The Astounding Truth
(Monday, December 13; 11 p. m.)
“As you know, Markham,” Vance began, when we were seated about the
library fire late that night, “I finally succeeded in putting together
the items of my summary in such a way that I could see plainly who the
murderer was.* Once I had found the basic pattern, every detail fitted
perfectly into a plastic whole. The technic of the crimes, however,
remained obscure; so I asked you to send for the books in Tobias’s
library—I was sure they would tell me what I wanted to know. First, I
went through Gross’s ‘Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter,’ which I
regarded as the most likely source of information. It is an amazing
treatise, Markham. It covers the entire field of the history and
science of crime; and, in addition, is a compendium of criminal
technic, citing specific cases and containing detailed explanations
and diagrams. Small wonder it is the world’s standard cyclopædia on
its subject. As I read it, I found what I was looking for. Ada had
copied every act of hers, every method, every device, every detail,
from its pages—_from actual criminal history_! We are hardly to be
blamed for our inability to combat her schemes; for it was not she
alone who was deceiving us; it was the accumulated experience of
hundreds of shrewd criminals before her, plus the analytic science of
the world’s greatest criminologist—Doctor Hans Gross.”
* I later asked Vance to rearrange the items for me in the
order of his final sequence. The distribution, which told him
the truth, was as follows: 3, 4, 44, 92, 9, 6, 2, 47, 1, 5,
32, 31, 98, 8, 81, 84, 82, 7, 10, 11, 61, 15, 16, 93, 33, 94,
76, 75, 48, 17, 38, 55, 54, 18, 39, 56, 41, 42, 28, 43, 58,
59, 83, 74, 40, 12, 34, 13, 14, 37, 22, 23, 35, 36, 19, 73,
26, 20, 21, 45, 25, 46, 27, 29, 30, 57, 77, 24, 78, 79, 51,
50, 52, 53, 49, 95, 80, 85, 86, 87, 88, 60, 62, 64, 63, 66,
65, 96, 89, 67, 71, 69, 68, 70, 97, 90, 91, 72.
He paused to light another cigarette.
“But even when I had found the explanation of her crimes,” he
continued, “I felt that there was something lacking, some fundamental
_penchant_—the thing that made this orgy of horror possible and gave
viability, so to speak, to her operations. We knew nothing of Ada’s
early life or of her progenitors and inherited instincts; and without
that knowledge the crimes, despite their clear logic, were incredible.
Consequently, my next step was to verify Ada’s psychological and
environmental sources. I had had a suspicion from the first that she
was Frau Mannheim’s daughter. But even when I verified this fact I
couldn’t see its bearing on the case. It was obvious, from our
interview with Frau Mannheim, that Tobias and her husband had been in
shady deals together in the old days; and she later admitted to me
that her husband had died thirteen years ago, in October, at New
Orleans after a year’s illness in a hospital. She also said, as you
may recall, that she had seen Tobias a year prior to her husband’s
death. This would have been fourteen years ago—just the time Ada was
adopted by Tobias.* I thought there might be some connection between
Mannheim and the crimes, and I even toyed with the idea that Sproot
was Mannheim, and that a dirty thread of blackmail ran through the
situation. So I decided to investigate. My mysterious trip last week
was to New Orleans; and there I had no difficulty in learning the
truth. By looking up the death records for October thirteen years ago,
I discovered that Mannheim had been in an asylum for the criminally
insane for a year preceding his death. And from the police I
ascertained something of his record. Adolph Mannheim—Ada’s father—was,
it seems, a famous German criminal and murderer, who had been
sentenced to death, but had escaped from the penitentiary at Stuttgart
and come to America. I have a suspicion that the departed Tobias was,
in some way, mixed up in that escape. But whether or not I wrong him,
the fact remains that Ada’s father was homicidal and a professional
criminal. And therein lies the explanat’ry background of her
actions. . . .”
* We later learned from Mrs. Mannheim that Mannheim had once
saved Tobias from criminal prosecution by taking upon himself
the entire blame of one of Tobias’s shadiest extra-legal
transactions, and had exacted from Tobias the promise that, in
event of his own death or incarceration, he would adopt and
care for Ada, whom Mrs. Mannheim had placed in a private
institution at the age of five, to protect her from Mannheim’s
influence.
“You mean she was crazy like her old man?” asked Heath.
“No, Sergeant. I merely mean that the potentialities of criminality
had been handed down to her in her blood. When the motive for the
crimes became powerful, her inherited instincts asserted themselves.”
“But mere money,” put in Markham, “seems hardly a strong enough motive
to inspire such atrocities as hers.”
“It wasn’t money alone that inspired her. The real motive went much
deeper. Indeed, it was perhaps the most powerful of all human
motives—a strange, terrible combination of hate and love and jealousy
and a desire for freedom. To begin with, she was the Cinderella in
that abnormal Greene family, looked down upon, treated like a servant,
made to spend her time caring for a nagging invalid, and forced—as
Sibella put it—to earn her livelihood. Can you not see her for
fourteen years brooding over this treatment, nourishing her
resentment, absorbing the poison about her, and coming at length to
despise every one in that household? That alone would have been enough
to awaken her congenital instincts. One almost wonders that she did
not break forth long before. But another equally potent element
entered the situation. She fell in love with Von Blon—a natural thing
for a girl in her position to do—and then learned that Sibella had won
his affections. She either knew or strongly suspected that they were
married; and her normal hatred of her sister was augmented by a
vicious and eroding jealousy. . . .
