In the Shadow of Agatha Christie

by Leslie S. Klinger

  Draycott Street was not difficult to find. It consisted of two rows of newly-built houses of the eight-roomed, lodging-letting order. A dim light shone from the first-floor windows of number fifteen, but the lower window was dark and uncurtained, and a board hanging from its balcony rails proclaimed that it was to let unfurnished. The door of the house stood slightly ajar, and pushing it open, Loveday led the way up a flight of stairs—lighted halfway up with a paraffin lamp—to the first floor.

  “I know the way. I was here this afternoon,” she whispered to her companion. “This is the last lecture he will give before he starts for Judea; or, in other words, bolts with the money he has managed to conjure from other people’s purses into his own.”

  The door of the room for which they were making, on the first floor, stood open, possibly on account of the heat. It laid bare to view a double row of forms, on which were seated some eight or ten persons in the attitude of all-absorbed listeners. Their faces were upturned, as if fixed on a preacher at the farther end of the room, and wore that expression of rapt, painful interest that is sometimes seen on the faces of a congregation of revivalists before the smouldering excitement bursts into flame.

  As Loveday and her companion mounted the last of the flight of stairs, the voice of the preacher—full, arrestive, resonant—fell upon their ear; and, standing on the small outside landing, it was possible to catch a glimpse of that preacher through the crack of the half-opened door.

  He was a tall, dignified-looking man, of about five-and-forty, with a close crop of white hair, black eye-brows and remarkably luminous and expressive eyes. Altogether his appearance matched his voice: it was emphatically that of a man born to sway, lead, govern the multitude.

  A boy came out of an adjoining room and asked Loveday respectfully if she would not like to go in and hear the lecture. She shook her head.

  “I could not stand the heat,” she said. “Kindly bring us chairs here.”

  The lecture was evidently drawing to a close now, and Loveday and Mr. Clampe, as they sat outside listening, could not resist an occasional thrill of admiration at the skilful manner in which the preacher led his hearers from one figure of rhetoric to another, until the oratorical climax was reached.

  “That man is a born orator,” whispered Loveday; “and in addition to the power of the voice has the power of the eye. That audience is as completely hypnotized by him as if they had surrendered themselves to a professional mesmerist.”

  To judge from the portion of the discourse that fell upon their ear, the preacher was a member of one of the many sects known under the generic name Millenarian. His topic was pollyon§ and the great battle of Armageddon. This he described as vividly as if it were being fought out under his very eye, and it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that he made the cannon roar in the ears of his listeners and the tortured cries of the wounded wail in them. He drew an appalling picture of the carnage of that battlefield, of the blood flowing like a river across the plain, of the mangled men and horses, with the birds of prey swooping down from all quarters, and the stealthy tigers and leopards creeping out from their mountain lairs. “And all this time,” he said, suddenly raising his voice from a whisper to a full, thrilling tone, “gazing calmly down upon the field of slaughter, with bent brows and folded arms, stands the imperial Apollyon. Apollyon did I say? No, I will give him his right name, the name in which he will stand revealed in that dread day, Napoleon! Napoleon it will be who, in that day, will stand as the embodiment of Satanic majesty. Out of the mists suddenly he will walk, a tall, dark figure, with frowning brows and firm-set lips, a man to rule, a man to drive, a man to kill! Apollyon the mighty, Napoleon the imperial, they are one and the same—”

  Here a sob and a choking cry from one of the women in the front seats interrupted the discourse and sent the small boy who acted as verger into the room with a glass of water.

  “That sermon has been preached before,” said Loveday. “Now can you not understand the origin of the ghost in Fountain Lane?”

  “Hysterics are catching, there’s another woman off now,” said Mr. Clampe; “it’s high time this sort of thing was put a stop to. Pearson ought to be here in another minute with his warrant.”

  The words had scarcely passed his lips before heavy steps mounting the stairs announced that Pearson and his warrant were at hand.

