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THE SOUL SCAR
[Decoration]
BOOKS BY
ARTHUR B. REEVE
_Craig Kennedy Detective Stories_
THE SOUL SCAR
THE PANAMA PLOT
THE ADVENTURESS
THE TREASURE-TRAIN
THE SILENT BULLET
THE POISONED PEN
THE DREAM DOCTOR
THE EXPLOITS OF ELAINE
THE ROMANCE OF ELAINE
THE EAR IN THE WALL
THE WAR TERROR
GOLD OF THE GODS
THE SOCIAL GANGSTER
_Other Detective Stories_
GUY GARRICK
CONSTANCE DUNLAP
HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
[ESTABLISHED 1817]
[Illustration: HONORA WILFORD]
THE SOUL SCAR
A CRAIG KENNEDY
SCIENTIFIC MYSTERY NOVEL
BY
ARTHUR B. REEVE
AUTHOR OF
_"The Treasure Train" "The Adventuress"
"The Panama Plot" and other
Craig Kennedy Stories_
[Logo]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
THE SOUL SCAR
Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published May, 1919
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I THE DEATH-DREAM 1
II THE MARBLE HEART 17
III THE FREUD THEORY 33
IV THE "HESITATION COMPLEX" 48
V THE PSYCHANALYSIS 63
VI THE "OTHER WOMAN" 78
VII THE CROOK DETECTIVE 93
VIII THE POISONED GLASS 108
IX THE ASSOCIATION TEST 123
X THE ORDEAL BEAN 138
XI THE RASCON REPORTS 153
XII THE "NEW MORALITY" 169
XIII THE MECHANICAL EAR 186
XIV THE "JUNG" METHOD 202
XV THE CONFLICTING CLUES 218
XVI THE FINESSE 234
XVII THE SUPPRESSED DESIRE 247
XVIII THE CONFESSION 261
XIX THE LIE-DETECTOR 274
XX THE SOUL SCAR 287
THE SOUL SCAR
I
THE DEATH-DREAM
"It's the most perplexing case I've been up against, Kennedy, for a
long time."
Doctor Leslie, now medical adviser to the district attorney, had
dropped in at the laboratory, and, to tell the truth, I was glad of
the interruption. For from a retort Kennedy was evolving an olfactory
offense which was particularly annoying to me, especially as I was
struggling with an article on art for _The Star_. The things were
incongruous, and the article suffered.
"A case?" repeated Kennedy, mechanically. "Here--stick your foot up.
That's fine," he added, as he scraped the sole and heel of Leslie's
shoe, while Leslie fidgeted impatiently. "This is new."
Apparently Leslie's case was forgotten before it was begun.
"You know," Craig went on, eagerly, "the use of all these new leather
substitutes is opening a new field for detectives in the study of
foot marks. I've just been analyzing the composition of some of the
products. I'll soon be able to identify them all. A case, you say--eh?"
"Yes. You know the lawyer, Vail Wilford? Well, they found him in his
office--this morning--dead--the lights on; a suicide--that is, it
looked like a suicide at first. I don't know. The thing's a mystery to
me."
"Oh--a suicide?" Craig frowned, as though such a thing was entirely too
trivial to interrupt his analysis of rubber heels.
"He left this letter--to his wife," persisted Leslie.
We read the note.
HONORA [it began]--Don't think I am a coward to do this, but
things cannot go on as they have been going. It is no use.
I cannot work it out. This is the only way. So I shall drop
out. You will find my will in the safe. Good-by forever.
VAIL.
The peculiarly pungent smell of burning rubber had by this time
completely filled the laboratory. It was stifling, sickening.
"There--you made me forget that test, with your confounded suicide,"
reproached Kennedy. "That sample's ruined."
"Glad of it," I snorted. "Now I won't need a gas-mask."
However, in curiosity I looked at the note again. It was, strangely
enough, written on a typewriter.
"Hm!" exclaimed Kennedy, with mild interest. "Suicides don't usually
write on typewriters. A hasty scrawl--that's what you usually find."
"But Wilford was an unusual man," I suggested. "You might look for
almost anything from Wilford."
I read the note again. And as I did so I asked myself whether it was a
suicide note, after all. To me, now, it seemed too calmly composed and
written for that, as Kennedy had suggested.
I knew Wilford as a lawyer, still comparatively young and well known
almost to the point of notoriety, for of late he had taken many society
divorce cases. Altogether, his office had become a sort of fashionable
court of domestic relations.
"Here's the strange thing," hastened Leslie, taking advantage of
Kennedy's momentary interest before he could return to another retort
laden with some new material. "We found in the office, on the desk, two
glasses. In one there seemed to be traces of nothing at all--but in the
other I have discovered decided traces of atropin."
"That looks promising," remarked Kennedy, his analysis now entirely
forgotten.
"That's why I decided to call you in. Will you help me?"
"Craig," I interrupted, "I don't know much about Vail Wilford, but he
has had such an unsavory reputation that--well, I'd hesitate. I've
always considered him a sort of society rat."
"What difference does that make, Walter?" argued Craig, turning on
me suddenly. "If a crime has been committed, I must get at it. It is
my duty--even if the man is a 'rat,' as you call him. Besides, this
promises to be a very interesting case. Where is the body?" he asked,
abruptly, in as matter-of-fact a tone as if it had been a wrecked car
towed to a garage.