“Now, Ada was the only member of the family who, according to the
terms of old Tobias’s will, was not compelled to live on the estate in
event of marriage; and in this fact she saw a chance to snatch all the
things she craved and at the same time to rid herself of the persons
against whom her whole passionate nature cried out in deadly hatred.
She calculated to get rid of the family, inherit the Greene millions,
and set her cap for Von Blon. There was vengeance, too, as a
motivating factor in all this; but I’m inclined to think the amatory
phase of the affair was the prim’ry actuating force in the series of
horrors she later perpetrated. It gave her strength and courage; it
lifted her into that ecstatic realm where anything seemed possible,
and where she was willing to pay any price for the desired end. And
there is one point I might recall parenthetically—you remember that
Barton, the younger maid, told us how Ada sometimes acted like a devil
and used vile language. That fact should have given me a hint; but who
could have taken Barton seriously at that stage of the game? . . .
“To trace the origin of her diabolical scheme we must first consider
the locked library. Alone in the house, bored, resentful, tied down—it
was inevitable that this pervertedly romantic child should play
Pandora. She had every opportunity of securing the key and having a
duplicate made; and so the library became her retreat, her escape from
the gruelling, monotonous routine of her existence. There she ran
across those books on criminology. They appealed to her, not only as a
vicious outlet for her smouldering, repressed hatred, but because they
struck a responsive chord in her tainted nature. Eventually she came
upon Gross’s great manual, and thus found the entire technic of crime
laid out before her, with diagrams and examples—not a handbook for
examining magistrates, but a guide for a potential murderer! Slowly
the idea of her gory orgy took shape. At first perhaps she only
imagined, as a means of self-gratification, the application of this
technic of murder to those she hated. But after a time, no doubt, the
conception became real. She saw its practical possibilities; and the
terrible plot was formulated. She created this horror, and then, with
her diseased imagination, she came to believe in it. Her plausible
stories to us, her superb acting, her clever deceptions—all were part
of this horrible fantasy she had engendered. That book of Grimm’s
‘Fairy-Tales’!—I should have understood. Y’ see, it wasn’t histrionism
altogether on her part; it was a kind of demoniac possession. She
lived her dream. Many young girls are like that under the stress of
ambition and hatred. Constance Kent completely deceived the whole of
Scotland Yard into believing in her innocence.”
Vance smoked a moment thoughtfully.
“It’s curious how we instinctively close our eyes to the truth when
history is filled with substantiating examples of the very thing we
are contemplating. The annals of crime contain numerous instances of
girls in Ada’s position who have been guilty of atrocious crimes.
Besides the famous case of Constance Kent, there were, for example,
Marie Boyer, and Madeleine Smith, and Grete Beyer.* I wonder if we’d
have suspected them——”
* An account of the cases of Madeleine Smith and Constance
Kent may be found in Edmund Lester Pearson’s “Murder at Smutty
Nose”; and a record of Marie Boyer’s case is included in H. B.
Irving’s “A Book of Remarkable Criminals.” Grete Beyer was the
last woman to be publicly executed in Germany.
“Keep to the present, Vance,” interposed Markham impatiently. “You say
Ada took all her ideas from Gross. But Gross’s handbook is written in
German. How did you know she spoke German well enough——?”
“That Sunday when I went to the house with Van I inquired of Ada if
Sibella spoke German. I put my questions in such a way that she could
not answer without telling me whether or not she, too, knew German
well; and she even used a typical German locution—‘Sibella speaks very
well German’—showing that that language was almost instinctive with
her. Incidentally, I wanted her to think that I suspected Sibella, so
that she would not hasten matters until I returned from New Orleans. I
knew that as long as Sibella was in Atlantic City she was safe from
Ada.”
“But what I want to know,” put in Heath, “is how she killed Rex when
she was sitting in Mr. Markham’s office.”
“Let us take things in order, Sergeant,” answered Vance. “Julia was
killed first because she was the manager of the establishment. With
her out of the way, Ada would have a free hand. And, another thing,
the death of Julia at the start fitted best into the scheme she had
outlined; it gave her the most plausible setting for staging the
attempted murder on herself. Ada had undoubtedly heard some mention of
Chester’s revolver, and after she had secured it she waited for the
opportunity to strike the first blow. The propitious circumstances
fell on the night of November 8; and at half past eleven, when the
house was asleep, she knocked on Julia’s door. She was admitted, and
doubtless sat on the edge of Julia’s bed telling some story to explain
her late visit. Then she drew the gun from under her dressing-gown and
shot Julia through the heart. Back in her own bedroom, with the lights
on, she stood before the large mirror of the dressing-table, and,
holding the gun in her right hand, placed it against her left
shoulder-blade at an oblique angle. The mirror and the lights were
essential, for she could thus see exactly where to point the muzzle of
the revolver. All this occupied the three-minute interval between the
shots. Then she pulled the trigger——”
“But a girl shooting herself as a fake!” objected Heath. “It ain’t
natural.”
“But Ada wasn’t natural, Sergeant. None of the plot was natural. That
was why I was so anxious to look up her family history. But as to
shooting herself; that was quite logical when one considers her true
character. And, as a matter of fact, there was little or no danger
attaching to it. The gun was on a hair-trigger, and little pressure
was needed to discharge it. A slight flesh wound was the worst she had
to fear. Moreover, history is full of cases of self-mutilation where
the object to be gained was far smaller than what Ada was after. Gross
is full of them. . . .”
He took up Volume I of the “Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter,” which
lay on the table beside him, and opened it at a marked page.
