‘What a cold response! Anyway, get up and come see!’ In spite of her unwillingness to go, he led her from the room, calling out to the maid next door, ‘I’m going to take Sanae for a few minutes.’
The adjacent room, where Akechi Kogorō slept, was open and empty. He had left earlier that morning to take care of some business. Naturally, before he left he had carefully checked the house, and warned the servants to keep their eyes on Sanae.
Sanae finally arrived at the drawing room, following in the wake of her father.
‘How do you like them? Maybe even a bit too pretty, eh?’
He sat down on one of the new chairs as he spoke.
It was an elegant seven-piece set, with sofa, armchairs, backless chairs for the ladies, and a small chair with a wooden back arranged elegantly about a round table.
‘Oh, they’re beautiful!’
The silent Sanae at last opened her mouth; obviously, she loved the new chairs. She at once sat down on the sofa to test it.
‘It’s a little too firm,’ she said. It felt somewhat different to most sofas.
‘It’s a little stiff when it’s brand new. It’ll soften up as we break it in.’
The sofa felt so unusual that if Iwase had only sat down next to Sanae, he would have been suspicious. But he sat there in one of the armchairs, and made no move to try any of the other pieces of furniture.
As they sat there, a houseboy suddenly stuck his head around the corner to say there was a telephone call; someone from the office in Osaka, it seemed. Iwase hurried off to the desktop telephone in the other room, but even so he did not forget to call into the houseboys’ room and order them to watch out for Sanae, who was in the drawing room.
When he called, two servants at once stepped into the hall and took up watch. At the end of the hall was the drawing room, and no-one could enter that room except by passing the servants.
Of course, the drawing room had a number of windows opening on to the garden, but they were all fitted with those stern steel bars. Every path to Sanae, whether from the hall or the garden, was blocked. And had they not been, Iwase would never have left Sanae alone in that room even for an urgent telephone call.
The telephone call made it necessary for Mr Iwase to travel to Osaka immediately. He changed quickly, and left the house, seen off by his wife and the servants.
‘Watch after Sanae. She’s in the drawing room right now. I asked the servants to keep an eye on her, but please go watch her yourself, too,’ he begged of his wife as the servant tied his shoelaces.
She waited for him to climb into the motorcar, and then went toward the drawing room to see how her daughter was doing when suddenly she heard the sound of the piano.
‘Sanae’s playing the piano! She hasn’t played for quite some time now. I’m so glad she’s feeling better! I’ll just leave her to herself for a bit longer.’
Feeling much happier now about her daughter, she warned the servants not to let down their guard, and returned to the living room.
After her father had left, Sanae sat in each chair in turn, comparing their softness, or stood looking out the window. Finally, she opened the piano and began to tap keys at random. She gradually became interested in what she was playing and began a child’s song, then changing to a selection from an opera.
She remained fascinated by the piano for some time, but at last even that palled, and she stood to return to the living room. As she turned, she was transfixed with horror at the totally unexpected sight that met her eyes.
But how could it happen? All paths to this room were locked, whether from the garden or the hallway! There were no spaces behind the piano or any of the furniture that a person could hide in, and these modern chairs were so low nobody could possibly hide under one. Until just a moment ago there had been no other living thing in this room, even a cat, other than Sanae.
In spite of which, a bizarre figure now stood in front of Sanae. Hair stuck out in all directions, scraggly whiskers covered its face and constantly glittering, terrifying eyes watched, above a suit torn and filthy… Without even stopping to think of who this demonic man might be or how he had gotten here, she had no doubt that he was one of the Black Lizard’s minions!
It had started exactly as the Black Lizard had promised. Just as people had begun to let down their guard, the kidnapper slipped through their defences like a magician, sneaking through the door like a ghost.
It had started exactly as
the Black Lizard had promised.
‘Ah, ah, ah! Mustn’t make a sound, dear. I’ll not hurt you, never fear. After all, you’re a precious daughter to us, too.’
His threatening voice was pitched low.
Even without his warning, though, poor Sanae was so terrified that she could not move a muscle or even think of screaming for help.
Smiling eerily, the kidnapper stepped smartly around behind Sanae, and pulled something like a balled-up handkerchief from his pocket. He suddenly swooped down on her, covering her mouth with the handkerchief.
Sanae felt a disgusting pressure along her shoulders and chest, as if she was being smothered by a giant snake. With the handkerchief pressed against her mouth, it was difficult to breathe. She could not remain still an instant longer! She gathered all the strength she had, and struggled to escape from her tormentor’s grasp. Like a beautiful butterfly caught in a spider’s web, she fluttered hopelessly.
But her furious hands and feet gradually lost their power, and she finally fell still. The anæsthetic had done its job.
When the butterfly’s wings stopped fluttering, the kidnapper laid her down gently on the carpet, rearranging her clothing primly and looking down into her gentle, sleeping face with a malicious smile.
Although the sound of the piano had stopped over thirty minutes earlier, there was still no sign of Sanae leaving the drawing room. Until just a few minutes ago random noises had issued from the room, but now there was only silence, and the room behind the door was quiet as the grave.
