Toward the Golden Age

by Ashley, Mike;

  “Ah, yes—your uncle insisted on your going to the Ritz to sleep that night. Why?”

  “Because he knew I hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep for a fortnight, by Jove! with all those infernal spirit rappin’s, and warnin’s, and whatnot! So, to please him, I went. And next mornin’, when my man came with my things, he told me that my poor uncle—”

  He shuddered, passed a shaking hand over his face, and reached out again for the whisky.

  “Those mysterious knocks,” said Fanny Gordon thoughtfully, “they were last heard—”

  “In the picture gallery, as I told you!” interposed Raoul de Chatellerault. “At first, the Duke himself told me, they were heard in various parts of the palace. As you see, it is immense, with many parts closed up. Lately, however, they seemed always to come from the picture gallery—on the last night, that of the ball, certainly so.”

  Five minutes later, Fanny and her guide, having mounted the wide stairway, came to a pause before an open doorway, watched by a silent policeman. In marked contrast to the rest of the house, darkened in token of mourning, this room was brilliantly alight in the afternoon sunlight, streaming in through the two wide-open windows. By one of the windows stood a uniformed official, writing in a little book. Fanny’s eye was, however, held by the chief article of the room’s furnishing: a huge, old-fashioned bed with beautifully gilded woodwork and a high, tent-like canopy and curtains of dark red silk. In the bright sunlight, she beheld the dark red tint hideously repeated in an immense stain like a pool, darkening the snowy surface of the embroidered sheets.

  Deliberately she dragged away her eyes, and nodded in grave acknowledgment of her presentation to the Chief of the Secret Service. That official bowed. His eyes showed that while as a man he approved, as a minister of the law he expected little from the vision of girlish prettiness before him.

  “You are English, mademoiselle?”

  “I am American, monsieur!”

  “Hum! Ever handle a murder case before?”

  Fanny assumed an air of extreme meekness.

  “No, monsieur! The Vicomte de Chatellerault will tell you I have only helped—”

  “Well, well! I may as well tell you, mademoiselle, the police believe that they have found an indication, which we are at present following up. However, we should be glad to have you take your own independent line—if your woman’s intuition suggests you one!” His patronizing air said, plainer than speech: “Play about all you please, little girl!”

  Fanny’s dark eyes blazed, but she held them resolutely down.

  “Monsieur, if you will be so good, I should like the facts!”

  Addressing himself to the Vicomte rather than to the young American, the official began the brief narrative of the crime.

  “On Thursday night, as you know, Monsieur le Vicomte, the Duc de Vaucaire received his friends at a fancy-dress ball. Dancing was continued till three o’clock. At half past three the Duke retired. I must explain that the Duc de Vaucaire was a gentleman of most methodical habits. Every night, after his valet had made him ready for bed, he was accustomed to dismiss the man, lock and bolt the door on the inside, and go immediately to sleep. In the morning, when he woke, he rang his bell. The valet was not allowed to wake him, but waited for this signal that his master was ready for his coffee. After ringing, the Duke invariably rose for an instant and unbolted his door, so that the man, arriving with the coffee-tray, could carry it into his master’s bed without a moment’s delay. Monsieur le Vicomte—mademoiselle! here is the most baffling feature, perhaps, of this whole mysterious case. On the morning of the murder—nay, at the very instant, perhaps, of the murder—that bell was rung!”

  “There is no possibility it was another bell that rang?”

  “None whatever, Monsieur le Vicomte. For Philippe, the valet, had, it seems, this custom: toward eight o’clock in the morning he would seat himself in the corridor where the row of bells hang—old-fashioned bronze bells with wire-pulls, you understand, since the Duke’s prejudices allowed no electricity in the house. With his eye on the bells, the valet could see the first quiver of No. 18, that of his master’s bedroom. And on Friday morning, he swears that the bell swung and jingled with precisely its customary motion and tinkle. The usual morning ring, neither more nor less. So Philippe dashed to the kitchen—his master was always very angry if the coffee were cold—seized the silver tray from the cook, ran full speed up the stairs, tried the handle of the Duke’s door, and for the first time in twenty-three years found it locked. He knocked. Then suddenly, to his horror—he seems to be a slow-witted fellow—he heard a low moaning sound within. At his knock, the cries became articulate. He recognized his master’s voice: ‘Help! Assassins! Help!’ Should you care to interview this fellow Philippe, Monsieur le Vicomte?”

