The Brain Jungle by Edward Mott Woolley Read online

  Short Stories, April, 1916

  The Brain Jungle

  by Edward Mott Woolley

  A wealthy woman murdered in her carriage, a sister of charity drowned as if by accident, children poisoned by some mysterious agent, such was the situation when Felix Hazard was called into the crime area of a hitherto reposeful New England town FTER the fifth unaccountable murder

  in getting the widow’s jewels. Evidently

  in Litchfield the city council met in

  something happened to alarm him, for he

  A secret session and voted to retain made his escape and left the brooch and the Felix Hazard, whose reputation for detecting

  rings untouched. Yet so rapidly and fiendishly

  well-nigh inscrutable crimes was unsurpassed.

  was the crime perpetrated that the victim

  Accordingly the Mayor went down to New

  seems to have made scarcely a struggle—”

  York without informing even the Chief of

  Hazard interrupted with a gesture. You

  Police of Litchfield, and called at the office of remember that he took little interest in

  the Hazard Detective Agency. Here, after a

  ordinary crimes with commonplace motives.

  wait of two hours in an anteroom, he was

  Nor did he waste time discussing them. The

  shown into the little private den of the world was full of sordid deeds of violence, wizard—the room so profusely decorated with

  and his lightning-like imagination had a habit

  skulls and other relics of crime. Hazard was

  of jumping to fantastic possibilities. If he

  there, seated at a flat-topped desk in a haze of found no range for such flights of involved

  blue tobacco smoke, with some red and green

  fancy, he invariably dropped a case at the

  diagrams before him.

  start. So now, without any change in his

  “Our city of Litchfield,” said the immobile countenance, he raised his hand and Mayor, after formalities, “has until recently

  observed:

  been unusually free from serious crime. On

  “You speak of the Asylum of the

  the first day of June the Litchfield Daily Times Innocents. An orphan asylum, I take it!”

  printed an editorial boasting that two years

  “One that shelters a hundred homeless

  had elapsed since a homicide had been children,” answered the Mayor. “An committed in our city. But that very evening,

  institution founded by Mrs. Blauvelt herself.”

  sir, an atrocious murder was done, the victim

  “Very good!” said Hazard. “Proceed to

  being one of our most noble women, Mrs.

  the second crime.”

  Agatha Blauvelt, a wealthy widow, who was

  “The second crime,” returned the

  waylaid in her electric runabout just after dark visitor, taken aback by the other’s

  and strangled to death. She was driving the car brusqueness, bears no relation to the first, but herself, and was alone, having just visited the is a separate mystery. If you will permit me, I Asylum of the Innocents, a mile out of town.

  should like to narrate the details of the first She had long been the chief patroness of this

  murder before proceeding——”

  institution, to which she had contributed large

  “The details can wait,” broke in

  sums of money. The apparent motive was

  Hazard. “I have an appointment in ten

  robbery, though the murderer did not succeed

  minutes.”

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  The Mayor, who had seated himself at

  escaped without being seen. Circumstances

  the opposite side of the table, looked at the

  pointed strongly to a certain young man for

  detective in amazement. He could not whom the minister had refused to perform a comprehend the rapid action of Hazard’s agile

  marriage ceremony, on the ground of the

  mind, and he was inclined to resent the applicant’s ill health. This young man was ungracious reception accorded him. He had

  arrested——”

  some hot words on his lips, but they died

  “And discharged for lack of evidence,

  away as he found the strange eyes of the other

  I take it!” said Hazard, gazing out of the

  fastened upon him. There was something window over the scenes of Broadway far singularly uncanny in Hazard’s unusually below.

  large and rounded orbs when they chose to

  “The grand jury did not feel justified,

  frame an illuminated interrogation mark.

  owing to an alibi——” the Mayor began, but

  “Very well!” said the Mayor, curtly.

  Hazard said quietly:

  “If our time is so unceremoniously short, I

  “Alibis are inconvenient nuisances in

  shall endeavor to be brief. The second crime

  the detection of crime. However, I think we

  may possibly have been an accident, but such

  need not concern ourselves in that way just

  theory is even more unexplainable than that of

  now. What was the reputation of the reverend

  murder. Two days after the death of the gentleman? A subject for scandal?”

