It was two o'clock before court, which had been dismissed for lunch
after Richard Glover's testimony, convened again. During the noon hour a
tray containing the only tempting food which the prisoner had seen since
his incarceration was brought up to his cell. It had become apparent to
the jailer that he had friends, and perhaps he was moved thereby to a
tardy compassion. But Kenwick, despite Dayton's admonition to "Brace up
and eat a good meal," waved it indifferently aside.
"I'm done for," he said simply. "I don't see how any twelve men could
hear the evidence that was presented this morning and find me innocent.
And by the time Jarvis gets through telling anything he likes, and
proving it----Well, it appears that every person who has been connected
in any way with me since this trouble fell upon me has taken advantage
of my misfortune to enrich himself. I don't care much now what they do
with me. When you lose your faith in humanity it's time to die. I'm no
religious fanatic, Dayton, but for these last two months I've thanked
God on my knees every night of my life for having brought me back into
the light. Now I wish that I had died instead."
Dayton made no further effort to rouse him from his despair. For
although not of a sensitive or particularly intuitive temperament
himself, he had come to realize the utter impossibility of finding this
other man in his trouble. "You don't seem to have much faith in me," was
all he said as he made some notes on the back of an envelope. But he
finally induced his client to eat some of the food upon his tray and
after the first few mouthfuls Kenwick was surprised to find that he was
ravenously hungry.
"That's something like," the lawyer approved, as they made their way
back through the court-house grounds. "Now you're good for another three
hours."
It hadn't seemed possible to Kenwick that he was, that his nerves could
stand the strain of hours and hours more of this, and there was no
assurance that the ordeal would end to-day or to-morrow. But Dayton's
easy assurance gave him a new grip upon himself.
They found the audience waiting and eager. None of them seemed to have
moved since they had been dismissed for recess two hours before. Only
the jury were absent, but five minutes after Kenwick's arrival they
filed in and took their places. The district attorney appeared to have
lost interest in the case. He sat staring out of the window with a sort
of wistful impatience as though he were visualizing a potential game of
golf. Dayton glanced at some notes on the table at his elbow and issued
his first command. "Call Madeleine Marstan."
In response to this summons one of the veiled women in the rear of the
room rose and came forward. She was quietly dressed in a gown of
clinging black silk and a black turban with a touch of amethyst. Every
eye in the court-room was fixed upon her, but she took the oath with the
unembarrassed self-possession of one long accustomed to the public gaze.
Kenwick, turned toward her, detected a faint odor of heliotrope.
"Where do you live, Mrs. Marstan?" Dayton inquired.
She gave a street and number in San Francisco.
"What is your occupation?"
"I am an actress."
"Do you know the prisoner?"
Without glancing at him she replied, with her unruffled composure, "I
do."
"How long have you known him?"
"About two months."
"Describe the occasion on which he was first brought to your notice."
She settled back slightly in her chair, like a traveler making herself
comfortable for what promised to be a long journey. "It was on the
afternoon of November 19 that my husband, a physician, came into our
apartment in San Francisco and announced to me that he had just secured
a remunerative position with a wealthy man down at Mont-Mer. He said
that the work would begin immediately and we must be ready to leave the
following day. I asked him for more details and he told me that the
position was a secretaryship which would involve little labor and afford
us a luxurious home with excellent salary. He had never been a success
in his profession, owing chiefly to the fact that he was dissipated, and
I had seriously considered leaving him and going back to the stage. But
I had decided to give him another chance, and since he appeared to find
my questions concerning this new work annoying, I agreed to go and allow
him to explain more fully when we should arrive.
"We went down in our own car and arrived at Rest Hollow in
mid-afternoon. My husband showed me over the house and grounds and I
thought I had never seen such a beautiful place. There was no one about
when we came, and after he had given me every opportunity to be
favorably impressed with the new home, we went to an upstairs
sitting-room in the left wing, and he told me, while he smoked one of
the expensive-looking cigars that he found there, further details
concerning his employer. I learned that he was an invalid, a young man
by the name of Roger Kenwick, who was recuperating from too strenuous
service overseas. We discussed the matter for only a few minutes before
my husband announced that it was time for him to go to the depot and
meet his charge, who was being brought up from Los Angeles by the
previous companion, who had taken him there to be outfitted with winter
clothes.
