THE MISSING BLADE
On that same morning of the meeting on the sands at Tormouth, Inspector
Clarke, walking southward down St. Martin's Lane toward Scotland Yard,
had a shock. Clarke was hardly at the moment in his best mood, for to
the natural vinegar of his temperament a drop of lemon, or of gall, had
been added within the last few days. That morning at breakfast he had
explained matters with a sour mouth to Mrs. Clarke.
"Oh, it was all a made-up job between Winter and Furneaux, and I was
only put on to the Anarchists to make room for Furneaux--that was it.
The two Anarchists weren't up to any mischief--'Anarchists' was all a
blind, that's what '_Anarchists_' was. But that's the way things are run
now in the Yard, and there's no fair play going any more. Furneaux must
have Feldisham Mansions, of course; Furneaux this, and Furneaux that--of
course. But wait: he hasn't solved it yet! and he isn't going to; no,
and I haven't done with it yet, not by a long way.... Now, where do you
buy these eggs? Just look at this one."
The fact was, now that the two Anarchists, Descartes and Janoc, had been
deported by the Court, and were gone, Clarke suddenly woke to find
himself disillusioned, dull, excluded from the fun of the chase. But, as
he passed down St. Martin's Lane that morning, his underlooking eyes,
ever on the prowl for the "confidence men" who haunt the West End, saw a
sight that made him doubt if he was awake. There, in a little by-street
to the east, under the three balls of a pawnbroker's, he saw, or dreamt
that he saw--Émile Janoc!--Janoc, whom he _knew_ to be in Holland, and
Janoc was so deep, so lost, in talk with a girl, that he could not see
Clarke standing there, looking at him.
And Clarke knew the girl, too! It was Bertha Seward, the late cook of
the murdered actress, Rose de Bercy.
Could he be mistaken as to Janoc? he asked himself. Could _two_ men be
so striking to the eye, and so alike--the lank figure, stooping; the
long wavering legs, the clothes hanging loose on him; the scraggy throat
with the bone in it; the hair, black and plenteous as the raven's
breast, draping the sallow-dark face; the eyes so haggard, hungry,
unresting. Few men were so picturesque: few so greasy, repellent. And
there could be no mistake as to Bertha Seward--a small, thin creature,
with whitish hair, and little Chinese eyes that seemed to twinkle with
fun--it was she!
And how earnest was the talk!
Clarke saw Janoc clasp his two long hands together, and turn up his eyes
to the sky, seeming to beseech the girl or, through her, the heavens.
Then he offered her money, which she refused; but, when he cajoled and
insisted, she took it, smiling. Shaking hands, they parted, and Janoc
looked after Bertha Seward as she hurried, with a sort of stealthy
haste, towards the Strand. Then he turned, and found himself face to
face with Clarke.
For a full half-minute they looked contemplatively, eye to eye, at one
another.
"Janoc?" said Clarke.
"That is my name for one moment, sare," said Janoc politely in a very
peculiar though fluent English: "and the yours, sare?"
"Unless you have a very bad memory you know mine! How on earth come you
to be here, Émile Janoc?"
"England is free country, sare," said Janoc with a shrug; "I see not the
why I must render you account of movement. Only I tell you this time,
because you are so singular familiarly with my name of family, you
deceive yourself as to my little name. I have, it is true, a brother
named Émile----"
Clarke looked with a hard eye at him. The resemblance, if they were two,
was certainly very strong. Since it seemed all but impossible that Émile
Janoc should be in England, he accepted the statement grudgingly.
"Perhaps you wouldn't mind letting me see your papers?" he asked.
Janoc bowed.
"That I will do with big pleasure, sare," he said, and produced a
passport recently viséd in Holland, by which it appeared that his name
was not Émile, but Gaston.
They parted with a bow on Janoc's side and a nod on Clarke's; but Clarke
was puzzled.
"Something queer about this," he thought. "I'll keep my eye on _him_....
What was he doing talking like that--_so earnest_--to the actress's
cook? Suppose she was murdered by Anarchists? It is certain that she was
more or less mixed up with them--more, perhaps, than is known. Why did
those two come over the night after her murder?--for it's clear that
they had no design against the Tsar. I'll look into it on my own. Easy,
now, Clarke, my boy, and may be you'll come out ahead of Furneaux,
Winter, and all the lot in the end."
