“Lost, a handbag containing private letters, car-tickets, etc. Liberal
reward paid for its return. Please write to A 31, the Daily News.”
I sat with it on my palm. It was so simple, so direct. And I, a lawyer,
and presumably reasonably acute, had not thought of it!
“You are wasted on us, Mrs. Dane,” I acknowledged. “Well? I see
something has come of it.”
“Yes, but I’m not ready for it.”
She dived again into the bag, and brought up another clipping.
“On the day that I had that inserted,” she said impressively, “this also
appeared. They were in the same column.” She read the second clipping
aloud, slowly, that I might gain all its significance:
“Lost on the night of Monday, November the second, between State Avenue
and Park Avenue, possibly on an Eastern Line street car, a black handbag
containing keys, car-tickets, private letters, and a small sum of money.
Reward and no questions asked if returned to Daily News office.”
She passed the clipping to me and I compared the two. It looked strange,
and I confess to a tingling feeling that coincidence, that element so
much to be feared in any investigation, was not the solution here. But
there was such a chance, and I spoke of it.
“Coincidence rubbish!” she retorted. “I am not through, my friend.”
She went down into the bag again, and I expected nothing less than the
pocketbook, letters and all, to appear. But she dragged up, among a
miscellany of handkerchiefs, a bottle of smelling-salts, and a few
almonds, of which she was inordinately fond, an envelope.
“Yesterday,” she said, “I took a taxicab ride. You know my chair gets
tiresome, occasionally. I stopped at the newspaper office, and found the
bag had not been turned in, but that there was a letter for A 31.” She
held out the envelope to me.
“Read it,” she observed. “It is a curious human document. You’ll
probably be no wiser for reading it, but it shows one thing: We are on
the track of something.”
I have the letter before me now. It is written on glazed paper, ruled
with blue lines. The writing is of the flowing style we used to call
Spencerian, and if it lacks character I am inclined to believe that its
weakness is merely the result of infrequent use of a pen.
You know who this is from. I have the bag and the letters. In a safe
place. If you would treat me like a human being, you could have them. I
know where the walking-stick is, also. I will tell you this. I have no
wish to do her any harm. She will have to pay up in the next world, even
if she gets off in this. The way I reason is this: As long as I have the
things, I’ve got the whiphand. I’ve got you, too, although you may think
I haven’t.
About the other matter I was innocent. I swear it again. I never did it.
You are the only one in all the world. I would rather be dead than go on
like this.
It is unsigned.
I stared from the letter to Mrs. Dane. She was watching me, her face
grave and rather sad.
“You and I, Horace,” she said, “live our orderly lives. We eat, and
sleep, and talk, and even labor. We think we are living. But for the
last day or two I have been seeing visions--you and I and the rest of
us, living on the surface, and underneath, carefully kept down so
it will not make us uncomfortable, a world of passion and crime and
violence and suffering. That letter is a tragedy.”
But if she had any suspicion then as to the writer, and I think she had
not, she said nothing, and soon after I started for home. I knew that
one of two things would have happened there: either my wife would have
put away the fire-tongs, which would indicate a truce, or they would
remain as they had been, which would indicate that she still waited
for the explanation I could not give. It was with a certain tension,
therefore, that I opened my front door.
The fire-tongs still stood in the stand.
In one way, however, Mrs. Johnson’s refusal to speak to me that evening
had a certain value, for it enabled me to leave the house without
explanation, and thus to discover that, if an overcoat had been left in
place of my own, it had been taken away. It also gave me an opportunity
to return the fire-tongs, a proceeding which I had considered would
assist in a return of the entente cordiale at home, but which most
unjustly appeared to have exactly the opposite effect. It has been
my experience that the most innocent action may, under certain
circumstances, assume an appearance of extreme guilt.
By Saturday the condition of affairs between my wife and myself remained
in statu quo, and I had decided on a bold step. This was to call a
special meeting of the Neighborhood Club, without Miss Jeremy, and
put before them the situation as it stood at that time, with a view to
formulating a future course of action, and also of publicly vindicating
myself before my wife.
In deference to Herbert Robinson’s recent attack of influenza, we met
at the Robinson house. Sperry himself wheeled Mrs. Dane over, and made a
speech.
“We have called this meeting,” he said, “because a rather singular
situation has developed. What was commenced purely as an interesting
experiment has gone beyond that stage. We find ourselves in the curious
position of taking what comes very close to being a part in a domestic
tragedy. The affair is made more delicate by the fact that this tragedy
involves people who, if not our friends, at least are very well known
to us. The purpose of this meeting, to be brief, is to determine
whether the Neighborhood Club, as a body, wishes to go on with the
investigation, or to stop where we are.”
He paused, but, as no one spoke, he went on again. “It is really not
as simple as that,” he said. “To stop now, in view of the evidence we
intend to place before the Club, is to leave in all our minds certain
suspicions that may be entirely unjust. On the other hand, to go on is
very possible to place us all in a position where to keep silent is to
be an accessory after a crime.”
He then proceeded, in orderly fashion, to review the first sitting and
its results. He read from notes, elaborating them as he went along, for
the benefit of the women, who had not been fully informed. As all the
data of the Club is now in my possession, I copy these notes.
“I shall review briefly the first sitting, and what followed it.” He
read the notes of the sitting first. “You will notice that I have made
no comment on the physical phenomena which occurred early in the seance.
This is for two reasons: first, it has no bearing on the question at
issue. Second, it has no quality of novelty. Certain people, under
certain conditions, are able to exert powers that we can not explain.
I have no belief whatever in their spiritistic quality. They are purely
physical, the exercise of powers we have either not yet risen high
enough in our scale of development to recognize generally, or which
have survived from some early period when our natural gifts had not been
smothered by civilization.”
