In the twelve hours that intervened between Roger Kenwick's arrest and
his transference to the authorities at Mont-Mer, he was not allowed to
see any one. As rigid a watch was kept beside his cell as though he were
a hardened criminal who had on previous occasions escaped the clutches
of justice. Even reporters were denied admittance, but he was permitted,
in courtesy to his former position as journalist, to read the papers. In
these he found, spread large upon the front pages, highly colored
stories concerning his manoeuvers and final capture. Only the
"Clarion's" story was conservative and hinted at a colossal mistake
which would lead later to more sensational developments.
When he left San Francisco, heavily hand-cuffed, a crowd followed to the
depot. The trip down the coast was uneventful, and he sat staring out of
the window, recalling his former ride through that same country when the
pruners had waved their shears to him in a sort of voiceless Godspeed.
There were no pruners visible from the car-window now, and the stark
stretches of orchard looked bleak and desolate. The bare, tangled
branches of the roadside poplars showed against the dull January sky
like intricate designs of lacework. They seemed to Kenwick to have lost
the comforting warmth of their leaves just when they needed them most.
It was almost dusk when the train drew into Mont-Mer, and here another
crowd was waiting. The engine appeared to plow its way through them.
Never had the quiet little city been so stirred. Never in all its
decorous history had the white spot-light of sensationalism played upon
it. It knew that its name was featured in every newspaper of the
country.
And Kenwick found the Mont-Mer papers even more lavish in descriptive
detail than those of the city had been. There was a picture of the
murdered man and one of himself spread upon the front page of the
evening sheet, and below, a cut of Rest Hollow, with the inevitable
black cross marking the spot under the dining-room window where the body
of Ralph Regan had been found. The morning daily matched this with a
picture of the handsome Kenwick home in New York, and an account of the
death, the previous spring, of Everett Kenwick and his wife, victims of
influenza. As he read, Kenwick reflected that Richard Glover must have
been very busy, very busy indeed since the night that they had
encountered each other at the theater.
And outside the county jail the city buzzed with comment and
speculation. Mont-Mer real estate men were elated over this unexpected
scandal in high society which had resulted in putting their town "on the
map." Better a gruesome publicity, they told each other, than no
publicity at all. Tourists from Los Angeles and the near-by towns
motored up during the week-end and made futile attempts to gain access
to Rest Hollow. The old conservative residents of the aristocratic
little city were horrified, and the colony of Eastern capitalists, who
made up a large part of the suburban population, were hotly resentful of
the hideous notoriety which had invaded their retreat by the sea. The
two country estates that bordered Rest Hollow were put on the market at
what the local realty dealers advertised as "spectacular bargains."
After the body of Ralph Regan had been exhumed and identified by the
grief-stricken little woman who was his sister, the links of the chain
which incriminated Kenwick seemed to fall of their own volition into
place. He reviewed them himself, sitting alone in Mont-Mer's bleak
little jail.
There would be first the testimony of the coroner who would describe the
gunshot wound. And then the evidence that he, Kenwick, had been armed on
that fatal night. The woman, or whoever it was that occupied the right
wing of the house, would narrate in detail all that he had said about
being a good shot and would doubtless follow this with the testimony
that he was obviously looking for trouble. The revolver, which he had
left on the table in the den, would add its mute confirmation of these
assertions. And his own mode of departure from that house, under such
circumstances, was sufficient in itself to send him to the electric
chair without any further testimony. Glover would be, of course, the
star witness for the State, and against his glib and convincing story
would be pitted the word of a man known to have been of an unsound state
of mind and never proved to have recovered from it. It was this last
evidence, he knew, that would acquit him. With the brand of Cain upon
his forehead he would be set free. The ghastly notoriety which he had
striven, with the difficult patience of the impatient temperament, to
avoid, had struck him with the force of a bomb and blown him skyward to
be the cynosure of every eye. Never while the world stood could he ask
Marcreta Morgan to take the name of Kenwick. Acquittal on any terms was
all that most men would have asked of fate. But Kenwick was made of
finer stuff. And so far as his future was concerned, he was already
tried, convicted, and sentenced.
