Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

by Lillian de la Torre

  “Are you sure Viotti is in London?”

  “My eyes tell me so.”

  “You judge over-hastily,” I cried, triumphing to have so caught out my philosophical friend. “Who has seen Viotti? Have you? Has Burney? Who knows that this black-browed young man is in very truth Viotti, and not an imposter? Your eyes tell you, here is a young man. Mr. Tresilian tells you, this is the world’s greatest violinist. Who tells him so? The man himself. But a man may lie. Letters from Paris. But letters may be forged.”

  “Yet what folly,” suggested my learned friend mildly, mopping tea from the ridges of his waistcoat, “what folly to attempt the one personation a man cannot make good. ’Tis as if I were to strive to pass myself off as Johnson the equestrian. How long can I sustain the character? I must be detected the moment the company challenges me to mount and give an exhibition of my skill.”

  “Aye, sir,” I exclaimed in excitement, “and so must he be the moment he puts bow to violin—unless he has the wit to extricate himself by pretending the sad lumpish wails he produces proceed from a violin bewitched, a changeling violin, a forgery. As indeed the instrument he carries must be a forgery, for how is a masquerader to come by a genuine Cremona? Nay, what need has he of a true Stradivari, who cannot play upon it like Viotti, be the instrument never so great? No, Sir, depend upon it, we have here to do with an impostor, come hither with no other object than to steal the great Orloff diamond from the Prince.”

  Johnson: “Surely ’tis a needless elaboration. A man may steal a diamond without giving himself out to be the world’s greatest performer upon the violin, the haut-boy or the Jew’s-harp.”

  Boswell: “How? How is one to take a diamond from a warrior seven feet high, unless by lulling him into security? For which, his easiness at the home of Dr. Burney is pitched upon. His partiality for music is known.”

  Johnson: “Well, Sir, say on. How did the pseudo-Viotti make off with the diamond after passing under the hands of the Cossacks?”

  Boswell: “Nor did he so. He dared not attempt it. Hence his fit of passion in departing. He must depend upon his entrée at Burney’s to carry it off subsequently from its hiding-place within the room.”

  “Why, Bozzy, you must consider,” said my friend, peering into the empty tea-pot, “that our thief, whoever he be, was fain to gain entrée at dead of night, at risk of a blast from a blunderbuss. Is this your conception of the entrée at Dr. Burney’s?”

  “Perhaps passion warped his judgment. Or, it may be, the princely Hindoos his masters pressed him to the attempt.”

  “Pray, Bozzy,” said my friend with asperity, setting down his cup with finality, “let us have no more of this romantick tale of the princely Hindoos, who in my belief know no more of the matter than the babe unborn. The diamond is to seek in Dr. Burney’s withdrawing room, and the thief is to seek among those who were in it, so let’s be up and doing, and leave the Hindoos to Mrs. Macaulay.”

  So saying, he clapped his old cocked hat on his little brown scratch-wig and set forth. I followed suit, and we set out for St. Martin’s Street.

  Passing, as so often before, with admiration under Temple Bar, whom should we meet but the very man, him who called himself Viotti.

  “Well-met, Dr. Johnson!” cried the volatile foreigner, “well-met indeed, for I am come forth to seek you. They give you a name, sir, for a detector of villainies, and I who have suffered one indeed, beg that you will put forth your endeavour to restore my priceless Stradivari and detect him who has made away with it.”

  I looked with amaze upon this impudence, but Dr. Johnson received the young man with unruffled complaisance.

  “Pray, Sir, walk along with us, and let us take counsel together.”

  I fell back a pace, the better to have the suspected young man under my eye, the while my ear was alert to every word my astute friend might let drop.

  “Well, Sir,” began Dr. Johnson, “where, then, do you lodge?”

  “At Joseph Hill’s, Sir, at the sign of the Harp and Flute, in the Haymarket.”

  “Oho, the violin maker! Here’s a man who knows a good fiddle when he sees it! Pray, sir, how know you that ’twas your own fiddle you brought away from thence last night?”

  “I played upon it, sir, and it was never sweeter. I played for a space of ten minutes together, and then I wrapped it in silk, and laid it in the case, and so brought it away to Dr. Burney’s. No, Sir, the exchange was made under my nose as it lay in the inner room, and the priceless instrument somehow spirited away from thence.”

