The Hole in the Mahogany Panel
Sir Henry paused a moment, his finger between the pages of theancient diary."It is the inspirational quality in these cases" he said, "thatimpresses me. It is very nearly absent in our modern methods ofcriminal investigation. We depend now on a certain formalroutine. I rarely find a man in the whole of Scotland Yard witha trace of intuitive impulse to lead him . . . . Observe howthis old justice in Virginia bridged the gaps between hisincidents."He paused."We call it the inspirational instinct, in criminal investigation. . . genius, is the right word."He looked up at the clock."We have an hour, yet, before the opera will be worth hearing;listen to this final case."The narrative of the diary follows:The girl was walking in the road. Her frock was covered withdust. Her arms hung limp. Her face with the great eyes and theexquisite mouth was the chalk face of a ghost. She walked withthe terrible stiffened celerity of a human creature when it istrapped and ruined.Night was coming on. Behind the girl sat the great old house atthe end of a long lane of ancient poplars.This was a strange scene my father came on. He pulled up his bigred-roan horse at the crossroads, where the long lane entered theturnpike, and looked at the stiff, tragic figure. He rode homefrom a sitting of the county justices, alone, at peace, on thismidsummer night, and God sent this tragic thing to meet him.He got down and stood under the crossroads signboard beside hishorse.The earth was dry; in dust. The dead grass and the dead leavesmade a sere, yellow world. It looked like a land of unendingsummer, but a breath of chill came out of the hollows with thesunset.The girl would have gone on, oblivious. But my father went downinto the road and took her by the arm. She stopped when she sawwho it was, and spoke in the dead, uninflected voice of a personin extremity."Is the thing a lie?" she said."What thing, child?" replied my father."The thing he told me!""Dillworth?" said my father. "Do you mean Hambleton Dillworth?"The girl put out her free arm in a stiff, circling gesture. "Inall the world," she said, "is there any other man who would havetold me?"My father's face hardened as if of metal. "What did he tellyou?"The girl spoke plainly, frankly, in her dead voice, withoutequivocation, with no choice of words to soften what she said:"He said that my father was not dead; that I was the daughter ofa thief; that what I believed about my father was all made up tosave the family name; that the truth was my father robbed him,stole his best horse and left the country when I was a baby. Hesaid I was a burden on him, a pensioner, a drone; and to go andseek my father."And suddenly she broke into a flood of tears. Her face pressedagainst my father's shoulder. He took her up in his big arms andgot into his saddle."My child," he said, "let us take Hambleton Dillworth at hisword."And he turned the horse into the lane toward the ancient house.The girl in my father's arms made no resistance. There was thisdominating quality in the man that one trusted to him andfollowed behind him. She lay in his arms, the tars wetting herwhite face and the long lashes.The moon came up, a great golden moon, shouldered over the rim ofthe world by the backs of the crooked elves. The horse and thetwo persons made a black, distorted shadow that jerked along asthough it were a thing evil and persistent. Far off in thethickets of the hills an owl cried, eerie and weird like acreature in some bitter sorrow. The lane was deep with dust. Thehorse traveled with no sound, and the distorted black shadowfollowed, now blotted out by the heavy tree tops, and now onlypartly to be seen, but always there.My father got down at the door and carried the girl up the stepsand between the plaster pillars into the house. There was a hallpaneled in white wood and with mahogany doors. He opened one ofthese doors and went in. The room he entered had been splendidin some ancient time. It was big; the pieces in it wereexquisite; great mirrors and old portraits were on the wall.A man sitting behind a table got up when my father entered. Fourtallow candles, in ancient silver sticks, were on the table, andsome sheets with figured accounts.The man who got up was like some strange old child. He wore anumber of little capes to hide his humped back, and his body, onethought, under his clothes was strapped together. He got on hisfeet nimbly like a spider, and they heard the click of a pistollock as he whipped the weapon out of an open drawer, as though itwere a habit thus always to keep a weapon at his hand to make himequal in stature with other men. Then he saw who it was and thedouble-barreled pistol slipped out of sight. He was startled andapprehensive, but he was not in fear.He stood motionless behind the table, his head up, his eyes hard,his thin mouth closed like a trap and his long, dead black hairhanging on each side of his lank face over the huge, malformedears. The man stood thus, unmoving, silent, with his twistedironical smile, while my father put the girl into a chair andstood up behind it."Dillworth," said my father, "what do