A Spark of Death

by Bernadette Pajer

  “Tell me about last Thursday.”

  “I didn’t do nothing wrong, mind you. And neither did Henry. It’s not our fault some murderer chose that very afternoon to kill Professor Oglethorpe. I couldn’t see no sense in going to the police when we had nothing to do with it.”

  “But you’re afraid that the police might learn that you delivered the note.”

  “Of course I’m afraid. It doesn’t look good, now, does it? Innocent people have hung before, Professor.”

  “You might not be able to keep it from the police for long, Mrs. Gertie. Artimus Lowe is in jail, and he knows about you and Henry. He’s not said anything yet, but he still might if he finds it’s the only way to prove his own innocence. Why don’t you tell me what happened, and I’ll see what I can do to help you if the need arises.”

  The story unraveled with much elaboration and a prodigious use of adjectives, but Bradshaw listened attentively and weeded through to the facts. Henry had enticed Mrs. Gertie Nolan—the “Mrs.” was strictly an honorary title, she’d never been married—to type a note for him on her employer’s typewriting machine. He then convinced her to go up with him to the university and present the note to Professor Oglethorpe.

  “I could see his side a things, couldn’t I? He’s been wanting to go back up to Alaska for the longest time, and he could’ve done if he’d gotten his fair gains from that investment.”

  Henry Pratt and Gertie Nolan had taken the streetcar to the university and parted company outside Oglethorpe’s classroom door. She went in with the note, and Henry took off down the stairs to await Oglethorpe in the lab. Gertie wasn’t sure about the time, some minutes after one o’clock she guessed. After delivering the note, she left the Administration Building, followed the path toward 14th Avenue, and waited as planned on the corner.

  “Henry came a running about ten minutes later, flapping a bit of paper in the air like a flag. He was happy, he was. It was a letter he had, telling that Professor’s bank to pay Henry a tidy sum. Said he was going back to mine his claim on the Klondike and make a million dollars. We rode back to town as far as 7th and Pike, then he got off and I came back here.”

  “Could you have mistaken happiness for anxiety? Did he seem flustered, upset?”

  She got to her feet. “Shame on you, Professor. He’s your friend more than mine. How dare you think he would harm a hair on Professor Oglethorpe’s head, no matter how much he despised the man. I should’ve trusted my instincts and not let you in the door, but you threatened me with the police, and—”

  “Did Henry mention if he’d seen anyone else in the lab? Or nearby?”

  “No.” She turned her back on him and led him through the kitchen and to the door.

  “Yes.”

  Bradshaw, already on the porch, turned. “Yes?”

  “I forgot until you asked. Henry did say he almost knocked down some poor kid as he ran out the door.”

  “A child? Running?”

  “No, no, Henry was the one running, happy with his money. He meant a student, of course.”

  “Did he describe this student?”

  “No.” She slammed the door.

  Ten minutes later, Bradshaw entered the telegraph office and dictated a message to be sent twice. Once, in care of the general post office in Skagway, where Henry’s ship would dock, and again in care of the general post office in the Klondike, in case the fool didn’t check for messages before heading to his claim.

  To Henry Pratt: Wire Home At Once. Explain Your Departure. Wire for Return Fare if Needed. Missouri Is Here. B. Bradshaw.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Professor Bradshaw drew upon the blackboard a rectangular box representing a piece of electrical equipment. He indicated the external power supply to be a standard electric wall outlet and damaged insulation causing an unwanted connection to the housing of the equipment.

  “Mr. Myers, please come to the board and draw for me as best you can, a graduate of this college who has been called to fix that piece of equipment.”

  Mr. Meyers, a thin, pimple-faced youth, came forward and drew a stick figure fellow with a cocked hat and big shoes, but no other clothing. Chuckles resounded from the other five students. There should have been six, but Graves had informed Bradshaw this morning that a parent had pulled his son out of school and threatened action if Bradshaw remained on staff. Graves had defended Bradshaw and refused to be pressured. He’d ensured Bradshaw that his job was safe, but how long would it be if other students were forced to leave?

