More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes

by Nick Rennison

  ‘When I clambered to the top of the wall I found that the snow upon the coping had been dislodged. I traced the marks, as you saw, for about a dozen yards. Where they ended I, too, dropped to the ground outside. There I made a remarkable discovery.

  ‘Upon a little drift of snow that lay in the shallow ditch beneath were more footprints. But they were not those of Ford. They were the marks of long and narrow boots, and led into the road, where they were lost in the track of a flock of sheep that had been driven over it the day before.

  ‘I took a careful measurement of those footprints. They might, of course, belong to some private investigator; but they gave me an idea. Could some man have walked across the lawn in Ford’s boots, changed them to his own on the top of the wall, and so departed? Was it the desire of someone to let it be supposed that Ford had run away?

  ‘When I examined Ford’s private rooms I was even more fortunate. From the boot-boy I discovered that the master had three pairs of shooting-boots. There were three pairs in the stand. Someone had made a very serious mistake. Instead of hiding the pair he had used on the lawn, he had returned them to their place. The trick was becoming evident. But where was Ford? In the house or grounds, dead or alive, but where?

  ‘I was able, through my friend the boot-boy, to examine the boots on the night of our arrival. My measurements corresponded with those that Jackson, the valet, wore. Was he acting for himself, or was Harbord, or even Ransom, in the secret? That, too, it was necessary to discover before I showed my hand.

  ‘Your story of Harbord’s midnight excursion supplied a clue. The secretary had evidently followed some man who had disappeared mysteriously. Could there be the entrance to a secret chamber in that corridor? That would explain the mystification of Harbord as well as the disappearance of Silas Ford. If so Harbord was not involved.

  ‘If Ford were held a prisoner he must be fed. His gaoler must of necessity remain in the house. But the trap I set in the suggested journey to town was an experiment singularly unsuccessful, for all the three men I desired to test refused. However, if I were right about the secret chamber I could checkmate the blackmailer by keeping a watch on him from your room, which commanded the line of communications. But Jackson was clever enough to leave his victualling to the night-time. I scattered the flour to try the result of that ancient trick. It was successful. That is all. Do you follow me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said I; ‘but how did Jackson come to know the secret hiding-place?’

  ‘He has long been a servant of the house. You had better ask his old master.’

  MARK POIGNAND & KALA PERSAD

  Created by Headon Hill (1857-1927)

  Born in the Suffolk coastal town of Lowestoft, Francis Edward Grainger began his career as a journalist but turned to writing fiction in his thirties. Under the pseudonym ‘Headon Hill’, taken from the name of a beauty spot on the Isle of Wight, Grainger produced a large number of crime stories for the monthly magazines throughout the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. His hardback fiction, with titles such as The Hour-Glass Mystery, Caged, and Guilty Gold, proved popular for more than thirty years without ever turning him into a bestselling author. He created several crime-solving characters, the most Sherlockian of which was the private detective Sebastian Zambra. However, his most original creations were Kala Persad, a wizened Hindu sage, and Mark Poignand, the young man who brings him to London. In England, Poignand opens a ‘Confidential Advice’ agency and makes use of Kala Persad’s wisdom and insights into human nature to solve a series of mysteries. Poignand, a not particularly likeable individual, tends to keep the old fakir in seclusion from English society and to take sole credit for the pair’s achievements but it is always Kala Persad who puts him on the right track. The stories are suffused with the kind of patronising assumptions about Indian life and Indian individuals that were commonplace at the time but these are sometimes undercut by their actual plots and by the ingenuity with which Kala Persad works out how and by whom crimes were committed. A collection of the stories, The Divinations of Kala Persad, was published in 1895.

  THE DIVINATION OF THE KODAK FILMS

  High up in the topmost turret of Okeover Castle sat Kala Persad, his leathery face glued to the window, and his eyes blazing like coals of fire at a group upon the terrace a hundred feet below.

