Sir Clinton’s Solution
“It’s a pleasure to meet Sir Clinton again,” Joan observed when they
had finished their coffee. “For the last ten days or so, I’ve been
dealing with a man they call the Chief Constable. I don’t much care
for him. These beetle-browed officials are not my sort. Too stiff and
overbearing for me, altogether.”
Sir Clinton laughed at the hit.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve invited one of your aversions to join us. In
fact, I think I hear him at the door now.”
“Inspector Armadale?” Joan demanded. “Well, I’ve nothing against him.
You never let him get a word in edgeways at our interviews. Grasping,
I call it.”
The door opened and the Inspector was ushered in. As he entered, a
glance passed between him and Sir Clinton. In reply, Armadale made a
furtive gesture which escaped the rest of the company.
“Passed in his checks,” Sir Clinton interpreted it to himself. “That
clears the road.”
Joan poured out coffee for the Inspector and then turned to the Chief
Constable.
“Cecil promised that you’d tell us all about everything. Don’t linger
over it. We’re all in quite good listening form and we look to you not
to be boring. Proceed.”
Sir Clinton refused to be disconcerted.
“Inspector Armadale’s the last authority on the subject,” he remarked.
“He’s got the confession of the master mind in his pocket. I haven’t
seen it yet. Suppose I give you my account of things, and the
Inspector will check it for us where necessary? That seems a fair
division of labour.”
“Very fair,” Una Rainhill put in. “Now, Joan, be quiet and let’s get
on with the tale.”
“Before the curtain goes up,” Sir Clinton suggested, “you’d better
read your programmes. First of all you find the name of Thomas
Pailton, _alias_ Cocoa Tom, _alias_, J. B. Foss, _alias_ The Wizard of
Woz: a retired conjurer, gaolbird, confidence-trick sharp, etc. As I
read his psychology, he was rather a weak character and not over
straight even in dealing with his equals. In the present play, he was
acting under the orders of a gentleman of much tougher fibre.
“The next name on the programme is Thomas Marden. The police have no
records of his early doings, but I suspect that Mr. Marden had cause
to bless his luck in this respect, rather than his honesty. I’m sure
he wasn’t a prentice hand. As to his character, I believe he was
rather a violent person when roused, and he had a deplorable lack of
control over a rather bad temper.
“The third name is . . . ?”
“Stephen Racks,” the Inspector supplied in answer to Sir Clinton’s
glance of inquiry.
“_Alias_ Joe Brackley,” Sir Clinton continued. “I think we’ll call him
Brackley, since that was the name you knew him by, if you knew him at
all. He was nominally Foss’s chauffeur. Actually, I think, he was the
brain of the gang and did the planning for them.”
“That’s correct,” the Inspector interpolated.
“Mr. Brackley, I think, was the most deliberately unscrupulous of them
all,” Sir Clinton continued. “A really dangerous person who would
stick at nothing to get what he wanted or to cover his tracks.
“Then, last of all, there’s a Mr. Blank, whose name I do not know, but
who at present is under arrest in America for forging the name of Mr.
Kessock the millionaire. He was employed by Mr. Kessock in some
capacity or other which gave him access to Mr. Kessock’s
correspondence. I’ve no details on that point as yet.”
“This is the kind of stuff I always skip when I’m reading a detective
story,” complained Joan. “Can’t you get along to something interesting
soon?”
“You’re like the Bellman in the ‘Hunting of the Snark,’ Joan. ‘Oh,
skip your dear uncle!’ Well, I skip, as you desire it. I’ll merely
mention in passing that an American tourist came here a while ago and
asked to see the Leonardo medallions, because he was writing a book on
Leonardo. He, I believe, was Mr. Blank from America; and his job was
to see the safe in the museum and note its pattern.
“I must skip again; and now we reach the night of the robbery in the
museum. You know what happened then. Mr. Foss came to me with his tale
about overhearing some of you planning a practical joke. His story was
true enough, I’ve no doubt; but it set me thinking at once. I may not
have shown it, Joan, but I quite agreed with you about his methods. It
seemed a funny business to come straight to the police over a thing of
that sort. Of course he had his reason ready; but it didn’t ring quite
true, somehow. I might have put it down to tactlessness, if it hadn’t
suggested something else to my mind.
“That pistol-shot which smashed the lamp was too neatly timed for my
taste. It was fired by some one who knew precisely when the keeper was
going to be gripped, and it was fired just in time to get ahead of
Foxton Polegate in the raid on the show-case. That meant, if it meant
anything, that the man who fired the shot was a person who knew of the
practical joke. But on the face of it, Foss was the only person who
knew about the joke, bar the jokers themselves. So naturally I began
to suspect Foss of having a hand in the business. It was the usual
mistake of the criminal—trying to be too clever and throw suspicion on
to some one else.
“Now Foss wasn’t the man in white, obviously; for he came to see me
while the man-hunt was still in full cry. So at that stage in the
business I was fairly certain that at least two people were in the
game: Foss and some one else, who was the man in white. That looked
like either the valet or the chauffeur, since they were the only
people I knew about who were directly associated with Foss while he
was here. But this incognito business at the masked ball had made it
possible for outsiders to come in unrecognized; so the man in white
might be a confederate quite outside our range of knowledge. One
couldn’t assume that either Marden or Brackley was in the show at all.
