The Sleuth of St. James's Square

by Melville Davisson Post

  VIII. The Hole in the Mahogany Panel

  Sir Henry paused a moment, his finger between the pages of the ancientdiary.

  "It is the inspirational quality in these cases," he said, "thatimpresses me. It is very nearly absent in our modern methods of criminalinvestigation. We depend now on a certain formal routine. I rarely finda man in the whole of Scotland Yard with a trace of intuitive impulse tolead him.... Observe how this old justice in Virginia bridged the gapsbetween his incidents."

  He paused.

  "We call it the inspirational instinct, in criminal investigation ...genius, is the right word."

  He looked up at the clock.

  "We have an hour, yet, before the opera will be worth hearing; listen tothis final case."

  The narrative of the diary follows:

  The girl was walking in the road. Her frock was covered with dust. Herarms hung limp. Her face with the great eyes and the exquisite mouthwas the chalk face of a ghost. She walked with the terrible stiffenedcelerity of a human creature when it is trapped and ruined.

  Night was coming on. Behind the girl sat the great old house at the endof a long lane of ancient poplars.

  This was a strange scene my father came on. He pulled up his bigred-roan horse at the crossroads, where the long lane entered theturnpike, and looked at the stiff, tragic figure. He rode home froma sitting of the county justices, alone, at peace, on this midsummernight, and God sent this tragic thing to meet him.

  He got down and stood under the crossroads signboard beside his horse.

  The earth was dry; in dust. The dead grass and the dead leaves madea sere, yellow world. It looked like a land of unending summer, but abreath of chill came out of the hollows with the sunset.

  The girl would have gone on, oblivious. But my father went down into theroad and took her by the arm. She stopped when she saw who it was, andspoke in the dead, uninflected voice of a person in extremity.

  "Is the thing a lie?" she said.

  "What thing, child?" replied my father.

  "The thing he told me!"

  "Dillworth?" said my father. "Do you mean Hambleton Dillworth?"

  The girl put out her free arm in a stiff, circling gesture. "In all theworld," she said, "is there any other man who would have told me?"

  My father's face hardened as if of metal. "What did he tell you?"

  The girl spoke plainly, frankly, in her dead voice, withoutequivocation, with no choice of words to soften what she said:

  "He said that my father was not dead; that I was the daughter of athief; that what I believed about my father was all made up to save thefamily name; that the truth was my father robbed him, stole his besthorse and left the country when I was a baby. He said I was a burden onhim, a pensioner, a drone; and to go and seek my father."

  And suddenly she broke into a flood of tears. Her face pressed againstmy father's shoulder. He took her up in his big arms and got into hissaddle.

  "My child," he said, "let us take Hambleton Dillworth at his word."

  And he turned the horse into the lane toward the ancient house. Thegirl in my father's arms made no resistance. There was this dominatingquality in the man that one trusted to him and followed behind him. Shelay in his arms, the tears wetting her white face and the long lashes.

  The moon came up, a great golden moon, shouldered over the rim of theworld by the backs of the crooked elves. The horse and the two personsmade a black, distorted shadow that jerked along as though it were athing evil and persistent. Far off in the thickets of the hills an owlcried, eerie and weird like a creature in some bitter sorrow. The lanewas deep with dust. The horse traveled with no sound, and the distortedblack shadow followed, now blotted out by the heavy tree tops, and nowonly partly to be seen, but always there.

  My father got down at the door and carried the girl up the steps andbetween the plaster pillars into the house. There was a hall paneledin white wood and with mahogany doors. He opened one of these doors andwent in. The room he entered had been splendid in some ancient time.It was big; the pieces in it were exquisite; great mirrors and oldportraits were on the wall.

  A man sitting behind a table got up when my father entered. Four tallowcandles, in ancient silver sticks, were on the table, and some sheetswith figured accounts.

  The man who got up was like some strange old child. He wore a number oflittle capes to hide his humped back, and his body, one thought, underhis clothes was strapped together. He got on his feet nimbly like aspider, and they heard the click of a pistol lock as he whipped theweapon out of an open drawer, as though it were a habit thus always tokeep a weapon at his hand to make him equal in stature with other men.Then he saw who it was and the double-barreled pistol slipped out ofsight. He was startled and apprehensive, but he was not in fear.

  He stood motionless behind the table, his head up, his eyes hard, histhin mouth closed like a trap and his long, dead black hair hanging oneach side of his lank face over the huge, malformed ears. The man stoodthus, unmoving, silent, with his twisted ironical smile, while my fatherput the girl into a chair and stood up behind it.

