The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries

by The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries (retail) (epub)

  “It was that swindler Hahn who deceived me in the beginning,” Claridge said. “I have never made a mistake with a cameo before, and I never thought so close an imitation was possible. I examined it most carefully, and was perfectly satisfied, and many experts examined it afterward, and were all equally deceived. I felt as sure as I possibly could feel that I had bought one of the finest, if not actually the finest, cameos known to exist. It was not until after it had come back from Lord Stanway’s, and I was cleaning it the evening before last, that in course of my work it became apparent that the thing was nothing but a consummately clever forgery. It was made of three layers of molded glass, nothing more nor less. But the glass was treated in a way I had never before known of, and the surface had been cunningly worked on till it defied any ordinary examination. Some of the glass imitation cameos made in the latter part of the last century, I may tell you, are regarded as marvelous pieces of work, and, indeed, command very fair prices, but this was something quite beyond any of those.

  “I was amazed and horrified. I put the thing away and went home. All that night I lay awake in a state of distraction, quite unable to decide what to do. To let the cameo go out of my possession was impossible. Sooner or later the forgery would be discovered, and my reputation—the highest in these matters in this country, I may safely claim, and the growth of nearly fifty years of honest application and good judgment—this reputation would be gone forever. But without considering this, there was the fact that I had taken five thousand pounds of Lord Stanway’s money for a mere piece of glass, and that money I must, in mere common honesty as well as for my own sake, return. But how? The name of the Stanway Cameo had become a household word, and to confess that the whole thing was a sham would ruin my reputation and destroy all confidence—past, present, and future—in me and in my transactions. Either way spelled ruin. Even if I confided in Lord Stanway privately, returned his money, and destroyed the cameo, what then? The sudden disappearance of an article so famous would excite remark at once. It had been presented to the British Museum, and if it never appeared in that collection, and no news were to be got of it, people would guess at the truth at once. To make it known that I myself had been deceived would have availed nothing. It is my business not to be deceived; and to have it known that my most expensive specimens might be forgeries would equally mean ruin, whether I sold them cunningly as a rogue or ignorantly as a fool. Indeed, my pride, my reputation as a connoisseur, is a thing near to my heart, and it would be an unspeakable humiliation to me to have it known that I had been imposed on by such a forgery. What could I do? Every expedient seemed useless but one—the one I adopted. It was not straightforward, I admit; but, oh! Mr. Hewitt, consider the temptation—and remember that it couldn’t do a soul any harm. No matter who might be suspected, I knew there could not possibly be evidence to make them suffer. All the next day—yesterday—I was anxiously worrying out the thing in my mind and carefully devising the—the trick, I’m afraid you’ll call it, that you by some extraordinary means have seen through. It seemed the only thing—what else was there? More I needn’t tell you; you know it. I have only now to beg that you will use your best influence with Lord Stanway to save me from public derision and exposure. I will do anything—pay anything—anything but exposure, at my age, and with my position.”

  “Well, you see,” Hewitt replied thoughtfully, “I’ve no doubt Lord Stanway will show you every consideration, and certainly I will do what I can to save you in the circumstances; though you must remember that you have done some harm—you have caused suspicions to rest on at least one honest man. But as to reputation, I’ve a professional reputation of my own. If I help to conceal your professional failure, I shall appear to have failed in my part of the business.”

  “But the cases are different, Mr. Hewitt. Consider. You are not expected—it would be impossible—to succeed invariably; and there are only two or three who know you have looked into the case. Then your other conspicuous successes——”

  “Well, well, we shall see. One thing I don’t know, though—whether you climbed out of a window to break open the trap-door, or whether you got up through the trap-door itself and pulled the bolt with a string through the jamb, so as to bolt it after you.”

  “There was no available window. I used the string, as you say. My poor little cunning must seem very transparent to you, I fear. I spent hours of thought over the question of the trap-door—how to break it open so as to leave a genuine appearance, and especially how to bolt it inside after I had reached the roof. I thought I had succeeded beyond the possibility of suspicion; how you penetrated the device surpasses my comprehension. How, to begin with, could you possibly know that the cameo was a forgery? Did you ever see it?”

  “Never. And, if I had seen it, I fear I should never have been able to express an opinion on it; I’m not a connoisseur. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know that the thing was a forgery in the first place; what I knew in the first place was that it was you who had broken into the house. It was from that that I arrived at the conclusion, after a certain amount of thought, that the cameo must have been forged. Gain was out of the question. You, beyond all men, could never sell the Stanway Cameo again, and, besides, you had paid back Lord Stanway’s money. I knew enough of your reputation to know that you would never incur the scandal of a great theft at your place for the sake of getting the cameo for yourself, when you might have kept it in the beginning, with no trouble and mystery. Consequently I had to look for another motive, and at first another motive seemed an impossibility. Why should you wish to take all this trouble to lose five thousand pounds? You had nothing to gain; perhaps you had something to save—your professional reputation, for instance. Looking at it so, it was plain that you were suppressing the cameo—burking it; since, once taken as you had taken it, it could never come to light again. That suggested the solution of the mystery at once—you had discovered, after the sale, that the cameo was not genuine.”

