August Derleth - The Solar Pons Omnibus Volume 1

by August Derleth

  My patience with Pons was wearing dangerously thin. I protested, "If Ricoletti did not kill him, who did?"

  "Someone who looked like a beast," replied Pons simply. "The same individual who invaded Ricoletti's office. Let me hazard a guess, though I may well be in error. The murderer is a sufferer from a disease uncommon in these latitudes; you will recall Stoward's description — a 'horrible, swollen travesty of a face.' It suggested something to me at once, rare even in the latitudes where it occurs. Sometimes a commoner form of the disease is called 'Barbados leg.' "

  "Elephantiasis!" I exclaimed.

  "Capital, Parker, capital!" cried Pons. "I submit that elephantiasis arabum, or filarial elephantiasis, of the face, with its characteristic coarse, wart-like skin, with possible varicose ulcers, would excite the descriptions we have encountered."

  "But surely such an individual could be discovered with ease," I protested.

  "Perhaps," said Pons enigmatically. "I fancy the man to identify Walton's murderer is Ricoletti himself. I propose to ask him without further delay."

  He came to his feet as he spoke, a gleam in his eyes that would not be gainsaid.

  "But the hour," I cried. "It is almost midnight. You could call on him at his office tomorrow."

  "No, no, Parker," Pons answered impatiently. "It is the house I am most desirous of seeing. Must it not indeed be a veritable paradise that man would seclude himself within its walls with no desire to leave it save for the monotony of his work? If you will be so good as to telephone for a cab, we will be on our way without waiting upon the Underground."

  The house which belonged to Orso Ricoletti brooded darkly on the edge of Hampstead Heath, from which came the aroma of wet foliage, for, though rainfall had ceased, a thick fog was beginning to rise, and carried with it the multiple odours of the city and, in this place, of the surrounding countryside. I had remonstrated with Pons all the way in vain; he had set his heart on knocking up Ricoletti, and no other time would do.

  We made our way to the front door, upon which Pons beat a rattling tattoo. Beyond the house, the undulations of Hampstead Heath, with its birches and poplars, shone spectrally in the semi- darkness, for there was a moon behind the now thinning clouds, and a kind of iridescence illuminated the scene. The house, at the end of a street adjoining the Heath, was attractive yet simple, without ornateness in its exterior. Pons knocked again; there was no bell-push to be seen, for Pons had struck a match to search for it.

  We waited yet longer, but presently a light went up inside.

  "Ah, it is Ricoletti himself," whispered Pons. "He has stopped to put on his shoes. What a pity he should be so afflicted."

  The door opened suddenly and the cryptographer stood there, clad in a dressing-gown, his feet shod, and carrying in one hand a stout cane, leaded at one end, and in the other an electric lantern.

  "Mr. Ricoletti," said Pons softly.

  "I am Ricoletti."

  "My name is Solar Pons. My companion is Dr. Lyndon Parker."

  There was a sharp intake of breath from the sallow-faced man on the threshold, "Ah, Bancroft's brother. I have heard of you, Mr. Pons. Please come in."

  He stepped aside as he spoke, waited until we had passed him, then closed the door behind us and walked around us to lead the way in his slow fashion to a sitting-room, which he lit by pressing a button with his cane. Soft, diffused lights, set low around the walls, came into being. The room was comfortable and well-appointed, but its furnishings were distinctly foreign, save for such added pieces which contributed to physical comfort and did not conflict with the West Indian theme of the decoration. There was present in the house a marked, animal-like musk, not unpleasant, but provocative.

  I forebore to ask about it, but Ricoletti himself mentioned it at once. "I trust the aroma does not offend you. I am used to it. It is a West Indian perfume my wife likes to use." He turned, having reached the farther wall of the room. "Please sit down. I know you would not have come to see me except on a matter of the utmost urgency to you."

  "And to you," said Pons.

  Ricoletti sighed. His dark eyes seemed infinitely weary and sad, his sensitive mouth was twisted as if with pain. "Of course, it is about the office," he said. "I told them none of the papers had been taken; I assured them solemnly there was no occasion for concern. But I know the Chief; he will not rest until he knows."

