“Où donc est l’écrin de Madame la Marquise? La fenêtre est ouverte. Il a disparu!”
“Window open and jewel-case gone, by Jove!” exclaimed Lord Amersteth. “Mais comment est Madame la Marquise? Estelle bien?”
“Oui, milor. Elle dort.”
“Sleeps through it all,” said my lord. “She’s the only one, then!”
“What made Mackenzie—Clephane—bolt?” young Crowley asked me.
“Said there were more of them below.”
“Why the devil couldn’t you tell us so before?” he cried, and went leaping downstairs in his turn.
He was followed by nearly all the cricketers, who now burst upon the scene in a body, only to desert it for the chase. Raffles was one of them, and I would gladly have been another, had not the footman chosen this moment to hurl me from him, and to make a dash in the direction from which they had come. Lord Amersteth had him in an instant; but the fellow fought desperately, and it took the two of us to drag him downstairs, amid a terrified chorus from half-open doors. Eventually we handed him over to two other footmen who appeared with their nightshirts tucked into their trousers, and my host was good enough to compliment me as he led the way outside.
“I thought I heard a shot,” he added. “Didn’t you?”
“I thought I heard three.”
And out we dashed into the darkness.
I remember how the gravel pricked my feet, how the wet grass numbed them as we made for the sound of voices on an outlying lawn. So dark was the night that we were in the cricketers’ midst before we saw the shimmer of their pyjamas; and then Lord Amersteth almost trod on Mackenzie as he lay prostrate in the dew.
“Who’s this?” he cried. “What on earth’s happened?”
“It’s Clephane,” said a man who knelt over him. “He’s got a bullet in him somewhere.”
“Is he alive?”
“Barely.”
“Good God! Where’s Crowley?”
“Here I am,” called a breathless voice. “It’s no good, you fellows. There’s nothing to show which way they’ve gone. Here’s Raffles; he’s chucked it, too.” And they ran up panting.
“Well, we’ve got one of them, at all events,” muttered Lord Amersteth. “The next thing is to get this poor fellow indoors. Take his shoulders, somebody. Now his middle. Join hands under him. All together, now; that’s the way. Poor fellow! Poor fellow! His name isn’t Clephane at all. He’s a Scotland Yard detective, down here for these very villains!”
Raffles was the first to express surprise; but he had also been the first to raise the wounded man. Nor had any of them a stronger or more tender hand in the slow procession to the house. In a little we had the senseless man stretched on a sofa in the library. And there, with ice on his wound and brandy in his throat, his eyes opened and his lips moved.
Lord Amersteth bent down to catch the words.
“Yes, yes,” said he; “we’ve got one of them safe and sound. The brute you collared upstairs.” Lord Amersteth bent lower. “By Jove! Lowered the jewel-case out of the window, did he? And they’ve got clean away with it! Well, well! I only hope we’ll be able to pull this good fellow through. He’s off again.”
An hour passed: the sun was rising.
It found a dozen young fellows on the settees in the billiard-room, drinking whiskey and soda-water in their overcoats and pyjamas, and still talking excitedly in one breath. A time-table was being passed from hand to hand: the doctor was still in the library. At last the door opened, and Lord Amersteth put in his head.
“It isn’t hopeless,” said he, “but it’s bad enough. There’ll be no cricket to-day.”
Another hour, and most of us were on our way to catch the early train; between us we filled a compartment almost to suffocation. And still we talked all together of the night’s event; and still I was a little hero in my way, for having kept my hold of the one ruffian who had been taken; and my gratification was subtle and intense. Raffles watched me under lowered lids. Not a word had we had together; not a word did we have until we had left the others at Paddington, and were skimming through the streets in a hansom with noiseless tires and a tinkling bell.
“Well, Bunny,” said Raffles, “so the professors have it, eh?”
“Yes,” said I. “And I’m jolly glad!”
“That poor Mackenzie has a ball in his chest?”
“That you and I have been on the decent side for once.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“You’re hopeless, Bunny, quite hopeless! I take it you wouldn’t have refused your share if the boodle had fallen to us? Yet you positively enjoy coming off second best—for the second time running! I confess, however, that the professors’ methods were full of interest to me. I, for one, have probably gained as much in experience as I have lost in other things. That lowering the jewel-case out of the window was a very simple and effective expedient; two of them had been waiting below for it for hours.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I saw them from my own window, which was just above the dear old lady’s. I was fretting for that necklace in particular, when I went up to turn in for our last night—and I happened to look out of my window. In point of fact, I wanted to see whether the one below was open, and whether there was the slightest chance of working the oracle with my sheet for a rope. Of course I took the precaution of turning my light off first, and it was a lucky thing I did. I saw the pros. right down below, and they never saw me. I saw a little tiny luminous disk just for an instant, and then again for an instant a few minutes later. Of course I knew what it was, for I have my own watch-dial daubed with luminous paint; it makes a lantern of sorts when you can get no better. But these fellows were not using theirs as a lantern. They were under the old lady’s window. They were watching the time. The whole thing was arranged with their accomplice inside. Set a thief to catch a thief: in a minute I had guessed what the whole thing proved to be.”
