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THE WHISPERING MAN











The
WHISPERING MAN
BY
HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER
author of "the banker and the bear," .' roger
drake"; joint author of "the short
line war," "calumet * k,'" etc.

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1908


Copyright, 1908, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1908, by
THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY
Published September, 1908


<
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.—Not in the Papers
II.—Madeline
III. —The Theory of the Police
IV. —Carlton Stancliffe
V.—A Question of Minutes
VI.—Dr. Armstrong Testifies
VII.—The Balance of Probability
VIII.—What Jack Marshall Knew
IX.—The Last Patient
X.—Mr. Stancliffe's Trap .
XI.—Ten Minutes Left .
XII.—An Impossible Certainty
XIII. —Jeffrey Smokes a Pipe .
XIV. —And Tries an Experiment
XV.—Mr. Stancliffe Bids Us Good Evening
XVI.—Jeffrey Explains .
XVII.—The Story is Told
i
18
37
53
72
89
102
118
133
160
182
208
237
261
275
297
316





THE WHISPERING MAN
CHAPTER I
NOT IN THE PAPERS
IT is strange that we should have been talk-
ing about Dr. Marshall that very night, I
and my new friend and neighbor, across our
little table in the restaurant. Talking about him
we were, and at considerable length, too, before
I bought the paper that had the news of his
death in it. But, after all, it had come about
naturally enough.
Jeffrey and I had made friends, I think, for
the simple reason that we were about as unlike
as any two moderately intelligent and successful
young men could be. Well, there is no use
stretching my own modesty to cover Jeffrey's
position, too. He at least was more than mod-
erately successful in his vocation, which was that
of a painter. As to intelligence, it was a discus-
I


THE WHISPERING MAN
sion of that very subject which had led to the
introduction of Dr. Marshall's name.
Arthur Jeffrey was an illustrious monument
to the deceitfulness of appearances. He looked
like a rising young stock broker. Except among
people whom he could really call his friends, he
made no impression, and aimed to make none,
except that of a brisk, alert, well-mannered, per-
fectly dressed young man, whose habitat for
seven hours of the day was, no doubt, somewhere
below Chambers Street. I think it would have
been hard to induce the desk clerk at the fash-
ionable apartment building off Madison Square,
where we both lived, to believe that Jeffrey,
when he emerged from the elevator so promptly
at half past eight every morning, went uptown,
instead of down, to a big barnlike studio, where
he painted pictures whose queerness and daring
were making him the talk of New York.
But, if he was all commonplace on the out-
side, he was pure genius within. I have never
known a man who so deliberately and conscious-
ly abandoned the faculties of logic and reason,


NOT IN THE PAPERS
which he nevertheless possessed in a high de-
gree, in favor of the more hazardous flight of
fancy.
I suppose it was because he discovered no
streak at all of genius in me that he took a
fancy to me. What reputation I may have at-
tained for myself as a lawyer and as the author
of a large calf-bound text-book on evidence,
has come to me through the exercise of the very
faculty, to which my friend was fond of allud-
ing in terms of such contempt, the faculty of
thinking straight and consecutively.
It seems he had heard, possibly from myself,
though I am inclined to doubt it, of this text-
book of mine on evidence, and some unaccount-
able freak had induced him to buy and read it.
During the hour we had sat there over our
dinner, he had amused himself and me by at-
tacking, with a wealth of audacious paradox,
one after another of the principles of evidence
which my book contained. They were not, for
the most part, principles which I had formu-
lated myself; many of them were as old as the
3


THE WHISPERING MAN
common law, but the most venerable of them all
was none the safer, on that account, from my
friend's attack.
"What does the best evidence in the world
amount to, anyway, when it comes to that? " he
concluded. "It's utterly meaningless, except
when it's tied on behind some theory, like the
tail on a kite. As for expert testimony, there's
only one kind of true expert, and he is just an
inspired guesser, no more, no less."
"Come," said I, "take, for instance, Dr.
Roscoe Marshall, who is, perhaps, the leading
alienist in the United States. He has probably
taken the stand as an expert in more insanity
cases than any other man. Well, go and buy
his book and read it—his book on mental and
nervous diseases. You'll find it more interesting
than mine. And see how much guesswork you
think there is about that— Why, what's the
matter with you? What are you chuckling
about?" For my friend sat there, enjoying a
silent laugh all to himself, as if what I had just
said had been something exquisitely amusing.
4


NOT IN THE PAPERS
"Drew," he said at last, "never argue with
a man who always has the luck on his side. You
are delivered straight into my hands by your own
illustration."
"I don't see how," said I.
"No, but you will. Listen. I painted a por-
trait of Mrs. Marshall this spring. She's a
great beauty, by the way. She must be at least
twenty-five years younger than her husband.
Did you ever see her?"
"Yes," said I. "I know her rather well.
She's his second wife."
"Well, that has nothing to do with the point.
Marshall liked the picture a lot, so much that
he offered to pay me more than the price I had
agreed to paint it for. Of course I wouldn't
take that, but I asked him a favor instead. I
wanted some casts made of his hands. He has
the finest hands I ever saw. He finally assented,
and I've got them up at the studio now. I'll
show them to you some time. Well, that has
nothing to do with the point, either. The
advantage of not pretending to be logical is,
5


THE WHISPERING MAN
that you can wander around as much as you
like. .
"Anyway, that's how it happens that I was
talking to this famous expert of yours only this
morning.
"I had happened to tell him once that I be-
lieved that I always knew a criminal when I saw
one, without knowing how or why—by just
looking at him. He didn't scout that theory as
you would if I were to give you the chance. He
said he could recognize an insane man in the
same way. He said that only the other day a
man came into his office to consult him about
some little nervous affection he had. The man's
manner was quiet, composed, to the normal eye
perfectly normal, but he knew, just by looking
at him, that the man was mad—mad as a March
hare. In a year, or less, he was willing to stake
his professional reputation, that man would
turn into an out-and-out lunatic. The queer
part of it was, he said, this patient was a doctor
himself, and he, obviously, never dreamed of
his condition."
6


NOT IN THE PAPERS
"That's a rather grisly idea," I commented.
"But what's that you say about yourself: that
you can spot a criminal in the same way, just
by looking at him?"
"Oh, I shan't attempt to make you believe
it," said Jeffrey easily; " yet, if it weren't against
my principles, I could offer some evidence to
prove it."
"Waive the principles without prejudice,"
said I, " and give me an instance."
"Did you know that I was once a newspaper
artist? " he asked me. "Of course I came out
strong at murder trials and such places, where
the staff photographers couldn't get in. In that
famous Marshbank's trial—do you remember
it?—I attended every session of court, and I
knew who the real criminal was from the first
moment. If I had been the judge, instead of
bothering to select a jury composed of the twelve
stupidest men in the city, I should simply have
pointed out the respectable gentleman, who was
the star witness for the State, and said, 'Take
him out and electrocute him,' and that would
7


THE WHISPERING MAN
have been the end of it. It wouldn't have taken
ten minutes. It came to the same thing in the
end, but it took two years to do it, and wrecked
an innocent man's life in the bargain."
"And you believed all the while," I repeated
incredulously, "that McWilliams was the
man?"
"Not believed; knew. Oh, I don't know
how. That's the whole point. That's what I've
been preaching all the evening. The only cer-
tain knowledge is the inspired guess."
There wasn't much room for argument with
a man who took that position, and I was glad
when the arrival of a small newsboy crying the
eight o'clock extras in the street outside afforded
an opportunity to change the subject. It was a
warm evening, toward the latter part of May,
and the doors were open, so I called him in.
"We'll get down to something important," I
explained as I did so. "We'll see how the base-
ball game's come out."
But the black headlines that caught my eye
had nothing to do with our great national game.
8


NOT IN THE PAPERS
I was conscious, while I stared at them, of a
queer sensation, that might almost be called a
presentiment.
"That's rather curious, considering," said I,
handing the paper over to him.
For the item of news I had read there, which
tried to make up by the size and blackness of its
type for the meagerness of detail which it af-
forded, was that Dr. Roscoe Marshall, the
famous alienist and specialist in nervous dis-
eases, had been found dead in his office chair at
half past twelve o'clock that afternoon.
We made some pretense at reading the rest
of the news, and talking about indifferent sub-
jects, but neither my mind nor his succeeded in
getting very far away from the main theme.
Finally, after a little silence, I remarked:
"There is this to be said of him, he was abso-
lutely on the square. Nobody in the world had
money enough to get him to cut an opinion to fit
the brief. There are precious few experts who
won't do that. The State Attorney's office will
miss him."
9


THE WHISPERING MAN
"Well," said Jeffrey, "I am glad I've got
those casts of his hands. They are both dis-
tinguished, the right and the left one. I never
saw such a pair."
It occurred then to both of us, I think, that
we were treating the memory of an illustrious
citizen rather inadequately.
"Of course," said Jeffrey, "I knew him
very little. You knew him rather well, didn't
you?"
"On the contrary, not well at all. I know
her—knew her, I should say, as I've hardly seen
her since she married him. I knew her—rather
well."
"In other words," said Jeffrey, "you were
once in love with her. Well, that's natural
enough."
It was natural enough. I think that all the
men who ever enjoyed the privilege of knowing
Madeline Cartwright well were more or less in
love with her, and I had been no exception to
the rule. The rule which I was an exception to
was that the men who fell in love with her gen-
10


NOT IN THE PAPERS
erally got over it when they found that their
feelings toward her were not reciprocated.
I was in the habit of assuring myself, with a
good deal more confidence than I actually felt,
that I had got over it, too; but I had never gone
so far as to be able to imagine for one moment
that I was in love with anybody else. At all
events, I had made small progress toward carry-
ing out her injunctions of a half a dozen years
ago, that I go away and forget about her. She
had said it in perfectly good faith, but she had
said other things on that memorable night that
would have made forgetting impossible to any
but a man of brass.
"We don't miss it by so very much, Cliff,"
she had said. "I have hoped to come to feel
toward you the way you feel toward me. I'd
like to if I could, and I have—well, kept you
along in the hope that I might; but it's no
use. We don't miss by so very much, but we
do miss somehow. Some day a man may ask
me whom there is no question about. I don't
know whether there is such a man in the world
2 II


THE WHISPERING MAN
or not, but if there isn't, I shall never marry,
Cliff."
Well, I wish to Heaven she had kept to that
resolution. After that I had pretended to her,
and to myself as well, that my feeling toward
her had cooled down into the comfortable sort
of affectionate regard which she felt for me. I
think my pretense deceived her, though it never
was very successful in deceiving myself.
It was about two years ago now that she had
confided to me that she thought of marrying Dr.
Marshall, and had asked me what I thought of
him. Of course I had not committed myself on
a dangerous subject like that, but she had no
difficulty in seeing, I imagine, that I regarded it
as a mistake. So it was altogether natural that,
when she went ahead and did it anyway, our re-
lation should have lapsed. Of course I said
nothing of all.this to Jeffrey, but I did not deny
the validity of the guess he had hazarded.
"I would like to know what you thought of
him," said I, "or, rather, what you thought of
them together."
12


NOT IN THE PAPERS
He was ready enough to talk, at all events.
"Take it altogether, I think she's in luck. They
were a queerly matched couple. Oh, disparity
of years had nothing to do with it. They fas-
cinated each other about equally, but while he
was really in love with her—as well as he knew
how to be, and no man could be with her every
day and not be that—I think that in the core of
her heart she hated him."
"Hated! " I cried in protest. "Come, draw
it mild."
"Not a bit of it," he resumed. "Marshall
was a queer mixture."
"He was a cold sort of fish," I admitted.
"But not like the other cold fishes. Most
people are cold just because they can't under-
stand. Understanding, sympathetic people are
nearly always warm-hearted. If you can really
stand in another man's shoes and see how the
world looks to him, it generally makes you like
him. But it didn't have that effect on the doc-
tor. He saw through everybody; knew why they
laughed at this and cried at that; knew how the
13


THE WHISPERING MAN
world must look to them, but that knowledge
never warmed him up a bit. Human souls were
just so many specimens to him, possessed of more
or less scientific interest. His wife's was the
most interesting one of his collection, but that's
all it came to. Why, of course she hated him."
Somewhere along in this conversation we had
left the restaurant and started strolling across
the square toward The Atlas, where our apart-
ments were. Its brilliantly lighted entrance was
now in plain view. In the full light of one of
the great ornamental outside lamps we could see
two persons in apparently earnest conversation.
One was the hall boy. You could tell him even
at this distance by the glitter of his cut-steel but-
tons. The other figure looked familiar, too,
though I probably should not have recognized
it had it not been for the present theme of our
conversation.
I quickened my pace a little. "Do you
know," said I to my companion, "I believe
that's his son there now."
"Marshall's? What's he doing here?"
H


NOT IN THE PAPERS
"I can't imagine, unless he's come to see me.
He's been attending a course of evening lectures
I give at the law school, and I've come to know
him pretty well in the course of the last few
months. He'll take this hard, I suspect; harder
than anybody else. Come, they'll have told him
I'm not there, and I'm afraid he won't wait.
Do you mind hurrying a little?" But the fig-
ure had disappeared in the dark before we had
come near enough to attract his attention.
"Too bad you wasn't a minute sooner, sir,"
said the hall boy, as we came up. "There was
a gentleman here, very anxious to see you. Ah
—there he comes back now."
I wheeled around, to confront a white-faced
young man, with wildly haggard eyes,
"Mr. Drew!" he cried; "I've found you
at last!"
I grasped his hand and his shoulder at the
same time, to steady him. "You needn't tell
me," said I; "I've seen the papers. Do you
want me? I'll do anything I can, of course."
"Yes," he said; " Mrs. Marshall does, and I
15


THE WHISPERING MAN
do, too. She suggested sending for you. I've
an electric cab here waiting. Can you come at
once?"
"In two minutes," said I.
I turned to make my excuses to Jeffrey, but
found him listening in his turn to the conversa-
tion of the hall boy:
"There's a gentleman waiting for you in the
reception room, sir; he's been here some time;
says you expected him."
"Send him up to my apartments," said Jef-
frey; " I know who he is." And without turn-
ing in our direction, he walked straight to the
elevator.
Young Marshall and I made no attempt to
talk until we were rolling along uptown in the
late physician's electric brougham. The relation
between Marshall and me was hardly that of
pupil and professor. That is a relation I like to
avoid, and in this young man's case I had suc-
ceeded. We were almost like older and younger
brother.
I laid my hand on his shoulder. "I know
16


NOT IN THE PAPERS
there is nothing I can say that will make it any
easier"
He gave a sort of dry sob at that, and my grip
on his shoulder tightened. He was shuddering
all over. The impression I got was one of hor-
ror rather than of grief, somehow.
"You don't know," he said, when he had
commanded his voice. "It isn't in the papers;
not the worst of it." And then he turned and
looked me full in the face, and the wildness of
his eyes startled me. "It isn't in the papers
yet," he repeated, "but it will be—I think—oh,
more than that—I know. My father was mur-
dered!"


CHAPTER II
MADELINE
LL I could do at first was to repeat the
X A. word after him, in an accent of horror as
profound as his own, " Murder!"
He sank back limply against the luxurious
leather cushions, and turned his face away.
"Yes," he whispered.
My mind, which had simply stopped running
at the shock of the word, swiftly recovered it-
self and went to work again. "But how?" I
asked. "What was the weapon, and who could
have been the murderer? Who in the world
had a motive for wanting to murder him?"
"There was no weapon," he said.
"No weapon? Then how was the murder
committed?"
"I don't know." His voice was quite life-
less. Evidently it was with the greatest diffi-


MADELINE
culty that he forced himself to talk at all. But
I wanted to know more than he had told me,
as I did not care to face Madeline until I did.
"If there was no weapon," said I, " and you
don't know"
"Oh," he interrupted, with a trace of im-
patience; "I don't know, really. Dr. Arm-
strong, when he first saw him sitting there over
his desk, thought it was heart failure. But it
wasn't that. Even I could see it wasn't that
from the look in the eyes. There was the wild-
est, most horrible glare. And then they called
down Adams, whose office is on the floor above,
and he disposed of the heart-failure theory at a
glance."
"What did he say it was? " I asked.
It seemed as if the young man beside me
would never be able to frame the single word
needed to answer my question. He struggled
with it, but for a long time it would not come.
When it did, it was only in a whisper. The
word was " poison."
Now, the idea of sudden death by poisoning
19


THE WHISPERING MAN
has a peculiar atrocity about it such as no other
death-dealing device contains, for poison as a
means of murder spells treachery in burning let-
ters that even a child could read. It is a means
of murder no avowed enemy can use. A man
may be stabbed or shot in a heat of passion, or
even in self-defense, and by an enemy who has
taken a brave man's chance of meeting the same
fate himself in place of his intended victim. But
poison can only be administered by a false
friend. So I did not wonder that the word was
a long time coming from my young friend's lips.
Presently, however, I thought of something;
hesitated a while whether to speak of it or not,
but finally decided in the affirmative. "I sup-
pose," said I, "that it's an idea that would be
hard for you to entertain, but if he died by
poison, isn't it altogether probable that he ad-
ministered it himself? To speak plainly, don't
you think that he committed suicide?"
"Hard for me?" he echoed, with a half-
hysterical laugh. "Good God! if I only could
believe it! But it's perfectly impossible. My
20


MADELINE
father was one of the happiest as well as one of
the sanest of men. His nervous balance was
never disturbed, and had, indeed, very little to
disturb it. His whole life was an open book,
and there's nothing in it we don't know. He
was rich; he was famous; he was altogether hap-
py in his work. He was looking forward with
special interest to some cases that were coming
up within the next two or three days."
"Did you see him this morning?" I asked.
"At breakfast, yes, as usual," he answered.
"And was there anything unusual or abnor-
mal about his manner?"
He hesitated an appreciable space of time be-
fore he answered. "Nothing abnormal—no!"
I noticed by the slight, unconscious emphasis
that he put on the word that he avoided deny-
ing that there was anything unusual. But he
was obviously in no condition to be catechised,
so I let that point go.
"He went to his office at his usual time? " I
asked.
"Yes," said he, "and found the reception
21


THE WHISPERING MAN
room full of patients waiting for him, just as he
always did. He saw them in rotation up to half
past eleven. At half past twelve they found him
—dead."
"Then," said I, "the patient who went into
his office at half past eleven was the last person
known to have seen him alive?" But before
the question had fairly passed my lips, I realized
that it was little better than wanton cruelty to
ply him with questions and compel him to make
answers in his present condition.
He made no attempt to answer this last ques-
tion at all, but buried his face in his hands and
let the shuddering sobs, that all along had been
threatening his voice, have uncontrolled sway.
He made a brave effort to regain his self-con-
trol, and presently succeeded far enough to be
able to stammer out an apology to me for the
exhibition he had been making of himself. Be-
fore our swiftly moving vehicle had reached his
father's door, he seemed to be somewhere near
himself again.
The house was an ordinary four-story brown-
22


MADELINE
stone affair, furnished with exquisite taste, and
in no way suggesting the profession of the man
who had owned it. Dr. Marshall's offices were
a good deal farther downtown, in the Grosvenor
Building, and, to a far greater extent than most
physicians find it practicable to do, he had made
a practice of locking his work up inside his office
every night.
There was a large living room, half library,
half den, in the rear of the second story, and it
was hither that young Marshall led me. Two
or three young men, whom I took to be report-
ers, were waiting in the front drawing-room, and
their curious glances were fixed on me as I passed
the door on my way up the stairs.
The upper hallway was dark, so I could
not see who it was who addressed my guide
from the head of the stairs, but I did not
need to see; I should have known that voice
anywhere.
"Did you find him, Jack? " she asked. But
she did not wait for his answer, for the next
moment she caught sight of me.
23


THE WHISPERING MAN
"It was good of you to come, Clifford
Drew," she said. That was an old character-
istic of hers I well remembered, calling me by
both names, and she offered me both hands when
I had gained the last of the stairs and stood be-
side her. "I thought you would not fail us,"
she added. "Come in."
She led the way into the dimly lighted library,
her stepson standing aside to let me go in first.
She did not seat herself until she had crossed
over to the wall switch and flooded the room
with light. That action was characteristic,
too, and, in a way, symbolic. She had never
courted twilights or concealments. If she
had anything to conceal now, the thing it
would hide behind would be a mask of abso-
lute candor.
I was glad to have a good look at her now,
after those two years. She was all my memory
had painted her; just as beautiful as ever—
more, I think I may say, for her beauty had
only come to its full, matured perfection. She
was a large woman; magnificent, calm, stately.
24


MADELINE
Her head was crowned with a glory of chestnut-
brown hair, shot through with metallic lights,
and her eyes matched it. They were brown, but
quite without that velvety dullness which de-
tracts from the beauty of so many pairs of brown
eyes. Hers were extraordinarily bright and sin-
gularly expressive. The impression of intensity
that one got from her came, I think, almost ex-
clusively from her eyes.
Her manner certainly was repose itself. She
was still dressed in the simple lavender-colored
house frock she had on when they brought her
the news of the tragedy. It would have been
hard to imagine a manner more exactly opposite
to that her stepson had exhibited, than hers was
when I stood looking at her across the library.
Her eyes showed no trace of tears, nor were
they stony, fixed, paralyzed with grief or horror,
as many tearless eyes are. Her hand, as she
withdrew it from the wall switch, was as steady
—I had started to say as mine; it was a good
deal steadier.
But for just one instant I saw a look of ap-
25


THE WHISPERING MAN
prehension come across her face. That was
when she glanced toward the doorway, where
her stepson was still standing.
"I suppose you know the story," she began.
"Jack has told you, hasn't he?"
"I couldn't tell him much," said he, from his
position in the doorway. He seemed not to
mean to enter the room, but her attitude in-
vited him. "I tried to tell him, but I gave
it up."
"Well, don't worry any more, Jack," she
said. "There's nothing you have to do now.
Can't you read, or do something to get a little
quiet, and then go to bed? Clifford will attend
to everything."
"Exactly," said I; " that's what I'm here for.
I'll see everybody who is to be seen, and answer
questions as well as I can."
Of course I meant what I said, but I was a
little surprised and rather unpleasantly affected
by the eagerness with which the young man ac-
cepted my offer. He muttered a barely audible
"Thank you," turned, and went straight up the
26


MADELINE
stairs to the floor above, where his own room
was. A moment later I heard his door close
behind him with a bang.
"Of course," said I, "it must be a fearful
blow to him." She made no answer, but then
my comment called for none. "And, after all,"
I continued, "I think he has told me nearly
everything. He said that Dr. Marshall went to
his office this morning, as usual, and saw an un-
broken succession of patients, until within an
hour of the time they found him dead. There
are only two or three other questions that I
should have asked him had he been in condition
to give me all the information I wanted. One
is, who was the last person known to have seen
him alive? The patient who went in, I believe,
at half past eleven?"
"I don't know much about her," said Made-
line. "She called up the house on the telephone
only about an hour ago, having just learned that
Dr. Marshall was dead. She said she would be
glad to tell us anything she could about him.
She is a Miss Gwendolen Carr. She gave me
3 27


MADELINE
year. He was right in the adjoining room all
the while."
I looked at her in wonder, for she stated this
momentous fact quite as if she saw no excep-
tional significance in it. Yet if murder had been
done, as my young friend believed, and murder
by poison, who could more easily have accom-
plished this fiendish act than the trusted young
assistant with an office in the next room? Could
he have any motive for such an act? I would
make further inquiry about him presently.
For the moment, however, the alternate the-
ory, suicide, presented itself very strongly to my
mind. I asked Madeline the same thing I had
asked of Jack in the cab, "Did you see any-
thing unusual or abnormal about him this morn-
ing at breakfast?" But this time I got an an-
swer; it was unequivocal.
"Nothing abnormal, but unusual, yes, de-
cidedly."
"Jack hinted as much to me," said I, "but
seemed not to want to talk about it. Do you
mind if I ask you more particularly?"
29


THE WHISPERING MAN'
"Jack hinted at it? " she repeated. "How
could he have known anything about it? Why,
no, I don't mind telling. He and I—Dr. Mar-
shall, I mean, and I—had been having a some-
what sharp difference of opinion for a day or
two past, and it came rather to a climax this
morning."
"Was your quarrel serious enough," I asked,
feeling my way with a good deal of hesitation
—" serious enough to have afforded a possible
motive for—" I hesitated over the word, but
she manifested no such squeamishness:
"Suicide?"
"Yes."
"No," she answered quietly, "not by any
possibility. I don't think it would have
amounted to anything that could have been
called a quarrel, if he hadn't been tortured with
indigestion at the time. I didn't know that till
I saw on my dressing table the capsules he al-
ways takes. Anyway, if it had been my own
quarrel I shouldn't have pressed matters. As
it was, I had to, for I was trying to dissuade
30


MADELINE
him from doing a great wrong to some one
else."
I could not help it. It was not a suspicion of
her; it was a wholly involuntary perception that
the story she was telling me was forming itself
into a pattern.
I couldn't get my own voice to come very
clearly when I asked her the question that was
on my tongue. "Who was it," I asked,
"against whom he meditated this wrong? If
there has been murder, there must have been
a motive for it."
She paled a little, but she answered the ques-
tion steadily: " It was Dr. Armstrong."
Do you know what I thought of then? I
wished my friend Jeffrey might have had the
opportunity for the long, straight look she al-
lowed me right into her brown eyes. Was it a
face of the most courageous innocence, or of
the most cynical guilt? Would Jeffrey know, I
wondered. Evidently she saw that I did not,
for as she read what was in my face, I saw come
into hers the same expression of quick apprehen-
31


THE WHISPERING MAN
sion I had seen there when she was looking at
her stepson. But she came a little closer to me,
and held out her hands with a quick, appealing
gesture.
"Cliff, do I have to pretend with you? Can't
I let my looks and my inflections, and all the
ghastly perverse inferences that could be drawn
from the things I have been telling you take
care of themselves? Does it matter to you that
I haven't been crying, or do you think that I
ought to have pretended not to be able to talk
about it calmly, even if I was?"
"No," said I. "I am glad you are not pre-
tending at any rate."
"I didn't poison my husband," she said
quietly, "and I don't believe Dr. Armstrong
did. You were right, dreadfully right, when
you advised me not to marry him. I never was
in love with him; I often hated him, or thought
I did. But I shall miss him dreadfully. Can't
you understand that? And yet I am not alto-
gether sorry that he died to-day. He's had a
good life, a full life. It has brought him every-
32


MADELINE
thing he wanted—wealth and fame, and all the
rest of it. In going out now, he's prevented
from doing a man a serious wrong, a young
man for whom life otherwise seemed to have
as much in store as it had for him. I had tried
to get him not to do it. I urged him to show
a little plain, unmixed, undeserved mercy, but
he wouldn't listen. That quality wasn't in him.
He had done once before, years and years ago,
before I knew him, the very thing I was trying
to prevent. He had pushed a brilliant young
man off the edge of things; a young man who
only needed a steady touch of the shoulder to
set him right. Instead of that, he was sent slip-
ping down, down, down, quite off the curve of
the world—our world, and in what miserable
slough he perished, I don't know. I ventured
to remind Dr. Marshall of that young man this
morning. That was why he went away in
anger."
After she finished speaking, she made a list-
less gesture with her hands, as if it didn't much
matter after all, and went back to her seat.
33


THE WHISPERING MAN
"But, as you perceive," she continued, a hard,
lifeless tone of satire in her voice—" as you per-
ceive, the pattern is quite complete. Walter
Armstrong has been making love to me—I am
just telling you how it looks—and the doctor
, and I have quarreled about him; and the doc-
tor went down to his office and died of poison,
with Dr. Armstrong in the next room, and with
a little box in his pocket containing the capsules
which he had forgotten and I had handed to
him, in the presence of the butler, before he
started out. That's reasonably complete, isn't
it?"
Whatever had been in her voice and in
her face before, there was nothing there
now but hard defiance. "Do you advise me
to lie," she concluded, "or dare I tell the
truth?"
The sharp jangle of the telephone bell broke
the long, tense silence which had ensued upon
her last bitter question, for I had not been able
to make an answer to it.
I went to the 'phone. "Is this Dr. Mar-
34


MADELINE
v shall's residence?" asked a voice. "Well, this
is Police Headquarters. Can we talk with
Mrs. Marshall?"
"No," said I. "I am representing the fam-
ily. My name is Clifford Drew. I'll take your
message."
"Well, we've got the man," said the voice at
the other end of the 'phone. "I don't think
there can be any doubt about it. He's Pat
Pomeroy. He's one of the highest class crooks
in the country. He was in the doctor's office
this morning pretending to be a patient. We
arrested him about an hour ago on suspicion,
and found a large unset ruby in his pocket. We
think it's the Marshall ruby, and we want some
member of the family to come down and iden-
tify it."
I said that we would come, and hung up the
receiver. Then I turned to Madeline. "Thank
God! " I cried, and I gave her the message. I
felt somehow that I could breathe again; that
the heavy black pall which had hung over my
spirit since young Jack Marshall had inarticu-
35


THE WHISPERING MAN
lately uttered the word " poison " was suddenly
torn away.
It was wonderful that the police explanation
had occurred to none of us. Dr. Marshall had
been a connoisseur of precious stones. He was
known to have a hobby for them, based upon
the reactions they produced on certain classes
of patients. He frequently exhibited them to
the mentally disordered persons who came to
consult him, and the fact was more or less gen-
erally known.
But Madeline's face showed hardly the relief
I expected to find there.
"It's all right," I went on, trying to reassure
her. "The pattern that we fancied we saw
forming itself about you is knocked to pieces.
The only possible doubt of Pomeroy's guilt will
be settled when we identify that ruby in his
pocket as Dr. Marshall's."
"Well," she said, "perhaps you are right."


