Through the Wall

THIRTY IMPORTANT WORDS

"Now, Groener," resumed the magistrate after the shrimp had withdrawn, "why were you walking along this hotel balcony on the night of July 4th?"

"I wasn't," answered the prisoner coolly.

"The photographer positively identifies you."

"He's mistaken, I wasn't there."

"Ah," smiled Hauteville, with irritating affability. "You'll need a better defense than that."

"Whatever I need I shall have," came the sharp retort.

"Have you anything to say about those finger-nail marks?"

"Nothing."

"There's a peculiarity about those marks, Groener. The little finger of the hand that made them is abnormally, extraordinarily long. Experts say that in a hundred thousand hands you will not find one with so long a little finger, perhaps not one in a million. It happens that you have such a hand and such a little finger. Strange, is it not?"

"Call it strange, if you like," shrugged the prisoner.

"Well, isn't it strange? Just think, if all the men in Paris should try to fit their fingers in those finger marks, there would be only two or three who could reach the extraordinary span of that little finger."

"Nonsense! There might be fifty, there might be five hundred."

"Even so, only one of those fifty or five hundred would be positively identified as the man who choked the photographer and that one is yourself. There is the point; we have against you the evidence of Godin who saw you that night and remembers you, and the evidence of your own hand."

So clearly was the charge made that, for the first time, the prisoner dropped his scoffing manner and listened seriously.

"Admit, for the sake of argument, that I was on the balcony," he said. "Mind, I don't admit it, but suppose I was? What of it?"

"Nothing much," replied the judge grimly; "it would simply establish a strong probability that you killed Martinez."

"How so?"

"The photographer saw you stealing toward Kittredge's room carrying a pair of boots."

"I don't admit it, but—what if I were?"

"A pair of Kittredge's boots are missing. They were worn by the murderer to throw suspicion on an innocent man. They were stolen when the pistol was stolen, and the murderer tried to return them so that they might be discovered in Kittredge's room and found to match the alleyway footprints and damn Kittredge."

"I don't know who Kittredge is, and I don't know what alleyway you refer to," put in Groener.

Hauteville ignored this bravado and proceeded: "In order to steal these boots and be able to return them the murderer must have had access to Kittredge's room. How? The simplest way was to take a room in the same hotel, on the same floor, opening on the same balcony. Which is exactly what you did! The photographer saw you go into it after you choked him. You took this room for a month, but you never went back to it after the day of the crime."

"My dear sir, all this is away from the point. Granting that I choked the photographer, which I don't grant, and that I carried a pair of boots along a balcony and rented a room which I didn't occupy, how does that connect me with the murder of—what did you say his name was?"

"Martinez," answered the judge patiently.

"Ah, Martinez! Well, why did I murder this person?" asked the prisoner facetiously. "What had I to gain by his death? Can you make that clear? Can you even prove that I was at the place where he was murdered at the critical moment? By the way, where was the gentleman murdered? If I'm to defend myself I ought to have some details of the affair."

The judge and Coquenil exchanged some whispered words. Then the magistrate said quietly: "I'll give you one detail about the murderer; he is a left-handed man."

"Yes? And am I left-handed?"

"We'll know that definitely in the morning when you undergo the Bertillon measurements. In the meantime M. Coquenil can testify that you use your left hand with wonderful skill."

"Referring, I suppose," sneered the prisoner, "to our imaginary encounter on the Champs Elysées, when M. Coquenil claims to have used his teeth on my leg."

Quick as a flash M. Paul bent toward the judge and said something in a low tone.

"Ah, yes!" exclaimed Hauteville with a start of satisfaction. Then to Groener: "How do you happen to know that this encounter took place on the Champs Elysées?"

"Why—er—he said so just now," answered the other uneasily.

"I think not. Was the Champs Elysées mentioned, Jules?" he turned to the clerk.

Jules looked back conscientiously through his notes and shook his head. "Nothing has been said about the Champs Elysées."

"I must have imagined it," muttered the prisoner.

