Chapter I: AM an essayist, if anything, trying to tell Susan's story, and telling (1)

it badly, I fear, for lack of narrative skill. So it is with no desire to prolong cheaply a possible point of suspense that I must double back now before I can go forward. My personal interest centers so entirely in Susan herself, in the special qualities of her mind and heart, that I have failed to bring in certain stiff facts--essential, alas, to all further progress. A practiced novelist, handling this purely biographic material--such a man as Clifton Young--would quietly have "planted" these facts in their due order, thus escaping my present embarrassment. But indeed I am approaching a cruel crisis in Susan's life and in the lives of those dearest to her; a period of sheer circumstantial fatality; one of those incursions of mad coincidence, of crass melodrama, which--with a brutal, ironic, improbability, as if stage-managed by an anarchistic fiend of the pit--bursts through some fine-spun, geometrical web of days, leaving chaos behind; and I am ill-equipped to deal with this chance destruction, this haphazard wantonness.

Even could I merely have observed it from the outside, with aesthetic detachment, it would baffle me now; I should find it too crude for art, too arbitrary. It is not in my line. But God knows the victim of what seems an insane break in Nature is in no mood for art; he can do little more than cry out or foolishly rail!

* * * * *

Jimmy returned from his excursion to New York on the Sunday evening preceding Miss Goucher's letter. She must have been at work on it the next evening when Phil brought him to dine with me. It was our deliberate purpose to draw him out, track his shy impressions of Susan and of her new life in her new world. But it was hard going at first; for ten minutes or so we bagged little but the ordinary Jimmyesque _cliches_. He had had a great time, _etc._, _etc._...

Matters improved with the roast. It then appeared that he had lightly explored with Susan the two-thirds of Gaul omitted from her letter. He had called with her on Heywood Sampson, and fathomed Susan's allusion to the shy bluebird. Mr. Sampson, he assured us, was a fine old boy--strong for Susan too! He'd read a lot of her poems and things and was going to bring out the poems for her right away. But the bluebird in the bush had to do with a pet scheme of his for a weekly critical review of a different stamp from Hadow Bury's _Whim_. Solider, Jimmy imagined; safe and sane--the real thing! If Mr. Sampson should decide to launch it--he was still hesitating over the business outlook--Susan was to find a place on his staff.

Mr. Sampson, Jimmy opined, had the right idea about things in general. He didn't like Susan's quick stuff in _Whim_; thought it would cheapen her if she kept at it too long. And Mr. Sampson didn't approve of Susan's remaining third of Gaul, either--her Greenwich Village friends. Not much wonder, Jimmy added; Susan had trotted him round to three or four studios and places, and they were a funny job lot. Too many foreigners among them for him; they talked too much; and they pawed. But some nice young people, too. Most of them were young--and not stuck up. Friendly. Sort of alive--interested in everything--except, maybe, being respectable. Their jokes, come to think of it, were all about being respectable--kidding everyday people who weren't up to the latest ideas. There was a lot of jabber one place about the "Oedipus Complex," for example, but he didn't connect at all. He had his own idea--surely, not of the latest--that a lot of the villagers might feel differently when they began to make good and started their bank accounts. But Susan was on to them, anyway, far more than they were on to her! She liked them, though--in spite of Mr. Sampson; didn't fall for their craziest ways or notions of course, but was keen about their happy-go-lucky side--their pep! Besides, they weren't all alike, naturally. Take the pick of them, the ones that did things instead of posing round and dressing the part, and Jimmy could see they might be there. At least, they were on their way--like Susan.

This was all very well, so far as it went; but we had felt, Phil and I, a dumb undercurrent struggling to press upward into speech, and after dinner before the fire, we did our best to help Jimmy free its course. Gradually it became apparent; it rather trickled than gushed forth. Jimmy was bothered, more than bothered; there was something, perhaps there were several things, on his mind. We did not press him, using subtler methods, biding our time; and little by little Jimmy oozed toward the full revelation of an uneasy spirit.

"Did you see Mr. Phar?" Phil asked.

"No," said Jimmy, his forehead knotting darkly; "I guess it's a good thing I didn't too!"

"Why?"

"Well, that letter I had from Susan--the one I showed you, Mr. Hunt--mentioned some unpleasantness with Mr. Phar; and all Saturday afternoon while she was trotting me round, I could see she'd been worrying to herself a good deal."

"Worrying?"

"Yes. Whenever she thought I wasn't paying attention her face would go--sort of dead tired and sad--all used up. I can't describe it. And one or two remarks she dropped didn't sound as happy as she meant them to. Then, Sunday morning, she had to get some work done, so I took Miss Goucher to church. I'm supposed to be a Catholic, you know; but I guess I'm not much of anything. I'd just as soon go to one kind of church as another, if the music's good. Anyway, it was a nice morning and Miss Goucher thought I'd like to see the Fifth Avenue parade; so we walked up to some silk-stocking church above Thirty-fourth Street, where they have a dandy choir; and back again afterwards. I stayed at the Brevoort, down near them, you know; and Miss Goucher certainly is a peach. We got along fine. And I found out from her how Mr. Phar's been acting. He's a bad actor, all right. I'm just as glad I didn't run into him. I might have done something foolish."

"What, for instance?" I suggested.

"Well," muttered Jimmy, "there's some things I can't stand. I might have punched his head."

Phil whistled softly.

"He's not what I call a white man," explained Jimmy, dogged and slow, as if to justify his vision of assault. "He's a painted pup."

"Come, Jimmy!" Phil commanded. "Out with it! Hunt and I know he's been annoying Susan, but that's all we know. I supposed he might have been pressing his attentions too publicly. If it's more than that----"

There was an unusual sternness in Phil's eye. Jimmy appealed from it to mine, but in vain.