“I learned, later on, that Foss had synchronized his watch with yours,
Cecil; and that, of course, made it pretty plain that he was in the
game. There was also another bit of evidence which suggested
something. If either the valet or the chauffeur was the confederate,
then they could easily enough have found out from the servants what
costume Maurice meant to wear that night—a few questions to his valet
would have got the information—and they could have chosen the Pierrot
costume for their own runner in order to confuse things. That
suggested that Foss’s servants might be in the business; but it proved
nothing really. The white Pierrot costume was chosen mainly for its
conspicuousness, I’m sure.
“Now I come to the disappearance of the man in white.”
“Thank goodness!” Joan commented. “It gets more interesting as it goes
on, doesn’t it? That’s something to be thankful for.”
“One does one’s best,” Sir Clinton retorted, unperturbed. “Now the
vanishing of that fellow could be accounted for in various ways, so
far as I could see. First of all, he might have slipped down the rope
into the little lake. That was what the rope was meant to suggest,
obviously. But unfortunately one of the hunters had the wit to keep an
eye on the lake; and it was pretty clear the man in white didn’t go
that way. Then there was the possibility of his being concealed in the
cave; but that was ruled out by the search of the cave. Thirdly, the
gang might have hit on the opening of one of the secret passages of
Ravensthorpe. Candidly, I ruled that out also. It seemed next door to
impossible. But if you exclude all these ways, then there seem to be
only two possibilities left. The first of these depends on the man in
white having a confederate in the cordon who let him slip through. But
the chance of a slip-through of that sort escaping the notice of the
rest of the hunters seemed very small. It seemed to me too risky a
business for them to have tried.
“The final possibility was that the fugitive disguised himself as
something else. Well, what disguise would be the best? It’s a question
of camouflage, and they had only a few seconds to do the camouflaging.
You can’t dress up as a drain-pipe or a garden-seat in a couple of
seconds. So we come down to something that’s human in shape but isn’t
really human. In a garden, you might pretend to be a scarecrow; but up
on that terrace a scarecrow was out of the question. And then I
remembered the statues.
“Suppose somebody had gone up there in the evening and had chiselled
one of the statues off its base. The broken marble could be heaved
over into the little lake and the bare pedestal would be left for the
fugitive.”
“I ought to have thought of that,” Michael interjected. “It’s so
obvious when you think of it. But I didn’t think of anything like that
at the time.”
“My impression then,” Sir Clinton continued, “was that the man in
white had white tights on under his Pierrot dress. His face and hands
were whitened, also; so that as soon as he stripped off his jacket and
trousers, he was sufficiently statuelike to pass muster in that light.
His eyes would have given him away in daylight; but under the moon
he’d only got to shut them and you’d hardly notice his whitened
eyelashes. In the few moments that you left him, while the cordon was
being formed, he took off his Pierrot things, wrapped them round the
weight he’d used in breaking the case’s glass, and pitched the lot
over the balustrade. That would account for the splash that was
heard.”
Sir Clinton paused to light a cigarette.
“That theory seemed to fit most of the evidence, as you see. It
explained why they’d chosen that particular place for the disappearing
trick; and it accounted for the splash as well. Further, it suggested
that there was a third man in the gang: the man who smashed down the
real statue. They’d leave that bit of work to the last moment for fear
of the damage being seen accidentally beforehand. Now Foss was at the
masked ball, so it wasn’t he. The man in white might need all his
powers in that race, so it was unlikely that he’d been up there on a
heavy bit of manual labour just then, for the shifting of that statue,
even in pieces, can have been no light affair. That suggested the use
of a third confederate. But I’m no wild enthusiast for theories. I
simply noted the coincidence that this theory demanded three men and
that Foss’s party contained three men: himself, the valet, and the
chauffeur.
“Now, for reasons which I’ll give you immediately, it seemed likely
that this affair was only a first step in a more complicated plan. On
the spur of the moment, I decided it was worth while taking a hand. So
I got a patrol set round the spinney and issued orders that no one was
to go up to the terrace until I’d been over the ground. I took good
care that every one knew about this; and I took equally good care not
to go there myself. I rather advertised the thing, in fact. That was
to assure the fellows that no one had seen the empty pedestal. They
were pretty certain to rout about for information; and they’d hear on
all sides that no one had been up to the terrace. That left the thing
open for them to try again if they wanted to.
“Another thing confirmed my notions. When the Inspector was dragging
the lake, he got a largish piece of marble out of it. That fitted in
with the view that the broken statue was down in the water in
fragments, hidden by the weeds. It all fitted fairly well, you see.
“Then came another bit of evidence—two bits, in fact. The village
drunkard put abroad some yarn about seeing a White Man in the woods;
and a little girl saw a Black Man. That might have been mere fancy. Or
it might have been true enough. When the hunters had gone, the
pseudo-statue would come down off his pedestal. Suppose he wandered
off into the wood and was seen by old Groby. There’s your White Man.
But he couldn’t possibly get back to the house in white tights. He’d
want to get in as quietly as possible. What about a set of black
tights under the white ones? When he took off the white ones, he’d be
next door to invisible among shadows; and he’d be able to sneak in
through a window in the servants’ wing—in the shadow of the
house—fairly inconspicuously. Perhaps that’s how it happened.”
