THE BOLTED DOOR

as first published in

Scribner's Magazine, March 1909

I

Hubert Granice, pacing the length of his pleasant lamp-lit

library, paused to compare his watch with the clock on the

chimney-piece.

Three minutes to eight.

In exactly three minutes Mr. Peter Ascham, of the eminent legal

firm of Ascham and Pettilow, would have his punctual hand on the

door-bell of the flat. It was a comfort to reflect that Ascham

was so punctual--the suspense was beginning to make his host

nervous. And the sound of the door-bell would be the beginning

of the end--after that there'd be no going back, by God--no going

back!

Granice resumed his pacing. Each time he reached the end of the

room opposite the door he caught his reflection in the Florentine

mirror above the fine old walnut credence he had picked up at

Dijon--saw himself spare, quick-moving, carefully brushed and

dressed, but furrowed, gray about the temples, with a stoop which

he corrected by a spasmodic straightening of the shoulders

whenever a glass confronted him: a tired middle-aged man,

baffled, beaten, worn out.

As he summed himself up thus for the third or fourth time the

door opened and he turned with a thrill of relief to greet his

guest. But it was only the man-servant who entered, advancing

silently over the mossy surface of the old Turkey rug.

"Mr. Ascham telephones, sir, to say he's unexpectedly detained

and can't be here till eight-thirty."

Granice made a curt gesture of annoyance. It was becoming harder

and harder for him to control these reflexes. He turned on his

heel, tossing to the servant over his shoulder: "Very good. Put

off dinner."

Down his spine he felt the man's injured stare. Mr. Granice had

always been so mild-spoken to his people--no doubt the odd change

in his manner had already been noticed and discussed below

stairs. And very likely they suspected the cause. He stood

drumming on the writing-table till he heard the servant go out;

then he threw himself into a chair, propping his elbows on the

table and resting his chin on his locked hands.

Another half hour alone with it!

He wondered irritably what could have detained his guest. Some

professional matter, no doubt--the punctilious lawyer would have

allowed nothing less to interfere with a dinner engagement, more

especially since Granice, in his note, had said: "I shall want a

little business chat afterward."

But what professional matter could have come up at that

unprofessional hour? Perhaps some other soul in misery had

called on the lawyer; and, after all, Granice's note had given no

hint of his own need! No doubt Ascham thought he merely wanted

to make another change in his will. Since he had come into his

little property, ten years earlier, Granice had been perpetually

tinkering with his will.

Suddenly another thought pulled him up, sending a flush to his

sallow temples. He remembered a word he had tossed to the lawyer

some six weeks earlier, at the Century Club. "Yes--my play's as

good as taken. I shall be calling on you soon to go over the

contract. Those theatrical chaps are so slippery--I won't trust

anybody but you to tie the knot for me!" That, of course, was

what Ascham would think he was wanted for. Granice, at the idea,

broke into an audible laugh--a queer stage-laugh, like the cackle

of a baffled villain in a melodrama. The absurdity, the

unnaturalness of the sound abashed him, and he compressed his

lips angrily. Would he take to soliloquy next?

He lowered his arms and pulled open the upper drawer of the

writing-table. In the right-hand corner lay a thick manuscript,

bound in paper folders, and tied with a string beneath which a

letter had been slipped. Next to the manuscript was a small

revolver. Granice stared a moment at these oddly associated

objects; then he took the letter from under the string and slowly

began to open it. He had known he should do so from the moment

his hand touched the drawer. Whenever his eye fell on that

letter some relentless force compelled him to re-read it.

It was dated about four weeks back, under the letter-head of "The

Diversity Theatre."

"MY DEAR MR. GRANICE:

"I have given the matter my best consideration for the last

month, and it's no use--the play won't do. I have talked it over

with Miss Melrose--and you know there isn't a gamer artist on our

stage--and I regret to tell you she feels just as I do about it.

It isn't the poetry that scares her--or me either. We both want

to do all we can to help along the poetic drama--we believe the

public's ready for it, and we're willing to take a big financial

risk in order to be the first to give them what they want. BUT

WE DON'T BELIEVE THEY COULD BE MADE TO WANT THIS. The fact is,

there isn't enough drama in your play to the allowance of poetry--

the thing drags all through. You've got a big idea, but it's

not out of swaddling clothes.

"If this was your first play I'd say: TRY AGAIN. But it has been

just the same with all the others you've shown me. And you

remember the result of 'The Lee Shore,' where you carried all the

expenses of production yourself, and we couldn't fill the theatre

for a week. Yet 'The Lee Shore' was a modern problem play--much

easier to swing than blank verse. It isn't as if you hadn't

tried all kinds--"

Granice folded the letter and put it carefully back into the

envelope. Why on earth was he re-reading it, when he knew every

phrase in it by heart, when for a month past he had seen it,

night after night, stand out in letters of flame against the

darkness of his sleepless lids?

"IT HAS BEEN JUST THE SAME WITH ALL THE OTHERS YOU'VE SHOWN ME."

That was the way they dismissed ten years of passionate

unremitting work!

"YOU REMEMBER THE RESULT OF 'THE LEE SHORE.'"

Good God--as if he were likely to forget it! He re-lived it all

now in a drowning flash: the persistent rejection of the play,

his sudden resolve to put it on at his own cost, to spend ten

thousand dollars of his inheritance on testing his chance of

success--the fever of preparation, the dry-mouthed agony of the

"first night," the flat fall, the stupid press, his secret rush

to Europe to escape the condolence of his friends!

"IT ISN'T AS IF YOU HADN'T TRIED ALL KINDS."

No--he had tried all kinds: comedy, tragedy, prose and verse, the

light curtain-raiser, the short sharp drama, the bourgeois-

realistic and the lyrical-romantic--finally deciding that he

would no longer "prostitute his talent" to win popularity, but

would impose on the public his own theory of art in the form of

five acts of blank verse. Yes, he had offered them everything--

and always with the same result.

Ten years of it--ten years of dogged work and unrelieved failure.

The ten years from forty to fifty--the best ten years of his

life! And if one counted the years before, the silent years of

dreams, assimilation, preparation--then call it half a man's

life-time: half a man's life-time thrown away!

And what was he to do with the remaining half? Well, he had

settled that, thank God! He turned and glanced anxiously at the

clock. Ten minutes past eight--only ten minutes had been

consumed in that stormy rush through his whole past! And he must

wait another twenty minutes for Ascham. It was one of the worst

symptoms of his case that, in proportion as he had grown to

shrink from human company, he dreaded more and more to be alone. . . .

But why the devil was he waiting for Ascham? Why didn't

he cut the knot himself? Since he was so unutterably sick of the

whole business, why did he have to call in an outsider to rid him

of this nightmare of living?

He opened the drawer again and laid his hand on the revolver. It

was a small slim ivory toy--just the instrument for a tired

sufferer to give himself a "hypodermic" with. Granice raised it

slowly in one hand, while with the other he felt under the thin

hair at the back of his head, between the ear and the nape. He

knew just where to place the muzzle: he had once got a young

surgeon to show him. And as he found the spot, and lifted the

revolver to it, the inevitable phenomenon occurred. The hand

that held the weapon began to shake, the tremor communicated

itself to his arm, his heart gave a wild leap which sent up a

wave of deadly nausea to his throat, he smelt the powder, he

sickened at the crash of the bullet through his skull, and a

sweat of fear broke out over his forehead and ran down his

quivering face. . .

He laid away the revolver with an oath and, pulling out a

cologne-scented handkerchief, passed it tremulously over his brow

and temples. It was no use--he knew he could never do it in that

way. His attempts at self-destruction were as futile as his

snatches at fame! He couldn't make himself a real life, and he

couldn't get rid of the life he had. And that was why he had

sent for Ascham to help him. . .

The lawyer, over the Camembert and Burgundy, began to excuse

himself for his delay.

"I didn't like to say anything while your man was about--but the

fact is, I was sent for on a rather unusual matter--"

"Oh, it's all right," said Granice cheerfully. He was beginning

to feel the usual reaction that food and company produced. It

was not any recovered pleasure in life that he felt, but only a

deeper withdrawal into himself. It was easier to go on

automatically with the social gestures than to uncover to any

human eye the abyss within him.

"My dear fellow, it's sacrilege to keep a dinner waiting--

especially the production of an artist like yours." Mr. Ascham

sipped his Burgundy luxuriously. "But the fact is, Mrs. Ashgrove

sent for me."

Granice raised his head with a quick movement of surprise. For a

moment he was shaken out of his self-absorption.

"MRS. ASHGROVE?"

Ascham smiled. "I thought you'd be interested; I know your

passion for causes celebres. And this promises to be one. Of

course it's out of our line entirely--we never touch criminal

cases. But she wanted to consult me as a friend. Ashgrove was a

distant connection of my wife's. And, by Jove, it IS a queer

case!" The servant re-entered, and Ascham snapped his lips shut.

Would the gentlemen have their coffee in the dining-room?

"No--serve it in the library," said Granice, rising. He led the

way back to the curtained confidential room. He was really

curious to hear what Ascham had to tell him.

While the coffee and cigars were being served he fidgeted about

the library, glancing at his letters--the usual meaningless notes

and bills--and picking up the evening paper. As he unfolded it a

headline caught his eye.

"ROSE MELROSE WANTS TO

PLAY POETRY.

"THINKS SHE HAS FOUND HER

POET."

