XXIII
THE DEATH HOUSE
In the early forenoon, we were on our way by train "up the river" toSing Sing, where, at the station, a line of old-fashioned cabs andred-faced cabbies greeted us, for the town itself is hilly.
The house to which we had been directed was on the hill, and from itswindows one could look down on the barracks-like pile of stone with theevil little black-barred slits of windows, below and perhaps a quarterof a mile away.
There was no need to be told what it was. Its very atmosphere breathedthe word "prison." Even the ugly clutter of tall-chimneyed workshopsdid not destroy it. Every stone, every grill, every glint of a sentry'srifle spelt "prison."
Mrs. Godwin was a pale, slight little woman, in whose face shone anindomitable spirit, unconquered even by the slow torture of her lonelyvigil. Except for such few hours that she had to engage in her simplehousehold duties, with now and then a short walk in the country, shewas always watching that bleak stone house of atonement.
Yet, though her spirit was unconquered, it needed no physician to tellone that the dimming of the lights at the prison on the morning set forthe execution would fill two graves instead of one. For she had come toknow that this sudden dimming of the corridor lights, and then theiralmost as sudden flaring-up, had a terrible meaning, well known to themen inside. Hers was no less an agony than that of the men in thecurtained cells, since she had learned that when the lights grow dim atdawn at Sing Sing, it means that the electric power has been borrowedfor just that little while to send a body straining against the strapsof the electric chair, snuffing out the life of a man.
To-day she had evidently been watching in both directions, watchingeagerly the carriages as they climbed the hill, as well as in thedirection of the prison.
"How can I ever thank you, Professor Kennedy," she greeted us at thedoor, keeping back with difficulty the tears that showed how much itmeant to have any one interest himself in her husband's case.
There was that gentleness about Mrs. Godwin that comes only to thosewho have suffered much.
"It has been a long fight," she began, as we talked in her modestlittle sitting-room, into which the sun streamed brightly with nothought of the cold shadows in the grim building below. "Oh, and such ahard, heartbreaking fight! Often it seems as if we had exhausted everymeans at our disposal, and yet we shall never give up. Why cannot wemake the world see our case as we see it? Everything seems to haveconspired against us--and yet I cannot, I will not believe that the lawand the science that have condemned him are the last words in law andscience."
"You said in your letter that the courts were so slow and the lawyersso--"
"Yes, so cold, so technical. They do not seem to realise that a humanlife is at stake. With them it is almost like a game in which we arethe pawns. And sometimes I fear, in spite of what the lawyers say, thatwithout some new evidence, it--it will go hard with him."
"You have not given up hope in the appeal?" asked Kennedy gently.
"It is merely on technicalities of the law," she replied with quietfortitude, "that is, as nearly as I can make out from the language ofthe papers. Our lawyer is Salo Kahn, of the big firm of criminallawyers, Smith, Kahn."
"Conine," mused Kennedy, half to himself. I could not tell whether hewas thinking of what he repeated or of the little woman.
"Yes, the active principle of hemlock," she went on. "That was what theexperts discovered, they swore. In the pure state, I believe, it ismore poisonous than anything except the cyanides. And it was absolutelyscientific evidence. They repeated the tests in court. There was nodoubt of it. But, oh, he did not do it. Some one else did it. He didnot--he could not."
Kennedy said nothing for a few minutes, but from his tone when he didspeak it was evident that he was deeply touched.
"Since our marriage we lived with old Mr. Godwin in the historic GodwinHouse at East Point," she resumed, as he renewed his questioning."Sanford--that was my husband's real last name until he came as a boyto work for Mr. Godwin in the office of the factory and was adopted byhis employer--Sanford and I kept house for him.
"About a year ago he began to grow feeble and seldom went to thefactory, which Sanford managed for him. One night Mr. Godwin was takensuddenly ill. I don't know how long he had been ill before we heard himgroaning, but he died almost before we could summon a doctor. There wasreally nothing suspicious about it, but there had always been a greatdeal of jealousy of my husband in the town and especially among the fewdistant relatives of Mr. Godwin. What must have started as an idle,gossipy rumour developed into a serious charge that my husband hadhastened his old guardian's death.
"The original will--THE will, I call it--had been placed in the safe ofthe factory several years ago. But when the gossip in the town grewbitter, one day when we were out, some private detectives entered thehouse with a warrant--and they did actually find a will, another willabout which we knew nothing, dated later than the first and hidden withsome papers in the back of a closet, or sort of fire proof box, builtinto the wall of the library. The second will was identical with thefirst in language except that its terms were reversed and instead ofbeing the residuary legatee, Sanford was given a comparatively smallannuity, and the Elmores were made residuary legatees instead ofannuitants."