“Listen to this, Sergeant. I’ll translate the passage roughly as I
read: ‘_It is not uncommon to find people who inflict wounds on
themselves; such are, besides persons pretending to be the victims of
assaults with deadly weapons, those who try to extort damages or
blackmail. Thus it often happens that, after an insignificant scuffle,
one of the combatants shows wounds which he pretends to have received.
It is characteristic of these voluntary mutilations that most
frequently those who perform them do not quite complete the operation,
and that they are for the most part people who manifest excessive
piety, or lead a solitary life._’* . . . And surely, Sergeant, you are
familiar with the self-mutilation of soldiers to escape service. The
most common method used by them is to place their hand over the muzzle
of the gun and blow their fingers off.”
* “Selbstverletzungen kommen nicht selten vor; abgesehen von
solchen bei fingierten Raubanfällen, stösst man auf sie dann,
wenn Entschädigungen erpresst werden sollen; so geschieht es,
dass nach einer harmlosen Balgerei einer der Kämpfenden mit
Verletzungen auftritt, die er damals erlitten haben will.
Kenntlich sind solche Selbstverstümmelungen daran, dass die
Betreffenden meistens die Operation wegen der grossen
Schmerzen nicht ganz zu Ende führen, und dass es meistens
Leute mit übertrieben pietistischer Färbung und mehr einsamen
Lebenswandels sind.”—H. Gross, “Handbuch für
Untersuchungsrichter als System der Kriminalistik,” I,
pp. 32–34.
Vance closed the book.
“And don’t forget that the girl was hopeless, desperate, and unhappy,
with everything to win and nothing to lose. She would probably have
committed suicide if she had not worked out the plan of the murders. A
superficial wound in the shoulder meant little to her in view of what
she was to gain by it. And women have an almost infinite capacity for
self-immolation. With Ada, it was part of her abnormal condition.—No,
Sergeant; the self-shooting was perfectly consistent in the
circumstances. . . .”
“But in the back!” Heath looked dumbfounded. “That’s what gets me.
Whoever heard——?”
“Just a moment.” Vance took up Volume II of the “Handbuch” and opened
it to a marked page. “Gross, for instance, has heard of many such
cases—in fact, they’re quite common on the Continent. And his record
of them indubitably gave Ada the idea for shooting herself in the
back. Here’s a single paragraph culled from many pages of similar
cases: ‘_That you should not be deceived by the seat of the wound is
proved by the following two cases. In the Vienna Prater a man killed
himself in the presence of several people by shooting himself in the
back of the head with a revolver. Without the testimony of several
witnesses nobody would have accepted the theory of suicide. A soldier
killed himself by a shot with his military rifle through the back, by
fixing the rifle in a certain position and then lying down over it.
Here again the position of the wound seemed to exclude the theory of
suicide_.’”*
* “Dass man sich durch den Sitz der Wunde niemals täuschen
lassen darf, beweisen zwei Fälle. Im Wiener Prater hatte sich
ein Mann in Gegenwart mehrerer Personen getötet, indem er sich
mit einem Revolver in den Hinterkopf schoss. Wären nicht die
Aussagen der Zeugen vorgelegen, hätte wohl kaum jemand an
einen Selbstmord geglaubt. Ein Soldat tötete sich durch einen
in den Rücken gehenden Schuss aus einem Militärgewehr, über
das er nach entsprechender Fixierung sich gelegt hatte; auch
hier wäre aus dem Sitz der Wunde wohl kaum auf Selbstmord
geschlossen worden.”—_Ibid._, II, p. 843.
“Wait a minute!” Heath heaved himself forward and shook his cigar at
Vance. “What about the gun? Sproot entered Ada’s room right after the
shot was fired, and there wasn’t no sign of a gun!”
Vance, without answering, merely turned the pages of Gross’s
“Handbuch” to where another marker protruded, and began translating:
“‘_Early one morning the authorities were informed that the corpse of
a murdered man had been found. At the spot indicated the body was
discovered of a grain merchant, A. M., supposed to be a well-to-do
man, face downward with a gunshot wound behind the ear. The bullet,
after passing through the brain, had lodged in the frontal bone above
the left eye. The place where the corpse was found was in the middle
of a bridge over a deep stream. Just when the inquiry was concluding
and the corpse was about to be removed for the post mortem, the
investigating officer observed quite by chance that on the decayed
wooden parapet of the bridge, almost opposite to the spot where the
corpse lay, there was a small but perfectly fresh dent which appeared
to have been caused by a violent blow on the upper edge of the parapet
of a hard and angular object. He immediately suspected that the dent
had some connection with the murder. Accordingly he determined to drag
the bed of the stream below the bridge, when almost immediately there
was picked up a strong cord about fourteen feet long with a large
stone at one end and at the other a discharged pistol, the barrel of
which fitted exactly the bullet extracted from the head of A. M. The
case was thus evidently one of suicide. A. M. had hung the stone over
the parapet of the bridge and discharged the pistol behind his ear.
The moment he fired he let go the pistol, which the weight of the
stone dragged over the parapet into the water._’* . . . Does that
answer your question, Sergeant?”
