“‘Ah, how delightfully you talk!’ said she. ‘I am so glad you have taken this up, for, do you know, I rather thought Mr. Barnes a little dull, not to say stupid. Why, he actually suggested that my maid took the stud!’
“Here, I thought, was an opportune moment to follow the method which you employed with Mrs. Beaumont, and by a sudden, unexpected accusation, to endeavor to surprise the truth from her. I said:
“‘Oh, Mr. Barnes has given up that idea now, and has almost adopted one even more startling. He thinks that perhaps you took the stud yourself.’
“I had expected from your estimate of this woman’s character, which you recall was not very flattering to her mental calibre, that if indeed it were true that she had concocted this little scheme to injure a society rival, thus taken unawares she would feign great indignation. On the contrary, she laughed so heartily, and spoke of your theory so lightly that I was practically convinced that again we were on the wrong scent. All she said by way of comment was:
“‘Well, if that is the result of his investigation, he is a bigger fool than I took him to be. It is certain, therefore, that he will never discover the truth, and so I am doubly glad that he has gone out of town, and that you have consented to take his place.’
“‘You must not so quickly condemn Mr. Barnes,’ said I, feeling bound to defend you. ‘He has really worked in this matter quite systematically, and this final theory has been reached by exclusion.’
“‘I do not understand,’ said she, puzzled.
“‘Well, first he accepted your assurance that the maid Janet was not guilty because she had no opportunity. Then he called upon Mrs. Merivale, and from his interview with her judged that she too must be innocent, a view in which I must concur after reading his report of what passed. Then he called upon Mrs. Beaumont, and though she admitted, what you did not yourself observe, that she actually took the stud in her hand when leaving the room, yet it seems equally certain that she replaced it, as she says she did. Thus, if the stud is really not in the room, there apparently could be no other explanation than that you are misleading us.’
“‘Us? Does that mean that you too held the view that I merely pretend that the stud was lost?’
“‘My dear madame,’ I replied: ‘such an idea, of course, seems preposterous, but a detective cannot set aside any theory without thorough investigation. In an analysis of this character the personal equation must have a secondary place. In this affair it could not help us at all. Perhaps you will not understand my meaning. But do you not see that it is just as inconceivable that either of the other ladies should have stolen this stud of yours, as it is to believe that you merely pretend that it is lost? From the view-point of the impartial investigator there can be no choice between these propositions.’
“‘I must say that you are not very flattering,’ said she, troubled, as she realized that social position could not protect her from suspicion any more than it would the other women. ‘Why, I have my enmities, of course, and I frankly admit that I do not love either Mrs. Merivale or Mrs. Beaumont, especially not the latter. Still, to concoct such a scandalous calumny against an innocent woman would be awful. I could not be so low as that.’
“‘I believe you,’ said I, and I did. ‘But, on the other hand, would it not be equally low for these ladies, your social equals, to stoop to petty theft?’
“‘I suppose you are right,’ said she reluctantly; ‘but how did the stud disappear? Don’t you see that I had strong evidence against one of them? It was there when they were in the room, and gone when they had left. There must be some explanation of that. What can it be?’
“‘Of course,’ said I, ‘there must be, and there is, an explanation. The most plausible seems to be the one suggested by Mrs. Beaumont, that it rolled from the table to the floor when she put it back. It seems incredible that two searches have failed to discover it, yet it is a small object, and may be lying now in some crevice which you all have overlooked.’
“‘I think not,’ said she, shaking her head dubiously. ‘Suppose you come up and see for yourself. You won’t find any crevices. Why, we have even run wires along the line where the seat and back of the lounge are joined. No, the stud is not in that room.’
“And now, friend Barnes, we come to the finale, for I may as well tell you at once that I have found the stud,—that, indeed, as soon as I looked into the room, I suspected that it was within those four walls, in a place where no one had thought of looking, though, to mystify you a little more, I may say that it may not have been in the room when you made your search.
