The Victorian Mystery Megapack (51 page)

“Rolled up tight, and concealed in the bottom of a trunk in the room of one of the servants,” explained Mallory. “The servant’s name is Jennings. He is now under arrest.”

“Jennings!” exclaimed Kale. “Why, he has been with me for years.”

“Did he confess?” asked the scientist imperturbably.

“Of course not,” said Mallory. “He says some of the other servants must have hidden it there.”

The Thinking Machine nodded at Hatch. “I think perhaps that is all,” he remarked. “I congratulate you, Mr. Mallory, upon bringing the matter to such a quick and satisfactory conclusion.”

Ten minutes later they left the house and caught a car for the scientist’s home. Hatch was a little chagrined at the unexpected termination of the affair, and was thoughtfully silent for a time.

“Mallory does show an occasional gleam of human intelligence; doesn’t he?” he said at last quizzically.

“Not that I ever noticed,” remarked The Thinking Machine crustily.

“But he found the picture,” Hatch insisted.

“Of course he found it. It was put there for him to find.”

“Put there for him to find!” repeated the reporter. “Didn’t Jennings steal it?”

“If he did, he’s a fool.”

“Well, if he didn’t steal it, who put it there?”

“De Lesseps.”

“De Lesseps!” echoed Hatch. “Why the deuce did he steal a fifty thousand-dollar picture and put it in a servant’s trunk to be found?”

The Thinking Machine twisted around in his seat and squinted at him coldly for a moment. “At times, Mr. Hatch, I am absolutely amazed at your stupidity,” he said frankly. “I can understand it in a man like Mallory, but I have always given you credit for being an astute, quick-witted man.”

Hatch smiled at the reproach. It was not the first time he had heard of it. But nothing bearing on the problem in hand was said until they reached The Thinking Machine’s apartments.

“The only real question in my mind, Mr. Hatch,” said the scientist then, “is whether or not I should take the trouble to restore Mr. Kale’s picture at all. He is perfectly satisfied, and will probably never know the difference. So—”

Suddenly Hatch saw something. “Great Scott!” he exclaimed. “Do you mean that the picture that Mallory found was—”

“A copy of the original,” supplemented the scientist. “Personally I know nothing whatever about art; therefore, I could not say from observation that it is a copy, but I know it from the logic of the thing. When the original was cut from the frame, the knife swerved a little at the upper right hand corner. The canvas remaining in the frame told me that. The picture that Mr. Mallory found did not correspond in this detail with the canvas in the frame. The conclusion is obvious.”

“And de Lesseps has the original?”

“De Lesseps has the original. How did he get it? In any one of a dozen ways. He might have rolled it up and stuck it under his coat. He might have had a confederate. But I don’t think that any ordinary method of theft would have appealed to him. I am giving him credit for being clever, as I must when we review the whole case.

“For instance, he asked for permission to copy the Whistler, which you saw was the same size as the Rubens. It was granted. He copied it practically under guard, always with the chance that Mr. Kale himself would drop in. It took him three days to copy it, so he says. He was alone in the room all that time. He knew that Mr. Kale had not the faintest idea of art. Taking advantage of that, what would have been simpler than to have copied the Rubens in oil? He could have removed it from the frame immediately after he canvased it over, and kept it in a position near him where it could be quickly concealed if he was interrupted. Remember, the picture is worth fifty thousand dollars; therefore, was worth the trouble.

“De Lesseps is an artist—we know that—and dealing with a man who knew nothing whatever of art, he had no fears. We may suppose his idea all along was to use the copy of the Rubens as a sort of decoy after he got away with the original. You saw that Mallory didn’t know the difference, and it was safe for him to suppose that Mr. Kale wouldn’t. His only danger until he could get away gracefully was of some critic or connoisseur, perhaps, seeing the copy. His boldness we see readily in the fact that he permitted himself to discover the theft; that he discovered it after he had volunteered to assist Mr. Kale in the general work of rehanging the pictures in the gallery. Just how he put the picture in Jenning’s trunk I don’t happen to know. We can imagine many ways.” He lay back in his chair for a minute without speaking, eyes steadily turned upward, fingers placed precisely tip to tip.

