August Derleth - The Solar Pons Omnibus Volume 1

by August Derleth

  "You did not see what happened to the spectre?"

  "Ah, yes, I managed that. There are several points of interest to be noted. For instance, the cane which struck young Betterton is at least a very material object. I have no doubt we may assume that the spectre who wielded it is fully as material. He appeared, as I said, midway up the far side of the double stairs. Obviously then, he could not have walked the length of the great hall, gone upstairs, and been halfway down before being noticed, since we were watching for him. I fancy, therefore, he must have come not from the lower floor, but from the second storey. And as to his disappearance —this took place just across the hall from where we were hiding in the drawing-room; in fact, it was almost precisely before Jasper Bayne's door."

  "Surely that is conclusive!" I cried. "He simply got rid of his dressing-gown and came back out."

  "Slowly, slowly, Parker. Not at all. He wore a dressing-gown and pyjamas. He was therefore abed, or at least he was in his room. If it must be admitted that the spectre came from the second storey, it could not have been Bayne, for we had his quarters under eye throughout the preceding two hours. No, I think we cannot suspect Bayne of playing ghost. His lamp was certainly not alight before the spectre appeared, or we would have noticed its glow beneath the door. And if Bayne did play the ghost, he certainly made an uncommonly swift job of getting rid of his paraphernalia and lighting his lamp. Yet, it is equally certain that the spectre disappeared into his room."

  "I hold to Bayne, Pons."

  "If so, what motive did he have to carry on his deception over a month before Miss Melham made known her attachment for Hugh Betterton?"

  "As to that, I can't say. What of Sir Andrew?"

  "Ah, you have reached that point, eh? I took occasion yesterday afternoon to consult the physician who attended Sir Andrew during his paralytic stroke, and I have his absolute and unconditional assurance that Sir Andrew could never possibly walk again. I fear Sir Andrew is out of the question."

  "Then we have a third party to consider."

  "Obviously. And his identity ought to be clear enough. I am, however, not quite certain of the motive behind this complex and dark business, and I fear the matter must just rest until tonight's excitement at Melham Old Place is forgotten. If only Miss Melham had left matters entirely in my hands! As it is, I should not be surprised if events have been precipitated and we shall shortly hear from Miss Melham."

  Pons spent the next two days making inquiries in Durham and about the countryside. He learned that Jasper Bayne was the son of the late Sir Mark Melham's secretary, and that he had grown up with the Melham boys, and had been as disturbed and grieved by Sir Peter's unsolved disappearance as Sir Andrew had been. Pons was able to make several routine examinations of Melham Old Place by means of his binoculars, but could detect no signs of unusual activity.

  However, matters were soon to be brought to a head.

  On the night destined to resolve the mystery, a violent storm broke out. The day had been sullen and close; Pons had seen the storm approaching early in the evening and was in the house when it burst. We sat for some time listening to the furious driving of the rain against the windows, beating upon the glass and the shutters before a wind almost of gale proportions. I saw that Pons was listening intently, and indeed the wind was distinctly foreign to us, unused as we were to such blasts in London. I could not read, and Pons appeared to be ill at ease.

  "I should not be surprised if something happens over there tonight, Parker," he said at last, turning to me.

  "Why tonight?" I asked, smiling. "Because of the storm?"

  "Dear me, no. But Miss Melham's month is up today. She may well be asked for her decision in regard to young Betterton. Since we know she has no intention of giving him up, and that young Bayne has no intention of marrying her, since he could not even if he wanted to, her decision will break the tension and will doubtless effect a rift between Bayne and Sir Andrew. What may come of that should be of considerable interest.'*

  Pons looked up at the clock, while I turned his words over in my mind. It was ten minutes of midnight. "Well, it is almost twelve; if he still walks, the limping man will soon be on his rounds."

  At this moment there came a furious pounding at the door. Pons was up on the instant, and I followed him into the hall. As he swung the door open, the limp figure of Miss Maureen Melham fell forward into the room. Pons caught her and supported her, heedless of the rain driving in through the open door. She was dripping wet, and breathing rapidly, obviously having run through wind and rain to the house. I closed the door and turned to find her clutching the lapels of Pons's dressing-gown.