  “Later, later! What did he do then? Break down the door?”

  “He tried it, and found it beyond his strength. He seems, in short, to have lost his head, as did also the other servants. They describe the cries as heartrending. So, while half a dozen of them fumbled at the door—it is a massive one, as you see—the others ran out into the street and summoned the police—the police of the Republic, that poor Monsieur le Duc detested so! However, it was a policeman who finally managed to break down the door.

  “Through the burst panels, the policeman entered first of all. He found the Duke already dead, transfixed by a huge knife that had been thrust into his body at the left thigh—thrust in with such violence that it had completely severed the femoral artery and buried its point for two centimeters in the bone. The superhuman violence of the blow, as well as the fact that it had been dealt from the side, renders the idea of suicide physically impossible, even had we been tempted to entertain it. Yet the doors were bolted. The windows, impossibly high from the ground, were barred. The room was empty. The murdered man was alone!”

  “The witnesses?” asked the Vicomte quickly.

  “The Duke’s servants. Also the young policeman, Andre Chabanne, who himself stood guard at the broken-down door till I arrived. Together we made a scientific search of the room, which yesterday afternoon was completed by two of my experts. No sliding panel or any other dissimulated entrance exists. The walls, ceiling, and floor are as solid as a fortress. That the assassin, having done his foul work, should have escaped before that door was battered down is a physical impossibility. The concierge at the gate saw no one pass. Yet, by what superhuman means we have yet to divine, the murderer did escape!”

  III

  Fanny Gordon spoke: “Monsieur, you have twice used a certain word: superhuman. Do you mean—”

  “Mademoiselle, I beg you, do not offer the famous knockings as a clue! We are not here to arrest the family ghost!—that figment of an overwrought imagination, of an exaggerated pride of race. The supernatural? Bah!”

  “Monsieur, not supernatural. I used your own word—superhuman! The prodigious violence of the death-blow, the incomprehensible means of the assassin’s escape—do you mean, then, to hint that the knife was perhaps driven home by another agency than that of a human hand?”

  “By the hand of a gorilla, perhaps, as in a certain famous romance? Mademoiselle, abandon these fancies. It is a human murderer that we seek; neither wild beast nor ghost. Indeed, I may say that already, in our reconstruction of the crime, we have admitted the idea of a certain person.”

  “And the motive of the crime—that is included in your reconstruction?”

  “The motive—we have already established at least that it was deeper than mere robbery! The wardrobe and escritoire before you, where the Duke was accustomed to keep not only a large sum of money but also certain valuable family jewels, have been found to contain all their treasures intact. The desire to profit by his death may also be excluded, as it appears that the Duke, a fanatical Royalist as you know, has left all his property by will to the last reigning Bourbon, King Alfonso of Spain. There remain the motives of revenge, of homicidal mania—”

  “But th
e treasure?” asked Fanny slowly—“the gold of tradition, hidden by the Duke’s ancestor at the time of the Hundred Years’ War—to say nothing of the mass of wealth in cash added by the Duke himself, you said, Vicomte, when he sold his estates on the proclamation of the Republic? Did I not understand, it is all secreted somewhere in this ancient house?”

  “Possibly! Though this family treasure, after all, exists perhaps nowhere but in tradition. But, in any case, nowhere in the Duke’s room or in the whole house was there the slightest sign of a rifled hiding-place. Besides, remember this: the mere escape of our criminal unincumbered amounts, in this case, to a miracle! How much more impossible, then, the idea of his flight, whether at the moment of the crime or later, weighed down by the bulk and immense weight of a treasure in gold coin!”