When he arrived at his Chief's office in the Yard, he mentioned to
Winter his curious encounter with the other Janoc, but said not a word
of Bertha Seward, since the affair of the murder was no longer his
business, officially.
Winter paid little heed to Janoc, whether Émile or Gaston, for Furneaux
was there with him, and the two were head to head, discussing the
murder, and the second sitting of the inquest was soon to come. Indeed,
Clarke heard Winter say to Furneaux:
"I promised Mr. Osborne to give some sort of excuse to his servants for
his flight from home. I was so busy that I forgot it. Perhaps you will
see to that, too, for me."
"Glad you mentioned it. I intended going there at once," Furneaux said
in that subdued tone which seemed to have all at once come upon him
since Rose de Bercy was found lying dead in Feldisham Mansions.
"Well, then, from henceforth everything is in your hands," said Winter.
"Here I hand you over our dumb witness"--and he held out to Furneaux the
blood-soiled ax-head of flint that had battered Rose de Bercy's face.
He was not sure--he wondered afterwards whether it was positively a
fact--but he fancied that for the tenth part of a second Furneaux shrank
from taking, from touching, that object of horror--a notion so odd and
fantastic that it affected Winter as if he had fancied that the poker
had lifted its head for the tenth part of a second. But almost before
the conceit took form, Furneaux was coolly placing the celt in his
breast-pocket, and standing up to go.
Furneaux drove straight, as he had said, to Mayfair, and soon was being
ushered into Osborne's library, where he found Miss Prout, the
secretary, with her hat on, busy opening and sorting the morning's
correspondence.
He introduced himself, sat beside her, and, while she continued with her
work, told her what had happened--how Osborne had been advised to
disappear till the popular gale of ill-will got stilled a little.
"Ah, that's how it was," the girl said, lifting interested eyes to his.
"I was wondering," and she pinned two letters together with the neatness
of method and order.
Furneaux sat lingeringly with her, listening to an aviary of linnets
that prattled to the bright sunlight that flooded the library, and
asking himself whether he had ever seen hair so glaringly red as the
lady secretary's--a great mass of it that wrapped her head like a flame.
"And where has Mr. Osborne gone to?" she murmured, making a note in
shorthand on the back of one little bundle of correspondence.
"Somewhere by the coast--I think," said Furneaux.
"West coast? East coast?"
"He didn't write to me: he wrote to my Chief"--for, though Furneaux well
knew where Osborne was, his retreat was a secret.
The girl went on with her work, plying the paper-knife, now jotting down
a memorandum, now placing two or more kindred letters together: for
every hospital and institution wrote to Osborne, everyone who wanted
money for a new flying machine, or had a dog or a hunter to sell, or
intended to dine and speechify, and send round the hat.
"It's quite a large batch of correspondence," Furneaux remarked.
"Half of these," the girl said, "are letters of abuse from people who
never heard Mr. Osborne's name till the day after that poor woman was
killed. All England has convicted him before he is tried. It seems
unfair."
"Yes, no doubt. But 'to understand is to pardon,' as the proverb says.
They have to think something, and when there is only one thing for them
to think, they think it--meaning well. It will blow over in time. Don't
you worry."
"Oh, I!--What do I care what forty millions of vermin choose to say or
think?"
She pouted her pretty lips saucily.
"Forty--millions--of vermin," cried Furneaux; "that's worse than
Carlyle."
Hylda Prout's swift hands plied among her papers. She made no answer;
and Furneaux suddenly stood up.
"Well, you will mention to the valet and the others how the matter
stands as to Mr. Osborne. He is simply avoiding the crowd--that is all.
Good-day."
Hylda Prout rose, too, and Furneaux saw now how tall she was,
well-formed and lithe, with a somewhat small face framed in that nest of
red hair. Her complexion was spoiled and splashed with freckles, but
otherwise she was dainty-featured and pretty--mouth, nose, chin, tiny,
all except the wide-open eyes.
"So," she said to Furneaux as she put out her hand, "you won't let me
know where Mr. Osborne is? I may want to write to him on business."
"Why, didn't I tell you that he didn't write to me?"
"That was only a blind."
