JACK TELLS THE STORY
When I came down she was waiting for me. With a finger against her lips
in a command for silence, she turned and went along the passage to the
door from which I had seen her enter. I followed her and catching up
with her as she placed her hand on the knob, burst out:
"What is it—what _does_ it mean? Where’s Barker? In the name of Heaven
tell me quickly what _has_ happened?"
"I’ll tell you in here," she said softly, and opening the door preceded
me into the room.
It was evidently the dining-room of the house, a round table standing in
the center, a sideboard with glass and china on it against the wall. A
coal fire burned in the grate, and the blinds were raised showing the
dazzling glitter of the snow outside. It was warm and bright, the one
place in that sinister house that seemed to have a human note about it.
She passed round the table to the fire and, standing there, made a
gesture that swept the walls and unveiled windows:
"Last night in this room I at last understood the tragedy in which we’ve
all been involved."
I stood like a post, still too bemused to have any questions ready.
There were too many to ask. It was like a skein so tangled there was no
loose thread to start with.
"Did you know Harland was here when you came?" was what I finally said.
She nodded:
"I suspected it on Sunday afternoon. I was certain of it on Sunday night
before I left New York." She dropped into a chair by the fire, and
pointed me to one near-by at the table. "Sit down and let me tell it to
you as it happened to me, my side of it. When you’ve heard that, you can
read the statement he gave, then you’ll see it all. Straight from its
beginning to its awful end here last night."
Before she began I told her of our interview with Mrs. Whitehall and
that we knew her true relationship to Barker.
She seemed relieved and asked if her mother had also told us of her
position with regard to Harland. When she saw how fully we’d been
informed she gave a deep sigh and said:
"Now you can understand why I prevaricated that day in Mr. Whitney’s
office. I was trying to shield my father, to help him any way I could.
Oh, if I’d known the truth then or you had—the truth you don’t know even
yet! It was Johnston Barker that was murdered and Hollings Harland who
murdered him!"
I started forward, but she raised a silencing hand, her voice shaken and
pleading:
"Don’t, please, say anything. Let me go on in my own way. It’s so hard
to tell." She dropped the hand to its fellow and holding them
tight-clenched in her lap, said slowly: "If my mother told you of that
conversation I had with Mr. Harland you know what I discovered then—that
he loved me. I never suspected it before, but when he pressed me with
questions about Johnston Barker, so unlike himself, vehement and
excited, I understood and was sorry for him. I told him as much as I
could then, explained my feeling for the man he was jealous of without
telling my relationship, said how I respected and trusted him, what any
girl might say of her father. He seemed relieved but went on to ask if
Mr. Barker and I were not interested in some scheme, some undertaking of
a secret nature. _That_ frightened me, it sounded as if he had found out
about us, had been told something by someone. Taken by surprise, I
answered with a half truth, that Mr. Barker _had_ a plan on foot for my
welfare, that he wanted to help me and my mother to a better financial
position, but that I was not yet at liberty to tell what it was. I saw
he thought I meant business, and as I go on, you’ll see how that
information gave him the confidence to do what he did later.
"I know now that the Whitney office discovered I had had a letter from
Mr. Barker mailed from Toronto asking me to join him there and that I
agreed to do so in a phone message that same day. That letter, directed
to my office, was in typewriting and was signed with my father’s
initials. It was short, merely telling me that there was a reason for
his disappearance which he would explain to me, that his whereabouts
must be kept secret, and that he wanted me to come to him to make
arrangements for a new business venture in which he hoped to set me up.
As you know I attempted to do what he asked, and was followed by two men
from the Whitney office."
"How do you know all this?" I couldn’t help butting in.
She gave a slight smile, the first I had seen on her face:
"I’ll tell you that later—it’s not the least curious part of my story.
Realizing by the papers that there was a general hue and cry for him I
was very cautious, much more so than your detectives thought. I saw
them, decided the move was too dangerous, and came back. At that time,
and for some time afterward, I believed that letter was from my father."
"Wasn’t it?"
