II

Obviously the first fact to be settled was whether Mr. Holmes had died

from purely natural causes. I accordingly busied myself the next few

days with the question, and was fortunate enough to so interest the

proper authorities that an order was issued for the exhumation and

examination of the body.

The result was disappointing. No traces of poison were to be found in

the stomach nor was there to be seen on the body any mark of violence

with the exception of a minute prick upon one of his thumbs.

This speck was so small that it escaped every eye but my own.

The authorities assuring the widow that the doctor's certificate given

her in Philadelphia was correct, the body was again interred. But I was

not satisfied; and confident that this death had not been a natural one,

I entered upon one of those secret and prolonged investigations which

for so many years have constituted the pleasure of my life. First, I

visited the Colonnade in Philadelphia, and being allowed to see the room

in which Mr. Holmes died, went through it carefully. As it had not been

used since that time I had some hopes of coming upon a clue.

But it was a vain hope, and the only result of my journey to this place

was the assurance I received that the gentleman had spent the entire

evening preceding his death in his own room, where he had been brought

several letters and one small package, the latter coming by mail. With

this one point gained--if it was a point--I went back to New York.

Calling on Mrs. Holmes, I asked her if, while her husband was away, she

had sent him anything besides letters, and upon her replying to the

contrary, requested to know if in her visit to Philadelphia she had

noted among her husband's effects anything that was new or unfamiliar to

her. "For he received a package while there," I explained, "and though

its contents may have been perfectly harmless, it is just as well for us

to be assured of this before going any further."

"Oh, you think, then, he was really the victim of some secret violence."

"We have no proof of it," I said. "On the contrary, we are assured that

he died from natural causes. But the incident of the newspaper slip

outweighs, in my mind, the doctor's conclusions, and until the mystery

surrounding that obituary notice has been satisfactorily explained by

its author I shall hold to the theory that your husband has been made

away with in some strange and seemingly unaccountable manner, which it

is our duty to bring to light."

"You are right! You are right! Oh, John Graham!"

She was so carried away by this plain expression of my belief that she

forgot the question I had put to her.

"You have not said whether or not you found anything among your

husband's effects that can explain this mystery," I suggested.

She at once became attentive.

"Nothing," said she; "his trunks were already packed and his bag nearly

so. There were a few things lying about the room which I saw thrust into

the latter. Would you like to look through them? I have not had the

heart to open the bag since I came back."

As this was exactly what I wished, I said as much, and she led me into a

small room, against the wall of which stood a trunk with a

travelling-bag on top of it. Opening the latter, she spread the contents

out on the trunk.

"I know all these things," she sadly murmured, the tears welling in her

eyes.

"This?" I inquired, lifting up a bit of coiled wire with two or three

rings dangling from it.

"No; why, what is that?"

"It looks like a puzzle of some kind."

"Then it is of no consequence. My husband was forever amusing himself

over some such contrivance. All his friends knew how well he liked

these toys and frequently sent them to him. This one evidently reached

him from Philadelphia."

Meanwhile I was eyeing the bit of wire curiously. It was undoubtedly a

puzzle, but it had appendages to it that I did not understand.

"It is more than ordinarily complicated," I observed, moving the rings

up and down in a vain endeavour to work them off.

"The better he would like it," she said.

I kept working with the rings. Suddenly I gave a painful start. A little

prong in the handle of the toy had started out and pierced me.

"You had better not handle it," said I, and laid it down. But the next

moment I took it up again and put it in my pocket. The prick made by

this treacherous bit of mechanism was in or near the same place on my

thumb as the one I had noticed on the hand of the deceased Mr. Holmes.

There was a fire in the room, and before proceeding further I cauterised

that prick with the end of a red-hot poker. Then I made my adieux to

Mrs. Holmes and went immediately to a chemist friend of mine.

"Test the end of this bit of steel for me," said I. "I have reason to

believe it carries with it a deadly poison."

