Chapter Chapter 1 · A GREAT CASE

. A GREAT CASE

“A deed of dreadful note.”

Macbeth.

I had been a junior partner in the firm of Veeley, Carr & Raymond,

attorneys and counsellors at law, for about a year, when one

morning, in the temporary absence of both Mr. Veeley and Mr. Carr,

there came into our office a young man whose whole appearance was

so indicative of haste and agitation that I involuntarily rose at

his approach and impetuously inquired:

“What is the matter? You have no bad news to tell, I hope.”

“I have come to see Mr. Veeley; is he in?”

“No,” I replied; “he was unexpectedly called away this morning to

Washington; cannot be home before to-morrow; but if you will make

your business known to me----”

“To you, sir?” he repeated, turning a very cold but steady eye on

mine; then, seeming to be satisfied with his scrutiny, continued,

“There is no reason why I shouldn’t; my business is no secret. I

came to inform him that Mr. Leavenworth is dead.”

“Mr. Leavenworth!” I exclaimed, falling back a step. Mr.

Leavenworth was an old client of our firm, to say nothing of his

being the particular friend of Mr. Veeley.

“Yes, murdered; shot through the head by some unknown person while

sitting at his library table.”

“Shot! murdered!” I could scarcely believe my ears.

“How? when?” I gasped.

“Last night. At least, so we suppose. He was not found till this

morning. I am Mr. Leavenworth’s private secretary,” he explained,

“and live in the family. It was a dreadful shock,” he went on,

“especially to the ladies.”

“Dreadful!” I repeated. “Mr. Veeley will be overwhelmed by it.”

“They are all alone,” he continued in a low business-like way

I afterwards found to be inseparable from the man; “the Misses

Leavenworth, I mean--Mr. Leavenworth’s nieces; and as an inquest

is to be held there to-day it is deemed proper for them to have

some one present capable of advising them. As Mr. Veeley was their

uncle’s best friend, they naturally sent me for him; but he being

absent I am at a loss what to do or where to go.”

“I am a stranger to the ladies,” was my hesitating reply, “but if

I can be of any assistance to them, my respect for their uncle is

such----”

The expression of the secretary’s eye stopped me. Without seeming

to wander from my face, its pupil had suddenly dilated till it

appeared to embrace my whole person with its scope.

“I don’t know,” he finally remarked, a slight frown, testifying to

the fact that he was not altogether pleased with the turn affairs

were taking. “Perhaps it would be best. The ladies must not be left

alone----”

“Say no more; I will go.” And, sitting down, I despatched a hurried

message to Mr. Veeley, after which, and the few other preparations

necessary, I accompanied the secretary to the street.

“Now,” said I, “tell me all you know of this frightful affair.”

“All I know? A few words will do that. I left him last night

sitting as usual at his library table, and found him this morning,

seated in the same place, almost in the same position, but with a

bullet-hole in his head as large as the end of my little finger.”

“Dead?”

“Stone-dead.”

“Horrible!” I exclaimed. Then, after a moment, “Could it have been

a suicide?”

“No. The pistol with which the deed was committed is not to be

found.”

“But if it was a murder, there must have been some motive. Mr.

Leavenworth was too benevolent a man to have enemies, and if

robbery was intended----”

“There was no robbery. There is nothing missing,” he again

interrupted. “The whole affair is a mystery.”

“A mystery?”

“An utter mystery.”

Turning, I looked at my informant curiously. The inmate of a house

in which a mysterious murder had occurred was rather an interesting

object. But the good-featured and yet totally unimpressive

countenance of the man beside me offered but little basis for

even the wildest imagination to work upon, and, glancing almost

immediately away, I asked:

“Are the ladies very much overcome?”

He took at least a half-dozen steps before replying.

“It would be unnatural if they were not.” And whether it was

the expression of his face at the time, or the nature of the

reply itself, I felt that in speaking of these ladies to

this uninteresting, self-possessed secretary of the late Mr.

Leavenworth, I was somehow treading upon dangerous ground. As I

had heard they were very accomplished women, I was not altogether

pleased at this discovery. It was, therefore, with a certain

consciousness of relief I saw a Fifth Avenue stage approach.

“We will defer our conversation,” said I. “Here’s the stage.”

But, once seated within it, we soon discovered that all intercourse

upon such a subject was impossible. Employing the time, therefore,

in running over in my mind what I knew of Mr. Leavenworth, I found

that my knowledge was limited to the bare fact of his being a

retired merchant of great wealth and fine social position who, in

default of possessing children of his own, had taken into his home

two nieces, one of whom had already been declared his heiress. To

be sure, I had heard Mr. Veeley speak of his eccentricities, giving

as an instance this very fact of his making a will in favor of

one niece to the utter exclusion of the other; but of his habits

of life and connection with the world at large, I knew little or

nothing.

There was a great crowd in front of the house when we arrived

there, and I had barely time to observe that it was a corner

dwelling of unusual depth when I was seized by the throng and

carried quite to the foot of the broad stone steps. Extricating

myself, though with some difficulty, owing to the importunities of

a bootblack and butcher-boy, who seemed to think that by clinging

to my arms they might succeed in smuggling themselves into the

house, I mounted the steps and, finding the secretary, by some

unaccountable good fortune, close to my side, hurriedly rang the

bell. Immediately the door opened, and a face I recognized as that

of one of our city detectives appeared in the gap.

“Mr. Gryce!” I exclaimed.

“The same,” he replied. “Come in, Mr. Raymond.” And drawing us

quietly into the house, he shut the door with a grim smile on the

disappointed crowd without. “I trust you are not surprised to see

me here,” said he, holding out his hand, with a side glance at my

companion.

