Murderer's Mail

CHAPTER I. Sudden Death

DOCTOR JAMES RICHARDS was a practitioner whose patients were only among the most fashionable persons in the city, yet he did more than cater to the supposed ailments of persons who liked to be thought in delicate health. Doctor Richards was in love with his profession, and while he took pride in the fact that men and women of social position and wealth had him as family physician, yet he was more than a doctor in name only.

And he was more than the ordinary physician who looked at diseases in the ordinary way and cured them by drugs alone. Psychology played a big part in Doctor Richards' practice. He looked for symptoms in the mind as well as in the body. And in most cases he found the clew to the defect and also to the cure there.

Now he took out his gold-edged prescription book and lifted his fountain pen from his pocket. He adjusted his glasses, and smiled across the wide library table at Gordon Sparter. The latter refused to meet his glance. His eyes were furtive, his nostrils were distended, he opened and closed his hands spasmodically, he wet his lips with his tongue continually.

“Sparter, you have been drinking too much!” the doctor accused.

“I suppose so.”

“And that is not at all like you. You may be one of the idle rich, you may have sowed considerable wild oats in your youth, you may know a champagne bottle when you see one but of recent years you have been a very moderate drinker.”

“I—that's right!”

“And within the last few days you have been drinking heavily; is that not so? Yet you have not grown intoxicated. The drink has hurt you, of course, and raised hob with your nervous system, but there had been some sort of a counter-irritant, I may say.”

“Counter irritant?” Sparter gasped, looking at the doctor, and then looking away again quickly.

“Exactly. You have been suffering mentally, suffering so much that liquor did not have its ordinary effect. You are sure that you have nothing more to tell me?”

“Quite sure. What do you mean, Richards? Why, everything is all right. I'm just a bit under the weather—caught a little cold, you know. Nerves are all right.”

Doctor Richards brushed a book from the end of the table. It fell to the floor with a crash. Gordon Sparter almost sprang from his chair, and a cry escaped him. He sank back again, trembling.

“Nerves all right, are they?” Richards asked, smiling again.

“Confound you! Why did you do that?”

“Just to show you that your nerves are not all right, my friend. You are in a sorry state. Is it business?”

“No, Nothing like that. My fortune is invested wisely—and I never speculate.”

“That is what I thought. So it is not business. And it is no affair in which a woman is concerned, of course.”

“What makes you say such a thing as that?”

“Women have been known to make men nervous, my friend. A love affair that is not running smoothly2”

“Rot!”

“Of course it is rot, in your case,” Doctor Richards agreed. “A man happily married to one of the beauties of the city, and a woman who is more than a beauty2”

“Nothing like that!” Sparter snapped.

“Of course not. Business and women are eliminated. You are not being blackmailed?”

“Certainly not! Seems to me you are talking a lot of nonsense! Going to give me some medicine?”

“Some medicine and some advice,” the physician replied. “I can give you medicine to soothe your nerves, drugs to help your body to get back to normal—but I must remove the cause if I am to effect a complete cure.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Gordon Sparter snapped the words again, and got up to pace the floor nervously.

“Something is preying on your mind,” the doctor said. “Straighten out your mind, and your body will take care of itself.”

“Utter rot! I'm just a bit seedy, I tell you—a little cold, and all that sort of thing.”

“Have it your own way,” Doctor Richards said. “I'll give you a prescription. But you must stop drinking to excess, and get out in the air more. Take Mrs. Sparter and make a trip some place. You've nothing to tie you down to the city.”

“I may do that,” Sparter said, stopping at one end of the table. “Haven't been away for several months.”

“And whatever it is that is bothering you—get it off your mind.”

Sparter tried to smile.

“Rot, I tell you!” he exclaimed. “I'm all right—just a bit of a cold2”

The hall door was opened, and Doctor Richards was upon his feet instantly. A woman stood framed in the doorway—a woman of twenty-five, very beautiful, charming, cultured and refined. A smile played about her lips, and when she spoke it was in a voice that was musical and highly pleasing.

