by Howard Mason
This Meister Brandt expounded to me, the horror of the enterprise being strong upon him, he being that night, as I say, in his cups; and he knew that he was to be slain as were already his fellows and the masons who had constructed the walls and niches. And the Lord knows what devil was in Curtius the Count, that he should find pleasure in this strange enterprise, for in truth this game of dying chess was no game, but only a monstrous plaything, to be privily viewed and gloated after, not to be used. For thus they remained ever fixed and sealed up, to be shewn only to the most favoured of his guests for their admiration, and to his enemies for their warning.
In truth the Count is possessed, and tis the blood of his mother, whom men called the Italian witch, that hath set all the devils in him; and it is scarcely credible of the justice of God, that such a worker of iniquities yet walketh on alive; yet he walketh, as will shortly cease to do your husband; for the Count hath already killed Meister Brandt and suspects my knowledge, and hence am I confined here to await his will.
If I escape not, as it seems most probable I will not, this letter may not ever reach you, dearest Wife; yet there is staying in the castle two ambassadors from the English court, on their way home to England; and I shall do all in my power to get this into their hands. Perchance one of the boys may hide it for me in the English nobles’ saddlebags, and so I pray it may reach you that you may have knowledge of my end, if it should come, which God forbid but so I fear it.
Well my dear Wifey, if I return not to you, I pray you, see that our Nicky marks his Latin studies well, for he was ever slothful and backward in his classical tongues, and needs much exhortation and discipline if he would do well. For yourself I bless you with all my heart and soul.
Now fare you well and cherish in memory your True-Love and ever affectionate husband,
Nich. Truelove
This third day of March 1557
Well, that was it. The handwriting, in the last few lines, had grown larger, and a little erratic, as though the pen had trembled in the writer’s hand. The paper was yellowed in patches, and felt crisp and brittle to the touch, like newspapers which have been ironed smooth and allowed to scorch.
CHAPTER III
It took us a long time to read the thing. Stony read it first, and passed on each sheet as he finished it, and Sophia read over my shoulder.
Constantine sat watching us, patiently, and when Stony put down the last sheet, he leaned forward.
“I hope you are satisfied that this is the document you wished to purchase?”
“Satisfied, yes.” Stony spoke absently.
“Then, if you would care to make me out a cheque for the sum I mentioned in my letter—”
Stony said: “Nonsense.”
The dealer’s voice rose. “You realize that I have acted in all good faith in allowing you to see this letter before agreeing on a price. Of course, if you do not see your way—”
“Certainly not,” said Stony, calmly.
You had to hand it to him, he certainly knew how to take care of his own money.
Constantine, already conscious of having lost his game, struggled on. “Why, if that’s how you feel—then I daresay we can come to some agreement about—any financial profit that may derive from the investigation of the matters contained in the letter? What do you say, Herr von Arnhem? Fifty-fifty? I think I could agree to fifty-fifty. That would be fair, don’t you think?” He gabbled on, his voice rising higher. Stony was scarcely listening to him; his mind, I could see, was on Curtius, not on Constantine. I decided it was time I asked my questions.
I got to my feet and went and stood in front of the dealer’s chair. He looked up at me, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
“Interesting, that letter.”
He watched me cautiously. “Indeed, yes.”
“How did you get hold of it?”
“I—just as I said. The globe came to me in an auction lot.”
“Where from?”
“From an old house, a private house.”
“How did you come to look inside the globe?”
“I—I—”
“Well?”
He looked up at me with an air of guileless frankness. “To tell you the truth, it was simply the letter that came my way. I was never in possession of the globe itself.”
“‘Came your way?’ How do you mean?”
“Quite honestly, I assure you. A dealer, a friend of mine—Berber & Co., a reputable firm, you may have heard of it—he came by the globe, at an auction, and found the letter. He sent it to me because he knew of my interest in chessmen. People are always bringing me such things,” he added. “You did yourself. I am, I flatter myself, quite an authority on the subject; in fact, my little book—”
“Get on,” I said. “Berber sent you the letter.”
“There was nothing out of the way about it. He sent it as a curiosity—a gift.” He paused. “I do not think he had conceived any idea of—of its possible value.”
“But you did?”
“I did, yes.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Less than a month ago. Three weeks, perhaps.”
“Why did you lie about the globe?”
He wriggled beneath my stare. “It was merely that—having seen the advertisement concerning the globe—I thought that if the gentleman should wish to purchase the actual globe as well—”
“You could get hold of it cheap from Berber, and sting the gentleman for that, too?”
“I—yes.”
We were warming up a bit, now. Constantine was getting rattled. Stony watched, curiously, from the bed; Sophia stood near me, wide-eyed.
“Having formed this idea of the letter’s value, what did you do?”
“Nothing. That is—until I saw the advertisement.”
“When was that?”
