The Complete Simon Iff (29 page)

"The stranger found asylum with the proprietor of a sensational newspaper, who saw his way to exploit her. He had her psychoanalyzed, and tested in fifty different ways; her handwriting was photographed and enlarged - I may say that her bank cashed her first check without a word, and then went back on itself, refused to pay any more, but on the other hand refused to prosecute for forgery. She sued them; they put up a half-hearted fight, and she won handsomely. They hunted through the effects of the missing girl for fingerprints ... there was no end to it.

"Jenkins, of the 'Turkey-Buzzard', most certainly knew his business. He got experts from all over the country at loggerheads; he kept the whole of the United States in a turmoil for six months on end. It's still going on, fairly strong; safe for an argument in any gathering in the United States. The stranger's doing well, too; they say she stuck out for a thousand a week. And she's certainly earned it! That looks, by the way, as if she were not Dolores; for Dolores had all the money she needed. And Dolores wouldn't have given her family all that sorrow. No, if it's she, she must have one whale of a motive!"

"And what do you think?"

"I can't. I can't see what happened to the Dolores of the islet, unless they're all lying. And people don't turn out the best beloved for a joke; not people like the Cass family."

"Have you photographs?"

Miss Molly Madison promptly produced a docket.

"Nothing to go by, as I expected," grunted Simon Iff. "Yet - this is last week's - was it taken last week?"

"Surely. New dress; new pose. The Press has to keep up to date in this country!"

"Well, I suppose the best of us has a failing. This girl doesn't seem to be suffering as much as one would expect. She's got the anguished look, all right; but she hasn't lost much flesh since the fatal eighth of August."

"Oh, some people get fat on worry."

"Then you think it is Dolores, after all?"

Miss Mollie Madison was caught. She gave up. "Yes, I do; I think everybody does; only that makes the mystery more insoluble than ever."

"Then you think psychological difficulties are more serious than physical ones?"

"How you do pick one up! Yes, I suppose that's what I do think."

"My own course is simple. I will publish my solution. Or - wait - that's hardly fair. Was Dolores in love with Travis?'

"Very much. Friends and playmates from childhood; not another man in her life. We went through that with a toothcomb."

"Mr. Geoffrey Travis is not so faithful. He is engaged to be married to another girl."

"Impossible! He's heartbroken!"

"Ah, it's the double standard, I'm afraid!"

"I won't believe it of Geoffrey Travis."

"Well, you watch the papers. If there isn't an announcement to that effect in three days, you may come up here and get the box of gloves I'm betting you about it."

"Is it a joke?"

"Well, it is rather. Don't put it in your interview, though, or you'll spoil everything. But you may say that - er - I think I'll write it down for you; I want verbal accuracy in this one thing please. 'Mr. Iff said that the case showed clear evidence of certain influences connected with what is commonly and erroneously called the supernatural; and that he would publish a full analysis of the case in these columns, and in the Journals devoted to Psychical Research, in one month from date.' I think that will do. Only - don't put it in unless I'm wrong about Travis. So come up at four o'clock on Friday, and have tea, and we'll have another chat."

"You're as mysterious as the case itself."

"Just so," smiled Simon. "Quite plain sailing, if you think it out!"

Miss Mollie Madison sailed queenly out of the apartment, blessed above women in the possession of a number one 'scoop.'

Simon Iff called to his Jap to pack a bag. "I'll be back Thursday evening, at the latest," said he.

And on Thursday morning, Miss Mollie Madison, waking late after a hard night covering somebody's début, opened her paper at the Society Column to read the formal announcement of the engagement of Mr. Geoffrey Travis to Miss Alberta Crosman of Philadelphia.

"How could he possibly know?" she wailed. "He is a magician; it is all supernatural! But oh! what a scoop! what a scoop!"

She made the world's record for a lady's toilet look like a basket of eggs dropped from the Woolworth Building, and reached the office to write up the prophecy just about the time when Simon Iff, sitting with Geoffrey Travis in his office in Boston, saw the door flung open and an impetuous young lady, with a really remarkable diamond on her business finger, burst in with the cry "Don't you dare, Geoffrey, don't you dare!"

