Detection by Gaslight (30 page)

“Sit down, Mr. Holderby!” he was saying, “and tell us precisely what happened on that raft.”

'Twas a dramatic story Benjamin Holderby told—a tragedy tale of the sea—a tale of starvation and thirst torture and madness, and ceaseless battling for life—of crime and greed and the power of money even in that awful moment when death seemed the portion of all. The tale began with the foundering of the steamship Neptune, Liverpool to Boston, ninety-one passengers and crew, some thirty-two years ago. In mid-ocean she was smashed to bits by a gale, and went down. Of those aboard only nine persons reached shore alive.

Holderby told the story simply:

“God knows how any of us went through that storm; it raged for days. There were ten of us on our raft when the ship settled, and by dusk of the second day there were only six—one woman, and one child, and four men. The waves would simply smash over us, and when we came to daylight again there was some one missing. There was little enough food and water aboard, anyway, so the people dropping off that way was really what saved—what saved two of us at the end. Peter Ordway was one, and I was the other.

“The first five days were bad enough—short rations, little or no water, no sleep, and all that; but what came after was hell! At the end of that fifth day there were only five of us—Ordway and me, the woman and child, and another man. I don't know whether I went to sleep or was just unconscious; anyway, when I came to there were only the three of us left. I asked Ordway where the woman and child was. He said they were washed off while I was asleep.

“‘And a good thing,' he says.

“‘Why?' I says.

“‘Too many mouths to feed,' he says. ‘And still too many.' He meant the other man. ‘I've been looking at the rations and the water,' he says. ‘There's enough to keep three people alive three days, but if there were only two people—me and you, for instance?' he says.

“‘You mean throw him off?' I says.

“‘You're a sailor,' says he. ‘If you go, we all go. But we may not be picked up for days. We may starve or die of thirst first. If there were only two of us, we'd have a better chance. I'm worth millions of dollars,' he says. ‘If you'll get rid of this other fellow, and we ever come out alive, I'll give you one million dollars!' I didn't say anything. ‘If there were only two of us,' says he, ‘we would increase our chances of being saved one-third. One million dollars!' says he. ‘One million dollars!'

“I expect I was mad with hunger and thirst and sleeplessness and exhaustion. Perhaps he was, too. I know that, regardless of the money he offered, his argument appealed to me. Peter Ordway was a coward; he didn't have the nerve; so an hour later I threw the man overboard, with Peter Ordway looking on.

“Days passed somehow—God knows—and when I came to I had been picked up by a sailing vessel. I was in an asylum for months. When I came out, I asked Ordway for money. He threatened to have me arrested for murder. I pestered him a lot, I guess, for a little later I found myself shanghaied, on the high seas. I didn't come back for thirty years or so. I had almost forgotten the thing until I happened to see Peter Ordway's name in a paper. Then I wrote the slips and mailed them to him. He knew what they meant, and set a detective after me. Then I began hating him all over again, worse than ever. Finally I thought I'd go to his house and make a holdup of it—one million dollars! I don't think I intended to kill him; I thought he'd give me money. I didn't know there was any one with him. I talked to him, and he shot me. I killed him.”

Fell a long silence. The Thinking Machine broke it:

“You entered the apartment with a skeleton key?”

“Yes.”

“And after the shot was fired, you started out, but dodged behind the curtain at the door when you heard Mr. Pingree and Mrs. Robinson coming in?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly Hatch understood why The Thinking Machine had asked him to ascertain if there were curtains at that door. It was quite possible that in the excitement Mr. Pingree and Mrs. Robinson would not have noticed that the man who killed Peter Ordway actually passed them in the doorway.

“I think,” said The Thinking Machine, “that that is all. You understand, Mr. Mallory, that this confession is to be presented to the governor immediately in order to save Walpole's life?” He turned to Holderby. “You don't want an innocent man to die for this crime?”

“Certainly not,” was the reply. “That's why I wrote to the governor. Walpole's story was true. I was in court, and heard it.” He glanced at Mallory curiously. “Now, if necessary, I'm willing to go to the chair.”

“It won't be necessary,” The Thinking Machine pointed out. “You didn't go to Peter Ordway's place to kill him—you went there for money you thought he owed you—he fired at you—you shot him. It's hardly self-defense, but it was not premeditated murder.”

Detective Mallory whistled. It was the only satisfactory vent for the tangled mental condition which had befallen him. Shortly he went off with Holderby to the governor's office; and an hour later Walpole, deeply astonished, walked out of the death cell—a free man.

Meanwhile, Hutchinson Hatch had some questionsn to ask of The Thinking Machine.