  There were five persons in all who were focussed by those piercing orbs from the point of vantage in the tower. Three of the group had been upon the terrace some time; the other two had come up in succession within the last few minutes. The original trio consisted of an elderly lady, fur-clad and stately, having by her side a sweet-faced girl, so like in feature that they could only be mother and daughter, and of Mark Poignand, who had been slowly pacing up and down with them since breakfast. To them had come up the stone steps from the park a young lady of dashing carriage and stylish, tailor-made costume, carelessly swinging a Kodak by its leather strap; and she in turn had been followed at the interval of a couple of minutes by a dapper, well-groomed man of five-and-thirty, who, despite his short stature, was of distinctly military bearing.

  Presently the group separated, and after a brief interval Mark Poignand appeared in the doorway of the turret-chamber. Kala Persad was still squatting cross-legged on the chair which he had drawn to the window, but at the sound of his master’s footsteps he looked up and thrust forward his silver-stubbled chin in peering curiosity.

  ‘The Sahib has read the riddle?’ he asked eagerly.

  ‘No, indeed,’ replied Poignand; ‘and clever as you are, Kala, I should be very much surprised to hear that you had. Surely you don’t mean…?’ he continued, as he noted the glitter of the snake-charmer’s eye.

  ‘Bah!’ interrupted Kala Persad, in the half-contemptuous tone that always irritated Poignand, though it never failed to reassure him. ‘Bah! The vultures which perch on the summits of the Ghats sight more prey in an hour than the tigers of the jungle in a whole moon. The hiding-place of the Mem Sahib’s jewels is known to thy servant, and it remains but to put forth thy hand to restore them to their owners.’

  ‘Where are they, then?’ asked Poignand breathlessly.

  ‘The Sahib must first tell me this – so that by no chance do I go astray,’ proceeded Kala Persad leisurely. ‘The short Sahib who came on the terrace but now is he who saw and chased the robbers, is he not?’

  ‘Yes, that is Sir Frederick Cranstoun; but for Heaven’s sake don’t keep me waiting; where are the jewels?’

  ‘The Sahib saw a young Missee Baba come from the great maidan (park) with a black box in her hand, swinging it thus? Well, in that box lies hid the secret of our desires. Let the Sahib procure and open that box without delay, and he will discover the secret of the jewels which the old Mem Sahib deplores.’

  Mark Poignand regarded the old man with half-dubious wonder. ‘It is too late in the day for me to go back on your counsels now, Kala,’ he said; ‘otherwise I should say that you were at fault at last. Miss Hicks is an American lady, well known in society, and of great wealth.

  ‘What possible connection can she have with the professional burglars who were caught almost in the very act of stealing Lady Hertslet’s diamonds? The box she had in her hand is simply an instrument for taking sun pictures – a pastime to which, I have ascertained, she is much given; and, besides, I very much doubt if it would hold all the jewellery that was abstracted from the safe.’

  ‘I have spoken; it is for the Sahib to act,’ replied the snake-charmer curtly; and adjusting the folds of his scarlet turban, he turned to contemplate the landscape in dignified silence. Poignand, knowing his moods, smiled softly, and quietly left the room. Making his way down the winding staircase to the chamber that had been allotted to him in the main wing of the castle, he lighted a cigarette and sat down to think out his follower’s strange assertion.

  The more he gave his mind to it, the more astounding did the old snake-charmer’s ultimatum
seem. The burglary, which was the cause of his presence at Okeover Castle, had been a very commonplace affair, only interesting to the world at large because of the enormous value of the family jewels stolen. Two nights previously the usual little comedy had been played while Lady Hertslet and her guests were at dinner, the servants, as usual on such occasions, being busy in the lower part of the house. The ladder, which in country mansions seems to be kept ready for the special benefit of cracksmen, had been brought from an out-building, and by this means an entry had been effected through the window of her ladyship’s dressing-room, where was the safe containing the celebrated Hertslet diamonds. After prudently locking the doors leading on to the landing and into the adjoining bedroom, the burglars lost no time in getting to work.

