August Derleth - The Solar Pons Omnibus Volume 1

by August Derleth

She untied them eagerly and went through the packet. She nodded as if she did not trust herself to speak.

  Pons turned and indicated the fire on the hearth. "I assure your ladyship I have not read them, but surely their nature is such that it would be dangerous for you even to carry them home."

  She crossed to the fire and threw the letters into the flames. Then she turned and fell back against the mantel with a great sobbing sigh of relief.

  "Oh, Mr. Pons!" she cried. "I cannot thank you enough. I cannot pay you. I cannot tell you how much this has meant to me. If my husband had learned of them — as he threatened. ..."

  "Pray say no more, Lady Heltsham. If I may retain that spurious Tamerlane, I shall feel amply repaid."

  "Please do!" she said earnestly. "Thank you, sir. I am happy to learn there are still gentlemen left in England!"

  She bade us good-night and slipped away.

  "A woman of rare discretion," said Pons. "You will note she asked no questions, but accepted gratefully what fate had been kind enough to offer her."

  "So it was blackmail," I said, chagrined. "Why then all this talk of espionage?"

  "My brother would hardly have responded to anything other," said Pons. "You ought not to have responded to it at all. It was surely obvious that only the most pressing matter could have caused Lady Heltsham to pawn her valuables and then to take the extreme measure of borrowing money against his lordship's genuine Tamerlane. Affandi must have taken a tidy sum from her. Men of his stamp never know an end to greed. I knew he could not resist the chance to make new demands upon her when he read the story of her inheritance, and I was certain his approach to her would be made very quickly, as it was."

  "And the letters Affandi held?"

  Pons shrugged. "I submit they were the customary letters of a woman in love unwise enough to put down in her own handwriting things which ought never to have been written at all. Affandi learned of their existence somehow, and probably bought them. Knowing that she could not afford to have her husband know of their existence, he proceeded with methodical cold-bloodedness to blackmail her." He picked up the spurious Tamerlane, his eyes dancing. "I am delighted to add this curious memento to my little collection of items associated with what you call my adventures in deduction —with Mr. Bryant's permission, of course."

  The Adventure of the Rydberg Numbers

  I HAVE HESITATED many years before setting forth the curious events concerning the disappearance of the left-handed physicist which occupied the attention of my friend, Solar Pons, in the same year in the 1920s which saw us through the incredible case of the fantastic horror at Birlstone and the baffling problem of the Swedenborg Signatures. But the march of scientific progress has voided the qualms which prevented me from yielding heretofore to the inclination to chronicle this unique adventure.

  It began, as I recall, one October morning. I had risen early, only to find Pons already at the breakfast-table, and bearing every evidence of having been up for at least an hour. My companion looked at me with dancing eyes.

  "You are just in time, Parker. We are about to have a most distinguished visitor."

  "At this hour?" I protested.

  "His step is on the stair."

  There was indeed a heavy tread on the stairs leading to our quarters.

  "Who is it?" I asked. "The Prime Minister?"

  Pons shook his head. "One who is far more seldom seen in these rooms."

  "Not His Majesty!"

  Pons chuckled. "I am always at His Majesty's command without requesting his presence here."

  The door to our quarters was unceremoniously flung open to reveal the portly, almost massive figure of my companion's brother, Bancroft. His eyes were even sleepier than on the one previous occasion I had seen him some years before, regarding the curious behaviour of the reclusive cryptographer, Ricoletti. He came but slightly forward into the room, pushed his cane firmly to the floor, and looked from one to the other of us.

  "I detest above all things being awakened at such a barbaric hour," he said peevishly.

  "For my part, I welcome any hour of the day or night which may offer me some little problem in human travail," replied my companion. "It takes none of my powers to conclude that only such a problem would have brought you to our humble quarters. I am surprised that the Foreign Office permitted your sleep to be disturbed."

  "It has nothing to do with the Foreign Office," retorted Bancroft. "You are not at your best at this hour, Solar. Since it is too early for any activity at the Foreign Office, it is patent that no event or circumstance arising from my modest position there brings me here. No, sir, confound it, I have been aroused from my bed by a hysterical young woman, and I am persuaded it is you she wishes to see, not me."

