I offered to go home with Ricori, and somewhat to my surprise he accepted with alacrity. The man was
pitiably shaken. We rode silently, the tight-lipped gunmen alert. Peters' face kept floating before me.
I gave Ricori a strong sedative, and left him sleeping, his men on guard. I had told him that I meant to
make a complete autopsy.
Returning to the hospital in his car, I found the body of Peters had been taken to the mortuary. Rigor
mortis, Braile told me, had been complete in less than an hour-an astonishingly short time. I made the
necessary arrangements for the autopsy, and took Braile home with me to snatch a few hours sleep. It is
difficult to convey by words the peculiarly unpleasant impression the whole occurrence had made upon
me. I can only say that I was as grateful for Braile's company as he seemed to be for mine.
When I awoke, the nightmarish oppression still lingered, though not so strongly. It was about two when
we began the autopsy. I lifted the sheet from Peters' body with noticeable hesitation. I stared at his face
with amazement. All diabolism had been wiped away. It was serene, unlined-the face of a man who had
died peacefully, with no agony either of body or mind. I lifted his hand, it was limp, the whole body
flaccid, the rigor gone.
It was then, I think, that I first felt full conviction I was dealing with an entirely new, or at least unknown,
agency of death, whether microbic or otherwise. As a rule, rigor does not set in for sixteen to twenty-four
hours, depending upon the condition of the patient before death, temperature and a dozen other things.
Normally, it does not disappear for forty-eight to seventy-two hours. Usually a rapid setting-in of the
stiffening means as rapid a disappearance, and vice versa. Diabetics stiffen quicker than others. A sudden
brain injury, like shooting, is even swifter. In this case, the rigor had begun instantaneously with death,
and must have completed its cycle in the astonishingly short time of less than five hours-for the attendant
told me that he had examined the body about ten o'clock and he had thought that stiffening had not yet
set in. As a matter of fact, it had come and gone.
The results of the autopsy can be told in two sentences. There was no ascertainable reason why Peters
should not be alive. And he was dead!
Later, when Hoskins made his reports, both of these utterly conflicting statements continued to be true.
There was no reason why Peters should be dead. Yet dead he was. If the enigmatic lights we had
observed had anything to do with his death, they left no traces. His organs were perfect, all else as it
should have been; he was, indeed, an extraordinarily healthy specimen. Nor had Hoskins been able to
capture any more of the light-carrying corpuscles after I had left him.
That night I framed a short letter describing briefly the symptoms observed in Peters' case, not dwelling
upon the changes in expression but referring cautiously to "unusual grimaces" and a "look of intense fear."
Braile and I had this manifold and mailed to every physician in Greater New York. I personally attended
to a quiet inquiry to the same effect among the hospitals. The letters asked if the physicians had treated
any patients with similar symptoms, and if so to give particulars, names, addresses, occupations and any
characteristic interest under seal, of course, of professional confidence. I flattered myself that my
reputation was such that none of those who received the questionnaires would think the request actuated
either by idle curiosity or slightest unethical motive.
I received in response seven letters and a personal visit from the writer of one of them. Each letter,
except one, gave me in various degrees of medical conservatism, the information I had asked. After
reading them, there was no question that within six months seven persons of oddly dissimilar
characteristics and stations in life had died as had Peters.
Chronologically, the cases were as follows:
May 25: Ruth Bailey, spinster; fifty years old; moderately wealthy; Social Registerite and best of
reputation; charitable and devoted to children. June 20: Patrick McIlraine; bricklayer; wife and two
children. August 1: Anita Green; child of eleven; parents in moderate circumstances and well educated.
August 15: Steve Standish; acrobat; thirty; wife and three children. August 30: John J. Marshall; banker;
sixty interested in child welfare. September 10: Phineas Dimott; thirty-five; trapeze performer; wife and
small child. October 12: Hortense Darnley; about thirty; no occupation.
Their addresses, except two, were widely scattered throughout the city.
