Part 11

“Ah, gentlemen,” he said, coming in to us, “I have recovered some slight impression”--he tapped his moist forehead--“of that agonizing thought which preceded the unconsciousness of Ottley. I depart. Sometime to-night will come Sir Bartram Vane from Half-Moon Street, the specialist, to confer with the physician who is attending here. Mr. Searles, remain concealed. Not even he must know of your being here; no one outside the house must know. Remember my warnings. I depart.”

Behind the thick pebbles his eyes gleamed with some excitement repressed. By singular means, he would seem to have come upon a clue.

“Good-night, Mr. Haufmann,” he said. “Good-night, Mr. Searles. To the nurse I have said good-night and she only glared. She thinks I am the mad old fool!”

He departed, curtly declining company, and carrying his huge plaid rug and heavy grip. As his slouching footsteps died away along the avenue, Haufmann and I looked grimly at each other.

“Seems we’re left!” said my friend. “You won’t desert me, Searles?”

“Most certainly I shall not! You are tied here by the presence of poor Ottley, in any event, and you can rely upon me to keep you company.”

At about ten o’clock Sir Bartram Vane drove up, bringing with him the local physician who was attending upon Ottley. I kept well out of sight, but learnt, when the medical men had left, that the course of treatment had been entirely changed.

Thus commenced our strange ordeal; how it terminated you presently shall learn.

Moris Klaw, in pursuit of whatever plan he had formed, never appeared on the scene, but evidence of his active interest reached us in the form of telegraphic instructions. Once it was a wire telling Haufmann to detain the American servants in London should they arrive and to go on living as we were. Again it was a warning not to go out on the balcony after dusk; and, again, that we should not desert our posts for one single evening. On the fourth day the doctor pronounced a slight improvement in Ottley’s condition, and Haufmann determined to run down to Brighton on the following morning, returning in the afternoon.

That night we again heard the voice.

The house was very still, and Haufmann and I had retired to our rooms, when I discerned, above the subdued rustling whisper of the leaves, that other sound that no leaf ever made. In an instant I was crouching by the open window. A lull followed. Then, again, I heard the soft voice calling. I could not detect the words, but in obedience to the instructions of Klaw, I picked up the pistol which I had brought for the purpose, and ran to the door. The idea that the whispering menace was something that could be successfully shot at robbed it of much of its eerie horror, and I relished the prospect of action after the dreary secret sojourn in the upper rooms of the house.

I groped my way down to the hall. As we had carefully oiled the bolts, I experienced no difficulty in silently opening the door. Inch by inch I opened it, listening intently.

Again I heard the queer call.

Now, by craning my neck, I could see the moon-bright front of the house; and looking upward, I was horrified to see Shan Haufmann, a conspicuous figure in his light pajama suit, crouching on the balcony! The moonlight played vividly on the nickelled barrel of the pistol he carried as he rose slowly to his feet.

Though I did not know what danger threatened, nor from whence it would proceed, I knew well that Klaw’s was no idle warning. I could not imagine what madness had prompted Haufmann to neglect it, and was about to throw wide the door and call to him, when a series of strange things happened in bewildering succession.

An odd _strumming_ sound came from somewhere in the outer darkness. Haufmann dropped to his knees (I learnt, afterward, that the loose slippers he wore had tripped him). The glass of the window behind him was shattered with a great deal of noise.

A shot!… a spurt of flame in the black darkness of the poplar avenue!… a shriek from somewhere on the west front… and I ran out on to the drive.

With a tremendous crash a bulky form rolled down the sloping roof of the coach house, to fall with a sickening thud to the ground!

Then, out into the moonlight, Moris Klaw came running, his yet smoking pistol in his hand!

“Haufmann!” he cried, and again, “Haufmann!”

The big American peered down from the balcony, hauling in something which seemed to be a line, but which I was unable to distinguish in the darkness.

“Good boy!” he panted. “I was a fool to do it! But I saw him lying behind the chimney and thought I could drop him!”