"And who are these Elmores?" asked Kennedy curiously.
"There are three, two grandnephews and a grandniece, Bradford, Lambert,and their sister Miriam."
"And they live--"
"In East Point, also. Old Mr. Godwin was not very friendly with hissister, whose grandchildren they were. They were the only other heirsliving, and although Sanford never had anything to do with it, I thinkthey always imagined that he tried to prejudice the old man againstthem."
"I shall want to see the Elmores, or at least some one who representsthem, as well as the district attorney up there who conducted the case.But now that I am here, I wonder if it is possible that I could bringany influence to bear to see your husband?"
Mrs. Godwin sighed.
"Once a month," she replied, "I leave this window, walk to the prison,where the warden is very kind to me, and then I can see Sanford. Ofcourse there are bars between us besides the regular screen. But I canhave an hour's talk, and in those talks he has described to me exactlyevery detail of his life in the--the prison. We have even agreed oncertain hours when we think of each other. In those hours I know almostwhat he is thinking." She paused to collect herself. "Perhaps there maybe some way if I plead with the warden. Perhaps--you may be consideredhis counsel now--you may see him."
A half hour later we sat in the big registry room of the prison andtalked with the big-hearted, big-handed warden. Every argument thatKennedy could summon was brought to bear. He even talked over longdistance with the lawyers in New York. At last the rules were relaxedand Kennedy was admitted on some technicality as counsel. Counsel cansee the condemned as often as necessary.
We were conducted down a flight of steps and past huge steel-barreddoors, along corridors and through the regular prison until at last wewere in what the prison officials called the section for the condemned.Every one else calls this secret heart of the grim place, the deathhouse.
It is made up of two rows of cells, some eighteen or twenty in all, alittle more modern in construction than the twelve hundred archaiccaverns that pass for cells in the main prison.
At each end of the corridor sat a guard, armed, with eyes never off therows of cells day or night.
In the wall, on one side, was a door--the little green door--the doorfrom the death house to the death chamber.
While Kennedy was talking to the prisoner, a guard volunteered to showme the death chamber and the "chair." No other furniture was there inthe little brick house of one room except this awful chair, of yellowoak with broad, leather straps. There it stood, the sole article in thebrightly varnished room of about twenty-five feet square with walls ofclean blue, this grim acolyte of modern scientific death. There werethe wet electrodes that are fastened to
the legs through slits in thetrousers at the calves; above was the pipe-like fixture, like agruesome helmet of leather that fits over the head, carrying the otherelectrode.
Back of the condemned was the switch which lets loose a lethal store ofenergy, and back of that the prison morgue where the bodies are taken.I looked about. In the wall to the left toward the death house was alsoa door, on this side yellow. Somehow I could not get from my mind thefascination of that door--the threshold of the grave.
Meanwhile Kennedy sat in the little cage and talked with the convictedman across the three-foot distance between cell and screen. I did notsee him at that time, but Kennedy repeated afterward what passed, andit so impressed me that I will set it down as if I had been present.
Sanford Godwin was a tall, ashen-faced man, in the prison pallor ofwhose face was written the determination of despair, a man in whoseblue eyes was a queer, half-insane light of hope. One knew that if ithad not been for the little woman at the window at the top of the hill,the hope would probably long ago have faded. But this man knew she wasalways there, thinking, watching, eagerly planning in aid of any newscheme in the long fight for freedom.
"The alkaloid was present, that is certain," he told Kennedy. "My wifehas told you that. It was scientifically proved. There is no use inattacking that."
Later on he remarked: "Perhaps you think it strange that one in thevery shadow of the death chair"--the word stuck in his throat--"cantalk so impersonally of his own case. Sometimes I think it is not mycase, but some one else's. And then--that door."
He shuddered and turned away from it. On one side was life, such as itwas; on the other, instant death. No wonder he pleaded with Kennedy.
"Why, Walter," exclaimed Craig, as we walked back to the warden'soffice to telephone to town for a car to take us up to East Point,"whenever he looks out of that cage he sees it. He may close hiseyes--and still see it. When he exercises, he sees it. Thinking by dayand dreaming by night, it is always there. Think of the terrible hoursthat man must pass, knowing of the little woman eating her heart out.Is he really guilty? I must find out. If he is not, I never saw agreater tragedy than this slow, remorseless approach of death, in thatdaily, hourly shadow of the little green door."
