Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 25, No. 2, August 13, 1927

In which the poetic Mr. O’Neil is ejected from his easy chair to plunge into the seething mystery of the missing secretary

I

A detective is usually, of course, an avenger. The solution of his problem commonly means the penitentiary at least, if not the death penalty, for the criminal he unmasks; and where the crime is deliberate and malicious, the work of a calculating and hardened offender, this outcome seems to be necessary for the protection of society.

I have noticed, however, that Marcus O’Neil is by no means eager to have punishment visited on the wrongdoers with whom he has to deal. He much prefers merely to straighten out a tangle and set all the persons concerned on the right path.

This humane aspect of his work has been somewhat exemplified in two of the stories I have already told, those which I have called “The Secret Circle of Dredd” and “Madame Valla’s Pearls,” but it is even more clearly exhibited in the case I am now about to relate.

This case came to him on the afternoon of February 2, 1926. I must admit that I had been most horribly bored that afternoon. Marcus had inveigled me to his rooms at the Hotel de Soto to hear some new poems which he had just written.

He well knows how little I admire his verses — how little, according to his version, I am capable of appreciating them — yet he will insist on inflicting them upon me.

I listened perforce for two mortal hours, and was nearly ready to perish of ennui and impatience when the welcome interruption came.

It was a telephone call. Marcus reluctantly laid his manuscript down and answered it.

“Very well,” he said with a sigh. “Send them up.” He was evidently speaking to the operator at the desk.

“It’s an insurance case,” he added to me. “Stay if you like. It may prove interesting or very dull. Either way I shall have to go into it. As I believe I told you once, I have a retaining fee from one of the big insurance companies. Every little while they make me earn it.”

“Is this the first you’ve heard of this case?” I asked.

“No. The chief of the claims department telephoned me this morning. A young fellow by the name of Davis over in Elmwood, New Jersey, took out, just a year ago — a year ago to-day, in fact — a policy for one hundred thousand dollars, straight life. Two days ago — two days, that is, before the second premium was due — he died under distressing circumstances which may point to suicide.”

“And the company wants you to prove it suicide so as to escape payment?”

“That’s hardly a fair way of putting it. The company would rather pay a claim than not. It hurts the insurance business when any claim is not paid, whatever the circumstances. But they owe it to their other policy-holders to refuse payment in case of fraud. The claims chief has sent over a couple of men from Elmwood who can tell us the story in full. Here they are.”

II

The knocking at the door had been peremptory, and the man who entered first when Marcus opened was a decidedly confident and impressive person: about forty years old, large, blond, well-dressed in businesslike gray, with a keen eye, a quick, ingratiating smile, and a manner of taking no refusal.

His smile was instantly in action, and he held out a cordial hand.

“Mr. O’Neil? Mr. Marcus O’Neil, the celebrated investigator? I’m pleased and honored to meet you. I,” he asserted, “am J. Stewart Ayres, our company’s representative in the small but thriving city of Elmwood, New Jersey. And this,” he added, turning to a second man, who had entered more slowly, “is Dr. Richard Lovett, one of the company’s examiners, and, incidentally, the coroner of Elmwood.”

The physician was, at first glance, a much less prepossessing individual than the insurance agent. He was young, thin, stoop-shouldered, and nervously awkward, as if from an incorrigible shyness, with black hair which needed cutting, large glasses with shell rims, and a small black goatee ineffectively screening a weak chin.

“I’m pleased to meet you both,” said Marcus. “Let me present my friend, Mr. Carl Maddox, who has been my confidant in a number of my cases. Sit down, gentlemen. Cigars or cigarettes?”

The agent promptly accepted a large cigar; Dr. Lovett did not smoke.

“And now I should be glad to hear the facts.”

Marcus was looking at Dr. Lovett. Since he was the coroner, there had clearly been an inquest, and he was obviously the person to make an official statement of the circumstances.

But J. Stewart Ayres was not the man to let the chief speaking part go to another. He held out an impressive hand.

“Let me speak. I knew George Davis well. He was my friend as well as my client. I can tell his story as no one else can. I want you, Mr. O’Neil, to see for yourself that this suicide theory of Dr. Lovett’s is impossible, simply impossible, given the character of the man. But Dr. Lovett shall check me. He shall see that I do not depart in the smallest iota from the true facts.”

He swept on at full tide, as if he were selling a policy.

“I must begin at the beginning to give you a true picture. George was a poor boy, born on a small farm out in Ohio. His father was no good — that is conceded — a lazy, shiftless bankrupt. But George was sound from the beginning, hard working, ambitious.

