The Poisoned Pen - ebook

I

THE POISONED PEN

Kennedy’s suit-case was lying open on the bed, and he was literally throwing things into it from his chiffonier, as I entered after a hurried trip up-town from the Star office in response to an urgent message from him.

“Come, Walter,” he cried, hastily stuffing in a package of clean laundry without taking off the wrapping-paper, “I’ve got your suit-case out. Pack up whatever you can in five minutes. We must take the six o’clock train for Danbridge.”

I did not wait to hear any more. The mere mention of the name of the quaint and quiet little Connecticut town was sufficient. For Danbridge was on everybody’s lips at that time. It was the scene of the now famous Danbridge poisoning case - a brutal case in which the pretty little actress, Vera Lytton, had been the victim.

“I’ve been retained by Senator Adrian Willard,” he called from his room, as I was busy packing in mine. The Willard family believe that that young Dr. Dixon is the victim of a conspiracy - or at least Alma Willard does, which comes to the same thing, and - well, the senator called me up on long-distance and offered me anything I would name in reason to take the case. Are you ready? Come on, then. We’ve simply got to make that train.”

As we settled ourselves in the smoking-compartment of the Pullman, which for some reason or other we had to ourselves, Kennedy spoke again for the first time since our frantic dash across the city to catch the train.

“Now let us see, Walter,” he began. “We’ve both read a good deal about this case in the papers. Let’s try to get our knowledge in an orderly shape before we tackle the actual case itself.”

“Ever been in Danbridge?” I asked.

“Never,” he replied. “What sort of place is it?”

“Mighty interesting,” I answered; “a combination of old New England and new, of ancestors and factories, of wealth and poverty, and above all it is interesting for its colony of New-Yorkers - what shall I call it? - a literary-artistic-musical combination, I guess.”

“Yes,” he resumed, “I thought as much. Vera Lytton belonged to the colony. A very talented girl, too - you remember her in ‘The Taming of the New Woman’ last season? Well, to get back to the facts as we know them at present.

“Here is a girl with a brilliant future on the stage discovered by her friend, Mrs. Boncour, in convulsions - practically insensible - with a bottle of headache-powder and a jar of ammonia on her dressing-table. Mrs. Boncour sends the maid for the nearest doctor, who happens to be a Dr. Waterworth. Meanwhile she tries to restore Miss Lytton, but with no result. She smells the ammonia and then just tastes the headache-powder, a very foolish thing to do, for by the time Dr. Waterworth arrives he has two patients.”

“No,” I corrected, “only one, for Miss Lytton was dead when he arrived, according to his latest statement.”

“Very well, then - one. He arrives, Mrs. Boncour is ill, the maid knows nothing at all about it, and Vera Lytton is dead. He, too, smells the ammonia, tastes the headache-powder - just the merest trace - and then he has two patients, one of them himself. We must see him, for his experience must have been appalling. How he ever did it I can’t imagine, but he saved both himself and Mrs. Boncour from poisoning - cyanide, the papers say, but of course we can’t accept that until we see. It seems to me, Walter, that lately the papers have made the rule in murder cases: When in doubt, call it cyanide.”

Not relishing Kennedy in the humour of expressing his real opinion of the newspapers, I hastily turned the conversation back again by asking, “How about the note from Dr. Dixon?”

“Ah, there is the crux of the whole case - that note from Dixon. Let us see. Dr. Dixon is, if I am informed correctly, of a fine and aristocratic family, though not wealthy. I believe it has been established that while he was an interne in a city hospital he became acquainted with Vera Lytton, after her divorce from that artist Thurston. Then comes his removal to Danbridge and his meeting and later his engagement with Miss Willard. On the whole, Walter, judging from the newspaper pictures, Alma Willard is quite the equal of Vera Lytton for looks, only of a different style of beauty. Oh, well, we shall see. Vera decided to spend the spring and summer at Danbridge in the bungalow of her friend, Mrs. Boncour, the novelist. That’s when things began to happen.”

