CARDS ON THE TABLE
The crowd dispersed as the patrol wagon took Garney and the officer
away, but one man lingered and fell into step with me as I turned
away. It was Mr. Ellison. I had not noticed him in the crowd.
"What's all this?" he asked, twisting his head to look up at me,
bird-fashion.
"Walk with me, and I'll tell you," I said. "I am going down to see
Benbow."
And as we walked I told him of the surprising developments of the last
few hours,--that Garney, the Latin tutor, and Gene's friend, was the
man with crooked teeth who had been eating apples in Barker's inner
office while waiting for his victim, who had observed and recognized
my locket; and that Garney was Diavolo the hypnotist who had
threatened to kill his partner, Barker, if his identity were
disclosed. (I may say here, to anticipate events which befell later,
that this identity was absolutely established by Dr. Shaw, the dentist
who had extracted a tooth for Diavolo,--the first case in the law
reports, I believe, where identity was established by the teeth. By
that time every link was so clear that Garney's confession was hardly
needed,--though he did break down in the end and make a plea of
"Guilty.")
Ellison listened with his peculiar interest,--an interest in events
rather than in persons, and in ideas more than either. At the end he
nodded his alert head rapidly.
"Yes, I knew Garney had practised hypnotism but I thought it was years
ago. Barker told me, in strict confidence."
"Barker!"
He nodded. "Yes. I didn't say anything about it, because people seemed
to think it wasn't good form for me to have any civil relations with
the man who had killed my second cousin, but as a matter of fact, I
knew him fairly well. Gene would turn white at the mention of his
name, so I didn't mention it. That check for $250--you remember?"
"Yes."
"Well, that was to pay for a course of lessons in hypnotism. He
promised to get me a practical teacher who had been a public
performer,--Garney, in fact. He hadn't made the arrangements yet, but
he was confident that he could bring it about. And I was eager to have
the opportunity to investigate the matter, scientifically, you
understand. If he could teach me how to do it, I would understand the
thing,--the rationale of it, I mean. But it was strictly confidential,
because of Garney's position in the university."
"Did he know you knew?"
"No. Barker was killed before he could arrange it. I went to his room
the next day, to see if I could by chance recover that check, which
hadn't been presented at the bank, but his dragon landlady gave me no
chance,--and then you told me that you saw it in his pocket the next
day. So I let things take their own course."
"Somebody did break into his rooms that night," I said. "That has
never been cleared up."
"Garney!" said Ellison, shrewdly. "He has in his possession certain
books which I know Barker had in his room the day before. He
undoubtedly removed them, with any papers or other matters that might
have connected him with Barker or revealed his practices."
"How do you know he has them?" I asked, amazed.
"Oh, I have made a point of seeing a good deal of Garney lately. You
see, I am interested in the occult, scientifically. And since Barker
couldn't act as go-between, I have been cultivating Garney on my own
account."
"Yes, and given him a chance to work on Miss Benbow's feelings," I
groaned.
"Why, it never occurred to me that he was interested in her," he said
blandly.
"That was too obvious to attract your attention, doubtless," I could
not refrain from saying. "Well, you have cleared up a good many
points, Mr. Ellison, but I'd like to ask another question. Did you
send a thousand dollars to William Jordan, and if so, why?"
For the first time he looked embarrassed.
"Why yes," he said, nodding his head deliberately. "Jean told me about
him and his loss. It struck me that it was an unnecessary piece of
hard luck that he should suffer as an individual for an advancement of
knowledge which will benefit the race. He didn't care anything about
hypnotism scientifically. I did. I had fostered its development, so
far as lay within my power. So, in a manner, I was responsible for his
loss. Not immediately, of course, and yet not so remotely, either,
since I was encouraging Barker. At any rate, I felt that I should be
more comfortable if I made it up to the old farmer. When hypnotism is
no longer a mystery but an understood science, such things won't
happen!" He beamed with enthusiasm, and I saw that I had never
understood the man. He was an idealist.
"I hope they won't," I said doubtfully. "But hypnotism seems to me
devil's work, both for the hypnotizer and the victim. Think of Jordan,
and look at Garney. Aside from his crimes, the man is somehow
abnormal. He has the look of a haunted man. He faints like a woman
when he is discovered. No, no hypnotism for me, thank you. But in any
event, your action in reimbursing poor old Jordan does you credit."
He waved that aside. "What I should like to know," he said, changing
the subject, "is how Gene became involved in this affair. If Garney
shot Barker, why did Gene say he did? He isn't as fond of Garney as
all that. You don't suppose--" He stopped suddenly and looked at me
hard. "You don't suppose that Garney hypnotized him, _and sent him to
shoot Barker?_ That would be neat! Damnable, of course, but damnably
neat!"
