Part 7

“Sure!--He came in alone.”

“Take me up!” She trembled so that she could scarcely stand. Her eyes closed in a sickening anxiety as she swayed back against the wall of the elevator.

She shot upward. Another moment and she found herself racing along the corridor to her father’s rooms, twisting at the handle of the door.

She almost fell into the ante-room occupied by Jimmy Lomax. He jumped to his feet.

“Hetty!”

“Father!” She had scarcely breath enough for utterance. “Father!--I must see Father----!”

“Hetty, you can’t! He’s busy in his private room--no one dare----”

“I must!” she gasped. “Quick!--the ghost----!”

He stared in astonishment. She dodged past him, flung open the door into the next room.

Henry Forsdyke was standing, checking over a sheaf of papers in his hand, in front of the swung-open wall of the room, now revealed as a safe divided into many compartments. Hetty perceived him at the first glance; _perceived, standing at his side, a man with a sardonic mocking face and a scar over the right eye who peered over his shoulder_.

In a blind whirl of impulse she whipped out the automatic, rushed up close, and fired--into thin air!

Her father swung round on her in a burst of anger.

“Good God, Hetty!--Are you mad?”

She looked wildly at him.

“The ghost!--the ghost!”

He laughed despite his genuine wrath.

“Great heavens, what nonsense it all is!--What are you thinking of?--You can’t shoot a ghost!”

But Hetty had sunk on to a chair and was sobbing hysterically.

* * * * *

In the luxuriously furnished room in Berlin Kranz was speaking excitedly into the telephone.

“_Excellenz!_” he called. “_Excellenz!_--Are you there?--Quickly!--Karl says he will be with us in ten minutes!” He glanced toward the girl sleeping in the big chair. “Quickly!”

He listened for a moment and then put down the receiver with a satisfied air. He rose from his seat and began to pace nervously up and down the room. From time to time he threw a glance at the still figure stretched back among the cushions. She slept with a regular deep breathing. He listened, anxiously alert for any change.

The minutes passed, slowly enough to his impatience. He looked at his watch. It marked ten minutes to four. A thought occurred to him--he amplified it deliberately, to occupy his mind. Ten minutes to four!--What time would it be in Washington? Six hours--ten minutes to ten in the morning. What would be happening at ten minutes to ten? What was Karl looking at----?

The raucous hoot of a Klaxon horn startled him out of these meditations. He ran to the window, looked out. A familiar motor-car was drawing up by the pavement. His Excellency had lost no time!

A few moments later and the dreaded Chief stood in the room, formidable still despite his dwarfed appearance in the great fur coat turned up to his ears. The clipped white moustache bristled more than ever, it seemed, as he glared at Kranz through the pince-nez with a ferocity which was but the expression of his excitement.

“Yes?” he cried, ere the door had closed after him. “What has happened? Speak, man!”

“Nothing yet, _Excellenz_!” Kranz hastened to assure him. “The girl swooned off suddenly at about a quarter to four--I have not let her out of my sight since last night--and then Karl spoke. He said--and it sounded as though he meant it--that he would give us the information in ten minutes. I telephoned you at once.”

“Right! Quite right!” snapped His Excellency. “Ten minutes! The time must be up----”

“Good afternoon, _Excellenz_!” The old man jumped. The familiar mocking voice came from the lifeless mask of the sleeping girl. “Your suggestion was correct--Forsdyke! He is taking me to it now!” The derisive laugh rang out, uncanny in the silent room. “Patience for a few minutes!”

The old man made an effort of his will.

“Where are you now, Karl?” he asked.

“In a motor-car--funny story--tell you later--patience.” The voice sounded far away and faint. “Look to the girl, Kranz--not breathing properly--can’t speak--if--power--fails.”

Kranz went to the sleeping girl. Her head had fallen forward and she was breathing stertorously. He rearranged the cushions, posed her head so that she once more breathed deeply and evenly.

They waited in a tense silence. Then her lips moved again.

“Listen--now! Take it down as I read it!” Karl’s voice rang with an unholy triumph.

