answering to your description hired a motor yacht--cutter with
auxiliary engine--six weeks ago. It was rather noticed, being an
unusual time of year to start yachting. He’s been down odd times and
slept aboard. He seems to have slept aboard last night. I can’t find
anyone who’s seen him here to-day. But there’s a longshoreman swears
he saw a Tilbury boat go alongside the _Cyrilla_--that’s his yacht--a
while since, and the _Cyrilla’s_ away.”
“Have you got a fast boat ready for us?”
“At the pier head, sir. Motor launch.”
“Good work,” Reggie smiled. And they hurried on board.
“What’s the job, sir?” The captain of the launch touched his cap.
“Dig out after the _Cyrilla_. You know her, don’t you?”
“I do so. But I reckon she ain’t in sight. What’s the course?”
“Down stream. She’ll be making for the Dutch coast. Are you good for
a long run?”
“Surely. And I reckon it will be a long run. She’s fast, is
_Cyrilla_. Wind her up, Jim,” and the launch began to throb through
the water.
Mr. Fortune retired under the hood and lit his pipe, and Bell
followed him. “He’s smart, isn’t he, sir, our Mr. Kuyper? His yacht
at Gravesend and he comes down by Tilbury. That’s neat work.”
“Don’t rub it in, Bell. I know I ought to have thought of Tilbury.”
Bell stared at him. “Good Lord, Mr. Fortune, I’m not blaming you,
sir.”
“I am,” said Reggie. “It’s an untidy case, Bell. Well, well. I wonder
if I’ve missed anything more?”
“I don’t know what you’ve missed, sir. I know I wouldn’t like to be
on the run if you were after me.”
Reggie looked at the large, man with a gleam of amusement. “It would
be rather joyful, Bell,” he chuckled, and was solemn again. “No. I am
not happy. _Je n’ai pas de courage_. I want Mr. Kuyper.”
It was a grey day. The Essex flats lay dim and sombre. The heights on
the southern shore were blurred. Yet they could see far out to the
Nore. An east wind was whipping the flood tide into tiny waves,
through which the launch clove, making, after the manner of her kind,
a great show of speed, leaving the tramps that chunked outward bound
as though they lay at anchor.
“Do you see her yet?” Reggie asked the captain.
“Maybe that’s her,” he pointed to a dim line on the horizon beyond
the lightship, a sailless mast, if it was anything. “Maybe not.” He
spat over the side.
“Are you gaining on her?”
“I reckon we’re coming up, sir.”
“What’s that thing doing?” Reggie pointed to a long low black craft
near the Nore.
“Destroyer, sir. Engines stopped.”
“Run down to her, will you? How does one address the Navy, Bell? I
feel shy. Ask him if he’s the duty destroyer of the Nore Command,
will you?”
“Good Lord, sir,” said Bell.
The captain of the launch hailed. “Duty destroyer, sir?”
“Aye, aye. Scotland Yard launch? Come alongside.”
“Thank God for the Navy, as the soldier said,” Mr. Fortune murmured.
“Perhaps it will be warmer on board her.”
“I say, sir, did you order a destroyer out?”
“Oh, I asked Lomas to turn out the Navy. I thought we might want ’em.”
Superintendent Bell gazed at him. “And you say you forget things,” he
said. “Witt’s shot and all in a minute you have all this in your
head.”
They climbed a most unpleasant ladder. A young lieutenant received
them. “You gentlemen got a job of work for us?”
“A motor yacht, cutter rig, name _Cyrilla_, left Gravesend an hour or
two ago, probably making for the Dutch coast. There’s a man on board
that’s badly wanted.”
“Can do,” the lieutenant smiled and ran up to the bridge. “Starboard
five. Half ahead both.” He spoke into a voice pipe. “You’d better
come up here,” he called to them. “We’ll whack her up as we go.”
The destroyer began to quiver gently to the purr of the turbines.
Reggie cowered under the wind screen. The speed grew and grew and the
destroyer sat down on her stern and on either side white waves rushed
from the high sharp bow. “Who is your friend on the yacht?” the
lieutenant smiled.