  Meanwhile the party in the dining-room was making merry in happy ignorance of what was going on upstairs. Besides the hostess and her daughter, Mildred, there were present that night only the two guests staying at the castle – Sir Frederick Cranstoun, a captain in the 23rd Hussars; and Miss Stella Hicks, an American heiress, better known in Paris and London than her native New York. Towards the close of dinner an argument was started between Mildred Hertslet and Miss Hicks as to the height of a certain Swiss waterfall, and on it becoming known that Sir Frederick had a photograph of the falls in question which would decide the point there and then, he was requested to fetch it from his bedroom.

  The baronet of course complied, and went at once for the picture, his way taking him past the room in which the thieves were at work. As he came opposite the door, his attention was attracted by a gleam of light underneath, which was suddenly extinguished, as though on account of his approach, and, thinking it strange, he went close up and listened. At first there was dead silence within, but after a minute some faint whispering reached him, and he was confirmed in the conviction that something was wrong. Believing himself justified by the circumstances, he turned the handle of the door, only to find the latter locked, and to hear the scuffling sounds of hasty flight.

  His first course was to shout lustily for help, and his second to hurry round through Lady Hertslet’s bedchamber, rightly guessing that there would be another door thence into the dressing-room. On finding that also locked, he attacked it with such success that it gave way just as the head of the last burglar was disappearing below the window-sill, and just as the alarmed servants came trooping up the staircase to his aid. Without a moment’s hesitation, Sir Frederick plunged down the ladder, and reached ground in time to catch a glimpse of the thieves as they sped across the terrace towards the park.

  Despite the fact that he was in evening dress, hatless, and lightly shod, the baronet gave chase at once, and pursued the three flying forms right across the moonlit expanse, through a fringe of wood on the opposite side, and into the high road, which, after a half-mile stretch, led to the railway station in the village of Okeover. Here the burglars ran into the arms of a couple of policemen and a posse of railway officials, who, owing to the wise foresight of the butler at the castle in despatching a groom on a fast horse, were ready ambushed in the booking-office.

  Sir Frederick Cranstoun, who had stuck to the chase with dogged persistency, came up just as the capture had been effected, and a couple of men servants, who had followed in his wake, arrived at brief intervals a few seconds later.

  The three men were secured and taken to the county town, where they were subsequently identified as notorious metropolitan house-breakers; and the evidence against them was as complete as could be wished for, since Sir Frederick was close on their heels all the way, and sundry implements of their profession were found upon them. The only thing necessary to general satisfaction that was not found, either on the burglars or anywhere else, was the case containing the Hertslet diamonds. It was not in the broken-open safe; it had not been left in the dressing-room, and the most careful search along the route taken by the flying thieves failed to reveal the slightest trace of it. The box and the diamonds had vanished apparently into the infinities of space.

  A policeman, and especially a provincial policeman, when he has once got the handcuffs on the undoubted perpetrator of a crime, is apt to look on the case as finished and done with, so far as he himself is concerned. Lady Hertslet saw at once that if she trusted to the superintendent of the county police to find her jewels she would be in a fair way never to see them again. Without saying so in so many words, the officer allowed it to be seen pretty plainly that he thought it unreasonable of her to expect more from him than the procuring of vengeance on the criminals in the shape of a good rousing sentence. There was small comfort in this, seeing that in the superintendent’s opinion the men would be sure to get seven years, and that the best chance of finding the jewels would be in watching them on coming out, when they would probably make for the spot where they had hidden their plunder during their flight.

  Lady Hertslet was not the sort of woman to stand official nonsense. Having received the report, evidently intended to be final, of the futile police search along the ground traversed, she said nothing, but quietly despatched her steward to town for Mark Poignand, whose successes in elucidating mysteries had reached her ears. He had presented himself without delay, but on hearing the circumstances had at once pronounced the case to be outside the limits of his ordinary practice.

  ‘You see, Lady Hertslet,’ he said, ‘such small reputation as my bureau possesses has been gained in tracking out guilty persons. Here the thieves are already in custody. There is no mystery to be cleared up. What you wish me to engage in seems to be nothing more nor less than a game of hide-and-seek, and I can lay claim to no particular ability in that line.’

