From his wild lamentations Fanny’s keen ear picked out one phrase: “It was for you I did it.”
Summoning the whole force of her will power, she stooped and transfixed the wretched man’s eyes with her own.
“Listen to me, Sir Geoffrey Ffyles,” she said sternly. “It was you, with the aid of this woman, who murdered your uncle the Duc de Vaucaire—then tried to fasten the crime on the Abbé Fornarini. The whole chain of proof is in my hands. Look into my eyes and deny it if you can—deny it if you dare!”
The detectives crowded around. With a visible effort, Sir Geoffrey raised his bloodshot blue eyes. With a ghastly imitation of his usual manner, he addressed her in English: “By George, I don’t know what you come rottin’ me like this for! And, anyway, if my uncle went cuttin’ off his own flesh and blood to leave everything to that snob of an Alfonso, what the doose did he expect? And as for Rose—”
His eyes wavered. He collapsed upon the floor.
“I don’t know how you found it all out, but, after all, what difference does it make? Take me away—to the guillotine, if you like! If I wanted money, it was only for her. And now she’s gone, why shouldn’t I go too? Rose! Rose! Rose!”
VI
Next morning, Fanny Gordon, paler than usual, sat in her little salon, facing the Vicomte de Chatellerault and the Chief of the Secret Service.
“After all,” she observed, almost apologetically, “it was only a question of getting the right idea at the beginning—woman’s intuition, as you very justly say, Chief! As, for instance, those lines of ancient doggerel that I copied from the window—it’s merely an acrostic. Read downward, Vicomte, the first letter of each line!”
“C-l-o-c-h-e,” read the Vicomte; then, in a burst of admiration, “Bravo!”
“Cloche—bell!” repeated the Chief slowly. “Hum—very simple, as you say. For it was a bell that we heard beneath the wall, was it not, when Sir Geoffrey knocked there in the picture gallery last night!”
Fanny nodded. “But how many nights had he and his accomplice knocked, in other parts of the house, before they heard that answering tinkle from beneath the wall to assure them that the hiding-place of tradition was found? Ah! it was not a dull idea, to utilize the ancient legend of the three death knocks, not only in order to sound the walls but also to lend a supernatural air to the murder which later would be necessary to clear the house and make the removal of the treasure possible.”
“The murder!” said the Chief excitedly. “Now, young lady, since your wit has fathomed a secret which, for the first time in twenty-two years, has left me baffled, I await your explanation. If not by supernatural means, then how did the murderer escape from the sealed chamber after dealing the death-blow to the Duc de Vaucaire?”
“He did not escape, monsieur!”
“But you are mad—that room was empty!”
“Because, messieurs, the Duc de Vaucaire was alone when he died.”
The two men sprang to their feet. “But it has already been demonstrated that suicide was impossible!”
“The Duc de Vaucaire did not die a suicide.”
“Mademoiselle, explain—explain!”
“Messieurs,” returned Fanny solemnly, “I will ask you now to combine in your minds several detached circumstances of which the significance, it seemed, was revealed to me and not to you. Those knockings, which, if we accepted them as an attempt to profit by the secret of the ancient rhyme, showed so intimate a knowledge of family secrets, so close a knowledge also of the Duke’s character, who, in his devout attachment to tradition, might well be expected to conceal his treasure nowhere else but in the hereditary hiding-place of his race. Then, also, there was the question of the opportunity to knock on the walls. All of which circumstances narrowed down an inquiry to members of the Duke’s immediate household. Of the two who might be supposed to possess sufficient intelligence for such an attempt, secret inquiry proved one nephew to possess the spotless character of a model priest; the other—”
“But Sir Geoffrey possessed an excellent character!” cried the Chief, aggrieved. “His bills, his club dues, his gambling debts, all were promptly paid. His reputation—”
“Was above suspicion, Chief, in his relations with other men! But, American though I am, something told me that when a man embarks on a secret and perilous enterprise, not only the springs of his action but the confidante of his crime must be sought rather in a member of my own sex. My inquiries, therefore, were limited to Sir Geoffrey Ffyles’ relations with women; and I found that for the past three years he had been the lover of the notorious Rose d’Artigny—famed as a sort of female Apache, who by her beauty and fierce rapacity for money had driven countless men to crime.