“Quick, Kranz!--Write!” commanded the old man.

His subordinate leaped to the table, settled himself pen in hand.

The girl’s lips trembled in the commencement of speech, opened.

“Schedule of Sailings of American Army to Europe!” began the triumphant voice.

There was a pause.

“Yes--yes!” cried the old man impatiently. “Go on!”

“Numbers for March”--Karl Wertheimer’s voice came with a curious deliberation as though he were memorizing figures. “--_Ahh!_” The voice broke in a wild, unearthly cry that froze the blood.

They waited. There was no sound. They heard their hearts beat in a growing terror.

Suddenly the old man spoke.

“The girl!--Look, Kranz!--She does not breathe!”

Kranz sprang to her, lifted her hand, bent suddenly down to her face. He looked up with the eyes of a baulked demon.

“She is dead!” he said hoarsely.

He turned to her again and, with a frenzied rage, tore away the clothes from her throat and chest. Just over her heart was a small round dark spot staining the unbroken skin.

“Look!” he cried.

The old man peered down at the mark, and then stared round the room.

“What has happened?” The wild cry quavered with the terror of the Unseen.

No answer came from the silence.

NOTE

The belief that an injury done to the “astral” body of a spirit is reproduced in the physical body of the medium _en rapport_ with that spirit is found in all countries and in all times, from the most ancient to the present. The old-time witch or wizard is, of course, the same psychologically abnormal type as the “medium” of to-day. The genuineness or otherwise of their powers is beside the point. Phenomena of the same nature as that described above are reported again and again in the witchcraft trials of the seventeenth century and in a comparatively recent legal case in France in 1853. Andrew Lang, analyzing this last case, says: “In the events at Cideville, and the depositions of witnesses, we have all the characteristics.... The phantom is wounded, a parallel wound is found on the suspected warlock.” Reporting the evidence in the trial, Lang continues: “Nails were driven into points on the floor where Lemonier saw the spectral figure standing. One nail became red-hot and the wood around it smoked: Lemonier said that this nail had hit ‘the man in the blouse’ on the cheek. Now, when Thorel was made to ask the boy’s pardon and was recognized by him as the phantom, Thorel bore on his cheek the mark of the wound!” The alleged wizard lost his case. (“A Modern Trial for Witchcraft,” in _Cock Lane and Common-sense_, 1894, p. 278.)

In this case it was the medium’s own spectre which appeared. But the modern spiritualist holds that there exists the same connection between the living body of the medium and the materialized spirit of the dead. “... The clutching of a [materialized] form hits the medium with a force like that of an electric shock, and many sensitives have been grievously injured by foolish triflers in this way.” (_Spirit Intercourse_, J. Hewat Mackenzie, 1916, p. 53.) Sir Wm. Crookes sounds the same warning note in his description of the famous “Katie King” case (_Researches in Spiritualism_, 1874, p. 108 _et seq._).

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The reference is to _The Survival of Man_, Sir Oliver Lodge, pp. 104-5.

THE STRANGE CASE OF MR. TODMORDEN

Mr. Todmorden rose from his seat in the railway carriage; he spoke in the tones of a man who ends a discussion:

“Well, gentlemen, this is my station, and you haven’t convinced me that a man ever commits a crime unless of his own free-will. I’d show no mercy to the rascal! Good-night!”

Mr. Todmorden was far from being so stern, either in appearance or character, as this emphatically uttered sentiment would suggest. As his short, stout figure moved along the platform, the head thrown back and a pair of bright little eyes, set in a chubby round face, glancing sharply through his spectacles for an acquaintance to smile at, he looked--what, in fact, he was--a successful city man whose original kindness of heart had mellowed into habitual benevolence--the type of man who moves through life beaming on people who touch their caps; salutation and recognition alike instinctive, meeting each other half-way.

Affable though Mr. Todmorden was, he had his prejudices and his pride; pride centred in the practice he had built up as a family solicitor of standing and renown: prejudices directed against those unfortunates who, from choice or necessity, transgressed the social code. His ideal in life was probity. He was intolerant of any infraction of it, and conducted his own affairs with punctilious scrupulousness. If he contemplated himself with some approbation it was justified. His fellow-men concurred in it.