  "Mr. Pons! Something terrible has happened. Don't lose a moment! Jasper Bayne has been murdered, and my Uncle Andrew is dying—shot, too!"

  She brushed her hair from her eyes and stood away from him, for he took time only to seize his mackintosh before he left the house. Miss Melham would have taken after him, tired and wet as she was, but yielded to my insistence that she wear my own raincoat; then the two of us ran blindly through the rain and wind, over open fields softened by the rain, through underbrush of the scattered copses on the way to Melham Old Place.

  We were drenched to the skin when we got to the house. But Pons's wild run had got him there in ample time before us to have the situation already well in hand. A man had been dispatched to the headquarters of the county constabulary; another had been sent for young Betterton, since Pons had assumed that Miss Melham would want him to take over when Pons had finished. We had entered by the French windows and had come out into the lower hall where a huddled group of servants stood at a distance from the body of Jasper Bayne, which lay at the foot of the stairs, clothed only in nightgown and dressing-robe. Bayne lay on his back, his arms flung wide; his face was no longer malevolent, being now white and pale, and his cold, sightless eyes were devoid of the hatred I had first seen in them. Even the black Mephistophelian brows were no longer terrifying. An irregular red stain on his breast told where he had been shot.

  Pons was bustling about in a perfect storm of action — running in and out of Jasper Bayne's room, and up and down the stairs. "Yes, yes," he said excitedly, as we came up to him, "he was shot on the landing, and rolled down."

  "But by whom?" I demanded.

  "By whom but the limping man? The whole ridiculous jigsaw is clear as day, Parker; I have been only a little short of being obtuse. Now, then —we can do nothing for Bayne. Let us attend to Sir Andrew."

  So saying, he hastened up the stairs, whither Miss Melham had already gone, and followed her into Sir Andrew's room, the door to which stood open.

  Sir Andrew Melham lay in his low bed, breathing painfully. Miss Melham knelt beside him.

  "Your field, Parker," said Pons.

  I bent above Sir Andrew, trying not to disturb too much Miss Melham's attention to him, for there was evident between them now a strong attachment; she held one of her uncle's thin hands in hers, and was trying hard to keep back her tears. The man's bony outlines were plainly visible through the few coverings, which I turned back to attend to his wound. But it was manifest at a glance that he was dying. I staunched the flow of blood from his wound, and stood back.

  Despite the look of age upon him, Sir Andrew's eyes were sharp and piercing. He looked past me to Pons, who had seen the weapon on the floor, identified Pons, and spoke to his niece.

  "You had better go, Maureen. I wish to speak to these gentlemen, alone."

  Miss Melham bowed her head and relinquished her hold on her uncle's hand. Sir Andrew's eyes followed her to the door; only when it closed behind her did he turn to Pons once more.

  "Mr. Pons —you know?" he asked, watching him with his sharp eyes, which looked so vital and alive in his wrinkled features.

  "Yes, Sir Peter!"

  The dying man nodded. "I am Sir Peter Melham, yes. You can guess what we did, Bayne and I. We were mad, Mr. Pons —mad! It was the estate, of course. My brother swore that my daughter would not inherit
at his death. I can't know now whether he meant it; but I thought he did, then, and it maddened me." He put one hand weakly over his eyes.

  Pons said nothing.

  "It is said the devil protects his own —and he put one in this house to protect me. But I killed him tonight, you see, and now myself, to keep everything from coming out." He challenged Pons. "For the love of God, sir, will you keep it from her?" He made a feeble gesture in the direction of the door through which his daughter had passed.

  "I think it can be done, Sir Peter."

  The dying man made an attempt to rise on his elbows, but it was too much for him; before Pons and I could reach him, the wound began to gush blood anew, and he fell back, coughing and collapsing into his bed. Sir Peter Melham was dead.

