Introductory material

THE DREAM DETECTIVE

FIRST EPISODE. CASE OF THE TRAGEDIES IN THE GREEK ROOM

I

When did Moris Klaw first appear in London? It is a question which I am asked sometimes and to which I reply, “To the best of my knowledge, shortly before the commencement of the strange happenings at the Menzies Museum.”

What I know of him I have gathered from various sources; and in these papers, which represent an attempt to justify the methods of one frequently accused of being an insane theorist, I propose to recount all the facts which have come to my knowledge. In some few of the cases I was personally though slightly concerned; but regard me merely as the historian and on no account as the principal or even minor character in the story. My friendship with Martin Coram led, then, to my first meeting with Moris Klaw—a meeting which resulted in my becoming his biographer, inadequate though my information unfortunately remains.

It was some three months after the appointment of Coram to the curatorship of the Menzies Museum that the first of a series of singular occurrences took place there.

This occurrence befell one night in August, and the matter was brought to my ears by Coram himself on the following morning. I had, in fact, just taken my seat at the breakfast table, when he walked in unexpectedly and sank into an armchair. His dark, clean-shaven face looked more gaunt than usual and I saw, as he lighted the cigarette which I proffered, that his hand shook nervously.

“There’s trouble at the Museum!” he said, abruptly. “I want you to run around.”

I looked at him for a moment without replying, and, knowing the responsibility of his position, feared that he referred to a theft from the collection.

“Something gone?” I asked.

“No; worse!” was his reply.

“What do you mean, Coram?”

He threw the cigarette, unsmoked, into the hearth. “You know Conway?” he said; “Conway, the night attendant? Well—he’s dead!”

I stood up from the table, my breakfast forgotten, and stared incredulously. “Do you mean that he died in the night?” I inquired.

“Yes. Done for, poor devil!”

“What! murdered?”

“Without a doubt, Searles! He’s had his neck broken!”

I waited for no further explanations, but, hastily dressing, accompanied Coram to the Museum. It consists, I should mention, of four long, rectangular rooms, the windows of two overlooking South Grafton Square, those of the third giving upon the court that leads to the curator’s private entrance, and the fourth adjoining an enclosed garden attached to the building. This fourth room is on the ground floor and is entered through the hall from the Square, the other three, containing the principal and more valuable exhibits, are upon the first floor and are reached by a flight of stairs from the hall. The remainder of the building is occupied by an office and the curator’s private apartments, and is completely shut off from that portion open to the public, the only communicating door—an iron one—being kept locked.

The room described in the catalogue as the “Greek Room” proved to be the scene of the tragedy. This room is one of the two overlooking the Square and contains some of the finest items of the collection. The Museum is not open to the public until ten o’clock, and I found, upon arriving there, that the only occupants of the Greek Room were the commissionaire on duty, two constables, a plain-clothes officer and an inspector—that is, if I except the body of poor Conway.

He had not been touched, but lay as he was found by Beale, the commissionaire who took charge of the upper rooms during the day, and, indeed, it was patent that he was beyond medical aid. In fact, the position of his body was so extraordinary as almost to defy description.

There are three windows in the Greek Room, with wall cases between, and, in the gap corresponding to the east window and just by the door opening into the next room, is a chair for the attendant. Conway lay downward on the polished floor with his limbs partly under this chair and his clenched fists thrust straight out before him. His head, turned partially to one side, was doubled underneath his breast in a most dreadful manner, indisputably pointing to a broken neck, and his commissionaire’s cap lay some distance away, under a table supporting a heavy case of vases.

So much was revealed at a glance, and I immediately turned blankly to Coram.

“What do you make of it?” he said.

I shook my head in silence. I could scarce grasp the reality of the thing; indeed, I was still staring at the huddled figure when the doctor arrived. At his request we laid the dead man flat upon the floor to facilitate an examination, and we then saw that he was greatly cut and bruised about the head and face, and that his features were distorted in a most extraordinary manner, almost as though he had been suffocated.

The doctor did not fail to notice this expression. “Made a hard fight of it!” he said. “He must have been in the last stages of exhaustion when his neck was broken!”

“My dear fellow!” cried Coram, somewhat irritably, “what do you mean when you say that he made a hard fight? There could not possibly have been any one else in these rooms last night!”

“Excuse me, sir!” said the inspector, “but there certainly was something going on here. Have you seen the glass case in the next room?”

“Glass case?” muttered Coram, running his hand distractedly through his thick black hair. “No; what of a glass case?”

“In here, sir,” explained the inspector, leading the way into the adjoining apartment.

At his words, we all followed, and found that he referred to the glass front of a wall case containing statuettes and images of Egyptian deities. The centre pane of this was smashed into fragments, the broken glass strewing the floor and the shelves inside the case.

“That looks like a struggle, sir, doesn’t it?” said the inspector.

“Heaven help us! What does it mean?” groaned poor Coram. “Who could possibly have gained access to the building in the night, or, having done so, have quitted it again, when all the doors remained locked?”

“That we must try and find out!” replied the inspector. “Meanwhile, here are his keys. They lay on the floor in a corner of the Greek Room.”

Coram took them, mechanically. “Beale,” he said to the commissionaire, “see if any of the cases are unlocked.”

The man proceeded to go around the rooms. He had progressed no farther than the Greek Room when he made a discovery. “Here’s the top of this unfastened, sir!” he suddenly cried, excitedly.

We hurriedly joined him, to find that he stood before a marble pedestal surmounted by a thick glass case containing what Coram had frequently assured me was the gem of the collection—the Athenean Harp.

It was alleged to be of very ancient Greek workmanship, and was constructed of fine gold inlaid with jewels. It represented two reclining female figures, their arms thrown above their heads, their hands meeting; and the strings, several of which were still intact, were of incredibly fine gold wire. The instrument was said to have belonged to a Temple of Pallas in an extremely remote age, and at the time it was brought to light much controversy had waged concerning its claims to authenticity, several connoisseurs proclaiming it the work of a famous goldsmith of mediæval Florence, and nothing but a clever forgery. However, Greek or Florentine, amazingly ancient or comparatively modern, it was a beautiful piece of workmanship and of very great intrinsic value, apart from its artistic worth and unique character.

“I thought so!” said the plain-clothes man. “A clever museum thief!”

Coram sighed wearily. “My good fellow,” he replied, “can you explain, by any earthly hypothesis, how a man could get into these apartments and leave them again during the night?”

“Regarding that, sir,” remarked the detective, “there are a few questions I should like to ask you. In the first place, at what time does the Museum close?”

“At six o’clock in the summer.”

“What do you do when the last visitor has gone?”

“Having locked the outside door, Beale, here, thoroughly examines every room to make certain that no one remains concealed. He next locks the communicating doors and comes down into the hall. It was then his custom to hand me the keys. I gave them into poor Conway’s keeping when he came on duty at half-past six, and every hour he went through the Museum, relocking all the doors behind him.”

“I understand that there is a tell-tale watch in each room?”

“Yes. That in the Greek Room registers 4 A.M., so that it was about then that he met his death. He had evidently opened the door communicating with the next room—that containing the broken glass case; but he did not touch the detector and the door was found open this morning.”

“Someone must have lain concealed there and sprung upon him as he entered.”

“Impossible! There is no other means of entrance or exit. The three windows are iron-barred and they have not been tampered with. Moreover, the watch shows that he was there at three o’clock, and nothing larger than a mouse could find shelter in the place; there is nowhere a man could hide.”

“Then the murderer followed him into the Greek Room.”

“Might I venture to point out that, had he done so, he would have been there this morning when Beale arrived? The door of the Greek Room was locked and the keys were found inside upon the floor!”

“The thief might have had a duplicate set.”

“Quite impossible; but, granting the impossible, how did he get in, since the hall door was bolted and barred?”

“We must assume that he succeeded in concealing himself before the Museum was closed.”

“The assumption is not permissible, in view of the fact that Beale and I both examined the rooms last night prior to handing the keys to Conway. However, again granting the impossible, how did he get out?”

The Scotland Yard man removed his hat and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. “I must say, sir, it is a very strange thing,” he said; “but how about the iron door here?”

“It leads to my own apartments. I, alone, hold a key. It was locked.”

A brief examination served to show that exit from any of the barred windows was impossible.

“Well, sir,” said the detective, “if the man had keys he could have come down into the hall and the lower room.”

“Step down and look,” was Coram’s invitation.

The windows of the room on the ground floor were also heavily protected, and it was easy to see that none of them had been opened.

“Upon my word,” exclaimed the inspector, “it’s uncanny! He couldn’t have gone out by the hall door, because you say it was bolted and barred on the inside.”

“It was,” replied Coram.

“One moment, sir,” interrupted the plain-clothes man. “If that was so, how did you get in this morning?”

“It was Beale’s custom,” said Coram, “to come around by the private entrance to my apartments. We then entered the Museum together by the iron door into the Greek Room and relieved Conway of the keys. There are several little matters to be attended to in the morning before admitting the public, and the other door is never unlocked before ten o’clock.”

“Did you lock the door behind you when you came through this morning?”

“Immediately on finding poor Conway.”

“Could any one have come through this door in the night, provided he had a duplicate key?”

“No. There is a bolt on the private side.”

“And you were in your rooms all last night?”

“From twelve o’clock, yes.”

The police looked at one another silently; then the inspector gave an embarrassed laugh. “Frankly, sir,” he said, “I’m completely puzzled!”

We passed upstairs again and Coram turned to the doctor. “Anything else to report about poor Conway?” he asked.

“His face is all cut by the broken glass and he seems to have had a desperate struggle, although, curiously enough, his body bears no other marks of violence. The direct cause of death was, of course, a broken neck.”

“And how should you think he came by it?”

“I should say that he was hurled upon the floor by an opponent possessing more than ordinary strength!”

Thus the physician, and was about to depart when there came a knocking upon the iron door.

