August Derleth - The Solar Pons Omnibus Volume 1

by August Derleth

  " 'My dear young man, my partner and I have decided that you are eminently fit for the position we want to fill,' said Mr. Pyn- cheon. 'You may, however, decide that our hours are too long, but we are prepared to pay you a fair salary to make it up to you. We'll expect you promptly at eight o'clock in the morning, and we won't expect you to leave the premises again until nine o'clock in the evening. Lunch and dinner will be sent in. The premises consist of this room, an adjoining bathroom, and one inner room, which is to be kept locked and which you are on no account to enter.

  'Whenever ladies or gents come in, take the name and address, such summary of their problem as they may wish to leave, and tell them that whenever an opening presents itself, we will write to them and make an appointment. However, there is one exception to this rule. You will notice as you sit at this desk, which will be yours, a small light bulb over the entrance.' Here he turned me about so that I could see the bulb he meant. 'You'll keep your eye on that bulb, especially during the visit of any client. If at any time you see that it has been lit, you're to make whatever excuse you like to our client, withdraw at once, and leave the building for the remainder of that day, not to return again until the following day.

  " 'Now, then,' he finished, 'your first task for today will be to go through the London directory and make a list of all the stores which handle paper supplies.' And with that, Mr. Pons, Mr. Pyncheon put on his hat and left."

  Our client would have gone on, had not Pons interrupted him. Pons had finished his breakfast and had left the table to take his favourite easy-chair next to the fireplace, where he sat deeply absorbed in Mr. Renfield's narrative. "I take it, Mr. Renfield," said Pons, "that you are repeating Mr. Pyncheon's words faithfully?"

  "Yes, Mr. Pons, just as he spoke to me. When I was a lad, I used to like doing bits on the amateur stage, and I was quite good at it, if I may say so, but of course, not good enough to earn my keep. I did learn to memorize and imitate quite well, but I am telling you what Mr. Pyncheon told me just as he himself spoke to me."

  "Very well. Pray forgive my interruption."

  "Mr. Pons, for day after day, I sat at that desk, making lists of one kind or another. Now and then clients came in, and I concluded that my employers were in the business of helping people in trouble —not the ordinary kind of trouble, by any means. I always took down names and addresses, and promised that they would hear from Mr. Pyncheon. Occasionally people came in in response to the unusual notices which Counsellors Extraordinary, Ltd., inserted in the papers. Here, I've brought some of them in for you."

  So saying, our client took some crumpled cuttings from one of his pockets and handed them to Pons.

  "Hm!" murmured Pons, reading aloud from them. " 'Troubled by investments? See Counsellors Extraordinary.' 'We have acquired the books and papers of the late Jarel Perkins, including maps, notes, documents. Anyone interested, please apply to Counsellors Extraordinary.' 'Genealogical research? Family troubles? In-laws? Only the most difficult cases need apply to Counsellors Extraordinary.' Ah, here is Mr. Perkins again. 'We are experienced in all matters requiring intimate advice.' 'Private papers of Lord Recton. For sale or examination.' Mr. Perkins once more."

  "Yes, Mr. Pons, some of the advertisements were repeated."

  "Pray continue with your story, Mr. Renfield."

  Our client went on. "I worked steadily there at the hours set, and I must say that, apart from the fact that I could not understand quite the reason for making the lists my employers required, I was not ill-used. I was paid weekly at the rate of three pounds a day, which is a better wage than I was accustomed to at Spotswood & Greenwell. My meals were sent in from a nearby restaurant, and I must say that they were of good quality and quite sufficient for my needs. Once in a while my employer would pick up my accounts of names and addresses, and also the lists I made at his direction, but sometimes whole days would go by without a sign of Mr. Pyncheon. As for the names and addresses, I never heard another word of them from Mr. Pyncheon, though on four or five occasions visitors who had been in during my first week or two came back to complain that they had had no notification of an appointment as yet; I always took down their names and addresses again.

  "However, to make this story appropriately shorter, last night, just as I was about to close up, a very rough-looking individual came in. He had one of our advertisements clutched in his hand. He came in somewhat furtively and suspiciously, but he seemed reassured when he saw me sitting in the middle of the well-lit room.