"I don't know," I said slowly. I had been afraid to face that idea
myself. "I am going to see him now. Perhaps, with the news of Garney's
arrest for a lever, I may get the truth from him. If you don't mind, I
want to see him alone."
"All right. I'll leave you here."
But as he turned away, Fellows came up from behind and fell into step
with me. I think he had been watching for the chance.
"Royce's story is all right, Mr. Hilton," he said. "The cars _were_
tied up on the Park line the night that Barker was shot. And I have
seen the conductor. He knows Royce, who is a fireman at Engine House
No. 6, and he remembers seeing him on the stalled car, with a girl."
"A good alibi, but he won't need to prove it now," I said. "We have
found Barker's murderer. It is a man named Allen Garney."
"Oh, ho!" Fellows exclaimed, in obvious surprise.
"Do you know him?" I asked, recalling the damaging charge which Garney
had made against Fellows.
"I know who he is, and I know that there was something between him and
Barker in the old days,--on the quiet. Garney didn't care to be seen
with him, but in a way they were pals. In fact, I went to see him the
other day to make some inquiries about Barker's past. He was rather
rude in getting rid of me."
"You frightened him. He didn't want to be identified as having any
connection with Barker. I see. That's why he used your name as a
scapegoat to turn my attention from himself. He suggested that you
might have shot Barker yourself, Fellows!"
"Did he?" said Fellows, grimly. "Well, if I had, it would only have
been the execution of justice. Barker was a murderer."
"You mean in killing Senator Benbow?"
"More than that. Do you remember the story that the Samovar printed
about Mr. Clyde?"
"Well, rather!"
"It brought to my mind a story that Barker once told me. When I was a
fresh kid from the country and he was teaching me the ways of the
world and of the race-track, he told me that he had once stabbed a man
in a Texas hotel for cheating at cards. He said that he and three
other men were playing in the room of one of them, and that was the
one that was killed. He told me that another man was arrested, tried
and convicted, while he sat in the court room and watched the
proceedings."
"What a monster!"
"He told the story merely to point out that every man had to take his
chances,--good luck or bad,--just as it came. He was a great believer
in luck. It was his luck to escape and the other man's luck to be
convicted by mistake. But he said that the man escaped and was not
hung. The Clyde story was so much like Barker's story that I wondered
whether it might not be the same, and I went to Garney to ask if he
knew whether Barker was the man who killed Henley. He would not admit
knowing anything, but he let slip a word in his first anger that he
could not take back. It _was_ Barker."
"The villain! And he claimed to be merely a spectator in the court
room, and that that was how he came to recognize Clyde! He probably
studied his face pretty carefully during the days when he was watching
Clyde in the dock where he knew he should have been himself! I don't
wonder he recognized him. What a man!"
"I wonder if we can prove it," exclaimed Fellows.
"We have just discovered an old letter which will completely establish
an alibi for Clyde,--I'll tell you the details later. But whether we
can get your story before the court or not, it is undoubtedly the
inner truth of the matter and it rounds out the story of Barker's
villainy very completely. And he met the treachery he dealt out to
others. He was slain by the hand of the false friend he trusted and
whom he probably had never wronged."
"But if Garney killed him, what about Benbow?"
"I am going to see him now, and see if I can find out what it is that
he is concealing. I'm glad I don't have to swear out a warrant against
you, Fellows!"
Fellows smiled quite humanly as he turned away.
I found Benbow thinner, more nervous, and less self-possessed than I
had ever seen him before. I was glad to see these signs of
disintegration in his baffling reserve.
"I have had a strenuous afternoon," I said, as we shook hands. "Since
four o'clock I have discovered Barker's widow, spoiled an elopement,
and had your Latin tutor, Garney, arrested."
He looked surprised, naturally, but nothing more. "What for?" he
asked.
"For complicity in a murder," I said, watching him closely.
"Oh, impossible!" he exclaimed. "Not Mr. Garney!" His natural manner,
his genuine look of surprise and inquiry, were disconcerting. I saw I
must work my way carefully.
"Did you know that Mr. Garney had hypnotic powers?" I asked.
Ah, there my probe went home! His tell-tale face flushed and his eyes
evaded mine.
"I can tell you nothing about that," he said, with dignified reserve.
"Perhaps I may be able to tell you something that will be news to you,
even though you knew of his practices. He is known on the vaudeville
stage as Diavolo, and he has toured, giving exhibitions in hypnotism."
