The Quill Case

Nearly a year later, in the month of October, Austin was startled by a crime of singular ferocity and rendered all the more notable by the high position of the victim. The details were few and startling. A nursing student named Priya Nair, who rented a condominium that overlooked the hike-and-bike trail along the lake, had been sitting out on her balcony about eleven o'clock, studying for a pharmacology exam by the light of her phone. The early part of the night was cloudless, and the trail below her balcony was brilliantly lit by the full moon.

She told the police, with streaming tears, that she had been at peace with all men that night, and had thought more kindly of the world than she had in months. And as she sat she became aware of an aged, beautiful gentleman with white hair, drawing near along the trail; and advancing to meet him, another and very small gentleman, to whom at first she paid less attention. When they had come within speech, just under her eyes, the older man bowed and accosted the other with a very pretty manner of politeness. It did not seem as if the subject of his address were of great importance; indeed, from his pointing, it sometimes appeared as if he were only inquiring his way; but the moon shone on his face as he spoke, and the witness remembered being pleased to watch it, for it seemed to breathe such an innocent and old-world kindness of disposition, yet with something high too, as of a well-founded self-content.

Presently her eye wandered to the other, and she was surprised to recognize in him a certain Mr. Rook, who had once visited her landlord's building and for whom she had conceived a dislike. He had in his hand a heavy walking stick, blackthorn, with a silver collar, and he was trifling with it; but he answered never a word, and seemed to listen with an ill-contained impatience. And then all of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his foot, brandishing the stick, and carrying on, as she described it, like a madman. The old gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very much surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Rook broke out of all bounds and clubbed him to the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling his victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the path. At the horror of these sights and sounds, the girl fainted.

It was two o'clock when she came to herself and called the police. The murderer was gone long ago; but there lay his victim in the middle of the trail, incredibly mangled. The stick with which the deed had been done, although it was of some rare and very tough and heavy wood, had broken in the middle under the stress of this insensate cruelty; and one splintered half had rolled in the neighboring grass; the other, without doubt, had been carried away by the murderer. A wallet and a gold watch were found upon the victim: but no cards or papers, except a sealed envelope, which he had been probably carrying to the post, and which bore the name and address of Elias Corbin.

This was brought to the lawyer the next morning, before he was out of bed; and he had no sooner seen it and been told the circumstances than he shot out a solemn lip. "I shall say nothing till I have seen the body," said he. "This may be very serious. Have the kindness to wait while I dress." And with the same grave countenance he hurried through his breakfast and drove to the police station, whither the body had been carried. As soon as he came into the room, he nodded.

"Yes," said he. "I recognize him. I am sorry to say that this is Senator Lawrence Quill."

"Good God, sir," exclaimed the officer, "is it possible?" And the next moment his eye lighted up with professional ambition. "This will make a deal of noise," he said. "And perhaps you can help us to the man." And he briefly narrated what the student had seen, and showed the broken stick.

Corbin had already quailed at the name of Rook; but when the stick was laid before him, he could doubt no longer; broken and battered as it was, he recognized it for one that he had himself presented many years before to Roland Vane, a gift on the occasion of a prize, with Vane's initials in a silver collar.

"Is this Mr. Rook a person of small stature?" he inquired.

"Particularly small and particularly wicked-looking, is what the witness calls him," said the officer.

Corbin reflected; and then, raising his head, "If you will come with me in my car," he said, "I think I can take you to his address."

It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season lay over the river. The fog had eaten the color out of everything, and the river ran under the bridges the color of old pewter. Corbin drove with the detective through the old industrial flats east of the river, past the warehouses and the artists' lofts and the taquerias and the pawn shops, and the thoughts of his mind were of the gloomiest dye; and when he glanced at the companion of his drive, he was conscious of some touch of that terror of the law and the law's officers which may at times assail the most honest.

The address Rook had given him was a narrow building on a street of shuttered storefronts. The door was opened by an old woman with an ivory face and silvery hair, who looked at them with excellent manners and no welcome at all. Yes, she said, this was Mr. Rook's; but he was not at home; he had been in that night very late, but he had gone away again in less than an hour; there was nothing strange in that; his habits were very irregular, and he was often absent; for instance, it was nearly two months since she had seen him till yesterday.

"Very well, then, we wish to see his rooms," said the lawyer; and when the woman began to declare it was impossible, "I had better tell you who this person is," he added. "This is Detective Nora Beck of the Austin Police Department."

A flash of odious joy appeared upon the woman's face. "Ah!" said she. "He is in trouble! What has he done?"

Corbin and the detective exchanged glances. "He don't seem a very popular character," observed the latter. "And now, my good woman, just let me and this gentleman have a look about us."

In the whole extent of the building, which but for the old woman remained otherwise empty, Rook had only used a couple of rooms; but these were furnished with luxury and good taste. A cabinet was filled with wine; the table was of silver; a good picture hung upon the wall, a gift, as Corbin supposed, from Vane, who was much of a connoisseur; and the rugs were thick and agreeable in color. At this moment, however, the rooms bore every mark of having been recently and hurriedly ransacked; clothes lay about the floor, with their pockets inside out; lock-fast drawers stood open; and on the hearth there lay a pile of gray ashes, as though many papers had been burned. From these embers the detective disinterred the butt end of a checkbook, which had resisted the action of the fire; the other half of the stick was found behind the door; and as this clinched her suspicions, she declared herself delighted. A visit to the bank, where several hundred thousand dollars were found to be lying to the murderer's credit, completed her gratification.

"You may depend upon it, sir," she told Corbin. "I have him in my hand. He must have lost his head, or he never would have left the stick or, above all, burned the checkbook. Why, money's life to the man. We have nothing to do but wait for him at the bank, and get out the warrants."

This last, however, was not so easy of accomplishment; for Rook had numbered few familiars; his family could nowhere be traced; he had never been photographed; and the few who could describe him differed widely, as common observers will. Only on one point were they agreed; and that was the haunting sense of unexpressed deformity with which the fugitive impressed his beholders.

Corbin drove back across the river with the detective's words in his ears, and the feeling that he had been watching a door close. He had known Lawrence Quill for thirty years. Quill had been his client, his friend, one of the last of the old men who believed that a senator's job was to be boring in public and useful in private. And Quill had been beaten to death on a public trail by a man with a blackthorn stick and a bank account funded by Roland Vane. Corbin thought of the promise he had made, to get Rook's rights for him, and the words turned to ash in his mouth. He drove home without taking off his coat, and stood a long moment in the dark hall before he called Detective Beck back.