  " 'I'll take the lot of them papers,' he said.

  "I was about to inquire which papers he had reference to, when I saw, much to my astonishment, that the light above the en- tranceway was on. I suppose I had become so used to never seeing it after almost a month at work there, that I was the more astonished. Just the same, I remembered my instructions; I rose immediately, as I had been told to do, excused myself, and left the building, no doubt leaving our client to wonder what on earth I was about — unless he thought I had gone after the papers. I went directly home.

  "This morning, when I was making ready to come to work, I received a curt note informing me that my services with Counsellors Extraordinary, Ltd., were terminated. No reason was given, and I was upset by the ending of what I had come to regard as a soft berth. The matter would have ended there, perhaps, leaving me all in ignorance, if it had not been that I still had on my person the passkey to the premises of Counsellors Extraordinary, Ltd.; so I determined to go as usual this morning and leave the key on the desk.

  "As I came into the building, I was immediately aware of two things. The first was the fact that someone had disturbed the desk, which was much pushed about. A chair had also been turned over. The second was a peculiarly acrid smell, which I took for the smell of gun-smoke. Even so, Mr. Pons, I would have left my key and taken myself off, had I not chanced to see, leading out into the office from under the door of the room I had been forbidden to enter, a dark, glistening stain, which, on walking over to look at it, I saw was blood. Mr. Pons, I then tried the door. It was not locked.

  And just beyond it, in an almost empty room, lay the body of our client of last night, sprawled on his face. He had been shot, Mr. Pons. Before he died, he had tried to write something in the dust on the floor with his finger —a word which was meaningless to me, but unfortunately, he could not finish it, because he died before he could do so. There was no sign of my employers.

  "Mr. Pons, I knew my duty. The police must be informed. But even as I decided that I must telephone them, I realized I had absolutely no corroboration for what I had to tell them. The note I received this morning was typed on the same machine I had used for the past month. The signature was also in typescript. So far as I could prove, I had been alone in the building when I left the victim; there would be only my word for it that I had left him alive. However much I could say about my employers, I realized that I actually knew nothing of their whereabouts. Mr. Pyncheon had never mentioned his home address, and there was no hint of it among the papers I had handled.

  "Mr. Pons, I fear I lost my head. I closed and locked the door once more and came over here as fast as my legs would carry me."

  By this time, Pons's eyes were fairly dancing. "Singular, most singular," he muttered. "Counsellors Extraordinary, indeed! What diligence! What unusual tenacity! We shall just look in at their address. Once we have examined the premises, we shall get our old friend, Inspector Jamison, on the wire. I fancy there is no time to be lost. Our quarry already has a night's lead. Come, Parker, bestir yourself. I am at your service, Mr. Renfield."

  "Thank heaven! I did not come in vain," cried our client.

  "I have yet to turn away anyone who brightens my day with the promise of an adventure," replied Pons as he clapped his deerstalker on to his head.

  The premises occupied by Counsellors Extraordinary, Ltd., seemed indeed to have been converted from a small shop. While the place was outwardly neat, it was not prepossessing. No name had been painted on the door
or otherwise emblazoned on the building except for a very small business card attached to the outer door; this alone identified the tenant. Our client produced his passkey and threw open the door.

  The office was uncommonly barren, and clearly gave evidence of a struggle. Mr. Renfield had described it accurately —the desk had been pushed to one side, a chair had been turned over, and another chair stood well to one side, as if it had been kicked there without having fallen. The door to the lavatory stood ajar. However, it was the inner room in which Pons was primarily interested, and he walked across to it to open the door, revealing the body of the last client of Counsellors Extraordinary, Ltd.

  It was that of a man past middle age, clad in rough but not cheap clothing. He was grizzled and burly in appearance, thick of body but not fat, a large-boned, well-muscled man who might have given anyone a bad time in an encounter. He lay on his face, his arms sprawled out, and there was sufficient evidence in the dust to indicate that he had been wounded in the centre of the room, but had subsequently crawled toward the door, and, weakened by loss of blood, had attempted to leave a message on the dusty floor. He had been shot twice, once in the right lung, once in the abdomen, and he had been dead, I estimated, almost twelve hours.

