The First Mystery Novel

by Howard Mason

  And now Tydings, hat tilted on back of head, leaned back in his swivel chair and read it avidly—at least the writing uppermost and on the flap—once or twice mouthing silently a word or a phrase as in admiration of some precise lawyerlike way of putting something.

  He looked up finally, at the bottom of the flap.

  “Why, Boyce, it leaves his entire estate to you—except for $10,000, the use of the house for a year, and the furniture to Josiah. And that bunch of crackpots down in Washington Square are out without a farthing! Whoops! I congrat—but here—here—what the devil did he tangle this thing all up in a mess of beans for?”

  “That,” said Boyce, “is explained in the final paragraph. Which covers the entire reverse side. The true face of the envelope, in fact. And d’ya mind,” he added plaintively, “reading it aloud when you do read it?”

  “Not—not at all,” said Tydings, hastily turning the envelope over. And clearing his throat as though he were in a courtroom, he read aloud:

  And the reason I left Boyce Barkstone, in a certain previous will, a certain cryptogram to solve—and which, if this will is ever filed for Probate, he has solved! (though he can do as he likes about giving the Press any of the details) is that I myself, back in 1879, unearthed my own grandfather’s right and correct will thanks to being able to recognize the significance of—and to solve—a puzzle that he gave me before he died. He had heard—and heard correctly, too—for I was a young man at the time, and rash of tongue and judgment—he had heard about my having told someone that he was partly senile, to such extent that he probably could not construct a simple word-square, as a certain type of puzzle was known in those days. And the “word-square” he handed to me before he died was a word-square with a vengeance—for it was undoubtedly the first crossword puzzle; the first “word-square” ever built to a gigantic scale; a crossword puzzle one of whose horizontals was defined merely as “where Balhatchet Barkstone might poke about a bit.” I finally solved that horizontal as DUCKPOND; and, poking about, in a boat, with a steel rod, in the bottom of the duck pond on our farm, I came on a sealed copper canister containing his will. Rewarding me most generously. With it was an explanatory note telling me how hurt he had been by what I had said about him, but telling me also that, back in 1845, in England, he himself got his father’s correct will—generously remembering him—by recognizing and solving an unusual cryptogram left him by his father. Left him, as a matter of fact, not long after a tiff in which he had told the old man, face to face, that the latter could not even make up a 3-word rebus. (As certain types of pictorial puzzles were known in that day.) Neither my grandfather nor I, however, ever divulged to the Press of our own respective days how we came upon the right wills. Because, however, I believe firmly—as may have been evident from some of my talks and writings—that if talent and proclivities don’t go down through a family, then the family has died—and right of inheritance has stopped—has ceased. I’m seeing to it that my grandson prove himself able to do at least in part what I did—and what his great-great-grandfather did. For our cryptograms were tough! And how! For one thing I had never seen a word-square elaborated to such huge dimensions and into such a wild shape as the one I received—I did not even know what the thing was—I thought it was a design in senile geometry! And when I did finally suspect, I had to search for the definitions for its horizontals and verticals. And when I found them, on a narrow roll of paper secreted in my grandfather’s pet corncob pipe, I was further away than ever from solving it. For the definitions for the horizontals and verticals, which should have led to DUCKPOND, were hopelessly, hopelessly vague. Indeed, I had to make thousands and thousands of trials with Grandfather’s horrible definitions. The puzzle he received from his father, however, must have been worse—very much worse. For he received but three crude crayon etchings. It turned out finally that they represented a sort of charade—or rebus, the very thing about which he had taunted his own father—but it was a rebus involving puns in 3 languages! And which, when solved, led him to the hiding place. But he had to learn 6 languages perfectly and comprehensively before he could decipher that rebus! Now I’ve allowed for plenty, plenty of dilution of the true Barkstonian blood by giving Boyce a whole handful of hints as to his cryptogram being a cryptogram, and the rest should be easy if his mind is a true Barkstone mind. If, however, Boyce hasn’t it in him to recognize and solve the simple cryptogram I’ve left him, then the Barkstone family—so far as I’m concerned—has died—somewhere beyond myself and ahead of my grandson. It then has no living descendant; in which case, this will will remain ever unfound; and, if found by accident, by some rascally second-hand furniture dealer, or other person, it will be promptly destroyed in order that the latter may retain the contents of this envelope on which it was written.

