Master Tales of Mystery Part 63

"He will be here to-night," she went on. "It is a little early yet. He usually comes at eight-thirty."

"You mean he is here in the spirit," I said, trying to speak lightly.

"In the spirit, of course."

I breathed a sigh of relief. I fancied that I began to understand.

"Many people believe that their dead watch over them," I said.

"Oh, Mr. Magnus isn't watching over me," said my companion quickly.

"There is a certain thing he desires me to do. Once that is done, I don't believe he will bother me any more. I left his note with you this morning. Did you bring it with you?"

"Yes," I said, and got it out of my pocket and handed it to her.

"But really, Mrs. Magnus," I continued, "you don't mean to tell me seriously that you saw him write this?"

"I certainly did. He wrote it under my eyes, sitting at that desk three nights ago."

Again I looked at her to see if she was speaking seriously.

"I see you do not believe me," she added.

"Pardon me, Mrs. Magnus," I corrected; "of course I believe you--that is, I believe that you believe. But I cannot but think you are being imposed upon in some way."

A flush of anger crept into her cheeks.

"Do you think I am a woman easily imposed upon?" she asked. "Let me tell you the story, Mr. Lester."

"That is what I have been hoping you would do," I said. "I am very anxious to hear it."

"After my husband's death," she began, "I decided to use this room as my office or workroom. I went through his desk and cleared it out.

There were no papers of importance there; but I found one thing which gave me a shock. That was a letter, pushed back and I suppose forgotten in one of the drawers, which proved to me that my husband had been unfaithful."

I was not surprised, of course, after what G.o.dfrey had told me, but I managed to murmur some polite incredulity.

"Oh, it was true," she went on bitterly. "I knew he had grown away from me, but I never suspected that--that he could be so vulgar!"

That, of course, was the way in which it would appeal to her--as vulgar.

"It is that which is worrying him now," she added.

"You mean--"

"No matter. He shall have the money to-night, and that will be ended.

Let me go on with my story. As I said, I began to use this room. I kept my papers in the desk yonder, and worked there regularly every day. But one morning, when I came in, I noticed something unusual--an odor of tobacco. You know Mr. Magnus was a great smoker."

"Yes," I said.

"You may have noticed that he always smoked a heavy black cigar which he had made for him especially in Cuba. It had a quite distinctive odor."

"Yes," I said again. I had noticed more than once the sweet, heavy aroma of Magnus' cigars.

"I recognized the odor at once," went on Mrs. Magnus. "It was from one of his cigars. When I opened the desk, I found a little heap of ashes on his ash tray, which I had been using to keep pins in, and the remnant of the cigar he had been smoking."

"He?" I repeated. "But why should you think--"

"Wait," she interrupted, "till you hear the rest. I cleaned off the tray and went through my day's work as usual. The next morning I found the same thing--and something more. Some one had been trying to write on the pad of paper on the desk."

"_Trying to write_?" I echoed.

"Yes, trying--as though some force were holding him back."

She went over to the desk, unlocked a little drawer, and took out several sheets of paper.

"Here is what I found that morning," she said, and handed me a sheet from an ordinary writing pad.

I saw scrawled across it an indecipherable jumble of words. She had expressed it exactly--it seemed as though some one had been trying to write with a weight clogging his hand. And there was something about this sc.r.a.p of paper--something convincing and authentic--which struck heavily at my skepticism. Here was what a lawyer would call evidence.

"It kept on from day to day," continued Mrs. Magnus, sitting down again. "Every morning the little heap of ashes and fragment of cigar, and a scrawl like that--until finally, one morning, I understood what was happening in this room, for three words were legible."

She handed me another sheet of paper. At the top were the words, "My dear wife," and under them again an indecipherable scrawl.

"Did you tell any one of all this?" I asked.

"Not a word to any one. But I decided to investigate."

"How?"

"By staying in this room at night."

I could guess from her tone what the resolution had cost her.

"And you did?"

"Yes. I came up right after dinner, leaving word that I was not to be disturbed. I went first to the desk to a.s.sure myself that the tray was empty and that there was no writing on the top sheet of paper. Then I switched off the light and sat down here by the fire and waited."

"That was brave," I said. "What happened?"

"For an hour, nothing. Then I was suddenly conscious of an odor of tobacco, as though some one smoking a cigar had entered the room, and an instant later I heard that chair before the desk creak as though it had been swung around. I switched on the light at once. The chair _had_ turned. It had been facing away from the desk, and it was now faced toward it."

She stopped a moment, and I saw that her excitement of the morning was returning. Indeed, my own heart was beating with a quickened rhythm as I glanced around at the desk. I saw that the chair was facing away from it.

"The odor of tobacco grew stronger," went on Mrs. Magnus, "and, even as I watched, a little ma.s.s of ashes fell into the tray."

"From nowhere?"

"Apparently from nowhere, but of course it was from the cigar that he was smoking."

"Did you see the smoke?"