He read on with a thumping heart--found the name of a young

author he had barely heard of, saw the title of a play, a "poetic

drama," dance before his eyes, and dropped the paper, sick,

disgusted. It was true, then--she WAS "game"--it was not the

manner but the matter she mistrusted!

Granice turned to the servant, who seemed to be purposely

lingering. "I shan't need you this evening, Flint. I'll lock up

myself."

He fancied the man's acquiescence implied surprise. What was

going on, Flint seemed to wonder, that Mr. Granice should want

him out of the way? Probably he would find a pretext for coming

back to see. Granice suddenly felt himself enveloped in a

network of espionage.

As the door closed he threw himself into an armchair and leaned

forward to take a light from Ascham's cigar.

"Tell me about Mrs. Ashgrove," he said, seeming to himself to

speak stiffly, as if his lips were cracked.

"Mrs. Ashgrove? Well, there's not much to TELL."

"And you couldn't if there were?" Granice smiled.

"Probably not. As a matter of fact, she wanted my advice about

her choice of counsel. There was nothing especially confidential

in our talk."

"And what's your impression, now you've seen her?"

"My impression is, very distinctly, THAT NOTHING WILL EVER BE

KNOWN."

"Ah--?" Granice murmured, puffing at his cigar.

"I'm more and more convinced that whoever poisoned Ashgrove knew

his business, and will consequently never be found out. That's a

capital cigar you've given me."

"You like it? I get them over from Cuba." Granice examined his

own reflectively. "Then you believe in the theory that the

clever criminals never ARE caught?"

"Of course I do. Look about you--look back for the last dozen

years--none of the big murder problems are ever solved." The

lawyer ruminated behind his blue cloud. "Why, take the instance

in your own family: I'd forgotten I had an illustration at hand!

Take old Joseph Lenman's murder--do you suppose that will ever be

explained?"

As the words dropped from Ascham's lips his host looked slowly

about the library, and every object in it stared back at him with

a stale unescapable familiarity. How sick he was of looking at

that room! It was as dull as the face of a wife one has wearied

of. He cleared his throat slowly; then he turned his head to the

lawyer and said: "I could explain the Lenman murder myself."

Ascham's eye kindled: he shared Granice's interest in criminal

cases.

"By Jove! You've had a theory all this time? It's odd you never

mentioned it. Go ahead and tell me. There are certain features

in the Lenman case not unlike this Ashgrove affair, and your idea

may be a help."

Granice paused and his eye reverted instinctively to the table

drawer in which the revolver and the manuscript lay side by side.

What if he were to try another appeal to Rose Melrose? Then he

looked at the notes and bills on the table, and the horror of

taking up again the lifeless routine of life--of performing the

same automatic gestures another day--displaced his fleeting

vision.

"I haven't a theory. I KNOW who murdered Joseph Lenman."

Ascham settled himself comfortably in his chair, prepared for

enjoyment.

"You KNOW? Well, who did?" he laughed.

"I did," said Granice, rising.

He stood before Ascham, and the lawyer lay back staring up at

him. Then he broke into another laugh.

"Why, this is glorious! You murdered him, did you? To inherit

his money, I suppose? Better and better! Go on, my boy!

Unbosom yourself! Tell me all about it! Confession is good for

the soul."

Granice waited till the lawyer had shaken the last peal of

laughter from his throat; then he repeated doggedly: "I murdered

him."

The two men looked at each other for a long moment, and this time

Ascham did not laugh.

"Granice!"

"I murdered him--to get his money, as you say."

There was another pause, and Granice, with a vague underlying

sense of amusement, saw his guest's look change from pleasantry

to apprehension.

"What's the joke, my dear fellow? I fail to see."

"It's not a joke. It's the truth. I murdered him." He had

spoken painfully at first, as if there were a knot in his throat;

but each time he repeated the words he found they were easier to

say.

Ascham laid down his extinct cigar.

"What's the matter? Aren't you well? What on earth are you

driving at?"

"I'm perfectly well. But I murdered my cousin, Joseph Lenman,

and I want it known that I murdered him."

"YOU WANT IT KNOWN?"

"Yes. That's why I sent for you. I'm sick of living, and when I

try to kill myself I funk it." He spoke quite naturally now, as

if the knot in his throat had been untied.

"Good Lord--good Lord," the lawyer gasped.

"But I suppose," Granice continued, "there's no doubt this would

be murder in the first degree? I'm sure of the chair if I own

up?"

Ascham drew a long breath; then he said slowly: "Sit down,

Granice. Let's talk."

II

Granice told his story simply, connectedly.

He began by a quick survey of his early years--the years of

drudgery and privation. His father, a charming man who could

never say "no," had so signally failed to say it on certain

essential occasions that when he died he left an illegitimate

family and a mortgaged estate. His lawful kin found themselves

hanging over a gulf of debt, and young Granice, to support his

mother and sister, had to leave Harvard and bury himself at

eighteen in a broker's office. He loathed his work, and he was

always poor, always worried and in ill-health. A few years later

his mother died, but his sister, an ineffectual neurasthenic,

remained on his hands. His own health gave out, and he had to go

away for six months, and work harder than ever when he came back.

He had no knack for business, no head for figures, no dimmest

insight into the mysteries of commerce. He wanted to travel and

write--those were his inmost longings. And as the years dragged

on, and he neared middle-age without making any more money, or

acquiring any firmer health, a sick despair possessed him. He

tried writing, but he always came home from the office so tired

that his brain could not work. For half the year he did not

reach his dim up-town flat till after dark, and could only "brush

up" for dinner, and afterward lie on the lounge with his pipe,

while his sister droned through the evening paper. Sometimes he

spent an evening at the theatre; or he dined out, or, more

rarely, strayed off with an acquaintance or two in quest of what

is known as "pleasure." And in summer, when he and Kate went to

the sea-side for a month, he dozed through the days in utter

weariness. Once he fell in love with a charming girl--but what

had he to offer her, in God's name? She seemed to like him, and

in common decency he had to drop out of the running. Apparently

no one replaced him, for she never married, but grew stoutish,

grayish, philanthropic--yet how sweet she had been when he had

first kissed her! One more wasted life, he reflected. . .

But the stage had always been his master-passion. He would have

sold his soul for the time and freedom to write plays! It was IN

HIM--he could not remember when it had not been his deepest-

seated instinct. As the years passed it became a morbid, a

relentless obsession--yet with every year the material conditions

were more and more against it. He felt himself growing middle-

aged, and he watched the reflection of the process in his

sister's wasted face. At eighteen she had been pretty, and as

full of enthusiasm as he. Now she was sour, trivial,

insignificant--she had missed her chance of life. And she had no

resources, poor creature, was fashioned simply for the primitive

functions she had been denied the chance to fulfil! It

exasperated him to think of it--and to reflect that even now a

little travel, a little health, a little money, might transform

her, make her young and desirable. . . The chief fruit of his

experience was that there is no such fixed state as age or youth--

there is only health as against sickness, wealth as against

poverty; and age or youth as the outcome of the lot one draws.

At this point in his narrative Granice stood up, and went to lean

against the mantel-piece, looking down at Ascham, who had not

moved from his seat, or changed his attitude of rigid fascinated

attention.

"Then came the summer when we went to Wrenfield to be near old

Lenman--my mother's cousin, as you know. Some of the family

always mounted guard over him--generally a niece or so. But that

year they were all scattered, and one of the nieces offered to

lend us her cottage if we'd relieve her of duty for two months.

It was a nuisance for me, of course, for Wrenfield is two hours

from town; but my mother, who was a slave to family observances,

had always been good to the old man, so it was natural we should

be called on--and there was the saving of rent and the good air

for Kate. So we went.

"You never knew Joseph Lenman? Well, picture to yourself an

amoeba or some primitive organism of that sort, under a Titan's

microscope. He was large, undifferentiated, inert--since I could

remember him he had done nothing but take his temperature and

read the Churchman. Oh, and cultivate melons--that was his

hobby. Not vulgar, out-of-door melons--his were grown under

glass. He had miles of it at Wrenfield--his big kitchen-garden

was surrounded by blinking battalions of green-houses. And in

nearly all of them melons were grown--early melons and late,

French, English, domestic--dwarf melons and monsters: every

shape, colour and variety. They were petted and nursed like

children--a staff of trained attendants waited on them. I'm not

sure they didn't have a doctor to take their temperature--at any

rate the place was full of thermometers. And they didn't sprawl

on the ground like ordinary melons; they were trained against the

glass like nectarines, and each melon hung in a net which

sustained its weight and left it free on all sides to the sun and

air. . .

"It used to strike me sometimes that old Lenman was just like one

of his own melons--the pale-fleshed English kind. His life,

apathetic and motionless, hung in a net of gold, in an equable

warm ventilated atmosphere, high above sordid earthly worries.

The cardinal rule of his existence was not to let himself be

'worried.' . . . I remember his advising me to try it myself, one

day when I spoke to him about Kate's bad health, and her need of

a change. 'I never let myself worry,' he said complacently.

'It's the worst thing for the liver--and you look to me as if you

had a liver. Take my advice and be cheerful. You'll make

yourself happier and others too.' And all he had to do was to

write a cheque, and send the poor girl off for a holiday!

"The hardest part of it was that the money half-belonged to us

already. The old skin-flint only had it for life, in trust for

us and the others. But his life was a good deal sounder than

mine or Kate's--and one could picture him taking extra care of it

for the joke of keeping us waiting. I always felt that the sight

of our hungry eyes was a tonic to him.

