IT COULD HAPPEN AGAIN TO-MORROW
"Sorry, ma'am," said the Pullman conductor, "but there's not a bit of
space left in the chair car, nor the sleeper neither."
"I'm sorry too," said the young woman in the tan-colored tailor-mades.
She was smartly hatted and smartly spatted; smart all over from
toque-tip to toe-tip. "I didn't know until almost the last minute that
I'd have to catch this train, and trusted to chance for a seat."
"Yes'm, I see," commiserated the man in blue. "But you know what the
rush is this time of year, and right now on top of all that so many of
the soldiers getting home from the other side and their folks coming
East to meet 'em and everything. I guess though, miss, you won't have
much trouble getting accommodated in one of the day coaches."
"I'll try it," she said, "and thank you all the same."
She picked up her hand bag.
"Wait a minute," he suggested. "I'll have my porter carry your valise on
up to the other cars."
Men of all stations in life were rather given to offering help to Miss
Mildred Smith, the distinguished interior decorator and--on the
side--amateur investigator for Uncle Sam with a wartime record for
services rendered which many a professional might have envied. Perhaps
they were the more ready to offer it since the young woman seemed so
rarely to need it.
This man's reward was a brisk little nod.
"Please don't bother," she said. "This bag isn't at all heavy, and I'm
used to traveling alone and looking out for myself." She footed it
briskly along the platform of the Dobb's Ferry station. At the door of
the third coach back from the baggage car a flagman stopped her.
"All full up in here, lady," he told her, "but I think maybe you might
find some place to sit in the next car beyond. If you'll just leave your
grip here I'll bring it along to you after we pull out."
As she reached the door of the coach ahead the train began to move. This
coach was comfortably filled--and more than comfortably filled. Into the
aisles projected elbows and feet and at either side doubled rows of
backs of heads showed above the red plush seats. She shrugged her
shoulders; it meant standing for a while at least; probably someone
would be getting off soon--this train was a local, making frequent
stops. It was not the train she would have chosen had the choosing been
left altogether to her, but Mullinix of the Secret Service, her
unofficial chief, had called her away from a furnishing and finishing
contract at a millionaire's mansion in the country back of Dobb's Ferry
to run up state to Troy, where there had arisen a situation which in the
opinion of the espionage squad a woman was best fitted to handle,
provided only that woman be Miss Mildred Smith. And so on an hour's
notice she had dropped her own work and started.
Now, though, near the more distant end of the car she saw a break in one
line of heads. Perhaps the gap might mean there would be room for her.
She made her way toward the spot, her trim small figure swaying to the
motion as the locomotive picked up speed. Drawing nearer, she saw the
back of one seat had been turned so that its occupants faced rearward
toward her. In this seat, the one farther from her as she went up the
aisle, were a man and a woman; in the nearer seat, facing this pair and
sitting next the window, was a second woman--a girl rather--all three of
them, she deduced from the seating arrangement, being members of the
same party. A suitcase rested upon the cushions alongside the younger
woman.
"I beg your pardon," said the lone passenger, halting here, "but is
this place taken?"
The man's face twisted as though in annoyance. He made an undecided
gesture which might be interpreted either as an affirmative or the other
thing. "I'm sorry if I am disturbing you," added Miss Smith, "but the
car is crowded--every inch of it except this seems to be occupied."
"Oh, I guess it's all right," he said, though in his begrudged consent
was a sort of indirect intimation that it was not altogether all right.
He half rose and swung the suitcase up into the luggage rack overhead,
then tucked in his knees so she might slip into the place opposite him
next the aisle.
"Excuse me," he said a moment later, "but I could change seats with you
if you don't mind."
Her eyebrows went up a trifle.
In her experiences it had not often happened that seemingly without
reason a male fellow traveler had suggested that she give him a place
commonly regarded as preferable to his own.
"I do mind, rather," she answered. "Riding backward makes me carsick
sometimes. Still I will change with you if you insist on it. I'm the
intruder, you know."
"No, no, never mind!" he hastened to say. "I guess it don't make any
difference. And there's no intrusion, miss--honest now, there ain't."
Miss Smith opened the book she had brought along and began to read. She
felt that obliquely her enforced companions were studying her--at least
two of them were. The one with whom she shared a seat had not looked her
way; except to draw in her body a trifle as Miss Smith sat down she had
made no movement of any sort. Certainly she had manifested no interest
in the new arrival. In moments when her glance did not cross theirs,
Miss Smith, turning the pages of her book, considered the two who faced
her, subconsciously trying--as was her way--to appraise them for what
outwardly they presumably were. Offhand she decided the man might be the
superintendent of an estate; or then again he might be somebody's head
gardener. He was heavily built and heavily mustached with a reddish cast
to his skin and fat broad hands. The woman alongside him had the look
about her of being a high-class domestic employee, possibly a
housekeeper or perhaps a seamstress. Miss Smith decided that if not
exactly a servant she was accustomed to dealing with servants and in her
own sphere undoubtedly would figure as a competent and authoritative
person.
Of her own seat mate she could make out little except that she was
young--young enough to be the daughter of the woman across from her, and
yet plainly enough not the woman's daughter. Indeed if first impressions
counted for anything she was of a different type and a different fiber
from the pair who rode in her company. One somehow felt that she was
with them but not of them; that she formed the alien apex of a triangle
otherwise harmonious in its social composition. She was muffled cheek to
knees in a loose cape of blue military cloth which quite hid the
outlines of her figure, yet nevertheless revealed that she was slimly
formed and of fair height. The flaring collar of the garment was
upturned, shielding her face almost to the line of her brows. But out of
the tail of her eye Miss Smith caught a suggestion of a youthful regular
profile and admiringly observed the texture of a mass of thick, fine,
auburn hair. Miss Smith was partial to auburn hair; she wondered if this
girl had a coloring to match the rich reddish tones that glinted in the
smooth coils about her head.
Presently the man fumbled in a breast pocket of his waistcoat and found
a long malignant-looking cigar. He bit the end of it and inserted the
bitten end in his mouth, rolling it back and forth between his lips.
Before long this poor substitute of the confirmed nicotinist for a smoke
failed to satisfy his cravings. He whispered a word to his middle-aged
companion, who nodded, and then with a mutter of apology to Miss Smith
for troubling her he scrouged out into the aisle and disappeared in the
direction of the smoker.
Left alone, the woman very soon began to yawn. It was to be judged that
the stuffy air of the car made her dozy. She kept her eyes open with an
effort, her head lolling in spite of her drowsy efforts to hold it
straight, yet all the while bearing herself after the fashion of one
determined not to fall asleep.
A voice spoke in Miss Smith's ear--a low and well-bred and musical
voice.
"I beg your pardon," it said hesitatingly, then stopped.
Miss Smith turned her head toward the speaker and now for the first time
had a fair chance to look into the face of the voice's owner. She looked
and saw the oval of a most comely face, white and drawn as though by
exhaustion or by deep sorrow, or perhaps by both. For all their pallor
the cheeks were full and smooth; the brow was broad and low; the mouth
firm and sweet. From between the tall collars of the cape the throat,
partly revealed, rose as a smooth fair column. What made the girl almost
beautiful were her eyes--eyes big and brown with a fire in them to
suggest the fine high mettle of a resolute character, but out of them
there looked--or else the other was woefully wrong--a great grief, a
great distress bravely borne. To herself--all in that instant of
looking--she said mentally that these were the saddest, most courageous
eyes she ever had seen set in a face so young and seemingly bespeaking
so healthful a body. For a moment Miss Smith was so held by what she saw
that she forgot to speak.
