way that gave me an insight into some of its unusual features.”

“Detective?” asked Dudley, also sinking his voice.

“Not at all,” Mr. Barnes replied. “To be perfectly frank with you—as it’s only right I should be in view of the favor I’m going to ask—I was associated in a confidential way with the defense. Hard put to it for evidence they were, and I was able to turn up some for them. But the case was so extraordinary that after it was all over I began looking into various points that came up, and one thing led to another until I found I was in deep and moreover so interested that I couldn’t quit. Besides that, it began to look to me like a gold mine if it was handled right. Although the papers were full of it at the time, not only here in Boston but throughout the States and Canada, the real facts at the bottom of it never came to light—a case of ‘diplomatic suppression’ by the police, if I may be allowed to use the expression.”

“How gold mine?” asked Dudley.

“Publication,” answered Barnes. “I now have virtually the whole thing; and some of it is bound to stir up the animals a bit. I wouldn’t have thought of troubling you with all this but for hearing you say that Mr. McClintock is a reporter. I’m hoping you can give me a little advice, Mr. McClintock, on getting the thing into book form. I have it all in my mind, and notes and memoranda to keep it there. But I’ve got to get some one to write it down for me, as that’s something entirely out of my line.”

“What you want, Mr. Barnes,” I said, “is a literary chap—some one in the fiction line—a story writer.”

“Pardon me, Mr. McClintock, but that’s the very thing I don’t want. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time—not to speak of some money—in digging up the truth about this affair; and after all this to have it get into the hands of a story writer and be labeled on every page as a cheap concoction of his brain would be a calamity. I don’t want any ‘our hero’ and ‘dear reader’ and that sort of throw-down in the account of this Haworth case, nor any ‘Foreword’ or dedication to somebody whose loving care has helped me through or sustained me in hours of anguish. Everything that’s going into this book I saw, or heard, or got first-hand from the parties concerned. And as you’re in that line Mr. McClintock, I thought perhaps you could put me in the way of finding a reporter of the kind I need, who’d take it down the way I give it to him, the same as he would for a newspaper. I’m asking a great favor, but if you haven’t anyone in mind don’t hesitate to say so.”

I considered for a little, but finally had to tell him that at the moment I couldn’t think of anyone available for such a piece of work.

He rose apologetically, but hesitated an instant as he stood there.

“I don’t suppose there’s a chance of its appealing to you?” he asked, looking me full in the face; and went on before I could open my mouth to answer: “It would net you three thousand, and as you don’t know me I’m perfectly willing to pay for each quarter of the work in advance.”

By this time I’d recovered speech, and after expressing appreciation of his liberal offer, told him it would be impossible for me to accept as I had a regular staff job and didn’t want to lose it.

“Why lose it?” he asked, seating himself again as he spoke. “Your work with me would scarcely take ten days, for you’d have the idea in your notebooks as fast as I could talk it off. You can take your time writing it out—not the least hurry about that. And if your managing editor doesn’t want to give you the time off, I can follow you round and manage it evenings or whenever you had an hour or so to spare.”

I was in a most peculiar mental condition, with this glittering chance to reach up and pull down three thousand dollars, and with Mr. Barnes’s impelling personality seeming almost to force me into the arrangement without any consideration whatever. I tried to pull myself together and shake off something that seemed like a “spell,” and in doing so caught sight of Dudley, whose chair was near but slightly back of mine. All through this talk about my doing the work I’d felt a consciousness of his sitting there quietly smoking, and wasn’t surprised, as I glanced about, to hear him say:

“Why rush this?”

Mr. Barnes instantly disclaimed any idea of wishing to do so, explaining that as I’d appeared to show some slight interest in the matter, he’d been tremendously anxious to get before me whatever advantages it might possess.

“Let’s have a look at the disadvantages,” countered Dudley. “Suppose Mr. McClintock, on taking up the work (if he does that) finds, for one reason or another, that he’d rather not go on with it.”

“He’ll be at perfect liberty to discontinue,” was Barnes’s quick rejoinder. “I’ll say,” he added, “that at any time before the first quarter of the work is finished he may abandon it without even troubling to give a reason.”

Shortly after this we adjourned the conference to Dudley’s apartment—not far distant; and it was finally left that I’d have a night to think it over and that Barnes was to meet us at the Subtreasury the next day at four in the afternoon.

“Think he’s straight?” I asked Duds, after we’d heard the elevator door clang to with Barnes going down in the car.

“Put a question mark to that,” grunted Dudley as he lit his pipe. “But I’ll say this,” he added a minute later, “if he isn’t, there’s nothing he’d stop at.” He reflected awhile and then went on: “Uncommon specimen I must say.... Strange sort of influence, too.... If he’d had you there alone you’d be writing his book for him now.”

We sat smoking for some little time before Duds made further observations. I waited patiently, realizing the value of his advice in such a matter. After a while he spoke up in the manner of having arrived at conclusions.

“On the first shot I don’t see where he could get you,” he said. “Blackmail’s out of it. Robbery’s out of it. Playing this game to get a hook in you for another is out of it. Of course he didn’t come into that restaurant by any chance or accident.”

“No?”

“Not on the cat’s pajamas—or whatever it is they say. Wouldn’t be surprised if he followed you over from New York.”

“Why not talk to me there?”

“Can’t say, but he had his reasons. Nothing accidental goes with him.... All the same, what of it? If there’s anything criminal about his stuff, you can quit.... If he’s cribbed it somewhere, that doesn’t touch you. Another thing: if you do it I’m going to sit in with you. If Barnes objects, he’s crooked and that ends it. Lot of things I don’t like about the man, from his one-sided smile to something damned peculiar back in his eyes. And I don’t take much stock in his book, or whatever it is. Most likely a blind to cover a job he’s got on hand. Rather interesting to know what it’s all about, eh?——If he talks all right to-morrow, suppose we go ahead and see what he’s got!”

Mr. Barnes certainly did talk all right the next day, and not only raised no objections to the presence of Dudley while the dictating was going on, but seemed quite enormously pleased at the proposal, explaining that with two of us he’d be able to get his mind off the dictation business—which, to tell the truth, had rather alarmed him—and run it off on the idea of simply giving us an account of the affair.

I phoned the office, and my managing editor gave me a week or ten days, which Mr. Barnes said would do. The working time was arranged to suit Dudley, as his affairs couldn’t be shifted. Always we had the evenings, and frequently the afternoons as well. The place was the living room of Dudley’s apartment.

Mr. Barnes made it a part of the agreement that I should write out a brief statement of the episode of my trailing of Jamie Dreek, and our chance meeting with him (Barnes) in the restaurant,—this to serve as an explanation of his dictating the account of the affair to me. He suggested also that in this statement I make mention of the fact that because of the incidents he proposed to relate being actual happenings with actual people involved in them, he felt it necessary in some cases to use fictitious names and addresses.

This and the preceding pages constitute my effort to comply with Mr. Barnes’s wishes.

PART II

The following Account of a Series of Occurrences in the Jamaica Plain District of Boston during the year 1920, and Certain Facts Relating Thereto, was dictated by Mr. Andrew H. Barnes, who claims to be one of the Only Two Persons now living who have a knowledge of the True Solution of the Affair. The Recital of these things as set forth by him is in the main Correctly Reported. The Language Used is as close an approach to his own as could be managed with the rapid stenography required.

H. McC.

People who didn’t know—and let me tell you at the start that few did—could hardly avoid the supposition, on being shown into the offices of the Messrs. Harker & Pentecost, that they were entering the headquarters of a long-established, prosperous firm, evidently of high standing and doing a conservative and wisely managed business. Conclusions such as these are by no means beyond what furniture, fittings, and employees are able to convey, and Mr. Pentecost had seen to it that all these things had done a part toward so conveying it. Everything of the best quality, and more important still, not new—nothing to suggest the flashily fine furnishings so often associated with flashily conducted business.

Three years and three months before this time at which I’m calling your attention to the firm’s office, they didn’t have any, and Mr. Hugo Pentecost had Mr. Stephen W. Harker in such a double-twisted strangle grip that it was either hand over whatever price the former named or the latter went to jail. There was only one answer to that, and when Mr. Harker said, “Name the loot, you bastard,” expecting a response of, “I’ll take the pot!” he was considerably surprised to get no answer at all.

Pentecost—bullet-headed—regarded him with glassy, half-closed eyes.

Harker—slim, dapper, perfectly dressed, with a pleasant, attractive face (which was a pearl without price in his business) finally broke the silence.

“What’s masticating you?” he said. “You’ve got me cold, haven’t you? Go on an’ give it a name!”

Pentecost spoke in a low, soft voice. “I’ll take the business,” he said.

“One minute, George. I’m on to you from the send-off—see? You’re the guy that drops down on the boys when they’ve been working hard for it an’ rakes ’em for ninety per cent! Quite a name you’ve made for yourself! Know what they call you in the Mercer Street joints? ‘The Vulture’—that’s what they’ve put on you!”

“Fitting, too,” was the quiet rejoinder. “Vultures prey on the dead ones.”

“I can cough twenty grand. Do you want it?”

“You can cough forty-six, but I don’t want it. The business will do for the present.”

“Get to hell with it. My business is my business. Where do you cop the idea I can pass it around?”

“No passing around—I declare myself in.”

Harker—a man seldom surprised and never showing it—stood looking at Pentecost, amazement concealed behind his “dead” face.

“In on my game?” he finally asked.

Pentecost nodded slightly. “But not as you play it, my friend,” he said.

Harker was a successful fake promoter. Anything was grist for his mill that was slick enough in operation to catch the public fancy or timely enough to ride on the crest of a craze. Cheap novelties in medicine, food, housekeeping utensils, electric refrigerating and washing machines, oil-burning heaters,—anything attractive enough to sell stock on—that was the sole requirement. The organization of promoting companies—vast newspaper advertisements for a few days—window displays when it was an operating device of some kind; and after the crop from stock sales had been skillfully gathered in, came the little matter of the company paying for the patent or a factory site or whatever it was, and of course it took all the money realized on stock sales to do this; and as Harker was the man who happened to own the patent or factory site, he was naturally the person who sold it to the company, and there he was.

But he wasn’t there for long. That was the chief inconvenience connected with this simple method of relieving the “one-born-every-minute” crowd of their superfluous capital. It compelled the practitioner to travel for his health after every operation. Often, too, he had to change his name as well as the climate, and to make some drastic alteration in what might be referred to as his identity.

The reward, though, was frequently of large proportions, which it happened to be in the case I’m speaking of. And the vulture Pentecost, soaring above the vast and darkened stretches of crookdom, got the odor of tainted money and began circling nearer and nearer and eventually sunk his talons into Mr. Harker and found that he was good. Also that his game was well enough—indeed might be quite a big one if properly run—the effective method of playing it flashing instantly through his mind. He observed, too, that Harker was a skillful operator; also a good looker as a figurehead for an important and high-class concern. He had planned for some time to have an office to work from. So it came to be a partnership. No papers of course—just understood. Harker was to run his line of work in the office of the firm—after that work had been put on Pentecost’s basis. Pentecost would have the partnership and the office to give him solidity and standing in his own line of nefarious and frequently hazardous undertakings. He could, without trouble, pick up many things in Harker’s way and turn them over to him; and Harker could give him assistance in his own affairs, should he require it. They would divide at fifty-fifty.

Before he took to vulturizing again Pentecost gave his attention to the rearrangement of the Harker game. An office that was “the thing” was found in precisely the locality required, and in a modest but high-class building. When it came to the matter of furnishings, not an item escaped him. Being thoroughly aware that the various articles in a room have voices and can cry out, he took good care to have only those which would use the tones that he wanted.

Having now an office which would eloquently lie for them, the next thing in Mr. Pentecost’s scheme of operation was to secure a business reputation that would do the same. With this in view he and Harker went after inventions or devices for the firm to take hold of and exploit, that had some degree of solid merit. At the end of a year they had been able to get only two, in each case having to purchase from a company that was running it at a profit. Expensive deals, but both men were plungers. They found another during the second year, and that made three, which was enough. Companies were organized for each and the business carried on with success and profit, large dividends going out to the stockholders; the firm, however, on account of the expenses involved in buying out going concerns, made nothing.

Harker was now in a position to engineer another class of enterprise with entire safety. The firm was well-known, conservative, solid. Stock of companies it organized was bought without question. Instead of piking along he found he had in his hands swindles of great magnitude. With the solid business they were doing an occasional failure cut no figure.

The most important members of the office force—the heads of departments as you might say—were all in the family. Harker’s family, I mean—Pentecost had none. Alfred Harker—son of the senior partner, twenty-two and a sharp one for his age—had charge of the office. Chief clerk, I suppose you might call him. The head stenographer, Miss Mary Finch Dugas, was a sister of Mrs. Harker, and the head accountant Mrs. Harker’s nephew. As for the others, it didn’t matter. Nothing could get by young Harker or Miss Dugas or the head accountant that there was any reason for keeping in the shade. So the rest of the force had been picked—like the furniture and decorations—to express innocence and respectability—and they did it.

When you realize that about two and a half years before this Mr. Pentecost (under another name) had been practising law in Chicago—and would most likely have been there still if he hadn’t been disbarred—and that during the seven years he’d been at it he’d got to be one of the most successful and sought-after defense attorneys they’d ever had out there, you’ll have a pretty good basis to figure on him, especially when I tell you the sort of business he drifted into and his amazing methods of handling it.

When he came to be notable in certain ways among the legal practitioners of Chicago, and inquiries began to be made as to who he was and where he came from, nobody could give the answer. A rumor went the rounds during the proceedings of his disbarment, that he’d formerly been a confidence operator of some kind and had gone listening in at the trial of one of his pals. It was said that something about the legal maneuvers and court proceedings so impressed him with the idea that a lawyer was a pretty slick thing to be, that he started right in studying and reading and got by in a couple of years. I don’t know what there is to that story, but it’s as good as any.

He was a solid, thick-set man of average height, with dark eyes that bulged a little and occasionally went glassy—an odd trick you seldom see. Made you think he’d gone off and left them for a moment while he was attending to other matters. His eyelids a good part of the time were at half mast, giving him a sleepy sort of look. It had a great effect when, in a court proceeding, he suddenly came out of it with one of his lightning strokes.

His face, smooth-shaven, was heavy and hardly ever expressed anything, but he had expressions he could use when it suited his purpose. His forehead slanted back quite noticeably—not retreating in any sense—rather gave you the idea of the possibility of sudden and relentless advance, like some beast that springs or strikes. All these things didn’t make him appear anything especially remarkable. You see lots of bullet-headed men about, also men whose eyes are prominent and may go glassy for all you know. And drooping eyelids aren’t uncommon.

I’ve been speaking of this man as Mr. Pentecost, but that wasn’t his name at this time—in Chicago, I mean. On the door of his musty little office in the North Western Building a bit of modest black lettering announced the occupant as Max Spellman, Attorney at Law.

This Spellman (later Pentecost) had been plugging along in the law game out there for something like two years before he attracted attention. Then it began to be noticed in what is referred to as the underworld, that a young attorney in the Ashland Block seemed to be having extraordinary success in the cases of a number of small-caliber crooks for whose defense he’d been engaged or appointed. The court named him the first time, in a petty-larceny case where the accused was unable to get counsel. It was the ingenuity of this fellow’s tactics that first made him talked about, and a couple of instances of his lightning quickness and audacity went the rounds of crookdom. This underworld comment was hardly more than beginning when one of the high-up operators—a super-crook you might say—who’d been rounded up after a six months’ hunt—got Spellman to defend him, and from that time he was in the middle of the map. The upper world now began to take notice, and inquiries regarding the man flew about, but found nothing to light on.

More business than he could handle came in—and, with hardly an exception, from below. Of course he didn’t get verdicts for his clients every time, but his average was amazing. There was always a surprise in some quick turn he’d make—some entirely unexpected stroke—the finding of new and vital evidence and the throwing it at them just when it would knock them silly. He’d get at them this way nearly every time, and of course there was a rush to find a flaw, but there wasn’t a screw or a bolt missing.

Don’t get the idea that he was in the least spectacular. Nothing of the kind. No oratory nor impassioned pleading, nor any of those fancy things you read about. He’d sit hunched up like a toad in court, solid and motionless, never speaking unless necessary, and then in a voice so low that spectators, if there were any, found it difficult to hear. But—again like a toad—he struck with lightning quickness when the time came.

To witnesses for the prosecution he was a scourge and a terror. His gentle questioning, his weary manner and sleepily drooping eyelids, nursed his victims into unguarded confidence, and then came the lightning out of a clear sky, striking upon the least contradiction or misstatement. His very appearance at such times—the backward slant of his forehead, the sudden scorching fire of usually somnolent eyes—confused and disconcerted.

When underworld business came in on him with a rush he began to be careful about what cases he took—not as to the guilt or innocence of the applicant, but in order to pick out what he had a sporting chance to win. The possibilities of what extraordinary and ingenious defense he could accomplish—sometimes not only approaching the danger line, but frequently going a considerable distance on the other side of it—would flash through his mind almost automatically as he made his first hasty examination of the case; upon the character and attractiveness (for he greatly enjoyed this phase of the game) of these possibilities would depend his going into the defense.

After Spellman really got going there wasn’t much of anything in his line he wouldn’t do. All the tricks and political pulls were as lower-case a-b-c to him, not to speak of the intimate personal records of lawyers, judges, and police officials who were likely to come within his sphere of action. Sphere doesn’t sound precisely right, but you know what I mean. He had an extensive collection of the weak spots—vulnerable regions, you might say—everywhere, and saw in an instant how to play them in any given case. Through some sharp move or threat in the right direction, or by dropping a bit of money where he knew it would be picked up, or by whatever else he could use as a club, he’d be about ninety per cent sure to get his man out of the mess.

One day, to give you an instance, the assistant cashier of a Chicago bank of fairly decent standing was shown into Spellman’s office, and told him, after some beating about, that he was shy in his accounts by some two hundred and fifty thousand. The man, whose name was Chatfield, gave out the well-known tale about playing the stock market.

“All gone?” Spellman inquired, without bothering to pull up his drooping eyelids.

“Why—I think—not quite.”

“Damn think! You know to a nickel what you’ve got!”

“Yes—yes, sixteen thousand odd. I was—you see I was keeping it to—to get away on.”

“They’ll be on to you soon, of course, or you wouldn’t be here.”

“There’s—there’s barely two days! My God! Barely two!” Chatfield glanced about in a kind of agony. “And the—” (he swallowed with difficulty) “—the examiner might get here sooner. We can never be sure!”

“You’ve got the remnant with you I see.”

Chatfield nodded and his eyes moved painfully about in a way that made you think they’d fill up with tears in a minute.

“You want me to handle this affair I take it.”

“Oh, I hoped you would. That’s what I——”

“Pass me the sixteen.”

The terrified cashier handed Spellman a large fat envelope, which the latter opened in a weary sort of way, and having pulled the bunch of bills out a little way, flicked their ends as he might a pack of cards before the shuffle. Then he looked glassily at the assistant cashier for a full minute.

“Can you steal another hundred thousand?” he finally asked.

“Why—why—I—you don’t mean——”

“Can you steal another hundred thousand?” with no change in inflection.

“Why—why, yes—I could—but you——”

“Take you long?”

“Long?—Oh yes! Well—quite a while. I should say several hours.”

“Two o’clock is several hours. Come here with it then.”

“Mr. Spellman, I can do it!—Yes—I can you know—but they—they’re bound to find it out inside of twenty-four hours the way I—the way I’ve got to get it this time!”

“I don’t care how you get it—I want it at two.”

Of course it didn’t happen as quick as that. I’m only giving you the high spots.

When Chatfield came back at two with the money, Spellman put it in his safe where the sixteen was already reposing. Then he phoned the bank and got an appointment. Inside of half an hour he was seated in the private office of the president, and was conveying to him alone (having satisfied himself that no witnesses were within hearing distance) the information that he had a client, Henry Parsons Chatfield by name, who claimed to be the bank’s assistant cashier, and that—unless the man was lying—they’d find his accounts a matter of three hundred and fifty thousand short. He had strongly urged Mr. Chatfield, instead of trying to escape with the hundred thousand or thereabout that he still had in his possession after dumping the rest into Wall Street, to return it to the bank and make a confession. This he found Chatfield willing to do provided he could be safeguarded against arrest or legal action of any description. He (Spellman) wasn’t presuming to advise the acceptance of such a proposition. It seemed to be only a question of whether the bank wished the money or preferred to prosecute—the latter in case Chatfield could be apprehended.

Every time the bank president broke out on him—which of course he did with all the force at his command—the lawyer cut him short.

“I must say, sir—this is a most extraordinary—a most outrageous——”

“Do you want it?”

“Are you aware, Mr. Spellman, of your own risk in——”

“Do you want it?”

“We shall certainly take steps to——”

“Do you want it?”

But of course Spellman knew they did—knew they’d have to have it—or he wouldn’t have been there. Moreover, he noticed that the president made no move to ring the bell and call in other officials of the bank. The document he had ready was duly signed and executed. It wasn’t until after that was done and the thing securely in his possession that he paid over the hundred thousand to the bank. He returned six of the sixteen in his safe to Chatfield, and with it a biting comment on the assistant cashier’s consummate asininity. The remaining ten continued to remain.

For some time he played it this way, in and out of court, his adroit defenses of various kinds attracting more and more attention; and those who had begun to have symptoms of suspicion were very soon looking for questionable work back of the records.

I’m going to tell you at once what I dare say you’ve suspected all along, that Spellman was an amazingly successful manufacturer of evidence. He couldn’t use it always, but when he did, the play was a marvel. Everything came to that man in what is known as a flash. In the matter of bogus evidence he not only saw instantly where it would come in, but almost on the same ignition had the most elaborate defenses figured out for it with every point protected.

No matter where those sharps and detectives who were after him dug in and followed back the lines, they couldn’t find a thing to get hold of. Witnesses had actually seen what they testified to—the circumstances and surroundings and objects spoken of and dates and time of day given, etc., stood every test.

Yet notwithstanding the outcome of these investigations, I have to tell you that Mr. Spellman’s downfall resulted from a faulty piece of work in one of his manufactured-evidence structures. He knew that it was faulty and that they’d have it on him in the end, but the play did what it was intended to do, which was to hold open a loophole for escape just long enough so his client could dive through it. To save a comrade who’d once saved him—that was what drove him to it. The outcome, which he plainly saw, didn’t come within a thousand miles of making him hesitate. What this man, whose name was Morrison, had done for him or what he had saved him from, never came out; but it must have been something worth while.

Morrison was in bad. If the case should come to trial he’d stand no chance. Even Spellman couldn’t see any way out. His only hope lay in quick action. I give you an idea of Spellman’s play in this case to show you how it came about that he was eliminated from Chicago’s fetid life, and, as Hugo J. Pentecost, turned loose upon a more or less helpless world.

The quick action for the rescue of Bill Morrison from a more than serious predicament involved the buying up of an obscure movie actor named McArdle, doing small bits at the Essanay Studio on the North Side, who looked enough like Morrison to be his twin. Pentecost had used the movies in certain of his activities for a number of years, having found that field of endeavor packed with evidence possibilities that had never been worked; and in consequence he not only knew a lot of people employed in it, but he had quite a few of his own men scattered about in various studios. He remembered this McArdle on the instant and must have paid him ten or twelve thousand to disappear utterly for six weeks and turn over everything he owned, including his name, clothing, diary, letters, photographs, accounts, contracts with Essanay, and, in fact, everything there was, to him.

His game was possible because Morrison was a West Coast man and had never operated in Chicago before, and McArdle had only recently come over from London. If these things hadn’t happened to be the case, Spellman would have taken some other track. But he instantly saw the possibilities of this game if he rushed it and planted money lavishly in a few necessary places.

The Essanay was an enormous concern in those days, frequently taking fifteen or twenty pictures simultaneously, and naturally couldn’t keep a close watch on their hundreds of small-part people—of whom McArdle was one. Particularly was this so because these “artists” were hardly ever seen at the studio except in make-up.

The crime for which Morrison was arrested—a murderous assault on one of the clerks in a jewelry store—was committed in the early afternoon, and he was picked up by the police that same evening. At the time of the assault McArdle was engaged in his work in one of the Essanay studios. Spellman got at him in his room in a cheap apartment building between six and seven o’clock the next morning. It was, of course, vital to the game that McArdle should not go to the studio again, and, indeed, should be seen by no one who knew him. Those who had seen and recognized him after the time of Morrison’s arrest must be taken care of. If they couldn’t be, the game was off.

But the game wasn’t off on that account, for McArdle had been in his rooms all the evening and no one had come there. He had dined at a cheap restaurant near, but that was four hours before Morrison’s arrest. Clear sailing so far. The money bargain was arranged after Spellman had lifted the figure to the point where the temptation wrestled successfully with McArdle’s fears.

As soon as Spellman had this nailed down he let Morrison know by a prearranged signal—for he didn’t want to go near him just then—and Morrison began to cut up in his cell and cry and beg to see some one, as he wanted to confess. In the inspector’s office it transpired that what he was so anxious to tell them was not that he was guilty, but that when arrested the night before he’d been so terrified for fear his employers in Chicago would hear of it that he’d given them a fictitious name; but now he realized that he’d got to send word to the Essanay studios that he couldn’t get there for his scene. You had to notify them. If you didn’t they’d never give you another job. And would they please send word for him to the Essanay? Couldn’t they say he’d been in an automobile accident?—for if they knew up there that he was in jail it would be the end of him.

He finally told them that his name was Walter McArdle, that he’d lately come over from England, and that his occupation was acting for the movies. He had no family and the only people he knew were the Essanay managers who engaged him, and a few of the actors in the company—and those not very well. Morrison was an artist and pushed it along the line of one of his pet rôles. Everything tended to show that the man was Walter McArdle. He later described without effort or hesitation his lodgings on Rand Street and everything in them (I don’t need to say that Spellman had been there first), where to find his accounts, letters from home, how many shirts he had, and so forth and so on.

He told them, in answer to questions, all about the picture he’d been working in; you see Spellman had got everything possible out of McArdle before he left. But his crook artistry led to his instructing Morrison to make a slip or two in places where a person with an ordinary memory might not have been quite sure. Remembering too much is often more dangerous than remembering too little.

McArdle, except in rare instances, was seen at the studio in North Chicago only with his make-up on, and in these rare instances it would be only for brief moments as he passed in or out of the building on his way to and from his dressing room. As a consequence those associated with him in the picture—directors, photographers, electricians, property men, and his fellow actors in the cast—were misled by Morrison’s close resemblance, and testified to his being McArdle, and that he was at the studio occupied with his work in the picture on the afternoon the robbery and assault was committed. His entire familiarity with the piece they’d been filming and incidents that happened during its progress—some, indeed, on the very afternoon of the arrest—had great weight in the Essanay offices.

There were three persons whose evidence cost money, owing to the fact that they knew McArdle too well for Morrison to get by: the manager of the cheap restaurant where the movie actor got his meals; the girl waitress at the same place; and the actor who dressed in the same room with him at the Essanay studios. Particularly the last. He was a bit “fly” and saw that he had them. Also he wanted his in advance. This mass of evidence, with much more—such as that of the janitor of the building where McArdle roomed and many minor things that had been attended to—accomplished its purpose. No doubt existed that the police had arrested the wrong man. The police themselves were convinced of it. And the necessary formalities for his release having been gone through, Bill Morrison made his getaway.

Not many days later Max Spellman did the same.

The collapse of the jerry-built structure that Spellman had hastily thrown together for a rush showing, with its apparently overwhelming evidence of mistaken identity, was deferred several days longer than he expected. He waited on the one-in-a-thousand chance that it might, after all, escape destruction. But on the third day after Morrison had gone, a strange car with a disguised Spellman in it disappeared north of the Lake Boulevard, and Chicago saw him (as Spellman) no more. The first weak point to give way was the flapper waitress, who found it impossible to keep her mouth shut about the money she’d been paid to do that very thing. That started the crash. Proceedings for Spellman’s disbarment swiftly followed. In addition it began to be said about that he was “wanted.” But wanting was a matter of some distance from getting. How could it be otherwise when Spellman had ceased to exist? It was a plain case of transmigration of souls. The spirit that had tenanted the body of Max Spellman now moved into that of Hugo Pentecost—quite another proposition; and not differing alone because of a dark and well-trimmed beard, giving him something the appearance of a prosperous and experienced physician, but owing as well to a number of other changes in form, shape, expression, and more or less minor characteristics.

This metamorphosis, however, took time, and for months nothing was known of the man undergoing it. Then something peculiar began to dawn on the Crooks’ and Malefactors’ Guild. (You may as well call it that as anything.) Two or three large operations engineered by some of the Big Ones were mysteriously “tapped”—which is to say, the operators found themselves caught in a situation where they had to give up a share or quit—otherwise it was the cooler. It wasn’t a great while before word passed along that a peg was playing them from the dark side. Whoever this super crook might be, he continued to stay in the gloom. When he got the hook in his victim, his agent called, and it was pay or get it in the neck. And as this came to be played on them more and more they began putting a name to him—“The Vulture.”

It’s hardly necessary to call your attention to the fact that the recently arrived Mr. Pentecost had a most extraordinary equipment for the prosecution of such undertakings. Fully acquainted, even before he took up the practice of law in Chicago, with every phase of criminality, and familiar with the methods and characteristics of those engaged in it, his Spellman career brought to his hand all the weapons of sharp practice and chicanery that the crafty and hazardous defense of his underworld clients compelled him to use.

More than two years after Mr. Spellman’s disappearance, Mr. Stephen Harker (not operating under that name at the time) became suddenly aware that the talons of the offensive bird recently spoken of had sunk themselves into him. But a remarkable thing occurred. “The Vulture” wanted to see him. A meeting was arranged by an agent. Pentecost had a few tried and tested assistants in his business whom he liked to refer to as “trusties,” and this man was one of them. A year later he had fifteen or twenty mostly planted in the large cities throughout the country. These men were occupied solely in assisting him about his own operations—he had no idea of getting control of others and becoming a big boss of criminality like those you read about. Nobody ever did that anyway.

At the time he saw Harker he was beginning to have schemes for some of the most daring operations that had ever been conceived, and he’d got the idea that it would be a great advantage to work from the sound basis of a partnership and an office and a high-class rating.

The thing was brought about, resulting in the firm of Harker & Pentecost, with a perfectly satisfactory standing in the business world. Harker was the senior partner, but Pentecost was the power plant, and as soon as Harker got a gleam of the extraordinary sort of person it was who’d picked him up, he didn’t want it any other way. The running of the promoting schemes was left in his hands, while Pentecost conducted operations that were sufficiently dangerous and unusual to interest him. These affairs took him to all parts of the country, and he quite frequently spotted something in the way of a novelty that was more or less in Harker’s department. He couldn’t so much as glance at a thing without having a complete and, more often than not, amazingly ingenious method of operating it flash automatically through his mind.

They pegged along with a sort of team work for some time, Pentecost running to operations with a higher and higher percentage of danger to them, and Harker running to a higher and higher degree of anxiety on account of same, for owing to the partnership, he was in on them too. Once in a while he’d try to hook Pentecost back from something, but he never succeeded, and as one after another of these close-call enterprises got by—always, it turned out, protected by the most remarkable system of defensive lay-outs ever seen—he quit talking about it. That big risk and protection game appeared to be Pentecost’s delight. Often it would seem that he purposely played it as close as he could just to see them come up against his extraordinarily laid-out safety systems.

He was over in Boston one summer (it was the third year of the partnership), and had been there some five or six weeks attending to a little affair he had going in that town. Rather an ancient game it was, but he’d taken advantage of conditions to rejuvenate it. “Fifty percent in forty-five days and pull out whenever you like,” was the captivating slogan set in circulation. All the boobs ask for is a new excuse. If they can’t understand it, all the better—so long as it has the sound of money. Pentecost had one for them right fresh off the bat of the World War. “International Postal Reply Coupons” was his, and it did the trick. After the prompt payment of the forty-five days’ interest two or three times, there was a rush. People blocked the corridors of the office building where the headquarters of this hoary but brought-up-to-date swindle were situated, and fought for places in the line so they could get the chance to pitch away their money. Over nine million five hundred thousand was shaken out of socks and drawn out of savings banks and pushed over to Pentecost—or rather to the dummy he’d put in as manager, for of course he never appeared in it himself. This dummy was an innocent, simple-minded Italian, or Italian-American, dug up by one of Pentecost’s men and buzzed by two or three of them till he really came to believe this “Postal Reply” business was a gorgeous and legitimate undertaking. So enthusiastic about it did he become that he set to work with something bordering on religious frenzy; and so completely did his favorable opinion of the enterprise take possession of him that when, some time later, the warning signal went up and Pentecost notified him—through his trusties—to quit at once and he’d find a high-powered car waiting for him at a certain place, the fellow refused to budge. He was perfectly sure the Postal Reply Coupons affair was a profitable and reputable undertaking, and if the owners, whoever they were, were going to give it up, he’d go on with it himself. He had clerks there who knew the way to run it. It was in vain the two men who had charge of him—the same two who’d been making a nightly clean-up of the day’s receipts, transferring the amounts to various banks in the distant cities—argued with him.

When Pentecost heard of the Italian’s crazy ideas he made every possible effort to get him away. The simplicity and innocence of the poor devil hit him in the one spot where he was soft. But in this affair the time was too short. The police pounced on the Italian before Pentecost’s men could kidnap him, as they had orders to do.

The Sunday following, in his rooms at one of the hotels, Mr. Pentecost had a stack of the morning papers and was lazily running through the sensational accounts of the collapse of the Postal Reply Swindle, with their graphic descriptions of the arrest of the Italian supposed to have been at the head of it—of his wild insistence that everything was all right—of the frantic mob of investors fighting and screaming for their money—together with the statements and opinions of inspectors, district attorneys, financiers, Post Office authorities and what not, on the various aspects of the colossal fraud. It was a most amusing mess—one he’d have enjoyed immensely if his crazy Italian hadn’t got the hooks in him. He was sore as the devil about that.

As he carelessly turned the pages in other parts of one of the huge Sunday editions, his eye was suddenly caught and held by the heading of a full-page write-up in one of them, which read:

HERMIT INVENTOR OF WEST ROXBURY

MECHANICAL GENIUS SOLE OCCUPANT OF OLD CRIPPS

MANSION

MARVELOUS MACHINES BUT NO SALES

Pentecost had been lolling about in bathrobe and slippers, but now he sat erect and read on rapidly. The article strongly reinforced the notion he’d got from the headlines that he might find something out there that would come in nicely for Harker. His plan had been to leave for New York on the “Merchants’ Limited” (that is, the Sunday train running at that time on the “Merchants’” schedule), but he decided to take one of the night expresses instead, so he could get out to Roxbury and see what the fellow had.

The article spoke of the mansion as being on Torrington Road, but gave no further indication of its locality, and even at so early a stage of a barely possible chance, Pentecost would no more have thought of making enquiries than of swallowing rat poison. There were two or three pictures of the house, and several of the mechanical genius himself, which might help some. He took a taxi, dismounting as soon as they reached Torrington Road. After paying the fare and observing that the vehicle had safely disappeared townward with no questionable hesitation, he walked up the road. It was late in the afternoon and warm—the date being precisely mid August.

Mr. Pentecost, as he thought he could, recognized the old Cripps mansion from the newspaper illustrations. As he walked up the weed-grown and rutted driveway there was nothing he failed to take in: the ruinous gateway at the entrance with its great square posts—once painted white, but now a streaked and dirty brown, and one of them considerably off plumb; the neglected lawns with their tangles of overgrown grass and weeds and ancient misguided shrubbery that had long since heeded the call of the wild; the old elm trees clustered about the house and densely shading it; and the mansion itself, much needing paint and repair, particularly as to the huge wooden columns supporting the roof of a front portico two stories in height.

He saw, too, that the walls of the house were covered with a heavy growth of Virginia creeper and that this vigorous vine was massed thickly about most of the windows. Another thing he noticed was that several panes of glass were broken out of the second-story window on the left under the portico roof, and that the opening had been boarded up on the inside.

He noted all these things without pause while approaching the house, which was set at some distance back from the road; and after mounting the wide stone steps of the portico and crossing it, he pressed the push button at the right of the door. After waiting a little he gave it a more forceful shove. Still getting no response, he was in the act of raising his hand to the large and rusty knocker when the door was quietly opened and a rather tall and exceedingly slender young man stood before him in the dimness of the hall.

PART III

Most people who knew the house supposed that Michael Sutherland Cripps was the builder as well as the owner and occupant of the Cripps Mansion, as it was called, in the district of Boston popularly referred to as West Roxbury, though in reality situated in the southwestern extension of Jamaica Plain. But most people were mistaken.

Mr. Cripps had, about middle life, made a pretty good “deal”—for those days—when he suddenly got on to the way things were going in the suburbs and made a few choice investments. As a result, he became what was then called a millionaire. Of course he’d have been a mere piker now, but as he couldn’t read the future, he was well satisfied. At last he could do something. And the first thing was to get some sort of a family about him.

You see, this Cripps was naturally a lonely man—actually suffered unless he had people in the house with him; and he hadn’t had anybody since the death of his parents some years before.

What I’ve said shows you that he had no family of his own—wife and all that. He wasn’t at all a woman hater, but he was a merciless woman critic. Odd thing, too, for he liked them first off, but every time he got within striking distance of matrimony he saw what a tiresome thing it was likely to be, and thereupon fled for his life.

All the same, his ideal was to live in the midst of a family,—to have about him those who would be company for him and yet not have “claims” and things like that, that would make life a wretched bore.

Now that he’d made his haul, his first thought was to advertise for a family to come and live with him. But really nice people wouldn’t answer such an ad, and that was the only kind he wanted. Along here the thought of his own relatives occurred to him. That wasn’t a bad idea. He’d get some of them to come.

His only near relative was a widowed sister, Cynthia Findlay, living with her two children in St. Louis. Mr. Cripps had been supporting them for a number of years, both before and after her husband—a poor, disreputable fish—died of drink. She inherited nothing of value from Mr. Findlay except his absence, which was priceless but couldn’t be turned into money. She wouldn’t have parted with it, anyway.

He’d always liked Cynthia, and she’d had a tough life of it. He’d have her as a starter for his adopted-family enterprise. Yes, and the children would come in nicely, too. He’d always heard that children kept things lively. Well, that was the way he wanted them.

He had quite a lot of kin in the cousin line—mostly seconds. A male one consented to accept his invitation—for a time at least, and brought with him a sprightly wife and two quite charming grown-up daughters.

Then there were two elderly ladies who might be called cousins-in-law, one being the widow of a distant cousin and the other her sister. He was delighted that they would come, for they were witty and cheerful and level-headed.

And there were several youngish chaps in the remote distances of relationship. Cripps succeeded in getting two of them—one a second-rate sort of thing, the other a decent young fellow who was temporarily out of a job and was persuaded to try to find one in Boston.

That seemed to be about the limit of what he wanted. The only children he drew were his sister’s two youngsters, Dorothy and Augustus, nine and five years old, respectively.

After Mr. Cripps made sure he could get a decent lot to come and be a family to him, he looked about for a satisfactory place in which to establish it—and found it. One of the finest old places of the time it was, out Roxbury way on Torrington Road, and he picked it up at an extraordinary bargain.

He had the house done over in various ways and everything up to date, said date being back in the Nineties, but they had a few things even in that benighted decade. Gas, electricity, telephones, half a dozen bathrooms, a hot water heating system, and a few little things like that, did him very well. For a couple of years or so he had to manage as best he could with horses—but after that motor cars came in. Movies, aeroplanes and radio he had to struggle along without. But not knowing about them made the deprivation less severe.

Michael Cripps was a good spender and was bound to have the best of everything. A delightful host he was, too, reveling in the consciousness that he was taking care of people—giving them a good time. Besides his adopted family, he’d go out of his way to track down some unfortunate boyhood friend, or some far distant relative who hadn’t done well, and give him the time of his life.

So there he was, no longer suffering the—to him—hideous nightmare of having to live alone in a desolate house, but situated in a luxurious mansion, virtually in the country, yet only a few miles from the violently beating heart of the town, and surrounded by his own people, who turned out to be very enjoyable company—some of them, indeed, quite charming.

All went well and pleasantly—if you leave out occasional minor discords of small consequence—for quite some years. But owing to the inroads of death, marriage, and desertion, the population of the mansion decreased as time went on, and no way to recruit it to full strength occurred to Mr. Cripps. His sister Cynthia died early in 1904 and was followed by her daughter Dorothy a year and a half later. Others of the household had crossed the line; then, too, a couple of marriages had snatched their victims from the fold; and a few of the members of this synthetic family had departed for reasons of their own.

It had been quite a successful experiment as experiments go—more so than you’d think; and there’s no denying that old Cripps had got a lot of satisfaction out of it. But the thing had been falling away from him piece by piece, and finally his sister’s son Augustus was the only one left in the house with him. The old man had had a good pull at it, but here he was down to the last dreg—as you’d be likely to call it if you were acquainted with that precious nephew of his.

Being the only near relative that old Mr. Cripps now had on hand—or, indeed, had at all—it was generally supposed that Augustus Findlay would inherit the mansion, together with whatever else the old gentleman should die possessed of. But all did not go well between the two and there were times when gossip had it that the sporty young nephew would lose out on the “give and bequeath” proposition if he didn’t shove down the emergency brake on his behavior.

It was surely a trying thing for Michael Sutherland Cripps, with age and rheumatism already beginning to frolic with him, and the most of his once big pile melted away—or more truthfully pelted away, for during these years of his family life he’d spent without limit—to have to associate on intimate terms with a most objectionable brat of a nephew, coming in nearly every night of his life fuddled with booze—a cheap skate, and an unmitigated loafer in the real sense of the word, for at the age of twenty-six never a thought of earning his living had crossed his mind. Yet with all that he wasn’t a bad looker—almost handsome in a dissipated sort of way. And he could be charming on occasion. Women appeared fascinated by him—that is, some women. He had a high-class one on the line once and came near landing her, but she found out in time, tore out the hook, and swam away.

People wondered that old Cripps, whose violent temper was known throughout the West Roxbury and Jamaica Plains districts, was standing for that sort of thing in the house with him day after day—night after night. But the poor old boy had a reason for standing it—his absolute terror of being left alone. Whatever else the presence of Augustus did to him it saved him from that.

One afternoon late in October (it was 1910 by this time) Mr. Cripps was in the attic of the mansion trying to find something, when his glance happened to light on an old trunk in which he’d been accustomed to put letters from people acknowledging his delightful hospitality—a lazy way of keeping a visitors’ book. Up to now he’d only once had occasion to refer to these letters, and then merely to get an address. So long as the Present held out as an agreeable institution, Cripps didn’t care a great deal about recollections of bygone episodes. But of late the Present hadn’t been doing so well by him, and the Past was beginning to exhibit symptoms of attractiveness. One of these symptoms now manifested itself, drawing him so gently that he could hardly feel its pull, toward the old trunk of letters. He found a crippled chair in which he sat down before the thing and managed—with some little difficulty—to raise the lid.

He’d been there nearly an hour, glancing at letters which he picked up at random here and there, when he came upon a little package of three tied together and addressed in a hand he’d forgotten. But when he began to read one of them he remembered. It was from a young girl who’d been visiting there.

More than eighteen years ago the first of the letters was written. Pretty handwriting it was. Now he came to think of it, he’d always liked her handwriting, whoever she was. Glancing at the end, he found that she had signed herself Iris. Oh yes, now he began to remember! Quite a—yes—quite a charming little thing she was, too! By Jove yes! And he’d come very near to—to——His thoughts whirled a little here, but they settled down again in a moment. What was all this—he hadn’t married her, so why bother about it? He couldn’t quite recall how she came to be visiting there. Oh yes, now he remembered! She was a distant relative—almost indescribably distant. One of those things like second cousin of your brother-in-law’s first wife. And that reminded him that he used to call her his cousin a thousand times removed! It had been quite a joke between them; and at one time he had come breathlessly near to wiping out the entire bunch of removals by making one little suggestion—which, however, he never made. No, he never made it, worse luck! Or was it worse? A sweet little thing she was, and her name was—her name——He’d forgotten it again and glanced at the end of the letter. Oh, Iris—yes, of course! Iris Heminway. He got her last name himself. His dear little cousin, a thousand times removed. He couldn’t think what ever became of her! Nothing in the letter but what a perfectly lovely visit she’d had. Perhaps the next one might have something. Postmark made it four weeks later—no, five. He began to read. That was it—just what he thought! Somebody has asked her to marry him and she doesn’t know what to do. Wants to know what he thinks of her marrying a machinist. Machinist! He couldn’t recall what he’d answered. Most likely he’d told her to go on and marry the entire machine shop if she felt drawn to it! By George—now he thought of it, he did say just that! Rotten beastly pride! Huffed that she’d spoken of some one else—and there she was giving him the chance, even though he’d never written to her in all that time! Probably doesn’t give the chap’s name. Yes—there it was—Haworth! (Reading to himself from the letter): “His name is Charlie Haworth. He’s a special kind of a machinist and draughtsman and his home is in Montreal. I’m sure he is a splendid fellow, but I thought I would like to ask your advice about it.”

That was all. She didn’t say when or where, but just wanted his advice. Well, he’d given it to her!

And here was the last letter—Canada stamp and Montreal postmark. Yes, she’d married the machinist and gone up there. Two years later the letter was, according to the postmark.—Oh! Baby! That was it! (Reading again to himself): “... wanted you to know, so I’m writing you the first one. Of course we want his name to be from his father—Charles—but I thought you wouldn’t mind if we called his middle name after you, so it will be Charles Michael Haworth.”

The old man sat there for quite a while, staring before him. Then, rather suddenly, the thought came to him that he might be able to find these people, especially that boy—though of course he wouldn’t be a boy any longer. He’d be along seventeen or eighteen, he should think. He looked at the letter again. Montreal, and she gave the street address; but that was years ago. He might try it though, just to see. Charles Michael Haworth. He rather liked the name.

That evening he wrote a letter to the address given and sent it out to the nearest mailbox.

But in the night he got to thinking the thing over so intensely that sleep was impossible. It came to him then that the letter business was a waste of time. He got nervous, too, about the matter of death, the thought of which seldom bothered him. And on top of everything his dissolute nephew came lurching into the house about four-thirty in the morning, banging the heavy front door after him so that the building shuddered, careening against furniture, and finally stumbling up the stairway, all the while emitting a stream of disconnected profanity.

This was the finishing touch for old man Cripps. He rolled himself out of bed and made one bull rush—in his nightgown and bare feet—into the upper hall, meeting the astonished inebriate near the head of the stairs. Seizing him by the collar with both hands, he shook him back and forth, then dragged him bumping and rolling down the stairs, through the great entrance hall, out of the front door, across the entrance portico, and from there heaved him sprawling into the roadway.

For one instant the enraged old man stood looking at the dark mass lying there at the bottom of the steps, then turning with a sudden start he charged back into the house and up the stairs again and through the upper hall to his nephew’s bedroom, where he seized with frenzied clutchings all the clothing he could find in drawers, closets, on chairs, and on the floor, which he forthwith pitched out through the doorway into the hall, prancing back and forth across the room a dozen times or more to do it.

Where the old gentleman got his wind for all this would be a serious problem in physics and chemistry, for he was heavily built, underexercised, and with a tobacco heart. Anyway, he did it.

As soon as he’d cleared out everything he could find he rushed out and down the hall to his own room, and shoved in every bell push in the place, and kept on shoving until the chauffeur came running up the stairs, followed by both maids and the cook, and shortly after by the head gardener and his ten-year-old son from their cottage near. All were clutching together such garments as they’d hastily snatched up and thrown on over their night clothes.

Mr. Cripps had a fad for bells from his room to everyone concerned. But it was the chauffeur he wanted this time, and he yelled to him to get the car (it was 1910 by now, and of course he had one) and take the blankety-blank carcass of putrid hogwash at the bottom of the front steps an’ dump it in the road—anywhere—any street—any road! Just get the blankety-blank-blank-blank out of this place and his clothes with him—that was all he asked!

“Here, you!” he shouted in a general way to the maids and cook, “pitch those clothes out on top of him where Henry can find ’em—that pile in front of his door! Take ’em all—every damn stitch—you understand? Throw out everything he’s got! Don’t leave a damn thing he ever touched!” (To the chauffeur) “And when you’ve dumped the dirty loafer, and his putrid stuff on top of him, a couple of miles down the road, you come back and take me to town! North Station is what I want! I’ll be gone two or three days, and if any of you people allow that dirty, foul-mouthed, booze-soaked bum to crawl back into this house while I’m away I’ll fire the lot of you—take that from me!”

As in many instances, I can give you, in this one, only an approximate idea of the language used. I had the testimony of four persons who were witnesses of the scene, and the only danger is that it lacks the proper amount of intensity and force. If it isn’t clear what happened, just take it that Augustus Findlay was thoroughly and effectually kicked out of the house.

The servants, without exception, liked old man Cripps. You could almost say they were fond of him. Their opinion of Augustus I needn’t mention; so there wasn’t the slightest danger that he’d get into the house again even if they had to take turn and turn about in night watches to make sure of it.

The maids attended to the throwing out of the clothes with a spirit that could only have been born of the great enjoyment they took in the work, and the chauffeur did no less when it came to his part of the job. After which he transported the old gentleman to the North Station, getting him there in time for the morning train to Montreal.

Those three faded letters from Iris Heminway sent old Mr. Cripps to Canada in the hope of finding her and her husband and boy, and persuading them to come and live with him. But after an hour on the train he began to realize what an extremely off chance he had of succeeding in his quest, with the meager amount of information in his possession. They might have moved to another town—they might even be dead. Many things can happen in eighteen years. But now he’d started, he was going on with it! Well, he should think so!

The following morning he began the search, and had no difficulty in finding the address. It was a modest frame cottage beginning to show its age. A large middle-aged woman came to the door, and when Mr. Cripps explained that he was trying to trace a family named Haworth which had once occupied the house, she said at once, “Oh, I can tell you that,” and asked him in.

In the little front room she said: “Charlie lives here with me. Was it ’im you was askin’ about?”

He was so dumfounded at coming upon the object of his search at the very start that his “yes” was hardly audible. Then he added, “And—and Mrs. Haworth and the boy?”

“It’s the boy as is ’ere, sir; there ain’t none of ’em left but ’im.”

They sat down in the small room.

“You don’t—you don’t mean both of his parents are dead!”

“Yes, sir! ’Is mother she died about three years ago, an’ ’is father quite a spell before that.”

“And the little boy’s been living here with you since?”

“Yes, sir, ’e ’as. But you’d ’ardly call ’im little, sir; ’e’s comin’ on to eighteen.”

“Yes yes—of course. I knew he must be grown up, but in spite of that I couldn’t help thinking of him as a youngster. Is he—is he a nice boy? All right and—and straight—and good habits?”

“Indeed ’e is—a dear boy—but ’e’s a bit strange; an’ I ’opes, sir, if you ’ave any influence with ’im, you’ll try if you can’t do something about it.”

“Influence! But my God! I’ve never seen him, Mrs.——”

“Towse, sir.”

“Well, you see, Mrs. Towse, I don’t know the boy at all, and what’s more I doubt if he ever heard of me. So what I might say would hardly count with him, would it?”

“Of course,” Mrs. Towse said, “if you don’t know ’im you couldn’t do anything just yet, but after you get acquainted ’e might listen to you.”

“What seems to be the matter?” Mr. Cripps inquired. The devastating fear had come upon him that it might be another case of Augustus.

“It’s the way ’e was born, I suppose. ’E’s got so many ideas of ’is own that ’e can’t go along satisfactory with w’at you might call reg’lar work. W’y, ’e’d be a first-class machinist drawin’ good pay, but ’e’s so full o’ plans an’ ideas for this an’ that, ’e don’t seem to keep ’is mind on anything they put ’im to.”

Mr. Cripps inquired if the young man was doing anything just now.

“Mercy on us! Why, we can’t ’ardly get ’im ’ome for ’is meals, ’e’s that taken up with ’is invention work; but the thing ’e gets to workin’ on don’t never seem to be w’at people want.”

“What kind of things are they?”

“W’y, there’s all sorts. ’E gets an idea an’ then nothin’ can stop ’im—no matter w’ether it’s somethin’ worth botherin’ with or not. Some o’ the best men in Smith an’ Gaynor’s—that’s w’ere his father use to work—they say ’e’s got a wonderful invention faculty an’ Mr. Gaynor ’imself said it just after ’e’d been lookin’ over a clock Charlie made. It took ’im nigh to a year to finish it. Mr. Gaynor said the boy ’ad some kind o’ new an’ un’eard-of escapin’ thing I b’lieve they called it, that no one had ever seen or thought of before.”

“Wouldn’t it sell?”

“Not at first it wouldn’t, but w’en ’e’d ’most given it up a Mr. Patterson ’appened to come along an’ offered ’im two ’undred dollars for it an’ a patent on the new escapin’ thing, an’ Charlie took it. That might sound good enough for a clock, but it ain’t no pay w’en you comes to consider eleven months’ work, not to speak of what ’e’d ’ad to buy to make it of. But mercy! I didn’t ’ave any expectation it would sell! I don’t see what anyone in their senses would want of such a thing around the house, tickin’ that powerful you could hear it ’alf a block, an’ strikin’ different sorts o’ bells an’ chimes, an’ cuckoos singin’, an’ sun an’ moon risin’ an’ settin’, an’ ships rockin’, an’ folks comin’ in an’ out with umbrellas, an’ all. I don’t see how people can get any sleep with all them things goin’ on!”

“Where is he, Mrs. Towse? Not here. I suppose?”

“W’y, just now ’e’s workin’ over to Rawlingson’s Garage on Westover Street. They took ’im in there to help on repair work, an’ as soon as ’e gets to dreamin’ they dock ’is time. You see, it was the on’y way to manage. But o’ course in a big place like Smith an’ Gaynor’s they couldn’t trouble with no such things.”

Mr. Cripps learned that the elder Haworth had succumbed to an attack of pneumonia some five years previously, and that his fragile little wife had outlived him only a year and a half. The Smith & Gaynor people, where the elder Haworth had been employed so long, were more than generous, supporting Mrs. Haworth and the boy as long as she lived, and after her death doing everything possible to give young Charlie a good start as a machinist, which seemed to be the only line of work he wanted to undertake. They apprenticed him through their shops, finding that he was the master of every machine in the place—as well as the drafting room and foundry—in an incredibly short time. But when it came to regular employment, nothing could be done with him. His inability to hold his mind to the work in hand after it had been swept by one of his inventive brain storms was absolute. After many efforts to overcome this difficulty they finally had to give it up and let the young man go.

Following that he picked up stray jobs here and there, handing over whatever he earned to Mrs. Towse, who mothered him along, even buying his clothing for him when she judged that it was necessary.

Mrs. Towse had gone to the garage to get him, and the old gentleman waiting in the small front room felt his heart pounding most unusually—he couldn’t imagine why. He’d never set eyes on the boy. How could he be so disturbed over the question of the kind of boy he’d prove to be? At last Mrs. Towse, breathing hard, came briskly into the room, followed by a boyish-looking young man with a pale face and steady brown eyes.

“’Ere ’e is, sir! This is Charlie Haworth!”

The two shook hands, Haworth with his serious, steady gaze on the older man.

“Come now, Mrs. Towse” (from Mr. Cripps, smiling), “you didn’t give him his full name. You may not know it, Mr. Haworth, but your middle name is Michael and you owe it, in a certain sense, to me.”

The young fellow nodded slightly without taking his eyes off Mr. Cripps. He was a trifle above medium height and rather slim, with a delicate sort of face smooth shaven. His hair was dark but not black. He wore “jumpers” over his regular clothes, and his hands, notwithstanding that Mrs. Towse had made him wash them, were soiled with what would not come off. The most noticeable thing about him was a sort of innocent childlikeness in the steady, serious gaze of his luminous brown eyes. When they were turned toward a person who spoke or was spoken of, they rested on him for some little time, giving the impression, not of staring, but of calmly reflecting on what he saw or what the person was or had been saying.

They talked a little, Haworth answering with quiet and simple directness when asked about his work and what, in the way of inventions, was particularly interesting him at the present moment.

It proved to be what is known as a “time stamp”—a device for printing the exact hour and minute of the day on workmen’s cards as they passed in and out of factories, or on letters and such things in offices and hotels. These machines must carry a movable printing mechanism that is controlled by clockwork.

“Is that a new idea?” Cripps asked.

“No. I’m making one on a new principle, that’s all.”

“I see—new principle. And it’ll be a better one than the old, of course?”

“Well, I’ll like it better, anyway,” Haworth answered, with a shadowy smile, the first Mr. Cripps had seen on his serious face, and he was struck by the way it lighted it up for the brief time it was there. A moment of silence followed. Then Haworth, serious again, asked in a low voice, “Is your name Michael?”

“Yes—Michael Cripps.”

“My mother told me. She spoke of you once in a while.”

Mr. Cripps was silent a moment, quite moved.

“I was looking over some letters,” he soon resumed, “and came across the one she wrote telling me she’d given you the Michael out of my name, and it—well, I had a sudden feeling that I—that I’d very much like to see you—and—and her too if such a thing had been possible.”

Another silence, then, “Did you bring the letter?” Haworth asked.

“Why, yes. I’ve got it over at the hotel.” He read the eagerness in the young man’s eyes and went on: “Perhaps you’ll drop in there this evening. There’s that letter and two others. Do come. I’d like to have a little chat.”

After a few seconds, while his steady calm eyes rested on the old man, Haworth spoke.

“I will,” he said.

“Good,” said Mr. Cripps. And not long after—for he knew the value of brevity in such a case, he shook hands with both of them and told Haworth where he was staying. He went on foot the entire distance to the hotel, vastly enjoying a shadowy revisitation of the feeling known as treading on air.

The old fellow was captivated with the young one. So much so that a painful dread took possession of him that he might not be able to persuade him to leave Montreal, which was his home, and where, undoubtedly, all the friends he had were living. Young Haworth, he was certain, knew little about money and cared for it even less; for which reason no pecuniary advantages he (Cripps) could hold out would be likely to attract him.

It was Mr. Ralph Gaynor of the Smith & Gaynor Machine Works, who gave Mr. Cripps the most light on Haworth’s characteristics as to pecuniary matters, his genius for invention, and his inability to do steady work. This Mr. Gaynor, who was head of the works, thought young Haworth was hopeless. He could learn all right. Good God! The boy was a marvel when it came to that! He’d know more about a machine inside of two days than a man they’d had on it for years. But when it came to steady work he just couldn’t do it. Not but what he tried his best, but his mind would get off on something else and you can’t leave big lathes and complicated drill presses with anybody like that.