He took the toy, promising to subject it to every test possible and let

me know the result. Then I went home. I felt ill, or imagined I did,

which under the circumstances was almost as bad.

Next day, however, I was quite well, with the exception of a certain

inconvenience in my thumb. But not till the following week did I receive

the chemist's report. It overthrew my whole theory. He found nothing,

and returned me the bit of steel.

But I was not convinced.

"I will hunt up this John Graham," thought I, "and study him."

But this was not so easy a task as it may appear. As Mrs. Holmes

possessed no clue to the whereabouts of her quondam lover, I had nothing

to aid me in my search for him, save her rather vague description of his

personal appearance and the fact that he was constantly interrupted in

speaking by a low, choking cough. However, my natural perseverance

carried me through. After seeing and interviewing a dozen John Grahams

without result, I at last lit upon a man of that name who presented a

figure of such vivid unrest and showed such a desperate hatred of his

fellows, that I began to entertain hopes of his being the person I was

in search of. But determined to be sure of this before proceeding

further, I confided my suspicions to Mrs. Holmes, and induced her to

accompany me down to a certain spot on the "Elevated" from which I had

more than once seen this man go by to his usual lounging place in

Printing House Square.

She showed great courage in doing this, for she had such a dread of him

that she was in a state of nervous excitement from the moment she left

her house, feeling sure that she would attract his attention and thus

risk a disagreeable encounter. But she might have spared herself these

fears. He did not even glance up in passing us, and it was mainly by his

walk she recognised him. But she did recognise him; and this nerved me

at once to set about the formidable task of fixing upon him a crime

which was not even admitted as a fact by the authorities.

He was a man-about-town, living, to all appearances, by his wits. He was

to be seen mostly in the downtown portions of the city, standing for

hours in front of some newspaper office, gnawing at his finger-ends, and

staring at the passers-by with a hungry look alarming to the timid and

provoking alms from the benevolent. Needless to say that he rejected the

latter expression of sympathy with angry contempt.

His face was long and pallid, his cheek-bones high, and his mouth bitter

and resolute in expression. He wore neither beard nor moustache, but

made up for their lack by an abundance of light-brown hair, which hung

very nearly to his shoulders. He stooped in standing, but as soon as he

moved, showed decision and a certain sort of pride which caused him to

hold his head high and his body more than usually erect. With all these

good points his appearance was decidedly sinister, and I did not wonder

that Mrs. Holmes feared him.

My next move was to accost him. Pausing before the doorway in which he

stood, I addressed him some trivial question. He answered me with

sufficient politeness, but with a grudging attention which betrayed the

hold which his own thoughts had upon him. He coughed while speaking, and

his eye, which for a moment rested on mine, produced an impression upon

me for which I was hardly prepared, great as was my prejudice against

him. There was such an icy composure in it; the composure of an

envenomed nature conscious of its superiority to all surprises. As I

lingered to study him more closely, the many dangerous qualities of the

man became more and more apparent to me; and convinced that to proceed

further without deep and careful thought would be to court failure where

triumph would set me up for life, I gave up all present attempt at

enlisting him in conversation and went away in an inquiring and serious

mood.

In fact, my position was a peculiar one, and the problem I had set for

myself one of unusual difficulty. Only by means of some extraordinary

device such as is seldom resorted to by the police of this or any other

nation, could I hope to arrive at the secret of this man's conduct, and

triumph in a matter which to all appearance was beyond human

penetration.

But what device? I knew of none, nor through two days and nights of

strenuous thought did I receive the least light on the subject. Indeed,

my mind seemed to grow more and more confused the more I urged it into

action. I failed to get inspiration indoors or out; and feeling my

health suffer from the constant irritation of my recurring

disappointment, I resolved to take a day off and carry myself and my

perplexities into the country.

