As for himself, he strode silently forward, so that he might explain hurriedly into the other’s ear what he was doing there. But he stopped squarely after three steps, for to his amazement Fortescue had withdrawn his hand and now held, pointed directly at him, a blue steel gun.
“Why — ” he began.
But he never got beyond the “why,” even if he completed it, for a spurt of yellow-red flame shot from the gun, a terrible noise crashed in his ears, and he felt as though a white-hot bolt had passed through his neck. He felt himself sinking, he saw the floor rising, teetering, swaying, coming up to meet him. He held out his arms, and he tried to babble something. “Fo — Fo — For — ” was all he could manage, for something persisted in coming up in his throat and choking him. Again he saw that yellow-red spurt, again he felt that horrible streak of heat, this time in his chest, and next he realised that he was lying on his back, that a film seemed to be spreading over his eyes, that above him he could make out the dim lines of the figure of his friend, and he was curiously conscious that spurt after spurt of flame was coming directly at him from the round black nozzle-like device in the other’s hand.
Had he stood there as a spectator in this sudden, vivid drama instead of lain there as actor in it, he might have also seen Fortescue kneel down with a low satisfied laugh, tilt back the damp rain hat from the face of the man at his feet, and then stare in horror at the eyes over which a glaze was already coming. And he might have heard Fortescue’s terror-stricken exclamation, smoking gun still in hand
“My — God! I’ve — I’ve — I’ve killed the wrong man!”
CHAPTER XXIX
CLAD IN CANVAS
IF Ward A-I of the Birkdale Asylum had been the land of fantasy, Ward X of the same institution was in sooth Bedlam, the old English madhouse of the eighteenth century, brought back to life again, as Jerry Middleton was to learn late on the afternoon of Friday, October the thirty-first.
His first glimpse of Criminal Ward X brought back to him very vividly that human pen back in Chicago which had been dignified by the words Psycopathic Detention Station, and which had been his first abiding place in this chain of mishaps. Here, as there, were to be seen no rocking chairs, no tables, no magazines — none of the little comforts that had characterised that elysium which Ward A-i now truly seemed. Instead, a series of powerful benches were screwed into the floor by powerful angle irons. The windows not only had iron bars on their outsides, but iron gratings as well within. Along one wall were a series of powerful, stiff-looking armchairs also affixed to the floor, with broad, stout flat handles, and several recalcitrants sat strapped in them, groaning and cursing into the empty air. A barber’s chair, in a small windowless room, with its worn but pink plush, was the only thing that had colour or warmth to it.
And the patients! Here were no prison-spun suits, nor shirts, nor collars, nor clothes sent in by sympathetic relatives from the outside. Instead, every man was dressed in a one-piece canvas suit which was laced together at the back and tied at such a point that he could not reach it with his hands.
Everywhere were ominous sounds: rumbling, cursing, fighting, quarrelling, shouts, catcalls. At the very second of his entrance he saw two groups of three attendants each quelling two violent encounters that had broken out in two opposite corners of the big human pen at the same time.
His clothes were stripped from him, even as he tried weakly to remonstrate with the order. Instead of a union suit with buttons which could be torn off and swallowed, he was given a pair of cotton drawers and a cotton undershirt, minus hooks, minus buttons, but with a few strings of tape to hold one to the other. Into a canvas suit he was then inducted, and behind him he felt the attendant lacing him up. A pair of felt slippers were tossed to him from a locker, and he found himself then released, at last a member of this strange motley crew, free to come and go within the confines of the four walls about him, to wander up and down, but always under the eye of keen-looking attendants who in their white coats never once allowed their attention to stray from this potentially dangerous mob around them.
There was one attendant in particular who intrigued his attention, as he sat lugubriously in one corner, wondering, waiting, speculating hopelessly what could come of all the mad events of the past seventeen hours. He was a big fellow, the blue-black of whose beard showed from underneath his skin; a powerful recruit indeed, for he appeared to be somewhat new to the place. He stood awkwardly on one foot and then on the other, yet his eyes never left the assemblage.
