When Chantrelle’s counsel sat down, his client gasped: “Is that all the evidence for the defense?” He was taken aback by the brevity of his counsel.
The jury were out a few minutes over an hour and on their return found Chantrelle guilty of murder, and he was sentenced to death by hanging. His appearance outside the court was greeted with hisses, groans and yells.
Chantrelle’s comment was:
“Would that I could but place a fuse in the center of this earth, that I could blow it to pieces, and with it the whole of humanity. I hate them.”
He maintained in prison that the traces of opium found on the bolster and sheet had been rubbed in by some one with the object of incriminating him.
An almost unforgivable item came to light, that he had forbidden Elizabeth’s brother, her twin, to visit her. And the reason, the vile reason he pretended was that he suspected them of incest.
We can almost see Chantrelle in his two roles as husband and as the carefree man about town. No doubt there were many, men and women both, to swear that Chantrelle was a charming fellow, a gentleman, a model of courtesy and politeness, but if so none of them came forward to say so.
On the last day of May, Chantrelle went to his death, leaving behind him three little boys whom he had robbed of a devoted and loving mother.
Perhaps they found a foster mother, and little Louis and the baby had no memories of their own, but Eugene — he must have remembered that New Year’s day, his day in court, too, when he dared not look at his father’s staring eyes and fidgeting fingers.
Time rubs out the writing, and passes a merciful eraser over our childish troubles and terrors, and so, no doubt, it was with him. We pray so.
By Whose Hand?[1]
by Louise Rice
Many of the world’s best detectives put their heads together to catch the clever crooks who swirl about that cursed hand.
Mary Smith, the great graphologist, receives evidence of the substitution of a double for the prominent London widow, Mrs. Alma Batten. Miss Smith turns the case over to the world-renowned detective, Juan Murphey. Murphey sends over three “society” operatives on a big yacht, and Hoofty, a “roughneck” operative, on a transatlantic liner. He himself sails on the same liner disguised as a Spanish grandee, “Don Jaime de Ventura,” with one of his most talented assistants disguised as his valet, “Michael Strogoff.” A girl named Annette Taylor begins to spy on them. One evening she runs into their suite in deathly fear of a man in a steward’s uniform. The next day, she is found dead, with a dagger between her shoulder blades, and a misleading note pinned to the outside of her cabin door. As Juan and Michael return from the captain’s preliminary inquest, they stand close together while Juan reaches in, to turn on the electric light. “Once before they had stood thus and an instant afterward had been fighting for their lives.”
Chapter X
Deadly Caution
There was a vivid memory of that in their minds at the moment, for they felt the impalpable presence of menacing existences. However the lights, springing out, showed them the rooms empty.
Silently they went in, still close together, shut and locked the door, and still keeping side by side, thoroughly searched every nook and cranny of the rooms before they said a word. Then they withdrew to their bathroom, turned on the water and stood to talk.
“Did you notice that writing left outside the door, Michael?” asked Juan, sitting down on a chair before the mirror and pulling off his wig carefully, that Michael might massage his head, for the thing was very tight-fitting, and there were times when the pressure of it on his scalp drove him wild with nervousness.
“No — as to anything beside tire writing,” said the old man, who had begun to carefully knead the other’s shaven head.
“Listen, then. ‘Stewardess. Please do not wake me in the morning. I have had a bad night and wish to sleep.’ What does that tell you, my dear Michael?”
There was a silence, and after it had lasted a little while Don Jaime, looking in the mirror, saw the other shake his head.
“Well, it tells me that Miss Taylor was killed, not during the night, but in the morning!”
Another silence. Then Michael said:
“Oh!”
“Precisely!”
“ ‘Please do not wake me in the morning. I have had a bad night.’ Yes, of course!”
“You see, if it had really been written the night before, by the girl, she would have said: ‘Please do not wake me in the morning, I am afraid I shall have a bad night.’ Or something like that.
“The person who did write that was subconsciously aware that it was then morning or close to it, and involuntarily and without knowing it, wrote of the night as having passed.
“I don’t know that that helps us much, but it establishes the fact — more or less — that she was alive during the major part of the night. When the finger-print men from Scotland Yard get to work they may be able to get prints that will help, or the captain may be able to find the fellow.”
“I have always thought that in a large ship like this, a clever man could hide himself throughout the voyage by working at this and that, providing, of course, that he could get the right clothes for the jobs. It seems that this fellow did.”
“You would know him again?”
“I think I would know him even if he were disguised, and especially if I saw him walk. There was something very distinctive about his motion. And his voice, too. It had an odd, grating sound.
“I suspect that it is a ‘whisky’ voice, and I don’t think him as young as he was got up to seem. Perhaps his hair was dyed, or it might be a wig. There was something about the difference in two sides of his face, too.”
“He goes in the records, of course.”
“Oh, yes. I have sketched him profile, and full, and halfway.” Shutting the bathroom behind him and locking it — for this was always done when Juan was in there without his make-up — Michael brought from what seemed like the flat side of an open trunk some thin sheets of paper, and took them back to the bathroom. “There he is,” he said, and fell to massaging the shaven poll again.
Juan looked long and carefully. Michael had a really extraordinary gift, he knew. With sure, though seemingly careless pencil, he had placed on that little piece of tough tracing paper an almost breathing likeness, an ugly face, something malign and ferocious about it, despite the rather good-looking features.
The unevenness in the two sides of the face was well brought out. There was quite a library of these drawings, in a concealed wall safe, back in New York, in the big old-fashioned suburban house that Juan had called “home” since he was born.
Like Michael, Juan had a prodigious memory for faces.
“Ever see this bird before?”
“Never.”
“Probably an English or Continental criminal. Though he does not really look the criminal at all, does he?”
“No, he does not.”
By-and-by the make-up was all freshened, the dark stain all over the body inspected, and places where it seemed to have worn a little repaired, the special stain for the finger nails and toe nails renewed, the hair on legs and arms lightly touched to keep the red out of it.