‘That will do,’ said Pym at last, replacing the worthless-looking tangle pretty much as he had found it. A little rough sand fell from the flowerpot as he did this, and falling on his knees, he scrupulously removed it from the carpet grain by grain. Then he replaced the flowerpot in the wardrobe, and rising to his feet, closed the door, and handed the candlestick to Senora Murios in silence.
‘What is it?’ she asked, whisperingly, with an added terror in her eyes. ‘You have found something?’
‘Everything, I think,’ said Pym. ‘I shall have more to say downstairs.’
She looked at him wonderingly, but he stood without regarding her, his face still pale, his clean-shaven lips compressed in a hard, straight line, and his eyes veritably blazing. I, who had known him so closely for so many years, had no hint of a doubt about him in my mind, wholly in the dark as I was. He was always a daring theorist, but he treated theory as theory, and was, like all fine thinkers, slow to proclaim certainty.
When we reached the lower room, Macquarrie started and stared at him, his face was so transfigured. Senora Murios stood, with the unextinguished candle in her hand, waiting with a piteous look of bewilderment and fear. Pym planted himself squarely on the hearthrug, facing us all.
‘I have little doubt, madame,’ he said, in the slow and precise way in which a man speaks a language which is not often on his tongue, ‘that Josef Muelvos y Sagra is once a murderer in fact and twice a murderer in intent. I say this with a complete sense of the gravity of the statement. I believe myself to understand the diabolical means by which he has worked, and I trust to take him red-handed in a last attempt. But to succeed, I must have nothing less than your full trust and confidence.’
She looked from Pym to Macquarrie, from Macquarrie to me, and back again to Pym.
‘You are an English gentleman,’ she said, after a painfully undecided pause. ‘Dr Macquarrie is almost my only English friend. He tells me you are all-accomplished, and good and upright. I will take his word.’
‘Thank you,’ said Pym. ‘Tell me,’ he continued, still speaking in Spanish, but addressing himself to Macquarrie, ‘when do you think the child might be safely trusted to sleep in his own room again alone?’
‘Impossible to say,’ the doctor answered.
‘We must wait then,’ said Pym. ‘But when that time comes, Senora Murios, I shall ask you to trust me. In the meantime, I should advise the child’s removal from this house at the earliest safe hour. Other means than those I suspect may be employed against him.’
‘What means do you suspect?’ she asked, panting in her speech.
‘Pardon me if I even seem to add to your suspense,’ said Pym, gravely. ‘I have reason for it. I have only to ask you for one promise. When the time arrives, will you permit this gentleman and myself to watch over your charge for that one night? We shall ask to have the door locked and to be in darkness.’ She gazed at us all three in turn with her pathetic, troubled, and short-sighted look, but she finally assented by a mere inclination of the head. ‘The next matter is entirely at your discretion, but I should be happier to know that for that one night you would be willing to absent yourself from the house.’
Old Pym’s ugly face was handsome with sincerity and earnestness. His sturdy figure and his manly, quiet voice spoke honesty. The Senora held out her hand to him with a sudden impulse.
‘I trust you,’ she said. ‘I trust you altogether.’
We left upon this understanding, and Pym kept his secret to himself. The days went by, and I had from him or from the doctor occasional news of the child. He was recovering fast, but was suffering from a form of eczema, hearing which Pym merely nodded with ‘Just so, just so’. The Spanish Brazilian was still in London, unexpectedly detained, he said, by the prolongation of certain business negotiations. A full month went by before I found myself called upon. Pym came into my rooms at about the end of that time. He was very grave and stern, and I guessed the hour was near.
‘That business with our exotic friend comes off tonight,’ he said. ‘Shall you be ready?’ I was keen-set with curiosity and answered ‘Yes’ at once. ‘All right,’ said Pym. ‘Come down to me at eight o’clock.’
He went away without another word, and left me on the tenterhooks, feeling as if a big battle were announced for next morning. I ought to know that sensation.