"Very clever of you, Groener," said the judge dryly, "to imagine the exact street where the encounter took place. You couldn't have done better if you had known it."

"You see what comes of talking without the advice of counsel," remarked Maître Curé in funereal tones.

"Rubbish!" flung back the prisoner. "This examination is of no importance, anyhow."

"Of course not, of course not," purred the magistrate. Then, abruptly, his whole manner changed.

"Groener," he said, and his voice rang sternly, "I've been patient with you so far, I've tolerated your outrageous arrogance and impertinence, partly to entrap you, as I have, and partly because I always give suspected persons a certain amount of latitude at first. Now, my friend, you've had your little fling and—it's my turn. We are coming to a part of this examination that you will not find quite so amusing. In fact you will realize before you have been twenty-four hours at the Santé that——"

"I'm not going to the Santé," interrupted Groener insolently.

Hauteville motioned to the guard. "Put the handcuffs on him."

The guard stepped forward and obeyed, handling the man none too tenderly. Whereupon the accused once more lost his fine self-control and was swept with furious anger.

"Mark my words, Judge Hauteville," he threatened fiercely, "you have ordered handcuffs put on a prisoner for the last time."

"What do you mean by that?" demanded the magistrate.

THE MOVING PICTURE

"Are you feeling better?" asked the judge an hour later when the accused was led back.

"Yes," answered Groener with recovered self-possession, and again the detective noticed that he glanced anxiously at the clock. It was a quarter past eleven.

"We will have the visual test now," said Hauteville; "we must go to another room. Take the prisoner to Dr. Duprat's laboratory," he directed the guard.

Passing down the wide staircase, strangely silent now, they entered a long narrow passageway leading to a remote wing of the Palais de Justice. First went the guard with Groener close beside him, then twenty paces, behind came M. Paul and the magistrate and last came the weary clerk with Maître Curé. Their footsteps, echoed ominously along the stone floor, their shadows danced fantastically before them and behind them under gas jets that flared through the tunnel.

"I hope this goes off well," whispered the judge uneasily. "You don't think they have forgotten anything?"

"Trust Papa Tignol to obey orders," replied Coquenil. "Ah!" he started and gripped his companion's arm. "Do you remember what I told you about those alleyway footprints? About the pressure marks? Look!" and he pointed ahead excitedly. "I knew it, he has gout or rheumatism, just touches that come and go. He had it that night when he escaped from the Ansonia and he has it now. See!"

The judge observed the prisoner carefully and nodded in agreement. There was no doubt about it, as he walked Groener was limping noticeably on his left foot!

Dr. Duprat was waiting for them in his laboratory, absorbed in recording the results of his latest experiments. A kind-eyed, grave-faced man was this, who, for all his modesty, was famous over Europe as a brilliant worker in psychological criminology. Bertillon had given the world a method of identifying criminals' bodies, and now Duprat was perfecting a method of recognizing their mental states, especially any emotional disturbances connected with fear, anger or remorse.

Entering the laboratory, they found themselves in a large room, quite dark, save for an electric lantern at one end that threw a brilliant circle on a sheet stretched at the other end. The light reflected from this sheet showed the dim outlines of a tiered amphitheater before which was a long table spread with strange-looking instruments, electrical machines and special apparatus for psychological experiments. On the walls were charts and diagrams used by the doctor in his lectures.

"Everything ready?" inquired the magistrate after an exchange of greetings with Dr. Duprat.

"Everything," answered the latter. "Is this the—er—the subject?" he glanced at the prisoner.

Hauteville nodded and the doctor beckoned to the guard.

"Please bring him over here. That's right—in front of the lantern." Then he spoke gently to Groener: "Now, my friend, we are not going to do anything that will cause you the slightest pain or inconvenience. These instruments look formidable, but they are really good friends, for they help us to understand one another. Most of the trouble in this world comes because half the people do not understand the other half. Please turn sideways to the light."

For some moments he studied the prisoner in silence.