"Removed to his apartment on the Drive," replied Doctor Leslie, now
much encouraged and not concealing it. "I've just come from the place.
That was where I saw Honora Wilford."
"How did Mrs. Wilford take it?" asked Craig. "Has she been told all
this yet?"
"Not about the atropin, I think. That's just what I wanted to tell you
about. She was grief-stricken, of course. But she did not faint or do
anything like that."
"Then what was it?" hastened Kennedy, impatiently.
"When we told her," replied Leslie, "she exclaimed: 'I knew it! I knew
it!' She stood at the side of the bed where the body had been placed.
'I felt it!' she cried. 'Only the other night I had such a horrible
dream. I dreamed I saw him in a terrific struggle. I could not make
out who or what it was with which he struggled. I tried to run to him.
But something seemed to hold me back. I could not move. Then the scene
shifted--like a motion picture. I saw a funeral procession and in the
coffin I could see as though by a second sight, a face--his face! Oh,
it was a warning to me--to him!'
"I tried to calm her," went on Leslie. "But it was of no use. She kept
crying out: 'It has come true--just as I saw in the dream. I feared
it--even when I knew it was only a dream.' Strange, don't you think,
Kennedy?"
"Why didn't you tell me this before?" asked Craig, impatiently.
"Didn't have a chance. You were studying my rubber heels."
"Well--what then? Is there anything else?"
"I questioned her," went on Leslie. "I asked her about her dreams.
'Yes,' she said, 'often I have had the dream of that funeral
procession--and always I saw the same face--Vail's! Oh, it is
horrible--horrible!'"
Kennedy was studying Leslie now keenly, though he said nothing.
"There's another thing, too," added Leslie, eagerly. "Although Mrs.
Wilford seems to be perfectly normal, still I have learned that she
was suffering from the usual society complaint--nervousness--nervous
breakdown. She had been treated for some time by Doctor Lathrop--you
know, the society physician they all run to?"
Kennedy nodded.
"Then, on a sort of docket, or, rather, calendar for private notes by
dates, on the desk of Wilford, I discovered this entry, among others,
'Prepare papers in proposed case of Lathrop _vs._ Lathrop.' I turned
back the calendar. Several times, on previous days, covering quite a
period of time, I found entries like this: 'Vina at four,' 'Vina at
six,' and other dates."
I glanced over at Kennedy. Vina Lathrop! I knew also of Vina Lathrop,
the beautiful wife of the society physician. It was certainly news that
a divorce proceeding had even been contemplated. I could imagine how
the newspapers would revel in it when they knew.
"Then you'll go?" queried Doctor Leslie, anxiously.
Kennedy completely ignored my earlier objection. "Certainly I'll go,"
he replied, pulling off his stained smock.
Ten minutes later, with Doctor Leslie, we came to the Wilford
apartment, one of those ornate and expensive multiple dwellings that
front the river and command a rental that fixes a social station in
certain sets.
Following him, we rode up in the elevator, and had scarcely been
admitted to the Wilford suite when we were greeted familiarly by a
voice.
It was Doyle, of the detective bureau, a sleuth of the old school,
but for all that a capital fellow and one with whom we got along very
nicely, so long as we flattered him and allowed him a generous share of
credit when the rounding out of a case came about.
"What do you really _know_ about her?" he whispered, finally, after a
few moments' chat, jerking his thumb ominously as he pointed with it
down the hall in the direction of a room where I supposed that Honora
Wilford must be.
"Very little, it's true," cut in Leslie. "I think our report said
that her maiden name was Honora Chappelle, that her father, Honore
Chappelle, made quite a fortune as an optician, that she was an only
child and inherited--"
"I don't mean her pedigree," scorned Doyle. "I mean modern history.
Now, I've been making some inquiries, from the neighbors and others,
and I've had a couple of men out picking up stray bits of information."
Doyle leaned over patronizingly to Kennedy, as much as to say that,
with all Craig's science, he couldn't beat the organization of the
regular force, a contention Kennedy was always quite willing to admit.
"I have just learned," informed Doyle, "that Wilford had been having
her shadowed. They tell me, too, that she has been seen once or twice
with an old friend of hers, Vance Shattuck, the broker. They tell me
that before she married Wilford she was once engaged to Shattuck. Know
him?" he asked, turning to me.
"I've heard of him," I replied. "I guess he's well known on Wall
Street--seems to get his name into the papers often enough, anyhow, in
one scandal or another."
"Well, I think that dream stuff is all camouflage, just between you and
me," nodded Doyle, sagely, drawing a piece of paper from his pocket.
"I've been going over things pretty carefully since I've been here. In
her desk I found this thing."
He held out the paper to Kennedy. It was a page torn out of a book
of poetry, an anthology, I imagined, for on the page was printed the
title of a sonnet, "Renouncement," and the name of the author, Alice
Meynell. On the wide margin of the page was written in ink, in what
Doyle assured us was Mrs. Wilford's own handwriting, the notation, "One
of the greatest sonnets of pure emotion."
We all read it and I am forced to admit that, whatever our opinion
might have been of Honora Wilford before, we were convinced that her
literary judgment was not at fault. I add the sonnet:
I must not think of thee; and tired, yet strong,
I shun the love that lurks in all delight--
The love of thee--and in the blue heaven's height
And in the dearest passage of a song.