"Look here, Mr. Hunt," he blurted, "Susan's all right, of course--and so's Miss Goucher! They've got their eyes open. And maybe it's not up to me to say anything. But if I was in your place, I'd feel like giving two or three people down there a piece of my mind! Susan wouldn't thank me for saying so, I guess; she's modern--she likes to be let alone. Why, she laughed at me more than once for getting sort of hot! And I know I've a bunch to learn yet. But all the same," he pounded on, "I do know this: It was a dirty trick of Mr. Phar's not to stand up for Susan!"

"Not stand up for her! What do you mean?" Phil almost barked.

"Jimmy means, Phil," I explained, "that some rather vague rumors began not along ago to spread through Maltby's crowd in regard to Susan--as to why she found it advisable to leave New Haven. Many of his friends know me, of course--or know Gertrude; know all about us, at any rate. It's not very remarkable, then, that Susan's appearance in New York--and so far as Maltby's May-Flies know, in some sense under his wing--has set tongues wagging. I was afraid of it; but I know Maltby's set well enough to know that to-day's rumor, unless it's pretty sharply spiced, is soon forgotten. To-morrow's is so much fresher, you see. The best thing for innocent victims to do is to keep very still. And then, I confess, it seemed to me unlikely that Maltby would permit anything of the sort to go too far."

I saw that Jimmy was following my exposition with the most painful surprise. Phil grunted disgustedly as I ended.

"I don't pretend to much knowledge of that world," he said deliberately, "but common sense tells me Maltby Phar might think it to his advantage to fan the flame instead of stamping it out. I may be unfair to him, but I'm even capable of supposing he touched it off in the first place."

"No, Phil," I objected, "he wouldn't have done that. But you seem to be right about his failing to stamp out the sparks. That's what you meant by his not standing up for Susan, isn't it, Jimmy?"

The boy's face was a study in unhappy perplexity. "I guess I'm like Professor Farmer!" he exclaimed. "I'm not on to people who act like that. But, Mr. Hunt, you're dead wrong--excuse me, sir!"

"Go on, Jimmy."

"Well, I mean--you spoke of vague rumors, didn't you? They're not vague. I guess Susan hasn't wanted to upset you. Miss Goucher told me all about it, and she wouldn't have done it, would she, if she hadn't hoped I'd bring it straight back to you? I guess she promised Susan not to tell you, so she told me. That's the only way I can figure it," concluded Jimmy.

Phil was grim now. "Give us your facts, Jimmy--all of them."

"Yes, sir. There's a Mr. Young; he writes things. He's clever. They're all clever down there. Well, Mr. Young's dead gone on Susan; but then, he's the kind that's always dead gone on somebody. It's women with him, you see, sir. Susan understands. It don't seem right she should, somehow; but--well, Susan's always been different from most girls. At least, I don't know many girls----"

"Never mind that," prompted Phil.

"No, sir. Talking about things like this always rattles me. I can't help it. They kind of stick in my throat. Well, Mr. Young don't want to marry anybody, but he's been making love to Susan--trying to. He had the wrong idea about her, you see; and Susan saw that, too--saw he thought she was playing him for a poor fish. So--her way--out she comes with it to him, flat. And he gets sore and comes back at her with what he'd heard." Jimmy's handkerchief was pulled out at this point; he mopped his brow. "It don't feel right even to speak of lies like this about--any decent girl," he mumbled.

"No," Phil agreed, "it doesn't. But there's nothing for it now. Get it said and done with!"

"Yes, sir. Mr. Young told Susan he wasn't a fool; he knew she'd been--what she shouldn't be--up here."

"Hunt's mistress, you mean?" snapped Phil.

"Yes, sir," whispered Jimmy, his face purple with agonized shame.

"And then?"

"Susan's a wonder," continued Jimmy, taking heart now his Rubicon lay behind him. "Most girls would have thrown a fit. But Susan seems to feel there's a lot to Mr. Young, in spite of all that rotten side of him. She saw right away he believed that about her, and so he couldn't be blamed much for getting sore. Anyway, he must have a white streak in him, for Susan talked to him--the way she can--and he soon realized he was in all wrong. But the _reason_ he was in wrong--that's what finished things between Susan and Mr. Phar! I guess you won't blame me for wanting to punch his head."

"No," I threw in; "I shouldn't blame you for wanting to punch mine!"

"Give us the reason, Jimmy," insisted Phil, his grave, Indianlike face stiffened to a mask.

"Mr. Young didn't get that lie from Mr. Phar," admitted Jimmy, "but he did take it straight to him, when he first heard it, thinking he ought to know."

"Good God!" I cried. "Do you mean to tell me Maltby confirmed it?"

"Well," Jimmy hesitated, "it seems he didn't come right out and say, 'Yes, that's so!' But he didn't deny it either. Sort of shrugged his shoulders, I guess, and did things with his eyebrows. Whatever he did or didn't, Mr. Young got it fastened in his head then and there that Susan----"

But this time Jimmy simply couldn't go on; the words stuck in his throat and stayed there.

Phil's eyes met mine and held them, long.

"Hunt," he said quietly at last, "it's a fortunate thing for Susan--for all of us--that I have long years of self-discipline behind me. Otherwise, I should go to New York to-morrow, find Maltby Phar, and shoot him."

Jimmy's blue eyes flashed toward Phil a startled but admiring glance.

"What do _you_ propose to do, Hunt?" demanded Phil.

"Think," I replied; "think hard--think things through. Wednesday morning I shall leave for New York."

