CHAPTER XIX CARDS ON THE TABLE

The crowd dispersed as the patrol wagon took Garney and the officer away, but one man lingered and fell into step with me as I turned away. It was Mr. Ellison. I had not noticed him in the crowd.

"What's all this?" he asked, twisting his head to look up at me, bird-fashion.

"Walk with me, and I'll tell you," I said. "I am going down to see Benbow."

And as we walked I told him of the surprising developments of the last few hours,--that Garney, the Latin tutor, and Gene's friend, was the man with crooked teeth who had been eating apples in Barker's inner office while waiting for his victim, who had observed and recognized my locket; and that Garney was Diavolo the hypnotist who had threatened to kill his partner, Barker, if his identity were disclosed. (I may say here, to anticipate events which befell later, that this identity was absolutely established by Dr. Shaw, the dentist who had extracted a tooth for Diavolo,--the first case in the law reports, I believe, where identity was established by the teeth. By that time every link was so clear that Garney's confession was hardly needed,--though he did break down in the end and make a plea of "Guilty.")

Ellison listened with his peculiar interest,--an interest in events rather than in persons, and in ideas more than either. At the end he nodded his alert head rapidly.

"Yes, I knew Garney had practised hypnotism but I thought it was years ago. Barker told me, in strict confidence."

"Barker!"

He nodded. "Yes. I didn't say anything about it, because people seemed to think it wasn't good form for me to have any civil relations with the man who had killed my second cousin, but as a matter of fact, I knew him fairly well. Gene would turn white at the mention of his name, so I didn't mention it. That check for $250--you remember?"

"Yes."

"Well, that was to pay for a course of lessons in hypnotism. He promised to get me a practical teacher who had been a public performer,--Garney, in fact. He hadn't made the arrangements yet, but he was confident that he could bring it about. And I was eager to have the opportunity to investigate the matter, scientifically, you understand. If he could teach me how to do it, I would understand the thing,--the rationale of it, I mean. But it was strictly confidential, because of Garney's position in the university."

"Did he know you knew?"

"No. Barker was killed before he could arrange it. I went to his room the next day, to see if I could by chance recover that check, which hadn't been presented at the bank, but his dragon landlady gave me no chance,--and then you told me that you saw it in his pocket the next day. So I let things take their own course."

"Somebody did break into his rooms that night," I said. "That has never been cleared up."

"Garney!" said Ellison, shrewdly. "He has in his possession certain books which I know Barker had in his room the day before. He undoubtedly removed them, with any papers or other matters that might have connected him with Barker or revealed his practices."

"How do you know he has them?" I asked, amazed.

"Oh, I have made a point of seeing a good deal of Garney lately. You see, I am interested in the occult, scientifically. And since Barker couldn't act as go-between, I have been cultivating Garney on my own account."

"Yes, and given him a chance to work on Miss Benbow's feelings," I groaned.

"Why, it never occurred to me that he was interested in her," he said blandly.

"That was too obvious to attract your attention, doubtless," I could not refrain from saying. "Well, you have cleared up a good many points, Mr. Ellison, but I'd like to ask another question. Did you send a thousand dollars to William Jordan, and if so, why?"

For the first time he looked embarrassed.

"Why yes," he said, nodding his head deliberately. "Jean told me about him and his loss. It struck me that it was an unnecessary piece of hard luck that he should suffer as an individual for an advancement of knowledge which will benefit the race. He didn't care anything about hypnotism scientifically. I did. I had fostered its development, so far as lay within my power. So, in a manner, I was responsible for his loss. Not immediately, of course, and yet not so remotely, either, since I was encouraging Barker. At any rate, I felt that I should be more comfortable if I made it up to the old farmer. When hypnotism is no longer a mystery but an understood science, such things won't happen!" He beamed with enthusiasm, and I saw that I had never understood the man. He was an idealist.

"I hope they won't," I said doubtfully. "But hypnotism seems to me devil's work, both for the hypnotizer and the victim. Think of Jordan, and look at Garney. Aside from his crimes, the man is somehow abnormal. He has the look of a haunted man. He faints like a woman when he is discovered. No, no hypnotism for me, thank you. But in any event, your action in reimbursing poor old Jordan does you credit."

He waved that aside. "What I should like to know," he said, changing the subject, "is how Gene became involved in this affair. If Garney shot Barker, why did Gene say he did? He isn't as fond of Garney as all that. You don't suppose--" He stopped suddenly and looked at me hard. "You don't suppose that Garney hypnotized him, and sent him to shoot Barker? That would be neat! Damnable, of course, but damnably neat!"