In the warm light of a late summer sunset he strolled along the suburban streets to his home. His countenance expressed that contentment with himself and his surroundings usual with him. His mind, satisfied, played lightly over the headings of sundry affairs, neatly docketed and done with, he had settled that day. Other affairs, not so completed, were thrust into the background until the morrow. His good-humoured round face was in readiness for a smile.

Suddenly he stopped and contemplated through his spectacles a large house a little way back from the road. A long ladder resting against the wall was the uncommon object that had attracted his attention.

“Dear me!” he said to himself, “Old Miss Hartley having the house painted again!”

Miss Hartley was one of his oldest and most valued clients. In fact, both repudiated the business term and called each other “friends.” Their sentiments toward each other warranted it. She was an elderly spinster, eccentric and wealthy; he a bachelor who could and did afford himself a whim. They smiled at one another’s oddities without any lessening of the mutual respect many years of intercourse had induced. His attitude toward the old lady was almost fraternal. The long practice of watching her interests had developed a habit of affectionate protection in him. He advised her on countless petty manners and forgot to put them in the bill. He was personally, not merely professionally, anxious on her behalf when the occasion required it.

The sight of the ladder against the wall recalled one of his most common anxieties. It was a pet grievance of his that she would persist in living alone, save for one maid, in that large house. To his mind, she offered herself as a prey to the malefactor who should chance to correlate the two facts of her wealth and her solitude. He expressed that opinion frequently, and was obstinately smiled at. Now, as he walked on, the thought of the danger she invited recurred to him. It irritated him.

“Tut! tut!” he said. “That ladder, now, is just placed right for a burglar! I’m sure it is! Dear me! how careless! how very careless!” He tried to measure the ladder from his remembrance of it, and, to end his doubts, returned and examined it again. The ladder rested close to a freshly painted window-sill on the first floor.

“Dear me! dear me!” said Mr. Todmorden, genuinely perturbed. “That’s the window of Miss Hartley’s room!” He stood irresolute, debating whether he should ring the bell, and point out the dangerous position of the ladder. A nervous fear of the old lady’s smile restrained him. He knew she regarded him as an old “fusser.”

He walked on again, carrying his fears.

“She is really too foolish, too foolish!” he repeated. “Living alone there--with only that stupid girl in the house! Any one might break in. They’ve only to walk up that ladder! And she will persist in advertising that she has valuables!” The occasion of the final clause in Mr. Todmorden’s mental arraignment was a particularly fine diamond brooch the old lady wore at all times, despite his protests. If there was a sentimental reason for its continual use, she concealed it under her quiet smile. The memory of that smile irritated Mr. Todmorden. “Confound her! she’s so obstinate!” His thoughts focussed themselves on that brooch, with a criminal lurking in the background. Gradually, they drifted to the criminal. As his irritation faded under the soft warm light of the sunset, he amused himself by picturing types of possible burglars. Finally, forgetting his original preoccupation, he thought of an ancestor of his own--his maternal grandfather--who had been transported for a doubtful case of murder. In contrast to that squalid page of family history self-esteem read over his own achievements. Successful, respected, an alderman, a possible knighthood in front, he had surely wiped out that black patch on his pedigree. He savoured a very pleasant sense of personal probity as he walked up the drive to his house.

He ate his solitary dinner, and revived the feeling of well-being with a bottle of his favourite port. Then Miss Hartley’s brooch recurred to his mind, and was followed by a thought of the ladder which led to it, and of a criminal who might climb the ladder. As he sat in his big chair in the lonely dining-room, gazing at passing thoughts rather than thinking them, the case of his maternal grandfather cropped up in his reverie. Moved by a sudden whim, he rose from his chair and took down a battered volume of law reports. Fortified by another glass, he read through the case of his ancestor. He finished it, and sat thoughtful for a moment before replacing the book. “H’m, h’m,” he said to himself. “Very doubtful! Very doubtful! Ah, well, we’ve travelled a long road since then!” He smiled at his own success, and went off to bed in a contented mood. That doubtful grandfather was a long way back.

