Part 4

She looked up from the writing and met his eyes directly in a perfectly innocent stare.

"The faces seemed to be human," she repeated, "but I did not recognize them."

What did it mean? I knew she was not telling the truth. Kennedy knew it. Did she know that he knew it? If she did, it had no outward effect on her.

"It is all very hazy to me," she insisted.

I wondered what had been the reason of her hesitation and her final decision not to tell us what she had evidently told Doctor Lathrop on the first telling of the dream. Surely, I reasoned, there must be some reason back of this concealment. I was forced to be content to wait in order to question Kennedy to learn what his own impressions were. Any betrayal now, before her, might entirely upset his nicely laid plans, whatever they were.

She seemed to expect a further quizzing and to steel herself in preparation for it. Evidently Doyle's manner and methods had taught her that.

"Are those all the dreams you can remember?" Craig asked.

I fancied that there was an air of relief in her manner, though she would not, for the world, have betrayed it before us. For a moment she thought, as if glad to get away from something that had troubled her greatly. When she spoke her voice and manner were subdued.

"There is one other," she replied.

"Will you write it?" asked Kennedy, before she had time to change her mind.

"If you really care to have it."

"Very much," he urged.

Again she turned as though escaping something and wrote:

"I seemed to be walking through a forest with Vail. I don't know where we were going, but I seemed to have difficulty in getting there. Vail was helping me along. It was up-hill. Finally, when we got almost to the top of the hill, I stopped. I did not go any farther, though he did."

Here again she hesitated, then wrote slowly, "Then I seemed to meet--" and stopped.

Honora glanced up, saw Kennedy watching her, and turned hurriedly, adding, "--a woman."

She did not pause after that, but wrote: "Just then she cried that there was a fire. I turned around and looked. There was a big explosion and everybody ran out of the houses, shrieking."

"You say you saw a woman?" asked Craig, almost before she had finished writing. "Who was she?"

"I do not know who she was--a--just a woman."

By this time I, too, was narrowly watching Mrs. Wilford. She seemed to have a most remarkable composure, except for an almost imperceptible moment of hesitation now and then. In fact, the hesitation would have passed unnoticed had not one been on the lookout. I think it was now that she realized that there was something going on in Kennedy's mind and in his method of questioning her that she did not understand. It was as though in taking refuge from answering one question--about the faces on the bull and the serpent--she had run directly into another question which she was equally averse to answering frankly. I was now convinced that a large part of her frankness with us was mere pose, that she knew Kennedy had penetrated it, and that the discovery alarmed her. Kennedy also saw that she had understood. It was as though it had been a cue. Instantly he threw off the mask.

"Are you sure that it was not Vina Lathrop?" he shot out quickly.

For just a fraction of a second she was startled, almost disconcerted. But instantly she regained her control.

"Yes," she answered, positively. "I am sure it was not. It was no one I know."

Yet I was somehow more than ever convinced that she meant Vina Lathrop, after all--Vina, who was of quite a different type from herself. What it all meant was another question. I knew that we should have taken a long step toward the discovery if we could only have got her to admit it. But she was keenly on guard now. There was not a chance of a direct admission strong enough, though the indirect admission was.

"No one?" pressed Kennedy. "Think!"

"No, no one! Oh, why must I be badgered and hounded this way?" she burst forth. "What have I done? Am I not grief-stricken enough as it is?--I hate--you--all!"

It was the first time that she had let this undercurrent of her feelings leap to the surface, beyond control. She seemed to realize it, and instantly to repress it, as she stood there, her great, lustrous eyes fixed upon us--with defiance mixed with fear and doubt.

It was startling, dramatic, cruel, perhaps merciless--this dissecting of the soul of the handsome woman before us. But it had come to a point where it was absolutely necessary to get at the truth. At least Kennedy seemed convinced that locked in her heart was the key to the mystery.