“The only thing remaining is to go get the picture. It is in de Lesseps’ room now—you told me that—and so we know it is safe. I dare say he knows that if he tried to run away it would inevitably put him under suspicion.”

“But how did he take the picture from the Kale home?” asked Hatch.

“He took it with him probably under his arm the day he left the house with Mr. Kale,” was the astonishing reply.

Hatch was staring at him in amazement. After a moment the scientist arose and passed into the adjoining room, and the telephone bell there jingled. When he joined Hatch again he picked up his hat and they went out together.

De Lesseps was in when their cards went up, and received them. They conversed of the case generally for ten minutes, while the scientist’s eyes were turned inquiringly here and there about the room. At last there came a knock on the door.

“It is Detective Mallory, Mr. Hatch,” remarked The Thinking Machine. “Open the door for him.”

De Lesseps seemed startled for just one instant, then quickly recovered. Mallory’s eyes were full of questions when he entered.

“I should like, Mr. Mallory,” began The Thinking Machine quietly, “to call your attention to this copy of Mr. Kale’s picture by Whistler—over the mantel here. Isn’t it excellent? You have seen the original?”

Mallory grunted. De Lesseps’ face, instead of expressing appreciation of the compliment, blanched suddenly, and his hands closed tightly. Again he recovered himself and smiled.

“The beauty of this picture lies not only in its faithfulness to the original,” the scientist went on, “but also in the fact that it was painted under extraordinary circumstances. For instance, I don’t know if you know, Mr. Mallory, that it is possible so to combine glue and putty and a few other commonplace things into a paste which would effectually blot out an oil painting, and offer at the same time an excellent surface for water color work.”

There was a moment’s pause, during which the three men stared at him silently—with singularly conflicting emotions depicted on their faces.

“This water color—this copy of Whistler,” continued the scientist evenly—“is painted on such a paste as I have described. That paste in turn covers the original Rubens picture. It can be removed with water without damage to the picture, which is in oil, so that instead of a copy of the Whistler painting, we have an original by Rubens, worth fifty thousand dollars. That is true; isn’t it, M. de Lesseps?”

There was no reply to the question—none was needed. It was an hour later, after de Lesseps was safely in his cell, that Hatch called up The Thinking Machine on the telephone and asked one question.

“How did you know that the water color was painted over the Rubens?”

“Because it was the only absolutely safe way in which the Rubens could be hopelessly lost to those who were looking for it, and at the same time perfectly preserved,” was the answer. “I told you de Lesseps was a clever man, and a little logic did the rest. Two and two always make four, Mr. Hatch, not sometimes, but all the time.”

MURDER BY PROXY, by M. McDonnell Bodkin

(
Pearson’s Weekly
, February 6, 1897)

At two o’clock precisely on that sweltering 12th of August, Eric Neville, young, handsome, débonnaire, sauntered through the glass door down the wrought-iron staircase into the beautiful, old-fashioned garden of Berkly Manor, radiant in white flannel, with a broad-brimmed Panama hat perched lightly on his glossy black curls, for he had just come from lazing in his canoe along the shadiest stretches of the river, with a book for company.

The back of the Manor House was the south wall of the garden, which stretched away for nearly a mile, gay with blooming flowers and ripening fruit. The air, heavy with perfume, stole softly through all the windows, now standing wide open in the sunshine, as though the great house gasped for breath.

When Eric’s trim, tan boot left the last step of the iron staircase, it reached the broad gravelled walk of the garden. Fifty yards off, the head gardener was tending his peaches, the smoke from his pipe hanging like a faint blue haze in the still air that seemed to quiver with the heat. Eric, as he reached him, held out a petitionary hand, too lazy to speak.

