Then for the first time tears came in a storm. Her breath was quick and feverish. "No one will ever believe, no one will understand. They will say that I killed him, that I murdered him."
Through it all I stood almost speechless, puzzled. What did it all mean?
"No," said Kennedy, "no, for they will never know of it."
"Never know?"
"Never--if in the end justice is done. Have you the will? Or did you destroy it?"
It was a bold stroke.
"Yes. No. Here it is. How could I destroy it, even though it was burning out my very soul?"
She literally tore the paper from the bosom of her dress and cast it from her in horror and terror.
Kennedy picked it up, opened it, and glanced hurriedly through it. "Miss Bond," he said, "Jack shall never know a word of this. I shall tell him that the will has been found unexpectedly in John Fletcher"s desk among some other papers. Walter, swear on your honour as a gentleman that this will was found in old Fletcher"s desk."
"Dr. Kennedy, how can I ever thank you?" she exclaimed, sinking wearily down into a chair and pressing her hands to her throbbing forehead.
"By telling me just how you came by this will, so that when you and Fletcher are married I may be as good a friend, without suspicion, to you as I am to him. I think a full confession would do you good, Miss Bond. Would you prefer to have Dr. Jameson not hear it?"
"No, he may stay."
"This much I know, Miss Bond. Last summer in Paris with the Greenes you must have chanced to hear, of Pillard, the Apache, one of the most noted cracksmen the world has ever produced. You sought him out. He taught you how to paint your fingers with a rubber composition, how to use an electric drill, how to use the old-fashioned jimmy. You went down to Fletcherwood by the back road about a quarter after eleven the night of the robbery in the Greenes" little electric runabout. You entered the library by an unlocked window, you coupled your drill to the electric light connections of the chandelier. You had to work quickly, for the power would go off at midnight, yet you could not do the job later, when they were sleeping more soundly, for the very same reason."
It was uncanny as Kennedy rushed along in his reconstruction of the scene, almost unbelievable. The girl watched him, fascinated.
"John Fletcher was wakeful that night. Somehow or other he heard you at work. He entered the library and, by the light streaming from his bedroom, he saw who it was. In anger he must have addressed you, and his pa.s.sion got the better of his age--he fell suddenly on the floor with a stroke of apoplexy. As you bent over him he died. But why did you ever attempt so foolish an undertaking? Didn"t you know that other people knew of the will and its terms, that you were sure to be traced out in the end, if not by friends, by foes? How did you suppose you could profit by destroying the will, of which others knew the provisions?"
Any other woman than Helen Bond would have been hysterical long before Kennedy had finished pressing home remorselessly one fact after another of her story. But, with her, the relief now after the tension of many hours of concealment seemed to nerve her to go to the end and tell the truth.
What was it? Had she some secret lover for whom she had dared all to secure the family fortune? Or was she shielding someone dearer to her than her own reputation? Why had Kennedy made Fletcher withdraw?
Her eyes dropped and her breast rose and fell with suppressed emotion.
Yet I was hardly prepared for her reply when at last she slowly raised her head and looked us calmly in the face.
"I did it because I loved Jack."
Neither of us spoke. I, at least, had fallen completely under the spell of this masterful woman. Right or wrong, I could not restrain a feeling of admiration and amazement.
"Yes," she said as her voice thrilled with emotion, "strange as it may sound to you, it was not love of self that made me do it. I was, I am madly in love with Jack. No other man has ever inspired such respect and love as he has. His work in the university I have fairly gloated over.
And yet--and yet, Dr. Kennedy, can you not see that I am different from Jack? What would I do with the income of the wife of even the dean of the new school? The annuity provided for me in that will is paltry. I need millions. From the tiniest baby I have been reared that way. I have always expected this fortune. I have been given everything I wanted.
But it is different when one is married--you must have your own money. I need a fortune, for then I could have the town house, the country house, the yacht, the motors, the clothes, the servants that I need--they are as much a part of my life as your profession is of yours. I must have them.
"And now it was all to slip from my hands. True, it was to go in such a way by this last will as to make Jack happy in his new school. I could have let that go, if that was all. There are other fortunes that have been laid at my feet. But I wanted Jack, and I knew Jack wanted me. Dear boy, he never could realise how utterly unhappy intellectual poverty would have made me and how my unhappiness would have reacted on him in the end. In reality this great and beneficent philanthropy was finally to blight both our love and our lives.
