A RECONSTRUCTED DRAMA.
As he spoke, Sturgis handed Dunlap the sheet of paper upon which he had
traced a plan of the Knickerbocker bank.
"From this point on," he continued, "I have indicated the various
trails on the diagram. The dotted lines represent Arbogast's
footprints; the continuous lines show Chatham's trail."
"How can you distinguish between the two?" inquired Dunlap.
"There is no difficulty about that," replied Sturgis. "The differences
are very marked. I know Arbogast's foot because I have seen it; and I
know that the other one is Chatham's because you recognized the man
from the description I gave of him."
"Yes, I know. But how could you describe him so accurately when you
have never seen him?"
"I shall come to that presently," said Sturgis, smiling; "you must let
me tell my story in my own way, if I am to tell it connectedly."
"Very well," said the banker, resignedly. "Hold on, though," he
exclaimed; "you speak of two sets of trails; but what is this third set
of lines, marked by alternate dots and dashes?"
"They represent the traces of a third individual, who will appear
upon the scene later on. He has not yet received his cue. But, since
you mention him, we may put him down in the cast as 'X,' the unknown
quantity of the problem; for I do not yet know his name. Now, then; let
me see. Where was I? Your interruption has made me lose the thread. Oh,
yes; the men were in this room. Arbogast, nervous and excited, paced
back and forth, like a caged animal. Chatham was more collected. It
was warm in the bank, as compared with the intense cold outside; he
removed his overcoat and threw it over the back of that chair in the
corner. This fact is shown by the direction of the footsteps toward
the chair, and by a mark directly below the arm of the chair where the
garment trailed upon the wet floor. Chatham's carelessness was fraught
with serious consequences; for, as luck would have it, there was, in
one of the pockets of his coat, an important letter, which slipped out
and fell upon the floor superscription uppermost. Here is the envelope
itself, which I have pieced together. You will see that it is soiled
only upon the back, and here near the chair is the faint oblong mark
which it left upon the floor. Chatham went to the telephone in the
cashier's office. He probably did not see the letter fall. It caught
Arbogast's eye, however; and you may imagine his surprise when he saw
that it was addressed to his wife. What had his accomplice to write
to his wife? Arbogast evidently was not restrained by any feelings of
delicacy in the matter, or else he was already suspicious of Chatham;
for he picked up the envelope, tore it open, and read the letter which
lies before you, as I have pieced it together. It makes interesting
reading. I do not wonder that Arbogast lost his head when he saw it.
Read it for yourself."
"Why," exclaimed Dunlap, after reading the letter, "this announces his
intention of committing suicide."
"Precisely; and yet Arbogast did not commit suicide; probably never
had any intention of doing so; and, at any rate, did not write
that letter. You will observe that it is not signed; the name is
typewritten, like the rest of the letter, which, moreover, was not
written here, as the superscription would seem to indicate. I have
tried your typewriter, and although it is of the same make as the one
upon which this letter was written, there are several characteristic
differences in the alignment and in the imperfections of the type.
"Besides," continued Sturgis, thoughtfully, "the letter itself bears
evidence, on its face, that it could not have been written by Arbogast.
Your bookkeeper was of a weak, nervous, excitable temperament, as all
his actions plainly show. Before such a man is brought to the point
of taking his own life, he must have passed through a more or less
protracted period of agonizing nervous tension, of which you and I
can hardly form any adequate conception. Under the circumstances, if
he loved his wife, conscious that by his guilt he was about to plunge
her into the depths of grief and shame, he might have written her an
incoherent and hysterical letter, or a tender and repentant letter,
but never this frigid matter-of-fact statement of a supreme decision.
This letter is the work of a cold and calculating nature, incapable
of ordinary human feeling. The man who wrote it would not have written
to his wife at all, or would have written only to serve some selfish
purpose. From what I know of Arbogast, I do not believe he was capable
of composing these lines."
"You think, then, that the letter was written by Chatham," said Dunlap.
"But what object could Chatham have for writing such a letter?"
"No," answered Sturgis, "I do not think that Chatham wrote this letter.
That is the curious part of it. I cannot believe that if Chatham had
been aware of the important nature of its contents, he could have been
willing to leave it for an instant within Arbogast's reach."
"But who, then, could have been its author, and why should he have
intrusted the letter to Chatham?"
