August Derleth - The Solar Pons Omnibus Volume 1

by August Derleth

  "None at least so far known to us," said Pons.

  Pelham brushed this aside. "So if he didn't take his own life, then he was murdered — cord or no cord. If you ask me, the cord's a red herring. I'll say it straight, Mr. Pons —young Farrow had reason to get even with Edward Harton. Even if Harton didn't send him those notes."

  Pons turned to the Sergeant. "Notes, Sergeant Hetherman?"

  The Sergeant looked apologetic. "Farrow claimed to have received notes in the post taunting him with not being a man —to let Harton take his girl from him."

  "You neglected to mention it."

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Pons. We have no evidence that this is so. Farrow says he destroyed them. He may never have received them."

  "How many?"

  "Three, he said."

  Pelham snorted impatiently. He turned and flung his arm toward the copse. "And there are prints of a man's shoes there. What more do you need?"

  "I submit there are one or two points that would seem to need elucidation," said Pons. "For instance, the prints were made by someone who walked awkwardly, as if in some way physically defective. He was also unusually light for the size of the prints, for, if you will observe those in the bare soil around the copse near the path, you will notice that no very great indentation has been made.

  And such as are there are most uneven, indeed. I've not seen Mr. Farrow; I am not sure at this point that it will be necessary to avail myself of the privilege of speaking to him. I rather think there is nothing I can learn from him. Is he, Mr. Pelham, either physically defective or unusually light?"

  Pelham glared at Pons in astonishment not unmixed with a little scorn. "Farrow's a big man —almost as big as I am. He's no lightweight."

  "So then, let us eliminate him," continued Pons. "Could it be possible that your employee, discovering that he had become unwittingly involved in a scandal, took his own life?"

  Again Pelham snorted. "What kind of talk is this, Mr. Pons? What scandal?"

  "Let us just speculate for the moment, Mr. Pelham, and suggest that it might be fixed races."

  A cloud of rage darkened Pelham's face; his nostrils began to twitch with fury. He half raised a clenched fist as if to strike Pons, but controlled himself with manifest effort.

  "I bid you good-day, Mr. Solar Pons," he said, turning on his heel to stalk away.

  "Mr. Pelham is a man of strong temper," said Pons, after Pelham had driven away.

  "Perhaps your example was ill-advised, sir," said Ballinger loyally.

  "If so, it was by design," said Pons crisply. He gazed for a moment intensely at Ballinger. "I daresay you will inherit Harton's position, Mr. Ballinger?"

  "Mr. Pelham has suggested as much," answered Ballinger stiffly.

  Pons nodded. "Now, sir, you were out walking the dogs, I understand, when the fatal shot was fired."

  "I was, Mr. Pons. It's my custom to take the two Dobermans out at that time of the evening."

  "Invariably?"

  "Yes, Mr. Pons."

  "Were you seen by anyone?"

  Ballinger flushed a little, as if startled by Pons's question. He cleared his throat nervously and said, "No, Mr. Pons."

  "I fancy this custom of yours was known to all persons interested in the Kennels?"

  "I believe it was. People who come here at all are generally aware of our routine."

  "So that anyone intending harm to Harton could be certain that

  you would not be in the immediate vicinity of his office?"

  "I believe that is correct, Mr. Pons. I take the dogs over along the road to Bordon, and we walk for somewhat over a mile to a culvert where the dogs run loose for a bit. Then we return. I'm usually gone about forty minutes. I leave here when the sun's gone down or a bit before."

  Pons stood for a moment tugging at the lobe of his left ear. Then he said, "I daresay you knew Harton as well as anyone. Did he seem in any way troubled recently?"

  Ballinger grinned grimly. "Troubled? Well, Mr. Pons, he was always having woman trouble, if you know what I mean. Otherwise, no."

  "Did he ever make any adverse reference to Donald Farrow?"

  Ballinger shrugged. "Only to the extent of calling him an oaf in conversations with me. But perhaps he did so elsewhere; when he was irritated, he wasn't very tactful. I think anyone could tell you that. Try the pub —the Plough Inn on the near edge of Haslemere; he was there often enough, and I suspect they'd tell you the same thing."