“I enclose with this a sciagraph, that is to say, a picture taken with the X-ray. You will observe that the skeleton of a small animal is discernible surrounded by a faint outline which suggests the form of a dog. If you understand something of anatomy, look where the stomach of the dog should be, and you will notice a dark spot. This is the shadow of the missing stud, which, as Mrs. Beaumont suggested, must have dropped to the floor. There it evidently attracted the attention of Mrs. Upton’s pet dog, Fidele, who took it into his mouth, with the result, shown in the sciagraph. You will ask how I guessed this at once? In the first place I had perfect confidence in the thoroughness of your search, so when I saw the dog in the room, lying on a silk pillow, two pertinent facts were prominent at once. First, the dog may not have been in the room when you examined the place, and consequently you could not have counted him in as a possible place of search. Secondly, he might easily have been present when the two ladies called, and this was probable since his mistress was lying down and the dog’s sleeping-pillow was near the head of the lounge. If you noted this, you may not have comprehended its use; perhaps you took it for one which had slipped from the lounge. At all events, I do not consider that you have been at all at fault. I had better luck than you, that is all.
“Very sincerely yours,
“ROBERT LEROY MITCHEL.
“P. S.—I do not myself believe in luck. I must also state that Mrs. Upton has sent letters of apology to the other ladies. The dog, Fidele, is to undergo an operation to-morrow. One of our most skilful surgeons has agreed to regain the stud and preserve the life of the pet. A laparotomy, I believe they call it.—R. L. M.”
THE END
39 More than $6,000 in 2020 US dollars.
40 “Waist” here probably refers to a shirtwaist blouse or dress, rather than the customary meaning of the beltline, and so the “collar” probably refers to an open collar at the neck.
41 In Ottolengui’s novel An Artist in Crime (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons , 1892), after a discussion of Barnes’s clever capture of a criminal named Pettingill, Mitchel bets Barnes $1,000 that “I can commit a crime which will be as much talked of as his, and that I will not be captured, or rather I should say convicted.” Of course, Mitchel wins the bet. Note that in the Prefatory to this volume, Ottolengui states that the events recounted here occurred shortly after the events of An Artist in Crime.
Reading Group Guide
1. Which story was your favorite? Your least favorite? Why?
2. A few of the stories read almost as jokes—for example, “The Missing Link” and “A Shadow of Proof.” Do you think that Ottolengui intended them seriously? Was Ottolengui making serious points about evolution and scientific technology?
3. Which character did you find to be more appealing to you—Barnes or Mitchel? Why? Their styles of “detecting” are very different—do you think that one is better at his job than the other? Do you think that Ottolengui is suggesting that the ideal detective has some of each one’s characteristics?
4. Do you think that Mitchel is a realistic, believable character? Why or why not?
5. Why do you think the stories of Sherlock Holmes are more popular than Ottolengui’s stories?
6. Some writers of this period—the “Sherlock Holmes hiatus”—tried to create detective characters that were similar to Hol
mes himself. Do you think Ottolengui had this in mind?
7. What makes a good mystery short story in your opinion? Is it important that there be a criminal who is caught and punished?
Further Reading
BY RODRIGUES OTTOLENGUI
Novels and Short Story Collections
Conya: A Romance of the Buddhas. (1890, serialized in an unknown Charlotte, NC, newspaper)
An Artist in Crime. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892. Featuring Jack Barnes and Robert Leroy Mitchel.
A Conflict of Evidence. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1893. Another Barnes and Mitchel case.
A Modern Wizard. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1894. Another Barnes and Mitchel case.
The Crime of the Century. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896. The final full-length Barnes and Mitchel case.
Before the Fact. Eugenia, ON: Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2012. First book publication of six stories about Barnes and Mitchel that were originally published in Ainslee’s Magazine in 1901.
Nonfiction
Methods of Filling Teeth: An Exposition of Practical Methods. Philadelphia: S. S. White Dental Manufacturing, 1892.
Table Talks on Dentistry. Brooklyn: Dental Items of Interest Publishing, 1928.
SIMILAR DETECTIVE FICTION OF THE PERIOD
Cadett, Herbert. The Adventures of a Journalist. London: Sands, 1900.
Davis, Richard Harding. In the Fog. New York: R. H. Russell, 1901.
Meade, L. T., and Clifford Halifax. Stories from the Diary of a Doctor. London: George Newnes, 1894.