"What was I to do? Stand by and see my life and my love ruined or refuse Jack for the fortune of a man I did not love? Helen Bond is not that kind of a woman, I said to myself. I consulted the greatest lawyer I knew. I put a hypothetical case to him, and asked his opinion in such a way as to make him believe he was advising me how to make an unbreakable will. He told me of provisions and clauses to avoid, particularly in making benefactions. That was what I wanted to know. I would put one of those clauses in my uncle"s will. I practised uncle"s writing till I was as good a forger of that clause as anyone could have become. I had picked out the very words in his own handwriting to practise from.
"Then I went to Paris and, as you have guessed, learned how to get things out of a safe like that of uncle"s. Before G.o.d, all I planned to do was to get that will, change it, replace it, and trust that uncle would never notice the change. Then when he was gone, I would have contested the will. I would have got my full share either by court proceedings or by settlement out of court. You see, I had planned it all out. The school would have been founded--I, we would have founded it.
What difference, I said, did thirty millions or fifty millions make to an impersonal school, a school not yet even in existence? The twenty million dollars or so difference, or even half of it, meant life and love to me.
"I had planned to steal the cash in the safe, anything to divert attention from the will and make it look like a plain robbery. I would have done the altering of the will that night and have returned it to the safe before morning. But it was not to be. I had almost opened the safe when my uncle entered the room. His anger completely unnerved me, and from the moment I saw him on the floor to this I haven"t had a sane thought. I forgot to take the cash, I forgot everything but that will.
My only thought was that I must get it and destroy it. I doubt if I could have altered it with my nerves so upset. There, now you have my whole story. I am at your mercy."
"No," said Kennedy, "believe me, there is a mental statute of limitations that as far as Jameson and myself are concerned has already erased this affair. Walter, will you find Fletcher?"
I found the professor pacing up and down the gravel walk impatiently.
"Fletcher," said Kennedy, "a night"s rest is all Miss Bond really needs.
It is simply a case of overwrought nerves, and it will pa.s.s off of itself. Still, I would advise a change of scene as soon as possible.
Good afternoon, Miss Bond, and my best wishes for your health."
"Good afternoon, Dr. Kennedy. Good afternoon, Dr. Jameson."
I for one was glad to make my escape.
A half-hour later, Kennedy, with well-simulated excitement, was racing me in the car up to the Greenes" again. We literally burst unannounced into the tete-a-tete on the porch.
"Fletcher, Fletcher," cried Kennedy, "look what Walter and I have just discovered in a tin strong-box poked off in the back of your uncle"s desk!"
Fletcher seized the will and by the dim light that shone through from the hall read it hastily. "Thank G.o.d," he cried; "the school is provided for as I thought."
"Isn"t it glorious!" murmured Helen.
True to my instinct I muttered, "Another good newspaper yarn killed."
III. The Bacteriological Detective
Kennedy was deeply immersed in writing a lecture on the chemical compositions of various bacterial toxins and ant.i.toxins, a thing which was as unfamiliar to me as Kamchatka, but as familiar to Kennedy as Broadway and Forty-second Street.
"Really," he remarked, laying down his fountain-pen and lighting his cigar for the hundredth time, "the more one thinks of how the modern criminal misses his opportunities the more astonishing it seems. Why do they stick to pistols, chloroform, and prussic acid when there is such a splendid a.s.sortment of refined methods they might employ?"
"Give it up, old man," I replied helplessly, "unless it is because they haven"t any imagination. I hope they don"t use them. What would become of my business if they did? How would you ever get a really dramatic news feature for the Star out of such a thing? "Dotted line marks route taken by fatal germ; cross indicates spot where ant.i.toxin attacked it"--ha! ha! not much for the yellow journals in that, Craig."
"To my mind, Walter, it would be the height of the dramatic--far more dramatic than sending a bullet into a man. Any fool can shoot a pistol or cut a throat, but it takes brains to be up-to-date."
"It may be so;" I admitted, and went on reading, while Kennedy scratched away diligently on his lecture. I mention this conversation both because it bears on my story, by a rather peculiar coincidence, and because it showed me a new side of Kennedy"s amazing researches. He was as much interested in bacteria as in chemistry, and the story is one of bacteria.
It was perhaps a quarter of an hour later when the buzzer on our hall door sounded. Imagine my surprise on opening the door to discover the slight figure of what appeared to be a most fascinating young lady who was heavily veiled. She was in a state almost bordering on hysteria, as even I, in spite of my usual obtuseness, noticed.
"Is Professor Kennedy in?" she inquired anxiously.
"Yes, ma"am;" I replied, opening the door into our study.
She advanced toward him, repeating her inquiry.