Part 21 (1/2)

”This development in the case rather startled me, and as we walked along the upper hall and over into the right wing, which he said had been recently cleaned but was not to be used, I demanded more specific details concerning the arrangement. I wanted particularly to know why there was to be a change of 'secretaries' and whether the young man himself was willing to accept the companions.h.i.+p of people whom he had never seen.

”My husband had been drinking. I think he must have found a well-stocked wine-closet at Rest Hollow. And he finally grew furious at my insistence. The more angry he became the more he betrayed to me the fact that there was something to conceal. He had never told me the name of the man who had offered him this position, but I knew that there must be an intermediary. While I continued to question him he opened the door of one of the rooms in the right wing, hoping, I suppose, to distract my attention. We went on with our discussion there. And at last I refused pointblank to have anything to do with the affair, and told him that I was going to leave him and go back to the profession that would afford me an honest living. This infuriated him. He lost all self-control and confessed then, what I had already begun to suspect, that young Kenwick was a mental patient and had been in no way consulted in the arrangement. This disclosure terrified me, for I knew that my husband was not a competent person for such a responsibility. Hot words followed between us, and ended in his knocking me senseless on the floor. When I recovered consciousness, perhaps an hour later, I found myself locked into the room with no possible means of escape. The blow had dislodged a vertebra and I was in horrible pain. For a long time I lay on the bed ma.s.saging the injured place and trying to get comfortable.

”Early in the evening I heard some one being dragged into the house from the rear. I was unable to see anything, of course, but I could distinctly hear footsteps and the subsequent running around of an attendant. I concluded that my husband had returned drunk, and I was relieved to know that he had evidently not brought the patient with him.

I knew that I had no recourse but to wait until the stupor had worn off and my husband came to release me. I spent a wakeful and wretched night.

In the morning----”

Here a vivid and convincing description of her first encounter with the patient ensued. She drew a clear-cut picture of her own horror in hearing footsteps outside her door and of having the name ”Roger Kenwick” called in through the closed portal; of her terror at finding herself unaccountably alone with a man whom she believed to be a violent maniac.

Here Dayton held up the narrative. ”What evidence did he give to convince you of his insanity?'

”None at first. He seemed to talk quite rationally, and fearing that I might make him angry if I kept silence, I made evasive answers to his questions. He prepared food and sent it up to me at what I know now must have been immense physical cost to himself. I had come to the conclusion that he, like myself, was the victim of some foul conspiracy and had decided to risk confiding in him when all at once his manner changed. He began to talk wildly of finding a loaded revolver and of shooting any one who came near the place. A few minutes later, for no apparent reason, I heard him smash a window in the room just under mine. My terror increased a hundredfold, for I know absolutely nothing about the proper care of the insane. Late that same night I heard him crawl out through the broken window, and he called up to me that he was either going to get help or commit suicide.

”Almost insane myself now with terror, I waited until I heard his footsteps grow faint in the distance, then worked at the lock of my door, and at last succeeded in picking it with a pen-knife. Then I rushed downstairs, turned on the lights, and tried to make my escape. I had several of my own personal keys in my possession, and with one of these I opened the front door, which had been securely locked, I suppose by the gardener. My one frantic object was to get away and find my husband.

”But just as I got the door open I heard a shot fired from the side of the house. I hurried around there, and when I reached the spot from which the sound had come, I found just what I feared--a man lying dead under the window. I thought, of course, that it was the patient who had killed himself in a mania, as he had threatened to do. Filled with horror at the idea of leaving him there alone and uncovered in the storm, I ran back to the living-room, picked up the first thing at hand (an Indian blanket), and threw it over him. Then I hurried to the nearest house, about a mile away, and gave the alarm.

”Believing that it was my husband's neglect that had caused the tragedy, my purpose was to find him and get his version of the story before I betrayed him. So I furnished no further information to the authorities in town save that Roger Kenwick, the inmate of Rest Hollow, had committed suicide. I really knew nothing else about it but that bare fact.

”But that night I discovered, when I reached Mont-Mer, that my husband had been killed in an auto accident while coming out from the depot. I went to the morgue and identified his body, ordered the remains to be s.h.i.+pped north for interment, and left, unknown to any one, on the late northbound train. The undertaker told me that there had been no other victim of the tragedy, so I reasoned that the story which Mr. Kenwick had told me about a sprained leg was true, after all, that he had been injured in the catastrophe and had, by a curious freak of chance, found his way back alone to the very place that was awaiting him and in which he had been living for the preceding ten months.”

Dayton declared himself satisfied with the testimony and turned the witness over to the prosecution. The district attorney had recovered his interest. ”Mrs. Marstan,” he said, groping for his gla.s.ses, ”can you produce a certificate of marriage to Dr. Marstan?”

”I cannot. Important papers, including that, were among the few things that I took to Rest Hollow in November, and you have been informed that the place is completely destroyed.”

”That will do.”

She stepped down from the stand, and for the first time her eyes rested upon the prisoner. In them was an expression that would have given him new courage had he seen it, but Roger Kenwick sat motionless as a statue, his gaze fixed immutably upon the floor. It was only when the name of the next witness was called that he came back to a sense of his surroundings. ”Call Granville Jarvis.”

Dayton surveyed the Southerner sharply before he put his first question.

”You are the detective whom Richard Glover employed in San Francisco to shadow the prisoner?”

”I am.”

”How long were you in Mr. Glover's employ?”

”About two weeks.”

”Two _weeks_? Why did you give up the case then?”

”Because at the end of that time I was convinced that Roger Kenwick was neither mentally unbalanced nor guilty of any crime. I communicated this opinion to Mr. Glover and resigned from further service.”

”But you still continued to shadow the prisoner?”

”I still continued to cultivate his acquaintance. I considered him one of the most interesting men I had ever met.”

”And your connections with him since then have been of a purely friendly character? Not in any way professional, Mr. Jarvis?”

”No, I can't say that. For a few weeks after I had resigned from Mr.

Glover's service I was asked to take up the case again from a different angle; employed, I may say, by some one else.”