The Darrow Enigma Part 1

The Darrow Enigma.

by Melvin L. Severy.

THE EPISODE OF THE DARKENED ROOM

CHAPTER I

What shall we say when Dream-Pictures leave their frames of night and push us from the waking world?

As the part I played in the events I am about to narrate was rather that of a pa.s.sive observer than of an active partic.i.p.ant, I need say little of myself. I am a graduate of a Western university and, by profession, a physician. My practice is now extensive, owing to my blundering into fame in a somewhat singular manner, but a year ago I had, I a.s.sure you, little enough to do. Inasmuch as my practice is now secure, I feel perfectly free to confess that the cure I effected in the now celebrated case of Mrs. P-- was altogether the result of chance, and not, as I was then only too glad to have people believe, due to an almost supernatural power of diagnosis.

Mrs. P-- was not more surprised at the happy result than was I; the only difference being that she showed her astonishment, while I endeavoured to conceal mine, and affected to look upon the whole thing as a matter of course.

My fame spread; the case got into the medical journals, where my skill was much lauded, and my practice became enormous. There is but one thing further I need mention regarding myself: that is, that I am possessed of a memory which my friends are pleased to consider phenomenal. I can repeat a lecture, sermon, or conversation almost word for word after once hearing it, provided always, that the subject commands my interest. My humble abilities in this direction have never ceased to be a source of wonderment to my acquaintance, though I confess, for my own part, when I compare them with those of Blind Tom, or of the man who, after a single reading, could correctly repeat the London Times, advertis.e.m.e.nts and all, they seem modest indeed.

It was about the time when, owing to the blessed Mrs. P--, my creditors were beginning to receive some attention, that I first met George Maitland. He had need, he said, of my professional services; he felt much under the weather; could I give him something which would brace him up a bit; he had some important chemical work on hand which he could not afford to put by; in fact, he didn't mind saying that he was at work upon a table of atomical pitches to match Dalton's atomic weights; if he succeeded in what he had undertaken he would have solved the secret of the love and hatred of atoms, and unions. .h.i.therto unknown could easily be effected.

I do not know how long he would have continued had not my interest in the subject caused me to interrupt him. I was something of an experimenter myself, and here was a man who could help me.

It was a dream of mine that the great majority of ailments could be cured by a.n.a.lysing a patient's blood, and then injecting into his veins such chemicals as were found wanting, or were necessary to counteract the influence of any deleterious matter present. There were, of course, difficulties in the way, but had they not already at Cornell University done much the same for vegetable life? And did not those plants which had been set in sea sand out of which every particle of nutriment had been roasted, and which were then artificially fed with a solution of the chemicals of which they were known to be composed, grow twice as rank as those which had been set in the soil ordinarily supposed to be best adapted to them? What was the difference between a human cell and a plant cell? Yes, since my patient was a chemist, I would cultivate his acquaintance.

He proceeded to tell me how he felt, but I could make nothing of it, so I forthwith did the regulation thing; what should we doctors do without it! I looked at his tongue, pulled down his eyelid, and p.r.o.nounced him bilious. Yes, there were the little brown spots under his skin--freckles, perhaps--and probably he had an occasional ringing in his ears. He was willing to admit that he was dizzy on suddenly rising from a stooping posture, and that eggs, milk, and coffee were poison to him; and he afterward told me he should have said the same of any other three articles I might have mentioned, for he looked so hale and vigorous, and felt so disgracefully well, that he was ashamed of himself. We have had many a laugh over it since.

The fact of the matter is the only affliction from which he was suffering was an inordinate desire to make my acquaintance. Not for my own sake--oh, dear, no!--but because I was John Darrow's family physician, and would be reasonably sure to know Gwen Darrow, that gentleman's daughter. He had first met her, he told me after we had become intimate, at an exhibition of paintings by William T. Richards, --but, as you will soon be wondering if it were, on his part, a case of love at first sight, I had best relate the incident to you in his own words as he told it to me. This will relieve me of pa.s.sing any judgment upon the matter, for you will then know as much about it as I, and, doubtless, be quite as capable of answering the question, for candour compels me to own that my knowledge of the human heart is entirely professional. Think of searching for Cupid's darts with a stethoscope!

