A Noble Sacrifice

A Tale of Washington, DC

by Sinclair

“HOLLO, Bob.”

“Hollo yourself.”

“Anything new today?”

“Not a thing. It has been awfully dull, and I haven’t heard any news today.”

“Well, as you don’t seem to be able to stir me up a murder or two or anything else equally lively and interesting, I shall meander up town.”

And suiting the deed to the words I left to go to my office.

Before I go any further I will take the liberty of introducing myself. I was, at the time I am writing of, the police reporter on a large Washington daily. The young man whom I was addressing was one of the telephone operators at Police Headquarters, — Bob Richards, — and our conversation took place in the telephone room in that building. It was my regular custom to drop in at Police Headquarters every afternoon about four o’clock, get what news I could there, and then, wending my way up to the office, turn in whatever “copy” I might have collected during the afternoon.

It was a beautiful day at the commencement of May. The countless number of little parks for which Washington is so justly famous looked lovely in their new spring suits; the trees were one mass of verdant foliage; the birds sang their brightest lays as if hailing with satisfaction the return of warm weather; Pennsylvania Avenue was thronged with a gay crowd of handsomely dressed and beautiful women, — women that one can see only in Washington, — in fact it was an enlivening scene, and one that might make a man, unless he was a chronic dyspeptic, forget his troubles for the nonce.

I walked along the avenue, recognizing here and there a friend, bowing to an acquaintance, and passing “cheek by jowl” with many a distinguished public man. Presently the president drove past in an open landau, drawn by a pair of handsome bays. Several people raised their hats to him, and he acknowledged the salutation by gracefully bowing. Senators, Congressmen, cabinet ministers, heads of bureaux, government clerks, elegant young dandies, fashionable ladies, members of the demi monde, gamblers, and lobbyists, some on foot, and some in carriages, many of whom were distinguishable from the common crowd by their dress or bearing, were all being drawn by various ways to one common end, — dinner.

As for myself I never allowed my meals to bother me, and being most irregular in my habits it made very little difference to me whether I got my prandial meal half an hour earlier or later. So I leisurely strolled along, a good cigar in my mouth, and my eye open for an “item.”

Near the corner of Ninth Street I was arrested by the sight of an object which has before this caused older heads than mine to pause in their journey through life — a beautiful woman.

Coming toward me was a lady and gentleman. “A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,” was she. Very fair, with blue eyes, an exquisite complexion, and light golden hair, she was attired in a dress of purple plush that fitted her form faultlessly. There was such ease and grace in her every movement, and her bearing was so patrician, that no one could see her without being struck by her beauty. It would puzzle the ordinary male, I think, to describe her hat. I only know that in the rapid glance I cast at her I thought that bewitching was the only word that properly described it. The only jewelry she [wore] was a pair of large solitaire diamond earrings. Her hands were gloved in long gray kids, in her left hand she carried a dainty lace parasol. Her companion’s appearance was not less striking than her own. He was very tall, nearly six feet I imagined, with a lithe, well-proportioned figure. He was as dark as his companion was fair, with a heavy black mustache and a pair of piercing black eyes. He wore a suit of the latest cut of imported gray goods, his hat, gloves, boots, and jewelry, all bespoke a man of means, but there was nothing loud or flashy about his appearance. The lady I took to be an American, the gentleman a Spaniard.

As they passed me I must confess I was impertinent enough to stare the lady full in the face, and afterward to turn and watch the backs of their figures until they were out of sight. My first thoughts were to turn and follow them, but my engagements prevented me from doing so, and I felt a repugnance in playing the part of spy. Still I was deeply interested in knowing who the handsome couple were, and my fancy immediately began to weave a little romance round them. “Were they husband and wife?” I asked myself. No, I thought not. “Was she married?” Yes, I was certain of that. So, some gay Lothario with another man’s wife. And yet the face was too pure and innocent for me to attribute anything bad to its possessor. “Who were they then?” I was acquainted with nearly everybody worth knowing; if they were residents I should have met or heard of them before, so of course they must be strangers.

I got up to the office, and turned in my copy to the city editor. I looked at the assignment book, and found I was marked down for a scientific society lecture. It was a very dry and to me uninteresting subject. Although I heard the lecturer discourse about “molecules” and “atoms,” and mechanically wrote, yet my thoughts followed that picture of female loveliness, and her face appeared on the paper. At last Mr. Dryasdust closed his notes, I hastily put my papers in my pocket, and left the building. I then went to the various hotels, and, by cautious inquiries addressed to the clerks, sought to find out if the objects of my search had registered. But my interrogations elicited no information.

