Chapter VIII: The Axton Letters (2)

“It was the letter describing the second visit,” he exclaimed disgustedly as he opened the door. “It was most essential, for it contained the most minute description of the man of all. I do not see how I can manage well, now, without it.”

“Why should you?” Caryl said in surprise at the evident stupidity of the psychologist. “Surely, Mr. Axton, if he can not add any other details, can at least repeat those he had already given.”

“Of course!” Trant recollected. “If you would be so good, Mr. Axton, I will have a stenographer take down the statement to give you the least trouble.”

“I will gladly do that,” Axton agreed; and, when the psychologist had summoned the stenographer, he dictated without hesitation the following letter:

“The second time that I saw the man was at Calcutta, in the Great
Eastern Hotel. He was the same man I had seen at Cairo—shoeless and
turbaned; at least I believed then that it was a turban, but I saw
later, at Cape Town, that it was his short brown coat wrapped round
his head and tied by the sleeves under his chin. We had at the Great
Eastern two whitewashed communicating rooms opening off a narrow,
dirty corridor, along whose whitewashed walls at a height of some
two feet from the floor ran a greasy smudge gathered from the heads
and shoulders of the dark-skinned, white-robed native servants who
spent the nights sleeping or sitting in front of their masters’
doors. Though Lawler and I each had a servant also outside his door,
I dragged a trunk against mine after closing it—a useless
precaution, as it proved, as Lawler put no trunk against his—and
though I see now that I must have been moved by some foresight of
danger, I went to sleep afterward quite peacefully. I awakened
somewhat later in a cold and shuddering fright, oppressed by the
sense of some presence in my room—started up in bed and looked
about. My trunk was still against the door as I had left it; and
besides this, I saw at first only the furniture of the room, which
stood as when I had gone to sleep—two rather heavy and much
scratched mahogany English chairs, a mahogany dresser with swinging
mirror, and the spindle-legged, four-post canopy bed on which I lay.
But presently, I saw more. He was there—a dark shadow against the
whitewashed wall beside the flat-topped window marked his position,
as he crouched beside my writing desk and held the papers in a bar
of white moonlight to look at them. For an instant, the sight held
me motionless, and suddenly becoming aware that he was seen, he
leaped to his feet—a short, broad-shouldered, bulky man—sped across
the blue and white straw matting into Lawler’s room and drove the
door to behind him. I followed, forcing the door open with my
shoulder, saw Lawler just leaping out of bed in his pajamas, and
tore open Lawler’s corridor door, through which the man had
vanished. He was not in the corridor, though I inspected it
carefully, and Lawler, though he had been awakened by the man’s
passage, had not seen him. Lawler’s servant, pretty well dazed with
sleep, told me in blank and open-mouthed amazement at my question,
that he had not seen him pass; and the other white-draped Hindoos,
gathering about me from the doors in front of which they had been
asleep, made the same statement. None of these Hindoos resembled in
the least the man I had seen, for I looked them over carefully one
by one with this in mind. When I made a light in my room in order to
examine it thoroughly, I found nothing had been touched except the
writing desk, and even from that nothing had been taken, although
the papers had been disturbed. The whole affair was as mysterious
and inexplicable as the man’s first appearance had been, or as his
subsequent appearance proved; for though I carefully questioned the
hotel employés in the morning I could not learn that any such man
had entered or gone out from the hotel.”

“That is very satisfactory indeed;” Trant’s gratification was evident in his tone, as Axton finished. “It will quite take the place of the letter that was lost. There is only one thing more—so far as I know now—in which you may be of present help to me, Mr. Axton. Besides your friend Lawler, who was drowned in the wreck of the _Gladstone_, and the man Beasley—who, Miss Waldron tells me, is in a London hospital—there were only two men in Cape Town with you who had been in Cairo and Calcutta at the same time you were. You do not happen to know what has become of that German freight agent, Schultz?”

“I have not the least idea, Mr. Trant.”

“Or Walcott, the American patent medicine man?”

“I know no more of him than of the other. Whether either of them is in Chicago now, is precisely what I would like to know myself, Mr. Trant; and I hope you will be able to find out for me.”

“I will do my best to locate them. By the way, Mr. Axton, you have no objection to my setting a watch over your family home, provided I employ a man who has no connection with the police?”

“With that condition I think it would be a very good idea,” Axton assented. He waited to see whether Trant had anything more to ask him; then, with a look of partially veiled hostility at Caryl, he went out.