II

My prophecy was correct. Wednesday, at 12.03 A. M., I left for New York, in response to the shocking telegram from Lucette. I arrived at Gertrude's address, an august apartment house on upper Park Avenue, a little before half-past two, dismissed my taxi at the door, noting as I did so a second taxi standing at the curb just ahead of my own, and was admitted to the dignified public entrance-hall with surprising promptness, considering the hour, by the mature buttons on duty. Buttons was a man nearing sixty, at a guess, of markedly Irish traits, and he was unexpectedly wide-awake. When I gave him my name, and briefly stated the reason for my untimely arrival, his deep-set eyes glittered with excited curiosity, while he drew down deep parallels about his mouth in a grimacing attempt at deepest sympathy and profoundest respect. I questioned him. Several persons had gone up to Mrs. Hunt's apartment, he solemnly informed me, during the past two hours. He believed the police were in charge.

"Police?" I exclaimed, incredulous.

He believed so. He would say no more.

"Take me up at once!" I snapped at him. "Surely there's a mistake. There can be no reason for police interference."

His eyes glittered more shrewdly, the drawn parallels deepened yet further as he shot back the elevator door....

It was unmistakably a police officer who admitted me for the first and last time to Gertrude's apartment. On hearing my name he nodded, then closed the door firmly in the face of Buttons, who had lingered.

"He's been warned not to tip off the press," said the police officer, "but it's just as well to be cautious."

"The press? What do you mean?" I asked, still incredulous. "Is it a New York custom for police to enter a house of mourning?" I was aware as I spoke of repressed voices murmuring in an adjoining room.

"I'm Sergeant Conlon," he answered, "in charge here till the coroner comes. He should make it by seven. If you're the poor lady's husband, you'll be needed. I'll have to detain you."

As he ended, the murmur ended in the adjoining room, and Lucette walked out from it. She was wearing an evening gown--blue, I think--cut very low, and a twinkling ornament of some kind in her hair. She has fine shoulders and beautiful hair. But her face had gone haggard; she had been weeping; she looked ten years older than when I had last seen her.

"What is it? What is it?" I demanded of her. "I know nothing but your telegram!"

"Looks like murder," said Sergeant Conlon, dry and short. "I wouldn't talk much if I was you, not till the coroner gets here. I'm bound to make notes of what you say."

For the merest hundredth of a second my scalp prickled, my flesh went cold; but sheer incredulity was still strong upon me; it beat back the horror. It was simply not real, all this.

"At least," I managed, "give me facts--something!"

Then unreality deepened to utter nightmare, passing all bounds of reason. Lucette spoke, and life turned for me to sheer prattling madness; to a gibbering grotesque!

"_Susan_ did it!" she cried, her voice going high and strident, slipping from all control. "I know it! I know she did! I know it! Wasn't she with her? _Alone_ with her? Who else could have done it! Who else! _It's in her blood!_"

Well, of course, when a woman you have played tag with in her girlhood goes mad before you, raves----

How could one act or answer? Then, too, she had vanished; or had I really seen her in the flesh at all? Really heard her voice, crying out....

Sergeant Conlon's voice came next; short, dry, businesslike. It compelled belief.

"I've a question or two for you, Mr. Hunt. This way; steady!"

I felt his hand under my elbow.

Gertrude's apartment was evidently a very large one; I had vaguely the sensation of passing down a long hall with an ell in it, and so into a small, simply furnished, but tasteful room--the sitting-room for her maids, as I later decided. Sergeant Conlon shut the door and locked it.

"That's not to keep you in," he said; "it's to keep others out. Sit down, Mr. Hunt. Smoke somethin'. Let's make ourselves comfortable."

The click of the shot bolt in the lock had suddenly, I found, restored my power of cooerdination. It had been like the sharp handclap which brings home a hypnotized subject to reason and reality. I was now, in a moment, not merely myself again, but peculiarly alert and steady of nerve, and I gave matter-of-fact assent to Sergeant Conlon's suggestions. I lit a cigarette and took possession of the most comfortable chair. Conlon remained standing. He had refused my cigarettes, but he now lighted a long, roughly rolled cigar.

"I get these from a fellow over on First Avenue," he explained affably. "He makes them up himself. They're not so bad."

I attempted a smile and achieved a classic reaction. "They look--efficient," I said. "And now, sergeant, what has happened here? If I've seemed dazed for the past ten minutes, it's little wonder. I hurried down in response to a telegram saying my wife.... You know we've lived apart for years?" He grunted assent.... "Saying she had died suddenly. And I walk in, unprepared, on people who seem to me to be acting parts in a crook melodrama of the crudest type. Be kind enough to tell me what it's all about!"

Sergeant Conlon's gray-blue eyes fixed me as I spoke. He was a big, thickset man, nearing middle age; the bruiser build, physically; but with a solidly intelligent-looking head and trustworthy eyes.

"I'll do that, Mr. Hunt," he assented. "I got Mrs. Arthur to send you that telegram; but I'll say to you first-off, now you've come, I don't suspect you of bein' mixed up in this affair. When I shot that 'It looks like murder' at you, I did it deliberate. Well--that's neither here nor there; but I always go by the way things strike me. I have to." He twirled a light chair round to face me and seated himself, leaning a little forward, his great stubby hands propped on his square knees. "Here's the facts, then--what we know are facts: It seems, Mrs. Arthur--she's been visitin' Mrs. Hunt for two weeks past--she went to the opera to-night with a Mr. Phar; she says you know him well." I nodded. "Durin' the last act of the opera they were located by somebody in the office down there and called out to the 'phone--an accident to Mrs. Hunt--see?--important." Again I nodded. "Mrs. Arthur answered the 'phone, and Doctor Askew--he lives in this house, but he's Mrs. Hunt's reg'lar doctor--well, he was on the wire. He just told her to hurry back as fast as she could--and she and Mr. Phar hopped a taxi and beat it up here. Doctor Askew met them at the door, and a couple of scared maids. The doc's a good man--big rep--one of the best. He'd taken charge and sent on the quiet for us. I got here with a couple of my men soon after Mrs. Arthur----"

"But----"

"I know, _I_ know!" he stopped me off. "But I want you to get it all straight. Mrs. Hunt, sir, was killed--somehow--with a long, sharp-pointed brass paper-knife--a reg'lar weapon. I've examined it. And someone drove that thing--and it must'a' took some force, believe _me_!--right through her left eye up to the handle--a full inch of metal plumb into her brain!"

