Part 16

"As I faced him," he went on, "I told him that I would not kill him outright. I would give him an equal chance. I am a sportsman. I told him what the thing was, of the duels I had seen in Africa, of the chance that each took. At the very point of the gun I forced him to take the bean that was lying on the desk and cut it in half with my knife. Then I took back the knife and pointed to the two parts that lay on the desk before him.

"'Choose!' I ordered."

"But the glasses," interrupted Doyle, before he could check himself. "You forgot about the two glasses on the desk."

"Oh yes--the glasses--on the desk. There were two glasses--I got two glasses. I filled them with water. I placed one before him, the other before myself. 'Choose!' I ordered him, pointing to the halves of the bean before him.

"One thing I can say. Vail Wilford was not yellow. He saw that I had him--that there was no escape. He looked from the gun to me, then at the halves of the bean. Outside there was silence. No place, you know, is more deserted than down-town late at night after business hours. If he shouted, he knew that I would fire--also if he moved. I gave him sixty seconds to choose which half he would take. At the point of the gun he chose.

"'Now,' I said to him, taking the remaining half myself, 'put it in your mouth, chew it, swallow it. If you spit out so much as a fragment I will fire instantly.'

"And I give him credit. He was a sportsman and a gentleman through it all. I watched him chew it, and when he started I reached over and took my half. I began to chew that, myself. Then, together, we drank the water from the glasses, so that we would have to swallow the parts of the bean. Though I had him in my power, I did not take advantage of him."

Honora gasped at the picture Shattuck was drawing. The recital was deeply affecting to her. I saw her leaning forward, and her rapidly rising and falling breast told the suppressed emotion under which she labored.

"All right," hurried Doyle, to whom the dramatic quality of the tale had little appeal. "But what about the note? You forget to tell us about the suicide note."

"Oh yes," exclaimed Shattuck, "so I did--about the note. I made him write it before we ate the bean--while I had him covered. I made him sit down at his own typewriter and I dictated it to him--one for myself, the other for him--to be used in case either survived."

"You made him write one for you?"

"Yes."

"What did you do with it?"

"I destroyed it afterward--of course."

Doyle was forced to accept the answer.

"And you were alone?"

"Absolutely alone with him. Let me tell it--listen to me--will you? We ate the halves of the bean. I still kept the gun on him. I was taking no chances. The minutes passed as I stood over him--five--ten.

"On which of us would the thing take effect first? It was a terrible wait. I will admit it. But it was the ordeal. We were just primitive men. Besides," he added, still keeping his glance from the face of Honora, who was leaning forward, her lustrous eyes trying to catch his, "I was playing for a big stake--it was death or what is really more than life to me."

He paused just a fraction of a second, but only a fraction, as though he himself were afraid of an interruption.

"At last I saw that his heart and lungs were beginning to be affected. His eyes were narrowed, the pupils to a pin-point--am I right about that, Professor? Never mind. In myself I waited for the same symptoms to appear. And I began to feel them, too. I was dizzy--with a burning thirst--but--alive! Still, I kept the gun leveled at him--the best I could, for my hand shook.

"He did not know that, could not see it. Consciousness was fast going from him. But I was determined. I _would_ live. I saw that I might have the--the woman--I would give my life for. Perhaps it was will-power that saved me. But--they cannot say I did not give him a fair chance for the woman and the life that he did not deserve!"

Breathlessly now we were all listening. Honora was trembling. Doctor Lathrop bent forward, nervously pulling his beard, his eyes riveted on the speaker. Only Doyle seemed to take the thing as a matter of course.

"And Honora Wilford?" Doyle interjected. "What was she doing at--"

"No--no--no, she was not there, I tell you. No one but Wilford and I was there!"

Shattuck had burst forth with the first words in quick staccato, slowing up the assertion until at the end he was speaking slowly and warily. I had an impression that he was not so certain of himself that he could trust himself to get excited.

