Glover, who had been recalled to the stand and was giving this testimony, stated that upon dismissing the detective from his employ he had followed the case himself and was certain that Kenwick and his accomplice had lived together intermittently in San Francisco, and that he had been supplying her with funds.
It was at this point that Roger Kenwick, who had been sitting like a man frozen to his chair, suddenly electrified the court-room by springing to his feet. He had forgotten his surroundings, was contemptuous of the formalities, oblivious to everything save the insolent assurance in Richard Glover's eyes, and the steady gaze with which Marcreta Morgan's brother was regarding him. His sensitive nostrils quivered like those of a highly strung race-horse. His hands, those hands so impatient of delay, were clenched till the knuckles showed through the drawn skin like knobs of ivory. He struggled to speak but no words came. Then he became aware of the fact that the sheriff was forcing him back into his seat. Dayton leaned over and whispered sharply to him. "Sit down, man. You'll kill your case. What do you want them to think of you?"
The words recalled him to his surroundings. From sheer physical weakness he sank back into his chair. Another moment intervened while the auditors relaxed from the moment of tension. Then out of the deathly silence came Dayton's voice again, calm and with no trace of excitement.
"You say that when you first discovered the prisoner in San Francisco you employed a detective to help you on his case, Mr. Glover. Look around the court-room. Is that man present?"
"He is." There was a shade of reluctance in the reply.
"What is his name?"
"Granville Jarvis."
The next moment Glover had stepped down from the stand and resumed his place at the far end of the long table. Dayton leaned across to his client. "Jarvis?" he inquired, his pencil poised above his pad. "Granville Jarvis; is that the name?"
The light had gone out of Kenwick's eyes and the fire out of his voice. He had crumpled down in his chair like a man suddenly overcome with a spinal disease. He looked at Dayton with dead eyes.
"The name," he said bitterly, "is Judas Iscariot!"
It was two o'clock before court, which had been dismissed for lunch after Richard Glover's testimony, convened again. During the noon hour a tray containing the only tempting food which the prisoner had seen since his incarceration was brought up to his cell. It had become apparent to the jailer that he had friends, and perhaps he was moved thereby to a tardy compassion. But Kenwick, despite Dayton's admonition to "Brace up and eat a good meal," waved it indifferently aside.
"I'm done for," he said simply. "I don't see how any twelve men could hear the evidence that was presented this morning and find me innocent. And by the time Jarvis gets through telling anything he likes, and proving it——Well, it appears that every person who has been connected in any way with me since this trouble fell upon me has taken advantage of my misfortune to enrich himself. I don't care much now what they do with me. When you lose your faith in humanity it's time to die. I'm no religious fanatic, Dayton, but for these last two months I've thanked God on my knees every night of my life for having brought me back into the light. Now I wish that I had died instead."
Dayton made no further effort to rouse him from his despair. For although not of a sensitive or particularly intuitive temperament himself, he had come to realize the utter impossibility of finding this other man in his trouble. "You don't seem to have much faith in me," was all he said as he made some notes on the back of an envelope. But he finally induced his client to eat some of the food upon his tray and after the first few mouthfuls Kenwick was surprised to find that he was ravenously hungry.
"That's something like," the lawyer approved, as they made their way back through the court-house grounds. "Now you're good for another three hours."
It hadn't seemed possible to Kenwick that he was, that his nerves could stand the strain of hours and hours more of this, and there was no assurance that the ordeal would end to-day or to-morrow. But Dayton's easy assurance gave him a new grip upon himself.
They found the audience waiting and eager. None of them seemed to have moved since they had been dismissed for recess two hours before. Only the jury were absent, but five minutes after Kenwick's arrival they filed in and took their places. The district attorney appeared to have lost interest in the case. He sat staring out of the window with a sort of wistful impatience as though he were visualizing a potential game of golf. Dayton glanced at some notes on the table at his elbow and issued his first command. "Call Madeleine Marstan."
In response to this summons one of the veiled women in the rear of the room rose and came forward. She was quietly dressed in a gown of clinging black silk and a black turban with a touch of amethyst. Every eye in the court-room was fixed upon her, but she took the oath with the unembarrassed self-possession of one long accustomed to the public gaze. Kenwick, turned toward her, detected a faint odor of heliotrope.
"Where do you live, Mrs. Marstan?" Dayton inquired.
She gave a street and number in San Francisco.
"What is your occupation?"
"I am an actress."
"Do you know the prisoner?"
Without glancing at him she replied, with her unruffled composure, "I do."
"How long have you known him?"
"About two months."
"Describe the occasion on which he was first brought to your notice."