"I don't know," I said slowly. I had been afraid to face that idea myself. "I am going to see him now. Perhaps, with the news of Garney's arrest for a lever, I may get the truth from him. If you don't mind, I want to see him alone."

"All right. I'll leave you here."

But as he turned away, Fellows came up from behind and fell into step with me. I think he had been watching for the chance.

"Royce's story is all right, Mr. Hilton," he said. "The cars were tied up on the Park line the night that Barker was shot. And I have seen the conductor. He knows Royce, who is a fireman at Engine House No. 6, and he remembers seeing him on the stalled car, with a girl."

"A good alibi, but he won't need to prove it now," I said. "We have found Barker's murderer. It is a man named Allen Garney."

"Oh, ho!" Fellows exclaimed, in obvious surprise.

"Do you know him?" I asked, recalling the damaging charge which Garney had made against Fellows.

"I know who he is, and I know that there was something between him and Barker in the old days,--on the quiet. Garney didn't care to be seen with him, but in a way they were pals. In fact, I went to see him the other day to make some inquiries about Barker's past. He was rather rude in getting rid of me."

"You frightened him. He didn't want to be identified as having any connection with Barker. I see. That's why he used your name as a scapegoat to turn my attention from himself. He suggested that you might have shot Barker yourself, Fellows!"

"Did he?" said Fellows, grimly. "Well, if I had, it would only have been the execution of justice. Barker was a murderer."

"You mean in killing Senator Benbow?"

"More than that. Do you remember the story that the Samovar printed about Mr. Clyde?"

"Well, rather!"

"It brought to my mind a story that Barker once told me. When I was a fresh kid from the country and he was teaching me the ways of the world and of the race-track, he told me that he had once stabbed a man in a Texas hotel for cheating at cards. He said that he and three other men were playing in the room of one of them, and that was the one that was killed. He told me that another man was arrested, tried and convicted, while he sat in the court room and watched the proceedings."

"What a monster!"

"He told the story merely to point out that every man had to take his chances,--good luck or bad,--just as it came. He was a great believer in luck. It was his luck to escape and the other man's luck to be convicted by mistake. But he said that the man escaped and was not hung. The Clyde story was so much like Barker's story that I wondered whether it might not be the same, and I went to Garney to ask if he knew whether Barker was the man who killed Henley. He would not admit knowing anything, but he let slip a word in his first anger that he could not take back. It was Barker."

"The villain! And he claimed to be merely a spectator in the court room, and that that was how he came to recognize Clyde! He probably studied his face pretty carefully during the days when he was watching Clyde in the dock where he knew he should have been himself! I don't wonder he recognized him. What a man!"

"I wonder if we can prove it," exclaimed Fellows.

"We have just discovered an old letter which will completely establish an alibi for Clyde,--I'll tell you the details later. But whether we can get your story before the court or not, it is undoubtedly the inner truth of the matter and it rounds out the story of Barker's villainy very completely. And he met the treachery he dealt out to others. He was slain by the hand of the false friend he trusted and whom he probably had never wronged."

"But if Garney killed him, what about Benbow?"

"I am going to see him now, and see if I can find out what it is that he is concealing. I'm glad I don't have to swear out a warrant against you, Fellows!"

Fellows smiled quite humanly as he turned away.

I found Benbow thinner, more nervous, and less self-possessed than I had ever seen him before. I was glad to see these signs of disintegration in his baffling reserve.

"I have had a strenuous afternoon," I said, as we shook hands. "Since four o'clock I have discovered Barker's widow, spoiled an elopement, and had your Latin tutor, Garney, arrested."

He looked surprised, naturally, but nothing more. "What for?" he asked.

"For complicity in a murder," I said, watching him closely.

"Oh, impossible!" he exclaimed. "Not Mr. Garney!" His natural manner, his genuine look of surprise and inquiry, were disconcerting. I saw I must work my way carefully.

"Did you know that Mr. Garney had hypnotic powers?" I asked.

Ah, there my probe went home! His tell-tale face flushed and his eyes evaded mine.

"I can tell you nothing about that," he said, with dignified reserve.

"Perhaps I may be able to tell you something that will be news to you, even though you knew of his practices. He is known on the vaudeville stage as Diavolo, and he has toured, giving exhibitions in hypnotism."

