The prisoner was Wilma Bowers, a widow, and the charge was that she had willfully, and knowingly, and with malice aforethought, dropped into her husband’s beer enough cyanide of potassium to kill a horse. Mrs. Bowers admitted having bought the poison but only at her husband’s command. She admitted also that she had induced him to take out a life insurance policy for ten thousand dollars, but she felt this was no more than proper wifely prudence. Finally she asserted that her husband had suffered from chronic headaches and dosed his own beer with poison because he was tired of pain. In fact, he wrote a suicide note and left it on the table in the hall. Unfortunately, in the distraction of her grief, Wilma could not remember where she had mislaid this vital document.
“A likely story!” flared the district attorney, rolling his eyes at the jury. But Dawkins was not listening to the district attorney. He could concentrate only on the lovely prisoner. Henry thought that Wilma was a fascinating, glamorous creature. The modest dressing of her dark hair, the hope and fear in her large eyes, the curvacious figure, made the blood incandescent in his veins. In fact, he barely heard the impassioned arguments of prosecutor and counsel for defense.
The first vote in the jury room was eleven to one for a verdict of guilty. The one acquittal ballot was Henry’s. When he realized that all the other jurors were ready to send the beautiful prisoner to the electric chair he was stunned. Then he sprang into action. Never a garrulous man, he suddenly found himself gifted with a superb eloquence. He argued and debated, pleaded and denounced, while hours rolled on. Just before dinner, a second vote was taken and the count stood seven to five — for acquittal. By midnight, the last stand-out for electrocution, a Mrs. Harrington, changed her vote. The jury reported a unanimous vote of not guilty.
Naturally the defense attorney learned of the magnificent behavior of Henry Dawkins. The result was an invitation to luncheon, from which counsel then excused himself. Wilma Bowers and Henry were alone at last.
Eventually Henry said, “You are the most wonderful woman in the world. I wish I could be with you forever.”
“This is sudden,” admitted Wilma, “but I like it. I accept.”
One week later they were married. Then began for Henry Dawkins a period of ecstatic and thrill-filled days and nights. Wilma, the widow, was a tender and affectionate teacher of her bachelor pupil. But the familiar joys of wedlock were of wholly secondary importance to Henry Dawkins. He accepted them only as a pleasant byproduct of a larger bliss. His was a secret and solitary happiness, the thrill of living close to danger.
Not for one moment had Henry ever felt himself deceived about Wilma. He devoutly believed the whole story as told to the jury by the district attorney. Now he felt certain that the time would soon come when she would do to him what she did to her first husband. At last he was living a real adventure! Thus he was not surprised when Wilma suggested that he take out life insurance; he signed the application with glee. Until the policy was issued he felt uncomfortably and disappointingly secure.
But once the policy, naming Wilma as sole beneficiary, without possibility of change, was delivered to him, life really became exciting. If Wilma baked an apple pie, Henry tasted it with eyes to one side, tongue poised, for the distant tang of an alien taste. He went curiously to sleep wondering if he would ever wake up.
Then came a winter’s night, with the wind crying like a bad child. The lamps were low in the Dawkins’ living room, and Henry was in his easy chair reading a detective novel. Through the door came Wilma, smiling; in one hand she carried an empty glass and in the other an uncapped bottle. Henry’s heart vaulted and fell. He remembered; his predecessor had passed out after a draught of beer.
“My dear,” he grinned, “that looks like brown October ale. You remember — the song in Robin Hood?”
“Robin Hood?” repeated Wilma, aghast. “Did you say Robin Hood?”
“Yes,” said Henry. “Anything wrong about it?”
Wilma’s hand, pouring the beer, began to tremble. “Robin Hood,” she repeated. “I remember now.”
She rushed across the room toward the bookcase, and her hands raced from title to title. She gave a little triumphant squeal and pulled out a book, shook it, and a piece of white paper fluttered to the floor. With a cry from the heart she seized it and held it triumphantly before Henry’s bug-eyed stare. There it was, and no mistake. Her first husband’s note, proclaiming his intention to commit suicide.
Wilma was not a murderess. She was vindicated...
The squib in yesterday’s paper told how Henry Dawkins of the Bronx went to Reno and got his divorce.
A Case for Deduction
by M. P. Shiel and John Gawsworth
Copyright, 1947, by John Gawtwarth
In 1895 M. P. Shiel, that comparatively unsung genius of the weird and the fantastic, had his first book published. The three short stories in prince zaleski were a frank throwback to Poe’s Dupin trilogy which had first appeared in book form exactly half a century before. Like Poe, however, Shiel wearied of his eccentric sleuth and abandoned him — for precisely another half century.
And therein lies our tale...
It is not commonly known that in 1945 Mr. Shiel revived the character of Prince Zaleski — he wrote a fourth Zaleski short story especially for EQMM, but strangely enough we were not even aware of the epic event until it was too late. The details were sent to us by John Gawsworth, a personal friend and at times a collaborator of Mr. Shiel’s. As Gawsworth expressed it, the return of Prince Zaleski nearly cost Mr. Shiel his life. The fourth, and last, Zaleski story was written in October 1945, when the author was past eighty. As soon as the manuscript was finished, Mr. Shiel walked to Horsham to mail it to EQMM’s First Annual Short Story Contest. The effort was too much for the grand old man: he fainted and was taken to a hospital. When he recovered Mr. Shiel was uncertain whether or not he had actually posted the manuscript. In any event, the story never reached EQMM, and no trace of the original was ever found. Mr. Shiel died on February 17, 1947 and the mystery of the missing manuscript will probably remain a mystery forever. But think: if an accident of fate had not intervened, we should have gained possession of the only Prince Zaleski manuscript extant!
While we cannot bring you a new Prince Zaleski story — and now that Mr. Shiel is dead all hope for the resurrection of Prince Zaleski is gone — we can bring you a Shiel story which, according to the author himself, has never been published in the United States. It is a story, moreover, that was written by Mr. Shiel in collaboration with his good friend John Gawsworth. It is a story, too, that reveals Mr. Shiel’s genius for the weird and the fantastic, and yet within the framework, within the technical boundaries, of the modern detective story.
So, dear reader, hone thy logic — one of the great Old Masters is throwing down the gauntlet. Whet thy wits, dear reader — one of the Old Foxes is laying down the clues. And just before the end, when Mr. Shiel says (through his character, Uncle Quintus) that he has “provided you with sufficient clues to solve the problem,” we shall have a few more words to say — by way of warning!
“Since you pride yourself on solving mysteries,” said my Uncle Quintus, puffing from a petty pipette the smoke of some preparation of cannabis which had followed him from the East, “I will give you some facts in the case of a young artist friend of mine, Aubrey Smith; enough, I should think, for you to elucidate and explain his troubles to me, without my telling you the successful conclusions arrived at by the detective in charge. That would interest you?”