She settled back slightly in her chair, like a traveler making herself comfortable for what promised to be a long journey. "It was on the afternoon of November 19 that my husband, a physician, came into our apartment in San Francisco and announced to me that he had just secured a remunerative position with a wealthy man down at Mont-Mer. He said that the work would begin immediately and we must be ready to leave the following day. I asked him for more details and he told me that the position was a secretaryship which would involve little labor and afford us a luxurious home with excellent salary. He had never been a success in his profession, owing chiefly to the fact that he was dissipated, and I had seriously considered leaving him and going back to the stage. But I had decided to give him another chance, and since he appeared to find my questions concerning this new work annoying, I agreed to go and allow him to explain more fully when we should arrive.
"We went down in our own car and arrived at Rest Hollow in mid-afternoon. My husband showed me over the house and grounds and I thought I had never seen such a beautiful place. There was no one about when we came, and after he had given me every opportunity to be favorably impressed with the new home, we went to an upstairs sitting-room in the left wing, and he told me, while he smoked one of the expensive-looking cigars that he found there, further details concerning his employer. I learned that he was an invalid, a young man by the name of Roger Kenwick, who was recuperating from too strenuous service overseas. We discussed the matter for only a few minutes before my husband announced that it was time for him to go to the depot and meet his charge, who was being brought up from Los Angeles by the previous companion, who had taken him there to be outfitted with winter clothes.
"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 companionship 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 massaging 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 shipped 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 glasses, "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."
"Twoweeks? 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 space. "It was near the end of December that Professor Morgan came to my rooms one evening and asked my assistance 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 association, his memory (both for retentiveness and recall), and had tried him out, by means of various athletic games, for muscular coördination, 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 shifted 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 assigned 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 accomplishing 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 advertisements.
"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 assist 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 identity 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 association 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 association 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 reëstablish 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."
"And this was the report that you turned over to Professor Morgan at the end of your investigation?" Dayton inquired.
"This was the report. I was working on it with him up in San Francisco until late last night. We almost missed the train trying to fit together the final details. But I think the story, as I have given it to you, is now complete."
"Now, one other thing, Mr. Jarvis. In the first part of your testimony you said that Mr. Morgan told you that he had stumbled upon a clue that had made him suspicious of Glover. Did he disclose to you the nature of that clue?"
"Not at first. I told him that I preferred to work upon some theories of my own, unprejudiced by any evidence that he might have to offer."
"And how many times have you seen Mr. Morgan since then?"
"Only once. We came down from San Francisco together last night."
"Then you made no reports to him before?"
For the first time, the witness hesitated. Then his reply came with the customary clearness. "Not to him. I have reported to Miss Morgan on several occasions."
"Then you have been really working with her upon this case?"
"Yes, almost entirely with her."
There was a very obvious reluctance in his voice now, but Dayton went on imperturbably. "When you came down from San Francisco last night, Mr. Jarvis, was Professor Morgan's sister in your party?"
"Yes."
Dayton swept a glance over the rows of faces before him. "Is Miss Morgan in the court-room now?"
"She has just come in." The promptness with which the witness had given his earlier testimony served to make his present reluctance the more apparent.
Dayton brought his eyes back to the witness-stand. "That will do."
Jarvis stepped down. The voice of the auditors, beginning in a subdued murmur, rose in marked crescendo. No word in it could be distinguished from another. Yet upon Roger Kenwick's sensitive nerves this message from the outer world registered. It was unmistakably applause.
For the first time since the trial began, he felt his mask of graven indifference slipping from him. He was trembling in every fiber, and with one unsteady hand he made a pathetic effort to quiet the other. And then there fell upon his ears like the crash of thunder Dayton's curt command, "Call Miss Morgan."
As the men standing in the far aisle made way for the new witness, Kenwick sat with averted eyes. Through the open window he stared out at the court-house palms which grew to gigantic size and then diminished under his blistering gaze. It was a monstrous thing, he told himself, for Clinton Morgan to allow this; to permit his sister to subject herself to such a strain. What could he be thinking about? But underneath his miserable apprehension for her there was something else; something else that sent the fiery blood rioting through his veins. For she must have been willing. Over and over he repeated to himself this assurance. She must have been willing to come to his defense, for had she not been, they could have found a way to avoid it.
Marcreta Morgan, in long fur-trimmed motor-coat and dark veil, took the place which Granville Jarvis had vacated. She had none of Madeleine Marstan's calm self-assurance, but although she gave her testimony in a low voice, it was distinctly audible throughout the court-room. She sat with one gloved hand clasping the arm of the chair and her eyes resting upon Dayton. Only once, at the very end of the examination, did she raise them to meet the argus-eyed spectators. Dayton put his questions in an easy conversational tone as though he and the witness were alone in the room.
