“As I was giving my instructions in the dining-room, which is immediately beneath this study, I heard a slight thud overhead, and asked the girl what it could be.
“‘I’m sure I don’t know, sir,’ she answered, ‘for there is no one else in the house, except you and me and cook, who is down in the basement.’
“I ran upstairs immediately and found the window wide open and the list of Blues vanished from my desk.
“You will observe that this room is approached by a long passage, from which the bathroom and lavatory open; there was no one in either of those rooms, and no one could have got downstairs, for the parlour-maid, seeing my excitement, had followed me to the foot of the staircase. A moment later Smithers returned, and together we searched every inch of the house, while Helen remained on guard at the foot of the stairs.”
“One moment,” interrupted Ebbie, “did your man know that you had the list!”
“No!”
“Did you look out of the window?”
“Yes, but there was no sign of anyone upon the lead flat of the dining-room window below, nor could I see any means by which anyone could have mounted to my window from beneath.”
“And were the blinds drawn in the dining-room when you were speaking to the parlour-maid?”
“Yes, the blinds were down and the shutters closed and fastened.”
“Good! and what did you do next?”
“I decided to await your arrival, since the matter was far more in your province than in mine.”
“Good again,” said Ebbie; “if you have a strong electric torch we will examine first the lead flat and then the garden.”
“I can give you something better than a torch, for I have one of those petrol-gas storm lanterns; it gives a tremendous light.”
While the lamp was being fetched, Old Ebbie examined the room minutely, but apparently without result. This inspection finished, he slipped off his boots and stepped out on to the lead flat in his stockinged feet.
“There are numerous indentations in the lead,” he said, after a momentary inspection, “but it is impossible to say whether they are new.”
He got down on to his knees and I peered over the edge of the flat roof, holding the lantern out before him.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed, “the lead guttering has been completely crushed right in the centre of the bay, and yet the break is a single one and not very wide, so that it can hardly have been made by a ladder, and yet it is too broad for the imprint of a rope. Well, well! let us go below and see if the ground has any secrets to reveal.”
Outside the dining-room window we found a single deep impression in the ground, circular and about nine inches in circumference; from the imprint upon the frosty grass it appeared as if a stout rope had been dragged back perpendicularly some fifteen feet from the hole. Closer inspection of the circular impression in the turf revealed three slightly deeper holes, breaking the circumference triangularly. A mat having been fetched, Old Ebbie lay down to make a more minute examination by the aid of a magnifying-glass and the concentrated beam of a power-torch, which Smithers procured. Presently he passed the torch to me and took out his knife. From the triangular area enclosed by the three slightly deeper holes he delicately extracted a very thin layer of hard earth, in which were embedded infinitesimally small white flecks; in two places the edge of this dry crust was broken as if it had been pierced.
“I do not think there is anything else to be learned here,” said Old Ebbie, standing up and putting the thin layer of earth carefully away in his pocket case. “Have you ever been in the fen country, my lord? No? Ah, well, it is an interesting district. I was brought up there.”
Rockpool, Smithers and I regarded Entwistle with frank amazement, for to us it appeared that he was drivelling.
“By the way,” he added, as if to change the conversation, “could you tell me when Mr. McLaglan began to grow a beard?”
“Yes,” said Rockpool, “it was some weeks before Christmas. I remember, because he came to ask me about the Rhodes scholars coming over from the United States, and I told him he had at least nothing to fear from the American hammer-throwers, who would be up this term.”
“Is he a heavy man?”
“Oh yes; he has need of weight, you know, as a hammer-thrower.”
“Thank you,” said Ebbie, “and now have you such a thing as a tape, I want to measure the height of that lead flat from the ground.”
Smithers having procured a tape, the measurement was made and the height found to be exactly ten feet six inches.
