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The Poisoned Pen

A >> Arthur B. Reeve >> The Poisoned Pen



The Poisoned Pen by, Arthur B. Reeve
(transcriber's note: these stories were first published in 1911-13)


CONTENTS

I THE POISONED PEN

II THE YEGGMAN

III THE GERM OF DEATH

IV THE FIREBUG

V THE CONFIDENCE KING

VI THE SAND-HOG

VII THE WHITE SLAVE

VIII THE FORGER

IX THE UNOFFICIAL SPY

X THE SMUGGLER

XI THE INVISIBLE RAY

XII THE CAMPAIGN GRAFTER



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.


As we finished reading, Leland exclaimed, "That never must come
before the jury."

Kennedy was examining the letter carefully. "Strange," he muttered.
"See how it was folded. It was written on the wrong side of the
sheet, or rather folded up with the writing outside. Where have
these letters been?"

"Part of the time in my safe, part of the time this afternoon on my
desk by the window."

"The office was locked, I suppose?" asked Kennedy. "There was no
way to slip this letter in among the others since you obtained them?"

"None. The office has been locked, and there is no evidence of any
one having entered or disturbed a thing."

He was hastily running over the pile of letters as if looking to see
whether they were all there. Suddenly he stopped.

"Yes," he exclaimed excitedly, "one of them is gone." Nervously he
fumbled through them again. "One is gone," he repeated, looking at
us, startled.

"What was it about?" asked Craig.

"It was a note from an artist, Thurston, who gave the address of Mrs.
Boncour's bungalow - ah, I see you have heard of him. He asked
Dixon's recommendation of a certain patent headache medicine. I
thought it possibly evidential, and I asked Dixon about it. He
explained it by saying that he did not have a copy of his reply, but
as near as he could recall, he wrote that the compound would not
cure a headache except at the expense of reducing heart action
dangerously. He says he sent no prescription. Indeed, he thought
it a scheme to extract advice without incurring the charge for an
office call and answered it only because he thought Vera had become
reconciled to Thurston again. I can't find that letter of Thurston's.
It is gone."

We looked at each other in amazement.

"Why, if Dixon contemplated anything against Miss Lytton, should he
preserve this letter from her?" mused Kennedy. "Why didn't he
destroy it?"

"That's what puzzles me," remarked Leland. "Do you suppose some
one has broken in and substituted this Lytton letter for the
Thurston letter?

Kennedy was scrutinising the letter, saying nothing. "I may keep
it?" he asked at length. Leland was quite willing and even undertook
to obtain some specimens of the writing of Vera Lytton. With these
and the letter Kennedy was working far into the night and long after
I had passed into a land troubled with many wild dreams of deadly
poisons and secret intrigues of artists.

The next morning a message from our old friend First Deputy O'Connor
in New York told briefly of locating the rooms of an artist named
Thurston in one of the co-operative studio apartments. Thurston
himself had not been there for several days and was reported to have
gone to Maine to sketch. He had had a number of debts, but before
he left they had all been paid - strange to say, by a notorious firm
of Shyster lawyers, Kerr & Kimmel. Kennedy wired back to find out
the facts from Kerr & Kimmel and to locate Thurston at any cost.

Even the discovery of the new letter did not shake the wonderful
self-possession of Dr. Dixon. He denied ever having received it
and repeated his story of a letter from Thurston to which he had
replied by sending an answer, care of Mrs. Boncour, as requested.
He insisted that the engagement between Miss Lytton and himself had
been broken before the announcement of his engagement with Miss
Willard. As for Thurston, he said the man was little more than a
name to him. He had known perfectly all the circumstances of the
divorce, but had had no dealings with Thurston and no fear of him.
Again and again he denied ever receiving the letter from Vera
Lytton.

Kennedy did not tell the Willards of the new letter. The strain
had begun to tell on Alma, and her father had had her quietly
taken to a farm of his up in the country. To escape the curious
eyes of reporters, Halsey Post had driven up one night in his
closed car. She had entered it quickly with her father, and the
journey had been made in the car, while Halsey Post had quietly
dropped off on the outskirts of the town, where another car was
waiting to take him back. It was evident that the Willard family
relied implicitly on Halsey, and his assistance to them was most
considerate. While he never forced himself forward, he kept in
close touch with the progress of the case, and now that Alma was
away his watchfulness increased proportionately, and twice a day
he wrote a long report which was sent to her.

Kennedy was now bending every effort to locate the missing artist.
When he left Danbridge, he seemed to have dropped out of sight
completely. However, with O'Connor's aid, the police of all
New England were on the lookout.

The Thurstons had been friends of Halsey's before Vera Lytton had
ever met Dr. Dixon, we discovered from the Danbridge gossips, and I,
at least, jumped to the conclusion that Halsey was shielding the
artist, perhaps through a sense of friendship when he found that
Kennedy was interested in Thurston's movement. I must say I rather
liked Halsey, for he seemed very thoughtful of the Willards, and
was never too busy to give an hour or so to any commission they
wished carried out without publicity..

Two days passed with not a word from Thurston. Kennedy was obviously
getting impatient. One day a rumour was received that he was in Bar
Harbour; the next it was a report from Nova Scotia. At last, however,
came the welcome news that he had been located in New Hampshire,
arrested, and might be expected the next day.

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