The Almost Perfect Murder by Hulbert Footner (reading the story of the TXT) 📕

poisoned,” said Dr. Slingluff. “I suspected aconite owing to the

intolerable prickling of the skin of which he complained. No other

poison gives rise to that symptom. I sent Gabbitt on the run to my

office for atropine, but I saw that it was too late for atropine or

anything else. My real reason was to get the man out of the room

because I saw my friend had something of a private nature to say to me.

He took one of my hands between his; he was perfectly conscious, but I

had to stoop low to hear him. He said: ‘Fred, I have been poisoned!’

I nodded. He said with an agonised look of entreaty in his eyes: ‘Keep

it a secret, Fred. It rests with you. Oh, God! don’t let me die with

the fear of disgrace and horror on me!’ And so I promised, and a look

of relief came into his dying eyes. Could I have acted differently?”

“Certainly not,” said Mme. Storey. “But was that all?”

“That was all.”

“You’re an enlightened man,” she said, “you’re the sort of man, I take

it, who reserves the right to think and to act for himself on all

occasions.”

“I hope so,” said Doctor Slingluff.

“Well, wouldn’t it be consistent with your idea of what is right to

give such a promise to a dying man to ease his death, and then break it

afterwards if the public interest demanded?”

He saw that he was in a trap, and refused to answer.

“You see,” said Mme. Storey mildly, “you have not yet told me why you

lied.”

Silence from the doctor.

“Commodore Varick also, was a man of the world,” she went on, “he must

have known that in asking such a thing of you, he was asking you to

betray your professional reputation, your duty to the State. Didn’t he

appear to be aware of this?”

“No,” said Dr. Slingluff.

“Didn’t he give any reason for making such a request?”

“No!”

“Didn’t he,” Mme. Storey asked very softly, “didn’t he tell you who

poisoned him?”

The same symptoms of extreme agitation appeared in the doctor’s candid

face but he said, as before: “No!”

Mme. Storey sighed. She said: “It may help to clarify the situation if

I tell you that Henry Varick has been under arrest since last night.

We have built up a strong case against him.”

Doctor Slingluff started up out of his chair, and dropped back again in

a heap. His eyes seemed to start out of his head in horror. Then he

covered his face. “Henry arrested!” he groaned. “Then everything is

over!”

“You see there is no further occasion for lying,” said my mistress

gently.

“No!” he murmured wretchedly. “No! God help us!”

“What were Commodore Varick’s last words to you before he died?” asked

Mme. Storey.

“He said,” came the husky reply, “he said … ‘Henry poisoned me.’”

I pass over my private feelings at that moment. The others shared them

at least to some degree, I fancy. As Mme. Storey had said, the

situation was too painful. After the stricken doctor had left the

room, Inspector Rumsey turned to my employer in a kind of amazement.

“And you knew it all the time?” he said. “You knew what was coming?”

“Yes, I knew it,” she said soberly, “in a way.”

“How could you have known it?”

“By intuition. There was no other way of accounting for the doctor’s

agony of mind yesterday when I questioned him.”

“Can you still tell me that you are not satisfied as to this young

man’s guilt?” demanded the Inspector.

“I am not satisfied,” said Mme. Storey stoutly. “In this latest

disclosure there is merely an emotional effect, there is no proof. You

are crushed by the horror of that father’s death, believing that his

son had poisoned him. Suppose he was mistaken?”

“Impossible!”

“Suppose the Commodore had taken several substances into his mouth

about that time, how could he know which might have contained the

poison?”

“By the remembered taste afterwards.”

“It may have been disguised.”

“You are simply hoping against hope,” said Inspector Rumsey. “My duty

is clear. I must take Henry Varick down to headquarters.”

Mme. Storey spread out her hands in surrender.

However, Henry Varick was not taken away just then. Mme. Storey said;

“Before we part company in this case, Inspector…”

He interrupted her in great concern: “Part company?”

“Well, hereafter, I suppose you will be for the prosecution and I for

the defence. But let us try one last expedient together with a view to

discovering the truth.”

“What do you propose?” he asked.

“You are familiar with the criminal procedure in France and Italy,” she

answered; “how they bring accused and accusers face to face in the

court room, and let them shout at each other, the idea being that the

truth will somehow reveal itself in spite of them. It’s not a perfect

method, but it has its points; if there must be shouting in court it

seems more reasonable to let the principals do it than their hired

lawyers, as we arrange it over here. I propose that we have Henry

Varick and his accuser in here together.”

“But his father was his accuser,” objected the Inspector, “and he is

dead.”

“He has another accuser,” said Mme. Storey. “Telephone to Manby to

fetch him in here, and I’ll produce her.”