“Hum!” said Ebbie, “now how the deuce d’you think that anyone got up there so quickly without the aid of a ladder?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” answered Rockpool. “But I’m quite certain it was one of those damned journalists, and that the composition of the team will appear in one of the papers tomorrow morning.”
“Ah, well, we shall see,” said Ebbie, and with that we walked back to the Randolph Hotel, where we stayed the night.
Rockpool was wrong in his surmise; at least, none of the daily papers published a list of Blues next morning.
At breakfast, Ebbie was quite cheerful.
“You were sports officer to your battalion at one time, weren’t you?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Very well then,” he said, “let us walk out to Iffley Road today, where, I understand, that the Blues and the problematical Blues will be training, and you shall explain to me some of the mysteries of athletics, about which, I must confess, that I know but little. I want, moreover, to see this wonderful hammer-thrower. I have been thinking a lot about his performances and have worked out a few most interesting mathematical calculations; the strength and skill which enable him to throw a sixteen pound ball nearly one hundred and eighty feet must be simply phenomenal, as you will see for yourself if you work out in foot-pounds the resistance of the whirling hammer-head to the body while the thrower is turning. It would be interesting to know his weight and measurements.”
“As it happens, I can tell you his weight and height,” I answered; “he stands just six feet and weighs two hundred and thirty-five pounds; his reach, I believe, is abnormal.”
“Well, I should much like to see him,” said Ebbie.
This wish, however, was not to be gratified. Rockpool was just leaving the track after a training spin, when we arrived at Iffley Road; as we stood chatting, I asked him if McLaglan had been down that morning.
“No,” he replied, “he is most particular about his training, and will only throw at that time each day which most nearly corresponds with the hour at which he will have to compete at Queen’s, thus he ensures being at his best at the same hour each day.”
“By the way,” asked Ebbie, “at what school was McLaglan educated?”
“I do not know,” Rockpool replied; “he always appears in the programme as ‘Privately and St. Luke’s College.’”
That afternoon we returned to Iffley Road, but the hammer-thrower did not put in an appearance. Ebbie was disappointed, but still I could see that he was enchanted with the evolutions of the hurdlers and high jumpers. Also we stood for a long time watching the pole-vaulters at work, and it was with difficulty that I was able to make the old chemist believe that more than one American had beaten thirteen feet in this event.
“Really, that seems quite incredible, but what height can these men accomplish?” he said, as we stood beside the sawdust-filled pit into which the vaulters were landing over the high bar after flinging back their spiked poles.
I turned to an undergraduate standing by to get the information.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said; “Washburn Thorne, the Rhodes fellow from Cuthbert’s, will do something better than twelve feet, I believe, but we’ve no one else who can reach ten feet; but neither have the Cantabs, for that matter.”
Over tea Old Ebbie remained silent, except for such muttered soliloquies as I had learned to regard as an infallible sign that he was
rapidly arriving at his final conclusions, although, for the life of me, I was unable to see how he could have fixed upon one single circumstance in this present case.
The “dottle” fell from his third pipe, as he knocked it against the mantelpiece before rising with assured determination.
“Let us go to see Lord Rockpool,” he said, “there is someone to whom I wish him to present me.”
Rockpool, as mystified as myself, took us round to St. Cuthbert’s, where we found that Washburn Thorne had sported his oak, but since Old Ebbie had said that the matter was urgent, the O.U.A.C. president did not hesitate to hammer upon the door, which was opened presently by a typical American of the best type, a youth whose high cheek bones, aquiline features and sensitive hands attested his nationality. He stood about five feet eight inches, and must, I should say, have weighed all of a hundred and fifty pounds, since his arms and shoulders bulked big through his clothes.
“Sorry to bother you, Thorne,” said Rockpool, “but this gentleman, Mr. Ebenezer Entwistle, wants to see you on a matter which is most urgent.”
“Sure! Won’t you all come right in?” answered the young American, in pleasant, well assured tones. I must admit that I took to him at once.