Moris Klaw ran, ungainly, across to the coach house and I followed him. The figure of a tall, lithe man, wearing a blue serge suit, lay face downward on the gravel. As we turned him over, Haufmann, breathing heavily, joined us. The moonlight fell on a dark saturnine face.

“Gee!” came the cry. “It’s _Corpus Chris!_”

V

“Where did I get hold upon the clue?” asked Moris Klaw, when he, Haufmann, and I sat, in the gray dawn, waiting for the police to come and take away the body of Costa. “It was from the brain of Ottley! His poor mind”--he waved long hands circularly in the air--“goes round and round about the thing that happened to him on the balcony.”

“And what was that?” demanded Haufmann, eagerly. “Same as happened to me?”

“It was something--something that his knowledge of strange things tells him is venomous--which struck his wrist as he raised his revolver! What did he do? I can tell you; because he is doing it over and over again in his poor feverish mind. He clapped to the injured wrist the barrel of his revolver and fired! Then, swooning, he toppled over and fell among the bushes. The wound that so had puzzled all becomes explained. It was self-inflicted--a precaution--a cauterizing; and it saved his life. For I saw Sir Bartram Vane to-day and he had spoken with the other doctor on the telephone. The new treatment succeeds.”

“I am still in the dark!” confessed Haufmann.

“Yes?” rumbled Moris Klaw. “So? Why do I go to Brighton? I go to ask Miss Greta what Ottley would have asked her.”

“And that is?”

“What she feared that made her so very anxious to get you away from your home. To me she admitted that she had received from the man Costa impassioned appeals, such as, foolish girl, she had been afraid to show to you--her father!”

“Good heavens! the scamp!”

“The _canaille!_ But no matter, he is dead _canaille!_ After you got the brother hanged, this Corpus Chris (it was Fate that named him!) sent to your daughter a mad letter, swearing that if she does not fly with him, he will kill you if he has to follow you around the world! Yes, he was insane, I fancy; I think so. But he was a man of very great culture. He held a Cambridge degree! You did not know? I thought not. He tracked you to Europe and right to this house. Its history he learned in some way and used for his own ends. Probably, too, he had no opportunity of getting at you otherwise, without leaving behind a clue or being seen and pursued.”

Moris Klaw picked up an Indian bow which lay upon the floor beside him.

“A bow of the Sioux pattern,” he rumbled, impressively.

He stooped again, picking up a small arrow to which a length of thin black twine was attached.

“One standing on the balcony in the moonlight,” he continued, “what a certain mark if the wind be not too high! And you will remember that on gently blowing nights the whispering came!”

He raised the point of the arrow. It was encrusted in some black, shining substance. Moris Klaw lowered his voice.

“_Curari!_” he said, hoarsely, “the ancient arrow poison of the South American tribes! This small arrow would make only a tiny wound, and it could be drawn back again by means of the twine attached. Costa, of course, mistook Ottley for you, Mr. Haufmann. Ah, a clever fellow! I spent three evenings up the second tree in the avenue waiting for him. I need not have shot him if you had followed my instructions and not come out on the balcony. We could have captured him alive!”

“I’m not crying about it!” said Haufmann.

“Neither do I weep,” rumbled Moris Klaw, and bathed his face with perfume. “But I loathe it, this _curari_--it smells of death. Ah! the _canaille!_”

SEVENTH EPISODE. CASE OF THE CHORD IN G

I

It has been suggested to me more than once that the extraordinary crime which became known throughout the press as the Chelsea studio murder was the Waterloo of my eccentric friend, Moris Klaw; to which I reply that, on the contrary, it was his Austerlitz. This prince of criminologists, some of whose triumphs it has been my privilege to chronicle, never more dramatically established his theory of what he termed “Odic negatives” than in his solution of the mystery of the death of Pyke Webley, the portrait painter.

His singular power, which I can only term post-telepathy, of recovering thought-forms from the atmosphere, earned him the derision of the ignorant, as I have shown, but the grateful appreciation of the better informed--not least among these, Detective-Inspector Grimsby, of New Scotland Yard.

I cannot doubt that the recent experiments of Professor Gilbert Murray were based upon that law of “psychic angles” laid down by the strange genius of Wapping Old Stairs.

