BUILDING A THEORY
I was surprised, when I came down for dinner an hour later, to find
Godfrey awaiting me.
"I always try to make it, Saturday night," he explained. "The chief
throws the work on the other fellows, if he can. That's the reason I
hustled away after the inquest. The story's all in, and now we'll have
a good dinner--if I do say it myself--and then a good talk. I feel the
need of a talk, Lester."
"So do I," I said; "though I'm afraid talking won't help us much."
"The funny thing about this case is," mused Godfrey, "that the farther
we get into it the thicker it grows."
"Yes," I agreed, "and the more one thinks about it, the less one
understands."
"Well, suppose we get away from it for a while," said Godfrey, and
turned the talk to other things. No man could talk more delightfully
of music, of art, of letters. How he managed it I could never guess,
but he seemed to have read everything, to have seen everything, to
have heard everything. Marryat, for instance; who reads Marryat
nowadays? And yet he had read the "Phantom Ship," and so knew
something of Goa. An hour passed very quickly, but at last he rose and
led the way into his study.
"A friend of mine dropped in to see me to-day at the office," he
remarked, "a Cuban planter who comes up to New York occasionally, and
whom I happened to help out of a rather serious difficulty a few years
ago. Perhaps some day I'll tell you about it. He always brings me a
bundle of his own special cigars. I didn't see him to-day, but he left
the cigars, and I want you to try one. Perhaps it will give you an
inspiration."
He went to his desk, opened a tin-foiled package that lay there, and
carefully extracted two long cigars of a rich and glowing brown.
"Perhaps you've heard of the special cigars that are made for Pierpont
Morgan," he went on, as he handed one to me, after carefully replacing
the wrappings of the bundle. "Well, I smoked one of Morgan's cigars
once--it was good, mighty good; but it wasn't in the same class with
these. Light up."
I did. Never before had I drawn between my lips a breath so
satisfying--so rich, so smooth, so full of flavour. I exhaled the
fragrant smoke slowly.
"Godfrey," I said, "I never knew what tobacco was before. Are these
cigars purchasable? I'm only a poor lawyer, but even one a month would
be a thing to look forward to and dream about."
But Godfrey shook his head.
"I've felt like that," he said; "but they're not to be had for money.
And now about Swain."
"Let's postpone it a little longer," I begged. "I don't want my mind
distracted."
Godfrey laughed, but fell silent; and for the next half hour, no sound
was heard.
"Now," I said, at last, "I'm ready to listen, so fire ahead whenever
you want to."
"I haven't much to tell," he began; "nothing new about the case. But I
stopped at the Tombs, before I started back, to make sure that Swain
had everything he wanted. They'd given him an upper cell, and sent
over to the Marathon and got him his things, and I arranged to have
his meals sent in to him from Moquin's."
"I ought to have thought of that," I said, contritely. "I'm much
obliged to you, Godfrey. Did you see him?"
"Only for a minute. He seemed fairly cheerful. He'd had them bring
some of his law books to him, and remarked that he'd have plenty of
time to study. I like the way he's taking it. He gave me a message for
you."
"What was it?"
"That you are not to forget your promise."
I smoked on for a few moments in silence.
"I promised him I'd get Miss Vaughan away from that house," I said at
last. "I had Mrs. Royce write her a note, inviting her to stay with
her. I gave it to her this afternoon."
"What did she say?"
"She didn't say anything, but I could see the idea didn't impress her.
And I had thought all along that she would jump at it."
Godfrey gave a little grunt, whether of surprise or satisfaction I
could not tell.
"Why didn't you put her on the stand to-day, Lester?" he asked.
"Afraid of upsetting her?"
"I wouldn't have stopped for that, if her evidence would have helped
Swain. But it would only have put him deeper in the hole."
"In what way?"
"Well, in the first place, she says that as she and her father
returned to the house, she heard footsteps behind them and thought it
was Swain following them, because that would be a natural thing for
him to do; and, in the second place, she saw that blood-stained
handkerchief on the floor beside her father's chair when she came into
the room and found him dead."
"So," said Godfrey slowly, "it couldn't have been dropped there by
Swain when he stooped to pick her up."
"No; besides, we know perfectly well that it wasn't about his wrist
when he came back over the wall. Goldberger knows it, too, and we'll
be asked about it, next time."
