The Mystery & Suspense Novella

by Fletcher Flora

  Mrs. Murray had reseated herself, after her short struggle with Trant; and her face was absolutely devoid of expression. “He is a madman!” she said, calmly.

  “Perhaps it will hasten matters,” suggested Trant, “if I explain to you the road by which I reached this conclusion. As a number of startling cases of kidnapping have occurred recently, the very prevalent fear they have aroused has made it likely that kidnapping will be the first theory in any case even remotely resembling it. In view of this I could accept your statement of kidnapping only if the circumstances made it conclusive, which they did not. With the absence of any demand for a real ransom they made it impossible even for you to hold the idea of kidnapping, except by presuming it a plot of Mrs. Eldredge’s.

  “But when I began considering whether this could be her plan, as charged, I noted a singular inconsistency in the attitude of Raymond Murray. He showed obvious eagerness to disgrace Mrs. Eldredge, but for some reason—not on the surface—was most actively opposed to police interference and the publicity which would most thoroughly carry out his object. So I felt from the first that he, and perhaps his mother—who was established over Mrs. Eldredge in her own home, but, by your statement, was to leave if Mrs. Eldredge came into charge of things—knew something which they were concealing. This much I saw before I read a word of the evidence.

  “The evidence of the maid and the chauffeur told only two things—that a small woman rushed into the park and ran off with your son; and that your wife was in an extremely agitated condition. The maid said that the woman was blond and dressed in violet; and I knew, when I had read the evidence of other witnesses, that that was undoubtedly the truth.”

  Eldredge, pacing the rug, stopped short and opened his lips; but checked himself.

  “Without Miss Hendricks’ testimony there was positively nothing against your wife in the evidence of the chauffeur and the maid. I then took up Miss Hendricks’ evidence and had not read two lines before I saw that—as an accusation against your wife, Mr. Eldredge—it was worthless. Miss Hendricks is one of those most dangerous persons, absolutely truthful, and—absolutely unable to tell the truth! She showed a common, but hopeless, state of suggestibility. Her first sentence, in which she said she did not often look out of the window for fear people would think she was watching them, showed her habit of confusing what she saw with ideas that existed only in her own mind. Her testimony was a mass of unwarranted inferences. She saw a woman coming from the direction of the car line, so to Miss Hendricks ‘it was evident that she had just descended from a car.’ The woman was hurrying, so ‘she was late for an appointment.’ ‘As soon as she caught sight of the woman’ Mrs. Eldredge lifted Edward to the ground. And so on through a dozen things which showed the highest susceptibility to suggestion. You told me that before telling her story to you she had told it to Mrs. Murray. Miss Hendricks had rushed to her at once: the bias and suggestions which made her testimony apparently so damning against your wife could only have come from Mrs. Murray.”

  Eldredge’s glance shot to his mother-in-law. But Trant ran on rapidly. “I took up your wife’s evidence; and though apparently entirely at variance with the others, I saw at once that it really corroborated the testimony of the nurse and the chauffeur.”

  “Her evidence confirmed?” Eldredge demanded, brusquely.

  “Yes,” Trant replied; “to the psychologist, who understood Mrs. Eldredge’s mental condition, her evidence was the same as theirs. I had already seen for myself, by the aid of what you had told me, Mrs. Eldredge’s position in this household, after leaving your office to become your wife. On entering your house, she was brought face to face with a woman already in control here—a strong and dominant woman, who had immense influence over you. Everything told of a struggle between these women—slights, obstructions, merciless criticisms, of which your wife could not complain, which had brought her close to nervous prostration. You remember that immediately after reading her statement I asked you what particular thing had occurred just before she went motoring to throw her into that noticeably excitable condition described by the maid and the chauffeur. You said nothing had happened. But I was certain even then that there had been something—I know now that Mrs. Murray had put a climax to her persecution of your wife by charging that Mrs. Eldredge was taking the boy out to get rid of him—and my knowledge of psychology told me that, allowing for Mrs. Eldredge’s hysterical condition, she had stated in her evidence the same things that the maid and the chauffeur had stated. It is a fact that in her condition of hyperaesthesia—a condition readily brought on not only in weak women, but sometimes in strong men, by excitement and excessive nervous strain—her senses would be highly over-stimulated. Barely hearing the sound of the woman’s voice, she would honestly describe her as speaking in a loud tone.

