“There—that is the whole story. To my certain knowledge, Paul Gourchoff has caused the death or exile of over two hundred men and women, whose sole crime was patriotism and love of freedom. Did he deserve to die?”
And Hazell, who had listened to the recital attentively, nodded his head slowly.
“I think he did,” he said.
Presently he added:
“Can I do anything for you?”
“No,” replied Radziwill. “I don’t think anyone can do that. In your kindness you might leave me alone—that is all. I shall cheat the gallows. There is enough money in my clothes here to bury me. I have nothing to live for. Oh, do what you like!”
And he turned over and hid his face in the pillow. Hazell went downstairs. Mrs. Bull was talking to a gentleman at the door.
“Which it’s very strange, sir, you bein’ the doctor as was sent for, and yet another doctor’s with him now, and—”
“I’ll put that right,” replied Hazell. “Your patient is waiting to see you, sir.”
“Oh, I see. Are you a friend of his?”
“Ye—es,” replied Hazell. “I’d like to know what you think of him, so I’ll wait till you come down.”
And what the doctor thought of him was this:
“He may last two or three days, but he won’t see the week out.”
So Thorpe Hazell kept silent. He asked the doctor to direct him to a vegetarian restaurant, where he lunched on a rice pudding and a dish of prunes. Then he took the local train from Sandfield to Manningford, and saw Rolfe once more before returning to town.
“Well,” said the superintendent, “are you satisfied with your investigation?”
“Quite,” returned Hazell.
“Only an ordinary case, eh?”
“Only an ordinary case. I beg your pardon, Mr. Rolfe, but how much do you weigh?”
“Fourteen stone, I believe,” replied the official, with a puzzled air.
“And you are about five feet six, I should imagine,” went on Hazell, looking at him critically. “You really ought to reduce some of it. Try living on lentils for a fortnight; and a very excellent exercise is this—I do it before most meals—take three deep breaths through the nostrils, filling the lungs and letting the air escape through the mouth slowly. At the same time rise on the toes, reach the hands above the head, and bring them slowly down to the sides. Repeat fifteen times. It’s a capital thing for digestion. Good-bye!”
Two days later came the result of the inquest. Verdict, “Accidental death, with a recommendation from the jury that the railway officials should carefully examine the width of all their bridges, and take steps, if necessary, to avoid the occurrence of such a painful tragedy.”
Spontaneous Combustion
Arthur B. Reeve
The forensic detective, as portrayed by Dr. Thorndyke, rapidly grew in popularity, as much in the United States as in Britain. Two more appeared within months. Luther Trant was the creation of Edwin Balmer and his brother-in-law William MacHarg. In “The Man in the Room” (Hampton’s Magazine, May 1909) Trant, a laboratory assistant, believes that a particular technique he had been monitoring would help find the guilty party amongst a group of suspects. In the subsequent eleven stories he used various inventions, including the first use of the lie detector, to identify criminals. Hot on the heels of Trant came the Craig Kennedy stories by Arthur B. Reeve. Whilst Trant called himself a “psychological detective,” Kennedy was the “scientific detective” even though, at the outset, there was little to distinguish them. The first Kennedy story, “The Case of Helen Bond” (Cosmopolitan, December 1910), even used the same word-association test as Trant had in “The Man in the Room.” Both series were very methodical, even laborious at times, in their exploration of the possibilities of science to detect the criminal, and though both are of historical interest it is the Craig Kennedy stories that have fared the better over the years. Kennedy was dubbed “the American Sherlock Holmes” and it was claimed that Reeve was the most popular writer of detective fiction in America between 1910 and 1920.
Reeve (1880–1936) wrote prolifically. The Craig Kennedy stories alone filled twenty-six books. Part of their popularity was due to their adaptation to the silent cinema as weekly cliff-hanger serials. The best known was The Exploits of Elaine (1914), starring Pearl White, who had earned her reputation in the earlier (non-Kennedy) The Perils of Pauline (1914). Reeve enjoyed the fledgling film industry and wrote the storylines for fifteen serials and three feature films. He worked with Harry Houdini on three films, starting with The Master Mystery (1919). The only Kennedy feature film was Unmasked in 1929. In later years Kennedy’s popularity waned and few remember him today, but at the time his impact cannot be underestimated. The following is one of the better examples of the early stories. It is narrated by Kennedy’s reporter friend, Walter Jameson.
