Another burst of laughter came as Merrick started on his mission, and the sound hastened his steps. Crook stayed behind to listen, while from above sounds succeeded sounds of unnatural hilarity, punctuated by dead silences. Crook began to wonder why the other tenants were not disturbed.
Mr. Merrick hustled as he had never hustled before, and though the time seemed long to Crook he was back in less than ten minutes, with Wickes and two assistants. Crook met them on the stairs, and together they ascended the top flight.
Even as they did so, the door before them opened, and Pooley stood before them, bag in hand. He sprang back instantly, but Wickes sprang too, and held the door open.
“Ah!” said Wickes heartily, “good-morning, Robb — or Pooley, which you please! And Wide James, too — I think we must take you both along. And who is the happy old party?”
In an easy-chair before a table a short man, with a distinctly Jewish face, rolled and lolled and chuckled, his eyes wide open, but his brain unconscious of all that passed. On the table stood the magnum of Tokay, with three glasses; and a safe in the corner stood open, with papers spilt before it. Once again the man in the chair burst into his screaming laugh, and then relapsed into silence.
“That’s the game, is it?” said Wickes, pointing to the bottle. “All right. I must trouble you for your wrists. Reeves — you’d better fetch a doctor.”
The state of the case began to dawn on Crook and Merrick. This was the use to which the Tokay was to be put — to drug a man into helplessness while his safe was rifled with his own keys. And Crook saw at once why Pooley had bought the Tokay as an instrument of business, for a drug that would be detected in more familiar drink would be taken readily in so rare and unaccustomed a wine as Tokay, whose flavour would probably be unknown to the victim.
Presently the doctor arrived, and after a sniff or two at a glass pronounced the words “Indian hemp — and something else with it.”
That told more. Pooley had brought the drug from India, and it was a drug in which the famous Indian hemp — bhang or hashisch — had the chief part; the drug that brings on laughing, yelling, happy delirium, and leaves its victims broken and exhausted. It grew plain, in fact, that it was the need of some likely drink in which to administer the stuff that led Pooley to speculate in the Tokay.
At first it seemed difficult to understand how the three could have drunk together and only one suffer from the drug. But a further discovery made that plain. For the stuff was contained in a little rubber ball with a protruding spout, which Pooley could hide in his palm, and so doctor a glass of wine or not, as he pleased, while he poured it out. The experiments which Crook had witnessed through the window were no more than the tasting and testing that were necessary to judge of the practicability of the scheme. Isaacs had readily assented to the suggestion to try a glass of the rare wine which Pooley had with him, and so the thing was done.
No diamond was found in the bottle, nor anywhere about Pooley and his new lodgings. He had got to work quickly enough after his return, and on a likely victim. For, indeed, when Isaacs came to himself, very sick and wretched, he was as terrified at his predicament as was Pooley himself. For, as a matter of fact, the bonds which the scoundrels were about to carry away were stolen bonds already! So that Isaacs’s troubles only begun with the robbery; and as the law is usually severe on a receiver, they are not quite finished yet.
A BOX OF ODDMENTS
I.
AFTER the adventure which made it plain that the mystery of Mr. Pooley’s magnum had nothing to do with the missing green diamond, some little time was consumed by Harvey Crook and Mr. Merrick in unsuccessful attempts in different directions. Harvey Crook returned to Southampton, and, with the aid of Mr. Symons, the auctioneer’s clerk, succeeded in wasting some days in a futile pursuit of the magnums of Tokay still left unaccounted for. Merrick also went to Southampton, but it was for a shorter time, and his object was to learn what had been done by the police toward the apprehension of Pritchard, the murderer of his old friend, Mr. Clifton.
