wilford's office was in an old building of the days when a structure of five or six stories, with a cast-iron, ornamented front, was considered a wonderful engineering achievement. it was down-town, in the heart of the financial district, and had been chosen by wilford, without a doubt, to convey an impression of solidity and conservatism, a useful camouflage to cover the essential character of his law practice as scandal attorney.
we climbed the worn stairs with leslie, and, as we mounted, i noticed that there was also, down the hall, a back stairway, evidently placed there in case of fire. hence, it was possible, i reasoned, for a person to have slipped in or out practically unobserved from the front.
we knew now that at least one person, probably two, had been there, though who they were we did not know. nor was there yet any clue, except that certainly a woman had visited wilford, at least early in the evening.
wilford's office was on the third floor, in the [139] front. we entered and looked about. past the outer railing and outer office was his own sanctum.
it was furnished lavishly with divans and settees in mahogany and dark leather, with elaborate hangings over the windows and on the walls. there were law-books, but only, it seemed, for the purpose of giving a legal flavor to the place. most of the legal library was outside. the office was rather like a den than a lawyer's office.
reflecting, i could see the reason. society must be made welcome here, and at ease. besides, the conservative surroundings were quite valuable in covering up the profession—i had almost said, business—of divorce made easy and pleasant. i recalled rascon and the crook detectives who made little concealment of their business—"evidence for divorce furnished." doubtless many of these gentry had found occupation from this source. what stories these walls might have told! they would have made even belle balcom's ears tingle.
at once kennedy began his search of the office, going over everything minutely but quickly, while we waited, apart.
"not even a finger-print has been left unobscured!" he exclaimed, finally, almost ready in disgust to give it up. "it is shameful—shameful," he muttered. "when will they learn to let things alone until some one comes who knows the scientific importance of little things! if only i could have been first on the job."
[140]
"there's the typewriter," suggested leslie, trying to divert attention and smooth things over.
"have you the letter?" asked craig.
leslie drew it eagerly from his pocket and unfolded it. kennedy took it, spread it out and studied it a moment:
honora:
don't think i am a coward to do this, but things cannot go on as they have been going. it is no use. i cannot work it out. this is the only way. so i shall drop out. you will find my will in the safe. good-by forever.
vail.
then craig moved over and sat at the typewriter. quickly he struck several keys, then made a hasty comparison of the note with what he had written.
"the 's' and the 'r' are out of alignment, the 'e' battered—in both," he concluded, hurriedly, as though merely confirming what he was already convinced of. "there are enough marks to identify the writing as having been done on this machine, all right. no, there's nothing in this note—except what is back of it, and we do not know that yet. did wilford write that letter, or was it written for him? it could hardly have been done voluntarily."
"it was in this desk chair that we found him sprawled—so," illustrated doctor leslie, dropping into the chair. then, straightening up, he indicated the big flat-topped desk in the middle of [141] the room. "the two glasses were on this desk—one of them here, the other over there."
as he pointed the spots out, one of them near where he was, the other near the outer edge of the desk, kennedy's eye fell on the desk calendar.
"i removed the pages i told you about," supplied leslie, noticing the direction of craig's glance. "it's a loose-leaf affair, as you see. here they are."
leslie drew from his pocket the leaves for the various days, and we looked at them again, with their notations—one reading, "prepare papers in proposed case of lathrop vs. lathrop." others read, "vina at four," and other dates, with hours attached. there were several of them, more than would seem to have been necessary were the relation merely that of lawyer and client for so brief a time. there were none for the day of the murder however.
kennedy continued the search, now rummaging the papers, now directing either leslie or myself to bring him objects.
he had asked me for a letter-file, and i was turning from a cabinet to hand it to him when my foot kicked some small, soft object lying along the edge of the rug. the thing, whatever it was, flew over and hit the baseboard.
mechanically i reached down and picked the object up, holding it in the palm of my hand.
it seemed to be a rough-coated, grayish-brown bean, of irregular, kidney shape, about an inch [142] long and half an inch thick, with two margins, one short and concave, the other long and convex. the surfaces were rounded slightly, but flattened. the coat of the bean was glossy.
kennedy, with quick eye, had noted that i had picked up something and was over at my side in a moment.