CHAPTER HI
THE THEORY OF THE POLICE
IDECIDED that Jack would be the best per-
son to take with me to identify the ruby,
and leaving Madeline in the library, went up-
stairs to his room. Also, I was anxious to re-
lieve his mind of the horrible idea which I sup-
posed he had shared with me, and which I took
to account for his distracted conduct in the cab.
I knocked briskly on the door, and entered
the room without waiting for his invitation to
come in. He was still fully dressed. "Well,
it's all right," said I. "They've got the mur-
derer. I guess there's no doubt about it."
His face, which had been pale before, went
white as chalk. "Who? Where?" he asked.
"What makes them think so?"
"It's all right," I repeated. "Sit down and
listen. There is nothing more to worry about.
37


THE WHISPERING MAN
The man who did it is safe under lock and key
in the police station."
I thought I heard him say " the manl " after
me, in a whisper. When I turned quickly upon
him to verify my guess, however, his flushed
face and bright eyes seemed to be trying vainly
to conceal the relief he was ashamed to show.
"It's queer," said I, sitting down on the edge
of the bed, "that none of us ever thought of
robbery as a motive. But while we were sitting
here, torturing ourselves with all sorts of weird
and ghastly suspicions, the police were quietly
at work rounding up the professional criminal,
who, beyond any doubt, will prove to be the
guilty man. You can identify your father's
great ruby, can't you?"
"Yes," he said, "of course I can." He got
up at once, set his somewhat disordered cloth-
ing a little to rights before the mirror, and
started for the door.
"Stop in the library on the way down," I
suggested, "and speak to Madeline. It would
please her, I think, and certainly she deserves it."


THE THEORY OF THE POLICE
"What do you mean? " he asked, turning to
face me at the door.
"Why," said I, not knowing just how to put
it, "of course she saw what both of us were
thinking of; she knew that we couldn't help be-
ing aware how the circumstances pointed at
her."
"At her?" he repeated. "Who are you
talking about? What do you mean?"
"I mean Madeline, of course," said I a lit-
tle impatiently. "Both of us made fools of
ourselves. I've acknowledged it. I was sug-
gesting that you do the same thing."
He looked at me for a moment with a per-
fectly blank stare, made as if to speak, and
checked himself. Then, without a word, he
opened the door and walked ahead of me down-
stairs. He did go into the library and speak
to Madeline.
"I am glad it's all right, stepmother," he
said. It seemed that this half-humorous fashion
of address was one he always used.
"You are a dear boy," she answered, laying
39


THE WHISPERING MAN
one arm across his shoulder. "You couldn't
help it any more than Cliff. By the way, there's
another telephone message come for you. You
are to go to the office in the Grosvenor instead
of to Police Headquarters. They've taken the
prisoner up there."
The Grosvenor is a modern office building
running up to a moderate height of fifteen or
eighteen stories, and is situated just off the
Avenue in one of the cross-town Thirties. It is
luxurious to the last degree in all its appoint-
ments; and its tenants were the residuum of so
keenly discriminating a selective process that the
roll of them was altogether imposing. That the
respectability of the Grosvenor should be pre-
sented to the public eye in the yellow press, in
the same black headlines with the words Mur-
der and Mystery, struck me as one of those iron-
ical little jokes that Fate is so fond of playing.
I thought of something else, too, as young
Marshall and I were taking our places in one
of the battery of quick-firing elevators with
which the building was provided, and this was
40


THE THEORY OF THE POLICE
a theme I had heard Arthur Jeffrey dilating
upon only the other day—the modern office
building as the theater of Romance.
"No writer of modern fiction," Jeffrey had
said, " need ever go to the deserted moor, or the
forsaken farmhouse, or the abandoned mine
working for solitude or for mystery. The mod-
ern office building can beat them all at that.
One can come and go in them unseen, unre-
marked, by the other hundreds who are coming
and going also, each bent on his own private,
peculiar concerns. If you want to commit a
crime, do it in an office building. You are as
good as a thousand miles away from the scene
of it once you have closed the corridor door on
the room where it happened. If you want to
meet a long-lost brother, here is the place to do
it; he may have had an office on the floor above
for the last five years. Its resources in the way
of surprise, terror, mystery, and, yes, pictur-
esqueness, too, are absolutely unrivaled."
Making due allowance for my friend's fond-
ness for paradox and exaggeration, there was
41


THE WHISPERING MAN
still something in what he had said, I thought.
In this case, however, the murderer had evi-
dently found himself at the end of a short tether.
If he had acted on Jeffrey's advice, he had prof-
ited ill.
By the time I had reached that conclusion,
we were out of the elevator and had opened the
door into the reception room where Dr. Mar-
shall's patients had sat waiting that morning,
and where they would wait no more.
The doctor's suite of offices was L shaped, oc-
cupying, as it did, the most desirable and expen-
sive corner of the most expensive floor of that
most expensive building. Dr. Marshall's own
quarters, subdivided into an office, an examina-
tion room, and a dressing room, occupied the
corner itself, flanked to the south by the large
reception room we had just entered, and to the
west by the smaller office of his assistant. The
reception room and the two offices each had an
independent door opening into the corridor, and
both the reception room and the office of the
assistant communicated directly with the doc-
42


THE THEORY OF THE POLICE
tor's. So much I had been able to observe, or
had already been told, on crossing the corridor
and entering the reception room. I was to learn
more about it presently.
The reception room was furnished with a
magnificent Oriental rug, a large mahogany
center table, littered with magazines and books,
and a number of easy chairs. Also a telephone
desk, where the attendant sat taking messages,
making appointments, and sending into the
inner office the patient next in line, when the
sound of the doctor's buzzer announced that he
had just dismissed the preceding patient into the
corridor. There were two telephone sockets in
the desk, one for connecting the wire into Dr.
Marshall's office and the other for the assist-
ant's.
A man in a police sergeant's uniform, a burly
man with a big mustache, was sitting at the tele-
phone desk when we entered the room. There
were some other people sitting about in the vari-
ous easy chairs, but I had no leisure to examine
them particularly just then.
4 43


THE WHISPERING MAN
"My name is Drew," said I, addressing the
sergeant, "and this is Mr. Marshall, who will
be able to identify the ruby, in case it proves to
be the one that belonged to the doctor."
"The lieutenant will be out in a minute," said
the sergeant. "He's in there." He nodded as
he spoke toward the door to the inner office.
"I'll let him know you're here."
He suited the action to the word, but said,
after a moment of cryptic conversation into the
transmitter, that we were to wait. "There's
plenty of comfortable chairs and there's no
hurry," he added philosophically. He seemed
rather bored himself, however, for he yawned
portentously when he spoke.
"What's the lieutenant doing in there?" I
asked.
"Sweating Pomeroy," he answered laconic-
ally, apparently surprised at so unnecessary a
question. "Trying to get a squeal out of him."
I took it that he, used the word " squeal " in the
highly technical sense of confession, rather than
in its looser literary sense.
44


THE THEORY OF THE POLICE
"Is all you've got against Pomeroy," I
asked, "that you found a ruby on him? Sup-
posing that it is the ruby, what made you think
he had it?"
He hesitated about answering me, seeming to
think that discretion required a discouraging
amount of reserve on his part. But he really
wanted to talk, and he really was proud of the
way the police had caught up and run down
their clew.
It seemed that O'Malley, of the traffic regu-
lation squad, had seen Pomeroy at the corner
and recognized him, and after walking half a
block toward the Grosvenor entrance, had seen
him turn in there. He had reported this occur-
rence to the roundsman, with the result that as
soon as it became known that Dr. Marshall's
death was a coroner's case, probably of murder,
two and two were put together and Pomeroy
was arrested in a resort he was known to fre-
quent. He was searched, and what appeared to
be Dr. Marshall's great ruby was found on his
person. His description also tallied closely with
45


THE WHISPERING MAN
that furnished by the reception-room attendant
of an alleged patient who had come in and
waited for some time for his turn to see the
doctor, and then gone away, apparently without
accomplishing his purpose.
"She's sitting over there now," said the ser-
geant, lowering his voice, "and we are going
to give her a chance to identify him pres-
ently, as soon as the lieutenant gets through
with him."
"Who are the others? " I asked.
"Oh, them? They're some more patients
who were here in the office when he was sup-
posed to be. We'll let them identify him, too,
if they can."
"What I don't understand is," said I, "sup-
posing Pomeroy did get in there with the pur-
pose of stealing the ruby, why he should have
poisoned the doctor, or how he could have got
him to take it."
"Poisoned nothing," said the sergeant easily.
"He suffocated him, that's what he did, and
he didn't mean to do that, most likely. Just
46


THE THEORY OF THE POLICE
gagged him to keep him quiet, and pushed the
gag too far back into his pipe."
Before I could question him further on this
totally new theory of the case, the sound of the
buzzer recalled the sergeant's attention to the
telephone. After listening to the unintelligible
half of a brief conversation, we were told we
could go in now to the inner office.
I crossed the room at once and opened the
door, under the impression that Jack was at my
heels. When I looked back I saw him still
standing beside the desk.
"Come in, if you want to, and shut the
door," said the lieutenant.
"My name is Drew," said I. "I am not the
man who can identify the ruby. He's out
there."
"Come in anyway," said the lieutenant,
"and shut the door. We aren't ready for him
yet."
I seated myself in the nearest chair and looked
about me, but the first sensation I experienced
came not through my eyes, but through my nos-
47


THE WHISPERING MAN
trils—the strong acrid smell of stale tobacco.
What made me notice it was the knowledge of
the late physician's fastidious aversion to this
very odor. The detective force had been mak-
ing free with the place for hours. There were
enough of them here. There were five or six
men in the room, including the one who must be
the prisoner, and the man at the desk, whom
I took to be the lieutenant.
They were all in plain clothes, and with due
deference to the personnel of the detective force,
I am obliged to admit that it took me a minute
or two to satisfy myself as to which of the other
men sitting about the room was the prisoner,
and which were the guardians of the law.
Evidently, this device was a deliberately pro-
duced effect, for the lieutenant now spoke
through the 'phone to the sergeant at the desk
outside. "Send in the girl," he said, " the tele-
phone girl."
Evidently they meant to identify the prisoner
before proceeding to the identification of the
ruby.
48


THE THEORY OF THE POLICE
The girl answered the summons. She was a
young woman of no particular characteristics,
unless, perhaps, her hair had the look of being
somewhat more blond than nature had made it.
She came in with a good deal of confidence,
which visibly and rapidly ebbed, however, as
her gaze traveled from one face to another of
those about the room.
After looking more and more vaguely at the
faces of the men who were paraded for her in-
spection, she turned, as if in despair, looked long
and earnestly at me, and finally focused her gaze
on the lieutenant himself. "I think," she said
at last, " it must be one of those two." She had
not included me, as I half expected she would,
for evidently her powers of identification had
failed her completely.
'"Think?"' said the lieutenant. "This
isn't a case of thinking. Do you know?"
In spite of his efforts, he could not galvanize
her into even a reasonably firm conviction. She
was an indisputable failure, that was all there
was about it. So she was dismissed into the cor-
49


THE WHISPERING MAN
rldor, and " the one with the black eyes "—this
was the lieutenant's mode of designation—sum-
moned from the outer office to replace her.
Her eyes weren't black at all, those of the
girl whom the opening door now admitted.
They were the greenish-gray, curiously brilliant,
and never twice exactly the same, that are so
often seen, half veiled behind long, down-droop-
ing black lashes. Her hair was black, too, and
so was the small toque she wore, and the se-
verely tailored coat and skirt, which set off so
beautifully the perfections of a small, slender,
well-poised body. She was well shod, something
which cannot be said of all women more expen-
sively and elaborately dressed than she; and I
got the impression, though she had not removed
her gloves, that her hands must be beautiful. At
any rate, there was a distinction about the way
she carried them, and about the slight, almost
imperceptible gestures she made with them
which gloves could not disguise.
It was hardly five seconds before she spoke.
"The second man from the right end was in
50


THE THEORY OF THE POLICE
the office this morning," she said. "He was
wearing a small mustache then, and different
clothes."
He was the one I had already guessed to be
Pomeroy, though of course I had never seen him
before. I had founded my guess on the fact I
had noticed, that just before either of the two
attempts at identification, while the other three
men had not changed at all the attitude in which
they had happened to be at the moment, this
man had drawn himself a little straighter, as if
he meant to give himself an authoritative, quasi-
military air.
Evidently the identification was correct, for
the lieutenant was trying to conceal his pleasure
in it. "You are sure of that, are you? " he said.
"It's not a guess?"
"Yes, I'm sure," she replied. "If you will
look at the little finger of the right hand, the
hand that is in his pocket now, you will see that
it is bent out at the last joint as if it had been
broken."
"That's all right," said the lieutenant, " and
S1


THE WHISPERING MAN
you're all right. I wish there was more like
you."
For a moment my attention had wandered
from the criminal and the effect of the identi-
fication upon him. I was thinking about the
girl's voice. How thoroughly it pleased and sat-
isfied the ear, even in the utterances of the few
words I heard her say; and I was trying to
recollect what I had heard about a nice voice
earlier in the evening. Then it came to me.
This was the girl who had telephoned to Made-
line—Gwendolen something—the last person
known to have seen Dr. Marshall alive. She,
too, had been dismissed into the corridor before
I had completely identified her.
"Send in the old guy," the lieutenant was say-
ing into the telephone. "That was a good
identification, but we may as well have another."


CHAPTER IV
CARLTON STANCLIFFE
THE man who had entered the room in
response to this last summons proved
agreeably disappointing to my expectations.
My interest in the proceedings, which had some-
how flagged after the disappearance of the girl
in black, was revived again instantly by the sight
of the newcomer. As he is destined to play a
large and most romantic part in the solution of
our mystery, and as his queer, brilliant, eccentric
personality is to appear very often in these en-
suing pages, I think I may be pardoned a de-
scription of him.
He was the sort of man who never would be
spoken of as old, if it were not for his attempts
to look young. He was actually, I should judge,
somewhere in the middle forties, a tall, graceful,
and commanding figure, with a strikingly hand-
53


THE WHISPERING MAN
some face. There was nothing weak about it.
The features were big and boldly, though finely,
modeled, and the deep-set eyes singularly ex-
pressive. The only fault one could find with him
was that he carried everything just a little too
far. He was too aggressively well dressed; too
painfully clean shaven; his manner a little too
dignified; his voice and features a little too ex-
pressive. It came upon me all at once what he
must be—an actor. That was it. Everything
about him was heightened just enough to carry
itself over the footlights. He was in evening
dress, wore an overcoat and gloves, and carried
a walking stick, as well as an irreproachable silk
hat, in his hand.
Like his predecessor, he identified Pomeroy
instantly. "That's the man," said he, point-
ing at him with his stick. "He was the
third patient to come in after me this morn-
ing. He was sitting in the reception room
waiting his turn when I went into the doctor's
office."
Up to the middle of that last sentence his
54


CARLTON STANCLIFFE
voice had been just what I should have expected
an actor's to be—rich, suavely inflected, per-
fectly under control. But just at the end of the
word "reception," it suddenly abandoned him,
and he completed the sentence in a queer, harsh,
voiceless whisper. The suddenness of it startled
all of us, but it did not seem to surprise the man
himself.
He turned to me with a faintly apologetic
smile. "It's a curious vocal affection," he said,
still in that harsh whisper. "I am never able
to be sure of finishing a sentence audibly. I am
one of a good many who have reason to regret
Dr. Marshall's death. He held out hopes that
the difficulty was not incurable.
Curiously enough on the word "incurable,"
his voice came back again.'
My attention was diverted then by the en-
trance into the room of my young friend Mar-
shall. Why Jack had not come in sooner, I did
not know. He had heard, evidently from the
sergeant outside, of the successful identification
of Pomeroy. The effect of this had been to
55


THE WHISPERING MAN
brighten his eyes and bring a good clear color
into his cheeks again.
The whispering man had seated himself be-
side me, evidently with the intention of seeing
the little play out to the end.
Young Marshall walked over to where the
lieutenant sat. "You have something for me to
identify? " he asked.
"I understand," said the lieutenant, "that
your father owned a rather well-known ruby.
Do you know where he kept it?"
"Here in the office, most of the time," an-
swered the young man.
"And you saw it often, did you?"
"Yes."
"So that you might expect to know it when
you saw it?"
"Yes, without a doubt."
"Isn't this it?" The lieutenant's hand
opened as he spoke, revealing in the palm of it
an enormous, blazing red stone.
We had all automatically drawn nearer. The
other detectives, the whispering man, and I were
56


CARLTON STANCLIFFE
now gazing alternately at the great stone itself
and the thoughtful young face that was bending
over it.
"That's it," said Jack.
"You'd identify it on oath?"
"Yes," said Jack, " I'd do that."
"That's all, then," said the lieutenant. He
turned to the sergeant, who had by now come
into the inner office. "Call the wagon," he said,
"and take him back." And then he uttered a
word of valedictory to Pomeroy. "You see
we've got it on you," he said. "You might bet-
ter have owned up yourself."
I guessed from that, that his efforts to extract
a confession from Pomeroy had not been suc-
cessful. This surmise was correct, for from the
moment of his arrest he had scarcely spoken a
single word, had declined to offer any explana-
tion whatever of his visit to the doctor's office,
or of his possession of the ruby.
There seemed to be no further need of my
going back to the Marshalls' house that night,
so I sent Jack home alone, with instructions to
57


THE WHISPERING MAN
tell Madeline that the murderer was certainly
caught, and with the promise from myself to
be on hand the first thing in the morning. He
seemed glad enough at the prospect of a little
solitude, at which I did not wonder.
It is strange to think of, but it is true, that
our attitude toward each other at that moment
was almost one of congratulation; yet we were
standing in the very room where, not twelve
hours before, a great and famous man had met
a sudden and appalling death, and that man was
the father of the one who had just so cheerfully
extended his hand to me in parting.
I doubt if he had ever proved himself a very
affectionate parent. You could hardly imagine
the word Affection used in connection with him.
Yet that was not the reason for the quick re-
bound our spirits had made. It was the unut-
terable horror of the explanation of the crime
which had forced itself into both of our unwill-
ing minds—his, I was sure, as well as mine. Af-
ter contemplating that possibility for a while,
the fact of the murder itself seemed of secondary
58


CARLTON STANCLIFFE
importance. Having found the motive for it to
be simple robbery, and the murderer himself to
have been a hardened criminal, seemed almost
to make all right again.
And yet after Jack had gone out I stayed there
in that inner office. Saw them take the prisoner
away; saw everyone go, including the lieutenant
himself, leaving the premises in charge of the
young policeman who was to keep watch during
the night.
And standing there alone, the actual tragedy,
savage and horrible enough, though it was not
so unspeakably inhuman as the one my own im-
agination had constructed, began, for the first
time, to assume a reality for me.
I saw the doctor sitting there, calm, unsus-
pecting, in the full tide of life and work, allow-
ing himself, perhaps, a moment's leisure to en-
joy the pleasant memory which that last patient
of his, the girl with the darkly shaded eyes, must
have left behind. And I saw him suddenly be-
coming aware of another presence in the room;
looking up, possibly, with that faint smile still


THE WHISPERING MAN
on his lips, to confront the brutish face and
glowering eyes of his murderer.
And what had happened then? The man
had suffocated him, so the police said. How
had he ever got his hands on his throat before
the utterance of the one outcry that would have
brought help? There had been no such outcry.
The thing had been done as silently as if it had
been the work of evil spirits.
Try as I might, I could not construct a work-
ing hypothesis for those next few minutes. How
had Pomeroy got in? How had he crossed the
room and got into a position behind that swivel
chair? For even if his victim had not had his
eye on the door, that great mirror over there
would have revealed him. Perhaps when the
gallows had fairly overshadowed him, and the
last hope of some technical means of escape had
in fact gone, he might tell. Otherwise we
should never know. We should know nothing
more than that, at the end of those few horrible
minutes they had opened the doctor's door and
looked in, and, seeing his head and shoulders in
60


THE WHISPERING MAN
waste-paper basket, when something stopped
me. It was no very definite idea, probably just
a reminiscence from detective stories I had read,
of the immense importance of the most trivial
things.
I smiled a little over my own action, but for
all-that, I put the needle back upon the exact
spot o: he carpet where I had found it, instead
of tossing it"aLong the crumpled papers in the
basket.
My very last impression in that room was
identical with my first one—how thoroughly it
reeked of tobacco; what filthy brutes detectives
were anyway.
I meant to walk down to my apartment off
Madison Square, and, rather relishing the pros-
pect of a quiet stroll under the warm spring
night air, I took my time about starting, pulled
on my gloves quite deliberately, and lighted a
cigar in the sheltered entrance to the Grosvenor
Building.
As I stood there, shielding my match with my
hands, my walking stick tucked under my arm, I
62


CARLTON STANCLIFFE
was somewhat startled by a touch on the elbow.
Turning quickly, I saw the whispering man
standing there.
"I wonder if I may trouble you for the rest
of that match?" he asked. "I am in my
chronic condition, amply provided with things
to smoke and destitute of the means for setting
them alight." (1 „
I offered him matches ancijs^ited until his
cigar was drawing well, and then we went out in
the street together.
"A thing like a murder seems strangely in-
congruous among all these commonplace, re-
spectable surroundings," I observed.
"I don't know," said he. "I doubt if any
time or any place is intrinsically better adapted to
the crime of murder than the middle of the day,
a crowded city street, and a modern office build-
ing. I was just wondering, as a matter of fact,
why doctors and other professional men, who
shut themselves up in private offices, aren't mur-
dered oftener."
He was going south, too, it seemed, so we fell
63


THE WHISPERING MAN
in step together, both rather glad, I think, to
be able to talk to somebody without the need of .
making preliminary explanations. I was espe-
cially so, because there was something familiar
about him, which baffled me because it was so
vague. I was sure I had heard him talk before—
in his natural voice, I mean, not in the horrible,
croaking whisper which sometimes replaced it.
"You may be right in theory," said I. "I
have a friend who would agree with you, but,
as a practical matter of fact, this murderer has
been overtaken and caught very promptly."
"Do you think so? " he asked. "If the po-
lice go on exhibiting the same plentiful lack of
wit during the rest of the case which they have
shown to-night in the Pomeroy affair, I should
say the murderer had a good chance to die of
old age."
I stopped dead-still in the middle of the side-
walk, and looked at him. "What do you
mean?" I cried. "Do you mean to express a
doubt that Pomeroy is the man who killed Dr.
Marshall?"
64


CARLTON STANCLIFFE
"No doubt," said he quietly; " a certainty."
"And have you any objection to telling me
on what you base that certainty?"
"None at all," said he. "It is very simple.
You have no special knowledge of precious
stones, I presume?"
"None whatever," I replied.
"Neither has that fool of a police lieuten-
ant," was his rejoinder, "but I have; and I was
able to see at a glance that the thing they found
in Pomeroy's pocket was no more a ruby than
that big red vase in the drug-store window over
there is. It was a clever imitation, I grant, but
nothing more than that."
Mechanically I set my legs in motion again,
and he walked on beside me in silence. It was
impossible to doubt what he said; evidently he
knew exactly what he was talking about.
"Still," said I, after a few minutes of quiet
thought, "I don't see that the fact of its being
an imitation clears Pomeroy as completely as
you seem to think it does. It is not merely an
imitation ruby, it is an imitation of Dr. Mar-
65


THE WHISPERING MAN
shall's ruby, which makes it clear enough that
the man intended to get the real one. We know
he didn't succeed, but how do we know he didn't
murder the doctor?"
"It's not very difficult, is it? " asked my com-
panion politely. "If Pomeroy had contem-
plated the use of violence, he would hardly have
gone to the trouble and run the risk of securing
an imitation of the doctor's stone. What he
meant to do is perfectly plain. He undoubtedly
knew that Dr. Marshall frequently showed the
ruby to his patients. If he, going in the guise
of a patient, could persuade the doctor to show
it to him, the robbery was as good as accom-
plished. It would only need a little clever
sleight of hand, of which a man like Pomeroy is
past master, to exchange the real one for the imi-
tation. It might be weeks or months before the
doctor would discover that any crime whatever
had been committed, and when he did make that
discovery he would have no way of knowing
which of the patients to whom he had shown the
stone was the criminal.
66


CARLTON STANCLIFFE
"It was a well-planned crime, and like every
well-planned crime had this great merit: it did
not commit the intending criminal to any crimi-
nal act until success was actually in his grasp. If
the plan failed, if Pomeroy did not succeed in
inducing the doctor to show him his stone, he
lost no more than the cost of the imitation stone.
Indeed, there would be nothing to prevent his
going back for another trial whenever he
pleased.
"Now I think you can see that no man in his
senses—and a high-class crook like Pomeroy is
certainly in full possession of his—with a safe,
clever plan like that in his head, and the means
for carrying it out in his skillful fingers, would
wantonly have murdered the doctor and come
away without his ruby."
I could see clearly enough that he was right.
No man will do by violence what he is prepared
to do, with better promise of success, by fraud.
"Why, then," I asked, " didn't Pomeroy wait
his turn and go into the inner office in the char-
acter of a patient?"
67


THE WHISPERING MAN
"He was frightened away, I imagine," said
my companion, " and I have a notion that I my-
self am the person who frightened him. I had
mistaken him at first glance for some one I
knew, and, catching his eye, I bowed to him,
rather uncertainly, to be sure. But for all that,
I think he believed I had recognized him. So
he waited till I had gone into the doctor's office,
and then slipped quietly away."
By that time we had got down to Twenty-sixth
Street, and I must turn off across the square.
But my vague, half recognition of the man
troubled me, and I determined not to let him go
without finding out who he was.
"I am wondering," said I, "if I have been
similarly mistaken about you. It is your voice
that sounds so familiar to me. I have no recol-
lection of your face."
"That's natural enough," said he; "I am
Carlton Stancliffe."
Carlton Stancliffe, of course. It was stupid of
me not to have guessed, since I had put him
down for an actor at my first glance at him. But
68


CARLTON STANCLIFFE
it was no wonder that his face puzzled me, for
his specialty was character parts, and, in the
dozen times or more I must have seen him on the
stage, he had never looked twice alike.
I told him my name, and expressed my pleas-
ure at having met him. Then, rather thought-
lessly, I asked: " What are you playing in now,
Mr. Stancliffe?"
He smiled rather sadly. "I should have
spoken of myself in the past tense, I am afraid.
With this nervous affection of the throat, I am
as good as dead, though under Dr. Marshall's
treatment I had hopes of a resurrection." Then,
his mind going back to the grim topic we had
for a moment forgotten, he murmured: "A pe-
culiarly atrocious murder it must have been, but
a very interesting one."
"Have you any theory regarding it," I asked,
"now that Pomeroy is eliminated?"
He hesitated, "Why, yes," he said, " I have,
but it's hardly one that I should care to talk
about until it had turned out to be a good deal
more than a theory."
69


THE WHISPERING MAN
I understood him well enough. I felt, as he
spoke, the horrible black filaments of that sin-
ister web of circumstances settling upon my
spirits again.
"He's a singularly nice, clean-looking young
chap, too," he added thoughtfully. Then,
gravely, he bade me good night, and went on
down the Avenue.
I was unlocking the door of my own apart-
ment before it occurred to me to wonder a little
over Mr. Stancliffe's last words. I had never
seen Dr. Armstrong, but those words, somehow,
did not seem like a description of him. They
sounded more like a description of Jack. And
where, anyway, had the actor seen the doctor's
assistant?
I pulled the key out of the lock again, with-
out turning it, and decided to knock on Jeffrey's
door instead. I was wondering, in half-whim-
sical acquiescence in the claim he had put forth
over the dinner table, what would have hap-
pened had he been able to spend the evening in
my company. Would he have told the police to
70


CARLTON STANCLIFFE
set Pomeroy free, and would his accusing finger
have pointed at anyone else—at anyone I had
seen and talked with since we had read the news
together in the evening paper?