“And you did nothing!” I exclaimed.
“On the contrary, I went downstairs and straight into Lady Melrose’s room——”
“You did?”
“Without a moment’s hesitation. To save her jewels. And I was prepared to yell as much into her ear-trumpet for all the house to hear. But the dear lady is too deaf and too fond of her dinner to wake easily.”
“Well?”
“She didn’t stir.”
“And yet you allowed the professors, as you call them, to take her jewels, case and all!”
“All but this,” said Raffles, thrusting his fist into my lap. “I would have shown it you before, but really, old fellow, your face all day has been worth a fortune to the firm!”
And he opened his fist, to shut it next instant on the bunch of diamonds and of sapphires that I had last seen encircling the neck of Lady Melrose.
The Blind Spot
BARRY PEROWNE
THE STORY
Original publication: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 1945
THE GREATEST CRIMINAL CHARACTER in literature is A. J. Raffles, the gentleman jewel thief created by E. W. Hornung at the end of the Victorian era, his first book appearance being in The Amateur Cracksman (1899). A few years after the author’s death in 1921, the popularity of the character remained at such a high level that British magazine The Thriller asked Barry Perowne, already a regular contributor, to continue the rogue’s adventures. After making arrangements with the estate of Hornung, Perowne produced many more stories about Raffles than his creator had, as well as several novels.
Philip Atkey (1908–1985), using the pseudonym Barry Perowne, wrote hundreds of stories and more than twenty novels, many featuring the suave safecracker and his sidekick, Bunny Manders, including The Return of Raffles (1933), Raffles in Pursuit (1934), Raffles Under Sentence (1936), and Raffles Revisited (1974), a short story col
lection.
The exceptionally versatile and prolific Atkey also produced numerous thirty-thousand-word paperback original novellas about Dick Turpin, the notorious highwayman, and Red Jim, the first air detective.
“The Blind Spot” is quite different from much of his work, which tended to be plot-driven and fast-paced. In this ingenuous story, character and nuance is preeminent, along with a stunning, original plot that will leave readers wanting to throttle the author.
THE FILM
Title: Blind Spot, 1947
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Director: Robert Gordon
Screenwriter: Martin Goldsmith
Producer: Ted Richmond
THE CAST
• Chester Morris (Jeffrey Andrews)
• Constance Dowling (Evelyn Green)
• Steven Geray (Lloyd Harrison)
One can only wonder why anyone bothered to buy the rights to Barry Perowne’s story since the screenplay bears as much similarity to it as it does to Gone with the Wind.
The entire point of the short story is that a playwright has come up with the perfect solution to an impossible crime, inventing a credible method by which a person can be stabbed to death in a locked room. He tells the story to a fellow drinker at a bar, then drunkenly steps in front of a taxi, knocking his brilliant solution out of his mind.
In the film, there is a locked-room murder, but certainly no brilliant solution. If I told you the denouement, you would not believe me. It is a standard detective story of an innocent man being accused of murder, too drunk to remember whether he actually committed the crime, followed by his efforts to prove that he didn’t. Have you ever heard this plot before? It appears that Martin Goldsmith, a very good screenwriter, was more interested in turning the story into an over-the top noir film—with dialogue to match (“a .45 caliber toothache”; “the heat sapped my vitality like ten thousand blood-thirsty dwarves”).
Chester Morris had built a career in B movies, most notably the Boston Blackie series, and few would have described him as the next John Barrymore. His long scene as a drunk is among the most boring and irritating in the history of cinema. In his biography, he revealed that his friend, Roland West, had given him a deathbed confession that he had murdered the actress Thelma Todd.
Constance Dowling had been a model, singer, and dancer before going to Hollywood to be a film actress. A Veronica Lake type, she had a long affair with married director Elia Kazan in New York but he wouldn’t leave his wife and the affair ended when Dowling went west. She was later involved with Italian poet/novelist Cesare Pavese, who committed suicide in 1950 after being rejected by Dowling.
The working titles of Blind Spot during filming were Inside Story and Trapped.
THE BLIND SPOT
Barry Perowne
ANNIXTER LOVED THE LITTLE MAN like a brother. He put an arm around the little man’s shoulders, partly from affection and partly to prevent himself from falling. He had been drinking earnestly since seven o’clock the previous evening. It was now nudging midnight, and things were a bit hazy. The lobby was full of the thump of hot music; down two steps, there were a lot of tables, a lot of people, a lot of noise. Annixter had no idea what this place was called, or how he had got there, or when. He had been in so many places since seven o’clock the previous evening.
“In a nutshell,” confided Annixter, leaning heavily on the little man, “a woman fetched you a kick in the face, or fate fetches you a kick in the face. Same thing, really—a woman and fate. So what? So you think it’s the finish, an’ you go out and get plastered. You get good an’ plastered,” said Annixter, “an’ you brood.
“You sit there an’ you drink an’ you brood—an’ in the end you find you’ve brooded up just about the best idea you ever had in your life! ’At’s the way it goes,” said Annixter, “an’ ’at’s my philosophy—the harder you kick a playwright, the better he works.”
