Part 9

“Sir,” he began, “I am not advised that the purpose of a bequest is relevant, when the bequest is direct and unencumbered by the testator with any indicatory words of trust or uses. This will bequeathes me a sum of money. I am not required by any provision of the law to show the reasons moving the testator. Doubtless, Mr. Peyton Marshall had reasons which he deemed excellent for this course, but they are, sir, entombed in the grave with him.”

My father looked steadily at the man, but he did not seem to consider his explanation, nor to go any further on that line.

“Is there another who would know about this will?” he said.

“This effeminate son would know,” replied Gosford, a sneer in the epithet, “but no other. Marshall wrote the testament in his own hand, without witnesses, as he had the legal right to do under the laws of Virginia. The lawyer,” he added, “Mr. Lewis, will confirm me in the legality of that.”

“It is the law,” said Lewis. “One may draw up a holograph will if he likes, in his own hand, and it is valid without a witness in this State, although the law does not so run in every commonwealth.”

“And now, sir,” continued the Englishman, turning to my father, “we will inquire into the theft of this testament.”

But my father did not appear to notice Mr. Gosford. He seemed perplexed and in some concern.

“Lewis,” he said, “what is your definition of a crime?”

“It is a violation of the law,” replied the lawyer.

“I do not accept your definition,” said my father. “It is, rather, I think, a violation of justice--a violation of something behind the law that makes an act a crime. I think,” he went on, “that God must take a broader view than Mr. Blackstone and Lord Coke. I have seen a murder in the law that was, in fact, only a kind of awful accident, and I have seen your catalogue of crimes gone about by feeble men with no intent except an adjustment of their rights. Their crimes, Lewis, were merely errors of their impractical judgment.”

Then he seemed to remember that the Englishman was present.

“And now, Mr. Gosford,” he said, “will you kindly ask young Marshall to come in here?”

The man would have refused, with some rejoinder, but my father was looking at him, and he could not find the courage to resist my father's will. He got up and went out, and presently returned followed by the lad and Gaeki. The old country doctor sat down by the door, his leather case of bottles by the chair, his cloak still fastened under his chin. Gosford went back to the table and sat down with his writing materials to keep notes. The boy stood.

My father looked a long time at the lad. His face was grave, but when he spoke, his voice was gentle.

“My boy,” he said, “I have had a good deal of experience in the examination of the devil's work.” He paused and indicated the violated room. “It is often excellently done. His disciples are extremely clever. One's ingenuity is often taxed to trace out the evil design in it, and to stamp it as a false piece set into the natural sequence of events.”

He paused again, and his big shoulders blotted out the window.

“Every natural event,” he continued, “is intimately connected with innumerable events that precede and follow. It has so many serrated points of contact with other events that the human mind is not able to fit a false event so that no trace of the joinder will appear. The most skilled workmen in the devil's shop are only able to give their false piece a blurred joinder.”

He stopped and turned to the row of mahogany drawers beside him.

“Now, my boy,” he said, “can you tell me why the one who ransacked this room, in opening and tumbling the contents of all the drawers, about, did not open the two at the bottom of the row where I stand?”

“Because there was nothing in them of value, sir,” replied the lad.

“What is in them?” said my father.

“Only old letters, sir, written to my father, when I was in Paris--nothing else.”

“And who would know that?” said my father.

The boy went suddenly white.

“Precisely!” said my father. “You alone knew it, and when you undertook to give this library the appearance of a pillaged room, you unconsciously endowed your imaginary robber with the thing you knew yourself. Why search for loot in drawers that contained only old letters? So your imaginary robber reasoned, knowing what you knew. But a real robber, having no such knowledge, would have ransacked them lest he miss the things of value that he searched for.”

He paused, his eyes on the lad, his voice deep and gentle.

“Where is the will?” he said.

The white in the boy's face changed to scarlet. He looked a moment about him in a sort of terror; then he lifted his head and put back his shoulders. He crossed the room to a bookcase, took down a volume, opened it and brought out a sheet of folded foolscap. He stood up and faced my father and the men about the room.

“This man,” he said, indicating Gosford, “has no right to take all my father had. He persuaded my father and was trusted by him. But I did not trust him. My father saw this plan in a light that I did not see it, but I did not oppose him. If he wished to use his fortune to help our country in the thing which he thought he foresaw, I was willing for him to do it.

“But,” he cried, “somebody deceived me, and I will not believe that it was my father. He told me all about this thing. I had not the health to fight for our country, when the time came, he said, and as he had no other son, our fortune must go to that purpose in our stead. But my father was just. He said that a portion would be set aside for me, and the remainder turned over to Mr. Gosford. But this will gives all to Mr. Gosford and leaves me nothing!”