Crook left Southampton and regained London, with an idea of finding Smith, the wine-merchant’s traveller who had bought the four magnums of Tokay, or his employers. Crook was by no means certain that the firm belonged to London, but he could see no better way of setting to work than to make persistent inquiries at the offices of the principal firms, by the aid of the London Directory. He made his list and began what promised to be a very wearisome search. The first day was almost wholly wasted in a tedious pursuit of the wrong Smith. For, in fact, one of the first firms he tried chanced to employ a traveller of that name, who, being discovered after a hunt of several hours, was found not only to be a total stranger to Southampton, which was not in his district, but also a total stranger to Imperial Tokay, a liquid of which he knew nothing except by repute. The probability had already struck Crook that there might be several wine-merchants’ travellers about of the name of Smith, and now he realized the difficulty to the full.
He ended his day’s search in the vicinity of Euston Station, and he was emerging into the main road when he felt himself caught by the arm.
“Well, and what’s your luck with the Eye of Goona?” asked a voice at his elbow.
The speaker was a tall man in a rather curious combination of garments. He wore a new tie-over coster’s cap, an old bobtail coat, and excellent new trousers and boots. He had a blue choker where his collar should have been, and in his hand he carried a brown paper parcel. It was a disguise, no doubt, of a sort, but it did not serve for an instant to conceal from Crook the identity of Lyman W. Merrick, of Merricksville, Pennsylvania.
“Hullo!” answered Crook. “Luck? None at all — none. But why this get-up?”
“That’s the disguise,” replied Merrick, with some pride. “Rather a neat idea, I reckon, eh? I did try the red whiskers at first — got ‘em put on at a theatrical place at Covent Garden — but they made my face itch stampin’-mad, and I just dragged ‘em off as soon as I could get to hot water. Yes — crape-hair they called it, and I don’t want any more of it, sir — not me. But see — you’ll come and dine with us, won’t you? We’ll call a cab, and I’ll undisguise.”
The cab was called, and Mr. Merrick positively beamed as he revealed the inner cunning of his disguise.
“There’s pretty considerable of a difficulty you see,” he explained, “in using a disguise when you’re livin’ at an hotel. You attract suspicion goin’ in an’ out dressed like a tough, with varyin’ colours in the whiskers. So I’ve just fixed it up like this. See?”
He cut open the brown-paper parcel, and took therefrom a neat light overcoat and a crush hat. He put on the light coat over the old bobtail, buttoned it, stuffed the cap into a pocket, opened the crush hat and planted it on his head. Then he turned triumphantly to Crook.
“How’s that?” he asked. “The brown paper and the string I contribute toward the support of the cabman by stampin’ it down on the floor and leavin’ it there. You’d never allow I’d been disguised now, would you?”
Crook was tempted to tell his friend that as a matter of fact he hadn’t been disguised before, but Merrick’s delight in his idea was so obviously sincere that Crook refrained from spoiling it. Instead he asked for news.
“I’ve told you I’ve had no luck,” he said, “and I begin to despair of it. I seem to be wasting my time. But as to you — why this mysterious disguise? After Pritchard, I suppose? Can you report better luck than I?”
Merrick shook his head.
“Well, no,” he said. “I can’t. Not yet. I must admit that what’s been done as yet the police have done. They’ve traced Pritchard to London — or they think so.”
“Come, this is news to me. Tell me about it.”
“Well, they’ve been pretty active, and it seems that on the night of the murder, when he escaped from the house, he must have bolted out into the country, away from Southampton. They could find no trace of him at Southampton, but, after a good deal of inquir
y, they found that a man corresponding to his description took a ticket for London at Shawford, a little station nine or ten miles from Southampton, early the next morning, and travelled up by the first train, leaving Shawford at 6.32. What he’d been doing in the meantime they can’t guess, but they haven’t found that he took a bed anywhere, so that it seems very likely he was out all night. Well, that was all they could get at for a little while. Of course, all the ports are being watched, and so forth. But after our little adventure with ‘Wide James’ and Robb — or Pooley as he was called on the Rajapur — after that little scramble in the alley near Charing Cross, Sergeant Wickes came unexpectedly on what looked like a trace. But they’ve got no further with it, nor have I.”
“What was the trace?”