"I was standing," Maitland said, "before a masterpiece of sea and rock, such as only Richards can paint. It was a view of Land's End, Cornwall, and in the artist's very best vein. My admiration made me totally unmindful of my surroundings, so much so, indeed, that, although the gallery was crowded, I caught myself expressing my delight in a perfectly audible undertone. My enthusiasm, since it was addressed to no one, soon began to attract attention, and people stopped looking at the pictures to look at me. I was conscious of this in a vague, far-off way, much as one is conscious of a conversation which seems to have followed him across the borderland of sleep, and I even thought that I ought to be embarra.s.sed. How long I remained thus transported I do not know. The first thing I remember is hearing someone close beside me take a quick, deep breath, one of those full inhalations natural to all sensitive natures when they come suddenly upon something sublime. I turned and looked. I have said I was transported by that canvas of sea and rocks, and have, therefore, no word left to describe the emotion with which I gazed upon the exquisite, living, palpitating picture beside me. A composite photograph of all the Madonnas ever painted, from the Sistine to Bodenhausen's, could not have been more lovely, more ineffably womanly than that young girl, radiant with the divine glow of artistic delight--at least, that is my opinion, which, by the bye, I should, perhaps, have stated a little more gingerly, inasmuch as you are yourself acquainted with the young lady. Now, don't look incredulous [noticing my surprise]. Black hair--not brown, black; clear pink and white complexion; large, deep violet eyes with a remarkable poise to them."--Here I continued the description for him: "Slight of figure; a full, honest waist, without a suggestion of that execrable death-trap, Dame Fashion's hideous cuira.s.s; a little above middle height; deliberate, and therefore graceful, in all her movements; carries herself in a way to impress one with the idea that she is innocent, without that time-honoured concomitant, ignorance; half girl, half woman; shy, yet strong; and in a word, very beautiful--that's Gwen Darrow."

I paused here, and Maitland went on somewhat dubiously: "Yes, it's not hard to locate such a woman. She makes her presence as clearly felt among a million of her s.e.x as does a grain of fuchsine in a hogshead of water. If, with a few ounces of this, Tyndall could colour Lake Geneva, so with Gwen Darrow one might, such is the power of the ideal, change the ethical status of a continent."

He then told me how he had made a study of Miss Darrow's movements, and had met her many times since; in fact, so often that he fancied, from something in her manner, that she had begun to wonder if his frequent appearance were not something more than a coincidence. The fear that she might think him d.o.g.g.i.ng her footsteps worried him, and he began as sedulously to avoid the places he knew she frequented, as he previously had sought them. This, he confessed, made him utterly miserable. He had, to be sure, never spoken to her, but it was everything to be able to see her. When he could endure it no longer he had come to me under pretence of feeling ill, that he might, when he had made my acquaintance, get me to introduce him to the Darrows.

You will understand, of course, that I did not learn all this at our first interview. Maitland did not take me into his confidence until we had had a conference at his laboratory devoted entirely to scientific speculations. On this occasion he surprised me not a little by turning to me suddenly and saying: "Some of the grandest sacrifices the world has ever known, if one may judge by the fort.i.tude they require, and the pain they cause, have occurred in the laboratory." I looked at him inquiringly, and he continued: "When a man, simply for the great love of truth that is in him, has given his life to the solution of some problem, and has at last arrived, after years of closest application, at some magnificent generalisation--when he has, perhaps, published his conclusions, and received the grateful homage of all lovers of truth, his life has, indeed, borne fruit. Of him may it then be justly said that his

"'. . . life hath blossomed downward like The purple bell-flower.'

