"Why, don"t you see?" he cried. "All that you have told me simply adds mystery to mystery, apprehension to apprehension, fear to fear. And it strikes me that, though my own experience has been bizarre enough, your observations and that of this other doctor who is dead are even more fantastic. What do you hope to accomplish by telling me this gruesome, unnatural state of affairs?"
"I hope to make you act," I said, putting a chair in his path. "We are sensible men. There are, no doubt, explanations for all occurrences.
Our limited mental equipment may not find them at once. But the first thing to recognize is the one important fact; neither of us doubts that your wife is in some grave danger. Personally I believe that if you are not mentally deranged, she is! In any case, it"s your duty to go to your house. Force an entrance if necessary. It cannot be done too soon!"
Estabrook clenched his hands as he heard me, but after a moment he began to shake his head doggedly.
"Can"t you see that it would mean publicity?" he asked.
"Better than losing her," I argued, feeling certain that he would yield.
He did, in fact, cry aloud, but nevertheless he shook his head.
"Impossible," he groaned. "I"ve given her my solemn promise!"
I suppose I"ve a reputation for being short of speech, often frank, and sometimes profane. I then allowed myself in my rage to be all three. It was to no purpose. Estabrook would not consent to tearing the cover from his affairs in any way which would cost him the breach of his confounded words of honor.
"You are a madman!" I exclaimed in my vexation. "The death of your wife may be entered against you. What folly!"
"Doctor," he answered quietly, "I want your help and not abuse. Your storming will not accomplish anything. You are the only living soul to whom I have confessed the presence of a skeleton in my married life, and I want you to help me. I have been told repeatedly that you are a man of courage, steadiness of nerve, scientific eminence, and high ability."
I could not disagree with him.
"The next thing, then, is Margaret Murchie, the servant," I said.
"What of her?"
"She knows something," said I. "You have heard how she talked to me, how she tried to conceal her excitement, how she treated me as a spy, how guilty she seemed, and you have indicated that you, as well as I, believe that she knows what is at the bottom of this."
"Yes, yes," cried Estabrook. "I am sure that she knows. But what then--what then? What can we do?"
"My dear fellow," I said, "why "we"?"
He threw up his hands and sprang out of his chair again.
"I beg your pardon," he answered with a look of chagrin. "I"ve been under a strain, I suppose, and I forgot that you have nothing at stake."
"Not so fast, Estabrook," I said. "Take another nip of the brandy. I prescribe it for you. And not so fast. I have a good deal at stake."
"What?"
"My case," I said.
He looked at me with admiration.
"Furthermore," I went on, "I feel a certain brotherhood with you, young man. You are the first person with whom I"ve rolled on the sod for many years. I have punched you in the neck. You are now my patient and my guest. You have confided in me. You have made an unconscious appeal to me for help. Above all, I am one of those old fogies you have mentioned, who secretly mourn the dying-out of romance. Here!--a gla.s.s!--to adventure!"
Estabrook smiled sourly, but he drank.
"Thank you," he said. "I appreciate your spirit and, permit me to say, also your attempt to make me treat this terrible affair in a spirit of sport. But old Margaret is the superlative of stubbornness. We cannot expect to go to her to obtain information. I have lived in the house with her for more than six years. Can I say whether she is a saint or a crafty villainess? No. I know no more now than when I shook her in my anger on the evening the Judge died. She has never addressed me of her own will since. She will give up nothing to me. You have tried her already."
"I am less conservative in my ideas," I answered. "Since we are in this field of turbulence and mystery, let us be turbulent and mysterious. All that you say is true. Therefore, we must force the truth from Margaret Murchie."
"You mean to induce her--" he began.
"Stuff!" said I. "The thing I mean is a.s.sault and battery. The thing I mean is kidnapping. You may believe in clapping your hand over her mouth and struggling with her, while we take her out. Personally I prefer a cone containing the fumes of a liquid called cataleptol, fortunately well known in my profession, while still a stranger to criminals."
But the careful Estabrook shook his head.
"You are not serious?" said he doubtfully. "Do you plan for me to take part in this?"
"There must be two," I said. "And once we have the lady in this room, I will be willing to guarantee that she will tell all she knows. I cannot ask my chauffeur to go with me, for I trust him about as implicitly as I trust a rattlesnake. Which makes me think--can you run a car?"
