Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries

by Melville Davisson Post

  As the two entered between the plaster pillars, a tall old man came out from the county clerk’s office. But for his face, he might have been one of a thousand Englishmen in Virginia. There was nothing in the big, spare figure or the cranial lines of the man to mark.

  But the face seized you. In it was an unfathomable disgust with life, joined, one would say, with a cruel courage. The hard, bony jaw protruded; bitter lines descended along the planes of the face, and the eyes circled by red rims were expressionless and staring, as though, by some abominable negligence of nature, they were lidless. The two approached, and the one so elaborately dressed spoke to the old man.

  “How do you do, Northcote Moore?” he said. “You know Abner?”

  The old man stopped instantly and stood very still. He moved the stick in his hand a trifle before him. Then he spoke in a high-pitched, irascible voice.

  “Abner, eh! Well, what the devil is Abner here for?”

  The little pompous man clenched his fingers in his yellow gloves, but his voice showed no annoyance.

  “I asked him to have a look at Eastwood Court.”

  “Damn the justice of the peace of every county,” cried the old man, “and you included, Randolph! You never make an end of anything.”

  He gave no attention to Abner, who remained unembarrassed, regarding the impolite old man as one regards some strange, new, and particularly offensive beast.

  “Chuck the whole business, Randolph, that’s what I say,” the irascible old man continued, “and forget about it. Who the devil cares? A drooling old paralytic is snuffed out. Well, he ought to have gone five and twenty years ago! He couldn’t manage his estate and he kept me out. I was like to hang about until I rotted, while the creature played at Patience, propped up against the table and the wall. A nigger, on a search for shillings, knocks him on the head. Shall I hunt the nigger down and hang him? Damme! I would rather get him a patent of state lands!”

  The face of Randolph was a study in expression.

  “But, sir,” he said, “there are some things about this affair that are peculiar—I may say extraordinarily peculiar.”

  Again the old man stood still. When he spoke his voice was in a lower note.

  “And so,” he said, “you have nosed out a new clew and got Abner over, and we are to have another inquisition.”

  He reflected, moving his stick idly before him. Then he went on in a petulant, persuasive tone.

  “Why can’t you let sleeping dogs lie? The country is beginning to forget this affair, and you set about to stir it up. Shall I always have the thing clanking at my heels like a ball and chain?”

  Then he rang the paved court with the ferrule of his stick. “Damme, man!” he cried. “Has Virginia no mysteries, that you yap forever on old scents at Eastwood? What does it matter who did this thing? It was a public service. Virginia needs a few men on her lands with a bit of courage. This state is rotten with old timber. In youth, Duncan Moore was a fool. In age, he was better dead. Let there be an end to this, Randolph.”

  And he turned about and went back into the county clerk’s office.

  Randolph was a justice of the peace in Virginia. He looked a moment after the departing figure; then he spoke to his companion.

  “He is here to have the lands of Duncan Moore transferred on the assessor’s book to his own name. He takes the estate under the Life and Lives statute of Virginia, that the legislature got up to soften the rigor of Mr. Jefferson’s Statute of Descents. Under it, this estate with its great English manor house was devised by the original ancestor to Duncan Moore for his life, and after him to Northcote Moore for his life, and at his death to Esdale Moore. It could have run twenty-one years farther if the scrivener had known the statute. Mr. Jefferson did not entirely decapitate the law of entail.” He paused and lifted his finger with a curious gesture. “It is a queer family—I think the very queerest in Virginia. There is something defective about every one of them. Duncan Moore, the decedent, had no children. His two brothers died epileptics. This man, the son of the elder brother, is blind. And the son of the junior, Mr. Esdale Moore, the attorney-at-law—”

  The Justice of the Peace was interrupted. A little dapper man, sunburned and bareheaded, dressed like a tailor’s print, but with the smart, aggressive air of a well-bred colonial Englishman, pushed through the crowd and clapped the Justice on the shoulder.

  “What luck, Randolph?” he cried. “I am sure Abner has run the assassin to cover.” And he bobbed his head to Abner like one whose profession permits a certain familiarity. “Come along to the tavern; ‘I would listen to your wondrous tales,’ as Homer says it.”

  He led the way, calling out to a member of the bar, hailing an acquaintance, and hurling banter about him in the bluff, hearty fashion which he imagined to be the correct manner of a man of the people who is getting on. He was in the strength and vigor of his race at forty.

  “Beastly dull, Randolph,” he rattled; “nothing exciting since the dawn except old Baron—Vitch’s endless suit in chancery. But one must sit tight, rain or shine. The people must know where to find a lawyer when they want him.”

  He swung along with a big military stride.

  “The life of a lawyer is far from jolly. I should like to cut it, Randolph, if I had a good shooting and a bit of trout water. Alas, I am poor!” And he made a dramatic gesture.

