When after the autopsy, Dr. Harper announced that it was necessary to
send for the Medical Chief Examiner, Eunice cried out, “Why, what do
you mean? He’s the same as a Coroner!”
“He takes the place of the Coroner, nowadays,” rejoined Harper,
“and in Dr. Marsden’s opinion his attendance is necessary.”
“Do you mean Sanford was murdered?”
Eunice whispered, her face white and drawn.
“We can’t tell, Mrs. Embury. It is a most unusual case. There is
absolutely no indication of foul play, but, on the other hand, there is
no symptom or condition that tells the reason of his death. That is your
finding, Dr. Marsden?”
“Yes,” agreed the other. “Mr. Embury died because of a sudden and
complete paralysis of respiration and circulation. There is nothing we
can find to account for that and by elimination of all other possible
causes we are brought to the consideration of poison. Not any known or
evident poison, but a subtle, mysteriously administered toxic agent of
some sort--”
“You must be crazy!” and Eunice faced him with scornful glance and
angry eyes. “Who would poison my husband? How could any one get at him
to do it? Why would they, anyway?”
Dr. Marsden looked at her curiously. “Those questions are not for me,
madame,” he said, a little curtly. “I shall call Examiner Crowell,
and he will take charge of the case.”
“He’s the same as a coroner! I won’t have him!” Eunice declared.
“It isn’t for you to say,” Dr. Marsden was already at the
telephone. “The course of events makes it imperative that I should
call Dr. Crowell. He is not a coroner. He is, of course, a Civil
Service appointee, and as such, in authority. You will do whatever he
directs.”
Eunice Embury was silent from sheer astonishment. Never before had she
been talked to like this. Accustomed to dictate, to give orders, to have
her lightest word obeyed, she was dumfounded at being overruled in this
fashion.
The men took in the situation more clearly.
“Medical Examiner!” exclaimed Hendricks. “Is it a case for him?”
“Yes,” returned Marsden, gravely. “At least, it is a very
mysterious death. Mystery implies wrong--of some sort. Had Mr. Embury
been a man with a weak heart, or any affected organ, I should have been
able to make a satisfactory diagnosis. But his sound, perfect condition
precludes any reason for this sudden death. It must be looked into. It
may be the Examiner will find a simple, logical cause, but I admit I can
find none--and I am not inexperienced.”
“But if he were poisoned,” began Hendricks, “as you have implied,
surely, you could find some trace.”
“That’s just the point,” agreed Marsden. “I certainly think
I could. And, since I can’t, I feel it my duty to report it as a
mysterious and, to me, inexplicable death.”
“You’re right,” said Elliott. “If you can’t find the cause,
for heaven’s sake get somebody who can! I don’t for a minute believe
it’s a murder, but the barest suspicion of such a thing must be set at
rest once and for all! Murder! Ridiculous! But get the Examiner, by all
means!”
So Eunice’s continued objections were set aside and Dr. Crowell was
called in.
A strange little man the Examiner proved to be. He had sharp, bird-like
eyes, that darted from one person to another, and seemed to read their
very thoughts. On his entrance, he went straight to Eunice, and took her
hand.
“Mrs. Embury?” he said, positively, rather than interrogatively.
“Do not fear me, ma’am. I want to help you, not annoy you.”
Impressed by his magnetic manner and his encouraging handclasp, Eunice
melted a little and her look of angry scorn changed to a half-pleased
expression of greeting.
“Miss Ames--my aunt,” she volunteered, as Dr. Crowell paused before
Aunt Abby.
And then the newcomer spoke to the two doctors already present, was
introduced to Elliott and Hendricks, who were still there, and in a very
decided manner took affairs into his own hands.
“Yes, yes,” he chattered on; “I will help you, Mrs. Embury. Now,
Dr. Harper, this is your case, I understand? Dr. Marsden--yours, too?
Yes, yes--mysterious, you say? Maybe so--maybe so. Let us proceed at
once.”
The little man stood, nervously teetering up and down on his toes,
almost like a schoolboy preparing to speak a piece. “Now--if you
please--now--” he looked eagerly toward the other doctors.
They all went into Embury’s room and closed the door.
Then Eunice’s temporary calm forsook her.
“It’s awful!” she cried. “I don’t want them to bother poor
Sanford. Why can’t they let him alone? I don’t care what killed him!
He’s dead, and no doctors can help that! Oh, Alvord, can’t you make
them let San alone?”
“No, Eunice; it has to be. Keep quiet, dear. It can do no good for you
to get all wrought up, and if you’d go and lie down--”
“For heaven’s sake, stop telling me to go and lie down! If one more
person says that to me I shall just perfectly fly!”