  Balhatchet Barkstone.

  The lawyer looked up from his long reading. “Well, Boyce,” he said, “in case there is any question in your mind, I can tell you that the explanation we’ve just heard of why your grandfather did what he did doesn’t invalidate this thing as a will in any way; wills may go into any sort of fantastic by-paths, just so long as they bequeath something to somebody! And so, as you’ve guessed, the estate is yours all right, all right. The language in the actual bequeathal on the flap here is correct—the will, though unwitnessed, is holographic—which makes it legally self-sufficient—its date is one day later than that other will, so disastrous to you—when opened out, this envelope becomes one sheet, one document—quite everything is okay—and you win, hands down! And—but here—here—we haven’t opened the envelope. What can be in it, I wonder?”

  He held it up to the light, but it was plain, from the squinting of his eyes, that the thick paper frustrated him from seeing anything.

  “I’m almost certain I know,” said Boyce quietly, “though I’m not 100-percent sure. Whether or no, I didn’t open it, because I didn’t feel I had quite the legal right.”

  “We-e-ell,” laughed the lawyer, “since one who inherits all the estate but a fixed sum, is here, we have legal representation, so here goes—”

  He laid the envelope flat, and face down, on his glass-topped desk, and insinuated a thin slender silver paper-knife between the narrow bottom flap and the paper to which it adhered. With a deft slicing motion, he was already dissecting it neatly away.

  “My guess,” Boyce put in, “is that it contains a certain $5000—perhaps in odd bills, perhaps now not—which sum Grandfather took from me a week ago without a receipt. He probably intended to file a receipt for it later—I give him credit for that. Only Old Man Death foreclosed a mortgage on him before he did. Anyway, I happen to know from things that occurred today that I was scheduled to go to prison for that five thousand, and would have, if I hadn’t been lucky enough to be named heir—”

  “Money is right!” gasped the lawyer, peering into the now nearly open envelope. He pursed together the envelope, and shook out the contents. Which fluttered to the glass-topped table—crisp yellow oblongs of paper—one—two—three—four—five. “Thousand dollar bills!” He looked up. “And you mean to tell me, Boyce, you were on a spot all the time and said nothing? Why—but I guess I understand. Well—you’re not on any spot now. For—” He was gazing at the five crisp bills, and shaking his head. “What do you know about that! Your grandfather actually insured this will being destroyed in case its own heir wasn’t smart enough to find it. For of course any other finder would have had to destroy it in order to keep this money.” He shook his head wonderingly. “He surely believed in his own theories!” And again shook his head wonderingly.

  He looked up at the younger man suddenly and briskly. “Well, fortunately we now have in New York a night Probate Court clerk, thanks to the fact that people do die at night, and other people have to file hastily for executorships ahead of rascally others—and this fellow will be coming on duty in 15 minutes. So the very first place we go—yes, you and I—is over to the Courth
ouse and file this will; and I’ll see that it’s kept out of the newspapers just as the bean-will was. And again, Boyce, I congratulate you on winning this estate.”

  “Oh, that fool estate? To hell with it. Not that I perhaps can’t use a bit of wealth. Who can’t? But I’ll take it gladly, because it irons out my five thousand deficiency on those books, and makes it possible for me to marry a swell and wonderful girl. To whom, incidentally, I’ve told ever’thing, in a long, long phone conversation before I came down here to tell you. A conversation in which, by gosh, we even set the date of our marriage for next week.”

  “Referring, of course, to Carmine,” the lawyer nodded. “A charming girl, all right, all right. And so for that, then, I’ll congratulate you.” He rose and took up his stick, preparatory no doubt to leading the way straight to the Night Probate Clerk’s office. But paused, hand on back of chair. “And I suppose,” he added dryly, “that you and Carmine will be naming your first boy after the author of that fable you read me back there—whoever the author may have been?”

