A Master Hand: The Story of a Crime

by Richard Dallas

THE TRUTH AT LAST

It was nearly two weeks after my little dinner that I sat late one afternoon alone in my office. The rain without pattered dismally against the single window that looked into a deserted court and within the room was dimly lighted by the fading daylight and the fire that flickered on the hearth. The gloom of the close of a rainy winter's day was over everything and my thoughts and heart seemed full of the vague shadows that haunted the room. I was awaiting the coming of Miles, who that morning had sent me word that he had something to report. During the past fortnight he had been persistently engaged in working on his new theory of the case, but with what results I did not know, for he had told me nothing.

I also had at first made an effort to accomplish something along the same lines, for I had found inaction almost unbearable, but it proved to no purpose. The time had passed for analyses of conditions; what was now needed was expert detective work, and this I could not do, and so I had to give it up and in despair resign myself to idly waiting on Miles.

I might have sought the companionship of Van Bult and Davis, for they were about as usual, doing the same old things in the same old way, but I was not disposed to engage in their amusements and I doubt much if they were anxious for the society of a man in a condition of mind such as mine. From Littell I had only heard once since his departure and that letter recently received from Florida was but to tell me that he was about starting for home. He was coming back, he wrote, to again conduct the defence of Winters; if it were so, it would prove but a wasted errand, I feared, for there seemed little likelihood of Winters needing our services again. He was very ill, and no longer confined in a cell, but in the hospital ward of the prison to which he had been removed by the physician's orders after the trial. His strength was gone, and it did not need the professional eye to see that he was dying.

As soon as I had learned of his condition I had gone to him, not once but almost daily, and each time I had spent long hours at his bedside. No one was ever with him but his jailors and nurses; they were attentive, considerate, but to them he was only a criminal whom they had in charge and they performed their duties and no more. I was his only visitor, his only friend; even the hysterical women whose habit it is to shower their attentions and tears on hardened criminals found nothing heroic enough by the silent bedside of this dying man to call for their ministrations. His case, now become but a nine day's wonder, forgotten or neglected by the press and public, furnished no longer a gallery to be played to. Poor fellow! he must have spent many weary hours alone on that prison bed with only his wasted life and his wrong-doings and his wrongs to think of, but when I visited him he had always a smile and a pleasant word with which to greet me,—there was never a complaint. Sometimes he would talk of himself and of his early life when he and I had been at college together, and he would ask about his old friends and the outside world, and all in the manner of a man who had done with it, but he seldom referred to the charge against him or to the death of White. Once he asked me about Littell and Miles and when I assured him of their continued interest in his behalf he shook his head and bade me tell them to think no more of it—"they have been very kind," he said—and I knew he meant he would not live for a second trial, and I could not contradict him.

Sometimes during these days I would doubt, too, if it were worth while—this task I had set myself—of hunting down the murderer, for it could no longer avail to help Winters and must only bring more trouble in its trail. The authorities would be content to let it pass with the death of Winters into the long category of undetermined crimes and why should not I also? and I would be tempted to call Miles from his work, but always something—a vague fear I wanted quieted, held me back. I would recall many things that had happened and that had made little impression on me at the time, but which seemed now in the hours of my solitude and depression to be fraught with some strange significance. That speech of Littell's to the jury in which he had described the murderer as a friend of White's, and his strange words of admonition to me at our dinner, and the refusal of Miles to let me longer share in his work, and the presence of the detective, lurking near our club when my friends took their leave, what did it all mean? Was there something in the background which I did not know and which they did not wish me to learn? I feared for that which I knew not and which was coming with a fear that gripped my heart, yet I would not lift a hand to stay it, but waited for it with passive submission.

Such thoughts, such feelings as these possessed me as I sat alone in my office this gloomy afternoon waiting for Miles. After a silence that seemed ages he had at last sought me and I knew he had succeeded in his task and was coming to tell me of it. As the hour drew near for his arrival my vague fears grew stronger and would not be shaken off. I had a premonition of evil—I tried and tried again to convince myself that I was morbid and fanciful, but the thoughts and the fears would return and each time with deeper and more sinister meaning. They crowded on me as I sat bowed over my desk till I could bear them no longer and I got up and walked to the window and, pressing my head against the cool glass, stood looking with unconscious eyes through the rain into the darkening court. How long I stood thus I don't know; every faculty was absorbed in the one dreadful thought: "What if Miles has discovered the murderer and is coming to tell me he is some one I know, a friend"—I could get no further, just that train of thought, never finished, but repeated and repeated, till cold and trembling I turned at last from the window. As I did so I faced the detective; the hour had come. There was just a moment of hesitation, and then I steadied myself.

"Well," I said, "what news."

"Let us sit down," he replied, "it is a long story."

I walked to my desk and resumed my chair, and he seated himself opposite to me. By this time the room was in darkness, except for the flickering light of the fire, and though I tried to study his face I could not do so for the shadows.

"Well!" I repeated,—for he had not answered me,—"what news?" He leaned forward and put his hand on my arm, but I shook it off and straightened myself—"What news?" I said again sharply, though my voice was hoarse and my words hardly articulate.

"I have discovered the murderer," he replied.

I tried to ask the name, but could not, and turned away to look into the fire and watch with abstracted gaze the little yellow tongues of flame as they darted here and there over the dark surface of the coal. They seemed to me to be like tiny serpents at play and I smiled at their antics, but underneath in the dull glow of the deep fire I found a silent sympathy with my mood and there my gaze lingered while I thought.

The secret I had worked so long and hard to know was mine for the asking and I was silent. I could feel Miles was looking at me and could read my thoughts and thought me a coward, but what did it matter to me then? I must think if I could think. A man may stop and wait and still not be a coward—and so we sat in silence. At last something, perhaps it was pity, made him offer a last chance of escape.

"I alone know the name of that man," he said; "and I need never tell it."

I listened and I knew then that my struggle was over and won, and I turned back to him and leaning across the desk looked him in the eyes:

"No," I said; "tell me his name."

"Littell," he answered.

I sank back in my chair; it had come at last and I knew now what it was that I had feared and that, unacknowledged to myself, that fear had been with me ever since,—well, no matter when, for I hardly know, but I had guessed it, and it was not a secret that I had feared to hear, but the sound of a name.

So for a long time we sat there while the hissing of the fire alone broke the silence and the shadows deepened in the room. My thoughts were travelling back over the years through which I had known and looked up to the man who was now charged with crime. He had been my friend and guide, and he had fallen. He was a murderer, and I must denounce him. My nature recoiled from the dreadful thought.

"There must be some mistake," I said, "it cannot be"; and I looked at the detective for some sign of wavering or uncertainty, and he understood me, for his eyes fell pityingly, but the grave face gave no hope. "I must have proof, then," I said. For answer he extended a roll of paper he had been holding. I took it mechanically and unrolled it, and, smoothing it out before me, sat staring blankly at it in the darkness till he got up and lighted the gas and then I saw it was his report.

"Read it," he said, and I obeyed, and read it deliberately, dispassionately, each word. There was no need for question or comment, it was all too plain, and when I handed it back to him I knew Littell was guilty. This is what I read: