RGL e-Book Cover©
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover©
Cosmopolitan, September 1914, with "The Family Skeleton"
What is the secret of Minturn's mysterious death? Ordinary detective methods yield no theory that seems to fit in with the facts. No wonder; for rarely has a more subtle crime been conceived in the brain of man. But Craig Kennedy, with his up-to-the-minute knowledge of scientific discovery and familiarity with new inventions, quickly clears up perhaps the most puzzling situation which has ever been brought to his notice.
"MR. KENNEDY—I am ruined—ruined!"
It was early one morning that the telephone-bell rang, and I answered it. A very excited German, breathless and incoherent, was evidently at the other end of the wire.
I handed the receiver to Craig and picked up the morning paper lying on the table.
"Minturn—dead!" I heard Craig exclaim. "In the paper this morning? I'll be down to see you directly."
Kennedy almost tore the paper from me. In the next-to-the-end column, where late news usually is dropped, was a brief account of the sudden death of Owen Minturn, one of the foremost criminal lawyers of the city, in Josephson's Baths down-town. It ended:
"It is believed by the coroner that Mr. Minturn was shocked to death, and evidence is being sought to show that two hundred and forty volts of electricity had been thrown into the attorney's body while he was in the electric bath. Joseph Josephson, the proprietor of the bath, who operated the switchboard, is being held pending the completion of the inquiry."
As Kennedy hastily ran his eye over the paragraphs, he became more and more excited.
As Kennedy hastily ran his eye over the paragraphs, he became more and more excited.
"Walter," he cried, as he finished, "I don't believe that that was an accident."
"Why?" I asked.
He already had his hat on, and I knew he was going to Josephson's breakfastless. I followed reluctantly.
"Because," he answered, as we hustled along in the early-morning crowd, "it was only yesterday afternoon that I saw Minturn at his office, and he made an appointment with me for this very morning. He was a very secretive man, but he did tell me this much—that he feared his life was in danger and that it was in some way connected with that Pearcy case up in Stratfield, Connecticut, where he has an estate. You have read of the case?"
Indeed I had. It had seemed to me to be a particularly inexplicable affair. Apparently a whole family had been poisoned, and a few days before, old Mr. Randall Pearcy, a retired manufacturer, had died after a brief but mysterious illness.
Pearcy had been married a year or so ago to Annette Oakleigh, a Broadway comic-opera singer, who was his second wife. By his first marriage he had had two children—a son, Warner, and a daughter, Isabel.
Warner Pearcy, I had heard, had blazed a vermilion trail along the Great White Way, but his sister was of the opposite temperament, interested in social work, and had attracted much attention by organizing a settlement in the slums of Stratfield for the uplift of the workers in the Pearcy and other mills.
Broadway, as well as Stratfield, had already woven a fantastic background for the mystery, and hints had been broadly made that Annette Oakleigh had been very friendly with a young physician in the town, a Doctor Gunther, a friend, by the way, of Minturn.
"There has been no trial yet," went on Kennedy, "but Minturn seems to have appeared before the coroner's jury at Stratfield and to have asserted the innocence of Mrs. Pearcy and that of Doctor Gunther so well that, although the jury brought in a verdict of murder by poison by some one unknown, there has been no mention of the name of anyone else. The coroner simply adjourned the inquest so that a more careful analysis might be made of the vital organs."
"What was the poison?" I asked.
"They are pretty sure, so Minturn told me, that it was lead poisoning. The fact not generally known is," he added, in a lower tone, "that the cases were not confined to the Pearcy house. They had even extended to Minturn's, too. The estates up there adjoin, you know."
Owen Minturn, I recalled, had gained a formidable reputation by his successful handling of cases from the lowest stratum of society to the highest. Indeed, it was a byword that his appearance in court indicated two things—the guilt of the accused and a verdict of acquittal.
"Of course," Craig pursued, as we were jolted from station to station down-town, "you know they say that Minturn never kept a record of a case. But written records were as nothing compared to what that man carried in his head."
It was a common saying that if Minturn should tell all he knew, he might hang half a dozen prominent men in society. That was not strictly true, perhaps, but it was certain that a revelation of the things confided to him by clients, which were never put down on paper, would have caused a series of explosions that would have wrecked at least some portions of the social and financial world.
Had Minturn, I wondered, known the name of the real criminal?
JOSEPHSON'S was a popular bath, where many of the "sun-dodgers"
were accustomed to recuperate during the day from their arduous
pursuit of pleasure at night, and prepare for the resumption of
their toil during the coming night. It was more than that,
however, for it had a reputation for being conducted really on a
high plane.
We met Josephson downstairs. He had been released under bail, though the place was temporarily closed and watched over by the agents of the coroner and the police. Josephson appeared to be a man of some education and quite different from what I had imagined from hearing him over the telephone.
