On Sunday I went to church. I felt, after the strange phenomena in Mrs.
Dane’s drawing-room, and after the contact with tragedy to which they
had led, that I must hold with a sort of desperation to the traditions
and beliefs by which I had hitherto regulated my conduct. And the
church did me good. Between the immortality it taught and the theory of
spiritualism as we had seen it in action there was a great gulf, and
I concluded that this gulf was the soul. The conclusion that mind and
certain properties of mind survived was not enough. The thought of a
disembodied intelligence was pathetic, depressing. But the thought of a
glorified soul was the hope of the world.
My wife, too, was in a penitent and rather exalted mood. During the
sermon she sat with her hand in mine, and I was conscious of peace and a
deep thankfulness. We had been married for many years, and we had grown
very close. Of what importance was the Wells case, or what mattered it
that there were strange new-old laws in the universe, so long as we kept
together?
That my wife had felt a certain bitterness toward Miss Jeremy, a
jealousy of her powers, even of her youth, had not dawned on me. But
when, in her new humility, she suggested that we call on the medium that
afternoon. I realized that, in her own way, she was making a sort of
atonement.
Miss Jeremy lived with an elderly spinster cousin, a short distance out
of town. It was a grim house, coldly and rigidly Calvinistic. It gave an
unpleasant impression at the start, and our comfort was not increased
by the discovery, made early in the call, that the cousin regarded the
Neighborhood Club and its members with suspicion.
The cousin--her name was Connell--was small and sharp, and she entered
the room followed by a train of cats. All the time she was frigidly
greeting us, cats were coming in at the door, one after the other. It
fascinated me. I do not like cats. I am, as a matter of confession,
afraid of cats. They affect me as do snakes. They trailed in in a
seemingly endless procession, and one of them took a fancy to me, and
leaped from behind on to my shoulder. The shock set me stammering.
“My cousin is out,” said Miss Connell. “Doctor Sperry has taken her for
a ride. She will be back very soon.”
I shook a cat from my trouser leg, and my wife made an unimportant
remark.
“I may as well tell you, I disapprove of what Alice is doing,” said Miss
Connell. “She doesn’t have to. I’ve offered her a good home. She was
brought up a Presbyterian. I call this sort of thing playing with the
powers of darkness. Only the eternally damned are doomed to walk the
earth. The blessed are at rest.”
“But you believe in her powers, don’t you?” my wife asked.
“I believe she can do extraordinary things. She saw my father’s spirit
in this very room last night, and described him, although she had never
seen him.”
As she had said that only the eternally damned were doomed to walk
the earth, I was tempted to comment on this stricture on her departed
parent, but a large cat, much scarred with fighting and named Violet,
insisted at that moment on crawling into my lap, and my attention was
distracted.
“But the whole thing is un-Christian and undignified,” Miss Connell
proceeded, in her cold voice. “Come, Violet, don’t annoy the gentleman.
I have other visions of the next life than of rapping on tables and
chairs, and throwing small articles about.”
It was an extraordinary visit. Even the arrival of Miss Jeremy herself,
flushed with the air and looking singularly normal, was hardly a relief.
Sperry, who followed, was clearly pleased to see us, however.
It was not hard to see how things were with him. He helped the girl out
of her wraps with a manner that was almost proprietary, and drew a chair
for her close to the small fire which hardly affected the chill of the
room.
With their entrance a spark of hospitality seemed to kindle in the cat
lady’s breast. It was evident that she liked Sperry. Perhaps she saw
in him a method of weaning her cousin from traffic with the powers of
darkness. She said something about tea, and went out.
Sperry looked across at the girl and smiled.
“Shall I tell them?” he said.
“I want very much to have them know.”
He stood up, and with that unconscious drama which actuates a man at a
crisis in his affairs, he put a hand on her shoulder. “This young lady
is going to marry me,” he said. “We are very happy today.”
But I thought he eyed us anxiously. We were very close friends, and he
wanted our approval. I am not sure if we were wise. I do not yet know.
But something of the new understanding between my wife and myself must
have found its way to our voices, for he was evidently satisfied.
“Then that’s all right,” he said heartily. And my wife, to my surprise,
kissed the girl.
Except for the cats, sitting around, the whole thing was strangely
normal. And yet, even there, something happened that set me to thinking
afterward. Not that it was strange in itself, but that it seemed never
possible to get very far away from the Wells mystery.
Tea was brought in by Hawkins!
I knew him immediately, but he did not at once see me. He was evidently
accustomed to seeing Sperry there, and he did not recognize my wife. But
when he had put down the tray and turned to pick up Sperry’s overcoat
to carry it into the hall, he saw me. The man actually started. I
cannot say that he changed color. He was always a pale, anemic-looking
individual. But it was a perceptible instant before he stooped and
gathered up the coat.
Sperry turned to me when he had gone out. “That was Hawkins, Horace,” he
said. “You remember, don’t you? The Wellses’ butler.”
“I knew him at once.”
