The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack: 27 Mystery Tales of Dr. Thorndyke & Others

by R. Austin Freeman

  The three men pored over the canvas, searching suspiciously for any sign of change or substitution. But there was none. The surface of the painting was unaltered and apparently none the worse for its recent vicissitudes.

  “They seem to have handled it carefully,” Mr. Barnard remarked. “No one would dream that it had been covered up with fresh paint.”

  “No,” agreed Sir John; “it hasn’t left a trace. They must have used a slow-drying oil and cleaned it off immediately. But,” he added, turning the picture over, “they had the canvas off the stretcher. Do you notice?” He held the picture towards the other two, who eyed it narrowly.

  “It seems to me, Sir John,” said Fittleworth, after running his eye round the edge of the canvas, “that it’s only been off at one end. The tacks at the top and the upper part of the sides don’t seem to have been disturbed.”

  The Director looked at the picture once more. “You’re quite right, Fittleworth,” said he. “The canvas has been off the stretcher at the lower end only; and what’s more, the bottom bar of the stretcher has been removed and replaced by a fresh piece. Do you see that? The piece that has been inserted is old wood but it’s different from the other three, and you can clearly make out the fresh surface that has been left in cutting the tenons. It is a very astonishing thing. What do you make of it, Barnard?”

  Mr. Barnard could make nothing of it and said so. “The whole thing is a complete mystery to me,” said he. “They may have damaged the old stretcher bar and had to replace it; but I don’t see why they wanted to unfasten the canvas at all.”

  “Neither do I,” said Sir John, “but the main thing is that we’ve got the picture back uninjured, and, that being so, perhaps you would like to reconsider your resignation, Fittleworth.”

  “I don’t think I will, Sir John,” replied the latter. “The affair is known to several people and there’s bound to be some sort of inquiry.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” rejoined the Director. “At any rate, we will hear what the Trustees say. Of course, if the matter rested with me—but it doesn’t; so, for the time being, I must accept your resignation.”

  PART II

  It was perhaps fortunate that Saturday is a public day at most galleries, and so, an off-day for copyists; for in any case there would have been no work on this disastrous morning for Miss Katharine. Within a few minutes of Fittleworth’s arrival at the Gallery, she had taken up a position at the foot of the Nelson Column to await the promised report on the course of events. Fittleworth, on leaving the Director’s room, made straight for the trysting place, and was received with a bright smile and a small, outstretched hand, as they turned away together towards Whitehall.

  “Well,” asked Kate, “what has happened?”

  “I’ve offered to resign,” replied Fittleworth.

  “And of course Sir John scouted the idea?” said Katharine.

  “Oh, did he?” exclaimed Fittleworth. “Not at all. He did say that if the matter rested with him, he’d—”

  “What?”

  “I don’t quite know, but the great news is that the picture has come back.”

  “Oh, good!” exclaimed Katharine. “But, if it has come back, why on earth should you resign?”

  “You’ll see if I tell you how it came back;” and here Fittleworth described the mysterious return of the picture and the still more mysterious change of the stretcher bar.

  “But I still don’t see why you’re resigning,” Katharine persisted.

  “Then,” said Fittleworth, “I’ll explain. You see, Sir John and Barnard are concerned with the picture, qua picture, and from that point of view, a stretcher-bar is just a stretcher-bar and nothing else. But there’s one point that they’ve overlooked—at least, I think they have. This was not only a picture: it was a family relic.”

  “But what has that to do with it?” asked Katharine.

  “That question, my dear girl, is best answered by another. What did those men want with the old stretcher-bar?

  “Well, what did they?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Fittleworth; “but as soon, as I saw that the bar had been changed, I realised that there was something more in this robbery than met the eye. Consider the facts, Katie. First you will see that these men were not common thieves, for they have not only returned the property, but have obviously been most careful not to injure it; which is quite unlike a criminal, who is usually perfectly regardless of the amount of damage he does. In the second place, you will notice that these men wanted the bottom stretcher-bar of the canvas, and wanted it so badly that they were willing to go to great trouble and expense to get it. Next, you will see that these are men of very superior intelligence. One of them is quite a skilful painter, and another an expert musician, and one of them, at least, is a person of great ingenuity. And now, consider the picture itself. It was painted for the King when the Revolution had actually begun and was to be given into the custody of a man who was the King’s trusty friend, who was a man of unswerving loyalty, of infallible judgment and discretion, and who was so perfect a man of the world that he was practically certain not to be involved in any of the troubles that were to follow. What does this suggest to you?”

  “It doesn’t suggest anything,” she replied, with a vague little shake of the head. “What does it suggest to you?”

  “Well,” he replied, “you will agree that for a small and precious object, the stretcher-bar of a valuable picture would furnish an ideal hiding-place; and seeing that three men who are obviously not fools have gone to immense trouble to get possession of this bar, I am inclined to assume that it had been used for that purpose.”

  “Really, Joe!” exclaimed Katharine, “what a delightfully romantic idea! And how Machiavellian of you to have thought of it! Shall we turn into the Park for a little while?”

