Reply Paid

by H. F. Heard

  I stumbled on: “AP. 20111318 less 3, these of course are bearings. I suggest, just as a line for further research, AP stands for Latin Apud, ‘near,’ or ‘approximately,’ or even, broadly speaking, ‘at.’ Then some measurements which a little figuring could work out: the total sum or direction to be corrected by three.”

  I stopped. I knew I was getting out of my depth. But, hang it all, I had a line and the silly old fool, the jealous old dominie, was just determined I shouldn’t score and take from him any of the praise. Pope’s bitter but just line flashed into my head: “Bear like the Turk no brother near the throne.” Here, as always, was old crusted authority crushing out young promise.

  I struggled with my temper and managed to say, “If, Mr. Mycroft, you will give attention to the suggestions I have been able to make, I feel sure I have been able to provide you with some further information which is pertinent to our search.”

  “Codes of this sort,” was his indifferent reply, “don’t have spare words in them; if they do, terminal letters are not omitted to save space. ‘Friar’s Heel’ is not uningenious, I own, just here, but not in its wider context. As for the letter-number references, I own I’m still quite at a loss as to the important ending—minus 3 is especially obscure. But taking into consideration what I have found out already about our man (and codes and men fit like saddles and horses), I doubt if AP is at all what you think. Without knowing something of our late prospector’s nationality one might be utterly at a loss. As it is, I have a faint feeling that it might pay me to revive a knowledge that I once had of a book I ceased to study before I took up Thucydides—a book once much loved by riddle-raisers.”

  “Riddle-raisers.” At that last, almost openly contemptuous phrase, and the whole out-of-hand dismissal of my consistent suggestions, my patience snapped.

  “Mr. Mycroft,” I said, “it is clear that my particular assistance is nothing but a hindrance to a mind set as yours.” I thought of trying to use Dr. Johnson’s grand slam, “Sir, I have given you a reason, I cannot give you an understanding,” but I hadn’t the nerve quite to venture on that. I would have probably provoked a painful rejoinder. So I simply went on, “I have done my best and given you, I cannot but believe, some useful, essential information. Your attitude, however, persists in being.…” I wanted the sentence to be just, balanced, ironic, final, but it wasn’t going any better than the code. “I can’t do anything more,” I stumbled on. “I’m tired and I think you’re deliberately provoking. I am going, and want to drop this unpleasant business.”

  “I apologize,” he said. “I think aloud too much. I have to keep my own mind clear. You were muddling my line of thought.”

  A nice apology, to say your colleague is worse than useless!

  “Very well,” I snapped. “I can, at least, prevent your clear mind from being further contaminated.” And I walked straight out of the house.

  Chapter V

  And I found myself back in my well-proportioned life, again busy with problems, neat, adequate, remunerative. Mr. Mycroft made no motion to reopen our acquaintance. To close the matter definitely, I even returned his check, though I felt I had really more than earned it. There was no reply. For all I knew he had left the country, having failed to find a real clue. After all, even that old dead fellow—well, one was always seeing in the papers about some hobo found dried up in a gully after wandering off and getting lost. The Indians often put a few stones on top of them and don’t tell anyone, not wanting to be pulled into court and questioned. I’d had pointed out to me several such cairns when I visited Death Valley and Cactus Park. And as to all that tooth business—I’ve always had my doubts about all this fingerprinting. The patterns are too simple not to be repeated pretty often; and tooth-rings—well, they’re even more unreliable, I should wager. About the clue hidden in the table’s secret drawer? That was odd—at least that it should start with the very words I had decoded. But then, who knows, there might be some silly-solemn confraternity Ku-Klux-Klanning round these desert states and playing at being hooded, barefoot friars—all that New Mexico “Penitente” business taken up as a new thrill by whites from the Indians and the Mexicans. Anyhow, I was determined to dismiss the whole story, and as I was judge, dismissed it was.

