Suddenly, at the hotel entrance, where the porter was obsequiously holding open the door for Miss Marvell to pass through, I saw the latter’s figure stiffen; she took one step back as if involuntarily, then, equally quickly, attempted to dart across the threshold, on which a group – composed of my dear lady, of Saunders, and of two or three people scarcely distinguishable in the gloom beyond – had suddenly made its appearance.
Miss Marvell was forced to retreat into the hall; already I had heard Saunders’s hurriedly whispered words:
‘Try and not make a fuss in this place, now. Everything can go off quietly, you know.’
Danvers and Cotton, whom I knew well, were already standing one each side of Miss Marvell, whilst suddenly amongst this group I recognised Fanny, the wife of Danvers, who is one of our female searchers at the Yard.
‘Shall we go up to your own room?’ suggested Saunders.
‘I think that is quite unnecessary,’ interposed Lady Molly. ‘I feel convinced that Mr Leonard Marvell will yield to the inevitable quietly, and follow you without giving any trouble.’
Marvell, however, did make a bold dash for liberty. As Lady Molly had said previously, he was far too clever to allow himself to be captured easily. But my dear lady had been cleverer. As she told me subsequently, she had from the first suspected that the trio who lodged at the Scotia Hotel were really only a duo – namely, Leonard Marvell and his wife. The latter impersonated a maid most of the time; but among these two clever people the three characters were interchangeable. Of course, there was no Miss Marvell at all. Leonard was alternately dressed up as man or woman, according to the requirements of his villainies.
‘As soon as I heard that Miss Marvell was very tall and bony,’ said Lady Molly, ‘I thought that there might be a possibility of her being merely a man in disguise. Then there was the fact – but little dwelt on by either the police or the public – that no one seems ever to have seen brother and sister together, nor was the entire trio ever seen at one and the same time.
‘On that 3rd of February Leonard Marvell went out. No doubt he changed his attire in a lady’s waiting-room at one of the railway stations; subsequently he came home, now dressed as Miss Marvell, and had dinner in the table d’hôte room so as to set up a fairly plausible alibi. But ultimately it was his wife, the pseudo Rosie Campbell, who stayed indoors that night, whilst he, Leonard Marvell, when going out after dinner, impersonated the maid until he was clear of the hotel; then he reassumed his male clothes once more, no doubt in the deserted waiting-room of some railway station, and met Miss Lulu Fay at supper, subsequently returning to the hotel in the guise of the maid.
‘You see the game of criss-cross, don’t you? This interchanging of characters was bound to baffle everyone. Many clever scoundrels have assumed disguises, sometimes impersonating members of the opposite sex to their own, but never before have I known two people play the part of three. Thus, endless contradictions followed as to the hour when Campbell the maid went out and when she came in, for at one time it was she herself who was seen by the valet, and at another it was Leonard Marvell dressed in her clothes.’
He was also clever enough to accost Lord Mountnewte in the open street, thus bringing further complications into this strange case.
After the successful robbery of Miss Fay’s diamonds, Leonard Marvell and his wife parted for a while. They were waiting for an opportunity to get across the Channel and there turn their booty into solid cash. Whilst Mrs Marvell, alias Rosie Campbell, led a retired life in Findlater Terrace, Leonard kept his hand in with West End shop robberies.
Then Lady Molly entered the lists. As usual, her scheme was bold and daring; she trusted her own intuition and acted accordingly.
When she brought home the false news that the author of the shop robberies had been spotted by the police, Rosie Campbell’s obvious terror confirmed her suspicions. The note written by the latter to the so-called Miss Marvell, though it contained nothing in any way incriminating, was the crowning certitude that my dear lady was right, as usual, in all her surmises.
And now Mr Leonard Marvell will be living for a couple of years at the tax-payers’ expense; he has ‘disappeared’ temporarily from the public eye.
Rosie Campbell – i.e. Mrs Marvell – has gone to Glasgow. I feel convinced that two years hence we shall hear of the worthy couple again.