East Point was a queer old town on the upper Hudson, with a varyingassortment of industries. Just outside, the old house of the Godwinsstood on a bluff overlooking the majestic river. Kennedy had wanted tosee it before any one suspected his mission, and a note from Mrs.Godwin to a friend had been sufficient.
Carefully he went over the deserted and now half-wrecked house, for theauthorities had spared nothing in their search for poison, even goingover the garden and the lawns in the hope of finding some of thepoisonous shrub, hemlock, which it was contended had been used to putan end to Mr. Godwin.
As yet nothing had been done to put the house in order again and, as wewalked about, we noticed a pile of old tins in the yard which had notbeen removed.
Kennedy turned them over with his stick. Then he picked one up andexamined it attentively.
"H-m--a blown can," he remarked.
"Blown?" I repeated.
"Yes. When the contents of a tin begin to deteriorate they sometimesgive off gases which press out the ends of the tin. You can see howthese ends bulge."
Our next visit was to the district attorney, a young man, GordonKilgore, who seemed not unwilling to discuss the case frankly.
"I want to make arrangements for disinterring the body," explainedKennedy. "Would you fight such a move?"
"Not at all, not at all," he answered brusquely. "Simply make thearrangements through Kahn. I shall interpose no objection. It is thestrongest, most impregnable part of the case, the discovery of thepoison. If you can break that down you will do more than any one elsehas dared to hope. But it can't be done. The proof was too strong. Ofcourse it is none of my business, but I'd advise some other point ofattack."
I must confess to a feeling of disappointment when Kennedy announcedafter leaving Kilgore that, for the present, there was nothing more tobe done at East Point until Kahn had made the arrangements forreopening the grave.
We motored back to Ossining, and Kennedy tried to be reassuring to Mrs.Godwin.
"By the way," he remarked, just before we left, "you used a good dealof canned goods at the Godwin house, didn't you?"
"Yes, but not more than other people, I think," she said.
"Do you recall using any that were--well, perhaps not exactly spoiled,but that had anything peculiar about them?"
"I remember once we thought we found some cans that seemed to have beenattacked by mice--at least they smelt so, though how mice could getthrough a tin can we couldn't see."
"Mice?" queried Kennedy. "Had a mousey smell? That's interesting. Well,Mrs. Godwin, keep up a good heart. Depend on me. What you have told meto-day has made me more than interested in your case. I shall waste notime in letting you know when anything encouraging develops."
Craig had never had much patience with red tape that barred the way tothe truth, yet there were times when law and legal procedure had to berespected, no matter how much they hampered, and this was one of them.The next day the order was obtained permitting the opening again of thegrave of old Mr. Godwin. The body was exhumed, and Kennedy set abouthis examination of what secrets it might hide.
Meanwhile, it seemed to me that the suspense was terrible. Kennedy wasmoving slowly, I thought. Not even the courts themselves could havebeen more deliberate. Also, he was keeping much to himself.
Still, for another whole day, there was the slow, inevitable approachof the thing that now, I, too, had come to dread--the handing down ofthe final decision on the appeal.
Yet what could Craig do otherwise, I asked myself. I had become deeplyinterested in the case by this time and spent the time reading all theevidence, hundreds of pages of it. It was cold, hard, brutal,scientific fact, and as I read I felt that hope faded for theashen-faced man and the pallid little woman. It seemed the last word inscience. Was there any way of escape?
Impatient as I was, I often wondered what must have been the suspenseof those to whom the case meant everything.
"How are the tests coming along?" I ventured one night, after Kahn hadarranged for the uncovering of the grave.
It was now two days since Kennedy had gone up to East Point tosuperintend the exhumation and had returned to the city with thematerials which had caused him to keep later hours in the laboratorythan I had ever known even the indefatigable Craig to spend on astretch before.
He shook his head doubtfully.
"Walter," he admitted, "I'm afraid I have reached the limit on the lineof investigation I had planned at the start."
I looked at him in dismay. "What then?" I managed to gasp.
"I am going up to East Point again to-morrow to look over that houseand start a new line. You can go."
No urging was needed, and the following day saw us again on the ground.The house, as I have said, had been almost torn to pieces in the searchfor the will and the poison evidence. As before, we went to itunannounced, and this time we had no difficulty in getting in. Kennedy,who had brought with him a large package, made his way directly to asort of drawing-room next to the large library, in the closet of whichthe will had been discovered.
He unwrapped the package and took from it a huge brace and bit, the bita long, thin, murderous looking affair such as might have come from aburglar's kit. I regarded it much in that light.