you mean by turning thischild out of the house?"The man looked steadily at the two persons before him."Pendleton," he said, and he spoke precisely, "I do not recognizethe right of you, or any other man, to call my acts into account;however" - and he made a curious gesture with his extended hands"not at your command, but at my pleasure, I will tell you."This young woman had some estate from her mother at that lady'sdeath. As her guardian I invested it by permission of thecourt's decree." He paused. "When the Maxwell lands were soldbefore the courthouse I bid them in for my ward. The judgeconfirmed this use of the guardian funds. It was done uponadvice of counsel and within the letter of the law. Now itappears that Maxwell had only a life interest in these lands;Maxwell is dead, and one who has purchased the interest of hisheirs sues in the courts for this estate."This new claimant will recover; since one who buys at a judicialsale, I find, buys under the doctrine of caveat emptor - that isto say, at his peril. He takes his chance upon the title. Thecourt does not insure it. If it is defective he loses both themoney and the lands. And so," he added, "my ward will have noincome to support her, and I decline to assume that burden."My father looked the hunchback in the face. "Who is the manbringing this suit at law?""A Mr. Henderson, I believe," replied Dillworth, "from Maryland.""Do you know him?" said my father."I never heard of him," replied the hunchback.The girl, huddled in the chair, interrupted. "I have seenletters," she said, "come in here with this man's return addressat Baltimore written on the envelope."The hunchback made an irrelevant gesture. "The man wrote - toinquire if I would buy his title. I declined." Then he turnedto my father. "Pendleton," he said, "you know about this matter.You know that every step I took was legal. And with pains andcare how I got an order out of chancery to make this purchase,and how careful I was to have this guardianship investmentconfirmed by the court. No affair was ever done so exactlywithin the law.""Why were you so extremely careful?" said my father."Because I wanted the safeguard of the law about me at everystep," replied the man."But why?""You ask me that, Pendleton?"' cried the man. "Is not the wisdomof my precautions evident? I took them to prevent this verything; to protect myself when this thing should happen!""Then," said my father, "you knew it was going to happen."The man's eyes slipped about a moment in his head. "I knew itwas going to happen that I would be charged with all sorts ofcrimes and misdemeanors if there should be any hooks on which tohang them. Because a man locks his door is it proof that heknows a robber is on the way? Human foresight and the experienceof men move prudent persons to a reasonable precaution in theconduct of affairs.""And what is it," said my father, "that moves them to anexcessive caution?"The hunchback snapped his fingers with an exasperated gesture."I will not be annoyed by your big, dominating manner!" he cried.My father was not concerned by this defiance. "Dillworth," hesaid, "you sent this child out to seek her father. Well, shetook the right road to find him."The hunchback stepped back quickly, his face changed. He satdown in his chair and looked up at my father. There was heresuddenly uncovered something that he had not looked for. And hetalked to gain time."I have cast up the accounts in proper form," he said while hestudied my father, his hand moving the figured sheets. "They arecorrect and settled before two commissioners in chancery. Takingout my commission as guardian, the amounts allowed me for themaintenance and education of the ward, and no dollar of thispersonal estate remains."His long, thin hand with the nimble fingers turned the sheetsover on the table as though to conclude that phase of the affair."The real property," he continued, "will return nothing; thepurchase money was applied on Maxwell's debts and cannot befollowed. This new claimant, Henderson, who has bought up theoutstanding title, will take the land.""For some trifling sum," said my father.The hunchback nodded slowly, his eyes in a study of my father'sface."Doubtless," he said, "it was not known that Maxwell had only alife estate in the lands, and the remainder to the heirs waslikely purchased for some slight amount. The language of thedeeds that Henderson exhibits in his suit shows a transfer of allclaim or title, as though he bought a thing which the granteesthought lay with the uncertainties of a decree in chancery.""I have seen the deeds," said my father."Then," sand the hunchback, "you know they are valid, andtransfer the title." He paused. "I have no doubt that Mr.Henderson assembled these outstanding interests at no great cost,but his conveyances are in form and legal.""Everything connected with this affair," said my father, "isstrangely legal!"The hunchback considered my father through his narrow eyelids."It is a strange world;" he said."It is," replied my father. "It is profoundly, inconceivablystrange."There was a moment of silence. The two men regarded each otheracross the half-length