Reply Paid

by H. F. Heard

  “But these …” I began. And then the silly things slid off my nose just as, in the obsequarium, they had skidded down from Mr. Mycroft’s beak. The small clatter and my unfinished sentence made Mr. Mycroft look up.

  “You’re surprised at the simplicity of those lenses?” he questioned. “The spectacles are made—as you’ve demonstrated—rather to give the slip than to detect it. But if you will look you’ll see they’re sharp enough in their way. That’s blood on your finger.”

  I saw I’d made a small but clean little cut on my knuckle as I’d tried to save the silly stage-property spectacles from falling.

  “I don’t see why you should fool about with sham spectacles that won’t even stay on, and are so badly made as to scratch one’s fingers.”

  I was a little tart. But Mr. Mycroft had gone back to considering his scrap of paper. After dabbing my finger with iodine, I saw Mr. Mycroft rise, fetch his microscope, and put his precious scrap on its specimen-rack. That, though, didn’t satisfy him and he fetched an electric torch to add to the illumination. After all, I thought, maybe his eyes are going. But the torch didn’t seem to help either. Instead, he now began poking at his precious object with a small glass rod which he took out of a phial. Suddenly the whole thing seemed to bore him. He put the microscope aside, not troubling even to remove the small piece of paper which he had been studying, and remarking over his shoulder, “I’ve a call to make,” left the room. He was back, though, in a couple of minutes saying, “It’s not too late to make a call.”

  “I thought you’d made one,” I began. But he didn’t seem to hear and did assume that I was going along with him. “Hotel Magnifique,” which he said to the taxi-man as we got into the cab, made me assume that he was going again to try and pump its bland but ultra-discreet management about its late guest. The reception clerks “M. Sibon is away” was certainly a parry. Mr. Mycroft’s “But his valet’s in: I’ll leave a message with him” swept it aside and in a couple of minutes we found ourselves standing outside the door of the late Sibon’s luxurious suite. Nor did we experience a check there. The door was opened by the dapper, very French-looking manservant who had admitted us on our original visit. As before, he bowed so low that his black pointed beard must have stuck into his cravat while he presented to us a mass of black polished hair smooth as silk. I thought he started for an instant when Mr. Mycroft shot out: “Is M. Sibon at home?” Then bending still lower and with a catch in his voice:

  “Haven’t you heard, sir? Called away, called away.”

  I was just wondering whether this was an euphemism for falling into Mr. Montalba’s very arresting hands, when the valet added, “He left a note for you, sir. I didn’t know you’d call this evening. I have it in the pantry,” and he stepped back into a small side door which evidently led to the servants’ quarters. The door swung to behind him. But Mr. Mycroft was just in time to prevent it latching. He flung it back, I followed, and we hurried into the small pantry, just as the door at its other end snapped to.

  “Through the dining room!” called Mr. Mycroft, wheeling round on me. We doubled back, raced through the dining room into the kitchen. As we reached it we heard the sound of the service elevator on the back staircase begin to whirr. We were out on those stairs in five seconds but only to catch sight of the floor of the elevator ascending.

  “Up the stairs!” Mr. Mycroft was already up half a dozen of the steps. What he was up to, chasing a dead man’s valet, I couldn’t imagine, but I felt I couldn’t leave the old fellow now. Fortunately Sibon had liked pent-house privacy, so we had only one flight to scramble. As we tumbled out on the roof I saw the valet looking back at us, his strained face clear in the light from the wellshaft. To my huge relief he made no stand, and as even the smallest dog will chase a bull if it turns tail, I rushed after Mr. Mycroft. The roof area of the Magnifique is not only extensive, it is also rich in what golf players call hazards. I tripped over pipes, doubled round flues and chimneys in the wake of Mr. Mycroft’s comet-like coat, and stumbled in rain-gutters. It was after one of these that I lost the hunt and only after peering round half a dozen smokestacks, at last came upon Mr. Mycroft kneeling. Beside him, seated rather carelessly against a cased-in pipe, was the valet. He was certainly very much out of breath—far more than either of us, though he had had a lift-start. Then, through the panting, I could hear him saying to Mr. Mycroft, “In my left upper waistcoat pocket. Quick. It’s Sodium Amytal.” Without a word Mr. Mycroft did as he was told and put something into the valet’s mouth; then he remarked slowly, “You shouldn’t practice such exercises.”