"Well, I tried to see if I couldn't reach him through his vanity.

I flattered him, feigned a passionate interest in his melons.

And he was taken in, and used to discourse on them by the hour.

On fine days he was driven to the green-houses in his pony-chair,

and waddled through them, prodding and leering at the fruit, like

a fat Turk in his seraglio. When he bragged to me of the expense

of growing them I was reminded of a hideous old Lothario bragging

of what his pleasures cost. And the resemblance was completed by

the fact that he couldn't eat as much as a mouthful of his

melons--had lived for years on buttermilk and toast. 'But, after

all, it's my only hobby--why shouldn't I indulge it?' he said

sentimentally. As if I'd ever been able to indulge any of mine!

On the keep of those melons Kate and I could have lived like

gods. . .

"One day toward the end of the summer, when Kate was too unwell

to drag herself up to the big house, she asked me to go and spend

the afternoon with cousin Joseph. It was a lovely soft September

afternoon--a day to lie under a Roman stone-pine, with one's eyes

on the sky, and let the cosmic harmonies rush through one.

Perhaps the vision was suggested by the fact that, as I entered

cousin Joseph's hideous black walnut library, I passed one of the

under-gardeners, a handsome full-throated Italian, who dashed out

in such a hurry that he nearly knocked me down. I remember

thinking it queer that the fellow, whom I had often seen about

the melon-houses, did not bow to me, or even seem to see me.

"Cousin Joseph sat in his usual seat, behind the darkened

windows, his fat hands folded on his protuberant waistcoat, the

last number of the Churchman at his elbow, and near it, on a huge

dish, a fat melon--the fattest melon I'd ever seen. As I looked

at it I pictured the ecstasy of contemplation from which I must

have roused him, and congratulated myself on finding him in such

a mood, since I had made up my mind to ask him a favour. Then I

noticed that his face, instead of looking as calm as an egg-

shell, was distorted and whimpering--and without stopping to

greet me he pointed passionately to the melon.

"'Look at it, look at it--did you ever see such a beauty? Such

firmness--roundness--such delicious smoothness to the touch?' It

was as if he had said 'she' instead of 'it,' and when he put out

his senile hand and touched the melon I positively had to look

the other way.

"Then he told me what had happened. The Italian under-gardener,

who had been specially recommended for the melon-houses--though

it was against my cousin's principles to employ a Papist--had

been assigned to the care of the monster: for it had revealed

itself, early in its existence, as destined to become a monster,

to surpass its plumpest, pulpiest sisters, carry off prizes at

agricultural shows, and be photographed and celebrated in every

gardening paper in the land. The Italian had done well--seemed

to have a sense of responsibility. And that very morning he had

been ordered to pick the melon, which was to be shown next day at

the county fair, and to bring it in for Mr. Lenman to gaze on its

blonde virginity. But in picking it, what had the damned

scoundrelly Jesuit done but drop it--drop it crash on the sharp

spout of a watering-pot, so that it received a deep gash in its

firm pale rotundity, and was henceforth but a bruised, ruined,

fallen melon?

"The old man's rage was fearful in its impotence--he shook,

spluttered and strangled with it. He had just had the Italian up

and had sacked him on the spot, without wages or character--had

threatened to have him arrested if he was ever caught prowling

about Wrenfield. 'By God, and I'll do it--I'll write to

Washington--I'll have the pauper scoundrel deported! I'll show

him what money can do!' As likely as not there was some

murderous Black-hand business under it--it would be found that

the fellow was a member of a 'gang.' Those Italians would murder

you for a quarter. He meant to have the police look into it. . .

And then he grew frightened at his own excitement. 'But I must

calm myself,' he said. He took his temperature, rang for his

drops, and turned to the Churchman. He had been reading an

article on Nestorianism when the melon was brought in. He asked

me to go on with it, and I read to him for an hour, in the dim

close room, with a fat fly buzzing stealthily about the fallen

melon.

"All the while one phrase of the old man's buzzed in my brain

like the fly about the melon. 'I'LL SHOW HIM WHAT MONEY CAN DO!'

Good heaven! If I could but show the old man! If I could make

him see his power of giving happiness as a new outlet for his

monstrous egotism! I tried to tell him something about my

situation and Kate's--spoke of my ill-health, my unsuccessful

drudgery, my longing to write, to make myself a name--I stammered

out an entreaty for a loan. 'I can guarantee to repay you, sir--

I've a half-written play as security. . .'

"I shall never forget his glassy stare. His face had grown as

smooth as an egg-shell again--his eyes peered over his fat cheeks

like sentinels over a slippery rampart.

"'A half-written play--a play of YOURS as security?' He looked

at me almost fearfully, as if detecting the first symptoms of

insanity. 'Do you understand anything of business?' he enquired

mildly. I laughed and answered: 'No, not much.'

"He leaned back with closed lids. 'All this excitement has been

too much for me,' he said. 'If you'll excuse me, I'll prepare

for my nap.' And I stumbled out of the room, blindly, like the

Italian."

Granice moved away from the mantel-piece, and walked across to

the tray set out with decanters and soda-water. He poured

himself a tall glass of soda-water, emptied it, and glanced at

Ascham's dead cigar.

"Better light another," he suggested.

The lawyer shook his head, and Granice went on with his tale. He

told of his mounting obsession--how the murderous impulse had

waked in him on the instant of his cousin's refusal, and he had

muttered to himself: "By God, if you won't, I'll make you." He

spoke more tranquilly as the narrative proceeded, as though his

rage had died down once the resolve to act on it was taken. He

applied his whole mind to the question of how the old man was to

be "disposed of." Suddenly he remembered the outcry: "Those

Italians will murder you for a quarter!" But no definite project

presented itself: he simply waited for an inspiration.

Granice and his sister moved to town a day or two after the

incident of the melon. But the cousins, who had returned, kept

them informed of the old man's condition. One day, about three

weeks later, Granice, on getting home, found Kate excited over a

report from Wrenfield. The Italian had been there again--had

somehow slipped into the house, made his way up to the library,

and "used threatening language." The house-keeper found cousin

Joseph gasping, the whites of his eyes showing "something awful."

The doctor was sent for, and the attack warded off; and the

police had ordered the Italian from the neighbourhood.

But cousin Joseph, thereafter, languished, had "nerves," and lost

his taste for toast and butter-milk. The doctor called in a

colleague, and the consultation amused and excited the old man--

he became once more an important figure. The medical men

reassured the family--too completely!--and to the patient they

recommended a more varied diet: advised him to take whatever

"tempted him." And so one day, tremulously, prayerfully, he

decided on a tiny bit of melon. It was brought up with ceremony,

and consumed in the presence of the house-keeper and a hovering

cousin; and twenty minutes later he was dead. . .

"But you remember the circumstances," Granice went on; "how

suspicion turned at once on the Italian? In spite of the hint

the police had given him he had been seen hanging about the house

since 'the scene.' It was said that he had tender relations with

the kitchen-maid, and the rest seemed easy to explain. But when

they looked round to ask him for the explanation he was gone--

gone clean out of sight. He had been 'warned' to leave

Wrenfield, and he had taken the warning so to heart that no one

ever laid eyes on him again."

Granice paused. He had dropped into a chair opposite the

lawyer's, and he sat for a moment, his head thrown back, looking

about the familiar room. Everything in it had grown grimacing

and alien, and each strange insistent object seemed craning

forward from its place to hear him.

"It was I who put the stuff in the melon," he said. "And I don't

want you to think I'm sorry for it. This isn't 'remorse,'

understand. I'm glad the old skin-flint is dead--I'm glad the

others have their money. But mine's no use to me any more. My

sister married miserably, and died. And I've never had what I

wanted."

Ascham continued to stare; then he said: "What on earth was your

object, then?"

"Why, to GET what I wanted--what I fancied was in reach! I

wanted change, rest, LIFE, for both of us--wanted, above all, for

myself, the chance to write! I travelled, got back my health,

and came home to tie myself up to my work. And I've slaved at it

steadily for ten years without reward--without the most distant

hope of success! Nobody will look at my stuff. And now I'm

fifty, and I'm beaten, and I know it." His chin dropped forward

on his breast. "I want to chuck the whole business," he ended.

III

It was after midnight when Ascham left.

His hand on Granice's shoulder, as he turned to go--"District

Attorney be hanged; see a doctor, see a doctor!" he had cried;

and so, with an exaggerated laugh, had pulled on his coat and

departed.

Granice turned back into the library. It had never occurred to

him that Ascham would not believe his story. For three hours he

had explained, elucidated, patiently and painfully gone over

every detail--but without once breaking down the iron incredulity

of the lawyer's eye.

At first Ascham had feigned to be convinced--but that, as Granice

now perceived, was simply to get him to expose himself, to entrap

him into contradictions. And when the attempt failed, when

Granice triumphantly met and refuted each disconcerting question,

the lawyer dropped the mask suddenly, and said with a good-

humoured laugh: "By Jove, Granice you'll write a successful play

yet. The way you've worked this all out is a marvel."

Granice swung about furiously--that last sneer about the play

inflamed him. Was all the world in a conspiracy to deride his

failure?

