The Tragedy of Z (29 page)

And we waited again.

A half-hour before eleven o'clock, we all very quietly left Father Muir's. Inside the house, surrounded by four large young men in uniform, crouched Fanny Kaiser.

We strode, a silent party, toward the main gate of Algonquin Prison. It was dark now, and the lights of the prison were so many monster eyes against the black sky.

I shall never lose the horrible clarity of the next half-hour. I could not understand what the Governor and Mr. Lane were contemplating, and I was sick with the fear that something would go wrong. But from the moment we stepped through the archway into the yard everything moved on mysteriously oiled hinges. The Governor's presence galvanized the keepers on duty. His authority was naturally unquestioned; we secured entrance at once. Off at the corner of the quadrangle we could see the lights of the condemned cells and feel the sinister rustle of preparation from within those solid gray walls. There was no sound from the cell-blocks, and the keepers were nervous and twitchy in their movements.

The Governor sharply commanded the keepers who had admitted us to remain about us, forbidding them to pass word of our arrival along to the rest of the prison personnel. The men obeyed without question, although I caught curious glances.… And so, without speaking, we waited in a dark corner of the flood-lighted yard.

The minute-hand of my wrist-watch crept on. Father muttered incessantly beneath his breath.

I saw now, from the tense expression on his face, that it was a vital part of Drury Lane's plan to wait until the very last moment before the execution before going into action. The danger to Dow, of course, was minimized by the presence of the Governor; but I could find little comfort in this, and as the minutes dragged by, creeping closer to the fatal instant, I felt more and more like shrieking a protest and dashing madly across the yard to that silent bulky building facing us.…

At one minute to eleven, the Governor stiffened and said something very sharply to the keepers. And then, on the dead run, we all flashed across the yard to the death-house.

It was exactly eleven when we burst into the condemned block. It was eleven-one when, as grim as fate, Governor Bruno brushed aside two keepers and swung open the door of the death-chamber.

I shall never forget the absolute horror on the faces of the people in the death-chamber as we burst in. It was as if we were Vandals desecrating the inner shrine of some latter-day temple of the Vestal Virgins, or Philistines trampling the altar-cloth of the Holy of Holies. The scene—my memories are episodic, stereopticon. It was almost as if each instant was a life-time in itself, during the eternal course of which a facial expression, a movement of a hand, or a nod of a head were unshakably fixed in the realm of space-time.

The fact that I was half-suffocated by excitement made me forget that this scene was probably unprecedented among lawful executions, that we were making the most dramatic moment in penal history.

I saw everyone and everything. In the electric chair sat Aaron Dow, poor wretch, his eyes tightly closed; one keeper was binding his legs, another his torso, and a third his arms, while a fourth was shocked into suspended animation in the act of lowering a cloth before Aaron Dow's eyes. All four men stopped what they were doing, mouths agape, stricken absolutely motionless. Warden Magnus, standing a few feet from the Chair, watch in hand, never moved a hair's-breadth from his position. Father Muir, faint with excitement, leaned against one of the three other keepers. As for the rest … Three men, obviously the court officials; the twelve witnesses—among whom I saw with a sense of shock, the dumbly astonished face of Elihu Clay, and recalled in a flash what Jeremy had said; the two prison doctors; the executioner, his left hand busy with some apparatus in his lethal cubicle.…

The Governor said sharply: “Warden, stop this execution!”

Aaron Dow opened his eyes, almost in mild surprise. The fleeting expression in them was glazed there. As if this was a signal, animation returned to the frozen actors in the tableau. The four keepers around the Chair looked bewildered, and jerked their heads inquiringly toward the warden. The warden blinked, and looked with a kind of glassy stupefaction at the dial of his watch. Father Muir uttered a formless little cry, and a flush surged into his pale cheeks. The others gaped and turned to one another and a little buzz arose which was instantly stilled as Warden Magnus took a step forward and said: “But——”

Drury Lane said quickly: “Warden, Aaron Dow is innocent. We have new testimony which completely absolves him of the charge of murder for which he was sentenced to death. The Governor …”

