The Eleventh Hour
On the third Sunday in March the thermometer dropped suddenly in
Chicago a little after ten in the evening. A roaring storm of mingled
rain and snow, driven by a riotous wind—wild even for the Great Lakes
in winter—changed suddenly to sleet, which lay in liquid slush upon
the walks. At twenty minutes past the hour, sleet and slush had both
begun to freeze. Mr. Luther Trant, hastening on foot back to his rooms
at his club from north of the river where he had been taking tea,
observed—casually, as he observed many things—that the soft mess
underfoot had coated with tough, rubbery ice, through which the heels
of his shoes crunched at every step while his toes left almost no
mark.
But he noted this then only as a hindrance to his haste. He had been
taking the day “off” away from both his office and his club; but
fifteen minutes before, he had called up the club for the first time
that day and had learned that a woman—a wildly terrified and anxious
woman—had been inquiring for him at intervals during the day over the
telephone, and that a special delivery letter from the same source had
been awaiting him since six o’clock. The psychologist, suddenly
stricken with a sense of guilt and dereliction, had not waited for a
cab.
As he hurried down Michigan Avenue now, he was considering how affairs
had changed with him in the last six months. Then he had been a callow
assistant in a psychological laboratory. The very professor whom he
had served had smiled amusedly, almost derisively, when he had
declared his belief in his own powers to apply the necromancy of the
new psychology to the detection of crime. But the delicate instruments
of the laboratory—the chronoscopes, kymographs, plethysmographs,
which made visible and recorded unerringly, unfalteringly, the most
secret emotions of the heart and the hidden workings of the brain;
the experimental investigations of Freud and Jung, of the German
and French scientists, of Munsterberg and others in America—had
fired him with the belief in them and in himself. In the face of
misunderstanding and derision, he had tried to trace the criminal, not
by the world-old method of the marks he had left on things, but by the
evidences which the crime had left on the mind of the criminal
himself. And so well had he succeeded that now he could not leave his
club even on a Sunday, without disappointing somewhere, in the
great-pulsating city, an appeal to him for help in trouble. But as he
turned at the corner into the entrance of the club, he put aside this
thought and faced the doorman.
“Has she called again?”
“The last time, sir, was at nine o’clock. She wanted to know if you
had received the note, and said you were to have it as soon as you
came in.”
The man handed it out—a plain, coarse envelope, with the red two-cent
and the blue special delivery stamp stuck askew above an uneven line
of great, unsteady characters addressing the envelope to Trant at the
club. Within it, ten lines spread this wild appeal across the paper:
“If Mr. Trant will do—for some one unknown to him—the greatest
possible service—to save perhaps a life—a life! I beg him to come to
—— Ashland Avenue between seven and nine o’clock to-night! Eleven!
For God’s sake come—between seven and nine! Later will be too late.
Eleven! I tell you it may be worse than useless to come after
eleven! So for God’s sake—if you are human—help me! You will be
expected.
“W. Newberry.”
The psychologist glanced at his watch swiftly. It was already
twenty-five minutes to eleven!
Besides the panic expressed by the writing itself, the broken
sentences, the reiterated appeal, most of all the strange and
disconnected recurrence three times in the few short lines of the word
eleven—which plainly pointed to that hour as the last at which help
might avail—the characters themselves, which were the same as those on
the envelope, confirmed the psychologist’s first impression that the
note was written by a man, a young man, too, despite the havoc that
fear and nervelessness had played with him.
“You’re sure it was a woman’s voice on the phone?” he asked quickly.
“Yes, sir; and she seemed a lady.”
Trant hastily picked up the telephone on the desk; “Hello! Is this the
West End Police Station? This is Mr. Trant. Can you send a
plain-clothes man and a patrolman at once to —— Ashland Avenue? . . .
No; I don’t know what the trouble is, but I understand it is a matter
of life and death; that’s why I want to have help at hand if I need
it. Let me know who you are sending.”
He stood impatiently tapping one heel against the other, while he
waited for the matter to be adjusted at the police station, then swung
back to receive the name of the detective: “Yes. . . . You are sending
Detective Siler? Because he knows the house? . . . Oh, there has been
trouble there before? . . . I see. . . . Tell him to hurry. I will try
and get there myself before eleven.”
He dashed the receiver back on to the hook, caught his coat collar
close again and ran swiftly to claim a taxicab which was just bringing
another member up to the club.
The streets were all but empty; and into the stiffening ice the chains
on the tires of the driving wheels bit sharply; so it still lacked ten
minutes of the hour, as Trant assured himself by another quick glance
at his watch, when the chauffeur checked the motor short before the
given number on Ashland Avenue, and the psychologist jumped out.
The vacant street, and the one dim light on the first floor of the old
house, told Trant the police had not yet arrived.
The porticoed front and the battered fountain with cupids, which rose
obscurely from the ice-crusted sod of the narrow lawn at its side,
showed an attempt at fashion. In the rear, as well as Trant could see
it in the indistinct glare of the street lamps, the building seemed to
fall away into a single rambling story.
As the psychologist rang the bell and was admitted, he saw at once
that he had not been mistaken in believing that the cab which had
passed his motor only an instant before had come from the same house;
for the mild-eyed, white-haired little man, who opened the door almost
before the bell had stopped ringing, had not yet taken off his
overcoat. Behind him, in the dim light of a shaded lamp, an equally
placid, white-haired little woman was laying off her wraps; and their
gentle faces were so completely at variance with the wild terror of
the note that Trant now held between his fingers in his pocket, that
he hesitated before he asked his question:
“Is W. Newberry here?”
“I am the Reverend Wesley Newberry,” the little man answered. “I am no
longer in the active service of the Lord; but if it is a case of
immediate necessity and I can be of use—”
“No, no!” Trant checked him. “I have not come to ask your service as a
minister, Mr. Newberry. I am Luther Trant. But I see I must explain,”
the psychologist continued, at first nonplused by the little man’s
stare of perplexity, which showed no recognition of the name, and then
flushing with the sudden suspicion that followed. “To-night when I
returned to my club at half-past ten, I was informed that a
woman—apparently in great anxiety—had been trying to catch me all day;
and had finally referred me to this special delivery letter which was
delivered for me at six o’clock.” Trant extended it to the staring
little minister. “Of course, I can see now that both telephone calls
and note may have been a hoax; but—in Heaven’s name! What is the
matter, Mr. Newberry?”
The two old people had taken the note between them. Now the little
woman, her wraps only half removed, had dropped, shaking and pale,
into the nearest chair. The little man had lost his placidity and was
shuddering in uncontrolled fear. He seemed to shrink away; but
stiffened bravely.
“A hoax? I fear not, Mr. Trant!” The man gathered himself together.