  "Dillworth," said my father, "what do you mean by turning this child outof the house?"

  The man looked steadily at the two persons before him.

  "Pendleton," he said, and he spoke precisely, "I do not recognizethe right of you, or any other man, to call my acts into account;however"--and he made a curious gesture with his extended hands "not atyour command, but at my pleasure, I will tell you.

  "This young woman had some estate from her mother at that lady's death.As her guardian I invested it by permission of the court's decree." Hepaused. "When the Maxwell lands were sold before the courthouse I bidthem in for my ward. The judge confirmed this use of the guardian funds.It was done upon advice of counsel and within the letter of the law. Nowit appears that Maxwell had only a life interest in these lands; Maxwellis dead, and one who has purchased the interest of his heirs sues in thecourts for this estate.

  "This new claimant will recover; since one who buys at a judicial sale,I find, buys under the doctrine of caveat emptor--that is to say, at hisperil. He takes his chance upon the title. The court does not insure it.If it is defective he loses both the money and the lands. And so," headded, "my ward will have no income to support her, and I decline toassume that burden."

  My father looked the hunchback in the face. "Who is the man bringingthis suit at law?"

  "A Mr. Henderson, I believe," replied Dillworth, "from Maryland."

  "Do you know him?" said my father.

  "I never heard of him," replied the hunchback.

  The girl, huddled in the chair, interrupted. "I have seen letters," shesaid, "come in here with this man's return address at Baltimore writtenon the envelope."

  The hunchback made an irrelevant gesture. "The man wrote--to inquireif I would buy his title. I declined." Then he turned to my father."Pendleton," he said, "you know about this matter. You know that everystep I took was legal. And with pains and care how I got an order outof chancery to make this purchase, and how careful I was to have thisguardianship investment confirmed by the court. No affair was ever doneso exactly within the law."

  "Why were you so extremely careful?" said my father.

  "Because I wanted the safeguard of the law about me at every step,"replied the man.

  "But why?"

  "You ask me that, Pendleton?"' cried the man. "Is not the wisdom of myprecautions evident? I took them to prevent this very thing; to protectmyself when this thing should happen!"

  "Then," said my father, "you knew it was going to happen."

  The man's eyes slipped about a moment in his head. "I knew it wasgoing to happen that I would be charged with all sorts of crimes andmisdemeanors if there should be any hooks on which to hang them. Becausea man locks his door is it proof that he knows a robber is on the way?Human foresight and the experience of men move prudent persons to areasonable precaution in the conduct of affairs."

  "And what is it," sai
d my father, "that moves them to an excessivecaution?"

  The hunchback snapped his fingers with an exasperated gesture. "I willnot be annoyed by your big, dominating manner!" he cried.

  My father was not concerned by this defiance. "Dillworth," he said, "yousent this child out to seek her father. Well, she took the right road tofind him."

  The hunchback stepped back quickly, his face changed. He sat down inhis chair and looked up at my father. There was here suddenly uncoveredsomething that he had not looked for. And he talked to gain time.

  "I have cast up the accounts in proper form," he said while he studiedmy father, his hand moving the figured sheets. "They are correct andsettled before two commissioners in chancery. Taking out my commissionas guardian, the amounts allowed me for the maintenance and education ofthe ward, and no dollar of this personal estate remains."

  His long, thin hand with the nimble fingers turned the sheets over onthe table as though to conclude that phase of the affair.

  "The real property," he continued, "will return nothing; the purchasemoney was applied on Maxwell's debts and cannot be followed. This newclaimant, Henderson, who has bought up the outstanding title, will takethe land."

  "For some trifling sum," said my father.

  The hunchback nodded slowly, his eyes in a study of my father's face.

  "Doubtless," he said, "it was not known that Maxwell had only a lifeestate in the lands, and the remainder to the heirs was likely purchasedfor some slight amount. The language of the deeds that Hendersonexhibits in his suit shows a transfer of all claim or title, as thoughhe bought a thing which the grantees thought lay with the uncertaintiesof a decree in chancery."

  "I have seen the deeds," said my father.

  "Then," said the hunchback, "you know they are valid, and transfer thetitle." He paused. "I have no doubt that Mr. Henderson assembled theseoutstanding interests at no great cost, but his conveyances are in formand legal."

  "Everything connected with this affair," said my father, "is strangelylegal!"

  The hunchback considered my father through his narrow eyelids.