During lunch, I had been reading an account of the Chelsea tragedy in an early edition of the _Evening Standard_, and on returning to my chambers I found Inspector Grimsby waiting for me. A preamble was unnecessary. Simple deduction told me why he had come.

He was in charge of the Chelsea mystery--and out of his depth.

By several years the youngest detective inspector in the Service, Grimsby is a man earmarked by nature for constant promotion. He possesses a gift more precious than genius--the art of _using_ genius; allied to which he has that knack indispensable to any man who would succeed--the knack of finding the limelight. Although he may have done no more than stand in the wings throughout the performance, Detective-Inspector Grimsby invariably takes the last curtain.

This is as it should be, and I accord him my respectful admiration. Therefore, on seeing him:

“The murder of Pyke Webley?” I said, interrogatively.

“Well, that’s wonderful!” he declared, trying to look surprised. “I shall begin to think you are Moris Klaw’s only rival if you spring things like this on me.”

“I see,” said I, tossing my paper on the table. “The case is not so simple as it appears.”

“Simple!” cried Grimsby. He threw the stump of a vicious-looking cheroot into my hearth. “Simple? It’s _too_ simple. By which I mean that there is nothing to work upon--nothing _I_ can see.”

He stood, his back to the hearth, looking at me appealingly; and:

“Have you ’phoned to Wapping?” I asked.

Grimsby nodded.

“I could get no reply,” he answered gloomily.

“Then what do you suggest?”

“Well”--he hesitated--“I know your time is of value, Mr. Searles, but I was wondering--I have a taxi outside--if you had time to run down to Moris Klaw’s place with me for a chat?”

“Why not go alone?”

“Ah!” He selected a fresh cheroot and made it crackle between finger and thumb. “His daughter is the snag. She thinks I waste his time. I doubt if she’d let me see him.”

“Your own fault,” I said. “She’s a charming girl. You don’t handle her properly.”

“Ah!” he repeated, and became silent, fumbling for matches. Finally, taking pity upon him:

“Very well,” I agreed, “I have a couple of hours to spare, and if Klaw takes up the case my time will not be wasted.”

II

“You see,” said Grimsby, plaintively, as the cab threaded dingy highways, “there is absolutely no motive. Pyke Webley seems to have been a decent, clean-living man, with absolutely no vices as far as I can gather. Of course, I have tried to find a woman in the case, but the only women I’ve found are heartbroken about his death. A most popular chap. Revenge is out of the question; robbery is out of the question; and I’d take my oath that jealousy is out of the question. So what am I to make of it?”

“He was strangled?”

“Yes.” Grimsby nodded. “By a very powerful man. His face is horrible to see, and there are blue weals on his neck where the strangler’s fingers bit into the flesh.”

“Who saw him last, alive?”

“The door-keeper of the Ham Bone Club,” came the answer, promptly. “He dined there, stayed an hour talking to friends and then went out, saying that he had work to do at his studio. The studio is separated from the house by a small garden and can be entered direct from a side entrance. There are only two servants--he was a bachelor--a cook general and a man who has been with him for years. Neither of them heard him come into the house, so that we presume he went straight into the studio. Early this morning a charwoman, who comes daily, finding the studio door locked (I mean the one that opens on the garden) reported this to Parker (that’s the man’s name) and he came down with the key.”

“But,” I interrupted, “Parker must surely have known before this that his master was not in the house?”

“No!” Grimsby shook his head emphatically. “Mr. Webley often worked late and Parker had orders never to disturb him until his bell rang.”

“I see,” said I. “So they unlocked the studio----”

“Yes,” Grimsby went on, “and found him there--lying strangled on the floor.”

“How long had he been dead?”

“Well, the police surgeon says several hours. Everything points to the fact that it happened shortly after he entered the place.”

“Someone may have been concealed there,” I suggested.

“God knows!” Grimsby muttered. “I can’t find a thing to work upon. And in a case like this the first twelve hours are important. But here we are,” he added, nervously.