"Oh, Mr. Kennedy!" he exclaimed. "Who now will come to my baths? Last night they were crowded, but to-day—"
He ended with an expressive gesture.
"One customer I have surely lost—young Mr. Pearcy," he went on.
"Warner Pearcy?" asked Craig. "Was he here last night?"
"Nearly every night," replied Josephson, now glib enough as his first excitement subsided and his command of English returned. "He was a neighbor of Mr. Minturn's, I hear. Oh, what luck!"
"Well," remarked Kennedy, with an attempt at reassurance as if to gain the masseur's confidence, "I know as well as you that it is often amazing what a tremendous shock a man may receive and yet not be killed, and no less amazing how small a shock may kill. It all depends on circumstances."
Josephson shot a covert look at Kennedy.
"Yes," he reiterated, "but I cannot see how it could be. If the lights had become short-circuited with the bath, that might have thrown a current into the bath. But they were not. I know it."
"Still," pursued Kennedy, watching him keenly, "it is not all a question of current. To kill, the shock must pass through a vital organ—the brain, the heart, the upper spinal cord. So, a small shock may kill and a large one may not. If it passes in one foot and out by the other, the current isn't likely to be as dangerous as if it passes in by a hand or foot and out by a foot or hand. In one case it passes through no vital organ; in the other it is very likely to do so. You see, the current can flow through the body only when it has a place of entrance and a place of exit. In all cases of accident from electric-light wires, the victim is touching some conductor—damp earth, salty earth, water, something that gives the current an outlet, and—"
"But even if the lights had been short-circuited," interrupted Josephson, "Mr. Minturn would have escaped injury unless he had touched the taps of the bath. Oh, no, sir, accidents in the medical use of electricity are rare. They don't happen here in my establishment," he maintained stoutly. "The trouble was that the coroner, without any knowledge of the physiological effects of electricity on the body, simply jumped at once to the conclusion that it was the electric bath that did it."
"Then it was for medical treatment that Mr. Minturn was taking the bath?" asked Kennedy, quickly taking up the point.
"Yes, of course," answered the masseur, eager to explain. "You are acquainted with the latest treatment for lead poisoning by means of the electric bath?"
Kennedy nodded.
"Well, sir, that was why Mr. Minturn was here. He came with a Doctor Gunther, of Stratfield."
"Indeed?" remarked Kennedy colorlessly, though I could see that it interested him, for evidently Minturn had said nothing of being himself a sufferer from the poison. "May I see the bath?"
"Surely," said Josephson, leading the way up-stairs.
It was an oaken tub with metal rods on the two long sides from which depended prismatic carbon rods.
"This is what we call a hydroelectric bath," Josephson explained. "Those rods on the sides are the electrodes. You see there are no metal parts in the tub itself. The rods are attached by wiring to a wall switch out here."
He pointed to the next room. Kennedy examined the switch with care.
"From it," went on Josephson, "wires lead to an accumulator battery of perhaps thirty volts. It uses very little current."
Craig leaned over the bath, and from the carbon electrodes scraped off a white powder in minute crystals.
"Ordinarily," Josephson pursued, "lead is eliminated by the skin and kidneys. But now, as you know, it is being helped along by electrolysis. I talked to Doctor Gunther about it. It is his opinion that it is probably eliminated as a chloride from the tissues of the body to the electrodes in the bath in which the patient is wholly or partly immersed. On the positive electrodes we get the peroxide. On the negative there is a spongy, metallic form of lead. But it is only a small amount."
"The body has been removed?" asked Craig.
"Not yet," the masseur replied. "The coroner has ordered it kept here under guard until he makes up his mind what disposition to make of it."
We were next ushered into a little room on the same floor, at the door of which was posted an official from the coroner.
"First of all," remarked Craig, as he drew back the sheet and began a minute examination of the earthly remains of the great lawyer, "there are to be considered the safeguards of the human body against the passage through it of a fatal electric current—the high electric resistance of the body itself. It is particularly high when the current must pass through joints such as wrists, knees, elbows; and quite high when the bones of the head are concerned. Still, there might have been an incautious application of the current to the head, especially when the subject is a person of advanced age or has latent cerebral disease, though I don't know that that fits Mr. Minturn. That's strange," he muttered, looking up, puzzled; "I can find no mark of a burn on the body—absolutely no mark of anything."
"That's what I say," put in Josephson, much pleased by what Kennedy said. "It's impossible!"
"It's all the more remarkable," went on Craig, half to himself and ignoring Josephson, "because burns due to electric currents are totally unlike those produced in other ways. They occur at the point of contact, usually about the arms and hands or the head. Electricity is much to be feared when it involves the cranial cavity."
He completed his examination of the head which once had carried secrets which themselves must have been incandescent.
