I
When Webster G. Burgess asked ten of his cronies to dine with him
at the University Club on a night in January they assumed that the
president of the White River National had been indulging in another
adventure which he wished to tell them about.
In spite of their constant predictions that if he didn’t stop hiding
crooks in his house and playing tricks on the Police Department he
would ultimately find himself in jail, Mr. Burgess continued to find
amusement in frequent dallyings with gentlemen of the underworld. In
a town of approximately three hundred thousand people a banker is
expected to go to church on Sundays and otherwise conduct himself as
a decent, orderly, and law-abiding citizen, but the president of the
White River National did not see things in that light. As a member of
the Board of Directors of the Released Prisoners’ Aid Society he was
always ready with the excuse that his heart was deeply moved by the
misfortunes of those who keep to the dark side of the street, and that
sincere philanthropy covered all his sins in their behalf.
When his friends met at the club and found Governor Eastman one of the
dinner party, they resented the presence of that dignitary as likely
to impose restraints upon Burgess, who, for all his jauntiness, was
not wholly without discretion. But the governor was a good fellow, as
they all knew, and a story-teller of wide reputation. Moreover, he was
taking his job seriously, and, being practical men, they liked this
about him. It was said that no governor since Civil War times had spent
so many hours at his desk or had shown the same zeal and capacity for
gathering information at first hand touching all departments of the
State government. Eastman, as the country knows, is an independent
character, and it was this quality, shown first as a prosecuting
attorney, that had attracted attention and landed him in the seat of
the Hoosier governors.
“I suppose,” remarked Kemp as they sat down, “that these tablets are
scattered around the table so we can make notes of the clever things
that will be said here tonight. It’s a good idea and gives me a chance
to steal some of your stories, governor.”
A scratch pad with pencil attached had been placed at each plate, and
the diners spent several minutes in chaffing Burgess as to the purpose
of this unusual table decoration.
“I guess,” said Goring, “that Web is going to ask us to write limericks
for a prize and that the governor is here to judge the contest. Indoor
winter sports don’t appeal to me; I pass.”
“I’m going to write notes to the House Committee on mine,” said
Fanning; “the food in this club is not what it used to be, and it’s
about time somebody kicked.”
“As I’ve frequently told you,” remarked Burgess, smiling upon them from
the head of the table, “you fellows have no imagination. You’d never
guess what those tablets are for, and maybe I’ll never tell you.”
“Nothing is so innocent as a piece of white paper,” said the governor,
eyeing his tablet. “We’d better be careful not to jot down anything
that might fly up and hit us afterward. For all we know, it may be
a scheme to get our signatures for Burgess to stick on notes without
relief from valuation or appraisement laws. It’s about time for another
Bohemian oats swindle, and our friend Burgess may expect to work us for
the price of the dinner.”
“Web’s bound to go to jail some day,” remarked Ramsay, the surgeon,
“and he’d better do it while you’re in office, governor. You may not
know that he’s hand in glove with all the criminals in the country: he
quit poker so he could give all his time to playing with crooks.”
“The warden of the penitentiary has warned me against him,” replied the
governor easily. “Burgess has a man at the gate to meet convicts as
they emerge, and all the really bad ones are sent down here for Burgess
to put up at this club.”
“I never did that but once,” Burgess protested, “and that was only
because my mother-in-law was visiting me and I was afraid she wouldn’t
stand for a burglar as a fellow guest. My wife’s got used to ’em. But
the joke of putting that chap up here at the club isn’t on me, but on
Ramsay and Colton. They had luncheon with him one day and thanked me
afterward for introducing them to so interesting a man. I told them he
was a manufacturer from St. Louis, and they swallowed it whole. Pettit
was the name, but he has a string of aliases as long as this table, and
there’s not a rogues’ gallery in the country where he isn’t indexed.
You remember, Colton, he talked a good deal of his travels, and he
could do so honestly, as he’d cracked safes all the way from Boston to
Seattle.”
Ramsay and Colton protested that this could not be so; that the man
they had luncheon with was a shoe manufacturer and had talked of his
business as only an expert could.
The governor and Burgess exchanged glances, and both laughed.
“He knew the shoe business all right enough,” said Burgess, “for he
learned it in the penitentiary and proved so efficient that they made
him foreman of the shop!”
“I suppose,” said Kemp, “that you’ve got another crook coming to take
that vacant chair. You’d better tell us about him so we won’t commit
any social errors.”
