THE WRITING ON THE WALL
For a full minute McCarty blinked dazedly in the sudden glare of light.
His thoughts in their abrupt transition from the realm of mental
suggestion to manifest reality failed at first to co-ordinate and he
sat as one emerging from a trance.
Then gradually he became aware of moving figures and subdued voices
about him. Wade Terhune was standing over Oliver Jarvis holding a
glass to his client's lips while Norwood hovered solicitously about,
visibly shaken by the ordeal through which he had passed but in obvious
indignation.
"Sorry to have knocked you out like this, Mr. Jarvis." Terhune's smooth
tones rose above the general stir. "I tried to prepare you----"
"It was brutal!" Norwood interrupted. "If this is your science, Mr.
Terhune, this wretched clap-trap to reconstruct a scene of horror,
as false as it was cheaply melodramatic, and force a bereaved man
to undergo such wholly unnecessary torture, the old third-degree
methods of the police are infinitely preferable! Try to put the whole
abominable thing from your mind, Oliver! We know that what we have
listened to here to-night is sheer rot; Evelyn was killed in her own
apartments, poor child, and all this elaborate farce cannot twist the
facts to prove a baseless theory!"
Jarvis shook his head and rose, steadying himself with a hand on the
older man's arm.
"No, Uncle Cal. I have the utmost confidence in Mr. Terhune and he
must pursue the investigation in his own way. I knew in advance what
was going to take place to-night and I gave him permission to use that
phonographic record of Evelyn's voice. I thought I had steeled myself
to endure the sound of it, but I must have overestimated my strength
and the realism of the whole thing swept me off my feet. Do you think,
Mr. Terhune, that your test has been productive of the result you
anticipated?"
"I cannot tell until I have examined the records," Terhune responded,
unruffled by Norwood's tirade. "I will confer with you early in the
morning, before the funeral. You must try to rest to-night and steady
your nerves, for the utmost we may already have accomplished can at
best be only circumstantial and the most difficult task still lies
before us."
A new voice at McCarty's right caught his attention and he turned to
find the Englishman, Vivaseur, in animated conversation with Inspector
Druet.
"By Jove, it was immense!" His face was flushed and his gray eyes
sparkled with enthusiasm. "No wonder this chap is celebrated at home
as well as in the States for his amazing work! The crime was a hideous
affair, of course, and I'm cut up about it on Miss Norwood's account
and all that, but as I didn't know the lady I could approach this thing
from a more impersonal, analytical point of view than the others. The
illusion was perfect! I don't mind telling you, Inspector, that it
quite gripped me. Gad, what an actor the fellow would have made!"
"Mr. Terhune's methods are unique and he has obtained some creditable
results from them," Inspector Druet responded somewhat dryly. "We don't
always agree with him in theory, but he has given the department some
valuable pointers in more than one case."
Vivaseur stared, then laughed.
"Quite so. I'd forgotten that Mr. Terhune was a free lance. Naturally
your methods differ. It's been ripping, though, to be in one of his
tests; haven't the least idea what he was getting at, but I wouldn't
have missed it for worlds!"
Terhune had left his client and McCarty's eyes followed him as he
started toward the screen when Captain Marchal suddenly barred his way.
"May I be permitted to congratulate you, Monsieur?" His tone was quiet,
with no suspicion of a sneer, and yet there was a quality almost of
challenge in it which brought the other up standing. "As a grim little
playlet of the Grand Guignol, produced in darkness, it would have been
admirable; as an exposition of the case upon which you have bent your
distinguished efforts it is of a surprisingly novel point of view. Mes
compliments!"
"I am glad you were interested, Captain!" Terhune smiled steadily. "To
make use of your comparison, the drama is not yet finished; it still
lacks a climax, but that will come."
"When it does, let us hope that it will not prove an anticlimax,"
Marchal shrugged slightly. "Is it that we are no longer required here,
Monsieur? We may depart?"
"Yes. The experiment is finished."
Captain Marchal's heels clicked with military precision as he bowed
and turned to Calvin Norwood while Terhune advanced toward the screen.
