THE GREAT DETECTIVE
THE play was produced by the village dramatic society. William watched
it spellbound from the front row, sitting between his mother and
father. It was to him like the gateway to a new and enthralling life.
He could not see why his elder brother and sister were laughing. The
scene opened immediately after a murder. The corpse had been removed
(somewhat to William's disappointment), otherwise the room was as the
murderer had left it. William held his breath as uniformed policemen
innumerable moved about the stage with note-books, looking for clues,
crawling under the table, and examining the floor with magnifying
glasses. The only clue they could find left by the murderer had been a
red triangle drawn upon a piece of paper and neatly pinned to the body
by a dagger. This, they informed the audience many times, was the mark
of a criminal gang of robbers and murderers who were baffling Scotland
Yard.
Then the Great Detective came upon the scene, followed by a very
bored-looking and elderly bloodhound, with its tail between its legs.
The bloodhound, having made its appearance amid applause, contented
itself with sitting in the corner of the stage and gazing scornfully
at the audience. The Great Detective advanced to the centre of the
stage, bent down, and picked up a cigarette end from the floor. It had
been left by the murderer. The police, who had failed to notice it,
fell into postures of ardent admiration. The cigarette end, naturally,
bore the name of the maker, and yet more naturally was a blend made
specially for the murderer. So justice set off hot upon the track, and
the bloodhound yawned sleepily and shuffled off in the wake of the
Great Detective.
The next scene showed the murderer moving in scenes of luxury
and magnificence, wearing evening dress at all hours of the day,
entertaining earls and ambassadors amid tropical palms and gilded
pillars, and waited on by an army of obsequious footmen.
There was also the adventuress in a low (very low) red evening dress,
smoking cigarettes upon a gilded settee. The plot was rather involved.
There was a young man in a tweed suit, who kept appearing and calling
to heaven to support his claim to the villain's place and wealth, which
the villain himself dismissed with a most villainesque snarl. There
was also a simple maiden in sky-blue muslin, with golden (very golden)
hair, who was generally clinging to the young man or sobbing on his
shoulder while he appealed to heaven to make him worthy of her.
But the Great Detective was the real hero of the play. He appeared
(always in a dressing-gown) in his room smoking a pipe and working up
clues, with his hand upon the collar of his amiable bloodhound, who
tried to assure the audience by little deprecating wags of his tail
that he wouldn't hurt a fly.
The last scene was the great excitement. The villain, still in
evening dress, with his background of palms and pillars, was packing
to go away. The Great Detective arrived, tore open his suit-case,
and there were his handkerchiefs, adorned round the edges with red
triangles--irrefutable proofs--policemen with handcuffs sprang from
behind the palms--the young man, still wearing the young woman round
his neck, appeared from nowhere and thanked heaven for bringing the
guilty to justice--the bloodhound, in a sudden spasm of emotion, licked
the villain's hand as he was led out, and all was over, leaving only
the young man and young woman wringing the hand of the Great Detective,
who was still wearing his dressing-gown and smoking his pipe.
William walked out of the hall in a dream. It all seemed so wonderful
and yet so simple. Probably half the people one saw about were
criminals and murderers, if only one knew.
You just found a clue and worked it up. It would be fine to be a
detective. Of course, one needed a dressing-gown and a bloodhound, but
he had a dressing-gown, and though Jumble wasn't exactly a bloodhound,
he was a bloodhound as much as he was any kind of a dog. Jumble was all
sorts of dog. That was what was so convenient about him.
Before William had retired to bed that night he had firmly made up his
mind to lose no time in bringing some great criminal to justice with
the aid of Jumble and his dressing-gown.
* * * * *
"There have been," said Mrs. Brown, William's mother, at breakfast the
next morning, "a lot of burglaries around here lately."
William stiffened. A little later he went out, calling Jumble. He
walked down the road, scowling at the houses as he went. In one of
those larger houses the criminal must live, somewhere where there were
palm-trees and a butler. Of course, a murderer was more exciting, but a
burglar would do to begin on.
[Illustration: WILLIAM TURNED AND FOLLOWED, CREEPING ALONG THE SHADOW
OF THE HEDGE, BENT ALMOST DOUBLE.]
He met a man coming up the road from the station, carrying a black
bag. William glared at him suspiciously. A bag! Of course a burglar
would need a bag. Somewhat startled by William's stern, condemnatory
expression, the man turned round again! William scowled still more.
