The Twenty-Six Clues/Chapter 10

X-ROUNDSMAN McCARTY had just completed his sartorial equipment the following evening and stepped back to view with immense satisfaction the mirrored effect of a new and—as he fondly believed—conservative necktie, when the entrance bell rasped a raucous summons.

Pressing the button which released the lock downstairs he lost himself again in admiration of the vividly striped knot beneath his chin until a lugubrious shadow darkened the doorway, when he turned to behold Dennis Riordan, also in state attire but with apprehensive gloom riding upon his countenance.

"All ready for the shindy?" McCarty nodded his greeting. "Come in, Denny; don't be standing there looking like an undertaker's assistant. 'Tis no wake we're invited to!"

"I'm far from a well man," announced the visitor. "I've had a kind of a sinking feeling all day and it's in my bed I should be this minute instead of letting Terhune make a monkey of me!"

"In your bed? In a funk-hole, you mean?" retorted McCarty, severely. "I'm surprised at you, that's always the first up a ladder with the hose and the last to jump when a wall begins to go, to be scared of Mr. Terhune and his little machines. Of course, if your conscience is not clear"

He paused expectantly and Dennis rose to the bait.

"'Tis as clear as your own the night, but much good that'll do if his unholy contraptions work crooked. Do you mind the time he all but accused you because in one of the stunts he pulled you got excited and your pulse or something registered a hundred and eighty in the shade? I'm in no condition to have any tricks pulled on me, and although I'm not a religious man and well you know it, Mac, I misdoubt that this is tempting Providence on a Sunday evening."

"After the quiet little games you've sat in of a Sunday, I guess you'll not be getting further odds on your chances in the next world by what you'll be doing to-night," McCarty commented with withering sarcasm, "Come on, now. I want a word with Mr. Terhune before the show starts."

It still lacked twenty minutes of the hour appointed when they reached the apartments of Wade Terhune. A tall, lanky, studious-looking young man admitted them and his pale, nearsighted eyes blinked behind their huge-rimmed glasses as he beheld McCarty.

"How are you, Bassett?" The latter extended his hand cordially. "'Tis like old times to be in on another of Mr. Terhune's scientific try-outs. We're a trifle early, I'm thinking"

"That's all right, Mr. McCarty," the assistant responded. "Mr. Terhune thought you might come before the rest and he told me to send you right into the consulting-room."

Dragging the reluctant Dennis in his wake, McCarty proceeded down the hall and rapped smartly upon a door at its farther end.

"Come in. Ah, it is you, McCarty!" Terhune glanced up from a coil of silk-covered wire which he was manipulating in the center of the great, bare room. "Good evening, Riordan. Don't mind that! You haven't hurt it."

"That" was a screen which the unfortunate Dennis in his effort to render himself as inconspicuous as possible, had knocked over. Behind it was revealed a long table on which stood a row of glass retorts not unlike huge thermometers. Each contained a thin tube of ruby-colored liquid and the outside glass was spaced off in degrees. A series of separate wires led from the table to the floor and disappeared beneath a rug. Upon the wall above the table a huge square frame jutted out, enclosing what appeared to be a chart of some sort upon which long perpendicular lines had been marked, the spaces between headed with numbers, ranging from one to seven. Separate wires ran from the bottom of the frame to the base of each retort.

With a muttered ejaculation Dennis drew hastily away from the mysterious mechanism he had so unexpectedly exposed and Terhune turned to McCarty -with a slight smile.

"You spoke of one of my scientific experiments last year as a 'séance,' my dear McCarty. The test we are going to use to-night will be somewhat like one." He gestured to the circle of chairs which surrounded him. "I have had very little time in which to prepare my apparatus, but I do not expect a conclusive result to-night, just a mere indication to prove that my hypothetical reconstruction of the affair has a basis of fact. I'm sorry that you could not come last night, for I wanted an opportunity to talk over a certain phase of the case with you prior to this experiment, but, after all, I fancy that you and I are not working from different angles in this case."