At the governor’s right there was an empty place, and Burgess remarked
carelessly that they were shy a man, but that he would turn up later.
“I’ve asked Tate, a banker at Lorinsburg, to join us and he’ll be
along after a while. Any of you know Tate? One of our scouts recently
persuaded him to transfer his account to us, and as this is the first
time he’s been in town since the change I thought it only decent to
show him some attention. We’re both directors in a company that’s
trying to develop a tile factory in his town, so you needn’t be afraid
I’m going to put anything over on you. Tate’s attending a meeting
tonight from which I am regrettably absent! He promised to be here
before we got down to the coffee.”
As the dinner progressed the governor was encouraged to tell stories,
and acceded good-naturedly by recounting some amusing things that had
happened in the course of his official duties.
“But it isn’t all so funny,” he said gravely after keeping them in
a roar for half an hour. “In a State as big as this a good many
disagreeable things happen, and people come to me every day with
heart-breaking stories. There’s nothing that causes me more anxiety
than the appeals for pardon; if the pardoning power were taken away
from me, I’d be a much happier man. The Board of Pardons winnows out
the cases, but even at that there’s enough to keep me uncomfortable.
It isn’t the pleasantest feeling in the world that as you go to bed at
night somebody may be suffering punishment unjustly, and that it’s up
to you to find it out. When a woman comes in backed by a child or two
and cries all over your office about her husband who’s doing time and
tells you he wasn’t guilty, it doesn’t cheer you much; not by a jugful!
Wives, mothers, and sisters: the wives shed more tears, the sisters put
up the best argument, but the mothers give you more sleepless nights.”
“If it were up to me,” commented Burgess, “I’m afraid I’d turn ’em all
out!”
“You would,” chorused the table derisively, “and when you’d emptied the
penitentiaries you’d burn ’em down!”
“Of course there’s bound to be cases of flagrant injustice,” suggested
Kemp. “And the feelings of a man who is locked up for a crime he never
committed must be horrible. We hear now and then of such cases and it
always shakes my faith in the law.”
“The law does the best it can,” replied the governor a little
defensively, “but, as you say, mistakes do occur. The old saying that
murder will out is no good; we can all remember cases where the truth
was never known. Mistakes occur constantly, and it’s the fear of not
rectifying them that’s making a nervous wreck of me. I have in my
pocket now a blank pardon that I meant to sign before I left my office,
but I couldn’t quite bring myself to the point. The Pardon Board has
made the recommendation, not on the grounds of injustice--more, I’m
afraid, out of sympathy than anything else--and we have to be careful
of our sympathies in these matters. And here again there’s a wife to
reckon with. She’s been at my office nearly every day for a year,
and she’s gone to my wife repeatedly to enlist her support. And it’s
largely through Mrs. Eastman’s insistence that I’ve spent many weeks
studying the case. It’s a murder: what appeared to be a heartless,
cold-blooded assassination. And some of you may recall it--the Avery
case, seven years ago, in Salem County.”
Half the men had never heard of it and the others recalled it only
vaguely.
“It was an interesting case,” Burgess remarked, wishing to draw the
governor out. “George Avery was a man of some importance down there
and stood high in the community. He owned a quarry almost eleven miles
from Torrenceville and maintained a bungalow on the quarry land where
he used to entertain his friends with quail hunting and perhaps now
and then a poker party. He killed a man named Reynolds who was his
guest. As I remember, there seemed to be no great mystery about it,
and Avery’s defense was a mere disavowal and a brilliant flourish of
character witnesses.”
“For all anybody ever knew, it was a plain case, as Burgess says,”
the governor began. “Avery and Reynolds were business acquaintances
and Avery had invited Reynolds down there to discuss the merging of
their quarry interests. Reynolds was found dead a little way from the
bungalow by some of the quarry laborers. He had been beaten on the
head, with a club in the most barbarous fashion. Reynolds’s overcoat
was torn off and the buttons ripped from his waistcoat, pointing to
a fierce struggle before his assailant got him down and pounded the
life out of him. The purpose was clearly not robbery, as Reynolds had a
considerable sum of money on his person that was left untouched. When
the men who found the body went to rouse Avery he collapsed when told
that Reynolds was dead. In fact, he lay in a stupor for a week, and
they could get nothing out of him. Tracks? No; it was a cold December
night and the ground was frozen.