“It is Hilda,” said Coram, slipping the key in the lock—“my daughter,” he added, turning to the detective.

II

The heavy door swinging open, there entered Hilda Coram, a slim, classical figure, with the regular features of her father and the pale gold hair of her dead mother. She looked unwell, and stared about her apprehensively.

“Good morning, Mr. Searles,” she greeted me. “Is it not dreadful about poor Conway!”—and then glanced at Coram. I saw that she held a card in her hand. “Father, there is such a singular old man asking to see you.”

She handed the card to Coram, who in turn passed it to me. It was that of Douglas Glade of the Daily Cable, and had written upon it in Glade’s hand the words, “To introduce Mr. Moris Klaw.”

“I suppose it is all right if Mr. Glade vouches for him,” said Coram. “But does anybody here know Moris Klaw?”

“I do,” replied the Scotland Yard man, smiling shortly. “He’s an antique dealer or something of the kind; got a ramshackle old place by Wapping Old Stairs—sort of a cross between Jamrach’s and a rag shop. He’s lately been hanging about the Central Criminal Court a lot. Seems to fancy his luck as an amateur investigator. He’s certainly smart,” he added, grudgingly, “but cranky.”

“Ask Mr. Klaw to come through, Hilda,” said Coram.

Shortly afterward entered a strange figure. It was that of a tall man who stooped, so that his apparent height was diminished—a very old man who carried his many years lightly, or a younger man prematurely aged; none could say which. His skin had the hue of dirty vellum, and his hair, his shaggy brows, his scanty beard were so toneless as to defy classification in terms of colour. He wore an archaic brown bowler, smart, gold-rimmed pince-nez, and a black silk muffler. A long, caped black cloak completely enveloped the stooping figure; from beneath its mud-spattered edge peeped long-toed continental boots.

He removed his hat.

“Good morning, Mr. Coram,” he said. His voice reminded me of the distant rumbling of empty casks; his accent was wholly indescribable. “Good morning” (to the detective), “Mr. Grimsby. Good morning, Mr. Searles. Your friend, Mr. Glade, tells me I shall find you here. Good morning, Inspector. To Miss Coram I already have said good morning.”

From the lining of the flat-topped hat he took out one of those small cylindrical scent sprays and played its contents upon his high, bald brow. An odour of verbena filled the air. He replaced the spray in the hat, the hat upon his scantily thatched crown.

“There is here a smell of dead men!” he explained.

I turned aside to hide my smiles, so grotesque was my first impression of the amazing individual known as Moris Klaw.

“Mr. Coram,” he continued, “I am an old fool who sometimes has wise dreams. Crime has been the hobby of a busy life. I have seen crime upon the Gold Coast, where the black fever it danced in the air above the murdered one like a lingering soul, and I have seen blood flow in Arctic Lapland, where it was frozen up into red ice almost before it left the veins. Have I your permit to see if I can help?”

All of us, the police included, were strangely impressed now.

“Certainly,” said Coram; “will you step this way?”

Moris Klaw bent over the dead man.

“You have moved him!” he said, sharply.

It was explained that this had been for the purpose of a medical examination. He nodded absently. With the aid of a large magnifying glass he was scrutinizing poor Conway. He examined his hair, his eyes, his hands, his fingernails. He rubbed long, flexible fingers upon the floor beside the body—and sniffed at the dust.

“Someone so kindly will tell me all about it,” he said, turning out the dead man’s pockets.

Coram briefly recounted much of the foregoing, and replied to the oddly chosen questions which from time to time Moris Klaw put to him. Throughout the duologue, the singular old man conducted a detailed search of every square inch, I think, of the Greek Room. Before the case containing the harp he stood, peering.

“It is here that the trouble centres,” he muttered. “What do I know of such a Grecian instrument? Let me think.”

He threw back his head, closing his eyes.

“Such valuable curios,” he rumbled, “have histories—and the crimes they occasion operate in cycles.” He waved his hand in a slow circle. “If I but knew the history of this harp! Mr. Coram!”

He glanced toward my friend.

“Thoughts are things, Mr. Coram. If I might spend a night here—upon the very spot of floor where the poor Conway fell—I could from the surrounding atmosphere (it is a sensitive plate) recover a picture of the thing in his mind”—indicating Conway—“at the last!”

The Scotland Yard man blew down his nose.

“You snort, my friend,” said Moris Klaw, turning upon him. “You would snort less if you had waked screaming, out in the desert; screaming out with fear of the dripping beaks of the vultures—the last dreadful fear which the mind had known of him who had died of thirst upon that haunted spot!”

The words and the manner of their delivery thrilled us all.

“What is it,” continued the weird old man, “but the odic force, the ether—say it how you please—which carries the wireless message, the lightning? It is a huge, subtile, sensitive plate. Inspiration, what you call bad luck and good luck—all are but reflections from it. The supreme thought preceding death is imprinted on the surrounding atmosphere like a photograph. I have trained this”—he tapped his brow—“to reproduce those photographs! May I sleep here to-night, Mr. Coram?”

Somewhere beneath the ramshackle exterior we had caught a glimpse of a man of power. From behind the thick pebbles momentarily had shone out the light of a tremendous and original mind.

“I should be most glad of your assistance,” answered my friend.

“No police must be here to-night,” rumbled Moris Klaw. “No heavy-footed constables, filling the room with thoughts of large cooks and small Basses, must fog my negative!”

“Can that be arranged?” asked Coram of the inspector.

“The men on duty can remain in the hall, if you wish it, sir.”

“Good!” rumbled Moris Klaw.

He moistened his brow with verbena, bowed uncouthly, and shuffled from the Greek Room.

III

Moris Klaw reappeared in the evening, accompanied by a strikingly beautiful brunette.

The change of face upon the part of Mr. Grimsby of New Scotland Yard was singular.

“My daughter—Isis,” explained Moris Klaw. “She assists to develop my negatives.”

Grimsby became all attention. Leaving two men on duty in the hall, Moris Klaw, his daughter, Grimsby, Coram, and I went up to the Greek Room. Its darkness was relieved by a single lamp.

“I’ve had the stones in the Athenean Harp examined by a lapidary,” said Coram. “It occurred to me that they might have been removed and paste substituted. It was not so, however.”

“No,” rumbled Klaw. “I thought of that, too. No visitors have been admitted here during the day?”

“The Greek Room has been closed.”

“It is well, Mr. Coram. Let no one disturb me until my daughter comes in the morning.”

Isis Klaw placed a red silk cushion upon the spot where the dead man had lain.

“Some pillows and a blanket, Mr. Klaw?” suggested the suddenly attentive Mr. Grimsby.

“I thank you, no,” was the reply. “They would be saturated with alien impressions. My cushion it is odically sterilized! The ‘etheric storm’ created by Conway’s last mental emotion reaches my brain unpolluted. Good-night, gentlemen. Good-night, Isis!”

We withdrew, leaving Moris Klaw to his ghostly vigil.

“I suppose Mr. Klaw is quite trustworthy?” whispered Coram to the detective.

“Oh, undoubtedly!” was the reply. “In any case, he can do no harm. My men will be on duty downstairs here all night.”

“Do you speak of my father, Mr. Grimsby?” came a soft, thrilling voice.

Grimsby turned, and met the flashing black eyes of Isis Klaw.

“I was assuring Mr. Coram,” he answered, readily, “that Mr. Klaw’s methods have several times proved successful!”

“Several times!” she cried, scornfully. “What! has he ever failed?”

Her accent was certainly French, I determined; her voice, her entire person, was certainly charming—to which the detective’s manner bore witness.

“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with all his cases, miss,” he said. “Can I call you a cab?”

“I thank you, no.” She rewarded him with a dazzling smile. “Good-night.”

Coram opened the doors of the Museum, and she passed out. Leaving the men on duty in the hall, Coram and I shortly afterward also quitted the Museum by the main entrance, in order to avoid disturbing Moris Klaw by using the curator’s private door.

To my friend’s study Hilda Coram brought us coffee. She was unnaturally pale, and her eyes were feverishly bright. I concluded that the tragedy was responsible.

“Perhaps, to an extent,” said Coram; “but she is studying music and, I fear, overworking in order to pass a stiff exam.”

Coram and I surveyed the Greek Room problem from every conceivable standpoint, but were unable to surmise how the thief had entered, how left, and why he had fled without his booty.

“I don’t mind confessing,” said Coram, “that I am very ill at ease. We haven’t the remotest idea how the murderer got into the Greek Room or how he got out again. Bolts and bars, it is evident, do not prevail against him, so that we may expect a repetition of the dreadful business at any time!”

“What precautions do you propose to take?”

“Well, there will be a couple of police on duty in the Museum for the next week or so, but, after that, we shall have to rely upon a night watchman. The funds only allow of the appointment of four attendants: three for day and one for night duty.”

“Do you think you’ll find any difficulty in getting a man?”

“No,” replied Coram. “I know of a steady man who will come as soon as we are ready for him.”

I slept but little that night, and was early afoot and around to the Museum. Isis Klaw was there before me, carrying the red cushion, and her father was deep in conversation with Coram.

Detective-Inspector Grimsby approached me.

“I see you’re looking at the cushion, sir!” he said, smilingly. “But it’s not a ‘plant.’ He’s not an up-to-date cracksman. Nothing’s missing!”

“You need not assure me of that,” I replied. “I do not doubt Mr. Klaw’s honesty of purpose.”

“Wait till you hear his mad theory, though!” he said, with a glance aside at the girl.

“Mr. Coram,” Moris Klaw was saying, in his odd, rumbling tones, “my psychic photograph is of a woman! A woman dressed all in white!”

Grimsby coughed—then flushed as he caught the eye of Isis.

“Poor Conway’s mind,” continued Klaw, “is filled with such a picture when he breathes his last—great wonder he has for the white woman and great fear for the Athenean Harp, which she carries!”

“Which she carries!” cried Coram.