“No,” I returned. Then, with a vague idea that I ought to

introduce the young man at my side, continued: “This is Mr.

----, Mr. ----,--excuse me, but I do not know your name,” I said

inquiringly to my companion. “The private secretary of the late Mr.

Leavenworth,” I hastened to add.

“Oh,” he returned, “the secretary! The coroner has been asking for

you, sir.”

“The coroner is here, then?”

“Yes; the jury have just gone up-stairs to view the body; would you

like to follow them?”

“No, it is not necessary. I have merely come in the hope of being

of some assistance to the young ladies. Mr. Veeley is away.”

“And you thought the opportunity too good to be lost,” he went on;

“just so. Still, now that you are here, and as the case promises to

be a marked one, I should think that, as a rising young lawyer, you

would wish to make yourself acquainted with it in all its details.

But follow your own judgment.”

I made an effort and overcame my repugnance. “I will go,” said I.

“Very well, then, follow me.”

But just as I set foot on the stairs I heard the jury descending,

so, drawing back with Mr. Gryce into a recess between the reception

room and the parlor, I had time to remark:

“The young man says it could not have been the work of a burglar.”

“Indeed!” fixing his eye on a door-knob near by.

“That nothing has been found missing--”

“And that the fastenings to the house were all found secure this

morning; just so.”

“He did not tell me that. In that case”--and I shuddered--“the

murderer must have been in the house all night.”

Mr. Gryce smiled darkly at the door-knob.

“It has a dreadful look!” I exclaimed.

Mr. Gryce immediately frowned at the door-knob.

And here let me say that Mr. Gryce, the detective, was not the

thin, wiry individual with the piercing eye you are doubtless

expecting to see. On the contrary, Mr. Gryce was a portly,

comfortable personage with an eye that never pierced, that did not

even rest on _you_. If it rested anywhere, it was always on some

insignificant object in the vicinity, some vase, inkstand, book,

or button. These things he would seem to take into his confidence,

make the repositories of his conclusions; but as for you--you might

as well be the steeple on Trinity Church, for all connection you

ever appeared to have with him or his thoughts. At present, then,

Mr. Gryce was, as I have already suggested, on intimate terms with

the door-knob.

“A dreadful look,” I repeated.

His eye shifted to the button on my sleeve.

“Come,” he said, “the coast is clear at last.”

Leading the way, he mounted the stairs, but stopped on the upper

landing. “Mr. Raymond,” said he, “I am not in the habit of

talking much about the secrets of my profession, but in this case

everything depends upon getting the right clue at the start. We

have no common villainy to deal with here; genius has been at work.

Now sometimes an absolutely uninitiated mind will intuitively catch

at something which the most highly trained intellect will miss.

If such a thing should occur, remember that I am your man. Don’t

go round talking, but come to me. For this is going to be a great

case, mind you, a great case. Now, come on.”

“But the ladies?”

“They are in the rooms above; in grief, of course, but tolerably

composed for all that, I hear.” And advancing to a door, he pushed

it open and beckoned me in.

All was dark for a moment, but presently, my eyes becoming

accustomed to the place, I saw that we were in the library.

“It was here he was found,” said he; “in this room and upon this

very spot.” And advancing, he laid his hand on the end of a large

baize-covered table that, together with its attendant chairs,

occupied the centre of the room. “You see for yourself that it is

directly opposite this door,” and, crossing the floor, he paused

in front of the threshold of a narrow passageway, opening into a

room beyond.[A] “As the murdered man was discovered sitting in

this chair, and consequently with his back towards the passageway,

the assassin must have advanced through the doorway to deliver his

shot, pausing, let us say, about here.” And Mr. Gryce planted his

feet firmly upon a certain spot in the carpet, about a foot from

the threshold before mentioned.

“But--” I hastened to interpose.

“There is no room for ‘but,’” he cried. “We have studied the

situation.” And without deigning to dilate upon the subject, he

turned immediately about and, stepping swiftly before me, led the

way into the passage named. “Wine closet, clothes closet, washing

apparatus, towel-rack,” he explained, waving his hand from side

to side as we hurried through, finishing with “Mr. Leavenworth’s

private apartment,” as that room of comfortable aspect opened upon

us.

Mr. Leavenworth’s private apartment! It was here then that _it_

ought to be, the horrible, blood-curdling _it_ that yesterday was

a living, breathing man. Advancing to the bed that was hung with

heavy curtains, I raised my hand to put them back, when Mr. Gryce,

drawing them from my clasp, disclosed lying upon the pillow a cold,

calm face looking so natural I involuntarily started.

“His death was too sudden to distort the features,” he remarked,

turning the head to one side in a way to make visible a ghastly

wound in the back of the cranium. “Such a hole as that sends a man

out of the world without much notice. The surgeon will convince

you it could never have been inflicted by himself. It is a case of

deliberate murder.”

Horrified, I drew hastily back, when my glance fell upon a door

situated directly opposite me in the side of the wall towards the

hall. It appeared to be the only outlet from the room, with the

exception of the passage through which we had entered, and I could

not help wondering if it was through this door the assassin had

entered on his roundabout course to the library. But Mr. Gryce,

seemingly observant of my glance, though his own was fixed upon the

chandelier, made haste to remark, as if in reply to the inquiry in

my face:

“Found locked on the inside; may have come that way and may not; we

don’t pretend to say.”

Observing now that the bed was undisturbed in its arrangement, I

remarked, “He had not retired, then?”

“No; the tragedy must be ten hours old. Time for the murderer to

have studied the situation and provided for all contingencies.”

“The murderer? Whom do you suspect?” I whispered.

He looked impassively at the ring on my finger.

“Every one and nobody. It is not for me to suspect, but to detect.”

And dropping the curtain into its former position he led me from

the room.