At the head of that blind alley which shelters the all-but-indescribable establishment of Moris Klaw, we directed the taxi man to wait. This was a foggy afternoon and only dimly could we discern the lights in front of the shop. A chill in the atmosphere told of the nearness of old Father Thames, and as we approached that stacked-up lumber which represented the visible stock-in-trade of the proprietor, a singular piece of human flotsam was revealed propped against the door-post, a fragment of cigarette adhering to the corner of his mouth and threatening at any moment to ignite the stained and walrus-like moustache which distinguished William, Moris Klaw’s salesman.

“Good afternoon,” I said; “will you tell Mr. Moris Klaw that I have called?”

“Certainly, sir,” wheezed the inebriate. “Great pleasure, sir, I’m sure, sir.”

William paused, turned, and looked back.

“Do you mind a-waitin’ outside?” he added. “There’s a boy with red ’air ’angin’ about somewhere as ’as got ’is eye on this ’ere golf club”--indicating a dilapidated niblick. “If we all goes in ’e’ll nip orf with it.”

Accordingly we lingered, and:

“Moris Klaw! Moris Klaw! The devil’s come for you!” screeched the parrot who mounted guard within.

Presently came Klaw’s unmistakable deep, rumbling voice from the interior gloom:

“Ah! Good afternoon, Mr. Searles! Is it Detective-Inspector Grimsby you have with you? Good afternoon, Mr. Grimsby.”

He advanced through the odorous shadows, a strange, a striking figure and--

“Behold!” he said, “_I_ have my hat and _you_ have your cab. It is to Chelsea you take me? Yes?”

From the lining of the flat-topped hat he took out his cylindrical scent spray and played its contents upon his high, bald crown.

“Verbena,” he rumbled. “My guinea-pigs, they detest it, but I find it so refreshing.” He replaced the spray in the hat, the hat on his crown. “I have recently bought a fine pair of armadillos,” he explained, “and they have an odour peculiar which, to me, is objectionable.”

He regarded William, who was glancing suspiciously up and down the narrow alley.

“William,” he admonished, “cease to dwell upon the youth with red hair. He becomes with you an obsession. Give the sheldrake some fresh seaweed, and if the hedgehogs continue to refuse apples, they may have each a small piece of raw steak.”

He approached the waiting taxi cab, and on the step he paused.

“Mr. Searles, I shall buy no more hedgehogs. They are not only delicate in captivity but one was in my bed last night.”

We all entered the cab; and:

“Now, Mr. Grimsby,” Moris Klaw continued, “tell me all about this poor fellow who is murdered. I am expecting you. I see it is not simple. I say, ‘The old fool from Wapping is wanted here.’”

III

“You are squeamish, Mr. Searles,” said Moris Klaw, wagging a long finger at me. “You squeam. You are not yet recovered from the blue face of the murdered. Ah, well! it is horrible.”

The body had been removed and we had been to view it. Now we stood in the studio where the crime had taken place, and although some time had elapsed since we had left the mortuary, I confess that I was not entirely myself. Dusk was come and we had turned up the studio lights. A faint mist hung in the place, for the fog had grown denser.

I looked about me at half-completed pictures: groups; studies for magazine jackets; portraits of children and of women--and the ghastly face seemed to rise up before me, the distorted face of the man whose hand would never touch again the brushes of his craft.

“It isn’t the first time I’ve seen a strangling case,” said Grimsby, “but it’s the first time I’ve seen marks like that.”

“Ah! really!” Moris Klaw rumbled, turning to him. “Never before, eh, like that? You interest me, my friend; you begin to notice. Your intellect it expands like a sunflower in the sun. What is it that you see different in those marks?”

Grimsby stared hard, painfully uncertain whether to regard the words as a compliment or a joke, but finally:

“The pressure was greater,” he replied. “The murderer must have had amazing strength.”

“Ah, yes!” Moris Klaw removed his hat and stared reflectively into the crown thereof. “Amazing strength? And the surgeon, what does he think?”

“He thinks the same.”

“Ah! but no more, eh? Amazing strength only?”

Grimsby figuratively pricked up his ears.

