The Arthur Morrison Mystery

by Arthur Morrison

  “Come along,” he cried, in a voice trembling with excitement.

  They followed him as he tracked the footprints. They went straight for the shrubbery at a little distance from the bungalow. Braddell stopped here and pointed to the bush in front of him. Some of the twigs had been broken, as if a person had rushed through the bush, heedless of where he was going.

  “Better go round,” he said. “We won’t disturb this.”

  They found an opening a little lower down in the shrubbery, and Braddell cautiously entered, signing to the others to keep back. They waited almost breathlessly; then suddenly they heard a sharp, low cry from Braddell, and the next moment he came out, clutching the branches on each side of him as if for support. His face was deathly white, and he gazed over their heads as if he were obsessed by some horrible sight.5

  CHAPTER VII

  by Richard Marsh

  “Pardon me.” A man had stepped out from among the bushes who was regarding them with a smile. “Excuse me, gentlemen, this is all right as far as it goes, but the point is how far does it go? That’s the point.”

  “There’s a dead body lying on the ground where that man’s just come from,” Braddell stammered to the sergeant. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

  “Of course you did, and a very nice one it is.”

  “What fiend in human shape,” cried Braddell, facing the grinning stranger, “have we got here?”

  “That’s the point, as I was about to remark. “How far have we got? I killed him—”

  “You killed him? You killed the man who is lying there? You admit it?”

  “Certainly I killed him; that’s the idea. I gave him five blows with a hatchet. While he was struggling for life he caught hold of whatever he could, and that’s his bloody hand which you see upon the door-post. She saw it, the young lady who was dressed as a gent, and she did a bunk. Half-mad with tenor she was: we’d got her just right—we wanted to get her like that, you know; into the water she goes, then you come on the scene, and that’s as far as we’ve got.”

  “It seems to me that you’ve got some distance.” Spencer was surveying the stranger with a glance which, perhaps, insufticiently showed, his bewilderment.

  “Are you a murderer, or merely a criminal lunatic, or what are you, sir?”

  “Yes, what am I? That’s another point. We haven’t got so far as that.”

  Taking off his straw hat, the stranger passed a blue silk handkerchief across his brow. “Of course, the idea was that I was to cut her throat, drag her out of the water by the hair of her head, and, as she lay gasping for breath on the bank, slit it from ear to ear; but, as I was about to remark, that’s what we haven’t quite got to.”

  “Haven’t you? You may thank your lucky stars that your carnival of crime was not played out.” Spencer`s tones were portentous. “Sergeant, do you happen to have a pair of handcuffs in your pocket? If ever there was an occasion on which they were required, surely this is one.”

  “I’m thinking I’ve met this chap before,” the sergeant remarked.

  “You have, sergeant, when I gave you half a crown to smash my friend’s head open with your truncheon; then we had a hand-to-hand fight, after I’d thrown my wife out of the window.”

  “I remember,” agreed the constable; “I remember very well. You made that half a crown five shillings.”

  “It was worth it; you put up something like a fight; you’d have killed me if my friend hadn’t thrown you out of the window after my wife. Excuse me, gentlemen, but it occurs to me”—the stranger turned to Braddell and Spencer with the friendliest possible gesture—“that this may require a little explanation; something in your attitude suggests it. Perhaps you will find it here.”

  From a letter-case he took two cards, presenting one to each gentleman. They were inscribed:—

  FILMS!

  The finest world produces!!

  Startlers!!!

  Screamers!!!!

  Scorchers!!!!!

  Screechers!!!!!!

  More Terror, Tears and Laughter to the Square Inch

  Than Those of Any Other Firm in the Universe!

  The Very Latest Cinematograph Company

  3, 5 & 7, Corkcutter Alley, St. Martin’s Lane.

  Reprsentative, Jack Thompson.

  “That’s me, gentlemen. I’m Jack Thompson, very much at your service. We were rehearsing a little idea in which the intention was to cram more varieties of bloodshed and crime than have ever been crammed into twelve hundred feet before—a film full of human interest, with a heart-to-heart ending. And when you came upon the scene that was as far as we`d got.”

