‘Then how was it done?’
‘That’s your job,’ said Sir Charles cruelly. Then relenting: ‘Well, one idea does occur to me—a capsule with a specially tough wall, with a fatal dose inside in a dilute form. Until the wall of the capsule was digested, the drug wouldn’t act.’
‘Of course!’ said Hamerton with relief. ‘He was poisoned before he got to the Bank!’
Paule suddenly woke up from his abstraction. ‘Poisoned before he got to the Bank?’
‘Yes. X.K. could have worked out the exact time a capsule would have taken to digest, and administered it beforehand, so that Jauntley died at 8.30 exactly.’
Paule shook his head. ‘I don’t think that’s possible; is it, Sir Charles? Not to fix the time to the minute—or the second as it was in this case!’
‘Quite impossible, for the exact lapse of time depends on unknown factors. The rate of secretion of the gastric juices, for instance, vary from hour to hour in every subject. One would have to allow a possible error of ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, each way.’
‘Anyway,’ added Paule, ‘Briggs and Thomson are here, so that we could check the matter with them.’
***
Hamerton sent for the two constables to whom had been given the task of guarding Jauntley until his arrival at the Bank.
‘Briggs, we have reason to believe that Sir Richard Jauntley took some form of capsule or pillule on the morning of his death. Is that possible?’
Briggs thought carefully.
‘I should say it is impossible, sir,’ he said at last. ‘As you know, we were on guard in his room all night, and he certainly took nothing then.’
‘Perhaps he used to carry a box of medicine in his clothes, and the poison was substituted for one?’
‘No, sir. It occurred to us that X.K. might conceal an explosive or something in Sir Richard’s clothes, so as each article was handed to us by his valet, we went through the pockets and checked the contents with Sir Richard. There were no medicines of any kind.’
‘Perhaps it was concealed in his breakfast? In a piece of bread?’
‘Sir Richard had nothing but a cup of coffee, sir. He was going to take his breakfast afterwards.’
‘Very good, Briggs.’
***
Hamerton ruffled his iron-grey hair, his almost Oriental passivity momentarily disturbed. ‘I shall believe in magic in a moment!’
Paule stopped his pacing in mid-career and looked at the wall. He seemed to be speaking to himself.
‘Jauntley was murdered at 8.30 exactly. No outside power could have reached him in the Bank vault. So that power must have been already with him, whatever it was. It wasn’t a capsule or a pillule—and it was a power that knew Greenwich Mean Time.’
With a sudden dart Paule strode across the room to the little table at the foot of the slab on which Jauntley’s clothes and effects were ranged. His long white fingers dabbled among them for a moment, then he lifted up the dead man’s wrist watch, a glittering toy on a chromium-plated strap.
‘Logically he should have been killed by this!’
‘But how, Paule?’
Paule did not answer. He took a penknife and attempted to open the back of the watch. ‘Queer,’ he muttered, and pulled out a magnifying glass. ‘What do you make of that? The lid’s brazed on!’
Then he gave a low whistle. ‘Look!’
Hamerton went to his side and peered through the glass, following Paule’s pointing finger. ‘Why, it’s only a pit in the chromium plating at the back. You often get those flaws.’
‘Doesn’t look like a pit to me. However, let’s set the watch to 8.29, and see what happens.’
They waited.
Paule gave a gasp. ‘See that!’
From the ‘pit’ a tiny sliver of wire, hardly visible even under the glass, had darted out and vanished again.
‘A sting!’ breathed Paule. ‘A poisoned sting! And coated with Martelline, or I’m no policeman. Can you find if it is, Sir Charles?’
‘I think so,’ said the pathologist, holding the watch gingerly by the strap. ‘I suppose there’s a little reservoir of it inside through which the needle affair passes. The simplest way would be to try it on a live animal, but I don’t like using them if I can help it. However, I think I can produce something from my bag of tricks that will serve the purpose. Yes, here’s a section of living heart muscle in solution.’ His expert fingers ranged the object deftly before the policemen. ‘I set the watch to the critical time again, and as the sting comes out, there, I dab it with this wet camel-hair brush. So! As a result, the brush is loaded with whatever poison is on the sting, provided it’s water-soluble, and Martelline is. Now I dip the brush in this solution, and stir. Ah!’
