Eleven Possible Cases
Page 3
CHAPTER III.
The first man to go to work at Overlook in the morning was Jim Wilson,because he had to rouse the fire under a boiler early enough to providesteam for a score of rock drills. The night watchman awakened him atdaybreak, according to custom, and then got into a bunk as the other gotout of one.
"Everything all right?" Jim asked.
"I guess so," the other replied. "But I hain't seen your boiler sencebefore midnight. Eph was disturbin' Mary Mite, and so I hung 'round hercabin pretty much the last half of the night."
Jim went to his post at the boiler, and at an unaccustomed pace, fromthe point where he first saw and heard steam hissing upward from thesafety valve. On quitting the night previous, he had banked the fire asusual, and this morning he should have found it burning so slowly thatan hour of raking, replenishing, and open draughts would no more thanstart the machinery at seven o'clock. Going nearer he found that opendampers and a fresh supply of coal had set the furnace raging.
What was that which protruded from the open door, and so nearly filledthe aperture that the draught was not impaired?
A glance gave the answer. It was the legs and half the body of a man,whose head and shoulders were thoroughly charred, as Jim was horrifiedto see when he pulled the remains out upon the ground.
Jim ran to tell the superintendent, and within a few minutes a knot ofexcited men surrounded the body. The gathering grew in numbers rapidly.By means of the clothing the dead and partially burned man wasidentified at once as Tonio Ravelli. That he had been murdered was anequally easy conclusion. The murderer had apparently sought to crematethe corpse. Whether he had found it physically impossible, or had beenfrightened away, could only be conjectured.
"Who can have done it?" was the question asked by SuperintendentBrainerd, the autocrat of Overlook.
There was a minute of silence, with all staring intently at the body, asthough half expecting it to somehow disclose the truth. The nightwatchman was first to speak.
"Eph might have done it," he said.
Then he told of the monomaniac's visit to the telegraph station, and ofthe acute stage which his malady had reached. Nobody else present hadseen him since the previous evening. Superintendent Brainerd ordered asearch of the lodgings. Ten minutes were sufficient for a round of thedifferent quarters. Eph was in none of them. The searchers returned tothe furnace, and with them came Gerald Heath.
"I met Eph yonder where the paths cross, not a hundred yards from here,a little past midnight," Gerald said. "He was terribly excited. That wasafter he had tried in vain to telegraph a crazy message. Evidently hisdelusion, that his whole life was condensed into a brief space, haddriven him to a frenzy. He spoke of walking to Dimmersville, but I triedto quiet him, and he disappeared."
Dimmersville was a town about ten miles distant, in a direction oppositeto that from which the railroad had worked its way through themountains. No wire connected it with Overlook, and there was no publicroad for the nearest third of the way, although a faint trail showed thecourse that a few persons had taken on foot or horseback.
"Very likely Eph has gone toward Dimmersville," Brainerd argued, "and wemust try to catch him."
Before the order could be specifically given a horse and a rider aroseover the edge of the level ground and came into the midst of theassemblage. The man in the saddle had a professional aspect, impartedchiefly by his smoothly shaven face. In this era of mustaches a hairlessvisage is apt to be assigned to a clergyman, who shaves thus from amotive of propriety; an actor, who does it from necessity; or somebodywho aims at facial distinction without the features suitable to thatpurpose. A countenance of which it can only be said that it has onenose, one mouth, and two eyes, all placed in expressive nonentity, andwhich is dominated utterly by hair on and around it, may be less lost toindividuality if entirely shaven. Of such seemed the visage of the darkman, who calmly rode into the excitement at Overlook.
"Which way have you come?" Brainerd asked.
"From Dimmersville," was the reply.
"Did you see anybody on the way?"
"I started very early. Folks were not out of their beds in thehouses--as long as there were any houses--and that is only for five orsix miles, you know. After that--yes--I did see one man. A curiouslyexcited chap. He looked tired out. He asked the distance toDimmersville, and whether the telegraph office would be open by the timehe got there. Then he skurried on before I'd half answered him."
All that was known of the murder was told to the stranger by half adozen glib tongues, and it was explained to him that he had encounteredthe maniacal fugitive.
"I knew there was something wrong about him," said the stranger. "It ismy business to be observant."
He dismounted and hitched his horse to a tree. The dead body was shownto him. He examined it very thoroughly. All the particulars were relatedto him over and over. Then he drew Superintendent Brainerd aside.
"My name is Terence O'Reagan," he said, and in his voice was faintlydistinguishable the brogue of the land whence the O'Reagans came. "I ama government detective. I have been sent to work up evidence in the caseof some Italian counterfeiters. We had a clew pointing to asub-contractor here--the very man who lies there dead. Our informationwas that he used some of the bogus bills in paying off his gang. Now, itisn't going outside my mission to investigate his death--if you don'tobject."
