The matilda hunter murde.., p.28
The Matilda Hunter Murder, page 28
“That then,” broke in Trotter interestedly, and for the first time in quite a while, “was why Sir William Chisholm was brought into the case? Sir William Chisholm of London is the foremost authority on eye-muscles in the entire world. I have read his book called Opto-Myology which devotes 1200 pages of quite fine print to the 12 small extrinsic muscles which move the two eyes about in their orbits.”
“Then if people all had one eye,” grunted Ellwood sarcastically from his chair, “Sir William could only have written 600 pages!”
“Sir William wouldn’t then have written any pages,” said Trotter imperturbably. “Because it is the efforts of the two eyes in fusing their two retinal images into one that cause the complicated actions of these 12 muscles. One-eyed men do not go into involved muscle actions in directing their one eye towards an object; they merely turn their head toward whatever they wish to look at.”
If this were any sort of a tiff, the next words of the Englishman himself served to terminate it. “Yes, the Loucheur family got the best eye-muscle man in the United Kingdom. He was brought in solely to corroborate Loucheur’s paranoiacal belief about those spectacles. Sir William testified that while he had not, it is true, checked the visual correction, preferring to assume that Dr. Loughridge knew his own business, he had made a very elaborate examination of Loucheur with respect to the latter’s eye-muscle movements and eye-muscle capabilities, using candle flames, prisms, and various complicated devices which he had brought down with him from Harley Street, London. This sort of examination, it seems, is something that is rarely made in eye refraction. And he elicited the fact that Loucheur had a very unhappy—and somewhat rare—condition. He had—”
“Oblique astigmatism,” put in Callahan triumphantly. He grinned at Trotter, who essayed a faint return smile.
“Yes, Loucheur had that—that’s what Sir William called it. Oblique astigmatism, which required—ah—required lenses with cylindrical surfaces to correct it. But that was itself not the unhappy condition to which I referred. The unhappy condition was that these cylinders by pure mischance lay with their axes not vertical nor horizontal, but converging in quadrants which—now let me think carefully on this—yes—which rotated images—the corrected images, of course—in such directions that to fuse them threw an insuperable load on the man’s two superior oblique muscles, some muscles which run, pulley-like, through bone rings in back of the eyeballs, and which rotate the eyes wheel-like inward. That is—”
Trotter spoke up. He was very interested. “He had, in short, what is known as insufficiency of the superior oblique eye-muscles?”
“Yes, yes, that is it,” said the Englishman. “Sir William’s statement of the case subsequently caused quite a laugh. One of the younger asylum physicians dryly asked Sir William if that trouble with Loucheur’s superior obliques did nor give Loucheur his known ‘superiority complex’ which, so far as I understand, is invariably symptomatic of paranoia. The entire courtroom laughed.”
“But do proceed, Mr. Burthrick,” urged Trotter. He was leaning forward, both ears cupped in his hands so as not to lose a single word of a subject which appeared to be one of the many that interested him profoundly.
“Well, Sir William testified, as I say, that Loucheur would never be able to wear correcting spectacles for distant vision, because of being unable to keep his eyes torted in without extra innervation of the weak obliques by—now—let me see—”
“By the use of his ciliary muscle, innervated by the 3rd cranial nerve?” put in Trotter.
“Yes, exactly. The ciliary. Although I must confess I’m a little lost, don’t you know, by that mention of a cranial nerve.” He paused. “By the way, that was my friend Trotter was it not, speaking?”
“Yes, Mr. Burthrick. Trotter speaking. The neurological explanation is very simple, however. One of the origins in the brain of the 3rd cranial nerve, appears to be in some way identical with one of the origins of the 4th cranial nerve, which happens to innervate the superior obliques. Thus, when you energize the ciliary, you pump tonicity at the same time into the superior obliques.”
“By George, that was it! Sir William testified that Loucheur would be able to have his vision corrected only for reading, where he could literally pull on this particular pair of weak muscles by pulling at the same time on his ciliary muscles by the act of close-focusing. It was all very interesting to me, don’t you know. I talked with Sir William a few moments after the hearing, and he made it a little clearer to me. However, as a result of Sir William’s expert testimony, the man was found to have a most profound basis for being unable to wear for distance what appeared to give him perfect and absolute visual correction to his eyes. Sir William said that the torsional distress involved in trying to innervate these two muscles by themselves produced in a patient the most weird subjective sensations and compulsions; that patients of that nature had been known to hurl otherwise satisfactory glasses into the ocean, to burn them, to stamp on them, without being able to give any reason other than vague subjective sensations inside of their heads. He said the case cropped up now and then and was known as—now—let me see—”
“Extorsional cyclophoria,” put in Trotter.
“Yes. I knew the word held some significance of the cyclical deficiency involved.”