McCarty rose to follow when a voice close at his side made him pause.
"Please let go of the bulb, Mr. Riordan," Bassett was urging patiently.
"It is all over. Mr. Terhune has finished with the experiment and I
want to take up the apparatus now. Mr. Riordan!"
But Dennis was oblivious. He sat rigid, with his eyes squeezed tightly
shut and an expression on his face of one who had been set apart from
the things of this world. One hand gripped the arm of his chair and the
other clung tenaciously to the rubber sphere on the wire.
"Denny, for the love of God, come out of it!" McCarty shook him
vigorously. "Is it hypnotized you are? Open your eyes, you big chump,
and leave go of the bulb!"
"Eh?" Dennis drew a deep breath and relaxed limply, blinking with the
air of a suddenly awakened somnambulist. "Did he get away? Where's the
corpse?"
"Laid out these two days and well you know it, if you'll get your wits
about you!" retorted McCarty, jerking the bulb from his friend's grasp.
"A fine exhibition you're making of yourself!"
"But I heard it, the murder and all!" Dennis affirmed in an awestruck
whisper. "Mac, where the devil was I? What's come to me!"
"You've been listening to Mr. Terhune's little spiel, with phonographic
accompaniments and a little cologne and cigarette smoke thrown in for
good measure," responded the other. "'Twas all a trick, man, but it got
me, too, for a minute. We'd better be getting on our way now; the rest
are all leaving."
Terhune, emerging from behind the screen, caught the reluctant note in
his former colleague's tones and came forward.
"Wouldn't you and Riordan like to wait and learn the result of the
experiment? Bassett and I are going to check up the records now and we
will find out if our man has betrayed himself."
"Thanks, sir, we'd like nothing better than to stay for the finish."
McCarty accepted promptly before Dennis could speak. "'Twas a
remarkable stunt you pulled off the night, Mr. Terhune. If it's not
asking too much, would you tell us later how you worked some of it?
The fight, and all?"
"Go and see for yourselves while I get rid of these people." Terhune
waved toward the alcove. "The properties are all there, behind the
curtains, and I'll explain their use to you later."
"Come on!" McCarty seized Dennis' arm and pulled him to his feet as
their host turned to his departing guests.
Reluctantly Dennis permitted himself to be led to the alcove, but when
the curtains parted he recoiled.
"There's another of them!" he gasped. "Let me get out of this! What
with spooks and murders I've been through plenty this night to turn me
gray, and if I'd known that thing was here the saints themselves could
not have got a blindfold on me!"
He pointed with a trembling finger at a skeleton which lolled
lackadaisically in a chair grinning up at him, but McCarty dragged him
past, and over to a table against the farther wall.
"Do you see this cigarette end and the ashes in the tray? That's
where the smell of tobacco came from. And look!" He picked up a tiny
crystal atomizer and pressed the bulb gently, releasing a fine spray of
perfume. "That's the scent Mrs. Jarvis herself used, God rest her soul!
Don't you remember it? It was clinging to her yet when we found the
body."
Dennis sniffed experimentally.
"One perfumery smell is like another to me except the stuff the barber
douses me with when I'm not looking," he remarked conservatively.
"What's the bolt of silk for, and that sand-paper paddle?"
"To make the sound like the rustling of her dress and the tearing of it
in the struggle," hazarded McCarty. "I don't know, though, about the
opening of the window, nor the ladder----"
"I used this heavy bookcase door to simulate the opening of the
casement." Terhune's voice sounded from just behind them. "This board
scraped along the mantel shelf produced the effect of the ladder
grating against the window ledge. It is quite simple, you see."
"But the skeleton, sir?" Dennis ventured.
"I borrowed that from an artist friend of mine, to get the real sound
of rattling bones, at the moment when I described the substitution of
the body for the skeleton," explained Terhune. "Bassett imitated the
footsteps; he is light on his feet and I rehearsed him carefully this
afternoon."
"And the struggle, sir? I could have sworn I heard a man grunting
and muttering and breathing hard, and a woman's voice raised in that
fierce, choking cry at the end," McCarty declared.