  “Yes, yes—I see; but you say you began with the knowledge that I broke into the place myself. How did you know that? I can not imagine a trace——”

  “My dear sir, you left traces everywhere. In the first place, it struck me as curious, before I came here, that you had sent off that check for five thousand pounds to Lord Stanway an hour or so after the robbery was discovered; it looked so much as though you were sure of the cameo never coming back, and were in a hurry to avert suspicion. Of course I understood that, so far as I then knew the case, you were the most unlikely person in the world, and that your eagerness to repay Lord Stanway might be the most creditable thing possible. But the point was worth remembering, and I remembered it.

  “When I came here, I saw suspicious indications in many directions, but the conclusive piece of evidence was that old hat hanging below the trap-door.”

  “But I never touched it; I assure you, Mr. Hewitt, I never touched the hat; haven’t touched it for months——”

  “Of course. If you had touched it, I might never have got the clue. But we’ll deal with the hat presently; that wasn’t what struck me at first. The trap-door first took my attention. Consider, now: Here was a trap-door, most insecurely hung on external hinges; the burglar had a screwdriver, for he took off the door-lock below with it. Why, then, didn’t he take this trap off by the hinges, instead of making a noise and taking longer time and trouble to burst the bolt from its fastenings? And why, if he were a stranger, was he able to plant his jimmy from the outside just exactly opposite the interior bolt? There was only one mark on the frame, and that precisely in the proper place.

  “After that I saw the leather case. It had not been thrown away, or some corner would have shown signs of the fall. It had been put down carefully where it was found. These things, however, were of small importance compared with the hat. The hat, as you know, was exceedingly thick with dust—the accumulation of months. But, on the top side, presented toward the trap-door, were a score or so
of raindrop marks. That was all. They were new marks, for there was no dust over them; they had merely had time to dry and cake the dust they had fallen on. Now, there had been no rain since a sharp shower just after seven o’clock last night. At that time you, by your own statement, were in the place. You left at eight, and the rain was all over at ten minutes or a quarter past seven. The trap-door, you also told me, had not been opened for months. The thing was plain. You, or somebody who was here when you were, had opened that trap-door during, or just before, that shower. I said little then, but went, as soon as I had left, to the police-station. There I made perfectly certain that there had been no rain during the night by questioning the policemen who were on duty outside all the time. There had been none. I knew everything.

  “The only other evidence there was pointed with all the rest. There were no rain-marks on the leather case; it had been put on the roof as an after-thought when there was no rain. A very poor after-thought, let me tell you, for no thief would throw away a useful case that concealed his booty and protected it from breakage, and throw it away just so as to leave a clue as to what direction he had gone in. I also saw, in the lumber-room, a number of packing-cases—one with a label dated two days back—which had been opened with an iron lever; and yet, when I made an excuse to ask for it, you said there was no such thing in the place. Inference, you didn’t want me to compare it with the marks on the desks and doors. That is all, I think.”

  Mr. Claridge looked dolorously down at the floor. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that I took an unsuitable rôle when I undertook to rely on my wits to deceive men like you. I thought there wasn’t a single vulnerable spot in my defense, but you walk calmly through it at the first attempt. Why did I never think of those raindrops?”

  “Come,” said Hewitt, with a smile, “that sounds unrepentant. I am going, now, to Lord Stanway’s. If I were you, I think I should apologize to Mr. Woollett in some way.”

  Lord Stanway, who, in the hour or two of reflection left him after parting with Hewitt, had come to the belief that he had employed a man whose mind was not always in order, received Hewitt’s story with natural astonishment. For some time he was in doubt as to whether he would be doing right in acquiescing in anything but a straightforward public statement of the facts connected with the disappearance of the cameo, but in the end was persuaded to let the affair drop, on receiving an assurance from Mr. Woollett that he unreservedly accepted the apology offered him by Mr. Claridge.

  As for the latter, he was at least sufficiently punished in loss of money and personal humiliation for his escapade. But the bitterest and last blow he sustained when the unblushing Hahn walked smilingly into his office two days later to demand the extra payment agreed on in consideration of the sale. He had been called suddenly away, he exclaimed, on the day he should have come, and hoped his missing the appointment had occasioned no inconvenience. As to the robbery of the cameo, of course he was very sorry, but “pishness was pishness,” and he would be glad of a check for the sum agreed on. And the unhappy Claridge was obliged to pay it, knowing that the man had swindled him, but unable to open his mouth to say so.

  The reward remained on offer for a long time; indeed, it was never publicly withdrawn, I believe, even at the time of Claridge’s death. And several intelligent newspapers enlarged upon the fact that an ordinary burglar had completely baffled and defeated the boasted acumen of Mr. Martin Hewitt, the well-known private detective.

  The Divination of the Zagury Capsules

  HEADON HILL

  The prolific Francis Edward Grainger (1857–1924), using the pseudonym Headon Hill, was a journalist, novelist, and short-story writer who specialized in romance, thrillers, and detective fiction, including police procedurals featuring such Scotland Yard police officers as Inspector Heron in Guilty Gold (1896) and Sergeants Trevor and Godbold in Caged! The Romance of a Lunatic Asylum (1900).