I did so. Governed by an impulse which I did not then understand, I went

to a small town in New Jersey and entered the first house on which I saw

the sign "Room to Let." The result was most fortunate. No sooner had I

crossed the threshold of the neat and homely apartment thrown open to my

use, than it recalled a room in which I had slept two years before and

in which I had read a little book I was only too glad to remember at

this moment. Indeed, it seemed as if a veritable inspiration had come to

me through this recollection, for though the tale to which I allude was

a simple child's story written for moral purposes, it contained an idea

which promised to be invaluable to me at this juncture. Indeed, by means

of it, I believed myself to have solved the problem that was puzzling

me, and, relieved beyond expression, I paid for the night's lodging I

had now determined to forego, and returned immediately to New York,

having spent just fifteen minutes in the town where I had received this

happy inspiration.

My first step on entering the city was to order a dozen steel coils made

similar to the one which I still believed answerable for James Holmes's

death. My next to learn as far as possible all of John Graham's haunts

and habits. At a week's end I had the springs and knew almost as well as

he did himself where he was likely to be found at all times of the day

and night. I immediately acted upon this knowledge. Assuming a slight

disguise, I repeated my former stroll through Printing House Square,

looking into each doorway as I passed. John Graham was in one of them,

staring in his old way at the passing crowd, but evidently seeing

nothing but the images formed by his own disordered brain. A manuscript

roll stuck out of his breast-pocket, and from the way his nervous

fingers fumbled with it, I began to understand the restless glitter of

his eyes, which were as full of wretchedness as any eyes I have ever

seen.

Entering the doorway where he stood, I dropped at his feet one of the

small steel coils with which I was provided. He did not see it. Stopping

near him, I directed his attention to it by saying:

"Pardon me, but did I not see something drop out of your hand?"

He started, glanced at the seemingly inoffensive toy I had pointed out,

and altered so suddenly and so vividly that it became instantly apparent

that the surprise I had planned for him was fully as keen and searching

a one as I had anticipated. Recoiling sharply, he gave me a quick look,

then glanced down again at his feet as if half expecting to find the

object of his terror gone. But, perceiving it still lying there, he

crushed it viciously with his heel, and uttering some incoherent words

dashed impetuously from the building.

Confident that he would regret this hasty impulse and return, I withdrew

a few steps and waited. And sure enough, in less than five minutes, he

came slinking back. Picking up the coil with more than one sly look

about, he examined it closely. Suddenly he gave a sharp cry and went

staggering out. Had he discovered that the seeming puzzle possessed the

same invisible spring which had made the one handled by James Holmes so

dangerous?

Certain as to the place he would be found next, I made a short cut to an

obscure little saloon in Nassau Street, where I took up my stand in a

spot convenient for seeing without being seen. In ten minutes he was

standing at the bar asking for a drink.

"Whiskey!" he cried. "Straight."

It was given him, but as he set the empty glass down on the counter he

saw lying before him another of the steel springs, and was so confounded

by the sight that the proprietor, who had put it there at my

instigation, thrust out his hand toward him as if half afraid he would

fall.

"Where did that--that _thing_ come from?" stammered John Graham,

ignoring the other's gesture and pointing with a trembling hand at the

insignificant bit of wire between them.

"Didn't it drop from your coat-pocket?" inquired the proprietor. "It

wasn't lying here before you came in."

With a horrible oath the unhappy man turned and fled from the place. I

lost sight of him after that for three hours, then I suddenly came upon

him again. He was walking uptown with a set purpose in his face that

made him look more dangerous than ever. Of course I followed him,

expecting him to turn towards Fifty-ninth Street, but at the corner of

Madison Avenue and Forty-seventh Street he changed his mind and dashed

toward Third Avenue. At Park Avenue he faltered and again turned north,

walking for several blocks as if the fiends were behind him. I began to

think that he was but attempting to walk off his excitement, when, at a

sudden rushing sound in the cut beside us, he stopped and trembled. An

express train was shooting by. As it disappeared in the tunnel beyond,

he looked about him with a blanched face and wandering eye; but his

glance did not turn my way, or, if it did, he failed to attach any

meaning to my near presence.