MADELYN MACK
Created by Hugh Cosgro Weir (1884-1934)
Born in Illinois, Hugh Cosgro Weir began his career as a journalist when he was still in his teens and soon graduated to writing fiction for the many pulp magazines that flourished in America in the early years of the twentieth century. He also showed an early interest in the burgeoning new film industry, selling his stories for adaptation and writing his own screenplays. Before his early death at the age of 49, he also established his own advertising agency and set up a magazine publishing company. His best remembered fiction is the volume of short stories entitled Miss Madelyn Mack, Detective, first published in 1914. Madelyn Mack is an interesting creation, far more unusual and original than most of the other female detectives of the period. Weir goes to great lengths to emphasise her genius as a criminologist and, like Holmes, she attracts much admiring attention for her startling deductive abilities. Also like Holmes, she has her Watson (in the journalist Nora Noraker) and her eccentricities – she carries a locket around her neck in which she keeps cola berries to keep her awake for days at a stretch when she is on a particularly demanding case. (Sadly, as the story below reveals, her classical education is lacking and she can’t distinguish between Latin poets and Greek poets.) Thanks to Weir’s contacts in Hollywood, several of the Madelyn Mack stories were made into short films starring Alice Joyce, a popular actress who appeared in more than 200 movies in the silent era.
THE MISSING BRIDEGROOM
I
Two million dollars and the most beautiful girl in the county were to be Norris Endicott’s in another twenty-five minutes.
He was emphatically in love with Bertha Van Sutton, but cared nothing for her millions, in spite of the remembrance of his own uncertain income as a struggling architect. The next half-hour was to bring him all that a reasonable man could ask in this uncertain world.
This was his position and outlook at the Van Sutton home at seven forty pm. Someone has said that a moment can change the course of a battle. Also it can revolutionise a man’s life – perhaps end it altogether – and pitchfork him into another. At five minutes past eight – the hour that Endicott was to have made Bertha Van Sutton his wife – he had vanished from ‘The Maples’ as completely and mysteriously as though the balmy earth outside had opened and swallowed him. The expectant bridegroom literally had been whisked into oblivion.
At twenty minutes before eight o’clock, Willard White, glancing into his room, found Endicott pacing the floor, his tall, closely knit figure showing to excellent advantage in his evening clothes, a quiet smile, as of anticipation, on his face as he held a match to his cigarette.
‘Nervous, old man?’ White called banteringly, holding the door ajar.
Endicott turned with a laugh. ‘Nervous? When the best girl in the world is about to be mine – all mine? Of course I’m nervous, but it’s because I am so happy I can hardly keep my feet on the ground!’ (Which was a somewhat hysterical, but thoroughly human remark, you would agree, had you ever worshipped at the shrine of Bertha Van Sutton!)
At five minutes past eight the orchestra shifted the music of Mendelssohn’s ‘Wedding March’ to their racks, the leader cleared his throat in expectation of the signal to raise his baton, and the chattering throngs of guests, scattered through the lavishly decorated house from the conservatory to the veranda, swept into the long red-and-gold drawing-room, with the bower of palms and orchids at the end drawing admiring exclamations even from the most cynical dowagers. Adolph Van Sutton’s millions assuredly had set a fit stage for the
most talked-of wedding of the season.
Outside, Adolph himself was fumbling nervously with his cuffs as the bridal party ranged itself in whispering ranks for the entry. Bertha Van Sutton had just appeared with Ethel Allison, her chief bridesmaid and chum since boarding-school days. As she took the arm of her father, she made a picture to justify the half-audible sighs of envy from the bevy of attendants. With the folds of her long veil reaching almost to the hem of her gown and the sweep of her train, her figure looked almost regal in spite of her girlish slenderness. Her dark hair, piled in a great, loose coil, heightened the impression, which might have given her the suggestion of haughtiness had it not been for the magnetism of her smile.
The smile was bubbling in her eyes as she glanced around with the surprised question, ‘Where’s Norris?’
Her father looked up quickly, but it was Ethel Allison who answered, ‘Willard White has just gone after him, Bert. Here he comes now!’
