The Devil's Gentleman (10 page)

19

I
n the middle of June—after daily trips to his private letter box at Heckmann’s—the man who called himself Mr. H. C. Barnet suddenly stopped picking up his mail. His disappearance coincided with the departure of Roland Molineux for a summer trip to Europe.

When Roland returned at the end of August—minus his mustache—he took a room at Travers Island, the New York Athletic Club’s summer home on the Long Island Sound. He retained his living quarters at the Newark paint factory, though he rarely spent the night there anymore. He also made regular trips to Manhattan. Some of these were business-related.

Others had to do with matters of a more personal nature.

The offices of the Jersey City Packing Company—Henry Barnet’s employer—were located in the Produce Exchange Building, a vast, imposing structure in lower Manhattan, long since demolished but once considered a landmark of architectural design.

On a morning in late August, not long after Roland Molineux’s return from his European vacation, a small, slender package arrived in the mail, addressed to “H. C. Barnet, Room 342, Produce Exchange.” Barnet was out of town, so his office-mate, a salesman named James J. Hudson, set the package aside.

When Barnet returned a few days later, Hudson handed him the package. Barnet tore off the light-colored wrapping and exclaimed in surprise.

Inside was a small white box containing a number of white, powder-filled capsules. The box, which had a sliding top, was labeled “Calthos, five days’ treatment. The Von Mohl Company, Cincinnati, Ohio.”

There was no accompanying message or note, nothing to indicate why the pills had been sent to Barnet. Certainly he had no need for them, never having suffered from the condition for which Calthos was purportedly a cure.

With a shrug, he stuck the little box in the side pocket of his jacket. Later, he put it in a drawer of his desk and forgot about it.
¹

20

T
hough Blanche was an old woman by the time she wrote her memoirs, she describes the key events of her earlier life in novelistic detail. She recalls precisely what gown she was wearing when she performed at Carnegie Hall with the Musical Arts Society, the way the sunlight sparkled on the water the day she met Roland aboard the yacht
Viator,
the furnishings of the room in which she and Henry Barnet first made love.

So it seems odd—and highly significant—that she is unable to say exactly what happened on that fateful afternoon in early September 1898, when, with startling suddenness, she renounced her relationship with Barnet and reconciled with Roland.

True, she remembers that it happened over lunch at the Waldorf-Astoria. She recalls the table by the “great windows that opened on Fifth Avenue” and the “throngs of passersby” visible through the panes. She even remembers that she and Roland dined on filet of sole and drank white wine.

But as for what brought about her sudden change of heart, she claims a complete loss of memory. “In some way—I hardly remember—Molineux and I bridged the separation between us” is all she writes of that moment.
¹

It is hard not to conclude that Blanche is being deliberately evasive here, that she simply prefers not to recall—or not to confess—the real reason for her surprising turnaround. Still, it is possible to speculate.

We know from her memoirs that Blanche’s dearest dream was to visit Paris. It was a dream, as she had discovered by then, that she was unlikely to realize as the wife of Henry Barnet, whose financial circumstances were far less comfortable than Molineux’s. Roland himself had just returned from a month-long vacation in Europe—proof positive that it was he, not Barnet, who was more likely to give her the kind of life she craved. Indeed, had Blanche accepted his earlier proposal, she would have been at his side on his trip. Her dream would already have come true.

While it is fair to assume that Blanche made some such calculation on that autumn afternoon, it is impossible to know exactly what was going through her mind. One thing is certain: by the time she left the restaurant, she had agreed to give up Barnet and marry Roland.

“Before the end of our luncheon,” she writes in her memoir, “I had promised Roland I would again wear his ring—and this time with a pledge!”

However Roland managed to persuade Blanche to marry him—whatever inducements he offered—he couldn’t change her feelings for Barnet. In the days following the luncheon at the Waldorf, she found herself “consumed” by thoughts of her lover. His “influence over” her—that power “which from the beginning had so swept me off of my feet”—had in no way diminished. Try as she might “not to think of him,” she yearned “to see Barney.”

She left messages at his club but received no reply. Finally, after a protracted silence that left her baffled and hurt, he telephoned her at Alice Bellinger’s.

Yes, he knew about her engagement to Molineux, he said. He had “heard about it from someone at the Racquet Club.” Despite the coldness in his voice, the mere sound of it brought a terrible longing to her heart. “I suddenly wanted him back more than anything in the world.”

He agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to see her. They met in her apartment on an evening in late September. Barnet was understandably angry. What did Blanche expect of him? he demanded. She had erected an insuperable barrier between them by agreeing to wed Molineux.