"What's the lay?" I asked, as he tapped over the walls to ascertain ofjust what they were composed.
Without a word he was now down on his knees, drilling a hole in theplaster and lath. When he struck an obstruction he stopped, removed thebit, inserted another, and began again.
"Are you going to put in a detectaphone?" I asked again.
He shook his head. "A detectaphone wouldn't be of any use here," hereplied. "No one is going to do any talking in that room."
Again the brace and bit were at work. At last the wall h
ad beenpenetrated, and he quickly removed every trace from the other side thatwould have attracted attention to a little hole in an obscure corner ofthe flowered wall-paper.
Next, he drew out what looked like a long putty-blower, perhaps a footlong and three-eighths of an inch in diameter.
"What's that?" I asked, as he rose after carefully inserting it.
"Look through it," he replied simply, still at work on some otherapparatus he had brought.
I looked. In spite of the smallness of the opening at the other end, Iwas amazed to find that I could see nearly the whole room on the otherside of the wall.
"It's a detectascope," he explained, "a tube with a fish-eye lens whichI had an expert optician make for me."
"A fish-eye lens?" I repeated.
"Yes. The focus may be altered in range so that any one in the room maybe seen and recognised and any action of his may be detected. Theoriginal of this was devised by Gaillard Smith, the adapter of thedetectaphone. The instrument is something like the cytoscope, which thedoctors use to look into the human interior. Now, look through itagain. Do you see the closet?"
Again I looked. "Yes," I said, "but will one of us have to watch hereall the time?"
He had been working on a black box in the meantime, and now he began toset it up, adjusting it to the hole in the wall which he enlarged onour side.
"No, that is my own improvement on it. You remember once we used aquick-shutter camera with an electric attachment, which moved theshutter on the contact of a person with an object in the room? Well,this camera has that quick shutter. But, in addition, I have adapted tothe detectascope an invention by Professor Robert Wood, of JohnsHopkins. He has devised a fish-eye camera that 'sees' over a radius ofone hundred and eighty degrees--not only straight in front, but overhalf a circle, every point in that room.
"You know the refracting power of a drop of water. Since it is a globe,it refracts the light which reaches it from all directions. If it isplaced like the lens of a camera, as Dr. Wood tried it, so thatone-half of it catches the light, all the light caught will berefracted through it. Fishes, too, have a wide range of vision. Somehave eyes that see over half a circle. So the lens gets its name.Ordinary cameras, because of the flatness of their lenses, have a rangeof only a few degrees, the widest in use, I believe, taking in onlyninety-six, or a little more than a quarter of a circle. So, you see,my detectascope has a range almost twice as wide as that of any other."
Though I did not know what he expected to discover and knew that it wasuseless to ask, the thing seemed very interesting. Craig did not pause,however, to enlarge on the new machine, but gathered up his tools andannounced that our next step would be a visit to a lawyer whom theElmores had retained as their personal counsel to look after theirinterests, now that the district attorney seemed to hare cleared up thecriminal end of the case.
Hollins was one of the prominent attorneys of East Point, and beforethe election of Kilgore as prosecutor had been his partner. UnlikeKilgore, we found him especially uncommunicative and inclined to resentour presence in the case as intruders.
The interview did not seem to me to be productive of anything. In fact,it seemed as if Craig were giving Hollins much more than he was getting.
"I shall be in town over night," remarked Craig. "In fact, I amthinking of going over the library up at the Godwin house soon, verycarefully." He spoke casually. "There may be, you know, somefinger-prints on the walls around that closet which might proveinteresting."
A quick look from Hollins was the only answer. In fact, it was seldomthat he uttered more than a monosyllable as we talked over the variousaspects of the case.
A half-hour later, when he had left and had gone to the hotel, I askedKennedy suspiciously, "Why did you expose your hand to Hollins, Craig?"
He laughed. "Oh, Walter," he remonstrated, "don't you know that it isnearly always useless to look for finger-prints, except under somecircumstances, even a few days afterward? This is months, not days. Whyon iron and steel they last with tolerable certainty only a short time,and not much longer on silver, glass, or wood. But they are seldompermanent unless they are made with ink or blood or something thatleaves a more or less indelible mark. That was a 'plant.'"
"But what do you expect to gain by it?"
"Well," he replied enigmatically, "no one is necessarily honest."
It was late in the afternoon when Kennedy again visited the Godwinhouse and examined the camera. Without a word he pulled thedetectascope from the wall and carried the whole thing to thedeveloping-room of the local photographer.