Each of the letters noted the sudden onset of rigor mortis and its rapid passing. Each of them gave the
time of death following the initial seizure as approximately five hours. Five of them referred to the
changing expressions which had so troubled me; in the guarded way they did it I read the bewilderment
of the writers.
"Patient's eyes remained open," recorded the physician in charge of the spinster Bailey. "Staring, but gave
no sign of recognition of surroundings and failed to focus upon or present any evidence of seeing objects
held before them. Expression one of intense terror, giving away toward death to others peculiarly
disquieting to observer. The latter intensified after death ensued. Rigor mortis complete and dissipated
within five hours."
The physician in charge of McIlraine, the bricklayer, had nothing to say about the ante-mortem
phenomena, but wrote at some length about the expression of his patient's face after death.
"It had," he reported, "nothing in common with the muscular contraction of the so-called 'Hippocratic
countenance,' nor was it in any way the staring eyes and contorted mouth familiarly known as the death
grin. There was no suggestion of agony, after the death-rather the opposite. I would term the expression
one of unusual malice."
The report of the physician who had attended Standish, the acrobat, was perfunctory, but it mentioned
that "after patient had apparently died, singularly disagreeable sounds emanated from his throat." I
wondered whether these had been the same demonic machinations that had come from Peters, and, if so,
I could not wonder at all at my correspondent's reticence concerning them.
I knew the physician who had attended the banker-opinionated, pompous, a perfect doctor of the very
rich.
"There can be no mystery as to the cause of death," he wrote. "It was certainly thrombosis, a clot
somewhere in the brain. I attach no importance whatever to the facial grimaces, nor to the time element
involved in the rigor. You know, my dear Lowell," he added, patronizingly, "it is an axiom in forensic
medicine that one can prove anything by rigor mortis."
I would have liked to have replied that when in doubt thrombosis as a diagnosis is equally as useful in
covering the ignorance of practitioners, but it would not have punctured his complacency.
The Dimott report was a simple record with no comment whatever upon grimaces or sounds.
But the doctor who had attended little Anita had not been so reticent.
"The child," he wrote, "had been beautiful. She seemed to suffer no pain, but at the onset of the illness I
was shocked by the intensity of terror in her fixed gaze. It was like a waking nightmare-for
unquestionably she was conscious until death. Morphine in almost lethal dosage produced no change in
this symptom, nor did it seem to have any effect upon heart or respiration. Later the terror disappeared,
giving way to other emotions which I hesitate to describe in this report, but will do so in person if you so
desire. The aspect of the child after death was peculiarly disturbing, but again I would rather speak than
write of that."
There was a hastily scrawled postscript; I could see him hesitating, then giving way at last to the necessity
of unburdening his mind, dashing off that postscript and rushing the letter away before he could
reconsider-
"I have written that the child was conscious until death. What haunts me is the conviction that she was
conscious after physical death! Let me talk to you."
I nodded with satisfaction. I had not dared to put that observation down in my questionnaire. And if it has
been true of the other cases, as I now believed it must have been, all the doctors except Standish's had
shared my conservatism-or timidity. I called little Anita's physician upon the 'phone at once. He was
strongly perturbed. In every detail his case had paralleled that of Peters. He kept repeating over and
over:
"The child was sweet and good as an angel, and she changed into a devil!"
I promised to keep him apprised of any discoveries I might make, and shortly after our conversation I
was visited by the young physician who had attended Hortense Darnley. Doctor Y, as I shall call him,
had nothing to add to the medical aspect other than what I already knew, but his talk suggested the first
practical line of approach toward the problem.
His office, he said, was in the apartment house which had been Hortense Darnley's home. He had been
working late, and had been summoned to her apartment about ten o'clock by the woman's maid, a
colored girl. He had found the patient lying upon her bed, and had at once been struck by the expression
of terror on her face and the extraordinary limpness of her body. He described her as blonde,
blue-eyed-"the doll type."
A man was in the apartment. He had at first evaded giving his name, saying that he was merely a friend.