  “No such thing, Sir,” replied Dr. Johnson. “Did one of those who were searched to the skin by the Prince’s Cossacks succeed in smuggling thence so large a thing as your Stradivari? Disguised, perhaps, as a walking-stick?”

  “I give you back your question,” replied Viotti doggedly. “My Stradivari cannot still remain at Dr. Burney’s. Those rooms were stringently searched for a stone no larger than a nutmeg. Did we pass unseeing so large a thing as a fiddle? Disguised, perhaps, as a hearth-brush?”

  I jerked my head at this impudence, and muttered “Tschah” between my teeth. Dr. Johnson cast me a lowering look, and as we approached St. Martin’s Lane he continued.

  “Let us approach the matter by logic. Who will steal a violin? He who can play upon it. Who will substitute a forged fiddle? He who can make one. ’Tis plain: if the thief be not your landlord Hill—”

  “Sir, sir,” I ejaculated, “the most honoured violinmaker in London—”

  “Then it can only be …”

  “Hark!” cried Viotti, oblivious, and stood quite transfixed. “Hark!”

  Dr. Johnson frowned, and seemed to strain his dull hearing. I heard it plainly—the tones of a violin, of particular sweetness, and played with a practised hand. Viotti’s eyes seemed to start from his head.’

  “’Tis no other,” he cried in a strangled voice, “I cannot be mistaken, ’tis my own Stradivari, and played by the hand of a master!”

  I looked at the house whence the strains floated. The narrow door was ajar. Above it hung a gilded fiddle, and the brass plate bore the legend:

  “JOHN BETTS, Violinmaker.”

  Viotti rushed through the door instanter, and we were constrained to follow. Like the lute of Orpheus, the mellifluous voice of the, fiddle pulled us irresistibly into the violinmaker’s workroom.

  ’Twas Arthur Betts who played. He held the shining fiddle like a lover, and the silver notes cascaded under his bow. Seated at his work-table in a litter of pegs and patterns, his father beamed upon him and kept time with his famous articulated instrument. Our tumultuous entry but redoubled his smile. He met the rush of the choleric violinist with a rush as swift, and enveloped him in an embrace.

  “Signor Viotti,” exclaimed he, “I give you joy! Your Stradivari is restored to you good as new. You have been made the victim of an infamous trick, Sir, but by my skill I have made all right.”

  Arthur Betts, his fiddling broken off, extended the violin.

  “Do you set bow to it, Sir,” he exclaimed, “and your heart will be at rest. Oh, Sir, ’tis the sweetest, the most responsive …”

  Viotti, in an agony of impatience, yet forebore to snatch the precious instrument. Gently he accepted it from the boy’s hand, gently he set bow to it and drew it across the strings, and it answered him like honey from the comb. He began to play. If Arthur Betts had drawn sweetness from the famous instrument, now it was brought alive. It wept, it danced, it laughed, it sang. Never have I heard such fiddling. Even Dr. Sam: Johnson uncreased his brow. He looked at my rapt countenance.

  “Is this Viotti?” he murmured in my ear.

  “None other,” I replied; and even as the great violinist dropped his bow and caressed the violin in the cup of his hand, I realized that all my conjecture was vain, and the answer to both our riddles was still to seek.

  “Pray, Sir,” demanded Dr. Johnson of Betts, “how have you wrought this miracle?”

  “You must know, Sir,” replied th
e violinmaker, “that I was no more satisfied than yourself that a substitution had been effected. I desired to examine into the matter more closely, and to that end, as you know, Sir, I carried the instrument away with me. This morning I set it on my work-bench and opened it—and lo, the thing was made clear. Some enemy—jealous, as it might be, or desiring to damage the master’s reputation, had with great subtlety introduced against the sound-post—a quantity of beeswax!”

  He handed the substance in question to Dr. Johnson, a hardening wad of the stuff of about the bigness of a nut of Brazil. I peered over Dr. Johnson’s shoulder as he turned it in his big shapely fingers. One side bore the grain mark of the sound-post; on the other, clearly impressed, was the mark of a finger.

  “Beeswax!” cried Viotti. “Small wonder the sound was deadened!”

  “How so?” enquired I. A new realm was opening to me.

