The next evening I was at the Lucerne grill promptly. This modest chop
house was one of Dulcet's favourite resorts, and I found him already
sitting in one of the alcoves studying the menu. He was in fine spirits,
and his quizzical blue eyes shone with a healthy lustre.
“Are you armed?” he said, mysteriously.
“What,” I cried, “are we going to do some more guinea pigs to death? It
was cruel. I have scruples against taking innocent lives. Besides, your
experiment proved nothing. Those pigs would have died anyway, shut up in
an air-tight box like that.”
“Stuff!” he said. “The box was not hermetic. I had left small apertures:
there was plenty of oxygen. No, it was not the confinement in the
tin box that killed them. After you had gone, the chemist whom I had
consulted called me up. My suspicions were sound. Have you ever heard of
fumacetic acid?”
This is going to be terrible, I thought to myself, and ordered
tenderloin steak, well done, with a double order of hashed brown
potatoes.
“Have you ever heard of fumacetic acid?” he repeated, relentlessly.
“No,” I said, nervously.
“It is a deadly and little-known drug,” he said, “which (so the chemist
tells me) possesses the property that when vaporized the slightest whiff
of it causes instant death if inhaled into the lungs. The tobacco in
that tin had been doctored with it. I sent the chemist the pipe that
poor Digby was smoking when he died, and he analyzed what was left in
the bowl. There is no doubt whatever. He was poisoned in that way. I
tell you, my professional duty as a literary agent requires that in my
clients' interest I should sift this thing to the bottom. It may explain
some of those earlier deaths that baffled the Authors' League.”
“But Mrs. Carboy, surely, did not smoke,” I was about to say; but I
checked myself in time.
“Dove,” I said, “you are superb. But I wish you would tell me how you
worked the thing out. What was it that first aroused your suspicions? If
it had not been for you, I should never have guessed anything wrong.”
“Of course,” he said, grimly, “it was that murderous placard in the
laundry window, and that is to your credit, for you noticed it. That was
the one thing that made plain the whole complicated business. Naturally
I suspected the tobacco from the first, for (as I told you) it was a
mixture that Digby never smoked ordinarily. But when I heard that that
eccentric and damnable placard had been put there at the suggestion of
the tobacconist next door, and then found that the tobacconist was also
a bookseller, I knew the worst. I have spent to-day in rounding up the
threads, and I think I may say without vainglory that the miscreant is
in my power.”
“But the man standing on one leg?” I said, puzzled. “What was he up to,
and why did he run?” Dulcet's face shone with quiet triumph.
“I told you,” he said, “to look for a nervous man smoking Cartesian
Mixture. That tobacconist, Basswood, smokes Cartesian. It is a very
moist, sticky blend, as you know. It can only be shaken out of the pipe,
after smoking, by vigorously knocking the bowl on something hard. Very
well, and if there is no stone step or something of that sort handy,
what will a smoker tap his pipe on? Why, he will stand on one leg and
knock it out on the lifted heel of the other. And his running away when
you addressed him so whimsically, wasn't that a pretty good sign of
nervousness--and also of a guilty and doubtful spirit?”
He finished his tumbler of the near-beer that has made Milwaukee
infamous, and leaned forward earnestly.
“You know very well,” he said, “that that laundryman would never have
thought of his grotesque notice, addressed to 'Artists and Authors', if
someone hadn't suggested it to him. Obviously he was only a gull. That
card was intended as a decoy, to lure Digby away from his room, so that
Basswood could leave the poisoned tobacco for him. Basswood had studied
Digby's habits, and must have known that the notice about the collars
would be sure to catch his eye. Now we had better be going. The police
will be at Basswood's shop at eight o'clock.”
I could have done with a little strong coffee, but he haled me out
of the restaurant, and we walked up Amsterdam Avenue. How little, I
reflected, did the passersby, hurrying about their kindly and innocent
concerns, suspect our dark and perilous errand.
“The motive, of course,” said Dulcet, “was to profit by the increase
of value Digby's death would give to his literary work. You will see a
proof of that in a moment. Here we are. Come on, this is no time to hang
back!”