“Yes,” I put in, “when you come to know Danbridge as I did after that summer when you were abroad, you’ll understand, too. Everybody knows everybody else’s business. It is the main occupation of a certain set, and the per-capita output of gossip is a record that would stagger the census bureau. Still, you can’t get away from the note, Craig. There it is, in Dixon’s own handwriting, even if he does deny it: ‘This will cure your headache. Dr. Dixon.’ That’s a damning piece of evidence.”

“Quite right,” he agreed hastily; “the note was queer, though, wasn’t it? They found it crumpled up in the jar of ammonia. Oh, there are lots of problems the newspapers have failed to see the significance of, let alone trying to follow up.”

Our first visit in Danbridge was to the prosecuting attorney, whose office was not far from the station on the main street. Craig had wired him, and he had kindly waited to see us, for it was evident that Danbridge respected Senator Willard and every one connected with him.

“Would it be too much to ask just to see that note that was found in the Boncour bungalow?” asked Craig.

The prosecutor, an energetic young man, pulled out of a document-case a crumpled note which had been pressed flat again. On it in clear, deep black letters were the words, just as reported:

This will cure your headache.
DR. Dixon.

“How about the handwriting?” asked Kennedy.

The lawyer pulled out a number of letters. “I’m afraid they will have to admit it,” he said with reluctance, as if down in his heart he hated to prosecute Dixon. “We have lots of these, and no handwriting expert could successfully deny the identity of the writing.”

He stowed away the letters without letting Kennedy get a hint as to their contents. Kennedy was examining the note carefully.

“May I count on having this note for further examination, of course always at such times and under such conditions as you agree to?”

The attorney nodded. “I am perfectly willing to do anything not illegal to accommodate the senator,” he said. “But, on the other hand, I am here to do my duty for the state, cost whom it may.”

The Willard house was in a virtual state of siege. Newspaper reporters from Boston and New York were actually encamped at every gate, terrible as an army, with cameras. It was with some difficulty that we got in, even though we were expected, for some of the more enterprising had already fooled the family by posing as officers of the law and messengers from Dr. Dixon.

The house was a real, old colonial mansion with tall white pillars, a door with a glittering brass knocker, which gleamed out severely at you as you approached through a hedge of faultlessly trimmed boxwoods.

Senator, or rather former Senator, Willard met us in the library, and a moment later his daughter Alma joined him. She was tall, like her father, a girl of poise and self-control. Yet even the schooling of twenty-two years in rigorous New England self-restraint could not hide the very human pallor of her face after the sleepless nights and nervous days since this trouble had broken on her placid existence. Yet there was a mark of strength and determination on her face that was fascinating. The man who would trifle with this girl, I felt, was playing fast and loose with her very life. I thought then, and I said to Kennedy afterward: “If this Dr. Dixon is guilty, you have no right to hide it from that girl. Anything less than the truth will only blacken the hideousness of the crime that has already been committed.”

The senator greeted I us gravely, and I could not but take it as a good omen when, in his pride of wealth and family and tradition, he laid bare everything to us, for the sake of Alma Willard. It was clear that in this family there was one word that stood above all others, “Duty.”

As we were about to leave after an interview barren of new facts, a young man was announced, Mr. Halsey Post. He bowed politely to us, but it was evident why he had called, as his eye followed Alma about the room.

“The son of the late Halsey Post, of Post & Vance, silversmiths, who have the large factory in town, which you perhaps noticed,” explained the senator. “My daughter has known him all her life. A very fine young man.”

Later, we learned that the senator had bent every effort toward securing Halsey Post as a son-in-law, but his daughter had had views of her own on the subject.

Post waited until Alma had withdrawn before he disclosed the real object of his visit. In almost a whisper, lest she should still be listening, he said, “There is a story about town that Vera Lytton’s former husband - an artist named Thurston - was here just before her death.”

Senator Willard leaned forward as if expecting to hear Dixon immediately acquitted. None of us was prepared for the next remark.

“And the story goes on to say that he threatened to make a scene over a wrong he says he has suffered from Dixon. I don’t know anything more about it, and I tell you only because I think you ought to know what Danbridge is saying under its breath.”

