Part 9 (1/2)
CHAPTER VI.
A BOLD AND CUNNING SCHEME.
On the afternoon previous to Mr. Dinsmore's death a woman of perhaps sixty years alighted from an elegant private carriage before the door of a fine residence on West ---- street, in New York city.
She was simply but richly clad in heavy, l.u.s.trous black silk, and was a woman of fine appearance, although her face wore a look of deep sadness which seemed to indicate some hidden trouble or sorrow.
Her hair was almost white, but carefully arranged, and lay low upon her placid, but slightly wrinkled, brow in soft, silken waves that were very becoming to her. Her complexion was unusually clear and fair for one of her years, although it might have been enhanced somewhat by the fine vail of white tulle which she wore over it. She was tall and commanding in figure, a little inclined toward portliness, but every motion was replete with graceful dignity and high-bred repose.
After giving directions to her coachman to wait for her, she mounted the steps leading to the door, pausing for an instant to read the name, ”R.
Wesselhoff, M.D.” engraved upon a silver plate, before ringing the bell.
A colored servant soon answered her call, and responded affirmatively to her inquiry if the noted physician was in, then ushered her into a small but elegantly appointed reception-room upon the right of the lofty hall.
Five minutes later an elderly and singularly prepossessing man entered and saluted his visitor in a gracious and respectful manner.
”Mrs. Walton, I suppose?” he remarked, just glancing at the card which she had given the servant.
The woman bowed, then observed, with a patient but pathetic sigh:
”I have called, Doctor Wesselhoff, upon a very sad errand, and one which I trust you will regard as strictly confidential.”
”Certainly, madame; I so regard all communications made by my patients,”
the gentleman courteously responded.
”I have a son,” madame resumed, ”who has of late betrayed symptoms of the strangest mania, although he appears to be in perfect health in all other respects. He imagines that some gigantic robbery has been committed; sometimes he declares that bonds to a large amount have been stolen, at other times it is money, then again that costly jewels have disappeared; but the strangest phase of his malady consists in the fact that he accuses me, and sometimes other members of the family, of being the thief, and insists that he must have me arrested. This has gone on for some time, and I have been obliged to adopt every kind of device in order to keep him from carrying out his threats and thus creating a very uncomfortable scandal. This morning he became more violent than usual, and I felt obliged to take some decided step in regard to proper treatment for him; therefore my visit to you.”
”It is a singular mania, truly,” said the physician, who had been listening with the deepest interest to his companion's recital. ”I think I never have met with anything exactly like it before in all my experience. How old is your son, Mrs. Walter?”
”Twenty-four years,” the woman replied, with a heavy sigh; ”and,” she added, tremulously, ”I cannot bear the thought of sending him to any common lunatic asylum. I learned recently that you sometimes receive private patients to test their cases before sending them to a public inst.i.tution, and that you have frequently effected a cure in critical cases. Will you take my son and see what you think of his case--what you can do for him? I shall not mind the cost--I wish to spare nothing, and I do not wish any one, at least of our friends and acquaintances, to know that he is under treatment for insanity until you p.r.o.nounce your verdict.
He seems sane enough upon all other topics, except now and then he persists in calling himself by some other name, and I know he would be very sensitive, should he recover, to have his condition known. He does not even suspect that I am contemplating any such thing, and I shall be obliged to use strategy in bringing him to you.”
Doctor Wesselhoff was evidently very deeply interested in the case; he had never heard of anything like it before, and all his professional enthusiasm was aroused.
He spent some time questioning his visitor, and finally decided that he would receive the young man immediately--to-morrow afternoon Mrs. Walton might bring him, he said, if she could conveniently arrange to do so.
”I think, perhaps, it will not be best for me to come with him myself,”
the lady said, after considering the matter for some time. ”Truly,” she added, with a sad smile, ”I almost fear to go out with him, lest he put his threats into execution and have me arrested. But I think I can arrange with my sister, Mrs. Vanderbeck, to persuade him to come with her as if to call upon a friend.”
The matter was arranged thus, and madame arose to take her leave, the physician accompanying her to the door and feeling deep sympathy for the cultured and attractive woman in her strange affliction.
The next day, about one o'clock--the day following Mona Montague's attendance at the opera with Ray Palmer, and only a few hours after Mr.
Dinsmore's death, a brilliantly beautiful woman, who might have been forty-five years of age, entered the handsome store of Amos Palmer & Co., diamond merchants and jewelers.
She was exquisitely dressed in an expensive, tailor-made costume of gray ladies' cloth, with a gray felt bonnet trimmed with the same shade of velvet as her dress. Her hands were faultlessly gloved, her feet incased in costly imported boots, and everything about her apparel bespoke her a favorite of wealth and luxury.
Her appearance was the more marked from the fact that her hair was a deep, rich red, and curled about her fair forehead in lovely natural curls, while she wore over her face a spotted black lace veil, which, however, did not quite conceal some suspicious wrinkles and ”crow's-feet,” if that had been her object in wearing it.