“This note is not from me; but it is, I must not deceive myself,
undoubtedly from our son Walter—Walter Newberry. This writing, though
broken beyond anything I have seen from him in his worst dissipations
is undoubtedly his. Yet Walter is not here, Mr. Trant! I mean—I mean,
he should not be here! There have been reasons—we have not seen or
heard of Walter for two months. He can not be here now—surely he can
not be here now, unless—unless—my wife and I went to a friend’s this
evening; this is as though the writer had known we were going out! We
left at half-past six and have only just returned. Oh, it is
impossible that Walter could have come here! But Martha, we have not
seen Adele!” The livid terror grew stronger on his rosy, simple face
as he turned to his wife. “We have not seen Adele, Martha, since we
came in! And this gentleman tells us that a woman in great trouble was
sending for him. If Walter had been here—be strong, Martha; be strong!
But come—let us look together!”
He had turned, with no further word of explanation, and pattered
excitedly to the stairs, followed by his wife and Trant.
“Adele! Adele!” the old man cried anxiously, knocking at the door
nearest the head of the stairs; and when he received no answer, he
flung the door open.
“Dreadful! Dreadful!” he wrung his hands, while his wife sank weakly
down upon the upper step, as she saw the room was empty. “There is
something very wrong here, Mr. Trant! This is the bedroom of my
daughter-in-law, Walter’s wife. She should be here, at this hour! My
son and his wife are separated and do not live together. My son, who
has been unprincipled and uncontrollable from his childhood up, made a
climax to his career of dissipation two months ago by threatening the
life of his wife because she refused—because she found it impossible
to live longer with him. It was a most painful affair; the police were
even called in. We forbade Walter the house. So if she called to you
because he was threatening her again, and he returned here to-night to
carry out his threat, then Adele—Adele was indeed in danger!”
“But why should _he_ have written me that note?” Trant returned
crisply. “However—if we believe the note at all—there is surely now no
time to lose, Mr. Newberry. We must search the entire house at once
and make sure, at least, that Mrs. Walter Newberry is not in some
other part of it!”
“You are right—quite right!” the little man pattered rapidly from door
to door, throwing the rooms open to the impatient scrutiny of the
psychologist; and while they were still engaged in this search upon
the upper floor, a tall clock on the landing of the stairs struck
eleven!
So strongly had the warning of the note impressed Trant that, at the
signal of the hour, he stopped short; the others, seeing him, stopped
too, and stared at him with blanched faces, while all three
apprehensively strained their ears for some sound which might mark the
note’s fulfillment. And scarcely had the last deep stroke of the hour
ceased to resound in the hall, when suddenly, sharply, and without
other warning, a revolver shot rang out, followed so swiftly by three
others that the four reports rang almost as one through the silent
house. The little woman screamed and seized her husband’s arm. His
hand, in turn, hung upon Trant. The psychologist, turning his head to
be surer of the direction of the sound, for an instant more stared
indecisively; for though the shots were plainly inside the house, the
echoes made it impossible to locate them exactly. But almost
immediately a fifth shot, seeming louder and more distinct in its
separateness, startled them again.
“It is in the billiard room!” the wife shrieked, with a woman’s
quicker location of indoor sounds.
The little minister ran to seize the lamp, as Trant turned toward the
rear of the house. The woman started with them; but at that instant
the doorbell rang furiously; and the woman stopped in trembling
confusion. The psychologist pushed her husband on, however; and taking
the lamp from the elder man’s shaking hand, he now led Newberry into
the one-story addition which formed the back part of the house. Here
he found that the L shaped passage into which they ran, opened at one
end apparently on to a side porch. Newberry, now taking the lead,
hurried down the other branch of the passage past a door which was
plainly that of a kitchen, came to another further down the passage,
tried it, and recoiled in fresh bewilderment to find it locked.
“It is never locked—never! Something dreadful must have been happening
in here!” he wrung his hands again weakly.
“We must break it down then!” Trant drew the little man aside, and,
bracing himself against the opposite wall, threw his shoulder against
it once—twice, and even a third time, ineffectually, till a uniformed
patrolman, and another man in plain clothes, coming after them with
Mrs. Newberry, added their weight to Trant’s, and the door crashed
open.
A blast of air from the outside storm instantly blew out both the lamp
in Trant’s hand and another which had been burning in the room. The
woman screamed and threw herself toward some object on the floor which
the flare of the failing lights had momentarily revealed; but her
husband caught in the darkness at her wrist and drew her to him. Siler
and the patrolman, swearing softly, felt for matches and tried vainly
in the draft to relight the lamp which Trant had thrust upon the
table; for the psychologist had dashed to the window which was letting
in the outside storm, stared out, then closed it and returned to light
the lamp, which belonged in the room, as the plain-clothes man now lit
the other.
This room which Mrs. Newberry had called the billiard room, he saw
then, was now used only for storage purposes and was littered with the
old rubbish which accumulates in every house; but the arrangement of
the discarded furniture showed plainly the room had recently been
fitted for occupancy as well as its means allowed. That the occupant
had taken care to conceal himself, heavy sheets of brown paper pasted
over the panes of all the windows—including that which Trant had found
open—testified; that the occupant had been well tended, a full tray of
food—practically untouched—and the stubs of at least a hundred
cigarettes flung in the fireplace, made plain. These things Trant
appreciated only after the first swift glance which showed him a
huddled figure with its head half under a musty lounge which stood
furthest from the window. It was not the body of a woman, but that of
a man not yet thirty, whose rather handsome face was marred by deep
lines of dissipation. The mother’s shuddering cry of recognition had
showed that this was Walter Newberry.
Trant knelt beside the officers working over the body; the blood had
been flowing from a bullet wound in the temple, but it had ceased to
flow. A small, silver-mounted automatic revolver, such as had been
recently widely advertised for the protection of women, lay on the
floor close by, with the shells which had been ejected as it was
fired. The psychologist straightened.
“We have come too late,” he said simply to the father. “It was
necessary, as he foresaw, to get here before eleven, if we were to
help him; for he is dead. And now—” he checked himself, as the little
woman clutched her husband and buried her face in his sleeve, and the
little man stared up at him with a chalky face—“it will be better for
you to wait somewhere else till we are through here.”
“In the name of mercy, Mr. Trant!” Newberry cried miserably, as the
psychologist picked up a lamp and lighted the two old people into the
hall, “what is this terrible thing that has happened here? What is
it—Oh, what is it, Mr. Trant? And where—where is Adele?”
“I am here, father; I am here!” a new voice broke clearly and calmly
through the confusion, and the light of Trant’s lamp fell on a slight
but stately girl advancing down the hallway. “And you,” she said as
composedly to the psychologist, though Trant could see now that her
self-possession was belied by the nervous picking of her fingers at
her dress and her paleness, which grew greater as she met his eyes,
“are Mr. Trant—and you came too late!”
