The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  THE MONKEY TRICK

  THE HERO OF “The Monkey Trick” appears in only one collection of short stories by John Everard Gurdon (1898–1973) and both he and his creator are utterly unknown today. Although this short story presents a situation that is one of the most baffling in the realm of impossible crimes, and its solution one of the neatest, it does not appear to ever have been reprinted after its initial publication.

  Gurdon was born in London and educated at Sandhurst Royal Military College. He served as an officer in the British army during World War I and suffered severe injuries, being invalided out in 1919. While he was recovering in the hospital, he began to write fiction, primarily on aviation subjects, both for adults and younger readers, mostly under the byline Capt. J. E. Gurdon, D.F.C. Among his adult thrillers are his first book, Over and Above (1919); Feeling the Wind (1924), about Kekulen, a superanarchist outsmarted by a British Secret Service Agent and a former R.F.C. pilot; and a story collection, The Sky Trackers (1931).

  In addition to writing aviation stories for anthologies and such magazines as Modern Boys’ Annual and Air Stories, Gurdon wrote several popular young adult novels that were often reprinted, including Wings of Death (1929), The Kings’ Pipe (1934), The Secret of the Lab (1936), The Secret of the South (1950), and The Riddle of the Forest (1952). He also translated the nonfiction book The German Air Force in the Great War by Georg Paul Neumann. “The Monkey Trick” was first published in The Monkey Trick (London, Newnes, 1936).

  J. E. GURDON

  THE NOTE which His Excellency had just handed in was lying on the table, eyed in silence by three tired men upon whose shoulders rested all the weight of a nation’s decision.

  “War!” murmured one.

  The tall man facing him nodded.

  “They’ve never intended the dispute to go to arbitration,” he complained bitterly.

  From the depths of the chair which was almost engulfing him the fat little man spoke pipingly, a reflective smile creasing that famous chubbiness which a disgruntled colleague had once described as a “cartoonist’s dream come true.”

  “Would any nation force war upon her neighbour,” he demanded, “if aware that that neighbour possessed a type of aircraft which could be controlled by wireless when empty, and was capable of a speed of eight hundred miles an hour through the upper atmosphere?”

  Neither of his two companions answered, but sat very still, yet alert.

  “The possession of such a weapon,” pursued the high-pitched voice in prim enunciation, “is a factor which must inevitably exercise the most far-reaching influence upon the development of this situation.”

  “So far as I am aware, no such machine exists,” observed the tall man slowly. “What is your meaning?”

  The smile vanished and suddenly the jovial mobile features set.

  “I mean that although at the moment no such machine exists, I propose to call one into existence, and to demonstrate its powers in a manner which cannot fail to carry conviction. Moreover, I intend that this demonstration shall be made in the presence of Lobley, the Chief of their Secret Service, who is prowling about this country in blissful ignorance of the fact that our own men have had him under observation since the moment he landed.”

  “ ‘Call one into existence,’ eh?” echoed the tall man thoughtfully.

  A slow, understanding grin lit up his haggard face; then, for the first time in many anxious weeks, he laughed long and joyously.

  Of regular habits, Police-Sergeant Dunsterman played bowls every Wednesday evening, returning along the Snetch road as the light began to fade. On Wednesday, the 27th, having defeated the vicar of Ingoldsburgh in a warmly-contested match, he strolled home to become a figure of international importance.

  Peace brooded over the flats that stretched eastward from the roadside to the sea a mile away, a peace whose smoothness was scarcely scoured by the screams of wheeling swallows. Sergeant Dunsterman, humming a marching song, watched the swallows and the samphire and the distant dunes, cast a weatherwise glance at the June sunset, and himself sank into that peace peculiar to an East Anglian man on East Anglian soil.

  Half a mile ahead, where the road spanned the meandering River Wych, he glimpsed a white-clad figure that moved erratically. A chuckle rumbled in his deep chest as he recognized both figure and occupation. Mr. Kinley, the amiable young visitor from London, had already excited the amused comments of the neighbourhood by his habit of fishing in flannels at all hours of daylight.

