Sundry Accounts Part 11

"You are connected with this Doctor Shorter's place, I a.s.sume?"

"Yep."

"In what capacity?"

"Oh, sort of an outside man--look after the grounds and help out generally with the patients and all. And now, say, lady, if that'll satisfy you I guess I better be stepping along. I got to see about getting this here patient and the matron off the train; that's the matron that's setting with her."

"Just a moment more, please."

She felt in a fob set under the cuff of her left sleeve and brought forth a small gold badge and held it cupped in her gloved hand for him to see. As he bent his head and made out the meaning of the badge the gruff air dropped from him magically.

"Oh, I see!" he said. "Secret Service, eh? All right, ma'am, what more did you want to know? Only I'd ask you speak brisk because there ain't so much time."

"Tell me briefly what you know of that child."

"Not such a lot, excepting she's a dangerous lunatic, having been legally adjudged so yestiddy. And her mother's paying for her keep at a high-cla.s.s place where she can have special treatment and special care instead of letting her be put away in one of the state asylums. And so I'm taking her there--me and the matron yonder. That's about all, I guess."

"I don't believe it."

"You don't believe what?"

He was beginning to bristle anew.

"Don't believe she is insane at all, much less dangerously so. Why, I've just been talking with her. We exchanged only a few words, but in all that she said she was so perfectly rational, so perfectly sensible.

Besides, one has only to look at her to feel sure some terrible mistake or some terrible injustice is being done. Surely there is nothing eccentric, nothing erratic about her; now is there? You must have been studying her. Don't you yourself feel that there might have been something wrong about her commitment?"

He shook his head.

"Not a chancet. Everything's been positively regular and aboveboard. You can't railroad folks into Doctor Shorter's place; he's got too high a standing. Shorter takes no chances with anybody."

"But she seemed so absolutely normal in speech, manner--everything. I've seen insane persons before now and--"

"Excuse me, but about how many have you seen?"

"Not many, I admit, but--"

"Well, excuse me again, lady, but I thought as much. Well, I have--plenty of 'em I've seen in my time. See 'em every day for the matter of that. Listen to me! For instance, now, we've got a case up there with us now. He's been there going on fifteen years; used to be a preacher, highly educated and all that. Look at him and you wouldn't see a thing out of the way with him except that he'd be wearing a strait-jacket. Talk to him for maybe a week and you wouldn't notice a single thing wrong about him. He'd just strike you all along as being one of the nicest, mildest, old Christian gents you ever met up with in your whole life. But get him on a certain subject; just mention a certain word to him and he'd tear your throat out with his bare hands if he could get at you."

"But this poor girl, surely her case is different? Was it really necessary to bind her hands as you've done?"

"Lady, about these here violent ones you can't never tell. Me, I never saw her in my life before I went down after her this morning, and up to now she hasn't made me a mite of trouble. But I had my warning from them that turned her over to me. Anyhow, all I needed was the story of her own mother, as fine a lady as you'd care to see and just about broken-hearted over all this. You'd think from the way she carried on she was the one that was being put away and not the daughter. And yet, what did the mother swear to on her sacred oath? She swore to the daughter's having tried, not once but half a dozen separate times to kill her, till she was afraid for her own life--positively!

"Besides, lady, it's been my experience, and I've had a heap of it, that it's the quiet-acting ones that are apt to strike the quickest and do the most damage when the fit comes on 'em. So taking everything into consideration, I felt like as if I oughter be purty careful handling her on this trip. But she's all right. Probably n.o.body on this train, outside of you, knows there's anything wrong with her and it was accidental-like, so you tell me, the way you come to find out--you taking that seat alongside her and getting into talk with her whilst I was in yonder smoking. It's better she should be under control thataway than that she should maybe get a spell on her right here in this car or somewheres and me be forced to hold her down by main strength and possibly have to handle her pretty rough. I put it to you now, ain't it?

The way she's fixed she can't harm herself nor no one else. You take it from me, lady, that while I've been in this business for so long I don't always get my private feelings harrowed up over the case of a nice-looking young girl like this one is, like an outsider might, still at that I ain't hard-hearted and I ain't aiming to be severe just because I can. But what else is there for me to do except what I'm doing? I ask you. Say, it's funny she talked to you. She ain't said hardly a word to us since she started. Didn't even say nothing when I put the hobbles on her."