  "He waits only on my assurance, Mr. Ricoletti," said Pons. "That is why I am here."

  "I give you that," said Ricoletti passionately. "Pray believe me, Mr. Pons. The entire matter has been explained, and nothing further will come of it."

  "But there are a few minor points," Pons went on relentlessly. "There is a reasonable probability that your keys were used to effect entrance to your office last night."

  "Impossible. My keys were in my pocket when I went to bed; they were there when I woke up."

  "Could someone not have abstracted them in the night?"

  "Sir, my wife and I live here alone."

  "Did you by chance have visitors last evening?"

  "We never entertain visitors, Mr. Pons. Except for an urgent messenger from the office one night in 1914, no one but you two gentlemen has ever been inside this house," said Ricoletti gravely. "How can I assure you, so that you, in turn, can convince the Chief there is no reason for their concern?"

  "Ah, there is no need to assure me, Mr. Ricoletti," said Pons. "I know very well that the matter was an entirely personal one. The only question which remains is this: was Cyrus Cryder's death self- defence, or was it not?"

  "Sir, the evidence at the trial was satisfactory."

  "Ah, but you see, I have read Andrew Walton's letter," said Pons softly.

  Ricoletti's head jerked up, his lips parted in dismay. Then he covered his face with his hands and rocked his slender body to and fro in despair.

  "I might have known," he said at last. "They photographed the letter."

  "And now that Andrew Walton has been murdered," began Pons.

  "Mr. Pons, I beg you to believe me. Cryder had made overtures of the vilest kind to my wife. He came to my office one day, drunk, and attacked me; I shot him. I was unable to prevent his death. Walton's testimony was true, but he had fallen on evil days. He had written me from Barbados, asking for money; I had sent him some, but not at the urgency of a threat; he had previously not uttered any threats. I had not heard from him for years, believe me; his letter came like a bolt from the blue against which I had no defence. Everything would have been lost, my position — though that did not matter —my home and my wife, and that did. I had to pay, or be involved in scandal which would have ruined my life, no matter how certainly I might have been cleared, and I would have been. I am glad Walton is dead, but I did not kill him."

  "My visit here is entirely unofficial, Mr. Ricoletti," said Pons. "I know nothing of any murder you may have committed."

  There was a sudden rustle from the adjoining corridor, and in a moment a woman stepped into the room.

  "I think you gentlemen are looking for me," she said in a harsh but steady voice.

  Then I saw her face. It was a horrible, blasphemous mockery of a human face, swollen and coarse, warty and ulcerous; its features were askew, as were it a grotesque and repulsive mask; it was more than twice as large as it ought to have been, making a further mockery of the well-proportioned body beneath it; if ever it had had any natural beauty, that beauty had vanished without trace. The woman was dark-skinned, younger than Ricoletti, and despite the grotesquerie of her head, she walked with lithe grace to where Ricoletti sat and reached down for his hand.

  I controlled my features only with the utmost effort.

  Pons came to his feet. "No, Mrs. Ricoletti, we are looking for no one. We came only to assure your husband we could convince his superiors that there was no further cause for alarm at the invasion of his office which someone made last night. Neither of us is an official, and if I were to guess that someone had drugged your husband, taken his keys, taken
his car, driven to his office to find the address of the man who was blackmailing him because he would not himself reveal it, and then gone there to that inn in Limehouse and strangled him to protect your husband, I would be too far from being able to submit proof to dare offer the hypothesis."

  For a long minute the two of them faced us —he sitting there with his malformed foot before him, she standing at his side, their hands clasped, her horrible face turned in our direction but seeming to look beyond us.

  "Fifteen years," whispered Ricoletti then, and only clasped her hand more tightly.

  "Please tell them," said Mrs. Ricoletti, "that my husband has done nothing, that no one is interested in his work."

  "I shall have nothing other to report," said Pons.

  "Thank you," said Ricoletti.

  In the cab Pons leaned back, his chin sunk upon his chest, his eyes closed.

