Continental Op Stories

him.

On the first night, he had taken this gun out, stepped back from his bed a little, and fired a bullet into the doorframe. Then he had jumped back into bed, concealing the gun under the blankets⁠—where none thought to look for⁠—it until he could return it to its box.

That was all the preparation he had needed. He had established an attempted murder directed against himself; and he had shown that a bullet fired at him could easily go near⁠—and therefore through⁠—the connecting doorway.

On the second night, he had waited until the house had seemed quiet. Then he had peeped through one of the cracks in the Japanese screen at the girl, whom he could see in the reflected light from the moon. He had found, though, that when he stepped far enough back from the screen for it to escape powder marks, he could not see the girl, not while she was lying down. So he had fired first into the doorframe⁠—near the previous night’s bullet⁠—to awaken her.

She had sat up in bed immediately, screaming, and he had shot her. He had intended firing another shot into her body⁠—to make sure of her death⁠—but my approach had made that impossible, and had made concealment of the gun impossible; so, with what strength he had left, he had thrown the revolver out of the window.

He died that afternoon, and I returned to San Francisco.

But that was not quite the end of the story.

In the ordinary course of business, the agency’s bookkeeping department sent Gallaway a bill for my services. With the check that he sent by return mail, he enclosed a letter to me, from which I quote a paragraph:

I don’t want to let you miss the cream of the whole affair. The lovely Caywood, when she recovered, denied that Exon had talked of murder or any other crime during his delirium. The cause of the distaste with which she might have looked at him afterward, and the reason she would not tell him what he had said, was that his entire conversation during that week of delirium had consisted of an uninterrupted stream of obscenities and blasphemies, which seem to have shocked the girl through and through.

Zigzags of Treachery

I

“All I know about Dr. Estep’s death,” I said, “is the stuff in the papers.”

Vance Richmond’s lean gray face took on an expression of distaste.

“The newspapers aren’t always either thorough or accurate. I’ll give you the salient points as I know them; though I suppose you’ll want to go over the ground for yourself, and get your information firsthand.”

I nodded, and the attorney went on, shaping each word precisely with his thin lips before giving it sound.

“Dr. Estep came to San Francisco in ’98 or ’99⁠—a young man of twenty-five, just through qualifying for his license. He opened an office here, and, as you probably know, became in time a rather excellent surgeon. He married two or three years after he came here. There were no children. He and his wife seem to have been a bit happier together than the average.

“Of his life before coming to San Francisco, nothing is known. He told his wife briefly that he had been born and raised in Parkersburg, WV, but that his home life had been so unpleasant that he was trying to forget it, and that he did not like to talk⁠—or even think⁠—about it. Bear that in mind.

“Two weeks ago⁠—on the third of the month⁠—a woman came to his office, in the afternoon. His office was in his residence on Pine Street. Lucy Coe, who was Dr. Estep’s nurse and assistant, showed the woman into his office, and then went back to her own desk in the reception room.

“She didn’t hear anything the doctor said to the woman, but through the closed door she heard the woman’s voice now and then⁠—a high and anguished voice, apparently pleading. Most of the words were lost upon the nurse, but she heard one coherent sentence. ‘Please! Please!’ she heard the woman cry, ‘Don’t turn me away!’ The woman was with Dr. Estep for about fifteen minutes, and left sobbing into a handkerchief. Dr. Estep said nothing about the caller either to his nurse or to his wife, who didn’t learn of it until after his death.

“The next day, toward evening, while the nurse was putting on her hat and coat preparatory to leaving for home, Dr. Estep came out of his office, with his hat on and a letter in his hand. The nurse saw that his face was pale⁠—‘white as my uniform,’ she says⁠—and he walked with the care of one who takes pains to keep from staggering.

“She asked him if he was ill. ‘Oh, it’s nothing!’ he told her. ‘I’ll be all right in a very few minutes.’ Then he went on out. The nurse left the house just behind him, and saw him drop the letter he had carried into the mailbox on the corner, after which he returned to the house.

“Mrs. Estep, coming downstairs ten minutes later⁠—it couldn’t have been any later than that⁠—heard, just as she reached the first floor, the sound of a shot from her husband’s office. She rushed into it, meeting nobody. Her husband stood by his desk, swaying, with a hole in his right temple and a smoking revolver in his hand. Just as she reached him and put her arms around him, he fell across the desk⁠—dead.”

“Anybody else⁠—any of the servants, for instance⁠—able to say that Mrs. Estep didn’t go to the office until after the shot?” I asked.

The attorney shook his head sharply.

“No, damn it! That’s where the rub comes in!”

His voice, after this one flare of feeling, resumed its level, incisive tone, and he went on with his tale.

“The next day’s papers had accounts of Dr. Estep’s death, and late that morning the woman who had called upon him the day before his death came to the house. She is Dr. Estep’s