The Victorian Villains Megapack

by Arthur Morrison

  “He inherited it. It’s the most important of the family jewels, I assure you.”

  “Oh, skittles! I might have known you wouldn’t tell me, even if you knew yourself. But I should like to know. What sort of a duffer must it have been that let Bouvier do him for that big stone—Bouvier of all men in the world? Why, he was a record flat himself—couldn’t tell a diamond from a glass marble, I should think. Why, he used to buy peddling little trays of rotters in the Garden at twice their value! And then he’d sell them for what he could get. I knew very well he wasn’t going on systematically dropping money like that for no reason at all. He had some axe to grind, that was plain. And after a while he got asking timid questions as to the sale of big diamonds, and how it was done, and who bought them, and all that. That put me on it at once. All this buying and selling at a loss was a blind. He wanted to get into the trade to sell stolen diamonds, that was clear; and there was some value in them too, else he couldn’t afford to waste months of time and lose money every day over it. So I kept my eye on him. I noticed, when he put his overcoat on, and thought I wasn’t looking, he would settle a string of some sort round his neck, under his shirt-collar, and feel to pack up something close under his armpit. Then I just watched him home, and saw the sort of shanty he lived in. I mentioned these things to Mrs. H., and she was naturally indignant at the idea of a chap like Bouvier having something valuable in a dishonest way, and agreed with me that if possible it ought to be got from him, if only in the interests of virtue.” Hamer laughed jerkily. “So at any rate we determined to get a look at whatever it was hanging round his neck, and we made the arrangements you know about. It seemed to me that Bouvier was pretty sure to lose it before long, one way or another, if it had any value at all, to judge by the way he was done in other matters. But I assure you I nearly fell down like Bouvier himself when I saw what it was. No wonder we left the bottle behind where I’d dropped it, after soaking the shawl—I wonder I didn’t leave the shawl itself, and my hat, and everything. I assure you we sat up half last night looking at that wonderful stone!”

  “No doubt. I shall have a good look at it myself, I assure you. Here is Bessborough Street. Which is the number?”

  They alighted, and entered a house rather smaller than those about it. “Ask Mrs. Hamer to come here,” said Hamer, gloomily, to the servant.

  The men sat in the drawing-room. Presently Mrs. Hamer entered—a shortish, sharp, keen-eyed woman of forty-five. “This is Mr. Dorrington,” said Hamer, “of Dorrington & Hicks, private detectives. He wants us to give him that diamond.”

  The little woman gave a sort of involuntary bounce, and exclaimed. “What? Diamond? What d’ye mean?”

  “Oh, it’s no good, Maria,” Hamer answered dolefully. “I’ve tried it every way myself. One comfort is we’re safe, as long as we give it up. Here,” he added, turning to Dorrington, “show her some of your evidence—that’ll convince her.”

  Very politely Dorrington brought forth, with full explanations, the cork and the broken glass; while Mrs. Hamer, biting hard at her thin lips, grew shinier and redder in the face every moment, and her hard gray eyes flashed fury.

  “And you let this man,” she burst out to her husband, when Dorrington had finished, “you let this man leave your office with these things in his possession after he had shown them to you, and you as big as he is, and bigger! Coward!”

  “My dear, you don’t appreciate Mr. Dorrington’s forethought, hang it! I made preparations for the very line of action you recommend, but he was ready. He brought out a very well kept revolver, and he has it in his pocket now!”

  Mrs. Hamer only glared, speechless with anger.

  “You might just get Mr. Dorrington a whisky and soda, Maria,” Hamer pursued, with a slight lift of the eyebrows which he did not intend Dorrington to see. The woman was on her feet in a moment.

  “Thank you, no,” interposed Dorrington, rising also, “I won’t trouble you. I’d rather not drink anything just now, and, although I fear I may appear rude, I can’t allow either of you to leave the room. In short,” he added, “I must stay with you both till I get the diamond.”

  “And this man Bouvier,” asked Mrs. Hamer, “what is his right to the stone?”

  “Really, I don’t feel competent to offer an opinion, do you know,” Dorrington answered sweetly. “To tell the truth, M. Bouvier doesn’t interest me very much.”