"I did it, I did it," he muttered sullenly, his rage spending

itself against the impenetrable surface of the other's mockery;

and Ascham answered with a smile: "Ever read any of those books

on hallucination? I've got a fairly good medico-legal library.

I could send you one or two if you like. . ."

Left alone, Granice cowered down in the chair before his writing-

table. He understood that Ascham thought him off his head.

"Good God--what if they all think me crazy?"

The horror of it broke out over him in a cold sweat--he sat there

and shook, his eyes hidden in his icy hands. But gradually, as

he began to rehearse his story for the thousandth time, he saw

again how incontrovertible it was, and felt sure that any

criminal lawyer would believe him.

"That's the trouble--Ascham's not a criminal lawyer. And then

he's a friend. What a fool I was to talk to a friend! Even if

he did believe me, he'd never let me see it--his instinct would

be to cover the whole thing up. . . But in that case--if he DID

believe me--he might think it a kindness to get me shut up in an

asylum. . ." Granice began to tremble again. "Good heaven! If

he should bring in an expert--one of those damned alienists!

Ascham and Pettilow can do anything--their word always goes. If

Ascham drops a hint that I'd better be shut up, I'll be in a

strait-jacket by to-morrow! And he'd do it from the kindest

motives--be quite right to do it if he thinks I'm a murderer!"

The vision froze him to his chair. He pressed his fists to his

bursting temples and tried to think. For the first time he hoped

that Ascham had not believed his story.

"But he did--he did! I can see it now--I noticed what a queer

eye he cocked at me. Good God, what shall I do--what shall I

do?"

He started up and looked at the clock. Half-past one. What if

Ascham should think the case urgent, rout out an alienist, and

come back with him? Granice jumped to his feet, and his sudden

gesture brushed the morning paper from the table. Mechanically

he stooped to pick it up, and the movement started a new train of

association.

He sat down again, and reached for the telephone book in the rack

by his chair.

"Give me three-o-ten . . . yes."

The new idea in his mind had revived his flagging energy. He

would act--act at once. It was only by thus planning ahead,

committing himself to some unavoidable line of conduct, that he

could pull himself through the meaningless days. Each time he

reached a fresh decision it was like coming out of a foggy

weltering sea into a calm harbour with lights. One of the

queerest phases of his long agony was the intense relief produced

by these momentary lulls.

"That the office of the Investigator? Yes? Give me Mr. Denver,

please. . . Hallo, Denver. . . Yes, Hubert Granice. . . . Just

caught you? Going straight home? Can I come and see you . . .

yes, now . . . have a talk? It's rather urgent . . . yes, might

give you some first-rate 'copy.' . . . All right!" He hung up

the receiver with a laugh. It had been a happy thought to call

up the editor of the Investigator--Robert Denver was the very man

he needed. . .

Granice put out the lights in the library--it was odd how the

automatic gestures persisted!--went into the hall, put on his hat

and overcoat, and let himself out of the flat. In the hall, a

sleepy elevator boy blinked at him and then dropped his head on

his folded arms. Granice passed out into the street. At the

corner of Fifth Avenue he hailed a crawling cab, and called out

an up-town address. The long thoroughfare stretched before him,

dim and deserted, like an ancient avenue of tombs. But from

Denver's house a friendly beam fell on the pavement; and as

Granice sprang from his cab the editor's electric turned the

corner.

The two men grasped hands, and Denver, feeling for his latch-key,

ushered Granice into the brightly-lit hall.

"Disturb me? Not a bit. You might have, at ten to-morrow

morning . . . but this is my liveliest hour . . . you know my

habits of old."

Granice had known Robert Denver for fifteen years--watched his

rise through all the stages of journalism to the Olympian

pinnacle of the Investigator's editorial office. In the thick-

set man with grizzling hair there were few traces left of the

hungry-eyed young reporter who, on his way home in the small

hours, used to "bob in" on Granice, while the latter sat grinding

at his plays. Denver had to pass Granice's flat on the way to

his own, and it became a habit, if he saw a light in the window,

and Granice's shadow against the blind, to go in, smoke a pipe,

and discuss the universe.

"Well--this is like old times--a good old habit reversed." The

editor smote his visitor genially on the shoulder. "Reminds me

of the nights when I used to rout you out. . . How's the play,

by the way? There IS a play, I suppose? It's as safe to ask you

that as to say to some men: 'How's the baby?'"

Denver laughed good-naturedly, and Granice thought how thick and

heavy he had grown. It was evident, even to Granice's tortured

nerves, that the words had not been uttered in malice--and the

fact gave him a new measure of his insignificance. Denver did

not even know that he had been a failure! The fact hurt more

than Ascham's irony.

"Come in--come in." The editor led the way into a small cheerful

room, where there were cigars and decanters. He pushed an arm-

chair toward his visitor, and dropped into another with a

comfortable groan.

"Now, then--help yourself. And let's hear all about it."

He beamed at Granice over his pipe-bowl, and the latter, lighting

his cigar, said to himself: "Success makes men comfortable, but

it makes them stupid."

Then he turned, and began: "Denver, I want to tell you--"

The clock ticked rhythmically on the mantel-piece. The little

room was gradually filled with drifting blue layers of smoke, and

through them the editor's face came and went like the moon

through a moving sky. Once the hour struck--then the rhythmical

ticking began again. The atmosphere grew denser and heavier, and

beads of perspiration began to roll from Granice's forehead.

"Do you mind if I open the window?"

"No. It IS stuffy in here. Wait--I'll do it myself." Denver

pushed down the upper sash, and returned to his chair. "Well--go

on," he said, filling another pipe. His composure exasperated

Granice.

"There's no use in my going on if you don't believe me."

The editor remained unmoved. "Who says I don't believe you? And

how can I tell till you've finished?"

Granice went on, ashamed of his outburst. "It was simple enough,

as you'll see. From the day the old man said to me, 'Those

Italians would murder you for a quarter,' I dropped everything

and just worked at my scheme. It struck me at once that I must

find a way of getting to Wrenfield and back in a night--and that

led to the idea of a motor. A motor--that never occurred to you?

You wonder where I got the money, I suppose. Well, I had a

thousand or so put by, and I nosed around till I found what I

wanted--a second-hand racer. I knew how to drive a car, and I

tried the thing and found it was all right. Times were bad, and

I bought it for my price, and stored it away. Where? Why, in

one of those no-questions-asked garages where they keep motors

that are not for family use. I had a lively cousin who had put

me up to that dodge, and I looked about till I found a queer hole

where they took in my car like a baby in a foundling asylum. . .

Then I practiced running to Wrenfield and back in a night. I

knew the way pretty well, for I'd done it often with the same

lively cousin--and in the small hours, too. The distance is over

ninety miles, and on the third trial I did it under two hours.

But my arms were so lame that I could hardly get dressed the next

morning. . .

"Well, then came the report about the Italian's threats, and I

saw I must act at once. . . I meant to break into the old man's

room, shoot him, and get away again. It was a big risk, but I

thought I could manage it. Then we heard that he was ill--that

there'd been a consultation. Perhaps the fates were going to do

it for me! Good Lord, if that could only be! . . ."

Granice stopped and wiped his forehead: the open window did not

seem to have cooled the room.

"Then came word that he was better; and the day after, when I

came up from my office, I found Kate laughing over the news that

he was to try a bit of melon. The house-keeper had just

telephoned her--all Wrenfield was in a flutter. The doctor

himself had picked out the melon, one of the little French ones

that are hardly bigger than a large tomato--and the patient was

to eat it at his breakfast the next morning.

"In a flash I saw my chance. It was a bare chance, no more. But

I knew the ways of the house--I was sure the melon would be

brought in over night and put in the pantry ice-box. If there

were only one melon in the ice-box I could be fairly sure it was

the one I wanted. Melons didn't lie around loose in that house--

every one was known, numbered, catalogued. The old man was beset

by the dread that the servants would eat them, and he took a

hundred mean precautions to prevent it. Yes, I felt pretty sure

of my melon . . . and poisoning was much safer than shooting. It

would have been the devil and all to get into the old man's

bedroom without his rousing the house; but I ought to be able to

break into the pantry without much trouble.

"It was a cloudy night, too--everything served me. I dined

quietly, and sat down at my desk. Kate had one of her usual

headaches, and went to bed early. As soon as she was gone I

slipped out. I had got together a sort of disguise--red beard

and queer-looking ulster. I shoved them into a bag, and went

round to the garage. There was no one there but a half-drunken

machinist whom I'd never seen before. That served me, too. They

were always changing machinists, and this new fellow didn't even

bother to ask if the car belonged to me. It was a very easy-

going place. . .

"Well, I jumped in, ran up Broadway, and let the car go as soon

as I was out of Harlem. Dark as it was, I could trust myself to

strike a sharp pace. In the shadow of a wood I stopped a second

and got into the beard and ulster. Then away again--it was just

eleven-thirty when I got to Wrenfield.

"I left the car in a dark lane behind the Lenman place, and

slipped through the kitchen-garden. The melon-houses winked at

me through the dark--I remember thinking that they knew what I

wanted to know. . . . By the stable a dog came out growling--but

he nosed me out, jumped on me, and went back. . . The house was

as dark as the grave. I knew everybody went to bed by ten. But

there might be a prowling servant--the kitchen-maid might have

come down to let in her Italian. I had to risk that, of course.

