c.I PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED: THE TRAGEDY OF X IN PREPARATION: THE TRAGEDY OF Z THE AGEDY OF Y A Drury Lane Mystery BT BARMABT ROSS The Viking Press NEW YORK : MCMXXXII ccp-\ PRINTED IN U. S. A. COPYRIGHT, 1932, BY BARNABY ROSS COMPANY OF CANADA, LTD. DISTRIBUTED IN CANADA BY THE MACMILLAN Scenes Prologue Scene i. The Morgue 3 2. The Hatter House Act I Scene 1. The Hamlet -n 2. Louisa's Bedroom 47 The Library 3. ?0 Louisa's 4. Bedroom II0 5. The Laboratory ™ 6. The Hatter House J55 Act II Scene 1. The Laboratory j57 2. The Garden I?g The Library J. l8 4. The Hamlet 199 The Morgue 5. 219 6. Dr. Merriam's Office 224 7. The Hatter House 233 8. Barbara's Workroom 239 9. The Laboratory 243 vi Scenes Act III Scene i. Police Headquarters 251 2. The Hamlet 258 3. The Morgue 269 4. Inspector Thumm's Office 272 281 5. The Hamlet 6. The Death-Room 286 7. The Laboratory 295 8. The Dining-Room 298 Epilogue 3°5 An Explanation in an Interlude Behind the Scenes 3°7 ^ Characters York Hatter, a chemist District Attorney Walter Emily Hatter, his wife Bruno Louisa Campion, Emily's Inspector Thumm daughter by her first hus- Dr. Schilling, Medical Ex- band aminer Barbara Hatter, a poet Dr. Ingalls, Chief Toxicolo- Conrad Hatter, a waster gist, City of New York Martha Hatter, his wife Mr. Drury Lane Jackie Hatter, their ly Quacey, his familiar year-old son Dromio, his chauffeur Billy Hatter, their 4-year- Falstaff, his major-domo old son Jill Hatter, a hedonist Edgar Perry, a tutor Captain Trivett, a sea-dog Witnesses, Officers, Seamen, Chester Bigelow, a lawyer Reporters, Townsmen, etc. John Gormly, Conrad's partner Dr. Merriam, the family physician Miss Smith, a nurse Scene: New York City and Mrs. Arbuckle, coo\ and Environs housekeeper George Arbuckle, house- man and chauffeur Virginia, a maid Time: The Present A Dramatic Novel in Prologue, Three Acts, Epilogue, and Explanatory "Behind the Scenes." ^— THE TRAGEDY OF Y PROLOGUE Plays are like suppers . the prologue is the grace. Scene i The Morgue. February 2. 9:30 p.m. Ugly bulldog of a deep-sea trawler, the Lavinia D headed in from the long Adantic swells on that interesting Feb- ruary afternoon, swam past Sandy Hook, snarled at Ft. Hancock, and pushed her way into the Lower Bay, foam- ing at the mouth and with her tail stuck straight out behind her. There was a poor seaman's catch in the hold, the dirty deck was a shambles, the raw Atlantic winds upset her stomach, and the crew cursed the captain, the sea, the fish, the graphite sky, and the barren shore of Staten Island to larboard. A bottle passed from hand to hand. Men shiv- ered under spray-stung slickers. big A fellow leaning on the rail disconsolately studying the flecked green swells stiffened all at once, eyes popping from a sea-red face, and yelled. The crew stared in the direction of his forefinger. A hundred yards away some- thing small, something black, something unmistakably human and unmistakably dead was floating in the bay. The crew jumped. "Hard a-port!" The man at the wheel leaned and swore. Scene i 4 Prologue: The Lavinia D began a clumsy swing to larboard, creak- ing in all her joints. She circled the thing like the cautious animal she was, drawing nearer with every narrowing o£ her stalk. The crew, excited and happy, pawed the salt air with boathooks, eager to get at this queerest fish of the day's catch. Fifteen minutes later it lay in a puddle of stinking sea- water on the sloshy deck, limp and tattered and shapeless, but a man. A man who, from the ravished condition of his corpse, had been washed in the sea's deep vats for long weeks. The crew were silent now, standing with hands on hips, boots astride the deck. No one touched the body. So, with the smell of fish and salt wind in his dead nos- bier was a trils, York Hatter began his last journey. His dirty trawler, his pall-bearers rough unshaven men with scales clinging to their dungarees, his requiem the soft curses of sailors and the whisding of the wind through the Nar- rows. The Lavinia D nudged her wet nose through the scummy water and tied up at a small slip near the Battery. Home with unpredicted cargo from the sea. Men leaped, the cap- tain shouted himself hoarse, port officials nodded and looked briefly at the slick deck, telephones jangled in little Battery offices. And York Hatter lay quietly under a tarpaulin. Not for long. An ambulance scurried up. Men in white took up the sopping burden. The dead march left the sea; and the dirge was made of