"Miss Morgan, how long have you known the prisoner?"
"About two years."
"Describe the occasion of your first meeting."
She did so in words that sounded carefully rehearsed.
"And after he left San Francisco to go East and visit his brother did you ever hear from him?"
"Yes. He wrote frequently, telling me about his brother's recovery from illness and other affairs, and then later that he had decided to enlist in the army."
"At that time, Miss Morgan, had you ever known the State's witness here, Richard Glover?"
"It was about that time that I first met him."
"Describe your first encounter with him."
Again the carefully prepared report. But she was gaining in self-possession now, and the veil seemed to annoy her. With steady fingers she reached up and removed it. Clinton Morgan, watching her from the front row of seats, with a hawklike vigilance, was suddenly reminded of that Sunday night in the old library when she had first broken her long silence concerning Roger Kenwick, and had seemed all at once to come into a belated heritage.
The jurymen were leaning slightly forward in their seats, their eyes fixed upon the regal, fur-coated figure with delicately flushed profile showing clear-cut as a cameo against the frosted window-pane. Dayton thought that he caught an elusive fragrance that reminded him of something growing in his mother's garden.
"And how many times," he proceeded, "how many times have you seen Richard Glover during the past year?"
"I can't say exactly. For several months after our first meeting I didn't see him at all. But during the last three months his calls have been more and more frequent."
"Has your brother known of these visits?"
"My brother was in government service in Washington until about two months ago. He didn't know of them until he returned."
"And has he approved of them?"
"No, I can't say that he has."
"Did he ever give any reason for his opposition?"
"He told me that he suspected Mr. Glover of being an adventurer who was in need of——"
Here the district attorney interrupted. "We object. The suspicions of another person are irrelevant, incompetent, and have nothing to do with the case."
"Sustained," the judge decreed. "Stick to the facts, Mr. Dayton."
"During those three months, Miss Morgan, has Richard Glover made an effort to induce you to marry him?"
Her reply was given in a very low voice, but Dayton was sure that the jury caught it and he did not ask her to repeat. It was evident that the audience heard it, too, for another murmur rose and trailed off into silence before the lawyer went on. "Is it true thatyouwere the one who discovered the clue which led you and your brother to seek the services of Mr. Jarvis on this case?"
She acknowledged it with a single word.
"And what was that clue?"
The gloved fingers closed a little closer over the arm of the chair. And then followed a story which caused Roger Kenwick to tear his gaze away from the fantastic palm-trees and fix it upon Richard Glover's face. There was no resentment in his eyes, but only the dawning of a great light. Granville Jarvis, watching him as a physician might watch beside the bedside of an unconscious patient, knew by the leaping flame in those somber eyes that the last lap of the long journey had been covered, and that Roger Kenwick's memory had come home to him. But if that knowledge brought him a scientist's satisfaction, he gave no sign of it. After that one intent moment, his eyes returned to the witness-stand and fixed themselves upon Marcreta Morgan's face. Dayton was proceeding relentlessly.
"If you knew from the first that Richard Glover had stolen this story which he read to you as his own, why didn't you relate the circumstance to Mr. Kenwick when you saw him on the night that he was arrested for murder?"
The reply came haltingly, as though the witness were feeling her way over uneven ground. "My brother and I had consulted Mr. Jarvis about that and he had advised against it. He didn't wish to arouse any suspicions in—in the prisoner's mind just then. And—well, you see, Mr. Kenwick and I had not seen each other since his—illness and during that first meeting we both avoided everything connected with—with the tragedy as much as possible. Of course if we had known that this charge of—of crime was to be preferred against him, I suppose we would have acted differently."
This was no carefully rehearsed response, but nothing that she could have said would have disclosed more clearly the inside workings of the opposition's conspiracy. The web that had been woven around the prisoner had enmeshed with him every one who had ever been intimately associated with his past.
And now that romance had entered upon the sordid scene the whole aspect of the case was changed. The air became charged all at once with an electric current of sympathy. To every man and woman in the room Richard Glover now appeared in the guise of a baffled adventurer, and Roger Kenwick as a man who had loved, and because of cruel circumstance had lost. But had he really lost? The crux of public interest shifted with the abruptness of a weathercock, from mystery to romance.
"You assert, Miss Morgan, that you knew this story, 'A Brother of Bluebeard,' to be the one which the prisoner had read to you before he left for the East almost two years ago. What proof could you furnish of this?"