  "It is a strange world," he said.

  "It is," replied my father. "It is profoundly, inconceivably strange."

  There was a moment of silence. The two men regarded each other acrossthe half-length of the room. The girl sat in the chair. She had got backher courage. The big, forceful presence of my father, like the shadowof a great rock, was there behind her. She had the fine courage of herblood, and, after the first cruel shock of this affair, she faced thetragedies that might lie within it calmly.

  Shadows lay along the walls of the great room, along the gilt frames ofthe portraits, the empty fireplace, the rosewood furniture of ancientmake and the oak floor. Only the hunchback was in the light, behind thefour candles on the table.

  "It was strange," continued my father over the long pause, "that yourfather's will discovered at his death left his lands to you, and no acreto your brother David."

  "Not strange," replied the hunchback, "when you consider what my brotherDavid proved to be. My father knew him. What was hidden from us, whatthe world got no hint of, what the man was in the deep and secret placesof his heart, my father knew. Was it strange, then, that he should leavethe lands to me?"

  "It was a will drawn by an old man in his senility, and under yourcontrol."

  "Under my care," cried the hunchback. "I will plead guilty, if you like,to that. I honored my father. I was beside his bed with loving-kindness,while my brother went about the pleasures of his life."

  "But the testament," said my father, "was in strange terms. Itbequeathed the lands to you, with no mention of the personal property,as though these lands were all the estate your father had."

  "And so they were," replied the hunchback calmly. "The lands had beenstripped of horse and steer, and every personal item, and every dollarin hand or debt owing to my father before his death." The man pausedand put the tips of his fingers together. "My father had given to mybrother so much money from these sources, from time to time, that hejustly left me the lands to make us even."

  "Your father was senile and for five years in his bed. It was you,Dillworth, who cleaned the estate of everything but land."

  "I conducted my father's business," said the hunchback, "for him, sincehe was ill. But I put the moneys from these sales into his hand and hegave them to my brother."

  "I have never heard that your brother David got a dollar of this money."

  The hunchback was undisturbed.

  "It was a family matter and not likely to be known."

  "I see it," said my father. "It was managed in your legal manner andwith cunning foresight. You took the lands only in the will, leaving theimpression to go out that your brother had already received his sharein the personal estate by advancement. It was shrewdly done. But thereremained one peril in it: If any personal property should appear underthe law you would be required to share it equally with your brotherDavid."

  "Or rather," replied the hunchback calmly, "to state the thingcorrectly, my brother David would be required to share any discoveredpersonal property with me." Then he added: "I gave my brother David ahundred dollars for his share in the folderol about the premises, andtook possession of the house and lands."

  "And after that," said my father, "what happened?"

  The hunchback uttered a queerly inflected expletive, like a bitterlaugh.

  "After that," he answered, "we saw the real man in my brother David, asmy father, old and dying, had so clearly seen it. After that he turnedthief and fugitive."

  At the words the girl in the chair before my father rose. She stoodbeside him, her lithe figure firm, her chin up, her hair spun darkness.The courage, the fine, open, defiant courage of the first women of theworld, coming with the patriarchs out of Asia, was in her lifted face.My father moved as though he would stop the hunchback's cruel speech.But she put her fingers firmly on his arm.

  "He has gone so far," she said, "let him go on to the end. Let him omitno word, let us hear every ugly thing the creature has to say."

  Dillworth sat back in his chair at ease, with a supercilious smile. Hepassed the girl and addressed my father.

  "You will recall the details of that robbery," he said in hiscomplacent, piping voice. "My brother David had married a wife, like theguest invited in the Scriptures. A child was born. My brother livedwith his wife's people in their house. One night he came to me to borrowmoney."

  He paused and pointed his long index finger through the doorway andacross the hall.

  "It was in my father's room that I received him. It did not please me toput money into his hands. But I admonished him with wise counsel. Hedid not receive my words with a proper brotherly regard. He flared up inunmanageable anger. He damned me with reproaches, said I had stolen hisinheritance, poisoned his father's mind against him and slipped into thehouse and lands. 'Pretentious and perfidious' is what he called me. Iwas firm and gentle. But he grew violent and a thing happened."

  The man put up his hand and moved it along in the air above the table.

  "There was a secretary beside the hearth in my father's room. It was anold piece with drawers below and glass doors above. These doors had notbeen opened for many years, for there was nothing on the shelves behindthem--one could see that--except some rows of the little wooden boxesthat indigo used to be sold in at the country stores."

