the attention of an otherwise inattentive husband, it fills, from the
standpoint of her deeper longing, an important place. In a sense it
might even be said to be desirable for her. You see, the great point
about the psychanalytic method, as discovered by Freud, is that certain
symptoms of hysteria disappear when the hidden causes are brought to
light and the repressed desires are gratified."
"But," I interrupted, "how does this analysis apply to the case of
Honora Wilford?"
Kennedy considered a moment. "Very neatly," he answered. "Honora is
suffering from what the psychanalysts call a psychic trauma--a soul
wound, as it were. Recall, for instance, what our dream analysis has
already shown us--the old love-affair with Shattuck. To her mind, that
was precisely like a wound would have been to the body. It cut deeply.
Seemingly it had healed. Yet the old scar remained--a repressed love.
It could no more be taken away than could a scar be taken from the
face."
"Yet was not open and visible like a physical scar," I agreed.
"Quite the case. Then," he pursued, "came a new wound--the neglect
by her husband whom she thought she loved, and the discovery of Vina
Lathrop as the trouble-maker."
"I begin to see," I returned. "Those two sets of facts, the old scar
and the new wound, are sufficient, you think, to explain much in her
life."
"At least they explain about the hysteria. In her dream, a wave of
recollection swept over her and, so to speak, engulfed her mind. In
other words, reason could no longer dominate the cravings for love
so long repressed. The unconscious strain was too great. Hence the
hysteria--not so much the hysteria and the isolated outburst which
Doyle saw, as the condition back of it which must have continued for
days, perhaps weeks, previous to the actual murder of Wilford."
I frowned and objected inwardly. Was Craig, also, laying a foundation
for the ultimate conviction of Honora?
Before I could question him there was an interruption at the door and I
sprang to open it.
"Hello, Jameson!" greeted Doctor Leslie; then catching sight of
Kennedy, he entered and asked, "Have you discovered anything yet,
Professor?"
"Yes," replied Craig, "I should say I have."
Leslie was himself quite excited and did not wait for Craig to go on.
"So have I," he exclaimed, searching Kennedy's face as he spoke. "Did
you find physostigmine in the stomach contents I sent you? I did in
what I retained."
Kennedy nodded quietly.
"What does it mean?" queried Leslie, puzzled.
Kennedy shook his head gravely. "I can't say--yet," he replied. "It may
mean much before we are through, but for the present I think we had
better go slow with our deductions."
Leslie evidently had hoped that Kennedy's active mind would have
already figured out the explanation. But in cases such as this facts
are more important than clever reasoning and Kennedy was not going to
commit himself.
"Doyle tells me that he has put in a dictagraph in the Wilford
apartment," ventured Leslie, changing the subject unwillingly.
"Has he learned anything yet?"
"No, not yet. It's too soon, I imagine."
Leslie paused and glanced about impatiently. Things were evidently not
going fast enough to suit him. Yet, without Kennedy, he felt himself
helpless. However, there was always one thing about Leslie which I was
forced to like. He was no poser. Even when Doyle and the rest did not
recognize Kennedy's genius, Leslie quite appreciated it. Although he
was a remarkably good physician, he knew that the problems which many
cases presented to him were such that only Kennedy could help him out.
"You've heard nothing more about the gossip regarding Mrs. Lathrop and
Shattuck?" I asked.
"No, nothing about that. But there is something else that I have found
out," he added, after a moment--"something that leads to Wilford's
office."
Kennedy was interested in a moment. We had been so occupied with the
case that we had not even a chance to go down there yet, although that
would have been one of the first things to do, ordinarily, unless,
as in this case, we were almost certain that the ransacking of Doyle
and Leslie had destroyed those first clues that come only when one is
called immediately on a case.
"I've been looking about the place," went on Leslie, encouraged by
Kennedy's interest. "I knew you'd be busy with other things. Well, I've
discovered one of the other tenants in the building who did not leave
his office on the same floor until just after seven o'clock last night."
"Yes?" inquired Craig. "Did he see or hear anything?"
Leslie nodded. "Early in the evening there must have been a woman who
visited Wilford," he hastened.
"Who was she?"
"The tenant doesn't know."
"Did he see her?"