CHAPTER V
A QUESTION OF MINUTES
HERE and there in the memories of all of
us are days which stand out of the dim
past, bathed in a flood of light that spares us
not a detail of them. Days like that may be
called perpetual yesterdays. Such a day as that
to me was the one that followed the murder of
Dr. Marshall. It was the day of the coroner's
inquest, and, from the moment I entered the big
room in the Criminal Court building until the
moment I left it, there was no relief from the
strain of the most intense concentration to which
I could key my mind, nor was there any respite
from the rapid alternations between belief and
incredulity, constantly recurring horror and in-
termittent relief.
And the worst shock of all, the most utterly
and stupendously unexpected thing came as I
72


A QUESTION OF MINUTES
was leaving the building, wearily telling myself
that it was all over now at any rate. It was the
sort of day I should not care to go through again.
I had warned Madeline, when she and Jack
and I were riding downtown together to attend
the inquest, that she would have to make up her
mind to endure all the various discomforts of
publicity which the ingenious minds of yellow
city editors could subject her to. The Mar-
shall affair was the biggest news of the day, and
its participants must suffer the consequences.
There would be lots of people waiting to stare at
her, batteries of cameras to be faced, sketch
artists and wiry young reporters of both sexes
demanding interviews. These last she could, in
a measure, be shielded from, but not from the
others.
Of course, the arrest of Pomeroy and the
events which had led up to it, and which had
appeared in all the morning papers, would have,
for a while at least, the effect of keeping the
widow and her stepson out of the immediate cen-
ter of the focus of attention.
73


THE WHISPERING MAN
They did not know yet how frail that barrier
was and how soon it must give way. I had been
in two minds whether to tell them of the aston-
ishing fact which Mr. Stancliffe had so casually
communicated to me the night before. My real
reason, I suppose, was a cowardly and forlorn
hope, which, since my conversation with Jeffrey,
I had clung to, that perhaps Mr. Stancliffe did
not know as much about precious stones as he
thought he did. Jack had identified the ruby
quite positively. Might he not be right in his
identification after all? So long as there was a
chance of it, I shrank from making them unnec-
essarily miserable.
As they were both wanted as witnesses, they
did not go with me into the court room, but were
ushered into a little anteroom adjoining, to wait
until they should be called for.
The coroner took his seat. The jury filed in
and took their places in the box. The oath
was administered to them, and proceedings
began.
If I had needed any further evidence that we
74


A QUESTION OF MINUTES
were a celebrated case than was afforded by the
presence of the crowd and the numerous report-
ers, I should have got it when I saw the district
attorney himself elbowing his way brusquely
down the aisle, and dropping into a seat just in-
side the railing. I knew Cromwell pretty well,
and I was sure that unless he expected a larger
share of notoriety than could be extracted from
the conviction of an ordinary professional crim-
inal in an ordinary case of robbery and murder,
he would have manifested no such interest at this
early stage of the proceedings.
The first witness called to the stand was the
very blond young woman who had made the un-
successful attempt to identify Pomeroy the night
before. After she had given her name and ad-
dress, and stated that she had been for several
years in the employ of Dr. Marshall, the coroner
framed his first important question.
"Please tell the jury, Miss Jerome, what the
ordinary routine was in Dr. Marshall's office,
and what your own particular duties were."
"The doctor," she said, " always received his
6 75


THE WHISPERING MAN
patients in his own private office, which was in
a comer of the building. They waited their
turn to see him, out in the reception room where
my desk was. I had to keep track of the order
in which they came in, and to make a note of the
ones who had special appointments with him.
When he got through with a patient, he gener-
ally let them out, directly into the corridor with-
out their coming back through the reception
room."
"Could you hear, as a rule," the coroner
asked, "when he opened the door and let a pa-
tient out?"
"No, sir, not unless the door was shut with
a slam. The walls are specially deadened in that
building, I think because it was intended for doc-
tors and people like that, and the door was thick
and fitted very closely."
"Tell the jury, then," continued the coroner,
"how you knew when the doctor was through
with one patient and ready to see another."
"Sometimes," she answered, "he used to
open the door into the reception room and speak
76


A QUESTION OF MINUTES
to me, but he only did that when he wanted to
see how many patients were waiting for him.
Generally he just gave two rings on his desk
buzzer."
"Was there anything else you had to do?"
the coroner asked.
"I had to answer the 'phone," said the girl.
"When they were people the doctor wanted to
talk to, I put them on his wire. When they
weren't, I put them on Dr. Armstrong's. I had
two plugs in the desk."
"Now," said the coroner, "to get down to
the events of yesterday morning, was there any-
thing which happened before twelve o'clock
which struck you at all at the time, or which
occurs to you now as you think back upon it, as
out of the ordinary?"
For the first time in the course of her testi-
mony, she hesitated a little. "I don't know
that I would call it unusual," she said. "He
got down a little late—ten minutes perhaps—and
he seemed rather short-tempered, but he had
been that for the last day or two."
77


THE WHISPERING MAN
"There was nothing else that caught your at-
tention?"
"No, sir; nothing at all. There were a num-
ber of patients waiting to see him; just about the
usual number I should say."
"Were you acquainted with most of them?
Were they people who came frequently to see
the doctor?"
"They were mostly strangers," she answered.
"They usually were. People didn't come to see
Dr. Marshall regularly. They got sent to him
by other doctors. There were two or three who
came in during the early part of the morning who
were old patients. After II o'clock they were
all strangers."
"So far as you know, they were strangers,
that is."
"No; I am sure they were," the girl per-
sisted.
"Do you mean to say," questioned the coro-
ner, " that you were able to recognize at a glance
everyone who has ever been a patient of Dr.
Marshall's?"
78


A QUESTION OF MINUTES
"No, sir," said the girl. "But when a per-
son comes in in a lost sort of way, not knowing
which way to look, and then comes up to me and
asks me if this is Dr. Marshall's office, I know
that that person's a stranger."
"Very well," said the coroner, " who was the
last person whom you admitted to Dr. Mar-
shall's office?"
"She gave me her name," said the girl, " as
Miss Gwendolen Carr, and said her address was
the St. Anthony Hotel."
"Had she ever come to consult Dr. Marshall
before?"
"No, sir. That was the first time I had ever
seen her."
"Do you know what time it was when you
admitted her to Dr. Marshall's office?"
"No, sir, I don't," she said. "I didn't hap-
pen to look at my watch until quite a long time
afterwards."
. " What time was it when you looked at your
watch?"
"Ten minutes past twelve."
79


THE WHISPERING MAN
"And how long should you say it was then
since Miss Carr had gone into the inner office?"
"I couldn't tell you."
"Give us your best judgment," persisted the
coroner. "Was it an hour?"
"It may have been an hour, perhaps a little
less."
"And what did you do then when you had
looked at your watch?"
"I knew the doctor had an appointment at
twelve o'clock, and that he considered it impor-
tant, so I gave a short ring on his desk tele-
phone."
"Did he answer the ring?"
"No, sir; he didn't unhook the receiver."
"Wasn't that rather extraordinary?"
"Oh, no, not at all. When he was very busy
he never would answer the 'phone, unless I gave
three rings. That meant it was important."
"You hadn't given three rings in this in-
stance?"
"No, sir; one short one. And then I waited
until half past twelve o'clock."
80


A QUESTION OF MINUTES
"Go on," said the coroner; "tell the jury, as
plainly as you can, all that happened after that."
"Well," said the witness, "at half past twelve
I thought I had better give three rings, because
I knew his twelve o'clock appointment was im-
portant. I did, and listened at the 'phone to see
if he wasn't going to answer. When he didn't, I
rang again, and then all at once I began to won-
der whether something wasn't the matter. So
I got up from my desk and walked over to the
door and opened it, and looked in. There was
no one else there in the room. The doctor was
sitting in his swivel chair at the farther side of
his desk. I couldn't see his face very well, be-
cause the window w.as behind it, but he looked
kind of funny somehow—not exactly natural, I
mean. He was leaning forward in a queer
way.
"For a minute I thought he had dropped
asleep, and then I saw he hadn't. I don't know
how I saw; I hadn't got very close. I turned
round quick and went out into Dr. Armstrong's
office."
81


THE WHISPERING MAN
"Did you go out into the corridor or go back
through the reception room to get into Dr. Arm-
strong's office."
"I didn't have to do either. I went straight
in. There's a door opening between."
"Was it locked?"
"No, sir. That door was never locked that
I know of."
I believe every person in the room felt a little
electrical thrill of premonition at that; certainly
I did. I was reminded of what Madeline had
said of the way everything fell into a pattern.
Certainly that unlocked door was potentially
suggestive.
"Well," said the coroner, "what did you tell
Dr. Armstrong?"
"I didn't tell him anything. He wasn't there.
By that time I was beginning to get a little
frightened, and I went straight from his office
out into the corridor, meaning to tell an elevator
man to call some other doctor down from up-
stairs. I signaled the next car that was coming
up, to stop, but when it stopped, I saw Dr. Arm-
82


A QUESTION OF MINUTES
strong getting out. He had a little package in
his hand. I told him I was afraid something
was wrong with the doctor, and I wanted him
to go in and see.
"We went through the reception room. I
made him go ahead, and I followed him back
into Dr. Marshall's office."
"Tell, as fully as you can," said the coroner,
"what conversation passed between you and Dr.
Armstrong after you had gone through into the
inner office."
"There wasn't much that you could call con-
versation," said the girl. "He was ahead of
me, but when he got just about as far into the
room as I had gotten the first time, he stopped
and looked at—at what was sitting there humped
over the desk, and he said ' My God!' in a kind
of whisper, and then drew a long breath. Then
he handed me the package he had with him and
told me to go put it on his desk, and then come
back. I did; it only took me about a quarter of
a minute. When I got into the room again, he
was leaning over the—the body and seemed to
83


THE WHISPERING MAN
be feeling of the pulse. He said to me, 'Dr.
Marshall is dead. I think he has had an attack
of heart failure. You'd better go upstairs and
call down Dr. Adams. As soon as you have
done that, telephone for the police.'
"I did what he told me to. That was all. I
didn't go back into the inner room where—it
was."
It seemed to me that she had told her whole
story, and I was a little surprised when the dis-
trict attorney got up and asked permission to
question her further. "You said, I believe," he
began, "that the doctor's signal that he was
ready to see another patient was two rings on
his desk buzzer. Why was it two? What did
one ring mean? Something else?"
"Yes, sir. It meant that I was to go into the
office myself."
"Had he any other push buttons in his office
besides the one which rang at your desk?"
"Yes, sir. There was one he used to ell Dr.
Armstrong."
"Both those buttons were on his desk?"
84


A QUESTION OF MINUTES
"Yes, sir."
"So that when he sat where he was when you
found him, they would have been within easy
reach of his hand?"
"Yes, sir."
"That's all," said the district attorney.
I felt a momentary surprise, not that these
questions should be asked, but that they should
be asked by the district attorney, for the import
of them was plain enough. The answers they
elicited weakened the case against Pomeroy tre-
mendously; made it seem almost inconceivable
that the doctor could have been slain by any-
one toward whom he had entertained the slight-
est feeling of suspicion.
What troubled me about it was not the col-
lapse of the case against Pomeroy; that I had
foreseen, but I was sure Cromwell would not
have set about demolishing it, unless he already
had another and better one to put in its place.
The evidence that told for Pomeroy must tell
equally forcibly against some one else.
The very blond young woman left the stand,
85


THE WHISPERING MAN
and her place was taken by the one I had heard
designated by the police lieutenant last night as
"the black-eyed one." I found myself experi-
encing a regret, which I fancy was shared by
many of the other spectators, that we were
likely to see her delicious face and hear her
agreeable voice for so short a time. Her testi-
mony, however important, would not take long
to present.
She gave her name and the same address
which she had confided to the telephone girl
the day before, and then testified that on
the day in question, from about ten o'clock in
the morning, she had been waiting in Dr.
Marshall's reception room for a chance to
consult him.
"Were you personally acquainted with Dr.
Marshall? " asked the coroner.
"No, sir. I had seen him. He had been
pointed out to me from a distance, but I had
never spoken to him."
"Your call upon him, then, was a profes-
sional one?"
86


THE WHISPERING MAN
answer at once, he framed the question again.
"Did you notice any circumstance during your
visit to Dr. Marshall's offices that struck you as
suspicious, or strikes you so now, in the light of
what is known to have happened afterwards?"
"No, sir," she said.
"You will realize, I think," said the coroner,
"the extreme importance of the hour that you
have testified to as that at which you left the
office? That fixes the last moment when Dr.
Marshall is known to have been alive. Have
you any doubt whatever as to the accuracy of
your memory?"
"I appreciate the importance of it," she said
gravely, "but I am absolutely certain of the
hour. It was twenty minutes before twelve
when I happened to look up at the clock, just as
I was opening the door from Dr. Marshall's
office into the corridor."


DR. ARMSTRONG TESTIFIES
the coroner, to outline the nature of his duties
as Dr. Marshall's assistant. It appeared that
they did not take all of his time, and that he had
a considerable independent practice. He always
kept the same office hours as Dr. Marshall, how-
ever, and was subject to call from him at any
time. Many of the doctor's patients he simply
turned over, after a single consultation, to his
assistant.
"You say you were subject to call," observed
the coroner. "Is it true that the doctor had a
push button on his desk which served to summon
you into his office?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did he call you at any time during yester-
day morning?"
"Once or twice—yes, sir, but not after eleven
o'clock, I think."
"He had every reason to believe that you
were in the adjoining room, subject to call, as
long as he remained in his office?"
"Yes, sir."
"How did it happen, Dr. Armstrong, that
7 91


THE WHISPERING MAN
you were not in your office at half past twelve
when Miss Jerome went in there to find you?"
"Dr. Marshall had an appointment at twelve
o'clock," said the witness. "I knew it was im-
portant, and supposed he had gone to keep it.
I did not hear him go out, but concluded that he
must have done so, and went out on an errand
myself."
"Do you know what time it was when you
left your office?"
"Not exactly, no, sir."
"Did this errand of yours take you very far
away?"
"Only to the instrument maker's on the first
floor of our own building. I spent a good deal
more time, however, than was necessary for the
purpose of securing the article that I bought.
The proprietor of the shop is a friend of mine."
The ensuing testimony merely corroborated
that of Miss Jerome, the attendant in the recep-
tion room. She had met him at the elevator
door, as she said, and they had gone together
into the inner office. He had seen immediately
92


DR. ARMSTRONG TESTIFIES
that Dr. Marshall was dead, and had dispatched
the girl in quest of Dr. Adams, whose office was
on the floor above.
"Is it true," asked the coroner, "that you
said to Miss Jerome, '1 think Dr. Marshall has
had an attack of heart failure'?"
"I may have said something like that. I
don't recall the words clearly now; don't remem-
ber speaking them at all, but the thought oc-
curred to me."
"Had you any reason to anticipate a death
of that sort for Dr. Marshall?,"
"No, sir. He had been suffering from in-
digestion. An acute attack of that sort some-
times produces a mechanical effect on the heart
which causes death."
"After mature reflection, do you still believe
that that was the actual cause of death in this
instance?"
"Mature reflection has nothing to do with
the case," said the witness, with a touch of as-
perity. "It's a question of fact and can only
be determined by examination. I was not pres-
93


THE WHISPERING MAN
ent at the autopsy. I did not even make a care-
ful examination of the body of the deceased. I
did nothing beyond ascertaining that he was
dead. Then I sent at once for a physician whose
interest in the case was wholly professional."
"Do you think it possible," asked the cor-
oner, unruffled by this outburst, " that the cause
of death might have been suffocation, produced,
say, by a hand held tightly over the mouth and
nostrils of the deceased?"
"I should be unwilling," retorted the witness,
"to state, as my professional opinion, that that
was not the cause, for the reason that I am un-
willing to state any professional opinion what-
ever."
Dr. Armstrong was temporarily excused from
the stand at this point to make way for another
witness, who had just arrived, and who was ob-
viously in a hurry to get away again. I did not
know who he was, until his first answers to the
coroner's questions showed him to be the owner
of the instrument shop on the first floor of the
Grosvenor.
94


DR. ARMSTRONG TESTIFIES
Yes, he knew Dr. Armstrong very well.
The doctor had come into the shop a little after
noon yesterday and made a little purchase,
talked a while, and gone out again.
"Can you fix the time, with any degree of ac-
curacy, when Dr. Armstrong came into your
shop?"
"Yes, sir; it was sixteen minutes past
twelve."
"You are quite sure of this?"
"Yes, sir. I had just looked at my watch and
decided that it was time for me to go out to
lunch, when I saw Dr. Armstrong coming in. I
sold him what he wanted, and we talked for per-
haps fifteen minutes."
"You say you had just looked at your watch.
What assurance have you that your watch was
right?"
"It runs right," said the instrument maker,
with a certain amount of annoyance in his tone.
"Undoubtedly to your satisfaction," said the
coroner. "It happens in this case, however,
that the matter of time may well prove to be of
95


THE WHISPERING MAN
the most vital importance. Can you corroborate
the evidence offered by your watch in any
way?"
"I had compared it at noon with the office
clock," said the instrument maker.
"And is the office clock generally right?"
"It has to be right," said the witness.
"Please explain what you mean."
"It's an electric clock. It is connected on the
same circuit with all the clocks in the building,
and they are set every hour by telegraph from
the observatory at Washington. All the clocks
in that building are always right."
"Could one of them get out of order and
stop? " asked the coroner.
"No, because they are all on one circuit. If
one of them went wrong it would stop every
clock in the whole building."
"That's all," said the coroner. But the dis-
trict attorney wanted to ask a question.
"Dr. Armstrong talked to you in a perfectly
natural, spontaneous way, did he?"
"Yes, sir."
96


DR. ARMSTRONG TESTIFIES
"He did not seem to be laboring under any
unusual excitement?"
"None at all, sir. I thought he looked a bit
worried when I first caught sight of his face,
but nothing more than that, sir."
"That's all."
The doctor then resumed the stand.
"You were in your office, Dr. Armstrong,
from, say, eleven thirty until twelve fifteen?"
"If the latter hour is the time when I went
out—yes, sir."
"Did you hear anything in Dr. Marshall's
office to arouse your suspicion that all was not
well there?"
"Nothing whatever."
"What might you have expected to hear
from your position at your desk? Would an
ordinary conversation in the doctor's office be
audible?"
"No, sir."
"But if the voices were raised, as if in
anger?"
"Then I think I should have heard them."
97


THE WHISPERING MAN
"If there had been a life-and-death struggle,
such as a man of Dr. Marshall's physique could
have made against an attempt to suffocate him,
you would, in all human probability, have heard
something of it?"
"I should be inclined to think so; yes, sir."
"And you heard nothing?"
"Nothing whatever."
"You are sure the doctor did not ring your
bell?"
"Not after the last time I answered it."
"I think that's all for the present," said the
coroner, "unless some member of the jury
wishes to ask a question. Is there anything you
wish to inquire about, gentlemen?"
There was a little silence after that. For my
part my mind was centered on that blankly mys-
terious thirty-five minutes between twenty min-
utes to twelve, when Gwendolen Carr, if her tes-
timony was to be believed, had left the doctor
alive and well, sitting at his desk, and twelve
fifteen, when his assistant had gone out of the
adjoining office on his errand to the instrument
98


DR. ARMSTRONG TESTIFIES
maker's. Thirty-five minutes of silence. I felt
again as I had felt the evening before when
young Jack Marshall had inarticulately whis-
pered "poison!" I seemed to read across the
blank space of those thirty-five minutes the word
"treachery " written in lurid letters.
I think the increasing tension of that mo-
ment, while we waited to see if any of the jury
was going to act on the coroner's invitation, was
felt by everyone in the room. I am sure the
witness felt it, for I could see him turning a little
pale and breathing a little quicker. But the ten-
sion was instantly relaxed when one of the jurors
spoke up. He was a little ferret-faced man with
a piping voice. "I'd like to know," he said,
"what was in the package you brought back
from the instrument maker's."
The utter irrelevance and futility of the ques-
tion, asked, as it was, in that inquisitive piping
voice, caused a sudden ripple of laughter in the
room. Even the best behaved of us smiled, and
the coroner himself, though he sternly com-
manded silence, was not able to extinguish
99


THE WHISPERING MAN
the twinkle in his eye when he repeated the
question.
But the assistant showed no inclination to
laugh; nor, on the other hand, did he resent the
question as an impertinence. He answered, in
fact, rather gravely, "What I bought was a
new hypodermic syringe. The one I had been
using had a fall and the needle was broken.
That is a very necessary instrument to a man in
my profession. So I went down to the instru-
ment maker's, as soon as I could, and bought a
new one."
They summoned other witnesses after that,
witnesses whose testimony was far more sensa-
tional from the point of view of other specta-
tors at the inquest than anything that had gone
before. Pomeroy, the professional crook, against
whom the case had seemed last night so perfect,
was able to prove a positive alibi; and Dr. Mar-
shall's jeweler testified that the supposed ruby
which the police had found in Pomeroy's pocket
was nothing but an imitation. The true ruby
was undisturbed in the doctor's safe.
IOO


DR. ARMSTRONG TESTIFIES
It must have been very dramatic, this sudden
collapse of the theory of the crime which every-
body present, except, perhaps, the coroner, the
district attorney, and myself, had unhesitatingly
accepted. But I sat there through it all, wholly
unconscious of the rising excitement, of the
swiftly interchanged looks, the buzz of whis-
pered conversation, the dawning in every face of
some new and much more terrible surmise. It
was not because this result had been a foregone
conclusion to me that I remained thus oblivious
to my surroundings. It was because the whole
of my thinking power was focused on something
else; upon the small curved, gleaming bit of steel
which I had first mistaken for a bent pin upon
the carpet in Dr. Marshall's inner office. The
thing I had picked up, and then laughed at my-
self for replacing where I had seen it. I knew
what it was now. It was the broken end of a
hollow hypodermic needle.


CHAPTER VII ,
THE BALANCE OF PROBABILITY
JACK, dear, do try to cheer up and eat some-
thing. The world isn't coming to an end,
and no innocent person is going to suffer for
your father's murder. Cliff here will attend to
that. You and I are innocent, and I believe Dr.
Armstrong is. I believe it just as much as I did
this morning, though of course it was plain what
Mr. Cromwell was getting at. There are going
to be hard times for all of us until it is cleared
up, but it will be cleared up in the end. Come,
eat that sweatbread; it's delicious. And try to
smile a little."
We were lunching, not, indeed, where I could
have wished to take them, but in the least
impossible place that was near at hand. The
coroner had adjourned the inquest for only
102


BALANCE OF PROBABILITY
an hour, which put going uptown out of the
question.
Madeline had endured the strain and the dis-
comfort of the morning with a calmness which
was hard for me to understand, and with a cour-
age that I found it difficult to admire sufficiently.
She needed an extra supply to compensate for
her stepson's weakness. He had yielded, only
after a good deal of resistance, to my suggestion
that we go out to lunch, and had made almost
no pretense at eating anything.
The more I watched this young man, the less
I could understand him. He had never im-
pressed me as one likely to turn weak in a crisis,
and yet he seemed to be deplorably so. Made-
line had said there would be hard times for all
of them, and that was a mild way of putting it
if the evidence were to go on developing in the
direction it had taken against Dr. Armstrong.
But it would be infinitely harder for Madeline
than for Jack. Her name was sure to be
coupled with that of the suspected doctor in a
way that, at the best, would be disagreeable,
1
103


THE WHISPERING MAN
and at the worst would be unthinkably distress-
ing. If his guilt were proved, her own inno-
cence could hardly remain unquestioned.
It was clear enough in this circumstance that
Jack should have risen to the situation; should
have encouraged her, rather than leaned upon
her for support himself.
Just as we were about to leave the restaurant,
a little incident happened which I must mention
here, although it seemed insignificant enough at
the time. The brief hour which the coroner had
allowed us for recess had almost passed, and
we were in the act of rising from our table,
when behind me I heard a chair move back, and
the next moment, somewhat to my surprise, my
friend Jeffrey walked round our table and went
straight up to Madeline. What he said to her
amounted to nothing, except for what was
omitted.
He said nothing whatever by way of condo-
lence over Dr. Marshall's death, but spoke
merely of the course of events of the inquest,
which it appeared he had attended, and at-
104


BALANCE OF PROBABILITY
tempted to cheer her with the thought that it
would soon be over.
It suddenly occurred to me while he talked
that he must have seen her since her husband's
death. It was only last evening at dinner time
that we had got the news of it. He would
hardly have called at the house, let alone been
admitted to see her last evening while Jack and
I were down at the Grosvenor, unless there were
between them a much greater degree of intimacy
than he had allowed me to suppose. Then, too,
it seemed that while she stood talking to him
there her color was a little higher, her eyes
brighter; that there was less of the calm, cold
restraint in her manner than there had been
before.
We left him to go back to his unfinished
lunch, and drove back, rather silently, to the
Criminal Courts building. I was feeling rather
annoyed, but with myself rather than with Mad-
eline, for attaching what I assured myself was an
altogether exaggerated importance to the little
incident of our meeting with Jeffrey.
105


THE WHISPERING MAN
What Jack was thinking about I could not
guess. He had paid very little attention to Jef-
frey; had hardly spoken to him at all, unless I
was mistaken. He seemed entirely engrossed
with a train of thought that was all his own.
I knew he would be called as a witness, and
rather dreaded his appearance on the stand.
It was nearly half an hour after the time set
by the coroner for the continuation of the in-
quest before that functionary, accompanied by
the district attorney and a third man, whom I
did not recognize, emerged from the private of-
fice. The district attorney and the stranger
seated themselves within the railed-in space and
continued a low-voiced conversation.
The coroner, as soon as the room had been
brought to order, summoned the first witness for
the afternoon, John Roscoe Marshall. He had
had a junior after that name until yesterday.
He answered the formal routine questions
with which his testimony was inaugurated in a
rather listless manner, which told me that the
mysterious something, whatever it was, that had
106


BALANCE OF PROBABILITY
occupied his mind during the lunch hour was
still dominant in his thoughts.
It was not long before the coroner roused his
full attention. "You saw your father, Mr.
Marshall, yesterday morning before he went
downtown to his office?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did you see him for more than a mo-
ment?"
"Yes, sir, we breakfasted together. We had
some conversation."
The coroner leaned forward as he asked the
next question. "Did you happen to observe
whether or not, at that time, there was any sort
of wound or scratch upon your father's throat,
or anything that might have been such a wound
or scratch, but was covered by a piece of adhe-
sive surgical plaster?"
"No, sir," said the witness in some surprise,
"there was nothing of the sort there."
"You mean, I suppose," continued the cor-
oner, "that you happened to notice nothing of
the sort there?"
8 107


THE WHISPERING MAN
"No, sir, I meant there was nothing. My
father had a habit in conversation, especially
when he was a trifle excited, of putting back his
head and thrusting out his chin in such a way
as to get the edge of his beard clear from his
collar. I noticed particularly his doing that yes-
terday morning, and I am sure there was noth-
ing of the sort you speak of above the line of
the collar."
"That's all, Mr. Marshall," said the cor-
oner.
Jack looked at him in astonishment. "You
mean you are through with me? " he asked.
"For the present. I may wish to recall you
to the stand later. You may step down now."
Madeline was called to the stand immediately
afterwards, and, to my increasing surprise, she
was asked exactly the same questions we had just
heard her stepson answer. Her answers were
the same as his, or practically so. And then she,
too, was excused, though with the provision that
she might be recalled.
The question had already begun to take on a
108


BALANCE OF PROBABILITY
sort of uncanny force1 just from its apparent
triviality and the number of times it was in-
sisted upon. This effect was increased still fur-
ther when Gwendolen Carr was recalled to the
stand, only to have the same question, for a
third time, asked of her.
"Before twenty minutes to twelve, Miss
Carr, when you left Dr. Marshall's office, was
there such a wound or any such bit of surgical
plaster, as you have just heard me describe, on
Dr. Marshall's throat?"
"No, sir."
"You are quite sure?"
"Quite sure."
Almost before she had got the words uttered,
a sudden look of alarm, almost of terror, in her
eyes attracted my attention. She seemed to be
looking straight at Jack, who, after leaving the
stand, had taken a seat beside me. I followed
her gaze quickly enough to see him sway where
he sat, but not in time to save him from falling
out of his chair in a dead faint.
He recovered quickly in the cool fresh air of
109


THE WHISPERING MAN
the corridor, whither we carried him, and the
coroner sent out word that he might go home,
as it would probably not be necessary to call
on him for any further testimony.
I found myself a little puzzled to account for
the expression of alarm I had seen for a mo-
ment in Gwendolen Carr's face. It seemed
sharper and more poignant than the mere sight
of a fainting man would suffice to explain.
But the testimony of the next witness effectu-
ally diverted my mind from any such fine-spun
speculations as that. He was the stranger who
had come out of the coroner's office accompanied
by that official and the district attorney. He
now proved to be the coroner's physician, who
had conducted the autopsy on the body of the
murdered man.
"State what, in your opinion, was the cause
of the death." This was the question I heard
the coroner asking when I reentered the room.
"The cause of death was instantaneous col-
lapse accompanying paralysis of the heart and of
the organs of respiration. This was due to the
no


BALANCE OF PROBABILITY
presence, in a quantity sufficient to produce a
toxic effect, of some unidentified vegetable alka-
loid."
"In other words," said the coroner, " in your
opinion, the deceased met his death by poison?"
"Yes, sir, beyond a doubt."
"What was that poison?"
"That is a question," replied the doctor slow-
ly, "which at present I am unable to answer.
The process of chemical analysis is one of elim-
ination. There are a great many poisons which
we are quite sure this is not, but we have not
been able yet to determine absolutely what it is."
"You are quite sure, then, that it is not one
of the commoner poisons?"
"Yes, sir. It is a poison which I never en-
countered before in my experience. By its action
it must be of a singularly deadly nature. In this
case I am sure that death ensued practically in-
stantaneously after its administration."
"Have you been able to determine," asked
the coroner, "in what manner it was admin-
istered?"
in


THE WHISPERING MAN
Dr. Marshall bending over him. He must have
been able to touch the throat with his fingers
without exciting suspicion. The slightest resist-
ance, such as would have resulted from the
faintest guess as to his intention, would have
frustrated the attempt absolutely."
The coroner did not call the next witness im-
mediately. He sat there at his desk, a little en-
velope in his hand, and although his eyes were
lowered, he did not appear to be looking at it.
I glanced over toward the jury. They sat
there, every man of them, with the same curi-
ous fixed look about their faces that I had seen in
the coroner's. No one of them was looking in
Walter Armstrong's direction. Their horror at
the deed he had done—the deed he must have
done, that no one else could have had the oppor-
tunity to do—seemed to make it impossible for
them to look at him.
Who else but he could be the criminal? Who
else could have got into that room without ex-
citing the victim's suspicion? Who else than
this admitted student of poisons would have
116


BALANCE OF PROBABILITY
filled his syringe with a drug so rare that it baf-
fled the chemists? Who but a clever surgeon
could have directed his needle point into that
broad avenue that led so instantly to the heart?
But there was more to come. This mountain
of suspicion was to be piled higher yet, until it
reached the altitude of utter certainty.
Already the coroner was calling the next wit-
ness. "Thomas Mealy.",


CHAPTER VIII
WHAT JACK MARSHALL KNEW
THE man who took the stand in response
to this summons I recognized instantly
as the young police officer who had been left in
charge of the scene of the crime the night be-
fore. He sat very squarely on the witness chair,
his helmet on his knees, his face composed into
a perfectly meaningless official expression which
members of the force nearly always exhibit
when they are on the stand.
After the routine questions, which served to
inform the jury who he was and what his con-
nection with the case amounted to, the coroner
handed him the envelope which he had been hold-
ing in his fingers. "Open that," he said, " and
tell me if you know what the object is that it
contains."
"No, sorr, I don't."
118


WHAT JACK MARSHALL KNEW
"Do you recognize it?"
"D'you mean, have I iver seen it before?
Yes, sorr."
"Tell the jury where it was when you saw it."
"It was last evenin', late, after the lootenant
and the rest of thim had gone away, I was
lookin' about, not thinkin' of much of anythin',
when I saw somethin' shinin' on the carpet. It
looked like steel, and it was stickin' up like, so
that I was afraid I might step on it and get it
in my feet as I was walkin' about. I picked it
up, and this was it, sorr."
"You are quite sure that was the thing you
picked up?"
"Yes, sorr."
"Tell us exactly where it was when you
saw it."
"Why, it was on the carpet, sorr, in Dr. Mar-
shall's inner office, two or three paces away from
the desk, I should say."
"What did you do with it when you picked
it up?"
"I stuck it in this little envelope and put it
119


