But she done me wrong.’”

“Shut up, Belknap,” Berry shouted. “Don’t go playing the sentimental fool so late in the day. I guess she could have sung that song as it should be sung. And meant it.” Pushing Belknap roughly toward the hall door, Berry turned back to give his final orders. “By the way, Sergeant, I believe there are a few left-overs straying about the house. I wouldn’t care to sleep here myself and it’s likely they wouldn’t. You’d better round ’em up and take ’em places. There’s that John, and the girl named Lily, I believe. And of course Mr. Prentice and Miss Lacey and Mrs. Crawford—”

“You are most thoughtful, Lieutenant Berry.” Sydney Crawford, in hat and cloak, descended the stairs toward them. “But don’t have me on your mind. I’m just leaving—and I have my car.” She was about to pass them, and paused. “Thank you, Mr. Belknap,” she said, stiffly, her glazed eyes rigidly avoiding him, “for a thrilling week-end. And for my precious life which it is a joy to be able to dispose of as I please. Goodnight.”

Berry forever after wished he had obeyed his immediate impulse to detain her. It might have made the difference between another life and death. For, three days later, her body came ashore above Greenwich. It was the only death directly connected with that memorable week-end at Thorngate that was entered on the records as suicide.

But Berry, although it was with a strong feeling of apprehension and pity that he watched her go toward the garage, escorted by a kindly and gallant policeman, was more than anxious to reach town and deliver up his capture. He drew on his gauntlet driving gloves, accepted a light for his fag from the respectful hand of Sergeant Stebbins, slipped behind the wheel of his old Stutz, and circled out of the Thorngate drive cold on the stroke of midnight.

The following entry from the Diary of Judge Bertrand Whittaker, was incorporated verbatim in Berry’s written report of the preceding case given next day to Berry’s friend and chief, Inspector Thomas O’Donnell, of the New York Detective Bureau:

April 29th ’31—Ran into O. B. at the club just now. Saw him before he saw me. And the very look of him gave me the inspiration I’ve been praying for. What with revising my will yesterday, and buying that little gun this morning, I haven’t been in too good a humor. Not that I mind dying— Oh, I’ve said it too often. Too many denials make an affirmative! No, but death is the least part of it. It’s the wait, and the pain. God, the pain! It took me three shots of morphine to pull me through a spell last night. And, as I’ve also said before, the way around the wait and the pain is suicide. But a tame route. And unsavory. Certainly without thrill. I want thrill. I love it in my fashion as much as B. ever did. I simply haven’t his genius for devising it. How he has devised excitement for the two of us! When he deserted the Bench for the sole purpose of entering into a destroying pact with me, he the detective and I the judge, I couldn’t have foreseen in my wildest moments how positively dangerous and evil he was going to make our lives and our relations to each other. We’ve gone so far with our false witnessing and our false condemning that we are becoming terrified of each other and of our too great knowledge of sin. It’s the only way I can explain the ugly reserves and distrusts that have lately been thrusting between us. I’ve been sorry. It’s spoiled the play. But I hardly wonder. Our two last cases, particularly the Stanton-Mowbray-Blake, skimmed too close to destruction to be altogether pleasant. Perhaps it was the thought of the guillotines we hold over each other’s necks, together with a glimpse of his too handsome wicked face (proximity to him has always had the power to rouse in me such black magic as I possess), that drove the dart of my new scheme between my cerebrum and cerebellum.

I have kept a fairly accurate record of our twenty-odd cases since B. and I went into partnership. Eleven of them led to executions—that is, in each, a man or woman paid with death for a crime they never committed. Yet, of those eleven, eight confessed. The most diabolical thing about B.’s power is that he can subtly instil his victims with the exhausted and driven conclusion that to admit is the most painless way out. In some instances I even think his hypnotic force is so great that the person actually believes himself guilty. Anyway a judge can certainly do no less than impose the death penalty on a confessed murderer, can he now?

The publication, or threatened publication, of these Arabian Nights’ entertainments—together with odds and ends of undiscovered murders committed by various friends and relatives—should not only make good sensational reading, but should bring about an upheaval that might quite conceivably be climaxed by my own murder. That’s my fresh idea of an escape expressed in so many words! And however you look at it, it’s such a gay, pleasant, bad game—and so worthy of my associations with B.

And the Devil said to Mr. Legree,

“I like your style, so wicked and free

Come sit and share my throne with me—”

Yes, I’m all for trying it. And I even dropped B. a hint of something in the wind as I passed him by. I think he took alarm. I’ll give him a ring, in a few days, when my plans have matured. It’ll take a bit of planning. There’s the rounding up of half a dozen spicy criminals. Nadia Mdevani is number one.

My mind’s whirling with ideas! I can begin to see so many little twists I can give the affair—ironic, comic, naughty. An especially nice one for B. himself. It’s going to be jolly interesting. And a good death knell to set the wild echoes flying!

Transcriber’s Notes