This business began to eat into her life. Social duties went by the board. 'Jeff' was happy enough that 'Mutt' should be so intensely occupied; he did not even mind her talking in her sleep. He fell naturally into lunching downtown at Louis', or the club; usually Mutt would drop in, and distractedly toy with a chop. She was really in despair; if only she could have appealed to Simon Iff! But her pride prevented her.
She tried to trace the salt-cellars; but they were of a common pattern, sold by the thousand. There might be more in the idea that the number twelve had some significance. Possibly, again, the Chinese had some peculiar superstition about salt.
III
She now spent most of her time in the Chinese quarter. Her charm earned her plenty of friends, but of course nobody knew anything about the raft incident. There was, however, one old man who gave her some excellent advice. "A child!" he said, "see its body, which is like the bough of a rotten tree, and its mind is like slaked lime. Be at peace; this is Heaven's appointment, and the way of perfection."
Dolores, every nerve high-strung, reacted instantly against the philosopher. His words were kindly and sensible, but she was certain that a threat was intended: "Keep your nose out of what doesn't concern you!" Somehow or other she must be on the right track.
She took to watching the old fellow closely. She learnt that he had kept a drug-store of the Chinese variety for thirty years; he was of good character, so far as the police knew.
A Japanese went to his shop, at nearly the same time, nearly every night; the man was a tattooer, and bought inks. But why should he not lay in a stock of inks to last a month or a year? The purchase was an excuse; they really conferred about other things.
The next day she called on the Japanese. She was certain that he had lied to the police in saying that he had never executed the snake-and-anchor design. She ordered him to do a dragon on her shoulder, and gained leasure to observe. There was only one object visible which was at variance with the obvious characteristics of the tattooer. This was a letter-file. She determined to get a chance to examine it. So, on her second visit, she pretended to faint with the pain of the needle, and sent him out for brandy. She opened the file; almost at once she came on a miniature of the snake-and-anchor design, with a page of writing beneath it; a list, perhaps. She secreted it. The brandy failed to restore her courage; she left, promising to come back in the afternoon. She had the paper photographed, and restored the original on her next visit. She had the list translated, and looked up the owners of the names.
Wu Lee, the last but one on the list, was the only name not in Boston. His address was given as Mott Street, New York. It might be worth a trial. She took the afternoon train.
Wu Lee was a washerman. He had never been to Boston, he said. He willingly exposed his chest to his fair visitor. There was no snake-and-anchor to be seen.
For all that, she felt that she was on the trail. Here, at least, was one thing pertinent. Wu Lee was a 'Kilistian' and a copy of the same missionary magazine as was on the raft lay on the table of his little sitting room.
As she went out, a certainty gripped her that Wu Lee knew something. She would watch for a few moments. It was "a good bet if she lost". She concealed herself in a door-way. Ten minutes passed, and then she was rewarded by seeing her 'old philosopher' go quietly down the street and into the washerman's shop. He had hardly time to say two sentences, she judged, when Wu Lee staggered from the shop, a scared man if ever there was one in this world. The old man followed him out, stopped and took snuff; he grinned terribly as he watched Wu Lee reel into Chatham Square. Then he turned and came across the road directly to Dolores. He opened his mouth, and showed his toothless gums.
"You think?" he said, and made a grimace so sinister and menacing that Dolores shrank back appalled. "You go home; nice house, nice man; this side, bad weather."
She brushed past him, and went back to her hotel to think. It was certain that Wu Lee was threatened; she would offer him protection; he would have to tell her the whole story. But had he fled? What a fool she had been not to follow him!
However, the next morning she found Wu Lee at his work. But he was going about it with the air of one resigned to die. She told him frankly who she was, and promised all the might of Uncle Sam to save him. He was impassive as fate itself. She began to apply a little 'third degree' of her own, described the finding of the body. It moved him - but not normally. "Oh not the raft - not the raft!" was all he would say, and he said it over and over.
Again she retired in disorder. To fill in the time, she called on a missionary who worked in Chinatown, and asked about the snake and anchor. Was it a secret society?