He strode into the brightly lighted shop, and I followed with a clumsy
assumption of carelessness. I must confess that my eye wandered in
search of suitable cover in case there should be any gun play.
Mr. Basswood was behind his counter, smoking a battered-looking briar.
One side of the bowl was worn down nearly half an inch (from repeated
knocking out on stone steps, I suppose). He was a fat, cross-looking
person, with a black jut of moustache and a small, vindictive eye.
“A friend told me about your bookshop,” said Dulcet. “He said that you
sometimes buy books and manuscripts and that sort of thing.”
“Yes, sometimes,” said Basswood, without enthusiasm.
“I have an unpublished story of Kenelm Digby's,” said Dulcet. “It is
about forty pages of manuscript. What would you give for that?”
The dealer's eyes brightened. He took his pipe from his mouth, and
knocked it out smartly on his heel, tramping on the glowing cinders.
Dulcet looked at me gravely.
“Let me see it,” Basswood said, eagerly.
“I haven't got it with me. But give me an idea what it would be worth to
you.”
“If it is genuine, and characteristic of Digby's genius,” said Basswood,
slowly, “I would give you two hundred dollars for it.”
“Nonsense!” said Dulcet. “It isn't worth half that. I would not dream of
selling it for more than seventy-five.”
Basswood looked startled.
“I guess you are not in touch with the market for such things,” he said.
“There is more interest among collectors in Digby's work than in any
other recent writer. Perhaps you don't realize what a difference his sad
death has made in the prices of his editions. It is very regrettable,
but the death of a writer of that kind always puts a premium on
collectors' items, because there will never be any more of them.”
“Oh, I see,” said Dulcet, politely. “It is his death that has made the
difference, is it?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, then, I suppose this manuscript _is_ worth more than I thought.
By the way, I think the title of it will interest you. It is called 'The
Mystery of the Soft Collars' and deals with a murder that took place on
Eighty-second Street.”
I couldn't help admiring the glorious nonchalance with which Dulcet made
this remark, gazing the dealer straight in the eye. Basswood's face was
a study, and his cheek was pale and greasy. But he, too, was a man of
considerable nerve.
“I don't believe it's genuine,” he said. “That doesn't sound to me like
Digby's style.” His voice shook a little, and he added: “However, if
it's as interesting as it sounds, I might pay even more than two hundred
for it.”
“You rascal!” shouted Dulcet. “Do you think you can buy me off? No! keep
your hands above the counter!”
He had whipped out his revolver, and held it at the man's face.
“Look here, Mr. Basswood,” he said. “Even the cleverest of us make
mistakes. Let me call your attention to one thing. If it was Digby's
death that made the difference in the values of his books, how is it
that this bill from your printer, for that new catalogue of yours, is
dated ten days before Digby died? I picked it up in your back room the
other day. Doesn't that seem to show that you knew, ten days before the
event, that there was going to be a sudden boom in Digbiana? Ten days
before he died you were multiplying the prices of the items you had
gathered. Now, you dog, can you explain that?”
Basswood shook, but still he clung to his hope.
“I'll give you a thousand for that manuscript,” he said.
“Ben,” said Dulcet to me, “just slip around the corner and whistle three
times. The police are waiting on Eighty-fifth Street.”
*****
“There's still one thing that puzzles me,” I said to Dulcet late that
night as we sat in his room for a final smoke. “I remember that before
we discovered that sign in the laundry you said that what we needed to
do was to find a rhyme between tobacco and collar buttons. Now what the
deuce started you off on collar buttons?”
He smiled patiently.
“When I had to pack up poor old Digby's belongings,” he said, “I had
the sad task of going through his bureau drawers. You know the devilish
little buttons that the manufacturers insist on putting on soft collars.
They always come off after one or two washings, and then the collar
collapses round your neck into an object of slovenly reproach. Digby was
a bachelor, and there was no one to do any mending for him. And when I
found that every one of his soft collars had its little button neatly
sewed on, I knew there was something wrong. I ask you, wouldn't that
have aroused the alarm of the least suspicious?”
Up to the present time, as far as I know, Basswood remains the only
bookseller who has ever been electrocuted.