“Some woman took the harp from its case a few minutes before Conway died!” affirmed Moris Klaw. “I have much research to make now, and with aid from Isis shall develop my negative! Yesterday I learnt from the constable who was on night duty at the corner of the Square that a heavy pantechnicon van went driving round at four o’clock. It was shortly after four o’clock that the tragedy occurred. The driver was unaware that there was no way out, you understand. Is it important? I cannot say. It often is such points that matter. We must, however, waste no time. Until you hear from me again you will lay dry plaster of Paris all around the stand of the Athenean Harp each night. Good morning, gentlemen!”

His arm linked in his daughter’s, he left the Museum.

IV

For some weeks after this mysterious affair, all went well at the Menzies Museum. The new night watchman, a big Scot, by name John Macalister, seemed to have fallen thoroughly into his duties, and everything was proceeding smoothly. No clue concerning the previous outrage had come to light, the police being clearly at a loss. From Moris Klaw we heard not a word. But Macalister did not appear to suffer from nervousness, saying that he was quite big enough to look after himself.

Poor Macalister! His bulk did not save him from a dreadful fate. He was found, one fine morning, lying flat on his back in the Greek Room—dead!

As in the case of Conway, the place showed unmistakable signs of a furious struggle. The attendant’s chair had been dashed upon the floor with such violence as to break three of the legs; a bust of Pallas, that had occupied a corner position upon a marble pedestal, was found to be hurled down; and the top of the case which usually contained the Athenean Harp had been unlocked, and the priceless antique lay close by, upon the floor!

The cause of death, in Macalister’s case, was heart failure, an unsuspected weakness of that organ being brought to light at the inquest; but, according to the medical testimony, deceased must have undergone unnaturally violent exertions to bring about death. In other respects, the circumstances of the two cases were almost identical. The door of the Greek Room was locked upon the inside and the keys were found on the floor. From the detector watches in the other rooms it was evident that his death must have taken place about three o’clock. Nothing was missing, and the jewels in the harp had not been tampered with.

But, most amazing circumstance of all, imprinted upon the dry plaster of Paris which, in accordance with the instructions of the mysteriously absent Moris Klaw, had nightly been placed around the case containing the harp, were the marks of little bare feet!

A message sent, through the willing agency of Inspector Grimsby, to the Wapping abode of the old curio dealer, resulted in the discovery that Moris Klaw was abroad. His daughter, however, reported having received a letter from her father which contained the words—

“Let Mr. Coram keep the key of the case containing the Athenean Harp under his pillow at night.”

“What does she mean?” asked Coram. “That I am to detach that particular key from the bunch or place them all beneath my pillow?”

Grimsby shrugged his shoulders.

“I’m simply telling you what she told me, sir.”

“I should suspect the man to be an impostor,” said Coram, “if it were not for the extraordinary confirmation of his theory furnished by the footprints. They certainly looked like those of a woman!”

Remembering how Moris Klaw had acted, I sought out the constable who had been on duty at the corner of South Grafton Square on the night of the second tragedy. From him I elicited a fact which, though insignificant in itself, was, when associated with another circumstance, certainly singular.

A Pickford traction engine, drawing two heavy wagons, had been driven round the Square at 3 A.M., the driver thinking that he could get out on the other side.

That was practically all I learned from the constable, but it served to set me thinking. Was it merely a coincidence that, at almost the exact hour of the previous tragedy, a heavy pantechnicon had passed the Museum?

“It’s not once in six months,” the man assured me, “that any vehicle but a tradesman’s cart goes round the Square. You see, it doesn’t lead anywhere, but this Pickford chap he was rattling by before I could stop him, and though I shouted he couldn’t hear me, the engine making such a noise, so I just let him drive round and find out for himself.”

I now come to the event which concluded this extraordinary case, and, that it may be clearly understood, I must explain the positions which we took up during the nights of the following week; for Coram had asked me to take a night watch, with himself, Grimsby, and Beale, in the Museum.

Beale, the commissionaire, remained in the hall and lower room—it was catalogued as the “Bronze Room”—Coram patrolled the room at the top of the stairs, Grimsby the next, or Greek, Room, and I the Egyptian Room. None of the doors was locked, and Grimsby, by his own special request, held the keys of the cases in the Greek Room.

We commenced our vigil on the Saturday, and I, for one, found it a lugubrious business. One electric lamp was usually left burning in each apartment throughout the night, and I sat as near to that in the Egyptian Room as possible and endeavoured to distract my thoughts with a bundle of papers with which I had provided myself.

In the next room I could hear Grimsby walking about incessantly, and, at regular intervals, the scratching of a match as he lighted a cigar. He was an inveterate cheroot smoker.

Our first night’s watching, then, was productive of no result, and the five that followed were equally monotonous.

Upon Grimsby’s suggestion we observed great secrecy in the matter of these dispositions. Even Coram’s small household was kept in ignorance of this midnight watching. Grimsby, following out some theory of his own, now determined to dispense altogether with light in the Greek Room. Friday was intensely hot, and occasional fitful breezes brought with them banks of black thundercloud, which, however, did not break; and, up to the time that we assumed our posts at the Museum, no rain had fallen. At about twelve o’clock I looked out into South Grafton Square and saw that the sky was entirely obscured by a heavy mass of inky cloud, ominous of a gathering storm.

Returning to my chair beneath the electric lamp, I took up a work of Mark Twain’s, which I had brought as a likely antidote to melancholy or nervousness. As I commenced to read, for the twentieth time, “The Jumping Frog,” I heard the scratch of Grimsby’s match in the next room and knew that he had lighted his fifth cigar.

It must have been about one o’clock when the rain came. I heard the big drops on the glass roof, followed by the steady pouring of the deluge. For perhaps five minutes it rained steadily, and then ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Above the noise of the water rushing down the metal gutters, I distinctly detected the sound of Grimsby striking another match. Then, with a mighty crash, came the thunder.

Directly above the Museum it seemed as though the very heavens had burst, and the glass roof rattled as if a shower of stones had fallen, the thunderous report echoing and reverberating hollowly through the building.

As the lightning flashed with dazzling brilliance, I started from my chair and stood, breathless, with every sense on the alert; for, strangely intermingling with the patter of the rain that now commenced to fall again, came a low wailing, like nothing so much as the voice of a patient succumbing to an anæsthetic. There was something indefinably sweet, but indescribably weird, in the low and mysterious music.

Not knowing from whence it proceeded, I stood undetermined what to do; but, just as the thunder boomed again, I heard a wild cry—undoubtedly proceeding from the Greek Room! Springing to the door, I threw it open.

All was in darkness, but, as I entered, a vivid flash of lightning illuminated the place.

I saw a sight which I can never forget. Grimsby lay flat upon the floor by the farther door. But, dreadful as that spectacle was, it scarce engaged my attention; nor did I waste a second glance upon the Athenean Harp, which lay close beside its empty case.

For the figure of a woman, draped in flimsy white, was passing across the Greek Room!

Grim fear took me by the throat, since I could not doubt that what I saw was a supernatural manifestation. Darkness followed. I heard a loud wailing cry and a sound as of a fall.

Then Coram came running through the Greek Room.

Trembling violently, I joined him; and together we stood looking down at Grimsby.

“Good God!” whispered Coram; “this is awful. It cannot be the work of mortal hands! Poor Grimsby is dead!”

“Did you—see—the woman?” I muttered. I will confess it: my courage had completely deserted me.

He shook his head; but, as Beale came running to join us, glanced fearfully into the shadows of the Greek Room. The storm seemed to have passed, and, as we three frightened men stood around Grimsby’s recumbent body, we could almost hear the beating of each other’s hearts.

Suddenly, giving a great start, Coram clutched my arm. “Listen!” he said. “What’s that?”

I held my breath and listened. “It’s the thunder in the distance,” said Beale.

“You are wrong,” I answered. “It is someone knocking at the hall entrance! There goes the bell, now!”

Coram gave a sigh of relief. “Heavens!” he said; “I’ve no nerves left! Come on and see who it is.”

The three of us, keeping very close together, passed quickly through the Greek Room and down into the hall. As the ringing continued, Coram unbolted the door—and there, on the steps, stood Moris Klaw!

Some vague idea of his mission flashed through my mind. “You are too late!” I cried. “Grimsby has gone!”

I saw a look of something like anger pass over his large pale features, and then he had darted past us and vanished up the stairs.

V

Having rebolted the door, we rejoined Moris Klaw in the Greek Room. He was kneeling beside Grimsby in the dim light—and Grimsby, his face ghastly pale, was sitting up and drinking from a flask!

“I am in time!” said Moris Klaw. “He has only fainted!”

“It was the ghost!” whispered the Scotland Yard man. “My God! I’m prepared for anything human—but when the lightning came and I saw that white thing—playing the harp——”

Coram turned aside and was about to pick up the harp, which lay upon the floor near, when—

“Ah!” cried Moris Klaw, “do not touch it! It is death!”

Coram started back as though he had been stung as Grimsby very unsteadily got upon his feet.

“Turn up lights,” directed Moris Klaw, “and I will show you!”

The curator went out to the switchboard and the Greek Room became brightly illuminated. The ramshackle figure of Moris Klaw seemed to be invested with triumphant majesty. Behind the pebbles his eyes gleamed.

“Observe,” he said, “I raise the harp from the floor.” He did so. “And I live. For why? Because I do not take hold upon it in a natural manner—by the top! I take it by the side! Conway and Macalister took hold upon it at the top; and where are they—Conway and Macalister?”

“Mr. Klaw,” said Coram, “I cannot doubt that this black business is all clear to your very unusual intelligence; but to me it is a profound mystery. I have, myself, in the past, taken up the harp in the way you describe as fatal, and without injury——”

“But not immediately after it had been played upon!” interrupted Moris Klaw.

“Played upon! I have never attempted to play upon it!”

“Even had you done so you might yet have escaped, provided you set it down before touching the top part! Note, please!”