  Fanny walked up and down the room. “You have made a thorough search of the palace?”

  “Surely, mademoiselle! The rooms, a hundred and two in all, have been thoroughly examined—even the luggage and persons of their inmates.”

  “Those inmates—in what did it consist, the household of the Duke?”

  “A bachelor establishment—the Abbé Fornarini, his kinsman; the young English lord, his nephew; twenty-eight servants, excluding the concierge and stableman, who sleep outside; six maid-servants, the housekeeper, and the butler—”

  “And, besides the valet Philippe, there were other servants that had admission to the Duke’s bedroom?”

  “The chambermaid, Armande Lainois, who took care of the room.”

  “Ah! And may one examine these two servants?”

  “The valet Philippe Duval, yes. As to the woman, it appears that she was impertinent to the housekeeper on the night of the ball, received her eight days’ notice, and disappeared immediately. She is being searched for; in a few days we hope to lay our hands on her.”

  “Ah!”

  Fanny paused. Then, in a changed voice and with a slight gesture toward the bed: “And, Monsieur, he—it?”

  “The Duc de Vaucaire, mademoiselle, lies downstairs in the chapel of the palace.”

  “You have, of course, before removing the body, taken the usual measurements and diagrams?” asked de Chatellerault.

  “Traced here upon the sheet in black crayon you will find the exact outline of the body as it was discovered on the breaking down of the door. The large black cross, made afterward, indicates the exact position of the wound. Here are also the photographs, made from nine different views. As you see, the wound is in the left thigh, between the hip and the knee—a part, of course, not usually considered vital, but rendered so by the piercing of the great femoral artery, which emptied the blood-vessels of the body before the door could be broken open and aid supplied.”

  Fanny’s eyes lit up as she took the photographs offered her. In silence she bent over them.

  “Singular,” she murmured. “The wound is at the side of the leg, passing out toward the back.”

  “As I told you, mademoiselle! A fact which we explain by the position of Monsieur le Duc. As you see by this photograph, he lay half rolled over on the mattress, with extended arm—presumably to grasp the bell-rope for the summons which brought the servant Philippe upstairs—too late.”

  “Then you take it for granted, monsieur,” returned Fanny thoughtfully, “that it was the hand of the Duke himself that rang the bell?—that singular summons, neither violent, as if he had already perceived the horrible vision of the assassin—nor feeble, as if the death-blow had already fallen!”

  “Mademoiselle, there were two persons in this room. It is perfectly obvious that the murderer rang no summons to the household at the very instant of his crime. Ergo—that bell was rung by Monsieur le Duc himself!”

  “Two persons in the room—” murmured Fanny dreamily. “You say two persons in the room.”

  And the impatient official, following the direction of her bright, dark eyes, saw them travel from the large red silk tassel which lay upon the pillow, up the heavy red silk cord of the bell-pull to the brass triangle which, by the old-fashioned system, connected it with the wire beyond. So long she stood motionless, with her eyes fixed upon that commonplace instrument, that the chief became slightly ironic.

  “Romances again, mademoiselle? No; the murder was not committed by a trained snake who crawled down the bell-rope and returned later to the loop of her master’s whip. The aperture through which the wire passes has been examined, and would admit the passage of not so much as a trained earthworm.”

  What is that long loop of gray twine up there, dangling from the lower apex of the triangle?” asked Fanny suddenly.

  The official started, then resumed his ironical calm.

  “The loop of the whip perhaps, mademoiselle? Or else, a hundred years ago workmen were perhaps as careless as they are today, and as likely to leave traces of their packing material behind on the finished work! And now, mademoiselle, it happens that the serious aspects of this case call me—”

  “Monsieur, one thing more! I should like, if I may, to see the knife.”

  The chief turned, unlocked a flat black valise, and took from it a long slim paper parcel. In a moment he had produced a savage looking knife, whose polished blade was obscured near the point with dark and sinister stains. The Vicomte de Chatellerault bent over it.