Once I caught sight of Kennedy. He was saying nothing at all. But he was not idle. Taking advantage of the rapt attention of the little audience, he had stolen softly behind them. I saw him looking carefully at the various indicators of the arrangements on the wrists and noting them carefully.

Was Shattuck telling the truth about what happened--or was he coloring it to save himself?

"But about the atropin--in one glass and nothing in the other?" shot out Kennedy, suddenly.

It was as though a bombshell had exploded.

"Oh yes--yes," he faltered, "the atropin--of course, of course. In his glass, also, I--I--"

Shattuck stopped. What was the matter? Did he realize that he was getting hopelessly tangled?

"It is a pretty story, this, about your duel, as you call it," interrupted Doyle. "But it was not atropin that killed him. It was physostigmine. Atropin is the antidote. Didn't you know that, when you planned this ordeal you speak about? Besides, the traces of atropin were not in the glass that was found nearest the body. They were in the other."

For a moment Shattuck stared helplessly. Was he, after all, just a murderer? Had he framed this duel by poison, preparing safety for himself, death for Wilford?

"Come now, Shattuck," exclaimed Doyle, adopting that confidential manner that worked so well often with underworld characters, but seemed so out of place here, "did you--honestly--fight such a duel? Didn't you really force Mr. Wilford to eat that bean? And weren't you protecting yourself? Aren't there motives enough that we know for you to have wanted him out of the way?"

Before Shattuck could reply, there was a sudden exclamation from some one beside me. A figure in a filmy dress darted between Doyle and Shattuck.

"No--no--wait!"

We were all on our feet in an instant at this sudden interruption at such a tense moment.

It was Honora, no longer the stately creature of dignity we had seen, no longer the passive person submitting to the tests of Kennedy's psychology, suppressing the emotions that lay in her heart. Her whole being seemed to be transformed. It was as though a new spirit had been instilled suddenly into her. She faced us, and as I looked into her burning eyes I saw that what had been the mere statue of a woman, as we had first known her, had become a throbbing soul of life and passion.

Shattuck saw the change. In spite of the terrible situation, his face kindled. It was worth it, if only for the brief moments, to feel that he had aroused in her that which he saw.

"Wait," she repeated, "let me tell."

Doyle was about to interrupt, but Kennedy, who had not for a moment, even at this crisis, forgotten to glance quickly at one of the instrument dials after another, pulled him back and silenced him without a spoken word.

"You say there was a woman there?" she swept on, taking up the story, as though seizing it from Shattuck. "There _was_ a woman there. It was I. I was with him."

The thing came as another thunderbolt, as it were, before the reverberation of the first had ceased echoing.

Not one of us but realized what it meant. Honora had cast reputation, all, to the winds, to save him!

She looked about at us, and never have I seen a woman more appealing, not even in any of the great moments of great cases in court which it has been my fortune to have witnessed and to have written. Cynic though I am, and knowing, as I thought at the moment, the purpose of it all, to save the man she loved, I could not resist the appeal. Nor was it directed at me. So marvelous was she that she took in the whole group, at once appealing to each, as if a sudden power had become hers.

Quickly she poured forth her story, as though she, too, feared interruption.

"It is all true--all that he has told," she cried. "I saw it all--heard it. But there is more--more that he will not tell. He has not told the whole story. Listen."

It seemed as if she realized for the first time the power of an emotional woman. And her very instinct told her how to play upon us.

"I knew the Calabar bean," she explained. "I need not tell Professor Kennedy that. Of course, as he knows, I had seen them in my father's laboratory, at his shop. And so, when I knew what it was that was taking place--what was I to do?"

She paused, as though her intuition told her that the playing up of a dramatic moment would cover a multitude of questions that might otherwise come awkwardly flocking and demanding an answer as to much that she had not explained.

"Should I scream out for help? He might have fired the gun. Besides--"

She stopped again and dropped her gaze. "There was my reputation," she added.

Doyle smiled cynically. She saw it. There was nothing, no slightest facial change that she missed.

"What do I care--for anything--now?" she defied, directing the remark full at Doyle, who winced.