“O’ course I lit into him and gave it to him right from the shoulder,” Mr. Gaynor said, “but it didn’t do any good. Then I fired him, and he’d sure have starved if that Towse woman hadn’t gone on feeding him for nothing—which she couldn’t afford to do. Then we took him back an’ tried him with a helper to watch him, but even that wouldn’t work when he got one of his real inventing fits on him. So we had to give him up. Fond of the boy too, but there’s a limit.”

“What do you think of his talent—his inventive faculty?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. There isn’t any doubt but what he’s got a lot in him for new mechanical methods, but he can’t get anywhere with it because he hasn’t got the faintest conception of what people want. And telling him’s no good. You might as well tell a rooster to lay eggs. Of course he might hit on a winner by accident. That happens with these dreamy chaps once in a while, but the big guns like Edison, Marconi, and that lot know what they’re about every minute, an’ what’s more they never forget it. Now you must excuse me. There’s a new man on that third lathe down there I’ve got to keep an eye on. Glad to see you. Welcome to look through the shop if you care for such things. Good day.” And Mr. Gaynor hurried out of his office.

Mr. Cripps ran a carefully managed campaign to bring about the capture, as you might put it, of Charles Michael Haworth, and he ran it well; for there’s no denying that he was a man of judgment. And at once appreciating the serious limitations on what would attract the young man, he came down without delay to pushing one thing—the advantage of having a shop of his own, with whatever machines and room he required.

He played up to this with extreme caution, not speaking of it at all when Haworth called upon him that first evening, and only hinting at such a possibility during their next interview the day after. The third time they met, which was at the garage where Haworth was employed, he expressed curiosity as to whether young Haworth would care for a place where he could experiment and do what he pleased.

It appeared that young Haworth would; and soon thereafter Cripps brought in casually that, now he came to think of it, he had rather a good place for a shop where he lived—a large and airy sort of basement. Wouldn’t Haworth like to come along and try it, just to see how it would go? He needn’t stay if he didn’t like it. Just call it a visit or something like that. He, Mr. Cripps, would be delighted to have him there—that is, of course, if he’d care for such a thing.

The young fellow sat thinking for quite a time. Finally he looked up, and his eyes rested softly on old Cripps’s face as he asked in his quiet and serious way, “What kind of power could we have?” And old Cripps knew that the game was his.

A small trunk held all of Haworth’s personal belongings, but two crates were required for the shipping of his mechanical devices that he couldn’t leave behind.

Old Cripps was on edge for the few days following their arrival, fearing the boy would be disappointed or lonely, perhaps even homesick; the mansion itself, now that he came to figure how it might affect the young man, seemed hideously vast and hopelessly dismal—the huge high-ceilinged rooms, the empty echoing halls, the whole place gloomy and overcast from the great elms standing close about.

But the young man appeared to notice nothing of all these things; on the contrary, he fell in quietly and easily with the methods and habits of the diminutive household.

The large basement room he was to have for a shop was thoroughly cleaned and double flooring laid. It was ceiled and painted white; electric lights were installed, and an electric motor for power. Old Cripps had a mechanical expert come out to go over with Haworth the matter of the various machines and apparatus required, and insisted that every one of them must be of the best and most modern type. A lathe, a shaper, two drill presses, and an emery wheel were put in at the time; some months later another lathe for larger work was added. Also there was a bench with vises, and all the small tools and accessories necessary to complete a machine shop.

Opening off the main room was a smaller one with the fittings for a drafting room, and a large rough-boarded-off space in the ell of the basement was cleared out for the finished machines and inventions and working models that Haworth desired to store there. These came from Montreal (after infinite trouble with the customs) and were set up in this place. Altogether the little plant was quite complete in all important particulars, and thereafter it was always delightful to Mr. Cripps to add to its equipment at the slightest hint from Haworth. For the old man was more and more taken with the young one as the days went by. Haworth’s gentle and charming personality, his quiet sincerity and straightforwardness, were singularly appealing. But added to this for old Cripps was the effect of the vast contrast between this clean, simple-minded, almost childlike young fellow and the dissolute loafer of a nephew he had so long endured.

It was an odd little household, the two composing it differing so greatly in their ages, tastes, and temperaments, yet living in that vast and gloomy mansion in perfect harmony and content, neither of them saying much, yet thoroughly enjoying each other’s company.

Mr. Cripps became intensely interested in the young fellow’s work, too, appreciating enthusiastically the extraordinary ingenuity of his devices and altogether overlooking the drawback which they invariably seemed to have of not being in the line of popular demand. He had application made—in Haworth’s name of course—for patents on several of the most important. And when notice came from Washington that patents had been allowed, the old gentleman fell to dancing and prancing about like a rheumatic schoolboy, Haworth standing silent but smiling serenely at him as he careened ponderously about the room.

They had three years and four months of this life together, and then the summons came for the old man. Some sort of stroke, I think; but no matter—it did for him. Not at once, but the next thing to it. A couple of days or thereabouts. He tried to tell Haworth something about the property before he went, but couldn’t manage it. The young man sat silent and looked at him wide-eyed like some timid animal distressed and fearful.

Everything was left to Haworth. This included the house and grounds—on which there was a mortgage—and a few thousand dollars in the bank, doubtless the remnant of the money so obtained. That was all, of value. Quite an enormous lot of worthless stocks, mostly mining, were found in his safe-deposit boxes.

Henry P. Trescott, who had been old Cripps’s legal adviser, attended to matters connected with the will, and if it hadn’t been for his suggestions Haworth would never have thought of cutting down the expenses of the establishment. He did what Trescott advised—discharged all the servants except the cook and one maid, closed the entire north side of the house, and had the telephones and more than half the electric-light bulbs removed. It isn’t likely Haworth would have consented to these economies but for Trescott’s assurance that if he didn’t it would be but a brief time before he’d have to give up the house and all that it contained. The lawyer at first advised selling the place, but to that Haworth wouldn’t agree. The house itself didn’t matter so much—it was the shop and all his things down there, and the quiet surroundings.

Trescott also looked over Haworth’s work and occasionally sent out people who might be interested. But no one was. And after a time the young inventor grew to dislike having people come, knowing so well that they’d go away again with awkward regrets for having troubled him. One day when a caller was announced, he sent word by the maid that he was busy and couldn’t see anyone. The result was so gratifying that soon he came to rely on this expedient altogether. Thereafter he led a perfectly quiet and uninterrupted existence, devoting himself to the work he loved, undisturbed by events of any kind. The loss of his generous and sympathetic companion had affected him deeply, and often he was beset with an aching loneliness. But always he could retreat into the safe sanctuary of mechanics—the perfect absorption in his inventive pursuits—where loneliness and grief were successfully held at bay.

His time was mostly spent in his shop or drafting room, but he liked to walk when there were problems on his mind. He had certain places for certain kinds of problems: along a nearby section of railroad track, for one; a lonely little path in a patch of woods and weeds and bushes about a mile down the road, for another, and so on. Franklin Park wouldn’t do at all, for he was likely to meet people there; as to that, so would he on the railroad, but there it would only be men, and the sort he didn’t mind—working chaps, machinists, engineers, switchmen, and trainmen on the way to work or home from it.

PART IV

One late April afternoon—a chilly dismal day it had been, with a drizzle of rain—the maid knocked at his workroom door, and when he’d shut down the power on the drill he was using, she told him a lady and gentleman were at the door asking to see him, and they didn’t give any name.

“Busy,” he answered mechanically, and was turning back to his work.

“Excuse me sir, but the gentleman said, though you wouldn’t know him, he’s a near relative of old Mr. Cripps as used to live here.”

“Oh!” (Long pause.) “Relative.”

“Yes sir.”

“Lady with him, you say?”

“Yes sir, there is.” This maid, whose name was Hulda, had been there only a few weeks.

After a long consideration of the matter, turning it this way and that in his mind, Haworth abandoned hope of finding some way out of it, and told the maid to show them into the hall and say he’d come soon. He got out of his jumpers, washed his hands, and went upstairs.

Both the man and woman rose as he came toward them from the rear hall. The man stepped forward a little.

“Mr. Haworth?”

“Yes.”

“It’s very kind of you to see us, but perhaps you wouldn’t have done it if I’d sent in my name. I thought it was only right to give me a chance to explain.”

Haworth’s calm brown-eyed gaze was upon the man. “Explain what?” he asked, softly—almost timidly.

“You’ll know well enough when I tell you that I’m Augustus Findlay.... Yes, I’m Augustus Findlay,” he repeated, as the first announcement of the fact appeared not to have produced the effect expected, “an’ I’m not ashamed to own it!”

“What did you want to see me about?”

“That’s just what I expected! Just it, by God! It’s what I looked for, to be treated as a stranger!” And turning to his companion who was standing a little back of him, “Didn’t I tell you how it would be?” And to Haworth: “Of course the old man poisoned your mind against me. What else could you expect? He never had a kind word for me, Mr. Haworth—not one! It was pure animosity and hatred—and he my uncle, too!”

Haworth regarded him calmly for a moment.

“Who is your uncle?” he finally asked.

“Aw, what’s the good o’ pretending you don’t know who I mean! Pretty rank that is, if you ask me!”

And then, as Haworth said nothing in the pause allotted to him, he went on in a loud and blatant tone: “It’s old man Cripps I’m talking about—the one you’ve been living with for the last three or four years until he died and left you all his money—an’ this place along with it, I suppose!”

“I’m sorry,” Haworth murmured. And then, after a pause, “Did he know about you?”

“Know about me!” Findlay turned back to the young woman with a bitter laugh. “That’s pretty neat now, isn’t it?... Why,” (to Haworth) “I lived here in the house with him all my life until just before you came along! All my life by God!”

“And—you went away then?”

“Well, I didn’t exactly—I didn’t so much——You ain’t kiddin’ me, are you? Didn’t he ever tell you about it?”

Haworth shook his head slightly.

“Well” (turning to his companion) “can you beat that? The old man was——Oh, I beg your pardon! This is my wife, Edith. Mr. Haworth—Mr. Charles Haworth, I believe it is!” The girl—for she was only that—put out her hand timidly and Haworth took it.

“Now we haven’t come here as beggars, Mr. Haworth. I said to Edith we’d never do a thing like that. Didn’t I say it?” turning to his girlish wife.

She shook her head almost imperceptibly and glanced down in evident distress.

“No, I should think not!” He, in a measure, answering for her. “Don’t run away with the idea we’re that kind! Never more mistaken in your life!” And Findlay went on, becoming rather loud about it. “Far from it! We’re not that sort! But I’ll say this much, Mr. Haworth,—that matters haven’t gone right with us for some little time. No, they haven’t, and that’s a fact! We’ve certainly been up against it at every turn of the cards and we’re pretty close to being up against it now.”

Haworth’s eyes were steadily on Augustus as he talked. Only once did they shift for an instant to the girl.

“Now I wouldn’t go to any stranger,” Findlay went on; “no, not even to an ordinary friend you know,—for—ah—for advice at such a time. But I lived here all my life, an’ owing to blind prejudice an’ slander—that’s what it was, Mr. Haworth—I lost out on the will. Everything went to you. God knows I don’t complain of that! But in a time of trouble like this it seems only proper and decent to come to you for advice.”

Haworth spoke after a little pause. “Advice?” (Almost in a whisper).

“Yes, Mr. Haworth, that’s what I want! I need some one to tell me what to do, for I don’t know which way to turn. Of course, if out of the fullness of your heart you can—help us a little—just till I get on my feet——”

He broke off to give Haworth a chance to say something, but the young inventor did not speak.

“Why it’s as bad as this, Mr. Haworth, though I hate like hell to tell you! We haven’t actually—we haven’t actually any idea where we’re going to sleep to-night! That’s God’s truth!”

“There’s plenty of room here,” Haworth murmured in a low voice.

“Why, but you——I—I’d no idea of such a——Edith dear, do you hear that?”

The girl smiled a little doubtfully, and looked at Haworth.

Augustus went right along piling words on top of Haworth’s implied offer as if hoping to bury it so deep it couldn’t be withdrawn.

“My God! But that’s a great relief! You’ve no idea! It’s certainly splendid of you, Mr. Haworth! You really mean we can put up here with you for a bit? Wouldn’t make you trouble for the world or impose on your kindness, but if—if you can manage it—just till I get on my feet again—I can’t tell how much—how——”

“Come upstairs,” Haworth said, “and see which room you’d like.” He led the way to the floor above.

The large room at the front of the house on the south side (the north side wasn’t in use, you’ll remember) was finally decided upon for the Findlays. Haworth occupied a smaller one quite a distance back on the same corridor. There were several rooms and two or three bathrooms between.

When they came down he took them into the living room—that is to say, the room he used as such. It was a vast panelled apartment with a marble mantel and fireplace, and had been the dining room back in the old Cripps days. The chamber chosen by Augustus for the use of his wife and himself was directly above the front part of it.

Findlay now began a long recital of his misfortunes, telling with acrimony how he’d lost this position and that, always through no fault of his own. Now and then he managed to bring in references to his uncle, all tending to impress one with the idea that he had been most unjustly treated.

Haworth’s steady gaze, not for an instant leaving his face as he talked on, began to disturb Augustus. It gave him the feeling of being under calm and critical observation—which, in fact, he was. So before he’d gone far in his pathetic narrative he began to stumble about and lose track of what he was saying, and finally he rose suddenly, announcing that he’d completely forgotten about their trunks, which were at the South Station—for it seemed they had come in from somewhere—and he’d go and bring them out if Mr. Haworth didn’t mind.

Mr. Haworth didn’t mind at all and said so, and Findlay got his coat and hat and was just going out of the front door when he suddenly stopped, remembering something. Then he called back into the room asking Haworth if he could come out there just a moment—he’d like to speak to him.

“Awfully sorry, old chap,” he said in a carefully lowered voice when they were at the door together, “but could you—ah——You see I—I’m ashamed to say I haven’t got enough to pay an expressman. If I can once get the trunks out here we’ll be all right—if you don’t mind giving me a bit of a loan for that.”

“I see,” said Haworth, and he turned and went upstairs.

The moment he was out of sight Augustus stepped quickly to the door of the living room, and putting his head in, spoke to his wife in a sharp half whisper: “No monkey business now! If you give away anything you’ll be sorry for it!” And hearing steps near the top of the stairs he was instantly back at the front door again, waiting.

Haworth came down with a ten-dollar bill which he handed to Findlay, and the latter thanked him effusively and left the house. Haworth stood for a moment in thought, then went back into the living room. Edith Findlay looked up at him as he came in, and he stopped with his eyes on her, seeing that she was going to speak.

But it seemed hard for her to do so.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she finally said in a sort of breathless whisper.

He thought it over and then said, “Why?”

“I didn’t want to come—I tried to stop him.” Her voice had a soft huskiness that was strangely appealing. Her glance flitted painfully about the room, and she turned to him again.

“It’ll be so terrible for you!”

“You needn’t worry about me,” he said quietly, his eyes resting softly on her face.

“I can’t help it. I——No!” She suddenly stood up.

“We mustn’t stay, Mr. Haworth. I’ll find him and tell him so!”

“Don’t do that,” he said.

“Oh, but I——Mr. Haworth you—you don’t understand!”

“Not very well,—but you’ll tell me I hope.... No,—sit down first—this chair.” And as he moved nearer she sank into the old upholstered chair he indicated.

“Where could you go?” he asked as he stood before her.

“Oh——” She waved her hand as if such a matter was of no consequence. “That’s—that’s nothing!”

“Nothing for him perhaps, but——” He broke off, looking down into her upturned eyes.

A little spasmodic shiver passed over her. Haworth stepped quickly to the fireplace where wood and kindlings were ready laid. He knelt there, lighting a match and holding it to the shavings and small splinters.

She seemed somehow like a child, sitting there so small and demure in the big armchair. A child in distress, for from her face you’d hardly think she’d had any sleep for a week, and her dress was pitifully worn and shabby.

As Haworth was kneeling at the fireplace he turned to ask her something. The quick flaming of the shavings and small stuff threw a bright light on her poor little run-over shoes. He stopped motionless looking at them, then leaned over without getting to his feet and touched one. At once he rose and walked around behind her chair, which he pushed and turned until her feet were as near the fire as he thought would do. Then he pushed an electric button near the door.

“You may not know it,” he said as he stood waiting, “but you’re going to drink some hot tea—something near two hundred and twelve in the shade. Also, you’re going to have dry things for your feet, even if you have to shuffle about in something of mine!”

The maid came and he told her to make tea—the hottest kind she ever heard of—and to bring things with it—toast or whatever it was—she knew. Then he went on to ask what she could do about footwear for Mrs. Findlay, who was cold and wet and also very tired; and wouldn’t Hulda please take charge of her and arrange things satisfactorily?

Hulda said she thought she could manage if the lady wouldn’t mind wearing some of her things, and Haworth said he was sure she wouldn’t—and over his shoulder toward Edith, “You wouldn’t, would you?” And he saw the top of her little round hat above the back of the chair shaking slightly for “no” and heard a very faint sniffle, and told Hulda it would be all right. Upon which the maid departed to attend to everything.

Haworth stood uncertain a moment, for the first sniffle had alarmed him, as he realized that he wouldn’t have an idea what to do if Mrs. Findlay was actually crying. He earnestly hoped she wasn’t, yet had a fairly trustworthy intuition that such a thing was at that moment transpiring; and it occurred to him that if this was so, the correct and possibly even the noble behavior might be to go away and leave her. On the other hand, something might be seriously the matter, and probably was, otherwise why should such a thing be going on?

This latter seemed the most sensible view, and on arriving at it he went over very quietly and stood by the marble mantel, which brought him quite near and almost in front of her.

She was dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief every now and then, and as the firelight flickered on the hand that was doing it, he couldn’t help seeing that it was a perfect dear of a little hand. He didn’t understand how he could be thinking of this at such a time, when she was in evident distress; but for a moment he couldn’t think of anything else. And the diminutive wad of crumpled handkerchief,—also the wet and worn-out little shoes, appealed to him in some peculiar way that brought on, deep down in his system, an almost unbearable ache.

Suddenly she looked up at him.

“Do you know what I ought to do?”

He shook his head as he stood looking down at her.

“I ought to run out of the house this—this very instant.”

She glanced anxiously about as if meditating flight, which, in fact, she was.

“What for?” Haworth asked.

“For you,” she said.

The shadow of a smile passed over Haworth’s face.

“That wouldn’t do me any good.”

“Oh, it would—it would!” she cried out. “Because our being here is going to—to——” She was unable to go on.

“What is it going to do?” he finally asked.

She looked at him steadily for a moment, and then shook her head a little, but did not speak.

“Please tell me this: Is it true that your husband is Mr. Cripps’s nephew?”

“Yes, Mr. Haworth.”

“Then, even though it’s going to be so terrible, I’d rather have him stay. Mr. Cripps never said anything about having a nephew. I’m afraid there was some injustice done.”

Edith was looking up in his face, and there was something about it that he simply couldn’t stand. The only alternative seemed to be to go somewhere else as soon as he possibly could. Acting on this idea, he made a considerable effort and got his eyes away from her, and spoke quickly and mumblingly, addressing the floor.

“You know Hulda, the one you saw just now—she was here——”

“Yes, I saw her.”

“That’s the one. Well, she’ll take care of everything—tea, you know—and dry—and warm—and—your room—and—yes.”

He turned and walked rapidly past Edith and out of the room by one of the rear doors, thence through a back hall and down the basement stairs, making thus an instinctive retreat to his machine shop, the mechanical panacea for all his mental disturbances. At least he had found it so up to now.

Leaving Edith Findlay entirely in Hulda’s hands was precisely the effective way for getting results, though no thought of it as such entered Haworth’s mind. The maid, a neat, blue-eyed young woman of Scandinavian origin, was greatly pleased at being allowed to take entire charge of Mrs. Findlay, and proceeded to do so with enthusiasm. She brought the poor child (that’s what Edith Findlay seemed to her) hot tea and hot toast and thin sandwiches, and had her in dry stockings and warm slippers before anyone—provided only that he stammered badly—could have said “Jack Robinson.” At once after that she had an open fire burning in the room above and the covers of the furniture off and thorough sweeping and dusting done. Then she returned to Edith, and gave it as her opinion that the thing for her to do was to go to bed and rest herself. So positive was Hulda of the benefits to be derived from “just a few winks, Mrs. Findlay,” that Edith was swept to the room on the wave of her enthusiasm on the subject, and put snugly to bed.

But weary as she was, the realization of what must surely happen when Augustus returned, kept her in a condition of worried wakefulness. She knew so well what the interview at the door meant. He had got money from Mr. Haworth. There was no question in her mind as to what he would do with it, and, as a result, in what condition he would return to the house at two or three in the morning. If it could only be that he could come in and get to bed and to sleep without creating a terrifying disturbance, she would consider it serene and heavenly rest compared to what was to be expected, for he had reached the condition where alcohol came near to making a maniac of him. Shouts and curses and horrible songs; the throwing about of whatever came to his hand; the threatening of her, sometimes with a revolver—an enormous thing which he insisted on keeping under his pillow—all this was to be expected if he had money enough to buy drinks. And if Mr. Haworth had given him anything it was enough, for there were no trunks to spend it on; all that was pure fiction. Everything they owned had gone to the pawnshops long ago.

As it happened, however, her anxiety as to the home-coming of Augustus was misplaced. It should have been applied to future occasions. Findlay came in at a quarter before seven, a trifle electrified, to be sure, but not to a voltage that was shocking.

The three sat down to dinner in what had once been the breakfast room—opening off the present living room at its rear end, opposite the swing door of the butler’s pantry. It was, for that house, a rather small, cheerful place with a big bay window on the south side.

At this meal Augustus conversed with himself brilliantly. Haworth said little, but looked smilingly on in his detached way. Edith, who said hardly anything, stole an occasional glance at him. Hulda waited on them. A cat came in from somewhere and entered pleas for refreshments,—not in vain.

When dinner was over the three went back to the large room, Haworth sitting there with his guests for half an hour or so; then, excusing himself, and telling them that breakfast was whenever they asked for it (he remembered old Cripps used to tell his visitors that), he went down to his shop in the basement.

He had an unusual experience there—something quite unexpected for him. He found that, for some reason, he was utterly unable to keep his mind on his work—work which had always so completely engrossed him that he had often found it impossible, when he ought to have done so, to keep his mind away from it.

He had begun on the first rough draft of a problem that had been on his mind for days, and only that morning he had got it. Consequently he was more than eager to get it down on paper. But again and again after he had started on the sketch, he would suddenly rouse himself to find that he was sitting with pencil poised, doing nothing. He would seem to wake up from something and find himself in this extraordinary situation.

On making a startled inquiry of himself as to the cause of this unusual phenomenon, he realized at once that the chief trouble—or at least the chief diversion—was a pair of the most exquisite hands, though sometimes two tired little feet in worn-out shoes would share the guilt; and even an appealing face with dark troubled eyes looking up at him was now and again responsible. But why shouldn’t he have his guests on his mind? It was a most astonishing affair, this coming of Mr. Cripps’s nephew and his wife. Probably this accounted for everything.

Finally, after a couple of hours of useless effort, he gave up the struggle and allowed his thoughts to dwell in peace on Edith Findlay. He went over and over in his mind everything she had said or done and looked. What a pathetic and helpless little figure! And there was her husband—a most objectionable sort of thing. Most likely that was the trouble—something wrong with him. Liquor—drugs—it might be anything. Think of the fellow not bringing the trunks out with him, knowing his wife had nothing! He would see to it himself in the morning. Yet how wonderfully she had managed to transform herself in some way—her hair so becomingly arranged. Really, it was extraordinary. Perhaps Hulda had lent her some of the things. And now he thought of it, how nice it was of Hulda to take such an interest. He hadn’t really appreciated her before.

After a time it occurred to him that he ought to go up and see if there was anything he could do to make his guests, in the absence of their trunks, more comfortable for the night. Yes, it certainly was his duty as host to do what he could.

On reaching the living room, however, he found that they’d gone upstairs, so he stood awhile looking at the chair one of them had been sitting in, and remembering how she had looked up at him when he rolled that same chair, with her in it, close up to the fire. From that he went on to recall other things and to run the pictures over and over again in his mind. Finally, when he came to himself, it was very late indeed.

Haworth was an early riser, and the next morning Hulda, hearing him in his machine shop in the basement, took him down a pot of coffee with toast and a cereal, as she always did when he went down there before breakfast; for if he once got absorbed in his work the idea of coming up would never occur to him. She found him at his drawing board, apparently considering something very carefully before getting it down on paper. Hearing her come in, he roused himself and looked up blankly.

“Your coffee, sir,” she said; and placed the tray within his reach.

He thanked her and at once poured out some, for he’d been sitting there most of the night and felt the need of it, now the matter was brought to his attention.

As the maid was going out he stopped her with, “Oh, Hulda! It was—it was good of you to take care of Mrs. Findlay so—so nicely.”

“I was glad to, sir,” she responded after an instant of surprise, for Mr. Haworth so seldom noticed anything. “Indeed I was, sir, for she’s a sweet little body. If you’ll excuse me saying it, it must be awful for ’er with that man.”

Haworth turned, surprised, and looked at the maid.

“What do you know about him?” he asked.

“Well, I—I can see ’im, sir, an’ that’s something!”

Haworth was silent.

“And besides, cook tells me the cook before her was saying things about a terrible person used to live here, until one day in the middle of the night ole Mr. Cripps threw ’im out o’ the house an’ kicked ’im down the front steps; an’ when I was putting towels in their bathroom yesterday I heard ’im telling ’er how different things was when ’e lived here, so I can’t but think it’s ’im.”

Haworth looked silently at her for a moment and then said: “Yes. Well, tell me when they’ve finished breakfast. I want to see them about their trunks.”

Some two hours later the maid came down and told him. But when he went upstairs Augustus had left the house and Mrs. Findlay had gone to her room. Haworth went up and knocked at the door. She opened it.

“Oh!” she said with a little gasp. “I was afraid you were angry!”

“Angry?”

“Yes.” She was looking down, but soon raised her eyes to his. Suddenly she thought of the disordered room and stepped out into the hallway beside him, closing the door after her.

“What made you think so?” he asked, after his eyes had rested on her in silence a moment.

“You didn’t come to breakfast at all!”

“Oh, that!” Haworth smiled. “I nearly always don’t.”

“Don’t you have any?”

“Yes, but when I’m down working Hulda brings it to me.”

“Oh!” She seemed relieved. “I was afraid it was because you—because we were here.”

He shook his head a little and muttered, “No.”

“It’ll be so some time,” she said, scarcely above a whisper.

“You’re mistaken about that,” he told her gently.

She looked at him with eyes showing gratitude, yet with it the painful conviction that she was right.

“Did Mr. Findlay take the checks with him?” he asked.

She looked at him, not understanding.

“The checks for the trunks,” he explained.

“Oh! No, he—he didn’t!”

“There’s a truckman over at Jamaica Plain,” Haworth said. “He often hauls for me—that is, he used to. He’ll have the trunks here by noon. So if you’ll give the checks——”

“I—I don’t know where they——” She stopped for an instant, then turned and looked him in the face. “There aren’t any checks,” she said in a low voice.

Haworth was silent, his calm gaze upon her.

“There aren’t any checks—or trunks—or anything!” Having made this sweeping confession, she stood guiltily before him as though she’d acknowledged complicity in a bank robbery.

“But you have some things—somewhere!” he finally asked in a gentle voice, trying not to hurt her.

She shook her head a little without looking up. “You see—you see, we did have some trunks. We had them—but——”

“Yes yes, I know,” he said softly, his hand touching her shoulder in sympathy for an instant. “It’s a tough thing for you, losing everything like that, but it’s simply wonderful for me! Yes, it is,” (seeing her look of amazement) “for it gives me the chance to do something that I—that I like doing so very much indeed!”

“I’m afraid I don’t exactly——What is it?”

“Why—why nothing at all, only to get you a few little things you’ll need. Hulda can do it; we’ll leave it all to her.... And then you’ll be wearing something that I——”

He stopped, seeing that Edith had turned away and was fumbling with the door knob.

“But Mrs. Findlay,” he said, quickly, “I didn’t mean to—won’t you please——”

But she was shaking her head as she finally got the door open, and he heard an indistinct, “No——I can’t!” as she fled blindly through it into her room, closing it quickly after her.

Haworth stood motionless before the door—which had almost been shut in his face, and a great fear nearly stopped his heart from beating—the fear that she was angry with him.

After standing some time quite unable to figure it out, he suddenly thought of Hulda, and hurrying down to the room on the left, rang the bell; after which he waited in a state of near-panic till she came.

“Hulda,” he said the instant she appeared, “I’ve offended Mrs. Findlay seriously! Yes, I’m afraid I have! Do you know anything that could be done?”

“What makes you think it, sir? Did she say anything?”

“No—not exactly; but while I was talking to her she turned and ran into her room and shut the door.”

“What were you saying to ’er, Mr. Haworth? That might be it.”

“It couldn’t be! I was only telling her that I was going to have you get her some things to—to wear you know—because all their trunks are lost, you see.”

“I don’t think she’s angry.” Hulda had a smile concealed somewhere. “It’s most likely just feelings, sir.”

“Feelings?”

“Yes sir—about you being that kind to ’er, I’d say.”

“Are you quite sure that was all?”

“Indeed I am, sir, but when she’s had a little time I’ll go up and see to the room—they got up so late it isn’t done yet—an’ then I’ll hear what she says.”

“Yes, do that! And if it is so—as you think—and there’s no trouble of any kind, I want you to go to town with her as soon as you can and help about getting the things.”

“Yes sir. An’ what was you thinking of getting?”

“Oh yes. Well you’d know that, wouldn’t you? Things to wear, of course—dresses and—and—and so on. She must have things to use, too—brushes and combs and shaving soap—no, other soap, I mean—and hair things—you know, to hold it up and all that. Get whatever there is, Hulda; she hasn’t anything at all. That makes it quite simple, doesn’t it?”

“Yes sir; she wants to be fitted out.”

“That’s it—fitted out! And oh, there’s one thing—yes, shoes. Be very careful about that, Hulda! I want her to have some perfectly delightful shoes—the nicest you can get, and quite a lot of them—all she can use. And oh, another thing—gloves. Quite extraordinary gloves! Don’t forget those two things, Hulda—shoes—gloves. They’re really the most important of all!”

“I’ll do my best, sir.”

“And about the dresses—several different varieties—all of them the most satisfactory in every respect. And then—get the—the—” (making motions up and down his body to illustrate) “underthings, you know. Don’t fail to have them the nicest that are made. I’m sure this is a very important—er—phase of the matter.”

“Yes sir, it is.”

“And hats—of course she’ll need a few of those. And some fur things—don’t fail to get some fur things. She was shivering yesterday.”

“I’ll do the best I can, Mr. Haworth, but wouldn’t it be better to buy easy at first? Say, to-day a ready-made dress or two an’ a pair o’ shoes an’ a few things, an’ let the rest come gradual? I’m only thinking of ’er feelings as not being equal to it if all the things was to come at a jump, as one might say.”

“That’s perfectly true. Her feelings must be treated with the greatest care!” He glanced at the stairway through the open door.

“I’ll go upstairs now, sir; but I’m sure you needn’t to feel uneasy about it.”

And Hulda went up the stairway and a moment later could be heard gently knocking at Mrs. Findlay’s door.

When he finally heard Hulda coming down again his heart pounded so violently that he was sure it shook him. A mechanical notion flashed in his mind that his pumping plant was too powerful for the frame. He found himself, too, hardly able to turn and face the maid when she came to the door.

“It’s all right, sir,” she said. “An’ we’ll be going in as soon as I finish the rooms. An’ if you please, sir, she’d like to speak to you before we go.”

The relief was unspeakable. She wasn’t angry or offended. And she’d wear things that he gave her.

So everything was arranged and Haworth gave Hulda enough money for the first day, not noticing or thinking for an instant that he was making an ugly excavation in what was supposed to carry him on for a year. When the maid had gone for her hat and cloak, Haworth waited about in the hall. At last he heard Edith coming down and went to meet her at the foot of the stairs.

Seeing him, she stopped before she was quite down. The thought came to him that he wished she could stay there—on the stairs—a little above him—instead of going to town. Couldn’t that, perhaps, be put off until the next day? Her voice, slightly tremulous, interrupted his meditations.

“I’m awfully sorry I acted so,” was what she said. “Please forgive me.”

He looked up in her face, drinking in with his eyes something indescribable and inconceivable that came to him from hers.

“I’ll be so glad,” she went on after the briefest pause, “to wear anything that you——” suddenly putting out her hand, “oh, you’re so kind!”

It was incredible! At this time yesterday he had been unaware that she existed; now he was unaware that anything else did. But there was hardly time to realize it before the hand was gone and she was moving toward the door; and very soon Hulda came and the two went off together.

Haworth stood in the doorway and watched them go down the great stone steps and along the curved drive to Torrington Road. Then he came slowly in, closed the door, and stood thinking—or rather, remembering. Not one word had he said to her since she came down. Going over every smallest detail of what had occurred, he couldn’t find any place where he had said anything. But why should he? There didn’t seem to be anything to say. As a matter of fact he had no idea at all of what had happened to him.

From this you’ll understand why he had no slightest sense of guilt or trespass. It didn’t disturb him when Findlay came back from the city and borrowed twenty dollars—an amount, he told Haworth, that would enable him to take advantage of an extraordinary business opportunity which had presented itself.

Hulda brought Mrs. Findlay and a large number of packages home in a taxi about a quarter before five. Haworth was down in his workshop, where he managed, by the exertion of enormous will power, to do a few little pieces of manual labor on one of the lathes. His being unable to concentrate on his work had worried him quite a bit. But although he was entirely aware that Edith was tremendously attractive to him in many ways, it did not occur to him to connect that circumstance with what seemed to him a failing intellect so far as mechanics was concerned.

Hulda descended to the basement to report to Haworth on the shopping tour, which had resulted in not only what they had brought home, but several articles that were to be fitted later.

“Tell me what you did about the shoes?” he inquired, without the least effort to conceal his eagerness for information on that subject.

“Oh yes, sir! There’s lovely ones for the house an’ two kinds for the street, that’s most beautiful on ’er. Wait till you see ’em, sir!”

“I will,” said Haworth, and went on with his screw-cutting at the lathe, though his mind had absented itself entirely from mechanical pursuits. Fortunately the process was largely automatic, so no serious damage was done.

At half-past six he went to his room and got into a fairly good suit of clothes. He’d never given anything that could be called “thought” to what he wore, further than to have it clean, and so far as possible not torn or otherwise mutilated. Old Mr. Cripps, during the time the two were living together, had frequently taken him to his own tailor and ordered clothing for him in a most generous way. Since the old man’s death, however, Haworth had been to that place only once, on which occasion he had asked them to make him two suits, one thin, the other thick. But when they began to unroll the vast cylinders of “imported goods” before him, he had started for the door, muttering quite audibly that it was their business to find the stuff to make them of, not his.

Edith came down in a charming slip of a dress they’d found. It had needed no alteration, so she could have it for that evening.

Haworth, waiting in the living room, fixed his eyes on her in calm astonishment. He would hardly have known her. It wasn’t the dress alone, but everything, including herself.

She found herself standing still just inside the door, his steadfast gaze of amazement and admiration acting like an automatic signal set against her.

“Please sit here,” he said, after a moment of regarding her in silence, and indicating the big chair she’d been sitting in the day before when he lighted the fire.

She looked up at him from the depths of the chair with wide-eyed questioning.

After he’d stood looking at her a moment or two with a peculiar expression, he said, suddenly: “Come along—let’s have dinner!”

And she never got the answer—anyway not then—to her optical interrogation points. Which was, that he wanted to see her feet in their ravishing new slippers, just where he’d seen them the day before in the poor little worn and downtrodden shoes.

And there they were, these two by themselves, at dinner. Mr. Augustus Findlay, running true to form (about the only thing to which he did), failed to put in an appearance. He was otherwise engaged in low-lived haunts, with a twenty-dollar bill.

And there they were again, these two, sitting by the fire in the evening, quietly talking and occasionally silent for a space; going down to see his shop; then each apparently reading a book—though neither of them read a single word. And so it went on for a number of days.

Everything seemed to be against them—pushing them toward the edge of the precipice. Even the maid Hulda, who must have seen the danger, was assisting their approach to it instead of trying to hold them back; for which questionable behavior her opinion of Mr. Findlay was largely responsible, her sympathetic attitude toward what is roughly referred to as “romance” perhaps accounting for the rest.

But something shortly happened that not only showed them where they were going, but flashed them an idea of the distance they’d gone.

It was the night of the ninth day after the Findlays had arrived at the mansion. Augustus during this time, had made what were, for him, supreme efforts to control himself, knowing very well that a great deal depended on it. He and his wife had been taken in and provided with a home free of cost and containing among its other furniture a soft-hearted boob out of whom he could apparently squeeze what money he needed, if he was careful to handle it right. Haworth was certainly an utter fool, but even at that he might be troublesome if once aroused. Though by no means of powerful build, he was a bit too husky to take a chance on.

For a while Findlay managed to avoid displays of himself that would be positively objectionable. But as these nine days wore on he seemed to be losing his grip on himself, such as it was. He was coming home later and later each night and making more and more of a disturbance each time he did it.

Haworth had several times been awakened in the small hours of the morning by the slamming of doors and the shouting of oaths and lines out of what are called, for want of a worse name, songs. However, as the noise and uproar seemed to subside when Findlay finally got himself upstairs, Haworth waited for that relief, though with a sharp agony of pain at the thought of Edith having to endure the presence of the intoxicated loafer.

This had been going on for more than a week, and, as I say, growing steadily worse, when a night came that the raucous clamor failed to diminish on Findlay’s getting upstairs and into the room that he and his wife occupied. It was somewhat muffled after the door closed, but even then oaths and abuse could be heard, and violent demands for something.

Haworth’s room was farther back on the same corridor, and the old-fashioned transom above the door was open. At first he couldn’t make out what the half-crazy sot was trying to get from her, as he was evidently making an effort to keep his voice down; but soon excitement or anger made him raise it, and Haworth could hear his shouted demands for a key to something.

Edith was saying nothing. All that could be heard were the threats and imprecations of her husband. Suddenly this stopped, then a quick and frightened, “Oh no!” from Edith, followed at once by deeper threats and in the midst of them a subdued scream and the sound of the door flung open.

Haworth had sprung from his bed at the very instant of Edith’s scream and was through the door and out in the corridor just as she came running out of her room, followed by her husband. He was flourishing a big revolver and lurching this way and that as he came.

Haworth started up the hall toward them, but Edith had seen him and ran into his arms, terrified. He instantly swung her around behind him so that he was between her and Findlay, and without taking his eyes off the latter,—who had stopped not far from the door of his room and was staring with alcoholic malevolence at his wife and the man she was clinging to. The light that had been left on for him in the upper hall shone directly across them.

“Here!” he suddenly called out. “Thish has gone far enough!” And he flourished his weapon about. “Far enough!” he repeated, and went on mumbling threats and curses.

Haworth began gently to free himself from Edith’s frightened clinging, at the same time pushing her back toward the door of his room.

“Don’t worry,” he told her as they moved back; “he isn’t going to hurt anybody. I want to speak to him a minute.”

“Oh no! You mustn’t! No—please! He’s crazy! He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“Yes—well, I thought I’d tell him.”

They’d reached his door by now.

“Could you wait here a minute—just in the doorway?... That’s it. And please don’t come out in the hall.”

She obeyed and stood just within the door, but her eyes were looking at him with wide anxiety. He touched her shoulder soothingly, then turned away and walked easily up the corridor toward the liquor-crazed brute with the gun.

“Now you wait juss precishly ware you are or I’ll plug you!” Findlay’s speech was thick but his revolver was steady enough as he brought it down, covering Haworth.

There wasn’t the slightest hesitation, however, on the part of that young man as he calmly walked up to Augustus. “I’ll take that gun,” he said.

“What!”

“That gun—there in your hand.”

Augustus stood blinking at him several seconds, then slowly lowered his arm, and after another pause reached out the weapon toward Haworth. The young man took it and turning toward the front of the house, sent it crashing through the big east window of the upper hall. Then he stepped to the open door of Findlay’s room, and taking the key out of the inside keyhole, inserted it in the outside one. That done, he turned to Findlay and made a slight motion to him to go in. Nothing marked, no assumption of command, a mere side motion of the head with a turn of the hand.

Augustus did further vacant blinking. Then, seeming to comprehend something, he turned and walked unsteadily through the door, upon which Haworth closed it carefully and turned the key on the outside. After trying it to make sure the lock was holding, he went back to Edith.

She caught at him impulsively as he came to her in the doorway of his room, and he could hear her breathing deep relief. Almost without knowing it he had her in his arms, held close against him. He felt that her whole body was trembling. He looked down and noticed for the first time that she had on only a thin slip of a nightdress—one of the flimsy things that Hulda had bought her.

“You’re cold,” he said.

“No,” she whispered. “It’s only he——How did I know but—how did I know——”

“Tell me.”

“He might have—killed you!”

“There was no danger of that.—You’re shivering! Do you mind getting in there—in my bed—till I get some of your things?” And he pushed her gently back into the half-dark room. “You must get warm. You must, my—my dear.”

She still clung to him.

“Don’t go there again,” she whispered.

“But I want to get something warm for you—that fur thing.”

“You can’t. It’s locked in a drawer.”

“Where’s the key?”

“I—I——”

“Have you hidden it somewhere?”

“It’s on this string—around my neck. I didn’t want him to get it.”

“Get it! For what?”

She wouldn’t say any more. But even as he asked the question he knew—for the money he might raise on it.

“Let me have the key,” he said.

“No, please!” she remonstrated. “You mustn’t go—you mustn’t. When he drinks he’s out of his mind—a maniac; you don’t know what terrible things he might do.”

“He can’t do much now—his gun’s out there in the grass.”

She stared up at Haworth.

“Was that it—when the glass broke?”

He nodded.

After a moment she undid the string and gave him the key. But her hands were trembling.

“Does he do this often?” Haworth inquired.

“Not with—with one of those things.”

“Gun, you mean?”

He could feel her head nodding “yes” as it rested against him.

“But last night,” she went on, “he—told me—if I didn’t give him the key to-night he’d——” A slight shudder passed over her.

“Nothing like that’ll happen here, so please don’t worry.”

She looked up in his face, which she could just see—a whiteness in the gloom.

“I didn’t mind so much till he fired it once,—not—not at me, but I didn’t know that, and ever since I can’t—seem to——” She shuddered again in his arms.

“He won’t fire it again.... Your hands are like ice. Do please crawl in there and pull the blankets over you.”

And he urged her toward the disordered pillows.

When she had turned and moved away in the dimness, Haworth went back to the Findlay room and unlocked the door. Taking the key out of the lock, he stepped inside, closed the door and locked it again, putting the key in the pocket of his pajamas.

Augustus was sitting on the bed. He appeared to be trying to figure out what had happened to him.

“You again!” he mumbled.

Haworth didn’t take the trouble to glance in his direction but went across to the bureau and unlocked the drawers with the key Edith had given him, then piled the contents across his left arm, leaving his right free for other purposes. On these things he tossed whatever articles of feminine apparel he could find about the room, including a pair of little fur-lined slippers which he handled with the utmost consideration. He also made a clean sweep of the toilet articles on the dressing table, managing to hold them on top of the other things with his left hand backward over them. Then he returned to the door and was taking the key out of his pocket with his free hand when Augustus spoke again.

“You wait!” he shouted, thickly.

Haworth turned to him.

“I shay wait—you there! Do I make myself plain?”

“What is it? I’m waiting.”

“Oh, you are, eh! You’re waitin’, eh! Well, I’m damn glad to know it! Now you juss tell me—I demand you tell me where my wife is! You tell me that?”

“I’ll inform you of one thing—she’s safe from you!” And Haworth turned back to the door.

“Now, you!” Findlay had risen heavily and was lumbering toward him. “Now juss one minute, my frien’—juss one minute! I’ll thank you to leave those things where they b’long!”

Haworth waited until Findlay had come blustering up to within a couple of feet of him and stopped. The two regarded each other in silence for a few seconds. Then the young inventor spoke in a low voice. “I’ve got a few words to say to you in the morning,” he said, and unlocking the door, went out, and closed and locked it again on the outside.

“Getting warm all right?” he asked, standing by the bed in the dimness of his room.

“I think so,” came the voice of Edith, muffled by the pillows.

He put down the clothing carefully on a chair.

“I think I found everything,” he said. “You must stay here and keep warm.” And he tried to pull the blankets closer round her neck.

“But if he comes with that—that——”

“He won’t. He’s locked in the room. And I’ll be just outside here in the hall, not ten feet away—not ten feet. I’ll get the big chair down the hall——”

“But—oh no—I can’t drive you out of your room like that! I’ll stay out there.” She caught at his hand and clung to it.

“But wait. Listen, darling—darling—darling——” (Now that he’d found the word, he wanted to say it all the time.) “I’d so—so much—so tremendously much like being there watching while you’re asleep. You don’t know—it’s—it’s beyond words. So you must let me do that while you’re attending to the sleeping part.” He was accustomed to the near darkness now and could see her eyes wide open, fixed on him. “If you want a light”—he spoke rather hurriedly—“the switch is there by the door. Can you see it? And you’ll call me if you want anything, won’t you?”

He tried to disengage his hand, but as she wouldn’t let it go he lifted it so her hand came to his lips, and held it pressed against them for a little; then gently undid her fingers and tucked her arm under the coverlet.

“I’ll take these on the way,” he said, gathering up an armful of his own clothes from a chair and moving toward the door.

“I’m coming too!” she suddenly announced, throwing the bedclothes back and sliding out till her little white feet touched the floor. “If you’re going to sit out there I’m going to sit with you!” And she began to fumble among the things he’d brought from her room.

He stood in the doorway, considering. She surely ought to stay there and keep warm and rest. The house was chilly. She’d be sure to—she’d be——And at that point an idea came to him.

“I’ll build a fire downstairs if you’ll come and sit by it,” he said.

She straightened up from her search among the things on the chair and looked at him for a second; then:

“Are you coming too?”

“Oh yes!”

“Oh!—Then I’ll be down in just a minute!”

He reached in and snapped the light on for her, closed the door, and went downstairs. After putting on the clothes he had caught up while leaving his room, he built a huge fire in the fireplace of the living room.

Edith came before he’d quite finished, and he pushed the big chair around in front of the fire for her, and another for himself as near to it as its bloated old upholstery would allow. There was only firelight in the room, and the two were there in it without a thought of anything but that they were there—together. Haworth had her dear, precious, exquisite hands in his (I’m quoting from his thoughts) and when she fell asleep her head rested on his shoulder. Never had he imagined that such a miraculous night was within the reach of members of the human race—nor, indeed, had she.

Of course, they knew now. Perhaps not the strength of the current that was whirling them along, perhaps not precisely how far they’d already been carried by it, but enough. And the first idea in the minds of both Edith and Haworth when they came to think it over by daylight was to resist, to attempt to get out of the rapids.

With one accord and no words spoken they set to work on the following morning with the brave idea of behaving as though they were merely casual acquaintances, and not, as was the actual state of things, the custodians of each other’s lives. And they succeeded fairly well in acting this deceitful drama whenever they chanced to meet—which was necessarily quite often—and gave their performance as relentlessly when no audience was there to see, as they did in the presence of spectators. Moreover, they really tried, both of them, to avoid meeting. There was no attempted coldness; their relationship would have seemed to an observer to be of agreeable friendliness, nothing more.

And, as it happened, there was an observer——and not only that, but a close and eager one.

When Haworth went in to say a few words to Findlay the morning after the latter’s revolver had been taken from him and flung through the window, he found the fellow silent and sullen. His ideas as to what had occurred during the night were hazy in the extreme, but these few quiet words from Haworth cleared his atmosphere in the space of a few seconds, and put him in the way of distinct realization of where he stood. He had threatened his wife with a gun (he remembered having intended to do so) and the weapon had been taken from him. He had been locked in his room (he was already aware of this from having made efforts to get out) and as the Haworth fellow gave it to him, not only was Mrs. Findlay to have a separate sleeping room, but she was to occupy it without interference or disturbance from him.

As for Haworth himself, he would sleep downstairs on a cot in his drafting room, as he had often done before. This would give them the entire floor to themselves. If, however, he started any of his rowdyism again, or mistreated his wife, or threatened her with mistreatment, he would be turned over to the police and locked up. That was all. Good morning.

It was the matter of his wife being given a room by herself that put a knife in him. A dull but furious jealousy began to rage somewhere in his interior. Though he had a horror of losing these comfortable and cost-free quarters, that aversion was as nothing beside the rabid fury generated by his suddenly aroused suspicion. The mere thought of what might be—when he allowed himself to project his imaginings on the subject as far as that—threw him into a fit of murderous passion. He’d keep his eyes open! He’d get on to it pretty damned quick if any funny business was going on. And if it was —— ——

From that time and for more than a week it could have been noticed—and probably was by Hulda—that Mr. Findlay went in to Boston with much less frequency than formerly, and that when he did so he arrived back at most unexpected times,—once coming in quite hurriedly by one of the rear entrances fifteen minutes after he had left the house at the front door, apparently departing for the day.

It so happened, though, that neither of the two people Findlay was endeavoring to surprise in some sort of misdemeanor, was in the slightest degree aware of his violent spasm of watchfulness. They were both fighting desperately to struggle out of the torrent that had swept them off their feet, and couldn’t be expected to take notice of other things. Naturally, under the circumstances, Augustus discovered nothing. There was nothing. Even when they met alone, only a few commonplace words, if any, passed between them. He never once overheard the least thing that was out of the way when it happened that they were alone together and he could manage to listen, and when they both went out, as they did nearly every afternoon—Haworth for long walks on the railroad track, Edith to trudge about the suburban roads or sometimes to go in to Boston—and he followed one or the other of them, he never found that they met anywhere or came within miles of meeting.

As he was unable to gather fuel for his jealousy, it began to burn with diminished ferocity, and it wasn’t long before he revived his briefly interrupted custom of returning late at night from his alleged business trips to the city, bringing with him a heavy load of whatever intoxicant he could buy with the money he borrowed from Haworth. For a while, however, his subconscious department succeeded in keeping uppermost in his mind the idea that it would be well to control himself when he came in, and to get into bed as quietly as possible.

Something over a fortnight after the revolver episode and the night together by the open fire, the two unfortunates, caught in the merciless grip of a love trap and struggling with all the strength they could command to extricate themselves from it, had come very close to reaching the limit of what they could do. Was anything else to be expected? Completely out of their normal minds—mad—even quietly delirious—living there together in the same house—left to themselves most of the time, and trying to carry on as if they were casual acquaintances—wouldn’t that wear out the strength of anyone, or, to be more accurate, any two?

Haworth, one day along this time, came in from a tramp at dinner time and learned from Hulda that Mr. Findlay hadn’t come in. He and Edith would be alone together. It had happened several times lately, but to-night he had the feeling that he couldn’t manage to behave as an ordinary friend might; he didn’t think he could carry it through.

“When Mrs. Findlay comes down, ask her please to have dinner without me. I’ve got some important work to do—very important.”

When Hulda went into the hall she saw Edith near the top of the stairs and going up. She had come down and stopped near the door as she heard Haworth speaking, and couldn’t help hearing what he said. Upon which she fled up the stairs again, and a moment after the maid had caught sight of her she was back in her room with the door closed.

Hulda followed and knocked softly.

“Can’t I bring you up something, Mrs. Findlay?”

“No, nothing—please.”

Hulda left a tray on Haworth’s drawing table, before which he was sitting absently. But she knew, as soon as she saw him, that he wouldn’t touch anything.

It was a wicked evening for them both. Haworth sat in a corner of his workroom and stared before him, seeing nothing. Edith lay on her bed with her head pushed in among the pillows.

With her it was simpler—just plain misery, and longing, and hunger and thirst for him. But Haworth, while having all these feelings for her, was at the same time feverishly hunting for some way out, all the while knowing that nothing could be done without money, of which he was by this time nearly destitute. If he had had the means at hand, there isn’t the slightest doubt he’d have fled with her. But he hadn’t nearly enough for that, nor had he anything on which he could raise it. The amount that old Mr. Cripps had left to him (being probably the remains of the money obtained on the mortgage) had virtually disappeared.

Haworth wasn’t in the habit of thinking of these things; he’d always let them go until something happened. For himself what did it matter? But now ... Edith. And he went over the problem again and again, hoping each time to arrive at a better result.

It was very much later in the evening when Hulda came down and tapped at his door. After she had knocked three times he heard her.

“Come in,” he said, huskily.

“Mrs. Findlay asked me to say could she speak to you for a minute.”

“Yes—yes.” Haworth roused himself and cleared his throat. “Tell her I’ll go up there and—and see what she wants.”

“Yes sir.”

A moment later he knocked at Edith’s door and she opened it. They stood silent. Suddenly he snatched both her hands and held them pressed against him.

“Oh!” she breathed—a sort of whispered groan—and turned her head away for God knows what—perhaps a last feeble effort to avert the catastrophe she knew was coming. Soon she turned to him again and spoke unsteadily, almost whispering.

“This was what I—what I wanted to tell you,” she said. “I’ve been thinking it over, and now—you see—you see the way things are—I can’t——Don’t you see I’ll have to go?”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“I couldn’t let you! How could I when I love you so!”

She was looking up in his face and her lips moved. Though no sound came from them, he could feel what she was trying to say—knew it almost before she began—and had her close in his arms, kissing her madly, blindly, impetuously; whispering brokenly the few words of endearment he knew.

It seemed hardly a moment, but it was in reality a large number of them, before the violent closing of the front door recalled Edith and Haworth to the surface of the earth. Not only were they made acquainted by this with the circumstance of Findlay’s return, but the demonstration following said closing gave a fairly reliable indication of his condition, consisting as it did of a burst of song and a bit of incoherent monologue.

“I’m going to lock you in,” Haworth whispered in Edith’s ear.

“Yes.”

He locked the door from the outside and put the key in his pocket. Then he went along the corridor to the rear of the house, down the servants’ staircase, and through the passage into the main hall.

Augustus was preparing to negotiate the stairs.

“Well, how-dy-do!” he said, supporting himself by one of the newel posts. “You see before you, Misser Haworth, a shinin’ ezample of the pernishus influences of too mush happinish!”

Haworth stood silently regarding him.

“I’m shorry,” he went on. “Deeply an’ shincerely—e—sinsherely shorry. But it was on account o’ shelibrashun! Yes, sir—shelibration! You’ll be d’lighted to hear th’ glad tidings that I got a posishun. Yes, sir—though I say it myself they took me on to-day at the Boshun Nalb’ny freight yards. You know men are very scarce!”

“They must be,” said Haworth; and turning away he went into the living room. From there he could hear Augustus finally accomplish the (for him) considerable feat of ascending the stairs, and from the summit of the same negotiate the short distance to his room. In a moment he heard him come out again and walk heavily down the corridor to the room occupied by Mrs. Findlay.

Haworth could hear his loud pounding on her door and boisterous demands to be let in, together with the shouted information as to his having been taken on by the railroad company and his urgent desire for further celebration of that event. This he kept up interminably, varying it with whining and begging that she open the door. But he eventually became tired of it and went shambling back to his room.

Haworth gave him about half an hour. At the expiration of that time he went upstairs and listened at his door. Loud breathing and raucous nasal reverberations were the only sounds that could be heard from within. The key was at his hand on the outside. He grasped it firmly so there should be as little rattling as possible, and slowly turned it in the lock. After listening a moment to make sure the slight click hadn’t disturbed the sleeper within, he turned and walked down the corridor, taking the other key out of his pocket as he went.

It proved to be the truth that Augustus had got a job at the Exeter Street freight yards. Whether to hustle boxes and barrels about or sit on a high stool and work at bills of lading he never told. But whatever it was, it obliged him to rise every morning at five-thirty and have breakfast at six.

After three mornings of this, Alma, the cook, appeared before Haworth and made the solemn declaration that she wouldn’t be staying there to get up and cook a special breakfast “for the likes o’ him.” Haworth, much disturbed, inquired of Hulda what he’d better do, and she told him that the only way to settle it was to turn that Findlay man out of the house and get rid of him “for good an’ all.” But of course if he did that Augustus would take Edith with him. No way to prevent it that he could see. He puzzled quite distractedly over the matter for some time, and then bethought him of an old woman who came in from somewhere once a week to clean. Mrs. Temple was her name, and several times in the past when she’d been working in the basement he had called her into his shop and got her to help him about something that needed an extra pair of hands; and twice since Michael Cripps’s death—there being no one else to do it—she had gone in to Boston to manage the matter of replacing servants for him. It now occurred to him to ask her what had better be done about Mr. Findlay’s new breakfast requirements.

Mrs. Temple was entirely equal to the occasion. She herself went to Mr. Findlay and notified him in not the politest terms, that if he wanted his breakfast before eight o’clock in the morning he’d have to get it somewhere else. There was no more trouble; Findlay got his breakfast somewhere else. And beginning about then Haworth came more and more to rely on the old woman for advice and assistance. She was a wise one, too, and had a perfectly clear idea of what she was about, which was particularly fortunate just at this period, for the young inventor was in a daze—a dream—an enchantment.

About this time the market where they bought provisions notified Haworth that it could not extend further credit because of unpaid bills. Following shortly, a grocery establishment did the same thing. And Haworth, having no idea what to do about it, as it appeared on investigation that he had very little money left—certainly not enough to pay what was owing—turned the matter over to the old woman, asking her please to attend to it in whatever way she thought best. This she forthwith did by opening accounts elsewhere. This would carry them along for a time at least, and after that “we’ll see.” Put that in quotes, because it was Mrs. Temple’s philosophy to do what she could at the time, and as to the future, “we’ll see.”

Where this old woman came from or when she came, no one seemed to know. Haworth himself hadn’t the faintest idea. She spoke very seldom and never about herself. Where she lived was also in the nature of a mystery. Of course it could have been solved if anyone cared to follow her, but no one did. And no one noticed it, either, when she began coming in twice a week instead of once as formerly. Nobody had asked her to, and she said nothing to anyone about an increase in wages.

Haworth and Edith Findlay were now making little or no effort to conceal the fact from Augustus—or for that matter from anyone—that they were together for the greater part of the time. They were in every way so utterly and completely taken up with each other that nothing else appeared to them of the slightest consequence. They talked and read together, and took long tramps in woods and fields and along country roads.