I tried to believe him as he said this; as, seeing my blankness, he repeated it for me in other words. For the moment it was impossible. This sort of thing must have happened in the world, of course--at other times, to other people. But not now, not to Gertrude. Certainly not to Gertrude; a woman so aloof, so exquisite, self-sheltered, class-sheltered, not merely from ugliness, from the harsh and brutal, but from everything in life even verging toward vulgarity, coarse passion, the unrestrained....

"That's the way she was killed, Mr. Hunt--no mistake. Now--who did it--and why? That's the point."

At my elbow was a table with a reading-lamp on it, a desk-set, a work-basket, belonging, I suppose, to one of the maids, and some magazines. One magazine lay just before me--_The Reel World_--a by-product of the great moving-picture industry. I had been staring--unseeingly, at first--at a flamboyant advertisement on its cover that clamored for my attention, until now, with Conlon's question, it momentarily gained it. The release of a magnificent Superfeature was announced--in no quavering terms. "The Sins of the Fathers" it shrieked at me! "All the thrilling human suspense"; "virile, compelling"; "brimming over with the kind of action and adventure your audiences crave"; "it delivers the wallop!"

Instantly, with a new force, Lucette's outcry swept back upon me. "Susan did it! Wasn't she with her? Alone with her? _It's in her blood!_"

And at once every faculty of my spirit leaped, with an almost supernatural acuteness, to the defense of the one being on earth I wholly loved. All sense of unreality vanished. Now for it--since it must be so! Susan and I, if need be, against the world!

"Go on, sergeant. What's your theory?"

"Never mind my theory! I'd like to get _yours_ first--when I've given you all I know."

"All right, then! But be quick about it!"

"Easy, Mr. Hunt! It's not as simple as all that. Well, here it is: Somewhere round ten o'clock, a Miss Blake--a magazine-writer livin' on West 10th Street--your ward, I understand----"

"Yes."

"Well, she calls here, alone, and asks for Mrs. Arthur. Mrs. Hunt's personal maid--English; she's no chicken either--she lets her in and says Mrs. Arthur isn't here--see--and didn't the door boy tell her so? Yes, says Miss Blake, but she'll wait for her anyway. The maid--name of Iffley--says she thought that was queer, so she put it to Miss Blake that maybe she'd better ask Mrs. Hunt. Oh, says Miss Blake, I thought she was out, too. But it seems Mrs. Hunt was in her private sittin' room; she'd had a slight bilious attack, and she'd got her corsets off and somethin' loose on, the way women do, and was all set for a good read. So the maid didn't think she could see Miss Blake, but anyhow she took in her card--and Mrs. Hunt decided to see her. That maid Iffley's an intelligent woman; she's all broke up, but she ain't hysterical like the cook--who didn't see nothin' anyway. The parlor maid was havin' her night off, but she's back now, too, and I've got 'em all safe where they can't talk to outsiders, yet. I don't want this thing in the papers to-morrow, not if I can help it; I want to keep it dark till I know better where I'm gettin' off."

"Right!" I approved. "What's the maid's story?"

"Well, I've questioned her pretty close, and I think it's to be relied on. It hits me that way. Mrs. Hunt, she says, when she took in Miss Blake's card, was lyin' on her couch in a long trailin' thing--what ladies call a negligee."

"Yes?"

"And she was cuttin' the pages of some new book with that paper-knife I spoke of."

"Yes?"

"And her dog, a runty little French bull, was sleepin' on the rug beside the couch."

"What does that matter?"

"More'n you'd think! He's got a broken leg--provin' some kind of a struggle must'a'----"

"I see. Go on!"

"Well, Mrs. Hunt, the maid says, looked at Miss Blake's card a minute and didn't say anythin' special, but seemed kind of puzzled. Her only words was, 'Yes, I ought to see her.' So the maid goes for Miss Blake and shows her to the door, which she'd left ajar, and taps on it for her, and Mrs. Hunt calls to come in. So Miss Blake goes in and shuts the door after her, and the maid comes back to this room we're in now--it's round the corner of the hall from Mrs. Hunt's room--see? But she don't much more than get here--just to the door--when she hears the dog give a screech and then go on cryin' like as if he'd been hurt. The cook was in here, too, and she claims she heard a kind of jarrin' sound, like somethin' heavy fallin'; but Iffley--that's the maid, they call her Iffley--says all she noticed was the dog. Anyway she listened a second, then she started for Mrs. Hunt's room--and the cook, bein' nervous, locked herself in here and sat with her eyes tight shut and her fingers in her ears. Fact. She says she can't bear nothin' disagreeable. Too bad about her, ain't it!"

"And then?" I protested, crossly.

"Well, Mr. Hunt, when the Iffley woman turned the hall corner--the door of your poor wife's room opens, and Miss Blake walks out. She had the paper-knife in her right hand, and the knife and her hand was all bloody; her left hand was bloody too; and we've found blood on her clothes since. There was a queer, vacant look about her--that's what the maid says. She didn't seem to see anythin'. Naturally, the maid was scared stiff--but she got one look in at the door anyway--that was enough for her. She was too scared even to yell, she says. Paralyzed--she just flopped back against the wall half faintin'.