"what's that?" he asked quickly, taking the thing from my hand as i turned to him.
he looked at it critically for a moment. then he pressed the hard outer coat until it parted slightly, disclosing inside two creamy white cotyledons. he studied them for some time, then pressed the bean back into shape again as it had been before.
i was about to ask what he thought it was, and where it came from, when there was a noise in the direction of the door. we turned to see that it was a man in overalls shuffling in, his cap in his hand.
"oh, beggin' your pardon, doctor," he addressed leslie, "i heard some one here. i didn't know it was you."
it was the night watchman who had been off the job on perhaps the only occasion in years when it would have meant much for him to have been on it, but was making up for his laxity now by excessive vigilance.
"pete," demanded leslie, sharply, "did you see a woman here that night?"
"n-no, sir—that is, sir—i don't know. there [143] was some one here—but mr. wilford, he kept such late hours and irregular that i thought nothing of it. i thought it was all right, sir. later, when i didn't hear any voices, i thought they had gone home. i didn't see the lights burnin'—you wouldn't ha' noticed that, except from the other side of the street. i s'pose that's why they didn't discover the body till mornin'. but a woman here—no, sir, i can't say as i'd say that, sir."
whatever else there might have been said about pete, it was evident that he was perfectly honest. he even confessed his lack of observation and his inefficiency with utter frankness. there did not seem to be a hope of obtaining anything by questioning pete. he had told all he really knew. others might have embellished the story had they been in his place, and so have led us astray. at least he had the merit of not doing that.
"so—here you are," exclaimed a deep voice at the door.
it was doyle, flushed and excited.
"you may go, pete," nodded leslie to the janitor, who backed out of the room, still pulling at his cap.
alone, doyle turned to us.
"confound shattuck!" he exclaimed. "that man is the limit. i'll get him, if he doesn't look out. he's a game bird—but he flies funny."
"why, what has he done now?" asked kennedy.
"done?" fumed doyle. "done? been threatening, i hear, to have me 'broke'—that's all. i don't care about that, not a whoop—even if he had the influence [144] with the administration. what i care about is that he is putting every obstacle in the way of my finding out anything from that woman. she's hard enough to manage, heaven knows, without his butting in."
"what about that bean jameson picked up here?" asked leslie, impatiently, as doyle paused. "have you any idea what it may be?"
"a bean?" inquired doyle, looking from one of us to the other and not understanding. "a bean? picked up here? why, what do you mean?"
i was inclined to be vexed at leslie for having mentioned it, but i soon saw that kennedy betrayed no traces of annoyance. on the contrary, he seemed rather eager to answer, as he drew the thing from his pocket, where he had placed it when pete came in.
"just something jameson happened to find on the very edge of the rug, quite by accident, over by the letter-files," craig explained, with a certain gusto at showing doyle a thing that he had overlooked. "ever see anything like it?"
doyle took the bean, but it was evident that both it and its discovery meant nothing to him.
"no," he admitted, reluctantly. "what is it?"
"without a doubt it is one of the famous so-called 'ordeal beans' of calabar," replied kennedy, offhand.
"calabar?" i repeated, in surprise. "why, that's a place on the west coast of africa, isn't it? what would a calabar bean be lying on the floor here for?"
[145]
"what do you mean—ordeal bean?" questioned doyle, somewhat incredulously, while leslie maintained a discreet silence.
"in the calabar, where these things grow," explained kennedy, not put out for an instant, "as you perhaps know, they have a strange form of dueling with these seeds. two opponents divide a bean. each eats a half. it is some religious ceremony—voodoo, or some such thing, i suppose—a superstition. sometimes both die—for the bean contains physostigmine and is the chief source from which this drug is obtained."
"you mean they eat it—a poison?" i asked.
"certainly. over there, the natives believe that god will decide who is guilty and who is innocent, and that he will miraculously spare the innocent. i suppose that sometimes one gets a half a bean that doesn't contain so high a percentage of the poison—or else some people are not so susceptible to its toxin, or something like that. anyhow, that's one way they use it."