"No. He remembers hearing a voice on the other side of the door to the
hall. He didn't see any one, he says, and it is quite likely. When I
asked him if he overheard anything, he replied that he could catch only
a word here and there. There was one sentence he caught as he closed
his own door."
"And that was--?"
"Rather loudly, the woman said: 'Give her up, Vail. Can't you see she
really doesn't love you--never did--never could?'"
Leslie paused to watch the effect of the sentence on us. I, too,
studied Kennedy's face.
"Did she leave soon?" asked Craig.
Leslie shook his head. "I don't know. The tenant left and that was all
I heard."
"Well, Wilford was not dead then, we know," considered Craig. "Could
she have been there when he died? Of course you don't know."
"It's possible," replied Leslie.
To myself, I repeated the words: "Give her up, Vail. Can't you see she
really doesn't love you--never did--never could?"
A few hours ago I should have been forced to conclude that only Vina
might have said it, knowing as she did the peculiar nature of Honora
and the relations between Wilford and his wife. But now, with the hints
discovered by Leslie and amplified by Miss Balcom, I could not be so
sure. The remark might have come equally well from Honora herself and
have applied to Vina--for Honora, too, might have known that it was not
love for Wilford that prompted Vina's interest in her husband, but the
desire to make sure of her divorce for the purpose of being free to
capture Vance Shattuck.
Interesting and important as the discovery was, it did not help us,
except that it added to the slender knowledge we had of what had taken
place at the office. A woman had been there. Who it was, whether Honora
or Vina, we did not know. Nor did we know how long she had stayed,
whether she might merely have dropped in and have gone before the crime
was committed.
"You've told Doyle?" asked Kennedy.
"Naturally. I had to tell him. Remember, it was much later that he
found that some one else had been at the office, according to the
janitor's story."
"I do remember. That's just what I have been thinking about. I suppose
he'll tell it all around--he usually does use such things in his
third-degree manner."
Leslie smiled, then sobered. "Quite likely. Does it make any
difference?"
"Not a bit. I'm rather hoping he does tell it around. I've decided in
this case to play the game with the cards on the table. Then some one
is sure to make a false move and expose his hand, I feel sure."
Quickly I canvassed the situation. All might be involved, in one way
or another--either Vina or Honora might have been the early visitor;
later it might have been either Shattuck or even Lathrop, or perhaps
neither, who had been there, as far as the janitor's vague observation
was concerned.
"There was something strange that went on at that office the night of
the murder," ruminated Kennedy. "Maybe there is some clue down there,
after all, that has been overlooked. You've searched, you say. Doyle
has searched. The place must have been pretty well gone over. However,
I can see nothing left but to search again," he decided, quickly. "We
must go down there."
X
THE ORDEAL BEAN
Wilford's office was in an old building of the days when a structure of
five or six stories, with a cast-iron, ornamented front, was considered
a wonderful engineering achievement. It was down-town, in the heart
of the financial district, and had been chosen by Wilford, without a
doubt, to convey an impression of solidity and conservatism, a useful
camouflage to cover the essential character of his law practice as
scandal attorney.
We climbed the worn stairs with Leslie, and, as we mounted, I noticed
that there was also, down the hall, a back stairway, evidently placed
there in case of fire. Hence, it was possible, I reasoned, for a person
to have slipped in or out practically unobserved from the front.
We knew now that at least one person, probably two, had been there,
though who they were we did not know. Nor was there yet any clue,
except that certainly a woman had visited Wilford, at least early in
the evening.
Wilford's office was on the third floor, in the front. We entered
and looked about. Past the outer railing and outer office was his own
sanctum.
It was furnished lavishly with divans and settees in mahogany and dark
leather, with elaborate hangings over the windows and on the walls.
There were law-books, but only, it seemed, for the purpose of giving a
legal flavor to the place. Most of the legal library was outside. The
office was rather like a den than a lawyer's office.
Reflecting, I could see the reason. Society must be made welcome here,
and at ease. Besides, the conservative surroundings were quite valuable
in covering up the profession--I had almost said, business--of divorce
made easy and pleasant. I recalled Rascon and the crook detectives
who made little concealment of their business--"Evidence for divorce
furnished." Doubtless many of these gentry had found occupation from
this source. What stories these walls might have told! They would have
made even Belle Balcom's ears tingle.