  "How did she come to you?"

  "I have some acquaintance with her brother. It is he who seems to have disappeared."

  "Ah, at last we are coming to the matter in hand."

  "I have the young lady below in a cab. I should tell you she has defective eyesight; she is partially blind, in fact. Her name is Lillian Pargeter. She is under considerable strain."

  "By all means, let her come up!" cried Pons.

  "Before I fetch her, does the name Rydberg convey anything to you, Solar?"

  Pons tugged at his left ear and sat for a moment with closed eyes. "I believe that Per Axel Rydberg is or has been until recently the curator of the New York Botanical Garden. ..."

  "I doubt that he would be the one."

  "Then there was Abraham Viktor Rydberg, who died in 1895, a Swedish novelist and writer on various subjects. Swedish Academy in 1877, I believe, and professor of ecclesiastical history at Stockholm from 1884 onward. He was for many years on the staff of the Goteborgs Handels-och sjofartstidning, where such novels as his The Freebooter on the Baltic and The Last of the Athenians appeared. He wrote poems, ecclesiastical studies, and various other tomes, among them Magic in the Middle Ages. "

  "Surely it is not he!" exclaimed Bancroft testily. "And Mendelyeev?"

  "Dmitri Ivanovich Mendelyeev, author of the Periodic Law, the standard table."

  "Quite probably that is the man. The missing man seems to have been at work on some problem involving physics or physical chemistry. Physics and chemistry are not my forte, as you know, Solar. Pargeter was employed by the government in research. To the best of my knowledge, he was not involved in any major project. He is considered by the department a minor if persevering physicist and has a record of competence, but not brilliance. He is a man of thirty-five; his sister is somewhat younger."

  "He is, in short, a person of little consequence in the eyes of the government," said Pons. "Let us just have a talk with the young lady."

  "I'll get her," I offered.

  "Pray do," replied Bancroft, obviously relieved. "Seventeen steps to these rooms! I am not given to running needlessly up and down them."

  I descended to the street and opened the door of the cab on a not unattractive young woman, with dark hair and pale blue eyes. She was one of those fine-featured young women so typical of certain areas of England, though the thick-lensed glasses she was required to wear lent her fragile face an oddly owl-like appearance. I introduced myself and took her slender hand in mine to help her from the cab and up the stairs into our quarters.

  "Ah, Miss Pargeter," said Pons, coming to meet her and conduct her to a seat near the fireplace. "Sit here and tell us what has alarmed you."

  "It is about my brother, Stanley," she began. "He said to me not long ago, if anything was to happen to him, I should see Mr. Pons. I understood him to mean Mr. Bancroft Pons, but I may be in error. Oh, dear! I am so upset!"

  "Pray take your time, Miss Pargeter," said Pons persuasively.

  Bancroft Pons snorted impatiently.

  "I have no doubt my brother has not been at his best," Pons continued. "I beg you to overlook his idiosyncrasies. You must understand Bancroft has a position of some importance in the government."

  "The object of this gatherin
g is to inquire into the circumstances concerning the disappearance of Stanley Pargeter," observed Bancroft with icy detachment. "I suggest you get on with it, Solar."

  "How long has your brother been gone, Miss Pargeter?" asked Pons.

  "Oh, that is the trouble, Mr. Pons. I don't know. I think it has been all of two days now, perhaps three, but I cannot be sure."

  Pons glanced quizzically at his brother, but Bancroft flickered not an eyelash.

  "I know you'll think me hysterical or mad. I assure you I am not. As you have surely seen, I cannot see very well. My brother and I have lived together at Number 27 Conant Place for the past four years, and I believe I know him very well. I am accustomed to his step, his manner, his actions. It would be difficult to deceive me. Yet just such an attempt has been made. I could not be positive until last night, but then I grew certain, and I could not wait to see you. I know something dreadful has happened to Stanley, and I beg you to find him."

  "Something took place last night to increase your certainty?" prompted Pons.