  One felt that under this froth the man was calling out the truth. For all his hearty interest in affairs, the law was merely a sort of game. It was nothing real. He played to win, and he had chosen his profession with care and after long reflection, as a breeder chooses a colt for the Derby, or as an English family of influence selects a crack regiment for the heir at Oxford. He cared not one penny what the laws were or the great policies of Virginia. But he did care, with an inbred and abiding interest, about the value of a partridge shooting, or the damming of a trout stream by the grist mills. These things were the realities of life, and not the actions at law or the suits in chancery.

  “How does one get a fortune nowadays, Abner?” he called back across his shoulder, “for I need one like the devil. Marriage or crime, eh? Crime requires a certain courage, and they say out in the open that lawyers are decadent. With you and Randolph on the lookout, I should be afraid to go in for crime!”

  He clapped a passing giant on the back, called him Harrison, accused him of having an eye on Congress, and went on across his shoulder to Abner:

  “Marriage, then? Do you know a convenient orphan with a golden goose? Pleasure and a certain gain would be idyllic! The simplest men understand that. Do not the writers in Paris tell us that the French peasant on his marriage night, while embracing his bride with one arm, extends the other in order to feel the sack that contains her dowry?”

  They were now on the upper floor of the tavern porch. Mr. Esdale Moore sent a Negro for a dish of tea, after the English fashion.

  Then he got a table at the end of the porch, somewhat apart, and the three men sat down.

  “And now, Randolph,” he said, “what did you find in Eastwood?”

  “I am afraid,” replied the Justice of the Peace, “that we found little new there. The evidence remains, with trifling additions, what it was; but Abner has arrived at some interesting opinions upon this evidence.”

  “I am sure Abner can clap his hand on the assassin,” said the attorney. “Come, sir, let me fill your cup, and while I stand on one foot, as St. Augustine used to say, tell me who ejected my uncle, the venerable Duncan Moore, out of life.”

  The. Negro servant had returned with a great silver pot, and a tray of cups with queer kneeling purple cows on them.

  Abner held out his cup.

  “Sir,” he said, “one must be very certain, to answer that question.” His voice was deep and level, like some balanced element in nature.

  He waited while the man filled the cup; then he replaced it on the table.

  “And, sir,” he continued slowly, “I am not yet precisely certain.”
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  He slipped a lump of sugar slowly into the cup.

  “It is the Ruler of Events who knows, sir; we can only conjecture. We cannot see the truth naked before us as He does; we must grope for it from one indication to another until we find it.”

  “But, reason, Abner,” interrupted the lawyer, bustling in his chair; “we have that, and God has nothing better!”

  “Sir,” replied Abner, “I cannot think of God depending on a thing so crude as reason. If one reflects upon it, I think one will immediately see that reason is a quality exclusively peculiar to the human mind. It is a thing that God could never, by any chance, require. Reason is the method by which those who do not know the truth, step by step, finally discover it.”

  He paused and looked out across the table at the far-off mountains.

  “And so, sir. God knows who in Virginia has a red hand from this work at Eastwood Court, without assembling the evidence and laboring to determine whither these signboards point. But Randolph and I are like children with a puzzle. We must get all the pieces first, and then sit down and laboriously fit them up.”

  He looked down into his cup, his face in repose and reflective.

  “Ah, sir,” he went on, “if one could be certain that one had always every piece, there would no longer remain such a thing as a human mystery. Every event dovetails into every other event that precedes and follows. With the pieces complete, the truth could never elude us. But, alas, sir, human intelligence is feeble and easily deludes itself, and the relations and ramifications of events are vast and intricate.”

  “Then, sir,” said Mr. Esdale Moore, “you do not believe that the criminal can create a series of false evidences that will be at all points consistent with the truth.”

  “No man can do it,” replied Abner. “For to do that, one must know everything that goes before and everything that follows the event which one is attempting to falsify. And this omniscience only the intelligence of God can compass. It is impossible for the human mind to manufacture a false consistency of events except to a very limited extent.”

  “Then, gentlemen,” cried the lawyer, “you can make me no excuse for leaving this affair a mystery.”

  “Yes,” replied my uncle, “we could make you an excuse—a valid and sound excuse: the excuse of incompetency.” Mr. Esdale Moore laughed in his big, hearty voice.

  “With your reputation, Abner, and that of Squire Randolph in Virginia, I should refuse to receive it.”

  “Alas,” continued Abner, “we are no better than other men. A certain experience, some knowledge of the habits of criminals, and a little skill in observation are the only advantages we have. If one were born among us with, let us say, a double equipment of skull space, no criminal would ever escape him.”

  “He would laugh at us, Abner,” said the Justice. “He would never cease to laugh,” returned my uncle, “but he would laugh the loudest at the bungling criminal. To him, the most cunning crime would be a botch; fabricated events would be conspicuous patch-work, and he would see the identity of the criminal agent in a thousand evidences.” He hesitated a moment; then he added:

  “Fortunately for human society, the inconsistency of false evidence is usually so glaring that any one of us is able to see it.”

  “As in Lord William Russell’s case,” said the Justice, “where the valet, having killed his master in such a manner as to create the aspect of suicide, inadvertently carried away the knife with which his victim was supposed to have cut his own throat.”