  “And why,” exclaimed a voice behind them, “you wish to waste good Kirschwasser on making two sparrows dead drunk is beyond me altogether.”

  The speaker picked up two sparrows which were making some rather singular attempts to walk across the lawn.

  “Drunk?” murmured spencer. “I thought they were dead.”

  “Of course you did; you’d think anything—you’re such a nice young man.” The speaker plunged a pair of hands into his two trouser pockets. “You thought I was a man. Well, I’m not, I’m a girl; and that’s as far as I’ve got.”

  1The man of the bungalow kept a small map in the cigarete-case, giving the exact place of the buried money belonging to the Moorgate Street bank. The local police lock up the two young men, and their efforts, when released, to secure the vanished bungalow man are alded by a renewed acquaintance, in strange surroundings, with the cigarette-case.—W. Pette Ridge.

  2The two perpetrators of the bank robbery have been lying in retreat at the bungalow. The chase is hot, and the cleverer thief, never yet convicted and wholly unsuspected, fears detection through his companion, an old convict. He resolves to murder him, and thus to get rid of an inconvenient and dangerous partner and monopolize the plunder. Having attacked him from behind in the bungalow and left him for dead, he is disturbed by the approach of the boat. Fearing someone may land, he stations himself on the lawn and behaves as calmly as is described in the opening. The boat passes on. The man in the house revives, seizes a poker, and, covered with blood, staggers out, leaving the print of his hand on the door as he passes. He strikes the cool thief on the head, and the latter, suddenly confronted with the ghastly figure of his associate—a bigger man and a far more desperate character than himself—runs wildly and erratically (because of the blow on the head). The other fellow, badly hurt and seeing strangers, fears to follow far. The thief given refuge in the boat invents a muddled yarn, and realizing that it is muddled plays up to the character of a Crazy Cockney, and gets the two witneeses in the boat held up by the police while he bolts. After this, the story may take any one of a dozen courses, or more.—Arthur Morrison.

  3The young woman is not a criminal of sanguine hue, but a modern miss who has bolted from an irascible guardian to escape a marriage of convenience, and has donned trousers so as to avoid attracting attention as a pretty girl alone in a bungalow. Upon the morning when the story opens she is expecting her lover, who will recognize the bungalow as he punts down the river by the red hand painted on the door, a happy symbol, inasmuch as the lover is a bnronet, albeit rather impecunious. They have corresponded—since the young lady left hom—by means of the Agony column in the Daily Mail. The young lady, not quite of age, is a ward in Chancery, and the moment she is of age she hopes to marry her baronet, enjoying the while a quiet life in the bungalow, punctuated by visits from her beloved. The constable left in charge arrests the guardian and complications follow, including the capture of the runaway, who finds herself at the mercy of wind and tide. Braddell plays the familiar part of Deus ex machina, and true love triumphs.—H. A. Vachell.

  4The lady on the lawn was the head and brains of a gang of thieves. The bungalow in which she was taking refuge was haunted. Her terror was i
n consequence of this and genuine. Others of her gang were to have joined her at the bungalow, and she was waiting for them when she received the warning that the detectives were on her track. The poisoned drink was intended for the detectives.—Barry Pain.

  5The girl, a member of a good family, had fallen into the hands of a professional thief, at handsome, fascinating scoundrel. The two had been concerned in the bank robbery, the proceeds of which the had secreted in the bungalow, where they had been living for some time. They had arranged to meet at the bungalow, whence they were to escape in disguise. The girl had put on a man’s flannel boating suit and was awaiting her accomplice when Spencer and Braddell’s yawl came up. After they had gone she went to the house, and saw the red hand, a warning sign, on the door. She was about to take flight when she came upon the body of her accomplice lying in the shrubbery behind the bungalow. He had committed suicide by drinking the cup, which she did not know contained poison when she offered it to Spencer. A third accomplice who had been watching had made off with the contents of the bureau while Spencer and Braddell had gone for the police. The girl and the rest of the gang were captured and sent to penal servitude.—Charles Garvice.

