The Best American Mystery Stories of the Nineteenth Century

by Penzler, Otto

  “You say that your husband frightened you on that night by appearing suddenly at the door when you thought him on his way to Poughkeepsie. Is Dr. Zabriskie in the habit of thus going and coming alone at an hour so late as this must have been?”

  “You forget that to the blind, night is less full of perils than the day. Often and often has my husband found his way to his patients’ houses alone after midnight; but on this especial evening he had Harry with him. Harry was his driver, and always accompanied him when he went any distance.”

  “Well, then,” said I, “all we have to do is to summon Harry and hear what he has to say concerning this affair. He surely will know whether or not his master went into the house next door.”

  “Harry has left us,” she said. “Dr. Zabriskie has another driver now. Besides—(I have nothing to conceal from you)—Harry was not with him when he returned to the house that evening, or the Doctor would not have been without his portmanteau till the next day. Something—I have never known what—caused them to separate, and that is why I have no answer to give the Doctor when he accuses himself of committing a deed on that night which is wholly out of keeping with every other act of his life.”

  “And have you never questioned Harry why they separated and why he allowed his master to come home alone after the shock he had received at the station?”

  “I did not know there was any reason for doing so till long after he left us.”

  “And when did he leave?”

  “That I do not remember. A few weeks or possibly a few days after that dreadful night.”

  “And where is he now?”

  “Ah, that I have not the least means of knowing. But,” she suddenly cried, “what do you want of Harry? If he did not follow Dr. Zabriskie to his own door, he could tell us nothing that would convince my husband that he is laboring under an illusion.”

  “But he might tell us something which would convince us that Dr. Zabriskie was not himself after the accident, that he—”

  “Hush!” came from her lips in imperious tones. “I will not believe that he shot Mr. Hasbrouck even if you prove him to have been insane at the time. How could he? My husband is blind. It would take a man of very keen sight to force himself into a house that was closed for the night, and kill a man in the dark at one shot.”

  “Rather,” cried a voice from the doorway, “it is only a blind man who could do this. Those who trust to eyesight must be able to catch some glimpse of the mark they aim at, and this room, as I have been told, was without a glimmer of light. But the blind trust to sound, and as Mr. Hasbrouck spoke—”

  “Oh!” burst from the horrified wife, “is there no one to stop him when he speaks like that?”

  II.

  WHEN I RELATED to my superiors the details of the foregoing interview, two of them coincided with the wife in thinking that Dr. Zabriskie was in an irresponsible condition of mind which made any statement of his questionable. But the third seemed disposed to argue the matter, and, casting me an inquiring look, seemed to ask what my opinion was on the subject. Answering him as if he had spoken, I gave my conclusion as follows: That whether insane or not, Dr. Zabriskie had fired the shot which terminated Mr. Hasbrouck’s life.

  It was the Inspector’s own idea, but it was not shared in by the others, one of whom had known the Doctor for years. Accordingly they compromised by postponing all opinion till they had themselves interrogated the Doctor, and I was detailed to bring him before them the next afternoon.

  He came without reluctance, his wife accompanying him. In the short time which elapsed between their leaving Lafayette Place and entering Headquarters, I embraced the opportunity of observing them, and I found the study equally exciting and interesting. His face was calm but hopeless, and his eye, which should have shown a wild glimmer if there was truth in his wife’s hypothesis, was dark and unfathomable, but neither frenzied nor uncertain. He spoke but once and listened to nothing, though now and then his wife moved as if to attract his attention, and once even stole her hand toward his, in the tender hope that he would feel its approach and accept her sympathy. But he was deaf as well as blind; and sat wrapped up in thoughts which she, I know, would have given worlds to penetrate.

  Her countenance was not without its mystery also. She showed in every lineament passionate concern and misery, and a deep tenderness from which the element of fear was not absent. But she, as well as he, betrayed that some misunderstanding, deeper than any I had previously suspected, drew its intangible veil between them and made the near proximity in which they sat, at once a heart-piercing delight and an unspeakable pain. What was this misunderstanding? And what was the character of the fear that modified her every look of love in his direction? Her perfect indifference to my presence proved that it was not connected with the position in which he had put himself towards the police by his voluntary confession of crime, nor could I thus interpret the expression of frantic question which now and then contracted her features, as she raised her eyes towards his sightless orbs, and strove to read, in his firm-set lips, the meaning of those assertions she could only ascribe to a loss of reason.

  The stopping of the carriage seemed to awaken both from thoughts that separated rather than united them. He turned his face in her direction, and she, stretching forth her hand, prepared to lead him from the carriage, without any of that display of timidity which had been previously evident in her manner.

  As his guide she seemed to fear nothing; as his lover, everything.

  “There is another and a deeper tragedy underlying the outward and obvious one,” was my inward conclusion, as I followed them into the presence of the gentlemen awaiting them.

  Dr. Zabriskie’s appearance was a shock to those who knew him; so was his manner, which was calm, straightforward, and quietly determined.