"Dear me! A blind.... It is the truth, Miss Prout."
"Tell that to someone else."
"What, don't you like the truth?"
"All right, keep the information to yourself, then."
"Good-by--I mustn't allow myself to dally in this charming room with the
linnets, the sunlight, and the lady."
For a few seconds she seemed to hesitate. Then she said suddenly: "Yes,
it's very nice in here. That door there leads into the morning room, and
that one yonder, at the side----"
Her voice dropped and stopped; Furneaux appeared hardly to have heard,
or, if hearing, to be merely making conversation.
"Yes, it leads where?" he asked, looking at her. Now, her eyes, too,
dropped, and she murmured:
"Into the museum."
"The--! Well, naturally, Mr. Osborne is a connoisseur--quite so, only I
rather expected you to say 'a picture gallery.' Is it--open to
inspection? Can one----?"
"It is open, certainly: the door is not locked, But there's nothing
much----"
"Oh, do let me have a look around, and come with me, if it will not take
long. No one is more interested in curios than I."
"I--will, if you like," said the girl with a strange note of confidence
in her voice, and led the way into the museum.
Furneaux found himself in a room, small, but full of riches. On a
central table were several illuminated missals and old Hoch-Deutsch
MSS., some ancient timepieces, and a collection of enameled watches of
Limoges. Around the walls, open or in cabinets, were arms, blades of
Toledo, minerals arranged on narrow shelves, an embalmed chieftain's
head from Mexico, and many other bizarre objects.
Hylda Prout knew the name and history of every one, and murmured an
explanation as Furneaux bent in scrutiny.
"Those are what are called 'celts,'" she said; "they are not very
uncommon, and are found in every country--made of flint, mostly, and
used as ax-heads by the ancients. These rough ones on this side are
called Palæolithic--five hundred thousand years old, some of them; and
these finer ones on this side are Neolithic, not quite so old--though
there isn't much to choose in antiquity when it comes to hundreds of
thousands! Strange to say, one of the Neolithic ones has been missing
for some days--I don't know whether Mr. Osborne has given it away or
not?"
The fact that one _was_ missing was, indeed, quite obvious, for the
celts stood in a row, stuck in holes drilled in the shelf; and right in
the midst of the rank gaped one empty hole, a dumb little mouth that yet
spoke.
"Yes, curious things," said Furneaux, bending meditatively over them. "I
remember seeing pictures of them in books. Every one of these stones is
stained with blood."
"Blood!" cried the girl in a startled way.
"Well, they were used in war and the chase, weren't they? Every one of
them has given agony, every one would be red, if we saw it in its true
color."
Red was also the color of Furneaux's cheek-bones at the moment--red as
hectic; and he was conscious of it, as he was conscious also that his
eyes were wildly alight. Hence, he continued a long time bending over
the "celts" so that Miss Prout might not see his face. His voice,
however, was calm, since he habitually spoke in jerky, clipped syllables
that betrayed either no emotion or too much.
When he turned round, it was to move straight to a little rack on the
left, in which glittered a fine array of daggers--Japanese kokatanas,
punals of Salamanca, cangiars of Morocco, bowie-knives of old
California, some with squat blades, coming quickly to a point, some long
and thin to transfix the body, others meant to cut and gash, each with
its label of minute writing.
Furneaux's eye had duly noted them before, but he had passed them
without stopping. Now, after seeing the celts, he went back to them.
To his surprise, Miss Prout did not come with him. She stood looking on
the ground, her lower lip somewhat protruded, silent, obviously
distrait.
"And these, Miss Prout?" chirped he, "are they of high value?"
She neither answered nor moved.
"Perhaps you haven't studied their history?" ventured Furneaux again.
Now, all at once, she moved to the rack of daggers, and without saying a
word, tapped with the fore-finger of her right hand, and kept on
tapping, a vacant hole in the rack, though her eyes peered deeply into
Furneaux's face. And for the first time Furneaux made acquaintance with
the real splendor of her eyes--eyes that lived in sleep, torpid like the
dormouse; but when they woke, woke to such a lambency of passion that
they fascinated and commanded like the basilisk's.
With eyes so alight she now kept peering at Furneaux, standing tall
above him, tapping at the empty hole.
