The Greatest Works of Arthur B. Reeve - 60 Titles in One Edition - Arthur B. Reeve

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pocket of his coat, hung over the back of a chair.

      "Now, here's another most unusual case, apparently. It begins, really, at the other end, so to speak, with the conviction, begins at the very place where we detectives send a man as the last act of our little dramas."

      "What?" I gasped, "another case before even this one is fairly cleaned up? Craig you are impossible. You get worse instead of better."

      "Read it," he said, simply. Kennedy handed me a letter in the angular hand affected by many women. It was dated at Sing Sing, or rather Ossining. Craig seemed to appreciate the surprise which my face must have betrayed at the curious combination of circumstances.

      "Nearly always there is the wife or mother of a condemned man who lives in the shadow of the prison," he remarked quietly, adding, "where she can look down at the grim walls, hoping and fearing."

      I said nothing, for the letter spoke for itself.

      I have read of your success as a scientific detective and hope that you will pardon me for writing to you, but it is a matter of life or death for one who is dearer to me than all the world.

      Perhaps you recall reading of the trial and conviction of my husband, Sanford Godwin, at East Point. The case did not attract much attention in New York papers, although he was defended by an able lawyer from the city.

      Since the trial, I have taken up my residence here in Ossining in order to be near him. As I write I can see the cold, grey walls of the state prison that holds all that is dear to me. Day after day, I have watched and waited, hoped against hope. The courts are so slow, and lawyers are so technical. There have been executions since I came here, too—and I shudder at them. Will this appeal be denied, also?

      My husband was accused of murdering by poison—hemlock, they alleged—his adoptive parent, the retired merchant, Parker Godwin, whose family name he took when he was a boy. After the death of the old man, a later will was discovered in which my husband's inheritance was reduced to a small annuity. The other heirs, the Elmores, asserted, and the state made out its case on the assumption, that the new will furnished a motive for killing old Mr. Godwin, and that only by accident had it been discovered.

      Sanford is innocent He could not have done it It is not in him to do such a thing. I am only a woman, but about some things I know more than all the lawyers and scientists, and I know that he is innocent

      I cannot write all. My heart is too full. Cannot you come end advise me? Even if you cannot take up the case to which I have devoted my life, tell me what to do. I am enclosing a check for expenses, all I can spare at present.

      Sincerely yours,

       Nella Godwin.

      "Are you going?" I asked, watching Kennedy as he tapped the check thoughtfully on the desk.

      "I can hardly resist an appeal like that," he replied, absently replacing the check in the envelope with the letter.

      Chapter XXIII

      The Death House

       Table of Contents

      In the early forenoon, we were on our way by train "up the river" to Sing Sing, where, at the station, a line of old-fashioned cabs and red-faced cabbies greeted us, for the town itself is hilly.

      The house to which we had been directed was on the hill, and from its windows one could look down on the barracks-like pile of stone with the evil little black-barred slits of windows, below and perhaps a quarter of a mile away.

      There was no need to be told what it was. Its very atmosphere breathed the word "prison." Even the ugly clutter of tall-chimneyed workshops did not destroy it. Every stone, every grill, every glint of a sentry's rifle spelt "prison."

      Mrs. Godwin was a pale, slight little woman, in whose face shone an indomitable spirit, unconquered even by the slow torture of her lonely vigil. Except for such few hours that she had to engage in her simple household duties, with now and then a short walk in the country, she was always watching that bleak stone house of atonement.

      Yet, though her spirit was unconquered, it needed no physician to tell one that the dimming of the lights at the prison on the morning set for the execution would fill two graves instead of one. For she had come to know that this sudden dimming of the corridor lights, and then their almost as sudden flaring-up, had a terrible meaning, well known to the men inside. Hers was no less an agony than that of the men in the curtained cells, since she had learned that when the lights grow dim at dawn at Sing Sing, it means that the electric power has been borrowed for just that little while to send a body straining against the straps of the electric chair, snuffing out the life of a man.

      To-day she had evidently been watching in both directions, watching eagerly the carriages as they climbed the hill, as well as in the direction of the prison.

      "How can I ever thank you, Professor Kennedy," she greeted us at the door, keeping back with difficulty the tears that showed how much it meant to have any one interest himself in her husband's case.

      There was that gentleness about Mrs. Godwin that comes only to those who have suffered much.

      "It has been a long fight," she began, as we talked in her modest little sitting-room, into which the sun streamed brightly with no thought of the cold shadows in the grim building below. "Oh, and such a hard, heartbreaking fight! Often it seems as if we had exhausted every means at our disposal, and yet we shall never give up. Why cannot we make the world see our case as we see it? Everything seems to have conspired against us—and yet I cannot, I will not believe that the law and the science that have condemned him are the last words in law and science."

      "You said in your letter that the courts were so slow and the lawyers so—"

      "Yes, so cold, so technical. They do not seem to realise that a human life is at stake. With them it is almost like a game in which we are the pawns. And sometimes I fear, in spite of what the lawyers say, that without some new evidence, it—it will go hard with him."

      "You have not given up hope in the appeal?" asked Kennedy gently.

      "It is merely on technicalities of the law," she replied with quiet fortitude, "that is, as nearly as I can make out from the language of the papers. Our lawyer is Salo Kahn, of the big firm of criminal lawyers, Smith, Kahn & Smith."

      "A good lawyer," encouraged Kennedy.

      "Yes, I know. He has done all that lawyers can do. But the evidence was—what you would call, scientific—absolutely. Three expert chemists testified for the people that they found the alkaloid, conine, in the body. You see, I have thought and rethought, read and reread the case so much that I can talk like a—a man about it. Yes, they found the alkaloid in the body and try as he did there was no way that Mr. Kahn could shake their testimony. The jury believed them.

      "And yet, oh, Professor Kennedy, is there nothing higher than this cold science of theirs? It cannot be—it cannot be. Sanford has told me the truth, and I know I would know if he had not been telling me what was true."

      It was splendid, this exhibition of a woman's faithfulness, of this wife fighting against such tremendous weight of odds, fighting his fight, daring both law and science in her intrepid belief in him.

      "Conine," mused Kennedy, half to himself. I could not tell whether he was thinking of what he repeated or of the little woman.

      "Yes, the active principle of hemlock," she went on. "That was what the experts discovered, they swore. In the pure state, I believe, it is more poisonous than anything except the cyanides. And it was absolutely scientific evidence. They repeated the tests in court. There was no doubt of it. But, oh, he did not do it. Some one else did it. He did not—he could not."

      Kennedy said nothing for a few minutes, but from his tone when he did speak it was evident that he was deeply touched.

      "Since our marriage we lived with old Mr. Godwin in the historic Godwin House at East Point," she

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