‘Mr Carrados?’ he said inquiringly.
Carrados, who had risen, bowed slightly without offering his hand.
‘This gentleman,’ he said, indicating his friend, ‘is Mr Carlyle, the celebrated private detective.’
The Indian shot a very sharp glance at the object of this description. Then he sat down.
‘You wrote me a letter, Mr Carrados,’ he remarked, in English that scarcely betrayed any foreign origin, ‘a rather curious letter, I may say. You asked me about an ancient inscription. I know nothing of antiquities; but I thought, as you had sent, that it would be more courteous if I came and explained this to you.’
‘That was the object of my letter,’ replied Carrados.
‘You wished to see me?’ said Drishna, unable to stand the ordeal of the silence that Carrados imposed after his remark.
‘When you left Miss Chubb’s house you left a ruler behind.’ One lay on the desk by Carrados and he took it up as he spoke.
‘I don’t understand what you are talking about,’ said Drishna guardedly. ‘You are making some mistake.’
‘The ruler was marked at four and seven-eighths inches—the measure of the glass of the signal lamp outside.’
The unfortunate young man was unable to repress a start. His face lost its healthy tone. Then, with a sudden impulse, he made a step forward and snatched the object from Carrados’s hand.
‘If it is mine I have a right to it,’ he exclaimed, snapping the ruler in two and throwing it on to the back of the blazing fire. ‘It is nothing.’
‘Pardon me, I did not say that the one you have so impetuously disposed of was yours. As a matter of fact, it was mine. Yours is—elsewhere.’
‘Wherever it is you have no right to it if it is mine,’ panted Drishna, with rising excitement. ‘You are a thief, Mr Carrados. I will not stay any longer here.’
He jumped up and turned towards the door. Carlyle made a step forward, but the precaution was unnecessary.
‘One moment, Mr Drishna,’ interposed Carrados, in his smoothest tones. ‘It is a pity, after you have come so far, to leave without hearing of my investigations in the neighbourhood of Shaftesbury Avenue.’
Drishna sat down again.
‘As you like,’ he muttered. ‘It does not interest me.’
‘I wanted to obtain a lamp of a certain pattern,’ continued Carrados. ‘It seemed to me that the simplest explanation would be to say that I wanted it for a motor car. Naturally I went to Long Acre. At the first shop I said: “Wasn’t it here that a friend of mine, an Indian gentleman, recently had a lamp made with a green glass that was nearly five inches across?” No, it was not there, but they could make me one. At the next shop the same; at the third, and fourth, and so on. Finally my persistence was rewarded. I found the place where the lamp had been made, and at the cost of ordering another I obtained all the details I wanted. It was news to them, the shopman informed me, that in some parts of India green was the danger colour and therefore tail lamps had to show a green light. The incident made some impression on him, and he would be able to identify their customer—who paid in advance and gave no address—among a thousand of his countrymen. Do I succeed in interesting you, Mr Drishna?’
‘Do you?’ replied Drishna, with a languid yawn. ‘Do I look interested?’
‘You must make allowance for my unfortunate blindness,’ apologised Carrados, with grim irony.
‘Blindness!’ exclaimed Drishna, dropping his affectation of unconcern as though electrified by the word, ‘do you mean—really blind—that you do not see me?’
‘Alas, no,’ admitted Carrados.
The Indian withdrew his right hand from his coat pocket and, with a tragic gesture, flung a heavy revolver down on the table between them.
‘I have had you covered all the time, Mr Carrados, and if I had wished to go and you or your friend had raised a hand to stop me, it would have been at the peril of your lives,’ he said, in a voice of melancholy triumph. ‘But what is the use of defying fate, and who successfully evades his destiny? A month ago I went to see one of our people who reads the future and sought to know the course of certain events. “You need fear no human eye,” was the message given to me. Then she added: “But when the sightless sees the unseen, make your peace with Yama.” And I thought she spoke of the Great Hereafter!’
‘This amounts to an admission of your guilt,’ exclaimed Mr Carlyle practically.