Eight o’clock came, and down I went to Pym’s rooms. He was already dressed for out of doors, and when I entered he was toying with a small, short-handled butterfly net. He had fixed a string arrangement by which he could close the mouth of the net at a jerk, and he was testing this with an intentness which seemed absurdly trivial under the circumstances. But when he had fairly satisfied himself as to its smooth working, he folded it up and stowed it away under the light dust coat he wore. I concluded that he had a use for it, and forbore to question him. He armed himself further with a dark lantern, and then announced his readiness to start.
We found a hansom waiting, and the driver, evidently instructed beforehand, set off at a brisk pace. It was a clouded night, and cold, with a touch of wet mist in the air. The hansom set us down at a public-house, and Pym led the way in. He walked through the bar and into a snuggery behind it.
‘We may have to wait here for a little while,’ he said. We sat silent and alone for perhaps half an hour, and then the potman came in with a note. Pym read it and put it in his pocket. ‘The coast is clear,’ he said calmly. ‘We can go now.’
The mist had thickened to a drizzle, and the night had grown bleak and windy, but we were within five minutes’ distance of the house we sought. When we reached it, we found the street door already open and the Senora awaiting us. She was so terribly agitated that she could scarcely speak, but she made us understand that she was supposed to be absent from the house, and had made arrangements to spend the night away from it. Senor Muelvos y Sagra had made a pretence of being out of town, but he had returned that evening, bringing with him a large black despatch box, which he had himself carried to his own room.
‘That will do,’ said Pym. ‘You will act most wisely by showing us to the child’s room at once, and leaving the house immediately. Your servants know that you are here?’
‘I have but one,’ the unhappy lady answered, ‘but I could trust her with my soul.’
A minute later we were in the lower bedroom, in the dark. Two chairs had been placed for us near the window. Pym turned the key in the lock, and then withdrew it. We heard the opening and closing of the street door, and a retreating step in the passage below. The solitary domestic had retired.
Pym had fired the wick of his dark lantern before leaving the hall, and he now set it on the floor at his feet. I could see just a dim glow-worm sort of light shining in the ventilator at the top, but that was all. We sat as still as a pair of ghosts, and could hear each other’s breathing and the ticking of our own and each other’s watches. The time went on with incredible slowness, but my eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, which was faintly illuminated by the street lamps outside, and I could make out everything in the chamber in a dim and shadowy way. Cabs went by with roar and clatter, footsteps passed the house, and voices, and the time dragged along. A clock at some distance struck the quarters with an interminable stretch betwixt each and each.
It was near midnight when a rapid but light footstep came along the street, and paused below. The rattle of a latch-key sounded in the lock, faintly, and the door was stealthily opened and as stealthily closed. Then a step came creaking up the stair, and paused outside our room. A cautious hand tried the door. We heard the sputter of a match, and a light gleamed through the keyhole.
Then the footsteps went murderously stealing upstairs and by-and-by we heard them creaking overhead. I put my heart into my ears and listened. There was a faint noise of hollow iron; then a snap as of a key in a lock, then a pause, then footsteps again, then the creak of a floor, and then a fa
int rasp upon the floor above, as if one dry substance slid upon another. Pym’s hand touched mine, and it was like fire. I turned silently to look at him, and in the dimness saw him beckon upwards. I looked, and there, right above the child’s cot, was a square of faint light, and whilst I was wondering what this might mean, something dropped through it and came slowly down. The thing was living. It had a body shaped like two eggs, a lesser and a larger, and a number of limbs that writhed at the air as if they sought to grasp something. Then I knew the meaning of Pym’s butterfly net. He rose without a sound, and waited for the hideous thing to descend with the net open below it. It came down writhing into the waiting net, there was a faint clicking noise and Pym with a loud voice cried:
‘The lantern! Quick! I have it.’
Before I could snatch the lantern from the floor, the ceiling was shaken as if by a heavy fall.
‘Now,’ said Pym, ‘let us have a look at you.’ I flashed the lantern, and there on the floor, struggling in the butterfly net, was a gigantic spider, covered with coarse, reddish grey hair. ‘Take this,’ said Pym thrusting something into my hand. I felt at once that it was a revolver. ‘If that scoundrel tries to get downstairs, stop him.’
