The Rest Hollow Mystery Part 21

"This development in the case rather startled me, and as we walked along the upper hall and over into the right wing, which he said had been recently cleaned but was not to be used, I demanded more specific details concerning the arrangement. I wanted particularly to know why there was to be a change of 'secretaries' and whether the young man himself was willing to accept the companions.h.i.+p of people whom he had never seen.

"My husband had been drinking. I think he must have found a well-stocked wine-closet at Rest Hollow. And he finally grew furious at my insistence. The more angry he became the more he betrayed to me the fact that there was something to conceal. He had never told me the name of the man who had offered him this position, but I knew that there must be an intermediary. While I continued to question him he opened the door of one of the rooms in the right wing, hoping, I suppose, to distract my attention. We went on with our discussion there. And at last I refused pointblank to have anything to do with the affair, and told him that I was going to leave him and go back to the profession that would afford me an honest living. This infuriated him. He lost all self-control and confessed then, what I had already begun to suspect, that young Kenwick was a mental patient and had been in no way consulted in the arrangement. This disclosure terrified me, for I knew that my husband was not a competent person for such a responsibility. Hot words followed between us, and ended in his knocking me senseless on the floor. When I recovered consciousness, perhaps an hour later, I found myself locked into the room with no possible means of escape. The blow had dislodged a vertebra and I was in horrible pain. For a long time I lay on the bed ma.s.saging the injured place and trying to get comfortable.

"Early in the evening I heard some one being dragged into the house from the rear. I was unable to see anything, of course, but I could distinctly hear footsteps and the subsequent running around of an attendant. I concluded that my husband had returned drunk, and I was relieved to know that he had evidently not brought the patient with him.

I knew that I had no recourse but to wait until the stupor had worn off and my husband came to release me. I spent a wakeful and wretched night.

In the morning----"

Here a vivid and convincing description of her first encounter with the patient ensued. She drew a clear-cut picture of her own horror in hearing footsteps outside her door and of having the name "Roger Kenwick" called in through the closed portal; of her terror at finding herself unaccountably alone with a man whom she believed to be a violent maniac.

Here Dayton held up the narrative. "What evidence did he give to convince you of his insanity?'

"None at first. He seemed to talk quite rationally, and fearing that I might make him angry if I kept silence, I made evasive answers to his questions. He prepared food and sent it up to me at what I know now must have been immense physical cost to himself. I had come to the conclusion that he, like myself, was the victim of some foul conspiracy and had decided to risk confiding in him when all at once his manner changed. He began to talk wildly of finding a loaded revolver and of shooting any one who came near the place. A few minutes later, for no apparent reason, I heard him smash a window in the room just under mine. My terror increased a hundredfold, for I know absolutely nothing about the proper care of the insane. Late that same night I heard him crawl out through the broken window, and he called up to me that he was either going to get help or commit suicide.

"Almost insane myself now with terror, I waited until I heard his footsteps grow faint in the distance, then worked at the lock of my door, and at last succeeded in picking it with a pen-knife. Then I rushed downstairs, turned on the lights, and tried to make my escape. I had several of my own personal keys in my possession, and with one of these I opened the front door, which had been securely locked, I suppose by the gardener. My one frantic object was to get away and find my husband.

"But just as I got the door open I heard a shot fired from the side of the house. I hurried around there, and when I reached the spot from which the sound had come, I found just what I feared--a man lying dead under the window. I thought, of course, that it was the patient who had killed himself in a mania, as he had threatened to do. Filled with horror at the idea of leaving him there alone and uncovered in the storm, I ran back to the living-room, picked up the first thing at hand (an Indian blanket), and threw it over him. Then I hurried to the nearest house, about a mile away, and gave the alarm.

"Believing that it was my husband's neglect that had caused the tragedy, my purpose was to find him and get his version of the story before I betrayed him. So I furnished no further information to the authorities in town save that Roger Kenwick, the inmate of Rest Hollow, had committed suicide. I really knew nothing else about it but that bare fact.

"But that night I discovered, when I reached Mont-Mer, that my husband had been killed in an auto accident while coming out from the depot. I went to the morgue and identified his body, ordered the remains to be s.h.i.+pped north for interment, and left, unknown to any one, on the late northbound train. The undertaker told me that there had been no other victim of the tragedy, so I reasoned that the story which Mr. Kenwick had told me about a sprained leg was true, after all, that he had been injured in the catastrophe and had, by a curious freak of chance, found his way back alone to the very place that was awaiting him and in which he had been living for the preceding ten months."