“His last is attempted murder. But that was only this morning.”
“You fellows don’t lose much time,” said the lieutenant with more
respect. “You seem to want him bad.”
“I could bear to see him,” said Reggie. “He interests me as a medical
man.”
“Medical?” the lieutenant stared at him.
“Quite a lot of crime is medical,” said Reggie.
The lieutenant gave it up and again asked for more speed and began to
use his binoculars. “There’s a cutter rig,” he pointed at something
invisible. “Not under sail. Laying a course for Flushing. That’s good
enough, what?”
The destroyer came up fast. A white hull was revealed to the naked
eye. The lieutenant spoke to his signalman and flags fluttered above
the bridge. “Not answered. D’ye think your friend’ll put up a scrap?”
“I dare say he will, if his crew will stand for it.”
“Praise God,” said the lieutenant. “Will they have any arms?”
“Pistols, likely,” said Bell.
“Well! She is _Cyrilla_.” He picked up a megaphone and roared through
it. “The cutter! _Cyrilla!_ Stop your engine!”
There was some movement on the yacht’s deck. She did stop her engine
or slow. A shot was heard. She started her engine again and again
stopped. A man ran aft and held up his hand. The destroyer drew abeam
and the lieutenant said what occurred to him of yachts which did not
obey Navy signals. There was no answer. A little knot of men on the
_Cyrilla_ gazed at the destroyer.
“You fellows going aboard her? Got guns? I’ll give you an armed
boat’s crew.”
Behind the destroyer’s sub-lieutenant Bell and Reggie came to the
yacht’s deck. “Where’s the captain? Don’t you know enough to read
signals?” Thus the sub-lieutenant began.
“Where’s Mr. Kuyper?” said Bell.
“We didn’t understand your signals, sir.” The captain licked his
lips. “Don’t know anything about a Mr. Kuyper. We’ve got a Mr.
Hotten, a Dutch gentleman. He’s my owner, as you might say.”
“Where is he?”
“Down the engine-room. It was him fired at the engineer to make him
start her up again when I ’ad stopped. I laid him out with a spanner.”
“Bring him up,” Bell said.
A slim spruce body was laid on the deck, precisely the Julius Kuyper
of Tommy Owen’s description. Reggie knelt down beside him.
“He ain’t dead, is he?” said the yacht’s captain anxiously.
But the stertorous breath of Mr. Kuyper could be heard. “My only
aunt,” Reggie muttered.
“What’s the matter, sir?”
“Man hasn’t got a heart. This is very unusual. Good Lord! Heart well
over on the right side. Heterotaxy very marked. Quite unusual. Ah!
That’s more to the point. He’s had an operation on the thyroid gland.
Yes. Just so.” He smiled happily.
“What was that word you said, sir?”
“Heterotaxy? Oh, it only means he’s got his things all over on the
wrong side.”
“Then I know him!” Bell cried. “I thought I knew the look of him, as
old as he is now. It’s Lawton, sir, Lawton of the big bank frauds. He
went off with fifty thousand or more. Before your time, but you must
have heard of it. Did a clear getaway.”
“And that’s that,” said Reggie. “Now we know.”
* * * * *
Some days afterwards the Hon. Sidney Lomas called on Mr. Fortune, who
was at the moment making a modest supper of devilled sole. “Did you
clear it up?” he said.
“Try that champagne. It’s young but has distinction. Oh yes. Dr.
Wilton quite agrees with me. A faulty thyroid gland is the root of
the trouble.”
“I don’t want to hear about Mr. Kuyper Lawton’s diseases. I----”
“My dear fellow! But that is the whole case. Mr. Kuyper-Lawton is
undoubtedly a man of great ability. But there was always a cachexis
of the thyroid gland. This caused a certain mental instability.
Unsound judgment. Violence of temper. It’s quite common.”
“Is it though?” said Lomas. “And why was he violent to poor Wilton?”