  “All time intervals would also be greatly prolonged. It truly seemed to her that the child took a long time to cross the grass and that the woman talked with him several minutes, instead of seconds. The sensation of a similarly long time elapsing after the woman took the boy’s hand gave her the impression of a long struggle. She would honestly believe that it took the automobile fifteen minutes to make the circuit of the park. When you asked your wife why, if so much time elapsed, she tried to do nothing, she was unable to answer; for no time was wasted at all.

  “But most vital of all, I recognized her description of the woman as wearing a red dress as most conclusive confirmation of the maid’s testimony and a final proof, not that Mrs. Eldredge was trying to mislead you, but that she was telling the truth as well as she could. For it is a common psychological fact that in a hysterical condition red is the color most commonly seen subjectively; the sensation of red not only persists in hysteria, when other color sensations disappear, but it is common to have it take the place of another color, especially violet. It was discovered and recorded over thirty years ago that, in excessive excitability known psychologically as hyperaesthesia, all colors are lifted in the spectrum scale and, to the overexcited retina, the shorter waves of violet may give the sensation of the longer ones producing red. So what to you seemed an intentional contradiction was to me the most positive and complete assurance of your wife’s honesty.

  “And finally, to be consistent with this condition, I knew that if her state was due to expectation of harm to herself or the child from any unusually large, dark woman, she would see the woman in her excitement, as large and dark. For it is one of the commonest facts known to the psychologist that our senses in excitement can be so influenced by our expectation of any event that we actually see things, not as they are, but as we expect them to be. So when you told me that Mrs. Murray answered the description given by Mrs. Eldredge, all threads of the skein had led to Mrs. Murray.

  “Now, as it was clear to me that Mrs. Murray herself had used Miss Hendricks’ easy suggestibility to prejudice her evidence against Mrs. Eldredge, Mrs. Murray could not herself have believed that Mrs. Eldredge had taken the boy away. So, since the Murrays were making no search, they must have soon found out where the boy was and were satisfied that he was safe and that they could produce him, after they had finished ruining Mrs. Eldredge.

  “Therefore I was in a position to appreciate Mrs. Murray’s ridiculous letter when it came, with its painfully misspelled demand for an absurdly small ransom that would not be refused for a moment, as the object of the letter was only to make the final move in the case against Mrs. Eldredge and enable them to return the boy. So far, it is clear?” Trant checked his rapid explanation.

  Still Eldredge stared at the set, defiant features of his mother-in-law; and made no reply.

  “I appreciated thoroughly that I must prove all this,” Trant then shot on rapidly. “You, Mr. Eldredge, discovered that Miss Hendricks’ description of the woman tallied precisely with the published description of the St. Louis kidnaper, without appreciating that the description was in her mind. With her high suggestibility she substitute
d it for the woman she actually saw as unconsciously—and as honestly—as she substituted Mrs. Murray’s suggestions for her own observations.

  “But perhaps you can appreciate it now. You saw how I showed her the word ‘Armenia’ and spoke of the United States to lead her mind to substitute ‘America’ to prove how easily her mind substituted acts, motions and everything at Mrs. Murray’s suggestion. I had only to speak of ‘servilely copying’ to have her change ‘invitation’ into ‘imitation.’ A mere mention of researches made her think she saw ‘investigate,’ when the word was ‘inviolate.’ Finally, after showing her a picture in which there were two women and a man, but no boy, she stated, at my slight suggestion, that she saw a boy, and even described him for me and told me what he was doing. I had proved beyond cavil the utter worthlessness of evidence given by this woman, and dismissed her.”

  “I followed that!” Eldredge granted.