"And then she noticed somethin' that kind of brought her to again! Mr. Hunt, that young woman, Miss Blake--she'd gone quiet as you please and curled herself down on a rug in the hallway--that bloody knife in her hand--and she was either dead or fast asleep! And then the doorbell rang, and the Iffley woman says she don't know how she got past that prostrate figger on the rug--her very words, Mr. Hunt--that prostrate figger on the rug--but she did, somehow; got to the door. And when she opened it, there was Doctor Askew and the elevator man. And then she passed out. And I must say I don't much blame her, considerin'."

"Where's Miss Blake now?" I sharply demanded.

"She's still fast asleep, Mr. Hunt--to call it that. The doc says it's--somethin' or other--due to shock. Same as a trance."

I started up. "Where is Doctor Askew? I must see him at once!"

"We've laid Miss Blake on the bed in Mrs. Arthur's room. He's observin' her."

"Take me there."

"I'll do that, Mr. Hunt. But I'll ask you a question first--straight. Is there any doubt in your mind that that young lady--your ward--killed Mrs. Hunt?"

I met his gray-blue glance directly, pausing a moment before I spoke. "Sergeant Conlon," I replied, while a meteor-shower of speculation shot through me with the rapidity of light waves, "there is no doubt whatever in my mind: Miss Blake could not--and so did not--kill my wife."

"Who did, then?"

"Wait! Let me first ask you a question, sergeant: Who sent for Doctor Askew?"

"That's the queerest part of it; Miss Blake did."

"Ah! _How?_"

"There's a 'phone in Mrs. Hunt's sittin' room. Miss Blake called the house operator, gave her name and location, and said not to waste a moment--to send up a doctor double-quick!"

"Is that _all_ she said?"

"No. The operator tells me she said Mrs. Hunt had had a terrible accident and was dyin'."

"You're certain she said 'accident'?"

"The girl who was at the switchboard--name of Joyce--she's sure of it."

I smiled, grimly enough. "Then that is exactly what occurred, sergeant--a terrible accident; hideous. Your question is answered. Nobody killed Mrs. Hunt--unless you are so thoughtless or blasphemous as to call it an act of God!"

"Oh, come on now!" he objected, shaking his head, but not, I felt, with entire conviction. "No," he continued stubbornly, "I been turnin' that over too. But there's no way an accident like that could 'a' happened. It's not possible!"

"Fortunately," I insisted, "nothing else is possible! Are you asking me to believe that a young, sensitive girl, with an extraordinary imaginative sympathy for others--a girl of brains and character, as all her friends have reason to know--asking me to believe that she walked coolly into my wife's room this evening, rushed savagely upon her, wrested a paper knife from her hand, and then found the sheer brute strength of will and arm to thrust it through her eye deep into her brain? Are you further asking me to believe that having done this frightful thing she kept her wits about her, telephoned at once for a doctor--being careful to call her crime an accident--and so passed at once into a trance of some kind and walked from the room with the bloody knife in her hand? What possible motive could be strong enough to drive such a girl to such a deed?"

"Jealousy," said Sergeant Conlon. "She wanted _you_--and your wife stood in her way. That's what I get from Mrs. Arthur."

"I see. But the three or four persons who know Miss Blake and me best will tell you how absurd that is, and you'll find their reasons for thinking so are very convincing. Is Mr. Phar still about?"

"He is. I've detained him."

"What does he think of Mrs. Arthur's nonsensical theory?"

"He's got a theory of his own," said Conlon; "and it happens to be the same as mine."

"Well?"

"Mr. Phar says Miss Blake's own father went mad--all of a sudden; cut some fancy woman's throat, and his own after! He thinks history's repeated itself, that's all. So do I. Only a crazy woman could 'a' done this--just this way. A strong man in his senses couldn't 'a' drove that paper-knife home like that! But when a person goes mad, sir, all rules are off. I seen too many cases. Things happen you can't account for. Take the matter of that dog now--his broken leg, eh? What are you to make of that? And take this queer state she's in. There's no doubt in my mind, Mr. Hunt--the poor girl's gone crazy, somehow. You nor me can't tell how nor why. But it's back of all this--that's sure."

Throughout all this coarse nightmare, this insane break in Nature, as I have called it and must always regard it, let me at least be honest. As Conlon spoke, for the tiniest fraction of a second a desolating fear darted through me, searing every nerve with white-hot pain. Was it true? Might it not conceivably be true? But this single lightning-thrust of doubt passed as it came. No, not as it came, for it blotted all clearness, all power of voluntary thought from my mind; but it left behind it a singular intensity of vision. Even as the lightning-pang vanished, and while time yet stood still, a moving picture that amounted to hallucination began to play itself out before me. It was like

_... that last
Wild pageant of the accumulated past
That clangs and flashes for a drowning man._

I saw Susan shutting the door of a delicately panelled Georgian room, and every detail of this room--a room I had never entered in the flesh--was distinct to me. Given time, I could have inventoried its every object. I saw Gertrude lying on--not a couch, as Conlon had called it--on a _chaise-longue_, a book with a vivid green cover in her left hand, a bronze paper knife with a thin, pointed blade in her right. She was holding it with the knuckles of her hand upward, her thumb along the handle, and the point of the blade turned to her left, across and a little in toward her body. She was wearing a very lovely _neglige_, a true creation, all in filmy tones of old gold. On a low-set tip-table at her elbow stood a reading-lamp, and a small coal-black French bull lay asleep on a superb Chinese rug--lay close in by the _chaise-longue_, just where a dropped hand might caress him. A light silky-looking coverlet of a peculiar dull blue, harmonizing with certain tones of the rug, was thrown across Gertrude's feet.

