AN INCREDIBLE CASE
When Lockwood returned to the study, he found the Medical Examiner and
Doctor Greenfield in consultation.
The Examiner was a large, pompous-looking man, with an air of authority.
He looked at Gordon Lockwood from beneath his heavy brows, and demanded,
“What do you know of this?”
The younger man resented the tone but he knew the question was justified,
and so he replied, respectfully:
“Nothing more than you can see for yourself, sir. I broke in at that
glass door, being unable to get in any other way, and I found Doctor
Waring—as you see him now.”
“There was some other way, though, to get in and out,” Examiner Marsh
stated.
“Positively not,” Lockwood repeated.
“Don’t contradict me! I tell you there must have been—for this man was
murdered.”
“Impossible, sir,” and Lockwood’s eyes met the Examiner’s with a gaze
fully as calm and insistent as his own.
“Very well, then, how came he by his death?”
“I am not the Examiner,” the Secretary said, and he folded his arms and
leaned against the corner of the great mantelpiece; “but since you ask
me, I will repeat that there was no way of ingress into this room last
night, and that necessarily, the case is a suicide.”
“Just so; and, granting that, will you suggest what may have become of
the weapon that was used?”
“What was the weapon?” Lockwood asked, not so disturbed by the question
as the Examiner had expected him to be.
“That is what puzzles me,” returned Doctor Marsh. “As you can clearly see
the wound was inflicted with a sharp instrument. The man was stabbed just
below his right ear. The jugular vein was pierced, and he bled to death.
A plexus of nerves was pierced also, and this fact doubtless rendered the
victim unconscious at once—I mean as soon as the stab wound was made,
though he may have been alive for a few minutes thereafter.”
Gordon Lockwood gazed imperturbably at the speaker. He had always prided
himself on his unshakable calm, and now he exhibited its full
possibilities. It annoyed Doctor Marsh, who was accustomed to having his
statements accepted without question. He took a sudden dislike to this
calm young man, who presumed to differ from his deductions.
“I must say,” observed the mild-mannered Doctor Greenfield, “I knew
Doctor Waring very well, and he was surely the last person I would expect
to kill himself. Especially at the present time—when he was looking
forward to high honors in the College and also expected to marry a
charming lady.”
“That isn’t the point,” exclaimed Doctor Marsh, impatiently. “The point
is, if he killed himself, where is the weapon?”
“I admit it isn’t in view—and I admit that seems strange,” Lockwood
agreed, “but it may yet be discovered, while a way of getting into a
locked room cannot be found.”
“All of which is out of your jurisdiction, young man,” and Marsh looked
at him severely. “The police will be here soon, and I’ve no doubt they
will learn the truth, whatever it may be. What instrument do you deduce,
Doctor Greenfield?”
“That’s hard to say,” replied Greenfield, slowly. “You see the aperture
it made is a perfectly round hole. Now, most daggers or poniards are
flat-bladed. I’m not sure a real weapon is ever round. The hole is much
too large to have been made by a hatpin—it is as big as a—a—”
“Slate pencil,” suggested the Examiner.
“Yes, or a trifle larger—but not so large as a lead-pencil.”
“A lead-pencil could hardly accomplish the deed,” Marsh mused. “A
slate-pencil might have—but that is a most unusual weapon.”
“How about a bill-file?” asked Doctor Greenfield. “I knew of a man killed
with one.”
“Yes, but where is the bill-file?” asked Marsh. “There’s one on the desk,
to be sure, but it is full of papers, and shows no sign of having been
used for a criminal purpose. If, as Mr. Lockwood insists, this is a
suicide case, the victim positively could not have cleaned that file and
restored the papers after stabbing himself!”
“He most certainly could not have done that!” declared Doctor Greenfield.
Marsh examined the file carefully. It was an ordinary affair consisting
of a steel spike on a bronze standard. It would without doubt make an
efficacious implement of murder, but it was difficult to believe it had
been used in that way. For the bills and memoranda it contained were, to
all appearance, just as they had been thrust on the sharp point—and
surely, had they been removed and replaced, they would have shown traces
of such moving.