By the men's faces she saw that she had been tricked; but she didn't mind much. Simon Iff slipped out, with a wave of the finger-tips. "Won't disturb you now; see you at the wedding."

"Don't forget you're the best man!" shouted Geoffrey, through the waves of loosened gold that flowed about his head.

It was with reverence and godly fear that Miss Mollie Madison knocked at the door of 'that uncanny old man' on Thursday afternoon. She had just heard on long distance of the reappearance of the real Dolores, and Simon Iff's reference to the supernatural, which she had of course completely misunderstood, had set her imagination awhirl.

She was decidedly reassured to find him making the tea in a very fantastic and elaborate, but very practical manner, with one hand, and toasting muffins over a silver spirit lamp with the other.

"Welcome, my child!" he cried. "It may be you can lift the burden from my soul!"

She offered her utmost: what was the trouble?

"I despair of humanity," cried he. "I can trust no living creature either to make tea or to toast muffins, save myself. Yet they must be accomplished simultaneously, or all is lost!" He comically resigned the task to her. "You finish it! I must lament alone. I am getting old. The appalling castastrophe in the Pasquaney Puzzle has ruined my last hope for Man!"

"Why, haven't you heard?" she said, aglow. "The real Dolores has come back this morning."

"I was there," said Simon. "Pour out the tea, and I will declare to you this mystery. But I will declare it decently and in order: the castastrophe whereof I speak will therefore come last."

"I love being teased."

"It was evident from the first that the family was not lying. A joke might have been well enough for a day or a week, though a highbred Baastan clan is the last place on earth - if Baaston can be said to be on earth - to look for it. It is unthinkable that they should keep it up for six months and more. One might have explained the mere disappearance of Dolores by supposing that the two girls were lying for some strong motive, but that would involve a Second Girl, with all the difficulties attached to that theory. It was pretty clear to me that the Casses were absolutely honest, and absolutely bewildered.

"It followed that Dolores herself was the mainspring of the mechanism. She could not have been drowned in the shallow water of a calm lake within a few yards of her sisters; she could not have been kidnapped. No; she was the creator of the plot.

"Now then, we have to find a motive for her action. Here is a high-minded and noble girl, without a care in the world, loved and loving. We must exclude any idea of scandal or even of escapade. She was a jolly happy girl. But she had more in her than that; and that was not any secret passion or vice. It was an intense ambition to follow her father to an equal fame. She put in every spare moment on the higher mathematics or on the problems of psychical research.

"I said to myself that a very strong motive must be attached to this - er - I believe the Baaston for it is Urge.

"And then I saw instantly a quite inexplicable coincidence. You told me of her 'profound study of spirit return'. The crux of that problem is proof of identity. And the Pasquaney Puzzle is just such a problem. It was impossible to doubt that Dolores had deliberately invented a test case, and challenged all the wise men of the world to solve it. She knew well enough that the notoriety would attract every intelligence on the planet, if she only gave them time enough. It would not do to give the game away in a week or a month.

"No scandal would be attached to the family, once her motive was made clear by the publication of a thesis analysing the evidence in the case.

"Her action would cause extreme pain to those she loved; but science first! She would atone by the distinction of her achievement. At twenty-two one has such ideas.

"So far, so good; but how did such an idea arise in her mind? Possibly long ago, as an A. B. case; but if so, she must have seen immediately that it was perfectly impracticable. In what conceivable set of circumstances could she get her mother and sisters and brother and lover and friends to disown her? By some change of manner? Some assumed forgetfulness of her identity? They would merely have supposed her ill or insane; no public controversy could ever have arisen. No: the only plan would be to have a Second Girl; and my idea is that she found the Second Girl first, and that the likeness put the scheme into her head.

