Reply Paid

by H. F. Heard

  “Oh, you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t!” Without looking round I could sense the smile in Mr. Montalba’s whisper. “But you couldn’t resist, could you? And I couldn’t resist either, just letting you. We’re fellow enthusiasts. I knew it.”

  For I had started back more quickly than I’d sprung forward. The shoulder I had touched was as hard and stiff as wood.

  “Didn’t you understand? Of course I can’t help being pleased. It’s His Master’s Voice, isn’t it, all over again. But this time it’s the eye that’s completely taken in, not the ear. Still I do hope you haven’t been shocked. I did try, you will own, to save you any shock.”

  My mind was in an unpleasant whirl. I must sort out my impressions. First, this beastly taxidermist was, I could have no doubt, an enthusiast. He didn’t care a straw for the living. It was corpses he loved. A modern “resurrection man,” a civilized—not head-hunter but whole-body snatcher. Secondly, Sibon was dead—not a doubt of it. That horribly firm contact spoke volumes on the ultimate silence. The disgusting preservative had already turned him into a solid block. I remembered that in the short interview we had had before his death, he still had found time to complain of his heart and indeed seemed in some trouble with it.

  Well, all that remained was to thank Mr. Montalba, Obsequist, and to report back. I turned. He was regarding me with an easy complacency.

  “Are Mr. Sibon’s relations coming to fetch him?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid he had none.”

  “Then …?” I paused.

  “Well, again in confidence, I can tell you he bought himself a seat.”

  “A seat?”

  “Yes, just before you go, please one more glance at our range of services.” He ushered me out of the room and switched off the light. We went down the rose-lit passage. At the end was a large door. Mr. Montalba threw it open. That movement evidently set an organ playing. We were looking down quite a large choir. Stalls rose on either hand. Some were vacant but many were occupied by a congregation, some kneeling, others sitting.

  “A number of clients, especially when the home atmosphere hasn’t been completely cooperative, prefer to take to a more specifically ecclesiastical air. Home is surely sacred but here we have an alternative sanctity.”

  It certainly was. Incense for the nose. Electric candles and stained glass for the eyes. Subdued Gregorian chanting for the ear.

  I retreated. Here was complete closure. Across the ultimate mystery Mr. Montalba had drawn the thickest tapestry of sham man had ever woven. And here Sibon—or all that the Law could look for—the body of Sibon, would stay secure (“Immaculate” would have been Mr. Montalba’s word) in the heaviest odor of sanctity. What a getaway for the cleverest of international crooks, just as a convict’s garb, if not a hempen cravat, was being got ready for him!

  Mr. Montalba waved to me from the door. “Come again, and of course whenever you feel need of service you will remember ours is—I don’t boast, I know—incomparable.”

  I hailed a taxi and drove back to our hotel. In his usual way, Mr. Mycroft showed no surprise as I gave him my surely unusual story. As he made no comment, and that’s always a little galling, I added as a colophon, “Well, the mission you sent me on has closed the case.”

  “Why?” he asked with a sort of irritating innocence.

  “Well, I’ve seen Sibon and, unpleasant but convincing fact, actually touched him.”

  “Does that prove he’s got away?”

  “Well, when you took me along to see him, I was as close to him as I’m to you now; and I was as close as this, this afternoon, to what’s left of him now.”

  “Yes, yes, but he knew why we had come. If the game wasn’t closing I wouldn’t have taken you. It gave a second witness and prevented him—he’s Gascon and so impulsive—from giving way to any melodramatic action which, while of course fatal to his chances, might have been even more fatal to my expectations.”

  “But he was ill.”

  “Possibly, possibly: though you recall, after his valet had gone to tell him we’d called, though he kept us waiting a little while, he then came to the door himself.”

  “But I don’t see.…”

  “Did I say I expected that of you?”

  “But I have seen the corpse and you haven’t!”

  “If I allow your conclusion, perhaps I may be permitted to doubt your initial premise.”