  "Was there from the beginning the possibility of any other solution, Parker?" he asked. "I daresay not. The keys were Ricoletti's, certainly; he might have suspected that they had been used. He might have known. We shall not know. But I am certain that what happened can readily be imagined. It would have been impossible for Ricoletti to conceal his agitation from his wife, after he had read Walton's threat, however much he might strive to keep from her anything to worry her. But she must have divined when Walton's address reached her husband, perhaps by his actions —the preparations to send Walton money without further delay, a kind of lessening of his tension undoubtedly. He had not brought it home; he meant to deal with Walton on Walton's terms. She, too, foresaw Walton's ultimate plan and forestalled it. She may have drugged him; I think it likely that she did, taken his keys, gone for the car — you will remember that she was seen to leave the house, but the guard thought it was some late visitor—and found Walton's address in her husband's wastepaper-basket at his office. She lost no time going to Limehouse and strangled Walton.

  "Who can say where the largest measure of guilt lies? I loathe a blackmailer above all other criminals; he preys upon the weaknesses of his fellow-humans. And can you put yourself into her place? Conceive what torture she must have endured through these years, looking like an abomination on the face of the earth, a solitary by necessity, but still sharing a love that did not falter throughout her adversity. That house was their haven; their security lay in each other. Walton threatened it. She knew that if Walton had his way, their security would soon be gone; she knew that if she were caught, then, too, that precious security was lost, they would be parted, perhaps forever, since neither is any longer young. It did not matter. Perhaps she tried to reason with Walton; but I doubt even that. She went there to kill him and did so."

  "But if she did kill him, Pons," I remonstrated, "it was murder. You have an obligation to lay your evidence before the authorities."

  "Ah, but I have no evidence," said Pons, smiling. "My only obligation is to Bancroft and the Foreign Office in this matter; I can give them the assurance they want and need. I can do no more. My conjectures are of no interest to the police or Scotland Yard, and I have no desire to pursue them to actionable proof. No, Parker, I detect in this little matter the hand of Providence; and I have no desire to interfere with her inscrutable workings."

  The Adventure of the Unique Dickensians

  i.

  "THIS CHRISTMAS SEASON," said Solar Pons from his place at the windows of our quarters at 7B, Praed Street, "holds the promise of being a merry one, after the quiet week just past. Flakes of snow are dancing in the air and what I see below enchants me. Just step over here, Parker, and have a look."

  I put down the book I was reading and went over to stand beside him.

  Outside, the snowflakes were large and soft, shrouding the streetlight which had come on early in the winter dusk, and enclosing, like a vision from the past, the scene at the kerb —a hansom cab, no less, drawn by a horse that looked almost as ancient as the vehicle, for it stood with a dejected air while its master got out of the cab, leaning on his stick.

  "It has been years since I have seen a hansom cab," I said. "Ten, at least —if not more. And that must surely be its owner."

  The man getting out of the cab could be seen but dimly, but he wore a coat of ankle length, fitting his thin frame almost like an outer skin, and an old beaver hat that added its height to his, and when he turned to look up at the number above our outer entrance, I saw that he wore a grizzled beard and square spectacles.

  "Could he have the wrong address?" I wondered.

  "I fervently hope not," said Pons. "The wrong century, perhaps, but not, I pray, the wrong address."

  "No, he is coming in."

  "Capital, capital!" cried Pons, rubbing his hands together and turning from the window to look expectantly toward the door.

  We listened in silence as the cabman applied below to Mrs. Johnson, our landlady, and then to his climbing the stairs, a little wheezily, but withal more like a young man than an old.

  "But he clutches the rail," said Pons, as if he had read my thoughts. "Listen to his nails scrape the wall."

  At the first touch of the old fellow's stick on the door, Pons strode forward to throw it open.

  "Mr. Solar Pons?" asked our visitor in a thin, rather querulous voice.

  "Pray come in, sir," said Pons.

  "Before I do, I'll want to know how much it will cost," said our client.

  "It costs nothing to come in," said Pons, his eyes dancing.

  "Everything is so dear these days," complained the old fellow as he entered our quarters. "And money isn't easily come by. And too readily spent, sir, too readily spent."

