The Mystery & Suspense Novella

by Fletcher Flora

  “Then there is something you want to tell me that you cannot tell in the presence of the others?”

  The woman turned, her large eyes meeting his with an almost frightened expression, but she recovered herself immediately. “No, Mr. Trant; it is because I know that he—my husband—that no one is making any search, or trying to recover Edward—except through watching me.”

  “That is true, Mrs. Eldredge,” the psychologist helped her.

  “You must not do that too, Mr. Trant!” she leaned toward him appealingly. “You must search for the boy—my husband’s boy! You must not waste time in questioning me, or in trying me with your new methods! That is why I came to see you—to tell you, on my word of honor, that I know nothing of it!”

  “I should feel more certain if you would be frank with me,” Trant returned, “and tell me what happened on that afternoon before the child disappeared.”

  “We went motoring,” the woman replied.

  “Before you went motoring, Mrs. Eldredge,” the psychologist pressed, “what happened?”

  She shrank suddenly, and turned upon him eyes filled with unconquerable terror. He waited, but she did not answer.

  “Did not some one tell you,” the psychologist took a shot half in the dark, “or accuse you that you were taking the child out in order to get rid of him?”

  The woman fell back upon the cushions, chalk-white and shuddering.

  “You have answered me,” Trant said quietly. He glanced at her pityingly, and as she shrank from him, he tingled with an unbidden sympathy for this beautiful woman. “But in spite of the fact that you never brought the boy back,” Trant cried impetuously, “and in spite of—or rather because of all that is so dark against you, believe me that I expect to clear you before them all!” He glanced at his watch. “I am glad that you have been taking me toward your home, for it is almost time for my appointment with your husband.”

  The car was running on the street bounding the park on the west. It stopped suddenly before a great stone house, the second from the intersecting street. Eldredge was running down the steps, and in a moment young Murray came after him. The husband opened the door of the limousine and helped his wife tenderly up the steps. Murray and Trant followed him together. Eldredge’s second wife—though she could comprehend nothing of what lay behind Trant’s assurance of help for her—met her husband’s look with eyes that had suddenly grown bright. Murray stared from the woman to Trant with disapproval. He nodded to the psychologist to follow him into Eldredge’s study on one side; but there he waited for his brother-in-law to return to voice his reproach.

  “What have you been saying to her, Trant?” Eldredge demanded sternly as he entered and shut the door.

  “Only what I told you this morning,” the psychologist answered—“that I believe her innocent. And after seeing what relief it brought her, I can not be sorry!”

  “You can’t?” Eldredge rebuked. “I can! When I called you in you had the right to tell me whatever you thought, however wild and without ground it was. It could not hurt me much. But now you have encouraged my wife still to hold out against us—still to defy us and to deny that she knows anything when—when, since we saw you, the case has become only more conclusive against her. We have just discovered a most startling confirmation of Miss Hendrick’s evidence. Raymond, show him!” he gestured in sorry triumph.

  Young Murray opened the library desk and pulled out a piece of newspaper, which he put in Trant’s hand. He pointed to the heading. “You see, Trant, it is the account of the kidnapping in St. Louis which occurred just before Edward was stolen.”

  All witnesses describe the kidnaper as a short, dark woman, marked with smallpox. She wore a gray coat and black skirt, a hat with white feathers, and appeared to be an Italian.

  “I knew that. It exactly corresponds with the woman described by Miss Hendricks,” Trant rejoined. “I was aware of it this morning. But I can only repeat that the case has turned more and more conclusively in favor of Mrs. Eldredge.”

