Story V: The Seismograph Adventure

“Dr. James Hanson, Coroner’s Physician, Criminal Courts Building,” read Craig Kennedy, as he held a visitor’s card in his hand. Then to the visitor he added, “Take a chair, Doctor.”

The physician thanked him and sat down. “Professor Kennedy,” he began, “I have been referred to you by Inspector O’Connor of the Detective Bureau. It may seem an impertinence for a city official to call on you for assistance, but--well, you see, I’m completely floored. I think, too, that the case will interest you. It’s the Vandam case.”

If Dr. Hanson had suddenly turned on the current of an induction coil and I had been holding the handles I don’t think the thrill I received could have been any more sudden. The Vandam case was the sensation of the moment, a triple puzzle, as both Kennedy and myself had agreed. Was it suicide, murder, or sudden death? Every theory, so far, had proved unsatisfactory.

“I have read only what the newspapers have published,” replied Craig to the doctor’s look of inquiry. “You see, my friend Jameson here is on the staff of the Star, and we are in the habit of discussing these cases.”

“Very glad to meet you, Mr. Jameson,” exclaimed Dr. Hanson at the implied introduction. “The relations between my office and your paper have always been very satisfactory, I can assure you.”

“Thank you, Doctor. Depend on me to keep them so,” I replied, shaking his proffered hand.

“Now, as to the case,” continued the doctor slowly. “Here is a beautiful woman in the prime of life, the wife of a very wealthy retired banker considerably older than herself--perhaps nearly seventy--of very fine family. Of course you have read it all, but let me sketch it so you will look at it from my point of view. This woman, apparently in good health, with every luxury money can buy, is certain within a very few years, from her dower rights, to be numbered among the richest women in America. Yet she is discovered in the middle of the night by her maid, seated at the table in the library of her home, unconscious. She never regains consciousness, but dies the following morning.

“The coroner is called in, and, as his physician, I must advise him. The family physician has pronounced it due to natural causes, the uremic coma of latent kidney trouble. Some of the newspapers, I think the Star among them, have hinted at suicide. And then there are others, who have flatly asserted it was murder.”

The coroner’s physician paused to see if we were following him. Needless to say Kennedy was ahead of him.

“Have you any facts in your possession which have not been given to the public yet?” asked Craig.

“I’m coming to that in a moment,” replied Dr. Hanson. “Let me sketch the case first. Henry Vandam had become--well, very eccentric in his old age, we will say. Among his eccentricities none seems to have impressed the newspapers more than his devotion to a medium and her manager, Mrs. May Popper and Mr. Howard Farrington. Now, of course, the case does not go into the truth or falsity of spiritualism, you understand. You have your opinion, and I have mine. What this aspect of the case involves is merely the character of the medium and her manager. You know, of course, that Henry Vandam is completely under their control.”

He paused again, to emphasise the point.

“You asked me if I was in possession of any facts which have not been given to the press. Yes, I am. And just there lies the trouble. They are so very conflicting as to be almost worse than useless, as far as I can see. We found near the unfortunate woman a small pill-box with three capsules still in it. It was labelled ‘One before retiring’ and bore the name of a certain druggist and the initials ‘Dr. C. W. H.’ Now, I am convinced that the initials are merely a blind and do not give any clue. The druggist says that a maid from the Vandam house brought in the prescription, which of course he filled. It is a harmless enough prescription--contains, among other things, four and a half grains of quinine and one-sixth of a grain of morphine. Six capsules were prepared altogether.

“Now, of course my first thought was that she might have taken several capsules at once and that it was a case of accidental morphine poisoning, or it might even be suicide. But it cannot be either, to my mind, for only three of the six capsules are gone. No doubt, also, you are acquainted with the fact that the one invariable symptom of morphine poisoning is the contraction of the pupils of the eyes to a pin-point--often so that they are unrecognisable. Moreover, the pupils are symmetrically contracted, and this symptom is the one invariably present in coma from morphine poisoning and distinguishes it from all other forms of death.

“On the other hand, in the coma of kidney disease one pupil is dilated and the other contracted--they are unsymmetrical. But in this case both the pupils are normal, or only a very little dilated, and they are symmetrical. So far we have been able to find no other poison than the slight traces of morphine remaining in the stomach after so many hours. I think you are enough of a chemist to know that no doctor would dare go on the stand and swear to death from morphine poisoning in the face of such evidence against him. The veriest tyro of an expert toxicologist could too easily confute him.”

Kennedy nodded. “Have you the pill-box and the prescription?”

“I have,” replied Dr. Hanson, placing them on the table.

Kennedy scrutinised them sharply. “I shall need these,” he said. “Of course you understand I will take very good care of them. Is there anything else of importance?”