Then he came forward and put the paper in my father's hand. There was silence except for the sharp voice of Mr. Gosford.

“I think there will be a criminal proceeding here!”

My father handed the paper to Lewis, who unfolded it and read it aloud. It directed the estate of Peyton Marshall to be sold, the sum of fifty thousand dollars paid to Anthony Gosford and the remainder to the son.

“But there will be no remainder,” cried young Marshall. “My father's estate is worth precisely that sum. He valued it very carefully, item by item, and that is exactly the amount it came to.”

“Nevertheless,” said Lewis, “the will reads that way. It is in legal form, written in Marshall's hand, and signed with his signature, and sealed. Will you examine it, gentlemen? There can be no question of the writing or the signature.”

My father took the paper and read it slowly, and old Gaeki nosed it over my father's arm, his eyes searching the structure of each word, while Mr. Gosford sat back comfortably in his chair like one elevated to a victory.

“It is in Marshall's hand and signature,” said my father, and old Gaeki, nodded, wrinkling his face under his shaggy eyebrows. He went away still wagging his grizzled head, wrote a memorandum on an envelope from his pocket, and sat down in, his chair.

My father turned now to young Marshall.

“My boy,” he said, “why do you say that some one has deceived you?”

“Because, sir,” replied the lad, “my father was to leave me twenty thousand dollars. That was his plan. Thirty thousand dollars should be set aside for Mr. Gosford, and the remainder turned over to me.”

“That would be thirty thousand dollars to Mr. Gosford, instead of fifty,” said my father.

“Yes, sir,” replied the boy; “that is the way my father said he would write his will. But it was not written that way. It is fifty thousand dollars to Mr. Gosford, and the remainder to me. If it were thirty thousand dollars to Mr. Gosford, as my father, said his will would be, that would have left me twenty thousand dollars from the estate; but giving Mr. Gosford fifty thousand dollars leaves me nothing.”

“And so you adventured on a little larceny,” sneered the Englishman.

The boy stood very straight and white.

“I do not understand this thing,” he said, “but I do not believe that my father would deceive me. He never did deceive me in his life. I may have been a disappointment to him, but my father was a gentle man.” His voice went up strong and clear. “And I refuse to believe that he would tell me one thing and do another!”

One could not fail to be impressed, or to believe that the boy spoke the truth.

“We are sorry,” said Lewis, “but the will is valid and we cannot go behind it.”

My father walked about the room, his face in reflection. Gosford sat at his ease, transcribing a note on his portfolio. Old Gaeki had gone back to his chair and to his little case of bottles; he got them up on his knees, as though he would be diverted by fingering the tools of his profession. Lewis was in plain distress, for he held the law and its disposition to be inviolable; the boy stood with a find defiance, ennobled by the trust in his father's honor. One could not take his stratagem for a criminal act; he was only a child, for all his twenty years of life. And yet Lewis saw the elements of crime, and he knew that Gosford was writing down the evidence.

It was my father who broke the silence.

“Gosford,” he said, “what scheme were you and Marshall about?”

“You may wonder, sir,” replied the Englishman, continuing to write at his notes; “I shall not tell you.”

“But I will tell you,” said the boy. “My father thought that the states in this republic could not hold together very much longer. He believed that the country would divide, and the South set up a separate government. He hoped this might come about without a war. He was in horror of a war. He had traveled; he had seen nations and read their history, and he knew what civil wars were. I have heard him say that men did not realize what they were talking when they urged war.”

He paused and looked at Gosford.

“My father was convinced that the South would finally set up an independent government, but he hoped a war might not follow. He believed that if this new government were immediately recognized by Great Britain, the North would accept the inevitable and there would be no bloodshed. My father went to England with this scheme. He met Mr. Gosford somewhere--on the ship, I think. And Mr. Gosford succeeded in convincing my father that if he had a sum of money he could win over certain powerful persons in the English Government, and so pave the way to an immediate recognition of the Southern Republic by Great Britain. He followed my father home and hung about him, and so finally got his will. My father was careful; he wrote nothing; Mr. Gosford wrote nothing; there is no evidence of this plan; but my father told me, and it is true.”

My father stopped by the table and lifted his great shoulders.

“And so,” he said, “Peyton Marshall imagined a plan like that, and left its execution to a Mr. Gosford!”

The Englishman put down his pen and addressed my father.

“I would advise you, sir, to require a little proof for your conclusions. This is a very pretty story, but it is prefaced by an admission of no evidence, and it comes as a special pleading for a criminal act. Now, sir, if I chose, if the bequest required it, I could give a further explanation, with more substance; of moneys borrowed by the decedent in his travels and to be returned to me. But the will, sir, stands for itself, as Mr. Lewis will assure you.”

