The After House
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Mary Roberts Rinehart >> The After House
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"No; she said she was nervous."
"The same thing--only better. Then she persisted in talking of
the crime, and finally she said she would like to see the axe. It
wouldn't do any harm. She, wouldn't touch it."
He watched me uneasily.
"She didn't either," he said. "I'll swear to that, Leslie. She
didn't go near the bunk. She covered her face with her hands, and
leaned against the door. I thought she was going to faint."
"Against the door, of course! And got an impression of the key.
The door opens in. She could take out the key, press it against a
cake of wax or even a cake of soap in her hand, and slip it back
into the lock again while you--What were you doing while she was
doing all that?"
"She dropped her salts. I picked them up."
"Exactly! Well, the axe is gone."
He started up on his elbow.
"Gone!"
"Thrown overboard, probably. It is not in the cabin."
It was brutal, perhaps; but the situation was all of that. As Burns
fell back, colorless, Tom, the cook, brought into the tent the wire
key that Singleton had made.
That morning I took from inside of Singleton's mattress a bunch of
keys, a long steel file, and the leg of one of his chairs, carefully
unscrewed and wrapped at the end with wire a formidable club. One
of the keys opened Singleton's door.
That was on Saturday. Early Monday morning we sighted land.
CHAPTER XVIII
A BAD COMBINATION
We picked up a pilot outside the Lewes breakwater a man of few words.
I told him only the outlines of our story, and I believe he half
discredited me at first. God knows, I was not a creditable object.
When I took him aft and showed him the jolly-boat, he realized, at
last, that he was face to face with a great tragedy, and paid it the
tribute of throwing away his cigar.
He suggested our raising the yellow plague flag; and this we did,
with a ready response from the quarantine officer. The quarantine
officer came out in a power-boat, and mounted the ladder; and from
that moment my command of the Ella ceased. Turner, immaculately
dressed, pale, distinguished, member of the yacht club and partner
in the Turner line, met him at the rail, and conducted him, with a
sort of chastened affability, to the cabin.
Exhausted from lack of sleep, terrified with what had gone by and
what was yet to come, unshaven and unkempt, the men gathered on the
forecastle-head and waited.
The conference below lasted perhaps an hour. At the end of that
time the quarantine officer came up and shouted a direction from
below, as a result of which the jolly-boat was cut loose, and,
towed by the tug, taken to the quarantine station. There was an
argument, I believe, between Turner and the officer, as to allowing
us to proceed up the river without waiting for the police. Turner
prevailed, however, and, from the time we hoisted the yellow flag,
we were on our way to the city, a tug panting beside us, urging
the broad and comfortable lines of the old cargo boat to a
semblance of speed.
The quarantine officer, a dapper little man, remained on the boat,
and busied himself officiously, getting the names of the men, peering
at Singleton through his barred window, and expressing disappointment
at my lack of foresight in having the bloodstains cleared away.
"Every stain is a clue, my man, to the trained eye," he chirruped.
"With an axe, too! What a brutal method! Brutal! Where is the axe?"
"Gone," I said patiently. "It was stolen out of the captain's cabin."
He eyed me over his glasses.
"That's very strange," he commented. "No stains, no axe! You
fellows have been mighty careful to destroy the evidence, haven't
you?"
All that long day we made our deliberate progress up the river.
The luggage from the after house was carried up on deck by Adams
and Clarke, and stood waiting for the customhouse.
Turner, his hands behind him, paced the deck hour by hour, his
heavy face colorless. His wife, dark, repressed, with a look of
being always on guard, watched him furtively. Mrs. Johns, dressed
in black, talked to the doctor; and, from the notes he made, I
knew she was telling the story of the tragedy. And here, there,
and everywhere, efficient, normal, and so lovely that it hurt me
to look at her, was Elsa. Williams, the butler, had emerged from
his chrysalis of fright, and was ostentatiously looking after the
family's comfort. No clearer indication could have been given of
the new status of affairs than his changed attitude toward me. He
came up to me, early in the afternoon, and demanded that I wash
down the deck before the women came up.
I smiled down at him cheerfully.
"Williams," I said, "you are a coward--a mean, white-livered
coward. You have skulked in the after house, behind women, when
there was man's work to do. If I wash that deck, it will be with
you as a mop."