“Really, I don’t know,” said the physician dubiously. “It’s rather out of my province, but perhaps you would think it important. It’s mighty uncanny anyhow. Henry Vandam, as you doubtless know, was much more deeply interested in the work of this medium than was his wife. Perhaps Mrs. Vandam was a bit jealous--I don’t know. But she, too, had an interest in spiritualism, though he was much more deeply influenced by Mrs. Popper than she.

“Here’s the strange part of it. The old man believes so thoroughly in rappings and materialisations that he constantly keeps a notebook in his pocket in which he records all the materialisations he thinks he sees and the rappings he hears, along with the time and place. Now it so happened that on the night Mrs. Vandam was taken ill, he had retired--I believe in another part of the house, where he has a regular seance-room. According to his story, he was awakened from a profound sleep by a series of rappings. As was his custom, he noted the time at which they occurred. Something made him uneasy, and he said to his ‘control’--at least this is his story:

“‘John, is it about Mary?’

“Three raps answered ‘yes, ‘ the usual code.

“‘What is the matter? Is she ill?’

“The three answering raps were so vigorous that he sprang out of bed and called for his wife’s maid. The maid replied that Mrs. Vandam had not gone to bed yet, but that there was a light in the library and she would go to her mistress immediately. The next moment the house was awakened by the screams of the maid calling for help, that Mrs. Vandam was dying.

“That was three nights ago. On each of the two succeeding nights Henry Vandam says he has been awakened at precisely the same hour by a rapping, and on each night his ‘control’ has given him a message from his dead wife. As a man of science, I attribute the whole thing to an overwrought imagination. The original rappings may have been a mere coincidence with the fact of the condition of Mrs. Vandam. However, I give this to you for what it is worth.”

Craig said nothing, but, as was his habit, shaded his eyes with the tips of his fingers, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair: “I suppose,” he said, “you can give me the necessary authority to enter the Vandam house and look at the scene of these happenings?”

“Certainly,” assented the physician, “but you will find it a queer place. There are spirit paintings and spirit photographs in every room, and Vandam’s own part of the house--well, it’s creepy, that’s all I can say.”

“And also I suppose you have performed an autopsy on the body and will allow me to drop into your laboratory to-morrow morning and satisfy myself on this morphine point?”

“Certainly,” replied the coroner’s physician, “at any time you say.”

“At ten sharp, then, to-morrow I shall be there,” said Craig. “It is now eight-thirty. Do you think I can see Vandam to-night? What time do these rappings occur?”

“Why, yes, you surely will be able to see him to-night. He hasn’t stirred from the house since his wife died. He told me he momentarily expected messages from her direct when she had got strong enough in her new world. I believe they had some kind of a compact to that effect. The rappings come at twelve-thirty.”

“Ah, then I shall have plenty of time to run over to my laboratory before seeing Mr. Vandam and get some apparatus I have in mind. No, Doctor, you needn’t bother to go with me. Just give me a card of introduction. I’ll see you to-morrow at ten. Good-night--oh, by the way, don’t give out any of the facts you have told me.”

“Jameson,” said Craig, when we were walking rapidly over toward the university, “this promises to be an uncommonly difficult case.”

“As I view it now,” I said, “I have suspicions of everybody concerned in it. Even the view of the Star, that it is a case of suicide due to overwrought nerves, may explain it.”

“It might even be a natural death,” Craig added. “And that would make it a greater mystery than ever--a case for psychical research. One thing that I am going to do to-night will tell me much, however.”

At the laboratory he unlocked a glass case and took out a little instrument which looked like two horizontal pendulums suspended by fine wires. There was a large magnet near each pendulum, and the end of each pendulum bore a needle which touched a circular drum driven by clock-work. Craig fussed with and adjusted the apparatus, while I said nothing, for I had long ago learned that in applying a new apparatus to doing old things Craig was as dumb as an oyster, until his work was crowned with success.

We had no trouble in getting in to see Mr. Vandam in his seance-room. His face was familiar to me, for I had seen him in public a number of times, but it looked strangely altered. He was nervous, and showed his age very perceptibly.

It was as the coroner’s physician had said. The house was littered with reminders of the cult, books, papers, curious daubs of paintings handsomely framed, and photographs; hazy overexposures, I should have called them, but Mr. Vandam took great pride in them, and Kennedy quite won him over by his admiration for them.

They talked about the rappings, and the old man explained where and when they occurred. They proceeded from a little cabinet or closet at one end of the room. It was evident that he was a thorough believer in them and in the messages they conveyed.

Craig carefully noted everything about the room and then fell to admiring the spirit photographs, if such they might be called.

“The best of all I do not display, they are too precious,” said the old man. “Would you like to see them?”