“Logic, logic, Mr. Hatch!” the scientist answered, in that perpetual tone of irritation. “As an experiment, we assumed the truth of Walpole's story. Very well. Peter Ordway was afraid of water. Connect that with the one word ‘raft' or ‘craft' in Walpole's statement of what the intruder had said. Connect that with his description of that man—‘ruddy, like a seaman.' Add them up, as you would a sum in arithmetic. You begin to get a glimmer of cause and effect, don't you? Peter Ordway was afraid of the water because of some tragedy there in which he had played a part. That was a tentative surmise. Walpole's description of the intruder said white hair and flowing white beard. It is a common failing of men who disguise themselves to go to the other extreme. I went to the other extreme in conjecturing Holderby's appearance—clean-shaven or else close-cropped beard and hair—dyed. Since no bullet mark was found in the building—remember, we are assuming Walpole's statement to be true—the man Ordway shot at carried the bullet away with him. Ergo, a seaman with a pistol wound. Seamen, as a rule, stop at the sailors' lodging houses. That's all.”

“But—but you knew Holderby's name—his age!” the reporter stammered.

“I learned them in my effort to account for Ordway's fear of water,” was the reply. “An old friend, John Page, whom I found through Doctor Anderson, informed me that he had seen some account in a newspaper thirty-two years before, at the time of the wreck of the
Neptune
, of Peter Ordway's rescue from a raft at sea. He and one other man were picked up. The old newspaper files in the libraries gave me Holderby's name as the other survivor, together with his age. You found Holderby. I wrote to him that I was about to put a yacht in commission, and he had been recommended to me—that is, Benjamin Goode had been recommended. He came in answer to the advertisement. You saw everything else that happened.

“And the so-called ‘one million dollar' slips?”

“Had no bearing on the case
until
Holderby wrote to the governor,” said The Thinking Machine. “In that note he confessed the killing; ergo I began to see that the ‘One million dollar' slips probably indicated some enormous reward Ordway had offered Holderby. Walpole's statement, too, covers this point. What happened on the raft at sea? I didn't know. I followed an instinct, and guessed.” The distinguished scientist arose. “And now,” he said, “begone about your business. I must go to work.”

Hatch started out, but turned at the door. “Why,” he asked, “were you so anxious to know if any windowpane in the Ordway house had been replaced or was broken?”

“Because,” the scientist didn't lift his head, “because a bullet might have smashed one, if it was not to be found in the woodwork. If it smashed one, our unknown Mr. X was not wounded.”

Upon his own statement, Benjamin Holderby was sentenced to ten years in prison; at the end of three months he was transferred to an asylum after an examination by alienists.

SHERLOCK HOLMES once remarked that at his agency “ghosts need not apply,” and in general it is true that the detective story requires a rational, material explanation of the mystery. Occasionally, however, writers have used the investigatory techniques of the detective to confirm the supernatural. Probably the first series of such occult detective stories was “Real Ghost Stories,” twelve tales by the mother-and-son team of Kate and Hesketh Prichard, published in
Pearson's Magazine
beginning in January 1898. Although the Prichards looked on the stories as pure fiction, the magazine claimed that they described genuine events investigated by “Flaxman Low—” the publisher explained, “under the thin disguise of which name many are sure to recognize one of the leading scientists of the day.” Each story included a photograph of the supposedly haunted house. The stories were collected the next year under the title
Ghosts.

Hesketh Prichard was also the author of
November Joe: The Detective of the Woods
(1913), stories set in the Canadian forests. With his mother, he wrote the once very popular series of rogue stories featuring Don Q, who in a movie starring Douglas Fairbanks was described as the “son of Zorro.”

 

 

The Story of Baelbrow

 

 

IT IS A MATTER for regret that so many of Mr. Flaxman Low's reminiscences should deal with the darker episodes of his career. Yet this is almost unavoidable, as the more purely scientific and less strongly marked cases would not, perhaps, contain the same elements of interest for the general public, however valuable and instructive they might be to the expert student. It was also been considered better to choose the completer cases, those that ended in something like satisfactory proof, rather than the many instances where the thread broke off abruptly amongst surmisings, which it was never possible to subject to convincing tests.

North of a low-lying strip of country on the East Anglian coast, the promontory of Bael Ness thrusts out a blunt nose into the sea. On the Ness, backed by pinewoods, stands a square, comfortable stone mansion, known to the countryside as Baelbrow. It has faced the east winds for close upon three hundred years, and during the whole period has been the home of the Swaffam family, who were never in any wise put out of conceit of their ancestral dwelling by the fact that it had always been haunted. Indeed, the Swaffams were proud of the Baelbrow Ghost, which enjoyed a wide notoriety, and no one dreamt of complaining of its behaviour until Professor Jungvort, of Nuremburg, laid information against it, and sent an urgent appeal for help to Mr. Flaxman Low.

The Professor, who was well acquainted with Mr. Low, detailed the circumstances of his tenancy of Baelbrow, and the unpleasant events that had followed thereupon.