"I didn't know that," he said,--and I could not doubt his sincerity.
"It must have been a long time ago."
"No longer ago than last summer. He kept his own name from the public.
But I infer that you did know something of his practices in private?"
"Yes," he said, hesitatingly.
"Did you ever allow him to hypnotize you?" I asked abruptly.
He was obviously discomposed, but he tried to cover his embarrassment
by assuming an air of careless frankness. "Oh, yes. I believe I was a
good subject. Mr. Garney was trying to develop my mental powers by
hypnotism. He told me some remarkable accounts of idiots who had been
mentally stimulated by hypnotic suggestion to do creditable work in
their classes."
"Was that the direction in which his suggestions were made?" I asked,
as casually as possible. I must try to get from him, without
disturbing his sensibilities, as clear an account as he could give me,
or would give me, of his peculiar relations with Garney.
"Oh, yes. It was just to help me with my Latin. And it did help," he
added, defensively. I could see that he was not entirely at ease over
the admission.
"How often did you put yourself under his influence?"
"Oh, I don't remember. Half a dozen times, perhaps."
"Did you remember afterwards what he had said or done to you while you
were hypnotized?"
"Not a thing! I just went to sleep, and woke up. It isn't different
from any other kind of sleep," he explained, with a youthful air of
wisdom, "only that a part of you stays awake inside and takes lessons
from your teacher while you don't know it."
"So I understand," I said gently. His assumption of superior knowledge
touched me. "Was it hard to go to sleep?"
"The first time it wasn't easy. Something inside of my brain seemed to
snap awake just as I was going off,--over and over again. But at last
I went off. After that it was easier each time. Once he hypnotized me
in class and I found I had been making a brilliant recitation, though
I didn't remember anything about it myself. And once he hypnotized me
while I was asleep, and I never knew it at all until he told me
afterwards and showed me some things I had written while asleep."
"Did Mr. Garney ever speak to you of Alfred Barker?"
"No." His manner froze, as it always did at any mention of Barker.
"You did not know, then, that there was enmity between the two men?"
"No. I didn't know that Mr. Garney knew--_him_--at all." He swerved
from pronouncing the name.
"Yes, Barker had acted as his business manager in the vaudeville
business, and they had quarreled. Now tell me something else. Did
Garney hypnotize you the day that you hunted up Barker to shoot him?"
"No." A look of dawning uneasiness and indignation crossed his face.
"Did you see him that evening at all?"
"No," he said, with obvious relief.
"Now will you tell me again just what happened that evening,--the
order of the events?" (My object really was to see whether he would
change his story. I had no need to refresh my own memory, as his
former account was entirely clear in my mind.)
"Beginning with the banquet?" he asked.
"Yes, begin there."
"Well, everything went smoothly until Jim Gregory mentioned seeing
Barker on the street. That spoiled the evening for me. I got away as
soon as I could."
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"Just where did you go?--what streets?"
"Oh, I don't know. I didn't notice. I went home and threw myself down
on the couch in the library and read Cicero to get my mind quiet.
Things were whirling so in my brain!"
This was new! Evidently his memory was clearer than when he made his
first statement to me. "Do you remember what you were reading?" I
asked, to pin his recollection definitely.
"Yes, it was De Senectute,--an English version Mr. Garney had lent
me."
I stopped to think. That was the book young Chapman had had in his
hand the day I hunted him up,--the day after the murder.
"Are you certain it was that book and no other you read?" I asked. I
felt that I had a thread in my fingers,--a filmy thread that might
break if I did not work carefully.
"Quite sure. I picked it up at first just to read anything, because it
was lying there. Mr. Garney had left it that afternoon. And then I
became interested in it. It was quieting. It made me feel that after
all life is short and what was the use of cherishing ill-will and
bitterness towards--well, even a rascal like Barker. It would all be
over so soon."
"And with that thought in your mind, you went off and shot him, did
you?" I asked with a smile.
He looked perplexed, and did not answer.
"You didn't have another copy of De Senectute about? I want to be
sure."
"I am sure. Mr. Garney left it with me that afternoon and asked me to
pass it on to Chapman when I had looked it over."
"And you did?"
"No. I--I haven't been back to the house, you know, since--since that
morning."
"But Chapman had it the next day. He said Mr. Garney had given it to
him."
Gene looked puzzled and thoughtful. "I don't see--"
"As I understand it, the servants were away that evening. Mr. Garney
could not have come in unless you yourself admitted him, could he?"
"Oh, for that matter, he had my latchkey for the side door,--directly
into the library. He used to drop in--" He hesitated, and his
momentary embarrassment gave me the clue.
