John Baer - The Black Mask Magazine (Vol. 5, No. 5 — August 1922)

The whitish crystals, each one of them potentially able to transform Mrs. Nolan into a sudden if rather clumsy angel, aroused that lady’s curiosity. She picked up one of the candles and poked at the top of it with a hair pin, but the crystals clung rather tenaciously to the tallow, so she finally used her fingernails. Scratch, scratch, scrape!

What was it they used to say at the old motordrome down at Coney Island? Oh yes, — “Come in and see the motor cyclists race neck and neck with death!” These fellows had nothing on Mrs. Nolan when it came to taking chances As Mrs. Nolan dug the crystals off the third candle, a small piece broke off one of them and fell to the floor. And as she stepped to pick up the fourth candle she placed most of her two hundred and twenty pounds on the frozen nitroglycerine. My! That crystal could have played a nasty trick on her!

She found it a moment later, crushed to powder on the carpet, swept it up and spilled it with the rest of the crystals into a brass ash tray... Well anyhow, in that respect, Mr. Brophy was right: concussion will explode it sometimes, sometimes it won’t. This time it didn’t.

We also know a proverb to cover the succeeding events: “With God nothing is accidental.”

Mrs. Nolan decided to carry the stuff out into the kitchen and throw it in the waste pail. For no reason at all she changed her mind and carried the asy tray with her across the hall and into the reception room. She placed it on the center table and then threw all the windows open. She had just started cleaning when a cry and then the sound of a body falling, came from the floor above.

She rushed into the hall. The old Mr. Boyer lay on the stairway near the landing of the floor above. Mrs. Nolan saw him seize the bannister and try to pull himself up. But when he was half erect, he collapsed again. Now Mr. Boyer was ordinarily a mild-mannered gentleman, but under certain condition he was given to the use of colorful language. He got Mrs. Nolan and the butler and the chambermaid, all of whom had rushed to his assistance, rather excited.

It occurred to all three of them, at different times, that in case of accident it’s a good idea to telephone to somebody. Three doctors, Mr. Boyer’s office, a hospital and his lawyer were called up. No one thought of an undertaker or the fire department. Verily, a sprain in the ankle maketh of man an unreasonable wretch.

Neither of Mr. Boyer’s sons happened to be in the office when the three telephone calls brought the news of the old man’s injury. They had gone to transact outside business without leaving word of their movements. A secretary finally became alarmed and went out to the clerical department to notify Boyer’s nephew, Mr. Kremp.

“There’s been a terrible accident up at the Boyer home,” said the secretary. “The old man has been hurt... Well no, I couldn’t make out how. They’re sure awful excited up at the home. Perhaps you’d better go there.”

Accident... terrible... awful excitement — these were the words which kept ringing in Kremp’s ears as he hurried up to the Boyer home. But why had only the old gentleman been hurt? Had he gone into the music room alone?...

Kremp was admitted by the chambermaid. That young lady was still in the grip of her excitement. She led him to the reception room door and then, stating somewhat abruptly, that she would inform Mr. Boyer that he had come, turned and ran upstairs.

Now, from the hall it was apparent that the music room was not a wreck. This was puzzling. Still, something was not in order. That was clear from the maid’s actions.

Kremp went into the reception room. He was too preoccupied to notice that the windows were open and that the room was quite cold. He stood leaning against the center table. After a few moments he absently laid his lighted cigar into a brass ash tray.

Just how much nonsense do you expect nitroglycerine to stand for? It had been scratched, scraped, tossed about carelessly and stepped on. Now the hot end of a cigar was being applied to it. Can you blame it for raising a splutter?

It was a terrible mess for Mrs. Nolan to clean up.

“It was a most peculiar case,” Mr. Boyer will tell you. “The reception room was blown right out of the house and yet the most careful investigation could not disclose the original cause. It seems cruel to say so, but it would appear that Mr. Kremp’s torrid temperament, which was long suppressed, suddenly exploded from spontaneous combustion. He used to have a sulphurous disposition, that gentleman. He was, you might say, an explosive fellow.”

The state had completed its case. The conviction of the prisoner seemed certain, in spite of the fact that the evidence was purely circumstantial.

The attorney for the State was gathering up his papers at his table, upon which, facing the jury, stood a massive bronze bust of Beethoven, the composer. Beside the bust lay a cowboy’s lariat. Nothing else.

The attorney was a square-jawed, deep-chested man with cold blue eyes set much too wide apart and a bristling gray pompadour brushed back from his massive, corrugated forehead.

He had handled the case well. It had been a difficult one. The method alleged to have been used by the murderer savored of dime novels. The appearance of the prisoner, too, had been hard to overcome.

The attorney admitted grudgingly as he let his cold, hard eyes rest for the fraction of a moment upon the boy sitting erect on the bench beside the girl, with his head thrown back, that it was hard to believe him guilty of a cunning, brutal murder, and harder to convince a jury that he had committed it.

The lad raised his eyes for an instant to the face of his accuser, just then, but there was no. look of malice in them. He seemed merely to be endeavoring to fathom the reason for the vindictiveness that had just been directed against himself by this man whom he had known since boyhood.

He was not the conventional, beetle-browed murder suspect. Indeed, he was the one person in the crowded court-room who seemed out of place there. He was a little above average height — the dark head of the girl seated on the bench beside him came just above his shoulders-and slender; not slight, but slender with the vigorous slenderness of youth. His eyes were blue, large and very clear, and his hair was crisp, and sandy from habitual exposure to the elements.

It was early afternoon. A hush lay over the crowded court-room following the closing announcement of the attorney for the State. It was the courtroom of a small Western city at the foot of the snow-clad Sierra-Nevadas. A ray of the wan winter sun entering through the grimy window lay upon the judge’s silvery hair. The judge raised his watery eyes and glanced out at the snow-covered court house square where a gang of men with shovels were making a path for himself and his court to walk home upon. It had been snowing steadily all morning.

During the pause in the proceedings the constable left his post at the door to replenish the fire in the stove. He was a young man and big, a typical Western small town constable, broad-shouldered and ruddy-faced. His uniform was painfully new. He moved with clumsy momentousness on tiptoe across the floor, opened the door of the stove and placed two pine knots upon the bright embers with slow deliberation, as if to invest this simple act with some of the importance he felt.

Then he closed the door of the stove, softly, and started back on tiptoe to his post. As he passed the table of the defendant’s counsel, the lawyer looked up and said to him:

“Take the stand, Ed, please.”

The constable glanced at the prosecuting attorney as if for permission. Then he mounted the steps of the witness box, slowly, and upon being sworn in by the clerk, sat down. For several minutes he remained in his seat without movement, his elbows on the arm of the chair and his stubbled chin resting in the hollow of his great, hairy paw, waiting for the attorney for the defense to begin.