"I'm not working on it at all, sir; I'm an innocent bystander," McCarty asserted blandly, ignoring Dennis' eye. "Of course, I'm interested in it being as I was on hand, when the body was found, but I've no more idea who murdered the poor lady than a blind man."

"Blind men sometimes know more than we credit them with." Terhune's smile had deepened in significance. "If you could be guilty of intentional ambiguity, my dear McCarty, one would conclude that you had indeed formed an opinion not far removed from my own. But why is our friend Riordan seemingly practicing the goose step?"

Dennis halted in some confusion.

"It's them wires," he explained. "I've no mind, Mr. Terhune, sir, to be electrocuted before my time, and I don't know what I may be stepping on."

His tone was distinctly aggrieved and their host hastened to reassure him. *

"The wires are quite harmless. Come over here and I will explain the nature of our little experiment to-night. You see these seven chairs arranged in a circle? When the others come I will ask you all to seat yourselves and take hold of this wire with your right hands on the bulbs. You will then be blindfolded and listen to a brief résumé of the case. That is all that is required of you; just to listen, and not relax your hold upon the bulb. It is quite simple, you see."

"Blindfold?" Dennis betrayed symptoms of renewed apprehension. "Mr. Terhune, if it's all the same to you, I'd just as lief look on. I never was much of a hand at parlor games, and if anything's sprung on me sudden I'm liable to break up the circle."

"Nonsense! You are not under examination, my good fellow, but I want you to take the test along with the rest. Mr. Vivaseur has no connection with the case, either, but he is going to put himself in my hands, in order to witness a practical demonstration of my methods."

"Vivaseur? The young lady's fiancé?" Dennis momentarily forgot his perturbation. "And will she be here, too, sir?"

"No. This is strictly a stag affair. It is a test primarily of mental suggestion and the blindfolding is merely as an aid to concentration."

The door-bell pealed authoritatively and as his host and McCarty turned to greet the arrival of Inspector Druet, Dennis gazed wonderingly about him. The wire, unwound, formed a huge ring in which at a distance of about a yard apart were set seven bulbs covered with a gray, felt-like substance. Dennis pressed one gingerly and it gave beneath his fingers like a half-deflated rubber ball.

Dropping it hastily, he glanced about the room. It was lighted solely by a large center dome in the ceiling, heavy curtains covered the windows and alcove, and the fireplace was bare. On either side of the hearth stood a square cabinet resembling a talking machine, but save for these, the rug, a tall Colonial clock, the seven chairs arranged in a circle and the screen in the corner, the huge room was empty.

His inspection finished, Dennis' hand strayed longingly to the pocket wherein his pipe reposed, but that solace was denied his crawling nerves, and selecting a chair as far removed as possible from the screen and the devilish mechanism it concealed, he seated himself with the air of a martyr, just as the door-bell rang once more.

Calvin Norwood, Oliver Jarvis, Captain Marchal and a large, fair-headed man whom Dennis assumed to be the Englishman, Vivaseur, were ushered in solemnly by Bassett, who closed the door and retired behind the screen, and after subdued greetings, Wade Terhune took the floor.

"As I have just explained to our friends here, this experiment is merely a little test in mental suggestion and I shall be grateful if you will all assist me by concentrating as profoundly as possible upon what you will hear," he began. "I will ask you to sit motionless, and not to make the slightest sound until the test is completed, but to listen very closely and attentively. I Captain Marchal, will you sit here, please? I remember that at the dinner on Friday night which had so tragic an aftermath I promised to arrange to have you present at the next scientific experiment upon which I might be engaged, but I confess I little imagined under what circumstances I should keep my word."

His tone was sympathetic, with just the right blend of cordiality and courteous deference, yet McCarty glanced sharply at him. The allusion to a blind man returned to his mind and as its significance dawned upon him his eyes sought the face of the secretary. He found it resolutely composed, but haggard and weary with an almost waxen pallor. Unutterable sadness, the numbed reaction of shock and a settled melancholy he read there, but no sign of the disquiet of a secret knowledge as yet unrevealed, at which the criminalist had hinted.