"I would be glad to have you take hold of it," Brainerd replied. "Wecan't bring the authorities here before noon, at the earliest, and inthe mean time you can perhaps clear it all up."
The eagerly curious men had crowded close to this brief dialogue, andhad heard the latter part of it. O'Reagan became instantly an importantpersonage, upon whose smallest word or movement they hung expectantly,and nobody showed a keener interest than Gerald Heath. The detectivefirst examined the body. The pockets of Ravelli's clothes contained awallet, with its money untouched, beside a gold watch.
"So robbery was not the object," said O'Reagan to Brainerd. "The motiveis the first thing to look for in a case of murder."
Next, he found blood on the waistcoat, a great deal of it, but dried bythe fire that had burned the shoulders and head; and in the baked clothwere three cuts, under which he exposed three stab wounds. Strokes of aknife had, it seemed, killed the victim before he was thrust partiallyinto the furnace.
A storm was coming to Overlook unperceived, for the men were too muchengrossed in what lay there on the ground, ghastly and horrible, to payany attention to the clouding sky. Gloom was so fit for the scene, too,that nobody gave a thought from whence it came. To Gerald Heath thegoing out of sunlight, and the settling down of dusky shadows seemed amental experience of his own. He stood bewildered, transfixed, vaguelyconscious of peril, and yet too numb to speak or stir. DetectiveO'Reagan, straightening up from over the body, looked piercingly atGerald, and then glanced around at the rest.
"Is there anybody here who saw Tonio Ravelli last night?" he asked.
"I did," Gerald replied.
"Where and when?"
"At the same place where I met Eph, and immediately afterward."
"Ah! now we are locating Eph and Ravelli together. That looks like thelunatic being undoubtedly the stabber."
"And we must catch him," Brainerd interposed. "I'll send riders towardDimmersville immediately."
"No great hurry about that," the detective remarked; "he is too crazy tohave had any clear motive or any idea of escape. It will be easy enoughto capture him." Then he turned to Gerald, and questioned with the airof a cross-examiner: "Did the two men have any words together?"
"No," was the ready answer; "I don't know that they even saw each otherat that time. Eph went away an instant before Ravelli came."
"Did you talk with Ravelli?"
"Yes."
"About what?"
"Not about Eph at all."
"About what, then?"
Now the reply came reluctantly: "A personal matter--something that hadoccurred between us--an incident at the telegraph
station."
"The station where Eph had awakened the girl operator? Was it a quarrelabout her?"
"That is no concern of yours. You are impertinent."
"Well, sir, the question is pertinent--as the lawyers say--and theanswer concerns you, whether it does me or not. You and Ravelliquarreled about the girl?"
"The young lady shall not be dragged into this. She wasn't responsiblefor what happened between Ravelli and me."
"What did happen between you and Ravelli?"
The two men stood close to and facing each other. The eyes of thedetective glared gloatingly at an upward angle into the pale but stillfirm face of the taller Gerald, and then dropped slowly, until theybecame fixed on a red stain on the sleeve of the other's coat. Did hepossess the animal scent of a bloodhound?
"What is that?" he sharply asked. He seized the arm and smelled of thespotted fabric. "It is blood! Let me see your knife."
Quite mechanically Gerald thrust one hand into his trousers pocket andbrought out the knife which he had taken back from Ravelli, whose bloodwas on it yet.
The storm was overhead. A first peal of thunder broke loudly. It came atthe instant of the assemblage's tensest interest--at the instant whenGerald Heath was aghast with the revelation of his awful jeopardy--atthe instant of his exposure as a murderer. It impressed them and himwith a shock of something supernatural. The reverberation rumbled intosilence, which was broken by O'Reagan:
"There'll be no need to catch Eph," he said, in a tone of professionalglee. "This man is the murderer."
Again thunder rolled and rumbled angrily above Overlook, and the partystood aghast in the presence of the man dead and the man condemned.
"Bring him to the telegraph station," O'Reagan commanded.
Nobody disputed the detective's methods now--not even Gerald; and aprisoner as completely as though manacled, although not touched by anyone, he went with the rest.
Mary Warriner had taken down the tarpaulin front of her shed when themen approached. In the ordinary course of her early morning doings shewould wait an hour to dispatch and receive the first telegrams of theday, and then go to breakfast alone at the table where the engineers andoverseers would by that time have had their meal. She was astonished tosee nearly the whole population of Overlook crowd around her quarters,while a few entered. But she went quickly behind the desk, and took herplace on the stool. The soberness of the faces impressed her, butnothing indicated that Gerald was in custody, and her quick thought wasthat some disaster made it necessary to use the wire importantly.
"I wish to send a message," said O'Reagan, stepping forward.
The eyes of the girl rested on him inquiringly, and he palpablyflinched, but as obviously nerved himself to proceed, and when he spokeagain the Irish accent became more pronounced to hear, although notsufficiently to be shown in the printed words: "I will dictate itslowly, so that you can transmit it as I speak. Are you ready?"
