In high red boots, wide purple breeches and a yellow mandarin jacket,
Jones entered the workshop.
His appearance did not alarm him. He was invisible. Lloyd George and
Clemenceau might have called. Mr. Ten Eyck Jones was not at home, sir.
If necessary he was dead. Always, while he dressed, his servant put,
unseen, a tray on the workshop table and, still unseen, disappeared.
With the tray was the morning paper and the usual letters, which Jones
never read. Morning in the workshop meant work. No interruptions
permitted. On one occasion the house got on fire. His servant did not
venture to tell him, though the firemen did. Apart from such outrages,
necessarily infrequent, the only intrusion was the morning paper and the
cat that talked in her sleep. The cat had many privileges, the paper had
few. Sometimes it was briefly considered, more often it was not even
looked at, but its great privilege consisted in being stacked.
On this morning Jones did look, but quite involuntarily, and only
because a headline caught his eye. It was the same headline from before
which Cassy backed. The leaping words shouted at the girl. They shouted
at the novelist, a circumstance which did not prevent him from
breakfasting.
The fruit, the crescents, the coffee he consumed, not as was customary,
with his thoughts on his own copy, but on that which the paper supplied.
It was very colourful. At the opera, the night before, Monty Paliser had
been killed.
In New York, many men are killed, but not so many are murdered and of
those that are murdered, few are millionaires and fewer still have a box
at the Metropolitan, where, apart from stage business, no one up to then
had been done for. The case was therefore unique and, save for the
assassination of Abraham Lincoln, without a parallel. In the
circumstances, the leaded line of leaping words was justified.
According to the story that followed and which, Jones realised, must
have reached the city editor just as the paper was going to press, an
attendant, whose duty it was to visit the boxes after the performance
and see what, if anything, the occupants had forgotten, had, on entering
Paliser's box, found him at the back of it, unconscious, on the floor.
There were no external marks of violence, but a commandeered physician
pronounced him dead and, on examination, further pronounced that death
was due to internal hemorrhage, superinduced by heart-puncture, which
itself had been caused by some instrument, presumably a stiletto.
A picturesque detail followed. The box at the right was owned by the
Leroy Thompsons. The box at the left was the Harriwells'. At the late
hour, an attempt to communicate with the former had failed, but over the
wire, Mr. Legrand Harriwell stated that the deceased had come in during
the third act, that he had spoken to Mrs. Harriwell, after which he had
moved back and had either gone, or remained in the rear of the box. Mr.
Harriwell knew nothing else, he had been unaware of anything occurring,
he was not in the habit of spying about and he wished it distinctly
understood that he must not be mixed up in the matter, or Mrs. Harriwell
either.
The dear thing! thought Jones, who saw him, a tall, thin-lipped beast of
a brute, with a haw-haw manner and an arrogant air. God bless him!
But, Jones resumed to himself, voyons! The opera was Aida. Paliser came
in during the third act. The house then is brilliant. But during the
fourth--the duo in the crypt--it is dark. It was then that he was done
for and with what is assumed to have been a stiletto.
To cut out the account, Jones turned in search of a dagger, long, thin,
wicked, which, one adventurous night in Naples, he had found--just in
time--in his back. On the blade was inscribed a promise, Penetrabo. Now
his eyes roamed the table. He lifted the tray, lifted his copy, looked
on the floor. Yet only the evening before, when Lennox was there and
Cassy Cara had come, he had seen it. Since then it had gone.
The disappearance did not disturb him. Occasionally, in hunting for an
object, he found it in his hand. It is somewhere, he cogently reflected
and, taking a pencil, set to work.
But the muse was timorous as a chicken. The metaphor is entirely
metaphorical. Jones had no faith in the wanton. He believed in regular
hours, in silence and no interruptions. No intrusions of any kind. A
letter was an intrusion, so also was the news of the day. These things
he considered, when he did consider them, after his work was done.
Sometimes he ignored them entirely. Usually he had a bushel of letters
that he had not opened, a bale of papers at which he had not looked. Of
such is the life known as literary or, at any rate, such was the life
led by Jones.
On this morning, his copy, ordinarily fluent enough, would not come.
Ideas fluttered away just out of reach. The sequence of a chapter had
been in his head. Like the dagger, it had gone. He could not account for
that disappearance, nor did he try. It would turn up again. So,
ultimately, would the ousted sequence. For the latter's departure he did
not try to account either. The effort was needless. He knew. An
interruption had occurred. The news of the day had intruded itself upon
him. A headline had entangled his thoughts.
Abandoning the pencil, he lit a cigarette. Across the room, above the
bookcase, was a stretch of silk, a flight of dragons that he had got in
Rangoon. Above the silk was an ivory mask, the spoil of a sarcophagus,
which he had found in Seville. He looked at them. The dragons fled on,
the mask fell asleep. Something else took their place.
