THE FAMILY SKELETON
Surprised though we were at the unmasking of Dr. Coleman, there was
nothing to do but to follow the thing out. In such cases we usually ran
into the greatest difficulty—organized vice. This was no exception.
Even when cases involved only a clever individual or a prominent
family, it was the same. I recall, for example, the case of a
well-known family in a New York suburb, which was particularly
difficult. It began in a rather unusual manner, too.
“Mr. Kennedy—I am ruined—ruined.”
It was early one morning that the telephone rang and I answered it. A
very excited German, breathless and incoherent, was evidently at the
other end of the wire.
I handed the receiver to Craig and picked up the morning paper lying on
the table.
“Minturn—dead?” I heard Craig exclaim. “In the paper this morning? I’ll
be down to see you directly.”
Kennedy almost tore the paper from me. In the next to the end column
where late news usually is dropped was a brief account of the sudden
death of Owen Minturn, one of the foremost criminal lawyers of the
city, in Josephson’s Baths downtown.
It ended: “It is believed by the coroner that Mr. Minturn was shocked
to death and evidence is being sought to show that two hundred and
forty volts of electricity had been thrown into the attorney’s body
while he was in the electric bath. Joseph Josephson, the proprietor of
the bath, who operated the switchboard, is being held, pending the
completion of the inquiry.”
As Kennedy hastily ran his eye over the paragraphs, he became more and
more excited himself.
“Walter,” he cried, as he finished, “I don’t believe that that was an
accident at all.”
“Why?” I asked.
He already had his hat on, and I knew he was going to Josephson’s
breakfastless. I followed reluctantly.
“Because,” he answered, as we hustled along in the early morning crowd,
“it was only yesterday afternoon that I saw Minturn at his office and
he made an appointment with me for this very morning. He was a very
secretive man, but he did tell me this much, that he feared his life
was in danger and that it was in some way connected with that Pearcy
case up in Stratfield, Connecticut, where he has an estate. You have
read of the case?”
Indeed I had. It had seemed to me to be a particularly inexplicable
affair. Apparently a whole family had been poisoned and a few days
before old Mr. Randall Pearcy, a retired manufacturer, had died after a
brief but mysterious illness.
Pearcy had been married a year or so ago to Annette Oakleigh, a
Broadway comic opera singer, who was his second wife. By his first
marriage he had had two children, a son, Warner, and a daughter,
Isabel.
Warner Pearcy, I had heard, had blazed a vermilion trail along the
Great White Way, but his sister was of the opposite temperament,
interested in social work, and had attracted much attention by
organizing a settlement in the slums of Stratfield for the uplift of
the workers in the Pearcy and other mills.
Broadway, as well as Stratfield, had already woven a fantastic
background, for the mystery and hints had been broadly made that
Annette Oakleigh had been indiscreetly intimate with a young physician
in the town, a Dr. Gunther, a friend, by the way, of Minturn. “There
has been no trial yet,” went on Kennedy, “but Minturn seems to have
appeared before the coroner’s jury at Stratfield and to have asserted
the innocence of Mrs. Pearcy and that of Dr. Gunther so well that,
although the jury brought in a verdict of murder by poison by some one
unknown, there has been no mention of the name of anyone else. The
coroner simply adjourned the inquest so that a more careful analysis
might be made of the vital organs. And now comes this second tragedy in
New York.”
“What was the poison?” I asked. “Have they found out yet?”
“They are pretty sure, so Minturn told me, that it was lead poisoning.
The fact not generally known is,” he added in a lower tone, “that the
cases were not confined to the Pearcy house. They had even extended to
Minturn’s too, although about that he said little yesterday. The
estates up there adjoin, you know.”
Owen Minturn, I recalled, had gained a formidable reputation by his
successful handling of cases from the lowest strata of society to the
highest. Indeed it was a byword that his appearance in court indicated
two things—the guilt of the accused and a verdict of acquittal.
“Of course,” Craig pursued as we were jolted from station to station
downtown, “you know they say that Minturn never kept a record of a
case. But written records were as nothing compared to what that man
must have carried only in his head.”
