Stark fear stalked the camp of Justice Isaac Higginbotham. By the
time Professor Brierly had returned from his momentous trip to New
York this fear was naked, unashamed. The men now made no attempt
to dissemble.
All these men had fought; they had faced death in various forms.
They could each be counted on to act like soldiers in the face of
ordinary danger. It was the fear of the unknown; the dread that at
any moment of the day or night they might become the victims of a
deadly attack from an unknown and unexpected source that was
visibly having its effect on these octogenarians.
It finally took form in a strange manner. As if by unanimous
consent, they each avoided being left alone with one of their
comrades. They would gather at meals or on the porch or in the
large living-room, but they avoided being left in pairs.
They all took solitary walks. Some of them went out on the lake.
Some of them went to Lentone or elsewhere; always alone. Whether
this was sheer bravado, or some strange reaction to the
psychological elements involved, no observer could determine. They
apparently reached an unspoken and unannounced resolution, all of
them, to stay at the camp until the murders were cleared up. Some
of them went about armed, although that was merely a gesture.
To the four men who had been taken into their confidence fell the
task of keeping the strange unhappy group from going mad. Even
this solace was denied them during the past two days. The
kidnapping of the child now took, in the minds of at least two of
the men, a place equal in importance to the murders of their three
comrades.
Professor Brierly now spent all of his waking moments between
receiving and sending telegrams at the camp of the Tontine group.
The men were gathered on the porch. There was talk, jerky
sentences. Only a man finely and delicately balanced and organized
as was the old scientist could have resisted the pall of gloom and
dread that permeated the group.
"Any news of the little boy, Professor?" asked McGuire.
"No, none. The mother is frantic, of course. I myself am not easy
in mind about it. I do not believe, however, that harm is intended
the boy."
"Why don't you take the police into it, Professor," asked Judge
Fletcher. "It can't be worse than it is. The Canadian police are a
very efficient organization, almost as efficient as fiction makes
them out to be."
"I have given it to the police this morning. We have decided there
is nothing to be gained by further silence. The police now have it
in hand."
"You had a note asking you to go to New York and meet the
kidnappers and their representatives didn't you?"
"Why didn't you go, Professor?"
The old man, who was glad of this opportunity of taking their
minds off their own tragedy even for the moment, answered slowly,
his keen eyes darting from one member of the group to the other.
"It seemed to Mr. McCall and Hale, Matthews agreed with this, that
the communication addressed to me was designed to take me away
from here. It seems very probable that the entire kidnapping plan
is closely tied up with your own deplorable affair, gentlemen."
They were looking at him with concern. He went on.
"I have had some little part in exposing the role that some
person, at present unknown, had in the murders of at least three
of your comrades." His keen eyes shaded by their thick lashes and
eyebrows were watching intently. "It may be that the man or men we
are seeking intend some more mischief, right here. They may wish
me out of the way.
"They sent a deciduous tooth, a baby tooth as evidence of the
lengths to which they are prepared to go to enforce their demands
on me. Sending that tooth was almost ludicrous in its futility.
Mrs. Van Orden was distracted, of course, until I informed her
that the tooth did not come out of her son's mouth.
"Why should they have selected that boy for kidnapping, if ransom
was the object? Mrs. Van Orden is a poor woman. I am comparatively
so. John has no money, he is just starting life. Why did they make
that futile gesture with the tooth?"
Goldberg, who was sitting near the edge of the porch, said with
bitter sarcasm, pointing to the overhanging rock:
"Now there is a fine chance for a man to destroy this group. If
that overhanging rock came down here while we're sitting here it
would wipe out the survivors of the Tontine agreement like that!"
He snapped his fingers.
"There is no danger of that, Sam," reassured Justice Higginbotham.
"That has been that way since I came up here; that is about
thirty-five years. I and others have expressed uneasiness over the
position of that rock, but there is no danger. When--er soon, I
shall have it cleared away."
Vasiliewski burst out:
"Professor, we're sitting here talking of everything except that
which is uppermost in our minds. We are trying to mask our
feelings. You know what we are all thinking of. Is there any hope,
Professor."
Professor Brierly answered slowly, gravely.
"I have reason to believe that we will solve this--problem shortly.
Habits of a lifetime prevent me from being more specific. I have
learned, and paid dearly for learning, that jumping at conclusions
may often prove disastrous. That is why I am not given to making
guesses, surmises. I wish I could say something more definite."
"My God, Professor, do you mean to say that you suspect--"
Professor Brierly shook his head regretfully and was about to
speak when Vasiliewski impulsively interrupted.
"But can't you see, Professor, that this is not a cold scientific
problem, that our lives are at stake. This is a human problem,
Professor."