A week intervened between his arrival at Mont-Mer and the day set for
the trial. During that time he knew himself to be under the most
relentless surveillance. By day and by night his every act was watched.
With his food they brought him neither knife nor fork. On the second day
of this startling omission he smiled grimly at the attendant. "You can
tell the jailer," he said, "that he needn't be worried about me to that
extent. You see, I've worn my country's uniform, and that spoils a man
for taking the Dutch route."
The stolid-faced attendant looked at him without replying. Kenwick felt
a sudden pity for him. "I suppose he thinks I'm likely to get violent
and begin smashing up things at any moment," he reflected. For in the
jailer's eyes was that thing for which he had been on the watch for
almost two months. He pushed away his food almost untasted. When he was
left alone again he walked over to the heavily barred window and stood
looking down at the court-house garden. Very gently he shook one of the
iron rods. "For almost a year," he muttered. "Barred in for almost a
year; and the world has no intention of ever letting me forget it."
The date-palms in the grounds below swept the wintry air with long
graceful plumes. How helpless they were in the driving force of the
wind! And yet they were moored to something, securely rooted. The storm
might buffet but would not utterly destroy them. Down the curving path
which they bordered he saw a man approaching with a flat leather case
under his arm. It was Dayton, the young attorney whom the court had
appointed for his defense. Kenwick, who had taken his intellectual
measure at their first meeting the day before, had little faith in his
legal ability. But he liked him; liked his buoyant, unspoiled
personality. And Dayton was undisguisedly elated over this sudden
opportunity to try his mettle in so conspicuous a case. It was the
chance he had been hoping for during three years of commonplace
practice.
As the prisoner heard his step in the upper corridor he turned from the
window. Dayton closed the portal behind him and sat down on the edge of
the narrow cot. Downstairs he had just held brief parley with the
jailer. "Hasn't Kenwick got any family?" he had inquired.
The official shook his head. "As I understand it, he didn't have anybody
but a brother, and he died last spring, the papers said."
"No friends either?"
"Friends? Well, he wouldn't be likely to have any, would he--a feller
that's been crazy?"
"It's cursed luck!" Dayton had told him. He was still young enough to
feel resentful of life's contemptuous injustices. "And he's only
twenty-five; got his whole life before him. He's got to have his chance.
He's got to have a fighting chance."
As he looked at his client now, he was careful to keep anything like
compassion out of his eyes. He removed a cracked pitcher full of purple
asters from its perilous position at the head of the bed and swept his
glance over the crude table littered with envelopes in cream and pastel
shades. "Correspondence still growing?" he inquired genially.
Kenwick stacked the vari-colored missives into a pile. Most of them had
been accompanied by flowers, and all were signed by society women of
Mont-Mer. A few bore the more guarded signature of "A Friend," or "A
Sympathizer," with initials underneath. They condoled, they admonished,
they even made cautious love.
"Can you fathom it, Dayton?" the prisoner asked, weighing the
correspondence in one hand as though the answer to the riddle lay in
avoir-dupois. "These women think I'm guilty of murder. They all seem to
think I'm guilty as hell; and yet they send me flowers, and
love-letters." He turned his back contemptuously upon the purple asters.
"It comes over me every once in a while, Dayton, that I'm not the only
person in this world who has had moments of mental aberration."
The other man reached over, took up the stack of envelopes, and examined
them with curious interest. Here and there he recognized a coat of arms
or a monogram. "Going to answer any of them?" he queried.
"Answer them!"
"Well, most of them seem to expect a reply. You see, you really can't
blame them very much, either. These women are fed up on life. They come
out here every winter seeking a new sensation."
"And I am a new sensation, am I?"