“Well, is the examination over?” she asked.

“All over, Mrs. Sparter,” the physician replied.

“And what is the verdict?”

“Mr. Sparter has a cold that he has neglected. It has made him nervous. He says that he feels a bit seedy. I shall give him some medicine, but I advise that he get out into the air more—possibly take a trip. With you along to nurse him2”

“Heavens! I couldn't go along—not now!” Mrs. Sparter said.

“Why not?” her husband asked.

“With the club convention coming up in less than a month? And I am on several important committees too. But you can go, Gordon.”

“Think about it!” Sparter growled.

He turned toward the window, and Doctor Richards picked up his prescription book and fountain pen. He whirled around swiftly and looked sharply at Mrs. Sparter. He surprised a peculiar look on her face.

“And how are you feeling, Mrs. Sparter?” the doctor asked.

“Rather well—except that I am tired now and then,” she replied. She tried to smile, too, but there was a peculiar quality in her smile, and the physician noticed it. He had known her for years, had known her before her marriage to Sparter. She came from a prominent and wealthy family, had as much money of her own as Sparter had. Society had whispered that it had been a love match, that she adored Sparter, and that he was insanely jealous of her.

Doctor Richards was intensely interested in this household. He knew that something had happened within a year of the marriage—that there was not peace and contentment in this splendid house—and he supposed that it had been Sparter's jealousy that had caused a sort of estrangement. At times he felt a bit of fear for these friends of his. He had felt like doing something to aid them, he was fifty, and Sparter only thirty, and his wife twenty-five—but he had hesitated.

As he maintained the conversation, he watched Mrs. Sparter closely. She had been bred to conquer emotion when it was necessary. She was the sort of woman who can smile while her heart is breaking, but she did not delude Doctor Richards entirely this day.

There was something radically wrong in this household, he told himself—these young friends of his were on the rocks, or drifting in that direction.

“I just wanted to learn whether there was anything serious the matter with Gordon,” she said, now. “Stay and talk to him for a time, doctor, if you have no other patients waiting—cheer him up.”

“Glad to do it, if he wants me to.”

“Of course!” Sparter said. “Sit down, doctor. Going out?”

He addressed the question to his wife, and looked at her sharply as he did so.

“I am going to drive for a time—I feel that I need the air,” she said. “I have been writing a club paper.”

“Good thing to get out and let the breeze blow away the cobwebs,” Sparter told her.

“I'll be back long before dinner,” she said.

She went out and closed the door, and the doctor sat down beside the wide library table again, and began talking of things that did not concern diseases and drugs.

Mrs. Sparter hurried up the stairs to her own boudoir. In the hall she met her maid.

“I am going out for a time, Marie,” she said. “You may lay out the new blue gown for dinner.”

“Yes, madame.”

“I shall not need you now.”

Mrs. Sparter went on into the room and closed the door. The maid heard the key turned in the lock.

Had Doctor Richards been watching the maid then, he would have been more than ever convinced that there was something wrong in the Sparter household. She walked down the hall for a short distance, stopped, hesitated, and then returned softly, making not the slightest noise. Just outside the door of the boudoir she stopped to listen, and presently she knelt and peered through the keyhole.

Mrs. Gordon Sparter had on her hat and coat. She was sitting before her desk in one corner of the room, her profile toward the hall door, writing a note.

As the maid watched, Mrs. Sparter finished the note and put it into an envelope, which she addressed. Then, for a moment, she sat with her face resting in her hands. The maid could see her face—for an instant when Mrs. Sparter thought she was not observed. It was drawn, almost haggard.

Then the woman at the desk sighed and seemed to come from an unpleasant reverie. She reached for a little, jeweled stamp box that was on one end of the desk, and took out a stamp. She wet it on a sponge, and put it on the envelope.

The maid got up quickly and hurried down the hall, this time disappearing into her own room. An instant later, she was down the rear stairs and talking to some of the other servants.