  When Mr. Mycroft is like that I’ve learned to leave him alone. I venture to believe that being right as often as he has—and so often when people thought him wrong—has slightly affected his judgment. So I simply asked, “Why did you send me to see, then, and not go yourself?” But of course that was a mistake—I saw that the moment I’d said it. And Mr. Mycroft’s quiet check-mate, “Because I thought Mr. Montalba and you would get on better than he and I,” left me no opening but to leave the room. As I was leaving, however, as usual, the old master relented:

  “Please remember that you did something I couldn’t have done. I am not going to say you weren’t taken in. I really don’t know. But I am going to allow that you got in so far as to bring back much more than I had hoped. Now, Mr. Silchester, if you will use your other great gift by ordering one of your excellently planned dinners to be sent up to this small sitting-room of ours—while you plan that strategy, I’ll go over this other game and see whether it is as closed as it seems. Au revoir for an hour.”

  I left the old bird quite gay. After all, as he’d more than once remarked, we were complementary—quite a compliment from him.

  Certainly whatever Mr. Mycroft thought of me as a messenger, he left me in no unpleasant doubts as to his opinion of my gift as a maître d’ hôtel. The hotel in which we stayed during this affair was one of bungalows served from a central and excellent kitchen. There, with a fine chief-of-staff, I planned something that even during the planning took the taste of preservative out of my mouth. When the attack was deployed, Mr. Mycroft executed dignified justice on some decapitated prawns which had absorbed into their systems a white wine sauce and awaited sentence on anchovy toast. He stirred the cream into his Borscht, watching the white and crimson maze with a professional eye. With a neat surgical touch he disclosed the truffles and chestnuts which the roast pheasant was concealing on her person. The structure of the bombe glacé he demonstrated with technical ease. The angels-on-horseback that brought up the rear, he dismounted with a chivalrous lance.

  As we sat over our coffee he said: “I wonder whether I can answer this little mortician mystery anything like as well as you have today solved the perennial problem of the menu! We must remember precisely where we are. If you see precisely where you are, you can generally see considerably further than you think.”

  Yes, that was a typical prologue and promised well. I made a sound which I’d discovered was the perfect antiphon—a kind a Humph—half “hear, hear” and half “Howdymean?”

  “First, there’s Sibon himself getting on in years. Real crooks never carry their years well. Sibon is of course the ‘grand manner’ crook, seldom stooping to anything under the 50,000 figure and of course in his heyday he would never have been so outré as to go armed. His name will always have its niche in the annals of crime because we may say that he really opened up that large neglected mine, the Indian Rajahs’ palaces. Till his date crooks took such tropical fish as swam into their northern nets, as an occasional purloining of a really fine stone, a bit of none too pretty blackmail about some all too pretty white female. But Sibon had the pioneer’s pluck to go out and open up that rich field. He is said to have had some equally odd adventures. If you’re caught in those preserves you are not so much held as parted. The Rajah usually holds a piece of your anatomy as a pledge against your return. Sibon is evidently still fairly intact—if you leave out that problematical heart. But he has extradition proceedings closing round him. He’s old, yes, and may be ill, and he is certainly ready, very ready to be forgotten. But that is not quite the same as saying that he is prepared to go
to where all things are forgotten? Sibon’s wish—we want his wish to know his possible whereabouts—is to disappear.

  “Secondly, there’s myself. I want Sibon because his range of past activities awakes my professional curiosity. I’m ready to catch him now. I went with you to see him a couple of days ago because I wanted him to stand his ground and I judged he would if he knew I was nearly ready to pounce. All went well, you recall. He kept his head when he saw us. And when he keeps his head I’d gladly exchange mine for his. He saw at once I wouldn’t go to see him if I had all my clues ready, but I would go when I was nearly ready, just to see how the land lay. He was no doubt ill. But his illness was also charmingly apposite. I repeat, really bad heart cases don’t dismiss their valet and come themselves to welcome uninvited guests. This morning we learn that he’d had a fatal attack in the night and, in accord with modern hygiene, the most fashionable mortician—I beg Mr. Montalba’s pardon, obsequist—took over the Form. Yes, I like that word. Mr. Sibon may have been out of condition but he was certainly in form.

