"The h.e.l.l you have!" exclaimed Conlon excitedly, not meaning, I think, to be sarcastic. "Why, you haven"t even been in there"--he referred to Gertrude"s boudoir--"or seen the body!"
"No," I responded, "but you and Doctor Askew have, so you can easily put me right. Extraordinary as the whole thing is--the one deadly chance in perhaps a million--there"s nothing impossible about it. Merely from the facts you"ve given me, Sergeant Conlon, I can reconstruct the whole scene--come pretty near it, at any rate. But the strength of my conviction is based on other grounds--don"t lose sight of that! Miss Blake didn"t kill Mrs. Hunt; she"s incapable of such an action; and if she didn"t, no one else did. An accident is the only alternative."
"Well, then," grunted Conlon, "tell us about it! It"ll take some tellin"!"
"Hold on!" exclaimed Doctor Askew before I could begin. "Sorry, Mr.
Hunt--but you remember, perhaps--when you first came in--I had half a mind to try something--an experiment?" I nodded. "Well, I"ve made up my mind. We"ll try it right now, before it"s too late. If it succeeds, it may yield us a few facts to go on. Your suppositions can come afterward."
I felt, as he spoke, that something behind his words belied their rudeness, that their rudeness was rather for Conlon"s benefit than for mine. He got up briskly and crossed to the bedside. There after a moment he turned and motioned us both to join him.
As we did so, tiptoeing instinctively: "Yes--this is fortunate," he said; "she"s at it again. Look."
Susan still lay as I had first seen her, with shut eyes, her arms extended outside the coverlet; but she was no longer entirely motionless. Her left arm lay relaxed, the palm of her left hand upward.
I had often seen her hands lie inertly thus in her lap, the palms upward, in those moments of silent withdrawal which I have more than once described. But now her right hand was turned downward, the fingers slightly contracted, as if they held a pen, and the hand was creeping slowly on the coverlet from left to right; it would creep slowly in this way for perhaps eight inches, then draw quickly back to its point of starting and repeat the manoeuvre. It was uncanny, this patient repet.i.tion--over and over--of a single restricted movement.
"My G.o.d," came from Conlon in a husky whisper, "is she dyin"--or what?"
"Far from it!" said Doctor Askew, his abrupt, crisp speech in almost ludicrous contrast to Conlon"s sudden awe. "Get me some paper from that desk over there, Conlon. A pad, if possible."
He drew out a pencil from his pocket as he spoke. Conlon hesitated an instant, then obeyed, tiptoeing ponderously, with creaking boots, over to a daintily appointed writing-table, and returning with a block of linen paper. Doctor Askew, meanwhile, holding the pencil between his teeth, had lifted Susan"s unresisting shoulders--too roughly, I thought--from the bed.
"Stick that other pillow under her," he ordered me, sharply enough in spite of the impeding pencil. "A little farther down--so!"
Susan now lay, no less limply than before, with her trunk, shoulders, and head somewhat raised. Her right hand had ceased its slow, patient movement.
"What"s the idea?" Conlon was muttering. "What"s the idea, doc?"
Whatever it was, it was evident that Conlon didn"t like it.
"Got the pad?" demanded Doctor Askew. "Oh, good! Here!"
He almost s.n.a.t.c.hed the pad from Conlon and tore the blotter cover from it; then he slipped it beneath Susan"s right palm and finally thrust his pencil between her curved fingers, its point resting on the linen block, which he steadied by holding one corner between finger and thumb. For a moment the hand remained quiet; then it began to write. I say "it"
advisedly; no least trace of consciousness or purposed control could be detected in Susan"s impa.s.sive face or heavily relaxed body. _Susan_ was not writing; her waking will had no part in this strange automatism; so much, at least, was plain to me and even to Conlon.
"Mother of G.o.d," came his throaty whisper again, "it"s not _her_ that"s doin" it. Who"s pushin" that hand?"
"It"s not _sperits_, Conlon," said Doctor Askew ironically; "you can take my say-so for that." With the words he withdrew the scribbled top sheet from the pad, glanced at it, and handed it to me. The hand journeyed on, covering a second sheet as I read. "That doesn"t help us much, does it?" was Doctor Askew"s comment, when I had devoured the first sheet.
"No," I replied; "not directly. But I"ll keep this if you don"t mind."
I folded the sheet and slipped it into my pocket. Doctor Askew removed the second sheet.
"Same sort of stuff," he grunted, pa.s.sing it over to me. "It needs direction." And he began addressing--not _Susan_, to Conlon"s amazement--the _hand_! "What happened in Mrs. Hunt"s room to-night?" he demanded firmly of the hand. "Tell us exactly what happened in Mrs.
