As you will see, this matter, so recklessly entered into, had proved
to be of too serious a nature for me to pursue it farther without
the cognizance of the police. Having a friend on the force in whose
discretion I could rely, I took him into my confidence and asked for his
advice. He pooh-poohed the doctor’s statements, but said that he would
bring the matter to the attention of the superintendent and let me
know the result. I agreed to this, and we parted with the mutual
understanding that mum was the word till some official decision had been
arrived at. I had not long to wait. At an early day he came in with the
information that there had been, as might be expected, a division of
opinion among his superiors as to the importance of Dr. Zabriskie’s
so-called confession, but in one point they had been unanimous and that
was the desirability of his appearing before them at Headquarters for
a personal examination. As, however, in the mind of two out of three of
them his condition was attributed entirely to acute mania, it had been
thought best to employ as their emissary one in whom he had already
confided and submitted his case to,--in other words, myself. The time
was set for the next afternoon at the close of his usual office hours.
He went without reluctance, his wife accompanying him. In the short time
which elapsed between their leaving home and entering Headquarters,
I embraced the opportunity of observing them, and I found the study
equally exciting and interesting. His face was calm but hopeless, and
his eye, dark and unfathomable, but neither frenzied nor uncertain. He
spoke but once and listened to nothing, though now and then his wife
moved as if to attract his attention, and once even stole her hand
towards his, in the tender hope that he would feel its approach and
accept her sympathy. But he was deaf as well as blind; and sat wrapped
up in thoughts which she, I know, would have given worlds to penetrate.
Her countenance was not without its mystery also. She showed in every
lineament passionate concern and misery, and a deep tenderness from
which the element of fear was not absent. But she, as well as he,
betrayed that some misunderstanding deeper than any I had previously
suspected drew its intangible veil between them and made the near
proximity in which they sat at once a heart-piercing delight and an
unspeakable pain. What was the misunderstanding; and what was the
character of the fear that modified her every look of love in his
direction? Her perfect indifference to my presence proved that it was
not connected with the position in which he had placed himself towards
the police by his voluntary confession of crime, nor could I thus
interpret the expression, of frantic question which now and then
contracted her features, as she raised her eyes towards his sightless
orbs, and strove to read in his firm set lips the meaning of those
assertions she could only ascribe to loss of reason.
The stopping of the carriage seemed to awaken both from thoughts that
separated rather than united them. He turned his face in her direction,
and she stretching forth her hand, prepared to lead him from the
carriage, without any of that display of timidity which had previously
been evident in her manner.
As his guide she seemed to fear nothing; as his lover, everything.
“There is another and a deeper tragedy underlying the outward and
obvious one,” was my inward conclusion, as I followed them into the
presence of the gentlemen awaiting them.
Dr. Zabriskie’s quiet appearance was in itself a shock to those who had
anticipated the feverish unrest of a madman; so was his speech, which
was calm, straightforward, and quietly determined.
“I shot Mr. Hasbrouck,” was his steady affirmation, given without any
show of frenzy or desperation. “If you ask me why I did it, I cannot
answer; if you ask me how, I am ready to state all that I know
concerning the matter.”
“But, Dr. Zabriskie,” interposed one of the inspectors, “the why is the
most important thing for us to consider just now. If you really desire
to convince us that you committed this dreadful crime of killing a
totally inoffensive man, you should give us some reason for an act so
opposed to all your instincts and general conduct.”
But the doctor continued unmoved:
“I had no reason for murdering Mr. Hasbrouck. A hundred questions can
elicit no other reply; you had better keep to the how.”
A deep-drawn breath from the wife answered the looks of the three
gentlemen to whom this suggestion was offered. “You see,” that breath
seemed to protest, “that he is not in his right mind.”
I began to waver in my own opinion, and yet the intuition which has
served me in cases seemingly as impenetrable as this bade me beware of
following the general judgment.
“Ask him to inform you how he got into the house,” I whispered to
Inspector D--, who sat nearest me.
Immediately the inspector put the question which I had suggested:
“By what means did you enter Mr. Hasbrouck’s house at so late an hour as
this murder occurred?”
The blind doctor’s head fell forward on his breast, and he hesitated for
the first and only time.
“You will not believe me,” said he; “but the door was ajar when I came
to it. Such things make crime easy; it is the only excuse I have to
offer for this dreadful deed.”
The front door of a respectable citizen’s house ajar at half-past eleven
at night! It was a statement that fixed in all minds the conviction of
the speaker’s irresponsibility. Mrs. Zabriskie’s brow cleared, and
her beauty became for a moment dazzling as she held out her hands in
irrepressible relief towards those who were interrogating her husband.
I alone kept my impassibility. A possible explanation of this crime
had flashed like lightning across my mind; an explanation from which I
inwardly recoiled, even while I felt forced to consider it.
“Dr. Zabriskie,” remarked the inspector formerly mentioned as friendly
to him, “such old servants as those kept by Mr. Hasbrouck do not leave
the front door ajar at twelve o’clock at night.”
“Yet ajar it was,” repeated the blind doctor, with quiet emphasis; “and
finding it so, I went in. When I came out again, I closed it. Do you
wish me to swear to what I say? If so, I am ready.”