He blustered something about speaking to Mr. Turner and seeing that
I did the work I was brought on board to do, and, seeing Turner's
eye on us, finished his speech with an ugly epithet. My nerves were
strained to the utmost: lack of sleep and food had done their work.
I was no longer in command of the Ella; I was a common sailor, ready
to vent my spleen through my fists.
I knocked him down with my open hand.
It was a barbarous and a reckless thing to do. He picked himself
up and limped away, muttering. Turner had watched the scene with
his cold blue eyes, and the little doctor with his near-sighted ones.
"A dangerous man, that!" said the doctor.
"Dangerous and intelligent," replied Turner. "A bad combination!"
It was late that night when the Ella anchored in the river at
Philadelphia. We were not allowed to land. The police took charge
of ship, crew, and passengers. The men slept heavily on deck, except
Burns, who developed a slight fever from his injury, and moved about
restlessly.
It seemed to me that the vigilance of the officers was exerted
largely to prevent an escape from the vessel, and not sufficiently
for the safety of those on board. I spoke of this, and a guard was
placed at the companionway again. Thus I saw Elsa Lee for the last
time until the trial.
She was dressed, as she had been in the afternoon, in a dark cloth
suit of some sort, and I did not see her until I had spoken to the
officer in charge. She turned, at my voice, and called me to join
her where she stood.
"We are back again, Leslie."
"Yes, Miss Lee."
"Back to--what? To live the whole thing over again in a courtroom!
If only we could go away, anywhere, and try to forget!"
She had not expected any answer, and I had none ready. I was
thinking--Heaven help me--that there were things I would not forget
if I could: the lift of her lashes as she looked, up at me; the few
words we had had together, the day she had told me the deck was not
clean; the night I had touched her hand with my lips.
"We are to be released, I believe," she said, "on our own--some
legal term; I forget it."
"Recognizance, probably."
"Yes. You do not know law as well as medicine?"
"I am sorry--no; and I know very little medicine."
"But you sewed up a wound!"
"As a matter of fact," I admitted, "that was my initial performance,
and it is badly done. It--it puckers."
She turned on me a trifle impatiently.
"Why do you make such a secret of your identity?" she demanded.
"Is it a pose? Or--have you a reason for concealing it?"
"It is not a pose; and I have nothing to be ashamed of, unless
poverty--"
"Of course not. What do you mean by poverty?"
"The common garden variety sort. I have hardly a dollar in the
world. As to my identity,--if it interests you at all, I
graduated in medicine last June. I spent the last of the money
that was to educate me in purchasing a dress suit to graduate in,
and a supper by way of celebration. The dress suit helped me to
my diploma. The supper gave me typhoid."
"So that was it!"
"Not jail, you see."
"And what are you going to do now?"
I glanced around to where a police officer stood behind us watchfully.
"Now? Why, now I go to jail in earnest."
"You have been very good to us," she said wistfully. "We have all
been strained and nervous. Maybe you have not thought I noticed or
--or appreciated what you were doing; but I have, always. You have
given all of yourself for us. You have not slept or eaten. And now
you are going to be imprisoned. It isn't just!"
I tried to speak lightly, to reassure her.
"Don't be unhappy about that," I said. "A nice, safe jail, where
one may sleep and eat, and eat and sleep--oh, I shall be very
comfortable! And if you wish to make me exceedingly happy, you
will see that they let me have a razor."
But, to my surprise, she buried her face in her arms. I could not
believe at first that she was crying. The policeman had wandered
across to the other rail, and stood looking out at the city lights,
his back to us. I put my hand out to touch her soft hair, then
drew it back. I could not take advantage of her sympathy, of the
hysterical excitement of that last night on the Ella. I put my
hands in my pockets, and held them there, clenched, lest, in spite
of my will, I reach out to take her in my arms.
CHAPTER XIX
I TAKE THE STAND
And now I come, with some hesitation, to the trial. Hesitation,
because I relied on McWhirter to keep a record. And McWhirter,
from his notes, appears to have been carried away at times by
excitement, and either jotted down rows of unintelligible words,
or waited until evening and made up his notes, like a woman's
expense account, from a memory never noticeable for accuracy.
At dawn, the morning after we anchored, Charlie Jones roused me,
grinning.
"Friend of yours over the rail, Leslie," he said. "Wants to take
you ashore!"
