The place which Samuel Walcott had selected for the residence of
Nina San Croix was far up in the northern suburb of New York. The
place was very old. The lawn was large and ill kept; the house, a
square old-fashioned brick, was set far back from the street, and
partly hidden by trees. Around it all was a rusty iron fence. The
place had the air of genteel ruin, such as one finds in the
Virginias.
On a Thursday of November, about three o’clock in the afternoon, a
little man, driving a dray, stopped in the alley at the rear of the
house. As he opened the back gate an old negro woman came down the
steps from the kitchen and demanded to know what he wanted. The
drayman asked if the lady of the house was in. The old negro
answered that she was asleep at this hour and could not be seen.
“That is good,” said the little man, “now there won’t be any row.
I brought up some cases of wine which she ordered from our house
last week and which the Boss told me to deliver at once, but I
forgot it until to-day. Just let me put it in the cellar now,
Auntie, and don’t say a word to the lady about it and she won’t
ever know that it was not brought up on time.”
The drayman stopped, fished a silver dollar out of his pocket, and
gave it to the old negro. “There now, Auntie,” he said, “my job
depends upon the lady not knowing about this wine; keep it mum.”
“Dat’s all right, honey,” said the old servant, beaming like a May
morning. “De cellar door is open, carry it all in and put it in de
back part and nobody ain’t never going to know how long it has been
in dar.”
The old negro went back into the kitchen and the little man began
to unload the dray. He carried in five wine cases and stowed them
away in the back part of the cellar as the old woman had directed.
Then, after having satisfied himself that no one was watching, he
took from the dray two heavy paper sacks, presumably filled with
flour, and a little bundle wrapped in an old newspaper; these he
carefully hid behind the wine cases in the cellar. After awhile he
closed the door, climbed on his dray, and drove off down the alley.
About eight o’clock in the evening of the same day, a Mexican
sailor dodged in the front gate and slipped down to the side of the
house. He stopped by the window and tapped on it with his finger.
In a moment a woman opened the door. She was tall, lithe, and
splendidly proportioned, with a dark Spanish face and straight
hair. The man stepped inside. The woman bolted the door and
turned round.
“Ah,” she said, smiling, “it is you, Senor? How good of you!”
The man started. “Whom else did you expect?” he said quickly.
“Oh!” laughed the woman, “perhaps the Archbishop.”
“Nina!” said the man, in a broken voice that expressed love,
humility, and reproach. His face was white under the black
sunburn.
For a moment the woman wavered. A shadow flitted over her eyes,
then she stepped back. “No,” she said, “not yet.”
The man walked across to the fire, sank down in a chair, and
covered his face with his hands. The woman stepped up noiselessly
behind him and leaned over the chair. The man was either in great
agony or else he was a superb actor, for the muscles of his neck
twitched violently and his shoulders trembled.
“Oh,” he muttered, as though echoing his thoughts, “I can’t do it,
I can’t!”
The woman caught the words and leaped up as though some one had
struck her in the face. She threw back her head. Her nostrils
dilated and her eyes flashed.
“You can’t do it!” she cried. “Then you do love her! You shall do
it! Do you hear me? You shall do it! You killed him! You got
rid of him! but you shall not get rid of me. I have the evidence,
all of it. The Archbishop will have it to-morrow. They shall hang
you! Do you hear me? They shall hang you!”
The woman’s voice rose, it was loud and shrill. The man turned
slowly round without looking up, and stretched out his arms toward
the woman. She stopped and looked down at him. The fire glittered
for a moment and then died out of her eyes, her bosom heaved and
her lips began to tremble. With a cry she flung herself into his
arms, caught him around the neck, and pressed his face up close
against her cheek.
“Oh! Dick, Dick,” she sobbed, “I do love you so! I can’t live
without you! Not another hour, Dick! I do want you so much, so
much, Dick!”
