A FRESH ENIGMA
Godfrey met my eyes with a little deprecating smile, put his torch in
one pocket, took a handkerchief from another, and mopped his forehead.
"Rather nerve-racking, wasn't it, Lester?" he remarked, and then his
gaze wandered to the couch, and he stepped toward it quickly.
I saw that a change had come in Miss Vaughan's condition. Her eyes
were still closed, but her body no longer lay inert and lifeless, for
from moment to moment it was shaken by a severe nervous tremor.
Godfrey's face was very grave as he looked at her.
"Stop stroking her wrists, Swain," he said; "that does no good," and
when Swain, without answering or seeming to hear, kept on stroking
them, Godfrey drew the hands away, took Swain by the arm, and
half-lifted him to his feet. "Listen to me," he said, more sternly,
and shook him a little, for Swain's eyes were dull and vacant. "I want
you to sit quietly in a chair for a while, till you get your senses
back. Miss Vaughan is seriously ill and must not be disturbed in any
way. I'm going to get a doctor and a nurse at once; they'll do what
needs to be done. Until then, she must be left alone. Understand?"
Swain nodded vaguely, and permitted Godfrey to lead him to a chair
near the outer door, where he sat down. As his hand fell across the
arm of the chair, I could see that a little blood was still oozing
from the wound on the wrist. Godfrey saw it, too, and picked up the
hand and looked at it. Then he laid it gently down again and glanced
at his watch. I followed his example, and saw that it was half-past
one.
"Have you nerve enough to stay here half an hour by yourself, Lester?"
he asked.
"By myself?" I echoed, and glanced at the dead man and at the
quivering girl.
"I've got to run over to my place to get a few things and do some
telephoning," he explained. "We must get a doctor up here at once; and
then there's the police--I'll try to get Simmonds. Will you stay?"
"Yes," I said, "of course. But please get back as soon as you can."
"I will," he promised, and, after a last look around the room, stepped
out upon the walk.
I went to the door and looked after him until the sound of his
footsteps died away. Then, feeling very lonely, I turned back into the
room. Those regular tremors were still shaking the girl's body in a
way that seemed to me most alarming, but there was nothing I could do
for her, and I finally pulled a chair to Swain's side. He, at least,
offered a sort of companionship. He was sitting with his head hanging
forward in a way that reminded me most unpleasantly of the huddled
figure by the table, and did not seem to be aware of my presence. I
tried to draw him into talk, but a slight nod from time to time was
all I could get from him, and I finally gave it up. Mechanically, my
hand sought my coat pocket and got out my pipe--yes, that was what I
needed; and, sitting down in the open doorway, I filled it and lighted up.
My nerves grew calmer, presently, and I was able to think connectedly
of the events of the night, but there were two things which, looked at
from any angle, I could not understand. One was Swain's dazed and
incoherent manner; the other was the absence of servants.
As to Swain, I believed him to be a well-poised fellow, not easily
upset, and certainly not subject to attacks of nerves. What had
happened to him, then, to reduce him to the pitiable condition in
which he had come back to us over the wall, and in which he was still
plunged? The discovery of the murder and of Miss Vaughan's senseless
body might have accounted for it, but his incoherence had antedated
that--unless, indeed, he knew of the murder before he left the
grounds. That thought gave me a sudden shock, and I put it away from
me, not daring to pursue it farther.
As to the house, its deserted condition seemed sinister and
threatening. It was absurd to suppose that an establishment such as
this could be carried on without servants, or with less than three or
four. But where were they? And then I remembered that Godfrey and I
had not completed our exploration of the house. We had stopped at the
gruesome room where the adept and his serpent gazed unwinking into the
crystal sphere. There was at least one suite on the same floor we had
not looked into, and no doubt there were other rooms on the attic
floor above. But that any one could have slept on undisturbed by those
piercing screams and by our own comings and goings seemed
unbelievable. Perhaps there were separate quarters in the grounds
somewhere--
And then, without conscious will of my own, I felt my body stiffen and
my fingers grip my pipe convulsively. A slow tremor seemed to start
from the end of my spine, travel up it, and pass off across my scalp.
There was someone in the room behind me; someone with gleaming eyes
fixed upon me; and I sat there rigidly, straining my ears, expecting
I knew not what--a blow upon the head, a cord about the neck.
A rapid step came up the walk and Godfrey appeared suddenly out of the
darkness.
"Well, Lester," he began; but I sprang to my feet and faced the room,
for I could have sworn that I had heard behind me the rustle of a
silken dress. But there was no one there except Swain and Miss Vaughan
and the dead man--and none of them had moved.
"What is it?" Godfrey asked, stepping past me into the room.
"There was someone there, Godfrey," I said. "I'm sure of it--I felt
someone--I felt his eyes on me--and then, as you spoke, I heard the
rustle of a dress."
