August Derleth - The Solar Pons Omnibus Volume 1

by August Derleth

  "I don't doubt it," he replied with some asperity. "Anyone who could look at a row of deeply set footprints leading toward the

  brook and away from the house and loftily announce that of course 'they' were carrying Miss Laurel Stowecroft's body to the house has, I daresay, something wanting in his ability to follow my poor powers."

  "I had not noticed," I admitted. "You are ahead of me."

  "You are unusually flattering, Parker," he said, chuckling. "Has nothing else occurred to you about this singular business?"

  "I confess I have not thought of anything. I suppose, now, that the lady was murdered."

  "Her death was certainly not an accident. She was evidently carried from the house or its vicinity by her murderer, either in a somnambulistic or stunned condition, and held under the water until she was drowned. Can you doubt that the drowning of the cat, Toby, and all the other 'Signatures' were as easily arranged? I submit therefore that only someone thoroughly familiar with the household is behind this sequence of events. You will recall the action of the dogs. As soon as Miss Graham left us, they barked at us —we were strange to them. Yet Bligh could not testify to hearing any disturbance on the night of Miss Stowecroft's death. So whoever walked with her and carried her to her death was known to them. How does the picture look to you now, Parker?"

  "I see clearly that Alex Stowecroft is now his mother's sole heir."

  "Ah, we make progress," said Pons dryly. "And if Miss Laurel's death was arranged, certainly it is reasonable to venture that that of Courtenay and Isobel Stowecroft was also designed."

  "Oh, come, Pons, any car is apt to go out of control."

  "I dislike meaningful coincidences that come so opportunely," replied Pons. "I sent a telegram to Dover some days ago. We should have an answer before long."

  Indeed, the answer to Pons's query awaited us at our quarters.

  Pons read it, smiled, and threw the telegram to the table before me, so that I too could read it. "Evidence Stowecroft Car Tampered With Please Advise." It was signed by Police-Inspector P. H. Ramsey.

  "We are about to lock horns with a determined murderer," said Pons. "Two days hence will find us once again at Stowecroft Hall. From two to five in the afternoon, Miss Graham said. We shall just see whether we can stop him three short of six."

  "You talk as if you knew him," I said.

  "Have I said I did not?" Pons demanded with what I thought unseemly arrogance. "Indeed, Parker, I submit that few problems have offered so patent a solution. We are handicapped only by the lack of sufficient evidence for conviction, and are therefore forced to gamble another life to win it. I dislike the course, but necessity demands it."

  The following Thursday afternoon found us once again in the vicinity of Canterbury. Pons had not troubled to present himself to our client at Stowecroft Hall, but had taken us directly to the wood soon after lunch. There he had ensconced himself in a position from which he had a clear view of the Hall in his binoculars. Significantly, he was armed with both a revolver and a leaded stick, and he had insisted on my being armed as well.

  At two o'clock precisely, Pons announced that Alexander Stowecroft had emerged from the house. "Now he is going to the out-buildings for a beater," he went on. "Ah, he has chosen one of them. Now he is making for the upper part of the wood. Come along, Parker."

  So saying, he slid down from his eminence and moved off in a rapid trot in the direction of Alexander Stowecroft. Once in sight of him, however, he slowed.

  "Keep down, Parker," he instructed me. "We must not be seen."

  In this skulking fashion, we followed Stowecroft and his beater, who also served from time to time as his gun-bearer, for well over an hour. Pons's patience was the direct antithesis of my own impatience. I saw no point in this meaningless chase, and lacked only the opportunity to say so forcefully.

  It was shortly after three o'clock that afternoon when Stowecroft and his man came out into a grassy glade and made for a railed fence which they obviously intended to cross. Stowecroft, who was in the lead, turned as he approached the fence, and passed his gun to his companion. Then, as Stowecroft began to climb through between the rails, the beater ran forward, holding Stowecroft's gun at precisely the angle it might have been held if Stowecroft himself were carrying it in crossing the fence.

  Pons leaped to his feet with a warning shout.

  But he was too late to prevent the contrived "accident" he had foreseen. The gun went off, and Alexander Stowecroft tumbled to the ground.