  The other said faintly, “I ran because I was frightened and my heart gave out.”

  “No, no,” came the reply, “You speak English as well as I do. I said exercises not exercise. Your heart hasn’t given out just because of this evening’s amble over the eaves.”

  The valet’s “How do you know?” left me more lost than ever. And Mr. Mycroft’s “Because I’m as fit as I am,” completed my bewilderment. But neither had a moment’s care for my unenlightened condition. They were quite taken up with each other. Evidently Mr. Mycroft could remember me as soon as I could be of any use. He had hold of the valet, how or why it was too dark to see, and without turning said, “Go down and get the hotel doctor at once.”

  In five minutes I was back with the very capable medico which the Magnifique retained for its guests. We brought a couple of torches with us. As soon as we picked up Mr. Mycroft I saw that the valet was gone. In his place, looking far less life-like than Mr. Montalba’s creation, lay Sibon.

  “Dr. Armstrong,” Mr. Mycroft had turned on us. “Please examine this body. I believe he is now dead.” The doctor knelt beside Mr. Mycroft. After a moment I heard him say, “Yes, yes, not a doubt of it. He’s limp enough now.… But I don’t understand … how …?”

  “Oh, you were quite justified considering your premises,” replied Mr. Mycroft. “I must keep the actual Hows and Whys for the Police. A plainclothes man has at my request been stationed at the main entrance the last hour. If you would be so good as to stay with the body, I’ll drop down and have a word with him. Come, Mr. Silchester.”

  The word was quite brief. They seemed to understand each other. The quietly dressed man who looked as though he might be an insurance agent slipped across the big lounge and disappeared toward the back premises.

  “We shan’t be wanted till tomorrow: and then you needn’t come. I expect you’ve had enough of even the most modern of morgues and where Aristide Sibon’s Form will rest tonight—and be interviewed tomorrow—is not a very obsequious obsequarium. And now for dinner.”

  In spite of our hunt having ended in a morte, I must say we both did justice to our evening meal. My curiosity revived. And evidently Mr. Mycroft was also relaxed and ready to feed my mind as well as I had fed his form.

  I began naturally at the end: “I thought that Dr. Armstrong signed Sibon’s death certificate a couple of days ago?”

  “He certainly did. Without that, not even Mr. Montalba’s patter could have won him ‘the fair and desired form.’”

  “But I don’t understand—”

  “Don’t you think we might omit the obvious?” asked Mr. Mycroft, smiling. “The story has points, I own, which only out-of-the-way knowledge would catch. I shall enjoy running over them. First, we are agreed Dr. Armstrong is capable. Dr. Armstrong sees Sibon, sees him alive, and sees him, he is equally sure dead. The certificate is Syncope. But you remember the doctor’s remark, ‘He’s limp enough now?”

  “Yes, that’s a natural enough remark—simply meant he was dead.”

  “No, more than that. It means that last time Dr. Armstrong certified Aristide Sibon to be deceased, he was not limp.”

  “But he must have been, to be certified. Dr. Armstrong, as he was on duty in the Hotel, would have been called at once.”

  “You mean Sibon couldn’t have been other than limp—to be exact, the body wouldn’t be rigid—in rigor mortis—for some con
siderable time after death?”

  I nodded: the subject was not postprandially pleasant, but I knew enough about posthumous conditions to know that.

  “Oh, no,” Mr. Mycroft sailed on, “any shock in these heart cases can end with the rigor coming on with death itself. After all, the cause of death in such a case is cramp of the heart and it then spreads to all the other muscles. Just because Dr. Armstrong was a good doctor he was not surprised. But because he was trained in schools which know more about muscles than mind, he was wrong.”