  Fittleworth assented, and as they had now reached the gates of the Horse Guards, they passed through, furtively watched by the gaudy sentinel, who stood, like some gorgeous tropical bird, keeping guard over the tunnel-like entry. The two lovers walked soberly across the great gravel expanse, and it was not until they had passed through the small gate into the Park, that they took up the thread of their talk. It was Katharine who spoke first.

  “Have you made any sort of guess as to what it was that was hidden in that bar?”

  “No, I haven’t,” replied Fittleworth; “and it’s no use guessing. But this much I think is plain: those men must have had some pretty definite information, and as they couldn’t have got it from the picture, they must have got it from somewhere else; and the question is, where else could they have got it?

  “Could some one have told them?” Katharine suggested.

  “No, certainly not, for if anyone had known of the hiding-place, the hidden object would have been removed long ago. The only possible conclusion seems to be that a written record of the hiding-place exists and has been overlooked.”

  “I see,” said Katharine. “You mean among some of the old family papers.”

  “Possibly,” said Fittleworth, “but I think not. You see that, wherever the record is, these men have obtained access to it. Now, they can hardly be members of the family, for if they had been, they could have abstracted the stretcher-bar when the picture was in the private collection instead of waiting until it was in a public gallery. So that it seems to follow that the record that they have seen, is in some place which is accessible to the public. And if it is accessible to the public, why, you see, Katie dear, that it must be accessible to us.”

  “Yes,” agreed Katharine. “I suppose it must; ii we only knew where to look for it. But perhaps my Machiavellian Joseph has thought of that, too.”

  “I haven’t had much time to think about it at all,” replied Fittleworth; “but there is one likely place that occurs to me, and probably much the most likely: my old college.”

  “At Cambridge?”

  “Yes, Magdalene. That was Pepys’s college, you know, and he bequeathed to it, not on
ly the famous Diary, but a large number of manuscript memoirs on naval and political affairs, as well as prints and collections of ancient paintings. It is highly probable that the document of which we are assuming the existence is among the papers in the Pepysian library; but if it is, there is one little difficulty which will have to be got over.”

  “What is that?

  “Why, you remember that the prudent and secretive Samuel had a way of writing his private memoranda in shorthand, which he evidently used for security rather than brevity; and that being so, we may be pretty certain that our hypothetical document would be in shorthand, too. That is rather a serious difficulty, though I fancy that the system that he used was not a very complicated one. I must find out what Rich’s system is like.”

  Katharine clapped her hands. “Rich’s!” she exclaimed. “How delightful! Have you forgotten that I am an expert in Rich’s shorthand?”

  “I never knew,” said Fittleworth.

  “Oh, but I’m sure that I told you. It was when I used to copy drawings and manuscripts at the British Museum that I got a commission to make a facsimile of a volume written in Rich’s shorthand. Of course, it was necessary to know something about the system or I should have got the characters wrong, so I learnt it up from an old handbook, and by the time I had done my task I had become rather skilful. It’s really quite simple, you know, as compared with modern systems like Pitman’s.”

  Fittleworth regarded Katharine with admiring surprise. “What a clever little lady it is!” he remarked, “and how opportunely clever, too! Do you think it would take you long to teach me?”

  “But what is it that you propose to do?” she asked.

  “I propose to go down to Magdalene, and go through all the Pepys papers of the Revolution period, keeping an especially sharp lookout for any written in short hand. There are not likely to be many of these, for poor old Pepys’s eyesight became so bad that he had to give up keeping a shorthand diary after 1670.”

  Katharine reflected earnestly, and as they took possession of an empty seat in a secluded path, she wrapped her hand coaxingly around his arm.

  “I’m going to make a rather bold proposition, Joe. Of course you can learn Rich’s shorthand without any difficulty. But it would take some time and a good deal of trouble, whereas I already know it and have had quite a lot of experience in copying and reading the characters. Now, why shouldn’t you take me with you to Cambridge and let me decipher the shorthand papers?”

  Fittleworth took a critical survey of the toe of his boot, and reflected on the personal peculiarities of a a mythical female of the name of Grundy; and Katharine, stealing a cautious glance at him, deciphered a cryptogram that was easier than Rich’s.

  “Maggie Flinders would put me up, I know,” she said a propos of the decipherment. “She’s a something at Newnham, and we’re quite old friends.”

  Fittleworth’s face cleared. “That gets rid of one difficulty,” said he, “and the other difficulty I must get over as best I can.”

  “You mean the expense that the inquiry will involve?” said Katharine.

  “Yes. You see, I have no doubt that something of considerable value has been stolen, and stolen through my thick-headedness; and if that something can be recovered, it’s my duty to get it back if I spend my last halfpenny in doing it.”

  “Yes,” said Katharine. “I quite agree with you, excepting as to the thick-headedness, which is all nonsense; for of course the Director himself would have been taken in if he’d been in your place. So I’m going to make another proposition. I am just as keen on your getting this thing back as you are; in fact, your credit is my credit. Now, I have a little capital put by for a contingency that doesn’t seem likely to arise just at present, and I should like to invest some of it in our joint undertaking.”

