Reply Paid

by H. F. Heard

  “Yes. You were disgusted at my handling of that desiccated body. But I saw at once that it was our only chance. And if the Greeks are right, then the one wish of the ghost which sits by the corpse is that its murder should be avenged. So I was acting, if strangely, with nothing but ancestral piety. For in this way I could hope to find out who murdered this man by first finding out who the murdered man was. Some dentists—there are one or two of them in this part of the country—are now making tooth collections. They ask their colleagues to send them their extractions, with name, age, and any other relevant details of the patient. They prepare these cross sections and then correlate the ring-recorded growth with the personal information. It is the rise of a new science, and that is always a thing to be watched and used by detectives. The second I called on was a true enthusiast. He had a fine collection, beautifully tabulated. Like fingerprint matchers, we sat with my slide thrown on one screen and he running through his, throwing them on a screen just beside. We hadn’t done a few hundred before we both exclaimed, ‘That’s our man.’ He took the serial number on his slide over to his card-index, raised the slip and read out, ‘Sex male, age fifty-three: additional information given by dentist-donor: extraction: upper bicuspid; patient’s name: Samuel Sanderson.’”

  “Sanderson,” I interrupted, for I’m good at remembering names, “Sanderson? Didn’t Kerson mention that as the name of a prospector who used to be Seen about in his country?”

  “You are correct, and you will recall that neither Blue Feather nor others of the Indians had sighted him for some time. They missed his departure.” Then, with a pause, “We saw him for the last time under that too-carelessly made cairn of stones.”

  “But how will that help? Granted we know,” I was in my excitement associating myself with the hunt as a quiet cob will suddenly break away and leave the road when the pack crosses it in full cry, “granted we know the name that—that thing carried when alive, does Kerson know where he lived, and if he did, would that put us on the track of his murderer?”

  “No, Kerson couldn’t help us, and anyhow I don’t want to interest him much more in our researches. He couldn’t, anyhow, be of us. These prospectors are queer creatures—close as a crab. They wander for hundreds of miles over this immense Southwest territory, more than a third of which is yet waiting to be properly mapped. If they find a lode—and that I gather is not nearly so uncommon as the world imagines—their one wish naturally is to conceal their track to it. Kerson told me he knew of one who, when he found he was being trailed, doubled back in the night and, finding that his pursuer had only a day’s water and had shown that he had no knowledge of that terrain, led him into an area where you must have three. Perhaps it isn’t actual murder; certainly no blood is shed when the desert withers an intruder. But it is a pretty terrible defense. Of course I don’t know whether Sanderson would have used it, and you may say he showed the danger of not doing so. What I do know—from an address which it was not difficult to find with the assistance given me by the expert who loaned me this specimen” (he held up the slide which he had borrowed)—“what I do know is that Sanderson led a double life—which again is not uncommon. In the wilderness he seemed a fanatical waif. In town he had a very comfortable address. I have it here.”

  “Then you think Intil was—what do they call it—hijacking?”

  “We don’t have to think yet. If we are willing to act, we can, I believe, get much closer to proof positive before we have to argue and deduce.”

  I confess I was intrigued. Somehow the whole thing—the way Mr. Mycroft had literally snatched evidence out of the mouth which its murderer was certain he had silenced forever, the fact that we were obviously on the track of a first-class mystery—made me able to believe him when he said that at the end lay a first-class prize.

  “What is the next step?” I asked, with, I know, undue curiosity.

  “Obviously we call at Sanderson’s residence.”

  “But will anyone be there to help us?”

  The answer, “I hope not,” gave me both a sense of our self-sufficiency and also of adventure.

  So when Mr. Mycroft said, “Will you come and pay a call this evening at 10272 Chellean Drive?” I didn’t say no, and he added at once, as a sort of sealing of the pact, “Then we’ll dine first.”

  And dine we did, excellently, at a little restaurant he had found and I had never heard of. When dinner was over I then stepped with him into the taxi with no more than the sense that we were about to pay an after-dinner call, or, if no one was at home, get a glimpse of the kind of property the lost prospector used to frequent when “on shore.”