  My “But I don’t understand” rose like a hiccup and was as such rebuked by a shake of my teacher’s head.

  “Sibon, you remember, had made India his crook’s preserve. He spent many years there unloading Rajahs. Sibon and I, however, have this in common—we both always study our terrain. All’s grist to our mill. At one end Rajahs and their jewels and at the other Yogis and their ‘jewels in the lotus’—they are both products of India. Now if you want to lie really low—and it is, of course, a crook’s greatest need after a coup—you can never lie so low as if you are buried. Our agile Aristide learned the Hathi trick of tongue-swallowing and breath-control—the way of bringing on self-induced catalepsy. So, you see, he gives out that he has a ‘heart’ and he can show it to the doctor while it is doing the queerest of tricks, for conscious control of the heart-beat is one of the preliminary exercises for suspended animation. Then he has Mr. Montalba at hand to whisk him away to the Obsequarium—where he puts on his final trick of what one may call real sham death. Unfortunately, I send you round to call on that interesting couple too soon. Aristide had to play the part of a sleeping partner. He hadn’t the skill to bring himself to. For ten persons who train far enough to put themselves into catalepsy, not one can get himself out. He has to be retrieved, brought to.

  “One thing I don’t know—a small but amusing point. Did Mr. Montalba, who was to act, again literally, as a ‘resurrection man’, delay Sibon’s return to the world because he couldn’t help it, because he couldn’t get his partner out of the jail of his own body as soon as they hoped, or because he couldn’t resist fooling you? A man who is always playing with corpses may have his own sense of fun. What I am sure was arranged was that Sibon should leave his Form at the Obsequarium, and should I or my faithful friend call, or the police, they would be shown certificate and the body. But you certainly called too soon.”

  “Too soon?”

  “Yes, because the substitute wasn’t ready.”

  “Substitute?”

  “Of course: a perfect model was in the making and it was to be substituted for our temporarily rigid but only suspendedly animated Sibon.”

  “Substitute; But surely all that’s supposition!”

  For answer Mr. Mycroft only said, “Look here.”

  He’d swung the microscope onto the table, with the scrap of paper still in its grip. But this time he made me clap my eye to the lens, though he himself went through the little ritual of the extra light and then the touch with the small glass rod. I saw in the high-magnitude field a large lump, rather like “mutton-fat” jade.

  “That bulb is quite hot,” said Mr. Mycroft’s voice in my ear. “But, you see, the scrap of mastic does not soften. So it isn’t paraffin wax, the basis for the Aeternitas treatment. But this essential oil, on the glass rod tip, does begin to melt it.”

  True enough, as the rod touched the lump it began to “lose form.” Mr. Mycroft pushed the microscope away.

  “That scrap is not from a body treated by the Aeternitas method. It’s from a gutta percha model. I knew in that sunset-glowing loom, I’d have to touch that Form to make sure. Pink light’s the devil’s delight: you can’t see anything in it clearly and you think you can. That’s why mediums love a rosy illumination. More, I should really get an actual specimen. So I had these glasses made with the facet of one of the hinges as sharp as a razor—like a small scoop. And I took care, of course, that the spectacles themselves didn’t fit, and so would be sure to fall off my nose onto the Form’s hand as soon as I peered admiringly at it. As I retrieved my clumsy blunder, it was easy to make the little blade dredge a specimen of the skin.”

  “So I saw Sibon—the real Sibon!”

  “You had that honor. Mr. Montalba probably thought he’d better show you that Sibon was there and as the model wasn’t ready, and he feared such a call, he kept Sibon in trance. Had he felt safe and had time, no doubt he’d have taken the crook out of his catalepsy sooner. But he wasn’t going to take the risk of being found without the body and, should a search be called for, the discovery of a half-made model. That would have been too awkward. So he took the risk with his sleeping partner instead, who for once had to stay as he was put and not even speak when spoken to.”

