Quests of Simon Ark

by Edward D. Hoch

  “Frankly, I wanted to get rid of the thing. And I didn’t want to be plastered across the papers as the great-granddaughter of Jack the Ripper. You must understand that.”

  “I’d still like to meet your uncle.”

  “Meet him if you wish, Mr. Ark. But I repeat, it will accomplish nothing.”

  She gave us his address and then retreated into her laboratory. I decided she wasn’t sorry to see us go. Perhaps to her we represented the stigma of publicity she’d tried so hard to avoid.

  Or was she trying to avoid it? “Simon, the thought occurs to me that this whole charade might be nothing more than a giant publicity stunt for a new book about jack the Ripper.”

  He smiled at me. “British publishers go about things a bit differently from you New Yorkers. I hardly think she’s after publicity. At this point we must accept what she tells us at face value.”

  “And later?”

  “After we’ve met her uncle we might draw other conclusions.”

  As we drove away we noticed Glenda Coxe leaving through a rear door of the lab. Like Martin Rood, she too was closing early.

  Meeting her uncle involved driving to Greenwich, where the Coxe home was located within sight of the Observatory. “Virtually at longitude zero,” Simon remarked as we pulled up in front of a red stone house that had obviously seen better days.

  His name was Nesbett Coxe and like the house he had seen better days. Somehow he reminded me of a cross between the two bookdealers, Rood and Vats. He moved slowly, with glasses worn low on his nose so he could peer over them. His hair was thin and he looked unwell, though he couldn’t have been more than fifty years old. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Simon Ark. My niece warned me you were on your way. It’s about the Ripper business, what?”

  Simon nodded as we followed him through the downstairs rooms. A woman’s touch was obvious here and there, but it did little to alleviate the general gloom. “Do you and your niece live here alone?” Simon asked.

  “That’s right. Wife left me ten years ago. I’m Glenda’s guardian for another three years, till she reaches thirty. Her granddad didn’t think women matured till thirty.” He thought about it and remarked glumly, “I suppose then she’ll toss me out and sell the house. That’ll be all the thanks I get for bringing her up and putting her through the university.”

  “Then her grandfather had money? He would have been the son of this man Slackly?”

  Nesbett Coxe allowed an evil grin to form on his lips. “I know what you’re thinking. But the money didn’t come from Slackly’s criminal activities—and especially not from Queen Victoria’s golden lion. Slackly didn’t have a son, but a daughter—and she married Herbert Coxe, my father. He was something of a department-store tycoon, with a chain of shops in Liverpool and Bristol and York. Finally opened one in London, but that was his ruin. He couldn’t compete with the big boys. Still, there was enough left for me to take care of Glenda when her folks died in a fire.”

  “Your brother?”

  He nodded. “House burned down one night when Glenda was twelve. She lost everything, including her parents. Came to live with me after that. My father was still alive and he left all his money in trust for her till she reached thirty. He felt it would make up for the loss of her parents.”

  “And this journal?”

  “I never knew about it till Glenda showed it to me a few months ago. The map was with it—five little pieces of parchment stitched together, and marked with red dots in a strange sort of ink.”

  “I’d be most interested in seeing that map,” Simon told him.

  “That would be impossible unless Glenda approved. This is all hers—the journal and the map, you understand. If it was mine I’d be out selling it to the News of the World for a fancy figure.”

  I was thinking that was why she’d said it would do us no good to see her uncle. Glenda was in complete charge.

  He puttered around the house, offered us tea, and finally announced that he had work to do upstairs. That was as close as we came to seeing the mysterious map.

  On the way back to London I asked Simon what he thought about it. “Are we in the midst of a hoax, or a feud, or a swindle, or a great historical discovery, or what?”

  “I’m not quite sure, my friend. There are several ways of looking at it, and none of them is satisfactory.”

  Things grew even more puzzling the following morning. Ceritus Vats phoned our hotel quite early to announce that he was being questioned by the police. Glenda Coxe’s uncle Nesbett had been murdered the previous night, apparently during an attempted robbery at his home.

