“Well,” Hewitt said, “you’re first here after all. Have you seen any more of our friend Hoker?”
“No, nothing.”
“Very well—probably he’ll be here before long, though.”
The party turned into Colt Row, and the inspector, walking up to the door of the house with the shuttered bottom window, knocked sharply. There was no response, so he knocked again; but equally in vain.
“All out,” said the inspector.
“No,” I said, “I saw a woman watching me from the window above not three minutes ago.”
“Ho, ho!” the inspector replied. “That’s so, eh? One of you—you Johnson—step round to the back, will you? You know the courts behind.”
One of the plain-clothes men started off, and after waiting another minute or two the inspector began a thundering cannonade of knocks that brought every available head out of the window of every inhabited room in the Row.
The woman’s face appeared stealthily at the upper window again, but the inspector saw, and he shouted to her to open the door and save him the necessity of damaging it. At this the woman opened the window, and began abusing the inspector with a shrillness and fluency that added a street-corner audience to that already congregated at the windows.
“Go away you blaggards,” the lady said—among other things—“you ought to be ’orsew’ipped, every one of ye! A-comin’ ’ere a-tryin’ to turn decent people out o’ ’ouse and ’ome! Wait till my ’usband comes ’ome—’e’ll show yer, ye mutton-cadgin’ scoundrels! Payin’ our rent reg’lar, and good tenants as is always been—as you may ask Mrs. Green next door this blessed minute—and I’m a respectable married woman, that’s what I am, ye dirty great cow-ards!”—this last word with a low tragic emphasis.
“THE WOMAN BEGAN TO BELABOUR THE INVADERS ABOUT THE SHOULDERS AND HEAD FROM ABOVE.”
Hewitt remembered what Hoker had said about the present tenants refusing to quit the house on the landlord’s notice. “She thinks we’ve come from the landlord to turn her out,” he said to the inspector.
“We’re not here from the landlord, yon old fool!” the inspector said, in as low a voice as could be trusted to reach the woman’s ears. “We don’t want to turn you out. We’re the police, with a search-warrant to look for something left here before you came; and you’d better let us in, I can tell you, or you’ll get into trouble.”
“ ’Ark at ’im!” the woman screamed, pointing at the inspector, “ ’Ark at ’im! Thinks I was born yesterday, that feller! Go ’ome, ye dirty piestealer, go ’ome! ’Oo sneaked the cook’s watch, eh? Go ’ome!”
The audience showed signs of becoming a small crowd, and the inspector’s patience gave out. “Here Bradley,” he said, addressing the remaining plain-clothes man, “give a hand with these shutters,” and the two—both powerful men—seized the iron bar which held the shutters, and began to pull. But the garrison was undaunted, and seizing a broom the woman began to belabour the invaders about the shoulders and head from above. But just at this moment the woman, emitting a terrific shriek, was suddenly lifted from behind and vanished. Then the head of the plain-clothes man who had gone round the houses appeared, with the calm announcement, “There’s a winder open behind, sir. But I’ll open the front door if you like.”
Then there was a heavy thump and his head was withdrawn; the broom was probably responsible. The inspector shouted impatiently for the front door to be opened, and in a minute or two the bolts were shot and it swung back. The placid Johnson stood in the passage, and as we passed in he said: “I’ve locked ’er in the back room upstairs.” As a matter of fact we might have guessed it. Volleys of screeches, punctuated by bangs from contact of broom and door, left no doubt.
“It’s the bottom staircase of course,” the inspector said, and we tramped down into the basement. A little way from the stair-foot Hewitt opened a cupboard door which enclosed a receptacle for coals. “They still keep the coals here, you see,” he said, striking a match and passing it to and fro near the sloping roof of the cupboard. It was of plaster, and covered the under-side of the stairs.
“And now for the fifth dancer,” he said, throwing the match away and making for the staircase again. “One, two, three, four, five,” and he tapped the fifth stair from the bottom. “Here it is.”
The stairs were uncarpeted, and Hewitt and the inspector began a careful examination of the one he had indicated. They tapped it in different places, and Hewitt passed his hand over the surfaces of both tread and riser. Presently, with his hand at the outer edge of the riser, Hewitt spoke. “Here it is, I think,” he said; “it is the riser that slides.”