"Then, too, such burns are most often something more than superficial, for considerable heat is developed which leads to massive destruction and carbonization of the tissues to a considerable depth. I have seen actual losses of substance—a lump of killed flesh surrounded by healthy tissues. Besides, such burns show an unexpected indolence when compared to the violent pains of ordinary burns. Perhaps that is due to the destruction of the nerve endings. How did Minturn die? Was he alone? Was he dead when he was discovered?"
"He was alone," replied Josephson slowly, endeavoring to tell it exactly as he had seen it; "but that's the strange part of it. He seemed to be suffering from a convulsion. I think he complained at first of a feeling of tightness of his throat and a twitching of the muscles of his hands and feet. Anyhow, he called for help. I was up here, and we rushed in. Doctor Gunther had just brought him, and then had gone away."
Josephson proceeded slowly, evidently having been warned that anything he said might be used against him. "We carried him, when he was this way, into this very room. But it was only for a short time. Then came a violent convulsion. It seemed to extend rapidly all over his body. You see, Mr. Kennedy, that simply could not be the electric shock.
"Hardly," commented Kennedy, looking again at the body. "It looks more like a tetanus convulsion. Yet there does not seem to be any trace of a recent wound that might have caused lockjaw. How did he look?"
"Oh, his face finally became livid," replied Josephson. "He had a ghastly, grinning expression; his eyes were wide; there was foam on his mouth."
"Not like tetanus, either," revised Craig. "There, the convulsion usually begins with the face and progresses to the other muscles. Here, it seems to have gone the other way."
"That lasted a minute or so," resumed the masseur; "then he sank back—perfectly limp. I thought he was dead. But he was not. A cold sweat broke out all over him—"
"What did you do?" prompted Kennedy.
"I didn't know what to do. I called an ambulance. But the moment the door opened, his body seemed to stiffen again. He had one other convulsion—and then he grew limp. He was dead."
IT was a gruesome recital, and I was glad to leave the baths,
finally, with Kennedy. Josephson was quite evidently relieved at
the attitude Craig had taken toward the coroner's conclusion that
Minturn had been shocked to death.
Craig went directly up-town to his laboratory, in abstracted silence, which was his manner when he was trying to reason out some particularly knotty problem.
As Kennedy placed the white crystals which he had scraped off the electrodes of the tub on a piece of dark paper in the laboratory, he wet the tip of his finger and touched just the minutest grain to his tongue. The look on his face told me that something unexpected had happened. He held a similar minute speck of the powder out to me.
It was an intensely bitter taste and very persistent, for even after we had rinsed out our mouths, it seemed to remain, clinging to the tongue.
He placed some of the grains in pure water. They dissolved only slightly, if at all. But in a tube in which he mixed a little ether and chloroform, they dissolved fairly readily.
Next, without a word, he poured just a drop of strong sulphuric acid on the crystals. There was not a change in them.
Quickly he reached up into the rack and took down a bottle labeled, "Potassium Bichromate.
"Let us see what an oxidizing agent will do," he remarked.
As he gently added the bichromate, there came a most marvelous kaleidoscopic change. From being almost colorless, the crystals turned instantly to a deep blue, then rapidly to purple, lilac, red, and then the red slowly faded away and they became colorless again.
"What is it?" I asked, fascinated. "Lead?"
"N-no," he replied, the lines of his forehead deepening. "No; this is sulphate of strychnin."
"Sulphate of strychnin?" I repeated, in astonishment.
"Yes," he reiterated slowly. "I might have suspected that from the convulsions, particularly when Josephson said that the noise and excitement of the arrival of the ambulance brought on the fatal paroxysm. That is symptomatic. But I didn't fully realize it until I got up here and tasted the stuff."
"That's all very well," I remarked, recalling the intense bitterness yet on my tongue; "but how do you suppose it was possible for anyone to administer it? It seems to me that he would have said something if he had swallowed even the minutest part of it. He must have known it. Yet, apparently he didn't. At least, he said nothing about it—or else Josephson is concealing something."
"Did he swallow it—necessarily?" queried Kennedy, in a tone calculated to show me that in the chemical world there was much to learn.
"Well, I suppose if it had been given hypodermically, it would have a more violent effect," I persisted, trying to figure out a way that the poison might have been given.
"Even more unlikely," objected Craig, with a delight at discovering a new mystery that to me seemed almost fiendish. "No; he would certainly have felt a needle, have cried out and said something about it, if anyone had tried that. This poisoned needle-business isn't as easy as some people seem to think nowadays."
"Then he might have absorbed it from the water," I insisted, recalling a recent case of Kennedy's, and adding, "by osmosis."
"You saw how difficult it was to dissolve in water," Craig rejected quietly.
