But, most amazing circumstance of all, imprinted upon the dry plaster-of-Paris which, in accordance with the instructions of the mysteriously absent Moris Klaw, had nightly been placed around the case containing the harp, were the marks of little bare feet!
A message sent, through the willing agency of Inspector Grimsby, to the Wapping abode of the old curio dealer, resulted in the discovery that Moris Klaw was abroad. His daughter, however, reported having received a letter from her father which contained the words—
‘Let Mr. Coram keep the key of the case containing the Athenean Harp under his pillow at night.’
‘What does she mean?’ asked Coram. ‘That I am to detach that particular key from the bunch or place them all beneath my pillow?’
Grimsby shrugged his shoulders.
‘I’m simply telling you what she told me, sir.’
‘I should suspect the man to be an impostor,’ said Coram, ‘if it were not for the extraordinary confirmation of his theory furnished by the footprints. They certainly looked like those of a woman!’
Remembering how Moris Klaw had acted, I sought out the constable who had been on duty at the corner of South Grafton Square on the night of the second tragedy. From him I elicited a fact which, though insignificant in itself, was, when associated with another circumstance, certainly singular.
A Pickford traction-engine, drawing two heavy wagons, had been driven round the Square at three a.m., the driver thinking that he could get out on the other side.
That was practically all I learned from the constable, but it served to set me thinking. Was it merely a coincidence that, at almost the exact hour of the previous tragedy, a heavy pantechnicon had passed the Museum?
‘It’s not once in six months,’ the man assured me, ‘that any vehicle but a tradesman’s cart goes round the Square. You see, it doesn’t lead anywhere, but this Pickford chap he was rattling by before I could stop him, and though I shouted he couldn’t hear me, the engine making such a noise, so I just let him drive round and find out for himself.’
I now come to the event which concluded this extraordinary case, and, that it may be clearly understood, I must explain the positions which we took up during the nights of the following week; for Coram had asked me to take a night watch, with himself, Grimsby and Beale, in the Museum.
Beale, the commissionaire, remained in the hall and lower room—it was catalogued as the ‘Bronze Room’—Coram patrolled the room at the top of the stairs, Grimsby the next, or Greek, Room, and I the Egyptian Room. None of the doors were locked, and Grimsby, by his own special request, held the keys of the cases in the Greek Room.
We commenced our vigil on the Saturday, and I, for one, found it a lugubrious business. One electric lamp was usually left burning in each apartment throughout the night, and I sat as near to that in the Egyptian Room as possible and endeavoured to distract my thoughts with a bundle of papers with which I had provided myself.
In the next room I could hear Grimsby walking about incessantly, and, at regular intervals, the scratching of a match as he lighted a cigar. He was an inveterate cheroot smoker.
Our first night’s watching, then, was productive of no result, and the five that followed were equally monotonous.
Upon Grimsby’s suggestion we observed great secrecy in the matter of these dispositions. Even Coram’s small household was kept in ignorance of this midnight watching. Grimsby, following out some theory of his own, now determined to dispense altogether with light in the Greek Room. Friday was intensely hot, and occasional fitful breezes brought with them banks of black thunder-cloud, which, however, did not break; and, up to the time that we assumed our posts at the Museum, no rain had fallen. At about twelve o’clock I looked out into South Grafton Square and saw that the sky was entirely obscured by a heavy mass of inky cloud, ominous of a gathering storm.
Returning to my chair beneath the electric lamp, I took up a work of Mark Twain’s, which I had brought as a likely antidote to melancholy or nervousness. As I commenced to read, for the twentieth time, The Jumping Frog, I heard the scratch of Grimsby’s match in the next room and knew that he had lighted his fifth cigar.
It must have been about one o’clock when the rain came. I heard the big drops on the glass roof, followed by the steady pouring of the deluge. For perhaps five minutes it rained steadily, and then ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Above the noise of the water rushing down the metal gutters, I distinctly detected the sound of Grimsby striking another match. Then, with a mighty crash, came the thunder.
