Silent Nights

by Martin Edwards

  “Such jokes I never heard before,” asserted a dowager with green eyes and multiple chins, “and he tells them so well. I wonder why we are none of us to leave the hotel until given permission?”

  “Bit of a mystery,” commented young Glover. “Oh, well, who cares? It’s Christmas, and snowing like billy-ho outside.”

  “Let it snow,” growled the old colonel, reaching for another port and staring at the logs in the grate.

  “I was going to,” agreed Glover. “Did any of you hear about the station-master’s dog who always chased up the track in pursuit of every express that dashed through the station?”

  “Do tell us,” urged a stout lady of forty, trying to look up at him through distressingly short eyelashes.

  Glover plunged into his five-hundredth humorous story since his arrival at the little hotel two days previously. As he progressed, old Mr Mullinger chuckled again.

  “Inexhaustible,” he murmured, nodding at Mr Warboys, a permanent resident of the Grand. “Tricks, stories, games—he seems to know them all.”

  ***

  “Wonderful young man,” said Mr Warboys, setting his bottom teeth against his top in order that speech may be facilitated. “A great asset here at a time like Christmas. Been the life and soul of the place. What are they keeping us indoors for? The manager requested that no one leaves the hotel until given permission.”

  “Some Christmas surprise,” put in a thin lady, ceasing to eat nuts and raisins for the first time since dinner, and nodding brightly as she patted her hair. “I’ve heard of such things before. Sometimes they have someone to call dressed as Santa Claus, and every guest gets a gift.”

  “When?” said a small, sandy man with a tartan tie, emerging from his nap.

  “Quite an idea,” agreed Mr Mullinger.

  “Confined to barracks, by Gad,” snapped the colonel fiercely, and reached for the decanter.

  There came a discreet hurricane of fluttering applause from the table across the room. Young Glover had just completed another conjuring trick.

  “What’s the noise about?” demanded the old colonel, preening his moustache, and vaguely trying to light a match with a cigarette.

  “Astoundin’,” remarked a stout commercial traveller. “Dipped a piece of white paper right into a glass of ink? an’ when he pulled the paper out again? it was all black but the ink in the glass had changed to pure water. Makes Maskylion look silly he does; makes Maskylion look silly. Dipped a piece of white paper—”

  ***

  “Quite simple,” said young Glover modestly. “You see it was only a glass of clean water with some black silk inside the glass, sticking lightly against the side. When I stuck the paper in the water I drew it out with the black silk on it.”

  There was enthusiastic applause.

  “Talking about conjuring,” said Mr Mullinger lightly, “I once heard a chap say that it was possible for him to leave a glass full of water on a table in the room, that he would go out, and when he walked into the room again within a few minutes, the glass would be empty.”

  “Confederate in the room,” said the stout dowager excitedly.

  “No, he said not,” said Mr Mullinger. “No one else in the room was to touch the glass at all. All bunk, of course. Quite impossible. I would bet a sovereign it couldn’t be done. Don’t know whether the chap was trying to impress us with psychic stuff or whatever you call it, but—”

  “I could do it!”

  ***

  Mr Mullinger stared at Eric Glover’s eager face with surprise.

  “You would leave a glass full of water inside this room, go out, and when you walked in again the glass would be empty. Impossible!”

  “You spoke about a pound bet,” said Mr Glover playfully. “I’ll call you!”

  Mr Mullinger stared in silence. Chairs scraped near in an interested circle.

  “There is a glass here,” said the ancient Mr Warboys, snapping his upper set more tightly into position.

  “I shall want that,” snapped the old colonel, irritably removing the other’s fingers from the stem. What about that glass young Glover has been using? Use that, dammit!”

  “I’d like to see that glass,” muttered Mr Mullinger. He got up, examined the glass carefully and flicked it ringingly with his fingernail.

  “No false bottom there,” grinned Glover.

  “Let’s know where we stand,” grunted the older man. “Do you know what you have undertaken to do?”

  Glover nodded.