"At the time that Mr. Glover read the story to me I had in my possession the sequel to it, which Mr. Kenwick had sent me in manuscript for my criticism, just before he left for training-camp. It used many of the same characters and was rooted in the same plot."
"Could you produce that manuscript?"
"Mr. Jarvis can produce it. I turned it over to him."
The former witness leaned forward and laid a heap of pencil-written manuscript upon the table. But Dayton scarcely glanced at it. With one hand he pushed it aside, and then shifted the current of his interest into another channel. "When, and by what means, Miss Morgan, did you discover that Roger Kenwick had returned from France mentally disabled?"
Her reply to this question came in a voice that was struggling against heavy odds for composure. "It was exactly one year ago to-day that I received that news. Several letters of mine to—the prisoner were returned to me unopened. And with them came a communication from Mr. Everett Kenwick telling me that—that it had become necessary for them to send his brother to a private asylum."
"Did you know where that asylum was?"
"Not then. He told me that he was debating over several different places but that he had almost decided upon a friend's home in southern California. He didn't tell me where this home was. I think he realized that—that I would rather not know."
"And when did you discover that that place was Mont-Mer?"
"On the night that Mr. Kenwick was reported dead."
A murmur that was distinctly a wave of sympathy filled the chamber. But eagerness to catch the next question quieted it.
"After that first letter telling you about the prisoner's misfortune, did you ever hear from Mr. Everett Kenwick again?"
"Only once. Just a week before he died, he wrote again. He had just lost his wife and he seemed to have a premonition that he was not going to live very long."
She was feeling for her handkerchief in the pocket of the fur-trimmed coat. Some of the men in the court-room averted their eyes. The face of more than one woman softened. Clinton Morgan sat regarding his sister with a curious composure. In his eyes was that mixture of compassion and awe that he had worn on the night when the gold and ivory book had betrayed to him her secret.
"Yes?" Dayton went on gently, but with the same relentless persistence. "He wrote to you again? And what did he say?"
"He said that he wanted me to have something that had belonged—to his brother. He told me that he felt that Roger Kenwick would have wished me to have it. And with the letter there came a box in which I found——"
She had finished her search in the pocket of the motor-coat, and now she held something between her gloved fingers. "Mr. Everett Kenwick himself had only received it a short time before. There had been some delay and confusion about it, owing I suppose to his brother having been sent home—in just the way that he was. He himself never knew that he had won it. But it was such a wonderful display of courage——And the French officer whose life he had saved sent a letter, too, saying that France was grateful and wanted to express her appreciation in some way so——"
And then she held it up before them; before the lawyers and the jury and the crowd of spectators—a bit of metal on its patch of ribbon. Holding it out before them, she sat there like a sovereign waiting to confer a peerage. And not the judge's gavel nor the commanding voice of the district attorney could still the tumult that rose and swelled into tumultuous applause.
On the day following the notorious Kenwick murder trial, the Mont-Mer papers carried little other news. A special representative from the "San Francisco Clarion" and several Los Angeles journalists fed their copy over the wires and had extras out in both cities by eight o'clock.
"Kenwick Acquitted" was the head-line which his own paper ran, with his picture and one of Richard Glover sharing prominence upon the front page. And because of Kenwick's previous connection with this daily and the fact that the two star witnesses for the defense were well known in the Bay region, the "Clarion's" story was the most comprehensive and colorful.
It opened with a report of Dayton's speech which, it appeared, had electrified every one in the court-room, including the prisoner himself. But it had been unnecessary for the attorney to make a plea for his client, after the quietly dramatic testimony of the last witness for the defense. In thrilling terms the "Clarion" described Kenwick's final service at the front, when he had made his way alone across No-Man's-Land and saved for France one of her most gallant officers, and had given in exchange that thing which is more precious than life itself. Only through an accident, which had killed the man who had meant to batten upon his misery, had he been released from a pitiable bondage.
Having thus sketched in his "human interest," the reporter proceeded to tell the story which had proved so overwhelmingly convincing to the jury and audience. How, in his skilfully planned narrative, Richard Glover had transposed the identities of the two dead men. How, upon receiving his commission from Everett Kenwick, he had first turned over his charge to Ralph Regan, admitted by his own sister to be an addict to drugs and a ne'er-do-well whom she was helping, in a surreptitious way, to support. How the accounts, forwarded from the Kenwick lawyer in New York, showed that Regan must have received out of the arrangement only his living and enough of the drug to keep him satisfied but not wholly irresponsible. How, upon his own infrequent visits to the patient (whom he himself had conducted across the continent instead of the mythical Bailey) Glover had foreseen two months before the tragedy that Regan could no longer be relied upon and had told him that he was about to be dismissed.
