“You must have left the strong room open,” I said.
“That I will swear I did not,” he replied. “I locked the safe as usual, after showing it to you and Dufrayer yesterday. Here is the key.”
“Let me see it,” I said.
He handed it to me. I took it over to the light.
“Look here,” I cried, with sudden excitement, “this cannot be your original key—it must have been changed. You think you locked the safe with this key. Carlton, you have been tricked by that arch-fiend. Did you ever before see a key like this?”
I held the wards between my finger and thumb, and turned the barrel from left to right. The barrel revolved in the wards in a ratchet concealed in the shoulder.
“You could unlock the safe with this key, but not lock it again,” I exclaimed. “See here.”
I inserted the key in the keyhole as I spoke. It instantly started the bells ringing.
“The barrel turns, but the wards which are buried in the keyhole do not turn with it, and the resistance of the ratchet gives exactly the impression as if you were locking the safe. Thus, yesterday morning, you thought you locked the safe with this key, but in reality you left it open. No one but that woman could have conceived such a scheme. In some way she must have substituted this for your key.”
“Well, come to your room now, Head,” cried Dufrayer, “or Madame will have achieved the darling wish of her heart, and your life will be the forfeit.”
I accompanied Carlton upstairs, dressed, and presently joined the rest of the household in one of the sitting-rooms. The utmost excitement was apparent on every face. Mrs. Carlton was standing near an open window. There were traces of tears on her cheeks, and yet her eyes, to my astonishment, betokened both joy and relief. She beckoned me to her side.
“Come out with me for a moment, Mr. Head.”
When we got into the open air she turned to me.
“Dreadful as the loss of the diamond is,” she exclaimed, “there are few happier women in England than I am at the present moment. My maid brought me a letter from Mme. Koluchy this morning, which has assuaged my worst fears. In it she owns that Count Porcelli has been long in his grave, and that she only blackmailed me in order to secure large sums of money.”
I was just about to reply to Mrs. Carlton when Dufrayer hurried up.
“The detectives have arrived, and we want you at once,” he exclaimed.
I accompanied him into Carlton’s study. Tyler and Ford were both present. They had just been examining the strong room, and had seen the false key. Their excitement was unbounded.
“She has bolted, but we will have her now,” cried Ford. “We have got the evidence we want at last. It is true she has the start of us by three or four hours; but at last—yes, at last—we can loose the hounds in full pursuit.”
The Hammerpond Park Burglary
H. G. WELLS
Not generally known for his sense of humor, Herbert George Wells (1866–1946) produced this crime story with his tongue comfortably placed in his cheek. Not his primary genre, Wells nonetheless did write a few crime tales, such as “The Stolen Bacillus” (1894) and his famous science fiction novel The Invisible Man (1897), which certainly had plenty of criminal activity.
He was one of the first and greatest of all writers of science fiction, for which he remains known today, though he disliked being thought of as one, claiming that those works were merely a conduit for his social ideas. He had begun his adult life as a scientist and might, with a bit more encouragement, have made a successful career as a biologist, but instead was offered work as a journalist and quickly began to write fiction.
His prolific writing career was loosely divided into three eras, but it is only the novels and short stories of the first, when he wrote fantastic and speculative fiction, that are much remembered today. Such early titles as The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds (1898) are all milestones of the genre, though all feature Wells’s dim view of mankind and society, which led him to the socialistic Fabian Society.
He turned to more realistic fiction after the turn of the century with such highly regarded (at the time) novels as Kipps (1905), Anne Veronica (1909), Tono-Bungay (1909), and Marriage (1912). The majority of his works over the last three decades of his life were both fiction and nonfiction books reflecting his political and social views, as dated, unreadable, and insignificant as they are misanthropic.