  “Why, even before we recognized the woman described by Miss Hendricks the evidence was conclusive against Isabel!” Murray shot back. “Listen! She was nervously excited all that day; when the woman snatched Edward, Isabel did nothing. She denies she signaled the woman, but Miss Hendricks saw the signal. Isabel says the automobile took fifteen minutes making the circuit in the park, which is ridiculous! But she wants to give an idea in every case exactly contrary to what really occurred, and the other witnesses are agreed that the run was very quick. And most of all, she tried to throw us off in her description of the woman. The other three are agreed that she was short and slight. Isabel declares she was large and tall. The testimony of the chauffeur and the maid agrees with Miss Hendricks’ in every particular—except that the maid says the woman was dressed in violet. In that one particular she is probably mistaken, for Miss Hendricks’ description is most minute. Certainly the woman was not, as Isabel has again and again repeated in her efforts to throw us off the track, and in the face of all other evidence, clothed in a red dress!”

  “Very well summarized!” said Trant. “Analyzed and summarized just as evidence has been ten million times in a hundred thousand law courts since the taking of evidence began. You could convict Mrs. Eldredge on that evidence. Juries have convicted thousands of other innocent people on evidence less trustworthy. The numerous convictions of innocent persons are as black a shame to-day as burnings and torturings were in the Middle Ages; as tests by fire and water, or as executions for witchcraft. Courts take evidence to-day exactly as it was taken when Joseph was a prisoner in Egypt. They hang and imprison on grounds of ‘precedent’ and ‘common sense.’ They accept the word of a witness where its truth seems likely, and refuse it where it seems otherwise. And, having determined the preponderance of evidence, they sometimes say, as you have just said of Lucy Carew, ‘though correct in everything else, in this one particular fact our truthful witness is mistaken.’ There is no room for mistakes, Mr. Eldredge, in scientific psychology. Instead of analyzing evidence by the haphazard methods of the courts, we can analyze it scientifically, exactly, incontrovertibly—we can select infallibly the true from the false. And that is what I mean to do now,” he added, “if my apparatus, for which you telephoned this morning, has come.”

  “The boxes are in the rear hall,” Eldredge replied. “I have obtained over a hundred views of the locality, and the cards you requested me to secure are here too.”

  “Good! Then you will get together the witnesses? The maid and the chauffeur I need to see only for a moment. I will question them while you are sending for Miss Hendricks.”

  Eldredge rang for the butler. “Bring in those boxes which have just come for Mr. Trant,” he commanded. “Send this note to Miss Hendricks”—he wrote a few lines swiftly—“and tell Lucy and Morris to come here at once.”

  He watched Trant curiously while he bent to his boxes and began taking out his apparatus. Trant first unpacked a varnished wooden box with a small drop window in one end. Opposite the window was a rack upon which cards or pictures could be placed. They could then be seen only through the drop-window. This window worked like the shutter of a camera, and was so controlled that it could be set to remain open for a fixed time, in seconds or parts of a second, after which it closed automatically. As Trant set this up and tested the shutter, the maid and chauffeur came to the door of the library. Trant admitted the girl and shut the door.

  “On Tuesday afternoon,” he said to her, kindly, “was Mrs. Eldredge excited—very much excited—before you came to the place where the machine broke down, and before she saw the woman who took Edward away?”

  “Yes, sir,” the girl answered. “She was more excited than I’d seen her ever before, all the afternoon, from the time we started.”

  The young psychologist then admitted the chauffeur, and repeated his question.

  “She was most nervous, yes
, sir; and excited, sir, from the very first,” the chauffeur answered.

  “That is all,” said Trant, suddenly dismissing both, then turning without expression to Eldredge. “If Miss Hendricks is here I will examine her at once.”

  Eldredge went out, and returned with the little old maid. Miss Hendricks had a high-bred, refined and delicate face; and a sweet, though rather loquacious, manner. She acknowledged the introduction to Trant with old-fashioned formality.

  “Please sit down, Miss Hendricks,” said Trant, motioning her to a chair facing the drop-window of the exposure box. “This little window will open and stand open an instant. I want you to look in and read the word that you will see.” He dropped a card quickly into the rack.

  “Do not be surprised,” he begged, as she looked at the drop-window curiously, “if this examination seems puerile to you. It is not really so; but only unfamiliar in this country, yet. The Germans have carried psychological work further than any one in this nation, though the United States is now awakening to its importance.” While speaking, he had lifted the shutter and kept it raised a moment.