"Well, then," I concluded in desperation, "how could it have been introduced?"
"I have a theory," was all he would say, reaching for the railway guide, "but it will take me up to Stratfield to prove it."
His plan gave us a little respite, and we paused long enough to lunch, for which breathing-time I was duly thankful.
NOON saw us on the train, Kennedy carrying a large and
cumbersome package which he brought down with him from the
laboratory and which we took turns in carrying.
We arrived in Stratfield, a pretty little mill town, in the middle of the afternoon, and with very little trouble were directed to the Pearcy house, after Kennedy had checked the parcel with the station-agent.
Mrs. Pearcy, to whom we introduced ourselves as reporters of the Star, was a tall blonde. I could not help thinking that she made a particularly dashing widow. With her, at the time, was Isabel Pearcy, a slender girl, whose sensitive lips and large, earnest eyes indicated a fine, high-strung nature.
"No," replied the elder woman quickly, to a request from Kennedy for an interview, "there is nothing that I care to say to the newspapers. They have said too much already about this—unfortunate affair."
Whether it was imagination or not, I fancied that there was an air of reserve about both women. It struck me as a most peculiar household.
I managed to steal a glance at Kennedy's face to see whether there was anything to confirm my own impression. He was watching Mrs. Pearcy closely as she spoke. In fact, his next questions, inconsequential as they were, seemed addressed to her solely for the purpose of getting her to talk.
I followed his eyes and found that he was, in reality, watching her mouth. As she answered, I noted her beautiful white teeth. Kennedy himself had trained me to notice small things, and, at the time, though I thought it was trivial, I recall noticing on her gums, where they joined the teeth, a peculiar bluish-black line.
Kennedy had been careful to address only Mrs. Pearcy at first, and as he continued questioning her, she seemed to realize that he was trying to lead her along.
"I must positively refuse to talk any more," she repeated finally, rising; "I am not to be tricked into saying anything."
"I must positively refuse to talk any more," she repeated
finally, rising; "I am not to be tricked into saying anything."
She had left the room, evidently expecting that Isabel would follow. She did not. In fact, I felt that Miss Pearcy was visibly relieved by the departure of her stepmother. She seemed anxious to ask us something, and now took the first opportunity.
"Tell me," she said eagerly, "how did Mr. Minturn die? What do they really think of it in New York?"
"They think it is poisoning," replied Craig, noting the look on her face.
She betrayed nothing, as far as I could see, except a natural neighborly interest.
"Poisoning?" she repeated. "By what?"
"Lead poisoning," he replied evasively.
She said nothing. It was evident that she was quite the match of anyone who attempted leading questions. Kennedy changed his method.
"You will pardon me," he said apologetically, "for recalling what must be distressing. But we newspaper men often have to do things and ask questions that are distasteful. I believe it is rumored that your father suffered from lead poisoning?"
"Oh, I don't know what it was—none of us does," she cried, almost pathetically. "I had been living at the settlement until lately. When father grew worse, I came home. He had such strange visions—hallucinations, I suppose you would call them. In the daytime he would be so very morose and melancholy. Then, too, there were terrible pains in his stomach, and his eyesight began to fail. Yes, I believe that Doctor Gunther did say it was lead poisoning. But—they have said so many things—so many things," she repeated, plainly distressed at the subject.
"Your brother is not at home?" asked Kennedy, quickly changing the subject.
"No," she answered, then with a flash, as though lifting the veil of a confidence, added, "you know, neither Warner nor I have lived here much this year. He has been in New York most of the time, and I have been at the settlement."
She hesitated, as if wondering whether she should say more, then added quickly: "It has been repeated often enough; there is no reason why I shouldn't say it to you. Neither of us exactly approved of father's marriage."
She checked herself and glanced about, somewhat with the air of one who has suddenly considered the possibility of being overheard.
"May I have a glass of water?" asked Kennedy.
"Why, certainly," she answered, going to the door, apparently eager for an excuse to find out whether there was some one on the other side of it. There was not, or any indication that there had been.
"Evidently she does not have any suspicions of that," remarked Kennedy, in an undertone, half to himself.
I had no chance to question him, for she returned almost immediately. Instead of drinking the water, however, he held it carefully up to the light. It was slightly turbid.
"You drink the water from the tap?" he asked, as he poured some of it into a sterilized vial which he drew quickly from his vest pocket.
"Certainly," she replied, for the moment nonplused at his strange actions. "Everybody drinks the town water in Stratfield."
A few more questions—none of which was of importance—and Kennedy and I excused ourselves.
AT the gate, instead of turning toward the town, however,
Kennedy went on and entered the grounds of the Minturn house,
next door. The lawyer, I had understood, was a widower, and,
though he lived in Stratfield only part of the time, he still
maintained his house there.