“The doctor's with him now,” the butler was saying to the cook. “He's been hitting the drink—that's what. All I've done for a week is whisky and carbonated water to his library or his den. Business trouble, I suppose—speculating.”

“I hope he ain't gone and lost all his money and that of the missus too,” the cook replied. “This is a good place.”

“I heard him tell the doctor he had a cold,” the maid offered.

“What are you doing down here?” the butler demanded.

“She said she didn't need me until she wanted to dress for dinner—she's going out.”

“And there's something funny about that, though it isn't for me to question the comings and goings of my mistress,” the butler said. “The chauffeur was telling me about it. About a dozen times in the last month she has driven downtown and left the car on a corner, and been gone for about fifteen minutes. The chauffeur followed her once—she went to the central post office and mailed a letter.”

“Well, that's her business!” the maid snapped.

“Looks peculiar, says I,” the butler replied. “Funny she doesn't put those letters with the other mail at the house. But it's none of my business.”

“And that's the truth!” the maid replied.

She went through the rear door and found herself in a small garden, used by the servants now and then. Now that she was alone, the maid appeared to have troubles of her own. There was a worried look in her face, and she paced the walk nervously. She plucked a rose, and tore it to pieces without as much as looking at it. Then she seemed to fight to regain her composure, and when she returned to the house she was smiling.

A woman's scream rang through the house, a second and a third. The maid's face blanched, the butler's eyes bulged, and the fat cook seemed to flinch. Gordon Sparter and Doctor James Richards, in the library, heard it and sprang to their feet. They rushed out into the hall.

One of the servants was huddled at the top of the stairs, weeping hysterically, and they hurried up to her.

“What is it?” Sparter demanded.

“She's dead—dead,” the servant wailed.

“Of whom are you speaking?” the physician demanded, shaking the woman and making an attempt to bring her out of her hysterics. “Answer me! What do you mean?”

“Mrs. Sparter—she's dead!” the woman sobbed. “She's sittin' before her desk in her room—dead! I was cleanin' the bathroom, and I went in there and2”

But Doctor Richards and Gordon Sparter already were rushing along the hall toward the door of the boudoir,

CHAPTER II. Poison

THEY found that the door was locked on the inside, of course, and so they ran on, Doctor Richards in the lead, and reached the door of Sparter's room, ran through that and the bathroom, and so entered the boudoir. Some of the other servants, attracted by the tumult, had reached the second floor of the house and were caring for the woman who had made the discovery.

Mrs. Sparter was in the chair before her desk. She had fallen forward. She had on hat and coat, and the former had been thrust to one side, and her luxuriant hair had come down. One hand had overturned the inkwell, and the other had brushed paper and envelopes to the floor. Her eyes were open and glazed. There was an expression of agony about the corners of her mouth.

“Stand back!” Doctor Richards exclaimed, as they entered. He remembered that Sparter had married his wife for love, and he did not care to have a half-crazed man bothering him during these first few moments while he was at work.

But the first swift examination assured the physician that nothing could be done. Mrs. Sparter was dead. Doctor Richards turned toward Sparter.

“Is—she2” Sparter gasped.

Doctor Richards nodded his head, slowly, and then sprang forward and put an arm behind Sparter's shoulders as he tottered.

“Careful, old boy!” he warned. “Come away now. Try hard not to break down. You're not any too well, yourself, at the present time, you know!”

“But2” Sparter made an effort to speak, it seemed, and then glanced about him wildly.

“Into your own room for a few minutes, until you get over the shock a little!” the physician ordered. “I command it, Sparter! Back to your own room, old friend!”

He forced Sparter to turn around and pass through the bathroom again, and Sparter moved mechanically, as though dazed, rubbing the back of one hand over his eyes. Doctor Richards made him sit in a chair before one of the windows, and he called Sparter's valet to attend him.

“Just remain here until I make my investigation,” the physician said. “You can't help my being in there, old man, and you might hinder me a lot. Just sit here, and let your valet get you anything that you want.”

Richards stepped to the door and called the butler in from the hall.

