OVER THE TELEPHONE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue II, 13 July 1895, Page 40

OVER THE TELEPHONE.

THE DOCTOR RELATES THE REMARKABLE STORY OF A TRAGEDY. ‘ I heard a strange story to-day,’ said the doctor to me, as we sat in his office late one night, ‘ which on your solemn promise not to divulge, I’ll tell you, for I just can’t keep it to myself.’ Readily enough, I promised, and I violate no confidence in this telling, for no names are mentioned, correctly at least, and in any event the doctor was not pledged to secrecy after the expiration of a year, and it has been two years since he told me. ‘You remember,’ he said, ‘when Frank Broter was found in the hall of my office with a bullet through his brain and a pistol by his side ?’ I nodded in affirmation of my remembrance. ‘You know,’he continued, ‘that everybody thought it was suicide, for Frank was then under treatment with me for a nervous affection that made him wild at times. I thought he had taken his own life, as everyone else did, and he was buried under that impression. The coroner’s verdict was to the same effect also. Well, today his sister died, and before she crossed the dark river, she asked to see me alone, and now I know that we were all mistaken about poor Frank. ‘ There was another brother, if you remember, named George, and he was the black sheep of the flock. A bad boy from the beginning, he grew worse when his widowed mother died, and for five years before Frank’s death, he and his sister, who worked, as you know, in the central office of the Telephone Company, supported him. They boarded him in the same house with themselves, and, as far as appearances went, he had quite as much of the world’s goods as either of them. He drank and gambled and was in trouble all the time, and often threatened them if they did not give him more money. This they did, but the more he received from them the more he asked, and finally he made such a demand upon Frank that he refused to do anything for him except to board and clothe him. The sister joined with Frank in this resolve, and George threatened to kill them both. No one knew of this except the brothers and sister, for the girl was sensitive and shrank from telling her troubles to her friends. On the day of his death Frank came to my office to see me, and there was no one about. I had been called away suddenly, and had taken my assistant and my door boy with me, as I expected to return shortly. I did come back, and when I did I found Frank lying in the hall with the pistol by his side. It was his own pistol, and you know the rest—up to to day. To-day the sister told me tha| George had killed Frank. As far as she could determine, George had followed him there and had quarrelled with him in the hall. To satisfy himself that George was telling him the truth, he had gone to my telephone and called up his sister at the central office. Evidently, the two brothers were near the instrument, for as Frank called she heard the voice of George ordering him away from the ’phone. He refused, and then she heard George curse him and drag him away. She could hear the struggle, as it continued in the hall, and then suddenly came the crack of a pistol, and Frank screamed : “ Oh, George, George, brother, you have killed me I” That was all she could remember, except the slamming of a door as George hurried out of the hall, for she fainted. When she was restored to consciousness, the sister asserted itself first, and she felt that before she told her dreadful story she must first know what had happened. She was not a strong girl, and the fainting spell excited little or no alarm, so that no one thought of connecting the fainting with the tragedy. In fact I had never heard of it until she told me herself. When she learned that Frank had committed suicide and she alone could bear testimony to the contrary, she closed her lips for the sake of her brother, and she has never spoken of it until to day, and only now because George is dead, and she told me that she owed it to Frank’s memory to let some one know he had not taken his own life.’

‘That’s what killed her,’ I said horrified at the story. ‘ I'm sure of it,’ replied the doctor. ' She has gradually declined since Frank’s death, and nothing I could do for her appeared to have any effect. ‘ Aud yet,’ he concluded, • if George had been living she would have taken her secret to the grave with her.’