* “Es wurde zeitlich morgens dem UR. die Meldung von der
Auffindung eines ‘Ermordeten’ überbracht. An Ort und Stelle
fand sich der Leichnam eines für wohlhabend geltenden
Getreidehändlers M., auf dem Gesichte liegend, mit einer
Schusswunde hinter dem rechten Ohre. Die Kugel war über dem
linken Auge im Stirnknochen stecken geblieben, nachdem sie das
Gehirn durchdrungen hatte. Die Fundstelle der Leiche befand
sich etwa in der Mitte einer über einen ziemlich tiefen Fluss
führenden Brücke. Am Schlusse der Lokalerhebungen und als die
Leiche eben zur Obduktion fortgebracht werden sollte, fiel es
dem UR. zufällig auf, dass das (hölzerne und wettergraue)
Brückengeländer an der Stelle, wo auf dem Boden der Leichnam
lag, eine kleine und sichtlich ganz frische Beschädigung
aufwies, so als ob man dort (am oberen Rande) mit einem
harten, kantigen Körper heftig angestossen wäre. Der Gedanke,
dass dieser Umstand mit dem Morde in Zusammenhang stehe, war
nicht gut von der Hand zu weisen. Ein Kahn war bald zur Stelle
und am Brückenjoche befestigt; nun wurde vom Kahne aus (unter
der fraglichen Stelle) der Flussgrund mit Rechen an langen
Stielen sorgfältig abgesucht. Nach kurzer Arbeit kam wirklich
etwas Seltsames zutage: eine etwa 4 _m_ lange starke Schnur,
an deren einem Ende ein grosser Feldstein, an deren anderem
Ende eine abgeschossene Pistole befestigt war, in deren Lauf
die später aus dem Kopfe des M. genommene Kugel genau passte.
Nun war die Sache klarer Selbstmord; der Mann hatte sich mit
der aufgefundenen Vorrichtung auf die Brücke begeben, den
Stein über das Brückengeländer gehängt und sich die Kugel
hinter dem rechten Ohre ins Hirn gejagt. Als er getroffen war,
liess er die Pistole infolge des durch den Stein bewirkten
Zuges aus und diese wurde von dem schweren Steine an der
Schnur über das Geländer und in das Wasser gezogen. Hierbei
hatte die Pistole, als sie das Geländer passierte, heftig an
dieses angeschlagen und die betreffende Verletzung
erzeugt.”—_Ibid._, II, pp. 834–836.
Heath stared at him with gaping eyes.
“You mean her gun went outa the window the same like that guy’s gun
went over the bridge?”
“There can be no doubt about it. There was no other place for the gun
to go. The window, I learned from Sproot, was open a foot, and Ada
stood before the window when she shot herself. Returning from Julia’s
room she attached a cord to the revolver with a weight of some kind on
the other end, and hung the weight out of the window. When her hand
released the weapon it was simply drawn over the sill and disappeared
in the drift of soft snow on the balcony steps. And there is where the
importance of the weather came in. Ada’s plan needed an unusual amount
of snow; and the night of November 8 was ideal for her grisly
purpose.”
“My God, Vance!” Markham’s tone was strained and unnatural. “This
thing begins to sound more like a fantastic nightmare than a reality.”
“Not only was it a reality, Markham,” said Vance gravely, “but it was
an actual duplication of reality. It had all been done before and duly
recorded in Gross’s treatise, with names, dates, and details.”
“Hell! No wonder we couldn’t find the gun.” Heath spoke with awed
disgust. “And what about the footprints, Mr. Vance? I suppose she
faked ’em all.”
“Yes, Sergeant—with Gross’s minute instructions and the footprint
forgeries of many famous criminals to guide her, she faked them. As
soon as it had stopped snowing that night, she slipped down-stairs,
put on a pair of Chester’s discarded galoshes, and walked to the front
gate and back. Then she hid the galoshes in the library.”
Vance turned once more to Gross’s manual.
“There’s everything here that one could possibly want to know about
the making and detection of footprints, and—what is more to the
point—about the manufacturing of footprints in shoes too large for
one’s feet.—Let me translate a short passage: ‘_The criminal may
intend to cast suspicion upon another person, especially if he
foresees that suspicion may fall upon himself. In this case he
produces clear footprints which, so to speak, leap to the eyes, by
wearing shoes which differ essentially from his own. One may often in
this way, as has been proved by numerous experiments, produce
footprints which deceive perfectly._’* . . . And here at the end of
the paragraph Gross refers specifically to galoshes†—a fact which very
likely gave Ada her inspiration to use Chester’s overshoes. She was
shrewd enough to profit by the suggestions in this passage.”
* “Die Absicht kann dahin gehen, den Verdacht von sich auf
jemand anderen zu wälzen, was namentlich dann Sinn hat, wenn
der Täter schon im voraus annehmen durfte, dass sich der
Verdacht auf ihn lenken werde. In diesem Falle erzeugt er
recht auffallende, deutliche Spuren und zwar mit angezogenen
Schuhen, die von den seinigen sich wesentlich unterscheiden.
Man kann, wie angestellte Versuche beweisen, in dieser Weise
recht gute Spuren erzeugen.”—_Ibid._, II, p. 667.
† “Über Gummiüberschuhe und Galoschen s. Loock; Chem. u. Phot.
bei Krim. Forschungen: Düsseldorf, II, p. 56.”—_Ibid._, II,
p. 668.
“And she was shrewd enough to hoodwink all of us when we questioned
her,” commented Markham bitterly.
“True. But that was because she had a _folie de grandeur_, and lived
the story. Moreover, it was all based on fact; its details were
grounded in reality. Even the shuffling sound she said she heard in
her room was an imaginative projection of the actual shuffling sound
she made when she walked in Chester’s huge galoshes. Also, her own
shuffling, no doubt, suggested to her how Mrs. Greene’s footsteps
would have sounded had the old lady regained the use of her legs. And
I imagine it was Ada’s original purpose to cast a certain amount of
suspicion on Mrs. Greene from the very beginning. But Sibella’s
attitude during that first interview caused her to change her tactics.