  “I don’t think I can be of any further use,” said Loveday, rising to depart. “If you like to come to me tomorrow morning at my hotel at ten o’clock I will tell you, step by step, how I came to connect a stolen cheque with a ridiculous ghost.”

  “We had a tussle—he showed fight at first,” said Mr. Clampe, when, precisely at ten o’clock the next morning, he called upon Miss Brooke at the Métropole. “If he had had time to get his wits together and had called some of the men in that room to the rescue, I verily believe we should have been roughly handled and he might have slipped through our fingers after all. It’s wonderful what power these ‘born orators,’ as you call them, have over minds of a certain order.”

  “Ah, yes,” answered Loveday thoughtfully; “we talk glibly enough about ‘magnetic influence,’ but scarcely realize how literally true the phrase is. It is my firm opinion that the ‘leaders of men,’ as they are called, have as absolute and genuine hypnotic power as any modern French expert, although perhaps it may be less consciously exercised. Now tell me about Rogers and Maria Lisle.”

  “Rogers had bolted, as you expected he would have done, with the six hundred pounds he had been good enough to cash for his reverend colleague. Ostensibly he had started for Judea to collect the elect, as he phrased it, under one banner. In reality, he has sailed for New York, where, thanks to the cable, he will be arrested on his arrival and sent back by return packet. Maria Lisle was arrested this morning on a charge of having stolen the cheque from Mrs. Turner. By the way, Miss Brooke, I think it is almost a pity you didn’t take possession of her diary when you had the chance. It would have been invaluable evidence against her and her rascally colleagues.”

  “I did not see the slightest necessity for so doing. Remember, she is not one of the criminal classes, but a religious enthusiast, and when put upon her defence will at once confess and plead religious conviction as an extenuating circumstance—at least, if she is well advised she will do so. I never read anything that laid bare more frankly than did this diary the mischief that the sensational teaching of these millenarians is doing at the present moment. But I must not take up your time with moralizing. I know you are anxious to learn what, in the first instance, led me to identify a millenarian preacher with a receiver of stolen property.”

  “Yes, that’s it; I want to know about the ghost; that’s the point that interests me.”

  “Very well. As I told you yesterday afternoon, the first thing that struck me as remarkable in this ghost story was the soldierly character of the ghost. One expects emotionally religious people like Freer and his wife to see visions, but one also expects those visions to partake of the nature of those emotions, and to be somewhat shadowy and ecstatic. It seemed to me certain that this Napoleonic ghost must have some sort of religious significance to these people. This conviction it was that set my thoughts running in the direction of the millenarians, who have attached a religious significance (although not a polite one) to the name of Napoleon by embodying the evil Apollyon in the person of a descendant of the great Emperor, and endowing him with all the qualities of his illustrious ancestor. I called upon the Freers, ordered a pair of boots, and while the man was taking my measure, I asked him a few very pointed questions on these millenarian notions. The man prevaricated a good deal at first, but at length was driven to admit that he and his wife were millenarians at heart, that, in fact, the prayer meeting at which the Napoleonic ghost had made its first appearance was a millenarian one, held by a man who had at one time been a Wesleyan preacher in the chapel in Gordon Street, but who had been dismissed from his charge there because his teaching had been held to
be unsound. Freer further stated that this man had been so much liked that many members of the congregation seized every opportunity that presented itself of attending his ministrations, some openly, others, like himself and his wife, secretly, lest they might give offence to the elders and ministers of their chapel.”

  “And the bootmaking connection suffer proportionately,” laughed Mr. Clampe.