I rushed for the door, forgetting in my excitement that it was locked, and tugged at it until Pym followed with the key. The child was awake, and screamed in an agony of terror. Pym threw open the window, and blew a policeman’s whistle again and again. I stood guarding the stair. Feet came running, and a voice called out to know what was the matter.
‘Attempted murder!’ Pym’s voice answered. ‘Wait there till I let you in.’
Four of us went upstairs, two policemen lantern in hand, and we two spectators of that awful crime. I tried the door, and found it locked. I called, but no answer came. I made a rush and burst it open with one flatfooted thrust, and at that instant a shot sounded.
When we entered, we found that Josef Muelvos y Sagra had gone to his account.
On the bed stood a large despatch box, which opened both at the lid and at the front. It had a false bottom, on which was distributed, to the depth of five or six inches, a coarse grey sand, which had not long ago been sprinkled with water. Below the false bottom burned a spirit lamp. In one corner of the sanded space lay a flowerpot of the size and shape I knew already. Within it was the dead and shrunken body of a mouse.
By this time the quaking domestic was doing her best to soothe the frightened child.
Pym brought up his captive, and delivered a brief lecture to the bewildered officers.
‘This, gentlemen, is the largest and most formidable of the Mygalidae. It is commonly known as the great South American Hairy Spider. It is exceedingly fierce and venomous, though its powers of offence have been greatly exaggerated by the ignorant. Its bite has often been reported as fatal to adults, but I have met with no authentic record. It has been frequently known to be fatal to young children. When irritated, as you observe it is at present by the pressure of this contrivance of wire, it becomes additionally dangerous. It demands a high temperature, and an air not too devoid of moisture. I shall ask you to observe, gentlemen, that this wardrobe has no bottom, and that a hole has been cut through the floor of this apartment. Remark further, that the bed of the child whose life was attempted lies directly below the orifice.’
He detached the handle of the net and dropped the dreadful thing, net and all, into the despatch box, blew out the spirit lamp, and locked up the struggling insect.
We left one officer to guard the body of the suicide-murderer, and we accompanied the other to the local police office, where Pym told his story. When at the close of this wild night we found ourselves at home again, I gave a loose rein to my astonishment.
‘Well,’ said Pym simply, ‘I know no other poison which could produce all the effects that Mac detailed. Then came in that symptom of maddening irritation of the skin. Those short reddish grey hairs come off at a touch and produce precisely that effect. It is that fact which has led to the superstitious belief that mere contact with this insect is fatal. Then the villain himself came from Brazil, which is the home of this particular beast. I was less puzzled to diagnose the case than to work out the means by which the crime might be committed.’
And there is the unvarnished history of John Pym’s first criminal investigation.
CHRISTOPHER QUARLES
Created by Percy James Brebner (1864-1922)
Born in London, the son of a bank manager, Brebner began his own working life in the Stock Exchange but soon decided that writing was more to his taste. His fiction, written under both his own name and the pseudonym Christian Lys, includes examples of many of the most popular genres of the era. The Fortress of Yadasara, first published in 1899, is a ‘lost world’ adventure about a man who stumbles upon a land in the Caucasus where medieval knights still roam; Princess Maritza from 1907 is a Ruritanian tale of an English soldier’s adventures in a fictional European country; The Brown Mask of 1911 is a historical romance about a highwayman in the late seventeenth century. Brebner’s only significant contribution to crime fiction consists of the short stories featuring Christopher Quarles, a brilliant but eccentric professor and amateur detective whose services are regularly sought by the tales’ narrator, the police officer Murray Wigan. As Wigan diligently searches for clues, Quarles, often assisted by his granddaughter Zena, constructs elaborate, seemingly fanciful theories on the basis of slender facts to explain the mysteries they are investigating. Quarles’s theories always turn out to be correct. He appeared in two volumes of stories, Christopher Quarles: College Professor and Master Detective, published in 1914, and The Master Detective which appeared two years later.