For a long time Jerry Middleton stared at him, and then suddenly he got up and went over to him.
“Say — you are the man who came to me in the detention station in Chicago with a letter. You wore a beard then, didn’t you? You — ”
A passing attendant tapped the white-coated fellow on the shoulder. “Don’t pay any attention to these birds, Vianello. Just keep to yourself and don’t argue with them. You’ll never get anywhere with them.”
The man to whom Middleton had addressed his query spoke. “Now I teenk you better get along ‘bout you’ beezness, my friend’. I don’ know you, an’ you don’ know me. But dey put you in one of doze chairs over dere eef you no’ min’ you’ beezness. Now git — queeck — or I put you in a chair. Mooch.”
Middleton stared at the other’s eyes — the eyes and upper part of the man’s face were the only portions he thought he could recognise. And then, warned, he turned sadly on his heel and resumed his seat.
Supper, as was evidenced by a huge gong that electrified this assemblage of beastlike creatures in canvas suits into one grand rush for the little dining-room, was no cordial roomful of little tables where men sat at least like gentlemen, four to a table. Instead, as the doors opened, men rushed pell-mell into the two spaces between the one long table and the rigid bench on either side, shoving those who attempted to sit down clear to the end so that the line automatically filled up clear to the wall. Almost before the table had filled there arose a terrific clangour from the beating of wooden spoons upon tin plates — a din that sounded like a boiler factory. Attendants hopped and skipped, here, there, everywhere, holding down some who tried to climb across the table, taking from others food which had been seized by force, tearing the fingers of some from the throats of others, giving a little more food to the luckless ones who had been robbed. It was the maddest banquet which ever he had attended, and Jerry Middleton wondered dully how long a sane man could exist in this weird atmosphere; how long before he, too, would be as they.
Came night, and at seven o’clock a general rounding-up of the inhabitants of Ward X. One by one they were ferreted out from the restless moving throng, and jammed into the little sleeping room which belonged to each. As for Middleton he went without any compulsion into the one whose screened portal was held open for him, and without a word heard the door lock on him.
He crept out of his canvas suit which had been loosened at the back by the attendant who had locked him up, and threw himself on the rigid, immovable cot whose covers lay turned back as though inviting repose. He lay face down on the pitifully thin pillow; he did not try to sleep — he knew he would never sleep again. Yet, played out utterly by the day’s events, he did finally sleep, waking up, however, again And again to see ever and anon the night attendants lookin into the caged rooms one by one, but always dropping off again into weird wild dreams that were no wilder than the life about him.
Breakfast was a repetition of the mad scramble of the previous night, and two attendants this time came out with bloody noses. After breakfast was over, there was nothng to do except watch the attendants preparing for shaving theinmates. For it appeared that this was shave day on Ward X; and it appeared also that the new guard was in high favour, evidently because he could wield a razor.
But Jerry Middleton could not see the performance itself, for once an inmate was inside and his wrists and ankles locked to the chair, the tiny room was closed and a bolt slot from within. Thus one by one he saw other inmates c
alled for, and at length, after fifteen had been shaven clean by this paragon, he was motioned to by the chief attendant.
“You are next, Doe. Go in there and get your face scraped.”
He went in, guarded by two attendants. He sat down in the chair. His wrists and ankles were locked to the handles and support. He looked up at the cruel Sicilian features that spread the lather deftly over his own face, and suddenly he knew beyond all doubt that he had seen that face before. His voice rose in a cry of terror.
“Let me out — let me out,” he yelled. “This man — this man intends to kill me.” He bobbed his head violently from one side to the other.
Of the two attendants who had not yet departed from the room, one grinned to the other. “Always somebody wants to kill ‘em,” he said wearily. “You’ll see lots of this,” he added to his companion, who appeared new to the place.