"I beg your pardon," repeated the girl. "I wonder if you would be good
enough to bring me a drink of water--if it isn't too much trouble. I'm
so thirsty. I can't very well go myself--there are reasons why I can't.
And I don't think she"--with a sidelong glance toward the nodding figure
opposite--"I don't think she would feel that she could go and leave me.'
"Certainly I will," said Miss Smith. "It's not a bit of bother."
"What is it?" The woman had been roused to full wakefulness by the
movement of the stranger in rising.
"Please don't move," said Miss Smith. "Your young lady is thirsty and
I'm going to bring her a drink of water--that's all."
"It's very good of you, miss," said the elder woman. She reached for her
hand bag. "I think I've got a penny here for the cup."
"I've plenty of pennies," said Miss Smith.
At the cooler behind the forward door she filled a paper cup and brought
it back to where the two were. To her surprise the elder woman reached
for the cup and took it from her and held it to the girl's lips while
she drank. With a profound shock of sympathy the realization went
through Miss Smith that the girl had not the use of her hands.
Having drunk, the girl settled back in her former posture, her face half
turned toward the window and her head drooping as if from weariness. The
woman laid the emptied cup aside and at once was dozing off again. The
third member of the group sat in pitying wonder. She wondered what
affliction had made a cripple of this wholesome-looking bonny creature.
She thought of ghastly things she had read concerning the dreadful after
effects of infantile paralysis, but rejected the suggestion, because no
matter what else of dread and woe the girl's eyes had betrayed the face
was too plump and the body, which she could feel touching hers, too firm
and well nourished to betoken a present and wasting infirmity. So then
it must have been some accident--some maiming mishap which probably had
not been of recent occurrence, since nothing else about the girl
suggested physical impairment. If this deduction were correct, the
wearing of the shrouding blue cape in an atmosphere almost stiflingly
close stood explained. It was so worn to hide the injured limbs from
view. That, of course, would be the plausible explanation. Yet at the
same time an inner consciousness gave Miss Smith a certain and absolute
conviction that the specter of tearfulness lurking at the back of those
big brown eyes meant more than the ever-present realization of some
bodily disfigurement.
Fascinated, she found her eyes searching the shape beside her for a clew
to the answer of this lamentable mystery. In her covert scrutiny there
was no morbid desire to spy upon another's hidden miseries--our Miss
Smith was too well-bred for that--only was there a sudden quickened
pity and with that pity a yearning to offer, if opportunity served, any
small comfort of act or word which might fitly come her way. As her
glance--behind the cover of her reopened book--traveled over the cloaked
shape searching for a clew to the secret she saw how that chance
promised to serve her ends. The girl was half turned from her, a
shoulder pressing against the window ledge; the twist of her body had
drawn one front breadth of the cape awry so that no longer did it
completely overlap its fellow. In the slight opening thus unwittingly
contrived Miss Smith could make out at the wearer's belt line a partly
obscured inch or two of what seemed to be a heavy leathern gear, or
truss, which so far as the small limits of the exposed area gave hint as
to its purpose appeared to engage the forearms like a surgical device,
supporting their weight below the bend of the elbows. With quickening
and enhanced sympathy the little woman winced.
Then she started, her gaze lifting quickly. Of a sudden she became aware
that the girl was regarding her straightforwardly with those haggard
eyes.
"Can you tell what the--the trouble is with me?" she asked.
She spoke under her breath, the wraith of a weary little smile about her
mouth.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," answered Miss Smith contritely. "But please believe
me--it was not mere cheap inquisitiveness that made me look."
"I think I know," said the girl softly. "You were sorry. And it doesn't
matter much--your seeing. Somehow I don't mind your seeing."
"But I haven't really seen--I only caught a glimpse. And I'm afraid now
that I've been pressing too closely against your side; perhaps giving
you pain by touching your arms."
"My arms are not hurting me," said the girl, still with that queer ghost
of a smile at her lips. "I've not been hurt or injured in any way."
"Not hurt? Then why--"
She choked the involuntary question even as she was framing it.
"This--this has been done, I suppose, to keep me from hurting anyone
else."
"But--but I don't understand."
"Don't you--yet? Then lift a fold of my wrap--carefully, so no one else
can see while you are looking. I'd rather you did," she continued,
seeing how Miss Smith hesitated.
"But I am a stranger to you. I don't wish to pry. I----"
"Please do! Then perhaps you won't be worrying later on about--about me
if you know the truth now."
With one hand Miss Smith turned back the edge of the cape, enlarging
slightly the opening, and what she saw shocked her more deeply than
though she had beheld some hideous mutilation. She saw that about both
of the girl's wrists were snugly strapped broad leather bands, designed
something after the fashion of the armlets sometimes worn by athletes
and artisans, excepting that here the buckle fastenings were set upon
the tops of the wrists instead of upon the inner sides; saw, too, that
these cuffs were made fast to a wide leather belt, which in an unbroken
band encircled the girl's trunk, so that her prisoned forearms were
pressed in and confined closely against her body at the line of her
waist. Her elbows she might move slightly and her fingers freely; but
the hands were held well apart and the fingers in play might touch only
the face of the broad girthing, which presumably was made fast by
buckles or lacings at her back. As if the better to indicate how firmly
she was secured, the wearer of these strange bonds flexed her arm
muscles slightly; the result was a little creaking sound as the harness
answered the strain. Then the girl relaxed and the sound ended.
"Oh, you poor child!" The gasped exclamation came involuntarily,
carrying all the deeper burden of compassion because it was uttered in a
half whisper. Quickly she snugged the cloak in to cover the ugly thing
she had looked upon. "What have you done that you should be treated so?"
Indignation was in the asking--that and an incredulous disbelief that
here had been any wrongdoing.
"It isn't what I've done--exactly. I imagine it is their fear of what
they think I might do if my hands were free."
"But where are you going? Where are these people taking you? You're no
criminal. I know you're not. You couldn't be!"
"I am being taken to a place up the road to be confined as a dangerous
lunatic."
In the accenting of the words was no trace of rebellion or even of
self-pity, but merely there was the dead weight and numbness of a
hopeless resignation to make the words sound flat and listless.
"I don't believe one word of it!" exclaimed Miss Smith, then broke off
short, realizing that the shock of the girl's piteous admission had sent
her own voice lifting and that now she had a second listener. The woman
diagonally across from her was sitting bolt upright and a pair of small
eyes were narrowing upon her in a squint of watchful and hostile
suspicion. Instantly she stood up--a small, competent, determined body.
"I'll be back," she stated, disregarding the elder woman and speaking to
the younger. "And I'm going to find out more about you, too, before I'm
done."
Her step, departing, was brisk and resolute.
In the aisle near the forward door she encountered the flagman.
"There is a man in the smoker I must see at once," she said. "Will you
please go in there and find him and tell him I wish--no, never mind. I
see him coming now."
She went a step or two on to meet the person she sought, halting him in
the untenanted space at the end of the coach.
"I want to speak with you, please," she began.
"Well, you'll have to hurry," he told her, "because I'm getting off with
my party in less'n five minutes from now. What was it you wanted to say
to me?"
"That young girl yonder--I became interested in her. I thought perhaps
she had been injured. Then more or less by chance I found out the true
facts. I spoke to her; she told me a little about her plight."
"Well, if you've been talking to her what's the big idea in talking to
me?"
His tone was churlish.
