"I suppose there is some painless way of putting him to death?"
The voice was Wilkinson's. He was seated on the veranda at Cobblestone,
his Morris County place, and opposite to him sat a complacent,
side-whiskered M. D. from Morristown. The complacence of the M. D.
was due in great measure to the fact that a check reposed in his
waistcoat-pocket. It was a goodly check, too; Wilkinson had been
ailing, and the bill was heavy.
"I don't want him to suffer at all," went on Wilkinson. "I merely want
him to pass away and not feel it."
"Humph! He's of no further use?" returned Dr. Parker Wetherell.
"Tigerskin is twenty years old, nearly blind, and can hardly hobble a
step. My dear Wetherell, that horse has won me no end of money on the
track! He's been worth his weight in gold! I hate to think of him as
dead." He laid a cold hand upon the doctor's. "How about chloroform?
It's safe, painless----"
"It's painless enough," interrupted the physician, "but it's not always
sure."
Wilkinson's hand trembled.
"It kills men sure enough, doesn't it?"
Wetherell shook his head.
"Not sure enough," he answered. "They come out of it when one least
expects it."
"Strychnine, then, or prussic acid?" suggested Wilkinson.
Again Wetherell shook his head.
"I wouldn't give either of them to my dearest enemy," he opined. "My
advice is, not...." He drew forth a tiny cigarette and lighted it.
"My suggestion, Mr. Wilkinson--of course I'm not a horse doctor, and
there's no charge for this--my method, rather, would be powder and
shot--the old-fashioned way...."
"Pistol?"
"Yes."
"A pistol bullet through the heart?" went on Wilkinson, his hand still
resting lightly on the doctor's and his voice trembling. "Let's see,
you know I'm going to do this thing myself,--a horse's heart is in the
same place as a man's, isn't it?" He placed his hand on the right side
of his chest about even with his shoulder.
"Good gracious, man!" piped up the doctor, growing red in the face with
laughter. "Don't you know where your heart is? Didn't you ever go to
school?"
Wilkinson flushed.
"Don't tread on facts, Doc," he protested.
"Your heart is right there," explained the physician, placing the
millionaire's big paw-like hand over the right spot, and waiting until
Wilkinson could feel it throb. "You hear it beat?" he asked. "That's
where your heart is; but don't ever shoot a horse, or a man, either,
through the heart unless you want him to suffer the tortures of the
damned. He might linger hours in terrific pain. No, no, the head's the
place...."
Wilkinson shifted his hand from his heart to his head.
"Quickly, eh?" he continued eagerly, "and painless, too."
The specialist replied in the affirmative.
"Suppose, now," continued Peter V., "that we had old Tigerskin here.
Just what part of the head would I aim at? Back here?"
"The temple," said the doctor.
"That's back here, isn't it?" persisted his patient, forcing a laugh at
his own ignorance. "Where is it on a horse, anyhow?"
Parker Wetherell touched his own forehead, and said:
"Just about where it is on a man. Right here at the side of the head in
front of the ear."
Wilkinson had withdrawn his hand and was tapping the table in front of
him nervously.
"Doc," he insisted, "just put my finger on the spot--here on my
head--and when I get Tigerskin, why then I'll know...."
The physician seized his patient's pudgy finger, held it for an instant
poised half an inch from the big man's head, and then jammed it into
the temple with precision.
"There," he exclaimed, "that's just the spot!"
"You don't say," returned Wilkinson. "I never would have thought
it--and a ball through there would do the trick?"
"Man or beast--he'd never know what struck him." And then as Wilkinson
removed his arm, the doctor sprang forward in alarm, and added: "Why,
look, here, Mr. Wilkinson, you've smeared a lot of ink up there!"
"Where?"
"On your temple. Your finger must have dipped into the inkwell...."