Craig assented eagerly, and Vandam left us for a moment to get them. In an instant Craig had entered the cabinet, and in a dark corner on the floor he deposited the mechanism he had brought from the laboratory. Then he resumed his seat, shutting the box in which he had brought the mechanism, so that it would not appear that he had left anything about the room.

Artfully he led the conversation along lines that interested the old man until he seemed to forget the hour. Not so, Craig. He knew it was nearing half-past twelve. The more they talked the more uncanny did this house and room of spirits seem to me. In fact, I was rapidly reaching the point where I could have sworn that once or twice something incorporeal brushed by me. I know now that it was purely imagination, but it shows what tricks the imagination can play on us.

Rap! rap! rap! rap! rap!

Five times came a curiously hollow noise from the cabinet. If it had been possible I should certainly have fled, it was so sudden and unexpected. The hall clock downstairs struck the half-hour in those chimes written by Handel for St. Paul’s.

Craig leaned over to me and whispered hoarsely, “Keep perfectly still--don’t move a hand or foot.”

The old man seemed utterly to have forgotten us. “Is that you, John?” he asked expectantly.

Rap! rap! rap! came the reply.

“Is Mary strong enough to speak to me to-night?”

Rap! rap!

“Is she happy?”

Rap! rap!

“What makes her unhappy? What does she want? Will you spell it out?”

Rap! rap! rap!

Then, after a pause, the rapping started slowly, and distinctly to spell out words. It was so weird and uncanny that I scarcely breathed. Letter after letter the message came, nineteen raps for “s,” eight for “h,” five for “e,” according to the place in the alphabet, numerically, of the required letter. At last it was complete.

“She thinks you are not well. She asks you to have that prescription filled again.”

“Tell her I will do it to-morrow morning. Is there anything else?”

Rap! rap! came back faintly:

“John, John, don’t go yet,” pleaded the old man earnestly. It was easy to see how thoroughly he believed in “John,” as perhaps well he might after the warning of his wife’s death three nights before. “Won’t you answer one other question?”

Fainter, almost imperceptibly, came a rap! rap!

For several minutes the old man sat absorbed in thought, trance-like. Then, gradually, he seemed to realise that we were in the room with him. With difficulty he took up the thread of the conversation where the rappings had broken it.

“We were talking about the photographs,” he said slowly. “I hope soon to get one of my wife as she is now that she is transfigured. John has promised me one soon.”

He was gathering up his treasures preparatory to putting them back in their places of safekeeping. The moment he was out of the room Craig darted into the cabinet and replaced his mechanism in the box. Then he began softly to tap the walls. At last he found the side that gave a noise similar to that which we had heard, and he seemed pleased to have found it, for he hastily sketched on an old envelope a plan of that part of the house, noting on it the location of the side of the cabinet.

Kennedy almost dragged me back to our apartment, he was in such a hurry to examine the apparatus at his leisure. He turned on all the lights, took the thing out of its case, and stripped off the two sheets of ruled paper wound around the two revolving drums. He laid them flat on the table and studied them for some minutes with evidently growing satisfaction.

At last he turned to me and said, “Walter, here is a ghost caught in the act.”

I looked dubiously at the irregular up-and-down scrawl on the paper, while he rang up the Homicide Bureau of the Central Office and left word for O’Connor to call him up the first thing in the morning.

Still eyeing with satisfaction the record traced on the sheets of paper, he lighted a cigarette in a matter-of-fact way and added: “It proves to be a very much flesh-and-blood ghost, this ‘John.’ It walked up to the wall back of that cabinet, rapped, listened to old Vandam, rapped some more, got the answer it wanted, and walked deliberately away. The cabinet, as you may have noticed, is in a corner of the room with one side along the hallway. The ghost must have been in the hall.”

“But who was it?”

“Not so fast, Walter,” laughed Craig. “Isn’t it enough for one night that we have found out that much?”

Fortunately I was tired, or I certainly should have dreamed of rappings and of “John” that night. I was awakened early by Kennedy talking with someone over the telephone. It was Inspector O’Connor.

Of course I heard only one side of the conversation, but as near as I could gather Kennedy was asking the inspector to obtain several samples of ink for him. I had not heard the first part of the conversation, and was considerably surprised when Kennedy hung up the receiver and said:

“Vandam had the prescription filled again early this morning, and it will soon be in the hands of O’Connor. I hope I haven’t spoiled things by acting too soon, but I don’t want to run the risk of a double tragedy.”

“Well,” I said, “it is incomprehensible to me. First I suspected suicide. Then I suspected murder. Now I almost suspect a murder and a suicide. The fact is, I don’t know just what I suspect. I’m like Dr. Hanson--floored. I wonder if Vandam would voluntarily take all the capsules at once in order to be with his wife?”