THE WHISPERING MAN
in my pocket, and this mornin' I showed it to the
inspector."
The witness was excused, after having handed
back to the coroner the envelope and the thing
it contained. Then, very gravely, the coroner
looked down at the man who was sitting within
arm's reach of me. "I am afraid I must call
you to the stand again, Dr. Armstrong," he
said.
The new witness rose and walked steadily
up to the chair on the witness stand. He was
very pale, but he did not look terror-stricken
or guilty. He faced his inquisitor without
flinching.
The coroner handed the envelope to him.
"Can you tell the jury what that object is, Dr.
Armstrong?"
The young doctor took the curved bit of steel,
looked at it closely, appeared, somewhat to my
surprise, to smell of it, and then seemed to let
his mind glide off into a sort of reverie, uncon-
scious of the fact that we were all waiting for
his answer to the question.
120


WHAT JACK MARSHALL KNEW
The coroner repeated it rather sharply. "Do
you know what it is, Dr. Armstrong?"
He came back to his present surroundings
with a start. "Yes, sir," he said. "It is the
broken end of a hypodermic needle."
"In your testimony this morning, Dr. Arm-
strong, you mentioned the fact that your own
hypodermic needle was broken yesterday morn-
ing. You may recall this statement as the rea-
son you alleged for your errand to the instru-
ment shop on the first floor. Dr. Armstrong,
was that needle which you hold in your fingers
broken from the end of your own hypodermic
syringe?"
"No, sir," said the doctor quietly.
The question might as well have been, "Are
you the man who murdered Dr. Marshall?"
But there was no vehemence, no suggestion of
protest in the tone of the witness's voice.
"Are you able," the coroner continued,
"to produce the broken point of your own
needle?"
"No, sir. It fell from my hand while I was
121


THE WHISPERING MAN
washing it, and the broken end went down the
drain."
i Well, the chain was complete at last. On the
witness's own testimony, he had sat alone in a
room, with direct access to the murdered man,
at the time when the murder was committed.
The instrument of death had been a hypodermic
syringe, which had been broken in the encounter.
And again returning to the testimony of the
witness himself, this man who sat there now in
the witness box had gone out to purchase a new,
similar instrument within an hour of the com-
mission of the murder.
The witness seemed to realize how perfectly
the links of the chain fitted together, but some-
thing, either the incandescent clarity of his inno-
cence or the most stupendous, impudent effront-
ery, was sustaining him.
He seemed loath to hand the needle point
back to the coroner. He took off his spectacles
for a better look at it; rubbed his finger along
its curved surface. The coroner was holding
out his hand, waiting to take it back, when the
122


WHAT JACK MARSHALL KNEW
witness met his look, and it was the witness who
asked the next question.
"Is it your theory, sir, that this needle was
the one used by the murderer?"
"You are on the stand to answer questions,
not to ask them."
But the witness proceeded, unabashed: "I
believe that is your theory. If it is, and if it's
right, I think I can provide the coroner's physi-
cian with a hint as to the nature of the poison
used. I believe that I recognize it."
I think it is safe to say that everyone in that
room who heard his words gasped with aston-
ishment. Here was innocence or effrontery with
a vengeance, and for the moment I think most
of our minds inclined toward the latter.
There was a moment of dead silence. Then
the coroner said, rather hoarsely: "Go on, sir.
You may tell us your belief in the matter."
"I think," said the witness, "that the liquid
which was driven through this needle was a pow-
erful solution of nicotine bitartrate. It is one
of the essential principles of the tobacco plant,
9 123


THE WHISPERING MAN
and one of the deadliest and swiftest known poi-
sons. Of course it would require a chemical
analysis to prove the correctness of my opinion,
but I myself have very little doubt of it."
"Did you ever hear of a case, doctor "—it
was the coroner who spoke—" of this poison
being used upon a human being?"
"Such cases are rare," the witness answered
promptly, "but some few are known. I know
of only one murder in which this was the poison
used."
"But you do know of one?"
"Yes, sir. A certain French count, whose
name at the moment escapes me, was murdered
by means of this poison somewhere back in the
eighties."
"Have you at present in your laboratory any
sample of this poison, Dr. Armstrong?"
"I think so, sir. I am not sure. For that
matter, it occurs in the American Pharma-
copoeia. Any doctor can get it."
Strange as it may seem, I think the effect of
the doctor's candor with the coroner, myself,
124


WHAT JACK MARSHALL KNEW
the jury, and the spectators told. against rather
than for him. It produced so strong and in-
stantaneous an impression of innocence that the
mind reacted from it, and reflected that this im-
pression was just exactly what it had been cal-
culated to produce.
The coroner had no more questions to ask,
neither had any member of the jury, but the
district attorney was on his feet, asking for a
word more.
I think that had it not been for the effect that
might be produced on the jury by the amazing
information which Dr. Armstrong had volun-
teered, Cromwell would have spared the wit-
ness these last twists of the thumbscrews. But
he was quite merciless and meant to take no
chances.
"Is it true, Dr. Armstrong," he asked, "that
just before the murder you were on the point
of severing your connection with Dr. Marshall
and leaving the city?"
That shot told plainly enough. The witness
started, his hands clenched convulsively on the
125


THE WHISPERING MAN
chair arm, and he pressed his lips tight together
for a moment before he attempted to answer.
Finally he nodded his head, and contrived to
utter the word "Yes."
"Is it also true," his inquisitor went on, " that
you had quarreled with the deceased, and that
your decision to go away was the result of this
quarrel?"
"Partly; yes, sir."
"You had been on very friendly terms with
him previously, had you not; not only with him,
with his—family?"
"Yes, that is true."
"You had been a frequent visitor at his house,
had you not?"
"Yes, sir."
The district attorney, with a grim smile on
his pugnacious face, turned sharply away with a
little shrug of his shoulders, and he let fifteen
or twenty seconds intervene before he asked the
next question. When he did ask it, he contrived
to get into his inflection of the words the sug-
gestion that asking it was a mere form of law,
126


WHAT JACK MARSHALL KNEW
and that it was impossible there should be an
answer.
"Do you care to state to the jury the cause of
your quarrel with Dr. Marshall?" he asked.
"No," said the witness, between his white
lips. "That's quite impossible."
'" That's enough," said the district attorney.
The coroner's summing up of the case and
the retirement of the jury to deliberate was a
mere matter of form. They could have reached
their verdict without leaving their seats, as far
as that went.
Dr. Armstrong betrayed neither fear nor ex-
citement when he heard the verdict. It had been
practically a foregone conclusion all the after-
noon, and he was ready for it.
He listened without a quiver to the words
which deprived him of his liberty, turned to the
nearest officer and said:
"Take me across the bridge. I am ready."
The formalities were few and swift.
In the crowd of spectators I drifted out of the
room and down the corridor. I was wondering
127


THE WHISPERING MAN
how it happened that, after all, now that it was
over, the chain of testimony which the inquest had
brought out complete in every detail, providing
the motive, the opportunity, and the method of
the murder, and pointing it all straight at one
man, still failed to produce in me a full and sat-
isfactory conviction of his guilt. And then came
the thought, which I mentioned at the beginning
of my account of the day's proceedings, that at
any rate it was all over, at least for to-day.
Until a night's sleep and a little leisure for quiet
reflection should have brought back a clear mind
again, there could be nothing more to grapple
with. But there I was mistaken.
It was late in the afternoon and the corridor
was not very well lighted, but for all that I was
able to recognize the figure of the man who
stood back in the shadowy angle of it watching
the stream of spectators that was drifting out.
He was the man who had fainted and whom
the coroner had excused from further attend-
ance on the inquest—my young friend, Jack
Marshall.
128


WHAT JACK MARSHALL KNEW
It only needed one look at his face to convince
me that the perplexities and surprises of my day
were not exhausted yet, for if the wildly staring
eyes of the man who now clutched my arm were
prophets of the truth, something was going to
happen at once.
"Come with me!" he gasped hoarsely.
"I've got something to say to you!"
The hand which clutched my arm in a con-
vulsive grasp was trembling uncontrollably.
"Steady," said I. "There is plenty of time.
Walk along quietly with me until we are out of
the crowd."
I We turned down White Street, crossed Bax-
ter, and went into Mulberry Bend Park. It was
the late afternoon of a warm spring day, and the
little park teemed and swarmed with humanity.
But it was the sort of humanity that would have
no ears for our conversation.
"Sit down here, now," said I, "and tell me
what you have to say."
He began with a question. "Have they held
Armstrong?"
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THE WHISPERING MAN
I nodded. "He's locked up in the Tombs
already," said I.
"Drew," the young man whispered, "he
didn't do it. He didn't do it!"
"I wish I could be sure," said I. "Of course,
the circumstances seem to establish an almost
irresistible case against him. I think that any
jury would find him guilty on the evidence that
has been developed at the inquest to-day, and
yet somehow I can't find it in my heart to believe
he did it."
"That's not my trouble," said Jack. "I wish
to Heaven I could believe he did it. I don't
know how much I would give—my life, I
think—to be able to believe that it was Dr.
Armstrong who murdered my father, but I
can't; because, Drew, I know he didn't. I
know he didn't. He hadn't any chance to
do it."
"Then," said I, trying in vain to speak stead-
ily, "if you know that, you know more than
the coroner knows. You know something that
ought to have come out at the inquest to-day.
130


WHAT JACK MARSHALL KNEW
As a result of that inquest, if your knowledge is
correct—if there is no possibility of mistake
about it—then an innocent man is locked in a cell
over there in the Tombs prison. We shall have
to have the truth now, Jack, whoever it hurts,
whatever the consequences may be. But can you
be sure, absolutely sure, that Dr. Armstrong was
innocent after all?"
"Yes," he said, " that's the one thing I can be
sure of. He was down at the instrument maker's,
wasn't he, from a quarter past twelve till half
past twelve?"
"Yes," said I. "What of that?"
He was shuddering so that he could scarcely
speak, but he finally compelled the words to his
trembling lips:
"This is what I know," he said. "I know
that some one came out of my father's office at
twenty minutes past twelve. I know who that
person was."
There was a moment of silence while I waited
for him to speak the name, but it soon became
evident that he did not mean to do it.
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THE WHISPERING MAN
"Who was it, Jack?" I asked. "You must
tell me that now, whoever it was."
"Not yet," he said with a sort of gasp; " I
must see her first. I must try again to get her
to tell me the truth 1"


CHAPTER IX
THE LAST PATIENT
IMUST try again to get her to tell me the
truth."
The words fell like lead upon my mind, and
left me half stunned with horror. Before I
could utter a word he spoke again.
"Don't ask me any more questions. Don't
try to find out, and don't follow me. I am going
to see her now."
He sprang up from his seat on the bench be-
fore he had finished speaking, and without giv-
ing me time for a word of protest he rushed
away across the park.
I did not attempt to follow him. I was, in
fact, incapable of doing so. I sank back upon
my bench and closed my eyes, trying to steady
the world that was reeling round me. How
long I sat there I do not know; probably for the
133


THE LAST PATIENT
first. I am glad you have come. I hope you
will stay to dinner. It seems good to have you
here somehow, but please let's not talk about
anything that concerns these last two dreadful
days. Let's talk about old times."
Her words made my task ten times harder.
I rose miserably to my feet.
"Has Jack come home? " I asked.
"I think not," she said. "At least I have
not seen him. I missed you as I came out from
the inquest, and when I turned to look for you I
thought I saw you going off with him."
"You did," said I, "but he left me abrupt-
ly and I thought he meant to come straight
home."
There was a little silence after that. She
waited for me to speak, and finally I began.
"Madeline," said I, "I wish with all my
heart that we could do as you say—forget for a
while these dreadful days and talk about old
times—but there is something else that must
come first. Before Jack left me this afternoon
he told me something that did not come out at
135


THE WHISPERING MAN
the inquest, and I must, I must talk to you about
it. I have no alternative."
She sighed wearily. "Very well, then," she
said.
"Jack told me," I began, "that Dr. Arm-
strong is innocent."
"Well, I think so, too," she said. "My belief
in that was not shaken by the inquest at least.
I am glad Jack agrees with me."
"Jack is not glad," said I gravely. "He's in
despair. He told me that he would give any-
thing—his life, he thought—to be rid of the
knowledge that convinces him that Dr. Arm-
strong is innocent."
She started and looked at me intently.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Jack knows," I went on, looking at her in-
tently, "Jack knows who it was who came out
of Dr. Marshall's office at twenty minutes past
twelve on the day of the murder. It was a
woman."
Madeline dropped back rather limply in her
chair.
136


THE LAST PATIENT
"Oh, the poor, poor boy," she said, half un-
der her breath. Then she asked me a question:
"Did Jack tell you who it was that he saw?"
"No," said I. "He said he meant to see her
again and try to get her to tell the truth."
The expression in Madeline's face hardened
suddenly. "And you think," she observed, a
world of scornful anger in her voice, " you think
it was I who came out of the office at that
hour."
"I have not said so," I protested; "I have
accused you of nothing."
"Don't quibble," she said. "As a matter of
fact, you did say you suspected me, though you
didn't mean to. You said just now that Jack
left you to see the woman and to try to get her
to tell the truth, and you said five minutes ago
that you suspected he had come straight home.
That makes it clear enough, I think, what you
are thinking of. I am not sure that you really
deserve an answer, but I will make you one. I
did not come out of Dr. Marshall's office at
twenty minutes past twelve or at any other time
137


THE WHISPERING MAN
on the day of the murder, for the simple reason
that I didn't go into it on that day."
"Well," said I gravely, "I am very, very
glad. I did think from the way Jack spoke that
it was you he saw, and I think in time you will
forgive me for having thought so natural a
thing."
"Oh, I forgive you now," she said half-
heartedly, " but I find it a little difficult. I sup-
pose I should not blame my friends for having
suspected me of having murdered my husband,
when the circumstances really point in that di-
rection. But I think I have a right to expect
that they use a little ordinary reason in the mat-
ter. Why, Clifford Drew, do you suppose after
all the evidence at the inquest that Jack would
feel that Dr. Armstrong's innocence was estab-
lished beyond a doubt by the fact that / came
out of the doctor's office at twenty minutes past
twelve? Wouldn't that implicate him all the
more deeply, if anything?"
The sudden truth of what she said left me
speechless. I was seven times a fool not to have
138


THE LAST PATIENT
seen it when I sat there in the park; seen it and
rejoiced instead of dolefully imagining that the
world was coming to an end.
"Come, don't worry about it," she said at
length. "You meant all right, and we are all
so tired and so dazed that we are hardly respon-
sible. But poor, poor Jack!"
"Do you know who it was he saw?" I asked.
"No, I don't know."
"But you can guess?"
"I could make a guess that might or might
not be right, but I don't mean to do it."
"Well," said I, " I feel that I must do some-
thing. The position of leaving an innocent man
locked up in the Tombs under the weight of such
an appalling amount of circumstantial evidence
as has been piled upon Dr. Armstrong, is intol-
erable."
"I shan't say another word about it," she said
positively. "If you want to accept the terms I
first proposed when I came down to see you, and
sit here quietly till Jack comes home, you may;
otherwise I shall have to ask you to go. When
10 139


THE WHISPERING MAN
Jack comes in he will probably be able to clear
everything up. As for Dr. Armstrong, I don't
think he will mind spending an evening or even
a day or two in a nice comfortable cell where
he can't be pestered. I wish I were in one
myself."
I accepted her terms somewhat sulkily. But
even when they were accepted, the subject of
conversation didn't get very far away from the
dreadful mystery that enveloped us. We got
farthest away from it when she told me the story
of the man whom Dr. Marshall had ruined
years ago, just as he had meant to ruin this man
now.
I meant to stay until Jack came home, but
when the big hall clock struck eight I gave it
up. He might have gone to my rooms anyway,
and be waiting for me there. In case he came
home at any reasonable hour I left word that I
was to be telephoned for.
I picked up a hasty dinner in a restaurant on
the way down to the Atlas, and, arriving there,
went straight to Jeffrey's rooms. I opened my
140


THE LAST PATIENT
own door into the corridor and left it ajar, so
that I could hear the telephone when it rang.
Then I settled down to talk it out with Jeffrey.
In the web of perplexity in which I was then
involved, it was a downright necessity to me to
talk over the whole affair with some one in
whom I could place implicit confidence.
There was a good deal that I wanted to say,
wanted him to hear, and I had talked for some
time before I began gradually to become aware
that he was unusually silent, if not absolutely
indifferent.
"After all, she was quite tired out," he. said
at last, after I had described at some length my
unsatisfactory interview with Madeline. "Any-
way, so far as I can see, she gave you all you
had a right to ask for, in the assurance that
she didn't know whom Jack meant by 1 her.' If
you pressed her for more than that, I don't won-
der she quarreled with you."
"Oh, we didn't quarrel exactly, but I think
she might have tried to help. Certainly she
could have offered some suggestion. She has
141


THE WHISPERING MAN
known that boy very well in the last two years,
better in many ways than his own mother could
have known him, and she must have been able
to offer some hint."
"Not necessarily; and even though she could,
what good would a hint do, and what harm is
done by waiting? Oh, I know an innocent
man will spend the night in the Tombs, but
there are plenty more innocent men in there to
keep him company, and plenty of guilty ones
outside for company to the murderer, whoever
he is."
"It's all very well for you to take that de-
tached view of it," said I, "because it doesn't
matter a tallow dip to you, one way or the other.
But I happen to care. I have too much regard
for Madeline herself to feel comfortable leav-
ing her under suspicion that way."
"Leaving who under suspicion?" Jeffrey de-
manded. Then, as I was too much surprised by
the open anger in his voice to answer immedi-
ately, he went on: " Why, you silly ass, do you
mean that you suspect that Madeline Marshall
142


THE WHISPERING MAN
was visible, projecting out from under a folded
evening paper that had been laid down over
it. I happened to brush against the table as I
was leaving the room, and the note fell to the
floor. It was exactly at my feet, so I stooped
to pick it up, in spite of the "Never mind"
which Jeffrey uttered casually enough when he
saw what had happened. The note was ad-
dressed to Jeffrey, and it was in Madeline Mar-
shall's handwriting.
I went across to my own apartment, shut the
door behind me, and sat down to think. "Why,
why," I asked myself, "need this black web of
suspicion and mystery spread itself over one
after another of my friends?" That it should
include Jack and Madeline was bad enough, but
when it stretched to cover Arthur Jeffrey, too—
this was the last straw. There was absolutely
nothing tangible against him, of course. It was
nothing that he had received a note from Made-
line—I shouldn't want to be suspected on simi-
lar grounds myself—but he had deliberately
kept me in the dark, was still keeping me in the
144


THE LAST PATIENT
dark, and I felt that he had become impossible
as a confidant until he should be willing to give
me his confidence too.
And I did want somebody to tell my story to.
It would clarify itself just in the telling, I felt
sure.
The thought of the actor, Carlton Stancliffe,
had occurred to me a good many times during
the day. I recalled his interest in the case, the
valuable hint he had given me as to the coun-
terfeit nature of Pomeroy's ruby, and remem-
bered that he had admitted having a theory of
his own for the case.
On the impulse of the moment, I looked up
his address on the card he had given me, and
called him over the telephone. My call was
answered, and I had asked that Mr. Stancliffe
be summoned to the 'phone, before the incon-
siderateness of the act occurred to me. Of
course, without a voice, he could hardly be ex-
pected to talk to me. So I was a good deal sur-
prised to hear it, rich and full, coming to me
here through the receiver.
145


THE LAST PATIENT
"I am rather interested," he observed at last,
"in what you tell me of the other man—the doc-
tor whom Mrs. Marshall says her husband
ruined years ago. Tell me all you can about
him. In the first place, did she say quite defi-
nitely that he was dead?"
"No," said I thoughtfully, "she spoke as if
he was dead, spoke of it rather bitterly and with
a good deal of personal feeling. It was not
through her husband that she knew about it.
It seems that he—James Hyde, his name was—
was a sort of cousin of her own, a good deal
older, but not too old for a romantic young girl
to take an interest in. He was an extremely
handsome man, she says, with a great charm of
manner. From her description, he had a most
brilliant mind, which he could turn to anything,
although he had a special genius for medicine.
He was guilty, it seems, of little worse than an
indiscretion—talking about some patient of his,
I believe, in a way that was unprofessional, per-
haps, but not malicious—and Dr. Marshall
simply hounded him out of the city; 'pushed
147


THE WHISPERING MAN
him down off the curve of the world,' was the
way she put it. And now I remember what she
said about his death. She said she 'did not
know in what miserable slough of despair he
might have perished.'
"Evidently the incident made a lasting im-
pression on her mind, for she had taunted her
husband with it on the very morning of his
death, and she talked about it at considerable
length to me this evening. But her belief in
Hyde's death is evidently based on pure as-
sumption."
Our conversation got diverted just then, owing
to a little accident. A careless motion of his
arm knocked the siphon off the little tabouret
that stood beside his chair, and broke it, and the
moment of mild excitement which this provided
us with had the curious effect of restoring his
voice.
It was he who commented on the fact. "It
always acts that way," he said. "I can speak
perfectly well through the telephone if the con-
versation doesn't last too long. The affection is
148


THE LAST PATIENT
purely nervous. It has nothing to do with the
organs of the throat themselves. It is my firm
belief that if I could get the chance, I should be
able to play my parts on the stage just as well
as ever, but of course it is absurd to expect any
manager to risk it."
"But does an actor's excitement last after the
first minute or two?" I asked.
"Excitement is hardly the word for it. There
is an increase in the nervous tension. I think the
mere effort involved in keeping myself in another
character than my own would prevent my voice
from failing me."
"Isn't there a chance of your getting some
manager to risk it?"
He shook his head. "Not the least in the
world. I must find some other way of making
a living; some way that the possession of a voice
is not essential to. Then, perhaps, when I don't
want it, it will come back again. But that's
enough about me. Let's go back to our mys-
tery."
"Do you think," I asked, " that there may be
149


THE WHISPERING MAN
something in the theory that this doctor whom
he ruined has come back after all these years
and avenged himself upon him?"
Of course I was merely echoing the thought
that I knew was in Mr. Stancliffe's mind, but I
wanted him to develop the idea more thoroughly.
It made it seem rather promising.
"I don't know," he said very thoughtfully,
after a little silence. "They testified, if the
newspaper reports of the inquest are correct, that
the murder had, in all probability, been com-
mitted by a doctor; the coroner's physician, in
fact, spoke of it as a ' surgical operation ' rather
than a murder. But the other theory, espe-
cially in view of what young Marshall told you,
the woman theory, seems better. Unless Dr.
Marshall was deliberately submitting to an ex-
amination by a doctor, no man could have got
around behind his chair and touched his face
with his hands. Going farther than that, the
very first faint prick of steel, unless it were ex-
pected, would have caused an instantaneous
resistance.
150


THE LAST PATIENT
"But those difficulties quite shortly disap-
pear if you adopt the theory that it was a
woman. She might have got behind the doctor's
chair, have touched his face with her hands, by
way of a caress, and the imperceptible instant
during which he might have jerked away would
have been lost. He would have accounted for
the prick with the thought of a pin in the waist-
band, perhaps. His whole attitude of mind and
body, at least, would have been quite different
with a woman behind him, a charming and at-
tractive one, say, than with a man. On the
whole, I think that counteracts the presumption
established by the apparent knowledge of the
location of the jugular vein."
"Do you mean his wife? " I asked.
"No," he said, " I mean the woman we know
was in the office with him—the girl who testified
she went out at twenty minutes to twelve."
"You mean the last patient!" I cried.
"Gwendolen Carr, a slender frail little thing
like that?"
"This wasn't a crime of violence. That's
151


THE WHISPERING MAN
the very essence of it. Sandow never could have
accomplished it, because his purpose would have
been frustrated by the faintest resistance. The
very prettiness and innocence and charm, which
seem to have made such an impression on you,
would be worth more in a crime like that than
the strength of twenty men."
"Well," I confessed rather ruefully, " I have
suspected nearly everybody, but it never oc-
curred to me to think of her."
"That's because all the testimony had so ob-
vious a direction. When you look at the case
without prejudice, there's a good deal of ground
for suspicion against her. She is the last person
known to have seen him alive, in the first place;
and in the second place, there was an obvious
lack of candor about her testimony at the in-
quest."
"It wasn't obvious to me," said I.
"Oh, but you weren't looking. Do you re-
member when the coroner asked her if her visit
to the doctor was of a professional character?
This was her answer, ' Do you mean did I go as
152


THE LAST PATIENT
a patient? Yes, sir.' Of course she went as a
patient. She took her place in the line in the
reception room and waited her turn. If the
doctor had already refused to see her on any
other terms, this would afford her an easy means
of access to him; the only means, very likely,
unless she wanted to make a scene somewhere,
and she doesn't seem to be the kind of person
to do that."
"It seems to me you are attributing a curious
confusion to her character in supposing that she
would be willing to murder a man in cold blood,
and yet would risk an equivocation instead of a
downright lie when questioned about it."
"Women are like that," he said, "and,
then, too, God knows the poor thing may have
been justified."
I took ten minutes or so to digesting that the-
ory, in silence. It was utterly new to me, utterly
repugnant to my instincts to entertain it, and yet,
in many ways, it seemed to square remarkably
with the facts.
Suddenly, however, I thought of something.
153


THE WHISPERING MAN
"But there's Jack," I cried. "Where does he
come in? If he had happened to see her com-
ing out of his father's office at twenty minutes
past twelve, instead of twenty minutes before,
as she testified, what in the world could keep
him from saying so?"
But I saw the answer before Mr. Stancliffe's
whispering voice could put it into words. "Sup-
pose Jack knew," he answered; "knew some-
thing, no matter what, that involved this girl
to his father's discredit. Wouldn't he hold back
that knowledge as long as he could?"
His question clearly needed no answer, and I
made none, but sat thoughtfully silent, with my
chin in my hands, turning over in my mind this
new and disquieting angle which the case had
taken.
"There are a few minor points that are also
worthy of consideration. In the first place,
while her speech and manner are those of a per-
son of education and refinement, her dress is not
that of a young woman of wealth. It is incon-
spicuous and shows a considerable regard for
154


THE LAST PATIENT
economy. You must permit me, as an actor,
to speak in such matters as one having authority.
She gives her address as the St. Anthony. A
person who found it necessary to economize in
matters of dress would hardly be living at the
newest and most luxurious hotel in New York.
She would not be likely to go to consult Dr.
Marshall professionally. If she comes from out
of town and is only a transient at that hotel,
she would have some one with her. She would
not have gone alone to the doctor's office.
"I have just this much more to add: remem-
ber that I was in Dr. Marshall's waiting room
myself that morning. She was only three or
four behind me in the line of waiting patients,
and I had a good chance to observe her. It oc-
curred to me at the time that I could not ask
an actress better to portray a strong, self-con-
tained, well-bred young woman, waiting for the
beginning of what must prove a painful scene,
than this Miss Gwendolen Carr did while I sat
there watching her."
The telephone bell rang just then. It was
11 155


THE WHISPERING MAN
the call I had been expecting but had forgotten.
Madeline herself was on the wire.
"Jack came in about an hour ago," she said.
"He must have been having a fearful time. He
was mud stained and exhausted, and in a raging
fever. He is delirious now. I am afraid he is
going to be seriously ill."
When she had rung off, I told Mr. Stancliffe
the upshot of our conversation. "So there will
be nothing to be got from him for an indefi-
nite time. What do you say to our going
up to the St. Anthony and seeing Miss Carr
ourselves?"
"We shall be too late to find her," said Mr.
Stancliffe, "but we may as well go up there
and see what we can find out about her."
"Why do you think we shall be too late?" I
asked.
"I suspected it before, but Mrs. Marshall's
message made me sure of it. It was undoubt-
edly this Miss Gwendolen Carr whom Jack went
to see; undoubtedly, that is, unless our whole
theory of the case is wrong. Well, he couldn't
156


THE LAST PATIENT
have got into the mud between the St. Anthony
and his own house. She's gone away to some
one of the suburbs, you may take my word
for it."
We put on our hats, however, lighted fresh
cigars, and set out for the St. Anthony. It was
I who walked up to the clerk to make our in-
quiry.
"Is Miss Gwendolen Carr stopping here?"
I asked.
His face was wooden enough already, but at
the sound of that name it turned perfectly ex-
pressionless. "Not here," he said.
"Can you tell me when she left?"
"Never been here, I think," he said. "Look
at the register, if you like."
I didn't believe him; at least I was sure
that the name was familiar to him, and that
he could probably have told me more than he
did. But I saw nothing better to do than to
open the register, and begin to turn over the
pages.
After spending a few minutes at this profit-
157


THE WHISPERING MAN
»
less occupation, I felt a touch on my elbow.
"Come," said Mr. Stancliffe, "I always begin
to feel the need of a shave about this time
in the evening. Let's go down to the barber
shop."
I had no idea what he was driving at, and
he would not tell me. But I was not kept wait-
ing very long. The moment he settled down in
the first barber's chair, he gave his head a know-
ing nod in the direction of the manicurist's table
in the corner.
"Got a new one, I see," he said.
"You knew her, did you? " asked the barber,
with a look of perfect comprehension.
Mr. Stancliffe nodded indifferently. "What's
become of her? " he asked.
"Search me," said the barber. "She got the
sack from here when she gave this hotel as her
address at the coroner's inquest in the Marshall
case. It happened to be true; she did live here,
but that excuse didn't go down with the manage-
ment. She had orders to pack up as soon as they
read the evening papers."
iS8


CHAPTER X
MR. STANCLIFFE'S TRAP
SOMEWHERE between Hackensack and
Staten Island," or, if the barber's mind had
worked east and west, instead of north and south,
he might as well have said, "Somewhere between
Newark and Flushing." Somewhere among the
other four million in this congested little corner
of the world. It seemed to me, as I and my
companion emerged from the hotel and started
walking southward down the avenue together,
that any attempt to find her would be perfectly
hopeless.
I said as much to Mr. Stancliffe. "And yet
it is equally clear," I went on, "that she's got
to be found. Whether or not she murdered Dr.
Marshall, and I still find that difficult to believe,
there is no doubt that she knows a great deal
more of the matter than she told the coroner.
160


