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Anna Katharine Green >> Initials Only
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"No. I'm satisfied with nothing that leaves all ends dangling.
Suicide was not proved. It seemed the only presumption possible,
but it was not proved. There was no blood-stain on that
cutter-point."
"Nor any evidence that it had ever been there."
"No. I'm not proud of the chain which lacks a link where it should
be strongest."
"We shall never supply that link."
"I quite agree with you."
"That chain we must throw away."
"And forge another?"
Sweetwater approached and sat down.
"Yes; I believe we can do it; yet I have only one indisputable fact
for a starter. That is why I want you to tell me whether I'm
growing daft or simply adventurous. Mr. Gryce, I don't trust
Brotherson. He has pulled the wool over Dr. Heath's eyes and
almost over those of Mr. Challoner. But he can't pull it over mine.
Though he should tell a story ten times more plausible than the
one with which he has satisfied the coroner's jury, I would still
listen to him with more misgiving than confidence. Yet I have
caught him in no misstatement, and his eye is steadier than my own.
Perhaps it is simply a deeply rooted antipathy on my part, or the
rage one feels at finding he has placed his finger on the wrong man.
Again it may be--"
"What, Sweetwater?"
"A well-founded distrust. Mr. Gryce, I'm going to ask you a
question."
"Ask away. Ask fifty if you want to."
"No; the one may involve fifty, but it is big enough in itself to
hold our attention for a while. Did you ever hear of a case before,
that in some of its details was similar to this?"
"No, it stands alone. That's why it is so puzzling."
"You forget. The wealth, beauty and social consequence of the
present victim has blinded you to the strong resemblance which her
case bears to one you know, in which the sufferer had none of the
worldly advantages of Miss Challoner. I allude to--"
"Wait! the washerwoman in Hicks Street! Sweetwater, what have you
got up your sleeve? You do mean that Brooklyn washerwoman, don't
you?"
"The same. The Department may have forgotten it, but I haven't.
Mr. Gryce, there's a startling similarity in the two cases if you
study the essential features only. Startling, I assure you."
"Yes, you are right there. But what if there is? We were no more
successful in solving that case than we have been in solving this.
Yet you look and act like a hound which has struck a hot scent."
The young man smoothed his features with an embarrassed laugh.
"I shall never learn," said he, "not to give tongue till the hunt
is fairly started. If you will excuse me we'll first make sure of
the similarity I have mentioned. Then I'll explain myself. I have
some notes here, made at the time it was decided to drop the Hicks
Street case as a wholly inexplicable one. As you know, I never can
bear to say 'die,' and I sometimes keep such notes as a possible
help in case any such unfinished matter should come up again. Shall
I read them?"
"Do. Twenty years ago it would not have been necessary. I should
have remembered every detail of an affair so puzzling. But my
memory is no longer entirely reliable. So fire away, my boy,
though I hardly see your purpose or what real bearing the affair in
Hicks Street has upon the Clermont one. A poor washerwoman and the
wealthy Miss Challoner! True, they were not unlike in their end."
"The connection will come later," smiled the young detective, with
that strange softening of his features which made one at times
forget his extreme plainness. "I'm sure you will not consider the
time lost if I ask you to consider the comparison I am about to
make, if only as a curiosity in criminal annals."
And he read:
"'On the afternoon of December Fourth, 1910, the strong and persistent
screaming of a young child in one of the rooms of a rear tenement in
Hicks Street, Brooklyn, drew the attention of some of the inmates
and led them, after several ineffectual efforts to gain an entrance,
to the breaking in of the door which had been fastened on the inside
by an old-fashioned door-button.
"'The tenant whom all knew for an honest, hard-working woman, had
not infrequently fastened her door in this manner, in order to
safeguard her child who was abnormally active and had a way of
rattling the door open when it was not thus secured. But she had
never refused to open before, and the child's cries were pitiful.
"'This was no longer a matter of wonder, when, the door having been
wrenched from its hinges, they all rushed in. Across a tub of
steaming clothes lifted upon a bench in the open window, they saw
the body of this good woman, lying inert and seemingly dead; the
frightened child tugging at her skirts. She was of a robust make,
fleshy and fair, and had always been considered a model of health
and energy, but at the sight of her helpless figure, thus stricken
while at work, the one cry was 'A stroke! till she had been lifted
off and laid upon the floor. Then some discoloration in the water
at the bottom of the tub led to a closer examination of her body,
and the discovery of a bullet-hole in her breast directly over
the heart.