  ‘I only know that my jewels are worth eighty thousand pounds, and that it is a game well worth your playing if you care to undertake it,’ was the reply.

  Poignand thought for a moment. He had stated his honest conviction that a simple search was not more in his way of business than in anyone else’s; but over and above this was the objection that it was not a case in which Kala Persad, from his lair in the Strand, could profitably employ his instinctive faculties. The old man could hardly be expected to point out the whereabouts of a missing jewel-case that must be hidden somewhere in a stretch of country he had never seen, even if his talents extended to hitting off-hand on secret hiding-places.

  ‘If I am to make the attempt, it will be necessary for me to confide in you a private detail of my method,’ Poignand said at last. ‘I have a very shrewd assistant upon whom I greatly rely in these investigations, and I should require his presence here unknown to the members of your household, for his very existence is one of my trade secrets. The difficulty is that he is a foreigner – a Hindoo – and I do not quite see how to introduce him into the castle without exciting general curiosity.’

  ‘That can easily be arranged,’ replied Lady Hertslet eagerly. ‘My steward is thoroughly to be trusted, and not a soul else need know of your man’s presence. He can have the turret room at the top of the west tower, into which no one ever goes, and whence there is a clear view over nearly the whole of the route taken by the burglars on their way to the station. There is a separate door at the foot of the tower, by which he can get in and out after dark should he want to, and he would be able to see pretty well everything that is going on nearer home – if that would be an advantage.’

  ‘We never know in these cases,’ replied Poignand oracularly; and then, having concluded his final arrangements, he returned to town to bring Kala Persad upon the scene. Late the same evening, which was the one following the burglary, the old snake-charmer was smuggled – a mass of shawls and wraps – into the western tower, where he was safely installed in the turret chamber, Poignand himself being accommodated in the main wing of the castle with the avowed object of finding the jewels.

  Kala Persad’s dogmatic assertion with reference to Miss Hicks’ Kodak was made the morning after their arrival. As a well-known figure in society, Poignand was receiv
ed on an equal footing, and he had already taken advantage of this to learn what he could of his hostess and her daughter, as well as of his fellow guests. Nothing had transpired to suggest any mystery of the kind indicated. Lady Hertslet was a widow of enormous wealth, which would one day be inherited by her only daughter, and Poignand had not to exercise much of his ingenuity to discover that between Mildred Hertslet and Sir Frederick Cranstoun there existed an attachment which had not yet found favour with her mother. From a worldly point of view this was not, perhaps, surprising when certain stray bits of club gossip came to Poignand’s recollection that, for a baronet, Sir Frederick was a poor man.

  Miss Hicks gave the impression of being a fair specimen of the American heiress who is at home everywhere but in her own land. Very sprightly and agreeable, with perhaps a tinge of what in an English girl would be termed fastness, but which in ladies from over the Atlantic is allowed to pass as piquancy, she was considerably older than Mildred, and a year or two back had been the heroine of a rumour assigning her in matrimony to an Italian duke, a rumour since falsified by the duke marrying someone else. Her visit to Okeover Castle was the result of a long-standing invitation, the Hertslets having known her in London during several seasons.

  Pondering Kala Persad’s imputation in the privacy of his chamber, Poignand reflected that the worst he had heard of Miss Hicks was an inordinate desire to marry a ‘title’, but that was a weakness common to most of her fellow countrywomen, and one which in no way justified a suspicion of having appropriated her hostess’s diamonds. The odds, too, were heavy against her having stumbled by chance on the hiding-place, which a careful police search had failed to reveal.

  Poignand had not yet commenced the preliminaries of the investigation, and he decided to complete these before definitely following the line laid down for him by the snake-charmer. The first item in his programme was naturally to interview and closely question the man who had been hot on the trail of the flying burglars, and who might have seen something during that wild career which should throw a new light on the situation. He had intended to get hold of Sir Frederick immediately after breakfast, but the baronet had set out for the stroll from which he had only just returned, and the interval had been spent in examining the broken safe and in hearing Lady Hertslet once again recapitulate the facts so far as they were known to her.