“Now, Eunice,” began Aunt Abby, “it’s only for your own good,
dear. You are all excited and nervous--”
“Of course, I am! Who wouldn’t be? Mason,” she looked around at
the concerned faces, “I believe you understand me best. You know I
don’t want to go and lie down, don’t you?”
“Stay where you are, child,” Elliott smiled kindly at her. “Of
course, you’re nervous and upset--all you can do is to try to hold
yourself together--and don’t try that too hard, either--for you may
defeat your own ends thereby. Just wait, Eunice; sit still and wait.”
They all waited, and after what seemed an interminable time the Examiner
reappeared and the other two doctors with him.
“Well, well,” Crowell began, his restless hands twisting themselves
round each other. “Now, be quiet, Mrs. Embury--I declare, I don’t
know how to say what I have to say, if you sit there like a chained
tiger--”
“Go on!” Eunice now seemed to usurp something of Crowell’s own
dictatorship. “Go on, Dr. Crowell!”
“Well, ma’am, I will. But there’s not much to tell. Our principal
evidence is lack of evidence--”
“What do you mean?” cried Eunice. “Talk English, please!”
“I am doing so. There is positively no evidence that Mr. Embury was
poisoned, yet owing to the absolute lack of any hint of any other means
of death, we are forced to the conclusion that he was poisoned.”
“By his own hand?” asked Hendricks, his face grave.
“Probably not. You see, sir, with no knowledge of how the poison
was administered--with no suspicion of any reason for its being
administered--we are working in the dark--”
“I should say so!” exclaimed Elliott; “black darkness, I call it.
Are you within your rights in assuming poison?”
“Entirely; it has to be the truth. No agent but a swift, subtle poison
could have cut off the victim’s life like that.”
Crowell was now walking up and down the room. He was a restless, nervous
man, and under stress of anxiety he became almost hysterical.
“I don’t know!” he cried out, as one in an extremity of
uncertainty. “It must be poison--it must have been--murder!”
He pronounced the last word in a gasping way--as if afraid to suggest it
but forced to do so.
Hendricks looked at him with a slight touch of contempt in his glance,
but seeing this, Dr. Harper interjected:
“The Examiner is regretting the necessity of thrusting his convictions
upon you, but he knows it must be done.”
“Yes,” said Crowell, more decidedly now, “I have had cases before
where murder was committed in such an almost undiscoverable way as this.
Never a case quite so mysterious, but nearly so.”
“What is your theory of the method?” asked Elliott, who was
staggered by the rush of thoughts and conclusions made inevitable by the
Examiner’s report.
“That’s the greatest mystery of all,” Crowell replied. He was
quite calm now--apparently it was concern for the family that had made
him so disturbed.
“Poison was not taken by way of the stomach, that is certain.
Therefore, it must have been introduced through some other channel. But
we find no trace of a hypodermic needle--”
“How utterly ridiculous!” Eunice exclaimed, her eyes blazing with
scorn. “How could any one get in to poison my husband? Why, we lock
all our doors at night--we always have.”
“Yes’m--exactly, ma’am,” Crowell began, rubbing his hands again;
“and now, please tell me of the locking up last night. As usual,
ma’am, as usual?”
“Precisely. Our sleeping rooms are those three,” she pointed to the
bedrooms. “When they are locked, they form a unit by themselves, quite
apart from the rest of the apartment.”
Dr. Crowell looked interested.
The apartment faced on Park Avenue, and being on the corner had also
windows on the side street.
Front, enumerating from the corner and running south, were the
dining-room, the large living-room, and the good-sized reception hall.
Directly back of these, and with windows on a large court, were the
three bedrooms, Eunice’s in the middle, Sanford’s back of the
hall, and Aunt Abby’s back of the dining-room. Aunt Abby’s room was
ordinarily Eunice’s boudoir and dressing-room, but was used as a guest
chamber on occasion.
These three bedrooms, as was shown to Examiner Crowell, when locked
from the inside were shut off by themselves, although allowing free
communication from one to another of them.
“Lock with keys?” he asked.
“No,” Eunice replied. “There are big, strong, snap-locks on the
inside of the doors. I mean locks that fasten themselves when you shut
the door, unless you have previously put up the catch.”
“Yes, I see,” and Crowell looked into the matter for himself.
“Spring catches, and mighty strong ones, too. And these were always
fastened at night?”
“Always,” Eunice declared. “Mr. Embury was not afraid of burglars,
but it was his life-long habit to sleep with a locked door, and he
couldn’t get over it.”
“Then,” and the bird-like little eyes darted from one to another of
his listeners and paused at Aunt Abby; “then, Miss Ames, you were
also locked in, each night with your niece and her husband, safe from
intruders.”