  "Your man, Parker," said Pons.

  Then, swinging his leaded stick in ever swifter circles, he made off after the beater, who had begun to run at sight of us. Halfway to the scene, Pons let fly. The heavy head of the stick caught the beater in the back of the head. He went down like a stone, not far from where Stowecroft lay groaning.

  I came up to Stowecroft and dropped to my knees at his side. He was still breathing, and his wound, I saw, was not mortal, if I could manage to stanch the flow of blood. Had it been but a few inches lower! I worked hastily, and succeeded at last.

  "A near thing," I said to Pons, who had been standing by. Then I glanced over toward the beater. "Whom have we here?" I saw the edge of a bearded face. "Why, it's Nicholson!"

  "Mr. Arthur Graham, alias Nicholson," said Pons. "I fancy this will put an end to those mysteriously opportune 'Signatures,' as well as to Mr. Graham's bloody game."

  "The identity of the man whose hand was behind the events at Stowecroft Hall was never in doubt for a moment," said Pons as we sat in our compartment on our way back to London later that day. "Nicholson was the only man who had joined the staff after Miss Graham last was in touch with her brother. You will recall that our client mentioned that her benefactor had added her name to the will six months after she had come to work there. That would have been just after the new butler had come, and some months before Miss Graham last heard from her brother. Miss Graham has admitted having written her brother that she had been named in her aunt's will; soon after, she testified, she heard nothing further from him. Two years ago Nicholson turned up and took a position at Stowecroft Hall; Arthur Graham was effectively concealed behind his full beard, and his own sister never recognized him, thinking him somewhere on the dark continent.

  "He spent almost two years studying his relatives, and then seized upon his aunt's superstitious beliefs to pave the way for the elimination of those people who stood between him and the fortune he sought."

  "But Arthur Graham wasn't mentioned in her will," I protested.

  "That was precisely the point to which I so vainly called your attention on the occasion of Miss Graham's visit to our quarters. He need not have been. If Mrs. Stowecroft died after her children, then our client inherited. If then our client herself died, Arthur was her only heir. He meant to have a fortune by one means or another. He got halfway to it."

  The Adventure of the Spurious Tamerlane

  "A SUMMER IDYLL,'' was what my friend Solar Pons called the curious adventure which began one July afternoon with the appearance on the threshold of our quarters in Praed Street of a street gamin bearing a somewhat begrimed folded note. Under tousled blond hair, his blue eyes looked up at me out of a freckled face.

  "Mr. Pons?" he asked. "Mr. Solar Pons?"

  It was a rare occasion on which a visitor did not immediately identify Pons, who stood behind me in the living-room, and I hesitated a moment before replying.

  " 'E said as it was 7B," said the boy urgently.

  "And it is, my lad," said Pons, coming up behind me and reaching for the paper clutched in our visitor's fingers, while with the other hand he tossed him a shilling.

  The boy caught his tip and was off like a flash, clattering down the steps in marked contrast to the careful manner in which he had mounted to our floor.

  Pons stepped over to the window, unfolding the note as he walked. He read it without expression, but his eyes were twinkling when he handed me the paper. It was rough to the touch, and had a torn edg
e characteristic of the valley of a book. Its message had been hastily scrawled with a pencil on the first piece of paper to come to hand.

  "Mr. Pons, dear sir," it read, "I would be obliged to you if you could step around to my barrow. I have something of a problem that may interest you. I am, sir, your respectful servant, Joshua Bryant."

  "What do you make of that, Parker?" asked Pons.

  I was sure of my ground and answered confidently. "This note is written on the endpaper of a book —an old book, and no doubt secondhand," I said. "Mr. Bryant is very probably a dealer in secondhand books."

  Pons burst into approving laughter, clapped me heartily on the back and cried, "At any time now I can retire to Sussex and keep bees! Is it not remarkable what a little exposure to ordinary ratiocination will do for one!"

  "You know him, then?"

  "He has a book barrow in Farringdon Road. I have on occasion paused to look over his wares."

  "You're going then?"