"Interesting, ve-ry interesting," murmured the doctor, his fine student's face alight. "Especially the lobe of this ear! I will leave a note about it for Bertillon himself, he mustn't miss the lobe of this ear. Please turn a little for the back of the head. Thanks! Great width! Extraordinary fullness. Now around toward the light! The eyes—ah! The brow—excellent! Yes, yes, I know about the hand," he nodded to Coquenil, "but the head is even more remarkable. I must study this head when we have time—ve-ry remarkable. Tell me, my friend, do you suffer from sudden shooting pains—here, over your eyes?"

"No," said Groener.

"No? I should have thought you might. Well, well!" he proceeded kindly, "we must have a talk one of these days. Perhaps I can make some suggestions. I see so many heads, but—not many like yours, no, no, not many like yours."

He paused and glanced toward an assistant who was busy with the lantern. The assistant looked up and nodded respectfully.

"Ah, we can begin," continued the doctor. "We must have these off," he pointed to the handcuffs. "Also the coat. Don't be alarmed! You will experience nothing unpleasant—nothing. There! Now I want the right arm bare above the elbow. No, no, it's the left arm, I remember, I want the left arm bare above the elbow."

When these directions had been carried out, Dr. Duprat pointed to a heavy wooden chair with a high back and wide arms.

"Please sit here," he went on, "and slip your left arm into this leather sleeve. It's a little tight because it has a rubber lining, but you won't mind it after a minute or two."

Groener walked to the chair and then drew back. "What are you going to do to me?" he asked.

"We are going to show you some magic lantern pictures," answered the doctor.

"Why must I sit in this chair? Why do you want my arm in that leather thing?"

"I told you, Groener," put in the judge, "that we were coming here for the visual test; it's part of your examination. Some pictures of persons and places will be thrown on that sheet and, as each one appears, I want you to say what it is. Most of the pictures are familiar to everyone."

"Yes, but the leather sleeve?" persisted the prisoner.

"The leather sleeve is like the stop watch, it records your emotions. Sit down!"

Groener hesitated and the guard pushed him toward the chair. "Wait!" he said. "I want to know how it records my emotions."

The magistrate answered with a patience that surprised M. Paul. "There is a pneumatic arrangement," he explained, "by which the pulsations of your heart and the blood pressure in your arteries are registered—automatically. Now then! I warn you if you don't sit down willingly—well, you had better sit down."

Coquenil was watching closely and, through the prisoner's half shut eyes, he caught a flash of anger, a quick clenching of the freed hands and then—then Groener sat down.

Quickly and skillfully the assistant adjusted the leather sleeve over the bared left arm and drew it close with straps.

"Not too tight," said Duprat. "You feel a sense of throbbing at first, but it is nothing. Besides, we shall take the sleeve off shortly. Now then," he turned toward the lantern.

Immediately a familiar scene appeared upon the sheet, a colored photograph of the Place de la Concorde.

"What is it?" asked the doctor pleasantly.

The prisoner was silent.

"You surely recognize this picture. Look! The obelisk and the fountain, the Tuileries gardens, the arches of the Rue de Rivoli, and the Madeleine, there at the end of the Rue Royale. Come, what is it?"

"The Place de la Concorde," answered Groener sullenly.

"Of course. You see how simple it is. Now another."

The picture changed to a view of the grand opera house and at the same moment a point of light appeared in the headpiece back of the chair. It was shaded so that the prisoner could not see it and it illumined a graduated white dial on which was a glass tube about thirty inches long, the whole resembling a barometer. Inside the tube a red column moved regularly up and down, up and down, in steady beats and Coquenil understood that this column was registering the beating of Groener's heart. Standing behind the chair, the doctor, the magistrate, and the detective could at the same time watch the pulsating column and the pictures on the sheet; but the prisoner could not see the column, he did not know it was there, he saw only the pictures.

"What is that?" asked the doctor.

Groener had evidently decided to make the best of the situation for he answered at once: "The grand opera house."

"Good! Now another! What is that?"

"The Bastille column."

"Right! And this?"

"The Champs Elysées."

"And this?"

"Notre-Dame church."