Directly above the Museum it seemed as though the very heavens had burst, and the glass roof rattled as if a shower of stones had fallen, the thunderous report echoing and reverberating hollowly through the building.
As the lightning flashed with dazzling brilliance, I started from my chair and stood, breathless, with every sense on the alert; for, strangely intermingling with the patter of the rain that now commenced to fall again, came a low wailing, like nothing so much as the voice of a patient succumbing to an anaesthetic. There was something indefinably sweet, but indescribably weird, in the low and mysterious music.
Not knowing from whence it proceeded, I stood undetermined what to do; but, just as the thunder boomed again, I heard a wild cry—undoubtedly proceeding from the Greek Room! Springing to the door, I threw it open.
All was in darkness, but, as I entered, a vivid flash of lightning illuminated the place.
I saw a sight which I can never forget. Grimsby lay flat upon the floor by the further door. But, dreadful as that spectacle was, it scarce engaged my attention; nor did I waste a second glance upon the Athenean Harp, which lay close beside its empty case.
For the figure of a woman, draped in flimsy white, was passing across the Greek Room!
Grim fear took me by the throat—since I could not doubt that what I saw was a supernatural manifestation. Darkness followed. I heard a loud wailing cry and a sound as of a fall.
Then Coram came running through the Greek Room.
Trembling violently, I joined him; and together we stood looking down at Grimsby.
‘Good God!’ whispered Coram; ‘this is awful. It cannot be the work of mortal hands! Poor Grimsby is dead!’
‘Did you—see—the woman?’ I muttered. I will confess it: my courage had completely deserted me.
He shook his head; but, as Beale came running to join us, glanced fearfully into the shadows of the Greek Room. The storm seemed to have passed, and, as we three frightened men stood around Grimsby’s recumbent body, we could almost hear the beating of each other’s hearts.
Suddenly, giving a great start, Coram clutched my arm. ‘Listen!’ he said. ‘What’s that?’
I held my breath and listened. ‘It’s the thunder in the distance,’ said Beale.
‘You are wrong,’ I answered. ‘It is some one knocking at the hall entrance! There goes the bell, now!’
Coram gave a sigh of relief. ‘Heavens!’ he said; ‘I’ve no nerves left! Come on and see who it is.’
The three of us, keeping very close together, passed quickly through the Greek Room and down into the hall. As the ringing continued, Coram unbolted the door…and there, on the steps, stood Moris Klaw!
Some vague idea of his mission flashed through my mind. ‘You are too late!’ I cried. ‘Grimsby has gone!’
I saw a look of something like anger pass over his large pale features, and then he had darted past us and vanished up the stairs.
V
Having rebolted the door, we rejoined Moris Klaw in the Greek Room. He was kneeling beside Grimsby in the dim light—and Grimsby, his face ghastly pale, was sitting up and drinking from a flask!
‘I am in time!’ said Moris Klaw. ‘He has only fainted!’
‘It was the ghost!’ whispered the Scotland Yard man. ‘My God! I’m prepared for anything human—but when the lightning came a
nd I saw that white thing…playing the harp…’
Coram turned aside and was about to pick up the harp, which lay upon the floor near, when—
‘Ah!’ cried Moris Klaw, ‘do not touch it! It is death!’
Coram started back as though he had been stung as Grimsby very unsteadily got upon his feet.
‘Turn up lights,’ directed Moris Klaw, ‘and I will show you!’
The curator went out to the switchboard and the Greek Room became brightly illuminated. The ramshackle figure of Moris Klaw seemed to be invested with triumphant majesty. Behind the pebbles his eyes gleamed.
‘Observe,’ he said, ‘I raise the harp from the floor.’ He did so. ‘And I live. For why? Because I do not take hold upon it in a natural manner—by the top! I take it by the side! Conway and Macalister took hold upon it at the top; and where are they—Conway and Macalister?’