Before their astonished eyes the pale section of muscle had contracted convulsively.
Paule’s hand quivered with excitement as he picked up the fatal watch.
‘How diabolically ingenious. I suppose it has been substituted for his ordinary watch, and is an exact imitation of it. Where was Jauntley’s watch put at night?’
Briggs was recalled and remembered that the watch had been kept on a little table, with the dead man’s money, in the dressing room, beneath a window.
‘An open window, Briggs?’
Briggs nodded.
Hamerton sighed. ‘Knowledge of the dead man’s habits there. The watch was changed for another through the open window I expect, with a hooked stick or lazy tongs, while the police were guarding him in the other room! All right, Briggs, you couldn’t have foreseen it.’
‘I can’t help feeling,’ said Paule thoughtfully, ‘that X.K. has not quite finished with us. This is obviously meant to be the neatest job he has ever done, but he has left one rough edge, this watch. I admit he never guessed we should find out that Jauntley did not die of heart failure, but the fact remains we have this watch, and some day, perhaps, with the watch wound up, and the hands at 8.30, the sting might be noticed…’
‘What are you getting at, Paule?’ said Hamerton, puzzled.
‘I have a kind of hunch that X.K. will try to get this watch back!’
‘If he does!’ exclaimed Hamerton grimly.
‘We must give him some incentive, though,’ said Paule. ‘What about getting this story in the evening papers: that it has been discovered that Sir Richard Jauntley has been poisoned by Martelline, and the police are now hoping to discover how the poison was administered?’
***
The evening papers splashed this discovery, accompanied by guarded interviews with medical correspondents, most of them a little out of their depth with a new drug.
And then the ’phone rang in Hamerton’s office.
‘Superintendent Hamerton? Lady Jauntley speaking. I have just remembered two or three trinkets of sentimental value that poor Richard had with him when he died. A locket with my portrait in, for instance, pinned inside his waistcoat pocket. I wonder if I could send someone down for them?’
Hamerton agreed, replaced the ’phone, and stared incredulously at Paule.
‘Lady Jauntley! Trying to get the watch back!’
Then he added: ‘But that would explain everything! The inside knowledge. The O.H.M.S. letters!’
Paule smiled. ‘Have you met Lady Jauntley?’
‘Yes.’
‘I ask you, Hamerton, could she possibly be X.K.? I’ve got a strange feeling, through brooding over this case, that I know exactly the kind of man X.K. is. I feel I shall recognise him at once. I may be wrong; but I’d be ready to stake my reputation it’s not Lady Jauntley, nor any kind of woman I’ve met, for that matter!’
‘Well, what shall we do about Lady Jauntley’s request?’
‘Wait and see!’
***
The table with Sir Richard Jauntley’s belongings on it had been move
d into Hamerton’s office. Half an hour later there was a discreet tap, and Higgins, Jauntley’s servant, was shown in. He was dressed in black, with a pale thin face, and a high bald forehead backed by a few strings of dark hair.
Paule stepped forward.
‘What precisely are the things you want, Higgins?’
‘These, sir!’ Higgins held out a slip of paper. On it was written in Lady Jauntley’s handwriting:
‘Little gold locket.
Silver propelling pencil.
Signet ring.
Wrist watch.’
Paule looked up suddenly from the slip of paper and caught the eyes of the manservant. They were black, with dilated pupils, in which Paule could see his own inverted image. In that moment he had the odd sensation of being in the presence of some being different in kind from himself. More intelligent perhaps, more powerful, and yet pitifully lacking in some obvious quality every child possesses.
‘Morality, I suppose,’ thought Paule afterwards.
In that moment Paule knew he was in the presence of X.K.
Then Higgins’ eyes dropped.