On the wall was the scene at the opera.
In the golden gloom of the darkened house, it showed Paliser, sitting
back in his box, presumably enjoying the _Terra addio_, for which Caruso
had, as usual, been saving himself. Without, in the corridor, a figure
furtively peering at the names on the doors. Then the voice of the
soprano blending with that of the tenor and, during the divine duo, the
door of the box opening, letting in a thread of light; Paliser turning
to look and beholding that figure and a hand which, instantly
descending, deepened the gloom forever.
It was certainly _Terra addio_, Jones reflected. Certainly, too, the
scene is easy enough to reconstruct But whose was the hand?
Flicking his ashes, he looked about and saw two hands, between which, he
also saw, he was entirely free to pick and choose. One hand, slight and
fragile, was Cassy Cara's. The other, firm and virile, was Lennox'.
Lennox had threatened. He had been acidly murderous. He had a motive. He
had the opportunity. He knew where Paliser would be. He had been
supplied with a seat in that box. The hand was his. It was a clear case.
That was obvious, particularly to Jones, who regarded the obvious as
very misleading.
Given the chance, he reflected, and Lennox might have done for Paliser,
but he would have done for him with bare fists, never with a knife. It
was not Lennox to use one. It was not Lennox at all.
Jones threw him out and pulled in Cassy Cara.
The case against her was equally clear. Presumably she owned the
stiletto which a hat pin is. In addition, she also had a motive. If ever
a girl had cause to up and do it, she had. Then, too, the risk was
negligible. Any jury would acquit and tumble over each other to shake
hands with her. For equity has justice that the law does not know.
Moreover there are crimes that jurists have not codified. Some are too
inhuman, others too human. Cassy's righting of her own wrongs belonged
among the latter. Cassy's, that is, provided she had done it. But had
she? Logically, yes. If the police could look behind the scenes,
logically they would say to her, "Thou art the man."
But, Jones resumed, logic when pushed far enough becomes incoherence.
The psychologist prefers vision and it would display none to believe
that she did it. In the abstract, that is to be regretted. A lovely
assassin! A beautiful girl slaying a recreant lover! A future prima
donna killing a local millionaire! Monty Paliser murdered by the
Viscountess of Casa-Evora! And at the opera! If I had ever put anything
of the kind in my copy, reviewers would have indolently asked: "Why
doesn't this imbecile study life?"
Jones laughed. The enjoyment of one's own ideas--or of the absence of
them--is a literary trait. When Dumas wrote, he roared.
Here it is, then, Jones continued. If the police knew certain things
they would nab Lennox. If they knew others, they would nab Cassy Cara.
If they knew more, they would nab me. I should be held as a witness.
This is cheerful, particularly as my sole complicity in the matter has
been due to a desire to be of use. But that is just it. Through the
enigmatic laws of life, any kindness is repaid in pain.
Pleasurably, for a moment, he considered the altruism of that aphorism.
Then he got back at the murder which, he decided, must have been
premeditated by some one who knew where Paliser would be. That
conclusion reached, he groped for another. Lennox knew, but did Cassy
know, and, if she did, had she utilised the knowledge?
To decide the point he reviewed the visit of the previous evening.
Ostensibly Cassy's visit had been occasioned not by any wish to relate
what had happened to her, but to acquaint Lennox with the cause of what
had happened to him. In view of what had befallen her, the proceeding
was certainly considerate. In the misadventures of life, the individual
is usually so obsessed by his own troubles that they blind him to those
of another. But ostensibly Cassy had sunk her troubles and had pulled
them up, not to exhibit them, but to show Lennox the lay of the land as
it affected not her at all but him. The proceeding was certainly
considerate--unless it were astute, unless her object had been to employ
Lennox for the wreaking of her own revenge.
That was possible, but was it probable?
An ordinary young woman would have gone at it differently, gone at it
hammer and tongs. Cassy's methods were merely finer. That was the common
sense view. But was it psychology? The common sense view that is
applicable to the average individual is inapplicable to a problematic
nature and, consequently, not to Cassy, who must therefore have had
another incentive for her visit, an incentive stronger than the
primitive instinct for revenge.
But, Jones asked himself, what are the fundamental principles of human
activity? They are self-preservation and the perpetuation of the
species. Every idea that has existed, or does exist, in the mind of man
is the result of the permutations and combinations of those two
principles, of which the second is the stronger and its basis is sex.
That is what actuated Cassy. She is, or was, in love with Lennox, and
told him for no other reason.
That is it, Jones decided. But the course of her true love could not
have run very smooth and, knowing that Lennox was otherwise interested,
she took up with Paliser out of pique.