The Tragedy of Z (26 page)

Then I fainted. The next thing I knew, Jeremy's face was close to mine, and somebody was sluicing water over my head.

The rest was bitter anti-climax. I never think back about that afternoon without shivering. Father and Mr. Lane popped up from somewhere, and I remember sitting in John Hume's office listening to poor Dow's story. And I remember also how he crouched in his chair, every moment or so slavishly turning his battered old head from my face to Mr. Lane's to father's. I was in a stupor of heart-sickness. And Mr. Lane's face was a tragic mask. I shall never forget what he said and how he looked when I had told him, an hour before the meeting in Hume's office, of my promise to Dow in the shack.

“Patience, Patience!” he had cried out in a very real agony. “You shouldn't have done that. I don't know. I really don't. I'm on the track of something—something stupendous. But it isn't complete. It may be impossible to save him.” And then I realized what I had done. For the second time I had offered hope to this man, and for the second time …

He answered questions. No, he had not killed Dr. Fawcett. He had not even been in that house.… John Hume produced from his drawer the revolver which Dow had had in the shack.

“This belonged to Dr. Fawcett,” he said sternly. “Don't lie. Dr. Fawcett's valet saw it only yesterday afternoon in the top drawer of a secretary in the doctor's consulting room. You got it there, Dow. You were in that house.”

Dow broke down. Yes, that was true, he screamed; but he had not killed Fawcett. He had had an appointment. For eleven-thirty. When he got into the house, he had found Fawcett lying on the floor, all bloody; on the desk there was a revolver, and in a panic he had snatched it up and run out of the house.… Yes, he had sent the section of chest. How? He looked cunning; he would not say. What did the
JA
mean? He closed his lips.

“Did you find the dead body?” asked Mr. Lane tensely.

“I—Yeah, I did, but de minute I see he's dead——”

“You're sure, Dow, that he was dead?”

“Yeah. Yes, sir, I'm sure!”

The district attorney then showed the convict the scribbled note found on Dr. Fawcett's desk. And at this point we were all—with the exception of Drury Lane—surprised at the vehemence and obvious sincerity of Dow's denial. He had never seen that scrap of paper, he shrieked. The longhand message signed by Fawcett in ink he had never read; the black-lettered message signed “Aaron Dow” in pencil he had never written.

The old gentleman said quickly: “Dow, did you in the last few days receive any message at all from Dr. Fawcett?”

“Yeah, Mr. Lane, I did, but not dem! Tuesday it was. I got a—a letter from Fawcett. Told me to make my break on T'ursday. It's de truth, Mr. Lane. T'ursday, his note said!”

“Have you that note on you?” asked Mr. Lane slowly.

But Dow had thrown it down a drain at the prison, or so he said.

“Can't understand,” murmured Hume, “why Fawcett should have double-crossed this man that way. Or perhaps …”

The old gentleman seemed on the point of saying something, but he shook his head and remained silent. As for me, I was beginning—slowly, ever so slowly—to see a pinpoint of light.

The rest was horrible. Again John Hume chose the easier course; again he permitted the trial to be prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Sweet. For Dow had been indicted for first-degree murder without any trouble at all and with an indecent celerity, so that the trial came upon us before we could catch our breaths. The greatest difficulty was experienced in keeping the citizens of Leeds from taking the law into their own hands. This second accusation of murder against the same man seemed to inflame the populace, and it was necessary to spirit Dow from the Leeds jail to the courthouse and back again under heavy guard and in greatest secrecy.

Mark Currier was an enigma. He refused a fee from Mr. Lane. His fat face was smug, inscrutable. And again he fought an able case against hopeless odds.

And, while Mr. Drury Lane sat silent, wrapped in a mantle of desperation and impotence, Aaron Dow was tried, convicted of murder in the first degree after a forty-five-minute deliberation by the jury, and sentenced to be electrocuted by the same judge who only little more than a month before had sentenced him to life imprisonment.

“Aaron Dow … to be put to death in the manner prescribed by law in the week beginning …”

Manacled to two deputy sheriffs, surrounded by armed guards, Aaron Dow was hustled away to Algonquin Prison, where the silence of the condemned cells closed down like the frozen earth of a winter's grave upon his head.

