being Mr Loudham that you wouldn’t hear of me thinking of anyone else,”
retorted the chemist. “You will bear me out also that I never positively
identified him as my customer. Now here is the book. Southem, Potter’s
Bar. Voynich, Islington. Crawford, Streatham Hill. Brown, Southampton
Row. Vickers, Clapham Common. Tidey, Fulham. All those I knew quite
well--associated with them week after week. Williams I didn’t know so
closely. He is dead. Bigwood has gone to Canada. I don’t think anyone
else was in the bhurine craze--as we called it afterwards.”
“But now? What would you call it now?” queried Carrados.
“Now? Well, I hope that you will get me out of having to turn up at
court and that sort of thing, Mr Carrados. If Paulden is going on
experimenting with bhurine again on the sly I shall want all my spare
time to do the same myself!”
A few hours later the two investigators rang the bell of a substantial
detached house in Enstead, the little country town twenty miles out in
Berkshire, and asked to see Mr Paulden.
“It is no good taking Lightcraft to identify the man,” Carrados had
decided. “If Paulden denied it, our friend’s obliging record in that
line would put him out of court.”
“I maintain an open mind on the subject,” Carlyle had replied.
“Lightcraft is admittedly a very bending reed, but there is no reason
why he should not have been right before and wrong to-day.”
They were shown into a ceremonial reception-room to wait. Mr Carlyle
diagnosed snug circumstances and the tastes of an indoors,
comfort-loving man in the surroundings.
The door opened, but it was to admit a middle-aged, matronly lady with
good-humour and domestic capability proclaimed by every detail of her
smiling face and easy manner.
“You wished to see my husband?” she asked with friendly courtesy.
“Mr Paulden? Yes, we should like to,” replied Carlyle, with his most
responsive urbanity. “It is a matter that need not occupy more than a
few minutes.”
“He is very busy just now. If it has to do with the election”--a local
contest was at its height--“he is not interested in politics and
scarcely ever votes.” Her manner was not curious, but merely reflected a
business-like desire to save trouble all round.
“Very sensible too, ve-ry sensible indeed,” almost warbled Mr Carlyle
with instinctive cajolery. “After all,” he continued, mendaciously
appropriating as his own an aphorism at which he had laughed heartily a
few days before in the theatre, “after all, what does an election do but
change the colour of the necktie of the man who picks our pockets? No,
no, Mrs Paulden, it is merely a--um--quite personal matter.”
The lady looked from one to the other with smiling amiability.
“Some little mystery,” her expression seemed to say. “All right; I don’t
mind, only perhaps I could help you if I knew.”
“Mr Paulden is in his dark-room now,” was what she actually did say. “I
am afraid, I am really afraid that I shan’t be able to persuade him to
come out unless I can take a definite message.”
“One understands the difficulty of tempting an enthusiast from his
work,” suggested Carrados, speaking for the first time. “Would it be
permissible to take us to the door of the dark-room, Mrs Paulden, and
let us speak to your husband through it?”
“We can try that way,” she acquiesced readily, “if it is really so
important.”
“I think so,” he replied.
The dark-room lay across the hall. Mrs Paulden conducted them to the
door, waited a moment and then knocked quietly.
“Yes?” sang out a voice, rather irritably one might judge, from inside.
“Two gentlemen have called to see you about something, Lance----”
“I cannot see anyone when I am in here,” interrupted the voice with
rising sharpness. “You know that, Clara----”
“Yes, dear,” she said soothingly; “but listen. They are at the door here
and if you can spare the time just to come and speak you will know
without much trouble if their business is as important as they think.”
“Wait a minute,” came the reply after a moment’s pause, and then they
heard someone approach the door from the other side.
It was a little difficult to know exactly how it happened in the obscure
light of the corner of the hall. Carrados had stepped nearer to the door
to speak. Possibly he trod on Mr Carlyle’s toe, for there was a confused
movement; certainly he put out his hand hastily to recover himself. The
next moment the door of the dark-room jerked open, the light was let in
and the warm odours of a mixed and vitiated atmosphere rolled out.
Secure in the well-ordered discipline of his excellent household, Mr
Paulden had neglected the precaution of locking himself in.
“Confound it all,” shouted the incensed experimenter in a towering rage,
“confound it all, you’ve spoiled the whole thing now!”
“Dear me,” apologised Carrados penitently, “I am so sorry. I think it
must have been my fault, do you know. Does it really matter?”
