August Derleth - The Solar Pons Omnibus Volume 1

by August Derleth

  With this cryptic statement, Pons left the shop and strode out into the occasional sunlight now breaking through the light fog of the October morning. He walked with a gleam of good humour in his eyes, so that I knew his examination had not been fruitless. Yet he said nothing, and I would not ask until we had reached our rooms and discovered that Mrs. Johnson had left a note to say that Thomas Wilgreve had telephoned; he had received an inquiry about the furniture, and had answered it, in accordance with Pons's instructions.

  "You might just telephone Wilgreve, Parker, and ask him to step around here at two o'clock this afternoon if he cares for an explanation of his mystery," said Pons.

  "You've solved it then?"

  "Oh, yes — disappointingly elementary, and yet not without aspects of interest." He shrugged. "And by the way, I wish you would telephone Lord Venler and tell him that I would be obliged to him if he would call at our lodgings this afternoon at the same hour."

  "But what is it all about?"

  Pons chuckled. "Well, Parker, you have all the facts. It should be obvious to you as it was to me from the moment Wilgreve concluded his curious narrative."

  "I can make nothing of it, save that apparently something of value is connected with the furniture."

  "Come, come —you are warm, but how carefully you tread!" Laughing, he retreated to his crime file, and left me to the telephone.

  The novelist, curious and still perplexed, arrived but a few moments before Lord Venler; he had hardly seated himself when Mrs. Johnson announced Lord Venler, a tall, grim-faced man in his sixties, wearing impeccable afternoon dress. He fixed his keen grey eyes on my companion and bowed.

  "You wanted to see me, Mr. Pons?"

  "Yes. I believe I have something that belongs to your lordship."

  So saying, Pons reached casually into the pocket of his jacket and took from it a rough stone, which he put on the table before Lord Venler. His lordship's expression was almost ludicrous in its amazement. His eyes widened, his lips parted, he took a step forward; then he snatched the stone from the table and held it up before his eyes. Only after he had thoroughly examined it did he turn to Pons.

  "It is the Peacock's Eye! Where did you find it?"

  "Just where Parey put it —into the padding on the back of an old armchair in his sister's house in St. John's Wood. You will remember that Scotland Yard was able to account for every moment of Parey's time except for a half hour which he claimed to have spent on the Underground; he spent it in his sister's house, quite possibly unknown to her, and hid the stone in the armchair there."

  "But he died without revealing anything!"

  "Quite so. But one of his associates was in prison with him —the man who wrote the actual note, Guy Pilkington. There was always a reasonable doubt that Parey committed that forgery; it was too skillful; your writing was perfectly reproduced, and so, too, your signature. Pilkington was released from prison but a short time ago, and began his search for the stone as soon as he could do so. That brought him to Mr. Wilgreve, the novelist, and Mr. Wilgreve sought the aid of my modest powers."

  After Lord Venler had gone, Pons gave his attention to the novelist. "Do you understand the matter now, Mr. Wilgreve?"

  "Yes —except for knowing why Pilkington was so cautious."

  "Why, to avoid the very contingency he precipitated by his caution —sending you to any authority who might be able to rationalize the problem and so reach the Peacock's Eye before he did. Hence his extreme care about Lakin's signature and his carefully staged accident, which, if you had not gone from that office to which they had taken you, would doubtless have been very reasonably explained to you. You left the waiting-room before Pilkington and his confederate could complete the mumbo-jumbo of taking your deposition; doubtless Pilkington's companion was at fault, for Pilkington himself would never have been guilty of permitting you to go before he could allay any suspicions you might have. Pilkington might have obtained a key to your house from Parey; he might have managed an impression unknown to Parey or even to yourself; that he had one is apparent. We may logically assume that though Pilkington learned that Parey had hidden the stone in a piece of furniture, he knew, no more than I, which piece."

  Mr. Wilgreve stood, preparing to take his leave. "Then it was he who wrote to inquire what I had done with the rest of the furniture?"

  "Precisely."