  The hunchback paused as though to get the details of his story preciselyin relation.

  "I sat at my father's table in the middle of the room. My brother Davidwas a great, tall man, like Saul. In his anger, as he gesticulated bythe hearth, his elbow crashed through the glass door of this secretary;the indigo boxes fell, burst open on the floor, and a hidden store of myfather's money was revealed. The wooden boxes were full of gold pieces!"

  He stopped and passed his fingers over his projecting chin.

  "I was in fear, for I was alone in the house. Every negro was at adistant frolic. And I was justified in th
at fear. My brother leaped onme, struck me a stunning blow on the chest over the heart, gathered upthe gold, took my horse and fled. At daybreak the negroes found me onthe floor, unconscious. Then you came, Pendleton. The negroes had washedup the litter from the hearth where the indigo about the coins in theboxes had been shaken out."

  My father interrupted:

  "The negroes said the floor had been scrubbed when they found you."

  "They were drunk," continued the hunchback with no concern. "And, doesone hold a drunken negro to his fact? But you saw for yourself thewooden boxes, round, three inches high, with tin lids, and of a diameterto hold a stack of golden eagles, and you saw the indigo still stickingabout the sides of these boxes where the coins had lain."

  "I did," replied my father. "I observed it carefully, for I thought thegold pieces might turn up sometime, and the blue indigo stain might beon them when they first appeared."

  Dillworth leaned far back in his chair, his legs tangled under him, hiseyes on my father, in reflection. Finally he spoke.

  "You are far-sighted," he said.

  "Or God is," replied my father, and, stepping over to the table, he spuna gold piece on the polished surface of the mahogany board.

  The hunchback watched the yellow disk turn and flit and wabble on itsbase and flutter down with its tingling reverberations.

  "To-day, when I rode into the county seat to a sitting of the justices,"continued my father, "the sheriff showed me some gold eagles that yourman from Maryland, Mr. Henderson, had paid in on court costs. Look,Dillworth, there is one of them, and with your thumb nail on the millededge you can scrape off the indigo!"

  The hunchback looked at the spinning coin, but he did not touch it. Hishead, with its long, straight hair, swung a moment uncertain between hisshoulders. Then, swiftly and with a firm grip, he took his resolution.

  "The coins appear," he said. "My brother David must be in Baltimorebehind this suit."

  "He is not in Baltimore," said my father.

  "Perhaps you know where he is," cried the hunchback, "since you speakwith such authority."

  "I do know where he is," said my father in his deep, level voice.

  The hunchback got on his feet slowly beside his chair. And the girl cameinto the protection of my father's arm, her features white like plaster;but the fiber in her blood was good and she stood up to face the thingthat might be coming. After the one long abandonment to tears in myfather's saddle she had got herself in hand. She had gone, like theprinces of the blood, through the fire, and the dross of weakness wasburned out.

  The hunchback got on his feet, in position like a duelist, his hard,bitter face turned slantwise toward my father.

  "Then," he said, "if you know where David is you will take his daughterto him, if you please, and rid my house of the burden of her."

  "We shall go to him," said my father slowly, "but he shall not return tous."

  The hunchback's eyes blinked and bated in the candlelight.

  "You quote the Scriptures," he said. "Is David in a grave?"

  "He is not," replied my father.

  The hunchback seemed to advance like a duelist who parries the firstthrust of his opponent. But my father met him with an even voice.

  "Dillworth," he said, "it was strange that no man ever saw your brotheror the horse after the night he visited you in this house."

  "It was dark," replied the man. "He rode from this door through the gapin the mountains into Maryland."

  "He rode from this door," said my father slowly, "but not through thegap in the mountains into Maryland."

  The hunchback began to twist his fingers.

  "Where did he ride then? A man and a horse could not vanish."

  "They did vanish," said my father.

  "Now you utter fool talk!" cried Dillworth.

  "I speak the living truth," replied my father. "Your brother David andyour horse disappeared out of sound and hearing--disappeared out of thesight and knowledge of men--after he rode away from your door on thatfatal night."

  "Well," said the hunchback, "since my brother David rode away from mydoor--and you know that--I am free of obligation for him."

  "It is Cain's speech!" replied my father.

  The hunchback put back his long hair with a swift brush of the fingersacross his forehead.

  "Dillworth," cried my father, and his voice filled the empty places ofthe room, "is the mark there?"