“At the same time, I found that the woman who had obtained admittance to the household as chambermaid, and who had contrived to get herself discharged on the very night of the crime, answered to the same physical description as Mademoiselle d’Artigny—to the very fact of the downy strip on the back of the neck, a bizarre distinction of which Rose, it appeared, was inordinately vain and would not have removed even to escape possible detection. Besides, what detection did she have to fear? Taking, no doubt, alternate nights, they thumped the walls of the old house at their leisure, till at last in the picture gallery their perseverance was rewarded by the answering bell that they had hoped to hear.”
“But, mademoiselle—the murder, the murder!”
“The simplest business in the world! You noticed that little shred of black and scarlet floss attached to the handle of the knife? Yes, but I think you did not notice the gray camel’s-hair dressing-gown, presented by Sir Geoffrey Ffyles to the Abbé Fornarini on the very night of the ball, so the housekeeper informed me—though, as I told you, Sir Geoffrey himself denied ever having seen such a garment. That wrapper, messieurs, was secured about the waist by a cord of black and scarlet silk—which the housekeeper, when I saw her, was changing for black. I carried off a tassel. Even under the microscope, that red and black floss proved to be precisely identical with the scrap that remained upon the knife.”
“Yes! but, even so—”
“Even so, we might deduce merely a detail of the dastardly attempt to fasten the crime on the abbé—like jostling him so that it should be he, and not Sir Geoffrey, whose head broke the window and destroyed the legendary verse like stealing the very knife from the collection of the returned missionary—that strange savage weapon, half knife and half javelin, weighted at its tip to assure greater accuracy of aim.”
“Mademoiselle, I begin to see—”
“Which you will do entirely when I tell you that my searches with the ladder revealed to me the presence of that same silk in yet a third place.” She paused a moment, lifting her hand in an impressive gesture. “In the iron crossbar of that old-fashioned bed canopy, immediately above the place marked X to indicate the wound, there clung a shred of black and scarlet floss. Do you see now?”
“Almost! Ah, mon Dieu! But—”
“Do you remember, messieurs, that loop of gray twine—not ancient, as we thought, but ordinary string of modern commerce—that hung attached to the old-fashioned bell-pull where it entered the wall? That loop of twine, when tested, proved exactly of the length to reach the point in the bed’s canopy where the betraying floss still clung—that frail silk loop which held the sword of Damocles suspended all night above the sleeping Duke. Then, when he awoke in the morning and pulled the bell-cord, the brass triangle of its mechanism flew around, the twine was jerked suddenly taut and snapped the loop of flimsy floss to which it was attached. The silk broke, down came the knife—not in the heart or throat as an assassin would choose, but in that singular part of the body of which we have already spoken, but which, alas, proved to be deadly enough.”
Solemnly the Chief rose and extended his hand.
“Mademoiselle, I compliment you—you and America! You have done excellently. And though the reward offered is, doubtless, a mere bagatelle for a lady like you, I wi
ll see that the fifteen thousand francs are paid to you without delay. And now, one or two small remaining points. Why did the Duke not see it when he went to bed, that horrible blade suspended there above his head?”
“You forget, monsieur, his prejudices! From his home electric light was excluded. And by candle-light, especially when one goes to bed wearied by a ball, one sees little.”
“And the woman, Rose d’Artigny—how did it happen—”
“Monsieur, what more natural than, having betrayed her master, she should betray also her lover? On the night of the ball, knowing that, by the obstinate kindliness of his uncle, Sir Geoffrey was forced to sleep out, she thought to accomplish a fine stroke of business by rifling the Vaucaire hoard alone. The final knocks with which she resought the exact spot were doubtless those you heard when you sat at supper, Vicomte! And it was probably at the very moment that you dashed upstairs to the picture gallery that the wretched woman, in her alarm, swung the secret door to upon herself. Ignorant of the fact that the police prevented her lover from coming, she waited. He came at last, as we know—too late!”