‘Mr. Klaw,’ said Coram, ‘I cannot doubt that this black business is all clear to your very unusual intelligence; but to me it is a profound mystery. I have, myself, in the past, taken up the harp in the way you describe as fatal, and without injury—’
‘But not immediately after it had been played upon!’ interrupted Moris Klaw.
‘Played upon! I have never attempted to play upon it!’
‘Even had you done so you might yet have escaped, provided you set it down before touching the top part! Note, please!’
He ran his long white fingers over the golden strings. Instantly there stole upon my ears that weird, wailing music which had heralded the strange happenings of the night!
‘And now,’ continued our mentor, ‘whilst I who am cunning hold it where the ladies’ gold feet join, observe the top—where the hand would in ordinary rest in holding it.’
We gathered around him.
‘A needle-point,’ he rumbled impressively, ‘protruding! The player touches it not! But who takes it from the hand of the player dies! By placing the harp again upon its base the point again retires! Shall I say what is upon that point, to drive a man mad like a dog with rabies, to stay potent for generations? I cannot. It is a secret buried with the ugly body of Caesar Borgia!’
‘Caesar Borgia!’ we cried in chorus.
‘Ah!’ rumbled Moris Klaw, ‘your Athenean Harp was indeed made by Paduano Zelloni, the Florentine! It is a clever forge! I have been in Rome until yesterday. You are surprised? I am sorry; for the poor Macalister died. Having perfected, with the aid of Isis, my mind photograph of the lady who plays the harp, I go to Rome to perfect the story of the harp. For why? At my house I have records, but incomplete, useless. In Rome I have a friend, of so old a family, and once so wicked, I shall not name it!
‘He has recourse to the great Vatican Library—to the annals of his race. There he finds me an account of such a harp. In those priceless parchments it is called “a Greek lyre of gold.” It is described. I am convinced. I am sure!
‘Once the beautiful Lucrece Borgia play upon this harp. To one who is distasteful to her she says: “Replace for me my harp.” He does so. He is a dead man! God! What cleverness!
‘Where has it lain for generations before your Sir Menzies find it? No man knows. But it has still its virtues! How did the poor Menzies die? Throw himself from his room window, I recently learn. This harp certainly was in his room. Conway, after dashing, mad, about the place, springs head downward from the attendant’s chair. Macalister dies in exhaustion and convulsions!’
A silence; when—
‘What caused the harp to play?’ asked Coram.
Moris Klaw looked hard at him. Then a thrill of new horror ran through my veins. A low moan came from somewhere hard by! Coram turned in a flash!
‘Why, my private door is open!’ he whispered.
‘Where do you keep your private keys?’ rumbled Klaw.
‘In my study.’ Coram was staring at the open door, but seemed afraid to approach it. ‘We have been using the attendant’s keys at night. My own are on my study mantelpiece now.’
‘I think not,’ continued the thick voice. ‘Your daughter has them!’
‘My daughter!’ cried Coram, and sprang to the open door. ‘Heavens! Hilda! Hilda!’
‘She is somnambulistic!’ whispered Moris Klaw in my ear. ‘When certain unusual sounds—such as heavy vehicles at night—reach her in her sleep (Ah! How little we know of the phenomenon of sleep!), she arises, and, in common with many sleep-walkers, always acts the same. Something, in the case of Miss Hilda, attracts her to the golden harp—’
‘She is studying music!’
‘She must rest from it. Her brain is overwrought! She unlocks the case and strikes the cords of the harp, relocking the door, replacing the keys—I before have known such cases—then retires as she came. Who takes the harp from her hands, or raises it, if she has laid it down upon its side, dies! These dead attendants were brave fellows both, for, hearing the music, they came running, saw how the matter was, and did not waken the sleeping player. Conway was poisoned as he returned the harp to its case; Macalister, as he took it up from where it lay. Something to-night awoke her ere she could relock the door. The fright of so awaking made her to swoon.’
Coram’s kindly voice and the sound of a girl sobbing affrightedly reached us.