  “It must be very interesting,” Miss Hendricks commented. “That word was ‘America,’ Mr. Trant.”

  Trant changed the card quickly. “And I’m glad to say, Miss Hendricks,” he continued, while the maiden lady watched for the next word, interested, “that Americans are taking it up intelligently, not servilely copying the Germans!”

  “That word was ‘imitation,’ Mr. Trant!” said Miss Hendricks.

  “So now much is being done,” Trant continued, again shifting the card, “in the fifty psychological laboratories of this country through painstaking experiments and researches.”

  “And that word was ‘investigate!’” said Miss Hendricks, as the shutter lifted and dropped again.

  “That was quite satisfactory, Miss Hendricks,” Trant acknowledged. “Now look at this please.” Trant swiftly substituted the lithograph he had picked up at Eldredge’s office. “What was that, Miss Hendricks?”

  “It was a colored picture of a room with several people in it.”

  “Did you see the boy in the picture, Miss Hendricks?”

  “Why—yes, of course, Mr. Trant,” the woman answered, after a little hesitation.

  “Good. Did you also see his book?”

  “Yes; I saw that he was reading.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Yes; he was about fifteen years old, in a dark suit with a brown tie, black-haired, slender, and he sat in a corner with a book on his knee.”

  “That was indeed most satisfactory! Thank you, Miss Hendricks.” Trant congratulated and dismissed her. “Now your wife, if you please, Mr. Eldredge.”

  Eldredge was curiously turning over the cards which Trant had been exhibiting, and stared at the young psychologist in bewilderment. But at Trant’s words he went for his wife. She came down at once with Mrs. Murray. Though she had been described to him, it was the first time Trant had seen the grandmother of the missing boy; and, as she entered, a movement of admiration escaped him. She was taller even than her son—who was the tallest man in the room—and she had retained surprisingly much of the grace and beauty of youth. She was a majestic and commanding figure. After settling her charge in a chair, she turned solicitously to Trant.

  “Mr. Eldredge tells me that you consider it necessary to question poor Isabel again,” she said. “But, Mr. Trant, you must be careful not to subject her to any greater strain than is necessary. We all have told her that if she would be entirely frank with us we would make allowance for one whose girlhood has been passed in poverty which obliged her to work for a living.”

  Mrs. Eldredge shrank nervously and Trant turned to Murray. “Mr. Murray,” he said, “I want as little distraction as possible during my examination of Mrs. Eldredge, so if you will be good enough to bring in to me from the study the automatograph—the other apparatus which I took from the box—and then wait outside till I have completed the test, it will assist me greatly. Mrs. Murray, you can help me if you remain.”

  Young Murray glanced at his mother and complied. The automatograph, which Trant set upon another table, was that designed by Prof. Jastrow, of the University of Wisconsin, for the study of involuntary movements. It consisted of a plate of glass in a light frame mounted on adjustable brass legs, so that it could be set exactly level. Three polished glass balls, three-quarters of an inch in diameter, rested on this plate; and on these again there rested a very light plate of glass. To the upper plate was connected a simple system of levers, which carried a needle point at their end, so holding the needle as to travel over a sheet of smoked paper.

  While Trant was setting up this instrument Mrs. Eldredge’s nervousness had greatly increased. And the few words which she spoke to her husband and Mrs. Murray—who alone remained in the room—showed that her mind was filled with thoughts of the missing child. Trant, observing her, seemed to change his plan suddenly and, instead of taking Mrs. Eldredge to the new instrument, he seated her in the chair in front of the drop-window. He explained gently to the trembling woman that he wanted her to read to him the words he exposed; and, as in the case of Miss Hendricks, he tried to put her at ease by speaking of the test itself.