And then something happened which had, I am sure, no precedent in thes tragedies of the law. Ordinarily, with the Governor's reprieve coming on the threshold of the death-chamber, the condemned man would have been at once removed to his cell, the witnesses and others present would have been excused, and that would have been the end of it. But this was a very special occasion. It had been planned to a hair. It demanded, as I now was certain, a revelation in the chamber itself. But what they hoped to accomplish, the Governor and Mr. Lane, by this melodramatic procedure …

They were all too stunned, I think, to protest; and if any of the officials present were moved to question the propriety of the proceedings, the tight forbidding set of Governor Bruno's handsome jaw kept them silent.… And then it was all forgotten as the old gentleman, taking his stand quietly at the electric chair at the side of the cowering, motionless little old man who had been snatched from the arms of death, began to speak; and from his first word there was cathedral silence from his audience.

Tersely, rapidly, more clearly than I had been able in all my expositions of the theory to expound it, Drury Lane went through the original deductions from the murder of Senator Fawcett; showing how Aaron Dow could not, being left-handed, have committed the crime; and how the real murderer was right-handed.

“Then,” said the old gentleman in his rich and thrilling voice, “it is reasonable to say that the murderer, in deliberately using his left hand when ordinarily he would have used his right, was deliberately therefore making the commission of the crime consistent with Aaron Dow as the criminal. In other words, the murderer was, as we say, ‘framing' Aaron Dow for a crime Aaron Dow did not commit.

“Now please attend carefully, gentlemen. In order to frame Aaron Dow, what did the murderer have to know about Aaron Dow? From the facts, three things:

“One. He had to know that Dow had lost the use of his right arm
after
admission to Algonquin, and now had the use of his left arm only;

“Two. That Dow actually was intending to visit Senator Fawcett on the murder-night; and, in order to know this, that Dow was officially being released from prison that day;

“Three. That Dow possessed motive for a hypothetical crime involving Senator Fawcett as the victim.

“Let us discuss them in order,” went on the old gentleman smoothly. “Who could have known that Dow had lost the use of his right arm while in Algonquin? Warden Magnus told us that the man had had no letters, no visitors for some twelve years. And moreover had sent no letters through the regular channels. Through the illicit channel provided by Tabb, the letter-smuggling asistant librarian of the prison, Dow had sent only one letter: the original blackmailing note addressed to Senator Fawcett, and we know what was in that note. It said nothing about his arm. Further, Dow had never once been outside the prison walls between the time his right arm was paralyzed ten years ago, and his official release. He had no family, then, no friends. There was one individual, it is true, from the outside world who saw Aaron Dow during this period. I refer to Senator Fawcett himself, who visited the prison carpentry shop—that occasion on which Dow recognized the Senator. But at this time we have reason to believe, from testimony, that the Senator did not recognize Dow; and it is scarcely probable that, in a room with a score of prisoners, he would not only single out Dow but remember that there was something wrong with Dow's right arm. So we may discount that.” Mr. Lane smiled briefly. “In other words, we have every right to assume the powerful probability that the only one who could have learned of the loss of Dow's right arm was
someone connected with the prison
—inmate, trusty, official, or civilian regularly working for Algonquin.”

There was black silence in the brilliantly lighted death-chamber. Thus far I myself had gone—not so sharply, perhaps, but I had seen the indications. And I knew, too, what was coming. The others remained rooted to their little patches of floor as if their feet were imbedded in the cement.

“There is an alternative explanation,” continued Mr. Lane. “That the man who framed Dow, and who therefore had to know that Dow had become left-handed while in Algonquin, secured this information and all other information pertaining to Dow from some accomplice who was inside the prison.

“One of these explanations is correct. Which? I shall demonstrate that the more powerful theory—that of Dow's framer being himself with Algonquin Prison—is also the correct one.