  “I shot Mr. Hasbrouck,” was his steady affirmation, given without any show of frenzy or desperation. “If you ask me why I did it, I cannot answer; if you ask me how, I am ready to state all that I know concerning the matter.”

  “But, Dr. Zabriskie,” interposed his friend, “the why is the most important thing for us to consider just now. If you really desire to convince us that you committed the dreadful crime of killing a totally inoffensive man, you should give us some reason for an act so opposed to all your instincts and general conduct.”

  But the Doctor continued unmoved:

  “I had no reason for murdering Mr. Hasbrouck. A hundred questions can elicit no other reply; you had better keep to the how.”

  A deep-drawn breath from the wife answered the looks of the three gentlemen to whom this suggestion was offered. “You see,” that breath seemed to protest, “that he is not in his right mind.”

  I began to waver in my own opinion, and yet the intuition which has served me in cases as seemingly impenetrable as this, bade me beware of following the general judgment.

  “Ask him to inform you how he got into the house,” I whispered to Inspector D——, who sat nearest me.

  Immediately the Inspector put the question I had suggested:

  “By what means did you enter Mr. Hasbrouck’s house at so late an hour as this murder occurred?”

  The blind doctor’s head fell forward on his breast, and he hesitated for the first and only time.

  “You will not believe me,” said he; “but the door was ajar when I came to it. Such things make crime easy; it is the only excuse I have to offer for this dreadful deed.”

  The front door of a respectable citizen’s house ajar at half-past eleven at night. It was a statement that fixed in all minds the conviction of the speaker’s irresponsibility. Mrs. Zabriskie’s brow cleared, and her beauty became for a moment dazzling as she held out her hands in irrepressible relief towards those who were interrogating her husband. I alone kept my impassibility. A possible explanation of this crime had flashed like lightning across my mind; an explanation from which I inwardly recoiled, even while I was forced to consider it.

  “Dr. Zabriskie,�
� remarked the Inspector who was most friendly to him, “such old servants as those kept by Mr. Hasbrouck do not leave the front door ajar at twelve o’clock at night.”

  “Yet ajar it was,” repeated the blind doctor, with quiet emphasis; “and finding it so, I went in. When I came out again, I closed it. Do you wish me to swear to what I say? If so, I am ready.”

  What could we reply? To see this splendid-looking man, hallowed by an affliction so great that in itself it called forth the compassion of the most indifferent, accusing himself of a cold-blooded crime, in tones that sounded dispassionate because of the will that forced their utterance, was too painful in itself for us to indulge in any unnecessary words. Compassion took the place of curiosity, and each and all of us turned involuntary looks of pity upon the young wife pressing so eagerly to his side.

  “For a blind man,” ventured one, “the assault was both deft and certain. Are you accustomed to Mr. Hasbrouck’s house, that you found your way with so little difficulty to his bedroom?”

  “I am accustomed—” he began.

  But here his wife broke in with irrepressible passion:

  “He is not accustomed to that house. He has never been beyond the first floor. Why, why do you question him? Do you not see—”

  His hand was on her lips.

  “Hush!” he commanded. “You know my skill in moving about a house; how I sometimes deceive those who do not know me into believing that I can see, by the readiness with which I avoid obstacles and find my way even in strange and untried scenes. Do not try to make them think I am not in my right mind, or you will drive me into the very condition you deprecate.”

  His face, rigid, cold, and set, looked like that of a mask. Hers, drawn with horror and filled with question that was fast taking the form of doubt, bespoke an awful tragedy from which more than one of us recoiled.

  “Can you shoot a man dead without seeing him?” asked the Superintendent, with painful effort.

  “Give me a pistol and I will show you,” was the quick reply.

  A low cry came from the wife. In a drawer near to every one of us there lay a pistol, but no one moved to take it out. There was a look in the Doctor’s eye which made us fear to trust him with a pistol just then.

  “We will accept your assurance that you possess a skill beyond that of most men,” returned the Superintendent. And beckoning me forward, he whispered: “This is a case for the doctors and not for the police. Remove him quietly, and notify Dr. Southyard of what I say.”

  But Dr. Zabriskie, who seemed to have an almost supernatural acuteness of hearing, gave a violent start at this and spoke up for the first time with real passion in his voice:

  “No, no, I pray you. I can bear anything but that. Remember, gentlemen, that I am blind; that I cannot see who is about me; that my life would be a torture if I felt myself surrounded by spies watching to catch some evidence of madness in me. Rather conviction at once, death, dishonor, and obloquy. These I have incurred. These I have brought upon myself by crime, but not this worse fate—oh! not this worse fate.”

  His passion was so intense and yet so confined within the bounds of decorum, that we felt strangely impressed by it. Only the wife stood transfixed, with the dread growing in her heart, till her white, waxen visage seemed even more terrible to contemplate than his passion-distorted one.

  “It is not strange that my wife thinks me demented,” the Doctor continued, as if afraid of the silence that answered him. “But it is your business to discriminate, and you should know a sane man when you see him.”