“You are—Mrs. Walter Newberry?” Trant returned. “You were the one who
was calling me up this morning and this afternoon?”
“Yes,” she said. “I was his wife. So he is dead!”
She took no heed of the quick glance Trant flashed to assure himself
that she spoke in this way before she could have seen the body from
her place in the hall; and she turned calmly still to the old man who
was clinging to her crying nervously now, “Adele! Adele! Adele!”
“Yes, dear father and dear mother!” she began compassionately. “Walter
came back—” she broke off suddenly; and Trant saw her grow pale as
death with staring eyes fixed over his shoulder on Siler, who had come
to the doorway. “You—you brought the police, Mr. Trant! I—I thought
you had nothing to do with the police!”
“Never mind that,” the plain-clothes man checked Trant’s answer. “You
were saying your husband came home, Mrs. Newberry—then what?”
“Then—but that is all I know; I know nothing whatever about it.”
“Your shoes and skirt are wet, Mrs. Newberry,” the plain-clothes man
pointed significantly.
“I—I heard the shots!” she caught herself up with admirable
self-control. “That was all. I ran over to the neighbors’ for help;
but I could get no one.”
“Then you’ll have a chance to make your statement later,” Siler
answered in a business-like way. “Just now you’d better look after
your father and mother.”
He took the lamp from Trant and held it to light them down the hall,
then turned swiftly to the patrolman: “She is going upstairs with
them; watch the front stairs and see that she does not go out. If she
comes down the back stairs we can see her.”
As the patrolman went out, the plain-clothes man turned back into the
room, leaving the door ajar so that the rear stairs were visible.
“These husband and wife cases, Mr. Trant,” he said easily. “You
think—and the man thinks, too—the woman will stand everything; and she
does—till he does one more thing too much, and, all of a sudden, she
lets him have it!”
“Don’t you think it’s a bit premature,” the psychologist suggested,
“to assume that she killed him?”
“Didn’t you see how she shut up when she saw me?” Siler’s eyes met
Trant’s with a flash of opposition. “That was because she recognized
me and knew that, having been here last time there was trouble, I knew
that he had been threatening her. It’s a cinch! Regular minister’s
son, he was; the old man’s a missionary, you know; spent his life till
two years ago trying to turn Chinese heathens into Christians. And
this Walter—our station blotter’d be black with his doings; only, ever
since he made China too hot to hold him and the old man brought him
back here, everything’s been hushed up on the old man’s account. But I
happen to have been here before; and all winter I’ve known there’d be
a killing if he ever came back. Hell! I tell you it was a relief to me
to see it was him on the floor when that door went down. There are no
powder marks, you see,” the officer led Trant’s eyes back to the wound
in the head of the form beside the lounge. “He could not have shot
himself. He was shot from further off than he could reach. Besides,
it’s on the left side.”
“Yes; I saw,” Trant replied.
“And that little automatic gun,” the officer stooped now and picked up
the pistol that lay on the floor beside the body, “is hers. I saw it
the last time I was called in here.”
“But how could he have known—if she shot him—that she was going to
kill him just at eleven?” Trant objected, pulling from his pocket the
note, which old Mr. Newberry had returned to him, and handing it to
Siler. “He sent that to me; at least, the father says it is in his
handwriting.”
“You mean,” Siler’s eyes rose slowly from the paper, “that she must
have told him what she was going to do—premeditated murder?”
“I mean that the first fact which we have—and which certainly seems to
me wholly incompatible with anything which you have suggested so
far—is that Walter Newberry foresaw his own death and set the hour of
its accomplishment; and that his wife—it is plain at least to me—when
she telephoned so often for me to-day, was trying to help him to
escape from it. Now what are the other facts?” Trant went on rapidly,
paying no attention to the obstinate glance in the eyes of the
officer. “I distinctly heard five shots—four together and then, after
a second or so, one. You heard five?”
“Yes.”
“And five shots,” the psychologist’s quick glances had been taking in
the finer details of the room, “are accounted for by the bullet
holes—one through the lower pane of the window I found open, which
shows it was down and closed during the shooting, as there is no break
in the upper half; one on the plaster there to the side; one under the
moulding there four feet to the right; and one more, in the plaster
almost as far to the left. The one that killed him makes five.”
“Exactly!” Siler followed Trant’s indication triumphantly, “the fifth
in his head! The first four went off in their struggle; and then she
got away and, with the fifth, shot him.”
“But the shells,” Trant continued; “for that sort of revolver ejects
the shells as they are fired—and I see only four. Where is the fifth?”
“You’re trying to fog this thing all up, Mr. Trant.”
“No; I’m trying to clear it. How could anyone have left the room after
the firing of the last shot? No one could have gone through the door
and not been seen by us in the hall; besides the door was bolted on
the inside,” Trant pointed to the two bolts. “No one could have left
except by the window—this window which was open when we came in, but
which must have been closed when one, at least, of the shots was being
fired. You remember I went at once to it and looked out, but saw
nothing.”
Trant re-crossed the room swiftly and threw the window open, intently
re-examining it. On the outside it was barred with a heavy grating,
but he saw that the key to the grating was in the lock.
“Bring the lamp,” he said to the plain-clothes man; and as Siler
screened the flame against the wind—“Ah!” he continued, “look at the
ice cracked from it there—it must have been swung open. He must have
gone out this way!”
“He?” Siler repeated.
The plain-clothes man had squeezed past Trant, as the grating swung
back, and lamp in hand had let himself easily down to the ice-covered
walk below the window, and was holding his light, shielded, just above
the ground. “It was she,” he cried triumphantly—“the woman, as I told
you! Look at her marks here!” He showed by the flickering light the
double, sharp little semi-circles of a woman’s high heels cut into the
ice; and, as Trant dropped down beside him, the police detective
followed the sharp little heel marks to the side door of the house,
where they turned and led into the kitchen entry.
“Premature, was I—eh?” Siler triumphed laconically. “We are used to
these cases, Mr. Trant; we know what to expect in ’em.”
Trant stood for an instant studying the sheet of ice. In this
sheltered spot, freezing had not progressed so fast as in the open
streets. Here, as an hour before on Michigan Avenue, he saw that his
heels and those of the police officer at every step cut through the
crust, while their toes left no mark. But except for the marks they
themselves had made and the crescent stamp of the woman’s high heels
leading in sharp, clear outline from the window to the side steps of
the house, there were no other imprints. Then he followed the
detective into the side door of the house.
In the passage they met the patrolman. “She came down stairs just
now,” said that officer briskly, “and went in here.”