  “Risk?”

  “Oh, yes, very considerable. He kept him longer in catalepsy than is safe. Of course, men who are amazingly fit can stay ‘out’ for many days. But not Sibon. The exercise is not to be recommended for the heart and Sibon had a heart, either from that kind of effort at lying low or the opposite effort of keeping on the run—perhaps both combined. Well, after you leave, Mr. Montalba does bring him to and substitutes the model. Sibon can then go back to the Magnifique. The safest place, when you’re wanted, is home—if you’re disguised; and he was—as his valet.”

  “But where was his valet?”

  “He was. That was rather neat preparation, don’t you think? Remember when we called—there was a pause after the valet went to call him and then the great man graciously came out himself and welcomed us. The pause, of course, was because, in theatre language, he was ‘doubling the parts’ and so he had to make a quick ‘change.’ As soon as I was quite sure that was a gutta percha model, I knew that Sibon was back at his hotel. The phone call I then made was to the police—to tell them to watch the downstairs exits and arrest Mr. Sibon’s valet, if he tried to leave. I knew then he’d bolt for the roof. He’d soon find that the police were on below. Those men are always inspecting their exits, as a bird turns round between every pull at a worm—second nature. He’d feel safe, though, in his disguise, with an alibi body amply viewed elsewhere. He’d bolt only when we turned up. I guessed we’d have an easy run, for I was pretty sure with all those cataleptic tricks he’d have a bad heart. Still I thought we’d have a catch, not a kill. Both those fellows, Sibon and Montalba, are by nature largely mountebanks. But one played possum once too often. If you play at death, that grim player may take you in earnest.”

  “Poor Sibon! He should have been a psychologist. Fancy going to India and learning so much about the mind-body just to get away safely with a few gewgaws and trinkets—most of them in execrable taste.”

  “But I understand he stole some of the finest jewels in Asia!”

  “Still I repeat,” said Mr. Mycroft, getting up and moving towards his bedroom door, “Sibon brought back only the pearl case, not the pearl, or the synthetic instead of the real pearl in the lotus, if you like that better.”

  “I don’t understand,” hopped out from my lips like the frog instead of the pearl in the fairy story.

  He smiled as he opened the door and passed through. “Well, sleep wisely but not too well and don’t dream too much about good form.”

  About the Author

  Henry FitzGerald “Gerald” Heard (1889–1971) was an English philosopher, lecturer, and author. The BBC’s first science commentator, he pioneered the study of the evolution of consciousness, which he explored in his definitive philosophical work The Ascent of Humanity (1929). A prolific writer, Heard was also the author of a number of fiction titles, including mysteries and dystopian novels. He is best known for his beloved Mycroft Holmes mystery series.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  These are works of fiction. Names, character
s, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Reply Paid: A Mystery: Copyright © 1942 by The Vanguard Press, Inc.

  Rights reverted to H. F. Heard. Copyright renewed 1969 by H. F. Heard.

  Copyright transferred to The Barrie Family Trust.

  Foreword Copyright © 2014 Paul D. Herbert

  The Adventure of Mr. Montalba, Obsequist

  Copyright © 1945 by The American Mercury, Inc.

  Copyright transferred to Davis Publications, Inc.

  Copyright renewed 1972 by Davis Publications, Inc.

  Copyright transferred to The Barrie Family Trust.

  The Adventure of Mr. Montalba, Obsequist was first published in Vol. 6, #24, the September 1945 Edition of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. The Ellery Queen Introduction was first published in Volume 6, #24, the September 1945 edition of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. The Ellery Queen Introduction to The Adventure of Mr. Montalba, Obsequist is reprinted with the Permission of the Frederic Dannay Literary Property Trust and the Manfred Lee Family Literary Property Trust c/o JackTime of 3 Erold Court, Allendale, NJ 07401.

  Cover design by Andrea Worthington

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-3777-8

  This edition published in 2016 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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