"It might have been pushed up his sleeve--we weren't absolutely
certain. But this new evidence settles it."
I assented miserably and Godfrey smoked on thoughtfully. But my cigar
had lost some of its flavour.
"How did Miss Vaughan come to find the body?" he asked at last, and I
told him the story as she had told it to me. He thought it over for
some moments; then he leaned forward and laid his hand on my knee.
"Now, Lester," he said, "let's review this thing. It can't be as dark
as it seems--there's light somewhere. Here is the case, bared of all
inessentials: Swain crosses the wall about eleven o'clock, cutting his
wrist as he does so; Miss Vaughan meets him about eleven-thirty, and
after a time, finds that his wrist is bleeding and ties her
handkerchief about it; they agree to have her father examined for
lunacy, arrange a meeting for the next night, and are about to
separate, when her father rushes in upon them, savagely berates Swain
and takes his daughter away. That must have been about twelve o'clock.
"Swain, according to his story, sits there for ten or fifteen minutes,
finally sees the cobra, or thinks he does, and makes a dash for
safety, striking his head sharply against a tree. He tumbles over the
wall in a half-dazed condition. The handkerchief is no longer about
his wrist. That, you will remember, was about twelve-twenty.
"Almost at once we heard Miss Vaughan's screams. After that, Swain
isn't out of our sight for more than a minute--too short a time,
anyway, for anything to have happened we don't know about.
"Meanwhile, Miss Vaughan has returned with her father to the house,
hearing steps behind her and taking it for granted that it is Swain
following at a distance. She goes to her room, stays there fifteen
minutes or so, and comes downstairs again to find her father dead.
"Now let us see what had happened. You were right in saying that her
father must have been strangled immediately after she left him.
Otherwise he would still have been twitching in such a way that she
must have noticed it. No doubt he dropped into the chair exhausted by
his fit of rage; the murderer entered through the garden door,
stopped to cut off the end of the curtain-cord and make a noose of
it--that would have taken at least a minute--and then strangled his
victim. Then he heard her coming down the stairs, and escaped through
the garden-door again just as she entered at the other. She saw the
curtain still shaking. Then she fainted.
"Now, what are the clues to the murderer? A string tied with a
peculiar knot, the blood-stained handkerchief, and the finger-prints
on the dead man's robe."
Godfrey paused for a moment. Freed of its inessentials, in this way,
the case was beautifully clear--and beautifully baffling. It was a
paved way, smooth and wide and without obstruction of any kind; but it
ended in a cul-de-sac!
"One thing is certain," Godfrey went on, at last; "the murder was
committed by somebody--either by Swain, or by one of the Hindus, or by
some unknown. Let us weigh the evidence for and against each of them.
"Against Swain it may be urged that he was on the ground, that he had
time to do it, and some provocation, though the provocation, as we
know it, seems to be inadequate, provided Swain was in his right mind;
a handkerchief which was tied about his wrist is found beside the
body, and his finger-prints are found upon it. Miss Vaughan believed
he was following them; he admits that he thought of doing so.
"In his favour, it may be urged that a man like Swain doesn't commit
murder--though, as a matter of fact, this is a dangerous
generalisation, for all sorts of men commit murder; but if he should
do so, it would be only under great provocation and in the heat of
anger, certainly not in cold blood with a noose; and, finally, if the
motion of the curtain Miss Vaughan noticed was made by the murderer,
it couldn't possibly have been Swain, because he was with us at that
moment. You will see that there is a mass of evidence against him, and
practically the whole defence is that such a crime would be impossible
to one of his temperament. You know yourself how flimsy such a defence
is.
"Against the Hindus, on the other hand, practically the only basis for
suspicion is that such a crime might be temperamentally possible to
them. They may have been on the ground, and the method of the murder
savours strongly of Thuggee--though don't forget that Swain admitted
he could have tied that knot. Besides, if it was the Thug who followed
them, he wouldn't have made any noise, and most certainly he couldn't
have left the prints of Swain's fingers on the body. But if Swain is
right in his assertion that he saw the snake in the arbour, it is
probable that the Thug wasn't far away.
"Against an unknown it may be urged that neither Swain nor the Hindus
could have committed the crime; but I don't see how an unknown could
either, unless he happened to be one of the three or four people in
the world with finger-tips like Swain's. And that is too far-fetched
to be believable.