How he had then secured the services of one Edward Marstan, whom he believed to be without family, and who represented himself as a physician in good standing but heavily in debt. How the arrangement had been made that he assume charge of the patient at the Mont-Mer depot, whither Kenwick was to be brought up from a day's sojourn in Los Angeles by Regan. How the physician, accompanied by his wife, had arrived from San Francisco that very day; how Marstan had quarreled with his wife, and leaving her unconscious in a room at Rest Hollow, had gone into town to get his charge. How, on the way out from town he had been killed in an accident while driving his own car, and how, by a curious fate, Kenwick had been restored to sanity and had found his way back alone to his former asylum.
The story then went on to relate how Ralph Regan, evidently desperate over his loss of a home and drug supplies, had returned to Rest Hollow by stealth the following night, either to make a plea to the new caretaker or to search for drugs, and of how, finding the house dark and apparently deserted, he had forsaken all hope of reinstatement and had ended his life with the revolver which he had brought either for murder of Marstan or for suicide. The shot which he fired, the paper stated, had evidently been used to test his own nerve or the cartridges; and it had done its work. Letters written to his sister a few weeks before the tragedy, and produced by her in court, indicated a depression amounting to acute melancholia.
Recalled to the witness-stand and subjected to crucial cross-examination, the gardener at Rest Hollow had broken down in his testimony, admitted that he was afraid of Glover, and that although he had been in too dazed a condition on the fatal night to examine the body of the dead man, he knew Ralph Regan to have been the former attendant and had frequently talked to him about the patient's symptoms, about which Regan appeared to know little and care less.
The narrative then went on to tell how Richard Glover had discovered among the possessions of his charge certain manuscripts which he deemed suitable for publication, and how he had, after the death of the elder Kenwick, sold one of them under the name of Ralph Regan, choosing a real rather than a fictitious name in order that he might shift the theft to helpless shoulders if it were ever discovered. How he had, with the Kenwick capital entrusted to him, invested in large realty holdings which had completely absorbed his attention. How he had padded his accounts in order to wring extra money from Everett Kenwick under the guise of "special treatments" for the patient and so on. How on the night of the fatality he had driven to Rest Hollow from Los Angeles to give some final instructions to the new employee, and how, stumbling upon the dead body of Regan, he had been shocked to find himself involved in a tragedy. How he had then cold-bloodedly decided to have the body identified as Kenwick, partly to save himself from the charge of criminal neglect and partly because he knew that Everett Kenwick had left in his will a bequest that was to come to him "for faithful service" upon the death or recovery of his brother. How, not dreaming that his charge would ever recover, he had thus used his death as a means of gaining extra funds which he badly needed just at that time.
How he had accordingly selected certain of the patient's personal possessions with which he had been entrusted, to deceive the coroner. How all the subsequent action had seemed to play into his hands: the coroner's easy acquiescence in the suicide theory and the identity of the body; the chance discovery, through Arnold Rogers, that the story of Kenwick's self-destruction had already been accepted by the community.
How, preceding the coroner's inquest, Glover had spent the morning tracing the antecedent action of the tragedy and had heard of the accident which had killed Marstan. How he had erred in suspecting that the real victim of the tragedy was Kenwick and that the attendant had had the body identified as his own and then made his escape, fearing to communicate the news of the disaster to his employer. How he, Glover, had been startled to discover later that Kenwick was not only alive but had apparently recovered his mental health.
The remainder of the story was given as the testimony of Madeleine Marstan, well-known favorite in the former Alcazar stock company, and Granville Jarvis, expert psychologist, whose skilful work was a strong plea for the admission of that newest of the sciences into court-room procedure.
During this latter testimony, the "Clarion" asserted, interest had been divided between the ultimate fate of the accused and the valuable contributions which the laboratory experiments of the witness had given the case. The word-tests which he had provided to the medium were, he had explained, one of the surest means of discovering the train of associations which lodge in the guilty mind. He had never been convinced that Glover himself had committed a murder, but suspected that his crime lay in trying to fasten it upon a man whom he knew to be both innocent and helpless. The cards, containing a mixture of irrelevant and relevant words, had been shown him and then he had been instructed to turn his head in the opposite direction. These instructions he had carefully observed except in the cases of terms which held evil associations. In such cases his eyes almost invariably turned back to the card with the printed word. Such terms as "gravel" and "oleander" had produced this attraction. But they had also aroused his suspicions. And from the day of his first call upon "Madame Rosalie" the situation between them had been a succession of clever manœuvers. Neither one of them had dared to let the other go. But in this encounter Mrs. Marstan had had the advantage. What he was able to find out about her was little compared with what she had discovered concerning him.