  When we came from the room, we found the police and Hugh Betterton in charge. Pons went directly to Miss Maureen Melham, doubtless to tell her Sir Peter was dead. Then he stepped over to the police-officers and the doctor, and drew them aside; they went together up to Sir Peter's room, and it was some time before they came down to where I waited.

  An hour later, we were on our way back to Sir John Mollines's country-house. The storm had passed now, and the moon shone from the western heavens, casting a dim, eerie light on the landscape, which was still so wet that our progress was slow. We walked for some distance before I spoke at length to say that the solution of the puzzle left me with little to conjecture, though I must admit I was not entirely clear as to what had taken place.

  "Ah, it was simple enough," said Pons. "Suppose you go back three years to that October night when Sir Peter left Melham Old Place on the way to Prague. It should be relatively easy, in the light of tonight's events, to follow him. At Durward he purchased his ticket for London; he stepped into the train from Edinburgh, and that was the last seen of him. Sir Peter got into the train, and as soon as it began to move —perhaps even before —he got out again."

  "But surely he would have been seen!" I cried.

  "The hour was late. He may have waited until the train had pulled out of Durward and got back through the countryside. His motive for making away with his brother was obvious; he himself told us of it before he died. He had Bayne's aid, and Sir Andrew undoubtedly lies buried in some remote spot on the estate. The boldest stroke of the whole wretched business followed, when Sir Peter took his dead brother's place. As you were told, they were twins; their resemblance was marked; moreover, Sir Peter had watched his brother long enough to have memorized his actions; and he knew that since Sir Andrew no longer had regular medical

  attention, he was safe. His greatest difficulty lay in deceiving his daughter, but he succeeded. Next to that, his inability to enjoy relaxation imposed such a strain on him that he had to resort to walking about by night.

  "So the stage was set for Jasper Bayne's betrayal. You can well conceive what Sir Peter's feeling must have been when he discovered that Bayne had promised himself that Maureen Melham must marry his son, Robert. From that time on the breach between the murderers widened, and doubtless then, too, Sir Peter's nocturnal ramblings were made with less care and more agitation, as he passed to and from Bayne's room and his own, and so he was mistaken for his own spectre by his daughter. On the night we almost had him, he was doubtless on his way to Bayne's room, and remained hidden there until the household was once again quiet.

  "What happened tonight must be clear. Miss Melham gave her supposed 'uncle' her decision; he in turn informed Bayne when Bayne came to his room; Bayne delivered his ultimatum, which was the threat of revelation —very probably not to the police, since that would involve him, too —but to Miss Melham, in the knowledge that she, to conceal her father's crime, would acquiesce to Bayne's plan, for Bayne never did know of his son's marriage; and Sir Peter gave Bayne his answer —which was to pursue him from the room and shoot him as he was descending the stairs, after which, as we have seen, he shot himself."

  "Amazing!"

  "A remarkable but annoying affair in which I failed to distinguish myself, because I disregarded one of my own primary concepts —that what is most baffling on the face of matters is often most simple in essence."

  The Adventure of the Shaplow Millions

  SOLAR PONS LOOKED up from the morning post, chuckling. "Try your hand at that, Parker," he said, handing a letter across the breakfast-table.

  It came with a breath of fragrance. "Ah, perfumed stationery," I said. "From a lady."

  "Elementary," said Pons.

  "Mr. Solar Pons, Dear Sir," I read. "Even though I have been told you don't handle my kind of trouble in your private inquiry practise, I am sure only a cad would deny his assistance to a lady in need. If Arthur thinks he can do me out of my share of the money by just divorcing me, he's got another think coming. I've promised myself the best detective in London. I'm not going to give up my share without a struggle. He thinks because he's a Major in the Second Regiment of the King's Horse Guards nobody can touch him, but we'll see about that, and Mr. Pons, I believe you're the man to do it. If it's all the same to you, I will call on you at ten-thirty tomorrow morning." The letter was signed in a flourishing hand, "Rosie Shaplow." She appended an address in Chepstow, Monmouthshire.