  "Forgive me, I am distraught. Yes, a little thing. He took hold of my hands. Then I knew this man who had lived in our house for at least two days and perhaps three was not Stanley. You see, Mr. Pons, Stanley is left-handed. This man, too, appeared to be left- handed. But when he took hold of my hands last night, I felt there were more calluses on his right hand than on his left. That isn't true of Stanley. Yet in every other respect, I had thought him to be Stanley —perhaps with a slight change here or there, true, but nothing of great consequence. His voice, for instance, suggested that he was coming down with a cold; I have heard Stanley sound just so. His manner was identical, he was as considerate as Stanley has always been, and even the sound of his walk rang true most of the time. In appearance, he certainly resembled Stanley. But I know now it is not he. And I know that something has happened to Stanley, something he may have expected.

  "I cannot imagine what it can be. I have wracked my poor brain in an effort to discover anything he might have said to me. But it is only his request about you that comes to mind. And his work."

  "What work, Miss Pargeter?"

  "Mr. Pons, Stanley's work was not really important. It was what he did at home that seemed to matter to him."

  "Did he speak of it?"

  "No, Mr. Pons. He would have thought I could not understand, and I am sure he was right. But one evening I came silently into his rooms, and I heard him say to himself, 'Ten to one the old man didn't know what he had!' I thought this of no consequence, for Stanley is by nature solitary, and I interrupted him on the matter about which I had sought his advice, and went out again. But recently he spoke quite often of people named Rydberg, Balmer, Mendelyeev, Bohr, and others with whom I am not familiar, I am sorry to say. He has spoken so much, too, with some excitement of something he called quanta and the Rydberg numbers and constants, but it is all beyond me."

  Pons sat for a long minute with his head sunk on his chest in an attitude of deep concentration.

  "Who were your brother's associates, Miss Pargeter?"

  "He had none, Mr. Pons."

  "He did not go out of an evening?"

  "On occasion, yes." She spoke doubtfully. "Our father left us a competence. There was no need for Stanley to work, but he has always been keenly interested in chemistry and physics, and he wished to do so for his own gratification. We have few friends, but we do occasionally go out to parties, usually among friends in the Putney and Chelsea areas. Seldom anywhere else. They are always rather private parties, though not limited in size as much as I would like. But perhaps I am too sensitive about my affliction."

  "Yet your brother himself had no particular friend, no confidante?"

  "If he had, I know of none. I should be inclined to doubt that people would take kindly to Stanley. Please do not misunderstand me; I don't mean to disparage him. I mean only he is so engrossed in his work that he had no interest in talking of anything else, and he is therefore a very poor listener."

  Again Pons appeared to muse for a few moments in silence. Presently he asked, "It was two or three days ago when you first became suspicious, Miss Pargeter. Why?"

  "Yes, sir." She clenched one hand and made a futile gesture. "Oh, it's difficult to explain, Mr. Pons. Perhaps it was nothing more than intuition. People who are deficient in one of the senses are often compensated by a sharpening of those which remain unimpaired. Perhaps it is so with me. I felt that something was wrong with Stanley; I didn't dream at first it was not Stanley who was with me, for he seemed no different from his usual self. Until last night. Then, of course, I knew."

  She spoke with such assurance that it was not easy to doubt her. Glancing at my companion, I saw his keen eyes alight with interest. Bancroft Pons, for all the sleepiness of his expression, was no less alert. Both men appeared to be waiting upon Miss Pargeter's words with more than ordinary attention.

  "Mr. Pons, what am I to do?" she cried.

  "I fear yours is a most difficult task, my dear young lady," replied Pons immediately. "You must return home as if nothing had taken place, and you must conduct yourself without a single betrayal of your doubts."

  "Oh, I cannot!"

  "I am sorely afraid you have no alternative. I may say that your brother's fate rests on your doing so."

  "Mr. Pons, it will be beyond me."

  Pons was inexorable. "For his sake, perhaps for your own, there is no other way. Your substitute brother is employed as usual?"

  "Yes. He goes and comes just as Stanley did."

  "Very well then. I will call on you in the course of the day. Let us now waste not a further moment."

