XI. ALIKE IN ESSENTIALS
"Mr. Gryce, I am either a fool or the luckiest fellow going. You mustdecide which."
The aged detective, thus addressed, laid down his evening paper andendeavoured to make out the dim form he could just faintly discernstanding between him and the library door.
"Sweetwater, is that you?"
"No one else. Sweetwater, the fool, or Sweetwater, much too wise for hisown good. I don't know which. Perhaps you can find out and tell me."
A grunt from the region of the library table, then the sarcastic remark:
"I'm just in the mood to settle that question. This last failure to myaccount ought to make me an excellent judge of another's folly. I'vemeddled with the old business for the last time, Sweetwater. You'll haveto go it lone from now on. The Department has no more work for EbenezarGryce, or rather Ebenezar Gryce will make no more fool attempts toplease them. Strange that a man don't know when his time has come toquit. I remember low I once scored Yeardsley for hanging on after he hadlost his grip; and here am I doing the same thing. But what's the matterwith you? Speak out, my boy. Something new in the wind?"
"No, Mr. Gryce; nothing new. It's the same old business. But, if whatI suspect is true, this same old business offers opportunities forsome very interesting and unusual effort. You're not satisfied with thecoroner's verdict in the Challoner case?"
"No. I'm satisfied with nothing that leaves all ends dangling. Suicidewas not proved. It seemed the only presumption possible, but it was notproved. There was no blood-stain on that cutter-point."
"Nor any evidence that it had ever been there."
"No. I'm not proud of the chain which lacks a link where it should bestrongest."
"We shall never supply that link."
"I quite agree with you."
"That chain we must throw away."
"And forge another?"
Sweetwater approached and sat down.
"Yes; I believe we can do it; yet I have only one indisputable fact fora starter. That is why I want you to tell me whether I'm growing daft orsimply adventurous. Mr. Gryce, I don't trust Brotherson. He has pulledthe wool over Dr. Heath's eyes and almost over those of Mr. Challoner.But he can't pull it over mine. Though he should tell a story ten timesmore plausible than the one with which he has satisfied the coroner'sjury, I would still listen to him with more misgiving than confidence.Yet I have caught him in no misstatement, and his eye is steadier thanmy own. Perhaps it is simply a deeply rooted antipathy on my part, orthe rage one feels at finding he has placed his finger on the wrong man.Again it may be--"
"What, Sweetwater?"
"A well-founded distrust. Mr. Gryce, I'm going to ask you a question."
"Ask away. Ask fifty if you want to."
"No; the one may involve fifty, but it is big enough in itself to holdour attention for a while. Did you ever hear of a case before, that insome of its details was similar to this?"
"No, it stands alone. That's why it is so puzzling."
"You forget. The wealth, beauty and social consequence of the presentvictim has blinded you to the strong resemblance which her case bears toone you know, in which the sufferer had none of the worldly advantagesof Miss Challoner. I allude to--"
"Wait! the washerwoman in Hicks Street! Sweetwater, what have you got upyour sleeve? You do mean that Brooklyn washerwoman, don't you?"
"The same. The Department may have forgotten it, but I haven't. Mr.Gryce, there's a startling similarity in the two cases if you study theessential features only. Startling, I assure you."
"Yes, you are right there. But what if there is? We were no moresuccessful in solving that case than we have been in solving this. Yetyou look and act like a hound which has struck a hot scent." The youngman smoothed his features with an embarrassed laugh.
"I shall never learn," said he, "not to give tongue till the hunt isfairly started. If you will excuse me we'll first make sure of thesimilarity I have mentioned. Then I'll explain myself. I have some noteshere, made at the time it was decided to drop the Hicks Street case as awholly inexplicable one. As you know, I never can bear to say 'die,'and I sometimes keep such notes as a possible help in case any suchunfinished matter should come up again. Shall I read them?"