“He worked his way through high school and then through college. And no man ever made a finer record in college than George Davis did. I don’t know so much about his studies and grades and such, but he was the captain of the football team and the star player of the dramatic club. And he was a mechanical genius besides.

“Why, he earned most of his expenses by repairing Fords and every other kind of car for the other fellows. Right after graduation he came to Elmwood, where one of the alumni, who had admired George’s work on the gridiron, gave him a fine job as secretary in his silk mills.

“A few months later he married — a girl from a little town back in Ohio, whom he had known from boyhood. That may or may not have been a mistake for George. He might have done better. She hadn’t much... er... background, you know.

“She had worked, I believe, as a stenographer while George was getting through college. But I’ll say this for Mrs. Davis, she’s a mighty pretty girl and was devoted to George, and he to her. There was never a more devoted couple than the Davises. And if she didn’t know much at first, she was quick to learn, and all the right people soon took them up.

“She’s the quiet kind, you know — says little, notices everything. And sort of masterful. She took charge of George all right. But most of our wives do that” — Mr. Ayres laughed loudly — “and we like it, and George liked it. After a year or so they had a baby, a fine bouncing boy, and about the same time George got a raise in salary, and everything was fine.

“It was right after the baby was born and he had had his raise that he came to me about insurance. ‘You know, Mr. Ayres,’ he said, ‘that I didn’t have anything to start with, and we haven’t been able to save much. I’m buying the house we live in, and that’s about all.’

“ ‘But I want my wife and boy well provided for if anything should happen to me. I’m going to put all my savings for the present into insurance.’

“He wanted one hundred thousand dollars. I advised him that that was too much for him to carry, but he insisted, and after all for straight life at his age the cost wasn’t unreasonable. So I sold it to him. He was in the pink of physical condition then, as Dr. Lovett, who examined him, will admit.”

The physician gravely nodded his assent.

“But then,” Mr. Ayres continued, assuming a mournful expression, “his bad luck began. It was just at the beginning of February that he took out his policy. In March he came down with pneumonia and was very sick for two months.

“It might have been better, as things have turned out, if he had died then. But his wife nursed him through — how that woman nursed him! — and at last he seemed to get well. But his heart was affected, and his lungs too, for a cough hung on, and in July it was discovered that he had a touch of T. B.

“He got a leave of absence for three months, and they went to Colorado, he and Mrs. Davis and the baby. The first of November he came back without the cough, thinking he was cured. But a month of our Eastern winter brought him down again, worse than ever.

“It was pitiful. You never saw any one so blue as the Davises were last December. He had worked so hard and done so well, and he and his little family had been so happy — and there he was, down and out, a physical wreck.

“George himself had cheerful days, as consumptives do, when he thought he felt better. But Mrs. Davis had no illusions. She’s one to face the facts, she is. She saw clearly enough that George might linger on for months, but would never get well, at least not here in the East, where he had to stay on account of his job.”

At this point Dr. Lovett, with a sort of timid firmness, voiced a question:

“What was it he said about the insurance?”

Mr. Ayres looked very much pained.

“Well,” he said, “he was rather bitter about it. You can hardly blame him for anything in his condition. The second premium was due the second of February, and he knew he couldn’t meet it. What he said once was, ‘You have to die to get it.’ ”

“His wife,” said Dr. Lovett, “made the same remark to me.”

“What of it?” stormed Mr. Ayres. “It isn’t fair to twist anything out of that! Think of the fix they were in!”

“Perhaps,” said Marcus, soothingly, “it’s time you came to the final circumstances — the death, you know.”

“To be sure!” said Mr. Ayres, pausing only to cast one glance of lingering resentment at Dr. Lovett. “I will continue. By the first of the year poor George was so bad that he couldn’t go to the office.

“It was evident that he would have to resign his position, and what he and his family would do then no one could see. But he got the notion that if he could have a couple of months in Colorado again he would be all right. He borrowed five hundred dollars.

“I backed his note myself, though it was as good as giving it to him, and he went off to Denver, by himself this time. January 15 it was he left, and the plan was that he should stay until some time in April.

“But after two weeks he unexpectedly came back. That was last Sunday, January 31. He said, Mrs. Davis tells me, that he couldn’t stand it out there alone, away from her and the baby. He came in by the early train — 5 A.M. — and went straight to the house, and he and his wife spent the whole day talking, talking — poor things! So the maid tells me.