“Mr. Trotter here,” put in Callahan, “made an interesting character diagnosis from this man’s spectacles. He figured that because he had had the lenses finally placed, as is evident, in reading frames only, he was some sort of Don Juan and wouldn’t wear ’em for distance. And so—”
But as nobody in the entire room rose to the defense of the old man, Jerry himself spoke up, and quickly. “Mr. Trotter,” he stated curtly, even though his interruption might be costing a few additional pennies on that ever-rising telephone bill, “warned us all that certain oculo-myological conditions—that was exactly what he termed them—might entirely controvert such a character diagnosis.”
“Right,” said Callahan. “The young man here is right! I remember now.” He turned to Trotter. “Trotter, you win again.”
Now came a considerable pause, each side evidently waiting for the other to speak.
“I take it then,” Callahan put in, “that since psychiatrical opinions were barred, Loucheur received a discharge?”
“That is right. Solicitor Mayhew of Lincoln Inn Fields, London, made a rippingly magnificent plea. Point by point he proved that Loucheur’s entire reactions were those of a sane man, and that the latter only laid claim to a purely accidental scientific achievement that the greatest expert in the world—by Jove, the chap in his oratory was deuced flattering to me, gentlemen-pronounced logical and possible. He showed how the man’s beliefs as to Japanese agents persecuting him was far more logical than illogical, in the face of the facts about Fuchida, and he maintained that any sane man in the entire world would, if he could get hold of them, tear up a set of asylum records which, if they continued to exist, might ever be usable for blackmail against him in later years. He drew a graphic picture, showing how Loucheur had been set by an evil Fate in a huge and cruel impasse from which there was no release; that any attempt to prove the various claims concerning his machine by producing the machine itself meant that his secret—the only thing he had on earth—was lost. He thundered—by Jove, how that chap could declaim!—that this case affected the liberties, the rights, of every man in the world who might make a discovery or who might even claim to have made such. He swore that if this case were lost before the Lunacy Commissioner, it would go ultimately before the Crown itself. Indeed, with that speech—and in the weight of conditions such as eye muscles, accredited records of actual atomic disintegration, Japanese agents, and so forth, Loucheur was discharged as a sane man. Indeed, the hearing was concluded entirely by a quarter of noon the same day. And I daresay the asylum was glad, under the onus of seeing this single case become an issue before the Crown, to wash its hands of the entire thing.”
Now Burthrick was silent. And it was Callahan who again spoke.
“It seems to me, Mr. Burthrick, you have given us a remarkably good picture of all the circumstances about this man,” he said. He looked troubledly at the telechron clock on the wall. “But time is flowing rapidly on us—we have already run up a bill on our good friend Mr. Ellwood here, of nearly $100.” He looked about the room. “Now is there any question that appeals to any of you gentlemen as one that ought to be asked, before I make the final and, what to me, is the most valuable query that I can put to Mr. Burthrick—namely, just how we shall best handle this infernal machine we’ve got buried over there in that North Clark Street fire wreckage. For when I’ve asked that final question, and it has been answered, 3500 miles of Atlantic ocean will snap back between ourselves and Mr. Burthrick once more. If there is any question—from anyone of you—ask it now. If you will hold up your hands, I will call on you in turn.”
Callahan gazed about the room.
Ellwood, a pronouncedly sardonic smile hovering over his features, had put up a hand with the greatest of alacrity.
And Trotter, face as impassively stolid as that of an Egyptian mummy, had both of his hands up!
CHAPTER XXII
“Wanted—9 Suits of Armor! Apply Chicago Detective Bureau”
Callahan nodded his head toward the old man with the green polka-dotted red sock showing below one trouser’s leg and the striped yellow one below the other. “What’s your question, Trotter? You’re to the left of Mr. Ellwood.”
“I have two questions,” said the recipient of this invitation. “The first, Mr. Burthrick, is: Did Jules Loucheur ever claim or admit having resided for any length of time in Germany?”
“He did not specifically name Germany,” said Burthrick promptly. “So I do not know.”
“Did you then—I’m still on the same question, because there’s a German mixed up a bit in this case over here—notice any German magazines or newspapers among the reading matter which no doubt was in his room in the ward, as in all asylums?”
“Hm.” Burthrick reflected. “I do not recall. He had been generously supplied with magazines, both French and English, through his relatives, I presume. And newspapers too. The London Times came to him daily. I think, indeed, that I told you a while back how he differed violently at a half dozen points with some special writer in that paper who had written up Confucius. However, you are asking, I think, about magazines. I saw Le Sourire—and—oh yes, Le Monde d’Imagination. And oh yes, I’m sure I saw Punch, and The Illustrated London News. I recall no German publications. I think I would remember them if I had seen them.”
“Thank you. That disposes of that question as much as is now possible. Will somebody else ask one while I arrange my next one. And Hump—pass me Evans’ transcript of his aunt’s story to him about her roomer. No, just the first statement—the one he mailed in. Thanks.”