"This development in the case rather startled me, and as we walked along
the upper hall and over into the right wing, which he said had been
recently cleaned but was not to be used, I demanded more specific
details concerning the arrangement. I wanted particularly to know why
there was to be a change of 'secretaries' and whether the young man
himself was willing to accept the companionship of people whom he had
never seen.
"My husband had been drinking. I think he must have found a well-stocked
wine-closet at Rest Hollow. And he finally grew furious at my
insistence. The more angry he became the more he betrayed to me the fact
that there was something to conceal. He had never told me the name of
the man who had offered him this position, but I knew that there must be
an intermediary. While I continued to question him he opened the door of
one of the rooms in the right wing, hoping, I suppose, to distract my
attention. We went on with our discussion there. And at last I refused
pointblank to have anything to do with the affair, and told him that I
was going to leave him and go back to the profession that would afford
me an honest living. This infuriated him. He lost all self-control and
confessed then, what I had already begun to suspect, that young Kenwick
was a mental patient and had been in no way consulted in the
arrangement. This disclosure terrified me, for I knew that my husband
was not a competent person for such a responsibility. Hot words followed
between us, and ended in his knocking me senseless on the floor. When I
recovered consciousness, perhaps an hour later, I found myself locked
into the room with no possible means of escape. The blow had dislodged a
vertebra and I was in horrible pain. For a long time I lay on the bed
massaging the injured place and trying to get comfortable.
"Early in the evening I heard some one being dragged into the house from
the rear. I was unable to see anything, of course, but I could
distinctly hear footsteps and the subsequent running around of an
attendant. I concluded that my husband had returned drunk, and I was
relieved to know that he had evidently not brought the patient with him.
I knew that I had no recourse but to wait until the stupor had worn off
and my husband came to release me. I spent a wakeful and wretched night.
In the morning----"
Here a vivid and convincing description of her first encounter with the
patient ensued. She drew a clear-cut picture of her own horror in
hearing footsteps outside her door and of having the name "Roger
Kenwick" called in through the closed portal; of her terror at finding
herself unaccountably alone with a man whom she believed to be a violent
maniac.
Here Dayton held up the narrative. "What evidence did he give to
convince you of his insanity?'
"None at first. He seemed to talk quite rationally, and fearing that I
might make him angry if I kept silence, I made evasive answers to his
questions. He prepared food and sent it up to me at what I know now must
have been immense physical cost to himself. I had come to the conclusion
that he, like myself, was the victim of some foul conspiracy and had
decided to risk confiding in him when all at once his manner changed. He
began to talk wildly of finding a loaded revolver and of shooting any
one who came near the place. A few minutes later, for no apparent
reason, I heard him smash a window in the room just under mine. My
terror increased a hundredfold, for I know absolutely nothing about the
proper care of the insane. Late that same night I heard him crawl out
through the broken window, and he called up to me that he was either
going to get help or commit suicide.
"Almost insane myself now with terror, I waited until I heard his
footsteps grow faint in the distance, then worked at the lock of my
door, and at last succeeded in picking it with a pen-knife. Then I
rushed downstairs, turned on the lights, and tried to make my escape. I
had several of my own personal keys in my possession, and with one of
these I opened the front door, which had been securely locked, I suppose
by the gardener. My one frantic object was to get away and find my
husband.
"But just as I got the door open I heard a shot fired from the side of
the house. I hurried around there, and when I reached the spot from
which the sound had come, I found just what I feared--a man lying dead
under the window. I thought, of course, that it was the patient who had
killed himself in a mania, as he had threatened to do. Filled with
horror at the idea of leaving him there alone and uncovered in the
storm, I ran back to the living-room, picked up the first thing at hand
(an Indian blanket), and threw it over him. Then I hurried to the
nearest house, about a mile away, and gave the alarm.