of the room. The girl sat in the chair.She had got back her courage. The big, forceful presence of myfather, like the shadow of a great rock, was there behind her.She had the fine courage of her blood, and, after the first cruelshock of this affair, she faced the tragedies that might liewithin it calmly.Shadows lay along the walls of the great room, along the giltframes of the portraits, the empty fireplace, the rosewoodfurniture of ancient make and the oak floor. Only the hunchbackwas in the light, behind the four candles on the table."It was strange," continued my father over the long pause, "thatyour father's will discovered at his death left his lands to you,and no acre to your brother David.""Not strange," replied the hunchback, "when you consider what mybrother David proved to be. My father knew him. What was hiddenfrom us, what the world got no hint of, what the man was in thedeep and secret places of his heart, my father knew. Was itstrange, then, that he should leave the lands to me?""It was a will drawn by an old man in his senility, and underyour control.""Under my care," cried the hunchback. "I will plead guilty, ifyou like, to that. I honored my father. I was beside his bedwith loving-kindness, while my brother went about the pleasuresof his life.""But the testament," said my father, "was in strange terms. Itbequeathed the lands to you, with no mention of the personalproperty, as though these lands were all the estate your fatherhad.""And so they were," replied the hunchback calmly. "The lands hadbeen stripped of horse and steer, and every personal item, andevery dollar in hand or debt owing to my father before hisdeath." The, man paused and put the tips of his fingerstogether. "My father had given to my brother so much money fromthese sources, from time to time, that he justly left me thelands to make us even.""Your father was senile and for five years in his bed. It wasyou, Dillworth, who cleaned the estate of everything but land.""I conducted my father's business," said the hunchback, "for him,since he was ill. But I put the moneys from these sales into hishand and he gave them to my brother.""I have never heard that your brother David got a dollar of thismoney."The hunchback was undisturbed."It was a family matter and not likely to be known.""I see it," said my father. "It was managed in your legal mannerand with cunning foresight. You took the lands only in the will,leaving the impression to go out that your brother had alreadyreceived his share in the personal estate by advancement. It wasshrewdly done. But there remained one peril in it: If anypersonal property should appear under the law you would berequired to share it equally with your brother David.""Or rather," replied the hunchback calmly, "to state the thingcorrectly, my brother David would be required to share anydiscovered personal property with me." Then he added: "I gave mybrother David a hundred dollars for his share in the folderolabout the premises, and took possession of the house and lands.""And after that," said my father, "what happened?"The hunchback uttered a queerly inflected expletive, like abitter laugh."After that," he answered, "we saw the real man in my brotherDavid, as my father, old and dying, had so clearly seen it.After that he turned thief and fugitive."At the words the girl in the chair before my father rose. Shestood beside him, her lithe figure firm, her chin up, her hairspun darkness. The courage, the fine, open, defiant courage ofthe first women of the world, coming with the patriarchs out ofAsia, was in her lifted face. My father moved as though he wouldstop the hunchback's cruel speech. But she put her fingersfirmly on his arm."He has gone so far," she said, "let him go on to the end. Lethim omit no word, let us hear every ugly thing the creature hasto say."Dillworth sat back in his chair at ease, with a supercilioussmile. He passed the girl and addressed my father."You will recall the details of that robbery," he said in hiscomplacent, piping voice. "My brother David had married a wife,like the guest invited in the Scriptures. A child was born. Mybrother lived with his wife's people in their house. One nighthe came to me to borrow money."He paused and pointed his long index finger through the doorwayand across the hall."It was in my father's room that I received him. It did notplease me to put money into his hands. But I admonished him withwise counsel. He did not receive my words with a properbrotherly regard. He flared up in unmanageable anger. He damnedme with reproaches, said I had stolen his inheritance, poisonedhis father's mind against him and slipped into the house andlands. `Pretentious and perfidious' is what he called me. I wasfirm and gentle. But he grew violent and a thing happened."The man put up his hand and moved it along in the air above thetable."There was a secretary beside the hearth in, my father's room.It was an old piece with drawers below and glass doors above.These doors had not been opened for many years, for there wasnothing on the shelves behind them - one could see that - exceptsome rows of the little wooden boxes that