Murder by Reflection

by H. F. Heard

  “All perfectly cool, so far,” muttered Kermit to himself as he covered the ruby spy-hole, turned on an even deeper red light, and began to get ready the solutions for developing. Then he switched out all light and by touch in the dark put the actual plate into its bath. After a few moments he put on the deep red again and peered down into the shallow trough in which the plate was being rocked. Finally, after some while, he was able to raise it out of its liquid and scan it against the red beam. His eye ran round it. He was evidently not looking at it as a whole but seeking for some point that might show. After a moment of slowly turning it, he kept still and looked with concentration. He was gazing at a place about two-thirds of the way down on the left-hand side of the plate.

  “Well,” he said at last, putting the emulsion-coated square of glass on its edge to let the moisture run off, “well, that is a solution—yes, possibly that is the solution.”

  He tidied up a few things, emptying a dish or two and putting away some chemicals. Then, unlatching the door, he brought out the plate, setting it in a rack, so that it was illuminated by the window light falling through it. As he took out the other two plates, from the folders which lay by, and mounted them similarly on racks, he heard Arnoldo’s step behind him.

  “Well, you haven’t taken long. But are they really finished, or will there be prints from these negatives?”

  Kermit turned. Arnoldo was quietly regarding the three plates as they stood in a row.

  “Yes, they’re as finished as I can make them now. One can’t make prints yet. But,” he added slowly, watching Arnoldo’s profile, “they are quite clear enough to show a great deal—indeed, more, I believe, than any photos that anyone has taken so far.”

  “That’s claiming a good deal! I can see a sort of daguerreotype black-out outline effect in the center. But it’s all fuzz and fog around the edges.”

  “That’s the important feature.”

  “But it’s mere mist; the plate is fogged, surely?”

  “No,” repeated Kermit, watching Arnoldo, who still seemed only interested in trying, with a sort of courtesy effort, to make out what the plates could show. “Those blurs are not fog; they are dense striations, even bands or borders of radiation.”

  Did the muscles in Arnoldo’s neck tense? Kermit could not be sure. He turned to the plates; he would give a full demonstration.

  “This work of mine is a continuation of Kilner’s and Bagnall’s researches. I showed you their books when you first called, but then they did not interest you. Their work was pioneer work. Kilner could not actually get any photographic record. He did, however, draw charts of what he saw and he did persuade a number of people literally to come into line with him and so see what he saw. Looking through dicyanine screens, when he placed the subject in a strong cross-light with a dark background (he used a black velvet curtain) he was sure he could see—that there was to be seen—an atmosphere (he called it the human atmosphere) or nimbus around the entire body. Further, he went some way toward proving the objectivity of what he maintained, by showing at least in some cases that by local changes in this envelope, in its density and distribution, he could, with no other aid, diagnose very early conditions of malignancy.”

  Still Arnoldo gave no sign but a politely interested “Oh.”

  “My discovery,” continued Kermit, “was with the aid of a big mirror and additional radiation—projected from that small tube at the top of the camera—to be able at last to make actual records. These are they. This is your mother’s. You see how finely the ‘atmosphere’ is recorded, what a dense and regular aureole-shaped cloud it makes around the entire body. She was a very good subject to experiment with, for she was evidently an unusually vital and healthy woman. Indeed, when I looked through the screen before making the actual exposure, I remember noticing and being struck by the fact and, after, congratulating her on this most hopeful condition.” He stopped for a moment, then resumed.

  “You see, the interest of this new photography is that it yields far and away the best, the most sensitive criterion of health. I am convinced that Kilner was right. If there is the slightest trace or even precondition of cancer in the system, this method will show it long before any other known system of diagnosis. I repeat, I believe that by this means and this alone we could have evidence of that precancerous condition which we know must be present but of which no one as yet has had clear, unmistakable proof. This method can alone do so; for by this method alone can we detect, and indeed see, the change in the body’s electric field, which change is, I feel sure, the causa causans of cancer.”

  He stopped again, appearing to scan the outline on the plate which had been taken of Mrs. Heron; then he added slowly, “That was why I was so surprised—indeed, I might use a stronger word and say dumfounded—to learn that in so short a time afterward Mrs. Heron died of leukemia.”

  “Very interesting,” said Arnoldo in a quiet voice. “It would seem to show that the method is not quite infallible, at least at present. Perhaps on closer inspection the ‘atmosphere,’ as you call it, might disclose signs which would show that the condition had actually been present? I remember when I was young they thought I might have T.B. and when the doctors were reading the X-ray photos of the lung, some picked out details that others did not seem to notice. May I look at them more closely? This is my mother’s, is it not? Anyhow, it is a most remarkable discovery, most remarkable. But you say you can’t as yet make positives from these negatives?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that hardly matters. Once one understands what it is they are showing, they are remarkably clear. May I study the aureole effect more closely, by the window? I see the light, or whatever it is, fans out around the head.”

  He had put out his hand and picked up the plate, lifting it up against the light. There was a crash. It lay splintered to fragments in the porcelain sink which ran along under the window ledge.

  “Oh, I am so sorry! How clumsy of me!”