“That was it,” the Inspector confirmed, looking up from a sheet of
paper which he was consulting from time to time.
Sir Clinton acknowledged the confirmation but refused to lay much
stress on the point.
“I thought it possible,” he said, “but it was merely a guess. In
itself the evidence wasn’t worth anything; but it fitted well enough
into the hypothesis I’d made.”
He turned to the Inspector.
“Did you get the five medallions as I expected?”
Armadale put his hand into his pocket and withdrew the five discs of
gold, which he handed over to the Chief Constable. Sir Clinton took
the sixth medallion from his own pocket and laid the whole set on the
table beside him.
“They say,” he went on, “that the more _outré_ a crime is, the easier
it is to find a solution for it. I shouldn’t like to assert that in
every case. But there’s no harm in paying especial attention to the
bizarre points in an affair. If you cast your minds back to the case
as it presented itself to us on the night of the masked ball, you’ll
recall one point which undoubtedly seemed out of the common.”
He glanced round the circle of listeners, but no one ventured to
interrupt.
“Here was a gang of thieves bent on stealing something. One of
them—Foss—knew that in the show-case there were three medallions and
three replicas. The medallions were of enormous value; the replicas
were worth next to nothing. Foss, I was sure—and it turned out
afterwards that I was right—Foss knew that the real medallions were in
the top row and that the replicas were in the lower row.”
He arranged the six discs on the table as he spoke.
“And yet, with that knowledge, it was the replicas which they stole
and not the real medallions. Amazing, at first sight, isn’t it? To my
mind it was much more bizarre than the vanishing trick. And,
naturally, it was on that point in the case that I fixed my attention.
These weren’t blunderers, remember. The rest of the business showed
that they were anything but that. The way they had seized upon that
practical joke to serve their ends was quite enough to prove that
there was a good brain at the back of the thing. That joke wasn’t in
their original programme, and yet they’d taken it in their stride and
turned it to account in a most ingenious way. They weren’t the sort of
people who would make a mistake about the positions of the replicas.
If they took the electrotypes instead of the real things, it was
because the electrotypes were what they wanted.
“Why did they want them? That question seemed to thrust itself forward
in front of all the others which suggested themselves in the case; and
it was that question that had to be answered before one could see
light anywhere.”
He leaned forward in his chair and glanced at the two rows of
medallions on the table before him for a moment.
“If one thinks about a point long enough, it often happens that all of
a sudden a fresh idea turns up and fits into its place. I think it was
probably the notion of the pseudo-statue that put me on to this
affair. There you had a fraud imposing itself on some people simply
because they had no reason to suppose that any fraud was intended. I
doubt if any of you people, Mr. Clifton, gave a second glance at these
statues that night. You simply regarded them as statues, because you
knew that statues were on all the pedestals in normal circumstances.
You were off your guard on that particular point.
“That idea seemed to give me the key to this mysterious preference for
replicas. If they’d taken the real medallions that night, with all the
fuss that was made, then you Ravensthorpe people would have known at
once that the true Leonardos had gone; and, naturally, with the theft
of them dated to a minute, the risk was considerable. But suppose that
the theft of the replicas was only the first stage in the game, what
then? They had the replicas; you had the real medallions. Foss, as the
agent for Kessock, had every excuse for asking to see the medallions
again.
“Now at that point there would come in the very same subconscious
assurance that played into their hands in the case of the statue.
Maurice would know for certain that the three things in his safe were
the real Leonardos. He’d fish them out for Foss to examine; and he’d
put them back in the safe without any minute inspection when Foss
handed them over. The replicas would be off the board—lost, gone for
good. He’d never think of them.”
Sir Clinton glanced mischievously at Joan before continuing.
“As it happens, I can do a little parlour conjuring myself. It comes
in handy when one has to live up to the part of Prospero or anything
like that. I know what one can do in the way of palming things, and so
forth. And as soon as I hit on this idea of the case, I saw how things
might be managed. Foss would fake up some excuse for handling the real
medallions; and during that handling, he’d substitute the replicas for
the Leonardos. Maurice, having apparently had the things under his
eyes all the time, would never think of examining the medals which he
got back from Foss’s hands. He’d simply put them back into the safe.
Foss would have the real things in his pocket; the deal would fall
through; Foss & Co. would retire gracefully . . . and it was a hundred
to one that no minute examination of the medallions in the safe would
be made for long enough. By that time it would be impossible either to
find Foss or to bring the thing home to him even if you did find him.
“You see the advantages? First of all, the only theft would be one of
the replicas, which no one cared much about. Second, the date of the
real theft would be left doubtful. And third, this plan gave them any
amount of time to dispose of the real things before any suspicions
were aroused at all, as regards the genuine Leonardos. My impression
is that they had a market for them: some scoundrelly collector who’d
pay high to have the Leonardos even if he couldn’t boast publicly that
he had them.”
“That’s correct, sir,” the Inspector interposed. “Brackley had a
market, but he wouldn’t tell me who the collector was.”
Joan rose from her chair, crossed the room to a small table, and
solemnly came back with a tray.
“Have some whisky and soda,” she suggested to Sir Clinton.
“You find the tale rather dry?” he inquired solicitously. “Life’s like
that, you know. Inspector Armadale really needs this more than I do.
