AROUND 2 p.m. I was taken before Magistrate Patterson and my bail set in the sum of thirty-five hundred dollars. Arthur Terne, second vice president of the Colossus Trust Company, having appeared as my bondsman, the matter of my liberty pending the inquest, to be held the following morning, was soon arranged.
I left the court in Mr. Terne’s company. Nils Berquist I had not seen, but was given to understand that he had been remanded without bail. I had pleaded in vain for a chance to talk with him.
Mr. Terne was kindness personified, though I inferred from one or two remarks that the Colossus’ president was shocked.
The morning papers had featured the affair with blatant headlines. They had got my name. The Barbour & Hutchinson failure was resurrected.
The Colossus itself stalked in massive dignity across one column, irrelevantly capping a “Brutal Slaying in Haunted House,” and when I saw that, I knew that “not pleased” was a mild description for Vansittart’s probable emotions!
The bizarre character of Alicia, the nature of the wound, and the ghastly inappropriateness of the weapon which effected it, had appealed to the reportorial fancy with diversely picturesque results. A plain murder, with no more apparent mystery attached than this one, would have passed with slight attention. But though Alicia was not a professional medium, it appeared that she and Moore had a certain reputation.
In hinting to me of the latter’s tempestuous exit from the Psychic Research Association, Nils had spared mentioning Alicia as the bone of contention. I now learned that she had been a country girl, the daughter of a hotel-keeper in a tiny Virginian village, where Moore had spent two or three autumn weeks.
Discovering in her what he regarded as supernormal powers, he wished to bring her north for further study. On her father’s strangely objecting to this treatment of his daughter as a specimen, Moore had settled the difficulty by offering marriage. After the wedding, he did bring her north, educated her, and finally presented her to the Association as a prodigy well worth their attention.
Unfortunately, after several remarkable seances, she was convicted of fraud in flagrant degree. It was through the slightly heated arguments ensuing that Moore was asked to resign his directorship.
The fantastic dispute had amused the lay-public intermittently through a dull summer, but I was off in the mountains that year with Van, and what news we read was mostly on the sporting pages, whither the pros and cons of spiritualistic debate are not wont to penetrate. But all that was raked up now, as sauce for the news of Moore’s sensational death, and having acquired a certain personal interest in spiritualism, I read it.
Following Mr. Terne’s advice and my own inclination, I went straight home. No need to rehearse all I endured that day. Roberta’s smilingly tearful consolations were the worst, I think, though, my father’s: “Clay, son, you are right to stand by your friend!” ran a close second. He said it because I refused to hear a word against Nils, and insisted that the fault had not been his. Though I would not go into the details of what had taken place in Moore’s library, I stuck at that one truth, and Dad, at least, who had taken a fancy to Nils the evening he dined at our house, believed me.
Altogether, however, it was a bad afternoon, and that night in my bedroom the face came again. I knew it was he, though the room was dark and I could not see him clearly. He had become so like as that to a material being!
“You have done well!” he began. “But, to make one small criticism, you must learn not to blush so easily. When your father commended your loyalty you reddened and stammered till, if you had not been among friends, suspicion might have been roused.”
“My confusion only lasted a moment,” I defended. Then I remembered; “You go!”
I said. “What do I want of you and your criticisms or advice? You have brought me enough unhappiness. I am a sneak and a criminal, and all through you!”
“Ingratitude is the only real crime,” he retorted sententiously. “Always be grateful, and show it! You have brought unhappiness on yourself, and it is I who point the way out. So far you have followed my advice. Why turn on me now?”
“Liar!” I fairly hissed. “If you can read my thoughts, you know that I have planned otherwise than you would have me. I am doing as Nils wished without regard to you, and not for the sake of myself. And let me tell you this! If there arises the slightest prospect that my friend will not be cleared, I shall confess. Tomorrow will decide it. If things go badly for him at the inquest, my people will have to suffer. The shame and loss he is trying to save them from would be nothing, then, to the shame involved by silence!”
Had the face possessed shoulders, I know he would have shrugged them.
“You are wrong, but we need not discuss that. I tell you in advance that your friend will be held for willful murder. Did you know quite all that I know, you would not hope for a different indictment.”
The strings of my heart contracted. I passed a breathless moment of realization. Then: “Tomorrow I confess!” I said firmly.
“Tomorrow you will choose a lawyer for your friend, and begin the work which will surely achieve his release.”
“You do not know that. You have admitted that you are capable of mistakes.”
“Not in a case of this kind. I possess a wide knowledge of facts which enables me to be very sure that your friend will get his release. I am your unswerving ally. And remember that I have not only wisdom, but some power.
“Oh, you are — leave me!” I cried aloud. “In God’s name go!”
The faintly, seen oval of his smooth face faded, though more slowly than in the cell at the station-house.
I heard a soft swish of slippered feet in the hall. Someone rapped lightly and opened my door.
“Clay, dear,” said my mother, “did you call? Are you ill?”
“No. I had a bad dream and awoke crying out because of it.”
“One can’t wonder at that.” She came and sat on the edge of my bed. “Such an awful thing for you to be in! Please, dear son, keep to your own class after this. Trouble always comes of mingling with queer Bohemian people who have no standards, or — or morals.”
“Nils Berquist has the highest standard of any — man I know!” I was fiercely defensive.
There was a pause of silence. Then in the dark she leaned and kissed my forehead. “You are so like him!” she murmured.
I groaned. “If only that were true!”
“But you are. With those blue, clear eyes of his, that saw only beauty and love. He would never hear a word against a friend.”
“Mother! You meant that I am like-”
“‘Your uncle, yes. And in some strange way I feel sure that his guarding influence is really about us. Why, when I came into the room just now I had the queerest feeling — as if it were a room in a dream, or — no, I can’t convey the feeling in words. But the sense of his presence was in it. I do truly believe that he has returned to guard us in the midst of so much trouble. At least, it would be like him. Dear, faithful, loving, lovable Serapion!”
But had my desired obsession, or familiar, or haunting ghost really desired to help, he might have warned me definitely of Sabina Cassel.
Alicia did not appear at the inquest. She was ill and under a physician’s care. Her semi-conscious state as reported by him prevented even the taking of a deposition.
I did not, however, stand alone as star witness before the coroner’s jury. Sabina Cassel, Mrs. Moore’s old colored “Mammy” whom she had brought north with her from Virginia, shared and rather more than shared the honors with me.
They had taken pains that Nils and I should not meet. He was kept rigorously incommunicado till the inquest, no one, save the police and the district attorney, having access to him. At the inquest I caught only a glimpse of him, when he was led out past where I awaited my turn before the jury. Involuntarily I sprang up, only to be caught by a constable’s hand, while Nils was hustled out. As he went, he threw me a glance that was a burning, dictatorial com............