But suddenly, in the privacy of his laboratory, a single fact arises from the test-tube in his trembling hand and confronts him! His brain reels; the gla.s.s torment falls upon the floor, and shatters into countless pieces, but he is not conscious of it, for he feels it thrust through his heart. When he recovers from the first shock, he can only e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e: 'Is it possible?' After a little he is able to reason. 'I was fatigued,' he says; 'perhaps my senses erred. I can repeat the experiment again, and be sure. But if it overthrow those conclusions for which I have given my life?' he gasps. 'My generalisation is firmly established in the minds of all--all but myself--no one will ever chance upon this particular experiment, and it may not disprove my theory after all; better, much better, that the floor there keep the secret of it all both from me and from others!' But even as he says this to himself he has taken a new tube from the rack and crawled--ten years older for that last ten minutes--to his chemical case. The life-long habit of truth is so strong in him that self-interest cannot submerge it. He repeats the experiment, and confirms his fears. The battle between his life and a few drops of liquid in a test-tube has been mercilessly fought, and he has lost! The elasticity of the man is gone forever, and the only indication the world ever receives of this terrible conflict between a human soul and its destiny is some half a dozen lines in Nature, giving the experiment and stating that it utterly refutes its author's previous conclusions. Half a dozen lines--the epitaph of a dead, though unburied, life!"

My companion paused there, but I found myself unable to reply. He had spoken with such intensity, such dramatic fervour, that I was completely swept away by his eloquence; so much so, indeed, that it did not even occur to me to ask myself why he should have burst out in this peculiar strain. I have given you the incident in order that you may see the strange moods into which Maitland occasionally relapsed--at least, at that time. After a quick glance at me he continued, in a quieter vein: "All of us men of science have felt something, however little, of this, and I believe, as a cla.s.s, scientists transcend all other men in their respect for absolute truth." He cast another one of his searching glances at me, and said quickly: "This is precisely why I am going to confide in you and rely upon your a.s.sistance in a matter, the successful termination of which would please me as much as the discovery of an absolute standard of measurement."

He then made the confession which I have already given you, and ended by asking me to secure him an introduction to Miss Darrow.

I cheerfully promised to bring this about at the first opportunity.

He asked me if I thought, on account of his having met her so frequently, she would be likely to think it was all a "put up job."

"I do not know," I replied. "Miss Darrow is a singularly close observer. On the whole I think you had better reach her through her father. Do you play croquet?" He replied that he was considered something of an expert in that line. That, then, was surely the best way. John Darrow was known in the neighbourhood as a "crank" on the subject of croquet. He had spent many hundreds of dollars on his grounds. His wickets were fastened to hard pine planks, and these were then carefully buried two feet deep. The surface of the ground, he was wont to descant, must be of a particular sort of gravel, sifted just so, and rolled to a nicety. The b.a.l.l.s must be of hard rubber, and have just one-eighth inch clearance in pa.s.sing through the wickets, with the exception of the two wires forming the "cage,"

where it was imperative that this clearance should be reduced to one-sixteenth of an inch--but I need not state more to show how he came to be considered a "crank" upon the subject.

It was easy enough to bring Maitland and Darrow together. "My friend is himself much interested in the game; he heard of your superb ground; may he be permitted to examine it closely?" Darrow was all attention. He would be delighted to show it. Suppose they make a practical test of it by playing a game. This they did and Maitland played superbly, but he was hardly a match for the old gentleman, who sought to palliate his defeat by saying: "You play an excellent game, sir; but I am a trifle too much for you on my own ground. Now, if you can spare the time, I should like to witness a game between you and my daughter; I think you will be pretty evenly matched."