  Once again the whole matter was shelved. When, right into my office, right past my secretary, without check or warning, in walked—Intil! Of course I had made up my mind that Mr. Mycroft was foolishly wrong. Therefore, of course, I had no reason for being startled at seeing a man, suspicions about whom I had decided were groundless. Yet he had undeniably behaved very oddly with me and Miss Brown. I could and would take a stand on that—demand an explanation.

  “Well, sir,” I got in first, and threw myself back in my chair—always a strong position with a fine desk in front of you, “your behavior needs no little explaining. I give you a perfectly successful reading and then you bolt off without a thank you!” It was just on the tip of my tongue to add, “The rest of the passage is obscure but I believe …” when caution suddenly said “Wait.”

  He took my attitude, which was, I flatter myself, quite magisterial, very well. That was clearly the right way to deal with this sort of excitable creature. Anyhow I should pocket that long-overdue fee. I was right here, too.

  “I have come to pay what I fear has been unpaid very long.”

  It was perhaps not the real reason for such a return, but a good enough one as a start, for me. And it would also give me a nice little opportunity to test his sincerity.

  “As I gave you to understand,” I went on, not asking him to sit down as yet, “I don’t charge for a mere interview. Unless I obtain clear results I expect nothing. But when they are obviously obtained and a second opinion has made the finding undeniable,” (I was acknowledging Miss Brown’s assistance, which in my mind, whatever Mr. Mycroft might imagine, I had never minimized) “then an adequate remuneration is certainly due. The professional fee”—that always sounds better than “my charges”—“is fifty dollars.”

  I had named a fairly big price mainly to see his reaction. Again I was pleasantly surprised.

  “Very moderate,” he remarked, “Very. And may I add a similar sum as due to your assistant?”

  Again I allowed him. I wanted to be sure that Mr. Mycroft was wrong, and here, in a most pleasing and substantial way, my belief in human kind—as being if not good at least not dangerous—was being established against the detractor.

  “Very well,” I agreed, with a judicious attitude toward the whole thing. “I think that may settle quite satisfactorily all outstanding claims.”

  He paid the notes straight onto my desk. I own I was thawed, and thaw may always lead to a little gush. I couldn’t now bow him straight out.

  “Well, is there anything further I can do?” I asked. It was little more than putting “your obedient servant,” as lawyers used, when signing their letters. Though it still seemed odd that he should have called, I really never quite thought he would reopen the old question. After all, whether he was a Kluxer or a New Penitente or just an eccentric on his own—though I had decided that Mr. Mycroft was wrong—yet this man was hunting something; he’d never have bought that equipment and somehow furnished himself with a couple of burros if he hadn’t been out after something other than a hike. These thoughts had run through my mind. Nevertheless I was more than a little surprised when, after he had turned back and shut the door, which was still standing open between the office and my sanctum, he picked up the “interviewee’s” chair, put it on the right side of my desk, sat down, and spread a scrap of paper in front of me. A glance, and my surprise took on a keener edge. There was no doubt about it. Here was the full clue—as I had seen it when Mr. Mycroft put it together. This one was, however, copied out straightforwardly on a sheet of paper the length of a bank check. It was, I felt sure, a copy of some original, an original—I could not rule out this one supposition, though there could, fortunately, be ones less disconcerting—which had been possibly on the bo
dy of a man when he had been killed. And for which he had been murdered? That question was too unpleasant, in my actual immediate situation. Anyhow, I must and would gain time. And certainly, when I sidelongly looked at the little fellow beside me, he didn’t look dangerous—not in a comfortable office with a competent secretary within call.

  And he was speaking quite reasonably, “Your remarkable success with the first part of the test I made with you, leads me to hope you might be equally fortunate with the rest.”

  That was all aboveboard, at least as far as it went. I did believe that I already was on a line which might lead to solving the conclusion of this cryptic sentence and that Mr. Mycroft’s crude and superior behavior had just thrown me off the scent. It was really no concern of mine what use—or none—sense or nonsense—my clients made of the readings that I gave them in reply to their riddles.

