Unravelled Knots

by Baroness Orczy

  He threw a bundle of newspaper cuttings down on the table. I gazed at them still puzzled, but nevertheless convinced that he was right. When I looked up again, I only saw a corner of his shabby checked ulster disappearing through the swing-doors.

  X

  The Mystery of the Montmartre Hat

  I

  “It was during a foggy, rainy night in November a couple of years ago,” the Man in the Corner said to me that day, “that the inhabitants of Wicklow Lane, Southwark, were startled by a terrible row proceeding from one of the houses down the street. There was a lot of shouting and banging, then a couple of pistol shots, after that nothing more. It was then just after midnight. The dwellers in Wicklow Lane are all of them poor, they are all of them worried with the cares of large families, small accommodation, and irregular work, all of which we must take it make for indifference to other people’s worries, and, above all, to other people’s quarrels. Rows were not an unknown occurrence in Wicklow Lane, not always perhaps at dead of night and not necessarily accompanied by pistol shots, but nevertheless sufficiently frequent not to arouse more than passing interest. Half a dozen tousled heads—no more—were thrust out of the windows to ascertain what this particular row was about; but as everything was quiet again, as no police was in sight to whom one might give directions, and the mixture of rain and fog was particularly unpleasant, the tousled heads after a few minutes disappeared again, and once more peace reigned in Wicklow Lane.

  “Of course the next morning the event of the night was mentioned and mildly discussed, both by the men whilst going to their work and by the ladies whilst scrubbing their door steps. Everyone agreed that the pistol shots were fired soon after midnight, but no one seemed to be very clear in which particular house the row had occurred. Two or three of the people who lived in No. 11 and No. 15 respectively would have it that it occurred ‘next door,’ but as the house next door to them both could only be the one between them, namely No. 13, and as No. 13 had been empty for months, this testimony was at first strongly discounted.

  “Presently, however, a helmeted and blue-coated representative of the law came striding leisurely down the Lane. Within a minute or two he was surrounded by a number of excited ladies, all eager to give him their own version of the affair. You can see him, can’t you?” the Man in the Corner went on with a grin, “stalking up the street, his thumbs thrust into his belt, his face wearing that marvellous look of impassivity peculiar to the force, and followed by this retinue of gesticulating ladies, dressed in what they happened to have picked up in neighbouring ‘ole clo’ shops, and by a sprinkling of callow youths and unkempt, unshaven men. You can see him solemnly plying the knocker on the dilapidated front door of No. 13, while for the space of a minute or two the gesticulating ladies, the youths and the men were silent and motionless. But not a sound came in response to the Bobby’s vigorous knocking. The house was silent as the grave; just above the front door a weather-worn board, swaying and creaking in the wind, mutely gave it out that the lease of these desirable premises was to be sold and that the key could be had on application to Messrs. J. Whiskin and Sons, of Newnham Road, S.E. The ladies, with cheeks blanched under the grime, looked aghast at one another; the youths tittered nervously, the men swore. No one appeared altogether displeased. Here was a real excitement at last to vary the monotony of life, something that would keep gossip alive at the ‘White Lion’ for many a day to come. The majestic representative of the law then blew his whistle. This broke the spell of silence and voluble tongues started wagging again. Soon the second representative of the law appeared, as ponderous, as impassive as his mate. He was quickly put in possession of all the known and unknown facts connected with the mysterious occurrence. Leaving his mate in charge, he stalked off to get assistance.

  “Well, you remember no doubt what happened after that. A police inspector called straightway on Messrs. Whiskin and Sons and elicited from them the information that effectively No. 13 Wicklow Lane was for sale, had been for some time, and that on the previous morning—it was, of course, Thursday—a well-dressed gentleman had called to make enquiries about the house. Young Mr. Whiskin gave him the key and asked him to be sure and return it before 1 pm as the office closed early on Thursdays. Well, the gentleman hadn’t come back yet with the key, but Mr. Whiskin was not troubling much about that, there being nothing in the house—nor for a matter of that in the street—likely to tempt a thief. Young Mr. Whiskin thought that he would be able to identify the gentleman if he saw him again. He had rather a red face and a thick nose which suggested that he was accustomed to good living, rough ginger-coloured hair, and a straggly ginger beard and walrus moustache, all of which gave him rather a peculiar appearance. He wore a neat brown lounge suit, a light overcoat, and grey Homburg hat, and he was carrying a large parcel under his arm. Mr. Whiskin added that he had never seen the man before or since.

  “As soon as these facts became known there was more voluntary information forthcoming. It appears that one or two of the residents in Wicklow Lane remembered seeing a man in light overcoat and soft grey hat, and carrying a parcel under his arm, enter No. 13 with a latch-key. No one had taken ‘pertikler notice,’ however, chiefly because the occurrence was not an unusual one. Often people would go in to look at the empty house and come out again after inspection. Unfortunately, too, because of this there was distinct confusion of evidence, some witnesses declaring that the man carried a large parcel and that he went away again, but not until the evening; others would have it that he had a very small parcel and that he wore a bowler hat; others that the man with the bowler hat was another person altogether and did not call till the evening, whilst this again was contradicted by another witness who said that the man who called in the evening had very conspicuous ginger-coloured hair and beard, but that he certainly wore a bowler hat. And through this mass of conflicting evidence there was always the fact that the fog was very thick that night and that no one therefore was able to swear very positively to anything.