I crept around by the back door and hid in the shrubbery. Then I

listened. It was all as silent as death. I crossed over to the

house, pried open the pantry window and climbed in. I had a

little electric lamp in my pocket, and shielding it with my cap I

groped my way to the ice-box, opened it--and there was the little

French melon . . . only one.

"I stopped to listen--I was quite cool. Then I pulled out my

bottle of stuff and my syringe, and gave each section of the

melon a hypodermic. It was all done inside of three minutes--at

ten minutes to twelve I was back in the car. I got out of the

lane as quietly as I could, struck a back road that skirted the

village, and let the car out as soon as I was beyond the last

houses. I only stopped once on the way in, to drop the beard and

ulster into a pond. I had a big stone ready to weight them with

and they went down plump, like a dead body--and at two o'clock I

was back at my desk."

Granice stopped speaking and looked across the smoke-fumes at his

listener; but Denver's face remained inscrutable.

At length he said: "Why did you want to tell me this?"

The question startled Granice. He was about to explain, as he

had explained to Ascham; but suddenly it occurred to him that if

his motive had not seemed convincing to the lawyer it would carry

much less weight with Denver. Both were successful men, and

success does not understand the subtle agony of failure. Granice

cast about for another reason.

"Why, I--the thing haunts me . . . remorse, I suppose you'd call

it. . ."

Denver struck the ashes from his empty pipe.

"Remorse? Bosh!" he said energetically.

Granice's heart sank. "You don't believe in--REMORSE?"

"Not an atom: in the man of action. The mere fact of your

talking of remorse proves to me that you're not the man to have

planned and put through such a job."

Granice groaned. "Well--I lied to you about remorse. I've never

felt any."

Denver's lips tightened sceptically about his freshly-filled

pipe. "What was your motive, then? You must have had one."

"I'll tell you--" And Granice began again to rehearse the story

of his failure, of his loathing for life. "Don't say you don't

believe me this time . . . that this isn't a real reason!" he

stammered out piteously as he ended.

Denver meditated. "No, I won't say that. I've seen too many

queer things. There's always a reason for wanting to get out of

life--the wonder is that we find so many for staying in!"

Granice's heart grew light. "Then you DO believe me?" he

faltered.

"Believe that you're sick of the job? Yes. And that you haven't

the nerve to pull the trigger? Oh, yes--that's easy enough, too.

But all that doesn't make you a murderer--though I don't say it

proves you could never have been one."

"I HAVE been one, Denver--I swear to you."

"Perhaps." He meditated. "Just tell me one or two things."

"Oh, go ahead. You won't stump me!" Granice heard himself say

with a laugh.

"Well--how did you make all those trial trips without exciting

your sister's curiosity? I knew your night habits pretty well at

that time, remember. You were very seldom out late. Didn't the

change in your ways surprise her?"

"No; because she was away at the time. She went to pay several

visits in the country soon after we came back from Wrenfield, and

was only in town for a night or two before--before I did the job."

"And that night she went to bed early with a headache?"

"Yes--blinding. She didn't know anything when she had that kind.

And her room was at the back of the flat."

Denver again meditated. "And when you got back--she didn't hear

you? You got in without her knowing it?"

"Yes. I went straight to my work--took it up at the word where

I'd left off--WHY, DENVER, DON'T YOU REMEMBER?" Granice suddenly,

passionately interjected.

"Remember--?"

"Yes; how you found me--when you looked in that morning, between

two and three . . . your usual hour . . .?"

"Yes," the editor nodded.

Granice gave a short laugh. "In my old coat--with my pipe:

looked as if I'd been working all night, didn't I? Well, I

hadn't been in my chair ten minutes!"

Denver uncrossed his legs and then crossed them again. "I didn't

know whether YOU remembered that."

"What?"

"My coming in that particular night--or morning."

Granice swung round in his chair. "Why, man alive! That's why

I'm here now. Because it was you who spoke for me at the

inquest, when they looked round to see what all the old man's

heirs had been doing that night--you who testified to having

dropped in and found me at my desk as usual. . . . I thought

THAT would appeal to your journalistic sense if nothing else

would!"

Denver smiled. "Oh, my journalistic sense is still susceptible

enough--and the idea's picturesque, I grant you: asking the man

who proved your alibi to establish your guilt."

"That's it--that's it!" Granice's laugh had a ring of triumph.

"Well, but how about the other chap's testimony--I mean that

young doctor: what was his name? Ned Ranney. Don't you remember

my testifying that I'd met him at the elevated station, and told

him I was on my way to smoke a pipe with you, and his saying:

'All right; you'll find him in. I passed the house two hours

ago, and saw his shadow against the blind, as usual.' And the

lady with the toothache in the flat across the way: she

corroborated his statement, you remember."

"Yes; I remember."

Well, then?"

"Simple enough. Before starting I rigged up a kind of mannikin

with old coats and a cushion--something to cast a shadow on the

blind. All you fellows were used to seeing my shadow there in

the small hours--I counted on that, and knew you'd take any vague

outline as mine."

"Simple enough, as you say. But the woman with the toothache saw

the shadow move--you remember she said she saw you sink forward,

as if you'd fallen asleep."

"Yes; and she was right. It DID move. I suppose some extra-

heavy dray must have jolted by the flimsy building--at any rate,

something gave my mannikin a jar, and when I came back he had

sunk forward, half over the table."

There was a long silence between the two men. Granice, with a

throbbing heart, watched Denver refill his pipe. The editor, at

any rate, did not sneer and flout him. After all, journalism

gave a deeper insight than the law into the fantastic

possibilities of life, prepared one better to allow for the

incalculableness of human impulses.

"Well?" Granice faltered out.

Denver stood up with a shrug. "Look here, man--what's wrong with

you? Make a clean breast of it! Nerves gone to smash? I'd like

to take you to see a chap I know--an ex-prize-fighter--who's a

wonder at pulling fellows in your state out of their hole--"

"Oh, oh--" Granice broke in. He stood up also, and the two men

eyed each other. "You don't believe me, then?"

"This yarn--how can I? There wasn't a flaw in your alibi."

"But haven't I filled it full of them now?"

Denver shook his head. "I might think so if I hadn't happened to

know that you WANTED to. There's the hitch, don't you see?"

Granice groaned. "No, I didn't. You mean my wanting to be found

guilty--?"

"Of course! If somebody else had accused you, the story might

have been worth looking into. As it is, a child could have

invented it. It doesn't do much credit to your ingenuity."

Granice turned sullenly toward the door. What was the use of

arguing? But on the threshold a sudden impulse drew him back.

"Look here, Denver--I daresay you're right. But will you do just

one thing to prove it? Put my statement in the Investigator,

just as I've made it. Ridicule it as much as you like. Only

give the other fellows a chance at it--men who don't know

anything about me. Set them talking and looking about. I don't

care a damn whether YOU believe me--what I want is to convince

the Grand Jury! I oughtn't to have come to a man who knows me--

your cursed incredulity is infectious. I don't put my case well,

because I know in advance it's discredited, and I almost end by

not believing it myself. That's why I can't convince YOU. It's

a vicious circle." He laid a hand on Denver's arm. "Send a

stenographer, and put my statement in the paper.

But Denver did not warm to the idea. "My dear fellow, you seem

to forget that all the evidence was pretty thoroughly sifted at

the time, every possible clue followed up. The public would have

been ready enough then to believe that you murdered old Lenman--

you or anybody else. All they wanted was a murderer--the most

improbable would have served. But your alibi was too

confoundedly complete. And nothing you've told me has shaken

it." Denver laid his cool hand over the other's burning fingers.

"Look here, old fellow, go home and work up a better case--then

come in and submit it to the Investigator."

IV

The perspiration was rolling off Granice's forehead. Every few

minutes he had to draw out his handkerchief and wipe the moisture

from his haggard face.

For an hour and a half he had been talking steadily, putting his

case to the District Attorney. Luckily he had a speaking

acquaintance with Allonby, and had obtained, without much

difficulty, a private audience on the very day after his talk

with Robert Denver. In the interval between he had hurried home,

got out of his evening clothes, and gone forth again at once into

the dreary dawn. His fear of Ascham and the alienist made it

impossible for him to remain in his rooms. And it seemed to him

that the only way of averting that hideous peril was by

establishing, in some sane impartial mind, the proof of his

guilt. Even if he had not been so incurably sick of life, the

electric chair seemed now the only alternative to the strait-

jacket.

As he paused to wipe his forehead he saw the District Attorney

glance at his watch. The gesture was significant, and Granice

lifted an appealing hand. "I don't expect you to believe me now--

but can't you put me under arrest, and have the thing looked into?"

Allonby smiled faintly under his heavy grayish moustache. He had

a ruddy face, full and jovial, in which his keen professional

eyes seemed to keep watch over impulses not strictly

professional.

"Well, I don't know that we need lock you up just yet. But of

course I'm bound to look into your statement--"

Granice rose with an exquisite sense of relief. Surely Allonby

wouldn't have said that if he hadn't believed him!

"That's all right. Then I needn't detain you. I can be found at

any time at my apartment." He gave the address.

The District Attorney smiled again, more openly. "What do you

say to leaving it for an hour or two this evening? I'm giving a

little supper at Rector's--quiet, little affair, you understand:

just Miss Melrose--I think you know her--and a friend or two; and

if you'll join us. . ."

Granice stumbled out of the office without knowing what reply he

had made.

He waited for four days--four days of concentrated horror.

