Reply Paid

by H. F. Heard

  “I said I’d bring you proof that my behavior, though odd, was rational and your position, though it seemed safe, was one of the greatest danger.” I waited while he scanned the contents of the basket which he’d carried to the window, for all the world like a giant jackdaw looking into a little bird’s nest before deciding which of the eggs to purloin. “That’s it,” he said to himself. He set the basket on a small coffee-table and, taking a pair of long surgical forceps from his pocket, fished up an opened envelope. I had risen, and could see it was the once-bulky one marked “Personal.” “Would you,” he said, “ask your secretary to be so kind as to bring in the small box I left in your outer office?”

  He had not finished before Miss Delamere came in carrying a polished wood box with a paper parcel tied on the top of it. He watched her till she withdrew and closed the door, then laid both forceps and the envelope it still held, down in the fire-grate—I like an open fire in the cooler months. Unpacking the parcel, he drew out surgical rubber gloves and put them on. The parcel also contained long-handled surgical scissors. Next he opened the brown wood box and lifted out of it a microscope, selected a slide, set it in place, and asked me to look.

  “Nothing of particular note, as far as I can see,” was my report.

  “So I believe, and that was the reason for my delay.”

  I had given up any hope of making him explain by questions. The old fellow must be allowed to exude his knowledge at his standard, one-drop-per-minute flow. I suspected there was some real danger about, and so stood clear and silent in the offing, only doing a “super” part when called on. He turned then to the fireplace with the surgical scissors now in his left hand, picked up the forceps—which still retained the envelope in its jaws—and proceeded to snip into the top of it, finally cutting out a small disk from the center of the back flap. Disengaging the envelope and leaving it in the grate, the forceps then picked up this fragment—about the size of a piece of confetti. Placing it between two fine slips of glass, he clipped it into the field-platform of the microscope. Then he was still, for a little while, save for his long fingers twiddling the focus screws at the side. Finally he sighed, raised himself, and said, “May I trouble you again?” pointing to the lens. I stepped forward obediently. “You should be able to see some small objects, almost in the center of the field of vision,” he said. I did. “Those,” he said, “are perhaps the neatest packets of poison a murderer ever dispensed.”

  Instinctively I took my hands away from the table, putting them behind my back and began to breathe through my nose. I knew that such defenses would be of little use really, but one reacts like that to remarks of that unsettling sort. It was, therefore, naturally irritating to hear Mr. Mycroft saying, “More careful precautions than those would be needed if the enemy were really loose.”

  “Loose?” I queried.

  “Yes, though of course we are taking no risks with such a monster, still I think we can say he’s held at present. Now if you will be seated, may I explain?”

  Such questions are, of course, rhetorical. I waved him to a chair and sat, rather heavily, down in mine.

  His opening was good: “I need not now, I believe, take much of your time in striving to convince you that you have very nearly been murdered in a very ingenious way.” Well, I suppose a decoder ought to feel a little comfort in that—that the bump which bumped him off was given with a curious grace, a pretty skill. I smiled wanly. “Until I had proof I was not going to take your time and, as you see, even this morning, when I thought I had everything unraveled, there was a last twist. But that really, as you will see, put me at my ease. I knew we had time then, and then I realized a little later, not only that we had time but that time, in this matter, no longer counted. May I then begin from where we are and work back?”

  I touched the office bell and Miss Delamere sailed in. I hoped she thought Mr. Mycroft was anything but what he was, my savior. I knew I should fall forever in her estimation if she suspected I had been such a dumbbell that though I lived by decoding and detection I’d all but been murdered in my own office by one of my clients.

  “Miss Delamere,” I said, “please don’t wait. I may be kept for some time.” She nodded and in a minute or two I heard the outer office door click.

  Chapter VIII

  “You received a letter this morning, marked ‘personal’?”

  “Yes,” I said. “There it is,” pointing to it lying in a tray on the left of my desk.

  “It is safe to handle,” he said, “and as I am sure of the drift of the contents, perhaps you’ll not mind reading it to me or letting me read it?”

  I handed the tray to him and he picked it up, carelessly enough. He read it twice and then smiled. Certainly his reactions were a little inhuman: his sense of humor had, I could only suppose, become highly specialized.