It was a common saying that, if Minturn should tell all he knew, he
might hang half a dozen prominent men in society. That was not strictly
true, perhaps, but it was certain that a revelation of the things
confided to him by clients which were never put down on paper would
have caused a series of explosions that would have wrecked at least
some portions of the social and financial world. He had heard much and
told little, for he had been a sort of “father confessor.”
Had Minturn, I wondered, known the name of the real criminal?
Josephson’s was a popular bath on Forty-second Street, where many of
the “sun-dodgers” were accustomed to recuperate during the day from
their arduous pursuit of pleasure at night and prepare for the
resumption of their toil during the coming night. It was more than
that, however, for it had a reputation for being conducted really on a
high plane.
We met Josephson downstairs. He had been released under bail, though
the place was temporarily closed and watched over by the agents of the
coroner and the police. Josephson appeared to be a man of some
education and quite different from what I had imagined from hearing him
over the telephone.
“Oh, Mr. Kennedy,” he exclaimed, “who now will come to my baths? Last
night they were crowded, but to-day—”
He ended with an expressive gesture of his hands.
“One customer I have surely lost, young Mr. Pearcy,” he went on.
“Warner Pearcy?” asked Craig. “Was he here last night?”
“Nearly every night,” replied Josephson, now glib enough as his first
excitement subsided and his command of English returned. “He was a
neighbor of Mr. Minturn’s, I hear. Oh, what luck!” growled Josephson as
the name recalled him to his present troubles.
“Well,” remarked Kennedy with an attempt at reassurance as if to gain
the masseur’s confidence, “I know as well as you that it is often
amazing what a tremendous shock a man may receive and yet not be
killed, and no less amazing how small a shock may kill. It all depends
on circumstances.”
Josephson shot a covert look at Kennedy. “Yes,” he reiterated, “but I
cannot see how it _could_ be. If the lights had become short-circuited
with the bath, that might have thrown a current into the bath. But they
were not. I know it.”
“Still,” pursued Kennedy, watching him keenly, “it is not all a
question of current. To kill, the shock must pass through a vital
organ—the brain, the heart, the upper spinal cord. So, a small shock
may kill and a large one may not. If it passes in one foot and out by
the other, the current isn’t likely to be as dangerous as if it passes
in by a hand or foot and then out by a foot or hand. In one case it
passes through no vital organ; in the other it is very likely to do so.
You see, the current can flow through the body only when it has a place
of entrance and a place of exit. In all cases of accident from electric
light wires, the victim is touching some conductor—damp earth, salty
earth, water, something that gives the current an outlet and—”
“But even if the lights had been short-circuited,” interrupted
Josephson, “Mr. Minturn would have escaped injury unless he had touched
the taps of the bath. Oh, no, sir, accidents in the medical use of
electricity are rare. They don’t happen here in my establishment,” he
maintained stoutly. “The trouble was that the coroner, without any
knowledge of the physiological effects of electricity on the body,
simply jumped at once to the conclusion that it was the electric bath
that did it.”
“Then it was for medical treatment that Mr. Minturn was taking the
bath?” asked Kennedy, quickly taking up the point.
“Yes, of course,” answered the masseur, eager to explain. “You are
acquainted with the latest treatment for lead poisoning by means of the
electric bath?”
Kennedy nodded. “I know that Sir Thomas Oliver, the English authority
who has written much on dangerous trades, has tried it with marked
success.”
“Well, sir, that was why Mr. Minturn was here. He came here introduced
by a Dr. Gunther of Stratfield.”
“Indeed?” remarked Kennedy colorlessly, though I could see that it
interested him, for evidently Minturn had said nothing of being himself
a sufferer from the poison. “May I see the bath?”
“Surely,” said Josephson, leading the way upstairs.
It was an oaken tub with metal rods on the two long sides, from which
depended prismatic carbon rods. Kennedy examined it closely.
“This is what we call a hydro-electric bath,” Josephson explained.
“Those rods on the sides are the electrodes. You see there are no metal
parts in the tub itself. The rods are attached by wiring to a wall
switch out here.”
He pointed to the next room. Kennedy examined the switch with care.
“From it,” went on Josephson, “wires lead to an accumulator battery of
perhaps thirty volts. It uses very little current. Dr. Gunther tested
it and found it all right.”