  Kermit swung around. “You are not sorry, and you were very neat: a very thorough rupture of an important link in the chain of evidence.”

  The mask of courtesy which Arnoldo had worn was as shattered as the plate.

  “You have no evidence,” he said, trying in vain to keep his voice normal.

  “There is another photographic plate far more incriminating than the one you have broken.”

  Arnoldo glanced at the two remaining.

  “No; we cannot yet read a crime when it is still in the brain: we can’t record a pre-murder condition.”

  “I didn’t murder!”

  “Well, that is not for me to rule. What I know, and have record of—No, I took the precaution of putting it away—is that the area at the bed-head in your former laboratory showed a remarkable radioactive effect. It had become, in fact, a very dangerous area for anyone to sleep near.”

  There was a considerable silence.

  Then, “What are you going to do?” Arnoldo asked in a tired, flat voice. The answer, however, surprised him into a wonder which was nearly hope.

  “I want you to look at the two negatives which you have left.”

  For a moment it seemed as though he might snatch and shatter these too. If that were his motive or impulse, it was checked by Kermit’s following remark.

  “They are of no interest to anyone but yourself. But to yourself they are of the greatest concern. They will, I believe, help you, and me, to decide what should be done.”

  Arnoldo was completely at a loss. The voice that spoke to him was not denunciatory. It might be sad, it was certainly not angry. As always happens when basic reflexes, motivated by greed or fear, are suddenly thrown out, he became docile and obedient. The initiative was with the other; he must wait. Meanwhile he must do what he had just been asked to do. He looked carefully at the two negatives which remained, even clasping his hands behind his back as a silent pledge of voluntary restraint. Kermit watched him, but did not move when suddenly the hands were unlocked and whipped round
in front.

  He only said, “Yes, they are unmistakably clear.”

  Arnoldo had now wheeled around to him, holding out his hands.

  “Are you certain?” he cried.

  “I can have no reasonable doubt.” The tone was as quietly grave as a doctor’s giving the ultimate verdict. By common consent both men turned and looked at the two remaining transparencies. The same design was shown in both. In each case there was, blocked in, in solid black, a tall, fine figure, and around it, radiating almost to the limit of each plate, the same white-rayed fringe. There was only one difference. On the left-hand one, on which there still stood undried a drop or two of water from the wash after the developing bath, the radiant envelope had one interruption. As it flowed around to envelop the right hand, into it there seemed to drive a blunt wedge of darkness. Arnoldo stood regarding this stain or blur with a stunned fascination. Every now and then he would raise his right hand, flex the fingers, look at them and then let the hand drop loosely to his side. He repeated this routine act several times until Kermit’s voice checked him.

  “You thought I wanted proof to send you to the cyanide chamber at the state prison. Cyanide has convicted you, but it won’t execute you, I think.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Because the invisible weapon you used to kill Mrs. Heron was double-edged.”

  “I think I’d rather die in the gas-chamber quickly than—” he hesitated, then pointed with his right hand at the negative on the left—“than that way.”

  “You did not give your victim a choice.”

  “I didn’t mean to do it. I really didn’t. I just wondered what might happen. That was all—and she didn’t have pain. I couldn’t get away—she wasn’t real, really, and yet, somehow, there I was, all trapped in a dream. I only wanted to wake up and that was the only way I could, I …” The whimpering voice trailed off.

  “It was not due to you that she did not have pain. She might have had a form of cancer which was—most are,” he paused, “painful and agonizing. That brings us back to your case, your condition. Fate has given you, what you denied to that other person, a choice. Why it should so do I don’t know, but it has.”

  “What do you mean? Are you taunting me and wanting to torture me?”

  “No; I simply want to record what I see and,” he sighed, “I do not wish to go beyond the sentence which I believe has been imposed—a mysterious ‘indeterminate sentence.’” Then, more to himself than to his wretched companion, “It certainly looks like a sentence passed by a superior Justice to ours—just, but prepared to give possibility of amendment, after a price has been paid, a penalty exacted.”

  He turned again to Arnoldo and the two negatives.

  “You must be quite clear about this. You see by this first photograph, taken when Mrs. Heron was alive and well, that you, too, were a very healthy man—as healthy as she was. Both of you, it was therefore right, then, to judge, would have a high resistance against all illness. That, I believe, helps us to understand this second negative’s record. You must have exposed only your right hand repeatedly to a dangerous radiation dosage. Owing to that—an advantage which Mrs. Heron did not share—and to what you did share with her, a high natural, resistance, the damage done is not—at least at present—general. It is not a blood condition. It is confined to the right hand. That seems reasonably, surgically, certain. You must sacrifice your hand if you would save your life. It is certainly not an excessive penalty for your crime.”

  Arnoldo again raised his hand to his face; but he did not see it in the present afternoon light which was falling through the laboratory window. He saw it under candlelight. He saw it smoothly gloved, as he had made it, dead smooth and white, as dead as marble and almost as cold and stiff. So he had disguised it that he might not see its rough, actual vitality which had disturbed his dream. He put it to his lips. He remembered the soft, chalky touch of the tight kidskin and the smell of the old, almost-evaporated scent—the faint smell almost like a hospital dressing. His imagination switched forward to the near future. Soon it would be gloved again, and far more numb, stiff, and smooth; the leather of the glove, which he must always wear for decency’s sake, would fit over fingers which would be like the fingers of a statue dressed up, for a joke, to pass as human. And the hand would be, with dreadful sincerity now, a model of a hand, for under the glove would be an “artificial manual,” a hollow aluminum thing, cold as a handcuff.