“Anyway,” Doctor Greenfield said, after another examination, “the hole in
the side of Waring’s neck seems to me to have been made with an
instrument slightly larger than that file. Surely, there are round
stilettos, are there not?”
“Yes, there are,” said Lockwood, “I have seen them.”
“Where?” demanded the Examiner, suddenly turning on him.
“Why—I don’t know.” For once, the Secretary’s calm was a trifle shaken.
“I should say in museums—or in private collections, perhaps.”
“Are you familiar with so many private collections of strange weapons
that you can’t remember where you have seen a round-shaped blade?”
Examiner Marsh stared hard at him and Lockwood became taciturn again.
“Exactly that,” he conceded. “I have sometime, somewhere, seen a
round-bladed stiletto—but I cannot remember where.”
“Better brush up your memory,” Marsh told him, and then the police
arrived.
The local police of Corinth were rather proud of themselves as a whole,
and they had reason to be. Under a worthwhile chief the men had been well
trained, and were alert, energetic and capable.
Detective Morton, who took this matter in charge, went straight to work
in a most business-like way.
He examined the body of John Waring, not as the medical men had done, but
merely to find possible clues to the manner of his death.
“What’s this ring on his forehead?” he asked, looking at the dead man’s
face.
“I don’t know—that struck me as queer,” said Greenfield. “What is it,
Doctor Marsh?”
The Examiner peered through his glasses.
“I can’t make that out, myself,” he confessed, frankly.
Morton looked more closely.
There was a red circle on Waring’s forehead, that looked as if it had
been put there of some purpose.
A perfect circle it was, about two inches in diameter, and it was red and
sunken into the flesh, as if it might have been done with a branding
iron.
“Not a very hot one, though,” Morton remarked, after suggesting this,
“but surely somebody did it. I’ll say it’s the sign or seal of the
murderer himself. For a dead man couldn’t do it, and there’s no sense in
assuming that Doctor Waring branded himself before committing suicide.
Was it done before or after death?” he asked of the two doctors present.
“Before, I should say,” Doctor Greenfield opined.
“Yes,” concurred Marsh, “but not long before. I’m not sure it is a
brand—such a mark could have been made with, say, a small cup or
tumbler.”
“But what reason is there in that?” exclaimed Morton. “Even a lunatic
murderer wouldn’t mark his victim by means of a tumbler rim.”
Absorbedly, he picked up a tumbler from the water tray, and fitted it to
the red mark on Waring’s forehead.
“It doesn’t fit exactly,” he said, “but it does almost.”
“Rubbish!” said Gordon Lockwood, in his superior way. “Why would any one
mark Doctor Waring’s face with a tumbler?”
“Yet it has been marked,” Morton looked at the secretary sharply. “Can
you suggest any explanation—however difficult of belief?”
“No,” Lockwood said. “Unless he fell over on some round thing as he
died.”
“There’s nothing here,” said Morton, scanning the furnishings of the desk
“The inkstand is closed—and it’s a smaller round, anyway. There’s no one
of these desk fittings that could possibly have made that mark.
Therefore, since it was made before death, it must have been done by the
murderer.”
“Or by the suicide,” Lockwood insisted firmly.
Morton, looking at the secretary, decided to keep an eye on this cool
chap, who must have some reason for repeating his opinion of suicide.
“Now,” the detective said, briskly, “to get to business, I must make
inquiries of the family—the household. Suppose I see them in some other
room—”
“Yes,” agreed Lockwood, with what seemed to Morton suspicious eagerness.
Why should the secretary be so obviously pleased to leave the
study—though, to be sure, it was a grewsome place just now.
“Wait a minute,” Morton said, “how about robbery? Has anything been
missed?”
Lockwood looked surprised.
“I never thought to look,” he said; “assuming suicide, of course robbery
didn’t occur to me.” He looked round the room. “Nothing seems to be
missing.”
“Stay on guard, Higby,” the detective said to a policeman, and then asked
the secretary where he could interview the housekeeper and the servants.
Lockwood took Morton to the living-room, and there they found Mrs. Bates
as well as the two Peytons.
Though her eyes showed traces of tears, Emily Bates was composed and met
the detective with an appealing face.
“Do find the murderer!” she cried; “I don’t care how much that room was
locked up, I know John Waring never killed himself! Why would he do it?