“Reynolds had meant to take a midnight train for Chicago, and Avery
had wired for special orders to stop at the quarry station, to save
Reynolds the trouble of driving into Torrenceville. One might have
supposed that Avery would accompany his visitor to the station,
particularly as it was not a regular stop for night trains and the way
across the fields was a little rough. I’ve personally been over all
the ground. There are many difficult and inexplicable things about
the case, the absence of motive being one of them. The State asserted
business jealousy and substantiated it to a certain extent, and the
fact that Avery had taken the initiative in the matter of combining
their quarry interests and might have used undue pressure on Reynolds
to force him to the deal is to be considered.”
The governor lapsed into silence, seemingly lost in reverie. With his
right hand he was scribbling idly on the tablet that lay by his plate.
The others, having settled themselves comfortably in their chairs,
hoping to hear more of the murder, were disappointed when he ceased
speaking. Burgess’s usual calm, assured air deserted him. He seemed
unwontedly restless, and they saw him glance furtively at his watch.
“Please, governor, won’t you go on with the story?” pleaded Colton.
“You know that nothing that’s said at one of Web’s parties ever goes
out of the room.”
“That,” laughed the governor, “is probably unfortunate, as most of his
stories ought to go to the grand jury. But if I may talk here into the
private ear of you gentlemen I will go on a little further. I’ve got
to make up my mind in the next hour or two about this case, and it may
help me to reach a conclusion to think aloud about it.”
“You needn’t be afraid of us,” said Burgess encouragingly. “We’ve been
meeting here--about the same crowd--once a month for five years, and
nobody has ever blabbed anything.”
“All right; we’ll go a bit further. Avery’s stubborn silence was a
contributing factor in his prompt conviction. A college graduate, a
high-strung, nervous man, hard-working and tremendously ambitious;
successful, reasonably prosperous, happy in his marriage, and with
every reason for living straight: there you have George Avery as I make
him out to have been when this calamity befell him. There was just one
lapse, one error, in his life, but that didn’t figure in the case, and
I won’t speak of it now. His conduct from the moment of his arrest, a
week following the murder, and only after every other possible clue
had been exhausted by the local authorities, was that of a man mutely
resigned to his fate. I find from the records that he remained at the
bungalow in care of a physician, utterly dazed, it seemed, by the thing
he had done, until a warrant was issued and he was put in jail. He’s
been a prisoner ever since, and his silence has been unbroken to this
day. His wife assures me that he never, not even to her, said one word
about the case more than to declare his innocence. I’ve seen him at the
penitentiary on two occasions, but could get nothing out of him. In
fact, I exhausted any ingenuity I may have in attempting to surprise
him into some admission that would give me ground for pardoning him,
but without learning anything that was not in the State’s case. They’re
using him as a bookkeeper, and he’s made a fine record: a model
convict. The long confinement has told seriously on his health, which
is the burden of his wife’s plea for his release, but he wouldn’t even
discuss that.
“There was no one else at the bungalow on the night of the murder,”
the governor continued. “It was Avery’s habit to get his meals at the
house of the quarry superintendent, about five hundred yards away, and
the superintendent’s wife cared for the bungalow, but the men I’ve had
at work couldn’t find anything in that to hang a clue on. You see,
gentlemen, after seven years it’s not easy to work up a case, but two
expert detectives that I employed privately to make some investigations
along lines I suggested have been of great assistance. Failing to catch
the scent where the trial started, I set them to work backward from a
point utterly remote from the scene. It was a guess, and ordinarily it
would have failed, but in this case it has brought results that are all
but convincing.”
The tablets and pencils that had been distributed along the table had
not been neglected. The guests, without exception, had been drawing
or scribbling; Colton had amused himself by sketching the governor’s
profile. Burgess seemed not to be giving his undivided attention to the
governor’s review of the case. He continued to fidget, and his eyes
swept the table with veiled amusement. Then he tapped a bell and a
waiter appeared.
“Pardon me a moment, governor, till the cigars are passed again.”
In his round with the cigar tray the Jap, evidently by prearrangement,
collected the tablets and laid them in front of Burgess.
“Changed your mind about the Limerick contest, Web?” asked some one.
“Not at all,” said Burgess carelessly; “the tablets have fulfilled
their purpose. It was only a silly idea of mine anyhow.” They noticed,
however, that a tablet was left at the still vacant place that awaited
the belated guest, and they wondered at this, surmising that Burgess
had planned the dinner carefully and that the governor’s discussion of
the Avery case was by connivance with their host. With a quickening of
interest they drew their chairs closer to the table.