My principal duties on the paper were to look after “crimes and casualties” (I was familiarly known round the office as “Horrors”), but in addition I had the usual miscellaneous work that falls to the lot of every reporter in a large city. During the next couple of weeks I was at cabinet ministers’ receptions, balls, private parties, and dinners, and my one hope was that I might meet either the lady or gentleman, and find out more about them. I cannot tell why I was so interested; it is one of those mysterious things that no one knows. I only know that all my energies were aroused to find out who and what they were.

It must have been nearly three weeks after the day I have first mentioned at the commencement of this “o’er true tale,” that I was sitting in the office writing up the account of a most cold-blooded murder that had occurred just after the evening papers went to press that afternoon. I had finished a column article, and threw myself back in my chair prepared to find solid comfort in the enjoyment of a pipe. I had taken some half dozen whiffs when the telephone rang out. The office boy went to answer it, and called out, —

“Horrors, you’re wanted.”

I went to the instrument, and inquired, —

“Well, what do you want?”

“Is that you, Frank?” came back the well-known voice of Bob Richards, who was on duty that night at headquarters.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Just received a despatch, that the body of a woman has been taken out of the river, and is at the Georgetown station. You had better go after it.”

“Much obliged. O. K.”

And I hung up the instrument on the hook.

Putting a cigar in my mouth, I took the next car, and reached my destination in about twenty minutes. In front of the station house was the usual morbid and curious crowd of small boys, men, and women, that always congregate whenever anything exciting or horrible is going on. Nodding to the lieutenant, who was standing in the office, I asked where the “stiff” was.

“Out in the shed,” he said, pointing toward the rear. “I guess you know your way.”

I had been there too often on similar ghastly errands not to know it, and so walked leisurely over to a little outhouse in the yard. At the door stood a policeman, who, recognizing me, touched his hat, and opening the door disclosed the interior of the shed, a small, low, white-washed building, empty except in the centre stood a board on trestles on which lay something covered by a white sheet. A reporter becomes hardened to scenes of suffering, and the sight of death, and it was in a very heartless tone that I said to the policeman, —

“Young or old, pretty or homely?”

“Indeed she is pretty and quite young.”

I lifted up the corner of the sheet that covered the face, and letting it drop, with a cry of amazement reeled almost to the door.

“Wot’s the matter?” said the policeman, calm and imperturbable as every well-regulated policeman should be.

Regaining my composure almost instantly, I replied, —

“She reminds me of some one I once knew.”

Again urged by the terrible fascination I approached the corpse, and throwing the sheet back gazed on the lovely features of the woman who had made such an impression on me. Long and ardently I gazed on the face, looking in the cold pallor of death even more beautiful than when I had last seen it in the full flush of health. Never had fancy of painter conceived, nor artist painted, nor sculptor modeled a lovelier image of an angel than her who lay in this miserable little shed. The features were in perfect repose, and looked like chiseled marble. Not a scar or mark was visible, and it was evident the body had only been in the water a very short time, as it was not bloated or discolored. I threw back the sheet still farther. The woman had on a blue French bunting which clung to her form like Grecian drapery, and showed its graceful curves. The heavy golden hair hung down in luxuriant profusion over the breast, and seemed to frame the face, and increase its statuesque appearance by the contrast. A fly settled on her forehead. I lightly brushed it off with my handkerchief. I feared it might disturb her sleep. Yes, she slept, but it was the sleep that knows no awakening.

Sorrowfully I re-entered the station. It seemed to me as if the beautiful woman I left behind me was a part of my own life. If she had been a near and dear friend I could not have been more grieved. I soon gleaned what facts were known. Some men out in a boat had seen a dark object floating on the river. To their horror they discovered it to be a woman’s body. They had taken it to the bank, and communicated with the police. How it came there or who she was nobody knew. In the office, talking with the lieutenant, was James Clarke, the oldest detective on the force. Drawing Clarke aside I told him what I knew about the case, and that I had suspicions of foul play. We agreed that we would say nothing about it until the inquest was held next day. So I returned to the office, and wrote a short paragraph of the finding of the body, and grew eloquent over the dead’s surpassing loveliness, which provoked the facetious remark from the city editor that “Horrors was mashed again, and this time on a stiff,” whereat the other boys laughed.