  The officer investigating the case was Inspector Flaver, a bustling middle-aged man who came right to the point. “So your name is Simon Ark and you’re a friend of Mr. Vats. Is that any reason why I should talk to you?”

  Simon’s last encounter with Scotland Yard had been much too long ago to be meaningful to this man. Nevertheless, Simon told him, “I once helped Inspector Ashly in the matter of some Satanists and an arrow murder. I expect it was before your time.”

  “Yes, I remember Ashly.” He relaxed a bit. “What do you know about this killing?”

  “Far less than you at the moment. How did it happen?”

  “The niece, Miss Glenda Coxe, who lives with the deceased, was working late at a research laboratory. She returned home around midnight and found him shot to death on the steps going down to the side door. The door itself had been forced open. It looks as if a burglar tried the place, not knowing anyone was home, and Coxe surprised him.”

  “It looks a great deal like that,” Simon agreed. “Does Miss Coxe have an alibi—witnesses who saw her at work?”

  “Oh, certainly. You can’t suspect her of killing her own uncle, can you?”

  “It happens,” Simon said. “About what time did the crime occur?”

  “About nine, we figure.”

  “Just getting dark then, this time of year.”

  Inspector Flaver nodded. “We figure there were no lights on yet. That’s why the burglar thought the house was empty. There’s a tall hedge on that side which screens the door from the neighbors.”

  “They heard no shot?”

  “Not a thing. But, you know, they had the telly going.”

  “I’d like to see Miss Coxe,” Simon said.

  “She’s just finishing her statement. Wait here.”

  Glenda Coxe appeared about ten minutes later, looking tired and a bit bedraggled. When Simon Ark attempted to speak to her she held up a hand in protest. “I’ve been up all night. I’ve told the police everything I know. Please let me pass.”

  “Ceritus Vats is being questioned. Did you give the police his name?”

  “They asked why anyone would try to burgle our house. I had to mention the journal I’d offered both Vats and Rood.”

  “Is Rood being questioned too?”

  “I assume so. Now please let me pass.”

  “Miss Coxe, you must have checked to see if the journal and map were stolen. Were they?”

  She hesitated a moment and then answered. “They’re both safe. I believe the thief was frightened away after shooting my uncle.”

  “Miss Coxe, I must see that map at once,” Simon insisted.

  “That’s impossible.”

  “You don’t seem to understand your position at present. If the journal and the map are shown to be frauds, this whole business could be viewed as a plot to kill your uncle from the very beginning. You present the journal to two rival bookdealers known for their interest in esoterica. One of them is sent a black widow spider, apparently by the other—though I’m sure such creatures are easy to come by in your research labs. When you have the rivalry and tension between the dealers at a fever pitch, someone breaks into your house and kills your uncle. The dealers are suspected, while you seem to have an alibi. And with your uncle dead you don’t have to wait three more years to come into your inheritance.”

  Her eyes flashed with a cold fury. “Who could concoct su
ch a fantastic plot?”

  “A psychologist, Miss Coxe. A psychologist who spends her working days sending rats through mazes.”

  That stopped her. She gnawed at her bottom lip and asked quietly, “What good would it do you to see the map?”

  “The description given me, of a circle of dots with a horseshoe of dots within, reminded me of something. I might know the place where the treasure is buried.”

  “You might know it, when my great-grandfather didn’t? When neither my uncle nor I could make anything out of it?”

  “This man Hogarth would hardly leave a neatly labeled map in the hands of streetwalkers who were virtual strangers to him. Still, I repeat that I may know the place. You must decide quickly, Miss Coxe. Murder has made this a very serious business.”

  She hesitated only a moment. “Very well, come with me.

  As we followed her in our rented car, I said, “Simon, even if the map and the journal are genuine, that doesn’t prove she didn’t kill her uncle.”

  “I know, my friend. But it gives us an opportunity to see this fabled map.”

