A Suspicious Wife

Summary

A lone woman, lacquered in twilight and tremor, threads herself along the Brooklyn Bridge’s cat-cradle of steel; the East River below is a black mirror ready to swallow reflections. One breath, one plunge—then a tar-stained sailor vaults from a tug, snatching her limp silhouette from the aqueous abyss. Revived by a clattering lung-motor and the curious philanthropy of Dr. Warren—physician, husband, inadvertent catalyst—she is reborn into parole rather than prison, installed as nurse within the very household whose serenity she will soon stain with morphic longing. Cocaine, craving, and covert passion braid together; the doctor, blind to the heat lightning in her gaze, remains oblivious until anonymous ink tips off his wife. A dictograph—a sinister spider of wire and diaphragm—threads his office to her boudoir, turning intimacy into evidence. Over its copper capillaries she hears desire reciprocated, rage ignited, banishment pronounced. A case of mistaken outerwear at a reception swaps one woman for another beneath an opera cloak; a bullet meant for the wife shreds the substitute, and the law, tracing copper vines and venomous letters, claps the handcuffs on the wrong wrist. Yet the city itself becomes a vast listening device: the addict’s triumphant mutter bleeds through another dictograph, her confession boxed, broadcast, and finally believed. Madness usurps malice; the bars close around a mind rather than a body, and the wronged wife walks free into a dawn that tastes of rust and reconciliation.

Synopsis

The story opens with a full view of the Brooklyn Bridge with a woman in a nervous state stealing along. A policeman, noticing something amiss, approaches her, but too late. The woman jumps to the river below. A sailor on a passing tug dives overboard and rescues her. A harbor police-boats puts out from shore and they are both taken aboard. Dr. Warren, who is among the crowd on the shore, offers his assistance, but ordinary methods of resuscitation fail, and a call is given for a lung motor. This revives the woman and she is taken to a hospital where the doctor and his wife are her only visitors. They take a general interest in her, not realizing she is addicted to drugs. The woman, fully recovered, is brought to court and charged with attempted suicide. She is about to be committed to Blackwell's Island, but on the doctor's and his wife's promise, she is paroled. She is made assistant nurse to the doctor and later becomes infatuated with him. He is not aware of it, but some of his patients notice it and send Mrs. Warren an anonymous letter which she at the time ignores, still believing in her husband. However, on entering her husband's office just as the woman in the throes of an overdose of cocaine and is confessing her love for him, she perceives that something is wrong. Not being satisfied with her husband's explanation, she decides to install a dictograph from his office to her bedroom. Shortly after the dictograph is installed, she hears the woman again avowing her love, also her husband's repulses. Furious she enters the office and orders the woman to leave the house. She leaves vowing vengeance. The wife confesses about installing the dictograph. Forgiveness is granted, and the dictograph is disconnected. Mrs. Warren attends a reception where she meets Mrs. Halley, who has an opera cloak similar to the one worn by her, and upon leaving the maids give them the wrong cloaks. Mrs. Halley decides to return Mrs. Warren's cloak personally and orders her chauffeur to drive her to the Warren home. Arriving there she is ushered into the doctor's office. The woman, in the meantime, is prowling about the grounds, and mistaking Mrs. Halley for Mrs. Warren, shoots her from a window of the office. The police are notified of the murder, and in searching the house find the wires that were attached to the dictograph as well as the anonymous letter. Tracing the wires, they find they lead into Mrs. Warren's bedroom, thereby giving a motive, and Mrs. Warren is placed under arrest. The woman, reading in the paper that she has reaped vengeance on the wrong woman, is terror stricken, but as she reads further that Mrs. Warren has been arrested for the crime, she gloats over it. Being out of funds, the woman in seeking employment, enters the building where the dictograph offices are situated. Being unable to secure employment and in a state of prostration from lack of cocaine, she starts muttering and gloating over Mrs. Warren's predicament. Her voice is heard through the dictograph and an attempt is made to capture the woman, but as the men arrive in the corridor, the woman is seen descending in the elevator. The woman is finally caught by detectives who engage a room in the same house and in her absence a dictograph is installed connecting both rooms over which the detectives and the police hear her re-enact her crime. She is immediately arrested, her reason entirely gone. Mrs. Warren is released and husband and wife are happily reunited.