  It is needless to say that Fittleworth objected violently. It is equally needless to say that Katharine trampled on his objections with scorn, and that when they rose from the seat, the inevitable thing had happened. As the poet expresses it: “Man has his will but Woman has her way.” The joint expedition to Cambridge was an accepted fact.

  PART III

  The services of Miss Flinders were not required after all. An old friend of Fittleworth’s, a tutor and fellow of the college, who had married and settled down in Cambridge, had accommodation in his house for a pair of industriously studious turtledoves, and was even willing to provide them with a small study in which to carry out their researches.

  So, Mrs. Grundy being thus appeased on extremely advantageous terms, the doves aforesaid took up their abode in the residence of Mr. Arthur Winton, M.A., and the permission of the Master of the College that of the Curator of the Pepysian Library having been applied for and obtained, the great investigation began.

  It was a Tuesday morning, bright and sunny, when Fittleworth set forth on his quest. He carried with him, in addition to a quarto notebook, a half-plate camera of wooden construction, the property of Mr. Winton, who was an expert photographer and who had made the excellent suggestion that any likely documents should be photographed in order that they might be studied quietly at home and facsimile copies retained permanently for subsequent reference. So Fittleworth went forth with the camera in his hand and bright hope in his heart, picturing himself already restoring to its unconscious owner that (presumably precious) object of unknown nature, the very existence of which was unsuspected by anyone but himself. It would be a great achievement. His credit would be thereby completely restored and he must infallibly be reinstated in his not very lucrative office.

  The first cool draught which blew upon his enthusiasm came from the material placed at his disposal. It was a colossal mass. Apart from the prints, drawings, maps and collections of poetry, none of which could be entirely disregarded—for even the poems might contain a concealed hint—there was an enormous bulk of miscellaneous papers, all of which must be gone through before any could be rejected. And, as he gazed at the collection with growing dismay, he realised for the first time the extraordinary vagueness of his quest. What was it, after all, that he was looking for? The question admitted only of the most ambiguous answer. He had but two fixed points; the Revolution and the portrait by Kneller. Of the connection between them he was totally ignorant, and so might easily miss the clue even if it were under his very eyes.

  The famous Diary he dismissed after a brief glance of fond curiosity, for its last sad entry of May the 3rd 1669, was long before the stormy days when the catholic obstinacy of James brought its inevitable catastrophe. Other dated papers, too, could be set aside; but when all that was possible in this way had been done, the residue that remained to be studied was still appalling in its bulk. The first day was entirely taken up by a preliminary inspection, of which the chief result was profound discouragement. There followed a fortnight of close and strenuous labour, involving the minute study of countless documents on every possible subject, with fruitless efforts to extract from them some information bearing even indirectly on the picture. Day after day did he return to Katharine with the same dismal report of utter failure; and though his spirits revived under the influence of her bright hopefulness, yet as the the job ran on and the joint capital dwindled, so did his optimism grow less. It was a bigger undertaking than he had bargained for. The mass of material and the formalities accompanying the examination of precious relics involved an expenditure of time and labour that was quite beyond his calculations.

  And there was another discouraging element, of which for the present he said nothing to Katharine. As the days passed without a hint of any clue, a horrible suspicion began to creep into his mind. Suppose the whole thing was a delusion! That the substitution of the stretcher-bar was due merely to some chance accident, and that he was searching for something that had no existence save in his own imagination. Then all this labour and time and ill-spared money were utterly thrown away. It was a dreadful thought; and as it came to him again and again at increasingly frequent intervals, his heart sank and
the future grew dark and hopeless.

  It was on the fifteenth day that the first faint ray of hope pierced the gloom of his growing despair. On that day, amidst a collection of unclassified papers, he lit on something that at least invited inquiry. The find consisted of three small sheets of paper, evidently torn from a pocket memorandum book, each about four inches by two and a half, and all covered with microscopic writing in a strange, crabbed character which Fittleworth immediately recognised as some kind of shorthand. There was nothing to indicate the date, and, on applying to the librarian, Fittleworth was informed that nothing was known about the little papers excepting that they had belonged to Pepys, and were almost certainly in his handwriting. The script on them had never been deciphered, although several persons—one quite recently—had examined them; and the librarian was of opinion that they were never likely to be, as the writing was so small und so excessively shaky and badly written that it appeared to be practically undecipherable.

  The librarian’s report was, on the face of it, discouraging. But to Fittleworth the very illegibility of the writing gave it an added interest, hinting, as it did, at a late period when the use of the shorthand had become difficult. At his request the Diary was produced for comparison of the style of handwriting; and, on comparing the first of the six volumes with the List, it was evident that there was a change in the character of the script, though even the last entry, where Pepys records the failure of his eyesight, was much clearer and better written than the microscopic scrawl on these three loose leaves. Which was highly satisfactory, provided only that the illegibility was not so complete as to render decipherment utterly impossible.

  Having applied for and obtained permission to photograph the three leaves—each of which had writing on one side only—Fittleworth exposed three plates, and then, suspending his labours for the day, set forth homeward full of excitement and revived hope.