Arthur B. Reeve Crime & Mystery Boxed Set. Arthur B. Reeve

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      "And yet, oh, Professor Kennedy, is there nothing higher than this cold science of theirs? It cannot be—it cannot be. Sanford has told me the truth, and I know I would know if he had not been telling me what was true."

      It was splendid, this exhibition of a woman's faithfulness, of this wife fighting against such tremendous weight of odds, fighting his fight, daring both law and science in her intrepid belief in him.

      "Conine," mused Kennedy, half to himself. I could not tell whether he was thinking of what he repeated or of the little woman.

      "Yes, the active principle of hemlock," she went on. "That was what the experts discovered, they swore. In the pure state, I believe, it is more poisonous than anything except the cyanides. And it was absolutely scientific evidence. They repeated the tests in court. There was no doubt of it. But, oh, he did not do it. Some one else did it. He did not—he could not."

      Kennedy said nothing for a few minutes, but from his tone when he did speak it was evident that he was deeply touched.

      "Since our marriage we lived with old Mr. Godwin in the historic Godwin House at East Point," she resumed, as he renewed his questioning. "Sanford—that was my husband's real last name until he came as a boy to work for Mr. Godwin in the office of the factory and was adopted by his employer—Sanford and I kept house for him.

      "About a year ago he began to grow feeble and seldom went to the factory, which Sanford managed for him. One night Mr. Godwin was taken suddenly ill. I don't know how long he had been ill before we heard him groaning, but he died almost before we could summon a doctor. There was really nothing suspicious about it, but there had always been a great deal of jealousy of my husband in the town and especially among the few distant relatives of Mr. Godwin. What must have started as an idle, gossipy rumour developed into a serious charge that my husband had hastened his old guardian's death.

      "The original will—the will, I call it—had been placed in the safe of the factory several years ago. But when the gossip in the town grew bitter, one day when we were out, some private detectives entered the house with a warrant—and they did actually find a will, another will about which we knew nothing, dated later than the first and hidden with some papers in the back of a closet, or sort of fire proof box, built into the wall of the library. The second will was identical with the first in language except that its terms were reversed and instead of being the residuary legatee, Sanford was given a comparatively small annuity, and the Elmores were made residuary legatees instead of annuitants."

      "And who are these Elmores?" asked Kennedy curiously.

      "There are three, two grandnephews and a grandniece, Bradford, Lambert, and their sister Miriam."

      "And they live—"

      "In East Point, also. Old Mr. Godwin was not very friendly with his sister, whose grandchildren they were. They were the only other heirs living, and although Sanford never had anything to do with it, I think they always imagined that he tried to prejudice the old man against them."

      "I shall want to see the Elmores, or at least some one who represents them, as well as the district attorney up there who conducted the case. But now that I am here, I wonder if it is possible that I could bring any influence to bear to see your husband?"

      Mrs. Godwin sighed.

      "Once a month," she replied, "I leave this window, walk to the prison, where the warden is very kind to me, and then I can see Sanford. Of course there are bars between us besides the regular screen. But I can have an hour's talk, and in those talks he has described to me exactly every detail of his life in the—the prison. We have even agreed on certain hours when we think of each other. In those hours I know almost what he is thinking." She paused to collect herself. "Perhaps—there may be some way if I plead with the warden. Perhaps—you may be considered his counsel now—you may see him."

      A half hour later we sat in the big registry room of the prison and talked with the big-hearted, big-handed warden. Every argument that Kennedy could summon was brought to bear. He even talked over long distance with the lawyers in New York. At last the rules were relaxed and Kennedy was admitted on some technicality as counsel. Counsel can see the condemned as often as necessary.

      We were conducted down a flight of steps and past huge steel-barred doors, along corridors and through the regular prison until at last we were in what the prison officials called the section for the condemned. Every one else calls this secret heart of the grim place, the death house.

      It is made up of two rows of cells, some eighteen or twenty in all, a little more modern in construction than the twelve hundred archaic caverns that pass for cells in the main prison.

      At each end of the corridor sat a guard, armed, with eyes never off the rows of cells day or night.

      In the wall, on one side, was a door—the little green door—the door from the death house to the death chamber.

      While Kennedy was talking to the prisoner, a guard volunteered to show me the death chamber and the "chair." No other furniture was there in the little brick house of one room except this awful chair, of yellow oak with broad, leather straps. There it stood, the sole article in the brightly varnished room of about twenty-five feet square with walls of clean blue, this grim acolyte of modern scientific death. There were the wet electrodes that are fastened to the legs through slits in the trousers at the calves; above was the pipe-like fixture, like a gruesome helmet of leather that fits over the head, carrying the other electrode.

      Back of the condemned was the switch which lets loose a lethal store of energy, and back of that the prison morgue where the bodies are taken. I looked about. In the wall to the left toward the death house was also a door, on this side yellow. Somehow I could not get from my mind the fascination of that door—the threshold of the grave.

      Meanwhile Kennedy sat in the little cage and talked with the convicted man across the three-foot distance between cell and screen. I did not see him at that time, but Kennedy repeated afterward what passed, and it so impressed me that I will set it down as if I had been present.

      Sanford Godwin was a tall, ashen-faced man, in the prison pallor of whose face was written the determination of despair, a man in whose blue eyes was a queer, half-insane light of hope. One knew that if it had not been for the little woman at the window at the top of the hill, the hope would probably long ago have faded. But this man knew she was always there, thinking, watching, eagerly planning in aid of any new scheme in the long fight for freedom.

      "The alkaloid was present, that is certain," he told Kennedy. "My wife has told you that. It was scientifically proved. There is no use in attacking that."

      Later on he remarked: "Perhaps you think it strange that one in the very shadow of the death chair"—the word stuck in his throat—"can talk so impersonally of his own case. Sometimes I think it is not my case, but some one else's. And then—that door."

      He shuddered and turned away from it. On one side was life, such as it was; on the other, instant death. No wonder he pleaded with Kennedy.

      "Why, Walter," exclaimed Craig, as we walked back to the warden's office to telephone to town for a car to take us up to East Point, "whenever he looks out of that cage he sees it. He may close his eyes—and still see it. When he exercises, he sees it. Thinking by day and dreaming by night, it is always there. Think of the terrible hours that man must pass, knowing of the little woman eating her heart out. Is he really guilty? I must find out. If he is not, I never saw a greater tragedy than this slow, СКАЧАТЬ