"We've laid Miss Blake on the bed in Mrs. Arthur's room. He's observin'
her."
"Take me there."
"I'll do that, Mr. Hunt. But I'll ask you a question first--straight. Is
there any doubt in your mind that that young lady--your ward--killed
Mrs. Hunt?"
I met his gray-blue glance directly, pausing a moment before I spoke.
"Sergeant Conlon," I replied, while a meteor-shower of speculation shot
through me with the rapidity of light waves, "there is no doubt whatever
in my mind: Miss Blake could not--and so did not--kill my wife."
"Who did, then?"
"Wait! Let me first ask you a question, sergeant: Who sent for Doctor
Askew?"
"That's the queerest part of it; Miss Blake did."
"Ah! _How?_"
"There's a 'phone in Mrs. Hunt's sittin' room. Miss Blake called the
house operator, gave her name and location, and said not to waste a
moment--to send up a doctor double-quick!"
"Is that _all_ she said?"
"No. The operator tells me she said Mrs. Hunt had had a terrible
accident and was dyin'."
"You're certain she said 'accident'?"
"The girl who was at the switchboard--name of Joyce--she's sure of it."
I smiled, grimly enough. "Then that is exactly what occurred,
sergeant--a terrible accident; hideous. Your question is answered.
Nobody killed Mrs. Hunt--unless you are so thoughtless or blasphemous as
to call it an act of God!"
"Oh, come on now!" he objected, shaking his head, but not, I felt, with
entire conviction. "No," he continued stubbornly, "I been turnin' that
over too. But there's no way an accident like that could 'a' happened.
It's not possible!"
"Fortunately," I insisted, "nothing else is possible! Are you asking me
to believe that a young, sensitive girl, with an extraordinary
imaginative sympathy for others--a girl of brains and character, as all
her friends have reason to know--asking me to believe that she walked
coolly into my wife's room this evening, rushed savagely upon her,
wrested a paper knife from her hand, and then found the sheer brute
strength of will and arm to thrust it through her eye deep into her
brain? Are you further asking me to believe that having done this
frightful thing she kept her wits about her, telephoned at once for a
doctor--being careful to call her crime an accident--and so passed at
once into a trance of some kind and walked from the room with the bloody
knife in her hand? What possible motive could be strong enough to drive
such a girl to such a deed?"
"Jealousy," said Sergeant Conlon. "She wanted _you_--and your wife stood
in her way. That's what I get from Mrs. Arthur."
"I see. But the three or four persons who know Miss Blake and me best
will tell you how absurd that is, and you'll find their reasons for
thinking so are very convincing. Is Mr. Phar still about?"
"He is. I've detained him."
"What does he think of Mrs. Arthur's nonsensical theory?"
"He's got a theory of his own," said Conlon; "and it happens to be the
same as mine."
"Well?"
"Mr. Phar says Miss Blake's own father went mad--all of a sudden; cut
some fancy woman's throat, and his own after! He thinks history's
repeated itself, that's all. So do I. Only a crazy woman could 'a' done
this--just this way. A strong man in his senses couldn't 'a' drove that
paper-knife home like that! But when a person goes mad, sir, all rules
are off. I seen too many cases. Things happen you can't account for.
Take the matter of that dog now--his broken leg, eh? What are you to
make of that? And take this queer state she's in. There's no doubt in my
mind, Mr. Hunt--the poor girl's gone crazy, somehow. You nor me can't
tell how nor why. But it's back of all this--that's sure."
Throughout all this coarse nightmare, this insane break in Nature, as I
have called it and must always regard it, let me at least be honest. As
Conlon spoke, for the tiniest fraction of a second a desolating fear
darted through me, searing every nerve with white-hot pain. Was it true?
Might it not conceivably be true? But this single lightning-thrust of
doubt passed as it came. No, not as it came, for it blotted all
clearness, all power of voluntary thought from my mind; but it left
behind it a singular intensity of vision. Even as the lightning-pang
vanished, and while time yet stood still, a moving picture that amounted
to hallucination began to play itself out before me. It was like
_... that last
Wild pageant of the accumulated past
That clangs and flashes for a drowning man._
I saw Susan shutting the door of a delicately panelled Georgian room,
and every detail of this room--a room I had never entered in the
flesh--was distinct to me. Given time, I could have inventoried its
every object. I saw Gertrude lying on--not a couch, as Conlon had called
it--on a _chaise-longue_, a book with a vivid green cover in her left
hand, a bronze paper knife with a thin, pointed blade in her right. She
was holding it with the knuckles of her hand upward, her thumb along the
handle, and the point of the blade turned to her left, across and a
little in toward her body. She was wearing a very lovely _neglige_, a
true creation, all in filmy tones of old gold. On a low-set tip-table at
her elbow stood a reading-lamp, and a small coal-black French bull lay
asleep on a superb Chinese rug--lay close in by the _chaise-longue_,
just where a dropped hand might caress him. A light silky-looking
coverlet of a peculiar dull blue, harmonizing with certain tones of the
rug, was thrown across Gertrude's feet.
As Susan shut the door, the little bull pricked up his bat-ears and
started to uncurl, but Gertrude must have spoken to him, for he settled
back again--not, however, to sleep. It was all a picture; I heard no
sounds. Then I saw Gertrude put down her book on the table and swing her
feet from the _chaise-longue_, meaning to rise and greet Susan. But, as
she attempted to stand up, the light coverlet entangled her feet and
tripped her; she lost her balance, tried with a violent, awkward lurch
of her whole body to recover herself, and stamped rather than stepped
full on the dog's forepaws. He writhed, springing up between her
feet--the whole grotesque catastrophe was, in effect, a single, fatal
gesture!--and Gertrude, throwing her hands instinctively before her
face, fell heavily forward, the length of her body, prone. I saw Susan
rush toward her---- And the psychic reel flickered out, blanked.... I
needed to see no more.
"Don't you agree with me, Mr. Hunt?" Conlon was asking.
"No," I said bluntly. "No madwoman would have summoned a doctor. Miss
Blake called it a terrible accident. It was. Her present state is due to
the horror of it. When she wakes, it will all be explained. Now take me
to her."
Conlon's gray-blue glance fixed me once more. "All right," he grunted,
"I've no objections. But I'd 'a' thought your first wish would 'a' been
to see your wife."
"No," I replied. "Mrs. Hunt separated from me years ago, for reasons of
her own. I bore her no ill will; in a sense, I respected her, admired
her. Understand me, Sergeant Conlon. There was nothing vulgar in her
life, and her death in this stupid way--oh, it's indecent, damnable! A
cheap outrage! I could do nothing for her living, and can do nothing
now. But I prefer to remember her as she was. _She_ would prefer it,
too."
"Come on, then," said Conlon; pretty gruffly, I thought.
He unlocked the door.