  Widow Blauvelt, a small boy named

  “On the contrary,” the Mayor assured

  Donaldson died in great agony after eating

  him, “no breath of such suspicion had ever

  some candy buttercups bought at a local been whispered against him. A more godly confectioner’s—a store patronized largely by

  man never lived!”

  school children. Other persons were affected,

  “Ah!” muttered Hazard, with more

  but recovered. A postmortem showed show of interest than he had hitherto betrayed.

  strychnine in large quantities, and the “And the fourth crime was——?”

  confectioner was arrested. He proved that his

  The Mayor’s lips curled a little, but

  goods were purchased of reputable already he was getting into the rapid swing of manufacturers, who, in turn, demonstrated that

  this man who sat opposite.

  no strychnine was used for any purpose in

  “We are going pretty fast,” he said,

  their plants. Where it came from is a mystery

  “but if you cannot grant me more than a

  that our police detectives have not solved——

  minute to narrate each of these mysteries I

  —”

  shall have to be lively indeed. The fourth

  “Quite likely!” remarked Hazard, crime was the cowardly murder of a young caustically. “The third crime?”

  girl, without a clew or a motive remaining.

  With the question mark again burning

  She was stabbed to death on the steps of her

  into his brain, the Mayor smothered his anger.

  own home by a man who sprang out of the

  “The third crime,” he retorted, “had

  darkness, dealt the blow, and fled forthwith.

  nothing to do either with the first or second,

  The crime seems to have had not the vestige

  but was an assassination committed, of purpose.”

  apparently, for revenge. One of our

  “Which of itself opens a wide and

  clergymen,
the Reverend Dr. Mathewson, was

  amazing field for speculation,” answered

  shot down while entering the rear door of his

  Hazard, getting up. “In two minutes I must be

  church just before the hour for evening in my automobile, so I ask you to proceed at service. The murderer had concealed himself

  once to the fifth mystery, as you call it.”

  in the back vestibule, which was dark, and he

  “I do not follow you,” acknowledged

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  3

  the Mayor. “But the fifth murder was this: On

  fading away!”

  the seventh of July the Mother Superior of the

  “You have already stabbed at

  Good Shepherd Home For the Aged was something in this case?” demanded the Mayor, missed from the’ institution, and on the breathlessly. “You have seen something—in following day her body was found in the river

  the dark?”

  below town. A post-mortem showed that she

  “A mere deduction.” Hazard put on his

  died from drowning, but at no point near hat and offered his hand to his caller in adieu.

  Litchfield is the stream more than three feet

  “A mere grotesque fancy, perhaps—who can

  deep. It runs through a corner of the Good

  say? It must be worked out before it is talked

  Shepherd grounds, and the Mother Superior

  about. ‘Silence— silence always!’ is the motto

  was in the habit of going down to its banks, in under which we operate here. The

  a heavy grove, for meditation and prayer. Here

  imagination, my dear sir, is a wonderful thing.

  the police found evidences of a struggle but

  It can jump to any height and explore the most

  nothing was discovered that threw the inaccessible mental absurdities; but if it is a slightest light on the crime. There is no doubt good healthy imagination it will return to earth that she was seized and held under water until

  just as quickly when it finds nothing up there

  life was extinct. Why? It may have been for

  to seize upon. My men will visit you shortly in revenge, but for what? So far as known, the

  Litchfield. I merely repeat to you: ‘Silence!’

  Mother Superior had not an enemy in the

  Good day, sir!”

  world. There are those in Litchfield who

  incline toward the theory of suicide, on the

  II

  supposition that the woes of mankind, to

  which she had been ministering for forty A MONTH subsequent to the Mayor’s visit to years, had unbalanced her mind. But this the metropolis, Delos Nast, one of the theory appears preposterous. She never operatives of the Hazard Detective Agency, exhibited any evidence of dementia, unless

  returned to New York from a visit to

  you call sadness insanity and consider pity a

  Litchfield, where other secret agents of

  sign of a weakened intellect.”

  Hazard were at work. On the night of his

  “It may be that pity is one of the signs return he and his chief spent six hours in close we are looking for,” said Hazard, communion in the skull room, high above enigmatically, as he drew on his gloves.

  Broadway. To both these criminal pathologists

  “How

  so?”

  the night was pretty much the same as the day,

  The other shrugged his shoulders. so that dawn frequently came while they Stepping to the wall, he took a stiletto from

  conducted their mental clinics. Hazard and

  among the relics that hung there. Closing his

  Nast usually worked on the hypothesis that a

  eyes, he made a few passes with it in front of

  study of mental processes afforded the best

  him, so that the Mayor stepped back hurriedly.

  path to crime solution.

