by Sapper
Two days ago I wandered casually into Jones’ curio shop just off the Strand. At times I have picked up quite good bits of stuff there, and I frequently drop in on the chance of a bargain.
“I’ve got the very thing for you, Mr Mayhew,” he said as soon as he saw me. “A couple of bits of old Sheffield. Just wait while I get them.”
He disappeared into the back of the shop and left me alone. I strolled round, looking at his stuff, and in one corner I found a peculiarly ugly carved table, standing on three gim-crack legs. Ordinarily, I should merely have shuddered and passed on: but something made me stop and look at it a little more closely. Its proud designer, presumably in order to finish it off tastefully, had cut four holes in the top, and into these four holes he had placed four pieces of coloured glass – yellow, blue, green, and red. Mechanically I touched them, and to my surprise I found the red one was loose. Still quite mechanically I worked it about, and finally took it out.
A minute later Jones found me staring dazedly at something in my hand, which, even in the dim light of the shop, glowed and scintillated like a giant ruby.
“Here are those two bits of plate, Mr Mayhew,” he remarked. Then he saw what I had in my hand, and glanced at the table. “Don’t worry about that. It’s been loose ever since I got it. I must seccotine it in some day.”
“Tell me, Mr Jones,” I endeavoured to speak quite calmly, “where did you get this from?”
“What – that table? A Mr Mansfrey asked me to try and sell it for him months ago: you know, the gentleman who’s just written that book on poisons. Not that I’ve got any hope of obliging him, for it’s a horrible-looking thing, I think.”
A thousand wild thoughts were rushing through my brain as I stood there, with the dealer watching me curiously. If that bit of red glass came out of a table, it had never adorned an idol’s face in Tibet. And as it had come out of a table, it proved that Mansfrey had lied. Why?
“I will take that table,” I said to the astounded dealer. “I’ll give you five pounds for it. Send it round at once.”
“Shall I put that red thing in, sir?” he asked.
“No,” I answered, “I’ll keep this.”
I strode out of the shop and into the Strand. Why had Mansfrey gone to the trouble of inventing that long tissue of falsehood? Why? The question rang ceaselessly through my brain. Why should a writer on poisons and an able, clever man – I had heard of Mansfrey’s new book – take the trouble to lie steadily throughout an evening, unless he had some object in view?
I turned into my club, and sat down to try and puzzle things out. And the more I thought of it the less I liked it.
At length I rose and, going to a table, wrote a note to Mansfrey asking him to come round and see me at my flat. He came last night – and as I said before, I don’t know what to do.
Straight in front of him as he came into the room I had placed the table. The hole for the red glass was empty, the piece itself was in the centre of the mantelpiece. He stopped abruptly and stared at the little table: then he turned and the gleaming red thing in front of the clock caught his eyes. Then he looked at me, blinking placidly with a faint smile on his face.
“I didn’t know you knew Jones,” he said, sinking into an easy chair, and lighting a cigarette.
“I should like an explanation, Mansfrey,” I remarked, sternly.
“What of? Fenton’s death? My dear fellow – surely it was quite obvious from the first. I killed him.” He still blinked at me with his mild blue eyes.
“You killed him!” I almost shouted.
“Hush, hush!” He held up a deprecating hand. “Not so loud, please. Of course I killed him, as I had always intended to do. He was one of the type of carrion who was not fit to live. He ruined my sister!” For a moment he had ceased blinking: then he went on again quite calmly: “But why should I weary you with personal history? Is there anything else you’d like to know?”
“A lot,” I said. “Of course, your reason is a big extenuating circumstance, and undoubtedly Fenton was a blackguardly cad – but that does not excuse you, Mansfrey, for murdering him.”
“I absolutely disagree,” he returned, gently. “The law would have given me no redress, so I had to make my own.”
“Of course,” I said, after a pause, “I shall have to tell Scotland Yard. I mean, I can’t possibly condone such a thing.”
