Munsey's Magazine/Volume 86/Issue 4/The Unwritten Story/Chapter 19
XIX
Dr. Mayhew, aroused from profound slumber by the ringing of his bedside telephone, heard a tense voice that summoned him at once to the house of Elijah Lockwood, his best and oldest friend.
“Well, what's the matter? What's happened?” he demanded, still muzzy with sleep. “Who's talking? What is it?”
“Mrs. Forrester talking. I can't tell you over the phone; but come quick—quick!”
“Something serious?”
“No questions—only come!”
He heard the click of the receiver being hung up.
“Damn it, that's just like a woman!” he growled, with a sick sense of tragedy clutching at his heart. “I only hope it isn't Elijah! He was all right—seemed to be all right—when I left him a couple of hours ago.”
Ten minutes later the brass-knockered door of his house boomed shut after him, and he was hurrying up Beacon Street at his best pace—not a very swift pace, at that, for Dr. Mayhew's age had brought him rotundity and shortness of breath.
He knew at once that something of tragic import was forward when, in answer to his ring at Lockwood's door, Miss Grush—a singular figure without her wig—opened it, with Mrs. Forrester standing close behind her.
Not for an instant, since the housekeeper had tried to telephone, had the other woman let her out of view. The housekeeper, older and more feeble, had not dared to try conclusions of physical force. Now Mrs. Forrester dominated the situation; but her pallor, the panic in her dark eyes, sufficiently betrayed her stress, confirming the doctor's fears.
“I'm glad you're here, I am!” began Miss Grush. “There's doings here that's got to be cleared up, and—”
“Well, what's the matter?” Mayhew wheezed asthmatically, coming in and shutting the door. “What's going on? Who's ill? You wouldn't call me out of bed for that colored wench. Must be Lockwood. Serious?”
“Yes, indeed, it's serious,” answered Mrs, Forrester.
“How serious?”
“You've got to see for yourself, doctor.”
“It 'll be serious for more than him, too, before some parties get through with it, it will!” the housekeeper affirmed with malice. 'I'll say no more—just leave the evidence to you!”
“Evidence? What the devil d'you mean, evidence? What's between you two women? What's up here?”
“You'll see, in the library,” Mrs. Forrester told him, her white lips struggling to form the words.
“By God, I'll soon get at the bottom of this!”
Dr. Mayhew forgot both his years and his avoirdupois as he ran up the stairway. Mrs. Forrester came after; and behind her followed Miss Grush, muttering broken and poisonous words.
Into the library strode Dr. Mayhew, calling the name of his old friend. He glanced at the broad divan near the street windows, thinking to find him there, stricken with some sudden illness.
“Well, where is he?”
“There!” And Mrs. Forrester pointed.
“Hello, what's this?” cried the doctor, seeing her hand. “Blood?”
She only gestured toward the big chair.
“It's blood, doctor!” the housekeeper shrilled. “It's his! When I come in, I found her with the knife in her hand, and—”
But Mayhew was not listening. He had run forward, and was already at his old friend's side.
“Elijah!” he cried in a choked voice, down beside him on the rug. For a moment Mayhew was no longer an eminent physician—only a man. He reverted to the name of boyhood days together: “Lije! Speak to me, Lije, old man!”
But this was only for a moment. Swiftly he knew the truth. Self-mastery returned. Kneeling there, he faced the women.
“Who did this?” His voice was terrible. “Who?”
“She did!” vociferated the housekeeper. “Let her deny it if she can. I heard a noise an' come right in that door—an' there she was, with the knife in her hand! See the knife there, on the floor where she dropped it? And him layin' there!”
Mayhew sprang up and advanced with menace.
“True, eh?”
“No!” Mrs. Forrester denied. “Not true that I killed him—as God hears me, o! When I heard—something, I don't know just what, but it sounded like a body falling—I came downstairs. I saw the knife, and picked it up. I saw him there. She—Miss Grush—was here, all dressed. What was she doing, all dressed, this time of night? She accused me—”
“There's hell's own work going on here!” the doctor cried. “There's murder, and one of you knows who did it! I'll have the truth out of you two, by God, if I have to tear it out with my hands! Who killed him?”
