“Good.” He looked about the dark hot dining room, where the windows were shut as usual against even the slightest breeze or touch of sun. Not that he cared for the sun lately, for he had never experienced such prolonged heat and dryness for so long a time, and there seemed no end to it. Each day the sky became more yellow, as if it were jaundiced, and once or twice a day thick black clouds would gather and darken the earth, but it never rained, and soon the sun would be out again, as fierce as ever. Robert said, “What did you say, Mother?”
Jane Morgan’s grim gray face was simpering. “I do wish you’d listen, Robert. I merely remarked that Maude Kitchener seems much taken with you.”
Robert thought of Jenny Heger and he felt the usual sick spasm of love and longing and hopelessness. He had not seen her lately. He felt that she would not welcome him on the island at this time, or perhaps never again.
“You haven’t touched your toast, Robert,” said Jane. “I don’t know what is wrong with you lately. You seem so—so concerned with something. I trust everything is going well for you in this little town?”
“It isn’t so little, Mother. Yes, everything is going well for me. I have now taken over all of Jon’s practice.” He looked at his cup of cooling coffee but did not lift it. “I wish he were not going away.”
“He is compelled to,” said Jane Morgan with acid pleasure. Robert looked up quickly.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Robert, it is town talk, not that I gossip or listen to gossip. But I do know Mrs. Beatrice Offerton quite well now. A very pleasant and comely lady, and so democratic, but yet so appreciative of our better station in Philadelphia. She knows Philadelphia, and we discovered that we have mutual friends. It may surprise you, Robert, that Mrs. Offerton has a very low opinion of that detestable man.”
Robert felt that at last he was going to hear something interesting if he did not press his mother. So he waited. Jane bridled and smirked. “Indeed,” she said. “Remember, Robert, that I never liked him, never trusted him, and never believed that he was not guilty of that crime. Mrs. Offerton quite agrees with me. She told me, only a week or so ago, or rather, I should say, hinted, that new evidence has arisen proving that he did, indeed, murder his wife.”
Robert smiled, and his mother thought that his smile was extremely odd.
“You don’t agree, Robert?”
“Of course not. Doesn’t she ever go to Washington with her brother?”
“No.”
“He is there now.” Robert picked up the newspaper
by
his plate, folded and neat and waiting. Jane had always so placed her father’s morning newspaper, and she would never have dreamed, as she did not now, of reading it before “the gentle-man of the house” had first glanced through it. Jane was annoyed that Robert treated her news so lightly and then had dismissed it. He was not looking well lately. He had lost weight He seemed preoccupied. She often heard him calling the Ferrier number, but apparently “that man” never answered his calls, and Robert would leave a message with the maid, hopelessly. Had Robert and he had a quarrel? She hoped so. She wanted no stain from “that man’s” association with her son to remain on him. She studied Robert as he listlessly unfolded the newspaper, and she thought his color was not so bright as it should be, and that there was a new melancholy on his face. Ah, well, responsibility came hard to the young. He would soon adjust to it. And there was that lovely girl, Maude Kitchener, who was definitely setting her cap for him. Jane started. Robert had suddenly uttered a loud and gleeful exclamation, and he was grinning joyously at the newspaper.
“Dear me, you quite startled me!” said Jane. But Robert was laughing uproariously, and he was handing her the newspaper over the plates, and his blue eyes were dancing.
“Do read, Mother!” he said. “You will notice that the front-page item of the
Hambledon Daily News,
in a very prominent place, has a Washington dateline. As of yesterday.”
Jane opened her glass case, put on her glasses, looked at her son suspiciously, then looked at the item he had pointed out to her. It said,
SENATOR DECLARES DR. JONATHAN FERRIER OF HAMBLEDON, PENNSYLVANIA, CLEARED OF ALL SUSPICION OF HIS WIFE’S MURDER LAST NOVEMBER!
“Oh!” said Jane incredulously. She looked at the masthead of the paper, as if suspecting a deception. She peered at the columns below the heading. Her hps, dried and stiff, pursed as if she were about to cry.