She shook her head:
"No—but wait. I had no other letter and no other communication of any
sort. I searched the papers for any news of him, thinking he might put
something for me in the personal columns, but there was not a sign. Days
passed that way, my business was closed and I had time to think, and the
more I thought the more strange and inexplicable it seemed. Why, in the
letter, had he made no reference to the broken engagement, so vital to
both of us, that night in the church. Why had he said nothing about my
mother whose state of mind he would have guessed?
"From the first I had suspicions that something was wrong. I could not
believe he would have done what they said he had. Even after I read in
the papers of his carefully planned get-away I was not convinced. After
that scene in the Whitney office, when I saw you were all watching me,
eager to trip me into any admission, my suspicions grew stronger. There
was more than showed on the surface. I sensed it, an instinct warned me.
"As days passed and I heard nothing more from him, the conviction grew
that something had happened to him. If it was accident I was certain it
would have been known; if, as many thought, he’d lost his memory and
strayed away, I was equally certain he’d have been seen and recognized.
What else could it be? Can you picture me, shut up with my poor
distracted mother, ravaged by fear and anxiety? Those waiting days—how
terrible they were—with that sense of dread always growing, growing.
Finally it came to a climax. If my father was dead as I thought, there
was only one explanation—foul play. On Friday, when you came to see me,
I was at the breaking point, afraid to speak, desperate for help and
unable to ask for it.
"Now I come to the day when I learned everything, when all these broken
forebodings of disaster fell together like the bits of glass in a
kaleidoscope and took a definite shape. It was Sunday, can it be only
two days ago? My mother had moved to the cottage and I was alone in the
apartment packing up to follow her. About the middle of the afternoon
while I was hard at work the telephone rang. I answered it and was told
by the operator Long Distance was calling me, Quebec. At that my heart
gave a great jump of joy and relief—my father was alive and sending for
me again. It was like the wireless answer of help to a foundering
vessel.
"You know how often the Long Distance connection varies—one day you can
recognize a voice a thousand miles off that on the next you can’t make
out at a hundred? The voice that had spoken to me from Toronto was no
more than a vibration of the wire, thin and toneless. The one that spoke
from Quebec was distinct and colored with a personality.
"The first words were that it was J. W. B. and at these words, as if the
receiver had shot an electric current into me, I started and grew tense,
for it did not sound like the voice of J. W. B. It went on, explaining
why he had not communicated with me, and how he now again wanted me to
come to him. I, listening, became more and more sure that the person
speaking was not my father, but that, whoever he was, his voice stirred
a faint memory, was dimly suggestive of a voice I _did_ know.
"I was confused and agitated, standing there with the receiver at my
ear, while those sentences ran over the wire, every syllable clear and
distinct. Then, suddenly, I thought of a way I could find out. My father
was the only man in the world who knew of our secret, of the plan for
our reunion. A simple question would test the knowledge of the person
talking to me. When he had finished I said:
"’I’ve been longing to hear from you, not only for myself but for my
mother—she’s been in despair.’
"There was a slight pause before the voice answered:
"’Why should Mrs. Whitehall be so disturbed?’
"Then I _knew_ it wasn’t Johnston Barker. The reason for Mrs.
Whitehall’s disturbance was as well known to him as it was to me.
Besides in our talks together he had never alluded to her as ’Mrs.
Whitehall’ but always as ’your mother’ or by her Christian name, Serena.
"I said the mystery of his disappearance had upset her, she was afraid
something had happened to him. A faint laugh—with again that curiously
familiar echo in it—came along the wire:
"’You can set her mind at rest after you’ve seen me.’
"There was something ghastly about it—talking to this unknown being,
listening to that whispering voice that called me to come and wasn’t the
voice I knew. It was like an evil spirit, close to me but invisible, and
that I had no power to lay hold of.
"While I was thinking this he was telling me that he had a safe hiding
place and that I must join him at once, the plans were now perfected for
the new enterprise in which he was to launch me. I demurred and to gain
time told him how I’d tried to go before and been followed. That caught
his attention at once, his questions came quick and eager. Perhaps
before that he had tried to disguise his voice, anyway now the familiar
note in it grew stronger. I began to catch at something—inflexions,
accent—till suddenly, like a runner who rounds a corner and sees his
goal unexpectedly before him, my memory saw a name—Harland!
