The Saintsbury Affair

by Lily A. Long

"It was the man who had your latchkey to the library door. It was the man who picked up the De Senectute which you had been reading and passed it on to Chapman the next day. It was the man who knew how to hypnotize you in your sleep and make your brain believe what he wished it to believe. It was the man who had just shot Barker from his inner office and who impressed upon your dormant brain the scene he had just been through and made you believe you had acted his part in it. It was Allen Garney."

Benbow looked too paralyzed to really understand the situation. That didn't matter. All the missing pieces of the puzzle were now in my hands and I saw that I could prove my case and clear Gene in spite of his false confession and his traitorous memory. I thought of Jean! It was another and the most convincing indication of Garney's abnormality that he should have desired to wed the sister of his victim. That was strangely revolting. But his passion had carried him beyond his judgment.

"The chances are that hypnotizing you was not a part of his original plan," I said thoughtfully, going over the links in my own mind. "He shot Barker because Barker knew too much about his past, and was not to be trusted to keep it a secret. And his suspicion was justified. Barker had already given his secret away to Mr. Ellison. Whether he knew that instance of bad faith or not, he evidently felt that there was no real safety for him until Barker was dead. So he laid a careful plan to kill him, and carried it out. But an unsolved murder mystery never ceases to be a menace to the murderer. The police would make investigations, and his past connection with Barker might possibly come out. The fact that he searched Barker's rooms the next night shows that he was not easy on that point, even then. There might have been papers in Barker's possession which would turn inquiry upon him. So,--you offered him the opportunity of making him secure."

"I? How?"

"He saw the light burning in your study. He came in,--perhaps to establish an alibi, perhaps merely to get away from himself. He found you asleep,--a condition in which he had already hypnotized you. He saw his opportunity. By making you believe that you had shot Barker, by making you confess, he would forever turn the possibility of inquiry from himself. There would be no mystery to provoke backward inquiries along the past. And, if I may say so, you had made it easier for him to fix that idea in your mind because, as a matter of fact, you had harbored ideas of vengeance against Barker. The thought of killing him was not wholly alien to you. You had prepared the way for the impression Garney wanted you to have,--and he knew that fact. You had revealed that side of your mind to him. He used the bitterness which was already there as the foundation for the idea of revenge. Therefore, when you awoke, and came back to your senses, the idea that you had shot Barker did not strike you as an impossibility. You remembered it dimly, but there was no intrinsic impossibility in it. Do you see that?"

"Yes," he said, in a low voice. "I never could understand why some points were so clear and positive in my mind, and yet I could not remember the connecting links. It was like remembering spots in a dream."

"Those spots were the points Garney had emphasized to you, undoubtedly. He took you with him, mentally, step by step, but things he failed to touch upon would be blank in your mind. How about your revolver, Gene? Did he know where you kept it?"

"Yes. I showed it to him that afternoon."

"Then undoubtedly he took it away when he left. And he remembered to impress upon you the thought that you had thrown it away. He was careful,--yet he betrayed himself unconsciously. Those apples which he ate without thought were a stronger witness against him than his careful tissue of lies. But it's all right now. Take my word for it. It was the cleverest scheme a criminal brain ever worked out, but the righteousness on which the world is built would not permit it to triumph. As soon as we can get the matter before the court, you will be free."

"Mr. Hilton, there is a telephone call for you at the office," interrupted an attendant.