MR. STANCLIFFE'S TRAP
Of course it may be a wild-goose chase alto-
gether; we can't tell about that until Jack Mar-
shall is well enough to talk again, but that won't
be for several days, and it may be never. We
do know, or practically know, at least, that Dr.
Armstrong is innocent, and we can't leave him
disgraced and in despair locked up there in the
Tombs."
"I am not so sure that it would prove a very
difficult matter to find her," said Mr. Stancliffe.
"Apparently, Jack Marshall did."
"I suppose it might be done," I assented, "but
I haven't the slightest idea how to set about
it. My wits seem to be paralyzed somehow
in this business. I begin to suspect myself—
no, not of being the murderer, but of being a
great fool."
"Oh, that doesn't follow," said my compan-
ion easily. "The one essential thing to a de-
tective is a sense of complete detachment. A
man whose personal sympathies, likes, dislikes,
affections are aroused in any case is, in the nature
of things, powerless. Sherlock Holmes would
161


THE WHISPERING MAN
have been if somebody had murdered Dr. Wat-
son."
"There may be something in that," I ad-
mitted, "yet, I doubt if I am cut out for a de-
tective anyway. I was too ignorant to spot
Pomeroy's ruby for an imitation. I was too in-
attentive to note the suspicious circumstance
which you pointed out to me in the case of Miss
Carr's testimony. I hadn't any personal inter-
est in either of them. And yet the police are
worse than I am. If we were to put this line of
evidence into their hands, the first thing that
they would do would be to take the whole Met-
ropolitan press into their confidence, and fan the
spark into a perfect blaze of scandal inside of
twenty-four hours. And by that time Miss
Gwendolen Carr would be lost indeed."
"You are quite right," he assented. "There's
nothing to be done in that direction."
We walked on for two or three blocks, per-
haps, in silence. I was pondering upon an idea
of mine, which I didn't quite dare to put into
words. But at last he turned to me with a smile.
162


THE WHISPERING MAN
of a livelihood, at least for a while. One of
these new magazines has entered into an ar-
rangement with me to write a series of sketches
of some of the character parts I have taken in
famous plays. My part of the work is really
little more than to provide the letter press for
a series of drawings, for which I am to pose
as the characters themselves. The artist is no
less a person than your friend, Mr. Arthur Jef-
frey. But that is for the future, at least the
payment is. For the immediate present I am,
or was until this evening, almost at a loss which
way to turn. If you think my services as a de-
tective are worth anything, I am very glad."
I could not accept his offer without a little
protest. "It's not a fit sort of work for me to
let you do. It's not the sort of thing a gentle-
man should be asked to stain his hands with."
"My dear young friend," said he, "it was not
because it was disagreeable that you hesitated to
undertake it yourself, but because you thought,
and quite rightly, that you weren't competent to
do it. I believe I am, and I am very glad of the
164


MR. STANCLIFFE'S TRAP
ability to do you a service. As for staining one's
hands, a knock-about character like an actor
stains his often enough; and, then, one always
can wear gloves."
With that mild joke, we let the subject drop
and talked of other matters, until we reached
the point downtown where our ways divided.
Then we came down to business, and had a
good-humored little quarrel about terms, he pro-
testing against those I offered as too high. We
soon came to an amicable understanding, how-
ever.
"Don't worry about it," was his parting in-
junction. "I shall find her, never fear. When
I do, I will let you know."
For the next two days I did what I could to
follow his instructions and stop worrying about
the Marshall mystery. I made a point of seeing
nothing whatever of any person however re-
motely connected with it. I took pains to avoid
even Jeffrey, the regularity of whose daily rou-
tine made it an easy matter. The only thing
I did was to call up the Marshall house once a
165


THE WHISPERING MAN
day on the 'phone and inquire about Jack. He
was still very, very ill, and the two physicians
who were in daily attendance on him adopted
the reassuring, encouraging tone which all who
know anything of desperate illness and waning
hopes are alike familiar with.
I contrived to do my own work, which was
sadly in arrears, in a certain dull routine fashion,
and by means of an extremely active pair of
mental pruning shears, managed to nip in the
bud the various guesses, theories, and hazards
which my mind kept putting forth about the
scene of the murder. I would do as I was told,
and wait to hear from Mr. Stancliffe.
One night, two or three days after the fu-
neral, when I returned to the apartment after
a long day's work, the desk clerk cheered me
with the information that a gentleman was wait-
ing to see me, a clean-shaven gentleman who had
lost his voice.
"Where is he?" I asked.
"When we told him that you were out,
sir, he inquired if Mr. Jeffrey was in, and
166


MR. STANCLIFFE'S TRAP
learning that he was, decided to wait for you
there."
In Jeffrey's rooms! Oh, of course it was all
natural enough. He and Jeffrey were working
together for this magazine series, but I could not
help wondering, as I rode up in the elevator,
whether, by any possibility, Mr. Stancliffe could
have run on some clew that would give him
reasonable data for the same suspicion which my
own mind so vaguely and irrationally enter-
tained against the young artist.
I simply called a good evening to Jeffrey
through the door, and told Mr. Stancliffe I was
ready to see him. We had comfortably settled
down in my sitting room before we exchanged a
word.
"He is an enigma I find it difficult to solve,"
said I, nodding in the direction of my friend's
apartments. "I think I told you of that note
from Mrs. Marshall I saw on his table."
"In other words," said he, "you are inclined
to suspect him of some connection with our mys-
tery?"
167


THE WHISPERING MAN
"Oh, I know I haven't the slightest reason-
able ground for it," I answered, half apologet-
ically.
He laughed. "You'll do well to take one
thing at a time, at any rate," said he. "If our
theory about Miss Carr and the doctor proves
to be a mare's nest, it will be time enough to look
about for another one."
"You are quite right," said I. "Well, how
does it go? Have you any hope of finding
her?"
"I have found her. Here's her address."
He handed me a card as he spoke. "And you'll
observe that Jack had an ample excuse for get-
ting in the mud. The address is in Flatbush, or
rather in a suburb of it. She's living quite by
herself in a boarding house."
From the point of view of a confirmed New
Yorker, the place seemed incredibly remote.
"And you've actually found her," said I; " not
only found her, but found her in a place away
off a thousand miles from anywhere. I don't see
how you did it."
168


MR. STANCLIFFE'S TRAP
"It didn't prove difficult. Miss Carr, al-
though she dresses inconspicuously and talks in
a soft voice, is not the sort of person who would
find it easy to lose herself. She has too much
personal color. A person who had enjoyed one
good look at her would not only recognize her
on seeing her a second time, but would remember
that he had seen her, if he only saw her once.
Of course the St. Anthony was the starting point.
She had been employed there for some time, and
it was obvious she could not have been there
long without arousing the keen personal interest
of a good many people. It was only a question
of appearing in the right character and asking
the right kind of questions of the right people.
The rest proved easy enough. At all events,
there she is."
"Have you talked to her? " I asked. "Has
she told you anything?"
"I have not even seen her, or, rather, she's
not seen me. I am leaving that part of it to
you."
"I think you could do it better," I urged.
169


THE WHISPERING MAN
"My powers of penetration seem to be under
an eclipse."
"This is my suggestion," said he: "that you
go out, find her, tell her quite simply your po-
sition in the case, and ask her to come to New
York with you. I advise you to tell her frankly
that you want to take her up to Dr. Marshall's
office; that there are some matters of detail that
you wish to satisfy yourself about, and it will be
easier to clear them up there on the spot than
anywhere else. I think you told me you knew
Cromwell, the district attorney. In that case,
you will have no trouble in getting permission to
look over the premises, which I suppose are still
under police guard. As for me, you can pick
me up on the way, and we will all go together."
"Do you think she'll come?"
"I'm inclined to think so, yes. There is no
reason for making her think that you suspect her
of anything. She's come through so far without
suspicion. On the other hand, if she refused to
come, in spite of your urgent request, that re-
fusal would, of itself, direct suspicion against
170


MR. STANCLIFFE'S TRAP
her. She'll see that, I think, and come like a
Iamb."
I hated the job heartily. "Come like a
lamb," indeed! like a lamb to the slaughter!
But there was nothing else for it, so I went. The
task was not made easier by the strong convic-
tion, which had been growing upon me as I
summed up the case against her, that if not
guilty of the actual murder itself, she at least
had guilty knowledge of it.
All the length of my long ride in the sub-
way and the elevated I felt a good deal as a
jailer must feel when he has to read a death
warrant.
I found the house without as much difficulty
as I had anticipated. It was in a rather lonely
neighborhood, but a comfortable-looking place
enough.
When I ascertained that I had come to the
right place, and that Miss Gwendolen Carr was
at home, or " in," as the domestic, who answered
the bell, expressed it, I simply sent in my card,
without explanation, and asked if I might see
12 171


THE WHISPERING MAN
her. I took my seat in the cheerless little par-
lor which the servant indicated, heard her heavy
footsteps ascending the stairs, heard a door open
and a low-voiced conversation.
After that, I thought I heard a little half-
choked cry. Then came descending footsteps,
lighter ones and more hurried, and the next mo-
ment Miss Gwendolen Carr stood in the door-
way.
I could hardly repress an exclamation of as-
tonishment at the sight of her face. The pallor
of it might be the result of a shock, or a pre-
monition received only a moment ago, but the
haggard, hunted look it wore was not a matter
of moments, but of days. When I first saw her
there in Dr. Marshall's office the evening she
identified Pomeroy, I instinctively described her
to myself as a girl. Now I should describe her
as a woman, a woman wearing an invisible veil
of tragedy.
Evidently she had identified me from my
card, though how, I was at a loss at first to dis-
cover. Afterwards I remembered that she had
172


MR. STANCLIFFE'S TRAP
been sitting in the doctor's reception room that
night when Jack and I came in, and that I had
given my name to the sergeant. So she mani-
fested no surprise at the sight of me.
But, in fact, the tragic horror in her face was
far beyond surprise. Her hands opened and
shut convulsively, once or twice, and then she
clasped them together in front of her before
she spoke. "Have you something to tell me?"
she asked. "Have you something dreadful to
tell me?" Before I could find words with
which to frame a reply she went on:
"Did he— Is he"
It was simply impossible to look upon an
agony like that and make no attempt to alleviate
it. I suppose if I were a born detective, I should
have played upon her fears, misled her, trapped
her in that moment when grief made her de-
fenseless, and pieced together her whole story,
whatever it was. There was a story there
plainly enough. But, as I say, I could not do it.
"Sit down, Miss Carr," I said. "Please,
please don't distress yourself. I've brought no
173


THE WHISPERING MAN
news for you whatever. I came out here to ask
you a favor."
With a long sigh, which told me that I had
only half succeeded in reassuring her, she seated
herself and I followed her example.
"Miss Carr," said I, "there are still a few
details connected with Dr. Marshall's death
which are very obscure to us. Young Mr.
Marshall was taken ill on the day of the inquest
and is not yet in condition to take charge of the
family affairs, is not even able as yet to tell us
what he himself may know. So at present that
duty devolves on me. It has occurred to me,
and to one of my friends, that if you will go with
us to Dr. Marshall's office, you may be able
to clear up some things that puzzle us. I said
it was a favor I had to ask, and I repeat that
that is the way I regard it. We shall be under
a very great obligation to you if you will come."
It was some little time before she made me
any answer. It did not seem precisely as if she
hesitated, but rather as if her mind were follow-
ing out some line of thought of her own. There
174


MR. STANCLIFFE'S TRAP
was no evidence of alarm about her manner
either; indeed, she seemed distinctly more self-
possessed than she had been when she first came
into the room.
I did not repeat my question, however, but
waited in silence, and at last she answered it.
"Yes, I'll go with you," she said simply, and
rose as if to leave the room in quest of her
wraps, but at the doorway she paused a moment.
"I can't pretend that it won't be very painful
to me," she said, "more painful than you had
any cause to suspect when you came out here,
but I realize that it isn't your fault. You had
to come and I must go with you."
The ride back to town was rather ghastly;
that was my feeling about it, at any rate. Mr.
Stancliffe had been too wise to take me very far
into his confidence, but I was able to guess that
there in Dr. Marshall's office would be found
some trap, ready to spring and hold fast, the
moment her unwary foot had trodden on it.
It would have been horrible enough to take
her there in any case, but she made it worse by
175


THE WHISPERING MAN
her brave attempt to spare me the discomfort of
witnessing her own agony. All the way back
to town she held her dainty head erect, and
though words half choked her, made conversa-
tion for me, talked brightly, even wittily, about
such indifferent subjects as we could find in com-
mon. There was no trace of bravado about it.
She was simply trying to spare me an acute dis-
comfort. It was, I think, the finest exhibition of
courage I have ever seen.
Before we reached our rendezvous with Stan-
cliffe, I told her about him, and I think I suc-
ceeded in diverting her mind a little by my re-
cital. I prepared her for his queer, whispering
voice, and told her something of the interest he
had been taking in our mystery. "He gives me
the feeling, somehow," said I, "that eventually
he will solve it."
"I hope he may," she said, in a voice little
above a whisper; " oh, how I hope he may 1"
Was her little exclamation spontaneous or
calculated? I would have given a good deal to
know. It sounded spontaneous to me.
176


MR. STANCLIFFE'S TRAP
We met Mr. Stancliffe in the entrance to the
Grosvenor, and on alighting from the elevator
i
and presenting the pass which I had secured, we
were at once admitted to the doctor's reception
room.
My friend surprised me by seeming to pay
very little attention to the girl, certainly sub-
jected her to no close scrutiny while we sat there
talking. He recalled to her mind the fact that
he had only been three or four ahead of her in
the line, and asked her a few questions, irrele-
vant enough, chiefly about the patients who had
intervened between them and had been in to see
the doctor after he himself had seen him and
gone away.
He also spoke of Pomeroy, and asked rather
particularly when he had gone out. His place
in the line had been just ahead of Miss Carr's.
It was plain enough to me what he was doing.
He was putting her at her ease, quieting her sus-
picions; getting her mind off its guard, so that
his trap, when it should be sprung, should catch
her utterly unawares.
177


THE WHISPERING MAN
Finally he rose. "I know it will be painful
to you, Miss Carr," he said, "and I dislike to
have to ask you to do it, but would you be will-
ing to come with us into the inner office here?"
She turned a little paler, but assented to his
request, as a matter of course.
With a word of apology, he went in first. I
followed her, and at Mr. Stancliffe's request,
closed the door behind us.
"Now," said he cheerfully, "after another
detail or two we shall be done. What chair did
you sit in during your interview with the doc-
tor, Miss Carr?"
"This one," she answered promptly, indicat-
ing it with her hand.
"Whereabout in the room was it?"
"Almost exactly where it is standing now."
"Do you mind sitting down in it?"
"Not at all."
"May I ask you, Mr. Drew, to sit down in
Dr. Marshall's chair behind the desk?" Then,
turning to her, "It was there that he sat, was
it not, during your interview, Miss Carr?"
178


MR. STANCLIFFE'S TRAP
"Yes," she answered.
"Did he remain in that chair throughout
your whole interview?"
"Yes."
"And you in yours?"
She was finding it more and more difficult to
answer his questions. Her last "yes" was in
almost as soundless a whisper as that in which
the question was asked.
"You stayed in that chair, then, until the in-
terview was closed and you got up to leave the
room?"
"Yes."
"And then did you walk straight to the door
and open it?"
I hardly heard her answer, though I was
aware, vaguely, that it was in the affirmative.
For the first time, since I had taken my seat
in the swivel chair behind the desk, my eyes left
her face. I wonder if the direction they took
was the result of an unconscious telepathic sug-
gestion from the powerful mind of the other
man in the room. Where I looked was at a
179


THE WHISPERING MAN
point on the wall behind her, five or six feet
above her head, where the clock hung.
And then I saw Stancliffe's trap, or thought
I did, for he had set the hands of that clock so
that they pointed to twenty minutes past twelve.
"You went straight to the door? " Mr. Stan-
cliffe asked. "Show us how you did it."
She sat quite still for a second, to steady her-
self. Then rose, and, without a backward
glance, walked toward the door and laid her
hand on the knob.
"You said something in your testimony be-
fore the coroner about looking at the clock just
as you were opening the door." She stood per-
fectly still where she was, waiting for him to
finish his sentence.
His whispered command, when he went on,
had a sort of horrible menace in it: " Look at the
clock now, Miss Carr."
To do so, she would have to turn quite
around. To my astonishment, that was not
what she did at all. She turned, instead, a lit-
tle, a very little to the right and looked into the
180


MR. STANCLIFFE'S TRAP
great mirror. Then she gasped a little and
looked around quickly at Mr. Stancliffe.
"That's—that's the time it was when I went
out."
"What time?"
"Twenty minutes before twelve; the time I
said."
"You are looking at the clock in the mirror,
Miss Carr. Turn and look at it on the wall."
She did not do so at once. It seemed for a
moment as if she did not understand, and she
looked at me instead, as if for further enlight-
ment. But at last she followed the direction of
his own look, and glanced at the clock.
One glance was enough. "Twenty minutes
after \" she whispered. And then from Mr.
Stancliffe's face to mine, and from mine back to
his, she turned, in an agonized sort of bewilder-
ment and horror.
Then she swayed a little where she stood, and
fainted.


TEN MINUTES LEFT
"Open the door," said he, " and call in that
policeman from the reception room. Then the
two of you together carry this couch out into the
outer room. We'll put her on it and give her
a chance to get her strength and her wits to-
gether again before we ask her any further ques-
tions."
"Why take her out there? " I asked.
"Because I want to talk things over with you
privately, and it would be inhuman to leave her
in here alone. Not only inhuman, but possibly
dangerous. But out there the policeman can
keep an eye on her without seeming to."
When we had left her, comfortably ensconced
on the couch under the curious eye of the police-
man, who had a hint that it would be as well to
keep his eye upon her, we withdrew once more
into that horrible inner office.
"How in the world," I asked when the door
closed behind us, "did you happen to think of
it—the trap, I mean?"
"Why," said he, " I had noticed that mirror
myself when I was in here earlier that very
183


THE WHISPERING MAN
morning. When I read in her testimony that
she looked at the clock as she was opening the
door, I thought it possible that she was merely
lying. Then, as I thought further about it, the
mirror occurred to me, and I saw that she might
think that she was telling the truth and think,
also, that she was perfectly safe in doing so, the
interval between her going out and the finding
of the body being sufficient to allow for the com-
mission of the crime."
"Well," said I regretfully, " you have made
your case."
"Oh, by no means," he protested. "That's
what the police thought when they found Pom-
eroy's imitation ruby. That's what the district
attorney thought when he heard about Arm-
strong's hypodermic needle. We haven't our
case yet by any means, but the first thing
to do is to find out exactly what we have got;
not what we are able to guess at, but what we
actually know. The first thing is a complete
alibi for Armstrong. He was in the instru-
ment shop downstairs at a quarter past twelve,
184


THE WHISPERING MAN
hour. We know that her visit was not an ordi-
nary professional one. We know there was
some relation between them which has not yet
been explained by the Marshalls. She went
away unseen and unheard, and ten minutes after-
wards Dr. Marshall was found murdered."
"You have stated right there the two things
we need to make the case complete. First, what
was her personal relation with the Marshalls?
Was it one that would supply a possible motive
for the murder? A well-bred young woman
does not deliberately kill a man until she is
urged to by some very strong compulsion. We
need a motive, and we haven't got it. That,
in the first place. And in the second place, my
dear young friend, we must account for that
last ten minutes before we can sit back and say
our case is altogether complete."
"What could possibly have happened in so
short time as that?" I asked.
"Don't you remember," said he, "that both
the telephone operator and Dr. Armstrong spoke
of the murdered man as having had an appoint-
186


TEN MINUTES LEFT
ment at twelve o'clock—an important appoint-
ment? Neither of them was asked what that
appointment was, it is true, but isn't it likely if
they had known what it was, they would have
volunteered the information? It is possible, at
any rate, that both these witnesses are in the
dark as to the nature of that important appoint-
ment at twelve o'clock. Both of them assumed
that he was going out to keep it, but both of
them might be mistaken.
"However, we are distinctly making prog-
ress. Dr. Marshall was alive at half past
eleven; at half past twelve he was dead. For
fifty minutes of the hour that poor young girl
out there in the reception room was in here with
him. For the remaining ten minutes, dead or
alive, he was alone, so far as we know."
Without another word to me he opened the
door and stepped out into the reception room.
Looking over his shoulder I saw that Miss Carr
had left the couch and was sitting in an easy
chair near one of the windows.
"We don't want to cause you one moment of
13 187


THE WHISPERING MAN
unnecessary distress," Mr. Stancliffe was saying
to her, and his words, in spite of the harsh whis-
pered quality of his voice, or voicelessness rather,
sounded gentle. "However, if you feel able to
answer a few more questions, I am sure you can
help us, and I think it not unlikely that we can
help you. Also, since we cannot dismiss the
policeman, I would suggest that we go back into
the inner office."
She agreed to that without demur. So back
we went, and once more the door was shut be-
hind us.
Somewhat to my surprise, Mr. Stancliffe whis-
pered to me that I had better take charge of the
interrogation, and it seemed reasonable enough
when I came to think of it. He had questioned
her before, had led her into a trap, and he was
in her mind nothing but a detective. By com-
parison with him, at any rate, I would seem like
a friend. She would probably find my questions
easier to answer frankly and fully than she would
his.
"If I ask anything, Miss Carr," I began,
188


THE WHISPERING MAN
thing else to do, and there wasn't any time for
looking about, so the very day I got the lawyer's
letter, I applied for work at the St. Anthony
Hotel, and got it."
I had to check a disposition to applaud. The
quality I most admire, both in men and women,
the quality of courage, shone out so splendidly
in this simple little recital. There was no word
of lament over her fallen fortunes, no disposi-
tion to parade the thing she had done as any
special virtue. She told it as if what she had
done had been the simplest thing in the world—
just what anyone else in her circumstances would
have done.
"It must have been frightfully hard for you,"
I observed.
"Oh, it wasn't easy," she assented. "I had
to tell myself every night about the thousands
of other girls alone here in New York, who had
to do just what I did, who had to earn their
living, and whose fate didn't matter to any single
soul in all the city besides themselves. I had to
brace myself up for every day, and every day,
194


TEN MINUTES LEFT
at first, I found that I just about lasted until it
was over."
"How long had you been at it," I asked,
"when you met Jack?"
"It was just a year ago, day before yester-
day," she said, "that he came down there into
the barber shop for the first time and sat down
at the other side of my little glass table."
Her words, unexpectedly to herself it seemed,
touched some chord of memory, whose vibra-
tions destroyed for a moment the even self-
control with which up to now she had told her
story. Her eyes filled suddenly with tears, and
her voice faltered. She sat quite still for a mo-
ment, holding fast to the arms of her chair and
pressing her trembling lips together, letting her
tears run as they would down her cheeks.
Finally she dried her eyes and sat a little
straighter in her chair.
"It was about two weeks ago," she said,
"when I told him I would marry him if he
could get his father to consent to it. He was
to tell his father that we would not marry with-
195


THE WHISPERING MAN
out his consent. He didn't much want to do
it that way. His plan was that we should be
married and get his father's forgiveness after-
wards, for he was afraid, though he would not
admit it at the time, that things would fall out
exactly as they did.
"So at last he told his father about it, and
told him quite frankly who I was and what I
was—how I was earning my living, I mean.
"Dr. Marshall not only refused his consent
to Jack's marriage, but he declined absolutely
to see me. Jack believed "—she faltered a lit-
tle over the words—" believed that if he could
only see me and talk with me, it would—make
a difference. It was his suggestion—Jack's, I
mean—that I should go to Dr. Marshall as a
patient and then tell him who I was and—and
all about myself. I could do that. There was
—there is .nothing that I am ashamed to tell
anybody."
"So you carried out your plan," I prompted
her, "came in and told Dr. Marshall who you
were. What happened then?"
196


TEN MINUTES LEFT
She shuddered and covered her face with her
hands. It will be easy to imagine the feelings
with which we waited for her to go on.
Finally I prompted her again. "The inter-
view didn't go as you and Jack had hoped it
would. We can see that, and we can imagine
that it is painful to you to talk about it. But
if you can tell us, I wish you would."
She looked up, straight into my face. Her
cheeks were faintly flushed, as if with anger, and
her eyes were shining. "I can't tell you what
he said. It was unrepeatable, unspeakable. I
can't make you understand the utter brutality of
it. He took it for granted, the moment he knew
who I was, that all I wanted was money—that
I was simply a blackmailer. Oh, I can't tell you
the words he used—the things he really did say.
"I wanted to go away, but he wouldn't let
me; ordered me back into my chair and told me
to listen. And then it went on, and on, until I
was too sick with disgust .to try to answer him,
or to go, or to do anything but to sit there with
my hands over my ears.
197


THE WHISPERING MAN
"I didn't kill Dr. Marshall, but I was angry
enough to. If he had talked that way to a man,
that man would have strangled him as he sat
there. When I got up to go I wished I was
dead. I didn't want to marry Jack. I felt
that I never wanted to see him again, that
I never should be able to forget whose son
he was.
"But all the time he was waiting for me at
the foot of the elevators, waiting with high
hopes, I knew, and I had to go down and face
him and tell him. He took me somewhere to
lunch—I don't remember where—and I tried not
to say a word until I was cool again, but thinking
about it and trying to talk about it brought all
my anger back, as it brings it now.
"And then, what was worst of all, I could
see that Jack didn't believe me. He was trying
to, but he couldn't—couldn't believe that his
father could have done such a thing. So we
parted very unhappily—I think he was as utterly
miserable as I was—and I went back to work
at the St. Anthony Hotel.
198


TEN MINUTES LEFT
"I didn't know Dr. Marshall was dead until I
heard them talking about it—the men who were
reading the evening papers in the barber shop.
And when I heard he was dead I was glad. I
was almost glad when I heard that the thief
Pomeroy had murdered him. I felt that he de-
served it.
"I think you know the rest. I left the St.
Anthony the evening after the inquest. I was
discharged. Jack came up there just after I
had gone, and followed me out to Flatbush,
where the woman lives who has, as best she
could, been a mother to me ever since I came
up to New York with a lot of ambitious notions
of becoming a great singer. I shall never forget
Jack's face as it looked when I saw him that
night. And I found out then—he told me, he
had to tell me—that he believed I had murdered
his father. He could hardly have helped think-
ing that. I can understand it now, because he
was waiting for me and he knew what time it
really was when I came down in the elevator;
and he thought—he had to think—that I had
199


THE WHISPERING MAN
lied in my testimony at the inquest. He begged
me that night to tell him the truth.
"I heard nothing more from him at all.
When you sent up your card to me to-night, I
remembered that you were the man who had
come up with him to his father's office that night
we identified Pomeroy, and I thought that you
had come to tell me that he was dead, too.
That's what I meant by asking if you had any
news for me."
She leaned back in her chair with a little air
of relaxation, and drew a long breath or two to
steady herself.
"I can't thank you enough," she said, "for
bringing me down here and clearing up that
mystery about the clock. I am so glad you
thought of that. It never would have occurred
to me."
"Mr. Stancliffe deserves the credit for it,"
said I. He was standing at the window staring
out, for the recital must have moved him greatly,
as it had me. His gloved hands were clasped
over the head of his stick, and he was leaning
200


TEN MINUTES LEFT
back upon it. He did not look around nor make
any answer; just stood there, gazing out over the
housetops.
"I have something to hope for now," the girl
concluded. "I hope Jack may not die without
knowing that I told the truth."
The thought that had come so persistently that
first night of the murder came back to me: if
only we could find some one endowed with the
power which Jeffrey had claimed for himself, the
power of reaching the truth, not by the devious
ways of evidence, but by the straight short cut
of inspiration, for the logic of fact and circum-
stance had led us into a hopeless bog and left
us there.
Not a half hour ago Mr. Stancliffe had said
that one of the two things which we needed was
a motive. Well, we had it. The girl had con-
fessed to it. Her interview with the doctor had
been personal, had led into a violent quarrel—
on his part, at any rate. The girl had said in
so many words that she was glad when she heard
that he was dead; glad, almost, when she learned
201


THE WHISPERING MAN
that he had been murdered. She had left him
and gone away from that scene only ten minutes
before he had been found dead.
Her story would admit of no halfway accept-
ance. If the crime had been one of violence in
the ordinarily accepted sense, if the doctor had
been stabbed with a knife which happened to
be lying on the desk, or even shot with a re-
volver, it might be possible to credit a consider-
able part of her story and still believe she had
committed the crime. It would be conceivable
that a brutally insulting attack such as the doc-
tor had made upon her, had brought on an emo-
tional convulsion, during which she had killed
him, without premeditation, and almost without
consciousness of what she was doing.
But the means that had been taken to accom-
plish the doctor's murder showed an almost
fiendish amount of foresight which could be rec-
onciled with no single word of the girl's story.
No, she was either lying from the first word to
the last, lying with every look in her eyes and
every gesture of her hands, or else she was tell-
202


TEN MINUTES LEFT
ing the simple truth. Yet either one of these
alternatives led, it seemed, to an impossible con-
clusion.
Well, we had still the ten minutes left.
Would that suffice, a mere six hundred seconds,
to bridge the gap between the point where our
belief in her story left us and the staring face
of the dead thing which the telephone girl saw
sitting in what had been his office chair?
It was like Mr. Stancliffe that he wasted no
time in such unprofitable speculations. That ten
minutes was there, and he went to work upon it
at once.
"When you came out of the office into the
corridor, Miss Carr, are you sure that you drew
the door to behind you? As I remember your
testimony, you said Dr. Marshall did not leave
his desk."
"I am sure I locked it," she said. "I pulled
on the knob until I heard it click, and then
pushed back to make sure."
"You met no one, spoke to no one, while you
were waiting for the elevator?"
u 203


THE WHISPERING MAN
"No, sir."
His next question surprised me. "Were you
ever hypnotized?"
"Never, that I know of," she answered.
"Then you never were," he said decisively.
"This talk of people being hypnotized for the
first time unconsciously or against their will is
rubbish."
He took a turn up and down the room.
"Well," said he at last, "I think of nothing
else to ask you."
She rose and walked swiftly toward the door
into the reception room, opened it, and went out,
without closing it behind her.
Mr. Stancliffe and I exchanged an inquiring
glance. In the face of all the suspicious circum-
stances which existed against her, had we any
right to let her go out to Flatbush, or to take
her out there and leave her until we had pro-
vided some means of keeping her under sur-
veillance?
"I don't know," I whispered, answering his
unspoken question; "I don't know what to be-
204


TEN MINUTES LEFT
lieve or where to turn. Do as you think best
about it."
He nodded, and then, without telling me his
decision, went out into the reception room' where
the girl was waiting for us.
"I am afraid I rather ran away," she said.
"That room will always be a chamber of hor-
rors to me, I fear."
She was pinning on her hat, which we had
removed, clumsily enough, when she fainted, stnd
she paused long enough to find the right hole
for the hat pin. "It isn't the sight of it that
bothers me so much. It's that odor of tobacco.
Somehow that brings it all back."
She had been speaking to me. Now she
turned to Mr. Stancliffe. "Are you going to let
me go home," she asked, " just leaving my word
with you that I'll come whenever and wherever
you want me, or would you feel better about it
if you—?" She did not finish the sentence, but
a glance at the half-dormant policeman, sup-
posed to be on watch, completed her meaning.
"No," he said, "your word is all we want."
1
205


TEN MINUTES LEFT
misunderstanding about the time cleared up. I
am going to sleep to-night, all by myself, with-
out the help of a bromide. I haven't done that
since—" She finished the sentence with a little
gesture.
"I hope so indeed," Mr. Standiffe said.
Then he added: " You are quite sure you don't
mind going alone?"
"Not a bit. What's more, I shan't go by the
Subway; it's much too fine a night. If anyone
went with me, I should feel that I had to take
the quickest way."
I hadn't the faintest intention of letting her
go out to Flatbush alone, but I said nothing. It
would be much easier to waive argument and
simply clamber onto the car when it came along.