He’s been a long time out in the cold up yonder. I’ll take some later
on, if you don’t mind.”
Joan presented the tray to the Inspector, who helped himself.
Sir Clinton waited till he was finished with the siphon and then
continued, addressing himself to Joan:
“Perhaps the story has lacked feminine interest up to this point.
We’ll hurry on to the day when you, Maurice, and Foss had your talk on
the terrace. Down below was Foss’s motor, serving two purposes. It was
there if they had to make a bolt, should things go wrong. It also
allowed the chauffeur, making a fake repair, to watch what went on in
the museum. I gather that he meant to keep an eye on his confederates.
“At that moment, Foss had the three replicas in his pocket; and he was
looking for some excuse to carry out the exchange. He led the
conversation on to Japanese swords and so forth. I suspect Brackley
supplied the basis for that matter, enough to allow Foss to make a
show of information. Then Foss brought up the subject of his ‘poor
man’s collection’ of rubbings. I’ve no doubt he forced a card
there—induced Maurice to offer to let him take rubbings of the
medallions. That would be child’s play to an ex-conjurer with a smart
tongue. He got his way, anyhow.
“But then came a complication he hadn’t expected. You, Joan, got
interested in this taking of rubbings. I admit it was hard lines on
the poor fellow. It was the last thing he could have anticipated.”
“Thanks for the compliment!” Joan interjected, ironically.
“Well, it wasn’t in the plan, anyhow,” Sir Clinton went on. “It meant
an extra pair of eyes to deceive when the exchange was made; and as
the exchange was the crucial move in the whole scheme, your
company—strange to say—was not appreciated. In fact, you made Mr. Foss
nervous. He wasn’t quite as cool as he could have wished; and my
reading of the situation is that he bungled his first attempt at the
substitution and had to prolong the agony by pretending to take a
second rubbing of the first medallion he got into his hands.
“He had more luck with his second attempt, even with your eagle eyes
on him; and he stowed away Medallion Number One in one of the special
concealed pockets which he had in his clothes. But he desired
intensely to be relieved of your company; and he proceeded to draw
your attention to some one calling you. Of course that voice existed
solely in his own imagination. But it was quite as effective as a real
voice in getting you to leave the museum; and then there was one
onlooker the less to bother him in his sleight-of-hand.”
Sir Clinton paused to light a cigarette before continuing. Inspector
Armadale, laying down his paper, turned to the Chief Constable as
though expecting at this point to hear something which he did not
already know.
“The next stage is one of pure conjecture,” Sir Clinton went on. “Foss
is dead, and I haven’t had any opportunity of interrogating the other
actor: Marden.”
Inspector Armadale smiled grimly at the way in which the Chief
Constable evaded any reference to the valet’s murder.
“Possibly Inspector Armadale has a note or two on the matter,” Sir
Clinton pursued, “but even if he has, it can only be something like
‘what the soldier said,’ for Brackley could have merely second-hand
evidence at the best. Take the case as the Inspector and I found it.
Foss was dead, stabbed with the Muramasa sword. On its handle we found
the finger-prints of Maurice, and no others. Under Foss’s body we
found an undischarged automatic pistol with his finger-prints on the
butt. We noticed curious pockets in Foss’s clothes; but they were
empty. And we found no trace of any of the medallions about the place.
Maurice was _non est inventus_—we could see no sign of him. Marden had
cut his hand in a fall against one of the cases. He’d wrapped it up
with his handkerchief in a rough sort of way. The case containing the
Muramasa sword was open, and the sheath was lying in it, empty, of
course.
“It’s only fair to Inspector Armadale to tell you that he suspected
Marden immediately. What I’m going to give you is merely the case as
it presented itself to me.”
Armadale looked slightly flustered by this tribute to his
perspicacity. He glanced suspiciously at the Chief Constable, but Sir
Clinton’s face betrayed no ironical intention.
“He may be pulling my leg again,” the Inspector reflected, “but at
least it’s decent of him to go out of his way to say that. It’s true
enough, but not exactly in the way that they’ll understand it.”
“Marden had a very complete story to tell us. He’d come to the door of
the museum with a parcel which Foss had sent him to post. He’d found
the address was incomplete and came back to get Foss to finish it. He
stayed outside the door and he heard a quarrel between Maurice and
Foss, ending in a struggle. When he burst into the room, Maurice was
disappearing at the other end and Foss was dead on the floor. Then
Marden slipped on the parquet, fell against a show-case, cut his hand,
and tied it up in his handkerchief. Then he gave the alarm.
“The parcel with the incomplete address was the first thing that
interested me. We opened it and we found in it a cheap wrist-watch in
perfect condition, apparently. The Inspector tried it for
finger-prints. There weren’t any of any sort, either on the watch or
the box in which it was enclosed. That seemed a bit rum to us both.
“The only thing that seemed to fit the case was this. Suppose Marden
wanted to keep an eye on Foss. This parcel would give him an excuse of
bursting in on his employer at any moment. Assume that Marden himself
had made up the parcel and that Foss had nothing to do with it. It was
wrapped up in paper on which the address was written. You know how one
writes on a parcel—not the least like one’s normal handwriting if the
paper is crumpled a bit in the wrapping-up. That would make a bit of
rough forgery of Foss’s writing fairly easy. Further, if by any chance
the parcel fell into the hands of the police—as actually
happened—there was nothing inside to show that Foss hadn’t wrapped it
up himself. Nobody else’s finger-marks were on it at all. It had been
wrapped up with gloved hands. And the contents were innocent enough:
only a watch being sent to a watch-maker to be regulated, perhaps. If
it had been a letter, then to carry the thing through properly they’d
have had to forge Foss’s writing all the way through, in order to make
it look genuine if it happened to be opened.