Did ever a man have so much to live for? He couldn’t have taken his
life!”
“I’m inclined to agree with you, Mrs. Bates,” Morton told her, “yet you
must see the difficulties in the way of a murder theory. I’m told the
room was inaccessible. Is not that right, Mrs. Peyton?”
Flustered at the sudden question the housekeeper wrung her hands and
burst into tears. “Oh, don’t ask me,” she wailed, “I don’t know anything
about it!”
“Nothing indicative, perhaps,” and Morton spoke more gently, “but at
least, tell me all you do know. When did you see Doctor Waring last?”
“At the supper table, last evening.”
“Not after supper at all?”
“No; that is, I didn’t _see_ him. I am training a new servant, and I
watched him as he took a tray of water pitcher and glasses into the
study, but I didn’t look in, nor did I see the doctor.”
“Did you hear him?”
“I don’t think I heard him speak. I heard a paper rustle, and I knew he
was there.”
“The servant came right out again?”
“Yes; my attention was all on him. I told him exactly what to do during
the evening.”
“What were those instructions?”
“To attend to his dining-room duties, putting away the supper dishes and
that, and then to stay about, on duty, until Doctor Waring left his study
and went to bed.”
“This servant had done these things before?”
“Not these things. He arrived but a few days ago, and Ito the butler,
attended to the Doctor. But Sunday afternoon and evening Ito has off, so
I began to train Nogi.”
“And this Nogi has disappeared?”
“Yes; he is not to be found this morning. Nor has his bed been
disturbed.”
“Then we may take it he left in the night or early morning. Now the
doctors judge that Doctor Waring died about midnight. We must therefore
admit the possibility of a connection between the Jap’s disappearance and
the Doctor’s death.”
At this suggestion, Gordon Lockwood looked interested. Whereas he had
preserved a stony calm, his face now showed deep attention to the
detective’s words and he nodded his head in agreement.
“You think so, too, Mr. Lockwood?” Morton asked, in that sudden and often
disconcerting way of his.
“I don’t say I think so,” the secretary returned, quietly, “but I do
admit a possibility.”
“It would seem so,” Mrs. Peyton put in, “if Nogi could have got into the
study. But he couldn’t. You know it was locked—impossible, Mr. Lockwood?”
“Yes,” Gordon returned. “I heard Doctor Waring lock his door.”
“When was that?” asked the detective, sharply.
“I should say about ten o’clock.”
“Where were you, then?”
“Sitting in the window nook outside the study door.”
“Could you not, then, hear anything that went on in the study?”
“Probably not. The walls and door are thick—they were made so for the
doctor’s sake—he desired absolute privacy, and freedom from interruption
or overhearing. No, I could not know what was taking place in that
room—if anything was, at that time.”
“At what time did you last see the doctor?”
“After supper I went with him to the study. I looked after his wants,
getting him a number of books from the shelves, and selecting from his
files such notes or manuscript as he asked for. Those are my duties as
secretary.”
“And then?”
“Then he practically dismissed me, saying I might leave for the night.
But I remained in the hall window until eleven o’clock.”
“Why did you do this?”
“Out of consideration for my employer. He was exceedingly busy and if a
caller came, I could probably attend to his wants and spare the doctor an
interruption.”
“Did any one call?”
“No one.”
“Yet you remained until eleven?”
“Yes; I was doing some work of my own, and it was later than I thought,
when I decided to go home.”
“And you spoke to the Doctor before leaving?”
“As is my custom, I tapped lightly at the door and said good-night. This
is my rule, when he is busy, and if he makes no response, or merely
murmurs good-night, I know there are no further orders till morning, and
I go home.”
“Did he respond to your rap last night?”
“I—I cannot say. I heard him murmur a good-night but if he did, it was so
low as to be almost inaudible. I thought nothing of it. Since he did not
call out. ‘Come in, Lockwood,’ as he does when he wants me, I paid little
attention to the matter.”
“And you reached home—when?”
“Something after eleven. It’s but a few steps over to the Adams house,
where I live.”
“Now,” summed up the detective, “here’s the case. You, Mr. Lockwood, are
not sure Doctor Waring responded to your good-night. You did not see or
hear him when Nogi took in the water tray?”
“No; I did not.”
“Mrs. Peyton did not see him then, either—though she imagined she heard a
paper rustle. Nogi is gone—he cannot be questioned. So, Mr. Lockwood, the
last person whom we know definitely to have seen John Waring alive, is
yourself when, as you say, you left him at about—er—what time?”
“About half-past eight or nine,” said Lockwood, carelessly.
“Yes; you left him and sat in the hall window. Now, we have no positive
evidence that he was alive after that.”
“What!” Lockwood stared at him.
“No positive evidence, I say. Nogi went in, but no one knows what Nogi
saw in there.”
“Come now, Detective Morton,” Lockwood said, coldly, “you’re romancing.
Do you suppose for a minute, that if there had been anything wrong with
Doctor Waring when Nogi went in with the water, that he would not have
raised an alarm?”
“I suppose that might have easily have been the case. The Japanese are
afraid of death. Their one idea is to flee from it. If that Japanese
servant had seen his master dead, he would have decamped, just as he did
do.”
“But Nogi was here when I went home. He handed me my overcoat and hat,
quite with his usual calm demeanor.”
“You must remember, Mr. Lockwood, we have only your word for that.”
Gordon Lockwood looked at the detective.
“I will not pretend to misunderstand your meaning,” he said, slowly and
with hauteur. “Nor shall I say a word, at present, in self defence. Your
implication is so absurd, so really ridiculous, there is nothing to be
said.”
“That’s right,” and Morton nodded. “Don’t say anything until you get
counsel. Now, Mrs. Bates—I’m mighty sorry to bother you—but I must ask
you a few questions. And if I size you up right, you’ll be glad to tell
anything you can to help discover the truth. That so?”
“Yes,” she returned, “yes—of course, Mr. Morton. But I can’t let you seem
to suspect Mr. Lockwood of wrong-doing without a protest! Doctor Waring’s
secretary is most loyal and devoted—of that I am sure.”
“Never mind that side of it just now. Tell me this, Mrs. Bates. Who will
benefit financially by Doctor Waring’s death? To whom is his fortune
willed? I take it you must know, as you expected soon to marry him.”
“But I don’t know,” Emily Bates said, a little indignantly. “Nor do I see
how it can help you to solve the mystery to get such information as that.
You don’t suppose anybody killed him for his money, do you?”
“What other motive could there be, Mrs. Bates? Had he enemies?”
“No; well, that is, I suppose he had some acquaintances who were
disappointed at his election to the College Presidency. But I’d hardly
call them enemies.”
“Why not? Why wouldn’t they be enemies? It’s my impression that election
was hotly contested.”
“It was,” Mrs. Peyton broke in. “It was, Mr. Morton, and if Doctor Waring
was murdered—which I can’t see how he was—some of that other faction did
it.”
“But that’s absurd,” Gordon Lockwood protested; “there was disappointment
among the other faction at the result of the election, but it’s
incredible that they should kill Doctor Waring for that reason!”
“The whole case is incredible,” Morton returned. “What is it, Higby, what
have you found?”
“The doctor,” Higby said, coming into the living room, “they have just
noticed that although there is a pinhole in Doctor Waring’s tie, there is
no stickpin there. Did he wear one?”
“Of course he did,” Mrs. Bates cried. “He had on his ruby pin yesterday.”
“He did so,” echoed Mrs. Peyton. “That ruby pin was worth an immense sum
of money! That’s why he was killed, then, robbery!”
“He certainly wore that pin last night,” said Lockwood. “Are you sure
it’s missing? Hasn’t it dropped to the floor?”
“Can’t find it,” returned Higby, and then all the men went back to the
study.
“Anything else missing?” asked Morton, who was deeply chagrined that he
hadn’t noticed the pin was gone himself.
“How about money, Mr. Lockwood?” said Doctor Marsh. “Any gone, that you
can notice?”
With an uncertain motion, Gordon Lockwood pulled open a small drawer of
the desk.
“Yes,” he said, “there was five hundred dollars in cash here last
night—and now it is not here.”
“Better dismiss the suicide theory,” said Detective Morton, with a quick
look at the secretary.