THE ENDS OF JUSTICE
A few minutes later we were in the sitting room of her suite. She
received us rather ungraciously, I thought.
“Do you feel any better?” asked Kennedy.
“No,” she replied curtly. “Excuse me for a moment. I wish to see that
maid of mine. Clarisse!”
She had hardly left the room when Kennedy was on his feet. The bottle
of white tablets, nearly empty, was still on the table. I saw him take
some very fine white powder and dust it quickly over the bottle. It
seemed to adhere, and from his pocket he quickly drew a piece of what
seemed to be specially prepared paper, laid it over the bottle where
the powder adhered, fitting it over the curves. He withdrew it quickly,
for outside we heard her light step, returning. I am sure she either
saw or suspected that Kennedy had been touching the bottle of tablets,
for there was a look of startled fear on her face.
“Then you do not feel like continuing the tests we abandoned last
night?” asked Kennedy, apparently not noticing her look.
“No, I do not,” she almost snapped. “You—you are detectives. Mrs.
Hazleton has sent you.”
“Indeed, Mrs. Hazleton has not sent us,” insisted Kennedy, never for an
instant showing his surprise at her mention of the name.
“You are. You can tell her, you can tell everybody. I’ll tell—I’ll tell
myself. I won’t wait. That child is mine—mine—not hers. Now—go!”
Veronica Haversham on the stage never towered in a fit of passion as
she did now in real life, as her ungovernable feelings broke forth
tempestuously on us.
I was astounded, bewildered at the revelation, the possibilities in
those simple words, “The child is mine.” For a moment I was stunned.
Then as the full meaning dawned on me I wondered in a flood of
consciousness whether it was true. Was it the product of her
drug-disordered brain? Had her desperate love for Hazleton produced a
hallucination?
Kennedy, silent, saw that the case demanded quick action. I shall never
forget the breathless ride down from the sanitarium to the Hazleton
house on Riverside Drive.
“Mrs. Hazleton,” he cried, as we hurried in, “you will pardon me for
this unceremonious intrusion, but it is most important. May I trouble
you to place your fingers on this paper—so?”
He held out to her a piece of the prepared paper. She looked at him
once, then saw from his face that he was not to be questioned. Almost
tremulously she did as he said, saying not a word. I wondered whether
she knew the story of Veronica, or whether so far only hints of it had
been brought to her.
“Thank you,” he said quickly. “Now, if I may see Morton?”
It was the first time we had seen the baby about whom the rapidly
thickening events were crowding. He was a perfect specimen of
well-cared-for, scientific infant.
Kennedy took the little chubby fingers playfully in his own. He seemed
at once to win the child’s confidence, though he may have violated
scientific rules. One by one he pressed the little fingers on the
paper, until little Morton crowed with delight as one little piggy
after another “went to market.” He had deserted thousands of dollars’
worth of toys just to play with the simple piece of paper Kennedy had
brought with him. As I looked at him, I thought of what Kennedy had
said at the start. Perhaps this innocent child was not to be envied
after all. I could hardly restrain my excitement over the astounding
situation which had suddenly developed.
“That will do,” announced Kennedy finally, carelessly folding up the
paper and slipping it into his pocket. “You must excuse me now.”
“You see,” he explained on the way to the laboratory, “that powder
adheres to fresh finger prints, taking all the gradations. Then the
paper with its paraffine and glycerine coating takes off the powder.”
In the laboratory he buried himself in work, with microscope compasses,
calipers, while I fumed impotently at the window.
“Walter,” he called suddenly, “get Dr. Maudsley on the telephone. Tell
him to come immediately to the laboratory.”
Meanwhile Kennedy was busy arranging what he had discovered in logical
order and putting on it the finishing touches.
As Dr. Maudsley entered Kennedy greeted him and began by plunging
directly into the case in answer to his rather discourteous inquiry as
to why he had been so hastily summoned.
“Dr. Maudsley,” said Craig, “I have asked you to call alone because,
while I am on the verge of discovering the truth in an important case
affecting Morton Hazleton and his wife, I am frankly perplexed as to
how to go ahead.”
The doctor seemed to shake with excitement as Kennedy proceeded.
“Dr. Maudsley,” Craig added, dropping his voice, “is Morton III the son
of Millicent Hazleton or not? You were the physician in attendance on
her at the birth. Is he?”
Maudsley had been watching Kennedy furtively at first, but as he rapped
out the words I thought the doctor’s eyes would pop out of his head.
Perspiration in great beads collected on his face.
“P—professor K—Kennedy,” he muttered, frantically rubbing his face and
lower jaw as if to compose the agitation he could so ill conceal, “let
me explain.”
“Yes, yes—go on,” urged Kennedy.
“Mrs. Hazleton’s baby was born—dead. I knew how much she and the rest
of the family had longed for an heir, how much it meant. And
I—substituted for the dead child a newborn baby from the maternity
hospital. It—it belonged to Veronica Haversham—then a poor chorus girl.
I did not intend that she should ever know it. I intended that she
should think her baby was dead. But in some way she found out. Since
then she has become a famous beauty, has numbered among her friends
even Hazleton himself. For nearly two years I have tried to keep her
from divulging the secret. From time to time hints of it have leaked
out. I knew that if Hazleton with his infatuation of her were to
learn—-”
“And Mrs. Hazleton, has she been told?” interrupted Kennedy.
“I have been trying to keep it from her as long as I can, but it has
been difficult to keep Veronica from telling it. Hazleton himself was
so wild over her. And she wanted her son as she—-”
“Maudsley,” snapped out Kennedy, slapping down on the table the mass of
prints and charts which he had hurriedly collected and was studying,
“you lie! Morton is Millicent Hazleton’s son. The whole story is
blackmail. I knew it when she told me of her dreams and I suspected
first some such devilish scheme as yours. Now I know it
scientifically.”