We rang the bell and a middle-aged housekeeper answered.
"I am from the water company," Craig began politely. "We are testing the water—perhaps will supply consumers with filters. Can you let me have a sample?"
She did not demur, but invited us in. As she drew the water, Craig watched her hands closely. She seemed to have difficulty in holding the glass, and, as she handed it to him, I noticed a peculiar hanging-down of the wrist. Kennedy poured the sample into a second vial, and I noticed that it was turbid, too. With no mention of the tragedy to her employer, he excused himself, and we walked slowly back to the road.
Between the two houses, Kennedy paused, and for several moments appeared to be studying them.
We walked slowly back along the road to the town. As we passed the local drug store, Kennedy turned and sauntered in.
He found it easy enough to get into conversation with the druggist, after making a small purchase, and in the course of a few minutes we found ourselves gossiping behind the partition that shut off the arcana of the prescription counter from the rest of the store.
Gradually Kennedy led the conversation around to the point which he wanted, and asked, "I wish you'd let me fix up a little sulphureted hydrogen."
"Go ahead," granted the druggist good-naturedly. "I guess you can do it. I can stand the smell, if you can."
Kennedy smiled and set to work.
Slowly he passed the gas through the samples of water he had taken from the two houses. As he did so, the gas, bubbling through, made a blackish precipitate.
"What is it?" asked the druggist curiously.
"Lead sulphide," replied Kennedy, stroking his chin.
He continued to work over the vials.
"The water contains, I should say, from ten to fifteen hundredths of a grain of lead to the gallon," he remarked finally.
"Where did it come from?" asked the druggist.
"I got it up at Pearcy's," Kennedy replied frankly, turning to observe whether the druggist might betray any knowledge of it.
"That's strange," he replied in genuine surprise. "Our water in Stratfield is supplied by a company to a large area, and it had always seemed to me to be of great organic purity."
"But the pipes are of lead, are they not?" asked Kennedy.
"Y-yes," answered the druggist, "I think in most places the service-pipes are of lead. But," he added earnestly, as he saw the implication of his admission, "water has never to my knowledge been found to attack the pipes so as to affect it injuriously." He turned his own faucet and drew a glassful. "It is normally quite clear," he added, holding the glass up.
It was, in fact, perfectly clear, and when he passed some of the gas through it, nothing happened at all.
Just then a man lounged into the store.
"Hello, Doctor!" greeted the druggist. "Here are a couple of fellows that have been investigating the water up at Pearcy's. They've found lead in it. That ought to interest you. This is Doctor Gunther," he introduced, turning to us.
It was an unexpected encounter—one, I imagine, that Kennedy might have preferred to take place under other circumstances. But he was equal to the occasion.
"We've been sent up here to look into the case for the New York Star," Kennedy said quickly. "I intended to come around to see you, but you have saved me the trouble."
Doctor Gunther looked from one of us to the other.
"Seems to me the New York papers ought to have enough to do without sending men all over the country making news," he grunted.
"Well," drawled Kennedy quietly, "there seems to be a most remarkable situation up there at Pearcy's—and Minturn's, too. As nearly as I can make out, several people there are suffering from unmistakable signs of lead poisoning. There are the pains in the stomach, the colic, and then on the gums is that characteristic line of plumbic sulphide, the distinctive mark produced by lead. There are the wrist-drop, the affected eyesight, the partial paralysis, the hallucinations, and a condition in old Pearcy's case almost bordering on insanity—to enumerate the symptoms that seem to be present in varying degrees in various persons in the two houses."
Gunther looked at Kennedy, as if in doubt just how to take him.
"That's what the coroner says, too—lead poisoning," put in the druggist, himself as keen as anyone else for a piece of local news.
"That all seems to be true enough," replied Gunther, at length, guardedly; "I recognized that, some time ago."
"Why do you think it affects each so differently?" asked the druggist.
Doctor Gunther settled himself easily back in a chair to speak as one having authority.
"Well," he began slowly, "Miss Pearcy, of course, hasn't been living there much until lately. As for the others, perhaps this gentleman here from the Star knows that lead, once absorbed, may remain latent in the system and then make itself felt. It is like arsenic, an accumulative poison."
Doctor Gunther settled himself easily back in a chair to speak as one having authority.
He shifted his position slowly, and went on, as if defending the course of action he had taken in the case.
"Then, too, you know, there is an individual as well as family and sex susceptibility to lead. Women are especially liable to lead poisoning, but then, perhaps in this case Mrs. Pearcy comes of a family that is very resistant. There are many factors. Personally I don't think Pearcy himself was resistant. Perhaps Minturn was not, either. At any rate, after Pearcy's death, it was I who advised Minturn to take the electrolysis cure in New York. I took him down there," added Gunther. "Confound it; I wish I had stayed with him!"