Siler laid his hand on the door of the little sitting-room the
patrolman indicated, but turned to speak a terse command to the man
over his shoulder; “Go back to that room and see that things are kept
as they are. Look for the fifth shell. We got four; find the other!”
Then, with a warning glance at Trant, he pushed the door open.
The girl faced the two calmly as they entered; but the whiteness of
her lips showed Trant, with swift appreciation, that she could bear no
more and was reaching the end of her restraint.
“You’ve had a little while to think this over, Mrs. Newberry,” the
plain-clothes man said, not unkindly, “and I guess you’ve seen it’s
best to make a clean breast of it. Mr. Walter Newberry has been in
that room quite a while—the room shows it—though his father and mother
seem not to have known about it.”
“He”—she hesitated, then answered suddenly and collectively, “he had
been there six days.”
“You started to tell us about it,” Trant helped her. “You said ‘Walter
came home’—but, what brought him here? Did he come to see you?”
“No;” the girl’s pale cheeks suddenly burned blood red and went white
again, as she made her decision. “It was fear—deadly fear that drove
him here; but I do not know of what.”
“You are going to tell us all you know, are you not, Mrs. Newberry?”
the psychologist urged quietly—“how he came here; and particularly how
both he and you could so foresee his death that you summoned me as you
did!”
“Yes; yes—I will tell you,” the girl clenched and unclenched her
hands, as she gathered herself together. “Six nights ago, Monday
night, Mr. Trant, Walter came here. It was after midnight, and he did
not ring the bell, but waked me by throwing pieces of ice and frozen
sod against my window. I saw at once that something was the matter
with him; so I went down and talked to him through the closed door—the
side door here; for I was afraid at first to let him in, in spite of
his promises not to hurt me. He told me his very life was in
danger—and he had no other place to go; and he must hide here—hide;
and I must not let anyone—even his mother or father—know he had come
back; that I was the only one he could trust! So—he was my husband—and
I let him in!
“I started to run from him, when I had opened the door; for I was
afraid—afraid; but he ran at once into the old billiard-room—the store
room there—and tried the locks of the door and the window gratings,”
the sensitive voice ran on rapidly, “and then threw himself all
sweating cold on the lounge there, and went to sleep in a stupor. I
thought at first it was another frenzy from whiskey or—or opium. And I
stayed there. But just at morning when he woke up, I saw it wasn’t
that—but it was fear—fear—fear, such as I’d never seen before. He
rolled off the couch and half hid under it till I’d pasted brown paper
over the window panes—there were no curtains. But he wouldn’t tell me
what he was afraid of.
“He got so much worse as the days went by that he couldn’t sleep at
all; he walked the floor all the time and he smoked continually, so
that nearly every day I had to slip out and get him cigarettes. He got
more and more afraid of every noise outside and of every little sound
within; and it made him so much worse when I told him I had to tell
someone else—even his mother—that I didn’t dare to. He said other
people were sure to find out that he was there, then, and they would
kill him—kill him! He was always worst at eleven—eleven o’clock at
night; and he dreaded especially eleven o’clock Sunday night—though I
couldn’t find out what or why!
“I gave him my pistol—the one—the one you saw on the floor in _there_.
It was Friday then; and he had been getting worse and worse all the
time. Eleven o’clock every night I managed to be with him; and no one
found us out. I was glad I gave him the pistol until this—until this
morning. I never thought till then that he might use it to kill
himself; but this morning—Sunday morning, when I came to him, he was
talking about it—denying it; but I saw it was in his mind! ‘I shan’t
shoot myself!’ I heard him saying over and over again, when I came to
the door. ‘They can’t make me shoot myself! I shan’t! I shan’t!’—over
and over, like that. And when he had let me in and I saw him, then I
knew—I knew he meant to do it! He asked me if it wasn’t Sunday; and
went whiter when I told him it was! So then I told him he had to trust
someone now; this couldn’t go on; and I spoke to him about Mr. Trant;
and he said he’d try him; and he wrote the letter I mailed you—special
delivery—so you could come when his father and mother were out—but he
never once let go my pistol; he was wild—wild with fear. Every time I
could get away to the telephone, I tried to get Mr. Trant; and the
last time I got back—it was awful! It was hardly ten, but he was
walking up and down with my pistol in his hand, whispering strange
things over and over to himself, saying most of anything, ‘No one can
make me do it! No one can make me do it—even when it’s eleven—even
when it’s eleven!’—and staring—staring at his watch which he’d taken
out and laid on the table; staring and staring so—so that I knew I
must get someone before eleven—and at last I was running next door for
help—for anyone—for anything—when—when I heard the shots—I heard the
shots!”
She sank forward and buried her face in her hands; rent by tearless
sobs. Her fingers, white from the pressure, made long marks on her
cheeks, showing livid even in the pallor of her face. But Siler pursed
his lips toward Trant, and laid his hand upon her arm, sternly.
“Steady, steady, Mrs. Newberry!” the plain-clothes man warned. “You
can not do that now! You say you were with your husband a moment
before the shooting, but you were not in the room when he was killed?”
“Yes; yes!” the woman cried.
“You went out the door the last time?”
“The door? Yes; yes; of course the door! Why not the door?”
“Because, Mrs. Newberry,” the detective replied impressively, “just
at, or a moment after, the time of the shooting, a woman left that
room by the window—unlocked the grating and went out the window. We
have seen her marks. And you were that woman, Mrs. Newberry!”
The girl gasped and her eyes wavered to Trant; but seeing no help
there now, she recovered herself quickly.
“Of course! Why, of course!” she cried. “The last time I went out, I
did go out the window! It was to get the neighbors—didn’t I tell you?
So I went out the window!”
“Yes; we know you went out the window, Mrs. Newberry,” Siler responded
mercilessly. “But we know, too, you did not even start for the
neighbors. We have traced your tracks on the ice straight to the side
door and into the house! Now, Mrs. Newberry, you’ve tried to make us
believe that your husband killed himself. But that won’t do! Isn’t it
a little too strange, if you left by the window while your husband was
still alive, that he let the window stay open and the grating
unlocked? Yes; it’s altogether too strange. You left him dead; and
what we want to know—and I’m asking you straight out—is how you did
it?”
“How I did it?” the girl repeated mechanically; then with sharp agony
and starting eyes: “How _I_ did it! Oh, no, no, I did not do it! I was
there—I have not told all the truth! But when I saw you,” her
horrified gaze resting on Siler, “and remembered you had been here
before when he—he threatened me, my only thought was to hide for his
sake and for theirs,” she indicated the room above, where she had
taken her husband’s parents, “that he had tried to carry out his
threat. For before he killed himself, he tried to kill me! That’s how
he fired those first four shots. He tried to kill me first!”
“Well, we’re getting nearer to it,” Siler approved.