"I was so amazed, so staggered that for a moment I couldn’t speak. The
voice brought me back, saying sharply, ’Are you there?’ I stammered a
reply and said I couldn’t make up my mind to come. He urged, but I
wouldn’t promise, till at length, feeling I might betray myself, I said
I’d think it over and let him know later. He had to be satisfied with
that and gave me his telephone number telling me to call him up as soon
as I decided.
"What did I feel as I sat alone in that dismantled place? Can you
realize the state of my thoughts? What did it mean—what was going on?
The man was not Johnston Barker, but how could he be Harland, who was
dead and buried? Ah, if you had come _then_ instead of Friday I’d have
told you for I was in waters too deep for me. All that I could grasp was
that I was in the midst of something incomprehensible and terrible, from
the darkness of which one thought stood out—my father had never sent for
me, I had never heard from him—it had been this other man all along! I
was then as certain as if his spirit had appeared before me that
Johnston Barker was dead.
"And now I come to one of the strangest and finest things that ever
happened to me in my life. Late on Sunday night a girl—unknown to me and
refusing to give her name—came and told me of the murder, the whole of
it, the evidence against me, and that I stood in danger of immediate
arrest."
I jumped to my feet—I couldn’t believe it:
"A girl—what kind of a girl?"
"Young and pretty, with dark brown eyes and brown curly hair. Oh, I can
place her for you. She said she had been employed to help get the
information against me and my father, and was the only woman acting in
that capacity."
"Molly!" I gasped, falling back into my chair. "Molly Babbitts! What in
Heaven’s name—"
"You’re right to invoke Heaven’s name, for it was Heaven that sent her.
She wouldn’t tell me who she was or why she came, but I could see. What
reason could there have been except that she believed me innocent and
wanted to help me escape?"
For a moment I couldn’t speak. I dropped my head and a silent oath went
up from me to hold Molly sacred forever more. I could see it all—she’d
found her heart, realized the cruelty of what was to be done, discovered
in some way she’d given me wrong information, and done the thing
herself. The gallant, noble little soul! God bless her! God bless her!
Carol went on:
"I wonder now what she thought of me. I must have appeared utterly
extraordinary to her. She thought she was telling me what I already
knew, or at least knew something of. But as I sat there listening to her
I was piecing together in my mind what she was saying with what I myself
had found out. I was building up a complete story, fitting new and old
together, and it held me dumb, motionless, as if I didn’t care. It would
take too long to tell you how I got at the main facts—the smaller points
I didn’t think of. It was as if what she said and what I knew jumped
toward each other like the flame and the igniting gas, connecting the
broken bits into a continuous line of fire. I knew that murder had been
committed. I knew that the body was unrecognizable. I knew that had my
father been living I would have heard from him. I knew that the voice on
the phone was Harland’s. Without all the details she gave me it would
have been enough. Before she had finished my mind had grasped the truth.
It was Johnston Barker who had been murdered and Harland—trying now to
draw me to him—was the murderer.
"Do you guess what a flame of rage burst up in me—what a passion to trap
and bring to justice the man who could conceive and execute such a
devilish thing? I could hardly wait to go. I was too wrought up to think
out a reasonable course. Looking back on it today it seems like an act
of madness, but I suppose a person in that state is half mad. I never
thought of getting anybody to go with me, of applying to the police. I
only saw myself finding Harland and accusing him. It’s inconceivable—the
irrational action of a woman beside herself with grief and fury.
"I called up the number he’d given me and told him I was coming on the
first train I could catch. He told me at what hour that morning it would
leave New York and when it would reach Quebec. He said he would send his
servant, a French woman, to meet me at the depot as he didn’t like to
risk going himself. Then I left the house and went to the Grand Central
Station, where I sat in the women’s waiting room for the rest of the
night.
"I did not get to Quebec till after midnight. The servant met me, put me
in a sleigh that was waiting for us, and together we drove here.