  "Did you yourself ever have any disagreements with him, Mr. Ballinger?"

  "Only such as might arise between a professional and a man coming almost new into the game. And I'd have to admit I had coming what I got."

  "In short, Harton lived pretty much for himself, without regard for the reactions of others?"

  "Don't we all, Mr. Pons? I mean, we all think first of ourselves. That's only human. Some of us do it smoothly, and some don't care. Like Mr. Harton."

  Pons nodded. "Tell me, Mr. Ballinger, was Harton in the habit of bringing his rifle to the Kennels?"

  "I never knew him to bring his rifle here, sir."

  "He shot game?"

  "Yes, sir. Apart from women, it was his only recreation, Mr. Pons."

  "Thank you. That's all, Mr. Ballinger."

  Ballinger walked back toward the Kennels, leaving us to stand where we were. For a few moments Pons said nothing, but his eyes were fixed on a point in space far ahead of him, and wore that expression of intense concentration which gave evidence of the ratiocinative process. It was Sergeant Hetherman who broke in upon him.

  "Mr. Pons, if I might ask —you called my attention to the cord and the twig around which it was looped. I've examined it and found nothing."

  "Precisely, Sergeant. That was the point. There was no evidence that the cord had ever been tightened on the twig—no rubbing of the bark, no fragments of bark adhering to the cord, which indicated that the cord had been put up only to distract us from evidence of murder. That should dispose effectively of the inclination to believe that Harton took his own life."

  Sergeant Hetherman nodded, as if to confirm his own convictions.

  "A singularly well thought out murder, too, Sergeant," continued Pons. "By the way, you ought to lose no time setting Farrow free. He had nothing whatever to do with Harton's death."

  "Very well, Mr. Pons."

  "As for the murderer," continued Pons, "I rather think that if you pick up that pair of boots standing beside Coster's grain- trough, you'll find that they will fit the prints you've marked off leading into and out of the copse on the side toward the lane. Moreover, a close scrutiny of the grass should reveal to you —as it did to me —tiny fragments of fertilizer, maize-husk, and maize-silk, which indicate that the wearer came from a farm in the vicinity — not far enough away to have worn off this evidence — though I fancy the boots were carried to the scene and back. Coster would seem to be one of the few farmers who is experimenting in the raising of maize, and the evidence therefore, is conclusive."

  "Coster!" cried Sergeant Hetherman. "But why?"

  Pons gave him a sympathetic glance. "Alas, no, Sergeant. Harton was slain by Miss Ethel Coster, wearing her father's brogans. Coster in his own shoes would have left a far more definite print, and there would have been no uncertainty about any prints left by him —a6 there were by Miss Ethel's small feet in her father's shoes. You'll probably find the ball from which she cut the cord on the Coster farm; it's a cord commonly used by the farming community. Of those people who obviously had reason to hate Harton, she was the only one who had access to his rifle. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned! I fancy she tried at first to provoke Farrow into violence against Harton —if we can believe him about the notes he had received, and there is no reason why we should not. And, Sergeant, I should not be surprised if you found that Miss Ethel Coster is a devotee of the adventures of my illustrious master."

  While Sergeant Hetherman stood in amazement slowly giving way to belief, Pons looked at his watch. "I daresay we ha
ve just time to catch the 1:50 for London, Sergeant, if you will be so good as to run us back into Haslemere."

  "It is really elementary, when you consider the problem," I said, once we were comfortably seated in our compartment on the short run back to Waterloo. "Circumstantial evidence was certainly deceptive in this case."

  Pons sighed. "My dear fellow, circumstantial evidence is deceptive only to those who have no ability to interpret it properly. Facts are facts, and any unbiased, ordinarily intelligent approach to them cannot fail to read them without error."