“Yes; now I have told you all!” the girl cried. “Oh, I have now—I
have! The last time he let me in, it was almost eleven—eleven! He had
my pistol in his hand, waiting—waiting! And at last he cried out it
was eleven; and he raised the pistol and shot straight at me—with the
face—the face of a demon with fear. It was no use to try to speak to
him, or to get away; I fell on my knees before him, just as he shot at
me again and again—aiming straight, not at my eyes, but at my hair;
and he shot again! But again he missed me; and his face—his face was
so terrible that—that I covered my own face as he aimed at me again,
staring always at my hair. And that time, when he shot, I heard him
fall and saw—saw that he had shot himself and he was dead!
“Then I heard your footsteps coming to the door; and I saw for the
first time that Walter had opened the window before I came in. And—all
without thinking of anything except that if I was found there
everybody would know he’d tried to kill me, I took up the key of the
grating from the table where he had laid it, and went out!”
“I can’t force you to confess, if you will not, Mrs. Newberry,” Siler
said meaningly, “though no jury, after they learned how he had
threatened you, would convict you if you pleaded self-defense. We know
he didn’t kill himself; for he couldn’t have fired that shot! And the
case is complete, I think,” the detective shot a finally triumphant
glance at Trant, “unless Mr. Trant wants to ask you something more.”
“I do!” Trant quietly spoke for the first time. “I want to ask Mrs.
Newberry—since she did not actually see her husband fire the last shot
that killed him—whether she was directly facing him as she knelt. It
is most essential to know whether or not her head was turned to one
side.”
“Why, what do you mean, Mr. Trant?” the girl looked up wonderingly;
for his tone seemed to promise he was coming to her defense.
“Suppose he might have shot himself before her, as she says—what’s the
difference whether she heard him with her head straight or her head
turned?” the police detective demanded sneeringly.
“A fundamental difference in this case, Siler,” Trant replied, “if
taken in connection with that other most important factor of all—that
Walter Newberry foretold the hour of his own death. But answer me,
Mrs. Newberry—if you can be certain.”
“I—certainly I can never forget how I crouched there with every muscle
strained. I was directly facing him,” the girl answered.
“That is very important!” The psychologist took a rapid turn or two up
and down the room. “Now you told us that your husband, during the days
he was shut up in that room, talked to himself almost continuously.
Toward the end, you say, he repeated over and over again such
sentences as ‘No one can make me do it!’ Can you remember any others?”
“I couldn’t make much out of anything else, Mr. Trant,” the girl
replied, after thinking an instant. “He seemed to have hallucinations
so much of the time.”
“Hallucinations?”
“Yes; he seemed to think I was singing to him—as I used to sing to
him, you know, when we were first married—and he would catch hold of
me and say, ‘Don’t—don’t—don’t sing!’ Or at other times he would
clutch me and tell me to sing low—sing low!”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing else even so sensible as that,” the girl responded. “Many
things he said made me think he had lost his mind. He would often
stare at me in an absorbed way, looking me over from head to foot, and
say, ‘Look here; if anyone asks you—anyone at all—whether your mother
had large or small feet, say small—never admit she had large feet, or
you’ll never get in. Do you understand?’”
“What?” The psychologist stood for several moments in deep thought;
then his eyes flashed suddenly with excitement. “What!” he cried
again, clutching the chair-back as he leaned toward her. “He said that
to you when he was absorbed?”
“A dozen times at least, Mr. Trant,” the girl replied, staring at him
in startled wonder.
“Remarkable! Yes; this is extraordinary!” Trant strode up and down
excitedly. “Nobody could have hoped for so fortunate a confirmation of
the evidence in this remarkable case. We knew that Walter Newberry
foresaw his own death; now we actually get from him himself, the
key—the possibly complete explanation of his danger—”
“Explanation!” shouted the police detective. “I’ve heard no
explanation! You’re throwing an impressive bluff, Mr. Trant; but I’ve
heard nothing yet to make me doubt that Newberry met his death at the
hands of his wife; and I’ll arrest her for his murder!”
“I can’t prevent your arresting Mrs. Newberry,” Trant swung to look
the police officer between the eyes hotly. “But I can tell you—if you
care to hear it—how Walter Newberry died! He was not shot by his wife;
he did not die by his own hand, as she believes and has told you. The
fifth shot—you have not found the fifth shell yet, Siler; and you will
not find it, for it was not fired either by Walter Newberry or his
wife. As she knelt, blinding her eyes as she faced her husband, Mrs.
Newberry could not know whether the fifth shot sounded in front or
behind her. If her head was not turned to one side, as she says it was
not, then—and this is a simple psychological fact, Siler, though it
seems to be unknown to you—it would be impossible for her to
distinguish between sounds directly ahead and directly behind. It was
not at her—at her hair—that her husband fired the four shots whose
empty shells we found, but over her head at the window directly behind
her. And it was through this just opened window that the fifth shot
came and killed him—the shot at eleven o’clock—which he had foreseen
and dreaded!”
“You must think I’m easy, Mr. Trant,” said the police officer
derisively. “You can’t clear her by dragging into this business some
third person who never existed. For there were no marks, and marks
would have been left by anybody who came to the window!”
“Marks!” Trant echoed. “If you mean marks on the window-sill and
floor, I cannot show you any. But the murderer did leave, of course,
one mark which in the end will probably prove final, even to you,
Siler. The shell of the fifth shot is missing because he carried it
away in his revolver. But the bullet—it will be a most remarkable
coincidence, Siler, if you find that the bullet which killed young
Newberry was the same as the four we know were shot from his wife’s
little automatic revolver!”
“But the ice—the ice under the window!” shouted the detective. “You
saw for yourself how her heels and ours cut through the crust; and you
saw that there were no other heel marks, as there must have been if
anyone had stood outside the window to look through it, or to fire
through it, as you say!”
“When you have reached the point, Siler,” said Trant, more quietly,
“where you can think of some class of men who would have left no heel
marks but who could have produced the effect on young Newberry’s mind
which his wife has described, you will have gone far toward the
discovery of the real murderer of Walter Newberry. In the meantime, I
have clews enough; and I hope to find help, which cannot be given me
by the city police, to enable me to bring the murderer to justice. I
will ask you, Mrs. Newberry,” he glanced toward the girl, “to let me
have a photograph of your husband, or”—he hesitated, unable to tell
from her manner whether she had heard him—“I will stop on my way out
to ask his photograph from his father.”
He glanced once more from the detective to the pale girl, who, since
she received notice of her arrest, had stood as though cut from
marble, with small hands tightly clenched and blind eyes fixed on
vacancy; then he left them.