  “It’s well done,” he remarked. “I’m sure you noticed the skillful appearance of clumsiness? He has to get you to answer. It is quite likely you won’t. He must provoke you, so that, perhaps against your better judgment, you’ll dash off a reply, an impatient retort—a few lines and then fling them into the envelope put ready to your hand—and so send the bearish fellow off with a flea in his ear. You react as he planned. Now for my intrusion. Intil ‘by-passed’ you to Miss Brown. So, I confess, did I. You and I had fallen out. I fear I grate on you, do what I will. You had awakened my curiosity about Miss Brown and her gift. Besides, I was still trying to work out the mystery on which you began by helping me, and especially the code. Miss Brown, a charming woman, kindly gave me a sitting—odd, how specialized we are, Mr. Silchester. Here’s an old detective and yet till then, believe me, I’d never had a sitting with a good medium, or, indeed, with any of that sort. It was, as far as I was concerned, a brilliantly successful attempt.” He sighed, “A great loss.”

  I thought I ought to say something, I suppose to show that after all here was territory in which he was the tyro, I the proficient. “Didn’t you find the so-called ‘control’ pretty exasperating?”

  “No,” he answered complacently. “I have never required of my informants intelligence or critical acumen—only that they report fully what they see. And, in this case, that, my one demand, was copiously met. But of all that later. Fortunately, I have enough information. That, however, does not make the tragedy any less regrettable.”

  “Yes, she died very suddenly of acute influenza.”

  “No,” he contradicted, “she died of diabolic poisoning.

  “First, how did I find out? Casually, as we were having tea after my sitting and sedulously avoiding the topic on which I had come to see her (and, ten minutes before, I had been obtaining ample clues from her alter ego, her other mind), she, making conversation, mentioned you. I had, of course, when asking for an appointment, said that I had known you and now she said simply that she had seen you last over a client you had brought into her.

  “‘We mediums, Mr. Mycroft,’ she chuckled, ‘are supposed to be unstable. I suspect, though, our instability, were it compared with that of many of our clients, would make us look a sober lot. The little fellow Mr. Silchester and I tried to help—beside him I feel as phlegmatic as a policeman. His first visit was absurdly amusing. I’m afraid he upset Mr. Silchester, but he interested me. I’m breaking no professional confidences, for, as you realize, I don’t know what goes on once I have made whatever this long-distance connection may be. I’m out, as long as “it” is in. His second visit intrigued me, for he acted up to character, though he was perhaps a little less abrupt. And now,’ she said, ‘I’ve just had a third demand that I consult the oracle once more for him. He won’t telephone.’ Pouring me out a second cup of tea, she looked up smiling. ‘I think that is rather nice and old-fashioned. Don’t you think it’s a point in his favor? That though he’s so impatient when he’s on the spot, he can control himself in trying to get one to join him there?’

  “I asked, ‘Is he really capable of courtesy?’ For you know, Mr. Silchester, I am—I hav
e had to be—no detective is really any use unless he is—interested in human nature per se. We have to face the puzzling fact (which will always make our work an art and deny its becoming a science) that human nature can be extremely inconsistent. At the same time, though we deal with a far wider spectrum-band of behavior than that narrow belt of the commonplace, with which conventional characterization deals, in novel and in film, we have to know that it is a belt. There are no leaps and gaps. One state of mind passes into another. The angry man can be very brave and very brutal—up or down. But he can seldom be sensitively sympathetic or diplomatically subtle. My estimate of Intil was, and remains, that if he ever showed virtues—and of course he might—they would not be those of delicate considerateness.”

  I suppose it was because I knew that I was in great danger and, even worse, did not yet quite know what it was, knew it was near and yet didn’t still see precisely where it lurked, that I heard him out. But his detachment was pretty exasperating. My fidgeting, though, did not accelerate his processes. He was evidently waiting for my opinion of his generalization.

  “I suppose so, I suppose so,” I said, letting, quite willingly, some of my impatience show.

  “I wanted to know whether you agreed,” he went on, “because on this judgment of mine depended my succeeding actions and”—he paused and looked over at me with a look which I did not quite like—“the steps I took for your safety. So you must understand why and how I arrived at my conclusion that you were in the greatest danger.”