If he could spare the time! I laughed outright at the idea. Why, with the prospect of meeting Gwen Darrow before him, an absolute unit of measure, with a snail's pace, would have made good its escape from him. As it is a trick of poor humanity to refuse when offered the very thing one has been madly scheming to obtain, I hastened to accept Darrow's invitation for my friend, and to a.s.sure him on my own responsibility, that time was just then hanging heavily on Maitland's hands. Well, the game was played, but Maitland was so unnerved by the girl's presence that he played execrably, so poorly, indeed, that the always polite Darrow remarked: "You must charge your easy victory, Gwen, to your opponent's gallantry, not to his lack of skill, for I a.s.sure you he gave me a much harder rub." The young lady cast a quick glance at Maitland, which said so plainly that she preferred a fair field and no favour that he hastened to say: "Your father puts too high an estimate upon my play. I did my best to win, but--but I was a little nervous; I see, however, that you would have defeated me though I had been in my best form." Gwen gave him one of those short, searching looks, so peculiarly her own, which seem to read, with mathematical certainty, one's innermost thoughts,--and the poor fellow blushed to the tips of his ears.

--But he was no boy, this Maitland, and betrayed no other sign of the tempest that was raging within him. His utterance remained as usual, deliberate and incisive, and I thought this perplexed the young lady. Before leaving, both Maitland and I were invited to become parties to a six-handed game to be played the following week, after the grounds had been redressed with gravel.

Maitland looked forward to this second meeting with Miss Darrow with an eagerness which made every hour seem interminably long, and he was in such a flutter of expectancy that I was sure if

"We live . . . in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial We should count time by heart-throbs,"

he must have pa.s.sed through a period as long as that separating the Siege of Troy from the "late unpleasantness." The afternoon came at last, however. The party consisted, besides Darrow and his daughter, Maitland and myself, of two young gentlemen with whom personally I had but a slight acquaintance, although I knew them somewhat by reputation. The younger one, Clinton Browne, is a young artist whose landscapes were beginning to attract wide attention in Boston, and the elder, Charles Herne, a Western gentleman of some literary attainments, but comparatively unknown here in the East. There is nothing about Mr. Herne that would challenge more than pa.s.sing attention. If you had said of him, "He is well-fleshed, well-groomed, and intellectually well-thatched," you would have voiced the opinion of most of his acquaintances.

This somewhat elaborately upholstered old world has a deal of mere filling of one kind and another, and Mr. Herne is a part of it. To be sure, he leaves the category of excelsior very far behind and approaches very nearly to the best grade of curled hair, but, in spite of all this, he is simply a sort of social filling.

Mr. Browne, on the other hand, is a very different personage. Of medium height, closely knit, with the latent activity and grace of the cat flowing through every movement and even stagnating in his pose, he is a man that the first casual gaze instantly returns to with sharpened focus. You have seen gymnasts whose normal movements were slowly performed springs, just as rust is a slow combustion and fire the same thing in less time. Well, Clinton Browne strongly suggested that sort of athlete. Add to this a regularly formed, clearly cut, and all-but-beautiful face, with a pair of wonderfully piercing, albeit somewhat shifty, black eyes, and one need not marvel that men as well as women stared at him. I have spoken of his gaze as "somewhat shifty," yet am not altogether sure that in that term I accurately describe it. What first fastened my attention was this vague, unfocussed, roving, quasi-introspective vision flashing with panther-like suddenness into a directness that seemed to burn and pierce one like the thrust of a hot stiletto, His face was clean-shaven, save for a mere thumb-mark of black hair directly under the centre of his lower lip. This Iago-like tab and the almost fierce brilliancy of his concentrated gaze gave to his countenance at times a sinister, Machiavellian expression that was irresistible and which, to my thinking, seriously marred an otherwise fine face. Of course due allowance must be made for the strong prejudice I have against any form of beard. However, I'd wager a box of my best liver-pills against any landscape Browne ever painted, --I don't care if it's as big as a cyclorama,--that if he had known how completely Gwen shared my views,--how she disliked the appearance of bewhiskered men,--that delicately nurtured little imperial would soon have been reduced to a tender memory,--that is to say, if a physician can diagnose a case of love from such symptoms as devouring glances and an attentiveness so marked that it quite disgusted Maitland, who repeatedly measured his rival with the apparent cold precision of a mathematician, albeit there was warmth enough underneath.

This singular self-poise is one of Maitland's most noticeable characteristics and is, I think, rather remarkable in a man of such strong emotional tendencies and lightning-like rapidity of thought.