“Hol’ still,” the Sicilian above Middleton was saying gruffly. “Hol’ still. I — ”
But at this juncture the chief attendant appeared in the doorway of the room as by magic. He gave a short, terse order.
“Wash this man’s face — never mind completing the shaving now. I’ve just had a ‘phone message from the main building. Put him back into his clothes. See that he gets a better coat than the one he brought. Then take him to the superintendent’s office.”
With alacrity Middleton jumped to his feet as he felt the straps releasing his wrists and ankles flung aside. He dressed with frantic speed. The door of the ward opened before him and the two attendants, then closed behind them again, and, quite unmanacled, he crossed the lawn connecting Ward X with the main building. Through a corridor they proceeded, the attendants now in the lead, and thence into a tiny room which carried on its door the sign: “Superintendent’s Office.”
They opened the door and beckoned for him to pass within. Inside, at a desk near the window, sat a man in a checked suit who appeared to be partly a politician and partly a doctor, for from him, in the square, pugnacious jaw, and the owlish looking, academic eyeglasses, the personality of the office-holder and professional man radiated in strange duality. At his side sat a very business-like man of about thirty-six with a leather portfolio, who suggested both lawyer and public official.
And standing near him —
Jerry Middleton rushed forward.
“Anne!” he cried. “Anne. You have come!”
CHAPTER XXX
CONCERNING ONE FORTESCUE
SHE stood there in the flesh, captivatingly real in this land of things hallucinatory.
“Yes,” she said in a low voice, “it is I.” She looked inquiringly toward the man at the desk. He nodded in the direction of one of the two attendants.
“You may report back to your ward.”
The man with the portfolio next to him spoke laconically to the remaining attendant.
“Anything, Brower?”
“Nothing.”
“Won’t be necessary now, anyway. Just got a new message from headquarters. Report back to the State attorney’s office at Chicago. That’s all. You can go.”
With which cryptic remark, the latter attendant’s white-jacketed companion staring dumbly at him, thence at Jerry Middleton, the two men withdrew one behind the other to the outer corridor. The man behind the desk rose. He spoke in Middleton’s direction.
“Mr. Middleton, a great injustice has been done to you in the honoured name of psychiatry. I do not speak for my science — it is too far in its embryonic stage as yet, but perhaps, now that the facts of your case have come to light, the disciples of that science will be a little more hesitant in the future before they rivet a conclusive diagnosis on a patient. But I refer you to this gentleman.”
“And — and I am not insane after all?” asked Jerry Middleton wonderingly, asininely.
The man with the bulldog jaw and horn-shell glasses shook his head sadly. “You never were: but I will say that never yet have the elements which could convict a man of insanity been so cunningly marshalled together as they have in this case by those who had their own ends in view. I might have found a flaw in the chain, somehow, somewhere, who knows?” He shrugged his shoulders with manifest resignation. “But as superintendent and sole managing physician of a big institution such as this, I am constrained to say that my professional psychiatrical work here consists neither of diagnosis nor of study of cases, but of hiring, firing, reading hundreds of letters, dictating answers to hundreds of letters, interviewing committees — ” He shook his head helplessly. “However, Mr. Middleton, I want you to meet Mr. Charles Godwin, first assistant State attorney at Chicago, who has come down here with Miss Holliston, your good angel.”
The man with the portfolio rose and held out a hand. “Sit down,” he said friendly. Jerry Middleton did so, dazedly. The other resumed his chair and spoke. “Mr. Middleton, your father’s former secretary and subsequent general manager of his estate is in gaol in Indiana, not far from Chicago, charged with the crime of murder. He killed a man — the man, in fact, who has been going about Chicago as Jerome Herbert Middleton — Mr. Middleton. And the killing has been as much a surprise to Fortescue as to anybody else, too. Stated very briefly he engaged a room at Kenburyport, Indiana, to watch Miss Holliston here, and to wait for your arrival after your escape of night before last. He intended to shoot you down like a dog before you had a chance even to open your mouth. But in the meantime, your usurper got wind of Fortescue’s location, he rode out on the electric line wearing a raincoat, removing at some point unknown to us those spurious glasses which he wore constantly in Chicago, and as he stepped up on the floor where Fortescue was waiting, Fortescue, thinking it was you who had finally reached Miss Holliston’s, stepped forth and poured five shots into his body. He killed him almost instantly. Is it all clear?”