“Mademoiselle,” said the Vicomte suddenly, “one last point! Those cushions beneath the mattress—how did you know they were there?”
“I took it for granted that, having set their trap, they would not risk the chance that their predestined victim might lie on the wrong side of the bed! And, by a system of carefully graded cushions, it was easy to insure that, even in his sleep, his body should slip to the point where they desired it to be, beneath the knife. Cleverly designed, was it not? And now, if you won’t think me too frivolous, I’m going to shake off these gruesome horrors that I’ve been living among—and, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going straight down to the summer sale of the Galeries Lafayette. They announce bargains in peignoirs and in trimmed hats!”
Whither Thou Goest
Edward H. Hurlbut
Edward Harwood Hurlbut (1881–1954) was another regular contributor to the magazines at the start of the twentieth century, who is now all but forgotten except for his collection Lanagan: Amateur Detective, published in 1913. Its contents were previously serialized in the prestigious Collier’s magazine. The emergence of the hard-boiled school of fiction in the United States is usually attributed to several writers in the 1920s—Carroll John Daly, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler, all contributors to the pulp magazine Black Mask, which had first appeared in 1926. At the outset Black Mask was filled as much with westerns as it was crime stories, and the two fields soon cross-fertilised, with the rough, frontier mood of the westerns flavouring the gangster-based stories set in the “mean streets” of the big cities, notably Chicago and San Francisco.
But the hard-boiled school had other roots and I believe that Hurlbut’s stories about ace reporter Jack Lanagan, who has secured special privileges with the San Francisco police department, is amongst them. The stories betray much of the same atmosphere of the loner up against corruption and villainy, which can usually only be solved by violence. Unfortunately many of the stories are overtly racist and not suitable for reproduction here, but the first in the series provides a more palatable example of what Hurlbut could produce.
JACK Lanagan of the San Francisco Enquirer was conceded to have “arrived” as the premier police reporter of San Francisco. This honour was his not solely through a series of brilliant newspaper feats in his especial field, but as well by reason of an entente that permitted him to call half the patrolmen on the force by their given names; enjoy the confidences of detective sergeants, a close-mouthed brotherhood; dine tête-a-tête in private at French restaurants with well-groomed police captains on canvasback or quail out of season, and sit nonchalantly on a corner of the chief’s desk and absent-mindedly smoke up the chief’s two-bit cigars.
It was an intimacy that carried much of the lore of the force with it: that vital knowledge not of books. Bill Dougherty on the “pawnbroker detail” knew scarcely more “fences” than did Lanagan; Charley Hartley, who handled the bunco detail, found himself nettled now and then when Lanagan would pick him up casually at the ferry building and point out some “worker” among the incoming rustics whom Hartley had not “made,” and debonair Harry O’Brien, who spent his time among the banks, was more than once rudely jarred when Lanagan would slip over on the front page of the Enquirer a defalcation that had been engaging O’Brien’s attention for a week.
So it went with Lanagan; from the “bell hops” of big hotels, the bar boys of clubs, down to the coldest-blooded unpenned felon of the Barbary Coast who sold impossible whiskey with one hand and wielded a blackjack with the other, the police sources were his.
Consequently Lanagan, having “arrived,” may be accorded a few more liberties than the average reporter and permitted to spend a little more time than they in poker in the back room at Fogarty’s, hard by the Hall of Justice. Here, when times were dull, he could drift occasionally to fraternise with a “shyster,” those buzzards of the police courts and the city prisons who served Fogarty; or with one of the police court prosecuting attorneys affiliated with the Fogarty political machine, for Fogarty was popularly credited with having at least two and possibly three of the police judges in his vest pocket. Or he could rattle the dice with a police judge himself and get the “inside” on a closed-door hearing or the latest complaint on the secret file; and he could keep in touch with the “plainclothes” men who dropped in to pass the time of day with Fogarty; or with the patrolmen coming on and off watch, who reported to Fogarty as regularly as they donned and doffed their belts and helmets things they thought Fogarty should know.