The next morning’s papers, which carried startling headlines of the
murder of Walter Newberry, brought Police Detective Siler a feeling of
satisfaction with his own work. The detective, it is true, had been
made a little doubtful of his own assumptions by Trant’s confident
suggestion of a third person as the murderer. But he was reassured by
the newspaper accounts, though they contained merely an elaboration of
his own theory of an attack by the missionary’s dissipated son on his
wife and her shooting him in self-defense, which Siler had
successfully impressed not only on the police but on the reporters as
well.
Even the discovery on the second morning that the bullet which had now
been taken from young Newberry’s body was of .38 calibre and, as Trant
had predicted, not at all similar to the steel .32 calibre bullets
shot by the little automatic pistol which had belonged to young Mrs.
Newberry, did not disturb the police officer’s self-confidence, though
it obviously weakened the case against the wife. And when, on the day
following, Siler received orders to report at an hour when he was not
ordinarily on duty at the West End Police Station, where Mrs. Newberry
was still held under arrest, he pushed open, with an air of
importance, the door of the captain’s room, to which the sharp nod of
the desk sergeant had directed him.
The detective’s first glance showed him the room’s three occupants—the
huge figure of Division Inspector of Police Walker, lolling in the
chair before the captain’s desk; a slight, dark man—unknown to
Siler—near the window; and Luther Trant at the end of the room busy
arranging a somewhat complicated apparatus.
Trant, with a short nod of greeting, at once called Siler to his aid.
With the detective’s half-suspicious, half-respectful assistance, the
psychologist stretched across the end of the room a white sheet about
ten feet long, three feet high, and divided into ten rectangles by
nine vertical lines. Opposite this, and upon a table about ten feet
away, he set up a small electrical contrivance, consisting of two
magnets and wire coils supporting a small, round mirror about an inch
in diameter and so delicately set upon an axis that it turned at the
slightest current coming to the coils below it. In front of this
little mirror Trant placed a shaded electric lamp in such a position
that its light was reflected from the mirror upon the sheet at the end
of the room. Then he put down a carbon plate and a zinc plate at the
edge of the table; set a single cell battery under the table;
connected the battery with the coils controlling the mirror, and
connected them also with the zinc and carbon plates.
“I suppose,” Siler burst out finally with growing curiosity which even
the presence of the inspector could not restrain, “I haven’t got any
business to ask what all this machinery is for?”
“I was about to explain,” Trant answered.
The psychologist rested his hands lightly on the plates upon the
table; and, as he did so, a slight and, in fact, imperceptible current
passed through him from the battery; but it was enough to slightly
move the light reflected upon the screen.
“This apparatus,” the psychologist continued, as he saw even Walker
stare strangely at this result, “is the newest electric psychometer—or
‘the soul machine,’ as it is already becoming popularly known. It is
made after the models of Dr. Peterson, of Columbia University, and of
the Swiss psychologist Jung, of Zurich, and is probably the most
delicate and efficient instrument there is for detecting and
registering human emotion—such as anxiety, fear, and the sense of
guilt. Like the galvanometer which you saw me use to catch Caylis, the
Bronson murderer, in the first case where I worked with the police,
Inspector Walker,” the psychologist turned to his tall friend, “this
psychometer—which is really an improved and much more spectacular
galvanometer—is already in use by physicians to get the truth from
patients when they don’t want to tell it. No man can control the
automatic reflexes which this apparatus was particularly designed to
register when the subject is examined with his hands merely resting
upon these two plates! As you see,” he placed his hands in the test
position again, “these are arranged so that the very slight current
passing through my arms—so slight that I cannot feel it at all—moves
that mirror and swings the reflected light upon the screen according
to the amount of current coming through me. As you see now, the light
stays almost steady in the center of the screen, because the amount of
current coming through me is very slight, as I am not under any stress
or emotion of any sort. But if I were confronted suddenly with an
object to arouse fear—if, for instance, it reminded me of a crime I
was trying to conceal—I might be able to control every other evidence
of my fright, but I could not control the involuntary sweating of my
glands and the automatic changes in the blood pressure which allow the
electric current to flow more freely through me. The light would then
register immediately the amount of my emotion by the distance it swung
along the screen. But I will give you a much more perfect
demonstration of the instrument,” the psychologist concluded, while
all three examined it with varying degrees of interest and respect,
“during the next half hour while I am making the test that I have
planned to determine the murderer of Walter Newberry.”
“You mean,” cried Siler, “you are going to test the woman?”
“I might have thought it necessary to test Mrs. Newberry,” Trant
answered, “if the evidence at the house of the presence of a third
person who was the murderer had not been so plain as to make any test
of her useless.”
“Then you—you still stick to that?” Siler demanded derisively.
“Thanks to Mr. Ferris, who is a special agent of the United States
government,” Trant motioned to the slight, dark man who was the fourth
member of the party, “I have been able to fix upon four men, one of
whom, I feel absolutely certain, shot and killed young Newberry
through the window of the billiard-room that night. Inspector Walker
has had all four arrested and brought here. Mr. Ferris’s experience
and thorough knowledge enabled me to lay my hands on them much more
easily than I had feared, though I was able to go to him with
information which would have made their detection almost certain
sooner or later.”
“You mean information you got at the house?” asked Siler, less
derisively, as he caught the attentive attitude of the inspector.
“Just so, Siler; and it was as much at your disposal as mine,” Trant
replied. “It seemed to mean nothing to you that Walter Newberry knew
the hour at which he was to die—which made it seem more like an
execution than a murder; or that in his terror he raved that ‘he would
not do it—that they could not make him do it’—plainly meaning commit
suicide. Perhaps you don’t know that it is an Oriental custom, under
certain conditions, to allow a man who has been sentenced to death,
the alternative of carrying out the decree upon himself before a
certain day and hour that has been decided upon. But certainly his
ravings, as told us by his wife, ought to have given you a clew, if
you had heard only that sentence which she believed an injunction not
to sing loudly, but which was in reality a name—Sing lo!”
“Then—it was a Chinaman!” cried Siler, astounded.
“It could hardly have been any other sort of man, Siler. For there is
no other to whom it could be commended as a matter of such vital
importance whether his mother had small feet or large, as was shown in
the other sentence Mrs. Newberry repeated to us. But to a Chinaman
that fact is of prime importance; for it indicates whether he is of
low birth, when his mother would have had large feet, or of high, in
which case his women of the last generation would have had their feet
bound and made artificially smaller. It was that sentence that sent me
to Mr. Ferris.”
“I see—I see!” exclaimed the crest-fallen detective. “But if it was a
Chinaman, then, even with that thing,” he pointed to the instrument
Trant had just finished arranging, “you’ll never get the truth out of
him. You can’t get anything out of a Chinaman! Inspector Walker will
tell you that!”