indigo used to be soldin at the country stores."The hunchback paused as though to get the details of his storyprecisely in relation."I sat at my father's table in the middle of the room. Mybrother David was a great, tall man, like Saul. In his anger, ashe gesticulated by the hearth, his elbow crashed through theglass door of this secretary; the indigo boxes fell, burst openon the floor, and a hidden store of my father's money wasrevealed. The wooden boxes were full of gold pieces!"He stopped and passed his fingers over his projecting chin."I was in fear, for I was alone in the house. Every negro was ata distant frolic. And I was justified in that fear. My brotherleaped on me, struck me a stunning blow on the chest over theheart, gathered up the gold, took my horse and fled. At daybreakthe negroes found me on the floor, unconscious. Then you came,Pendleton. The negroes had washed up the litter from the hearthwhere the indigo about the coins in the boxes had been shakenout."My father interrupted:"The negroes said the floor had been scrubbed when they foundyou.""They were drunk," continued the hunchback with no concern."And, does one hold a drunken negro to his fact? But you saw foryourself the wooden boxes, round, three inches high, with tinlids, and of a diameter to hold a stack of golden eagles, and yousaw the indigo still sticking about the sides of these boxeswhere the coins had laid.""I did," replied my father. "I observed it carefully, for Ithought the gold pieces might turn up sometime, and the blueindigo stain might be on them when they first appeared."Dillworth leaned far back in his chair, his legs `tangled underhim, his eyes on my father, in reflection. Finally he spoke."You are far-sighted," he said."Or God is," replied my father, and, stepping over to the table,he spun a gold piece on the polished surface of the mahoganyboard.The hunchback watched the yellow disk turn and flit and wabble onits base and flutter down with its tingling reverberations."To-day, when I rode into the county seat to a sitting of thejustices," continued my father, "the sheriff showed me some goldeagles that your man from Maryland, Mr. Henderson, had paid in oncourt costs. Look, Dillworth, there is one of them, and withyour thumb nail on the milled edge you can scrape off theindigo!"The hunchback looked at the spinning coin, but he did not touchit. His head, with its long, straight hair, swung a momentuncertain between his shoulders. Then, swiftly and with a firmgrip, he took his resolution."The coins appear," he said. "My brother David must be inBaltimore behind this suit.""He is not in Baltimore," said my father."Perhaps you know where he is," cried the hunchback, "since youspeak with such authority.""I do know where he is," said my father in his deep, level voice.The hunchback got on his feet slowly beside his chair. And thegirl came into the protection of my father's arm, her featureswhite like plaster; but the fiber in her blood was good and shestood up to face the thing that might be coming. After the onelong abandonment to tears in my father's saddle she had gotherself in hand. She had gone, like the princes of the blood,through the fire, and the dross of weakness was burned out.The hunchback got on his feet, in position like a duelist, hishard, bitter face turned slantwise toward my father."Then," he said, "if you know where David is you will take hisdaughter to him, if you please, and rid my house of the burden ofher.""We shall go to him," said my father slowly, "but he shall notreturn to us."The hunchback's eyes blinked and bated in the candlelight."You quote the Scriptures," he said. "Is David in a grave?""He is not," replied my father.The hunchback seemed to advance like a duelist who parries thefirst thrust of his opponent. But my father met him with an evenvoice."Dillworth," he said, "it was strange that no man ever saw yourbrother or the horse after the night he visited you in thishouse.""It was dark," replied the man. "He rode from this door throughthe gap in the mountains into Maryland.""He rode from this door," said my father slowly, "but not throughthe gap in the mountains into Maryland."The hunchback began to twist his fingers."Where did he ride then? A man and a horse could not vanish.""They did vanish," said my father."Now you utter fool talk!" cried Dillworth."I speak the living truth," replied my father. "Your brotherDavid and your horse disappeared out of sound and hearing -disappeared out of the sight and knowledge of men - after he rodeaway from your door on that fatal night.""Well," said the hunchback, "since my brother David rode awayfrom my door - and you know that - I am free of obligation forhim.""It is Cain's speech!" replied my father.The hunchback put back his long hair with a swift brush of thefingers across his forehead."Dillworth," cried my father, and his voice filled the emptyplaces of the room, "is the mark there?"The hunchback began to curse. He walked around my father and thegirl, the hair about his lank jaws, his fingers working, his faceevil. In his front and menace he was like a weasel that wouldattack some larger creature. And