Wilkinson looked at his finger with a grimace, then he looked at the
surface of the table upon which was a round, wet splotch of ink. Upon
the end of his finger, which evidently had rested for an instant upon
the spot on the table, was a similar splotch; and when Wetherell had
jammed the finger into his temple, it being still moist with the dusky
fluid, it had left a small round spot on his forehead. With a hasty
movement Wilkinson drew forth his handkerchief and started it on the
way to his head.
"Hold on!" he suddenly exclaimed. "I'll get my kerchief stained, too.
I'll go to the bathroom and wash it off, if you'll excuse me."
Wilkinson rose, but some sudden tremour seemed to seize him.
"Nerves a bit shaky yet, Doc," he complained. And, turning, walked
through an open window. Behind the palms his daughter Leslie was
reading a book; she had heard scraps of the conversation without, and
glanced up at him questioningly. "Trying to find out just where to
shoot old Tigerskin," he stopped to explain, "and got myself all ink."
Leslie laughed, and he continued his way through the room and up one
flight of stairs to the bathroom.
"A bull's-eye--a perfect bull's-eye that," he whispered to himself,
looking in the glass. Then suddenly whipping out of his hip-pocket a
revolver, he aimed for the small, black spot upon his forehead.
Parker Wetherell, M. D., down on the veranda, having taken from his
waistcoat-pocket Leslie's check, was glancing on it with reverence; but
soon the reverie into which he had plunged was rudely interrupted: a
pistol shot rang out, followed almost instantly by a woman's scream.
Wetherell leaped to his feet.
"He tricked me," he whispered, turning pale, "the painless method was
for himself, not for Tigerskin."
With an answering shout he ran pell-mell up the stairs. In the bathroom
he found three people: Hawkins, Wilkinson's new valet, Leslie and
Wilkinson, the latter swaying to and fro in the grasp of the other two.
In his hand he held a smoking revolver; and as the doctor seized him,
he smiled a ghastly smile and exclaimed:
"I missed it, Doc! Missed!... My little painless program didn't pull
through!"
That night all Morris County, all New York, had the news, specials
having been gotten out by the various papers to that effect.
"It's up to you, Hawkins," said the District Attorney over the wire to
Wilkinson's new valet; "we've got to have this man alive, and not dead.
You've got to be Johnny-on-the-spot every minute of the time."
And that was precisely what was the trouble, so far as Wilkinson
was concerned. Hawkins was too much Johnny-on-the-spot to suit his
purposes. Down in his home on the Drive Jeffries had resigned from his
position, and the new man who took his place was one of Murgatroyd's
shrewdest men, which meant that Peter V. Wilkinson, under a ten-year
sentence, out on a million-dollar bail, was surrounded by a net-work
of Murgatroyd's making. Murgatroyd was seeing to it successfully that
Wilkinson couldn't run away. Wilkinson had said that one of three
things confronted him: prison, flight or suicide. The second seemed
to have been eliminated from the program of possibilities; the first
he had sworn never to endure; and as for suicide, Murgatroyd had
said it was up to Hawkins.... But there were other guards also who
interposed: Leslie watched her father as a mother watches an errant
child. Wetherell, too, sniffing more big checks, suggested other
safeguards, and called with undue regularity. Every servant in the
household and even the pudgy Mrs. Wilkinson herself--Flomerfelt had
warned her that his death now would upset all their plans--kept on the
look-out. Morristown druggists were warned to be sure to whom they sold
poisons. Express and mail packages were scrutinised with care. No end
of precaution was being exercised to thwart his plans.
"Seems to be an awful lot of fuss about it," remarked Mrs. Peter V., as
she scanned the daily press. "If I tried suicide, I wonder...."
"Probably not," grinned Wilkinson, feebly, "unless you succeeded in the
attempt."
Now Murgatroyd's men were handicapped in one respect: Murgatroyd
never trained detectives to be servants; he trained servants to be
detectives. Hawkins, the valet, and Watson, Jeffries' successor,
were born to yellow plush, and had acquired the detective polish
later. Their handicap was, that they must maintain their character
as servants. They must obey, must efface themselves, must serve ...
otherwise the game was spoiled. When Wilkinson roared a command which
sent them off for half an hour, they had to go. But the intervention of
the family now helped them out: it became an unwritten rule that Peter
V. must never be left alone, save in the night-time when he slept in
an apartment stripped of everything save a bed and chair. This last
arrangement he consented to only after Wetherell had threatened him
with sanatorium confinement.