As I see it, Sibella was suspicious of little sister, and talked the
situation over with Chester, who may also have had vague misgivings
about Ada. You remember his _sub-rosa_ chat with Sibella when he went
to summon her to the drawing-room. He was probably informing her that
he hadn’t yet made up his mind about Ada, and was advising her to go
easy until there was some specific proof. Sibella evidently agreed,
and refrained from any direct charge until Ada, in telling her
grotesque fairy-tale about the intruder, rather implied it was a
woman’s hand that had touched her in the dark. That was too much for
Sibella, who thought Ada was referring to her; and she burst forth
with her accusation, despite its seeming absurdity. The amazing thing
about it was that it happened to be the truth. She named the murderer
and stated a large part of the motive before any of us remotely
guessed the truth, even though she did back down and change her mind
when the inconsistency of it was pointed out to her. And she really
did see Ada in Chester’s room looking for the revolver.”
Markham nodded.
“It’s astonishing. But after the accusation, when Ada knew that
Sibella suspected her, why didn’t she kill Sibella next?”
“She was too canny. It would have tended to give weight to Sibella’s
accusation. Oh, Ada played her hand perfectly.”
“Go on with the story, sir,” urged Heath, intolerant of these side
issues.
“Very well, Sergeant.” Vance shifted more comfortably into his chair.
“But first we must revert to the weather; for the weather ran like a
sinister motif through all that followed. The second night after
Julia’s death it was quite warm, and the snow had melted considerably.
That was the night chosen by Ada to retrieve the gun. A wound like
hers rarely keeps one in bed over forty-eight hours; and Ada was well
enough on Wednesday night to slip into a coat, step out on the
balcony, and walk down the few steps to where the gun lay hidden. She
merely brought it back and took it to bed with her—the last place any
one would have thought to look for it. Then she waited patiently for
the snow to fall again—which it did the next night, stopping, as you
may remember, about eleven o’clock. The stage was set. The second act
of the tragedy was about to begin. . . .
“Ada rose quietly, put on her coat, and went down to the library.
Getting into the galoshes, she again walked to the front gate and
back. Then she went directly up-stairs so that her tracks would show
on the marble steps, and hid the galoshes temporarily in the
linen-closet. That was the shuffling sound and the closing door that
Rex heard a few minutes before Chester was shot. Ada, you recall, told
us afterward she had heard nothing; but when we repeated Rex’s story
to her she became frightened and conveniently remembered having heard
a door close. My word! That was a ticklish moment for her. But she
certainly carried it off well. And I can now understand her obvious
relief when we showed her the pattern of the footprints and let her
think we believed the murderer came from outside. . . . Well, after
she had removed the galoshes and put them in the linen-closet, she
took off her coat, donned a dressing-gown, and went to Chester’s
room—probably opened the door without knocking, and went in with a
friendly greeting. I picture her as sitting on the arm of Chester’s
chair, or the edge of the desk, and then, in the midst of some trivial
remark, drawing the revolver, placing it against his breast, and
pulling the trigger before he had time to recover from his horrified
astonishment. He moved instinctively, though, just as the weapon
exploded—which would account for the diagonal course of the bullet.
Then Ada returned quickly to her own room and got into bed. Thus was
another chapter written in the Greene tragedy.”
“Did it strike you as strange,” asked Markham, “that Von Blon was not
at his office during the commission of either of the crimes?”
“At first—yes. But, after all, there was nothing unusual in the fact
that a doctor should have been out at that time of night.”
“It’s easy enough to see how Ada got rid of Julia and Chester,”
grumbled Heath. “But what stops me is how she murdered Rex.”
“Really, y’ know, Sergeant,” returned Vance, “that trick of hers
shouldn’t cause you any perplexity. I’ll never forgive myself for not
having guessed it long ago,—Ada certainly gave us enough clews to work
on. But, before I describe it to you, let me recall a certain
architectural detail of the Greene mansion. There is a Tudor
fireplace, with carved wooden panels, in Ada’s room, and another
fireplace—a duplicate of Ada’s—in Rex’s room; and these two fireplaces
are back to back on the same wall. The Greene house, as you know, is
very old, and at some time in the past—perhaps when the fireplaces
were built—an aperture was made between the two rooms, running from
one of the panels in Ada’s mantel to the corresponding panel in Rex’s
mantel. This miniature tunnel is about six inches square—the exact
size of the panels—and a little over two feet long, or the depth of
the two mantels and the wall. It was originally used, I imagine, for
private communication between the two rooms. But that point is
immaterial. The fact remains that such a shaft exists—I verified it
to-night on my way down-town from the hospital. I might also add that
the panel at either end of the shaft is on a spring hinge, so that
when it is opened and released it closes automatically, snapping back
into place without giving any indication that it is anything more than
a solid part of the woodwork——”
“I get you!” exclaimed Heath, with the excitement of satisfaction.
“Rex was shot by the old man-killing safe idea: the burglar opens the
safe door and gets a bullet in his head from a stationary gun.”
“Exactly. And the same device has been used in scores of murders. In
the early days out West an enemy would go to a rancher’s cabin during
the tenant’s absence, hang a shotgun from the ceiling over the door,
and tie one end of a string to the trigger and the other end to the
latch. When the rancher returned—perhaps days later—his brains would
be blown out as he entered his cabin; and the murderer would, at the
time, be in another part of the country.”
“Sure!” The Sergeant’s eyes sparkled. “There was a shooting like that
in Atlanta two years ago—Boscomb was the name of the murdered man. And
in Richmond, Virginia——”
“There have been many instances of it, Sergeant. Gross quotes two
famous Austrian cases, and also has something to say about this method
in general.”