Shattuck's face was a study as she poured forth her story. There was admiration in every line of it--and surprise. I was convinced that she had swept him off his feet as she had all of us. What did it mean?

"What was I to do?" she repeated, gazing about wildly. "It came to me in a flash, an inspiration," she raced on, "the atropin--belladonna. I remembered it from the old days when I was little more than a school-girl, in the store."

Involuntarily she reached for her chatelaine, but did not open it, as she illustrated.

"I had my belladonna bottle with me."

Rapt, now, we watched and listened.

"There were only a few drops left in the bottle, I knew. I never carried much--nor used it often."

She paused and clasped her hands as though in an agony of recollection. Was she telling the truth--or was she really a great actress who had just found herself?

"I tried to run between them--I pleaded--my name--my honor--everything. They would not listen."

She stopped just long enough to allow our own now supersensitive minds to reconstruct the scene already described by Shattuck between the two men.

"But I managed to get between them and the glasses on the desk. I held the bottle, in one hand behind me--so."

She acted it out, placing herself between us and a table, her face toward us, but her hand holding an imaginary bottle behind her. It was real to her, at least.

"Which would I save?"

She paused in desperation as she reconstructed the scene. Almost she had me convinced already, as she played out the part, under the stress of her feelings.

"Which? My husband--or the other man whom I--I--"

She let her voice die away over the implied word "loved" and there was another tense moment of silence.

"There was not enough for both," she added, quickly; then, as though sweeping us on to the finale: "I poured the few drops of belladonna into the glass nearest me. Vance--Mr. Shattuck, drank it!"

She swayed as the words were wrung from her very soul.

Shattuck sprang to her and caught her.

"You're wonderful," he whispered. "Honora--why--why have you said this?"

For answer she merely allowed herself to rest more closely in his arms.

Doyle moved forward with a triumphant smile. It made no difference to him. It was a confession, either way. And confessions meant convictions and success to him. What was human emotion, compared to a good record and report in the files at Headquarters?

Honora looked from Doyle to Kennedy fearfully. She shrank farther into Shattuck's arms, nor did Shattuck relax his embrace.

"It's true," she cried. "It's true. I tell you--it was a duel--just as he said--really--and I saved him!"

Not one of us moved as we realized the situation. She would sacrifice her reputation, everything. But she would save her lover.

"It was not murder--it--"

Doyle raged, as he realized that, after all, a clever lawyer, with this woman as a witness, the heart-throbbing hypothetical question, and the impressionable jury might quickly overturn all that Doyle might swear to.

"I beg your pardon," interrupted Kennedy, looking up from his rounds of examination of the dials. "You know this little thing--the blood-pressure measurer that is used by the doctors? Many insurance companies use similar things in investigating risks."

At once Kennedy had wrested from Shattuck and Honora the center of the stage. Nor did he intend to relinquish it.

"I beg your pardon," he repeated, "but my sphygmograph--this little instrument--my lie-detector, if you please--tells me you are both lying!"

XX

THE SOUL SCAR

"Let me go back a bit," began Kennedy, as in perplexity we turned to him. "Let me repeat how I first entered this case. You will remember it was because of my interest in the dreams of Honora Wilford. I have studied them ever since. My first clue came from them. From them I have worked out my leads."

At the mention of the dreams Honora had drawn away from Shattuck. She was gazing at Kennedy, wide-eyed. Shattuck, too, was following tensely. No less were Doyle and Leslie. Doctor Lathrop leaned forward, his brow wrinkled, as he tugged at his beard, impatiently listening.

"Let us take those dreams, without wasting any more time," continued Kennedy. "I do not know how many of you are acquainted with the Freud theory. Mr. Jameson is, by this time. Also Mr. Shattuck. We've seen some of Freud's books in his library. Doctor Leslie knows it, I am sure, and Doctor Lathrop has told me he reacts against many of Freud's theories seriously.