"I'm not questioning your judgment," said Miss Smith, "but she is so pitiable! She seemed to me like some dumb, frightened, wild creature caught in a trap. And despite what you say I'm sure she can't be mad.

Please, may I speak with her again--if she herself doesn't mind?"

"I'm afeared it's too late," he said not unkindly. "We're slowing down for Peekskill now. I'll have to step lively as it is to get 'em off s.h.i.+pshape. But if you've still got any doubts left in your mind you can look up the court records at White Plains. You'll find everything's been done positively legal and regular. And if you should want to reach me any time to find out how she's getting along or anything like that, why my name is Abram Foley, care of Doctor Shorter."

He cast this farewell information back over his shoulder as he hurried from her.

Half convinced yet doubting still, and filled wholly with an overmastering pity, Miss Smith stood where she was while the train jerkily came to a standstill. There she stayed, watching, as the trio quitted the car. Past her where she stood the man Foley led the way, burdened with the heavy suitcase. Next came his charge, walking steadily erect, mercifully cloaked to her knees in the blue garment; and the matron, in turn behind her, bearing a hand bag and an odd parcel or two.

About the departing group a casual onlooker would have sensed nothing unusual. But our Miss Smith, knowing what she did know, held a clenched hand to the lump that had formed in her throat. She was minded to speak in farewell to the prisoner, and yet a second impulse held her mute.

She fell in behind the three of them though, following as far as the platform, being minded to witness the last visible act of the tragedy upon which she had stumbled. Her eyes and her heart went with them as they crossed through the open shed of the station, the man still leading, the matron with one hand guiding their unresisting ward toward where a closed automobile, a sort of hybrid between a town car and an ambulance, was drawn up on the driveway just beyond the eaves of the building. A driver in a gray livery opened the door of the car for its occupants.

Alongside the automobile the girl swung herself round, her head thrown back, as a felon might face about at the gateway of his prison--for a last view of the free world he was leaving behind. Seemingly the vigilant woman misinterpreted this movement as the first indication of a spirit of kindling obstinacy. Alarmed, she caught at the girl to restrain her. Her grasp closed upon the shoulder of the cape and as the wrenched garment came away in her hand the prisoner stood revealed in her bonds--a slim graceful figure, for all the disfigurement of the clumsy harness work which fettered her.

An instant later the cape had been replaced upon her shoulders, hiding her state from curious eyes, but in that same brief s.p.a.ce of time she must have seen leaning from the train, which now again was in motion, the shape of her unknown champion, for she nodded her head as though in grat.i.tude and good-by and her white face suddenly was lighted with what the pa.s.senger upon the car platform, seeing this through a sudden mist of tears, thought to be the bravest, most pitiable smile that ever she had seen.

The train doubled round an abrupt curve, in the sharpness of its swing almost throwing her off her feet, and when she had regained her balance and looked again the station was furlongs behind her, hidden from sight by intervening buildings.

It was that smile of farewell which acted as a flux to carry into the recipient's mind a resolution already forming. Into things her emotions were likely to lead her headlong and impetuously, but for a way out of them this somewhat unusual young woman named Smith generally had for her guide a certain clear quality of reasoning, backed by an intuition which helped her frequently to achieve satisfactory results. So it was with her in this instance.

Her share of the business in Troy completed, as speedily it was, she stayed in Albany for half a day on her way back and called upon the governor. At first sight he liked her, for her good looks, for her trigness, her directness and more than any of these for the excellent mental poise which so patently was a part of her. The outcome of her visit to him and his enthusiastic admiration for her was that the district attorney of Westchester County shortly thereafter inst.i.tuted an investigation, the chief fruitage of that investigation being embodied in a somewhat longish letter from him, which Miss Smith read in her studio apartment one afternoon perhaps three weeks after the date of her meeting on trainboard with that adjudged maniac, the girl Margaret Vinsolving.

To the letter was a polite preamble. She skipped it. We may do well to follow her lead and come to the body of it, which ran like this:

"Mrs. Janet Vinsolving is the widow of a colonel in our Regular Army. My information is that she is a woman of culture and refinement. Since the death of her husband some eight years ago she has been residing in a small home which she owns in the outskirts of Pleasantdale village in this county. From the fact that she keeps no servants and from other facts brought to me I gather that she is in very modest circ.u.mstances.