A guilty conscience! That was what made him turn round like that! He
recognised, doubtless, the expression of a detective. Jumble barked
excitedly, and wagged his tail. Even Jumble suspected something.
William turned and followed, creeping along in the shadow of the
hedge, bent almost double. The man turned round again uneasily.
William followed him till he saw him enter a pair of large gates by
the roadside and go up to a fair-sized house with large bow-windows.
William, with pride and determination writ large upon his freckled
face, took a piece of chalk from his pocket and made a cross upon the
stone gatepost. He had very neatly, and almost under the master's eye,
removed the chalk from his master's desk at school that morning for
the purpose. Becoming absorbed in his task, he turned the cross into
a spider, and then into a shrimp. A few minutes later, inspired now
purely by Art for Art's sake, he was adding a tree and a house, when he
was roughly and ignominiously ordered off by a passing policeman. With
a glance of crushing dignity, he obeyed.
If only that policeman knew----
* * * * *
That night, William, after retiring for the night, dressed himself
completely, donned a dressing-gown in lieu of an overcoat, crept
downstairs, and out of the back-door. He released Jumble on his way.
Together they crept up the drive to the house. The bow-window was open
and the room was in darkness. The first thing William wanted to do
was to find out what the inside of the house was like. If there were
palms----
He climbed in by the open window, holding Jumble tightly beneath his
dressing-gown. He went out of the room and across a hall past the open
doorway of a room in which the man who had been carrying the bag was
having dinner. Opposite him was (presumably) the adventuress--a little
fatter than the adventuress in the play, and in a black evening dress
instead of a red one. Still, you couldn't expect all adventuresses to
look exactly the same. And she was wearing pearls. The pearls must be
what the man had stolen last night and had been bringing home in his
bag.
William stood in the doorway for a minute taking in the scene, then he
went down to a room at the end of the passage--a glass room--_palms!_
Ha! William had learnt all he wanted to know. He returned to the other
room and out of the bow-window.
That evening Mr. Croombe, merchant in the city, turned to his wife,
with a worried frown.
"There's something worrying me, old girl," he said.
"What is it, Jim?" said Mrs. Croombe.
"Well," said Mr. Croombe, throwing away his cigar end, "have I seemed
queer at all lately?"
"No," said his wife anxiously.
"Not as if I might be subject to--er--hallucinations?"
"Oh no, Jim."
"Well," he said, "it's a strange thing. I was coming along the
road to-day--I suddenly saw a boy--I hadn't noticed him before,
and he seemed suddenly to appear--a most peculiar expression--most
peculiar--very intense and searching, as if he had some message--you
know, I'm never quite sure that there's nothing in spiritualism.
Well, I kept thinking about it as I changed--that peculiar piercing
expression--wondering, you know, whether it was hallucination or a
message, or anything, you know. There was something not _ordinary_
about his expression, and," he was obviously reaching the climax of the
story--"well, you may hardly believe me, but--this evening, as we sat
at dinner, I looked up and distinctly _saw_ the same boy standing in
the doorway and looking at me again with that peculiar expression. He
wore a strange flowing garment this time. I pinched myself and looked
round the room, and then, again at the door, and he'd disappeared. Yet
I swear I saw him, with just that extraordinary expression, looking at
me--just for a minute."
Mrs. Croombe, open-mouthed, laid aside her sewing.
"My _dear_ Jim!" she said. "How extraordinary! I wonder--you might try
psycho-analysis if the vision comes again--it's quite fashionable!"
"I hope," said Mr. Croombe, "that it won't appear again. It wasn't," he
confessed, "on the whole, a pleasant expression."
Meanwhile, William, asleep in bed, was dreaming of Mr. and Mrs.
Croombe, handcuffed, and dressed from head to foot in red triangles.
* * * * *
"It's chiefly jewellery that's been taken," announced Mr. Brown from
the local paper the next morning at breakfast.
"Ha!" said William sardonically.
"Mrs. Croombe wants us to go to dinner on Saturday," said Mrs. Brown,
looking up from a letter.
"Who's Mrs. Croombe?" said Ethel, William's elder sister.
"They're new people, up Green Lane, the end house!"
"Ha!" snorted William.
"What," said William's elder brother, "is the matter with _you?_"
"You'd like to know, wouldn't you?" said William with a disrespectful
contortion of his face. "_Just!_"
Then he went up to his bedroom and, putting on his dressing-gown, stood
scowling into space with his head resting on his hand and his elbow on
the mantelpiece in the attitude of the Great Detective thinking out a
clue.