The best man came hurriedly through the door. As he paused, he wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
‘Where’s Norris, Willard?’ Miss Allison asked impatiently.
‘He’s gone!’
‘Gone!’ The bridesmaid’s voice rose to a shrill falsetto.
The best man shook his head in a sort of blind bewilderment. ‘He’s gone,’ he repeated, mechanically.
The bride whirled. Adolph Van Sutton strode forward and seized White by the arm.
‘What, under Heaven, are you giving us, man?’
White stiffened his shoulders as though the sharp grasp had awakened him from his daze.
‘Norris Endicott is not in this house, sir!’ he cried, as if realising for the first time the full import of his announcement.
In the drawing-room, the orchestra-leader, with a final look at the empty door, lowered his baton with a snort of disgust and plumped sullenly back in his chair. The jewel-studded ranks of the crowding guests elevated their eyebrows in polite wonder. In the corner, the palms that were to have sheltered the bride beckoned impatiently.
On the velvet carpet, outside, lay a white, silent figure. It was Bertha Van Sutton who had fallen, an unconscious heap in the folds of her wedding finery.
Upstairs in the groom’s apartment, a circle of dishevelled men were staring at one another in tongue-tied bewilderment. Norris Endicott might have vanished into thin air, evaporated. The man who was to wed the Van Sutton heiress had been blotted out, eliminated.
As the group edged uneasily toward the door, a stray breeze, fragrant with the evening odours of the flower-lined lawn below, swept through the open window. A small object, half buried in the curtain folds, fell with a soft thud to the floor. The nearest man stooped toward it almost unconsciously. It was a silver ball, perhaps three-quarters of an inch in diameter. With a shrug, he passed it to Adolph Van Sutton. The latter dropped it mechanically into his pocket.
II
The five o’clock sun was splashing its waning glow down on to the autumn-thinned trees when I pushed open the rustic gate of ‘The Rosary’ the next afternoon to carry the sombre problem that was beyond me to the wizard skill of Madelyn Mack.
I was frankly tired after the day’s buffetings. And there was a soothing restfulness in the velvet green of the close-cropped lawn, with its fat box hedges and the scarlet splashes of its canna beds that brought me to an almost involuntary pause lest I break the spell. Madelyn Mack’s rose garden beyond was a wreck of shrivelled bushes, but my pang at the memory of its faded glories was softened by the banks of asters and cosmos marshalled before it as though to hide its emptiness. The snake-like coil of a black hose was pouring a playful spray into a circle of scarlet sage at the side of the gravelled path, with the gaunt figure of Andrew Bolton crouching, hatless, near it, trimming a ragged line of grass with a pair of long shears.
With a sigh I turned toward the quaint chalet nestling ahead. I might have been miles from the rumble of the work-a-day world.
I smiled – somewhat cynically, I will confess – as I pulled the old-fashioned knocker. There were few persons yet who knew, as I did, the shadows surrounding the wedding-night vanishing of Norris Endicott. Could Madelyn solve the problem that had already taken rank as the most baffling police case of five years?
The sphinx-like face of Susan Bolton greeted me on the other side of the door. She was dressed for the street in her prim bonnet and black silk gown.
‘Miss Madelyn said you would be here, Miss Noraker,’ she greeted me. ‘I thought I might meet you on my way to the Missionary Tea.’
Crime and a Missionary Tea! I smiled at the incongruity as I protested, ‘But I never told her I was coming! How in the world –’
Susan threw up her mittened hands. ‘Law, child, don’t you know she has a way of finding out things?’
A sudden laugh and the friendly bark of a dog sounded from the end of the hall. A slight figure in black stepped toward me with her two hands extended. At her heels, Peter the Great trotted lazily.
‘I am glad you came before six!’ she said, as she seized and held both of my hands, a distinctively Madelyn Mack habit. ‘I was afraid you would be delayed. The trolley service to the Van Sutton place is abominable!’