  Bancroft came to his feet with cat-like grace. "I will see you to the cab, Miss Pargeter," he announced.

  Thus impelled, our client had no other course but to take her leave.

  "Is that not a singular occurrence, Parker?" asked Pons, while yet their steps sounded on the stairs.

  "It would seem to be a hallucination. I believe they are not uncommon in cases where there is a clear diminution of one of the senses."

  Pons clucked in disapproval. "Dear me, you medical gentlemen find it difficult to credit the unusual. Why are the scientific gentry always so ready to dismiss the admittedly inexplicable and substitute a rationalization which negates the evidence? I submit that our client is a young lady of more than ordinary intelligence, of some considerable perception, refreshingly free of unnecessary emotionalism, and not at all given to hallucinations."

  "Hallucinations!" echoed Bancroft Pons, who had come silently back up to the threshold. "Bosh and twaddle! That young lady suffered none. But whoever made off with her brother must indeed have been labouring under illusions."

  "Why do you say so?" asked Pons.

  "Come, come," said Bancroft impatiently. "Had he gone of his own free will, there would have been no need of a substitute. His sister is not a child; she could have been told if he wished to go away. Since there was a substitute, Pargeter was abducted. If so, the abduction must be concerned with his work. He could hardly have been mistaken for anyone else —but stay! there is young Samuel Pargitton, who is at work on bacteriological warfare."

  Pons smiled. "You have eliminated him, surely. I submit that such an elaborate attempt at deception could not have been made in error, and could have been done only to prevent anyone from taking note of Pargeter's absence. Have you enough personal acquaintance with Pargeter's work to be assured that it could not be of interest to any foreign power?"

  "Certainly. I have all our men at my fingertips."

  Pons smiled again. "But how many chemists, foreign agents, intriguers, physicists, and experts in the various fields of interest to our Foreign Office can occupy your fingertips? That must surely be a question as academic and incapable of solution as the number of angels believed to be able to occupy the point of a pin. Ninety, was it not? There are more chemists than that, to say nothing of the others. The experts always abound."

  "The hour is too early for thi
s kind of sport, Solar," said Bancroft testily. "Let us have done with it. The man did routine work. Consider, if he had not done so, a substitute might not have been so readily put forward. A consummate actor, after studying Pargeter for weeks, perhaps months, might readily deceive all who knew him; but if precise and specialized knowledge were required of him in so restricted a field as that in which Pargeter worked, he could hardly hope to excel in this, also. No, in this I brook no question; Pargeter's work was routine, no more. But the matter in hand would seem to be one of importance."

  "Of the utmost importance," added Pons. "No pains have been spared to deceive Miss Pargeter and prevent knowledge of her brother's disappearance. It is evident that Stanley was thoroughly and comprehensively studied over a considerable peiiod of time. We are faced with the obligation of inquiring whether the missing man has access to any vital information."

  "None."

  "Then if his vocation offers nothing, perhaps his avocation?"

  "Were they not the same? I believe Miss Pargeter said as much."

  "The field is not so restricted as you suppose," said Pons, waving toward his corner table filled with retorts and chemicals.

  "Our German friends have an expressive word for this: Kin- derspiel," interrupted Bancroft. "I shall expect to hear from you in good time, Solar. In deference to you, I shall have Pargeter's work re-examined; if I have not sent word to you by midday, you may consider that his position offers us nothing of possible interest pointing toward a solution of the riddle. Let us hope that the game will not be too long afoot."

  With that, Pons's distinguished brother took his leave.

  Pons turned merry eyes on me. "I fear Bancroft is irritated. Something has escaped him. We shall have no word from him."

  "You are certainly confident," I said.

  "I submit that our client's brother's status is not one which enlists the profound interest of the Foreign Office. The question which instantly occurs is —why not? I daresay it is for the very reason my brother has set forth —his work is not important. Of the nature of his work we have had some hint —radiation of heat and light. Now this strikes me as a field with most interesting possibilities, though it is admittedly difficult to grasp at the moment just how Stanley Pargeter may have come across information which might conceivably be of concern to someone other than an academician. I fancy our next move is an examination of Pargeter's home."