“Senator Kenton Campion, senior Senator from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, today called a conference of reporters in Washington to dear the name of one of his fellow townsman, Dr. Jonathan Ferrier, who was arrested last December for the alleged death of his wife, Mavis Eaton Ferrier, after a criminal operation. The case will be recalled as having attracted nationwide interest and publicity, due to the prominent position of Dr. Ferrier and his wife and the extraordinary brutality of the crime.
“Dr. Ferrier’s lawyer in Hambledon, Mr. Howard Best, had moved for a change of venue because of the alleged ill-feeling and indignation against Dr. Ferrier in that town. Mr. Best said that he did not believe that Dr. Ferrier would have a fair trial under the circumstances. The trial was moved to Philadelphia, and Dr. Ferrier was subsequently acquitted. Messrs. Cranbury and Oldsman, of the law firm of Cranbury, Smythe, Jordan and Oldsman, were Dr. Ferrier’s attorneys during a long, dramatic and surprising trial. The case remains a mystery to this day, as no other person has been accused of the crime, or arrested.
“Reporters from every important city in the nation were present during the trial, which occupied some four weeks of constant and repeated testimony for the defense and for the prosecution. No motive for the alleged crime was ever brought to light, and the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty after prolonged balloting. At one time Judge Henry Morrissey appeared to believe that the jury could come to no unanimous conclusion and that he would be compelled to dismiss the jury and call for a new trial. The prosecuting attorney was Mr. Nathan Campbell of Philadelphia, who expressed his disappointment eloquently after the verdict was brought in.
“Dr. Ferrier returned to Hambledon and his practice. Then he later decided to sell his practice and leave the town. This was due, it has been rumored, to the fact that the town of Hambledon did not wholly accept the verdict of the jury in Philadelphia, and there was some popular feeling against Dr. Ferrier.
“Because of this, Senator Campion stated today, he himself decided that a full investigation must be begun to clear the name of Dr. Ferrier. Senator Campion is an old friend of Dr. Ferrier and a friend of the family. ‘Yet this,’ Senator Campion declared to your reporter, ‘had no weight in my decision to see justice done and the name of an honorable man and a famous and worthy citizen of my hometown, Hambledon. restored unblemished and honored once again. Therefore, some months ago I quietly instituted an investigation of my own in behalf of Dr. Ferrier, fearless of the truth, and determined only to bring the full facts to public light.
” ‘The investigation was private and conducted through the most estimable citizens and investigators, professionals in their craft. No expense was spared. No stone was left unturned. No possible clue was ignored. The wildest statements were tracked down and proved false or true. No one who had the slightest connection with the case was overlooked. The investigators were sleepless. Finally they admitted that not a single piece of evidence pointed to Dr. Ferrier’s guilt.
” ‘Among those consulted sedulously was Dr. Martin Eaton, uncle and adoptive father of the late Mrs. Jonathan Ferrier, who had been present during all the long weeks of the trial. Dr. Eaton had been in failing health since the death of his niece, and evidence has been brought to light that he was, during the final two weeks, in a state of confusion and distress. When the verdict of ‘not guilty’ was brought in it was reported that he cried out, ‘No, no!’ He then collapsed in the courtroom, suffering from a severe stroke.
” ‘Dr. Eaton’s physical condition prevented him from making his convictions known, he told one of my investigators only three weeks ago,’ stated Senator Campion. Then I consulted him also, praying him to give me the truth. Dr. Eaton thereupon declared to me that he had never believed Dr. Ferrier to be guilty and had fully accepted the defense’s contentions that Dr. Ferrier had been in Pittsburgh during the crucial time, and had not doubted the sworn testimony of prominent physicians who had been in the company of Dr. Ferrier for several days and had been present at two operations which he had performed on well-known citizens of Pittsburgh. The reason for his ambiguous cry of ‘No, no!’ when the verdict was brought in, said Dr. Eaton, was because in his bereft and confused state of mind and grief he had believed that the jury had brought in a verdict of guilty, and therefore collapsed. He had been an invalid immured in his house since that time, receiving almost no one, and therefore was unaware that Dr. Ferrier’s name was still obscured by the suspicions of the people of Hambledon. When this was brought to his attention, by me and my investigators, he emphatically declared that at no time had he for a moment thought Dr. Ferrier guilty of the heinous crime.