No doubt some small portion of it is the result of acquirement, for life can hardly fail to teach us all something of this sort; still I cannot but think that the larger part of it is native to him.

Born of well-to-do parents, he had never had the splendid tuition of early poverty. As soon as he had left college he had studied law, and had been admitted to the bar. This he had done more to gratify the wishes of his father than to further any desires of his own, but he had soon found the profession, so distasteful to him that he practically abandoned it in favour of scientific research. True, he still occasionally took a legal case when it turned upon scientific points which interested him, but, as he once confessed to me, he swallowed, at such times, the bitter pill of the law for the sugar coating of science which enshrouded it. This legal training could, therefore, it seems to me, have made no deep or radical change in his character, which leads me to think that the self-control he exhibited, despite the angry disgust with which I know Browne's so apparent attentions to Gwen inspired him, must, for the most part, have been native to him rather than acquired.

Nothing worthy of record occurred until evening; at least nothing which at the time impressed me as of import, though I afterward remembered that Darrow's behaviour was somewhat strange. He appeared singularly preoccupied, and on one occasion started nervously when I coughed behind him. He explained that a disagreeable dream had deprived him of his sleep the previous night and left his nerves somewhat unstrung, and I thought no more of it.

When the light failed we were all invited into the parlour to listen to a song by Miss Darrow. The house, as you are perhaps aware, overlooks Dorchester Bay. The afternoon had been very hot, but at dusk a cold east wind had sprung up, which, as it was still early in the season, was not altogether agreeable to our host, sitting as he was, back to, though fully eight feet from, an open window looking to the east. Maitland, with his usual quick observation, noticed his discomfort and asked if he should not close the window. The old gentleman did not seem to hear the question until it was repeated, when, starting as if from a reverie, he said: "If it will not be too warm for the rest of you, I would like to have it partly closed, say to within six inches, for the wind is cold"; and he seemed to relapse again into his reverie.

Maitland was obliged to use considerable strength to force the window down, as it stuck in the casing, and when it finally gave way it closed with a loud shrieking sound ending in the bang of the counterweights. At the noise Darrow sprang to his feet, exclaiming: "Again! The same sound! I knew I could not mistake it!" but by this time Gwen was at his side, pressing him gently back into his seat, as she said to him in an undertone audible to all of us: "What is it, father?" The old gentleman only pressed her closer by way of reply, while he said to us apologetically: "You must excuse me, gentlemen. I have a certain dream which haunts me,--the dream of someone striking me out of the darkness. Last night I had the same dream for the seventh time and awoke to hear that window opened. There is no mistaking the sound I heard just now; it is identical with that I heard last night. I sprang out of bed, took a light, and rushed down here, for I am not afraid to meet anything I can see, but the window was closed and locked, as I had left it! What do you think, Doctor," he said, turning to me, "are dreams ever prophetic?"

"I have never," I replied, anxious to quiet him, "had any personal experience justifying such a conclusion." I did not tell him of certain things which had happened to friends of mine, and so my reply rea.s.sured him.

Maitland, who had been startled by the old gentleman's conduct, now returned to the window and opened it about six inches. There was no other window open in the room, and yet so fresh was the air that we were not uncomfortable. Darrow, with ill-concealed pride, then asked his daughter to sing, and she left him and went to the piano. "Shall I not light the lamp?" I asked. "I think we shall not need it," the old gentleman replied, "music is always better in the gloaming."

In order that you may understand what follows, it will be necessary for me to describe to you our several positions in the room. The apartment is large, nearly square, and occupies the southeast corner of the house. The eastern side of the room has one window, that which had been left open about six inches, and on the southern side of the room there were two windows, both of which were securely fastened and the blinds of which had been closed by the painters who, that morning, had primed the eastern and southern sides of the house, preparatory to giving it a thorough repainting. On the north side of the room, but much nearer to the western than the eastern end, are folding doors. These on this occasion were closed and fastened. On the western side of the room is the piano, and to the left of it, near the southwest corner, is a door leading to the hallway. This door was closed. As I have already told you, Darrow sat in a high-backed easy-chair facing the piano and almost in the centre of the room. The partly opened window on the east side was directly behind him and fully eight feet away. Herne and Browne sat upon Darrow's right and a little in front of him against the folding doors, while Maitland and I were upon his left, between him and the hall door. Gwen was at the piano. There are no closets, draperies, or niches in the room. I think you will now be able to understand the situation fully.