“Well, what can I do for you, Mr. Entwistle?” he asked, when we were all seated.
Old Ebbie looked around the room until his eyes rested upon a couple of bamboo, tape-bound vaulting poles in one corner.
“I believe that you have reduced pole-vaulting to a fine art, Mr. Thorne,” said Ebbie.
“Why yes, sir, I reckon to get over the bar with the least margin of waste each time.”
“And you can fall from considerable heights without sustaining the least injury?”
At this question the American fidgeted a little and a strange look came into his eyes.
“Yes,” he said, more curtly, “if you land anyhow you tire yourself out long before the competition is over.”
“And you use a pole with three spikes set triangularly at the point?”
“See here!” exclaimed Thorne, springing up, “I don’t mind answering your question; but what is there back of all this?”
“Nothing; except that Lord Rockpool would be interested to know why you entered his rooms last evening and extracted the list of those athletes who will represent your University against Cambridge at the end of the month.”
“Eh?” interrupted Rockpool, “how the deuce could Thorne have entered my rooms?”
“The thud you heard overhead, my lord, when you were in the dining-room was caused by Mr. Thorne alighting on the lead flat which he reached by means of his vaulting-pole. I saw the place where it touched the soft lead guttering; we all saw the small circular indentation in the turf pierced triangularly, and I, being a fen-man, knew that it was made by the point of a spiked vaulting-pole, the imprint of which was left on the grass where it fell, and which you and Hicks mistook for the mark made by a rope. The thin layer of dried earth fell from between the spikes when the pole was planted, but I’ll admit the white flecks puzzled me until I saw the sawdust in the pit at Iffley Road today.”
“But why do you fasten this affair on to Thorne with such certitude?” asked Rockpool.
“Because the height of the lead-flat from the ground is ten feet six inches, and Mr. Thorne is the only man at either Oxford or Cambridge who can beat ten feet at present.”
Washburn Thorne was about to speak, but Old Ebbie held up his hand.
“Lord Rockpool,” he said, “was anxious to ascribe the business to some too enterprising journalist; I, personally, suspected that the betting fraternity had bribed someone to obtain early and accurate information for them, but since I have seen Mr. Thorne the matter admits of a different significance, and I think McLaglan, too, may play a part, conscious or otherwise, in this affair.
“You, my lord, have told us that the controversy was somewhat hot as to whether he should be given his Blue, and I have wondered if he knew of this and had been anxious to satisfy himself, hence my question concerning his weight. The fact that he weighs nearly two hundred and forty pounds put him out of court as a pole-vaulter, but I still have a feeling that Mr. Thorne knows something about McLaglan and wanted to see the list of Blues on that account.
“It struck me as odd that McLaglan, a man of thirty, should be so foolish as to antagonise his associates by growing a beard, but you will remember that you, my lord, told us he was not quite a gentleman and had been much abroad, and that he did not begin to grow his objectionable beard until he knew the names of the Rhodes scholars expected from America. In other words, I wondered if anyone coming over had knowledge of his previous career which would be detrimental, and if for that reason he was growing a beard.
“Mixed up with all this is a fantastic second, or perhaps I should say first, problem—that of the false cheque.
“The man who wrote that cheque was an American, or had lived in America, as witness the method of dating it; the silversmith says his customer had abnormally long arms, by which, in common with other hammer-throwers, Captain Hicks tells me McLaglan is distinguished; the shop-keeper tells me, moreover, that his customer chose his words carefully, as, I told myself, one might do who wished to conceal his American accent. You must remember, too, that McLaglan had been educated privately, and that nothing is known as to his antecedents. Finally, Lord Rockpool has told us that some suspicion attaches to the man of being not quite straight in money matters. I have no proof of his guilt in the matter of the cheque.
“And now, Mr. Thorne, what have you to say to all this?”
Washburn Thorne, who had been regarding Old Ebbie with ever-growing amazement, laughed nervously.