More than two dozen films have been based on Wells’s novels, with countless others using them as uncredited sources. Among the most famous are the classic The Invisible Man (1933), Things to Come (1936), The First Men in the Moon (1919 and 1964), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977 and 1996), more capably filmed as Island of Lost Souls (1932), The War of the Worlds (1953 and 2005), and The Time Machine (1960 and 2002), among many others.
“The Hammerpond Park Burglary” was originally published in the July 5, 1894, issue of Pall Mall Budget; it was first collected in The Short Stories of H. G. Wells (London, Benn, 1927).
THE HAMMERPOND PARK BURGLARY
H. G. Wells
It is a moot point whether burglary is to be considered as a sport, a trade, or an art.
For a trade, the technique is scarcely rigid enough, and its claims to be considered an art are vitiated by the mercenary element that qualifies its triumphs. On the whole it seems to be most justly ranked as sport, a sport for which no rules are at present formulated, and of which the prizes are distributed in an extremely informal manner. It was this informality of burglary that led to the regretable extinction of two promising beginners at Hammerpond Park.
The stakes offered in this affair consisted chiefly of diamonds and other personal bric-à-brac belonging to the newly married Lady Aveling. Lady Aveling, as the reader will remember, was the only daughter of Mrs. Montague Pangs, the well-known hostess. Her marriage to Lord Aveling was extensively advertised in the papers, as well as the quantity and quality of her wedding presents, and the fact that the honeymoon was to be spent at Hammerpond.
The announcement of these valuable prizes created a considerable sensation in the small circle in which Mr. Teddy Watkins was the undisputed leader, and it was decided that, accompanied by a duly qualified assistant, he should visit the village of Hammerpond in his professional capacity.
Being a man of naturally retiring and modest disposition, Mr. Watkins determined to make his visit Incog., and after due consideration of the conditions of his enterprise, he selected the rôle of a landscape artist and the unassuming surname of Smith. He preceded his assistant, who, it was decided, should join him only on the last afternoon of his stay at Hammerpond.
Now the village of Hammerpond is, perhaps, one of the prettiest little corners in Sussex; many thatched houses still survive, the flint-built church, with its tall spire nestling under the down, is one of the finest and least restored in the county, and the beechwoods and bracken jungles through which the road runs to the great house are singularly rich in what the vulgar artist and photographer call “bits.” So that Mr. Watkins, on his arrival with two virgin canvases, a brand-new easel, a paint-box, portmanteau, an ingenious little ladder made in sections (after the pattern of the late lamented master, Charles Peace), crowbar, and wire coils, found himself welcomed with effusion and some curiosity by half-a-dozen other brethren of the brush. It rendered the disguise he had chosen unexpectedly plausible, but it inflicted upon him a considerable amount of æsthetic conversation for which he was very imperfectly prepared.
“Have you exhibited very much?” said young Porson in the bar-parlour of the “Coach and Horses,” where Mr. Watkins was skilfully accumulating local information on the night of his arrival.
“Very little,” said Mr. Watkins, “just a snack here and there.”
“Academy?”
“In course. And at the Crystal Palace.”
“Did they hang you well?” said Porson.
“Don’t rot,” said Mr. Watkins; “I don’t like it.”
“I mean did they put you in a good place?”
“Whadyer mean?” said Mr. Watkins suspiciously. “One ’ud think you were trying to make out I’d been put away.”
Porson had been brought up by aunts, and was a gentlemanly young man even for an artist; he did not know what being “put away” meant, but he thought it best to explain that he intended nothing of the sort. As the question of hanging seemed a sore point with Mr. Watkins, he tried to divert the conversation a little.
“Do you do figurework at all?”
“No, never had a head for figures,” said Mr. Watkins, “my miss—Mrs. Smith, I mean, does all that.”
“She paints too!” said Porson. “That’s rather jolly.”
“Very,” said Mr. Watkins, though he really did not think so, and, feeling the conversation was drifting a little beyond his grasp, added: “I came down here to paint Hammerpond House by moonlight.”