‘It was my yell of fear, Mr. Klaw!’ said Grimsby shamefacedly. ‘She looked like a ghost!’
‘I understand,’ rumbled Moris Klaw soothingly. ‘As I see her in my sleep she is very awesome! I will show you the picture Isis has made from my etheric photograph. I saw it, finished, earlier tonight. It confirmed me that the Miss Hilda with the harp in her hand was poor Conway’s last thought in life!’
‘Mr. Klaw,’ said Grimsby earnestly, ‘you are a very remarkable man!’
‘Yes?’ he rumbled, and gingerly placed in its case the ‘Greek lyre of gold’ which Paduano Zelloni had wrought for Caesar Borgia.
From the brown hat he took out his scent-spray, and squirted verbena upon his heated forehead.
‘That harp,’ he explained, ‘it smells of dead men!’
The Aluminium Dagger
R. Austin Freeman
The crime fiction of Richard Austin Freeman (1862–1943) was as sober as that of Sax Rohmer was extravagant. Freeman, a doctor by profession, researched his scientific stories featuring Dr. Thorndyke with meticulous care, and his craving for realism perhaps explain why his extensive output includes only one locked-room novel, The Jacob Street Mystery (1942), and this story, which appeared in John Thorndyke’s Cases (1909).
Freeman’s diligence in researching the viability of murder methods, and their detection, was legendary. In Search of Dr. Thorndyke (revised edition, 1992) by Norman Donaldson includes an amusing anecdote from the author’s son John about the lengths to which Freeman went in conducting experiments using the modus operandi adopted in ‘The Aluminium Dagger’. The quest for authenticity was hampered by the fact that the dagger Freeman used had been manufactured incompetently, at a local garage. The blade was made from a carpenter’s chisel, and the handle from a brass rod. Happily, Freeman’s construction of his story was rather more accomplished.
***
The ‘urgent call’—the instant, peremptory summons to professional duty—is an experience that appertains to the medical rather than the legal practitioner, and I had supposed, when I abandoned the clinical side of my profession in favour of the forensic, that henceforth I should know it no more; that the interrupted meal, the broken leisure, and the jangle of the night-bell, were things of the past; but in practice it was otherwise. The medical jurist is, so to speak, on the borderland of the two professions, and exposed to the vicissitudes of each calling, and so it happened from time to time that the professional services of my colleague or myself were demanded at a moment’s notice. And thus it was in the case that I am about to relate.
The sacred rite of the ‘tub’ had been duly
performed, and the freshly-dried person of the present narrator was about to be insinuated into the first instalment of clothing, when a hurried step was heard upon the stair, and the voice of our laboratory assistant, Polton, arose at my colleague’s door.
‘There’s a gentleman downstairs, sir, who says he must see you instantly on most urgent business. He seems to be in a rare twitter, sir—’
Polton was proceeding to descriptive particulars, when a second and more hurried step became audible, and a strange voice addressed Thorndyke.
‘I have come to beg your immediate assistance, sir; a most dreadful thing has happened. A horrible murder has been committed. Can you come with me now?’
‘I will be with you almost immediately,’ said Thorndyke. ‘Is the victim quite dead?’
‘Quite. Cold and stiff. The police think—’
‘Do the police know that you have come for me?’ interrupted Thorndyke.
‘Yes. Nothing is to be done until you arrive.’
‘Very well. I will be ready in a few minutes.’
‘And if you would wait downstairs, sir,’ Polton added persuasively, ‘I could help the doctor to get ready.’
With this crafty appeal, he lured the intruder back to the sitting-room, and shortly after stole softly up the stairs with a small breakfast-tray, the contents of which he deposited firmly in our respective rooms, with a few timely words on the folly of ‘undertaking murders on an empty stomach.’ Thorndyke and I had meanwhile clothed ourselves with a celerity known only to medical practitioners and quick-change artists, and in a few minutes descended the stairs together, calling in at the laboratory for a few appliances that Thorndyke usually took with him on a visit of investigation.
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