"This isn't mere vulgar curiosity on my part. I have a perfectly proper
motive, I think, in inquiring into her case. What is her name."
"Margaret Vinsolving."
"Spell it for me, please--the last name?"
He spelled it out, and she after him to fix it in her mind.
"Where does she live--I mean where is her home?"
"Village of Pleasantdale, this state," shortly.
"Who are her people?"
"She's got a mother and that's all, far as I know."
"What asylum are you taking her to?"
"No asylum. We're taking her to Doctor Shorter's Sanitarium back of
Peekskill two miles--Dr. Clement Shorter, specialist in nervous
disorders--he's the head."
"It is a private place then and not a state asylum?"
"You said it."
"You are connected with this Doctor Shorter's place, I assume?"
"Yep."
"In what capacity?"
"Oh, sort of an outside man--look after the grounds and help out
generally with the patients and all. And now, say, lady, if that'll
satisfy you I guess I better be stepping along. I got to see about
getting this here patient and the matron off the train; that's the
matron that's setting with her."
"Just a moment more, please."
She felt in a fob set under the cuff of her left sleeve and brought
forth a small gold badge and held it cupped in her gloved hand for him
to see. As he bent his head and made out the meaning of the badge the
gruff air dropped from him magically.
"Oh, I see!" he said. "Secret Service, eh? All right, ma'am, what more
did you want to know? Only I'd ask you speak brisk because there ain't
so much time."
"Tell me briefly what you know of that child."
"Not such a lot, excepting she's a dangerous lunatic, having been
legally adjudged so yestiddy. And her mother's paying for her keep at a
high-class place where she can have special treatment and special care
instead of letting her be put away in one of the state asylums. And so
I'm taking her there--me and the matron yonder. That's about all, I
guess."
"I don't believe it."
"You don't believe what?"
He was beginning to bristle anew.
"Don't believe she is insane at all, much less dangerously so. Why, I've
just been talking with her. We exchanged only a few words, but in all
that she said she was so perfectly rational, so perfectly sensible.
Besides, one has only to look at her to feel sure some terrible mistake
or some terrible injustice is being done. Surely there is nothing
eccentric, nothing erratic about her; now is there? You must have been
studying her. Don't you yourself feel that there might have been
something wrong about her commitment?"
He shook his head.
"Not a chancet. Everything's been positively regular and aboveboard. You
can't railroad folks into Doctor Shorter's place; he's got too high a
standing. Shorter takes no chances with anybody."
"But she seemed so absolutely normal in speech, manner--everything. I've
seen insane persons before now and--"
"Excuse me, but about how many have you seen?"
"Not many, I admit, but--"
"Well, excuse me again, lady, but I thought as much. Well, I
have--plenty of 'em I've seen in my time. See 'em every day for the
matter of that. Listen to me! For instance, now, we've got a case up
there with us now. He's been there going on fifteen years; used to be a
preacher, highly educated and all that. Look at him and you wouldn't see
a thing out of the way with him except that he'd be wearing a
strait-jacket. Talk to him for maybe a week and you wouldn't notice a
single thing wrong about him. He'd just strike you all along as being
one of the nicest, mildest, old Christian gents you ever met up with in
your whole life. But get him on a certain subject; just mention a
certain word to him and he'd tear your throat out with his bare hands if
he could get at you."
"But this poor girl, surely her case is different? Was it really
necessary to bind her hands as you've done?"
"Lady, about these here violent ones you can't never tell. Me, I never
saw her in my life before I went down after her this morning, and up to
now she hasn't made me a mite of trouble. But I had my warning from them
that turned her over to me. Anyhow, all I needed was the story of her
own mother, as fine a lady as you'd care to see and just about
broken-hearted over all this. You'd think from the way she carried on
she was the one that was being put away and not the daughter. And yet,
what did the mother swear to on her sacred oath? She swore to the
daughter's having tried, not once but half a dozen separate times to
kill her, till she was afraid for her own life--positively!
"Besides, lady, it's been my experience, and I've had a heap of it, that
it's the quiet-acting ones that are apt to strike the quickest and do
the most damage when the fit comes on 'em. So taking everything into
consideration, I felt like as if I oughter be purty careful handling her
on this trip. But she's all right. Probably nobody on this train,
outside of you, knows there's anything wrong with her and it was
accidental-like, so you tell me, the way you come to find out--you
taking that seat alongside her and getting into talk with her whilst I
was in yonder smoking. It's better she should be under control thataway
than that she should maybe get a spell on her right here in this car or
somewheres and me be forced to hold her down by main strength and
possibly have to handle her pretty rough. I put it to you now, ain't it?
The way she's fixed she can't harm herself nor no one else. You take it
from me, lady, that while I've been in this business for so long I don't
always get my private feelings harrowed up over the case of a
nice-looking young girl like this one is, like an outsider might, still
at that I ain't hard-hearted and I ain't aiming to be severe just
because I can. But what else is there for me to do except what I'm
doing? I ask you. Say, it's funny she talked to you. She ain't said
hardly a word to us since she started. Didn't even say nothing when I
put the hobbles on her."
"I'm not questioning your judgment," said Miss Smith, "but she is so
pitiable! She seemed to me like some dumb, frightened, wild creature
caught in a trap. And despite what you say I'm sure she can't be mad.
Please, may I speak with her again--if she herself doesn't mind?"
"I'm afeared it's too late," he said not unkindly. "We're slowing down
for Peekskill now. I'll have to step lively as it is to get 'em off
shipshape. But if you've still got any doubts left in your mind you can
look up the court records at White Plains. You'll find everything's been
done positively legal and regular. And if you should want to reach me
any time to find out how she's getting along or anything like that, why
my name is Abram Foley, care of Doctor Shorter."
He cast this farewell information back over his shoulder as he hurried
from her.
Half convinced yet doubting still, and filled wholly with an
overmastering pity, Miss Smith stood where she was while the train
jerkily came to a standstill. There she stayed, watching, as the trio
quitted the car. Past her where she stood the man Foley led the way,
burdened with the heavy suitcase. Next came his charge, walking steadily
erect, mercifully cloaked to her knees in the blue garment; and the
matron, in turn behind her, bearing a hand bag and an odd parcel or two.
About the departing group a casual onlooker would have sensed nothing
unusual. But our Miss Smith, knowing what she did know, held a clenched
hand to the lump that had formed in her throat. She was minded to speak
in farewell to the prisoner, and yet a second impulse held her mute.
She fell in behind the three of them though, following as far as the
platform, being minded to witness the last visible act of the tragedy
upon which she had stumbled. Her eyes and her heart went with them as
they crossed through the open shed of the station, the man still
leading, the matron with one hand guiding their unresisting ward toward
where a closed automobile, a sort of hybrid between a town car and an
ambulance, was drawn up on the driveway just beyond the eaves of the
building. A driver in a gray livery opened the door of the car for its
occupants.
Alongside the automobile the girl swung herself round, her head thrown
back, as a felon might face about at the gateway of his prison--for a
last view of the free world he was leaving behind. Seemingly the
vigilant woman misinterpreted this movement as the first indication of
a spirit of kindling obstinacy. Alarmed, she caught at the girl to
restrain her. Her grasp closed upon the shoulder of the cape and as the
wrenched garment came away in her hand the prisoner stood revealed in
her bonds--a slim graceful figure, for all the disfigurement of the
clumsy harness work which fettered her.