The man shifted his right arm quickly, slipped a great Mexican
knife out of his sleeve, and passed his fingers slowly up the
woman’s side until he felt the heart beat under his hand, then he
raised the knife, gripped the handle tight, and drove the keen
blade into the woman’s bosom. The hot blood gushed out over his
arm, and down on his leg. The body, warm and limp, slipped down in
his arms. The man got up, pulled out the knife, and thrust it into
a sheath at his belt, unbuttoned the dress, and slipped it off of
the body. As he did this a bundle of papers dropped upon the
floor; these he glanced at hastily and put into his pocket. Then
he took the dead woman up in his arms, went out into the hall, and
started to go up the stairway. The body was relaxed and heavy, and
for that reason difficult to carry. He doubled it up into an awful
heap, with the knees against the chin, and walked slowly and
heavily up the stairs and out into the bathroom. There he laid the
corpse down on the tiled floor. Then he opened the window, closed
the shutters, and lighted the gas. The bathroom was small and
contained an ordinary steel tub, porcelain lined, standing near the
window and raised about six inches above the floor. The sailor
went over to the tub, pried up the metal rim of the outlet with his
knife, removed it, and fitted into its place a porcelain disk which
he took from his pocket; to this disk was attached a long platinum
wire, the end of which he fastened on the outside of the tub.
After he had done this he went back to the body, stripped off its
clothing, put it down in the tub and began to dismember it with the
great Mexican knife. The blade was strong and sharp as a razor.
The man worked rapidly and with the greatest care.
When he had finally cut the body into as small pieces as possible,
he replaced the knife in its sheath, washed his hands, and went out
of the bathroom and downstairs to the lower hall. The sailor
seemed perfectly familiar with the house. By a side door he passed
into the cellar. There he lighted the gas, opened one of the wine
cases, and, taking up all the bottles that he could conveniently
carry, returned to the bathroom. There he poured the contents into
the tub on the dismembered body, and then returned to the cellar
with the empty bottles, which he replaced in the wine cases. This
he continued to do until all the cases but one were emptied and the
bath tub was more than half full of liquid. This liquid was
sulphuric acid.
When the sailor returned to the cellar with the last empty wine
bottles, he opened the fifth case, which really contained wine,
took some of it out, and poured a little into each of the empty
bottles in order to remove any possible odor of the sulphuric acid.
Then he turned out the gas and brought up to the bathroom with him
the two paper flour sacks and the little heavy bundle. These sacks
were filled with nitrate of soda. He set them down by the door,
opened the little bundle, and took out two long rubber tubes, each
attached to a heavy gas burner, not unlike the ordinary burners of
a small gas stove. He fastened the tubes to two of the gas jets,
put the burners under the tub, turned the gas on full, and lighted
it. Then he threw into the tub the woman’s clothing and the papers
which he had found on her body, after which he took up the two
heavy sacks of nitrate of soda and dropped them carefully into the
sulphuric acid. When he had done this he went quickly out of the
bathroom and closed the door.
The deadly acids at once attacked the body and began to destroy it;
as the heat increased, the acids boiled and the destructive process
was rapid and awful. From time to time the sailor opened the door
of the bathroom cautiously, and, holding a wet towel over his mouth
and nose, looked in at his horrible work. At the end of a few
hours there was only a swimming mass in the tub. When the man
looked at four o’clock, it was all a thick murky liquid. He turned
off the gas quickly and stepped back out of the room. For perhaps
half an hour he waited in the hall; finally, when the acids had
cooled so that they no longer gave off fumes, he opened the door
and went in, took hold of the platinum wire and, pulling the
porcelain disk from the stopcock, allowed the awful contents of the
tub to run out. Then he turned on the hot water, rinsed the tub
clean, and replaced the metal outlet. Removing the rubber tubes,
he cut them into pieces, broke the porcelain disk, and, rolling up
the platinum wire, washed it all down the sewer pipe.
The fumes had escaped through the open window; this he now closed
and set himself to putting the bathroom in order, and effectually
removing every trace of his night’s work. The sailor moved around
with the very greatest degree of care. Finally, when he had
arranged everything to his complete satisfaction, he picked up the
two burners, turned out the gas, and left the bathroom, closing the
door after him. From the bathroom he went directly to the attic,
concealed the two rusty burners under a heap of rubbish, and then
walked carefully and noiselessly down the stairs and through the
lower hall. As he opened the door and stepped into the room where
he had killed the woman, two police officers sprang out and seized
him. The man screamed like a wild beast taken in a trap and sank
down.
“Oh! oh!” he cried, “it was no use! it was no use to do it!” Then
he recovered himself in a manner and was silent. The officers
handcuffed him, summoned the patrol, and took him at once to the
station house. There he said he was a Mexican sailor and that his
name was Victor Ancona; but he would say nothing further. The
following morning he sent for Randolph Mason and the two were long
together.