"You did. It was a talking-machine record made especially for me
yesterday by two professionals at the studio of the company from
which I purchased my machines in here." He led the way back into the
consulting-room and motioned toward the cabinets on each side of the
hearth. "The first woman's voice that you heard--the little laugh, and
the sentence: 'Really, I don't know what to say'--was the living voice
of Mrs. Jarvis."
Dennis crossed himself surreptitiously and even McCarty started in awed
astonishment.
"You mean, sir, it was a record she talked into herself?" he asked.
"Yes. I learned from Miss Joan Norwood that one evening a few months
ago she and her uncle, Oliver Jarvis, his wife, and several of their
friends amused themselves by talking into a reproducing phonograph.
She had preserved the records and I persuaded her to lend me the disk
upon which Mrs. Jarvis' voice was recorded. The opening sentence of her
speech was all I could use, but it was startlingly apropos."
"It was all of that, sir," Dennis averred solemnly. "'Twas like black
magic, the whole of it! But for what did we hold on to them little
rubber balls strung on the wire?"
"I'll demonstrate that to you now. Ready, Bassett?"
"Yes, sir."
The assistant, followed by Inspector Druet, appeared from behind the
screen.
"First of all, you must know that I timed my theoretical reconstruction
of the murder scene very carefully." The criminalist began. "You
perhaps did not observe that a double set of wires extended from the
ring upon which the bulbs were strung. One set ran under the rug to the
screen and the other led to the clock. It is a physiological fact that
nervousness superinduced by fear or a kindred emotion betrays itself by
dryness of the mouth, stricture of the throat, irregular action of the
heart and moisture and contraction of the hands. It is to the latter
that I have confined myself exclusively during this test. Of course,
the result cannot be infallibly accurate, for allowances must be made
for the physical condition of each individual which only a physician
could diagnose, but we will obtain at least a significant indication in
each case."
He walked over to the tall, Colonial clock which stood against the
wall and opened the narrow doors of its base. The interior was
brightly illuminated by electric lights in seven long slender tubes
of varicolored glass set against the sides and back. A series of
slender-pointed steel indicators, like the hands of a clock, reached
from each tube to a dial beside it on which numbers from one to twenty
were arranged in a circle.
"You will observe that the glass tubes are tinted the seven chromatic
colors of the prism, with violet as the base, graduating through the
different hues to red at the top, and the extent of the illumination
varies in each tube," Terhune continued. "The bulbs which each of
you held in your right hand were covered with a highly absorbent
composition and these tubes register the degree of moisture exuding
from your palms at given intervals. The actual test was arranged to
take just twenty minutes to complete, from half-past eight to ten
minutes before nine, and I had rehearsed it, timing each sentence and
pause for the suggested action until I knew to the minute when each
phase of the scene I reconstructed was reached. The indicators reaching
out from the side of each tube to the dial beside it records the exact
moment when the degree of exuded moisture, superinduced by mental
suggestion, increased.
"For instance, take bulb number one, which was that held by my client,
Mr. Jarvis. He is naturally in a feverish, weakened condition and
super-sensitive to suggestion. The degree of moisture in the palm of
his hand increased steadily through the violet, indigo and blue stages
to the fourth--the green--where it remained until the tenth minute of
the test; the minute when the voice of his dead wife sounded from the
talking machine. Then the record leaped two degrees, through yellow to
orange, and there remained. At no time did it reach the maximum--or
red--degree at the top of the tube.
"Number two--Mr. Calvin Norwood--shows but a normal degree of moisture
until the third quarter of the test, the struggle, when it increased
slowly two degrees, but became no more intense. Number three--Why, this
is indeed curious!" He pointed to the third tube, which was illuminated
to the very top. "The moisture excretions here are abnormally profuse
from the start and quickly reached the maximum, but since the increase
was steady and not in spurts it indicates general nervousness rather
than the effect of emotional reaction. Bassett, who held the third
bulb?"
"Mr. Vivaseur, sir."