“Matter!” stormed Mr Paulden, recklessly flinging open the door fully
now to come face to face with his disturbers--“matter letting a flood of
light into a dark-room in the middle of a delicate experiment!”
“Surely it was very little,” persisted Carrados.
“Pshaw,” snarled the angry gentleman; “it was enough. You know the
difference between light and dark, I suppose?”
Mr Carlyle suddenly found himself holding his breath, wondering how on
earth Max had conjured that opportune challenge to the surface.
“No,” was the mild and deprecating reply--the appeal _ad misericordiam_
that had never failed him yet--“no, unfortunately I don’t, for I am
blind. That is why I am so awkward.”
Out of the shocked silence Mrs Paulden gave a little croon of pity. The
moment before she had been speechless with indignation on her husband’s
behalf. Paulden felt as though he had struck a suffering animal. He
stammered an apology and turned away to close the unfortunate door. Then
he began to walk slowly down the hall.
“You wished to see me about something?” he remarked, with matter-of-fact
civility. “Perhaps we had better go in here.” He indicated the
reception-room where they had waited and followed them in. The admirable
Mrs Paulden gave no indication of wishing to join the party.
Carrados came to the point at once.
“Mr Carlyle,” he said, indicating his friend, “has recently been acting
for the prosecution in a case of alleged poisoning that the Public
Prosecutor has now taken up. I am interested in the defence. Both sides
are thus before you, Mr Paulden.”
“How does this concern me?” asked Paulden with obvious surprise.
“You are experimenting with bhurine. The victim of this alleged crime
undoubtedly lost his life by bhurine poisoning. Do you mind telling us
when and where you acquired your stock of this scarce substance?”
“I have had----”
“No--a moment, Mr Paulden, before you reply,” struck in Carrados with
arresting hand. “You must understand that nothing so grotesque as to
connect you with a crime is contemplated. But a man is under arrest and
the chief point against him is the half-ounce of bhurine that Lightcraft
of Trenion Street sold to someone at half-past five last Wednesday
fortnight. Before you commit yourself to any statement that it may
possibly be difficult to recede from, you should realise that this
inquiry will be pushed to the very end.”
“How do you know that I am using bhurine?”
“That,” parried Carrados, “is a blind man’s secret.”
“Oh, well. And you say that someone has been arrested through this
fact?”
“Yes. Possibly you have read something of the St Abbots mushroom
poisoning case?”
“I have no interest in the sensational ephemera of the Press. Very well;
it was I who bought the bhurine from Lightcraft that Wednesday
afternoon. I gave a false name and address, I must admit. I had a
sufficient private reason for so doing.”
“This knocks what is vulgarly termed ‘the stuffing’ out of the case for
the prosecution,” observed Carlyle, who had been taking a note. “It may
also involve you in some trouble yourself, Mr Paulden.”
“I don’t think that you need regard that very seriously in the
circumstances,” said Carrados reassuringly.
“They must find some scapegoat, you know,” persisted Mr Carlyle.
“Loudham will raise Cain over it.”
“I don’t think so. Loudham, as the prosecution will roundly tell him,
has only himself to thank for not giving a satisfactory account of his
movements. Loudham will be lectured, Lightcraft will be fined the
minimum, and Mr Paulden will, I imagine, be told not to do it again.”
The man before them laughed bitterly.
“There will be no occasion to do it again,” he remarked. “Do you know
anything of the circumstances?”
“Lightcraft told us something connected with colour photography. You
distrust Mr Lightcraft, I infer?”
Mr Paulden came down to the heart-easing medium of the street.
“I’ve had some once, thanks,” was what he said with terse expression.
“Let me tell you. About eighteen months ago I was on the edge of a great
discovery in colour photography. It was my discovery, whatever you may
have heard. Bhurine was the medium, and not being then so cautious or
suspicious as I have reason to be now, and finding it difficult--really
impossible--to procure this substance casually, I sent in an order to
Lightcraft to procure me a stock. Unfortunately, in a moment of
enthusiasm I had hinted at the anticipated results to a man who was then
my friend--a weakling called Southem. Comparing notes with Lightcraft
they put two and two together and in a trice most of the secret boiled
over.
“If you have ever been within an ace of a monumental discovery you will
understand the torment of anxiety and self-reproach that possessed me.