Oh, just beyond the sweetest thoughts that throng
This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden, yet bright;
But must it never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
Must doff my will as raiment laid away--
With the first dream that comes, with the first sleep
I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart.
Kennedy folded up the sonnet and its notation, and, without a word,
turned from Doyle and looked about the room in which we were, a little
reception-room.
On the table before Doyle there were two glasses, as well as some other
objects which Doyle had either collected or brought with him from the
office.
"I suppose those are the glasses you found at the office," ventured
Kennedy. "In one of them I understand that traces of atropin were
found."
Doyle nodded.
"What's that?" asked Craig, pointing to a cut-glass-stoppered bottle
which was standing by the glasses, empty.
"That? It was found with a vanity-case and some other things on her
dressing-table. It once contained belladonna--atropin, you know. I've
had her maid, Celeste, cross-examined. Mrs. Wilford used belladonna to
brighten her eyes sometimes, as many society women do."
I shot a glance of inquiry at Doyle, who nodded. "So far, we haven't
been able to connect Mrs. Wilford directly with the mystery, but we're
keeping the evidence," he confirmed.
I must admit that both Doyle's information and his general attitude
after what we had heard from Leslie came as a shock.
Yet, try as I might, I had to admit that even if that were the
purpose for which Honora Wilford had the belladonna, it need not
have been the only use to which she put it. Doyle was raising a
very serious presumption, at least. A poison like belladonna was a
dangerous weapon, I reasoned, in the hands of a jealous woman. The
mere possession of it and the traces of atropin in the glass did, I
confessed, look badly.
A moment later, with the physician and the detective, we entered the
room where the body lay.
Wilford had been a large and rather forceful figure in life. I knew
him as a man of unusual ability, though I despised the direction in
which his legal talents had been diverted. Perhaps, I thought, unusual
talents had brought unusual temptations. For, whatever we may have
thought of people in life, our judgments are necessarily softened by
death.
As I looked at him now, I could not escape the feeling that his
peculiar kind of success somehow would afford the basic reason which
would prove to be the solution of the mystery before us.
At length Kennedy straightened up and turned to us, a peculiar look on
his face.
"What is it?" I queried, impatiently. "Have you discovered something
already?"
Without replying for the moment, Kennedy glanced down significantly at
the eye of Wilford as he held the lid with his finger.
"Atropin, you know, would dilate the pupil," he remarked, simply.
We took a step closer and looked. The pupils of both eyes were
contracted.
"I know," remarked Doyle, wisely, "but there may have been something
else. You remember the Buchanan case?"
Before any one could answer, he went on: "Remember when the Carlyle
Harris case was going on, the testimony showed that Helen Potts's eyes
had been contracted to a pin-point? Well, at that time Doctor Buchanan,
a dentist down on Staten Island, I think, was talking to a patient. He
said that Harris was a fool--that all he needed to have done was to
have put some atropin in the capsule with the morphine--and her pupils
would have expanded--and thus covered up the morphine clue. Later,
when he himself was accused of murder, the patient recollected what
the doctor had said, and it was found that he had tried the very thing
himself. It was proved against him. Perhaps there is something like
that."
Kennedy nodded sententiously at Doyle's wisdom, but did not betray what
his real opinion was, if indeed he had formed any so soon.
"You have examined the contents of the stomach?" asked Craig of Leslie.
Doctor Leslie shook his head. "Not yet. I have not had time. Remember,
it is only a couple of hours since this case was handed over to me and
it has been only a matter of minutes since I learned that there was
anything suspicious."
"Then I suppose you have no objection to my sharing the examination
with you?"
"None whatsoever. In fact, I should welcome it. Leave it to me. I will
arrange for samples of everything to be sent to you at your laboratory
at the very first opportunity."
"Very well, then," thanked Kennedy. "Now I should like to see Mrs.
Wilford, if she is here."
"You bet she's here," ejaculated Doyle. "You don't suppose I'd let her
get away, do you?"
He led the way down the hall to a sort of drawing-room.
Honora Wilford was a tall, perfectly formed woman, a beautiful woman,
too. At first glance she gave one an impression of youth, though soon
one saw that she was mature. I think that for that very reason she was
fascinating. There was something baffling about her.
Remembering what Leslie had said about the dream, I was surprised to
see she was of anything, apparently, but a hysterical nature. One would
not have thought her to be the type subject to hallucinations of any
nature.
Honora had large, lustrous, gray-blue eyes.
From her carefully dressed chestnut hair to her dainty, fashionable
foot-gear she was "correct." Her face had what people call "character."
Yet, as I studied it and the personality it expressed, I had an
indefinable feeling that there was something wanting.
It was some time before I was able to catch it, much less express it.
But as she talked I realized what it was. Her beauty was that of a
splendid piece of sculpture--cold, almost marble.
There seemed to be something lacking. I could not at first define it,
yet I felt that it was lacking, nevertheless. The very perfection I saw
fell short of some quality. It was that elusive thing we call "heart."
As we entered with Doyle, Honora seemed to ignore him. Once I saw her
covertly eying Kennedy, after our introduction, as though estimating
him. Doyle had glossed the introduction over by saying that we were a
"couple of scientists." What idea it conveyed to Mrs. Wilford I do not
know. It meant nothing to me, except that Doyle suffered from either
secret jealously or contempt.
"I understand," questioned Doyle, in his best third-degree,
hammer-and-tongs method, "that some time ago you had a disagreement
with Mr. Wilford and even threatened to leave him."