"When he came to try his hypnotic stunts?" I asked lightly.
"Yes," Gene nodded, looking relieved at my manner.
"But he didn't come that evening?"
"No. I dropped asleep. I slept awfully hard. When I woke up the gas
was on full blaze." He caught himself up and looked startled.
"It was morning, then?" I said, quickly.
"Yes," he said slowly, evidently trying to puzzle something out. "I
must have gone to sleep--again."
"But you don't remember that, do you?" I asked. "You think you must
have,--but do you _remember_ it, as you do the first?"
The perspiration sprang out on his white forehead. "I remembered when
I woke up that I had killed Barker in the night."
"You remember that you thought in the morning that you had killed
Barker in the night," I said sharply, "but do you remember killing
him? Do you remember, as a matter of fact, going to his office? Tell
me something you saw or did, to prove that you actually remember the
events of the night."
His face was pitiable. "I can't! I remember going to sleep over the De
Senectute and I remember waking up in the morning with the gas burning
in the sunshine,--and I know, of course, that I went out in the night
and killed Barker,--_but I can't remember it!_ Do you suppose I am
losing my mind?"
"I think you are just recovering possession of it," I said,
unsteadily. "By the way, I told you a few minutes ago that Garney had
been arrested for complicity in a murder. You don't ask whose."
"Whose?" he demanded, startled.
"Alfred Barker's."
"I don't understand--at all," he faltered.
"Garney was in Barker's inner office the night Barker was shot. If you
were there, you saw him."
He shook his head. "I did not see him."
"Did you see me?"
"Where?"
"In Barker's outer office."
"No."
"Yet I was there. I was the strange man who came in and waited. Do you
remember you told me you saw a stranger come in?"
"I--remember that I told you."
"But you don't remember what the man looked like? You didn't recognize
me as the man?"
He put his hands up suddenly and clutched his head. "Do you think I
was out of my head that night? Was I--was I--under his influence? Do
you mean that I was hypnotized when I shot Barker?"
"That is what I have thought possible, but I have changed my mind on
that point. Benbow, I don't believe that you were out of your room
that night after you returned from the Frat supper."
He was shaking so that he could not speak, but I saw the piteous
questioning of his eyes.
"I'll tell you briefly the points that have made the matter at last
clear, in spite of yourself," I said, reassuringly. "Tell me this,
first,--when you came into the house that evening, after you left the
boys at the banquet, was the house lit up or dark?"
"Dark. I lit the gas in the library. I did not go into the rest of the
house."
"Exactly. Well, I saw the gas lit in the library that evening, and it
was just a few minutes before ten. I had supposed that your sister and
at least one servant were in the house, but I have learned they were
not. Therefore, when I saw the light flare up just before ten in the
library, you were there."
"Yes," he said, trying to follow.
"You threw yourself down on the couch and read Cicero from a book
which the next day was in the hands of Chapman. You don't know how
long you were reading, but you were sound asleep on that couch at
three o'clock the next morning, for your sister came in and saw you."
"Jean?" he murmured, perplexedly.
"Yes, Jean. Never mind the details. Now it is not humanly possible
that after reading yourself quiet at ten you could have reached
Barker's office by foot before I reached there in a taxicab so as to
secrete yourself in the inner room before I came. Neither is it
humanly possible that after shooting him at eleven, you could have
fled for your life down the fire-escape, skulked through the streets,
and then come home and gone composedly to sleep by three, only to wake
at six and remember for the first time that a gentleman who has had
the misfortune to shoot a man is in honor bound to give himself up to
the law."
He drew his hand over his eyes in a dazed fashion.
I went on. "Minnie, the maid, and her escort, came home at three that
night and saw a man leaving the house by the library door. She took
for granted that it was you. But your sister came into the room a few
minutes later and saw you asleep on the couch. The man who left the
house was not you."
"Who was it?" he asked, very low.
"It was the man who had your latchkey to the library door. It was the
man who picked up the De Senectute which you had been reading and
passed it on to Chapman the next day. It was the man who knew how to
hypnotize you in your sleep and make your brain believe what he wished
it to believe. _It was the man who had just shot Barker from his inner
office and who impressed upon your dormant brain the scene he had just
been through and made you believe you had acted his part in it_. It
was Allen Garney."
Benbow looked too paralyzed to really understand the situation. That
didn't matter. All the missing pieces of the puzzle were now in my
hands and I saw that I could prove my case and clear Gene in spite of
his false confession and his traitorous memory. I thought of Jean! It
was another and the most convincing indication of Garney's abnormality
that he should have desired to wed the sister of his victim. That was
strangely revolting. But his passion had carried him beyond his
judgment.