At once Kennedy began his search of the office, going over everything
minutely but quickly, while we waited, apart.
"Not even a finger-print has been left unobscured!" he exclaimed, finally,
almost ready in disgust to give it up. "It is shameful--shameful," he
muttered. "When will they learn to let things alone until some one
comes who knows the scientific importance of little things! If only I
could have been first on the job."
"There's the typewriter," suggested Leslie, trying to divert attention
and smooth things over.
"Have you the letter?" asked Craig.
Leslie drew it eagerly from his pocket and unfolded it. Kennedy took
it, spread it out and studied it a moment:
HONORA:
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.
Then Craig moved over and sat at the typewriter. Quickly he struck
several keys, then made a hasty comparison of the note with what he had
written.
"The 's' and the 'r' are out of alignment, the 'e' battered--in both,"
he concluded, hurriedly, as though merely confirming what he was
already convinced of. "There are enough marks to identify the writing
as having been done on this machine, all right. No, there's nothing in
this note--except what is back of it, and we do not know that yet. Did
Wilford write that letter, or was it written for him? It could hardly
have been done voluntarily."
"It was in this desk chair that we found him sprawled--so," illustrated
Doctor Leslie, dropping into the chair. Then, straightening up, he
indicated the big flat-topped desk in the middle of the room. "The two
glasses were on this desk--one of them here, the other over there."
As he pointed the spots out, one of them near where he was, the other
near the outer edge of the desk, Kennedy's eye fell on the desk
calendar.
"I removed the pages I told you about," supplied Leslie, noticing the
direction of Craig's glance. "It's a loose-leaf affair, as you see.
Here they are."
Leslie drew from his pocket the leaves for the various days, and we
looked at them again, with their notations--one reading, "Prepare
papers in proposed case of Lathrop _vs._ Lathrop." Others read, "Vina
at four," and other dates, with hours attached. There were several of
them, more than would seem to have been necessary were the relation
merely that of lawyer and client for so brief a time. There were none
for the day of the murder however.
Kennedy continued the search, now rummaging the papers, now directing
either Leslie or myself to bring him objects.
He had asked me for a letter-file, and I was turning from a cabinet to
hand it to him when my foot kicked some small, soft object lying along
the edge of the rug. The thing, whatever it was, flew over and hit the
baseboard.
Mechanically I reached down and picked the object up, holding it in the
palm of my hand.
It seemed to be a rough-coated, grayish-brown bean, of irregular,
kidney shape, about an inch long and half an inch thick, with two
margins, one short and concave, the other long and convex. The surfaces
were rounded slightly, but flattened. The coat of the bean was glossy.
Kennedy, with quick eye, had noted that I had picked up something and
was over at my side in a moment.
"What's that?" he asked quickly, taking the thing from my hand as I
turned to him.
He looked at it critically for a moment. Then he pressed the hard outer
coat until it parted slightly, disclosing inside two creamy white
cotyledons. He studied them for some time, then pressed the bean back
into shape again as it had been before.
I was about to ask what he thought it was, and where it came from, when
there was a noise in the direction of the door. We turned to see that
it was a man in overalls shuffling in, his cap in his hand.
"Oh, beggin' your pardon, Doctor," he addressed Leslie, "I heard some
one here. I didn't know it was you."
It was the night watchman who had been off the job on perhaps the only
occasion in years when it would have meant much for him to have been on
it, but was making up for his laxity now by excessive vigilance.
"Pete," demanded Leslie, sharply, "did you see a woman here that night?"
"N-no, sir--that is, sir--I don't know. There was some one here--but
Mr. Wilford, he kept such late hours and irregular that I thought
nothing of it. I thought it was all right, sir. Later, when I didn't
hear any voices, I thought they had gone home. I didn't see the lights
burnin'--you wouldn't ha' noticed that, except from the other side of
the street. I s'pose that's why they didn't discover the body till
mornin'. But a woman here--no, sir, I can't say as I'd say that, sir."
Whatever else there might have been said about Pete, it was evident
that he was perfectly honest. He even confessed his lack of observation
and his inefficiency with utter frankness. There did not seem to be
a hope of obtaining anything by questioning Pete. He had told all he
really knew. Others might have embellished the story had they been in
his place, and so have led us astray. At least he had the merit of not
doing that.