"Not very secret, poor fellows!" said the missionary. "It's a Cantonese Mutual Help Society, and its qualifications are two: Christianity and Tuberculosis. The snake stands for healing, and the anchor for hope."
"Then you can't imagine its members getting into trouble as such?"
"Oh, you're thinking of that raft business? No; that's a most mysterious affair. I'm afraid I can't suggest anything. You ought to go to Mr. Simon Iff; a godless man, I fear, but with a wonderful knowledge of all things Chinese."
"Ah!" smiled Dolores sadly, "he's the one man I mustn't ask," and took her leave.
At her hotel she found Miss Mollie Madison waiting to see her. She was overjoyed; the puzzle was on her nerves, and she longed to pour out her soul. But she refrained gallantly from asking Mollie if she had discussed the matter with the mystic, and even shut her up when she began to volunteer some data on the subject.
IV
They went in to the luncheon-room. Dolores stopped at the desk on the way, and inquired for her mail. There was a letter from 'Jeff' enquiring pleasantly when she meant to return. And there was a long envelope without name or address. The clerk said that it had been handed in 'by a man'; he hadn't noticed what he was like; it had been a particularly busy morning.
Dolores had presentiment. She wouldn't open the letter until she had ordered lunch for herself and Mollie. When she did so, two documents fell out. Their meaning could not be mistaken. One was a railway folder with the service from New York to Boston; the other a Chinese drawing of herself. The clothes left no doubt of that; it was the dress she was wearing, and she was pictured on a raft, nailed as the dead man had been nailed, and mutilated as he had been. The world swam for a moment before her eyes. Mollie seized the drawing. "You must absolutely come right away to Mr. Iff," she cried. "It's too horrible; it's too horrible!"
Dolores swallowed a Colony Club Cocktail. "Mollie dear," she said very gently and sweetly, "please ring up Mr. Iff after lunch - and tell him I'll see him damned first!"
"Oh Dolores!" Mollie was genuinely shocked at such expressions from the Hub.
"I mean it," said her friend firmly, and attacked a Seatag Oyster with baresark fury.
"I'm sure Simon won't stand for it," said the red mouth, with a pout. "It's my duty to tell him, and he'll get right on to the case, and solve it, and leave you flat. But if you go to him he'll help you out, and leave you the glory."
"Get thee behind me, Satan!" retorted Dolores, with energy.
It developed into a quarrel; if Mollie uttered one syllable about this picture, which was a sacred secret, further, should she write, mark, engrave, or otherwise it delineate upon any object moveable or immoveable under the canopy of heaven, she, Dolores, would never speak to her again, no, not if Mollie were dying in Sing Sing, for which she was a certain candidate!
The Amazonian fury of her friend ultimately cowed Miss Mollie Madison. They went to Dolores' bedroom, wept in each other's arms, and discussed underwear for three hours. Then Dolores drifted back to Chinatown; she would wring the truth out of that toothless old scoundrel, or die for it.
But on the way she paused. This was all wrong. She was working like a detective; she had left the starlight heights of pure analysis for the mire of shadowing, and following clues, like a common 'bull'. Simon Iff would work out the whole problem from t
he data without uncrossing his legs. She retraced her steps slowly, and had dinner in her room. She ate a hearty meal, and then settled down to think furiously.
She went over the facts, one by one. She tried to reconstruct the drama.
Here is a Christian Chinaman, dying of tuberculosis - she now remembered the extraordinary emaciation of the body - who yet accomplishes some treachery so abominable as to deserve the most fearful death that can be devised. It is connected, evidently, with his change of faith. Several men are concerned to punish him; one alone could not have done the labour required.
Wu Lee, also a Christian, is in danger of similar vengeance. 'Toothless' is the spokesman of the gang. Yet he is said to be of excellent character. Can even Chinese duplicity account for it?
But Wu Lee is himself a puzzle. He is listed by the tattooer, yet he had not the marks. He is certainly not consumptive.
