The Incendiary: A Story of Mystery
Page 58
CHAPTER LVIII.
THE MIRACLE.
It was after two o'clock when, breathless, spiritless, and penniless,Saul Aronson arrived at the court-room again. The examination of Berthawas nearly ended.
"Will you take these spectacles, Miss Lund?" said Shagarach, handingBertha a pair. They looked like the "horns" that used to straddle ourgrandfathers' noses, being uncommonly large, circular in shape andfitted with curved wires to pass over the ears.
"Do they bear any resemblance to Prof. Arnold's?"
"I thought they were his at first."
"Let us suppose they are. Will you kindly leave the stand and adjustthem on this desk near the window exactly as the professor's spectacleslay on his desk that afternoon?"
Bertha took the spectacles without hesitation, walked over to thecrier's desk and placed them on its edge, with their wires toward thewindow. Then she laid a book under the wires. This made the glasses tipa little downward. The sun was shining in fiercely.
"I believe there was a waste basket in the study?" continued Shagarach.
"Yes, sir."
"Like this one?" He held up an uncommonly capacious basket, over twofeet high.
"The very same kind."
"And as full as this is?"
"Fuller. It was just bursting with papers."
"What kind of paper?"
"Black wrapping paper that comes off the professor's books."
"Something like this?"
"Just like that."
The paper in Shagarach's wicker basket was not black, exactly, but of adeep shade which could hardly be described by the name of any knowncolor.
"Why are you wearing a white dress, Miss Lund?"
Bertha blushed a little.
"Because light colors are cooler."
"Coolness is a strong recommendation on a day like this. Do you rememberwhether the Saturday of the fire was as warm?"
"It was very hot, I know."
"The hottest day of a hot June, was it not?"
"Well, I couldn't answer that. The thermometer goes up and down like ajumping-jack here."
"You had pulled up the study curtains so as to let in the sunlight, Ibelieve?"
"Yes, sir. That was for the poor canary. And, besides, the professorused to say the sunlight was good--good for plants and animals andeverything that has life in it."
"The sun, then, was shining down on the desk where the spectacles lay?"
"Just as you see it here, sir."
She pointed to the desk, by which she was still standing.
"You know, from your own experience in dresses, that dark colors absorbmore heat than light ones?"
"Sir?"
"Light dresses are cooler than dark ones?"
"Yes, sir."
"Brown paper burns more quickly than white?"
"Oh, yes. You can kindle a fire with brown paper better."
"Will you take the waste-basket and place it on the floor just as farfrom those spectacles as the waste-basket in the study stood, and in thesame direction."
Bertha measured off a short distance with her eye, picked up the basket,shifted it once or twice, and finally set it down with a satisfied air.
"There!"
"It stood just behind the desk, then?"
"What is the drift of all this?" interrupted the district attorney, hisdeep voice falling on a breathless silence. A presentiment had spreadfrom one to another that the solution was at hand.
"We are reproducing the exact condition of the study at the time thefire occurred. These spectacles, containing powerful cataract lenses,are made from the same prescription as Prof. Arnold's, by his optician,Mr. Dean. The large basket, a mild eccentricity of the professor's, andthe black paper, are also duplicates."
"What do you hope to prove?" asked Chief Justice Playfair. His answerwas a shrill cry, like a bird note, from Emily, who had never withdrawnher eye from the waste basket.
"It's catching!"
Every eye in the court-room turned. Those who sat near enough beheld twotiny holes, like worm holes, suddenly pierced in the black paper, wherethe rays of light converged through the tilted lenses. Each had a crisp,brown margin around it. Gradually they widened and spread, as thoughinstinct with life, one working faster than the other. Then suddenly alittle circle of flame curled out, and before the onlookers realized themiracle in progress, the waste basket was throwing up red tongues offire and sighing softly. If it were not for Sire's furious barking therailing of the bar might have caught. As it was, its varnish had begunto crackle before the nearest court officer recovered his presence ofmind and threw the blazing basket out of the window.
Gazing at Shagarach the spectators waited breathlessly for anelucidation. Before speaking he walked over and shook hands warmly withEmily. When he turned at last, his words came forth like a whirlwind.
"I think nothing more is needed to convince us of the source from whichthis fire originated. We have reproduced every circumstance of itsoccurrence in order to provide you with ocular demonstration. The sunsupplying extraordinary heat, the burning glass duplicated by an expertand placed in position by a trustworthy witness, the focal distanceestimated by her, the highly combustible fuel, identical in color andsubstance--can you not turn back in imagination and see happening inthat deserted study all that has happened here? Can you not follow it onto the destruction of the mantel fringe just above, the awaking of thesleepy dog, the mad leap of the flames from wall to wall, and at lastthat whole irresistible carnival of the elements? It was no human torch,but the hot gaze of the sun, condensed through these powerful lenses,which lit that funeral pyre and dug graves for seven human beings. Fate,working out its processes in that lonely room, was the mysteriousincendiary toward whom we have all been blindly groping."
As Shagarach pointed upward in his awful close, the audience, on thevery brink of an outburst, held back their enthusiasm for an instant.But the chief justice was seen to bow his head, and at once theexcitement broke all barriers. A loud spontaneous cheer, rendered halfarticulate by cries of "Shagarach, Shagarach!" scattered to the windsthe customary restraints of the surroundings. Women embraced each other;strangers shook hands warmly; Emily Barlow rushed over and huggedRosalie March, and drops were glistening on Chief Justice Playfair'seyelashes when he lifted his head. McCausland, standing agape on thethreshold of his ante-room, completed the happy picture.