“I don’t quite follow you, Mr. Klaw,” he said. “Did you notice something else?”

Moris Klaw placed his hat upon a little table.

“I did take notice of some other thing, Mr. Grimsby,” he replied, “and for a moment I had dreams that you synchronize with me. It is a complimentary mistake which I make. Please forgive me. This ashtray”--he took up an ashtray from the table beside his hat--“is of great interest. You are agreeable, Mr. Searles”--turning to me--“that it is of great interest?”

I stared rather helplessly. It was a common brass ashtray containing match sticks and cigarette ends. I could see nothing unusual about it, and so presently I shook my head.

“Ah!”

Moris Klaw inserted two long yellow fingers gingerly and plucked out a cigarette stump. He replaced the tray and held up the stump.

“Behold!” he said, “what I find!”

Grimsby now was frankly amazed and not a little angry. As for myself, familiar though I was with Klaw’s peculiar methods, I could not divine at what he was driving.

“My friends,” he continued, looking from one to the other of us, and holding up the cigarette stump as a lecturer holds up a specimen, “the cigarette, a vice which has killed many men. I have known a woman to hang because of a hairpin, but men and women, too, many of them, because of a cigarette.”

He opened a bulging pocket-case and tenderly deposited the stump inside. As he was about to close the case:

“One moment, Mr. Klaw!” said Grimsby. “If that is evidence--though I can’t for the life of me see how it can be…”

“But _I_ see!” cried Moris Klaw--“I, the old foolish from Wapping, behold in this the hangman’s rope!”

He closed the case.

“But----” Grimsby began again.

“But me no buts!” Moris Klaw implored. “In _my_ hands it is the evidence, in _your_ hands it is the cigarette stump. But listen!” A bell rang. “It is Isis. I had arranged with her to meet me here. Perhaps, Mr. Grimsby, you would be so good as to open the door?”

Grimsby obeying with alacrity, the beautiful Isis presently entered, exquisitely gowned. She gave me smiling greeting, this lovely daughter of a singular father, and whilst Grimsby deferentially held the door wide open, managed to introduce into the studio, without brushing it against the sides of the door, a large brown paper bag.

“Ah!” Moris Klaw exclaimed, “it is my odically sterilized cushion. Place it here, my child.” He indicated a spot upon the floor. “My other engagements do not allow of my sleeping here for more than two hours, but, in that time, I shall hope to recapture the etheric storm in the mind of the slayer or the last great emotion in the brain of the slain. Something, certainly, I shall get, for this was no common crime.”

From its paper wrappings Isis Klaw took a red silk cushion and placed it upon the spot where the dead man had been found.

I turned aside, shuddering. That any human being, having seen what we had seen that day, could lie down and, above all, could sleep upon that haunted spot, was almost more than I could believe. Yet such was Moris Klaw’s intention, and that he would carry it out I did not doubt.

“Isis, my child,” he said, “awake me in two hours.”

Removing his caped coat and revealing the shabby tweed suit which he wore beneath it, he spread the garment on the carpet, stretched his gaunt shape upon it, and rested his head on the red cushion.

“Gentlemen,” he said in his queer, rumbling tones, “leave me to my slumber. When I awake, I perhaps shall know something more about the man who smoked”--he tapped long fingers upon his breast pocket--“this cigarette.”

We went out of the studio through the door leading to the garden. Isis was last to leave and I heard her father’s voice:

“Isis, my child, be pleased to extinguish the lights.”

So, leaving the eccentric investigator to his dark and ghastly vigil, we went up to the house; and, taking pity upon Grimsby, whose anxiety to talk to Isis was almost pathetic, I sought out Parker, the dead artist’s manservant, and endeavoured to obtain from him some useful information. In this, however, I was wholly unsuccessful.

“He hadn’t an enemy in the world, sir,” the man declared emotionally. “He was the best employer I’ve ever had or am ever likely to have. I don’t deny that he had his little affairs, sir, but there was nothing that left a nasty taste behind. Believe me, there was no woman in it, like the Scotland Yard men tried to make out.”

And indeed, the more I considered the facts of the case, the more inexplicable these became.