We were admitted to see her in her own library, a tastefully furnished room on the second floor of the house, facing a garden at the side.
“Mrs. Hazleton,” began Butler, smoothing the way for us, “of course you realize that we are working in your interests. Professor Kennedy, therefore, in a sense, represents both of us.”
“I am quite sure I shall be delighted to help you,” she said with an absent expression, though not ungraciously.
Butler, having introduced us, courteously withdrew. “I leave this entirely in your hands,” he said, as he excused himself. “If you want me to do anything more, call on me.”
I must say that I was much surprised at the way she had received us. Was there in it, I wondered, an element of fear lest if she refused to talk suspicion might grow even greater? One could see anxiety plainly enough on her face, as she waited for Kennedy to begin.
A few moments of general conversation then followed.
“Just what is it you fear?” he asked, after having gradually led around to the subject. “Have there been any threatening letters?”
“N-no,” she hesitated, “at least nothing—definite.”
“Gossip?” he hinted.
“No.” She said it so positively that I fancied it might be taken for a plain “Yes.”
“Then what is it?” he asked, very deferentially, but firmly.
She had been looking out at the garden. “You couldn’t understand,” she remarked. “No detective—” she stopped.
“You may be sure, Mrs. Hazleton, that I have not come here unnecessarily to intrude,” he reassured her. “It is exactly as Mr. Butler put it. We—want to help you.”
I fancied there seemed to be something compelling about his manner. It was at once sympathetic and persuasive. Quite evidently he was taking pains to break down the prejudice in her mind which she had already shown toward the ordinary detective.
“You would think me crazy,” she remarked slowly. “But it is just a—a dream—just dreams.”
I don’t think she had intended to say anything, for she stopped short and looked at him quickly as if to make sure whether he could understand. As for myself, I must say I felt a little skeptical. To my surprise, Kennedy seemed to take the statement at its face value.
“Ah,” he remarked, “an anxiety dream? You will pardon me, Mrs. Hazleton, but before we go further let me tell you frankly that I am much more than an ordinary detective. If you will permit me, I should rather have you think of me as a psychologist, a specialist, one who has come to set your mind at rest rather than to worm things from you by devious methods against which you have to be on guard. It is just for such an unusual case as yours that Mr. Butler has called me in. By the way, as our interview may last a few minutes, would you mind sitting down? I think you’ll find it easier to talk if you can get your mind perfectly at rest, and for the moment trust to the nurse and the detectives who are guarding the garden, I am sure, perfectly.”
She had been standing by the window during the interview and was quite evidently growing more and more nervous. With a bow Kennedy placed her at her ease on a chaise lounge.
“Now,” he continued, standing near her, but out of sight, “you must try to remain free from all external influences and impressions. Don’t move. Avoid every use of a muscle. Don’t let anything distract you. Just concentrate your attention on your psychic activities. Don’t suppress one idea as unimportant, irrelevant, or nonsensical. Simply tell me what occurs to you in connection with the dreams—everything,” emphasized Craig.
I could not help feeling surprised to find that she accepted Kennedy’s deferential commands, for after all that was what they amounted to. Almost I felt that she was turning to him for help, that he had broken down some barrier to her confidence. He seemed to exert a sort of hypnotic influence over her.
“I have had cases before which involved dreams,” he was saying quietly and reassuringly. “Believe me, I do not share the world’s opinion that dreams are nothing. Nor yet do I believe in them superstitiously. I can readily understand how a dream can play a mighty part in shaping the feelings of a high-tensioned woman. Might I ask exactly what it is you fear in your dreams?”
She sank her head back in the cushions, and for a moment closed her eyes, half in weariness, half in tacit obedience to him. “Oh, I have such horrible dreams,” she said at length, “full of anxiety and fear for Morton and little Morton. I can’t explain it. But they are so horrible.”
Kennedy said nothing. She was talking freely at last.
“Only last night,” she went on, “I dreamt that Morton was dead. I could see the funeral, all the preparations, and the procession. It seemed that in the crowd there was a woman. I could not see her face, but she had fallen down and the crowd was around her. Then Dr. Maudsley appeared. Then all of a sudden the dream changed. I thought I was on the sand, at the seashore, or perhaps a lake. I was with Junior and it seemed as if he were wading in the water, his head bobbing up and down in the waves. It was like a desert, too—the sand. I turned, and there was a lion behind me. I did not seem to be afraid of him, although I was so close that I could almost feel his shaggy mane. Yet I feared that he might bite Junior. The next I knew I was running with the child in my arms. I escaped—and—oh, the relief!”
She sank back, half exhausted, half terrified still by the recollection.
“In your dream when Dr. Maudsley appeared,” asked Kennedy, evidently interested in filling in the gap, “what did he do?”
“Do?” she repeated. “In the dream? Nothing.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, shooting a quick glance at her.
“Yes. That part of the dream became indistinct. I’m sure he did nothing, except shoulder through the crowd. I think he had just entered. Then that part of the dream seemed to end and the second part began.”
Piece by piece Kennedy went over it, putting it together as if it were a mosaic.
“Now, the woman. You say her face was hidden?”
She hesitated. “N—no. I saw it. But it was no one I knew.”
Kennedy did not dwell on the contradiction, but added, “And the crowd?”
“Strangers, too.”
“Dr. Maudsley is your family physician?” he questioned.
“Yes.”
“Did he call—er—yesterday?”
“He calls every day to supervise the nurse who has Junior in charge.”
“Could one always be true to oneself in the face of any temptation?” he asked suddenly.
It was a bold question. Yet such had been the gradual manner of his leading up to it that, before she knew it, she had answered quite frankly, “Yes—if one always thought of home and her child, I cannot see how one could help controlling herself.”
She seemed to catch her breath, almost as though the words had escaped her before she knew it.
“Is there anything besides your dream that alarms you,” he asked, changing the subject quickly, “any suspicion of—say the servants?”
“No,” she said, watching him now. “But some time ago we caught a burglar upstairs here. He managed to escape. That has made me nervous. I didn’t think it was possible.”
“Anything else?”
“No,” she said positively, this time on her guard.
Kennedy