Dayton declared himself satisfied with the testimony and turned the witness over to the prosecution. The district attorney had recovered his interest. "Mrs. Marstan," he said, groping for his gla.s.ses, "can you produce a certificate of marriage to Dr. Marstan?"

"I cannot. Important papers, including that, were among the few things that I took to Rest Hollow in November, and you have been informed that the place is completely destroyed."

"That will do."

She stepped down from the stand, and for the first time her eyes rested upon the prisoner. In them was an expression that would have given him new courage had he seen it, but Roger Kenwick sat motionless as a statue, his gaze fixed immutably upon the floor. It was only when the name of the next witness was called that he came back to a sense of his surroundings. "Call Granville Jarvis."

Dayton surveyed the Southerner sharply before he put his first question.

"You are the detective whom Richard Glover employed in San Francisco to shadow the prisoner?"

"I am."

"How long were you in Mr. Glover's employ?"

"About two weeks."

"Two _weeks_? Why did you give up the case then?"

"Because at the end of that time I was convinced that Roger Kenwick was neither mentally unbalanced nor guilty of any crime. I communicated this opinion to Mr. Glover and resigned from further service."

"But you still continued to shadow the prisoner?"

"I still continued to cultivate his acquaintance. I considered him one of the most interesting men I had ever met."

"And your connections with him since then have been of a purely friendly character? Not in any way professional, Mr. Jarvis?"

"No, I can't say that. For a few weeks after I had resigned from Mr.

Glover's service I was asked to take up the case again from a different angle; employed, I may say, by some one else."

"By whom?"

For just an instant the witness hesitated. Then, "By Mr. Clinton Morgan."

"Describe that incident, please."

Jarvis clasped his hands behind his head and stared off into s.p.a.ce. "It was near the end of December that Professor Morgan came to my rooms one evening and asked my a.s.sistance on the case of Richard Glover."

For the first time since the beginning of the trial, the chief witness for the prosecution betrayed an unguarded emotion. The narrow slit of amber, showing between his drooping lids, widened.

"My caller," Jarvis went on, "explained to me that he and his sister, who were friends of Roger Kenwick, had stumbled upon a clue the previous day that had made them suspect that there was foul play about his death; that perhaps he might even be alive after all, and a base advantage taken of his helplessness."

Here Dayton interjected a question. "Was there any special reason why Professor Morgan should have chanced upon you as the detective for this investigation? Had you had any previous connection with him?"

"Only an academic connection. He knew, through university affiliations, that I was out here on the coast doing some research work for Columbia in my chosen profession--criminal psychology."

"Then you are not a detective?"

"Not in the strict sense of the word. The finding out of a criminal is only the introductory part of my interest."

"Proceed with your story, Mr. Jarvis."

"Well, Professor Morgan and I had lunched together several times over at the Faculty Club on the campus, so I was not greatly surprised to receive a call from him. Furthermore, having heard the other side of this case, I was much interested in the opportunity to study it from a new angle. For while I was in Mr. Glover's employ, I had, unsuspected by Kenwick himself, subjected him to a variety of exacting psychological tests. Under the pretext of making some photographic experiments in which I was at that time interested, I had enlisted his aid on several occasions and in this way had made a rather thorough examination of his five senses, his power of a.s.sociation, his memory (both for retentiveness and recall), and had tried him out, by means of various athletic games, for muscular coordination, endurance, poise, and many other essentials of normality. In only one of these did I find him defective. And that one was memory.

"My research was made the more interesting by the fact that shortly after I undertook the work for Mr. Glover the subject gave me, voluntarily and quite unsuspectingly, the complete story of his strange adventure at Rest Hollow, an adventure for which he frankly confessed that he could not account. It coincided exactly with the hypothesis which I had established for him; that he had at one period of his life been mentally unbalanced, and that he had in some way re-gained his sanity but not completely his memory. When I knew that there was likely to be a crime attributed to him (for Mr. Glover had hinted as much) my interest doubled. For Mr. Kenwick had on various occasions shown himself possessed of the highest ideals and a fineness of caliber which I have not often encountered. And so, in the employ of Professor Morgan, I s.h.i.+fted the focal point and turned the search-light of science upon the accuser. It has resulted in the most startling revelations."

There was an inarticulate stir in the crowded room. From the rear seats men and women strained forward to catch every word as it fell, clear-cut and decisive, from the scientist's lips. Jarvis sat with one hand thrust into his pocket, and his keen eyes fixed upon the group of lawyers below. A casual observer of the scene might easily have mistaken his position and a.s.signed to him the role of prosecuting attorney.