Findlay usually got home from his work about half-past five or six, often in plenty of time to see the two come in from an afternoon’s tramp, or to find them working in the old flower garden together, or something like that. And it was entirely open to observation—when anyone was there to observe it—that in the evening they were by themselves somewhere, reading together or engaged over chess or cribbage.

While all this, as I’ve said, could be seen without effort, Augustus had all the appearance of being unaware of it. But he had seen and heard enough in the course of a week or so, to rouse his most malignant passions. Without appearing to do so, he was watching every move they made.

When he first began work at the yards, Findlay had felt too tired on getting home at the end of the day, to go back to town again after dinner—or even to nearer places—for alcoholic consolation. This resulted in a much clearer mind than was normal with him. And once his overpowering suspicion was awakened the thought of drinking never crossed his mind.

As he became more and more aroused, at the same time gaining a stronger perception of the situation and harboring a more desperate desire to trap them, a scheme by which he could do so came into his mind, and he set to work to put it into practice. The first move was his failure to appear for dinner, which had not occurred since he got the job at the freight yards. Late that night he came in loaded—or apparently so. One would have supposed, if not too close an investigator, that the fellow was in a hopeless state of intoxication. And so, notwithstanding that his imitation of himself as a roistering inebriate was far from being a perfect one, it succeeded with the two people for whose benefit (and ultimate undoing) he was giving the performance; for, unfortunately, neither of them was in the mood to criticize it. He was enabled, therefore, eventually to stagger into his room with the impression successfully conveyed that he was drunk and disorderly to the furthest limit. Once there, and from the moment of his violently slamming shut the door, his vigil began.

He had tools with which to open the door should anyone lock him in, and the key was purposely left on the outside as a further blind. It was the fourth time that he set this trap before it closed on its victims.

Shortly before nine o’clock of the morning following the springing of the trap, Mr. Augustus Findlay drove up to the front portico of the mansion in a taxi, and with two small and exceedingly moderate-priced trunks set in front beside the driver. He’d gone out early and bought them at a place in Roslindale where they kept almost everything. The chauffeur lent a hand in taking them into the house, and about an hour later renewed the loan in bringing them out again.

Edith came slowly down the great stairway, pulling on her gloves. She wore the long fur coat that Haworth had given her; indeed, everything she had on came from him. She didn’t raise her eyes as she descended, seeming to be occupied with her gloves. The veil which was pulled down over her face failed to hide the paleness of it, which glimmered through like a small white cloud.

Haworth was standing back against the wall near the foot of the stairs, with the look of death upon him. It wasn’t so much the mortuary pallor of his countenance as the strained fixity of his staring yet unseeing eyes. He had gone to her room while Augustus was getting the taxi, and found it locked.

“Open the door! Open it quick!” he’d called to her in a half whisper as he knocked lightly, for to create a disturbance would defeat what he had made up his mind to do.

“Oh, I can’t!” she answered, coming as near to him as possible. “He’s taken away the key!”

Haworth turned and ran down the two flights of stairs to the basement, and was back in a moment with a heavy iron bar.

“Darling, are you there?”

“Oh yes—I’m right here—as near as I can get!”

“Well, stand away—stand away from the door. I’m going to break it in!”

“No no!—Please don’t! Oh wait Michael!”

“Get back by the window! You’re coming with me!”

“Stop! Michael—stop! You’ll hurt me! I’m close to the door—right against it! Listen to me, dear—it’ll only make it worse! Yes, it will—whatever you do! He could stop us. There’d be police and, oh! reporters—and everything! I’m sure there would.”

Her low voice reached him clearly as she stood close against the door.

“What can we do?” he got out, hoarsely.

“Nothing now—nothing, dear, just now! I must go with him and you mustn’t do anything! Afterward, when it all quiets down, we’ll find some way!” This poor child was the wise and cool one through it all. Haworth was demented with the hurt of it and his helplessness.

“Don’t let him find you here!” she went on. “Let him have his way. Don’t say anything! Good-by, darling. I’ll be—I’ll be loving you always—always—and oh, so much!”

Haworth tried to speak, but couldn’t. After a time he moved slowly away.

And now she was coming down the stairs, buttoning one of her gloves and with her white face showing through the veil. He knew that she passed close to him and felt the thrill of her nearness. Then came the terrifying consciousness that she was going away from him. After that she was gone.

Findlay, waiting outside, saw her seated in the taxi; then he entered the house. Seeing Haworth near the stairway, he walked down the hall and got out between his teeth with a peculiar low-voiced malevolence: “You dirty loafer! You —— —— ——! Sometime—yes, by God! I’m going to get even with you.” Having delivered himself of which, he strode through the front door. A moment later the taxicab could be heard driving away.

PART V

For interminable weeks Haworth had no idea where they were. Edith had asked him not to try to find her, and he would do nothing against her wishes.

Most of the time he was sitting somewhere in the house—he didn’t notice where—staring before him with wide open eyes that saw nothing. Hulda brought him “just a taste” of this or that at meal times and he’d make an attempt to eat a little so she wouldn’t feel hurt. Sometimes he would start walking aimlessly about the house.

For quite a time he couldn’t bring himself to enter the room Edith had occupied—his own room. But the time came when, with a fearful sinking of the heart, he opened the door. After a while he ventured in a little way and stood looking at the dressing table with the chair before it. He could picture her there so well. His eyes slowly moved to other things—the bureau, the chairs, the bed with the soft rug at the side where her small white feet so often touched before she could find her bedroom slippers.

Very soon—on his first visit—he had to turn away and hasten gropingly out of the room. He was there again the next day, and on the floor of the great wardrobe he found the worn little shoes that were on her feet the day she came.

It was more than a fortnight after she left when he got a note from her. It had been mailed. For a while he was unable to open it, as he had been at first to enter her room. When he did, life came back to him. Sometime they could meet somewhere—but not now. And he must not try to find her. Would he please write and tell her if he still loved her? It would help her to stay alive if she could only be sure that he truly did. The best address would be the General Delivery, Boston. She would read the letter and destroy it there at the Post Office.

After this he was able to look at all the things that spoke to him of her, with painful delight instead of devastating despair.

But now financial troubles began to bear down on him. The greatly increased expenses from having the Findlays there, together with Augustus’s borrowings and Edith’s wardrobe, had more than made an end of the few thousands left him by old Mr. Cripps. He had adopted the plan long ago advised by Mr. Trescott, the attorney, of cutting down living expenses and apportioning so much and no more to each month. In this way the money could have been made to last nearly four years, and surely by that time, Mr. Trescott had said, he ought to be able to do something with his patents and mechanical work.

But this wise financial arrangement had been abandoned when the Findlays came; and now the funds that were to have carried him for some two years longer had entirely disappeared, and in addition to that a number of people were clamoring for various amounts which he appeared to owe them. Haworth turned in this emergency, as he had before, to Mrs. Temple, who muttered something about “cormorants,” and then did the best she could again, this time persuading some of the creditors to wait a little on the ground that Mr. Haworth had valuable patents and was on the point of selling one of them for thousands of dollars. In cases where further credit was refused she made arrangements with other (and more distant) firms. Of course there wasn’t the least use in going to the electric-light company—nobody ever heard of their doing anything except shut off the current—which they promptly did.

So far as light was concerned, Haworth minded it very little. The oil lamps and candles Mrs. Temple got hold of somewhere, answered well enough. But he did very much mind—though not so much at this time as later, when he tried to get back to his work again—losing the power for his machinery. He had only the haziest ideas as to creditors or electrical calamities or where his groceries were or were not coming from. Mrs. Temple was attending to it, and he let it rest at that. He could live in peace with his dreams and memories and imaginings—all of Edith and the exquisite pain of his longing for her. He wrote to her and had another precious letter in reply. She told of their having moved into a small house on Cherry Street, but said he must not come there. Perhaps sometime, but not then. If they could only meet somewhere, perhaps in town, before long, just for a few minutes. She loved him so! And if she could not see him soon it did not seem as if she could go on living.

It was a month after this before they finally met. He waited for her on a quiet old street on the hill back of the State House. When she finally came, neither could speak. They found a bench hidden by shrubbery near the north end of the pond in the Public Garden.

After a time, when they had whispered those first words of endearment after the long separation, and he could begin to realize things, he was greatly disturbed by her appearance, so worn and thin she was, with a hunted look in the eyes he loved beyond all measure. After much effort he discovered in a roundabout way, that for one thing she was half starved. It appeared that when Augustus earned anything he spent nearly the whole of it on himself or gambled it away. Very little came to her for household uses. Sometimes none. And now he wasn’t working at all. He’d lost his place at the freight yards.

She wouldn’t mind so much about the food part of it, she said, but when he came home late at night and there wasn’t anything to eat, he was so violent! He seemed to think that she was to blame for it. The trouble was he had a revolver again and flourished it about. He always seemed to want to do that when he’d been drinking. And though she felt sure he wouldn’t fire it, she couldn’t help being frightened.

After that, although they talked of other things in their brief time together, he never once escaped from the terrifying realization that she was starving,—actually starving, and he could do nothing. Until now he had never entertained a suspicion of the tremendous importance of having money. Even while they were there, with only those few precious moments to themselves after weeks of loneliness, he was desperately catching at straws of possibilities for obtaining some—in sufficient amount, that is, to relieve her distressing situation at home. By a lucky chance he had brought with him what little he had in the house, so he could at least keep her from starvation for to-day. It would hardly do more than that. But how to get more? How? How? How?

Then suddenly he thought of Mr. Trescott. He remembered one thing the lawyer had recommended was the sale of the place. There was a mortgage, but they could get a figure, he had said, that would cover it and leave something over. Haworth couldn’t bring himself to do it then. There was his shop and machinery and drafting room—all the things he needed. But what did that amount to now? Edith had come into his life; she was his life. There was nothing else. He didn’t understand it, but it was so—there was nothing else.

He would go and see Mr. Trescott the next day and ask him to sell the place. That was settled. And for the rest of the time they were together he had no thought but of Edith, and of her presence close beside him. Most of it was spent in a restaurant, for as soon as it would do after discovering the state of things he claimed to be exceedingly hungry, and they went to one together. She was entirely frank and said she was hungry too, and he had the joy of seeing her present famishment relieved.

While they were there he told her, as a preparation for what would come from selling the mansion (for she might not like that), that he expected to dispose of one of his inventions and she was to go halves with him on whatever he got. She said, “Oh!” and her eyes were alight for a moment. But then she looked at him doubtfully.

“What is it, darling?” he asked.

“Oh—why, I’m thinking—I’m afraid you’ll not be taking care of yourself—your machinery and patents and—and all that you need to do about them.”

“There’ll be plenty for those things too.”

“Will there?”

And so at last she was satisfied, and they began to consider the way of getting her “share” to her—whether a little at a time or a lump sum. They finally decided on small and more frequent remittances, for if Findlay once got the idea that she had a considerable amount of money in the house he would resort to any violence to get it. And mailing seemed the best way of sending, for she could go to the Post Office without danger of discovery, if she was careful about it.

Soon after they had decided on this she left him, going out of the restaurant by herself and getting a car in the subway which would take her within a few blocks of Cherry Street.

On reaching the mansion Haworth found a letter waiting for him. The envelope bore the name of a prominent savings bank in Boston from which he vaguely remembered having heard before. Within was a formal notice to the effect that if the interest on the mortgage note was not paid by such and such a time (which was only five days away), foreclosure proceedings would at once be instituted. This explained why the name of the bank had seemed familiar, other communications on the same subject having come in before, though none so definite and alarming. These—as he had no idea what to do with them—he had turned over, with other bills and requests for payment, to Mrs. Temple; and although this estimable old woman quite well understood grocery and market accounts, foreclosure notices were as Greek to her. She had therefore done nothing about them, quite certain that this behavior would bring further explanation if there was any.

It looked serious to Haworth. If they foreclosed he wouldn’t be able to sell the place. Naturally he wasn’t able to sleep that night. Next morning he went to Mr. Trescott’s office.

The old lawyer said at once that he doubted if anything could be done, as the property was mortgaged to nearly the limit. A forced sale was out of the question. When he had advised selling some years before, prices were high; now they were normal again. A second mortgage would hardly be possible under the circumstances. The only chance he saw was the possibility that the holders of the first would be willing to make a new one for an increased amount, or that a new one for a larger amount could be negotiated elsewhere and the old one paid off with the proceeds, leaving him something after the transaction. He would take the matter up with the bank, and Mr. Haworth would hear from him in a day or two. He inquired how the inventions were selling and was sorry to hear that they hadn’t done better. He had sent a few people out there to see them and would try to do so again.

Four days later—four terrible days for Haworth—the letter he was waiting for came. Mr. Trescott requested him to call and attend to the execution of a new mortgage. It seemed the bank was willing to increase the amount of the loan to the extent of five thousand dollars—a consideration being, however, not alone the payment out of this of interest due, but interest on the new note for two years in advance.

Haworth, enormously relieved, went to the Trescott & Chamberlain offices and the business was transacted. Fifty dollars was at once mailed to Edith, and he sent her that amount weekly thereafter. Mrs. Temple was given what was necessary to pay current bills and, at her suggestion, the expenses of the establishment were reduced still further.

All thought of attention to the needs of the house, in the way of repairs, painting, and the like, was abandoned, as was also the keeping up of the grounds and gardens surrounding it. Even the shattered window in front on the second floor was still as Augustus’s hurtling revolver had left it. These various economies and others wouldn’t have occurred to Haworth, but his overwhelming desire to save enough out of the additional mortgage money to enable him to take Edith away, caused him to entreat Mrs. Temple to think of all possible ways to cut down expenditures. This she did.

In the course of the next few weeks Edith’s condition was much improved, though it couldn’t be said that she looked entirely well. The two met in town when they could—which wasn’t often, for Augustus, being out of a job, was hanging about. They’d thought of Franklin Park and other places nearer than the Public Garden, but Edith couldn’t lose herself before going to them as she could in the crowds in the city district. Besides this, she had managed to find a place where they’d give her needlework to take home—one of the “sweating” industries you read about—and this not only furnished her with an excuse for going to town occasionally, but had so far blocked Findlay’s suspicions as to where her housekeeping money came from.

Several times they went out Cambridge way and beyond to some woodsy place, and wandered among the trees. There were still warm Indian summer days for them, though November was close at hand.

It was on one of these trips, as they were sitting on soft green moss with their backs to the trunk of a great oak, that Haworth told her about going away—that he couldn’t live without her. They would take a steamer to South America or anywhere she wished. There would be money enough to pay the fares and keep them until he could find work. He would dig in the streets or do anything, it made no difference what, if he could only be with her.

She looked at him in a half-frightened way and shook her head a little.

“You—you don’t mean——I thought you’d come!” he said.

“There’s a—there’s something——” She couldn’t go on and her face went white.

He looked at her silently, desolated by the thought that she didn’t care enough for him to come. Finally he half whispered:

“I suppose you——You don’t love me—really.”

“There’s only you in the world, Michael—only you—now—but before long....”

He looked at her for the rest.

“Before long there’ll be some one else.”

It was a moment before he understood.

As weeks went by Haworth’s anxieties about Edith came to be unbearable—the thought of her having to live in that comfortless shanty and being subjected, at such a time, to the brutalities of her liquor-crazed husband. Finally, in desperation, he went to Mr. Trescott for advice, explaining that the Findlays were relatives of old Cripps and that he (Haworth) had taken them in at the mansion for a while, though they were now in a house of their own; that Mr. Findlay was brutal and loathsome in every respect, often drinking to excess and at such times abusing and browbeating his wife and frequently terrorizing her with a revolver; so that, now she was to be confined, he feared she’d not only have no care, but be seriously injured in some way.

“I suppose it wouldn’t do for her to have the trouble and anxiety of divorcing him—now?”

“I—I’m afraid not.”

“Can’t she go home to her mother or family?”

“No.” (Shaking his head). “She hasn’t any.”

“Alone in the world, eh?”

“Not so good as that. She’s with him.”

“I see.... Treats her badly, you say?”

“I don’t think that’s quite the word for it.”

“You said something about a revolver?”

Haworth nodded in affirmation.

“That he threatened her with it?”

“Yes.”

“Did anyone see him do that?”

The young man hesitated for an instant; then, “I did—once.”

“Then this threatening with a revolver took place in your presence?”

“Yes.”

“Did you interfere in any way?”

“Yes; I took it away from him.”

Mr. Trescott regarded Haworth with peculiar interest for an instant. Finally he said: “If the fellow’s slamming around, threatening his wife with firearms, we can get the patrolman on that beat to keep an eye on him. Write the address for me.”

“But it’s no place for her there, where he might come in crazy drunk any minute. Isn’t there some way so she can be kept away from him—so he can’t get to her?”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Haworth, unless he——” Mr. Trescott broke off as a possibility occurred to him. “Has he any money?” he asked. “Enough, I mean, to have her well taken care of—private hospital and all that?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, he has! Well, do you think there’s any way to make him do it? It’s going to cost something, you know.”

“He’ll do it.”

“That’s the thing, then.”

Trescott wrote an address on a desk pad and scribbled a few words below. “See the doctor personally. Tell his secretary it’s from me.” He handed the address to Haworth. “He’ll see that she’s sent to the right place. And I rather think they can let her come along awhile before. She’ll have nurses, doctors, everything, and nobody’ll be allowed to see her that might have the least unfavorable effect—you understand. As I say, it’s going to be rather expensive. You feel quite positive the fellow can stand it?” He was watching the young man narrowly as he put the question.

“Yes.”

“All right then—Now, Mr. Haworth, what about you? I suppose, from what you’ve been telling me, that you’ve had some—er—interruptions and—and anxieties that may have seriously interfered with your work?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Well, we’ve got one distraction out of the way,” Trescott said, hopefully, indicating the note and address that Haworth was holding in his hand.

“Yes,” the young man said; and after thanking Mr. Trescott in his laconic way, he went to the address of the doctor.

They kept Edith at the hospital for some weeks after she could have gone home. For observation, it was said—but that didn’t get to Haworth. He knew only that all had gone well, that there was a very minute daughter in the world, and that the conditions might perhaps be better than they had been so far as Findlay was concerned, for a warning from the patrolman given before his wife was taken to the hospital had apparently accomplished its purpose. Augustus entertained a serious repugnance to jail from having once been compelled to sample it, and the patrolman’s words were seed sown in specially fertilized soil.

For some time he had kept on the safe side of the line which divided bestial drunkenness from mere gentlemanly intoxication. And when Edith, after an absence of some two months, returned to the cottage on Cherry Street with the baby and a nurse, the comparative decency of his conduct came near astounding her. Findlay, however, was controlling himself with the utmost difficulty. To the fear of the police was now added the presence of a nurse—and in a damned uniform, at that! How did he know but that she was sent there to report him? His mania to get even with Haworth increased till he was in a condition of chronic fury. He’d found out that Haworth had been meeting his wife, that the money she’d been using for household expenses came from him instead of being earned by her, that he had sent her to the hospital for her confinement and paid for it—though as to that, who should pay for it if not he?—and he hadn’t a doubt that it was Haworth who’d set the police on him. Haworth—Haworth—Haworth—whichever way he turned. And here she was, still wearing the clothes this fellow had given her—brazenly wearing them before his face! The getting of his money was nothing; it was what it meant—what it showed was going on.

He’d been told by some of his disreputable associates that he could bring suit for alienation and get all the rotter’s property away from him. He’d do it, too! He knew a lawyer who’d take it on spec. Cost nothing. But that wasn’t enough. Money was all very well, but satisfaction—that was what he wanted—satisfaction!

Haworth had been allowed to see Edith a few days after the child was born. She was very white and beautiful. When the nurse brought the little speck of humanity, sound asleep, and laid it beside her, he sat gazing at it for a long time. Edith lay looking at him with a shadow of a smile flitting about her face. Soon the nurse made a little sign and turned away. Haworth bent over and pressed his lips to Edith’s hands as they lay on the coverlet—first one and then the other, and then the first again and then the other again. Then he looked once more at the little one, and finally let his eyes meet Edith’s in a long embracing look that told her everything. After that he rose and tiptoed out of the room. Neither of them noticed that not a word had been said. They had spoken in a language not crippled by words.

I’ve always had the idea that those innocent and delightful people who are born without a trace of what might be referred to as economics, and who are unable to acquire enough of same for personal use, should have financial guardians appointed to help them through. Charles Michael Haworth, the inventor, should have had one.

Everything that he could lay his hands on was expended in providing the best possible care for Edith during the period of her maternity. No still small voice—indeed, no voice of any description—was heard by him in warning against overdoing in the matter of present expenditure, as future needs were likely to be still greater.

Haworth could not think of such things. He could think only of Edith. And not Edith in the future, but Edith now. One day, upon roughly figuring from his check-book stubs (which was the only figuring he ever did) he was amazed to find that he had very nearly expended the entire amount deposited from the new loan. Only a few hundred left, and he needed that for the nurse who was taking care of Edith! The doctor had advised keeping some one with her for a while, as she was still far from well.

After a tough night worrying about it, he got old Mrs. Temple in and told her that he had come to the place where there was no more money for his own use—none at all. All the servants must go—the cook and Hulda, even herself, for he would be unable to pay any more wages. He was sorry, but they must all go.

“What will you do, sir?” the old woman asked.

“Oh, that’s—that’s nothing. I’ll be all right.”

“You won’t be all right without your food, Mr. Haworth.”

“I can get it somewhere.” He had vague notions of things in tins and oatmeal and baked beans, that he could live on for a few cents a day. That money in the bank, every dollar of it, must go for the nurse—for the nurse and their food, too. Augustus was doing nothing.

Mrs. Temple went out in a blind sort of way. Soon Hulda appeared.

“She told me, sir.” She came just within the door, embarrassed.

“Oh yes—about going. I’m sorry.”

“I—I’d rather stay, Mr. Haworth.”

“You mustn’t.”

“If you please, it’s nothing to me about the paying—not till you can.”

“I don’t see how I ever can, Hulda. And there won’t be anything for you to eat—nothing you’d like at all. It’s too bad, isn’t it? You’ve been so good to me, Hulda.”

A strange convulsion twitched the honest Swedish face and a couple of large-sized tears went sliding down her cheeks, upon realizing which, she bolted out of the room.

Haworth went down into the shop. Not to work; that was impossible—impossible even if the power current hadn’t been shut off. He stood for half an hour gazing vacantly down the long room with the lathes and heavier machines lined along one side, the dead power shaft above them, and the bench with vises and tool racks and the lighter machines along the other.

Hulda and the cook left four days later, the former making spasmodic swipes across the upper part of her face with a bunched-up handkerchief as she stood near the taxi waiting for them to bring down her trunks. Nothing, however, would induce old Mrs. Temple to budge. Haworth’s earnest pleading (on her behalf) that not only would he have no money for her wages, but nothing wherewith to buy food for her, made no impression on the old woman. She announced that she was a-goin’ to come in an’ see to him an’ he might just as well make up his mind to it. Wages wasn’t no consequence; he could pay her later when he was doin’ well with his inventions. A compromise was finally reached. She was to come in once in a while to put things to rights, but you may as well know now that the said “once in a while” eventually developed into twice in a while and then to three times a week; later still, as you will see, to the old woman remaining in the house night and day as long as she was able to manage it.

Three months had passed since the baby was born, and Edith hadn’t regained her strength. It was absolutely necessary that she should have proper care and nourishment. The doctor continued to visit her at intervals and insisted on the importance of having the nurse remain with her. So far Haworth had been able to manage these things, but he was now close upon the end of his resources, and as time went on his anxiety became appalling.

He had been to a number of machine shops and manufacturing establishments and applied for work. At two places he got a chance to try, but in neither did he last more than three days. It wasn’t the trouble of earlier years—inability to hold his mind concentrated on work that was deadly and meaningless repetition. With the tremendous incentive he had and the absence of interfering inventive ideas, he could have done it. But with his marvelous mechanical knowledge he couldn’t compete in cheap rapidity with a boob they might pick up in the street. What he did he must do carefully and well. That lifelong habit was absolutely unbreakable, and it unfitted him for modern work. It took time. That wouldn’t do.

It came to be the day after to-morrow that he was expected to pay the monthly expenses for Edith, and he realized that he couldn’t do it. Mrs. Temple saw from the way he strode blindly about the house that he was in distress. She’d been watching him (without seeming to do so) for some hours. Finally she managed to get in his way so that he was compelled to stop before her. He hesitated and looked at her blankly.

“Oh, Mrs. Temple. Yes—yes.”

“I was just thinkin’, Mr. Haworth, there’s furniture in this house that you ain’t got any use fur that I c’n see.”

“Take anything you want, Mrs. Temple.” He turned to resume his feverish pacing.

“No, Mr. Haworth, it wasn’t that!” She was so emphatic that he stopped again and stood looking at her.

“There’s good furniture here, Mr. Haworth. Now that sideboard—I don’t see’s you really need it. Maybe I could find somebody that’d give a good price for it——”

“What?”

She repeated what she’d said.

“Could you find him now?”

“I’ll have to go in to Boston. There’s a man there——”

“Would—would it be enough to—to——”

“I dunno exactly, but that sideboard’s wuth consid’rable; and that walnut set in the East Room——”

“Anything—anything, Mrs. Temple. Please hurry. You might lose a chance!” And he almost pushed her out of the room. The enormous relief made him feel really faint and he sank into the nearest chair.

It was more than two months after the sale of the sideboard—during which interval many other articles of furniture and four paintings had been disposed of in one way or another, together with the largest of his two lathes and his shaper and drill press—that Edith heard what was going on. The information reached her via Augustus, who kept a close watch on Haworth, and observing the trucks of second-hand dealers taking these various articles from the mansion, took delight in taunting her with it.

At once she insisted that the nurse should not remain another day—that it was entirely unnecessary, as she was feeling very much better. She seemed so determined about this that the doctor thought best to give way, and told her the nurse could go at the end of the month.

In a letter to Haworth, Edith told him that she was so much better that the nurse was going, and that hereafter she could manage with very little help—perhaps none at all—as Augustus had got a job again and she was going to insist that he turn over half his pay to her for household expenses. She would miss the nurse, of course, she said, especially about getting his letters at the Post Office and taking hers there. But she would find some way.

This letter reached Haworth at a time when he was beginning again to be frightfully anxious as to where he could obtain money to go on with, for he had only a small amount left and everything they could find in the house that would sell had been disposed of. He was cutting off every possible expense, even to half starving himself, pretending to Mrs. Temple, when she came in on one of her “on” days and wanted to cook things for him, that he had just eaten a hearty meal and couldn’t possibly get down any more. He had an empty baked-bean can that he feloniously left where she would see it, in order to help with the deception.

Edith’s letter gave him relief. He sat on his bench in the workroom, thinking it over, and before going to bed he wrote one to her asking if he couldn’t call and see her before the nurse actually left as it was better for him to come while she was there. And so it was arranged.

And the nurse was discreet and left them to themselves. And he held the minute bundle of recently arrived humanity in his arms a few moments until it protested vigorously on account of his profound awkwardness. An exquisite hour it was for both of them. But Augustus was informed of what had occurred by the small boy he’d hired to keep a lookout, and on reaching home that evening was so violent and abusive that the nurse started out of the house to bring the police, but he called her back, thereafter subsiding into a scowling silence, and not long after leaving the house.

On the following day, along toward afternoon, a car came up the drive and the front-door buzzer sounded. Haworth opened the door to the physician in whose care Edith had been at the hospital and who’d been keeping an eye on her since she came back to the Cherry Street cottage.

“Mr. Haworth, good afternoon.”

“Oh—the doctor, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Markham. Met you two or three times at the hospital. Dropped around to have a little talk.”

Haworth stood, near to being paralyzed with a frightful dread—some sort of premonition concerning Edith—that stopped his heart.

He was aroused by the doctor’s gently turning him about and walking with him into the house. There was no furniture left in the vast dim hall, and Doctor Markham, seeing through the open door on the left that the room beyond had at least chairs and a table in it, guided him in there. Haworth managed to make a motion toward one of the chairs and Doctor Markham seated himself. Then Haworth slowly sat down, without once taking his eyes off the doctor. He heard a voice saying something about there being no cause for alarm and wishing to assure somebody that there was nothing that couldn’t be taken care of if the proper steps were taken without delay.

“We’ve had Mrs. Findlay under observation for some little time,” Doctor Markham went on. “I needn’t tell you that the important thing in these cases is to get them in time; and while there was no——”

“What cases?” broke in Haworth, who was on the rack.

“The situation is this, Mr. Haworth: During the time Mrs. Findlay was at the hospital we deemed it inadvisable to make a thorough examination, for she could hardly have failed to realize what we were looking for, and the effect on her might have been unfortunate. But we feared a tendency toward tubercular trouble. We could say nothing more at the time.”

The doctor paused.

Haworth heard himself repeating huskily, “At that time.”

“Yes.”

“But you—you can now?”

“We’ve made an examination, Mr. Haworth.”

Doctor Markham waited a moment and then continued: “Fortunately the infection is very slight—only a small tract at the top of the left lung. We’re in plenty of time, you see, and by sending her to the right locality and making sure that she has proper treatment and surroundings, there’s no occasion for anxiety. I came to see you about this because I don’t know of anyone else. Her husband is out of the question. Perhaps you know of some relatives or—or——”

Haworth shook his head a little and tried to say “no,” but accomplished no more than a movement of his lips.

“The only thing, then, is to leave it in your hands, Mr. Haworth,” the doctor went on, “and I’m very much hoping you’ll see your way—or—or find a way” (he could not help a glance about the poverty-stricken room) “to send her to one of the best high-altitude cures, where she’ll have a complete change in every respect:—air—food—sunlight—surroundings—even language if possible, for every little helps. Attitude of mind is an important element you know. Of course there are State and other institutions here—all admirable in their way. But I’m sure Mrs. Findlay needs something more than we can find near at hand. Moreover, there’s a child to be considered. That complicates matters a little.”

Haworth sat rigid, his eyes fixed on the physician.

“I’m going over the case carefully with Doctor Benjamin, our lung specialist, and I’ll have you fully informed of the steps to be taken. Mrs. Findlay is aware of her condition. Just as well, too. She’d have to know very soon in order to understand why certain things in the way of treatment are necessary.” Doctor Markham understood the situation pretty well and felt no resentment nor, indeed, surprise that Haworth failed to rise from his chair or even seemingly to be aware that he was going. He left the young man sitting motionless, staring before him.

Mrs. Temple came in next morning and found Haworth in the room on the left, sitting motionless, staring before him. He had the appearance of having been there for some time, though she had no idea it was so long as since the day before. For that matter, neither had he.

It wasn’t necessary to make an effort to rouse him; he looked up at her as she came near and answered her “good morning” absently. Later he took a cup of strong coffee she brought, and drank it in compliance with her request. Afterward she heard him murmuring faintly and mechanically, as from force of habit, that he had had all the breakfast he wanted and really couldn’t eat any more, so would she please not get it for him. She paid no attention to this, though, and cooked him an egg with two little ribbons of bacon which she had brought over from her own limited base of supplies. When she set the tray on a kitchen chair by his side he looked up at her gratefully but shook his head a little. But when she said, “Please eat it, Mr. Haworth,” he did so. Afterward, when she had gone back to the kitchen and was washing the dishes he came out and asked if she could take a note to Mrs. Findlay for him and bring back an answer. He explained how to get there, and she started at once, without waiting to finish the dishes. There was a strange and disquieting look in his eyes that she hadn’t seen in them before.

He had scribbled in pencil, “I must see you—I must—I must.” And the answer came back, “Darling—oh, my darling, please don’t be worried—it will be all right. Come to-morrow—three is the best time.”

When he was with her once more and she with him, there wasn’t much that could be said. It was mostly the two silent ones clinging to each other, feeling even then that the dread specter was standing over them, making ready to tear them eternally apart; yet each managed to find a few words of encouragement, Edith stopping his eyes with kisses when they turned that terrified look on her, and telling him there wasn’t any danger at all—that she felt so perfectly well; he muttering about a patent he might sell, and anyway there were other things he had in mind, so that she’d have every care and be sent to a place where cure was certain.

And then there was the little one—Mildred they were going to name her—sound asleep on the nearby couch! It was inconceivable that tragedy could come to such an innocent! He sat for a long time looking down at the child, with Edith’s hand, now so white and thin, pressed against his lips.

While he was there the maddening inability to do what would save her seemed not to burn into him so mercilessly. It was when he left her and was back in the vast and gloomy house with its shadowy candlelight and bareness of furniture that these things returned upon him and assaulted him with their full force. And something that made it still more terrible was lying on the table in the living room, awaiting his return—the large envelope from Doctor Markham’s office containing the specialist’s report. An agonizing thing to read, yet he did not hesitate.

Mrs. Findlay was in a serious condition. Though much of the detail was beyond his comprehension, he had no difficulty in understanding that. No time must be lost in getting her to one of the high-altitude cures. Switzerland was recommended as most desirable for one of her type. There were several that were held to be as beneficial in the United States, but for Mrs. Findlay they were not to be preferred if it were possible to send her abroad.

Haworth saw it all. To save her life she must be sent to one of those places—and little Mildred taken care of. And there was no one but himself to do it,—no one.

Mrs. Temple, pretending to be busy with an unusual amount of cleaning, managed to hover near, not annoying him as he sat distracted or moved blindly about the house, but ready at any time to do what she could—for she saw there was serious trouble. Along toward seven o’clock she made tea and cooked a small chop she’d bought while he was away. When she asked him to come and have his supper, he stared at her vacantly, seeming not to know what she meant; but it came to him after a little, and he seated himself at the table in the small breakfast room without further urging, drinking and eating, but plainly without an idea of what he was doing.

Afterward he wandered back into the living room, behaving somewhat as people probably do when they’re walking in their sleep—I never saw one.

The old woman glanced in occasionally while doing the dishes, and saw each time that he was sitting there staring into vacancy, the pallor of his face emphasizing the darkness of his deep-set eyes. She was greatly worried, and wasn’t going home that night, no matter what! He might be taken ill or something. She would lie down on the old lounge she’d found in the loft of the barn and brought into the kitchen when all the good furniture was taken away. The last thing before doing this she stole quietly to the door and looked in again. Mr. Haworth hadn’t moved from the chair nor changed his position in any way. She went back to the kitchen and stretched herself on the ancient and moth-eaten sofa. It was a warm evening and she needed no covering. It seemed only a few moments after she fell asleep that she was suddenly awakened by the sound of violent knocking or pounding that apparently came from somewhere in the basement. She listened for a few seconds, alarmed, her old heart doing a corresponding pounding of its own. Haworth hadn’t worked down there for months, and it seemed incredible that he would suddenly go at it again at such an hour, and with the terrible thing, whatever it was, that seemed to be pressing on his mind.

But Mrs. Temple was game, if ever a woman was. It was hardly two ticks after the pounding began before she was feeling her way down the basement stairs.

It was Haworth at work, and not in his shop, but some distance beyond it. She could see him by the light of the lamp he’d placed near. He had a lot of weather-beaten boards or planks that had apparently been dragged in through one of the basement windows. She couldn’t think where he’d got them, unless it was from the old barn at the rear of the house. Out of these he was building a partition, so far as the old woman could make out, and he was evidently in a fever of haste about it, knocking and clawing out old nails, sawing boards in lengths, and then nailing them to upright timbers or studding set in a way so they would wall off a small-sized room.

Even Haworth’s furious activity which she now beheld, seemed better to her than having him sit rigid, staring at nothing, with some hidden anguish eating his heart out; and she thought best not to disturb him. So, after watching him a few moments she turned away and went back up the stairs, and as soon as she’d got herself quieted a little, lay down again on the old lounge. But not to sleep. She didn’t expect that. How could she while hearing this dearly beloved young man in his frenzied fit of work, to which he was driven by some desperation the cause of which she could not guess?

It was still going on when the morning sunlight struck in through one of the windows, and did not cease until she went down to him with coffee and toast on a tray. He stopped when she spoke, and stood an instant looking at her. Then he thanked her, but really he didn’t want anything. This behavior she considered much nearer to what was normal with him than the way he’d acted at supper the night before—eating everything without a word. Indeed, Mrs. Temple was so much encouraged by his refusal to take anything, that she went further and insisted. He must take it now while it was hot, and she set the tray on the plank he was just then sawing. On this the young fellow came to terms and drank the coffee and ate the toast—very hurriedly to be sure, and with eyes roving about the structure he was engaged upon; but he “got it down,” as Mrs. Temple said to herself, “and that’s the main thing!”

In three or four minutes he was working again, and with the same feverish haste—the same madness to have it finished.

It was late the previous night that the thing had occurred to him. He’d been sitting where Mrs. Temple last saw him, all hope gone, crushed, stunned, overcome. All at once, without warning, he found himself standing erect and with a plan or conception in his mind which promised, on its first occurring to him, to be something which would certainly turn defeat into victory. The central idea of the thing, with its most extraordinary possibilities for profit, came to him as a whole, and from that he began rapidly to develop it. For nearly an hour he stood there intensely occupied with this, feeling positive that he had something which would enable him to save the life of the one so dear to him. Toward the end of that time the vital necessity for secrecy began to dawn on him and then to rise rapidly into tremendous importance, until he suddenly came to the realization that it was at the basis of everything—that without it the invention would be valueless—so much junk. He decided at once to build a room in the basement where the device could be constructed without the slightest danger that knowledge of its purpose or mechanism would leak out. Bars and padlocks. Timbers from the old barn back of the house. Almost before he knew what he was doing he found himself out there with hammer and chisel and cross-cut saw. He took the lamp that Mrs. Temple had left lighted on the table, and drove at the business frantically. Time—time—time! The doctors said delay might turn the scales against her.

In a couple of hours he had enough timber ripped off and dragged to the basement to begin on, and at it he went, startling Mrs. Temple—of whose presence in the house he was unaware—out of a sound sleep.

Working with the same desperate drive all the next day and well into the succeeding night, he had the small room entirely planked-up by two in the morning, the partitions build up solid to the floor joists of the room above.

He was at it again the morning following, and Mrs. Temple knew from the muffling of the sound, as she heard it in the kitchen, that he had now closed himself into the new room and was working inside.

There isn’t a doubt in the world that Charles Michael Haworth would have starved himself to death at this time but for Mrs. Temple. Without a word of remonstrance or fault-finding she simply took things as they came and hustled about to do what she could. Sometimes she was able to induce a grocer or market man to give a little more credit. Failing that, she’d go home to her lodgings (a small room in a tenement building of forbidding aspect) and pull a battered old trunk from under the bed. After looking about to satisfy herself that no spectators were present, she’d reach in under the clothing which partly filled it, and bring up a cigar box, from which the old woman would surreptitiously and with a snatching motion, take out a dollar or two, quite in the manner of one engaged in a robbery of some kind. Very well she knew that this little hoard had been put by for a rainy day, and nearly always she’d mumble to herself, “Well if this ain’t one, what is it I’d like to know!” as she pilfered it. The money was quickly exchanged for groceries.

She brought his food to him in the basement, putting the dishes on an upturned barrel near the little room where he was working. Then she’d call to him that it was there and at once hurry away upstairs again. He wouldn’t open the door while she was in the basement. For sleep he took what little he got like a Chinese laundryman, dropping down where he was when exhausted and resuming his hectic labor the instant consciousness returned.

There was only one outside interruption during the time Haworth was driving to finish the apparatus or device he was working on, and that a brief one. Two young men came to the house one morning, and so impressed old Mrs. Temple (who answered the bell) with the importance of their errand—assuring her that instead of being after money they wanted to pay Mr. Haworth some—that she went down and talked to him through the partition about it. It resulted in his finally putting on his coat and going up to see what they wanted. He found them on the front portico. Although Mrs. Temple had asked them in, they seemed, for some reason, to prefer waiting outside.

Certainly the one who did the talking did it well. He was a reporter from one of the Boston papers and had in view a story for the Sunday supplement. This recluse inventor had become quite a subject of remark in his near neighborhood, and something of general interest might be got out of it. Realizing from what he’d heard that Haworth would be a ticklish proposition to handle, he said nothing about the real object of his visit, but pretended instead that he wanted to buy one of his inventions. His talk was so earnest, so glib, so voluble, that Haworth was led into answering quite a lot of questions about his life, habits of work, etc., before he realized what he was doing, and altogether failed to notice that during this time the other chap (who was a photographer) was dodging about in different places, carrying a peculiar box-like affair in his hands. It was this latter that brought an abrupt end to the interview, for Haworth’s ear, trained to a hair on mechanical sounds, suddenly caught the click of a camera, and turning on the instant, he got a fleeting glimpse of the thing focused on him before the young man had time to drop it down. After a second’s pause he turned on his heel and went into the house, closing the door firmly, though not violently, behind him. The reporter chap was disappointed, as he had it laid out to see the inside and look over the inventions after they had the photographs taken. But with the pictures they had there was enough stuff to go on with, and he could do a bit of imaginary work for the interior.

Three weeks—even working under forced draft as he did—was quick time in which to finish what Haworth had undertaken. He had one thing in his favor, though, which counted for not a little: the parts he had to get out were large and simple—heavy wooden shafts and levers, smooth-running pulleys with cords and weights, a great heavy pendulum with escapement device—parts like that, and all on a scale involving no complicated adjustments. Whatever lathe-work was necessary he managed on the small lathe—it was only the large one that had been sold. He had to rig it for foot power, but that was a comparatively simple matter.

On an evening which was near to the end of this period of drastic toil, Haworth sent Mrs. Temple on an errand so that he could test his mechanism out. He found that with some minor changes and readjustments that took him, notwithstanding the furious drive he put into it, a day and a half longer, the device operated with certainty and precision. Mad to complete it as he was, he realized that it must be unerring in its performance. The slightest thing amiss or out of adjustment would not only have spelled disaster, but pronounced it.

It was late one afternoon when Haworth was finally able to say to himself that the mechanism was complete and its operation satisfactory. As early the next morning as he thought likely people would have arrived in their offices or places of business, he started out to find some one who would purchase the rights for the handling and exploitation of his novel mechanical conception; and before evening of that same day he had come home stunned and stricken with the realization that all his work had been of no avail. For it had never occurred to the young inventor that the absolute secrecy upon which the value of his device depended, could at the same time prove an insurmountable obstacle in the way of disposing of it. Not until he went out and tried to make a sale did this unfortunate situation reveal itself. Then, and at once, he made the terrifying discovery that he couldn’t possibly describe his mechanism and its tremendous monetary possibilities until he was perfectly certain that he was doing so to the man who would buy it; for there could be no possibility of anyone taking hold of it and agreeing to pay the large sum of money that he (Haworth) must have, as well as assuming the heavy expense of manufacture and general promoting, unless given a full description of the invention and its operation, together with his plans connected with its exploitation. If ever there was a vicious circle on earth, this was one—and not much distance to go in circumnavigating it.

The truth came to him with a shock; indeed, he got the shock before his conscious mind was aware of the truth. He had gone to a man he used occasionally to meet at the mansion while old Mr. Cripps was alive. This gentleman and Mr. Cripps seemed quite friendly, and the latter once mentioned that Mr. Hollister (the gentleman’s name) had just made a big pile of money on some patent he owned. Haworth hadn’t seen him since those days. His office was in a large building on Beacon Street a little way up from Tremont, and Haworth was there before ten in the morning. It was his first attempt to sell.

Mr. Hollister received him graciously—an elderly gentleman with a sharp Yankee face, though kindly at that. While he was quite disturbed by Haworth’s appearance—his extreme emaciation and ghastly pale face with the feverish fire burning in his eyes—he showed no sign of it, and after making him sit down by his desk and remarking on the number of years since they’d met, asked if there was anything he could do for him.

Haworth began at once to explain that he’d just perfected a mechanical novelty regarding which he would like to interest him. He had built, in the basement of the house, a full-sized working model—in fact, the machine itself—for in the exploitation, or you might say output, of the thing, lay the large money-making possibilities. He was going on glibly enough with this sort of talk—for he was feverishly excited and spoke rapidly—when he suddenly and unexpectedly came up against the insurmountable obstacle. At the time he did not know what it was;—he was only aware that something had stopped him dead. There was a silence for a full minute. Then, his mind a sickening blank, he began to stammer out a few disconnected words, after which he was silent again and sat staring.

Mr. Hollister, who’d been more than eager to hear what Haworth had in the way of an invention, supposed the young man had been taken suddenly ill (he certainly looked it) and hastened to get him a drink. But it was all over. The young fellow couldn’t go on. And finally, in a blind sort of way, he got up from his chair and walked dizzily out of the office.

The elder man followed to the elevator, quite solicitous; asking if there wasn’t something he could do, and making efforts to learn what the trouble was. But Haworth shook his head weakly, the elevator door clanged, and he dropped silently out of sight.

As he came out at the street entrance of the building he moved along the wall a short distance and stood there, his eyes strained wide open. The blow was so sudden and smashing that he was dazed, not realizing what had struck him. He’d been there for hardly more than a minute when the traffic policeman from the Tremont corner came hurrying along. A lady had reported that something was the matter with a man leaning against a building a little way up Beacon. The moment he saw Haworth he ran across the street to him and asked what was wrong.

The young man shook his head a little, but was unable to speak.

“Live here in Boston?” the officer inquired.

“Out—Roxbury.”

“What’s the street?”

“Torrington.”

“Some ways. I’ll send a taxi.”

“No, please don’t!” Haworth was suddenly emphatic. “I can get home all right!” Saying which, he turned and walked unsteadily up the street.

He found himself awhile later, without knowing how he got there, seated on the bench in the Public Garden where he and Edith had been—ages ago—ages ago. He was trying to remember what he’d said to Mr. Hollister, with the vague idea of finding out what it was that had stopped him in the midst of the interview.

It’s an odd thing, isn’t it, what the human mind’ll do to you! While he was talking in the office there, running as smooth as you like, the brakes suddenly went on, the wheels creaked, and he came to a dead stop, and all without the slightest volition on his part. Now, as he sat there near the pond and the shouting children, he slowly came to a realization of the reason why a certain safety device installed somewhere in his mental machinery, had automatically brought him to a standstill. It would be impossible to explain the device and its operation to anyone without ruining every chance it had. That is, unless the people he explained it to took it—and how could he be sure they would?

Suddenly, after a length of time of which he had no idea, he got to his feet. There was hope yet! A ray of hope!

He would think up some sort of similar affair—a proposition involving the same sort of risks yet in reality nothing like it. This he would describe to a man he was trying to interest in the thing, speaking of it casually, not as anything of his own, but as an odd thing he’d heard of—a man he knew had gone into it, and so on. From the remarks and behavior of a person to whom he described this similar proposition, it was Haworth’s idea that he could gain a pretty clear indication as to whether the man would go into such a thing himself if he got the opportunity; and when he found one who would, he could safely let him know exactly what it was.

There was no time to waste. He walked rapidly away, trying mightily to conceive of some scheme that would give hazards corresponding to his own, yet bearing no dangerous similarity to it.

Among the few men with whom he had had business dealings, he selected the manager of a machine shop—one Mat Williams—as being the most likely to be attracted. By the time he got to Williams’s place he had something roughly thought out to test him with, and as soon as he could get him aside he began telling about a friend of his who had gone into a most unusual enterprise—which enterprise he described at length. Williams was naturally astonished that Haworth should come there to tell him an absurd and apparently pointless anecdote, and when the young man began demanding avidly what he thought of it, Williams decided that the fellow had gone completely off his nut. He was sorry, but the only course seemed to be to get rid of him as soon as possible, which he did, smoothing things over with pleasant talk and a hurried handshake.

Haworth was cut up a bit, though he had no idea how bad it really was. But as he tried one after another with his singular method of diagnosing their speculative propensities, and found that every one of them, instead of talking business, tried to get away from him as soon as he possibly could, his hope began to ebb.

From one to another he went, despairingly yet without thought of surrender, coming to expect their glances of surprise, followed sometimes by alarm, and again by something akin to pity. He accepted these various expressions as they came, entirely unable to account for them, realizing only that one after another of those he approached on the subject appeared to have a strange antipathy to hearing anything about the hypothetical cases he hit on to try them with, and hurried away from him at the first available opportunity.

It was impossible that the night, when it came, should be anything but a distressing one for Haworth. Though approaching people about his machine had come, in this short space of time, to be about as enjoyable as so many executions for murder, the poor fellow would rather have gone on with it than lie helpless while his mind grappled with his monstrous predicament.

After a time, when the torture of the thing passed the point of endurance, he would stagger blindly to his feet and stride about at a tremendous pace, having no realization of where he was. This happened several times during the night.

The morning saw him out again with his white, emaciated face and threadbare clothing, going mechanically from one place to another in his vain search for some one he could rely on as a purchaser—a most doubtful enterprise at the best, but put in the perfectly hopeless class by his eccentric management of it, together with his disturbing appearance and behavior.

He hunted up several speculators who had once been friendly with old Mr. Cripps, and quite frequently, in those days, guests at the house; he went to Mr. Trescott and even to the manager of the bank with which he had had some modest dealings in time gone by. But there wasn’t one of those he approached with his misguided efforts to test them out, who was not quite convinced, after listening to him a moment, that the poor fellow was mildly insane. Mr. Trescott was quite saddened by it, yet hardly surprised.

The day following was Sunday, and after a hideous night of despair he had fallen into a sort of stupor that lasted until the middle of the afternoon. When he finally roused himself from it (he had been sitting in a chair since the night before) the realization of his dreadful dilemma came upon him with appalling intensity, and he went to pacing about the house in a manner that filled Mrs. Temple with a new alarm. There was a frantic desperation about it that terrified the old woman, and it was some time before she got her courage up to speak to him. She finally succeeded in waylaying him in the narrow back hall, but he strode past without appearing to see her, crowding her against the side wall as he did so, but of course without any idea of what he was doing.

She recovered herself as soon as she could and made another effort to get his attention, this time calling out to him that he mustn’t go on that way—he’d kill himself! But it seemed impossible to make him hear.

For more than an hour she listened to his tramping about, sometimes on the floor above, sometimes in the large entrance hall or other rooms on the ground floor, but never in the basement.

Suddenly, when it was getting on toward four o’clock, there was a dull, muffled noise apparently coming from one of the rooms above, as of something falling heavily on the floor, and with it the sound of tramping ceased. Though she felt her legs weakening under her, she toiled up the main stairway. Looking down the upper hall, she could see from the light striking through it into the corridor that the door of the room Mrs. Findlay had occupied was open—something unusual, for he’d always kept it closed and locked.

She hurried, limping, down the hall and went to the door.

Haworth was lying face down on the floor, his head resting on his arms.

Mrs. Temple hastened to him, possessed only of the terrifying thought that he was dead, and sank down on the floor at his side.... No! He was breathing! Gently shaking him by the shoulder, she called his name.

At first there was no response, but after a little he spoke in a voice that was half a whisper, and without raising his head asked her please to go away—he didn’t want to be disturbed. Would she please go?

The old woman struggled to her feet and brought a pillow from another room, feeling he wouldn’t like her to disturb the pillows in this one. Kneeling on the floor beside him, she gently raised his head and put the pillow under it. Then, with all the haste she was able to make, she set out for a drug store, half a mile away on Center Street.

On reaching the place she had to wait a moment before she could recover breath enough to ask the clerk if he could tell her where she could find a good doctor for Mr. Haworth.... Yes, over at the Cripps mansion.... Yes indeed, it was very serious and some one ought to see him.

The clerk had, that very morning, been reading a full-page write-up in one of the Sunday supplements, in which the house on Torrington Road and its singular occupant had been fully described and illustrated. For this reason he was instantly interested, and volunteered himself to telephone to Doctor Crimmin’s office. If the doctor wasn’t in he’d leave word for him to go out there as soon as he came.

Mrs. Temple thanked him and hurried away. When she got to her lodgings she carefully closed the door, pulled out the old trunk, reached down under the clothing in it, and brought up the cigar box, from which she took three silver quarters, muttering to herself as she seized them: “Rainy day! I should think so! It’s one o’ them cloudbursts!”

With these coins gripped in her withered hands, she went to the nearest grocery store and bought four eggs, a loaf of bread, ten cents’ worth of tea, and a small glass jar of milk, and then made all possible haste back to the mansion.

I never could find out—for certainly Haworth had no idea, and what other witnesses were there?—how long it was after Mrs. Temple left him face down on the floor of his room, that he became aware of the sounding of the front-door “buzzer.” Few in his distracted state of mind would have noticed it, nor would he had not his years of mechanical training made him ultrasensitive to such sounds. Sensitive also to the condition of such mechanisms and instruments, as shown by his never failing to keep the electric bell system of the house in perfect working order, no matter what dilapidations befell elsewhere.

Again the buzzer sounded on the floor below, echoing through the bare half-furnished rooms. Haworth found himself vaguely realizing that Mrs. Temple wasn’t in the house or she’d have answered the first ring.

Slowly he got to his feet, descended the stairs, and crossing the great hall to the front door, opened it.

Mr. Pentecost,—who had that morning read a Sunday supplement write-up with headings about the “Hermit Inventor of West Roxbury,” and had come out there (instead of taking an afternoon express for New York as he had planned) to see if possibly some one of the devices the “Hermit Inventor” had on hand might not come in nicely for his partner’s (Mr. Harker’s) activities,—had hardly a doubt that it was the inventor himself standing before him in the doorway. And although, owing to the overshadowing elms and the roof and pillars of the portico above and behind him, he found it difficult to see with any distinctness, he got an instant impression, from a certain paleness of face that was almost luminous and a peculiarity in the young fellow’s attitude or manner, that something was wrong with him.

The two stood silent a moment, for something made the commonplace salutation Pentecost had in mind seem quite inappropriate, and it was the young man who finally spoke.

“What is it?” he asked in a hollow voice, slightly tremulous.

“I beg your pardon,” Pentecost hastened to say. “I called to see Mr. Haworth.”

“What about?” still with a quivering note of near-tragedy.

“Are you Mr. Haworth?”

“Yes——but I don’t want to see anybody. Please go away.” And he was turning back into the house.

“One moment! It’s business—entirely business—I’m sure you’ll be interested.”

“I don’t think so,” came the hollow voice out of the gloomy half light, and it was evident the young man was about to close the door.

“Mr. Haworth!” Pentecost spoke sharply. “Can’t you listen half a minute? It concerns us both—and I can’t very well talk about it here.”

Haworth stared at him an instant and then, opening the door a little wider, made a slight motion of invitation.

Pentecost stepped in with a muttered, “You’re very kind,” and glanced quickly about the vast entrance hall in which he found himself—an enormous place two stories in height and with a great stairway at the further end rising to a landing and from that branching to each side. The place was seemingly quite destitute of furniture or floor covering, and he found himself wondering how the young man had managed to make no sound when he crossed it to open the door. He would look at his feet later, when there was more light; it was very dim in the hall.

Closing the massive front door, Haworth moved to the large double doorway on the left—on the left as you enter the house, I mean—and stood waiting for his caller to enter before him. Pentecost did so and found himself in a large and lofty room with high paneled wainscoting of some dark wood, and a white marble mantel on the side opposite as he came in. There were two large windows in that wall—one on either side of the fireplace, though not near it; and another in the wall at his left which faced off toward Torrington Road. At the further end of the room—which was quite a distance, as it was an exceedingly long one—were two doors, one of which (a swing door held partly open by a chair shoved against it) revealed a butler’s pantry beyond. This large apartment was evidently the dining room—or once had been. The wainscoting, heavily built and with deeply set panels, was fully six feet high and extended entirely around it.

Though somewhat shadowed, this room was lighter than the great hall, and he saw mechanical blueprints and drawings laid out on a cheap kitchen table near the middle of it, with small tools and implements scattered about. Books and papers were piled and balanced here and there. The floor was covered with what had once been a handsome carpet—now worn and threadbare. The windows, he noticed, had cheap roller shades to them—but judging from the cornices and rich but faded lambrequins above—had once evidently had the heavy draperies of an earlier fashion.

Pentecost was an instantaneous observer, requiring no time exposure, so that there had hardly been a pause when he turned to speak to Haworth. But Haworth wasn’t there. He had followed into the room after Pentecost, but had slipped to one side and was now wandering back and forth along the wall toward the further end. He appeared to have forgotten the other’s presence, and his eyes shifted about, giving him the look of one tortured by some harrowing thought or memory. In a few moments his restless glance accidentally fell on Pentecost and he came to a sudden stop and stood staring at him.

“Oh—you!” he muttered, half to himself.

“Quite right,” said Pentecost.

“Well, what is it?” the young man asked, moving toward him.

“Perhaps I ought not to have intruded like this.”

“As you have,” came back the hollow voice out of the gloom, “why don’t you tell me what you want?”

“It’s a matter of some importance to us and I thought it might be to you. I represent a firm——Great God! what’s the matter?”

For as Haworth approached him out of the shadows at the far end of the room and the light from the front window fell on his face, Pentecost saw it distinctly for the first time, and the eyes that looked out at him from the drawn and almost distorted features might have been those of a drowning man.

“Matter?” the young man repeated.

“Why—yes. Are you—are you feeling all right Mr. Haworth?”

“You said you came about something important.”

“Yes—I did—but perhaps you——”

“If it’s money I owe you take anything you want and go away—that’s all—go away!” Saying which, Haworth turned and started walking restlessly about the room as he was doing before.

“Not at all—not at all! There’s nothing like that! It’s just the other way—I’m going to put a few dollars in your pocket if you’ve got anything I can use.”

Haworth, halfway down the room, swung round with a look of such fearful and desperate avidity that Pentecost saw at once it was a case of money. The young fellow was in some dire extremity—some feverish need that mere destitution, even to the point of starvation, wouldn’t explain. Couldn’t be a more favorable situation for business. Easy to drive him to the wall and get one of his inventions for a block of stock—in other words, for nothing.

“I represent a firm of promoters—New York—Harker & Pentecost.” He took a card from his pocketbook. “We’re always looking for novelty—something different from anything that’s been on the market before.”

Mr. Pentecost paused, but the young man said nothing, and he went on: “It came to us a short time ago that you had some extraordinary inventions here and if——”

“There’s nothing you’d want,” Haworth interrupted.

“But perhaps—if you’d allow me to see what——”

“There’s no use in that! They come—hundreds of them—just want me to let them see. Then they’re sorry, but there’s nothing of practical use. That’s it—always nothing practical—always—always!” He moved away.

“It’s nothing to me whether the thing’s practical or not!”

Haworth stopped and stood looking at him.

