Trent Intervenes

by E. C. Bentley

  ‘When I came out of prison I knew just what I meant to do. I went to my mother’s brother, who was a fruit merchant, and told him I was going to go straight for the future. I asked him if he would pay my passage to America, so I could begin life again. He agreed to do that, and I emigrated. There was no difficulty about getting into the United States in those days. I soon found employment clerking. To make a short story of it, in five years’ time I had a good position with a firm in Harrison, Colorado, and was saving money. When I was twenty-eight, some land I had bought near the town for a speculation turned out to be mostly copper-ore under the surface, and the first thing I knew I was a millionaire.

  ‘After that I engaged in all kinds of business, and prospered still more. I donated a library and a hospital to Harrison, founded professorships at Denver and Boulder, subscribed liberally to charities. I was a prominent citizen and a public benefactor. The governor of the state appointed me a member of his personal staff with the rank of colonel. That was just an honour, I didn’t have to do a thing for it. I liked being a colonel, for I thought it might be useful when I got after Somerton. I had plenty else to think about, but I never forgot him.

  ‘Three years ago I put a private inquiry agency onto Somerton. I had reports of his position, his health, his way of life. I got the addresses he had lived at during the years since I last saw him. I found he had come into a lot of money and resigned from the bench; and among other things I heard he had the habit of spending a month in Monte Carlo after Christmas, staying at the Artemare.

  ‘Well, the next time he went there, last year—I went there too. We became acquainted, we got on well together. When I left to attend to my business interests at home, we both hoped we should meet again next year—that is to say, this year. During those few weeks I learnt a lot more about him than I knew before, I had spied out the land for my enterprise, and I had my little scheme ready for a year ahead. The hotel staff knew me as a man who tipped extravagantly. I was on the best of terms with Madame Joubin at the paper-stand and I had wasted a lot of money with old Grangette.

  ‘When Somerton arrived at the Artemare a fortnight ago I was already here. He was delighted to see me, and I spent all my time with him and his daughter and their friends. After a few days I started on him, in the way you know. The hotel servants, who disliked him, entered thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. The people who spoke to him in the street would have done a lot more than that for a 100-franc bill.

  ‘I have told you, in part, how I managed the matter of Somerton’s billfold. I expected he would be going to the bank for money some time, and I had been practising for months till my hands had got the old dexterity. I was with him when he went to the Crédit Lyonnais, saw him draw his ten bills, returned with him to the crowd watching the regatta. Lifting a wallet from a hip pocket is one of the easiest things an expert dip ever does. I put in ten more milles, returned the case, watched him turn white when he made the discovery. That was good! A minute later I had the case out again, removed my own ten, put it back. It all went over very smoothly.

  ‘The newspaper trick was done in this way. Passing through London I had obtained from the Times back-date department copies of the paper covering a fortnight of this time last year. Madame Joubin willingly agreed, for a consideration, to help me work a practical joke on Somerton. She was to hand him a year-old paper the first time we both came to her stand together. I timed that for the day after the billfold incident. I already had in my coat pocket a Times of the right date, which I had provided myself with an hour before. When he took his paper from Madame Joubin I bought a copy of Esquire, which is a large-size American magazine, and I held my own Times ready underneath it. When he did notice the date on his paper, and exclaimed about it, I very naturally held out my hand for it. Looking him in the eyes—as I did with you, you may remember—I changed the papers in an instant, and then remarked that the date was all right. His ghastly face as I handed it to him was well worth all my trouble and expense, believe me.

  ‘What I had in mind when I got Somerton’s old address was this. The year before, he had sent his wife a birthday present, which I had helped him choose, from Grangette’s. I gambled on his doing the same again, and he did; but if he didn’t, I thought I would be able to make a good use of that address some way. As it happened, he actually asked me to go with him to Grangette’s again, for the same purpose; he had confidence in my judgment. As you know, I didn’t make the mistake of offering Grangette too little; he would probably have done it for much less, but I wanted that thing done.