  “Precisely. A visit to the Wesleyan chapel in Gordon Street and a talk with the chapel attendant enabled me to complete the history of this inhibited preacher, the Rev. Richard Steele. From this attendant I ascertained that a certain elder of their chapel, John Rogers by name, had seceded from their communion, thrown in his lot with Richard Steele, and that the two together were now going about the country preaching that the world would come to an end on Thursday, April 11th, 1901, and that five years before this event, viz., on the 5th of March, 1896, one hundred and forty-four thousand living saints would be caught up to heaven. They furthermore announced that this translation would take place in the land of Judea, that, shortly, saints from all parts of the world would be hastening thither, and that in view of this event a society had been formed to provide homes—a series, I suppose—for the multitudes who would otherwise be homeless. Also (a very vital point this), that subscriptions for this society would be gladly received by either gentleman. I had arrived so far in my ghost enquiry when you came to me, bringing the stolen cheque with its pencilled figures, 144,000.”

  “Ah, I begin to see!” murmured Mr. Clampe.

  “It immediately occurred to me that the man who could make persons see an embodiment of his thought at will, would have very little difficulty in influencing other equally receptive minds to a breach of the ten commandments. The world, it seems to me, abounds in people who are little more than blank sheets of paper, on which a strong hand may transcribe what it will—hysteric subjects, the doctors would call them; hypnotic subjects others would say; really the line that divides the hysteric condition from the hypnotic is a very hazy one. So now, when I saw your stolen cheque, I said to myself, ‘there is a sheet of blank paper somewhere in that country vicarage, the thing is to find it out.’”

  “Ah, good Mrs. Brown’s gossip made your work easy to you there.”

  “It did. She not only gave me a complete summary of the history of the people within the vicarage walls, but she put so many graphic touches to that history that they lived and moved before me. For instance, she told me that Maria Lisle was in the habit of speaking of Mrs. Turner as a ‘Child of the Scarlet Woman,’ a ‘Daughter of Babylon,’ and gave me various other minute particulars, which enabled me, so to speak, to see Maria Lisle going about her daily duties, rendering her mistress reluctant service, hating her in her heart as a member of a corrupt faith, and thinking she was doing God service by despoiling her of some of her wealth, in order to devote it to what seemed to her a holy cause. I would like here to read to you two entries which I copied from her diary under dates respectively August 3rd (the day the cheque was lost) and August 7th (the following Sunday), when Maria no doubt found opportunity to meet Steele at some prayer-meeting in Brighton.”

  Here Loveday produced her note-book and read from it as follows:

  Today I have spoiled the Egyptians! Taken from a Daughter of Babylon that which would go to increase the power of the Beast!

  “And again, under date August 7th, she writes:”

  I have handed today to my beloved pastor that of which I despoiled at Daughter of Babylon. It was blank, but he told me he would fill it in so that 144,000 of the elect would be each the richer by one penny. Blessed thought! this is the doing of my most unworthy hand.

  “A wonderful farrago, that diary of distorted Scriptural phraseology—wild eulogies on the beloved pastor, and morbid ecstatics, such as one would think could be the outcome only of a diseased brain. It seems to me that Portland or Broadmoor, and the ministrations of a sober-minded chaplain, may be about the happiest thing that could befall Maria Lisle at this period of her career. I think I ought to mention in this connection that when at the religious service yesterday afternoon (to attend which I slightly postponed my drive to East Downes), I heard Steele pronounce a fervid eulogy on those who had strengthened his hands for the fight which he knew it would shortly fall to his lot to wage against Apollyon, I did not wonder at weak-minded persons like Maria Lisle, swayed by such eloquence, setting up new standards of right and wrong for themselves.”

  “Miss Brooke, another question or two. Can you in any way account for the sudden payment of Mrs. Turner’s debts—a circumstance that led me a little astray in the first instance?”

  “Mrs. Brown explained the matter easily enough. She said that a day or two back, when she was walking on the other side of the vicarage hedge, and the husband and wife in the garden were squabbling as usual over money-matters, she heard Mr. Turner say indignantly, ‘only a week or two ago I gave you nearly £500 to pay your debts in Brighton, and now there comes another bill.’”

  “Ah, that makes it plain enough. One more question and I have done. I have no doubt there’s something in your theory of the hypnotic power (unconsciously exercised) of such men as Richard Steele, although, at the same time, it seems to me a trifle far-fetched and fanciful. But even admitting it, I don’t see how you account for the girl, Martha Watts, seeing the ghost. She was not present at the prayer-meeting which called the ghost into being, nor does she appear in any way to have come into contact with the Rev. Richard Steele.”