“Follow closely. There were five sealed envelopes on Senator Fawcett's desk when he was stabbed to death. One of these envelopes provided the salient clue, which I should not have been able to follow through had not Miss Patience Thumm, in her admirably photographic summary of the first murder, reported it to me. Upon the envelope appeared the impression of a paper-clip—no, let me amend that; not one impression but
two;
for there was a distinct impression of the clip on each side of the envelope's face, one to the left, therefore, and one to the right. Yet, upon the letter's being opened by the district attorney, only
one
paper-clip was found inside! But how could a single paper-clip have left two different impressions on opposite ends of the same surface?”

Someone drew a long whistling breath. The old gentleman leaned forward, so that his body blocked out the quiet body of Aaron Dow, still seated in the electric chair. “I shall show you how. Carmichael, Senator Fawcett's secretary, had seen his employer hastily insert the enclosure into this envelope, and as hastily seal it. Common sense dictates, then, that in pressing down upon the flap to seal the envelope, the Senator caused one impression of the single paper-clip inside. But we found two impressions in different places. There can be only one explanation.” He paused for a moment. “Someone had opened the sealed envelope, removed the enclosure, and then in slipping the enclosure back had inadvertently replaced the enclosure in a reverse position from the position in which it had been lying when he first opened the envelope; then, in resealing the envelope and again pressing down on the flap, once more an impression of the paper-clip inside was produced, but this time at the other end of the face, since the paper-clip was now in an entirely different position.

“Now, who could have reopened that envelope?” went on the old gentleman crisply. “As we have seen, only two possible individuals are involved: the Senator himself and the single visitor seen by Carmichael entering and leaving the house during the general murder-period—the visitor who must have been, as demonstrated, both murderer and burner of the letter, ashes of which were found in the fireplace.

“Did the Senator himself reopen
his own letter
after Carmichael's departure and before the arrival of his visitor? Theoretically he might have, I grant you; but we must go by the common probabilities also, and I ask you: Why should he have reopened his own letter? To make a correction? But there was no correction made; the enclosures of all the letters corresponded exactly with the carbons. To refresh his memory as to what he had dictated and caused to be typed? Rubbish! There was a carbon available right on his desk.

“But even aside from this, had the Senator desired to open the envelope, he would have
sliced
it open and made out a new envelope later, especially since he had told Carmichael the letters might be mailed the next morning. But the envelope obviously was not a fresh one; it had the two clip impressions, and if it had been a new one would have shown only one clip impression. Therefore the envelope was not only opened, but it was the
same
envelope that had been originally sealed. How was it done? There was an electric percolator near the desk; it was still warm after the murder; apparently then (in the absence of other evidence of how the envelope might have been opened) the letter had been
steamed
open. Ah, but we have arrived at the crux of the matter!
Would Senator Fawcett have steamed open his own letter?”

From the manikin nods of all heads, it was evident that the old gentleman's audience was in tense and breathless sympathy with his dialetic. He smiled faintly and continued.

“Then if Senator Fawcett did not open that envelope, it must have been opened by his visitor, the only other person who entered and left the house during the murder-period.

“Now, what was the precise nature of this envelope, to have caught the eye of the visitor—
id est,
the murderer—and compelled him, against all dictates of prudence, to open it on the scene of his crime? It was addressed to the Warden of Algonquin Prison and a notation on the envelope stated that its contents referred to a given letter-file, on the subject of
‘Algonquin Promotion.'
Mark that, please; it is of the gravest importance.”

I caught a glimpse of Elihu Clay's face; it was livid, and he stroked his chin with fingers that quivered.

“All along we have had two alternatives, you will recall: one—the strong one—that the murderer was connected with the prison; two—the weak one—that the murderer was not connected with the prison but had an accomplice on the inside who supplied him with all needed information. Now, suppose this latter were the case; suppose the murderer was not connected with the prison but was an outsider with an inside informant. What conceivable interest would he have in opening a letter which deals with ‘proposed promotions' in Algonquin Prison? If he was an outsider, he would certainly for himself have no interest whatever. Then for his inside-the-prison informant, you say? But why bother? The promotion, if it came to his accomplice, could not possibly affect the murderer personally; if it did not come, then he still lost nothing. The hypothetical outsider then, we may say with perfect assurance, would not have opened that envelope.