“You’ll need to see that maid, by the way, Mr. O’Neil. She’s a little high school girl, named Irene Bishop, who gives Mrs. Davis part time. She’s quite intelligent, and her evidence is important for certain parts of the tragedy.

“The only people in town who knew during the day that George was back were the Higginses — their only near neighbors, for the Davises were out in a new suburb — who dropped in in the afternoon with the idea of cheering Mrs. Davis up and found them together. They were both very nervous and depressed, Higgins says, and seemed to want to be alone, so the Higginses didn’t stay long.

“That brings us right up to the accident.”

Mr. Ayres italicized the word “accident” and looked defiantly at Dr. Lovett.

“About eight o’clock George went out through the kitchen, where Irene was washing up after supper, on the way to his workshop. I told you George was a mechanical genius. He had fixed up a tool bench out in the corner of what was meant for the garage.

“The Davises hadn’t a car, so they used it for his workshop and also as a sort of general storage place. Most unfortunately one of the things they had stored there was a shallow box partly full of excelsior; it stood at one end of the workbench.

“Mrs. Davis followed George into the kitchen.

“ ‘I think you ought to go to bed, George,’ she said — this is Irene’s testimony. ‘You aren’t well at all. You said you felt faint.’ And indeed, Irene says, he was looking terribly haggard and feverish.

“ ‘I’m all right now,’ he replied. ‘Only restless. I couldn’t sleep. I’ll tinker a bit till I get quiet. Maybe I’ll fix that toaster.’

“For, as it happened, that very morning their electric toaster had failed to work, and he had taken it out to the workshop after breakfast, saying then that he would fix it later in the day.

“So he went out. Half an hour later he telephoned to the house — he had fixed up a private line — asking for a cup of coffee. Mrs. Davis made the coffee herself and took it out to him. She stayed out there perhaps ten minutes, and when she came back her eyes were red and swollen with crying.

“She said nothing to Irene, but hurried on into the living room, where the maid heard her walking about as if she found it impossible to sit still.

“Another half hour passed, and Mrs. Davis came back into the kitchen, looking almost frantic.

“ ‘Why doesn’t he come in?’ she cried, and then, staring out through the back window, ‘Why, the light’s out! Where can he have gone?’

“Irene, looking out, saw for herself that the garage was dark. But there was a switch in the kitchen which turned on the lights in the garage. Mrs. Davis stepped quickly to that switch and pressed it, and one light went on — the one that hung in the center, but not the one over the workbench.

“For just an instant Mrs. Davis stared through the window.

“Then she cried, ‘I’ll get a wrap and go out!’ and ran back into the front part of the house.

“She was hardly gone when Irene saw the blaze flare up. The garage was on fire and burning fiercely.

“Irene screamed ‘Fire!’ and rushed after Mrs. Davis, but found her on the davenport in a dead faint.

“It was three or four minutes probably-before Higgins ran over — there are two vacant lots between his place and the Davises’ — and when he got there the blaze was so well started that he could do nothing but send in the alarm.

“He swears there was no sound whatever from inside — no screaming, moaning, gasping — nothing. But he smelled the burning flesh.

“The engines responded promptly, and were able to save a part of the walls and roof. The blaze had been terrific in the corner by the workbench, where the excelsior had stood, but the rest of the structure, damp from the winter rains and snows, had to some extent resisted the flames. The stream from the fire hose soon stopped them.

“And then they found George’s body. The poor fellow had fallen face downward in that shallow box of excelsior, and his face and all the upper part of his body were crisped to the bone. It was terrible! But the lower part of the legs was untouched, and it was undoubtedly George’s trousers and shoes, and they found his watch and keys and stickpin.

“But the most tragic thing of all was the way in which the fire evidently started. There right beside his blackened skull, within the charred remains of the excelsior box, still hanging from a red-hot wire from which the insulation had been burned away, was that electric toaster! Warped and melted, but still connected to the socket which hung above the workbench!

“You can see for yourself, Mr. O’Neil, what must have happened. The poor fellow was working with that toaster. He had taken the bulb out of the socket above his workbench and connected the toaster to test it. Then he must have felt faint again, and decided to go in, and turned off the switch — and then fainted and fallen with his head in the excelsior. And as he fell he must have knocked the toaster off the bench so that it dropped down beside his face.

“He may have been dead then. We must hope he was. I told you his heart was affected by his pneumonia. But, my God, he may not have been. And then his wife, his wife, saw the lights were off and pushed the switch in the kitchen! The electric toaster glowed and set fire to the excelsior, and whether he was already dead or not that finished him!