"Believing that it was my husband's neglect that had caused the tragedy,
my purpose was to find him and get his version of the story before I
betrayed him. So I furnished no further information to the authorities
in town save that Roger Kenwick, the inmate of Rest Hollow, had
committed suicide. I really knew nothing else about it but that bare
fact.
"But that night I discovered, when I reached Mont-Mer, that my husband
had been killed in an auto accident while coming out from the depot. I
went to the morgue and identified his body, ordered the remains to be
shipped north for interment, and left, unknown to any one, on the late
northbound train. The undertaker told me that there had been no other
victim of the tragedy, so I reasoned that the story which Mr. Kenwick
had told me about a sprained leg was true, after all, that he had been
injured in the catastrophe and had, by a curious freak of chance, found
his way back alone to the very place that was awaiting him and in which
he had been living for the preceding ten months."
Dayton declared himself satisfied with the testimony and turned the
witness over to the prosecution. The district attorney had recovered his
interest. "Mrs. Marstan," he said, groping for his glasses, "can you
produce a certificate of marriage to Dr. Marstan?"
"I cannot. Important papers, including that, were among the few things
that I took to Rest Hollow in November, and you have been informed that
the place is completely destroyed."
"That will do."
She stepped down from the stand, and for the first time her eyes rested
upon the prisoner. In them was an expression that would have given him
new courage had he seen it, but Roger Kenwick sat motionless as a
statue, his gaze fixed immutably upon the floor. It was only when the
name of the next witness was called that he came back to a sense of his
surroundings. "Call Granville Jarvis."
Dayton surveyed the Southerner sharply before he put his first question.
"You are the detective whom Richard Glover employed in San Francisco to
shadow the prisoner?"
"I am."
"How long were you in Mr. Glover's employ?"
"About two weeks."
"Two _weeks_? Why did you give up the case then?"
"Because at the end of that time I was convinced that Roger Kenwick was
neither mentally unbalanced nor guilty of any crime. I communicated this
opinion to Mr. Glover and resigned from further service."
"But you still continued to shadow the prisoner?"
"I still continued to cultivate his acquaintance. I considered him one
of the most interesting men I had ever met."
"And your connections with him since then have been of a purely
friendly character? Not in any way professional, Mr. Jarvis?"
"No, I can't say that. For a few weeks after I had resigned from Mr.
Glover's service I was asked to take up the case again from a different
angle; employed, I may say, by some one else."
"By whom?"
For just an instant the witness hesitated. Then, "By Mr. Clinton
Morgan."
"Describe that incident, please."
Jarvis clasped his hands behind his head and stared off into space. "It
was near the end of December that Professor Morgan came to my rooms one
evening and asked my assistance on the case of Richard Glover."
For the first time since the beginning of the trial, the chief witness
for the prosecution betrayed an unguarded emotion. The narrow slit of
amber, showing between his drooping lids, widened.
"My caller," Jarvis went on, "explained to me that he and his sister,
who were friends of Roger Kenwick, had stumbled upon a clue the previous
day that had made them suspect that there was foul play about his death;
that perhaps he might even be alive after all, and a base advantage
taken of his helplessness."
Here Dayton interjected a question. "Was there any special reason why
Professor Morgan should have chanced upon you as the detective for this
investigation? Had you had any previous connection with him?"
"Only an academic connection. He knew, through university affiliations,
that I was out here on the coast doing some research work for Columbia
in my chosen profession--criminal psychology."
"Then you are not a detective?"
"Not in the strict sense of the word. The finding out of a criminal is
only the introductory part of my interest."
"Proceed with your story, Mr. Jarvis."
"Well, Professor Morgan and I had lunched together several times over at
the Faculty Club on the campus, so I was not greatly surprised to
receive a call from him. Furthermore, having heard the other side of
this case, I was much interested in the opportunity to study it from a
new angle. For while I was in Mr. Glover's employ, I had, unsuspected by
Kenwick himself, subjected him to a variety of exacting psychological
tests. Under the pretext of making some photographic experiments in
which I was at that time interested, I had enlisted his aid on several
occasions and in this way had made a rather thorough examination of his
five senses, his power of association, his memory (both for
retentiveness and recall), and had tried him out, by means of various
athletic games, for muscular coördination, endurance, poise, and many
other essentials of normality. In only one of these did I find him
defective. And that one was memory.