  "And he will go to Woodly and buy the furniture, I suppose. I should like to see his face when he opens up the armchair."

  Reaching for his pipe, Pons smiled. "He should have no cause for complaint," he said dryly. "In place of the stone I left him a receipt, over my signature."

  The Adventure of the Missing Tenants

  IN THE EARLY hours of a winter night within the first decade I shared with my friend, Solar Pons, I was awakened by his hand on my shoulder, and his voice at my ear, "We are about to have a visitor who will not be put off. You may care to sit in, Parker."

  "What time is it?" I asked, struggling awake.

  "Two o'clock."

  "Two o'clock!" I cried. "What is it, then?"

  "Some little crisis at the Foreign Office," replied Pons. "Bancroft is on his way."

  I was just emerging into our sitting-room, tying the cord of my dressing-gown, when Pons's brother, Bancroft, having come noiselessly up the stairs of 7B, opened the door and stepped into our quarters. He was an impressively tall, formidable man, with a mind far keener than my companion's, for which I had had Pons's word on several occasions.

  He nodded in my direction and said to Pons without preamble, "Ercole d'Oro, the Italian consul, has disappeared. The Italian government has begun to make some inquiries, and the situation is delicate."

  "You ought to have called in the Pinkertons," said Pons. "They never sleep."

  "They can afford not to; the Foreign Office cannot," said Bancroft. "You are needlessly waspish. We have not seen fit to apply to the Yard. There is good reason here for the utmost discretion in this inquiry."

  "I fancy there is a woman other than the Countess involved," observed Pons.

  "Elementary. Spare me these trifling exercises of yours," said Bancroft testily. "But, of course, there may be some involvement with a woman, since d'Oro was last seen entering the house in Orrington Crescent which he had been using for some months as a rendezvous for his amatory exploits."

  "Ah, these Italians," mused Pons. "I fancy their Foreign Office could be demoralized by an attractive woman."

  "You know of Count d'Oro?"

  "I met him socially some years ago. Since 1921, he has been the Italian consul. Born in 1882. Now forty-four. Privately tutored, some study at the University of Genoa. At one time rumoured to have some connection with the Mafiosa. His hobby: entomology. One of his monographs is used as a standard reference in the field. Married in 1900 to Harriet Jackson, niece of the Earl of Ellenbroke. No children."

  "Yes, yes," interrupted Bancroft, "I know these details."

  "Of the house in Orrington Crescent, however, I know nothing," said Pons. "Presumably you do." Suddenly a light broke upon Pons's face. "Unless, that is, it is Number 27."

  "It is."

  "Ah, that puts a different light on the matter. A house notorious in the annals of London's unsolved mysteries. Let us now have the details."

  "D'Oro left home three days ago, early in the evening, bound for the house in Orrington Crescent. His wife was told his destination, of course —she had been given to understand when d'Oro leased the house a month ago, that it was to be used for clandestine meetings concerned with the affairs of government —bluntly, espionage. I rather think the woman is convinced that some foreign agent is at the bottom of d'Oro's disappearance. It is not impossible."

  "Which means that someone at the Foreign Office — characteristically —entertains the same suspicion."

  Bancroft brushed this impatiently away. "D'Oro was reported missing two days ago, after a full day during which he had not appeared either at his home or at his official quarter
s. No doubt the facts of his vanishing had also been transmitted to his government, for since yesterday we have had representations made to His Majesty's Government about d'Oro's safety.

  "We have naturally examined the house. He had certainly reached it, and he was alone there —one does not customarily engage in this kind of dalliance in the company of a third person — and he had made some preparations to receive the lady —a Miss Violet Carson of Upper Hampstead, a secretary by profession. The hour of their rendezvous had been set for ten o'clock, and the lady —in accordance with the usual arrangements — arrived by cab at that hour, and let herself into the house. All evidence plainly indicated that her arrival was expected —the house was lit with subdued lights, d'Oro had bathed and was clad only in dressing-robe and slippers. All was as usual, except that he himself was not there.