"The house was lit up, every lower window bright. As we walked up the
path from the gate I saw a man moving behind the shrubbery and called
her attention to him. While she was opening the door with her key I
noticed another loitering along the footpath by the gate, obviously
watching us. This time I asked her why there should be men about at such
an hour and on such a freezing night. She seemed bewildered and
frightened, muttering something in French about having noticed them when
she went out. In the hallway she directed me to a room on the upper
floor, telling me, when I was ready, to go down to the dining-room where
supper was waiting.
"I went upstairs and she followed, showing me where I was to go and then
walking down the passage to another room. As I took off my wraps and hat
I could hear her voice, loud and excited, telling someone of the two men
we had seen. Another voice answered it—a man’s—but pitched too low for
me to make out the words.
"When I was ready I went downstairs and into the room. No one was about,
there was not a sound. The fire was burning as it is now, the curtains
drawn, and the table, set out with a supper, was brightly lit with
candles and decorated with flowers. I stood here by the fire waiting,
white, I suppose, as the tablecloth, for I was at the highest climax of
excitement a human being can reach and keep her senses.
"Suddenly I heard steps on the stairs. I turned and made ready,
moistening my lips which were stiff and felt like leather. The steps
came down the passage—the door opened. There he was!
"That first second, when he entered as the lover and conqueror, he
looked splendid. The worn and harassed air he had the last time I’d seen
him was gone. He was at the highest pinnacle of his life, ’the very butt
and sea mark of his sail,’ and it was as if his spirit recognized it and
flashed up in a last illuminating glow of fire and force.
"He was prepared for amazement, horror, probably fear from me. The first
shock he received was my face, showing none of these, quiet, and, I
suppose, fierce with the hatred I felt. He stopped dead in the doorway,
the confidence stricken out of him—just staring. Then he stammered:
"’Carol—you—you—’
"He was too astounded to say any more. I finished for him, my voice low
and hoarse:
"’You think I didn’t expect to see you. I did. I knew you were here—I
came to find you. I came to tell you that I know how you killed Johnston
Barker.’
"I don’t think anyone has ever said he lacked courage. He was one of
those bold and ruthless beings that came to their fullest flower during
the Italian Renaissance—terrible and tremendous too. I’ve thought of him
since as like one of the Borgias or Iago transplanted to our country and
modern times. When he saw that I knew he went white, but he stood with
the light of the candles bright on his ghastly face, straight and steady
as a soldier before the cannon.
"’Johnston Barker,’ he said very quietly—’killed him? You bring me
interesting news. I didn’t know he was dead!’
"As I’ve told you I had come without plans, with no line of action
decided upon. Now the futility, the blind rashness of what I had done
was borne in upon me. His stoney calm, his measured voice, showed me I
was pitted against an antagonist whose strength was to mine as a lion’s
to a mouse. The thought maddened me, I was ready to say anything to
break him, to conquer and crush him and in my desperation—guided by some
flash of intuition—I said the right thing:
"’Oh, don’t waste time denying it. It’s too late for that now. It’s not
I alone who knows—they know in New York—everything. How you did it, how
you stole away, and where you are now. The net is around you—they’ve got
you. There’s no use any more in lies and tricks, for you can’t escape
them.’
"He had listened without a movement or a sign of agitation. But when I
finished he straightened his shoulders and throwing up his head sent a
glance of piercing question over the curtained windows. His whole being
suggested something arrested and fiercely alert, not fear, but a wild
concentration of energy, as if all his forces were aroused to meet a
desperate call.
"Then suddenly he made a step forward, leaned across the table and
spoke. I can’t tell you all he said. It was so horrible and his face—it
was like a demon’s in its death throes! But it was about his love for
me—that he’d done it all for me—that he could give me more than any
woman ever had before—lay the world at my feet. And to come with
him—now—we could get away—we had time yet. Oh!" she closed her eyes and
shuddered at the memory—"I can’t go on. He knew it was hopeless, he must
have known then what the men outside meant. It was the last defiance—the
last mad hope.