He did so. Meanwhile Mme. Storey went to the door into the office.

When she opened it one could hear the uninterrupted tapping of the

typewriter within. She said: “Miss Priestley, will you be good enough

to come in here for a moment.”

The secretary entered with a look of polite surprise. Inspector

Rumsey’s eyes opened at the sight of her, and that indefinable change

took place in him that one always sees in a man upon the entrance of

beauty. My heart began to beat again, foreseeing another painful

scene. I wished myself away from there, for I felt that I had had

about all I could bear.

A moment later Henry Varick was brought in. The detective was sent

back to wait until he was called for again. Henry knew by instinct, I

suppose, that the stranger in the room was a police official, and a

desperate look came into his eyes. When he saw Julia Priestley also,

he changed colour, and looked around him wildly like a trapped

creature. All this created a very unfavourable impression on the

Inspector. Guilty! his look said just as clearly as if he had

enunciated the word. But good heavens! the unfortunate young man was

half mad with grief and terror. How could he have looked any

differently? If I had been in his place, I should have looked just the

same. So far as I could see, Miss Priestley never looked at him.

“Sit down,” said Mme. Storey to Miss Priestley. My employer had

assumed a bland and smiling air that might have concealed anything.

Henry was not invited to take a chair, but he did so anyway, not having

become accustomed as yet to being treated as an inferior. So there we

were, the five of us. We were grouped around a table at the end of the

room farthest from the fireplace. It was the same table upon which tea

had been served two days before—the Commodore’s last meal. The

Inspector was seated directly at the table, and myself a little behind

him. My mistress had told me not to produce a notebook, so I had

nothing to do but sit with my hands in my lap and look on. Mr. Henry

had his back to the windows, and Miss Priestley was across the room.

Mme. Storey was between them, but she did not remain in one position,

frequently rising to pace back and forth.

She said to Miss Priestley with her blandest air: “I asked you in,

knowing your great interest in this matter. Our labours are completed

for the moment. It would not be proper for me to say that Mr. Henry

Varick is guilty, but our case against him is complete. He is about to

be arrested.”

A haunted look came into the young man’s face as he listened to this.

It seemed like gratuitous cruelty on the part of my mistress, but it

was all part of her plan.

“Inspector Rumsey and I want to thank you for the great assistance you

have rendered us,” she said.

The girl started. “I don’t understand you,” she said.

“I am referring to the two letters you wrote,” said Mme. Storey. “One

to Inspector Rumsey and one to me. The first started this

investigation, and the second directed it into the right channel.”

This was a surprising piece of news to me, and, likewise, to the

Inspector. But both of us looked as if we had known it all along.

“I wrote no such letters,” said Miss Priestley with an air of great

astonishment.

“Oh, I quite understand your reasons for wishing to keep in the

background,” said Mme. Storey with a friendly smile. “They do you

credit. But unfortunately we need you for a witness.”

The girl shook her head with a mystified air. “What reason have you to

suppose that I wrote the letters you speak of?” she asked.

Mme. Storey went to the escritoire, and unlocked the drawer that I had

seen her lock on the day before. From it she took the sheet of paper

she had then put away. There was a slip clipped to it that she

detached. “This appears to be a sketch for a title page to Commodore

Varick’s book,” she said. “As soon as I saw the lettering I recognised

the same hand that had written the two anonymous notes. There is just

as much character in block letters, of course, as in written ones. You

have a taste for lettering, I see. The characters are formed with

care.”

Miss Priestley did not turn a hair. Glancing at the paper, she said

with a smile: “I am sorry for the truth of your deductions, but that

sketch was made by Commodore Varick, not by me.”

“That can hardly be,” said my employer, still most polite, “because

this slip was pinned to it. I read upon it: ‘Here is a sketch I have

made. I hope you like it.’ And signed with your initials: J. P.”

“Oh, then I have made a mistake,” said the girl with the utmost

coolness. “So many sketches were made at different times; some by the

Commodore and some by me…. However, I know nothing about any

anonymous letters.”

“Ah, you can’t be allowed to keep modesty in the background,” said Mme.

Storey smiling. “In the net of espionage we have spread you had to be

included, of course, and we know all about your movements during the

past thirty-six hours. You live in an apartment on Lexington Avenue at

Thirty-Seventh Street. From a hall boy there we have learned that you

went out about nine-thirty on Tuesday night, returning in a moment or

two with a newspaper. The incident was fixed in the boy’s mind,

because he wondered why you hadn’t sent him for it. The late editions

that night carried the first news of Commodore Varick’s death. When

you read that his death had been ascribed to natural causes, you feared

that the ends of justice would be defeated, and you wrote the first

letter.