"'As she had been standing with face towards the window, all crowded
that way to see where the shot had come from. As they were on the
fourth storey it could not have come from the court upon which the
room looked. It could only have come from the front tenement,
towering up before them some twenty feet away. A single window of
the innumerable ones confronting them stood open, and this was the
one directly opposite.
"'Nobody was to be seen there or in the room beyond, but during the
excitement, one man ran off to call the police and another to hunt
up the janitor and ask who occupied this room.
"'His reply threw them all into confusion. The tenant of that room
was the best, the quietest and most respectable man in either
building.
"'Then he must be simply careless and the shot an accidental one.
A rush was made for the stairs and soon the whole building was in
an uproar. But when this especial room was reached, it was found
locked and on the door a paper pinned up, on which these words were
written: Gone to New York. Will be back at 6:30! Words that
recalled a circumstance to the janitor. He had seen the gentleman
go out an hour before. This terminated all inquiry in this
direction, though some few of the excited throng were for battering
down this door just as they had the other one. But they were
overruled by the janitor, who saw no use in such wholesale
destruction, and presently the arrival of the police restored order
and limited the inquiry to the rear building, where it undoubtedly
belonged.'
"Mr. Gryce," (here Sweetwater laid by his notes that he might
address the old gentleman more directly), "I was with the boys when
they made their first official investigation. This is why you can
rely upon the facts as here given. I followed the investigation
closely and missed nothing which could in any way throw light on
the case. It was a mysterious one from the first, and lost nothing
by further inquiry into the details.
"The first fact to startle us as we made our way up through the
crowd which blocked halls and staircases was this:--A doctor had
been found and, though he had been forbidden to make more than a
cursory examination of the body till the coroner came, he had not
hesitated to declare after his first look, that the wound had not
been made by a bullet but by some sharp and slender weapon thrust
home by a powerful hand. (You mark that, Mr. Gryce.) As this
seemed impossible in face of the fact that the door had been found
buttoned on the inside, we did not give much credit to his opinion
and began our work under the obvious theory of an accidental
discharge of some gun from one of the windows across the court.
But the doctor was nearer right than we supposed. When the coroner
came to look into the matter, he discovered that the wound was not
only too small to have been made by the ordinary bullet, but that
there was no bullet to be found in the woman's body or anywhere
else. Her heart had been reached by a thrust and not by a shot
from a gun. Mr. Gryce, have you not heard a startling repetition
of this report in a case nearer at hand?
"But to go back. This discovery, so important if true, was as
yet--that is, at the time of our entering the room,--limited to
the off-hand declaration of an irresponsible physician, but the
possibility it involved was of so astonishing a nature that it
influenced us unconsciously in our investigation and led us almost
immediately into a consideration of the difficulties attending
an entrance into, as well as an escape from, a room situated as
this was.
"Up three flights from the court, with no communication with the
adjoining rooms save through a door guarded on both sides by heavy
pieces of furniture no one person could handle, the hall door
buttoned on the inside, and the fire-escape some fifteen feet to
the left, this room of death appeared to be as removed from the
approach of a murderous outsider as the spot in the writing-room
of the Clermont where Miss Challoner fell.
"Otherwise, the place presented the greatest contrast possible to
that scene of splendour and comfort. I had not entered the
Clermont at that time, and no, such comparison could have struck
my mind. But I have thought of it since, and you, with your
experience, will not find it difficult to picture the room where
this poor woman lived and worked. Bare walls, with just a newspaper
illustration pinned up here and there, a bed--tragically occupied
at this moment--a kitchen stove on which a boiler, half-filled
with steaming clothes still bubbled and foamed,--an old bureau,--a
large pine wardrobe against an inner door which we later found to
have been locked for months, and the key lost,--some chairs--and
most pronounced of all, because of its position directly before the
window, a pine bench supporting a wash-tub of the old sort.
