PAGE 6
The Sybarite
by
He had lowered a rolled-up sheet of white at the opposite end of the room, and there, in huge characters, stood forth plainly the writing of the note.
“This letter,” he resumed, studying the enlargement carefully, “is likely to prove crucial. It’s very queer. Collins says he didn’t write it, and if he did he surely is a wonder at disguising his hand. I doubt if any one could disguise what the rayograph shows. Now, for instance, this is very important. Do you see how those strokes of the long letters are–well, wobbly? You’d never see that in the original, but when it is enlarged you see how plainly visible the tremors of the hand become? Try as you may, you can’t conceal them. The fact is that the writer of this note suffered from a form of heart disease. Now let us look at the copy that Collins made at the Novella.”
He placed the copy on the table of the rayograph. It was quite evident that the two had been written by entirely different persons. “I thought he was telling the truth,” commented Craig, “by the surprised look on his face the moment I mentioned the note to Miss Blaisdell. Now I know he was. There is no such evidence of heart trouble in his writing as in the other. Of course that’s all aside from what a study of the handwriting itself might disclose. They are not similar at all. But there is an important clue there. Find the writer of that note who has heart trouble, and we either have the murderer or some one close to the murderer.”
I remembered the tremulousness of the little beauty-doctor, his third-rate artificial acting of fear for the reputation of the Novella, and I must confess I agreed with O’Connor and Collins that it looked black for him. At one time I had suspected Collins himself, but now I could see perfectly why he had not concealed his anxiety to hush up his connection with the case, while at the same time his instinct as a lawyer, and I had almost added, lover, told him that justice must be done. I saw at once how, accustomed as he was to weigh evidence, he had immediately seen the justification for O’Connor’s arrest of the Millefleurs.
“More than that,” added Kennedy, after examining the fibres of the paper under a microscope, “all these notes are written on the same kind of paper. That first torn note to Miss Blaisdell was written right in the Novella and left so as to seem to have been sent in from outside.”
It was early the following morning when Kennedy roused me with the remark: “I think I’ll go up to the hospital. Do you want to come along? We’ll stop for Barron on the way. There is a little experiment I want to try on that girl up there.”
When we arrived, the nurse in charge of the ward told us that her patient had passed a fairly good night, but that now that the influence of the drug had worn off she was again restless and still repeating the words that she had said over and over before. Nor had she been able to give any clearer account of herself. Apparently she had been alone in the city, for although there was a news item about her in the morning papers, so far no relative or friend had called to identify her.
Kennedy had placed himself directly before her, listening intently to her ravings. Suddenly he managed to fix her eye, as if by a sort of hypnotic influence.
“Agnes!” he called in a sharp tone.
The name seemed to arrest her fugitive attention. Before she could escape from his mental grasp again he added: “Your date-book is full. Aren’t you going to the Novella this morning?”
The change in her was something wonderful to see. It was as though she had come out of a trance. She sat up in bed and gazed about blankly.
“Yes, yes, I must go,” she cried as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Then she realised the strange surroundings and faces. “Where is my hat–wh-where am I? What has happened?”
“You are all right,” soothed Kennedy gently. “Now rest. Try to forget everything for a little while, and you will be all right. You are among friends.”
As Kennedy led us out she fell back, now physically exhausted, on the pillow.
“I told you, Barron,” he whispered, “that there was more to this case than you imagined. Unwittingly you brought me a very important contribution to a case of which the papers are full this morning, the case of the murdered actress, Blanche Blaisdell.”