The other followed, but stopped at the door.

“We—that is, Miss Waldron—will hear from you, Mr. Trant?” he asked with sudden distrust—“I mean, you will report to her, as well as to Mr. Axton?”

“Certainly; but I hardly expect to have anything for you for two or three days.”

The psychologist smiled, as he shut the door behind Caryl. He dropped into the chair at his desk and wrote rapidly a series of telegrams, which he addressed to the chiefs of police of a dozen foreign and American cities. Then, more slowly, he wrote a message to the Seric Medicine Company, of New York, and another to the Nord Deutscher Lloyd.

The first two days, of the three Trant had specified to Caryl, passed with no other event than the installing of a burly watchman at the Axton home. On the third night this watchman reported to Miss Waldron that he had seen and driven off, without being able to catch, a man who was trying to force a lower window; and the next morning—within half an hour of the arrival of the Overland Limited from San Francisco—Trant called up the Axton home on the telephone with the news that he thought he had at last positive proof of the mysterious man’s identity. At least, he had with him a man whom he wanted Mr. Axton to see. Axton replied that he would be very glad to see the man, if Trant would make an appointment. In three quarters of an hour at the Axton home, Trant answered; and forty minutes later, having first telephoned young Caryl, Trant with his watchman, escorting a stranger who was broad-shouldered, weasel-eyed, of peculiarly alert and guarded manner, reached the Axton doorstep. Caryl had so perfectly timed his arrival, under Trant’s instructions, that he joined them before the bell was answered.

Trant and Caryl, leaving the stranger under guard of the watchman in the hall, found Miss Waldron and Axton in the morning-room.

“Ah! Mr. Caryl again?” said Axton sneeringly. “Caryl was certainly not the man you wanted me to see, Trant!”

“The man is outside,” the psychologist replied. “But before bringing him in for identification I thought it best to prepare Miss Waldron, and perhaps even more particularly you, Mr. Axton, for the surprise he is likely to occasion.”

“A surprise?” Axton scowled questioningly. “Who is the fellow?—or rather, if that is what you have come to find out from me, where did you get him, Trant?”

“That is the explanation I wish to make,” Trant replied, with his hand still upon the knob of the door, which he had pushed shut behind him. “You will recall, Mr. Axton, that there were but four men whom we know to have been in Cairo, Calcutta, and Cape Town at the same time you were. These were Lawler, your servant Beasley, the German Schultz, and the American Walcott. Through the Seric Medicine Company I have positively located Walcott; he is now in Australia. The Nord Deutscher Lloyd has given me equally positive assurance regarding Schultz. Schultz is now in Bremen. Miss Waldron has accounted for Beasley, and the Charing Cross Hospital corroborates her; Beasley is in London. There remains, therefore, the inevitable conclusion that either there was some other man following Mr. Axton—some man whom Mr. Axton did not see—or else that the man who so pried into Mr. Axton’s correspondence abroad and into your letters, Miss Waldron, this last week here in Chicago, was—Lawler; and this I believe to have been the case.”

“Lawler?” the girl and Caryl echoed in amazement, while Axton stared at the psychologist with increasing surprise and wonder. “Lawler?”

“Oh! I see,” Axton all at once smiled contemptuously. “You believe in ghosts, Trant—you think it is Lawler’s ghost that Miss Waldron saw!”

“I did not say Lawler’s ghost,” Trant replied a little testily. “I said Lawler’s self, in flesh and blood. I am trying to make it plain to you,” Trant took from his pocket the letters the girl had given him four days before and indicated the one describing the wreck, “that I believe the man whose death you so minutely and carefully describe here in this letter as Lawler, was not Lawler at all!”

“You mean to say that I didn’t know Lawler?” Axton laughed loudly—“Lawler, who had been my companion in sixteen thousand miles of travel?”

Trant turned as though to reopen the door into the hall; then paused once more and kindly faced the girl.

“I know, Miss Waldron,” he said, “that you have believed that Mr. Lawler has been dead these six weeks; and it is only because I am so certain that the man who is to be identified here now will prove to be that same Lawler that I have thought best to let you know in advance.”

He threw open the door, and stood back to allow the Irish watchman to enter, preceded by the weasel-faced stranger. Then he closed the door quickly behind him, locked it, put the key in his pocket, and spun swiftly to see the effect of the stranger upon Axton.

That young man’s face, despite his effort to control it, flushed and paled, flushed and went white again; but neither to Caryl nor the girl did it look at all like the face of one who saw a dead friend alive again.