KENEDY and I had risen early, for we were hustling to get off for a week-end at Atlantic City. Kennedy was tugging at the straps of his grip and remonstrating with it under his breath, when the door opened and a messenger-boy stuck his head in.
“Does Mr. Kennedy live here?” he asked.
Craig impatiently seized the pencil, signed his name in the book, and tore open a night letter. From the prolonged silence that followed I felt a sense of misgiving. I, at least, had set my heart on the Atlantic City outing, but with the appearance of the messenger-boy I intuitively felt that the board walk would not see us that week.
“I’m afraid the Atlantic City trip is off, Walter,” remarked Craig seriously. “You remember Tom Langley in our class at the university? Well, read that.”
I laid down my safety razor and took the message. Tom had not spared words, and I could see at a glance at the mere length of the thing that it must be important. It was from Camp Hang-out in the Adirondacks.
“Dear old K.,” it began, regardless of expense, “can you arrange to come up here by next train after you receive this? Uncle Lewis is dead. Most mysterious. Last night after we retired noticed peculiar odour about house. Didn’t pay much attention. This morning found him lying on floor of living-room, head and chest literally burned to ashes, but lower part of body and arms untouched. Room shows no evidence of fire, but full of sort of oily soot. Otherwise nothing unusual. On table near body siphon of seltzer, bottle of imported limes, and glass for rickeys. Have removed body, but am keeping room exactly as found until you arrive. Bring Jameson. Wire if you cannot come, but make every effort and spare no expense. Anxiously, Tom Langley.”
Craig was impatiently looking at his watch as I hastily ran through the letter.
“Hurry, Walter,” he exclaimed. “We can just catch the Empire State. Never mind shaving—we’ll have a stopover at Utica to wait for the Montreal express. Here, put the rest of your things in your grip and jam it shut. We’ll get something to eat on the train—I hope. I’ll wire we’re coming. Don’t forget to latch the door.”
Kennedy was already half-way to the elevator, and I followed ruefully, still thinking of the ocean and the piers, the bands and the roller chairs.
It was a good ten-hour journey up to the little station nearest Camp Hang-out and at least a two hour ride after that. We had plenty of time to reflect over what this death might mean to Tom and his sister and to speculate on the manner of it. Tom and Grace Langley were relatives by marriage of Lewis Langley, who, after the death of his wife, had made them his protégés. Lewis Langley was principally noted, as far as I could recall, for being a member of some of the fastest clubs of both New York and London. Neither Kennedy nor myself had shared in the world’s opinion of him, for we knew how good he had been to Tom in college and, from Tom, how good he had been to Grace. In fact, he had made Tom assume the Langley name, and in every way had treated the brother and sister as if they had been his own children.
Tom met us with a smart trap at the station, a sufficient indication, if we had not already known, of the “roughing it” at such a luxurious Adirondack “camp” as Camp Hang
-out. He was unaffectedly glad to see us, and it was not difficult to read in his face the worry which the affair had already given him.
“Tom; I’m awfully sorry to—” began Craig when, warned by Langley’s look at the curious crowd that always gathers at the railroad station at train time, he cut it short. We stood silently a moment while Tom was arranging the trap for us.
As we swung around the bend in the road that cut off the little station and its crowd of lookers-on, Kennedy was the first to speak. “Tom,” he said, “first of all, let me ask that when we get to the camp we are to be simply two old classmates whom you had asked to spend a few days before the tragedy occurred. Anything will do. There may be nothing at all to your evident suspicions, and then again there may. At any rate, play the game safely—don’t arouse any feeling which might cause unpleasantness later in case you are mistaken.”