As requested, the young Frenchman had seated himself at Dennis' left and beside him Terhune placed Oliver Jarvis. Then Calvin Norwood, Vivaseur, Inspector Druet and McCarty, the latter at Dennis' right, completed the circle of seven. When they had seated themselves, Terhune, standing well outside the circle, reached over Norwood's shoulder and picked up the wire.

"Mr. Norwood, will you kindly hold this bulb lightly in your right hand, with the fingers closed over the top, the palm encircling it and the thumb underneath? That is it. The bulb, I may add, is perfectly harmless, an ordinary rubber sphere filled to a certain degree with gas and covered with an absorbent substance. Now will each of you please take up the bulb nearest you on the wire and hold it in the same manner, with the right hand only? Remember that under no condition must any of the bulbs be dropped until the test is at an end. I am going to ask you also to submit to being blindfold to ensure your undistracted concentration."

Bassett produced the folded white cloths and Terhune made the rounds of the circle carefully adjusting each bandage. He started tactfully with Oliver Jarvis, at Captain Marchal's left and finished with Dennis, at his right. The Frenchman divined his action and smiled faintly in acknowledgment.

"I am already blindfold, is it not so?" he remarked quietly, adding something which McCarty failed to hear, for Dennis* muttered declaration intervened:

"Never again unless I'm caught napping and subpœnaed!" he asserted in a sepulchral undertone to his friend. "The wire's across my knees and I can feel it sending a cold thrill to the marrow of me! Mac, if anything should happen, the Firemen's Benevolent Association"

"Shut up, you loon!" McCarty growled. "Whist, now, and listen. You're worse than a woman!"

Dennis received the scathing rebuke in injured silence and Terhune's quiet, level tones sounded once more from somewhere behind them.

"Try, please, to concentrate, to fix your minds only on what you will hear, and to visualize the scene I am about to describe to you. All ready, Bassett? Lights out!"

Utter blackness succeeded the gray film before McCarty's eyes and in the tense silence which ensured the chair at his left creaked audibly.

"We are now in a room with which you are all familiar." Terhune's voice had sunk to a droning monotone. "It is large with a very high ceiling, a fireplace at the side, and four windows at its farther end, reaching to the floor. Cabinets and glass cases line the walls and above them are shelves containing various bottles and jars, while still higher, against the walls themselves, are hung assortments of odd weapons, knives, clubs and firearms. In the center of the room is a long table covered with a red and yellow blanket which is stained in dark patches of brown."

As he paused Dennis drew a stertorous breath which ended in a gulp as McCarty's elbow dug viciously into his ribs. The rest sat as though spell-bound.

"It is twilight and the corners of the room are in shadow." The monotonous voice went on. "Dusk is Creeping in at the windows and the wind is rising."

Was it the imagination which Terhune had so often accused him of lacking, or did a faint moaning as of wind in the chimney actually come to McCarty's tingling ears?

"The door opens. See! A man enters. His face is in shadow but he paces softly, impatiently up and down. He halts. He is listening, waiting. Now he resumes his pacing. The dusk deepens"

This time there could be no mistaking his senses, and McCarty felt the hair rise upon his tingling scalp. He had heard a key click in a lock, felt a light current of air as a door opened and the sound of footsteps on bare, polished floor came plainly to his ears, halting and then continuing again. Moreover, a faint odor of tobacco assailed his nostrils; tobacco of a peculiar blend which seemed strange and yet vaguely reminiscent.

The little group sat tense and motionless, and in the utter stillness the echo of measured footsteps seemed to beat upon McCarty's brain. That odd, halting, hesitant yet curiously rhythmic triad; where had he heard it before? It ceased as he pondered and the low, steady voice droned on:

"He stops once more and listens. He hears light footsteps on the stairs of the passageway, the rustle of a gown. A woman stands in the door, he advances to her"

"A-ah!" A harsh, shuddering cry, like that of a tortured animal broke in upon the monotone. It rose from somewhere within the circle, quivered on the air and died away, but McCarty could not have told from which side it had come. He was straining every sense to grasp the intangible, elusive sensation which had stolen upon him even before that cry had cleaved the air.