  One of his books, By a Hair’s Breadth (1897), is an early novel to employ a female detective, Laura Metcalf, as its protagonist. In the thriller category, The Peril of the Prince (1901) had Montague Waldrop of the Foreign Office at its center.

  It is likely that his most-read works nowadays (not that Hill is widely read at all) are short-story collections, many of which are prized by collectors for their stupendous rarity. His best-known detective is Sebastian Zambra, whose methods have often been compared to those of Sherlock Holmes. He appears in one novel, The Narrowing Circle (1924), and two short-story collections: Zambra the Detective: Some Clues from His Note-Book (1894) and in two stories contained in The Divinations of Kala Persad (1895).

  The latter book is a peculiar mixture. In spite of its title, it is barely devoted to the titular character. Kala Persad is an Indian mystic confined to a small room in which he spends his days chewing on betel nuts and playing with his cobras. He is in debt to Mark Poignand, a private enquiry agent, who gathers information and provides it to the enigmatic Persad, who invariably points him in the right direction. Curiously, Persad has a major role in the story reprinted here, while the others mainly feature Poignand, Zambra, or no detective at all.

  “The Divination of the Zagury Capsules” was originally published in The Divinations of Kala Persad (London, Ward, Lock, & Co.,1895).

  THE DIVINATION OF THE ZAGURY CAPSULES

  Headon Hill

  On the first floor of one of the handsome buildings that are rapidly replacing “Old London” in the streets running from the Strand to the Embankment was a suite of offices, bearing on the outer door the words “Confidential Advice,” and below, in smaller letters, “Mark Poignand, Manager.” The outer offices, providing accommodation for a couple of up-to-date clerks and a lady typist, were resplendent with brass-furnished counters and cathedral-glass partitions; and the private room in the rear, used by the manager, was fitted up in the quietly luxurious style of a club smoking-room. But even this latter did not form the innermost sanctum of all, for at its far corner a locked door led into a still more private chamber, which was never entered by any of the inferior staff, and but rarely by the manager himself. In this room—strange anomaly within earshot of the thronging traffic of the Strand—a little wizened old Hindoo mostly sat cross-legged, playing with a basket of cobras, and chewing betel-nut from morning to night. Now and again he would be called on to lay aside his occupations for a brief space, and these intervals were quickly becoming a factor to be reckoned with by those who desired to envelop their doings in darkness.

  Mark Poignand, though the younger son of a good family, possessed only a modest capital, bringing him an income of under three hundred a year, and after his success in the matter of the Afghan Kukhri, he was taken with the idea of entering professionally on the field of “private investigation.” He was shrewd enough to see that without Kala Persad’s aid his journey to India would have ended in failure, and he determined to utilise the snake-charmer’s instinctive faculty as the mainstay of the new undertaking. He had no difficulty in working upon the old man’s sense of gratitude to induce him to go to England, and all that remained was to sell out a portion of his capital and establish himself in good style as a private investigator, with Kala Persad installed in the back room. A rumour had got about that he had successfully conducted a delicate mission to India, and this, in conjunction with the novelty of such a business being run by a young man not unknown in society, brought him clients from the start.

  At first Mark felt some anxiety as to the outcome of his experiment, but by compelling himself with an effort to be true to the system he had drawn up, he found that his first few unimportant cases worked out with the best results. Briefly, his system was this:—When an inquiry was placed in his hands, he would lay the facts as presented to him before Kala Persad, and would then be guided in future operations by his follower’s suspicions. On one or two occasions he had nearly failed through a tendency to prefer his own judgment to the snake-charmer’s instinct, but he had been able to retra
ce his steps in time to prove the correctness of Kala Persad’s original solution, and to save the credit of the office. It devolved upon himself entirely to procure evidence and discover how the mysteries were brought about, and in this he found ample scope for his ingenuity, for Kala Persad was profoundly ignorant of the methods adopted by those whom he suspected. It was more than half the battle, however, to start with the weird old man’s finger pointed, so far unerringly, at the right person, and Mark Poignand recognised that without the oracle of the back room he would have been nowhere. Some of Kala Persad’s indications pointed in directions into which his own wildest flights of fancy would never have led him.

  It was not till Poignand had been in practice for nearly three months that a case was brought to him involving the capital charge—a case of such terrible interest to one of our oldest noble families that its unravelling sent clients thronging to the office, and assured the success of the enterprise. One murky, fog-laden morning in December he was sitting in the private room, going through the day’s correspondence, when the clerk brought him a lady’s visiting card, engraved with the name of “Miss Lascelles.”

  “What like is she?” asked Poignand.

  “Well-dressed, young, and, as far as I can make out under her thick veil, good-looking,” replied the clerk. “I should judge from her voice that she is anxious and agitated.”

  “Very well,” replied Poignand; “show her in when I ring.” And the other having retired, he rose and went to the back wall, where an oil painting, heavily framed, and tilted at a considerable angle, was hung. Behind the picture was a sliding panel, which he shot back, leaving an opening about a foot square into the inner room.