  "Consider, for example. The cord was cut with scissors — moreover, small scissors, of a type commonly used by women rather than men. A man customarily cuts with a knife, looping the cord and slashing it. While this in itself is hardly conclusive, it struck me at once as most suggestive. Next, the tracks left by the murderer. These were clearly made by a man's shoes, worn by someone with unusually small feet —such as Miss Coster obviously has. But again, this too is highly speculative. Add to it, however, anonymous notes sent to goad Farrow to violence, and you begin to perceive a feminine intelligence in the matter. Let us go on to Harton's unfinished letter. Did nothing about it strike you, Parker?"

  "Certainly. It supported the known fact that Farrow had made threats against Harton."

  "Dear me," said Pons testily. "I thought it quite the contrary. How did he phrase it? 'Look —aren't you making rather a fool of yourself with all this threatening,' he began. And he went on, 'I've destroyed your notes — because you'd really look a fool if they fell into anybody else's hands. . . .' And then he asks that something of his be sent back to him. Now, my dear Parker, I submit that this is patently not the kind of letter a man sends to another man; no, this letter was clearly being written to a woman. Moreover, it was to a woman who had threatened him —not publicly, but privately, in 'notes,' a woman who has something of Harton's —very likely letters. Who else could this be but his former financ6e, Ethel Coster? Certainly it could not be intended for Farrow.

  "Further, when at last I saw the girl, I was more than ever convinced that she was our quarry. She was calm, collected, cool. But she made two little slips, quite apart from the fact that she had manifestly not been training her dog at retrieving —retriever or no,

  every dog can be taught to retrieve after a fashion, and had the dog been so taught, he would have made after the boot when I threw it."

  "If she made slips, as you say, they were beyond me," I put in.

  "Ah, Parker, you've always had an eye for the ladies —exterior first —and I am considerably more interested in what goes on inside their pretty heads. Miss Coster said that her father had had 'some threatening notes'; who would know this better, since she sent them? Unfortunately for her, when she dropped the cord inside the Kennels after killing him, she did not take time to look at the letter Harton had been writing, or she might have seen her notes mentioned.

  "Secondly, she made a curious and tantalizing slip in our conversation at the maize-trough. She said, if you remember, 'You don't seem to have any power over dogs, Mr. Pons. Perhaps the ladies resist you, too?' Now, I submit this is not the kind of remark one makes casually to someone one has only just met. No, indeed. It came up from deep in Miss Coster's subconscious, for she was very much bound up in the problem of lovers and engagements — particularly broken engagements — and fading hopes of marriage, and in the concealment of that fury of hatred at being thrust aside for another woman which drove her to take the life of the man she had hoped to marry.

  "Miss Coster had the strongest motive of all —revenge. When young Ballinger told us that Harton never brought his rifle to the Kennels, the matter was plain as a pikestaff. Where was it, then, but in the Coster home, where Ethel need only walk into his room and take it? She had the opportunity to use it, and she knew just when to do so, for the crime was patently committed by someone who knew the routine of the Kennels. She walked over to the copse, coolly shot Harton, then boldly attempted to make his death look like suicide — borrowing a gambit from Doyle. Thin, true —but it might have taken in someone less observant than Sergeant Hetherman."

  "Yes, it is all perfectly clear now," I conceded.

  "I daresay this little problem established a sort of record, Parker — though I cannot be certain; you are more fond of these inconsequential details than I —but I cannot recall a puzzle which has consumed less time. Three hours, I make it."

  The Adventure of the Lost Dutchman

  WHEN I LOOK over my notes concerning the various adventures of my companion, Solar Pons, in the closing years of the 1920s, I am hard put to it to make a choice from a roster which includes the diabolical affair of the Devil's Footprints, the curious puzzle of the hats of M. Henri Dulac, the French Consul, and the singular affair of the Little Hangman, but I doubt that there was another in those years which began as dramatically as the strange adventure of John Paul Renfield, clerk of Counsellors Extraordinary, Ltd.

  The problem had its origin, as I recall, on a bright summer morning. The early sunlight still streamed into our quarters at 7B Praed Street, and Pons, having just finished putting into his files his own notes on the case of the Cloverdale Kennels, had come to the breakfast-table, only a few moments ago laid by our estimable landlady, Mrs. Johnson. He carried The Times, and was just turning to the agony column, as was his custom, when there was a sound of running footsteps from the street below, followed by the flinging open of the outer door and a clatter on the stairs.