“Well, of course you remember that when the police had rescued Isaacs from the other two, they discovered that he was just about as tough a subject as they were themselves. All the bonds, in fact, that they had planned to steal were stolen bonds already. Now the police followed up that matter, and it grew plain that Isaacs had been carrying on a pretty big trade in stolen bonds and other valuable property — about the biggest in London, in fact. They made inquiries of some fellow in their pay — what they call a ‘nark,’ I think — who told them the names of several people who had been frequenting Isaacs’s office, besides the two who had gone to rob him. And some of those whose names he didn’t know he described. One of them was quite a new arrival, and it struck Sergeant Wickes that it sounded a bit like the description of Pritchard. So he communicated with Southampton, and they sent up a photograph of Pritchard that they had managed to root out somewhere, and when their spy saw that he identified it positively!”
“Phew! Come, this looks like business!”
“Yes, so it seemed. But it’s led no farther as yet. The police won’t tell me what they are doing — they seem to think I may spoil their game, I believe!”
“And you haven’t had any luck on your own account?”
“Well — no, I can’t say I have. But I can’t sit and do nothing, you see, so I’m watching about generally all day in this disguise. I’ve watched about the place at Charing Cross, but that don’t seem very useful — the place is blown on now, you see. So this afternoon I came along here, and looked about the neighbourhood where we saw those two toughs dosing up their bottle of Tokay; I wondered if they might be connected any way with Pritchard. It’s slow work, and I don’t seem to be doin’ much, I allow. But I’m going to do my little best, foolish as it may be, and I’m watchin’ out!”
Crook was thoughtful for a few minutes.
“There is something in all this,” he said at length. “Why should Pritchard go to Isaacs? We know all that he was supposed to have taken from Mr. Clifton’s safe — sixty or seventy pounds’ worth of notes and gold. He wouldn’t need to go to Isaacs to sell that, would he?”
“No, he wouldn’t. You’re thinking of that green diamond, I guess.”
“I am. It was in one of those dozen bottles, and I have already seen some of them opened without finding it. Also, it is not in the bottle you have. But we both found an unaccounted-for bottle already opened at Mr. Clifton’s after the murder. I really think this is worth following up.”
“Better than your own tack?”
“My own tack leads me nowhere just now. And I doubt if it’s worth following much farther, in any case. You see, the odds are that by this time the rest of those bottles have been opened. People who buy a single magnum of such a rare old wine as that don’t keep it very long before opening it, and I think it’s more than likely that somebody has discovered that green diamond before now. If it is some unknown person, it is of little use for me to carry my search farther. If Pritchard has had it, there may be a chance.”
“Even if he has already parted with it to Isaacs?”
“Even then, perhaps. But here we are at the hotel.”
Mr. Merrick gave an extra stamp on the brown paper, and emerged from the cab in most respectable guise, to the astonishment of the driver; and in two minutes Harvey Crook was shaking hands with Daisy Merrick, who was no doubt quite as glad to see him as she looked — perhaps even more so. Though, after all, a few days is not so long to be parted from a friend — an ordinary friend — is it? Daisy pushed across the table to her father a small square parcel-post packet, which he took and examined with some little surprise.
“It came soon after lunch,” she explained.
“Well,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting anything, and I didn’t suppose I had any friend in this country to send me little presents — unless some sportsman who bought a magnum of my wine should think it only the fair thing to send me back the green diamond, eh?”
He tore away the paper cover and came on a small wooden box. This he opened, and tumbled out on the table an odd little assortment of seeds, cloves, pieces of glass, a cork, and similar rubbish.
“What’s this?” asked Merrick, staring.
“This is just a fool parcel. If it was the first of April I’d understand it, though I don’t know who’d go to the trouble of fooling me that way in this country, anyhow. But it isn’t the first of April, and here is the fool parcel all the same!”
“Isn’t there a letter.” asked Daisy.
“No sort of a letter at all.”
He turned over the brown wrapping paper and shook the little box. “Nothing but this stuff.”
Harvey Crook bent over the table.
“May I look at it.” he asked.
“Of course — if it will amuse you. There it is — a chip of marble, a cork, a bit of green glass, a bit of brass, a dead tulip flower, and the seeds. What do you make of that?”
Crook looked closely over the strange collection, and then picked up the little box and smelt it.