“But if that theory were adopted, a lot followed from it. First and
foremost, it meant that Marden was the boss and his nominal employer
was an underling in the gang, who would have to back up any story that
Marden liked to tell. Secondly, it pointed to the fact that Marden
didn’t trust Foss much. He wanted an excuse to get at Foss at any
moment—which is hardly in the power of a simple valet. When he thought
Foss needed watching, all he had to do was to trot up with his little
parcel, just to let Foss see that he was under observation. Thirdly,
this dodge was worked at a crucial stage in the game—when the replicas
were being exchanged for the Leonardo medallions. Doesn’t that suggest
that Marden didn’t trust Foss very much? It looks as if Marden was
none too sure that he’d get a square deal from Foss once the real
medallions had changed hands. Am I right in my guesses, Inspector?”
“They didn’t trust Foss to play straight, sir. Brackley was quite open
about that.”
“And it was Brackley’s idea? The parcel, I mean. It looks as if it
came from his mint.”
“He said so, sir. Foss knew nothing about it, of course. It was a
surprise for him. They knew he’d have to pretend he knew all about it
when Marden brought it to him.”
“That finishes the parcel,” Sir Clinton continued. “But it had
suggested one or two things, as you see. The most important thing,
from my point of view, was that this gang was not exactly a band of
brothers. Two of them suspected the third. Possibly the split was even
more extensive.
“The next thing was the valet’s story. According to him, Maurice
stabbed Foss, after a quarrel which Marden couldn’t overhear clearly.
Unfortunately for that tale, the blow that killed Foss was a powerful
one. What Marden didn’t know was that Maurice had sprained his wrist
that morning. I doubt if a sprained wrist could have achieved that
stab. There was no proof, of course; but it seemed just a little
doubtful. Then Marden said that from the door he couldn’t catch the
words of the quarrel, although the voices were angry in tone. I tried
the experiment myself later; and it’s perfectly easy to overhear
what’s said in the museum from the position Marden said he was in. So
that was a deliberate lie. On that basis, one could eliminate most of
Marden’s tale as being under suspicion.
“What really happened in the museum? Maurice is gone, Foss is dead,
Marden won’t tell. One has just to reconstruct the thing as plausibly
as one can. My impression—it’s only conjecture—is this. Marden was
listening at the door and he could see some parts of the room, since
the door was ajar. Foss had succeeded in substituting one replica for
a real medallion. To get Maurice’s eye off him, he asked to see the
Muramasa sword. Maurice went to get it, leaving Foss at his
rubbing—visible to Maurice all the time. Foss made the exchange of the
second replica at that moment. Maurice came back with the Muramasa
sword—and of course in doing that, he put his finger-prints on the
handle in drawing the blade from the sheath. Marden, at the door, saw
him do this and made a note of it. Just as Maurice came back to Foss,
he was suddenly taken ill. He had the third real medallion in one
hand; and as he passed Foss he picked up the two replicas—which he
believed to be the other two real medallions. He went to the safe and
hurriedly put on a shelf the two replicas; but the other medallion, in
his other hand, he forgot all about. He shut the safe and staggered
into the secret passage.”
Inspector Armadale looked frankly incredulous.
“Do people take ill all of a sudden like that?” he demanded. “Why
should he want to rush off all at once?”
Sir Clinton swung round on him.
“Ever suffered from rheumatism, Inspector? Or neuralgia? Or
toothache?”
“No,” the Inspector replied with all the pride of perfect health.
“I’ve never had rheumatism and I’ve never had a tooth go wrong in my
life.”
“No wonder you can’t understand, then,” Sir Clinton retorted. “Wait
till you have neuralgia in the fifth nerve, Inspector. Then, if you
don’t know yourself that you’re unfit for human society, your friends
will tell you, soon enough. If you get a bad attack, it’s
maddening—nothing less. Men have suicided on account of it often
enough,” he added, with a meaning glance at Armadale.
A light broke in on the Inspector’s mind.
“So that was it? No wonder I couldn’t put two and two together!” he
reflected to himself; but he made no audible comment.
“Now we come to a mere leap in the dark,” Sir Clinton continued. “I
believe that as soon as Maurice was out of the way, Marden went into
the museum and demanded the medallions from Foss.”
He put down his cigarette and leaned back in his chair. When he spoke
again, a faint tinge of pity seemed to come into his voice.
“Foss was a poor little creature, hardly better than a rabbit in the
big jungle of crime. And the other two were something quite different:
carnivores, beasts of prey. They’d picked him out simply on account of
his one miserable talent: his little trick of legerdemain. He was only
a tool, poor beggar, and he knew it. I expect that when he saw what
sort of company he’d fallen into, he was terrified. That would account
for the pistol he carried.