"I didn't know that," he said,--and I could not doubt his sincerity. "It must have been a long time ago."

"No longer ago than last summer. He kept his own name from the public. But I infer that you did know something of his practices in private?"

"Yes," he said, hesitatingly.

"Did you ever allow him to hypnotize you?" I asked abruptly.

He was obviously discomposed, but he tried to cover his embarrassment by assuming an air of careless frankness. "Oh, yes. I believe I was a good subject. Mr. Garney was trying to develop my mental powers by hypnotism. He told me some remarkable accounts of idiots who had been mentally stimulated by hypnotic suggestion to do creditable work in their classes."

"Was that the direction in which his suggestions were made?" I asked, as casually as possible. I must try to get from him, without disturbing his sensibilities, as clear an account as he could give me, or would give me, of his peculiar relations with Garney.

"Oh, yes. It was just to help me with my Latin. And it did help," he added, defensively. I could see that he was not entirely at ease over the admission.

"How often did you put yourself under his influence?"

"Oh, I don't remember. Half a dozen times, perhaps."

"Did you remember afterwards what he had said or done to you while you were hypnotized?"

"Not a thing! I just went to sleep, and woke up. It isn't different from any other kind of sleep," he explained, with a youthful air of wisdom, "only that a part of you stays awake inside and takes lessons from your teacher while you don't know it."

"So I understand," I said gently. His assumption of superior knowledge touched me. "Was it hard to go to sleep?"

"The first time it wasn't easy. Something inside of my brain seemed to snap awake just as I was going off,--over and over again. But at last I went off. After that it was easier each time. Once he hypnotized me in class and I found I had been making a brilliant recitation, though I didn't remember anything about it myself. And once he hypnotized me while I was asleep, and I never knew it at all until he told me afterwards and showed me some things I had written while asleep."

"Did Mr. Garney ever speak to you of Alfred Barker?"

"No." His manner froze, as it always did at any mention of Barker.

"You did not know, then, that there was enmity between the two men?"

"No. I didn't know that Mr. Garney knew--him--at all." He swerved from pronouncing the name.

"Yes, Barker had acted as his business manager in the vaudeville business, and they had quarreled. Now tell me something else. Did Garney hypnotize you the day that you hunted up Barker to shoot him?"

"No." A look of dawning uneasiness and indignation crossed his face.

"Did you see him that evening at all?"

"No," he said, with obvious relief.

"Now will you tell me again just what happened that evening,--the order of the events?" (My object really was to see whether he would change his story. I had no need to refresh my own memory, as his former account was entirely clear in my mind.)

"Beginning with the banquet?" he asked.

"Yes, begin there."

"Well, everything went smoothly until Jim Gregory mentioned seeing Barker on the street. That spoiled the evening for me. I got away as soon as I could."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"Just where did you go?--what streets?"

"Oh, I don't know. I didn't notice. I went home and threw myself down on the couch in the library and read Cicero to get my mind quiet. Things were whirling so in my brain!"

This was new! Evidently his memory was clearer than when he made his first statement to me. "Do you remember what you were reading?" I asked, to pin his recollection definitely.

"Yes, it was De Senectute,--an English version Mr. Garney had lent me."

I stopped to think. That was the book young Chapman had had in his hand the day I hunted him up,--the day after the murder.

"Are you certain it was that book and no other you read?" I asked. I felt that I had a thread in my fingers,--a filmy thread that might break if I did not work carefully.

"Quite sure. I picked it up at first just to read anything, because it was lying there. Mr. Garney had left it that afternoon. And then I became interested in it. It was quieting. It made me feel that after all life is short and what was the use of cherishing ill-will and bitterness towards--well, even a rascal like Barker. It would all be over so soon."

"And with that thought in your mind, you went off and shot him, did you?" I asked with a smile.

He looked perplexed, and did not answer.

"You didn't have another copy of De Senectute about? I want to be sure."

"I am sure. Mr. Garney left it with me that afternoon and asked me to pass it on to Chapman when I had looked it over."

"And you did?"

"No. I--I haven't been back to the house, you know, since--since that morning."

"But Chapman had it the next day. He said Mr. Garney had given it to him."

Gene looked puzzled and thoughtful. "I don't see--"

"As I understand it, the servants were away that evening. Mr. Garney could not have come in unless you yourself admitted him, could he?"