  “No go, Maria!” growled Hamer. “I’ve tried it all. The fact is we’ve got to give Dorrington the diamond. If we don’t he’ll just call in the police—then we shall lose diamond and everything else too. He doesn’t care what becomes of Bouvier. He’s got us, that’s what it is. He won’t even bargain to give us a share.”

  Mrs. Hamer looked quickly up. “Oh, but that’s nonsense!” she said. “We’ve got the thing. We ought at least to say halves.”

  Her sharp eyes searched Dorrington’s face, but there was no encouragement in it. “I am sorry to disappoint a lady,” he said, “but this time it is my business to impose terms, not to submit to them. Come, the diamond!”

  “Well, you’ll give us something, surely?” the woman cried.

  “Nothing is sure, madam, except that you will give me that diamond, or face a policeman in five minutes!”

  The woman realised her helplessness. “Well,” she said, “much good may it do you. You’ll have to come and get it—I’m keeping it somewhere else. I’ll go and get my hat.”

  Again Dorrington interposed. “I think we’ll send your servant for the hat,” he said, reaching for the bell-rope. “I’ll come wherever you like, but I shall not leave you till this affair is settled, I promise you. And, as I reminded your husband a little time ago, you’ll find tricks come expensive.”

  The servant brought Mrs. Hamer’s hat and cloak, and that lady put them on, her eyes ablaze with anger. Dorrington made the pair walk before him to the front door, and followed them into the street. “Now,” he said, “where is this place? Remember, no tricks!”

  Mrs. Hamer turned towards Vauxhall Bridge. “It’s just over by Upper Kennington Lane,” she said. “Not far.”

  She paced out before them, Dorrington and Hamer following, the former affable and businesslike, the latter apparently a little puzzled. When they came about the middle of the bridge, the woman turned suddenly. “Come, Mr. Dorrington,” she said, in a more subdued voice than she had yet used, “I give in. It’s no use trying to shake you off, I can see. I have the diamond with me. Here.”

  She put a little old black wooden box in his hand. He made to open the lid, which fitted tightly, and at that moment the woman, pulling her other hand free from under her cloak, flung away over the parapet something that shone like fifty points of electric light.

  “There it goes!” she screamed aloud, pointing with her finger. “There’s your diamond, you dirty thief! You bully! Go after it now, you spy!”

  The great diamond made a curve of glitter and disappeared into the river.

  For the moment Dorrington lost his cool temper. He seized the woman by the arm. “Do you know what you’ve done, you wild cat?” he exclaimed.

  “Yes, I do!” the woman screamed, almost foaming with passion, while boys began to collect, though there had been but few people on the bridge. “Yes, I do! And now you can do what you please, you thief! You bully!”

  Dorrington was calm again in a moment. He shrugged his shoulders and turned away. Hamer was frightened. He came at Dorrington’s side and faltered, “I—I told you she had a temper. What will you do?”

  Dorrington forced a laugh. “Oh, nothing,” he said. “What can I do? Locking you up now wouldn’t fetch the diamond back. And besides I’m not sure that Mrs. Hamer won’t attend to your punishment faithfully enough.” And he walked briskly away.

  “What did she do, Bill?” asked one boy of another.

  “Why, didn’t ye see? She chucked that man’s watch in
the river.”

  “Garn! That wasn’t his watch!” interrupted a third, “it was a little glass tumbler. I see it!”

  * * * *

  “Have you got my diamond?” asked the agonised Léon Bouvier of Dorrington a day later.

  “No, I have not,” Dorrington replied drily. “Nor has your cousin Jacques. But I know where it is, and you can get it as easily as I.”

  “Mon Dieu! Where?”

  “At the bottom of the river Thames, exactly in the centre, rather to the right of Vauxhall Bridge, looking from this side. I expect it will be rediscovered in some future age, when the bed of the Thames is a diamond field.”

  The rest of Bouvier’s savings went in the purchase of a boat, and in this, with a pail on a long rope, he was very busy for some time afterward. But he only got a great deal of mud into his boat.

  THE CASE OF MR. LOFTUS DEACON, by Arthur Morrison

  Originally published in The Windsor Magazine, May 1897.