” ‘Dr. Eaton also vehemently stated that the married life of Dr. Ferrier and his wife had been most happy and without a cloud, and there was no other woman in the case. Dr. Eaton,
I
regret to say, was so disturbed at hearing that his fellow townsmen still believed Dr. Ferrier guilty that he had a relapse and died on September 1st. He leaves his wife, Mrs. Flora Eaton, and several cousins in Philadelphia, but no children.
” ‘I am
delighted,’
said Senator Campion, using the word with an obvious bow to his close friend, Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt, ‘by the felicitous conclusion of this sad matter, and the final and complete exoneration of Dr. Jonathan Ferrier. The true criminal has not yet been uncovered, but that is not in my hands. I only hope now that Dr. Ferrier will forgive and forget the unjust and unfair suspicions of his fellow citizens in Hambledon and consent to remain in the town and hold his position as a member of the staffs of the two hospitals in Hambledon, and that his unstinted gifts will be as freely given to all of us who live there as they were before his arrest and trial. His father, the late Adrian Ferrier, was a leading citizen of Hambledon, a descendant of one of the Founding Fathers of the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and his mother was Miss Marjorie Farmington of the Philadelphia Farmingtons.’
“Senator Campion showed every indication of immense joy and satisfaction in the results of his selfless investigation, conducted at his own expense, and declared that he had done so not only to clear the name of a dear and valued young friend but to prove, once again, that justice is not dead in America but will rise in all her glory when her presence is demanded, and that in the Republic of the United States of America no innocent man can be unjustly condemned, unlike in certain other nations. Senator Campion was a most ardent supporter of the Spanish-American War, it will be remembered, and wished to join his friend, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, as a member of the Rough Riders. However, his age prohibited his engagement.”
Robert had been watching his mother with a most unfilial malice and enjoyment while she read. Again and again she would glance at the masthead, still hoping for a practical joke. An unbecoming color was staining her thin cheeks, and now she kept licking her lips, as if thinking some malevolent thoughts. Finally she looked up and met Robert’s smiling eyes.
She said, “Oh, that saintly, that charitable, that noble man!”
“Jon, I assume?”
“Robert! I mean Senator Campion. To perjure himself so, to spend so much money, to demean himself, a Senator of his country, to open himself selflessly to gossip and conjecture!”
Robert tried to sort this out, and failed. He called for fresh coffee. He appeared rejuvenated. “I shouldn’t suggest, if I were you, Mother, to Mrs. Offerton that her brother, the Senator, had ‘perjured’ himself. That’s a grave crime. In this case it is a libel.”
Jane was frightened. “I don’t mean it exactly so, Robert! How you always confuse my words! Oh, dear. Now I suppose that frightful man will remain in Hambledon.”
“The unblemished Senator has declared that Jon is blameless and not guilty. What better evidence would you want? A message from Gabriel, in person? I don’t know why you call Jon ‘frightful.’ You have no reason to think so. You never had. The Senator says not, himself, and if you want to remain On amiable terms with Mrs. Offerton, you had better declare it abroad that you fully agree with her brother.”
In better humor than he had been for some time, Robert went to the offices, where he was greeted by a joyfully tearful Miss Forster, waving her copy of the newspaper at him.
Jonathan, at that moment, was reading the newspaper himself. As he read, his eyes kept blurring, and there was an ominous hard pressure in his chest. Mechanically, he noted that his blood pressure was rising. He concluded the reading, and sat back in his chair in the breakfast room, and stared blindly at the opposite buffet. He could feel the bounding pulses in his neck; he felt the tightness of his skull. A burning pain shot through his left chest and then down his arm. He made himself breathe carefully and slowly, until the enraged spasm had passed. Now he was sweating.
He got up and went to his telephone in the hall. He called Louis Hedler at St. Hilda’s. He received the information that Dr. Hedler had been called hurriedly to Scranton the day before, as a relative was ill. Jon smiled a curious smile. He then called Howard Best’s house and his office. Mr. Best was in Wilkes-Barre on a short vacation with Mrs. Best. Jonathan hung up, unsurprised. As he did so the telephone began to ring. Mary, the maid, hurried into the hall. Jonathan said to her, “Mary, there will be many calls for me this morning. Tell everyone that I am not in town at present, will you?”