“I know, Siler,” Trant answered, “that it is absolutely hopeless to
expect a confession from a Chinaman; they are so accustomed to control
the obvious signs of fear, guilt, the slightest trace or hint of
emotion, even under the most rigid examination, that it had come to be
regarded as a characteristic of the race. But the new psychology does
not deal with those obvious signs; it deals with the involuntary
reactions in the blood and glands which are common to all men
alike—even to Chinamen! We have in here,” the psychologist looked to
the door of an inner room, “the four Chinamen—Wong Bo, Billy Lee, Sing
Lo, and Sin Chung Ming.
“My first test is to see which of them—if any—were acquainted with
Walter Newberry; and next who, if any of them, knew where he lived.
For this purpose I have brought here Newberry’s photograph and a view
of his father’s house, which I had taken yesterday.” He stooped to one
of his suit-cases, and took out first a dozen photographs of young
men, among them Newberry’s; and about twenty views of different
houses, among which he mixed the one of the Newberry house. “If you
are ready, inspector, I will go ahead with the test.”
The psychologist threw open the door of the inner room, showing the
four Celestials in a stolid group, and summoned first Wong Bo, who
spoke English.
Trant, pushing a chair to the table, ordered the Oriental to sit down
and place his hands upon the plates at the table’s edge before him.
The Chinaman obeyed passively, as if expecting some sort of torture.
Immediately the light moved to the center of the screen, where it had
moved when Trant was touching the plates, then kept on toward the next
line beyond. But as Wong Bo’s first suspicious excitement—which the
movement of the light betrayed—subsided as he felt nothing, the light
returned to the center of the screen.
“You know why you have been brought here, Wong Bo?” Trant demanded of
the Chinaman.
“No,” the Chinaman answered shortly, the light moving six inches as he
did so.
“You know no reason at all why you should be brought here?”
“No,” the Chinaman answered calmly again, while the light moved about
six inches. Trant waited till it returned to its normal position in
the center of the screen.
“Do you know an American named Paul Tobin, Wong Bo?”
“No,” the Chinaman answered. This time the light remained stationary.
“Nor one named Ralph Murray?”
“No.” Still the light stayed stationary.
“Hugh Larkin, Wong Bo?”
“No.” Calmly again, and with the light quiet in the center of the
screen.
“Walter Newberry?” the psychologist asked in precisely the same tone
as he had put the preceding question.
“No,” the Chinaman answered laconically again; but before he answered
and almost before the name was off Trant’s lips, the light—which had
stayed almost still at the recital of the other names—jumped quickly
to one side across the screen, crossed the first division line and
moved on toward the second and stayed there. It had moved over a foot!
But the face of the Oriental was as quiet, patient, and impassive as
before. The psychologist made no comment; but waited for the light
slowly to return to its normal position. Then he took up his pile of
portrait photographs.
“You say you do not know any of these men, Wong Bo,” Trant said
quietly, but with the effect of sending the light swinging half the
distance again, “You may know them, but not by name, so I want you to
look at these pictures.” Trant showed him the first. “Do you know that
man, Wong Bo?”
“No,” the Chinaman answered patiently. Trant glanced quickly to see
that the light stayed steady; then showed him four more pictures of
young men, getting the same answer and precisely the same effect. He
showed the sixth picture—the photograph of Walter Newberry.
“You know him?” Trant asked precisely in the same tone as the others.
“No,” Wong Bo answered with precisely the same patient impassiveness.
Not a muscle of his face changed nor an eyelash quivered; but as soon
as Trant had displayed this picture and the Chinaman’s eyes fell upon
it, the light on the screen again jumped a space and settled near the
second line to the left!
Trant put aside the portraits and took up the pictures of the houses.
He waited again till the light slowly resumed its central position on
the screen.
“You have never gone to this house, Wong Bo?” he showed a large, stone
mansion, not at all like the Newberry’s.
“No,” the Chinaman replied, impassive as ever. The light remained
steady.
“Nor to this—or this—or this?” Trant showed three more with the same
result. “Nor this?” he displayed now a rear view of the Newberry
house.
“No,” quietly again; but, as when Newberry’s name was mentioned and
his picture shown, the light swung swiftly to one side and stood
trembling, again a foot and a half to the left of its normal position
when shown the other pictures!
“That will do for the present,” Trant dismissed Wong Bo. “Send him
back to his cell, away from the others,” he said to Walker, with
flashing eyes. “We will try the rest—in turn!”
And rapidly, and with precisely the same questions and test he
examined Billy Lee and Sing Lo. Each man made precisely the same
denials and in the same manner as Wong Bo, but to the increasing
wonder and surprise of Walker and the utter astonishment of Siler, for
each man the light stayed steady when they were asked if they knew the
other Americans named; while for each the light swung suddenly wide
and trembling when Walter Newberry’s name was mentioned and when his
picture was shown. And for Sing Lo also—precisely as for Wong Bo—the
light wavered suddenly and swung, quivering, a foot and a half to the
left when they were shown the Newberry home.
“Bring in Sin Chung Ming!” the psychologist commanded with subdued
fire shining in his eyes; but he hid all signs of excitement himself,
as the government agent handed the last Oriental over to him. Trant
set the yellow hands over the plates and started his questions in the
same quiet tone as before. For the first two questions the light moved
three times, as it had done with the others—and as even Ferris and
Siler now seemed to be expecting it to move—only this time it seemed
even to the police officers to swing a little wider. And at Walter
Newberry’s name, for the first time in any of the tests, it crossed
the second dividing line at the first impulse; moved toward the third
and stayed there.
Even Siler now waited with bated breath, as Trant took up his pile of
pictures; and, as he came to the picture of the murdered man and the
house where he had lived, for the second and third time in that single
test the light—stationary when Sin Chung Ming glanced at the other
photographs—trembled across the screen to the third dividing line. For
the others it had moved hardly eighteen inches, but when Sin Chung
Ming saw the pictured face of the murdered man it had swung almost
three feet.
“Inspector Walker,” Trant drew the giant officer aside, “this is the
man, I think, for the final test. You will carry it out as I arranged
with you?”
“Sin Chung Ming,” the psychologist turned back to the Chinaman
swiftly, as the inspector, without comment, left the room, “you have
been watching the little light, have you not? You saw it move? It
moved when you lied, Sin Chung Ming! It will always move when you lie.
It moved when you said you did not know Walter Newberry; it moved when
you saw his picture, and pretended not to know it; it moved when you
saw the picture of his house, which you said you did not know! Look
how it is moving now, as you grow afraid that you have betrayed your
secret to us now, Sin Chung Ming—as you have and will,” Trant pointed
to the swinging light in triumph.