“Well, Lawton got clean away after his bank frauds, as you know----”
“I know all about Lawton. He lived on the plunder in Holland as
Adrian Hotten and flourished till the war. Then he lost most of his
money backing Germany to win. In the end of 1917 he went off to
Russia. This year he turned up in London as Julius Kuyper, talking
about Russian finance and selling Russian jewels.”
“Quite so. Well, in February he was in a motor accident in Cavendish
Square. A lorry hit his car and he was thrown out and stunned. The
unfortunate Wilton was passing and gave him first-aid, and discovered
that his heart was on the wrong side. He came to under Wilton’s
hands. I suppose Wilton showed a little too much interest. Anyhow,
Mr. Kuyper saw that the malformation which would identify him with
Lawton of the bank frauds was known to the young doctor. Well, he
kept his head then. He was very grateful. He asked for Wilton’s card.
And Wilton never heard any more of him. But Wilton was interested in
this striking case of heterotaxy. He noted the number of the car,
found the garage from which it was hired and went round to ask who
the man was. They wouldn’t tell him, but the chauffeur, I suppose,
told Mr. Kuyper the doctor was asking after him. He sent Witt to take
a flat over Wilton’s and find out what Wilton was up to. I take it
Mr. Kuyper was doing mighty good business in London and didn’t want
to run away. He needn’t have bothered--but that’s the man all over,
brilliantly ingenious and no judgment. That thyroid of his! Wilton
had come to know the local detective-inspector, that poor chap who
committed suicide. I’m mighty sorry for that fellow, Lomas. He was so
keen against Wilton because he was afraid of not doing his duty when
he liked the man--and then he found he’d blundered into giving false
evidence against his friend. I don’t wonder he chose to die.”
“Conscience makes fools of us all,” said Lomas.
“Yes. Yes. Poor beggar. And no wonder Wilton was bitter against him.
Well, Kuyper decided that Wilton with his curiosity and his friend in
the police wasn’t safe at large. First they tried to ship him out of
the country and he wouldn’t go. So they put up the burglary. I
suppose Witt or Witt’s friend the sham Dutch journalist is a Hun.
That accounts for the Rauch-tabak and the German keys.”
“Lawton-Kuyper has done a lot of business with Germany himself.”
“Yes. He ought to have been on the great General Staff. The right
type of mind. One of our native Prussians. An able man--a very able
man. If his thyroid had been healthy!”
CASE IV
THE MAGIC STONE
A NIGHTINGALE began to sing in the limes. Mr. Fortune smiled through
his cigar smoke at the moon and slid lower into his chair. In the
silver light his garden was a wonderland. He could see fairies
dancing on the lawn. The fine odour of the cigar was glorified by the
mingled fragrance of the night, the spicy scent of the lime flowers
borne on a wind which came from the river over meadowsweet and hay.
The music of the nightingale was heard through the soft murmur of the
weir stream.
The head of the Criminal Investigation Department was arguing that
the case of the Town Clerk of Barchester offered an example of the
abuse of the simple poisons in married life.
Mr. Reginald Fortune, though his chief adviser, said no word.
The head of the Criminal Investigation Department came at last to an
end. “That’s the case, then.” He stood up and knocked over his coffee
cup: a tinkling clatter, a profound silence and then only the murmur
of the water. The nightingale was gone. “Well, Fortune?”
Mr. Fortune sighed and raised himself. “Dear me, Lomas,” he said
sadly, “why don’t you find something to do?”
The Hon. Sidney Lomas suffered from a sense of wrong and said so. It
was a difficult and complex case and had given him much anxiety and
he wanted Fortune’s advice and----
“She did him in all right,” said Reggie Fortune succinctly, “and
you’ll never find a jury to hang her. Why don’t you bring me
something interesting?”
Lomas then complained of him, pointing out that a policeman’s life
was not a happy one, that he did not arrange or even choose the
crimes of his country. “Interesting? Good Gad, do you suppose I am
interested in this female Bluebeard? I know my job’s not interesting.