  AUNT SARAH’S BROOCHZ

  First published in The Strand Magazine, February 1899.

  I am afraid to face my Aunt Sarah. Though how I am to get out of it I don’t quite see. At any rate, I will never again undertake the work of a private detective; though that would have been a more useful resolve a fortnight ago. The mischief is done now.

  The main bitterness lies in the reflection that it is all Aunt Sarah’s fault. Such a muddlesome old—but, there, losing my temper won’t mend it. A few weeks ago I was Clement Simpson, with very considerable expectations from my Aunt Sarah and no particular troubles on my mind, and I was engaged to my cousin, Honoria Prescott. Now I am still Clement Simpson (although sometimes I almost doubt even that), but my expectations from my Aunt Sarah are of the most uncomfortable, and my troubles overwhelm me. As for Honoria Prescott—but read and learn it all.

  My aunt is a maiden lady of sixty-five, though there is something about her appearance at variance with the popular notion of a spinster, insomuch that it is the way of tradesmen to speak of her as “Mrs.” Simpson, and to send their little bills thus addressed. She is a very positive old lady, and she measures, I should judge, about five feet round the waist. She is constantly attended by a doctor, and from time to time, in her sadder moments, it has been her habit to assure me that she shall not live long, and that very soon I shall find myself well provided for; though for an invalid she always ate rather well: about as much, I should judge, as a fairly healthy navvy. She had a great idea of her importance in the family—in fact, she was important and she had—has now, indeed—a way of directing the movements of all its members, who submit with a becoming humility. It is well to submit humbly to the caprice of a rich elderly aunt, and it has always been my own practice. It was because of Aunt Sarah’s autocratic reign in the family that Honoria Prescott and I refrained from telling her of our engagement; for Aunt Sarah had conceived vast matrimonial ambitions on behalf of each of us. We were each to make an exceedingly good marriage: there was even a suggestion of a title for Honoria, though what title, and how it was to be captured, I never heard. And for me, I understood there would be nothing less than a brewer’s daughter, or even a company-promoter’s. And so we feared that Aunt Sarah might look upon a union between us not only as a flat defiance of her wishes, but as a deplorable mésalliance on both sides. So, for the time the engagement lasted (not very long, alas!), we feared to reveal it. Now there is no engagement to reveal. But this is anticipating.

  Aunt Sarah was very fussy about her jewels. In perpetual apprehension lest they might be stolen, she carried them with her whenever she took a change of air (and she had a good many such changes), while in her own house she kept them in some profoundly secret hiding-place.

  I have an idea that it was under a removable board in the floor of her bedroom. Of course, we all professed to share Aunt Sarah’s solicitude, and it had been customary in the family, from times beyond my knowledge, to greet her first with inquiries as to her own health, and next with hopes for the safety of the jewels. But, as a matter of fact, they were not vastly valuable things; probably they were worth more than the case they were kept in, but not very much. Aunt Sarah never wore them—even she would not go as far as that. They were nothing but a small heap of clumsy old brooches, ear-rings, and buckles, with one or two very long, thin watch-chains, and certain mourning and signet rings belonging to departed members of the family who had flourished (or not) in the early part of the century. There were no big diamonds among them—scarcely any diamonds at all, in fact: but the garnets and cats’ eyes strove to make good in size and ugliness of setting what they lacked in mere market worth. Chief of all the “jewels,” and most precious of Aunt Sarah’s possessions, was a big amethyst brooch, with a pane of glass let in behind, inclosing a lock of the reddest hair I have ever seen. It was the hair of Aunt Sarah’s own uncle Joseph, the most distinguished member of the family, who had written three five-act tragedies, and dedicated them all, one after another, to George the Fourth. Joseph’s initials appeared on the frame of the brooch behind—“J.” on one side and “S.” on the other. It was, on the whole, perhaps, the ugliest and clumsiest of all Aunt Sarah’s jewels, and I never saw anything else like it anywhere, except one; and that, singularly enough, was an exact duplicate—barring, of course, the hair and the inscription—in a very mouldy shop in Soho, where all sorts of hopelessly out-of-date rings and brooches and chains hung for sale. It was the way of the shopkeeper to ticket these gloomy odds and ends with cheerful inscriptions, such as “Antique, 17s. 6d.,” “Real Gold, £1 5s.,” “Quaint, £2 2S. 6d.” But even he could find no more promising adjective for the hideous brooch than “massive”—which was quite true. He wanted £3 for the thing when I first saw it, and it slowly declined, by half-a-crown at a time, to £1 15s., and then it vanished altogether. I wondered at the time what misguided person could have bought it; but I learnt afterward that the shopkeeper had lost heart, and used the window space for something else.