"So--here you are," exclaimed a deep voice at the door.
It was Doyle, flushed and excited.
"You may go, Pete," nodded Leslie to the janitor, who backed out of the
room, still pulling at his cap.
Alone, Doyle turned to us.
"Confound Shattuck!" he exclaimed. "That man is the limit. I'll get
him, if he doesn't look out. He's a game bird--but he flies funny."
"Why, what has he done now?" asked Kennedy.
"Done?" fumed Doyle. "Done? Been threatening, I hear, to have me
'broke'--that's all. I don't care about that, not a whoop--even if he
had the influence with the administration. What I care about is that
he is putting every obstacle in the way of my finding out anything from
that woman. She's hard enough to manage, Heaven knows, without his
butting in."
"What about that bean Jameson picked up here?" asked Leslie,
impatiently, as Doyle paused. "Have you any idea what it may be?"
"A bean?" inquired Doyle, looking from one of us to the other and not
understanding. "A bean? Picked up here? Why, what do you mean?"
I was inclined to be vexed at Leslie for having mentioned it, but I
soon saw that Kennedy betrayed no traces of annoyance. On the contrary,
he seemed rather eager to answer, as he drew the thing from his pocket,
where he had placed it when Pete came in.
"Just something Jameson happened to find on the very edge of the rug,
quite by accident, over by the letter-files," Craig explained, with a
certain gusto at showing Doyle a thing that he had overlooked. "Ever
see anything like it?"
Doyle took the bean, but it was evident that both it and its discovery
meant nothing to him.
"No," he admitted, reluctantly. "What is it?"
"Without a doubt it is one of the famous so-called 'ordeal beans' of
Calabar," replied Kennedy, offhand.
"Calabar?" I repeated, in surprise. "Why, that's a place on the west
coast of Africa, isn't it? What would a Calabar bean be lying on the
floor here for?"
"What do you mean--ordeal bean?" questioned Doyle, somewhat
incredulously, while Leslie maintained a discreet silence.
"In the Calabar, where these things grow," explained Kennedy, not put
out for an instant, "as you perhaps know, they have a strange form
of dueling with these seeds. Two opponents divide a bean. Each eats
a half. It is some religious ceremony--voodoo, or some such thing, I
suppose--a superstition. Sometimes both die--for the bean contains
physostigmine and is the chief source from which this drug is obtained."
"You mean they _eat_ it--a poison?" I asked.
"Certainly. Over there, the natives believe that God will decide who
is guilty and who is innocent, and that he will miraculously spare the
innocent. I suppose that sometimes one gets a half a bean that doesn't
contain so high a percentage of the poison--or else some people are not
so susceptible to its toxin, or something like that. Anyhow, that's one
way they use it."
"Why," I exclaimed, "that is primitive justice, you might say--the duel
by poison!"
"Exactly," Craig nodded.
Doyle stared, amazed and puzzled.
"No worse than some of the things our ancestors did, not many centuries
ago," reminded Craig. "They used to have all sorts of ordeals, by fire
and water and what not. We haven't progressed so far over the savages,
after all. Civilization is only a veneer, and pretty thin, sometimes.
Underneath we're quite like the savage--only we substitute mechanical
war for brute strength and high finance for highway robbery. The
caveman and the cavewoman are in all of us--only we manage either to
control them or conceal them--except when something happens that means
calling in either Doyle or myself."
"What's this--phy--physos--what you call it?" demanded Doyle,
forgetting to conceal his ignorance in his curiosity.
"A drug," replied Kennedy. "One effect it has is to contract the pupil
of the eye. Both Leslie and I have discovered considerable traces of it
in Wilford's stomach. In such quantities, it would be very poisonous.
By the way, this bean would account also for those starch grains I
found, Walter," added Kennedy.
"Then you mean you think that Wilford ate one of these things?" queried
Leslie.
"That there was a--duel by poison?" demanded Doyle, hesitating over the
words I had used.
"I know he must have eaten one of those beans," asserted Kennedy. "What
else could it have been? He certainly didn't eat this one, though.
There must have been more. This one must have dropped on the floor in
the excitement and have been overlooked. You didn't find any traces of
others about, did you?" he added, looking from Doyle to Leslie.