‘She’s been in there pretty long now… ’bout time she came back, isn’t it?’
‘It’s so quiet… Too quiet! Something funny’s going on here!’
The two houseboys on guard, unable to stand it any longer, began to whisper to each other, and just then the maid-in-waiting came from the back, worried about her charge.
‘Is the young miss in the drawing room? And the master is with her, of course?’
She was unaware that Mr Iwase had left suddenly on business.
‘No, the master had a call from the company, and has gone to Osaka,’ they informed her. She looked unhappy at the news.
‘That’s why we’re on guard here, but quite some time has passed and she still hasn’t come out. It’s been so quiet we were beginning to get worried.’
‘Well, then, I’ll just go and have a look myself!’ said the maid-in-waiting, walking briskly to the door and pulling it open. She took a glance inside, then abruptly slammed it shut and ran back to where the houseboys were waiting. Her face was white as a sheet.
‘This is terrible! Go look for yourselves! A strange person is sleeping on the sofa! And I can’t see the young miss at all! Seize him, quickly! Oh, it’s so frightening!’
The houseboys did not believe her, of course. They wondered if she might be crazy. However, they had no choice but to go and look for themselves. They swung the door open and rushed into the drawing room.
Astonishing at it was, the maid-in-waiting had not been lying. As she had said, there was someone lying on the sofa, slumping as if dead. A man who looked like a beggar, with a torn suit and bewhiskered face.
‘Get up! Who are you!’ shouted one of the houseboys, a well-built man with a first dan judo belt, as he shook the man’s shoulder.
‘Ugh! He’s drunk as a skunk! And the cheek of him scattering his junk on the sofa!�
�
The houseboy jumped back, almost comically, holding his nose.
And as evidence of his drunken state, the man’s face was unnaturally pale; and large – and empty – whiskey bottles rolled on the floor under the sofa. If he had indeed been drinking in this room he was perhaps a little too drunk for the short time he must have been there, but the houseboys were too shocked at events to notice.
They shook him awake. He opened his eyes to slits, then shakily raised his upper torso as he moistened his disgustingly dirty lips with a red tongue.
‘Ah, very sorry chaps. I’m done for. Can’ drink ’nother drop.’
As if mistaking the stately drawing room for a bar, he babbled incomprehensibly at the houseboys.
‘Idiot! Where do you think you are!? Wake up and tell us how you got in here!’
‘Wha…? How I got in? Heh, heh, takes a thief to catch a thief, right? I know where the best liquor’s hidden, easy enough…’
‘Enough of that. Where’s the young lady? I can’t see her anywhere! He must have done something!’ broke in the other houseboy, suddenly noticing her absence.
They searched every corner of the room, and strange as it was, there was no sign of anyone except for the totally unknown drunkard. What in the world could it mean? Had Sanae, in some feat of magical art, been transformed into this disgusting drunkard in a matter of only 30 minutes or so? When they thought about what had happened before they took up watch, and what they saw now, they could think of no other answer…
‘Hey, when did you enter this room? There should have been a beautiful young girl in here; you didn’t see her? Answer me properly!’
No matter how they shook his shoulder, the man showed no sign of feeling it.
‘Ooo… a beautiful young girl, huh? That’d be nice, huh? Well, bring her in! …to see the face of a beautiful girl again, after all this time… Lemme see! Hurry up, come on! Bring on the gals! Yee-haw!’
It was inconsequential drivel.
‘We’re just wasting time asking this fool questions. Let’s just call the police and let them take care of him. Leave him here any longer and he’ll cover the whole room with his disgusting filth!’
Mrs Iwase, alerted by the maid-in-waiting, came running in, but when the fastidious woman heard that a drunkard who looked like a beggar was vomiting in the drawing room, she was unable to force herself to enter the room at all. Surrounded by a bevy of maids, she timidly peered into the room from the doorway, but when she heard the houseboy’s comment she immediately agreed.
‘Yes, do so at once! Call the policeman right now! Someone! Call the police!’
And so the vagabond was thrown into the jail at the local police station, but after the two policemen had frog-marched him off, feet dragging, the room was left with a thick miasma of vomit, which emanated from the disgusting pool on the sofa.
‘And that was such a beautiful sofa, just delivered today!’ said the maid-in-waiting, looking in the door with a frown on her face. ‘Oh, dear! It’s more than just dirty. Look! It’s ripped, too! My goodness! He must have been carrying a knife! The upholstery is ruined!’
‘Oh, and it was just finished! What a shame! We can’t leave that here in the drawing room. Somebody call the furniture store and have them come pick it up at once! It’ll have to be reupholstered.’
The fastidious Mrs Iwase demanded that the filthy sofa be removed from her home as soon as possible.
Once the uproar about the drunk died down, people once again noticed that Sanae had vanished. Of course, Mr Iwase was notified at once. Akechi, who had told them where he would be, was also notified by telephone to return at once.
A manhunt was started through every corner of the house… three policemen and all of the houseboys and other servants began the search in the drawing room, moving to Sanae’s room, then upstairs, downstairs and even under the garden patio.
However, the beautiful girl had vanished like the mist in the morning sunlight. Strange as it was, there was not a single trace of her anywhere in the house.