So far the beats had come uniformly about one in a second, for the man's pulse was slow; at each beat the liquid in the tube shot up six inches and then dropped six inches, but, at the view of Notre-Dame, the column rose only three inches, then dropped back and shot up seven inches.

The doctor nodded gravely while Coquenil, with breathless interest, with a, morbid fascination, watched the beating of this red column. It was like the beating of red blood.

"And this?"

As the picture changed there was a quiver in the pulsating column, a hesitation with a quick fluttering at the bottom of the stroke, then the red line shot up full nine inches.

M. Paul glanced at the sheet and saw a perfect reproduction of private room Number Six in the Ansonia. Everything was there as on the night of the crime, the delicate yellow hangings, the sofa, the table set for two. And, slowly, as they looked, two holes appeared in the wall. Then a dim shape took form upon the floor, more and more distinctly until the dissolving lens brought a man's body into clear view, a body stretched face downward in a dark red pool that grew and widened, slowly straining and wetting the polished wood.

"Groener," said the magistrate, his voice strangely formidable in the shadows, "do you recognize this room?"

"No," said the prisoner impassively, but the column was pulsing wildly.

"You have been in this room?"

"Never."

"Nor looked through these eyeholes?"

"No."

"Nor seen that man lying on the floor?"

"No."

Now the prisoner's heart was beating evenly again, somehow he had regained his self-possession.

"You are lying, Groener," accused the judge. "You remember this man perfectly. Come, we will lift him from the floor and look him in the face, full in the face. There!" He signaled the lantern operator and there leaped forth on the sheet the head of Martinez, the murdered, mutilated head with shattered eye and painted cheeks and the greenish death pallor showing underneath. A ghastly, leering cadaver in collar and necktie, dressed up and photographed at the morgue, and now flashed hideously at the prisoner out of the darkness. Yet Groener's heart pulsed on steadily with only a slight quickening, with less quickening than Coquenil felt in his own heart.

"Who is it?" demanded the judge.

"I don't know," declared the accused.

Again the picture changed.

"Who is this?"

"Napoleon Bonaparte."

"And this?"

"Prince Bismarck."

"And this?"

"Queen Victoria."

Here, suddenly, at the view of England's peaceful sovereign, Groener seemed thrown into frightful agitation, not Groener as he sat on the chair, cold and self-contained, but Groener as revealed by the unsuspected dial. Up and down in mad excitement leaped the red column with many little breaks and quiverings at the bottom of the beats and with tremendous up-shootings as if the frightened heart were trying to burst the tube with its spurting red jet.

The doctor put his mouth close to Coquenil's ear and whispered: "It's the shock showing now, the shock that he held back after the body."

Then he leaned over Groener's shoulder and asked kindly: "Do you feel your heart beating fast, my friend?"

"No," murmured the prisoner, "my—my heart is beating as usual."

"You will certainly recognize the next picture," pursued the judge. "It shows a woman and a little girl! There! Do you know these faces, Groener?"

As he spoke there appeared the fake photograph that Coquenil had found in Brussels, Alice at the age of twelve with the smooth young widow.

The prisoner shook his head. "I don't know them—I never saw them."

"Groener," warned the magistrate, "there is no use keeping up this denial, you have betrayed yourself already."

"No," cried the prisoner with a supreme rally of his will power, "I have betrayed nothing—nothing," and, once more, while the doctor marveled, his pulse steadied and strengthened and grew normal.

"What a man!" muttered Coquenil.

"We know the facts," went on Hauteville sternly, "we know why you killed Martinez and why you disguised yourself as a wood carver."

The prisoner's face lighted with a mocking smile. "If you know all that, why waste time questioning me?"

"You're a good actor, sir, but we shall strip off your mask and quiet your impudence. Look at the girl in this false picture which you had cunningly made in Brussels. Look at her! Who is she? There is the key to the mystery! There is the reason for your killing Martinez! He knew the truth about this girl."

Now the prisoner's pulse was running wild, faster and faster, but with no more violent spurtings and leapings; the red column throbbed swiftly and faintly at the bottom of the tube as if the heart were weakening.