He smiled peacefully and shook his head. “I don’t think I would if I were you,” he murmured. “Who was it who begged Fenton not to take the idol’s eye in his hand–?” He glanced at the glass on the mantelpiece. “It bore a striking resemblance to that thing you’ve got there, now I come to look at it. But, who was it? Why, me. Who overruled me? Well – neither you nor Lethbridge backed me up, anyway. Who was it suggested removing it before the doctor came? I think I am right in saying it was Lethbridge. Who insisted on a chemical analysis? I did. Who had it carried out? You, and I have the chemist’s report in my desk. What was the result of the post-mortem and the coroner’s inquest? Death from natural causes: no trace of poison.” He blinked on placidly. “Oh! no, my friend, I don’t quite see you going to Scotland Yard. In the extremely improbable event of that august body not regarding you as a lunatic, you would inevitably, and Lethbridge also, be regarded as my accomplices in the matter. You see, between you, in all innocence, you compromised yourselves very awkwardly – very awkwardly indeed.” He rose to go.
“How did you kill him?” I demanded.
“A rare and little-known poison,” he answered. “You’ll find something about it in my new book. Probably the most deadly in the world, for it leaves no trace. It kills by shock, which induces heart failure. I dipped that glass – er – I mean the idol’s eye, which is so like that bit of glass – into a solution of the poison before putting it in his hand. Then the next morning I dipped it in another solution. You considerately left it with me for some hours – a minute was all I required. From experiments I have carried out on animals, I should think he died in about half an hour. Er – good night.”
The door closed behind him, and I sat staring at the red bauble glittering in the light. Then in a fit of rage I took it to the window and hurled it into the street below. It broke into a thousand fragments and Mansfrey – who had just left the front door – looked up and smiled.
“Er – good night,” he called, and I could imagine those blue eyes blinking mildly.
And the devil of it all is, as I mentioned previously – I don’t know what to do.
A QUESTION OF IDENTITY
The reputation of Mason, Cartwright and Mason is too well known to need emphasizing. To do so would be rather like alluding to the solvency of the Bank of England. Mention them as your solicitors, and no further reference for a business deal is necessary. And yet it is nevertheless a fact that John Mason, senior member of the firm, did, on one occasion, wittingly and with full knowledge thereof, compound a felony. And it is a further fact that his doing so has never caused him one sleepless night, nor is it ever likely to. Neither Peter Mason, his son, nor Edward Cartwright, his partner for thirty years, knows anything about it: it is his own private secret and it will go with him to the grave. And this was the way of it…
It was in the year 1835 that William, tenth Earl of Olford, being dissatisfied with his lawyer, transferred his affairs to John Mason’s father. It was doubtless an honour and a compliment, but it was not altogether an unmixed blessing. Like all the Olfords the tenth Earl had the devil of a temper, and since – again like all the Olfords – his ideas on expenditure with regard to income were a little optimistic, John Mason’s father had sometimes been heard to express a profound wish that the honour had been bestowed elsewhere.
He died in 1850, did the tenth Earl, twelve years before John Mason was born, so that his first acquaintance with the family was Richard, the eleventh holder of the title. And he was twenty-five when his father, who was getting on in years, took him down to Olford Towers to introduce him to the Earl.
&n
bsp; “My young hopeful, Lord Olford,” said the old lawyer. “We’ve got to have a Mason in the firm, and another few years will see me through.”
The Earl shook hands with a grip that made John Mason wince, though he was a rowing man of no mean repute.
“Glad to meet you, my boy. And I hope you’ll look after our affairs as well as your father has done. But you’ll find it difficult.”
“I’ll do my best, my lord,” John answered, and then the other two plunged into business.
It was always the same, as he found out afterwards – the place. With Richard, Olford Towers was an obsession. It was his religion, almost his very soul. And for an hour that morning John Mason sat and listened while the other two went into facts and figures. Once or twice the imperious will of the Earl flashed out when his father raised objections, only to be succeeded immediately by a charming smile and, “You’re right, old friend, as usual.”