“I do not know him!” Axton’s eyes glanced quickly, furtively about. “I have never seen him before! Why have you brought him here? This is not Lawler!”

“No; he is not Lawler,” Trant agreed; and at his signal the Irishman left his place and went to stand behind Axton. “But you know him, do you not? You have seen him before! Surely I need not recall to you this special officer Burns of the San Francisco detective bureau! That is right; you had better keep hold of him, Sullivan; and now, Burns, who is this man? Do _you_ know _him_? Can you tell us who he is?”

“Do I know him?” the detective laughed. “Can I tell you who he is? Well, rather! That is Lord George Albany, who got into Claude Shelton’s boy in San Francisco for $30,000 in a card game; that is Mr. Arthur Wilmering, who came within a hair of turning the same trick on young Stuyvesant in New York; that—first and last—is Mr. George Lawler himself, who makes a specialty of cards and rich men’s sons!”

“Lawler? George Lawler?” Caryl and the girl gasped again.

“But why, in this affair, he used his own name,” the detective continued, “is more than I can see; for surely he shouldn’t have minded another change.”

“He met Mr. Howard Axton in London,” Trant suggested, “where there was still a chance that the card cheating in the Sussex guards was not forgotten, and he might at any moment meet someone who recalled his face. It was safer to tell Axton all about it, and protest innocence.”

“Howard Axton?” the girl echoed, recovering herself at the name. “Why, Mr. Trant; if this is Mr. Lawler, as this man says and you believe, then where is Mr. Axton—oh, where is Howard Axton?”

“I am afraid, Miss Waldron,” the psychologist replied, “that Mr. Howard Axton was undoubtedly lost in the wreck of the _Gladstone_. It may even have been the finding of Howard Axton’s body that this man described in that last letter.”

“Howard Axton drowned! Then this man—”

“Mr. George Lawler’s specialty being rich men’s sons,” said the psychologist, “I suppose he joined company with Howard Axton because he was the son of Nimrod Axton. Possibly he did not know at first that Howard had been disinherited, and he may not have found it out until the second Mrs. Axton’s death, when the estate came to Miss Waldron, and she created a situation which at least promised an opportunity. It was in seeking this opportunity, Miss Waldron, among the intimate family affairs revealed in your letters to Howard Axton that Lawler was three times seen by Axton in his room, as described in the first three letters that you showed to me. That was it, was it not, Lawler?”

The prisoner—for the attitude of Sullivan and Burns left no doubt now that he was a prisoner—made no answer.

“You mean, Mr. Trant,” the eyes of the horrified girl turned from Lawler as though even the sight of him shamed her, “that if Howard Axton had not been drowned, this—this man would have come anyway?”

“I cannot say what Lawler’s intentions were if the wreck had not occurred,” the psychologist replied. “For you remember that I told you that this attempted crime has been most wonderfully assisted by circumstances. Lawler, cast ashore from the wreck of the _Gladstone_, found himself—if the fourth of these letters is to be believed—identified as Howard Axton, even before he had regained consciousness, by your stolen letters to Howard which he had in his pocket. From that time on he did not have to lift a finger, beyond the mere identification of a body—possibly Howard Axton’s—as his own. Howard had left America so young that identification here was impossible unless you had a portrait; and Lawler undoubtedly had learned from your letters that you had no picture of Howard. His own picture, published in the _News_ over Howard’s name, when it escaped identification as Lawler, showed him that the game was safe and prepared you to accept him as Howard without question. He had not even the necessity of counterfeiting Howard’s writing, as Howard had the correspondent’s habit of using a typewriter. Only two possible dangers threatened him. First, was the chance that, if brought in contact with the police, he might be recognized. You can understand, Miss Waldron, by his threats to prevent your consulting them, how anxious he was to avoid this. And second, that there might be something in Howard Axton’s letters to you which, if unknown to him, might lead him to compromise and betray himself in his relations with you. His sole mistake was that, when he attempted to search your desk for these letters, he clumsily adopted once more the same disguise that had proved so perplexing to Howard Axton. For he could have done nothing that would have been more terrifying to you. It quite nullified the effect of the window he had fixed to prove by the man’s means of exit and entrance that he was not a member of the household. It sent you, in spite of his objections and threats, to consult me; and, most important of all, it connected these visits at once with the former ones described in Howard’s letters, so that you brought the letters to me—when, of course, the nature of the crime, though not the identity of the criminal, was at once plain to me.”