‘Please wait in the next room, Higgins. Take him in, Briggs!’ said Paule, giving the constable the secret signal which indicated that the witness was not to be allowed to leave without permission.
‘We have to get an authorisation,’ he explained to Higgins.
‘What on earth did you do that for?’ asked Hamerton, a little reprovingly, for Paule was technically his junior, though the difference in authority was so slight as to receive no more than the tribute of an intermittent deference from Paule.
‘That man is X.K.!’ said Paule.
‘But how do you know?’
‘As one knows things like that. In my bones!’
‘But can you prove it?’ asked Hamerton reasonably.
‘That’s a different matter,’ said Paule, running his hands through his red hair. ‘May I ring up Lady Jauntley?’
He asked the astonished widow a number of questions. How did the idea of sending for the locket come to her? Well, as a matter of fact, in conversation with Higgins. Did he suggest it? Good gracious no, it was her suggestion, she was sure. Did Higgins suggest the items to be retrieved? He had helped her. The wrist watch? She could not remember.
Paule banged down the receiver a little angrily.
‘What a psychologist the man is! Of course the suggestion came from him. But he naturally led Lady Jauntley on in conversation so that it seemed to come from her. Her evidence would count for nothing in the witness box. In fact she’d be evidence for the defence.
‘How can we get him, Hamerton?’ he finished desperately.
‘Hold him for three or four hours! Meanwhile I’ll get every man I can spare on the job.’
***
Higgins was, in fact, held for forty-eight hours. During that time his rooms, his clothes, and his past were searched expertly and exhaustively. And nothing came of it. His clothes and rooms contained nothing to connect him with X.K. He was the son of poor but honest parents, and had been in service all his life.
‘But, of course,’ said Paule, ‘that is just what you’d expect of X.K. He’s a genius, a criminal artist, with more cunning and less morals than any man born of woman. He probably delighted in seeming an ordinary humdrum servant, attentive and respectful, and meanwhile, in his hours off, exercising his fiendish power over the persons and properties of the greatest in the land. In his time off he’s someone we can’t even guess, with a huge fortune, and perhaps the most respected name. How can we trace the connection without a clue? Higgins can become X.K. in such a way as not to leave his tracks behind!’
‘Well, what are we to do, my lad?’ asked Hamerton.
‘Let him go, I suppose,’ answered Paule bitterly. ‘Let him go on murdering and terrorising, while we stand helpless. Do you realise what X.K.’s release means, Hamerton? The end of law and order! The rule of the criminal! For thousands of imitators will rise up, inspired by X.K.’s success. And thousands of rich men will fear them, terrified by Jauntley’s death!’ There was a silence. Paule’s chair clattered suddenly. ‘I’ve an idea! Have him sent in!’
Higgins came in, quiet, obsequious, eyes deferentially downcast. ‘I hope my innocence is proved, sir. The suggestion was a terrible shock, and me so devoted to my master.’
‘And so clever at reading his confidential reports and using his post-bag!’ exploded Hamerton.
Higgins looked at the policeman with a humble smile.
‘Really, sir, as if I should dream of such a thing!’
***
Paule ignored Hamerton’s outburst. He was swinging a glittering wrist watch gently by its strap. ‘Higgins, would you have any objection to putting on this watch?’
Higgins looked at the watch and then into Paule’s eyes. Both men were silent for a full minute. It seemed to Hamerton as if he were a spectator at a duel between Paule and Higgins, fought with invisible weapons of the mind, and that he was no more than a piece of furniture, playing not even the part of a ‘property’ in the drama enacted before his eyes.
‘No; why should I object?’ Higgins said at last.
‘I thought you would have no objection. No innocent man could. Hold out your wrist.’
‘Silly, it seems to me,’ said Higgins, his eyes as unblinking as a lizard’s.
‘Hold out your wrist!’
Higgins extended it.