  There was no arguing with his logic, so I didn’t try. When we reached the house in Greenwich once more, I parked behind her little red car and we followed her inside.

  She went at once to a small wall safe and extracted a metal box. Opening it, she took out a faded notebook. “There, gentlemen—the journal of Jack the Ripper. Just as I found it in a trunk in my father’s attic.”

  “At the moment I’m more interested in the map.”

  She unrolled a small piece of parchment and placed it on the table before us. As described, it consisted of five separate pieces which had been stitched together. The whole thing had a diameter of perhaps eight inches. On it, marked in red ink, was a circle of thirty dots, with an inner horseshoe of five more pairs of dots, and a larger dot near the center. At the top of the map, directly opposite the open end of the horseshoe, was an X.

  “Just as I suspected!” Simon announced triumphantly.

  “What is it?”

  “A simplified diagram of the rocks at Stonehenge. That’s where you’ll find Jack the Ripper’s lost treasure—if there is a treasure.”

  Simon telephoned Inspector Flaver and told him we planned to dig at Stonehenge for buried treasure. He suggested the Inspector meet us there, accompanied by the two bookdealers, Vats and Rood. Then he hung up before the questions started coming.

  “How can you be so sure it’s Stonehenge?” I asked.

  “Around 1887 it wouldn’t have been uncommon for people to be digging in the area, searching for artifacts of the past. It’s only in more recent times that the government has taken steps to preserve and protect these ancient monuments. For Hogarth it would have been the perfect hiding place for his stolen lion.”

  “But his partner Slackly couldn’t read the map even after he recovered its five parts.”

  “Exactly. He wasn’t familiar with Stonehenge and the dots would have meant nothing to him.”

  The drive to the Salisbury Plain took nearly two hours from London, but when we arrived I spotted the Inspector and the two bookdealers at once. Stonehenge seemed alive with police that day, guarding against possible trouble from a nearby rock concert.

  “All right,” Flaver said, “we came. This had better be worthwhile.”

  “It will be,” Simon assured him.

  We took the tunnel from the parking area, beneath the highway to Stonehenge. The place was filled with summer tourists and a group of youths from the rock concert who were carrying on a sort of chanting ceremony. “They imagine they’re Druids,” Inspector Flaver explained, “though of course these stones were here long before the Druids came.”

  We passed through the great stone archways, which somehow seemed smaller with all the people about. Then Simon consulted the stitched-together parchment once more and paced off a distance to the point that seemed to correspond roughly with the spot on the map where the X was drawn.

  “It’s far enough beyond the actual monument, so we can dig here,” Simon said. “I trust you brought a shovel, Inspector.”

  “We have one in the car,” he admitted.

  Finally it was Martin Rood who insisted on starting the digging. “If it’s there I want to find it,” he said.

  Vats tried to pull the shovel from him, but Inspector Flaver intervened. “If you find anything at all, I’m taking it. If there’s any truth to Miss Coxe’s story, it’s the property of the British government.”

  But after twenty minutes Rood threw down the shovel. “Nothing here,” he said, obviously disappointed.

  “Perhaps a bit to the left,” Simon suggested, consulting the map again. Ceritus Vats took over the digging for a time while the rest of us watched. Some tourists had drifted over, but Flaver’s orders to the police on guard kept them away.

  After another half-hour’s digging Vats gave up too. “If it was ever here, it’s gone.”

  “He would have buried it deeper,” Simon speculated, “because of all the digging in the area. He wouldn’t have wanted it uncovered by accident.”

  I jumped into the hole and took up the shovel. We were only down about four feet and Simon’s reasoning seemed sound to me. If the treasure was here at all, it would be deeper.

  As I plunged the shovel into the earth for the third time I hit something solid. “It could be just a rock,” I cautioned, stooping to scoop the dirt away by hand.

  But it wasn’t a rock. It was something hard and heavy, wrapped in burlap sacking that had partly disintegrated with the passage of time. I unwrapped it and held it high, brushing the clinging dirt from its glistening surface.