"Oh, I see," muttered Furneaux, _his_ eyes, too, alight like live coals,
"there's an article missing here, also--one from the celts, one from the
daggers."
"He is innocent!" suddenly cried Hylda Prout, in a tempest of passionate
reproach.
"She loves him," thought Furneaux.
And the girl thought: "He knew before now that these things were
missing. His acting would deceive every man, but not every woman. How
glad I am that I drew him on!"
Now, though the fact of the discovery of the celt by Inspector Clarke
under the dead actress's piano had not been published in the papers, the
fact that she had been stabbed through the eye by a long blade with
blunt edges was known to all the world. There was nothing strange in
this fierce outburst of Osborne's trusted secretary, nor that tears
should spring to her eyes.
"Mr. Furneaux, he is innocent," she wailed in a frenzy. "Oh, he is! You
noticed me hesitate just now to bring you in here: well, _this_ was the
reason--this, this, this----" she tapped with her forefinger on the
empty hole--"for I knew that you would see this, and I knew that you
would be jumping to some terrible conclusion as to Mr. Osborne."
"Conclusion, no," murmured Furneaux comfortingly--"I avoid conclusions
as traps for the unwary. Interesting, of course, that's all. Tell me
what you know, and fear nothing. Conclusion, you say! I don't jump to
conclusions. Tell me what was the shape of the dagger that has
disappeared."
She was silent again for many seconds. She was wrung with doubt, whether
to speak or not to speak.
At last she voiced her agony.
"Either I must refuse to say, or I must tell the truth--and if I tell
the truth, you will think----"
She stopped again, all her repose of manner fled.
"You don't know what I will think," put in Furneaux. "Sometimes I think
the most unexpected things. The best way is to give me the plain facts.
The question is, whether the blade that has gone from there was shaped
like the one supposed to have committed the crime in the flat?"
"It was labeled 'Saracen Stiletto: about 1150,'" muttered the girl
brokenly, looking Furneaux straight in the face, though the fire was now
dead in her eyes. "It had a square bone handle, with a crescent carved
on one of the four faces--a longish, thin blade, like a skewer, only not
round--with blunt-edged corners to it."
Furneaux took up a little tube containing radium from a table at his
hand, looked at it, and put it down again.
Hylda Prout was too distraught to see that his hand shook a little. It
was half a minute before he spoke.
"Well, all that proves nothing, though it is of interest, of course," he
said nonchalantly. "How long has that stiletto been lying there?"
"Since--since I entered Mr. Osborne's employment, twelve months ago."
"And you first noticed that it was gone--when?"
"On the second afternoon after the murder, when I noticed that the celt,
too, was gone."
"The second--I see."
"I wondered what had become of them! I could imagine that Mr. Osborne
might have given the celt to some friend. But the stiletto was so rare a
thing--I couldn't think that he would give that. I assumed--I
assume--that they were stolen. But, then, by whom?"
"That's the question," said Furneaux.
"Was it this same stiletto that I have described to you that the murder
was done with?" asked Hylda.
"Now, how can I tell that?" said Furneaux. "_I_ wasn't there, you know."
"Was not the weapon, then, found in the unfortunate woman's flat?"
"No--no weapon."
"Well, but that is excessively odd," she said in a low voice.
"Why so excessively odd?" demanded Furneaux.
"Why? Because--don't you see?--the weapon would be blood-stained--of
course; and I should expect that after committing his horrid deed, the
murderer would be only too glad to get rid of it, and would leave
it----"
"Oh, come, that is hardly a good guess, Miss Prout. I shall never make a
lady detective of you. Murderers don't leave their weapons about behind
them, for weapons are clews, you see."
He was well aware that if the fact of the discovery of the celt had been
published in the papers, Hylda might justly have answered: "But _this_
murderer did leave _one_ of his weapons behind, namely the celt; and it
is excessively odd that, since he left one, the smaller one, he did not
leave the other, the larger one."