There he set to work on the film and I watched him in silence. Heseemed very much excited as he watched the film develop, until at lasthe held it up, dripping, to the red light.
"Some one has entered that room this afternoon and attempted to wipeoff the walls and woodwork of that closet, as I expected," he exclaimed.
"Who was it?" I asked, leaning over.
Kennedy said nothing, but pointed to a figure on the film. I bentcloser. It was the figure of a woman.
"Miriam!" I exclaimed in surprise.
XXIV
THE FINAL DAY
I looked aghast at him. If it had been either Bradford or Lambert, bothof whom we had come to know since Kennedy had interested himself in thecase, or even Hollins or Kilgore, I should not have been surprised. ButMiriam!
"How could she have any connection with the case?" I askedincredulously.
Kennedy did not attempt to explain. "It is a fatal mistake, Walter, fora detective to assume that he knows what anybody would do in any givencircumstances. The only safe course for him is to find out what thepersons in question did do. People are always doing the unexpected.This is a case of it, as you see. I am merely trying to get back atfacts. Come; I think we might as well not stay over night, after all. Ishould like to drop off on the way back to the city to see Mrs. Godwin."
As we rode up the hill I was surprised to see that there was no one atthe window, nor did any one seem to pay attention to our knocking atthe door.
Kennedy turned the knob quickly and strode in.
Seated in a chair, as white as a wraith from the grave, was Mrs.Godwin, staring straight ahead, seeing nothing, hearing nothing.
"What's the matter?" demanded Kennedy, leaping to her side and graspingher icy hand.
The stare on her face seemed to change slightly as she recognised him.
"Walter--some water--and a little brandy--if there is any. Tellme--what has happened?"
From her lap a yellow telegram had fluttered to the floor, but beforehe could pick it up, she gasped, "The appeal--it has been denied."Kennedy picked up the paper. It was a message, unsigned, but not fromKahn, as its wording and in fact the circumstances plainly showed.
"The execution is set for the week beginning the fifth," she continued,in the same hollow, mechanical voice. "My God--that's next Monday!"
She had risen now and was pacing the room.
"No! I'm not going to faint. I wish I could. I wish I could cry. I wishI could do something. Oh, those Elmores--they must have sent it. No onewould have been so cruel but they."
She stopped and gazed wildly out of the window at the prison. Neitherof us knew what to say for the moment.
"Many times from this window," she cried, "I have seen a man walk outof that prison gate. I always watch to see what he does, though I knowit is no use. If he stands in the free air, stops short, and looks upsuddenly, taking a long look at every house--I hope. But he alwaysturns for a quick, backward look at the prison and goes half runningdown the hill. They always stop in that fashion, when the steel dooropens outward. Yet I have always looked and hoped. But I can hope nomore--no more. The last chance is gone."
"No--not the last chance," exclaimed Craig, springing to her side lestshe should fall. Then he added gently, "You must come with me to EastPoint--immediately."
"What--leave him here--alone--in the last days? No--no--no. Never. Imust see him. I wonder if they have told him yet."
> It was evident that she had lost faith in Kennedy, in everybody, now.
"Mrs. Godwin," he urged. "Come--you must. It is a last chance."
Eagerly he was pouring out the story of the discovery of the afternoonby the little detectascope.
"Miriam?" she repeated, dazed. "She--know anything--it can't be.No--don't raise a false hope now."
"It is the last chance," he urged again. "Come. There is not an hour towaste now."
There was no delay, no deliberation about Kennedy now. He had beenforced out into the open by the course of events, and he meant to takeadvantage of every precious moment.
Down the hill our car sped to the town, with Mrs. Godwin stillprotesting, but hardly realising what was going on. Regardless oftolls, Kennedy called up his laboratory in New York and had two of hismost careful students pack up the stuff which he described minutely tobe carried to East Point immediately by train. Kahn, too, was at lastfound and summoned to meet us there also.
Miles never seemed longer than they did to us as we tore over thecountry from Ossining to East Point, a silent party, yet keyed up by anexcitement that none of us had ever felt before.
Impatiently we awaited the arrival of the men from Kennedy'slaboratory, while we made Mrs. Godwin as comfortable as possible in aroom at the hotel. In one of the parlours Kennedy was improvising alaboratory as best he could. Meanwhile, Kahn had arrived, and togetherwe were seeking those whose connection with, or interest in, the casemade necessary their presence.
It was well along toward midnight before the hasty conference had beengathered; besides Mrs. Godwin, Salo Kahn, and ourselves, the threeElmores, Kilgore, and Hollins.