And then, just as they had finished, the door opened and a boy of ten came into the room. No need to ask who he was: the likeness, even at that age, to his father was amazing. The same keen eyes and firm chin, the same look of inflexible pride. It was the little Viscount Carslake, the future twelfth Earl and his father’s only child.
At the moment, however, any thought of the future was relegated to the background by the very obvious present. A cut under one eye, some bleeding knuckles, and a large tear in his shirt proclaimed the fact that there had been trouble.
“What have you been up to, young fellow?” said his father quietly.
“I found Joe Mercer hitting his puppy,” answered the boy, “and I told him to stop. And he wouldn’t.”
“So, you fought him, did you?”
“Well, of course I did, father,” said the boy simply.
“Did you beat him?”
The boy nodded.
“He said he’d had enough, and promised he wouldn’t hit the puppy again.”
“Good boy,” said the Earl, “now go and tidy yourself up before your mother sees you.”
The door closed behind the child, and the Earl turned with twinkling eyes to the other two.
“Young Mercer is twelve and big for his age. ‘Nil timent’ – eh, what! ‘Nil timent!’”
“They fear nothing”: the motto of the Olfords. And that was the other half of their religion. Never mentioned, naturally, merely accepted as a matter of course. “Nil timent.” Once in years to come, when John Mason had relieved his father, he happened to go one day to the portrait gallery. They were all there – all the men of the line of Olford – staring down from the walls; all, that is, save one. And where his portrait should have been there was a gap. Without thinking he asked the obvious question.
“It is put away somewhere,” said the Earl. “A pity, because it is the most valuable of all as a painting. But we have indisputable proof that he was guilty of cowardice at the time of the Civil War.”
And that was enough: the blank space marked the unforgivable sin. Libertines, gamblers, drunkards – all were represented; but for a coward there could only be the oblivion of an attic.
It was during the Boer War that Richard died, and Viscount Carslake became the twelfth Earl. He was in South Africa at the time – a subaltern in the early twenties. And as John Mason wired him the news he breathed a silent prayer that he would pull through all right. For five hundred years the title had descended from father to son, and now there was a chance of the line being broken. Broken badly, too, for the new Earl’s nearest male relatives were second cousins.
There were two brothers – Spencer by name – and John Mason had hardly been aware of their existence till they turned up at the funeral. The elder, Harold, was a very decent fellow: to the younger, Stephen, he took an instant dislike. He was a shifty-eyed, ferret-nosed young man, with an unhealthy looking skin, and he habitually spoke with a slight snuffle. However, even if the worst happened in Africa, Stephen would come into the picture, and Harold, though not a true Olford, would make a very fair substitute. And John Mason was a very exacting judge. More and more as the years passed had he become wrapped up in the family. In fact, he was more like an elder brother to the youngster at the front than a legal adviser. And he wanted an elder brother pretty badly at times. He was a wild boy, bubbling over with life and spirits – a true Olford, and there had been one or two awkward scrapes. One at Eton touching a little matter of gambling; and another at Sandhurst concerning breaking bounds and an unlawful supper party at one of the local hotels.
It was touch and go in the latter case as to whether he wasn’t expelled, and his father was furious.
“An Olford,” he roared, “sneaking out like a damned footman to drink bad port with fifth-rate chorus girls. By Gad! sir, I never thought I’d say it, but I’m glad your mother is dead.”
It blew over and they patched it up, but things were never quite the same again. Their wills were both too imperious, and the atmosphere at Olford Towers stifled the boy. Not that he didn’t love the place, but it was only natural that he couldn’t feel for it at his age in the way his father did. He wanted freedom and big spaces. Olford Towers could come later. He wanted life with a capital L, not the comparative stagnation of a great country seat.
And so when he returned to England, the war over, John Mason was not altogether surprised at his decision. He heard it while they were sitting over the port at the end of dinner. A day of business lay behind them, and once or twice from little remarks he had guessed that something of the sort was coming.