  "I never scorn the possibility of a little adventure to vary the prosaic routine," he said. "Let us just step around and pay Mr. Bryant a call."

  The Farringdon Road Book Market consisted of a row of barrows —some on wheels, some on wooden supports which held only boards on which books were displayed —set along the kerb. The wheeled barrows were supplied with canvas covering which could be rolled back on sunny days, and unrolled to cover books and browsers on days of rain and bad weather. The market was not far from Farringdon Station in one direction and the Great Northern Railway Depot in the other, and the spire of St. Paul's rose on the horizon behind the row of barrows. A score of people browsed among the books at the kerb, most of them men.

  Joshua Bryant was a short, rotund man with a florid face which made a strong contrast to his thatch of white hair. His eyes were bright and alert, and bespoke more than ordinary intelligence. He acknowledged his introduction to me with a friendly nod, but his face told us nothing.

  "I appreciate your coming, Mr. Pons," he said, without preamble. "Have a look at that."

  So saying, he took from the side pocket of his jacket a slender, tea-coloured, paperbound booklet and laid it before Pons, deftly turning back the cover to the title page, which could be read at a glance. "Tamerlane and Other Poems. By a Bostonian." A quotation from Cowper followed, though somewhat badly printed: "Young bards are giddy, and young hearts are warm, / And make mistakes for manhood to reform." Then came the name of the publisher: "Boston: Calvin F. S. Thomas . . . Printer," and the date: "1827."

  I glanced at Pons and saw his eyes lit with interest. He in turn looked inquiringly at Bryant.

  "Mr. Pons," he said earnestly, "that book was not on my barrow when I came here this morning. It doesn't belong to me. I neither bought it nor took it in in trade. Yet I found it among the books about two hours ago." His eyes challenged Pons. "Do you know its value?"

  "It is one of the rarest of American books," said Pons. "Worth

  perhaps five thousand pounds."

  Bryant nodded. "It's worth more than I am," he said wryly. "I said to myself right away, There's a smell of fish about this! So I sent off that note to you."

  Pons picked up the booklet. "May I borrow it? I will give you a receipt for it."

  "Do, Mr. Pons."

  "But first, a question or two. What of your clientele this morning?"

  "Oh, the usual. I have the regulars, Mr. Pons, the same as anyone else. Then there are those who come and go."

  "Ah, but anyone unusual?"

  Bryant looked thoughtful. "A lady," he said presently. "She bought a book of poems. Rupert Brooke."

  "Describe her."

  "Young, well-dressed, married. Not the sort I'd have expected to see here, but then, Mr. Pons, books draw from all walks of life."

  "Dark or light?"

  "Oh, on the dark side. Chestnut brown."

  "The colour of her eyes?"

  "She wore tinted glasses."

  "I see. Anyone else?"

  "A young barrister, I took him to be. He bought a Raffles. Then there was the elderly gentleman in morning-clothes. Got out of a Daimler, driven by a chauffeur. The barrister was perhaps thirty- five, the elderly gentleman certainly thirty years older. They lingered a bit, whereas the lady more or less drifted by."

  "What did the elderly gentleman buy?"

  "Nothing, Mr. Pons. I thought he'd take a book on chess he looked at for a while, but he put it back."

  "Did any of these people go to any other barrow, if you noticed?"

  "The barrister stopped at them all. The lady just walked away, and the elderly gentleman returned to his car and was driven off."

  "Can you describe him?"

  "Grey-haired, but not as white as I am, Mr. Pons. He wore a Masonic ring. His hands were well groomed. There was a moustache on his upper lip, but his chin was clean-shaven. He had blue eyes, and a squarish face."

  "Anyone further?"

  Bryant shook his head.

  "Very well. You'll hear from me, Mr. Bryant."

  Pons said not a word all the way back to 7B, and, once there, he retired at once to the corner of the room by the window where he kept his scientific laboratory, such as it was. There I left him to attend to three calls I had to make.

  When I returned to our quarters in time for dinner, I found Pons sitting deep in thought in his favourite chair, his eyes closed and his fingers tented before him. He had evidently only just finished a pipeful of the odoriferous shag he smoked, for our quarters reeked of it.