"My research was made the more interesting by the fact that shortly
after I undertook the work for Mr. Glover the subject gave me,
voluntarily and quite unsuspectingly, the complete story of his strange
adventure at Rest Hollow, an adventure for which he frankly confessed
that he could not account. It coincided exactly with the hypothesis
which I had established for him; that he had at one period of his life
been mentally unbalanced, and that he had in some way re-gained his
sanity but not completely his memory. When I knew that there was likely
to be a crime attributed to him (for Mr. Glover had hinted as much) my
interest doubled. For Mr. Kenwick had on various occasions shown himself
possessed of the highest ideals and a fineness of caliber which I have
not often encountered. And so, in the employ of Professor Morgan, I
shifted the focal point and turned the search-light of science upon the
accuser. It has resulted in the most startling revelations."
There was an inarticulate stir in the crowded room. From the rear seats
men and women strained forward to catch every word as it fell, clear-cut
and decisive, from the scientist's lips. Jarvis sat with one hand thrust
into his pocket, and his keen eyes fixed upon the group of lawyers
below. A casual observer of the scene might easily have mistaken his
position and assigned to him the role of prosecuting attorney.
"There was an insurmountable barrier, of course," he continued, "to my
making any personal examination of Mr. Glover, as I had done with the
former subject. One man was innocent and unsuspecting; the other, I felt
certain, would be on his guard. And he was. Since I left his service,
Richard Glover has avoided me. So a more indirect means of accomplishing
my task had to be devised. After some consideration I decided to enlist
the aid of an ally whom I knew to be both clever and discreet."
A long-drawn sigh swept the court-room. It was that sigh, a mixture of
eagerness and satisfaction by means of which an audience at a theater
indicates to the actors that the performance is living up to its
advertisements.
"Mr. Kenwick himself," the witness went on in his calm, even voice, "had
called my attention to a certain Madame Rosalie, a spiritualistic
medium, who was taking the city by storm. He had interviewed her for his
paper, and from his description I imagined that she might be able and
willing to assist me. So I went to see her, and at the first mention of
Mr. Kenwick's name she became intensely interested."
Here Dayton's voice, sounding a curious little note of exultation, broke
in again. "You have referred to this medium as 'Madame Rosalie.' Was
that her professional or her real name?"
"Her professional name. Her real name, as she disclosed it to me on the
occasion of my first call, was Madeleine Marstan."
Another moment of silence and then the witness proceeded. "Having told
me her real name, she went on to describe her unexpected encounter, a
few days previously, with Roger Kenwick, who she had thought was dead.
It seemed that when Kenwick had come to her for a sitting, his name had
been accidentally revealed to her by another client, and it had struck
her with the force of a blow. For it recalled to her mind a horrible
adventure at Mont-Mer, which she narrated for me then in detail. At
first she had surmised that this must be some relative of the
unfortunate young man, and she had done all she could, she said, to
start him upon the track of the tragedy. When she discovered that it was
the man himself, she was glad to place all her powers at my disposal.
For she had returned to the city in November with two dominating
purposes; first to find some employment which would bring in quick money
and so pay her husband's debts and clear his name, and second to
discover, if possible, the identity of the man who had led them both
into the miserable Mont-Mer trap, which resulted so disastrously for
every one concerned in it. She had not been able to make a stage
contract, she said, for the season was too far advanced, and so she had
turned to the occult, in which she had always felt a deep interest, and
for which she knew herself to have an unaccountable talent. Fortunately
her strange psychic ability had caught the attention of one of the
university faculty and she had been given just the publicity which she
needed.