  “I’d rather be dead!” he cried, with a sudden flare of rage at the invisible trap which had closed on his limb.

  “Wait,” came Kermit’s voice. “You are reprieved; we do not know whether you are pardoned at the price which must be paid.”

  “Can’t I be X-rayed?”

  “My opinion is that X-ray cancer won’t be cured by X-rays but may well be made worse. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m no expert in malignancy. But I’m going to stick to that judgment—and I believe that Dr. Hertz would back it up. But my chief reason for sticking to it, I own, is that I believe I see true Justice marking out the course here.”

  “I’ll kill myself!”

  “No, you won’t. That healthy body of yours—its main vitality is untouched. It won’t let you. It will rule what is to be done with it and it, as do all animal organisms, much prefers pain to death. It will rule; not your weak will that wouldn’t even face the fact that it was carefully and coldly killing an intimate fellow human being.”

  Arnoldo knew the judgment to be coldly true.

  “Then why don’t you hand me over to the courts?”

  There was the same quiet justice in the reply: “Legally, I don’t know that there’s enough evidence to get a conviction, evidence which a clever, highly paid lawyer could not get put aside. I do know that you’d fight the prosecution, naturally, and I do know that you’d certainly be the worse for that. The one chance that you would see this thing without partisanship and self-pity would be gone. The one hope that you would look on yourself as an infected thing that might be cured would have vanished.

  “I also know, quite as clearly as that, about the other point at issue—the safety of the community. By killing you the rest of us will certainly have rendered you incapable of making any reparation. Further, we will have made ourselves a little less capable of seeing that if your killing of your mother was an appalling mistake, however much you may have had against her, our killing you can hardly be the answer to the question which you have raised so acutely. As to whether your being killed for your peculiar and, I must say, abominable crime, will make the rest of us want to kill each other less—about that we can be certain: there’s not a shred of evidence that it will or that it ever has. Like yourself, when you began to entertain the fancy, the daydream, which has ended in this terrible fact—or rather to be exact, is going on with these terrible facts—” He looked at Arnoldo’s hand, and the miserable man, like a guilty boy, put the branded thing behind his back. “—Like you, every murderer thinks himself, if not a superman, at least a unique creature, a peculiar person with a peculiar problem, something above and beyond the rules made for common folk, and nearly every murderer adds the additional distortion to his vision—the distortion of pretending, as you did: ‘I really am not a murderer.’ I don’t doubt you, and most of them, actually believe what they say to themselves. Faiths that are so convenient and comforting have never lacked many true believers.

  “How are such people to be supposed to count chances and say, ‘It won’t pay me to murder!’ No; Calvert, in his classic Capital Punishment, proved to the hilt, with statistical care, that community killing has never done anything to stop private killing. The only thing that stops murder and puts a real wall in its way is the height of the value we put upon life.”

  “Then you’re going to let me go?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “What, then, are you going to do with me?”

  “I’m not going to do anything with you.”

  “Except blackmail or white-mail me with your, ‘
I won’t speak, but if you don’t behave I will’ generosity.”

  “No, nothing I can say can be of much use to you. I can say what it’s no use doing with you. What you are good for, I can’t say, for I can’t call it out of you.”

  Once again Arnoldo’s eyes had gone back to his hand.

  “Can nothing be done?”

  Kermit, looking at him, suddenly saw no longer a mean little murderer. The actual words, which were of course only a reflex, did not register. Only the tone, the note, sounded in his mind. With the pitch of that whimpering cry another scene appeared in front of him—where he had last heard that hopeless whinny of trapped panic, a cry wrung from a creature of cruel caution by its hopeless distress. He was out in the woods. He had gone over to find what it was—a weasel caught in a trap. The trapper was evidently late on his rounds. The beast was in extremis. Its front feet were caught in the rubber-sheathed teeth of the trap—a trap designed so as not to spoil a good pelt. It had evidently been so held for a long while, for its strength was gone. When he approached, it only uttered its exhausted whine. He’d thought, as he looked down at it, “A mean beast, but mean because of its race. The little vermin couldn’t help itself for pouncing on its prey any more than the trap could help catching it.” He had trodden on the trap-lever and the jaws relaxed their grip. The animal drew in first one numbed paw and then the other. It held them under its quivering body as the pain of the returning circulation racked it. Then with a great effort it put its weight on the damaged limbs and stumbled off for cover.

  “If I had any right to do that, there’s more right to do this,” Kermit reflected. “That little beast had killing in its blood and only Heaven knows whether it ever had the spark of a soul. This creature won’t kill again; he killed because he felt trapped, and he has a soul—a soul which will hurt him like hell as its circulation comes back, hurt more than the weasel was hurt by its damaged paws or than he’ll be hurt by his own damaged hand.