As Susan shut the door, the little bull pricked up his bat-ears and started to uncurl, but Gertrude must have spoken to him, for he settled back again--not, however, to sleep. It was all a picture; I heard no sounds. Then I saw Gertrude put down her book on the table and swing her feet from the _chaise-longue_, meaning to rise and greet Susan. But, as she attempted to stand up, the light coverlet entangled her feet and tripped her; she lost her balance, tried with a violent, awkward lurch of her whole body to recover herself, and stamped rather than stepped full on the dog's forepaws. He writhed, springing up between her feet--the whole grotesque catastrophe was, in effect, a single, fatal gesture!--and Gertrude, throwing her hands instinctively before her face, fell heavily forward, the length of her body, prone. I saw Susan rush toward her---- And the psychic reel flickered out, blanked.... I needed to see no more.

"Don't you agree with me, Mr. Hunt?" Conlon was asking.

"No," I said bluntly. "No madwoman would have summoned a doctor. Miss Blake called it a terrible accident. It was. Her present state is due to the horror of it. When she wakes, it will all be explained. Now take me to her."

Conlon's gray-blue glance fixed me once more. "All right," he grunted, "I've no objections. But I'd 'a' thought your first wish would 'a' been to see your wife."

"No," I replied. "Mrs. Hunt separated from me years ago, for reasons of her own. I bore her no ill will; in a sense, I respected her, admired her. Understand me, Sergeant Conlon. There was nothing vulgar in her life, and her death in this stupid way--oh, it's indecent, damnable! A cheap outrage! I could do nothing for her living, and can do nothing now. But I prefer to remember her as she was. _She_ would prefer it, too."

"Come on, then," said Conlon; pretty gruffly, I thought.

He unlocked the door.

III

It was a singular thing, but so convincing had my vision been to me that I felt no immediate desire to verify the details of its setting by an examination of Gertrude's boudoir. It had come to me bearing its own credentials, its own satisfying accent of truth. One question did, however, fasten upon me, as I followed Conlon's bulky form, down the hall to Lucette's bedroom. Whence had this vision, this psychic reel come to me? What was its source? How could the mere fact of it--clearing, as it did, at least, all perplexities from my own mind--have occurred? For the moment I could find no answer; the mystery had happened, had worked, but remained a mystery.

Like most men in this modern world I had taken a vague, mild interest in psychical research, reading more or less casually, and with customary suspension of judgment, anything of the sort that came in my way. I had a bowing acquaintance with its rapidly growing literature; little more; and until now I had had no striking psychical experiences of my own, and had never, as it happened, attended a seance of any kind, either popular or scientific. Nevertheless, I could--to put it so--speak that language. I was familiar with the described phenomena, in a general way, and with the conflicting theories of its leading investigators; but I had--honestly speaking--no pet theories of my own, though always impatient of spiritistic explanations, and rather inclined to doubt, too, the persistent claim that thought transference had been incontrovertibly established. On the whole, I suppose I was inclined to favor common-sense mechanistic explanations of such phenomena, and to regard all others with alert suspicion or wearily amused contempt.

Now at last, in my life's most urgent crisis, I had had news from nowhere; now, furthermore, the being I loved and would protect, _must_ protect, had been thrown by psychic shock into that grim borderland, the Abnormal: that land of lost voices, of the fringe of consciousness, of dissociated personalities, of morbid obsession, and wild symbolic dreams. Following on Conlon's heels, then, I entered a softly illumined room--a restrained _Louis Seize_ room--a true Gertrude room, with its cool French-gray panelled walls; but entered there as into sinister darkness, as if groping for light. The comfortably accustomed, the predictable, I felt, lay all behind me; I must step warily henceforth among shifting shadows and phosphoric blurs. The issues were too terrifying, too vast, for even one little false move; Susan's future, the very health of her soul, might depend now upon the blundering clumsiness or the instinctive tact with which I attempted to pick and choose my way. It was with a secret shuddering of flesh and spirit that I entered that discreet, faultless room.

Susan was lying on the low single French bed, a coverlet drawn over her; they had removed her trim tailored hat, the jacket of her dark suit, and her walking-boots, leaving them on the couch by the silk-curtained windows, where they had perhaps first placed her. She had not dressed for the evening before coming up to Gertrude's; it was evidently to have been a businesslike call. Her black weblike hair--smoky, I always called it, to tease her; it never fell lank or separated into strings--had been disordered, and a floating weft of it had drifted across her forehead and hung there. Her face was moon-white, her lips pale, the lines of cheek and chin had sharpened, her eyes were closed. It was very like death. My throat tightened and ached....

Doctor Askew stood across the bed from us, looking down at her.

"Here's Mr. Hunt," said Conlon, without further introduction. "He wants to see you." Then he stepped back to the door and shut it, remaining over by it, at some distance from the bed. His silence was expressive. "Now show me!" it seemed to say. "This may be a big case for me and it may not. If not, I'm satisfied; I'm ready for anything. Go on, show me!"

Doctor Askew was not, as I had expected to find him, old; nor even middle-aged; an expectation caught, I presume, from Conlon's laconic "One of the best--a big rep"; he was, I now estimated, a year or so younger than I. I had never heard of him and knew nothing about him, but I liked him at once when he glanced humorously up at Conlon's "He wants to see you," nodded to me, and said: "I've been hoping you'd come soon, Mr. Hunt. I've a mind to try something here--if you've no objection to an experiment?"

He was a short man, not fat, but thickset like Conlon; only, with a higher-strung vitality, carrying with it a sense of intellectual eagerness and edge. He had a sandy, freckled complexion, bronzy, crisp-looking hair with reddish gleams in it, and an unmistakably red, aggressive mustache, close-clipped but untamed. Green-blue eyes. A man, I decided, of many intensities; a willful man; but thoughtful, too, and seldom unkind.