  “I will shew you, Sir,” said Betts. From his work-bench he took the two halves of another instrument, “The sound, d’ye see, Sir, is made by drawing the bow over the string. But the sound is thin, and of no account, till it be resounded within the belly of the instrument. Now much depends on this strip of wood which lies in the belly, being made fast there—’tis by name the bass bar; and much depends on this peg which joins top and bottom. This peg we call the sound-post, and ’tis most particularly not to be meddled with. ’Twas just here, that our Vandal had loaded the Viotti Stradivarius with this pad of wax. How determined an enemy is he who takes such pains. Pray, Signor Viotti, have you ever an enemy in England?”

  “None that I know. Yet stay, an enemy I have, so much is certain, for last night in my homeward way I was followed, and I feared a knife in the ribs.”

  “More like a horse-pistol, with a ‘Stand and deliver.’ Yet you came off unscathed after all.”

  “I shewed him a clean pair of heels; I can run with the best. Yet how have I earned such hatred? Who can hate me so?”

  “Who,” said Dr. Johnson with a laugh, “but another violinist?”

  “Or,” said Arthur Betts quickly, “a rival defeated in love?”

  Johnson was staring at the lozenge of wax through the violinmaker’s glass.

  “I think,” he said in an absent voice, “I think we may soon find out.”

  “How, Sir?” demanded Viotti eagerly. “I would give much to know the scoundrel.”

  “There is a way,” said Johnson, “or my observation is much at fault. Let us gather tonight once more, in the withdrawing room of Dr. Burney. I’ll engage him to receive us. ’Tis there I’ll expose Signor Viotti’s enemy; aye, and perhaps restore the diamond of Prince Orloff.”

  The musical trio strove to learn more, but not another word would Dr. Johnson say. They perforce consented to the rendezvous. We left Viotti descanting upon the art of violin-playing, and Arthur Betts hanging entranced upon his every motion.

  “Pray, Sir,” I enquired as we made the best of our way to Dr. Burney’s, “how do you propose to lay your hand upon him who tampered with yonder violin?”

  Johnson: “Look upon this wax. See the print of a finger upon it. I will engage, with luck, to fit this print to the finger that made it.”

  Boswell: “Nay, how? Remember the thumb-print at Stratford, where you said that some other means than gross measurement must be found to fit a finger to its print.”

  Johnson: “I have found the means. I will put my finger—nay, his own finger—”

  Boswell: “Or her finger.”

  Johnson: “Or her own finger—’tis indeed a slim one—on the miscreant.”

  Boswell: “I muse who it may be?”

  “An avenging Hindoo,” hazarded Dr. Johnson slily, “passing himself off as Viotti?”

  “Why, no, sir, no avenging Hindoo could win such sweetness even from a Stradivarius,” I owned. “Nor would any avenging Hindoo have an interest in harming even the first violinist of the age. Sure such an one had attacked Prince Orloff direct … Prince Orloff! Pray, Sir, how do we know that he is Prince Orloff? Or that yonder yellow sparkler is indeed a diamond, or ever saw the land of the Hindoos? Is not all perhaps a hoax?—the seven-foot hero and his blaze of brilliants, and Viotti’s fiddle choaked with beeswax till it croaks again—”

  “Nay, Bozzy, spare me this while!” cried Dr. Johnson. “Be not so finespun in conjecture. I cannot see that massive thumb that choaked the emperor brought to the finicking task of introducing a lozenge of wax through an f-hole with a hump-backed darning-needle, and there’s an end on’t.”

  “Yet Orloff works in my mind,” continued I presently. “How if he has hypothecated his own diamond? Perhaps he has insured it at Lloyd’s coffeehouse, and will have its value again from the gentlemen there.”

  “Oh, the diamond,” said Dr. Johnson. “Well, I have my eye on the diamond, never fear.”

  “Or perhaps,” I went on, “Prince Orloff fancies his diamond, and would keep it. How long, think you, will it be his after the Empress’s greedy eye has lighted upon it? How better keep it, than to noise after the story of its greatness the story of its loss?”

  “At last!” Dr. Johnson breathed in relief. “St. Martin’s Street!”

  Dr. Burney readily assented to another gathering in his withdrawing room. A card was sent to Mr. Tresilian, and another to Prince Orloff. The Prince’s reply was characteristick: “If it is the will of God His Highness will come.” Mr. Tresilian, entertaining no doubts of the efficacy of his own will, as touching not only himself, but also Miss Polly and young Chinnery, sent a curt assent in the name of all three. All that remained was to make the withdrawing room fast and wait the event.