“Sandalwood,” he said, laconically. “This is Indian.”
“Indian?”
“Yes — let me count those seeds. Have you got a newspaper, or something white?”
Daisy brought a napkin from the sideboard and spread it out on the table. Crook transferred to its white surface the contents of the sandalwood box, being especially careful not to leave behind as much as a single seed. Then he began arranging the various objects before him, grouping each of its kind together.
“First,” he said, “we have a piece of green glass. Then a cork from a bottle. Then the tulip; a red tulip, you see — blood red. Then there are ten cloves and eighteen other seeds, all the eighteen of one sort; they look like hemp seeds, though perhaps they are something else. And to end up we have a chip of marble, such as you might pick up in any mason’s yard, and a little piece of brass pipe. Mr. Merrick, you said there was no letter in this packet, but you were wrong. This is a letter!”
“A letter?”
“Yes, a letter. An Indian object-letter, though, as you see from the postmark, it has been sent from a London post-office in the West Central district. What is more, unless I am vastly mistaken, it is concerned with the Green Eye of Goona! Come — this gives furiously to think, as the French say.”
“But I don’t understand. What—”
“One moment. I don’t understand either, just yet. But I think perhaps I can learn a little, with consideration.”
“But if these things mean a letter, and a letter about that green diamond, why does it come to me?”
“There’s a bottle of that Tokay in your luggage. Perhaps the sender thinks the stone is there. As to the things meaning a letter, I think that’s pretty plain. This is a well-known means of communication among the natives in India, when they have anything to say that it wouldn’t be safe to put into plain words. But I must think this over.”
At this moment Daisy turned to shut the drawer in the sideboard, and Crook seized the occasion to make a quick signal to her father. He pointed to the door, and then downward; and Merrick understood at once that he wished to speak to him out of Daisy’s hearing.
“Dinner’s at half-past seven,” said Mr. Merrick. “and there�
��s nearly an hour. Daisy’ll want to dress, I reckon, and I know I want a shave. If you want to think over that boxful of notions I guess you can do your thinking pretty well anywhere?”
“Yes, I’ll come with you,” Crook answered, “of course. We’ll put the things back in the box, if you like — I know what they are. But these object-letters require a rare exercise of the imagination before their meaning is to be got at.”
Once they were well clear of Merrick’s suite of rooms the American turned and said:
“Well! And what is it all?”
“What it seems to mean, in the first place, is that more people are after this diamond than I had supposed. There are Indian natives after it, and they have followed the clue pretty closely. Now who are they? Are they sent by the rajah to recover it, or are they men who are in the secret of its disappearance, and wish to get it for themselves? Does Hahn know about them, and if so, are they working with him or against him? All these questions are matters of doubt. What is no matter of doubt, however, is that these fellows seem disposed to go to great lengths to get the jewel. That letter, as I read it, is something very much — or quite — like a threat of murder!”
Merrick whistled and stopped.
“Me?” he asked.
“Well,” Crook replied, “I’m afraid it looks like it, since the packet was addressed to you — and that is why I wouldn’t offer my translation before your daughter. It is likely they may have learned of your second purchase of that magnum you have, by inquiries of McNab, the steward. But as to the package, just go over those objects in your mind, now. There was the piece of green glass — broken from a stopper, I should think. That must mean the diamond — I see no other meaning for it, if the letter deals with the diamond at all. And the cork means that they know it is in a bottle of wine — by implication, also, that they know you have one of the bottles. Then there is the red tulip. Now in India, in such messages as these, a red flower means danger or death, if the sense of the accompanying article permits of it. There may be other secondary meanings, if the flower appears in conjunction with certain other things, or with other flowers. But here it is alone, and it must bear its primary meaning. After that there are the seeds of two sorts; cloves, and those others that look like hemp seed. Now these seeds may have meanings of their own when they appear singly — probably they have. But when a number of such things are pitched in together they must always be counted — they mean nothing but figures. You will remember there were ten of the cloves and eighteen of the seeds. There we get the figures ten and eighteen. Do they suggest anything to you?”
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 218