Whether the gloom of the scene suggested it to her, or whether it was merely a coincidence, I do not know, but Miss Darrow began to sing "In the Gloaming" in a deep, rich contralto voice which seemed fraught with a weird, melancholy power. When I say that her voice was ineffably sympathetic I would not have you confound this quality either with the sepulchral or the aspirated tone which usually is made to do duty for sympathy, especially in contralto voices. Every note was as distinct, as brilliantly resonant, as a cello in a master's hand. So clear, so full the notes rang out that I could plainly feel the chair vibrate beneath me.

"In the gloaming, O my darling!

When the lights are dim and low, And the quiet shadows falling Softly come and softly go.

When the winds are sobbing faintly With a gentle unknown woe, Will you think of me and love me As you did once, long ago?

"In the gloaming, O my darling!

Think not bitterly of me, Though I pa.s.sed away in silence, Left you lonely, set you free.

For my heart was crushed with longing.

What had been could never be: It was best to leave you thus, dear, Best for you and best--"

But the line was never finished. With a wild cry, more of fear than of pain, Darrow sprang from his chair. "Gentlemen, I have been stabbed!" was all he said, and fell back heavily into his seat. Gwen was kneeling before him in an instant, even before I could a.s.sist him. His right hand was pressed to his throat and his eyes seemed starting from their sockets as he shouted hoa.r.s.ely: "A light, a light! For G.o.d's sake, don't let him strike me again in the dark!"

Maitland was already lighting the gas and Herne and Browne, so Browne afterward told me, were preparing to seize the a.s.sailant. I remembered, after it all was over, a quick movement Browne had made toward the darkest corner of the room.

The apartment was now flooded with light, and I looked for the a.s.sa.s.sin. He was not to be found! The room contained only Gwen, Darrow, and his four invited guests! The doors were closed; the windows had not been touched. No one could possibly have entered or left the room, and yet the a.s.sa.s.sin was not there. But one solution remained; Darrow was labouring under a delusion, and Gwen's voice would restore him. As she was about to speak I stepped back to note the effect of her words upon him. "Do not fear, father," she said in a low voice as she laid her face against his cheek, "there is nothing here to hurt you. You are ill,--I will get you a gla.s.s of cordial and you will be yourself again in a moment." She was about to rise when her father seized her frantically by the arm, exclaiming in a hoa.r.s.e whisper: "Don't leave me! Can't you see? Don't leave me!" and for the first time he removed his hand from his throat, and taking her head between his palms, gazed wistfully into her face. He tried to speak again, but could not, and glanced up at us with a helpless expression which I shall never forget. Maitland, his eyes riveted upon the old gentleman, whose thoughts he seemed to divine, hurriedly produced a pencil and note-book and held them toward him, but he did not see them, for he had drawn Gwen's face down to him and was kissing her pa.s.sionately. The next instant he was on his feet and from the swollen veins that stood out like cords upon his neck and forehead, we could see the terrible effort he was making to speak. At last the words came,--came as if they were torn hissing from his throat, for he took a full breath between each one of them.

"Gwen--I--knew--it! Good-bye! Remember--your--promise!"

--and he fell a limp ma.s.s into his chair, overcome, I felt sure, by the fearful struggle he had made. Maitland seized a gla.s.s of water and threw it in his face. I loosened the clothing about his neck and, in doing so, his head fell backward and his face was turned upward toward me. The features were drawn,--the eyes were glazed and set. I felt of his heart; he was dead!

CHAPTER II