  “Sir?”

  Bradshaw brought his thoughts back to Mr. Meyers. No part of the stick man touched the drawing of the electrical equipment.

  “Tell us, please. What is this fine graduate doing?”

  “He is examining the situation from a distance to be sure no hazard exists.”

  “Very good. A graduate who values his life and digits.”

  “Oh, yes, sir.” Mr. Meyers wriggled his fingers to the delight of his classmates.

  “And does a hazard exist?”

  “Uh—” Mr. Meyers examined the diagram. “I don’t believe it would be safe to touch the equipment or housing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because then I, or I mean he,” he pointed to his stick man, “might become part of the circuit.”

  “You can tell that by the diagram because I’ve shown damaged insulation. In the real world, Mr. Meyers, would you be able to see a hazard as you approached?”

  “No, sir. Being a well-trained engineer in the electrical field I always assume a faulty piece of equipment poses a hazard until I safely prove otherwise.”

  “Exactly so. Very good. What, then, would be your first move?”

  “I’d find a way to safely disconnect the power supply.”

  Mr. Meyers stood waiting for further instruction. But Bradshaw’s mind had diverted from imaginary dilemmas to a very real one, and the diagram before him on the blackboard teased him with a promise of solution.

  If Oglethorpe were represented by that stick figure, and the rest of the circuit showed the path and faults necessary for him to be electrocuted, then who and what caused that fault?

  Bradshaw had gone over the details of the Electric Machine a hundred times. He’d mentally assembled dozens of devices to produce a lethal shock using components in the engineering lab, but none of them fit the known facts. The solution, the electrical solution, eluded him.

  But what if he considered the human solution? The human path of connections? The energy of anger or passion or hatred that led to Oglethorpe’s death? Maybe the answer could be found not in how it was done, but who did it and why.

  Bradshaw examined the drawing on the board. Who was represented by the power supply? Who in the human equation provided the most substantial and constant motive? Henry? No, Henry wasn’t a man with constant, streaming anger. Henry didn’t let his emotions fester, he let them out whenever he felt like it. He was impulsive and explosive, but then instantly forgiving. Henry was like a capacitor.

  “Mr. Meyers, please add a capacitor to the circuit, in parallel with the power supply, before the fault.”

  Mr. Meyers drew in the requested component, and Bradshaw examined the diagram once more. He pressed aside his instinct to see the diagram as an electric circuit and focused instead on human energy.

  Anger over being swindled about the oil stock would have infuriated Henry. Bradshaw knew for a fact he’d confronted Oglethorpe, had extracted money from him. Had he also, in a surge of released anger, killed Oglethorpe? But the set-up had been elaborate and time-consuming. It had been planned by somebody very carefully, not hastily improvised in a matter of minutes. Had Henry then been unwittingly used? Had his explosive anger somehow instigated or triggered the real killer’s plan?

  And where did Lowe fit in? Artimus Lowe wa
s neither a man of impulse nor revenge, although he could be passionate. His actions were always self-serving. What was the electrical equivalent of a leech?

  Mr. Myers scratched his head. “Professor, what are we making?”

  Bradshaw didn’t reply. He was devising a human circuit, not an electrical one. Was anarchy involved here? Had McKinley been the intended victim? Had the lethal current been diverted from its intended path to Oglethorpe by accident? Was the anarchist the power source, the source of lethal anger? But what was the connection between Henry Pratt and Artimus Lowe and some unknown anarchist? Or was Lowe the anarchist? Had he tricked Henry into to typing and delivering that note? And what would be the point? It kept coming back to that note! Why involve Oglethorpe at all if McKinley were the target? And why the attempt on Bradshaw’s life?

  He got up and paced to the blackboard, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Why did both Henry and young Lowe pay a visit to Oglethorpe on Thursday? Because they learned they’d been cheated. Because of the article in the newspaper. Because Marion Oglethorpe had telephoned to tell them to read the article in the newspaper.