  ‘Of course, it went wrong because the inquiry agent made a couple of errors in giving me that old address. I do not blame him, at that. No man could have thought of the slight change in the postal direction since Somerton lived there, and the misspelling of Talfourd was a very natural slip. I am not worrying, anyway. I got the effect I wanted. And I have found it quite a pleasure telling this story to an intelligent person who can appreciate it.

  ‘I believe that is all. I have had a very interesting and happy time. Somerton will miss me, I am afraid. He can put in the time thinking about all the pleasant little talks we have had together, beginning in his own police court twenty years ago.’

  ‘A very interesting and happy time!’ Trent repeated to himself. ‘Monte Cristo in miniature!’ He turned back a few sheets. ‘A prominent citizen and a public benefactor, was he? And a private malefactor in his spare time. Well, Somerton won’t like this; but I dare say he will like it better than being driven out of his mind. All the same, I don’t think I’ll deliver it by hand.’

  He telephoned to the porter’s office for a chasseur.

  X

  THE LITTLE MYSTERY

  IT was early on a Saturday afternoon that Philip Trent, passing through Cadogan Place, caught sight of a trim figure in the portico of one of the tall old houses. The girl came down the steps as he stopped his car.

  ‘How goes it, Marion?’ he said. ‘It must be all of a year since I saw you last.’

  ‘Why, Phil! What a surprise!’ She glanced back at the door she had just left. ‘Have you come to see the doctor? But no, you can’t do that without an appointment—and besides, he’s just going out himself.’

  Trent got out of the driving seat and shook hands with Marion Silvester, whom he had known for most of her twenty-two years. ‘So this is the doctor’s. Ah yes, I see—brass plate so tiny you don’t notice it’s there. A great man, evidently—the smaller the plate the bigger the doctor. Still, I don’t want to see him. I have just been lunching in Chelsea, but it wasn’t as bad as all that.’

  ‘Well, you will see him, whether you want to or not,’ she said in a low tone as the door opened, and a tall, gaunt man, black-bearded, came out. He took off his hat to Marion, with a swift glance at Trent as he returned the salutation, and passed on his way.

  ‘He’s not a doctor, really, he’s a surgeon,’ Marion explained. ‘But he is a Pole, and it seems that whatever degree you take in his country, you’re called a doctor.’

  Trent examined the brass plate. ‘Dr W. Kozicki. There is something very tragic about the look of your Dr W. Kozicki, Marion. An interesting, cultured face. And he has very small ears, with hardly any lobes. Beautiful hands; and he has had the left one badly bitten by a dog, or possibly a patient—some years ago by the look of the scar. No baldness, though he must be over fifty. Short nose, long upper lip—he wouldn’t look nearly so handsome if he was clean-shaven.’

  She laughed. ‘Isn’t that just like you! You see a person for a split second, and you’ve got him photographed. Well, I’m his secretary, and as Saturday’s a short day, I get off after lunch.’

  ‘Is there anywhere I can take you? I am free for the next hour.’

  She thought for a moment. ‘You know, Phil, meeting you like this is really rather lucky. Several times I’ve wished I could tell you about something that’s been annoying me, because I can’t understand it, and perhaps you could, though it’s not one of your crime
problems. If you could take me home, I could explain it best there. I suppose you don’t know Reville Place.’

  ‘I know where it is.’

  ‘Then you know it’s where a quite nice neighbourhood shades off into a dingy one. I’ve got a cheap top floor at number 43.’ Trent opened the door of the car, and she took her place. ‘It’s not a very cheery spot, but my flatlet is all right once you’re inside the door. Mother let me have some decent furniture and things, and it’s airy and comfortable.’

  The car started, and Marion continued, ‘Yes, I am on my own now. Of course, we haven’t met since father died. We weren’t left any too well-off, as you may imagine, knowing him as you did.’