“I quite agree with you,” answered Tom. “You wired, from Albany, I think, to keep the facts out of the papers as much as possible. I’m afraid it is too late for that. Of course the thing became vaguely known in Saranac, although the county officers have been very considerate of us, and this morning a New York Record correspondent was over and talked with us. I couldn’t refuse; that would have put a very bad face on it.”
“Too bad,” I exclaimed. “I had hoped, at least, to be able to keep the report down to a few lines in the Star. But the Record will have such a yellow story about it that I’ll simply have to do something to counteract the effect.”
“Yes,” assented Craig. “But—wait. Let’s see the Record story first. The office doesn’t know you’re up here. You can hold up the Star and give us time to look things over, perhaps get in a beat on the real story and set things right. Anyhow, the news is out. That’s certain. We must work quickly. Tell me, Tom, who are at the camp—anyone except relatives?”
“No,” he replied, guardedly measuring his words. “Uncle Lewis had invited his brother James and his niece and nephew, Isabelle and James, junior—we call him Junior. Then there are Grace and myself and a distant relative, Harrington Brown, and—oh, of course, uncle’s physician, Doctor Putnam.”
“Who is Harrington Brown?” asked Craig.
“He’s on the other side of the Langley family, on Uncle Lewis’s mother’s side. I think, or at least Grace thinks, that he is quite in love with Isabelle. Harrington Brown would be quite a catch. Of course he isn’t wealthy, but his family is mighty well connected. Oh, Craig,” sighed Langley, “I wish he hadn’t done it—Uncle Lewis, I mean. Why did he invite his brother up here now when he needed to recover from the swift pace of last winter in New York? You know—or you don’t know, I suppose, but you’ll know it now—when he and Uncle Jim got together there was nothing to it but one drink after another. Doctor Putnam was quite disgusted, at least he professed to be, but, Craig,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, as if the very forest had ears, “they’re all alike—they’ve been just waiting for Uncle Lewis to drink himself to death. Oh,” he added bitterly, “there’s no love lost between me and the relatives on that score, I can assure you.”
“How did you find him that morning?” asked Kennedy, as if to turn off this unlocking of family secrets to strangers.
“That’s the worst part of the whole affair,” replied Tom, and even in the dusk I could see the lines of his face tighten. “You know Uncle Lewis was a hard drinker, but he never seemed to show it much. We had been out on the lake in the motor-boat fishing all the afternoon and—well, I must admit both my uncles had had frequent recourse to ‘pocket pistols,’ and I remember they referred to it each time as ‘bait.’ Then after supper nothing would do but fizzes and rickeys. I was disgusted, and after reading a bit went to bed. Harrington and my uncles sat up with Doctor Putnam—according to Uncle Jim—for a couple of hours longer. Then Harrington, Doctor Putnam, and Uncle Jim went to bed, leaving Uncle Lewis still drinking. I remember waking in the night, and the house seemed saturated with a peculiar odour. I never smelt anything like it in my life. So I got up and slipped into my bathrobe. I met Grace in the hall. She was sniffing.
“‘Don’t you smell something burning?’ she asked.
“I said I did and started down-stairs to investigate. Everything was dark, but that smell was all over the house. I looked in each room down-stairs as I went, but could see nothing. The kitchen and dining-room were all right. I glanced into the living-room, but, while the smell was more noticeable there, I could see no evidence of a fire except the dying embers on the hearth. It had been coolish that night, and we had had a few logs blazing. I didn’t examine the room—there seemed no reason for it. We went back to our rooms, and in the morning they found the gruesome object I had missed in the darkness and shadows of the living-room.”
Kennedy was intently listening. “Who found him?” he asked.
“Harrington,” replied Tom. “He roused us. Harrington’s theory is that uncle set himself on fire with a spark from his cigar—a charred cigar butt was found on the floor.”
We found Tom’s relatives a saddened, silent party in the face of the tragedy. Kennedy and I apologised very profusely for our intrusion, but Tom quickly interrupted, as we had agreed, by explaining that he had insisted on our coming, as old friends on whom he felt he could rely, especially to set the matter right in the newspapers.