"As it was here the woman fell, this tub naturally received the
closest examination. A board projected from its further side,
whither it had evidently been pushed by the weight of her falling
body; and from its top hung a wet cloth, marking with its lugubrious
drip on the boards beneath the first heavy moments of silence which
is the natural accompaniment of so serious a survey. On the floor
to the right lay a half-used cake of soap just as it had slipped
from her hand. The window was closed, for the temperature was at
the freezing-point, but it had been found up, and it was put up
now to show the height at which it had then stood. As we all took
our look at the house wall opposite, a sound of shouting came up
from below. A dozen children were sliding on barrel staves down
a slope of heaped-up snow. They had been engaged in this sport all
the afternoon and were our witnesses later that no one had made a
hazardous escape by means of the ladder of the fire-escape, running,
as I have said, at an almost unattainable distance towards the left.
"Of her own child, whose cries had roused the neighbours, nothing
was to be seen. The woman in the extreme rear had carried it off
to her room; but when we came to see it later, no doubt was felt by
any of us that this child was too young to talk connectedly, nor
did I ever hear that it ever said anything which could in any way
guide investigation.
"And that is as far as we ever got. The coroner's jury brought in
a verdict of death by means of a stab from some unknown weapon in
the hand of a person also unknown, but no weapon was ever found,
nor was it ever settled how the attack could have been made or the
murderer escape under the conditions described. The woman was poor,
her friends few, and the case seemingly inexplicable. So after
creating some excitement by its peculiarities, it fell of its own
weight. But I remembered it, and in many a spare hour have tried
to see my way through the no-thoroughfare it presented. But quite
in vain. To-day, the road is as blind as ever, but--" here
Sweetwater's face sharpened and his eyes burned as he leaned closer
and closer to the older detective--"but this second case, so unlike
the first in non-essentials but so exactly like it in just those
points which make the mystery, has dropped a thread from its tangled
skein into my hand, which may yet lead us to the heart of both.
Can you guess--have you guessed--what this thread is? But how
could you without the one clew I have not given you? Mr. Gryce,
the tenement where this occurred is the same I visited the other
night in search of Mr. Brotherson. And the man characterised at
that time by the janitor as the best, the quietest and most
respectable tenant in the whole building, and the one you remember
whose window opened directly opposite the spot where this woman lay
dead, was Mr. Dunn himself, or, in other words, our late redoubtable
witness, Mr. Orlando Brotherson."
XII
Mr. GRYCE FINDS AN ANTIDOTE FOR OLD AGE
"I thought I should make you sit up. I really calculated upon
doing so, sir. Yes, I have established the plain fact that this
Brotherson was near to, if not in the exact line of the scene of
crime in each of these extraordinary and baffling cases. A very
odd coincidence, is it not?" was the dry conclusion of our eager
young detective.
"Odd enough if you are correct in your statement. But I thought it
was conceded that the man Brotherson was not personally near,--was
not even in the building at the time of the woman's death in Hicks
Street; that he was out and had been out for hours, according to the
janitor."
"And so the janitor thought, but he didn't quite know his man. I'm
not sure that I do. But I mean to make his acquaintance and make
it thoroughly before I let him go. The hero--well, I will say the
possible hero of two such adventures--deserves some attention from
one so interested in the abnormal as myself."
"Sweetwater, how came you to discover that Mr. Dunn of this
ramshackle tenement in Hicks Street was identical with the elegantly
equipped admirer of Miss Challoner?"
"Just this way. The night before Miss Challoner's death I was
brooding very deeply over the Hicks Street case. It had so
possessed me that I had taken this street in on my way from Flatbush;
as if staring at the house and its swarming courtyard was going to
settle any such question as that! I walked by the place and I looked
up at the windows. No inspiration. Then I sauntered back and
entered the house with the fool intention of crossing the courtyard
and wandering into the rear building where the crime had occurred.
But my attention was diverted and my mind changed by seeing a man
coming down the stairs before me, of so fine a figure that I
involuntarily stopped to look at him. Had he moved a little less
carelessly, had he worn his workman's clothes a little less
naturally, I should have thought him some college bred man out on
a slumming expedition. But he was entirely too much at home where
he was, and too unconscious of his jeans for any such conclusion on
my part, and when he had passed out I had enough curiosity to ask
who he was.