"There was an insurmountable barrier, of course," he continued, "to my making any personal examination of Mr. Glover, as I had done with the former subject. One man was innocent and unsuspecting; the other, I felt certain, would be on his guard. And he was. Since I left his service, Richard Glover has avoided me. So a more indirect means of accomplis.h.i.+ng my task had to be devised. After some consideration I decided to enlist the aid of an ally whom I knew to be both clever and discreet."

A long-drawn sigh swept the court-room. It was that sigh, a mixture of eagerness and satisfaction by means of which an audience at a theater indicates to the actors that the performance is living up to its advertis.e.m.e.nts.

"Mr. Kenwick himself," the witness went on in his calm, even voice, "had called my attention to a certain Madame Rosalie, a spiritualistic medium, who was taking the city by storm. He had interviewed her for his paper, and from his description I imagined that she might be able and willing to a.s.sist me. So I went to see her, and at the first mention of Mr. Kenwick's name she became intensely interested."

Here Dayton's voice, sounding a curious little note of exultation, broke in again. "You have referred to this medium as 'Madame Rosalie.' Was that her professional or her real name?"

"Her professional name. Her real name, as she disclosed it to me on the occasion of my first call, was Madeleine Marstan."

Another moment of silence and then the witness proceeded. "Having told me her real name, she went on to describe her unexpected encounter, a few days previously, with Roger Kenwick, who she had thought was dead.

It seemed that when Kenwick had come to her for a sitting, his name had been accidentally revealed to her by another client, and it had struck her with the force of a blow. For it recalled to her mind a horrible adventure at Mont-Mer, which she narrated for me then in detail. At first she had surmised that this must be some relative of the unfortunate young man, and she had done all she could, she said, to start him upon the track of the tragedy. When she discovered that it was the man himself, she was glad to place all her powers at my disposal.

For she had returned to the city in November with two dominating purposes; first to find some employment which would bring in quick money and so pay her husband's debts and clear his name, and second to discover, if possible, the ident.i.ty of the man who had led them both into the miserable Mont-Mer trap, which resulted so disastrously for every one concerned in it. She had not been able to make a stage contract, she said, for the season was too far advanced, and so she had turned to the occult, in which she had always felt a deep interest, and for which she knew herself to have an unaccountable talent. Fortunately her strange psychic ability had caught the attention of one of the university faculty and she had been given just the publicity which she needed.

"And so we deliberately plotted between us the scientific testing of Richard Glover. I prepared a list of apparently random words in which were mingled what I call 'dangerous terms'; that is, words which were connected with the adventure at Rest Hollow. When these and the other tests were ready, I induced Glover, by means of a casual suggestion from a mutual acquaintance, to seek the aid of 'Madame Rosalie.' I felt certain that if he were not intimately connected with the tragedy he would scorn this idea, and that if he were, it was exactly the time that he would turn to the supernatural for aid. And I was not mistaken. For almost immediately he called upon the clairvoyant. And his response to the tests for a.s.sociation was amazing even to me. If I may quote from the list of words----" He drew a folded paper from his pocket. "Among many perfectly irrelevant terms I had smuggled in such words as 'blanket' and 'window' and 'oleander.' Madame Rosalie reported that his gaze always returned to such suggestive words (despite her admonition to look at something else) before she could change the card. The subconscious response to evil a.s.sociation was almost perfect. There were many other tests, of course, and by the time he had completed them he had shown an intimate knowledge of the crime at Rest Hollow and an uneasiness from which any skilful psychologist could take his starting-point. And then, as a culminating incident, he supplied to the medium, quite of his own accord, the name 'Rest Hollow,' and put to her the unexpected question, 'Where is Ralph Regan?'

"Having been thus convinced that he was the man we sought, Mrs. Marstan and I continued our investigations together. She went out with him, upon several occasions, and once, by pre-arrangement, accompanied him to the theater. On the same evening I invited Kenwick, and, all at once, called his attention to Glover. The response was like match to powder. The visual image of his former warden restored, in large degree, his memory.

He was eager to reestablish the connection. Mrs. Marstan had been careful to point out Kenwick to her escort, and the result was just what we had foreseen. It was he who evaded the encounter, supplying a pretext upon which he and Mrs. Marstan immediately left the theater.

"But Glover now suspected that he was entrapped. He had already, I knew, put another detective upon Kenwick's track. When news was published of Mrs. Fanwell's arrival in Mont-Mer, and the subsequent demand to have the disappearance of her brother investigated, he decided that his only course was to act at once. Mrs. Marstan, aided by her unmistakable psychic ability, had advised him to follow his third plan, and this plan was to have Kenwick convicted of murder."