“He'd have found out that she was a faker, and wouldn't have left her a penny!” the housekeeper venomously asserted.
“No, that won't do,” Mayhew denied. “I tried to tell him that myself. I felt that there was fraud in all this, but he was convinced. We came near a quarrel over it, so I kept still; but the knife—the blood on your hand—”
“Doctor, listen!” Mrs. Forrester strove to speak calmly. “If it comes to a motive, nobody had any motive but the housekeeper here.”
“What? What's that?” shrilled Miss Grush. “You're tryin' to shift it from your own wicked shoulders to mine, you—”
“Hold on!” cried the doctor. “What motive?”
“The will! He was going to make a new one, giving everything to my daughter and me, and taking it away from Miss Grush; but he delayed for a few days. To-morrow he had an appointment with a lawyer—”
“Let her tell it!” the housekeeper railed. “A likely story, that I'd kill the man I've worked an' slaved for all these twenty-seven years! Accusin' me, eh? Makin' me out a murderer?” Her face grew livid. She advanced on Mrs. Forrester, her fist up and shaking. “Doctor, don't you listen to such a wicked, hellish lie! I tell you—I—I—oh!”
Suddenly the old woman's clamor ceased. Her hands groped unsteadily. Swift terror was writ large upon that wrinkled face of hate. She sagged down, uttering grotesque and formless sounds.
“Oh, my head!” she gasped.
Then she fell. Oddly writhen, she stumbled and collapsed prone across the rug, at Dr. Mayhew's very feet.
“God above!” he cried. “What is this—a madhouse?”
For a moment, while Mrs. Forrester stared with wide eyes of terror, the doctor remained motionless. He stood there looking down at the housekeeper, who was breathing stertorously, lying with half closed eyes—an object almost as ghastly as the crumpled heap beside the fireplace.
Then, as sometimes happens in moments of supreme stress and tragedy, the very horror of it snapped the thread. Dr. Mayhew laughed with macabre reaction.
“I seem to have two objects of professional solicitude here,” he uttered dryly, “instead of one; and the living always take precedence of the dead.”
He knelt, lifted Miss Grush's lids, and examined her pupils. The left showed unnatural dilation.
“She's had a stroke?” asked Mrs. Forrester. “Another?”
“Yes—her last.”
He picked her up and carried her to her room. Then he returned and knelt again by his murdered friend. For a moment the old doctor groaned and uttered broken words; but he drew a tight rein on his emotions, for this was now no time to yield. He was about to gather up the body and lay it on the divan. Second thought, however, restrained him.
“No, no—not till the police get here!”
“Police?” gasped Mrs. Forrester. “You mean—”
“Of course they've got to come!” he retorted, as he got up and went to the telephone. “If you're innocent, you have nothing to fear. If you're not, God knows I hope you get the limit!”
“I am innocent, so far as killing him; but—”
“Oh, I know what you mean—this business of being his daughter. Well, that's not my affair. I'll have nothing to say about that. He's gone now, and I don't want the world laughing at him as the dupe of a charlatan. Now, keep still!”
The doctor's nerves were steel again. Full self-control had returned. In steady tones he called police headquarters, Pemberton Square.
“Hello?” he heard the voice of the lieutenant at the desk.
“Dr. Mayhew speaking—Everett Mayhew. There's been foul play at 42 A Beacon Street. I'm there now. Send up a couple of men!”
“Right-o! I'll send a sergeant, too, directly.”
“Good! Quicker the better!”
Mayhew rang off. Grim-faced, but coldly impersonal now, as if in any stranger's house, he returned to keep vigil by the crumpled thing that lay so still before the smoldering fire.
“This here looks like a regular, old-fashioned, first-class murder,” judged Sergeant McCarthy, as he and two of his patrolmen viewed the body. “We'll have the coroner up here as quick as we can get him. Who lives here with him? Who was here when it happened?”