“The prosecuting attorney who represented the State in the trial is
now a judge of the Circuit Court,” the governor resumed when the
door closed upon the waiter. “I have had many talks with him about
this case. He confesses that there are things about it that still
puzzle him. The evidence was purely circumstantial, as I have already
indicated; but circumstantial evidence, as Thoreau once remarked, may
be very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk! But when
two men have spent a day together in the house of one of them, and
the other is found dead in a lonely place not far away, and suspicion
attaches to no one but the survivor--not even the tramp who usually
figures in such speculations--a jury of twelve farmers may be pardoned
for taking the State’s view of the matter.”
“The motive you spoke of, business jealousy, doesn’t seem quite
adequate unless it could be established that they had quarreled and
that there was a clear showing of enmity,” suggested Fullerton, the
lawyer.
“You are quite right, and the man who prosecuted Avery admits it,” the
governor answered.
“There may have been a third man in the affair,” suggested Ramsey, “and
I suppose the cynical must have suggested the usual woman in the case.”
“I dare say those possibilities were thrashed out at the time,” the
governor replied; “but the only woman in this case is Avery’s wife,
and she and Reynolds had never met. I have found nothing to sustain
any suspicion that there was a woman in the case. Avery’s ostensible
purpose in asking Reynolds to visit him at that out-of-the-way place
was merely that they could discuss the combination of their quarry
interests privately, and close to Avery’s plant. It seems that Avery
had undertaken the organization of a big company to take over a
number of quarries whose product was similar, and that he wished to
confer secretly with Reynolds to secure his sanction to a selling
agreement before the others he wanted to get into the combination
heard of it. That, of course, is perfectly plausible; I could make a
good argument justifying that. Reynolds, like many small capitalists
in country towns, had a number of irons in the fire and had done
some promoting on his own hook. All the financial genius and all the
financial crookedness aren’t confined to Wall Street, though I forget
that sometimes when I’m on the stump! I’m disposed to think from what
I’ve learned of both of them that Avery wasn’t likely to put anything
over on Reynolds, who was no child in business matters. And there
was nothing to show that Avery had got him down there for any other
purpose than to effect a merger of quarry interests for their mutual
benefit.”
“There probably were papers to substantiate that,” suggested Fullerton;
“correspondence and that sort of thing.”
“Certainly; I have gone into that,” the governor replied. “All the
papers remain in the office of the prosecuting attorney, and I have
examined them carefully. Now, if Avery had been able to throw suspicion
on some one else you’d think he’d have done so. And if there had been a
third person at the bungalow that night you’d imagine that Avery would
have said so; it’s not in human nature for one man to take the blame
for another’s crime, and yet we do hear of such things, and I have read
novels and seen plays built upon that idea. But here is Avery with
fifteen years more to serve, and, if he’s been bearing the burden and
suffering the penalty of another’s sin, I must say that he’s taking it
all in an amazing spirit of self-sacrifice.”
“Of course,” said Fullerton, “Reynolds may have had an enemy who
followed him there and lay in wait for him. Or Avery may have connived
at the crime without being really the assailant. That is conceivable.”
“We’ll change the subject for a moment,” said the governor, “and return
to our muttons later.”
He spoke in a low tone to Burgess, who looked at his watch and answered
audibly:
“We have half an hour more.”
The governor nodded and, with a whimsical smile, began turning over the
tablets.
“These pads were placed before you for a purpose which I will now
explain. I apologize for taking advantage of you, but you will pardon
me, I’m sure, when I tell you my reason. I’ve dipped into psychology
lately with a view to learning something of the mind’s eccentricities.
We all do things constantly without conscious effort, as you know;
we perform acts automatically without the slightest idea that we are
doing them. At meetings of our State boards I’ve noticed that nobody
ever uses the pads that are always provided except to scribble on. Many
people have that habit of scribbling on anything that’s handy. Hotel
keepers knowing this, provide pads of paper ostensibly for memoranda
that guests may want to make while at the telephone, but really to keep
them from defacing the wall. Left alone with pencil and paper, most of
us will scribble something or draw meaningless figures.
“Sometimes it’s indicative of a deliberate turn of mind; again it’s
sheer nervousness. After I had discussed this with a well-known
psychologist I began watching myself and found that I made a succession
of figure eights looped together in a certain way--I’ve been doing it
here!