"My interest, you may believe, was in no wise abated when I learned
that he was that highly respectable tenant whose window had been
open at the time when half the inmates of the two buildings had
rushed up to his door, only to find a paper on it displaying these
words: Gone to New York; will be back at 6:30. Had he returned at
that hour? I don't think anybody had ever asked; and what reason
had I for such interference now? But an idea once planted in my
brain sticks tight, and I kept thinking of this man all the way to
the Bridge. Instinctively and quite against my will, I found
myself connecting him with some previous remembrance in which I
seemed to see his tall form and strong features under the stress of
some great excitement. But there my memory stopped, till suddenly
as I was entering the subway, it all came back to me. I had met
him the day I went with the boys to investigate the case in Hicks
Street. He was coming down the staircase of the rear tenement then,
very much as I had just seen him coming down the one in front. Only
the Dunn of to-day seemed to have all his wits about him, while the
huge fellow who brushed so rudely by me on that occasion had the
peculiar look of a man struggling with horror or some other grave
agitation. This was not surprising, of course, under the
circumstances. I had met more than one man and woman in those halls
who had worn the same look; but none of them had put up a sign on
his door that he had left for New York and would not be back till
6:30, and then changed his mind so suddenly that he was back in
the tenement at three, sharing the curiosity and the terrors of its
horrified inmates.
"But the discovery, while possibly suggestive, was not of so
pressing a nature as to demand instant action; and more immediate
duties coming up, I let the matter slip from my mind, to be brought
up again the next day, you may well believe, when all the
circumstances of the death at the Clermont came to light and I found
myself confronted by a problem very nearly the counterpart of the
one then occupying me.
"But I did not see any real connection between the two cases, until,
in my hunt for Mr. Brotherson, I came upon the following facts: that
he was not always the gentleman he appeared: that the apartment in
which he was supposed to live was not his own but a friend's; and
that he was only there by spells. When he was there, he dressed
like a prince and it was while so clothed he ate his meals in the
cafe of the Hotel Clermont.
"But there were times when he had been seen to leave this apartment
in a very different garb, and while there was no one to insinuate
that he was slack in paying his debts or was given to dissipation
or any overt vice, it was generally conceded by such as casually
knew him, that there was a mysterious side to his life which no one
understood. His friend--a seemingly candid and open-minded
gentleman--explained these contradictions by saying that Mr.
Brotherson was a humanitarian and spent much of his time in the
slums. That while so engaged he naturally dressed to suit the
occasion, and if he was to be criticised at all, it was for his zeal
which often led him to extremes and kept him to his task for days,
during which time none of his up-town friends saw him. Then this
enthusiastic gentleman called him the great intellectual light of
the day, and--well, if ever I want a character I shall take pains
to insinuate myself into the good graces of this Mr. Conway.
"Of Brotherson himself I saw nothing. He had come to Mr. Conway's
apartment the night before--the night of Miss Challoner's death,
you understand but had remained only long enough to change his
clothes. Where he went afterwards is unknown to Mr. Conway, nor
can he tell us when to look for his return. When he does show up,
my message will be given him, etc., etc. I have no fault to find
with Mr. Conway.
"But I had an idea in regard to this elusive Brotherson. I had
heard enough about him to be mighty sure that together with his
other accomplishments he possessed the golden tongue and easy
speech of an orator. Also, that his tendencies were revolutionary
and that for all his fine clothes and hankering after table luxuries
and the like, he cherished a spite against wealth which made his
words under certain moods cut like a knife. But there was another
man, known to us of the ---- Precinct, who had very nearly these
same gifts, and this man was going to speak at a secret meeting
that very evening. This we had been told by a disgruntled member
of the Associated Brotherhood. Suspecting Brotherson, I had this
prospective speaker described, and thought I recognised my man.
But I wanted to be positive in my identification, so I took Anderson
with me, and--but I'll cut that short. We didn't see the orator
and that 'go' went for nothing; but I had another string to my bow
in the shape of the workman Dunn who also answered to the description
which had been given me; so I lugged poor Anderson over into Hicks
Street.
"It was late for the visit I proposed, but not too late, if Dunn was
also the orator who, surprised by a raid I had not been let into,
would be making for his home, if only to establish an alibi. The
subway was near, and I calculated on his using it, but we took a
taxicab and so arrived in Hicks Street some few minutes before him.