  “This, then, being all the information that could be gathered for the moment from the outside, the police next decided to force an entry into the empty house. Its unlucky number justified, as you know, its sinister reputation, because the first sight that greeted the inspector when he entered the front room on the ground floor was the body of a man lying in a pool of blood. At first glance he looked like a foreigner—youngish, and with jetblack hair and moustache. By the side of him there was a damp towel, also stained with blood. Closer examination revealed the fact that he was not dead, but he seemed in a dead faint, and the inspector sent one of the men off at once to telephone for the divisional surgeon.

  “The wounded man was dressed in a dark suit. He had on a gold watch of foreign make, twenty pounds in notes and some loose silver in his pockets, and a letter addressed to ‘Allen Lloyd, Esq.’ at an hotel at Boulogne. The letter was a private one relating unimportant family events; it was signed by a Christian name only, and bore a London postmark but no address. The police inspector took charge of the letter and the money, and as the divisional surgeon had now arrived and was busy with the wounded man, he proceeded to examine the premises.

  “The houses in Wicklow Lane all have small yards at the back. These yards end in a brick wall, the other side of which there is a railway cutting. It was obvious that No. 13 had been untenanted for some time. The dust of ages lay over window and door frames, over broken mantelpieces and dilapidated stoves. There was not a stick of anything anywhere; even the rubbish in the basement—such as is found in every empty house, residue left over by the last tenant—had been picked over until there was nothing left but dust and a few empty bottles.

  “The front room in which the wounded man lay revealed very little. Two bullets were found lodged in one of the walls; one, quite close to the ceiling, suggesting that it had been fired in the air, and the other at a height of seven feet from the ground. The dust on the floor had certainly been disturbed, but by how many pairs of feet it was imp
ossible say. On the other hand, the back room on the same floor had quite a grim tale to tell. It gave on the small backyard with the wall as a background, beyond which was the railway cutting. The window in this room was open. In one corner there was an ordinary sink which showed that water had been running from the tap quite recently; there was a small piece of soap in the sink which had also recently been used. On the mantelpiece a small oak-framed mirror was propped up against the wall and beside it on the shelf there was the remnant of a burnt-out candle and a box of matches, half empty. And thrown down on the floor, in a corner of the room, were a black Inverness cape and soft black hat with a very wide brim, such as are usually affected by French students.

  “It was, of course, difficult to reconstruct the assault just at present, the wounded man being still in a state of stupor and unable to give any account of himself, but the revolver was found lying at the bottom of the yard close to the end wall.

  “In the meanwhile the divisional surgeon had concluded his examination. He pronounced the wound to have been caused by one of the bullets that had lodged in the wall of the front room. It had been fired at very close range, as the flesh was singed all round the wound. The bullet had gone right through the left deltoid, front to back and slightly upwards, just grazed the top of the shoulder and then lodged in the wall. The surgeon was inclined to think that the wound was self-inflicted, but this theory was thought to be untenable, because if a man was such an obviously poor shot he would surely have chosen some other way of putting an end to himself, unless, indeed, he was a lunatic, which might account for any incongruity in the known facts, even to the noise—the shouting and the banging—that all the neighbours agreed had preceded the revolver shots.

  “But there certainly was one fact which discounted the attempted suicide theory and that was the undoubted presence of another man upon the scene—the man with the ginger hair and the thick nose who had called for the key at Messrs. Whiskin and Sons, and whom several witnesses had actually seen entering the empty house—the man with the parcel. Now no one saw him come out again by the front door. He must have been in the house when the foreigner with the jet-black hair came and joined him, and he must have slipped out later on in the dark, under cover of the fog and rain, either by the front door when nobody happened to be passing by, or over the wall and then by the railway cutting. Now what had brought these two men together in an empty house, in one of the worst slums in London? One man was wounded; where was the other? Had the revolver been dropped by one of them in his flight or flung out of the window by a lunatic? Was it attempted suicide by a madman or murder consequent on a quarrel, or blackmail? None of these questions was ever answered, nor was the man with the ginger-coloured hair ever found. There was absolutely no clue by which he might be traced; the earth just swallowed him up as if he had been a spook.

  “Nor was the identity of the wounded man ever satisfactorily established. Who he was, where he came from, who were his associates and what were his antecedents, he never revealed. He was detained in hospital for a time as he certainly was suffering from loss of memory. But presently they had to let him go. He had money and he was otherwise perfectly sane, but to every question put to him he only answered ‘I don’t know! I can’t remember!’ He spoke English without the slightest trace of foreign accent; all that was foreign about him was his jet-black hair and beard. Nor was the history of the revolver ever traced to its source. Where was it bought? To whom was it sold, and by whom? Nobody ever knew.”