That she possessed unmistakable psychic powers could not be disputed. By a means of communication, which she could not herself explain, she had received at the time of Roger Kenwick's interview with her a message from the spirit of Isabel Kenwick, confessing that it was she who had unwittingly brought Richard Glover into his life, and entreating his forgiveness.
As to the concluding story of the actress, it was concerned with her description of how she had identified the body of her husband at the morgue on the evening of her flight from Rest Hollow; of how she had turned all arrangements for its shipment and burial over to the Mont-Mer and San Francisco undertakers, desiring to figure as little as possible in connection with the death of the man who had ruined her life. Of how she had succeeded in paying the debts against his name and had recently signed a stage contract with an eastern theatrical company.
When the trial was ended the crowd that jammed the room rose and surged toward the man in the prisoner's box, like a human tidal wave. "Keep them back, Dayton," Kenwick implored. "I don't want to talk to them."
Somehow his attorney managed to check the onrush, and the throng of congratulatory spectators was headed toward the exits. The room was almost empty when some one touched the prisoner's arm.
"Can you give me a few words?" It was one of the local reporters. "You're a newspaper man yourself, Mr. Kenwick, and you know how it is about these things."
Kenwick shook him off. "Come around later, to the hotel, if you like," he said, and turned to take a hand that was timidly held out to him.
"I didn't know whether you'd be willing to speak to me or not, Mr. Kenwick. But I just wanted to tell you that I'm satisfied, more than satisfied with—the way it has all come out."
"I am glad to hear that, Mrs. Fanwell," Kenwick told her gravely. "I would never have been quite satisfied myself unless I had heard you say that. I wish you would leave your address with Dayton, for, you see, I feel a little bit responsible for you, and I would like to put you in the way of getting a new hold on life."
The only other person in the room with whom he stopped to talk was Madeleine Marstan, who stood in conversation with Dayton near the door. To her his words of thanks were the more eloquent perhaps because they came haltingly, impeded by an emotion which he could not master.
"It was nothing," she told him. "Nothing that I didn't owe you, Mr. Kenwick."
"I don't see that you owed me anything," he objected. "As the affair has developed, we were both the victims of an ugly plot. It certainly was not your fault. And once out of that accursed house,youwere free."
"Not my fault—no," she repeated, "but my responsibility afterward." She gazed past him out of the window where, at the curb, Arnold Rogers was assisting a fur-coated figure into the Paddington limousine. "You see, Edward Marstan was my husband and——Well, some day you may come to realize, Mr. Kenwick, that when a woman has loved, there is no such word as 'free.'"
At the foot of the stairway Kenwick spoke with an almost curt suppression to Granville Jarvis. "I'm going over to the hotel with Morgan. Come over there."
The other man made no reply save a slight inclination of his head, and there was in his eyes an expression which haunted and mystified the released prisoner.
"Jarvis is a wizard," he said to Clinton Morgan as they walked the few short blocks to Mont-Mer's leading hostelry. "If they ever let down the bars of the court-room to men like that, they'll revolutionize legal procedure. He seems to have seen this case from every angle."
"From more angles than you imagine," his friend replied. "And he had let me in on some of the most interesting of his findings that were not revealed in court. For instance, he examined that gardener this morning, just for his own satisfaction. The boy was willing, even flattered by the attention. Jarvis told me afterward that a witness like that ought to be ruled out of court. And he is typical of the mass of men and women who assist in acquitting the guilty and sending the innocent to the gallows. The average physician examining him would pronounce him normal. He can hear a sound distinctly, for instance, but he is afflicted with that common defect, the equivalent, Jarvis says, of color-blindness in the visual realm, which makes it impossible for him to tell whether the sound comes from behind or in front of him. And he lacks completely a visual memory. He could recall the exact words that Gifford said to him on the night of the suicide but he couldn't remember whether the body was covered or uncovered when he saw it. And as for the tests with Glover——By the way, what are you going to do with Glover?"
"I don't know yet. I haven't got that far. I think I can forgive him everything except that infamous story about Everett being close with me while I was under age. Why, I had too much money while I was in college, Morgan. That's the chief reason why I didn't push my literary work with greater zeal. The creative temperament is naturally indolent. It requires a spur, not necessarily a financial one, but so much the better if it is. Of course Glover and I will have to have a financial reckoning. I can see now why my frantic messages to our family lawyer were never answered. I suppose he's had dozens of communications from people purporting to be connected by blood or marriage with the Kenwick estate. Yes, Glover has got some things to answer to me for, but——" His mind flew back to that last evening that he had spent in the fire-lit living-room on Pine Street. "He brought hell into my life for a time," he ended slowly. "But he brought—something else into it, too."