  The roads wound away, however, and we climbed as the light faded until square miles of “the largest city limits in the world” lay like an illuminated carpet at our feet. Finally the car stopped.

  “That’s as far as I can take you,” said the driver. “The realtors pushed this road up here in ’29 and then the rains of ’38 cut the road to ribbons. But I guess 10272 lies somewhere along this contour. I couldn’t take the car along it, but you’ll be able to walk this bit.”

  “You’ll get a fare back if you’ll wait half an hour,” said Mr. Mycroft, paying him, I saw, a handsome retaining fee.

  “You bet,” evidently signified assent, and we turned to follow the road. It had been engineered round the contours of a very steep bluff: the concrete pavement had mainly stood, but a deluge of rain had cut the soft, disintegrated granite on which the road itself had been laid, almost clean away. It had become a very isolated spot and, when we had picked our way round the bastion of the hill, we found ourselves at a dead end. The concrete curb, silted over with sand fallen from the cliff which had been carved so as to give the road passageway, here came abruptly to an end. The great boom of “permanent prosperity” had driven its path as high as this, and then suddenly the slump came. The fluted concrete street lamppost with no light stood marking a “high” in real-estate development perhaps never again to be touched.

  “He chose a quiet spot,” Mr. Mycroft commented. “That dark mass above us is, I judge, the house.”

  We clambered up some concrete steps also nearly hidden now under silt and sand.

  “Talk of building on sand!” I exclaimed. The house stood out on a sort of bracket of concrete struts.

  “Well, you can see who is approaching,” he answered, “and a prospector may be excused for liking wide horizons.” We had reached a small platform which ran round the house front. “No one at home,” was his next remark. “And if I know anything of American homes, they put more trust in mobile than in rigid defenses.”

  To my alarm, while he said this, Mr. Mycroft was looking over the place with too professional an interest, and I began to say, “Well, we have seen all we can.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t have brought you so far for just that,” he politely hastened to un-assure me. “We can certainly see considerably more if this catch is the kind I think it is.” Of course it was. A panel of a window swung open, the whole window swung back and, with perfect courtesy, Mr. Mycroft was holding out his hand, inviting me to join him in a little after-dinner housebreaking. As I hesitated, “You’ll be less conspicuous inside,” he told me, and it was true enough. I slipped over the sill and was fatally committed to larceny or some such legal trap.

  The lights from the city below made, through the large, undraped windows, enough illumination for us to see our way about.

  “He meant one day to make a splash when he’d collected enough specie,” commented my leader into temptation, as we stepped through the kitchen and passed into a wide living room. “See here, he has already indulged in a certain amount of collecting. The way to get an appetite for luxury is to have wandered, literally, in the wilderness.”

  The room was bare, but standing about in it was quite a collection of furniture—big antique chairs, a sofa in the same full Venetian style, even a couple of heavily framed pictures. Two fine carved bookcases with glass doors proved to contain, when we
looked with the aid of an electric torch into their interiors, a number of rather incongruously bound books, almost all on archaeology.

  “Perhaps he was trying,” I suggested, “to educate himself up to his new acquisitions.”

  There was also a table with massive gilt legs and scrolling wreathed round its under edge.

  “Yes,” remarked Mr. Mycroft. “That’s the reaction from desert austerity. They always go more rococo when their ship comes home. No severity in his home for the man who has been homeless, but craving for comfort in the homeless waste. That buhl table, even by this light, I judge to be a genuine piece, and this desk—yes, already he must have made a pretty piece to purchase that. I expect he used to come back here, adding an object after each trip from the sale of his quills of gold dust. Why didn’t he stop?” Mr. Mycroft was now mainly thinking aloud. “Because he was on the trail of something really big—making all these siftings and nuggetings mere nugae.” While he talked he was running his hand over the big pieces of furniture, judging their nature and quality as much by his keen touch as by sight. “Yes, genuine enough, and so—” he suddenly stopped this rapid sotto voce monologue, but his hands were still running over the table. Next moment a small spot of light from his pocket torch threw a little circle on the table. One saw the gleaming squiggles of ormolu-brass writhing round the darker curls of the carved tortoise-shell.