  “Don’t you think that ghost-seeing is quite as catching as scarlet-fever or measles?” answered Loveday, with a little smile. “Let one member of a family see a much individualized and easily described ghost, such as the one these good people saw, and ten to one others in the same house will see it before the week is over. We are all in the habit of asserting that ‘seeing is believing.’ Don’t you think the converse of the saying is true also, and that ‘believing is seeing’?”

  * An ornamental writing desk with drawers.

  † While the phrase is used to mean something like “truly accursed,” it is actually two distinct words: “anathema,” meaning accursed, and “Maranatha,” meaning “the Lord is coming.” The phrase appears at the end of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, I Corinthians 16:22.

  ‡ Tour guide.

  § The Greek name for Abbadon, the “Destroyer,” the “Angel of Death,” the leader of the army of locusts mentioned in the Book of Revelation.

  Geraldine Bonner (1870–1930) was an American journalist and author, whose father John Bonner was also a journalist and historical writer. By 1899, according to her father’s obituary, Geraldine Bonner had already established a reputation as a “well-known” magazine writer and novelist. Though she is best remembered for her Lady Laura, a gentlewoman-burglar featured in her novel The Castlecourt Diamond Case (1906), the following story features—what else!—an enterprising young journalist who sets out to save a man wrongly accused of murder. The story won a prize in a competition run by The Black Cat magazine and first appeared in June 1899.

  THE STATEMENT OF JARED JOHNSON

  GERALDINE BONNER

  I am going to write my side of the famous Johnson Case.

  It’s a pretty hard thing to go over in cold blood, but I want the public to hear my version of the story. They know the case against me has been dismissed and they’ve read in the papers what I said, but it’s been so mixed up and so misrepresented that I’ve decided to make my own statement—to write down as simply and as honestly as I can just how it was I came to be suspected.

  My name is Jared Johnson and until I was arrested on the 23d of last December, I was the janitor of the Fremont Building, and had been so for two years past.

  The Fremont, as people know now, since the trial made it famous, is an old building off Washington Square. It was one of those houses that still exist in that quarter of the city, which used to be the homes of the gentry and gradually got down in the world till they were first sliced
off into flats, and then split up into offices.

  The Fremont had been a fine, well built house in the beginning, and even when I came into it was in good repair. But it was old-fashioned, without elevators or electric lights, and the offices rented for low prices.

  The top story had been used as a photograph gallery, and had long glass skylights in the ceiling. But that was before my time. Ever since I’d been janitor it had been leased by a society of ladies for a studio. One batch painted there all the morning and another all the afternoon. They had models who used to pose for them and who were forever clattering up and down stairs—mostly Italians and generally a pretty tough-looking lot.

  This room was a good deal of a charge on me, for I had to keep it heated up to a tremendous temperature, because the models stood up to be painted in their skins as God made them. And, if they were dagoes, I couldn’t let them take their deaths. One end of the room, under the corner skylight, was curtained off for them to use as a dressing room.

  Below this were four floors of offices and lodgings, and in the basement I and my wife, Rosy, had our rooms. I have to be particular about describing all this, because I want those who read my statement to have everything clear in their minds.

  Just about the middle of December there was a great frost, the worst cold snap I remember, and I came to New York from Ohio when I was twelve. On the morning of December 17th Rosy told me that the thermometer outside Miss Maitland, the typewriter’s, window, had dropped to 3 above zero. It was mortal cold. I was kept busy building fires and seeing that the steam heat was on full pressure.

  I was proud of the old Fremont for not a pipe in her burst or froze. And next door in the Octagon Building, a brand new skyscraper, twelve stories, and with all the modern improvements, the pipes on our side burst and froze so that the ice was clogged down the sides of them in a huge mass with icicles as long as your arm.