“I’m not looking for carpet sweepers,” Pentecost went on, “or fireless cookers or any of those things that people are tired of reading advertisements about. The thing I’m after is novelty—something absolutely new and unheard of—something impressive in its operation so we can exploit it and give it a chance. Now it struck me from what I heard, that your work would perhaps be just the kind——”

He was halted in the midst of his talk by the way Haworth was staring at him. It wouldn’t have surprised him to get an indication on the fellow’s face that he’d just thought of one of his devices that would be what was wanted. But that wasn’t it. For soon he saw that the young inventor was studying him—figuring out what sort of a character he really was. Those strange and troubled eyes were fixed on him with an intense scrutiny that penetrated below the surface.

To divert this rather too close attention to himself, Pentecost spoke with more emphasis than before.

“I see you’ve thought of something, Mr. Haworth.”

There was no verbal response to this, but a barely perceptible motion of his head while still gazing intently at Pentecost, might be taken to mean that he had.

“Anything near what we’re looking for, do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope it’s something unusual,” Pentecost said, cheerfully; “some novelty that’ll make ’em talk.”

“It will do that.”

“What made you say just now that you hadn’t anything I’d want?”

“This is something else.”

Pentecost was inclined to think the fellow had illusions. Anyone could see there was something wrong with him.

“Well, bring it along,” he suggested. “Let’s have a look at it.”

The answer was a slight negative head-shake.

“Too heavy?”

“It’s built in.”

“Where?”

“Under here—in the basement.”

“I see. Something to operate in a home. What does it do?”

“I want you to come down.”

“Certainly, Mr. Haworth. Lead the way.”

Notwithstanding that Pentecost felt convinced that the young man had signals set for some sort of brain storm and that he himself knew a thing or two about basements in relation to crime, the notion of not going down there when the distracted inventor suggested the idea, didn’t come within miles of occurring to him. He had a hunch there was something here for him—something extraordinary, too—and he was going after it.

Haworth moved nearer. “Mr.——What did you say your——”

“Pentecost.”

“Mr. Pentecost, I’ve decided to tell you everything.”

“The best thing you could do Mr. Haworth.”

“I find you’re the person I’ve been looking for.”

“You’re very kind to say so. Shall we go down and have a look at it?”

From Haworth’s last remark, Pentecost feared that after all he was hopeless.

“I’ll get the key.”

“Secret, eh?”

“Yes.”

“No patent?”

Haworth shook his head.

“What about the people you’ve shown it to?”

“There are none.”

“And you haven’t told anybody?”

“No.”

That sounded better. The chap had some sort of sense, anyway. But not the sense to patent it. That was too bad.

“The key’s upstairs.” And he started toward the entrance hall.

“Could we switch on a light here, Mr. Haworth? It’s a trifle overcast.”

“I’ll tell Mrs. Temple to light a lamp,” the young man answered from the door, and he hurried out.

So they’d cut off his current, Pentecost reflected—for he’d noticed electric fixtures about. Although hardly late enough for twilight, there was much the same thing in this vast and gloomy room with its dark walls and tree-shaded and vine-overgrown windows. Pentecost wanted to see what—if anything—was going on here. Something made him feel that whatever it was might be turned to his advantage.

Soon after Haworth left the room, Pentecost saw in the dimness the frail figure of a woman coming toward the table from the further end. Mrs. Temple, probably—the one he’d spoken of. He saw from her unsteady gait and bent figure that she was old and somewhat decrepit, and the momentary clicking of the lamp chimney against the glass shade as she took it off told of her trembling hands.

The old woman had reached home with her modest packages of food only a few moments before, and was greatly relieved as she passed down the flagged footpath to the kitchen, to catch a glimpse of Mr. Haworth through a side window of the living room; for it was evidence that he had recovered sufficiently to come downstairs. An instant later she saw that he wasn’t alone. A strange man—at least a stranger to her—was standing near the table and appeared to be watching the young fellow intently as he moved about. Then it came to her that he must be the doctor. Who else could it be? He certainly had the look of one with his close trimmed beard—and watching Mr. Haworth like that.

After getting the lamp shade and chimney off, Mrs. Temple groped about and found a match somewhere; but instead of striking it she straightened up—so far as she could—and after a glance at the door spoke in a low voice.

“You’re the doctor, ain’t ye?”

“No, madam,” Pentecost answered.

Mrs. Temple stared blankly at him, seeming for some reason to be astonished. “You ain’t?” she finally said.

“Certainly not. Are you feeling ill, madam?”

“Me?” looking at him in a surprised sort of way. “No!”

After an instant she again bent over the lamp and lighted it, regulating the flame by the little brass disk at the side. Pentecost saw her thin, withered old hands trembling under the light.

“Perhaps it’s Mr. Haworth who isn’t well?” he ventured.

The old woman looked at him. “You ain’t blind, be ye?” she asked.

“Not exactly, madam,” with a trace of a smile. “I saw he wasn’t looking quite right——”

“It’s a great sight more’n not lookin’ right!” Then she turned to him suddenly. “What’re you doin’ here?” she demanded sharply, yet keeping her voice subdued.

“I came on business.”

“Well ef it’s money you’re after you can talk to me. He ain’t in no condition to be pestered; you ain’t got much jedgment about ye ef ye can’t see that.”

“But my dear madam, I assure you——”

“Sh!” She was fussing with the lamp as Haworth came in.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, seeing her bending over it. “Won’t it work?”

“Yes,” she said, stooping and looking under the shade.

“I guess it’s liable to go now.”

“I want to take it downstairs, Mrs. Temple——This way, Mr. Pentecost.” The latter followed him across the great bare hall, to a door under the branching stairway on the left, and through this to a back hall at the further end of which the basement stairway descended.

Mrs. Temple stood motionless at the table where they’d left her. Strange as it may seem when you realize the briefness of the time, this decrepit old woman, bent and knotted with rheumatism, her hands tremulous with the palsy of age, had conceived a deep and implacable distrust of the man she had just heard addressed as Mr. Pentecost. She didn’t reason about it or ask herself why—that wasn’t her method. She simply accepted it and was determined to do what she could.

Ever since Haworth had built the small room in the basement some weeks before, he’d been working feverishly day and night on what she supposed to be one of his inventions, seeming so desperately bent on completing the thing, and for the last day or two plunged in such dreadful despair, that the poor woman was beside herself with anxiety. She’d often seen him through times of such absorption in his work that he would have starved if she hadn’t kept after him with food, but there’d never been anything so terrible as this and she couldn’t find out what was the matter.

And now had come this sinister-looking creature (though to save her life she couldn’t have said what was sinister about him) enveloped, it seemed to her, in an atmosphere of cunning and intrigue so dense that she could feel it, and Mr. Haworth had taken him down into the basement—most likely to that secret room he’d been working in so desperately—where the fellow was undoubtedly arranging some infamous plan or deviltry involving him.

Haworth, as soon as the door of the roughly planked room was closed on them, had stripped away the sheet that covered his mechanism from view and had begun to describe to Pentecost what it was intended to do. He was in the midst of this when Pentecost suddenly stopped him with a quick motion of his hand.

The lamp with its green shade stood on the top board of a stepladder, throwing a weird light on the two men facing each other in silence.

Haworth, recovering from his surprise (for he hadn’t heard anything) started to speak, but Pentecost shook his head emphatically, and after a moment’s pause whispered: “I hear someone!”

There was another pause. “You think somebody’s listening?” Haworth asked in a subdued voice.

“What I think cuts no figure. This is where we take no chances!” And Pentecost suddenly threw open the door.

The light struck on old Mrs. Temple as she was going in through the door of Haworth’s workshop nearly opposite. She’d caught a word or two about some one listening and noted the sudden lowering of their voices just in time to turn back and get into the shop.

“Oh, Mrs. Temple!” Pentecost called in the most ordinary tone. “I’m on the hunt for a drink of water. Maybe you’d get me some, if it isn’t too much trouble?”

The old woman reappeared at the door with a bunch of chips and shavings in her hands. “It ain’t no trouble,” she mumbled without the faintest trace of embarrassment, and limped along to the stairway. Pentecost watched her labor up the stairs, then turned to Haworth standing in the door of the planked-up room.

“That old dame of yours is right on the mark,” he said in an undertone. “Came out of there with a bunch of shavings.”

“Yes—my shop. She gets them for the stove.”

“So I inferred,” said Pentecost. His admiration was because she’d managed it so deftly and said nothing about it. An amateur would have mentioned the stove. Just as well to keep an eye on that old lady.

She soon came back with the water. Pentecost took it from her. “Awful sorry to trouble you,” he said, “—and all those stairs to climb.” He took a sip of water. “You won’t need anything more down here perhaps?”

“Anything more?” she repeated in a puzzled way.

“Kindlings, for instance?”

“Not if the fire goes, I won’t.”

“I’m trusting, then, that it’ll do that.”

They stood looking at each other for an instant. Then the old woman turned and went hobbling off into the shadows of the basement and could be dimly seen toiling up the stairs.

A moment before she disappeared Pentecost said to Haworth, speaking distinctly but not raising his voice, “It’s a remarkable invention, Mr. Haworth—one that, handled properly, would make money; and I’d like to talk business with you.” Then, setting down the glass of water, he asked if he could have something out of his workshop.

“Of course,” Haworth said, hardly understanding. “What is it?”

“A piece of board five or six feet long—a light one about the size of a lath.”

They found a piece of narrow half-inch stuff, and Pentecost stood it against the wall, slanting across the path of anyone walking through the passageway in the darkness. He balanced it so that a touch would send it clattering down.

“Mrs. Temple wouldn’t listen, if that’s what you think,” Haworth said as they went back to the room.

“Of course not,” agreed Pentecost as he carefully closed the door. “Go ahead with it,” he whispered, “but keep the soft pedal on. Basement’s safe enough, but there’s a room above.”

“Yes, but Mrs. Temple would never——”

“I know—I know. She’s all right. Hell of a pity you don’t know what talent you’ve got in the house! Go on now. What the devil is all this?”

And thereafter had anyone been at the rear end of the room on the left (which was the one above) or even in the basement itself, only the faint droning tones of conversation could have been heard, with occasional clanking and grinding sounds suggesting the revolution of geared wheels. No words could have been distinguished and the fact that toward the end of the interview, after Pentecost’s voice had been going on in a subdued but earnest murmur for quite a time, it was suddenly stopped, as though something had shut him off in the midst of a sentence, and that then, for several minutes following, there was absolute silence, could only have mystified without in the least enlightening anyone in a position to overhear.

In reality there was no mystery whatever, and the whole discussion between the two in that basement room was simple and straightforward. It was only that while Mr. Pentecost was in the very act of telling Mr. Haworth that there were various reasons why it was impossible for his firm to take on this remarkable idea of his for exploitation, there suddenly came to him—flashing through his mind in the characteristic way he hit on such things—a most ingenious scheme or operation that could be worked in connection with this device of Haworth’s—and in fact with nothing else; a scheme that appealed to him by reason of its extraordinary possibilities for shrewd maneuvering and complicated trickery and strategy, and because it was dangerous, cold-blooded, and terrible.

It came crashing in on him in the very midst of his declining to have anything to do with the Haworth invention—even while he was advising Haworth himself to let it alone—and naturally brought him to a stop that was near to being a jolt. The rest of his sentence remained unspoken. He sat motionless, his mind flooded with his new idea, a blank to everything else. And when Haworth, who had taken his refusal as final, at last muttered something about going upstairs, he rose from the wooden box on which he was sitting and followed.

Haworth, in the room above, set the lamp down and stood staring into vacancy.

Pentecost hunched himself up in a chair where he sat with his dark half-closed eyes fastened on the young inventor. He was figuring on what the chap would be likely to do under certain circumstances—the most effective method of taking care of him should he prove an obstacle—the safeguards he could use.

He was as certain that he’d purchase the rights for handling and exploiting the Haworth machine—but doing so in his own way—as he was that he saw the young fellow there before him. It was a chance he’d been looking for ever since he left Chicago. He’d pay anything necessary. But of course he knew how to manage so that the said “necessary” would be an insignificant figure.

Haworth began to walk up and down the room. Pentecost watched him for a while.

“What seems to be the matter?” he finally asked.

The young man stopped in his tracks and looked at him.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t take it.”

“I’m not the only man on earth.”

“It’s the time—the time!”

Pentecost regarded him from under his drooping eyelids.

“You’re looking for a bunch of money?” he asked.

“Yes—oh yes!” And Haworth turned and began to move about.

“Look here,” Pentecost called out to him after a while. “Just to satisfy my curiosity, put an index to it!”

“Index?” Haworth stopped and faced him.

“What amount?”

“I don’t know. A lot—thousands—I must have thousands.”

“How many?”

“All I can get—twenty. No, wait! More! Thirty—forty——”

“The fool that would give you that isn’t born yet.”

“How do you know? Wait! I’ve thought of something! I’ll go to the moving-picture men. They’ll take an interest—they’re bound to—the pictures are part of it—and they pay great prices—they pay thousands!”

Moving-picture men! And the distracted young fellow was capable of doing it. Might get something out of them, too, if he happened to strike a crooked concern.

“I don’t suppose you could wait a few days,” Pentecost mumbled in an uninterested sort of way. “There’s a bare chance I’ve thought of—though I doubt if it’s as good as the pictures at that.” (Of course he couldn’t appear to block the picture game. The price would go up on him—or would if the chap knew anything.)

“For yourself?” Haworth asked, eagerly; for he’d got it firmly fixed in his mind that this man was the one choice on earth for the carrying out of his idea.

Pentecost shook his head. “No,” he said, “but I’ve got a partner. I’ve known him to take a fling at something on his own account—if he took a fancy to it.”

“Where is he?”

“Pittsburgh—on business. He might be able to get here by Friday.”

“Five days!”

“Good man for you, too. Just his line. Done this sort of thing before.”

“But you don’t know he’d take it! I can’t wait five days and then have him say no! I’ll try the pictures. There was a man here last week—wanted to take me working at the lathe—said he’d read about me in a paper. I know where he is. I’ll find him to-night!”

There could be no doubt that the fellow would do as he said. He hadn’t the faintest idea in his system of what a “bluff” was. And the fear of losing this rare chance for ingenious chicanery drove Pentecost into the execution of what is popularly referred to as a “climb down.” Although able to camouflage this performance so that it did not appear in that unpleasant light, he had, before leaving the old Cripps mansion that evening, virtually guaranteed that his firm would take over the entire exploiting rights in the Haworth mechanism, and had agreed to pay for the same in cash, upon the signing of the contract, an amount which should be “satisfactory” to the young inventor. As to this payment he asked for a delay of fourteen days so that he could sound the market, the idea of the thing being so utterly unique that it was impossible at this time to estimate the exact figure they could pay. And as he needed every moment of the fourteen days option—as you might call it, and this being Sunday and so late anyway that nothing could be accomplished, he asked that the time allowed begin on the following day—Monday—at noon, bringing its expiration on Monday the 30th of August at the same hour.

With talk like this—which, as you see, bound him to nothing—in combination with the young man’s earnest desire that he should be the one to undertake the exploitation, Haworth was persuaded into this fourteen days delay, being made confident of receiving a large amount of money at the end of that time. Pentecost said he would bring Harker there to draw up the contract, on his return from Pittsburgh, and then this promoter of hazardous and extraordinary villainies rose to take his leave, slipping a bunch of bills on the table as he did so, with the explanation that what he’d got—though not in legal form—was really a fourteen-day option, and as option money he was leaving a couple of hundred. There was nothing of kindliness or rescue work involved in this; Pentecost had sized up Haworth well enough to know that acceptance of money would make him feel in honor bound to wait the fourteen days—bound firmer, indeed, than if he’d signed documents. A wary move, certain to prevent the young fellow, in a possible fit of desperation, from taking his astonishing idea to a motion picture concern.

The delay he’d asked for was absolutely necessary to Pentecost for the carrying through of the complicated campaign mapped out in his mind. Advance planting of a most unusual character and covering a great extent of territory was required. In addition there was the matter of Haworth himself—the chances—the safeguards—for he was a risk beyond computation. He had insisted on the payment being made to him in cash at the expiration of the fourteen days—if the firm decided to purchase the rights. It looked like a big bunch of money dropped in his lap and no anchor to it—an impossible situation. Of course the fellow would have to be taken care of. The way to do it was the problem. But Pentecost very well knew he’d have a solution—and an adroit one—before morning.

He boarded the midnight train for New York fifteen minutes before leaving time, and at once went to work on his intricate scheme.

PART VI

When Stephen W. Harker of Harker & Pentecost returned from Pittsburgh, where he’d been “planting” for a nice little Gasoline Substitute Swindle (stock selling, of course—that was his department) and had sat in for an hour with Pentecost, getting the details of the extraordinary Haworth device and the elaborate scheme his partner had evolved for its exploitation, he vehemently refused to have anything to do with it. Not for by George and all hell was he going to put his head in a noose like that when he had a nice safe little business that was raking it in as fast as he wanted it.

“You got me going once when you had the firm into that damned Folsam affair—you know the one—came out his wife had hit him with something in his tea. You’d got a grip some way so you could hold it back an’ play it. I dipped in with you an’ no complaint at the time. But now I’ll tell you that was too close for me and this time you’re going to jump plumb into the middle of the shake-off! You must be dippy! They’ll get you sure! Anyways, you can count me good an’ out.”

Pentecost sat toadlike, silent, regarding Harker with bulging, half-closed eyes.

“Now hook to this,” Harker went on; “if the turn is against you and they’re fixing you for the clamps, I back your play to ooze out of anything. But I get loose teeth if I mix in with those little sports that look like raspberry tarts to you. Now this Haworth layout—it looks to me like a frolic with the undertaker; but if you like it for yourself, go to it!”

“I’ve gone to it,” Pentecost murmured in a careless sort of way; “and I play it under the firm name.”

“But my God—wait! That gets me in!”

“Why, so it does!”

“What are you doing, dragging me into a play whether I want it or not?”

“Can that!” Pentecost flashed sudden fire for an instant. “Do you think I planned this damned firm to keep you under glass?”

There was a short pause and Pentecost’s blaze-out subsided.

After a while Harker spoke in another tone, now petulant and pleading. “You going to jam me up against that layout an’ nothing to say?”

“You can make your getaway now.”

“Jump the firm?”

“Why not? In that case, jump while the jumping’s good.”

Harker, on that, said no more. He’d go a long way before dropping the partnership. It wasn’t alone losing the tidy and “classy” business as it was now run through Pentecost’s putting it on a straight-play basis, but even more than that he appreciated the association with this marvelous operator. It gave him the feeling of trailing along with a giant, a super-sharp, a past master of crookedness. He gave the matter of the Haworth enterprise deep thought, and by noon of the following day had decided to play in on it, saying to himself that he’d bar worrying by putting his trust in Pentecost.

On the afternoon of the same day that Mr. Harker declared himself in on the West Roxbury undertaking, both members of the firm embarked on a steamer of the Metropolitan Line for Boston. The boat was the North Land and this line was the “all-the-way-by-water” route, the steamers after traversing Long Island and Block Island Sounds and Buzzards Bay, passing through the Cape Cod Canal into Barnstable Bay, and thence through Cape Cod and Massachusetts Bay into Boston Harbor.

It was the fourth day after Pentecost’s visit to the Cripps mansion and the firm was proceeding to Boston as agreed, in order to discuss with Haworth various points of the contract—the amount to be paid down, the delivery of the machine, and other matters connected with the sale—so that the papers could be drawn up ready for signature on the day the option expired.

Mr. Pentecost had already accomplished a great deal, having got in reports from his men (if it was ordinary business you’d call them correspondents) in all the large cities, and also having come to the determination to carry on the thing himself in such of those towns as he finally selected, instead of selling to the central agency or bureau handling this class of material,—a bureau which he found to be run by “pikers,” mortally afraid to pay big money for big chances. In addition to this, it was safer not to trust them in so ticklish a business. So he had it all laid out, and his own men were already where he wanted them or on the way. He’d sent a couple of his choicest “trusties” over to Boston the day before. Of course the main work was going to be there.

The taking of a steamer instead of going by rail, and also the selection of this particular line, were both essential to Mr. Pentecost’s scheme; and the same thing made it imperative that, following their interview with Haworth, they return to New York by the same boat on which they went over. So important was this latter, indeed, that had they been unable to secure return accommodations on the North Land, Pentecost would have postponed the trip until both the going and returning could have been accomplished on the same steamer—he did not care which of the two running on this route it was.

Awhile after the North Land left—they must have been about running out into the Sound at Hell Gate—Mr. Pentecost went to the purser’s window to make inquiries about the tickets for the return trip (he had left the matter to be adjusted when he came on board, merely having been informed by telephone that the reservations had been made), and after finishing with the business remarked jovially to Mr. Lawson (the purser) that that was a damn good picture of a locomotive he had on the wall there behind him. It represented, lithographed in color, a giant locomotive hauling a night express on the New York Central, and so realistically coming toward you that your first impulse was to make one grand hurdle for your life. The purser, pleased at the appreciation, for he had a fad on locomotives (a fact which Pentecost had obtained from the comprehensive report on the steamer and its officers turned in by one of his men), said it was a pretty good one, but he thought the one they got out the year before beat it.

The conversation resulted in Mr. Pentecost’s being invited into the office, and when business at the window permitted the purser showed him other views of locomotives.

Pentecost didn’t stay long. He knew enough not to drive an entering wedge too far.

By evening they had a slight acquaintance with several of the officers, and Pentecost had made a most favorable impression on the head waiter as well—this latter through the poignant influence of an extraordinary tip; and along toward nine-thirty or ten o’clock the purser, with whom he was chatting over cigars, introduced him to Captain Snow, who happened along just then, and the three talked about the canal.

Pentecost made many intelligent inquiries on the subject and Harker came along and listened in with great interest. So that the total result of the voyage was most satisfactory from Pentecost’s point of view. With no hint of pushing or forcing themselves they had a fairly good traveler’s acquaintance with the captain, the purser, and several minor officers of the North Land, as well as the head waiter and one or two of the deck hands of whom they’d asked questions. Also the chief engineer, to whom they’d been turned over on expressing a wish to have a look at the “power plant,” as they called it. Pentecost had made this engine room move in order to bring it in casually that they were especially interested in machinery—almost their business, you might say. Indeed, that they were even then on their way to Boston to negotiate for the purchase of the rights in a most ingenious mechanical contrivance, though they weren’t positive of being able to get it. Held at so high a figure. But an extraordinary thing in its way.

The North Land backed into her berth at India Wharf, Boston, shortly after 8 o’clock the next morning, and Messrs. Harker & Pentecost were driven to the hotel they were in the habit of patronizing when there (except at such times as they preferred to have their presence in that town unobserved), and went to the room which had been reserved by wire. Alfred Harker, son of the senior partner, who’d come over on the train that left New York at midnight (there’s an “Owl” in each direction you know), had been waiting for them there since about half-past six in the morning.

After breakfasting together and going over a few matters, the three came down into the hotel office and sat there smoking and chatting. One of the house managers came along. An assistant manager, I believe he was. His name was Tate.

He greeted Pentecost and Harker by name, and Alfred (who hadn’t been there before) was introduced.

“Boston on business?” Mr. Tate inquired, pleasantly.

“That’s it,” said Pentecost; “rather an odd business, too.”

“Not so much the business that’s odd,” put in Harker, “but what it brings us up against. Maybe you can give us a pointer or two. We’re trying to buy a mechanical device—invention, you know—from the queerest duck you ever saw, out Roxbury way.”

“Queer, eh?”

“Just bordering on the lunatic fringe,” Pentecost took it up, “but a crackerjack on mechanics. Got a lot of strange devices in his shop out there; most of ’em no earthly use but marvels of ingenuity, nearly every one. Went out there to see ’em a few days ago—Sunday it was. In fact, it was a Sunday paper put me on to it. Full-page write-up about the chap—pictures of him and all that.”

“Oh yes,” Tate put in. “I saw it—I mean the heading—that’s all I read. Something about a hermit, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“Has some ingenious things, you say?”

“Remarkable! No idea I’d find anything we wanted when I saw the tumble-down place; but, if you’ll believe it, he had one of the most novel inventions I ever laid eyes on; in fact, just the kind of thing we’re after. Exploiting’s our business, you know. I got an option on it and we’re over here to get the thing if we can.”

“What’s the man’s name—I forget?”

“Haworth—Charles Michael Haworth, if you want it all. I suppose you can’t tell us anything about him?”

But aside from having caught a glimpse of that heading Mr. Tate had never heard of the man. He assured them, though, that he was going to make inquiries, and if he got hold of anything he’d certainly let them know. They thanked him, and not long after that the three went out and took a carefully selected taxi for West Roxbury.

I don’t want you to get the idea that there were any loose ends about what these super-sharps were doing—not for one half of one per cent. They figured the play to a hair. In this case they had Tate cribbed for a witness.

Although the day set for the visit of Harker, Pentecost, and Alfred to the mansion on Torrington Road was not one of Mrs. Temple’s days in according to custom, but was branded by the calendar as a Friday (which was one of her days out) the old woman was there just the same. Since the appearance of Mr. Pentecost at the house nearly a week before she had been obsessed by the feeling that he was working up some treacherous plot against the trusting young fellow in her charge, and she was determined to be on hand to keep a watch on the vicious brute if he came to the house again—as she had no doubt whatever that he would.

But Haworth had taken note of this tendency of Mrs. Temple’s to be present irrespective of her days in and finding her there on this particular morning he had sent the old woman on an errand which would keep her away for some time. So when the party arrived at the house it was he who opened the door.

Mr. Pentecost greeted him and introduced his partner, Mr. Harker, and Mr. Alfred Harker, after which Haworth ushered them into the room on the left. It was all peculiarly quiet and subdued. Few words were spoken, and those that were, in lowered voices. Pentecost took notice of Haworth’s improved appearance—his quiet, steady voice and the absence of the tortured look and the “drowning-man” stare.

After the four were seated there was a brief pause. They seemed weighed down by some sort of oppressive restraint that could almost be described as funereal.

It was Harker senior who finally began the conversation, endeavoring, with an allusion to Boston’s climate, to establish a commonplace atmosphere—though one hardly more cheerful; and Harker junior hastened to his assistance with a reference to his surprise at so rural a section being in the heart of the town. He supposed Roxbury—or was it Jamaica Plain?—might be so considered.

Pentecost turned them to business, remarking that there wasn’t any time to throw away, and that the first thing was to go down and inspect the machine under consideration, so that the Harkers could get a clear understanding of it. Before they did this, however, he would appreciate information as to the whereabouts of the talented old lady he had seen there on his previous visit. Haworth explained that Mrs. Temple had been dispatched on an errand to East Boston and would have to wait there about three hours before the foundry people could get her the article he’d ordered. Pentecost inquired how much time the journey to East Boston and return would normally require. Haworth thought, with the walk necessary when she got there, it might roughly be put at two hours.

“How long ago did she leave?” Pentecost inquired.

“About twenty minutes.”

“An hour and forty minutes left,” and he glanced at his watch.

“Four hours and forty minutes, if she waits there three,” corrected Alfred.

“As you say—if she waits there three,” was Pentecost’s muttered rejoinder.

The four men spent over an hour in the planked-up room, various sounds of clanking machinery and low-toned conversation issuing therefrom. When they finally completed their investigations and were coming out, Mr. Pentecost expressed the wish to see others of Mr. Haworth’s inventions; so the young man, after lighting Mr. Harker and Alfred to the stairway, took him to the large room where he kept his working models. In this way Pentecost got the opportunity of speaking with Haworth alone.

There were a number of matters relative to the exploitation of the invention in the planked-up room that he wished to arrange with the young man personally. Nothing in all this was a secret from Harker, who understood that it would be better for Pentecost to arrange matters with Haworth personally, afterward turning over the results, as you might say, to his partner.

In the course of this interview in the model room Pentecost spoke earnestly for some time. Haworth’s rejoinders were short and quiet, but it was perfectly evident that what he said, he meant.

After several matters had been gone over, Pentecost turned his attention to the inventions he had come in there to see, for his wish to look them over wasn’t altogether a blind. Eventually he came upon one that suited the purpose he had in view. It showed great ingenuity, and it was not patented—two most desirable points.

When the two men came upstairs they found Mr. Harker and Alfred seated at the table in the room on the left, working on the rough draft of the proposed agreement. A sound and businesslike contract with Haworth was of the utmost importance to the firm.

They’d been discussing the matter for some time when Pentecost stopped them with a quick motion of his hand and sat listening. After a moment he glanced at his watch. The time was nineteen minutes after twelve.

“Gave us four minutes longer than I figured,” he muttered in an undertone.

“Mrs. Temple?” from Alfred in a whisper.

Haworth, amazed, incredulous, started up to investigate, but Pentecost indicated that he’d like to attend to it himself. Tiptoeing to the swing door of the butler’s pantry at the farther end of the room, he stood close to it, listening for a second, then suddenly pushed it open and went out, the door closing itself after him. Sounds like the moving of furniture came from the kitchen, and Pentecost soon reëntered as though nothing unusual had taken place. Instead, though, of sitting where he’d been before, he pushed a chair close to the door into the big entrance hall, which door he opened a few inches, and sat in such a position that he could command a view of the main stairway at the farther end of the hall.

“Shall I go on?” Alfred inquired after a moment.

“Why not?” said Pentecost.

Alfred read the draft of the contract, and when he came to the blank left for the amount that Haworth was to get when the agreement was signed, he stopped and looked at Pentecost. The latter said that Mr. Haworth had consented to allow the matter to stand over till the day of signing—nine days from then. However, he would say before witnesses that it would be a figure satisfactory to Mr. Haworth after considering certain facts which he, Pentecost, would then be in a position to give him. “He’s willing,” and Pentecost said it appreciatively, “to allow us that much more time to feel out the market.”

He then went on to tell them that, as a result of a discussion they’d just had in the basement, Mr. Haworth had agreed to another matter to be included in the contract. It was to the effect that, in case the negotiations for the purchase of the invention were successful, Mr. Haworth would sign for a term of five years, to work exclusively for the firm of Harker & Pentecost, on such inventive undertakings as they should designate, receiving as compensation a salary of six thousand a year.

Harker was struck with astonishment at this, but in an instant realized the importance of the stipulation to the firm. Alfred, too, was surprised—though he showed no sign of it. Neither need have troubled to hide his feelings, as Haworth cared nothing about them one way or another.

Alfred was beginning to put away the papers in his document case, when Pentecost spoke of wishing to suggest a method for safeguarding the secrecy of this unpatented mechanism when they had occasion to refer to it in any way, orally or in writing. His idea was that they allude to it as “The Machine,” and in case some allusion to the mechanism was necessary, they should use for that purpose, as a blind, some other of Mr. Haworth’s inventions, preferably an apparatus on which a patent had been allowed. “Letters may fall into the hands of outsiders,” Mr. Pentecost explained. “Telegrams and telephonic communications are of necessity known to various persons, and personal conversations are quite liable to be overheard. By using the name and description of some other device these dangers may be eliminated and we will understand what is meant.” He happened to come upon one of Mr. Haworth’s earlier inventions that would very well answer the purpose—a combination gas and compressed-air engine, really a most ingenious thing. They could speak of this as “The Machine” or as “The Gas and Air Engine,” and allude to its construction when necessary. He was very desirous of having this blind used in the contract—for contracts frequently have to be made public and this would make everything safe.

This ended the discussion of the contract. But Pentecost, turning to Haworth, said there was an important matter that he rather hated to speak of, but with an extra-hazardous operation like this it was vital.

“What is it?” Haworth asked, slightly apprehensive.

“I’m going to ask you to give that admirable old lady of yours a vacation.”

Pentecost was taking care to turn away from the slightly open door to the hall while speaking. “You must see, Mr. Haworth,” he went on in a lowered voice, “that it won’t do to have her about for the next ten days. The machine,—by that I mean the one we’re taking—is going to be exposed at the time of its ‘delivery’—perhaps before. She knows it’s in that room down there; you can’t touch her with any decoy. She may not understand machinery, but she’d give it away to others who did.”

Haworth was silent for a moment. A great ache gripped his throat, and he finally spoke in a voice that he couldn’t quite control: “You don’t know how—how true she’s been—how kind! Why she—she’d do anything for me!”

“Yes, my friend, and there’s where she’d play particular hell with us! That old dame’s no fool. And the trouble is, she’s got the idea there’s something going on here and she’s all set to protect you from it.”

“Yes, yes—she’d do that!” Haworth murmured, huskily.

“Not would—is now!”

The young man looked at him suddenly.

Pentecost nodded. “In the butler’s pantry there a few minutes ago,” he went on; “slid back into the kitchen as I was going to the door. When I got out there she was hustling up the back stairway. I shut the door at the bottom of the stairs and balanced a table against it. You’ll hear it fall if she tries to push the door open. Only way she can get down is by the main stairway out here. Don’t think she’d care to try a window.”

Haworth was so amazed he couldn’t speak.

“You must see what this means to our end of it,” Pentecost went on. “We’ve got to put up big money in advance and incur enormous expenses before there’s any return, and here’s this old lady in a position to wreck the whole damned layout if she can get her nose into it—and that’s what she’s working for.”

“What—what do you want me to do?”

“Keep her out of the house until the machine’s delivered.”

The young man was silent, staring uneasily before him. In a moment or two Pentecost resumed: “I admire that old lady and I’ve got things laid out for her later where she’ll come in delightfully. But for eleven days she’ll have to disappear—or we must. It’s one or the other, Mr. Haworth. We can’t risk money on a chance like that.”

Haworth nodded. “I’ll attend to it!” he said, hoarsely.

“Right. And there’s only one thing more to speak of—the butler.”

“Butler——” Haworth repeated, surprised.

“The old lady’s going. You ought to have some one here to attend to you. Also, we’d like a man in the house to look out for our interests. Why not combine the two? A butler—a general servant—who’ll take care of you, and on our side see that no one tampers with the lock of that small room in the basement, and a few little things like that.”

“Will you send some one?”

“Not quite that, Mr. Haworth. I know just the man for the job, but I’d like you to get him yourself and leave us out of it.”

“But I—I don’t know. I never had any experience in——”

“Perfectly easy to manage. This young butler I speak of is booked with a first-class employment agency on Forty-fifth Street.”

“New York?”

“Yes, West Forty-fifth. You can write them to send him over. Fellow’s name is Dreek—James Dreek—and if he isn’t out on a job they’ll put him on the next train.” (Pentecost very well knew “James Dreek” wasn’t out on any job, though not from the employment agency, with which concern he’d been more than careful never to have any dealings whatever.) “Dreek can manage the whole place for you—see that our side of it is protected at the same time.” He got out a pocketbook and took a card from it. “Here we are; this is the agency.”

“But I——What shall to say to this—this agency?”

“Here, I’ll do it for you and you can sign it. Got a machine here? Typewriter?”

Haworth shook his head.

“Oh well, wait. Sign your name at the bottom of a blank sheet and I’ll type a letter in above it when I get back to the hotel.”

For some reason Haworth trusted this man implicitly, and after writing his name at the bottom of a blank sheet, held it out to him. But Pentecost didn’t take it.

“Haven’t you got a large envelope or something I can put it in?” he asked. “Just to keep it clean till I get to the hotel?”

“I’m afraid not,” said Haworth, looking about on the table.

“Couldn’t you slip it into that large flat book there?”

“Why no! that’s my——Oh!” He seemed to recollect something and opened the book, which was an illustrated catalogue of machinists’ tools, and placed the sheet of paper on which he’d written, between the leaves.

“Shove an envelope with it, there’s a good fellow. The kind you use for letters.”

Haworth did this and passed the book to Pentecost, who thus got the stationery he wanted without touching it himself or having anyone else touch it after it left Haworth’s hands.

Pentecost said, as he and the two Harkers were preparing to go: “Keep it from the old lady that Dreek comes here on our recommendation.”

“I will,” said Haworth.

“We’re coming back in ten days—expiration of option you know—and can take delivery at that time if the machine’s ready by then.”

“It’s ready now.”

Pentecost looked at him with a peculiar glint in his droop-lidded eyes.

“Then you plan to make delivery on that date?” he asked.

“My God, yes! if I’ve got to wait that long!”

Pentecost regarded the young man absently for an instant, then, with the Harkers, turned away, and the three went down the steps to the waiting taxi.

The firm, with Alfred, had a late luncheon at the hotel, and then Pentecost left the others and walked a few blocks—or what would have been a few blocks in a rectangular city—to one of the largest dealers in “rebuilt” typewriting machines. He asked to see some of the less expensive models, and the salesman brought several, placing them on a table along the side of the wall of the showroom. As it was a busy hour, he left Pentecost to try the lot at his leisure, and went to the customers who were waiting to be served.

Pentecost sat down and began trying the machines in a manner indicating to anyone who noticed that he was somewhat of a novice. But though he was awkward and slow, it didn’t take him long to discover which of the three instruments displayed the most irregularities in its output; and thereupon he quietly gave it a few extra characteristics, slightly bending a couple of the type bars and filing away a part of two or three of the printing faces with the nail blade of his pocket knife. After a sharp glance about the place to assure himself that he wasn’t under observation, he took the signed sheet of paper and envelope from the large thin book in which Haworth had placed them, handling these things with small pieces of blotting-paper folded once and slipped over the edges, so that for the second time that day he avoided contact with them.

The sheet of paper was thus inserted in the machine he had selected (and doctored), and he proceeded to type a letter on it in the space above Haworth’s signature. His inexperience with the typewriting business was still in evidence, for he was constantly stopping to erase or print over, or forgetting to shift for the next line.

There’s only time to give you an example, here and there, of this man’s extraordinary methods of constructing his defenses. He worked far deeper than along the line of the obvious, for his highest satisfaction was to put up barriers against what had never been thought of by police departments, but which he conceived as possible.

After finishing the letter, addressing the envelope, sealing it and affixing a postage stamp by the same blotting-paper method of handling (the moistening of stamp and envelope being his only “touchdowns”—but no system of tongue-prints has as yet been devised), he bought the machine he had been using for nineteen dollars, and took it with him. The sealed letter he had slipped into a larger envelope, again making use of the blotting-paper hold.

Walking to the corner of Court and Sudbury Streets, which wasn’t far, he stopped and, taking out his handkerchief, mopped at his left eye, as if he’d got a cinder in it. At once a man who had been following came and stood at the corner near, but without giving any sign of recognition. It was a busy corner, so that a man more or less stopping there wouldn’t attract attention. Even at that early stage a “trusty” was on the job in case anyone was putting a shadow on him.

The signal was “all clear,” and Pentecost turned west and strolled up beyond the State House to Bullfinch Place. His man, following, joined him in this quiet neighborhood.

Pentecost put the large envelope in his hands.

“Letter inside, stamped and addressed. Get it into the nearest letter box to the house and before eight to-night,” he said, speaking rapidly. “And keep your hands off it. Rip open the outside envelope, and let the one inside slide into the box. Here’s a typewriter in this package; take it out and polish it up. Clean all the marks off it. Wrap it up again without touching it. Do you get that? If you put one finger on it after you polish it off it’s you for the chair. The machine’s for Haworth. Take it to him yourself. Tell him I thought he might like to learn to use it. You stand by and get him to try it—tell him you’ve got to change it if not satisfactory. I want his hands on it.”

“I get you!”

And the two sauntered carelessly away in different directions.

When the firm of Harker & Pentecost, together with the son of the senior partner, boarded the North Land late that afternoon for the return trip to New York, they greeted their steamer acquaintances of the previous night pleasantly, though in a manner indicating that they’d had a rather strenuous day of it. Mr. Pentecost alluded to his intention of turning in early. Alfred was introduced to the purser and one or two others as occasion arose, and the three were about for a while, chatting with one and another of the officers.

Beside the Messrs. Harker & Pentecost and Alfred, there were two men on board the North Land who were closely associated with the firm, although giving no evidence thereof. Their business on this trip was to make close observation of certain points and circumstances connected with the steamer and its crew, particularly in the passage through the canal and the docking of the boat on reaching New York the following morning; which business was faithfully attended to, as was also the matter of their making the reservation of the two cabins they were occupying on this voyage for the trip out of Boston ten days later, so that the firm should have no appearance whatever in that transaction, these rooms being 202 and 204 on the hurricane deck—the name of which tends to foster the idea that it was high up among the clouds, whereas there were two decks above it, the promenade and the boat.

The firm members made not the slightest effort to push themselves; they were seen here and there; and after an early dinner together, Pentecost, passing the pilot house, greeted Captain Snow, and the two exchanged a few words through the open window. He very soon left, saying he was going to bed, but hoped to be on board a week later, as he had further business in Boston about then.

Instead, however, of turning in, he slipped down to the fantail, a small deck at the stern just below the promenade. Passengers seldom went there—and, indeed, weren’t allowed on that deck while the steamer was docking or leaving, for the crew worked from there, and it was cumbered with hawsers and chains, capstans, bitts, and other machinery for handling the ship. When she was under way, however, the chains across the passage were taken down. One of his men was on the fantail when Pentecost got there, but no sign of recognition passed between them. The other man was in the forward part of the boat, moving unobtrusively about to see where officers and crew were stationed as the steamer negotiated the canal, which she was about to do. Both men on the fantail made the closest observations possible as she slid quietly through, the passage occupying something like thirty-five minutes, for they had her down to less than half speed. It was dusky twilight when the North Land entered the canal, and quite dark as she emerged at the other end. And when she did emerge and swung out into the shimmering and light-dotted open of Buzzards Bay, Pentecost went at once to his cabin, slipping forward by the outside starboard passage, to the door of the saloon lobby, and from there up the stairway to the promenade deck, thus keeping it nicely in the shade as to what part of the ship he’d come from.

The week that followed was one of hard work for Mr. Pentecost, arranging for the execution of his extraordinary plan of campaign—assembling the parts, as you might say, arranging for “the market” in most of the large cities, instructing his men, and all the while perfecting his defensive system to cover any possible contingency.

For Haworth, after he had finished with the very painful task of asking old Mrs. Temple to remain away from the house until the machine he’d sold was crated and taken away, the waiting wasn’t so hard as it had been, for now he was uplifted by the realization that at last he’d be able to come to the rescue of the one who was dearer to him than his life.

Early one evening, soon after the Harker & Pentecost visit I’ve just been telling you about, he went to see her. He’d been keeping away for weeks—months, it seemed to him—in order to spare her the trying ordeal with Augustus—his drunken and bestial abuse, his threats of violence, that were sure to follow his visits. But now he wanted her to have the comfort of knowing that help was coming—that it would be here in a few days. And it was something he wanted to say to her in person—say with his mouth and lips and eyes and heart and entire being—not convey in the form of a letter, a cold series of words which in themselves meant next to nothing. Making as sure as possible of a time when Findlay wasn’t there or likely to be, he went to the little cottage.

It was a precious visit for them both, though her cough and emaciation and strange pallor with the feverish scarlet flush made his heart stop beating when he first saw her. But it was from that—from the terrible thing it meant—that he could now be the one to save her. And he told her about the invention he was going to sell for a great deal of money, and how after that everything would be done for her—everything—the most wonderful medical care and the most beneficial place in the world. He was magnificently happy in telling her this, and she was quietly elated with him, rejoicing to the utmost of her small strength. But before her happiness could be completed she had to ask if he would be with her, and be made confident that he would. He assured her that it was so, that though he might not be able to go with her when she went, because of the business he would have to finish up, he would come as soon as he could possibly do it—the very minute he could get away.

The steamer North Land upon which the Messrs. Harker & Pentecost had already made two trips—one over and one back—made fast to the India wharf in Boston on the tenth morning after their former visit to Haworth, which brought it to the 30th day of August—the expiration date of the option. The voyage had been quiet and uneventful, the partners not pushing themselves in the least, though enjoying brief chats with some of the officers and having cigars with Captain Snow and one or two others in his cabin after dinner.

When they were asked how it was coming out about the invention they were trying to get hold of—the one they’d referred to on the last trip over—Mr. Pentecost gave them some further particulars about young Haworth and his extraordinary genius; and as there seemed to be quite a little interest in the matter, he briefly described what it was they were trying to get hold of—a combination gas and compressed-air engine. He spoke, too, of an idea they had of trying to get the young inventor on a contract to work under their direction for five years.

Alfred was waiting for them at the hotel (the one at which they stopped before), having, as he had on the former visit, come over by a night train. A heavy mail awaited the firm at the office, with several telegrams from various places and two or three large envelopes registered, all of which had been attended to by Miss Dugas, their office stenographer, who had notified the “correspondents” (as you might call them) in various cities to send letters and telegrams to Boston as per instructions; and because you know the letters and telegrams so sent were bogus, the trick being one among many items in Pentecost’s establishment of their “open work” presence in town, it needn’t lead you to imagine that a single envelope of the lot contained only blank paper. Each one had in it an apparently important business communication relating to one of the three or four legitimate promotions that the firm operated as decoys; and if traced to its source a man or woman would be found who was trying to buy stock in one of their straight companies, or wanting an agency, or with an invention to sell, or that sort of thing. Pentecost left two or three of the best of these letters lying about the room for the chambermaid to turn in at the hotel office when he left. Also, he went to the hotel telegraph desk and asked for a repeat on one of his wires.

After breakfast in the restaurant the three men retired to their room and went into a low-voiced conference for perhaps half an hour.

Then Pentecost went down to the hotel desk, there making inquiry as to a reliable trucking concern that could handle a heavy piece of machinery he wanted hauled from West Roxbury to one of the freight stations for Jersey City. Proceeding by taxi to one that the information clerk looked up for him, he arranged for one of their heavy trucks and a moving apparatus and plenty of men to call for the machine on the following day, giving them an order on Haworth and full shipping instructions. Having done this, he rejoined the Harkers.

And about twenty minutes before eleven the three came out of the hotel and, entering a large car which had been waiting for them, were driven away. No slipping out on the quiet. All open and aboveboard.

Harker rang the bell at the mansion, and James Dreek opened the door. He was an ideal servant in both appearance and behavior. When Harker inquired if Mr. Haworth was at home, Dreek asked what names he should give, and upon being told—with the further information that they’d come by appointment—he begged pardon and showed them in at once, saying Mr. Haworth was expecting them.

The great entrance hall showed a marked change since their visit of ten days before. Several worn chairs stood about and a long table was pushed up against the north wall—doubtless stuff that wouldn’t sell and had been stored in other rooms or the attic. But the most noticeable thing in the place was a huge edifice in the form of a crate, measuring something like five feet in height. Between the slats and timbers of this enormous cage could be seen machinery of heavy build, and such parts as were discernible plainly indicated to a person of sufficient mechanical enlightenment that it was an engine of some kind.

Pentecost walked over to the great slatted box and glanced at what was visible within, then followed the two others of his party, who had gone into the room on the left,—the door of which James Dreek was holding open for him.

Haworth was shaking hands with Harker and Alfred as he entered, and he did the same with Pentecost as he approached; and as the latter asked him how he was feeling, the faint smile that meant so much lighted his face for an instant as he answered in a low voice, “Rather worn-out waiting, Mr. Pentecost.”

“We had to take all the time the option allowed us, Mr. Haworth, but we’re here within the limit and can go on whenever you say the word.”

“Consider the word said,” was Haworth’s quiet answer.

Upon which Mr. Harker took the papers from a document case and tossed them on the table.

The contract, though not long, took some little time to go through, for Harker was at pains to explain each point; and you could see that Haworth was growing restless and was eager to come to the clause dealing with the amount of money which the firm was to pay him.

When Harker—it was toward the end—read out that the amount to be paid to the party of the first part upon the signing of this contract was the sum of fifteen thousand dollars, and was going on with slight acceleration of speed to the next clause, Haworth said, very quietly: “Wait a minute, please. That’s a mistake.”

“Mistake? How so?” from Harker—simulating surprise.

“You said fifteen thousand. It should be forty-five.”

What might be called a telling pause followed, the idea being that the partners were struck dumb with astonishment.

“Forty-five what?” Harker finally managed to inquire.

“Thousand,” Haworth answered in his gentle voice.

“Where in God’s name did you get the notion that we are going to give you such a figure as that? Why you’re crazy! We never agreed to any such ridiculous price—never in this world!”

“Excuse me. Your partner”—indicating Pentecost—“said the amount would be one that was satisfactory to me. That’s the one that is. I’ve found I need it.”

“Mr. Haworth”—Harker spoke with quiet and pleading earnestness—“let’s be reasonable about this. The amount you name is far beyond what we’re able to pay. We couldn’t touch it. If that’s the figure you’re going to insist on, it’s only a dirty waste of time for us to go on talking. We’re through—and the whole thing stops right here!”

“No—it doesn’t stop! I know the idea’s good—you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t—and if you can’t give me as much as that, I can find someone who will!”

The two super-sharps of the firm, born gamblers both, were entirely aware that Haworth meant precisely what he said, no thought of bluffing having a place in his system. They argued about it for some little time—which is to say, Harker did, for Haworth said nothing, merely shaking his head a little now and then in refusal of some offer or suggestion; and when Harker, driven to his last play, stated that all the money they’d brought with them was twenty-five thousand, the young man merely asked him how long it would take to get the rest.

“Then you won’t accept this twenty-five?” Harker’s tone had now a definite finality in it, carrying the idea that he was giving Haworth his last chance. But the young man shook his head again.

It was here that Pentecost, who hadn’t joined in the discussion, came forward. He said he had one proposal to make. It was quite true the firm had brought only twenty-five thousand, but he himself had in his possession the sum of ten thousand, which he’d intended using in the liquidation of a stock transaction. But he was so anxious to have the deal go through that he would add this ten thousand to the firm’s twenty-five, and they would then be able to offer Mr. Haworth thirty-five thousand in cash, and in addition to that would agree to pay him or whomsoever he might designate as his agent, an amount equal to one-fifth of whatever profit they were able to make on the handling of the enterprise.

I’m giving you this little episode in some detail because it was certainly odd to see such a simple, almost childlike person as Charles Michael Haworth putting it all over a brace of about the most consummate swindlers that ever adorned the criminal contingent, and doing it without an idea that he was making any play at all.

As to this new proposition of accepting one-fifth share of the profits in place of ten thousand of the cash price which he had fixed upon, he considered it a few moments and then turned to Pentecost.

“Will you attend to this yourself?” he asked.

“Yes—I will.”

The young man sat looking steadily at Mr. Pentecost for some little time, his calm penetrating gaze seeming to search for something. Then he turned away and indicated that he would agree to the arrangement proposed.

Harker had been fuming to himself over his partner’s enormous offer, but Pentecost, with a peculiar twist of his hand as he looked at his wrist watch, put it across to him that the game was so fixed they couldn’t lose. Harker’s experience with this same signal in former operations led him to infer that it didn’t matter what they paid, as they’d get it back. He took out his fountain pen and wrote into the contract the thirty-five thousand and the one-fifth share of profits.

After both parties to the agreement had duly written their names, James Dreek was called in to sign as one witness, with Alfred Harker as the other, thus making the thing complete and duly executed. It was in duplicate—one copy for Haworth, the other for the firm.

After the signing, with only a wait until Dreek had left the room, Mr. Harker, with some difficulty, got out the bunch of money from the document case and passed it over to Alfred. At the same time Pentecost approached the table, and saying, “There’s mine,” tossed a roll of bills on it. This payment in cash had been insisted on by Haworth from the very beginning.

Alfred counted out the thirty-five thousand, which was in century notes, on the table. The separate piles of a thousand each were deftly stacked in one, and this was pushed nonchalantly across the table to Haworth. He fussed with it rather helplessly a moment.

“Like to have ’em riffled again with the brakes on?” Alfred was an expert bill shifter and had snapped ’em off like the flutter of a humming bird’s wings.

“Yes, please.” Haworth watched intently while the lightfingered youth dealt each bill off the pack so slowly and carefully that it could be seen and noted as it fell on the pile before him.

When the recount was finished, Haworth muttered a “thank you,” and signed the receipt which Harker, mumbling something about its being “a cash transaction, you know,” pushed over to him.

At that moment, Pentecost, turning from the money count, caught sight of James Dreek going through the swing door into the butler’s pantry at the farther end of the room.

“How the hell did he get here?” Pentecost demanded in a sharp, rasping whisper the instant the door swung to.

“Who?” Haworth asked with a glance about.

“That young butler of yours. He had his lamps on that stack of yellows on the table.”

“You got him in yourself,” Haworth answered, “to sign as a witness.”

“He went out again!” (Still in the guttural whisper.) “We waited for that before we slid the boodle out on the table.”

“You said he was all right, didn’t you?”

“All the same, you want to be a little careful with that bunch of money!” And he moved noiselessly to the door which had closed after Dreek’s exit, and listened with his ear close against it.

Appearing to be no more than half satisfied, he returned to the others and for an hour they discussed various points such as Haworth’s wishes regarding future payments, the taking of the machine the next day by the trucking firm, and the actual time of what was referred to by them as “delivery of the goods.” These things settled, Pentecost expressed the wish to take a look around the basement. Haworth went with him to the place where the planked-up room had been. Not only was it no longer there, but no evidence existed of its having been there. The timbers and flooring above the place where it had been built in showed no nail marks or abrasions of any kind and were grimy and darkened by age.

Having examined the place and its vicinity with the utmost care, using for this the small electric torch he always carried, Pentecost led the way into what had been the machine shop, and closed the door. There he went over several important matters which he preferred to discuss with Haworth alone. They conversed earnestly for a while, and then left the basement together by the door opening to stone steps leading up to the grounds at the rear of the house.

Mr. Pentecost made a surreptitious examination of this door and the route by which they reached it, while Haworth was setting the lamp on the cellar stairs, after extinguishing it. The two then went out to the old barn not far in the rear, and looked about there for a while. After that they went toward the house again.

Haworth had been carrying the big bunch of money in his clothes all this while, part in one pocket and part in another, and Pentecost, appearing to notice this for the first time, begged him to go in and put it somewhere where it would be safe. He said he’d walk about a bit for the air and would be with him in a few minutes. So Haworth left him and went in.

Pentecost now gave the house (outside) and its surroundings his full attention, especially as to the windows of the room on the left with their vine-covered shutters, and the character of the ground and shrubbery beneath them. It took him but a few moments to get all the information he needed as to the walls and foundation and roof overhang, together with other details that might come in, and lastly he took a look at the great elm trees in front and the “lay” of the ground in the rear.

He reëntered the house by the basement door through which he and Haworth had come out, and James Dreek was waiting for him in a corner of the cellar.

“Old woman?” Pentecost asked in a whisper.

“Outside,” was the answer. “Watches all day from a distance. Nights in the bushes close under the side windows.”

“We can use her!” And he gave Dreek whispered directions, after which he rejoined the others in the room on the left.

Harker and Alfred were ready to go—indeed eager to, for it hadn’t been an easy quarter of an hour for them. They rose rather suddenly when Pentecost came in, and the three moved toward the door murmuring the ordinary phrases of leave-taking.

Haworth had taken the bulky bunches of money out of his pockets and put them together on the table, and as Pentecost and the two Harkers saw him last he was standing there with one hand resting on them. He made no move to go with them to the door.

Besides the Messrs. Harker & Pentecost and Alfred, there were on board the steamer North Land when she left the India wharf that same afternoon, a number of persons who were more or less concerned in the business of the firm, yet, as you need hardly be told, giving no indication that such was the case. Not only were cabins 202 and 204 on the hurricane deck occupied by Pentecost’s men as before, but 200, 201, 203, and 205 were also held, though only two of these were occupied. Thus, if you should happen to examine a chart of the boat, you would see that the firm commanded both port and starboard approaches to the fantail.

And also as on the return voyage eight days before, the partners appeared to be pretty well fagged out, although it didn’t prevent their being about for a while and chatting pleasantly with their steamer acquaintances, letting it be known (but not until inquiry was made) that they’d succeeded in purchasing the rights to the extraordinary device of which they’d spoken, and what was more, had got a contract with the young inventor himself giving them his services for five years.

Again they had an early dinner together in the restaurant and sat on the boat deck for a while, smoking cigars. Along toward half-past seven or a quarter to eight they sauntered forward, pausing at the large windows of the pilot house and greeting the captain. He asked them to come in and have a look at the canal—which the steamer was even then slowing down to enter. They accepted the invitation, and sat watching the shores on each side until it grew so dark—for the night was overcast—that only faint and blurred outlines could be distinguished.

Some ten or twelve minutes before they reached the western end of the canal, Pentecost rose lazily, made an effort to conceal a yawn, and bade the captain good night. He was rather done up with the day in Boston, he said, and really couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. Having thus excused himself, he went below, leaving Harker there to see the ship come out into the Bay, which he claimed to be desirous of doing.

Shortly after this the steamer slid silently by the village of Buzzards Bay, its many lights twinkling about a mile to the north, for it wasn’t situated directly on the canal; and a little later passed out into the open waters of the Bay itself; and on that, in obedience to the “full speed ahead” ring from the wheel-house, broke into her normal stride again, heading out toward Block Island Sound.

About this time, when the North Land had been clear of the canal for something like eight or ten minutes, Mr. Harker’s attention appeared to be suddenly arrested by something below on the forward deck.

“Well, doesn’t that beat the——” He broke off and stood staring down.

“Anything wrong?”

“Not exactly wrong—only he was telling us just now he was so completely done up he’d got to go to bed!”

“Your partner, you mean?”

“Yes, Pentecost! And now he’s gone into conference with a young lady! Over there on the left. See?”

Harker was pointing to a man near the port rail, whose back was turned to them and who was in animated conversation with a person who, in the dim light, appeared to be an attractive young lady.

Captain Snow laughed a little.

“So he has,” he said. “Well, it’s never too late for that!”

“There’s truth in what you say,” Harker admitted, and thereupon changed the subject. “New Bedford light we see over there?” he asked.

“No. That’s Bird Island. Five points starboard.”

“What’s that one you’re aiming for?”

“Dead ahead you mean?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a fairway buoy—Buzzards Bay Buoy they call it. We change the course there for Nigger Ledge.”

Most likely you picked it up when I mentioned that it was only the back of the gentleman on the forward deck that could be seen from the pilot house, and naturally it was the said back that resembled Mr. Harker’s partner; and that was all that did. The man wasn’t Pentecost at all, for the good and sufficient reason that that gentleman had jumped off the steamer fifteen minutes before. It was one of his gang of “trusties,” brought along for the purpose, with about the same build as himself, entirely similar hat and clothing, and well matched hair and back of head, so far as could be seen. The young woman with him was Miss Mary Finch Dugas, their office stenographer, who was occasionally sent out on an operation where the utmost precaution was necessary.

A short time before the North Land, gliding noiselessly at about fifty-five turns (less than half speed) through the still waters of the canal, reached the vicinity of Buzzards Bay village, (which is at the farther end of it as you go from Boston) Mr. Pentecost had left the pilot house in the manner described to you a moment ago, gone below to the hurricane deck, and hurried aft on the starboard outside passageway until he reached the fantail deck at the stern. Alfred was waiting for him there in the dark. He had fixed a knotted rope so that it hung over the stern rail nearly to the water, the upper end made fast to a stanchion.