  As he reached the bridge the fisherman looked up with a friendly smile.

  “Evening, Sergeant. How wags the world?”

  “Mustn’t grumble, sir. Have you had any luck?”

  The young man grimaced and jerked his head at an empty creel which lay by his gaudy yellow blazer on the grass behind him.

  “Never a nibble! I’ll swear there’s nothing but water in this darned stream. Ever try yourself?”

  Dunsterman did not immediately reply, for he was staring with considerable surprise and interest at a pair of binoculars which also lay beside the blazer. For years he had been practising observation and accumulating a very wide fund of useful knowledge; even from where he stood he could see that those binoculars were in all probability a Zeiss instrument of exceptional power—at any rate a most unusual item of equipment for a young man fishing in flannels.

  “Ever try yourself?”

  The policeman pulled himself together at the repeated question and smiled.

  “Not in my line. Haven’t the patience.” He hesitated, then went on casually: “Looks like a fine pair of glasses you’ve got there, sir.”

  Somewhat to his disappointment the response was remarkable for undoubted gratification. Promptly the young man picked up the glasses and offered them by swinging the strap at the low parapet.

  “Catch,” he invited. “You’ll find ’em as good as any you’ve looked through. My brother won ’em from a German officer … Hello! … Hear an aeroplane? … Sounds as though she’s coming from that direction.”

  He pointed seaward.

  Although he was justly proud of his hearing and listened intently, the sergeant could detect no sound remotely resembling an engine. He trained his glasses on the sea horizon and swept it from north to south. Through the splendid prisms and lenses he saw seabirds innumerable, but never a speck that might be an aeroplane.

  “She’s getting nearer!” exclaimed Kinley.

  “Then, sir,” laughed the policeman, “I must be getting deaf!”

  “Can’t you spot any machine?”

  Dunsterman put down the binoculars and stared at the fisherman with sudden interest, for there had been a queer, tense ring of anxiety in his voice. Beneath his scrutiny Kinley flushed and became very busy packing up his tackle.

  “Must have been mistaken,” he mumbled. “Motor-bike, perhaps.”

  “No,” answered the sergeant slowly, a few seconds later. “You were not mistaken. There is a machine coming in from the sea—though how you managed to hear her before beats me hollow!”

  To this Kinley made no comment, nor did either utter a word during the crowded minutes that followed.

  It all happened so swiftly that Dunsterman afterwards told his superintendent that it reminded him of going over the top. Out of the east droned a winged shape that grew with frightening rapidity, became suddenly silent, dipped, sank, and vanished behind a row of stunted willows.

  “Gosh! Crashed!” breathed the policeman, and vaulted the parapet. Still without a word Kinley kept by his side as he forced his way through the clumps of reeds that fringed the stream. Together they reached the row of willows and together halted as at a word of command.

  Between the willows and the nearest dunes was a strip of level turf, roughly triangular in shape and scarcely more than two hundred yards in length from apex to base. Quite undamaged, but with motionless propeller, a tiny aeroplane faced them from the tip of the triangle.

  “Some landing,” remarked Kinley.

&n
bsp; “You’re right. This is about the only possible patch for a mile around.”

  “Queer sort of bus!”

  Dunsterman agreed. A low-wing monoplane, showing only a pair of planes protruding on either side of an immense tapering engine cowling, the intruder ridiculously reminded him of a bullet wearing a bow tie. The moment that they reached the machine and rounded one of the wing-tips he made a discovery, however, which drove all fanciful analogies from his mind, for nowhere on planes, sides, fins, or rudder was there a vestige of either international marking or registration number.

  “Totally enclosed cabin,” remarked Kinley, chattily, indicating the deep, glass-panelled fuselage. “Never seen such a fat body on such thin wings, have you?”

  “Never. Don’t go too close yet, sir. I don’t want that turf messed up with footprints—not that there seems to be any except our own.” His quick glances covered every tuft of the soft marshy grass before he nodded satisfaction. “Can’t have got out yet,” he concluded. “Not unless he’s got wings himself!”