  “But where did the man go after he left the hospital?” I now asked, seeing that the funny creature looked like curling himself up in his corner and going to sleep. “Surely he was kept under observation when they let him out!”

  “Of course he was,” he replied glibly, “and for some time after that.”

  “Then where did he go,” I reiterated impatiently, “when he was discharged from hospital?”

  “He asked the way to the nearest public library and went straight there; he looked down the columns of the Morning Post, scribbled a few addresses on a scrap of paper, then took a taxi and drove to one of the private hotels in Mexborough Gate, where he engaged a room, paying a fortnight’s board and lodging in advance. Here he lived for some considerable time. He was always plentifully supplied with money, he bought himself clothes and linen, but where he got the money from was never discovered. For a time he was watched both by the police and by amateur detectives eager for copy, but nothing was ever discovered that would clear up the mystery. From time to time letters came for him at the hotel in Mexborough Gate. They were addressed to Allen Lloyd, Esq., which may or may not have been a taken-up name. Presumably these letters contained remittances in cash. They were never traced to their source. Anyway he always paid his weekly bills at the hotel, but he never spoke to anyone in the place, nor, as far as could be ascertained, did he ever meet anyone or enter any house except the one he lodged in.

  “Then one fine day he left the hotel, never to return. He went out one afternoon and nothing has been seen or heard of him from that day to this. The mysterious Mr. Allen Lloyd has disappeared in the whirlpool of London, leaving no trace of his identity. He had paid his bill at the hotel that very day. He left no debts and just a very few personal belongings behind. To all intents and purposes the matter was relegated in the public mind to the category of unsolved and unsolvable mysteries.”

  II

  The Man in the Corner had paused. From the capacious pocket of his tweed ulster he now extracted a thick piece of string; his claw-like fingers set to work. The problem which the police and public had never been able to solve had, I had no doubt, presented few difficulties to his agile brain.

  “Tell me,” I suggested.

  He went on working away for a little while at an intricate knot, then he said: “If you want to know more, you will have to listen to what will seem to you an irrelevant story.”

  I professed my willingness to listen to anything he might choose to tell me.

  “Very well, then,” he said. “Let me take your mind back to that same winter two years ago. Do you remember the extraordinary theft of a valuable collection of gems, the property of Sir James Narford?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you know who Sir James Narford was?”

  “I would prefer you to tell me,” I replied.

  “Sir James Narford,” the funny creature went on glibly, “was a young gentleman who had been employed during the war in one of the Government departments; he was the only son of his father who was an impoverished Irish baronet. Soon after the Armistice Sir James went to South America to visit some relations. He must have made a very favourable impression on one of these—an eccentric old cousin who died a very few months later and left to his English relative a marvellous collection of pearls and other gems. Some of these were of priceless value, and as is the way with anything that is out of the common, all sorts of stories grew around the romantic legacy. The great worth and marvellous beauty of the jewels were told and retold, with much embellishment no doubt, in the English papers. It was asserted that the Brazilian Government had valued them for probate at a million pounds sterling; that there were diamonds—some still uncut—that would make the Koh-i-Noor or the Orloff look like small bits of glass, and so on. I daresay you can remember some of the legends that gathered around Sir James Narford’s gems. By the time the lucky owner of the fabulous treasure, who had gone out again to Brazil in order to fetch away his jewels, had returned to England, he was the object of universal interest, and he and his gems were photographed and paragraphed all over the place.

  “But as I told you, the recipient of this princely legacy had always been a poor man. We may take it that the payment of legacy duty on forty thousand pounds’ worth of gems had impoverished him still further. Busybodies of course tried to persuade him to sell the gems; he had numberless letters from diamond and pearl merchants, asking for permission to see them with a view to purchase, but, naturally enough, he didn’t want to do
anything in a hurry; he deposited his treasure at the bank and then thought things over. He didn’t want to sell for he was inordinately proud of his new possession and of the notoriety which it had conferred upon him. It was even rumoured that he had received more than one hint from fair lips that if he proposed marriage, the owner of such beautiful jewels would be certain of acceptance.

  “I don’t know who first suggested the idea to Sir James Narford that he should exhibit the gems for the benefit of disabled soldiers and sailors. It was a splendid idea; 2s. 6d. was to be charged for admission, and, after deducting expenses of rent and attendants, the profits were to go to that very laudable charity. Suitable premises were secured in Sackville Street. These consisted of a shop with a large plate-glass front and a small room at the back; the entrance was through a front door and passage which were common to the rest of the house, and there were two doors in the passage, one of which gave into the shop and the other into the back room. Sir James spent a little money in getting up the place in modern style and he had some cases made for the display of the gems. The door which gave from the passage into the shop was condemned and a heavy piece of furniture placed against it. The back room was only to be used as an office and anteroom with communicating doors leading into the shop.

  “In the daytime the gems were displayed in glass cases ranged right and left of the shop; at night they were locked up in a safe which stood in the middle of the shop, facing the plate-glass window and with a blazing electric light kept on all night, just above the safe. This is a very usual device with jewellers in a smaller way of business. The policeman on night duty can see at once if there is anything wrong.