“You know I’ve sent in my papers, John: no peace soldiering for me.”
John Mason sipped his wine.
“What do you propose to do?”
“Get out of England,” cried the other. “Man! there are a million places in this world that I want to see, a million things to do. Life’s all too short as it is, so why waste another moment. But I’m not going as the Earl of Olford in a de luxe suite on a P & O. I don’t mind sticking to Hector, since it’s my name, but from tomorrow onwards yours truly becomes Hector Latham.”
“And all this?” asked John Mason, with a little wave of his hand round the room.
“Can wait. I’ll come back to it in time, John; never fear about that. But first I’ve got to live. Lord! old man, yarning with some of those irregulars out there, I’ve just marvelled at the life most of us live.”
“And supposing you don’t come back?” said John Mason quietly, “then what about all this?”
“It will go presumably to that fellow you told me about – Harold Spencer,” answered the other. “I’ve never seen him, but you say he’s a decent fellow. I know what you’re driving at, John. You want me to marry, and have an heir. But if I do that how the devil can I go off and do what I want to do? I’ll marry when I come back, old man; there will be plenty of time then. And you can look after the place for me. I won’t have it let, I love the old pile too much for that. And if I want any money I’ll cable you from time to time. But I’ll not want much.”
And so a few days later, Hector, twelfth Earl of Olford, disappeared, and in the log of a wind-jammer bound from South Shields to Sydney, the fact that one Hector Latham had booked a passage by nominally signing on as second steward, was duly entered.
From then on for ten years John Mason heard from him periodically. From South America, China, New Zealand, there came short messages. Sometimes, not often, there was a request for money to be cabled; generally it was just a notification that he was still alive. And it was in June, 1912, that he received a cable which brought a smile of satisfaction to his face.
“Wire hundred pounds. Leaving for home, Bellonia.”
And it had been handed in at Auckland.
The hundred pounds were duly dispatched; preparations were at once started at Olford Towers to welcome the returning owner. The end of July, reflected John Mason, should see him in England again; and on the second of that month the Bellonia was reported lost with all hands on board.
At first he could hardly grasp it;
he just sat in his chair staring dazedly at the paper in his hands. Then feverishly he rang up Lloyd’s. Yes, he was told, as far as they could make out it was only too true. The whole thing at the moment was wrapped in mystery, and they really knew no more than he did. She had apparently encountered the most fearful weather, and had got into difficulties. Her SOS had been picked up by three other boats, but when they reached the place indicated there was no sign of her. Moreover the last SOS had broken off abruptly in the middle of the message.
He got hold of a passenger list, hoping against hope that Hector might have changed his mind at the last moment and not travelled in the Bellonia. But a glance at the names confirmed his worst fears. Evidently, since he was coming home, he had decided to travel under his real name, for the Earl of Olford was at the top of the column.
So he hadn’t come back as he said he would. Fate had decided otherwise. The unbroken line had got to be severed. Of course there were legal formalities as to presumption of death; months dragged by before they were concluded. But in no one’s mind was there the slightest doubt as to what had happened. Not a word came to break the silence; it was just one of those mysteries of the sea, which, in this world, will never be explained.
And so in due course, Harold Spencer became the thirteenth Earl, with a singularly charming young wife as his Countess. They had been married about a year, and a son had just appeared on the scene, when the war in France broke out. And the first batch of Kitchener’s Army included Harold; it did not include his brother Stephen. That ferret-faced gentleman preferred to fight from an office stool, and succeeded in wangling it successfully. He even gave a watery snuffle when Harold was ripped to pieces by a machine gun at Loos; and felt aggrieved when a dry-eyed woman holding a baby boy of a year in her arms called him a coward to his face.
The fourteenth Earl of Olford – that baby boy; and Stephen, the shifty-eyed, found strange thoughts coming into his tortuous mind. Just supposing the child died, and children do die, he would be the Earl. Measles or something like that.