The two waited silently in the gloom until they could hear the raucous clanging of the warning bell on the drawbridge, which commenced its clatter when the great draw swung up into the air, and kept it going until it was down in place again. This was the Bourne highway bridge and in a couple of minutes the steamer was passing through. A moment after that, while the bell was still ringing and the passengers on the decks above watching the draw slowly descend, Pentecost, who had hold of the rope, clambered over the rail and lowered himself to the level of the main deck, which was the next one below. This deck was closed in at the stern, but he got a foothold on the ribbon piece and from there let himself down into the water without the least noise. It was so quiet, with the steamer slipping along at scarcely more than steerage way, that a splash might have attracted attention if the bell on the draw should stop ringing. The overhang of the counter made him safe from the propellers, and the water kicked up by them amounted to very little. He was whirled around two or three times, but it didn’t even duck him. A few strokes brought him to shore. But he didn’t come up on the banks till the North Land was going through the draw of the railroad bridge, a little further on, for there were lights along the shore of the canal, and he wasn’t taking any chances.

Coming up on the low flat that bordered the waterway at this place, he quickly found the marks of an old road through it, and followed this with the aid of his flashlight which he quickly undid from its waterproof wrappings. He hardly needed it though, as of course he’d been over every inch of the ground. Coming to the embankment of the bridge approach, he still kept to the cart tracks which turned along the side of the embankment and then climbed it, bringing him out on the Bourne Road at a point nearly opposite the Soldier’s Monument.

Pentecost stood there a moment, dripping with water, and looking sharply down the road. It was hardly thirty seconds before a large closed car hove in sight, coming rapidly up the slope toward the bridge. A white handkerchief fluttered for an instant from the right-hand rear window (behind the driver), and instantly Pentecost ran out in the road and, waving his own handkerchief, signaled the car to stop. As soon as the car came to a standstill Pentecost called out to the driver, begging pardon for delaying him, etc., but stating that he was in a desperate hurry to get to Boston and asking if he could tell him where there was a garage. The chauffeur told him there was one on the right as he went toward the village—some distance up the road.

At this point the man in the car, who’d been listening to the talk and also regarding Pentecost with what appeared to be astonishment (the road was well lighted here), opened the door and asked if there’d been an accident.

“Not at all,” said Pentecost; “that is, I did take a tumble into the water. But that’s of no consequence. My trouble is to get to Boston in the shortest possible time—life and death matter—I’ll try the garage up the road—and thank you very much.”

“Why see here!” called out the stranger as he climbed out of the car. “You take this machine—just came down in it from Boston—my place in Bourne—across the bridge—walk it in six minutes!... You’ll take him back won’t you?” addressing the man at the wheel. And then to Pentecost as he passed close to him and put something in his hand while he continued speaking, “It’s a hired car you know—he’s got to go back anyway!”

The matter was quickly arranged, and the driver stimulated toward doing his best in the way of speed by the promise of a quite enormous bonus if he made it inside of eighty minutes.

You may as well know (perhaps you’ve already guessed it) that this was one of Pentecost’s men who hired the car in Boston and came down in it to Buzzards Bay, waiting in the village on some pretext until the North Land reached the railroad bridge over the canal, and then starting for the highway bridge where Pentecost was to stop him. It was a crumpled wad of paper he’d put into Pentecost’s hand, with the number 2026 written on it—the same being the number of the chauffeur’s operating license.

The chauffeur, on the other hand, was a stranger. This for reasons that’ll come in later. I can say this now,—that he earned the bonus offered for speed; they were negotiating the streets of Jamaica Plain in a trifle under the seventy-five minutes. Pentecost stopped him at the corner of Centre and Greenough Streets, and after settling the bill and the bonus, turned east and walked rapidly up Greenough. As soon, however, as the sound of the car assured him that it was at a safe distance, he retraced his steps and kept on to the west or southwest, eventually coming to a little-used lane well beyond Torrington Road, from which, by crossing a long-abandoned vegetable garden, he could approach the Cripps mansion from the rear.

And now, just so you can keep the run of things as they come along, I’m going back a few days in order to show you how it happened that old Mrs. Temple was concealed in the bushes under one of the windows of the room on the left, at the very moment that Hugo Pentecost, after his plunge from the steamer into the Cape Cod Canal and the rapid drive in an automobile to the Roxbury district of Boston, was cautiously making his way toward the rear of the mansion.

The old woman had been greatly relieved to notice a striking improvement in Mr. Haworth’s condition almost immediately after the first visit of Mr. Pentecost to the house, although she feared it was due to trickery by which the scoundrel (which she was sure he was) would in some way do him injury. The doctor she’d left word for at the drug store called the same evening and said there was nothing seriously wrong with him, and did no more than prescribe a tonic, nourishing food, and a complete rest.

As the days passed and nothing transpired, Mrs. Temple felt less and less uneasiness, and it was nearly a week before things began to happen that revived her anxiety. They began on the morning of the fifth day after the Pentecost visit, and the first of them was the sending of her by Mr. Haworth on a most unusual errand—one that took her to some sort of foundry place in East Boston. And he told her if they didn’t have the kind of pulley wheel described in his letter, she must wait until they could get it for her.

Her smoldering suspicions instantly burst into flame, yet she couldn’t refuse to go.

It was a long journey and her imaginings of what might befall Mr. Haworth while she was away came near to making her turn back without doing the errand at all. She finally reached the office of the foundry and delivered the letter, but when they told her that they hadn’t the pulley wheel there but would send to the warehouse for it, she answered without an instant’s hesitation that she couldn’t wait, but would come another time. The men in the office called her attention to the fact that Mr. Haworth had said in the letter that she would wait for the pulley.

“Well, I ain’t a-goin’ to!” she muttered hurriedly as she disappeared through the door.

Arriving home something like an hour later, Mrs. Temple approached the mansion from the rear. She had worked herself into a frenzy of fear that Mr. Haworth was in danger, and she wanted to investigate without being seen. Finding herself at last in one of the rear passages of the house, she stood listening. Low voices could be heard from somewhere in the front.

With the utmost caution she made her way across the kitchen and through the butler’s pantry to the swing door opening into the room on the left. But the conversation within suddenly ceased and she began a hasty retreat. Hearing the door she’d just left swing open again (it had a very decided creak) she made for the servants’ stairway—which opened off the kitchen.

There was a door at the bottom of these stairs which Mrs. Temple hastily closed after her as she fled, and when she paused at the top she heard the thud of heavy objects being shoved against it and realized that she was trapped; for the only other way down was the main stairway to the entrance hall, which was in plain sight if anyone took the trouble to look. And she very well knew that some one would take that trouble. She’d heard his voice in the room on the left in the brief second she was at the swing door.

So she’d have to stay there until the gang of criminals and thugs, as she classified the men in the front room with Haworth, was gone. She brought a chair to the top of the main stairway and sat there, ready at the first alarming sound to rush down and fight like a wildcat, or run for the police, or do anything to rescue and protect the one to whom she was so desperately devoted. But no cry of distress reached her—only the low murmur of subdued voices.

It was early afternoon (she’d been waiting somewhere near two hours) when she saw the men come out into the entrance hall below her. There were three of them—the Pentecost creature with two confederates. Of course they were confederates. What else could they be?

Haworth came out with them. She heard the taxi the men had waiting for them drive away, and she saw Mr. Haworth return to the room on the left. At this she crept noiselessly down the main stairway and back through the rear hall. But she’d hardly more than reached the kitchen when Haworth came in through the butler’s pantry and stopped at the door.

“Oh, you came back?” he said.

“I hope ye ain’t a-goin’ ter take it hard, Mr. Haworth,” the old woman begged, “but I couldn’t no more wait there an’ you left here alone with them thugs or card sharps or whatever they be, than I could fly! I knew they’d be comin’ the minute ye sent me away like that an’ told me to wait—an’ how could I, Mr. Haworth—how could I stay settin’ there in that factory place, not knowin’ what might be happenin’ to ye?”

“No matter, Mrs. Temple.”

“Yes, Mr. Haworth, that was all; an’ I was worryin’ the life clean out o’ me. Terrible warn’t no name fur it! I couldn’t tell ye!”

“You did it for me, Mrs. Temple, and you’ve always been doing things for me. Please don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

The old woman’s trembling hand made two or three fumbles for her apron before she realized that she wasn’t wearing one, and a tear or two ran unmolested down her withered cheek.

“And—I—I’ve got to ask you,” he went on, hesitatingly (and then came another of the frightful things that were to alarm her on this fearsome day)—“I’ve got to ask you to do something more for me, Mrs. Temple.”

She looked up, staring at him with apprehension in her tear-wet eyes. And he went on to tell her how it seemed best that she should stay away from the house for a few days—just until one of his inventions was crated and out of the way—something very important that had to be kept secret, as there was no patent—so just a few days——

“Mr. Haworth,” she interrupted, “do please listen to me! Ye mustn’t have no more to do with them creatures. They ain’t right, Mr. Haworth; they’re crooked an’ treach’rous, every one o’ ’em—awful men! That Pentecost, he wouldn’t stop at nothin’—nothin’ in the world! Don’t let ’em in here again—don’t do it, Mr. Haworth! I beg ye won’t do it!”

“But I must, Mrs. Temple. They’ve bought one of my machines.”

The old woman was struck silent for an instant.

“Be they goin’ to pay ye money for it?”

“Yes.”

“You mean money right down?”

“Yes,—it’s got to be that way.”

A pause. Then: “Mr. Haworth, there’s some trick! Ef them jailbirds pay you money down they’ll rob it away from ye! They’re a-goin’ to git you some way—they wouldn’t be here if they wasn’t. I’ve seen spellbinders like them be—yes, an’ had to do with ’em too! Don’t turn me away now. Wait till after I’ve got ’em out an’ then I’ll go! Not now—not now, Mr. Haworth. You ain’t no person to cope with such as them.”

The young man stood looking at Mrs. Temple’s face, unable to speak. Suddenly he turned away and uttering a broken “I can’t—I can’t——You must go!” he turned and fled from the room.

For the following few days Mrs. Temple’s anxiety concerning the unknown danger she considered Haworth to be in overshadowed the lacerated feelings that naturally followed the poor soul’s expulsion from the house. No particle of blame could attach to him, for was he not under the malign influence of a gang of criminals and in no way responsible for what he did? This she felt, and her heart harbored no bitterness—though it had been cruelly hurt. She must find out in some way what villainy these human sharks were planning, though for the present nothing was possible but to keep close watch on the house.

The very next night after her dismissal by Mr. Haworth she saw a young man who hadn’t been there before, emerge from the darkness into the faint light that fell from a front window across the portico (she was watching from behind bushes quite near), and after ringing the bell, pass in at the front door. The roller shades—cheap affairs that the second hand dealer had agreed to put in in place of the old velvet curtains he was taking away—hadn’t been pulled down since she left, so she could see in. The stranger was being shown about by Mr. Haworth, who had evidently expected him, and seemed to be given charge of things as though he was a servant. That was it! The scoundrels had got Mr. Haworth to send her away and take a man in her place. So now they had a confederate right there in the house with him!

The old woman, desperate in her helplessness, made up her mind to get assistance. She’d go to the police in the morning and they’d arrest this man. Wasn’t it their business to protect people? If not, what was their business, she’d like to know!

Early the next morning she hurried to the Jamaica Plain district, and as soon as she saw a patrolman, plunged into an excited account of the situation. But the old woman’s story seemed to border on the grotesque. From what he could gather the officer figured that she’d lost her job and they’d got a butler to take her place, with the result that the poor creature had gone dotty about it, thinking the man was some sort of a crook. He couldn’t find that she had any grounds for such a suspicion, but to quiet her he took down the address and said he’d keep an eye on the place. Mrs. Temple became almost hysterical, begging him not to stop with just keepin’ an eye on it, but to come over an’ arrest the man,—to please do somethin’ for mercy’s sake—if he didn’t there’d be some terrible thing happenin’ to some one. But the patrolman told her he couldn’t make an arrest until some crime or misdemeanor had been committed. She finally realized that it was useless to waste further time with him and hurried back to keep watch again from the outside, and do what she could alone. That’s what she did from then on.

During the day she hung about at some distance, keeping herself well out of sight, but always at places where she could see who entered the mansion and who left it. When darkness set in she stole to some overgrown shrubbery close to the house on the south side, and was able to see what was happening within, if the lights were on.

For a week the old woman remained on watch until late at night and returned to her vigil early in the morning, bringing with her in a paper bag what little food she needed. During this time she saw Mr. Haworth leave the place a number of times, which was a little unusual, but he doubtless had business in town or elsewhere; also men having the appearance of being mechanics drove up in a car one day and were in the house until nearly five o’clock; and she discovered, on reaching her nearer station in the evening, that a heavy piece of machinery was standing crated in the great entrance hall, presumably having been brought up from the basement. The butler fellow appeared to be taking care of Mr. Haworth in a surprisingly competent manner. What a relief, she thought, if the machine in the hall should be taken away and the crooked gang that bought it never show up again!

But this growing hopefulness on the part of Mrs. Temple served only to make the shock more violent when, on the morning of the tenth day after their former visit, the very bunch of swindlers she dreaded drove up to the mansion and were admitted to the house. She had known it would happen!

During the whole day, from the time they came, the old woman hardly took her eyes off the mansion, not even for long enough to open the little package of bread and cheese she’d brought. After they entered, nothing more could be seen of them until early in the afternoon, when Mr. Haworth appeared with Mr. Pentecost, walking around from the back and going across to the old barn in the rear. After that she saw Mr. Pentecost alone, making an examination of the windows, the grounds, even the old elm trees near the house. He finally disappeared into the mansion at one of the rear doors, and a short time after that the three came out at the front portico and drove away in the big car which had been waiting since their arrival in the morning.

The moment it was dark enough for her to approach the house she made haste to her place among the tangled shrubbery close under the side windows. The room on the left was absolutely dark, but by listening intently she could hear voices in a further room, and it was an unspeakable relief when she recognized Mr. Haworth’s among them. He seemed to be giving directions to the young accomplice (there wasn’t a doubt in her mind as to his being one) that the gang of scoundrels had got into the house as a butler.

She’d been there but a short time, close under one of the side windows of the room on the left, when the sound of carefully lightened footsteps reached her ears. Soon the forms of two men could be made out in the darkness coming along the flagged path from the rear and passing quite near her as they went toward the front of the house. They appeared to be carrying some heavy object and went around the corner with it to the front.

Mrs. Temple crawled cautiously through the high weeds and bushes to a place where she could see them again and more distinctly, for the light was on in the big entrance hall, and struck through the two narrow windows—one at each side of the door—across the front portico. This with its columns reflected enough light to enable her to make out what they were doing.

They had put a ladder (which must have been what they were carrying) against the vine-covered wall at one side of the front window of the room on the left, up which one of them had climbed, and were working at something which seemed to be under the thick growth of creeper, carefully disentangling the vines, unwinding, drawing out, and securing them at one side, never cutting or breaking. The leaves in particular they appeared to be handling with the utmost care, and it wasn’t until they had slowly and with all possible precaution pulled one of the window shutters out of the tangled mass that had covered it as it stood opened back against the wall, that she suddenly realized what it all meant.

They were closing the blinds! Closing them! Such a thing hadn’t been done in all the years she’d been there! It could mean but one thing—something was going to happen in the house that no one must see! She was horrified, aghast, unable to move.

It took the men a long time to free both shutters and tie the vines back so they’d be supported. But finally she saw they were coming down and gathering up some cords and tools from the ground. It would be the side windows next—the blinds there were open and overgrown in the same way as the front one—and she’d be directly in their path as they came around the corner. So she crawled out from among the bushes and hobbled away a little distance in the darkness. Her rheumatism was bad from her being out on the damp ground so much.

But the men didn’t stop at the side windows. Instead they went back to the rear of the house, passing along the flagged path by which they came, carrying the ladder and what tools they’d brought with them.

Shivering with dread, Mrs. Temple stood trying to think how she could get word to Mr. Haworth—how warn him—put him on his guard? Though after his telling her that she must not, she didn’t dare to go in, yet she would dare if there was no other way.

Before the poor old soul could decide what to do she heard the front door of the house close heavily and saw someone coming down the steps. As he turned at the bottom, the illumination from the hall windows fell upon him, and she saw it was Haworth.

At once she determined to speak to him—to warn him of his danger—to beg him to let her come into the house again so she could see that no harm came to him. She said to herself that if he’d do that, she’d sleep in front of his door at night—indeed, never let him out of her sight if she could help it.

All this came to her while she was hurrying with all her strength to overtake the young man as he went toward the gate; but he was walking fast, and, crippled by rheumatism as she was, she couldn’t come up with him. She called as loud as she dared—which was in a very subdued voice indeed, as it wouldn’t do for that butler scoundrel to know that she was warning him.

But Haworth either didn’t hear or wouldn’t stop; and finally, about halfway down the drive, the old woman gave it up.

Then she decided to wait in the drive until his return; she could speak to him there without disobeying his orders.

A little time after Charles Haworth disappeared in the darkness, leaving poor old Mrs. Temple standing in the driveway not far from the gate, he and Edith were together in the small living room of the Findlay cottage on Cherry Street. That afternoon about half-past four, a stranger had called on Mrs. Findlay—a mild-looking middle-aged man—and had told her that Mr. Haworth would be there that evening between seven and eight.

Edith had hesitated, whereupon the stranger muttered in a low voice, “Mr. Findlay won’t be home till quite late.”

“How—how do you know?” she asked.

“Some one’ll be taking him to supper, an’ they’re liable to be engaged in conversation for some little time.”

Before she could make any reply the man was gone.

And now Haworth was there—with her.

For a long time they scarcely spoke. A few endearing words whispered as they clung together—that was all.

Finally he lowered her hands from his lips, though still holding them. “Darling one—you know it already—that I’ve come with good news—don’t you?”

He could feel her head making little nods against his breast and heard a muffled “Yes” from down there.

“It happened—what I told you I was trying to do. Those people took the machine—bought it you know—and to-day they paid the money—and there’ll be other payments coming in later. So now all the trouble is over—there won’t be any more at all!”

She suddenly looked up in his face, but he gently drew her head down again, so then she couldn’t see his face any more but lay there resting, and hearing his voice saying how marvelous it was that this sale had come just in time—for it was in time. The doctors said it would be all right and a certain cure if she could get away at once. And now she could! They hadn’t definitely decided where she was to go, but would in a day or two. It would be the most beneficial place in the world for her—they’d make sure of that. And they’d send the best nurse they could find to take care of her on the journey and when she got there. And very soon—very soon—she’d be entirely cured and strong and well again.

When he stopped speaking she twisted around a little so that she could see his face.

“What is it?” she whispered. Her heart was suddenly beating with a vague alarm that she couldn’t understand.

He looked down and met her anxious gaze.

“But don’t you see, dear—it’s going to be so wonderful! We’ll have enough for everything—more than enough. Plenty to take care of you and plenty for me to go on with anything I want to do. I brought a little over for you to get along on just for now—see, that package on the chair there—where my hat is. Don’t mind what’s in it; remember there’s a lot more—thousands. They paid all that down, you see, and I’m to have so much a year to work for them—that is, after we’ve got you all right. That’s the first thing. I couldn’t do anything,—any work at all, if I—if I was afraid about you. And you know what you have to do for your part, don’t you, dear one? Wherever the doctors say, you must go, and whatever they tell you to do you’ll do, won’t you?”

Edith didn’t answer. She was lying quite motionless against him. He looked down at her.

“But—but you——” she began in a faint voice, and stopped, hesitating.

“Yes?” he encouraged her tenderly.

“I mean you——” (Quite a pause.) “Aren’t you coming too—if I—if I have to go a long way off?”

“Yes dear—as soon as I can! But to make this sale I had to agree to oversee the setting up of the machine—and the regulating and all that. It’s bound to take a little time—it’s bound to, dear—and it won’t do for you to wait—oh no!”

“But—don’t you think you can come soon?”

“Oh——I do!”

“You see, I”—she clung against him—“I wouldn’t care much about getting well if you weren’t there.”

“My dear!”

She seemed satisfied and nestled down. After a time she spoke again, a little mournfully. “I hoped we could do what we always thought we would as soon as you sold something. You know what we—what we planned.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Will there—will there be enough for that, too?”

“More than enough.”

“But I suppose this other”—with a little sighing breath—“I suppose it must come first.”

“It must, my precious one.”

“Yes, I know.”

She had referred to their plan of having her get a divorce as soon as there was money enough to do it.

After this they sat together, silent mostly.

Suddenly Haworth realized he ought to go. He knew some arrangement had been made for detaining Findlay, but had kept no track of the time. Now a strong feeling that the hour was late took possession of him. For Edith’s peace of mind the fellow mustn’t find him there. But he couldn’t leave without going upstairs to little Mildred, asleep in her crib.

As they approached the door of the bedroom he stopped and caught Edith to him, holding her close in his arms.

“My dear,” he whispered, and her lips, as she looked up in his face, moved in a soundless “Yes.”

After a moment they went on; but in that moment her heart began throbbing again with the same vague alarm she had felt before.

Haworth had stopped when just within the door of the room and stood there for a little, looking across at the sleeping child; then he suddenly turned away and hurried down the stairs into the room below. Edith, following, felt her hands caught, with a sort of desperation, in his, and heard his whispered, “Good night ... good night, my dear!”

He released her hands and was turning to leave her, when the front door, opening and closing again with a violent bang, shook the flimsy little house, and instantly thereafter Augustus Findlay plunged into the room. He was out of breath from running, and frenzied with precisely the right mixture of vindictive jealousy and vicious alcohol to produce perfect ignition.

“I thought so!” he shouted between his gasps for wind. “By God! I just got on to it they were trying to hold me back!” He glared across at Haworth. “What the hell you doing here in the house with my wife?” He was pulling something like a glove on his right hand as he spoke.

“I’m calling on Mrs. Findlay,” Haworth answered, quietly, and turned toward Edith as if to say a final word.

“Calling, were you?” Augustus was striding toward him. “Well if you’re calling I’ve got to show my hand—an’ here it is you —— —— ——!” Saying which he struck Haworth a savage blow in the face with the brass knuckles he’d been putting on his hand.

Edith, uttering a subdued cry, tried to run in between the two, but Haworth put out his hand and held her back. He was standing quite unconcerned, though the blood was running down the left side of his face from an ugly cut just under the eye.

Turning to Edith as though nothing out of the way had occurred, Haworth raised her hand to his lips, looked deeply into her eyes, and huskily murmuring “Good-bye,” walked out of the room and out of the house without so much as a glance at Findlay.

For an instant the two left there stood silent; then Augustus recovering himself made for the stairs, up which he rushed with stumbling feet. When he came pounding down again a moment later he found Edith blocking the way. “You shan’t go!” she called out, breathlessly. “You shan’t go with that!”

“What?” he demanded, stopping before her.

“You’ve got it there under your coat!”

“What if I have?” (Trying to pass her.)

“You shan’t take it with you! No—no—no!” She was holding to his arm and trying to reach the gun.

He shoved her violently aside and strode toward the door. “You think I’m going to stop for you, you —— ——! No, by God! an’ you’ll damned well get it yourself when I come back!” And he was gone before she had time to recover herself.

Augustus knew the streets Haworth would be likely to take to get home, and started after him on a run—an unsteady one, owing to the load of booze he was carrying, but he got over the ground. He had the gun gripped in his hand and was muttering threats and foul names as he plunged along.

But Haworth, realizing that his appearance would attract attention—for, though he continually wiped his face, it went on bleeding—turned off the most direct route through the well-lighted business district of Egleston Square and Jamaica Plain, into some of the quiet streets to the south. Even at that he had to pass through one of the lesser business neighborhoods where there were shops with lighted windows and people about on the sidewalks.

It was just along here that Findlay, not finding Haworth on the route he’d expected him to take and turning off into side streets running parallel thereto, came up with him. Shouting threats and menacing him with his revolver, he strode along unsteadily by his side, attracting the attention of everybody within hearing. Quite a few who happened to be close at hand ran into shops or behind trees. Haworth’s bleeding face added to the general alarm.

The young man suddenly turned on Findlay with a low-voiced warning.

“Keep away from me or you’ll get into trouble!” he said, and instantly turned and walked as before.

“Trouble!” Augustus screamed. “You talk to me about trouble do you, you —— —— ——! What in hell d’ye suppose you’re going to get? I’ve been waiting for this chance for a year, by God! for more’n a year, by God! an’ now we’ll see where you get off, you —— —— ——!” And on he went, letting out the foulest language he could lay his tongue to, with Haworth paying no further attention to him; and the two disappeared down a poorly lighted road which took them in the direction of Franklin Park.

After this extraordinary and rather terrifying scene had shifted itself well past the little area of shops and light, several of those who had witnessed it came out from their places of refuge and a hurried consultation was held, the result of which was a telephonic report of the affair to police station 13 in Jamaica Plain, and assurance from that quarter that a couple of men would be sent over.

One man who’d been a spectator, had sufficient curiosity to follow Haworth and Augustus at a safe distance, and was joined later by another who saw them pass a couple of blocks further on.

Haworth, dogged by the foul-mouthed nephew of old Michael Cripps, turned in at the mansion gate and went up the dark and weed-grown drive to the house. They mounted the steps of the front portico together, but when Augustus made as if to follow him in, Haworth suddenly turned on him. “You can’t come in here,” he said.

“We’ll see whether I can or not!” Findlay shouted, and began to fight his way past.

“Very well, we will.” Saying which in his quiet way Haworth gripped Augustus by the collar and gave him a shove that sent him back across the portico nearly to the steps, and then turned and entered the house. Findlay rushed back toward the door, which, as he reached it, was slammed violently in his face and bolted inside. With an outburst of the most malignant profanity he sprang against it like a maniac, making frantic efforts to get it open, pounding and shouting and screaming threats until exhausted and out of breath. After panting and fuming there for a while the crazy idea took hold of him that he might get in at a window—or at least get a look in, which was all he wanted. One look—that was all! And he stumbled and felt his way along the east wall until he found himself under the large front window of the room on the left. The shutters were closed, but at the bottom of one of them, which was about on the level of his eyes as he stood on the ground, there were two or three broken slats, and with the frenzied fit of rage still shaking him like an ague he peered avidly in.

Although Mrs. Temple had waited nearly two hours in the darkness about halfway down the drive, hoping to intercept Mr. Haworth on his return, she wasn’t there—as you’ve already gathered—when he finally did come. She’d been sitting for a long time in the grass at the side of the drive, her poor old heart beating the very life out of her with anxiety, when she suddenly became aware that a peculiar mechanical sound was coming from the direction of the mansion. She’d heard it before while Mr. Haworth had been working in the basement. He must have got home by some other way than the drive, and she’d missed him.

Limping back to the house, she got into the shrubbery near the side windows and tried to see into the room on the left, but it was still in darkness. She tried the other windows on that side with the same result. The entrance hall seemed to be the only place in the house where there was a light. The sounds in the house had now ceased. All was quiet.

Then she heard a strident voice down the Torrington Road. Faint it was at first, but gradually growing louder as the man doing the shouting approached. Quarreling with some one he seemed to be. Oaths were screamed out, and a great quantity of blackguardly language along with them.

As the abusive and threatening clamor became more distinct Mrs. Temple realized that the parties concerned were turning in at the gate and coming up the drive.

Intensely alarmed, she moved through the shrubbery to the front corner of the house, where she could get a view of the dimly lighted portico.

It was only a moment before Haworth, closely hounded by Augustus, appeared out of the darkness of the drive, and the old woman caught the metallic glint of something that Findlay had in his hand. Without an instant’s hesitation she hobbled toward him; if she could have got there she’d have torn the gun away from him or been shot in the attempt. But before she’d gone halfway the two had mounted the steps, and a second later Augustus was staggering back, with the door slammed in his face.

Owing to Findlay’s outcries and his fierce beating against the door, Mrs. Temple could at first hear nothing else, but when his hammering and shouting subsided a little she began to notice again those strange noises from within. Upon this she hurried back along the side of the house, still avoiding the footpath and keeping in the bushes. Determined now to get in, even though against Mr. Haworth’s wishes, she made for the kitchen door, but couldn’t open it, and another rear door giving into the back hall was also locked. Then she remembered the basement entrance at the bottom of the stone steps. She found the door there fastened, as she’d expected, but there was a secret way to slide the bolt back by reaching in through an aperture in the side and finding a cord to pull.

The cord was there, but she couldn’t make it work. It was tied in some way, and after desperate attempts she had to give it up.

She was utterly terrified, for that drunken beast might get into the house with his knife or pistol and do Mr. Haworth some fearful injury. In addition to this danger something alarming was going on inside. She could hear hurried footsteps and what seemed to her strange menacing sounds.

She started back toward the front of the house, hobbling and stumbling through the shrubbery, thinking she might find somebody down in Torrington Road who’d come to her assistance.

But as she came toward the side windows of the room on the left, she was amazed to see that, instead of the darkness that had prevailed, an unusually brilliant light was shining out in narrow beams below the roller shades. At both windows these shades had now been pulled down, but as is quite commonly the case, they weren’t quite long enough to reach the bottom of the windows. She hurried to the one nearest to the front of the house and looked in through the narrow slit.

At once she saw Mr. Haworth seated by the large table, reading a book. She watched him intently as he sat there occasionally turning the pages. He seemed entirely at ease and untroubled. There was nothing about him that gave the idea of anything being wrong or out of the way. It amazed her that he could recover entire equanimity so soon after the frightful time he’d been having with Augustus Findlay.

As she watched him he began to feel in his pockets in the absent-minded way she knew so well, bringing out his pipe and tobacco pouch; then he stopped reading and began to fill the pipe. It looked so safe and commonplace after her frightful imaginings and premonitions, that she hesitated about calling out to him, as she’d fully intended to do.

Now he rose and got a box of matches from the mantel, returning with it to the table. She had a momentary impulse to speak to him through the glass, but his singularly calm and reassuring behavior made her hesitate. Could it be that she was mistaken after all?

Quite suddenly something peculiar startled her—a moving shadow on the floor it seemed to be, and she realized that the whole room couldn’t be seen from where she was: the back part, where the doors to the breakfast room and the butler’s pantry were, was out of sight. This was behind Haworth as he stood at the table lighting his pipe, and a wave of horror swept over her as she started for the window farther back which would give her a view of it.

The aperture below the shade at this window was very narrow, but she twisted round, and looking sideways was able to see through into the room.

At last! The frightful thing had come! Standing there behind Mr. Haworth and aiming a terrible black thing straight at his head, a man, his face hidden by a cloth or bandage, his clothes clinging to him as though soaking wet.... She didn’t stop to see any more, but screamed out a frantic warning, at the same time starting back for the other window where she could see Haworth.

As she turned she saw dimly by the light sifting out under the shades, that a man carrying a stepladder was hurrying down the walk toward the front of the house, and she called to him as she ran, but didn’t stop to see whether he heard or not. In an instant she was back at the other window and looking in. Haworth was standing close to the table, half leaning on it and holding a lighted match to his pipe, emitting quick puffs of smoke as he drew on it. She shrieked out his name and beat on the glass with her hands. But she’d no more than begun this when two shots rang out—one close after the other and with reports so deafening that they seemed to shake the house.

The old woman was unable to move, frozen, paralyzed, seeing Haworth spin round as he was hit, and after a weak attempt to hold to the table for support, sink to the floor. Almost at the same time her own trembling legs gave way and she sank down, lying half on the ground and half against the low-growing bushes beneath the window. But only for the briefest moment was she there, for she’d hardly more than gone down when she was struggling to her feet again. And as she did so she saw by the light still shining through under the roller shade, that the man who’d been running along the path must have stopped and dropped the ladder, for he was picking it up; and as she stumbled blindly through the bushes toward the rear of the house he started running toward the front, dragging the ladder after him along the walk.

The doors of the kitchen and back hall were still locked, but she found that some one had opened the basement entrance and she got in there.

Two policemen arriving shortly after—smashing a side window to get in, as there wasn’t time to fumble with the doors—found the old woman on the floor holding Haworth’s limp body in her arms, his head fallen back against her breast.

The patrolmen who smashed their way into the house some twenty-six minutes after the firing of the shots, were sent from Station 13. The desk sergeant got the phone call from citizens in Jamaica Plain, describing the terrifying progress through that district of the two quarreling men with revolvers—blood streaming down the face of one of them. He sent a man from the station, and also the patrolman on the nearest beat as soon as his call came in. These two had no difficulty in picking up the trail of consternation left along the route that Haworth and Findlay had taken. But when they’d followed it a short distance beyond Jamaica Plain the two citizens whose curiosity had led them into trailing the quarreling men in order to see what happened, came sprinting down the road in a frantic effort to get away, for they’d been close to the mansion when the shooting took place and knew that if someone was shot suspicion might light on them.

The patrolmen took these men for the ones they were after and grabbed them. But in a minute they saw there was something else to it; and after a bit of time wasted in sharp questioning they got at the truth and made a run for the Cripps mansion, bringing the two citizens along with them. Material witnesses at least, and a good chance they’d had a hand in it—whatever it was. After smashing one of the kitchen windows these two citizen chaps were shoved in first and stood back against the wall with orders not to move. Then the officers, working with their electric torches (for all the lights were now off) ran through the butler’s pantry, guided by the pungent smell of gunpowder, and an instant later found what they were looking for.

A quick glance at Haworth was all they needed. One took charge; the other ran for the nearest patrol box and reported to his station. The station notified headquarters, and down came a department automobile with the chief inspector and three plain-clothes men and after that the medical examiner (called coroner in most places) and two more uniformed men. (They need a few uniforms in a case like this so people won’t think it’s a hold-up.)

The medical examiner came in his own car, bringing his stenographer and a surveyor with him, as was his custom. I don’t think it’s the usual thing to run a surveyor in, outside of Boston. Of course there were photographers and all that, and it wasn’t any time at all before newspapermen were swarming about.

Mrs. Temple hardly noticed anything—excepting that the lights went suddenly on—until she found herself being urged back by one of the policemen—he was gentle enough with the old woman—toward the swing door of the butler’s pantry. James Dreek was standing just within the door, looking pale and frightened, with a sort of wild-eyed blankness on his face. The officer told them they’d have to go back into the kitchen, and Dreek disappeared in that direction, but Mrs. Temple tried to resist, looking back to where men were bending over Haworth—the surveyor making measurements of positions and distances, working by compass; the medical examiner cutting away parts of his clothing. She made an effort to push past the policeman and get back to the body, but he prevented her, speaking with rough kindness: “Now, now, ma’am, you won’t be allowed over there!” But as he looked at the old woman he saw it wasn’t an ordinary case.

“One o’ the family, ma’am?” he asked in a low voice.

“Yes. Let me by!”

“You can’t do anything, lady—he’s past help.”

“I can be there with ’im, can’t I?”

“Not now, ma’am—but if you’re one o’ the family they’ll let you in afterwards.”

She said no more, but went where he directed. There were a number of persons waiting in the kitchen—all exits from which were guarded—but she didn’t notice them, nor had she any idea of what was going on—that the detectives were searching every part of the house and going over the grounds outside with electric torches; that a couple of plain-clothes men were out after the man who’d followed Haworth through the streets, threatening him with a revolver; that the people waiting there in the room with her were being taken into another room one by one, to be questioned.

Some time later she found herself in the great entrance hall, standing before a man at an improvised desk of rough boarding. There were police about and a plain-clothes man was writing things on sheets of paper. Two or three others not in uniform were standing near, apparently uninterested, but in reality watching her like cats. The old woman glanced at the various people in the room, hardly aware that they were real. It might just as well have been a dream. After a time she thought she heard some one speaking to her.

“What?” she asked, looking about vaguely.

An officer came to her and explained that she must answer the questions.

“What questions?” she inquired.

It appeared there was curiosity as to her name, age, and occupation. She gave the information in a low mumbling voice, speaking absently.

That out of the way, the inspector, noticing that she was inattentive, began with sharp emphasis:

“Mrs. Temple, you knew the deceased, did you not?”

The old woman turned to him, startled, and stood looking at him a moment. Then she looked away, glancing rather vaguely about the room. She was beginning to realize where she was and what was going on.

“Well, are we going to hear anything from you this evening?”

“Are you the perlice?” she asked with a sharpness of her own.

“You’re here to answer questions—not to ask them.”

“I’d like to know if you’re the perlice, that’s all!”

“This is a police investigation, if that’s what you mean. We’re taking testimony throwing light on the crime just committed here. You may be able to help us.”

“No——” Mrs. Temple shook her old gray head. “I won’t be able to help ye none.”

“You mean you don’t know anything about it?”

“I mean what I told ye—that I won’t be able to help ye none.”

“You don’t seem to realize your position, madam. We can compel you to answer questions here. But you ought to be willing to give us any information you can without that, so we can find the guilty man and bring him to the punishment he deserves.”

“What good’ll punishment do, I’d like to know? What’s the good o’ that to—to the poor dear man lyin’ there—shot down like a dog he was—doin’ no harm to no one—juss standin’ there lightin’ his pipe—and shot down like a dog!” She was unable to go on for a moment; but having caught what she said about Haworth lighting his pipe, the inspector waited for her. He would give her plenty of time and nurse her along, for it looked very much as though she’d been a witness to the actual shooting.

“A nice lot of folks you be,” the old woman finally went on in a broken voice but with deep indignation back of it. “What was ye doin’ before, I’d like to know, asettin’ around offices an’ paradin’ up and down the streets! When I went an’ warned ye more’n a week ago that we was in danger over here, I was told there warn’t nothin’ you could do—not till somebody done somethin’. Well, now some one’s done somethin’ an’ ye come hurryin’ around askin’ us all about it! But ye needn’t take no trouble askin’ me. I’ve told ye all I’ve got to tell. I told it to one of yer perlice a-strollin’ up an’ down Centre Street in a nice uniform with brass buttons on it!”

The inspector made no attempt to interrupt or cut short Mrs. Temple’s somewhat fervent remarks, and when she’d quite finished he spoke to her in a carefully softened tone.

“You’re certainly right, Mrs. Temple,” he said, “as to its being too late to do anything now for the—the unfortunate victim in this case. His murder was, as you indicate, a most cold-blooded crime. Every additional particular that is brought out adds to its cruelty and brutality. And was it really a fact, as I think you intimated, that the poor fellow was lighting his pipe as the shots were fired?” He looked sympathetically and inquiringly at the old woman.

But Mrs. Temple’s mouth was shut and there were no signs visible that she had any intention of opening it.

“Rot in jail before she’d talk if she didn’t want to,” was the inspector’s unspoken comment. Well, they’d have to make her want to, that was all. So she was excused, almost with apologies, and allowed to go where she pleased. But wherever that was a detective would be on the job and not lose track of her for an instant.

All available information was in, but the plain-clothes men were still working through the house and grounds. No weapon of any kind had yet been found, and no bullet marks discovered in the room. The theory regarding the latter was that the bullets (it was taken for granted they’d been fired through the front window) struck against the masonry of the fireplace or chimney and left no noticeable mark. In that case, however, they should have been found where they dropped—and the search for them was still going on.

Notwithstanding there were any number of witnesses to the following of Haworth home by an infuriated man using the most abusive language and threatening him with a revolver, no one could be found who had any idea who this person was. Nor had anyone seen him make an attack on Haworth that would result in the cut and bruise which had been found on his face. The two Jamaica Plains citizens who’d followed the quarreling couple to the house gave as good a description of him as could be expected. But their statement that the instant before the shots were fired he was peering in through the large window at the left of the entrance portico and had his revolver gripped in his hand, was positive and unshaken. Also that he stayed there a few seconds after the firing,—though they could not make out what he was doing,—and then turned suddenly and dashed madly down the drive into Torrington Road. Everything pointed to this person as the man they wanted, and the inspector had detectives out after him when the taking of testimony had hardly begun.

The report of the medical inspector with the “survey” attached, showing all distances, positions, heights, measurements of everything in the room, as well as all particulars relating to the body of the murdered man, had been turned in. Out of this technical mass of information a few facts adapted to the limited intelligence of the layman could be extracted. Charles Haworth’s tragic death resulted from whichever of the two gunshot wounds found upon him was inflicted first. Either would have caused it instantly. The shots were discharged from a distance of from fifteen to twenty feet. No chance therefore existed of the wounds being self-inflicted. The distance of the weapon or weapons at the instant of discharge, the locality of the wounds and the course of the projectiles through the body, made such a feat impossible. Both missiles had come from behind the victim, one entering at the back of the head and drilling the brain, the other striking near the middle of the spine and passing through the heart. There were no burns or powder marks on the clothing nor on the head or body, where the projectiles went in.

The upward course of the bullets demonstrated two things—and you can see from both of them how nicely the services of a surveyor came in: first, Haworth must have been standing when he was shot, for otherwise the assailant couldn’t have got low enough down to fire at the angle shown; second, even with Haworth standing, the weapon must have been held well down to give the bullets their upward course; but as accurate aim (which had evidently been taken) would have been difficult if not impossible while holding the gun down within two or three inches of the floor, the probability was that the assailant had been standing outside of one of the windows and had fired into the room from near the bottom of it.

The detectives had a fresh filled pipe—the tobacco on top hardly more than singed; a book fallen open on its face, crumpling the leaves; a box of matches; one partly burned match—all from the floor close to the body. The exact position of each article was given in the survey.

Haworth had evidently been reading and had stopped to fill and light his pipe as the first of the two bullets made an end of him. No evidence of a struggle with anyone—none that he had an idea of what was about to happen.

Two persons concerned in this tragic affair got away from the mansion and its vicinity before the arrival of the police—Hugo Pentecost from within, slipping out quietly through the basement entrance, proceeding through the rear of the property and coming into town by way of Brookline,—thus avoiding Torrington Road and Roxbury altogether; and Augustus Findlay from the front, rushing blindly down the drive like a wild man pursued by seven devils.

After one fearful moment when he’d stood, stunned and paralyzed, looking through the broken slats near the bottom of the shutters of the front window—the booze suddenly swept from his system—the crashing reports of the shots ringing in his ears and Haworth lying there in a crumpled heap on the floor, Findlay was suddenly recalled to himself by feeling the weight of something dragging down his right arm; and raising it into a bar of light coming through the chinks in the shutter, he saw his revolver gripped in his hand, his forefinger still hooked to the trigger. He knew—hazily, but he knew it—that he’d been following Haworth and threatening him with the gun.... And so at last he’d done it! In a drunken frenzy he’d killed a man! Murder—murder—that was it! The crime they hang people for or sizzle the life out of them, strapped in an electric chair! They’d have him for that if he stayed there. Flight was his only chance, yet he couldn’t move. He saw the lights suddenly go off in the house—somebody already there! A moment later he heard a loud voice within calling out something, yet still his feet were weighted with lead. Then came the sound of quick footsteps from around the southeast corner. Some one was coming down the path at the side of the house and dragging some heavy wooden thing—he heard it grating along the stone flagging. Wheeling about with a desperate jerk, he fled madly down the drive.

Findlay had been running only a few minutes (he was out on the Torrington Road by this time) when he suddenly thought of his gun. It mustn’t be found on him! Looking frantically about, he saw a thick clump of shrubbery on one of the front lawns and quite near the road. No one would look for it there! But as he stopped to pitch the weapon over the fence he discovered that he was being followed! He mustn’t be seen throwing the thing away—that alone would convict him! There was nothing to do but run with the gun in his hand. Perhaps he could see a hole or drain where he could drop it without a noticeable motion as he ran.

Somewhere about the time the homicide squad arrived at the Cripps mansion an individual whose clothing set him down as a laboring man and who was evidently carrying a load of something with more than one-half of one percent alcoholic content, walked a trifle unsteadily into the South Station by the Atlantic Avenue entrance, looked blankly about, and then stopped a man who was hurrying past and asked where there was a telephone. On having the booths pointed out to him, he mumbled a thick “much obliged” and made his way to them, getting into No. 19 and occupying it for some little time. Then he reappeared in the concourse, and after further inquiries of various persons, found the gate for the 11:35 P.M. train for New York (“Advanced” time). With much fumbling in his pockets and boozy mutterings as a running accompaniment thereto, he produced a ticket, and after passing in at the gate tried to give it up to the Pullman and train conductors seated at a table just inside; they, however, refusing to take it—as only Pullman passengers gave their tickets there—he went on toward the train, and eventually climbed aboard one of the day coaches.

Walking bravely down the aisle, finding not a little assistance from the friendly arms and backs of the seats on each side, he half fell into an unoccupied seat—the next to the last at the extreme forward end. It might have been observed (but it wasn’t) that this seat gave a person the advantage of having all the lights of the car at his back, leaving his face in comparative obscurity.

Not long after the train passed the Back Bay station this man was half asleep, his head bobbing about; and the conductor took his ticket from the band of his cap where he had stuck it, and passed on without getting a view of his face.

On arrival at the Grand Central a few minutes before six in the morning (a few minutes before five, standard) he was left snoozing in his seat after the rest of the passengers had filed out. A moment or two later the head end trainman, running through the coaches to see that all was clear, stopped and shook him, not altogether gently, into consciousness, yelling as he did so, “All out—all out—Grand Central!... You get out here!”

The drowsy chap, coming to himself and doubtless being considerably hazy, conceived that he was being attacked, and hit out in all directions. The result was a scuffle of wrestling and pulling, all the more eagerly entered into by the trainman because of having had a lot of trouble during the night trying to keep the fellow’s muddy boots off the seat in front of him, throwing them off by main force a number of times. The present struggle ended in the enraged passenger falling in the aisle and being dragged out by his feet to the station platform.

On this same morning the steamer North Land, from the stern of which Mr. Pentecost had rather skillfully disembarked a few hours after she left Boston, came down the Sound and through Hell Gate, emerging into the East River at about eight o’clock, daylight-saving time. Half an hour later she was rounding the Battery into the North River, and not long after that was backing into her berth alongside Pier 18.

By this time most of the passengers were massed in the saloon lobby of the hurricane deck, their small luggage in their hands, ready to go ashore through the starboard door of that lobby as soon as the steamer was made fast and the gangplank run out from the wharf. Nearly every officer and steward and deckhand was on duty on the starboard side, which was the landing side in this instance, as the steamer slowly backed in alongside her wharf.

A small rowboat had been lying close up under the stringpieces at the shore end of the pier. There were three men in it, apparently of the deckhand order, and they had mops and pails in the bottom of the boat and across the seats. They had rowed in there some time before the arrival of the steamer, coming along the south side of the slip among the barges and scows of the New York Central Railroad Company which, at this time, occupied the pier on that side as a freight terminal.

As the North Land came slowly gliding in stern first, the men in the rowboat pulled out into the middle of the slip and waited there. A moment after she was made fast and the crew on the fantail had gone forward, a man in the uniform of a ship’s officer stepped out of the passageway near the stern on the port side (the passengers were to disembark on the starboard) and motioned to the men in the rowboat, upon which they pulled up close under the guard and began to make an examination of the hull near the water line. Soon after this they had mops out and appeared to be swabbing off something on the ship’s side, the officer overlooking the job from the rail above them. A moment later there were two others watching them, not in the ship’s uniform, one from some distance forward on the port outside passageway, and the other from near the stern end of it where it opens into the fantail. These men each had a movie camera focused on the party in the rowboat, and when one of the swabbers was trying to get at a place that was too high to reach and the officer dropped him a rope ladder, the two men kept their cameras trained on him as he clambered up and stepped over the rail into the passage, and still followed him as he was reaching down the ship’s side with his mop in one hand while clinging to the rail with the other.

This man—the deckhand or swabber who had come aboard by the rope ladder—got somehow mixed with one or two others of his kind who came out into the passage, but eventually he could be seen climbing down the ladder again and into the boat; and very soon after that the three rowed lazily away with their buckets and mops. The officer hauled the rope ladder aboard and disappeared through the “emergency exit” into the ship’s cabin, and the men with the cameras were already gone, one walking forward along the port passageway, and the one who had been near the stern passing round to the starboard side by way of the fantail. Everything was smoothly and rapidly done, the whole thing occupying scarcely four minutes from the time the rowboat came up to the ship’s side.

It’s hardly necessary to tell you that after this little performance was over, the man who climbed the rope ladder with his mop was still on board the steamer, and that the man with the same mop who went down the ladder into the rowboat was another person altogether. Nor is it of the least importance to mention names, for you gentlemen can hardly fail to be aware that it was Mr. Pentecost who thus came aboard and that it was one of his “trusties”—made up and dressed to appear in every way like him—who slid down into the rowboat; so that it might be seen, if anyone kept account of such things, that the number of men in it when it was rowed away from the steamer was not less than when it came up under the stern. And, as you can readily imagine—if you have not already done so—the entire scene was played, as one might say, for outside consumption only—that is, for whoever might be about in boats or barges or on the railway pier opposite. No one connected with the steamer could have any knowledge of it; a passenger approaching from either direction on one of the passages would have been begged, by whichever camera man blocked the way, to wait just a moment until the picture was taken; an officer or seaman would receive quite the same request, but with the added explanation that their film concern had obtained permission from the Eastern Steamship Lines, Inc., to photograph a bunch of seamen (which is to say, actors posing as such) swabbing blood off the steamer’s side.

No one would have recognized Pentecost in the confusion, even had he been seen; and it was perfectly true that such permission had been asked and granted. Indeed, the company had loaned an officer’s uniform to help it along. There seemed to have been a little misunderstanding as to dates, but that was a small matter. Back of it all, if it ever got to it, they’d have found a company and a scenario, and a couple of thousand feet of film already taken.

The passengers, herded in the saloon lobby of the hurricane deck, which was the one they were to disembark from, were growing impatient. Those nearest the open door on the starboard side had noticed a couple of men on the dock in conversation with a policeman, and the moment the gangplank was run out the latter had given a signal of some kind and the ship’s officers held everybody back. The two men came aboard at once and went with the Purser into his office, where they scanned the passenger list. A little later the Captain came to the door and the Purser asked him to step in a moment. Shortly after that the Steward and head waiter were sent for. Then (the whole affair had hardly taken five minutes) the two men went ashore with the Purser, and at once the ship’s officers who were blocking the way stood aside, the two ticket takers from the New York office took their places, and the passengers began to leave the steamer.

Near the foot of the gangplank in the vast dock building was a corner partition where the passengers coming ashore made a turn to the right. Back in this corner, which commanded a view of the people filing past the two ticket takers and down the gangplank, stood the Purser with the two men who had been looking over the passenger list in his office.

It was toward the end of the stream of disembarking passengers that Mr. Pentecost and the two Harkers, father and son, came into view at the top of the gangway, with one of the stewards carrying their luggage. As they came ashore and were approaching the right-hand turn, the Purser stepped out and shook hands with them, trusting they’d had a restful night after their strenuous day in Boston, and wishing them good luck with their new invention. All was in the most jovial manner, and the three passed on toward the street. But before they’d got there one of the stewards came running after them and said that if they had time the Purser would like to see them for just a minute. “Why, certainly,” Pentecost said. “Tell him we’ll be right along!”

Harker was alarmed and started to say something under his breath, but Pentecost growled in a half whisper, without looking at him, “Can’t you see everything they do stamps it!”

Alfred went on toward the street to get a taxi, and the two partners turned back.

The Purser was still on the dock near the gangplank, but the two men who’d been with him were gone—at least, not in sight. But don’t imagine that fooled Pentecost any.

“Didn’t mean to trouble you,” Mr. Lawson called out as the two came near.

“No trouble,” said Pentecost.

“Not at all,” added Harker. “What’s going?”

“Why, I’ve just heard something that might concern you gentlemen in a business way. Man came aboard a minute ago and was telling about a hell of a murder last night over in Boston.”

“Murder, eh?” said Harker, with the interest such news might naturally inspire—but no more.

“What makes you think we’d be concerned?” Pentecost inquired.

“Hardly a chance you are—only he said it was out in West Roxbury, and I remembered you told us your man——”

“What was the name—did he say?” Pentecost asked quickly and with awakening anxiety—just the right amount you know—not the merest trifle overdone.

“Why no, I don’t think he did.”

Pentecost glanced at Harker and Harker at him.

“A lot of things might happen in West Roxbury,” he said, turning back to the Purser.

“Sure they might,” assented that official; “but he said it was an inventor chap living out there alone.”

“Inventor!” exclaimed Pentecost. “Living out——By George! And all that money we——” He broke off, and suddenly turning to go was heard to say, “I’ve got to make a run for a train!”

Harker emitted a “My God!” and followed his partner up the dock. But Pentecost stopped suddenly a few yards away, where he could still be seen and heard by the Purser (or anyone concealed in the vicinity), and pulling out a N. Y., N. H. & H. Railroad folder, began looking for express trains to Boston.

“That’s right,” Harker said, coming up to him. “We’ll get the first train out!”

The Purser was approaching them.

“You stay here,” said Pentecost. “There’s a lot of business at the office. I can wire if I want you. Here”—looking at the folder—“‘New York to Boston’—I ought to get the nine o’clock.”

“No—” (from Harker) “half-past nine now!”

“That’s Daylight—railroad’s on Standard.”

“So it is—train’s ten our time—just make it!”

Pentecost seized the Purser’s hand. “Thank you very much, Mr. Lawson. You’ve done us a great favor.” And as he was turning to go: “We paid that man something like thirty thousand yesterday. A yegg’s run up on him—that’s what it is!” He hurried out to the street and jumped into the taxi that Alfred was holding, pushed a five-dollar bill into the driver’s hand with “Grand Central—make time!” and shouting out a few parting directions to Harker as the taxi started with a great jerk (the driver was earning his money) he was whirled away into the traffic.

The man who was following Augustus Findlay as he fled wildly away from the Cripps mansion a few seconds after the sound of the two revolver shots split the air, wasn’t by any means putting a shadow on him, but was running him close, never less than thirty yards behind, and a flash on him from his pocket torch whenever it was safe to throw a light. His name was Graham and he knew his business. He kept so near that Findlay didn’t get a chance to pitch his gun anywhere, and what’s more, I doubt if he could have done it if he’d got the chance, for the minute he realized he was being followed and the light flashed on him every few seconds, he was virtually on the scrap heap—which is to say, out of his head with terror.

It was in a quiet block of Collamore Street over near the railroad tracks that Graham ran up on him and bumped him against the iron post or column of a street light. This nearly knocked Findlay over, but Graham got him by the throat and shut off his wind before he had a chance to fall, and in his wild struggles to loosen Graham’s grip so he could get air, and Graham doing some extra thrashing about trying to hold him, it gave the idea there was the liveliest kind of a fight on; and a man in his shirt sleeves, who’d been sitting smoking a pipe at a second-story window nearly above, commenced to yell at them to quit.

From that minute you could see that Graham was trying to get Findlay’s revolver away from him, twisting his arm, trying to bite his fingers loose, and all the while shouting out, “You damn dirty sneak, gimme that gun! Gimme the gun, I say! It’s the gun I want!” and things like that. And Augustus, who was terrified, thinking they were after the thing to prove murder on him, clung to it with the tenacity of an octopus.

The man at the second-story window, whose name it later appeared was Rathbun, finding yelling to the two scrappers was no good, came downstairs and out at the street door of the tenement building; but seeing—or, to be more accurate, hearing what it was they were fighting for, hesitated in the doorway, as he had an aversion to being shot up. In this instant of Rathbun’s hesitation Graham gave Augustus a smash in the face that made him loosen his hold, and then snatching the revolver out of his hands turned and raced up Collamore Street, carrying it by the muzzle; and Rathbun noticed, as the man swung into a street light, that the hand he was holding it with had a glove on it.

After Graham got safely away, Rathbun went out to Findlay, who was lying in the road, and tried to find out what it was all about and whether he was hurt. But he couldn’t get anything out of the fellow.

After a few moments Findlay got to his feet unsteadily, stared blankly at Rathbun for a second or two, then wheeled around and went limping down the street toward the railroad. A sorry-looking object he was, battered and torn and plastered with mud. But his mental condition was sorrier. Maudlin and devastating fright possessed him. He’d done a murder—murder—murder! Shot a man, killed a man, and they were hunting for him—they’d get him! Drunkenness no defense. He’d looked that up before, when he really thought of doing it! This time he didn’t think. And he’d done it!

He stopped. If he went home they’d get him there. But if he tried to get away it would be the same as a confession of guilt. If he went home he could deny everything—insist that he didn’t know what they were talking about—that he hadn’t left the house all that evening. Edith must back him up. That is, if anyone came for him. But after all, why should they? No one could possibly have seen him at the Haworth place. It was dark as pitch. And the shutters were closed, so no light shone on him. Yet who could the man have been who got his revolver? Just a plain hold-up, that’s what it was. Yet he thought he’d heard him following from way back near Torrington Road. But if he was a detective he’d have arrested him. And, anyway, a detective couldn’t have got on the job thirty seconds after Haworth was k——. Great God! He couldn’t say it even to himself.

With his mind seething, he stumbled up the two steps to his front door and stopped there with his hand on the knob and a quick glance up the street, thinking he heard some one following. He turned with a sudden terror and tried to open the door, but it was locked. He shook it and pounded on it, and the instant he heard Edith turn the key in the lock he burst in, closed the door frantically after him, and stood pushing against it as if trying to keep some one out.

Edith stood quiet, watching his feverish terror. When he finally ceased his violent pushing against the door she spoke.

“Tell me,” she said.

“Tell you what? Whad’ ye mean? I ain’t got anything to tell!”

“You have.”

“I have not! I been in a fight, that’s all. A hell of a dirty footpad jumped on me—just over the other side of the railroad—but he didn’t get any money—he only took my gun!”

“Your revolver?”

“Can’t you hear what I say?”

“What had you been doing with it?”

“What had——I just had it along. How could I be doing anything when he took it away from me!” The man was almost sobbing. “You ain’t got any right to talk to me like that! You’d ought to help me—that’s what you’d ought to do! I’m going to bed and you tell ’em I was here all this evening! You can do that much for me, I should think. I was here reading a book, that book over there on the stand—that’s all you got to say. What’s the harm o’that? Just tell ’em I was here reading that book?”

Edith shook her head.

Then followed begging and crying and protesting on his part, but with no response on hers. She didn’t speak again.

After Augustus had gone whining upstairs and locked himself in his bedroom, Edith opened the front door and looked out into the dismal night. She was hesitating. If it hadn’t been for leaving little Mildred alone in the house with the crazed brute (who had often threatened to kill the child) she’d have hurried through the dark streets to Torrington Road. She knew from her husband’s behavior that something fearful had happened, yet without an idea of how terrible it was.

Finally she sat on a chair in the small living room and waited. There was nothing else to do.