clanging sirens. York Hatter was borne up lower Broadway to the Morgue. His had been a curious, and until now mysterious, fate. On the twenty-first of December, four days before Christ- mas of the previous year, old Emily Hatter had reported her The Tragedy of Y 5 husband missing from their house on Washington Square North in New York City. He had simply walked out of the red-bricked reliquary of the Hatter fortunes that morning, unattended, saying farewell to no one, and had vanished. No trace of the old man's movements could be found. Old Mrs. Hatter could give no reason for her husband's disappearance. The Missing Persons Bureau offered the theory that Hatter had been kidnaped and was being held for ransom. This was effectually disproved when no word was received by the old man's wealthy family from the hypothetical abductors. Other theories were offered by the newspapers: he had been murdered, said one—anything was possible where the Hatters were concerned. The family denied this stubbornly; York Hatter had been an inoffensive little man, a quiet creature with few friends and, so far as could be discovered, no enemies. Another paper, perhaps on the strength of the curious and hectic history of the Hatter tribe, ventured the opinion that he had simply run away— away from his iron-jawed wife, his eccentric and trying children, his nerve-shattering household. This theory, too, went begging when the police pointed out that his personal bank account had been left untouched. It was from this fact also that the desperate surmise of a "mysterious woman in the case" died a-borning. And old Emily Hatter, furious at the suggestion, snapped that her husband was sixty-seven years old—hardly the time of life when a man leaves home, family, and fortune in pursuit of the amorous will-o'-the- wisp. Throughout the five weeks of unremitting search the police had held to one theory—suicide. And for once, it appeared, the police were right. 6 Prologue: Scene i Department, Inspector Thumm of the New York Police Homicide Squad, was fitting chaplain to York Hatter's everything: a rude funerary rites. He was big and ugly in hands hard gargoyle face, broken nose, smashed ears, big supposed he was and feet on a big body. You would have were an old-time heavyweight prize-fighter; his knuckles head gnarled and broken from solid blows on crime. His was gray and red: gray hair, slate eyes, sandstone face. He gave you the feeling of substance and dependability. He forthright had a brain in his head. He was, as policemen go, and honest. He had grown old in an all but hopeless fight. This, now, was different. A disappearance, an unsuccess- corpse. ful search, the discovery of the fish-nibbled And plentiful hints to identification. All open and aboveboard, but there had been talk of murder and it was his duty, the Inspector felt, to settle the question for all time. Dr. Schilling, the Medical Examiner of New York County, motioned to an assistant, and the nude body was the wheel- lifted from the autopsy-table and restored to obeisance table. Schilling's short fat Teuton body made before a marble sink; he washed his hands, disinfected them, wiped them thoroughly. When his fat little paws were dried to his satisfaction, he produced a much-bitten ivory toothpick and began thoughtfully to explore his teeth. The Inspector sighed; the job was done. When Dr. Schil- ling began to grope for cavities, the time had come for talk. They walked together behind the wheel-table to the corpse depository of the Morgue. Neither said a word. York Hatter's body was dumped on a slab. The assistant turned inquiringly; into the niche? Dr. Schilling shook his head. "Well, Doc?" The Medical Examiner put away his toothpick. "Plain after case, Thumm. The man died almost immediately striking the water. Lungs show that." The Tragedy of Y y "You mean he drowned right away?" "Nein. He did not drown. He died of poisoning." Inspector Thumm scowled at the slab. "Then it was murder, Doc, and we were wrong. The note might have been a plant." Dr. Schilling's little eyes gleamed behind old-fashioned gold-rimmed spectacles. His dinky gray cloth hat stood in a grotesque peak on his bald head. "Thumm, you're in- genuous. Poisoning is not necessarily murder. Ja, there are traces of prussic acid in his system. Then what? I say this man stood at the rail of a boat, swallowed prussic acid, and fell or jumped into the water. Salt water, mind you. Is that murder? Suicide, Thumm, and you were right." The Inspector looked vindicated.