“It’s the ghastliest thing I ever heard of. But how any one can think it was other than an accident is more than I can see!”

Mr. Ayres glared again at Dr. Lovett.

“I challenge you,” he added haughtily, “to point out any material fact which I have omitted.”

The young physician coughed nervously.

“I do not say that you have left anything out,” he conceded.

III

“Still,” said Marcus, “I understand that in your opinion it was, or may have been suicide.”

“Exactly!” said Dr. Lovett. “May have been. And I think that, in justice to the company and its policy-holders, that possibility — I do not claim it is anything more — should be considered and investigated. I devoutly hope,” he added, “that my suspicion may prove to be unfounded.”

“Please state your theory,” said Marcus.

Dr. Lovett sat forward on the edge of his chair and fixed his eyes earnestly on Marcus.

“Well,” he began, “in the first place, it is a curious coincidence that this death should have occurred just before Mr. Davis’s protection expired. As it is, Mrs. Davis gets one hundred thousand dollars. If the same thing had happened forty-eight hours later she would have got nothing. It was, in a sense, strikingly opportune.

“Secondly, it is notable that the ghastly circumstances of the death and the condition in which the body was left by the flames made an autopsy almost impossible.”

“An autopsy?”

“Yes. An autopsy, which might have determined whether the death was due to heart failure, as is assumed, or to some other cause.”

“For example?”

“For example — poison. Please recall the incident of the coffee. Half an hour before George Davis died he phoned for a cup of coffee. That seems queer in itself, since he had complained, in the maid’s hearing, of restlessness and sleeplessness and professed to be going out to the workshop to quiet down.

“One would have supposed that coffee was the last thing he would have wanted. Yet he asked for it, and Mrs. Davis made it and took it out and left it with him. Certain kinds of poison are frequently taken in coffee.

“It seems to me at least possible that George Davis took poison that night, and then deliberately placed the electric toaster in the excelsior and lay down to die with his head beside it, intending that his body should be horribly burned and the suspicion of suicide thus avoided.

“That supposition affords a logical and motivated explanation of what must otherwise appear as a very extraordinary series of mere accidents.”

“But it assumes,” said Marcus thoughtfully, “a very remarkable degree of fortitude and resolution on Davis’s part.”

“It does!” cried Dr. Lovett eagerly. “And also great devotion to his family. It is all to his credit, most of us would feel, except on the score of abstract integrity. Many men in his tragic situation would not hesitate at fraud against a thing so impersonal as an insurance company.

“As I see it, he may have thought the thing out on that long, lonely trip to Colorado, from which he returned so unexpectedly. He may have seen that he was doomed in any case, and that the only way he could provide for his wife and child was to take himself off before his insurance ran out. That’s why I can’t help recalling his remark, ‘You have to die to get it.’ ”

“Why didn’t he poison himself in Colorado then?” demanded Mr. Ayres. “Or throw himself from the train?”

“It had to seem an accident,” replied the physician steadily; Marcus’s close attention had evidently given him confidence. “The policy, being less than a year old, was still contestable and invalid in case of suicide. And perhaps he wanted to see his wife once more before he killed himself for her sake.”

Marcus spoke:

“Your theory implies that Mrs. Davis may have been an accessory to the suicide, since she took the coffee out to her husband, and especially since, after just about the right interval, she pushed the switch to turn on the electric toaster and so start the blaze which was to avert the idea of self-slaughter.”

“I’m afraid it does imply that,” Dr. Lovett admitted sadly. “And I must point out one circumstance which seems to support it, namely, that the maid found Mrs. Davis unconscious on the davenport immediately after she had pressed the switch and before she had any reason to suppose that her husband or his body was in the burning garage.

“The same idea would explain the conduct of the Davises through the preceding day — their long hours of mournful talk, their nervousness before callers, Mrs. Davis’s swollen eyes when she came back from the garage after what she knew was a last farewell, and her distraught appearance when she went out into the kitchen to press the switch, as well as her fainting immediately afterward.

“It all fits in only too well. It seems to me George Davis committed suicide to provide for his wife and child, and that she acquiesced and aided him for the child’s sake.”

There was silence for a moment in Marcus’s study. Then Mr. Ayres spoke, registering a nice balance of pain and contempt:

“Dr. Lovett’s theory is very ingenious — very ingenious indeed! But it’s all moonshine, and a gross injustice to George Davis’s memory! Why think up all that stuff? Why not accept the facts at their face value? It was an accident — a horrible accident — and that’s all there is to it!”