‘I bow to the decree of fate,’ replied Drishna. ‘And it is fitting to the universal irony of existence that a blind man should be the instrument. I don’t imagine, Mr Carlyle,’ he added maliciously, ‘that you, with your eyes, would ever have brought that result about.’
‘You are a very cold-blooded young scoundrel, sir!’ retorted Mr Carlyle. ‘Good heavens! Do you realise that you are responsible for the death of scores of innocent men and women?’
‘Do you realise, Mr Carlyle, that you and your Government and your soldiers are responsible for the death of thousands of innocent men and women in my country every day? If England was occupied by the Germans who quartered an army and an administration with their wives and their families and all their expensive paraphernalia on the unfortunate country until the whole nation was reduced to the verge of famine, and the appointment of every new official meant the callous death sentence on a thousand men and women to pay his salary, then if you went to Berlin and wrecked a train you would be hailed a patriot. What Boadicea did and—and Samson, so have I. If they were heroes, so am I.’
‘Well, upon my word!’ cried the highly scandalised Carlyle, ‘what next! Boadicea was a—er—semi-legendary person, whom we may possibly admire at a distance. Personally, I do not profess to express an opinion. But Samson, I would remind you, is a Biblical character. Samson was mocked as an enemy. You, I do not doubt, have been entertained as a friend.’
‘And haven’t I been mocked and despised and sneered at every day of my life here by your supercilious, superior, empty-headed men?’ flashed back Drishna, his eyes leaping into malignity and his voice trembling with sudden passion. ‘Oh! How I hated them as I passed them in the street and recognised by a thousand petty insults their lordly English contempt for me as an inferior being—a nigger. How I longed with Caligula that a nation had a single neck that I might destroy it at one blow. I loathe you in your complacent hypocrisy, Mr Carlyle, despise and utterly abominate you from an eminence of superiority that you can never even understand.’
‘I think we are getting rather away from the point, Mr Drishna,’ interposed Carrados, with the impartiality of a judge. ‘Unless I am misinformed, you are not so ungallant as to include everyone you have met here in your execration?’
‘Ah, no,’ admitted Drishna, descending into a quite ingenuous frankness. ‘Much as I hate your men I love your women. How is it possible that a nation should be so divided—its men so dull-witted and offensive, its women so quick, sympathetic and capable of appreciating?’
‘But a little expensive, too, at times?’ suggested Carrados.
Drishna sighed heavily.
‘Yes; it is incredible. It is the generosity of their large nature. My allowance, though what most of you would call noble, has proved quite inadequate. I was compelled to borrow money and the interest became overwhelming. Bankruptcy was impracticable because I should have then been recalled by my people, and much as I detest England a certain reason made the thought of leaving it unbearable.’
‘Connected with the Arcady Theatre?’
‘You know? Well, do not let us introduce the lady’s name. In order to restore myself I speculated on the Stock Exchange. My credit was good through my father’s position and the standing of the firm to which I am attached. I heard on reliable authority, and very early, that the Central and Suburban, and the Deferred especially, was safe to fall heavily, through a motor bus amalgamation that was then a secret. I opened a bea
r account and sold largely. The shares fell, but only fractionally, and I waited. Then, unfortunately, they began to go up. Adverse forces were at work and rumours were put about. I could not stand the settlement, and in order to carry over an account I was literally compelled to deal temporarily with some securities that were not technically my own property.’
‘Embezzlement, sir,’ commented Mr Carlyle icily. ‘But what is embezzlement on the top of wholesale murder!’
‘That is what it is called. In my case, however, it was only to be temporary. Unfortunately, the rise continued. Then, at the height of my despair, I chanced to be returning to Swanstead rather earlier than usual one evening, and the train was stopped at a certain signal to let another pass. There was conversation in the carriage and I learned certain details. One said that there would be an accident some day, and so forth. In a flash—as by an inspiration—I saw how the circumstance might be turned to account. A bad accident and the shares would certainly fall and my position would be retrieved. I think Mr Carrados has somehow learned the rest.’
‘Max,’ said Mr Carlyle, with emotion, ‘is there any reason why you should not send your man for a police officer and have this monster arrested on his own confession without further delay?’