  Trent nodded. He had indeed known Colin Silvester well enough to be surprised that he had left anything at all. Probably, he reflected, Mrs Silvester had her own income. Silvester had made money easily and abundantly, but he had loved entertaining on a generous scale, and loved yet more anything in the nature of a gamble for high stakes. He had been well-known and popular in the social world, though a malicious wit had made him not everyone’s friend; which had added a spice to the news that, at his death, he had left behind him the material for a volume of memoirs, to be published in due time.

  ‘Mother has the house in Wallingford,’ Marion said, ‘and not too much to run it on, when Fred’s school bills have been paid. I had a little capital of my own, enough to keep me while I was learning to make a living, so I decided to come to London and train for a secretary’s job. I took this place we’re going to, and started a course at Needham’s.’

  Trent asked when she had finished her course.

  ‘Why, I never did finish it,’ Marion said. ‘I hadn’t been at it three months when Paula Kozicki looked me up. You wouldn’t know her—she’s my boss’s daughter, of course, and she was my greatest friend at school. She had all her education in England, and you would never know she was a Pole. She’s lived with her father since he came to London. He had a son who went to the devil, Paula told me, and since then the old man has been entirely devoted to her. Well, when she called on me, she told me her father wanted a new secretary, and nothing would do but that he must have me for the job.

  ‘I was astonished. I had only seen him once in my life, when Paula brought him to tea in Reville Place. I had heard about him sometimes from father, who for some reason didn’t like him, and I had always imagined he was very disagreeable; but when he came I quite took to the old chap, he so evidently doted on Paula. But of course I hadn’t ever dreamed of an offer like this. Well, she made me come round and see him; and he was most charming—said he had been so much touched by Paula’s story of me and my doings—he laid it on rather thick, really. You know the sort of thing men say when a girl doesn’t merely curl up and collapse when things get difficult.’

  ‘Yes, I do know,’ Trent said with feeling. ‘Your pluck, your self-reliance, your—’

  ‘All right, I see you’ve got it by heart,’ interrupted the girl of the period. ‘So when we had got over that part, he asked if I could come to him, as his secretary was leaving him for a better position—which I knew from Paula; only she also told me the doctor had got her another post because he wanted to have me. I said how gratified I was, but that I had had very little training and no experience; and he said any fool could do the work—though he didn’t put it quite that way—as it was just keeping a list of appointments with patients, and receiving them when they came, and taking some correspondence, and noting up the fees. And then he offered me about double what I should have expected for my first job.

  ‘Well, I took it. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it; and there still isn’t, after a month of it. The work’s not hard, and in fact there’s often not much to do, so that I can get a little work done on Father’s book. Oh! I didn’t tell you that I was putting his rough notes for his memoirs into shape for the publishers. They’re very rough ones, and I have to write the whole thing out myself. I take some of the stuff to the doctor’s every day. There’s quite a lot of it—I haven’t read it all yet, in fact; but a good deal of what I have read is pretty scandalous, believe me.’

  Trent, with a vivid memory of Silvester’s vein of unexpurgated anecdote about people of importance, said that this was easy to believe. ‘But you say there’s still nothing wrong with this heaven-sent job of yours. Marion, you blast my hopes. I thought I was going to hear that Kozicki had made dishonourable proposals to you, or that he drinks laudanum, or that he has a private delusion that he is a weasel. Well, it’s all very capital for you, and I am gladder than I can say—and here we are at 43 Reville Place.’

  This was an old-fashioned, high-roofed, stucco-fronted house with a basement and three other floors; like all its neighbours, slightly dingy in appearance, though not dilapidated. They mounted the steps, and Marion opened the door with a latch-key. It could be seen, as they went up the stairs, that each floor had been partitioned off to form a self-contained flat; and Marion’s own door, like the front door, was fitted with a Yale lock.

  ‘Well, here’s my top floor,’ she said as they entered. There were four rooms opening off the landing, all fairly lofty and well lighted.

  ‘And a very good top floor,’ Trent observed when he had been shown the living-room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. ‘Much better than the top floor in my own place; and furnished, as I think you said, with faultless taste. If ever you want to get rid of that little tallboy you might let me know. And that mahogany writing-table—it was a spinet when it was young, wasn’t it? You want to keep that, I suppose.’