During the first twenty-four hours the fear of Ascham's alienist

dogged him; and as that subsided, it was replaced by the

exasperating sense that his avowal had made no impression on the

District Attorney. Evidently, if he had been going to look into

the case, Allonby would have been heard from before now. . . .

And that mocking invitation to supper showed clearly enough how

little the story had impressed him!

Granice was overcome by the futility of any farther attempt to

inculpate himself. He was chained to life--a "prisoner of

consciousness." Where was it he had read the phrase? Well, he

was learning what it meant. In the glaring night-hours, when his

brain seemed ablaze, he was visited by a sense of his fixed

identity, of his irreducible, inexpugnable SELFNESS, keener, more

insidious, more unescapable, than any sensation he had ever

known. He had not guessed that the mind was capable of such

intricacies of self-realization, of penetrating so deep into its

own dark windings. Often he woke from his brief snatches of

sleep with the feeling that something material was clinging to

him, was on his hands and face, and in his throat--and as his

brain cleared he understood that it was the sense of his own

loathed personality that stuck to him like some thick viscous

substance.

Then, in the first morning hours, he would rise and look out of

his window at the awakening activities of the street--at the

street-cleaners, the ash-cart drivers, and the other dingy

workers flitting hurriedly by through the sallow winter light.

Oh, to be one of them--any of them--to take his chance in any of

their skins! They were the toilers--the men whose lot was

pitied--the victims wept over and ranted about by altruists and

economists; and how gladly he would have taken up the load of any

one of them, if only he might have shaken off his own! But, no--

the iron circle of consciousness held them too: each one was

hand-cuffed to his own hideous ego. Why wish to be any one man

rather than another? The only absolute good was not to be . . .

And Flint, coming in to draw his bath, would ask if he preferred

his eggs scrambled or poached that morning?

On the fifth day he wrote a long urgent letter to Allonby; and

for the succeeding two days he had the occupation of waiting for

an answer. He hardly stirred from his rooms, in his fear of

missing the letter by a moment; but would the District Attorney

write, or send a representative: a policeman, a "secret agent,"

or some other mysterious emissary of the law?

On the third morning Flint, stepping softly--as if, confound it!

his master were ill--entered the library where Granice sat behind

an unread newspaper, and proferred a card on a tray.

Granice read the name--J. B. Hewson--and underneath, in pencil,

"From the District Attorney's office." He started up with a

thumping heart, and signed an assent to the servant.

Mr. Hewson was a slight sallow nondescript man of about fifty--

the kind of man of whom one is sure to see a specimen in any

crowd. "Just the type of the successful detective," Granice

reflected as he shook hands with his visitor.

And it was in that character that Mr. Hewson briefly introduced

himself. He had been sent by the District Attorney to have "a

quiet talk" with Mr. Granice--to ask him to repeat the statement

he had made about the Lenman murder.

His manner was so quiet, so reasonable and receptive, that

Granice's self-confidence returned. Here was a sensible man--a

man who knew his business--it would be easy enough to make HIM

see through that ridiculous alibi! Granice offered Mr. Hewson a

cigar, and lighting one himself--to prove his coolness--began

again to tell his story.

He was conscious, as he proceeded, of telling it better than ever

before. Practice helped, no doubt; and his listener's detached,

impartial attitude helped still more. He could see that Hewson,

at least, had not decided in advance to disbelieve him, and the

sense of being trusted made him more lucid and more consecutive.

Yes, this time his words would certainly carry conviction. . .

V

Despairingly, Granice gazed up and down the shabby street.

Beside him stood a young man with bright prominent eyes, a smooth

but not too smoothly-shaven face, and an Irish smile. The young

man's nimble glance followed Granice's.

"Sure of the number, are you?" he asked briskly.

"Oh, yes--it was 104."

"Well, then, the new building has swallowed it up--that's

certain."

He tilted his head back and surveyed the half-finished front of a

brick and limestone flat-house that reared its flimsy elegance

above a row of tottering tenements and stables.

"Dead sure?" he repeated.

"Yes," said Granice, discouraged. "And even if I hadn't been, I

know the garage was just opposite Leffler's over there." He

pointed across the street to a tumble-down stable with a blotched

sign on which the words "Livery and Boarding" were still faintly

discernible.

The young man dashed across to the opposite pavement. "Well,

that's something--may get a clue there. Leffler's--same name

there, anyhow. You remember that name?"

"Yes--distinctly."

Granice had felt a return of confidence since he had enlisted the

interest of the Explorer's "smartest" reporter. If there were

moments when he hardly believed his own story, there were others

when it seemed impossible that every one should not believe it;

and young Peter McCarren, peering, listening, questioning,

jotting down notes, inspired him with an exquisite sense of

security. McCarren had fastened on the case at once, "like a

leech," as he phrased it--jumped at it, thrilled to it, and

settled down to "draw the last drop of fact from it, and had not

let go till he had." No one else had treated Granice in that

way--even Allonby's detective had not taken a single note. And

though a week had elapsed since the visit of that authorized

official, nothing had been heard from the District Attorney's

office: Allonby had apparently dropped the matter again. But

McCarren wasn't going to drop it--not he! He positively hung on

Granice's footsteps. They had spent the greater part of the

previous day together, and now they were off again, running down

clues.

But at Leffler's they got none, after all. Leffler's was no

longer a stable. It was condemned to demolition, and in the

respite between sentence and execution it had become a vague

place of storage, a hospital for broken-down carriages and carts,

presided over by a blear-eyed old woman who knew nothing of

Flood's garage across the way--did not even remember what had

stood there before the new flat-house began to rise.

"Well--we may run Leffler down somewhere; I've seen harder jobs

done," said McCarren, cheerfully noting down the name.

As they walked back toward Sixth Avenue he added, in a less

sanguine tone: "I'd undertake now to put the thing through if you

could only put me on the track of that cyanide."

Granice's heart sank. Yes--there was the weak spot; he had felt

it from the first! But he still hoped to convince McCarren that

his case was strong enough without it; and he urged the reporter

to come back to his rooms and sum up the facts with him again.

"Sorry, Mr. Granice, but I'm due at the office now. Besides,

it'd be no use till I get some fresh stuff to work on. Suppose I

call you up tomorrow or next day?"

He plunged into a trolley and left Granice gazing desolately

after him.

Two days later he reappeared at the apartment, a shade less

jaunty in demeanor.

"Well, Mr. Granice, the stars in their courses are against you,

as the bard says. Can't get a trace of Flood, or of Leffler

either. And you say you bought the motor through Flood, and sold

it through him, too?"

"Yes," said Granice wearily.

"Who bought it, do you know?"

Granice wrinkled his brows. "Why, Flood--yes, Flood himself. I

sold it back to him three months later."

"Flood? The devil! And I've ransacked the town for Flood. That

kind of business disappears as if the earth had swallowed it."

Granice, discouraged, kept silence.

"That brings us back to the poison," McCarren continued, his

note-book out. "Just go over that again, will you?"

And Granice went over it again. It had all been so simple at the

time--and he had been so clever in covering up his traces! As

soon as he decided on poison he looked about for an acquaintance

who manufactured chemicals; and there was Jim Dawes, a Harvard

classmate, in the dyeing business--just the man. But at the last

moment it occurred to him that suspicion might turn toward so

obvious an opportunity, and he decided on a more tortuous course.

Another friend, Carrick Venn, a student of medicine whom

irremediable ill-health had kept from the practice of his

profession, amused his leisure with experiments in physics, for

the exercise of which he had set up a simple laboratory. Granice

had the habit of dropping in to smoke a cigar with him on Sunday

afternoons, and the friends generally sat in Venn's work-shop, at

the back of the old family house in Stuyvesant Square. Off this

work-shop was the cupboard of supplies, with its row of deadly

bottles. Carrick Venn was an original, a man of restless curious

tastes, and his place, on a Sunday, was often full of visitors: a

cheerful crowd of journalists, scribblers, painters,

experimenters in divers forms of expression. Coming and going

among so many, it was easy enough to pass unperceived; and one

afternoon Granice, arriving before Venn had returned home, found

himself alone in the work-shop, and quickly slipping into the

cupboard, transferred the drug to his pocket.

But that had happened ten years ago; and Venn, poor fellow, was

long since dead of his dragging ailment. His old father was

dead, too, the house in Stuyvesant Square had been turned into a

boarding-house, and the shifting life of New York had passed its

rapid sponge over every trace of their obscure little history.

Even the optimistic McCarren seemed to acknowledge the

hopelessness of seeking for proof in that direction.

"And there's the third door slammed in our faces." He shut his

note-book, and throwing back his head, rested his bright

inquisitive eyes on Granice's furrowed face.

"Look here, Mr. Granice--you see the weak spot, don't you?"

The other made a despairing motion. "I see so many!"

"Yes: but the one that weakens all the others. Why the deuce do

you want this thing known? Why do you want to put your head into

the noose?"

Granice looked at him hopelessly, trying to take the measure of

his quick light irreverent mind. No one so full of a cheerful

animal life would believe in the craving for death as a

sufficient motive; and Granice racked his brain for one more

convincing. But suddenly he saw the reporter's face soften, and

melt to a naive sentimentalism.

"Mr. Granice--has the memory of it always haunted you?"

Granice stared a moment, and then leapt at the opening. "That's

it--the memory of it . . . always . . ."

McCarren nodded vehemently. "Dogged your steps, eh? Wouldn't

let you sleep? The time came when you HAD to make a clean breast

of it?"