"To your second question, my answer is, probably because he wanted it
mailed from the main Post Office at about the time that Arbogast would
leave the bank. To the first, I cannot yet give any positive answer,
although, as you will presently see, there are some clues pointing to
our unknown quantity 'X' as the author of this letter. But let us not
anticipate. Suppose we return to our drama. When Arbogast read this
letter, he evidently thought, as I do, that somebody was playing him
false; that he was to be gotten rid of in some safer way than exile;
in short that, as somebody said of one of the Turkish sultans, he was
to be 'suicided.' He must have had strong reasons to suspect Chatham
of treachery; for he at once impulsively jumped to the conclusion that
his only chance of safety lay in striking before he could be struck.
At any rate, while the accountant was busy at the telephone, Arbogast
stood near this desk, mechanically tearing to pieces this letter,
while he planned the accountant's death. He had taken with him your
revolver. As the thought of it flashed upon his mind, his resolution
was instantly taken. He stealthily crept to the paying teller's wicket.
Through it he could see the telephone closet, the door of which stood
open. Chatham was in direct range, as Arbogast raised the pistol, and,
without a word of warning, fired. The accountant held the receiver of
the telephone to his ear. This saved his life; for the bullet entered
his left hand and remained embedded in his flesh. I shall show you the
blood-stained receiver in proof of this assertion. When the bullet
struck him, Chatham fell forward, striking his head against a corner
of the telephone box, and inflicting a slight scalp wound. I found a
few hairs of an intensely red hue, which are evidently his. I also
found shreds of his clothing which caught on a projecting nail as he
fell; and I infer from these his taste for loud dress. He recovered
himself before Arbogast was ready to fire a second time and ran into
the clerks' room, probably hoping to make his way to the street through
the Exchange Place door. But at the same time, Arbogast rushed through
the reception room and this office, reaching the vestibule in time to
head off Chatham, who then turned back and ran through the secretary's
room, with Arbogast in pursuit. In the meantime, 'X,' to whom I have
already alluded, was waiting in Exchange Place, where Chatham had
a cab. Upon hearing the pistol shot, he went to the accountant's
assistance. He passed into this office, which he probably reached in
time to see Chatham rush in from the secretary's room, closely followed
by Arbogast. 'X' seized that chair over there in the corner and sprang
between the hunted man and his pursuer as the latter raised his arm to
fire. Our anonymous friend is probably a man of great strength; for
with one blow of the chair, he broke the bookkeeper's wrist. The hammer
fell; but the weapon was deflected, and the bullet, instead of reaching
its intended victim, passed through the upper lobe of Arbogast's left
lung, and out at the back at an angle of about sixty degrees. The
bookkeeper was standing not far from the mantel-piece yonder. Do you
see that broad black line on the hearth? That was made by the bullet.
Its direction and the angle enabled me at once to see that it must have
ricochetted into the fire-place; and there, sure enough, I found it in
the soot in the bend of the chimney. Here it is."
Dunlap had listened to this narrative with evident interest. But now,
recovering from the spell of Sturgis's persuasive conviction, his
skepticism regained the ascendancy for a moment.
"Mr. Sturgis, you have missed your vocation," he said, laughing good
naturedly; "you ought to have been a playwright. You have a most
convincing way of presenting both your facts and your theories. While
you are speaking, one is ready to admit the plausibility of every
statement you make. But now that you have finished, I have become
a hard-headed banker once more, and I beg to submit one or two
facts--since we are seeking facts--which it seems to me are enough to
demolish all your elaborate structure."
"Go on," said Sturgis; "it goes without saying that any theory is
worthless unless it takes into account and explains every existing
fact. If there are any in this case which have escaped me--a
contingency which is quite possible, for I have no pretension to
infallibility--I shall be glad to hear about them; and naturally, if
my conclusions do not tally with the facts, the conclusions must be
altered, since facts are absolute."
"Well then," said Dunlap, "assuming, for the sake of the argument, that
these various marks which you have called trails were made by the feet
of three different people; admitting even that one of these individuals
was Arbogast, who often stays here after banking hours, I do not see
that you have established by any satisfactory evidence your assumption
that the other so-called trails are those of Chatham and a stranger.