  “I will go out of this room, leaving that glass full of water. No one else is to touch it; it shall stand on the table in full view of everybody. When I walk in again—which I shall do within five minutes of walking out—the glass will still be on the table BUT EMPTY.”

  “Impossible,” declared Mr Mullinger.

  Glover smiled quietly. He filled the glass from a decanter of water and set it on the table, where it stood palely agleam against the dark polish of the oak.

  “I know a good way of keeping milk from going sour,” put in the commercial traveller suddenly.

  “What way?” demanded a sour-looking woman, looking up from a woollen pullover she was committing for a nephew.

  “Leave it in the cow,” said the commercial traveller, laughing uproariously and turning it into a cough as no one took any notice.

  When Glover reached the door, leaving everybody seated and waiting expectantly, he turned and spoke:

  “When I walk in again, that glass will be empty.”

  The door closed behind him.

  “Watch that glass,” counselled Mr Warboys, staring at the table with tense eyes. “Watch it!”

  They watched it. There fell a dead silence.

  ***

  The door opened within the minute. Grinning wickedly, Mr Glover made his appearance and progressed to the table on his hands and knees.

  He coolly lifted the glass, drank its contents with a solemn “Good health, everybody,” and set the glass back as he had found it.

  Amid some laughs and partial surprise, he crawled out of the room again. Brows puckered in thought until the commercial traveller burst in with enlightenment.

  “That’s what it is,” he boomed. “He didn’t walk in that time! HE CRAWLED IN! Now, when he walks in the glass will be empty, won’t it?”

  Smilingly, Glover returned, walked calmly up to the table, and raised the glass.

  Mullinger nodded with a little shrug.

  “I owe you a pound,” he admitted. “Will you give me an opportunity to win it back? A thought-reading trick, it is called. It isn’t really, but I’d like to bet you a pound that I can be taken out of this room, blindfolded, brought back, twisted round several times if you like, and then led by the hand round the room.

  “Before we start making the round of the room, though, you will name some object which has been hidden whilst I have been out being blindfolded. I will undertake to call a halt when I am directly opposite the place where the object is hidden. Come, you are game?”

  ***

  “That’s new on me,” nodded Glover.

  “But how do I know you won’t choose a confederate to signal to you while you are being guided by him? No offence, of course; simply look at the thing from a fool-proof standpoint.”

  “Easy,” agreed Mr Mullinger, counter sly. “You can guide me yourself, Glover.”

  Blindfolded very thoroughly, Mr Mullinger was led back into the smoking room. There was general laughter as Glover rotated him several times, and little Mullinger swayed dizzily upon his feet.

  “If he has the slightest idea of the lay-out of the room now,” grinned Glover, “I’ll eat my boots, rubber heels and all!”

  He took Mr Mullinger’s hand and led him slowly along the sides of the room. Interestedly, the others stared as the pair approached the dish of wax fr
uit secreted within the gramophone cabinet. There was a general gasp of wonder as the pair reached the instrument and Mr Mullinger called a halt.

  “Here,” he chuckled, removed the bandage from his eyes and took in his surroundings. His eye lit on the gramophone before which they had paused. In a moment he opened the doors of the cabinet, looked in and spotted the imitation fruit.

  “Yes,” he suggested.

  “You couldn’t see?” demanded Mr Warboys.

  “Let us do it again,” said Mr Mullinger. “We’ll start again from the door. Bandage my eyes very tightly, Glover. That is the idea, my boy. Lead me to the door. Good. Now, turn me several times.”

  ***

  Glover did as instructed. He took the older man’s hand and steadied him as he reeled dizzily.

  “Now,” Mr Mullinger spoke very steadily, “we will walk slowly round the walls again. I don’t know where it is, but I shall undertake to call ‘halt’ opposite eighty-five pounds and some securities.”

  There was an electric silence.

  The man in the tartan tie emerged again from a doze.

  “Eighty-five pounds and some securities. Where?”

  “I don’t know,” confessed Mr Mullinger quietly. “But if Mr Glover will take my hand and lead me round the room. I shall stop by them! Something weird about this? Come on, Glover!”