"And _then_ I conquered him, not as I’d meant to do, not with any
intention. All the horror and loathing I felt came out in what I said.
Terrible words—how I hated him—all that had been locked up in me since
I’d known the truth. His face grew so dreadful that I shrank back in
this corner, and finally to hide it, hid my own in my hands.
"People do such strange things in life, not at all like what they do in
books and plays. When I stopped speaking he said nothing, and dropping
my hands I looked at him, not knowing what I’d see. He was standing very
quiet, gazing straight in front of him, like a man thinking—deeply
thinking, lost in thought.
"We were that way for a moment, so still you could hear the clock
ticking, then, without a word or look at me, he turned and went out of
the room.
"I was so paralyzed by the scene that for a space I stood where he’d
left me, squeezed into the angle behind the mantelpiece, stunned and
senseless. Then the sound of his feet on the stairs called me back to
life. He was going, he was running away. I did not know myself then who
the men outside were and thought he could easily make his escape.
"I ran out into the hall, calling to the French woman. She came, out of
a door somewhere in the back part of the house, and I have a queer
impression of her face by the light of a bracket lamp, almost ludicrous
in its expression of fright. As I ran up the stairs I screamed to her to
come, to follow me, and heard her steps racing along the passage and her
panting exclamations of terror. At the stair head my ear caught the snap
of a closing door and the click of a key turned in a lock. It came from
the darkened end of the hall and as I ran down I cried to the woman,
'Get someone. Call. Get help.’ Then and there she threw up a window and
thrusting out her head screamed into the darkness, ’_Au secours! Au
secours!_'
"A man’s voice, close under the window, answered her and she flew past
me to another staircase beyond in the darkness down which I could hear
her clattering rush. Then there were the sound of steps, and the
breaking of wood, sharp tearing noises mixed with the shouts of men. It
all came together, for as I stood outside that locked door, listening to
the woman’s cries and the smashing of the wood below, sharp as a flash
came the report of a pistol from the closed room.
"That’s all. I didn’t see him again, I couldn’t. The police
inspector—they’ve all been very kind, have done everything for me they
could—let me see the statement. When you’ve read that you’ll know
everything—it’ll be the last chapter. I can’t tell it to you—it’s more
than I can bear."
She glanced at me and then suddenly looked away for tears, quick and
unexpected, welled into her eyes. She put up one hand, pressing it
against her eyelids, while the other lay still on the table. I leaned
forward and laid mine over it. As she sat speechless, struggling with
her moment of weakness, I looked at the two hands—mine big and hard and
brown, almost hid hers, closing round it, sheltering and guarding it, as
my life, if God willed it, would close round and shelter and guard hers.
————
I am coming to the end of my part of the story and it’s only up to me
now to give the final explanation—furnished by Harland’s statement—of
the strangest crime that had ever come within the ken of the Whitney
office.
We all read the statement that day and that night in our sitting-room at
the Frontenac, O’Mally, Babbitts and I talked it over. A good deal had
to be supplemented by our own inside information. For anyone who had not
our fuller knowledge there would have been many broken links in the
chain. But to us it read as a clear, consecutive sequence of events. One
thing I drew from it—almost as if Harland had told me himself—its
unconscious revelation of the development in him of sinister
possibilities that had lain dormant during the struggle of his early
years. In middle life, his world conquered, two master passions, love of
gain and love of a woman, had seized him, and swept him to his ruin.
I won’t give it in his words, but in as plain and short a narrative as I
can.
Harland had been the welcher in the Copper Pool and Barker had suspected
him. This was the immediate cause of the murder. Back of that, the root
from which the whole intricate crime grew, was his love of Carol
Whitehall and determination to make her his wife.
Briefly outlined, his position with regard to her was as follows. His
passion for her had started with the inauguration of the land company,
but while she was grateful and friendly, he soon saw that she was
nothing more. So he kept his counsel, making no attempt by word or look
to disturb the harmony of their relations. But while he maintained the
pose of a business partner he studied her and saw that she was
ambitious, large in her aims, and aspiring. This side of her character
was the one he decided to lay siege to. If he could not win her heart,
he would amass a fortune and tempt her with its vast possibilities. His
membership in the Copper Pool gave him the opportunity, and he saw
himself able to lay millions at her feet.