“Not quite,” said Middleton slowly, trying to absorb this amazing piece of news. “How — how is all this known?”
“It would not have been known,” said the first assistant State attorney, “were it not for the fact that the coroner and sheriff of the Indiana town, after hearing Fortescue’s story, merely technically took him in custody on a charge of manslaughter, locking him up with the full expectation of liberating him to-day on a modest bond; they then convened a coroner’s jury on which they called Mr. Lock wood and Mr. Searles of Chicago, who had figured in the newspaper stories about the affairs of yourself and your estate, and who, knowing Jerome H. Middleton, would be personally in a position to identify his body, Fortescue uneasily admitting that he had accidentally killed him believing he was the escaped lunatic. And then, Mr. Middleton, the startling fact developed that the dead man had blue eyes.”
“Blue eyes? The devil you say!”
The State official nodded. “With that it became not only evident that there were two men who looked alike, but that the man who had been sent to the insane asylum must be the real Jerome H. Middleton. For both Searles and Lockwood stated emphatically at the inquest that the real Middleton possessed brown eyes. Fortescue, in gaol, was confronted with the fact that he had been fearing. And he offered to confess all providing he could get a life sentence instead of execution. To cut the story short, the little Indiana county in which Kenburyport is situated didn’t want to be put to an expensive trial of a Chicago scoundrel, the cost of which trial would have to come out of the Indiana taxpayers’ pockets — we’d have done the same in Chicago, I guess, considering how our dockets are jammed with untried cases — and the opportunity of clearing off one long trial was therefore seized. Fortescue confessed all — and goes to a life sentence to-morrow.”
“Then answer me just two questions,” Middleton queried eagerly, “and I think I can wait till later for any further ones. Did Fortescue have something to do with that weird scene I saw through the window of that vacant — ”
The lawyer nodded. “An ingenious but simple optical illusion, accomplished by three sheets of plate glass. What you saw was acted out in the window above you.”
; Middleton nodded his head slowly. “And I thought all the time because I had those antique spectacles on, that — ” He proceeded no further, but propounded his remaining and principal question: “When did this idea of sliding me into an American insane asylum first come into Fortescue’s head — and why — why of all things?”
“Simply answered,” replied the lawyer. “Fortescue, at the time you reached America a month and a half ago, had embezzled over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars from your father’s estate which he had been managing. So deep was he in debt, that he was all in readiness to decamp the moment the will should be read making you sole owner and manager of the estate. He was desperately enamoured, however, of a young married society woman of Chicago — our office has decided to eliminate her name entirely from the case, hence I will not mention it — so much so that he hated with all his being to have to skip — to go clear to Liberia, in Africa, or Honduras, in South America, where he could never see the lady again. To his joy, when the will was read he was made general manager of the Middleton estate at fifty thousand dollars a year — his joy being not at the salary but at the fact that he would have an opportunity to so juggle the books and handle the affairs of the Middleton estate that he could stave off his flight for a considerable time to come.
“But this idea did not come to him,” went on the State attorney’s emissary, “till one morning, about five days before he induced you to go to Lake Winneback to fish for ten days and grow a beard that would somewhat disguise your features. On that day a young man from Philadelphia had called upon him. He was your double — and so much so that he astounded Fortescue. He was an actor, a character impersonator of a cheaper sort as compared with the bigger artists in that line, playing his first American engagement on a four-a-day circuit in the East, and a not altogether scrupulous chap, as Fortescue could easily see. His name was nothing like yours, however, and Fortescue could throw no light upon matters for him.”
The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro Page 31