"Do. Twenty years ago it would not have been necessary. I should haveremembered every detail of an affair so puzzling. But my memory is nolonger entirely reliable. So fire away, my boy, though I hardly see yourpurpose or what real bearing the affair in Hicks Street has upon theClermont one. A poor washerwoman and the wealthy Miss Challoner! True,they were not unlike in their end."
"The connection will come later," smiled the young detective, with thatstrange softening of his features which made one at times forget hisextreme plainness. "I'm sure you will not consider the time lost ifI ask you to consider the comparison I am about to make, if only as acuriosity in criminal annals."
And he read:
"'On the afternoon of December Fourth, 1910, the strong and persistentscreaming of a young child in one of the rooms of a rear tenement inHicks Street, Brooklyn, drew the attention of some of the inmates andled them, after several ineffectual efforts to gain an entrance, tothe breaking in of the door which had been fastened on the inside by anold-fashioned door-button.
"'The tenant whom all knew for an honest, hard-working woman, had notinfrequently fastened her door in this manner, in order to safeguard herchild who was abnormally active and had a way of rattling the door openwhen it was not thus secured. But she had never refused to open before,and the child's cries were pitiful.
"'This was no longer a matter of wonder, when, the door having beenwrenched from its hinges, they all rushed in. Across a tub of steamingclothes lifted upon a bench in the open window, they saw the body ofthis good woman, lying inert and seemingly dead; the frightened childtugging at her skirts. She was of a robust make, fleshy and fair, andhad always been considered a model of health and energy, but at thesight of her helpless figure, thus stricken while at work, the one crywas 'A stroke! till she had been lifted off and laid upon the floor.Then some discoloration in the water at the bottom of the tub led to acloser examination of her body, and the discovery of a bullet-hole inher breast directly over the heart.
"'As she had been standing with face towards the window, all crowdedthat way to see where the shot had come from. As they were on the fourthstorey it could not have come from the court upon which the room looked.It could only have come from the front tenement, towering up beforethem some twenty feet away. A single window of the innumerable onesconfronting them stood open, and this was the one directly opposite.
"'Nobody was to be seen there or in the room beyond, but during theexcitement, one man ran off to call the police and another to hunt upthe janitor and ask who occupied this room.
"'His reply threw them all into confusion. The tenant of that room wasthe best, the quietest and most respectable man in either building.
"'Then he must be simply careless and the shot an accidental one. A rushwas made for the stairs and soon the whole building was in an uproar.But when this especial room was reached, it was found locked and on thedoor a paper pinned up, on which these words were written: Gone to NewYork. Will be back at 6:30! Words that recalled a circumstance tothe janitor. He had seen the gentleman go out an hour before. Thisterminated all inquiry in this direction, though some few of the excitedthrong were for battering down this door just as they had the other one.But they were overruled by the janitor, who saw no use in such wholesaledestruction, and presently the arrival of the police restored orderand limited the inquiry to the rear building, where it undoubtedlybelonged.'
"Mr. Gryce," (here Sweetwater laid by his notes that he might addressthe old gentleman more directly), "I was with the boys when they madetheir first official investigation. This is why you can rely upon thefacts as here given. I followed the investigation closely and missednothing which could in any way throw light on the case. It was amysterious one from the first, and lost nothing by further inq
uiry intothe details.
"The first fact to startle us as we made our way up through the crowdwhich blocked halls and staircases was this:--A doctor had beenfound and, though he had been forbidden to make more than a cursoryexamination of the body till the coroner came, he had not hesitatedto declare after his first look, that the wound had not been made by abullet but by some sharp and slender weapon thrust home by a powerfulhand. (You mark that, Mr. Gryce.) As this seemed impossible in face ofthe fact that the door had been found buttoned on the inside, we didnot give much credit to his opinion and began our work under the obvioustheory of an accidental discharge of some gun from one of the windowsacross the court. But the doctor was nearer right than we supposed. Whenthe coroner came to look into the matter, he discovered that the woundwas not only too small to have been made by the ordinary bullet, butthat there was no bullet to be found in the woman's body or anywhereelse. Her heart had been reached by a thrust and not by a shot from agun. Mr. Gryce, have you not heard a startling repetition of this reportin a case nearer at hand?