Having been informed promptly about the commotion with the drunk, Iwase and Akechi arrived back from Osaka a couple of hours later. In Iwase’s lounge the pair were talking animatedly about the baffling event. Mrs Iwase and the nanny looked on from the side. The two servants on duty at the time had been summoned and were waiting self-effacingly.
‘What a mistake on my part. Really, it seems I let my guard slip.’
Akechi appeared to feel he was very much to blame.
‘No, no, it wasn’t your mistake. I’m the one to blame. My daughter seemed extremely downcast and I let her go into the drawing room because I felt sorry for her, but that was wrong of me. If anyone let his guard slip, it was me.’
Mrs Iwase spoke in a similar vein to her husband.
Putting an end to something that was now in the past, Akechi said, ‘But it doesn’t help to say these things now. Rather, we need to find out when your daughter left the drawing room and where she was taken to.’
‘You’re right. And that’s just what I can’t understand. You, Kurata, you lot didn’t keep your eyes open, did you? Didn’t you see my daughter leave the room?’
The servant named Kurata replied to Iwase with a somewhat disgruntled expression, ‘No, I am sure she didn’t! We guarded the door carefully. And if Miss Sanae left the drawing room to go to another room, she would have to use the corridor where we were standing. There is absolutely no way that we would not see her passing in front of our eyes.’
‘Hrrmph! You’re very cocky aren’t you! So how did my daughter disappear then? Are you saying that she broke through those thick steel bars on the window and jumped out or something? Well, what do you say? Perhaps the grille wasn’t on properly, mmh?’
When Iwase’s emotions got the better of him, he tended to become sarcastic.
The servant instantly assumed a respectful demeanour and, while scratching his head, provided straight answers regarding what he actually knew.
‘There is no sign that the grille – or for that matter the window glass and the latch – had been tampered with.’
‘There you have it then! She must have slipped past you, right?’
‘Let’s hold on shall we. I don’t think they overlooked anything. They would have had to have missed not only your daughter but the drunk coming into the drawing room… and, no matter how inattentive they might have been, I think it unlikely that they would not have noticed the entrance and exit of two people.’
Akechi was lost in thought.
‘Well it might appear unlikely but that is what happened!’
Iwase spoke with increasing vitriol, but Akechi continued unheedingly.
‘The steel bars have not been broken. And if the servants let nothing slip there is only one conclusion. No-one came into the room or left the room.’
‘Hah! So are you saying that Sanae transformed into that drunk? You’ve got to be kidding. My daughter isn’t a hermaphrodite!’
‘Mr Iwase, you showed your daughter some newly built chairs, didn’t you? Were those chairs delivered today?’
‘That’s right. They were delivered just after you went out.’
‘Somewhat peculiar, don’t you think? Doesn’t it strike you that there might be a link between the delivery of the chairs and the abduction of your daughter? It does me…’
The detective narrowed his eyes and seemed to sink into deep thought for a while. Then with a start he lifted his head and uttered something that seemed without meaning.
‘“The Human Chair.” Could that novelist’s fiction become reality?’
Then Akechi stood up and with a very preoccupied look suddenly went out of the room without saying anything to anyone.
Surprised by the famous detective’s outlandish behaviour, they all just stood there dumbstruck looking at each other. Then they heard Akech
i run back and shout from the corridor.
‘Where has the sofa been put? I can’t see it in the drawing room!’
‘Mr Akechi, calm down please. At the moment we are concerned about my daughter.’
After Iwase spoke, Akechi finally came back into the room. But standing fixedly in front of them he asked, ‘No, I want to know where the sofa is. Where has it gone?’
One of the servants answered, ‘Well, I said so before, but … The man from the furniture shop came to pick it up and I handed it over. He had been told by Mrs Iwase to replace the torn section.’
‘Is that right Mrs Iwase?’
‘Yes. That drunk left it in such a state – all ripped up and filthy – I told them to come and pick it up quickly.’
‘Ah… is that so. You’ve gone and done something unwise. And it’s probably too late now… But, then maybe… yes, just maybe I was wrong. May I use your phone?’
Muttering softly in a somewhat distracted way, the detective snatched up the receiver from the phone set on the table.
‘You there, tell me phone number of the furniture shop.’
Akechi repeated the number loudly to the operator as he heard it from the servant.
‘Hello, is that the Nakano Furniture Shop? This is the Iwase residence. Your people just came to pick up a sofa. Has it arrived at your end yet?’
From the other end of the line came a confusing response, ‘Eh? A sofa? Oh, yes, I understand. Er, sorry about taking so long. Actually, I was just about to send one of my men to pick it up.’
Akechi shouted back impatiently, ‘What did you say? You are going to send someone to pick it up now? Are you certain? We have already handed it over at this end.’
‘I’m afraid that can’t be. No-one has gone from here yet.’
‘Are you the boss? Look I want you to make sure. Is it possible that someone came here without you knowing?’
‘No, they couldn’t have. I haven’t yet told anyone from the shop to visit the mansion, so there’s no reason why any of our people would go there.’
The Black Lizard and Beast In the Shadows Page 8