He ran his long white fingers over the golden strings. Instantly there stole upon my ears that weird, wailing music which had heralded the strange happenings of the night!

“And now,” continued our mentor, “whilst I who am cunning hold it where the ladies’ gold feet join, observe the top—where the hand would in ordinary rest in holding it.”

We gathered around him.

“A needle-point,” he rumbled, impressively, “protruding! The player touches it not! But who takes it from the hand of the player dies! By placing the harp again upon its base the point again retires! Shall I say what is upon that point, to drive a man mad like a dog with rabies, to stay potent for generations? I cannot. It is a secret buried with the ugly body of Cæsar Borgia!”

“Cæsar Borgia!” we cried in chorus.

“Ah!” rumbled Moris Klaw, “your Athenean Harp was indeed made by Paduano Zelloni, the Florentine! It is a clever forge! I have been in Rome until yesterday. You are surprised? I am sorry, for the poor Macalister died. Having perfected, with the aid of Isis, my mind photograph of the lady who plays the harp, I go to Rome to perfect the story of the harp. For why? At my house I have records, but incomplete, useless. In Rome I have a friend, of so old a family, and once so wicked, I shall not name it!

“He has recourse to the great Vatican Library—to the annals of his race. There he finds me an account of such a harp. In those priceless parchments it is called ‘a Greek lyre of gold.’ It is described. I am convinced. I am sure!

“Once the beautiful Lucrece Borgia play upon this harp. To one who is distasteful to her she says: ‘Replace for me my harp.’ He does so. He is a dead man! God! what cleverness!

“Where has it lain for generations before your Sir Menzies find it? No man knows. But it has still its virtues! How did the poor Menzies die? Throw himself from his room window, I recently learn. This harp certainly was in his room. Conway, after dashing, mad, about the place, springs head downward from the attendant’s chair. Macalister dies in exhaustion and convulsions!”

A silence; when—

“What caused the harp to play?” asked Coram.

Moris Klaw looked hard at him. Then a thrill of new horror ran through my veins. A low moan came from somewhere hard by! Coram turned in a flash!

“Why, my private door is open!” he whispered.

“Where do you keep your private keys?” rumbled Klaw.

“In my study.” Coram was staring at the open door, but seemed afraid to approach it. “We have been using the attendant’s keys at night. My own are on my study mantelpiece now.”

“I think not,” continued the thick voice. “Your daughter has them!”

“My daughter!” cried Coram, and sprang to the open door. “Heavens! Hilda! Hilda!”

“She is somnambulistic!” whispered Moris Klaw in my ear. “When certain unusual sounds—such as heavy vehicles at night—reach her in her sleep (ah! how little we know of the phenomenon of sleep!), she arises, and, in common with many sleepwalkers, always acts the same. Something, in the case of Miss Hilda, attracts her to the golden harp——”

“She is studying music!”

“She must rest from it. Her brain is overwrought! She unlocks the case and strikes the cords of the harp, relocking the door, replacing the keys—I before have known such cases—then retires as she came. Who takes the harp from her hands, or raises it, if she has laid it down upon its side, dies! These dead attendants were brave fellows both, for, hearing the music, they came running, saw how the matter was, and did not waken the sleeping player. Conway was poisoned as he returned the harp to its case; Macalister, as he took it up from where it lay. Something to-night awoke her ere she could relock the door. The fright of so awaking made her to swoon.”

Coram’s kindly voice and the sound of a girl sobbing affrightedly reached us.

“It was my yell of fear, Mr. Klaw!” said Grimsby, shamefacedly. “She looked like a ghost!”

“I understand,” rumbled Moris Klaw, soothingly. “As I see her in my sleep she is very awesome! I will show you the picture Isis has made from my etheric photograph. I saw it, finished, earlier to-night. It confirmed me that the Miss Hilda with the harp in her hand was poor Conway’s last thought in life!”

“Mr. Klaw,” said Grimsby, earnestly, “you are a very remarkable man!”

“Yes?” he rumbled, and gingerly placed in its case the “Greek lyre of gold” which Paduano Zelloni had wrought for Cæsar Borgia.

From the brown hat he took out his scent spray and squirted verbena upon his heated forehead.

“That harp,” he explained, “it smells of dead men!”

SECOND EPISODE. CASE OF THE POTSHERD OF ANUBIS

In examining the mass of material which I have collated respecting Moris Klaw, several outstanding facts strike me as being worthy of some special notice.

For instance, an unusual number of the cases in which he was concerned centred about curios and relics of various kinds. His personal tastes (he was, I think, primarily, an antiquarian) may have led him to examine such cases in preference to others. Then again, no two of his acquaintances agree upon the point of Moris Klaw’s actual identity and personality. He was a master of disguise; and the grand secret of his life was one which he jealously guarded from all.

But was the Moris Klaw who kept the curio shop in Wapping the real Moris Klaw? And to what extent did he believe in those psychical phenomena upon which professedly his methods were based? As particularly bearing upon this phase of the matter, I have selected, for narration here, the story of the potsherd.

Since the Boswell, in records of this kind, has often appeared, to my mind, to overshadow the Johnson, I have decided to present this episode in the words of Mr. J.E. Wilson Clifford, electrical engineer, of Copthall House, Copthall Avenue, E.C., to whom I am indebted for a full and careful account. I do not think I could improve upon his paper, and my own views might unduly intrude upon the story; therefore, with your permission, I will vacate the rostrum in favour of Mr. Clifford, for whom I solicit your attention.

Mr. Clifford’s Story of the Egyptian Potsherd

I

During the autumn of 19—, I was sharing a pleasant set of rooms with Mark Lesty, who was shortly taking up an appointment at a London hospital, and it was, I think, about the middle of that month that the extraordinary affair of Halesowen and his Egyptian potsherd came under our notice.

Our rooms (they were in a southwest suburb) overlooked a fine expanse of Common. Halesowen rented a flat commanding a similar prospect; and, at the time of which I write, he had but recently returned from a protracted visit to Egypt.

Halesowen was a tall, fair man, clean-shaven, very fresh coloured, and wearing his hair cropped close to his head. He was well travelled and no mean antiquary. He lived entirely by himself; and Lesty and I frequently spent the evening at his place, which was a veritable museum of curiosities. I distinctly recall the first time that he showed us his latest acquisitions.

Both the windows were wide open and the awning fluttered in the slight breeze. Dusk was just descending, and we sat looking out over the Common and puffing silently at our briars. We had been examining the relics that Halesowen had brought back from the land of the Pharaohs, the one, I remember, which had most impressed me, tyro that I was, being the mummy of a sacred cat from Bubastis.

“It wouldn’t have been worth bringing back only for the wrapping,” Halesowen assured me. “This, now, is really unique.”

The object referred to was a broken pot or vase, upon which he pointed out a number of hieroglyphics and a figure with the head of a jackal. “A potsherd inscribed with the figure of Anubis,” he explained. “Very valuable.”

“Why?” Lesty inquired, in his lazy way.

“Well,” Halesowen replied, “the characters of the inscription are of a kind entirely unfamiliar to me. I believe them to be a sort of secret writing, possibly peculiar to some brotherhood. I am risking expert opinion, although, in every sense, I stole the thing!”

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Well, Professor Sheraton—you’ll see his name on a row of cases in the B.M.—excavated it. But it’s a moral certainty he didn’t intend to advise the authorities of his find. He was going to smuggle it out of Egypt into his private collection. I had marked the spot where he found it for inquiries of my own. This dishonest old fossil——”

Lesty laughed.

“Oh! my own motives weren’t above suspicion! But, anyway, the Professor anticipated me. Accordingly, I employed one Ali, a distinguished member of a family of thieves, to visit the learned gentleman’s tent! Cutting the story—there’s the pot!”

“Here! I say!” drawled Lesty. “You’ll come to a bad end, young fellow!”

“The position is a peculiar one,” replied Halesowen, smiling. “Neither of us had any legal claim to the sherd—whilst we were upon Egyptian territory. Therefore, even if the Professor learnt that I had the thing—and he may suspect—he couldn’t prosecute me!”

“Devilish high-handed!” commented Lesty.

“Yes. But remember we were well off the map—miles away from Cook’s route. The possession of this potsherd ought to make a man’s reputation—any man who knows a bit about the subject. Curiously enough, a third party had had his eye upon the place where this much-sought sherd was found. And in some mysterious fashion he tumbled to the fact that it had fallen into my hands. He made a sort of veiled offer of a hundred pounds for it. I refused, but ran across him again, a week or so later, in Cairo, and he raised his price to two hundred.”

“That’s strange,” I said. “Who was he?”

“Called himself Zeda—Dr. Louis Zeda. He quite lost his temper when I declined to sell, and I’ve not set eyes on him since.”

He relocked the fragment in his cabinet, and we lapsed into silence, to sit gazing meditatively across the Common, picturesque in the dim autumn twilight.

“By the way, Halesowen,” I said, “I see that the flat next door, same floor as this, is to let.”

“That’s so,” he replied. “Why don’t you men take it?”

“We’ll think about it,” yawned Lesty, stretching his long limbs. “Might look over it in the morning.”

The following day we viewed the vacant flat, but found, upon inquiry of the agent, that it had already been let. However, as our own rooms suited us very well, we were not greatly concerned. Just as we finished dinner the same evening, Halesowen came in, and, without preamble, plunged into a surprising tale of uncanny happenings at his place.

“Take it slow,” said Lesty. “You say it was after we came away?”

“About an hour after,” replied Halesowen. “I had brought out the potsherd, and had it in the wooden stand on the table before me. I was copying the hieroglyphics, which are unusual, and had my reading lamp burning only, the rest of the room being consequently in shadow. I was sitting with my back to the windows, facing the door, so no one could possibly have entered the room unseen by me. It was as I bent down to scrutinize a badly defaced character that I felt a queer sensation stealing over me, as though someone were standing close behind my chair, watching me!”

“Very common,” explained Lesty; “merely nerves.”