"Yes?" parried Honora, without admitting a syllable. "I didn't leave
him, though, did I?"
I watched her closely. She did not flinch from the questioning, nor did
she betray anything. Her face wore an expression of enforced calmness.
Had she steeled herself for this ordeal, as merely the first of many?
Try as he might, Doyle could not shake her calmness. Yet all the time
he gave the impression that he was holding something in reserve against
her.
"We shall have to require you to stay here, for the present," added
Doyle, ominously, as his man summoned him outside for some message from
headquarters.
I saw what his idea was. It was a refinement of torture for her--in the
hope that, surrounded by things that would keep the tragedy constantly
in her mind, she might break down. Honora, on the other hand, did not
seem to me to be entirely frank with the detective. Was it that Doyle,
by his manner, antagonized her? Or was there some deeper reason?
For a moment we were alone with her. If I had expected any appeal to
Kennedy, I was mistaken.
"I understand that you have been under the care of Doctor Lathrop,"
hazarded Craig.
"Yes," she replied; "I've been so run down and miserable this season in
town that I needed some treatment."
"I see," considered Kennedy. "Doctor Leslie has told me. He also told
me about your dreams."
She averted her eyes. "They have made me even more nervous," she
murmured, and I now noticed that it was quite true that her apparent
placid exterior was merely a matter of will-power.
"Do you dream more--or less, lately?" Craig asked. "That is, I mean
since you have been consulting Doctor Lathrop. Has his treatment done
you any good?"
I wondered whether, beneath her nervousness, she was on guard always.
"I think I have been getting more and more nervous, instead of less,"
she answered, in a low tone. "So many dreams of Vail--and always dreams
of warning--of death. My dreams are so peculiar, too. Why, last night
I dreamed even of Doctor Lathrop. In the dream I seemed to be going
along a path. It was narrow, and as I turned a corner there was a lion
in the way. I was horribly frightened, of course--so frightened that I
woke up. The strange part of it was that, as I recollected the dream,
the face of the lion seemed to be that of Doctor Lathrop."
"Have you told him? What does he say?"
"I haven't had a chance to see him--though by the way I feel after this
tragedy I shall need a physician--soon. He tells me that I am run down,
that I need a complete change of surroundings."
It was evident that, whatever the reason, her nervous condition was
quite as she described it. Kennedy evidently considered that nothing
was to be gained by questioning her further just at that moment, and we
left her.
Outside we were joined by Doctor Leslie.
"What do you think of it?" he asked.
"A most peculiar tangle, to say the least," remarked Kennedy. "Just
consider it. Here are two couples--Wilford and Honora, Doctor Lathrop
and his wife, Vina. We may suspect, from what you found at the office,
something in the relations of Wilford and Vina. As to the doctor and
Honora--we don't know. Then, into the case seems to have entered a
fifth person, Vance Shattuck. Really, Leslie, I cannot say anything
now. It seems as though it might be quite complicated. I shall have
to visit them, talk with them, find out. You and Doyle will keep me
informed?"
"Certainly. And I will let you have the materials for your tests as
soon as possible."
As we left the apartment, Kennedy appeared preoccupied.
"Those dreams were peculiar," he remarked, slowly, almost to himself.
I glanced at him quickly.
"You don't mean to say that you attach any importance to dreams?" I
remarked.
Kennedy merely shrugged.
But I knew from his actions that he did.
II
THE MARBLE HEART
"I'm going to get acquainted with the people in this case," remarked
Kennedy, as he left the Wilford apartment, "and first of all it will be
with Vance Shattuck."
We found that Shattuck lived in a rather sumptuous bachelor apartment
farther up the Drive, to which we were admitted by his Japanese valet,
who led the way into a sort of den, then disappeared to summon his
master.
As we waited in the den I glanced about. It was a most attractive and
fascinating place. There were innumerable curios that seemed to have
been gathered from all over the world. Nor were they merely thrown
together in a jumble. It was artistic, too, with a masculine art.
From the manner of the valet, though he had said nothing, I somehow
gathered that Shattuck had been waiting for something or somebody. It
was no longer early in the morning and I knew that he must have been
neglecting his business, that is, if he really had any to neglect. I
wondered why he should be doing so.
A few minutes later Shattuck himself appeared, a slim, debonair,
youngish-old man, with dark hair of the sort that turns iron-gray in
spots even in youth. Somehow he gave the impression of being a man of
few words, of being on guard even thus early in our meeting.
"You have evidently traveled considerably," commented Kennedy, as he
entered and we introduced ourselves.
"Yes, a great deal, before the war," replied Shattuck, guardedly
watching.
"In Africa, I see," added Kennedy, who had been examining some striking
big-game photographs that hung on a side wall.
"Once I was in Africa--yes. But I contracted a fever there. It has
left me unable to stand the fatigue I used to stand. However, I'm all
right--otherwise--and good for a great many years in this climate--so
my doctor tells me."
"Doctor Lathrop?" suggested Kennedy, quickly.
Shattuck evaded replying. "To what am I indebted for the honor?" he
queried, coldly now, still standing and not offering us seats.
"I suppose you have heard of the death of Vail Wilford?" asked Kennedy,
coming directly to the point.
"Yes. I have just learned that he was found dead in his office, the
lights turned on, and with a note left by him to his wife. It's very
sudden."