“I see it was plain; but was it merely from these letters—these typewritten letters, Mr. Trant?” cried Caryl incredulously.

“From those alone, Mr. Caryl,” the psychologist smiled slightly, “through a most elementary, primer fact of psychology. Perhaps you would like to know, Lawler,” Trant turned, still smiling, to the prisoner, “just wherein you failed. And, as you will probably never have another chance such as the one just past for putting the information to practical use—even if you were not, as Mr. Burns tells me, likely to retire for a number of years from active life—I am willing to tell you.”

The prisoner turned on Trant his face—now grown livid—with an expression of almost superstitious questioning.

“Did you ever happen to go to a light opera with Howard Axton, Mr. Lawler,” asked Trant, “and find after the performance that you remembered all the stage-settings of the piece but could not recall a tune—you know you cannot recall a tune, Lawler—while Axton, perhaps, could whistle all the tunes but could not remember a costume or a scene? Psychologists call that difference between you and Howard Axton a difference in ‘memory types.’ In an almost masterly manner you imitated the style, the tricks and turns of expression of Howard Axton in your letter to Miss Waldron describing the wreck—not quite so well in the statement you dictated in my office. But you could not imitate the primary difference of Howard Axton’s mind from yours. That was where you failed.

“The change in the personality of the letter writer might easily have passed unnoticed, as it passed Miss Waldron, had not the letters fallen into the hands of one who, like myself, is interested in the manifestations of mind. For different minds are so constituted that inevitably their processes run more easily along certain channels than along others. Some minds have a preference, so to speak, for a particular type of impression; they remember a sight that they have seen, they forget the sound that went with it; or they remember the sound and forget the sight. There are minds which are almost wholly ear-minds or eye-minds. In minds of the visual, or eye, type, all thoughts and memories and imaginations will consist of ideas of sight; if of the auditory type, the impressions of sound predominate and obscure the others.

“The first three letters you handed me, Miss Waldron,” the psychologist turned again to the girl, “were those really written by Howard Axton. As I read through them I knew that I was dealing with what psychologists call an auditory mind. When, in ordinary memory, he recalled an event he remembered best its sounds. But I had not finished the first page of the fourth letter when I came upon the description of the body lying on the sand—a visual memory so clear and so distinct, so perfect even to the pockets distended with sand, that it startled and amazed me—for it was the first distinct visual memory I had found. As I read on I became certain that the man who had written the first three letters—who described a German as guttural and remembered the American as nasal—could never have written the fourth. Would that first man—the man who recalled even the sound of his midnight visitor’s shoulders when they rubbed against the wall—fail to remember in his recollection of the shipwreck the roaring wind and roaring sea, the screams of men and women, the crackling of the fire? They would have been his clearest recollection. But the man who wrote the fourth letter recalled most clearly that the sea was white and frothy, the men were pallid and staring!”

“I see! I see!” Caryl and the girl cried as, at the psychologist’s bidding, they scanned together the letters he spread before them.

“The subterfuge by which I destroyed the second letter of the set, after first making a copy of it—”

“You did it on purpose? What an idiot I was!” exclaimed Caryl.

“Was merely to obviate the possibility of mistake,” Trant continued, without heeding the interruption. “The statement this man dictated, as it was given in terms of ‘sight,’ assured me that he was not Axton. When, by means of the telegraph, I had accounted for the present whereabouts of three of the four men he might possibly be, it became plain that he must be Lawler. And finding that Lawler was badly wanted in San Francisco, I asked Mr. Burns to come on and identify him.

“And the stationing of the watchman here was a blind also, as well as his report of the man who last night tried to force the window?” Caryl exclaimed.

Trant nodded. He was watching the complete dissolution of the swindler’s effrontery. Trant had appreciated that Lawler had let him speak on uninterrupted as though, after the psychologist had shown his hand, he held in reserve cards to beat it. But his attempt to sneer and scoff and contemn was so weak, when the psychologist was through, that Ethel Waldron—almost as though to spare him—arose and motioned to Trant to tell her, whatever else he wished, in the next room.

Trant followed her a moment obediently; but at the door he seemed to recollect himself.

“I think there is nothing else now, Miss Waldron,” he said, “except that I believe I can spare you the reopening of your family affairs here. Burns tells me there is more than enough against him in California to keep Mr. Lawler there for some good time. I will go with him, now,” and he stood aside for Caryl to go, in his place, into the next room.