Part 48 (1/2)

I handed the receiver to Craig and picked up the morning paper lying on the table.

”Minturn--dead?” I heard Craig exclaim. ”In the paper this morning?

I'll be down to see you directly.”

Kennedy almost tore the paper from me. In the next to the end column where late news usually is dropped was a brief account of the sudden death of Owen Minturn, one of the foremost criminal lawyers of the city, in Josephson's Baths downtown.

It ended: ”It is believed by the coroner that Mr. Minturn was shocked to death and evidence is being sought to show that two hundred and forty volts of electricity had been thrown into the attorney's body while he was in the electric bath. Joseph Josephson, the proprietor of the bath, who operated the switchboard, is being held, pending the completion of the inquiry.”

As Kennedy hastily ran his eye over the paragraphs, he became more and more excited himself.

”Walter,” he cried, as he finished, ”I don't believe that that was an accident at all.”

”Why?” I asked.

He already had his hat on, and I knew he was going to Josephson's breakfastless. I followed reluctantly.

”Because,” he answered, as we hustled along in the early morning crowd, ”it was only yesterday afternoon that I saw Minturn at his office and he made an appointment with me for this very morning. He was a very secretive man, but he did tell me this much, that he feared his life was in danger and that it was in some way connected with that Pearcy case up in Stratfield, Connecticut, where he has an estate. You have read of the case?”

Indeed I had. It had seemed to me to be a particularly inexplicable affair. Apparently a whole family had been poisoned and a few days before old Mr. Randall Pearcy, a retired manufacturer, had died after a brief but mysterious illness.

Pearcy had been married a year or so ago to Annette Oakleigh, a Broadway comic opera singer, who was his second wife. By his first marriage he had had two children, a son, Warner, and a daughter, Isabel.

Warner Pearcy, I had heard, had blazed a vermilion trail along the Great White Way, but his sister was of the opposite temperament, interested in social work, and had attracted much attention by organizing a settlement in the slums of Stratfield for the uplift of the workers in the Pearcy and other mills.

Broadway, as well as Stratfield, had already woven a fantastic background, for the mystery and hints had been broadly made that Annette Oakleigh had been indiscreetly intimate with a young physician in the town, a Dr. Gunther, a friend, by the way, of Minturn. ”There has been no trial yet,” went on Kennedy, ”but Minturn seems to have appeared before the coroner's jury at Stratfield and to have a.s.serted the innocence of Mrs. Pearcy and that of Dr. Gunther so well that, although the jury brought in a verdict of murder by poison by some one unknown, there has been no mention of the name of anyone else. The coroner simply adjourned the inquest so that a more careful a.n.a.lysis might be made of the vital organs. And now comes this second tragedy in New York.”

”What was the poison?” I asked. ”Have they found out yet?”

”They are pretty sure, so Minturn told me, that it was lead poisoning.

The fact not generally known is,” he added in a lower tone, ”that the cases were not confined to the Pearcy house. They had even extended to Minturn's too, although about that he said little yesterday. The estates up there adjoin, you know.”

Owen Minturn, I recalled, had gained a formidable reputation by his successful handling of cases from the lowest strata of society to the highest. Indeed it was a byword that his appearance in court indicated two things--the guilt of the accused and a verdict of acquittal.

”Of course,” Craig pursued as we were jolted from station to station downtown, ”you know they say that Minturn never kept a record of a case. But written records were as nothing compared to what that man must have carried only in his head.”

It was a common saying that, if Minturn should tell all he knew, he might hang half a dozen prominent men in society. That was not strictly true, perhaps, but it was certain that a revelation of the things confided to him by clients which were never put down on paper would have caused a series of explosions that would have wrecked at least some portions of the social and financial world. He had heard much and told little, for he had been a sort of ”father confessor.”

Had Minturn, I wondered, known the name of the real criminal?

Josephson's was a popular bath on Forty-second Street, where many of the ”sun-dodgers” were accustomed to recuperate during the day from their arduous pursuit of pleasure at night and prepare for the resumption of their toil during the coming night. It was more than that, however, for it had a reputation for being conducted really on a high plane.

We met Josephson downstairs. He had been released under bail, though the place was temporarily closed and watched over by the agents of the coroner and the police. Josephson appeared to be a man of some education and quite different from what I had imagined from hearing him over the telephone.

”Oh, Mr. Kennedy,” he exclaimed, ”who now will come to my baths? Last night they were crowded, but to-day--”

He ended with an expressive gesture of his hands.

”One customer I have surely lost, young Mr. Pearcy,” he went on.

”Warner Pearcy?” asked Craig. ”Was he here last night?”