  “A brutal weapon—from one of the Congo tribes, as Sir Geoffrey said,” he remarked in a hushed voice. “They use them as javelins, to hurl at the enemy. Do you observe the tiny handle of elk-horn, perforated for ornament? And the disproportionate size of the blade, with the extra weight so skilfully introduced toward the tip—precisely as our own early ancestors, monsieur, tipped their arrows with stone!”

  With a gesture of contained horror, Fanny took the repulsive-looking weapon into her hands.

  “But your explanation, Vicomte, does us no good—because, to hurl the knife, one must be in the room just as much as to stab with it! And, for a savage, the problem of escape later would be just as difficult as for a civilized man!”

  Then, bending again toward the ugly blade in her hands: “What is this little piece of black and scarlet floss, knotted through one of the perforations of the handle?”

  “Probably a memento of the last war dance in which it figured before it was brought to Europe, mademoiselle,” returned the Vicomte. “All savages, as you know, decorate their weapons, as they do their persons—”

  He was interrupted by the Chief, who sat in a brown study.

  “The Abbé Fornarini was a missionary among the West Coast tribes for ten years before he came here to Paris,” he observed in a low tone.

  De Chatellerault knit his brows. “Circumstantial evidence. Where is his motive?”

  The official hesitated. When he spoke, his voice, though almost inaudible, yet crackled with the hatred born of modern and republican prejudice: “Understand me, Monsieur le Vicomte! I make no charge, as yet. But the abbé is a Jesuit. As you know, the Society of Jesus is all-powerful in Spain.”

  Fanny rose to her feet.

  “Monsieur, I will detain you no longer. To the courtesy you have already shown me I will ask you to add three favors more.”

  “Name them, mademoiselle!”

  “First, I want this house guarded. Understand me! I do not speak of half a dozen policemen—I want the whole place thoroughly sentineled, night and day. A policeman for every two or three rooms, in day and night shifts, who will patrol constantly. And in the picture gallery, monsieur, I should like to have always two men!”

  The Chief surveyed this rosy-faced young vision in dark blue satin, issuing her orders so decidedly. The excess of her presumption seemed almost to please him, like the impertinence of a pretty child.

  “Indeed, mademoiselle, your requests are not small ones! And yet, the Apaches are quiet for the moment; our men have little to do—perhaps forty or fifty men could be spared. For eight days, no longer. And, mind, at the end of those eight days I shall expect results!”

  “Perhaps even soo
ner, monsieur! And now for favor number two—a step-ladder!”

  “Ah! I should have expected you to ask for the Eiffel Tower! A ladder you shall have. And then?”

  “The freedom of the house for the week, monsieur!”

  “You shall have it. And now—by the way, I am informed that the legatee has offered, through the Spanish Ambassador here, a reward of fifteen thousand francs for evidence leading to the capture of the assassin. Had you heard that? Au revoir!”

  IV

  “I say, Miss Gordon! Do you mind if I trot around after you a bit?”

  “It’s a pleasure, Sir Geoffrey!”

  “Thanks. You know, I’m just back from my poor uncle’s funeral. This house—it gives me the creeps. I’m all in.”

  With a violent shudder, Sir Geoffrey Ffyles sank into one of the high, carved chairs of the little private chapel where, for the instant, Fanny’s researches had led her. His handsome face was haggard.

  “I say, I didn’t sleep a wink last night. This house—ugh! It’s haunted.”

  “But the knockings haven’t been heard since—since the night the Duke died, have they?”

  “No—don’t you see, that makes it all the worse? It all goes to show there was somethin’ uncanny in the business! Hang it—bein’ a historic family—it’s poor sport, I remember, there at Ffyles Court, before my poor father died, our family banshee whoopin’ and screechin’ about the tree-tops all winter long. And he died. Then my poor mother came over here to her brother, my Uncle Vaucaire. And the knockin’s began, for her. And she died. Then, now, after twelve years, the knocks begin again for my poor uncle. And he’s dead, the Lord knows how.”