Mark Twain's Medieval Romance (15 page)

‘I hadn’t any reason for going out, sir,’ Joseph explained. He helped Annixter off with his coat. ‘I rather enjoy a quiet evening in, once in a while.’

‘You got to get out of here,’ said Annixter.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Joseph. ‘I’ll go and throw a few things into a bag.’

Annixter went into his big living-room-study, poured himself a drink.

The manuscript of his play lay on the desk. Annixter, swaying a little, glass in hand, stood frowning down at the untidy slack of yellow paper, but he didn’t begin to read. He waited until he heard the outer door click shut behind Joseph, then he gathered up his manuscript, the decanter and a glass, and the cigarette box. Thus laden, he went into the hall, walked across it to the door of Joseph’s room.

There was a bolt on the inside of this door and the room was the only one in the apartment which had no window—both facts which made the room the only one suitable to Annixter’s purpose.

With his free hand, he switched on the light.

It was a plain little room, but Annixter noticed, with a faint grin, that the bedspread and the cushion in the worn basket-chair were both blue. Appropriate, he thought—a good omen.
Room Blue
by James Annixter—

Joseph had evidently been lying on the bed, reading the evening paper; the paper lay on the rumpled quilt, and the pillow was dented. Beside the head of the bed, opposite the door, was a small table littered with shoe-brushes and dusters.

Annixter swept this paraphernalia on to the floor. He put his stack of manuscript, the decanter and glass and cigarette box on the table, and went across and bolted the door. He pulled the basket-chair up to the table and sat down, lighted a cigarette.

He leaned back in the chair, smoking, letting his mind ease into the atmosphere he wanted—the mental atmosphere of Cynthia, the woman in his play, the woman who was afraid, so afraid that she had locked and bolted herself into a windowless room, a sealed room.

‘This is how she sat,’ Annixter told himself, ‘just as I’m sitting now: in a room with no windows, the door locked and bolted. Yet he got at her. He got at her with a knife—in a room with no windows, the door remaining locked and bolted on the inside.
How was it done?’

There was a way in which it could be done. He, Annixter, had thought of that way: he had conceived it, invented it—and forgotten it. His idea had produced the circumstances. Now, deliberately, he had reproduced the circumstances, that he might think back to the idea. He had put his person in the position of the victim, that his mind might grapple with the problem of the murderer.

It was very quiet: not a sound in the room, the whole apartment.

For a long time, Annixter sat unmoving. He sat unmoving until the intensity of his concentration began to waver. Then he relaxed. He pressed the palms of his hands to his forehead for a moment, then reached for the decanter. He splashed himself a strong drink. He had almost recovered what he sought; he had felt it close, had been on the very verge of it.

‘Easy,’ he warned himself, ‘take it easy. Rest. Relax. Try again in a minute.’

He looked around for something to divert his mind, picked up the paper from Joseph’s bed.

At the first words that caught his eye, his heart stopped.

The woman, in whose body were found three knife wounds, any of which might have been fatal, was in a windowless room, the only door to which was locked and bolted on the inside. These elaborate precautions appear to have been habitual with her, and no doubt she went in continual fear of her life, as the police know her to have been a persistent and pitiless blackmailer
.

Apart from the unique problem set by the circumstance of the sealed room is the problem of how the crime could have gone undiscovered for so long a period, the doctor’s estimate from the condition of the body as some twelve to fourteen days
.

Twelve to fourteen days—

Annixter read back over the remainder of the story; then let the paper fall to the floor. The pulse was heavy in his head. His face was grey. Twelve to fourteen days? He could put it closer than that.
It was exactly thirteen nights ago that he had sat in the Casa Havana and told a little man with hexagonal glasses how to kill a woman in a sealed room!

Annixter sat very still for a minute. Then he poured himself a drink. It was a big one, and he needed it. He felt a strange sense of wonder, of awe.

They had been in the same boat, he and the little man—thirteen nights ago. They had both been kicked in the face by a woman. One, as a result, had conceived a murder play. The other had made the play reality!