  “Yes, I think I can help,” I said, glancing at the words which were more familiar to me than he imagined. “The time-reference we have already settled, and that part of the clause undoubtedly governs the next word, ‘Cloc.’” I thought he became a little restive at that, but I wasn’t going to have my hunch ruined again, and this time by a highly remunerative client. “All that remains, is, then, to settle the last few words. The next two are plain and helpful. Here is obviously a reference to a trail—a mission trail, no doubt. One of those outlier Gospel-raids probably, made by the first Franciscans here.…” (Did he know that I knew that he had gone to the desert?) “I should then freely translate this part of the passage as, ‘On the track of the mission trail.’” I could feel that he was watching me closely. “The remainder of the message gives precise bearings. We have, then, given: one, a definite time, two, a definite route, and, three, the actual spot on that route.” He was dead silent. To relieve what I felt to be an awkward tension I added with some conscious carelessness, “Of course, I’m no seer. It is for the client to apply the reading. I have no idea what the message means but I am glad to be able to tell you that that is what, in point of fact, it says.”

  I turned toward him. Yes, he was watching me with a curious nondescript expression—puzzled, I felt, and if certain of anything, then …? Well, perhaps not so friendly as I could wish. He’d been friendly enough till he knew enough? That was my vague, not very reassuring feeling. He remained watching me until I really became quite nervous.

  “Well,” I said, rising to break the tension, “that, I think, concludes the matter.”

  “No,” he replied with a curious and none-too-pleasant intensity. “You’re wrong, every word of it—’cept for the first words you did long ago. I can’t have clever theories. I must have facts.”

  I was a little frightened, but I was also a good deal more angry. He had hit me where quite a large bruise remained from Mr. Mycroft’s unpleasant handling. He was just wanting to get out of paying—well, he could get out. I was sick of the subject, a nauseating mixture of the sinister and the silly—a beaten-up white of egg silliness over some horrid little smear of peril. I heard myself say, “Get out of this office.” I felt it quite out of character but again—as earlier with this odd customer—it worked. He had stood up, looked at the door, then, holding his precious scrap of nonsense in one hand, he rubbed the fingers of the other hand smartly up and down the bridge of his nose till it was quite red.

  “Mr. Silchester,” he said, “will you take me along to Miss Brown? Didn’t mean to vex you—always was a bit hasty—have a good deal on my mind—can’t help feeling that, back of this, there’s something worth all whiles to find. Honestly, know enough to bet the reading you gave—very good, I say, very subtle—still it’s just not the thing. Do let’s see if Miss Brown can see.”

  So he really didn’t know more than I did, and, on the other hand, he and I shared his feeling that there was really something worth seeing at the bottom of this puzzle. As long as he’d behave, why shouldn’t I give the thing one more chance? Then caution and comfort both urged: Leave the whole thing alone!

  “No, Mr. Intil,” I said. “I’ve done my bit and my best. You can again decline to pay. I don’t expect you to. Perhaps you can ill afford it. Certainly if that is so you should not bother Miss Brown.”

  “You think I can’t pay?” he said. “All right; all right.” He was turning over something in his mind, I could see. He looked at me and then I could see he had come to some decision, something, I judged, which cost him some effort. But now that his mind was made up he seemed at his ease, more than I had ever seen him. “I’ll trust you,” he said, “if you and Miss Brown will keep my confidence. I have a feeling that people are on my track. I just must get through before I’m forestalled. I can’t get this clear by myself—have everything right but can’t quite get the precise bearings. I’ll promise you two a big fee.” He hesitated. “Two hundred and fifty dollars apiece?” he looked up at me. I bowed quietly and noncommittally. “Five hundred each.” Yes, he evidently had gone very near some goal if that was a serious offer, “If you’ll really put yourselves into this decoding. Well, I’ve trusted you. Will you close with my offer?”

  I must say I couldn’t get the feel that he was really trusting. But I did get very strongly that he was in a fix and had his finger very nearly on a big thing—just out of his reach.