“Not until a week ago—ten days perhaps.”
“You wrote at once?”
“Yes.”
I turned to Stony. “Is that right?”
Stony nodded. “That’d be about it.”
I looked at the dealer again. “So you’d already seen that letter when I brought my red bishop to show you.”
“Yes.”
“Did you connect it with the piece mentioned in the letter?”
“The bishop?” He hesitated. “No. That is, not immediately.”
“Yet you offered to buy it—immediately.”
“I—well, yes, perhaps I did connect it. After I had studied it. It was of the right period, the right provenance; and then the carving of the piece was unusual—the upper parts, the mitre—I saw that it was a possibility, though of course I couldn’t be certain.”
“Why did you say nothing about it, when I asked you if you could tell me anything about the piece?”
“Why should I?” A spark of spirit had returned to him. He peered up at me defiantly through the tortoiseshells.
“Did you know that an attempt to steal it was made—the day after I showed it to you?”
“No.”
“Did you not think it odd when I brought the bishop back and exchanged it for one of yours?”
“I did, yes.”
“Seen Agag lately?”
It went home, I thought, watching him. He covered it quickly. “I am not acquainted—I don’t know what you mean.”
I waited for a moment, and then I said, suddenly: “You’ve got it, haven’t you? The bishop? You kept it. It wasn’t Hedge who collected it. You kept it.”
His voice rose. “No, no. I don’t know what you mean. Your man collected it. That is, the man I described to you. I told you. He had the receipt. How was I to know? It wasn’t my fault.”
That was true; he had described Hedge well enough. Then he was telling the truth. Or was he?
I said: “Have you show
n this Truelove letter to anyone?”
“No.”
“To a man called Walter Mott—Agag?”
He said doggedly: “I don’t know what you mean.” But I noticed that his hands, resting on the briefcase on his knee, were trembling ever so slightly.
My eyes went to the briefcase. It was well-filled, and plump. I made a sudden dive for it, and got hold of it before he could stop me. He jumped up then, his face working furiously; I struggled with him, feeling his pockets for his keys. He was stronger than you would have thought, to look at him, but he wasn’t much trouble. I found the key and threw it to Sophia.
“Open that case.”
She obeyed, her face puzzled.
“Feel around for something knobbly. Small. Wrapped up, probably.”
She found it immediately: a small tissue-paper parcel, neatly tied with string. She unwrapped it quickly, and held the thing up.
It was the bishop all right. The original, as far as I could see from a glance. Sophia handed it to Stony, and he began to examine it.
Constantine was struggling again under my grasp. I held him down till he subsided, panting, into a chair, and slumped there, watching.
“It’s the one from the set,” rasped Stony. “By God, the feller had it all the time.” He was clutching it very tight, gazing at it, as though the little bishop’s eyes held him fascinated. I turned back to Constantine. He was frightened now. His Adam’s apple was moving up and down like an escalator. His head had shrunk into his collar as though into a shell.
“Now then. Let’s have the truth.”
“I told you. I—”
“Look, that bishop is stolen property. I could have you charged and locked up. Answer my questions, and you may get off lightly. We’ll take it from the beginning. When did you get hold of that letter?”
“I told you. A few weeks ago, three weeks. Through Berber. That’s the truth, I swear it is.”
“And then?”
“I—I made investigations about this place, about Burg Endert. I thought, if the story was true, the gold chessmen might still be there. I tried to trace the set with the red bishop—the Curtius set.”
“How?”
“Through German dealers.”
“Didn’t it occur to you that the set might be in the possession of the castle’s owner?”
“It did. But I didn’t wish to—to communicate my knowledge at that stage.”
“You intended to go after the stuff yourself. All right. And then?”
“Then I read the account of the ‘Red Bishop Case.’ It interested me, but no more; I had nothing much to go on. Until you came and brought me the bishop.”
He was speaking mechanically now, the fight gone out of him. “I tried to buy it from you. I didn’t want to be too pressing, for fear of arousing your suspicion of its value. You wouldn’t sell. I decided to get help.”
“You mean, to hire a burglar?”
“If you like, yes.”
“Who did you go to?”
“A—a man called Rivera. A Spaniard. He had worked for—that is, I knew of him.”
“You were going to say, he had worked for you before?”
“No, no.” His voice rose again. “I am an honest man, a reputable dealer. Ask anyone, ask my friend Berber—”
“Never mind. You knew Rivera. Having engaged him to rob me, what happened then?”
“Rivera brought a friend to see me.”
“A friend?”
“A—a receiver.”
“Agag?”
After a pause, the dealer said, with a shrug:
“Yes.”
“And you showed him the letter?”
“Yes. I decided to bring him in. I needed—that is, I thought he would be useful. He would be in a position to dispose of—of anything we found, when the time came.”
“You needed a fence. So you told Agag. When?”