A low knock sounded on the door; but Trant, watching the light now
slowly returning to its normal place, waited an instant more. Then he
himself rapped gently on the table. The door to the next room—directly
opposite the Chinaman’s eyes—swung slowly open; and through it they
could see the scene which Trant and the inspector had prepared. In the
middle of the floor knelt young Mrs. Newberry, her back toward them,
her hands pressed against her face; and six feet beyond a man stood,
facing her. Ferris and Siler looked in astonishment at Trant, for
there was no meaning in this scene to them at first. Then Siler
remembered suddenly, and Ferris guessed, that such must have been the
scene in the billiard room that night at the Newberry’s; thus it must
have been seen by the man who fired through the window at young
Newberry that night—and to him, but to that man only—it would bring a
shock of terror. And appreciating this, they stared swiftly, first at
the Chinaman’s passionless and immobile face; then at the light upon
the screen and saw it leap across bar after bar. And, as the Chinaman
saw it, and knew that it was betraying him, it leaped and leaped
again; swung wider and wider; until at last the impassiveness of the
Celestial’s attitude was for an instant broken, and Sin Chung Ming
snatched his hands from the metal plates.
[Illustration: In a darkened room a man in a silk Tang suit sits at
a table. Wires lead from the fingers on one hand to a small
electrical machine. A table lamp is pointed at the top of the
machine where a mirror is mounted, reflecting light onto a screen at
the right. A young man stands by and watches the seated man. Through
an open doorway can be seen two people: a woman, seated, holding her
face in her hands, and a man, standing, pointing a gun at the
woman.]
Caption: The Chinaman saw it and knew that it was betraying him, but
it leaped and leaped again
“I had guessed that anyway, Sin Chung Ming,” Trant swiftly closed the
door, as Walker returned to the room, “for your feeling at sound of
Walter Newberry’s name and the sight of his picture was so much deeper
than any of the rest. So, it was you that fired the shot, after
watching the house with Sing Lo and Wong Bo, as their fright when they
saw the picture of the house showed, while Billy Lee was not needed at
the house that night and has never seen it, though he knew what was to
be done. That is all I need of you now, Sin Chung Ming; for I have
learned what I wanted to know.”
As the fourth of the Chinamen was led away to his cell, Trant turned
back to Inspector Walker and Siler.
“I must acknowledge my debt to Mr. Ferris,” he said with a glance
toward the man of whom he spoke, “for help in solving this case,
without which I could not have brought it to a conclusion without
giving much more time to the investigation. Mr. Ferris, as you already
know, Inspector Walker, as special agent for the Government, has for
years been engaged in the enforcement of the Chinese exclusion laws.
The sentence repeated to us by Mrs. Newberry, in which her husband,
delirious with fright, seemed warning some one that to acknowledge
that his mother had large feet would prevent him from ‘getting in,’
seemed to me to establish a connection between young Newberry’s terror
and an evasion of the exclusion laws. I went at once to Mr. Ferris to
test this idea, and he recognized its application at once.
“As the exclusion laws against all but a very small class of Chinese
are being more strictly enforced than ever before, there has been a
large and increasing traffic among the Chinese in bogus papers to
procure entry into this country of Chinese belonging to the excluded
classes. And in addition to being supplied with forged official papers
for entry, as Ferris can tell you, the applicants of the classes
excluded are supplied with regular ‘coaching papers’ so that they can
correctly answer the questions asked them at San Francisco or Seattle.
The injunction to ‘say your mother had small feet’ was recognized at
once by Ferris as one of the instructions of the ‘coaching paper’ to
get a laborer entered as a man of the merchant class.
“Mr. Ferris and I together investigated the career of Walter Newberry
after his return from China, where he had spent nearly the whole of
his life, and we were able to establish, as we expected we might, a
connection between him and the Sing Lo Trading Company—a Chinese
company which Mr. Ferris had long suspected of dealing in fraudulent
admission papers, though he had never been able to bring home to them
any proof. We found, also, that young Newberry had spent and gambled
away much more money in the last few months than he had legitimately
received. And we were able to make certain that this money had come to
him through the Sing Lo Company, though obviously not for such uses.
As it is not an uncommon thing for Chinese engaged in the fraudulent
bringing in of their countrymen to confide part of the business to
unprincipled Americans—especially as all papers have to be viséd by
American consuls and disputes settled in American courts—we became
certain that young Newberry had been serving the Sing Lo Company in
this capacity. It was plain that he had diverted a large amount of
money from the ends for which the members of the Sing Lo Company had
intended it to be used and his actions as described by his wife, made
it equally certain that he had been sentenced by the members of the
Company to death, and given the Oriental alternative of committing
suicide before eleven o’clock on Sunday night, or else the company
would take the carrying out of the sentence into their own hands. Now
whether it will be possible to convict all four of the Chinamen we had
here for complicity in his murder, or whether Sin Chung Ming, who
fired the shot will be the only one tried, I do not know. But the
others, in any case, will be turned over to Mr. Ferris for prosecution
for their evasions of the exclusion laws.”
“Exclusion laws!” exclaimed the giant inspector—“Mr. Ferris can look
after his exclusion laws if he wants. What we want, Trant, is to
convict these men for the murder of Walter Newberry; and knowing what
we do now, we will get a confession out of them some way!”
“I doubt whether, under the circumstances, any force could be brought
to bear that would extort any formal confession from these Chinamen,”
the Government agent shook his head. “They would lose their ‘face’ and
with it all reputation among their countrymen.”
But at this instant the door of the room was dashed open and the
flushed face of the desk sergeant appeared before them.
“Inspector!” he cried sharply, “the chink’s dead! The last one, Sin
Chung Ming, choked himself as soon as he was alone in his cell!”
The inspector turned to Trant who looked to Ferris, first, in his
surprise.
“What? Ah—I see!” the immigration officer comprehended after an
instant. “He considered what we found from him here confession
enough—especially since he implicated the others with him—so that his
‘face’ was lost. To him, it was unpardonable weakness to let us find
what we did. I think, then, Mr. Trant,” he concluded quietly, “that
you can safely consider your case proved. His suicide is the surest
proof that this Chinaman considered that he had confessed.”
The End
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
This transcription is made from the edition published in 1910 by
Small, Maynard & Company. The following alterations have been made to
correct what are believed to be unambiguous errors in the text:
* “42$=80” was changed to “43$=80”, as per the surrounding context
(Chapter IV).
* “straighened” was changed to “straightened” (Chapter V).
* “chachihuitl” was changed to “chalchihuitl” (Chapter VI).
* “neice” was changed to “niece” (Chapter VII).
* “touseled” was changed to “tousled” (Chapter VII).
* “mysterous” was changed to “mysterious” (Chapter VIII).
* Three occurrences of mismatched quotation marks have been repaired.