"I shall not attempt to explain the theory, but shall touch on certain phases of my psychanalysis," he remarked, addressing the remark apparently to Honora. "Recall that Freud tells us that all dreams are primarily about self in some way or interests close to self. Your first dream and each succeeding dream which I learned, Mrs. Wilford, were, I take it then, about your own relations with your husband."

Honora looked startled, not only at having been singled out, but at the mention of the dreams and the vague thought of what might, after all, have been derived from them by this man whom she did not understand.

"The dream of death, the struggle dream, the bull-and-serpent dream, the dream of fire and explosion, all pointed to one thing among others, but one thing that was paramount. Really you did not love your husband--with that deep, passionate love which every woman yearns to possess. It was not your fault. You were the creature of forces, of circumstances, of feelings which were out of your control. I could have told you more about yourself than you would have admitted--half an hour ago," he qualified.

It was a delicate and intimate subject, yet Kennedy handled it without a touch of morbidness.

"From the study of your dreams," he resumed, "as I have already hinted, many other things might have been discovered. One of the next importance to your unconscious feeling toward your husband was shown clearly. It was that you knew that another woman had entered his life."

Kennedy glanced from her to Doctor Lathrop, and back to Honora.

"Of course, you did not know the whole story--that that woman was merely using your husband as a means to an end. But it would have made no difference if you had. In that she was equally in your way, whether you would have admitted it or not. We can speak frankly on this subject now. Vina Lathrop's death has put a different aspect on that phase of the case."

"Oh, I see," interrupted Shattuck, who had been following carefully up to this point, when it suddenly dawned on him that Kennedy's remarks were converging on himself and the gossip that had flown far and wide regarding Vina and himself. "I see. You have been reading the French detective tales--eh?--_Cherchez la femme_?"

Kennedy ignored the interruption. He did not intend to let any such aside destroy the thread of either his thought or his argument.

"Let me delve a little deeper in the analysis," he proceeded, calmly. "There was something back of that lack of love, something even deeper than the hurt given by the discovery of his relations with the other woman."

If Shattuck had been minded to pursue the guerrilla conversation in the hope of harassing Kennedy, this remark was like an explosion of shrapnel. He sought cover.

Kennedy was talking rapidly and earnestly now.

"In short," he concluded, "there is something which we call a soul scar here--a psychic wound--a mental trauma. It bears the same relation to the soul that a wound does to the body. And, as in the case of some wounds, muscles and limbs do not function and must be re-educated, so in these mental and moral cases feelings and emotions must be made to function again, must be re-educated. I need not refer to what caused that wound. I think we understand the reaction that almost any girl would experience against one whom she loved but considered unworthy. I saw it the moment I began to analyze the dreams."

In spite of its intimate nature, Kennedy kept his analysis on almost an impersonal level. It was as though he were telling us the results of his study of some new substance that had been submitted to him for his opinion.

"Mrs. Wilford," he went on, speaking rather to us generally now than to her, "married not for love--whatever she may say or even think about it. Yet love--romantic love--was open to her, if she would only let herself go."

I saw that as he proceeded, Shattuck had colored deeply. He knew the origin of this soul wound in her disapproval of the life he had led at the time. He shifted restlessly.

"All my psychanalysis, by whatever means I went at it, whether merely by study of the dreams or by having them written out a second time in order to compare the omissions and hesitations, whether by the association test, the day-dreaming when relaxed, or the Jung association word test, all the psychological expedients I resorted to, now paying out, as it were, a piece of information, now withholding another, and always watching what effect it had upon the various parties to this case, all, I say, tended toward one end--the discovery of the truth that was hidden from us.

"Finally," he exclaimed, "came the time when I allowed Doyle to place a dictagraph in the apartment, where we might overhear the interplay of the forces let loose by the information which I was allowing to leak out in one way or another."

Involuntarily, Honora turned and caught the eye of Shattuck leveled at her. Each looked startled. What had Craig overheard through that dictagraph? The thought was quite evident in both minds.

Honora gripped her chair. Shattuck turned and stared sullenly at the man before him.