"I am a perfect fool," she exclaimed; "I begin to believe with Simon Iff that marriage is a failure!"
She mused a while. "Let me look at this new evidence!" She took up the folder. It was not marked in any way. "But what kind of man sends that sort of hint?" She stopped short, and bit her lips. Then she seized the drawing, and examined it with eager attention. "This was done this morning by some one who saw me in this dress. It's the first time I've worn it. He is an amazing genius, with an imagination, and an appreciation of cruelty, and of beauty in cruelty. I don't think it's 'Toothless'; he hasn't got the eyesight, or the type of hand. That envelope, too; that was bought up town. No mark, but a smart American-made paper. I bet the artist, whoever he is, is a rich man, and devised the whole affair. Who can be threatening him? And about what?"
She took up the drawing once more. It fascinated her despite herself. The treatment of the fog was peculiarly clever. More and more she riveted her attention on the background. There was an almost shapeless smudge of darker cloud between wind and water.
She sat back, lost in reverie. A telegram disturbed her. It contained the words "Give it up. Simon Iff."
"No answer!" she cried to the boy, and crushed the paper in her hand. She dismissed Mollie's betrayal with one word, 'Cat!' And then she returned to her thought. Deeper and deeper she sank into the pure abyss of mind, until the facts of the case became etherealized and vitalized in symbols of force rather than of matter.
Hour after hour she sat. Then she rang for her maid. "Pack!" she cried, "I'm going to Boston on the midnight train." The maid began her work, while Dolores sat at her desk with a quill pen between her teeth.
At last she scribbled a note.
"Dear Mr. Iff,
I am going back to Boston after all. I wish you would spend the week-end with us.
Yours ever,
Dolores Cass."
She smiled very curiously as she signed her maiden name.
V
Simon Iff sat in Mrs. Travis' boudoir in the immense arm-chair usually consecrated to Jeff. Dolores, ravishing in a golden tea-gown, was pouring him champagne.
"And so?" said he, very doubtfully. "I may not be able to drink this wine, don't you know? I thought that signature very suspicious."
Dolores laughed gleefully, like a child.
"This is very serious. Please talk!"
"You see, I asked you up here, because I wanted to thank you in person for your magnificent wedding present. It was worth all the rest."
"I surrender," he said. "Excuse me, but - You - Little - Beast! I love you. Excuse me again!"
"May I go over it with you?"
"I should be delighted."
"I did make an ass of myself! Even now, I'm a little doubtful about one or two things."
"Yes, you blundered badly at first. Problem No. 1, if I may put it so, was the raft. You had two pictures, one Chinese, and the other not Chinese, in one frame. The mutilation and torture indicated one type of mind, the marlin-spikes, the clasp-knife, the Union Jack, the missionary magazine, quite another type. It's not conclusive, but it should have made you think.
"And what about the salt-cellars? You never did anything with them. Yet, as the most fantastic and incongruous items, they should have received most attention. The other things were more horrible, and you allowed that fascination to overlay the purely mental deduction. Had you considered the point, you would have noticed that the salt was still dry, and therefore deduced that the raft had not been floating about in that fog for many minutes.
"Then you evidently missed the point of the mysterious ship, that seemed to be always hovering round you, though she had a speed of forty knots to your fifteen. A strange coincidence, to say the least of it, on a day when you run into so weird a derelict as your raft.
"Again, you altogether omitted the crucial point of autopsy. You would have learnt that the wounds were all inflicted after death. That was a dreadful omission.
"Now then, problem No. 2, the snake-and-anchor business. Not so bad, most of your work, but oh! what a fall was there! Dolores Travis had quite destroyed Dolores Cass, the brilliant author of 'Evidence of Identity'. You assumed that the man in Wu Lee's shop must be Wu Lee, despite the absence of the tattoo-marks. You could easily have found out that the man was Wu Lee's brother, he himself having died of consumption a few days before you met him on the raft.