while he made the great turn ofhis circle my father, with his arm about the girl, stepped beforethe drawer of the table where the pistol lay."Dillworth," he said calmly, "I know where he is. And the markyou felt for just now ought to be there.""Fool!" cried the hunchback. "If I killed him how could he rideaway from the door?""It was a thing that puzzled me," replied my father, "when Istood in this house on the morning of your pretended robbery. Iknew what had happened. But I thought it wiser to let the evilthing remain a mystery, rather than unearth it to foul yourfamily name and connect this child in gossip for all her dayswith a crime.""With a thief," snarled the man."With a greater criminal than a thief," replied My father. "Iwas not certain about this gold on that morning when you showedme the empty boxes. They were too few to hold gold enough forsuch a motive. I thought a quarrel and violent hot blood werebehind the thing; and for that reason I have been silent. Butnow, when the coins turn up, I see that the thing was allruthless, cold-blooded love of money."I know what happened in that room. When your brother Davidstruck the old secretary with his elbow, and the dozen indigoboxes fell and burst open on the hearth, you thought a greathidden treasure was uncovered. You thought swiftly. You had gotthe land by undue influence on your senile father, and you didnot have to share that with your brother David. But here was atreasure you must share; you saw it in a flash. You sat at yourfather's table in the room. Your brother stood by the walllooking at the hearth. And you acted then, on the moment, withthe quickness of the Evil One. It was cunning in you to selectthe body over the heart as the place to receive the imagined blow- the head or face would require some evidential mark to affirmyour word. And it was cunning to think of the unconscious, forin that part one could get up and scrub the hearth and lie downagain to play it."He paused."But the other thing you did in that room was not so clever. Apicture was newly hung on the wall - I saw the white square onthe opposite wall from which it had been taken. It hung at theheight of a man's shoulders directly behind the spot where yourbrother must have stood after he struck the secretary, and ithung in this new spot to cover the crash of a bullet into themahogany panel!"My father stopped and caught up the hunchback's double-barreledpistol out of the empty drawer.The room was now illumined; the moon had got above the tree topsand its light slanted in through the long windows. The hunchbacksaw the thing and he paused; his face worked in the fantasticlight."Yes," continued my father, in his deep, quiet voice, "this isyour mistake to-night - to let me get your weapon. Your mistakethat other night was to shoot before you counted the money. Itwas only a few hundred dollars. The dozen wooden boxes wouldhold no great sum. But the thing was done, and you must coverit."He paused."And you did cover it - with fiendish cunning. It would not dofor your brother to vanish from your house, alone and with nomotive. But if he disappeared, with the gold to take him and ahorse to ride, the explanation would have solid feet to go on. Igive you credit here for the ingenuity of Satan. You managed thething. You caused your brother David and the horse to vanish. Isaw, on that morning, the tracks of the horse where you led himfrom the stable to the door, and his tracks where you led him,holding the dead man in the saddle, from the door to the ancientorchard where the grass grows over the fallen-down chimney ofyour grandsire's house. And there, at your cunning, they whollyvanished."The mad courage in the hunchback got control, and he began toadvance on my father with no weapon and with no hope to win. Hisfingers crooked, his body in a bow, his wizen, cruel face pallidin the ghostly light."Dillworth," cried my father, in a great voice, like one whowould startle a creature out of mania, "you will write a deed inyour legal manner granting these lands to your brother's child.And after that" - his words were like the blows of a hammer on ananvil - "I will give you until daybreak to vanish out of oursight and hearing - through the gap in the mountains intoMaryland on your horse, as you say your brother David went, orinto the abandoned cistern in the ancient orchard where he liesunder the horse that you shot and tumbled in on his murderedbody!"The moon was now above the gable of the house. The candles wereburned down. They guttered around the sheet of foolscap wet withthe scrawls and splashes of Dillworth's quill. My father stoodat a window looking out, the girl in a flood of tears, relaxedand helpless, in the protection of his arm.And far down the long turnpike, white like an expanded ribbon,the hunchback rode his great horse in a gallop, perched like amonkey, his knees doubled, his head bobbing, his lose bodyrolling in the saddle - while the black, distorted shadow thathad followed my father into this tragic house went on before himlike some infernal messenger convoying the rider to the Pit.
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