It appeared that Mr. Swaffam, senior, who spent a large portion of his time abroad, had offered to lend his house to the Professor for the summer season. When the Jungvorts arrived at Baelbrow, they were charmed with the place. The prospect, though not very varied, was at least extensive, and the air exhilarating. Also the Professor's daughter enjoyed frequent visits from her betrothed—Harold Swaffam—and the Professor was delightfully employed in overhauling the Swaffam library.

The Jungvorts had been duly told of the ghost, which lent distinction to the old house, but never in any way interfered with the comfort of the inmates. For some time they found this description to be strictly true, but with the beginning of October came a change. Up to this time and as far back as the Swaffam annals reached, the ghost had been a shadow, a rustle, a passing sigh—nothing definite or troublesome. But early in October strange things began to occur, and the terror culminated when a housemaid was found dead in a corridor three weeks later. Upon this the Professor felt that it was time to send for Flaxman Low.

Mr. Low arrived upon a chilly evening when the house was already beginning to blur in the purple twilight, and the resinous scent of the pine came sweetly on the land breeze. Jungvort welcomed him in the spacious, firelit hall. He was a stout German with a quantity of white hair, round eyes emphasised by spectacles, and a kindly, dreamy face. His life-study was philology, and his two relaxations chess and the smoking of a big Bismarck-bowled meerschaum.

“Now, Professor,” said Mr. Low when they had settled themselves in the smoking-room, “how did it all begin?”

“I will tell you,” replied Jungvort, thrusting out his chin, and tapping his broad chest, and speaking as if an unwarrantable liberty had been taken with him. “First of all, it has shown itself to me!”

Mr. Flaxman Low smiled and assured him that nothing could be more satisfactory.

“But not at all satisfactory!” exclaimed the Professor. “I was sitting here alone, it might have been midnight—when I hear something come creeping like a little dog with its nails, tick-tick, upon the oak flooring of the hall. I whistle, for I think it is the little ‘Rags' of my daughter, and afterwards opened the door, and I saw”—he hesitated and looked hard at Low through his spectacles, “something that was just disappearing into the passage which connects the two wings of the house. It was a figure, not unlike the human figure, but narrow and straight. I fancied I saw a bunch of black hair, and a flutter of something detached, which may have been a handkerchief. I was overcome by a feeling of repulsion. I heard a few, clicking steps, then it stopped, as I thought, at the museum door. Come, I will show you the spot.”

The Professor conducted Mr. Low into the hall. The main staircase, dark and massive, yawned above them, and directly behind it ran the passage referred to by the Professor. It was over twenty feet long, and about midway led past a deep arch containing a door reached by two steps. Jungvort explained that this door formed the entrance to a large room called the Museum, in which Mr. Swaffam, senior, who was something of a dilettante, stored the various curios he picked up during his excursions abroad. The Professor went on to say that he imme- . diately followed the figure, which he believed had gone into the museum, but he found nothing there except the cases containing Swaffam's treasures.

“I mentioned my experience to no one. I concluded that I had seen the ghost. But two days after, one of the female servants coming through the passage in the dark, declared that a man leapt out at her from the embrasure of the Museum door, but she released herself and ran screaming into the servants' hall. We at once made a search but found nothing to substantiate her story.

“I took no notice of this, though it coincided pretty well with my own experience. The week after, my daughter Lena came down late one night for a book. As she was about to cross the hall, something leapt upon her from behind. Women are of little use in serious investigations—she fainted! Since then she has been ill and the doctor says ‘Run down.'” Here the Professor spread out his hands. “So she leaves for a change to-morrow. Since then other members of the household have been attacked in much the same manner, with always the same result, they faint and are weak and useless when they recover.

“But, last Wednesday, the affair became a tragedy. By that time the servants had refused to come through the passage except in a crowd of three or four,—most of them preferring to go round by the terrace to reach this part of the house. But one maid, named Eliza Freeman, said she was not afraid of the Baelbrow Ghost, and undertook to put out the lights in the hall one night. When she had done so, and was returning through the passage past the Museum door, she appears to have been attacked, or at any rate frightened. In the grey of the morning they found her lying beside the steps dead. There was a little blood upon her sleeve but no mark upon her body except a small raised pustule under the ear. The doctor said the girl was extraordinarily anaemic, and that she probably died from fright, her heart being weak. I was surprised at this, for she had always seemed to be a particularly strong and active young woman.”

“Can I see Miss Jungvort to-morrow before she goes?” asked Low, as the Professor signified he had nothing more to tell.

The Professor was rather unwilling that his daughter should be questioned, but he at last gave his permission, and next morning Low had a short talk with the girl before she left the house. He found her a very pretty girl, though listless and startlingly pale, and with a frightened stare in her light brown eyes. Mr. Low asked if she could describe her assailant.