  “So, thirdly, you come in. You call on Mr. Montalba and ask if Mr. Sibon has settled in. Straight questions are always best especially when asked,” he paused a moment and I thought he was going to say, “by simple people,” but he repeated the happier adjective “straight.”

  “But then the story runs too straight. True crime like true love never does. Mr. Montalba’s reception of you”—he looked up at me with that long twisted smile of his. “Mr. Silchester, we have hunted together until we both appreciate each other’s gifted oddities. I know, I allow, that whereas I might have made a competent surgeon or pharmacist, you might have made more than a moderate success as a maître d’hotel—but a mortician, even if called an obsequist, never! Why did Mr. Montalba welcome you with the high title of confrère?”

  “He mistook me for the Press.”

  “That was only at the start. Besides the Press aren’t confrères of such confectioners as Mr. Montalba. They are blood brothers of the police. They both prefer their quarry fresh and sanguinary, not a waxen preservative. No, you were such a success fou with this modist of the morgue that my curiosity is aroused. Let sleeping Sibon lie. Maybe he is sleeping as heavily as you thought. Even wanted crooks have died conveniently, for themselves. There’s nothing too coincidental about that. Being hunted at over 50 is certainly not good for the heart. But your description of the present possessor of his Form does, I own, intrigue me. I must see for myself. After all, until I have, as coroners say, viewed the body, I can’t officially enter the case as closed.”

  The next morning our cab drew up under the porte cochere of the Montalba building. As we alit I glanced up at the front. There was nothing secretive about even the side façade. Windows stood open with flowers in them. Then my eye caught sight of someone glancing down at us, beside a large vase of wall flowers and forget-me-not. I expected the observer, seeing himself observed, would withdraw his head, but he retained his casually curious glance too long. Of course, I should have known at once: it was a Form taking the air, so as to show clients what a charming summer, semi-out-of-door effect could be composed, when the hot weather made dreaming by the fireside a seasonal anachronism.

  When I looked down, the door was already open and Mr. Mycroft was enquiring, for Mr. Montalba himself had not answered the door. Instead a junior Obsequist was bowing us in—an understudy of the master modelled in the same uniform of pearl grey morning suit.

  “Mr. Montalba will be with you in a moment.”

  And we were left in a cheerful small study looking out into a little court where an almond tree was in almost too full bloom.

  “The master knows his Ecclesiastes, I see,” said Mr. Mycroft, glancing at it, but I had bent to stroke a particularly fine grey Persian which was dozing in a seat by the window. I nearly collided with Mr. Mycroft in my recoil. Of course the beautiful creature was cold and hard as a block.

  “You didn’t,” remarked Mr. Mycroft, “expect to find anything but Forms here? The animal funeral business has grown with modern sentimentality until it’s too profitable a sideline not to be combined with the human traffic.”

  The door opened.

  “You’ve come again and brought another interested party. An advance visit! How wise. We do learn with the advancing years to take Time by the forelock and make every rightful provision. And, as I said yesterday, as an artist—and now not speaking in my other role as family adviser—I, too, deeply appreciate the opportunity for preliminary study, to get an impression from the life, the fleeting life, which afterwards I may be permitted, privileged, to make enduring and place above, safely above, the eroding tides of Time. And, if I may say so, what a noble presence we shall here preserve unchanging for the future. So often—I confess it—I have to extemporize just a little. Look at the Form as I will, with whatever generosity of appreciation, still it remains stubbornly jejune. Even death cannot ennoble those who lived commonplace.”