“One of them alone would be quite sufficient if the ‘ghost’ should take a notion, as I think it will, to walk in the daytime,” replied Craig enigmatically. “I don’t want to run any chances, as I have said. I may be wrong in my theory of the case, Walter, so let us not discuss this phase of it until I have gone a step farther and am sure of my ground. O’Connor’s man will get the capsules before Vandam has a chance to take the first one, anyhow. The ‘ghost’ had a purpose in that message, for O’Connor tells me that Vandam’s lawyer visited him yesterday and in all probability a new will is being made, perhaps has already been made.”

We breakfasted in silence and later rode down to the office of Dr. Hanson, who greeted us enthusiastically.

“I’ve solved it at last,” he cried, “and it’s easy.”

Kennedy looked gravely over the analysis which Dr. Hanson shoved into his hand, and seemed very much interested in the probable quantity of morphine that must have been taken to yield such an analysis. The physician had a text-book open on his desk.

“Our old ideas of the infallible test of morphine poisoning are all exploded,” he said, excitedly beginning to read a passage he had marked in the book.

“‘I have thought that inequality of the pupils, that is to say, where they are not symmetrically contracted, is proof that a case is not one of narcotism, or morphine poisoning. But Professor Taylor has recorded a case of morphine poisoning in which the unsymmetrical contraction occurred.’

“There, now, until I happened to run across that in one of the authorities I had supposed the symmetrical contraction of the pupils of the eyes to be the distinguishing symptom of morphine poisoning Professor Kennedy, in my opinion we can, after all, make out our case as one of morphine poisoning.”

“Is that case in the book all you base your opinion on?” asked Craig with excessive politeness.

“Yes, sir,” replied the doctor reluctantly.

“Well,” said Kennedy quietly, “if you will investigate that case quoted from Professor Taylor, you will find that it has been proved that the patient had one glass eye.”

“Then my contention collapses and she was not poisoned?”

“No, I do not say that. All I say is that expert testimony would refute us as far as we have gone. But if you will let me make a few tests of my own I can readily clear up that end of the case, I now feel sure. Let me take these samples to my laboratory.”

I was surprised when we ran into Inspector O’Connor waiting for us in the corridor of the Criminal Courts Building as we left the office of the coroner’s physician. He rushed up to Kennedy and shoved into his hand a pill-box in which six capsules rattled. Kennedy narrowly inspected the box, opened it, and looked thoughtfully at the six white capsules lying so innocently within.

“One of these capsules would have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to ‘John, ‘“ said Craig contemplatively, as he shut the box and deposited it carefully in his inside vest pocket. “I don’t believe I even said good morning to you, O’Connor,” he continued. “I hope I haven’t kept you waiting here long. Have you obtained the samples of ink?”

“Yes, Professor. Here they are. As soon as you telephoned this morning I sent my men out separately to get them. There’s the ink from the druggist, this is from the Vandam library, this is from Farrington’s room, and this is from Mrs. Popper’s apartment.”

“Thank you, Inspector. I don’t know what I’d do without your help,” said Kennedy, eagerly taking four small vials from him. “Science is all right, but organisation enables science to work quickly. And quickness is the essence of this case.”

During the afternoon Kennedy was very busy in his laboratory, where I found him that night after my hurried dinner, from which he was absent.

“What, is it after dinner-time?” he exclaimed, holding up a glass beaker and watching the reaction of something he poured into it from a test-tube.

“Craig, I believe that when you are absorbed in a case, you would rather work than eat. Did you have any lunch after I left you?”

“I don’t think so,” he replied, regarding the beaker and not his answer. “Now, Walter, old fellow, I don’t want you to be offended with me, but really I can work better if you don’t constantly remind me of such things as eating and sleeping. Say, do you want to help me--really?”

“Certainly. I am as interested in the case as you are, but I can’t make heads or tails of it,” I replied.

“Then, I wish you would look up Mrs. Popper to-night and have a private seance with her. What I want you to do particularly is to get a good idea of the looks of the room in which she is accustomed to work. I’m going to duplicate it here in my laboratory as nearly as possible. Then I want you to arrange with her for a private ‘circle’ here to-morrow night. Tell her it is with a few professors at the university who are interested in psychical research and that Mr. Vandam will be present. I’d rather have her come willingly than to force her to come. Incidentally watch that manager of hers, Farrington. By all means he must accompany her.”

That evening I dropped casually in on Mrs. Popper. She was a woman of great brilliance and delicacy, both in her physical and mental perceptions, of exceptional vivacity and cleverness. She must have studied me more closely than I was aware of, for I believe she relied on diverting my attention whenever she desired to produce one of her really wonderful results. Needless to say, I was completely mystified by her performance. She did spirit writing that would have done credit to the immortal Slade, told me a lot of things that were true, and many more that were unverifiable or hopelessly vague. It was really worth much more than the price, and I did not need to feign the interest necessary to get her terms for a circle in the laboratory.