In this fashion does the police reporter best serve his paper; for it is by such unholy contact that he keeps in touch with the circles within circles of the police department of a great city. Some he handles by fear, some he wins by favour, some he wheedles. In the end, if he be a brother post-graduate, the grist of the headquarters mill is his.
Of the shysters there is Horace Lathrop, for instance, who boasts a Harvard degree when he is drunk never when he is sober. Horace is sitting with Lanagan at Fogarty’s rear room table, while Lanagan sips moodily at his drink.
Larry the Rat, runner for the shysters, pasty of face, flat of forehead as of chin, with an upper lip whose malformation suggests unpleasantly the rodent whose name he bears, shuffles in and bespeaks Lathrop at length. That worthy straightens up, glances at Lanagan, and then remarks: “Casey has just brought in a moll,” and arises, with elaborate unconcern, to leave the room.
“Well,” drawled Lanagan, “what else?”
“Nothing. That’s all I know. Going to try to get the case now, whatever it is.”
“Is that all you told him, Larry?” asked Lanagan. The Rat mumbled unintelligibly and shuffled away.
“The Rat’s answered after his breed,” said Lanagan. “He says no, it is not. Now, Horace—pardon me, Barrister Lathrop—kick through. You know I’ve got to deliver a story to my paper to-day. Come on.”
Lanagan never wasted words with Lathrop. There were a few trivialities that he “had” on that individual. But Lathrop balked. “Look here, Lanagan, all I got’s her name and address. It isn’t square. She may have a roll as long as your arm. You print this story, the newspaper men go at her for interviews, tip her off about me, she gets a regular lawyer, and where do I come off? You fellows are always crabbing our game. I gave you that shoplifter story a week ago and you played it for a column. You know you did, Jack; now you know you did.”
Lathrop had been whining. Now he stiffened.
“I ain’t going to,” defiantly; “I’m tired o’ being bullied by you. Aw, say now, Jack, it’s a big case. And I got a wife and kids to look out for ‘which was a fact’ and here you come taking the bread and butter out of their mouths. It ain’t square, Jack; you know it ain’t.”
All morals to all men, reflected Lanagan, and laughed lazily, pulling a copy of the Enquirer across the table.
“See her, Horace? Right on this page—page o
ne, column two, right here, with your name in big black-face letters—a little story of about one-third of a column on that $750 touch-off on that Oroville deacon, who went astray for the first time of his life and was pinched as a drunk to be fleeced by you and your precious band. There isn’t any way of getting his money back, or proving a case against you or the two cops who cut the roll with you and Fogarty. I didn’t print the story, but I’ve got the facts pretty straight; and it goes right here right in this nice, conspicuous place for the grand jury to see and for that wife and those kids to see also, who, singular as it may sound, actually don’t know what particular brand of a lawyer you are. Get all that?”
Lathrop “got” it.
Lanagan was then told that the detinue cells held a young woman of remarkable beauty, Miss Grace Turner, taken from a family rooming house on O’Farrell Street. Also that through Lathrop word of her arrest was to be taken to her brother there. Lathrop or Larry the Rat, both being cogs in the same machine, had come by the information by the underground wire that runs from every city prison to the bail-bond operators and their shysters without.
Fogarty was the bail-bond chief, and possibly one of the plainclothes men who just now rested his elbow upon the bar may have passed that name and address to Larry the Rat.
The “detinue” cases are those on the secret book at headquarters, that stable police violation of Magna Charta; the detinue cases, therefore, become the focus of the police reporter’s activity.
“And incidentally, Horace, you stay away from 1153A O’Farrell Street until I get through,” was Lanagan’s final command.
“But what about Fogarty?” whined the shyster. “He must know by this time I got the case. You know what he could do to me if he wanted to, Jack.”
“Yes, and I know what I could do to him if I wanted to, and he knows it, too,” snapped Lanagan. “Leave him to me.”
“I’m a friend of Miss Turner’s,” he said as the landlady opened the door at 1153A O’Farrell. “I wish to speak with her brother.”
Toward the Golden Age Page 30