  “Precisely,” said Abner. “And there is, I think, in every case something equally inconsistent, if we only look close enough to find it.”

  He turned to Mr. Esdale Moore.

  “With a little observation, sir, to ascertain the evidence, and a little common sense to interpret its intent, Randolph and I manage to get on.”

  The lawyer put a leading question.

  “What glaring inconsistency did you find at Eastwood?” he said.

  Abner looked at Randolph, as though for permission to go on. The Justice nodded.

  “Why, this thing, sir,” he answered, “that a secretary that was not locked should be broken open.”

  “But, Abner,” said the lawyer, “who, but myself, knew that this secretary was not locked? It was the custom to lock it, although it contained nothing but my uncle’s playing cards. As I told Randolph, on the day of my uncle’s death I put the key down among the litter of papers inside the secretary, after I had opened it, and could not find it again, so I merely closed the lid. But I alone knew this. Everybody else would imagine the secretary to be locked as usual.”

  “Not everybody,” continued my uncle. “Reflect a moment: to believe the secretary locked on this night, one must have known that it was locked on every preceding night. To believe that it was locked on this night because the lid was closed, one must have known that it was always locked on every preceding night when the lid was closed. And further, sir, one must have known this custom so well—one must have been so certain of it—that one knew it was not worth while to attempt to open the secretary by pulling down the lid on the chance that it might not be locked, and so, broke it open at once.

  “Now, sir,” he went on, “does this not exclude the theory that Duncan Moore was killed by a common burglar who entered the house for the purpose of committing a robbery? Such a criminal agent could not have known this custom. He might have believed the secretary to be locked, or imagined it to be, but he could not have known it conclusively. He could not have been so certain that he would fail to lay hold of the lid to make sure. One must assume the lowest criminal will act with some degree of intelligence.”

  “By Jove!” cried the attorney, striking the table, “I had a feeling that my uncle was not killed by a common thief! I thought the authorities were not at the bottom of this thing, and that is why I kept at Randolph, why I urged him to get you out to Eastwood Court.”

  “Sir,” replied Abner, “I am obliged to you for the compliment. But your feeling was justified, and your persistence in this case will, I think, be rewarded.

  “Nevertheless, sir, if you will pardon the digression, permit me to say that your remark interests me profoundly. Whence, I wonder, came this feeling that caused you to reject the obvious explanation and to urge a further and more elaborate inquiry?”

  “Now, Abner,” returned Mr. Esdale Moore, “I cannot answer that question. The thing was a kind of presentiment. I had a sort of feeling, as we express it. I cannot say more than that.”

  “I have had occasion,” continued Abner, “to examine the theory of presentiments, and I find that we are forced to one of two conclusions: Either they are of an origin exterior to the individual, of which we have no reliable proof, or they are founded upon some knowledge of which the correlation in the mind is, for the moment, obscure. That is to say, a feeling, presentiment, or premonition, may be a sort of shadow thrown by an unformed conclusion.

  “An unconscious or subconscious mental process produces an impression. We take this impression to be from behind the stars, when, in fact, it merely indicates the rational conclusion at which we would have arrived if we had made a strong, conscious effort to understand the enigma before us.”

  He drank a little tea and put the cup back gently on the table.

  “Perhaps, sir, if you had gone forward with the mental processes that produced your premonition, you would have worked out the solution of this mystery. Why, I wonder, did your deductions remain subconscious?”

  “That is a question in mental science,” replied the lawyer.

  “Is not all science mental?” continued my uncle. “Do not men take their facts in a bag to the philosopher that he may put them together? Let us reflect a moment, sir: Are not the primitive emotions—as, for example, fear—in their initial stages always subconscious, or, as we say, instinctive? Thus, a thousand times in the day do not our bodies draw back from danger of which we are wholly unconscious? We do not go forward into these perils, and we pass on
with no realization of their existence. Can we doubt, sir, that the mind also instinctively perceives danger at the end of certain mental processes and does not go forward upon them?” The lawyer regarded my uncle in a sort of wonder. “Abner,” he said, “you forget my activities in this affair. It is I who have kept at Randolph. What instinctive fear, then, could have mentally restrained me?”

  “Why, sir,” replied Abner, “the same fear that instinctively restrained Randolph and myself.”

  Mr. Esdale Moore looked my uncle in the face.

  “What fear?” he said.

  “The fear,” continued Abner, “of what these deductions lead to.”

  Abner moved his chair a little nearer to the table and went on in a lower voice.

  “Now, sir, if we exclude the untenable hypothesis that this crime was committed by an unknown thief, from the motive of robbery, what explanation remains? Let us see: This secretary could have been broken open only by some one who knew that it was the custom to keep it locked. Who was certain of that custom? Obviously, sir, only those in the household of the aged Duncan Moore.”

  The face of the lawyer showed a profound interest. He leaned over, put his right elbow on the table, rested his chin in the trough of the thumb and finger, and with his other hand, took a box of tobacco cigarettes from his pocket and began to break it open. It was one of the elegancies of that day.