Strange though it was, the room seemed to me almost to have assumed thefamiliar look of the laboratory in New York. There was the same clutterof tubes and jars on the tables, but above all that same feeling ofsuspense in the air which I had come to associate with the clearing upof a case. There was something else in the air, too. It was a peculiarmousey smell, disagreeable, and one which made it a relief to haveKennedy begin in a low voice to tell why he had called us together sohastily.
"I shall start," announced Kennedy, "at the point where the state leftoff--with the proof that Mr. Godwin died of conine, or hemlockpoisoning. Conine, as every chemist knows, has a long and well-knownhistory. It was the first alkaloid to be synthesised. Here is a sample,this colourless, oily fluid. No doubt you have noticed the mousey odourin this room. As little as one part of conine to fifty thousand ofwater gives off that odour--it is characteristic.
"I have proceeded with extraordinary caution in my investigation ofthis case," he went on. "In fact, there would have been no value in it,otherwise, for the experts for the people seem to have established thepresence of conine in the body with absolute certainty."
He paused and we waited expectantly.
"I have had the body exhumed and have repeated the tests. The alkaloidwhich I discovered had given precisely the same results as in theirtests."
My heart sank. What was he doing--convicting the man over again?
"There is one other test which I tried," he continued, "but which I cannot take time to duplicate tonight. It was testified at the trial thatconine, the active principle of hemlock, is intensely poisonous. Nochemical antidote is known. A fifth of a grain has serious results; adrop is fatal. An injection of a most minute quantity of real coninewill kill a mouse, for instance, almost instantly. But the conine whichI have isolated in the body is inert!"
It came like a bombshell to the prosecution, so bewildering was thediscovery.
"Inert?" cried Kilgore and Hollins almost together. "It can't be. Youare making sport of the best chemical experts that money could obtain.Inert? Read the evidence--read the books."
"On the contrary," resumed Craig, ignoring the interruption, "all thereactions obtained by the experts have been duplicated by me. But, inaddition, I tried this one test which they did not try. I repeat: theconine isolated in the body is inert."
We were too perplexed to question him.
"Alkaloids," he continued quietly, "as you know, have names that end in'in' or 'ine'--morphine, strychnine, and so on. Now there are two kindsof alkaloids which are sometimes called vegetable and animal. Moreover,there is a large class of which we are learning much which are calledthe ptomaines--from ptoma, a corpse. Ptomaine poisoning, as every oneknows, results when we eat food that has begun to decay.
"Ptomaines are chemical compounds of an alkaloidal nature formed inprotein substances during putrefaction. They are purely chemical bodiesand differ from the toxins. There are also what are called leucomaines,formed in living tissues, and when not given off by the body theyproduce auto-intoxication.
"There are more than three score ptomaines, and half of them arepoisonous. In fact, illness due to eating infected foods is much morecommon than is generally supposed. Often there is only one case in anumber of those eating the food, due merely to that person's inabilityto throw off the poison. Such cases are difficult to distinguish. Theyare usually supposed to be gastro-enteritis. Ptomaines, as their nameshows, are found in dead bodies. They are found in all dead matterafter a time, whether it is decayed food or a decaying corpse.
"No general reaction is known by which the ptomaines can bedistinguished from the vegetable alkaloids. But we know that animalalkaloids always develop either as a result of decay of food or of thedecay of the body itself."
At one stroke Kennedy had reopened the closed case and had placed theexperts at sea.
"I find that there is an animal conine as well as the true conine," hehammered out. "The truth of this matter is that the experts haveconfounded vegetable conine with cadaveric conine. That raises aninteresting question. Assuming the presence of conine, where did itcome from?"
He paused and began a new line of attack. "As the use of canned goodsbecomes more and more extensive, ptomaine poisoning is more frequent.In canning, the cans are heated. They are composed of thin sheets ofiron coated with tin, the seams pressed and soldered with a thin lineof solder. They are filled with cooked food, sterilised, and closed.The bacteria are usually all killed, but now and then, the apparatusdoes not work, and they develop in the can. That results in a 'blowncan'--the ends bulge a little bit. On opening, a gas escapes, the foodhas a bad odour and a bad taste. Sometimes people say that the tin andlead poison them; in practically all cases the poisoning is ofbacterial, not metallic, origin. Mr. Godwin may have died of poisoning,probably did. But it was ptomaine poisoning. The blown cans which Ihave discovered would indicate that."
I was following him closely, yet though this seemed to explain a partof the case, it was far from explaining all.
