The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  “I think,” said Tarrant that evening, “that it was some member of the Lycosidæ or wolf-spider species. Or else one of the larger species of Aviculariidæ, some of which grow to great size. Even so, I have never heard of anything as large as this having been reported. And judging from the experiences here I judge it unlikely that many observers will live to report it. Although the poisonous effects of most spider bites are exaggerated, I have a feeling that this one’s bite was fatal.

  “Of course I had some inkling as to what to expect. Oh, not such a spider, I couldn’t guess that. Although I should have done. When I was examining the motor yesterday, I did see some heavy cob-webbing way up under the bow, but at that time I didn’t think that any sort of spider could be so terrifying; I am not greatly upset by spiders myself. Just the same, reason told me that something appeared on that boat which drove people overboard in a panic. And since the motor was the only portion of it that I was unable to examine thoroughly, it was from that direction that I looked for it. That is why, as soon as I could, I lashed the wheel and got as far away from the driving seat as was possible. The heat, I believe, brought it out; not only the heat of the motor but also that of the sun pouring down on the forward deck. How it got into the driver’s cockpit I don’t know; the first I saw of it was when it sprang up on the back of the seat.

  “I can’t express the horror and loathing its appearance inspired. It was sufficient to make Jerry pretty ill—and it never got with twenty yards of him. Sheer panic, that’s what one felt in its presence. When I struck the water, I had no thought of where I was going, only a hopeless conviction that I would surely be overtaken. I forgot everything, all my own preparations; and the mere swish of Jerry’s boat when he first came toward me only increased my terror. That is why Duff turned away from his rescuers; in his panic-stricken condition he may even have imagined that the rowboat with its oars was the beast itself.… Well, thank God I recovered sufficiently to get into the Grey Falcon and finish the job.”

  “Suppose there’ll be no trouble about the motor-boat?”

  “Oh, no. I didn’t see the widow, but she sent word that I could blow it up if I wished and good riddance. The loss of the boat was a small price, I think.”

  Valerie shuddered and reached for my hand. “Jerry,” she said, “it’s nice here, but take me home to-morrow, please?”

  GREAVES’ DISAPPEARANCE

  JULIAN HAWTHORNE (1846–1934), the only son of Nathaniel Hawthorne, followed in his father’s footsteps and decided to become a writer—very much against his family’s wishes, as he had been educated at Harvard to be a civil engineer and previously had expressed interest in philosophy and had shown great artistic skill with his ability to draw. What he lacked in genius he compensated for with perspicacity, producing a vast number of novels and short stories, many uncollected from their magazine appearances. Much of his writing was in the mystery, horror, and supernatural genres.

  His first story, “Love & Counter Love; or, Masquerading,” was immediately accepted by Harper’s Weekly, which paid the then generous sum of fifty dollars for it, and he quickly sold more stories to Scribner’s, Lippincott’s, and other leading magazines. He was one of the first American mystery writers to use a series detective, Inspector Byrnes, who serves as the protagonist in several novels, including A Tragic Mystery (1887), An American Penman (1887), Another’s Crime (1888), and The Great Bank Robbery (1888). Working as a journalist, he covered the Indian famine for Cosmopolitan magazine in 1897 and the Spanish-American War for the New York Journal in 1898. Having lost his money in a farming venture in Jamaica, he entered a contest, reputedly writing A Fool of Nature in eighteen days under a pseudonym (it was published under his own name in 1896), for which he won a ten-thousand-dollar prize. He was later caught in a silver-mine stock fraud and served a year in prison.

  “Greaves’ Disappearance” was first published in Six Cent Sam’s (St. Paul, Minnesota, Price-McGill, 1893).