Work’s work.”
“And eggs is eggs. You have no soul, Lomas.” Reggie Fortune stood up.
“Come and have a drink.” He led the way from the dim veranda into his
study and switched on the light. “Now that,” he pointed to a pale
purple fluid, “that is a romantic liqueur: it feels just like a ghost
story: I brought it back from the Pyrenees.”
“Whisky,” said Lomas morosely.
“My dear chap, are we down-hearted?”
“You should go to Scotland Yard, Fortune.” Lomas clung to his
grievance. “Perhaps you would find it interesting. What do you think
they brought me this afternoon? Some poor devil had an epileptic fit
in the British Museum.”
“Well, well”--Reggie Fortune sipped his purple liqueur--“the British
Museum has made me feel queer. But not epileptic. On the contrary.
Sprightly fellow. This is a nice story. Go on Lomas.”
“That’s all,” Lomas snapped. “Interesting, isn’t it?”
“Then why Scotland Yard? You’re not an hospital for nervous diseases.
Or are you, Lomas?”
“I wonder,” said Lomas bitterly. “Why Scotland Yard? Just so. Why?
Because they’ve lost an infernal pebble in the fray. And will I find
it for them please? Most interesting case.”
Reggie Fortune took another cigar and composed himself for comfort.
“Begin at the beginning,” he advised, “and relate all facts without
passion or recrimination.”
“There are no facts, confound you. It was in the Ethnological Gallery
of the British Museum--where nobody ever goes. Some fellow did go and
had a fit. He broke one of the glass cases in his convulsions. They
picked him up and he came round. He was very apologetic, left them a
fiver to pay for the glass and an address in New York. He was an
American doing Europe and just off to France with his family. When
they looked over the case afterwards they found one of the stones in
it was gone. The epilept couldn’t have taken it, poor devil. Anybody
who was in the gallery might have pocketed it in the confusion. Most
likely a child. The thing is only a pebble with some paint on it. A
pundit from the Museum came to me with his hair on end and wanted me
to sift London for it. I asked him what it was worth and he couldn’t
tell me. Only an anthropologist would want the thing, he said. It
seems an acquired taste. I haven’t acquired it. I told him this was
my busy day.”
Reggie Fortune smiled benignly. “But this is art,” he said. “This is
alluring, Lomas. Have you cabled to New York?”
“Have I----?” Lomas stopped his whisky on the way to his mouth. “No,
Fortune, I have not cabled New York. Nor have I sent for the
military. The British Museum is still without a garrison.”
“Well, you know, this gentleman with the fit may be a collector.”
“Oh, Lord, no. It was a real fit. No deception. They had a doctor to
him.”
Reggie Fortune was much affected. “There speaks the great heart of
the people. The doctor always knows! I love your simple faith, Lomas.
It cheers me. But I’m a doctor myself. My dear chap, has no one ever
murmured into the innocence of Scotland Yard that a fit can be faked?”
“I dare say I am credulous,” said Lomas. “But I draw the line
somewhere. If you ask me to believe that a fellow shammed epilepsy,
cut himself and spent a fiver to pick up a pebble, I draw it there.”
“That’s the worst of credulity. It’s always sceptical in the wrong
place. What was this pebble like?”
Lomas reached for a writing-pad and drew the likeness of a fat cigar,
upon which parallel to each other were two zigzag lines. “A greenish
bit of stone, with those marks in red. That’s the Museum man’s
description. If it had been old, which it isn’t, it would have been a
_galet coloré_. And if it had come from Australia, which it didn’t,
it would have been a chu-chu something----”
“Churinga.”
“That’s the word. The pundit from the Museum says it came from
Borneo. They don’t know what the marks mean, but the thing is a sort
of mascot in Borneo: a high-class insurance policy. The fellow who
holds it can’t die. So the simple Bornese don’t part with their
pebbles easily. There isn’t another known in Europe. That’s where it
hurts the Museum pundit. He says it’s priceless. I told him marbles
were selling thirty a penny. Nice round marbles, all colours.”