"But this I am sure of, Lester," and Godfrey leaned forward again:
"the murder was committed either by Swain or by someone anxious to
implicate Swain. We agree that it wasn't Swain. Very well, then: the
person who committed the murder made a noise in following Miss Vaughan
and her father so that she should think it was Swain who was following
them; he picked up the blood-stained handkerchief, which Swain had
dropped perhaps when he fled from the arbour, and placed it beside the
body; and in some way inconceivable to me he pressed the prints of
Swain's fingers on the dead man's robe. Now, to do that, he must have
known that Swain was injured--the blood-stained handkerchief would
tell him that; but he must also have known that it was his right hand
that was injured. There was no blood on Swain's left hand."
Again Godfrey paused. I was following his reasoning with such
absorbed attention that I could feel my brain crinkle with the effort.
"Now, listen," said Godfrey, and I could have smiled at the
uselessness of the admonition--as if I were not already listening with
all my faculties! "There is only one way in which the murderer could
have known that it was Swain's right hand, and that was by overhearing
the conversation in the arbour. But if he overheard that much, he
overheard it all, and he knew therefore what it was Swain proposed to
do. He knew that Vaughan's sanity was to be questioned; he knew that
he would probably be placed in a sanitarium; he knew that Miss Vaughan
would probably marry Swain. Presuming that it was Silva, he knew that,
unless something was done to stop it, a very few days would place both
Vaughan and his daughter beyond his reach."
"That is true," I admitted; "but Vaughan was beyond his reach a good
deal more certainly dead than he would have been in a sanitarium.
Besides, it isn't at all certain that he would have been sent to a
sanitarium."
"That's an objection, surely," Godfrey agreed; "but I must find out if
Vaughan is really beyond his reach dead."
I stared at him.
"You don't mean...."
"I don't know what I mean, Lester. I can feel a sort of dim meaning
at the back of my mind, but I can't get it out into the light."
"Besides," I went on, "if the yogi did it, how did he get back into
the house before we got there?"
"He peeped in at the door, saw the coast was clear, and went back
through the library. Remember, Miss Vaughan was unconscious. That
doesn't bother me. And another thing, Lester. How did Miss Vaughan's
father come to burst in on her and Swain like that? How did he know
they were in the arbour? It was dark and he couldn't have seen either
of them."
"He might have been walking about the grounds and overheard them."
"I don't believe it. I believe somebody told him they were there. And
only one person could have told him--that is Silva. No--there's only
one point I can't get past--that's the finger-prints."
And then I remembered.
"Godfrey," I cried, "there's one thing--I forgot to tell you. You
heard Swain remark that Vaughan was a collector of finger-prints?"
"Yes."
"And that he had a set of Swain's?"
"Yes."
"Well, when I told Miss Vaughan about the prints on her father's
robe, she ran to a book-case and got out a book. It had Vaughan's
collection in it, all bound together. But the page on which Swain's
were had been torn out."
Godfrey sat for a moment, staring at me spell-bound. Then he began
pacing up and down the study, like a tiger in its cage; up and down,
up and down.
"I'm bound to add," I went on finally, "that Hinman suggested a very
plausible reason for their disappearance."
"What was it?"
"He said they were probably destroyed by Vaughan himself, because of
his dislike of Swain. He said that would be characteristic of
Vaughan's form of insanity."
Godfrey took another turn up and down, then he stopped in front of my
chair.
"What did Miss Vaughan think of that explanation?" he asked.
"It didn't seem to impress her, but I don't remember that she made any
comment."
He stood a moment longer staring down at me, and I could feel the
intense concentration of his mind; then he ran his fingers impatiently
through his hair.
"I can't get it, Lester!" he said. "I can't get it. But I _will_ get
it! It's there! It's there, just out of reach." He shrugged his
shoulders and glanced at his watch. "I'm getting dippy," he added, in
another tone. "Let's go out and get a breath of air."
I followed him out into the yard--I knew where he was going--among the
trees and up the ladder. Silently we took our places on the limb;
silently we stared out into the darkness.
And there, presently, the strange star glowed and burned steel-blue,
and floated slowly down, and burst above a white-robed figure,
standing as though carved in marble, its arms extended, its head
thrown back.
"That fellow is certainly an artist," Godfrey muttered, as he led the
way back to the house.