He paused, and I waited anxiously to see whether Kennedy would make some reference to the discovery of the strychnin salts.
"Have you any idea how the lead poisoning could have been caused?" asked Kennedy instead.
Doctor Gunther shook his head. "It is a puzzle to me," he answered. "I am sure of only one thing. It could not be from working in lead, for it is needless to say that none of them worked."
"Food?" Craig suggested.
The doctor considered. "I had thought of that. I know that many cases of lead poisoning have been traced to the presence of the stuff in ordinary foods, drugs, and drinks. I have examined the foods, especially the bread. I even went so far as to examine the kitchen-ware to see if there could be anything wrong with the glazing. They don't drink wines and beers, into which, now and then, the stuff seems to get.
"You seem to have a good grasp of the subject," flattered Kennedy, as we rose to go. "I can hardly blame you for neglecting the water, since everyone here seems to be so sure of the purity of the supply."
Gunther said nothing. I was not surprised, for, at the very least, no one likes to have an outsider come in and put his finger directly on the raw spot.
WE left the druggist's, and Kennedy, glancing at his watch,
remarked: "If you will go down to the station, Walter, and get
that package we left there, I shall be much obliged to you. I
want to make just one more stop, at the office of the water
company, and I think I shall just about have time for it. There's
a pretty good restaurant across the street. Meet me there, and by
that time I shall know whether to carry out a little plan I have
outlined or not."
We dined in a leisurely manner, which seemed strange to me, for it was not Kennedy's custom to let moments fly uselessly when he was on a case. However, I soon found out why it was. He was waiting for darkness.
As soon as the lights began to glow in the little stores on the main street, we sallied forth, taking the direction of the Pearcy and Minturn houses.
On the way he dropped into the hardware store and purchased a light spade and one of the small, pocket electric flashlights, about which he wrapped a piece of cardboard in such a way as to make a most effective dark lantern.
Both the Pearcy and Minturn houses were in nearly total darkness when we arrived. They sat well back from the road and were plentifully shielded by shrubbery. Then, too, at night it was not a much frequented neighborhood. We could easily hear the footsteps of anyone approaching on the walk, and an occasional automobile gliding past did not worry us in the least.
"I have calculated carefully from an examination of the water-company's map," said Craig, "just where the water-pipe of the two houses branches off from the main in the road."
After a measurement or two from some landmark, we set to work a few feet inside, under cover of the bushes and the shadows, like two grave-diggers.
Kennedy had been wielding the spade vigorously for a few minutes when it touched something metallic. There, just beneath the frost-line, we came upon the service-pipe.
He widened the hole and, carefully scraping off the damp earth that adhered to the pipe, cut out a small piece and quickly plugged the strong stream of water that spurted from the cut end.
"I hope they don't suspect anything like this in the houses with their water cut off," he remarked, as he carefully split the piece open lengthwise and examined it under the light.
On the interior of the pipe could be seen patchy lumps of white which projected about an eighth of an inch above the internal surface. As the pipe dried in the warm night air, they could easily be brushed off as a white powder.
"What is it—strychnin?" I asked.
"No," he replied, regarding it thoughtfully with some satisfaction. "That is lead carbonate. There can be no doubt that the turbidity of the water was due to this powder in suspension. A little dissolves in the water, while the scales and incrustations in fine particles are carried along in the current. As a matter of fact, the amount necessary to make the water poisonous need not be large."
He applied a little instrument to the cut ends of the pipe. As I bent over, I could see the needle on its dial deflected just a bit.
"My voltmeter," he said reading it, "shows that there is a current of about 1.8 volts passing through this pipe all the time.
"Electrolysis of water-pipes!" I exclaimed, thinking of statements I had heard by engineers. "That's what they mean by stray or vagabond currents, isn't it?"
He had seized the lantern and was eagerly following up and down the line of the water-pipe. At last he stopped, with a low exclamation, at a point where an electric-light wire supplying the Minturn cottage crossed overhead. Fastened inconspicuously to the trunk of a tree which served as a support for the wire, was another wire which led down from it and was buried in the ground. Craig turned up the soft earth as fast as he could, until he reached the pipe at this point. There was the buried wire wound several times around it.
As quickly and as neatly as possible, he inserted a connection between the severed ends of the pipe to restore the flow of water to the houses and covered up the holes he had dug. Then he unwrapped the package which we had tugged about all day, and in a narrow path between the bushes, which led to the point where the wire had tapped the electric-light feed, he placed in a shallow hole in the ground a peculiar apparatus.
As nearly as I could make it out it consisted of two flat platforms between which, covered over and protected, was a slip of paper which moved forward, actuated by clockwork, and pressed on by a sort of stylus. Then he covered it over lightly with dirt so that unless anyone had been looking for it, it would never be noticed.