‘But why did you want me before six?’ I cried. ‘And how did you know I was coming at all? And how –’
Madelyn released my hands with a smile. ‘Really, you must give me time to catch my breath! Come into the den with Peter the Great, and toast yourself while we cross-examine each other.’
It was not until she was drawn up before the crackling log in the great open fireplace, with the dog curled contentedly on the jaguar skin at her feet, that she spoke again, and then it was in the rapid-fire fashion that showed me she was ‘hot on a winding trail,’ as she would express it.
‘I will answer your questions first,’ she began, as she rested her chin on her left hand in her favourite attitude and peered across at me, her eyes glowing with the restless energy of her mood. ‘I telephoned the Bugle office this morning and was told that you had just left for “The Maples”. Of course, I knew that Nora Noraker, the star reporter, would be put on the Van Sutton case at once, and I had a shrewd idea from past experience that you would bring the problem to me before night. As I am to meet Adolph Van Sutton here at six, I was anxious to review the field with you before his arrival. I was retained in the case this afternoon, as I rather expected to be, after I had read the early editions of the papers and saw that the police would have to abandon their obvious theory.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘What is that?’
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Murder! I had not read half a dozen paragraphs before I saw that this, of course, was absurd, and that even the police would have to admit as much before night.’
‘But they haven’t!’ I cut in triumphantly. ‘Detective Wiley gave out an interview just before I left – said there was no doubt that Endicott had been made away with!’
‘Then the more fool he!’ Madelyn stirred the gnarled log in the fireplace until a shower of yellow sparks went dancing up the chimney. ‘I could show him his mistake in three sentences.’
For a moment she sat staring at me, with her long lashes veiling a slow smile.
‘Do they use gas or electricity at “The Maples”?’ she asked, abruptly.
I thought for a moment. ‘Both,’ I answered. ‘Why?’
‘Was either burning in Endicott’s room at the time of his disappearance?’
I shook my head with a helpless smile.
Madelyn rubbed her hands gently through the long, shaggy hair of Peter the Great. We both sat staring into the fire for quite five minutes. ‘Did Endicott dress at “The Maples” for the ceremony?’ she demanded suddenly. ‘Or did he dress before he appeared at the house?’ I could feel her eyes studying me as I pondered the question.
I looked up finally with an expression of rueful bewilde
rment.
‘Oh, Nora! Nora!’ she cried, with a little stamp of her foot. ‘Where are your eyes and your ears? And you at the house all day!’
‘I rather flattered myself that I had found out all there was to find,’ I answered somewhat petulantly.
Madelyn reached over to the divan by her elbow and selected a copy of the Bugle from the stack of crumpled papers that it contained. It was not until she had read slowly through the five-column report of the Van Sutton mystery – two columns of which I had contributed myself – that she looked up. ‘I presume you have mentioned here everything of importance?’
I nodded. ‘Norris Endicott was above suspicion – morally and financially. He had few friends – that is, close friends – but no enemies. There was absolutely no one who wished him ill, no one who might have a reason for doing so, unless –’
Madelyn noted my hesitation with a swift flash. ‘You mean his defeated rivals for Miss Van Sutton’s hand?’
‘You have taken the words out of my mouth. There were two of them, and both were present at the wedding – that didn’t take place. Curiously enough, one of the two was Endicott’s best man, Willard White. The other he also knew more or less intimately – Richard Bainbridge, the civil engineer.’ I gazed across at her as I paused. To my disappointment, she was studying the carpet, with her thoughts obviously far away. ‘That is all, I think,’ I finished rather lamely.
The log in the fireplace fell downward with a shower of fresh sparks. Peter the Great growled uneasily. Madelyn took the dog’s head in her lap, and was silent so long I thought she had forgotten me.
Suddenly she leaned back in her chair and her eyes half closed.
‘One more question, Nora, if you please. I believe you said in your report that, when the group of searchers were leaving Endicott’s vacant room, a small silver ball rolled from the sill to the floor. Do you happen to know whether the ball is solid or hollow?’
I smiled. ‘It is hollow. I examined it this afternoon. But surely such a trivial incident –’
More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes Page 23