In the morning, as he walked down to the station to catch his usual train, he noticed a group of people standing on the pavement and gazing up at a house. An unreasoning anxiety gripped him. He hastened his pace. Yes--surely!--it was Miss Hartley’s house which excited this unwonted interest. He arrived among the crowd, rather out of breath.

“What is it? What is it, my man?” he demanded of a gazing spectator.

Half a dozen voices replied.

“It’s a murder! Old Miss Hartley----!”

Mr. Todmorden did not wait to hear more.

“Good gracious!” he said, as he hurried along the garden path, and “Good gracious!” he repeated, as he rang the bell. He could not formulate a thought. He gazed, mentally, at the awful thing, stunned.

The door was opened by a policeman. Behind him stood the maid-servant, white, frightened, and sobbing. She ran toward him with a cry of “Oh, sir!” but broke down, unable to utter a word.

“All right, all right, Ellen,” said Mr. Todmorden rather brusquely, pushing her aside. He addressed himself to the policeman. “What has happened, constable? Surely not murder?”

“Yes, sir. I’m afraid so.” He looked doubtfully at his questioner. “Are you one of the old lady’s relatives, sir?”

“No. I’m her solicitor, and one of her oldest friends. Dear me! dear me! how terrible! Is there any one in authority here, constable?”

“Two inspectors upstairs, sir.”

“Can I see them?”

He was shown into the bedroom, and introduced himself to the police-officers. They welcomed him with gravity. On the bed lay a covered figure. Mr. Todmorden drew aside the sheet and gazed upon the features of his old friend. They were marred by a bullet-hole through the forehead. He turned away, trembling, his face working with emotion. He could scarcely speak, but made the effort due to his dignity, as the deceased’s legal adviser. “Any--any clue?” he asked.

“None, sir, at present,” was the reply.

“Dear me! how terrible! how very terrible! She was my oldest friend----” he could not find the strength to repress his grief--“my oldest friend! Oh, it’s awful, inspector, awful! The--the wickedness of it! She hadn’t an enemy.” He struggled for the control of himself. “What was it--robbery?”

“No, sir--nothing seems to be tampered with. Perhaps the murderer was startled.”

“When was it discovered?”

“This morning, when the maid brought in the tea. She says she heard nothing. She admits being a heavy sleeper.”

“And there is nothing missing?”

“Apparently not, sir. The drawers were locked, and the keys have not been interfered with. Nothing was disturbed, in fact.”

“Ah!” Mr. Todmorden was gradually getting back into his legal clearness of mind. “Has the girl looked carefully round to see if anything has disappeared?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Call her up, if you please, officer.”

Ellen appeared, still weeping, and was bidden to look round for anything out of place. Dabbing her eyes, she examined the room carefully. Suddenly she gave a cry.

“The mistress’s diamond brooch! I put it here last night!” She pointed to a tray on the dressing-table. “It’s gone!”

“Good God!” said Mr. Todmorden. “How very curious!”

The inspectors looked at him sharply.

“Does that give you any clue, sir?” asked one of them.

“No--no,” he replied, rather confused. “I--the fact is, I was thinking of that brooch only last night, and of how unprotected Miss Hartley was. I have often told her so--poor woman!”

“Ah!” said the inspectors in chorus. Mr. Todmorden felt there was something suspicious in their sharply uttered exclamation. Even to himself his explanation had sounded lame. The police-officers might imagine he was shielding somebody. The consciousness of his inability to explain how very startling the fulfilment of his fears had been to him made him feel awkward.

“Of course,” he said, “the murderer must have come in by the ladder.”

“The ladder?” asked one of the inspectors. “I saw no ladder.”

“There was certainly a ladder resting against the sill of this window at six o’clock last night,” asserted Mr. Todmorden. “The house, you will observe, is being redecorated. I noticed the ladder, and it occurred to me that a first-class opportunity was being offered to a burglar. In fact, I was on the point of calling on Miss Hartley and warning her of it. I wish I had done so!”

