Five times came a curiously hollow noise from the cabinet.If it had been possible I should certainly have fled, it was so sudden and unexpected.The hall clock downstairs struck the half-hour in those chimes written by Handel for St.Paul's.
Craig leaned over to me and whispered hoarsely, "Keep perfectly still--don't move a hand or foot."The old man seemed utterly to have forgotten us."Is that you, John?" he asked expectantly.
Rap! rap! rap! came the reply.
"Is Mary strong enough to speak to me tonight?"Rap! rap!
"Is she happy?"
Rap! rap!
"What makes her unhappy? What does she want? Will you spell it out?"Rap! rap! rap!
Then, after a pause, the rapping started slowly, and distinctly to spell out words.It was so weird and uncanny that I scarcely breathed.Letter after letter the message came, nineteen raps for "s," eight for "h," five for "e," according to the place in the alphabet, numerically, of the required letter.At last it was complete.
"She thinks you are not well.She asks you to have that prescription filled again.""Tell her I will do it to-morrow morning.Is there anything else?"Rap! rap! came back faintly:
"John, John, don't go yet," pleaded the old man earnestly.It was easy to see how thoroughly he believed in "John," as perhaps well he might after the warning of his wife's death three nights before."Won't you answer one other question?"Fainter, almost imperceptibly, came a rap! rap!
For several minutes the old man sat absorbed in thought, trance-like.Then, gradually, he seemed to realise that we were in the room with him.With difficulty he took up the thread of the conversation where the rappings had broken it.
"We were talking about the photographs," he said slowly."I hope soon to get one of my wife as she is now that she is transfigured.John has promised me one soon."He was gathering up his treasures preparatory to putting them back in their places of safekeeping.The moment he was out of the room Craig darted into the cabinet and replaced his mechanism in the box.Then he began softly to tap the walls.At last he found the side that gave a noise similar to that which we had heard, and he seemed pleased to have found it, for he hastily sketched on an old envelope a plan of that part of the house, noting on it the location of the side of the cabinet.
Kennedy almost dragged me back to our apartment, he was in such a hurry to examine the apparatus at his leisure.He turned on all the lights, took the thing out of its case, and stripped off the two sheets of ruled paper wound around the two revolving drums.
He laid them flat on the table and studied them for some minutes with evidently growing satisfaction.
At last he turned to me and said, "Walter, here is a ghost caught in the act."I looked dubiously at the irregular up-and-down scrawl on the paper, while he rang up the Homicide Bureau of the Central Office and left word for O'Connor to call him up the first thing in the morning.
Still eyeing with satisfaction the record traced on the sheets of paper, he lighted a cigarette in a matter-of-fact way and added:
"It proves to be a very much flesh-and-blood ghost, this 'John.'
It walked up to the wall back of that cabinet, rapped, listened to old Vandam, rapped some more, got the answer it wanted, and walked deliberately away.The cabinet, as you may have noticed, is in a corner of the room with one side along the hallway.The ghost must have been in the hall.""But who was it?"
"Not so fast, Walter," laughed Craig."Isn't it enough for one night that we have found out that much?"Fortunately I was tired, or I certainly should have dreamed of rappings and of "John" that night.I was awakened early by Kennedy talking with someone over the telephone.It was Inspector O'Connor.
Of course I heard only one side of the conversation, but as near as I could gather Kennedy was asking the inspector to obtain several samples of ink for him.I had not heard the first part of the conversation, and was considerably surprised when Kennedy hung up the receiver and said:
"Vandam had the prescription filled again early this morning, and it will soon be in the hands of O'Connor.I hope I haven't spoiled things by acting too soon, but I don't want to run the risk of a double tragedy.""Well," I said, "it is incomprehensible to me.First I suspected suicide.Then I suspected murder.Now I almost suspect a murder and a suicide.The fact is, I don't know just what I suspect.I'm like Dr.Hanson--floored.I wonder if Vandam would voluntarily take all the capsules at once in order to be with his wife?""One of them alone would be quite sufficient if the 'ghost'
should take a notion, as I think it will, to walk in the daytime," replied Craig enigmatically."I don't want to run any chances, as I have said.I may be wrong in my theory of the case, Walter, so let us not discuss this phase of it until I have gone a step farther and am sure of my ground.O'Connor's man will get the capsules before Vandam has a chance to take the first one, anyhow.The 'ghost' had a purpose in that message, for O'Connor tells me that Vandam's lawyer visited him yesterday and in all probability a new will is being made, perhaps has already been made."We breakfasted in silence and later rode down to the office of Dr.Hanson, who greeted us enthusiastically.
"I've solved it at last," he cried, "and it's easy."Kennedy looked gravely over the analysis which Dr.Hanson shoved into his hand, and seemed very much interested in the probable quantity of morphine that must have been taken to yield such an analysis.The physician had a text-book open on his desk.
"Our old ideas of the infallible test of morphine poisoning are all exploded," he said, excitedly beginning to read a passage he had marked in the book.
"'I have thought that inequality of the pupils, that is to say, where they are not symmetrically contracted, is proof that a case is not one of narcotism, or morphine poisoning.But Professor Taylor has recorded a case of morphine poisoning in which the unsymmetrical contraction occurred.'