  The message itself showed in the dust just away from the index finger of the right hand. Pons's eyes fixed upon it at once.

  "Is that not most curious, Parker!" he exclaimed.

  "Poor fellow! If only he could have finished it!"

  "Can you read it?"

  I peered at the letters in the dust. "It begins with an 'I,' I think, and goes on with 'a - s -.' Is that another letter after, or does he go on to the next? And that is a 'd,' surely, followed by 'u - t' — what follows may be a 'c' or not; at any rate, at that point he lost consciousness."

  "Capital!" exclaimed Pons, and went on to examine the room.

  The death-chamber was as comparatively barren as the front office. It contained only a cot, on the floor beside which lay a host of cigarette stubs. Pons was already at the bed, examining cot and floor alike, his magnifying glass in his hand. He moved from this corner of the room to another, examining footprints in the dust, picking up a pair of pince-nez with a torn cord, which lay on the floor, and came at last to the dead man, whom he examined as closely as he dared without disturbing the body. He not only went through the empty pockets in vain, but went so far as to scrape grains of earth and particles of dust out of the dead man's trouser turn-ups, and to cut away a portion of the turn-ups themselves and put both into the little envelopes he was accustomed to carrying in the hope of finding some object to analyze in that corner of our quarters given over to his chemical laboratory.

  Having finished this, he returned to the outer office, and subjected that room to the same intense scrutiny, often on his hands and knees. It was only when he had finished examining the desk so

  recently our client's that he came back at last to the pathetic message which the dying man had attempted to leave in the heavy dust of the inner room. He brought with him a sheet of onion-skin paper from the desk in the outer office, and proceeded to trace the letters carefully without disturbing the dust itself.

  This done, Pons was ready to leave.

  "Now, then, Mr. Renfield. If you will telephone Inspector Jamison at New Scotland Yard, I fancy the police will soon be here to take your statement and assume control. I daresay your Mr. Pyncheon will not be coming in today."

  "I'll just step in next door and make the call, Mr. Pons."

  "If you'll give me your address, Mr. Renfield, I will keep you informed of developments."

  "Number 31, Moundgrove Road, N. 5, Mr. Pons."

  "And you might ask Inspector Jamison to step around to our quarters for a word with me when he finishes here."

  Once back at 7B, Pons busied himself at his chemistry. He said nothing of his work while he was absorbed in it. Only when he had completed it did he come over to the mantel, dip into the toe of the slipper affixed to it for a pipeful of shag, and sit down to look at the tracing he had made.

  "I daresay you've arrived at some conclusions, Parker," he said finally.

  "None but that this is a most unusual affair."

  "With a distinct odour of the fraudulent."

  "I would not have thought our client was deceiving us."

  "No, no, not he," replied Pons impatiently. "Dear me, you have a reprehensible habit of thinking the worst of people, Parker. The circumstances, the circumstances."

  "Ah, you mean the spare furnishings of the headquarters of this so-called Counsellors Extraordinary, Ltd."

  "Capital, Parker! You make progress. Yes, indeed, the furnishings literally scream aloud of the temporary. But is not the business of this unusual firm in itself totally out of the ordinary?"

  "Indeed it is."

  "So much so that it is difficult to believe in it?"

  "Well nigh impossible," I agreed.

  "Yet these enterprising employers of our Mr. Renfield seem to have advertised in rather costly space in every paper in London. The cuttings I examined came from no one of them alone. Let me see —did not one of them offer the papers of Lord Recton?"

  "I believe so."

  "Let us just look into Burke's. I cannot recall such a title; I am inclined to think it is as false as the business advertising the mythical lord's papers."

  For a few moments Pons pored over Burke's Peerage. Then he looked up with twinkling eyes. "No one of that title is listed here — nor, I daresay, anywhere else."

  "Surely that is an idiotic procedure!"