"You bet you are! Why, man, you're nothing short of a godsend. And most
of these people," he swept a hand over the coterie represented on the
table, "are from New York themselves. They're not writing to a stranger
exactly. They know who your family is--or was. They know all about you."
Kenwick's lips stiffened. "Well, they certainly have that advantage over
me."
"I don't mean to imply, of course, that they've been investigating your
personal history," Dayton hastened to explain. "But Kenwick is not an
inconspicuous name in the East. And then you've been in the service
and----"
"I'm glad you mentioned that," the prisoner cut in. "It reminds me of
something I want to say to you. When you get up to talk in court, don't
you make any plea for me on the grounds that I've been in the service.
That's one thing I won't stand for. The man who was in the army is a
different man from the alleged murderer of Ralph Regan. I'm not going to
have _his_ record smeared with this horrible thing."
Dayton dropped the letters to the table as though they had bitten him.
"Why, Mr. Kenwick! You've got a right to the consideration that would
naturally----"
"If I've got a right to it, I've got a right to waive it. This country
is flooded with men who expect to beat their way all through life on the
plea that they've been in the service. And there's nothing so despicable
on God's earth as that. I use my uniform to fight in, not to hide in.
Get me?"
Dayton was obviously crestfallen. He got up from the hard cot and stood
looking at his client gravely. Kenwick gathered up the pile of
envelopes. "Take this junk out of here when you go, please. And don't
let them send in any more flowers. They can save those for the funeral.
But I'm not dead yet."
"You may be very soon, though, if you don't listen to sense," his
adviser remarked bluntly. "I haven't wanted to get you worked up over
the case, because that's poor policy and it doesn't buy us anything. But
it strikes me, Mr. Kenwick, that you don't realize what a very serious
position you are in."
The ghost of a smile appeared upon the prisoner's face. It was a
terrible little smile, and he was not even conscious of its existence.
He was only conscious that every nerve in his body ached with weariness
and that he felt faint from want of food. Two pictures were stamping
themselves alternately upon his brain; the dim, sinister interior of
Rest Hollow, and the fire-lighted room on Pine Street. One of these
incessantly erased and superseded the other. And he knew that there
could be no division of their supremacy. Only one of them might survive.
Day and night the memory of them racked his jaded brain. For the
humiliation of his present position, not the ultimate outcome of the
trial, burned him with a consuming flame.
As he stood now at the barred window, he was doing that thing to which,
ever since his arrest, all his energies had been directed. Hour by hour,
minute by minute, he was welding together the joints of an armor. With a
slow but ceaseless persistence he was girding himself with a
graven-faced indifference that must be his shield against the barrage of
the gaping, curious world. And this man, standing so close beside him,
and in reality so far away that their spirits were scarcely discernible
to each other in the distance was telling him that he seemed unaware of
the peril of his position. That wave of deafening depression which
engulfs the human soul in the moments when it realizes its utter
loneliness surged over him like a tidal wave. He stood looking at Dayton
and wondering what manner of man he was.
"I don't want to play up anything now that will sound like dramatics,"
the lawyer went on in a soothing voice. "But we've got to face this
thing as it is. You know Glover, don't you?"
"No. But Glover knows me. He has that immense advantage. And he is using
it to the full. He has been fighting a man who's got both hands tied
behind him."
Dayton appeared to take new courage from this summary. "Well, I see
you've got a line on his methods anyway, and that's something. That
gives us our starting-point. And besides having both hands free, he's
also got his eyes open. You've been blindfolded a part of the time. He
never has."
There was a sound of a key grating in the lock. The dialogue ended
abruptly and Kenwick turned from the window. On the threshold was a
shabby, faded-looking little woman guarded by the relentless sentry.
Kenwick advanced to meet her, apologizing for the discomfort of the
backless chair which he offered.