Again he opened the “Handbuch.”
“On page 943 Gross remarks: ‘_The latest American safety devices have
nothing to do with the safe itself, and can in fact be used with any
receptacle. They act through chemicals or automatic firing devices,
and their object is to make the presence of a human being who
illegally opens the safe impossible on physical grounds. The judicial
question would have to be decided whether one is legally entitled to
kill a burglar without further ado or damage his health. However, a
burglar in Berlin in 1902 was shot through the forehead by a
self-shooter attached to a safe in an exporting house. This style of
self-shooter has also been used by murderers. A mechanic, G. Z.,
attached a pistol in a china-closet, fastening the trigger to the
catch, and thus shot his wife when he himself was in another city. R.
C., a merchant of Budapest, fastened a revolver in a humidor belonging
to his brother, which, when the lid was opened, fired and sent a
bullet into his brother’s abdomen. The explosion jerked the box from
the table, and thus exposed the mechanism before the merchant had a
chance to remove it._’* . . . In both these latter cases Gross gives a
detailed description of the mechanisms employed. And it will interest
you, Sergeant—in view of what I am about to tell you—to know that the
revolver in the china-closet was held in place by a _Stiefelknecht_,
or bootjack.”
* “Die neuesten amerikanischen Schutzvorrichtungen haben
direkt mit der Kasse selbst nichts zu tun und können
eigentlich an jedem Behältnisse angebracht werden. Sie
bestehen aus chemisehen Schutzmitteln oder Selbstschüssen, und
wollen die Anwesenheit eines Menschen, der den Schrank
unbefugt geöffnet hat, aus sanitären oder sonst physischen
Gründen unmöglich machen. Auch die juristische Seite der Frage
ist zu erwägen, da man den Einbrecher doch nicht ohne weiteres
töten oder an der Gesundheit schädigen darf.
Nichtsdestoweniger wurde im Jahre 1902 ein Einbrecher in
Berlin durch einen solchen Selbstschuss in die Stirne getötet,
der an die Panzertüre einer Kasse befestigt war. Derartige
Selbstschüsse wurden auch zu Morden verwendet; der Mechaniker
G. Z. stellte einen Revolver in einer Kredenz auf, verband den
Drücker mit der Türe durch eine Schnur und erschoss auf diese
Art seine Frau, während er tatsächlich von seinem Wohnorte
abwesend war. R. C., ein Budapester Kaufmann, befestigte in
einem, seinem Bruder gehörigen Zigarrenkasten, eine Pistole,
die beim Öffnen des Deckels seinen Bruder durch einen
Unterleibsschuss tötlich verletzte. Der Rückschlag warf die
Kiste von ihrem Standort, sodass der Mördermechanismus zu
Tage trat, ehe R. C. denselben bei Seite schaffen
konnte.”—_Ibid._, II, p. 943.
He closed the volume but held it on his lap.
“There, unquestionably, is where Ada got the suggestion for Rex’s
murder. She and Rex had probably discovered the hidden passageway
between their rooms years ago. I imagine that as children—they were
about the same age, don’t y’ know—they used it as a secret means of
correspondence. This would account for the name by which they both
knew it—‘our private mail-box.’ And, given this knowledge between Ada
and Rex, the method of the murder becomes perfectly clear. To-night I
found an old-fashioned bootjack in Ada’s clothes-closet—probably taken
from Tobias’s library. Its width, overall, was just six inches, and it
was a little less than two feet long—it fitted perfectly into the
communicating cupboard. Ada, following Gross’s diagram, pressed the
handle of the gun tightly between the tapering claws of the bootjack,
which would have held it like a vise; then tied a string to the
trigger, and attached the other end to the inside of Rex’s panel, so
that when the panel was opened wide the revolver, being on a
hair-trigger, would discharge straight along the shaft and inevitably
kill any one looking into the opening. When Rex fell with a bullet in
his forehead the panel flapped back into place on its spring hinge;
and a second later there was no visible evidence whatever pointing to
the origin of the shot. And here we also have the explanation for
Rex’s calm expression of unawareness. When Ada returned with us from
the District Attorney’s office, she went directly to her room, removed
the gun and the bootjack, hid them in her closet, and came down to the
drawing-room to report the foot-tracks on her carpet—foot-tracks she
herself had made before leaving the house. It was just before she came
down-stairs, by the way, that she stole the morphine and strychnine
from Von Blon’s case.”
“But, my God, Vance!” said Markham. “Suppose her mechanism had failed
to work. She would have been in for it then.”
“I hardly think so. If, by any remote chance, the trap had not
operated or Rex had recovered, she could easily have put the blame on
some one else. She had merely to say she had secreted the diagram in
the chute and that this other person had prepared the trap later on.
There would have been no proof of her having set the gun.”
“What about that diagram, sir?” asked Heath.
For answer Vance again took up the second volume of Gross and, opening
it, extended it toward us. On the right-hand page were a number of
curious line-drawings, which I reproduce here.
[Illustration: A set of six figures, labelled “Fig. 23” through “Fig.
28,” showing a variety of arcane drawings. Fig. 24, for example, is a
drawing of a parrot, a pile of three stones, a church, a key and a
swaddled infant. Fig. 25 shows two variants of a drawing of a heart
pierced by arrows and/or nails. The other figures include drawings of
things such as a knot, numbered arrows, a hand, and a book.]