  Eric Glover forced a smile which found no support in his eyes. A little muscle in his neck showed momentarily.

  The pair progressed slowly along the first wall. There was a pause as they turned. It was Mr Mullinger who began the second wall with slow, deliberate, shuffling steps.

  “Halt!” he called suddenly, and stopped at a point halfway across the width of the second wall.

  Glover’s gasp was lost in the triumph of the word. Mullinger tore off the bandage, stared at the floor, at the wall.

  ***

  There was no furniture at that point. But Mr Mullinger raised his eyes and smiled gently at a picture, massive, ancient, which graced the wall directly opposite where he stood.

  “Of course,” he chuckled. “Quite simple, really. I had expected somewhere more subtle. A hidden panel or something like that. Well, well!”

  There was a mild chaos as the others crowded around. Mr Mullinger had taken down the picture carefully. He released the twist-catches holding the wooden back in position, and forced out the sheet of shrivelled boarding. There was a fluttering of papers to the floor.

  “Eighty-five pounds, I imagine,” said Mr Mullinger smoothly. “And securities to the value of another three hundred. The contents of the hotel safe robbed in the early hours of Christmas Eve morning.”

  “Extraordinary,” whispered Glover.

  “Nothing extraordinary, really,” drawled Mr Mullinger. “You were good enough to explain your trick, so I’ll do the same. When you led me round the room. Glover, after the hiding of the wax fruit in the gramophone cabinet, you gave me the tip when I reached the spot with you holding my hand. Psychological reason, of course. You squeezed my hand slightly. Quite unconsciously, you squeezed it, though.

  “The knowledge that we were at the very point where the object was hidden caused a keying up of your nervous system. Suspense, really. Your balance, as it were—will he stop or won’t he?—was affected. The suspense of the moment causes a contraction of your fingers holding mine. You see, it had to be someone leading me who knew when we would reach the object. THAT WAS WHY I CHOSE YOU AGAIN WHEN SETTING OUT TO DISCOVER WHERE THE PROCEEDS FROM THE SAFE HAD BEEN HIDDEN!”

  Glover started violently.

  “By heaven, do you dare to suggest that I knew…that I—?”

  “You and none other,” nodded Mr Mullinger. “You knew where the notes and securities had been hidden—naturally, seeing that you hid them there till opportunity offered to get them away from the hotel.”

  “It is a lie,” grated Glover. He laughed harshly. “You can prove nothing, either.”

  “No?” Mr Mullinger never took his hand from his pocket. He stared dispassionately at the pale face of the other. “The emptying of the glass trick over which you—again most obligingly—tumbled, was one I have done myself for the amusement of parties. I guessed you would know it, hence my affording you the opportunity.

  “You see, Glover, fingerprints are easy to obtain. People leave them everywhere in normal actions. But knee-prints are more difficult to obtain. People don’t leave knee-prints about; it was difficult to establish comparison with the knee-prints the thief left on the polished floor about the safe!”

  Glover swore suddenly; his hand went swiftly behind him.

  “It isn’t there,” said Mr Mullinger, gently. “I have it here, look! I abstracted it quite unostentatiously when you crawled on all fours to the table to empty the glass.”

  Glover stared ashen-faced at his own automatic, pointed steadily in the grasp of Mr Mullinger.

  “You see,” pursued Mr Mullinger evenly, “I suspected you quite early. And from the fact that you haunted this room practically all day on Christmas-eve, and again today—subconscious desire to be near the booty, my dear Glover, and know it is safe—it was fairly good proof that the proceeds were hidden here somewhere.

  “Your knees have provided some excellent prints on the polished floor here. Identical with those left by the safe. And the distances between the impressions are identical, too, my young friend.”

  “A blasted detective!” snarled Glover.

  Mullinger smiled and nodded.

  “I was,” he admitted. “Retired from the Force. Retiring, Glover—but not BACKWARD! Colonel, can you forsake the port long enough to ring up the police and summon the manager in here? Thank you.”