I knew no one in Philadelphia except the chap who had taken me
yachting once, and I felt pretty certain that he would not
associate Leslie the football player with Leslie the sailor on
the Ella. I went reluctantly to the rail, and looked down. Below
me, just visible in the river mist of the early morning, was a
small boat from which two men were looking up. One was McWhirter!
"Hello, old top," he cried. "Or is it you behind that beard?"
"It's I, all right, Mac," I said, somewhat huskily. What with seeing
him again, his kindly face behind its glasses, the cheerful faith in
me which was his contribution to our friendship,--even the way he
shook his own hand in default of mine,--my throat tightened. Here,
after all, was home and a friend.
He looked up at the rail, and motioned to a rope that hung there.
"Get your stuff and come with us for breakfast," he said. "You look
as if you hadn't eaten since you left."
"I'm afraid I can't, Mac."
"They're not going to hold you, are they?"
"For a day or so, yes."
Mac's reply to this was a violent resume of the ancestry and present
lost condition of the Philadelphia police, ending with a request
that I jump over, and let them go to the place he had just designated
as their abiding-place in eternity. On an officer lounging to the
rail and looking down, however, he subsided into a low muttering.
The story of how McWhirter happened to be floating on the bosom of
the Delaware River before five o'clock in the morning was a long one
--it was months before I got it in full. Briefly, going home from
the theater in New York the night before, he had bought an "extra"
which had contained a brief account of the Ella's return. He seems
to have gone into a frenzy of excitement at once. He borrowed a
small car,--one scornfully designated as a "road louse,"--and
assembled in it, in wild confusion, one suit of clothes for me, his
own and much too small, one hypodermic case, an armful of newspapers
with red scare-heads, a bottle of brandy, a bottle of digitalis, one
police card, and one excited young lawyer, of the same vintage in
law that Mac and I were in medicine. At the last moment, fearful
that the police might not know who I was, he had flung in a scrapbook
in which he had pasted--with a glue that was to make his fortune--
records of my exploits on the football field!
A dozen miles from Philadelphia the little machine had turned over
on a curve, knocking all the law and most of the enthusiasm out of
Walters, the legal gentleman, and smashing the brandy-bottle.
McWhirter had picked himself up, kicked viciously at the car, and,
gathering up his impedimenta, had made the rest of the journey by
foot and street-car.
His wrath at finding me a prisoner was unbounded; his scorn at
Walters, the attorney, for not confounding the police with law
enough to free me, was furious and contemptuous. He picked up the
oars in sullen silence, and, leaning on them, called a loud and
defiant farewell for the benefit of the officer.
"All right," he said. "An hour or so won't make much difference.
But you'll be free today, all right, all right. And don't let
them bluff you, boy. If the police get funny, tackle them and
throw 'em overboard, one by one. You can do it."
He made an insulting gesture at the police, picked up his oars, and
rowed away into the mist.
But I was not free, that day, nor for many days. As I had expected,
Turner, his family, Mrs. Johns, and the stewardess were released,
after examination. The rest of us were taken to jail. Singleton as
a suspect, the others to make sure of their presence at the trial.
The murders took place on the morning of August 12. The Grand jury
met late in September, and found an indictment against Singleton.
The trial began on the 16th of November.
The confinement was terrible. Accustomed to regular exercise as I
was, I suffered mentally and physically. I heard nothing from Elsa
Lee, and I missed McWhirter, who had got his hospital appointment,
and who wrote me cheering letters on pages torn from order-books or
on prescription-blanks. He was in Boston.
He got leave of absence for the trial, and, as I explained, the
following notes are his, not mine. The case was tried in the United
States Court, before Circuit Judge Willard and District Judge
McDowell. The United States was represented by a district attorney
and two assistant attorneys. Singleton had retained a lawyer
named Goldstein, a clever young Jew.
I was called first, as having found the bodies.
"Your name?"
"Ralph Leslie."
"Your age?"
"Twenty-four."
"When and where were you born?"
"November 18, 1887, in Columbus, Ohio."
"When did you ship on the yacht Ella?"
"On July 27."
"When did she sail?"
"July 28."
"Are you a sailor by occupation?"
"No; I am a graduate of a medical college."
"What were your duties on the ship?"
"They were not well defined. I had been ill and was not strong.
I was a sort of deck steward, I suppose. I also served a few meals
in the cabin of the after house, when the butler was incapacitated."
"Where were you quartered?"
"In the forecastle, with the crew, until a day or so before the
murders. Then I moved into the after house, and slept in a
storeroom there."