"The chances are that hypnotizing you was not a part of his original
plan," I said thoughtfully, going over the links in my own mind. "He
shot Barker because Barker knew too much about his past, and was not
to be trusted to keep it a secret. And his suspicion was justified.
Barker had already given his secret away to Mr. Ellison. Whether he
knew that instance of bad faith or not, he evidently felt that there
was no real safety for him until Barker was dead. So he laid a careful
plan to kill him, and carried it out. But an unsolved murder mystery
never ceases to be a menace to the murderer. The police would make
investigations, and his past connection with Barker might possibly
come out. The fact that he searched Barker's rooms the next night
shows that he was not easy on that point, even then. There might have
been papers in Barker's possession which would turn inquiry upon him.
So,--you offered him the opportunity of making him secure."
"I? How?"
"He saw the light burning in your study. He came in,--perhaps to
establish an alibi, perhaps merely to get away from himself. He found
you asleep,--a condition in which he had already hypnotized you. He
saw his opportunity. By making you believe that you had shot Barker,
by making you confess, he would forever turn the possibility of
inquiry from himself. There would be no mystery to provoke backward
inquiries along the past. And, if I may say so, you had made it easier
for him to fix that idea in your mind because, as a matter of fact,
you had harbored ideas of vengeance against Barker. The thought of
killing him was not wholly alien to you. You had prepared the way for
the impression Garney wanted you to have,--and he knew that fact. You
had revealed that side of your mind to him. He used the bitterness
which was already there as the foundation for the idea of revenge.
Therefore, when you awoke, and came back to your senses, the idea that
you had shot Barker did not strike you as an impossibility. You
remembered it dimly, but there was no intrinsic impossibility in it.
Do you see that?"
"Yes," he said, in a low voice. "I never could understand why some
points were so clear and positive in my mind, and yet I could not
remember the connecting links. It was like remembering spots in a
dream."
"Those spots were the points Garney had emphasized to you,
undoubtedly. He took you with him, mentally, step by step, but things
he failed to touch upon would be blank in your mind. How about your
revolver, Gene? Did he know where you kept it?"
"Yes. I showed it to him that afternoon."
"Then undoubtedly he took it away when he left. And he remembered to
impress upon you the thought that you had thrown it away. He was
careful,--yet he betrayed himself unconsciously. Those apples which he
ate without thought were a stronger witness against him than his
careful tissue of lies. But it's all right now. Take my word for it.
It was the cleverest scheme a criminal brain ever worked out, but the
righteousness on which the world is built would not permit it to
triumph. As soon as we can get the matter before the court, you will
be free."
"Mr. Hilton, there is a telephone call for you at the office,"
interrupted an attendant.
I shook hands with Gene and went to the office, where I found the
receiver down, waiting for me. I hardly recognized Katherine
Thurston's voice at first.
"Is that you, Mr. Hilton? Oh, thank goodness I have found you! Jean
has gone away. I'm terribly worried--"
"What makes you think she is gone? Didn't Barney bring her home in a
cab an hour ago? I told him to."
"He did. I was waiting at Mr. Ellison's for news when she came. She
told me everything,--the poor child had been terribly imposed on. That
man made her believe that he could clear Gene,--"
"So he could have done, if he had wanted to!"
"Well, that is what she believed, and so she consented to marry him.
But of course she was dreadfully worked up over it all, and when she
came home with Barney and told me about your coming and saving her at
the last moment, she was so excited that she was hardly coherent. So I
made her lie down and try to rest, and I left her in her room. Just
now I went back to see her, and she was gone. Minnie says she went
away, with a handbag, immediately after I left, and said that she was
not coming back. When I remember the nervous and excited state she was
in, I am dreadfully worried."
"How long ago did she leave the house, according to Minnie?"
"Nearly an hour ago. Do you think she could possibly have gone to that
man?"
"Not at all," I said promptly. "He is in custody."
"But he might have some agents--"
"I think not. And Jean is a wise child in her own way. The chances
are that she is safe somewhere. But I'll let the police know, and I'll
go down to the railway station myself. I'll call you up from time to
time to see if you have any news."
I reported the matter to police headquarters, and while I could see
that they were not greatly impressed with the urgency of discovering a
young woman of twenty who had been lost sight of for less than an
hour, I confess that I felt more apprehensive than I had admitted to
Miss Thurston. You see, Jean wasn't a reasonable young woman. She
was--Jean.