"You were acquainted with Honora Wilford, I believe?"
Shattuck flashed a quick glance sidewise.
"We went to school together."
"And were engaged once, were you not?"
Shattuck looked at Kennedy keenly.
"Yes," he replied, hastily. "But what business of yours--or anybody's,
for that matter--is that?" A moment later he caught himself. "That is,"
he added, "I mean--how did you know that? It was a sort of secret, I
thought, between us. She broke it off--not I."
"She broke off the engagement?"
"Yes--a story about an escapade of mine, and all that sort of thing,
that kind mutual friends do so well for one in repeating--but! by Jove,
I like your nerve, sir, to talk about it--to me. The fact of the matter
is, I prefer not to talk about it. There are some incidents in a man's
life, particularly where a woman is concerned, that are a closed book."
He said it with a mixture of defiance and finality.
"Quite true," hastened Kennedy, briskly, "but a murder has been
committed. The police have been called in. Everything must be gone over
carefully. We can't stand on any ceremony now, you know--"
At that moment the telephone rang and Shattuck turned quickly toward
the hall as his valet padded in after having answered it softly.
"You will excuse me a moment?" he begged.
Was this call what he had been waiting for? I looked about, but
there was no chance to get into the hall or near enough in the den to
overhear.
While Shattuck was at the telephone, Kennedy paced across the room
to a bookcase. There he paused a moment and ran his eye over the
titles of some of the books. They were of a most curious miscellaneous
selection, showing that the reader had been interested in pretty
nearly every serious subject and somewhat more than a mere dabbler.
Kennedy bent down closer to be sure of one title, and from where I was
standing behind him I could catch sight of it. It was a book on dreams
translated from the works of Dr. Sigmund Freud.
Kennedy continued to pace up and down.
Out in the hall Shattuck was still at the telephone and we could just
make out that he was talking in a very low tone, inaudible to us at a
distance. I wondered with whom it might be. From his manner, which was
about all we could observe, I gathered that it was a lady with whom he
talked. Few of us ever get over the feeling that in some way we are in
the presence of the person on the other end of the wire. Could it have
been with Honora Wilford herself that he was talking?
A few moments later Shattuck returned from the telephone.
"Have you met Mrs. Wilford recently?" asked Kennedy, picking up the
conversation where he had been interrupted by the call.
Shattuck eyed Kennedy with hostility and grunted a surly negative. I
felt that it was a lie.
"I suppose you know that she has been suffering from nervous trouble
for some time?" he continued, calmly ignoring Shattuck's answer, then
adding, sarcastically, "I trust you won't consider it an impertinence,
Mr. Shattuck, if I ask you whether you were aware that Doctor Lathrop
was Mrs. Wilford's physician?"
"Yes, I am aware of it," returned Shattuck. "What of it?"
"He is yours, too, is he not?" asked Kennedy, pointedly.
Shattuck was plainly nettled by the question, especially as he could
not seem to follow whither Kennedy was drifting.
"He was once," he answered, testily. "But I gave him up."
"You gave him up?"
It has always been a source of enjoyment to me to watch Kennedy
badgering an unwilling and hostile witness. Shattuck was suddenly
finding himself to be far from the man of few words he thought himself.
It was not so much in what Kennedy asked as the manner in which he
asked it. Shattuck was immediately placed on the defensive, much to his
chagrin.
"Yes. I most strenuously object to being the subject of--what shall
I call it--perhaps--this mental vivisection, I suppose," he snapped,
vexed at himself for answering at all, yet finding himself under the
necessity of finishing what he had unwillingly begun under the lash of
Kennedy's quizzing.
Kennedy did not hesitate. "Why?" he asked. "Do you think that he
sometimes oversteps his mark in trying to find out about the mental
life of his patients?"
Shattuck managed to control a sharp reply that was trembling on his
tongue.
"I would rather say nothing about it," he shrugged.
"I see you are a student of Freud yourself," switched Kennedy, quickly,
with a nod toward the bookcase.
"And of many other things," retorted Shattuck. "You'll find about a ton
of literature in that bookcase."
"But it was about her dreams," persisted Kennedy, "that she consulted
Doctor Lathrop, I believe. Are you acquainted with the nature of the
dreams?"
Shattuck eyed him in silence. It was evident that he realized that the
only refuge from the quizzing lay in that direction.
"Really, sir," he said, at last, "I don't care to discuss a thing I
know nothing about any further."
He turned, as though only by a studied insult could he find escape. I
expected Kennedy to flare up, but he did not. Instead, he was ominously
polite.
"Thank you," he said, with a mocking sarcasm that angered Shattuck the
more. "I suppose I may reach you at your place of business, later, if I
need?"
Shattuck nodded, but I knew there was a mental reservation back of
it and that his switchboard operator would be given instructions to
scrutinize every call carefully, and that, should we call up, Mr.
Shattuck would have "just stepped out." As for Kennedy's tone, I was
sure that it boded no good for Shattuck himself. Perhaps Kennedy
reasoned that there would be plenty of other interviews later and that
it was not worth while fighting on the first.
On his part Shattuck could do no less than assume an equal politeness
as he bowed us out, though I know that inwardly he was ready to consign
us to the infernal regions.