What reply could they give? To see this splendid-looking man, hallowed
by an affliction so great that in itself it called forth the compassion
of the most indifferent, accusing himself of a cold-blooded crime, in
tones which sounded dispassionate because of the will forcing their
utterance, was too painful in itself for any one to indulge in
unnecessary words. Compassion took the place of curiosity, and each and
all of us turned involuntary looks of pity upon the young wife pressing
so eagerly to his side.
“For a blind man,” ventured one, “the assault was both deft and certain.
Are you accustomed to Mr. Hasbrouck’s house, that you found your way
with so little difficulty to his bedroom?”
“I am accustomed--” he began.
But here his wife broke in with irrepressible passion:
“He is not accustomed to that house. He has never been beyond the first
floor. Why, why do you question him? Do you not see--”
His hand was on her lips.
“Hush!” he commanded. “You know my skill in moving about a house; how
I sometimes deceive those who do not know me into believing that I can
see, by the readiness with which I avoid obstacles and find my way even
in strange and untried scenes. Do not try to make them think I am not
in my right mind, or you will drive me into the very condition you
attribute to me.”
His face, rigid, cold, and set, looked like that of a mask. Hers, drawn
with horror and filled with question that was fast taking the form of
doubt, bespoke an awful tragedy from which more than one of us recoiled.
“Can you shoot a man dead without seeing him?” asked the Superintendent,
with painful effort.
“Give me a pistol and I will show you,” was the quick reply.
A low cry came from the wife. In a drawer near to every one of us there
lay a pistol, but no one moved to take it out. There was a look in the
doctor’s eye which made us fear to trust him with a pistol just then.
“We will accept your assurance that you possess a skill beyond that of
most men,” returned the Superintendent. And beckoning me forward, he
whispered: “This is a case for the doctors and not for the police.
Remove him quietly, and notify Dr. Southyard of what I say.”
But Dr. Zabriskie, who seemed to have an almost supernatural acuteness
of hearing, gave a violent start at this, and spoke up for the first
time with real passion in his voice:
“No, no, I pray you. I can bear anything but that. Remember, gentlemen,
that I am blind; that I cannot see who is about me; that my life would
be a torture if I felt myself surrounded by spies watching to catch some
evidence of madness in me. Rather conviction at once, death, dishonour,
and obloquy. These I have incurred. These I have brought upon myself by
crime, but not this worse fate--oh! not this worse fate.”
His passion was so intense and yet so confined within the bounds of
decorum, that we felt strangely impressed by it. Only the wife stood
transfixed, with the dread growing in her heart, till her white,
waxen visage seemed even more terrible to contemplate than his
passion-distorted one.
“It is not strange that my wife thinks me demented,” the doctor
continued, as if afraid of the silence that answered him. “But it is
your business to discriminate, and you should know a sane man when you
see him.”
Inspector D---- no longer hesitated.
“Very well,” said he, “give me the least proof that your assertions are
true, and we will lay your case before the prosecuting attorney.”
“Proof? Is not a man’s word--”
“No man’s confession is worth much without some evidence to support
it. In your case there is none. You cannot even produce the pistol with
which you assert yourself to have committed the deed.”
“True, true. I was frightened by what I had done, and the instinct of
self-preservation led me to rid myself of the weapon in any way I could.
But someone found this pistol; someone picked it up from the sidewalk of
Lafayette Place on that fatal night. Advertise for it. Offer a reward.
I will give you the money.” Suddenly he appeared to realize how all this
sounded. “Alas!” cried he, “I know the story seems improbable; but it is
not the probable things that happen in this life, as, you should know,
who every day dig deep into the heart of human affairs.”
Were these the ravings of insanity? I began to understand the wife’s
terror.
“I bought the pistol,” he went on, “of--alas! I cannot tell you his
name. Everything is against me. I cannot adduce one proof; yet even she
is beginning to fear that my story is true. I know it by her silence, a
silence that yawns between us like a deep and unfathomable gulf.”
But at these words her voice rang out with passionate vehemence.
“No, no, it is false! I will never believe that your hands have been
plunged in blood. You are my own pure-hearted Constant, cold, perhaps,
and stern, but with no guilt upon your conscience save in your own wild
imagination.”
“Zulma, you are no friend to me,” he declared, pushing her gently aside.
“Believe me innocent, but say nothing to lead these others to doubt my
word.”
And she said no more, but her looks spoke volumes.
The result was that he was not detained, though he prayed for instant
commitment. He seemed to dread his own home, and the surveillance to
which he instinctively knew he would henceforth be subjected. To see him
shrink from his wife’s hand as she strove to lead him from the room was
sufficiently painful; but the feeling thus aroused was nothing to that
with which we observed the keen and agonized expectancy of his look as
he turned and listened for the steps of the officer who followed him.
“From this time on I shall never know whether or not I am alone,” was
his final observation as he left the building.
Here is where the matter rests and here, Miss Strange, is where you come
in. The police were for sending an expert alienist into the house; but
agreeing with me, and, in fact, with the doctor himself, that if he were
not already out of his mind, this would certainly make them so, they, at
my earnest intercession, have left the next move to me.
That move as you must by this time understand involves you. You have
advantages for making Mrs. Zabriskie’s acquaintance of which I beg you
to avail yourself. As friend or patient, you must win your way into that
home? You must sound to its depths one or both of these two wretched
hearts. Not so much now for any possible reward which may follow the
elucidation of this mystery which has come so near being shelved, but
for pity’s sake and the possible settlement of a question which is fast
driving a lovely member of your sex distracted.