It happened, therefore, that one day, Wilkinson, weary of this close
surveillance, remarked to Leslie:
"Let's go back to the Drive, child. I'm sick of the still nights up
here."
And indeed Leslie was not sorry of the opportunity to go. There was
one reason in particular for this: Cobblestone was but a quarter of a
mile away from the Ilingsworth place; and Ilingsworth's place, like
its former owner, had become a wreck. It was overgrown with weeds, was
falling gradually to pieces; upon it had been laid the heavy hand of
disuse and decay. The heavy mortgage on the place had been foreclosed;
the property laid vacant, idle; it had become an eye-sore to Leslie.
Besides, vague rumour had it that the place was haunted--lights,
even, having been seen in the rooms at night. It was none of these
things, however, that had disquieted Leslie, but the fact that one
night at dusk as she tripped along the road, a man had darted from the
road-side, and laying a detaining hand upon her arm, had said to her:
"I wish you could help me find my daughter. I've tried to beg, borrow,
steal even, to get enough to find her, but----" he had stopped to
search her face, "but you're a Wilkinson, I see; you wouldn't help;"
and letting her go, he suddenly disappeared in the shadows.
Naturally, the girl had been frightened. Afterwards, however, she
regretted that she had not tried to detain Ilingsworth, for he it was,
since there were mysteries about him which she could not understand.
If he had lost his daughter, why did he not use the money that he had
stowed away--the millions that her father had told her about,--and
why was the mortgage on his place foreclosed? The mortgage on her own
father's place had not been foreclosed, she was sure of that. And so
insistent became the pressure of these doubts that one night just
before they returned to town, she sent a servant over with a note to
Ilingsworth. Leslie knew him for a murderer, a forger, a perjurer, a
thief, and yet some instinct drove her to this act.
" ... Some time," she wrote, "when we are out of our own trouble,
if there is anything that I can do--for Elinor--believe me I shall
do it--the very best I can."
It now became known throughout the Wilkinson household
on-the-Drive--and, likewise, to the inner sanctum of District Attorney
Murgatroyd's office--that Peter V. Wilkinson contemplated a trip to
Maine. There was reason for it: the city sweltered in mid-August heat.
Peter V. had no house or shooting-box in Maine--his game being men, not
beasts,--and accordingly a suite of rooms at a hotel was engaged by
wire. Railroad tickets were purchased; trunks were packed; appointments
made with his nearest and dearest friends to meet him there for a
three-weeks' jaunt. Every essential detail was attended to; nothing was
overlooked. But there was one strange thing about it all: Leslie, who
usually accompanied him, was to be left behind; Wilkinson was going
alone with Hawkins. It was his frolic; he did not want to be hampered
by anyone. But Hawkins and the District Attorney knew that Wilkinson
would not be lonely: a chambermaid to have charge of his suite of rooms
at the hotel in Maine was despatched from the Borough of Manhattan;
two bell-boys were installed; from the instant that Wilkinson should
reach the East Side pier in New York he would be attended by a drove of
sleuths.
But did Wilkinson have any suspicion of all this? If he did, not by
word or look did he betray as much.
On the day of his departure, Peter V., with a matter-of-fact air,
handed to Hawkins a small, oblong, heavy, cold, metallic package,
saying:
"Hawkins, just stick that in my suit-case."
Alone, later, the valet opened and examined the package, and found, as
he suspected, that it contained another revolver, hammerless, sinister,
ominous.
"Suicide in Maine!" He emitted a whistle, and added: "Not if I know it,
Mr. Wilkinson."
He discussed at length with Murgatroyd the ease with which Wilkinson
might throw himself overboard, or might shoot or poison himself in his
stateroom. But "Hawkins, it's up to you to see that he doesn't ..." was
all the satisfaction that he received from the District Attorney.