Honora, hitherto almost pallid, was now flushed and indignant. For the first time we saw a flash of real feeling and I knew that underneath her conventional exterior a woman existed--very real, capable of the heights of feeling and passion when once aroused. It made me more than ever sympathetic toward her. I longed to help her, yet there seemed no way to do so. Only Honora might work out Honora's salvation.

It was then and later that I realized that the very manner of her indignation showed the truth of the new psychology of dreams, for, as I later learned, people often become indignant when the analyst strikes what is called by the new psychologists the "main complex" of ideas.

Kennedy evidently concluded that his examination had gone far enough, that to pursue it would be only to antagonize her unnecessarily. That would never do so early in the case.

Accordingly he apologized as gracefully as an inquisitor could, and we excused ourselves, though Honora's gaze followed him defiantly to the door.

"Well--we're in bad with her now," I whispered, as we gained the outside, in the private hallway.

"That's most unfortunate," he agreed, though it did not seem to worry him much. "But you know by this time, Walter, that man-hunting is not a popular occupation--and woman-hunting is even less so."

He stopped a moment, looked back, sighed, and added, "It is the penalty I must pay."

In the hall, Craig stopped a moment to speak to Doyle's man, McCabe, a thick-necked fellow, square-jawed and square-toed, of the "flatty" type.

"Mr. Doyle isn't here, I suppose?"

"No, sir. Gone down to Mr. Wilford's office. Telephone call that there's something new there."

"I see. Is the maid, Celeste, here?"

"Yes, sir. Queer girl--pretty--French--but I can't seem to 'make' her."

Kennedy passed over the impertinence of the slang. Evidently McCabe considered flirtations with maids his prerogative.

"I'd like to see her."

McCabe led us down the hall, and soon we found Celeste, a young and remarkably beautiful girl.

One could see traces of sorrow on her face, which was exceedingly, though not unpleasingly, pale. She was dressed in black, which heightened the pallor of her face and excited a feeling of mingled respect and interest. There was, however, a restless brilliancy of her eyes and a nervousness which was expressed by the constant motion of her slender fingers.

She shrank from McCabe, and her confidence was not restored even after Kennedy had ordered him to leave us alone with her so that we might question her.

"Oh, these horrible detectives!" she murmured. "It is terrible. They will drive me crazy. _Pauvre, pauvre madame!_"

Kennedy had sought this opportunity to question her about Vail Wilford alone. But, as he plied her with questions, she had little to say either about him or about her mistress. She was evidently well trained.

"Did you ever see Mr. Wilford or Mrs. Wilford with Mrs. Vina Lathrop?" asked Kennedy, suddenly.

Celeste shook her head with a naïve stare.

"Nevair."

"But, madame--did she not know her?"

Celeste merely shrugged.

"Wasn't she jealous of Mr. Wilford--and some one?"

Celeste regarded him a moment. Her quick mind seemed to race ahead toward the implication of the remark.

"No--no--no!" cried Celeste, vehemently. "She was not jealous. She would never have done such a thing. She might have left monsieur--but--violence--nevair!"

Kennedy continued with a few inconsequential questions. Then from a table in the room he picked up a magazine. As he ran over the pages he stopped before a picture of a dinner in a fashionable restaurant, such as delights the heart of the modern magazine illustrator to portray.

He turned the picture around and held it before Celeste for just a few instants, perhaps ten seconds. Then he closed the magazine quickly.

It seemed to me to be a purposeless action, but I was not surprised when Kennedy added, "Now tell me what you saw."

Celeste by this time was quite overwhelming in her desire to please on anything but the quizzing about her mistress. Quickly she enumerated the objects, gradually slowing down as the number became exhausted.

"Were there any flowers?" asked Kennedy.

"Oh yes--and favors, too, you call them?"

I could see no reason at all in the proceeding, yet I knew Kennedy too well to suppose that he had not some purpose.

The questioning thus strangely over, Kennedy withdrew, leaving Celeste more mystified than ever.

"Well," I exclaimed, "what was all that kindergarten stuff?"