IV

Marcus ignored this protest.

“We have had two theories,” he said. “Obviously there are several others which might fit the facts.”

“For example?” demanded Mr. Ayres belligerently.

“For example, a very slight amendment of Dr. Lovett’s theory would point to murder on the part of the wife instead of suicide on the part of the husband.

“Your description of Mrs. Davis gives us a picture of a silent, inscrutable, and masterful personality — the very type most worthy of attention in connection with any complicated mystery or crime. And, after all, she is the beneficiary.

“If we assume for the moment Dr. Lovett’s hypothesis of poison, it is clear that Mrs. Davis could have put the drug in the coffee, which she made herself, before she took it out to the garage.”

“And waited till he dropped dead, and then laid his head in the excelsior, and put the electric toaster beside it!” cried Mr. Ayres in gruesome derision. “Unthinkable!”

“It is a large order,” Marcus conceded. “Moreover, it implies that Mrs. Davis had poison up her sleeve, so to speak, ready to be employed at the first accidental opportunity, like her husband’s request for the coffee, and that is not very probable.

“On the whole,” he added, “I am inclined to agree with you, Mr. Ayres, that your construction of the matter as a simple accident is the most probable of the theories we have been considering. On the other hand, I am by no means disposed to dismiss the case without investigation. There are aspects, at least, of Dr. Lovett’s hypothesis which demand attention. I shall have to go to Elmwood. Meanwhile a few questions.”

He turned to Dr. Lovett.

“Doubtless you looked among the debris for the cup which had held that coffee?”

“I did. It still stood in its saucer on the charred work-bench. But it had been in the fiercest of the flames and was licked dry and blackened with smoke. It yielded no evidence.”

“Second: When does the funeral take place?”

Mr. Ayres answered this question: “George’s body — what was left of it — has been buried this afternoon — while we have been talking, in fact. I should have been there.”

“Finally,” said Marcus, addressing Ayres, “can you tell me anything of Mrs. Davis’s plans?”

“So far as I know she has made none. How can you expect her to have any yet?” he added indignantly.

Ignoring this counter-question, Marcus got rid of his two callers, with the understanding that they would meet him at the station in Elmwood the following morning. I obtained his permission to accompany him.

V

We reached Elmwood at eight forty-three. Dr. Lovett had been detained, but Mr. Ayres met us and drove us out to the Davises’ house.

Mrs. Davis, we understood from Ayres, had been prostrated until after the funeral and was up for the first time that morning. We were somewhat surprised, therefore, to learn from the little high school maid, Irene, that she was out, had gone down town. She had said she would be back in an hour.

I thought Marcus seemed pleased as well as surprised. He said immediately that we would await Mrs. Davis’s return. In the meantime he would like to ask Irene some questions and to see the burned garage.

“Mrs. Davis didn’t say where she was going?” he added to the maid.

“No, sir.”

“Well, then, about last Sunday?” and he proceeded to cross-examine the girl somewhat closely about the circumstances of the tragedy.

Irene was, as Mr. Ayres had said, intelligent. She answered Marcus’s questions directly and freely. But he did not succeed in eliciting a single fact which had not been covered in Mr. Ayres’s really excellent account. At last he gave it up, and we went out to the garage or workshop.

There again everything was about as we had reason to expect. The building stood at the back of the lot on the edge of a high bank made by a railroad cutting. The front was, of course, badly gutted. We saw the charred workbench, the charred remains of the shallow box which had held the excelsior, the battered and blackened toaster still hanging from its wire. George Davis’s shoes, the remains of his trousers, and his watch, keys, and stickpin had been put in a box and taken into the house, Mr. Ayres said; we could see them if we wished.

But Marcus appeared to be indifferent about those ghastly relics. He stood in the center of the garage looking about at the concrete floor and at various boxes, barrels, and discarded pieces of furniture, all badly water-soaked, which still stood against the three remaining sides of the structure; Ayres had told us that the Davises used it in part for storage.

Suddenly he turned to Irene, who had accompanied us.

“This place has been swept since the fire?”

“Yes, sir. It was the first thing Mrs. Davis told me to do.”

“When she came out of her faint?”

“Yes, sir. She said everybody would be seeing it and she wanted it to look tidy. It was all over cinders and soot and wet bits of excelsior from the fire.”

“It would be, of course,” said Marcus pleasantly.

“She swept it again herself this morning,” Irene volunteered, encouraged, no doubt, by his agreeable tone.

