Raspberry Jam Part 19

Harper, this is your case, I understand? Dr. Marsden--yours, too?

Yes, yes--mysterious, you say? Maybe so--maybe so. Let us proceed at once."

The little man stood, nervously teetering up and down on his toes, almost like a schoolboy preparing to speak a piece. "Now--if you please--now--" he looked eagerly toward the other doctors.

They all went into Embury's room and closed the door.

Then Eunice's temporary calm forsook her.

"It's awful!" she cried. "I don't want them to bother poor Sanford.

Why can't they let him alone? I don't care what killed him! He's dead, and no doctors can help that! Oh, Alvord, can't you make them let San alone?"

"No, Eunice; it has to be. Keep quiet, dear. It can do no good for you to get all wrought up, and if you'd go and lie down--"

"For heaven's sake, stop telling me to go and lie down! If one more person says that to me I shall just perfectly fly!"

"Now, Eunice," began Aunt Abby, "it's only 'for your own good, dear.

You are all excited and nervous--"

"Of course, I am! Who wouldn't be? Mason," she looked around at the concerned faces, "I believe you understand me best. You know I don't want to go and lie down, don't you?"

"Stay where you are, child," Elliott smiled kindly at her. "Of course, you're nervous and upset--all you can do is to try to hold yourself together--and don't try that too hard, either--for you may defeat your own ends thereby. Just wait, Eunice; sit still and wait."

They all waited, and after what seemed an interminable time the Examiner reappeared and the other two doctors with him.

"Well, well," Crowell began, his restless hands twisting themselves round each other. "Now, be quiet, Mrs. Embury--I declare, I don't know how to say what I have to say, if you sit there like a chained tiger--"

"Go on!" Eunice now seemed to usurp something of Crowell's own dictatorship. "Go on, Dr. Crowell!"

"Well, ma'am, I will. But there's not much to tell. Our princ.i.p.al evidence is lack of evidence--"

"What do you mean?" cried Eunice. "Talk English, please!"

"I am doing so. There is positively no evidence that Mr. Embury was poisoned, yet owing to the absolute lack of any hint of any other means of death, we are forced to the conclusion that he was poisoned."

"By his own hand?" asked Hendricks, his face grave.

"Probably not. You see, sir, with no knowledge of how the poison was administered--with no suspicion of any reason for its being administered--we are working in the dark--"

"I should say so!" exclaimed Elliott; "black darkness, I call it. Are you within your rights in a.s.suming poison?"

"Entirely; it has to be the truth. No agent but a swift, subtle poison could have cut off the victim's life like that."

Crowell was now walking up and down the room. He was a restless, nervous man, and under stress of anxiety he became almost hysterical.

"I don't know!" he cried out, as one in an extremity of uncertainty.

"It must be poison--it must have been--murder!"

He p.r.o.nounced the last word in a gasping way--as if afraid to suggest it but forced to do so.

Hendricks looked at him with a slight touch of contempt in his glance, but seeing this, Dr. Harper interjected:

"The Examiner is regretting the necessity of thrusting his convictions upon you, but he knows it must be done."

"Yes," said Crowell, more decidedly now, "I have had cases before where murder was committed in such an almost undiscoverable way as this.

Never a case quite so mysterious, but nearly so."

"What is your theory of the method?" asked Elliott, who was staggered by the rush of thoughts and conclusions made inevitable by the Examiner's report.

"That's the greatest mystery of all," Crowell replied. He was quite calm now--apparently it was concern for the family that had made him so disturbed.

"Poison was not taken by way of the stomach, that is certain.

Therefore, it must have been introduced through some other channel.

But we find no trace of a hypodermic needle--"

"How utterly ridiculous!" Eunice exclaimed, her eyes blazing with scorn. "How could any one get in to poison my husband? Why, we lock all our doors at night--we always have."

"Yes'm--exactly, ma'am," Crowell began, rubbing his hands again; "and now, please tell me of the locking up last night. As usual, ma'am, as usual?"

"Precisely. Our sleeping rooms are those three," she pointed to the bedrooms. "When they are locked, they form a unit by themselves, quite apart from the rest of the apartment."

Dr. Crowell looked interested.

The apartment faced on Park Avenue, and being on the corner had also windows on the side street.

Front, enumerating from the corner and running south, were the dining-room, the large living-room, and the good-sized reception hall.

Directly back of these, and with windows on a large court, were the three bedrooms, Eunice's in the middle, Sanford's back of the hall, and Aunt Abby's back of the dining-room. Aunt Abby's room was ordinarily Eunice's boudoir and dressing-room, but was used as a guest chamber on occasion.

These three bedrooms, as was shown to Examiner Crowell, when locked from the inside were shut off by themselves, although allowing free communication from one to another of them.

"Lock with keys?" he asked.

"No," Eunice replied. "There are big, strong, snap-locks on the inside of the doors. I mean locks that fasten themselves when you shut the door, unless you have previously put up the catch."

"Yes, I see," and Crowell looked into the matter for himself. "Spring catches, and mighty strong ones, too. And these were always fastened at night?"

"Always," Eunice declared. "Mr. Embury was not afraid of burglars, but it was his life-long habit to sleep with a locked door, and he couldn't get over it."

"Then," and the bird-like little eyes darted from one to another of his listeners and paused at Aunt Abby; "then, Miss Ames, you were also locked in, each night with your niece and her husband, safe from intruders."

"Yes," and Aunt Abby looked a little startled at being addressed. "I don't sleep with my door locked at home, and it bothered me at first.

But, you see, my room has no outlet except through Mrs. Embury's bedroom, so as the door between her room and mine was never locked, it really made little difference to me."

"Oh, is that the way of it?" and Dr. Crowell rose in his hasty manner and dashed in at Eunice's door. This, the middle room, opened on the right to the boudoir, and on the left to Embury's room.

The latter door was closed, and Crowell turned toward the boudoir--now Aunt Abby's bedroom. A small bed had been put up for her there, and the room was quite large enough to be comfortable. It was luxuriously furnished and the appointments were quite in keeping with the dainty tastes of the mistress of the house.

Crowell darted here and there about the room. He looked out of the rear windows, which faced on the court; out of a window that faced on the side street, peeped into the bathroom, and then hurried back to Eunice's own room. Here he observed the one large window, which was a triple bay, and which, of course, opened on the court.