The Gloved Hand, Burton Egbert Stevenson [first ebook reader txt] 📗

it for a while," said Godfrey, and turned the talk to other things. No man could talk more delightfully of music, of art, of letters. How he managed it I could never guess, but he seemed to have read everything, to have seen everything, to have heard everything. Marryat, for instance; who reads Marryat nowadays? And yet he had read the "Phantom Ship," and so knew something of Goa. An hour passed very quickly, but at last he rose and led the way into his study.

"A friend of mine dropped in to see me to-day at the office," he remarked, "a Cuban planter who comes up to New York occasionally, and whom I happened to help out of a rather serious difficulty a few years ago. Perhaps some day I'll tell you about it. He always brings me a bundle of his own special cigars. I didn't see him to-day, but he left the cigars, and I want you to try one. Perhaps it will give you an inspiration."

He went to his desk, opened a tin-foiled package that lay there, and carefully extracted two long cigars of a rich and glowing brown.

"Perhaps you've heard of the special cigars that are made for Pierpont Morgan," he went on, as he handed one to me, after carefully replacing the wrappings of the bundle. "Well, I smoked one of Morgan's cigars once—it was good, mighty good; but it wasn't in the same class with these. Light up."

I did. Never before had I drawn between my lips a breath so satisfying—so rich, so smooth, so full of flavour. I exhaled the fragrant smoke slowly.

"Godfrey," I said, "I never knew what tobacco was before. Are these cigars purchasable? I'm only a poor lawyer, but even one a month would be a thing to look forward to and dream about."

But Godfrey shook his head.

"I've felt like that," he said; "but they're not to be had for money. And now about Swain."

"Let's postpone it a little longer," I begged. "I don't want my mind distracted."

Godfrey laughed, but fell silent; and for the next half hour, no sound was heard.

"Now," I said, at last, "I'm ready to listen, so fire ahead whenever you want to."

"I haven't much to tell," he began; "nothing new about the case. But I stopped at the Tombs, before I started back, to make sure that Swain had everything he wanted. They'd given him an upper cell, and sent over to the Marathon and got him his things, and I arranged to have his meals sent in to him from Moquin's."

"I ought to have thought of that," I said, contritely. "I'm much obliged to you, Godfrey. Did you see him?"

"Only for a minute. He seemed fairly cheerful. He'd had them bring some of his law books to him, and remarked that he'd have plenty of time to study. I like the way he's taking it. He gave me a message for you."

"What was it?"

"That you are not to forget your promise."

I smoked on for a few moments in silence.

"I promised him I'd get Miss Vaughan away from that house," I said at last. "I had Mrs. Royce write her a note, inviting her to stay with her. I gave it to her this afternoon."

"What did she say?"

"She didn't say anything, but I could see the idea didn't impress her. And I had thought all along that she would jump at it."

Godfrey gave a little grunt, whether of surprise or satisfaction I could not tell.

"Why didn't you put her on the stand to-day, Lester?" he asked. "Afraid of upsetting her?"

"I wouldn't have stopped for that, if her evidence would have helped Swain. But it would only have put him deeper in the hole."

"In what way?"

"Well, in the first place, she says that as she and her father returned to the house, she heard footsteps behind them and thought it was Swain following them, because that would be a natural thing for him to do; and, in the second place, she saw that blood-stained handkerchief on the floor beside her father's chair when she came into the room and found him dead."

"So," said Godfrey slowly, "it couldn't have been dropped there by Swain when he stooped to pick her up."

"No; besides, we know perfectly well that it wasn't about his wrist when he came back over the wall. Goldberger knows it, too, and we'll be asked about it, next time."

"It might have been pushed up his sleeve—we weren't absolutely certain. But this new evidence settles it."

I assented miserably and Godfrey smoked on thoughtfully. But my cigar had lost some of its flavour.

"How did Miss Vaughan come to find the body?" he asked at last, and I told him the story as she had told it to me. He thought it over for some moments; then he leaned forward and laid his hand on my knee.

"Now, Lester," he said, "let's review this thing. It can't be as dark as it seems—there's light somewhere. Here is the case, bared of all inessentials: Swain crosses the wall about eleven o'clock, cutting his wrist as he does so; Miss Vaughan meets him about eleven-thirty, and after a time, finds that his wrist is bleeding and ties her handkerchief about it; they agree to have her father examined for lunacy, arrange a meeting for the next night, and are about to separate, when her father rushes in upon them, savagely berates Swain and takes his daughter away. That must have been about twelve o'clock.

"Swain, according to his story, sits there for ten or fifteen minutes, finally sees the cobra, or thinks he does, and makes a dash for safety, striking his head sharply against a tree. He tumbles over the wall in a half-dazed condition. The handkerchief is no longer about his wrist. That, you will remember, was about twelve-twenty.

"Almost at once we heard Miss Vaughan's screams. After that, Swain isn't out of our sight for more than a minute—too short a time, anyway, for anything to have happened we don't know about.

"Meanwhile, Miss Vaughan has returned with her father to the house, hearing steps behind her and taking it for granted that it is Swain following at a distance. She goes to her room, stays there fifteen minutes or so, and comes downstairs again to find her father dead.