Without a word the gardener stretched for a huge peach that was striving to hide its red face from the sun under narrow ribbed leaves, plucked it as though he loved it, and put it softly in the young man’s hand.

Eric stripped off the velvet coat, rose-coloured, green, and amber, till it hung round the fruit in tatters, and made his sharp, white teeth meet in the juicy flesh of the ripe peach.

Bang!

The sudden shock of sound close to their ears wrenched the nerves of the two men; one dropped his peach and the other his pipe. Both stared about them in utter amazement.

“Look there, sir,” whispered the gardener, pointing to a little cloud of smoke oozing lazily through a window almost directly over their head, while the pungent spice of gunpowder made itself felt in the hot air.

“My uncle’s room,” gasped Eric. “I left him only a moment ago fast asleep on the sofa.”

He turned as he spoke and ran like a deer along the garden walk, up the iron steps, and back through the glass door into the house, the old gardener following as swiftly as his rheumatism would allow.

Eric crossed the sitting-room on which the glass door opened, went up the broad, carpeted staircase four steps at a time, turned sharply to the right down a broad corridor, and burst straight through the open door of his uncle’s study.

Fast as he had come, there was another before him. A tall, strong figure, dressed in light tweed, was bending over the sofa where, a few minutes before, Eric had seen his uncle asleep.

Eric recognized the broad back and brown hair at once. “John,” he cried—“John, what is it?”

His cousin turned to him a handsome, manly face, ghastly pale now even to the lips.

“Eric, my boy,” he answered falteringly, “this is too awful. Uncle has been murdered—shot stone dead.”

“No, no; it cannot be. It’s not five minutes since I saw him quietly sleeping,” Eric began. Then his eyes fell on the still figure on the sofa, and he broke off abruptly.

Squire Neville lay with his face to the wall, only the outline of his strong, hard features visible. The charge of shot had entered at the base of the skull, the grey hair was all dabbled with blood, and the heavy, warm drops still fell slowly on to the carpet.

“But who can have—” Eric gasped out, almost speechless with horror.

“It must have been his own gun,” his cousin answered. “It was lying there on the table, to the right, barrel still smoking, when I came in.”

“It wasn’t suicide—was it?” asked Eric, in a frightened whisper. “Quite impossible, I should say. You see where he is hit.”

“But it was so sudden. I ran the moment I heard the shot, and you were before me. Did you see anyone?”

“Not a soul. The room was empty.”

“But how could the murderer escape?”

“Perhaps he leapt through the window. It was open when I came in.”

“He couldn’t do that, Master John.” It was the voice of the gardener at the door. “Me and Master Eric was right under the window when the shot came.”

“Then how in the devil’s name did he disappear, Simpson?”

“It’s not for me to say, sir.”

John Neville searched the room with eager eyes. There was no cover in it for a cat. A bare, plain room, panelled with brown oak, on which hung some guns and fishing-rods—old-fashioned for the most part, but of the finest workmanship and material. A small bookcase in the corner was the room’s sole claim to be called “a study.” The huge leather-covered sofa on which the corpse lay, a massive round table in the centre of the room, and a few heavy chairs completed the furniture. The dust lay thick on everything, the fierce sunshine streamed in a broad band across the room. The air was stifling with heat and the acrid smoke of gunpowder.

John Neville noticed how pale his young cousin was. He laid his hand on his shoulder with the protecting kindness of an elder brother.

“Come, Eric,” he said softly, “we can do no good here.”

“We had best look round first, hadn’t we, for some clue?” asked Eric, and he stretched his hand towards the gun; but John stopped him.

“No, no,” he cried hastily, “we must leave things just as we find them. I’ll send a man to the village for Wardle and telegraph to London for a detective.”

He drew his young cousin gently from the room, locked the door on the outside, and put the key in his pocket. “Who shall I wire to?” John Neville called from his desk with pencil poised over the paper, to his cousin, who sat at the library table with his head buried in his hands. “It will need a sharp man—one who can give his whole time to it.”