The Seventh Noon

by Frederick Orin Bartlett

The cab stopped before headquarters and Saul, with lagging steps, led his man in. The Chief listened to the story he told with his keen eyes kindling like a fire through shavings. He saw the end to the bitter invective heaped upon him during the last three weeks by the press. Then he began his gruelling cross-examination.

The story Donaldson told was simple and convincing. He had come to New York full of hope, had waited month after month, and had finally become discouraged. In this extremity he had taken to a drug. His relations with the Arsdales began less than a week ago and they knew nothing of him save that he had been of some assistance in helping young Arsdale straighten out. Arsdale had borrowed money of him, although doubtless he could not remember it, and had taken it to go down to Tung's. Feeling a sense of responsibility for the use the boy had made of this money and out of regard to the sister, he had done his best to help him pull out.

When pressed for further details of the crimes themselves, Donaldson admitted that his memory was very much clouded. He had committed the assaults when in a mental condition that left them in his memory only as evil dreams. The substantiation of this must come through his identification by the witnesses. He could remember nothing of what he had done with the purses, or the jewels and papers which they contained. He had used only the money.

An officer was sent to search his rooms at the hotel, and in the meanwhile men were sent out to bring in the victims of the assaults. It was for this test that Donaldson held in check all the reserve power he had within him. If his story was weak up to this point, he realized that this identification would substantiate it beyond the shadow of a doubt. This he knew must be done in order to offset Arsdale's possible attempt to give himself up when he should hear of this. As a student he had been impressed with the unreliability of direct evidence, and here would be an opportunity to test his theory that much of the evidence to the senses is worthless. From the moment he had determined upon this course he had based his hopes upon this test. Saul had made it clear that the descriptions given by the witnesses were vague, and now in the excitement of confronting their assailant they were apt to be still more unsubstantial. If he could succeed in terrifying them, he could convince them to a point where they would make all their excited visions fit him to a hair.

And so as each man was brought before him, Donaldson looked at him from beneath lowering brows with his mind fixed so fiercely upon the determination to force them to see him as the shadowy brute who had attacked them that he in reality looked the part. Two of the men withdrew, wiping their foreheads, after making the identification absolute.

The third witness, a woman, promptly fainted. When she revived she said she was willing to take her oath that this was the man. Not only was she sure of his height, weight, and complexion, but she recognized the same malicious gleam which flashed from the demon's eyes as he had stood over her. She shivered in fright.

The fourth victim was a man of fifty. He was slower to decide, but the longer he stood in front of Donaldson, the surer he became. Donaldson, with his arms folded, never allowed his eyes to move from the honest eyes of this other. And as he looked he made a mental picture of the act of creeping up behind this man, of lifting his weapon, finally of striking. With the act of striking, his shoulders lifted, so intense was his determination.

The man drew back from him.

"Yes," he said, "I am sure. This is the brute."

It was two hours later before Donaldson was finally handed over to the officers of the Tombs, and Saul turned back reluctantly to give to the eager reporters as meagre an outline of the story as he could.