"Ah, I thought so." A gratified smile touched Terhune's thin lips.
"From his appearance I should have believed him to be in better
physical condition than this indicates, but his interest in the test
was so keen that he betrayed it from the start, despite his phlegmatic
exterior. Number four--that was yours, Inspector--remained absolutely
normal throughout, and McCarty--number five--only registered one degree
above normal. Our friend Riordan, here, is evidently in better shape
physically than Mr. Vivaseur, but his record only falls one degree
short of the Englishman's. Your hand perspired with abnormal profusion
from the start, Riordan."
"And why wouldn't it, sir? I'm reeking from every pore of me." Dennis
announced with dignity. "'Tis a cold-blooded fish that could sit quiet
and blindfold in a room where there's murder being done, and not sweat
like a glass of--of ice-water on a hot day!"
He glanced witheringly at McCarty, but the latter was watching Terhune.
The latter with furrowed brow was examining the last tube and when he
spoke his usually level tones were charged with suppressed excitement.
"The man who held the seventh bulb was normal at the start, but almost
immediately his record jumped two degrees. That was even before I
described the arrival of the woman. Then it shot up three degrees--to
the yellow space--until the tenth minute of the test, when the voice
came from the talking machine. From that moment on it gradually
subsided to normal!" He paused and added slowly: "I confess I had not
foreseen this. Captain Marchal must either have assumed quick control
of himself or----"
"Marchal?" The Inspector laughed shortly. "Oh, he's out of it, Mr.
Terhune! Your reconstruction of the murder must have been all Greek to
him."
Terhune shrugged.
"Let us see what the other record reveals." He suggested, leading the
way to the screen. "These glass retorts register the contraction of the
fingers on the bulb and the degree and period of pressure which are in
turn recorded numerically upon the chart."
The spaces between the perpendicular lines on the large framed
chart upon the wall were covered now with irregular rows of figures
illuminated from behind and the thin thread of ruby-colored liquid in
each retort had risen to varying heights.
"I will not go into a maze of technical detail now as to the process
by which the pressure upon the bulbs is transmitted and registered.
It is too complicated and if you are unfamiliar with the pulsometer
invented by Professor Wekerle of Buda Pesth, and in use by the criminal
investigators throughout the continent to record the pulse beats
of suspects under examination, an explanation would be well-nigh
unintelligible to you," Terhune vouchsafed. "I will merely read you the
result recorded here.
"Mr. Jarvis held the bulb lightly at first, but his hand contracted
convulsively at the suggested entrance of his wife and again at
the sound of her voice. During the struggle he gripped the bulb
tenaciously, but from the moment of the final death-cry his hand
became limp. That is perfectly natural and quite as I anticipated.
Mr. Norwood's fingers worked nervously about the bulb, alternately
energizing and relaxing until the struggle, when he, too, squeezed the
bulb in a sustained pressure, which gradually diminished.
"Number three--Ah! as I expected! Despite Mr. Vivaseur's profuse
exudations, denoting his absorbed interest, he held the bulb lightly,
as I had instructed, without the slightest tremor or contraction until
the end. However, you, Inspector, were not as unimpressed as you would
have us believe!" He turned with a smile of triumph to the official.
"The voice, the struggle, the death-cry and even the sixteenth minute
of the test, when the suggestion was conveyed of the strand of hair
being caught on the window casing, each made you start and tighten your
grip upon the bulb!"
"Possibly." The Inspector admitted dryly. "Apart from its theoretical
value the little scene you staged for us was realistic enough to make
one forget momentarily that it was a mere ingenious illusion."
"And you, McCarty!" Terhune pointed to the fifth record upon the wall.
"You, at least, comprehend the motive underlying my experiment, I see.
When the cigarette was lighted----"
"Yes, sir," McCarty interrupted quietly. "I thought I recognized the
kind of a sweetish smell of that brand and the gait of those steps
coming and going reminded me, too, of some I'd heard just lately. I
knew then who you had picked out as the murderer and 'tis small wonder
if I squeezed that bulb like a sponge!"