Leslie shook his head negatively. Doyle's puzzled face was answer
enough from him.
I considered a moment as an idea struck me, offering a refuge from an
unpleasant implication of Kennedy's remarks which I foresaw and which I
knew would occur to Doyle, if not directly, at least very soon.
"Shattuck has traveled widely," I remarked, reflectively. "He himself
told us, you recall, that he had hunted big game in Africa. Perhaps he
has been in the Calabar, too--at any rate somewhere on that continent
where he might have learned of these beans and the use to which the
natives put them."
Kennedy nodded again, cautiously.
"A good many such beans are imported for medical purposes to obtain
the physostigmine from them," Craig remarked, carefully. "It's the
source of the drug. Don't jump too hastily at your conclusions,
Walter. Remember, physostigmine is a drug that is known and used by
oculists, too, for its effect on the pupil of the eye, the opposite of
belladonna."
I could have sworn at Kennedy for that. It was just the idea that I had
wanted to keep away from Doyle. I had known that he would pounce on it
like a hawk. Now I was sure that he would use it against Honora.
"Oh--oculists use it, do they?" repeated Doyle, running true to form.
"Ah--I see."
He looked about, from one to the other of us, knowingly. No one said
anything as he continued to gaze with superior slyness at us, regarding
us as poor simpletons who were unable to see through a millstone with
a hole in it.
"I see--I see," he added. "Honora--Chappelle. That was her name before
she was married. Her father was a Frenchman, Honore Chappelle--an
oculist--well known in the city before he died. Oh, that's very
important, then, that about this bean and the physostigmine, or
whatever you call it. And, Leslie, you say you've discovered that some
one--a woman--was here early in the evening. Can't we put two and two
together? She's lying when she says she wasn't out of that house, she
is. So is that Celeste, the hussy. Depend on it, she was here. I'm on
the right track, all right," Doyle concluded with a cocksure shake of
the head that was more irritating than any amount of ignorance on his
part would have been.
I did not reply. I understood the purport of the broad insinuation that
Doyle was making. Also, I saw the real reason of Kennedy's remark to
me, cautioning me to make haste slowly in deducing anything from the,
as yet, slender facts of the case.
I thought a moment. Far from eliminating anybody, the discovery of the
Calabar bean left us scarcely a bit ahead of where we had been before.
With a keen repulsion against the very idea and its implications as
seen by the astute Doyle, I still was forced to admit that Honora
Wilford's father had been an oculist and that it was perfectly true
that she had every opportunity to have learned of the ordeal bean and
its drug. Yet I kept asking myself what, after all, that might mean.
Purposely Kennedy reverted to the Calabar bean and the remarks of Doyle
that had started the conversation.
"If Shattuck gets too brash," hinted Kennedy, "spring this information
on him. Perhaps it might interest him."
As he said it, I remembered what Craig had said in the laboratory only
a short time before--that he was going to tell part of what he had
found, as he went along, in the hope that the actions of each suspect
who heard it might perhaps betray some thing. There was some crumb of
comfort in that, I felt, as far as Honora herself was concerned. Yet I
felt uncomfortable and misgiving.
We parted from Leslie and Doyle, and as we went up-town again I could
not help remarking that somehow the apparent effort of Shattuck to
hamper us was suspicious. Kennedy said very little, but when we got off
at the station on the Subway just before our own, I saw that he was not
yet through.
It did not take long to elicit from him the information that, while he
felt he could trust Doyle to convey the information about the discovery
and the drug to both Shattuck and Honora before long, the case was
different as far as Vina and Doctor Lathrop were concerned.
As we entered Doctor Lathrop's office, we found that not only was he
there, but that his wife was there also. However, it was quite evident
that they had been having words, and all was not as serene between
them as they would have us wish, by the forced looks on their faces. In
short, they had been quarreling.
I could have guessed what it was about, but Kennedy affected not to
notice that anything was wrong and I fancied that Vina, at least, wore
a look of relief as she saw that he was not paying any attention to it.
Briefly, Kennedy outlined what we had found--the physostigmine in the
stomach, the poison, the bean itself, which he took particular pains to
describe along with the circumstances under which it had been found.
"Did you ever have any of these ordeal beans?" asked Kennedy,
displaying the one we had found.
"I have had them," admitted Lathrop.