18. DARK HOURS

And so we lay fast in the doldrums, praying for the breath of hope. And the sun shone fiercely down upon us, and we foundered in a glassy sea. We were all deathly tired—tired of spreading sail before a wind that never came, tired of fighting, tired of thinking.

Father and Elihu Clay had settled their differences, and because neither of us had heart to struggle we remained submissively at the Clays'. We slept there, but little else. Father was in a frenzy of restlessness, prowling about town like some burly ghost; and, as for me, I haunted old Father Muir's house on the hill, perhaps with some guilty feeling that I should be near the condemned man. Our friend the priest saw Aaron Dow every day, but for some reason refused to tell us how the man was faring. I gathered from the distress on the little padre's face the Dow was heaping imprecations upon all our heads. It did not make things easier.

Everything that could be done was being done. Little things came out. I learned that Drury Lane had paid a secret visit to Dow while the convict, awaiting sentence, had lain in the Leeds county jail. What passed between them I never discovered fully, but it must have been an extraordinary interview, for it left the old gentleman with a fixed horror on his face that persisted for days afterward.

Once I asked him what had been said. He was silent for a long time. Then he said: “He refuses to tell me what Hejaz means.” And that was all I could get out of him.

At another time he disappeared, and for four whole hours we searched frantically for him. Then he turned up quietly and resumed his seat on Father Muir's porch as if he had never left it; and weary and grim he looked as he sat there, rocking dismally with his thoughts. I learned much later that, working on some incomprehensible theory of his own, he had visited Rufus Cotton. What he hoped to accomplish by this mysterious call I could not fathom at the time; but from his manner it was clear that, no matter what his purpose was, it had failed.

There was another occasion upon which, after several hours of stony silence, he leaped to his feet and, crying for Dromio and his car, disappeared down the road to Leeds in a billow of dust. They returned soon enough, and several hours later a messenger came pedaling up the hill with a telegram. Mr. Lane read it with basilisk eyes and then tossed it into my lap.

FEDERAL AGENT WHOSE WHEREABOUTS YOU REQUEST NOW IN MIDDLE WEST ON DUTY FOR DEPARTMENT PLEASE KEEP ABSOLUTELY CONFIDENTIAL.

The wire was signed by a high official in the United States Department of Justice. I had no doubt that, tortured by some lurking hope, Mr. Lane had checked up on Carmichael; with, as was plain, no results.

The old gentleman, of course, was the real martyr. It was hard to believe that this was the same Drury Lane who had, with the flush of excitement and pleasure on his old cheeks, accompanied us to Leeds those long weeks ago. Something inside him seemed to have ebbed, until it barely twitched with life; he was a sick old man again, and between his sporadic leaps of energy he and Father Muir sat silently facing each other for interminable empty hours, thinking God knows what monstrous thoughts.

Time dragged on; and then suddenly seemed to spring ahead. Day followed eventless day with lagging steps; and yet one morning, as I slunk wearily out of bed, in vertiginous horror I stiffened with the realization that this was Friday, and that on a week from the coming Monday Warden Magnus, as he was required to do by law, would set the exact date of Aaron Dow's execution. But it would be a formality. It was the custom in Algonquin Prison to hold executions on Wednesday nights. Aaron Dow, unless a miracle intervened, would be a charred corpse in less than two weeks.… The realization made me panicky, and on the instant I wanted to see people, plead with authority, make gargantuan efforts in behalf of the poor wretch behind the walls. But to whom should I go?

That afternoon as usual I dragged over to Father Muir's, and I found father there deep in consultation with Mr. Lane and the priest. I slipped into a chair and shut my eyes. And then I opened them again.

Mr. Lane was saying: “It looks hopeless, Inspector. I'm going to Albany to see Bruno.”

It was one of those not uncommon situations of the drama in which friendship and plain duty clash. Under less unhappy circumstances it might have been amusing.

We had been, father and I, only too glad to grasp an excuse for action. We insisted on accompanying the old gentleman to Albany, and he seemed rather comforted by our presence. Dromio drove like the tireless Spartan he was, but when we reached the hilly little state capital we were—at least, father and I were—exhausted. But Mr. Lane would listen to no suggestion of delay; he had telegraphed Governor Bruno from Leeds, and we were expected. So he had Dromio pilot us up Capitol Hill without pausing for refreshment or an hour's rest.