By a natural reaction the outburst was succeeded by a spell of tenserepression, amid which the district attorney rose and moved thewithdrawal of the case against Robert Floyd. The foreman of the juryannounced that he and his associates had long been agreed upon theinnocence of the accused, and Chief Justice Playfair, dignified as anarchbishop blessing his flock, expressed in his golden idiom the commonfeeling of thankfulness that the trial had so felicitous a termination.
And so the logic of Richard McCausland and the psychology of MeyerShagarach were both overmatched by the intuitions of a loyal girl--agirl who knew something about lenses because she dealt with cameras, andwho brought to the problem a concentration of thought as powerful asthat of the sunlight on the professor's spectacles. Both the lawyer andthe detective came forward promptly to pay her their homage; and thelast she saw of McCausland he was focusing one of the lenses on the endof his cigar, readily obtaining the desired red light.
But Emily was not holding court even for them while there was still astroke of work to be done. Her second thought was of Harry in his cell.With admirable modesty avoiding Robert's kiss, she took him and Rosalieby the hand and made them friends at once. Then, leaving Beulah Ware tochat with Brother Tristram, the trio sped over to the jail. At thecourt-house door they met Dr. Silsby, who came flying along, florid andout of breath, mopping his face with a napkin which he had probablymistaken in his hurry for a handkerchief.
"Is it over?" he cried.
"Over? We're acquitted," cried Emily, using a reckless plural. "Whatmakes you so late?"
"Stopped to nib a quill after lunch," grumbled the director
of theArnold Academie, as he gave Robert a pump-handle squeeze.
It was a changed Harry that stepped out of the cell in murderers' row.In the confidence of the preceding night the two cousins had growncloser together than ever before. After all, as Harry had said on thestand, they were both Arnolds and the sole survivors of that eccentricblood.
But a stronger bond was soon to rivet them together in the waxing amityof the two girls, one of whom was dearer than kin to each of thecousins. Rosalie's exclusiveness and the wealth she continued to enjoywith an equanimity he could not understand at first prevented Robertfrom doing full justice to her. But on acquaintance she proved as merry(among her chosen few) as any lassie, and a certain child-likeinnocence, all the more singular from her association with the stage,made a charming foil to the ripe womanly beauty of her person.
Moreover, as the months roll by, and Robert learns more and more whatmen and women really are, he lowers his standards gradually as to whatmay be expected of them. Not that he has given up his ideals. Far fromit! He is still a socialist; and, what is better, a sower of good seedin action, placing goodly portions of his income here and there, withsomething of his uncle's bow-wow manner, to be sure, as though it wereno personal pity tugging at his heart-strings, but only an abstractdesire to see things ship-shape in the world, an impatience at disorder.But this affected matter-of-factness doesn't suffice to shake off theblessings of his pensioners.
If he chooses to set all orthodoxy by the ears with that series offire-brand polemics which, as readers remember, succeeded the "ModestProposal for a Consumers' Trust," so that one old granny among hisopponents has already christened him "the Legicide," what do Mrs. Lacyand Mrs. Riley know or care? I fancy most of us, if we were burdenedwith a maniac son or blessed with the love of a dutiful boy likeWalter, would accept assistance for their sakes, and ask no questions ofthe giver.
Mrs. Arnold is too old now ever to forget that her maiden name was AliceBrewster. It was the fear of staining that name with the publisheddetails of a petty intrigue that caused her to sail for Europe sosuddenly. For it was she, conscious of her own financial straits, andanxious for Harry if his inheritance should be cut off, who hadconducted the correspondence with Ellen Greeley. In this there wasnothing criminal; but much to wound her pride. So she had fled from theordeal of testifying before Shagarach, and the disclosures which sheforesaw were inevitable.
Her embarrassments have since been tided over and the family fortunesaved, at least from total shipwreck. The match with Rosalie Marchguarantees to Harry the gratification of all his tastes; and, as theyoung couple are coming to Woodlawn to live, the sting of separation issoftened. Ah, the fond jealous mothers who must forget their ownhoneymoons to chide the child that only obeys divine injunctions incleaving to another when the time is ripe!
Of Emily Barlow what more can be said? Praise is superfluous; intrusionon her betrothal joys, soon to merge into marriage happiness, deeper ifless unmixed with care, an impertinence.
Of late the whole world seems conspiring to bless her. Only the otherday Tristram March won the sculpture prize at the academy with hislife-size group "Driftwood Pickers at the Sea Level." The critics havegone mad over the boldness of his conception--one figure erect andpeering far off, two stooping and adding to their fagot bundles. Thewhole ocean is there in that fretted line of surf--a bare suggestion.One interpreter has gone so far as to see in the figures a type ofhumanity itself, on the margin of some mysterious beneficent elementwhich surrounds it. But the salient fact to Emily is that Tristram wonthe prize, and is striving might and main for another more precious--thehand of the dark, collected girl who gave him both subject andinspiration during their memorable week at Digby.
And Shagarach--the iron will, the giant mind--what is his destiny? To bealways a criminal lawyer, a consorter with publicans and sinners?Always, we may be sure, to protect the innocent, to whatever sphere thebuoyancy of his genius may lift him; and whether he wear ultimately theermine or the laurel wreath he will never forget one cause, whichbrought him, with much added celebrity and some unhappiness, thefriendship of three couples so rare and fine--that great search for theIncendiary which is registered (not without pique) in InspectorMcCausland's private docket as "The Eye-Glass Fiasco."
THE END.
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Transcriber's Note: Hyphen variations left as printed.