  "I submit there is method in it. Consider Mr. Renfield's story. Every client who came was turned away —put off with the promise of being called in for an appointment. He made no mention of anyone having ever been called subsequently. But one client alone excited the curious Mr. Pyncheon's interest —and this one he knew by sight, for, as you will recall, Renfield had not yet discovered the nature of the client's business before he was aware of the light switched on above the entrance. Does not this suggest something to you?"

  "Elementary! The room was being watched."

  "Right again! It was being watched by the occupant of the inner room. For someone kept a constant vigil from that room. The cigarette stubs indicate a period of long tenancy by a man of substantial weight and medium height, whose footprints indicate that he has rather a small foot —he wears a size eight shoe and has sustained an injury to his right leg, either as the result of an accident or an early sickness, which causes him to walk with his right foot slightly at an angle, perhaps not with a noticeable limp."

  "Ah! Mr. Pyncheon's partner," I ventured.

  "I fear Mr. Pyncheon's partner does not exist," retorted Pons. "There is every indication that Mr. Pyncheon was alone in the matter. His talk of a partner was only to allay Mr. Renfield's doubts, just as his explanation of the bareness of his 'office' was. There is but one set of prints in the inner room, apart from those of the murdered man. I submit that the whole extraordinary stage was set for the sole purpose of finding someone whom our Mr. Pyncheon wanted very badly to find, and who might be drawn by the nature of the advertising sponsored by Counsellors Extraordinary."

  "You are setting yourself an impossible task, Pons."

  "It is not as difficult as you think. For one thing, our client's elusive employer is most certainly of comparatively recent American origin. You will have noted that several times Mr. Renfield repeated his words. No Englishman, for example, would say 'stores' when he meant to say 'shops.' That peculiarly offensive diminutive, 'gents,' is another word of which no British professional man is likely to be guilty. Nor is the Englishman accustomed to speak of shops keeping supplies as those which 'handle' them. I have no doubt you observed even more such peculiarities of speech.

  "I have also made some little examination of the particles I removed from the dead man's turn-ups, and find it possible to come to certain conclusions regarding him. I subjected the cloth of the turn-ups to close scrutiny and chemical anal
ysis. I found in turnups and cloth both, apart from the customary specimens of London grime, tiny fragments of quartzite, stone dust, and —perhaps most suggestive of all —gold dust. Add to that discovery the fact that the murdered man's hands were well callused, and I fancy we are not very wide of the mark if we conclude that the victim was an American miner by calling."

  "Why American?" I objected.

  "Ah, well, even if the cut of his clothes did not suggest as much to you, it is surely entirely credible that Mr. Pyncheon, an American, sought a fellow American —or was himself the object of such search on the part of his victim."

  "I fear I cannot follow you, Pons."

  "It is not the first time. Yet the reconstruction of events leaves precious little else in explication. I submit that Mr. Pyncheon and his victim each possessed something the other was most anxious to obtain. Mr. Pyncheon fled to London and set a trap for his victim, who, deceived by the guilelessness of our client, whom we may be sure he observed from outside before he entered the premises of Counsellors Extraordinary, fell into it, lost his life, and perhaps also that possession of his so much desired by Mr. Pyncheon."

  "That is all highly speculative, Pons."

  "I don't think so. I suggest you look at all the facts. Here is an American setting up a business which is surely fraudulent in that, according to such evidence as we have, no counsel is actually given to anyone. Unknown to his employee, our client, he conceals himself in the back room of the shop and keeps a vigilant watch on every client who enters. When at last he catches sight of his victim, he rids himself of his employee by a prearranged signal, and takes his victim by surprise."

  "Now that is as far-fetched as anything I have yet heard from you," I cried. "How would one American find another, hiding from him, somewhere in all London?"

  "Why, by dint of advertising. Our American brethren are profound believers in the power of the printed word. Counsellors

  Extraordinary, Ltd., ran daily advertisements of a size out of all proportion to the services offered. If his victim were indeed in London, as Mr. Pyncheon had reason to suspect — there is some reason to believe each knew the other would be here —then it was surely within the law of averages that sooner or later his eye would fall upon an advertisement which was directly pertinent to his reason for being here."