As it was, the girl took thought, and her comment was shrewd enough:
"All murderers do not act in the same way, for some are a world more
cunning and alert than others. I say that it _is_ odd that the murderer
did not leave behind the weapon that pierced the woman's eye, and I will
prove it to you. If the stiletto was stolen from Mr. Osborne--and it
really must have been stolen--and if that was the same stiletto that the
deed was done with, then, the motive of the thief in stealing it was to
kill Mademoiselle de Bercy with it. But why should one steal a weapon to
commit a murder? And why should the murderer have chosen _Mr. Osborne_
to steal his weapon from? Obviously, because he wanted to throw the
suspicion upon him--in which case he would _naturally_ leave the weapon
behind as proof of Mr. Osborne's guilt. Now, then, have I proved my
point?"
Though she spoke almost in italics, and was pale and flurried, she
looked jauntily at Furneaux, with her head tossed back; and he, with
half a smile, answered:
"I withdraw my remark as to your detective qualifications, Miss Prout.
Yes, I think you reason well. If there was a thief, and the thief was
the murderer, he would very likely have acted as you say."
"Then, why was the stiletto not found in the flat?" she asked.
"The fact that it was not found would seem to show that there was _not_
a thief," he said; and he added quickly: "Perhaps Mr. Osborne gave it,
as well as the celt, to someone. I suppose you asked him?"
"He was gone away an hour before I missed them," Hylda answered. She
hesitated again. When next she spoke it was with a smile that would have
won a stone.
"Tell me where he is," she pleaded, "and I will write to him about it.
You may safely tell _me_, you know, for Mr. Osborne has no secrets from
_me_."
"I wish I could tell you.... Oh, but he will soon be back again, and
then you will see him and speak to him once more."
Some tone of badinage in these jerky sentences brought a flush to her
face, but she tried to ward off his scrutiny with a commonplace remark.
"Well, that's some consolation. I must wait in patience till the mob
finds a new sensation."
Furneaux took a turn through the room, silently meditating.
"Thanks so much for your courtesy, Miss Prout," he said at last. "Our
conversation has been--fruitful."
"Yes, fruitful in throwing still more suspicion upon an innocent man, if
that is what you mean. Are not the police _quite_ convinced yet of Mr.
Osborne's innocence, Inspector Furneaux?"
"Oh, quite, quite," said he hastily, somewhat taken aback by her candor.
"Two 'quites' make a 'not quite,' as two negatives make an affirmative,"
said she coldly, fingering and looking down at some wistaria in her
bosom.
She added with sudden warmth: "Oh, but you should, Inspector Furneaux!
You should. He has suffered; his honest and true heart has been wounded.
And he has his alibi, which, though in reality it may not be so good as
you think, is yet quite good enough. But I know what it is that poisons
your mind against him."
"You are full of statements, Miss Prout," said Furneaux with an
inclination of the head; "what is it, now, that poisons my mind against
that gentleman?"
"It is that taxicabman's delusion that he took him from the Ritz Hotel
to Feldisham Mansions and back, added to the housekeeper's delusion that
she saw him here----"
Furneaux nearly gasped. Up to that moment he had heard no word about a
housekeeper's delusion, or of a housekeeper's existence even. A long
second passed before he could answer.
"Well, she was no doubt mistaken. I have not yet examined her
personally, but I have every reason to believe that she is in error. At
what hour, by the way, does she say that she thought she saw him here?"
"_She_ says she thinks it was about five minutes to eight. But at that
time, I take it from the evidence, he must have been writing those two
letters at the Ritz. If she were right, that would make out that after
doing the deed at about 7.40 or so, he would just have time to come back
here by five to eight, and change his clothes. But he was at the
Ritz--he was at the Ritz! And Mrs. Bates only saw his back an instant
going up the stairs--his ghost's back, she means, his double's back, not
his own. He was at the Ritz, Inspector Furneaux."
"Precisely," said Furneaux, with a voice that at last had a quiver in
it. "If any fact is clear in a maze of doubt, that, at least, is
established beyond cavil. And Mrs. Bates's other name--I--forget it?"
"Hester."
"That's it. Is she here now?"
"She is taking a holiday to-day. She was dreadfully upset."
"Thanks. Good-by."
He held out his hand a second time, quite affably. Hylda Prout followed
him out to the library and, when the street door had closed behind him,
peeped through the curtains at his alert, natty figure as he hastened
away.
Furneaux took a motor-bus to Whitehall, and, what was very odd, the 'bus
carried him beyond his destination, over Westminster Bridge, indeed, he
was so lost in meditation.