The bloodhound insisted on spoiling the picture by sitting up to beg.
* * * * *
That evening Mr. Croombe looked very weary when he came home.
"I went to a psycho-analyst," he said wearily, "about that--boy,
you know, and he asked me questions for over an hour--all about my
past life. He asked me if I'd ever had a shock connected with boys,
and I remembered that squib that a boy let off just in front of me
last November. He says that this hallucination may be caused by a
subconscious fear. He gave me a lot of other cases of the same kind
that he's treating. He says that if, when I see the boy, I try to
remember that really he doesn't exist, I may get over it. I met cousin
Agatha afterwards. She thinks it's a message--she wanted me to ask the
Psychical Research Society to come down, but I think I'll wait till
after the dinner-party anyway."
Mrs. Croombe clasped her hands.
"Oh, Jim!" she said, "it's all very wonderful, isn't it?"
* * * * *
William, after deep consideration, had decided not to take anyone into
partnership. In the play there had been a faithful and unobtrusive
friend of the Great Detective, who had merely asked questions and
expressed admiration, but William, reviewing his circle of friends,
could not think of anyone who would be content with this _rôle_.
Therefore, he kept the whole thing to himself. He decided to bring
off his great _coup_ on the evening of the Croombe's dinner-party.
He decided to go into the house and hide till the dinner had begun,
and then go out and collect the stolen jewellery and convict the
criminals. He expected vaguely to be summoned to Buckingham Palace to
receive the V.C. after it. Anyway, his family would treat him a bit
different--_just!_
He was in his bedroom, wearing his dressing-gown, and his faithful
bloodhound was worrying the cord of it. He was sucking a lead pencil
to represent the Great Detective's pipe. He had, at an earlier stage,
experimented upon an actual pipe removed from the greenhouse where the
gardener had left it for a moment. A very short experience of it had
convinced him that a lead pencil would do just as well.
Dusk was already falling when the Great Detective issued forth--a
sinister figure, with frown, lead pencil and dressing-gown--on the
track of the criminals. The villain's house was brightly lit up, and he
experienced some difficulty in making his way in. He made it ultimately
through the larder window, and was detained for a few minutes by a
raspberry cream which was a special weakness of his. Then, leaving the
empty plate behind him, he gathered his dressing-gown about him and
reconnoitred. The coast seemed to be clear. He crept upstairs and then
on all fours along the landing. A door opened suddenly, and the master
of the house, in shirt-sleeves, appeared full in William's way. William
returned his gaze unflinchingly. The master of the house paled and
retired precipitately to his wife's bedroom.
[Illustration: WILLIAM RETURNED HIS GAZE UNFLINCHINGLY. THE MASTER OF
THE HOUSE PALED AND RETIRED PRECIPITATELY.]
"I've seen it again, Marie," he said.
"What, dear?"
"The--er--subconscious fear--the--er--message, you know. It was
crawling along the passage outside in its curious long garment, and
it gave me just the same kind of look. _Piercing_, you know--almost
hostile. I'm beginning to feel rather nervous, my dear. You've--never
seen anything of it, have you?"
"Never!"
Mr. Croombe wiped the perspiration from his brow.
"I'd better look up some sort of comfortable--asylum, you know,
somewhere where the food's good--in case I go clean off it suddenly. I
believe it generally begins by hallucinations."
"You must go away for a change," said Mrs. Croombe firmly, "as soon as
you can after the upset of this party's over."
"Yes," said Mr. Croombe, "but supposing I see it _there_--when I have
gone away?"
"I don't know," said Mrs. Croombe vaguely. "Perhaps they don't
travel--hallucinations, I mean."
Meanwhile, the hallucination itself was concealed under the bed of his
victim. He waited till host and hostess had gone down. He heard the
sound of effusively polite greetings downstairs.
"How _good_ of you to come!"
"Ha!" snorted William to a cardboard hatbox that shared his refuge with
him. "Just you _wait!_"
Then he crept out and began to look around the room. He managed to find
some of Mr. Croombe's handkerchiefs and was disappointed not to find
red triangles on them, but he found a horseshoe on one, and that was
just as likely to be the sign of a criminal gang. Then he went through
the connecting door to Mrs. Croombe's bedroom. He opened a drawer and
saw a leather box. There was a key in it, but it was not locked. He
opened it--pearls, rubies, emeralds--_all_ the stolen jewellery.
"Ha!" said William.