"No, I don't want to sit down, thanks," she told him hurriedly. "I'm not
goin' to stay but a minute." She twisted her ungloved hands nervously
together under a scrawny wool scarf. "It's just this, Mr. Kenwick; I
asked them to let me come just to tell you this----"
The prisoner stood waiting. The realization came to him that she was
afraid of him, and he tried to help her to begin. "You are Mrs. Fanwell,
aren't you?"
"Yes. But--you don't know me, do you?"
"No, I just guessed at who you were." His eyes rested compassionately
upon her thin, eager face, her poverty-stricken mourning. She was
obviously relieved at his quiet composure. "I just wanted to tell you
this; that it's not revenge that I'm after. I've had a hard life, any
way you look at it. But I'm in Science now and I'm tryin' to tear hate
out of my heart. I haven't got any hard feelin's against you, for I
don't believe, I never will believe that you really meant to do it."
"Won't you sit down?" Kenwick suggested, and forced her gently into the
chair. Then he stood beside her, one hand resting upon the
paper-littered table. "You believe, do you, that I--am responsible for
your brother's death?"
She was looking past him, through the narrow window where Dayton stood
watching her curiously. "I don't know just what to think. But I wanted
you to know that I'm not wishin' you--any violent end. I never dreamed
there was anything so horrible connected with his death when I came out
here. But I felt that I had to know about him; I had to find out."
"Of course you had to find out," Kenwick agreed earnestly. "This thing
must be cleared up in your mind--in everybody's mind. May I ask you a
personal question, Mrs. Fanwell, to help me clear up a part of it
myself? Were you dependent upon your brother to any degree for your
support?"
"Dependent on _Ralph_?" The astonishment in her tone was sufficient
reply in itself. "Oh, no. I was tryin' to help Ralph out, as much as I
could without lettin' my husband know. It was hard, havin' always to
stand between them. But I couldn't blame my husband either. He was
always hard-workin' himself and he hadn't any patience with poor Ralph.
He thought he ought to get a steady job at carpentry; that was his
trade, and he made good at it till he got sick and began takin' that
terrible stuff. It was the ruin of him."
"You mean that he took--drugs?"
She nodded. And Kenwick hastened to cover the pitiful little secret
which he had laid bare.
"It was only for this reason that I asked, Mrs. Fanwell. If I am proved
guilty of this crime, you shall receive whatever money recompense it is
in my power to give. This is not an attempt to pay for it, but only to
ease my own conscience."
The woman's eyes filled with tears. She leaned beseechingly across the
table, clutching, with strange incongruity, one of the perfumed
envelopes. "Then you _are_ guilty!" she cried. "Oh, Mr. Kenwick, why
don't you confess? All the lawyers have told me that if you confess,
they can't give you the death sentence. And you hadn't ought to be
in--in a place like this. Now that I've seen you I know that what the
others say isn't so. You did it when you was crazy. You never would have
done it if you had been in your right mind."
She rose and moved slowly toward the door, her gaze still fixed upon him
with a mixture of pleading and horror. He followed, and opened the door
himself. "I'm glad you came, Mrs. Fanwell. It was very kind indeed of
you to come."
She stopped with her hand upon the knob. "I don't care what he says,"
she told him tremulously. "I don't care what anybody says; they can't
none of them make me believe that you would have done it if you'd known
what you was about."
When she had gone Kenwick drew a long sigh. The thing had come near to
shattering his laboriously constructed mask. He spoke sharply to the man
at the window. "What in the world did she mean by that, Dayton? They're
certainly not trying to make her believe that I killed her brother when
I was in my right mind?"
Dayton took a few slow steps toward him. "I was trying to lead up to
that when she came in. But it's just as well to have had you get it from
her. Now maybe you'll take more stock in it. That is exactly what
they're trying to make her think; what they'll try to make the court
think. Glover is going to try to prove (and he'll come within an ace of
doing it, too) that when you were in your right mind you deliberately
plotted to kill that man. He has the witnesses and the motive, and the
thing that he's going to attempt to saddle upon you, Mr. Kenwick
is--murder in the first degree."