"Again, you never became in the least aware of the real incongruity in your experience, a matter which needed no enquiry whatever. You should have seen that your Chinese were acting totally out of character. They were Dr. Nikole Chinese, all melodrama; not real Chinese at all. It ought to have been evident that they were going through a clumsily constructed play.
"Problem No. 3. The Letter of Warning. As you solved that, you had better tell me how."
"I saw something wrong. The Chinese Artist used an inappropriate stationary, and I thought the railway folder hint was not quite in tone, either. The truth is that I began to see the light as soon as I started on your lines of looking at minds instead of at facts. There seemed to be two people at work. Then that same incongruity on the raft occurred to me. That made three people, perhaps four. And 'Toothless', too, didn't fit in at all well. There was something radically wrong.
"Then I looked again at the drawing. And I began to realize that the smudge was not quite an accident. I recognized the 'Flying Dutchman', as we called her. Who, then, would know that we had seen her that day? Why connect her with the raft? And, above all, why the raft in any case? The thought came that the raft might have been lowered from the 'Dutchman'. More mysterious than ever: The 'Dutchman' had been flitting about us ever since we left Halifax. Then came the answer to that horrible first question: 'Why the raft?' - it must have been so that the Opossum, and no other ship but the Opossum, should pick it up. And who was on the Opossum but a chit of a girl who rather fancied herself at analysis, and put up problems for the world to solve? A dose of my own medicine? But who could have had such an object in view?
"I could only think of one object, and one mind capable of conceiving it.
"Then I thought of your telegram. 'Give it up' might have been a polite interrogative.
"And I became quite sure that you had been at the pains to send me a present, as you said at my wedding, as soon as you were 'able to think of anything suitable'."
"Very pretty!" replied Simple Simon; "no trouble at all, I assure you. I merely enlisted the services of a friend in Chinatown, Tze-wei, for the gruesome horror part of it. The 'Flying Dutchman' is a toy boat we are trying out - I'm in the Admiralty, you should have remembered - in connection with your government. Pray observe, I have decided to drink your champagne - a symbol of triumph - and you may refill my glass. For my triumph is not in beating you, but in convincing you, as I have done, that the proper method of attacking problems is transcendental analysis."
"Especially when I thought I knew it," sighed Dolores, in mock sorrow. "Oh, but I know what you are gloating over in reality! You've convinced me that I ought to go on with my life's work instead of being merely Mrs. Travis. I suppose part of the '
suitability' of that wonderful wedding present was to wean me from the honeymoon!"
"My dear child, it would be ungracious to criticize so admirably argued a thesis."
"I believe there's a planet outside Neptune; and I'll start to look for it to-morrow."
"With the new telescope?" was Simon's last arrow.
"With a table of logarithms, and all I can muster of brains and imagination."
"And a little touch of spite!"
"Merely the Malic Acid in the Apple of Love!"
Geoffrey Travis, coming into the room, heard the last three words.
"Apple of Love," he cried, "always the same old theme. Oh, you women, you women!"
***
*Born and raised in the "Steel City" (and Pittsburgh was spelled without the "h" in Crowley's day) I suppose I should be offended. - G.M.Kelly
Nebuchadnezzar
"I am always bothering you," murmured Miss Mollie Madison, apologetically.
"You are," admitted Simon Iff; "but I suppose I am old enough to like it."
It is possible that he might have tolerated her even had he been young. There was never hair so plentiful, so irrepressible, or so golden red as hers; and it framed a face warm, creamy flushed, round and innocent and laughing as a Greuze, with an impudent nose, and a mouth, perpetually pouting, which was redder even than the hair. Her body was slim and snakelike, every gesture sinuous and seductive. And she had no trace of self-consciousness or vanity. She never put a price upon herself, but gave freely as a queen should do.
"You frequently impress me as being a human being," continued the mystic; "and real human beings never really bother me. What is it this time?"
"It's a very small matter, Cephas," which was her pet name for Simon. "I had a dear friend at Vassar, Agnes Mills, and her mother's in trouble, and I thought you would advise her."
The Complete Simon Iff Page 28