“His only chance of a fair deal from them lay in the fact that he had
the real medallions in his possession; and he meant to hold on to
them. And when Marden demanded them, Foss revolted. It must have been
like the revolt of a rabbit against a stoat. He hadn’t a chance. He
pulled out his pistol, I expect; and when that appeared, Marden saw
red.
“But Marden, even in a fury, was a person with a very keen mind.
Perhaps he’d thought the thing over beforehand. He was evidently one
of these sub-human creatures with no respect for human life—the things
they label Apaches in Paris. When the pistol came out he was ready for
it. Foss, I’m sure, brandished the thing in an amateurish fashion—he
wasn’t a gunman of any sort. Probably he imagined that the mere sight
of the thing would bring Marden to heel.
“Marden had his handkerchief out at once. Probably he had it ready in
his hand. He picked up the Muramasa sword, leaving no finger-marks of
his own on it through the handkerchief. And . . . that was the end of
Foss.”
Sir Clinton leaned over, selected a fresh cigarette with a certain
fastidiousness, and lighted it before going on with his tale.
“That was the end of his feeble little attempt to get the better of
his confederate. The money in his pocket-book didn’t give him the
escape he’d hoped for. All his precautions to leave no clues to his
real identity played straight into the hands of Marden and Brackley.
“Marden’s immediate problem, once he’d come out of his fury, was
difficult enough. I suspect that his first move was to search Foss and
get the medallions out of his pockets. Then he was faced with the
blood on his hands and on his handkerchief. He had his plan made
almost in a moment. He went across, deliberately slipped—he was an
artist in detail, evidently—smashed against the glass of one of the
cases, cut his hand, and then he felt fairly secure. He wrapped up the
wounds in his handkerchief—and there was the case complete to account
for any stray blood anywhere on his clothes. He tried the safe, for
fear Maurice was lurking inside; and then he gave the alarm.”
Sir Clinton glanced inquiringly at the Inspector, but Armadale shook
his head.
“Brackley had nothing to say about all that, sir. Marden gave him no
details.”
“It’s mostly guess-work,” Sir Clinton warned his audience. “All that
one can say for it is that it fits the facts fairly well.”
“And is that brute in the house now?” Una Rainhill demanded. “I shan’t
go to sleep if he is.”
“Two constables were detached to arrest him,” Sir Clinton assured her.
“He’s not on the premises, you may count on that.”
Inspector Armadale’s face took on a wooden expression, the result of
suppressing a sardonic smile.
“Well, he does manage to tell the truth and convey a wrong impression
with it,” he commented inwardly.
“Now consider the state of affairs after the Foss murder,” Sir Clinton
went on. “Marden and Brackley were in a pretty pickle, it seems to me.
They had three medallions which Marden had got when he rifled Foss’s
body. But _they didn’t know what they’d got_. They weren’t in the
secret of the dots on the replicas. For all they knew—knew for
certain, I mean—Foss might have bungled the affair and the things they
had might be merely replicas. If so, they were no good. I can’t tell
the difference between a medallion and an electrotype myself; but I
believe an expert can tell you whether a thing’s been struck with a
die or merely plated from a mould. These two scoundrels, I take it,
weren’t experts. They couldn’t tell which brand of article they had in
their hands.
“There was only one thing to be done. They’d have to get the whole six
things into their hands, and then they’d be sure of having the three
medallions. So they fell back on their original scheme of plain
burglary. That, I’m sure, had been their first plan. They’d sent their
American confederate to see the safe a long while ago; and no doubt
he’d reported that it was an old pattern. Hence the otophone, by means
of which they could pick the combination lock. The otophone was still
on the premises: I’d left it for them. But they were up against one
thing.
“I’d put a guard night and day on the museum. That blocked any attempt
at burglary unless they were prepared to take the tremendous risk of
manhandling the guard. If the door had merely been locked, I don’t
think it would have given them much trouble. I’m pretty sure there’s a
very good outfit of burglar’s tools mixed up with the tool-kit of the
car, where it would attract no attention. But the guard was a
difficulty in the way.”
Without making it obvious to the others, Sir Clinton made it clear to
Armadale that the next part of his story was meant specially for the
Inspector.
“I’d given you the view I held of the case at that point. I felt
fairly certain I was right. But if I’d been asked to put that case
before a jury, I certainly would have backed out. It was mostly
surmise: accurate enough, perhaps, but with far too little support. A
jury—quite rightly—wants facts and not theories. Could one even
convince them that the vanishing trick had been carried through as I
believed it had? It would have been a bit of a gamble. And I don’t
believe in that sort of gamble. I wanted the thing proved up to the
hilt. And the best way to do that was to catch them actually at work.
“There seemed to me just one weak point in the armour. I counted on a
split between the two remaining confederates, if I could only get a
wedge in somehow. I guessed, rightly or wrongly, that the Foss murder
would strike the chauffeur as a blunder, and that there might be the
makings of friction there. The chauffeur’s watching the museum under
cover of the fake repair to the hood suggested that he mistrusted the
others. I suspected that Marden might have stuck to the stuff he’d
taken off Foss’s body. If Brackley hadn’t got his share of that swag,
he’d be in a weak position. I gambled on that: everything to gain and
nothing much to lose. I had the chauffeur up for examination again;
and when I gave him an opening, he deliberately gave his friend away
by letting me know he’d seen Marden and Foss together just before the
murder. And when he did that, I blurted out to Inspector Armadale that
the guards on the terrace and the museum door were to be discontinued.