"Why did you make the change?"
"Mrs. Johns, a guest, asked me to do so. She said she was nervous."
"Who slept in the after house?"
"Mr. and Mrs. Turner, Miss Lee, Mrs. Johns, and Mr. Vail. The
stewardess, Mrs. Sloane, and Karen Hansen, a maid, also slept there;
but their room opened from the chartroom."
A diagram of the after house was here submitted to the jury. For
the benefit of the reader, I reproduce it roughly. I have made no
attempt to do more than to indicate the relative positions of rooms
and companionways.
_____
Forward |_____|Compartment
___________________________|_____|_____________________________
\ bath \ |_____| / /
\___ ___\ |_____| /Turner's/
Mrs.\ \ /room_ __/
John's\ /____/ /
room \ \ Main Cabin / / /
\___ ___\ / /_ _/bath
Mrs. \ \ / Vail's /room
Turner's \___ \ /________/
room \ \ / ______/linen
\ \____\ /__/store/
bath \ \ \ /__ room /
\ \ \ /___/____/
\__\ /general /
Miss \ \ /supplies/
Lee's \ \ /________/
room \_______\______ _____/________/butler's
\_maid's\ Chart Room / pantry
\\ room used as library /
bunk---\\ ___ \ and lounge____ /
\_\__\__\_________|____|_/
bunk (wheel)|____|
"State what happened on the night of August 11 and early morning of
August 12."
"I slept in the storeroom in the after house. As it was very hot, I
always left the door open. The storeroom itself was a small room,
lined with shelves, and reached by a passageway. The door was at
the end of the passage. I wakened because of the heat, and found the
door locked on the outside. I lit a match, and found I could unscrew
the lock with my knife. I thought I had been locked in as a joke by
the crew. While I was kneeling, some one passed outside the door."
"How did you know that?"
"I felt a board rise under my knee as if the other end had been trod
on. Shortly after, a woman screamed, and I burst open the door."
"How long after you felt the board rise?"
"Perhaps a minute, possibly two."
"Go on."
"Just after, the ship's bell struck six--three o'clock. The main
cabin was dark. There was a light in the chart-room, from the
binnacle light. I felt my way to Mr. Vail's room. I heard him
breathing. His door was open. I struck a match and looked at him.
He had stopped breathing."
"What was the state of his bunk?"
"Disordered--horrible. He was almost hacked to pieces."
"Go on."
"I ran back and got my revolver. I thought there had been a mutiny-"
"Confine yourself to what you saw and did. The court is not
interested in what you thought."
"I am only trying to explain what I did. I ran back to the
storeroom and got my revolver, and ran back through the chart-room
to the after companion, which had a hood. I thought that if any
one was lying in ambush, the hood would protect me until I could
get to the deck. I told the helmsman what had happened, and ran
forward. Mr. Singleton was on the forecastle-head. We went below
together, and found the captain lying at the foot of the forward
companion, also dead."
"At this time, had you called the owner of the ship?"
"No. I called him then. But I could not rouse him."
"Explain what you mean by that."
"He had been drinking."
There followed a furious wrangle over this point; but the
prosecuting attorney succeeded in having question and answer stand.
"What did you do next?"
"The mate had called the crew. I wakened Mrs. Turner, Miss Lee,
and Mrs. Johns, and then went to the chart-room to call the women
there. The door was open an inch or so. I received no answer to
my knock, and pulled it open. Karen Hansen, the maid, was dead
on the floor, and the stewardess was in her bunk, in a state of
collapse."
"State where you found the axe with which the crimes were committed."
"It was found in the stewardess's bunk."
"Where is this axe now?"
"It was stolen from the captain's cabin, where it was locked for
safe keeping, and presumably thrown overboard. At least, we didn't
find it."
"I see you are consulting a book to refresh your memory. What is
this book?"
"The ship's log."
"How does it happen to be in your possession?"
"The crew appointed me captain. As such, I kept the log-book. It
contains a full account of the discovery of the bodies, witnessed
by all the men."
"Is it in your writing?"
"Yes; it is in my writing."
"You read it to the men, and they signed it?"
"No; they read it themselves before they signed it."
After a wrangle as to my having authority to make a record in the
log-book, the prosecuting attorney succeeded in having the book
admitted as evidence, and read to the jury the entry of August 13.