  This was Miss Carson's seventh rendezvous with d'Oro. She said, on interrogation, that she had 'got ready' —by which I take it she had undressed and got into bed, which had been turned back, and lay there waiting for d'Oro to make his appearance. She thought that perhaps he had gone below stairs for champagne or something other to serve her, as was his custom, but presently, hearing no sound in the house beyond the ticking of a clock, she got out of bed, slipped into the robe d'Oro kept for the use of such women as shared his nights there, and went to look for him. She searched the house. There was no sign of him. His car —a small Fiat —was in the adjoining garage, and the garage locked; it is still there. Some of our people have been through the house. Nothing untoward has been found. No sign of forced entry. Nothing. It is as if d'Oro simply vanished all in an instant. Miss Carson waited for an hour; then she dressed again, called a cab, and went back to her flat.

  "A significant factor—if we can rely on Miss Carson —is that d'Oro telephoned her at a quarter to nine to let her know he had reached the Orrington house. Between that hour and her arrival a light snow fell. Miss Carson says that there were no footprints in the snow on the walk leading to the house, which suggests that d'Oro either left soon after he had telephoned —which is unlikely in view of his having bathed and shaved after he had telephoned — presumptively —or went by another door. Of course, by the time his absence had been reported, the snow had thawed away.

  "But you shall see for yourself. I am going home. The car will return for you within the hour. That will give you ample time to dress and take breakfast, if you need it. Here are the keys."

  He threw them to the table, and took his leave as noiselessly and unceremoniously as he had come.

  "We are all presumed to be at the instant service of His Majesty's Government, Parker," said Pons, smiling. "Come, let us get dressed."

  "You said it was a house 'notorious in the annals of London's unsolved mysteries,' " I said.

  "So it is. A writer in the Chronicle — one of those devotees of that vein of fantasy known as science-fiction —scarcely three months ago wrote a sensational article about it under the heading, 'Orrington Crescent House Hole in Space?' speculating about a favourite gambit of investigators of curious, unexplained facts —like Charles Fort —that strange, motiveless disappearances —of, for instance, persons seen walking in at one end of a street and never seen to emerge at the other, vanishing utterly —as having stepped into 'holes in space' or into other dimensions, or some such phenomenal 'openings' in time or space. Number 27 lends itself very well to such an article for the press. D'Oro is the fourth resident of it to disappear in the course of less than five years. All, if memory serves me, vanished in very much the same fashion, without motive, without trace."

  He crossed the room and took down one of the files in which he kept cuttings about crimes and criminals. As I dressed in my room, I could hear his going through material that was never in the best of order, though Pons maintained a loosely alphabetical arrangement frequently disorganized by the hasty addition of new data. From time to time I caught muttered references to crimes he passed over —the case of Williams, the owl burglar, the Van Houtain murder, the multiple murders on Illington Moor.

  "Ah, here we are!" he cried as I came back into the sitting-room, his keen eyes rapidly scanning the cuttings before him. "The house appears to have been built in 1920, by Dr. Roland Borstad, son of the one-time ambassador to Germany, Henry C. Borstad. The younger Borstad was a surgeon with an interest in psychoanalysis. Author of three published papers on psychoanalysis, and one monograph on Dr. Sigmund Freud. He appears also to have had some ability in architecture and undertook part of the building of his home. Overwork brought on a nervous breakdown, after recovery from which he went to live in the Orrington Crescent house, from which he vanished on December 17th, 1921. The papers made much of the fact that Borstad had evidently been planning a journey, for he had withdrawn a large sum of money, and his bags, already packed, were standing in the vestibule in preparation for his departure."

  "I know the Borstad papers," I put in. "A brilliant young man. His death was a decided loss to psychoanalysis. As I recall it, he had some very advanced, unorthodox theories, and there was conflict with his peers. They fell out about his radical theories and experiments in the domain of pain and pain therapy, and this ultimately brought about a break in their relations, endangering his position in the hospital where he was briefly the resident physician, and ultimately brought on a nervous breakdown."