"To return to the dreams," resumed Kennedy, apparently not noticing this interchange of looks and byplay. "From the hesitations in telling and retelling the dreams, from the changes that were made, from a somewhat similar process in tracing out the more controlled thoughts of the waking state, I found that everything confirmed and amplified my original conclusion. True, I did not know all. I may not know _all_ yet. But each time I added to my knowledge until there were so many things that joined up and corroborated one another that there was no human possibility left that I was on the wrong track."

One might have heard a pin drop in the laboratory as Craig held his auditors and carried them along, even after the intensity of feeling that we had witnessed scarcely a few minutes before.

"I wish I had time to go into the many phases of the dream theories of the modern scientists," he hastened. "For hours, with Mr. Jameson, I have patiently tried to interpret and fit together the strange and fantastic conceptions of the mind when the censorship of consciousness is raised in sleep, veiling things which are as little thought of in your philosophies as you could well imagine.

"For example, nothing in modern psychological science is more amazing, more likely to cause violent dissent, than the intimate connection that exists between the fundamental passions of love and hate. There is no need of the injunction to love our enemies--in this sense. Very often it happens that those we love may arouse the most intense hate, and that those we hate may exercise a fascination over us that we ourselves hasten to repress and refuse to admit. It is curious, but more and more it is coming to be recognized.

"And before I go a step farther," he added, "let me forestall what is going to happen in this case as certainly as if I were adding chlorin to sodium and were going to derive salt. When I touch the deep, true 'complex,' as we psychanalysts call it, I shall expect the very idea to be rejected with scorn and indignation. Thereby will the very theory itself be proved. Shattuck, your old rule may work well with the case of a man. But the new rule, the complementary rule, for woman is _Cherchez l'homme_."

It was not said to Shattuck, however. With clever psychology Kennedy aimed the remark full at Honora. She flushed and her eyes blazed defiance. Scornfully and angrily she cast a withering glance at Craig as she drew herself up with dignity.

"Then--you think, your science teaches--that a woman must be a fool--that she does not know with whom she really is in love--that she can really be in love with one whom she--hates?"

There was a flash of satisfaction in Craig's eyes. "Complex," I read it. As for Shattuck, where a moment ago he had scoffed, he remained to pray, or rather to smile faintly.

"I did not say exactly that," returned Kennedy, "although it may seem that way, if you choose to interpret the intimate relationship of love and hate so. Follow me just a moment. Consciously, she may hate. Education, society, morality, religion--this thing we call civilization--may exert restraints. Unconsciously, though, she may love. The veneer of modern society is very thin. I think the experiences the world is going through to-day demonstrate that. Underneath there are the deep, basic passions of millions of years. They must be reckoned with. It is better to reckon with them than to be wrecked by them. The wonder is, not that they are so strong--but that the veneer covers them so well!"

Powerfully though as Kennedy was making the presentation of the case, Honora tenaciously refused to admit it. Like her sex, when a general proposition was made she immediately made a personal application, found it distasteful, and rejected the proposition.

Still, Kennedy was not dismayed. Nor did he admit defeat, or even checkmating.

For several seconds he paused, then added in a low tone that was almost inaudible, yet in a way that did not call for an answer.

"Could you--be honest, now, with yourself, for you need not say a word aloud--could you always be sure of yourself, after this, in the face of any situation?"

She looked startled at his sudden shift of the argument to the personal ground.

Her ordinarily composed face betrayed everything, though it was averted from the rest of us and could be seen only fully by Kennedy.

In the welter of passion, as one fact after another had been torn forth during the moments since she had come to the laboratory, much had happened to Honora which never before had entered her well-ordered, conservative life.

She knew the truth that she strove to repress. She _was_ afraid of herself. And she knew that he knew.

The defiance in her eyes died slowly.

"It is dangerous," she murmured, "to be with a person who pays attention to such little things. If every one were like you, I would no longer breathe a syllable of my dreams!"

She was sobbing now.