He took out his pocket-knife and scraped away the grease and paint from the edge of the old stair. Then a joint was plainly visible. For a long time the plank, grimed and set with age, refused to shift, but at last, by dint of patience and firm fingers, it moved, and in a few seconds was drawn clean out from the end, like the lid of a domino-box lying on its side.
Within, nothing was visible but grime, fluff, and small rubbish. The inspector passed his hand along the bottom angle. “Here’s a hook or something at any rate,” he said. It was the gold hook of an old-fashioned earring, broken off short.
Hewitt slapped his thigh. “Somebody’s been here before us,” he said, “and a good time back too, judging from the dust. That hook’s a plain indication that jewellery was here once, and probably broken up for convenience of carriage and stowage. There’s plainly nothing more, except—except this piece of paper.” Hewitt’s eyes had detected, black with loose grime as it was, a small piece of paper lying at the bottom of the recess. He drew it out and shook off the dust. “Why, what’s this?” he exclaimed. “More music! Why, look here!”
We went to the window and there saw in Hewitt’s hand a piece of written musical notation, thus:—
Hewitt pulled out from his pocket a few pieces of paper. “Here is a copy I made this morning of the ‘Flitterbat Lancers,’ and a note or two of my own as well,” he said. He took a pencil and, constantly referring to his own papers, marked a letter under each note on the last-found slip of music. When he had done this the letters read:—
“You are a clever cove whoever you are but there was a cleverer says Jim Snape the horney’s mate.”
“You see?” Hewitt said, handing the inspector the paper. “Snape, the unconsidered messenger, finding Legg in prison, set to work and got the jewels for himself. He either had more gumption than the other people through whose hands the ‘Flitterbat Lancers’ has passed, or else he had got some clue to the cipher during his association with Shiels. The thing was a cryptogram, of course, of a very simple sort, though uncommon in design. Snape was a humorous soul, too, to leave this message here in the same cipher, on the chance of somebody else reading the ‘Flitterbat Lancers.’ ”
“But,” I asked, “why did he give that slip of music to Luker’s father?”
“Well, he owed him money, and got out of it that way. Also he avoided the appearance of ‘flushness’ that paying the debt might have given him, and got quietly out of the country with his spoil. Also he may have paid off a grudge on old Luker—anyhow the thing plagued him enough.”
The shrieks upstairs had grown hoarser, but the broom continued vigorously. “Let that woman out,” said the inspector, “and we’ll go and report. Not much good looking for Snape now, I fancy. But there’s some satisfaction in clearing up that old quarter-century mystery.”
We left the place pursued by the execrations of the broom wielder, who bolted the door behind us, and from the window defied us to come back, and vowed she would have us all searched before a magistrate for what we had probably stolen. In the very next street we hove in sight of Reuben B. Hoker in the company of two swell-mob-looking fellows, who sheered off down a side turning at sight of our group. Hoker, too, looked rather shy at sight of the inspector. As we passed, Hewitt stopped for a moment and said, “I’m afraid you’ve lost those jewels, Mr. Hoker; come to my office to-morr
ow and I’ll tell you all about it.”
III.