“Yes. You have no soul, Lomas.”
“I dare say. I’m busy.”
“With toxic spouses!” said Reggie reproachfully. “Green, was it?
Green quartz, I suppose, or perhaps jade with the pattern in oxide of
iron.”
“And I expect some child has swopped it for a green apple.”
“Lomas dear,” Mr. Fortune expostulated, “this is romance. Ten
thousand years ago the cave men in France painted these patterns on
stones. And still in Borneo there’s men making them for magic. Big
magic. A charm against death. And some bright lad comes down to
Bloomsbury and throws a fit to steal one. My hat, he’s the heir of
all the ages! I could bear to meet this epilept.”
“I couldn’t,” said Lomas. “I have to meet quite enough of the
weak-minded officially.”
But Reggie Fortune was deaf to satire. “A magic stone,” he murmured
happily.
“Oh, take the case by all means,” said Lomas. “I’m glad I’ve brought
you something that really interests you. Let me know when you find
the pebble,” and announcing that he had a day’s work to do on the
morrow, he went with an air of injury to bed.
It was an enemy (a K.C. after a long and vain cross-examination) who
said that Mr. Fortune has a larger mass of useless knowledge than any
man in England. Mr. Fortune has been heard to explain his eminence in
the application of science to crime by explaining that he knows
nothing thoroughly but a little of everything, thus preserving an
open mind. This may account for his instant conviction that there was
something for him in the matter of the magic stone. Or will you
prefer to believe with Superintendent Bell that he has some singular
faculty for feeling other men’s minds at work, a sort of sixth sense?
This is mystical, and no one is less of a mystic than Reggie Fortune.
To the extreme discomfort of Lomas he filled the time which their car
took in reaching London with a lecture on the case. He found that
three explanations were possible. The stone might have been stolen by
some one who believed in its magical power, or by some one who
coveted it for a collection, or by some one who meant to sell it to a
collector.
“Why stop?” Lomas yawned. “It might have been snapped up by a
kleptomaniac or an ostrich or a lunatic. Or perhaps some chap wanted
to crack a nut. Or a winkle. Does one crack winkles?”
Reggie went on seriously. He thought it unlikely that the thing was
stolen as a charm.
“Oh, don’t lose heart,” said Lomas. “Why not put it down to a brave
from Borneo? The original owner comes over in his war paint to claim
his long lost magic stone. Malay runs amuck in Museum. That would go
well in the papers. Very plausible too. Compare the mysterious
Indians who are always hunting down their temple jewels in novels.”
“Lomas, you have a futile mind. Of course some fellow might want it
for an amulet. It’s not only savages who believe in charms. How many
men carried a mascot through the war? But your epileptic friend with
the New York address don’t suggest this simple faith. I suspect a
collector.”
“Well, I’ll believe anything of collectors,” Lomas admitted. “They
collect heads in Borneo, don’t they? I know a fellow who collects
shoes. Scalps or stamps or press-cuttings, it’s all very sad.”
“I want you to cable to New York and verify this epilept. Which I do
not think. I’m going to look about for him here.”
“My dear Fortune!” Lomas sat up and put up an eyeglass to examine
him. “Are you well? This is zeal. But what exactly are you looking
for?”
“That’s what I want to find out,” said Reggie, and having left Lomas
at Scotland Yard made a round of calls.
It is believed that there is no class or trade, from bargees to
bishops, in which Reggie Fortune has not friends. The first he sought
was a dealer in exotic curiosities. From him, not without diplomatic
suppression of the truth, Mr. Fortune made sure that magic stones
from Borneo were nothing accounted of in the trade, seldom seen and
never sought. It was obvious that the subject did not interest his
dealer, who could not tell where Mr. Fortune would find such a thing.
Old Demetrius Jacob was as likely a man as any.
“Queer name,” said Mr. Fortune.
“Queer fish,” he was informed. “Syrian, you know, with a bit of
Greek. A lot of odd small stuff goes his way.”
