The Greatest Works of Arthur B. Reeve - 60 Titles in One Edition. Arthur B. Reeve
I looked down at the counter where the Kimberley Queen reposed in all the trappings of genuineness. Mrs. Willoughby had arrived again.
We were too far off to observe distinctly just what was taking place, but evidently Mrs. Willoughby was looking at the gem. A moment later another woman sauntered casually up to the counter. Even at a distance I recognised Annie Grayson. As nearly as I could make out they seemed to exchange remarks. The clerk answered a question or two, then began to search for something apparently to show them. Every one about them was busy, and, obedient to instructions from Donnelly, the store detectives were in the background.
Kennedy was leaning forward watching as intently as the distance would permit. He reached over and pressed the button near him.
After a minute or two the second woman left, followed shortly by Mrs. Willoughby herself. We hurried over to the counter, and Kennedy seized the box containing the Kimberley Queen. He examined it carefully. A flaw in the paste jewel caught his eye.
"There has been a substitution here," he cried. "See! The paste jewel which we used was flawless; this has a little carbon spot here on the side."
"One of my men has been detailed to follow each of them," whispered Donnelly. "Shall I order them to bring Mrs. Willoughby and Annie Grayson to the superintendent's office and have them searched?"
"No," Craig almost shouted. "That would spoil everything. Don't make a move until I get at the real truth of this affair."
The case was becoming more than ever a puzzle to me, but there was nothing left for me to do but to wait until Kennedy was ready to accompany Dr. Guthrie to the Willoughby house. Several times he tried to reach the doctor by telephone, but it was not until the middle of the afternoon that he succeeded.
"I shall be quite busy the rest of the afternoon, Walter," remarked Craig, after he had made his appointment with Dr. Guthrie. "If you will meet me out at the Willoughbys' at about eight o'clock, I shall be much obliged to you."
I promised, and tried to devote myself to catching up with my notes, which were always sadly behind when Kennedy had an important case. I did not succeed in accomplishing much, however.
Dr. Guthrie himself met me at the door of the beautiful house on Woodridge Avenue and with a hearty handshake ushered me into the large room in the right wing outside of which we had placed the telegraphone two nights before. It was the library.
We found Kennedy arranging an instrument in the music-room which adjoined the library. From what little knowledge I have of electricity I should have said it was, in part at least, a galvanometer, one of those instruments which register the intensity of minute electric currents. As nearly as I could make out, in this case the galvanometer was so arranged that its action swung to one side or the other a little concave mirror hung from a framework which rested on the table. Directly in front of it was an electric light, and the reflection of the light was caught in the mirror and focused by its concavity upon a point to one side of the light. Back of it was a long strip of ground glass and an arrow point, attached to which was a pen which touched a roll of paper.
On the large table in the library itself Kennedy had placed in the centre a transverse board partition, high enough so that two people seated could see each other's faces and converse over it, but could not see each other's hands. On one side of the partition were two metal domes which were fixed to a board set on the table. On the other side, in addition to space on which he could write, Kennedy had arranged what looked like one of these new miniature moving-picture apparatuses operated by electricity. Indeed, I felt that it must be that, for directly in front of it, hanging on the wall, in plain view of any one seated on the side of the table containing the metal domes, was a large white sheet.
The time for the experiment, whatever its nature might be, had at last arrived, and Dr. Guthrie introduced Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby to us as specialists whom he had persuaded with great difficulty to come down from New York. Mr. Willoughby he requested to remain outside until after the tests. She seemed perfectly calm as she greeted us, and looked with curiosity at the paraphernalia which Kennedy had installed in her library. Kennedy, who was putting some finishing touches on it, was talking in a low voice to reassure her.
"If you will sit here, please, Mrs. Willoughby, and place your hands on these two brass domes—there, that's it. This is just a little arrangement to test your nervous condition. Dr. Guthrie, who understands it, will take his position outside in the music-room at that other table. Walter, just switch off that light, please.
"Mrs. Willoughby, I may say that in testing, say, the memory, we psychologists have recently developed two tests, the event test, where something is made to happen before a person's eyes and later he is asked to describe it, and the picture test, where a picture is shown for a certain length of time, after which the patient is also asked to describe what was in the picture. I have endeavoured to combine these two ideas by using the moving-picture machine which you see here. I am going to show three reels of films."
As nearly as I could make out Kennedy had turned on the light in the lantern on his side of the table. As he worked over the machine, which for the present served to distract Mrs. Willoughby's attention from herself, he was asking her a series of questions. From my position I could see that by the light of the machine he was recording both the questions and the answers, as well as the time registered to the fifth of a second by a stop-watch. Mrs. Willoughby could not see what he was doing under the pretence of working over his little moving-picture machine.
He had at last finished the questioning. Suddenly, without any warning, a picture began to play on the sheet. I must say that I was startled myself. It represented the jewelry counter at Trimble's, and in it I could see Mrs. Willoughby herself in animated conversation with one of the clerks. I looked intently, dividing my attention between the picture and the woman. But so far as I could see there was nothing in this first film that incriminated either of them.
Kennedy started on the second without stopping. It was practically the same as the first, only taken from a different angle.
He had scarcely run it half through when Dr. Guthrie opened the door.
"I think Mrs. Willoughby must have taken her hands off the metal domes," he remarked; "I can get no record out here."
I had turned when he opened the door, and now I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Willoughby standing, her hands pressed tightly to her head as if it were bursting, and swaying as if she would faint. I do not know what the film was showing at this point, for Kennedy with a quick movement shut it off and sprang to her side.
"There, that will do, Mrs. Willoughby. I see that you are not well," he soothed, "Doctor, a little something to quiet her nerves. I think we can complete our work merely by comparing notes. Call Mr. Willoughby, Walter. There, sir, if you will take charge of your wife and perhaps take her for a turn or two in the fresh air, I think we can tell you in a few moments whether her condition is in any way serious or not."
Mrs. Willoughby was on the verge of hysterics as her husband supported her out of the room. The door had scarcely shut before Kennedy threw open a window and seemed to beckon into the darkness. As if from nowhere, Donnelly and Bentley sprang up and were admitted.
Dr. Guthrie had now returned from, the music-room, bearing a sheet of paper on which was traced a long irregular curve at various points on which marginal notes had been written hastily.
Kennedy leaped directly into the middle of things with his characteristic ardour. "You recall," he began, "that no one seemed to know just who took the jewels in both the cases you first reported? 'Seeing is believing,' is an old saying, but in the face of such reports as you detectives gathered it is in a fair way to lose its force. And you were not at fault, either, for modern psychology is proving by experiments that people do not see even a fraction of the things they confidently believe they see.
"For example, a friend of mine, a professor in a Western university, has carried on experiments with scores of people and has not found one who could give a completely accurate description of what he had seen, even in the direct testimony; while under the influence of questions, particularly if they were at all leading, witnesses all showed extensive inaccuracies in one or more particulars, and that even though