  “Our first child, don’t you mean?” corrected Boyce, though somewhat cryptically. “Whether boy or girl? Oh yes, Carmine and I’ve already agreed we should do that—agreed by phone a while ago. It’s to be called Cornelius if a boy; Constance if a girl; for—”

  “But Cornelius? Constance? How? Why?”

  “The nickname for either one,” explained Boyce Barkstone patiently, “is Con. And the author of that fable I read you was the greatest Con who ever lived. Yes—Con-Fu-Tse, more commonly known as Confucius.”

  Chapter XXII

  KIDNAPPED

  Gilbert Parradine, lying in the jet black impenetrable darkness of the hideout where he was being held, and atop only the pair of thin cotton blankets spread upon the hard floor, realized full well that whether the $100,000 ransom was ultimately and eventually paid for him or not, he himself was due to be murdered.

  For he knew that Louis Rocco, his own electrician for Parradine Tower and Parradine Moderne Motion Picture Theatre, was head of the gang that had accomplished this crime; and Parradine had seen, and could completely describe, no less than 3 others of the gang—all highly individual in appearance, to say the least. He could even establish the actual identity of the one who so uncannily resembled him; could furnish at least the “monikers” of the other two who had helped. Moreover, Parradine could prove, if ever liberated, no matter just where he might be freed, exactly where he had been held! And since he was in a position to give not less than 4 men life on The Rock in San Francisco Bay, he well knew that he was never going to live to see that they got it!

  One other thing he knew, too: that rescue of him would be impossible, in view of the location of this more-than-unusual hideout, plus the fact that Rocco had created an ingenious scheme to make it appear, beyond all shadow of a doubt, that Parradine had been seized in Chicago—and, moreover, held in Chicago.

  No, Gilbert Parradine knew that he would be permitted to remain alive only so that vital samples of his handwriting could be obtained—if necessary. Samples like, for instance, the Palmer House registry card he had signed hours ago, when the hot iron was brought agonizingly close to his bare foot. Or even that other damning slip of paper which he had written only when that iron had been applied to his foot. Or, in turn, the pay-off order itself, against whose writing he had no longer even struggled. No, he knew he would be permitted to remain alive only so that other such vital samples of his writing could, if necessary, be furnished in the ransom negotiations atop current newspaper heads, to prove that the ransom was not being paid for a dead man. So-o—until the spurious kidnapping had technically been performed in Chicago, tomorrow night—so long, indeed, as there might be need for samples of his writing, or of data from him as to possible go-betweens in the negotiations—so long, in fact, as the ransom, if in line to be paid, yet remained unpaid—he was 100-percent safe. A $100,000 property, no less. But once that $100,000 was paid, he would be killed. For the specious assurances of these rats, through their chief rat, that, once paid off, they intended to flee for parts unknown, were but to keep him calm, he knew; he knew that in the face of the inescapable net that the F.B.I., could throw for kidnappers over the whole breadth and length of the land, their lives would not be worth tissue-paper nickels: and he knew that they knew it. No, God help him, once that ransom was paid, he would be—

  He drew a brief, almost choking breath. Not so much from terror as because the single electric bulb that had been serving to light up this strange hideout had gone out an hour ago—had been extinguished from without—and now the utter and impenetrable darkness of the place seemed to press him in, actually to smother him, to—

  How long, he wondered dully, would it be—in days, before the trustees, following that signed order, succeeded in making contact with the Chicago members of the gang? How long before—

  He jerked himself away, by a powerful effort, from these maddening but hopeless thoughts. Tried to distract himself by thinking of something else. But of what? Well—well, how long had he been here now? Six—seven—eight hours? Yes, about eight—yes. So it must be now about 2 in the morning. But it seemed literally ages since yesterday afternoon, when he had been blithely talking with so many persons. And with all about the same thing—at least for the most part. A book! A book of Chinese wisdom. How futile and inutile it all seemed now—his quest of a book—in the face of this—this thing which was so grave. This thing that meant—

  And thus his mind, like a rubber ball on a rubber band, came straight and true and unerringly back to the very thing he’d tried to draw it away from—his present status. Kidnapped! Held in a hopelessly unfindable and unreachable hideout—as he well knew, even if nobody else did! And with the police destined to search for him, if at all, a thousand miles away. And at the end of it all—

  Fiercely, he tore his mind away, flung it back to the one thing that had served, if only for a few fleeting seconds, to distract it. The book! The book of Chinese wisdom. The book called—

  The Way Out!