Young Marshall looked anxiously at the lawyer.

“Is that the law, sir?”

“It is the law of Virginia,” said Lewis, “that a will by a competent testator, drawn in form, requires no collateral explanation to support it.”

My father seemed brought up in a cul-de-sac. His face was tense and disturbed. He stood by the table; and now, as by accident, he put out his hand and took up the Japanese crystal supported by the necks of the three bronze storks. He appeared unconscious of the act, for he was in deep reflection. Then, as though the weight in his hand drew his attention, he glanced at the thing. Something about it struck him, for his manner changed. He spread the will out on the table and began to move the crystal over it, his face close to the glass. Presently his hand stopped, and he stood stooped over, staring into the Oriental crystal, like those practicers of black art who predict events from what they pretend to see in these spheres of glass.

Mr. Gosford, sitting at his ease, in victory, regarded my father with a supercilious, ironical smile.

“Sir,” he said, “are you, by chance, a fortuneteller?”

“A misfortune-teller,” replied my father, his face still held above the crystal. “I see here a misfortune to Mr. Anthony Gosford. I predict, from what I see, that he will release this bequest of moneys to Peyton Marshall's son.”

“Your prediction, sir,” said Gosford, in a harder note, “is not likely to come true.”

“Why, yes,” replied my father, “it is certain to come true. I see it very clearly. Mr. Gosford will write out a release, under his hand and seal, and go quietly out of Virginia, and Peyton Marshall's son will take his entire estate.”

“Sir,” said the Englishman, now provoked into a temper, “do you enjoy this foolery?”

“You are not interested in crystal-gazing, Mr. Gosford,” replied my father in a tranquil voice. “Well, I find it most diverting. Permit me to piece out your fortune, or rather your misfortune, Mr. Gosford! By chance you fell in with this dreamer Marshall, wormed into his confidence, pretended a relation to great men in England; followed and persuaded him until, in his ill-health, you got this will. You saw it written two years ago. When Marshall fell ill, you hurried here, learned from the dying man that the will remained and where it was. You made sure by pretending to write letters in this room, bringing your portfolio with ink and pen and a pad of paper. Then, at Marshall's death, you inquired of Lewis for legal measures to discover the dead man's will. And when you find the room ransacked, you run after the law.”

My father paused.

“That is your past, Mr. Gosford. Now let me tell your future. I see you in joy at the recovered will. I see you pleased at your foresight in getting a direct bequest, and at the care you urged on Marshall to leave no evidence of his plan, lest the authorities discover it. For I see, Mr. Gosford, that it was your intention all along to keep this sum of money for your own use and pleasure. But alas, Mr. Gosford, it was not to be! I see you writing this release; and Mr. Gosford”--my father's voice went up full and strong,--“I see you writing it in terror--sweat on your face!”

“The Devil take your nonsense!” cried the Englishman.

My father stood up with a twisted, ironical smile.

“If you doubt my skill, Mr. Gosford, as a fortune, or rather a misfortune-teller I will ask Mr. Lewis and Herman Gaeki to tell me what they see.”

The two men crossed the room and stooped over the paper, while my father held the crystal. The manner and the bearing of the men changed. They grew on the instant tense and fired with interest.

“I see it!” said the old doctor, with a queer foreign expletive.

“And I,” cried Lewis, “see something more than Pendleton's vision. I see the penitentiary in the distance.”

The Englishman sprang up with an oath and leaned across the table. Then he saw the thing.

My father's hand held the crystal above the figures of the bequest written in the body of the will. The focused lens of glass magnified to a great diameter, and under the vast enlargement a thing that would escape the eye stood out. The top curl of a figure 3 had been erased, and the bar of a 5 added. One could see the broken fibers of the paper on the outline of the curl, and the bar of the five lay across the top of the three and the top of the o behind it like a black lath tacked across two uprights.

The figure 3 had been changed to 5 so cunningly is to deceive the eye, but not to deceive the vast magnification of the crystal. The thing stood out big and crude like a carpenter's patch.

Gosford's face became expressionless like wood, his body rigid; then he stood up and faced the three men across the table.

“Quite so!” he said in his vacuous English voice. “Marshall wrote a 3 by inadvertence and changed it. He borrowed my penknife to erase the figure.”

My father and Lewis gaped like men who see a penned-in beast slip out through an unimagined passage. There was silence. Then suddenly, in the strained stillness of the room, old Doctor Gaeki laughed.