  "The house stood empty for over a year. Then it was turned over to be let, though its ownership remained in the Borstad family where it presumably still is. The second disappearance was on February 24th, 1923; it was that of Clyde Lee, son of the Duke of Dunwich. After Lee, Mr. and Mrs. John Tomlins and their family took the house. They remained for only five months, complaining that now and then distant sounds disturbed them. They made no charge against the house as 'haunted.' Tomlins, an engineer, said that the house obviously lay in a place that echoed sounds from far away —chiefly mechanical. The third disappearance was that of Howard Eliot, a writer of short stories and sensational newspaper pieces- on occult subjects; he had taken the house because of its reputation and meant to 'lay its ghost,' as he put it, since there had been occasional reports of ghostly figures in the grounds. He vanished on May 17th, 1925. As in this fourth disappearance, investigation disclosed no motive for any one of the disappearances. Dunwich waited on the arrival of ransom notes; none was received."

  "That is certainly a curious record!"

  "Is it not!" He stood for a few moments tugging at an earlobe. "It has, however, some parallels. None of the missing tenants at the Orrington Crescent house was married. Except for Lee, who had a man-servant and had the house done by an occasional cleaning woman, each of the missing tenants lived alone; and Lee disappeared on his man's night off. What does this suggest to you, Parker?"

  "A necessary condition," I said.

  "Which in turn implies a related plan."

  "What connection, if any, was there among the men who disappeared?"

  "Other than the common tenancy of the house in Orrington Crescent, none has been turned up. They were not known to one another." He shrugged. "But it is idle to speculate with so little knowledge available. Bancroft will have a dossier on d'Oro in my hands by the time we return. Let us just have a look at the house."

  He crossed to his chamber to dress.

  The house in Orrington Crescent was, for lack of any classification, late Edwardian. It was without the ornateness of many Edwardian houses, but its lines —what could be seen of them through the massed foliage of many bushes — though suggesting the Georgian, were a far remove from the classical. It struck me, in the wan light of a lamppost set in the street outside the bordering hedge, as very much an expression of the undisciplined architectural preferences of its builder. Perhaps the late Dr. Borstad had designed it himself.

  Its interior, however, was essentially simple. The front door opened upon a vestibule; this in turn opened directly upon a sitting- room, adequately but not richly furnished, dominated by a fireplace which bore no signs of recent use. A tab
le-lamp was lit on a reading table next to a stuffed chair; on the table a book lay face down, as if someone had been interrupted at reading. It was, I saw, not surprisingly, a collection of Leopardi's poems, in Italian — clearly the book the Count d'Oro had been reading while he waited upon the arrival of Miss Violet Carson.

  This room, in turn, led to two bed-chambers, a bathroom, a kitchen and adjacent pantry, a study or library, and a compact little room that might have served at one time as a laboratory— something which the original owner of the house might well have put to use, though of all its original contents only a small microscope, a retort, and some of the lesser paraphernalia of the surgeon stood on shelves in a small glass case on one wall. The furnishings in the house were sturdy, useful pieces, all for the most part ordinary, severe, and entirely unornamented.

  There was no basement beneath the building, though there was a rear entrance to the house, and an enclosed stairway led to the top floor. This floor consisted of one large room, just above the study, a bathroom, and two other rooms of almost equal size, opposite the larger room. None of the rooms bore any evidence of ever having been furnished, though all were scrupulously clean, even to the obvious scrubbing of the variegated-width oak flooring. The chimney leading up from the fireplace below stood apart from the wall, which was set back from it, and was windowless, with some shelving boards piled beside the uncommonly massive chimney, as if Borstad had meant to line this wall, too, as the wall below had been lined, with books.

  Pons examined each room cursorily, then returned to the head of the stairs and stood in deep thought, caressing the lobe of his left ear.

  "Does not this cleanliness surprise you, Parker?" he asked presently.

  "I can't say that it does."

  "Curious. Most curious. Are we to believe that Count d'Oro scrubbed down the floors of rooms for which he had no use before taking his mistress to bed?"