Читать книгу The Darrow Enigma - Melvin L. Severy - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Silence is the only tender Death can make to Mystery.

The look of pain and astonishment upon my face said plainly enough to Gwen:

“Your father is dead.” I could not speak. In the presence of her great affliction we all stood silent, and with bowed heads. I had thought Darrow’s attack the result of an overwrought mental condition which would speedily readjust itself, and had so counted upon his daughter’s influence as all but certain to immediately result in a temporary cure. When, therefore, I found him dead without any apparent cause, I was, for the time being, too dazed to think, much less to act, and I think the other gentlemen were quite as much incapacitated as I. My first thought, when I recovered so that I could think, was of Gwen. I felt sure her reason must give way under the strain, and I thought of going nearer to her in case she should fall, but refrained when I noticed that Maitland had noiselessly glided within easy reach of her. To move seemed impossible to me. Such a sudden transition from warm, vigorous life to cold, impassive death seems to chill the dynamic rivers of being into a horrible winter, static and eternal. Though death puts all things in the past tense, even we physicians cannot but be strangely moved when the soul thus hastily deserts the body without the usual farewell of an illness.

Contrary to my expectations Gwen did not faint. For a long time—it may not have been more than twenty minutes, but it seemed, under the peculiar circumstances, at least an hour—she remained perfectly impassive. She neither changed colour nor exhibited any other sign of emotion. She stood gazing quietly, tenderly, at her father’s body as if he were asleep and she were watching for some indication of his awakening. Then a puzzled expression came over her countenance. There was no trace of sorrow in it, only the look of perplexity. I decided to break the gruesome silence, but the thought of how my own voice would sound in that awe-inspired stillness frightened me. Gwen herself was the first to speak. She looked up with the same impassive countenance, from which now the perplexed look had fled, and said simply:

“Gentlemen, what is to be done?” Her voice was firm and sane—that it was pitched lower than usual and had a suggestion of intensity in it, was perfectly natural. I thought she did not realise her loss and said: “He has gone past recall.” “Yes,” she replied, “I know that, but should we not send for an officer?” “An officer!” I exclaimed. “Is it possible you entertain a doubt that your father’s death resulted from natural causes?” She looked at me a moment fixedly, and then said deliberately: “My father was murdered!” I was so surprised and pained that, for a moment, I could not reply, and no one else sought to break the silence.

Maitland, as if Gwen’s last remark had given rise to a sudden determination, glided to the body. He examined the throat, raised the right hand and looked at the fingers: then he stepped back a little and wrote something in his note-book. This done, he tried the folding doors and found them locked on the inside; then the two windows on the south side of the room, which he also found fastened. He opened the hall door slightly and the hinges creaked noisily, of all of which he made a note. Then taking a rule from his pocket he went to the east window, and measured the opening, and then the distance between this window and the chair in which the old gentleman had sat, recording his results as before. His next act astonished me not a little and had the effect of recalling me to my senses. With his penknife he cut a circle in the carpet around each leg of the chair on which the body rested. He continued his examinations with quiet thoroughness, but I ceased now to follow him closely, since I had begun to feel the necessity of convincing Gwen of her error, and was casting about for the best way to do so.

“My dear Miss Darrow,” I said at length; “you attach too much importance to the last words of your father, who, it is clear, was not in his right mind. You must know that he has, for some months, had periods of temporary aberration, and that all his delusions have been of a sanguinary nature. Try to think calmly,” I said, perceiving from her expression that I had not shaken her conviction in the least. “Your father said he had been stabbed. You must see that such a thing is physically impossible. Had all the doors and windows been open, no object so large as a man could possibly have entered or left the room without our observing him; but the windows were closed and fastened, with the exception of the east window, which, as you may see for yourself, is open some six inches or so, in which position it is secured by the spring fastening. The folding doors are locked on the inside and the only possible means of entrance, therefore, would have been by the hall door. Directly in front of that, between it and your father, sat Mr. Maitland and myself. You see by my chair that I was less than two feet from the door. It is inconceivable that, in that half-light, anyone could have used that entrance and escaped observation. Do you not see how untenable your idea is? Had your father been stabbed he would have bled, but I am as certain as though I had made a thorough examination that there is not so much as a scratch anywhere upon his body.” Gwen heard me through in silence and then said wearily, in a voice which had now neither intensity nor elasticity, “I understand fully the apparent absurdity of my position, yet I know my father was murdered. The wound which caused his death has escaped your notice, but—”

“My dear Miss Darrow,” I interrupted, “there is no wound, you may be sure of that!” For the first time since Darrow’s death Maitland spoke. “If you will look at the throat a little more closely, you will see what may be a wound,” he said, and went on quietly with his examinations. He was right; there was a minute abrasion visible. The girl’s quick observation had detected what had escaped me, convinced as I was that there was nothing to be found by a scrutiny however close.

Gwen now transferred her attention to Maitland, and asked: “Had not one of us better go for an officer?” Maitland, whose power of concentration is so remarkable as on some occasions to render him utterly oblivious of his surroundings, did not notice the question and Browne replied to it for him. “I should be only too happy to fetch an officer for you, if you wish,” he said. Have you ever noticed how acute the mind is for trifles and slight incongruities when under the severe tension of such a shock as we had experienced? Such attacks, threatening to invade and forever subjugate our happiness, seem to have the effect of so completely manning the ramparts of our intellect the nothing, however trivial, escapes observation. Gwen’s father, her only near relative, lay cold before her—his death, from her standpoint, the most painful of mysteries—and yet the incongruity of Browne’s “only too happy” did not escape her, as was evident by the quick glance and sudden relaxation of the mouth into the faintest semblance of a smile. All this was momentary and, I doubt not, half unconscious. She replied gravely:

“I would indeed be obliged if you would do so.”

Maitland, who had now finished his examination, noticed that Browne was about to depart. When the artist would have passed him on his way to the hall door, he placed his hand upon that gentleman’s shoulder, saying: “Pardon me, sir, but I would strongly urge that you do not leave the room!”

Browne paused. Both men stood like excited animals at gaze.