"That?" he explained. "It is known to criminologists as the 'Aussage test.' Just try it sometime when you get a chance. If there are, say, fifty objects in a picture, normally a person may recall perhaps twenty of them."

"I see," I nodded. "A test of memory."

"More than that," he replied. "You remember that, at the end, I suggested that she might have overlooked something? I mentioned an object--the flowers--likely to have been on the table. They were not there, as you might have observed if you had had the picture before you. That was a test of the susceptibility to suggestion of Celeste."

By this time we were on the street and walking slowly back to the laboratory.

"She may not mean to lie deliberately," concluded Kennedy, "but I'm afraid we'll have to get along without her in getting to the bottom of this case. There were no flowers there, yet in her anxiety to please she said there were, and even went farther and added favors, which were not there. You see, before we go any farther, we know that Celeste is unreliable, to say the least."

V

THE PSYCHANALYSIS

Back at the laboratory again, we found that not even yet had the materials arrived from Doctor Leslie with which to make the examination that Craig desired.

It seemed to me that Leslie was very slow, but it didn't worry Craig. Evidently there were other and even more absorbing problems on his mind, problems that pressed for solution even above the discovery of the poison.

"What was your idea in having her write those dreams out again?" I asked.

"Well"--he smiled--"I wanted to see whether she would make any changes. Changes in the telling of dreams over again are often very significant. They indicate what the psychanalysts call the 'complexes,' the root ideas, often hidden away, out of which many actions and feelings spring."

"I see--and did you find anything?"

"A great deal. There are some important changes, some variations between what she told and what she wrote which are very significant. Don't you see? It is one thing to tell a dream in conversation--quite another when you calmly sit down to write it on paper. The words take on an added weight. Now the next problem is to figure out in my psychanalysis just what it is that these changes may mean."

He drew forth the writing she had done and began studying over it carefully for several minutes. Finally, with an air of satisfaction, he looked over at me.

"First of all," he said, "I want to consider that dream of the death of her husband. Just recall for the moment how she told that dream to Leslie."

He took the paper in his hand and began reading.

"Just listen. 'My most frequent dream is a horrible one. I have dreamed ever so many times that I saw Vail in a terrific struggle. I could not make out who or what it was with which he struggled.' If you remember, it was at this point that she hesitated in writing. Why did she?

"'I tried to run to him. But something seemed to hold me back. I could not move.' Why was she unable to go to him? What held her back? There is something strange about it. Could it have been because she did not really want to go to him? Could it have been because she did not love him?"

I said nothing. It had been the thought in my own mind, yet I had not cared to express it.

"At that point," he went on, "she paused again. 'Then the scene shifted, like a motion picture. I saw a funeral procession and in the coffin I could see a face. In all my dreams it has been the face of Vail.' There was no hesitation, practically no change in that. I noted that she exhibited considerable emotion--that is, considerable emotion for her. She did not hesitate, because she does not understand the dream. If she did, I think she would hesitate--even refuse to tell it. I think with that dream alone one might get a pretty good inkling of the state of affairs."

I was about to interrupt, but Craig hurried right on and gave me no chance.

"More important, perhaps, take that dream of the bull and the serpent. If you recall, she wrote that more slowly and carefully than the other dream, choosing her words. There's something significant about that fact in itself. Now, let's see.

"'I seemed to be attacked by a bull. It was in a great field and I fled from it over the field. But it pursued me. It seemed to gain on me.' That's where the first hesitation came, and right there we come to a very important 'complex,' I think. There was practically no change until we come to this part where the bull chases her. Did you get that?"

I was forced to confess that I had not understood. It made no difference to Kennedy. Very patiently he proceeded to enlighten me, as if I were one of his pupils.

"She omitted something that may be very important. Don't you remember when Lathrop told us she had told him that the bull was so close to her that she could feel its hot breath?"

"I remember now. What of it?"

"Very much. For some reason--perhaps unknown to herself--she omits all mention of it in writing it for us. I think you'll understand better as we go on with the dream. 'It was very close,' he read, rapidly. 'Then in my dream, in fright I ran faster over the field. I remember I hoped to gain a clump of woods. As I ran, I stumbled and would have fallen. But I managed to catch myself in time. I ran on.'