  "I suppose you've solved the mystery of Mr. Bryant's valuable book," I ventured.

  "No, no," he said almost irritably, "it is more of a mystery than ever. And the book is not valuable. It is spurious —a very clever copy, but a forgery."

  He came to his feet and strode to the table where the Tamerlane lay.

  "Look here, Parker. The date of publication is 1827. Less than a dozen copies of this book are known to exist, though a considerably larger edition was printed. Poe wrote that the book was 'suppressed for private reasons'— this accounts for its scarcity. But this copy could not have been printed in 1827, for an analysis of the paper on which it has been printed shows that the paper was made of chemically treated wood pulp. Chemical treatment for wood pulp was not, however, introduced in papermaking until after 1880. Further, the paper contains esparto grass, which was not used until 1861. And most obvious of all, the type has no kerns, and alphabets without kerns were not introduced anywhere in the world until the early 1880s. This book therefore has no value except as a literary curiosity."

  "Then no one, after all, has lost or misplaced a valuable book," I said.

  "Ah, that is the nub of the problem. I submit that the reason for the existence of this spurious Tamerlane is likely to be of more interest than its discovery in Bryant's barrow. One of his customers this morning left it there."

  "But which?"

  "I submit it was the lady. I detected lint from her white gloves on the book, but even so, it is quite the sort of thing a lady would be more likely to do than a man. The book is a skilled, professional job. How came it into being? Was it done with the intention of deceiving someone into buying it? If so, how came it on to Bryant's barrow?"

  "It was certainly done with the intention of deceiving someone," I said. "What other purpose would a spurious copy of anything have?"

  "Elementary," agreed Pons. "But I submit that the precise purpose of the deception is not nearly so clear. Presumptive evidence suggests that the copy was not made to be sold."

  "What then, was it made for?"

  "That seems to be the problem. Had it been made to be sold, we could hardly expect to discover it 'lost' on a barrow in Farringdon Road. But its only other purpose must have been to deceive a collector for some reason."

  "You infer then that it served its purpose?"

  "Precisely."

  "Then why not simply destroy it?"

  "A man would logically have done so. But women are not as logical. I put it to you that th
e lady could not bear to destroy something in the creation of which so much effort was expended."

  "Where do you go from here, then?" I asked.

  "I hoped you might be able to tell me," he said gently. "Does no course of action suggest itself to you?"

  I threw up my hands. "To find a woman on so slight a description as that supplied by Bryant seems to me next to impossible. There must be a hundred thousand women who fit that description in Greater London."

  "More," agreed Pons.

  "But perhaps there is a genuine Tamerlane in London."

  "Capital!" cried Pons. "My dear fellow, I congratulate you. It so happens that there is such a book. It is in the possession of the well- known bibliophile, Lord Heltsham. My brother knows him reasonably well. While you were on your rounds I took the opportunity of sending around to Bancroft asking him to dispatch a note by messenger to his lordship asking that I be permitted to examine his genuine Tamerlane for a few minutes at noon tomorrow."

  "Heltsham is hardly likely to be home at that hour," I pointed out.

  "Oh, it isn't his lordship I wish to see. I count on seeing his wife. He would hardly be likely to trust a servant to show me such a treasure."

  "Lady Heltsham!"

  "I fancy her ladyship knows considerably more about the spurious Tamerlane than Lord Heltsham does. I am eager to add her knowledge to my own," said Pons with an enigmatic smile. "I chose tomorrow, because I saw in this morning's Times that his lordship has a committee meeting in the Lords at noon."

  Promptly at twelve o'clock next day we presented ourselves at the front door of Lord Heltsham's townhouse in Bedford Square. The butler admitted us, showed us into the drawing-room, and retired. Presently Lady Heltsham swept into the room —a young, attractive, and vivacious woman, considerably her husband's junior. Her pleasant brown eyes looked from one to the other of us, and without hesitation fixed upon Pons.

  "Mr. Pons? I have the pleasure of your brother's acquaintance."

  "I presume upon it, your ladyship," said Pons, and introduced me.