We shook off the last of the reporters who affixed themselves to us, and for a moment Kennedy dropped in at the little bungalow to see Mrs. Boncour. She was much better, though she had suffered much. She had taken only a pinhead of the poison, but it had proved very nearly fatal.

“Had Miss Lytton any enemies whom you think of, people who were jealous of her professionally or personally?” asked Craig.

“I should not even have said Dr. Dixon was an enemy,” she replied evasively.

“But this Mr. Thurston,” put in Kennedy quickly. “One is not usually visited in perfect friendship by a husband who has been divorced.”

She regarded him keenly for a moment. “Halsey Post told you that,” she said. “No one else knew he was here. But Halsey Post was an old friend of both Vera and Mr. Thurston before they separated. By chance he happened to drop in the day Mr. Thurston was here, and later in the day I gave him a letter to forward to Mr. Thurston, which had come after the artist left. I’m sure no one else knew the artist. He was here the morning of the day she died, and - and - that’s every bit I’m going to tell you about him, so there. I don’t know why he came or where he went.”

“That’s a thing we must follow up later,” remarked Kennedy as we made our adieus. “Just now I want to get the facts in hand. The next thing on my programme is to see this Dr. Waterworth.”

We found the doctor still in bed; in fact, a wreck as the result of his adventure. He had little to correct in the facts of the story which had been published so far. But there were many other details of the poisoning he was quite willing to discuss frankly.

“It was true about the jar of ammonia?” asked Kennedy.

“Yes,” he answered. “It was standing on her dressing-table with the note crumpled up in it, just as the papers said.”

“And you have no idea why it was there?”

“I didn’t say that. I can guess. Fumes of ammonia are one of the antidotes for poisoning of this kind.”

“But Vera Lytton could hardly have known that,” objected Kennedy.

“No, of course not. But she probably did know that ammonia is good for just that sort of faintness which she must have experienced after taking the powder. Perhaps she thought of sal volatile, I don’t know. But most people know that ammonia in some form is good for faintness of this sort, even if they don’t know anything about cyanides and - “

“Then it was cyanide?” interrupted Craig.

“Yes,” he replied slowly. It was evident that he was suffering great physical and nervous anguish as the result of his too intimate acquaintance with the poisons in question. “ I will tell you precisely how it was, Professor Kennedy. When I was called in to see Miss Lytton I found her on the bed. I pried open her jaws and smelled the sweetish odour of the cyanogen gas. I knew then what she had taken, and at the moment she was dead. In the next room I heard some one moaning. The maid said that it was Mrs. Boncour, and that she was deathly sick. I ran into her room, and though she was beside herself with pain I managed to control her, though she struggled desperately against me. I was rushing her to the bathroom, passing through Miss Lytton’s room. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked as I carried her along. ‘I took some of that,’ she replied, pointing to the bottle on the dressing-table.

“I put a small quantity of its crystal contents on my tongue. Then I realised the most tragic truth of my life. I had taken one of the deadliest poisons in the world. The odour of the released gas of cyanogen was strong. But more than that, the metallic taste and the horrible burning sensation told of the presence of some form of mercury, too. In that terrible moment my brain worked with the incredible swiftness of light. In a flash I knew that if I added malic acid to the mercury - per chloride of mercury or corrosive sublimate - I would have calomel or subchloride of mercury, the only thing that would switch the poison out of my system and Mrs. Boncour’s.

“Seizing her about the waist, I hurried into the dining-room. On a sideboard was a dish of fruit. I took two apples. I made her eat one, core and all. I ate the other. The fruit contained the malic acid I needed to manufacture the calomel, and I made it right there in nature’s own laboratory. But there was no time to stop. I had to act just as quickly to neutralise that cyanide, too. Remembering the ammonia, I rushed back with Mrs. Boncour, and we inhaled the fumes. Then I found a bottle of peroxide of hydrogen. I washed out her stomach with it, and then my own. Then I injected some of the peroxide into various parts of her body. The peroxide of hydrogen and hydrocyanic acid, you know, make oxamide, which is a harmless compound.