Hunt"s room to-night! It"s important. What happened in Mrs. Hunt"s room to-night?"
Always addressing the hand, his full attention fixed upon it as it moved, he repeated this burden over and over. "We must know exactly what happened in Mrs. Hunt"s room to-night! Tell us what happened in Mrs.
Hunt"s room to-night.... What happened in Mrs. Hunt"s room to-night?"
Conlon and I both noted that Susan"s breathing, hitherto barely to be detected, gradually grew more labored while Doctor Askew insisted upon and pressed home his monotonous refrain. He had so placed himself now that he could follow the slowly pencilled words. More and more deliberately the hand moved; then it paused....
"What happened in Mrs. Hunt"s room to-night?" chanted Doctor Askew.
"This ain"t right," muttered Conlon. "It"s worse"n the third degree. I don"t like it."
He creaked uneasily away. The hand moved again, hesitatingly, briefly.
"Ah," chanted Doctor Askew--always to the hand--"it was an accident, was it? How did it happen? Tell us exactly how it happened--exactly how it happened. _We must know_.... How did the accident happen in Mrs. Hunt"s room to-night?"
Again the hand moved, more steadily this time, and seemingly in response to his questions.
Doctor Askew glanced up at me with an encouraging smile. "We"ll get it now--all of it. Don"t worry. The hand"s responding to control."
Though sufficiently astonished and disturbed by this performance, I was not, like Conlon, wholly at sea. Sober accounts of automatic writing could be found in all modern psychologies; I had read some of these accounts--given with all the dry detachment of clinical data. They had interested me, not thrilled me. No supernatural power was involved. It was merely the comparative rarity of such phenomena in the ordinary normal course of experience that made them seem awe-inspiring. And yet, the _hand_ there, solely animate, patiently writing in entire independence of a consciously directing will----! My spine, too, like Conlon"s, registered an authentic shiver of protest and atavistic fear.
But, throughout, I kept my tautened wits about me, busily working; and they drove me now on a sudden inspiration to the writing-table, where I seized pen and paper and wrote down with the most collected celerity a condensed account of--for so I phrased it--"what must, from the established facts, be supposed to have taken place in Mrs. Hunt"s boudoir, just after Miss Blake had entered it." I put this account deliberately as my theory of the matter, as the one solution of the problem consistent with the given facts and the known characters involved; and I had barely concluded when I was startled to my feet by Doctor Askew"s voice--raised cheerily above its monotonous murmur of questions to the hand--calling my name.
"What are you up to, Mr. Hunt? My little experiment"s over. It"s a complete success."
He was walking toward me with a handful of loose scribbled sheets from the linen block.
"How is she now?" I inquired anxiously, as if she had just been subjected to a dangerous operation.
"All right. Deep under. I shan"t try to pull her out yet. Much better for her to come out of it naturally herself. I suggest we darken the room and leave her."
"That suits _me_!" I just caught from Conlon, over by the door.
"She"ll be quite safe alone?"
"Absolutely. I want to read this thing to Conlon and Mrs. Arthur and Mr.
Phar, before the coroner gets here. I rather think they"ll find it convincing."
"Good," I responded. "But, first of all, let me read them this. I"ve just jotted down my a.n.a.lysis of the whole situation. It"s a piece of cold constructive reasoning from the admitted data, and I shall be greatly surprised if it doesn"t on the whole agree with what you"ve been able to obtain."
Doctor Askew stared at me a moment curiously. "And if it doesn"t agree?"
he asked.
"If it don"t," exclaimed Conlon, with obvious relief, "it may help us, all the same! This thing can"t be settled by _that_ kind of stuff, doc."
He gave a would-be contemptuous nod toward Doctor Askew"s handful of scrawled pages. "That"s no evidence--whatever it says. Where does it come from? Who"s givin" it? It can"t be sworn to on the Book, that"s certain--eh? Let"s get outa here and begin to talk sense!" Conlon opened the door eagerly, and creaked off through the hall.
"Go with him," ordered Doctor Askew. "I"ll put out the lights." Then he touched my elbow and gave me a slight nod. "I see your point of course.
But I hope to G.o.d you"ve hit somewhere near it?"
"Doctor," I replied, "this account of mine is exact. I"ll tell you later how I know that."
"Ah!" he grunted, with a green-blue flash of eyes. "What a lucky devil I am!... But I"ve felt all along this would prove a rewarding case."
IV