“Yes, I know; but not what followed. The sensation became so pronounced that I stood up. No one was in the room. I determined to take a stroll, concluding that the fresh air would clear these uncanny cobwebs out of my brain. Accordingly, I extinguished the lamp and went out. I was just putting my cap on when something prompted me to return and lock up the potsherd.”

He fixed his eyes upon us with an expression of doubt.

“There was someone, or something, in the room!”

“What do you mean?” asked Lesty, incredulously.

“I quite distinctly saw a hand and bare white arm pass away from the table—and vanish! It was dark in the room, remember; but I could see the arm well enough. I switched on the reading lamp. Not a thing was to be seen. There was no one in the room and no one but myself in the flat, for I searched it thoroughly!”

Some moments of silence followed this remarkable story, and I sat watching Lesty, who, in turn, was regarding Halesowen with the stolid, vacant stare which sometimes served to conceal the working of his keen brain.

“Pity you didn’t let us know sooner,” he said, rising slowly to his feet. “This is interesting.”

II

Halesowen’s nerves evidently had been shaken by the inexplicable incident. As the three of us strode across the corner of the Common, he informed us that the new tenant of the adjoining flat had moved in. “I have been away all day,” he said; “but the stuff was bundled in some time during the afternoon.”

We proceeded upstairs and into the cosy room which had been the scene of the remarkable occurrence related. As it was growing dark, Halesowen turned on the electric light, and, indicating a chair by the writing table, explained that it was there he had been seated at the time.

“Did you have the windows open?” asked Lesty.

“Yes,” was the reply. “I left the chairs and the awning out, too, as it was a fine night; in fact, you can see that they still remain practically as you left them.”

“When you returned, and saw, or thought you saw, the hand and arm—you would have to pass around to this side of the table in order to reach the lamp?”

“Yes.”

Apparently Lesty was about to make some observation, when an interruption occurred in the form of a ringing on the door bell, followed by a discreet fandango on the knocker.

“Who the deuce have we here!” muttered Halesowen. “I saw no one go in below.”

As our host passed through the lighted room and into the hall, my friend and I both leant forward in our chairs, the better to hear what should pass; nor were we kept long in suspense, for, as we heard the outer door opened, an odd, rumbling voice came, with a queer accent:

“Ah, my dear Mr. Halesowen, it is indeed an intrusion of me! But when I find how we are neighbours I cannot resist to make the call and renew a so pleasant acquaintance!”

“Doctor Zeda!” we heard Halesowen exclaim, with little cordiality.

“Ever your devoted servant!” replied the courteous foreigner.

I glanced at Lesty, and we rose together and stepped through the open window in time to see a truly remarkable personage enter.

This was a large-framed man, with snow-white hair cut close to his skull, French fashion. He had a high and very wrinkled brow and wore gold-rimmed pince-nez. Jet-black and heavy eyebrows were his, and his waxed moustache, his neat imperial, were likewise of the hue of coal. His complexion was pallid; and in his well-cut frock coat, with a loose black tie overhanging his vest, he made a striking picture, standing bowing profoundly in the doorway.

Halesowen rapidly muttered the usual formalities; in fact, I remember mentally contrasting our friend’s unceremonious manners with the courtly deportment of Doctor Zeda.

The latter explained that he had taken the adjacent flat, only learning, that evening, whom he had for a neighbour, and, despite the lateness of the hour, he said, he could not resist the desire to see Halesowen, of whose company in Egypt he retained such pleasant memories. Allowing for his effusiveness, there was nothing one could take exception to in his behaviour, and I rather wondered at the brusque responses of our usually polite host.

When, after a brief chat, the foreign gentleman rose to take his leave, he extended an invitation to all of us to lunch with him on the following day. “My place is in somewhat disorder,” he said, smiling, “but you are Bohemian, like myself, and will not care!”

Though I half expected that Halesowen would decline, he did not do so; I, therefore, also accepted, as did Lesty. Whereupon, Zeda departed.

Halesowen, returning to the chair which he had vacated to usher out his visitor, lighted a cigarette, regarded it for a moment, meditatively, and then frankly expressed his doubts.

“He’s been watching me!” he said; “and when he saw the next flat vacant he jumped at the chance.”

“My dear chap,” I retorted, “he must be very keen on securing your potsherd if he is prepared to take and furnish a flat next door to you simply with a view to keeping an eye on it!”

“You have no idea how anxious he is,” he assured me. “If you had seen his face, in Cairo, when I flatly declined to sell, you would be better able to understand.”

“Why not sell, then?”

“I’m dashed if I do!” said Halesowen, stubbornly.

On the following day we lunched with Doctor Zeda and were surprised at the orderly state of his establishment. Everything, from floor to ceiling, was in its proper place.

“It hasn’t taken you long to get things straight,” commented Lesty.

“Ah, no,” replied the other. “These big firms, they do it all in a day if you insist—and I insist, see?”

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, for he proved an excellent host, and I think even Lesty grew less suspicious of him. During the weeks that followed, the doctor came several times to our rooms, and we frequently met at Halesowen’s. The latter, who boldly had submitted photographs and drawings of the sherd to the British Museum, experienced no repetition of the mysterious phenomenon already described. Then, about seven o’clock one morning, when the mists hung low over the Common in promise of a hot day, a boy came for Lesty and myself with news of a fresh development. He was a lad who did odd jobs for Halesowen, and he brought word of an attempted burglary, together with a request that we should go over without delay.

Our curiosity keenly aroused, we were soon with our friend, and found him seated in the familiar room, before a large cabinet, with double glass doors, which, as was clearly evident, had been hastily ransacked. Other cases in which he kept various curios were also opened, and the place was in general disorder.

“What’s gone?” asked Lesty, quickly.

“Nothing!” was the answer. “The potsherd is in the safe, and the safe is in my bedroom—or perhaps something might have gone!”

“You lock it up at night, then? I thought you kept it in the cabinet.”

“Only during the day. It goes in the safe, with one or two other trifles, at night; but everybody doesn’t know that!”

We looked at one another, silently; but the name that was on all our lips remained unspoken—for we were startled by a loud knocking and ringing at the door. Carter opening it, into the room ran Doctor Zeda!

“Oh, my dear friends!” he cried, in his hoarse, rumbling voice, “there has been to my flat a midnight robber! He has turned completely upside-down all my collections!”

Lesty coughed loudly; but, as I turned my head to look at him, his face was quite expressionless. Halesowen seemed stricken dumb by surprise; whilst, for my own part, as I watched the foreigner staring about the disordered room, and noted the growing look of bewilderment creeping over his pallid countenance, I was compelled to admit to myself that here was either a consummate actor or a man of whom we hastily had formed a most unwarrantable opinion.

“But, my friend—my good Halesowen,” he exclaimed, with widely opened eyes and extended palms, “what is it that I see? You are as disordered as myself!”

Halesowen nodded. “The burglar gave me a call, too!” he said, grimly.

“My dear sir!” gasped Zeda, seizing the speaker’s arm, “tell me quickly—you have lost nothing?”

Halesowen glanced at him rather hard. “No,” he answered.

“Ah! what a relief! I feared,” rumbled the doctor. “But perhaps you wonder for what it is they came?”

“I can guess!”

“You need no longer to guess; I will tell you. It is for your fragment of the sacred vase, and to me they come for mine!”

We were even more astonished by this assertion than we had been by the doctor’s first. “Your fragment!” said Halesowen, slowly, with his eyes fixed on Zeda; “to what fragment do you refer?”

“To that which, together with your potsherd, makes up the complete vase! But you doubt?” he suggested, shrugging his shoulders. “Wait but a moment and I will prove!”

He moved from the room; his gait had a mincing awkwardness, quite indescribable; and we heard his retreating, heavy footsteps as he passed downstairs. Then we stood and gaped at one another. “His confounded ingenuity,” rapped Halesowen, “has completely tied my hands.”

Being interrupted, at this moment, by the re-entrance of the gentleman in question, further discussion of the subject was precluded. Zeda carried a small iron box which he placed carefully upon the table and unlocked. A second box of polished ebony was revealed within, and this, being unlocked in turn, was proved to contain, reposing in a nest of blue velvet, a fragment of antique pottery. Taking the fragment in his hand, the doctor begged that the potsherd be produced.

Halesowen, after a momentary hesitation, retired from the room, to return almost immediately with the broken vase in its wooden frame. Doctor Zeda, placing the portion which he held in his hand against that in the frame, but not so closely as to bring the parts in contact, turned to us with a triumphant smile. “They correspond, gentlemen, to a smallest fraction!” he declared; which, indeed, was perfectly true.

“And now,” continued Zeda, evidently gratified by the surprise which we could not conceal, “I will relate to you a story. I do not ask that you shall credit it; I only say that I have given up my life to such studies, and that I am willing, as matters have so arrived, that you shall join me to prove false or true what I think of the potsherd of Anubis.”

“Good!” said Lesty, and settled himself to listen, an example that was followed by Halesowen and myself. Zeda paused for a moment, evidently to collect his ideas, a pause upon which my stolid friend placed a dubious interpretation, for he cleared his throat, significantly.

III

“The date is no matter,” said Doctor Zeda, “but there was at Gîzeh, to the north of the Sphinx, a temple dedicated to Isis, but wherein the worship was different. We only know of this shrine by the monuments, but they prove it to have been—eh, Mr. Halesowen?”

Halesowen nodded.

“Here, then, the gods of the dead were adored—but the worship of Anubis took precedence, and was conducted at a shrine apart. Here, locked within three-and-thirty doors, having each its separate janitor who held the key, reposed a sacred symbol—a symbol, my friends, upon which was based the occult knowledge of the initiated; a symbol more precious than the lives of a hundred-hundred warriors—for so it is written!”

“I have never met with the inscription!” said Halesowen, drily.

Doctor Zeda smiled.