"You registered surprise at the voice on the machine, and sustained
excitement during the struggle." Terhune pursued. "After that, however,
you relaxed your hold upon the bulb. The end of the test did not
impress you as the first had done. Still stubborn, eh, McCarty? Still
unwilling to accept any fact based on other than most obvious evidence?"
"Well, Mr. Terhune, I don't know, of course, what there is back of all
this," McCarty responded cautiously. "You see, I'm not on the case,
sir, and I've no way of learning how you doped it out."
"I don't see anything particularly significant in all this," Inspector
Druet remarked with a touch of impatience. "What is the answer, Mr.
Terhune?"
"We are coming to that," Terhune replied. "The sixth record is fairly
obvious. From the beginning of the test to its completion the bulb was
compressed in a grip which never relaxed an iota."
"That was Denny," observed McCarty. "He'd be holding on to it now only
we pried him loose!"
"The seventh and last record, however, gives us something vastly
different." Terhune's tones had quickened. "Evidently our friend
Captain Marchal also recognized the odor of that particular brand of
cigarette, for instinctively his fingers tightened about the bulb.
The pressure increased at the suggested entrance of the woman and
held until the talking-machine record was turned on. Then it relaxed
utterly and after that there were several quick, hard pressures; not
nervous or spasmodic but more as though he clenched his hand in anger.
The choking death-cry, the incident of the strand of hair catching on
the window casing, the placing of the ladder against the ledge and the
final retreating footsteps each caused him to grip the bulb tightly
in quite unconscious muscular contraction, but the pressure reached
its highest degree when I spoke of that strand of hair. Gentlemen, I
told you before this little experiment was attempted that I expected
nothing conclusive from it, but merely an indication as to whether my
theory was tenable or not. I think we have here all the confirmation
necessary to warrant a request which I am about to make. I have
indisputable evidence that Captain Marchal was madly in love with Mrs.
Jarvis. I propose to prove to you that she was totally unaware of this
unfortunate attachment, having taken merely a kindly, pitying interest
in the young, blind officer which he had mistaken for a reciprocal
infatuation; that he became desperate as the time approached for her
departure for France; that on some pretext he lured her to the museum
when he knew their interview would be undisturbed and there declared
his passion. When she repulsed him and he realized the hopelessness of
his suit he killed her. Until such time as I am able to produce proof
of this, Inspector, may I ask that you place Captain Marchal under
strict surveillance?"
"Every occupant of both houses has been shadowed from the hour the
crime was discovered," Inspector Druet responded. "At this stage of the
investigation I am not prepared to refute your theory, Mr. Terhune, but
ingenious as your reconstruction of the murder was, I am afraid you
will find that it won't work. For one thing, there's that little matter
of blackmail which doesn't fit in with your theory. Captain Marchal
only came to this country three months ago----"
Terhune smiled in infinite superiority.
"My dear Inspector, Captain Marchal had nothing whatever to do with
that. It is a coincidence, of course, but Mrs. Jarvis' death was in
no way connected with it. Whatever her secret, the blackmailer would
not have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. You will remember
that in those fantastic communications composed of macaroni paste she
was never threatened with death, but only with exposure; it was to the
blackmailer's obvious interest to keep her alive and he is probably
highly chagrined at the tragic turn of affairs. It is unfortunate
that we seem to be invariably working at cross purposes, but as in the
past I think you will find my theory to be the true solution of the
affair. Scientific testimony is incontrovertible and in spite of his
self-control the man has laid bare his innermost thoughts to us here in
these records.
"He recognized the odor of his particular brand of cigarettes--a brand
practically unknown in this country--and knew that his secret had been
discovered. He betrayed his emotions in the ensuing scene but with the
sound of his victim's voice on the machine he pulled himself together
and realizing the vital need of caution in this test which he now saw
was directed solely at him, he deliberately relaxed. However, he could
not help that instinctive clenching of his hand at the points which
told most against him. There cannot be the slightest doubt of it,
Inspector. Captain Marchal is the murderer of Mrs. Jarvis."