Craig leaned over the bath, and from the carbon electrodes scraped off
a white powder in minute crystals.
“Ordinarily,” Josephson pursued, “lead is eliminated by the skin and
kidneys. But now, as you know, it is being helped along by
electrolysis. I talked to Dr. Gunther about it. It is his opinion that
it is probably eliminated as a chloride from the tissues of the body to
the electrodes in the bath in which the patient is wholly or partly
immersed. On the positive electrodes we get the peroxide. On the
negative there is a spongy metallic form of lead. But it is only a
small amount.”
“The body has been removed?” asked Craig.
“Not yet,” the masseur replied. “The coroner has ordered it kept here
under guard until he makes up his mind what disposition to have made of
it.”
We were next ushered into a little room on the same floor, at the door
of which was posted an official from the coroner.
“First of all,” remarked Craig, as he drew back the sheet and began, a
minute examination of the earthly remains of the great lawyer, “there
are to be considered the safeguards of the human body against the
passage through it of a fatal electric current—the high electric
resistance of the body itself. It is particularly high when the current
must pass through joints such as wrists, knees, elbows, and quite high
when the bones of the head are concerned. Still, there might have been
an incautious application of the current to the head, especially when
the subject is a person of advanced age or latent cerebral disease,
though I don’t know that that fits Mr. Minturn. That’s strange,” he
muttered, looking up, puzzled. “I can find no mark of a burn on the
body—absolutely no mark of anything.”
“That’s what I say,” put in Josephson, much pleased by what Kennedy
said, for he had been waiting anxiously to see what Craig discovered on
his own examination. “It’s impossible.”
“It’s all the more remarkable,” went on Craig, half to himself and
ignoring Josephson, “because burns due to electric currents are totally
unlike those produced in other ways. They occur at the point of
contact, usually about the arms and hands, or the head. Electricity is
much to be feared when it involves the cranial cavity.” He completed
his examination of the head which once had carried secrets which
themselves must have been incandescent.
“Then, too, such burns are most often something more than superficial,
for considerable heat is developed which leads to massive destruction
and carbonization of the tissues to a considerable depth. I have seen
actual losses of substance—a lump of killed flesh surrounded by healthy
tissues. Besides, such burns show an unexpected indolence when compared
to the violent pains of ordinary burns. Perhaps that is due to the
destruction of the nerve endings. How did Minturn die? Was he alone?
Was he dead when he was discovered?”
“He was alone,” replied Josephson, slowly endeavoring to tell it
exactly as he had seen it, “but that’s the strange part of it. He
seemed to be suffering from a convulsion. I think he complained at
first of a feeling of tightness of his throat and a twitching of the
muscles of his hands and feet. Anyhow, he called for help. I was up
here and we rushed in. Dr. Gunther had just brought him and then had
gone away, after introducing him, and showing him the bath.”
Josephson proceeded slowly, evidently having been warned that anything
he said might be used against him. “We carried him, when he was this
way, into this very room. But it was only for a short time. Then came a
violent convulsion. It seemed to extend rapidly all over his body. His
legs were rigid, his feet bent, his head back. Why, he was resting only
on his heels and the back of his head. You see, Mr. Kennedy, that
simply could not be the electric shock.”
“Hardly,” commented Kennedy, looking again at the body. “It looks more
like a tetanus convulsion. Yet there does not seem to be any trace of a
recent wound that might have caused lockjaw. How did he look?”
“Oh, his face finally became livid,” replied Josephson. “He had a
ghastly, grinning expression, his eyes were wide, there was foam on his
mouth, and his breathing was difficult.”
“Not like tetanus, either,” revised Craig. “There the convulsion
usually begins with the face and progresses to the other muscles. Here
it seems to have gone the other way.”
“That lasted a minute or so,” resumed the masseur. “Then he sank
back—perfectly limp. I thought he was dead. But he was not. A cold
sweat broke out all over him and he was as if in a deep sleep.”
“What did you do?” prompted Kennedy.
“I didn’t know what to do. I called an ambulance. But the moment the
door opened, his body seemed to stiffen again. He had one other
convulsion—and when he grew limp he was dead.”