Mr. Fortune filed Demetrius Jacob for reference and visited another
friend, a wholesale draper, whose real interest in life was his
collection of objects of savage art. A still more diplomatic economy
of the truth brought out the fact that the draper did not possess a
magic stone of Borneo, and would do and pay a good deal to obtain
one. He was excited by the mere thought. And Reggie Fortune watching
him as he expanded on the theme of magic stones, said to himself:
“Yes, old thing, a collector is the nigger in this wood pile.” The
draper returning to the cold reality mourned that his collection
lacked this treasure, and cheered up again at the thought that nobody
else had it.
“Nobody?” said Reggie Fortune. “Really?”
The draper was annoyed. “Well, I know old Tetherdown hasn’t. And he
has the best collection in England. Of course with his money he can
do anything.”
Reggie Fortune neatly diverting the conversation to harmless
subjects, consulted his encyclopædic memory about old Tetherdown.
Lord Tetherdown was a little gentleman of middle age, reputed by
connoisseurs to be the shabbiest in London. He inherited great wealth
and used it by living like a hermit and amassing an anthropological
collection. That afternoon saw Reggie Fortune knocking at a little
house in a back street of Mayfair. The door was opened by an old
woman in an overall. Lord Tetherdown was not at home. Reggie Fortune
exhibited great surprise. “Really? But I counted on seeing him. Can
you tell me when he’ll be back?”
“No, I can’t; he’s away.”
It appeared to Reggie that she was ill at ease. “Away?” he repeated.
“Oh, that’s absurd. When did he go?”
“He was off last night.”
“Really? But didn’t he say when he’d be back?”
“No, he didn’t, young man.”
“It’s amazing.”
“I don’t know what call you have to be amazed, neither,” she cried.
“But I counted on seeing him to-day,” Reggie explained. “I had better
come in and write a note.”
The old woman did not seem to think so, but she let him in and took
him to a little room. Reggie Fortune caught his breath. For the place
was ineffably musty. It was also very full. There was hardly space
for both him and the woman. Cabinets lined the walls; and in the
corners, in between the cabinets, on top, on the mantel and the
window sill were multitudes of queer things. A large and diabolical
mask of red feathers towered above him, and he turned from it to see
a row of glittering little skulls made of rock crystal and lapis
lazuli and carved with hideous realism. On the door hung a cloak made
of many coloured bird skins and a necklace of human teeth with the
green image of a demon as pendant. A golden dragon with crystal eyes
gaped on the sideboard over the whisky decanter.
Reggie showed no surprise. He slid into a chair by the table and
looked at the old woman. “I don’t know what you want that you can’t
say,” she grumbled, unlocked a desk and put before him one sheet of
paper, one envelope, pen and ink.
“Well, it’s about a curio,” Reggie smiled upon her.
“The good Lord knows we’ve enough of them,” she cried. “That’s what
took him away now.”
Reggie showed no interest and naturally, while he went on writing
that Mr. Fortune was anxious to consult Lord Tetherdown on a matter
of anthropology, she went on talking. He learnt that it was a
gentleman coming about a curio who took Lord Tetherdown away the
night before, and she made it plain that she thought little of
gentlemen who came about curios.
“Didn’t he say when he would be back?” Reggie asked as he stood up to
go.
“Not a word, I tell you.”
“Well, that’s strange.”
“Strange, is it? It’s plain you don’t know the master, young man.
He’d go to the end of kingdom come for his pretties.”
“I hope he hasn’t gone as far as that,” said Reggie. He saw as he
turned the corner of the street that she was still looking after him.
“She knows more than she says,” he told himself, “or she’s more
rattled than she’ll let on.” He went to Scotland Yard.
Lomas was pleased to see him. “And how do you like marbles, Fortune?”
he said genially. “An intellectual game, I’m told. The glass ones are
the trumps now, Bell says. I’m afraid you’re old-fashioned. Stone
isn’t used by the best people.”
“Breakin’ upon this merry persiflage,” said Reggie, “have you heard
from New York?”