  “These word tests, Mrs. Eldredge, will probably seem rather pointless. For that matter all proceedings with which one is not familiar must seem pointless; even the proceedings of the national legislature in Washington seem pointless to the spectators in the gallery.” At this point the shutter lifted and exposed a word. “What was the word, please, Mrs. Eldredge?”

  “‘Sedate,’” the woman faltered.

  “But though the tests seem pointless, Mrs. Eldredge, they are not really so. To the trained investigator each test word is as full of meaning as each mark upon the trail is to the backwoodsman on the edge of civilization. Now what word was that?” he questioned quickly, as the shutter raised and lowered again.

  The woman turned her dilated eyes on Trant. “That—that,” she hesitated—“I could make it out only as ‘p-i-o-s-e-e-r,’ “she spelled, uneasily. “I do not know any such word.”

  “I shall not try you on words any longer, Mrs. Eldredge,” Trant decided. He took his stop-watch in his hand. “But I shall ask you to tell me how much time elapses between two taps with my lead pencil on the table. Now!”

  “Two minutes,” the woman stammered.

  Eldredge, who, observing what Trant was doing, had taken his own watch from his pocket and timed the brief interval, stared at Trant in astonishment. But without giving the wife time to compose herself, Trant went on quickly:

  “Look again at the little window, Mrs. Eldredge. I shall expose to you a photograph; and if you are to help me recover your husband’s son, I hope you can recognize it. Who was it?” the psychologist demanded as the shutter dropped.

  “That was a photograph of Edward!” the woman cried. “But I never saw that picture before!” She sat back, palpitating with uneasiness.

  Mrs. Murray quickly took up the picture which had just been recognized as her grandson. “That is not Edward, Mr. Trant,” she said.

  Trant laid a finger on his lips to silence her. “Mrs. Murray,” he said in quick appeal, “I wished, as you probably noted, to use this instrument, the automatograph, a moment ago: I will try it now. Will you be good enough to test it for me? Merely rest your fingers lightly—as lightly as you please—upon this upper glass plate.” Mrs. Murray complied, willingly. “Now please hold your hand there while I lay out these about you.” He swiftly distributed the photographic views of the surrounding blocks which Eldredge had collected for him.

  Mrs. Murray watched him curiously as he placed about a dozen in a circle upon the table; and, almost as swiftly, swept them away and distributed others in their place. Again, after glancing at her hand to see that it was held in position, he set out a third lot, his eyes fixed, as before, on
the smoked paper under the needle at the end of the levers. Suddenly he halted, looked keenly at the third set of cards and, without a word, left the room. In an instant he returned and after a quick, sympathetic glance at Mrs. Eldredge, turned to her husband.

  “I need not examine Mrs. Eldredge further,” he said. “You had better take her to her room. But before you go, he grasped the woman’s cold hand encouragingly, “I want to tell you, Mrs. Eldredge, that I have every assurance of having the boy back within a very few minutes, and I have proof of your complete innocence. No, Mrs. Murray,” he forbade, as the older woman started to follow the others. “Remain here.” He closed the door after the other and faced her. “I have just sent your son to get Edward Eldredge from the place on Clark Street just south of Webster Avenue where you have been keeping him these three days.”

  “Are you a madman?” the powerful woman cried, as she tried to push by him, staring at him stonily.

  “Really it is no use, madam.” Trant prevented her. “Your son has been a most unworthy confederate from the first; and when I had excluded him from the room for a few moments and spoke to him of the place which you pointed out to me so definitely, it frightened him into acquiescence. I expect him back with the boy within a few minutes: and meanwhile—”

  “What is that?” Eldredge had stepped inside the door.

  “I was just telling Mrs. Murray,” said Trant, “that I had sent Raymond Murray after your son in the place where she has had him concealed.”

  “What—what?” the father cried, incredulously, staring into the woman’s cold face.

  “Oh, she has most enviable control of herself,” Trant commented. “She will not believe that her son has gone for Edward until he brings him back. And I might say that Mrs. Murray probably did not make away with the boy, but merely had him kept away, after he had been taken.”