Kennedy was no sooner in the street than he hastened to a near-by
telephone-booth. Evidently the same thought had been in his mind as had
been in mine. He called up Doyle at the Wilford apartment immediately
and inquired whether Honora Wilford had made any telephone calls
recently. To my surprise, though I will not say to his own, he found
out that she had not.
"Then who was it called Shattuck?" I queried. "I could have sworn from
his manner that he was talking to a woman. Could it have been to the
maid?"
He shook his head. "Celeste is watched, too, you know. No, it was not
Celeste that called up. He would never have talked that long nor as
deferentially to her. Never mind. We shall see."
Back on the Drive again, we walked hastily up-town a few squares until
we came to another apartment, where, in a first-floor window, I saw a
little sign in black letters on white, "Dr. Irvin Lathrop."
Fortunately it was at a time when Lathrop was just finishing his office
hours, and we had not long to wait until the last patient had left
after a consultation.
As we waited I could see that even his waiting-room was handsomely
furnished and I knew that it must be expensive, for our own small
apartment, a little farther up-town and around the corner from the
Drive, cost quite enough, though Kennedy insisted on keeping it because
it was so close to the university where he had his laboratory and his
class work.
As Lathrop flung the door to his inner office open I saw that he was
a tall and commanding-looking man with a Vandyke beard. One would
instinctively have picked him out anywhere as a physician.
Lathrop, I knew, was not only well known as a specialist in nervous
diseases, but also as a man about town. In spite of his large and
lucrative practice, he always seemed to have time enough to visit the
many clubs to which he belonged and to hold a prominent place in the
social life of the city.
Not only was he well known as a club-man, but he was very popular with
the ladies. In fact, it was probably due to the very life that he led
that his practice as a physician to the many ills of society had grown.
"I suppose you know of the suicide of Vail Wilford?" asked Kennedy, as
he explained briefly, without telling too much, our connection with the
case.
Doctor Lathrop signified that he did know, but, like Shattuck, I could
see that he was inclined to be cautious about it.
"I've just been talking to Honora Wilford," went on Craig, when we were
settled in the doctor's inner office. "I believe she was a patient of
yours?"
"Yes," he admitted, with some reluctance.
"And that she had been greatly troubled by nervousness--insomnia--her
dreams--and that sort of thing."
The doctor nodded, but did not volunteer any information. However,
his was not the hostility of Shattuck. I set it down to professional
reticence and, as such, perhaps hard to overcome.
"I understand, also," pursued Kennedy, affecting not to notice anything
lacking in the readiness of the answer, "that Vance Shattuck was
friendly with her."
The doctor looked at him a moment, as though studying him.
"What do you mean?" he asked, evasively. "What makes you say that?"
"But he was, wasn't he? At least, she was friendly with him?" Kennedy
repeated, reversing the form of the question to see what effect it
might have.
"I shouldn't say so," returned the doctor, slowly, though not frankly.
Kennedy reached into his pocket and drew forth the sonnet which he had
taken from Doyle back at the Wilford apartment.
"You will recognize the handwriting in that notation on the margin," he
remarked, quietly. "It is Mrs. Wilford's. Her sentiment, taken from the
poem, is interesting."
Lathrop read it and then reread it to gain time, for it was some
moments before he could look up, as though he had to make up his mind
just what to say.
"Very pretty thought." He nodded, scarcely committing himself.
Lathrop seemed a trifle uneasy.
"I thought it a rather strange coincidence, taken with the bit I
learned of her dreams," remarked Kennedy.
Lathrop's glance at Kennedy was one of estimation, but I saw that
Kennedy was carefully concealing just how much, or rather at present
how little, he actually knew.
"Ordinarily," remarked Lathrop, clearing his throat, "professional
ethics would seal my lips, but in this instance, since you seem to
think that you know so much, I will tell you--something. I don't
like to talk about my patients, and I won't, but, in justice to Mrs.
Wilford, I cannot let this pass."
He cleared his throat again and leaned back in his chair, regarding
Kennedy watchfully through his glasses as he spoke.
"Some time ago," he resumed, slowly, "Mrs. Wilford came to me to be
treated. She said that she suffered from sleeplessness--and then when
she slept that her rest was broken by such horrible fantasies."
Kennedy nodded, as though fully conversant already with what the doctor
had said.
"There were dreams of her husband," he continued, "morbid fears. One
very frequent dream was of him engaged in what seemed to be a terrific
struggle, although she has never been able to tell me just with what
or whom he seemed to struggle. She told me she always had a feeling of
powerlessness when in that dream, as though unable to run to him and
help him. Then there were other dreams that she had, especially the
dreams of a funeral procession, and always in the coffin she saw his
face."
Kennedy nodded again. "Yes, I know of those dreams," he remarked,
casually. "And of some others."
For a moment Kennedy's manner seemed to take the doctor off his
professional guard--or did he intend it to seem so?
"Only the other day," Lathrop went on, a moment later, "she told me
of another dream. In it she seemed to be attacked by a bull. She fled
from it, but as it pursued her it seemed to gain on her, and she said
she could even feel its hot breath--it was so close. Then, in her
dream, in fright, as she ran over the field, hoping to gain a clump of
woods, she stumbled and almost fell. She caught herself and ran on. She
expected momentarily to be gored by the bull, but, strangely enough,
the dream went no farther. It changed. She seemed, she said, to be in
the midst of a crowd and in place of the bull pursuing her was now
a serpent. It crept over the ground after her and hissed, seemed to
fascinate her, and she trembled so that she could no longer run. Her
terror, by this time, was so great that she awoke. She tells me that as
often as she dreamed them she never finished either dream."