‘It’s a dreadful thing to fall under suspicion, Higgins,’ went on Paule dreamily. ‘Particularly suspicion of being X.K. Think of being shadowed everywhere, day and night. Never a moment’s peace. Everything pried into. No more liberty to lord it over the lords of the earth. Never a minute’s respite to slip into your other personality. Always the possibility of a slip. Always feeling an inferior, hunted creature.’
‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ said Higgins coldly. He looked down at the watch. ‘Look ’ere, this thing’s wrong. It says twenty-eight minutes past eight; and it’s only quarter past four by your clock!’
Suddenly Hamerton perceived the full implications of this puzzling conversation. Paule had trapped Higgins. If Higgins was innocent, he would be unconcerned at the progress of the hands to the fatal hour. If he were guilty, however, he would be bound, on pain of death, to snatch it off before the time of striking. What a risk! Supposing Higgins were innocent. But of course Paule would have put the sting out of action. The test was a brilliant bluff.
‘Never mind about the hands,’ Paule was saying sharply. ‘The watch is going—that’s the great thing. X.K. was a great man,’ Paule went on in the dreamy tone again, ‘and I don’t think that kind of life would appeal to him—to be a harried, hunted creature, after frightening the greatest people in the world. He was an artist, was X.K., and knew when a work of art was complete.’
A wild gleam kindled in Higgin’s eyes. His lips became chips of stone. The thin pale face changed unbelievably, became the face of a maniac, of a saint who by some incredible combination of circumstances has irretrievably damned himself.
‘Yes, he was an artist,’ he shouted, ‘the greatest criminal the world has ever known!’
His face flushed, and changed again; his arms sawed at the air; he slid off his chair. After a twitch or two he was motionless—dead.
***
Hamerton gazed at the body in horror. ‘Paule, what have you done? I thought it was a trap! That he’d prove himself guilty by—taking off the watch!’
‘Nothing of the sort,’ said Paule. The tension of his contest had left him lax and depressed. ‘I knew Higgins was X.K. and he knew that I knew. I was trying to persuade him that though we couldn’t prove him guilty, it was better that he should die than be subjected for the rest of his life to our attentions. You see, I was banking on the colossal vanity of the criminal. It was a bluff, for we couldn’t have fulfilled
our threat. But I won.
‘We’d better write our report,’ added Paule. ‘While being cross-examined, the prisoner made a confession and killed himself with a watch snatched from the table, which thus proved to be the instrument of Sir Richard Jauntley’s death! The report will be quite true, because Higgins’ last words were a confession.’
***
No one besides Hamerton ever knew of what the Superintendent called, ‘Paule’s Private Murder.’
‘But I tell you it was suicide,’ Paule would reply, not too well pleased with this joke.
X.K. was never heard of again, but a certain hotel mourned the absence of a mysterious stranger, who used to appear suddenly, spend lavishly, and disappear again.
Too Clever By Half
G.D.H. and Margaret Cole
G.D.H. and Margaret Cole were a power couple, long before that term was invented. Both were highly influential left-wing thinkers and writers, and they regarded their detective fiction as a trivial sideline, a form of escape from their worthier work in the field of politics. George Douglas Howard Cole (1889–1959) was an economist whose publications included The Intelligent Man’s Guide Through World Chaos (1932). Margaret Postgate (1893–1980), whom he married in 1918, was the sister of Raymond Postgate, another radical who wrote a celebrated crime novel, Verdict of Twelve (1940). Margaret’s books included a posthumous biography of her husband, published in 1971.
The couple wrote three impossible crime stories. Disgrace to the College (1937) is a novella which makes use of their knowledge of Oxbridge life; the sleuthing is undertaken by the Hon. Everard Blatchington, who crops up in a handful of their stories. ‘In a Telephone Cabinet’ features the Coles’ principal detective, the diligent but rather under-characterised Superintendent Wilson. This story was included in Detection Medley (1939), an anthology put together by members of the Detection Club, of which the Coles were founder members. Here the central character is Dr. Benjamin Tancred, originally introduced in a curious pair of novels, Dr. Tancred Begins and Last Will and Testament, both published in 1935, but chronicling events separated by a quarter of a century.
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