Next day I repeated to the coroner what I had told Clarke the night before. At Clarke’s request the coroner decided he would not call me, but ordered a post mortem to be made. The post mortem revealed a remarkable state of things. Not a trace of poison nor any natural cause was found that could have produced death. The various organs were in perfect condition. It was the general verdict of the surgeons who assisted at the operation that death had ensued before the body was placed in the water; there was neither water nor sand in the lungs; the stomach was natural; the heart, except for a slight venous congestion, was normal. What was the cause of death then? Pursuing their investigations they arrived at the following theory, a theory that seemed rational: —

The deceased had been placed under the influence of a powerful anaesthetic, what the physicians declined to state, but believed it to be ether. In this condition she had been put in the water, and, without a struggle, quietly passed away. There was a slight predisposition to heart disease, the ether had at once attacked that organ, and acted with the deadly results.

These facts being laid before the jury they returned the usual verdict of “death at the hands of some person or persons unknown.” The woman’s identity was completely lost. Her underclothing, all very fine, was unmarked; she was dead, and seemed not to have left a single clew behind her. The police department kept all her clothes, and took her photograph. I obtained permission from the coroner to cut off a long tress, which I carefully tied up, and put away. The affair created great excitement for a few days; the authorities offered five hundred dollars’ reward for the detection of her murderers; then the matter dropped, and there were few people outside of police officials who ever gave the nameless woman, resting in a pauper’s grave, a single thought. But I had not forgotten her. Her memory haunted me constantly, and do what I would, she seemed to call on me to track her murderers to their doom. I agreed with Clarke that we would work up the case, but we had so little to make a start on that it seemed almost hopeless that we should ever bring the villains to justice. After making a few preliminary inquiries, and being foiled at every turn, we determined to bide our time, and trust to circumstances. Of one thing I was certain: I should meet the dark-complexioned man again.

Two years rolled round, years that had been busy ones with me, and left me very little time to think about that lovely face. Save for a tress of golden hair, which I sometimes gazed at, I believed the occurrence to have been almost the imagination of my fancy. Clarke and I occasionally talked the matter over, but we had no hope now that justice would ever be done. It was one of those mysterious crimes with which police annals are always full, and which never are detected.

It was in the winter at the very height of the season that I went one night to Ford’s Opera House. It was the first appearance in Washington of a world-renowned soprano in Italian opera, and, as a consequence, the house was crowded by the fashionable world. In the intermission between the first and second acts I strolled round the main aisle back of the parquet, making a note of the distinguished people present. The president and a party of ladies and gentlemen were in the left-hand lower box. In the opposite box was the British minister and his daughter. The other boxes had equally prominent people in them. Among the audience I noticed three or four cabinet ministers, several assistant secretaries, the heads of many important bureau, a majority of the diplomatic corps and society generally. But in all that vast audience there was one face that riveted my attention, and caused every drop of blood in my body to rush in a wild torrent to my heart. In the fifth row from the stage, in the end seat, sat the man whom I had last seen on that memorable May afternoon two years ago. He looked supremely handsome and supremely indifferent, in fact, I thought, a trifle bored. Occasionally he would raise his opera glasses and survey the house, but never more than for a few seconds at a time. He was in evening dress, a set of very handsome diamond studs in his shirt bosom, and a diamond solitaire ring of unusual size and brilliance on the little finger of his left hand. His right hand was gloved. These details I took in in a minute. As a reporter I had acquired the faculty of catching details and striking points by one rapid glance. Again I looked at his face. Was I mistaken in my man? No, a thousand times no. I should have known that face anywhere, and I felt as certain as mortal could be that the man I longed to stand face to face with was within an arm’s length.

The overture to the second act commenced, and the man’s eyes were instantly fixed on the orchestra. I at once made up my mind as to what course to pursue. Going to the box office I asked permission to use the telephone, and was placed in connection with police headquarters.

“Is Clarke there?” I asked.

“No,” was the reply, “he left here about ten minutes ago, and said he was going right home.”

I then ordered a district messenger boy to be immediately sent to the theatre. While waiting for him, I wrote the following note:

“Clarke, — Come here at once; have struck important clew in that matter. Bearer has a carriage. If not home come to my office as soon as you get this, and wait for me. Most important that I see you tonight.