  Trant continued: “So I tested your wife to show that she had not suggestibility, like Miss Hendricks—that is, she could not be made to say that she saw ‘senate’ instead of ‘sedate’ by a mere mention of the national legislature at the time the word was shown; nor would she make over ‘pioseer’ into ‘pioneer’ under the suggestion of backwoodsman. But by getting her into an excitable condition with her mind emotionally set to expect a picture of the missing boy, her excited mind at the moment of perception altered the picture of the totally different six-year-old boy I showed her into the picture of Edward, as readily as her highly excited senses—fearing for herself and for the boy through Mrs. Murray—altered the woman she saw taking Edward into an emotional semblance of Mrs. Murray.

  “I had understood it as essential to clear your wife as to find the boy—whom I appreciated could be in no danger. So I made the next test with Mrs. Murray. This, I admit, depended largely upon chance. I knew, of course, that she must know where the boy was and that probably her son did too. The place was also probably in the vicinity. The automatograph is a device to register the slightest and most involuntary motions. It is a basic psychological fact that there is an inevitable muscular impulse toward any object which arouses emotion. If one spreads a score of playing cards about a table and the subject has a special one in mind, his hand on the automatograph will quickly show a faint impulse toward the card, although the subject is entirely unaware of it. So I knew that if the place where the boy was kept was shown in any of the pictures, I would get a reaction from Mrs. Murray; which I did—with the result, Mr. Eldredge,” Trant went to the window and watched the street, expectantly, “that Mr. Raymond Murray is now bringing your son around the corner and—”

  But the father had burst from the room and toward the door. Trant heard a cry of joy and the stumble of an almost hysterical woman as Mrs. Eldredge rushed down the stairs after her husband. He turned as Mrs. Murray, taking advantage of the excitement, endeavored to push past him.

  “You are leaving the house?” he asked. “But tell me first,” he demanded, “how did the boy come to be taken out of the park? Had the boys whom the chauffeur said stopped around his car anything to do with it?”

  “They were a class which a kindergarten teacher—a new teacher—had taken to see the animals,” the woman answered, coldly.

  “Ah! So one of them was left behind—the one whom they saw running and mistook for Edward—and the teacher, running back, took Edward by mistake. But she must have discovered her mistake when she rejoined the others.”

  “Only after she got on the car. There one of my former servants recognized him and took him to her home.”

  “And when the servant came to tell you, and you understood how Miss Hendricks’ suggestibility had played into your hands, the temptation was too much for you, and you made this last desperate attempt to discredit Mrs. Eldredge. I see!” He stood back and let her by.

  Raymond Murray, after bringing back the boy, had disappeared. In the hall Eldredge and his wife bent over the boy, the woman completely hysterical in the joy of the recovery, laughing and crying alternately. She caught the boy to her frantically as she stared wildly at a woman ascending the steps.

  “The woman in red—the woman in red!” she cried suddenly.

  Trant stepped to her side quickly. “But she doesn’t look big and dark to you now, does she?” he asked. “And see, now,” he said, trying to calm her, “the dress is violet again. Yes, Mr. Eldredge, this, I believe, is the woman in violet—the small blond woman who took your boy from the park by mistake—as I will explain to you. She is coming, undoubtedly, in response to an advertisement that I put in The Journal this noon. But we do not require her help now, for Mrs. Murray has told me all.”

  The maid, Lucy Carew, ran suddenly up the hall.

  “Mrs. Murray and Mr. Murray are leaving the house, Mr. Eldredge!” she cried, bewilderedly.

  “Are they?” the master of the house returned. He put his arm about its mistress and together they took the boy to his room.

  IV

  THE PRIVATE BANK PUZZLE

  “Planning to rob us?”

  “I am sure of it!”

  “But I don’t understand, Gordon! Who? How? What are they planning to rob?” the young acting-president of the bank demanded, sharply.

  “The safe, Mr. Howell—the safe!” the old cashier repeated. “Some one inside the bank is planning to rob it!”

  “How do you know?”