“The day after you came to see me. He—he was more interested than I had imagined. He seemed to know something already. He said that there might be more in it than I thought.”
“What did he mean?”
“I don’t know.”
I thought I knew what he had meant, though. For Mott, Nicholas Truelove’s letter was connected, by two links, with Lord Stonybridge’s fortune. One link was my red bishop; the other was the Cochem address of the von Arnhem who figured in the Stonybridge passbooks. But compared to the gold chessmen, Stony’s hypothetical fortune must have seemed to him then like chicken-feed.
I said: “So Agag arranged the burglary?”
“Yes. I was to hear from him.”
“And did you?”
“The next thing I knew was that you walked into my shop that night—with the bishop. I knew then that the attempt had failed.”
“And then?”
Constantine licked his lips nervously. “I saw that advertisement of Herr von Arnhem’s.”
“Why did you answer it?”
“I—things didn’t seem to be going smoothly. They had failed in their first attempt to get the bishop, and—I hadn’t taken much to the man Agag. I wasn’t sure if I could trust him. I was alarmed at the turn things were taking; his ideas were altogether too—too—”
“Too illegal?”
He nodded, eagerly. “I am a reputable dealer, I couldn’t afford to compromise myself. It was all becoming more difficult than I had—than I had imagined in the first instance.”
“You found you were out of your depth, in fact. So you decided to double-cross Agag?”
“I decided to—to retire from the partnership. I thought I could make a deal with Herr von Arnhem; nothing gross, you understand, just a small profitable deal; but it would be safe, quite legal. I had—I suppose I had lost my nerve.” I could see that, I thought.
A treacherous little rat; the frightened ones always are. I said:
“When they burgled my flat the second time and found that receipt of yours, they came to you?”
“In—in considerable haste, yes. They were very pressing.”
“I’ll bet they were. What happened?”
The dealer peered up at me with a gleam of a smile. “I took a leaf out of your book, Lord Stonybridge. I gave them the wrong bishop.”
“You what?”
“A similar one—from the same set, as a matter of fact, as the one I lent to you.”
“They weren’t taken in by mine. Why were they taken in by yours?”
He spread his hands and shrugged. “I had perhaps arranged things with more care. I knew they’d be coming, and I had the dummy carefully wrapped and locked in my safe. It was Rivera and the other man, Hedge, who came for it; they became—a little violent. I let them obtain the key of the safe from me by force, and allowed them to find the thing for themselves. They scarcely troubled to examine it. Possibly you made things too easy for them.”
That was true enough, I thought. I’d tried to hand it to them on a platter. It was an interesting lesson in deceit. I said:
“So you got out quickly and came to Cochem?”
“As you say. I was obliged to—remain in concealment for a day or two, until it was safe for me to leave. I arrived in Germany this afternoon.”
After a moment, I said: “Where’s Agag now?”
“I don’t know.” Seeing me lean forward, he said quickly: “I swear it’s the truth. I haven’t set eyes on him since I left England. I’ve told you everything, I swear it.”
He sat, limp and shrunken, then, and began to mop his brow with a handkerchief.
I left him, thoughtfully, and turned to Sophia.
“Well, that’s that. You’d better get him a drink; he looks as though he needs one. I could do with one, too.”
“All right.”
We both turned then, and glanced towards the bed. St
ony wasn’t there.
The covers were thrown aside, and the bed was empty.
CHAPTER IV
“Hello, where did he get to?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t hear him go.” Sophia stared at the empty bed.
“Funny. I suppose he’s all right?”
Sophia said slowly, “He’s taken that bishop.”
Personally, I hadn’t liked the look in the old man’s eye as he fondled that little chessman. I said: “I think we’d better go after him.”
“Yes.”
She was already out of the door, and I took another look at Constantine, slumped in the big chair, looking more shrunken than ever now. There wasn’t much kick left in him, but I hadn’t decided what to do with him, yet, so I turned the key in the lock after me and left him to his thoughts. After that I followed Sophia along the landing, down the stairs, into the gallery and up to the turret door. I was beginning to know my way about a bit, but I could see it would take a long time before you could get from your bedroom to your bathroom without the aid of a map. I caught Sophia up at the door of the chess-room, and we entered it together.
Clearly Lord Stonybridge had embarked on his search. The tall portrait of Curtius, unhooked from the wall, lay tipped forward drunkenly against a chair. In the centre of the oblong stretch of wall where it had hung, a foot above ground level, there was a smaller oblong opening, about the size of a trap-door; the trap was hinged vertically, and was let down so that it rested against the floor. Through the opening, the light from the room showed us the stone wall of a stairway that curved away steeply into darkness. I crossed the room and peered through the opening; and then I looked at the tilted stone flap and squinted under it, to see my little bishop’s upturned feet protruding from the lock.