  I

  This was a case that helped to give Dorrington much of that reputation which unfortunately too often enabled him to profit himself far beyond the extent to which his clients intended. It occurred some few years back, and there was such a stir at the time over the mysterious death of Mr. Loftus Deacon that it well paid Dorrington to use his utmost diligence in an honest effort to uncover the mystery. It gave him one of his best advertisements, though indeed it occasioned him less trouble in the unravelling than many a less interesting case. There were scarcely any memoranda of the affair among Dorrington’s papers, beyond entries of fees paid, and I have almost entirely relied upon the account given me by Mr. Stone, manager in the employ of the firm owning the premises in which Mr. Deacon died.

  These premises consisted of a large building let out in expensive flats, one of the first places built with that design in the West-End of London. The building was one of three, all belonging to the firm I have mentioned, and numbered 1, 2 and 3, Bedford Mansions. They stood in the St. James’s district, and Mr. Loftus Deacon’s quarters were in No. 2.

  Mr. Deacon’s magnificent collection of oriental porcelain will be remembered as long as any in the national depositories; much of it was for a long while lent, and, by Mr. Deacon’s will, passed permanently into possession of the nation. His collection of oriental arms, however, was broken up and sold, as were also his other innumerable objects of Eastern art—lacquers, carvings, and so forth. He was a wealthy man, this Mr. Deacon, a bachelor of sixty, and his whole life was given to his collections. He was currently reported to spend some £15,000 a year on them, and, in addition, would make inroads into capital for special purchases at the great sales. People wondered where all the things were kept. And indeed they had reason, for Mr. Deacon’s personal establishment was but a suite of rooms on the ground floor of Bedford Mansions. But the bulk of the collections were housed at various museums—indeed it was a matter of banter among his acquaintances that Mr. Loftus Deacon made the taxpayers warehouse most of his things; moreover, the flat was a large one—it occupied almost the whole of the ground-floor of the building, and it overflowed with the choicest of its tenant’s possessions. There were eight large and lofty rooms, as well as the lobby, scullery and so forth, and every one was full. The walls were hung with the most precious kakemono and nishikiyé of Japan; and glass cabinets stood everywhere, packed with porcelain and faience—celadon, peach-bloom, and blue and white, Satsuma, Raku, Ninsei, and Arita—many a small piece worth its weight in gold over and over and over again. At places on the wall, among the kakemono and pictures of the ukioyé, were trophies of arms. Two suits of ancient Japanese armour, each complete and each the production of one of the most eminent of the Miochin family, were exhibited on stands, and swords stood in many corners and lay in many racks. Innumerable drawers contained specimens of the greatest lacquer ware of Korin, Shunsho, Kajikawa, Koyetsu, and Ritsuo, each in its wadded brocade fukusa with the light wooden box encasing all. In more glass cabinets stood netsuké and okimono of ivory, bronze, wood, and lacquer. There were a few gods and goddesses, and conspicuous among them two life-sized gilt Buddhas beamed mildly over all from the shelves on which they were raised. By the operation of natural selection it came about that the choicest of all Mr. Deacon’s possessions were collected in these rooms. Here were none of the great cumbersome pots, good in their way, but made of old time merely for the European market. Of all that was Japanese every piece was of the best and rarest, consequently, in almost every case, of small dimensions, as is the way of the greatest of the wares of old Japan. And of all the precious contents of these rooms everything was oriental in its origin except the contents of one case, which displayed specimens of the most magnificent goldsmiths’ and silversmiths’ work of medieval Europe. It stood in the room which Mr. Loftus Deacon used as his sitting-room, and more than one of his visitors had wondered that such valuable property was not kept at a banker’s. This view, however, always surprised and irritated Mr. Deacon. “Keep it at a banker’s?” he would say. “Why not melt it down at once? The things are works of art, things of beauty, and that’s why I have them, not merely because they’re gold and silver. To shut them up in a strong-room would be the next thing to destroying them altogether. Why not lock the whole of my collections in safes, and never look at them? They are all valuable. But if they are not to be seen I would rather have the money they cost.” So the gold and silver stood in its case, to the blinking wonderment of messengers and porters whose errands took them into Mr. Loftus Deacon’s sitting-room. The contents of this case were the only occasion, however, of Mr. Deacon’s straying from oriental paths in building up his collection. There they stood, but he made no attempt to add to them. He went about his daily hunting, bargaining, cataloguing, cleaning, and exhibiting to friends, but all his new treasures were from the East, and most were Japanese. His chief visitors were travelling buyers of curiosities; little Japanese who had come to England to study medicine and were paying their terms by the sale of heirlooms in pottery and lacquer; porters from Christie’s and Poster’s; and sometimes men from Copleston’s—the odd emporium by the riverside where lions and monkeys, porcelain and savage weapons were bought and sold close by the ships that brought them home. The travellers were suspicious and cunning; the Japanese were bright, polite, and dignified, and the men from Copleston’s were wiry, hairy and amphibious; one was an enormously muscular little hunchback nicknamed Slackjaw—a quaint and rather repulsive compound of showman, sailor and half-caste rough; and all were like mermen, more or less. These curious people came and went, and Mr. Deacon went on buying, cataloguing, and joying in his possessions. It was the happiest possible life for a lonely old man with his tastes and his means of gratifying them, and it went placidly on till one Wednesday mid-day. Then Mr. Deacon was found dead in his rooms in most extraordinary and, it seemed, altogether unaccountable circumstances.