And, to make our position clear, that is today the attitude of the
Neighborhood Club. The supernormal, as I said at the beginning, not the
supernatural, is our explanation.
Sperry’s notes were alphabetical.
(a) At 9:15, or somewhat earlier, on Monday night a week ago Arthur
Wells killed himself, or was killed. At 9:30 on that same evening by Mr.
Johnson’s watch, consulted at the time, Miss Jeremy had described such a
crime. (Here he elaborated, repeating the medium’s account.)
(b) At midnight, Sperry, reaching home, had found a message summoning
him to the Wells house. The message had been left at 9:35. He had
telephoned me, and we had gone together, arriving at approximately
12:30.
(c) We had been unable to enter, and, recalling the medium’s description
of a key on a nail among the vines, had searched for and found such a
key, and had admitted ourselves. Mrs. Wells, a governess, a doctor, and
two policemen were in the house. The dead man lay in the room in which
he had died. (Here he went at length into the condition of the room,
the revolver with one chamber empty, and the blood-stained sponge and
razorstrop behind the bathtub. We had made a hasty examination of the
ceiling, but had found no trace of a second shot.)
(d) The governess had come in at just after the death. Mr. Horace
Johnson had had a talk with her. She had left the front door unfastened
when she went out at eight o’clock. She said she had gone out to
telephone about another position, as she was dissatisfied. She had
phoned from, Elliott’s pharmacy on State Avenue. Later that night Mr.
Johnson had gone to Elliott’s. She had lied about the message. She
had really telephoned to a number which the pharmacy clerk had already
discovered was that of the Ellingham house. The message was that Mr.
Ellingham was not to come, as Mr. and Mrs. Wells were going out. It was
not the first time she had telephoned to that number.
There was a stir in the room. Something which we had tacitly avoided had
come suddenly into the open. Sperry raised his hand.
“It is necessary to be explicit,” he said, “that the Club may see where
it stands. It is, of course, not necessary to remind ourselves that this
evening’s disclosures are of the most secret nature. I urge that
the Club jump to no hasty conclusions, and that there shall be no
interruptions until we have finished with our records.”
(e) At a private seance, which Mr. Johnson and I decided was excusable
under the circumstances, the medium was unable to give us anything. This
in spite of the fact that we had taken with us a walking-stick belonging
to the dead man.
(f) The second sitting of the Club. I need only refresh your minds as
to one or two things; the medium spoke of a lost pocketbook, and of
letters. While the point is at least capable of doubt, apparently the
letters were in the pocketbook. Also, she said that a curtain would have
been better, that Hawkins was a nuisance, and that everything was all
right unless the bullet had made a hole in the floor above. You will
also recall the mention of a box of cartridges in a table drawer in
Arthur Wells’s room.
“I will now ask Mr. Horace Johnson to tell what occurred on the night
before last, Thursday evening.”
“I do not think Horace has a very clear recollection of last Thursday
night,” my wife said, coldly. “And I wish to go on record at once that
if he claims that spirits broke his hat, stole his overcoat, bumped his
head and sent him home with a pair of fire-tongs for a walking-stick, I
don’t believe him.”
Which attitude Herbert, I regret to say, did not help when he said:
“Don’t worry, Horace will soon be too old for the gay life. Remember
your arteries, Horace.”
I have quoted this interruption to show how little, outside of Sperry,
Mrs. Dane and myself, the Neighborhood Club appreciated the seriousness
of the situation. Herbert, for instance, had been greatly amused when
Sperry spoke of my finding the razorstrop and had almost chuckled over
our investigation of the ceiling.
But they were very serious when I had finished my statement.
“Great Scott!” Herbert said. “Then she was right, after all! I say, I
guess I’ve been no end of an ass.”
I was inclined to agree with him. But the real effect of my brief speech
was on my wife.
It was a real compensation for that night of terror and for the
uncomfortable time since to find her gaze no longer cold, but
sympathetic, and--if I may be allowed to say so--admiring. When at last
I sat down beside her, she put her hand on my arm in a way that I had
missed since the unfortunate affair of the pharmacy whiskey.
Mrs. Dane then read and explained the two clippings and the letter, and
the situation, so far as it had developed, was before the Club.
Were we to go on, or to stop?
Put to a vote, the women were for going on. The men were more doubtful,
and Herbert voiced what I think we all felt.
“We’re getting in pretty deep,” he said. “We have no right to step in
where the law has stepped out--no legal right, that is. As to moral
right, it depends on what we are holding these sittings for. If we
are making what we started out to make, an investigation into psychic
matters, then we can go on. But with this proviso, I think: Whatever may
come of it, the result is of psychic interest only. We are not trailing
a criminal.”
“Crime is the affair of every decent-minded citizen,” his sister put in
concisely.
But the general view was that Herbert was right. I am not defending our
course. I am recording it. It is, I admit, open to argument.
Having decided on what to do, or not to do, we broke into animated
discussion. The letter to A 31 was the rock on which all our theories
foundered, that and the message the governess had sent to Charlie
Ellingham not to come to the Wells house that night. By no stretch of
rather excited imaginations could we imagine Ellingham writing such a
letter. Who had written the letter, then, and for whom was it meant?
As to the telephone message, it seemed to preclude the possibility of
Ellingham’s having gone to the house that night. But the fact remained
that a man, as yet unidentified, was undoubtedly concerned in the case,
had written the letter, and had probably been in the Wells house the
night I went there alone.
In the end, we decided to hold one more seance, and then, unless the
further developments were such that we must go on, to let the affair
drop.
It is typical of the strained nervous tension which had developed in
all of us during the past twelve days, that that night when, having
forgotten to let the dog in, my wife and I were roused from a sound
sleep by his howling, she would not allow me to go down and admit him.