Brackley went off with those two bits of exclusive information. He
didn’t tell them to Marden. He saw his way to make the balance even
between himself and his confederate. If he kept his news to himself,
he could burgle the museum safe; get the remainder of the six
medallions; and then he’d be sure of getting his share of the profits.
Neither of them could do without the other in that case.
“In actual practice, Brackley went a stage farther than I’d
anticipated. He schemed to get Marden’s loot as well as the stuff from
the safe. I needn’t go into that side-issue.”
Again Inspector Armadale suppressed his amusement at the way in which
Sir Clinton chose to present the truth.
“The rest of the tale’s short enough,” Sir Clinton went on. “Brackley
determined to burgle the safe. If pursued, he decided, he’d repeat the
vanishing trick on the terrace; for I’d convinced him, apparently,
that the _modus operandi_ of it was still unknown to us. Probably he
went up there and satisfied himself that no one came near, after the
patrol was taken off. He got himself up for the part: whitened his
face; put on white tights; covered himself with Marden’s waterproof as
a disguise and to conceal his fancy dress; put on a big black mask to
hide the paint on his face, lest he should give the show away if an
interruption came. And so he walked straight into the trap I’d laid
for him.
“We saw the whole show from start to finish. I even let Cecil and Mr.
Clifton into the business, so that we’d have some evidence apart from
police witnesses. We saw the whole show from start to finish.”
Sir Clinton broke off his story and glanced at his watch.
“We’ve kept Inspector Armadale up to a most unconscionable hour,” he
said, apologetically. “We really mustn’t detain him till sunrise.
Before you go, Inspector, you might tell us if my solution fits the
confession you got out of Brackley—in the later stages, I mean.”
Inspector Armadale saw his dismissal and rose to his feet.
“There’s really nothing in the confession that doesn’t tally, sir.
Differences in detail, of course; but you were right in the main
outlines of the affair.”
Sir Clinton showed a faint satisfaction.
“Well, it’s satisfactory enough to hear that. By the way, Inspector,
you’d better take my car. It’s in the avenue still. Send a man up with
it, please, when you’ve done with it. There’s no need for you to walk
after a night like this.”
Armadale thanked him; declined Cecil’s offer of another whisky and
soda; and took his departure. When he had gone, Cecil threw a glance
of inquiry at the Chief Constable.
“Do you feel inclined to tell us what you made of my doings? I noticed
that you didn’t drag them out in front of the Inspector.”
Sir Clinton acquiesced in the suggestion.
“I think that’s fairly plain sailing; but correct me if I go wrong.
When you heard of Maurice’s disappearance, you saw that something was
very far amiss. You had a fair idea where he might be, but you didn’t
want to advertise the Ravensthorpe secrets. So you came back one night
and went down there. I don’t know whether you were surprised or not
when you found him; but in any case, you decided that there was no
good giving the newspapers a titbit about secret passages. So you took
him out into the glade by the other entrance to the tunnel; and then
you came up to Ravensthorpe as though you’d come by the first train.
The Inspector tripped you over that point, but it didn’t matter much.
He doesn’t love you, though, I suspect. I’d no desire to make matters
worse by interfering between you; for you seemed able to look after
yourself. Wasn’t that the state of affairs?”
“There or thereabouts,” Cecil admitted. “It seemed the best thing to
do, in the circumstances.”
Sir Clinton showed obvious distaste for discussing the matter further.
He turned to the girls.
“It’s high time you children were in bed. Dawn’s well up in the sky.
You’ve had all the excitement you need, for the present; and a good
sleep seems indicated.”
He gave a faint imitation of a stifled yawn.
“That sets me off,” said Una Rainhill, frankly. “I can hardly keep my
eyes open. Come along, Joan. It’s quite bright outside and I’m not
afraid to go to bed now.”
Joan rubbed her eyes.
“This sort of thing takes more out of one than twenty dances,” she
admitted. “The beginning of the night was a bit too exciting for
everyday use. How does one say ‘Good-night’ in proper form when the
sun’s over the horizon? I give it up.”
With a gesture of farewell, she made her way to the door, followed by
Una. When they had disappeared, Sir Clinton turned to Cecil
Chacewater.
“Care to walk down the avenue a little to meet my car? The fresh air
and all that. I rather like the dawn, myself, when it happens to come
my way without too much exertion.”
Cecil saw that the Chief Constable was giving him an opening if he
cared to take it.
“I’ll come along with you till you meet the car.”
Sir Clinton took leave of Michael Clifton, who obviously intended to
go to bed immediately. As soon as he was well clear of the house,
Cecil turned to the Chief Constable.
“You skated over thin ice several times in that yarn of yours.
Especially the bits about Maurice. Toothache! Neuralgia! That infernal
Inspector of yours swallowed it all down like cat-lap. From his face,
you’d have thought he picked up an absolute cert. that no one else
could see. I almost laughed, at that point.”
He changed suddenly to a serious tone.
“How did you spot what was really wrong with Maurice?”
“One thing led to another,” Sir Clinton confessed. “I didn’t hit on it
all at once. The Fairy Houses set me thinking at the start. One
doesn’t keep toys like that in good repair merely on account of some
old legend. They were quite evidently meant for use. And then, Cecil,
you seemed to have some private joke of your own—not a particularly
nice joke either—about them. That set me thinking. And after that, you
dropped some remark about Maurice having specialized in family
curses.”
