“Before God, Mr. Kennedy, I'm innocent,” screeched Bridget. “Don't have
me arrested. I'm innocent. I'm innocent.”
Craig gently, but firmly, forced her back into her chair.
Again the announcer snapped. This time the last page of Mr. Bisbee's
will appeared on the sheet, ending with his signature and the witnesses.
“I'm now going to show these two specimens of handwriting very greatly
enlarged,” he said, as the stereopticon plates were shifted again.
“An author of many scientific works, Dr. Lindsay Johnson, of London,
has recently elaborated a new theory with regard to individuality in
handwriting. He maintains that in certain diseases a person's pulse
beats are individual, and that no one suffering from any such disease
can control, even for a brief space of time, the frequency or peculiar
irregularities of his heart's action, as shown by a chart recording his
pulsation. Such a chart is obtained for medical purposes by means of a
sphygmograph, an instrument fitted to the patient's forearm and supplied
with a needle, which can be so arranged as to record automatically on
a prepared sheet of paper the peculiar force and frequency of the
pulsation. Or the pulsation may be simply observed in the rise and fall
of a liquid in a tube. Dr. Johnson holds the opinion that a pen in
the hand of a writer serves, in a modified degree, the same end as the
needle in the first-named form of the sphygmograph and that in such
a person's handwriting one can see by projecting the letters, greatly
magnified, on a screen, the scarcely perceptible turns and quivers
made in the lines by the spontaneous action of that person's peculiar
pulsation.
“To prove this, the doctor carried out an experiment at Charing Cross
Hospital. At his request a number of patients suffering from heart and
kidney diseases wrote the Lord's Prayer in their ordinary handwriting.
The different manuscripts were then taken and examined microscopically.
By throwing them, highly magnified, on a screen, the jerks or
involuntary motions due to the patient's peculiar pulsations were
distinctly visible. The handwriting of persons in normal health, says
Dr. Johnson, does not always show their pulse beats. What one can say,
however, is that when a document, purporting to be written by a certain
person, contains traces of pulse beats and the normal handwriting of
that person does not show them, then clearly that document is a forgery.
“Now, in these two specimens of handwriting which we have enlarged it is
plain that the writers of both of them suffered from a certain peculiar
disease of the heart. Moreover, I am prepared to show that the pulse
beats exhibited in the case of certain pen-strokes in one of these
documents are exhibited in similar strokes in the other. Furthermore, I
have ascertained from his family physician, whose affidavit I have here,
that Mr. Bisbee did not suffer from this or any other form of heart
disease. Mr. Caswell-Jones, in addition to wiring me that he refused to
write Bridget Fallon a recommendation after the typhoid broke out in his
country house, also says he does not suffer from heart disease in any
form. From the tremulous character of the letters and figures in both
these documents, which when magnified is the more easily detected, I
therefore conclude that both are forgeries, and I am ready to go farther
and say that they are forgeries from the same hand.
“It usually takes a couple of weeks after infection for typhoid to
develop, a time sufficient in itself to remove suspicion from acts which
might otherwise be scrutinised very carefully if happening immediately
before the disease developed. I may add, also, that it is well known
that stout people do very poorly when they contract typhoid, especially
if they are old. Mr. Bisbee was both stout and old. To contract typhoid
was for him a virtual death-warrant. Knowing all these facts, a certain
person purposely sought out a crafty means of introducing typhoid fever
into Mr. Bisbee's family. That person, furthermore, was inoculated
against typhoid three times during the month before the disease was
devilishly and surreptitiously introduced into Bisbee Hall, in order to
protect himself or herself should it become necessary for that person to
visit Bisbee Hall. That person, I believe, is the one who suffered from
an aneurism of the heart, the writer, or rather the forger, of the two
documents I have shown, by one of which he or she was to profit greatly
by the death of Mr. Bisbee and the founding of an alleged school in a
distant part of the country--a subterfuge, if you recall, used in at
least one famous case for which the convicted perpetrator is now under a
life sentence in Sing Sing.
“I will ask Dr. Leslie to take this stethoscope and examine the hearts
of everyone in the room and tell me whether there is anyone here
suffering from an aneurism.”
The calcium light ceased to sputter. One person after another was
examined by the health commissioner. Was it merely my imagination, or
did I really hear a heart beating with wild leaps as if it would burst
the bonds of its prison and make its escape if possible? Perhaps it
was only the engine of the commissioner's machine out on the campus
driveway. I don't know. At any rate, he went silently from one to the
other, betraying not even by his actions what he discovered with the
stethoscope. The suspense was terrible. I felt Miss Bisbee's hand
involuntarily grasp my arm convulsively. Without disturbing the silence,
I reached a glass of water standing near me on Craig's lecture-table and
handed it to her.
The commissioner was bending over the lawyer, trying to adjust the
stethoscope better to his ears. The lawyer's head was resting heavily
on his hand, and he was heaped up in an awkward position in the cramped
lecture-room seat. It seemed an age as Dr. Leslie tried to adjust the
stethoscope. Even Craig felt the excitement. While the commissioner
hesitated, Kennedy reached over and impatiently switched on the electric
light in full force.
As the light flooded the room, blinding us for the instant, the large
form of Dr. Leslie stood between us and the lawyer.
“What does the stethoscope tell you, Doctor?” asked Craig, leaning
forward expectantly. He was as unprepared for the answer as any of us.
“It tells me that a higher court than those of New York has passed
judgment on this astounding criminal. The aneurism has burst.”
I felt a soft weight fall on my shoulder. The Morning Star did not have
the story, after all. I missed the greatest “scoop” of my life seeing
Eveline Bisbee safely to her home after she had recovered from the shock
of Denny's exposure and punishment.