It was early morning when they came—still dark. Edith heard their feet on the wooden steps and then the heavy knock on the front door.

Two men stood there, dressed in ordinary clothes. And she could see a uniformed policeman moving back at the side of the house. It was the patrolman on the beat who’d been phoned from headquarters to keep an eye on the place till the Inspectors got there. Now they’d come and were sending him to cover the rear.

The men at the door were roughly polite. They were sorry to disturb her, but was Mr. Findlay at home?

“Yes.”

“We’d like to see him.”

“He’s in his room upstairs. I’ll tell him you’re here.”

But as she turned to go the man who’d been speaking called after her:

“If it’s all the same to you we’ll go——Which room is it?”

“The back one—farthest from the stairs.”

“Thank you ma’am.”

The men ran up, and she heard their loud knocking on the door and gruff orders to Findlay to open it.

Then came the crash of splintering wood (the door was a flimsy affair) and their heavy tread as they rushed into the room. A moment later there were more distant voices, and the men came hurrying down again.

“They got him outside, ma’am,” one of them said. “Sorry to make you all this trouble.” And the two passed out at the front door. Edith called:

“Oh, wait! I want to——”

One of the men turned in the doorway.

“I want you to—I want you to tell me if—if——Oh, what is it?”

“Some trouble in West Roxbury, ma’am. You can find out from headquarters.”

As the man passed into the street she could hear Augustus’s voice through the open door. He was whining and crying that he didn’t know anything about it—he was here at home all the evening reading a book—that was what he was doing—he never once left the house—ask his wife if they didn’t believe it—she was right there—just ask her; in the midst of which came a rough caution from one of the inspectors that he’d better keep his mouth shut—he could tell all that to the chief. A moment later came the clatter of a car driven up from somewhere, the slamming of its door, and the sound of its rapid departure up the street.

A number of things were happening along here that I’m not going to try to describe to you. My supposition is that I’m able to get away with plain facts so they’ll be understood, which is all I aim at. But when it comes to telling you about Edith Findlay through all this affair—her going over to the mansion as soon as she could get a neighbor to take care of little Mildred, and staying there with all that was left of poor Haworth as long as they’d let her; and later her being at the funeral; and after that sitting stunned and dry-eyed in her little parlor at home while she slowly came to the realization of what it meant—that the one person who was all there was in the world for her had gone forever, and that somehow it was through her that the terrible thing had come about—I’m out of it altogether. I can only briefly refer to it as I’ve just been doing.

Yet with all these fearful things coming down on her, the poor child—frail and delicate and already in the grip of the demon of disease—had it in her to stand up to it, quiet and brave. I made a mistake, though, when I said all these fearful things coming down on her, for she knew only one. Others had no place in her mind. They didn’t even occur to her.

And with old Mrs. Temple it was much the same, though in a different way. Back of all the police investigations, and questionings of witnesses, and photographing, and ransacking the mansion and grounds surrounding it, and the sensational newspaper write-ups, and arrests, and talk, and confusion, was this cruel blow for each of them—the loss of the one who was dear to them.

Mr. Pentecost left the train at Back Bay Station on arrival in Boston, thus saving about five minutes. And he saved some three minutes more by not having to explain to the taxi man where Torrington Road could be found, the morning and early afternoon papers having thoroughly attended to that.

It was a few minutes after four o’clock (Advanced time) when his machine came tearing up the drive—that is, tearing up the lower part of it, for it was stopped by a patrolman some distance from the house. Two policemen and a plainclothesman were on watch there. Pentecost hurriedly explained who he was, and that his firm had paid a large amount of money the day before for one of the murdered man’s inventions—which was still in the house, he supposed. They’d left it crated in the front hall.

The detective made no reply to that, but instead informed Mr. Pentecost that the Chief would like to see him at headquarters.

“Yes, but wait a minute!” remonstrated Pentecost. “I want to find out if that machine——”

“You can talk it over with the Inspector when you get there.”

“Talk it over! But my God, man—it’s our property!”

“The Inspector’ll attend to that. You don’t need to worry.”

“Was there a truck out here after it?”

“There sure was, but the truck didn’t get it. How do we know but it might have something to do with the case?”

“Have you got the idea that anybody’s going to shoot up a man for a three-ton machine he couldn’t get out of the house?”

“Ask the Inspector that.”

Pentecost was allowed to go in and satisfy himself that his property was still in the house and had not been tampered with. After a moment of breathing easier (not overdone you know) upon finding that this was the case, he apparently began to call to mind that a terrible crime had been committed and finally asked if he could see the poor chap who’d been shot. But the body’d been taken to the morgue some hours before.

Half an hour later the detective and Mr. Pentecost arrived at Pemberton Square and the Inspector didn’t keep them waiting long. Besides the latter there were two plain-clothes men in the room—one at a table ready to make notes, the other standing back near the window. The Inspector, seated at his desk, greeted Pentecost pleasantly; and after an informal question or two regarding his business and the methods of running it, came down to the matter in hand.

“Understand your firm’s been having some dealings with the man they shot out in Roxbury—or rather Jamaica Plain—last night.”

“Why yes, we just bought an invention of his—that is, rights to exploit and so forth—and paid the money down for it. It was only yesterday, and the machine’s still out there in the house. One of your men in charge advised me to speak to you about it, and I certainly hope you’ll be so good as to arrange it so we can——”

“All in good time Mr. Pentecost. First I’d like to have you tell me what you know about the affair or the people concerned in it.”

“Yes, certainly, certainly—er——” Pentecost appeared to be slightly flurried by having the subject shifted so suddenly away from what was apparently uppermost in his mind. (It might be just as well to remember I said “appeared to be” and “apparently.”)

“Your firm specializes in novelties of a mechanical nature, you say—organizes companies and that sort of thing?”

“Yes—yes, we—that’s our business.”

“What are some of the inventions you’ve handled?”

“Well, there’s quite a number. The latest thing we took over was the Crudex Oil Burning Device. We’re also behind the Polaris Refrigerating Machine, the Acme Vacuum Cleaner and other successful things. Of course we hit on a loser now and then, but our average stands up well.” (Pentecost had naturally given out the straight deals that the firm had undertaken—sometimes at considerable expense—for precisely this sort of emergency.)

“That being your business, I take it you were attracted to Haworth’s inventions.”

“Yes—I was.—That is, to one of them.”

“How did you happen to hear of them?”

“From reading a Sunday supplement write-up when I was over here a couple of weeks ago—or thereabout.” And Pentecost went on to give an account of how he went out there to see what sort of mechanical novelties the inventor had, and to describe his visit to the ancient mansion—the young man alone there with an old charwoman—the finding of a device that greatly interested him—the bringing of his partner over from New York to see it—and their ultimate purchase of the rights in the machine and the payment of quite a large sum of money down.

“Did you see much of the old woman you speak of,—the one who came in to cook for him and so on?”

“Not a great deal, but I had to admire her.”

“Why? What did you admire?”

“The game way she kept at it trying to protect Mr. Haworth from us,—for she got the idea we were trying to rob him or something like that. She bothered us some listening around, but it was no great matter, so I let it go.—Though now I think of it I did drive her away once.”

“What was the reason for that?”

“The machine we were negotiating for depended on a secret process, as you might say. That is, he managed his combustion to compress air direct without the use of intervening machinery. Something they’d hardly allow a patent on. That’s why I’m so nervous about it. I hope nobody takes it out of that crate.”

“Was the old woman trying to see it?”

“Trying to see anything she could. We’d find her everywhere. I don’t suppose she’d have understood the thing even if she’d got a good look at it, but I always like to play safe when there’s no patent. So we finally asked Haworth to keep her out of the house till we got the machine away.”

After questioning Pentecost on other points, the business transaction between Haworth and the firm was taken up,—the fourteen-day option, the payment of the thirty-five thousand dollars, the arrangement made with him for coming on to New York and setting up and adjusting the machine, and his agreement to work under their direction for five years.

“It was a cash transaction I understand—this payment of thirty-five thousand?”

“Yes—he insisted on having it that way.”

“Do you know his reasons for that?”

“No.”

“You actually paid him that amount—in bills?”

“Yes. That is to say, he received it from the firm. Alfred Harker, our secretary, was the one who handed it to him.”

“But you saw—yourself—that that amount was paid over to him?”

“Yes, I did. I watched Harker counting it out for him.”

“Into his hands?”

“Well, no, it was rather too bulky for that. He counted it out on the table.”

“And Haworth took it?”

“Yes.”

“What did he do with it—put it in his pocket?”

“I’m not sure, but I should say not. It was rather too large for an ordinary pocket.”

“Mr. Pentecost, where, exactly, was that bunch of bills when you last saw it?”

“My recollection isn’t clear enough to admit of a positive statement. I have the impression that Haworth held it in his hands a short time and then put it down on the table and stood there with one hand resting on it.”

“What happened then?”

“Soon after the money was paid we left the house.”

“Did he bring it to the door with him when he went to see you out?”

“He didn’t come to the door—we left him standing at the table.”

“He said good night to you there?”

“Yes. And it was then that he was standing—as I remember it—with one hand resting on the stack of bills.”

“You referred to an agreement you made with him for working under your direction. Was he entirely willing to agree to this or did you have to urge it to some extent?”

“We had some discussion, but he finally saw it was to his advantage, and signed the contract willingly.”

“Have you that contract with you?”

“My partner took charge of it. I can wire him and he’ll get it in the mail to-night.”

“Kindly do that.”

The next inquiries were as to the machine the firm had bought, and Pentecost described it as well as he could and offered to have the blueprints sent over from New York—an offer which was accepted. He was unable, when asked, to give any information concerning Augustus Findlay as he’d never seen him nor even heard his name mentioned, nor could he tell the Inspector anything about the butler, Dreek, as he’d only seen him once or twice in the performance of his duties and once when he was called in to sign as a witness.... Yes, he should say it was quite possible this butler, Dreek, had seen the bunch of money.... No, he had no idea how it happened that Mr. Haworth had sent to a New York agency for a butler.

Shortly after that he was excused, the Inspector intimating that he’d like to have another chat with him in the near future.

Pentecost said of course—anything he could do, and added that if the Inspector wanted to see Mr. Harker and his son Alfred—the two who were with him at the Haworth place—he could get them over that night; but he was told that such a thing was hardly necessary, as their testimony could be taken in New York if it came to that.

“You got over here in quick time, Mr. Pentecost,” the Inspector was moved to say as the interview was coming to a close. “We have to thank you for that.”

“It was my business that was worrying me—not yours,” Pentecost returned. “And now that you speak of it,” he went on, beginning to show eagerness again, “I was advised to consult you as to how I could get that machine out of the house. We’ve got a good-sized stack of money invested in it and I’d like to get it into a safe place.”

“It’s perfectly safe where it is, Mr. Pentecost. We’ve got to hold it till we can see what bearing—if any—it has on the case. Good afternoon.”

A plain-clothes man opened the door for him and Mr. Pentecost passed out. When the man turned back into the room the Inspector spoke quickly in an undertone: “Run out after him, Charlie, and keep him in sight till I get someone on the job. Keep your distance—don’t let him get wise to it.”

The detective addressed as Charlie disappeared through the door.

The Inspector sat thinking a moment and then got to his feet and began pacing the room—a habit of his when hunting for the answer to something. He suddenly stopped and spoke to the plain-clothes man at the table who’d been taking down the conversation with Pentecost.

“What did you think of that, Alec?”

“Sounded nice an’ slick to me.”

“Ever see him before?”

“Not as I remember.”

“Got an idea I have. Can’t place it. Going to put Loderer and Trench on him.”

“Cinch on Findlay, ain’t it?”

“What you might call that, but there’s one or two curious things about it—money gone—thirty-five thousand in bills—we can’t get that on Findlay.”

“Nor on this man, either, that I can see. You can’t crack an alibi like that, with the Purser an’ all talking to ’im on the voyage. And on top of it he comes ashore from the steamer in New York this morning.”

The inspector muttered, “Yes, I know,” absently, and was silent a moment, thinking. Finally he said with a slightly explosive effect:

“God! I hope Bellinger gets the man that phoned in here last night!”

“You mean about this Pentecost not being on board?”

“Yes—and advising us to have the boat watched in New York.”

“Nothing on it yet?”

“Nothing to the good. We got the booth he phoned from and we picked up a man who saw a chap go into that booth about that time, but he couldn’t give a description except that he looked like a day laborer of some kind—so we don’t land anywhere.”

“What booth was it?”

“Nineteen——South Station.”

PART VII

You can readily understand that the daily papers, both morning and evening, were going strong on this murder, giving the public all the sensational stuff they could rake out of the gory mess. Even wild rumor was sufficiently tamed to occupy a place of honor on first pages, no least item of the appalling affair being too inconsequent to be written up until it fairly bristled with significance.

Even at that, very little attention was given to a press dispatch from Montreal which appeared in the Boston papers on the second morning after the shooting. Only a few lines it amounted to, and tacked on at the end of one of the columns devoted to the murder.

This dispatch stated as rather a striking coincidence, that one of the Montreal papers of the day before—that is, of the morning following the West Roxbury shooting—had printed in a local news column a short paragraph to the effect that at a spirit séance in a private house on Sackville Street the night before—which was the evening of the murder, a call had come from the spirit of some one (a man it seemed to be) whose name, owing to his extreme agitation, couldn’t be obtained, but who was so insistent on speaking that the control brought him in.

The medium, who was in trance, suddenly taken by this spirit, began crying out: “Stop them! Stop them! Can’t somebody stop them? Oh, it’s terrible—terrible! They’re going right on—there’s no help for it! Oh—can’t somebody telegraph?”

Then there was a pause, and some of the sitters began asking this spirit what the trouble was, and where he wanted them to telegraph, and what his name was, and things like that. But there was no answer, and for several minutes nothing more came through. Then suddenly there was something like a shout for help repeated several times and followed by wild exclamations about killing some one. “Down in the States—down in the States! Roxbury—down in the States! They’re killing a man in Roxbury—killing a man. No one can stop it now! There’s a gun aimed at him—don’t you understand—aiming a gun—aiming a——Oh, They’ve shot him!... Now they’ve shot him again!... He’s sinking—sinking down—down.... Now he’s on the floor—all in a heap!... Now he’s dead!... Dead!... Dead...!” The words seemed to trail off in the distance toward the end, and nothing more was heard from the perturbed visitor.

The Montreal paper carrying the account of this went on to say that its information was obtained from a well-known person who had attended the sitting. And one of the Boston papers, commenting on it briefly, as one of those odd coincidences which come along and surprise us every now and then, added: “This will be less astounding, however, when we reflect that a medium in Canada or anywhere else can confidently assert, at any hour of the day or night, that a murder is being committed in one of the large cities of the United States, and not be far out of the way in time or place.”

The evidence tending to establish the guilt of Augustus Findlay in the case of the shooting to death of Charles Michael Haworth was so overwhelming from the point of view of newspaper readers, that it threatened to make the case uninteresting—a threat, however, which was soon swept into the discard. For a few days, though, it looked unpromising in the extreme to those who revel in newspaper sewerage. The facts were so plain and Findlay’s guilt so evident that no room was left for enthralling suspicions as to others—for gossip and scandal, for the laying bare of nauseous details concerning the habits and lives of loathsome people, and all those choice morsels of offal that newspaper addicts go after so ravenously.

It was simply that this Findlay man, the murderer, had always been threatening to put a bullet into the Haworth man, the murdered, and had finally done so, being worked up to a sufficient frenzy in his half-drunken condition, by finding the said Haworth calling upon his—Findlay’s—wife. He had thereupon followed him home, flourishing a revolver in his face most of the way and shouting the most murderous threats and maledictions, and finally had shot him from outside the Cripps mansion on Torrington Road (where Haworth lived) getting it there through one of the front windows. Then he had run home and tried to make his wife uphold him in his statement that he hadn’t left the house all the evening. If that wasn’t enough to land him in the chair, what was?

To the authorities, however, it wasn’t quite so easy navigation. No one had seen Findlay do the deed; no revolver had been found; no bullet marks in the room had yet been discovered. It was true that everything pointed to him as the murderer, but pointing wasn’t enough. It answers very nicely for the general public, but doesn’t go with a Grand Jury.

And there was that obstinate old woman who undoubtedly had intimate knowledge of the entire episode from A to Z—knowing the persons involved, the motives behind the murderous deed, and every circumstance leading up to it;—for hadn’t she run out and warned a patrolman in Jamaica Plain nearly a week before the event? Fully aware of this and more, yet keeping her mouth as securely closed as if officially padlocked. More important still if it was a fact—and a word or two she’d dropped just after the shooting made it look that way—she’d been an eyewitness of the murder. Yet so far nothing could be got out of her on the subject.

But no mistake was made about Amelia Temple. It was seen from the first that the only chance was in giving it to her easy and waiting patiently for results. No pressure. On a sign of that she’d have cheerfully gone to prison for life or permitted herself to be hung by the neck until dead, before she’d have let out a word. So they kept careful watch on her without interfering in any way with her freedom or giving her the least idea they were doing it.

And the Inspector and she enjoyed a couple of pleasant conversations during this time, in which, “as a matter of form” he gave her the opportunity to enlighten them as to one or two little things, but said himself she was perfectly justified in declining to do so if she still felt that she must—indeed, he wasn’t sure but he’d do the same in her place. And the patrolman who’d failed to respond to her request for help had (under instructions, of course) made her a most abject apology, to which her only response was, “That does a lot o’ good now, don’t it?”

While proceedings in this quarter were at a standstill (for they wanted to give the old woman time), those in other and unexpected directions were not. Some rather unusual phenomena relating to the case were beginning to attract attention. Although the first of these—the communication that came through a Montreal medium—had hardly caused a ripple, a manifestation on similar lines now broke out in Boston itself, and people began to sit up and take notice.

The séance in which this occurred was taking place in a small hall or conference room, where a committee appointed by some sort of psychical research society was investigating the spirit manifestations claimed to be produced by a certain medium. It was a lady in this case—using the term merely as indicative of sex (though for all I know it could be applied in a broader sense as well)—and she was trying to cope with the various tests to which this committee was subjecting her at a series of meetings held for that purpose, hoping to win a prize that had been offered; but sure, in any event, of valuable publicity.

As you see, I am fairly well uninformed as to the interior workings of this particular brand of religious endeavor—if it may be referred to as such. Nevertheless, I am fully aware of the phenomena that touched on the Haworth case, and can report them to you with a close approach to accuracy, leaving you to draw your own conclusions as to their origin.

It was certainly a great surprise to everyone interested in the affair—with the possible exception of the firm of Harker & Pentecost, neither member of which was ever surprised at anything—that an attempt at interference should come from such a quarter. For a time it was treated as an absurdity not worth serious attention. But that was only for a time.

It seems that mediums, being forbidden, in these enlightened days, to give public séances for which admission fees are charged, are obliged to employ other methods of attracting and doing business. The most common is to appear before the congregations in the great Spiritist temples—or whatever name they may go by—where meetings are held at stated intervals in all the large cities and many of the smaller ones. At these gatherings a limited number of “inspirational speakers” and “test mediums” are allowed a certain time each in which to bring the spirits of the departed into communication with friends or relatives present, and sometimes with people who cannot be found in the assembly.

The more striking and convincing the feats these inspirational individuals perform, the greater will be their renown and ultimate pecuniary reward. For upon the impression made at these meetings (where no admission fee is charged) largely depends the amount and the value of the private business they can do thereafter. It has been known that one extraordinary “demonstration” in the way of spirit communication or materialization, has come near to making the fortune of the artist (using the term with entire respect) who brought it about. The field is of vast extent. The highest aim is the convincing and consequent conversion of persons of wealth who are undergoing the pangs of recent bereavement; for the successful medium deals in that for which almost anything will be paid—if the believing client has the price.

While these appearances at the great Spiritist assemblies are the most used of the publicity methods for commercial mediums, a greatly superior one has recently been developed for the few who are fortunate enough to be able to associate themselves with it. It is one of the innumerable outcomes—all more or less revolting—of what a few nations egotistically refer to as “the World War.”

Owing to this absurd and ghastly occurrence, hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—of families were suddenly plunged into the most heartrending grief known to man. Those who were beyond words dear to them had been snatched away and violently put to death, and the ones so taken were in the very part of life where death seems most impossible, most unbelievable, and consequently most terrible.

Resulting from this, the interest in that creed which assures people that their lost ones are yet here with them in spirit form, trying to speak to them and often succeeding (through the mediumship of others), even on occasion appearing before them in person (again through the interposition of others), was suddenly and tremendously increased. One result was an enormous enlargement in the number of believers, among which were included some with a high order of mental equipment—something in which this “faith” had been painfully deficient before. A result of the unprecedented interest which this accession to the ranks of Spiritists inspired, was a stimulation of the efforts made by the less credulous to learn whether or not there existed grounds for confidence in the amazing claims set forth. Societies and associations and investigating committees were organized for this purpose in various parts of the country, rewards were offered and the claims and accomplishments of various mediums were subjected to investigation. As a by-product of these activities, and one, it must be admitted, wholly unlooked for by those undertaking this enthusiastic search for truth, the most effective machinery yet devised for the manufacture of publicity for mediums was put in operation.

The prize of a few thousand dollars offered by the organizations behind the investigating committees, was as nothing to the enormously increased business for the medium which was sure to follow the newspaper accounts of the proceedings, no matter which way they went or what decision was arrived at. Free newspaper publicity, and in the news columns—that was the real prize.

It happened that an investigation of this kind was going on in Boston at the time of the tragic occurrence on Torrington Road. The medium who was undergoing tests was a Mrs. Belden—Henrietta E. Belden was the entire name I believe—and she had heretofore revealed her unusual gifts only in private—that is to say, in her own home out in Quincy. But accounts of the extraordinary things that took place when she went into trance, came to the notice of members of a research society, and after a bit of wirepulling that was kept in the dark (as it certainly should have been) the lady was invited to submit to a series of test sittings, and, I need hardly say, accepted.

The first test séance had already been held and with some success—enough to get half-column reports of it on inside pages of most of the next day’s papers. But this was only a beginning.

On the evening of the day after the murder in Torrington Road, the second sitting was scheduled to take place—which it did. Most of the newspaper reports of this meeting spoke of it as being unsatisfactory in the extreme, though one or two contended that it would be only fair to the medium to suspend judgment until the next one, as there appeared to be some unexplained obstacle in her way, and she should be given a chance to overcome it.

It seems that after Mrs. Belden had gone into trance, instead of being, as on the first occasion, immediately controlled by energetic spirits who spoke volubly (through her) and caused sounds of knockings and chilly draughts and inexplicable moving of furniture, she was suddenly plunged by some mysterious influence, into the most overpowering grief, begging piteously that some one would help her. On questioning by members of the committee, it developed that they were speaking to the spirit of a woman named Cynthia. That is to say, the medium herself had disappeared into trance, and the spirit of this Cynthia woman was speaking through Mrs. Belden’s terrestrial machinery.

“Cynthia—I’m Cynthia!” the medium kept calling out in a voice entirely different from her own, and with tears running down her cheeks. “Yes—Cynthia! Oh, won’t somebody help me! Though you don’t know me, for God’s sake help me! Isn’t there somebody here who can do something?” And the medium sobbed and moaned and rocked back and forth, and her very face was changed. All the questions that were put to her by the members of the committee seemed to get them no further. The Cynthia spirit was apparently crazed with grief or anxiety, and held her place for nearly an hour, begging for help, yet leaving those present without information as to what the trouble was, further than the little that could be gathered from her incoherent cries of: “Oh—they’ve made a terrible mistake! Don’t you see—a terrible, frightful mistake!”

“Mistake about what, madam?” would come in a sharp incisive voice from an investigator.

“About him—about him. He’s my son—my son—my son! Don’t you understand?—and he’s in such trouble—oh, such trouble! It’s all wrong—all wrong! Can’t somebody go and tell them it’s all a mistake! Oh, please somebody tell them!” And thus it went on, the grief-stricken spirit of Cynthia hysterically begging for assistance and imploring them to tell somebody that something wasn’t so, yet seemingly unable to furnish information as to what persons she wished to have told, or to let them know who she was herself. And although, after some little time of this, the members of the committee urgently requested Cynthia’s spirit to leave the medium so that the spirits of others who were better able to communicate might take her place, she couldn’t be persuaded to do so.

Even Mrs. Belden’s assistant or director—or whatever it is those people are called—joined in the efforts to persuade Cynthia to release the medium, calling out several times to the usual spirit control: “Doctor Coulter, can’t you relieve this situation? Tell us what this Cynthia woman wants or take her away.”

But nothing availed and the investigation was finally adjourned until the evening after the next.

When Mrs. Belden came out of the trance and began to take notice of things, she discovered, from the behavior of those members of the committee who had waited, that all was not well. Her director whispered a few hurried words to her, and she could be heard exclaiming, “Cynthia? Why—why, what does it mean? I don’t know anybody named Cynthia—I never heard of such a person!” She appeared greatly disturbed, evidently fearing her chances of winning the prize which had been offered for a successful test were gone, or at least greatly reduced in size.

The condition in which she was left after being under the control of this sorrowful spirit for more than an hour, was surely bad enough without the added anxiety as to the failure of the test. One or two of the gentlemen shook hands with her and said she mustn’t take it so much to heart, as the next meeting would undoubtedly be a fine one and more than make up for any shortcomings in this. But it was evident that Mrs. Belden was disappointed and chagrined.

The next sitting was approached with feelings bordering on trepidation of one sort or another by nearly everyone concerned. And when Mrs. Belden had finally succeeded—with more difficulty than usual—in getting herself into trance condition, and almost immediately thereafter the tearful voice of Cynthia was heard, the depression among the investigators became acute.

But there was a surprise awaiting them, for not only was this spirit calmer and more reasonable than she had been two nights before, but she spoke in a way that aroused a sudden and peculiar interest.

The Haworth case—barely three days old and still on the front pages—was the subject of conversation everywhere. So that when the members of the committee became aware—as they did from the first few words spoken—that it was the spirit of Cynthia Findlay addressing them,—the mother of the man arrested for the Haworth murder, and as to whose guilt there wasn’t a remnant of doubt in the public mind—the deepest interest was aroused. Her voice was still sad and occasionally tremulous with emotion, but there was no more sobbing and hysteria. She begged most piteously that somebody there would tell the Judge or the Jury or the police or some one, that her son was innocent. It was all a dreadful mistake. He——Oh no! Oh, believe her, no!—he wasn’t the one who did it! All the things that looked so terribly incriminating could be accounted for some other way. Every one of them could be explained!—Every one!—Every one!

She went on like that for quite a time, becoming more and more affected until she could hardly speak. But on this occasion her repetitions—even her paroxysms of emotion—were no longer wearisome to those present.

As soon as it became necessary for her to pause for breath—for while it’s more than unlikely that a spirit needs any, the same could hardly be said of a medium—a flood of incisive questioning poured in, which ran something like this:

Professor Elbertson (a psychologist): “Mrs. Findlay, if you know your son did not commit the crime he’s charged with, you must also know who did.”

Mr. Blatchford (an attorney): “Certainly. Your knowledge implies that you are in a position where you have an insight of the case. This insight should enable you to give us the name of the guilty one.”

The Spirit: “Oh, don’t ask me! I can’t—I can’t!”

Doctor Wingate (a physician): “Who prevents you? Who stops you when so much depends on it? Let us know who this person—this spirit—is.”

The Spirit: “There’s no ‘who.’ Nothing can be said—no words—no—no—no words!”

Mr. Halsted (a prestidigitator): “Do you mean, Mrs. Findlay, that there is no person or being or entity of any description who forbids you or stands in the way of your telling us this?”

The Spirit: “No such thing as that! I am held by an influence from all that is, of which I myself am an infinitesimal part.”

Mr. Blatchford: “Then why does not this prohibitive influence prevent you from informing us as to your son? You experience no difficulty in declaring his innocence. Is it a law that operates either way according to its fancy?”

The Spirit: “My own influence, though infinitesimal as a rule, becomes of more consequence than all others when it concerns my son, and the balance is turned. For him I can speak across to you and beg you to save him.”

Mr. Blatchford: “Then surely for him you can reveal the facts that will accomplish that result.”

The Spirit: “Perhaps I can—oh, perhaps—perhaps! But it can’t be now! If it can be—I’ll come again!” The voice trailed away in a despairing moan and the spirit of Cynthia was gone.

Mrs. Belden came out of the trance rather suddenly, rubbing her eyes and glancing questioningly at her director and the members of the committee. As before, she seemed greatly exhausted by the use to which the spirit of Cynthia had put her, and found herself in a cold perspiration.

While no real test had yet been furnished by Mrs. Belden, a majority of the committee had a feeling that the next visit of the spirit of Cynthia would supply one, while a pessimistic minority openly stated that there wouldn’t be any next visit,—that the questioning they had given her would keep her occupied in other spheres, and that it was an exceedingly good way to be rid of her.

Mediumistic episodes such as this wouldn’t get a thing from the papers under ordinary circumstances. But these investigations the psychical research people put over, excited enough public interest to be taken up by the Associated Press and run all over the country. And this alleged appearance of the grief-stricken spirit of the mother of Augustus Findlay, the man who was under arrest for the murder of Charles Haworth, was featured in all the morning editions from Maine to California and Montreal to New Orleans.

On the day following the publication of these reports, quite a pack of editors got after it as a specimen of the gullibility of the human race in general and the people who took part in such “goings-on” in particular. You can see how the free advertising piles up for them in cases like this. Even the high and mighty editors push it along!

Of course there was nothing in it for the police—not even enough to laugh at—and no attention was paid to the matter. It wasn’t even recognized as having occurred.

Mr. Forbes, the Defense Attorney, read the accounts of the séance with a grimace. While entirely willing to catch at a straw in this case, he failed to see anything in the alleged appearance of the spirit of his client’s mother that could be dignified by such an appellation.

But in the evening of the day following there happened something that every one of these persons did pay attention to, not to speak of millions of newspaper readers besides.

It seems that a well-known medium named Dillingworth was having his chance at one of the meetings of a Spiritist convention that was in progress at Lilly Dale, a village not far from Chautauqua, in the westernmost county of New York State, where gatherings of this nature occur at intervals (no admission charged). Mr. Dillingworth was calling out names and descriptions of spirit forms that appeared to him, and asking if anyone in the audience recognized them as departed relatives or friends. Some one, of course, nearly always did, and thereupon would follow affectionate messages and disjointed conversations between the living and the dead, carried on from the dead side through the mediumship of Mr. Dillingworth.

This sort of thing went on for something like half the medium’s allotted time, when suddenly he seemed to be strangely affected, and unable for a moment to proceed. He soon recovered, however, and half apologizing, told the assembly that some one had come who had a peculiar sort of influence—an oldish man, it was, who kept saying that he didn’t know anyone there but couldn’t get control in other places, and very much wanted a message sent to some one.

“Yes, a—a—damnably important message,” went on the medium abstractedly, as though trying to listen to something in the distance. “But I can’t seem to get his name.... Oh—says he doesn’t care to give it.... But we can hardly send a message unless we know who it’s from!” (Trying to hear.) “How do you spell it? C—r—i—p—p—Crippen? ... Oh, Cripps. His name is Cripps—quite an old gentleman—rather portly—medium height—gray-blue eyes—smooth face—grizzled gray hair—bushy dark eyebrows. Anyone here know such a person? Wait a minute!... Yes yes, Mr. Cripps, I know you told me no one knew you, but I’m so used to asking the question——What?... He’s using the most frightful language!... All right—all right—there’s no need of getting huffy about it! Give us the message.... He says it’s to the police somewhere—I can’t get the place. Yes, go on, Mr. Cripps.... R-o-x-b-u-r—Oh, Roxbury!... Man shot there, he says—murdered. ... Boston police? Why not the police where the man was shot?... Oh I see—a part of Boston. I didn’t know that.... Yes, I guess you’re right, Mr. Cripps!... He says my geography isn’t worth a God-forsaken damn!... Very well, the Boston police. Now what’s the message?... Let me get that straight! We’re to send word that both times—is that right?—both times their detectives examined the inside of the rain-water conductor on the south side of the front portico they didn’t reach high enough up. Is that all, Mr. Cripps?... But you haven’t mentioned what it is they’re reaching for.... What?... Oh, I see!... He says they’ll know damned well—and don’t you forget it!... All right, Mr. Cripps. That’s pretty strong language, but we’ll try not to forget it.... What’s that? Yes, we’ll tell them.... He says they’d better be careful how they handle it if the finger marks on the butt are any use to them.... But can’t you tell us, Mr. Cripps, whether the—What?... Who’s this speaking?... Oh, some one else! Just a minute.” Then, glancing toward the audience and in a lower voice: “Will somebody remember that message? I don’t know what it’s all about, but if it’s going to help the Boston police any, God knows they ought to have it!”

A roar of laughter, together with some vigorous hissing, followed this last remark, which could hardly excite surprise when one reflected on the derision and contempt which had been aroused by the peculiar behavior of the organization referred to not a great while before.

Though the medium, Mr. Dillingworth, didn’t know what it was all about, the bunch of reporters sitting at a table down in front of him, did. In forty-five minutes the Associated Press had the whole thing, and before midnight newspaper men were dashing madly out to Jamaica Plain, having obtained permission to look over the ground.

The outcome of all this was that along about 1:30 in the morning half a dozen chaps from the papers were gathered round the rain-water conductor on the front of the Cripps mansion, pushing wires and small rods up from the lower end. But nothing was found—which wasn’t so very surprising when you take into consideration that headquarters had received a rush dispatch fully an hour before the papers got it, giving the spirit message from old Mr. Cripps in full. No one in the Department had any confidence in it—unadulterated rot, all these spirit stunts. Still, when it was wired over on a “rush” from Lilly Dale and signed “H. Thompson, Sergeant State Police,” what was the good of taking chances? So the Inspector hustled a couple of plain-clothes men out to the mansion with orders to take another look up the water pipe.

It was ten minutes after the detectives arrived at the mansion that they pulled Augustus Findlay’s revolver down out of the large zinc water conductor up which it had been shoved to a height of several feet, and wedged in with a branch from a shrub to hold it there. They got a grip on it with hooks and wires so that nobody’s hands came in contact with it. Two chambers of the gun were empty.

As the Boston papers had no knowledge of this, the dispatch from Lilly Dale was used inconspicuously in most of them, followed by the brief statement that reporters had been out and searched, but that nothing was found in the locality mentioned. Papers elsewhere gave it more prominence, as it was too late to hit them with the news that the search made by the reporters had been in vain.

This new evidence—Findlay’s revolver found hidden near the place where the crime was committed, with two of the chambers empty and his fingerprints showing up nicely on the handle—was of the utmost value, though they’d most likely have got an indictment without it. But while it made the action of the Grand Jury a certainty, and would be damning evidence when it came to trial, it must be confessed that the views of the Chief Inspector and of the Assistant District Attorney who was to prosecute, were a trifle unsettled by the source of the information which had led to its discovery. It was certainly not an agreeable position to be placed in, and every effort must be made to keep the matter quiet. Luckily the presentation of the evidence before the Grand Jury would be behind closed doors, and by the time it had come up at the trial people would probably have forgotten what it was all about.

On the following day Assistant District Attorney McVeigh went before the Grand Jury and the indictment of Augustus Cripps Findlay for the murder of Charles Michael Haworth was handed down without delay.

The date which had been set for Mrs. Henrietta E. Belden’s final séance before the researching committee, fell on the third day after the indictment of Findlay. Many persons not connected in any way with this committee made strenuous efforts to gain admission, but without success. Representatives of the press were present, but the public had been excluded from the beginning.

So when, upon the assembling of the committee on that evening, it was discovered that a meek-looking person who was not a member, nor a reporter from any of the papers, was seated near the door, inquiries were at once made, and the whispered reply of the chairman was that the stranger was from the office of the Chief of Police. For what purpose he had been sent, he (the chairman) had not been informed. So far as he was aware, they hadn’t been violating any police regulations.

As on the two preceding occasions, the spirit of Cynthia took immediate possession of the medium, but she appeared to be laboring under an excitement so intense that it was with difficulty she could articulate, and more than half an hour went by before anything came through that could be understood.

This incoherency and delay did not, however, have the discouraging effect which it had on a former occasion, for everyone there was intent to hear, held so by the feeling that she had something important to tell if only she could get it across. She would start on something—it seemed to be some number she was trying to give them—and then break off with: “I will—I will—I WILL!” repeated again and again.

The committee members were doing what they could to help her along, and when one of them asked, “Is some one preventing you from telling us?” the vehement answer came back: “Yes—yes! Such forces against me!—I can hardly speak! Don’t go away—don’t go away!” And then all was confusion again, in the midst of which she tried repeatedly to tell the number. Finally, after many interruptions, she got it out—four hundred ninety-one, four hundred ninety-one, and went on repeating it, but still apparently unable to explain its present significance. But after a long struggle to overcome the obstacle, whatever it was, something seemed suddenly to release the spirit of Cynthia from what had the effect of a strangle hold, and she almost screamed out: “West side of the street! West! West! Four hundred ninety-one!”

As soon as she stopped repeating this long enough for anyone to speak, every effort was made to get from her the name of the street she was talking about. She was asked what part of the town—what buildings were on it—the first letter of its name—everything the committee members could think of that might be a clue.

The forces holding her back began to weaken from the time she managed to shriek out about the west side of the street, and the whole thing came through rather suddenly a few minutes later.

“Don’t forget—don’t forget—four hundred ninety-one Collamore Street—four hundred ninety-one Collamore Street—west side—west side—man smoking a pipe—west side of Collamore Street—he saw them take it away from him. Oh, get him—somebody go and get him—he saw it all!”

Even while this was being repeated (as it was a number of times) there was the beginning of a quiet and unobtrusive movement by some of the newspaper men toward the door. But they found the meek and inoffensive person from the office of the chief of police standing before it and pulling his coat back the merest trifle so that the edge of his badge could be seen.

“Sorry but you’ll have to wait a minute, gentlemen,” he said in an undertone, and before the reporters recovered from their astonishment he slipped through the door. The indignant journalists started to follow him, but they found a bulky patrolman just outside who declined to let them pass. The only reply to their furious questions was, “Orders.”

It was a great surprise to James Rathbun, who lived with his family on the second floor of 491 Collamore Street, Roxbury district, and was employed in a ladies’ boot and shoe factory near the railroad, to be roused from bed when he’d scarcely more than gone to it, and questioned by a couple of men who appeared to be ordinary citizens, but were accompanied by the patrolman on that beat.

No, he didn’t know anything at all about the murder over to Torrington Road, excepting what he’d seen in the papers.... Sure he’d read about it.... No, he didn’t know anyone concerned in it and hadn’t seen any of them so far as he was aware of. They must have got the wrong place, hadn’t they?... He couldn’t say as he remembered of anything special happening around there on the night of the murder.... No, he hadn’t noticed anyone taking anything away from anybody that night—unless they—unless——Why hold on now! There was a kind of a fight down in the street, now he came to think of it, and he’d gone down and tried to stop it, but it was about as good as over when he got there. But now they were speaking about taking away something from somebody, maybe that was what they meant.... No, not money or a watch, it wasn’t, but the other feller’s gun.... No, he hadn’t any idea at all who they was.... Sure, he’d go to the Inspector’s office if they wanted him to, but there wasn’t much of anything to it so far as he could see.

The Inspector, it seems, was at the Charles Street jail, and Mr. Rathbun was taken there and questioned in one of the rooms. His testimony, as brought out, was straight and simple. He had come home rather late that night—about half-past ten or so he should say—and was smoking a pipe at his window facing the street. All of a sudden he heard a lot of scuffling and cursing outside, and looking out saw two men down there near one of the street lamps wrestling around and jabbing each other. There was something shining that they both had hold of, and once when it got out into the light he could see one man was holding on to it by the nozzle and trying to get it away from the other. That one had gloves on.... No, the other chap didn’t have none. He (Rathbun) yelled out to ’em from the window, but they was at it like two dogs holding to a stick, so he went downstairs to the street door and opened it, and just at that minute the man that had the gloves on give the other fellow a paste in the face that made him loosen his grip for a second so he could snatch the gun away from him and run up the street with it.... Yes, he was sure it was the one with the gloves on that got the gun.... How did he know? Well, for one thing he went out and spoke to the other chap and he didn’t have none on.... No, there wasn’t any talk between them, for the chap didn’t say anything, but in a minute or so turned suddenly and beat it down the street toward the railroad tracks.... Know him? Did the Inspector mean the one he went out and spoke to? Sure he’d know him if he ever saw him again!

“Why, there he is now!” Rathbun exclaimed with genuine surprise, as he pointed at a man among about a dozen prisoners who were filing into the room. It was Augustus Findlay. The Inspector had given a signal a moment before.

The digging up of James Rathbun of 491 Collamore Street on a tip from the disembodied spirit of Cynthia Cripps Findlay shook things up a bit in the Police Department. Of course everyone connected with said Department was entirely aware that the spirit game was simply cheap poppycock and that the two rather surprising messages bearing on the Haworth case were merely instances of odd coincidence. Great God! There were eleven thousand mediums in the United States, and these giving out ten communications a day (a conservative estimate) made the output from the spirits forty million one hundred and fifty thousand messages a year; it would be a damned pity if one or two of them couldn’t strike it right once in a while! As for the alleged Cripps message from Lilly Dale, they had it pretty well covered up—at least for the present. The papers, to be sure, had printed it, but they had also mentioned the fact that nothing could be found in the place indicated.

But holding back this Collamore Street message with its extraordinary results was another matter. It must be done though, if possible. The precaution of ordering the detention of everybody in the hall where the séance was held, in case some “spirit” got a message through that might cause trouble, was certainly well taken, and neither the reporters nor any others who’d been present during Mrs. Belden’s trance were permitted to leave the building until Mr. Rathbun had been returned to his dwelling place and, with his wife (who’d come to the window the night of the fight on hearing the shouting) sworn to keep the matter entirely to themselves, and the fact strongly impressed upon them that it would be a highly dangerous thing for them, to let out a word of it.

A search was quickly made for others in the tenements near who might have been witnesses to the revolver fight, but none were found. All this had transpired in not much above an hour, and the Rathbuns, as requested, locked their door and went to bed.

Some twenty minutes thereafter No. 491 Collamore Street was seething with baffled newspaper men. They pounded on the door and rang the bell of the tenement on the second floor, until Mr. Rathbun, apparently roused from deep slumber, opened it to find out what all the racket was about.

The reporters surged about him, calling out questions, demanding statements, jotting down descriptions of him, and making such a riotous clamor, notwithstanding his assurances that he didn’t know anything about it, that he finally (to all appearances) lost his temper, and shoving those nearest to him back on to the landing, slammed the door in their faces and turned the key in the lock.

By this time there was quite a gathering in the street below, and when the newspaper boys began to surge down the stairs with the idea of trying to get in through a rear entrance, there was considerable excitement; for the crowd hadn’t the least idea what it was all about and looked for the capture of a desperate burglar or something equally diverting. In the midst of all this, word was suddenly passed from somewhere that some one had found a man up the street a ways, who’d seen the whole thing, and in ten seconds No. 491 was left as quiet as a church.

The rumor of the man who knew it all turned out to be based on fact. A solid, reliable-looking chap he was, and the reporters had him penned. He seemed reluctant to say anything at first, but finally admitted that he was walking through Collamore Street that night and came right on it. Must have been half-past ten or eleven, he thought. Two men fighting for a revolver—that’s all it was. He backed into a doorway on the other side, about opposite 491, and took it all in. The reporters got everything down to the minutest details, and you can imagine what the papers looked like next morning. Not Boston alone, but everywhere. Headlines you could read a block away. Here was the real thing, and the newspaper chaps know one of those when they see it.

The authorities laid the leakage to the Rathbuns, but of course couldn’t hold them for anything. When they came to figure up the effect of the revolver episode on the case, it didn’t alter matters to any extent. While it had the look of some kind of framing of Findlay, it was at the same time shown by this very episode that he had his revolver in his hands after the shooting and was chasing himself home with it at the time it was taken from him. The only real loss sustained by the prosecution was the necessary abandonment of the contention that Findlay’s revolver had been concealed by himself after the shooting, for, as it now appeared, somebody else had shoved it up in the water conductor. But without this, the evidence against the man was amply sufficient. His violent threats—his frenzy at being shoved back out of the house by Haworth with the door slammed in his face—his position at the front window with his gun in his hand at the instant of the shooting—his mad flight from the grounds of the Cripps mansion, carrying (as it now appeared) his weapon with him—his incriminating behavior at the time of his arrest next morning in attempting to escape and then, when caught, endeavoring to get his wife to support him in his statement that he hadn’t left the house the evening before—all this, taken together with other evidence which had since been collected, meant nothing but swift conviction.

But while the Chief Inspector and the District Attorney entertained no doubts as to the case against Findlay so far as the actual firing of the shots that killed his victim was concerned, this extraordinary seizure of the revolver in the public street and its concealment near the place where the murder had been committed, were a plain indication that others were involved in the crime, and now that it was accomplished, were using every effort to frame it on him alone. It was a strong hand that was working in the dark against Findlay, and Mrs. Belden, the spirit medium, had shown that she knew a great deal about it. She’d been held, after the release of the others, at the room where the séance took place, notwithstanding the indignant protests of the committee; and orders were later given to bring her to headquarters. They’d soon make her tell where she got her information—a key, most likely, to the whole thing.

They’d have liked very well to get Mr. Dillingworth, too—the Lilly Dale medium whose control, alleged to be old Mr. Cripps, told where the gun was concealed. But that would be difficult. And then again a man wasn’t so easy to handle in a case like this. They could frighten a woman. She’d lose her head and tell them everything.

Mrs. Belden was brought in by a couple of detectives. It was somewhere about three in the morning. Notwithstanding what she’d been through and her virtual arrest coming on top of it—for that’s what it was made to appear—she showed no signs of disturbance; indeed one would have thought she hardly noticed what was going on. She had, or assumed, a detached air, giving the impression that her mind was occupied with other and more important things than those in the immediate vicinity. A pleasant but vacant smile had been arranged on her countenance before her thoughts wandered abroad, as a friendly signal to those who might notice it fluttering there.

She was brought before the Inspector. Several plain-clothes men stood about, watching her like hungry wolves. Uniformed police were stationed at each door and a very large-sized one sat near the Inspector. She was to be impressed with the importance of what was about to occur.

A detective brought her a chair.

All went smoothly enough as to preliminary questions—name, address, occupation, etc.—although she replied absently, and several times had to be recalled to herself and the question repeated before they could get a response. After this was over and an effective pause had followed, a police stenographer (plain-clothes) rose, and read in a loud and impressive voice a report of what Mrs. Belden had said and done during the séance of the evening just passed, while under the alleged control of some one deceased.

The moment this man announced what the report was about, that he intended to read, Mrs. Belden’s manner underwent a drastic change. Her detachment disappeared, and evidences of the most eager interest took its place. She listened with rapt attention to every word that had come through from Cynthia, and when the reading was finished breathed a sigh of the deepest satisfaction.

“Mrs. Belden, you have heard the report of what was given out and said and uttered by you at the meeting held in the Board Room at Charnley’s this evening?”

“What sir?” she asked with a startled turn, aroused from her thoughts of the séance.

“I say” (in a louder voice) “you have heard what has just been read—the report of what you gave out at a Spiritualistic meeting this past evening?”

“Oh yes——yes indeed! How nice of you to put it all down!”

“And do you acknowledge it to be a true and correct statement of your words on that occasion?”

“Mercy! I’m sure I don’t know!”

“You don’t know?”

“Why no,” (shaking her head). “How could I when I was in trance?”

“In what?”

“Trance.”

“What in God’s name is that?”

“I—I really couldn’t tell. Why don’t you ask some of the committee? That’s what they’re trying to find out. I’m sure they’d be glad to——”

“One moment! Just one moment, madam!” spoke up a large man in uniform who was standing near the inspector. He wore a face and jowl something like Von Hindenburg and his voice was as the bellowing of a bull. “We’re here to ask you, Mrs. Belden! You are the person who uttered those words and we propose to hold you responsible!”

“What the hell’s the committee got to do with it, anyway?” growled one of the detectives, whose natural gifts for vicious snarling had made him of value in a business like this. “It was you who said it—now you answer for it—see?”

Mrs. Belden blinked from one to another of them in cheerful bewilderment. Her pleasant and comfortable smile still occupied her face, though for a moment a trifle insecurely.

“Now then,” went on the Inspector, “we’d like very much to hear from you, Mrs. Belden!”

When he spoke she turned to him as though to a pleasing conversation with some new-found friend.

“Be so good as to answer the question.”

“The question?”

“Yes, the question!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t remember what it was!”

“Don’t remember! Don’t remember! Well, I’ll be damned!” (From the snarling one.)

“Perfectly plain and simple, madam,” continued the Inspector. “Is this report which has just been read to you a true and correct statement of the words spoken by you at the séance or meeting this evening just passed?”

“Oh dear me—but you see, I—I don’t know.”

“You know what you said, don’t you?”

“No sir.”

“What’s the reason you don’t?” (Von Hindenburg speaking.) “Give us the reason! Don’t try to put over any of that trance cackle on us! Don’t you know what you say to people?”

“Oh, no!” (shaking her head). “Not when I’m in—in——not when it’s like that.”

“Mrs. Belden, aren’t you perfectly well aware that you told those present in the room to go to a certain street and number and get a man who was living there, for a witness?”

“Yes sir.”

“A——h!” (A snarling roar.) “At last you’re beginning to remember, are you?”

“No sir, I don’t remember.”

“You don’t!”

“No sir.”

“Then how do you know it?”

“I heard that man over there read it.”

“And did you remember then—when you heard him read it—that you’d said it?”

“Why, I’m sorry, but I didn’t really remember having done so. I hope you—I hope you won’t mind.”

“Whether you remember or not, Mrs. Belden, the fact that you did actually tell them this, remains!”

“Oh yes indeed, that remains of course!” She wanted to oblige these shouting and excited men in any way she could.

“Now then! You fully believe this to be the case—that you told them to go to the address on Collamore Street, and find a man who was smoking a pipe there, and bring him in for a witness?”

“Oh yes, I do believe it, really!”

“Ah—you do! Well that’s something!”

“Why, I don’t see why that man” (looking at him) “should want to tell a lie about it, do you? I’m sure he looks honest!”

“Never mind how he looks. You acknowledge in our presence that you said those words, or words to that effect—you admit that you did give that street and number. Now what we want to know is, where you got that information?”

“Yes!” (From the snarling hyena man.) “Who told you? Where did you find it out? I say, where did you find it out?”

“Find what out?”

“That a man living at four hundred ninety-one Collamore Street saw something that made him a valuable witness. Where did you find that out?”

“Oh, but you don’t understand at all—I didn’t find it out!”

“You knew it, didn’t you?”

“Oh no, I really had no idea of it at all!”

“Here! Here!” from the Hindenburg man.

“My God woman” (from the hyena man) “you said it—you acknowledged it—we’ve got half a dozen witnesses who’ll swear to that!”

“Oh yes! Well, doesn’t that satisfy you?”

“It does not! You’re going to tell us where you got that tip! It came from somewhere—that somewhere is what we’ll get out of you—and don’t you make any mistake about that!”

Mrs. Belden, unable to comprehend, smiled vaguely at them as if hoping to soothe and quiet them thereby.

“Answer me this: How could you tell them all that about Collamore Street if you didn’t know it yourself?”

“I don’t know, but if you’ll ask one of the committee men——”

“Be quiet!” “That’s enough of that!” “Committee be damned!” And general protests from the men in the room.

Mrs. Belden subsided pleasantly. Her smile flickered a little but refused to go out.

“I’m not here to ask committee men,” the Inspector went on. “I’m here to ask YOU!”

“That’s very nice of you, I’m sure!” (A little doubtfully.)

“And what’s more, you’re going to tell me! You’re going to tell me where you got your information about that witness in Collamore Street before you leave this place!”

“Oh, I hope I can—if you feel so about it!”

“Go on with it then! How came you to know anything about that witness at four hundred ninety-one Collamore Street? How was that? Explain yourself!”

“Why I thought I told you that I didn’t know anything about him! What funny questions you ask me!”

“But you acknowledge that you told them about him—you acknowledge that! Don’t you acknowledge that?”

“Oh yes indeed—I acknowledge that!”

“Well if you told them about him you must know about him! You can’t tell a thing unless you know it, can you?”

“Well, you see, when I’m in trance——”

(A burst of yells and imprecations from the men in the room.) “Don’t give us any more of that!” the Inspector went on as soon as it was quiet. “Just the idea out of your head that you can put that kind of birdseed over on us! From now on no more trances and rappings and slates and the whole bag of tricks! We know these games—every one of ’em, an’ they don’t go here! They don’t go here, Mrs. Belden! Now you tell me straight, where did you get that information about the witness on Collamore Street?”

“I didn’t get it at all.”

“You mean you told them all that—told them just where to find a man—the very street—the very number—the very apartment—the very pipe he smoked—and didn’t know any of those things yourself?”

“Oh yes—it’s so strange, isn’t it! When I’m in a——”

“None o’ that now!” (From the Inspector, speaking above a general murmur of protest from the police and detectives.)

Mrs. Belden smilingly held her peace.

The Inspector, McCurran, paused a moment in order to increase the impressiveness of his next question.

“Mrs. Belden,” he began, in a lower voice and with overpowering solemnity, “do you realize the position in which you are placing yourself by your refusal to answer this question?”

“Why, I’m afraid you don’t like it at all!”

“Not like it, madam! I can assure you that it’s a great deal worse for you than NOT LIKING IT! We are compelled to conclude that for some reason known only to yourself you are SHIELDING the person or persons WHO ARE GUILTY OF THIS FIENDISH CRIME!”

“Dear me! Why, who do you think it is?”

“You apparently have no idea what such a thing may mean to you!”

“No sir.” (She was so interested that she was leaving her smile alone to get along the best it could without her.) “I’m almost sure I haven’t!”

“A person who shields one guilty of murder is an ACCESSORY AFTER THE FACT!”

“Mercy! Am I—am I one of those?”

“It certainly begins to look like it, madam!”

“Why how perfectly dreadful!”

“Now before you’re arrested and tried on that charge we’ll give you one more chance to clear yourself! You understand—one more chance and that’s the last!”

“Well that’s—I’m sure you’re very kind! Is it something you want me to do?”

“That’s what it is, madam, and your only chance is to DO IT NOW! Tell us where you got your information about the witness on Collamore Street!”

“But how can I when I didn’t get it anywhere? It was whoever was in control that had it. That man there who read it said Cynthia was the name.”

“Well then, where did Cynthia get it?”

“Oh, well,” (the smile spreading) “I’d like to know that myself!”

And so it went on hour after hour, Mrs. Belden cheerful and unmoved, her questioners more and more wearied; bored beyond words by her dense and unshakable simplicity and maddened by her invulnerable smile; until finally they had to give it up and tell her to go home. Smiling pleasantly, she thanked them and said she’d enjoyed it very much.

Though it seemed that some mysterious person or persons—dead or alive—were framing Augustus Findlay, the Grand Jury had indicted him for murder, and the evidence against him was seemingly overwhelming.

As for Findlay himself, his state of mind was pitiable. He had no doubt whatever that he had fired the shots that killed Charles Haworth, and Mr. Forbes (of Houston, Forbes & McAllister), the Defense Attorney, had all he could do to keep the frightened wretch from confessing in the hope of having mercy shown him. A prospect of life imprisonment gave him no uneasiness; what appalled him was the thought of death. And it certainly looked black for him as the day set for his trial drew near.

Then late one night the Associated Press took a hand—or rather let us say extended a hand—from the wind-swept reaches of Chicago. Mr. Harcourt Sidney was a well-established materializing medium doing business in that city. Through his efforts and ministrations some remarkable spirit phenomena had taken place, and he had a choice and well-to-do clientele—the well-to-do feature being by far the more important one to him. This man Sidney was not only clever in the line of materialization, but he was a trumpet medium as well, and many of his other-world communicants appeared to find this an assistance in getting through.

In the practice of his profession, as Mr. Sidney conducted it, there would be specially arranged private meetings at the houses of those belonging to the circle; and Mr. Sidney, securely tied into a plain kitchen chair with stout ropes, and his thumbs and fingers wound with easily breakable thread, would bring—or let us say persuade to come—from the spirit world, many friends or relatives of those present, so that they seemed to be actually there in the darkened room, able to converse freely in their own voices, and often with other characteristics of their earthly existence easily distinguishable.

These sittings or séances were entirely private, and I don’t have to tell you that no admission fee was charged. But if any of those who attended felt that their enjoyment had been of quite unusual dimensions either in the way of witnessing absorbingly interesting phenomena or in having departed friends or relatives actually speak to them, sometimes even allowing shadowy glimpses of themselves like faint half-luminous clouds to be seen shimmering about in the darkness, they were at liberty to send to Mr. Sidney any little token of esteem that they felt like offering.

Quiet and select little spiritistic gatherings like this were started all over the country, when the extraordinary revival of interest in such things came along carrying some very big names at the top of it. And I want to tell you that there’s millions of dollars coming to the people owning these names if a commission on the business they brought in for the mediums could be collected.

At these private sittings, with Mr. Sidney in the chair, so to speak, not only the friends and relatives of those present, but also quite a number of distant acquaintances, or even just fellow townspeople, would occasionally drop in; a few came at nearly every meeting for a bit of a chat. It was almost as if they enjoyed talking things over with their mundane fellow citizens—and for all I know they did.

One of these few who made an occasional spirit call, was a man well known not only to everyone in that circle, but to nearly everybody in the United States as well; he had been a renowned—you might almost say world-famous—detective, a great part of whose life had been spent in Chicago. A most entertaining talker he was, and seemed to enjoy the opportunity of conversing with those he had left on earth when he passed over, as the saying is.

At one of these private séances on an evening along about the time I’ve just been speaking of, they’d been having visits from various dead ones (dead in an earthly sense I mean) for upwards of an hour, when the medium announced the approach of this well-known man, and in a moment the trumpet was seized in a strong grasp and a visit with him of more than usual interest followed. Some one in the circle alluded to the Haworth case in Boston, which had become, by this time, owing to the unusual occurrences connected with it, quite the talk wherever you went.

Then a man on the other side of the circle asked Mr. P. (which is what we’ll call this spirit) if he’d be willing to say anything about that singular affair. “Certainly singular,” he said, talking through the trumpet, which made his voice loud and clear; “an’ I notice that several people on this side have got excited about it.”

“But can’t you give us anything about the case yourself?” was the next question. And I’ll tell you beforehand that his answer was in the morning edition of every newspaper in the country, as well as Canada. It was about like this as I got it from the papers.