“Mrs. Sparter has died while sitting before her desk in her boudoir,” he explained, simply. “I'm going to make an investigation, and I'd like to have you go into the room with me, if you have no objection to make.”

“Certainly, sir, unless there is something else that is required of me,” the butler said.

“Order the other servants down stairs, and then follow me. And tell them to remain in the house and keep quiet for the present. They are not to talk.”

“I understand, sir.”

The butler did as he had been ordered, and then went into the boudoir after the doctor. He glanced at Sparter as he passed; Sparter was gazing through the window as a man who sees nothing, one fist pressed tightly against his mouth. The valet was hovering near, ready to be of assistance, hoping that his master would control himself and neither faint nor grow hysterical.

Richards called the butler to aid him, and they lifted the body and put it upon the bed.

“Touch nothing in the room for the time being,” the physician directed.

“What do you suppose caused it, sir?”

“I do not know,” Richards replied. “Persons die in peculiar ways sometimes. A human heart is a delicate organ and easily demolished; it is a frail thing, yet life depends upon it.”

“She always seemed to be so very healthy, sir,” the butler offered. “She indulged in sports and2”

“She was healthy,” the doctor replied. “I examined her less than two weeks ago—used to examine her every six months—and I remarked to her at that time that she had a splendid constitution. Her ceaseless social activities did not seem to break her down, as is the case with so many women.”

And then Doctor Richards was silent, conducting his examination. The butler, standing against the wall across the room, heard the physician grunt once or twice as if in surprise, and once an exclamation escaped his lips. And after a time the doctor raised his head, and the butler saw an expression of horror in his face.

“What is it, sir?” the butler asked.

“Do not ask questions!” Doctor Richards snapped, angrily. “Glance into the other room and see if Mr. Sparter is all right.”

The butler obeyed.

“Mr. Sparter is sitting before the window, sir, looking out,” he reported. “He—he seems to be taking it pretty hard, sir. I suppose the shock2”

“No doubt,” the doctor interrupted. “And there is another sad blow in store for him. You have been with them since their marriage, haven't you?”

“Yes, sir,” the butler replied, “and I was with Mr. Sparter's father before that.”

“Then you should have the interests of the family at heart and should be trusted,” said Doctor Richards. “I'm going to tell you what may surprise you—Mrs. Sparter died from poison!”

The butler gasped, and his face grew livid.

“Poison, sir?”

“Not so loud! We'll keep it to ourselves for a few minutes. Just stand where you are!”

The butler remained near the wall, looking across the room at the body with an expression of horror in his face. Doctor Richards went slowly around the room, looked at the litter on the desk and on the floor below it, investigated the things on the dressing table, and then glanced toward the butler again.

“Why—why did she take it, sir?” the servant gasped.

Doctor James Richards was asking himself the same question. He knew the poison that had caused Mrs. Sparter's death—knew it the moment he had looked at the dead lips and had sniffed the odor that remained clinging there. It was a subtle poison not generally known, a poison the mere touch of which on the tongue would cause a person's heart to cease beating.

How had Mrs. Gordon Sparter obtained it? And why had she taken it? As far as Doctor Richards knew, she had every reason for wanting to live. She was talented, rich, popular. There was no skeleton in her family, as far as the doctor knew, nor in the family of her husband. Three years before, she had married for love. Possibly her husband's unreasonable jealousy had caused a minor estrangement, but nothing serious enough to lead this high-spirited woman to take her own life.

She was not that sort, either, Doctor Richards told himself. She was a woman who was known to be thoroughly modern. In the event of a separation from her husband, she would have gone elsewhere and lived her own life, perhaps in sorrow, yet in peace.

Doctor Richards walked over to the bed and looked down at her again. He found that he could not bring himself to believe that she had committed suicide. And the one thing that bothered him, aside from a motive for the act, was the fact that there was no trace of poison remaining in the room.

There was no tiny, empty bottle to be found. There was no small piece of paper that could have contained the poison in the form of a powder. Envelopes and paper were scattered about, there were a few letters on the desk, that it seemed she had just written and prepared for mailing, and that was all.