I think Craig noticed keenly the reticence of the family group in the mystery—I might almost have called it suspicion. They did not seem to know just whether to take it as an accident or as something worse, and each seemed to entertain a reserve toward the rest which was very uncomfortable.
Mr. Langley’s attorney in New York had been notified, but apparently was out of town, for he had not been heard from. They seemed rather anxious to get word from him.
Dinner over, the family group separated, leaving Tom an opportunity to take us into the gruesome living-room. Of course the remains had been removed, but otherwise the room was exactly as it had been when Harrington discovered the tragedy. I did not see the body, which was lying in an anteroom, but Kennedy did, and spent some time in there.
After he rejoined us, Kennedy next examined the fireplace. It was full of ashes from the logs which had been lighted on the fatal night. He noted attentively the distance of Lewis Langley’s chair from the fireplace, and remarked that the varnish on the chair was not even blistered.
Before the chair, on the floor where the body had been found, he pointed out to us the peculiar ash-marks for some space around, but it really seemed to me as if something else interested him more than these ash-marks.
We had been engaged perhaps half an hour in viewing the room. At last Craig suddenly stopped.
“Tom,” he said, “I think I’ll wait till daylight before I go any further. I can’t tell with certainty under these lights, though perhaps they show me some things the sunlight wouldn’t show. We’d better leave everything just as it is until morning.”
So we locked the room again and went into a sort of library across the hall.
We were sitting in silence, each occupied with his own thoughts on the mystery, when the telephone rang. It proved to be a long-distance call from New York for Tom himself. His uncle’s attorney had received the news at his home out on Long Island and had hurried to the city to take charge of the estate. But that was not the news that caused the grave look on Tom’s face as he nervously rejoined us.
“That was Uncle’s lawyer, Mr. Clark, of Clark & Burdick,” he said. “He has opened Uncle’s personal safe in the offices of the Langley estate—you remember them, Craig—where all the property of the Langley heirs is administered by the trustees. He says he can’t find the will, though he knows there was a will and that it was placed in that safe some time ago. There is no duplicate.”
The full purport of this information at once flashed on me, and I was on the point of blurting out my sympathy, when I saw by the look which Craig and Tom exchanged that they had already realised it and understood each other. Without the will the blood-relat
ives would inherit all of Lewis Langley’s interest in the old Langley estate. Tom and his sister would be penniless.
It was late, yet we sat for nearly an hour longer, and I don’t think we exchanged a half-dozen sentences in all that time. Craig seemed absorbed in thought. At length, as the great hall-clock sounded midnight, we rose as if by common consent.
“Tom,” said Craig, and I could feel the sympathy that welled up in his voice, “Tom, old man, I’ll get at the bottom of this mystery if human intelligence can do it.”
“I know you will, Craig,” responded Tom, grasping each of us by the hand. “That’s why I so much wanted you fellows to come up here.”
Early in the morning Kennedy aroused me. “Now, Walter, I’m going to ask you to come down into the living-room with me, and we’ll take a look at it in the daytime.”
I hurried into my clothes, and together we quietly went down. Starting with the exact spot where the unfortunate man had been discovered, Kennedy began a minute examination of the floor, using his pocket lens. Every few moments he would stop to examine a spot on the rug or on the hardwood floor more intently. Several times I saw him scrape up something with the blade of his knife and carefully preserve the scrapings, each in a separate piece of paper.
Sitting idly by, I could not for the life of me see just what good it did for me to be there, and I said as much. Kennedy laughed quietly.
“You’re a material witness, Walter,” he replied. “Perhaps I shall need you some day to testify that I actually found these spots in this room.”
Just then Tom stuck his head in. “Can I help?” he asked. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going at it so early?”
“No, thanks,” answered Craig, rising from the floor. “I was just making a careful examination of the room before anyone was up so that nobody would think I was too interested. I’ve finished. But you can help me, after all. Do you think you could describe exactly how everyone was dressed that night?”
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