CHAPTER XII
AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
MY ride back to Flatbush with Gwendolen
brought out nothing new in the way of
evidence, nothing that a judge or a jury would
weigh at a feather's weight in the balances that
were to determine this young girl's innocence or
guilt. But it decided me at any rate. It was
impossible to hear her amplifying her story, giv-
ing me an account of the early stages of her ac-
quaintance with Jack Marshall, or to see her
hanging on my words when I gave her the full
account of the progress of his illness, which had
been denied her—impossible to do all this and
not reject as utterly grotesque and fantastic the
idea that she was a cold-blooded murderess.
I found it easy to understand how the young-
ster had fallen in love with her. I might have
done it myself if it had not been for Madeline.
208


AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
One might get over being in love with Madeline
—I had told myself so enough times during the
past two years to come to believe it—and still be
aware of the utter impossibility of falling in
love with anyone else. But I sympathized
heartily with poor Jack. Even amidst the sur-
roundings where he had first found her, even
in the barber shop at the St. Anthony at her
little glass table in the corner, with the imple-
ments of her trade spread out before her, her
blood and breeding, which even more than
her beauty constituted her birthright, must have
been instantly evident. The pathos of her in-
congruity to her garish surroundings would have
turned a cooler head than that of a generous,
sensitive youngster like Jack Marshall.
The one thing that continued to trouble me as
we neared our journey's end was, how had it hap-
pened that these obvious facts of Gwendolen's
fineness and true gentility had not been apparent
to Jack's father? His perceptions were as keen
as his son's. His power of disregarding adven-
titious and superficial appearances and striking
209


AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
street. The houses were few and were one and
all shrouded in darkness. The vacant lots, the
broad unbroken zones of deep black shadow,
were many.
She was walking with her hand on my arm.
"I am disposed to be indignant with you," said
I, "for even suggesting that we let you come
out here alone at this time of night. You
weren't quite truthful then, at any rate, when
you assured us you wouldn't be afraid."
"No, that was true," she insisted, "or at
least I thought it was then; after the terrors
I've been going through these last few days,
afraid that Jack would die, afraid that if he
lived I should never be able to convince him that
I had spoken the truth, even if he ever gave me
the chance—after all that, one isn't likely to re-
member to be afraid in the dark." Then she
shivered a little. "But it is fearsome," she said,
"and I am not brave naturally. I think I am
getting natural again. It's you who have done
it, Mr. Drew, you and Mr. Stancliffe. Some-
how, since I've told you everything, though it's


THE WHISPERING MAN
still terrible and mysterious enough, yet the old
nameless horror has left me. I feel like a real
person, not like a person in a nightmare. I shall
go to sleep to-night without taking any of the
stuff the doctor made me take. And, oh, I can't
tell you how I thank you."
"It will all come right," said I reassuringly.
"I am sure it will."
We were passing just then through a densely
shaded patch in the middle of a long block, but
ahead of us, two hundred feet perhaps, was a
stretch that was better lighted. An opening in
the trees allowed the direct rays of an arc light
to shine white on the street. Coming toward us
through that light we saw a man. He was in
the act of vanishing into the same shadow which
enveloped us when I glanced up at him, so that
I did not see his face.
It did not occur to me that there had been
anything alarming about it, until I felt the clutch
of Gwendolen's hand on my sleeve. It was sud-
den, convulsive, involuntary. I was on the out-
side and would be interposed between him, who-
212


AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
ever he was, and the girl, and I felt no alarm
for either of us.
I kept on talking in just the same tone I had
used before. I don't remember what I said.
The approaching footsteps came nearer.
They seemed to hesitate ever so little, and then
came on again. The man passed close enough
to brush my sleeve, but offered no molestation
whatever. The next moment his footsteps were
receding behind us.
I expected her, the moment her alarm proved
groundless, to laugh a little over her own fears,
but to my surprise she did nothing of the sort.
I looked at her, when we got out into the light
again, and she was certainly very pale.
"Isn't that the house where you live," I
asked, "just the other side of this big vacant
lot, the first one?"
She did not answer my question. Her voice
when she spoke was a mere whisper. "He's
stopped," she said. "Do you hear?"
I listened, and was a little surprised not to
hear the receding footsteps. "He's probably
213


THE WHISPERING MAN
got out of earshot," said I, "that's all. He
must be a good way off by this time."
"No," she said, " it's a still night. We could
have heard him for ever so long." Then she
looked up at me. "Don't you know who it
was? " she asked.
"No, I didn't see his face at all."
"It was Pomeroy," she said. "Don't you
remember? The thief who they thought at
first must be Dr. Marshall's murderer? It was
Pomeroy, I am sure."
I pointed out to her that even if she were right
about it, she had nothing to fear from him. My
words hadn't much weight, I am afraid. She
had been badly frightened, and seemed very anx-
ious about the prospect of my returning to New
York alone.
"But I have nothing to fear from him either.
He would never in the world try to pick the
pocket of a man who might, in all probability,
be expected to identify him, and he has no pos-
sible motive for attempting anything more
serious."
214


AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
I left her, however, only half reassured.
On my way back to the lonely corner where
I must wait for a late car, I kept a sharp look-
out for the man we had passed in the dark. I
was not at all sure that I might not be attacked,
but this was only because I doubted her iden-
tification of the man Pomeroy. If it were in-
deed he, I was safe enough. But I saw nothing
of him or anybody else.
I was spared the long wait on the corner I
had expected by the timely arrival of a car.
For the first time since the Marshall mystery had
enveloped me in its folds, I found myself actu-
ally feeling sleepy.
The earliest mail next morning brought me a
note from Mr. Stancliffe.
"Don't expect to see anything of me for the next two or
three days," he said. "I have got on the track of something
that I think may prove important. I haven't time to tell
you what it is, and as the situation is one in which you would
not be able to assist me, I am going to ask you to do nothing
but wait until I have either run it down to the end, or have
found that it simply leads back into the fog bank again.
"I am afraid we shall have to leave Dr. Armstrong in
215


THE WHISPERING MAN
jail for a few days longer. We could only secure his release
by giving the district attorney all the information we possess
about Miss Carr. He would almost certainly have her
arrested, or else subjected to surveillance, and either of these
courses would be disastrous to my plans. She must remain
perfectly free and, so far as she knows, unwatched. Don't
communicate with her, and if she writes to you or comes to
see you, let me know."
The letter disappointed me a good deal.
Evidently enough Mr. Stancliffe was a long way
from sharing my belief in Gwendolen's inno-
cence. It was natural, perhaps, that this should
be so. He had not gone home with her last
night, had not heard her frank and unguarded
talk about the whole dreadful business. His im-
pression of her was limited to the comparatively
short time when she had been in Dr. Marshall's
office and she had been under the restraining in-
fluence of the inquisition to which we had sub-
jected her. I wished he had come to me instead
of writing, for I felt sure that after a talk with
me he would have seen things rather differently.
As the matter stood, however, there was noth-
ing to do but obey his injunction. After all, if
216


AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
she were innocent, as I firmly believed, his clew
would, as he put it, only lead back into the " fog
bank again."
There were two things, however, which he
had left me at liberty to do. One thing was
to go to Madeline and tell her that Dr. Arm-
strong was cleared. Tell her as much as might
prove necessary to convince her of this fact, and
also to clear myself of the imputation of sus-
pecting that she had had anything to do, directly
or indirectly, with her husband's death. The
other thing was to go to work myself upon
that last ten minutes which still remained un-
accounted for.
I did what would, in my own conscience, pass
muster for a day's work, and then about five
o'clock went up to see Madeline.
She is in many ways—in all sorts of ways, in
fact—a wonderful woman. I found her at her
tea table, and it seemed as if she read my whole
errand instantly in my face, for she came up im-
pulsively and, in that old well-known way of
hers, held out both hands to me.
217


THE WHISPERING MAN
"So you've come back," she said. "I knew
you would some day. But you've no idea how
good it seems to see you sitting there looking at
me without that wild troubled surmise in your
face. Tell me all about it."
I couldn't quite do that, but I told her all
I could. "We are as far from the end as
ever," I concluded, "but the thing is in good
hands now and it is going to be solved, I am
sure of that." Then I added: "I can't tell
how much brighter the world looks now that
I know Dr. Armstrong had nothing to do
with it."
"I was sure he hadn't. He has done some
foolish things. He is awfully serious. He had
chanced to see something that happened between
Dr. Marshall and me, and he had lost his head
about it. I had always liked him and had never
pretended that I didn't. He seemed so old and
—like a schoolmaster, that I never thought
there could be any—danger. But he's very
honest and a little quixotic, and if he did do a
foolish thing he didn't deserve any such punish-
218


AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
ment as Dr. Marshall intended for him. It
would have been a cruel injustice."
I understood the story, or enough of it, from
her fragmentary account. There was no deny-
ing her complete candor so far, yet there was
one thing left that troubled me a little.
I looked up and found her watching me
intently. "Out with it," she commanded.
"There is something else."
"I haven't any right to be jealous," I began,
"and there is no reason why you should tell
me anything that you prefer to keep to your-
self"
"Never mind rights and reasons; what is it?"
"Why," said I, rather lamely, "you and
Jeffrey."
"Has he told you anything about that? I
especially asked him not to."
"He has told me nothing. I am almost
ashamed to confess how slight a thing it is that
has troubled me, but, in fact, it was his very
silence and yours that did it. I saw a note from
you on his table—in your handwriting, that is."
15 219


THE WHISPERING MAN
A quick little frown of irritation contracted
her brows. I supposed the cause of it was
the revelation I had made of my own jeal-
ous suspicions, but I soon found I was mis-
taken.
"That was a perverse little bit of bad luck,"
she observed. "Of course it troubled you; it
would have. And the only reason for the note
was to prevent your being troubled. I can't ex-
plain it all just now. But Mr. Jeffrey had seen
his way to do me—me and Jack—a great serv-
ice. The note I wrote him was simply to tell
him that you had best not be troubled with the
matter. I'll explain it all some time. I can't
just now. But there's nothing between Mr. Jef-
frey and me beyond that, except, of course, that
he's awfully interesting and—well, he's a good
friend of yours. That counts for him rather
heavily in my estimation."
She told me then that the doctors had pro-
nounced Jack to be out of danger. After that
we settled down to a good old-fashioned visit.
Altogether, in spite of my disquiet about
220


AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
Gwendolen Carr, I left Madeline's house and
started downtown with a feeling of elation such
as I had not experienced before in a long, long
time. Everything was coming out right. Jack
was going to get well. We were going to clear
Gwendolen and make the two young lovers
happy again. While, as for Madeline—well, I
would not play with that idea yet. There was
work to be done first. There were those mys-
terious ten minutes which must be made to give
up their tale.
I do not, however, enjoy the advantage of
being a man of indefinite leisure. For the next
two days a press of work which would admit of
no delay prevented me from giving a moment
or a thought to the inquiry I was so anxious to
begin. But on the third day I determined to
leave my office to take care of itself, and start
out upon my tour of investigation.
The day began auspiciously with a note handed
to me, while I sat at breakfast, from Stancliffe.
It was forty-eight hours since I had had any
communication from him:
221


THE WHISPERING MAN
"Dear Mr. Drew," it read, "I am afraid that in the two
days that have elapsed since you have heard from me, you
have been thinking of me as either unnecessarily dilatory, or
unnecessarily secretive; possibly both. But I really have
been very busy and would not have left you in the dark if I
could have helped it.
"I really think I am making progress, although when one
is working in a labyrinth such as this case of ours has proved
to be, one sometimes finds what he thought was progress to
be merely a devious and exhausting return to the very point
from which he started.
"In one way, I have come back to the starting point.
My first intrusion into this case, you will remember, occurred
on that night when we walked downtown from the Grosvenor
together, and I assured you that Pat Pomeroy's ruby was
an imitation and that he was undoubtedly innocent of the
murder of Dr. Marshall. If I were asked to go on the
stand now and swear to Pomeroy's innocence I should feel
a good deal more doubt about it. It is true that his stone
was an imitation, and that if he had any complicity in the
murder of Dr. Marshall, of which I am by no means sure,
the motive was not robbery.
"I have seen the man, however, and am arranging my
lines to get an interview with him, not, of course, in my
proper person, but in a character under which I hope to
gain his confidence. I may say, by the way, that I have
never taken so many character parts in forty-eight hours
before as I have played since last you saw me in the
222


AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
Grosvenor. I have seen you since, though you do not know
where.
"I hope within the next twenty-four hours that matters
will develop to a point where I really will have something to
tell you. Faithfully yours,
"Carleton Stancliffe."
I laid the letter down with a feeling of the
liveliest curiosity. Matters must have been pro-
gressing rapidly beyond my knowledge if the
circle of events had swung clear around again and
enveloped Pomeroy. I was half inclined to give
over my own projected investigation with the
feeling that I was too far behind the present
situation to contribute anything to Stancliffe's
labors. But a phrase of his own caused me to
go back to my original intention. Perhaps, after
all, the progress he was making was just a la-
borious return to the starting point. After all,
the thing I had to do was quite clear.
On the presumption of Gwendolen Carr's in-
nocence, the only presumption which my reason
found it possible to entertain, the heart of our
mystery was contained in the ten minutes be-
tween the time when she had left Dr. Marshall
223


THE WHISPERING MAN
alive and Miss Jerome, the telephone operator,
had found him dead. If Stancliffe were right in
this new suspicion of Pomeroy, my work upon
those ten minutes would lead to him just as di-
rectly as Mr. Stancliffe's labors would; and I did
not see that there could be any possible harm in
my trying.
I began the day with a visit to the Grosvenor
building. I spent there what was perhaps the
most utterly futile hour of my whole career, talk-
ing with office boys, elevator men, scrubwomen,
and janitors, in the hope of finding some one
who could remember the noon hour of that fatal
day vividly enough to provide me with a pos-
sible clew. I did succeed in getting descriptions
of myself, of Stancliffe, and of Gwendolen Carr,
and even of Pomeroy, but these descriptions
were all evidently ex post facto and perfectly
useless. I got no facts from any of them that
had not already been thrashed out thoroughly in
the columns of the daily press.
But it took me about an hour to become con-
vinced of the futility of trying to get anything
224


AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
from them that would serve as a logical clew.
Then I turned to what seemed a more promising
line of inquiry, and hunted up the telephone girl.
When I found her, she was busy and hadn't
much time to talk to me. However, in this case
my business admitted dispatch.
"It's only one question I want to ask," said
I, after she had assured me that she was likely
to lose her new job if she spent any time " gas-
sing "—that was her word—with me.
"Only one question. Do you know who it
was that Dr. Marshall had his appointment
with at twelve o'clock on the day of his mur-
der?"
"Yes," she said shortly. "He had to appear
before the commission in lunacy in the Hart
case."
Well, that was a blow. I went out of the
downtown office where she was employed, feel-
ing all at sea again. Whoever had got into the
doctor's office during those ten minutes had been
an unexpected visitor.
Not knowing exactly what to do next, I
225


THE WHISPERING MAN
turned north and began strolling slowly up
Broadway, hoping that the possible sights and
sounds about me would afford some sugges-
tions as to what line of action I should pur-
sue next.
Nothing whatever occurred to me until just
as I was passing the New York Life building,
with the intersection of Leonard Street just
before me. The neighborhood brought back
strongly to my mind the day of the inquest, and
the sight of the Tombs, only a block away to
the right, gave me the idea of going to see Dr.
Armstrong.
In fact, my conscience smote me suddenly for
having deferred the visit so long. He, rather
than' Madeline, was entitled to the first tidings
that he was cleared from the dreadful appear-
ance of guilt which must almost have over-
whelmed him. We could not get him out of
jail until Stancliffe's researches had gone far
enough to enable us to put the real criminal, or
at least one more strongly under suspicion, in
his place. But he, at least, might have the cheer-
226


AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
ing news that the substitution would soon be
made.
The formality of getting permission to visit
him was easy of accomplishment to a man in
my profession, and so it happened that just be-
fore the end of visiting hours I found myself in
a corridor looking through an iron grating at
the pale, troubled face of the man I had last
seen on the witness stand at the inquest.
Evidently he read the good news in my face.
The sudden brightening of his eyes at the sight
of me moved me much more than I had ex-
pected the visit to do. I had never seen Arm-
strong except for the hour he was on the stand,
and the one thing I knew about him outside of
what he revealed there—namely, that he had
been the means of precipitating a quarrel be-
tween Madeline and her husband, and of put-
ting her for a while in a distressingly false light
in the eyes of her friends—that one piece of
knowledge had not tended to make me like him.
But his sufferings were written plainly on his
face, and the sight of them and the knowledge
227


THE WHISPERING MAN
that they had been brought upon him by no
more serious faults than an absence of humor
and a quixotic temperament, caused me to ex-
tend my hand to him through the bars, with a
feeling of genuine cordiality which surprised my-
self no less than it did him.
"Dr. Armstrong," said I, "my name is
Drew. You may have heard Mrs. Marshall
speak of me. I have come to tell you that you
are cleared."
"Do you mean it? " he asked, in a voice that
was hardly articulate. "Do you mean really
clear, or only that you have found a reasonable
doubt in my favor?"
"No, I mean just what I said. You are
clear," I repeated. "When the world knows
what I know now, it will think of you only as
an absolutely innocent man who has been most
cruelly wronged by circumstances. No sane
man will be able to hold any other opinion."
He dropped my hand, clenched his own to-
gether and extended them above his head.
"Thank God! " he said, and the words were
228


AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
more a prayer than an ejaculation. "Thank
God! I hardly believed this day would ever
come."
"I am sorry," said I, "that we are not at
liberty to go at once to the district attorney with
our information and get you out of here. We
have not been able to take the police into our
confidence, and until we have gone a step or two
farther it is critically important that certain per-
sons should not be alarmed, as they would be
by your release."
"Don't think of me," he protested eagerly.
"Leave me here as long as you like. I shall be
glad of the quiet and seclusion which even this
dreadful place can afford to a man with a quiet
mind." Then he turned to me with a rather
curious expression in his eyes.
"I take it from what you say," said he, " that
you as good as have your hand upon the mur-
derer. You could hardly so completely clear me
without that."
"We don't know as much as we could wish
to know," said I cautiously.
229


THE WHISPERING MAN
"I confess," said he, "I almost find it in my
heart to hope he may escape. The man he killed
was a—no, he was not a devil—and that is what
I started to say. He was only a singularly per-
fect machine; as brilliant, as perfect, as infallible
as the finest machine, and as completely without
heart or mercy. If you fell in his way he ground
you up. I had so fallen, and all that saved me
was the act of some one who may have been his
victim, even as I was. I should not have killed
him. I was more likely to have destroyed my-
self; but I will tell you this—that my heart
raised a song of savage joy when I found him
dead."
His words were startling enough in them-
selves, but they were doubly so to me, because
they echoed the thought of Gwendolen Carr. I
remembered how she had said, while affirming
her innocence of the crime she saw we imputed
to her: " When I read in the papers that he was
murdered I was glad; I felt that he deserved it."
"Of course," said I, "no man has the right
to absolve the guilty from punishment for their
230


AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
crimes, and even if one were disposed to do so
the punishment of the guilty is often the only
way of clearing the innocent. Indeed, in this
case the person whose testimony clears you, the
person who was in Dr. Marshall's office from
some time after eleven until twenty minutes past
twelve, that person I firmly believe to be inno-
cent; but that person cannot possibly be cleared
until the true criminal is discovered."
He looked at me in a curious way.
"You say you know that a certain person was
in Dr. Marshall's office continuously from a lit-
tle after eleven until twenty minutes past twelve.
The doctor was alive at the earlier hour; he was
dead at the later."
"No," said I. "It was ten minutes after
that person had gone out when Miss Jerome
went into the office and found the doctor dead.
We have still that ten minutes to account for."
He drew his breath sharply, as if about to
speak, then checked himself, and for a moment
turned abruptly away from the grating. He
seemed to be keeping back something, something
231


THE WHISPERING MAN
of importance that he might have said. I waited
in silence for him to speak.
"Do you mind if I make a suggestion? " he
said at last. "Go up to the Grosvenor and see
Dr. Adams. He did something that I did not
do. He made a fairly careful examination of
Dr. Marshall's body when he was called down
at twenty-five minutes to one. He may be able
to be of service to you."
A bell rang then which announced the termi-
nation of the visitors' hour. Again I extended
my hand through the grating.
- "Good-by," said I. "I hope I may renew
our acquaintance under more auspicious circum-
stances."
"Good-by," said he, but he seemed loath to
let me go. "One question more," he asked.
"Does—does Mrs. Marshall know the facts you
have told me?"
"Yes," said I, " I told her first of all."
I left the jail with the feeling that at last
I had really accomplished something, slight
though it might be. Dr. Armstrong's sugges-
232


AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
tion that I go and see Dr. Adams was clearly a
good one. I ought to have thought of it my-
self. I expected, indeed, nothing positive from
him, but it was clear that his negative testimony
in a certain direction might prove valuable.
I went straight uptown to the Grosvenor, but
was too late to find him at his office there. He
had gone home. So I inquired his house address,
and followed him thither. Here, at last, I was
successful. He was at home and would see me.
He proved to be a large, gray man, with an
aquiline nose and an authoritative manner. He
didn't seem especially pleased to see me, par-
ticularly not after I had told him the nature of
my errand. But he waited rather grudgingly
to hear what I had to ask of him.
"It has occurred to me," said I, "that you
might be able, from the condition of Dr. Mar-
shall's body when you examined it, to fix the
hour of his death"
"Not with any degree of accuracy," the doc-
tor answered; "not at all."
"You couldn't feel at all sure, then," I asked,
233


THE WHISPERING MAN
"that he had been killed within, say, ten minutes
of the time you saw the body?"
He stared at me. "Ten minutes?" he re-
peated. "What are you talking about? I am
perfectly willing to swear that he had not been
killed within ten minutes, if that is what you
want. When I saw the body at twenty-five min-
utes to one, he had been dead at least an hour."
"There certainly must be some doubt—" I
began.
"Not a doubt in the world," he answered
shortly. "No possible doubt, except in the
mind of an ignorant fool. Go down to the
Tombs and ask Armstrong, if you don't care
how much time and how much shoe leather you
waste. Ten minutes, indeed!"
There was no need of asking Dr. Armstrong.
I knew already what his answer would be. No,
the last gate of escape had closed. Gwendolen
had gone into Dr. Marshall's office some time
before half past eleven. The doctor was alive
then. And at twenty-five minutes to one he
had been dead for an hour. Gwendolen had
234


AN IMPOSSIBLE CERTAINTY
not left the office until twenty' minutes past
twelve.
Admitting these facts to be true—and the
only one susceptible of doubt was the correctness
of the doctor's opinion—admitting them to be
true, they amounted to a mathematical demon-
stration that the young girl had either murdered
the doctor herself, or had seen him murdered
before her eyes. In either case, the story she
had told to Stancliffe and me was a lie from be-
ginning to end.
I was walking along a quiet cross street which
led to the Subway station, trying to force my
mind to accept what I must regard as a demon-
strated fact, when suddenly I stopped short.
For I had asked myself a question which put a
capstone of fantastic impossibility upon the
whole affair.
If Gwendolen had murdered the doctor, or if
she had seen him murdered before twenty-five
minutes to twelve, why in the world had she
waited in that office until twenty minutes past?
I threw out my hands with a gesture of de-
le 235


THE WHISPERING MAN
spair. If the immutable laws of logic could lead
to grotesque conclusions like this, I would pre-
fer, I thought, to be mad.
Well, I would go and see Jeffrey. It was
something to be thankful for, at least, that I
could talk to him again, and quite frankly. I
would own to him that the queer paradoxical
position that he had maintained that night over
the dinner table, the night we had read of Dr.
Marshall's death in the newspaper, was the only
sane one after all. The only certain knowledge
was the inspired guess. The conclusions to
which fact and reason led were insane, anyway.