“Well now,” Mr. P. objected at first, “I can’t say I like talking about that. What would I do, butting in?”

But many in the circle now began begging him to give them just a hint of what his opinion was—what he said to be treated as strictly confidential.

“Well,” he finally said, “if you’ll just consider it a private matter between ourselves an’ leave my name out of it, I’ll say this: While I have every respect for those Boston boys, they’ve got it doped out wrong. I didn’t see the thing done, but as soon as I heard about it I went over there an’ took a look around. The trouble is they’ve got it set in their minds the shots were fired from outside. Everything was fixed to look that way, but, heavenly Jerusalem! that’s what’s the matter with it—it was fixed! They’d ought to take a look at those front window blinds no matter if the vines are growing over ’em. You can do a great deal with vines if you give your mind to it. Also they’ll find a bullet struck one o’ the elms out in front. If they want it they can get it about fifteen feet up. The feller was firing high, whoever he was.”

That was all Mr. P. would say on the subject, except that you couldn’t expect any sort of good work in these days with a pack of yelping newspaper hounds worrying the life out of you and giving away anything they could get hold of so the man you were after could act accordingly. After a few anecdotes about how they kept things quiet in his day, on the principle that when your man was working in the dark against you you ought to be let alone to do the same by him, he said good night and was gone. Instantly the meeting broke up, and everybody was buzzing about. Two or three jumped into a car and made for the Loop District to talk it over with a couple of managing editors they knew, and the conclusion quickly reached was to transmit the message to the Boston police and also let the Associated Press have it—this without making use of Mr. P.’s name. The result was that it went out to the press as a Mediumistic Message from a Celebrated Detective.

It’s hardly necessary to state that the reporters at headquarters wanted to know this and that, and what you might call a press rush was made for Torrington Road. But the police were already making an investigation, and the newspaper men were kept out of the grounds until it was finished.

The outside blinds to the front window of the room on the left—which were flat against the wall on each side—had the appearance of having been undisturbed for years. Tangled Virginia creeper grew so densely over them that they could hardly be found. Yet when it came to the work of clearing these vines away it was discovered that hardly any effort was required. The blinds had evidently been opened as wide as possible and the vines hung over them.

When brought to view, these shutters told their gruesome tale. Two smashing bullet holes far up near the top where no one standing on the ground outside could have reached,—one splintering a slat of the left-hand shutter, the other cutting a fairly clean hole through the frame of the one on the right, and both giving unmistakable evidence of having come through from the inside (of course when the shutters were closed) submitted their silent evidence.

The murderer, whoever he was, had evidently failed to think of the blinds until it was too late, and they were shattered by the bullets that had killed Charles Haworth. Then, with no time to otherwise dispose of them, the mass of vines had been torn away from the wall on each side until the shutters could be opened back against it, and the vines then pulled over them. All this was a trick to make it appear that the shots were fired from outside the front window—or at any rate to avoid anything that conflicted with that idea. Again that mysterious framing for the conviction of Findlay.

In either event the shattered window blinds and one of the bullets found embedded in the trunk of an elm tree a few feet away, plainly indicated that Findlay could not have fired the shots, even though he may have thought he did.

Added to this was the significant fact that the detectives had been unable to find any trace of a bullet on the walls at the inner end of the room, where they should have been if fired from outside the front window. The District Attorney was obliged to enter a nolle prosse, and that was the end of it.

Augustus Findlay was a free man.

His Attorney, Mr. Archibald Forbes, was waiting for him in the corridor, and with a muttered “Come along, quick!” hurried him out to a taxi. The windows of this vehicle were covered with newspapers pasted to the inside, and a man with a heavy and obtrusive jaw was seated within.

When the door was opened and Augustus saw this man, he hesitated, but Mr. Forbes shoved him aboard and got in after him. The instant the door closed, the taxi dashed down the street. The three men were shaken and tumbled about as they rattled on at what, to Findlay, appeared to be breakneck speed. The papers pasted to the windows prevented his seeing where they were going.

It was something like half an hour before the machine stopped.

“Be careful!” warned Mr. Forbes in a hoarse whisper. “We get out here and you’ve got to keep between us! If they find out we’ve got you away, they’ll nab you!”

“What is it—what are you——”

“Sh!” warned the lawyer, impressively.

The two men ran across the walk, Augustus between them, and as they did so the door of the house before which the taxi had stopped was opened from the inside, and they dashed madly up the steps and plunged in, the door being instantly closed after them.

It was a vacant house and without furniture of any kind. Findlay was taken to a dark room in the basement where coal had been kept. It contained bins and piles of rubbish which could be sat upon in an extremity.

“You going to do something to me?” Findlay managed finally to stammer out.

“Shut your mouth!” from the man with the jaw.

“Now listen to me,” began Mr. Forbes in a low voice. “I got you off by a fluke, but they’ll be on to it in an hour or two. Mr. Sugden here’s a Department detective and he’ll get you by the police to-night and put you on a train. Also he’s got a wad of money for you—subscribed by friends. Now I’m done with you! I said I’d get you off and by God! I’ve done it! But if they ever get you again you’re finished—remember that!” Having said which Mr. Forbes went up stairs and left the house.

Augustus stood silent. After a time he roused himself and glanced about. His eyes fell on Mr. Sugden and a pathetic look came into them.

“Say,” (his voice trembling) “you look like a decent sport—that might help a feller out.”

“What the hell do ye want? Ain’t I get’n’ ye by the cops?”

“Yes—yes—but I——You see, it’s this way. I’m feeling pretty sick—an’ if you could manage to get me a drink somewheres——”

“Listen here, Topsy!” Sugden spoke unfeelingly. “You’re going to Canada—didn’t you know that? Canada, you fish bait, where you can swim in it!”

Shortly after this the detective left, reappearing again about nine o’clock with a few things that Findlay had left at the Charles Street jail, and in addition a heavy winter overcoat which he made the frightened wretch put on. Somewhere about a quarter to eleven o’clock they cautiously left the house, got into a taxi that was waiting, and were driven to the Trinity Place Station of the Boston and Albany. Sugden took Augustus down to the platform for the west-bound trains, and arriving there, shoved him to one side where they were in the shadow.

“Listen here,” he growled in a low voice with warning in it. “You’re goin’ to take the night train for St. Louis, due here in about one minute. But ye don’t stay on that train—get me? There’ll be a bull waitin’ fur ye at the Union Station out there if ye do. You’re goin’ to side-step at Albany—see? It’ll be five in the morning. Keep to the shadows an’ slouch on to the Montreal train at seven. Ye change at Rouses Point, an’ that helps throw ’em off. When ye hit Montreal, lay low! Get a bunk at some joint. Monkey with that mug o’ yours. Raise a crop o’ hay on it; an’ whatever ye do, don’t be seen with a paper from the States in yer han’s or they’ll cop you. After about two weeks climb on a steamer for England. You’ll find a fake passport in with the railroad ticket in that pocket” (touching Findlay’s overcoat on the right breast). “There’s another name on it. You ain’t Findlay any more. There’s a wad o’ money sewed in the linin’. Lose yerself over there. An’ if yer life is worth anything to ye don’t cross back to this side again. There’ll be a big reward out for ye an’ there’s sharp guys here that makes a hell of a livin’ keepin’ tabs on boobs like you. I’m one of ’em. An’ if ever ye do take a fancy to come back I hope I’ll be the guy that puts the nippers on ye. There’s yer train!” (With an ugly jerk of his head toward it). “Now on with ye, an’ I’ll keep back any cops that’s followin’.”

Augustus hurried into the coach, and Sugden stood close to the steps until the train moved on—which was in a few seconds, as the stop at Trinity Place is brief in the extreme.

Of course you’ll realize that all this elaborate framing was for the purpose of getting Findlay permanently out of the Western Hemisphere. After the nolle prosse there was nothing in the world they could hold him for. Who it was that had got Mr. Forbes and Mr. Sugden to carry out this scheme did not at the time, appear.

Following at once on the collapse of the case against Augustus and his discharge from custody, came the arrest of James Dreek, the butler, and the holding of him for the murder.

In his avid eagerness for every detail that can be found (or manufactured) in murder cases, the newspaper addict skips with perfect ease from one suspect to another, often seemingly glad of the change. In this instance, however, the very unusual interest had been aroused, not so much by the hunt for the person or persons guilty of the crime (though that feature was rapidly becoming absorbing) as by the extraordinary manner in which the evidence in the case was being brought to light. Everybody knew of that celebrated detective in Chicago not long deceased, and his brief and characteristic comments on the Haworth case through the mediumistic services of Mr. Harcourt Sidney, and his calling attention to the shattered window blind and the bullet in the tree, made not only a sensation, but a strange and alluring one.

From the first intimation that somebody was framing Augustus Findlay—which flashed upon them when Mr. Rathbun told of the fight for the revolver under his window in Collamore Street—the detectives had fastened their eyes on Dreek. There were already a few things that didn’t look well for the young butler. They’d found a loaded revolver under a lot of soiled linen on the floor of a cupboard in the butler’s pantry. One or two letters they got out of his trunk had an ugly look. Worst of all was the finding of his footprints on each side of the front windows of the room on the left, these imprints overlapping those of Augustus Findlay—thus showing that he’d been there after Findlay had run away. These Dreek footprints had not meant so much before, as Findlay was known to have been at the window when the shots were fired, and therefore Dreek arrived afterward. But now that it was proved that the firing was from within the house, it involved Dreek in several ways, two of them being serious. Not only was he the only one in the house with Haworth, according to all the evidence (excepting his own), and therefore apparently the only one who could have fired from the inside, but the footmarks showed unmistakably that he was the one who went round after the murder and opened the shutters back against the wall, replacing the vines over them in such a way that they would give the appearance of not having been disturbed at all. He was now, on account of this, definitely in the position of trying to throw the guilt on an innocent man. This was corroborated by a number of small items—the marks of a house stepladder outside under each shutter, the finding of a house stepladder in the back entry which fitted into these marks, and the fingerprint people reporting that Dreek had been the last one who had handled it. He had insisted most emphatically in his earlier testimony that he had gone out of the rear door several minutes before the shooting and wasn’t in the house when it occurred. But there was nothing to show that this was the case. On the contrary there was every reason to suppose that he had not left the house with the stepladder until after the shots were fired.

Of course he was in for a fearful ordeal. I’m not going to describe it to you, but only give you my word that they third-degreed Jamie Dreek good and plenty.

Precisely in the midst of these painful proceedings the Associated Press again took a hand in the game—or to put it more accurately, played a hand that had been dealt to it.

It was the day following the second night of Dreek’s torment. The police had kept him awake for twenty-nine hours with their shouted questions and punching-up process and rough handling. The job was nearly done. He was “ripe” (put that in quotes) to sign anything or confess anything. And then came the noon editions with big front page headlines on top of A. P. dispatches from San Francisco.

It seems a well-known medium out there by the name of Waverley Bentick was doing his turn—or whatever’s the right name for it—at one of the specially high-class Spiritistic assemblies, held in a large hall commonly alluded to as their “church,” and situated some considerable way out Golden Gate Avenue. Mr. Bentick was passing out messages to people in the auditorium, when, as he was in the midst of a communication for a woman sitting in the second row, he suddenly stopped and called out, “Wait a moment, please, and let this lady finish!—Just a moment, I say!—You mustn’t break in like that!”

There was a pause. Then the medium resumed in an altered tone, speaking to the assemblage: “I’m sorry, but a man has pushed in, in spite of everything my control can do!—Tall—heavily built—grizzled gray hair—pointed beard—looks as if he might be a doctor.... No—says he isn’t one. Only keep us a moment—been trying to get through in Boston—too many in the way. It’s about some murder case over there—the Howard case, is that it?... No—that isn’t it! He doesn’t speak very distinctly.... What?... All right, go on.... H-a-w-o-r-t-h. Oh, the Haworth case! Yes, we’ve heard of that! I should think so!”

Instantly there was intense interest shown—people craning forward to listen, and calls of, “Go on—go on!” For the extraordinary developments in the case had by this time made it known everywhere,—especially among those of the Spirit Sect—if that is a proper way to refer to them.

“He says he wants to speak of something now—while they’re third-degreeing a man—as it may apply to him. Something about money—yes—some money—large amount—paid to victim a few hours before he was shot. Thirty-five thousand dollars.... Is that right?... Yes—thirty-five thousand. Police haven’t been able to trace it.... If they want thirty-four thousand five hundred of it—old barn—old barn.... Yes, we understand—old barn. What about it?... He says follow butler’s footprints.... northwest corner in foundation wall under sill timber.... Take out loose stone.... That’s all.... Good-by.”

In this case the Boston police got a rush wire from San Francisco that gave them nearly a forty-five minutes’ start. Inside of twenty after it came in, a Department automobile was speeding through Centre Street, Jamaica Plain, and four minutes later was turning in at the old Cripps gate from Torrington Road.

Perhaps you’ll have noticed that the attitude of the authorities toward messages from the other world had undergone something of a change. Even if the Inspector and others still entertained the notion that these communications were founded on trickery of some kind, they were obliged to admit that it was trickery with a hell of a kick to it, and that made all the difference in the world.

It wasn’t exactly child’s play—nor even adult’s recreation—to trace out James Dreek’s footmarks between the flag paving at the rear of the house and the old barn farther back. But the old weed-grown drive up which he’d gone was fairly soft, and they finally succeeded, arriving at the northwest corner of the barn and finding the loose stone in the foundation wall just under the sill timber. The thirty-four thousand five hundred was in the cavity behind it.

This happened in the small hours. Close to four o’clock in the morning it was—on account of the three-hour difference in time. The papers got it for their afternoon editions. But the police treated it as an old story. “Oh yes, we got the money some time ago!” “Yes, pretty good guess from San Francisco, but a bit late!” “Of course it’s a bad thing for Dreek!” That was about the gist of answers to the frantic inquiries from the reporters at headquarters.

That same morning about eleven o’clock James Dreek was nearing the point of breakdown that the police were working him for. The gang that took him on at noon (they worked in shifts) had it in for him. Even then the pitiable wretch was trying to answer as best he could, but he found it difficult to remember anything at all or even to understand what his persecutors were talking about. Furthermore, his voice was nearly gone, and his tongue so swollen and dry that he couldn’t speak with any sort of distinctness.

“Ye say ye ran out o’ the house before the murder was committed—that’s what ye say, is it? Answer! What’s the matter with ye! Answer the question! Answer the question!”

Dreek tried to say “Yes,” but could hardly more than move his lips. It must have been the eight hundred and sixty-eighth time they’d asked him that.

“Now go on an’ tell us why ye run out? Why? Why? What was it started ye out? Was ye sick? Whad did ye run out for?... Punch ’im up Lucas!... Whad did ye run out for? Whad did ye run out for?”

“I—I thought——” His dry mouth and swollen tongue made it almost impossible to form words.

“Go on—go on—go on! Whad did ye think?”

“Something terrible—going—happen!”

“Goin’ to happen! How in hell’s name could you know something was goin’ to happen unless you was goin’ to MAKE it happen! It did happen, by God, an’ it was you made it happen—an’ then ye ran out o’ the house so’s you could FRAME SOMEBODY ELSE FOR IT!”

“No! No!” (With much difficulty and shaking his head.)

“What was it, then? What was it? What made ye run out?”

“Nos—noises!” His tongue seemed to get in his way.

“What kind o’ noises?... Punch ’im up Lucas!... What noises?”

“Noises—cellar—lights out—scared—ran for police.”

“Oh—police! Ye ran fur the police!”

Dreek nodded, and his bloodshot eyes rolled heavily from one to another of his burly questioners.

“Did ye have to take a ladder with ye to find ’em?”

“Laddle—laddle—ladder?”

“Don’t try any funny business with us—we know what ye did! Now what about that ladder, eh? WHAT ABOUT IT?”

“Oh—ladder—yes! Misser Ha’orth ass me open blin’s—front winnow. So I—I—I was——” He broke off as his head fell forward in sleep.

“Punch him up Lucas! Keep ’im on the job, can’t ye!... Listen here, Dreek—that ladder was to open the blinds, ye say. Now what did ye want ’em open for—tell me that! TELL ME THAT!”

“Yes——” (with a great effort to keep awake). “Always Misser Ha’orth like blin’s open—always!”

“Then what the hell was they SHUT for? What was they SHUT for?... Punch ’im up Lucas—put a dig in ’im!... Now answer the question! WHAT WAS THEY SHUT FOR?”

Dreek struggled to remember, but finally shook his head.

“Now I will ask ye something. What about that money? Ye wouldn’t answer lass night, but now we got it on ye! You saw that money! What?”

“I—I——”

“You saw it, I say! You saw that big pile o’ bills they had out on the table? Why don’t ye answer? I’ll tell you why—YE’RE AFRAID TO TELL!”

“No” (shaking his head) “not afraid! I saw—yes.”

“What was ye do’n’ sneakin’ round spyin’ on ’em like that when they had money in sight? Why didn’t ye stay in the kitchen where ye belong?”

“I—I don’ know——Oh—now—yes! They rang—they ass me—sign paper—witness!”

“A fine witness you was, all right, all right!”

Every detective in the room roared with laughter. The man who’d been questioning turned suddenly on Dreek. “When did ye crib that money?” he demanded.

“When did I——”

“You got it! Don’t ye s’pose we know you got it? Now when? When? D’ye hear? WHEN DID YE CRIB THAT MONEY?”

The muscles of Dreek’s throat went through the spasmodic motions of swallowing.

“I—promised not to——”

“Not to what? Whad did ye promise—eh?”

“Not to—say—anything——”

“Who did ye promise that to?”

“Miss’r Ha’orth.”

“How did that happen?”

“He handed—money—me.”

“Oh, handed it to ye, did he? Made a little present o’ thirty-five thousand to ye, I s’pose!”

Dreek tried to speak but couldn’t manage it.

“Whad did ye do with it?”

Again Dreek couldn’t get the words out—it would take so many to explain it.

“I’ll tell ye what ye did with it—ye put it in the barn behind a loose stone! D’ye deny that?”

“No.”

“Oh, ye don’t deny it! Ye did it! Ye stole that money from Charles Haworth an’ then, by God! ye hid it in the wall o’ that barn! D’ye confess you hid it there?”

“He ass me pu’ there—safe place!”

“So! Now ye got it out! Now, by God, we got yer story an’ a pretty one it is! What ye’ve told us is jus’ the same as a confession ye shot the man yerself! Yes, by God! ye jus’ as good as said it! Now, the way it stan’s, yer one chance is to spit out the truth in plain words! The truth is ye shot Haworth yerself—ye hid the money yerself—an’ ye went out an’ opened the shutters yerself so people ’u’d think a man outside done the shootin’! Put that in plain words an’ sign it an’ ye got some chance! Ye got a chance o’ mercy from the court if ye confess ye did that! W’at about it—eh?”

The “No” Dreek tried to say couldn’t be forced through his parched mouth, so he shook his head.

“The story ye’ve told’ll put ye in the chair—give ye the grand burn—see?—shock the guts out o’ ye! YE HEAR w’at I say?”

Dreek made no attempt to answer.

“They’ll find ye guilty in ten minutes! That story ye told is the end o’ ye! THAT’S YOUR FINISH, BY GOD!”

Another persecutor started in on him—an enormous man with a rumbling, bellowing voice: “Didn’t you open those shutters, Dreek? Didn’t you open ’em back against the wall and put the vines over ’em? Didn’t you take that ladder out there and do that thing? Aren’t you the one who did it? Answer that! AREN’T YOU THE ONE?”

“Yes——” Dreek got out in a whisper and nodded his head a little.

“That convicts you! That convicts you!”

“You’re fur the chair!” another detective joined in. “You’re fur the chair! You’re done fur now, by God!”

“That’s the end o’ you!” “You’re in for the dead house!”

They’d all come up with a rush and were standing close about him. Painfully he turned his eyes from one to another as they spoke, all joining in with violent exclamations as to his finish.

“There’s only one thing that’ll save you now!” roared the man with the bellowing voice. “Only one thing to do now if you want mercy: sign a confession an’ they’re bound to treat you fair! YOUR ONLY CHANCE ON EARTH!” He snapped his fingers and a stenographer (plain-clothes man) entered from the inner office and handed him a typewritten sheet. “Here it is,” he went on. “He’s written it out—just what you told us—just what you told us.”

“Wha—wha—what I——” (A weak whisper.)

“Just that. For Christ’s sake can’t you see we’re trying to get you off the death sentence? It may be prison, but what’s that? A few years an’ then some damn Governor that wants women’s votes pardons you out! Here it is—put your name there. See that line?”

Dreek was holding a pen clutched awkwardly in his hand, having no idea where it came from. He managed to shake his head a little.

“Not—not if it says I killed—— ... no—no ... not that—not——”

“Here Lucas——” And all the detectives in the room turned as if to leave. “Put the next watch on him. One more night of it’ll change his mind!”

“No!—Oh no!” Dreek made hoarse and breathless noises, “O my God!—not another—not another! O my God!”

The big detective swung round to him suddenly.

“Sign here—right under here—see?” pushing the paper under his eyes, while another man seized the pen and dipped it in nearby ink. “Sign here—on that line! IT’S THE ONLY THING THAT’LL SAVE YOU!”

Other detectives gathered close round, shouting to him to go on and sign, and yelling threats in his ears of what would happen if he didn’t.

James Dreek, gasping and mumbling incoherently and with shaking hand, made marks with the pen which were as near his written name as he could manage.

The late editions that afternoon had a wealth of display headlines (the Department had seen to it that the Associated Press got the news at the earliest possible moment) which ran—in slightly varying forms to—this effect:

FULL CONFESSION IN THE HAWORTH CASE

JAMES DREEK THE ASSASSIN

THEFT THE MOTIVE

STOLEN MONEY RECOVERED BY POLICE

BRILLIANT WORK OF DETECTIVES

At last the Department had things coming its way—for which reason much relief was felt.

As James Dreek had made a confession and signed it, the tide of public interest and curiosity began to ebb. There was no longer a mystery. The young butler had done the deed. Robbery was the motive. He had got hold of that thirty-five thousand dollars and hidden it. Some spirit in California had told the police where to look for it. This in itself was of course an odd occurrence, but the riddle of guessing who the guilty man was and why he did the appalling deed no longer existed. This being so, the bulk of the inhabitants of Boston and its environs began looking eagerly in their daily papers for the next killing. As to the sensation-guzzlers in other cities, they no longer had their attention diverted from their enthralling local atrocities. The amazing behavior of the spirits remained as something to be spoken of when the subject of ghosts and haunted houses came up.

As the date set for the Dreek trial approached, it appeared to those who kept in touch with spiritistic affairs, that extreme restlessness regarding the Haworth case was prevalent in higher spheres—if what came through via various mediums could be taken as a truthful indication.

A wire from Providence, Rhode Island, stated that a private séance in that town had been considerably upset by the insistent demands of a disembodied soul claiming to be that of the father of young Dreek, that something be done—and done damned quick—to rescue his son, who was absolutely innocent, from the clutches of the blackguards and bullies who posed in Boston as police, but who were simply low-lived thugs and dirty bums. The press dispatch giving an account of the affair went on to say that the language proceeding from his apparition had grown so violent that two elderly ladies felt obliged to quit the room where the séance was being held, although it must be conceded that they were later seen to be listening just outside the door. It was really quite thrilling while it lasted, this flow of expert profanity, and a few knowing ones were aware that this spirit used expressions and dialect prevalent among a certain class of crooks practising in what is known as “The Gay Nineties.”

The Press paid little attention to the Providence message and the police none whatever, owing to the fact that nothing was included in it which substantiated its claims that Dreek was innocent. This communication, though, was followed by a disembodied statement—if I may put it that way—which reached the earth via a New Orleans trance medium, to the effect that the fools in Boston had third-degreed an innocent man to his death, adding that no surprise could be felt by those who remembered how the police had recently treated the entire populace of that unfortunate town.

Dubuque, Iowa, sent in something of the same kind, and others began to crop up from places quite remote. All of which went far toward creating the impression that the next world was considerably dissatisfied with the proceedings of this one in the matter of the murder on Torrington Road, and that the inhabitants thereof were not averse to letting their feelings relating thereto become generally known.

The members of the private circle in Chicago (recently alluded to, and since then greatly increased in numbers) wished beyond anything else that Mr. P., the famous detective not long deceased, would return and let them have his views upon matters as they now stood in the Roxbury case. But it was their third meeting after the one at which he had advised the examination of the window shutters and the extraction of bullets from trees, before he dropped in again; and when he did come he gave the impression of trying his utmost to avoid the subject. Finally, upon being asked point-blank if he wouldn’t please let them know just his personal opinion as to the guilt or innocence of James Dreek, the reply came back through the trumpet that he thought it would be just as well to go easy on that young man. Those were his final words. When another question was put to him it was found that he had quietly slipped away; not even those very near heard the trumpet fall when he released it.

In Boston there was displayed rather more of this spirit restlessness than elsewhere, for a considerable number of mediums about the city and its suburbs were getting communications from their controls protesting Dreek’s innocence and begging that something be done about it.

More than any of the others were Mrs. Belden’s sittings (she was giving “private circles” now with great success) pervaded by this sort of thing, and it was the spirit of the hysterical Cynthia which created most of the disturbance. She took possession of the medium at every opportunity and was more often than not incoherent from excitement—or whatever it may be that appears so often to afflict the souls of people who have successfully emancipated themselves from the thralldom of their bodies.

At several of Mrs. Belden’s séances (which were always held in private houses), Cynthia had occupied much of the time and without result—although owing to the great interest in the spiritistic features of this case, none of the persons present made objections to the delay. On the contrary, they all waited with eager interest, hoping that this spirit, which was the one through whom the revelation as to Mr. Rathbun and the fight for the revolver had come, would eventually disclose something else of equally startling importance.

At these appearances of Cynthia—or more correctly at these times when she got the floor, as you might say—she occupied much of the time in mourning over the plight of poor Dreek and begging people to help in his rescue. Then, toward the end, the sitters could make out that she was desperately anxious to see somebody—a woman, it appeared, but so far she’d been unable to get the name across. “Bring her here! Oh, bring her! She’s the only one—the only one who knows! The only one! The only one!” And so on.

On that, some one would ask the spirit for the name of the person she wanted so much, and always the answer came back from Cynthia: “Oh, I don’t know it! Not now—not now! It’s gone! I knew it before, but they’ve taken it away from me! Don’t you know who I mean? Oh, you must know! Can’t somebody tell?” And that sort of thing, trailing off into moans and inarticulate sounds of pity. And soon after that she would vacate the medium.

Dreek’s trial had been going on four days before Cynthia’s spirit was able to overcome whatever influence was holding her back—much as it had been on a former occasion—and then the whole thing poured out on them like a flood released.

Mrs. Amelia Temple was the woman she wanted. Mrs. Temple could save him. Couldn’t they bring her at once? Oh, quickly! She wanted to talk to her! When reminded by one of the circle that the old woman had, from the beginning, refused to say anything, she said: “No matter—bring her—bring her—bring her! Don’t waste time!” And went on that way till she came near to hysterical shrieks. But even while she was carrying on like that people had gone out to try and find the old woman.

It was late in the evening—something after eleven—when Mrs. Temple was brought to the house. There had been no difficulty in persuading her to come. It appeared that she had once had an experience. Quite far back in her life she had lost her mother, the only one dear to her at that time, and her loneliness and yearning had drawn her to spiritist gatherings where, she had heard, departed ones are able to come back and speak to those they have left behind. To her unspeakable joy she found that this was so, and became, forthwith, an intense devotee. But after about two ecstatically happy months of it her faith was rudely shaken, for, at a séance where materializations were being accomplished, she suddenly saw something that looked to her like evidence of fraud. At the next of these séances she became satisfied that there was fraud. It was a cruel blow to her. Many times she wished she hadn’t found out. From that time she never attended another séance or spiritist meeting of any kind.

That was long ago. And now, after reading the newspaper accounts of the developments in the tragic affair which so deeply concerned her (she read everything about it that she could find), the extraordinary spirit communications that had been received in connection with it, all but convinced her that, if there had been fraud in that long ago experience of hers, it must have been only because of an untrustworthy medium and did not in any way affect the system or belief itself. One had only to see what marvels it was responsible for in this case, to be made certain that the spirits of the dead are here with us and doing what they can for our welfare.

And so, upon being told that the spirit of Cynthia Cripps Findlay (she very well knew who was meant by that) was begging, through the mediumship of Mrs. Henrietta Belden, that she come and let her speak to her, she dressed immediately—for she’d gone to bed—and went with the two women who’d come from the séance to fetch her.

The spirit of Cynthia began to talk the moment Mrs. Temple entered the dimly lighted room, and continued while she was being silently conducted to a chair near the medium.

“Oh, you’re here! Thank you so much for coming, Mrs. Temple! Oh, I do thank you! And you will help us—you will! You couldn’t refuse—you’re so tender-hearted to anyone in distress! And some one is in distress! Oh, some one is—terribly! It’s the poor Dreek boy, the butler who was with Mr. Haworth, and he’s being tried for murder at this very moment—and perfectly innocent as you know—as you know so well, Mrs. Temple. Why, the poor fellow never raised a finger to hurt anyone or steal anything—but there’s no way to save him unless you will tell them what you saw—just what you saw—that’s all we ask! It’s for his mother, his poor old mother, ill in New York! And, oh, listen to me—your mother is here—she’s here with me because she wants so much to help us, but she can’t speak to you herself—she’s one of those who can’t get through. She tried it long ago, as you may remember. So she asks me to tell you that she’s sure you’ll help us save this innocent boy—for her sake if nothing else. And oh, will you please wait a moment, Mrs. Temple?”

A short pause. Perfect stillness in the room. Then the spirit of Cynthia spoke again.

“Your mother—I was speaking to her—oh, you can’t have any conception of how dear she is—she’s just waiting till you come—and she wants me to say that she loves you as always—it will never change—it couldn’t change—oh, it couldn’t Mrs. Temple! And she’s been with you almost all the time—just staying near—that’s all she could do. And she’s so happy that you’re still keeping the old bonnet she used to wear—she sees it there in your trunk whenever she’s with you in the room—and she knows you’ll think of this poor young man’s mother the same as she does, and what a terrible thing it would be for her if her son—who never did it—was found guilty of such a fearful, awful crime. It isn’t death (as you call it) that matters, but such a death! Oh, Mrs. Temple, think what it would mean to his poor mother, and for her sake and for your own mother’s sake, tell them what you saw—just tell them—oh—tell them!—Oh!...” The voice of Cynthia, uttered through the expert mediumship of Mrs. Belden, trailed rapidly away to nothing and the spirit was gone.

Mr. Forbes (for the defense) was unable to bring in Mrs. Temple’s testimony as a surprise. Though the séance was a strictly private one and held in a private residence and with no reporters admitted, the Inspector had insisted on having a representative at any “spirit circle” in which Mrs. Belden officiated; and although the representative in this case—a plain-clothes man—had seen to it that there were no listeners behind doors or otherwise concealed, and had afterward instructed the medium and all those present not to give away anything that had been said or done, and furthermore had had every one of them shadowed by detectives both in the house and after they left it, the papers next morning had full accounts of the appeal of the disembodied spirit of Cynthia to the still-embodied spirit of Mrs. Temple, and the court room was packed with an eager multitude, rabidly craving excitement.

When her name was called, the crowd, as one person, held its breath, and strained its eyes to see and its ears to hear.

The old woman was given a chair in the witness box, and the usual form of preliminary questioning gone through. After that, she was led by Mr. Forbes to describe how she’d been at one of the side windows of the room where the murder was done, a short time before it took place, and was trying to see in, but owing to its being pitch-dark inside, she was unable to make out anything, though she heard strange and alarming noises; how she then hurried to the rear of the house and tried to get in there, but every door—even the basement—was locked, and she had to give it up; and how, more alarmed than ever about Mr. Haworth, she then started, as fast as she was able to go, toward the front of the house again.

“When you were hastening in this way toward the front, Mrs. Temple, did you pass near the window where you’d been trying to look in?”

“Yes sir; the path warn’t more’n a few yards from the side winders, but it was mos’ly growed up with bushes an’ things in between.”

“Could a person among the bushes at one of the windows, see anyone passing along that path?”

“Ef there was any light, they could.”

“What was your object in hurrying toward the front of the house again?”

“I wanted to git down to the road.”

“What did you intend to do there?”

“I was goin’ to find some one to help me—ef I could.”

“You mean the police?”

“Mercy no! They ain’t no earthly use!”

“I object!” shouted the District Attorney, springing to his feet.

“Just answer the question, madam.” (From the Court.)

“And I ask Your Honor that the remark of the witness be stricken from the record.”

This request was granted, and Mr. Forbes went on.

“Where did you expect to find help, Mrs. Temple?”

“If I didn’t find nobody in the road, I was goin’ to try the house on the fur side a ways up. There was some men there.” She put a very slight accent on the word “men.”

“And did you go down to the road?”

“No sir. I was stopped sudden-like by a bright light flashin’ up inside the room as I was goin’ by. It was so bright it lit up the chinks o’ the winders, an’ thinkin’ I could see then if anyone was there an’ what they was doin’, I pushed through the bushes an’ went up clost to one of ’em.”

“Which one did you go to?”

“Why, the first one I come to I seen the roller shade was pulled down, so I went on to the next.”

“That would be the one nearest the front of the house?”

“Yes sir, that was the one.”

“And did you find that you could see anything inside?”

“I found the shade was down there, too, but it warn’t pulled quite to the bottom so’s it left a narrer crack.”

“And could you see into the room through this narrow aperture below the curtain?”

“Not at first I couldn’t—the light dazzled me some—but in a minute I got used to it an’ then I could.”

“Tell the Court what you saw, Mrs. Temple.”

“Mr. Haworth—it was him I seen first. He was settin’ by the table, readin’ a book. After a minute or two he felt in his pocket an’ got his pipe out an’ filled it an’ was huntin’ around fur a match.”

“Was there anyone else in the room?”

“Not as I could see from the winder I was at. But just as he was lookin’ fur the match I commenced to think mebbe there might be somebody behind him in the back part o’ the room, so I hurried through the bushes to the other winder—the one further back. I knew the shade was down, but I thought mebbe there was a crack at the bottom same as the other, an’ I found there was—on’y not so much, but by twistin’ around I could get a look through to the back part o’ the room, an’ there was a man standin’ there, back against the door o’ the butler’s pantry, an’ he had a black thing in his hand that he was pointin’ at Mr. Haworth from behind.”

A moment of tense stillness followed on this, as Mrs. Temple stopped speaking. I don’t suppose there was one person among the spectators in that packed court room who hadn’t stopped breathing.

After letting the pause have its full effect, Mr. Forbes spoke with all the solemnity he could command.

“Mrs. Temple,” he said, “was the man you saw standing behind Mr. Haworth and aiming a black object at him, the accused you now see on trial in this court—James Dreek?”

The old woman shook her head. “No sir, it warn’t him,” she said.

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes sir.”

“What makes you certain that it was not the accused?”

“For one thing, he warn’t built no ways like him—he was heavy-set an’ solid. This man” (pointing at Dreek) “ain’t that way.”

“You say his different size and build, for one thing. Was there something else that made you still more positive that this was not the man?”

“Yes sir.”

“Kindly describe it.”

“I was just turnin’ away from the winder to get to the other one an’ warn Mr. Haworth, when I seen this man you’re tryin’——”

“James Dreek?” interjected Mr. Forbes, to prevent any mistake as to the person she meant.

“Yes sir, James Dreek—I seen him come hurryin’ along the walk carryin’ a ladder.”

“Which way was he going?”

“Toward the front o’ the house.”

“What did you do then?”

“I kep’ on as fast as I could to the other winder—the one near where Mr. Haworth was—so’s I could call out an’ warn him. As soon as I got there I begun screamin’ out his name an’ beatin’ on the winder glass, but I hadn’t no more’n started doin’ that when there was a terrible loud crash of a gun goin’ off, an’ right after it another, an’ Mr. Haworth turnin’ round an’ tryin’ to ketch a holt o’ the table; but he couldn’t do it, an’ there he was sinkin’ down on the floor—sinkin’ down there right before my eyes!”

It was some time before the old woman could go on, but the Court waited. Finally Mr. Forbes, seeing that she was getting control of herself, went on with the examination.

“Tell us what you did then, Mrs. Temple.”

“I—I kinder sunk down there under the winder—as if all my stren’th was took away. But in a minute I was able to git up again, an’ the first thing I see was this Dreek man on the path there where I’d seen ’im afore.”

“What was he doing?”

“He’d stopped where he was an’ let the ladder fall on the ground. But just as I looked at him he picked it up again an’ set off runnin’.”

“In which direction did he run?”

“The same as ’e was goin’ afore—toward the front o’ the house.”

“And what did you then do, Mrs. Temple?”

“I run as fast as I could toward the back—the kitchen.”

“What was your idea in going there again?”

“Why I—I wanted to get to ’im as quick as I could.”

“To Mr. Haworth?”

The old woman nodded, unable, for a moment, to speak.

“What made you think you could get in? You’d tried it a few moments before, hadn’t you?”

“Yes sir, but this Dreek man had come out sense then, an’ I didn’t think he was liable to ’uv locked the door, carryin’ the ladder like he was.”

“Had he locked the door?”

“No sir, he hadn’t.”

“Which door was it?”

“The basement.”

“So you got in?”

“Yes sir.”

Mr. Forbes indicated that he was through with the witness, and the district attorney took her, his manner conveying the impression that he considered her testimony as almost too flimsy to waste time over. He soon learned, however, that it wasn’t such an easy matter to punch holes in it. As a sample, without going into it as a whole:—

“I believe you made the statement, Mrs. Temple, as other witnesses have done, that the night when all this occurred was a dark one. Did you so testify?”

“Yes sir.”

“Was there a moon?”

“I didn’t see none.”

“But you admit the night was unusually dark?”

“It was dark—I ain’t got no idea how unusual it was.”

“Very well—that’s all I want to know—it was dark. Now Mrs. Temple, on this very dark night—the blackness being almost impenetrable, as has been shown by the testimony of others, although you yourself, for some reason, don’t seem inclined to admit it—in this dense and inky blackness you claim to have recognized the accused going by on a path at some distance from you. How do you explain that?”

“I s’pose you warn’t int’rested when I was speakin’ about them roller shades to the two side winders not reachin’ down to the bottom so’st it left a crack where the light could git through.”

“You mean to say enough light could pass through a little slit like that to enable you to recognize a person on a pitch-dark night twenty feet away?”

“Yes sir.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?”

“No sir.”

“Oh! You don’t expect me to believe it!”

“I ain’t botherin’ one way or the other about what you believe. I’ve got enough to think of besides that!”

“Well then, let’s get a little light on what you believe, Mrs. Temple! We have information that you attended a séance last night, a private séance given by a medium named Henrietta E. Belden, and that you are here giving evidence in this court because disembodied spirits—in other words people who have passed away—requested you to do so. Do you deny that this is the fact?”

“No sir, I don’t deny it.”

“Then am I to understand that you are a believer in the supernatural—that spirits are about us, speaking to us through mediums, and that these dead people can be relied on to give assistance and advice in a case like this? Do you believe that, madam?”

“Well I ain’t certain sure of it, but I’m tendin’ that way, seein’ how much more the dead ones seem to know about this case than you folks that’s still walkin’ around.”

A roar of laughter swept over the crowded room, broken by the court crier’s loud rapping for silence. It might have been observed that the Court itself bowed its head over as if making notes, so that its face was hidden for a moment.

And so it went on, every effort to undermine Mrs. Temple’s credibility as a witness serving the more firmly to establish it. She could not be confused nor rushed nor intimidated, though all three of these methods were attempted. Over and above this it was very soon discovered that she had no idea of going further with her testimony than giving what related to the innocence of James Dreek. As to that, however, her evidence was clear, straightforward, and unshakable.

The confession signed by Dreek when he was out of his mind from the torture of sleeplessness and constant bullying had been riddled by the Defense, and cut no figure at all, so that when the case went to the Jury a verdict of “Not guilty” was returned within fifteen minutes and Jamie Dreek caught the next train home to his old mother, whose devastating anxiety about him had brought her to within a stone’s throw of the grave.

You mustn’t get the idea that the Dreek trial came to an end in the brief time my way of telling about it would seem to indicate. I said just now, that when the case went to the Jury there was a verdict in fifteen minutes; but that when took quite some days. In fact there was a most peculiar delay directly following Mrs. Temple’s testimony.

You’d naturally think that when the entire bottom had dropped out of the thing they’d have got the Jury out on it as quick as they could. But they didn’t, for the State was holding it up in every possible way—recalling witnesses without reason—wrangling over this and that, and playing for time whenever a chance came up. The Defense was brief enough, and the Judge occupied only a few minutes in charging, but the prosecution managed to string it along for four days, and of course the wise ones began to make remarks about the District Attorney having something up his sleeve. The singular part of it is that for once “the wise ones” were right.

On the fifth morning following Mrs. Temple’s appearance on the witness stand, the not guilty verdict was brought in, and that same afternoon Hugo Pentecost was arrested for the murder.

It came to pass at headquarters. Pentecost had been sent for by Chief Inspector McCurran to give further information, and had been answering such questions as he could—which is to say, as he could with safety. There were others in the room—a couple of detectives (plain-clothes men), two or three policemen in uniform, and a stenographer (plain-clothes).

“By the way,” the Inspector asked, carelessly, after a number of commonplace questions had been answered, “did you ever happen to wear a pair of boots that were very much too large for you?”

“Why yes,” (after just enough surprise to go with so odd a question); “I suppose I have—at one time or another.”

“Ah—you have!... But your recollection doesn’t extend, I presume, to your having worn such boots recently?”

“Pardon me,” Pentecost returned, “but is this flattering curiosity as to my wearing apparel merely personal, or are you still seeking information in the case of Haworth?”

The Inspector’s eyes glittered into Pentecost’s for a second or two. When he spoke it was pointedly and with deliberation. “I’m still seeking information in the case of Haworth.”

“That being so,” Pentecost responded in a soft, pleasant voice, “you’ll excuse me for going no further in the direction indicated.”

The Inspector drew his mouth into a mechanical grin.

“I’m inclined to think, Pentecost, that you’ll find yourself going some distance further in that direction.”

“It’s inspiring to meet a real optimist, Mr. McCurran—there are so few.”

“Where were you between ten and eleven on the night Charles Haworth was shot to death?”

Mr. Pentecost appeared to be quite unaware that a question had been asked.

“We’ve got to hold you Pentecost.” The Inspector made a slight motion, and one of the patrolmen stepped forward and stood at Pentecost’s side.

“Want anything from the hotel—toilet articles—clothing—that sort of thing?”

“Many thanks—they’re outside in a grip.”

“Ah!” the Inspector said, after an instant’s pause of surprise. “You looked for it, did you?”

“Great God!—what would I look for with a couple of your teasers running circles around me since the day I first came in here!”

“Noticed it, did you?”

The Inspector pulled his lips back into what you might take for a grin. “But don’t go trying to pass that across,” he added, “as the reason you brought your grip. There’s a better one than that.”

“Sure there is,” said Pentecost.

“You know damned well the game’s up and we’ve got it on you.”

“I know damned well you think you have.”

“Ah! And would you care to tell the reason I think so?”

“Why certainly ... Pittsburgh.”

There was what you might call an instantaneous pause. The mention of the name of the smoke-draped city apparently struck fire somewhere inside of Mr. McCurran.

“What do you know about Pittsburgh?” he demanded in a lowered voice with anger not entirely excluded from it.

“Sorry to upset you,” murmured Pentecost.

“What do you know about Pittsburgh?” the Inspector repeated.

“Much the same as you,” answered Pentecost.

“Where were you between ten and eleven on the night that Charles Michael Haworth was shot?”

There was no answer, and almost at once the Inspector went on, his voice more menacing: “If you’re not the guilty man, tell me your reason for trying to put over that fake alibi on us—yes, an’ a damned foolish fake at that, when we had you cold in Roxbury the same night?... So? Nothing to say about that, eh?”

There was a moment of silence, during which the Inspector managed to subdue any evidences of the fury which the name of the western Pennsylvania city had aroused. Soon he resumed in a voice cold and hard: “We find it to be a rule that a man who is unjustly charged with crime is more than anxious to answer questions and explain his true position. I observe that you have no such desire.”

“Accept my congratulations, Inspector, on having at last discovered the missing exception to your rule.”

“Then you have no explanation to make of that manufactured alibi?”

“None—until the necessity arises.”

“Am I to understand that it hasn’t yet arisen?”

“Such an understanding would be according to fact.”

“In that case we may be able to assist it to do so.” And the Inspector rose and walked away to another part of the room, motioning, as he did so, to have Pentecost taken away.

The patrolman got the usual safety grip on Pentecost’s twisted coat sleeves near the wrists, and took him out at a side door, one of the plain-clothes men slipping out after him, and shortly thereafter he was safely within the portals of the Charles Street jail.

Inspector McCurran stood at a window revolving a few things in his mind—and their revolution failed to please him. This was not from any doubt of their case against Pentecost, for anyone could see they had the murder buckled to him in every conceivable way—including one that hadn’t been put down by the Inspector as conceivable up to this time. But back of the whole thing was some cursed mystery—every now and then they turned up evidence of it. Could there be, after all, anything in the spirit business? Seemed absurd, but, by God! they had some pretty good names to it!—Not in this country—but look at those big ducks in England who were pushing the game!

And there was the man himself—Pentecost—something about him that made one feel a shiver of apprehension. You’d put him down as slippery in some peculiar, slimy sort of way, that would make any grip you could get on him not worth a tinker’s dam.

The Inspector’s mind came round to Pentecost’s careless reference to the city of Pittsburgh. It had nearly lost him his self-control—an unusual happening with Matt McCurran. For this simple geographical allusion meant that the knowledge of certain spiritistic phenomena which had occurred in that town a few nights before, and which the authorities supposed to be successfully suppressed, was now—or soon would be—public property. If this man Pentecost had knowledge of these occurrences, others had as well, and without doubt the papers would get hold of it and there’d be the very devil to pay.

And you may as well know at once that the papers of the following day did get hold of it, and there was the devil to pay—and he was paid, too! Throughout the length, breadth, and thickness of the country, and including as well our friend and near relation across the St. Lawrence, the press dispatches did the Boston Police Department proud in one place, and then, without knowing it, jabbed a knife through it in another.

In every paper the first thing striking the reader’s eye was a sensational write-up of the arrest of Hugo Pentecost as the murderer, in the strange and mysterious Haworth case, and the astonishing detective work accomplished by the Police Department in tracing the (alleged) guilty man by a pair of old boots left in a cabin of a Metropolitan Line steamer, and in puncturing one of the most ingenious fake alibis on record. The dispatches went on to say that Mr. Henry Harker and his son Alfred, of the firm of Harker & Pentecost, had both waived extradition and were on their way to Boston with detectives, and upon arrival would be held as accomplices. The stenographer of the firm, Miss Dugas, who was wanted as a witness, and who might also be implicated in the crime, was voluntarily accompanying the Harkers.

The foregoing, written up fully and triumphantly, was agreeable reading for those connected with the Department; but in the same editions, and nearly always in an adjoining column, was an A. P. dispatch from Pittsburgh which simply tore the insides out of the first one.

It was headed, in every case, with these disastrous lines—or something similar—and in type that came out and smashed a reader right between the eyes:—

SPIRITS SPEAK AGAIN IN HAWORTH CASE

ADVISE MICROSCOPE IN PENTECOST ALIBI

ASTOUNDING CLUES GIVEN

OPERATOR’S LICENSE 2026

BOOTS LEFT ON “NORTH LAND”

Then it got down to plain reading matter, and described a message that had come through at a séance held in Allegheny—now a section of Pittsburgh and popularly referred to as the North Side—five days before, and instantly telephoned to the Boston chief of police, but which, for reasons stated below, had only now been given to the press. The spirit who got “control” of the medium conducting this séance declined to give his name—in fact allowed that he had too many, his life while on earth having been not precisely what it should have been. He merely saw a chance to get even with a cocky screw who’d once—before he (the spirit speaking) had crossed to the higher realms—put the low-down play on him good and plenty; and the only thing he asked was that some one present at the sitting would send word to the Boston police to go after a big pair of boots that was left in a cabin of the steamer North Land on arrival in New York the next morning after the murder; also he’d suggest that they put a microscope on a few other little items of that beautiful alibi. For instance, it wouldn’t do a damn bit of harm to dig up Operator’s License 2026. “Tell the bulls,” he gave out in conclusion, “to take it from me they’ll pull something out of the fire if they go after it!” And with that he was gone.

The A. P. dispatch on this Pittsburgh occurrence closed with a paragraph in brackets explaining the five days’ delay in getting the news. It stated that the spirit message had been telephoned to the Boston police even while the séance was still in progress with the medium under other controls. The Boston Department, for diplomatic reasons, had withheld the news of this message from the Pemberton Street reporters and had also asked the Pittsburgh police to hush the matter up until the clues (if there was anything to it) could be worked out and a clean-up of the guilty parties made before they got warning. Pittsburgh headquarters found that only eleven persons had been present at the séance, and got them all, together with the medium and her assistant or director, before they left the place. These people, appreciating the importance of keeping it quiet in order to bring the criminals to justice, agreed to say nothing of the affair, and for five days no leakage occurred. Then from somewhere (it could not be traced to any of those concerned in the séance) a full account of the whole proceeding had suddenly reached the Associated Press, and of course could no longer be withheld from the public.

“The account of this amazing occurrence in Pittsburgh,” as one of the Boston papers put it in a bracketed “Ed.” note following the A. P. dispatch, “which is quite in keeping with former developments in the Haworth case, can now be published without disturbing the activities of the police, the ‘clean-up’ referred to having been successfully accomplished, as may be noted elsewhere in this issue.”

This Allegheny episode might not have been so bad served up by itself, but coming immediately under or on parallels with the triumphant write-up of the Department’s detective work, showed that the whole thing was done on a tip from the spirit world. You mustn’t understand me as saying—or even intimating—that there wasn’t any good work done by the police detectives. The trouble was that when they got anywhere they were stood on their heads and everything they’d worked up dumped into the discard by one of those ghostly manifestations or whatever they might be.

Anyway, it isn’t an account of marvelous detective work I’m trying to give you, but something which, as I look at it, is vastly more unusual. The papers will give you stuff about “sleuths”—as they call ’em—every day in the week, including Sundays; and if you want to go into the field of fiction you’ll find there’s one born there every minute. But so far as my experience goes, this was the first time people in the next world ever took a hand in the game.

The public interest in the Pentecost trial came near to being the record for this class of diversion. You’d have thought the feeling against him would have been so bitter that they’d have had to fight off the lynchers. But it’s just as well to go easy on predicting how the public is going to behave. Something about the man—it wasn’t beauty or youth or romance—more like hypnotism, perhaps—in conjunction with his ingenious methods of work so far as they had been made known, and also his silence under fire (My God! how the public adores a man who keeps his mouth shut!) got the people with him, notwithstanding the brutal murder that they could now so plainly see was his doing. Much of the sympathy may have resulted from the hopelessness of his case, for they certainly had it all over him. He hadn’t said a word since his arrest, excepting to state mildly—and even then, only when he was asked about it—that he wasn’t guilty. And he sat in the cage quiet and unassuming, never once dropping to the “cheerful act” nor the “bravado act” nor any act whatever, but only sitting there quietly and hearing witness after witness testify to things that were like so many nails in his coffin.

He saw his marvelously laid-out defensive system crumble and melt away before his eyes; his carefully constructed alibi split into a thousand pieces.

They had the chauffeur (Operator’s License 2026) who took him—dripping with water—at about nine o’clock on the night of the murder, from a place near the Soldier’s Monument just north of the Bourne Highway Bridge over the Cape Cod Canal, and who left him, shortly before half-past ten, at the corner of Centre and Greenough Streets, Jamaica Plain. Even the fact of his having walked in a direction away from Torrington Road when he left the car told against him. Of course he did—that’s precisely what a man with criminal intent would do.

The Captain, Purser, and other officers of the North Land were called and testified against him—at least negatively—although they had, up to this time, been the most important bulwarks of the alibi;—Captain Snow now recalling the fact that he hadn’t seen the face of the man on the forward deck whom he took to be Mr. Pentecost, after his ship passed out of the canal, but only his back; and the other officers realizing, when they came to think of it, that they hadn’t seen him on board after the steamer emerged into Buzzards Bay—that is, until he was disembarking at New York the following morning.

The conductor of the midnight express to New York, and the head end trainman who’d had such difficulty in arousing him from apparent sleep in the morning and getting him off at the Grand Central, were put on the stand and told of his being on their train the night of the murder; men from the New York Central’s railroad pier next south of the North Land’s berth, testified to having seen the rowboat come up under the steamer’s stern as she docked in New York the morning after the shooting, and put a man aboard her by a rope ladder; a man and his wife from Buzzards Bay village, who’d been waiting on the highway bridge over the canal for the “draw” to close at the time the North Land passed through, on the night of the crime, testified to seeing a man in the semidarkness come up from the low flats at the west of the bridge approach, and climb into a car near the Soldier’s Monument, though they couldn’t swear, owing to the darkness, to its being the accused; these things, and scores of others not less important, put Pentecost in the position of having faked an alibi by boarding the steamer in Boston, going overboard from her during her passage through the canal, returning thence to Roxbury by hired automobile, proceeding to the rear of the Cripps mansion a few minutes before the shots were fired, and within half an hour after the murder, staggering, disguised as a drunken laborer, into the North Station, and there taking the 11:50 express for New York, finally getting aboard the steamer again from a rowboat the moment she tied up to her dock.

Although no witness to his actually entering the house or to his being in it at the time the deed was done, could be found, there was surely sufficient evidence to convict him without it. At the same time the District Attorney would have given a great deal to be able to cover those points.

Pentecost’s senior counsel, Harvey Brookfield, had little to offer in rebuttal, but he was a crack shot when the witnesses were turned over to him, and many of them were raked raw by the cross fire. His request that the head end trainman explain his remembering, for such a long time, what kind of boots a stranger on his train had worn, brought the reply: “Because every time I went through the car I had to shove ’em off the seat in front of him—they was muddy an’ I didn’t want him fouling up the seat.”

“Very thoughtful of you, too! But you testified a few minutes ago, that this man whose boots you noticed, was seated at the extreme forward end of the car. Didn’t you say that?”

“Why, I said—I—I——”

“Certainly you did! I can have the stenographer read it to you if you’ve forgotten.—Now I ask you to explain to the Court and the Jury how this man—if he was, as you stated that he was, sitting at the extreme forward end of the car, could put his feet on the seat in front of him? How could there be a seat in front of him if he was in the very first seat? Now just tell us that—in your own language.”

“Well, he—he was up there at that end—it might ’a’ been one seat more or less from the end—I didn’t notice. He was——”

“Ah—you didn’t notice!” broke in Brookfield, springing on him like a cat. “That explains it! You didn’t notice! You told us that he was at the extreme end, but you didn’t notice. Now you tell us about his boots—perhaps you didn’t notice in that case, either! A man’s life may depend on it—but you didn’t notice! You’ve rendered your testimony before this court ridiculous by making a man put his feet on a seat that wasn’t there!” And so on. But while this sort of thing might tear a witness to pieces, it couldn’t, to any extent, weaken the prosecution’s case.

In discussing the situation with Mr. Pentecost at the Charles Street jail after one of the worst days in court, Mr. Brookfield declared that there was nothing for it but to fall back on insanity as a plea. But Pentecost wouldn’t hear of it.

“What’s the idea, then? I don’t need to tell you they’re piling it up on us pretty thick.”

“They haven’t got me in the house yet. Keep jabbing on that till you draw blood.”

“It won’t acquit you!”

“No matter—go to it.”

And Brookfield went to it.

It may surprise you to hear of an Attorney taking orders as to the conduct of a case from his client—especially when said client was so evidently a criminal of the most desperate character. But the explanation is simple in the extreme. Pentecost owned Brookfield through having bought and paid for him, and was virtually conducting the case himself.

While the Pentecost trial, owing to its extraordinary developments, had held the interest of the country at large and kept the eastern section of Massachusetts in something like a ferment of astonishment and curiosity, it was toward the latter part of it that things really began to happen.

When the testimony was all in and Mr. Brookfield was about to go on with his summing up, a message was brought into the court room and handed to the District Attorney. After a glance at it he was instantly on his feet, asking to be allowed to bring in another witness whose presence in court had hitherto been impossible, and whose testimony was of the utmost importance in its bearing on the case.

Brookfield, of course, objected, but was overruled, and an old woman, bent and rheumatic, was brought into the court room and assisted between the rows of spectators, past the jurors, and into the witness box. As she turned and faced the onlookers, and it was seen that Mrs. Temple had consented to take the stand for the prosecution, a composite sound of gasps, subdued exclamations, and quick whisperings issued from the audience. Many had seen her when she testified in the trial of James Dreek, and there was hardly one who hadn’t read in the newspapers that the old woman knew everything about the murder—had, indeed, actually witnessed it—yet couldn’t be persuaded to say a word excepting to testify to as much as would clear the young butler of guilt. That was for the Defense in the case of James Dreek—now the Prosecution in the case of Pentecost, had her!

After the first surprise, all eyes shifted across to the prisoner’s cage to see what effect this fearful menace—for that’s what it was—had on Hugo Pentecost. But so far as could be seen it hadn’t any. The man was sitting precisely as before, expressionless, waiting.

While Mrs. Temple was being sworn and the formal questioning gone through, a Court Messenger entered, and threading his way between the tables, handed a written communication to Chief Inspector McCurran, who was seated at the Attorneys’ table, and who arose at once and left the court room, followed by the messenger. Few noticed this, for the attention of the spectators appeared to be divided between the old woman on the witness stand and the accused in the prisoners’ cage, whose death sentence—or what amounted to that—the former was surely about to pronounce.