His object now was to see Winter and fling at his chief's head some of
the amazing things he had just learned.
But when he arrived at Scotland Yard, Winter was not there. At that
moment, in fact, Winter was at Osborne's house in Mayfair, whither he
had rushed to meet Furneaux in order to whisper to Furneaux without a
moment's delay some news just gleaned by the merest chance--the news
that Pauline Dessaulx, Rose de Bercy's maid, had quarreled with her
mistress on the morning of the murder, and had been given notice to quit
Miss de Bercy's service.
When Winter arrived at Osborne's house Furneaux, of course, was gone. To
his question at the door, "Is Mr. Furneaux here?" the parlor-maid
answered: "I am not sure, sir--I'll see."
"Perhaps you don't know Mr. Furneaux," said Winter, "a small-built
gentleman----"
"Oh, yes, sir, I know him," the girl answered. "I let him in this
morning, as well as when he called some days ago."
No words in the English tongue could have more astonished Winter, for
Furneaux had not mentioned to him that he had even been to Osborne's.
What Furneaux could have been doing there "some days ago" was beyond his
guessing. Before his wonderment could get out another question, the girl
was leading the way towards the library.
In the library were Miss Prout, writing, and Jenkins handing her a
letter.
"I came to see if Inspector Furneaux was here," Winter said; "but
evidently he has gone."
"Only about three minutes," said Hylda Prout, throwing a quick look
round at him.
"Thanks--I am sorry to have troubled you," he said. Then he added, to
Jenkins: "Much obliged for the cigars!"
"Do not mention it, sir," said Jenkins.
Winter had reached the library door, when he stopped short.
"By the way, Jenkins, is this Mr. Furneaux's first visit here?--or don't
you remember?"
"Mr. Furneaux came here once before, sir," said Jenkins in his staid
official way.
"Ah, I thought perhaps--when was that?"
"Let me see, sir. It was--yes--on the third, the afternoon of the
murder, I remember."
The third--the afternoon of the murder. Those words ate their way into
Winter's very brain. They might have been fired from a pistol rather
than uttered by the placid Jenkins.
"The afternoon, you say," repeated Winter. "Yes--quite so; he wished to
see Mr. Osborne. At what exact _hour_ about would that be?"
Jenkins again meditated. Then he said: "Mr. Furneaux called, sir, about
5.45, as far as I can recollect. He wished to see my master, who was
out, but was expected to return. So Mr. Furneaux was shown in here to
await him, and he waited a quarter of an hour, if I am right in saying
that he came at 5.45, because Mr. Osborne telephoned me from Feldisham
Mansions that he would not be returning, and as I entered the museum
there, where Mr. Furneaux then was, to tell him, I heard the clock
strike six, I remember."
At this Hylda Prout whirled round in her chair.
"The museum!" she cried. "How odd, how exceedingly odd! Just now Mr.
Furneaux seemed to be rather surprised when I told him that there was a
museum!"
"He doubtless forgot, miss," said Jenkins, "for he had certainly gone in
there when I entered the library."
"Thanks, thanks," said Winter lightly, "that's how it was--good-day";
and he went out with the vacant air of a man who has lost something, but
knows not what.
He drove straight to Scotland Yard. There in the office sat Furneaux.
For a long time they conferred--Winter with hardly a word, one hand on
his thigh, the other at his mustache, looking at Furneaux with a frown,
with curious musing eyes, meditating, silent. And Furneaux told how the
celt and the stiletto were missing from Osborne's museum.
"And the inference?" said Winter, speaking at last, his round eyes
staring widely at Furneaux.
"The inference, on the face of it, is that Osborne is guilty," said
Furneaux quietly.
"An innocent man, Furneaux?" said Winter almost with a groan of
reproach--"an innocent man?"
Furneaux's eyes flashed angrily an instant, and some word leapt to his
lips, but it was not uttered. He stood up.
"Well, that's how it stands for the moment. Time will show--I must be
away," he said.
And when he had gone out, Winter rose wearily, and paced with slow steps
a long time through the room, his head bent quite down, staring.
Presently he came upon a broken cigar, such as Furneaux delighted in
smelling. Then a fierce cry broke from him.
"Furneaux, my friend! Why, this is madness! Oh, d--n everything!"