  Inspector D——no longer hesitated.

  “Very well,” said he, “give us the least proof that your assertions are true, and we will lay your case before the prosecuting attorney.”

  “Proof? Is not a man’s word—”

  “No man’s confession is worth much without some evidence to support it. In your case there is none. You cannot even produce the pistol with which you assert yourself to have committed the deed.”

  “True, true. I was frightened by what I had done, and the instinct of self-preservation led me to rid myself of the weapon in any way I could. But someone found this pistol; someone picked it up from the sidewalk of Lafayette Place on that fatal night. Advertise for it. Offer a reward. I will give you the money.” Suddenly he appeared to realize how all this sounded. “Alas!” cried he, “I know the story seems improbable; all I say seems improbable; but it is not the probable things that happen in this life, but the improbable, as you should know, who every day dig deep into the heart of human affairs.”

  Were these the ravings of insanity? I began to understand the wife’s terror.

  “I bought the pistol,” he went on, “of—alas! I cannot tell you his name. Everything is against me. I cannot adduce one proof; yet she, even she, is beginning to fear that my story is true. I know it by her silence, a silence that yawns between us like a deep and unfathomable gulf.”

  But at these words her voice rang out with passionate vehemence.

  “No, no, it is false! I will never believe that your hands have been plunged in blood. You are my own pure-hearted Constant, cold, perhaps, and stern, but with no guilt upon your conscience, save in your own wild imagination.”

  “Helen, you are no friend to me,” he declared, pushing her gently aside. “Believe me innocent, but say nothing to lead these others to doubt my word.”

  And she said no more, but her looks spoke volumes.

  The result was that he was not detained, though he prayed for instant commitment. He seemed to dread his own home, and the surveillance to which he instinctively knew he would henceforth be subjected. To see him shrink from his wife’s hand as she strove to lead him from the room was sufficiently painful; but the feeling thus aroused was nothing to that with which we observed the keen and agonized expectancy of his look as he turned and listened for the steps of the officer who followed him.

  “I shall never again know whether or not I am alone,” was his final observation as he left our presence.

  I said nothing to my superiors of the thoughts I had had while listening to the above interrogatories. A theory had presented itself to my mind which explained in some measure the mysteries of the Doctor’s conduct, but I wished for time and opportunity to test its reasonableness before submitting it to their higher judgment. And these seemed likely to be given me, for the Inspectors continued divided in their opinion of the blind physician’s guilt, and the District-Attorney, when told of the affair, pooh-poohed it without mercy, and declined to stir in the matter unless some tangible evidence were forthcoming to substantiate the poor Doctor’s self-accusations.

  “If guilty, why does he shrink from giving his motives,” said he, “and if so anxious to go to the gallows, why does he suppress the very facts calculated to send him there? He is as mad as a March hare, and it is to an asylum he should go and not to a jail.”

  In this conclusion I failed to agree with him, and as time wore on my suspicions took shape and finally ended in a fixed conviction. Dr. Zabriskie had committed the crime he avowed, but—let me proceed a little further with my story before I reveal what lies beyond that “but.”

  Notwithstanding Dr. Zabriskie’s almost frenzied appeal for solitude, a man had been placed in surveillance over him in the shape of a young doctor skilled in diseases of the brain. This man communicated more or less with the police, and one morning I received from him the following extracts from the diary he had been ordered to keep.

  “The Doctor is settling into a deep melancholy from which he tries to rise at times, but with only indifferent success. Yesterday he rode around to all his patients for the purpose of withdrawing his services on the plea of illness. But he still keeps his office open, and to-day I had the opportunity of witnessing his reception and treatment of the many sufferers who came to him for aid. I think he was conscious of my presence, though an attempt had been made to conceal it. For the listening look never left his face from the moment he entered the room, and once he
rose and passed quickly from wall to wall, groping with outstretched hands into every nook and corner, and barely escaping contact with the curtain behind which I was hidden. But if he suspected my presence, he showed no displeasure at it, wishing perhaps for a witness to his skill in the treatment of disease.

  “And truly I never beheld a finer manifestation of practical insight in cases of a more or less baffling nature than I beheld in him to-day. He is certainly a most wonderful physician, and I feel bound to record that his mind is as clear for business as if no shadow had fallen upon it.

  “Dr. Zabriskie loves his wife, but in a way that tortures both himself and her. If she is gone from the house he is wretched and yet when she returns he often forbears to speak to her, or if he does speak, it is with a constraint that hurts her more than his silence. I was present when she came in to-day. Her step, which had been eager on the stairway, flagged as she approached the room, and he naturally noted the change and gave his own interpretation to it. His face, which had been very pale, flushed suddenly, and a nervous trembling seized him which he sought in vain to hide. But by the time her tall and beautiful figure stood in the doorway he was his usual self again in all but the expression of his eyes, which stared straight before him in an agony of longing only to be observed in those who have once seen.