"why," i exclaimed, "that is primitive justice, you might say—the duel by poison!"
"exactly," craig nodded.
doyle stared, amazed and puzzled.
"no worse than some of the things our ancestors did, not many centuries ago," reminded craig. "they used to have all sorts of ordeals, by fire and water and what not. we haven't progressed so far over the savages, after all. civilization is only a veneer, and pretty thin, sometimes. underneath [146] we're quite like the savage—only we substitute mechanical war for brute strength and high finance for highway robbery. the caveman and the cavewoman are in all of us—only we manage either to control them or conceal them—except when something happens that means calling in either doyle or myself."
"what's this—phy—physos—what you call it?" demanded doyle, forgetting to conceal his ignorance in his curiosity.
"a drug," replied kennedy. "one effect it has is to contract the pupil of the eye. both leslie and i have discovered considerable traces of it in wilford's stomach. in such quantities, it would be very poisonous. by the way, this bean would account also for those starch grains i found, walter," added kennedy.
"then you mean you think that wilford ate one of these things?" queried leslie.
"that there was a—duel by poison?" demanded doyle, hesitating over the words i had used.
"i know he must have eaten one of those beans," asserted kennedy. "what else could it have been? he certainly didn't eat this one, though. there must have been more. this one must have dropped on the floor in the excitement and have been overlooked. you didn't find any traces of others about, did you?" he added, looking from doyle to leslie.
leslie shook his head negatively. doyle's puzzled face was answer enough from him.
[147]
i considered a moment as an idea struck me, offering a refuge from an unpleasant implication of kennedy's remarks which i foresaw and which i knew would occur to doyle, if not directly, at least very soon.
"shattuck has traveled widely," i remarked, reflectively. "he himself told us, you recall, that he had hunted big game in africa. perhaps he has been in the calabar, too—at any rate somewhere on that continent where he might have learned of these beans and the use to which the natives put them."
kennedy nodded again, cautiously.
"a good many such beans are imported for medical purposes to obtain the physostigmine from them," craig remarked, carefully. "it's the source of the drug. don't jump too hastily at your conclusions, walter. remember, physostigmine is a drug that is known and used by oculists, too, for its effect on the pupil of the eye, the opposite of belladonna."
i could have sworn at kennedy for that. it was just the idea that i had wanted to keep away from doyle. i had known that he would pounce on it like a hawk. now i was sure that he would use it against honora.
"oh—oculists use it, do they?" repeated doyle, running true to form. "ah—i see."
he looked about, from one to the other of us, knowingly. no one said anything as he continued to gaze with superior slyness at us, regarding us as [148] poor simpletons who were unable to see through a millstone with a hole in it.
"i see—i see," he added. "honora—chappelle. that was her name before she was married. her father was a frenchman, honore chappelle—an oculist—well known in the city before he died. oh, that's very important, then, that about this bean and the physostigmine, or whatever you call it. and, leslie, you say you've discovered that some one—a woman—was here early in the evening. can't we put two and two together? she's lying when she says she wasn't out of that house, she is. so is that celeste, the hussy. depend on it, she was here. i'm on the right track, all right," doyle concluded with a cocksure shake of the head that was more irritating than any amount of ignorance on his part would have been.
i did not reply. i understood the purport of the broad insinuation that doyle was making. also, i saw the real reason of kennedy's remark to me, cautioning me to make haste slowly in deducing anything from the, as yet, slender facts of the case.
i thought a moment. far from eliminating anybody, the discovery of the calabar bean left us scarcely a bit ahead of where we had been before. with a keen repulsion against the very idea and its implications as seen by the astute doyle, i still was forced to admit that honora wilford's father had been an oculist and that it was perfectly true that she had every opportunity to have learned of the [149] ordeal bean and its drug. yet i kept asking myself what, after all, that might mean.
purposely kennedy reverted to the calabar bean and the remarks of doyle that had started the conversation.