‘Pray do so, Mr Carrados,’ acquiesced Drishna. ‘I shall certainly be hanged, but the speech I shall prepare will ring from one end of India to the other; my memory will be venerated as that of a martyr; and the emancipation of my motherland will be hastened by my sacrifice.’
‘In other words,’ commented Carrados, ‘there will be disturbances at half-a-dozen disaffected places, a few unfortunate police will be clubbed to death, and possibly worse things may happen. That does not suit us, Mr Drishna.’
‘And how do you propose to prevent it?’ asked Drishna, with cool assurance.
‘It is very unpleasant being hanged on a dark winter morning; very cold, very friendless, very inhuman. The long trial, the solitude and the confinement, the thoughts of the long sleepless night before, the hangman and the pinioning and the noosing of the rope, are apt to prey on the imagination. Only a very stupid man can take hanging easily.’
‘What do you want me to do instead, Mr Carrados?’ asked Drishna shrewdly.
Carrados’s hand closed on the weapon that still lay on the table between them. Without a word he pushed it across.
‘I see,’ commented Drishna, with a short laugh and a gleaming eye. ‘Shoot myself and hush it up to suit your purpose. Withhold my message to save the exposures of a trial, and keep the flame from the torch of insurrectionary freedom.’
‘Also,’ interposed Carrados mildly, ‘to save your worthy people a good deal of shame, and to save the lady who is nameless the unpleasant necessity of relinquishing the house and the income which you have just settled on her. She certainly would not then venerate your memory.’
‘What is that?’
‘The transaction which you carried through was based on a felony and could not be upheld. The firm you dealt with will go to the courts, and the money, being directly traceable, will be held forfeit as no good consideration passed.’
‘Max!’ cried Mr Carlyle hotly, ‘you are not going to let this scoundrel cheat the gallows after all?’
‘The best use you can make of the gallows is to cheat it, Louis,’ replied Carrados. ‘Have you ever reflected what human beings will think of us a hundred years hence?’
‘Oh, of course I’m not really in favour of hanging,’ admitted Mr Carlyle.
‘Nobody really is. But we go on hanging. Mr Drishna is a dangerous animal who for the sake of pacific animals must cease to exist. Let his barbarous exploit pass into oblivion with him. The disadvantages of spreading it broadcast immeasurably outweigh the benefits.’
‘I have considered,’ announced Drishna. ‘I will do as you wish.’
‘Very well,’ said Carrados. ‘Here is some plain notepaper. You had better write a letter to someone saying that the financial difficulties in which you are involved make life unbearable.’
‘But there are no financial difficulties—now.’
‘That does not matter in the least. It will be put down to an hallucination and taken as showing the state of your mind.’
‘But what guarantee have we that he will not escape?’ whispered Mr Carlyle.
‘He cannot escape,’ replied Carrados tranquilly. ‘His identity is too clear.’
‘I have no intention of trying to escape,’ put in Drishna, as he wrote. ‘You hardly imagine that I have not considered this eventuality, do you?’
‘All the same,’ murmured the ex-lawyer, ‘I should like to have a jury behind me. It is one thing to execute a man morally; it is another to do it almost literally.’
‘Is that all right?’ asked Drishna, passing across the letter he had written.
Carrados smiled at this tribute to his perception.
‘Quite excellent,’ he replied courteously. ‘There is a train at nine-forty. Will that suit you?’
Drishna nodded and stood up. Mr Carlyle had a very uneasy feeling that he ought to do something but could not suggest to himself what.
The next moment he heard his friend heartily thanking the visitor for the assistance he had been in the matter of the Indo-Scythian inscription, as they walked across the hall together. Then a door closed.
‘I believe that there is something positively uncanny about Max at times,’ murmured the perturbed gentleman to himself.
The Unsolved Puzzle of the
Man with No Face
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893–1957) was one of the leading lights among detective novelists during the Golden Age of Murder between the two world wars. She introduced Lord Peter Wimsey in her first novel, Whose Body? (1923), and became an articulate advocate for the well-written detective story both in essays and in her reviews for the Sunday Times, now collected in Taking Detective Stories Seriously (2017). The Documents in the Case (1930) was an ambitious attempt at the epistolary detective novel pioneered by Wilkie Collins. In writing the book, she collaborated with L.T. Meade’s former writing partner, Robert Eustace; in Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul (1993), Barbara Reynolds includes a fascinating and in-depth account of how the pair worked together on the story. It proved, however, to be an experiment they never repeated.