"Then followed," he hurried on, "the development of the usual ptomainesin the body itself. These, I may say, had no relation to the cause ofdeath itself. The putrefactive germs began their attack. Whatever theremay have been in the body before, certainly they produced a cadavericptomaine conine. For many animal tissues and fluids, especially ifsomewhat decomposed, yield not infrequently compounds of an oily naturewith a mousey odour, fuming with hydrochloric acid and in short, actingjust like conine. There is ample evidence, I have found, that conine ora substance possessing most, if not all, of its properties is at timesactually produced in animal tissues by decomposition. And the fact is,I believe, that a number of cases have arisen, in which the poisonousalkaloid was at first supposed to have been discovered which werereally mistakes."
The idea was startling in the extreme. Here was Kennedy, as it were,overturning what had been considered the last word in science as it hadbeen laid down by the experts for the prosecution, opinions soimpregnable that courts and juries had not hesitated to condemn a manto death.
"There have been cases," Craig went on solemnly, "and I believe this tobe one, where death has been pronounced to have been caused by wilfuladministration of a vegetable alkaloid, which toxicologists would nowput down as ptomaine-poisoning cases. Innocent people have possiblyalready suffered and may in the future. But m
edical experts--" he laidespecial stress on the word--"are much more alive to the danger ofmistake than formerly. This was a case where the danger was notconsidered, either through carelessness, ignorance, or prejudice.
"Indeed, ptomaines are present probably to a greater or less extent inevery organ which is submitted to the toxicologist for examination. Ifhe is ignorant of the nature of these substances, he may easily mistakethem for vegetable alkaloids. He may report a given poison present whenit is not present. It is even yet a new line of inquiry which has onlyrecently been followed, and the information is still comparativelysmall and inadequate.
"It is very difficult, perhaps impossible, for the chemist to stateabsolutely that he has detected true conine. Before he can do it, thesymptoms and the post-mortem appearance must agree; analysis must bemade before, not after, decomposition sets in, and the amount of thepoison found must be sufficient to experiment with, not merely to reactto a few usual tests.
"What the experts asserted so positively, I would not dare to assert.Was he killed by ordinary ptomaine poisoning, and had conine, or ratherits double, developed first in his food along with other ptomaines thatwere not inert? Or did the cadaveric conine develop only in the bodyafter death? Chemistry alone can not decide the question so glibly asthe experts did. Further proof must be sought Other sciences must cometo our aid."
I was sitting next to Mrs. Godwin. As Kennedy's words rang out, herhand, trembling with emotion, pressed my arm. I turned quickly to seeif she needed assistance. Her face was radiant. All the fees for bigcases in the world could never have compensated Kennedy for the mute,unrestrained gratitude which the little woman shot at him.
Kennedy saw it, and in the quick shifting of his eyes to my face, Iread that he relied on me to take care of Mrs. Godwin while he plungedagain into the clearing up of the mystery.
"I have here the will--the second one," he snapped out, turning andfacing the others in the room.
Craig turned a switch in an apparatus which his students had broughtfrom New York. From a tube on the table came a peculiar bluish light.
"This," he explained, "is a source of ultraviolet rays. They are notthe bluish light which you see, but rays contained in it which you cannot see.
"Ultraviolet rays have recently been found very valuable in theexamination of questioned documents. By the use of a lens made ofquartz covered with a thin film of metallic silver, there has beendeveloped a practical means of making photographs by the invisible raysof light above the spectrum--these ultraviolet rays. The quartz lens isnecessary, because these rays will not pass through ordinary glass,while the silver film acts as a screen to cut off the ordinary lightrays and those below the spectrum. By this means, most white objectsare photographed black and even transparent objects like glass areblack.
"I obtained the copy of this will, but under the condition from thesurrogate that absolutely nothing must be done to it to change a fibreof the paper or a line of a letter. It was a difficult condition. Whilethere are chemicals which are frequently resorted to for testing theauthenticity of disputed documents such as wills and deeds, their usefrequently injures or destroys the paper under test. So far as I coulddetermine, the document also defied the microscope.
"But ultraviolet photography does not affect the document tested in anyway, and it has lately been used practically in detecting forgeries. Ihave photographed the last page of the will with its signatures, andhere it is. What the eye itself can not see, the invisible lightreveals."
He was holding the document and the copy, just an instant, as ifconsidering how to announce with best effect what he had discovered.
"In order to unravel this mystery," he resumed, looking up and facingthe Elmores, Kilgore, and Hollins squarely, "I decided to find outwhether any one had had access to that closet where the will washidden. It was long ago, and there seemed to be little that I could do.I knew it was useless to look for fingerprints.