  "A young man in distressing haste," observed Pons, his eyes twinkling. "He has forgotten to close the outer door."

  His words were hardly spoken before there was an insistent rapping, and, before either of us could rise from the table, our own door was flung open, and a hatless, disheveled young man bounded into the room, to close the door behind him and to stand there with his back against it, one hand still on the knob.

  "Mr. Pons!" he gasped in great distress, "Save me! I've done nothing, but the police are bound to arrest me for the murder!"

  "Pray compose yourself, young man," said Pons. "The police are occasionally guilty of gross stupidity, but they are as often capable of extremely able and level-headed work. I observe you have just come from your place of employment, which is not too far from these quarters, and which you yourself opened with your passkey not long ago —the hour lacks but a few minutes of half-past eight. You have been kneeling on a floor —not one which is your responsibility, for you yourself appear to be a singularly neat person, and would not willingly permit such dust to accumulate on any floor within your province —and kneeling quite possibly beside the body, the discovery of which sent you in such headlong flight to us."

  Our young client's jaw dropped, his mouth agape, and in his expression there was that amazement invariably aroused in the untutored at any exhibition of my companion's power of deduction, no matter how simple it was. He took a step or two into the room, and stood there, still trembling a little.

  "Sit down, by all means," said Pons persuasively. "Perhaps you would care to join us in a bite of breakfast?"

  The young man shook his head almost violently. "I couldn't eat — in truth, I couldn't! My God, sir! do you think you can do anything for me? They'll put it on me, as sure as I stand here!"

  "Suppose you tell us your story from the beginning," urged Pons. "I daresay the body will not go off of its own accord."

  Thus persuaded, our client dropped into the chair Pons pushed out for him, and sat for a few moments, his face lowered into his hands, until he could catch his breath and control himself. When at last he looked up, his features were more calm; indeed, he was not unhandsome; though his face was round and extremely guileless in its expression, his eyes were a strong blue, his nose and mouth soft, and a sand-coloured moustache was faintly evident on his upper lip.

  "Mr. Pons, my name is John Paul Renfield. I live in Highbury," he began. "About a month ago, I found myself unemployed. I had been a clerk in a small shop, which was bought up by a chain, with
the result that two of us were dismissed. I turned to the papers to find employment, and almost at once I saw a small notice from a firm called Counsellors Extraordinary, Ltd., in the Edgware Road, not very far from here. The firm needed a clerk, and I went round at once to apply. The place had once been a shop, I guessed, but now it had been taken over by this new firm. The gentleman in charge was an elderly man who gave his name as Elwyn Pyncheon; he looked a scholarly sort of man, for he wore pince-nez with heavy brown rims, and he had a bushy brown beard, though I took notice that such hair as I could see coming out from under the skullcap he wore had a more reddish tinge.

  "There was not much in the way of furnishings in the office. Just a worn old desk, a wastepaper-basket, a hatrack, and three chairs. Mr. Pyncheon was at the desk when I came in. I introduced myself and said I had come in reply to his advertisement. He looked me over carefully.

  " 'Married?' he asks me.

  "I said I was not.

  " 'Family?' he asks me.

  "I said as how I had a mother living in Northumberland, and a brother with her. One sister. My father died in the war.

  " 'You haven't got any close friends who'd be likely to drop in and take up your time?'

  " 'No, sir, I haven't,' I said.

  "He wanted to know what experience I'd had, and I told him I had been clerk for Spotswood & Greenwell for almost seven years.

  " 'Ever kept books?'

  " 'Yes, sir. I have.'

  "Well, Mr. Pons, the short of it was that he decided I was satisfactory, depending on what his partner said. For the time being, I was to consider myself engaged, and would be expected on the stroke of eight in the morning. If, however, I minded long hours, I needn't apply. He explained that the spareness of the rooms was due to the fact that his partner had ordered special equipment made, but the manufacturer had not yet completed the order, and for the time being we would be required to do our best with such fittings as we now had.

  "I went around next morning and there he was, waiting for me.