Doctor Richards searched the boudoir again, thoroughly, while the butler watched, but he found nothing. And then the thought came to him that Mrs. Sparter had not taken her own life, but had been slain by another.

Yet, who would murder such a splendid woman? What could the motive be? So far as the doctor knew, she did not have an enemy in the world. And could it have been an accident? Doctor Richards did not think so, remembering the nature of the poison. It was not a drug that every person could procure. And this was not a case of a careless woman taking a poisonous powder by mistake for headache medicine, or anything like that. Mrs. Sparter had not used headache powders, as the doctor knew very well—she had a sort of prejudice against them.

The poison caused instant death—and she had died at her desk. Her swollen and discolored lips and tongue told that the poison had touched there. And what had contained it? Where was the bottle or paper?

Doctor Richards unlocked and opened the door that led from the boudoir into the hallway, and stepped outside. He walked rapidly down the stairs to the lower floor, where the servants had gathered, and asked for the maid, who stepped forward immediately.

“When did you see Mrs. Sparter last?” the doctor demanded.

“She came up the stairs from the library and told me that she was going out and would not need me until time for her to dress for dinner,” the maid replied. “I went down the rear stairs to talk to the other servants.”

“Did she act in a peculiar manner?”

“No, sir; she seemed to act quite as usual, sir.”

Doctor Richards regarded the faces of the other servants, and then went slowly up the stairs. He closed and locked the boudoir again, and walked across the room to the telephone, and called the office of the coroner. A cry caused him to whirl around. Gordon Sparter stood in the bathroom door.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I am calling the coroner's office, Gordon—sudden and—unexpected death, you know.”

“Don't do that—the publicity2”

“I am afraid that it cannot be helped in such a case, my friend,” the doctor replied. “Everybody will know that she died suddenly; and there would be greater publicity—and scandal—if we did not obey the law.”

“I—I won't have it2”

The doctor hung up the receiver without attending to the call, and hurried across the room to grasp Sparter by the shoulders.

“I see that I have to tell you now—and I was hoping to spare you for a time,” he said. “Gordon, prepare yourself for a shock—your wife did not die a natural death!”

“What—what is this you say?”

“She died from poison, Gordon.”

“I—I don't understand2”

“A peculiar poison that not every man knows about, Gordon, a virulent poison of which I happened to learn a few years ago while on a tour of the world.”

But—she2”

“We cannot understand it, of course, Gordon,” the doctor said. “Perhaps she took it by accident, perhaps she committed suicide, and, perhaps she was murdered.”

“But, who2”

“Don't you see, now, why I must telephone to the coroner and have him investigate?”

“I—I suppose so. You know what is right. But I can't understand it! I can't believe it!” Sparter cried. He glanced toward the body of his wife.

“Go back into your own room, Gordon,” Doctor Richards commanded. “It will only make it worse for you to remain here at the present time.”

“The room—we'd better have it straightened2”

“Nothing can be touched until the coroner arrives,” the physician told him.

“Those papers—letters2”

“Nothing, Gordon. Go back into your own room. You must try to be quiet. I'll take charge for the present and attend to everything. You are not yourself, remember. Please do as I say.”

He urged Sparter back into the other room, and before Sparter realized what was taking place, he felt the sharp prick of a hypodermic needle in his wrist.

“You2” Sparter gasped.

“You must remain quiet, and rest!” the doctor said. “You'll be a raving maniac if you don't sleep while the officials are here. Leave everything to me, Gordon. I'll attend to things, and remain until you are conscious again.”

He assisted Sparter to the bed and stretched him upon it, sat beside him until the narcotic took effect, and then hurried back into the boudoir and called the coroner and reported the case.

And then he walked to a window and stood looking out toward the street, thinking. Finally he whirled back to the desk again, and reached for the telephone directory. He located the number he wished, obtained the connection.

“I wish to speak to Mr. Terry Trimble,” he said.