"Why did you wait for my permission?" I asked.

"I shouldn't have--much longer," he replied, his eyes returning to Susan's unchanging face. "But I've read one or two of your essays, so I know something of the feel of your mind. It occurred to me you might be useful. And besides, I badly need some information about this"--he paused briefly--"this very lovely child." Again he paused a moment, adding: "This is a singular case, Mr. Hunt--and likely to prove more singular as we see it through. I acted too impulsively in sending for Conlon; I apologize. It's not a police matter, as I at first supposed. However, I hope there's no harm done. Conlon is holding his horses and trying to be discreet. Aren't you, Conlon?"

"What's the idea?" muttered Conlon, from the doorway; Conlon was not used to being treated thus, _de haut en bas_. "Even if that poor little girl's crazy, we'll have to swear out a warrant for her. It's a police matter all right."

"I think _not_," said Doctor Askew, dismissing Conlon from the conversation. "Have you ever," he then asked me, "seen Miss Blake like this before?"

I was about to say "No!" with emphasis, when a sudden memory returned to me--the memory of a queer, crumpled little figure lying on the concrete incline of the Eureka Garage; curled up there, like an unearthed cutworm, round a shining dinner-pail. "Yes," I replied instead; "once--I think."

"You think?"

I sketched the occasion for him and explained all its implications as clearly and briefly as I could; and while I talked thus across her bed Susan's eyes did not open; she did not stir. Doctor Askew heard me out, as I felt, intently, but kept his eye meanwhile--except for a keen glance or two in my direction--on Susan's face.

"All right," he said, when I had concluded; "that throws more or less light. There's nothing to worry us, at least, in Miss Blake's condition. Under psychical trauma--shock--she has a tendency to pass into a trance state--amounting practically to one of the deeper stages of hypnosis. She'll come out of it sooner or later--simply wake up--if we leave her alone. Perhaps, after all, that's the wisest thing for us to do."

On this conclusion he walked away from the bed, as if it ended the matter, and lit a cigarette.

"Well, Conlon," he grinned, "we're making a night of it, eh? Come, let's all sit down and talk things over." He seated himself on the end of the couch as he spoke, lounging back on one elbow and crossing his knees. "I ought to tell you, Mr. Hunt," he added, "that nervous disorders are my specialty; more than that, indeed--my life! I studied under Janet in Paris, and later put in a couple of years as assistant physician in the Clinic of Psychiatry, Zurich. Did some work, too, at Vienna--with Stekel and Freud. So I needn't say a problem of this kind is simply meat and drink to me. I wouldn't have missed it for anything in the world!"

I was a little chilled by his words, by an attitude that seemed to me cold-bloodedly professional; nevertheless, I joined him, drawing up a chair, and Conlon gradually worked his way toward us, though he remained standing.

"What I want to know, doc," demanded Conlon, "is why you've changed your mind?"

"I haven't," Doctor Askew responded. "I can't have, because I haven't yet formed an opinion. I'm just beginning to--and even that may take me some time." He turned to me. "What's your theory, Mr. Hunt?"

I was prepared for this question; my mind had been busying itself foresightedly with every possible turn our conversation was likely to take. All my faculties were sharpened by strain, by my pressing sense that Susan's future, for good or evil, might somehow be linked to my lightest word. I had determined, then, in advance, not to speak in Conlon's presence of my inexplicable vision, not to mention it at all to anyone unless some unexpected turn of the wheel might make it seem expedient. I could use it to Susan's advantage, I believed, more effectively by indirection; I endeavored to do so now.

"My theory?" I queried.

"As to how Mrs. Hunt met her death. However painful, we've got to face that out, sooner or later."

"Naturally. But I have no theory," I replied; "I have an unshakable conviction."

"Ah! Which is----"

"That the whole thing was accidental, of course; just as Miss Blake affirmed it to be over the telephone."

"You believe that _because_ she affirmed it?"

"Exactly."

"That won't go down with the coroner," struck in Conlon. "How could it? I'd like to think it, well enough--but it don't with me!"

"Wait, Conlon!" suggested Doctor Askew, sharply. "I'll conduct this inquiry just now, if you don't mind--and if Mr. Hunt will be good enough to answer."

"Why not?" I replied.

"Thank you. Conlon's point is a good one, all the same. Have you been able to form any reasonable notion of how such an accident could have occurred?"

"Yes."

"The hell you have!" exclaimed Conlon excitedly, not meaning, I think, to be sarcastic. "Why, you haven't even been in there"--he referred to Gertrude's boudoir--"or seen the body!"

"No," I responded, "but you and Doctor Askew have, so you can easily put me right. Extraordinary as the whole thing is--the one deadly chance in perhaps a million--there's nothing impossible about it. Merely from the facts you've given me, Sergeant Conlon, I can reconstruct the whole scene--come pretty near it, at any rate. But the strength of my conviction is based on other grounds--don't lose sight of that! Miss Blake didn't kill Mrs. Hunt; she's incapable of such an action; and if she didn't, no one else did. An accident is the only alternative."

"Well, then," grunted Conlon, "tell us about it! It'll take some tellin'!"

"Hold on!" exclaimed Doctor Askew before I could begin. "Sorry, Mr. Hunt--but you remember, perhaps--when you first came in--I had half a mind to try something--an experiment?" I nodded. "Well, I've made up my mind. We'll try it right now, before it's too late. If it succeeds, it may yield us a few facts to go on. Your suppositions can come afterward."

I felt, as he spoke, that something behind his words belied their rudeness, that their rudeness was rather for Conlon's benefit than for mine. He got up briskly and crossed to the bedside. There after a moment he turned and motioned us both to join him.

As we did so, tiptoeing instinctively: "Yes--this is fortunate," he said; "she's at it again. Look."