When the preliminaries were finished, District Attorney McVeigh in—for him—an incredibly soft voice and gentle manner, led the old woman to describe Mr. Pentecost’s behavior while on his several visits to the Cripps mansion before the commission of the crime,—her suspicions regarding his intentions; the attempts she made to warn Mr. Haworth of the danger of dealing with such a man; and following that, her exclusion from the house—and thereafter her efforts to keep watch from the outside. From this she was tactfully brought to the events of that last evening,—the closing of the blinds to the front window; the coming home of Mr. Haworth followed by Augustus Findlay; her attempts to see in at the side windows but the darkness within preventing; her unsuccessful efforts to enter the house at the rear, and then the sudden brilliant light in the room so that she was able to look in through the narrow slits below the roller shades; her seeing Mr. Haworth reading at the table and then filling and lighting his pipe; her hurrying to the other window and seeing a man at the back of the room whose face was covered (except for the eyes) with a cloth or bandage and whose clothing was wet and draggled, pointing some dark object at Mr. Haworth from behind; her turning to run back to the window which was nearer to Mr. Haworth so that she could warn him, and as she did so seeing James Dreek going along the path with a ladder; her attempt to call out to Mr. Haworth; then the shots and his collapse to the floor, and she herself so overcome that she sank down beside the window; her recovering and trying again to get into the house at the rear, and finally succeeding in doing so.

“How did you get in, Mrs. Temple?” the District Attorney asked.

“Through the basement door.”

“But wasn’t that door locked when you tried it before?”

“Yes—but it warn’t locked this time.”

“How long do you suppose this was after you heard the shots and saw Mr. Haworth sink to the floor?”

“It must a’ been some few minutes, fur I wasn’t able to git up very quick from where I’d sunk down.”

“And when you got into the house what did you do?”

“I hurried to him as quick as I could.”

“Do you mean Mr. Haworth?”

There was a pause before she spoke. “Yes,” she said in a lower voice, with eyes seeking the floor. “You might ’a’ known that, I should think.”

“I did know it Mrs. Temple, but it’s important to have others know it too. Now tell me this—if you can: did it take you long to get to him—after you succeeded in entering the house I mean? The time is important. Very likely you were detained by the house being dark?”

“No, I was used to it.”

“It was very dark, was it?”

“There warn’t no light at all—somebody must ’a’ shut it off while I was hurryin’ back to get in. But I got to the stairs easy enough and up into the kitchen; an’ then groped along through the butler’s pantry an’ opened the door of the front room where—where he was.”

“I see. And when you opened that door, Mrs. Temple, could you see anything in the room?”

“Yes, I could.”

“But I understood you to say that the house was entirely dark?”

“It was. But when I pushed open the swingin’ door o’ that room there was a faint light shinin’ on Mr. Haworth’s face as he lay there on the floor, an’ I could see from its not stayin’ still that somebody must be holdin’ it. Then I could make out the figger of a man—the one that had the light in his hand—an’ he was bendin’ over lookin’ at the body, an’ he hadn’t taken no notice o’ my comin’ in. At first I didn’t know anything at all, but the minute I come to my senses I started to run an’ git a holt of him; but just then the light he had in his hand must ’a’ slipped some way so’st the beam of it struck right across his face, an’ he didn’t have no cloth tied around it that time, so I could see who it was.”

The quiet in the room was intense. Every person there might have been a wax figure.

“Mrs. Temple, who was that man?”

“It was him there—the one you’re tryin’.”

“Can you give the Court his name?”

“The one he went by was Pentecost.”

“Was there light enough to see him distinctly?”

“There was plenty for me.”

“Did you have any other means of identification?”

“What sir?”

“Was there anything else you’d know him by—hair, clothes, shoes, hands, teeth—anything at all?”

“Oh!—Well, you see the second after the light struck across his face it went out an’ I couldn’t see nothin’ at all. But I heered his voice plain enough if that’s any good to ye.”

“It certainly is, Mrs. Temple. What was he saying?”

“He was shoutin’ out not to touch anythin’—that everythin’ had got to be left like it was in the name o’ the law, or somethin’ like that.”

“And the voice you heard shouting those things—did you recognize it?”

“Yes sir.”

“Whose voice was it?”

“His—that man there.” (With a motion toward Pentecost.)

“Do you mean the accused—in the prisoners’ cage?”

“That’s who I mean.”

“Had you heard his voice before?”

“Yes—I had.”

“When?”

“He’d spoke to me a number o’ times, an’ then I heered him a-talkin’ to Mr. Haworth quite frequent.”

“What did you do then, Mrs. Temple?”

“I run toward where I’d seen him an’ felt all around there—but he’d gone. An’ then—I—I don’t know.... I must ’a’ sunk down there where—where he was.”

“You mean Mr. Haworth?”

She nodded her head a little, as it slowly bowed down, hiding her face from view.

Mr. McVeigh waited a moment so that the Jury might get the full effect of the old woman’s grief, and then indicated to Mr. Brookfield that he could take the witness.

But it so happened that Mr. Brookfield had caught a signal from Pentecost, as previously arranged.

“I don’t care to examine, Your Honor,” he said.

Shortly after this, Mr. Brookfield was seen to be addressing the Court, but in so low a tone that few were able to hear him. For this reason a sensation was created when the prison guards took Pentecost from the cage and conducted him to the witness stand.

After the preliminaries there was a pause—whether intentionally so or not, a most dramatic one. Brookfield on his feet ready to question, yet stopping silent before the accused. Pentecost standing motionless as marble in the witness box—the court officer at his side. Reporters at the press table, pencils poised, eyes fixed on Pentecost’s face, ready to catch and record his slightest change of expression. Every man on the Jury regarding him with strained attention. The Judge himself unusually interested. Stillness of death in the court room.

Brookfield began in a low voice, speaking slowly and distinctly.

“Mr. Pentecost, you have heard the testimony given before this Court by Mrs. Amelia Temple?”

“Yes.”

“Have you anything to say regarding it?”

“Yes.” (A pause.) “It’s the truth.”

“All of it?”

“All that concerns me.”

“What can you say as to the rest of the testimony submitted before this Court?”

“The same.”

“By that do you mean that all of it is true as to fact?”

“I do.”

“Now as to this testimony that has been given here, and which you have stated is the truth—can you say that the inferences which would naturally be drawn from it are the correct ones?”

“I cannot.”

“Why?”

“Because they make it appear that I have committed a murder.”

“How does it happen, if they are statements of fact, that they are misleading as to such a conclusion?”

“They describe only a part of my movements and behavior, omitting what would lead to the correct conclusion.”

“Do you claim that these omissions were purposely made?”

Mr. Pentecost shook his head slightly.

“The witnesses,” he said in a low voice, “were doubtless unaware of them.”

“Will you—if it pleases the Court—make a brief statement outlining these omitted facts.”

Mr. Pentecost waited a moment, and then, as the Court made no objection thereto, began to speak in a subdued voice, faintly suggestive of hopelessness.

“I have no witnesses,” he said, “except those who have testified against me. But there are circumstances bearing on my actions which none of these witnesses could have known; and while their consideration by this Court is most vital to me, I have only my unsupported word to offer, and feel that such consideration will almost certainly be denied me. So I will refer to these things as briefly as possible and with little hope. Let me speak first of my getting off the steamer at Buzzards Bay, as that seems the most misleading thing against me. It is true I did this, but not for the purpose of committing the crime with which I am charged. Such an inference, indeed, is quite the reverse of the correct one, for I came back to Boston that night hoping to save Mr. Haworth from some calamity that I feared was about to overtake him—and which, in fact, did so before I could prevent it.

“My association with the young man during the time I was negotiating the purchase of one of his inventions, had awakened in me a most unusual interest. His quiet and almost childlike sincerity, his trustfulness and simplicity, appealed to me in a way that I cannot describe. I am alone, with no family of—of any kind, and the experience of suddenly being deeply interested in a person was something new to me.

“The last day of the negotiations—which was at the end of a fourteen-day option he’d given us—everything was concluded and we paid over to Mr. Haworth a large sum of money. It was in bills—for he’d asked to have it that way. As we were making this payment it suddenly occurred to me that this trustful and helpless young fellow might get into trouble with it, for in these days there are crackerjacks looking for money who can smell it in a house, just passing by in the street. It was a lonely place where he lived and didn’t look good to me, so I cautioned him about it. But he smiled at me—one of his rare smiles that seemed to sink right into you—and said he knew a safe place for it; and anyway he’d have it there only till the next day.

“The three of us—my partner, his son, and myself—took the steamer for New York that same afternoon, and I tried to get my anxiety about the young man off my mind. But instead of going off it increased, and by the time we were well out in the Bay it was like one of these premonitions you read about. I did everything to rid myself of this feeling—talked with the officers, ordered dinner, walked in the wind on the top deck—but it was no use, and by seven o’clock I realized that something had to be done.

“The steamer was due at the canal in about an hour, and I remembered they had to slow down to half speed or less for the passage through. So I got young Harker to make inquiries in a sort of casual way, as if it was only from curiosity on his part, as to whether they’d stop at some place along the canal if a person wanted to get off. If they said no, I told him to throw out feelers to see if money would do it. But there was no use—the thing was impossible.

“By this time I was in a—a most trying nervous condition. Suddenly I realized that, without even thinking about it, I’d made up my mind to jump off the steamer while she was in the canal and in some way get back to Roxbury. I did this as the boat was passing the village of Buzzards Bay. It was quite dark at the time, and I waited till the steamer had passed through the Bourne Highway Bridge, as I knew the passengers would be watching the great draw come down into place, and even if the lights along the canal hit me, no one would be looking.

“After I got out of the swirl a few strokes brought me to shore. It was a sort of low flat along there, and I got across it and up on to the road embankment that is the north approach to the bridge. There wasn’t any garage in sight and in a sort of desperation I stopped a car coming up toward the bridge and asked where the nearest one was. The man inside asked me what was wrong, for I was soaking wet, and I told him it was a matter of life and death for me to get to Boston. He said he’d just come down from there and was only a quarter of a mile from his destination, so I could take the car he had (it was a hired one) if the chauffeur wanted to do it, and he’d go on foot the rest of the way. I suppose my dripping clothes made an impression. I fixed the chauffeur all right with a couple of watersoaked ten-dollar bills, telling him I’d double it if he did the trip under eighty minutes. And I want to say that everything this man has testified to is the truth, for he couldn’t possibly have known who I was, how I got to Buzzards Bay, or where I was going in Boston. I’d be sorry indeed to get this innocent man into trouble.

“My reason for leaving the car at some distance from the house on Torrington Road was not because I planned to commit a murder—as the Prosecution would have it translated, but only that I wanted to approach the place with the utmost caution. Robbers or safe smashers would have their lookouts posted, and it was up to me to get at the inside operators before they had warning.

“I crawled in at the gate and worked along behind shrubbery. But I hadn’t got halfway to the house when I made out the dim forms of two men moving about. This was a tremendous relief, for I took them for the lookouts, and their being there showed I was in time: if the job was done they’d be gone. So I slid in among the bushes and crawled around to the rear of the house.

“The two doors at the back were locked, but I happened to think of the basement door, and on trying, found it was open.

“Luckily for me, my pocket flashlight still worked, and with it I was able to run through the dark basement and up the stairs, across the kitchen (which was also dark) and through the butler’s pantry. I bunted open the swing door and ran into the long room where we’d been sitting that same afternoon, but for a moment couldn’t see anything at all, there was such a strong light on. It dazzled me, and I suppose I must have stood with my electric torch pointing toward Mr. Haworth, as the last witness testified. I really have no idea which way it was pointing as I stood there blinded by the glare and trying to see. In a moment I made out Mr. Haworth standing near the table in the middle of the room lighting his pipe, and instantly started toward him, calling out his name. But just as I did so two gunshots blazed out from somewhere quite near—though I couldn’t say exactly where—and the poor fellow went down. I got to him just as the lights went out, but as my pocket light was still on I was able to see him, and I found he was dead.

“While I was there on the floor by his side I heard a sound from the butler’s pantry, and instantly got to my feet. My light was still on, but I switched it off after some little difficulty with it, and shouting out that nobody must touch anything—for I had the feeling there were people about and I knew the police would want everything left as it was—I hurried out of the house by the way I’d come in. As I got out into the air it began to dawn on me what trouble I’d be in if anyone saw me there and they couldn’t find the man who’d committed the crime. My only safety lay in getting out of Boston without being recognized, for if my presence there was known it would lead to their finding out that I’d jumped off the steamer, and that would put me in a terrible position—always supposing they couldn’t find the guilty man.

“I got around into Boston by way of Brookline, and in a poorly lighted side street I ran across a tough-looking bum wearing old and grimy clothing and carrying a considerable load of alcohol. I struck a bargain with him, and we exchanged clothes in an unlighted alley among factories closed for the night. He understood in a bleary way, that I’d fallen in the water and wanted a dry outfit, which, of course, was the truth—so far as it went.

“While I was hurriedly disguising myself in this way it suddenly came to me that my absence, when the passengers disembarked from the steamer North Land in New York, could hardly fail to be noticed. They’d have to file between the two ticket takers at the gangway, and pass down the gangplank under the watchful eyes of the ship’s officers—several of whom I’d come to know quite well. Harker and his son, leaving the steamer without me, would be more than likely to cause comment.

“It was then that I happened to think of the night expresses, which hadn’t left Boston yet and were due in New York two hours or more before the arrival time of the steamer. Why couldn’t I go back on one of them and manage, without being seen, to slip aboard the North Land from a rowboat the minute she docked? If I was seen doing this it would look bad, but no worse than if I wasn’t on the steamer at all. This way I had a chance—and as the testimony given here has shown, I took it.

“I appreciate the forbearance of the Court in permitting this extended recital—made, I confess, in the face of a realization that it cannot save me. But perhaps some time, long after this crowning error in the rather extended series of police blunders has been committed, the fact that it was an error may come to light—and——”

No more could be heard, for Mr. McVeigh was on his feet shouting objections. “I object, Your Honor, and I ask that the reference made by the accused to the police of this city be stricken from the record and the Jury instructed to disregard it!”

The Judge spoke in a voice that seemed especially low, coming after the District Attorney’s vociferous demands.

“That may be stricken out,” he said.

“Will the Court permit me to apologize?” Pentecost asked almost in a whisper and with evident contrition.

“What’s the sense of that?” snapped McVeigh. “It’s off the record—that’s all I want!”

But a man face to face with a death sentence is usually permitted some latitude, and the Judge indicated by a slight motion of the head that he could do so.

“Permit me then, Your Honor, to say that I regret having made use of the expressions I did, and certainly would not have done so had I been aware how sensitive the District Attorney is to the mere mention of the little spiritistic frolics with the Police Department that have recently taken place.”

Pentecost had finally got in a reference to the mediumistic phenomena which had played so amazing a part in the case—something he had been playing for a chance to do since taking the stand. This man’s statement before the court that was trying him was undoubtedly one of the most adroit pieces of pure and unadulterated chicane that he’d ever attempted—at any rate in that line. To fit an innocent and sympathetic tale like that to the multitude of incriminating facts established by the testimony against him;—to bring it out with just the pathetic hopelessness, exactly the sincerity and precisely the manner and inflection which would make every point tell and thus inspire confidence and pity, was something near to marvelous.

He knew well enough that it would do him no good in court, but he knew, too, that it would do him enormous good where he wanted it. The statement made little short of a sensation, and not alone with those who heard it, but with the millions who read it in the newspapers. To most people, of course, it seemed to explain everything. What if Pentecost couldn’t prove it? Let the Prosecution disprove it—that was the thing! How noble of him to say that the State’s witnesses told the truth—and then show exactly how it was! Etcetera,—etcetera.

In court, as I’ve indicated, it was another matter. The only thing Mr. Brookfield (for the Defense) could do, was to review the contradictions in which he’d skillfully entangled many of the witnesses for the prosecution, and end with an eloquent plea for the credibility of the Pentecost statement which agreed with the testimony given before the court at every point, and to challenge anyone, in court or out to find a flaw in it.

The District Attorney, of course, tore it all to pieces. He had declined to cross-examine the accused “after such a ridiculous and flimsy tale,” and took care of it in his summing up. The fact is—but no one was aware of it at the time—he had a decided disinclination to give the accused any further chances with the Jury.

“Here, gentlemen,” he said in his final argument, “we have an illustration—even in this extraordinary plan by a master mind in criminality—of the well-known fact that there’ll always be a weak spot somewhere—a little matter perhaps, but large enough to wreck the whole structure. This tale of the accused is based on the claim that the alibi was never planned beforehand, that it was developed on the impulse of the moment, an innocent person suddenly finding at eleven o’clock on the night of the murder that he might be brought under suspicion if it were known he left the steamer—and so he jumped on a train and managed to get back to it in time to come off with the passengers. An inspiration of the moment! Remember that, gentlemen! And now let us see if it’s the truth that he never thought of it before. Let us consider the behavior of the accused on previous trips, which, you will observe, were always made by the same steamer, although there was another on that line, and although there were three other lines of Boston boats—a choice of four steamers every day, not to speak of fifteen or twenty express trains, all bound for the same destination! But on this steamer North Land, which was chosen by the accused as the theatre in which to perform his alibi, we find from the testimony of eleven of its officers and crew, that he was sociable and talkative to the last degree, making acquaintance with everybody who might thereafter be able to testify that he was on board the vessel on that fatal night. Contrast this with what four witnesses have sworn to regarding the usual behavior of this same individual—that he was naturally silent, taciturn, not easily making acquaintances, not a man given to sociability, reserved, keeping his affairs to himself, never discussing them with outsiders,—and there you have it, gentlemen. He was a different being when on the steamer North Land on those previous trips, when he was planting his alibi; making himself and his alleged business of buying inventions known to everybody, jollying over cigars with the Captain and the Purser—and now telling us on the stand that he never thought of the alibi until after the murder!”

From this the District Attorney went back and recapitulated every point made by the prosecution during the trial, showing that not one of them had been disproved and that there wasn’t even a tremor in the finger of Justice, now extended, and pointing to the accused, Hugo Pentecost, as the guilty man.

As McVeigh was nearing the latter part of his closing argument, the Chief Inspector, followed by a messenger, returned to the court room and resumed his place at the attorneys’ table. At once he took a sheet of paper and began writing with evident haste. In a moment he bunched some papers he had brought with him and put them in a large envelope with the sheet on which he’d been writing. This packet he handed to the Court Messenger, who delivered it to the Judge.

Before closing his argument the District Attorney took up the “impertinent reference” made by the accused before this court to a series of blunders which he attributed to the Police Department of Boston, and called the attention of the Jury, and of all who had heard this slanderous implication, to the fact that there never yet was a murder case where doubt existed as to the guilty party, which was without false clues, and mistaken arrests.

From this he proceeded to a violent denunciation of Hugo Pentecost. “And if this insolent, swaggering fiend in human form” (I got the wording from the newspaper reports) “who coolly, with careful planning and infinite calculation, takes the life of an innocent—a gentle—a defenseless man;—this cowardly assassin who sends two bullets into his victim from behind, and for no other reason than to get a few thousand dollars away from him;—if he is now looking for another of those ‘spiritistic frolics’ to stand between him and retribution, he will look in vain; for even the so-called spirits—whatever they are—can’t help him now! It’s in your hands, gentlemen, to see that the strong right arm of the Law is stretched forth and this red-handed assassin is brought to the punishment he so richly deserves.”

At this point there came to pass one of those curious coincidences—a real and bona-fide one, for it couldn’t have been laid out beforehand even by a master-criminal mind, though such a mind may have figured there was an off chance on it.

For a few moments during the latter part of the District Attorney’s summing up, the faint but strident calls of an “extra” from far down Washington Street could have been heard in the court room—a babel of boyish voices coming through the open windows. This increased in volume, and as the newsboys came running into Scollay Square and up into Tremont and Court Streets, there was a sudden burst of high-pitched shouting, so that following right on Mr. McVeigh’s climactic outburst, “Even the so-called spirits—whatever they are—can’t help him now!” came the screams of the newsboys below: “E-x-t-r-e-e! Spirit message!”—“Spirit Message in the Haworth Case!”—“E-x-t-r-e-e!”—“Haworth’s Spirit Speaks!”—“Message from Haworth!”—“E-x-t-r-e-e!” and so on until the shouts grew fainter again as the boys ran down Sudbury and Hanover Streets toward the North Station, and West and South on Beacon and Tremont.

When the attention of the spectators was again directed to the court proceedings, they realized that everything had stopped. A consultation at the Bench was in progress. All the attorneys concerned and the Chief Inspector were there, evidently having been called up by the Judge.

A peculiar stillness had settled over the place. Charged with electricity it seemed, the tension increasing every moment. Some foolish ones wondered if the newsboys, shouting about another spirit message, could have affected the Court. Once—and not such a time ago at that—the calling of such a piece of news on the streets would have excited only derision. None of that now! Even the pooh-poohers had stopped their pooh-poohing. Too many astounding things!

A sudden straining to see and hear as the Chief Inspector and the attorneys went back to their places, the Inspector leaving the court room immediately afterward.

The Judge sat motionless a few moments, apparently in thought. After that he examined again some of the papers that had been submitted. Finally he rose and turned to the Jury and the twelve men composing it came to their feet at the same instant and stood facing him. Then the Judge, in a voice so subdued that it could scarcely be heard in the further parts of the room, thanked them for the time and labor they had contributed to the cause of justice, and proceeded to remind them that the world we live in is a place of considerable uncertainty, and that in Courts of Law the unexpected is a frequent—and sometimes a welcome—visitor.

Everyone could hear him now, which resulted not so much from the raising of his voice a trifle as from the stillness prevailing. “In the case before us, gentlemen,” he went on, “the arrival of this visitor, the unexpected, must be regarded as most opportune, for it is the means of removing all doubt as to the guilt, or freedom from guilt, of the accused. Mr. Foreman and Gentlemen: Certain facts have just now been called to the attention of myself and counsel, which indicate beyond any question or doubt that this defendant is innocent of the crime with which he is charged; and I therefore instruct you to bring in a verdict of Not Guilty.”

A moment later the Clerk of the Court was saying: “Hugo Pentecost, look upon the Jury; Jurors, look upon the defendant.—Mr. Foreman and Gentlemen: in the case of the Commonwealth against Hugo Pentecost have you agreed upon a verdict?”

“We have,” the Foreman answered.

“What say you, Mr. Foreman: is the defendant, Hugo Pentecost, guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty,” answered the Foreman. And after the swearing of the Jury in the usual form, Hugo Pentecost was informed that he was hereby discharged and could go “without day” unless held on some other process.

On the evening before these final proceedings, and at a time approaching the hour of midnight, a private “circle” in West Philadelphia was about to adjourn. Mr. Ernest Everett Blatchford, well known among the spiritists of that region as a talented and highly successful materializationist and trance medium, had brought about during the evening a number of visits from the other side, and in all but two the spirit had become visible to human eyes—in a shadowy way.

As the director or assistant (I’m not sure what they call those people) turned to switch on the lights, there came strange muffled cries issuing from the darkness in the further part of the room, and a cold musty current of air breathed across the circle of “sitters.” At the same instant a whitish cloud appeared, faintly wavering in the darkness. It rapidly grew in size and seemed to be trying to shape itself into something resembling the human form. Vague suggestions of a man’s face began to appear in the misty cloudiness, the features gradually forming themselves, like the fade-in of a picture; and when, as it came to be more and more distinct, somebody whispered the name of Charles Haworth, there were several involuntary gasps of astonishment and a breathless “Oh!” or two could be heard. The papers had used his picture so often (taken for that first write-up in a Boston “Magazine Section”) that there was no difficulty about the recognition after the whispered name had started it. (No one ever traced that important whisper to its source.)

In a few moments it was seen that the lips of the apparition were moving—yet no sound came. The cloudlike human form with a face resembling Haworth’s, was trying to speak.

A voice from somewhere in the circle—a man’s voice—was heard asking, “Isn’t this Mr. Haworth?” and the head resembling Haworth’s nodded slowly in affirmation. Almost at once some sort of a sound was heard—confused and broken, as though pushed through a barrier that gave way, and after that the spirit began to speak in a low voice and with what seemed like a sort of eager breathlessness. “Machine!—Machine!—Machine!” repeated over and over many times more than that, was what it said, and between two of them a loud whisper came from somewhere in or near the circle, “It’s Haworth’s voice!” and an answering whisper, forceful and penetrating, “Yes—oh yes!—His own voice!” So that everybody knew, though they’d never seen the man Haworth nor heard him speak, that it was he now appearing before them.

For some time the apparition or spirit—if that’s what it was—seemed unable to utter anything more than this repetition of the word “Machine,” and the director and some others, although they asked encouraging questions, proved unable to get anything further.

But again some sort of obstruction was seemingly overcome, for after many unsuccessful attempts, the voice suddenly broke out with: “In the wall!—In the wall!—In the wall!—Why don’t they look? It’s there! The Machine! Find it!—Find it!—Make the court wait!—That man—that man—nothing—nothing—nothing to do with it—nothing—nothing! Nobody can hear me in Boston—I can just reach this one—but not for long! Tell them the wall—inside the wall—that same room—further end—the machine—papers on the pendulum!—the pendulum!—Papers!—Oh——I’m going!—” (The voice becoming faint and far away) “—I can’t hold out—and I want to speak to someone else—oh, I do—I do——” and nothing more could be heard.

The voice was growing weaker and the features were dissolving back into mistiness even while he spoke; and in a moment there was only the whitish floating haze which seemed rapidly drawing itself to a point, at which it wavered for a moment and then flickered out in the blackness.

No reporters were present at this séance nor were the Philadelphia police keeping an eye on mediumistic activities; and as it was already after two in the morning, no one who’d been there took it upon himself to communicate with anybody as to what had come through. It was consequently nearly eleven o’clock the following morning before news of it reached the Boston newspaper offices; and an effort made later to find out who sent the news met with no success. Whoever it was completely ignored the police. Not a word of this astounding communication from the alleged spirit of Charles Haworth was wired or telephoned to them. Their first intimation that anything of interest had taken place in West Philadelphia came from the newspaper “extras” on the streets.

The Department—as it had in another and similar instance—got particulars without giving it away that this was the first they’d heard of it. And so important did the matter seem that the Inspector was called out of the court room. And so important did it seem to the Inspector that he proceeded with the utmost speed and a bunch of detectives to the Cripps mansion. Reporters were kept outside the line that had been established.

Within twenty minutes after the Inspector’s arrival with his gang, the rear end of the wall of the room on the left was what you might call a near ruin, and a most extraordinary mechanical arrangement that had been constructed within it was exposed to view.

The first, and it might be said the most striking, thing they had come upon as they were ripping the lath and plaster away and prying off the heavy paneling, was a 44 Colt revolver bolted to the studding (the upright timbers within the wall) just behind one of the panels of the wainscot, and down within eighteen inches of the floor. It was bolted so securely as to be absolutely immovable, and was aimed straight out into the room. The husky plain-clothes man who smashed away the panel in front of it was seen to spring suddenly to one side.

“Careful now!” the Inspector shouted, as he came running. “Keep away from that!” he yelled to the other men who were coming over to see. And they were ordered well to one side while the two working there reached over and ripped away the panels above and on each side of the one that had concealed the gun.

It took but a few minutes to expose the whole thing: a simple but ingenious device built in there for firing two revolvers at nearly the same instant—discharging them about twelve minutes from the time the mechanism was set in motion. The second gun, a matter of six inches below the other, was behind the same panel, but hadn’t been noticed at first as it was so close to the floor—just clearing the panel frame at the bottom.

They found that this panel—the one concealing the guns—had been made to slide up and down, the guides holding it on the inside so there was no evidence of them in sight; when pushed up, the muzzles of the revolvers were exposed; when dropped down into place, they were hidden. And so carefully had this sliding panel been handled that no scratch or abrasion could be found on its surface, nor did it differ in any way, so far as appearances went, from the other panels in the wainscoting; neither did it display the slightest evidence of being movable—which, indeed, it was not, after the discharge of the revolvers; for on dropping down into place it automatically locked itself by the swinging across the top of it, of a block of wood on a pivot—all within the wall, of course. To get it open again it was necessary to push this block away from the inside.

Both guns were immovably aimed to throw bullets directly across the middle of the room and out through the upper part of the window at the front; and as they were set so low down, the course of the bullets would be upward. A man of a certain height standing at a certain spot near the center of the room would get the bullet from the upper revolver through the head and from the lower one through the heart—if he could stand there long enough after the shot from the first one—hardly more, probably, than half a second.

The mechanism which—twelve minutes from its starting—fired the revolvers, and at the same time released the movable panel and allowed it to slide down into place and automatically to lock itself there, was an escapement device with a pendulum swinging to seconds. About halfway of the fifteenth revolution of the escape-wheel (a very large one carrying fifty teeth or jump-cogs) the powerful springs that connected with the two rods—one to the trigger of each revolver—were released, which discharged the guns nearly, but not quite, simultaneously, and on the next jump of the escape-wheel a lever pulled back the catch that held the sliding panel up, allowing it to drop down and close the opening. It locked itself there automatically as I’ve explained.

There were many minor arrangements to safeguard and insure the perfect operation of the device, such as the weighting (on the inside) of the sliding panel; the carrying of the rope that unwound from a drum on the main shaft, up through a pulley at the top, so the heavy weight attached to it would have room to descend in that space—for of course it couldn’t go below the floor; the setting of the two revolvers at the place where the wall of the breakfast room joined this rear wall of the room on the left, so that, as they were too long for the normal wall thickness, their butts might project back into the transverse wall.

The whole device had been built in through a large aperture from the basement below, and on completion of the job this opening was closed up with the very same old grimy boarding, and even fastened in place with the same ancient and rusted nails driven into their original holes, that had been taken out of them. Even the rust on the nail heads where the hammer would strike them was undisturbed; safeguarded probably by the use of a cushion of leather or blotting-paper.

It was evident that the machine couldn’t have been set going on its final performance, from the basement, for by no possibility could the opening down there have been closed with all the care required, within the twelve minutes between the starting and the automatic discharge of the guns. Undoubtedly the sliding panel was opened from below and held open (that is, up) by its catch, and the block above adjusted to swing in when it next slid down; and after that, at whatever time it was desired to start the pendulum on its last gruesome swing, it would only be necessary to reach in through the open panel in the room on the left, and give it a shove. That was all. There would be twelve minutes left for reading awhile and then lighting a pipe.

Of course all these small details weren’t figured out by the police until afterward. The Inspector was there to learn what there was, if anything, to the latest alleged spirit message, and they found it of such vital import, too, that it required instant action. No time to be wasted on conjectures as to the method of starting. There it was——The Machine! And secured to its great pendulum which, you might say, ticked Charles Haworth to his death, was the envelope of papers.

Quick investigation followed; the Inspector raced back to town; the newly discovered evidence was brought to the Judge’s attention; his conference with the attorneys and the Inspector followed, and after that came the Court’s instructions to the Jury and the Jury’s verdict in accordance therewith.

The large envelope which they found lashed securely to the great pendulum contained three instruments or documents—the Last Will and Testament of Charles Michael Haworth; a Statement made by Charles Michael Haworth; and an Insurance Policy on the life of Charles Michael Haworth. The Statement had been sworn to before a Notary Public (of course without his learning anything of its purport) three days before Haworth’s death, and was to the effect that he intended within a week to take his own life and to do it by means of a mechanical contrivance which he, and he alone, had devised and built for that purpose; that no one but himself was in any way connected with, or responsible for, this determination on his part, or involved in its carrying out, for he had built the device with the utmost secrecy, locking himself into a room in the basement of the house while at work on it, and allowing no one to come near. His housekeeper, Mrs. Amelia Temple, had, he stated, been aware of his labor in this room night and day for nearly two weeks, though she could have had no knowledge of the character of the work he was doing; and the butler, James Dreek, could not have been aware that anything of the kind existed, as he arrived after the completion of the machine and its sealing up inside the wall.

He then went on to speak of the property he was leaving, mentioning the eighteen-thousand-dollar Insurance Policy and the thirty-five thousand dollars which was to be paid him by the firm of Harker & Pentecost of New York, for one of his inventions which the said firm had purchased—“a combination gas and compressed-air engine.” Following that was only a brief paragraph to the effect that a little something might be realized from the sale of a few pieces of machinery that were still in his possession—but nothing worth writing down.

The statement ended with that, but he had written a few lines on the margin three days after it had been signed and sworn to. “This is to say,” he wrote in a hand without sign of tremor (and it must have been only a few hours before he reached in and set swinging that pendulum of death), “that the Messrs. Harker & Pentecost have now paid what was due me from them ($35,000) which amount (less the sum of $500 that I have taken from it for a certain present requirement), as it is in bills, and as Mr. Pentecost has cautioned me that there is danger of robbery, I have had James Dreek conceal in the stone foundation at the northeast corner of the barn in the rear of this house.” And to this marginal memorandum he signed his initials.

The will was simple and brief. After payment of debts, only two bequests. “To my faithful and beloved friend Amelia Temple” was left the sum of five thousand dollars—and the statement followed that all the money in the world could not wipe out the debt he owed her. The rest of his property went to Edith Carrington Findlay.

By this time you are likely to be aware that Mr. Hugo Pentecost of the firm of Harker & Pentecost, Promoters, had something to do with the unusual happenings in what might be a trifle incorrectly spoken of as the Haworth Homicide Case. I’m inclined to doubt, though, whether you quite appreciate the extent of his work. To say that he was behind every move in the whole affair comes near to putting it mildly.

When, on his first visit to the mansion, he went down into the basement with Charles Haworth and got an idea of what the desperate and half-crazed young man proposed to do, and the instrument with which he intended to accomplish it, even he, a person never known to be disturbed by danger, horror, or dilemma of any description, was near to the experience of amazement. This, though, didn’t prevent him from jumping in at once and making an earnest effort to dissuade the young inventor from carrying out his gruesome enterprise. The realization that Haworth couldn’t be persuaded out of it—indeed, that he was in a mad frenzy to carry it through if only for the insurance money—struck Pentecost at about the same time that there flashed into his mind a most extraordinary “operation” that could be carried on in connection with it. A born adventurer and intrepid explorer in the shady mazes of criminality, keen for danger in unusual forms, to be baffled by unusual and skillfully contrived defenses, with, of course, the chances of a good haul to make it financially interesting, he was hardly the man to throw down an unbelievably attractive proposition when he had it in his hand.

Mr. Harker added his own protests the first time he was at the house on Torrington Road. He watched his opportunity and got Haworth aside—for he didn’t want his partner to know what he was up to—and did his best to induce the young fellow to abandon the grisly idea that seemed to have taken possession of him.

In the ordinary run of things, the only course left to the firm was to turn a person having such unlawful designs on himself, over to the police. But this happened not to be in the ordinary run of things. It was distinctly extraordinary. Furthermore the firm alluded to wasn’t in the business of turning unlawfully behaving citizens over to the police. Quite and much otherwise. And the reason for this was because it was composed of two conscienceless crime experts, one of them—the controlling member—a consummate operator in strategic chicanery if there ever was one on the earth.

Neither of the methods that Haworth had in mind for profiting by the tragic act to which he was apparently driven by some desperate need, had met the approval of Mr. Pentecost. One was based on a life insurance policy which the young inventor had recently taken out, having, by inquiry, found a company which was supposed to pay in such cases; the other depended on the sale of a motion picture which should be taken of the actual occurrence—showing not only the operation of the machine, but, as well, depicting its frightful consequence. But this master crook had declared himself willing to give both these things a fair try-out and with every advantage he was able to command, if the young man would consent, in return, to have his own (Pentecost’s) extraordinary scheme go into operation. He would play Haworth’s ideas to the limit, even though it involved the taking of the picture himself—for he wasn’t going to let any of his men in for a job like that. The ghastly situation might send any one of them up in the air.

Mr. Pentecost’s scheme, which had struck him like a blow while Haworth was explaining the working of the Machine, concerned and depended upon the alleged spirits of the dead, as known through and represented by persons who called themselves mediums; and it took him into a field he’d long desired to negotiate—one where the hunting, he happened to know, was exceedingly good. Furthermore, his astounding method of handling the mediumistic output involved, was beyond anything dreamed of before.

You are doubtless acquainted with the fact that information concerning the lives and the families of more or less prominent people who have made the crossing to the other side—or who, for various undesirable reasons, are expected soon to make it—is dealt in by a number of bureaus or clearing houses for that class of goods. High prices are paid by their customers (the mediums) for information of value, and if the bureaus haven’t anything in stock as to the life and characteristics of a person called for, they have facilities for getting it without delay.

But this thing of Pentecost’s, although of a decidedly spiritistic nature, was by no means a matter of information about dead people; on the contrary, it involved the sale to mediums of information which dead people could get across—through them—about the living, and under the most unusual circumstances. That’s where the great mercantile possibilities came in, the operation of his scheme giving these spirit communications such astonishing advertising value to mediums who passed them through, that they’d pay almost any price to get them—if they had it. In addition to this price down (on delivery as you might say) he’d take—in each case and for a limited time—a slice of the increased business which was sure to follow.

It would have been entirely possible to sell out his “spirit information” in a lump to one of the bureaus, but by handling it personally he could take advantage of the immense increase in advertising value as the Haworth case attracted more and more attention.

To give these “messages” or “communications” an enormously high market value was the object of the entire operation. What such value means to professional mediums is realized by very few outside of spiritist circles. I’m referring, of course, to those who practise the methods alluded to. It has been said that there are others in the spirit game who go perfectly straight and have a great time believing every word they say; but if such is the case I don’t know where they live.

A regular—or professional—medium will sometimes make a small fortune on one skillful (and lucky) performance. To attract wealthy clients, preferably those who have been hypnotized by the loss of those who are dear to them—that’s the top of the game. And it’s the unusual—the extraordinary—manifestations that do it. Taking this into consideration, you will understand why the Pentecost messages, before he got through with them, had run up into the twenty and thirty thousands each. From asking three thousand in Montreal, and six of Mrs. Belden in Boston, the price went up by jumps of five thousand. This, together with the rake-off on increased business for two years from every medium in the game, put Harker & Pentecost nicely to the good—even though quite vast expenses, including the Haworth money, had to come out of it.

Using his gang of picked sharps (his correspondents you might call them in the big cities) Pentecost could cull out the mediums who had the money, and make his cash sales without difficulty; this same gang also made prompt payment of percentages as near a certainty as such things ever come. Extraordinary experiences in misfortune would overtake anyone in any town or in any part of the country who tried to hold back on him. And they knew it. It was made strikingly evident to them by the “agents” who, under instructions, engineered the sales and delivered the “spirit” messages at the precise time required.

As to the vital matter of secrecy, no leakage could possibly occur, for the very simple reason that there was nothing to leak. Not a medium in the lot had the faintest idea where “the goods” came from nor what was the manner of their origination. Even had one of them known, it would hardly have been cause for alarm; this owing to the fact that the basic principle in their guild is the keeping of things dark.

Now you have the key to the whole affair. With it—if you haven’t been picking the locks as we went along—you gentlemen can let yourselves in on what the man was playing for at any stage of the game; and how it came to pass that everybody concerned—public, police, witnesses for the prosecution, reporters, editors, spiritists, jurors, lawyers, even the District Attorney himself, and the Chief Inspector with his choice assortment of plain-clothes men, were dancing for Hugo Pentecost according as he pulled the strings. What was it if not that? Anyway, you have the facts—call it what you like. And don’t imagine, when I speak of this man’s scheme, that this consummate operator had a set and rigid plan to be followed whether or no. On the contrary, his arrangements were elastic to an extreme degree. If you’ll notice how it went, he played each part of the thing as far as it would safely go, and then pulled it back to the line with a voice from the tomb, as you might say. Where one of several things might happen he had substitute plays for each, every one carried back to the safety point in whatever direction it went. Had old Mrs. Temple persisted in her refusal to testify, notwithstanding the appealing spirit messages he’d carefully planted, he was ready to work in another witness to the murder, to Dreek’s being outside the house at the time, and to his own presence in the room aiming the terrible black object (which was, of course, the movie camera) at Haworth as the poor fellow stood lighting his pipe. If the head end trainman hadn’t remembered getting him off the day coach at the Grand Central Terminal in New York, and had failed to recognize the boots he had shoved off the seat so many times, there was a waiter at the lunch counter of the restaurant on the lower level who would answer all purposes, owing to his (Pentecost’s) unusual behavior while getting a cup of coffee at that place.

The extreme importance of wrecking the alibi at the time required, caused him to deal it two simultaneous smashes, either one of which would have done the trick—barring accident. The boots might not have been kept in the Lost Property Department of the Eastern Steamship Lines, Inc. On the bare chance of their having been thrown away, Operator’s License 2026 would bring the chauffeur into the case; up to then he could have had no idea that his fare to Boston on that fateful night was Hugo Pentecost. If Augustus Findlay had failed to take his revolver with him as he plunged madly away from the house, the fight in Collamore Street almost directly under Mr. Rathbun’s window would have gone on just the same; the only readjustment being that Pentecost’s man would have picked up the gun wherever Findlay dropped it—whether at the mansion or on the road—and brought it along, making it appear in the struggle that he got it away from the terrified boob; so there it would be, finger marks and all, ready to shove up in the water conductor. And if you imagine that it was any kind of an accident when Mr. Pentecost tipped up his pocket flashlight and gave the old woman a glimpse of his face as she came toward him in the pitch-dark room just after the Machine had done its deadly work; or that the roller shades being not quite down was a matter of chance; or a hundred and one things like that, call it off and take a new start.

I saw it troubled both you gentlemen when that carefully constructed alibi began to crumble. The first thing that occurred to you must have been an inquiry as to why all the trouble and ingenuity expended on planting it, if an old pair of boots or an operator’s license was going to throw it down. But your second thought was undoubtedly quite different, for unless I’m mistaken, you soon realized that not only was that fake alibi one of the most effective advertising nuts for the spirits to crack, but vastly more important than that, it was the veritable backbone that was to hold up the entire Pentecost operation. Without it they’d have picked him up that same night or early the next morning, and the mediums—with the possible exception of Mr. Ernest Everett Blatchford of West Philadelphia—wouldn’t have had any play at all.

If you’re financially minded, it might seem unbelievable that two such seasoned sharps as Harker and Pentecost would let a thirty-five-thousand bundle of bills go out of their hands with the chance against them that the Machine might not function or that Haworth wouldn’t stand up to the grisly game he’d set himself to play. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if the young fellow, when he got right up against it, were to go mad; indeed, both partners had a notion he was half there already. But do you notice that this money never did go out of their hands—that, as the crucial time approached, Pentecost had Dreek outside the house where he could instantly seize on it at a signal from inside—and that he himself was inside?

But neither this nor the taking of the motion picture accounted so much for Pentecost’s presence in the room at the crucial moment as the absolute necessity of his being seen there by a competent witness in order to make the case against him have the look of being incontestable. His trial for murder was the final play, and he’d begun laying lines for it at his very first interview with the Inspector, adroitly behaving, on that occasion, in a manner calculated to awaken the suspicion that he’d been connected in some way with the crime, even though the alibi—at that time unshaken and to all appearances unshakable—blocked any idea of his having committed it himself.

I won’t go any further with small details as to Pentecost’s methods of operation. But I’ll ask you to take it from me that from the time he staggered—to all appearances a semi-intoxicated coal heaver or something like that—into telephone booth 19 at the South Station in Boston, just before boarding the night train for New York, and calling up Pemberton Square (that is to say, headquarters) told the official in charge that a man named Pentecost who was supposed to have embarked for New York that afternoon on the Steamer North Land had been seen near the Haworth house just before the murder that evening, and suggested that it might be a good idea to have the New York police verify this on arrival of the steamer there (thus, as you’ll see, making his alibi official in a certain sense by bringing in the New York detectives as witnesses to it), to the moment of his having himself put on the witness stand and reciting his fake statement before the court, his hand never for one instant left the throttle.

Notwithstanding all this, he found time, during that stressful period, without personally appearing in the matter or indeed ever meeting her, to have everything possible attended to for Edith Findlay. All things tending to her comfort and well-being were arranged for: a nurse brought from the hospital to take care of her and manage everything about the house; Augustus Findlay permanently eliminated by having such a fright thrown into him that the entire continent of North America was thenceforth relieved of his weight upon it, with South America standing a good chance of equal immunity; and finally (it was some weeks before the Pentecost trial came on) her departure, with little Mildred and two nurses, to one of the most highly recommended places in the Austrian Alps.

At once after his acquittal Mr. Pentecost did his best—as he’d promised Haworth he would—with the $18,000 life insurance and the more than gruesome “movie”—which he had himself taken. The former he succeeded in collecting after a campaign of sharp practice devoted to it; the latter—as he’d figured from the start—stood no chance with censors and the inter-state people. He got a few thousand for it from the “bootleggers” of padlocked films who smuggle them across state lines and put them in the “private show” programs. These things, with the $51,000, and odd which was Haworth’s share on his percentage of profits on the game, more than doubled the total of deposits to the credit of Edith Findlay in the bank which had been designated to take care of her property. While no mention of this percentage was made in the contract between Haworth and the firm, it was one of those things that Pentecost would have paid though it reduced him to penury.

When you say—as you’re more or less liable to if I give you the chance—that this man was a surprising combination of characteristics, you will have spoken the truth. Not quite so surprising, though, when you come to reflect that every man is that—more or less—if he has any characteristics worth considering.

And while we’re speaking of it, it’s just as well for you to know that the man was taking all this care of Edith Findlay’s interests—as well as of Edith Findlay herself, solely and entirely because of Haworth. Something about the fellow had appealed to him in a peculiar way.

As the matter stood there was no possibility of Edith’s ever knowing that the money coming to her—aside from the insurance—was other than the amounts realized from the sale of one of Haworth’s mechanical inventions. This was shown by Haworth’s contract with the firm and by the receipt he gave for the cash payment, as well as implied in his statement and will. The tragic truth of the matter, which might have affected her disastrously both mentally and physically, as well as undoubtedly preventing her from touching a penny of the inheritance, was safely locked up with the firm of Harker & Pentecost.

For several months all went well. According to the doctors there, Edith’s condition was improving. Then a cable that was rather disquieting. A slight turn for the worse. Probably only temporary. Must expect ups and downs.

This talk about temporary ups and downs was nothing to Pentecost. He found, after some drastic searching, a high-up specialist who would go over. He felt that an American patient ought to have an American doctor. Whatever you say, races are different and need different treatment.

He met the doctor at the steamer on his return and they had a talk in the latter’s cabin while the baggage was coming off. The gist of the physician’s report was that while Mrs. Findlay was in a much better condition as far as the disease itself was concerned, and ought to go right on improving, her present mental activity was holding her back. This had not been the case heretofore, as the shock of the affair had, in a certain sense, stunned her. For several months she seemed hazy about it all, but recently things were becoming clearer to her, which was unfortunate. Everything was being done to divert her mind, but it was an obstinate case—she didn’t want it diverted.

“What does she want?” Pentecost inquired.

“Well—it amounts to this: She’s made up her mind to die and so far there’s no shaking her determination.”

“I wish I had her here,” said Pentecost.

Two weeks after that a cable reached him signed by Edith Findlay herself, begging him to come over as soon as he possibly could—utmost importance that she see him before the end, which was near.

He was on the next steamer going out.

Mr. Pentecost was sitting by the side of her bed. The nurse had told her his name before he came in, but for quite a time she couldn’t remember who he was or why he was there. Perceiving this, the nurse came in from the adjoining room and explained that it was the gentleman who’d been so kind in attending to everything for her, and that he’d come all the way from New York because she’d asked to see him.

“Oh, you—you came from America!” Her voice was faint and far away.

He said “Yes” softly.

The nurse had retired again to the next room.

“Did——” Edith glanced about searching for some one—then her eyes came back to him. “Did he come with you?”

“No.”

“Isn’t that strange!” She spoke hardly above a whisper. “Oh, it is so strange! But he’s coming! He’s coming just as soon as he sets up the machine and regulates it—that was in the contract you know!”

“Yes Mrs. Findlay, but it’ll take quite a while yet.”

“Oh, will it? It seems so long! I can’t understand why they keep him so long!”

“You mustn’t worry yourself about it.”

“Oh no—no, I mustn’t! But it does seem as if they’d be through by this time!” She lay quiet for a little—her eyes closed. Then suddenly turning her head on the pillow she looked at him again.

“How long did it take to get here?” she asked.

“Ten days, but I didn’t get a very fast steamer.”

“Yes, I see. Maybe he took a slow one. But I’m expecting him very soon now—very soon.”

She went on for a little, asking questions about the detention of the one she expected—the length of time it would take to regulate the machine he’d sold—whether a fast steamer would be leaving when it was finished, and other fancies like that, to all of which Pentecost replied briefly and in a low voice. He was waiting his chance.

She’d been lying back against the pillows, but rather suddenly in the midst of her questioning she stopped and sat up erect in the bed, staring at him. “Oh——” she finally breathed. “I thought you—I didn’t know——Are you Mr. Pentecost?”

“Yes, Mrs. Findlay.”

“They—they said so, but I didn’t seem to——” She glanced about, thinking; then her eyes were fixed on him again. “You were so good to come,” she whispered painfully.

He saw that the merciless memories were coming back to her.

“You—you can be such a help to me—if you will—such a help! It’s something that——” She broke off, and raising her head a little from the pillow, glanced at the door into the nurse’s room. “Would you shut it, please?”

Pentecost carefully closed the door—then returned to his chair by her side.

“I want to ask you to do something for me, Mr. Pentecost—because—you see—they think I’m going to get well—but it isn’t so—no,” (shaking her head a little on the pillow) “it isn’t so.”

Pentecost sat looking at her with a peculiar glint in his prominent eyes, but said nothing.

“I tell you,” she went on after a momentary pause, “because you—you’re the only one I can trust.”

“Where did you get that idea?”

“He told me. It was in a letter he left. He said you were his friend, the only friend he had except the old woman who took care of him, and that I must trust you in everything.”

“In view of this, Mrs. Findlay, tell me in what way I can be of service?”

“Mr. Pentecost, what will become of my little Mildred?”

“It strikes me” (in a suddenly sharp, penetrating voice) “you’re the one to answer that.”

She looked at him in amazement.

“I?” she finally asked in a faint voice.

“Who else?” he inquired. “Aren’t you the one who’s proposing to abandon her?”

“Abandon——!” (With a slight gasp.) “Why——How——You don’t mean——”

“Well what would you call it?”

“No—no—no! Oh, wait! Let me tell you!” (With all her earnestness she could hardly do more than whisper.) “Oh, I couldn’t stay—I don’t want to!” She shook her head a little on the pillow. “He’s gone—gone! The thought of it is killing me. I want to go. I want to be where he is!”

“How do you know where he is?” Pentecost’s voice cut in like a knife.

She stared at him in astonishment.

“My religion tells me that, Mr. Pentecost,” she whispered, reverently.

“And does this religion of yours omit to tell you where your daughter is?”

“Oh yes—yes!—that’s why I wanted to see you. That’s why I——” She broke off and glanced distressfully about the room.

“You seem to have made up your mind to leave her,” Pentecost observed.

Edith was silent.

“Aren’t the living of some consequence,” he went on, “or is it only the dead we have to consider?”

“No no—that’s wrong! I hadn’t forgotten her! Oh, how can you think such a thing, when it was about her that I wanted to see you—just about her—nothing else!”

“What can I do?”

“I hope—I hope you’ll consent to take her—to take care of her! I don’t know who else to ask—and he told me to trust in you—about everything. If I can only know she’ll be with you I shall die happy!”

Pentecost suddenly turned and blazed out upon her—something as he used to do in the Chicago days when he leaped, tigerlike, on a victim in the witness stand.

“What is it to me whether you die happy or not! Whatever I can do in this affair I’m doing on account of someone else—not for you Mrs. Findlay! You cut no figure with me—why in God’s name should you? I’ve never laid eyes on you before—and now I come to see you it looks to me like a cursed low-down play you’re making, that while I’m doing my best to carry out everything he wanted, you’re lying here doing your best to block his game! That’s just what you’re doing, Mrs. Findlay,—pitching the fulfillment of his most vital wish into the discard!”

“Why I——Why you——” She couldn’t go on.

“Look, then—look at this! The one thing in the world he wanted money for—the reason he was mad and crazy and demented to sell his machine and get it, was so he could send you here and do everything on earth to save your life! He lived for that—nothing else—it was the one thought that possessed him! He made a will to make it certain that—if anything happened to him—the money would be used for that and nothing else. And after all this—which you know as well as I do, I come over here and find you deliberately throwing away all he worked for and hoped for and—for all I know—prayed for. Of course if you’re bound to go against it I’ll do what I can about the child—though God knows the little one needs you. It all rests with you, Mrs. Findlay. The head medical sharp that came over, tells me it isn’t the disease that’s killing you—it’s yourself. He says you’ve made up your mind to die—you’re determined to do it—and that play’s certainly going to take the trick if you sit in the game long enough. It’s up to you to quit that if you want to do the right thing by the dead——and by the living.”

Pentecost rose and took her thin little hand in his. “I’ll say good-by, Mrs. Findlay,” he said in an altered tone. “They’ll keep me informed” (motioning toward the nurse’s room) “of which way the cards fall, and I’ll act accordingly.”

As he reached the door he thought he heard her call to him faintly, and went back to see if it was so. She was looking up at him as he stood by the bed, and tried to speak—but only her lips moved. He bent nearer to catch what she said.

“I’ll try,” she whispered.

He took her hand again.

“There’s some sense to that Mrs. Findlay,” he said; and after looking down into her eyes a moment he laid her hand back on the coverlet where he’d found it, and quietly left the room.

It was still early enough to get the afternoon train out—which he did.

A few days short of a month after Mr. Pentecost’s brief visit to the Austrian Alps, he walked, one wintry afternoon, into the office of the firm, having come direct from a trans-Atlantic steamer—just docked. Wasting no more time on salutations than he usually did—which was precisely none at all, he quickly got Harker into the small inner office—sometimes referred to by the staff as the dissecting room—and after pushing him into a chair and drawing one for himself close to it, began talking to him in tones that were subdued to the limit.

“We’re moving the office to London,” he said, “—and inside of twenty-one days. I’ve got something I want to put on over there. I’ll need most of the office force—especially Finch Dugas—and I’m taking eleven of the boys.” (By which he meant his “trusties.”)

“What’s the matter,” Harker inquired; “can’t you play it with the natives?”

“You’re dippy! Hasn’t the Yard got their numbers?”

“Sure—the Yard’s got everything. And take it from me if you’re going up against that layout you’ve got to watch your step and then some!”

“Now, Roxy—you’ve hit on the one thing that’s doing the pull on me. As I was over on that side I thought I’d come home by way of London and take a look around. While I was doing it a little something crossed my mind that looked to me as if it might interest ’em. That being so, we play it.”

“Don’t say we. Maybe you’ll play it, I don’t know; but if this London scheme you’re pulling off is one of your favorite flirtations with the undertaker, I declare myself out of it here and now. I can get myself nicely hung in the U. S. A. without going abroad for it—and I’d just as soon patronize home industries.”

“Not a killing to it I give you my word,” Pentecost assured him. “We play a corpse for two or three moves, but it’s handed to us—no chance of a line across—they’ll have the guy that did it. Now every one of us comes in from different places—I go round and get across from Stockholm—you and Dugas make it from Rio—plenty of time as you don’t play in till near the finish. Kennedy makes it from Holland—” and he went on laying out the “game” with Harker to the uttermost detail.

Three days later Pentecost (but not as Pentecost) embarked on a Swedish-American Line steamer. Harker was at the dock getting final instructions (of course he was going in on it as Pentecost knew he would), and there was a vast lot of things to do in a limited time.

The two stood talking on the pier, hidden by piled-up crates and boxes, yet only a short distance from the gangplank so that Pentecost could go on board at the last moment. When they had about finished up matters connected with the London “operation,” Harker happened to think of something.

“Oh—by the way,” he said; “how was that lady you went over to see?”

“Not so well,” Pentecost muttered in a way that suggested aversion to talking about it.

But Harker, not affected by this, cheerfully pursued the subject.

“Going to die?” he asked.

“Had it all fixed to.” (Speaking very shortly.)

“Who? Who do you mean had it fixed?”

“She did.”

“Oh—I see—she wanted to.”

“Yes, and her wanting was doing it. The doctors were hunting some way to shake her up, and left it to me. So I went in and gave her a jolt or two that might change her mind.”

“What did you say?”

“Anything I could grab off the line.”

“Then she’s going to get well, is she?”

“How the hell do I know?”

Pentecost had put an end to the subject with that, but after a silence of some little time, he went on,—and Harker took notice of a most unusual softness in his voice.

“D’you know what I’d do, Hark, if I had it to do again—that is, if I knew what it was that was eating him?”

Harker—surprised at his tone—kept his eyes on him for the answer.

“I’d ’a’ framed that Findlay soak for a twenty-year jack in a nice cool cell, and then staked those two out in the mountains—or wherever it was she had to go.”

“I thought you did know.”

“Not till too late. It was in a letter he left for me with Jamie Dreek.”

The two stood looking at one another.

“Well,” said Harker after a brief silence; “what’s the good of post mortems?”

Pentecost nodded. “What’s the good?” he muttered.

A moment later he was hurrying on board, and with that came the end of this “Pentecost Episode.”

I take the liberty of adding a brief statement.

H. McC.

Dudley sat smoking heavily and abstractedly after Mr. Barnes had finished a few business details with me, and after shaking hands with both of us, had gone. I was to take a night express for New York, as my time was up. We’d just got it in on the ten-day limit.

I saw that Duds had something on his mind—puffing away at his pipe and staring down at the floor—so, as there was plenty of time before my train I let him alone. He looked up at me after a wink, in the manner of rousing himself.

“D’you know who that was that just went out?” he asked.

“What?—Oh!—Why Barnes of course!”

“No.” He shook his head. “Not Barnes of course, but some one else of course. I’ve been keeping a few tabs on the man that’s been telling us all this stuff, and there’s four things—with a possibility of five—that no one on earth could know but Hugo Pentecost.”

“Good Lord!... Why ... then you think——”

“That’s it—I think.—But I’m going to make sure. He’s in town yet. I’ll drop you a line to-morrow.”

The “line” reached me a couple of days later.

“It was Pentecost,” was the statement it began with. And went on: “That is, I mean it was the man that was—he’s something else now. He’s in business abroad, and taking a steamer from here. His agent (or ‘trusty’ if you like) is going to get the manuscript from you when you write it out. Take my advice and put in all this at the end of the thing. It needs some sort of a finish, and this might do. If he doesn’t like it he can cut it out when he gets the proof—and you can bet he’ll get it.

“Couldn’t make him tell the sort of an enterprise he’s on over there—says maybe he will sometime.

“It seems the girl—Edith Findlay—is making a slow recovery. I asked him how the book would affect her if she got hold of it, and he said it wouldn’t do her any harm by then. ‘And by God!’ he went on, ‘it’s just as well for her to know—now she’s able to stand it—that such a man as Charles Michael Haworth went happily and eagerly to his death, so that she might live. You’d think she might run through her life on that, and ask for nothing more. But probably not.’”

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes

pg 358 Changed: | faintly wavering in the darknenss
to: | faintly wavering in the darkness