  A Happy Solution

  Raymund Allen

  Raymund Allen (1863–1943) was a Welsh-born, Cambridge-educated barrister who spent much of his legal career working as District Probate Registrar in Llandaff. An obituary in The Times described him as “a stimulating companion, a witty talker with a strong love of argument, and an excellent raconteur who had a strong fund of legal stories with a South Wales setting”. His wife, Alice Pattinson, was a well-known bookbinder.

  Allen wrote on legal subjects such as the Workers’ Compensation Act, but his passion was for chess, and he contributed short stories about the game to the Strand Magazine for over twenty years. “The Black Knight”, which appeared in 1892, was a story of the uncanny, while “A Happy Solution”, published in 1916, combined chess with detection to such good effect that twelve years later, Dorothy L. Sayers included it in her ground-breaking anthology Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror. Allen was also the author of Irregular Forces: A Story of Chess and War (1915) and yet another chess story, “Allah Knows Best”.

  ***

  The portmanteau, which to Kenneth Dale’s strong arm had been little more than a feather-weight on leaving the station, seemed to have grown heavier by magic in the course of the half-mile that brought him to Lord Churt’s country house. He put the portmanteau down in the porch with a sense of relief to his cramped arm, and rang the bell.

  He had to wait for a few minutes, and then Lord Churt opened the door in person. His round, rubicund face, that would hardly have required any make-up to present an excellent “Mr Pickwick”, beamed a welcome. “Come in, my dear boy, come in. I’m delighted to see you. I wish you a merry Christmas.”

  It was Christmas Eve, and his manner was bubbling over with the kindliness appropriate to the season. He seized the portmanteau and carried it into the hall.

  “I am my own footman and parlour-maid and everything else for the moment. Packed all the servants off to a Christmas entertainment at the village school and locked the doors after ’em. My wife’s gone, too, and Aunt Blaxter.”

  “And Norah?” Kenneth inquired.

  “Ah! Norah!” Churt answered, with a friendly clap on Kenneth
’s shoulder. “Norah’s the only person that really matters, of course she is, and quite right too. Norah stayed in to send off a lot of Christmas cards, and I fancy she is still in her room, but she must have disposed of the cards, because they are in the letter-bag. She would have been on the look-out for you, no doubt, but your letter said you were not coming.”

  “Yes, I know. I thought I couldn’t get away, but today my chief’s heart was softened, and he said he would manage to do without me till the day after tomorrow. So I made a rush for the two-fifteen, and just caught it.”

  “And here you are as a happy surprise for your poor, disappointed Norah—and for us all,” he added, genially.

  “I hope you approve of my fiancée,” Kenneth remarked, with a smile that expressed confidence as to the answer.

  “My dear Kenneth,” Churt replied, “I can say with sincerity that I think her both beautiful and charming. We were very glad to ask her here, and her singing is a great pleasure to us.” He hesitated for a moment before continuing. “You must forgive us cautious old people if we think the engagement just a little bit precipitate. As Aunt Blaxter was saying today, you can’t really know her very well on such a short acquaintance, and you know nothing at all of her people.”

  Kenneth mentally cursed Aunt Blaxter for a vinegar-blooded old killjoy, but did not express any part of the sentiment aloud.

  “We must have another talk about your great affair later,” Churt went on. “Now come along to the library. I am just finishing a game of chess with Sir James Winslade, and then we’ll go and find where Miss Norah is hiding.”

  He stopped at a table in the passage that led from the hall to the library, and took a bunch of keys out of his pocket. “She was sending you a letter, so there can be no harm in our rescuing it out of the bag.” He unlocked the private letter-bag and turned out a pile of letters on to the table, muttering an occasional comment as he put them back, one by one, in the bag, in his search for the letter he was looking for. “Aunt Emma—ah, I ought to have written to her too; must write for her birthday instead. Mrs Dunn—same thing there, I’m afraid. Red Cross—hope that won’t get lost; grand work, the Red Cross. Ah, here we are: ‘Kenneth Dale, Esq., 31, Valpy Street, London, S.W.’ ’’ He tumbled the rest of the letters back into the bag and re-locked it. “Put it in your pocket and come along, or Winslade will think I am never coming back.”