  I made a frontal attack. “What precisely are you, Mr. Intil?” That should bring him out into the open if he really intended leaving cover. And it did, with a rush.

  “What am I?” he answered, quite melodramatically. “Well, in a phrase, I’m one of the queer crowd called prospectors. Prospectors, you’ll say, why that old ’49 stuff? There are none now except those poor crackpot old fellows you’ll see off in the Mojave and other of the deserts trailing about behind a couple of burros. There, though, you’re wrong. Individual mining days over? Not a bit of it. Though perhaps it’s best the public should think they are. Truth is, they’re only beginning. Frontiers closed? Nonsense. They’re opening as never before. Gold? There you go again down the old trail. Mining’s only beginning now, I tell you. But if that’s so, what am I doing with a slip of worn paper, trying it over and over? Why am I not out with pick and shovel? Why, there are two good reasons. In the first place, we’re in the New Prospecting age. In the old-time mining there was just copper and a hope of tin and, of course, always the silly lure of gold. But the really precious metals or minerals were just coming over the horizon. The really precious metals, haven’t you read about them? About Big Bear, colder than Klondike and far richer. What was there? Something that looked like bad coal. What was it? Pitchblende so shot with radium that literally you burnt your seat if you sat on your precious find. Talk of hot money—what about that! Price of radium still makes all the old ‘precious’ metals look like junk. And there are”—he paused and eyed me carefully—“bigger and better deposits than Big Bear.” He paused again. “I’m nearly on the track of such a lode and Miss Brown (I have it now firm in my head), with what I give her, can get the line. Now will you take me to her?”

  So this was the real story. Well, it fitted in fairly closely with Mr. Mycroft’s speculations. And as he had declined to give me his full confidence, I could not help feeling a certain justifiable satisfaction at finding out what he had kept from me. Besides, paying him back was a wrench; and here I should not only “turn a pretty penny,” but I should find what he had held back from me, and, more, what he himself didn’t know. I, despised Sydney Silchester, would be there first. That decided me. To be able to write to Mr. Mycroft, in quite a friendly way—I supposed he’d have his mail forwarded to him—and just as a casual piece of news give him the whole story, clue and climax! I own that tempted me too much. Intil was out, it was quite clear, after some rare ore. It wasn’t at all likely that it would pan out as he dreamed, any more than it was likely that Mr. Mycroft’s dramatic detective rendering of the story was the right one. Intil might well be crazy, but if so, he was the sort that has enough money to be worth humoring. I didn’t doubt that Mr. Mycroft might have been s
ent by some interests which were concerned about getting some sort of new ore. I’d heard that minute amounts—such as of tungsten—could change the quality of steels. There was no need to swallow all the embroidery with which either of the men gave their particular trimming to the tale. The thing was to find the main thread under it and to see that that at least was “a thread of gold”!

  “All right,” I said. “If you will provide an advance payment of, say, 50 percent, I’ll see whether Miss Brown and I can again work the oracle.”

  He did not hesitate. “I’ll have the cash here tomorrow for you if you can make the appointment for then.”

  I picked up the telephone. Miss Brown was in. “If you will wait in the outer office I will have a word with my colleague. I can give you your answer in five minutes.”

  As meek as a schoolboy he said, “Thank you,” and went out, closing the door gently. I certainly had established an ascendancy. The last misgivings in my mind shrank into the background. I felt I had the initiative in quite an entertaining adventure.

  “Miss Brown,” I said, “do you remember a Mr. Intil who never paid a fee for the very remarkable sitting you gave him?”

  “So the little fellow who bolted has come back?” she answered.

  “Yes, he wants another sitting.”

  There was silence at the line’s other end. If Miss Brown would not help we were done. And though she was stable enough, as good, unpretentious “extrasensory” people usually are before they are spoiled, she of course had to respect what she couldn’t control—her subconscious temperament. I knew that, by myself, I couldn’t get another word of that damned Scotch-locked code.