“H’m!” The inspector scarcely deigned to trifle with the suggestion. It could be understood that it was his professional prerogative to evolve theories. “Yes--perhaps. But I think we can explain the entrance in a more likely way,” he said, mysteriously. “It is scarcely probable that the decorator’s men would leave the ladder there all night, sir.”

“I’m sure the rascal came up the ladder!” Mr. Todmorden’s affirmation was so vehement, came so involuntarily, that it surprised himself. Why was he so positive? He felt uncomfortable. He put on a bustling, important air. “Well, well, I must get up to town, as I have a very important appointment. I will look in at the station on my way home this evening. If you hear of anything during the day you might communicate with me. Here is my card.”

The old gentleman took his way to the city, oppressed by grief. Bitterly he reproached himself for not having ceded to his impulse to point out the dangerous position of that fatal ladder.

As good as his word, he called at the police-station on his way home. The chief inspector received him:

“A very mysterious affair, Mr. Todmorden. Very mysterious!”

“It is very terrible to me,” replied the old gentleman. “Miss Hartley was a very old friend. I feel myself in some way responsible. The possibility of such a tragedy actually occurred to me on my way home last night, and I might have warned her of it. I shall never forgive myself. Miss Hartley relied upon me. It is terrible to think that I failed her in this supreme instance.”

“You refer to the ladder,” said the inspector. “We have made enquiries about that. It appears it was overlooked last night and was carried away by one of the decorator’s men at six o’clock this morning. Undoubtedly, the murderer used it. In fact, he left the window open after him.”

“I was certain of it,” said Mr. Todmorden. “And there is no clue to the rascal?”

“Hardly any. The constable on the beat reports that, at two o’clock this morning, he saw the figure of a man running along the road away from the house. That man was wearing a very light suit--possibly a flannel one. A curious dress for a burglar, I think you will admit. The constable particularly noticed that there was no sound of footsteps as the man ran. He must have been wearing rubber soles. Unfortunately, the constable lost sight of him when he turned the corner.”

“Dear me!” said Mr. Todmorden. Only half his mind had listened to the inspector’s words; the other half was occupied by that curious and fairly common hallucination of a previous and identical incident. The description was oddly familiar. He seemed to know it in advance. At an intense moment of the hallucination, he had a glimpsed memory of himself running, running along a road at the dead of night, running silently. He shook off the uncomfortable and absurd feeling. “Dear me! How very strange!”

The inspector was observing him narrowly.

“I suppose you cannot give us any hint that might help us, Mr. Todmorden? You know no one who bore the old lady a grudge?”

“Certainly not. She was the best and kindest of women.”

“May I ask who benefits by her death?”

“She has only one relative, a nephew, who inherits everything. He is in America. I have cabled to him, and received a reply.”

“Ah! So he’s out of it.”

“Of course, of course.”

“This business of the brooch, Mr. Todmorden--it seems strange that the murderer should have taken that, and that only. He has made no attempt on anything else. You know no one who had an interest in the article?”

“No one. Miss Hartley wore it always. I have often expostulated with her for wearing so valuable a piece of jewellery in the street. Someone might have noticed it and resolved to obtain it.”

“Yes, yes, of course. A very strange affair, Mr. Todmorden, very strange! I confess I cannot see light in it. Er--her affairs are quite in order, of course?”

“Quite. I keep the accounts; they are open to investigation. The name of Todmorden and Baines is a sufficient guarantee, I think,” he added, with a smile. “But, of course, it is natural you should wish to make sure. You can examine the books to-morrow.”

“Unnecessary, my dear sir, I’m quite certain. Of course, I am bound to ask these unpleasant questions.”

“Don’t apologize. I am as anxious as you are to catch the criminal. I have, in fact, a personal interest in it. Miss Hartley was so good a friend to me that I shall never rest until I have brought the scoundrel to justice. A reward may help. I will personally give a hundred pounds for his apprehension. You might have bills printed to that effect.”

“Thank you, Mr. Todmorden. I hope we shall be able to claim it, though, at present, I see little chance of it. However, something may turn up.”