"Very peculiar," commented Kennedy. "You have records of what she has
told you?"
"Yes. I may say that I have asked her to make a record of her dreams,
as well as other data which I thought might be of use in the diagnosis
and treatment of her nervous troubles."
"Might I see them?"
Lathrop shook his head emphatically.
"By no means. I consider that they are privileged, confidential
communications between patient and physician--not only illegal, but
absolutely unethical to divulge. There's one strange thing, though,
that I may be at liberty to add, since you know something already.
Always, she says, these animals in the dreams seemed to be endowed with
a sort of human personality. Both the bull and the serpent seemed to
have human faces."
Kennedy nodded at the surprising information. If I had expected him to
refer to the dream of Doctor Lathrop which she herself had told, I was
mistaken.
"What do you think is the trouble?" asked Kennedy, at length, quite as
though he had no idea what to make of it.
"Trouble? Nervousness, of course. I readily surmised that not the
dreams were the cause of her nervousness, but that her nervousness
was the cause of her dreams. As for the dreams, they are perfectly
simple, I think you will agree. Her nervousness brought back into
her recollection something that had once worried her. By careful
questioning I think I discovered what was back of her dreams, at least
in part. It's nothing you won't discover soon, if you haven't already
discovered it. It was an engagement broken before her marriage to
Wilford."
"I see," nodded Kennedy.
"In the dreams, you remember, she saw a half-human face on the animals.
It was the face of Vance Shattuck."
"I gathered as much," prompted Kennedy.
"It seems that she was once engaged to him--that she broke the
engagement because of reports she heard about his escapades. I do
not say this to disparage Mr. Shattuck. Far from that. He is a fine
fellow--an intimate friend of mine, fellow-clubmate, and all that sort
of thing. That was all before he made his trips abroad--hunting,
mostly, everywhere from the Arctic to Africa. The fact of the matter
is, as I happen to know, that since he traveled abroad he has greatly
settled down in his habits. And then, who of us has not sown his wild
oats?"
The doctor smiled indulgently at the easy-going doctrine that is now so
rapidly passing, especially among medical men.
"Well," he concluded, "that is the story. Make the most of it you can."
"Very strange--very," remarked Kennedy, then, changing the angle of the
subject, asked, "You are acquainted with the recent work and the rather
remarkable dream theories of Doctor Freud?"
Doctor Lathrop nodded. "Yes," he replied, slowly, "I am acquainted with
them--and I dissent vigorously from most of Freud's conclusions."
Kennedy was about to reply to this rather sweeping categorical manner
of settling the question, when, as we talked, it became evident that
there was some one just outside the partly open doors of the inner
office. I had seen a woman anxiously hovering about, but had said
nothing.
"Is that you, Vina?" called Doctor Lathrop, also catching sight of her
in the hall.
"Yes," she replied, parting the portières and nodding to us. "I beg
pardon for interrupting. I was waiting for you to get through, Irvin,
but I've an appointment down-town. I'm sure you won't mind?"
Vina Lathrop was indeed a striking woman; dark of hair, perhaps a bit
artificial, but of the sort which is the more fascinating to study just
because of that artificiality; perhaps not the type of woman most men
might think of marrying, but one whom few would fail to be interested
in. She seemed to be more of a man's woman than a woman's woman.
"You will excuse me a moment?" begged the doctor, rising. "So, you
see," he finished with us, "when you asked me whether she was friendly
with Shattuck, it is quite the opposite, I should--"
"You're talking of Honora?" interrupted the doctor's wife.
Doctor Lathrop introduced us, as there seemed to be nothing else to do,
but I do not think he was quite at ease.
"I don't think I would have said that," she hastened, almost ignoring,
except by an inclination of the head, the introduction in the eagerness
to express an idea his words had suggested. "I don't think Honora is
capable of either deep love or even deep hate."
"A sort of marble woman?" suggested the doctor, at first biting his
lips at having her in the conversation, then affecting to be amused, as
though at one woman's spontaneous estimate of another.
Vina shrugged her prettily rounded shoulders, but said no more on the
subject.
"I sha'n't be gone long," she nodded back. "Just a bit of business."
She was gone before the doctor could say a word. Had the remark in some
way been a shot at the doctor? All did not appear to be as serene
between this couple as they might outwardly have us believe.
I saw that the interruption had not been lost on Kennedy. Had it been
really an interest in our visit that had prompted it? Somehow, I
wondered whether it might not have been this woman who had called up
Shattuck while we were there. But why?
We left the doctor a few minutes later, more than ever convinced that
the mystery in the strange death of Vail Wilford was not so simple as
it seemed.
III
THE FREUD THEORY
"Until I receive those materials from Doctor Leslie to make the poison
tests," considered Kennedy, as we walked slowly the few blocks to the
laboratory, "I can't see that there is much I can do but wait."
In his laboratory, he paused before his well-stocked shelves with their
miscellaneous collection of books on almost every conceivable subject.
Absently he selected a volume. I could see that it was one of the
latest translated treatises on this new psychology from the pen of the
eminent scientist, Dr. Sigmund Freud, and that it bore the significant
title, _The Interpretation of Dreams_.