‘And I actually, tonight, offered him a share!’ Annixter thought. ‘I talked about “real” money!’

That was a laugh. All the money in the universe wouldn’t have made that little man admit that he had seen Annixter before—that Annixter had told him the plot of a play about how to kill a woman in a sealed room! Why, he, Annixter, was the one person in the world who could denounce that little man! Even if he couldn’t tell them, because he had forgotten, just how he had told the little man the murder was to be committed, he could still put the police on the little man’s track. He could describe him, so that they could trace him. And once on his track, the police would ferret out links, almost inevitably, with the dead woman.

A queer thought—that he, Annixter, was probably the only menace, the only danger, to the little prim, pale man with the hexagonal spectacles. The only menace—as, of course, the little man must know very well.

He must have been very frightened when he had read that the playwright who had been knocked down outside the Casa Havana had only received ‘superficial injuries.’ He must have been still more frightened when Annixter’s advertisements had begun to appear.
What must he have felt tonight, when Annixter’s hand had fallen on his shoulder?

A curious idea occurred, now, to Annixter. It was from tonight, precisely from tonight, that he was a danger to that little man. He was, because of the inferences the little man must infallibly draw, a deadly danger as from the moment the discovery of the murder in the sealed room was published. The discovery had been published tonight and the little man had a paper under his arm—

Annixter’s was a lively and resourceful imagination.

It was, of course, just in the cards that, when he’d lost the little man’s trail at the subway station, the little man might have turned back, picked up
his
, Annixter’s trail.

And Annixter had sent Joseph out. He was, it dawned slowly upon Annixter, alone in the apartment—alone in a windowless room, with the door locked and bolted on the inside, at his back.

Annixter felt a sudden, icy and wild panic.

He half rose, but it was too late.

It was too late, because at that moment the knife slid, thin and keen and delicate, into his back, fatally, between the ribs.

Annixter’s head bowed slowly forward until his cheek rested on the manuscript of his play. He made only one sound—a queer sound, indistinct, yet identifiable as a kind of laughter.

The fact was, Annixter had just remembered.

THE MYSTERIOUS CARD

C
LEVELAND
M
OFFETT

American dramatist, journalist, novelist, and short story writer Cleveland Moffett (1863–1926) spent many years in Europe as a correspondent for several newspapers and, even after he returned to live permanently in the United States, set many of his stories abroad, mostly in France. He lived his last years and died in Paris.

Moffett made several major contributions to the mystery genre, notably the novel
Through the Wall
(1909), which is a Haycraft-Queen Cornerstone;
True Tales from the Archives of the Pinkertons
(1897), accounts which are almost as fictionalized as those written by Allen, Frank, and Myron Pinkerton years earlier;
The Seine Mystery
(1925), about an American journalist in Paris who does amateur sleuthing; and
The Bishop’s Purse
(1913), co-authored with Oliver Herford, a humorous tale of robbery and impersonation set in England.

His most famous story, and one of the two most famous riddle stories of all time (along with “The Lady, or the Tiger?”) is “The Mysterious Card.” It was first published in
The Black Cat
magazine in 1895, and was followed the next year by “The Mysterious Card Unveiled.” The enterprising Boston publisher Small, Maynard and Company then put both stories together in 1912 with a gimmick: the second part was sealed and the purchaser was promised a refund if the book was returned to the bookseller with its seal unbroken.

THE MYSTERIOUS CARD

BY
C
LEVELAND
M
OFFETT

R
ICHARD BURWELL,
of New York, will never cease to regret that the French language was not made a part of his education.

This is why:

On the second evening after Burwell arrived in Paris, feeling lonely without his wife and daughter, who were still visiting a friend in London, his mind naturally turned to the theater. So, after consulting the daily amusement calendar, he decided to visit the
Folies Bergère
, which he had heard of as one of the notable sights. During an intermission he went into the beautiful garden, where gay crowds were strolling among the flowers, and lights, and fountains. He had just seated himself at a little three-legged table, with a view to enjoying the novel scene, when his attention was attracted by a lovely woman, gowned strikingly, though in perfect taste, who passed near him, leaning on the arm of a gentleman. The only thing that he noticed about this gentleman was that he wore eye-glasses.

