It is a fairly good indication that she was ignorant of the true relations of the pair that she did not hand them over immediately to public censure, that she gave them the benefit of the doubt and waited hopefully through the night for an outcome of the affair that might lift the miasma in which it was beclouded.
The fact that she first made her own private search, with only her brother, Willie, as her confidant, for trace of the couple, and waited until seven o’clock the next morning before making a guarded inquiry to public sources of information, was simply that of a decent, dignified woman fearful for the safety of the man she loved and fearful that in her distraction she would bring upon him a scandal that might prove later to be an injustice.
In other words, Mrs. Hall hoped to the last that the worst wasn’t true.
But the herd refused to see that. The mob was after her. The community angel of mercy was suddenly becoming a devil, a fierce, vicious, ugly old woman who had baited a younger man with her money to marry her and had become murderously vindictive when she found him out to be faithless to their altar oaths.
It is curious and further proof of the mob madness which had determined Mrs. Hall to be guilty, that little or no attention was given at the time to Mills, the husband of the slain woman, as possibly having a hand in the crime. Although his motive was even greater then Mrs. Hall’s might have been.
For he had been cognizant of his wife’s romantic attachment, soul and intellectual affinity, for the good-looking rector. Mrs. Mills had flouted the facts in the very face of her husband. He had even seen the rector’s love letters. Was it possible that a man could be so spineless as to accept all that without reprisal?
It was Ellis Parker, county detective of Mount Holly, one of the best detectives in New Jersey, the country, for that matter, who asked the question first.
But in his quick, quiet way he soon satisfied himself that Jimmy Mills had a trustworthy alibi and had been no more concerned in the murders than Mrs. Hall. For Parker from the first declined to believe that Mrs. Hall and her brothers had plotted or executed the crime.
It is a pity that Parker wasn’t further retained, for the real murderers of Hall and Mrs. Mills would have then been in danger and might not be going free as they are to-day, smirking inwardly in their satisfaction at having so successfully hoodwinked the law by directing its investigators to the wrong scent, which the obvious, superficial aspect of the case directed toward the wronged Mrs. Hall.
It was Ellis Parker who from deductions drawn from a footprint brought to justice the slayers of old Brunen, the circus man. And it was Parker who solved the Camp Dix murder mystery six months after the United States Army Intelligence men had confessed themselves beaten.
A soldier disappeared from the field at rifle practice. Near-by woods and all surrounding country were searched and he wasn’t found. Nearly a year later his skeleton was discovered by boys who were romping in the woods.
Field animals and time had completely destroyed his flesh and clothing. All that was left were the metal insignia of his regimentals. And his leather revolver holster — empty!
There was a bullet hole in his skull, but his pistol was nowhere to be found. It was murder.
But the army sleuths put in weeks and weeks of theorizing and searching and got nowhere. Parker’s reputation for remarkable past performances caused him to be called in.
His first request for assistance was regarded as amazing by the commandant.
“I want to interview every man in this young man’s particular company,” he said. “Please get out the roll and send them to me one by one.”
As they came, Parker asked each man of his particular movements on the day of the disappearance of the murdered soldier.
One by one they gave their answers as best they could, till toward the end of the “G’s” on the alphabetically arranged roster a private named Gregory stood before him.
He questioned Gregory as he had the others, and when that young soldier left the commandant’s office, Parker turned to that gentleman and said:
“There’s your man.”
“What on earth makes you think so?” demanded the astonished officer. “He answered questions more promptly and fully than any of the others.”
“That’s just it,” said Parker. “He remembers too damn much of exactly what he did on a day more than a year and a half ago!”
And on that shrewd observation began an investigation which ended in Gregory’s confession that he had murdered the other soldier over a rivalry in love.
I think that if Parker had continued on the investigation he would have concerned himself chiefly with the one, big clew that received at the trial scarcely more than passing notice.
I do not mean the fact that the crime was committed by a marksman, expert with the pistol.
But I mean the weird and ghastly clew-offered by the cutting of Mrs. Mills’s throat from ear to ear after the woman was dead.
Mind you, here was a wound that wasn’t made to stop her outcries. Whatever outcry she may have made was all over then. She was dead. There were four bullets in her brain.
She was silenced forever when some one knelt over her corpse, threw back the helpless head and applied a knife with ghoulish savagery deeply into the flesh.
One slash from ear to windpipe wasn’t enough to slake the hatred back of the knife. The blade was sunk deeper and carried entirely across the throat. And her tongue was cut out!
This terrible wounding of the dead marks a sign of a special vengeance. It is maniacal in character. It plainly indicates a mark of reprisal put upon Mrs. Mills for a special reason.
And the New Jersey authorities should, from the first, have given it their own special attention and have pursued the avenue of investigation which it so clearly suggests.
What did that ghoulishly inflicted wound on the dead mean? What was the cause of its making? What is the significance of the special marks of vengeance — the obliterated tongue, the severed throat?
That tongue shall speak no more, deceive no more, beguile no more!
That throat shall sing no more!
There is nothing fantastic in the deduction that is more fantastic than the wound itself.
It was a thoroughly fantastic vengeance — the couple trapped at their rendezvous, slain without mercy, the woman attacked, slashed after death, the proof of their guilty love tossed between their dead bodies in letters written by the woman and doubtless robbed from the rector’s church study, for it is inconceivable that Hall went about with a bulk of these incriminating letters in his pockets.
This was not such a vengeance as the Stevens family by all its training and traditions would have taken. For had they decided on murder it would have been with the consent and dictation of their consciences that such a deed was right. It would have been an open affair.
If Mrs. Hall had felt herself justified to kill she would have publicly shot them down. If Henry Stevens had decided that the honor of his family must be avenged in blood it would have been his way also.
But what of the curious religious sects that exist? Sects that make it their business to secretly score against “sinners?”
What of the religious fanatics to be found among them? What of the men and women among them who conceived themselves secretly to be agents of the Almighty?