Having thus proved the crimes, I was excused, to be recalled later.
The defense reserving its cross-examination, the doctor from the
quarantine station was called next, and testified to the manner of
death. His testimony was revolting, and bears in no way on the
story, save in one particular--a curious uniformity in the
mutilation of the bodies of Vail and Captain Richardson--a sinister
similarity that was infinitely shocking. In each case the forehead,
the two arms, and the abdomen had received a frightful blow. In
the case of the Danish girl there was only one wound--the injury
on the head.
CHAPTER XX
OLESON'S STORY
HENRIETTA SLOANE was called next.
"Your name?"
"Henrietta Sloane."
"Are you married?"
"A widow."
"When and where were you born?"
"Isle of Man, December 11 1872."
"How long have you lived in the United States?"
"Since I was two."
"Your position on the yacht Ella?"
"Stewardess."
"Before that?"
"On the Baltic, between Liverpool and New York. That was how I met
Mrs. Turner."
"Where was your room on the yacht Ella?"
"Off the chartroom."
"Will you indicate it on this diagram?"
"It was there." (Pointing.)
The diagram was shown to the jury.
"There are two bunks in this room. Which was yours?"
"The one at the side--the one opposite the door was Karen's."
"Tell what happened on the night of August 11 and morning of the
12th."
"I went to bed early. Karen Hansen had not come down by midnight.
When I opened the door, I saw why. Mr. Turner and Mr. Singleton
were there, drinking."
The defense objected to this but was overruled by the court.
"Mr. Vail was trying to persuade the mate to go on deck, before
the captain came down."
"Did they go?"
"No."
"What comment did Mr. Singleton make?"
"He said he hoped the captain would come. He wanted a chance to
get at him."
"What happened after that?"
"The captain came down and ordered the mate on deck. Mr. Vail
and the captain got Mr. Turner to his room."
"How do you know that?"
"I opened my door."
"What then?"
"Karen came down at 12.30. We went to bed. At ten minutes to
three the bell rang for Karen. She got up and put on a wrapper
and slippers. She was grumbling and I told her to put out the
light and let me sleep. As she opened the door she screamed and
fell back on the floor. Something struck me on the shoulder, and
I fainted. I learned later it was the axe."
"Did you hear any sound outside, before you opened the door?"
"A curious chopping sound. I spoke of it to her. It came from
the chart-room."
"When the girl fell back into the room, did you see any one beyond
her?"
"I saw something--I couldn't say just what."
"Was what you saw a figure?"
"I--I am not certain. It was light--almost white."
"Can you not describe it?"
"I am afraid not--except that it seemed white."
"How tall was it?"
"I couldn't say."
"As tall as the girl?"
"Just about, perhaps."
"Think of something that it resembled. This is important, Mrs.
Sloane. You must make an effort."
"I think it looked most like a fountain."
Even the jury laughed at this, and yet, after all, Mrs. Sloane
was right--or nearly so!
"That is curious. How did it resemble a fountain?"
"Perhaps I should have said a fountain in moonlight white, and
misty, and--and flowing."
"And yet, this curious-shaped object threw the axe at you, didn't it?"
There was an objection to the form of this question, but the court
overruled it.
"I did not say it threw the axe. I did not see it thrown. I felt
it."
"Did you know the first mate, Singleton, before you met on the Ella?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where?"
"We were on the same vessel two years ago, the American, for Bermuda."
"Were you friends?"
"Yes"--very low.
"Were you engaged to marry him at one time?"
"Yes."
"Why did you break it off?"
"We differed about a good many things."
After a long battle, the prosecuting attorney was allowed to show
that, following the breaking off of her relations with Singleton,
she had been a witness against him in an assault-and-battery case,
and had testified to his violence of temper. The dispute took so
long that there was only time for her cross-examination. The
effect of the evidence, so far, was distinctly bad for Singleton.
His attorney, a young and intelligent Jew, cross-examined Mrs. Sloane.
Attorney for the defense: "Did you ever write a letter to the
defendant, Mrs. Sloane, threatening him if he did not marry you?"
"I do not recall such a letter."
"Is this letter in your writing?"
"I think so. Yes."
"Mrs. Sloane, you testify that you opened your door and saw Mr. Vail
and the captain taking Mr. Turner to his room. Is this correct?"
"Yes."
"Why did they take him? I mean, was he not able, apparently, to
walk alone?"
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