With which typed paper in his hand, Mr. Trotter proceeded to pull down his right shirt cuff into more adequate view, and to straighten out his silver-bowed glasses the better, apparently, to peruse some notes he had recorded on it.
Before, however, Callahan had nodded toward Ellwood, the next in line, Hump spoke up, his stenographer’s pad on his knee, his pencil in hand. “Mr. Burthrick, I am just a private secretary here—Hump’s my name—but I’d like to ask a question that’s suggested itself to me. Why wasn’t Loucheur just deported out of England when it was found he was insane?”
“Oh, my dear chap, I should have mentioned this before. He was, Mr. Hump, a naturalized Britisher. For some years. He couldn’t be deported.”
“Thank you.” Hump finished the recording of his own last two monosyllables.
“Next question,” Callahan ordered. “Ellwood? Trotter?”
The life insurance president’s question, however, appeared to be getting eternally shelved. For Trotter, his indelible pencil tracing itself from hieroglyphic to hieroglyphic on his shirt cuff, and thence to Jerry’s typed statement, and back to his cuff again, was propounding his own Query No. 2.
“Mr. Burthrick, the owner of this diabolical machine claimed to his landlady here in Chicago—which unfortunate lady ultimately became an accidental victim of the machine—a congeries of some 10 or 11 characteristics about his device, and you in turn have nicely aided us by giving the description of the thing as you got it direct from the inventor in Liverpool. None of these points, of course, are at variance: indeed, six are identical in both statements; and majority of the six, moreover, have been corroborated by actual fatal and destructive results here in this city. The six most distinctive characteristics claimed for this device—and I am now naming the six points that are identical in both descriptions—are—is it not so?—the following: 1, that it melts metal after exactly 7 continuous seconds’ play of its emanations; 2, that it kills by paralysis of the heart; 3, that it can be set so as to operate for any length of time the inventor desires; 4, that it has a meter-second arrangement by which it can be made to operate over any distance after any length of time; 5, that it is extremely, absurdly simple; and 6, that it is extremely accurate, viz., the bird-cage experiment. Is this not correct?”
“You are correct.”
“Are your experiments at West Orange, New Jersey, sufficiently advanced that you can definitely claim any of these six particular points in any device thus far constructed there? That is—if this is not a secret, Mr. Burthrick?”
“I am not revealing any secret which Japan herself does not already know,” the Englishman replied gravely. “We happen to be cognizant already that Japan has secretly published a bulletin of our entire progress so far as results go—but the precise means by which we do what we do is, of course, not available to her yet, I can safely say. So I may with perfect propriety state, therefore, that our experiments thus far in changing the orbits of electrons have liberated electro-static effects sufficient to deflect heavy pivoted charged plates and, when caught in specially constructed helical detectors, to actually run minute test-motors. The power emanations which we liberate are, however, more like the so-called cosmic rays than electric waves—for they pass right through 9 feet of lead, or heavy iron screens. They do not transform at all into thermal energy, until first converted into ordinary electrical energy. This erroneous statement in your New York Star was a mere description of a desideratum, as yet not realized. Indeed, the temperature of such screens as we have moved, whether lead or iron, is not raised even in the micro-thermometer. We have not killed anybody or any animal thus far, yet we believe that we can do so if and when we liberate sufficient power, but we are quite convinced that such energy, when lethal, will leave demonstrable lesions, burns of a sort. Our liberating apparatus is far, far from simple, with its vacuum tubes and radium containers—etc. and etc.!—and I doubt whether a trained electrical engineer could comprehend the workings in less than a couple of hours. Certainly not at a glance or two. We have nothing that exactly times out at 7 seconds. And of course we have not achieved any fine control of effects so far as distance goes—that is, any distinct determination of exact radius of action—nor have we bothered to install in any of our scientific apparatus clockwork for starting it, stopping it, or doing anything else like that. We regulate our experiments from a switchboard.” Burthrick paused. “So, to answer this last question, we at West Orange do not claim anything, practically, that Loucheur claims. In a patenting matter, his invention and ours would conceivably not even conflict.” He paused again. “However, if Jules Loucheur has solved the thing in such a practical manner—with such definiteness of action—whether by accident, or by deliberate forethought in design—whether by radium, or by helium, or by pulsating electrostatic stress—or by some still further unknown principle—I take off my hat to him as a great scientist. As one scientist to another. I envy the chap, really—and I am glad, for Science’s sake—although sorry that he has not lived to see his triumph.”
“Thank you very, very much,” said Trotter. He was nodding his head absently. His face was set in an abstracted frown.
Callahan now took the floor. He had apparently forgotten all about the question belonging to the one man who was paying for this unusual interview. “Well, we haven’t gotten down to brass tacks yet. Now for the main question of all. Mr. Burthrick, when our bomb squad here in Chicago opens Loucheur’s machine with, perhaps, a few scientists present as observers, how may they protect themselves from his own fate?”