“That is silly,” she said. “There are no barriers. Can’t we remain friends?”

He gave a harsh laugh. “That is ridiculous.”

“But why?” she persisted.

“Good God!” he cried. “Molineux knows perfectly well that you and I have been seeing each other. You must know that. He hates me!”

“That is preposterous,” Blanche said. “You two are old friends. He doesn’t hate you.”

“The enmity is veiled,” said Barnet. “But if he ever knew I saw you again, it would be open hostility. You ought to know that. This is good-bye—it has to be.”

Before Blanche could respond, Barnet took her in his arms and “kissed her with savage abandon.” Then, pushing her away from him, he turned and strode from the room.

Blanche followed him into the hallway and “cried out to him” as he hurried down the stairs. But Barnet, turning a deaf ear to her pleas, “made no reply.”

“I stood there on the lower landing of the stairway,” Blanche writes in her memoir. “I believed he would return. But he went straight out the door.”

She never saw Henry Barnet again.

21

I
n addition to his duties as night watchman of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club, Joseph Moore, a forty-year-old Englishman, performed valet services for various members, including Henry Barnet.

Early on the morning of Friday, October 28, 1898, Moore received an urgent summons to Barnet’s room. He found the thirty-two-year-old clubman stretched out on his bed, ashen-faced and clutching his stomach. The normally dapper Barnet was wearing only an open-collared shirt and trousers, as though he’d been stricken while getting dressed for the day. His breakfast—which had been brought up to his room earlier—lay untouched on its tray.

“Moore,” gasped Barnet. “Call Dr. Phillips.”

Hardly had he spoken the words than Barnet let out a moan, leapt from the bed, and ran for the toilet. As Moore made for the staircase, he could hear the sound of violent retching through the closed door.
¹

The residence of Dr. Wendell C. Phillips, a surgeon at the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital and a longtime member of the KAC, was located on Madison Avenue, only a block away from the clubhouse. By 9:00
A.M.
—less than fifteen minutes after Joseph Moore dispatched an errand boy to his home—Phillips was standing at Barnet’s bedside.

“Hello, old man,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

Before Barnet could answer, he was seized with a spasm of sickness and had to dash for the bathroom, where he suffered another bout of simultaneous vomiting and diarrhea. Minutes later, he staggered back to bed, a ghastly pallor suffusing his face.

Phillips checked his pulse, which seemed normal. He also examined Barnet’s throat. There was some inflammation of the membrane, though in Phillips’s professional opinion, “no more than would be present when a person was vomiting.”
²

Phillips concluded that Barnet was suffering from “an irritant substance in the stomach” and asked if he had eaten anything unusual.

“It was that damned Kutnow’s Powder,” answered Barnet with a groan.

He explained that, after overindulging in food and drink the previous evening, he had awakened at around eight that morning feeling unwell. As it happened, he had received a sample tin of Kutnow’s Improved Effervescent Powder in the mail two months earlier. Supposedly made of salts from the Carlsbad mineral springs, Kutnow’s—a competitor of bromo-seltzer—was promoted as a surefire remedy for “biliousness, sick headache, loss of appetite, sour stomach, constipation, drowsiness, nervousness, gout, jaundice, and rheumatism.” Potential customers could receive a free sample by sending in a letter with their name and address.
³

Barnet wasn’t sure
why
the little tin had been sent to him, since he hadn’t requested it. Still, as he was in the habit of treating his hangovers with Kutnow’s, he didn’t think twice about taking a dose. Almost immediately, however, he had gotten dreadfully ill.

Phillips went downstairs to telephone a local pharmacy for some remedies. He then returned to sit with Barnet, who lay shivering beneath a heavy wool blanket when he wasn’t in the bathroom throwing up and voiding uncontrollably.

After an hour or so, Phillips returned to his home, leaving Barnet in the care of Joseph Moore. Phillips checked on his patient two more times during the day. By 5:30
P.M.
, Barnet seemed greatly improved—so much so that, as Dr. Phillips would later testify, he saw “no reason to come again.”
⁴

Though the vomiting and diarrhea had abated by the following day, Barnet still couldn’t eat. Swallowing food was too painful. His throat was agonizingly sore. Even his tongue hurt.

On Sunday, October 30, he went downstairs for the first time in two days and sought the advice of a friend, Colonel Austen, who suggested that Barnet get a second opinion from Henry Beaman Douglass, a fellow KAC member and prominent New York physician. A telephone call was promptly placed to Douglass’s home.

A graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Douglass had interned for two years at Presbyterian Hospital, then studied overseas in Paris, London, and Berlin before returning to New York. In addition to his private practice, he served as adjunct professor of diseases of the throat at the Post-Graduate Medical College and assistant surgeon and pathologist at the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital.

Within a half hour of receiving the call, Douglass arrived at the Knickerbocker Athletic Club. He found Barnet in the café with Colonel Austen. Leading the doctor into the adjoining reading room, Barnet explained what had happened on Friday after he had swallowed the Kutnow’s Powder.

“I was a damned fool to take something that came in the mail,” he said. He then described his current symptoms—the burning throat and painful tongue.

“Well, I can’t examine you here, old man,” said Dr. Douglass.

Taking the elevator to the second floor, they proceeded to Barnet’s room, where Douglass peered into Barnet’s throat and saw (as he later testified) a “membrane on the right tonsil and uvula.” He immediately concluded that Barnet had a case of diphtheria.

Leaving Barnet in his room, Douglass went out to a drugstore called Schoonmaker’s, where he purchased two culture tubes. He then returned to the club, took samples from Barnet’s tonsil, and departed again, this time for his lab in the Manhattan Eye and Ear Hospital.

When the cultures were analyzed, they revealed “streptococci in large numbers,” though no evidence of “diphtheritic bacilli.” Nevertheless, Douglass remained convinced that Barnet had a mild case of diphtheria and treated him accordingly, with injections of antitoxin.
⁵

Over the next few days, Barnet—who was attended around the clock from that point on by two trained nurses, Addie Bates and Jane Callender—seemed to be in a convalescent state, though his tongue and gums continued to bother him.

By Friday, November 4, Barnet’s mouth was still inflamed and his tongue ulcerated. Curious about the content of the Kutnow’s Powder, Douglass brought the sample tin (which Barnet had saved) to a chemist named Guy P. Ellison for analysis.

No sooner had Ellison removed the cover of the tin than he detected the odor of bitter almonds, typical of “salt of cyanide.” Taking a tiny amount on the tip of one finger, he tasted it and found that the Kutnow’s had a “metallic, corrosive taste,” also characteristic of cyanide.

Ellison then performed a series of tests on the powder—first adding hydrochloric acid, then iodide of potassium, and finally heating it slowly in a test tube. The results clearly showed that the Kutnow’s Powder contained cyanide of mercury.
⁶

When Douglass received the report, he decided that the sores on Barnet’s tongue and gums were probably “mercurial stomatitis”—an inflammation of the mucous membranes of the mouth produced by the ingestion of mercury. But that conclusion set off no alarm bells in Douglass, who saw no reason to alter his original opinion.

It’s natural to wonder why—when Dr. Douglass found evidence that Barnet had ingested mercury and pharmacist Ellison discovered cyanide in the Kutnow’s Powder—neither of them suspected that the patient was the victim of foul play. The answer, bizarre as it seems, is that both mercury and cyanide, along with many other toxic substances, were standard medicinal ingredients in the late nineteenth century.

The soothing syrups and aromatic bitters and revitalizing tonics so popular in that elixir-crazed period might have been utterly worthless, giving great-grandma a mild high while allowing whatever disease was killing her to run rampant through her system. But the medications prescribed by legitimate physicians were often no better, and in many cases far worse. American medicine in the post–Civil War era had not yet emerged from the Dark Ages, as even a cursory glance at the 1899 edition of the venerable textbook the
Merck Manual
makes alarmingly clear.

It was a time when formaldehyde was routinely prescribed for the common cold, arsenic for asthma, strychnine for headaches, morphine for diarrhea—and mercury for everything from anemia to yellow fever. A woman with morning sickness might be treated with a heaping spoonful of belladonna, a constipated man with a cup of turpentine oil, and a colicky baby with a chloroform-soaked rag placed over its nostrils. Gargling with cyanide of mercury was a recommended cure for sore throats.
⁷

It was clear to Dr. Douglass that Barnet had consumed mercury. But then, so had millions of other Americans who customarily took calomel, one of the most commonly prescribed remedies of the time. In addition to its supposedly salubrious effects, calomel (also known as mercurous chloride) frequently produced ulcerations of the tongue, gums, and throat, caused teeth to fall out, and occasionally destroyed entire jawbones.

In short, despite the absence of “diphtheritic bacilli” in the culture and the presence of cyanide of mercury in the Kutnow’s Powder, Dr. Douglass was absolutely convinced that the symptoms displayed by Barnet pointed to only one diagnosis: a case of mild diphtheria.