"Oh, for that matter, he had my latchkey for the side door,--directly into the library. He used to drop in--" He hesitated, and his momentary embarrassment gave me the clue.

"When he came to try his hypnotic stunts?" I asked lightly.

"Yes," Gene nodded, looking relieved at my manner.

"But he didn't come that evening?"

"No. I dropped asleep. I slept awfully hard. When I woke up the gas was on full blaze." He caught himself up and looked startled.

"It was morning, then?" I said, quickly.

"Yes," he said slowly, evidently trying to puzzle something out. "I must have gone to sleep--again."

"But you don't remember that, do you?" I asked. "You think you must have,--but do you remember it, as you do the first?"

The perspiration sprang out on his white forehead. "I remembered when I woke up that I had killed Barker in the night."

"You remember that you thought in the morning that you had killed Barker in the night," I said sharply, "but do you remember killing him? Do you remember, as a matter of fact, going to his office? Tell me something you saw or did, to prove that you actually remember the events of the night."

His face was pitiable. "I can't! I remember going to sleep over the De Senectute and I remember waking up in the morning with the gas burning in the sunshine,--and I know, of course, that I went out in the night and killed Barker,--but I can't remember it! Do you suppose I am losing my mind?"

"I think you are just recovering possession of it," I said, unsteadily. "By the way, I told you a few minutes ago that Garney had been arrested for complicity in a murder. You don't ask whose."

"Whose?" he demanded, startled.

"Alfred Barker's."

"I don't understand--at all," he faltered.

"Garney was in Barker's inner office the night Barker was shot. If you were there, you saw him."

He shook his head. "I did not see him."

"Did you see me?"

"Where?"

"In Barker's outer office."

"No."

"Yet I was there. I was the strange man who came in and waited. Do you remember you told me you saw a stranger come in?"

"I--remember that I told you."

"But you don't remember what the man looked like? You didn't recognize me as the man?"

He put his hands up suddenly and clutched his head. "Do you think I was out of my head that night? Was I--was I--under his influence? Do you mean that I was hypnotized when I shot Barker?"

"That is what I have thought possible, but I have changed my mind on that point. Benbow, I don't believe that you were out of your room that night after you returned from the Frat supper."

He was shaking so that he could not speak, but I saw the piteous questioning of his eyes.

"I'll tell you briefly the points that have made the matter at last clear, in spite of yourself," I said, reassuringly. "Tell me this, first,--when you came into the house that evening, after you left the boys at the banquet, was the house lit up or dark?"

"Dark. I lit the gas in the library. I did not go into the rest of the house."

"Exactly. Well, I saw the gas lit in the library that evening, and it was just a few minutes before ten. I had supposed that your sister and at least one servant were in the house, but I have learned they were not. Therefore, when I saw the light flare up just before ten in the library, you were there."

"Yes," he said, trying to follow.

"You threw yourself down on the couch and read Cicero from a book which the next day was in the hands of Chapman. You don't know how long you were reading, but you were sound asleep on that couch at three o'clock the next morning, for your sister came in and saw you."

"Jean?" he murmured, perplexedly.

"Yes, Jean. Never mind the details. Now it is not humanly possible that after reading yourself quiet at ten you could have reached Barker's office by foot before I reached there in a taxicab so as to secrete yourself in the inner room before I came. Neither is it humanly possible that after shooting him at eleven, you could have fled for your life down the fire-escape, skulked through the streets, and then come home and gone composedly to sleep by three, only to wake at six and remember for the first time that a gentleman who has had the misfortune to shoot a man is in honor bound to give himself up to the law."

He drew his hand over his eyes in a dazed fashion.

I went on. "Minnie, the maid, and her escort, came home at three that night and saw a man leaving the house by the library door. She took for granted that it was you. But your sister came into the room a few minutes later and saw you asleep on the couch. The man who left the house was not you."

"Who was it?" he asked, very low.

"It was the man who had your latchkey to the library door. It was the man who picked up the De Senectute which you had been reading and passed it on to Chapman the next day. It was the man who knew how to hypnotize you in your sleep and make your brain believe what he wished it to believe. It was the man who had just shot Barker from his inner office and who impressed upon your dormant brain the scene he had just been through and made you believe you had acted his part in it. It was Allen Garney."

Benbow looked too paralyzed to really understand the situation. That didn't matter. All the missing pieces of the puzzle were now in my hands and I saw that I could prove my case and clear Gene in spite of his false confession and his traitorous memory. I thought of Jean! It was another and the most convincing indication of Garney's abnormality that he should have desired to wed the sister of his victim. That was strangely revolting. But his passion had carried him beyond his judgment.