  He was a shrewd, delicately manipulating old bully. When he wanted me to move, out came his hypodermic tongue and gave me that shot of flattery I couldn’t resist. When he wanted me to stand still, to stand at attention, that same sharp tongue gave me a stab and sting of sharp fear.

  “I may then resume my explanation?” It was again one of his closure questions, rhetorical questions, just flourishes of an arrogant condescension. For he never waited for me to reply—indeed, turned away and looked out of the window as he continued.

  “‘Why shouldn’t he be capable of courtesy?’ Miss Brown then asked me. ‘He gave, surely, a small sign of it when he sent a stamped and addressed envelope?’ ‘That might well be impatience?’ I questioned. ‘No; he left me to name the date of the appointment.’ The subject seemed anyhow a trivial one and, after the conversation had turned to one or two other small topics, I left. I had work to do on the information the trance-personality had given me and I remember thinking, also, that Miss Brown looked tired. I know little of these abnormal states of consciousness and thought that she might be wearied by the long trance-spell she had lately undergone.…”

  Glad again to be more experienced, if only for a moment, I interjected, “No; on the contrary, Miss Brown, as is the case with most good mediums, is very little affected by her work.”

  “I came to that conclusion,” he resumed, “when we parted.” (Of course he had to be right!) “As we shook hands I was sure she was in for a slight feverish attack. I could feel it. How I wish,” he went on with a really human regret that I own touched me, “how I wish I had risked being officious and begged her to see a doctor—but even then!” He paused. “Well, I suppose,” he said, turning back to me, “that you now see the procedure?”

  “No; not quite; I mean, I see, of course, that perhaps.…” I stopped.

  “Very well, then, let’s go back a little.”

  I groaned inwardly. Why couldn’t I be sharper and avoid this endless lecturing which, at the slightest hesitation on my part, slid back, like a badly opened spring door, back to the beginning, so that the whole case had to be reopened de novo! My fears were right.

  “Do you remember when we were in the desert you were a little startled—startled into a momentary impatience—” he smiled. Oh, I thought, if only my impatience now were but momentary. “—by our guide’s killing a ground-squirrel which was coming near our camping site?”

  “Yes,” I said dully.

  “You don’t know, however, what I discovered later in talk with that trader, that he’d shot another of those poor little beasts in the presence of another ‘tenderfoot’ in that district and that that tenderfoot’s reaction was even more amusing to the trader than was yours. ‘The one,’ he said, retailing to me his piece of gossip in a place where, you may imagine, gossip is almost as rare as gooseberries, ‘the one greenhorn gets all gooey over the poor dear little vermin. The other also asked why I shot ’em if they come near. I told him as I told t’other. And what does he do? He makes a note of it! Day after, I was up along that way and saw his tracks again (he was all over that country then, before and after your visit). But what tickled me was the timid little fellow (as timid but different from your dude) had, would you believe it, shot, I swear, every ground-squirrel he’d had in range. There were their bodies. It tickled me, so that I’d stop every time I saw that piece of bloody fur. Sure he’d killed them—no one else’d waste a shot on ’em out in the open. He must have stopped and knocked ’em out as soon as they showed a nose. Must say he’s a fair shot. But Lord, what a timid fellow! Afraid of infection, I guess, until it’s almost a mania. Well, I’ve heard of people who couldn’t just stop washing for the same reason.’

  “I checked him there. ‘Did you look at his tracks when he stopped to shoot?’ ‘Well, now you ask, of course I did. Yes, and he didn’t only stop. That’s sure enough, I remember. He’d walked up to each of his kills and inspected it. Well, perhaps he was crazy public-spirited—wasn’t so afraid of being infected as wanted to clean up the desert and make it safe for the Indians!’ Then our guide’s interest changed. ‘But what the hell, sir, was he after at the end of it all? What’s he really tracking? I’ve been out here for twenty year. The old prospectors, course, just scrape up a bit. But sure, he’s after something bigger than that? He’s not the old pick-and-shovel type?’

