The Soul Scar: Detective Kennedy's Case. Arthur B. Reeve
later, with the physician and the detective, we entered the room where the body lay.
Wilford had been a large and rather forceful figure in life. I knew him as a man of unusual ability, though I despised the direction in which his legal talents had been diverted. Perhaps, I thought, unusual talents had brought unusual temptations. For, whatever we may have thought of people in life, our judgments are necessarily softened by death.
As I looked at him now, I could not escape the feeling that his peculiar kind of success somehow would afford the basic reason which would prove to be the solution of the mystery before us.
At length Kennedy straightened up and turned to us, a peculiar look on his face.
"What is it?" I queried, impatiently. "Have you discovered something already?"
Without replying for the moment, Kennedy glanced down significantly at the eye of Wilford as he held the lid with his finger.
"Atropin, you know, would dilate the pupil," he remarked, simply.
We took a step closer and looked. The pupils of both eyes were contracted.
"I know," remarked Doyle, wisely, "but there may have been something else. You remember the Buchanan case?"
Before any one could answer, he went on: "Remember when the Carlyle Harris case was going on, the testimony showed that Helen Potts's eyes had been contracted to a pin-point? Well, at that time Doctor Buchanan, a dentist down on Staten Island, I think, was talking to a patient. He said that Harris was a fool—that all he needed to have done was to have put some atropin in the capsule with the morphine—and her pupils would have expanded—and thus covered up the morphine clue. Later, when he himself was accused of murder, the patient recollected what the doctor had said, and it was found that he had tried the very thing himself. It was proved against him. Perhaps there is something like that."
Kennedy nodded sententiously at Doyle's wisdom, but did not betray what his real opinion was, if indeed he had formed any so soon.
"You have examined the contents of the stomach?" asked Craig of Leslie.
Doctor Leslie shook his head. "Not yet. I have not had time. Remember, it is only a couple of hours since this case was handed over to me and it has been only a matter of minutes since I learned that there was anything suspicious."
"Then I suppose you have no objection to my sharing the examination with you?"
"None whatsoever. In fact, I should welcome it. Leave it to me. I will arrange for samples of everything to be sent to you at your laboratory at the very first opportunity."
"Very well, then," thanked Kennedy. "Now I should like to see Mrs. Wilford, if she is here."
"You bet she's here," ejaculated Doyle. "You don't suppose I'd let her get away, do you?"
He led the way down the hall to a sort of drawing-room.
Honora Wilford was a tall, perfectly formed woman, a beautiful woman, too. At first glance she gave one an impression of youth, though soon one saw that she was mature. I think that for that very reason she was fascinating. There was something baffling about her.
Remembering what Leslie had said about the dream, I was surprised to see she was of anything, apparently, but a hysterical nature. One would not have thought her to be the type subject to hallucinations of any nature.
Honora had large, lustrous, gray-blue eyes.
From her carefully dressed chestnut hair to her dainty, fashionable foot-gear she was "correct." Her face had what people call "character." Yet, as I studied it and the personality it expressed, I had an indefinable feeling that there was something wanting.
It was some time before I was able to catch it, much less express it. But as she talked I realized what it was. Her beauty was that of a splendid piece of sculpture—cold, almost marble.
There seemed to be something lacking. I could not at first define it, yet I felt that it was lacking, nevertheless. The very perfection I saw fell short of some quality. It was that elusive thing we call "heart."
As we entered with Doyle, Honora seemed to ignore him. Once I saw her covertly eying Kennedy, after our introduction, as though estimating him. Doyle had glossed the introduction over by saying that we were a "couple of scientists." What idea it conveyed to Mrs. Wilford I do not know. It meant nothing to me, except that Doyle suffered from either secret jealously or contempt.
"I understand," questioned Doyle, in his best third-degree, hammer-and-tongs method, "that some time ago you had a disagreement with Mr. Wilford and even threatened to leave him."
"Yes?" parried Honora, without admitting a syllable. "I didn't leave him, though, did I?"
I watched her closely. She did not flinch from the questioning, nor did she betray anything. Her face wore an expression of enforced calmness. Had she steeled herself for this ordeal, as merely the first of many?
Try as he might, Doyle could not shake her calmness. Yet all the time he gave the impression that he was holding something in reserve against her.
"We shall have to require you to stay here, for the present," added Doyle, ominously, as his man summoned him outside for some message from headquarters.
I saw what his idea was. It was a refinement of torture for her—in the hope that, surrounded by things that would keep the tragedy constantly in her mind, she might break down. Honora, on the other hand, did not seem to me to be entirely frank with the detective. Was it that Doyle, by his manner, antagonized her? Or was there some deeper reason?
For a moment we were alone with her. If I had expected any appeal to Kennedy, I was mistaken.
"I understand that you have been under the care of Doctor Lathrop," hazarded Craig.
"Yes," she replied; "I've been so run down and miserable this season in town that I needed some treatment."
"I see," considered Kennedy. "Doctor Leslie has told me. He also told me about your dreams."
She averted her eyes. "They have made me even more nervous," she murmured, and I now noticed that it was quite true that her apparent placid exterior was merely a matter of will-power.
"Do you dream more—or less, lately?" Craig asked. "That is, I mean since you have been consulting Doctor Lathrop. Has his treatment done you any good?"
I wondered whether, beneath her nervousness, she was on guard always.
"I think I have been getting more and more nervous, instead of less," she answered, in a low tone. "So many dreams of Vail—and always dreams of warning—of death. My dreams are so peculiar, too. Why, last night I dreamed even of Doctor Lathrop. In the dream I seemed to be going along a path. It was narrow, and as I turned a corner there was a lion in the way. I was horribly frightened, of course—so frightened that I woke up. The strange part of it was that, as I recollected the dream, the face of the lion seemed to be that of Doctor Lathrop."
"Have you told him? What does he say?"
"I haven't had a chance to see him—though by the way I feel after this tragedy I shall need a physician—soon. He tells me that I am run down, that I need a complete change of surroundings."
It was evident that, whatever the reason, her nervous condition was quite as she described it. Kennedy evidently considered that nothing was to be gained by questioning her further just at that moment, and we left her.
Outside we were joined by Doctor Leslie.
"What do you think of it?" he asked.
"A most peculiar tangle, to say the least," remarked Kennedy. "Just consider it. Here are two couples—Wilford and Honora, Doctor Lathrop and his wife, Vina. We may suspect, from what you found at the office, something in the relations of Wilford and Vina. As to the doctor and Honora—we don't know. Then, into the case seems to have entered a fifth person, Vance Shattuck. Really, Leslie, I cannot say anything now. It seems as though it might be quite complicated. I shall have to visit them, talk with them, find out. You and Doyle will