“There are the three stones, and the parrot, and the heart, and even
your arrow, Sergeant. They’re all criminal graphic symbols; and Ada
simply utilized them in her description. The story of her finding the
paper in the hall was a pure fabrication, but she knew it would pique
our curiosity. The truth is, I suspected the paper of being faked by
some one, for it evidently contained the signs of several types of
criminal, and the symbols were meaninglessly jumbled. I rather
imagined it was a false clew deliberately placed in the hall for us to
find—like the footprints; but I certainly didn’t suspect Ada of having
made up the tale. Now, however, as I look back at the episode it
strikes me as deuced queer that she shouldn’t have brought so
apparently significant a paper to the office. Her failure to do so was
neither logical nor reasonable; and I ought to have been suspicious.
But—my word!—what was one illogical item more or less in such a
mélange of inconsistencies? As it happened, her decoy worked
beautifully, and gave her the opportunity to telephone Rex to look
into the chute. But it didn’t really matter. If the scheme had fallen
through that morning, it would have been successful later on. Ada was
highly persevering.”
“You think then,” put in Markham, “that Rex really heard the shot in
Ada’s room that first night, and confided in her?”
“Undoubtedly. That part of her story was true enough. I’m inclined to
think that Rex heard the shot and had a vague idea Mrs. Greene had
fired it. Being rather close to his mother temperamentally, he said
nothing. Later he voiced his suspicions to Ada; and that confession
gave her the idea for killing him—or, rather, for perfecting the
technic she had already decided on; for Rex would have been shot
through the secret cupboard in any event. But Ada now saw a way of
establishing a perfect alibi for the occasion; although even her idea
of being actually with the police when the shot was fired was not
original. In Gross’s chapter on alibis there is much suggestive
material along that line.”
Heath sucked his teeth wonderingly.
“I’m glad I don’t run across many of her kind,” he remarked.
“She was her father’s daughter,” said Vance. “But too much credit
should not be given her, Sergeant. She had a printed and diagrammed
guide for everything. There was little for her to do but follow
instructions and keep her head. And as for Rex’s murder, don’t forget
that, although she was actually in Mr. Markham’s office at the time of
the shooting, she personally engineered the entire _coup_. Think back.
She refused to let either you or Mr. Markham come to the house, and
insisted upon visiting the office. Once there, she told her story and
suggested that Rex be summoned immediately. She even went so far as to
plead with us to call him by phone. Then, when we had complied, she
quickly informed us of the mysterious diagram, and offered to tell Rex
exactly where she had hidden it, so he could bring it with him. And we
sat there calmly, listening to her send Rex to his death! Her actions
at the Stock Exchange should have given me a hint; but I confess I was
particularly blind that morning. She was in a state of high nervous
excitement; and when she broke down and sobbed on Mr. Markham’s desk
after he had told her of Rex’s death, her tears were quite real—only,
they were not for Rex; they were the reaction from that hour of
terrific tension.”
“I begin to understand why no one up-stairs heard the shot,” said
Markham. “The revolver detonating in the wall, as it were, would have
been almost completely muffled. But why should Sproot have heard it so
distinctly down-stairs?”
“You remember there was a fireplace in the living-room directly
beneath Ada’s—Chester once told us it was rarely lighted because it
wouldn’t draw properly—and Sproot was in the butler’s pantry just
beyond. The sound of the report went downward through the flue and, as
a result, was heard plainly on the lower floor.”
“You said a minute ago, Mr. Vance,” argued Heath, “that Rex maybe
suspected the old lady. Then why should he have accused Von Blon the
way he did that day he had a fit?”
“The accusation primarily, I think, was a sort of instinctive effort
to drive the idea of Mrs. Greene’s guilt from his own mind. Then
again, as Von Blon explained, Rex was frightened after you had
questioned him about the revolver, and wanted to divert suspicion from
himself.”
“Get on with the story of Ada’s plot, Vance.” This time it was Markham
who was impatient.
“The rest seems pretty obvious, don’t y’ know. It was unquestionably
Ada who was listening at the library door the afternoon we were there.
She realized we had found the books and galoshes; and she had to think
fast. So, when we came out, she told us the dramatic yarn of having
seen her mother walking, which was sheer moonshine. She had run across
those books on paralysis, d’ ye see, and they had suggested to her the
possibility of focussing suspicion on Mrs. Greene—the chief object of
her hate. It is probably true, as Von Blon said, that the two books do
not deal with actual hysterical paralysis and somnambulism, but they
no doubt contain references to these types of paralysis. I rather
think Ada had intended all along to kill the old lady last and have it
appear as the suicide of the murderer. But the proposed examination by
Oppenheimer changed all that. She learned of the examination when she
heard Von Blon apprise Mrs. Greene of it on his morning visit; and,
having told us of that mythical midnight promenade, she couldn’t delay
matters any longer. The old lady had to die—_before Oppenheimer
arrived_. And half an hour later Ada took the morphine. She feared to
give Mrs. Greene the strychnine at once lest it appear
suspicious. . . .”
“That’s where those books on poisons come in, isn’t it, Mr. Vance?”
interjected Heath. “When Ada had decided to use poison on some of the
family, she got all the dope she needed on the subject outa the
library.”
“Precisely. She herself took just enough morphine to render her
unconscious—probably about two grains. And to make sure she would get
immediate assistance she devised the simple trick of having Sibella’s
dog appear to give the alarm. Incidentally, this trick cast suspicion
on Sibella. After Ada had swallowed the morphine, she merely waited
until she began to feel drowsy, pulled the bell-cord, caught the
tassel in the dog’s teeth, and lay back. She counterfeited a good deal
of her illness; but Drumm couldn’t have detected her malingering even
if he had been as great a doctor as he wanted us to believe; for the
symptoms for all doses of morphine taken by mouth are practically the
same during the first half-hour. And, once she was on her feet, she
had only to watch for an opportunity of giving the strychnine to Mrs.