For months the result must have trembled in the balance, but even as it
evaded me, so it evaded the others. And at last I was able to spread
conviction that the bhurine process was a failure. I breathed again.
“You don’t want to hear of the various things that conspired to baffle
me. I proceeded with extreme caution and therefore slowly. About two
weeks ago I had another foretaste of success and immediately on it a
veritable disaster. By some diabolical mischance I contrived to upset my
stock bottle of bhurine. It rolled down, smashed to atoms on a
developing dish filled with another chemical, and the precious lot was
irretrievably lost. To arrest the experiments at that stage for a day
was to lose a month. In one place and one alone could I hope to
replenish the stock temporarily at such short notice and to do it openly
after my last experience filled me with dismay.... Well, you know what
happened, and now, I suppose, it will all come out.”
* * * * *
A week after his arrest Philip Loudham and his sister were sitting
together in the drawing-room at Hazlehurst, nervous and expectant.
Loudham had been discharged scarcely six hours before, with such
vindication of his character as the frigid intimation that there was no
evidence against him afforded. On his arrival home he had found a letter
from Max Carrados--a name with which he was now familiar--awaiting him.
There had been other notes and telegrams--messages of sympathy and
congratulation, but the man who had brought about his liberation did not
include these conventionalities. He merely stated that he purposed
calling upon Mr Loudham at nine o’clock that evening and that he hoped
it would be convenient for him and all other members of the household to
be at home.
“He can scarcely be coming to be thanked,” speculated Loudham, breaking
the silence that had fallen on them as the hour approached. “I should
have called on him myself to-morrow.”
Mrs Dupreen assented absent-mindedly. Both were dressed in black, and
both at that moment had the same thought: that they were dreaming this.
“I suppose you won’t go on living here, Irene?” continued the brother,
speaking to make the minutes seem tolerable.
This at least had the effect of bringing Mrs Dupreen back into the
present with a rush.
“Of course not,” she replied almost sharply and looking at him direct.
“Why should I, now?”
“Oh, all right,” he agreed. “I didn’t suppose you would.” Then, as the
front-door bell was heard to ring: “Thank heaven!”
“Won’t you go to meet him in the hall and bring him in?” suggested Mrs
Dupreen. “He is blind, you know.”
Carrados was carrying a small leather case which he allowed Loudham to
relieve him of, together with his hat and gloves. The introduction to
Mrs Dupreen was made, the blind man put in touch with a chair, and then
Philip Loudham began to rattle off the acknowledgment of gratitude of
which he had been framing and rejecting openings for the last half-hour.
“I’m afraid it’s no good attempting to thank you for the extraordinary
service that you’ve rendered me, Mr Carrados,” he began, “and, above
all, I appreciate the fact that, owing to you, it has been possible to
keep Mrs Guestling’s name entirely out of the case. Of course you know
all about that, and my sister knows, so it isn’t worth while beating
about the bush. Well, now that I shall have something like a decent
income of my own, I shall urge Kitty--Mrs Guestling--to apply for the
divorce that she is richly entitled to, and when that is all settled we
shall marry at once and try to forget the experiences on both sides that
have led up to it. I hope,” he added tamely, “that you don’t consider us
really much to blame?”
Carrados shook his head in mild deprecation.
“That is an ethical point that has lain outside the scope of my
inquiry,” he replied. “You would hardly imagine that I should disturb
you at such a time merely to claim your thanks. Has it occurred to you
why I should have come?”
Brother and sister exchanged looks and by their silence gave reply.
“We have still to find who poisoned Charlie Winpole.”
Loudham stared at their guest in frank bewilderment. Mrs Dupreen almost
closed her eyes. When she spoke it was in a pained whisper.
“Is there anything more to be gained by pursuing that idea, Mr
Carrados?” she asked pleadingly. “We have passed through a week of
anguish, coming upon a week of grief and great distress. Surely all has
been done that can be done?”
“But you would have justice for your nephew if there has been foul
play?”
Mrs Dupreen made a weary gesture of resignation. It was Loudham who took
up the question.
“Do you really mean, Mr Carrados, that there is any doubt about the
cause?”
“Will you give me my case, please? Thank you.” He opened it and produced
a small paper bag. “Now a newspaper, if you will.” He opened the bag and
poured out the contents. “You remember stating at the inquest, Mrs
Dupreen, that the mushrooms you bought looked rather dry? They were dry,
there is no doubt, for they had then been gathered four days. Here are
some more under precisely the same conditions. They looked, in point of
fact, like these?”