  Marion laughed. ‘Are you setting up an antique shop? But now, let me tell you what it was I wanted your advice about. To begin with, look at the top of that table.’

  He bent over it. ‘You mean these faint scratches here and there—as if something hard and heavy had been shifted about on it. Curious? The scratches are in four lots—making the four corners of a square. Was it done when the furniture was moved here from Wallingford?’

  ‘No, it was done fairly lately—three weeks ago, say; perhaps more. That table was as smooth as glass till then. I rub it over with a duster every day, so I noticed it at once. And it wasn’t done by the charlady who comes in two mornings a week. She is a very careful, neat-handed woman; and besides, I first saw the scratches on a Thursday, and her days are Tuesday and Friday. Of course, I don’t like having my table scratched, but what I like much less is not knowing who did it, and how anyone could have been here to do it. The entrance door is locked when I’m out, of course; and the street door always is. And don’t look as if you thought I was worrying about a trifle. There are other things that tell me plainly someone comes into this place when I’m not here.

  ‘You see the velvet cushion in that arm-chair? It’s embroidered a prettier pattern on one side than on the other, and I always leave it showing that side, as it is now. But several times I have come in and found it turned the other way round. Anyone who had been sitting in that chair, and had punched the cushion into shape again before going away, would be as likely as not to leave it wrong way round. Then again there is that old writing-table you covet so much. There is nothing of value in either of the drawers—I keep Father’s notes for his memoirs in the left-hand one, and as much as I have done of the fair copy in the other—but three times someone has been at them.’

  ‘They are not locked?’ Trent asked.

  ‘No—nothing in the place is locked except the door of the flat. Now, look at these drawers. You see’—she opened both and shut them again—‘they both push in a little too far when you close them, and I always pull them back so as to be just level with the woodwork round them. I’m fussily particular, perhaps you think; anyhow, I am absolutely certain I have never left those drawers pushed right in as I found them three days running not long ago. And now here’—she led the way into the kitchen—‘I’ll show you the thing that makes me quite certain, and that is this sink. When I’ve washed up after breakfast I leave it not only perfectly clean,
but quite dry, bottom and sides as well.’

  ‘Why?’ Trent wondered.

  ‘Because I’ve been well brought up,’ Marion said conclusively. ‘Well, every day for some time past I have come home and found it perfectly clean, but not dry—drops of water on the sides, which you get from the splashes when you’re running the tap. Look! You see those drops? A man wouldn’t, I suppose, unless they were pointed out to him. They weren’t here when I left this morning.’

  Marion and her guest looked at one another in silence for some moments; then Trent remarked, ‘You say nothing about having missed anything—jewellery, or any other sort of portable property.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Absolutely nothing has ever been stolen, I am sure. I often leave money in my dressing-table drawer, and my jewellery, such as it is, is kept there, too, and nothing has been taken. What food I have had in the place has never been touched, nor any of the household things—unless you count those matches, which I suppose came from my box.’

  Trent rose and paced the floor. ‘It all sounds pretty mad, I must say,’ he observed. ‘And it doesn’t make it seem any saner to suggest that one of the people on the lower floors may be your visitor, as they haven’t got your private key.’

  ‘Yes, and besides, why should they? As for my keys, they are always in my handbag, which is with me all the time. The only duplicates are a pair I keep in the dressing-table drawer, and a pair the charwoman has; and if you ever saw Mrs Kinch you would know she was incapable of doing anything eccentric or not respectable. She worships the vicar of St Mark’s, just round the corner, and she sings hymns while she is doing out the place, as she calls it; and she has a son in a solicitor’s office, and likes to let you know it. There have been other things, too, which you can’t possibly connect with Mrs Kinch. There’s that window you saw me shut when we came in. She knows I always leave it open, to air the room. Well, several times I have come home and found it shut. You see?’