Part 23 (2/2)

But it had been unnecessary for the attorney to make a plea for his client, after the quietly dramatic testimony of the last witness for the defense. In thrilling terms the ”Clarion” described Kenwick's final service at the front, when he had made his way alone across No-Man's-Land and saved for France one of her most gallant officers, and had given in exchange that thing which is more precious than life itself. Only through an accident, which had killed the man who had meant to batten upon his misery, had he been released from a pitiable bondage.

Having thus sketched in his ”human interest,” the reporter proceeded to tell the story which had proved so overwhelmingly convincing to the jury and audience. How, in his skilfully planned narrative, Richard Glover had transposed the ident.i.ties of the two dead men. How, upon receiving his commission from Everett Kenwick, he had first turned over his charge to Ralph Regan, admitted by his own sister to be an addict to drugs and a ne'er-do-well whom she was helping, in a surrept.i.tious way, to support. How the accounts, forwarded from the Kenwick lawyer in New York, showed that Regan must have received out of the arrangement only his living and enough of the drug to keep him satisfied but not wholly irresponsible. How, upon his own infrequent visits to the patient (whom he himself had conducted across the continent instead of the mythical Bailey) Glover had foreseen two months before the tragedy that Regan could no longer be relied upon and had told him that he was about to be dismissed.

How he had then secured the services of one Edward Marstan, whom he believed to be without family, and who represented himself as a physician in good standing but heavily in debt. How the arrangement had been made that he a.s.sume charge of the patient at the Mont-Mer depot, whither Kenwick was to be brought up from a day's sojourn in Los Angeles by Regan. How the physician, accompanied by his wife, had arrived from San Francisco that very day; how Marstan had quarreled with his wife, and leaving her unconscious in a room at Rest Hollow, had gone into town to get his charge. How, on the way out from town he had been killed in an accident while driving his own car, and how, by a curious fate, Kenwick had been restored to sanity and had found his way back alone to his former asylum.

The story then went on to relate how Ralph Regan, evidently desperate over his loss of a home and drug supplies, had returned to Rest Hollow by stealth the following night, either to make a plea to the new caretaker or to search for drugs, and of how, finding the house dark and apparently deserted, he had forsaken all hope of reinstatement and had ended his life with the revolver which he had brought either for murder of Marstan or for suicide. The shot which he fired, the paper stated, had evidently been used to test his own nerve or the cartridges; and it had done its work. Letters written to his sister a few weeks before the tragedy, and produced by her in court, indicated a depression amounting to acute melancholia.

Recalled to the witness-stand and subjected to crucial cross-examination, the gardener at Rest Hollow had broken down in his testimony, admitted that he was afraid of Glover, and that although he had been in too dazed a condition on the fatal night to examine the body of the dead man, he knew Ralph Regan to have been the former attendant and had frequently talked to him about the patient's symptoms, about which Regan appeared to know little and care less.

The narrative then went on to tell how Richard Glover had discovered among the possessions of his charge certain ma.n.u.scripts which he deemed suitable for publication, and how he had, after the death of the elder Kenwick, sold one of them under the name of Ralph Regan, choosing a real rather than a fict.i.tious name in order that he might s.h.i.+ft the theft to helpless shoulders if it were ever discovered. How he had, with the Kenwick capital entrusted to him, invested in large realty holdings which had completely absorbed his attention. How he had padded his accounts in order to wring extra money from Everett Kenwick under the guise of ”special treatments” for the patient and so on. How on the night of the fatality he had driven to Rest Hollow from Los Angeles to give some final instructions to the new employee, and how, stumbling upon the dead body of Regan, he had been shocked to find himself involved in a tragedy. How he had then cold-bloodedly decided to have the body identified as Kenwick, partly to save himself from the charge of criminal neglect and partly because he knew that Everett Kenwick had left in his will a bequest that was to come to him ”for faithful service” upon the death or recovery of his brother. How, not dreaming that his charge would ever recover, he had thus used his death as a means of gaining extra funds which he badly needed just at that time.

How he had accordingly selected certain of the patient's personal possessions with which he had been entrusted, to deceive the coroner.