“No,” she answered, “I could not see him, for he was behind me. I only saw a dark, bony hand, with shining nails, and a bandaged arm pass just under my eyes before I fainted.”

“Bandaged arm? I have heard nothing of this.”

“Tut—tut, mere fancy!” put in the Professor impatiently.

“I saw the bandages on the arm,” repeated the girl, turning her head wearily away, “and I smelt the antiseptics it was dressed with.”

“You have hurt your neck,” remarked Mr. Low, who noticed a small circular patch of pink under her ear.

She flushed and paled, raising her hand to her neck with a nervous jerk, as she said in a low voice:

“It has almost killed me. Before he touched me, I knew he was there! I felt it!”

When they left her the Professor apologised for the unreliability of her evidence, and pointed out the discrepancy between her statement and his own.

“She says she sees nothing but an arm, yet I tell you it had no arms! Preposterous! Conceive a wounded man entering this house to frighten the young women! I do not know what to make of it! Is it a man, or is it the Baelbrow Ghost?”

During the afternoon when Mr. Low and the Professor returned from a stroll on the shore, they found a dark-browed young man with a bull neck, and strongly marked features, standing sullenly before the hall fire. The Professor presented him to Mr. Low as Harold Swaffam. ,

Swaffam seemed to be about thirty, but was already known as a farseeing and successful member of the Stock Exchange.

“I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Low,” he began, with a keen glance, “though you don't look sufficiently high-strung for one of your profession.”

Mr. Low merely bowed.

“Come, you don't defend your craft against my insinuations?” went on Swaffam. “And so you have come to rout out our poor old ghost from Baelbrow? You forget that he is an heirloom, a family possession! What's this about his having turned rabid, eh, Professor?” he ended, wheeling round upon Jungvort in his brusque way.

The Professor told the story over again. It was plain that he stood rather in awe of his prospective son-in-law.

“I heard much the same from Lena, whom I met at the station,” said Swaffam. “It is my opinion that the women in this house are suffering from an epidemic of hysteria. You agree with me, Mr. Low?”

“Possibly. Though hysteria could hardly account for Freeman's death.”

“I can't say as to that until I have looked further into the particulars. I have not been idle since I arrived. I have examined the Museum. No one has entered it from the outside, and there is no other way of entrance except through the passage. The flooring is laid, I happen to know, on a thick layer of concrete. And there the case for the ghost stands at present.” After a few moments of dogged reflection, he swung round on Mr. Low, in a manner that seemed peculiar to him when about to address any person. “What do you say to this plan, Mr. Low? I propose to drive the Professor over to Ferryvale, to stop there for a day or two at the hotel, and I will also dispose of the servants who still remain in the house for, say, forty-eight hours. Meanwhile you and I can try to go further into the secret of the ghost's new pranks?”

Flaxman Low replied that this scheme exactly met his views, but the Professor protested against being sent away. Harold Swaffam however was a man who liked to arrange things in his own fashion, and within forty-five minutes he and Jungvort departed in the dogcart.

The evening was lowering, and Baelbrow, like all houses built in exposed situations, was extremely susceptible to the changes of the weather. Therefore, before many hours were over, the place was full of creaking noises as the screaming gale battered at the shuttered windows, and the tree-branches tapped and groaned against the walls.

Harold Swaffam, on his way back, was caught in the storm and drenched to the skin. It was, therefore, settled that after he had changed his clothes he should have a couple of hours' rest on the smoking-room sofa, while Mr. Low kept watch in the hall.

The early part of the night passed over uneventfully. A light burned faintly in the great wainscotted hall, but the passage was dark. There was nothing to be heard but the wild moan and whistle of the wind coming in from the sea, and the squalls of rain dashing against the windows. As the hours advanced, Mr. Low lit a lantern that lay at hand, and, carrying it along the passage, tried the Museum door. It yielded, and the wind came muttering through to meet him. He looked round at the shutters and behind the big cases which held Mr. Swaffam's treasures, to make sure that the room contained no living occupant but himself.

Suddenly he fancied he heard a scraping noise behind him, and turned round, but discovered nothing to account for it. Finally, he laid the lantern on a bench so that its light should fall through the door into the passage, and returned again to the hall, where he put out the lamp, and then once more took up his station by the closed door of the smoking-room.

A long hour passed, during which the wind continued to roar down the wide hall chimney, and the old boards creaked as if furtive footsteps were gathering from every corner of the house. But Flaxman Low heeded none of these; he was waiting for a certain sound.

After a while, he heard it—the cautious scraping of wood on wood. He leant forward to watch the Museum door. Click, click, came the curious dog-like tread upon the tiled floor of the Museum, till the thing, whatever it was, paused and listened behind the open door. The wind lulled at the moment, and Low listened also, but no further sound was to be heard, only slowly across the broad ray of light falling through the door grew a stealthy shadow.