The crooked crossDutton, Charles J. (Charles Judson)
General
The crooked cross
Dutton, Charles J. (Charles Judson)
Bartley, John (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories; Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction
“I began to wonder if perhaps I had not found the type who would
commit such a crime, and also the motive. When you told me of the
faint cross cut into the head of the dead man, I knew that we were
dealing with an unbalanced mind.”
He paused and lighted a fresh cigar; then added:
“And the night the minister came here I began to wonder if he might be
the man. This afternoon I was sure of it.”
At our questioning glances he informed us as to what had made him
suspicious. He reminded us that the minister had broken out in a
rather wild attack upon what he said was the fact that evolution was
responsible for people not going to church. Then he added that when
the clergyman had expressed his opinion that Warren's discoveries
could not be given to the world, he had been corrected by Carter's
statement that Mr. Warren's assistant was coming to finish the book.
He remarked that only the fact he was suspicious of the man, perhaps
caused him to notice the look which passed over his face when he made
his statement regarding Patton. It was a look of consternation and of
hatred. From that moment he had begun to have his suspicions regarding
the minister. One other thing convinced him they were true.
The chief had been following Bartley's story with the closest
attention. In part, I believed that he was not sure Bartley's
reasoning was correct. I could see the puzzled look sweep across his
face, and once or twice he shook his head as if he did not agree. It
was his voice which asked:
“What was the other thing?”
“Pelt and I were in the minister's study this afternoon. I made my
call at a time I knew he was out. I had seen him go down the lake in
his boat. There was nothing very much out of the way in his study—that
is, on first glance. His books were mostly controversial theological
works, and a good many of them were attacks upon evolution. But in a
bookcase which had a glass door covered by cloth I found something
else. To start with, the books in the case were a weird mixture. There
were a great many books upon flagellation—the worst sort of books.
Then there were a number dealing with the celebrated Girard case. That
was a famous case of sadism under the guise of religion. Also there
were the five pamphlets which covered the Lepworth school matter.”
There came a short expression from Ranville. As the rest of us looked
blankly at the two men, Bartley enlightened us.
“The Lepworth school affair is a very celebrated case in the realm of
sexual psychology. The schoolmaster, a young man named Woods, aroused
England over sixty years ago by the brutal and cruel punishments he
inflicted upon his pupils. He managed to escape to America. There is
no doubt the man was sexually unbalanced. To-day we would call it a
pathological condition. But standing on that shelf was a genealogy of
the Woods family—that branch of it. And that schoolmaster, who had to
flee England, was the grandfather of the minister.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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