It was half an hour later, after Kenwick had bathed and dressed for dinner, that Granville Jarvis came up to his room. Kenwick admitted him with an inarticulate word of greeting. Then while with fumbling fingers he put on a fresh collar, he made an attempt at normal conversation.
"Been expecting you," he said. "Morgan is down in the lobby. We'll all have dinner here first and then——"
"Can't do it," Jarvis cut in. "I have another engagement for dinner, and I'm leaving town on the eight-forty northbound. I just ran up to say good-by and—good luck."
"Where are you going?"
Jarvis smiled. "To Argentina, so far as you are concerned. But you can call it Columbia if you like. I'm returning to my work there. You see, I've been away on leave."
"You've got to stay long enough for me to tell you something," Kenwick's voice cut in authoritatively. "But you couldn't stay long enough, Jarvis, for me to thank you for what you've done."
His caller held up a hand. "Please don't. Not that—please."
"But," Kenwick went on, "you've got to hear an apology. I was just about on the verge of a collapse over there, and when you got up in court as the representative of Glover——Well, I didn't know the game, you see and I thought——"
"I know; Brutus." It was Jarvis who finished the sentence. "And in a sense, you were right," he went on slowly. "For what I did, I did—not for you."
"You did it for science, of course; because to you I was an interesting case. But what can I ever do to repay you? How can——"
"I have been paid." The same haunting, baffling expression was in the scientist's eyes, and he was not looking at the man whom his testimony had freed.
"Oh, I don't mean money!" Kenwick cried hotly. "I know you have that!"
"I don't mean money, either." He forced his gaze back to his host. And then that sixth sense which is in the soul of every creative artist awoke in Kenwick's being and made his eyes luminous with understanding.
Jarvis picked up his hat from the chair into which it had dropped. "I'm going out to the Paddingtons' for dinner," he said casually. "I'll have about——" He snapped open the cover of his watch, then closed it again. "The most devilish thing about life on this planet, Kenwick, is that we can't do very much for each other. The game is largely solitaire. But for any good that I ever did I've been well repaid. Any man ought to be satisfied, I think, when the gods allow him two full hours—in Utopia."
It was the morning after his acquittal that Kenwick and Marcreta Morgan drove out of the Paddington gateway in one of the Utopia machines. They turned to the left and took the stretch of perfect asphalt road that led to the old Raeburn house.
The mystery of its destruction had never been explained. Richard Glover, and every one else who was connected with the case of Ralph Regan, had proved a satisfactory alibi. The owner of Rest Hollow had been notified by wire of its destruction and he had replied with orders that the grounds were to be kept locked and admission denied to all callers. It had undoubtedly been one of the handsomest homes in a community of handsome homes, but since the first days of its existence fate had destined it for tragedy. And perhaps its owner was relieved to know that only a pile of whitening ashes marked the grave of his own romance and the prison of another man's hope. At all events, the mystery of its passing never has been solved, and conjecture concerning it is still a favorite topic around the tea-tables of Mont-Mer's fashionable suburban district.
"But I want toseeit in ruins," Kenwick had told Marcreta after their first radiant hour together. "I want to know that it is really gone off the face of the earth, so that when it comes to me in memory I can assure myself that it is only a dream."
They turned the last corner and came suddenly in sight of the tall iron gate. Across it a sinister chain swung ominously, warning the world away from communication with that most dreadful affliction that can befall a human soul. The ruins of Rest Hollow loomed somber and shapeless before them, and Roger Kenwick brought his car to a stop in the very spot where Arnold Rogers had once halted, hesitated, and then gone on his way. Guarding the pile like a battered but relentless sentinel was the tall, charred chimney of the dining-room. As he looked at it, Kenwick's hand sought instinctively for that of the woman beside him, as though to assure himself of her reality. And then he heard himself ask the question that for so long had beaten against his brain.
"How could you do it? How could you send me away that night, dear, into the horrors of war and—this, without hope?"
"I couldn't know," she told him desperately. "I couldn't foresee what was coming. And I wanted you to win a place in the world. I wanted you to win, as I knew you could if you were unhampered by——"
"Unhampered!" He echoed the word incredulously, as though it were quite new and its meaning not clear. "Is any one ever hampered by love and inspiration and all that——"
"You don't understand," she said. "Nobody can understand physical disability except those who have suffered it. My mother had a sister who was a bed-ridden invalid. She helped her husband to find his place in the world and keep it. But he never seemed to realize that she had helped him. He always thought, though I suppose he never said, that his marriage had held him back. And she died at last of a broken heart. Through all my youth I had her tragedy before me."