We found the Governor in his executive offices at the Capitol—the old stocky Bruno, with his thin brown hair and iron eyes. He greeted us warmly, and had one of his secretaries ring for sandwiches, and joked and rambled in a pleasant way with father and Mr. Lane … and all the while his eyes were hard and wary, and did not smile when his lips smiled.

“And now,” he said, when we were refreshed and comfortably settled, “what brings you to Albany, Mr. Lane?”

“The case of Aaron Dow,” said the old gentleman quietly.

“I thought so.” Governor Bruno drummed a rapid little tune on his desk. “Tell me all about it.”

So the old gentleman told him, in cold succinct sentences that left nothing to the imagination. He went through the whole weary argument which tended to show how Aaron Dow could not have killed the first victim, Senator Fawcett. Mr. Bruno listened with eyes closed, and if he was impressed his face did not betray it.

“And so,” concluded Mr. Lane, “in view of the fact that there is certainly reasonable doubt of Dow's guilt, we've come here, Governor, to ask you to stay execution.”

Governor Bruno opened his eyles. “A splendid analysis as usual, Mr. Lane; and under ordinary circumstances I should probably say a correct one. But—there's no evidence.”

“Listen, Bruno,” growled father. “I know you're in a tough spot, but be yourself. I knew you when! Hell, your sense of duty always made you a horse's neck! You've got to delay this execution!”

The Governor sighed. “This is one of the hardest jobs I've had since taking office. Thumm, old man—Mr. Lane—I'm just an instrument of the law. I've sworn to serve justice, it's true; but as our legal system is constituted, justice feeds on facts, and you've no facts, men, no
facts.
They're all theories—nice, resounding theories; but that's all. I can't interfere in the execution of a death-sentence pronounced by a judge after conviction by a jury unless I'm evidentially as well as morally certain, of the innocence of the condemned man. Give me proof, proof!”

There was an awkward silence, and I squirmed in my chair with a feeling of blank helplessness. Then Mr. Lane rose; he was very tall and grave, and his tired old face was set in pale marble lines. “Bruno, I came here equipped with more than a mere theory about the innocence of Aaron Dow. There are certain unavoidable and damning deductions from the two crimes which are startling in their clarity. But—as you say—reasoning is not conclusive unless it has proof to bolster it, and I've no proof.”

Father was goggle-eyed. “You mean you
know?”
he cried.

Mr. Lane made a queer impatient gesture. “I know nearly everything. Not everything, but nearly everything.” He leaned over the Governor's desk, and his eyes bored into Mr. Bruno's. “On various occasions in the past, Bruno, I've asked you to take me on faith. Why don't you trust me now?”

Bruno's eyes fell. “My dear Lane … I can't.”

“Very well, then.” The old gentleman straightened up. “Let me go further. My reductions do not as yet point to a single individual as the murderer of the Senator and Dr. Fawcett. But, Bruno, I have reached the advanced stage in my analysis where I can say with mathematical certainty:
The criminal can be only one of three people!”

We stared at him wildly, father and I. One of three! It seemed an amazing, an impossible, statement to make. I myself had narrowed the field down to a specific number of possibilities, but—
three!
I did not see how any such pruning-down process was possible from the facts available.

The Governor murmured: “And Aaron Dow is not one of these three?”

“No.”

The word fell with calm assurance. I could see the light waver in Mr. Bruno's unhappy eyes.

“Bruno, trust me enough to give me time.
Time,
do you understand? It's all I need, all I want. Time must bring out … There is one piece, one important piece, missing. I must have time to find it.”

“Perhaps the piece doesn't exist,” muttered the Governor. “These things are nebulous. What then? Can't you realize my position?”

“Then I admit defeat. But until I'm sure the piece doesn't exist, you have no moral right, as the arbiter of Dow's fate, to allow him to be executed for a crime he didn't commit.”

Governor Bruno rose abruptly. “All right, then,” he said, snapping his lips together. “I'll go this far with you. If by the time the day of execution rolls around you haven't found your last link, I'll stay execution for a week.”