Their preparations completed, Hawkins now stepped into the presence of
his master, and announced:
"Colonel Morehead, sir, to see you."
Wilkinson descended to his Den, entered and locked the door behind him.
After fifteen minutes of desultory conversation, he held out his hand,
and said, his voice trembling:
"Good-bye, old boy! We shall never meet in life again--good-bye!"
Colonel Morehead stared curiously at his client. He asked no questions,
but merely took Peter's hand within his own and pressed it hard.
"Good-bye, Peter," was all he said.
* * * * *
Wilkinson, watch in hand, stood at the open door.
"Look sharp, now, with those grips," he directed. And turning to
Watson, his new footman: "Watson, time is the essence of this thing. Go
up and help Hawkins, and be quick about it, please."
Out of the corner of his eye, Watson glanced at Wilkinson; that
gentleman was holding his gaze upon his watch. It all seemed safe....
So Watson obeyed, running swiftly down the broad hall and swiftly up
the stairs.
"Get a move on, Hawkins," he whispered; "he's down there all alone."
The multi-millionaire waited until Watson was well out of sight, then
going quietly to the open door he passed through, and walking rapidly
to the corner of the street, turned and disappeared--disappeared, and
that was all that could be said about it. No, there was this to be
said: His trunks went on to Maine, and when opened there later were
found to reek with poison--anæsthetics, chiefly, that stupefied and
killed; while tucked away in one corner was a gun. Wilkinson had been
cunning: he had done things under the nose of Hawkins that Hawkins had
not surmised, much less seen.
But Wilkinson had not quite disappeared after all! There were some
who saw him after his disappearance, though they were not members of
his household, nor were they officials in the employ of the county
or State: they were casual observers, mere pleasure-seekers down at
Brighton Beach. For later on that day a man with a bristling beard
stepped into Obermeyer's Bathing Pavilion at the Beach, stepped up to
the desk, as he had done several times before,--for Wilkinson loved
promiscuity--he was essentially of the people,--and nodding to the
clerk, passed out his wallet, his pin and other valuables, sealed them
in an envelope, writing his name quite plainly upon it, and handed it
to the man behind the desk. The recipient glanced at the name, glanced
at the man interestedly, then gave him a fifty-cent bathing-suit,
two checks on rubber strings and a key; and Wilkinson, taking these,
proceeded to his allotted booth.
"Can I check that, too?" the clerk called after him, referring to
a brown paper parcel which Wilkinson carried under his arm. But
Wilkinson shook his head, and the incident passed out of the clerk's
mind, for the next man was becoming angrily insistent.
Once inside his booth, Peter V. stripped to the skin and donned the
bathing-suit. So far he had followed the prescribed method of bathers
at Obermeyer's as well as every other pavilion in the universe. But
at this juncture he departed from custom: For having donned the
bathing-suit, he did not, as other men do, unlock the door and run
flat-footed to the beach; instead, he opened the brown paper bundle and
looked over its contents with considerable satisfaction. It contained a
complete suit of underwear, clothing, hat and shoes--all second-hand;
and over his Obermeyer bathing-suit he drew on these clothes, one by
one, jamming the soft, felt hat upon his head. Then folding up the
brown paper he tied it carefully with the string, and placed it in the
side-pocket of his coat, taking good care at the same time to remove
from the trousers pocket of the suit he had discarded a goodly roll of
bills.
Now fully dressed in his new garments--leaving his own clothes behind,
he left the room, and locked the door, forgetting neither his brass
checks, nor to place the bathhouse key on the ledge above the door.
"So far so good," he whispered to himself.
Curiously enough, however, he did not join the crowds upon the
beach, but sought another bathing pavilion a quarter of a mile
away--Helmstaedter's--where he was not known. There he repeated the
process: went to the desk; obtained a twenty-five cent bathing-suit,
but this time he deposited no valuables, having none that were visible.