  Ironic thing! That title. The Way Out! For it stated, in three tiny 3-letter words, that one thing which Gilbert Parradine most needed in the entire world right now—most wanted.

  The Way Out! From certain and sure death—the actual facts of which would never, never be traced or even known. The Way Out. The Way—and now Parradine groaned aloud. For from this hopeless setup—his own double being “kidnapped” in Chicago—from this unfindable, unreachable spot in New York City where not even an explosion could be heard—where now he himself was lying in Stygian darkness—there was no way out, any more than there was even the printed work The Way Out itself, its only existent copy lying in the hands of a queer stubborn individual on the East River front who, for utterly unfathomable reasons, apparently would not sell it for love nor for money. Would not even consider discussing its sale to—

  And now Gilbert Parradine, clinging desperately to this one titillating idea which served, in slight measure, to distract him from far more terrifying ones, tossed it about in his mind, back and forth, like a feathery, elusive, celluloid Ping-Pong ball. Till suddenly, worn to utter exhaustion, he fell into blessed sleep. A sleep in which, brief though it was destined to be, he dreamed he was walking—a completely free and happy man—down Broadway. In company with another man. A man who, strangely, was dressed from toes to pointed cap in garments made of coarsely sewn cowhide. And who answered—strangely or not strangely, as the case might be—to the name of Hutchcock McDolphus!

  Chapter XXIII

  PRICELESS VOLUME!

  Hutchcock McDolphus, dealer in hides, shook his bald head stubbornly, pugnaciously, angrily, at the phone in front of him.

  “I—I tell you, Jark,” he shouted, “that the book isn’t for sale at any price. And ‘any’, by Godfrey, means any—A—N—Y—any! Is that plain?”

  The retort from the other end of the wire was but a si
gh. However, the man at the other end did now speak.

  “I guess it is—yes. But since, Mr. McDolphus, I’m the cause, in a manner of speaking, of your acquiring this—this now quite priceless volume, do you mind if I run over? I’m next door now, in a tallow jobber’s shop—thought I’d find out first if you were in, and—but may I at least have the courtesy of a minute’s talk?”

  “Oh, I suppose so,” retorted Hutchcock McDolphus, but with a highly resigned sigh of his own. “Run up, then. I’ll be waiting. Upstairs, you know—over the sidewalk-level stockroom.”

  He hung up petulantly. And spun ’round, in his creaking, whining, rusty-springed swivel chair, from sight of his old-fashioned rolltop desk to where he faced the prosaic office itself. A curious little man he was, with not a single hair on the whole of his billiard-ball-like head, with eyes so colorless they were gelid, and with a sharply pointed chin that stuck ’way out like a bartender’s paunch: a sharply pointed chin that bespoke no less than 101-percent obduracy in any situation. He was in green-striped shirtsleeves and vest.

  And now, facing the softwood-floored room, with its old-fashioned drawer filing cabinet, and its tall flyspecked and multi-paned windows letting in the mid-afternoon sunlight and gazing at the same time out and down, from South Street, on the East River itself, its air full of a stench that Hutchcock McDolphus himself could not even discern, working in it all day as he did, he rocked back and forth, sulkily reflecting on the problem of why in Hell and Hades, by Godfrey, a man, having purchased a simple innocent article, couldn’t be left in peace to—to possess it. Why, if every sales transaction in the world were to undergo reconsideration by seller and buyer, what—in Hell and Hades would become of profit? What would become of—

  And thus he was still sitting dourly, and sourly reflecting, when an undoubtedly timorous knock at the door apprised him that the bookdealer he had been talking to on the telephone had arrived.