“Only two women,” Dr. Mayhew answered; “Miss Grush, his housekeeper, and Mrs. Forrester here, his daughter. The colored maid seems to have taken French leave. Mrs. Forrester's daughter is away—in Worcester, I believe.”
“I'd like to interview that colored maid!” growled McCarthy curtly. “We'll get hold of her pretty quick! Where's the housekeeper?”
“In her room, and—”
“Let's have her on the carpet!”
“No use. She had an apoplectic stroke, a few minutes after I got here, and I doubt very much whether she'll live till morning.”
“Stroke, eh? Sure, there's been lively doings in this house, what? Stabbed to death with his own paper knife!” McCarthy gestured at the knife, which now lay on the long table. “Mrs. Forrester—you—what d'you know about this?”
“I—I was lying awake,” Mrs. Forrester managed to answer. “I heard a noise, came downstairs, and found Mr. Lockwood lying there. Miss Grush came in, fully dressed—came in by that door, there, and accused me of—murdering him. Then I phoned for the doctor, and—”
“Hello!” exclaimed McCarthy. “Blood on your hand!”
“That doesn't prove anything,” cut in the doctor. “There's blood on mine, too.”
“I don't know about that!” the sergeant exclaimed. “That's different. How did this woman—”
“I picked up the knife, and—”
“Damn the luck! If the housekeeper hadn't had a stroke, we could check up on the two stories. Any robbery here?” Anything stolen?
“There's something gone from the top of that bookcase!” cried Mrs. Forrester. “It was there last night, and it's gone now.”
“Gone? What's gone?”
“A wooden box.”
McCarthy strode to the bookcase, produced a flash light, and painted a beam of white radiance along the top.
“Something's been moved away from here, that's right,” he agreed. “There's a little place not as dusty as on both sides. Box, eh?” He turned back. “What was in it?”
“A skull.”
“What?”
“Yes, that's true,” the doctor agreed. “Mr. Lockwood kept a skull in it. I've seen it several times; and it's certainly gone now.”
“Skull? What kind of a skull? What is this, anyhow—a museum? Why would anybody want to grab a skull? Who would murder a man to get it?”
“It happens to be a very special kind of skull,” the doctor explained, a new light in his eyes, while Mrs. Forrester and the two patrolmen listened with silent intensity. “It's part of Mr. Lockwood's collection of curios, gathered all over the world. It came from Africa—belonged to a negro witch doctor. I'll wager a year's income some negro wanted it for voodoo work. Your trail's going to lead to Darktown!”
“By God, now we're getting warm! This checks up with some dope we've been getting from Roxbury, the last few days. How would any coon get in here, though?”
“Might be an inside job, sergeant,” put in one of the patrolmen. “There's the maid, you know, and—”
“There's an L at the back of the house, officer,” said Dr. Mayhew, pointing. “Its roof comes up almost to that window there.”
McCarthy walked to the window and once more used his flash light.
“Here we are!” he exultantly exclaimed. “Looka here!”
The doctor came close, peering.
“Where? What?”
McCarthy threw up the window, which was unlocked.
“Look at that on the sill, will you?”
“Blood, by—”
“Yes, and on top of the sash, too. If some nigger didn't raise this sash with a bloody hand, and then leave four big fingerprints on the sill, lowering himself down to that roof, I'm an Orangeman!” McCarthy turned back, smiling with immense self-satisfaction. “He's prob'ly—”
“Might have got in here, not knowing there was anybody in the library,” suggested Mayhew. 'Lockwood was very likely asleep in his chair, and—”
“Woke up, started to say somethin'—”
“Yes! A man sitting in that big chair, back to the window, couldn't be seen from there.”
“And the coon knifed him, grabbed what he wanted, and—well, it's good. It holds water. I can't make an arrest here—not with them finger-prints on the sill; but that woman”—he pointed at Mrs. Forrester—“I've got to hold her as a material witness.”
“All right! I'll be responsible for her appearance,” declared the doctor. “You know who I am.”
“Sure I do. That's good enough for me. Now, then, here's where the department gets busy. A fine, old-fashioned, first-class job this is, by God, if ever I saw one!”