"Of a dress?"
"Or of a robe," and my thoughts were on the bearded man upstairs.
Godfrey glanced at me, crossed the room, and looked out into the hall.
Then he turned back to me.
"Well, whoever it was," he said, and I could see that he thought my
ears had deceived me, "he has made good his escape. There'll be a
doctor and a nurse here in a few minutes, and I got Simmonds and told
him to bring Goldberger along. He can't get here for an hour anyway.
And I've got a change here for Swain," he added, with a gesture
toward some garments he carried over one arm; "also a bracer to be
administered to him," and he drew a flask from his pocket and handed
it to me. "Maybe you need one, yourself," he added, smiling drily,
"since you've taken to hearing rustling robes."
"I do," I said, "though not on that account," and I raised the flask
to my lips and took a long swallow.
"Suppose you take Swain up to the bath-room," Godfrey suggested, "and
help him to get cleaned up. I'll go down to the gate and wait for the
doctor."
"The gate's probably locked."
"I thought of that," and he drew a small but heavy hammer from his
pocket. "I'll smash the lock, if there's no other way. I'd like you to
get Swain into shape before anyone arrives," he added. "He's not a
prepossessing object as he is."
"No, he isn't," I agreed, looking at him, and I took the garments
which Godfrey held out to me. Then I went over to Swain and put the
flask into his uninjured hand. "Take a drink of that," I said.
He did not understand at first; then he put the flask to his lips and
drank eagerly--so eagerly that I had to draw it away. He watched me
longingly as I screwed on the cap and slipped it into my pocket; and
there was more colour in his face and a brighter light in his eyes.
"Now, come along," I said, "and get that cut fixed up."
He rose obediently and followed me out into the hall. Godfrey had
preceded us, found the light-switch after a brief search, and turned
it on.
"There's a switch in the bath-room, too, no doubt," he said. "Bring
him down again, as soon as you get him fixed up. You'll find some
cotton and gauze in one of the pockets of the coat."
Swain followed me up the stair and into the bath-room. He seemed to
understand what I intended doing, for he divested himself of coat and
shirt and was soon washing arms and face vigorously. Then he dried
himself, and stood patiently while I washed and bandaged the cut on
the wrist. It was not a deep one, and had about stopped bleeding.
"Feel better?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, and without waiting for me to tell him, slipped into
the clean shirt which Godfrey had brought, attached the collar and
tied the tie, all this quite composedly and without hesitation or
clumsiness. Yet I felt, in some indefinable way, that something was
seriously wrong with him. His eyes were vacant and his face flabby, as
though the muscles were relaxed. It gave me the feeling that his
intelligence was relaxed, too!
He picked up his own coat, but I stopped him.
"Don't put that on," I said, speaking to him as I would have spoken to
a child. "The sleeve is blood-stained and there's a long tear down the
side. Take this one," and I held out the light lounging-coat Godfrey
had brought with him.
Swain laid down his own garment without a word and put on the other
one. I rolled the soiled garments into a bundle, took them under my
arm, turned out the lights, and led the way downstairs.
A murmur of voices from the library told me that someone had arrived,
and when I reached the door, I saw that it was the doctor and the
nurse. The former was just rising from a rapid examination of the
quivering figure on the couch.
"We must get her to bed at once," he said, turning to Godfrey. "Her
bedroom's upstairs, I suppose?"
"Yes," said Godfrey; "shall I show you the way?"
The doctor nodded and, lifting the girl carefully in his arms,
followed Godfrey out into the hall. The nurse picked up a
medicine-case from the floor and followed after.
I had expected Swain to rush forward to the couch, to make a scene,
perhaps, and had kept my hand upon his arm; but to my astonishment he
did not so much as glance in that direction. He stood patiently beside
me, with his eyes on the floor, and when my restraining hand fell
away, he walked slowly to the chair in which he had been sitting, and
dropped into it, relaxing limply as with fatigue.
Godfrey was back in a moment.
"That doctor was the nearest one I could find," he said. "He seems to
be all right. But if Miss Vaughan isn't better in the morning, I'll
get a specialist out."
"Godfrey," I said, in a low tone, "there's something the matter with
Swain," and I motioned to where he sat, flaccid and limp, apparently
half-asleep. "He is suffering from shock, or something of that sort.
It's something more, anyway, than over-wrought nerves. He seems to be
only half-conscious."
"I noticed it," said Godfrey, with a little nod. "We'll have the
doctor look at him when he comes down," and he sank wearily into a
chair. "This has been a pretty strenuous night, Lester."
"Yes; and it isn't over yet. I wonder what the man with the snake is
doing?"
"Still staring into the crystal, no doubt. Do you want to go and see?"
"No," I said decidedly, "I don't. Godfrey," I added, "doesn't the
absence of servants seem strange to you?"
