Then he noticed something peculiar in the host’s method of handling the decanter. A second glance showed him that Schenck was manipulating it with his left hand.
Hereward leaned forward as if to pick up his glass. He picked up, instead, a long spindle from the table. He turned this over once or twice, noticing its massive base of carved silver and the flecks of rust on the long wire.
“You killed him with this, didn’t you, Mr. Schenck?” he asked gently, holding up the spindle.
The old man sprang to his feet and flashed a startled, indignant glance at the reporter.
Hereward returned his stare with utter indifference. In the silence that followed, the two could hear the distant roar of a Third Avenue “L” train, and the muffled snores of some one sleeping in the upper part of the house.
“That was the clue I had,” said Hereward at last. “This is the sort of a wound a spindle makes,” unwinding the bandage from his hand. “This spot is like the one over your son’s heart. You see there’s no use denying anything. We have all the proof we need,” he ended, marveling at his own daring lie.
There was a crash as the decanter slipped from Schenck’s stiff fingers and rolled gurgling about the floor.
The old man sank back in his chair, his stem fortitude all gone.
He buried his face in his trembling hands and shook from head to foot.
The gray old figure in the padded worn gown moved Hereward to a momentary pity. Then the reporter asked with mild curiosity’
“Why did you do it?”
“He was drunk,” moaned the old man from behind his hands. “He was drunk — I heard him shambling up the street and climbing the steps— It wasn’t the first time I’d lain awake for him. I let him in. He came in here and I followed him— He was drunk — and... and he said terrible things to me. He said we were living here on his charity, and he was sick of listening to my lectures on drink and sick of seeing his mother and me pottering ’round.
“He said he’d turn us out next day and leave us to starve. He often talked that way when he was drunk. But this time he seemed to mean it. And then... then he ordered me out of the room and threatened to beat me if I didn’t go. Me — his own father. I am an old man, sir, and I’m not the man I used to be. I suppose courage goes when strength goes.”
He paused and a fresh shudder convulsed his crouching gray form. Throughout his broken, half whispered speech Schenck had never removed his hands from his face.
Hereward said nothing, but eyed him intently.
“He staggered toward me,” mumbled Schenck at last, taking up the thread of his story. “My son is — my son was — a strong man, sir, and very violent sometimes. I saw he meant to strike me and — and I was afraid. He was a violent man. Mr. Hereward.”
“Well?” queried the reporter.
“And I picked up the first thing that came to hand to defend myself with. And the next thing I knew there he lay on the rug by the table all tumbled together. It was horrible!”
“So you pulled him into the vestibule and then hid the silver to make it appear that thieves killed him!” said Hereward with scarcely a note of inquiry in his voice.
“Yes... yes, sir. Though I can’t see how you learned about it so soon. It is hard thing for an old man to be tried for his life and perhaps electrocuted. It is... it’s a hard thing, sir. And after all,” he pleaded, “I hadn’t meant to harm him. It was self defence, your honor — I mean Mr. Hereward.”
The stately dignity with which Mr. Schenck had so favorably impressed all the reporters was gone. The shrivelled old man crouched on the floor at Hereward’s feet.
“I... I fancied no one could find out, Mr. Hereward,” Schenck muttered at last. “If I sign a confession do you think the law will deal more gently with me?”
The reporter did not reply, but the old man was evidently impressed by his own idea. Scrambling to his chair again he wrote a few shaky sentences on a blank sheet, signed the confession, and shoved it across to Hereward.
The sight of the written words awoke all the sleeping news gathering instinct in the reporter.
Every newspaper man knows how infinitely stronger is this instinct than any other earthly craving.
“Take it,” entreated Schenck. “If I confess they may let me off easy.”
Snatching the confession in one hand and the long, shining spindle in the other, Hereward made for the front door; never stopping for so much as a backward glance at the quivering gray figure, so pitiably old and shrunken under the glare of the light.
The managing editor of the New York Morning Planet lived half a mile from the Schenck house. Five minutes later a panting, dishevelled reporter was gasping out to him a story that caused that half clad dignitary to gallop madly to the nearest telephone.
Dawn was breaking as a group of hastily summoned compositors and pressroom hands gathered together after their hour of hard work, to talk over the “Extra” that had just gone to press.
“This’ll make the Globe and the rest of ’em look like thirty cents,” said one. “It’s the biggest beat that ever happened.”
“That feller Hereward’s really something,” chuckled a second. “To think of his gettin’ the whole story when every other reporter in town failed!”
“An’ th’ next edition’s goin’ to have a facsimile of the confession an’ a photo of the spindle that did the murder,” said a third. “Oh, it’s the biggest beat that ever happened!”
“Yes, Hereward’s terrific!” reiterated the second man. “He’s gone back to old Schenck’s again. I’ll bet he’ll get another good column or two out of it.”
At that moment Hereward, without stopping to take off his hat or coat, was entering the managing editor’s office.
The chief was looking with delight over his hastily constructed “Extra,” whose first page bore a four column scare head, reading:
As Hereward stepped into the sanctum the managing editor looked up with a smile.
“Anything new?” he asked. “Is he arrested yet?”
“He won’t be arrested,” said Hereward. “He hanged himself in his study just after I left the first time. He was quite dead before his body was found.”
The managing editor leaped to his feet.
“Oh, I wrote that end of the story on the way down,” said Hereward wearily, answering his chief’s unasked question. “I’ve just turned it in to the city editor.”
“Hereward!” cried the managing editor, grasping the young man’s cold, unresponsive hand, “you’ve done some great work! You were clever to follow up that spindle clue and then to notice the old man was left handed. Do you know that it means a raise of pay for you?”
Through his wonder at the chief’s actually volunteering a raise of pay to any one, there slowly crept into Jack Hereward’s memory the picture of a gray, withered figure crouching at his feet.
“I’m very tired, sir,” said the reporter, “and my hand hurts. I think I’d like a day off if you don’t mind.”
Trilby’s Warden
by Dennis O’Neil
Upstairs, he could hear the voice. Was it a song of love — or of sudden, very brutal death?