He emptied it into the pocket of his dressing-gown. He looked round the
room again. There were some silver boxes and candlesticks. William's
stern frown deepened.
"Ha!" he said again.
_All_ stolen things. He put them also in his pockets.
The next thing was to try and find some handcuffs somewhere. He ought
to have thought of that before.
* * * * *
The party downstairs was going very well. The conversation turned on
the thefts in the neighbourhood.
"I hear that they have taken a considerable amount of jewellery," said
Mrs. Brown.
Mrs. Croombe paled.
"Jewellery!" she said. "Jim! I believe I forgot to lock my jewel-case.
I believe I just left it in my drawer."
He rose.
"I'll go and see, dear," he said.
He went out of the room. At the foot of the stairs was William, in a
conspiratorial attitude, his pockets bulging.
White to the lips, Mr. Croombe returned to his festive board.
"I can't go just now, dear," he said to his wife, then he whispered
with an air of mystery:
"_It's_ there!"
Someone gave a little scream.
"Oh, is the house haunted?"
"Well," admitted Mr. Croombe, not without a certain wistful pride,
"it's not exactly the house. To be quite precise, it's I who am
haunted."
The whole table was agog.
[Illustration: AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS WAS WILLIAM, IN A
CONSPIRATORIAL ATTITUDE, HIS POCKETS BULGING.]
"It's--a boy," said Mr. Croombe. "I see him everywhere--in the road,
in the house, with a _piercing_ expression and curious raiment. He
looks straight _at_ me as if he meant something--a sort of freckled
face--not friendly, I'm afraid. I've been psycho analysed. It's a sort
of--er--complex----"
There was a hubbub of excitement.
"Is it there--now--outside the room?"
"It _was_, but _anyone_ mightn't see it."
"May we go and see?"
"Er--yes, I should think so--but be careful. You know,
those--er--emanations can be very dangerous--a hostile aura, you know."
Three or four bold young men opened the door and crept cautiously into
the hall. There was the sound of a scuffle and a high, indignant voice,
familiar to two at least of the guests. The jaws of Mr. and Mrs. Brown
dropped suddenly.
"Let _go_ of me! Take your 'ole hands _out_ of my pocket. Mind your
_own_ business! Well, I'm a detective, but I've not got any handcuffs.
Leave _go_ of me--I've left my bloodhound behind--that's not _your_
stuff--well it isn't his'n--it's stole stuff. I've tooken it 'cause
I'm a detective--let _go_ of me, I say. Leave go of my dressing-gown,
will you? I'll call the police--I say he's a robber, an' I bet
he's a murderer--will you let _go_ of me? He's a gang--look at his
handkerchiefs--what d'you think of that--well, will you let _go_----?"
Still expostulating, William was dragged into the dining-room. Mr.
Croombe covered his face with his hands.
"That's it," he said. "Don't bring it too near."
"It's the thief," said the young men excitedly. "Look at his pockets
full of things!"
"Leave _go_ of me!" said William, with rising irritability.
"My jewels!" screamed Mrs. Croombe.
Mrs. Brown, meeting her son face to face in such circumstances, did the
only possible thing. She fainted dead away and did not recover till the
crisis was partially over.
William frenziedly accused Mr. Croombe of theft and murder. He referred
to handcuffs and bloodhounds. He said wildly that he had had the house
surrounded by police. It took about half an hour to convince him of his
mistake.
"How do you _know_ they're their own things? They only _say_ so--I've
seen him walking suspicious with a bag full of something. Well, how do
you _know_ he isn't a gang?"
William, at the head of the gaily-decorated table, pale and determined,
in his dressing-gown, gesticulated wildly with his hands full of
jewellery.
Mr. Croombe was apologetic and pleading, wistfully grateful to William
for being real.
William--only gradually, and under the influence of a large and
indigestible meal which Mr. Croombe insisted on giving him in proof of
his gratitude--forgot his grievances.
Later, he found his father less sympathetic. Later still, he surveyed
the world scornfully through his bedroom window, and thought of his
family. It was no good trying to do anything with a family. The only
thing was to cut loose from it altogether.
Mentally he surveyed the past evening. Everything was different in real
life. What was the good of being a detective when everybody said the
people hadn't done the things?
Real life was stupid.
He decided to go on the stage. There one could be a detective in
comfort, and everyone didn't say the person hadn't done the things, and
you'd made a mistake.
He'd go on the stage.
Feeling much comforted by this resolve, he got into bed and went to
sleep.