CHAPTER III. Some Letters

WHEN the telephone bell rang, Terry Trimble looked at the instrument accusingly and sighed. Though it was four o'clock in the afternoon, Trimble was in dressing gown and slippers. He had been sitting beside the table in his den, smoking and perusing a volume of poetry written by an Englishmen whom the critics were praising at the moment.

Billings, his secretary, entered the room quietly and stepped to the desk to take up the telephone.

“Before you answer that, Billings, want you to understand a few things,” Terry Trimble told him. “If it is the chief of police, tell him that I have gone to Maine to fish and left word that ] refused to help his men solve any more mysteries.”

“Yes, sir.

“If it is some society woman, you may say that I am very deep in a case and cannot accept invitations at the present time, and that, if I ever accept an invitation again, I shall refuse to tell how run criminals to earth.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well,” said Terry Trimble. “Now you may answer that call, and let us hope that the party has called the wrong number. I have been trying for four hours to ascertain why the critics call this poet great, and it is one mystery I am unable to solve.”

The secretary grinned and turned his back as he took the receiver from its hook. Terry Trimble touched match to cigarette and continued reading the despised poet as if Billings were not in the room and the telephone bell had not sounded.

“Sir?” Billings said, presently.

“What is it, Billings?'

“Doctor James Richards, sir, and he says that it is very important.”

Terry Trimble sighed and put down his book, and took the telephone from the hand of Billings.

“Good afternoon, doctor,” he said. “What is troubling you now? Are you going to make me work?”

Billings, waiting in anticipation, watched Terry Trimble closely as he listened to the words that came over the wire. He had been with Trimble for three years, and yet he could not begin to understand him. This man who pretended to be a butterfly at times, who relished poets and high-brow drama, who dressed almost like a fashion-plate—this was Terry Trimble, the trouble-maker, the man feared by criminals as they feared none other!

Some five years before, Terry Trimble after a row with an uncle whose heir he was, had established himself as a detective, only he did not call himself that. He termed himself a trouble-maker, and explained that he sought to make trouble for unscrupulous persons who annoyed others. He had special ways of attending to blackmailers, for instance.

“Cause them so much trouble that they'll stop troubling other people,” had been his plan.

He had been extraordinarily successful from the first, being one of those rare things, a born detective. And so he became more than a trouble-maker, and often helped the police out of a tight hole. Billings knew that Terry Trimble loved the work, and yet he pretended to be bored whenever a call to duty came. Billings knew he loved it because, while he charged wealthy men exorbitant fees, he often worked for poor men for nothing.

“Well, I suppose I'll have to run over and look into the matter,” Billings heard him say. “Oh, in about half an hour, I suppose! Don't let that silly ass of a coroner obliterate all the clews.”

And then he put the receiver on the hook, put the telephone on the table, and got to his feet.

“We go into action, Billings!” he announced,

Billings knew what that meant. He removed Terry Trimble's dressing gown and slippers, fetched shoes and coat, stick and gloves, and helped Trimble make himself ready—Billings was secretary and assistant and valet combined, not because Trimble could not afford more than one man, but because Terry Trimble did not care to have too many persons know the details of his business. He had learned to trust Billings.

“Just when I was beginning to solve the mystery of that poet, too,” Trimble complained. “Order the limousine, Billings, and prepare to accompany me. Mrs. Gordon Sparter is dead—poison—don't know, it seems, whether it was suicide, accident or murder. Ordinary case, I imagine, but old Doctor Richards is a friend of mine. Let us make haste, Billings.”

The secretary had touched the button that warned the chauffeur, and had put on his own hat and coat. Terry Trimble yawned and picked up his gloves and stick and followed Billings slowly through the hall. He even stopped to sniff at a bowl of roses there—it was his idea of making haste.

As they rode across the city to the Sparter residence, Trimble talked of almost everything except homicides and criminals. Billings knew the mood. Trimble never bothered about a crime until he knew the details. And then he worked like a fiend, accomplished what seemed to be impossible, and then relapsed into an orgy of reading and smoking once more.