  I wondered what the mischief Mr. Mycroft would make of this attack. He didn’t: he simply ignored it. Apparently it struck him as neither funny nor significant. I’d noticed that in him before. If he felt that the man he was with was acting he was far too interested in watching the act and wondering why it was being put on, to be amused, far less disconcerted. And in his queer way Mr. Montalba was all actor, all a series of stock-parts, artist, family friend, business manager—evidently he, too, didn’t care a straw if one of the parts didn’t get over. As quickly as a sportsman who has missed reloads and shoots again, he shot off another little speech.

  “But you wanted to tell me something, just a little confidential.” The family friend was of course all discretion, tact and oblique deference.

  “You were good enough to let my friend Mr. Silchester see your latest masterpiece. I had the privilege of studying Mr. Sibon in the life. I would value the opportunity to see him in Aeternitas.”

  I felt sure that Mr. Montalba must resist such a frontal attack. After all he had the “blood-relation” formula to hand. I experienced a fresh, and I must say an unpleasant, surprise, when Mr. Mycroft’s challenge was welcomed with a fresh burst of synthetic pleasure.

  “Delighted, delighted! I’ve told Mr. Silchester that it is a privilege to have the private view before the masterpiece—as you so kindly phrase it—is framed. But rules should never be rigid—indeed, my motto might well be that of Life itself, ‘Good Form is never rigid.’ I welcome the opportunity to compare notes with another student of the Sibon form.”

  We had been swept along to the accompaniment of this rear-action smoke-screen—through the parlor of posthumous preserves with its synthetic sunlight, firelight and flesh—into that passage leading to the final sanctuary. The small door on the left was swung open: and there was Sibon as still as the Statues of Memnon and more silent.

  The only change was that the light seemed even kinder, more rosy. But when I brought myself to scan the too too solid Form of Sibon, I viewed it with repugnance. Mr. Mycroft’s interest was as great, though without repugnance. He was peering down at it with little grunts of admiring recognition. I glanced up and saw Mr. Montalba’s own glassy good form relax for a moment with a gleam of triumph.

  “A pretty piece of work, you allow, Mr. Mycroft?”

  “Remarkable, indeed.”

  And with that Mr. Mycroft whipped out of his pocket a large pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and popped them onto his nose. I would have been far less startled had he whipped out a pair of handcuffs and clapped them onto Mr. Montalba’s wrists. For I knew my old dominie’s eyes were sharper than anyone’s. He used to say, “Picking up clues exercises the eye-muscles.” I could only think that the rosy glow threw out his vision temporarily. But it was clear that the glasses didn’t help. More it was clear that he couldn’t have been used to wearing them. For he had no sooner leaned forward to study the exhibit, than the spectacles slid down his long nose so swiftly that before he could catch them, they fell plump on the plump Sibon hand which lay re
laxed in its lap.

  “Oh, forgive me. I’m new to glasses. My admiration made me anxious not to miss the really wonderful detail.”

  He retrieved the glasses deftly and popped them closed into his pocket.

  “Too kind, too kind,” he murmured turning to Mr. Montalba, who was already bowing us through the door. “Quite wonderful. Who can deny progress when at last here we see Time arrested.”

  “Truly glad that you appreciate our effort to round out and complete the modern program of social endeavor.”

  The two masked fencers kept up their rally until the front door closed between them. I was at a loss to know which had scored most points. Neither seemed to have made an actual “touch.”

  And in the automobile Mr. Mycroft, perhaps I need hardly say, did not enlighten me. When we were back in our apartment he still preserved his silence. I took up a book. But he didn’t do anything but sit. Then after a few minutes I saw him move. He put his hand into his breast pocket and pulled out those glasses. He looked at them; not through them. He was examining the right-hand hinge. He began to work at the hinge and then drew toward him a small piece of notepaper. On working the hinge again, he seemed content and put the glasses aside on the table and picked up the small sheet. Then he took that rather melodramatic lens out of his waistcoat pocket and began to study the paper.

  Bored with watching this routine—as routine as a cat washing its whiskers when the mouse has temporarily given it the slip—I idly picked up the spectacles Mr. Mycroft had abandoned. I tried one lens and then the other. Finally I slipped them on.