He turned over the prints.
“I suppose that study of these prints, Maudsley, will convey nothing to
you. I know that it is usually stated that there are no two sets of
finger prints in the world that are identical or that can be confused.
Still, there are certain similarities of finger prints and other
characteristics, and these similarities have recently been exhaustively
studied by Bertilion, who has found that there are clear relationships
sometimes between mother and child in these respects. If Solomon were
alive, doctor, he would not now have to resort to the expedient to
which he did when the two women disputed over the right to the living
child. Modern science is now deciding by exact laboratory methods the
same problem as he solved by his unique knowledge of feminine
psychology.
“I saw how this case was tending. Not a moment too soon, I said to
myself, ‘The hand of the child will tell.’ By the very variations in
unlike things, such as finger and palm prints, as tabulated and
arranged by Bertillon after study in thousands of cases, by the very
loops, whorls, arches and composites, I have proved my case.
“The dominancy, not the identity, of heredity through the infinite
varieties of finger markings is sometimes very striking. Unique
patterns in a parent have been repeated with marvelous accuracy in the
child. I knew that negative results might prove nothing in regard to
parentage, a caution which it is important to observe. But I was
prepared to meet even that.
“I would have gone on into other studies, such as Tammasia’s, of
heredity in the veining of the back of the hands; I would have measured
the hands, compared the relative proportion of the parts; I would have
studied them under the X-ray as they are being studied to-day; I would
have tried the Reichert blood crystal test which is being perfected now
so that it will tell heredity itself. There is no scientific stone I
would have left unturned until I had delved at the truth of this
riddle. Fortunately it was not necessary. Simple finger prints have
told me enough. And best of all, it has been in time to frustrate that
devilish scheme you and Veronica Haversham have been slowly unfolding.”
Maudsley crumpled up, as it were, at Kennedy’s denunciation. He seemed
to shrink toward the door.
“Yes,” cried Kennedy, with extended forefinger, “you may go—for the
present. Don’t try to run away. You’re watched from this moment on.”
Maudsley had retreated precipitately.
I looked at Kennedy inquiringly. What to do? It was indeed a delicate
situation, requiring the utmost care to handle. If the story had been
told to Hazleton, what might he not have already done? He must be found
first of all if we were to meet the conspiracy of these two.
Kennedy reached quickly for the telephone. “There is one stream of
scandal that can be dammed at its source,” he remarked, calling a
number. “Hello. Klemm’s Sanitarium? I’d like to speak with Miss
Haversham. What—gone? Disappeared? Escaped?”
He hung up the receiver and looked at me blankly. I was speechless.
A thousand ideas flew through our minds at once. Had she perceived the
import of our last visit and was she now on her way to complete her
plotted slander of Millicent Hazleton, though it pulled down on herself
in the end the whole structure?
Hastily Kennedy called Hazleton’s home, Butler, and one after another
of Hazleton’s favorite clubs. It was not until noon that Butler himself
found him and came with him, under protest, to the laboratory.
“What is it—what have you found?” cried Butler, his lean form a-quiver
with suppressed excitement.
Briefly, one fact after another, sparing Hazleton nothing, Kennedy
poured forth the story, how by hint and innuendo Maudsley had been
working on Millicent, undermining her, little knowing that he had
attacked in her a very tower of strength, how Veronica, infatuated by
him, had infatuated him, had led him on step by step.
Pale and agitated, with nerves unstrung by the life he had been
leading, Hazleton listened. And as Kennedy hammered one fact after
another home, he clenched his fists until the nails dug into his very
palms.
“The scoundrels,” he ground out, as Kennedy finished by painting the
picture of the brave little broken-hearted woman fighting off she knew
not what, and the golden-haired, innocent baby stretching out his arms
in glee at the very chance to prove that he was what he was. “The
scoundrels—take me to Maudsley now. I must see Maudsley. Quick!”
As we pulled up before the door of the reconstructed stable-studio,
Kennedy jumped out. The door was unlocked. Up the broad flight of
stairs, Hazleton went two at a time. We followed him closely.
Lying on the divan in the room that had been the scene of so many
orgies, locked in each other’s arms, were two figures—Veronica
Haversham and Dr. Maudsley.
She must have gone there directly after our visit to Dr. Klemm’s, must
have been waiting for him when he returned with his story of the
exposure to answer her fears of us as Mrs. Hazleton’s detectives. In a
frenzy of intoxication she must have flung her arms blindly about him
in a last wild embrace.
Hazleton looked, aghast.
He leaned over and took her arm. Before he could frame the name,
“Veronica!” he had recoiled.
The two were cold and rigid.
“An overdose of heroin this time,” muttered Kennedy.
My head was in a whirl.
Hazleton stared blankly at the two figures abjectly lying before him,
as the truth burned itself indelibly into his soul. He covered his face
with his hands. And still he saw it all.
Craig said nothing. He was content to let what he had shown work in the
man’s mind.
“For the sake of—that baby—would she—would she forgive?” asked
Hazleton, turning desperately toward Kennedy.
Deliberately Kennedy faced him, not as scientist and millionaire, but
as man and man.
“From my psychanalysis,” he said slowly, “I should say that it IS
within your power, in time, to change those dreams.”
Hazleton grasped Kennedy’s hand before he knew it.
“Kennedy—home—quick. This is the first manful impulse I have had for
two years. And, Jameson—you’ll tone down that part of it in the
newspapers that Junior—might read—when he grows up?”
THE END