IT was late when we reached the city again, but Kennedy had
one more piece of work, and that devolved on me. All the way down
on the train he had been writing and rewriting something.
"Walter," he said, as the train pulled into the station, "I want that published in to-morrow's papers."
I looked over what he had written. It was one of the most sensational stories I have ever fathered, beginning, "Latest of the victims of the unknown poisoner of whole families in Stratfield, Connecticut, is Miss Isabel Pearcy, whose father, Randall Pearcy, died last week."
I knew that it was a "plant" of some kind, for, so far, he had discovered no evidence that Miss Pearcy had been affected. What his purpose was, I could not guess, but I got the story printed.
THE next morning early, Kennedy was quietly at work in the
laboratory.
"What is this treatment of lead poisoning by electrolysis?" I asked.
"Brand-new, Walter," replied Kennedy. "It has been discovered that ions will flow directly through the membranes."
"Ions?" I repeated. "What are ions?"
"Travelers," he answered smiling, "so named by Faraday from the Greek word 'ion,' 'going.' They are positive and negative charges of electricity of which molecules are composed. You know, some believe now that matter is really composed of electrical energy. I think I can explain it best by a simile I use with my classes. It is as though you had a ballroom in which the dancers in couples represent the neutral molecules. There are a certain number of isolated men and women—dissociated ions—"
"Who don't know these new dances," I interrupted.
"They all know this dance," he laughed. "But, to be serious in the simile, suppose at one end of the room there is a large mirror and at the other a buffet with cigars and champagne. What happens to the dissociated ions?"
"Well, I suppose you want me to say that the women gather about the mirror and the men about the buffet."
"Exactly. And some of the dancing partners separate and follow the crowd. Well, that room presents a picture of what happens in an electrolytic solution when the electric current is passing through it."
"Thanks," I laughed "That was quite adequate to my immature understanding."
Kennedy continued at work, checking up and arranging his data until the middle of the afternoon, when he went up to Stratfield.
HAVING nothing better to do, I wandered out about town in the
hope of running across some one with whom to while away the hours
until Kennedy returned. I found out that, since yesterday,
Broadway had woven an entirely new background for the mystery.
Now it was rumored that the lawyer Minturn himself had been on
very intimate terms with Mrs. Pearcy. I did not pay much
attention to the rumor, for I knew that Broadway is
constitutionally unable to believe that anybody is straight.
Kennedy had commissioned me to keep in touch with Josephson, and I finally managed to get around to the baths, to find them still closed.
As I was talking with him, a very muddy and dusty car pulled up at the door, and a young man whose face was marred by the red, congested blood-vessels that are in some a mark of dissipation, burst in on us.
"What! Closed up yet, Joe?" he asked. "Haven't they taken Minturn's body away?"
"Yes; it was sent up to Stratfield to-day," replied the masseur, "but the coroner seems to want to worry me all he can.
"Too bad. I was up almost all last night, and to-day I have been out in my car—tired to death. Thought I might get some rest here. Where are you sending the boys—to the Longacre?"
"Yes. They'll take good care of you till I open up again. Hope to see you back again, then, Mr. Pearcy," he added, as the young man turned and hurried out to his car again. "That was that young Pearcy, you know. Nice boy—but living the life too fast. What's Kennedy doing—anything?"
I did not like the jaunty bravado of the masseur, which now seemed to be returning, since nothing definite had taken shape. I determined that he should not pump me, as he evidently was trying to do. I had at least fulfilled Kennedy's commission, and felt that the sooner I left Josephson the better for both of us.
I WAS surprised at dinner to receive a wire from Craig saying
that he was bringing down Doctor Gunther, Mrs. Pearcy, and Isabel
to New York, and asking me to have Warner Pearcy and Josephson at
the laboratory at nine o'clock.
By strategy I managed to persuade Pearcy to come, and as for Josephson, he could not very well escape, though I saw that as long as nothing more had happened, he was more interested in "fixing" the police so that he could resume business than anything else.
As we entered the laboratory that night, Kennedy, who had left his party at a downtown hotel to freshen up, met us each at the door. Instead of conducting us in front of his laboratory-table, which was the natural way, he led us singly around through the narrow space back of it.
I recall that, as I followed him, I half imagined that the floor gave way just a bit, and there flashed over me, by a queer association of ideas, the recollection of having visited an amusement park not long before where merely stepping on an innocent-looking section of the flooring had resulted in a tremendous knocking and banging underneath, much to the delight of the lovers of slap-stick humor.
"The discovery of poison and its identification," began Craig, at last, when we had all arrived and were seated about him, "often involves not only the use of chemistry but also a knowledge of the chemical effect of the poison on the body, and the gross as well as microscopic changes which it produces in various tissues and organs—changes, some due to mere contact, others to the actual chemico-physiological reaction between the poison and the body."
