The Notched Hairpin (19 page)

This was all a little shy-making, to use that dear old-fashioned phrase of my childhood. So I shifted back from dangerous ground by asking again. “But what does P.O. stand for, if not for post office?”

His answer rather deepened my embarrassment instead of lessening it, and made me sorry that I'd raised the issue at all.

He said, “P.O. stands for probation officer.”

Then, when I was at a loss as to what to say, he added even more quietly, “But the initials go even better when expanded in Latin. That gives an even more precise description of the office, the difficult office that remarkable man chooses now to spend his time in carrying out.”

He stopped, and so I felt bound in courtesy to ask further, “What is the title in Latin?”

When he answered,
“Pastor Ovis,”
I was no wiser—I have let my Latin get rusty. Besides, I felt a certain relief that I didn't know and was protected by what someone has called that defense against a shock to the feelings which is given by the obscurity of an ancient tongue.

I didn't feel I needed to say I didn't know and so bowed, and remarking, “Well, I suppose it's apt,” slipped off and consulted a good Latin lexicon that was in the house.

Inexpert as I am with that kind of heavy reading, I soon deciphered the code words and saw at once how sound, as usual, had been my intuition that warned me that we were on the verge of something that might prove positively sentimental, a thing to which my natural good taste has always given me a vigorous aversion. I'm not saying that there's any actual harm in that sort of thing if it helps you, and you happen, as poor Millum had, to fall into a position in which you have to be in the hands of someone else, however sound those hands may be. If Mr. Millum felt safer when penned, that was a matter for his feelings. After all, this was a better pen than the only other place which goes in American slang under the same name. And as he had to choose one or the other, naturally I approve his choice. No doubt Mr. M.'s “rod and staff” were much more comfortable than a warder's truncheon. But if Mr. Millum thinks that the role of the successfully bleached black sheep suits him, it certainly isn't mine. Black or white or a charming gray with mottlings of fawn, I intend to remain in the team not as the hero worshipper nor the reformed rake but as the candid kid.

But I don't want to end on a captious note. Both the summer and the team proved most propitious. Millum could, and did, talk metaphysics to his heart's content with Mr. M., and when he'd got this off his chest and the master had withdrawn to his endless studies and what people actually do and the mess of it and what they ought to do and the neatness that would result if they did, as they never will, then Mr. Millum would come and discuss matters of fact with me. I found him charmingly well-informed on what I now called My Period and ever so helpful in assisting me in ordering my material and adding to it for my opus.

As the days have gone by and this remarkable work has grown under my hands, I cannot help feeling increasingly that, maybe before not too long, the whole of this queer case may be seen to fall into its proper proportions. It will appear at last inevitably as the accidental and dramatic occasion or provocation that led to that definitive study,
1760, the Co-ordinate Acme of British Culture
, by Sidney Silchester. And I think, as I shall have it printed in a face of type of that date just to show that we cannot improve even on the print, I shall concede to the good taste of the period and add my rank, as it should be, in Latin—
Armiger
, If Mr. Mycroft chooses, he can take it as a far more sensitive compliment than being called P.O.! For then he can imagine, and I shall not in courtesy dispute it, that he is the Knight—if something of a white one—of whom I am the Esquire.

T
HE
E
NCHANTED
G
ARDEN

The Enchanted Garden

by H. F. HEARD

“‘Nature's a queer one,' said Mr. Squeers,” I remarked.

“I know what moves you to misquote Dickens,” was Mr. Mycroft's reply.

Here was a double provocation: first, there was the injury of being told that the subject on which one was going to inform someone was already known to him, and secondly, there was the insult that the happy literary quotation with which the information was to be introduced was dismissed as inaccurate. Still it's no use getting irritated with Mr. Mycroft. The only hope was to lure his pride onto the brink of ignorance.

“Then tell me,” I remarked demurely, “what I have just been reading?”

“The sad, and it is to be feared, fatal accident that befell Miss Hetty Hess who is said to be extremely rich, and a colorful personality' and ‘young for her years'—the evidence for these last two statements being a color photograph in the photogravure section of the paper which establishes that her frock made up for its brevity only by the intense virility of its green color.”