Craig glanced through it mechanically, then laid it aside. For a few
moments he sat at his desk, hunched forward, staring straight ahead and
drumming his fingers thoughtfully. I leaned over and my eye happened to
fall on the following paragraphs:
"To him who is tortured by physical and mental sufferings the
dream accords what has been denied him by reality, to wit,
physical well-being and happiness; so the insane, too, see
the bright pictures of happiness, greatness, sublimity, and
riches. The supposed possession of estates and the imaginary
fulfilment of wishes, the denial or destruction of which
has just served as the psychic cause of the insanity, often
form the main content of the delirium. The woman who has
lost a dearly beloved child, in her delirium experiences
maternal joys; the man who has suffered reverses of fortune
sees himself immensely wealthy, and the jilted girl pictures
herself in the bliss of tender love."
The above passage from Radestock reveals with the greatest
clearness the wish-fulfilment as a characteristic of the
imagination, common to the dream and the psychosis.
It is easy to show that the character of wish-fulfilment in
dreams is often undisguised and recognizable, so that one may
wonder why the language of dreams has not long since been
understood.
I read this and more, but, as I merely skimmed it, I could not say that
I understood it. I turned to Kennedy, still abstracted.
"Then you really regard the dreams as important?" I asked, all thought
of finishing my own article on art abandoned for the present in the
fascination of the mysterious possibilities opened up by the Wilford
case.
"Important?" he repeated. "Immensely so--indispensable, as a matter of
fact."
I could only stare at him. The mere thought that anything so freakish,
so uncontrollable as a dream might have a serious importance in a
murder case had never entered my mind.
"If I can get at the truth of the case," he explained, "it must be
through these dreams."
"But how are you going to do that?" I asked, voicing the thought
that had been forming. "To me, dreams seem to be just disconnected
phantasmagoria of ideas--arising nowhere and getting nowhere, as far as
I can see--interesting, perhaps, but--still, well, just chaotic."
"Quite the contrary, Walter," he corrected. "If you had kept abreast
with the best recent work in psychology, you wouldn't say that."
"Well, what is this wonderful Freud theory, anyhow?" I asked, a bit
nettled at his positive tone. "What do we know now that we didn't know
before?"
"Very much," he replied, thoughtfully. "There's just this to be said
about dreams to-day. A few years ago they were all but inexplicable.
The accepted explanations, then, were positively misleading and
productive of all sorts of misapprehension and downright charlatanry."
"All right," I argued. "That's just my idea of dreams. Tell me what it
is that the modern dream-books have to say about them, then."
"Don't be frivolous, Walter," Craig frowned. "Dreams used to be
treated very seriously, it is true, by the ancients. But, as I just
said, until recently modern scientists, rejecting the beliefs of the
dark ages, as they thought, scouted dreams as senseless jumbles of
ideas, uncontrolled, in sleep. That's your class, Walter," he replied,
witheringly, "with the scientists who thought that they had the last
word, just because it was, to them, the latest."
Though I resented his correction, I said nothing, for I saw that he
was serious. Mindful of many previous encounters with Craig in his own
fields in which I had come off a bad second, I waited prudently.
"To-day, however," he continued, "we study dreams really
scientifically. We believe that whatever is has a reason. Many students
had had the idea that dreams meant something in mental life that was
not just pure fake and nonsense. But until Freud came along with his
theories little progress had been made in the scientific study of
dreams."
"Granted," I replied, now rather interested. "Then what is his theory?"
"Not very difficult to explain, if you will listen carefully a moment,"
Craig went on. "Dreams, says Freud, are very important, instead of
being mere nonsense. They give us the most reliable information
concerning the individual. But that is possible only if the patient is
in entire rapport with the investigator. Later, I may be able to give
you a demonstration of what I mean by that. Now, however, I want you to
understand just what it is that I am seeking to discover and the method
it is my purpose to adopt to attain it."
The farther Kennedy proceeded, the more I found myself interested, in
spite of my assumption of skepticism. In fact, I had assumed the part
more because I wanted to learn from him than for any other reason.
"But how do you think dreams arise in the first place?" I asked, more
sympathetically. "Surely, if they have a meaning that can be discovered
by a scientist like yourself, they must come in some logical way--and
that is the thing I can't understand, first of all."
"Not so difficult. The dream is not an absurd and senseless jumble,
as you seem to think. Really, when it is properly understood, it is a
perfect mechanism and has definite meaning in penetrating the mind."
He was drawing thoughtfully on a piece of paper, as he often did when
his mind was working actively.
"It is as though we had two streams of thought," he explained, "one of
which we allow to flow freely, the other of which we are constantly
repressing, pushing back into the subconscious or the unconscious, as
you will. This matter of the evolution of our individual mental life is
much too long a story for me to go into just at present.
"But the resistances, as they are called, the psychic censors of our
ideas, so to speak, are always active, except in sleep. It is then that
the repressed material comes to the surface. Yet these resistances
never entirely lose their power. The dream, therefore, shows the
material distorted.
"Seldom does one recognize his own repressed thoughts or unattained
wishes. The dream is really the guardian of sleep, to satisfy the
activity of the unconscious and repressed mental processes that would
otherwise disturb sleep by keeping the censor busy. That's why we don't
recognize the distortions. In the case of a nightmare the watchman, or
censor, is aroused, finds himself over-powered, as it were, and calls
for help. Consciousness must often come to the rescue--and we wake up."