“You never are likely to meet it!” he responded. “Your Belzoni and Lepsius, your Birch, Renouf, Brugsch and Petrie, is a mere unseeing vandal, blinded to the great truth—to the ultimate secret that Egypt holds for him who has eyes to see and a brain to realize!”

The mysterious foreign gentleman looked about him with a sort of challenge in his glance; then he quietly resumed his story.

“At the change of the moon in the sacred month, Methori, a maiden selected from a noble house for her beauty and purity, and for a whole year dedicated to the service of the gods, held in her hands the sacred thing—held it aloft that the initiated might worship, until the first white beam lit up the receptacle, when all bowed down their heads and chanted the ‘Hymn of the Souls Who Are Passing.’ Then was it locked again within the three-and-thirty doors, there to remain for another year. None saw the symbol itself but the high priest, who looked upon it when he was so ordained—for any other that gazed upon it died! It was contained in a holy vase!”

He paused impressively. We had all fallen under the peculiar fascination of the speaker’s personality; we felt as though he spoke of matters wherein he had had personal concern. I could almost believe him to have witnessed the strange rites that he told of with such conviction.

“In a year so long ago,” he softly resumed, his voice now a kind of jagged whisper, “that to speak of its date were to convey nothing to you, the high-born virgin on whom the exalted office was conferred closed upon her unhappy soul the gates of paradise for ages unnumbered; called down upon her head the curse of the high priest and the anger of the most high gods; was rejected of Set himself!

“She let fall from her hands the sacred vase, and the holy symbol was lost to the children of earth for evermore! Lost was the key to the book of wisdom; closed was that book to man for all time!”

“Go on!” said Halesowen, harshly, for Zeda had paused again.

“You do not grasp?” asked the doctor. “Well, then, know that the sentence was ‘Until the parts of this vase be made whole again.’ Five fragments there were: a large one, which is your potsherd, and four smaller. The four smaller, after twenty years of untiring search, I have recovered and joined together. What if we now make whole that which was broken? May I not, by the exercise of such poor shreds of the lost wisdom as I have gathered up, summon before me that wandering spirit ere it return again to plead for rest at the judgment seat of Amenti?”

When I say that the man’s words proved electrical, I do not exaggerate the effect which this astounding proposition had upon us. Halesowen was fairly startled out of his chair, and stood with his eyes fixed on the other in a fascinated gaze.

Zeda, entirely returning to his customary urbanity, shrugged and smiled. “You believe my story?”

Lesty was the first to recover himself, and his reply was characteristic. “Can’t say I do,” he drawled, frankly. “I don’t say that you may not, though,” he added.

“Then do you not owe it to assist in proving my words? A little séance? You are sceptical, quite? Very well; I try to show you. If I fail, then it is unfortunate, but—I bow to an inevitable!”

We looked at each other, interrogatively, and then Halesowen answered, “All right. It’s a queer yarn, but we leave the matter entirely in your hands.”

The doctor bowed. “Shall we say to-night to begin?” he said, tentatively.

“By all means.”

The doctor expressed himself delighted, and, carefully relocking the fragment of the vase in its double case, he was about to depart, when a point occurred to me.

“Might I ask whom you suspect of the attempted burglary?” I said.

He turned, in the door, and fixed a strange glance upon me. “There are others,” he replied, “who seek as I seek, and who do not scruple to gain their ends how they may. Of them we shall beware, my friends, for we know they design upon us!”

With that and a low bow he retired.

Little of interest occurred during the day, until about four in the afternoon, when Halesowen aroused us out of a lazy doze to show a letter just received from the British Museum.

It was in reply to one asking why he had received no acknowledgment of the photographs and drawings submitted; and it informed him that no such photographs and drawings had come to hand!

We usually took tea in the afternoon, and Halesowen joined us on this occasion, whilst, at about five o’clock, Doctor Zeda also looked in. He remained until it began to grow dusk, when we all went over to Halesowen’s to arrange the first “sitting”—for so the doctor referred to the projected séance. Retiring, for a few minutes, to his own establishment, Zeda returned with the iron box and explained what he proposed to do.

“Around this small table we sit, as at séance,” he said; “but no medium—only the potsherd. With these flexible bands I will attach, temporarily, the parts, and stand the vase in Mr. Halesowen’s frame, here by the window—so. Beside it we will place the lamp, shaded thus—so that a dim light is upon it. We can just see from where we sit in the dark. We will now wait until it is more dusk.”

Accordingly, we went out on to the balcony and smoked for an hour, Zeda polluting the clean air with the fumes of the long, black cigars he affected. They had an appearance as of dried twigs and an odour so wholly original as to defy simile. Between eight and nine o’clock he expressed himself satisfied with the light—or, rather, lack of it—and we all gathered around the table in the gloom, spreading our hands as he directed. For close upon an hour we sat in tense silence, the room seeming to be very hot. A slight breeze off the Common had wafted the fumes of Zeda’s cigar in through the open windows, which he had afterward closed, and the reek filled the air as with something palpable—and nauseous. I was growing very weary of the business, and Lesty, despite the doctor’s warning against disturbing the silence, had begun to cough and fidget irritably, when the rumbling foreign voice came, so unexpectedly as to startle us all: “It is useless to-night; something is not propitious. Turn up the lights.”

From the celerity with which Halesowen complied, I divined that he, too, had been growing impatient.

“There is some not suitable condition,” said Zeda, relocking his portion of the vase in its case. “To-morrow we shall make some changes in the order.”

He seemed not at all disappointed, being apparently as confident as ever in the ultimate success of the séances. One of the windows, he suggested, should be left open on the following evening during our sitting; and this we were only too glad to agree upon, since it would possibly serve to clear the atmosphere, somewhat, of the odour emanating from the doctor’s cigars. Several other points he also mentioned as being conceivably responsible for our initial failure—such as our positions around the table, and the relative distance of the potsherd. “We shall see to-morrow,” were his last words as he left us.

“A perfect monument of mendacity!” muttered Lesty, as we heard the retiring footsteps of our foreign friend on the gravel below; “and I think his accent is assumed. I don’t know why we even seem to credit such an incredible fable.”

“I don’t know, either,” said Halesowen, reflectively. “But he certainly possesses the missing part of the vase, and if he does not believe the story himself, what earthly object can he hope to serve by these séances?”

“Give it up!” replied Lesty, promptly; and that, I think, rather aptly expressed the mental attitude of all three.

We saw nothing of Zeda throughout the following day, but he duly put in an appearance in the evening, and placed us around the table again, but in different order. One of the French windows was left open, and the potsherd, with the lamp beside it, placed somewhat to the left.

After persevering for about forty minutes, we were rewarded by a rather conventional phenomenon. The table rocked and gave forth cracking sounds. There was no other manifestation, and, at about half-past ten, the doctor again terminated the séance.

“Excellent!” said Zeda, enthusiastically, “excellent! We were en rapport, and within the circle there was power. To-morrow we shall triumph, my friends, but there is again an alteration that occurs to me. You, Mr. Clifford, shall sit next to Mr. Lesty on the left, Mr. Halesowen shall be upon his right, and I, facing Mr. Lesty between. Also, there is too much light from the lamps in the road. It is good, I think, to have open the windows, but this Japanese screen will keep out that too much light and shelter the vase. To-morrow we will observe these things.”

This, then, concluded our second sitting, and brings me to the final episode of that affair which, strange enough in its several developments, was stranger still in its dénouement.

IV

Zeda, on the following day, entertained us to luncheon in town, followed by an afternoon concert, for which he had procured seats, being interested, or professing to be, in a certain fiddler who figured largely in the programme. We had arranged that Halesowen and the doctor should dine with us in the evening, before we went to the former’s flat for the séance, and we accordingly returned direct to our rooms and chatted over the doings of the day until dinner was served. Zeda surpassed himself in brilliant conversation. He must, I remember thinking, have led a strange and eventful life.

At about nine o’clock, we walked over, in the dark, to our friend’s flat, where we had to grope for and light an oil lamp which he had, Zeda declaring that something in the atmosphere was propitious and that the electric light would tend to disturb these favourable conditions. He seemed to be strung to high tension, perhaps with expectancy, but was not so preoccupied as to forget his black cigars, one of which he lighted as he was about to go out for the iron box. He borrowed my matches for the purpose and forgot to return them.

It was, perhaps, a quarter to ten before Zeda had matters arranged to his satisfaction, and so dark, by reason of the tall Japanese screen which stood before the open windows, that I could see neither Zeda, on my left, nor Lesty, who sat on my right. Halesowen was a dim silhouette against the patch of light cast by the oil reading lamp beside the vase, which stood the whole length of the room away. I was conscious of a suppressed excitement, which I am sure was shared by my companions.

I heard a distant clock striking the half hour, and then the three quarters; but still nothing had occurred. A motor car drove around from the road and stopped somewhere at the outer end of the drive. I wondered, idly, if it were that of the surgeon who lived at Number 10. After that, everything was very quiet, and I was expecting to hear the hour strike, and straining my ears to catch the sound of the first chime, when the rocking and cracking of the table began. This was much more violent than hitherto, and Zeda’s gruff tones came softly: “Whatever shall happen, do not remove your hands from the table!”

He ceased speaking, and the rocking motions, together with the rapping and cracking that had sounded from all about us, also ceased, with disconcerting suddenness. A silence fell, so short in duration as to be scarcely appreciable; for it was almost instantly broken by an unexpected sound.

It was a woman’s voice, very low and clear, and it seemed to mutter something in a weird, rising cadence, with a high note at the end of every third bar or so, and this over and over again—an eerie thing, vaguely like a Gregorian chant.

“Triumph!” whispered Zeda. “The ‘Hymn of the Souls Who Are Passing.’ ”

His speech seemed to disturb the singer, but only for a moment. The Hymn was continued.

This singular performance was proving too much for my nerves; at each recurrence of the quiet, clear note on the fourth beat of the third bar, a cold shudder ran down my spine. Then, as the very monotony of the thing was beginning to grow appalling, I suddenly became aware of a slim, white figure standing beside the vase!