An instant later the cape had been replaced upon her shoulders, hiding
her state from curious eyes, but in that same brief space of time she
must have seen leaning from the train, which now again was in motion,
the shape of her unknown champion, for she nodded her head as though in
gratitude and good-by and her white face suddenly was lighted with what
the passenger upon the car platform, seeing this through a sudden mist
of tears, thought to be the bravest, most pitiable smile that ever she
had seen.
The train doubled round an abrupt curve, in the sharpness of its swing
almost throwing her off her feet, and when she had regained her balance
and looked again the station was furlongs behind her, hidden from sight
by intervening buildings.
It was that smile of farewell which acted as a flux to carry into the
recipient's mind a resolution already forming. Into things her emotions
were likely to lead her headlong and impetuously, but for a way out of
them this somewhat unusual young woman named Smith generally had for
her guide a certain clear quality of reasoning, backed by an intuition
which helped her frequently to achieve satisfactory results. So it was
with her in this instance.
Her share of the business in Troy completed, as speedily it was, she
stayed in Albany for half a day on her way back and called upon the
governor. At first sight he liked her, for her good looks, for her
trigness, her directness and more than any of these for the excellent
mental poise which so patently was a part of her. The outcome of her
visit to him and his enthusiastic admiration for her was that the
district attorney of Westchester County shortly thereafter instituted an
investigation, the chief fruitage of that investigation being embodied
in a somewhat longish letter from him, which Miss Smith read in her
studio apartment one afternoon perhaps three weeks after the date of her
meeting on trainboard with that adjudged maniac, the girl Margaret
Vinsolving.
To the letter was a polite preamble. She skipped it. We may do well to
follow her lead and come to the body of it, which ran like this:
"Mrs. Janet Vinsolving is the widow of a colonel in our Regular Army. My
information is that she is a woman of culture and refinement. Since the
death of her husband some eight years ago she has been residing in a
small home which she owns in the outskirts of Pleasantdale village in
this county. From the fact that she keeps no servants and from other
facts brought to me I gather that she is in very modest circumstances.
She has been living quite alone except for the daughter, Margaret, who
is her only child. The daughter was educated in the public schools of
the county. Lately she has been studying applied designing with a view
to becoming an interior decorator."
"Ah, now I know another reason why I was drawn to her!" interpolated the
reader, speaking to herself. With heightened interest she read on:
"On inquiry it appears that among her former schoolmates and teachers
she was popular, though not inclined to make intimates. She is reputed
to have been rather high-tempered, but seemingly throughout her
childhood and young girlhood there was nothing about her conduct or
appearance to indicate a disordered mind. Indeed there was no suggestion
of mental aberration on her part from any source until within the past
month. However, I should add that it is rather hard to arrive at any
accurate estimate of her general behavior by reason of the fact that
mother and daughter led so secluded a life. They had acquaintances in
the community, but apparently no close friends there or elsewhere.
"About four weeks ago, on the twenty-eighth of last month to be exact,
the mother, described to me as being in a state of great distress,
visited Justice Cannavan, then sitting in chambers at White Plains, and
asking for a private interview with him, requested an inquiry into the
sanity of the girl Margaret, with a view, as she explained, of
protecting her own life. Her daughter, she alleged, had without warning
developed a homicidal tendency aimed at the applicant.
"According to Mrs. Vinsolving, the girl, who always theretofore had been
a devoted and affectionate child, had made at least five separate and
distinct attempts to kill her, first by putting poison into her food and
later by attempting to strangle her at night in her bed. Next only to a
natural desire to have her own physical safety insured, the mother was
apparently inspired by a wish to surround the truth regarding her
beloved child's aberration with as much secrecy as possible. At the same
time she realized that a certain amount of publicity was inevitable.
"Acting under the statutes, the justice appointed two reputable
practicing physicians of the county, namely Dr. Ernest Malt, of
Wincorah, and Dr. James P. McGlore, of Pleasantdale, to sit as a
commission for the purpose of inquiring into Miss Vinsolving's mental
state. The mother, still exhibiting every evidence of maternal grief,
appeared before these gentlemen and repeated in detail the account of
the attacks made upon her, as previously described to His Honor.
"The girl was then brought before the commission. It was explained to
her that under the law she had the right to demand a hearing in open
court before a jury chosen to pass upon her sanity. This she waived, but
from this point on throughout the inquiry she steadfastly declined to
make answers to the questions propounded to her by the members of the
commission in an effort to ascertain her mental status, but on the
contrary persistently maintained a silence which they interpreted as a
phase of insane cunning characteristic of a type of abnormality not
often encountered, but in their opinion the more sinister and
significant because of its rarity.
"They accordingly drew up a finding setting forth that in their opinion
and deliberate judgment the unfortunate young woman was suffering from a
progressive and therefore probably incurable form of dementia. The
justice immediately signed the necessary orders for her detention and
commitment. To save the daughter from being sent to a state institution
the mother provided funds sufficient for her care at Doctor Shorter's
sanitarium, an establishment of unimpeachable reputation, and she
accordingly was taken there in proper custody, as you yourself are
aware.
"My information from the sanitarium, which I procured in response to
your request, and the governor's instructions to me for a full inquiry
into all the circumstances is that since her confinement Miss
Vinsolving has been under constant observation. She has been orderly and
obedient and except for slightly melancholic tendencies, which might
easily be provoked by the nature of her environment, is quite natural in
her behavior. I draw the inference, however, that this docility may be
merely the forerunner of an outburst at any time.
"Altogether my investigation convinces me that no miscarriage of the law
could possibly have occurred in this instance. There is certainly no
ground for suspecting that the mother had any ulterior or improper
motive in seeking to have her daughter and sole companion deprived of
liberty. Neither the mother nor any other person alive can hope to
profit in a financial sense by reason of the girl's temporary or
permanent detention.
"The girl herself is without means of her own. The mother for her
maintenance is largely dependent upon the pension she receives from the
United States Government. The girl had no income or estate of her own
and no expectancy of any inheritance from any imaginable source other
than the small estate she will legally inherit at the death of her
mother. Finally I may add that nowhere in the case has there developed
any suggestion of a scandal in the life of mother or daughter or of any
clandestine love affair on the part of either.
"These briefly are the available facts as compiled by a trustworthy
member of my staff, Assistant District Attorney Horace Wilkes, to whom
I detailed the duty of making a painstaking inquiry. If I may hereafter
be of service to you in this matter or any other matter, kindly command
me. I have the honor to be,
"Yours etc., etc."
With a little gesture of despairful resignation Miss Smith laid the
letter down. Well, there was nothing more she could do; nothing more to
be done. She had come to a blind end. The proof was conclusive of the
worst. But in her thoughts, waking and sleeping, persisted the image of
that gallant, pathetic little figure which she had seen last at the
Peekskill station, bound, helpless, alone and all so courageously facing
what to most of us would be worse than death itself. Awake or in sleep
she could not get it out of her mind.
At length one night following on a day which for the greater part she
had spent in a study of the somewhat curious laws that in New York
State--as well as in divers other states of the Union--govern the
procedure touching certain classes coming within purview of the code,
she awoke in the little hours preceding the dawn to find herself saying
aloud: "There's something wrong--there must be--there has to be!"
Until daylight and after she lay there planning a course of action until
finally she had it completed. True, it was a grasping at feeble straws,
but even so she meant to follow along the only course which seemed open
to her.