“And now,” he went on with a chuckle, “you gentlemen have been
indulging this same propensity as you listened to me. I find on one
pad the word Napoleon written twenty times with a lot of flourishes;
another has traced a dozen profiles of a man with a bulbous nose: it is
the same gentleman, I find, who honored me by drawing me with a triple
chin--for which I thank him. And here’s what looks like a dog kennel
repeated down the sheet. Still another has sketched the American flag
all over the page. If the patriotic gentleman who drew the flag will
make himself known, I should like to ask him whether he’s conscious of
having done that before?”
“I’m guilty, governor,” Fullerton responded. “I believe it is a habit
of mine. I’ve caught myself doing it scores of times.”
“I’m responsible for the man with the fat nose,” confessed Colton;
“I’ve been drawing him for years without ever improving my
draftsmanship.”
“That will do,” said the governor, glancing at the door. “We won’t take
time to speak of the others, though you may be relieved to know that I
haven’t got any evidence against you. Burgess, please get these works
of art out of the room. We’ll go back to the Avery case. In going over
the papers I found that the prosecuting attorney in his search of the
bungalow the morning after the murder found a number of pieces of paper
that bore an odd, irregular sort of sketch. I’m going to pass one of
them round, but please send it back to me immediately.”
He produced a sheet of letter paper that bore traces of hasty
crumpling, but it had been smoothed out again, and held it up. It bore
the lithographed name of the Avery Quarry Company. On it was drawn this
device:
[Illustration]
“Please note,” said the governor as the paper passed from hand to hand,
“that that same device is traced there five times, sometimes more
irregularly than others, but the general form is the same. Now, in the
fireplace of the bungalow living-room they found this and three other
sheets of the same stationery that bore this same figure. It seems a
fair assumption that some one sitting at a table had amused himself by
sketching these outlines and then, when he had filled the sheet, tore
it off and threw it into the fireplace, wholly unconscious of what he
was doing. The prosecutor attached no importance to these sheets, and
it was only by chance that they were stuck away in the file box with
the other documents in the case.”
“Then you suspect that there was a third man in the bungalow that
night?” Ramsay asked.
The governor nodded gravely.
“Yes; I have some little proof of it, quite a bit of proof, in
fact. I have even had the wastebasket of the suspect examined for a
considerable period. Knowing Burgess’s interest in such matters, I have
been using him to get me certain information I very much wanted. And
our friend is a very successful person! I wanted to see the man I have
in mind and study him a little when he was off-guard, and Burgess has
arranged that for me, though he had to go into the tile business to do
it! As you can readily see, I could hardly drag him to my office, so
this little party was gotten up to give me a chance to look him over at
leisure.”
“Tate!” exclaimed several of the men.
“You can see that this is a very delicate matter,” said the governor
slowly. “Burgess thought it better not to have a smaller party, as
Tate, whom I never saw, might think it a frame-up. So you see we are
using you as stool-pigeons, so to speak. Burgess vouches for you as
men of discretion and tact; and it will be your business to keep Tate
amused and his attention away from me while I observe him a little.”
“And when I give the signal you’re to go into the library and look at
picture books,” Burgess added.
“That’s not fair!” said Fullerton. “We want to see the end of it!”
“I’m so nervous,” said Colton, “I’m likely to scream at any minute!”
“Don’t do it!” Burgess admonished. “The new House Committee is very
touchy about noise in the private dining rooms, and besides I’ve got a
lot of scenery set for the rest of the evening, and I don’t want you
fellows to spoil it.”
“It begins to look,” remarked the governor, glancing at his watch, “as
though some of our scenery might have got lost.”
“He’d hardly bolt,” Burgess replied; “he knows of no reason why he
should! I told the doorman to send him right up. When he comes there
will be no more references to the Avery case: you all understand?”
They murmured their acquiescence, and a solemn hush fell upon them as
they turned involuntarily toward the vacant chair.
“This will never do!” exclaimed the governor, who seemed to be the one
tranquil person in the room. “We must be telling stories and giving an
imitation of weary business men having a jolly time. But I’m tired of
talking; some of the good story-tellers ought to be stirred up.”
With a little prodding Fullerton took the lead, but was able to win
only grudging laughter. Colton was trying his hand at diverting them
when they were startled by a knock. Burgess was at the door instantly
and flung it open.