“Well, between you you did an excellent job, I must say.” He peered into the corners and even moved one or two barrels containing old newspapers. “Still,” he added, stooping to reach down behind the barrels, “here are one or two tiny shreds of excelsior which you both missed.”

He appeared to scrutinize those shreds closely, holding them right under his nose, so to speak, and then put them in his waistcoat pocket — all of which struck me as absurd.

His next move seemed to me equally pointless. He stopped at the back window of the garage, which was still intact, raised it, leaned out, and stared down at the railway tracks below.

“What road is that?” he asked of Ayres.

“A spur of the Jersey Central running up from Trenton.”

But Marcus appeared to give little attention to this reply. His hand rested on a large trunk which stood below the window, flanked on one side by the barrels and on the other by a broken chair.

“Whose trunk is this?”

“It was Mr. Davis’s,” said Irene.

“Did he usually keep it here?”

“Oh, no. But he had it brought in here that morning when he came back, because it was so heavy. He had taken a lot of books with him to Colorado, because he expected to be all alone for a couple of months and to have nothing to do but read; and the expressmen who had to carry it downstairs when he left grumbled so much that when he came back he just had them back up to the garage and put it in here, and said he would unpack the books here and carry them up himself.”

“And did he do so?”

“Yes — on Sunday morning.”

“I should have thought that would have been too heavy work for him in his condition.”

“It was. Mrs. Davis scolded him for having the men put it here. And she wanted him to let her bring the books in, but he wouldn’t.”

“There were a lot of them, were there?”

“Five or six armloads.”

“Let’s see if he got them all,” said Marcus, the fatuity of whose proceedings seemed to me to be increasing.

He raised the lid of the trunk. The tray was empty, and he lifted it out. But the bottom also was absolutely bare.

“Yes, he got them all.”

An inane remark, certainly. I read amazement and contempt on the self-satisfied, unfriendly features of Mr. Ayres, and was glad of the diversion which immediately followed.

It was a woman’s voice, calling from the house:

“Irene!”

“Mrs. Davis is back!” cried the girl.

“Very well,” said Marcus. “Please go in and ask if she will see us.”

Irene returned almost immediately to say that her mistress would receive us in the sitting room.

We found a woman — a girl rather, for she was hardly more — who in happier days must have been very pretty indeed. A slender figure, regular features at once delicate and firm, brown hair becomingly bobbed, and wide brown eyes which met yours with an appealing directness.

She bore herself with an admirable, heroic composure, but her colorless cheeks and the dark circles under those wide eyes went straight to my heart. They told only too plainly the horror and grief she had suffered. Marcus’s suggestion of the day before that she might be a murderess recurred to me as appallingly callous.

Mr. Ayres introduced us and explained that in any case of accidental death the insurance company makes an investigation of the circumstances, especially when the amount of the policy is large. “A mere matter of form,” he added in a somewhat too casual tone.

“I see!”

The note of exclamation in her tone was, of course, natural; women do not understand how impersonal and unsympathetic business has to be. She looked searchingly at Marcus, and her delicate lips closed in a curiously firm line.

“I shall be glad to answer any questions,” she said, in a flattened voice. “It is very horrible, of course,” she added, closing her eyes.

I was glad to see that Marcus’s regard, fixed upon her, expressed the same pity I was feeling.

“I think I need not ask you to go over the circumstances,” he said gently. “I have the facts very nearly complete from Mr. Ayres. But I do need to ask two questions.”

“Well?” she challenged.

“Please tell me where you have been this morning.”

She looked, I thought, somewhat startled. But I was surprised myself; why this question first of all? She appeared to reflect carefully.

“I don’t see how it can possibly concern you,” she said at last, somewhat haughtily, “but if you must know, I have been down to the office of the Elmwood Call to insert an advertisement offering this house for sale.”

“I see. That answers in part my only other question, namely, what plans you have made for the immediate future.”

She regarded him steadily, I would almost say watchfully.

“Again,” she said, “I do not see how that can interest you. But I am going back to my former home in Ohio. I could not stay here!” She shuddered.

“You will go as soon as the house is sold?”

“Sooner, I hope, unless it sells very quickly. I shall go,” she added pointedly, “as soon as the insurance company pays my claim.”

“Just so,” said Marcus, rising. “Thank you very much. I need not trouble you further.”

VI

“Well?” said Mr. Ayres, when we were back in the car. His glance was quizzical, not to say pitying.