"I had to. Can't you understand?"

The reporter struck his fist on the table. "God, sir! I don't

suppose there's a human being with a drop of warm blood in him

that can't picture the deadly horrors of remorse--"

The Celtic imagination was aflame, and Granice mutely thanked him

for the word. What neither Ascham nor Denver would accept as a

conceivable motive the Irish reporter seized on as the most

adequate; and, as he said, once one could find a convincing

motive, the difficulties of the case became so many incentives to

effort.

"Remorse--REMORSE," he repeated, rolling the word under his

tongue with an accent that was a clue to the psychology of the

popular drama; and Granice, perversely, said to himself: "If I

could only have struck that note I should have been running in

six theatres at once."

He saw that from that moment McCarren's professional zeal would

be fanned by emotional curiosity; and he profited by the fact to

propose that they should dine together, and go on afterward to

some music-hall or theatre. It was becoming necessary to Granice

to feel himself an object of pre-occupation, to find himself in

another mind. He took a kind of gray penumbral pleasure in

riveting McCarren's attention on his case; and to feign the

grimaces of moral anguish became a passionately engrossing game.

He had not entered a theatre for months; but he sat out the

meaningless performance in rigid tolerance, sustained by the

sense of the reporter's observation.

Between the acts, McCarren amused him with anecdotes about the

audience: he knew every one by sight, and could lift the curtain

from every physiognomy. Granice listened indulgently. He had

lost all interest in his kind, but he knew that he was himself

the real centre of McCarren's attention, and that every word the

latter spoke had an indirect bearing on his own problem.

"See that fellow over there--the little dried-up man in the third

row, pulling his moustache? HIS memoirs would be worth

publishing," McCarren said suddenly in the last entr'acte.

Granice, following his glance, recognized the detective from

Allonby's office. For a moment he had the thrilling sense that

he was being shadowed.

"Caesar, if HE could talk--!" McCarren continued. "Know who he

is, of course? Dr. John B. Stell, the biggest alienist in the

country--"

Granice, with a start, bent again between the heads in front of

him. "THAT man--the fourth from the aisle? You're mistaken.

That's not Dr. Stell."

McCarren laughed. "Well, I guess I've been in court enough to

know Stell when I see him. He testifies in nearly all the big

cases where they plead insanity."

A cold shiver ran down Granice's spine, but he repeated

obstinately: "That's not Dr. Stell."

"Not Stell? Why, man, I KNOW him. Look--here he comes. If it

isn't Stell, he won't speak to me."

The little dried-up man was moving slowly up the aisle. As he

neared McCarren he made a slight gesture of recognition.

"How'do, Doctor Stell? Pretty slim show, ain't it?" the reporter

cheerfully flung out at him. And Mr. J. B. Hewson, with a nod of

amicable assent, passed on.

Granice sat benumbed. He knew he had not been mistaken--the man

who had just passed was the same man whom Allonby had sent to see

him: a physician disguised as a detective. Allonby, then, had

thought him insane, like the others--had regarded his confession

as the maundering of a maniac. The discovery froze Granice with

horror--he seemed to see the mad-house gaping for him.

"Isn't there a man a good deal like him--a detective named J. B.

Hewson?"

But he knew in advance what McCarren's answer would be. "Hewson?

J. B. Hewson? Never heard of him. But that was J. B. Stell fast

enough--I guess he can be trusted to know himself, and you saw he

answered to his name."

VI

Some days passed before Granice could obtain a word with the

District Attorney: he began to think that Allonby avoided him.

But when they were face to face Allonby's jovial countenance

showed no sign of embarrassment. He waved his visitor to a

chair, and leaned across his desk with the encouraging smile of a

consulting physician.

Granice broke out at once: "That detective you sent me the other

day--"

Allonby raised a deprecating hand.

"--I know: it was Stell the alienist. Why did you do that,

Allonby?"

The other's face did not lose its composure. "Because I looked

up your story first--and there's nothing in it."

"Nothing in it?" Granice furiously interposed.

"Absolutely nothing. If there is, why the deuce don't you bring

me proofs? I know you've been talking to Peter Ascham, and to

Denver, and to that little ferret McCarren of the Explorer. Have

any of them been able to make out a case for you? No. Well,

what am I to do?"

Granice's lips began to tremble. "Why did you play me that

trick?"

"About Stell? I had to, my dear fellow: it's part of my

business. Stell IS a detective, if you come to that--every

doctor is."

The trembling of Granice's lips increased, communicating itself

in a long quiver to his facial muscles. He forced a laugh

through his dry throat. "Well--and what did he detect?"

"In you? Oh, he thinks it's overwork--overwork and too much

smoking. If you look in on him some day at his office he'll show

you the record of hundreds of cases like yours, and advise you

what treatment to follow. It's one of the commonest forms of

hallucination. Have a cigar, all the same."

"But, Allonby, I killed that man!"

The District Attorney's large hand, outstretched on his desk, had

an almost imperceptible gesture, and a moment later, as if an

answer to the call of an electric bell, a clerk looked in from

the outer office.

"Sorry, my dear fellow--lot of people waiting. Drop in on Stell

some morning," Allonby said, shaking hands.

McCarren had to own himself beaten: there was absolutely no flaw

in the alibi. And since his duty to his journal obviously

forbade his wasting time on insoluble mysteries, he ceased to

frequent Granice, who dropped back into a deeper isolation. For

a day or two after his visit to Allonby he continued to live in

dread of Dr. Stell. Why might not Allonby have deceived him as

to the alienist's diagnosis? What if he were really being

shadowed, not by a police agent but by a mad-doctor? To have the

truth out, he suddenly determined to call on Dr. Stell.

The physician received him kindly, and reverted without

embarrassment to the conditions of their previous meeting. "We

have to do that occasionally, Mr. Granice; it's one of our

methods. And you had given Allonby a fright."

Granice was silent. He would have liked to reaffirm his guilt,

to produce the fresh arguments which had occurred to him since

his last talk with the physician; but he feared his eagerness

might be taken for a symptom of derangement, and he affected to

smile away Dr. Stell's allusion.

"You think, then, it's a case of brain-fag--nothing more?"

"Nothing more. And I should advise you to knock off tobacco.

You smoke a good deal, don't you?"

He developed his treatment, recommending massage, gymnastics,

travel, or any form of diversion that did not--that in short--

Granice interrupted him impatiently. "Oh, I loathe all that--and

I'm sick of travelling."

"H'm. Then some larger interest--politics, reform, philanthropy?

Something to take you out of yourself."

"Yes. I understand," said Granice wearily.

"Above all, don't lose heart. I see hundreds of cases like

yours," the doctor added cheerfully from the threshold.

On the doorstep Granice stood still and laughed. Hundreds of

cases like his--the case of a man who had committed a murder, who

confessed his guilt, and whom no one would believe! Why, there

had never been a case like it in the world. What a good figure

Stell would have made in a play: the great alienist who couldn't

read a man's mind any better than that!

Granice saw huge comic opportunities in the type.

But as he walked away, his fears dispelled, the sense of

listlessness returned on him. For the first time since his

avowal to Peter Ascham he found himself without an occupation,

and understood that he had been carried through the past weeks

only by the necessity of constant action. Now his life had once

more become a stagnant backwater, and as he stood on the street

corner watching the tides of traffic sweep by, he asked himself

despairingly how much longer he could endure to float about in

the sluggish circle of his consciousness.

The thought of self-destruction recurred to him; but again his

flesh recoiled. He yearned for death from other hands, but he

could never take it from his own. And, aside from his

insuperable physical reluctance, another motive restrained him.

He was possessed by the dogged desire to establish the truth of

his story. He refused to be swept aside as an irresponsible

dreamer--even if he had to kill himself in the end, he would not

do so before proving to society that he had deserved death from it.

He began to write long letters to the papers; but after the first

had been published and commented on, public curiosity was quelled

by a brief statement from the District Attorney's office, and the

rest of his communications remained unprinted. Ascham came to

see him, and begged him to travel. Robert Denver dropped in, and

tried to joke him out of his delusion; till Granice, mistrustful

of their motives, began to dread the reappearance of Dr. Stell,

and set a guard on his lips. But the words he kept back

engendered others and still others in his brain. His inner self

became a humming factory of arguments, and he spent long hours

reciting and writing down elaborate statements of his crime,

which he constantly retouched and developed. Then gradually his

activity languished under the lack of an audience, the sense of

being buried beneath deepening drifts of indifference. In a

passion of resentment he swore that he would prove himself a

murderer, even if he had to commit another crime to do it; and

for a sleepless night or two the thought flamed red on his

darkness. But daylight dispelled it. The determining impulse

was lacking and he hated too promiscuously to choose his victim. . .

So he was thrown back on the unavailing struggle to impose

the truth of his story. As fast as one channel closed on him he

tried to pierce another through the sliding sands of incredulity.

But every issue seemed blocked, and the whole human race leagued

together to cheat one man of the right to die.

Thus viewed, the situation became so monstrous that he lost his

last shred of self-restraint in contemplating it. What if he

were really the victim of some mocking experiment, the centre of

a ring of holiday-makers jeering at a poor creature in its blind

dashes against the solid walls of consciousness? But, no--men

were not so uniformly cruel: there were flaws in the close

surface of their indifference, cracks of weakness and pity here

and there. . .