“I admit entering Lord Rockpool’s rooms in the manner you have mentioned,” he said, “but not from any evil motive. I was at Cornell before I came to Oxford, and I went with the U.S.A. Olympic team to the last celebration of the Olympic Games. There was a hammer-thrower aboard the U.S.A. ship who made himself pretty obnoxious, and who, after the Games, turned professional and then disappeared. This was the so-called J. C. McLaglan, and once I spotted him I was determined he should not bring discredit upon Oxford University by representing us against Cambridge; but all the time I did not like to speak in case he should be trying to get a good education for honest ends; but I knew I’d have to tell Rockpool if the Committee had given him his Blue. I only meant to look at the list, but I heard Rockpool running upstairs, and so I grabbed the paper, slipped through the window, and jumped down from the lead flat. I played ’possum in the bushes awhile, and then slipped over the wall back to College.”
“Ah!” said Old Ebbie, “then McLaglan’s beard didn’t deceive you?”
“It did absolutely.”
“Then how did you recognise him?”
“In the strangest possible way,” answered Thorne, smiling. “On board the boat bearing the U.S.A. Olympic team the hammer-thrower in question used to recite a poem he himself had written all about a man called James Vivian, and here in Oxford I heard McLaglan recite the same puerile verses, and spotted him at once.”
“Well, now, that is most extraordinary,” exclaimed Old Ebbie with a dry chuckle, “for we have solved the double problem. The false cheque given to the silversmith was signed ‘James Vivian’; McLaglan has borrowed the name of his invented hero.”
“I think we had better go and call on McLaglan,” interposed Lord Rockpool. “As a professional he is, of course, altogether outside the pale, but I wonder what has been his object in this masquerade.”
“I fancy he was brought over by a bunch of bookmakers who wanted to make sure of an Oxford victory,” said Washburn Thorne, “but I’m afraid you won’t find him. I warned him last night that he must not dare to represent the ’Varsity at Queen’s Club or I would show him up, and I believe he quitted Oxford early this morning.”
In this assumption the Rhodes scholar was correct, nor did the pseudo-amateur hammer-thrower again put in an appearance at that ancient seat of
learning.
Fisherman’s Luck
J. Jefferson Farjeon
Joseph Jefferson Farjeon (1883–1955) came from a literary family; his father, brother, and sister were all capable authors. After a decade working in the editorial department of Amalgamated Press, he established himself as a thriller writer with books such as The Master Criminal (1924) and Number 17 (1926), which was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. He became a prolific and popular novelist, but his work slipped from sight after his death until Mystery in White (1937) was published by the British Library in 2014 and became a runaway bestseller. Thirteen Guests (1936) and The Z Murders (1932) have also been republished in the Crime Classics series.
Farjeon was a cricket lover, as is evident from Thirteen Guests. The website Cricket Country points out that the game forms “a vital cog in the wheel of a complex plot. A scorecard of a match between MCC and Somerset emerges from one of the drawers. And an act of fielding practice has a defining role in the unravelling of the final mystery, and thereby the devious twist in the tale.” This story, however, features angling. One of a long series of short tales featuring Detective X. Crook which Farjeon wrote for the magazine market in the mid-1920s, it appeared in Flynn’s Magazine on 18 July 1925.
I
The Boar’s Head stood on the fringe of a big pine forest, and the proprietor often said that if only there were as many customers in the district as there were trees, he would possess a fortune. He was saying so now to Detective X. Crook, who had turned into the little inn for a drink before completing a journey to the Crofts.
“’Ot day like this, customers oughter be swarmin’ in like hinsecks,” complained the innkeeper. “But, there! Besides yourself, sir, there’s them two yonder, and that’s all the warm weather’s brought me!”
Crook smiled, and took his glass to a seat near the other two inmates of the bar parlour—a squat, beard-fringed man with fishing tackle by his side, and a taller, sandy-haired fellow with light blue eyes.
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