Gosford lifted his long pink face, with its cropped beard bringing out the ugly mouth.

“Why do you laugh, my good man?” he said.

“I laugh,” replied Gaeki, “because a figure 5 can have so many colors.”

And now my father and Lewis were no less astonished than Mr. Gosford.

“Colors!” they said, for the changed figure in the will was black.

“Why, yes,” replied the old man, “it is very pretty.”

He reached across the table and drew over Mr. Gosford's memorandum beside the will.

“You are progressive, sir,” he went on; “you write in iron-nutgall ink, just made, commercially, in this year of fifty-six by Mr. Stephens. But we write here as Marshall wrote in 'fifty-four, with logwood.”

He turned and fumbled in his little case of bottles.

“I carry a bit of acid for my people's indigestions. It has other uses.” He whipped out the stopper of his vial and dabbed Gosford's notes and Marshall's signature.

“See!” he cried. “Your writing is blue, Mr. Gosford, and Marshall's red!”

With an oath the trapped man struck at Gaeki's hand. The vial fell and cracked on the table. The hydrochloric acid spread out over Marshall's will. And under the chemical reagent the figure in the bequest of fifty thousand dollars changed beautifully; the bar of the 5 turned blue, and the remainder of it a deep purple-red like the body of the will.

“Gaeki,” cried my father, “you have trapped a rogue!”

“And I have lost a measure of good acid,” replied the old man. And he began to gather up the bits of his broken bottle from the table.

VIII. The Hole in the Mahogany Panel

Sir Henry paused a moment, his finger between the pages of the ancient diary.

“It is the inspirational quality in these cases,” he said, “that impresses me. It is very nearly absent in our modern methods of criminal investigation. We depend now on a certain formal routine. I rarely find a man in the whole of Scotland Yard with a trace of intuitive impulse to lead him.... Observe how this old justice in Virginia bridged the gaps between his incidents.”

He paused.

“We call it the inspirational instinct, in criminal investigation ... genius, is the right word.”

He looked up at the clock.

“We have an hour, yet, before the opera will be worth hearing; listen to this final case.”

The narrative of the diary follows:

The girl was walking in the road. Her frock was covered with dust. Her arms hung limp. Her face with the great eyes and the exquisite mouth was the chalk face of a ghost. She walked with the terrible stiffened celerity of a human creature when it is trapped and ruined.

Night was coming on. Behind the girl sat the great old house at the end of a long lane of ancient poplars.

This was a strange scene my father came on. He pulled up his big red-roan horse at the crossroads, where the long lane entered the turnpike, and looked at the stiff, tragic figure. He rode home from a sitting of the county justices, alone, at peace, on this midsummer night, and God sent this tragic thing to meet him.

He got down and stood under the crossroads signboard beside his horse.

The earth was dry; in dust. The dead grass and the dead leaves made a sere, yellow world. It looked like a land of unending summer, but a breath of chill came out of the hollows with the sunset.

The girl would have gone on, oblivious. But my father went down into the road and took her by the arm. She stopped when she saw who it was, and spoke in the dead, uninflected voice of a person in extremity.

“Is the thing a lie?” she said.

“What thing, child?” replied my father.

“The thing he told me!”

“Dillworth?” said my father. “Do you mean Hambleton Dillworth?”

The girl put out her free arm in a stiff, circling gesture. “In all the world,” she said, “is there any other man who would have told me?”

My father's face hardened as if of metal. “What did he tell you?”

The girl spoke plainly, frankly, in her dead voice, without equivocation, with no choice of words to soften what she said:

“He said that my father was not dead; that I was the daughter of a thief; that what I believed about my father was all made up to save the family name; that the truth was my father robbed him, stole his best horse and left the country when I was a baby. He said I was a burden on him, a pensioner, a drone; and to go and seek my father.”

And suddenly she broke into a flood of tears. Her face pressed against my father's shoulder. He took her up in his big arms and got into his saddle.

“My child,” he said, “let us take Hambleton Dillworth at his word.”

And he turned the horse into the lane toward the ancient house. The girl in my father's arms made no resistance. There was this dominating quality in the man that one trusted to him and followed behind him. She lay in his arms, the tears wetting her white face and the long lashes.

The moon came up, a great golden moon, shouldered over the rim of the world by the backs of the crooked elves. The horse and the two persons made a black, distorted shadow that jerked along as though it were a thing evil and persistent. Far off in the thickets of the hills an owl cried, eerie and weird like a creature in some bitter sorrow. The lane was deep with dust. The horse traveled with no sound, and the distorted black shadow followed, now blotted out by the heavy tree tops, and now only partly to be seen, but always there.