There was a moment of silence between them. And then Kenwick spoke slowly. "You hadn't much faith in me, Marcreta. You admit now that you loved me, yet you hadn't much faith—in my character or my——"
"But love comes a long time before faith, Roger. It always does. And I was younger then. I didn't know so much about life and—and character. But, oh, when they wrote me about this! I would have given anything on earth to have lived over again our last night together!"
"I know! I know!" His voice was vibrant with self-reproach.
"Your brother must have been splendid," she went on. "He wrote me such a wonderful letter. But he couldn't soften it; nobody can ever dilute the big tragedies of life. We must drink them unstrained. I knew that you were somewhere in this county, and when I came down here, just that one time, I liked to feel that I was near you. I couldn't have endured to see you, but I wanted to be near you for a little while before—I did anything else. And then that night when you came back, I couldn't be sure——Everything was so changed. You were so different from the carefree boy who had gone away. I knew, of course, that you would be; in a sense, I wanted you to be. But I didn't want you to feel bound by anything that had gone before. I was afraid you might feel that way. Oh, a woman is at such a disadvantage, Roger. She is always at a disadvantage if the man she loves is honorable and chivalrous."
"I had work to do," he reminded her gently. "I had to quiet the title to my name. For when a woman marries a man, Marcreta, she marries his past, every bit of it. Before I could offer my life to you again, I had to be certain that every minute of it was clean and decent and above reproach. I was not willing to let any of it go on the grounds of irresponsibility. I never would have been satisfied. And you never would have been satisfied. There would always have been for both of us terrible moments of doubt. The bramble-bush lay between us. I had to tear it away first; I had to tear it away and look bravely at whatever lay underneath."
A shaft of golden sunlight suddenly broke through the January clouds and slanted across the road. Roger Kenwick's eyes followed it as though seeking for the treasure that might lie revealed at last at the end of a rainbow. A sharp exclamation escaped him. And he felt the quick response of the hand that still lay in his.
Drawing the heavy motor-cloak closer about her, he helped Marcreta Morgan out of the car and guided her to a spot about a hundred yards on the other side of the iron gate. "I remember now!" His words came in the low, awed voice of one who suddenly encounters in broad daylight some object that has played conspicuous part in an evil and oft-recurring dream.
"At last!" he said, and stood rooted to the roadside gazing at the thing for which, during the last two months, he had been so desperately groping. "This one thing," he went on, "this one thing about those impenetrable months here I do remember. I believe that if I had chanced to see it on that afternoon of my recovery, if I had only chanced to come this way instead of around by the other road, it might have restored to me some memory of this place."
They stood now on the edge of the strip of pavement, where dead leaves spread a spongy carpet between the asphalt and the barbed-wire fence that bordered the opposite estate. And what they looked upon was a huge boulder, half embedded in the earth. By some mighty and persistent force it had been rent asunder, and now, up through the cleft which tore its surface with a long jagged scar, a sapling eucalyptus-tree, perfectly shaped and beautifully proportioned, had pushed its way. A zephyr or perhaps a bird had sown the seed in this rock-bound prison. And with a vitality that appeared incredible it had taken root and grown there, stretching vigorous, red-tipped leaves heavenward. In some miraculous manner its tap-root had found the sustaining soil, and its flame-colored crown the sunlight. There it stood, on the lonely road to Rest Hollow, a living torch of liberty, flaunting its heroic triumph above the shattered body of its foe.
"On the day that Glover first brought me here, I saw that tree." Kenwick's voice was scarcely more than a whisper. "I remember looking out at it from an opening in the fence. I didn't know just why I was here, but I had a sense of—I can't describe it to you—but it was a sense ofimprisonment. I knew that if I wanted to get out of that place I couldn't do it, and there's no feeling on earth like that. And then I saw—this, and it thrilled me. In a curious, unexplainable way it gave me hope. I don't recall anything else about the place, and I don't remember whether I ever saw this again. But during these last two months I have been looking for something that I knew I had lost out of my life, and here it is."
Marcreta Morgan reached over and touched the sapling's damp bark with reverent fingers. From a cleft in the conquered boulder came the pungent odor of the crushed leaves that were sustaining this new life. She turned to the man beside her with shining eyes.
"The resurrection!" she cried.
He drew her close to him beneath the tender branches of the valiant little sapling.
"An imprisoned soul," he whispered, "liberated at last—by the miracle of love."