“Really!” said Porson. “That’s rather a novel idea.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Watkins, “I thought it rather a good notion when it occurred to me. I expect to begin to-morrow night.”
“What! You don’t mean to paint in the open, by night?”
“I do, though.”
“But how will you see your canvas?”
“Have a bloomin’ cop’s——” began Mr. Watkins, rising too quickly to the question, and then, realising this, bawled to Miss Durgan for another glass of beer. “I’m going to have a thing called a dark lantern,” he said to Porson.
“But it’s about new moon now,” objected Porson. “There won’t be any moon.”
“There’ll be the house,” said Watkins, “at any rate. I’m goin’, you see, to paint the house first and the moon afterwards.”
“Oh!” said Porson, too staggered to continue the conversation.
“They doo say,” said old Durgan, the landlord, who had maintained a respectful silence during the technical conversation, “as there’s no less than three p’licemen from ’Azleworth on dewty every night in the house—count of this Lady Aveling ’n her jewellery. One’m won fower-and-six last night, off second footman—tossin’.”
Towards sunset next day Mr. Watkins, virgin canvas, easel, and a very considerable case of other appliances in hand, strolled up the pleasant pathway through the beechwoods to Hammerpond Park, and pitched his apparatus in a strategic position commanding the house. Here he was observed by Mr. Raphael Sant, who was returning across the park from a study of the chalkpits. His curiosity having been fired by Porson’s account of the new arrival, he turned aside with the idea of discussing nocturnal art.
Mr. Watkins was apparently unaware of his approach. A friendly conversation with Lady Hammerpond’s butler had just terminated, and that individual, surrounded by the three pet dogs, which it was his duty to take for an airing after dinner had been served, was receding in the distance. Mr. Watkins was mixing colour with an air of great industry. Sant, approaching more nearly, was surprised to see the colour in question was as harsh and brilliant an emerald green as it is possible to imagine. Having cultivated an extreme sensibility to colour from his earliest years, he drew the air in sharply between his teeth at the very first glimpse of this brew. Mr. Watkins turned round. He looked annoyed.
“What on earth are you going to do with that beastly green?” said Sant.
Mr. Watkins realised that his zeal to appear busy in the eyes of the butler had evidently betrayed him into some technical error. He looked at Sant and hesitated.
“Pardon my rudeness,” said Sant; “but really that green is altogether too amazing. It came as a shock. What do you mean to do with it?”
Mr. Watkins was collecting his resources. Nothing could save the situation but decision. “If you come here interrupting my work,” he said, “I’m a-goin’ to paint your face with it.”
Sant retired, for he was a humorist and a peaceful man. Going down the hill, he met Porson and Wainwright. “Either that man is a genius or he is a dangerous lunatic,” said he. “Just go up and look at his green.” And he continued his way, his countenance brightened by a pleasant anticipation of a cheerful affray round an easel in the gloaming, and the shedding of much green paint.
But to Porson and Wainwright Mr. Watkins was less aggressive, and explained that the green was intended to be the first coating of his picture. It was, he admitted in response to a remark, an absolutely new method, invented by himself. But subsequently he became more reticent; he explained he was not going to tell every passer-by the secret of his own particular style, and added some scathing remarks upon the meanness of people “hanging about” to pick up such tricks of the masters as they could, which immediately relieved him of their company.
Twilight deepened, first one then another star appeared. The rooks amid the tall trees to the left of the house had long since lapsed into slumbrous silence, the house itself lost all the details of its architecture and became a dark grey outline, and then the windows of the salon shone out brilliantly, the conservatory was lighted up, and here and there a bedroom window burnt yellow. Had anyone approached the easel in the park it would have been found deserted. One brief uncivil word in brilliant green sullied the purity of its canvas. Mr. Watkins was busy in the shrubbery with his assistant, who had discreetly joined him from the carriage-drive.