The chant stopped, and I could hear nothing but the nervous breathing of my companions. Seated as they were, I doubted whether Halesowen or Lesty could see this apparition, but I was facing directly toward her—for it was a woman. I could see every line of her figure—the curves of her throat and arms and shoulders, the dull, metallic gleaming of her clustering hair. As she extended her hand toward the light, I distinctly saw the large green stone set in a ring on her index finger. She must be very beautiful, I thought, and I was peering through the gloom in a vain endeavour to see her more clearly, when there came a disconcerting crash—and utter darkness! The table whereat we were seated was overturned, and I found myself capsized from my chair!

“Hold him!” yelled the voice of Lesty. “Hold him, Halesowen—Clifford!”

A door banged loudly.

“Confound it! I’m on the floor!”—from Halesowen.

I shouted for someone to turn up the light, at the same time scrambling through the gloom with that intent. After severely damaging my shins against the intervening furniture, I found the switch. It would not work!

“It’s cut off!” I cried. “Strike a match, somebody.”

“Haven’t got any!” said Lesty.

“Zeda has mine!” responded Halesowen. “Open the door.”

“Locked!” was Lesty’s next report.

“Break it down!” shouted Halesowen, hurling aside the Japanese screen. “The potsherd is gone!”

Lesty applied his shoulder to the oak—once—twice—thrice. Then all together we attacked it, and it flew open with a splintering crash.

“Round to his flat!” panted Halesowen, running downstairs.

Out on to the drive we sprinted, into the next entrance and up to the first landing. Knocking and ringing proved ineffectual, and the door was too strong to be burst open. We stood in dismayed silence, staring at one another.

“Off your balcony, on to his and through the French window!” said Lesty, suddenly; so back we all ran again.

I had never before realized how easy it was to get from one balcony to another, until I saw Lesty swing himself across. Halesowen and I followed in a trice, and we all blundered into the dark room through the open window and made for the electric switch beside the mantelpiece. We turned on the light. The room was unfurnished!

“Good Lord!” breathed Halesowen, hurrying into the next.

That, too, was quite bare, as were all the rest! The outer door was locked.

“While we were fooling at that concert, he had every scrap of stuff removed!” I said. “He probably had the lot on hire from a big furnishing firm—curios and all. I remember noticing that his curiosities were of a very ordinary character, considering his extensive travels and the nature of his studies.”

“No doubt whatever,” agreed Lesty. “His burglary proved a failure (and, I think, must have been interrupted), though I am compelled to admire the neat manner in which he handled the very delicate situation that resulted. His more recent and elaborate device has turned out all that could be desired—from Zeda’s point of view!”

“But how has he got away?” said Halesowen, in bewilderment.

“Motor waiting at the corner,” replied Lesty, promptly. “Heard it come up. When the reading lamp was capsized, and whoever had crept from his balcony to yours and in behind the screen had returned the same way—with the vase!—Zeda overturned the table and pushed you two men backward in your chairs. Then, before I could reach him, he bolted out and locked the door after him. For, having lulled my suspicions by two practically uneventful séances, he cunningly placed himself nearest to the door and me farthest away. He probably removed the key when he went out for the box and placed it outside in the lock when he returned. His accomplice had run straight through Zeda’s flat and out to the waiting car, and there he joined her. They may be thirty miles away by now!”

Being unable to open the door, we perforce returned to Halesowen’s balcony by the same way that we had come, our friend bewailing his lost potsherd and exclaiming: “The cunning, cunning scamp!”

“I knew he had some deep game in hand,” said Lesty; “but I hadn’t bargained for this move. Of course, I had noticed the dodge of borrowing all our matches, but I didn’t grasp its importance until too late. It never occurred to me that he’d disconnected the electric light (which he probably did sometime in the night, by the way). I was a fool not to realize it, too, when he insisted on our using only the oil lamp. Then, again, I was slow not to go straight through the window and into Zeda’s flat that way. It is just possible I might have caught the lady songster if I had done that in the first place. The possibility, however, had not been overlooked, since she took the precaution to lock the door after her.”

“A clever rogue!” I declared. “But wasn’t the first attempt—for I suppose we must classify the mysterious arm under that head—more than a trifle indiscreet?”

“No doubt,” agreed Lesty. “But we didn’t know, then, that Zeda was in London, and the flat was still unfurnished. Also, they may have thought Halesowen was in bed; or the woman (whom he has so cleverly kept out of sight) may have exceeded her instructions in attempting to touch the potsherd while any one remained in the room.”

“But,” said Halesowen, slowly, “we don’t know that there was any woman!”

“Eh?” queried Lesty.

“Did you see her?”

“No.”

“I did. She was lovely, very lovely—for a woman!”

Lesty stared curiously. “You surprise me,” he commented, drily.

“Zeda was a strange man,” pursued the other, “and there were certainly things occurred as we sat round that table that need a lot of explaining.”

“Very ordinary three-and-six-a-head phenomena!” was the reply. “Merely a blind.”

“Then what was the reason of his burning desire to secure my potsherd, if not to complete the vase?”

“Do you mean to tell me,” asked Lesty, “that you are going to credit that story about the priestess—now, after he has shown his hand? Do you wish to suggest that he was aided by a spirit?”

“Then why was he so keen to get the thing?” persisted Halesowen.

Lesty looked at him, looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and began to load his pipe. Having done so, he sat smoking and staring at the brilliant moon.

“Well?” inquired our host.

“Give it up!” admitted Lesty.

(Conclusion of Mr. Clifford’s Account)

V

One of my visits to the Wapping curio shop of Moris Klaw was made in company with Mr. Halesowen, who, with the others mentioned in the foregoing narrative, I subsequently had met.

Somewhere amid the misty gloom of this place, where loot of a hundred ages, of every spot from pole to pole, veils its identity in the darkness, sits a large gray parrot. Faint perfumes and scuffling sounds tell of hidden animal life near to the visitor; but the parrot proclaims itself stridently:

“Moris Klaw! Moris Klaw! The devil’s come for you!”

That signal brings Moris Klaw from his hiding place. He shuffles into the shop, a figure appropriate to its surroundings. Imagine a tall, stooping man, enveloped in a very faded blue dressing gown. His skin is but a half-shade lighter than that of a Chinaman; his hair, his shaggy brows, his scanty beard, defy one to name their colour. He wears pince-nez.

When upon this particular occasion I introduced my companion, and Moris Klaw acknowledged the introduction in his rumbling voice, I saw Halesowen stare.

Klaw produced a scent spray from somewhere and sprayed verbena upon his high yellow brow.

“It is very stuffy—in this shop!” he explained. “Isis! Isis! Bring for my visitors some iced drinks!”

He invoked a goddess, and a goddess appeared: a brilliantly beautiful brunette, with delightfully curved scarlet lips and flashing eyes whose fire the gloom could not dim.

“Good God!” cried Halesowen—and fell back.

“My daughter Isis,” rumbled Moris Klaw. “This is Mr. Halesowen, from whom we rescue the Egyptian potsherd!”

“What!”

Halesowen leant forward across the counter.

“You recognize my daughter?” continued Moris Klaw; “but not Doctor Zeda, eh? Or only his poor old voice? You gave us great trouble, Mr. Halesowen. Once, you came in just as Isis, who has climbed on to your balcony, is about to take the potsherd——”

“There was no one in the room!”

“I was in the room!” interrupted the girl, coolly. “I was draped in black from head to foot, and I slipped behind the window hangings, unseen, whilst you fumbled with your lamp!”

“It was indiscreet,” continued Moris Klaw, “and made it harder for me; because, afterward, you lock up the treasure and my search is unavailing. Also, I am interrupted. Pah! I am clumsy! I waste time! But, remember, I offered to buy it!”

“Suppose,” said Halesowen, slowly, “I give you both in charge?”

“You cannot,” was the placid reply; “for you cannot say how you came into possession of the sherd! Professor Sheraton was in a similar forked stick—and that is where I come in!”

“What! you were acting for him?”

“Certainly! I happen to be in Egypt at the time, and he is a friend of mine. Your thief, Ali, left a small piece of the pot behind, and I am entrusted to make it complete!”

“You have succeeded!” said Halesowen, grimly, all the time furtively watching the beautiful Isis.

“Yes,” rumbled Moris Klaw. “I am the instrument of poetic justice. Isis, those cool beverages. Let us drink to poetic justice!”

He sprayed his ample brow with verbena.

In conclusion, you may ask if the value of the potsherd justified the elaborate and costly mode of its recovery.

I reply: Upon what does the present fame of Professor Sheraton rest? His “New Key to the Egyptian Book of the Dead.” Upon what is that work founded? Upon the hieroglyphics of the Potsherd of Anubis, which (no questions being asked of so distinguished a savant) was recently acquired from the Professor by the nation at a cost of £15,000!

THIRD EPISODE. CASE OF THE CRUSADER’S AX

I

I have heard people speak of Moris Klaw’s failures. So far as my information bears me, he never experienced any. “What,” I have been asked, “of the Cresping murder case? He certainly failed there.”

Respecting this question of his failure or success in the sensational case which first acquainted the entire country with the existence of Crespie Hall, and that brought the old-world village of Cresping into such unwonted prominence, I shall now invite your opinion.

The investigation—the crime having baffled the local men—ultimately was placed in the hands of Detective-Inspector Grimsby; and through Grimsby I was brought into close touch with the matter. I had met Grimsby during the course of the mysterious happenings at the Menzies Museum, and at that time I also had made the acquaintance of Moris Klaw.

Thus, as I sat over my breakfast one morning reading an account of the Cresping murder case, I was no more than moderately surprised to see Inspector Grimsby walk into my rooms.

He declined my offer of a really good Egyptian cigarette.

“Thanks all the same,” he said; “but there’s only one smoke I can think on.”

With that he lighted one of the cheroots of which he smoked an incredible quantity, and got up from his chair, restlessly.