  Bradshaw stood very still, barely breathing.

  Mrs. Marion Oglethorpe had lived with and loved Wesley Oglethorpe for fifteen years. She spent those years devotedly caring for him, bearing his children, aiding him with his career, providing a comfortable home for him—all the while he belittled and berated her. Did it anger him that she understood electrical theory? Did he both use and resent her intelligence? When he learned of her recent pregnancy, he cruelly told her the child was not wanted. After a lifetime of build-up, his rejection of her child must have been too much. She had the electrical know-how. She saw a way out and she took it, cleverly adding unnecessary elements to the circuit to confuse and distract the police. McKinley’s future visit was a false path already in place. A telephone call to Henry sent him racing off to the university with a misleading note. Another call sent Artimus Lowe, who by mere chance had been studying anarchists, also to call on Oglethorpe.

  Bradshaw turned slowly. His young students eyed him curiously.

  “We’ve done enough for today,” he said to their amazement. “Class dismissed.”

  ***

  Bradshaw sat in the plush waiting parlor on a wide velvet chair designed for the proportions of expectant mothers. The seat was rather high, and it struck his backside more quickly than expected on the way down, but made it all the more easy to rise when the nurse, a saintly-looking girl in starched gray, told him Doctor Swenson was now available.

  He was led through a polished door to a book-lined office where Marion Oglethorpe’s doctor rose from behind a mahogany desk. Bradshaw again noticed the familial similarity between Swenson and Mrs. Oglethorpe, the big-boned frame, the fair hair, the plump face.

  “Professor Bradshaw, how may I help you?”

  “Doctor Swenson,” Bradshaw said, shaking the offered hand. “I’m not sure. Are you a relation of Mrs. Oglethorpe’s? An uncle or brother?”

  The doctor indicated a chair, and Bradshaw sat, hat in hand. Doctor Swenson eased into the plush chair behind his desk. The springs gave a small protesting squeak.

  “No, no. I’m no relation. I’m merely attending Mrs. Oglethorpe more closely than usual because of her delicate condition. I want to be sure she doesn’t become too upset.”

  “Yes, I see. You must admit there’s a similarity between you. You could pass for a relative.”

  “We’re both Swedish, Professor. Our families have been friends for many years. They immigrated to this country together forty years ago. I’ve known Marion since she was a child. I assure you, we are not related. Was that what you came to ask me?”

  “I came to ask you what the police already have. Did Marion Oglethorpe visit your office last Thursday, and if so, what time was she here?”

  “She was here for several hours of observation. She’d had some pain and I wanted to be sure labor wasn’t coming on prematurely.”

  “Wouldn’t it be more usual for you to go to her home, especially under such circumstances?”

  “She was downtown when the pain came on. It was closer for her to come here. But if you’ll pardon my rudeness, I don’t see how this is any business of yours, Professor.”

  “Professor Oglethorpe’s death has touched many lives, Doctor. A young man is in jail because last Thursday he received a telephone call from Mrs. Oglethorpe. I am simply trying to understand the connection. Was Mrs. Oglethorpe upset? Nervous? Did she seem anxious?”

  “She was deeply concerned about the fate of her child. She was anxious and distraught until the pain matured into a simple case of indigestion.”

  “Nothing else seemed to be distracting her?”

  Doctor Swenson smiled politely, shaking his head. He was not about to volunteer anything about his patient, and if he were lying about Marion Oglethorpe’s whereabouts last Thursday, he certainly wasn’t going to admit it to Bradshaw.

  “I’m sorry I troubled you.” As Bradshaw rose to leave, his gaze skimmed the bookshelves with their many medical tomes. Amidst the books nearest the doctor’s desk, skewed away from visitors, were two small picture frames. An impulse made Bradshaw cock his head and lean forward to catch a glimpse of the photographs behind the glass. Towheaded children—a boy and a girl—smiled out at him. Bradshaw, dropped his hat on the desk, boldly strode to the photographs and took them up, one in each hand. There was no mistaking them. The girl was Olive Oglethorpe, the boy, Wesley Jr. The photos were recent.