“You seem to have a devil of a memory for trifles,” Cecil commented,
in some surprise.
“Trifles sometimes count for a good deal in my line,” Sir Clinton
pointed out. “One gets into the habit of docketing them, almost
without thinking about it. I must have pigeon-holed your talk about
the Fairy Houses quite mechanically. Then later on I remembered that
these things were dotted all over your estate and nowhere else. On
their own ground, the Chacewaters were always within easy distance of
one or other of these affairs. Ancient family curse; curious little
buildings very handy; one brother grinning—yes, you did grin, and
nastily too—at them, when you know he hates another brother like
poison. It was quite a pretty little problem. And so . . .”
“And so?” demanded Cecil, as Sir Clinton stopped short.
“And so I put it out of my mind. It wasn’t the sort of thing I cared
to think much about in connection with Ravensthorpe,” Sir Clinton
said, bluntly. “Besides, it was no affair of mine.”
“And then?”
“Then came Michael Clifton’s story of finding Maurice in one of these
Fairy Houses. And the details about the queer state Maurice was in
when he was found. That came up in connection with a crime; and crimes
are my business. Why does a fellow crawl away into a place like that?
Why does he resent being dragged out of it? Why won’t he even take the
trouble to get up? These were the kind of questions that absolutely
bristled over the whole affair. One couldn’t help getting an inkling.
But that inkling threw no light on the crime in hand, so it was no
affair of mine. I dropped it. But . . .”
“Yes?”
“Maurice wasn’t an attractive character, I’ll admit that. I loathed
the way he was going on. But I like to look on the best side of people
if I can. In my line, one sees plenty of the other side—more than
enough. And by and by I began to see that perhaps all Maurice’s doings
could be explained, if they couldn’t be excused. He was off his
balance.”
“He was, poor devil,” Cecil concurred, with some contrition in his
tone.
“Then came the time I forced you to open the secret passage. Your
methods were the very worst you could have chosen, Cecil. I knew
perfectly well that you hadn’t done anything to Maurice. You’re not
the fratricidal type. But you very evidently had something that you
wanted to conceal behind that door. You were afraid of my spotting
something. The Inspector jumped to the conclusion that it was murder
you were hushing up. By that time I had a pretty good notion that it
was the Ravensthorpe family secret. Once I saw that passage of yours,
dwindling away to almost nothing, the thing was clear enough. With the
Fairy House clue as well, the thing was almost certain. And finally,
you gave the show away completely by what you said beside Maurice’s
body.”
“Chuchundra, you mean?”
“Yes. I remembered—another of these docketed trifles—just what
Chuchundra was. He was the muskrat that tried to make up his mind to
run into the middle of the room, but he never got there. Then I asked
you if the trouble began with A. Of course it did. Agoraphobia. I
suppose when Maurice was a kid he had slight attacks of it—hated to
move about in an open room and preferred to sidle along by the walls
if possible. That was the start of the nickname, wasn’t it?”
Cecil assented with a nod.
“It evidently cropped up in your family now and again. Hence the Fairy
Houses—harbours of refuge when attacks came on. And that underground
cell, where a man could shut himself up tight and escape the horror of
open spaces.”
“I’d really no notion how bad it was with Maurice,” Cecil hastened to
say. “It must have been deadly when it drove him to shoot himself.”
“Something beyond description, I should say,” Sir Clinton said,
gravely.
He glanced over the wide prospects of the park and then raised his
eyes to where great luminous clouds were sailing in stately procession
across the blue.
“Looks peaceful, Cecil, doesn’t it? Makes one rather glad to be alive,
when one gets into a scene like this. And yet, to poor Maurice it was
a mere torture-chamber of nausea and torment, a horror that drove him
to burrowing into holes and crannies, anywhere to escape from the
terrors of the open sky. I don’t suppose that we normal people can
even come near the thing in our imaginations. It’s too rum for our
minds—outside everything we know. Poor devil! No wonder he went off
the rails a bit in the end.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
This transcription follows the text of the edition published by
Grosset & Dunlap in February, 1928. However, the following alterations
have been made to correct what are believed to be unambiguous errors
in the text:
* “usally” was corrected to “usually” (Chapter I).
* “sufficent” was corrected to “sufficient” (Chapter I).
* “inqiringly” was corrected to “inquiringly” (Chapter I).
* “deadful” was corrected to “dreadful” (Chapter II).
* “artifical” was corrected to “artificial” (Chapter II).
* “reassurred” was corrected to “reassured” (Chapter III).
* “even since” was corrected to “ever since” (Chapter IV).
* “That’s was” was corrected to “That was” (Chapter VI).
* “her’s” was corrected to “hers” (Chapter IX).
* “lot’s of” was corrected to “lots of” (Chapter XI).
* “Froggart” was corrected to “Froggatt” (Chapter XIII).
* “spiney” was corrected to “spinney” (Chapter XIV).
* “orginal” was corrected to “original” (Chapter XIV).
* “out of question” was corrected to “out of the question”
(Chapter XV).
* Three occurrences of mismatched quotation marks were repaired.
* One occurrence of a missing em dash was repaired.