The scope afforded by the novel was particularly well suited to Sayers’ literary talents and ambitions, but several of her short stories are pleasing and original. This story, which was included in Lord Peter Views the Body (1928), is one of the most intriguing of them.
‘And what would you say, sir,’ said the stout man, ‘to this here business of the bloke what’s been found down on the beach at East Felpham?’
The rush of travellers after the Bank Holiday had caused an overflow of third-class passengers into the firsts, and the stout man was anxious to seem at ease in his surroundings. The youngish gentleman whom he addressed had obviously paid full fare for a seclusion which he was fated to forgo. He took the matter amiably enough, however, and replied in a courteous tone:
‘I’m afraid I haven’t read more than the headlines. Murdered, I suppose, wasn’t he?’
‘It’s murder, right enough,’ said the stout man, with relish. ‘Cut about he was, something shocking.’
‘More like as if a wild beast had done it,’ chimed in the thin, elderly man opposite. ‘No face at all he hadn’t got, by what my paper says. It’ll be one of these maniacs, I shouldn’t be surprised, what goes about killing children.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk about such things,’ said his wife, with a shudder. ‘I lays awake at nights thinking what might ’appen to Lizzie’s girls, till my head feels regular in a fever, and I has such a sinking in my inside I has to get up and eat biscuits. They didn’t ought to put such dreadful things in the papers.’
‘It’s
better they should, ma’am,’ said the stout man, ‘then we’re warned, so to speak, and can take our measures accordingly. Now, from what I can make out, this unfortunate gentleman had gone bathing all by himself in a lonely spot. Now, quite apart from cramps, as is a thing that might ’appen to the best of us, that’s a very foolish thing to do.’
‘Just what I’m always telling my husband,’ said the young wife. The young husband frowned and fidgeted. ‘Well, dear, it really isn’t safe, and you with your heart not strong—’ Her hand sought his under the newspaper. He drew away, self-consciously, saying: ‘That’ll do, Kitty.’
‘The way I look at it is this,’ pursued the stout man. ‘Here we’ve been and had a war, what has left ’undreds o’ men in what you might call a state of unstable ekilibrium. They’ve seen all their friends blown up or shot to pieces. They’ve been through five years of ’orrors and bloodshed, and it’s given ’em what you might call a twist in the mind towards ’orrors. They may seem to forget it and go along as peaceable as anybody to all outward appearance, but it’s all artificial, if you get my meaning. Then, one day something ’appens to upset them—they ’as words with the wife, or the weather’s extra hot, as it is today—and something goes pop inside their brains and makes raving monsters of them. It’s all in the books. I do a good bit of reading myself of an evening, being a bachelor without encumbrances.’
‘That’s all very true,’ said a prim little man, looking up from his magazine, ‘very true indeed—too true. But do you think it applies in the present case? I’ve studied the literature of crime a good deal—I may say I make it my hobby—and it’s my opinion there’s more in this than meets the eye. If you will compare this murder with some of the most mysterious crimes of late years—crimes which, mind you, have never been solved, and, in my opinion, never will be—what do you find?’ He paused and looked round. ‘You will find many features in common with this case. But especially you will find that the face—and the face only, mark you—has been disfigured, as though to prevent recognition. As though to blot out the victim’s personality from the world. And you will find that, in spite of the most thorough investigation, the criminal is never discovered. Now what does all that point to? To Organisation. Organisation. To an immensely powerful influence at work behind the scenes. In this very magazine that I’m reading now—’ he tapped the page impressively—‘there’s an account—not a faked-up story, but an account extracted from the annals of the police—of the organisation of one of these secret societies, which mark down men against whom they bear a grudge, and destroy them. And, when they do this, they disfigure their faces with the mark of the Secret Society, and they cover up the track of the assassin so completely—having money and resources at their disposal—that nobody is ever able to get at them.’
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