Mary's fingers were on the key, and her bright, alert face was an answerto the query.
"To Henry Deckerman, president," the detective slowly said, waiting forthe clicks of the instrument to put his language on the wire; "TonioRavelli, a sub-contractor here, was murdered last night."
Mary's hand slid away from the key after sending that, and the alwaysfaint tint in her cheeks faded out, and her eyes flickered up in ascared way to the stern faces in front of her. The shock of the newsthat a man had been slain, and that he was a man who, only the previousday, had proffered his love to her, was for a moment disabling. But thehabit of her employment controlled her, and she awaited the furtherdictation.
"His body was found this morning in the furnace of the steam boiler."O'Reagan resumed deliberately, "where it had evidently been placed in avain attempt to destroy it."
A shudder went through Mary, and she convulsively wrung her small handstogether, as though to limber them from a cramp. But her fingers wentback to the key.
"The murderer has been discovered," the detective slowly continued, andthe operator kept along with his utterance word by word. "He killedRavelli for revenge. It was a love affair." Here the girl grew whiterstill, and the clicks became very slow, but they did not cease.O'Reagan's voice was cold and ruthless: "The motive of the murderer wasrevenge. His name is Gerald Heath."
All but the name flashed off on the wire. Mary Warriner's power to stirthe key stopped at that. She did not faint. She did not make any outcry.For a moment she looked as though the soul had gone out of her body,leaving a corpse sitting there. A grievous wail of wind came through thetrees, and a streak of lightning zig-zagged down the blue-clouded sky.
"Go on," said O'Reagan.
"I will not," was the determined response.
"Why not?"
"Because it is not so. Gerald Heath never murdered Ravelli."
Gerald had stood motionless and silent. Now he gave way to an impulse asremarkable as his previous composure had been singular. If there hadbeen stagnation in his mind, it was now displaced by turbulence. Hegrasped Mary's hands in a fervid grip; then dropped them and faced theothers.
"I did not kill the Italian," he said. "He attacked me with my knifewhich he had stolen. In the struggle his hand was cut, but I took theweapon away from him. He quitted me alive and unhurt. I never saw himagain. You don't believe it? Mary does, and that is more than all else."
"The circumstances don't favor you," the detective retorted, "theyconvict you. You killed Ravelli because you and he were both in lovewith this young lady."
"Isn't it the rejected suitor who kills the other one for spite?" Thiswas in Mary Warriner's voice, weak, but still steady. "Ravelli loved me,I knew, and I drove him away. Mr. Heath loved me, I believed, and I hadnot repulsed him. If I were the cause of a murder between them, itshould be Ravelli who killed Gerald."
"You detested Ravelli?" O'Reagan asked, with a strange bitterness.
"Yes."
"And you love Heath?"
The answer was no more hesitant than before; "Yes."
"Send the rest of my message," and the detective was boisterous. "Sendthe name. Gerald Heath is the murderer."
He roughly seized her hand and clapped it on the key. She drew it away,leaving his there. A blinding flash of lightning illumined the place,and what looked like a missile of fire flew down the wire to theinstrument, where it exploded. O'Reagan fell insensible from thepowerful electrical shock. The rest did not altogether escape, and for aminute all were dazed. The first thing that they fully comprehended wasthat O'Reagan was getting unsteadily to his feet. He was bewildered.Staggering and reeling, he began to talk.
Mary was first to perceive the import of his utterance. He was merelygoing on with what he had been saying, but the manner, not the matter,was astounding.
He spoke with an Italian accent, and made Italian gestures.
"You-a send ze mes-sage," he said; "Heath ees ze murder-are. Send-a zemes-sage, I say."
Tonio Ravelli had unwittingly resumed his Italian style of English.
His plenitude of hair and whiskers was gone; and in the face, therebyuncovered, nobody could have recognized him in Detective O'Reagan butfor his lapse into the foreign accent; and he said so much beforediscovering his blunder that his identification, as indeed Ravelli, wascomplete.
Who, then, was the dead man? Why, he was Eph.
Nothing but the fear of being himself condemned as a murderer of themaniac, as a part of the scheme of revenge against Gerald, inducedRavelli to explain. He had found Eph lying dead in the path, after bothhad parted from Gerald. The plot to exchange clothes with the corpse,drag it to the furnace, burn away all possibility of recognition, andthus make it seem to be his murdered self, was carried out with all thehot haste of a jealous vengeance. Ravelli was not an Italian, althoughvery familiar with the language of Italy, and able, by a natural gift ofmimicry, to hide himself from pursuit for a previous crime. Overlook hadbeen a refuge until his passion for Mary Warriner led him to abandon hisdisguise. Thereupon, he had turned himself into Terence
O'Reagan, adetective, whose malicious work wrought happiness for Gerald Heath andMary Warriner.