On January fifth, he met Barker on the street and in the course of a
short conversation learned that the head of the pool suspected his
treachery. That half-expressed suspicion, with its veiled hint of
publicity, planted the seed of murder in his mind.
It was not, however, till two days later that the seed sprouted. How his
idea came to him indicated the condition of morbidly acute perception
and wild recklessness he had reached. Walking up Fifth Avenue after dark
he had seen a man standing under a lamp, lighting a pipe. The man,
Joseph Sammis, was so like Barker, that he moved nearer to address him.
A closer view showed him his mistake, but also showed him that Sammis,
feeble in health, shabby and impoverished, was sufficiently like Barker
to pass for him.
From that resemblance his idea expanded still further. He followed
Sammis to his lodgings, had a conference with him, and told him he had
work in Philadelphia which he wanted Sammis to undertake. The man, down
to his last dollar, flattered and amazed at his good fortune, agreed at
once. Though the work had not developed, it was necessary for Sammis to
be on the ground and stay there awaiting instructions. Money was given
him for proper clothes and an advance of salary. The date when he was to
leave would be communicated to him within a few days. It would appear
that Sammis never knew his benefactor’s real name, but accepted the luck
that came to him eagerly and without question. In _his_ case the chief
had guessed right—he was a "plant."
From this point the plot mushroomed out into its full dimensions.
Harland and Barker were of a size, small, light and wiry, both men had
gray hair and dark eyes. The features obliterated, clothes, personal
papers and jewelry would be the only means of identification. The back
office with its one egress through the other rooms was selected as the
scene of the crime. Barker’s body could be lowered from the cleat—tried
and tested—to the floor below. Through his acquaintance with Ford and
Miss Whitehall, Harland was familiar with the hours of the Azalea Woods
Estates people. They would be gone when he went down, entered their
office with the pass key he had procured, and made the change of
clothing with his victim. His own disguise was a very simple matter.
Through an acquaintance with actors in his youth he had learned their
method of building up the nose by means of an adhesive paste—that and
the white mustache were all he needed. He took one chance and one only—a
gambler’s risk—that the body might not be sufficiently crushed to escape
recognition. This chance, as we know, went his way.
Gone thus far he had only to wait his opportunity. Against that he
bought and concealed the rope, the blackjack for the blow, and the
articles for his own transformation—all the properties of the grisly
drama he was about to stage.
Meantime his scheme to win Carol was working out less successfully and
the strain was wearing on him. On January fifteenth, his nerves
stretched to the breaking point, he went to her determined to find out
how she stood with Barker. Her answer satisfied him. He knew her to be
truthful and when she told him she had no other than a filial affection
for the magnate he believed her. The information she gave about Barker’s
intention of helping her, of having plans afoot for her future welfare,
he seized upon and subsequently used.
He also, in that interview, learned that she had had a phone message
from the magnate saying he was coming to her office that afternoon and
would later go to the floor above to see Mr. Harland. When he heard this
he knew that his time had come.
From her he went straight to a telephone booth, called up Barker’s
garage and gave Heney the instructions to meet him that night and take
him to the Elizabeth Depot. That done he returned to the Black Eagle
Building, saw that his stenographer and clerk were disposed to his
satisfaction, and made ready for the final event.
The quarrel with Barker was genuine. The head of the Copper Pool burst
into accusations of treachery and threatened immediate exposure. Sitting
at the desk, engrossed in his anger, he did not notice Harland slip
behind him. One blow of the blackjack delivered below the temple
resulted in death, as instantaneous as it was noiseless. Fastening the
rope about the body, Harland swung it from the cleat to the floor below,
where in the darkness it would have been invisible at a distance of ten
feet.
