The place which Samuel Walcott had selected for the residence of Nina
San Croix was far up in the northern suburb of New York. The place
was very old. The lawn was large and ill-kept; the house, a square
old-fashioned brick, was set far back from the street, and partly hidden
by trees. Around it all was a rusty iron fence. The place had the air of
genteel ruin, such as one finds in the Virginias.
On a Thursday of November, about three o'clock in the afternoon, a
little man, driving a dray, stopped in the alley at the rear of the
house. As he opened the back gate an old negro woman came down the steps
from the kitchen and demanded to know what he wanted. The drayman asked
if the lady of the house was in. The old negro answered that she was
asleep at this hour and could not be seen.
"That is good," said the little man, "now there won't be any row. I
brought up some cases of wine which she ordered from our house last week
and which the Boss told me to deliver at once, but I forgot it until
to-day. Just let me put it in the cellar now, Auntie, and don't say
a word to the lady about it and she won't ever know that it was not
brought up on time."
The drayman stopped, fished a silver dollar out of his pocket, and gave
it to the old negro. "There now, Auntie," he said, "my job depends upon
the lady not knowing about this wine; keep it mum."
"Dat's all right, honey," said the old servant, beaming like a May
morning. "De cellar door is open, carry it all in and put it in de back
part and nobody aint never going to know how long it has been in 'dar."
The old negro went back into the kitchen and the little man began to
unload the dray. He carried in five wine cases and stowed them away in
the back part of the cellar as the old woman had directed. Then, after
having satisfied himself that no one was watching, he took from the dray
two heavy paper sacks, presumably filled with flour, and a little bundle
wrapped in an old newspaper; these he carefully hid behind the wine
cases in the cellar. After a while he closed the door, climbed on his
dray, and drove off down the alley.
About eight o'clock in the evening of the same day, a Mexican sailor
dodged in the front gate and slipped down to the side of the house. He
stopped by the window and tapped on it with his finger. In a moment a
woman opened the door. She was tall, lithe, and splendidly proportioned,
with a dark Spanish face and straight hair. The man stepped inside. The
woman bolted the door and turned round.
"Ah," she said, smiling, "it is you, Senor? How good of you."
The man started. "Whom else did you expect?" he said quickly.
"Oh!" laughed the woman, "perhaps the Archbishop."
"Nina!" said the man, in a broken voice that expressed love, humility,
and reproach. His face was white under the black sunburn.
For a moment the woman wavered. A shadow flitted over her eyes, then she
stepped back. "No," she said, "not yet."
The man walked across to the fire, sank down in a chair, and covered
his face with his hands. The woman stepped up noiselessly behind him and
leaned over the chair. The man was either in great agony or else he was
a superb actor, for the muscles of his neck twitched violently and his
shoulders trembled.
"Oh," he muttered, as though echoing his thoughts, "I can't do it, I
can't!"
The woman caught the words and leaped up as though some one had struck
her in the face. She threw back her head. Her nostrils dilated and her
eyes flashed.
"You can't do it!" she cried. "Then you do love her! You shall do it!
Do you hear me? You shall do it! You killed him! You got rid of him!
but you shall not get rid of me. I have the evidence, all of it. The
Archbishop will have it to-morrow. They shall hang you! Do you hear me?
They shall hang you!"
The woman's voice rose, it was loud and shrill. The man turned slowly
round without looking up, and stretched out his arms toward the woman.
She stopped and looked down at him. The fire glittered for a moment
and then died out of her eyes, her bosom heaved and her lips began to
tremble. With a cry she flung herself into his arms, caught him around
the neck, and pressed his face up close against her cheek.
