1
Gray Dusk
Octavus Roy Cohen
TO MY FRIEND ARTHUR N. HERMAN
Chapter I
David Carroll felt suddenly ill. A mist swam momentarily before his eyes, dimming the small sheet of yellow paper which had so affected him. He passed his right hand across his forehead and bent to re-read the neatly typed telegram:
Karnak, South Carolina
October Ninth.
David Carroll
Berkley City
Mary killed. I have been arrested. In jail at Karnak. Need you immediately as friend and detective. Wire.
Stanford Forrest.
The message had completely robbed David Carroll of his poise. In all his years of successful crime investigation he had never experienced such a sense of personal horror as gripped him when the import of the telegram impressed itself on his mind. He had hitherto been secretly rather proud of his ability to view everything from an impersonal and judicial angle. Yet here, in a second, that boast was negatived.
Mary Carmody--Mary Forrest now--a bride of three days, murdered. Stanford Forrest, lifelong friend and school chum, arrested for the crime. The thing was inconceivable even to a brain trained to the socially abnormal. Why it had been only a few days before that Carroll had stood at the chancel with this man and woman, best man at their wedding; carefree and boyish in leading the matrimonial pranks which have become almost a ceremonial of affection.
And now--
He lifted the combination telephone instrument and called the telegraph company. "Take this message," he snapped and as the operator answered "Ready," he dictated:
"Stanfo