  Bradshaw quickly surveyed the rest of the shelves.

  “I delivered those two,” the doctor said hastily. “I like to keep photographs of the children I brought into the world.”

  “But you have no others, Doctor. Only the Oglethorpe children. And these aren’t birth photographs. These were taken recently.”

  “Marion gave them to me,” he said defensively, then seemed to be searching for more of an explanation. But he wasn’t very good at impromptu excuses. He wiped his mouth with his hand.

  Bradshaw examined the photographs closely. The children resembled their mother. Neither had their father’s concave bones, sharp features, or dark coloring. They had wide-set eyes and fair brows and noses like….

  Bradshaw’s gaze went from the children’s slightly upturned noses to the doctor’s upturned nose, and then his fearful eyes.

  “You’ve been having a love affair with Marion Oglethorpe for many years. Olive is eight years old.”

  “No, it wasn’t that way.”

  “Then how was it?”

  Bradshaw, still clutching the framed children, returned to his chair, sinking upon it automatically, his mind and body heavy with his discovery.

  Dr. Swenson tried to explain. “Professor Oglethorpe was unable to father children. Marion wanted them. Desperately. She came to me several years after her marriage and I gave her a thorough examination. After finding nothing wrong with her, I suggested she tell her husband he should be examined, but he refused. He was very angry that she even suggested the problem could possibly be him.”

  Bradshaw recalled the packet he’d found in Oglethorpe’s desk, the pills that promised to restore a man’s lost virility. He could easily imagine Oglethorpe, so proud, so vain, exploding at the suggestion that his manhood was flawed but secretly seeking a solution. And since deep beneath that vanity insecurity festered, as Marion had revealed to Bradshaw, confronting him must have been one of the most difficult things she’d ever done.

  “I failed to understand why,” Doctor Swenson went on, “but Marion loved her husband. She wanted to find a way to have children without letting her husband know he’d failed her. I was appalled when she asked me if I would provide what her husband could not. But I was really her only option. As you noticed, we look enough alike that a child born to her would not be questioned. It would be thought simpl
y that her children favored her and not their father, which they do. For a year, I refused. Marion grew depressed. Despondent. With each child I delivered to my other patients, the more I ached for poor Marion. The joy I saw, the pure love on the faces of the new mothers, that was something I knew, that without my help, Marion would never have.” Swenson glanced briefly at Bradshaw. “She told her husband that it was the new tonic I had given her that had enabled her to get pregnant. He believed her.”

  A tonic, indeed. Bradshaw took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He could understand Swenson’s kind-hearted desire to give to Marion the children she so desperately wanted. But the actual carrying out of the deception? There would have been clandestine meetings, and the intimacy of procreation, the progression of the pregnancy knowing the child was his, and the delivery—how had this man delivered his own precious children into the world? Heard those first cries, felt the fragile warm weight in his arms, and then handed them over to another man? A man he neither liked nor respected. Not once, but twice. And a third on the way.

  “Professor Oglethorpe found out after they moved into the new house that she was pregnant again, and this time he knew it couldn’t be his. He hadn’t slept in her bed in months. She hadn’t told me. I never would have agreed to try for another child if I’d known.”

  Bradshaw shook his head, stunned and appalled. No wonder life in the new mansion had been so full of shouting. “Did she tell him the truth? That he hadn’t fathered any of their children?”

  “No. Even in the face of his brutal anger she wanted to protect him. She tried to convince him he’d merely forgotten a night of intimacy. She’d plied him with drink a few times, trying to lure him to her bed in order to validate her pregnancy. It hadn’t worked. That’s what saddens her the most. He died believing she’d been unfaithful.”

  “She had been unfaithful.”

  “She didn’t see it that way. Her heart never strayed.”

  Swenson clasped his pale hands tightly together. Bradshaw had never seen anyone actually wring his hands before. Swenson’s eyes were alive with troubled emotion.