First she did some long-distance telephoning. Then immediately after
breakfast she sent to the garage round the corner for her runabout and
in it she rode up through the city and on into Westchester, now
beginning to flaunt the circus colors of a gorgeous Indian summer. An
hour and a half of steady driving brought her to the village of
Pleasantdale. She found it a place well named, seeing that it was tucked
down in a cove among the hills between the Hudson on the one side and
the Sound on the other.
Following the directions given her by a lone policeman on duty in the
tiny public square, she ran two blocks along the main street and drew up
where a window sign giving name and hours advertised that James P.
McGlore, M.D., here professionally received patients in his office on
the lower floor of his place of residence. A maidservant answered the
caller's knock, and showing her into a chamber furnished like a parlor
which had started out to be a reception room and then had tried--too
late--to change back again into a parlor, bade her wait. She did not
have long to wait. Almost immediately an inner door opened and in the
opening appeared the short and blocky figure of a somewhat elderly,
old-fashioned-looking man with a square homely face--a face which
instantly she classified as belonging to a rather stupid, very dogmatic
and utterly honest man. He had outjutting, belligerent eyebrows and a
stubborn underjaw that was badly undershot. He spoke as he entered and
his tone was noticeably not cordial.
"The girl tells me your name is Smith. I suppose from that you're the
young person that the district attorney telephoned me about an hour or
so ago. Well, how can I serve you?"
"Perhaps, doctor, the district attorney told you I had interested myself
in the case of the Vinsolving girl--Margaret Vinsolving," she began. "I
had intended to call also upon your associate, Doctor Malt, over at
Wincorah, but I learn he is away."
"Yes, yes," he said with a sort of hurried petulance. "Know all about
that. Malt's like a lot of these young new physicians--always running
off on vacations. Mustn't hold me responsible for his absences. Got no
time to think about the other fellow. Own affairs are enough--keep me
busy. Well, go on, why don't you? You were speaking of the Vinsolving
girl. Well, what of her?"
"I was saying that I had interested myself in her case and--"
He snapped in: "One moment. Let's get this all straightened out before
we start. May I inquire if you are closely related to the young person
in question?"
"I am not. I never saw her but once."
"Are you by any chance a close friend of the young woman?"
He towered over her, for she was seated and he had not offered to sit
down. Indeed throughout the interview he remained standing.
Looking up at him, where he glowered above her, she answered back
promptly:
"As I was saying, I never saw her but once--that was on the day she
was carried away to be placed in confinement. So I cannot call myself
her friend exactly, though I would like to be her friend. It was
because of the sympathy which her position--and I might add, her
personality--roused in me that I have taken the liberty of coming here
to see you about her."
Under his breath he growled and grunted and puffed certain sounds. She
caught the purport of at least two of the words.
"Pardon me, doctor," she said briskly, "but I am not an amateur
philanthropist. I trust I'm not an amateur anything. I am a business
woman earning my own living by my own labors and I pay taxes and for the
past year or so I have been a citizen and a voter. Please do not regard
me merely as an officious meddler--a busybody with nothing to do except
to mind other people's affairs. It was quite by chance that I came upon
this poor child and learned something of her unhappy state."
The choleric brows went up like twin stress marks accenting unspoken
skepticism.
"A child--of twenty-four?" he commented ironically.
"A child, measured by my age or yours. As I told you, I met her quite
accidentally. She appealed to me so--such a plucky, helpless, friendless
little thing she seemed with those hideous leather straps binding her."
"Do you mean to imply that she was being mistreated by those who had her
in charge?"
"No, her escorts--or attendants or warders or guards or whatever one
might call them--seemed kindly enough, according to their lights. But
she was so quiet, so passive that I--"
"Well, would you expect anyone who felt a proper sense of responsibility
to suffer dangerous maniacs to run at large without restraint or control
of any sort upon their limbs and their actions?"
"But, doctor, that is just the point--are you so entirely sure that she
is a dangerous maniac? That is what I want to ask you--whether there
isn't a possibility, however remote, that a mistake may conceivably have
been made? Please don't misunderstand me," she interjected quickly,
seeing how he--already stiff and bristly--had at her words stiffened and
bristled still more. "I do not mean to intimate that anything unethical
has been done. In fact I am quite sure that everything has been quite
ethical. And I am not questioning your professional standing or decrying
your abilities.
"But as I understand it, neither you nor Doctor Malt is avowedly an
alienist. I assume that neither of you has ever specialized in nervous
or mental disorders. Such being the case, don't you agree with me--this
idea has just occurred to me--that if an alienist, a man especially
versed in these things rather than a general practitioner, however
experienced and competent, were called in even now--"
"And you just said you were not reflecting upon my professional
abilities!"
His tone was heavily sarcastic.
"Of course I am not! I beg your pardon if my poor choice of language has
conveyed any such impression. What I am trying to get at, doctor, in my
inexpert way, is that I talked with this girl, and while I exchanged
only a few words with her, nevertheless what she said--yes, and her
bearing as well, her look, everything about her--impressed me as being
entirely rational."
He fixed her with a hostile glare and at her he aimed a blunt gimlet of
a forefinger.
"Are you quite sure you are entirely sane yourself?"
"I trust I am fairly normal."
"Got any little funny quirks in your brain? Any little temperamental
crotchets in which you differ from the run of people round you? Think
now!"
"Well," she confessed, "I don't like cats--I hate cats. And I don't like
figured wall paper. And I don't like--"
"That will be sufficient. Take the first point: You hate cats. On that
count alone any confirmed cat lover would regard you as being as crazy
as a March hare. But until you start going round trying to kill other
people's cats or trying to kill other people who own cats there's
probably no danger that anyone will prefer charges of lunacy against you
and have you locked up."
She smiled a little in spite of her earnestness.
"Perhaps it is symptomatic of a lesion in my brain that I should be
concerning myself in the case of a strange girl whom I have seen but
once--is that also in your thoughts, Doctor McGlore?"
"We'll waive that," he said. "For the sake of argument we'll concede
that your indicative peculiarities assume a harmless phase at present.
But this Vinsolving girl's case is different--hers were not harmless.
Her acts were amply conclusive to establish proof of her mental
condition."
"From the district attorney's statement to me I rather got the
impression that she did not indulge in any abnormal conduct while before
you for examination."
"Did he tell you of her blank refusal to answer the simplest of the
questions my associate and I put to her?"
"Doctor," she countered, seeking to woo him into a better humor, "would
you construe silence on a woman's part as necessarily a mark of
insanity? It is a rare thing, I concede. But might it not sometimes be
an admirable thing as well?"
But this gruff old man was not to be cajoled into pleasanter channels
than the course his mood steered for him.
"We'll waive that too. Anyhow, the mother's evidence was enough."
"But was there anything else other than the mother's unsupported story
for you to go on and be guided by?"
"What else was needed?" he retorted angrily. "What motive could the
mother have except the motives that were prompted by mother love? That
was a devoted, desolated woman if ever I saw one. Look here! A daughter
without cause suddenly turns upon her mother and tries to kill her.
Well, then, either she's turned criminal or she has gone crazy!
"But why should I go on debating with you a matter which you don't know
anything about in the first place and in which you have no call to
interfere in the second place?
"I don't want to be sharp with you, young woman, but that's the plain
fact. The duty which I undertook under the law and as a reputable
physician was not a pleasant one, and it becomes all the less pleasant
when an unqualified layman--laywoman if you prefer to phrase it that
way--cross-examines me on my judgment."