She has been living quite alone except for the daughter, Margaret, who is her only child. The daughter was educated in the public schools of the county. Lately she has been studying applied designing with a view to becoming an interior decorator."

"Ah, now I know another reason why I was drawn to her!" interpolated the reader, speaking to herself. With heightened interest she read on:

"On inquiry it appears that among her former schoolmates and teachers she was popular, though not inclined to make intimates. She is reputed to have been rather high-tempered, but seemingly throughout her childhood and young girlhood there was nothing about her conduct or appearance to indicate a disordered mind. Indeed there was no suggestion of mental aberration on her part from any source until within the past month. However, I should add that it is rather hard to arrive at any accurate estimate of her general behavior by reason of the fact that mother and daughter led so secluded a life. They had acquaintances in the community, but apparently no close friends there or elsewhere.

"About four weeks ago, on the twenty-eighth of last month to be exact, the mother, described to me as being in a state of great distress, visited Justice Cannavan, then sitting in chambers at White Plains, and asking for a private interview with him, requested an inquiry into the sanity of the girl Margaret, with a view, as she explained, of protecting her own life. Her daughter, she alleged, had without warning developed a homicidal tendency aimed at the applicant.

"According to Mrs. Vinsolving, the girl, who always theretofore had been a devoted and affectionate child, had made at least five separate and distinct attempts to kill her, first by putting poison into her food and later by attempting to strangle her at night in her bed. Next only to a natural desire to have her own physical safety insured, the mother was apparently inspired by a wish to surround the truth regarding her beloved child's aberration with as much secrecy as possible. At the same time she realized that a certain amount of publicity was inevitable.

"Acting under the statutes, the justice appointed two reputable practicing physicians of the county, namely Dr. Ernest Malt, of Wincorah, and Dr. James P. McGlore, of Pleasantdale, to sit as a commission for the purpose of inquiring into Miss Vinsolving's mental state. The mother, still exhibiting every evidence of maternal grief, appeared before these gentlemen and repeated in detail the account of the attacks made upon her, as previously described to His Honor.

"The girl was then brought before the commission. It was explained to her that under the law she had the right to demand a hearing in open court before a jury chosen to pa.s.s upon her sanity. This she waived, but from this point on throughout the inquiry she steadfastly declined to make answers to the questions propounded to her by the members of the commission in an effort to ascertain her mental status, but on the contrary persistently maintained a silence which they interpreted as a phase of insane cunning characteristic of a type of abnormality not often encountered, but in their opinion the more sinister and significant because of its rarity.

"They accordingly drew up a finding setting forth that in their opinion and deliberate judgment the unfortunate young woman was suffering from a progressive and therefore probably incurable form of dementia. The justice immediately signed the necessary orders for her detention and commitment. To save the daughter from being sent to a state inst.i.tution the mother provided funds sufficient for her care at Doctor Shorter's sanitarium, an establishment of unimpeachable reputation, and she accordingly was taken there in proper custody, as you yourself are aware.

"My information from the sanitarium, which I procured in response to your request, and the governor's instructions to me for a full inquiry into all the circ.u.mstances is that since her confinement Miss Vinsolving has been under constant observation. She has been orderly and obedient and except for slightly melancholic tendencies, which might easily be provoked by the nature of her environment, is quite natural in her behavior. I draw the inference, however, that this docility may be merely the forerunner of an outburst at any time.

"Altogether my investigation convinces me that no miscarriage of the law could possibly have occurred in this instance. There is certainly no ground for suspecting that the mother had any ulterior or improper motive in seeking to have her daughter and sole companion deprived of liberty. Neither the mother nor any other person alive can hope to profit in a financial sense by reason of the girl's temporary or permanent detention.

"The girl herself is without means of her own. The mother for her maintenance is largely dependent upon the pension she receives from the United States Government. The girl had no income or estate of her own and no expectancy of any inheritance from any imaginable source other than the small estate she will legally inherit at the death of her mother. Finally I may add that nowhere in the case has there developed any suggestion of a scandal in the life of mother or daughter or of any clandestine love affair on the part of either.

"These briefly are the available facts as compiled by a trustworthy member of my staff, a.s.sistant District Attorney Horace Wilkes, to whom I detailed the duty of making a painstaking inquiry. If I may hereafter be of service to you in this matter or any other matter, kindly command me. I have the honor to be,

"Yours etc., etc."