“I’ve just run up from Cresping by the early train,” he began, abruptly. “You’ve heard all about the murder, of course?”

I pointed to my newspaper, conspicuous upon the front page of which was:

“THE MURDER AT CRESPIE HALL”

“Ah, yes,” he said, absently. “Well, I’ve been sent down and, to tell you the white and unsullied truth, I’m in a knot!”

I passed him a cup of coffee.

“What are the difficulties?” I asked.

“There’s only one,” he rapped back: “who did it!”

“It looks to me a very clear case against Ryder, the ex-butler.”

“So it did to me,” he agreed, “until I got down there! I’d got a warrant in my pocket all ready. Then I began to have doubts!”

“What do you propose to do?”

Grimsby hesitated.

“Well,” he replied, “it wouldn’t do any good to make a mistake in a murder case; so what I should like to do would be to get another opinion—not official, of course!”

I glanced across at him.

“Mr. Moris Klaw?”

He nodded.

“Exactly!”

“You’ve changed your opinion respecting him?”

“Mr. Searles, his investigation of the Menzies Museum outrages completely stood me on my head! I’m not joking. I’d always thought him a crank, and in some ways I think so still; but at seeing through a brick wall I’d put all I’ve got on Moris Klaw any day!”

“But surely you are wasting time by coming to me?”

“No, I’m not,” said Grimsby, confidently. “Moris Klaw, for all his retiring habits, is not a man that wants his light hidden under a bushel! He knows that you are collecting material about his methods, and he’s more likely to move for you than for me.”

I saw through Grimsby’s plan. He wanted me to invite Moris Klaw to look into the Crespie murder case, in order that he (Grimsby) might reap any official benefit accruing without loss of self-esteem! I laughed.

“All right, Grimsby!” I said. “Since he has made no move, voluntarily, it may be that the case does not interest him; but we can try.”

Accordingly, having consulted an A.B.C., we presently entrained for Wapping, and as a laggard sun began to show up the dinginess and the dirtiness of that locality, sought out a certain shop, whose locale I shall no more closely describe than in saying that it is close to Wapping Old Stairs.

One turns down a narrow court, with a blank wall on the right and a nailed-up doorway and boarded-up window on the left. Through the cracks of the latter boarding, the inquiring visitor may catch a glimpse, beyond a cavernous place which once was some kind of warehouse, of Old Thames tiding muddily.

The court is a cul de sac. The shop of Moris Klaw occupies the blind end. Some broken marble pedestals stand upon the footway, among seatless chairs, dilapidated chests, and a litter of books, stuffed birds, cameos, inkstands, swords, lamps, and other unclassifiable rubbish. A black doorway yawns amid the litter.

Imagine Inspector Grimsby and me as entering into this singular Cumæan cave.

Our eyes at first failed to penetrate the gloom. All about moved rustling suggestions of animal activity. The indescribable odour of old furniture assailed our nostrils together with an equally indescribable smell of avian, reptilian, and rodent life.

“Moris Klaw! Moris Klaw! The devil’s come for you!”

Thus the scraping voice of the parrot. A door opened, admitting a little more light and Moris Klaw. The latter was fully dressed; whereby I mean that he wore his dilapidated caped black cloak, his black silk muffler and that rarest relic of his unsavoury reliquary, the flat-topped brown bowler.

In that inadequate light his vellum face looked older, his shaggy brows, his meagre beard, more toneless, than ever. Through the gold-rimmed pince-nez he peered for a moment, downward from his great height. He removed the bowler.

“Good morning, Mr. Searles! Good morning, Inspector Grimsby! I am just from Paris. It is so good of you to call so early to tell me all about the poor murdered man of Cresping! Good morning! Good morning!”

II

Moris Klaw’s sanctum is certainly one of the most remarkable apartments in London. It is lined with shelves, which contain what I believe to be a unique library of works dealing with criminology—from Moris Klaw’s point of view. Strange relics are there, too; and all of them have histories. A neat desk, with flowers in a silver vase, and a revolving chair standing upon a fine tiger skin are the other notable items of furniture.

The contrast on entering was startling. Moris Klaw placed his hat upon the desk, and from it took out the scent spray without which he never travels. He played the contents upon his high, yellow forehead—filling the air with the refreshing odour of verbena.

“That shop!” he said, “it smell very strong this morning. It is not so much the canaries as the rats!”

“I trust,” began Grimsby, respectfully, “that Miss Klaw is quite well?”

“Isis will presently be here to say for herself,” was the reply. “And now—this bad business of Cresping. It seems I am just back in time, but, ah! it is a fortnight old!”

Grimsby cleared his throat. “You will have read——”

“Ah, my friend!” Moris Klaw held up a long, tapering white hand. “As though you do not know that I never confuse my poor brain with those foolish papers. No, I have not read, my friend!”

“Oh!” said Grimsby, something taken aback. “Then I shall have to tell you the family story——”

Isis Klaw entered.

From her small hat, with its flamingo-like plume, to her dainty shoes, she was redolent of the Rue de la Paix. She wore an amazingly daring toilette; I can only term it a study in flame tones. A less beautiful woman could never have essayed such a scheme; but this superb brunette, with her great flashing eyes and taunting smile, had the lithe carriage of a Cleopatra, the indescribable diablerie of a ghaziyeh.

Inspector Grimsby greeted her with embarrassed admiration. Greetings over—

“We must hurry, Father!” said the girl.

Moris Klaw reclaimed his archaic bowler.

“Mr. Searles and Inspector Grimsby will perhaps be joining us?” he suggested.

“Where?” began Grimsby.

“Where but by the 9:5 train for Uxley!” said Klaw. “Where but from Uxley to Cresping! Do I waste time, then—I?”

“You have been retained?” suggested Grimsby.

“Ah, no!” was the reply. “But I shall receive my fee, nevertheless!”

At the end of the court a cab was waiting. Outside the cavernous door a ramshackle man with a rosy nose bowed respectfully to the proprietor.

“You hear me, William,” said Moris Klaw, to this derelict. “You are to sell nothing—unless it is the washstand! Forget not to change the canaries’ water. The Indian corn is for the white rats. If there is no mouse in the trap by eight o’clock, give the owl a herring. And keep from the drink; it will be your ruin, William!”

We entered the cab. My last impression of the place was derived from the invisible parrot, who gave us Godspeed with:

“Moris Klaw! Moris Klaw! the devil’s come for you!”

As we drove stationward, Grimsby, his eyes rarely leaving the piquant face of Isis Klaw, outlined the history of the Crespie family to the silent Moris. In brief it was this:

The late Sir Richard Crespie, having become involved in serious monetary difficulties, employed such methods of drowning his sorrows as were far from conducive to domestic felicity; and after a certain unusually violent outburst the home was broken up. His son, Roland, was the first to go; and he took little with him but his mother’s blessing and his father’s curses. Then Lady Crespie went away to her sister in London, only surviving her departure from the Hall by two years. Alone, and deserted, first by son and then by wife, the debauched old baronet continued on his course of heavy drinking for some years longer. The servants left him, one by one, so that in the end, save for faithful old Ryder, the butler, whose family had served the Crespies for time immemorial, he had the huge mansion to himself. Apoplexy closed his unfortunate career; and, since nothing had been heard of him for years, it was generally supposed that the son had met his death in Africa, whither he had gone on leaving home.

With the passing of Sir Richard came Mr. Isaac Heidelberger, and he wasted no time in impressing his noxious personality upon the folks of Cresping. He was a German Jew, large and oily, with huge coarse features and a little black moustache that had been assiduously trained in a futile attempt to hide a mouth that had well befitted Nero. A week after Sir Richard’s burial, Mr. Heidelberger took possession of the Hall.

The new occupant brought with him one Heimer, a kind of confidential clerk, and, old Ryder the butler having been sent about his business, the two Jewish gentlemen proceeded to make themselves comfortable. The nature of their business was soon public property; the grand old Hall was to be turned into a “country mansion for paying guests.”

Very strained relations existed between the big Jew and the ex-butler, who, having a little money saved, had settled down in Cresping. One night, at the Goblets—the historic village inn—Heidelberger having swaggered into the place, there arose an open quarrel. Said Ryder:

“Sir Richard, with all his faults, was once a good English gentleman, and, but for such as you, a good English gentleman he might have died!”

It was exactly a week later that the tragedy occurred.

“We come to it now, eh?” interrupted Moris Klaw at this point. “So—we also come to the station! I will ask you to reserve us a first-class carriage!”

Grimsby made arrangements to that end. And, as the train moved out of the station, resumed his story.

“What I gather is this,” he said.

[I condense his statement and append it in my own words.]

The Goblets was just closing its doors, and the villagers who nightly met there were standing in a group under the swinging sign, when a man came running down the street from the direction of the Hall, and, observing the gathering, ran up. It was Heimer, Isaac Heidelberger’s secretary. He was hatless and his flabby face, in the dim light, was ghastly.

“Quick!” he rasped, hoarsely. “Where does the doctor live?”

“Last house but one,” somebody said. “What’s the matter?”

“Murder!” cried Heimer, as he rushed off down the village street.

Such was the dramatic manner in which the news of the subsequently notorious case was first carried to the outside world. The facts, as soon made known throughout the length and breadth of the land, were, briefly, as follows:

Heidelberger and his secretary, who were engaged in making an inventory of the contents of the Hall and in arranging for such alterations of the rooms and laying out of the neglected grounds as they considered necessary, had practically reached the end of their task. In fact, had nothing intervened, Cresping would, on the following day, have seen the old mansion in the hands of an army of London workmen.

At about half-past seven in the evening, Heidelberger had entered the room occupied by Heimer and had mentioned that he expected a visitor. The secretary, who had more work than he could well accomplish, did not pause to inquire concerning him, believing the other to allude either to the architect or to Heidelberger’s man, who was coming down from London. Heidelberger had then gone up to the library, saying that he should not require Heimer again that night.