Above Terhune's voice there had sounded the patter of light footfalls, the soft, sibilant rustle of silk, and now another odor, pungent and cloyingly sweet, obliterated the tantalizing scent of tobacco. It was a rare and exotic perfume, and as it mounted, heady as new wine to his brain, McCarty seemed to stand once more beside that still form upon the table and again the blind secretary's horror-stricken cry rang in his ears: "The scent of the Rose d'Amour! It is Madame Jarvis!"

"They meet. We cannot hear what they say, for their voices are low, but his tones are impassioned, hers quiet and restrained. See! He is urging, pleading with her; she refuses to listen, refuses to take him seriously, to fall in with his mood"

A woman's voice, high, and sweet, and clear as a rippling brook echoed in soft laughter through the room and then the words came with startling distinctness:

"Really, I don't know what in the world to say"

"Her laughter maddens him!" Terhune's voice broke in upon that other eerie once, and his droning note had changed. Into its monotone there crept a breathless quality as of suspense, and it rose in a crescendo of swift, dramatic fervor. "He tries to take her in his arms, but she repulses him, at first gently, then imperiously. He becomes enraged, she defies him! See! He is advancing upon her with menace in every line of his crouched figure! She tries to elude him, to escape, but he seizes her! They struggle, she is fighting for her life!"

He paused abruptly upon the final word, and before the ringing echo of his voice had died upon the air a succession of other sounds, pregnant with suggestion, took its place.

McCarty could have sworn that close beside him in the darkness two bodies were locked in a death-struggle. He heard the man's stertorous, grunting breath, the woman's sobbing gasps, the scraping shuffle of feet upon the floor, a muttered oath, a smothered cry and the sharp sibilant sound of tearing silk. Then a shriek rang out hideous in its import, rising in an agony of mortal fear and dying in a horrible choking gurgle which ebbed into silence.

McCarty had forgotten his immediate surroundings, forgotten that tense circle of which he formed a part; he was back in Norwood's museum in the very presence of wanton crime and death and the voice of Terhune, monotonously level and unemotional once more, failed to break the illusion.

"The woman's body is huddled motionless upon the floor by the table now and the man is standing over her. He realizes what he has done, his passion is dead within him and he is scheming to gain time before the inevitable discovery of his deed; time in which to divert suspicion from himself. His clenched hand falls upon the table and as he feels the woolly texture of the blanket, and the hard bony structure beneath an inspiration comes to him. He jerks the blanket from the table, seizes the skeleton and carrying it to the fireplace thrusts it up the chimney."

As he spoke the sound of footsteps came again, a harsh rattle as of dry and brittle bones, and the soft rustle of silk once more. Then a dozen hasty steps, a metallic click and the creak of a casement, accompanied by a sudden blast of chill air.

"He has lifted the woman's body to the table and covered it with the blanket. Now he has gone to the end of the room and opened one of the windows! But see! A long strand of black hair is wound about the button on his coatsleeve; it catches on a broken sliver of wood on the window frame as he leans out and clings there as he closes the window without fastening it and turns"

The footsteps with their curiously hurried yet hesitating gait passed so close that McCarty felt that he could have reached out and touched the man, but a strange numbness held him in leash.

With straining ears he followed the subdued, diminishing tread until it died away and in another moment a dull, grating thud ensued.

"The man has descended to the yard, raised the ladder and placed it against the window ledge. Now he re-enters the house, mounts the stairs, closes the museum door and departs. Do you hear him? He is walking down the hall toward the front of the house. His footsteps die away in the distance; he has gone! But here in this room that motionless figure lies beneath the blanket while the shadows creep nearer and nearer, the gloom deepens and night comes."

"Evelyn!" A deep-throated cry, hoarse with anguish, pulsed upon the air and ceased in a moaning gasp as Terhune called out in brisk, normal tones:

"Lights, Bassett! Gentlemen, the experiment is over!"