"Oh! Dick, Dick," she sobbed, "I do love you so! I can't live without
you! Not another hour Dick! I do want you so much, so much, Dick!" The
man shifted his right arm quickly, slipped a great Mexican knife out of
his sleeve, and passed his fingers slowly up the woman's side until he
felt the heart beat under his hand, then he raised the knife, gripped
the handle tight, and drove the keen blade into the woman's bosom. The
hot blood gushed out over his arm, and down on his leg. The body, warm
and limp, slipped down in his arms. The man got up, pulled out the
knife, and thrust it into a sheath at his belt, unbuttoned the dress,
and slipped it off of the body. As he did this a bundle of papers
dropped upon the floor; these he glanced at hastily and put into his
pocket. Then he took the dead woman up in his arms, went out into the
hall, and started to go up the stairway. The body was relaxed and heavy,
and for that reason difficult to carry. He doubled it up into an awful
heap, with the knees against the chin, and walked slowly and heavily up
the stairs and out into the bath-room. There he laid the corpse down
on the tiled floor. Then he opened the window, closed the shutters, and
lighted the gas. The bath-room was small and contained an ordinary steel
tub, porcelain-lined, standing near the window and raised about six
inches above the floor. The sailor went over to the tub, pried up the
metal rim of the outlet with his knife, removed it, and fitted into its
place a porcelain disk which he took from his pocket; to this disk
was attached a long platinum wire, the end of which he fastened on the
outside of the tub. After he had done this he went back to the body,
stripped off its clothing, put it down in the tub and began to dismember
it with the great Mexican knife. The blade was strong and sharp as a
razor. The man worked rapidly and with the greatest care.
When he had finally cut the body into as small pieces as possible, he
replaced the knife in its sheath, washed his hands, and went out of the
bath-room and down stairs to the lower hall. The sailor seemed perfectly
familiar with the house. By a side door he passed into the cellar. There
he lighted the gas, opened one of the wine cases, and, taking up all
the bottles that he could conveniently carry, returned to the bath-room.
There he poured the contents into the tub on the dismembered body, and
then returned to the cellar with the empty bottles, which he replaced in
the wine cases. This he continued to do until all the cases but one were
emptied and the bath tub was more than half full of liquid. This liquid
was sulphuric acid.
When the sailor returned to the cellar with the last empty wine bottles,
he opened the fifth case, which really contained wine, took some of
it out, and poured a little into each of the empty bottles in order to
remove any possible odor of the sulphuric acid. Then he turned out the
gas and brought up to the bath-room with him the two paper flour sacks
and the little heavy bundle. These sacks were filled with nitrate of
soda. He set them down by the door, opened the little bundle, and took
out two long rubber tubes, each attached to a heavy gas burner, not
unlike the ordinary burners of a small gas-stove. He fastened the tubes
to two of the gas jets, put the burners under the tub, turned the gas
on full, and lighted it. Then he threw into the tub the woman's clothing
and the papers which he had found on her body, after which he took up
the two heavy sacks of nitrate of soda and dropped them carefully into
the sulphuric acid. When he had done this he went quickly out of the
bath-room and closed the door.
The deadly acids at once attacked the body and began to destroy it; as
the heat increased, the acids boiled and the destructive process was
rapid and awful. From time to time the sailor opened the door of the
bath-room cautiously, and, holding a wet towel over his mouth and nose,
looked in at his horrible work. At the end of a few hours there was only
a swimming mass in the tub. When the man looked at four o'clock, it was
all a thick murky liquid. He turned off the gas quickly and stepped
back out of the room. For perhaps half an hour he waited in the hall;
finally, when the acids had cooled so that they no longer gave off
fumes, he opened the door and went in, took hold of the platinum wire
and, pulling the porcelain disk from the stop-cock, allowed the awful
contents of the tub to run out. Then he turned on the hot water, rinsed
the tub clean, and replaced the metal outlet. Removing the rubber tubes,
he cut them into pieces, broke the porcelain disk, and, rolling up the
platinum wire, washed it all down the sewer pipe.
The fumes had escaped through the open window; this he now closed and
set himself to putting the bath-room in order, and effectually removing
every trace of his night's work. The sailor moved around with the very
greatest degree of care. Finally, when he had arranged everything to his
complete satisfaction, he picked up the two burners, turned out the gas,
and left the bath-room, closing the door after him. From the bath-room
he went directly to the attic, concealed the two rusty burners under a
heap of rubbish, and then walked carefully and noiselessly down the
stairs and through the lower hall. As he opened the door and stepped
into the room where he had killed the woman, two police-officers sprang
out and seized him. The man screamed like a wild beast taken in a trap
and sank down.
"Oh! oh!" he cried, "it was no use! it was no use to do it!" Then he
recovered himself in a manner and was silent. The officers handcuffed
him, summoned the patrol, and took him at once to the station-house.
There he said he was a Mexican sailor and that his name was Victor
Ancona; but he would say nothing further. The following morning he sent
for Randolph Mason and the two were long together.