"A hundred and sixty to the minute," whispered Duprat to the magistrate. "It is dangerous to go on."

Hauteville shrugged his shoulders.

"Martinez knew the truth," he went on, "Martinez held your secret. How had Martinez come upon it? Who was Martinez? A billiard player, a shallow fellow, vain of his conquests over silly women. The last man in Paris, one would say, to interfere with your high purposes or penetrate the barriers of wealth and power that surrounded you."

"You—you flatter me! What am I, pray, a marquis or a duke?" chaffed the other, but the trembling dial belied his gayety, and even from the side Coquenil could see that the man's face was as tense and pallid as the sheet before him.

"As I said, the key to this murder," pursued the magistrate, "is the secret that Martinez held. Without that nothing can be understood and no justice can be done. The whole aim of this investigation has been to get the secret and we have got it! Groener, you have delivered yourself into our hands, you have written this secret for us in words of terror and we have read them, we know what Martinez knew when you took his life, we know the story of the medal that he wore on his breast. Do you know the story?"

"I tell you I know nothing about this man or his medal," flung back the prisoner.

"No? Then you will be glad to hear the story. It was a medal of solid gold, awarded Martinez by the city of Paris for conspicuous bravery in saving lives at the terrible Charity Bazaar fire. You have heard of the Charity Bazaar fire, Groener?"

"Yes, I—I have heard of it."

"But perhaps you never heard the details or, if you did, you may have forgotten them. Have you forgotten the details of the Charity Bazaar fire?"

Charity Bazaar fire! Three times, with increasing emphasis, the magistrate had spoken those sinister words, yet the dial gave no sign, the red column throbbed on steadily.

"I am not interested in the subject," answered the accused.

"Ah, but you are, or you ought to be. It was such a shocking affair. Hundreds burned to death, think of that! Cowardly men trampling women and children! Our noblest families plunged into grief and bereavement! Princesses burned to death! Duchesses burned to death! Beautiful women burned to death! Rich women burned to death! Think of it, Groener, and—" he signaled the operator, "and look at it!"

As he spoke the awful tragedy began in one of those extraordinary moving pictures that the French make after a catastrophe, giving to the imitation even greater terrors than were in the genuine happening. Here before them now leaped redder and fiercer flames than ever crackled through the real Charity Bazaar; here were women and children perishing in more savage torture than the actual victims endured; here were horrors piled on horrors, exaggerated horrors, manufactured horrors, until the spectacle became unendurable, until one all but heard the screams and breathed the sickening odor of burning human flesh.

Coquenil had seen this picture in one of the boulevard theaters and, straightway, after the precious nine-second clew of the word test, he had sent Papa Tignol off for it posthaste, during the supper intermission. If the mere word "Charity Bazaar" had struck this man dumb with fear what would the thing itself do, the revolting, ghastly thing?

That was the question now, what would this hideous moving picture do to a fire-fearing assassin already on the verge of collapse? Would it break the last resistance of his overwrought nerves or would he still hold out?

Silently, intently the three men waited, bending over the dial as the test proceeded, as the fiends of torture and death swept past in lurid triumph.

The picture machine whirled on with droning buzz, the accused sat still, eyes on the sheet, the red column pulsed steadily, up and down, up and down, now a little higher, now a little quicker, but—for a minute, for two minutes—nothing decisive happened, nothing that they had hoped for; yet Coquenil felt, he knew that something was going to happen, he knew it by the agonized tension of the room, by the atmosphere of pain about them. If Groener had not spoken, he himself, in the poignancy of his own distress, must have cried out or stamped on the floor or broken something, just to end the silence.

Then, suddenly, the tension snapped, the prisoner sprang to his feet and, tearing his arm from the leather sleeve, he faced his tormentors desperately, eyes blazing, features convulsed:

"No, no, no!" he shrieked. "You dogs! You cowards!"

"Lights up," ordered Hauteville. Then to the guard: "Put the handcuffs on him."