“The meaning of the thing was so very plain,” Hewitt said to me afterwards, “that the duffers who had the ‘Flitterbat Lancers’ in hand for so long never saw it at all. If Shiels had made an ordinary clumsy cryptogram, all letters and figures, they would have seen what it was at once, and at least would have tried to read it. But because it was put in the form of music they tried everything else but the right way. It was a clever dodge of Shiels’, without a doubt. Very few people, police officers or not, turning over a heap of old music, would notice or feel suspicious of that little slip among the rest. But once one sees it is a cryptogram (and the absence of bar-lines and of notes beyond the stave would suggest that) the reading is as easy as possible. For my part I tried it as a cryptogram at once. You know the plan—it has been described a hundred times. See here—look at this copy of the ‘Flitterbat Lancers.’ Its only difficulty, and that is a small one, is that the words are not divided. Since there are on the stave positions for less than a dozen notes, and there are twenty-six letters to be indicated, it follows that crotchets, quavers and semiquavers on the same line or space must mean different letters. The first step is obvious. We count the notes to ascertain which sign occurs most frequently, and we find that the crotchet in the top space is the sign required—it occurs no less than eleven times. Now the letter most frequently occurring in an ordinary sentence of English is e. Let us then suppose that this represents e. At once a coincidence strikes us. In ordinary musical notation in the treble clef the note occupying the top space would be E. Let us remember that presently. Now the most common word in the English language is the. We know the sign for e, the last letter of this word, so let us see if in more than one place that sign is preceded by two others, identical in each case. If so, the probability is that the other two signs will represent t and h, and the whole word will be the. Now it happens that in no less than four places the sign e is preceded by the same two other signs—once in the first line, twice in the second, and once in the fourth. No word of three letters ending in e would be in the least likely to occur four times in a short sentence except the. Then we will call it the, and note the signs preceding the e. They are a quaver under the bottom line for the t and a crotchet on the first space for the h. We travel along the stave, and wherever these signs occur we mark them with t or h, as the case may be. But now we remember that e, the crotchet in the top space, is in its right place as a musical note, while the crotchet in the bottom space means h, which is no musical note at all. Considering this for a minute, we remember that among the notes which are expressed in ordinary music on the treble stave, without the use of leger lines, d e and f are repeated at the lower and at the upper part of the stave. Therefore anybody making a cryptogram of musical notes would probably use one set of these duplicate positions to indicate other letters, and as h is in the lower part of the stave, that is where the variation comes in. Let us experiment by assuming that all the crotchets above f in ordinary musical notation have their usual values, and let us set the letters over their respective notes. Now things begin to shape. Look toward the end of the second line: there is the word the and the letters f f t h, with another note between the two f s. Now that word can only possibly be fifth, so that now we have the sign for i. It is the crotchet on the bottom line. Let us go through and mark the i s. And now observe. The first sign of the lot is i, and there is one other sign before the word the. The only words possible here beginning with i, and of two letters, are it, if, is and in. Now we have the signs for t and f, and we know that it isn’t it or if. Is would be unlikely here, because there is a tendency, as you see, to regularity in these signs, and t, the next letter alphabetically to s, is at the bottom of the stave. Let us try n. At once we get the word dance at the beginning of line three. And now we have got enough to see the system of the thing. Make a stave and put G A B C and the higher D E F in their proper musical places. Then fill in the blank places with the next letters of the alphabet downward, h i j, and we find that h and i fall in the places we have already discovered for them as crotchets. Now take quavers and go on with k l m n o, and so on as before, beginning on the A space. When you have filled the quavers do the same with semiquavers—there are only six alphabetical letters left for this—u v w x y z. Now you will find that this exactly agrees with all we have ascertained already, and if you will use the other letters to fill up over the signs still unmarked you will get the whole message—
“ ‘In the Colt Row ken over the coals the fifth dancer slides says Jerry Shiels the horney.’
“ ‘Dancer,’ as perhaps you didn’t know, is thieves’ slang for a stair, and ‘horney’ is the strolling musician’s name for a cornet player. Of course the thing took a little time to work out, chiefly because the sentence was short, and gave one few opportunities. But anybody with the key, using the cipher as a means of communication, would read it as easily as print. Snape used the same cipher in his jocular little note to the next searcher in the Colt Row staircase.
“ ‘THE FIFTH DANCER SLIDES.’ ”
“As soon as I had read it, of course I guessed the purport of the ‘Flitterbat Lancers.’ Jerry Shiels’s name is well known to anybody with half my knowledge of the criminal records of the century, and his connection with the missing Wedlake jewels, and his death in prison, came to my mind at once. (The police afterwards, by the way, soon identified his old house in Colt Row from their records.) Certainly here was something hidden, and as the Wedlake jewels seemed most likely, I made the shot in talking to Hoker.”
“But you terribly astonished him by telling him his name and address. How was that?”
Hewitt laughed aloud. “That,” he said; “why, that was the thinnest trick of all. Why, the man had it engraved at large all over the silver band of his umbrella handle. When he left his umbrella outside, Kerrett (I had indicated the umbrella to him by a sign) just copied the lettering on one of the ordinary visitors’ forms and brought it in. You will remember I treated it as an ordinary visitor’s announcement. Kerrett has played that trick before, I fear.” And he laughed again.
On the afternoon of the next day Reuben B. Hoker called on Hewitt and had half an hour’s talk with him in his private room. After that he came up to me with half-a-crown in his hand. “Sir,” he said, “everything has turned out a durned sell. I don’t want to talk about it any more. I’m goin’ out o’ this durn country. Night before last I broke your winder. You put the damage at half-a-crown. Here is the money. Good-day to you, sir.”