  There was but one door leading into Mr. Deacon’s rooms from the open corridor of the building, and this was immediately opposite the large street door. When one entered from the street one ascended three or four broad marble steps, pushed open one of a pair of glazed swing doors and found oneself facing the door by which Mr. Deacon entered and left his quarters. There had originally been other doors into the corridor from some of the rooms, but those Mr. Deacon had had blocked up, so making the flat entirely self-contained. Just by the glazed swing doors which I have spoken of, and in full view of the old gentleman’s door, the hall-porter’s box stood. It was glazed on all sides, and the porter sat so that Mr. Deacon’s door was always before his eyes, and, so long as he was there, it was very unlikely that anybody or anything could leave or enter by that door unobserved by him. It is important to remember this, in view of what happened on the occasion I am writing of. There was one other exterior door to Mr. Deacon’s flat, and one only. It gave upon the back spiral staircase, and was usually kept locked. This staircase had no outlet to the corridors, but merely extended from the
housekeeper’s rooms at the top of the building to the basement. It was little used, and then only by servants, for it gave access only to the rooms on its own side. There was no way from this staircase to the outer street except through the private rooms of the tenants, or through those of the housekeeper.

  That Wednesday morning things had happened precisely in the ordinary way. Mr. Deacon had risen and breakfasted as usual. He was alone, with his newspaper and his morning letters, when his breakfast was taken in and when it was removed. He had remained in his rooms till between twelve and one o’clock. Goods had arrived for him (this was an almost daily occurrence), and one or two ordinary visitors had called and gone away again. It was Mr. Deacon’s habit to lunch at his club, and at about a quarter to one, or thereabout, he had come out, locked his door, and leaving his usual message that he should be at the club for an hour or two, in case anybody called, he had left the building. At about one, however, he had returned hurriedly, having forgotten some letters. “I didn’t give you any letters for the post, did I, Beard, before I went out?” he asked the porter. And the porter replied that he had not. Mr. Deacon thereupon crossed the corridor, entered his door, and shut it behind him.

  He had been gone but a few seconds, when there arose an outcry from within the rooms—a shout followed in a breath by a loud cry of pain, and then silence. Beard, the porter, ran to the door and knocked, but there was no reply. “Did you call, sir?” he shouted, and knocked again, but still without response. The door was shut, and it had a latch lock with no exterior handle. Beard, who had had an uncle die of apoplexy, was now thoroughly alarmed, and shouted up the speaking-tube for the housekeeper’s keys. In course of a few minutes they were brought, and Beard and the housekeeper entered.

  The lobby was as usual, and the sitting-room was in perfect order. But in the room beyond Mr. Loftus Deacon lay in a pool of blood, with two large and fearful gashes in his head. Not a soul was in any of the rooms, though the two men, first shutting the outer door, searched diligently. All windows and doors were shut, and the rooms were tenantless and undisturbed, except that on the floor lay Mr. Deacon in his blood at the foot of a pedestal whereupon there squatted, with serenely fierce grin, the god Hachiman, gilt and painted, carrying in one of his four hands a snake, in another a mace, in a third a small human figure, and in the fourth a heavy, straight, guardless sword; and all around furniture, cabinets, porcelain, lacquer and everything else lay undisturbed.