"if shattuck gets too brash," hinted kennedy, "spring this information on him. perhaps it might interest him."
as he said it, i remembered what craig had said in the laboratory only a short time before—that he was going to tell part of what he had found, as he went along, in the hope that the actions of each suspect who heard it might perhaps betray some thing. there was some crumb of comfort in that, i felt, as far as honora herself was concerned. yet i felt uncomfortable and misgiving.
we parted from leslie and doyle, and as we went up-town again i could not help remarking that somehow the apparent effort of shattuck to hamper us was suspicious. kennedy said very little, but when we got off at the station on the subway just before our own, i saw that he was not yet through.
it did not take long to elicit from him the information that, while he felt he could trust doyle to convey the information about the discovery and the drug to both shattuck and honora before long, the case was different as far as vina and doctor lathrop were concerned.
as we entered doctor lathrop's office, we found that not only was he there, but that his wife was there also. however, it was quite evident that they [150] had been having words, and all was not as serene between them as they would have us wish, by the forced looks on their faces. in short, they had been quarreling.
i could have guessed what it was about, but kennedy affected not to notice that anything was wrong and i fancied that vina, at least, wore a look of relief as she saw that he was not paying any attention to it.
briefly, kennedy outlined what we had found—the physostigmine in the stomach, the poison, the bean itself, which he took particular pains to describe along with the circumstances under which it had been found.
"did you ever have any of these ordeal beans?" asked kennedy, displaying the one we had found.
"i have had them," admitted lathrop.
i thought i caught a covert look at his wife, as if to see how she was taking the discovery. as for vina, i knew that she was far too clever to betray anything, especially before us.
"they're comparatively easy to obtain in new york," went on lathrop, with greater ease. "drug importers get them in quantities to derive the drug from them. however, now i employ the drug itself, the few times i have any occasion to use it. i suppose i've got some in my medicine-chest."
as we talked, i saw that vina was really listening, keen and silent. if actions for which we had no immediate explanation had bearing on the question of guilt, i felt that her very manner was incriminatory [151] in itself. why should she try to conceal under a cloak of indifference her real interest in the thing? and yet, even with vina, i was loath to jump at a conclusion. somehow or other her preoccupied manner and the stress of her suppressed attention aroused my suspicions most strongly against her, after what other things i knew of her private affairs.
as we left them and hurried toward the laboratory, i found myself wondering whether she might not have been the visitor to wilford whom the tenant had overheard talking in wilford's office. as for the why of such a visit, i was forced to admit i had no explanation.
i reacted against the deduction that perhaps honora had known of the properties of the calabar bean and had been able to obtain some of them. yet it was clearly that that was in kennedy's mind as we approached his workshop.
we had scarcely entered the hall when i saw that there was some one waiting for us near the door. it was brooks, of the star.
brooks wore a very important air of secrecy, as though he had been doing a bit of gumshoeing and was proud of it.
"something about rascon?" i asked, jumping to the conclusion, after i had introduced brooks to craig.
"yes," he replied, eagerly, "i've got a clue."
"a clue? why, we've got rascon—at least doyle can get him whenever we want him. what do you mean?" i asked.
[152]
"how about those reports?" answered brooks, pointedly. "you know he did a good deal of work for wilford and wrote a good many of them. the reports are gone—doyle told me."
"where are they?" asked kennedy, quickly appreciating the possible importance of the matter. "is that what you've found out?"
brooks looked knowing. "ah—that's just it. you see, i decided to trail the trailers, so to speak. there's one very trusted operative of rascon's—he calls him number six—that's his denomination, i believe, in the rascon records. well, that fellow has double-crossed him. he has stolen the reports, i hear. or perhaps it's part of rascon's plan to cover himself. i don't know. at any rate, i've traced number six to a river-front saloon—you may know of the place, a tough joint called 'the ship,' on water street. without a doubt there's something there."
brooks was speaking earnestly and i looked questioningly at kennedy.
"i believe it's worth following up," decided craig, not even stopping to unlock the laboratory door, as we turned away with brooks. "if we had those records it might point up the case very closely."