For aught I know to the contrary, they may have been made by some of
the bank employés in the discharge of their regular duties. Chatham's
coat may have caught on a nail in the telephone closet last week,
while he was here in his legitimate capacity of expert accountant. The
change of the combination of the safe may be the result of an error;
for we have no direct proof whatever that Arbogast is a defaulter. And
then, when it comes to your interesting description of the alleged
shooting of Arbogast, it strikes me that you are entirely carried away
by your enthusiasm; for, in your minute description of the path of
the bullet, at a certain angle, of which you seem to know the measure
almost to the fraction of a second, you overlook several important
things. Two shots were fired yesterday in or near the Knickerbocker
bank. _In_, say you, because here is a revolver with two empty
cartridge shells; here is a black mark, which may have been produced
by the ricochet of a bullet, and here is a shapeless piece of lead,
which may be that bullet. As, however, one bullet cannot account for
two shots, you are forced at once to assume that Chatham has carried
away the second one in the palm of his hand. This is ingenious, very
ingenious, but----"
"His blood is on the telephone receiver," observed Sturgis quietly.
"Blood!" exclaimed Dunlap; "why, with the carnage that you have
imagined here, there should be oceans of blood. Here is a man, running
around with a wounded hand, who leaves a few drops of blood on the
telephone receiver, and nowhere else. And here is another man, shot
through the lungs,--excuse me, through the upper lobe of the left
lung,--who does not bleed at all. And where is he now? Such a wound as
you have given him must, I take it, be fatal, or, at any rate, serious.
Yet here is a dead or, at least, a dying man, calmly walking off as
if--as if the curtain had fallen at the end of your drama, and the
corpse had hurried off to his dressing-room."
"You have forgotten something else," suggested the reporter smiling.
Dunlap looked at him questioningly.
"Yes; you have forgotten the pistol replaced in the drawer after
Arbogast was shot, and the doors of the bank carefully locked."
"True. No, my dear sir; your elaborate theory will not bear an
instant's calm examination."
"And yet," rejoined Sturgis, "my conclusions, as far as they go, are
absolutely correct. Every objection which you raise is plausible
enough when considered by itself; but we have not to deal with a lot
of isolated facts, but with a series of connected events, each of which
depends upon and supports all the others. Let me finish my story, and I
think you will then be prepared to admit that what seems to you now a
flight of fancy on my part, is nothing but a sober exposition of plain
unvarnished facts."
Dunlap, with a deprecating gesture, settled back into his chair once
more.
"We left Arbogast shot through the left lung,--fatally wounded, as
you have just remarked. He probably fell like a log; while Chatham,
weak from shock, leaned against the door jamb yonder. He had probably
stanched his wound with his free hand as he ran; I have been unable
to find any trace of blood between the telephone and this spot. On
the door jamb, however, the blood left a stain which has not been
completely wiped out and which enabled me to judge of Chatham's
height. 'X' was the only one of the trio who knew what he was about
at this time. I have a genuine admiration for 'X'; he must be a man
of marvelous nerve. Instead of flying panic-stricken from the scene,
as any ordinary criminal would have done, he calmly proceeded to
protect his retreat and to systematically cover his trail. His first
step was to lock the Wall Street gate and the inside door. Quinlan
had doubtless pulled the outer door to as he ran away, so that 'X'
probably thought this also locked. He then, with Chatham's assistance,
helped Arbogast, who was not yet dead, and who perhaps by this time
had regained consciousness, into the cab which was waiting near by in
Exchange Place, where I found the blood-stains on the curb, as you
will remember. After starting off his two accomplices in the cab, he
returned to the bank, put away the pistol in its proper place, which,
by the way, he seems to have known, and washed up all or nearly all
the blood-stains. There is a sponge and bucket under the sink in the
clerks' room, which were used in this operation. After, as he thought,
completely obliterating all traces of the tragedy, he quietly walked
off by the Exchange Place entrance, locked the door and threw away the
key. All this, while policeman Flynn was chasing Quinlan. You will note
that 'X,' knowing nothing of the Quinlan episode, was quite justified
in believing that the shots had failed to attract any attention outside
of the bank. Very likely he was disturbed by the return of the
policeman and Quinlan; I cannot otherwise account for his having left
the gas burning. Had he had the time, I feel confident that, with his
customary thoroughness, he would have turned it out. As to my minute
description of Arbogast's wounds, there is nothing remarkable in that.
I know that the weapon used by 'X' was yonder chair, because I found
particles of the bookkeeper's epidermis upon one of the legs, which was
considerably loosened by the blow. But I know exactly what the wounds
were, because I have examined them. I told you that I had seen Arbogast
yesterday."
"What!" exclaimed Dunlap, "you mean after he was wounded?"
"Yes," replied Sturgis; "his body is at the morgue now. You might call
there this afternoon to identify it, if you choose; but, everything
considered, it might be as well not to make the identification public
until we are well on the track of Chatham and our friend 'X.'"