“Yes,” and Aunt Abby looked a little startled at being addressed.
“I don’t sleep with my door locked at home, and it bothered me
at first. But, you see, my room has no outlet except through Mrs.
Embury’s bedroom, so as the door between her room and mine was never
locked, it really made little difference to me.”
“Oh, is that the way of it?” and Dr. Crowell rose in his hasty
manner and dashed in at Eunice’s door. This, the middle room, opened
on the right to the boudoir, and on the left to Embury’s room.
The latter door was closed, and Crowell turned toward the boudoir--now
Aunt Abby’s bedroom. A small bed had been put up for her there, and
the room was quite large enough to be comfortable. It was luxuriously
furnished and the appointments were quite in keeping with the dainty
tastes of the mistress of the house.
Crowell darted here and there about the room. He looked out of the rear
windows, which faced on the court; out of a window that faced on
the side street, peeped into the bathroom, and then hurried back to
Eunice’s own room. Here he observed the one large window, which was a
triple bay, and which, of course, opened on the court.
He glanced at Embury’s closed door, and then returned to the
living-room, and again faced his audience.
“Nobody came in from the outside,” he announced. “The windows show
a sheer drop of ten stories to the ground. No balconies or fire-escapes.
So our problem resolves itself into two possibilities--Mr. Embury was
given the poison by someone already inside those locked doors--or, the
doors were not locked.”
The restless hands were still now. The Examiner bore the aspect of a
bomb-thrower who had exploded his missile and calmly awaited the result.
His darting eyes flew from face to face, as if he were looking for a
criminal then and there. He sat motionless--save for his constantly
moving eyeballs--and for a moment no word was spoken by anyone.
Then Eunice said, with no trace of anger or excitement, “You mean some
intruder was concealed in there when we went to bed?”
Crowell turned on her a look of undisguised admiration. More, he
seemed struck with a sudden joy of finding a possible loophole from the
implication he had meant to convey.
“I never thought of that,” he said, slowly, piercing her with his
intent gaze; “it may be. But Mrs. Embury--in that case, where is the
intruder now? How did he get out?”
“Rubbish!” cried Miss Ames, caustically. “There never was any
intruder--I mean, not in our rooms. Ridiculous! Of course, the doors
were not locked--they were unintentionally left open--I don’t believe
they’re locked half the time!--and your intruder came in through these
other rooms.”
“Yes,” agreed Hendricks; “that must have been the way of it. Dr.
Crowell, if you’re sure this is a--a--oh, it isn’t! Who would kill
Embury? Your theory presupposes a motive. What was it? Robbery? Is
anything missing?”
Nobody could answer this question, and Ferdinand, as one familiar
with his master’s belongings was sent into the room of death to
investigate.
Unwillingly, and only after a repeated order, the man went.
“No, ma’am,” he said, on his return, addressing Eunice. “None of
Mr. Embury’s things are gone. All his pins and cuff-links are in their
boxes and his watch is on the chiffonier where he always leaves it.
“Then,” resumed Hendricks, “what motive can you suggest, Dr.
Crowell?”
“It’s not for me, sir, to go so far as that. I see it this way:
I’m positive that the man was killed by foul means. I’m sure he was
poisoned, though I can’t say how. I--you see, I haven’t been Medical
Examiner very long--and I never had such a hard duty to perform before.
But it is my duty and I must do it. I must report to headquarters.”
“You shan’t!” Eunice flew across the room and stood before him,
her whole body quivering with intense rage. “I forbid it! I am Sanford
Embury’s wife, and as such I have rights that shall not be imposed
upon! I will have no police dragged into this matter. Were my husband
really murdered--which, of course, he was not--I would rather never have
the murderer discovered or punished, than to have the degradation, the
horrors of--a police case!”
The infinite scorn with which she brought out the last phrase showed her
earnestness and her determination to have the matter pushed no further.
But Examiner Crowell was by no means the inefficient little man he
looked. His eyes took on a new glitter, and narrowed as they looked at
the angry woman before him.
“I am sorry, Mrs. Embury,” he said, gently, but with a strong
decision in his tone, “but your wishes cannot be considered. The law
is inexorable. The mystery of this case is deepened rather than lessened
by your extraordinary behavior and I must--”
But his brave manner quailed before the lightning of Eunice’s eyes.
“What!” she cried; “you defy me! You will call the police against
my desire--my command! You will not, sir! I forbid it!”
Crowell looked at her with a new interest. It would seem he had
discovered a new species of humanity. Doubtless he had never seen a
woman like that in his previous experience.