  In France, Sergeant Dunsterman had behaved in a manner which earned him two very significant strips of ribbons. Regarding his courage, therefore, neither his fellowmen nor he himself had ever had cause for doubt, yet eyeing that inert mass of machinery, his heart misgave him as though he had been asked to lead some desperate venture. It was not that he feared the unknown pilot, although his conduct in remaining concealed was at least suspicious; what made the sergeant’s scalp tingle were the altogether unaccountable sounds that came from within the sealed cockpit—sounds clearly made by something alive fighting to escape.

  Squaring his shoulders he rapped authoritatively upon the panelled cabin, and assumed official tones—“Now then. What’s up in there?”

  To this came no articulate reply, although the sounds of struggling became frenzied.

  “What is it?” whispered Kinley.

  Examining the catch of the cockpit door the sergeant snorted with pardonable irritation. A fool question, he thought. For some seconds he fumbled at the unfamiliar device, then the door clicked and slid silently sideways.

  A small monkey jumped out, bounced on to his shoulder, chattered agitatedly, and scampered away towards the dunes. The sergeant said nothing, for his jaw had dropped and he was staring incredulously into an empty cockpit where the joystick lolled to one side as though just released from the pilot’s hand.

  “Humph!” he grunted at length, sliding the door back. “Whoever flew this machine is just about the swiftest mover I’ve ever run across! I could have sworn it was impossible for any man to get out and disappear in the time it took us to come here from the bridge.”

  “But his footprints!” exclaimed Kinley. “There aren’t any.”

  “Must be. Stands to reason. In failing light it’s easy to overlook a footprint, even on squashy turf like this.”

  “I suppose,” put in the young man, hesitantly, “I suppose the monkey—I mean to say they’re awfully intelligent little beasts and one can train ’em to do almost anything. Supposing it was a pet monkey who’d been taught to fly, and managed to bolt with its owner’s machine?”

  Dunsterman laughed harshly, because he himself had just been guilty of equally fantastic speculations.

  “The monkey’s about the size of a cat,” he retorted, “and it would take quite a reasonably tall man to sit on that seat and reach the rudder gadget with his feet. Besides the whole idea’s too damn silly!”

  It was not at all correct, he fully realized, to speak to a member of the public in this fashion, but for the moment he was too rattled to care. Not only was the affair from beginning to end so incredible as to be exasperating, but its developments seemed full of unpleasant possibilities for himself.

  There were a great many points for him to consider, and the most important of them all was the immediate tracing of the vanished pilot. That, however, meant getting assistance, and while he was attending to this the pilot might return and fly off. Of course, he mused, he could leave Kinley on guard, but in the peculiar circumstances that was a risky thing to do; anything might happen; he might come back to find the machine gone and the unfortunate young man with his head knocked in. On the other hand, if he stayed himself and sent Kinley back to the station with a written report and instructions, it would inevitably be some hours before an effective search could be organized—and Sergeant Dunsterman was most uncomfortably sure that his superiors would be vengeful if, through any dilatoriness on his part, the pilot of this unregistered machine managed to get away.

  “I quite see your difficulties,” said Kinley suddenly, as though his companion had indeed been thinking aloud, “but if you like to leave me on guard while you get things moving I shall be quite O.K. My idea is to get into the cabin and shut the door. Then, if the blighter does return he’s done in the eye. Moreover, he can’t very well give me a swipe without first of all busting up his own ’plane.”

  “That, sir,” returned the sergeant promptly, “is a good idea. Very good indeed. I am obliged to you. At the very most I shall not be away more than an hour.”

  “Right-o, old man.” Kinley slid open the door and squeezed into the seat. “Don’t you worry about me. It’s jolly snug in here.”

  The door closed as Dunsterman nodded his thanks and strode rapidly off. Scarcely had he reached the row of willows when the monoplane’s engine snarled. Feeling slightly sick, the policeman instinctively dodged behind the nearest tree as the little machine, like an unleashed beast, raged straight at him across the turf, bumped, rose, missed the topmost twigs by a bare foot, and sped with a dwindling scream into the gathering dusk.