"But to go back. This discovery, so important if true, was as yet--thatis, at the time of our entering the room,--limited to the off-handdeclaration of an irresponsible physician, but the possibilityit involved was of so astonishing a nature that it influenced usunconsciously in our investigation and led us almost immediately into aconsideration of the difficulties attending an entrance into, as well asan escape from, a room situated as this was.
"Up three flights from the court, with no communication with theadjoining rooms save through a door guarded on both sides by heavypieces of furniture no one person could handle, the hall door buttonedon the inside, and the fire-escape some fifteen feet to the left, thisroom of death appeared to be as removed from the approach of a murderousoutsider as the spot in the writing-room of the Clermont where MissChalloner fell.
"Otherwise, the place presented the greatest contrast possible to thatscene of splendour and comfort. I had not entered the Clermont at thattime, and no, such comparison could have struck my mind. But I havethought of it since, and you, with your experience, will not find itdifficult to picture the room where this poor woman lived and worked.Bare walls, with just a newspaper illustration pinned up here and there,a bed--tragically occupied at this moment--a kitchen stove on which aboiler, half-filled with steaming clothes still bubbled and foamed,--anold bureau,--a large pine wardrobe against an inner door which welater found to have been locked for months, and the key lost,--somechairs--and most pronounced of all, because of its position directlybefore the window, a pine bench supporting a wash-tub of the old sort.
"As it was here the woman fell, this tub naturally received the closestexamination. A board projected from its further side, whither it hadevidently been pushed by the weight of her falling body; and from itstop hung a wet cloth, marking with its lugubrious drip on the boardsbeneath the first heavy moments of silence which is the naturalaccompaniment of so serious a survey. On the floor to the right lay ahalf-used cake of soap just as it had slipped from her hand. The windowwas closed, for the temperature was at the freezing-point, but it hadbeen found up, and it was put up now to show the height at which it hadthen stood. As we all took our look at the house wall opposite, a soundof shouting came up from below. A dozen children were sliding on barrelstaves down a slope of heaped-up snow. They had been engaged in thissport all the afternoon and were our witnesses later that no one hadmade a hazardous escape by means of the ladder of the fire-escape,running, as I have said, at an almost unattainable distance towards theleft.
"Of her own child, whose cries had roused the neighbours, nothing was tobe seen. The woman in the extreme rear had carried it off to her room;but when we came to see it later, no doubt was felt by any of us thatthis child was too young to talk connectedly, nor did I ever hear thatit ever said anything which could in any way guide investigation.
"And that is as far as we ever got. The coroner's jury brought in averdict of death by means of a stab from some unknown weapon in the handof a person also unknown, but no weapon was ever found, nor was it eversettled how the attack could have been made or the murderer escape underthe conditions described. The woman was poor, her friends few, and thecase seemingly inexplicable. So after creating some excitement by itspeculiarities, it fell of its own weight. But I remembered it, and inmany a spare hour have tried to see my way through the no-thoroughfareit presented. But quite in vain. To-day, the road is as blind as ever,but--" here Sweetwater's face sharpened and his eyes burned as he leanedcloser and closer to the older detective--"but this second case, sounlike the first in non-essentials but so exactly like it in just thosepoints which make the mystery, has dropped a thread from its tangledskein into my hand, which may yet lead us to the heart of both. Can youguess--have you guessed--what this thread is? But how could you withoutthe one clew I have not given you? Mr. Gryce, the tenement wherethis occurred is the same I visited the other night in search of Mr.Brotherson. And the man characterised at that time by the janitor as thebest, the quietest and most respectable tenant in the whole building,and the one you remember whose window opened directly opposite the spotwhere this woman lay dead, was Mr. Dunn himself, or, in other words, ourlate redoubtable witness, Mr. Orlando Brotherson."