CHAPTER XIII
JEFFREY SMOKES A PIPE
IT was about two hours later that I found a
chance to make this confession to Jeffrey.
He was in his own rooms when I arrived at the
Atlas, and we went out to dinner together; then
we came back to my quarters and settled down
for a long talk.
He heard my story now with an attention
close and serious enough to compensate for his
lack of it before. He asked me to tell him
everything that had happened since the night I
had left his room and called in Mr. Stancliffe;
and I was glad enough to comply with his re-
quest.
"And there we are," I concluded, when I had
brought my narrative down to date. "She must
have done it, or else have seen it done. And
that's a conclusion which I find it utterly im-
237


THE WHISPERING MAN
possible to accept. I'm willing to give up all be-
lief in evidence. I'll burn my book if you'll pro-
duce one of those inspired guesses of yours that
will solve the riddle."
I was conscious when I spoke of a half-serious
hope that he would, then and there, perform the
miracle I had asked of him. At any rate I spoke
gravely enough, being willing to risk the grin of
derision with which he would, in all probability,
greet my words.
But he answered as soberly as I had spoken.
"Even if I had such a guess, it wouldn't do
much good. We should have to build up to it
with the plain brick and mortar of fact and in-
ference before we could ask anyone else to ac-
cept our guess as anything but raving."
He ran his fingers through his hair, and then
drummed with them on the table. Evidently he
was as completely perplexed as I. Then he took
up Mr. Stancliffe's note, which I had tossed
across to him at an earlier stage of the conversa-
tion, and read it again.
"You have not seen Miss Carr since you left
238


JEFFREY SMOKES A PIPE
her that night out in Flatbush? " he asked pres-
ently.
I shook my head. "Nor heard from her,"
I added.
"You say you didn't get a good look at the
man she thought was Pomeroy?"
"Nothing you could call a look," I answered.
"But she seemed to have no doubt about him."
"And you've neither seen nor heard anything
more, since this note, from Mr. Stancliffe?"
"Nothing whatever. I wish we had him here
to talk to now. He's very clear headed."
"Yes," Jeffrey assented, " I wish so, too. He
must be pretty busy with the clew he speaks of.
He broke an appointment he had to pose for me
this morning, broke it by telephone."
Neither of us spoke for a moment. Then he
pushed back his chair and got to his feet.
"Haven't you a pipe somewhere, Drew?"
he asked. "Mine are all at the studio, and cig-
arettes are no help in a puzzle like this. I want
something to bite on."
"I don't know whether either of these will
239


THE WHISPERING MAN
draw," said I, producing a couple, " but you are
welcome to try."
My suspicion about them proved well
founded. But a pipe was what he wanted, and
after selecting the one that seemed the more
promising, he methodically set himself about the
unpleasant task of cleaning it.
"It's queer," said I, " the effect of association
that smells have. It's so much stronger than
sights or sounds. That pipe takes me straight
back to Dr. Marshall's office. I told you how
frightfully it smelled of stale tobacco."
He nodded absently.
"Miss Carr was speaking of the same thing
to Stancliffe and me," I continued. "It was the
night we took her up there. She said the office
was a chamber of horrors to her, but it was the
smell and not the sight of it that brought the
whole thing back."
He could not have been listening, for he
looked up now rather suddenly. "What's
that? " he asked. "Say it again."
"It's not worth repeating."
240


JEFFREY SMOKES A PIPE
But he was looking at me with a strange in-
tensity. "Say it again," he commanded for the
second time. "I want to be sure I understood
you exactly."
So, feeling rather foolish, I began my little
essay on the associative powers of smell again.
When I had finished, he threw down his pipe
and literally clutched and tugged at his hair with
both hands. His eyes were shining like coals.
"What in the world is the matter with you?"
I asked.
"You were wanting an inspired guess a little
while ago. Well, I've got one, that's all."
He sprang to his feet and began pacing ex-
citedly up and down the room, plunging his
hands into his pockets one minute, and press-
ing them against his head the next, as if he
feared that something struggling in there would
burst it.
"Drew, did you mean what you said?" he
demanded, stopping in front of me and looking
straight into my eyes. "Did you mean it? Are
you willing to throw reason to the winds and
241


THE WHISPERING MAN
take a leap in the dark? We may find we have
wings, and we may not."
"I meant it absolutely," said I. "You can't
produce a guess too fantastic for me to accept
as a working hypothesis."
He nodded curtly, turned away, and resumed
his patrol of the room. After a moment he
stopped again. "Have you read to-day's pa-
pers?" he asked. "I haven't."
"Yes," said I. "Why?"
"It's all right, then," he answered, irrele-
vantly enough. "Nothing's happened to her
yet."
"Happened to whom?"
"To whom? " he repeated. "To that poor
girl out there alone in Flatbush. To Gwendolen
Carr."
"You mean you think she is in actual phys-
ical danger?"
"Physical danger! " he shouted, catching the
words out of my mouth. "She's in mortal peril
to-night if anyone ever was."
Well, there was no denying that this was a
242


JEFFREY SMOKES A PIPE
guess. Whether it was inspired, or not, time
alone would show. The inference of extreme .
peril to Miss Carr from the smell of stale to-
bacco from an old pipe was not a logical process
at any rate.
Jeffrey's manner had quieted down rather sud-
denly. He was looking at his watch. "Well,
it's only half past eight; that's one comfort," he
said. "They go to bed early out in those parts,
but there's still time. You have her telephone
number, haven't you?"
"Somewhere in my pocketbook," said I, rum-
maging for the card. "What do you want me
to tell her over the 'phone?"
"Tell her not to go to bed nor up to her own
room. Tell her not to be alone in any room.
She must have some one with her all the time
until we come. And tell her we are coming as
fast as an automobile can bring us. I'll order
mine from the garage as soon as you've done
talking to her."
I suppose my expression was still incredulous,
for he came up to me and put his hand on my
243


THE WHISPERING MAN
shoulder. "There isn't any time for explana-
tions, really," he said. "It's life and death now.
This question is going to be settled to-night, the
whole of it; the Marshall mystery and all. But
we must act first and think afterwards, if we are
going to be in time."
His earnestness convinced me, although his
reason did not.
Before I had got my connection with the tele-
phone that I wanted in Flatbush, a good part
of my belief in the validity of Jeffrey's guess had
oozed away. It was one thing to stand, half
spellbound, while he talked me into a decisive
acceptance of his extraordinary theory; it was
another thing to prepare to deliver the message
he had intrusted to me into the mouthpiece of
an unresponsive telephone.
I asked for Miss Carr. "She's not here,"
said the voice—a woman's—at the other end.
I told the voice who I was, hoping that with
the knowledge, it would prove less uncommuni-
cative. "But don't you know where she is?"
the woman inquired, her voice showing symp-
244


JEFFREY SMOKES A PIPE
toms of alarm. "I was hoping she had gone
to see you. She disappeared about an hour
ago, without a word to anybody. She hasn't
been outside the house before in several days,
and she certainly is not fit to be outside it
now."
"Is she ill?"
"No. There is nothing the matter with her,
except that I am afraid she is going crazy. For
several days she's seemed afraid to go out of the
house or be left alone, and in the night she
wakes up screaming. But there is nothing you
can call the matter. I tried to get her to have
the doctor, but she wouldn't. She spoke of wish-
ing to talk to you. That's why I thought maybe
she had gone to see you now."
My further questions elicited nothing valu-
able in the way of additional information. I
asked what Miss Carr had seemed afraid of, but
it appeared that the landlady hadn't been able
to make out. "Though," she added, "she
couldn't have been more afraid if she had ex-
pected to be killed."
245


THE WHISPERING MAN
My heart felt like lead when I hung up that
receiver and turned back to Jeffrey. "She's
gone," said I hoarsely; " they don't know where
she is. And, Jeffrey, for four days past, they
say that she has been beside herself with terror
—terror of death, they think. And, Jeffrey,
how did you know? How could you have
known? If it is an inspiration—you see I am
ready to believe anything—why in God's name
couldn't it have come before it was too late?"
Before he had time to answer me there came
a ring at the bell.
"I hope that's Stancliffe," said I.
"Yes," said Jeffrey rather soberly, with an
audible ring of excitement in his voice, " I hope
so, too."
It was not Stancliffe whom we saw in the cor-
ridor when I flung my door wide open. But on
seeing who it was, we both cried out together—
Jeffrey and I—"Thank God!" For it was
Gwendolen Carr herself.
I have a vague impression that the desk clerk
was there beside her, half supporting her, and
246


JEFFREY SMOKES A PIPE
that he stammered out something apologetic for
having brought the lady straight up, without
announcing her in advance over the 'phone;
but my 'phone had been busy for so long a time,
and the lady seemed in haste.
At the time, however, neither Jeffrey nor I
could spare enough attention from the girl in
the doorway to give much thought to the desk
clerk's apologies. She was very pale, and her
eyes had in them that same wild, hunted look
that I had seen there the night I had gone out
to Flatbush after her.
For a minute or two, until we had got the
door shut and had her seated in an easy chair,
she managed to retain a superficial appearance of
self-possession, thanked the desk clerk, said good
evening to me, and bowed to Jeffrey when I pro-
nounced their names—he had never seen her be-
fore, except at the inquest. But the moment it
was possible for her to slacken the nervous ten-
sion which had driven her to undertake this jour-
ney and had supported her through it, she fairly
broke down; struggled against her sobs for a
247


THE WHISPERING MAN
moment, and then allowed the torrent to sweep
her away.
I stood miserably by, trying to think of some-
thing to say or something to do, and from a
sheer failure of mental resourcefulness did the
best thing, the thing that Jeffrey was doing from
another motive, namely, waited in silence for the
torrent to spend itself.
When at last the sobs had given place to long
tremulous breathing, Jeffrey flashed me a signal
to the effect that he would do the talking him-
self. I was glad enough to have him, for I
didn't know what to say myself.
"Can you listen while I tell you something?"
he asked. "It's nothing you have to think
about. All you have to do is to believe that it's
true. We have just found out, Mr. Drew and
I, that you have been in serious danger for the
past few days. We know what the source of
that danger is, and it's quite finally over now.
All you have to do for the present is to believe
that."
She had rapidly recovered her self-possession.
248


THE WHISPERING MAN
though kindly meant, seemed bound to prove
mere cruelty in the end.
Jeffrey, however, was perfectly at his ease,
and he added: "We'll let you take the news
around to him yourself presently." Then, after
a moment's thought, he spoke again. "You
came directly here from your boarding house in
Flatbush, did you not, Miss Carr?"
"Yes," she said, "as directly as I could
come."
"And had you any sort of misadventure on
the way; anything that seemed like an acci-
dent?"
"Nothing at all."
"You didn't get the idea at any time that you
were being followed?"
A quick alarm lighted up in her eyes, but she
answered steadily enough, "No; not once."
Jeffrey drew a long breath of complete satis-
faction. "It's perfectly incredible good luck,"
he said. Then he asked, rather irrelevantly it
seemed to me: "What sort of person is your
landlady? Can she keep her own counsel?"
250


JEFFREY SMOKES A PIPE
Gwendolen smiled. "If she were told that it
was for my good that she should do so, yes, for
she is very fond of me."
"Where is the telephone in your house; out
in one of the public rooms?"
"No, it is in a closet under the front stairs."
"Then," said Jeffrey quietly, "I'm going to
get her on the 'phone and ask you to talk to her.
You will tell her, if you please, that-you are
quite safe. Then find out if she has talked about
your disappearance to anybody, especially to any
of the boarders. Tell her to light up your room
as if you were in it, and to tell anyone who asks
about it that you are there. No, you needn't
get up. I can put the 'phone on the arm of your
chair, so."
During the five minutes that it took to carry
out these rather singular instructions, Jeffrey
paced slowly up and down the room, but more
with the air of one who is merely waiting
to put into effect the next move of his pro-
gramme than of one trying to decide what his
next move is to be.
17 251


THE WHISPERING MAN
I was looking at him in undisguised won-
der, but his only reply to my look was a smile
of anticipation and triumph. If he had lied
to Gwendolen in saying that he knew who
had killed Dr. Marshall, it was evident that
he expected to make that lie the truth be-
fore any necessity for undeceiving her should
arise.
When Gwendolen had finished her conversa-
tion with her landlady, she put the telephone
over on my desk, and, rising, went over to an-
other chair which permitted a less informal atti-
tude. "I am sorry I made such a scene when I
came in," she said. "I am quite right now, so
you needn't feel that I must be handled like—
something that might break or explode any
minute. For these last few days I have thought
I was awake when I was dreaming, and that I
must be dreaming when I was awake. I couldn't
tell which was which. If it had lasted much
longer, I think it would have driven me mad.
But it's over now. What is the next thing you
want me to do?"
252


THE WHISPERING MAN
them. The first of the dreams came the night
you took me home—she turned to me as she said
it—the night we met Pomeroy on the sidewalk,
or I thought we did, at any rate."
"That was the night you thought you were
going to sleep," I observed.
"I remember. Perhaps the whole thing is
just a judgment upon me for having boasted to
you and Mr. Stancliffe that I meant to get off
that night without a bromide."
"You spoke a minute ago," Jeffrey remarked,
"as if you doubted whether the man you passed
on the sidewalk was actually Pomeroy. You
were quite sure of it at the time, weren't you?"
"That's where the puzzle begins," she said.
"I don't know whether he belongs with the
dreams or the realities."
"You've seen him more than that once?"
"Yes," she said. "Not again that night, but
every night since then."
"You saw him at night? Where did you
see him? Was he going by on the sidewalk, or
did you see him in the yard?" It was I who
254


THE WHISPERING MAN
ever he felt, his tone expressed nothing but a
keen, common-sense interest.
"They didn't do anything," she said. "I
would be lying there in bed wide awake—feeling
sure that I was wide awake—trying to keep my
mind down to sensible, everyday things, and
then, suddenly, I would see one of them standing
there in the room."
"What light did you see them by?"
"There is a big arc lamp on the corner that
shines in through my window and makes a patch
of bright light in the middle of the room. It's
there he would be standing, whichever one he
was. And then I would cry out and wake my-
self up, only it wouldn't feel like waking up,
except that the thing I had seen would vanish.
But it still left me feeling as if I had been awake
all the time."
There was a little silence after that, but be-
fore either of us spoke, she went on again, of her
own accord. "Of course it's easy in the morn-
ing—it has been, that is, until to-day—to say
that I've just been having nightmares, and that
256


JEFFREY SMOKES A PIPE
there is nothing to make a fuss about. But when
night comes round again, and when you know
you're awake—know it as well as I know it
now"
"You still went on taking your bromides, I
suppose," said Jeffrey.
"Yes, one every night, but they didn't do me
any good; they didn't even make me feel
sleepy."
"You never took a second one when you
thought the first one had failed to have any ef-
fect?"
"No, never."
"Why not?"
"The doctor who gave them to me—the doc-
tor out there in Flatbush—told me it would be
dangerous to take more than one. Oh—it
wasn't for myself that I cared. There hasn't
been a night when I didn't feel a temptation to
take them all at once and go to sleep anyway.
Whether I ever woke up or not, didn't seem to
matter—not to me, that is. But I've kept say-
ing to myself that I mustn't run any risks; that
257


THE WHISPERING MAN
you from slipping—a new rubber; but it had
been a little damp and a little dirty, and had
left a mark. And the mark was not there the
night before." 1


CHAPTER XIV
AND TRIES AN EXPERIMENT
ITHINK that is all there is to tell," she con-
cluded after a little silence. "When I saw
that mark on the floor, I didn't know whether I
was mad or not, for a dream or a ghost could
not leave a mark. Yet the print I saw there was
the print of Dr. Marshall's foot. I had seen
him standing there in my room just as plainly
as I saw him that day in the office. I've been
torturing myself with that all day. I didn't
want a doctor. I knew what he'd think well
enough. But I thought if I could talk to you
and Mr. Stancliffe, perhaps you could do some-
thing; perhaps you would tell me whether I was
mad or not, anyway."
Jeffrey got up and looked at his watch. "I
am going out for a few minutes," he said, " but
I'll be back directly. In the meantime, remem-
ber the first thing I said to you when you came
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THE WHISPERING MAN
in here. You have been, during these last few
days, in a very real and tangible danger. The
danger is over now because we understand what
it is. We've learned the source of it. As re-
gards being mad, don't worry about that. You
are saner than I am, or than most people are.
You've shown yourself to be one of the sanest
and one of the bravest people I know of. Now
don't worry."
He went out without another word, and a mo-
ment later I heard the door of his apartment
close behind him. I guessed that he wanted to
telephone, and did not care to take us into his
confidence just then regarding the message he
was going to send.
The moment he had gone, Gwendolen turned
to me. "Must I wait any longer? " she asked.
"Can't you trust me with the whole story now?
It's all very well to be told not to worry, and
that it's coming out all right—I believe it is—
but if you know"
"I don't know," said I. "I am as much in
the dark as you are. The curious thing about
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AND TRIES AN EXPERIMENT
it is that Jeffrey himself didn't know when we
sat down in this room to talk it over after din-
ner. And then, suddenly, he just guessed. My
mind isn't like Jeffrey's or Mr. Stancliffe's; it
can't fly. It can only go straight ahead, a step
at a time. I imagine Mr. Stancliffe sees some-
thing—the same thing that Jeffrey does. He
wrote to me three or four days ago about hav-
ing a clew which he was working on. I haven't
seen or heard from him since, but I am pretty
sure of this, that between them they'll solve it.
Jeffrey told me, just before you came in, that
it would be solved to-night. I know he means
it. He isn't the sort to talk idly."
She leaned back in her chair, her eyelids
drooped lower and lower, and her hands lay in-
ert in her lap. "I'm so tired," she said, "that
I'd just like to stop altogether and never go on
again. Did you ever feel like that?"
It was then that I had a really good idea.
"How long is it," I asked, " since you have had
anything to eat—since you've really eaten any-
thing, I mean?"
263


THE WHISPERING MAN
"I don't know," she said; " I really don't re-
member, but I do know that food would choke
me now."
I reached for the telephone, nevertheless, and
ordered an eggnog and a sandwich. "You
needn't taste either of them when they come, un-
less they look good to you," said I.
They arrived just as Jeffrey was returning.
"Good for you, Drew," he said, noticing the
contents of the tray. "We ought to have done
that long ago."
Gwendolen was still inclined to be rebellious.
"If you'll eat it all," said Jeffrey, " you shall
have some good news; but not until after the last
swallow and the last bite."
Once she got started, it required no urging to
make her continue. "I wonder why girls are
always so silly about that," she observed. "We
get into a dreadful state of mind and think we
are going to die of all sorts of complicated emo-
tions, when the only thing the matter with us is
that we are hungry."
She drank the last of the yellow liquid in the
264


AND TRIES AN EXPERIMENT
tall glass, and then turned to Jeffrey. "Now
have I earned my good news?"
"I've been talking to Mrs. Marshall over the
telephone," Jeffrey said, "and she's coming
straight here. She's on her way now. She says
that Jack is a great deal better—so much better
that she's had a talk with him about the whole
affair, the first one since the murder was com-
mitted."
Gwendolen pressed her lips together tight-
ly. "I suppose she wants to hear all that I
can tell her," she said. "Well, I'll do my
best."
"That's not what she's coming for," Jeffrey
said. "She already knows all you can tell her,
and more, too. She's coming to take you home
with her. Mr. Drew and I are going out to
Flatbush to-night, and we are going to spend
the night in your room, or as much of the night
as may be necessary. We mean to catch the
ghost, Miss Carr. I expect he will prove solid
enough. By the way, do you mind sitting down
and writing a little note to your landlady, telling
265


THE WHISPERING MAN
her that we're all right and she's to do what we
say?"
"It was real, then?" she asked. "A real
man who got into my room and stood there glar-
ing at me? But if he was real and wanted to
kill me, why didn't he do it when he had the
chance?"
"Never mind that," said Jeffrey easily.
"You'll know in good time."
Before she had finished writing the note,
Madeline arrived. The two women had hardly
seen each other before, since Madeline, on the
day of the inquest, had been heavily veiled, and
had had no idea that the young girl who took the
stand as the last person known to have seen Dr.
Marshall alive would ever cross her path again.
And while Madeline stood there looking across
the room at this young girl, whose life story she
had just heard, for the first time, from Jack's
lips—as she stood there looking at her, I looked
at Madeline herself. I saw the color come up
into her cheeks and a softer brightness, the
brightness of tears, come into her eyes. I had
266


AND TRIES AN EXPERIMENT
never seen just that look in Madeline's face be-
fore. I knew now what it was that I had always
missed there.
Then she held out her hands to Gwendolen.
"You poor dear child," she said unsteadily;
"you poor dear pair of children, you and Jack."
She crossed the room impulsively, and took the
girl in her arms and kissed her. "But you are
going to be happy now," she said, "you two.
Trust us for that." Then she looked over her
shoulder at me. "Can I take her now, Clifford,
this instant?"
"You'll have to ask Jeffrey," said I. "He's
running the show."
"We'll leave it to her," he said. "Miss
Carr, do you feel equal to having an experiment
tried on you?"
"Not to-night, Mr. Jeffrey," protested Mad-
eline. "Wait until to-morrow for whatever
it is."
"I don't think it will be very painful," said
Jeffrey; "at least it will soon be over. If you
feel equal to letting me try it to-night, then to-
18 267


THE WHISPERING MAN
morrow morning at breakfast I think I can guar'
antee you the whole story complete."
"But it isn't necessary," said Madeline; " it
Can't be necessary. Won't to-morrow morning
do just as well?"
"I don't know just what you mean by trying
an experiment on me," Gwendolen said thought-
fully, "but I shan't mind anything, even though
it is painful, that will help solve our problem,
or that will make the complete solution come any
quicker than it otherwise would. But"—she
hesitated—" there isn't any doubt about what
you told me, is there? You do know, don't you,
who it was that killed Jack's father?"
"No, there is no doubt about that," said Jef-
frey quietly. "I don't think you will find the
experiment painful. I want you merely to come
across the hall to my quarters to see if you recog-
nize something that I shall show you."
Madeline seemed half minded to make some
further protest against the plan, but apparently
she thought better of it, for she drew the young
girl's arm through her own, and turned to Jef-
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THE WHISPERING MAN
murder. It seemed horribly inconsiderate of
Jeffrey to have brought her in here where they
were. If it should occur to her to ask whose
hands they were, or if there should be anything
about to enable her to make the discovery for
herself, they would prove about as grisly a re-
minder of her frightful experience as could well
have been contrived.
When I reflected what her occupation was, or
had been up to a few days ago, when I remem-
bered the little glass table in the corner of the
barber shop in the St. Anthony Hotel, it seemed
to me more than likely that she would be able
to identify those hands, just by looking at them,
without asking a single question.
I did what I could to divert her attention from
them by attracting it to other objects about the
room, the Japanese prints on the wall, and so on,
and I tried, vainly however, to catch Madeline's
eye and enlist her assistance. But her attention
seemed fixed upon Jeffrey as he bent over his
writing desk and pulled out one drawer after
another, only to shut it again, with a bang, after
270


THE WHISPERING MAN
table were made, in my presence, from Dr. Mar-
shall's hands. If you doubt my words, Mrs.
Marshall here will tell you that what I say is
true."
Suddenly I saw that the girl was trembling
violently, and that every particle of color had
receded from her face. She swayed a little
where she stood. Madeline saw it, too, and go-
ing quickly up to her, put a strong arm about
her.
Jeffrey had hesitated an instant. Now he
went on again. "But, nevertheless, Miss Carr,
you are not mistaken, or, at least, only partly.
For these are not the hands of the man who sat
behind the desk in Dr. Marshall's office when
you talked to him that day. They are not the
hands of the man who made that wanton and
brutal attack upon you. For when the bell rang
that summoned you into his office, Dr. Marshall
was already dead! And the man you talked
with was his murderer!"


CHAPTER XV
MR. STANCLIFFE BIDS US GOOD EVENING
JEFFREY must have accomplished a good
deal during his brief absence from my quar-
ters, when I supposed he had gone to telephone,
for when we emerged together from the great
doorway of the Atlas, we found his motor
car drawn up to the curb behind Madeline's
brougham.
When we had put the ladies into the latter
vehicle, I observed that there were two men in
the touring car. The chauffeur would account for
one, but who could the other be? Jeffrey in-
troduced him as Lieutenant Richards, and then
climbed, himself, into the driver's seat, motion-
ing the chauffeur to take the one beside him.
That meant that the stranger and I were to oc-
cupy the tonneau. I would have liked that seat
beside Jeffrey myself, for I was bursting with
275


THE WHISPERING MAN
questions. But it was evident that he did not
want to answer them yet, for his manner of seat-
ing us in the car was obviously the result of
forethought; and after conquering a momentary
pique, I realized clearly that, with grave prob-
lems still ahead of him, my friend was right in
not wishing to be bothered with those he had
already solved.
My companion in the tonneau proved more
entertaining than I had at first expected to find
him. He had been a member of the New York
detective force for a good many years, and had
a string of stories to tell, which would have fas-
cinated me had not the particular story we were
actually living in, and whose solution still re-
mained to be accomplished, made them sound
rather tame. The most interesting thing I
learned from him was that he and Jeffrey were
old friends. In his newspaper and police court
days, my oddly inspired artist friend had been a
familiar figure in the "Front Office," and the
police had often put his guesses to good use.
When we were crossing the Williamsburg
276


HE BIDS US GOOD EVENING
Bridge Jeffrey, with a nod of his head, inter-
rupted our conversation, and summoned us to
a council of war. First of all he inquired par-
ticularly of me about the location of the house
in Flatbush.
"Now," said he, when he was satisfied that
he understood, "this isn't a raid we're making.
It's a surprise, and, consequently, we can't go
chugging right up to the door in this car. We'll
stop when we're about three or four blocks
away, and I'll go up to the house on foot. We
don't know whether our man is in the house
or out of it, so we'll have to find out how the
land lies before we can set out about the busi-
ness."
Then Richards made a suggestion. "If your
friend happens not to be in the house, happens
to be on the way there, and comes upon this car
with three men in it, waiting at a lonely corner,
don't you think he'll be likely to smell some-
thing more than gasoline?"
"Right," said Jeffrey. "When we get there,
I will slow down and drop off at the corner, and
277


THE WHISPERING MAN
then Charles here can drive for ten minutes
straight on down the avenue. Then he can turn
around and come back. If you don't find me
waiting there on the corner, then drive straight
on for five minutes more, and come back again."
He gave his whole attention to the steering
wheel after that. The lieutenant and I fell
silent, too. I think that even this veteran, who
had had so many such adventures as the one we
had now set out upon, felt a little thrill of ex-
citement over the prospect that was before us.
In my own veins I felt it mounting higher and
higher with every mile which the flying car de-
voured between us and our destination.
We carried out our programme to the letter.
The chauffeur slid into Jeffrey's seat, slowed
down, and Jeffrey dropped off at the corner,
where my pointing finger indicated. Then, for
as long a ten minutes as I ever spent, we drove
straight away from the scene which was to wit-
ness the solution of our mystery.
But we were not forced to repeat the maneu-
ver and waste an interminable five minutes more
278


HE BIDS US GOOD EVENING
going in the opposite direction, for on coming
back to the corner again we saw Jeffrey nod to
us from the shadow.
"Drive off," he said to the chauffeur, as soon
as the lieutenant and I had scrambled out, " and
keep driving. Don't come near here for an
hour. After that I think it will be safe enough
for you to wait here for us."
He set a brisk pace up the lonely, ill-lighted
street where Gwendolen and I had walked less
than a week before. "I think it's all right,"
he said presently, in a tone barely above a whis-
per. "He went out about five o'clock and hasn't
come back yet. He generally comes in late, the
landlady tells me. But I imagine, unless he sus-
pects something, he won't be much longer now."
The thing which now seemed most likely to
cause a mishap to our plans was the possibility
that " he," whoever he was, might see us in the
act of walking toward the boarding house, if not
of actually entering it. The sight of the three
of us at that time of night would be likely to
suggest a good many disquieting things to a
279


THE WHISPERING MAN
guilty conscience. The thought of this possibil-
ity made it hard to keep down to the unhurried,
though still rapid, pace which Jeffrey was set-
ting.
The front door swung open the moment we
set foot on the steps; in this particular, at least,
the reconnoissance our scout had made was not
in vain. Five seconds later it closed behind us.
Jeffrey directed a swift glance of inquiry to-
ward the stout, shapeless, middle-aged woman,
whose hand was still on the door knob. She was
not beautiful, with her tear-reddened eyes and
her worried expression; particularly not as our
visit had evidently interrupted her preparations
for bed, which a hurriedly assumed tea gown
was quite inadequate to hide. But she proved
an efficient ally for all that.
She understood Jeffrey's glance without a
word. "No," she said; " not yet."
"We're all right so far then, I think," my
friend whispered. "Is the light still burning
in Miss Carr's room, and are the shades drawn
down tight?"
280


HE BIDS US GOOD EVENING
"Everything's just as you ordered it."
"In that case there's nothing more for you to
bother about. You'd better go back to bed and
try to get some sleep. It may be hours before
anything happens. Pretend to anyway, even if
you think you can't; he mustn't see anything
about the house that will strike him as unusual.
Come along; "—this he addressed to us—" he
may be turning up at any minute now."
He led the way up to Gwendolen's room with-
out another word. It was on the third story,
and at the back of the house. The stairway
which led from the second floor to the third
story was simply a continuation of the back
stairs from the first floor to the second. There
were two closed doors at the stair head, but the
light which came through the crack under one
of them told us which room was Gwendolen's.
Jeffrey opened it and motioned us to go in.
Richards and I both started to obey his signal,
and then, at the same moment, started back
again, for both of us thought we saw a figure,
well covered with blankets, there in the bed.
281


THE WHISPERING MAN
"It's all right," Jeffrey whispered; "there's
nothing there but a dummy. Our landlady has
done a good job."
He, however, did not follow us into the room,
but remained on the landing between the two
doors.
I could see that he was puzzled about some-
thing. "Anything wrong? " I asked.
"I don't think so, but I can't quite figure this
out. This other door opens into an attic. His
room's at the foot of the stairs here on the floor
below, and this straight, narrow stairway makes
the place a perfect rat trap."
"Well," said Richards, "if it's a rat trap,
we may as well use it to catch our rat."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, we were planning to grab him when
he came in, but this room may not be as dark
as we could wish. He may see us, and turn
around and bolt. But there's a little niche just
past the foot of the stairs that's as dark as a
pocket. I can wait down there until he opens
his door and starts to come up. Then I can close
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HE BIDS US GOOD EVENING
in on the foot of the stairs here, and we'll have
him sure."
Jeffrey frowned thoughtfully and ruffled his
hair. "Well, that sounds like sense," he said at
last. "You'd better do it."
All of us had our shoes off by this time,
and the lieutenant vanished from the room
as noiselessly as if he had been a ghost him-
self. Then Jeffrey took a final survey of the
room.
It was too plain and prosaic a little place to
be worthy of particular description. A white
iron bed stood in one corner, with a small table
beside it, and a washstand a little farther along,
while against the opposite wall stood an ordinary
oak bureau between two gas jets, one of them
lighted.
Jeffrey closed the door, and whispered to me
to put out the light. "Only be careful," he
urged, "not to let your shadow fall on that
window shade; that might spoil the whole thing.
It's not at all unlikely that, at this very moment,
he's watching that oblong patch of light and
19 283


THE WHISPERING MAN
waiting for it to disappear before he comes into
the house."
When I had turned out the light, he himself
raised the shade and opened the window a little,
standing off to the side, however, in order not to
risk exposing himself to the view of the keen-
eyed watcher, who might be waiting somewhere
out there in the dark.
When the shade was raised and the bluish-
white rays of the big arc lamp on the corner cast
their patch of light on the floor, the room was
not, as Richards had foreseen, as dark as we
could wish. The reflection from that spot on
the floor diffused a soft light through the small
room, in which, though we chose the darkest
corners, we could hardly hope to remain invis-
ible. Jeffrey, however, soon thought of an expe-
dient to remedy this difficulty. There was a
square of dark-colored carpet on the floor beside
the bed, and this he dragged out over the patch
of light upon the floor. It absorbed the rays,
instead of reflecting them, and darkened the
room appreciably.
284


HE BIDS US GOOD EVENING
Each of us took one of the small, straight
chairs with which the room was furnished, and
sat down there in the dark to wait.
In confirmation of my friend's theory, that a
pair of watchful eyes had been turned on that
translucent window shade waiting for the light
behind it to disappear, it was not more than five
minutes after the light had been put out before
we heard the click of a latchkey in the street
door.
The newcomer let himself in, closed the door
behind him, walked up the front stairs and down
the hall to his room at the foot of the second
stairway. He did it all quietly, but not in the
least stealthily, did it, in short, so exactly in the
manner of any ordinary boarder coming home
late, that I felt a momentary incredulity as to
his being the man we were waiting for. Well,
so far he was only doing a perfectly plain, law-
abiding act; he had no need of silence.
I heard a whisper from Jeffrey, so low that it
barely reached my ears, "All's right so far;
he's got past Richards in the lower hall."
285


HE BIDS US GOOD EVENING
shout aloud, to break that uncanny spell of si-
lence and of mystery.
I had expected, and I think Jeffrey shared the
belief with me, that some faint sound would give
us warning in advance of the arrival of the man
we were waiting for, something that would give
us time to get to our feet and poise our bodies for
a spring upon the intruder who was to appear.
A warning came, indeed, but not until it was
too late to hazard the slightest movement. And
it was not a sound at all; it was just a puff of
cool air upon our faces. The door must have
opened, but it had opened soundlessly.
I strained my eyes toward it, but saw nothing,
nothing at all, unless that shapeless area of
blacker darkness than the rest of the room could
be called something to see.
My eyes were riveted on the place where I
knew the door was, and I was still waiting to
see some one come in through it—some human
person, moving stealthily, no doubt, but in a hu-
man way, and with some faintly discernible
sound.
287


THE WHISPERING MAN
feet, and then I heard a door slam. In less than
a second Jeffrey had pulled an electric torch
from his pocket, and its faint light made us
visible to each other, but we were alone in the
room.
His face was white and clammy with sweat,
and his hands were shaking so that he could
hardly hold the torch. For myself, I was con-
scious of feeling the way he looked.
I was the first to reach the door, and flung it
open. "Richards!" I shouted. "Look out
below!" I don't think there could have been
more than three or four seconds between the
vanishing of that face and the ring of my shout
down the stairway.
We half ran, half fell down the stairs, only
to find ourselves facing the glare of the lieuten-
ant's bull's-eye, while our own torch revealed
nothing but a look of utter bewilderment in his
face.
"What are you doing here!" Jeffrey cried.
"Have you let him give you the slip?"
Richards's face, if possible, looked more as-
290


