Prefatory note attached to Document 2, Homicide File G029-02: The deposition herein filed as Document 2 was taken down by public stenographer R. A. Wallis from oral testimony voluntarily given under oath on the afternoon of March 29, 1929. Sheriff Homer Tate Watkins was questioning officer; Patrolman Wilbur J. Barlow, witness. This file is to be held in the “Open" section until six (6) months after the above date, and will then be filed under "Unsolved" in the Santiago County Criminal Courts Bldg., Santiago, California.
AS regards the murder of the night watchman, Emiliano Gonzalez, I know nothing for I was not present to witness the crime. But as to the death of the unknown intruder, who seems to have been some sort of Polynesian or Mongoloid mixed breed, I have much to say, for I saw it happen. But little of what I can tell you will be believed, I fear. It is all I can do to believe it myself, for all that I saw it with my own eyes.
Sheriff Watkins has apprised me of my right to keep silent or to have the lawyer of my choice present while I gave this testimony, but I have chosen to tell everything I know regarding these two deaths and the fire which enveloped the South Gallery, even if this sworn deposition should later be used as evidence against me. As I am innocent of all crimes except that of ignorance, I have nothing to fear.
My name is Arthur Wilcox Hodgkins. I am 29 years old, and I reside at 34 Mission Street, this city. For the past four years I have worked at the Sanbourne Institute of Pacific Antiquities, first as a library clerk, then as Assistant to the Curator of the Manuscripts Collection of the Institute. My direct superior was Dr. Henry Stephenson Blaine; when he was unexpectedly taken ill, about seven months ago, the directors of the Institute requested me to fill the role of temporary Curator of Manuscripts until such time as Dr. Blaine should be well enough to resume his rightful duties.
Because everything I am going to reveal at this time has its genesis in Dr. Blaine’s unfortunate illness, and in certain events which preceded and were subsequent to that illness. I must begin my statement with what may seem to you officers to be irrelevant material. I am sorry to have to take up so much of your time, but it is imperative that you permit me to tell my story in my own way.
I.
TO anyone who knew him as well as I did, or who worked by his side day in and day out, it was distressingly obvious that Dr. Blaine's nervous breakdown had been impending for some time. His features, normally tranquil, became increasingly pallid and worn, as if he were suffering under great strain and tension during the months immediately preceding his mental collapse. The change was perhaps most visible in his manner, which was usually genial and affable; but more and more he seemed distracted, inattentive to his work, unaware of his surroundings. Many times I came upon him musing over a brown manila file folder he had recently begun keeping; he had never shown me the contents of this folder, but it was marked "Copeland Notes/Xothic Legend Cycle" in ink on the tab. It was not until much later that I gained any idea as to what this inscription referred.
Whenever I happened to interrupt his study of this particular file, he would start guiltily, eye me with something resembling suspicion, and at times abruptly ask what I was doing there. Then he would hurriedly stuff the file back in the bottom drawer of his desk—a drawer he always kept locked.
As I have said, there was no question in my mind that Dr. Blaine was suffering under enormous nervous strain, due to causes completely unknown to me. But it was not until that terrible night in August that I gained any notion of just how serious his condition actually was. Whenever I happened to inquire as to his health, he would set the question aside with some seemingly casual remark to the effect that he was "sleeping badly" or "had a lot on his mind these days." From time to time he complained of bad dreams. As his condition rapidly deteriorated, he did in fact display the signs of insomnia in his trembling hands, pale face, red-rimmed eyes, and lack of ability co concentrate.
Then, at 3 o'clock in the morning of August 4. 1928. he was admitted to the Psychiatric Emergency Ward of Mercy Hospital in a state of shock resembling catatonia. Dr. Robinson Dambler, the physician in charge of his case, said he seemed to be in a condition of complete nervous collapse. He appeared to have lost the power of coherent speech, repeating over and over again the meaningless and singularly bestial sounds. “Yugg ... Yugg ... Yugg." He resisted every attempt at communication, and, during the next two months or so, had to be held in continuous restraint, having made several frenzied attempts at self-mutilation. Early in October he was committed to Dunhill Sanitarium, under treatment by the renowned Dr. Harrington J. Colby, a distinguished specialist in nervous disorders of this type.
I wish I could convey to you how shocked and horrified I was at the news of his nervous breakdown. I profoundly admired and esteemed Dr. Blaine as an eminent scholar and a scientist of high repute in his field. Even more than this, I regarded him as my friend, despite the considerable difference in our ages.
As requested by the directors, I assumed temporary curatorship, and for some months was too deeply immersed in handling my double burden of work to inquire more than cursorily into his condition. I have to admit that during the several weeks immediately prior to his breakdown, Dr. Blaine had neglected his duties, and our files were in the most slovenly condition. We had been engaged in cataloguing items from the Copeland bequest, with an eye toward a public display of the art treasures recently bequeathed to us. The directors had most urgently wished to place the Copeland Collection of Central Pacific and Polynesian Antiquities on display during the 1928 season, and the South Gallery had been cleared with that purpose in mind; but this proved simply impossible, due to Dr. Blaine’s neglect of his duties during the final phase of his illness. The task of completing the preliminary cataloguing devolved upon me.
I suppose I should explain to you officers that the Copeland bequest was the largest and most important acquisition the Sanbourne Institute had ever received since it was first established to house the great Carlton Sanbourne collection itself. Professor Copeland, who died in 1926, was the most distinguished archaeologist in the field of Pacific prehistory, and the fruits of his long and remarkable career lay in the unique collection of artifacts he had built up over half a century of field research. It was composed of several steamer trunks filled with unsorted papers, correspondence, articles clipped from learned quarterlies, unorganized notes and private journals, and several partially complete manuscripts, including one of book length. The artifacts themselves occupied numerous packing crates, and ranged from examples of Tonga Island tapa-cloth weaving to idols and stone images, some of considerable size and weight. The work involved in sorting, identifying, labeling, and classifying this enormous miscellany occupied me for several months.
The most baffling item in the entire collection, however, remained unclassifiable and stubbornly resisted all attempts to identify either the nature of its composition of the style or period of its workmanship. This singular artifact had reputedly been brought up from the depths of the sea off Ponape in 1909 by a native diver. It had attained considerable notoriety in the popular press as “the Ponape figurine”, because in some manner it was intimately connected with Dr. Blaine’s collapse. News stories told how he had raved that it must be destroyed when he had been taken into custody on the night of August third; muck-raking journalists had dug up the slanderous account of Professor Copeland, its discoverer, and repeated yet again the sensationalist accounts of how he had died a babbling maniac in a San Francisco mental institution. These specialists in "yellow journalism" even had the temerity to drag poor Dr. Blaine’s unfortunate condition into their Sunday supplement horror stories. I recall the headline of one, “PONAPE FIGURINE CLAIMS SECOND VICTIM ”, which outraged and disgusted me.