He then passed through the outer offices and went downstairs. He must
have missed Carol by a few seconds. His knock being unanswered, he let
himself in with his pass key, and walked through to the back room. Here
he drew in the body, then curtaining the window, turned on the lights
and effected the change of clothes, shaving off the mustache, and
looking for the scarf pin which he couldn’t find. He had just completed
this when Ford entered—a terrible moment for him.
When Ford left his nerve was shaken and he realized he must finish the
job at once. After he had done so he went back to the private office,
carefully arranged his own disguise, and after waiting for over an hour,
put on Barker’s hat and coat and went down the service stairs.
He met no person or obstacle, skirted the back of the block and picked
up Heney at the place designated. At the Elizabeth Station he bought a
ticket to Philadelphia, but when he saw his chance, crossed the lines to
the Jersey Central platform and boarded a local for Jersey City, from
which by a devious route he made his way to Canada. It was in the
waiting-room at the Jersey City depot that he removed his disguise.
In Toronto he sublet a small apartment, only going out at night, and
keeping a close watch on the developments in New York which he followed
through the papers. By these he learned that everything had worked out
as he hoped, that the crime was unsuspected, and the public interest
centered on the chase for Barker. All that now remained to complete his
enterprise was to get Carol.
That his continued success must have given him an almost insane
confidence is proved by the way he went about this last and most
difficult step. Criminals all slip up somewhere. He had attended to the
details of the murder with amazing skill and thoroughness. It was in his
estimate of the character of Carol that he showed that blind spot in the
brain they all have.
The only way to explain it is that he was so sure of his own powers, so
confident that she was heart whole and would be unable to resist the
temptation of his enormous wealth, that he took the final risk—sent for
her in Barker’s name. Her response to his first summons encouraged him.
When she didn’t come he had many reasons with which to buoy himself
up—fears, illness, the impossibility of leaving her mother.
But it made him more cautious and he didn’t venture again till the hue
and cry for Barker had subsided and he had made a move to the last port
of call on the St. Lawrence. That he had expected to take her by storm,
win her consent and leave her no time to deliberate was proved by the
fact that "Henry Santley" had engaged accommodations for himself and
"sister" on the _Megantic_, sailing from Quebec at ten the next morning.
What had he intended to say to her, how was he going to explain? If he
had not mentioned it in his statement we never would have known, for
Carol did not give him time to tell. The story was simple and in the
face of her supposed ignorance of the murder, might have satisfied her.
He was going to admit his duplicity in the Copper Pool—his excuse being
he had done it for her. In his last interview with Barker he saw that
discovery was imminent, and decided to drop out of sight. When he passed
through his own office he was on his way out of the building, descending
unseen by the stairs, and going immediately to Canada. When he read in
the papers of the suicide, identified as Hollings Harland, no one was
more surprised than he was.
How the mistake had been made he readily guessed. Some months before he
had discharged one of his clerks for intemperance. The man, unable to
get another job and in the clutch of his vice, had gone to the dogs,
applying frequently to Harland for help. The lawyer, moved to pity, had
given this in the form of clothing and money. On the afternoon of
January fifteenth he had visited the Harland offices, in a suit of
Harland’s clothes, begging for money and threatening suicide. He was
sunk to the lowest depths of degradation, for, during a few moments when
he was alone in the private office, he had evidently searched among his
employer’s papers and taken a watch and chain which was lying on the
desk, to be sent to a jeweler’s for repairs. Startled in his hunt among
the papers he had had no time to replace them and had put them in his
pocket. After the man had gone Harland noticed the missing documents and
jewelry but in the stress of his own affairs paid no attention to the
theft. The next day when he read of the suicide, he remembered the man’s
threat to kill himself and realized he had done it later that afternoon.
That the body, crushed beyond recognition, had been identified through
the clothes, papers and watch as himself, he regarded as a lucky chance.
Without his intervention a thing had occurred which forever severed him
from the life he wished to be done with.
Such was Harland’s crime as explained in Harland’s statement. How we
talked it over! How we mused on the slight happening that had brought it
to light—a child at a window! Strange and wonderful! The hotel noises,
the traffic in the street, faded into the silence of the night as we sat
there, pondering, speculating, and awed too by this modern fall of
Lucifer.