THE SEARCH FOR THE MISSING FORTUNE
Whenever he had solved a case, if not to the world’s satisfaction, to his own, Quarles seldom mentioned it again. He professed to think little of his achievement, a pose which I have no doubt concealed a considerable amount of satisfaction and self-complacency. Of the curious case connected with the Bryants, he was, however, rather proud; and, since it resulted in making things easier for Zena and me, I have every reason to be satisfied.
It began in a strange way. A simple looking old man, his clothes a size too large for him, walked into a large pawnbroker’s one day, and, handing him a scarf-pin, asked how much could be given for it. The pin was no use to him. He didn’t want to pawn it, but to sell it. The customer was requested to put a price upon his property, and, after some hesitation, he asked whether twenty pounds would be too much. The man in the shop went into a back room ostensibly to consult his superior, in reality to send for the police. It happened that a quantity of jewellery had been stolen from a well-known society lady a few weeks before, and pawnbrokers had had special notice of the fact; hence the firm’s precaution. The simple old man had offered for twenty pounds a diamond that was worth at least twenty times that amount.
Being interested in the jewel robbery, I was naturally keen to know all that could be discovered about this simple old man, and I will give the story as I told it to Christopher Quarles after I had made the most minute inquiries.
The old man’s name was Sims – James Sims – and for the last year he had resided with a niece, who was married and living at Fulham. Until twelve months ago he had been manservant to an old gentleman named Ottershaw, living at Norbiton, who he said had given him the pin. Mr Ottershaw was a retired Indian servant, who chose to live a lonely life, and was evidently an erratic individual.
Although there was no direct evidence on the point, nothing to show that he had any income beyond his pension, nor any property beyond the old house at Norbiton which he had bought, the idea got abroad that he was an exceedingly wealthy man. Sims declared that he had never seen any evidence of great wealth. His master was aware of what was said, and used to chuckle about it, but he never in any way endorsed the story. At the same time he didn’t deny it, and, indeed, fostered the idea to some
extent by saying that he hoped to keep his anxious relatives waiting until he was a hundred.
These relatives consisted of two nephews and a niece, the children of Mr Ottershaw’s sister, who had been some years his senior. Both the nephews – George and Charles Bryant – were married; the niece was a spinster whose sole interest in life was foreign missions. The Bryants had money, just sufficient to obviate the necessity to work, and, so far as the two brothers were concerned, they were undoubtedly chiefly concerned in waiting for a dead man’s shoes. Miss Bryant hoped to become rich for the sake of her missionary work. All of them were convinced of their uncle’s wealth.
The old gentleman did not attain his century. He caught a chill, pneumonia set in, and in three days he was dead. Sims declared that about a month before his death his master had given him the pin with the remark: ‘You’ve been a good servant, Sims. This is a little gift in recognition of the fact. It’s worth a few pounds, and should you outlive me and find yourself hard up, you can turn it into money.’ Sims had not found himself hard up, he had saved enough to live quietly upon, but his great-niece, of whom he was very fond, was going to be married, and he thought he would turn the pin into money as a nest egg for her.
Mr Ottershaw’s will was a curiosity. It began with a very straightforward statement that the testator was aware that his relatives had for long past been hoping for his death. No doubt they would have come to live with him had he allowed it, to see that his money did not go to strangers. ‘They have their reward,’ the will went on. ‘I leave all I am possessed of to George, Charles, and Mary Bryant in equal shares, without any restrictions whatever. But, since during my lifetime my nephews and niece have undoubtedly speculated concerning my wealth, I feel it would be a pity if my death were to rob them suddenly of so pleasant an occupation. Frankly, I would take what wealth I have with me if I could. This being impossible, I suppose, I have placed it in a safe place, so that, in order to find it, my relatives will still be able to speculate and exercise their ingenuity. For their guidance I may say that I deposited it in this place while alone in one of the rooms of my house at Norbiton, that I did not send it out of the house, yet if the house is burnt down, or pulled down brick by brick, it will not be found.’
More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes Page 31