"And so we deliberately plotted between us the scientific testing of
Richard Glover. I prepared a list of apparently random words in which
were mingled what I call 'dangerous terms'; that is, words which were
connected with the adventure at Rest Hollow. When these and the other
tests were ready, I induced Glover, by means of a casual suggestion from
a mutual acquaintance, to seek the aid of 'Madame Rosalie.' I felt
certain that if he were not intimately connected with the tragedy he
would scorn this idea, and that if he were, it was exactly the time that
he would turn to the supernatural for aid. And I was not mistaken. For
almost immediately he called upon the clairvoyant. And his response to
the tests for association was amazing even to me. If I may quote from
the list of words----" He drew a folded paper from his pocket. "Among
many perfectly irrelevant terms I had smuggled in such words as
'blanket' and 'window' and 'oleander.' Madame Rosalie reported that his
gaze always returned to such suggestive words (despite her admonition to
look at something else) before she could change the card. The
subconscious response to evil association was almost perfect. There were
many other tests, of course, and by the time he had completed them he
had shown an intimate knowledge of the crime at Rest Hollow and an
uneasiness from which any skilful psychologist could take his
starting-point. And then, as a culminating incident, he supplied to the
medium, quite of his own accord, the name 'Rest Hollow,' and put to her
the unexpected question, 'Where is Ralph Regan?'
"Having been thus convinced that he was the man we sought, Mrs. Marstan
and I continued our investigations together. She went out with him, upon
several occasions, and once, by pre-arrangement, accompanied him to the
theater. On the same evening I invited Kenwick, and, all at once, called
his attention to Glover. The response was like match to powder. The
visual image of his former warden restored, in large degree, his memory.
He was eager to reëstablish the connection. Mrs. Marstan had been
careful to point out Kenwick to her escort, and the result was just what
we had foreseen. It was he who evaded the encounter, supplying a pretext
upon which he and Mrs. Marstan immediately left the theater.
"But Glover now suspected that he was entrapped. He had already, I knew,
put another detective upon Kenwick's track. When news was published of
Mrs. Fanwell's arrival in Mont-Mer, and the subsequent demand to have
the disappearance of her brother investigated, he decided that his only
course was to act at once. Mrs. Marstan, aided by her unmistakable
psychic ability, had advised him to follow his third plan, and this
plan was to have Kenwick convicted of murder."
"And this was the report that you turned over to Professor Morgan at the
end of your investigation?" Dayton inquired.
"This was the report. I was working on it with him up in San Francisco
until late last night. We almost missed the train trying to fit together
the final details. But I think the story, as I have given it to you, is
now complete."
"Now, one other thing, Mr. Jarvis. In the first part of your testimony
you said that Mr. Morgan told you that he had stumbled upon a clue that
had made him suspicious of Glover. Did he disclose to you the nature of
that clue?"
"Not at first. I told him that I preferred to work upon some theories of
my own, unprejudiced by any evidence that he might have to offer."
"And how many times have you seen Mr. Morgan since then?"
"Only once. We came down from San Francisco together last night."
"Then you made no reports to him before?"
For the first time, the witness hesitated. Then his reply came with the
customary clearness. "Not to him. I have reported to Miss Morgan on
several occasions."
"Then you have been really working with her upon this case?"
"Yes, almost entirely with her."
There was a very obvious reluctance in his voice now, but Dayton went on
imperturbably. "When you came down from San Francisco last night, Mr.
Jarvis, was Professor Morgan's sister in your party?"
"Yes."
Dayton swept a glance over the rows of faces before him. "Is Miss Morgan
in the court-room now?"
"She has just come in." The promptness with which the witness had given
his earlier testimony served to make his present reluctance the more
apparent.
Dayton brought his eyes back to the witness-stand. "That will do."
Jarvis stepped down. The voice of the auditors, beginning in a subdued
murmur, rose in marked crescendo. No word in it could be distinguished
from another. Yet upon Roger Kenwick's sensitive nerves this message
from the outer world registered. It was unmistakably applause.
For the first time since the trial began, he felt his mask of graven
indifference slipping from him. He was trembling in every fiber, and
with one unsteady hand he made a pathetic effort to quiet the other. And
then there fell upon his ears like the crash of thunder Dayton's curt
command, "Call Miss Morgan."