Granice began to think that his mistake lay in having appealed to

persons more or less familiar with his past, and to whom the

visible conformities of his life seemed a final disproof of its

one fierce secret deviation. The general tendency was to take

for the whole of life the slit seen between the blinders of

habit: and in his walk down that narrow vista Granice cut a

correct enough figure. To a vision free to follow his whole

orbit his story would be more intelligible: it would be easier to

convince a chance idler in the street than the trained

intelligence hampered by a sense of his antecedents. This idea

shot up in him with the tropic luxuriance of each new seed of

thought, and he began to walk the streets, and to frequent out-

of-the-way chop-houses and bars in his search for the impartial

stranger to whom he should disclose himself.

At first every face looked encouragement; but at the crucial

moment he always held back. So much was at stake, and it was so

essential that his first choice should be decisive. He dreaded

stupidity, timidity, intolerance. The imaginative eye, the

furrowed brow, were what he sought. He must reveal himself only

to a heart versed in the tortuous motions of the human will; and

he began to hate the dull benevolence of the average face. Once

or twice, obscurely, allusively, he made a beginning--once

sitting down at a man's side in a basement chop-house, another

day approaching a lounger on an east-side wharf. But in both

cases the premonition of failure checked him on the brink of

avowal. His dread of being taken for a man in the clutch of a

fixed idea gave him an unnatural keenness in reading the

expression of his interlocutors, and he had provided himself in

advance with a series of verbal alternatives, trap-doors of

evasion from the first dart of ridicule or suspicion.

He passed the greater part of the day in the streets, coming home

at irregular hours, dreading the silence and orderliness of his

apartment, and the critical scrutiny of Flint. His real life was

spent in a world so remote from this familiar setting that he

sometimes had the mysterious sense of a living metempsychosis, a

furtive passage from one identity to another--yet the other as

unescapably himself!

One humiliation he was spared: the desire to live never revived

in him. Not for a moment was he tempted to a shabby pact with

existing conditions. He wanted to die, wanted it with the fixed

unwavering desire which alone attains its end. And still the end

eluded him! It would not always, of course--he had full faith in

the dark star of his destiny. And he could prove it best by

repeating his story, persistently and indefatigably, pouring it

into indifferent ears, hammering it into dull brains, till at

last it kindled a spark, and some one of the careless millions

paused, listened, believed. . .

It was a mild March day, and he had been loitering on the west-

side docks, looking at faces. He was becoming an expert in

physiognomies: his eagerness no longer made rash darts and

awkward recoils. He knew now the face he needed, as clearly as

if it had come to him in a vision; and not till he found it would

he speak. As he walked eastward through the shabby reeking

streets he had a premonition that he should find it that morning.

Perhaps it was the promise of spring in the air--certainly he

felt calmer than for many days. . .

He turned into Washington Square, struck across it obliquely, and

walked up University Place. Its heterogeneous passers always

allured him--they were less hurried than in Broadway, less

enclosed and classified than in Fifth Avenue. He walked slowly,

watching for his face.

At Union Square he felt a sudden relapse into discouragement,

like a votary who has watched too long for a sign from the altar.

Perhaps, after all, he should never find his face. . . The air

was languid, and he felt tired. He walked between the bald

grass-plots and the twisted trees, making for an empty seat.

Presently he passed a bench on which a girl sat alone, and

something as definite as the twitch of a cord made him stop

before her. He had never dreamed of telling his story to a girl,

had hardly looked at the women's faces as they passed. His case

was man's work: how could a woman help him? But this girl's face

was extraordinary--quiet and wide as a clear evening sky. It

suggested a hundred images of space, distance, mystery, like

ships he had seen, as a boy, quietly berthed by a familiar wharf,

but with the breath of far seas and strange harbours in their

shrouds. . . Certainly this girl would understand. He went up

to her quietly, lifting his hat, observing the forms--wishing her

to see at once that he was "a gentleman."

"I am a stranger to you," he began, sitting down beside her, "but

your face is so extremely intelligent that I feel. . . I feel it

is the face I've waited for . . . looked for everywhere; and I

want to tell you--"

The girl's eyes widened: she rose to her feet. She was escaping

him!

In his dismay he ran a few steps after her, and caught her

roughly by the arm.

"Here--wait--listen! Oh, don't scream, you fool!" he shouted

out.

He felt a hand on his own arm; turned and confronted a policeman.

Instantly he understood that he was being arrested, and something

hard within him was loosened and ran to tears.

"Ah, you know--you KNOW I'm guilty!"

He was conscious that a crowd was forming, and that the girl's

frightened face had disappeared. But what did he care about her

face? It was the policeman who had really understood him. He

turned and followed, the crowd at his heels. . .

VII

In the charming place in which he found himself there were so

many sympathetic faces that he felt more than ever convinced of

the certainty of making himself heard.

It was a bad blow, at first, to find that he had not been

arrested for murder; but Ascham, who had come to him at once,

explained that he needed rest, and the time to "review" his

statements; it appeared that reiteration had made them a little

confused and contradictory. To this end he had willingly

acquiesced in his removal to a large quiet establishment, with an

open space and trees about it, where he had found a number of

intelligent companions, some, like himself, engaged in preparing

or reviewing statements of their cases, and others ready to lend

an interested ear to his own recital.

For a time he was content to let himself go on the tranquil

current of this existence; but although his auditors gave him for

the most part an encouraging attention, which, in some, went the

length of really brilliant and helpful suggestion, he gradually

felt a recurrence of his old doubts. Either his hearers were not

sincere, or else they had less power to aid him than they

boasted. His interminable conferences resulted in nothing, and

as the benefit of the long rest made itself felt, it produced an

increased mental lucidity which rendered inaction more and more

unbearable. At length he discovered that on certain days

visitors from the outer world were admitted to his retreat; and

he wrote out long and logically constructed relations of his

crime, and furtively slipped them into the hands of these

messengers of hope.

This occupation gave him a fresh lease of patience, and he now

lived only to watch for the visitors' days, and scan the faces

that swept by him like stars seen and lost in the rifts of a

hurrying sky.

Mostly, these faces were strange and less intelligent than those

of his companions. But they represented his last means of access

to the world, a kind of subterranean channel on which he could

set his "statements" afloat, like paper boats which the

mysterious current might sweep out into the open seas of life.

One day, however, his attention was arrested by a familiar

contour, a pair of bright prominent eyes, and a chin

insufficiently shaved. He sprang up and stood in the path of

Peter McCarren.

The journalist looked at him doubtfully, then held out his hand

with a startled deprecating, "WHY--?"

"You didn't know me? I'm so changed?" Granice faltered, feeling

the rebound of the other's wonder.

"Why, no; but you're looking quieter--smoothed out," McCarren

smiled.

"Yes: that's what I'm here for--to rest. And I've taken the

opportunity to write out a clearer statement--"

Granice's hand shook so that he could hardly draw the folded

paper from his pocket. As he did so he noticed that the reporter

was accompanied by a tall man with grave compassionate eyes. It

came to Granice in a wild thrill of conviction that this was the

face he had waited for. . .

"Perhaps your friend--he IS your friend?--would glance over it--

or I could put the case in a few words if you have time?"

Granice's voice shook like his hand. If this chance escaped him

he felt that his last hope was gone. McCarren and the stranger

looked at each other, and the former glanced at his watch.

"I'm sorry we can't stay and talk it over now, Mr. Granice; but

my friend has an engagement, and we're rather pressed--"

Granice continued to proffer the paper. "I'm sorry--I think I

could have explained. But you'll take this, at any rate?"

The stranger looked at him gently. "Certainly--I'll take it."

He had his hand out. "Good-bye."

"Good-bye," Granice echoed.

He stood watching the two men move away from him through the long

light hall; and as he watched them a tear ran down his face. But

as soon as they were out of sight he turned and walked hastily

toward his room, beginning to hope again, already planning a new

statement.

Outside the building the two men stood still, and the

journalist's companion looked up curiously at the long monotonous

rows of barred windows.

"So that was Granice?"

"Yes--that was Granice, poor devil," said McCarren.

"Strange case! I suppose there's never been one just like it?

He's still absolutely convinced that he committed that murder?"

"Absolutely. Yes."

The stranger reflected. "And there was no conceivable ground for

the idea? No one could make out how it started? A quiet

conventional sort of fellow like that--where do you suppose he

got such a delusion? Did you ever get the least clue to it?"

McCarren stood still, his hands in his pockets, his head cocked

up in contemplation of the barred windows. Then he turned his

bright hard gaze on his companion.

"That was the queer part of it. I've never spoken of it--but I

DID get a clue."

"By Jove! That's interesting. What was it?"

McCarren formed his red lips into a whistle. "Why--that it

wasn't a delusion."

He produced his effect--the other turned on him with a pallid

stare.

"He murdered the man all right. I tumbled on the truth by the

merest accident, when I'd pretty nearly chucked the whole job."

"He murdered him--murdered his cousin?"

"Sure as you live. Only don't split on me. It's about the

queerest business I ever ran into. . . DO ABOUT IT? Why, what

was I to do? I couldn't hang the poor devil, could I? Lord, but

I was glad when they collared him, and had him stowed away safe

in there!"

The tall man listened with a grave face, grasping Granice's

statement in his hand.

"Here--take this; it makes me sick," he said abruptly, thrusting

the paper at the reporter; and the two men turned and walked in

silence to the gates.

The End