The result you know. Anderson recognised the man as the one whom he
saw washing his hands in the snow outside of the Clermont, and the
man, seeing himself discovered, owned himself to be Brotherson and
made no difficulty about accompanying us the next day to the
coroner's office.
"You have heard how he bore himself; what his explanations were and
how completely they fitted in with the preconceived notions of the
Inspector and the District Attorney. In consequence, Miss
Challoner's death is looked upon as a suicide--the impulsive act of
a woman who sees the man she may have scouted but whom she secretly
loves, turn away from her in all probability forever. A weapon was
in her hand--she impulsively used it, and another deplorable suicide
was added to the melancholy list. Had I put in my oar at the
conference held in the coroner's office; had I recalled to Dr. Heath
the curious case of Mrs. Spotts, and then identified Brotherson as
the man whose window fronted hers from the opposite tenement, a
diversion might have been created and the outcome been different.
But I feared the experiment. I'm not sufficiently in with the
Chief as yet, nor yet with the Inspector. They might not have
called me a fool--you may; but that's different--and they might
have listened, but it would doubtless have been with an air I could
not have held up against, with that fellow's eyes fixed mockingly on
mine. For he and I are pitted for a struggle, and I do not want to
give him the advantage of even a momentary triumph. He's the most
complete master of himself of any man I ever met, and it will take
the united brain and resolution of the whole force to bring him to
book--if he ever is brought to book, which I doubt. What do you
think about it?"
"That you have given me an antidote against old age," was the
ringing and unexpected reply, as the thoughtful, half-puzzled aspect
of the old man yielded impulsively to a burst of his early
enthusiasm. "If we can get a good grip on the thread you speak of,
and can work ourselves along by it, though it be by no more than an
inch at a time, we shall yet make our way through this labyrinth of
undoubted crime and earn for ourselves a triumph which will make
some of these raw and inexperienced young fellows about us stare.
Sweetwater, coincidences are possible. We run upon them every day.
But coincidence in crime! that should make work for a detective, and
we are not afraid of work. There's my hand for my end of the
business."
"And here's mine."
Next minute the two heads were closer than ever together, and the
business had begun.
XIII
TIME, CIRCUMSTANCE, AND A VILLAIN'S HEART
"Our first difficulty is this. We must prove motive. Now, I do
not think it will be so very hard to show that this Brotherson
cherished feelings of revenge towards Miss Challoner. But I have
to acknowledge right here and now that the most skillful and vigourous
pumping of the janitor and such other tenants of the Hicks Street
tenement as I have dared to approach, fails to show that he has ever
held any communication with Mrs. Spotts, or even knew of her
existence until her remarkable death attracted his attention. I
have spent all the afternoon over this, and with no result. A
complete break in the chain at the very start."
"Humph! we will set that down, then, as so much against us."
"The next, and this is a bitter pill too, is the almost
insurmountable difficulty already recognised of determining how a
man, without approaching his victim, could manage to inflict a
mortal stab in her breast. No cloak of complete invisibility has
yet been found, even by the cleverest criminals."
"True. The problem is such as a nightmare offers. For years my
dreams have been haunted by a gnome who proposes just such puzzles."
"But there's an answer to everything, and I'm sure there's an answer
to this. Remember his business. He's an inventor, with startling
ideas. So much I've seen for myself. You may stretch probabilities
a little in his case; and with this conceded, we may add by way of
off-set to the difficulties you mention, coincidences of time and
circumstance, and his villainous heart. Oh, I know that I am
prejudiced; but wait and see! Miss Challoner was well rid of him
even at the cost of her life."
"She loved him. Even her father believes that now. Some lately
discovered letters have come to light to prove that she was by no
means so heart free as he supposed. One of her friends, it seems,
has also confided to him that once, while she and Miss Challoner
were sitting together, she caught Miss Challoner in the act of
scribbling capitals over a sheet of paper. They were all B's with
the exception of here and there a neatly turned O, and when her
friend twitted her with her fondness for these two letters, and
suggested a pleasing monogram, Miss Challoner answered, 'O. B.
(transferring the letters, as you see) are the initials of the
finest man in the world.'"
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