  “I merely stab in the dark,” observed

  On the table between them there now

  Hazard, tossing the dagger on to his desk and

  reposed the tabulated results of some elaborate smiling grimly. “When I shut my eyes I “sales researches” conducted in Litchfield and sometimes see things that may or may not

  vicinity: in other words, long lists of names

  exist in reality. It is the things one sees in the that were classified ostensibly into such

  dark that makes the good detective. He may

  groups as the clever sales manager lays out

  stab and hit nothing, but if the thing he sees is when he analyzes a district preparatory to a

  really there—Ah! mysteries have a habit of

  selling campaign. Outwardly, this research

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  had been conducted in behalf of the Electrical

  example of the inscrutable workings of the

  Outfitting Company of New York, and it human intellect under abnormal and unhappy constituted quite a valuable assembly of facts

  conditions. It is your privilege and mine, Nast, as to the buying power of Litchfield, to reach continually a little beyond the known individually and collectively. But of course

  realms of mental science. We are explorers in

  the sales information was not destined to be

  that most mysterious of all countries, the

  used; as a blind, it covered some Brain Jungle. But we must not forget that extraordinarily interesting facts about a group however elusive are the paths that run through

  of persons in Litchfield.

  the jungles up in that land, they follow

  Nast now gathered up a big bunch of

  convolutions that have been mapped. Thus we

  the papers, and, tying them with a string, laid draw on what we already know, and, by

  them aside.

  analogy, adduce suppositions.”

  “These,” he said, “are the final

  He opened the volume and let the

  eliminations. The solution of the Litchfield

  pages run loosely through his fingers—pages

  mysteries does not lie among them, if your

  that held within their confines many of the

  theory is correct, sir.” Then, gathering up the weirdest mysteries of time. Then he closed the

  remaining papers, he tapped the uppermost

  book sharply.

  one with his forefinger. “Somewhere here,” he

  “We are working along the right line!”

  added, “lies the key.”

  he said. “Every deduction tells me so. We will

  “It is your hypothesis as much as set the trap soon—and catch in it perhaps an mine,” returned Hazard, speaking from his

  arch-fiend.”

  customary halo of blue smoke. “It was your

  Then, with a sudden change of tone, he

  work on the Wabusson case that suggested the

  went on:

  thought to me.”

  “How many names remain, after the

  Nast looked across at his chief, with

  eliminations?”

  affectionate eyes. Hazard was his god—an

  “Six,”

  said

  Nast.

  idol before whom he bowed. However,

  Hazard took the list and studied it

  dissimilar in some respects, the two men were

  long, pondering the closely written notations

  in accord mentally; and however cold and curt

  Nast had made opposite the names. He studied

  Hazard could be with outsiders, he did not fail and pondered so long that Trinity chimes rang

  in sympathetic consideration for his favorite

  two o’clock, and then three, before he put

  pupil—this keen young man whose down the list and t
hrew away the remains of imagination could take flights almost as high

  his fifth cigar.

  as his own.

  “Our move is to concentrate rather

  “Yes,” Nast returned; “it is my strongly on Abbot Abburton,” he said.

  hypothe sir, yet sometimes, I confess, I

  “1 had already reached the same

  question its reasonableness. For the sake of its conclusion,” answered Nast.

  picturesqueness, at least, I should like to

  accept it unequivocally. It would add some

  III

  interesting material to forensic medicine.”

  Hazard reached over to a bookcase and

  Two evenings later, at the dinner hour, Delos

  took down a ponderous volume.

  Nast moved cautiously along in the shadow of

  “And yet,” he said, “it would be in

  an eight-foot brick wall that surrounded the

  tune with what you already find here in this

  spacious grounds of The Turrets, as the home

  book. It would simply furnish another of Abbot Abburton in Litchfield was called.

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  5

  Reaching a spot especially favored by the

  Nose” because of his aquiline features. Older

  deep gloom of the trees, he sprang lightly up

  persons spoke of him sometimes as “Dante.”

  and caught the top ledge with his fingers. Nast He might indeed have been a model for Dore

  was rather small but abnormally athletic, so

  had he lived earlier. In youth, his sepulchral

  that in a few seconds he had swung himself

  face had been relieved by the geniality of his

  over and disappeared in the darkness inside.

  smile, and his wit had overshadowed his

  The Abburton home was on a lonely

  Dantean physical atmosphere; but now there

  hill in the outskirts of the most exclusive was no smile, and wit and he were strangers.

  residential part of Litchfield. It was a

  It was here, then, that Delos Nast