"The chances are that hypnotizing you was not a part of his original plan," I said thoughtfully, going over the links in my own mind. "He shot Barker because Barker knew too much about his past, and was not to be trusted to keep it a secret. And his suspicion was justified. Barker had already given his secret away to Mr. Ellison. Whether he knew that instance of bad faith or not, he evidently felt that there was no real safety for him until Barker was dead. So he laid a careful plan to kill him, and carried it out. But an unsolved murder mystery never ceases to be a menace to the murderer. The police would make investigations, and his past connection with Barker might possibly come out. The fact that he searched Barker's rooms the next night shows that he was not easy on that point, even then. There might have been papers in Barker's possession which would turn inquiry upon him. So,--you offered him the opportunity of making him secure."

"I? How?"

"He saw the light burning in your study. He came in,--perhaps to establish an alibi, perhaps merely to get away from himself. He found you asleep,--a condition in which he had already hypnotized you. He saw his opportunity. By making you believe that you had shot Barker, by making you confess, he would forever turn the possibility of inquiry from himself. There would be no mystery to provoke backward inquiries along the past. And, if I may say so, you had made it easier for him to fix that idea in your mind because, as a matter of fact, you had harbored ideas of vengeance against Barker. The thought of killing him was not wholly alien to you. You had prepared the way for the impression Garney wanted you to have,--and he knew that fact. You had revealed that side of your mind to him. He used the bitterness which was already there as the foundation for the idea of revenge. Therefore, when you awoke, and came back to your senses, the idea that you had shot Barker did not strike you as an impossibility. You remembered it dimly, but there was no intrinsic impossibility in it. Do you see that?"

"Yes," he said, in a low voice. "I never could understand why some points were so clear and positive in my mind, and yet I could not remember the connecting links. It was like remembering spots in a dream."

"Those spots were the points Garney had emphasized to you, undoubtedly. He took you with him, mentally, step by step, but things he failed to touch upon would be blank in your mind. How about your revolver, Gene? Did he know where you kept it?"

"Yes. I showed it to him that afternoon."

"Then undoubtedly he took it away when he left. And he remembered to impress upon you the thought that you had thrown it away. He was careful,--yet he betrayed himself unconsciously. Those apples which he ate without thought were a stronger witness against him than his careful tissue of lies. But it's all right now. Take my word for it. It was the cleverest scheme a criminal brain ever worked out, but the righteousness on which the world is built would not permit it to triumph. As soon as we can get the matter before the court, you will be free."

"Mr. Hilton, there is a telephone call for you at the office," interrupted an attendant.

I shook hands with Gene and went to the office, where I found the receiver down, waiting for me. I hardly recognized Katherine Thurston's voice at first.

"Is that you, Mr. Hilton? Oh, thank goodness I have found you! Jean has gone away. I'm terribly worried--"

"What makes you think she is gone? Didn't Barney bring her home in a cab an hour ago? I told him to."

"He did. I was waiting at Mr. Ellison's for news when she came. She told me everything,--the poor child had been terribly imposed on. That man made her believe that he could clear Gene,--"

"So he could have done, if he had wanted to!"

"Well, that is what she believed, and so she consented to marry him. But of course she was dreadfully worked up over it all, and when she came home with Barney and told me about your coming and saving her at the last moment, she was so excited that she was hardly coherent. So I made her lie down and try to rest, and I left her in her room. Just now I went back to see her, and she was gone. Minnie says she went away, with a handbag, immediately after I left, and said that she was not coming back. When I remember the nervous and excited state she was in, I am dreadfully worried."

"How long ago did she leave the house, according to Minnie?"

"Nearly an hour ago. Do you think she could possibly have gone to that man?"

"Not at all," I said promptly. "He is in custody."

"But he might have some agents--"

"I think not. And Jean is a wise child in her own way. The chances are that she is safe somewhere. But I'll let the police know, and I'll go down to the railway station myself. I'll call you up from time to time to see if you have any news."

I reported the matter to police headquarters, and while I could see that they were not greatly impressed with the urgency of discovering a young woman of twenty who had been lost sight of for less than an hour, I confess that I felt more apprehensive than I had admitted to Miss Thurston. You see, Jean wasn't a reasonable young woman. She was--Jean.