  Aunt Sarah had been for six weeks at a “Hydropathic Establishment” at Malvern. On the day fixed for her return, I left a very agreeable tennis party for the purpose of meeting her at the station, as was dutiful and proper. First I called at her house, to learn the exact time at which the train was expected at Paddington. It was rather sooner than I had supposed, so I hurried to find a cab, and urged the driver to drive his best. I am never lucky with cabs, however nor, I begin to think, with anything else—and the horse, with all the cabman’s efforts, never got beyond a sort of tumultuous shamble; and so I missed Aunt Sarah at Paddington. It was very annoying, and I feared she might take it ill, because she never made allowances for anybody’s misfortunes but her own. However, I turned about and cabbed it back as fast as I could. She had been home nearly half an hour when I arrived, and was drinking her third or fourth cup of tea. She was not ill-tempered, on the whole, and she received my explanations with a fairly good grace.

  She had been a little better, she thought, during her stay at Malvern, but feared that her health could make no permanent improvement. And indeed there seemed very little room for improvement in Aunt Sarah’s bodily condition, and no more room at all in her clothes. Then, in the regular manner, I inquired as to the well-being of the jewels.

  The jewels, it seemed, were all right. Aunt Sarah had seen to that. She had herself stowed the case at the bottom of her biggest and strongest trunk, which was now upstairs, partly unpacked. My question reminded her, and she rose at once, to transfer her valuables to their permanent hiding-place.

  I heard Aunt Sarah going upstairs with a groan at every step, each groan answered by a loud creak from the woodwork. Then for awhile there was silence, and I walked to the French window to look out on the lawn and the carriage-drive. But as
I looked, suddenly there came a dismal yell from above, followed by many shrieks.

  We—myself and the servants—found Aunt Sarah seated on a miscellaneous heap of clothes by the side of her big trunk, a picture of calamity. “Gone!” she ejaculated. “Stolen! All my jewels! Stop thief! Catch ’em! My jewel-case!”

  There was no doubt about it, it seemed. The case had been at the bottom of the big trunk—Aunt Sarah had put it there herself—and now it was gone. The trunk had been locked and tightly corded at Malvern, and it had been opened by Aunt Sarah’s maid as soon as it had been set down where it now stood. But now the jewel-case was gone, and Aunt Sarah made such a disturbance as might be expected from the Constable of the Tower if he suddenly learned that the Crown of England was gone missing.

  “Clement!” said my aunt, when she rose to her feet, after sending for the police; “go, Clement, and find my jewels. I rely on your sagacity. The police are always such fools. But you—you I can depend upon. Bring the jewels back, my dear, and you will never regret it, I promise you. At least bring back the brooch—the brooch with Uncle Joseph’s hair and initials. That I must have, Clement!” And here Aunt Sarah grew quite impressive—almost noble. “Clement, I rely entirely on you. I forbid you to come into my presence again without that brooch! Find it, and you will be rewarded to the utmost of my power!”

  Nevertheless, as I have said, Aunt Sarah took care to call in the police.

  Now what was I to do? Of course, I must make an effort to satisfy Aunt Sarah; but how? The thing was absurd enough, and personally, I was in little grief at the loss, but Aunt Sarah must be propitiated at any cost. I was to go and find the jewels, or at least the brooch, and the whole world was before me wherein to search. I was confused, not to say dazed. I stood on the pavement outside Aunt Sarah’s gate, and I tried to remember what the detectives I had read of did in such circumstances as these.