HE BIDS US GOOD EVENING
tonished than ever. "But he hasn't come out of
his room at all," he answered.
"What do you mean?"
"Just that. I've never had my eyes off his
door since he went inside. He locked it after
he went in, and then his light went out. I tell
you that door hasn't opened since he shut it and
locked it behind himself."
Thought is, of course, infinitely quicker than
the possibility of expressing it. For an instant
I half believed that I had really slept; that the
vision and the paralysis of nightmare which ac-
companied it had, indeed, been a dream; that
some passing gust of the night air had opened
that silent door and then slammed it shut again.
Jeffrey's mind had been working as fast, but
in another and more profitable direction. "I
was a fool," he whispered. "I might have
known he wouldn't use the stairs. Break down
the door!"
The lieutenant looked dubious for a moment,
and then something in Jeffrey's manner con-
vinced him. Bracing himself against the wall
291


THE WHISPERING MAN
at the opposite side of the passage, he drove his
heel, with shattering force, against the door.
The blow was well placed, right over the lock,
and there was no need of a second. The door
swung slowly open, and we rushed in.
There was a faint light in the room from a
single gas jet, turned low. Standing before the
bureau, with his back to us, was a man clad in
a long, hooded robe, or domino, of black silk. I
remember now, though I did not notice it at the
time, that he was in the act of setting an empty
glass upon the marble top of the bureau, when I
first saw him.
"Stand where you are!" cried the lieutenant.
"Don't move, on your life!"
But his words might have fallen on deaf ears,
for all the effect they had. The man picked up
a towel from the bureau top, buried his face in
it, wiped it, in fact, as if he had just been
washing.
When the operation was completed, he turned
for the first time, and looked up at us. "I shall
make no resistance," he said quietly. "You
292


HE BIDS US GOOD EVENING
needn't worry." He had spoken, but no voice
had come with the words—only a whisper.
The face that I stood looking into was the
face of Carlton Stancliffe!
"Lieutenant," said Jeffrey, with a thrill of
triumph in his voice, "permit me to make you
acquainted with James Hyde, M.D., formerly
of New York, latterly of Australia, and last of
all of the stage. He merits your close attention
and your watchful care, for he is the murderer
of his former friend and colleague, Dr. Roscoe
Marshall."
The lieutenant was most businesslike. He
pulled out of his pocket a pair of handcuffs. "I
know you said you didn't intend to resist," he
observed, "but I'll feel better leaving you with
these on your wrists while I go to telephone for
a patrol wagon."
Meanwhile, Jeffrey, with a touch on my arm,
drew my attention to the ceiling of the room.
There was an opening in it up into the attic
above. "That's his route, you will observe,"
he said. "Evidently when the house was built
293


THE WHISPERING MAN
the attics weren't finished off, and this was the
only way of getting into them. It provided him
with exactly the thing he needed. I noticed that
he had oiled the hinges of the door leading into
Miss Carr's room. If I had examined those on
the other door, up at the head of the stairs, I
shouldn't have made the mistake of supposing
that he used the stairs at all. It's only an easy
spring, you see, from the table up through the
trap, and he could be still more expeditious
about coming back. By the time the girl's
screams had aroused the house, he'd be back in
his own room, ready, if he chose, to unlock his
door ostentatiously, and inquire what the matter
was.
"There's one thing we mustn't forget," he
added, " and I think I'll go upstairs for it now.
That's the last one of that packet of powders,
the one she would have taken to-night—the one
that would have sent her off into a sleep from
which there is no wakening, if she had taken it."
The lieutenant was about to leave the room
in search of the telephone. "I can spare you
294


HE BIDS US GOOD EVENING
gentlemen both those errands," said Mr. Stan-
cliffe, in his whisper. "You will not be able to
find that paper of powders upstairs, for the sim-
ple reason that I have just taken them myself.
And for that same reason, it will be unnecessary
to telephone for a patrol wagon. The coroner is
the man you want to talk to. I shall be dead in
ten minutes."
"The doctor, quick!" cried Jeffrey.
The lieutenant left the room with a rush, met
the landlady in the hall, and got the telephone
number of the nearest local practitioner almost
before he had time to ask for it. She was an
efficient woman, that landlady.
Mr. Stancliffe sat down comfortably enough
on the edge of his bed, stretching his manacled
arms up above his head to their utmost reach.
Then he relaxed and lay down quietly, as if com-
posing himself for sleep. "It's absolutely no
use calling up a doctor," he said. "I shall be
beyond his reach before he gets here."
Then he turned to us and smiled the faintly
contemptuous smile of a man who lays down his
295


THE WHISPERING MAN
cards at the end of an unprofitable game. "I
will confess," he said, " I didn't expect my rid-
dle to be solved. I thought the world had
grown too stupid. On the whole I am not sorry
to know that there will be a little leaven of in-
telligence left in it when I am gone. I don't
know which one of you two young men possesses
it. I am sorry I cannot hope to wait to clear
up any little points about my mystery with re-
gard to which you may still be in doubt."
His whisper had been growing fainter and
fainter. Now it was barely audible at all—
"Already—I—find—I—am—going. Good
evening—gentlemen."


CHAPTER XVI
JEFFREY EXPLAINS
MR. STANCLIFFE was not actually dead
when the doctor, summoned by Rich-
ards in such hot haste, arrived.
"There is probably no hope in the world,"
that gentleman had said, "but there's no doubt
of our duty to attempt to revive him." So for
the next half hour he did everything that skill
and energy could suggest, and kept Jeffrey and
me pretty busy following out his instructions.
Finally, however, he turned away.
"That's all I can do, gentlemen," he said,
"except to notify the coroner. Your testimony
will doubtless be wanted at the inquest."
While this had been going on Richards was
busily occupied in a careful, systematic search
through the dead man's effects. It was all very
well for Jeffrey to proclaim Carlton Stancliffe as
the murderer of Dr. Marshall, but it would be
297


THE WHISPERING MAN
a little better to have some sort of corroborative
evidence to back it up with.
The wardrobe and the bureau drawers were
empty, but a great many articles were lying
about the room; a big trunk was half packed
with others, and an empty suit case yawned to
receive its share. A little hanging shelf full of
books was the only thing in the room that gave
it an air of habitation.
Richards finished his investigations at the
trunk just about the time the doctor went away.
"I don't find anything here, Mr. Jeffrey, that
bears out your theory," he said.
"No," my friend said coolly, " I didn't think
you would."
He himself was standing with his hands in his
pockets gazing at the little row of well-worn
books on the shelf.
"I suppose," said Richards, half in sarcasm,
but half in uneasy earnest, " I suppose you know
where everything important in this room is with-
out looking."
"Yes," my friend said quietly, "I do. One
298


JEFFREY EXPLAINS
"Stancliffe—Carlton," it read. "His third
visit this week. Shows more clearly than before
the symptoms of degenerative, recurrent hypo-
mania. If the examination bears this out I shall
take steps to have him put under restraint. Still
perfectly sane in the legal sense, but distinctly
dangerous at large."
"Well," said I thoughtfully, "he was right
up to the last, wasn't he?"
Jeffrey shivered. "No," said he, "it was
his one great mistake. He ought to have acted
sooner." And then he repeated half under his
breath: " ' Third visit this week.'"
He closed the book and handed it to the lieu-
tenant.
"I think," said he, "that my friend and I
here have had about enough. If we can't do
anything more for you we'll be off. I doubt if
there's anything else to find."
Jeffrey emptied his glass and took a long pull
at my pipe, the pipe he had set about cleaning
so few hours before—the pipe that had so un-
301


THE WHISPERING MAN
expectedly provided him with the clew to our
mystery. I had already made him a present
of it.
"Well," said he, "it's four o'clock in the
morning. Do you want to go to bed like an
only moderately disreputable citizen, or shall we
make a night of it, thrashing out the whoL
tale?"
"You know what I want, well enough," said
I. "When you took the driver's seat in the au-
tomobile coming home and brought me all the
way up here without a word of explanation, I
began to wonder whether you ever meant to talk
or not; whether you weren't going to leave me
to wallow in my ignorance and stupidity to my
dying day."
"I had to get my story in order before I
could tell it to you," said he. "I knew there
would be no use showing you my kite until
I had tied a tail of reasonable inferences on
behind it."
Really, I believe he had postponed telling his
story until now for the purpose of providing us
302


JEFFREY EXPLAINS
with a reasonable excuse for not going to bed
when we did get home.
I may as well preface the narrative with
which Jeffrey was about to favor me with the
remark that in one particular he had made a
mistake. A further search of Stancliffe's effects
revealed one more article of capital importance,
a remarkable diary in the handwriting of the
murderer himself, a diary which was afterwards
found to contain a practically complete account
of the murder of Dr. Marshall and of the at-
tempt upon the life of Gwendolen. But the
document contained nothing, hardly a single de-
tail, which was not anticipated by Jeffrey in the
story he told me this morning.
"You remember," Jeffrey began, "the even-
ing we dined together, and you found Jack Mar-
shall waiting for you when we came back here?
I left you immediately, for I don't know him
well and felt sure he wouldn't want to speak to
me. The desk clerk stopped me before I could
get into the elevator and told me there was a
gentleman waiting in the reception room to see
303


THE WHISPERING MAN
mc. It was Carlton Stancliffe, and I took him
straight up to my quarters.
"I had never seen him before—not off the
stage, that is—for the arrangement for the series
of sketches and articles we were to do together
had been completed through the magazine. It
was a business call and I was expecting it. I
no more imagined a connection between him and
Dr. Marshall than between him and the Shah
of Persia. But he had a newspaper with him
and began to talk about the doctor. Told me
how he had been there that morning; told me
what was not in the paper, that it was supposed
to be a case of murder. He also added that
he was to go up to the office that evening to at-
tempt to identify Pomeroy.
"Well, you may believe me or not, but it's
true just the same, that before he got halfway
through talking about the case, I knew he was
the murderer just as well as I know it now. I
can't tell you how I knew; I just saw the facts
sticking out all over him, and I tell you it gave
me a mighty queer feeling. After he had gone
3°4


THE WHISPERING MAN
'' That perception didn't in the least affect my
certainty that I was right, after all. So I de-
cided on a course of action. I would say noth-
ing more to anyone of this idea of mine—I
pledged Mrs. Marshall to secrecy—but I would
go to work, all by myself, to find out what mo-
tive Stancliffe could possibly have had for the
murder, and how he could possibly have com-
mitted it.
"I got my first hint from you, yourself, when
you came home late that night with the full ac-
count of your evening's adventures. You spoke
then of the man Hyde whom Dr. Marshall had
ruined, long ago, and my mind jumped at once
at a possible identity between him and Mr.
Stancliffe."
"Well," said I, " I wish you had been in my
shoes from the first. We should have got to the
end of our mystery a good deal quicker. I had
a hint at that identity myself, but never per-
ceived it, for when I was talking to Stancliffe
about Hyde and how Madeline regarded him,
he started, and knocked a siphon off the table.
306


JEFFREY EXPLAINS
subsequent time before 12.30, and I wasn't able
to find it.
"Just before you came in that evening I had
received a note from Mrs. Marshall, which you
chanced upon a little later, and which I fancy
had the effect of directing your suspicions against
both of us."
I had been waiting for him to come to that,
and was feeling rather silly in anticipation of it.
"She wrote to me," Jeffrey went on, " solely
out of regard for your feelings. She pointed out
to me that it must necessarily be distressing to
you to become aware that there was a confiden-
tial relation between herself and me in the case,
from which you were excluded, and she sug-
gested that, unless I wanted to take you com-
pletely into my confidence as I had herself, I
should take care not to let you know that any
such confidence existed. I meant, when you came
in that night, to tell you the whole story, but you
were off on another tack altogether, even hint-
ing suspicion against Mrs. Marshall herself; so
I closed up. I owe you an apology for that."
3°9


JEFFREY EXPLAINS
and a very fascinating man—that you will find
it easy to believe—but he was almost utterly de-
void of moral scruples. The thing that caused
Dr. Marshall to drive him out of his profession
and out of the city, was practically blackmail.
He had used knowledge that came to him pro-
fessionally to terrorize a woman. All the money
she paid him, which was nearly all she had, was
for alleged medical services, but it was black-
mail just the same.
"The best thing about the man was, perhaps,
his inability to see that there was anything wrong
in what he had done. He simply hadn't any
morals; that was all.
"I succeeded in tracing him as far as Austra-
lia, and then I managed to trace Carlton Stan-
cliffe back from the same place. It was there
that he drifted on the stage, and that was prob-
ably the profession that he should have followed
from the first. There are very few men who
enter that profession as late in life as he did
who rise so quickly to eminence."
"Well," said I, a little bit resentfully, " when
3ii


THE WHISPERING MAN
you knew all that, you certainly had something
to tell me—any amount of fact and inference to
justify your suspicion—and yet, without a word,
you let me go blindly on, confiding in him, em-
ploying him, even, in the detection of the crim-
inal."
Jeffrey laughed. "I was rather taken aback
when I found that you had done that," he ad-
mitted, "but on second thought it occurred to
me that it was the best thing that could have
happened. The man would never be so com-
pletely off his guard; so completely unsuspicious
that he himself was suspected as when he was
serving you in that very employment. And
keeping you in the dark as to what he really was
simply made it possible for you to act naturally
the part that you would have been compelled to
play had you known the truth.
"During all those days while he kept you
entertained with the evidence he was piling up
against Miss Carr, I was racking my brains, and
pretty nearly wrecked them, in an attempt to
work out a sane and plausible theory of the mur-
312


THE WHISPERING MAN
must follow that the murder had already been
committed. And the man she talked to must
have been somebody impersonating him. He
could, of course, be no one else but the mur-
derer."
"I see," said I, "but answer me another
question. How did you know to-night that that
syringe was to be found in Mr. Stancliffe's trou-
sers pocket?"
"Think a minute," said Jeffrey. "What was
the whole purpose of this second crime that Stan-
cliff e was trying to commit out at Flatbush? It
was to prevent Gwendolen Carr from revealing
the clew she unconsciously possessed that would
have put us on his track: that, in the first place;
and in the second place, to saddle an absolutely
convincing proof of guilt upon her. How could
he do it better than by secreting the instrument
with which the murder was committed among her
effects? But he couldn't do that safely until
after she was dead. He probably carried it with
him all the time, anyway. He could hardly have
had a safer hiding place for it than upon his own
314


CHAPTER XVII
THE STORY IS TOLD
WHY, in the first place," said he, "Carl-
ton Stancliffe was a real actor, and he
had a real trouble with his throat. Undoubtedly
he went to Dr. Marshall as a perfectly bona fide
patient, upon the recommendation of some other
physician. Of course he knew who Dr. Mar-
shall was, but perhaps the old enmity had died
away; perhaps he was merely curious to see what
the elder man would be like. He couldn't have
been sure, of course, whether Dr. Marshall
would recognize him or not, but, then, he
wouldn't have cared much. His own success had
been great enough to make him indifferent to the
doctor's opinion of him; and as for any real
shame or regret for the thing he had done, he
simply never had any.
"Dr. Marshall must have failed completely
316


THE WHISPERING MAN
his, he—Hyde—might be sitting there at the
other side of the desk, rich, famous, secure.
"Possibly Mrs. Marshall may have been an
unconscious factor in the situation. It's alto-
gether likely that he had seen her, had had her
pointed out to him. He was a distant cousin of
hers, remember, and very naturally, in that hour
of despair, he counted her as rightfully his, as one
of the things that the cool, confident, successful
man across the desk had deprived him of.
"I think the idea of his ability to fill the doc-
tor's chair and his place in society, his sort of
potential right to possess all that the doctor pos-
sessed—I think it must have been with that idea
that the notion of the crime came to him. Once
it had come, it must have fascinated him. It was
so perfect, so safe, and, to his mind, never well
balanced morally, so perfect a piece of retribu-
tive justice, that to have it occur to him at all,
was followed, as a matter of course, by his pre-
paring to put it into execution."
"I am surprised that you should call it safe,"
I objected. "The idea of waiting there in the
3i8


THE STORY IS TOLD
office for an hour or more, with the murdered
body of his victim tucked away somewhere while
he was admitting patients and talking to them
in the character of the man whose life he had
just taken, seems to me rash to the verge of mad-
ness. Either Dr. Armstrong or Miss Jerome
could have come in at any time, and they would
have detected him at a glance."
"But they wouldn't come in unless he sum-
moned them. That's the point," said Jeffrey.
"There's nobody whose privacy is so sacredly
guarded as that of a physician in consultation
with his patients. No, the only possible danger
would come from some old patient of the doc-
tor's who knew him well, and who would expect
to be known. That danger, however, he obvi-
ated by waiting his chance. The beauty of the
crime he was planning lay in this, that he need
not make any move until a favorable chance
presented itself. He had gone to the office
twice before, that week, fully prepared to
commit the crime he had set his heart upon,
and only deferring it because he found that
319


THE WHISPERING MAN
all the circumstances were not exactly to his
liking."
"He told me once," I observed, reflectively,
"that every well-planned crime had that par-
ticular merit."
"There is one thing I hadn't thought of,
though," said Jeffrey, with a puzzled look.
"How about his voice? How could he be sure
that wouldn't go back on him? I should think
that consideration might have upset the whole
plan. Evidently it didn't; certainly not, at least,
when he was talking to Miss Carr. But how
could he be sure it wouldn't?"
"Well," said I, "he told me that his voice
never failed when he was talking in another
character than his own. He said that if he could
only have made the managers believe it, he could
have played his parts just as well as ever. That
is the theory he diverted me with the night he
smashed the siphon."
"Now, on that one morning," Jeffrey went
on, " everything went beyond his hopes. He not
only had a succession of patients behind him who
320


THE STORY IS TOLD
he was able to ascertain were strangers to Dr.
Marshall, he also had Pomeroy, and, unless I
am mistaken, he recognized him."
"No doubt," said I; " he practically admitted
as much to me."
Jeffrey looked at me with a rather rueful
smile. "I do begin to regret your opportuni-
ties," he said. "At any rate, Stancliffe went
into Dr. Marshall's office that morning fully
fortified against mischance, and fully prepared
for what he had to do. He knew exactly, as a
result of previous visits, what the doctor's rou-
tine of examination was. He had studied out
the exact moment when his chance would be best
—when he was lying back submitting to exami-
nation, with Dr. Marshall bending over him.
He had everything in his favor: a clever sur-
geon's skill and quickness, and a total absence
of suspicion on the part of his victim.
"You know, from the testimony at the in-
quest, how that poison acts, and can imagine
what happened, as well as I can. Dr. Marshall
went down without a cry. The murderer then
321


THE WHISPERING MAN
sealed up, with a piece of court plaster, the
wound his needle had made. Then he pro-
ceeded, quite deliberately, to make up for the
part he was about to play. Remember, he had
all the time he wanted. He had no fear what-
ever of interruption.
"When everything was finally ready, he set-
tled himself in the doctor's chair and rang for
the next patient. He knew he was secure from
detection. The next three patients who came in
may not have received as valuable advice from
him as they would have had from Dr. Mar-
shall, but, at any rate, the impostor was a good
enough physician himself to give them instruc-
tions and advice which they would never call
in question.
"When he rang the bell the fourth time, he
undoubtedly expected to see Pomeroy, and must
have been a little taken aback when Gwendolen
Carr came in instead. He had made the mis-
take of not seeing that the recognition between
himself and Pomeroy had been mutual. But of
course the moment Miss Carr told him who she
322


THE STORY IS TOLD
was, namely, the young woman his son was anx-
ious to marry, from that moment on, all was
easy for him. All he had to do was to quarrel
with her violently, to make sure that she should
leave the office in a state of the utmost anger
against himself, and the thing was done.
"Once he had dismissed her, the thing was all
but accomplished. He had to remove his own
make-up and conceal the traces of it; to drag the
body of the doctor out of its hiding place and
prop it up in the chair. That done, he could
watch his chance to slip out into the corridor
without attracting attention, and get away. I
am sure that when he did so, he must have felt
absolutely secure against detection.
"He was under no necessity to manufacture
evidence, for he had what would protect him bet-
ter—an irresistible presumption: the presump-
tion that Dr. Marshall was alive when the bell
rang that summoned Gwendolen Carr into his
office.
"It was nothing more than a presumption
for there wasn't a scrap of evidence to support it.
323


THE STORY IS TOLD
cant, and made possible the case against Arm-
strong. Of course it was to Stancliffe's interest
that a sustained case should be made against
somebody, and it was possible to make a better
case against Miss Carr, when all the truth was
known, than against Armstrong. Also, he could
additionally safeguard himself by getting the
credit of successful detective work.
"It must have been a queer game to play, pre-
tending to make a series of brilliant discoveries
of things he had known all along, but apparently
he played it well. Neither of you suspected
him, at least, that night in the office when he
sprang his coup about the clock."
"Suspected him! I should think not," I ex-
claimed. "Gwendolen thanked him for having
thought of it, and for clearing it up. For, of
course, that was the one insoluble mystery be-
tween her and Jack."
"What did Stancliffe look like when she
thanked him that night?" Jeffrey asked curi-
ously.
"I remember now," said I, "I didn't see his
325


THE STORY IS TOLD
"Did it spring into your mind complete the mo-
ment I made that remark about the tobacco; or
did it just grow up gradually, one detail at a
time?"
"Why, I saw the main idea at once, of course,
but I didn't know how to fill it up. The horrible
danger that I knew Gwendolen Carr must be in
at that very moment didn't leave much leisure
for contemplating Stancliffe's past villainies. He
was in process of carrying out a more diabolical
scheme at that moment, and we had to be quick
if we could hope to thwart him."
"I was hoping you would come to that," said
I. "What made you think Gwendolen's life
was in danger?"
"Why, she made that remark about the smell
of tobacco to Stancliffe as well as to you, didn't
she? Well, that told him she had in her hands
the clew that would destroy him, although she
herself didn't recognize it. But it was only a
question of time before she would make that
same remark to some one who would catch its
import. So long as she was alive and in pos-
327


THE WHISPERING MAN
session of that knowledge, his life couldn't be
safe. Wasn't it after she made the remark
about the tobacco that he told her she could go
home alone?"
"Yes," said I.
"And she announced, didn't she, that she was
going in the surface cars? Well, of course,
that assured him of his opportunity to get out
to Flatbush ahead of her. It was he, as I sup-
pose you have guessed, who passed you on the
sidewalk out there. Had you not been with her,
he would, very likely, have killed her then and
there on her own doorstep, and in some way to
suggest that it was a case of suicide. Being
foiled in that scheme, he simply thought of a
better one; slower but surer."
"It seems to me," said I, "he ran a good
deal of risk in taking a room there in her board-
ing house."
"I don't know," said Jeffrey. "His only
risk was an encounter with her, which really
must have been rather easy to avoid. And then,
if she had seen him, she would have thought of
328


THE STORY IS TOLD
nothing more than that he was playing the spy
upon her."
"I still don't see exactly what he meant to do;
what could he hope to do, unless he could liter-
ally scare her to death or out of her wits?"
"The only wonder to me," said Jeffrey
gravely, " is that she wasn't found dead the sec-
ond morning after you left her out there. Stan-
cliffe knew, didn't he, that she had been taking
something to make herself sleep?"
"Yes, she mentioned it to both of us."
"Well, what I suppose he did was this, and
I should be greatly surprised if I proved wrong:
he got into her room during her absence, and
substituted for that packet of powders a number
of perfectly neutral ones that could have no ef-
fect upon her whatever, and one at the bottom
of the package which contained the concentra-
ted dose that should have been distributed all
through them. The natural thing for a person
to do in her state of mind, half mad with terror
and altogether in despair, would be to seek sleep
at any cost. To take one powder after another,
329


THE STORY IS TOLD
piled upon her since then. Shaken by Stancliffe's
attack upon her, by her quarrel with Jack, tired
out with the strain of the inquest. Then to
have that white-faced, wild-eyed young lover of
hers as good as accuse her of his father's mur-
der. And to have that accusation backed up by
facts that seemed to justify it! The only sup-
port she had was the consciousness of her inno-
cence."
"Do you call that a support?" said Jeffrey.
"I think it would have been easier for her if she
had been guilty. If she had been guilty, she
could have confessed and taken the conse-
quences, and got the thing off her mind. It must
have taken a good deal of courage not to con-
fess, anyway; not to have made a lying admis-
sion that she had committed a crime that she
was really perfectly innocent of. That happens
sometimes, you know; happens, I believe,
oftener than we suppose. But she isn't the sort
of person to do a thing like that. She wouldn't
make a lying confession, and she wouldn't de-
stroy herself. She just sat tight and saw it
22 331


THE STORY IS TOLD
against whom there wasn't any was the guilty
man himself. No, evidence doesn't amount to
much until it's tied on behind the right guess."
Then he laughed and stretched his arms.
"Well," he said, "that takes us back to the
point we started from, the very matter we were
discussing before we read the paper with the ac-
count of Dr. Marshall's death in it. And as for
me, I'm not going around the circle again. I've
been around once, and that's enough for me.
Stancliffe's dead, and I've fixed it up with the
lieutenant to get Armstrong out. He's got all
the facts necessary.
"I am going to sleep for three hours, and
then I'm going to take a color box and go up
to Bronx Park and paint, and the reporter or
other person who thinks he's going to get an-
other word out of me about the Marshall mys-
tery is seriously mistaken."
"But," I protested, "you'll have to tell it
once more, to Madeline and Miss Carr and
Jack. You promised them a report at breakfast
time, you remember; it's nearly that now."
333


THE WHISPERING MAN
"And do you think. I've gone all over this
once with you with the intention of serving it up
again, rechauffe, over the breakfast table? No.
From now on, anyone who wants to know any-
thing about Dr. Marshall and the ' Whispering
Man ' will be gently but firmly referred to you."
I may take this occasion to observe that my
friend has remained perfectly inflexible in this
resolution. As a consequence, I have been kept
telling the story over and over again, until now,
in self-defense, I have sat down and written it
out. Hereafter, anyone that wants to know
about the story will be referred by me, in turn,
to these pages, upon the last of which, or nearly,
I hope I am now writing.
There is, indeed, but little more to say. At
the earliest decent and reasonable hour I went up
to the Marshall house, where I found Madeline
superintending, as if they were babes in the
wood, the breakfast of her convalescent stepson
and his fiancee.
In answering the first of the eager questions
they showered upon me, I am afraid I ruined
334


THE STORY IS TOLD
my tale by beginning it wrong end to. But once
their first curiosity was satisfied, they demanded
the whole story from beginning to end, and I
assenting, we adjourned to the library, the room
where Madeline was first introduced into this
tale, for the purpose.
The hour was still early and the spring morn-
ing not very warm, so the fire which glowed
on the hearth had a good practical justification
for itself. I should have held it justified had
the room been stifling hot without it, just by the
way it played over and caressed Madeline's face.
The two young lovers occupied the sofa at the
farther side of the library, Jack, in consideration
of the early stages of his convalescence, half re-
clining upon a heap of pillows, while Gwendolen
sat near—oh, very near, and— Well, that
needn't go into this story anyway.
The face I watched was Madeline's, as she
watched them. I could hardly tell my story for
looking at it. It was half eager, half regretful,
yet wholly tender and all alight with a new un-
derstanding.
335


THE STORY IS TOLD
long afterwards—what she has been saying over
and over again, ever since—what she said when,
leaning over the back of my chair, she saw what
I was writing on this page—is no concern, posi-
tively none, of any living creature in the world
but our two selves.
THE END


1


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to the end."—Detroit Free Press.
"Mr. Chambers has written many brilliant stories, but
this is his masterpiece."—Pittsburg Chronicle Telegraph.
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.


BOOKS BY S. R. CROCKETT.
Each, J2mo. doth, $1.50.
"For a good Scotch story, faithful to locality and quaint neighborhoods
in its every particular, commend us to S. R. Crockett."—The Courier, Boston.
Deep Moat Grange.
In the popular author's most readable style, but through the lips of a
Yorkshire lad, comes this tale of young love, steeped in murder and mystery,
and the machinations of the criminally insane. Deep Moat Grange—a tum-
ble-down estate near the village of Breckonside, in the north of England, is
the pivot of interest around which the lad, Elsie the heroine, a curate, and
the villagers revolve.
Fishers of Men.
Illustrated.
The story of Kid McGhie, "a little hero of the Dickens type who is fully
as interesting as Oliver Twist."—New York Evening Telegram.
"Facile, ingenious invention, brilliant, smoothly Sowing colloquy, the
deeds of brave men and beautiful women in a framework of glowing descrip-
tion—all these qualities are disclosed in * Fishers of Men.'"
—Philadelphia North American.
The Lilac Sunbonnet.
Twenty-third thousand.
'A love story, pure and simple, one of the old-fashioned, wholesome, sun-
shiny kind, with a pure-minded, sound-hearted hero, and a heroine who is
merely a good and beautiful woman; and if any other love story half so sweet
has been written this year it has escaped our notice."—New York Times.
Cleg Kelly, Arab of the City. His Progress and
Adventures.
Illustrated. Twelfth thousand.
"A masterpiece which Mark Twain himself has never rivaled. ... If
there ever was an ideal character in fiction it is this heroic ragamuffin."
—London Daily Chronicle.
"In no one of his books does Mr. Crockett give us a brighter or more
graphic picture of contemporary Scotch life than in 'Cleg Kelly.' ... It is
one of the great books."—Boston Daily Advertiser.
The Standard Bearer.
An Historical Romance. Ninth thousand.
"Those of his friends who read Mr. Crockett all the more eagerly because
the wholesome country air blows through his books, because the heather flames
in his landscapes, and because he is never tired of drawing women is pure as
they are lovable, may turn to 'The Standard Bearer' with unimpaired trustful-
ness. We have enjoyed this tale heartily, and we feel sure that in this respect
we shall have thousands of companions."— The Literary World, London.
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. NEW YORK.