Susan still lay as I had first seen her, with shut eyes, her arms extended outside the coverlet; but she was no longer entirely motionless. Her left arm lay relaxed, the palm of her left hand upward. I had often seen her hands lie inertly thus in her lap, the palms upward, in those moments of silent withdrawal which I have more than once described. But now her right hand was turned downward, the fingers slightly contracted, as if they held a pen, and the hand was creeping slowly on the coverlet from left to right; it would creep slowly in this way for perhaps eight inches, then draw quickly back to its point of starting and repeat the manoeuvre. It was uncanny, this patient repetition--over and over--of a single restricted movement.

"My God," came from Conlon in a husky whisper, "is she dyin'--or what?"

"Far from it!" said Doctor Askew, his abrupt, crisp speech in almost ludicrous contrast to Conlon's sudden awe. "Get me some paper from that desk over there, Conlon. A pad, if possible."

He drew out a pencil from his pocket as he spoke. Conlon hesitated an instant, then obeyed, tiptoeing ponderously, with creaking boots, over to a daintily appointed writing-table, and returning with a block of linen paper. Doctor Askew, meanwhile, holding the pencil between his teeth, had lifted Susan's unresisting shoulders--too roughly, I thought--from the bed.

"Stick that other pillow under her," he ordered me, sharply enough in spite of the impeding pencil. "A little farther down--so!"

Susan now lay, no less limply than before, with her trunk, shoulders, and head somewhat raised. Her right hand had ceased its slow, patient movement.

"What's the idea?" Conlon was muttering. "What's the idea, doc?"

Whatever it was, it was evident that Conlon didn't like it.

"Got the pad?" demanded Doctor Askew. "Oh, good! Here!"

He almost snatched the pad from Conlon and tore the blotter cover from it; then he slipped it beneath Susan's right palm and finally thrust his pencil between her curved fingers, its point resting on the linen block, which he steadied by holding one corner between finger and thumb. For a moment the hand remained quiet; then it began to write. I say "it" advisedly; no least trace of consciousness or purposed control could be detected in Susan's impassive face or heavily relaxed body. _Susan_ was not writing; her waking will had no part in this strange automatism; so much, at least, was plain to me and even to Conlon.

"Mother of God," came his throaty whisper again, "it's not _her_ that's doin' it. Who's pushin' that hand?"

"It's not _sperits_, Conlon," said Doctor Askew ironically; "you can take my say-so for that." With the words he withdrew the scribbled top sheet from the pad, glanced at it, and handed it to me. The hand journeyed on, covering a second sheet as I read. "That doesn't help us much, does it?" was Doctor Askew's comment, when I had devoured the first sheet.

"No," I replied; "not directly. But I'll keep this if you don't mind."

I folded the sheet and slipped it into my pocket. Doctor Askew removed the second sheet.

"Same sort of stuff," he grunted, passing it over to me. "It needs direction." And he began addressing--not _Susan_, to Conlon's amazement--the _hand_! "What happened in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night?" he demanded firmly of the hand. "Tell us exactly what happened in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night! It's important. What happened in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night?"

Always addressing the hand, his full attention fixed upon it as it moved, he repeated this burden over and over. "We must know exactly what happened in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night! Tell us what happened in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night.... What happened in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night?"

Conlon and I both noted that Susan's breathing, hitherto barely to be detected, gradually grew more labored while Doctor Askew insisted upon and pressed home his monotonous refrain. He had so placed himself now that he could follow the slowly pencilled words. More and more deliberately the hand moved; then it paused....

"What happened in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night?" chanted Doctor Askew.

"This ain't right," muttered Conlon. "It's worse'n the third degree. I don't like it."

He creaked uneasily away. The hand moved again, hesitatingly, briefly.

"Ah," chanted Doctor Askew--always to the hand--"it was an accident, was it? How did it happen? Tell us exactly how it happened--exactly how it happened. _We must know_.... How did the accident happen in Mrs. Hunt's room to-night?"

Again the hand moved, more steadily this time, and seemingly in response to his questions.

Doctor Askew glanced up at me with an encouraging smile. "We'll get it now--all of it. Don't worry. The hand's responding to control."

Though sufficiently astonished and disturbed by this performance, I was not, like Conlon, wholly at sea. Sober accounts of automatic writing could be found in all modern psychologies; I had read some of these accounts--given with all the dry detachment of clinical data. They had interested me, not thrilled me. No supernatural power was involved. It was merely the comparative rarity of such phenomena in the ordinary normal course of experience that made them seem awe-inspiring. And yet, the _hand_ there, solely animate, patiently writing in entire independence of a consciously directing will----! My spine, too, like Conlon's, registered an authentic shiver of protest and atavistic fear. But, throughout, I kept my tautened wits about me, busily working; and they drove me now on a sudden inspiration to the writing-table, where I seized pen and paper and wrote down with the most collected celerity a condensed account of--for so I phrased it--"what must, from the established facts, be supposed to have taken place in Mrs. Hunt's boudoir, just after Miss Blake had entered it." I put this account deliberately as my theory of the matter, as the one solution of the problem consistent with the given facts and the known characters involved; and I had barely concluded when I was startled to my feet by Doctor Askew's voice--raised cheerily above its monotonous murmur of questions to the hand--calling my name.

"What are you up to, Mr. Hunt? My little experiment's over. It's a complete success."

He was walking toward me with a handful of loose scribbled sheets from the linen block.

"How is she now?" I inquired anxiously, as if she had just been subjected to a dangerous operation.

"All right. Deep under. I shan't try to pull her out yet. Much better for her to come out of it naturally herself. I suggest we darken the room and leave her."

"That suits _me_!" I just caught from Conlon, over by the door.

"She'll be quite safe alone?"