Greene. . . .”
“It all seems too cold-blooded to be real,” murmured Markham.
“And yet there has been any number of precedents for Ada’s actions. Do
you recall the mass murders of those three nurses, Madame Jegado, Frau
Zwanzigger, and Vrouw Van der Linden? And there was Mrs. Belle
Gunness, the female Bluebeard; and Amelia Elizabeth Dyer, the Reading
baby-farmer; and Mrs. Pearcey. Cold-blooded? Yes! But in Ada’s case
there was passion too. I’m inclined to believe that it takes a
particularly hot flame—a fire at white heat, in fact—to carry the
human heart through such a Gethsemane. However that may be, Ada
watched for her chance to poison Mrs. Greene, and found it that night.
The nurse went to the third floor to prepare for bed between eleven
and eleven-thirty; and during that half-hour Ada visited her mother’s
room. Whether she suggested the citrocarbonate or Mrs. Greene herself
asked for it, we’ll never know. Probably the former, for Ada had
always given it to her at night. When the nurse came down-stairs again
Ada was already back in bed, apparently asleep, and Mrs. Greene was on
the verge of her first—and, let us hope, her only—convulsion.”
“Doremus’s _post-mortem_ report must have given her a terrific shock,”
commented Markham.
“It did. It upset all her calculations. Imagine her feelings when we
informed her that Mrs. Greene couldn’t have walked! She backed out of
the danger nicely, though. The detail of the Oriental shawl, however,
nearly entangled her. But even that point she turned to her own
advantage by using it as a clew against Sibella.”
“How do you account for Mrs. Mannheim’s actions during that
interview?” asked Markham. “You remember her saying it might have been
she whom Ada saw in the hall.”
A cloud came over Vance’s face.
“I think,” he said sadly, “that Frau Mannheim began to suspect her
little Ada at that point. She knew the terrible history of the girl’s
father, and perhaps had lived in fear of some criminal outcropping in
the child.”
There was a silence for several moments. Each of us was busy with his
own thoughts. Then Vance continued:
“After Mrs. Greene’s death, only Sibella stood between Ada and her
blazing goal; and it was Sibella herself who gave her the idea for a
supposedly safe way to commit the final murder. Weeks ago, on a ride
Van and I took with the two girls and Von Blon, Sibella’s venomous
pique led her to make a foolish remark about running one’s victim over
a precipice in a machine; and it no doubt appealed to Ada’s sense of
the fitness of things that Sibella should thus suggest the means of
her own demise. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Ada intended, after
having killed her sister, to say that Sibella had tried to murder
_her_, but that she had suspected the other’s purpose and jumped from
the car in time to save herself; and that Sibella had miscalculated
the car’s speed and been carried over the precipice. The fact that Von
Blon and Van and I had heard Sibella speculate on just such a method
of murder would have given weight to Ada’s story. And what a neat
ending it would have made—Sibella, the murderer, dead; the case
closed; Ada, the inheritor of the Greene millions, free to do as she
chose! And—’pon my soul, Markham!—it came very near succeeding.”
Vance sighed, and reached for the decanter. After refilling our
glasses he settled back and smoked moodily.
“I wonder how long this terrible plot had been in preparation. We’ll
never know. Maybe years. There was no haste in Ada’s preparations.
Everything was worked out carefully; and she let circumstances—or,
rather, opportunity—guide her. Once she had secured the revolver, it
was only a question of waiting for a chance when she could make the
footprints and be sure the gun would sink out of sight in the
snow-drift on the balcony steps. Yes, the most essential condition of
her scheme was the snow. . . . Amazin’!”
There is little more to add to this record. The truth was not given
out, and the case was “shelved.” The following year Tobias’s will was
upset by the Supreme Court in Equity—that is, the twenty-five-year
domiciliary clause was abrogated in view of all that had happened at
the house; and Sibella came into the entire Greene fortune. How much
Markham had to do with the decision, through his influence with the
Administration judge who rendered it, I don’t know; and naturally I
have never asked. But the old Greene mansion was, as you remember,
torn down shortly afterward, and the estate sold to a realty
corporation.
Mrs. Mannheim, broken-hearted over Ada’s death, claimed her
inheritance—which Sibella generously doubled—and returned to Germany
to seek what comfort she might among the nieces and nephews with whom,
according to Chester, she was constantly corresponding. Sproot went
back to England. He told Vance before departing that he had long
planned a cottage retreat in Surrey where he could loaf and invite his
soul. I picture him now, sitting on an ivied porch overlooking the
Downs, reading his beloved Martial.
Doctor and Mrs. Von Blon, immediately after the court’s decision
relating to the will, sailed for the Riviera and spent a belated
honeymoon there. They are now settled in Vienna, where the doctor has
become a _Privatdocent_ at the University—his father’s Alma Mater. He
is, I understand, making quite a name for himself in the field of
neurology.
Transcriber Notes
This transcription follows the text of the first edition published by
Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1928. However, the following alterations
have been made to correct what are believed to be unambiguous errors
in the text:
* Two occurrences of missing quotation marks have been restored;
* “betwen” has been corrected to “between” (Chapter IV);
* “aways be” has been corrected to “always be” (Chapter V);
* “Departmen” has been corrected to “Department” (Chapter VIII);
* “te panels” has been corrected to “the panels” (Chapter XXVI).