  That for the moment he should be deprived of all power either to think or act was inevitable, but with surprising swiftness training and discipline resumed command. In a flashing sequence of tableaux his mind visualized what must have happened during those few seconds—the sudden reappearance of the pilot; some ruse that induced Kinley to open the cabin; then a savage blow, the body dragged out, and flight.

  Shouting the young man’s name, he sped back to where the machine had rested. Nothing lay sprawling on the turf, as he had feared; no signs of a struggle; no tracks, even, other than those which he and Kinley had made.

  Swearing with all the fervour of a badly-frightened man, Dunsterman peered around into the bewildering shadows, then was struck to cold, sweating silence by a hand that clutched his leg. Hissing, the breath escaped between his teeth as he looked down and saw the monkey.

  The tiny creature was holding his trouser leg, staring up, and making forlorn, twittering noises. Very gently Dunsterman stooped.

  “Clarence,” he said, tucking the animal under his jacket. “You’re coming along with me!”

  During all the breathless rush back to the police station at Snetch, Sergeant Dunsterman was thanking his lucky stars for the monkey. Without the reassuring warmth of the living body under his arm he would almost have doubted his own sanity and, even with the monkey to show as evidence, he dreaded the coming explanations to a notoriously caustic and sceptical superintendent.

  On this point his misgivings were destined to be speedily removed, for as he panted up the station path, the Superintendent appeared in the doorway.

  “What’s all this about an aeroplane down on Wych marshes?” he demanded abruptly. “And why the devil are you running about with a monkey?”

  “It j-j-jumped out of the aeroplane!”

  The Superintendent grunted and led the way into the parlour, which also served the sergeant at his office.

  “Now then,” he commanded, “fire ahead, keep cool, and miss nothing.”

  Even the critical attention of his superior could find no fault with Dunsterman’s crisp and circumstantial account of the incident or with his handling of it.

  “This man Kinley,” snapped the Superintendent when the tale was ended. “Know anything about him?”

  “Nothing, sir, except that he turned up a few days ago and has been staying at the Sanger Arms. J
ust an ordinary visitor, I’ve understood, and I heard that he came from London.”

  “Humph! Go down to the pub at once. Go through his effects. Never mind formalities!” The Superintendent hesitated. He was a man of exceptional reserve and caution, even with trusted subordinates, but he was also an exceptionally worried man, with all a worried man’s hankering after confidence. “Serious business this, Dunsterman,” he growled at last. “London’s been burning the wires blue. Now cut and——”

  “See here, sir,” broke in the sergeant excitedly. “This monkey! There’s a collar on it with a brass plate—a name and address—‘Sammy—Warnford Durrant—Hylton.’ ”

  “So that’s it!” he breathed. “Warnford Durrant, the Government aircraft designer, and the biggest man at his job in the country! Hylton in Essex is his experimental station—all passwords, barb wire, and sentries. I know ’cause I took leave down that way this spring. See now what’s happened? That machine’s one of Durrant’s secret models—and it’s been stolen!”

  The faces of the two men as they exchanged a long, understanding look were grave, yet aglow with the curious pleasure of patriotic citizens drawn into deep and secret waters. Dunsterman was the first to break the silence.

  “Will you take charge of the animal, sir,” he inquired, “or shall I leave it with my wife? She is in the kitchen, and it will be perfectly safe if I chain it to the table-leg.”

  “Do that. I must report to the Chief Constable. Go down to the Sanger Arms and let me know immediately what you find.”

  Forty minutes later, Dunsterman and the Superintendent were closeted together in a small annexe to the hall of the Chief Constable’s house.

  “Everything’s been cleared clean out,” announced the harassed sergeant. “Just after nine o’clock this evening a young man drove up in a small open two-seater car and gave the landlord a note purporting to come from Kinley. The note said that he, Kinley, had been recalled to London and that the bearer of the note would settle his bill and collect his kit. The landlord says that he compared the signature on the note with Kinley’s own signature in the visitors’ book, and concluded that the note was genuine. I’ve compared ’em myself, and to me also the note seems genuine enough. So the landlord let the kit go. There was only one old suit-case, he says, and a haversack and some fishing-tackle.”