He began to move on again and this time towards the bridge spanning the

cut. I followed him very closely. In the centre of it he paused and

looked down at the track beneath him. Another train was approaching. As

it came near he trembled from head to foot, and, catching at the railing

against which he leaned, was about to make a quick move forward when a

puff of smoke arose from below and sent him staggering backward, gasping

with a terror I could hardly understand till I saw that the smoke had

taken the form of a spiral and was sailing away before him in what to

his disordered imagination must have looked like a gigantic image of the

coil with which twice before on this day he had found himself

confronted.

It may have been chance and it may have been providence; but whichever

it was it saved him. He could not face that semblance of his haunting

thought; and turning away he cowered down on the neighbouring curbstone,

where he sat for several minutes, with his head buried in his hands;

when he arose again he was his own daring and sinister self. Knowing

that he was now too much master of his faculties to ignore me any

longer, I walked quickly away and left him. I knew where he would be at

six o'clock and had already engaged a table at the same restaurant. It

was seven, however, before he put in an appearance, and by this time he

was looking more composed. There was a reckless air about him, however,

which was perhaps only noticeable to me; for none of the habitues of

this especial restaurant were entirely without it; wild eyes and unkempt

hair being in the majority.

I let him eat. The dinner he ordered was simple and I had not the heart

to interrupt his enjoyment of it.

But when he had finished and came to pay, then I allowed the shock to

come. Under the bill which the waiter laid at the side of his plate was

the inevitable steel coil; and it produced even more than its usual

effect. I own I felt sorry for him.

He did not dash from the place, however, as he had from the liquor

saloon. A spirit of resistance had seized him and he demanded to know

where this object of his fear had come from. No one could tell him (or

would). Whereupon he began to rave and would certainly have done himself

or somebody else an injury if he had not been calmed by a man almost as

wild-looking as himself. Paying his bill, but vowing he would never

enter the place again, he went out, clay white, but with the swaggering

air of a man who had just asserted himself.

He drooped, however, as soon as he reached the street, and I had no

difficulty in following him to a certain gambling den, where he gained

three dollars and lost five. From there he went to his lodgings in West

Tenth Street.

I did not follow him. He had passed through many deep and wearing

emotions since noon, and I had not the heart to add another to them.

But late the next day I returned to this house and rang the bell. It was

already dusk, but there was light enough for me to notice the unrepaired

condition of the iron railings on either side of the old stoop and to

compare this abode of decayed grandeur with the spacious and elegant

apartment in which pretty Mrs. Holmes mourned the loss of her young

husband. Had any such comparison ever been made by the unhappy John

Graham, as he hurried up these battered steps into the dismal halls

beyond?

In answer to my summons there came to the door a young woman to whom I

had but to intimate my wish to see Mr. Graham for her to let me in with

the short announcement:

"Top floor, back room! Door open, he's out; door shut, he's in."

As an open door meant liberty to enter, I lost no time in following the

direction of her finger, and presently found myself in a low attic

chamber overlooking an acre of roofs. A fire had been lighted in the

open grate, and the flickering red beams danced on ceiling and walls

with a cheeriness greatly in contrast to the nature of the business

which had led me there. As they also served to light the room, I

proceeded to make myself at home; and drawing up a chair, sat down at

the fireplace in such a way as to conceal myself from any one entering

the door.

In less than half an hour he came in.

He was in a state of high emotion. His face was flushed and his eyes

burning. Stepping rapidly forward, he flung his hat on the table in the

middle of the room, with a curse that was half cry and half groan. Then

he stood silent and I had an opportunity of noting how haggard he had

grown in the short time which had elapsed since I had seen him last. But

the interval of his inaction was short, and in a moment he flung up his

arms with a loud "Curse her!" that rang through the narrow room and

betrayed the source of his present frenzy. Then he again stood still,

grating his teeth and working his hands in a way terribly suggestive of

the murderer's instinct. But not for long. He saw something that

attracted his attention on the table, a something upon which my eyes had

long before been fixed, and starting forward with a fresh and quite

different display of emotion, he caught up what looked like a roll of

manuscript and began to tear it open.