"Very strange. But, I dare say, we'll find them around
somewhere--though they seem to be sound sleepers! We didn't look
through the whole house, you know. I'm not going to, either; I'm going
to let the police do that. They ought to be here pretty soon. I told
Simmonds to bring two or three men with him."
I glanced at the huddled body of the murdered man. With all the
night's excitements and surprises, we had not even touched upon that
mystery. Not a single gleam of light had been shed upon it, and yet it
was the centre about which all these other strange occurrences
revolved. Whose hand was it had thrown that cord about the throat and
drawn it tight? What motive lay behind? Fearsome and compelling must
the motive be to drive a man to such a crime! Would Simmonds be able
to divine that motive, to build the case up bit by bit until the
murderer was found? Would Godfrey?
I turned my head to look at him. He was lying back in his chair, his
eyes closed, apparently lost in thought, and for long minutes there
was no movement in the room.
At last the doctor returned, looking more cheerful than when he had
left the room. He had given Miss Vaughan an opiate and she was
sleeping calmly; the nervous trembling had subsided and he hoped that
when she waked she would be much better. The danger was that brain
fever might develop; she had evidently suffered a very severe shock.
"Yes," said Godfrey, "she discovered her father strangled in the chair
yonder."
"I saw the body when I came in," the doctor remarked, imperturbably.
"So it's her father, is it?"
"Yes."
"And strangled, you say?"
Godfrey answered with a gesture, and the doctor walked over to the
body, glanced at the neck, then disengaged one of the tightly clenched
hands from the chair-arm, raised it and let it fall. I could not but
envy his admirable self-control.
"How long has he been dead?" Godfrey asked.
"Not more than two or three hours," the doctor answered. "The muscles
are just beginning to stiffen. It looks like murder," he added, and
touched the cord about the neck.
"It _is_ murder."
"You've notified the police?"
"They will be here soon."
I saw the doctor glance at Godfrey and then at me, plainly puzzled as
to our footing in the house; but if there was a question in his mind,
he kept it from his lips and turned back again to the huddled body.
"Any clue to the murderer?" he asked, at last.
"We have found none."
And then the doctor stooped suddenly and picked up something from the
floor beside the chair.
"Perhaps this is a clue," he said, quietly, and held to the light an
object which, as I sprang to my feet, I saw to be a blood-stained
handkerchief.
He spread it out under our eyes, handling it gingerly, for it was
still damp, and we saw it was a small handkerchief--a woman's
handkerchief--of delicate texture. It was fairly soaked with blood,
and yet in a peculiar manner, for two of the corners were much
crumpled but quite unstained.
The doctor raised his eyes to Godfrey's.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
"A clue, certainly," said Godfrey; "but scarcely to the murderer."
The doctor looked at it again for a moment, and then nodded. "I'd
better put it back where I found it, I guess," he said, and dropped it
beside the chair.
And then, suddenly, I remembered Swain. I turned to find him still
drooping forward in his chair, apparently half-asleep.
"Doctor," I said, "there is someone else here who is suffering from
shock," and I motioned toward the limp figure. "Or perhaps it's
something worse than that."
The doctor stepped quickly to the chair and looked down at its
occupant. Then he put his hand under Swain's chin, raised his head and
gazed intently into his eyes. Swain returned the gaze, but plainly in
only a half-conscious way.
"It looks like a case of concussion," said the doctor, after a moment.
"The left pupil is enlarged," and he ran his hand rapidly over the
right side of Swain's head. "I thought so," he added. "There's a
considerable swelling. We must get him to bed." Then he noticed the
bandaged wrist. "What's the matter here?" he asked, touching it with
his finger.
"He cut himself on a piece of glass," Godfrey explained. "You'd better
take him over to my place, where he can be quiet."
"I've got my car outside," said the doctor, and together he and I
raised Swain from the chair and led him to it.
He went docilely and without objection, and ten minutes later, was
safely in bed, already dozing off under the influence of the opiate
the doctor had given him. "He'll be all right in the morning," the
latter assured me. "But he must have got quite a blow over the head."
"I don't know what happened to him," I answered. "You'll come back
with me, won't you?"
"Yes; I may be useful," and he turned the car back the way we had
come. "Besides," he added, frankly, "I'm curious to learn what
happened in that house to-night."
He had certainly shown himself equal to emergencies, I reflected; and
I liked his voice and his manner, which was cool and capable.
"My name is Lester," I said. "I'm a lawyer staying with Mr. Godfrey.
We heard Miss Vaughan scream and ran over to the house, but we don't
know any more than you do."
"My name is Hinman, and I'm just a country doctor," said my companion;
"but if I can be of any help, I hope you'll call upon me. Hello!" he
added, as we turned through the gate into the grounds of Elmhurst, and
he threw on the brake sharply, for a uniformed figure had stepped out
into the glare of our lamps and held up his hand.
The police had arrived.