  “I didn’t tell Mr. K. my—our?—expectations. I didn’t want his interest aroused there. I did want his attention referred back to the first subject—what he took to be Intil’s hypochondriac notions of preventing infection. ‘Tracks went right up to the kill?’ I questioned. ‘Yes,’ he added with professional interest in noting every character of a ‘trail.’ ‘Yes, would you believe it, with a stick, or something, he’d actually turned the bodies over. Do you think he’s so crazy he wanted to make sure they were dead?’ Then, Mr. Silchester, I allowed myself a small comment. ‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘he wanted to make sure whether they were really infected?’ The vagaries of hypersensitive greenhorns had, however, by then ceased to interest my informant.

  “Well, at the time, I felt there was here either monomania or a skill I ought to understand, a method in madness which might quite easily come back into our lives in some queer way. But unfortunately my mind was up along the other track, trying to decode that cipher and trying to think out where Intil would have reached in his converging trail on the common goal (hence my repeated visit to the desert), a goal neither of us actually knew but both of us suspected was so big as to make all side issues insignificant. You see I was doubly lulled. I thought there was no danger anyhow. I couldn’t see a red light along that track. And even if there was, Intil himself, I felt, was so engrossed in his search that he would have no time left to plot. A more active mind than I thought.

  “But mine suddenly cleared—a very unpleasant clearance—when, ringing up to ask Miss Brown how she was—I was, I suppose, subconsciously uneasy, and the excuse was to tell her that her sitting was so successful that I felt I had the clue quite clear, thanks to her. And, of course, getting the clue off my mind and the goal fairly in sight, made me run back and check along the side lines which had not been fully explored.”

  “Oh, please go on, Mr. Mycroft!” I cried. “These parentheses! Do, please, tell me what you found that has put me in such danger?”

  “All right,” he almost shot back. “Miss Brown; dead: one. Doctor’s opinion: acute influenza: two. Really, anthrax: three.”

  “I’m at a loss,” I h
ad to own.

  “Then, please, let me give you, as I wished, full proofs.”

  I subsided once again.

  “Look,” he said. “Miss Brown suddenly dies of a general infection. She falls ill just after receiving and sending off a reply-paid envelope. That envelope is sent to her by a very ingenious man who has lately learned that ground-squirrels may often now be found infected with anthrax, who has acted on that information and killed and examined a number of such ground-squirrels. All this we know.

  “Now, what do we know of anthrax itself? First,” he tapped off the points with methodical swiftness, “it is a spore infection and so, like all such fungus growths, immensely resistant. As you know, when a farm beast dies of it, the agricultural authorities have the carcass cremated. If a sheep so infected dies and is simply buried, it has been known that other sheep which simply ate the grass growing from the earth under which the animal lay buried, have contracted the disease. ‘Badger hair,’ made in Japan into shaving brushes, years later gave anthrax to users in Europe. Spores are the most vital forms of life: they are unhurt by immersion in liquid helium—the cold of outer space. It may be that life reached this earth in such tenacious form. Second, to return to our deadly muttons: we know that, though farm-animal infection of this most dangerous kind can be combated, we can do little once such diseases get loose among the small wild rodents. Thirdly, you will say, well, anyway, anthrax is a well-known, well-marked disease.”

  I hadn’t said so because I didn’t know. That, however, did not prevent him from replying, “But, though that would be a natural mistake, you would be wrong—pardonably wrong, but wrong as a matter of fact and, sad to say, nature knows nothing of nonculpable, pardonable mistakes, but only of matters of fact. In many cases of anthrax attack, the patient, especially, as in this case when the person and the society he lives in have never been exposed to that type of infection, dies straightaway. Having no resistance built up against these toxins, they have a free run. The mark, the symptom which gives the disease its Greek name is, like most symptoms, a body-reaction, a defense, if a desperate one, being put up by the organism against the attacker. That is shown by the fact that the anthrax, the ‘coal,’ the black nodule under the skin, appears most frequently in the groin—in other words, in those glands which protect the main organism from infection, contracted in the limbs. No doubt if a doctor made a careful examination, and suspected from the start that some such infection was present, such an examination would lead him to see that the groin glands were in a queer state. But, as usual, much can be overlooked if our suspicions are not aroused. The number of people murdered is, I am convinced, always far higher than the number so certified.”