For Eunice was no shrew. She did not, for a moment, lose her poise or
her dignity. Indeed, she was rather more imperious and dominating in her
intense anger than when more serene. But she carried conviction. Both
Elliott and Hendricks hoped and believed she could sway the Examiner to
her will.
Aunt Abby merely sat nodding her head, in corroboration of Eunice’s
speeches. “Yes--yes--that’s so!” she murmured, unheeding whether
she were heard or not.
The Examiner, however, paid little attention to the decrees of the angry
woman. He looked at Eunice, curiously, even admiringly, and then went
across the room to the telephone.
Eunice flew after him and snatched the instrument from his hand.
“Stop!” she cried, fairly beside herself with fury. “You shall
not!”
Both Elliott and Hendricks sprang from their chairs, and Dr. Harper rose
to take care of Eunice as an irresponsible patient, but Crowell waved
them all back.
“Sit down, gentlemen,” he said; “Mrs. Embury, think a minute.
If you act like that you will--you inevitably will--draw suspicion on
yourself!”
“I don’t care!” she screamed; “better that than the--the
publicity--the shame of a police investigation! Oh, Sanford--my
husband!”
It was quite clear that uppermost in her disturbed mind was the dread of
the disgrace of the police inquiry. This had dulled her poignant grief,
her horror, her sadness--all had been lost in the immediate fear of the
impending unpleasantness.
“And, too,” the Examiner went on, coldly, “It is useless for you
to rant around like that! I’ll simply go to another telephone.”
Eunice stepped back and looked at him, more in surprise than submission.
To be told that she was “ranting around” was not the way in which
she was usually spoken to! Moreover, she realized it was true, that to
jerk the telephone away from Dr. Crowell could not permanently prevent
his sending his message.
She tried another tack.
“I beg your pardon, doctor,” she said, and her expression was that
of a sad and sorry child. “You’re right, I mustn’t lose my temper
so. But, you know, I am under a severe mental strain--and something
should be forgiven me--some allowance made for my dreadful position--”
“Yes, ma’am--oh, certainly, ma’am--” Crowell was again nervous
and restless. He proved that he could withstand an angry woman far
better than a supplicating one. Eunice saw this and followed up her
advantage.
“And, so, doctor, try to appreciate how I feel--a newlymade
widow--my husband dead, from some unknown cause, but which I know is
not--murder,” after a second’s hesitation she pronounced the awful
word clearly--“and you want to add to my terror and distress by
calling in the police--of all things, the police!”
“Yes, ma’am, I know it’s too bad--but, my duty, ma’am--”
“Your duty is first, to me!” Eunice’s smile was dazzling. It had
been a callous heart, indeed, that would not be touched by it!
“To you, ma’am?” The Examiner’s tone was innocence itself.
“Yes,” Eunice faltered, for she began to realize she was not gaining
ground. “You owe me the--don’t they call it the benefit of the
doubt?”
“What doubt, ma’am?”
“Why, doubt as to murder. If my husband died a natural death you know
there’s no reason to call the police. And as you’re not sure, I
claim that you must give me the benefit of your doubt and not call
them.”
“Now, ma’am, you don’t put that just right. You see, the police
are the people who must settle that doubt. It’s that very doubt that
makes it necessary to call them. And, truly, Mrs. Ernbury, it won’t
be any such horrible ordeal as you seem to anticipate. They’re decent
men, and all they want to get at is the truth.”
“That isn’t so!” Eunice was angry again. “They’re horrible
men! rude, unkempt, low-down, common men! I won’t have them in my
house! You have no right to insist on it. They’ll be all over the
rooms, prying into everything, looking here, there and all over!
They’ll ask impertinent questions; they’ll assume all sorts
of things that aren’t true, and they’ll wind up by coming to a
positively false conclusion! Alvord, Mason, you’re my friends--help me
out! Don’t, let this man do as he threatens!”
“Listen, Eunice,” Elliott said, striving to quiet her; “we can’t
help the necessity Dr. Crowell sees of notifying the police. But we can
help you. Only, however, if you’ll be sensible, dear, and trust to our
word that it can’t be helped, and you must let it go on quietly.”
“Oh, hush up, Mason; your talk drives me crazy! Alvord, are you a
broken reed, too? Is there nobody to stand by me?”
“I’ll try,” and Hendricks went and spoke to Dr. Crowell in low
tones. A whispered colloquy followed, but it soon became clear that
Hendricks’ pleas, of whatever nature, were unsuccessful, and he
returned to Eunice’s side.
“Nothing doing,” he said, with an attempt at lightness. “He
won’t listen to reason--nor to bribery and corruption--” this
last was said openly and with a smile that robbed the idea of any real
seriousness.
And then Dr. Crowell again lifted the telephone and called up
Headquarters.