"Now let us see what had happened. You were right in saying that her father must have been strangled immediately after she left him. Otherwise he would still have been twitching in such a way that she must have noticed it. No doubt he dropped into the chair exhausted by his fit of rage; the murderer entered through the garden door, stopped to cut off the end of the curtain-cord and make a noose of it—that would have taken at least a minute—and then strangled his victim. Then he heard her coming down the stairs, and escaped through the garden-door again just as she entered at the other. She saw the curtain still shaking. Then she fainted.

"Now, what are the clues to the murderer? A string tied with a peculiar knot, the blood-stained handkerchief, and the finger-prints on the dead man's robe."

Godfrey paused for a moment. Freed of its inessentials, in this way, the case was beautifully clear—and beautifully baffling. It was a paved way, smooth and wide and without obstruction of any kind; but it ended in a cul-de-sac!

"One thing is certain," Godfrey went on, at last; "the murder was committed by somebody—either by Swain, or by one of the Hindus, or by some unknown. Let us weigh the evidence for and against each of them.

"Against Swain it may be urged that he was on the ground, that he had time to do it, and some provocation, though the provocation, as we know it, seems to be inadequate, provided Swain was in his right mind; a handkerchief which was tied about his wrist is found beside the body, and his finger-prints are found upon it. Miss Vaughan believed he was following them; he admits that he thought of doing so.

"In his favour, it may be urged that a man like Swain doesn't commit murder—though, as a matter of fact, this is a dangerous generalisation, for all sorts of men commit murder; but if he should do so, it would be only under great provocation and in the heat of anger, certainly not in cold blood with a noose; and, finally, if the motion of the curtain Miss Vaughan noticed was made by the murderer, it couldn't possibly have been Swain, because he was with us at that moment. You will see that there is a mass of evidence against him, and practically the whole defence is that such a crime would be impossible to one of his temperament. You know yourself how flimsy such a defence is.

"Against the Hindus, on the other hand, practically the only basis for suspicion is that such a crime might be temperamentally possible to them. They may have been on the ground, and the method of the murder savours strongly of Thuggee—though don't forget that Swain admitted he could have tied that knot. Besides, if it was the Thug who followed them, he wouldn't have made any noise, and most certainly he couldn't have left the prints of Swain's fingers on the body. But if Swain is right in his assertion that he saw the snake in the arbour, it is probable that the Thug wasn't far away.

"Against an unknown it may be urged that neither Swain nor the Hindus could have committed the crime; but I don't see how an unknown could either, unless he happened to be one of the three or four people in the world with finger-tips like Swain's. And that is too far-fetched to be believable.

"But this I am sure of, Lester," and Godfrey leaned forward again: "the murder was committed either by Swain or by someone anxious to implicate Swain. We agree that it wasn't Swain. Very well, then: the person who committed the murder made a noise in following Miss Vaughan and her father so that she should think it was Swain who was following them; he picked up the blood-stained handkerchief, which Swain had dropped perhaps when he fled from the arbour, and placed it beside the body; and in some way inconceivable to me he pressed the prints of Swain's fingers on the dead man's robe. Now, to do that, he must have known that Swain was injured—the blood-stained handkerchief would tell him that; but he must also have known that it was his right hand that was injured. There was no blood on Swain's left hand."

Again Godfrey paused. I was following his reasoning with such absorbed attention that I could feel my brain crinkle with the effort.

"Now, listen," said Godfrey, and I could have smiled at the uselessness of the admonition—as if I were not already listening with all my faculties! "There is only one way in which the murderer could have known that it was Swain's right hand, and that was by overhearing the conversation in the arbour. But if he overheard that much, he overheard it all, and he knew therefore what it was Swain proposed to do. He knew that Vaughan's sanity was to be questioned; he knew that he would probably be placed in a sanitarium; he knew that Miss Vaughan would probably marry Swain. Presuming that it was Silva, he knew that, unless something was done to stop it, a very few days would place both Vaughan and his daughter beyond his reach."

"That is true," I admitted; "but Vaughan was beyond his reach a good deal more certainly dead than he would have been in a sanitarium. Besides, it isn't at all certain that he would have been sent to a sanitarium."

"That's an objection, surely," Godfrey agreed; "but I must find out if Vaughan is really beyond his reach dead."

I stared at him.

"You don't mean...."

"I don't know what I mean, Lester. I can feel a sort of dim meaning at the back of my mind, but I can't get it out into the light."

"Besides," I went on, "if the yogi did it, how did he get back into the house before we got there?"

"He peeped in at the door, saw the coast was clear, and went back through the library. Remember, Miss Vaughan was unconscious. That doesn't bother me. And another thing, Lester. How did Miss Vaughan's father come to burst in on her and Swain like that? How did he know they were in the arbour? It was dark and he couldn't have seen either of them."

"He might have been walking about the grounds and overheard them."

"I don't believe it. I believe somebody told him they were there. And only one person could have told him—that is Silva. No—there's only one point I can't get past—that's the