"Just then a flash of memory came to assist me. I met Professor Cass several times in Europe. He was just such a man as I imagine Dolores to be a woman. He would go to any lengths in the interest of his work. He once nearly killed himself in an experiment with digitalis and hyoscine - he wanted to map out the conflicting curves in the record of his heart action produced by those drugs. And as for some reason or other he couldn't bring Mrs. Cass on his travels, and as he 'couldn't work without her inspiration', he simply contracted a liaison with a woman as much like her as possible! It occurred to me that some such union had been fruitful, and that Dolores, by accident or design, had met a half-sister on the trip to Europe, two years ago, of which you told me.

"Now suppose that this half-sister, or some other girl equally well qualified, agrees to the suggestion of Dolores. They must first put in a great deal of work, prompting the Second Girl in family knowledge, teaching her to imitate Dolores' handwriting, and so on; and they must then invent a dramatic quick change scene, if possible one so extraordinary as to exclude all trickery - except The Trick. Dolores had made a special study of this with her 'mediums'. She thought of the summer cottage, and an excellent idea came to her. She would learn to swim like a fish, and keep up the pretence of being a duffer. I suspected something of that sort from the first minute - the statement of her incompetence was as weak as negatives usually are - especially in spiritualistic circles. When a man begins to argue that a medium couldn't know this or couldn't do that, he's either an expert or an ignoramus; and he's rarely an expert.

"She would need one further essential, and co-operation of somebody powerful, somebody who could hide the Second Girl until the right moment, and arrange for her own getaway and concealment while the play was playing. Probably she knew already of some people of wealth, deeply interested in the spirit problem, who would join the merry throng.

"I could not see any other solution that was not barred either by the psychology or by the physics of the known facts."

Miss Mollie Madison had got it all down in her note book. As Simon Iff was now politely offering her a cigarette, she decided to ask what she wanted to know. Analysis and deduction were nothing in her young life; but how did 'that uncanny old man' prophesy the engagement of Geoffry Travis, whose name he had just heard for the first time?

"I'm a vain old person, my dear; I ought to have let well alone. But I'm still young enough to be annoyed that a chit of a girl should think to puzzle me, even if she merely includes me in Carlyle's 'mostly fools'. So I determined to twist my knuckles in the golden locks of Miss Dolores and drag her to my wigwam. Therefore I arranged with you - as a last resort - to publish that I would deal with the matter from the point of view of Psychical Research. She would see the point at once, of course. Her Press-Cutting people must be keeping her supplied with all possible material for her book. She would know my name, I hoped, and know from that notice that I knew the whole story, and meant to take the wind out of her sails by publishing my own analysis of the identity problem before she had got hers ready. In which case, good-bye to her fame, to the whole purpose of her plot.

"But alas for humanity! I bethought me also of a simple plan, a plan which would humiliate her even more before me. I would tell Travis my conclusions, and end: 'If you want her back, you've only got to advertise that you've got a new girl now.' So, as I said before - and Shakespeare even earlier! - that bait of falsehood took that carp of truth. She came round in a rage the next morning, and delivered the goods. To think that one whose aspiration soared so high should fall so low! 'Tis vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself, and falls on the other! To aim at mathematics and to hit mere man!"

"Oh how wonderful you are, Mr. Iff! How you know the Heart of a Pure Woman!"

"Oh no, my dear, it's not original at all; it's just a modern adaptation of Solomon and the Baby. And now I have to run away and dress for dinner; you may publish all I've said, except the bit about the half-sister. Just invent a marvellous coincidence, won't you? It's the crucial difficulty of the whole business, but nobody will know that. So run away, little girl, run away and play with your nice toy, the Public!"

"Desperate Bear Raid on Coal, sir," announced Simon Iff's Japanese servant, cheerfully, as he brought in the morning chocolate, and pulled back the curtains to let in the lovely sunlight. The mystic had instructed him carefully in this manner of announcing the weather; for he had observed that Americans, informed of any event, from a railroad accident or a strike or a war to a change in the fashion of hair cutting, would invariably consult an internal monitor, asking, "Cui profuerit?" - Americanice: "Who's the grafter?" - accompanied by a rapid calculation of "Where do I come in?" Thus they would attribute an epidemic to financial distress in medical circles, the ravages of the boll weevil to a conspiracy to put up the price of cotton, or a shortage of sugar to a plan to discredit some particular set of politicians.