I am seldom untruthful deliberately, even when considerably nonplussed; besides it was no use: Mr. Mycroft was as usual one move ahead. He filled in the silence with: “I should have countered that naturalists are the queer ones.”

I had had a moment to recover, and felt that I could retrieve at least a portion of my lost initiative. “But there's no reason to link the accident with the death. The notice only mentions that she had had a fall a few weeks previously. The cause of death was ‘intestinal stasis'.”

“Cause!” said Mr. Mycroft. He looked and sounded so like an old raven as he put his head on one side and uttered “caws,” that I couldn't help laughing.

“Murder's no laughing matter!” he remonstrated.

“But surely,
cher maître
, you sometimes are unwilling to allow that death can ever be through natural causes!”

“Cause? There's sufficient cause here.”

“Post hoc, propter hoc,”
I was glad to get off one of my few classic tags. “Because a lady of uncertain years dies considerably
after
a fall from which her doctor vouched there were no immediate ill effects, you would surely not maintain that it was
on account
of the fall that the rhythm of her secondary nervous system struck and stopped for good? And even if it was, who's to blame?”

“Cause.” At this third quothing of the Raven I let my only comment be a rather longer laugh—and waited for my lecture. Mr. Mycroft did not fail me. He went on: “I'll own I know nothing about causality in the outer world, for I believe no one does really. But I have spent my life, not unprofitably, in tracing human causality. As you're fond of Dickens, I'll illustrate from Copperfield's Mr. Dick. The
causes
of King Charles's head coming off may have been due to four inches of iron going through his neck. I feel on safer ground when I say it was due to his failing to get on with his parliament. You say Miss Hess died naturally—that is to say (I) her death, (2) her accident a fortnight before, and (3) the place where that accident took place, all have only a chance connection. Maybe your case would stand were I not watching
another
line of causality.”

“You mean a motive?”

“Naturally.”

“But motives aren't proof! Or every natural death would be followed by a number of unnatural ones—to wit, executions of executors and legatees!”

“I don't know whether I agree with your rather severe view of human nature. What I do know is that when a death proves to be far too happy an accident for someone who survives, then we old sleuths start with a trail which often ends with our holding proofs that not even a jury can fail to see.”

“Still,” I said, “suspicion can't always be right!”

What had been no more than an after-lunch sparring-match suddenly loomed up as active service with Mr. Mycroft's, “Well, the police agree with you in thinking that there's no proof, and with me in suspecting it
is
murder. That's why I'm going this afternoon to view the scene of the accident, unaccompanied—unless, of course, you would care to accompany me?”

I may sometimes seem vain but I know my uses. So often I get a ringside seat because, as Mr. Mycroft has often remarked, my appearance disarms suspicion.

“We are headed,” Mr. Mycroft resumed as we bowled along in our taxi, “for what I am creditably informed is in both senses of the word a gem of a sanctuary—gem, because it is both small and jewelled.”

We had been swaying and sweeping up one of those narrow rather desolate canyons in southern California through which the famous “Thirteen suburbs in search of a city” have thrust corkscrew concrete highways. The lots became more stately and secluded, the houses more embowered and enwalled, until the ride, the road, and the canyon itself all ended in a portico of such Hispano-Moorish impressiveness that it might have been the entrance to a veritable Arabian Nights Entertainments. There was no one else about, but remarking, “This is Visitors' Day,” Mr. Mycroft alit, told our driver to wait, and strolled up to the heavily grilled gate. One of the large gilt nails which bossed the gate's carved timbers had etched round it in elongated English so as to pretend to be Kufic or at least ordinary Arabic the word PRESS. And certainly it was as good as its word. For not only did the stud sink into the gate, the gate followed suit and sank into the arch, and we strolled over the threshold into as charming an enclosure as I have ever seen. The gate closed softly behind us. Indeed, there was nothing to suggest that we weren't in an enchanted garden. The ground must have risen steeply on either hand. But you didn't see any ground—all manner of hanging vines and flowering shrubs rose in festoons, hanging in garlands, swinging in delicate sprays. The crowds of blossom against the vivid blue sky, shot through by the sun, made the place intensely vivid. And in this web of color, like quick bobbins, the shuttling flight of humming-birds was everywhere. The place was, in fact, alive with birds. But not a single human being could I see.