  The hunchback began to curse. He walked around my father and the girl,the hair about his lank jaws, his fingers working, his face evil. Inhis front and menace he was like a weasel that would attack some largercreature. And while he made the great turn of his circle my father, withhis arm about the girl, stepped before the drawer of the table where thepistol lay.

  "Dillworth," he said calmly, "I know where he is. And the mark you feltfor just now ought to be there."

  "Fool!" cried the hunchback. "If I killed him how could he ride awayfrom the door?"

  "It was a thing that puzzled me," replied my father, "when I stood inthis house on the morning of your pretended robbery. I knew what hadhappened. But I thought it wiser to let the evil thing remain a mystery,rather than unearth it to foul your family name and connect this childin gossip for all her days with a crime."

  "With a thief," snarled the man.

  "With a greater criminal than a thief," replied My father. "I was notcertain about this gold on that morning when you showed me the emptyboxes. They were too few to hold gold enough for such a motive. Ithought a quarrel and violent hot blood were behind the thing; and forthat reason I have been silent. But now, when the coins turn up, I seethat the thing was all ruthless, cold-blooded love of money.

  "I know what happened in that room. When your brother David struck theold secretary with his elbow, and the dozen indigo boxes fell and burstopen on the hearth, you thought a great hidden treasure was uncovered.You thought swiftly. You had got the land by undue influence on yoursenile father, and you did not have to share that with your brotherDavid. But here was a treasure you must share; you saw it in a flash.You sat at your father's table in the room. Your brother stood by thewall looking at the hearth. And you acted then, on the moment, with thequickness of the Evil One. It was cunning in you to select the body overthe heart as the place to receive the imagined blow--the head or facewould require some evidential mark to affirm your word. And it wascunning to think of the unconscious, for in that part one could get upand scrub the hearth and lie down again to play it."

  He paused.

  "But the other thing you did in that room was not so clever. A picturewas newly hung on the wall--I saw the white square on the opposite wallfrom which it had been taken. It hung at the height of a man's shouldersdirectly behind the spot where your brother must have stood after hestruck the secretary, and it hung in this new spot to cover the crash ofa bullet into the mahogany panel!"

  My father stopped and caught up the hunchback's double-barreled pistolout of the empty drawer.

  The room was now illumined; the moon had got above the tree tops and itslight slanted in through the long windows. The hunchback saw the thingand he paused; his face worked in the fantastic light.

  "Yes," continued my father, in his deep, quiet voice, "this is yourmistake to-night--to let me get your weapon. Your mistake that othernight was to shoot before you counted the money. It was only a fewhundred dollars. The dozen wooden boxes would hold no great sum. But thething was done, and you must cover it."

  He paused.

  "And you did cover it--with fiendish cunning. It would not do for yourbrother to vanish from your house, alone and with no motive. But ifhe disappeared, with the gold to take him and a horse to ride, theexplanation would have solid feet to go on. I give you credit here forthe ingenuity of Satan. You managed the thing. You caused your brotherDavid and the horse to vanish. I saw, on that morning, the tracks ofthe horse where you led him from the stable to the door, and his trackswhere you led him, holding the dead man in the saddle, from the door tothe an
cient orchard where the grass grows over the fallen-down chimneyof your grandsire's house. And there, at your cunning, they whollyvanished."

  The mad courage in the hunchback got control, and he began to advance onmy father with no weapon and with no hope to win. His fingers crooked,his body in a bow, his wizen, cruel face pallid in the ghostly light.

  "Dillworth," cried my father, in a great voice, like one who wouldstartle a creature out of mania, "you will write a deed in yourlegal manner granting these lands to your brother's child. And afterthat"--his words were like the blows of a hammer on an anvil--"I willgive you until daybreak to vanish out of our sight and hearing--throughthe gap in the mountains into Maryland on your horse, as you say yourbrother David went, or into the abandoned cistern in the ancient orchardwhere he lies under the horse that you shot and tumbled in on hismurdered body!"

  The moon was now above the gable of the house. The candles were burneddown. They guttered around the sheet of foolscap wet with the scrawlsand splashes of Dillworth's quill. My father stood at a window lookingout, the girl in a flood of tears, relaxed and helpless, in theprotection of his arm.

  And far down the long turnpike, white like an expanded ribbon, thehunchback rode his great horse in a gallop, perched like a monkey,his knees doubled, his head bobbing, his loose body rolling in thesaddle--while the black, distorted shadow that had followed my fatherinto this tragic house went on before him like some infernal messengerconvoying the rider to the Pit.