“Yes, Sydney, he paid the price the State puts on murder, and I guess it
is just as well.” A fleeting smile crossed Colton’s thin lips for an
instant. “But the chief is naturally angry that such a spectacular
murderer should escape his clutches so easily. My keen ears caught the
click of the breech as he put in the cartridge. But I was too late; he
had waited until the last second.”
The two men were in the library of the old-fashioned house, where the
blind man had come to spend his regular afternoon four hours in darkness
that meant insurance against the splitting headaches too-long-continued
light on his sensitive, sightless eyes always caused. The knife-thrower
had lived but a few minutes, for his skill had not failed him, and the
bullet had pierced one of his lungs. Rogers had gone to arrange for the
funerals of Cartwright and the daughter he had loved. They were to be
side by side in death, and the story would go to their graves. On that
the men had agreed in the big bare room where the last act of the
tragedy had been played.
“How did you ever connect the knife-thrower with the murders?” asked
Sydney finally.
“Your story of the shooting in the box, as you told it to me while we
were waiting for the panic to cease in the theatre, gave me the first
clue,” explained the blind man thoughtfully. “The fact that you saw the
face of Nelson so plainly told me that the flash must have crossed his
body, and, in groping his way in the darkness, his right hand must have
been on the hangings. Shrimp’s enthusiastic description of the
knife-thrower’s act told me how wonderful it was, and--he was the
possibility.
“Then the murder of Cartwright was the proof needed. There could be no
explanation but that of a thrown pistol for the thing Rogers saw. And
the two pistols being identical was the last link. But no one would
believe the theory without irrefutable proof. That I got, first by the
nicked-up butts of the guns, showing how long they had been used in
practice. Then Rogers’s story of Cartwright told me the guilty person.
But then came the necessity of explaining where he had been all the
years. I sent Shrimp to the stage-entrance to get the knife-thrower’s
address and locate him. He did, and, being a boy, he aroused not the
slightest suspicion when he made an inquiry at the house. I knew also
that at least one of the two employees of the rathskeller must have
known another man had been on hand when the murder was committed. I had
to go there to see why they had withheld the information from the
police. The explanation was logical enough, but the police would never
have seen it. Then I had to go to the theatre and find the place where
the butt of the gun had struck on the wall. The finding was more of a
job than I thought. In his excitement the boy must have moved the
hangings a foot, for the scar in the velvet was a foot lower than I
should have found it. And you must remember that it was a scar that no
eye could have seen, one that could only be found with a microscope, or
supersensitive finger-tips like mine. Then came the message from Shrimp,
whom I had told to call me up either at the rathskeller or the theatre.”
Silence came in the darkened room. When Thornley Colton spoke again his
voice was low, solemn, its tone one of reverent wonder. “The death of
that girl is one of the higher mysteries, Sydney. Was she murdered
because of a terrible mistake, or did a merciful Providence send a
thoughtless, foolish boy to grope in the darkness at just the right
instant to deflect that pistol, and send the bullet into her back? She
died in the happiest moment of her life; joy was in her heart and on her
lips. If the pistol had not been turned by the moving velvet, Cartwright
would have died. Her whole story would have had to come out then; she
would have heard it bandied by unclean lips on the street-corners; to
know that her father, the father who did not even recognize her, was a
murderer. A merciful Providence? I’ll always wonder, Sydney.”
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