And Reuben B. Hoker went out into the tumultuous world.
The Case of the Ward Lane Tabernacle
I.
MONG the few personal friendships that Martin Hewitt has allowed himself to make there is one for an eccentric but very excellent old lady named Mrs. Mallett. She must be more than seventy now, but she is of robust and active, not to say masculine, habits, and her relations with Hewitt are irregular and curious. He may not see her for many weeks, perhaps for months, until one day she will appear in the office, push directly past Kerrett (who knows better than to attempt to stop her) into the inner room, and salute Hewitt with a shake of the hand and a savage glare of the eye which would appal a stranger, but which is quite amiably meant. As for myself, it was long ere I could find any resource but instant retreat before her gaze, though we are on terms of moderate toleration now.
After her first glare she sits in the chair by the window and directs her glance at Hewitt’s small gas grill and kettle in the fireplace—a glance which Hewitt, with all expedition, translates into tea. Slightly mollified by the tea, Mrs. Mallett condescends to remark, in tones of tragic truculence, on passing matters of conventional interest—the weather, the influenza, her own health, Hewitt’s health, and so forth, any reply of Hewitt’s being commonly received with either disregard or contempt. In half an hour’s time or so she leaves the office with a stern command to Hewitt to attend at her house and drink tea on a day and at a time named
—a command which Hewitt obediently fulfils, when he passes through a similarly exhilarating experience in Mrs. Mallett’s back drawing-room at her little freehold house in Fulham. Altogether Mrs. Mallett, to a stranger, is a singularly uninviting personality, and indeed, except Hewitt, who has learnt to appreciate her hidden good qualities, I doubt if she has a friend in the world. Her studiously concealed charities are a matter of as much amusement as gratification to Hewitt, who naturally, in the course of his peculiar profession, comes across many sad examples of poverty and suffering, commonly among the decent sort, who hide their troubles from strangers’ eyes and suffer in secret. When such a case is in his mind it is Hewitt’s practice to inform Mrs. Mallett of it at one of the tea ceremonies. Mrs. Mallett receives the story with snorts of incredulity and scorn, but takes care, while expressing the most callous disregard and contempt of the troubles of the sufferers, to ascertain casually their names and addresses; twenty-four hours after which Hewitt need only make a visit to find their difficulties in some mysterious way alleviated.
“SLIGHTLY MOLLIFIED BY THE TEA.”
Mrs. Mallett never had any children, and was early left a widow. Her appearance, for some reason or another, commonly leads strangers to believe her an old maid. She lives in her little detached house with its square piece of ground, attended by a housekeeper older than herself and one maidservant. She lost her only sister by death soon after the events I am about to set down, and now has, I believe, no relations in the world. It was also soon after these events that her present housekeeper first came to her in place of an older and very deaf woman, quite useless, who had been with her before. I believe she is moderately rich, and that one or two charities will benefit considerably at her death; also I should be far from astonished to find Hewitt’s own name in her will, though this is no more than idle conjecture. The one possession to which she clings with all her soul—her one pride and treasure—is her great-uncle Joseph’s snuff-box, the lid of which she steadfastly believes to be made of a piece of Noah’s original ark, discovered on the top of Mount Ararat by some intrepid explorer of vague identity about a hundred years ago. This is her one weakness, and woe to the unhappy creature who dares hint a suggestion that possibly the wood of the ark rotted away to nothing a few thousand years before her great-uncle Joseph ever took snuff. I believe he would be bodily assaulted. The box is brought out for Hewitt’s admiration at every tea ceremony at Fulham, when Hewitt handles it reverently and expresses as much astonishment and interest as if he had never seen or heard of it before. It is on these occasions only that Mrs. Mallett’s customary stiffness relaxes. The sides of the box are of cedar of Lebanon, she explains (which very possibly they are), and the gold mountings were worked up from spade guineas (which one can believe without undue strain on the reason). And it is usually these times, when the old lady softens under the combined influence of tea and uncle Joseph’s snuff-box, that Hewitt seizes to lead up to his hint of some starving governess or distressed clerk, with the full confidence that the more savagely the story is received the better will the poor people be treated as soon as he turns his back.
The Best Martin Hewitt Detective Stories Page 25