"I think we discussed that ourselves, once, the fear of being a fallen woman. We need not go over it again, except to point out that her dream shows that, perhaps unconsciously, something restrained her. 'I expected momentarily to be gored by the bull. That seemed to be the end of the dream,' and so forth.

"Now, the next part. 'I seemed to be in the midst of a crowd.' We discussed that, too--about the crowd denoting a secret. Then comes the serpent. 'It reared its head angrily and crept over the ground after me and hissed.' That's a bit different, there, from the way she told it. 'It seemed to fascinate me. I trembled and could not run. My fear was so great that I awoke.' All right. Here's the point--when I questioned her about the faces, the human faces, on those animals. She told Lathrop that the face she saw was that of Shattuck. But to me she absolutely denied it. She said she did not recognize the face. There's the point. Why did she cut out that about the hot breath of the bull? Why did she deny absolutely the face of Shattuck?"

He was pacing up and down as though he had either made or confirmed a discovery.

"Just consider what I told you about the Freud theory again," he went on. "Fear, as I told you, is equivalent to a wish in this sort of dream. We threshed that all out over my interpretation of the first dream of all--the death-dream. I hope you are beginning to understand, by this time.

"But morbid fear also, as I have said, denotes some sex feeling. Now take the last dreams. In dreams animals are usually symbols. In the two parts of this dream we find both the bull and the serpent. From time immemorial they have been the symbols of the continuing life-force. Such symbolism has been ingrained in literature and thinking, both mystical and otherwise. When she felt the hot breath of the bull, it meant the passion of love in Shattuck, who is pursuing her. Frankly, I do not think he has ever lost his love for her. And she knows it--at least, subconsciously. That's what that means. In her heart she knows it, although she may not openly admit it. Also, she fears it.

"More than that. Dreams are always based on experiences or thoughts of the day preceding the dreams. One doesn't always realize how easy that is. A thing dreamed of may have happened years ago. But if one could recall all the thoughts immediately preceding sleep, one would be able to trace out some impelling thought, perhaps on the surface quite unrelated, which brought it up. The more unrelated, the more interesting and important the connecting link. There was every chance, in this case, of Shattuck having been suggested to her any day. Besides, she may be thinking a great deal of him--and not realize it--for her moral censorship is always pushing such thoughts back into the subconscious."

Kennedy regarded me attentively, then added: "She dreamed of a man's face on those beasts--then denied it to me. What's the explanation?"

I suppose Kennedy was handing the explanation to me, but I could not quite understand it, much less express it.

"Easy," he answered to his own question. "She thinks that she hates him. Consciously she rejects. Unconsciously, though, she accepts him. Any of the new psychologists who know the intimate connection between love and hate could understand how that is possible. Love does not extinguish hate, nor hate, love. They repress each other. The opposite sentiment may very easily grow. A proper understanding of that would explain many of the anomalies of human nature--especially in the relations of men and women which sometimes seem to be inexplicable."

Since our previous discussion on the subject, I had turned it over many times in my mind. It was surely a new situation to me which this application of the new psychology was unfolding. Yet, under the exposition of Kennedy, I was not so bitterly hostile to it now as I had been before. Plainly enough, nothing that I had been able to offer to myself had fitted in with what I saw in the character of Honora Wilford. At least this seemed to fit.

"You would be surprised to learn how frequently such situations arise," defended Craig. "I suppose, to an analyst, they seem to be common, because it is only such cases that come to his attention. If one treated only red-haired men, one would, no doubt, soon get the idea that the community was composed mainly of the red-haired. That is just as foolish as to go to the other extreme and to deny that there are any red-haired people, just because one has never happened to see one."

The remark was obviously intended for me. I said nothing, but I was really alarmed. For I could see that the case was actually growing very much blacker for Honora as he proceeded. Was not Kennedy practically taxing her with loving another man than her husband? Was he not building up motives?