  I looked into Pons's twinkling eyes. "You are surely not going to demean yourself by exploring the lady's marital affairs," I cried. "Matters of divorce are beneath a man of your calibre."

  "Ah, let us not be hasty, Parker," said Pons. "It involves no commitment to hear what the lady has to say. Moreover, there is an intriguing little note in the letter —apart from some mystery about 'the money' —that interests me."

  "It is no more than a sordid divorce proceeding," I said.

  "You observed nothing else about Mrs. Shaplow's letter to give you pause?"

  "Except that Mrs. Shaplow would appear to be a vulgar woman, given to saturating her stationery with cheap perfume. ..."

  "On the contrary," interrupted Pons, "it is costly —a cloying and much-advertised perfume from Paris."

  "The principle is the same. She can hardly write a coherent letter."

  "True, she becomes increasingly indignant at the thought of losing a share of 'the money.' But there is at least one other little point."

  "I fail to see a facet of interest beyond the commonplace. "

  "Yet Mrs. Shaplow is so specific I have no doubt she has been impressed time and again with her husband's importance."

  "It is a role husbands play without effort."

  "While I have no interest in Mrs. Shaplow's marital difficulties, I confess to a tickling of curiosity about a fellow who vaunts his membership in the Second King's Horse Guards. In any case, it is far too late to put the lady off. She will be here within the hour."

  In half an hour before the appointed time, our client presented herself. She proved to be an attractive blonde in her mid-thirties, dressed in the height of expensive bad taste, and wearing a furpiece around her neck, though the weather was much too warm for it. She flashed no less than five gaudy rings and reeked of perfume; as if that were not bad enough from my point of view, she had a singularly annoying habit of fluttering long, and, I was sure, artificial eyelashes over her cold blue eyes.

  "I said to myself that Mr. Solar Pons would take my case," she announced with easy self-confidence, as she settled herself in the chair Pons proffered and fluttered her lashes at him where he stood leaning against the mantel. "I can pay —and if I get my share of the money, I can pay well —as well as you've been paid, Mr. Pons."

  "Indeed," said Pons, keeping a straight face with difficulty.

  "As soon as the suit is settled, that is."

  "Ah, there is a suit before the courts?"

  "Oh, yes, I should say so, Mr. Pons. Over seven million pounds! And he can't lose it, I should say, with a Certain Personage in it with him. They are the two parties to the action, as my husband puts it." She seemed to be proud of the circumstances, but in a thrice her indignation boiled up again. "But if he thinks he can up and divorce me withou
t even going to court—just by having his important friends stamp the papers, why, I'll not stand for it, I certainly won't."

  Pons's face, I saw, was now alight with interest. "Pray start at the beginning, Mrs. Shaplow," he urged.

  She was momentarily stopped in her flow of words, but not for long. With a little laugh, she said, "I suppose it began when I married Arthur three years ago. He had already started the suit then. Not that, as you might say, he needed the money —he was that good a provider, he never left me in want of anything—but with one thing and another, I suppose we were apart too much, he was always having to go up to London, and he still does to this day, takes the 8:17 for Paddington every morning, as regular as you please, five days a week, always on the watch for new investors, because of course he never had so much money to fight the bank with over so many years, and the sum's worth it, indeed it is."

  I was surprised at Pons's willingness to permit our client to go on so, but he seemed, if the evidence of my senses were not to be distrusted, to be engrossed in her account, which was delivered in a very rapid manner, as if Mrs. Shaplow were utterly unfamiliar with commas or periods. Indeed, his eyes glittered in their intensity, and he caressed his earlobe in such a manner as to denote unusual interest —and in nothing more than the customary details of the prosaic sordid story of a divorce action!

  "But the suit isn't my story," she went on without interruption from Pons. "I suppose it's the old story. I suppose Arthur met another woman in London and took a fancy to her. He was always the one to give in to quick like or dislike — that's Arthur. Naturally, he wouldn't say anything to me. Not that I didn't notice anything. I could tell he was cooling on me, but it didn't worry me at first. Three days ago he told me we were all through —divorced, and he put the divorce decree in my hands."