"Doctor, let me repeat again I have not sought to cross-question you or
belittle your knowledge. But you speak of the law. Do you not think it a
monstrous thing that two men even though they be of high standing in
their profession as general practitioners, but without special
acquaintance with mental derangements--I am not speaking of this
particular case now but of hundreds of other cases--do you not think it
a wrong thing that two such persons may pass upon a third person's
sanity and upon the uncorroborated testimony of some fourth person
recommend the confinement of the accused third person in an asylum for
the insane?"
"I suppose you know a person so complained of--or accused, as you put
it--has the right to a jury trial in open court. This girl that you're
so worked up about had that right. She waived it."
"But is a presumably demented person a fit judge of his or her own best
course of conduct? In your opinion shouldn't there be other safeguards
in their interests to insure against what conceivably might be a
terrible error or a terrible injustice?"
He didn't exactly sneer, but he indulged himself in the first cousin of
a sneer.
"You've evidently been fortifying yourself to give me a battle--reading
up on the subject, eh?"
"I've been reading up on the subject--not, though, for the purpose of
entering into a joint debate on the subject with anyone. But, doctor, I
have read enough to startle me. I never knew before there were such laws
on the statute books. And I have learned about another case, the case of
that rich man--a multimillionaire the papers called him, which means I
suppose that at least he was well-to-do. You remember about him, I am
sure? A commission declared him of unsound mind. He got away to another
state where the legal processes of this state could not reach him. The
courts of that other state declared him mentally competent and capable
of managing his own affairs--and for a period of years he did manage
them. Here the other month, under a pledge of safe conduct, he returned
to New York on legal business and while he was here he carried his cause
to a higher court and that court ruled him to be sane and entitled to
his complete freedom of body and action. But for years he had been a
pseudofugitive in enforced exile and for years he had carried the stigma
of having been adjudged insane. This thing happened, incredible as it
sounds. It might happen again to-day or to-morrow. It--"
"Excuse me for interrupting your flow of eloquence," he said with a
labored politeness, "but I thought you came here to discuss the case of
a girl named Vinsolving, not the case of a man I never heard of before.
Now, at least I'm not going to discuss generalities with you and I'm not
going to sit here and join with you in questioning the workings of the
law either. The laws are good enough for me as they stand. I'm a
law-abiding citizen, not one of these red-eyed socialistic Bolsheviks
that are forever trying to tear down things. I believe in taking the
laws as I find them. Let well enough alone--that's my motto, young
woman. And there are a whole lot more like me in this country."
"Pardon me for breaking in on you, sir," she said, fighting hard to keep
her temper, "but neither am I a socialist or a Bolshevik."
"Then I reckon probably you're one of these rampant suffragists. Anyhow,
what's the use of discussing abstracts? If you don't like the law why
don't you have it changed?"
"That's one of the very things I hope before long to try to do," she
replied.
"It'll keep you pretty busy," he responded with a sniff of profound
disapproval. "But then you seem to have a lot of spare time on your
hands to spend in crusading round. Well, I haven't. I've got my patients
to see to. One of 'em is waiting for me now--if you'll kindly excuse
me?"
She rose.
"I'm sorry," she said sincerely, "if either my mission or my language
has irritated you. I seem somehow to have defeated the purpose that
brought me--I mean a faint hope that perhaps somehow I might help that
girl. Something tells me--call it intuition or sentimentality or what
you will--but something tells me I must keep on trying to help her. I
only wish I could make you share my point of view."
"Well, you can't. Say, see here, why don't you go to see the mother? I
judge she might convince you that you are on the wrong tack, even if I
can't."
"That's exactly what I mean to do," she declared.
Something inside her brain gave a little jump. It was curious that she
had not thought of it before; even more curious that his labored
sarcasms had been required to set her on this new trail.
"Well, at that, you'd better think twice before you go," he retorted.
"She was a mighty badly broken-up woman the last time I saw her, but
even so I judge she's still got spunk enough left in her to resent
having an unauthorized and uninvited stranger coming about, seeking to
pry into her own private sorrow. But it's your affair, not mine.
Besides, judging by everything, you probably don't think my advice is
worth much anyhow."
"Oh, yes, but I do--I do indeed! And I thank you for it."
"Don't mention it! And good day!"
The slamming of the inner door behind him made an appropriate
exclamation point to punctuate the brevity of his offended and indignant
departure. For a moment she felt like laughing outright. Then she felt
like crying. Then she did neither. She left.
"Poor, old opinionated, stupid old, conscientious old thing!" she was
saying to herself as she let herself, unattended, out of the front door.
"And yet I'll wager he would sit up all night and work his fingers to
the bone trying to save a life. And when it comes to serving poor people
without expecting payment or even asking for it, I know he is a perfect
dear. Besides, I should be grateful to him--he gave me an idea. I don't
know where he got it from either--I don't believe he ever had so very
many of his own."
Again the handy cop in the communal center set her upon her way. But
when she came to the destination she sought--a small, rather shabby
cottage standing a mile or so westward from the middle of things
communal, out in the fringes of the village where outlying homesteads
tailed away into avowed farmsteads--the house itself was closed up fast
and tight. The shutters all were closely drawn and against the gatepost
was fastened a newly painted sign reading: "For Sale or Rent. Apply to
Searle, the Up-to-Date Real Estate Man, Next Door to Pythian Hall."
Not quite sure she had stopped at the right place, Miss Smith hailed a
man pottering in a chrysanthemum bed in the yard of the adjoining
cottage.
"Mrs. Vinsolving?" he said, lifting a tousled head above his palings.
"Yessum, she lives there--leastwise she did. She moved away only the day
before yesterday. Sort of sudden, I think it must have been. I didn't
know she was going till she was gone." He grinned in extenuation of the
unaccountable failure of a small-town man to acquaint himself with all
available facts regarding a neighbor's private affairs. "But then she
never wasn't much of a hand, Mrs. Vinsolving wasn't, for mixing with
folks. I'll say she wasn't!"
Back she turned to seek out Searle, he of up-to-date real estate. In a
dingy office upstairs over the local harness store a lean and rangy
gentleman raised a brindled beard above a roll-top desk and in answer to
her first question crisply remarked, "Can't tell."
"But surely if she put her property in your hands for disposal she must
have given you some address where you might communicate with her?"
pressed Miss Smith.
"Oh, yes, she done that all right, but that ain't the question you ast
me first. You ast me if I could tell you where she was--and that I can't
do."
"I see. Then I presume she left instructions with you not to give her
present whereabouts to anyone?"
"Well, you might figger it out that way and mebbe not so far wrong,"
said the cryptic Mr. Searle. "But if you think you'd like to buy or rent
her place I'm fully empowered to act. Got the keys right here and a car
standing outside--take you right on out there in a jiffy if you say the
word."
He rose up and followed her halfway down the steps, plainly torn
between a desire to make a commission and a regret that under orders
from his client he could furnish no details regarding her late
movements.
"If you're interested in any other piece of property in this vicinity--"
were the last words she heard floating down the stair well as she passed
out upon the uneven sidewalk.
She knew exactly what she meant to do next. At sight of her badge, as
shown to him through his wicketed window marked "General Delivery," the
village postmaster gave her a number on a side street well up-town in
New York, adding: "Going away, Mrs. Vinsolving particularly asked me not
to tell anybody where her mail was to be sent on to. Kind of a secretive
woman anyhow, she was, and besides she's had some very pressing trouble
come on her lately. I presume you've heard something about that matter?"
She nodded.
"I suppose now," went on the postmaster, his features sharpening with
curiosity, "that the Federal authorities ain't looking into that
particular matter? Not that I care to know myself, but I just thought it
wouldn't be any harm to ask."