"The dreamer," he proceeded, "is always the principal actor in a dream, or the dream centers about the dreamer intimately. Dreams are personal. We never dream about matters that concern others primarily, but of matters that concern ourselves, either very directly or at least indirectly. So it has been with these dreams of Honora. They concern her intimately.

"Years ago that woman suffered what the new psychologists call a psychic trauma--a soul wound. She was engaged to Shattuck. We know that. But her censored consciousness rejected the manner of life of her fiancé. In pique, perhaps, she married Wilford. It was a wound when she cast aside her first love, a deep wound.

"But Nature always does her best to repair a wound--either a physical wound or a psychic wound. That underlies the psychology of forgetting. Honora thought she had found love again, in the advances of Wilford. But she had not, truly. She never lost her real, now subconscious, love for another--Shattuck. Day by day she tells herself that he is nothing to her, never really was, never again can be. She believes it. She lives it. Yet, when that censorship is raised in sleep, it is different. Then he pursues her, in her dreams. In actuality, too, I don't doubt that he pursues her, and she knows it. I'll wager Shattuck does not dream of her except frankly. He frankly thinks of her. He is still in love with her. It is a tough problem for Honora Wilford."

"I begin to see it more and more clearly," I admitted. "Dreams are very wonderful experiences, when one understands them rightly."

"Her dreams, especially," agreed Craig, fingering the papers. "Now there's that dream of Lathrop. I suspect she thinks of him somewhat as of a social lion. And I suppose he is--popular, a club-man, a lady-killer. Perhaps that is why she dreamed of him as a lion. But it wouldn't explain all. I recall he wore a beard. That may have suggested the tawny mane of a lion, too. The two ideas combined. There is the narrow path, too. A lion stands in the path. I don't quite fathom it yet. But, you see, Walter, of such stuff are dream lions made. This fantasy I must leave open for interpretation until we understand Lathrop himself better."

"About Shattuck," I reverted, not quite prepared to pass that point without clearing it as much as possible in my own mind. "Plainly he cares a great deal for her. I remember seeing one of Freud's books in his library. Suppose he knew her dreams. Would he not be able to discover that secretly she cared really very deeply for him and not for Vail?"

"He might," admitted Kennedy.

"But the problem would be to prove that he did," I supposed, for I was catching at any straw that would save Honora Wilford from the logical outcome of Kennedy's analysis as I saw it.

Craig had come to the last sheet of paper.

"This is my new prize," he exclaimed, waving it. "I had some inkling of what it betrays, but not the certainty this gives. This is an entirely new dream. We have no hastily spoken description with which to compare it. However, that will make little difference. We'll have to treat it as new. Let's go over it very carefully. It may easily prove most important of all."

Slowly he read it. "'I seemed to be walking through a forest with Vail. I don't know where we were going, but I seemed to have difficulty in getting there. Vail was helping me along. It was up-hill. Finally, when we got almost to the top of the hill, I stopped. I did not go any farther, though he did.' That's where her first hesitation-break in writing it occurred. So far, you see, this is a most intimate dream of their relations, as you yourself can interpret readily.

"There were several hesitations grouped here. 'Then I seemed to meet'--there was one--'a woman'--there was another. 'Just then she cried there was a fire.' What does that mean, you ask? Ever hear love described as a fire? Well, next: 'I turned around and looked. There was a big explosion and everybody ran out of the houses, shrieking.'"

"I recall vividly what took place when we reached that point," I put in. "At the time I thought of Vina Lathrop, of what a quite different type of woman Vina is. Vina is none of your consciously frigid, unconsciously passionate women. Vina Lathrop is throbbing with passion, as one can see who has ever met her or heard of her."

"Quite so. In this dream there plainly appears the 'other woman' in the case, the woman who has the passion which Honora herself does not have. Or at least, so she thinks. She seems to recognize in this other woman a woman of a different nature from herself. And yet," added Craig--"and yet, you know, 'The Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady--'"