How all the subsequent action had seemed to play into his hands: the coroner's easy acquiescence in the suicide theory and the ident.i.ty of the body; the chance discovery, through Arnold Rogers, that the story of Kenwick's self-destruction had already been accepted by the community.

How, preceding the coroner's inquest, Glover had spent the morning tracing the antecedent action of the tragedy and had heard of the accident which had killed Marstan. How he had erred in suspecting that the real victim of the tragedy was Kenwick and that the attendant had had the body identified as his own and then made his escape, fearing to communicate the news of the disaster to his employer. How he, Glover, had been startled to discover later that Kenwick was not only alive but had apparently recovered his mental health.

The remainder of the story was given as the testimony of Madeleine Marstan, well-known favorite in the former Alcazar stock company, and Granville Jarvis, expert psychologist, whose skilful work was a strong plea for the admission of that newest of the sciences into court-room procedure.

During this latter testimony, the ”Clarion” a.s.serted, interest had been divided between the ultimate fate of the accused and the valuable contributions which the laboratory experiments of the witness had given the case. The word-tests which he had provided to the medium were, he had explained, one of the surest means of discovering the train of a.s.sociations which lodge in the guilty mind. He had never been convinced that Glover himself had committed a murder, but suspected that his crime lay in trying to fasten it upon a man whom he knew to be both innocent and helpless. The cards, containing a mixture of irrelevant and relevant words, had been shown him and then he had been instructed to turn his head in the opposite direction. These instructions he had carefully observed except in the cases of terms which held evil a.s.sociations. In such cases his eyes almost invariably turned back to the card with the printed word. Such terms as ”gravel” and ”oleander” had produced this attraction. But they had also aroused his suspicions. And from the day of his first call upon ”Madame Rosalie” the situation between them had been a succession of clever manoeuvers. Neither one of them had dared to let the other go. But in this encounter Mrs. Marstan had had the advantage. What he was able to find out about her was little compared with what she had discovered concerning him.

That she possessed unmistakable psychic powers could not be disputed. By a means of communication, which she could not herself explain, she had received at the time of Roger Kenwick's interview with her a message from the spirit of Isabel Kenwick, confessing that it was she who had unwittingly brought Richard Glover into his life, and entreating his forgiveness.

As to the concluding story of the actress, it was concerned with her description of how she had identified the body of her husband at the morgue on the evening of her flight from Rest Hollow; of how she had turned all arrangements for its s.h.i.+pment and burial over to the Mont-Mer and San Francisco undertakers, desiring to figure as little as possible in connection with the death of the man who had ruined her life. Of how she had succeeded in paying the debts against his name and had recently signed a stage contract with an eastern theatrical company.

When the trial was ended the crowd that jammed the room rose and surged toward the man in the prisoner's box, like a human tidal wave. ”Keep them back, Dayton,” Kenwick implored. ”I don't want to talk to them.”

Somehow his attorney managed to check the onrush, and the throng of congratulatory spectators was headed toward the exits. The room was almost empty when some one touched the prisoner's arm.

”Can you give me a few words?” It was one of the local reporters.

”You're a newspaper man yourself, Mr. Kenwick, and you know how it is about these things.”

Kenwick shook him off. ”Come around later, to the hotel, if you like,”

he said, and turned to take a hand that was timidly held out to him.

”I didn't know whether you'd be willing to speak to me or not, Mr.

Kenwick. But I just wanted to tell you that I'm satisfied, more than satisfied with--the way it has all come out.”

”I am glad to hear that, Mrs. Fanwell,” Kenwick told her gravely. ”I would never have been quite satisfied myself unless I had heard you say that. I wish you would leave your address with Dayton, for, you see, I feel a little bit responsible for you, and I would like to put you in the way of getting a new hold on life.”

The only other person in the room with whom he stopped to talk was Madeleine Marstan, who stood in conversation with Dayton near the door.

To her his words of thanks were the more eloquent perhaps because they came haltingly, impeded by an emotion which he could not master.

”It was nothing,” she told him. ”Nothing that I didn't owe you, Mr.

Kenwick.”

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