"No," said Miss Smith, "I merely wanted to see her on a personal matter
and I only let you see my credential in order to learn her forwarding
address."
Provided with the requisite information, she figured that before night
she would interview the widow or know good reasons why. That the other
woman had quitted her home seemingly in a hurry and with efforts at
secrecy gave zest to the quest and added a trace of bepuzzlement to it
too. Even so, she did not herself know what she meant to say to the
woman when she had found her in her present abiding place or what
questions she would ask. Only she knew that an inner prompting stronger
than any reasoned-out process drove her forward upon her vague and
blinded mission. Fool's errand it might be--probably was--yet she meant
to see it through.
But she had not reckoned upon the contingency that on this fine October
forenoon, for the first time since buying his new touring car, Mr. Jake
Goebel, shirt-waist manufacturer in a small way in Broome Street and
head of a family in a large way in West One Hundred and Ninety-ninth
Street, would be undertaking to drive the said car unaided and untutored
by a more experienced charioteer on a trial spin up the Albany Post
Road, accompanied--it being merely a five-passenger car--only by Mrs.
Rosa Goebel, wife of the above, six little Goebels of assorted sizes and
ages and Mrs. Goebel's unmated sister, Miss Freda Hirschfeld of
Rivington Street. In Getty Square, Yonkers, about noontime occurred a
head-on collision, the subsequent upshots of which were variously that
divers of those figuring in the accident went in the following
directions:
Miss Smith to a doctor's office near by to have a sprained wrist
bandaged; and thence home in a hired automobile.
Her runabout to a Yonkers repair shop and garage.
Mr. Goebel, with lamentations, to the office of an attorney making a
specialty of handling damage suits, thence home by train with the seven
members of his family party, all uninjured as to their limbs and members
but in a highly distracted state nervously.
Mr. Goebel's car to another repair shop and garage.
The traffic policeman on duty in Getty Square to the station house to
make a report of the fifth smash-up personally officered by him within
eight hours--on a Sunday his casualty list would have been longer, but
this was a week day, when pleasure travel was less fraught with highway
perilousness.
It so happened that Mullinix came to town from Washington next morning
and, following his custom, rang up his unpaid but none the less valued
aid to inquire whether he might come a-calling. No, he might not, Miss
Smith being confined to her room with cold compresses on her injured
wrist, but he might render a service for her if so minded--and he was.
To him, then, over the wire Miss Smith stated her requirements.
"I want you please to go to this address"--giving it--"and see whether
you find there a Mrs. Janet Vinsolving, a widow. I rather imagine the
place may be a boarding house, though I won't be sure as to that. It
will not be necessary for you to see her in person; in fact I'd rather
you did not. What I want you to do is to learn whether she is still
there, and if so how long she expects to stay there, and generally
anything you can about her movements. She went there only three days ago
and inasmuch as she has a reputation in her former home for keeping very
much to herself this may be a more difficult job than it sounds. But do
the best you can, won't you, and then notify me of the results by
telephone? No, it is a personal affair--nothing to do with any of our
official undertakings. I'll tell you more about it when I see you. I
expect I shall be able to receive visitors in a day or two; just now I
feel a bit shaken up and unstrung. That's all, and thank you ever so
much."
Within an hour he had her on the telephone again.
"Hello!" she said. "Yes, this is Miss Smith. Oh, it's you, is it? Well,
what luck?... Oh, so it was a boarding house, after all.... And you
found her there?... No? Then where is she?... What? Where did you say?
Bellevue!... I knew it, I knew it, something told me!... No, no, never
mind my ravings! Go on, please, go on!... Yes, all right. Now then,
listen please: You jump in a taxi and get here to my apartments as soon
as you can. I'll be dressed and ready when you arrive to go over there
with you.... What?... Oh, bother the doctor's instructions. It's only a
sprain anyhow and I feel perfectly fit by now, honestly I do ... tell
you I'd get up out of my dying bed to go.... Yes, indeed, it is
important--much more important than you think! Come on for me, I'll be
waiting."
When fifteen minutes later the perplexed Mullinix halted a taxi at the
Deansworth Studio Building she was at the curbing, her left arm in a
sling and her eyes ablaze with barely controlled emotions. Before he
could move to get out and help her in she was already in.
"Bellevue Hospital, psychopathic ward," he told the driver as she
climbed nimbly inside.
As the taxi started she turned to Mullinix, demanding: "Now tell it to
me all over again. When you are through, then I'll explain to you why I
am so interested."
"Well," he said, "there isn't so very much to tell. The address you gave
me turned out to be a boarding house just as you suspected it might--a
second-rate place but apparently highly respectable, kept by a Mrs.
Sheehan. It's been under the same management at the same place for a
good many years. It wasn't very much trouble for me to find out what
you wanted to know, because the whole place was in turmoil after what
had happened just an hour or so before I got there. And when it
developed that I had come to inquire about the cause of all the
excitement every old-lady boarder in the house wanted to tell me about
it all at the same time.
"It seems that three days ago this Mrs. Vinsolving applied at the place
for room and board. Mrs. Sheehan vaguely remembered her as having been
her guest for a short time ten or twelve years ago. At that time she was
with her husband, Colonel Vinsolving, who it appears has since died, and
a daughter about ten years or twelve years of age--a little girl with
red hair, as Mrs. Sheehan recalls. This time, though, she came alone,
carrying only hand baggage. Except that she seemed to be nervous and
rather harassed and unhappy looking, there was nothing noticeably
unusual about her. Mrs. Sheehan took her in willingly enough.
"She went straight to her room on the third floor and stayed there,
having her meals brought up to her. But this morning early she went to
the landlady and begged for protection, saying she was in fear of her
life. Mrs. Sheehan very naturally inquired to know what was up--and then
Mrs. Vinsolving told her this story:
"She said she had discovered a conspiracy to murder her, headed
by--guess who? The late Kaiser, no less! She said that the Kaiser in
disguise had escaped from Holland, leaving behind him in his recent
place of exile over there a double made up to look like him, and was now
in hiding in this country for the sole purpose of having Mrs. Vinsolving
assassinated in revenge, because her late husband, while an officer in
the Army, had perfected a poison gas deadlier than any other known,
which, being kept a secret by this Government and used against the
German army in the war, had brought about the victory for our side and
led to the overthrow of the Kaiser's outfit.
"She went on to say she had run away from some suburban town or other to
hide in New York and that was why she had taken refuge at Mrs.
Sheehan's, thinking she would be in safety. But now she knew the
plotters had tracked her, because she had just detected that the maid
who had been bringing up her meals to her was really a German agent, and
acting under orders from the Kaiser had put poison into her food. All of
which naturally surprised Mrs. Sheehan considerably, especially as the
accused servant happened to be a perfectly reliable Finnish girl who has
been working for Mrs. Sheehan for five years and who had two brothers in
the Seventy-seventh Division overseas.
"It didn't take Mrs. Sheehan two minutes--she being a pretty
level-headed person evidently--to see what ailed her new boarder. She
managed to get Mrs. Vinsolving quieted down and get her back again into
her room, and then she called in the policeman on the post and inside
of an hour the woman had been smuggled out of the house and was on her
way to Bellevue in an ambulance with a doctor and a policeman guarding
her. But by that time, of course, the news had leaked out among the
other boarders and the whole place was beginning to stew with
excitement. It was still stewing when I got there.