"Assuming, Mr. Vasiliewski, that I took your view of it. Persons
are prone to regard me as a thinking machine. I am not. Let us
assume, I say, that I took your view of it. Just see what might
happen. I might accuse the wrong man. We might even convict the
wrong man. The guilty man might then go on, doing incalculable
evil. Guessing is dangerous and is--fallible. Scientific induction
and deductions, conclusions based on irrefutable fact, fact that
can be weighed and measured, is infallible."
There was real concern in his eyes as he rose to depart.
"All I can say, gentlemen, is that I shall be able to free you
from the terrible thing you fear in a very short time now."
To the scores of press representatives who hounded him for a
statement he resolutely turned a deaf ear. He was besieged by a
constant horde of visitors. The news hunters realized that where
Professor Brierly was, was the real source of news. It had been
necessary to divulge the part he had taken in the three murders.
He would have denied himself to callers, either personal or to
those calling on the telephone, but this was now impossible. He
might miss now an important communication bearing on the murders
or, what for the time was to him more important, the kidnapping.
The search went on relentlessly, the police of all the near--by
cities and states taking part in the search. It soon began to be
felt that the kidnapping was closely tied up with the murders of
the octogenarians. It was at the request of the survivors of the
Tontine group that Justice Higginbotham's camp was not molested.
It was readily seen that constant surveillance by the press and
police would be a highly undesirable and perhaps a very dangerous
thing for the ten aged survivors.
Arrangements were, therefore, set up for periodic statements by a
member of the group. The press of the country nevertheless felt
free to make its own search and indulge in its own surmises and
guesses.
One week after the first murder was announced it became apparent
that they were no nearer a solution than they were at the
beginning. Moral publications were beginning to clamor for
results. The people of New York City were clamoring for results.
Editors were profanely wiring their expensive representatives for
results. The patience of the police and the reporters was wearing
thin. During all this clamor the only thing that came from the
camps over the Canadian border, from the hundreds of star
reporters was--nothing. Even Jimmy was unmercifully berated for
falling down on the job, Jimmy, who one short week before was
praised to the skies for springing one of the greater newspaper
stories in history.
It was apparent to those who were close to him that Professor
Brierly was forging in silence a chain, link by link, that would
bridge the gap between doubt and certainty. He was sending and
receiving telegrams, without for one moment relaxing his vigilance
of the Higginbotham camp and its ten old men. The evening of the
day after the receipt of the last telegram, McCall in the hope of
drawing the old man out said:
"My vacation ends next week, Professor. When I get back to New
York I may be able to speed up things in the matter of the
Schurman murder. You're staying here the rest of the summer aren't
you?" he concluded innocently.
"Yes."
"Really, Professor, I know you don't like to make guesses, but
this is getting on all our nerves. How near to a solution are
you?"
"If I were a lawyer or a newspaper man," the old man said tartly,
"I should make a guess and arrest the murderer tomorrow. But
lawyers and newspaper men use a weird type of logic. That is why
lawyers and newspaper men are as often right as wrong. Legal
logic, particularly, is something awful to contemplate."
"Legal logic," began McCall stiffly.
"Is precisely what I said," snapped the old man. "How can you
defend the logic of a judge who hands down a decision basing it on
the statement that a dining car is not a railroad car. There is
also the logic of a judge who handed down a decision basing it on
the hypothesis that an overcoat is real estate. That is legal
logic, Mr. McCall."
He paused and leaned forward earnestly.
"Truth, Mr. McCall, sometimes hangs on a very thin thread. Snap
the thread and--you have something other than truth.
"It is not a mere coincidence that Boyle was arrested, charged
with the killing of Miller and 'Fingy' Smith arrested, charged
with the killing of Schurman. It was a vital part of the entire
devilish pattern. Miller's death was a splendid imitation of
suicide. The revolver was placed in his hand before rigor mortis
set in leaving his fingerprints on the weapon.
"But the powder marks spoiled the picture of suicide for me. The
rest was merely a matter of routine. The same was true of the
Schurman affair. It was made to look to the casual observer like
suicide. If you did not accept the suicide theory, you were given
an alternative theory, the mode of entrance, the big meal, the
eggs, the nail file with positive fingerprints. The one thing that
spoiled that was the apple. Remember the apple?
"To satisfy me the murderer would have to be identified with the
apple. You see arresting 'Fingy' left the apple unaccounted for.
In the Miller case the murderer would have to be identified with a
rope that came from a farmyard that contained a boxwood hedge, a
sorrel horse, leghorn chickens, a collie dog and some other items.
He would also have to be identified with a hat factory."
"What do you mean by saying that these two men were arrested
charged with those murders?"
"I mean that it was a foregone conclusion that if the suicide
theory was exploded, these men would be charged with the crime?"
"A foregone conclusion in whose mind, Professor?"
"In the mind of the--murderer, Mr. McCall. You see, don't you, the
thin line of demarcation that lies between truth and falsehood?
When the difference between the two may mean the difference
between life and death it behooves me to be extremely careful. I
am not holding a brief for the defendant or the state, Mr.
District Attorney, I am seeking the truth."