“Well enough,” Marcus replied, cheerfully but noncommittally.

Ayres grunted, rebuffed. “Back to the station?” he asked.

“Not just yet. If you can give me the time, I should like to stop at the office of the Elmwood Call. And can you tell me when Dr. Lovett’s office hours are?”

Ayres stared and scowled. “Eleven to one,” he replied gruffly.

“Very good,” said Marcus. “I must see him a moment, too.”

The company’s representative in Elmwood could hardly refuse to chauffeur us on these two calls. But his temper did not improve in the process. For at both places Marcus left us in the car, kept us waiting many minutes, and rejoined us without comment. It was a decidedly frigid Mr. Ayres who, still completely unenlightened, put us on the twelve fifteen for New York.

The smoking compartment of the chair car was empty, and Marcus laughed as we lit cigarettes.

“I treated him badly,” he said. “But he’s so devoted a partisan of poor Davis that I couldn’t let him in on the thing yet. There’s no reason, however, why I should keep you in the dark. Here’s the answer, complete.”

He handed me a small clipping from a newspaper.

“From to-day’s issue of the Elmwood Call,” he added.

It was a want advertisement and read:

“You see?” said Marcus.

“It is certainly verbose,” I replied, “and... well, incoherent. Mrs. Davis is naturally in no frame of mind to compose a good advertisement.”

“But look at it, man! Study it!”

I did study it attentively, but could only shake my head.

“I don’t see what you mean.”

He laughed. “Well, Carl, we’ll leave it at that for the present. But you shall be in at the death, I promise you. It will take me a week or ten days to wind the thing up properly. I’ll let you know.”

And then he began to talk of his infernal poetry!

VII

It was nine days later that Marcus telephoned me to come down to the De Soto. I was detained and did not reach his rooms until half an hour after the time he had suggested. He shook his head when he saw me.

“You’re late. I planned to give you the explanation first. But they’ve already telephoned from the desk. She’s on her way up.”

“Who?”

He did not answer, for a knock had sounded at the door. He opened it.

“Come in, Mrs. Davis.”

She was becomingly attired in simple mourning, but her cheeks had not regained their color nor her wide brown eyes lost the dark circles beneath them. Evidently she was still tense with grief and — was it apprehension?

“You asked me to come here, Mr. O’Neil.”

“Yes. Take this chair, won’t you?”

She sat down stiffly, unable to relax. When she spoke it was with a pitiful, strained composure.

“I hope you are about to tell me that the company has allowed my claim.”

“Not quite that, Mrs. Davis. Still I have good news for you — three pieces of good news.”

She stared uncomprehendingly.

“First, Dr. Lovett, who is very much your friend, has succeeded in finding a purchaser for your house.”

“Ah!”

“Second, I have found a job for you.”

“A job!”

“Yes, a good secretarial position with one of the best firms in Denver. The salary is quite liberal and the opportunities for advancement excellent. And, finally, I have secured your husband’s admission to an endowed hospital out there, where the charges will be quite within your means, and where I hope his recovery will proceed as rapidly as possible.”

She lay back in her chair, breathing quickly, with piteous frightened eyes.

“You know, then? You have seen him?”

“Yes, Mrs. Davis. Your little plot was well devised, but you could not expect it to stand expert investigation. And, believe me, this is the better way.

“The worry and fear were hurting your husband’s health. They might have killed him. And even if he had recovered and you had rejoined him under a new name, your lives would have had to be furtive and hidden, and the constant fear of recognition and exposure would have poisoned all your joy. As it is, you can start fresh in the open. The company will drop the matter.

“You can dose the sale of the house to-morrow and leave for Denver immediately. The policy on which you were trying to realize by fraud was called ‘straight life.’ Your husband has agreed with me that a straight life policy for the future will be best.”

VIII

When Mrs. Davis, after a good many tears of relief and gratitude, had departed, Marcus was willing to discuss the case as a whole.

“Dr. Lovett,” he said, “presented fairly well the more general a-priori reasons for suspicion of the alleged accident. In the first place it was remarkably opportune — I believe that was his word. In the second place, consider the chain of events which resulted in an unrecognizable corpse.

“That chain involved, first, the electric toaster’s getting out of order on that particular day; second, the box of excelsior so dangerously placed; third, the man’s fainting just after he turned out the lights; fourth, his falling in one particular direction, so that his head should rest in the excelsior; fifth, his knocking the toaster off in such a way that it should drop right beside him; and sixth, his wife’s pressing the switch — after a convenient interval.