  “A hideous form of decoration,” I let my thought express itself. “There’s nothing to keep us longer here looking at such objects.”

  “Hideous, maybe: de gustibus non disputandum; but the old man certainly had another idea besides decoration—at least in this piece. The decoration was a very helpful disguise, like the conjuror’s patter when, if he were silent, you’d be more on your guard. Ah, I have it,” he said, stretching his hands apart as though pretending, it seemed in the dusk, at piano playing on the table top. There was a small rasping click. “That did it,” I heard him say. “Now we have only to find where it did it.”

  The spotlight appeared again, tracing its way over the massive table, while a running commentary gave me some idea of what he was up to.

  “These fine pieces—for they are magnificent technical work, even if you happen to hate the style—were made for the offices of ministers of state, men who had to seem elaborately urbane on the surface, their conversation all in the grand manner with florid compliments and empty eloquence, as pointless as these never-ceasing arabesques and—ah, here we have it,” he was running his hand down the back leg of the table; “a capacity for perfect concealment under all this camouflage of decoration. Here’s the code drawer which these tables often contain and which can be found and opened only by knowing precisely where to press on a couple of points concealed in the decorative carved foliage.” Suddenly his voice rose a little, “And what I was looking for.”

  I saw, in the pencil of rays, that his lean index finger was working into a small cleft now apparent, where the table leg swelled into big scrolls with which it supported the table itself. The light snapped out.

  “We shan’t have kept our driver waiting beyond our covenanted time.” And indeed, ten minutes short of it we were back with him.

  “Anyone at home?” he queried. “No,” said Mr. Mycroft. “But the view was worth the journey. Certainly night is the time to visit this drive.”

  When we were back in his house he took from his breast pocket a small squill of paper. It had been folded, I judged, and refolded. As it rested in his palm it was a small band, perhaps six inches long and a quarter of an inch wide. When it was unfolded it was perhaps little short of a yard in length. On it, however, there appeared to be nothing, but at the edges I did notice some little touches and tips of ink, as though someone had been trying a pen but had, in the end, written nothing.

  “We’ve found nothing,” I said. “That is only a chance piece of paper, perhaps with some measuring check points made by the carpenter who made the table and left by him in that secret cleft.”

  “No,” said Mr. Mycroft, who had been looking at it through a lens, “that is modern paper, for one thing, and I’d wager that is modern ink, too.” We bent over it together. “Look at it,” said he, handing me another lens. “Don’t some of those touches look like bits of letters?”

  I bent closer. They certainly did. I passed my eye from one to another, scanning up and down the ribbon of paper. But the marks refused to yield any clew. Gradually, however, as I worked on it, determined to show Mr. Mycroft I could scan as carefully as he, the paper began to curl. I was so close to it that inadvertently I was breathing on it. I put out my hand to smooth it flat again but my hand was held. Mr. Mycroft was not only restraining me, but he too was breathing on the paper and, as he breathed, it began to buckle itself up quite definitely.

  “Don’t touch it,” he said, and then, chuckling to himself, “Well, Scotchmen are called laconic, and our old Gael was evidently scholar enough not only to know what that word means but how the Laconians capitalized on their speech-parsimony.”

  While speaking he had plugged in a small electric kettle; when it began to simmer he brought the spout near the underside of the paper ribbon, which he had turned over so that all the marks were now face down. He lifted it gently and ran the steaming spout along the underside. The curling of the paper became very distinct and, helping it with his finger, the strip began to turn itself into a corkscrew scroll.

  “I’ve got the pitch,” he said, replacing the kettle. And taking up the paper, which was now like a little snake, he slipped it onto a narrow round ruler which lay on his desk.