Now Burwell had never posed as a captivator of the fair sex, and could scarcely credit his eyes when the lady left the side of her escort and, turning back as if she had forgotten something, passed close by him, and deftly placed a card on his table. The card bore some French words written in purple ink, but, not knowing that language, he was unable to make out their meaning. The lady paid no further heed to him, but, rejoining the gentleman with the eye-glasses, swept out of the place with the grace and dignity of a princess. Burwell remained staring at the card.

Needless to say, he thought no more of the performance or of the other attractions about him. Everything seemed flat and tawdry compared with the radiant vision that had appeared and disappeared so mysteriously. His one desire now was to discover the meaning of the words written on the card.

Calling a fiacre, he drove to the Hôtel Continental, where he was staying. Proceeding directly to the office and taking the manager aside, Burwell asked if he would be kind enough to translate a few words of French into English. There were no more than twenty words in all.

“Why, certainly,” said the manager, with French politeness, and cast his eyes over the card. As he read, his face grew rigid with astonishment, and, looking at his questioner sharply, he exclaimed: “Where did you get this, monsieur?”

Burwell started to explain, but was interrupted by: “That will do, that will do. You must leave the hotel.”

“What do you mean?” asked the man from New York, in amazement.

“You must leave the hotel now—to-night—without fail,” commanded the manager excitedly.

Now it was Burwell’s turn to grow angry, and he declared heatedly that if he wasn’t wanted in this hotel there were plenty of others in Paris where he would be welcome. And, with an assumption of dignity, but piqued at heart, he settled his bill, sent for his belongings, and drove up the Rue de la Paix to the Hôtel Bellevue, where he spent the night.

The next morning he met the proprietor, who seemed to be a good fellow, and, being inclined now to view the incident of the previous evening from its ridiculous side, Burwell explained what had befallen him, and was pleased to find a sympathetic listener.

“Why, the man was a fool,” declared the proprietor. “Let me see the card; I will tell you what it means.” But as he read, his face and manner changed instantly.

“This is a serious matter,” he said sternly. “Now I understand why my confrère refused to entertain you. I regret, monsieur, but I shall be obliged to do as he did.”

“What do you mean?”

“Simply that you cannot remain here.”

With that he turned on his heel, and the indignant guest could not prevail upon him to give any explanation.

“We’ll see about this,” said Burwell, thoroughly angered.

It was now nearly noon, and the New Yorker remembered an engagement to lunch with a friend from Boston, who, with his family, was stopping at the Hôtel de l’Alma. With his luggage on the carriage, he ordered the
cocher
to drive directly there, determined to take counsel with his countryman before selecting new quarters. His friend was highly indignant when he heard the story—a fact that gave Burwell no little comfort, knowing, as he did, that the man was accustomed to foreign ways from long residence abroad.

“It is some silly mistake, my dear fellow; I wouldn’t pay any attention to it. Just have your luggage taken down and stay here. It is a nice, homelike place, and it will be very jolly, all being together. But, first, let me prepare a little ‘nerve settler’ for you.”

After the two had lingered a moment over their Manhattan cocktails, Burwell’s friend excused himself to call the ladies. He had proceeded only two or three steps when he turned, and said: “Let’s see that mysterious card that has raised all this row.”

He had scarcely withdrawn it from Burwell’s hand when he started back, and exclaimed: —

“Great God, man! Do you mean to say—this is simply—”

Then, with a sudden movement of his hand to his head, he left the room.

He was gone perhaps five minutes, and when he returned his face was white.

“I am awfully sorry,” he said nervously; “but the ladies tell me they—that is, my wife—she has a frightful headache. You will have to excuse us from the lunch.”

Instantly realizing that this was only a flimsy pretense, and deeply hurt by his friend’s behavior, the mystified man arose at once and left without another word. He was now determined to solve this mystery at any cost. What could be the meaning of the words on that infernal piece of pasteboard?