Morrison, Arthur. Martin Hewitt, Investigator. London: Ward & Lock, 1894.
Sims, George R. Dorcas Dene, Detective. London: F. V. White, 1897.
CRITICAL STUDIES
Buard, Jean-Luc. Rodrigues Ottolengui: Artiste ès crimes. New York: La Bibliothèque internationale Rodrigues Ottolengui, 2018. In French.
Panek, LeRoy Lad. The Origins of the American Detective Story. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006.
About the Author
Benjamin Adolph Rodrigues Ottolengui (“Rod” to his family and friends) was born in 1861 in Charlotte, South Carolina, to a Sephardic Jewish family, the son of Daniel Ottolengui, a playwright and newspaper man, and Helen Rosalie Rodrigues Ottolengui, an author. Ottolengui attended the College of Charleston, but in 1877, at the age of sixteen, he moved to New York City, where he took up an apprenticeship with a dentist. In 1885, he received a Master of Dental Surgery degree and began a career that would last until 1933, bringing him professional accolades and deep involvement in developing fields of dentistry. He specialized in orthodontia and root canal therapy and became an important force behind the fledgling American Society (later, Association) of Orthodontia. His 1891 text Methods of Filling Teeth was the standard work on the subject for many years. Ottolengui was one of the first to use dental radiography, pressure anesthesia, and cast gold inlays. He was a fiery speaker and advocate for the policing of dental practice and often spoke out against charlatans, quacks, and other illegal practitioners in New York City. He was also an amateur taxidermist, a photographer, and an entomologist of some note, specializing in the Plusia moth. Ottolengui was a charter member of the New York Entomological Society, and his collection of moths is an important part of the American Museum of Natural History.
In the 1890s, as he was establishing himself, he apparently had time on his hands, for Ottolengui turned to writing fiction. Though his first novel was a romantic adventure, Corya: A Romance of the Buddhas (serialized in a Charlotte newspaper), he soon turned to crime fiction. Ottolengui invented a pair of detectives, “Inspector” Jack Barnes, a professional detective with his own agency, and Robert Leroy Mitchel, a wealthy amateur, friend, and occasional rival of Barnes. While Ottolengui certainly knew the work of Arthur Conan Doyle and the success of the Sherlock Holmes tales, Barnes was no Watson and Mitchel no Holmes. Each was wholly original, and each had his own skills and abilities of deduction. Four novels of their adventures followed swiftly, the first published in 1893. These were well received, and newspaper advertisements touted him as “the American Conan Doyle.” In 1895, following in Conan Doyle’s footsteps, he tried his hand at short stories, quickly selling four in 1895 and another in 1898. He rounded these out into a collection, Final Proof, published in 1898. Ottolengui’s work was apparently popular, reprinted several times and translated into various foreign languages. In 1901, however, after writing six more stories of Barnes and Mitchel, Ottolengui retired from the writing of fiction. Today, Ottolengui has no entry in any of the three major encyclopedias of crime and mystery fiction,42 though Final Proof is cataloged in Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor’s A Catalogue of Crime and is very favorably described in Ellery Queen’s vital checklist of detective short stories collection, Queen’s Quorum.
42 Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection (Steinbrunner & Penzler), Encyclopedia Mysteriosa (DeAndrea), and Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing (Herbert) all lack entries for Ottolengui, although Herbert at least mentions two of the stories in this volume in entries on “Forensic Pathologist” and “Murderless Mystery.”
Case Pending
Another murder, another unanswered question. And Detective Mendoza hates to leave things undone.
Hers was the kind of casual homicide that occurred every week in a city like Los Angeles in the sixties. Beaten, robbed, and left in an abandoned lot, Elena Ramirez’s death was like many others…in fact, nearly identical to a murder that happened six months earlier—a case that Detective Luis Mendoza was never able to solve.
The detective isn’t a fan of puzzles but knows one when he sees it. He puts two and two together—these vicious murders must have been committed by the same deranged individual—and leads the charge into a case that is astounding in its complexity.
“Shannon’s attempt to portray racial prejudice and the effects of poverty in LA was noteworthy for its time. A worthy reissue.”
—Booklist
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Final Proof Page 31