"Well, as soon as you told me over the telephone that you were bent and
determined on going to Bellevue, though I do not see why you should be
in such a hurry about it and taking chances on setting up an
inflammation in your injured arm, because even though you do know the
poor crazed creature you can't be of any help--"
"I don't know her. I never saw her in my life."
"Then why--"
"That part can wait. I'll explain later. You were saying that as soon as
you talked with me over the telephone you did something. What was it?"
"Oh, yes, I called up Doctor Steele, chief surgeon in the psychopathic
ward, who happens to be a friend of mine and one of us besides"--he
tapped the badge he wore under his coat lapel--"and told him I was
bringing you down to see this woman, and he volunteered some information
of the case in advance of your coming. I've forgotten just what he
called the form of insanity which has seized her--it's a jaw-breaking
Latin name--but anyhow, he said his preliminary diagnosis convinced him
that it must have been coming on her for some time; that it was marked
by delusions of persecution and by an exaggerated ego, causing its
victims to imagine themselves the objects of plots engineered by the
most distinguished personages, such as rulers and high dignitaries; and
that while in this state a man or a woman suffering from this particular
brand of lunacy was apt to shift his or her suspicion from one person to
another--first perhaps accusing some perfectly harmless and well-meaning
individual, who might be a relative or a near friend, and then nearly
always progressing to the point in his or her madness where the charge
was directed against some famous character."
"Did you hear anywhere any mention made of a daughter--the red-haired
child of twelve years ago?" inquired Miss Smith.
"To be sure I did, but I'd forgotten about her," said Mullinix. "Mrs.
Sheehan told me that somewhere in her excited narrative Mrs. Vinsolving
did say something about the daughter. As nearly as I can recall, she
told Mrs. Sheehan that five or six weeks ago, or some such matter, her
daughter had tried to kill her and that she thought then the daughter
had gone mad, but that now she knew the girl had joined the Kaiser's
gang for pay. I made a mental note of this part of the rigmarole at the
time Mrs. Sheehan was repeating it to me, and then it slipped my mind.
But now putting that yarn alongside of what Doctor Steele tells me about
the symptoms of the disease, I see the connection--first the daughter,
then the strange servant girl and finally the Kaiser. But say, I wonder
why the daughter hasn't been keeping some sort of a guard over the poor
demented creature? What can she have been thinking about herself to let
her mother go running foot-loose round the country, nursing these
changing delusions?"
"She couldn't very well help herself," put in Miss Smith. "The daughter
is in an asylum--put there five weeks ago on the mother's complaint."
"But heavens alive, how could that have happened?"
"Very easily--under the laws of this state," she answered grimly. Then
speaking more quickly: "I've changed my mind about going to Bellevue
with you. Please tell the driver to take me to the Grand Central
Station. I don't know what train I'm going to catch, except that it's
the next one leaving on the Hudson River Division for up state. You go
on then, please, to the hospital and find out all you can about this
case and call me on the long-distance to-night--no, that won't do
either. I don't know where I'll be. I may be in Peekskill or in
Albany--I can't say which. I tell you--I'll call you at eight o'clock;
that will be better.
"No, no!" she went on impetuously, reading on his face the protest he
meant to utter. "My wrist is well bandaged and giving me no pain. I'm
thinking now of what a poor brave girl had on both her wrists when last
I saw her and of what she must have been enduring since then. I'll
explain the biggest chapter of the story to you on the way over before
you drop me at the station."
At the Grand Central she left behind a thoroughly astonished gentleman.
He was clear on some points which had been puzzling him from time to
time during this exceedingly busy morning, but still much mystified to
make out the meaning of Miss Smith's farewell remark as he put her
aboard her train.
"I only wish one thing," she had said. "I only wish I might take the
time to stop at the village of Pleasantdale and break the news to a
certain Doctor McGlore who lives there. I trust I am not unduly cattish,
but I dearly would love to watch the expression on his face when he
heard it. I think I'd do it, too, if I were not starting on the most
imperative errand that ever called me in my life."
A week later, to the day, two expected visitors were ushered into the
private chamber of the governor at Albany--one of them a small,
exceedingly well-groomed and good-looking woman in her thirties, and
one a slender pretty girl with big brown eyes and wonderful auburn hair.
"Governor," said Miss Smith, "I want the pleasure of introducing to you
the gamest girl in the whole world--Margaret Vinsolving."
He took the firm young hand she offered him. "Miss Vinsolving," he said,
"in the name of the State of New York and on behalf of it I ask your
forgiveness for the great and cruel wrong which unintentionally was done
to you."
"And I want to thank you for what you have done for me, sir," she
answered him simply.
"Don't thank me," he said. "You know the one to thank. If I had not set
the machinery of my office in motion on your behalf within five minutes
after your benefactress here reached me the other day I should have
deserved impeachment. But I should never have lived to face impeachment.
I'm sure the slightest sign of hesitation on my part would have been the
signal for your advocate to brain me with my own inkstand." His face
sobered. "But, my child, for my own information there are some things I
want cleared up. Why in the face of the monstrous charges laid against
you did you keep silent--that is one of the things I want to know?"
Before answering, the girl glanced inquiringly at her companion.
"Tell him," counseled Miss Smith.
Steadily the girl made answer.
"When my poor mother accused me of trying to kill her I realized for the
first time that her mind had become affected. No one else, though,
appeared to suspect the real truth. Perhaps this was because she seemed
so normal on every other subject. So I decided to keep silent. I thought
that if I were taken away from her for a while possibly the separation
and with it the lifting of the imaginary fear of injury at my hands,
which had upset her, might help her to regain her reason and no outsider
be ever the wiser for it. I am young and strong; I believed I could bear
the imprisonment without serious injury to me. I believe yet--for her
sake--I could have borne it. And I knew--I realized what would happen to
her if she were placed in such surroundings as I have been in and made
to pass through such experiences as those through which I have passed. I
felt that all hope of a cure for her would then be gone forever. And I
love my mother." She faltered, her voice trembling a bit, then added:
"That is why I kept silent, sir."
"But, my dear child," he said, "what a wrong thing for you to have done.
It was a splendid, chivalrous, gallant sacrifice, but it was wrong. And
if you don't mind I'd like to shake hands with you again."
"You see, sir, there was no one with whom I might advise in the
emergency that came upon me without warning," she explained. "I had no
confidante except my mother, and she--through madness--had turned
against me. I had no friend then--I have one now, though."
And she went to Miss Smith and put her head on the elder woman's
shoulder.
With her arms about the girl, Miss Smith addressed the governor.
"We are going away a while together for a rest," she told him. "We both
need it. And when we come back she is going to join me in my work. Some
day Margaret will be a better interior decorator than her teacher can
ever hope to be."
"Then from now on, so far as you two are concerned, this ghastly thing
should be only an unhappy dream which you'll strive to forget, I'm
sure," he said. "It's all over and done with, isn't it?"
"Over and done with for her--yes," said Miss Smith. "But how about your
duty as governor? How about my duty as a citizen? Shouldn't we each of
us, you in your big way and I in my small way, work to bring about a
reform in the statutes under which such errors are possible? Think,
governor, of what happened to this child! It may happen again to-day or
to-morrow to some other equally innocent sufferer. It might happen to
any one of us--to me or to someone dear to you."
"Miss Smith," he stated, "if ever it happens to you I shall take the
witness stand on your account and testify to two things: First, that you
are the sanest human being in this state; and second, that you certainly
do know how to play a hunch when you get one. If I had your intuition,
plus my ambition, I wouldn't be governor--I'd be running for president.
And I'd win out too!"