Birds are really stupid creatures and their noises, in spite of all the poetry that has been written about them, always seem to me tiring. Their strong point is, of course, plumage. I turned to Mr. Mycroft and remarked that I wished the Polynesian art of making cloaks of birds' feathers had not died out. He said he preferred them alive but that he believed copies of the famous plumage-mantles could now be purchased for those who liked to appear in borrowed plumes.

“This, I understand,” continued Mr. Mycroft, “is supposed to be the smallest and choicest of all the world's bird sanctuaries. It is largely reserved for species of that mysterious living automaton, the hummingbird,” and as was the way with the old bird himself, in a moment he seemed to forget why we were there. First, he scanned the whole place. The steep slopes came down till only a curb-path of marble divided the banks of flowers from a floor of water. At the farther end of this was a beautiful little statue holding high a lance, all of a lovely, almost peacock-green hue. And from this lance rose a spray of water, a miniature fountain. This little piece of art seemed to absorb him and as he couldn't walk on the water and examine it, he took binoculars from his pocket and scanned it with loving care. Then his mind shifted and slipping the glasses back in his pocket, he gave the same interest to the birds. His whole attention now seemed to be involved with these odd little bird-pellets. Hummingbirds are certainly odd. To insist on flying all the time you are drinking nectar from the deep flask of a flower always seems to me a kind of
tour de force
of pointless energy. In fact, it really fatigues me a little even to watch them. But the general plan of the place was beautiful and restful: there was just this narrow path of marble framing the sheet of water and this wall of flowers and foliage. The path curved round making an oval and at the upper end, balancing the fine Moorish arch through which we had entered, there rose a similar horseshoe arch, charmingly reflected in the water above which it rose. It made a bridge over which one could pass to reach the marble curb on the other side of the water.

“A bower,” remarked Mr. Mycroft. He loitered along, cricking back his neck farther and farther to watch the birds perched on sprays right against the sky. He had now taken a pen from his pocket and was jotting down some ornithological observation. Poor old dear, he never could enjoy but must always be making some blot of comment on the bright mirror of—well, what I mean is that I was really taking it in and he was already busy manufacturing it into some sort of dreary information. And poor Miss Hess, she too must wait till he came back to her actual problem, if indeed there was one.

I watched him as he stepped back to the very edge of the marble curb so that he might better view a spray of deep purple bougainvillea at which a hummingbird was flashing its gorget. Yes, it would have been a pretty enough bit of color contrast, had one had a color camera to snap it, but: I had seen a sign on the gate outside asking visitors not to take photographs. So I watched my master. And having my wits about me I suddenly broke the silence. “Take care,” I shouted. But too late. Mr. Mycroft had in his effort to see what was too high above him stepped back too far. The actual edge of the marble curb must have been slippery from the lapping of the ripples. His foot skidded. He made a remarkable effort to recover. I am not hard-hearted but I could not help tittering as I saw him—more raven-like than ever—flap his arms to regain his balance. And the comic maneuver served perfectly—I mean it still gave me my joke and yet saved him from anything more serious than a loss of gravity. His arms whirled. Pen and paper scrap flew from his hands to join some hummingbirds but the Mycroft frame, under whose over-arching shadow so many great criminals had cowered, collapsed not gracefully but quite safely just short of the water.

I always carry a cane. It gives poise. The piece of paper and even the pen—which was one of those new “light-as-a-feather” plastic things—were bobbing about on the surface. Of course, Mr. Mycroft who was a little crestfallen at such an absent-minded slip, wouldn't let me help him up. In fact he was up before I could have offered. My only chance of collecting a “Thank-you” was to salvage the flotsam that he had so spontaneously “cast upon the waters.” I fished in both the sopped sheet and the pen, and noticed that Mr. Mycroft had evidently not had time to record the precious natural-history fact that he had gleaned before his lack of hindsight attention parted the great mind and the small sheet. Nor when I handed him back his salvaged apparatus did he do so; instead he actually put both pen and sopped sheet into his pocket. “Shaken,” I said to myself; “there's one more disadvantage of being so high up in the clouds of speculation.”