  I offered him a seat, and took his hat.

  He wore, I saw now, the kind of black half-gloves customarily worn by clerks, that came over his wrists to his knuckles. Seeing me as for the first time, he pointed his cane at me and asked of Pons, "Who's he?"

  "Dr. Parker is my companion."

  He looked me up and down suspiciously, pushing his thin lips out and sucking them in, his eyes narrowed. His skin was the colour of parchment, and his clothes, like his hat, were green with age.

  "But you have the advantage of us, sir," said Pons.

  "My name is Ebenezer Snawley." Then he turned to me and stuck out an arm. "They're Pip's," he said, referring to the clerical cuffs, which I saw now they were. "No need for him to wear 'em. He's inside, and I'm out, and it would be a shameful waste to spend good money on gloves for the few times I go out in such weather." His eyes narrowed a trifle more. "Are you a medical man?"

  I assured him that I was.

  "Have a look at that, Doctor," he said, indicating a small growth on one finger.

  I examined it and pronounced it the beginning of a wart.

  "Ah, then it's of no danger to my health. I thank you. As you're not in your surgery, no doubt there'll be no fee."

  "Doctor Parker is a poor man," said Pons.

  "So am I, sir. So am I," said Snawley. "But I had to come to you," he added in an aggrieved voice. "The police only laugh at me. I applied to them to have the nuisance stopped."

  "What is the nature of the nuisance?" asked Pons.

  "Aha! you've not told me your fee for consultation," said Snawley.

  "I am accustomed to setting my fee in accordance with the amount of work I must do," said Pons. "In some cases there is no fee at all."

  "No fee? No fee at all?" "We do on occasion manifest the spirit of Christmas," continued Pons.

  "Christmas! Humbug!" protested our client.

  "Do not say so," said Pons.

  "Christmas is a time for well-meaning fools to go about bestowing useless gifts on other fools," our client went on testily.

  "But you did not come to discuss the season," said Pons gently.

  "You are right, sir. I thank you for reminding me. I came because of late I have been much troubled by some fellow who marches up and down before my house bawling street songs."

  "Are they offensive songs?"

  Our visitor shook his h
ead irritably. "Any song is offensive if I do not wish to hear it."

  "Scurrilous?"

  "Street songs."

  "Do you know their words?"

  "Indeed, and I do, Mr. Pons. And I should. 'Crack 'em and try 'em, before you buy 'em eight a-penny. All new walnuts. Crack 'em and try 'em, before you buy 'em. A shilling a-hundred. All new walnuts,' " he said in mimicry. "And such as Rope mat! Door mat! You really must buy one to save the mud and dust; think of the dirt brought from the street for the want of a mat to wipe your feet!' Indeed I do know them. They are old London street cries."

  Pons's eyes now fairly glowed with pleasure. "Ah, he sells walnuts and rope mats."

  "A ragbag of a fellow. Sometimes it is hats —three, four at a time on his head. Sometimes it is cress. Sometimes flowers. And ever and anon walnuts. I could not chew 'em even if I bought 'em —and there's small likelihood of that. Catch me wasting good money like that! Not likely."

  "He has a right to the street," observed Pons.

  "But Mr. Pons, sir, he limits himself to the street along my property. My house is on the corner, set back a trifle, with a bit of land around it —I like my privacy. He goes no farther than the edge of my property on the one side, then back around the corner to the line of my property on the other. It is all done to annoy me —or for some other reason — perhaps to get into the house and lay hands on my valuables."

  "He could scarcely effect an entrance more noisily," said Pons, reflectively. "Perhaps he is only observing the Christmas season and wishes to favour you with its compliments."

  "Humbug!" said Snawley in a loud voice, and with such a grimace that it seemed to me he could not have made it more effectively had he practised it in front of a mirror.

  "Is he young?"

  "If any young fellow had a voice so cracked, I'd send him to a doctor." He shook his head vigorously. "He can't be less than middle-aged. No, sir. Not with a voice like that. He could sour the apples in a barrel with such a voice."