“Yes,” admitted the lady, beginning to regard Carrados with a new and
curious interest.
“Dr Slark further stated that the only fungus containing the poison
bhurine--the _Amanita_ called the Black Cap, and also by the country
folk the Devil’s Scent Bottle--did not assume its forbidding appearance
until maturity. He was wrong in one sense there, for experiment proves
that if the Black Cap is gathered in its young and deceptive stage and
kept, it assumes precisely the same appearance as it withers as if it
was ripening naturally. You observe.” He opened a second bag and,
shaking out the contents, displayed another little heap by the side of
the first. “Gathered four days ago,” he explained.
“Why, they are as black as ink,” commented Loudham. “And the, phew!
aroma!”
“One would hardly have got through without you seeing it, Mrs Dupreen?”
“I certainly hardly think so,” she admitted.
“With due allowance for Lackington’s biased opinion I also think that
his claim might be allowed. Finally, it is incredible that whoever
peeled the mushrooms should have passed one of these. Who was the cook
on that occasion, Mrs Dupreen?”
“My maid Hilda. She does all the cooking.”
“The one who admitted me?”
“Yes; she is the only servant I have, Mr Carrados.”
“I should like to have her in, if you don’t mind.”
“Certainly, if you wish it. She is”--Mrs Dupreen felt that she must put
in a favourable word before this inexorable man pronounced
judgment--“she is a very good, straightforward girl.”
“So much the better.”
“I will----” Mrs Dupreen rose and began to cross the room.
“Ring for her? Thank you,” and whatever her intention had been the lady
rang the bell.
“Yes, ma’am?”
A neat, modest-mannered girl, simple and nervous, with a face as full,
as clear and as honest as an English apple. “A pity,” thought Mrs
Dupreen, “that this confident, suspicious man cannot see her now.”
“Come in, Hilda. This gentleman wants to ask you something.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The round, blue eyes went appealingly to Carrados, fell
upon the fungi spread out before her, and then circled the room with an
instinct of escape.
“You remember the night poor Charlie died, Hilda,” said Carrados in his
suavest tones, “you cooked some mushrooms for his supper, didn’t you?”
“No, sir,” came the glib reply.
“‘No,’ Hilda!” exclaimed Mrs Dupreen in wonderment. “You mean ‘yes,’
surely, child. Of course you cooked them. Don’t you remember?”
“Yes, ma’am,” dutifully replied Hilda.
“That is all right,” said the blind man reassuringly. “Nervous witnesses
very often answer at random at first. You have nothing to be afraid of,
my good girl, if you will tell the truth. I suppose you know a mushroom
when you see it?”
“Yes, sir,” was the rather hesitating reply.
“There was nothing like this among them?” He held up one of the
poisonous sort.
“No, sir; indeed there wasn’t, sir. I should have known then.”
“You would have known _then_? You were not called at the inquest,
Hilda?”
“No, sir.”
“If you had been, what would you have told them about these mushrooms
that you cooked?”
“I--I don’t know, sir.”
“Come, come, Hilda. What could you have told them--something that we do
not know? The truth, girl, if you want to save yourself?” Then with a
sudden, terrible directness the question cleft her trembling,
guilt-stricken little brain: “Where did you get the other mushrooms from
that you put with those that your mistress brought?”
The eyes that had been mostly riveted to the floor leapt to Carrados for
a single frightened glance, from Carrados to her mistress, to Philip
Loudham, and to the floor again. In a moment her face changed and she
was in a burst of sobbing.
“Oho, oho, oho!” she wailed. “I didn’t know; I didn’t know. I meant no
harm; indeed I didn’t, ma’am.”
“Hilda! Hilda!” exclaimed Mrs Dupreen in bewilderment. “What is it
you’re saying? What have you done?”
“It was his own fault. Oho, oho, oho!” Every word was punctuated by a
gasp. “He always was a little pig and making himself ill with food. You
know he was, ma’am, although you were so fond of him. I’m sure I’m not
to blame.”
“But _what_ was it? What _have_ you done?” besought her mistress.
“It was after you went out on that afternoon. He put on his things and
slipped down into the kitchen without the master knowing. He said what
you were getting for his dinner, ma’am, and that you never got enough of
them. Then he told me not to tell about his being down, because he’d
seen some white things from his bedroom window growing by the hedge at
the bottom of the garden and he was going to get them. He brought in
four or five and said they were mushrooms and asked me to cook them with
the others and not say anything because you’d say too many were not good
for him. And I didn’t know any difference. Indeed I’m telling you the
truth, ma’am.”