  “The treasure of jack the Ripper!” Ceritus Vats said in a voice touched with awe. And indeed it seemed a treasure—a striding lion all in gold, with fifty glistening diamonds set into the body at regular intervals.

  Only Simon seemed unimpressed. He took the lion in both hands and hefted it. “The journal said solid gold. I could tell by the ease with which you lifted it that this isn’t solid gold. A gold statue of this size would weigh nearly a hundred pounds. And those diamonds are fakes as well.”

  Vats could not believe it. “But—but something like that could never be presented to the Queen!”

  “Exactly—which leads us to believe it was never meant for Queen Victoria. That merchant, Felix Rhineman, collected the money, had a cheap statue gold-plated and encrusted with imitation diamonds, then dropped word at a place where thieves like Hogarth and Slackly would hear of it. There was no danger from his standpoint. Even if they discovered after the robbery that the statue was a fake they could hardly report it to the police.”

  “And Rhineman kept the money he collected,” I said. “He made a handsome profit and Queen Victoria never really lost anything.”

  Simon Ark nodded. “The only losers were those five women who carried parts of Hogarth’s map.”

  “Why did Slackly have to kill them, Simon? Especially the way he did?”

  Simon Ark took out the parchment map and held it to the light, “This is not the usual parchment, my friend, made from the skin of a sheep or goat. Slackly mutilated their bodies after strangling them so the missing pieces of flesh would go unnoticed. You see, Hogarth paid those poor women to let him tattoo the five parts of his map on their skin.”

  After that Simon walked for a long time with Inspector Flaver. Then Simon and I departed, leaving Ceritus and his rival Rood with Glenda Coxe and the Inspector. “But who killed Nesbett Coxe?” I asked on the drive back. “You never solved it, Simon!”

  “My friend, I am not a detective, much as you would like to make me one. I am merely a wanderer, searching the world for evil. At times I find it in unlikely places. At times I find it in the eyes of a twelve-year-old child grown to adulthood.”

  “You mean—?”

  “The story of the Ripper’s treasure was either true or false. On the basis of what we found here, we concluded it was true, to the best of Raymond Slackly’s knowledg
e when he wrote the journal. But if the journal is true we must believe that Glenda Coxe found it where she said—in her father’s attic trunk. Now her uncle told us yesterday that her house burned down when she was twelve. She lost everything, including her parents. Therefore her discovery of Slackly’s journal and the map must have come before that fire!”

  “Perhaps,” I was willing to grant.

  “Not perhaps, but certainly! And can you imagine the effect this discovery would have on a child of that impressionable age? Her great-grandfather—the most terrible murderer in London’s history! We know it had an effect on her, because she kept it a secret all these years till now.

  But I shook my head. “There’s a flaw in your reasoning, Simon. Suppose she found the journal sometime before the fire as you say. It would still have burned up, unless she deliberately removed it from the house before the fire.”

  “Exactly, my friend.”

  “You mean she burned down her own house? Killed her own—?”

  “And now resurrected the journal to kill again, in such a way that Vats or Rood would be blamed for it. She needed two suspects, in case one of them could prove an alibi for last night. Remember that back door to her laboratory? An easy way out, and back in, while her coworkers thought she never left the building.”

  “And you told all this to Inspector Flaver?”

  “I did. The proof is up to him. I believe he’ll start with the fire fifteen years ago.”

  “And the map, Simon?”

  “I think it will go into Scotland Yard’s files, along with the journal. Someday, perhaps, when there is not already enough horror in the world, it can be revealed.”

  We drove on toward London, and that was the last I ever heard of the treasure of Jack the Ripper.

  THE MUMMY FROM THE SEA

  IT WAS SEVERAL DAYS after Christmas when I arrived in Rio de Janeiro with Simon Ark, but the season was summer there and the wave of heat that hit us at the airport was a pleasant change from the wet snow we’d left behind in New York.

  Simon had phoned and asked me to make the journey with him. “I need you, my friend,” he’d said. “You are one of the few stabilizing influences in a world gone increasingly mad.”