“The maid put Mrs. Boncour to bed, saved. I went to my house, a wreck. Since then I have not left this bed. With my legs paralysed I lie here, expecting each hour to be my last.”

“Would you taste an unknown drug again to discover the nature of a probable poison?” asked Craig.

“I don’t know,” he answered slowly, “but I suppose I would. In such a case a conscientious doctor has no thought of self. He is there to do things, and he does them, according to the best that is in him. In spite of the fact that I haven’t had one hour of unbroken sleep since that fatal day, I suppose I would do it again.”

When we were leaving, I remarked: “That is a martyr to science. Could anything be more dramatic than his willing penalty for his devotion to medicine?”

We walked along in silence. “Walter, did you notice he said not a word of condemnation of Dixon, though the note was before his eyes? Surely Dixon has some strong supporters in Danbridge, as well as enemies.

The next morning we continued our investigation. We found Dixon’s lawyer, Leland, in consultation with his client in the bare cell of the county jail. Dixon proved to be a clear-eyed, clean-cut young man. The thing that impressed me most about him, aside from the prepossession in his favour due to the faith of Alma Willard, was the nerve he displayed, whether guilty or innocent. Even an innocent man might well have been staggered by the circumstantial evidence against him and the high tide of public feeling, in spite of the support that he was receiving. Leland, we learned, had been very active. By prompt work at the time of the young doctor’s arrest he had managed to secure the greater part of Dr. Dixon’s personal letters, though the prosecutor secured some, the contents of which had not been disclosed.

Kennedy spent most of the day in tracing out the movements of Thurston. Nothing that proved important was turned up, and even visits to near-by towns failed to show any sales of cyanide or sublimate to any one not entitled to buy them. Meanwhile, in turning over the gossip of the town, one of the newspapermen ran across the fact that the Boncour bungalow was owned by the Posts, and that Halsey Post, as the executor of the estate, was a more frequent visitor than the mere collection of the rent would warrant. Mrs. Boncour maintained a stolid silence that covered a seething internal fury when the newspaperman in question hinted that the landlord and tenant were on exceptionally good terms.

It was after a fruitless day of such search that we were sitting in the reading-room of the Fairfield Hotel. Leland entered. His face was positively white. Without a word he took us by the arm and led us across Main Street and up a flight of stairs to his office. Then he locked the door.

“What’s the matter?” asked Kennedy.

“When I took this case,” he said, “I believed down in my heart that Dixon was innocent. I still believe it, but my faith has been rudely shaken. I feel that you should know about what I have just found. As I told you, we secured nearly all of Dr. Dixon’s letters. I had not read them all then. But I have been going through them to-night. Here is a letter from Vera Lytton herself. You will notice it is dated the day of her death.”

He laid the letter before us. It was written in a curious greyish-black ink in a woman’s hand, and read:

DEAR HARRIS: Since we agreed to disagree we have at least been good friends, if no longer lovers. I am not writing in anger to reproach you with your new love, so soon after the old. I suppose Alma Willard is far better suited to be your wife than is a poor little actress - rather looked down on in this Puritan society here. But there is something I wish to warn you about, for it concerns us all intimately.

We are in danger of an awful mix-up if we don’t look out. Mr. Thurston - I had almost said my husband, though I don’t know whether that is the truth or not - who has just come over from New York, tells me that there is some doubt about the validity of our divorce. You recall he was in the South at the time I sued him, and the papers were served on him in Georgia. He now says the proof of service was fraudulent and that he can set aside the divorce. In that case you might figure in a suit for alienating my affections.

I do not write this with ill will, but simply to let you know how things stand. If we had married, I suppose I would be guilty of bigamy. At any rate, if he were disposed he could make a terrible scandal.

Oh, Harris, can’t you settle with him if he asks anything? Don’t forget so soon that we once thought we were going to be the happiest of mortals - at least I did. Don’t desert me, or the very earth will cry out against you. I am frantic and hardly know what I am writing. My head aches, but it is my heart that is breaking. Harris, I am yours still, down in my heart, but not to be cast off like an old suit for a new one. You know the old saying about a woman scorned. I beg you not to go back on

Your poor little deserted
VERA.

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