"So I used what we detectives now call the law of suggestion. Iquestioned closely one who was in touch with all those who might havehad such access. I hinted broadly at seeking fingerprints which mightlead to the identity of one who had entered the house unknown to theGodwins, and placed a document where private detectives wouldsubsequently find it under suspicious circumstances.
"Naturally, it would seem to one who was guilty of such an act, or knewof it, that there might, after all, be finger-prints. I tried it. Ifound out through this little tube, the detectascope, that one reallyentered the room after that, and tried to wipe off any supposedfinger-prints that might still remain. That settled it. The second willwas a forgery, and the person who entered that room so stealthily thisafternoon knows that it is a forgery."
As Kennedy slapped down on the table the film from his camera, whichhad been concealed, Mrs. Godwin turned her now large and unnaturallybright eyes and met those of the other woman in the room.
"Oh--oh--heaven help us--me, I mean!" cried Miriam, unable to bear thestrain of the turn of events longer. "I knew there would beretribution--I knew--I knew--"
Mrs. Godwin was on her feet in a moment.
"Once my intuition was not wrong though all science and law was againstme," she pleaded with Kennedy. There was a gentleness in her tone thatfell like a soft rain on the surging passions of those who had wrongedher so shamefully. "Professor Kennedy, Miriam could not have forged--"
Kennedy smiled. "Science was not against you, Mrs. Godwin. Ignorancewas against you. And your intuition does not go contrary to sciencethis time, either."
It was a splendid exhibition of fine feeling which Kennedy waited tohave impressed on the Elmores, as though burning it into their minds.
"Miriam Elmore knew that her brothers had forged a will and hidden it.To expose them was to convict them of a crime. She kept their secret,which was the secret of all three. She even tried to hide thefinger-prints which would have branded her brothers.
"For ptomaine poisoning had unexpectedly hastened the end of old Mr.Godwin. Then gossip and the 'scientists' did the rest. It wasaccidental, but Bradford and Lambert Elmore were willing to let eventstake their course and declare genuine the forgery which they had madeso skilfully, even though it convicted an innocent man of murder andkilled his faithful wife. As soon as the courts can be set in motion tocorrect an error of science by the truth of later science, Sing Singwill lose one prisoner from the death house and gain two forgers in hisplace."
Mrs. Godwin stood before us, radiant. But as Kennedy's last words sankinto her mind, her face clouded.
"Must--must it be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?" shepleaded eagerly. "Must that grim prison take in others, even if myhusband goes free?"
Kennedy looked at her long and earnestly, as if to let the beauty ofher character, trained by its long suffering, impress itself on hismind indelibly.
He shook his head slowly.
"I'm afraid there is no other way, Mrs. Godwin," he said gently takingher arm and leaving the others to be dealt with by a constable whom hehad dozing in the hotel lobby.
"Kahn is going up to Albany to get the pardon--there can be no doubtabout it now," he added. "Mrs. Godwin, if you care to do so, you maystay here at the hotel, or you may go down with us on the midnighttrain as far as Ossining. I will wire ahead for a conveyance to meetyou at the station. Mr. Jameson and I must go on to New York."
"The nearer I am to Sanford now, the happier I shall be," she answered,bravely keeping back the tears of happiness.
The ride down to New York, after our train left Ossining, wasaccomplished in a day coach in which our fellow passengers slept inevery conceivable attitude of discomfort.
Yet late, or rather early, as it was, we found plenty of life still inthe great city that never sleeps. Tired, exhausted, I was at least gladto feel that finally we were at home.
"Craig," I yawned, as I began to throw off my clothes, "I'm ready tosleep a week."
There was no answer.
I looked up at him almost resentfully. He had picked up t
he mail thatlay under our letter slot and was going through it as eagerly as if theclock registered P.M. instead of A.M.
"Let me see," I mumbled sleepily, checking over my notes, "how manydays have we been at it?"
I turned the pages slowly, after the manner in which my mind wasworking.
"It was the twenty-sixth when you got that letter from Ossining," Icalculated, "and to-day makes the thirtieth. My heavens--is there stillanother day of it? Is there no rest for the wicked?"
Kennedy looked up and laughed.
He was pointing at the calendar on the desk before him.
"There are only thirty days in the month," he remarked slowly.
"Thank the Lord," I exclaimed. "I'm all in!"
He tipped his desk-chair back and bit the amber of his meerchaumcontemplatively.
"But to-day is the first," he drawled, turning the leaf on the calendarwith just a flicker of a smile.
THE END
The Dream Doctor Page 23