“He wrote to me asking for a position, and I got him this. Looks sick,
poor devil. I intend to have a go at his chest.”
“How long has he been here?”
“More than a week, I think.”
As I drank my tea, I pondered. After all, the Neighborhood Club must
guard against the possibility of fraud, and I felt that Sperry had been
indiscreet, to say the least. From the time of Hawkins’ service in Miss
Jeremy’s home there would always be the suspicion of collusion between
them. I did not believe it was so, but Herbert, for instance, would be
inclined to suspect her. Suppose that Hawkins knew about the crime? Or
knew something and surmised the rest?
When we rose to go Sperry drew me aside.
“You think I’ve made a mistake?”
“I do.”
He flung away with an impatient gesture, then came back to me.
“Now look here,” he said, “I know what you mean, and the whole idea
is absurd. Of course I never thought about it, but even allowing for
connivance--which I don’t for a moment--the fellow was not in the house
at the time of the murder.”
“I know he says he was not.”
“Even then,” he said, “how about the first sitting? I’ll swear she had
never even heard of him then.”
“The fact remains that his presence here makes us all absurd.”
“Do you want me to throw him out?”
“I don’t see what possible good that will do now.”
I was uneasy all the way home. The element of doubt, always so imminent
in our dealings with psychic phenomena, had me by the throat. How much
did Hawkins know? Was there any way, without going to the police, to
find if he had really been out of the Wellses’ house that night, now
almost two weeks ago, when Arthur Wells had been killed?
That evening I went to Sperry’s house, after telephoning that I was
coming. On the way I stopped in at Mrs. Dane’s and secured something
from her. She was wildly curious, and made me promise to go in on my way
back, and explain. I made a compromise.
“I will come in if I have anything to tell you,” I said.
But I knew, by her grim smile, that she would station herself by her
window, and that I would stop, unless I made a detour of three blocks to
avoid her. She is a very determined woman.
Sperry was waiting for me in his library, a pleasant room which I have
often envied him. Even the most happily married man wishes, now and
then, for some quiet, dull room which is essentially his own. My own
library is really the family sitting-room, and a Christmas or so ago
my wife presented me with a very handsome phonograph instrument. My
reading, therefore, is done to music, and the necessity for putting
my book down to change the record at times interferes somewhat with my
train of thought.
So I entered Sperry’s library with appreciation. He was standing by the
fire, with the grave face and slightly bent head of his professional
manner. We say, in the neighborhood, that Sperry uses his professional
manner as armor, so I was rather prepared to do battle; but he
forestalled me.
“Horace,” he said, “I have been a fool, a driveling idiot. We were
getting something at those sittings. Something real. She’s wonderful.
She’s going to give it up, but the fact remains that she has some power
we haven’t, and now I’ve discredited her! I see it plainly enough.” He
was rather bitter about it, but not hostile. His fury was at himself.
“Of course,” he went on, “I am sure that she got nothing from Hawkins.
But the fact remains--” He was hurt in his pride of her.
“I wonder,” I said, “if you kept the letter Hawkins wrote you when he
asked for a position.”
He was not sure. He went into his consulting room and was gone for some
time. I took the opportunity to glance over his books and over the room.
Arthur Wells’s stick was standing in a corner, and I took it up and
examined it. It was an English malacca, light and strong, and had seen
service. It was long, too long for me; it occurred to me that Wells had
been about my height, and that it was odd that he should have carried so
long a stick. There was no ease in swinging it.
From that to the memory of Hawkins’s face when Sperry took it, the night
of the murder, in the hall of the Wells house, was only a step. I seemed
that day to be thinking considerably about Hawkins.
When Sperry returned I laid the stick on the table. There can be no
doubt that I did so, for I had to move a book-rack to place it. One
end, the handle, was near the ink-well, and the ferrule lay on a copy
of Gibson’s “Life Beyond the Grave,” which Sperry had evidently been
reading.
Sperry had found the letter. As I glanced at it I recognized the writing
at once, thin and rather sexless, Spencerian.
Dear Sir: Since Mr. Wells’s death I am out of employment. Before I took
the position of butler with Mr. Wells I was valet to Mr. Ellingham, and
before that, in England, to Lord Condray. I have a very good letter of
recommendation from Lord Condray. If you need a servant at this time I
would do my best to give satisfaction.
(Signed) ARTHUR HAWKINS.
I put down the application, and took the anonymous letter about the bag
from my pocketbook. “Read this, Sperry,” I said. “You know the letter.
Mrs. Dane read it to us Saturday night. But compare the writing.”
He compared the two, with a slight lifting of his eyebrows. Then he put
them down. “Hawkins!” he said. “Hawkins has the letters! And the bag!”
“Exactly,” I commented dryly. “In other words, Hawkins was in Miss
Jeremy’s house when, at the second sitting, she told of the letters.”
I felt rather sorry for Sperry. He paced the room wretchedly, the two
letters in his hand.
“But why should he tell her, if he did?” he demanded. “The writer of
that anonymous letter was writing for only one person. Every effort is
made to conceal his identity.”