Then with his second bathing-suit he stepped into one of Helmstaedter's
dressing-rooms, and again he undressed, stripping to the skin as
before, and donning now the Helmstaedter bathing-suit, he opened the
door, closed it behind him, and took his way to the beach.
And now, since Peter V. had gone to Brighton Beach for the ostensible
purpose of bathing, Peter V. bathed. But strangely enough, though
he had Helmstaedter's bathing-suit upon him, he did not bathe from
Helmstaedter's; on the contrary, he strode up the beach and bathed at
Obermeyer's. An expert swimmer, he was known to the life guard, who saw
him and warned him with:
"Better look out, Mr. Wilkinson, two big men had cramps out there
yesterday. I had the time of my life bringing them in."
"Never mind me," laughed Wilkinson, "there's no fear of my having
cramps to-day." And with that he plunged boldly into the surf. When
the life guard last saw him, Wilkinson was merely a speck far out upon
the surface of the sunlit sea.
* * * * *
That evening, while all New York was looking for him, while Hawkins
and Watson were being soundly rated by the District Attorney, while
Flomerfelt and Mrs. Peter V. were laying new plans, while Leslie wept
in the silence of her room, that evening one of the Obermeyer helpers
making his rounds, discovered the clothes of Peter V. Wilkinson, the
Trust Company man, in his booth. The clerk at the desk produced the
banker's wallet containing hundreds of dollars, his pin and other
valuables. But the bathing-suit, the brass checks, and Peter V.
Wilkinson were nowhere to be found.
"Suicide," at once said the press; family and friends said "drowning
accident," and the life guard backed them up. Furthermore,
Hawkins produced the pistol and poisons taken from the trunks in
Maine--evidences of suicidal intent. These strengthened and deepened
the theory of suicide. Even Murgatroyd, after thinking it over, was
satisfied that such was the case. As for Colonel Morehead, he would
sit for hours in his office, staring at the wall, never coming to
any conclusion. "Peter's certainly got me guessing," was the way he
acknowledged his inability to solve the problem. Nor did the ocean
ever give up Peter from its capacious depths.
Of all the men in New York County there was one, however, who had a
theory. This man was tall, slender, handsome, a man in authority. After
the county detectives had given up the search, and after the newspaper
reporters had faded from the scene, this man quietly went down to
Brighton Beach and interviewed the clerk.
"I wonder," he asked himself, as under his gruelling cross-examination
the clerk searched the remotest confines of his memory, "I wonder what
Wilkinson had in that brown paper bundle, and what became of it. Was it
drowned, too?"
But of all the people down at Brighton Beach, only one man _knew_
the movements of Peter V., and that was Peter V. himself. He had
had his swim; he had gone far out, ducked and swam under water
for a distance, and finally had gone ashore near Helmstaedter's
pavilion--Helmstaedter's pavilion, where he belonged and where he was
not known. Dripping, glowing from his bath, he had entered the pavilion
with hundreds of bathers and gone at once to his booth.
The rest was simple. Having dried himself, he once more donned the
dry, Obermeyer bathing-suit, drew on top of that his second-hand
suit of clothes, smashed his soft hat down on his head, and left
the pavilion by the street entrance. And pushing through the back
streets and alleyways which were crowded with the cheaper order of
pleasure-seekers, eating "hot-dogs," he darted into a barber-shop and
leaned back in the chair with a grunt of satisfaction.
"Too hot for spinach, Tony," he remarked in the genial vernacular of
the day, "so shave her off."
Tony did as he was bid; and when Wilkinson rose and glanced into Tony's
glass, he looked upon a countenance that he would never have recognised
for his own. In former days his cheeks were plump and muscular, his
chin bold, and his lips expressive. But for some years now a beard had
covered his face; his lips and chin and jowls had been unused. So that
not only was he not the Peter V. Wilkinson of the present day, but he
was not the Peter V. Wilkinson of any day: he was just a very average
man in a second-hand suit of clothes.
"So long, Tony!" he sang out, and soon he was lost in the crowd.