He gestured with such vehemence that he would have collapsed if the little man hadn’t steadied him. The little man was poker-backed, his grip was firm. His mouth was firm, too—a straight line, almost colourless. He wore hexagonal rimless spectacles, a black hard-felt hat, a neat pepper-and-salt suit. He looked pale and prim beside the flushed, rumpled Annixter.
From her counter, the hat-check girl watched them indifferently.
“Don’t you think,” the little man said to Annixter, “you ought to go home now? I’ve been honoured you should tell me the scenario of your play, but—”
“I had to tell someone,” said Annixter, “or blow my top! Oh, boy, what a play, what a play! What a murder, eh? That climax—”
The full, dazzling perfection of it struck him again. He stood frowning, considering, swaying a little—then nodded abruptly, groped for the little man’s hand, warmly pumphandled it.
“Sorry I can’t stick around,” said Annixter, “I got work to do.”
He crammed his hat on shapelessly, headed on a slightly elliptical course across the lobby, thrust the double doors open with both hands, lurched out into the night.
It was, to his inflamed imagination, full of lights, winking and tilting across the dark. Sealed Room by James Annixter. No. Room Reserved by James— No, no Blue Room. Room Blue by James Annixter—
He stepped, oblivious, off the curb, and a taxi, swinging in toward the place he had just left, skidded with suddenly locked, squealing wheels on the wet road.
Something hit Annixter violently in the chest, and all the lights he had been seeing exploded in his face.
Then there weren’t any lights.
Mr. James Annixter, the playwright, was knocked down by a taxi late last night when leaving the Casa Havana. After hospital treatment for shock and superficial injuries, he returned to his home.
* * *
—
The lobby of the Casa Havana was full of the thump of music; down two steps there were a lot of tables, a lot of people, a lot of noise. The hat-check girl looked wonderingly at Annixter—at the plaster on his forehead, the black sling which supported his left arm.
“My,” said the hat-check girl, “I certainly didn’t expect to see you again so soon!”
“You remember me, then?” said Annixter, smiling.
“I ought to,” said the hat-check girl. “You cost me a night’s sleep! I heard those brakes squeal after you went out the door that night—and there was a sort of thud!” She shuddered. “I kept hearing it all night long. I can still hear it now—a week after! Horrible!”
“You’re sensitive,” said Annixter.
“I got too much imagination,” the hat-check girl admitted. “F’instance, I just knew it was you even before I run to the door and see you lying there. That man you was with was standing just outside. ‘My heavens,’ I say to him, ‘it’s your friend!’ ”
“What did he say?” Annixter asked.
“He says, ‘He’s not my friend. He’s just someone I met.’ Funny, eh?”
Annixter moistened his lips.
“How d’you mean,” he said carefully, “funny? I was just someone he’d met.”
“Yes, but—man you been drinking with,” said the hat-check girl, “killed before your eyes. Because he must have seen it; he went out right after you. You’d think he’d ’a’ been interested, at least. But when the taxi driver starts shouting for witnesses, it wasn’t his fault, I looks around for that man—an’ he’s gone!”
Annixter exchanged a glance with Ransome, his producer, who was with him. It was a slightly puzzled, slightly anxious glance. But he smiled, then, at the hat-check girl.
“Not quite ‘killed before his eyes,’ ” said Annixter. “Just shaken up a bit, that’s all.”
There was no need to explain to her how curious, how eccentric, had been the effect of that “shaking up” upon his mind.
�
��If you could ’a’ seen yourself lying there with the taxi’s lights shining on you—”
“Ah, there’s that imagination of yours!” said Annixter.
He hesitated for just an instant, then asked the question he had come to ask—the question which had assumed so profound an importance for him.
He asked, “That man I was with—who was he?”
The hat-check girl looked from one to the other. She shook her head.
“I never saw him before,” she said, “and I haven’t seen him since.”
Annixter felt as though she had struck him in the face. He had hoped, hoped desperately, for a different answer; he had counted on it.
Ransome put a hand on his arm, restrainingly.
“Anyway,” said Ransome, “as we’re here, let’s have a drink.”
They went down the two steps into the room where the band thumped. A waiter led them to a table, and Ransome gave him an order.
“There was no point in pressing that girl,” Ransome said to Annixter. “She doesn’t know the man, and that’s that. My advice to you, James, is: Don’t worry. Get your mind on something else. Give yourself a chance. After all, it’s barely a week since—”
“A week!” Annixter said. “Hell, look what I’ve done in that week! The whole of the first two acts, and the third act right up to that crucial point—the climax of the whole thing: the solution: the scene that the play stands or falls on! It would have been done, Bill—the whole play, the best thing I ever did in my life—it would have been finished two days ago if it hadn’t been for this—” he knuckled his forehead—“this extraordinary blind spot, this damnable little trick of memory!”
“You had a very rough shaking up—”
“That?” Annixter said contemptuously. He glanced down at the sling on his arm. “I never even felt it; it didn’t bother me. I woke up in the ambulance with my play as vivid in my mind as the moment the taxi hit me—more so, maybe, because I was stone cold sober then, and knew what I had. A winner—a thing that just couldn’t miss!”
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 151