Estabrook was weakening. He nodded. I looked at my watch and found that it was after eleven. I drew the curtain and saw that sheets of rain were still being blown slantwise across the foggy radiance of the arc lights.
There is a trace of the criminal in me. Perhaps all men feel it at times. Just then, observing the wildness of the storm, I felt the joy of a midnight misdoing, even more than my desire to find the answer to MacMechem"s question.
"I shall be glad to know how you propose to gain a second admittance,"
said Estabrook, when, after tripping over the wet cobblestones and bending our shoulders to the drive of the cold rain, we had groped through the black alley to the dimly lit garage. "I"ll also be glad to know why you suppose you can draw a statement from the old woman."
"My dear fellow," said I, "there is the cause of many of your troubles!
You are always wanting to see your way to the end. And the way there often must be cut through a trackless waste of events that haven"t happened."
"In light of my experience it seems to me that your statement is unreasonable," he muttered peevishly; "but since you are satisfied, I will be, too. If I understand your plan, however, while you sit dry and comfortable within this machine, I am to ride outside, wet to the marrow."
At this remark the sleepy garage attendant rubbed his eyes, filling them with the sting of gasoline, swore, and forgot to submit my new chauffeur to the inspection of his first surprise. He drew back the door and we trundled out into the water-swept thoroughfare.
The rain, which had begun with a thin drive, had now settled into one of those sod-soaking, autumn downpours, commonly called an equinoctial storm. Estabrook was showing the effect of his nervous strain by driving the machine through it with a recklessness of which I disapproved, not only because we had twice skidded like a curling-stone from one side of the asphalt to the other, but also because I did not wish undue attention attracted to our course. The windows in front of me and to the right and left were covered with streaks of water and fogged with the smoke of my cigarettes which, in my pleasurable excitement, I smoked one after the other; therefore everything outside--the spots of light which lengthened into streaks, the shadows, the other vehicles, the glaring fronts of theatres in Federal Circle--formed a ribbon of s.m.u.tched panorama, the running of which obliterated vertical lines and made all the world horizontal. At each crossing we jumped, landing again to scoot forward to the next, where, through the opening of side streets, came the faint sound of whistles in the harbor; and still, Estabrook,--confound him!--to my cautions bellowed through the speaking-tube, paid no attention.
With shocking suddenness it occurred to me, for the first time, seriously, that I had no a.s.surance that this man who drove me was not a maniac!
I reviewed the meeting with him, the tale he had unfolded, his distraught actions. I am fairly familiar with psychopathic symptoms and my summary of all that I had observed in him indicated clearly enough that he was as sane as any one of us. But for the first time in my life I realized the feeling of uncertainty about a physician"s diagnosis which a patient must endure. A doctor delivers his opinion as a matter of self-a.s.sertion; the layman receives it as a matter of self-preservation. Riding in that flying car, I found myself in both positions. As a physician I was wholly satisfied with my conclusion; as a man I found myself still in doubt and picturing to myself a wild ten-minute ride, which I had no power to prevent, ending in a chaos of broken gla.s.s, twisted metal, clothing, blood, and flaming gasoline.
"MacMechem met violent death the moment he became curious as to the other side of the blue wall," I thought, with a twinge of the superst.i.tious fear which touches prowlers as well as presidents, professors as well as paupers.
We were whirling around a corner then, and through the gla.s.s and over Estabrook"s broad shoulders, I believed I saw again the treetops of the park.
"At least he knows where he lives," said I to myself as we drew up to the curb.
"Good!" I whispered to him, when I had stepped out into the swash of the rain. "Frankly, I hardly enjoyed it. You drive like a demonstrator."
"I"m a ruin of nerves," he answered, shivering. "I"m afraid I"m a poor a.s.sistant for you, anyway. What do you want me to do?"
"Just climb inside there where it is warmer," I said, clapping him on the shoulder. "I"ll be back in a minute."
"Back in a minute?" he repeated as if dazed.
"From the Marburys", if you don"t mind," I explained.
He leaned back against the cushions, disregarding the fact that with every nervous movement water ran from him as from a squeezed sponge.