"Back again! Always back!" wailed from his lips; and he gave the roll a

toss that sent from its midst a small object which he no sooner saw

than he became speechless and reeled back. It was another of the steel

coils.

"Good God!" fell at last from his stiff and working lips. "Am I mad or

has the devil joined in the pursuit against me? I cannot eat, I cannot

drink, but this diabolical spring starts up before me. It is here,

there, everywhere. The visible sign of my guilt; the--the----" He had

stumbled back upon my chair, and turning, saw me.

I was on my feet at once, and noting that he was dazed by the shock of

my presence, I slid quietly between him and the door.

The movement roused him. Turning upon me with a sarcastic smile in which

was concentrated the bitterness of years, he briefly said:

"So I am caught! Well, there has to be an end to men as well as to

things, and I am ready for mine. She turned me away from her door

to-day, and after the hell of that moment I don't much fear any other."

"You had better not talk," I admonished him. "All that falls from you

now will only tell against you on your trial."

He broke into a harsh laugh. "And do you think I care for that? That

having been driven by a woman's perfidy into crime I am going to bridle

my tongue and keep down the words which are my only safeguard from

insanity? No, no; while my miserable breath lasts I will curse her, and

if the halter is to cut short my words, it shall be with her name

blistering my lips."

I attempted to speak, but he would not give me an opportunity. The

passion of weeks had found vent and he rushed on recklessly:

"I went to her house to-day. I wanted to see her in her widow's weeds; I

wanted to see her eyes red with weeping over a grief which owed its

bitterness to me. But she would not grant me admittance. She had me

thrust from her door, and I shall never know how deeply the iron has

sunk into her soul. But"--and here his face showed a sudden change--"I

shall see her if I am tried for murder. She will be in the courtroom--on

the witness stand----"

"Doubtless," I interjected; but his interruption came quickly and with

vehement passion.

"Then I am ready. Welcome trial, conviction, death, even. To confront

her eye to eye is all I wish. She shall never forget it, never!"

"Then you do not deny----" I began.

"I deny nothing," he returned, and held out his hands with a grim

gesture. "How can I, when there falls from everything I touch the

devilish thing which took away the life I hated?"

"Have you anything more to say or do before you leave these rooms?" I

asked.

He shook his head, and then, bethinking himself, pointed to the roll of

paper which he had flung on the table.

"Burn that!" he cried.

I took up the roll and looked at it. It was the manuscript of a poem in

blank verse.

"I have been with it into a dozen newspaper and magazine offices," he

explained with great bitterness. "Had I succeeded in getting a

publisher for it I might have forgotten my wrongs and tried to build up

a new life on the ruins of the old. But they would not have it, none of

them; so I say, burn it! that no memory of me may remain in this

miserable world."

"Keep to the facts!" I severely retorted. "It was while carrying this

poem from one newspaper to another that you secured that bit of print

upon the blank side of which yourself printed the obituary notice with

which you savoured your revenge upon the woman who had disappointed

you."

"You know that? Then you know where I got the poison with which I tipped

the silly toy with which that weak man fooled away his life?"

"No," said I, "I do not know where you got it. I merely know it was no

common poison bought at a druggist's, or from any ordinary chemist."

"It was woorali; the deadly, secret woorali. I got it from--but that is

another man's secret. You will never hear from me anything that will

compromise a friend. I got it, that is all. One drop, but it killed my

man."

The satisfaction, the delight, which he threw into these words are

beyond description. As they left his lips a jet of flame from the

neglected fire shot up and threw his figure for one instant into bold

relief upon the lowering ceiling; then it died out, and nothing but the

twilight dusk remained in the room and on the countenance of this doomed

and despairing man.