“Oh, Hilda, Hilda!” was torn reproachfully from Mrs Dupreen. “You know
what we’ve gone through. Why didn’t you tell us this before?”
“I was afraid. I was afraid of what they’d do. And no one ever guessed
until I thought I was safe. Indeed I meant no harm to anyone, but I was
afraid that they’d punish me instead.”
Carrados had risen and was picking up his things.
“Yes,” he said, half musing to himself, “I knew it must exist: the one
explanation that accounts for everything and cannot be assailed. We have
reached the bed-rock of truth at last.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
V
The Ghost at Massingham Mansions
“Do you believe in ghosts, Max?” inquired Mr Carlyle.
“Only as ghosts,” replied Carrados with decision.
“Quite so,” assented the private detective with the air of acquiescence
with which he was wont to cloak his moments of obfuscation. Then he
added cautiously: “And how don’t you believe in them, pray?”
“As public nuisances--or private ones for that matter,” replied his
friend. “So long as they are content to behave as ghosts I am with them.
When they begin to meddle with a state of existence that is outside
their province--to interfere in business matters and depreciate
property--to rattle chains, bang doors, ring bells, predict winners and
to edit magazines--and to attract attention instead of shunning it, I
cease to believe. My sympathies are entirely with the sensible old
fellow who was awakened in the middle of the night to find a shadowy
form standing by the side of his bed and silently regarding him. For a
few minutes the disturbed man waited patiently, expecting some awful
communication, but the same profound silence was maintained. ‘Well,’ he
remarked at length, ‘if you have nothing to do, I have,’ and turning
over went to sleep again.”
“I have been asked to take up a ghost,” Carlyle began to explain.
“Then I don’t believe in it,” declared Carrados.
“Why not?”
“Because it is a pushful, notoriety-loving ghost, or it would not have
gone so far. Probably it wants to get into _The Daily Mail_. The other
people, whoever they are, don’t believe in it either, Louis, or they
wouldn’t have called you in. They would have gone to Sir Oliver Lodge
for an explanation, or to the nearest priest for a stoup of holy water.”
“I admit that I shall direct my researches towards the forces of this
world before I begin to investigate any other,” conceded Louis Carlyle.
“And I don’t doubt,” he added, with his usual bland complacence, “that I
shall hale up some mischievous or aggrieved individual before the ghost
is many days older. Now that you have brought me so far, do you care to
go on round to the place with me, Max, to hear what they have to say
about it?”
Carrados agreed with his usual good nature. He rarely met his friend
without hearing the details of some new case, for Carlyle’s practice had
increased vastly since the night when chance had led him into the blind
man’s study. They discussed the cases according to their interest, and
there the matter generally ended so far as Max Carrados was concerned,
until he casually heard the result subsequently from Carlyle’s lips or
learned the sequel from the newspaper. But these pages are primarily a
record of the methods of the one man whose name they bear and therefore
for the occasional case that Carrados completed for his friend there
must be assumed the unchronicled scores which the inquiry agent dealt
capably with himself. This reminder is perhaps necessary to dissipate
the impression that Louis Carlyle was a pretentious humbug. He was, as a
matter of fact, in spite of his amiable foibles and the self-assurance
that was, after all, merely an asset of his trade, a shrewd and capable
business man of his world, and behind his office manner nothing
concerned him more than to pocket fees for which he felt that he had
failed to render value.
Massingham Mansions proved to be a single block of residential flats
overlooking a recreation ground. It was, as they afterwards found, an
adjunct to a larger estate of similar property situated down another
road. A porter, residing in the basement, looked after the interests of
Massingham Mansions; the business office was placed among the other
flats. On that morning it presented the appearance of a well-kept,
prosperous enough place, a little dull, a little unfinished, a little
depressing perhaps; in fact faintly reminiscent of the superfluous
mansions that stand among broad, weedy roads on the outskirts of
overgrown seaside resorts; but it was persistently raining at the time
when Mr Carlyle had his first view of it.
“It is early to judge,” he remarked, after stopping the car in order to
verify the name on the brass plate, “but, upon my word, Max, I really
think that our ghost might have discovered more appropriate quarters.”