Mr. Watkins was inclined to be self-congratulatory upon the ingenious device by which he had carried all his apparatus boldly, and in the sight of all men, right up to the scene of operations. “That’s the dressing-room,” he said to his assistant, “and, as soon as the maid takes the candle away and goes down to supper, we’ll call in. My! how nice the house do look to be sure, against the starlight, and with all its windows and lights! Swop me, Jim, I almost wish I was a painter-chap. Have you fixed that there wire across the path from the laundry?”
He cautiously approached the house until he stood below the dressing-room window, and began to put together his folding ladder. He was much too experienced a practitioner to feel any unusual excitement. Jim was reconnoitring the smoking-room. Suddenly, close beside Mr. Watkins in the bushes, there was a violent crash and a stifled curse. Someone had tumbled over the wire which his assistant had just arranged. He heard feet running on the gravel pathway beyond.
Mr. Watkins, like all true artists, was a singularly shy man, and he incontinently dropped his folding ladder and began running circumspectly through the shrubbery. He was indistinctly aware of two people hot upon his heels, and he fancied that he distinguished the outline of his assistant in front of him. In another moment he had vaulted the low stone wall bounding the shrubbery, and was in the open park. Two thuds on the turf followed his own leap.
It was a close chase in the darkness through the trees. Mr. Watkins was a loosely-built man and in good training, and he gained hand-over-hand upon the hoarsely panting figure in front. Neither spoke, but, as Mr. Watkins pulled up alongside, a qualm of awful doubt came over him. The other man turned his head at the same moment and gave an exclamation of surprise. “It’s not Jim,” thought Mr. Watkins, and simultaneously the stranger flung himself, as it were, at Watkins’ knees, and they were forthwith grappling on the ground together. “Lend a hand, Bill,” cried the stranger as the third man came up. And Bill did—two hands in fact, and some accentuated feet. The fourth man, presumably Jim, had apparently turned aside, and made off in a different direction. At any rate, he did not join the trio.
Mr. Watkins’ memory of the incidents of the next two minutes is extremely vague. He has a dim recollection of having his thumb in the corner of the mouth of the first man, and feeling anxious about its safety, and for some seconds at least he held the head of the gentleman answering to the name of Bill to the ground by the hair. He was also kicked in a great number of dif
ferent places, apparently by a vast multitude of people. Then the gentleman who was not Bill got his knee below Mr. Watkins’ diaphragm, and tried to curl him up upon it.
When his sensations became less entangled he was sitting upon the turf, and eight or ten men—the night was dark, and he was rather too confused to count—standing round him, apparently waiting for him to recover. He mournfully assumed that he was captured, and would probably have made some philosophical reflections on the fickleness of fortune, had not his internal sensations disinclined him for speech. He noticed very quickly that his wrists were not handcuffed, and then a flask of brandy was put in his hands. This touched him a little—it was such unexpected kindness.
“He’s a-comin’ round,” said a voice which he fancied he recognised as belonging to the Hammerpond second footman.
“We’ve got them, sir, both of ’em,” said the Hammerpond butler, the man who had handed him the flask. “Thanks to you.”
No one answered this remark. Yet he failed to see how it applied to him.
“He’s fair dazed,” said a strange voice; “the villains half-murdered him.”
Mr. Teddy Watkins decided to remain fair dazed until he had a better grasp of the situation. He perceived that two of the black figures round him stood side by side with a dejected air, and there was something in the carriage of their shoulders that suggested to his experienced eye hands that were bound together. Two! In a flash he rose to his position. He emptied the little flask and staggered—obsequious hands assisted him—to his feet. There was a sympathetic murmur.
“Shake hands, sir, shake hands,” said one of the figures near him. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am very greatly indebted to you. It was the jewels of my wife, Lady Aveling, which attracted these scoundrels to the house.”
“Very glad to make your lordship’s acquaintance,” said Teddy Watkins.
“I presume you saw the rascals making for the shrubbery, and dropped down on them?”
The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries Page 70