“Under any circumstances such a correlated series of small accidents, all necessary to a final result, would have been highly remarkable. In a situation where that result, a body burned beyond recognition, was worth one hundred thousand dollars to a couple faced by destitution, it was nearly impossible to regard the sequence as fortuitous.

“Dr. Lovett was justified, also, in recalling the remark, made by both the Davises, to the effect that insurance money can only be obtained by dying; and he was acute in pointing out that Mrs. Davis fainted too soon.

“But his theory of poison, though natural from a physician, was preposterous. It assumed, on the part of both husband and wife, a degree of sacrificial hardihood which was simply incredible.

“Moreover, we knew from Ayres that they were a very devoted couple. If they were plotting to get one hundred thousand dollars by fraud, their plot would include provision, not for his death, but for his recovery, so that they might enjoy their booty together.

“Altogether, it was clear from the beginning that the burned body was not Davis’s. It was also pretty certain that his second trip to Colorado was for the twofold purpose of establishing a base there under a new name and probably a disguise and of obtaining a body, which he must have brought back with him; and that what he really did when he went out to the garage, ostensibly to fix the toaster, was to assume his disguise and to dress the body in his clothes and put it in position with respect to the excelsior and the toaster.

“The request for coffee brought Mrs. Davis out to inspect his work and for a last good-by. Then he climbed out the back window, scrambled down the bank to the railroad tracks, and walked the ties to Trenton, where he could catch a train.

“Mrs. Davis gave him half an hour’s start, pressed the switch to start the necessary conflagration, and, having done her part, incontinently collapsed.

“Most of this was clear enough even before we went to Elmwood. The evidence I found in the garage there made the case complete. First, why had the place been so carefully swept? Why was that sweeping Mrs. Davis’s first thought when she recovered consciousness? And why had she repeated it herself as soon as she was able to be out of bed? Obviously to remove something which might be incriminating.

“The floor had been covered, Irene said, with cinders, soot, and bits of excelsior. I hunted for and found several of those bits and smelled them. They had been soaked in kerosene. That was final evidence that the fire was premeditated. Second: that window at the back was Davis’s most probable means of exit; and, looking out, I could see in the mud of the cutting where some one had recently slipped and plowed his way down the bank to the tracks. Finally, the presence of the trunk in the garage, with all that elaborate hocus-pocus about heavy books, confirmed my guess that Davis had got the body in Colorado.

“What remained was, of course, to find Davis, and the readiest way to do that was obviously to intercept the messages which must certainly pass between him and his wife. In view, however, of the careful study and elaborate foresight displayed throughout, it was probable that this danger had been perceived and some secret means of communication devised.

“This point was in my mind when I learned of Mrs. Davis’s surprising promptness in advertising the house. A published advertisement is one of the commonest methods of sending code messages. Accordingly I stopped at the office of the Elmwood Call and looked up Mrs. Davis’s ad. You did not seem to make it out when I showed it to you in the train, but take another look.”

He handed it to me again.

“You will note,” he added, “that I have now underlined every fifth word.”

With this done the secret message stood out clear:

“Starting with the idea of a code message,” Marcus continued, “one had only to pick out the words ‘burned’ and ‘buried,’ which she was likely to use, and to note that they were five words apart. The rest was mere counting.”

“This message,” said I, “was conclusive confirmation of your theory of the plot, but I don’t see how it helped you find Davis.”

“Oh, I had only to ask to see the Call’s out-of-town mailing list — not a large list, of course, in the case of an obscure, small-town daily.

“When I found just one Colorado subscription, in the name of ‘George Meredith,’ Denver, and that one entered within two weeks, I was fairly safe, I think, in assuming that ‘George Meredith’ was the t alias of George Davis.

“Of course, I could — perhaps I should — merely have reported the facts to the company. But I felt too sorry for that I pitiful young wife and her husband. So I took Dr. Lovett into my confidence and arranged to buy the house myself through him, so as to give them a bit of ready cash. I shall be able to sell it again without loss.

“And then I ran out to Denver to see I Davis and convince him of the folly of their plan even if it had succeeded and to arrange for his hospitalization and for a position for her in which she can support them pending his recovery.

“He confessed that he got the corpse by the ancient dodge of calling at a charity hospital and claiming to recognize the body of a friendless pauper who had just died as that of a distant relative to whom he wished to give proper burial.

“The directors of the company were a little shocked, I think, when I finally made my report, but they have approved my handling of the matter. Even corporations may have a heart, provided they don’t lose money.”