  Once more the company was gathered in Dr. Burney’s withdrawing room. Once more the candlelight sparkled on Sir Isaac Newton’s prisms, and the firelight warmed Miss Fanny’s slender hands, busy with fresh beeswax. Once more Viotti languished, and Miss Polly mantled, and young Chinnery glowered, and old Tresilian watched the three. Once more the Bettses, neat and respectful, wore smiles unchangingly cheerful. As to Prince Orloff, he was tranced in apathy, resigned in fatalistick Russian pessimism to the will of God.

  “Pray, Boswell, be so good as to assist me.”

  I leaped to my feet with alacrity. Dr. Johnson handed me Miss Fanny’s lump of softened beeswax, with the injunction still to keep it warm.

  “Good friends,” he addressed the quiet circle, “we are here for a double purpose, to detect the Vandal who tampered with Signor Viotti’s Stradivarius, and to discover the whereabouts of His Highness’s diamond.”

  “If it be the will of God,” said His Highness.

  “If it be the will of God,” said Johnson solemnly. “The lesser puzzle first. Pray, Mr. Boswell, a lump of beeswax. Mr. Betts, oblige me by setting your forefinger to the wax.”

  The violinmaker looked up at him with quick intelligence; he saw what we would be at. He pressed his right forefinger to the wax. Arthur Betts followed, staring in wonder. Miss Fanny was next. Dr. Johnson scanned each imprint eagerly through a glass.

  Now we approached the group about Miss Polly Tresilian. She graciously complied with my humble request.

  “Signor Viotti?”

  Quick colour rushed up his dusky cheeks.

  “Have I tampered with my own most precious possession?” he began hotly.

  Dr. Johnson shrugged.

  “Mr. Chinnery?”

  “I will not, unless Signor Viotti precedes me.”

  Angry glances crossed. Dr. Johnson turned suddenly upon old Betts.

  “You, Sir, if memory serves you are left-handed?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Then touch your left forefinger, and do not trifle with me.”

  The violinmaker shrugged, and touched. Johnson scanned the imprint, and shook his head. What did he seek? Or was this perhaps but a pretence, designed to force the guilty to betray himself?

  “I am brought to a standstill, unless you, Sir—” to Viotti.

  Viotti shrugged, and touched. Now Johnson turned to Chinnery.<
br />
  The thin young man felt every eye, and rose slowly.

  “Pray, Sir, touch.”

  “I will not.”

  Quick as a snake striking Johnson had the slim wrist in his grip of iron, and pressed against the forefinger the softened wax.

  Chinnery was white as his ruffles as he nursed his wrist. “What signifies this hocus-pocus?” he demanded angrily.

  Johnson produced the lump of beeswax he had brought from Betts’s shop. At sight of it Chinnery went whiter yet.

  “This,” said my friend deliberately, “that when you tampered with Viotti’s violin”—he held the young man’s eyes with his in a gaze deep and full of meaning—“when you tampered with Signor Viotti’s violin out of mere spite and jealousy, you left your finger-print on the wax plain as a footprint, and a finger-print so singular that none in this room but you could have made it.”

  Viotti rose from the girl’s side, dints of rage whitening his nose, fists clenching and unclenching; but Tresilian stopped him with a heavy hand on his arm.

  “I deny it,” said Chinnery in a strangled voice, “make that good.”

  “’Tis easily made good,” said Dr. Johnson, still engaging his eyes. “I have long observed the pad of the human forefinger …”

  “Holy Mother,” remarked Orloff, his interest finally piqued, “what a man is this, that goes about peeping at forefingers! To what end, in God’s name?”

  “Why not?” said Johnson over his shoulder. “Nihil humanum a me alienum. Now the human forefinger, in the inscrutable wisdom of God, bears a pattern, as it were an eddy or a spiral, that goes to one center where the pad is highest. Never have I seen a triple center, and only twice in my life a double one—once on the finger of the Rector of St. Olave’s, and once on your forefinger, Mr. Chinnery. Now the finger-print on the wax has a double center. Was it made, think you, by the Rector of St. Olave’s?”

  Chinnery stood irresolute.

  “Come, Mr. Chinnery,” said Johnson perswasively, “this is not a crime you stand charged with, unless loving a lady too well be a crime. I counsel you, give me best, and be off with you.”