  “It’s not a perfect fit,” he remarked, “but, with a little shifting, it’s near enough. Look.” And, sure enough, the pitch of the curl brought each little pen touch near enough so that complete words began to be made by them. “It is the old Spartan way of sending code messages. They have to be short. This one is. And they should be on a paper which when untwisted does not retain its curl-torsion. This did. Otherwise, unless you have the exact duplicate of the original stick round which the paper was curled when the message was written on it, you have little chance of reading it.” He took the paper-wrapped ruler to the light. “This, I think, will sound familiar to you,” he remarked, and read out, “‘When the flyer whose flight is not through air, sitting in his cage, stretches his wing to the left.’”

  “Of course,” I exclaimed, “it’s Intil’s clue which I decoded for him.”

  “With Miss Brown’s help,” he added before I could, which I thought was discourteous.

  “She only gave a picture; it was I who found out what it meant.”

  Of course it was silly of me to justify myself, but we had been scrambling about and housebreaking and after a heavy dinner the excitement and strain had brought on indigestion and that always makes one touchy. I was cross, I confess, and Mr. Mycroft’s slight tone of superiority put a match to my mood. And he didn’t let it pass. He actually teased me further.

  “Then, no doubt, you’ll be able to help with the rest of the message now we have it in its entirety? I have, I think, done my bit and here we enter your field. I can tell you, if you have not followed the track so far, that Samuel Sanderson was remarkable among that remarkable crowd, the prospectors, and, in keeping with their tradition, he kept very quiet about his prospects. The one thing he seems to have feared—as he was getting on—was that he might get forgetful. I am sure he, too—perhaps the first of us—knew that there was something worth finding somewhere in the unmapped desert. He has set the rest of us on this trail. Perhaps he actually found the thing himself, but he had to find it again. If my supposition is true, he couldn’t handle it himself, or at least without the most careful preparation. A number of visits would probably be necessary. He carried, then, one clue with him, one verbalized map, I believe it to be. That was taken off him after death. For fear he should lose it he made this duplicate, and not only put it in code, but, using the ancient Spartan method of disguise, having hidden it in a secret place, he wa
s able to make the actual aide mémoire look worthless should anyone stumble on it. Yes, we are tracking a ‘verra careful mon’ as his cautious compatriots would say. Indeed, had I not combined, with a taste for what you call ill-taste furniture (and a knowledge of its craftsmanship), a good memory for my Thucydides and some of the out-of-the-way information which classical studies give—well, we’d never be where we are now.”

  This self-congratulation, all the more because it was true and couldn’t really be answered, vexed me further; and when with that badly timed raillery Mr. Mycroft added, “Now all you have to do is to read what I have put in your hand,” I became angrily nervous. I must try, though nervous anger is, of course, the worst of moods in which to try and summon your hunch to start you on a line.

  “Well,” I said, “the first part runs, ‘At twenty minutes to three o’clock in the afternoon,’ or we can say, if we like, ‘At two-forty P.M.’” Then I paused.

  “Yes?” said Mr. Mycroft. “Yes, we are agreed about that. And now for the rest.”

  It was maddeningly like an old schoolmaster taunting a boy who hasn’t had time to prepare his translation.

  I read on, “Cloc Friar’s Heel. AP. 20111318—3.” That was all. “Short inscriptions are the mischief,” I said.

  “Yet even the Etruscan and Hattitic yielded results,” he answered—showing off his learning in order to be able to provoke me more.

  “Well, I’ve done work on the Roger Bacon clues,” I retorted.

  “I doubt if they repay study,” was his gratuitous answer. I felt he was trying to show that I was no use. I made a last effort.

  “Cloc,” I said. “Well, obviously that has to do with the time-reference which I’ve already decoded. He left out the k to save space. ‘Friar’s Heel,’ yes, that’s a reference to the old mission trails. You know the Franciscans opened up much of this desert Southwest.”

  I looked up. I was doing far better than I had hoped. My hunch was working. The old fellow who thought he knew everything, would have to admit I could be of use, and on my own, without any wise-woman to help or start my native skill. I looked up, but there was no encouragement on his cold old face. Didn’t he know how much a gift such as mine depended on the spark not being quenched! He was jealous, that was it. But just to know that didn’t help.