His hand was resting on the poles of a large battery as he proceeded. "Every day the medical detective plays a more and more important part in the detection of crime, and I might say that, except in the case of crime complicated by a lunacy plea, his work has earned the respect of the courts and of detectives. In the case of insanity, the discredit is the fault rather of the law itself. The ways in which the doctor can be of use in untangling the facts in many forms of crime have become so numerous that the profession of medical detectives may almost be called a specialty."
Kennedy repeated what he had already told me about electrolysis, then placed between the poles of the battery a large piece of raw beef. He covered the negative electrode with blotting paper and soaked it in a beaker near at hand.
"This solution," he explained, "is composed of potassium iodide. In this other beaker I have a mixture of ordinary starch."
He soaked the positive electrode in the starch and then jammed the two on opposite sides against the soft red meat. Then he applied the current. A few moments later he withdrew the positive electrode. Both it and the meat under it were blue!
"What has happened?" he asked. "The iodine ions have actually passed through the beef to the positive pole and the paper on the electrode. Here we have starch iodide."
"I may say," he continued, "that the medical view of electricity is changing, due in large measure to the genius of the Frenchman, Doctor Leduc. The body, we know, is composed largely of water, with salts of soda and potash. It is an excellent electrolyte. Yet most doctors regard the introduction of substances by the electric current as insignificant or non-existent. But, on the contrary, the introduction of drugs by electrolysis is regular and, far from being insignificant, may very easily bring about death."
"That action," he went on, looking from one of us to another, "may be therapeutic, as in the cure for lead poisoning by removing the lead, or it may be toxic, as in the case of actually introducing such a poison as strychnin into the body by the same forces that will remove the lead."
He paused a moment to enforce the point which had already been suggested. I glanced about hastily. If anyone in his little audience was guilty, no one betrayed it, for all were following him, fascinated. Yet in the wildly throbbing brain of some one of them the guilty knowledge must be seared indelibly. Would the mere accusation be enough to dissociate the truth from that brain or would Kennedy have to resort to other means?
"Some one," he went on, in a low, tense voice, leaning forward, "some one who knew this effect, placed strychnin salts on one of the electrodes of the bath which Owen Minturn was to use."
He did not pause. Evidently he was planning to let the force of his exposure be cumulative, until, from its sheer momentum, it carried everything before it.
"Walter," he ordered quickly, "lend me a hand."
Together we moved the laboratory-table as he directed.
There, in the floor, concealed by the shadow, he had placed the same apparatus which I had seen him bury in the path between the Pearcy and Minturn estates at Stratficld.
We scarcely breathed.
"This," he explained rapidly, "is what is known as a kinograph—the invention of Professor Hele-Shaw, of London. It enables me to identify a person by his or her walk. Each of you, as you entered this room, has passed over this apparatus and has left a different mark on the paper which registers."
For a moment he stopped, as if gathering strength for the final assault.
"Until late this afternoon, I had this kinograph secreted at a certain place in Stratfield. Some one had tampered with the leaden water-pipes and the electric-light cable. Fearful that the lead poisoning brought on by electrolysis might not produce its result in the intended victim, that person took advantage of the new discoveries in electrolysis to complete that work by introducing the deadly strychnin during the very process of cure of the lead poisoning."
He slapped down a copy of a newspaper.
"In the news this morning, I told just enough of what I had discovered and colored it in such a way that I was sure I would arouse apprehension. I did it because I wanted to make the criminal revisit the real scene of the crime. There was a double motive, now—to remove the evidence and to check the spread of the poisoning."
He reached over, tore off the paper with a quick, decisive motion, and laid it beside another strip, a little discolored by moisture, as though the damp earth had touched it.
"That person, alarmed lest something in the cleverly laid plot might be discovered, went to a certain spot to remove the traces of the diabolical work which were hidden there. My kinograph shows the footsteps, shows as plainly as if I had been present the exact person who tried to obliterate the evidence."
An ashen pallor seemed to spread over the face of Miss Pearcy, as Kennedy shot out the words.
"That person," Kennedy emphasized, "had planned to put out of the way one who had brought disgrace on the Pearcy family. It was an act of private justice!"
Mrs. Pearcy could stand the strain no longer. She had broken down and was weeping incoherently. I strained my ears to catch what she was murmuring. It was Minturn's name, not Gunther's, that was on her lips.
"But," cried Kennedy, raising an accusatory finger from the kinograph tracing and pointing it like the finger of fate itself, "the self-appointed avenger forgot that the leaden water-pipe was common to the two houses. Old Mr. Pearcy, the wronged, died first. Isabel has guessed the family skeleton—has tried hard to shield you, but, Warner Pearcy, you are the murderer!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.