At first glance, Dr. Y had thought the woman had been subjected to some violence, but examination
revealed no bruises or other injuries. The "friend" had told him they had been eating dinner when "Miss
Darnley flopped right down on the floor as though all her bones had gone soft, and we couldn't get
anything out of her." The maid confirmed this. There was a half-eaten dinner on the table, and both man
and servant declared Hortense had been in the best of spirits. There had been no quarrel. Reluctantly, the
"friend" had admitted that the seizure had occurred three hours before, and that they had tried to "bring
her about" themselves, calling upon him only when the alternating expressions which I have referred to in
the case of Peters began to appear.
As the seizure progressed, the maid had become hysterical with fright and fled. The man was of tougher
timber and had remained until the end. He had been much shaken, as had Dr. Y, by the after-death
phenomena. Upon the physician declaring that the case was one for the coroner, he had lost his
reticence, volunteering his name as James Martin, and expressing himself as eager for a complete
autopsy. He was quite frank as to his reasons. The Darnley woman had been his mistress, and he "had
enough trouble without her death pinned to me."
There had been a thorough autopsy. No trace of disease or poison had been found. Beyond a slight
valvular trouble of the heart, Hortense Darnley had been perfectly healthy. The verdict had been death by
heart disease. But Dr. Y was perfectly convinced the heart had nothing to do with it.
It was, of course, quite obvious that Hortense Darnley had died from the same cause or agency as had all
the others. But to me the outstanding fact was that her apartment had been within a stone's throw of the
address Ricori had given me as that of Peters. Furthermore, Martin was of the same world, if Dr. Y's
impressions were correct. Here was conceivably a link between two of the cases-missing in the others. I
determined to call in Ricori, to lay all the cards before him, and enlist his aid if possible.
My investigation had consumed about two weeks. During that time I had become well acquainted with
Ricori. For one thing he interested me immensely as a product of present-day conditions; for another I
liked him, despite his reputation. He was remarkably well read, of a high grade of totally unmoral
intelligence, subtle and superstitious-in olden time he would probably have been a Captain of
Condettieri, his wits and sword for hire. I wondered what were his antecedents. He had paid me several
visits since the death of Peters, and quite plainly my liking was reciprocated. On these visits he was
guarded by the tight-lipped man who had watched by the hospital window. This man's name, I learned,
was McCann. He was Ricori's most trusted bodyguard, apparently wholly devoted to his white-haired
chief. He was an interesting character too, and quite approved of me. He was a drawling Southerner who
had been, as he put it, "a cow-nurse down Arizona way, and then got too popular on the Border."
"I'm for you, Doc," he told me. "You're sure good for the boss. Sort of take his mind off business. An'
when I come here I can keep my hands outa my pockets. Any time anybody's cutting in on your cattle,
let me know. I'll ask for a day off."
Then he remarked casually that he "could ring a quarter with six holes at a hundred foot range."
I did not know whether this was meant humorously or seriously. At any rate, Ricori never went anywhere
without him; and it showed me how much he had thought of Peters that he had left McCann to guard him.
I got in touch with Ricori and asked him to take dinner with Braile and me that night at my house. At
seven he arrived, telling his chauffeur to return at ten. We sat at the table with McCann, as usual, on
watch in my hall, thrilling, I knew, my two night nurses-I have a small private hospital adjunct-by
playing the part of a gunman as conceived by the motion pictures.
Dinner over, I dismissed the butler and came to the point. I told Ricori of my questionnaire, remarking
that by it I had unearthed seven cases similar to that of Peters.
"You can dismiss from your mind any idea that Peters' death was due to his connection with you,
including the tiny globes of radiance in the blood of Peters."
At that his face grew white. He crossed himself.
"La strega!" he muttered. "The Witch! The Witch-fire!"
"Nonsense, man!" I said. "Forget your damned superstitions. I want help."
"You are scientifically ignorant! There are some things, Dr. Lowell-" he began, hotly; then controlled
himself.
"What is it you want me to do?"
"First," I said, "let's go over these eight cases, analyze them. Braile, have you come to any conclusions?"
"Yes," Braile answered. "I think all eight were murdered!"