  “I feel it; I know it. I am as certain of it as though I had overheard the plot being made! But I cannot tell you how I know. Put an extra man on guard here tonight,” the old man appealed, anxiously, “for I am certain that some one in this office means to enter the safe!”

  The acting-president swung his chair away from the anxious little man before him, and glanced quickly through the glass door of his private office at the dozen clerks and tellers busy in the big room who sufficed to carry on the affairs of the little bank.

  It was just before noon on the last Wednesday in November, in the old-established private banking house of Henry Howell & Son, on La Salle Street; and it was the beginning of the sixth week that young Howell had been running the bank by himself. For the first two or three weeks, since his father’s rheumatism suddenly sent him to Carlsbad, the business of the bank had seemed to go on as smoothly as usual. But for the last month, as young Howell himself could not deny, there had been a difference.

  “A premonition, Gordon?” Howell’s brown eyes scrutinized the cashier curiously. “I did not know your nerve had been so shaken!”

  “Call it premonition if you wish,” the old cashier answered, almost wildly. “But I have warned you! If anything happens now you cannot hold me to blame for it. I know the safe is going to be entered! Why else should they search my waste-basket? Why was my coat taken? Who took my pocketbook? Who just to-day tried to break into my old typewriter desk?”

  “Gordon! Gordon!” The young man jumped to his feet with an expression of relief. “You need a vacation! I know better than anybody how much has happened in the last two months to shake and disturb you; but if you attach any meaning to those insignificant incidents you must be going crazy!”

  The cashier tore himself from the other’s grasp and left the office. Young Howell stood looking after him in perplexity an instant, then glanced at his watch and, taking up his overcoat, hastened out. He had a firm, well-built figure, a trifle stout; his expression, step, and all his bearing was usually quick, decisive, cheerful. But now as he passed into the street his step slowed and his head bent before the puzzle which his old cashier had just presented to him.

  After walking a block his pace quickened, however, and he turned abruptly into a great office building towering sixteen stories from the street. Halting for an instant before the building directory, he took the express elevator to the twelfth floor and, at the end of the hall, halted again before an office door upon which was stenciled in clear letters:

  “LUTHER T
RANT, PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGIST.”

  At the call to come in, he opened the door and found himself facing a red-haired, broad-shouldered young man with blue-gray eyes, who had looked up from a delicate instrument which he was adjusting upon his desk. The young banker noted, half unconsciously, the apparatus of various kinds—dials, measuring machines and clocks, electrical batteries with strange meters wired to them, and the dozen delicate machines that stood on two sides of the room, for his conscious interest was centered in the quiet but alert young man that rose to meet him.

  “Mr. Luther Trant?” he questioned.

  “Yes.”

  “I am Harry Howell, the ‘son’ of Howell & Son,” the banker introduced himself. “I heard of you, Mr. Trant, in connection with the Bronson murder; but more recently Walter Eldredge told me something of the remarkable way in which you apply scientific psychology, which has so far been recognized only in the universities, to practical problems. He made no secret to me that you saved him from wrecking the whole happiness of his home. I have come to ask you to do, perhaps, as much for me.”

  The psychologist nodded.

  “I do not mean, Mr. Trant,” said the banker, dropping into the chair toward which Trant directed him, “that our home is in danger, as Eldredge’s was. But our cashier—” The banker broke off. “Two months ago, Mr. Trant, our bank suffered its first default, under circumstances which affected the cashier very strongly. A few weeks later father had to go to Europe for his health, leaving me with old Gordon, the cashier, in charge of things. Almost immediately a series of disorders commenced, little annoyances and persecutions against the cashier. They have continued almost daily. They are so senseless, contemptible, and trivial that I have disregarded them, but they have shaken Gordon’s nerve. Twenty minutes ago he came to me, trembling with anxiety, to tell me that they mean that one of the men in the office is trying to rob the safe. I feel confident that it is only Gordon’s nervousness; but in the absence of my father I feel that I cannot let the matter go longer unexplained.”