  JULIAN HAWTHORNE

  WE WERE FOUR in the club smoking room that October afternoon. The weather was gusty and inclement, and we were out of sorts. Perhaps our having been up till two or three o’clock the night before may have had something to do with our gloomy sensations. Twelve hours had elapsed since we had left the card table, and permitted yawning Thomas to go to bed. We had dispersed to our various abiding places, slept till noon, and drifted back to the club and breakfast. Hardly anyone besides ourselves was in the house. It was intolerably dull. What is one to do in town at three o’clock of a rainy October afternoon, after being up all night?

  Allardice, the man-about-town par excellence, lay languid and relaxed in his easy-chair, his legs outstretched, his chin on his breast, and a black Mexican cigar between his teeth. His prominent gray eyes were half closed, some cigar ashes lay unheeded on his vest, and the light from the window was reflected dimly on the bald summit of his cranium. Tinling, the poet and dramatic critic, reclined on the divan, his gray, abundant hair contrasting oddly with his smooth pink-and-white face; the hand with the big seal ring on it lay romantically and conspicuously on his heart. Gawtrey sat with his elbows on his knees, and his face between his hands, the small eyes in his big fat countenance blinking stupidly at the fire. He and Tinling had been wrangling about the merits or demerits of the new Persian dancer who had been attracting the town for some days past, and who was being advertised, free and otherwise, to a degree unexampled. Tinling had declared that she was “the peer—I do not say of Ellsler or Taglioni, but of Salome, the daughter of Herodias.” Gawtrey had replied that he had never seen the Herodias girl, or the other two, either; but that he could find women in any ordinary music hall, here or in London, who could knock the stuffing out of Mlle. Saki. Thereupon fell a silence, finally broken by Allardice.

  “If no one else will, I suppose I must,” said he, leaning forward and touching the electric bell in the panel. “Think of what it’s to be, gentlemen.”

  We sighed and changed the position of our legs.

  “There should be a by-law specifying the correct drink for each hour of the day,” said someone. “Up to eleven p.m., at any rate, it’s too fatiguing to choose for one’s self.”

  “You might always order the same drink, you know, like Greaves,” suggested Gawtrey. “Grand Vin Sec is his tipple, and he never touches any other.”

  “Gawtrey has no discrimination,” murmured Tinling. “Greaves has a hundred thousand a year, youth, health and happiness.”

  “No rose without the thorn,” said Allardice. “He’s going to get married.”

  “That’s a pretty cheap article of cynicism, even before dinner,” rejoined Tinling. “In the first place, the girl comes of one of our best families. Baddely was a name famous in the old country centuries ago, and always respected. Secondly, Miss Baddely is a mighty fine girl, both in looks and otherwise; and fifthly and sixthly, and to conclude, Greaves is dead in love with her.”

  “The Baddely, is it?” grunted Gawtrey. “Why, they don’t amount to a row of pins! Met the old boy downtown. Ain’t worth a hundred thousand.”

  “The greater her good sense, to look with favor on Greaves’s suit,” was contributed by Allardice.

  Tinling closed his eyes. “You weary me,” he said. “She’s the most independent girl I know. If anything could make her jilt Greaves, it would be precisely his income. If Greaves were poor, she’d support him. She thinks women ought to support themselves, anyway.”

  “What can she do for a living?” someone inquired.

  “What couldn’t she? Anything—from keeping a dancing school to running an American railroad system. She’s got genius.”

  “That’s the reason Greaves didn’t join us last night,” remarked Gawtrey. “When a fellow gets gone on a girl, he may as well resign from his clubs. But I wish he’d given me my revenge first. Never saw anything like the hands that fellow held last time. Two flushes and a four-ace were some of ’em.”

  “What is yours, sir?” inquired the pale but ev
er respectful Thomas, appearing at this juncture. Whereupon we all wearily began to try to think of something.

  In the midst of our deliberations, in came Fred Guise, looking quite pale and haggard. He nodded to us without speaking, and dropped into a chair.

  “Just in time,” said Allardice, “and you look as if you needed it. Ask Mr. Guise what he’ll have, Thomas.”

  “Absinthe cocktail,” said Guise, without faltering. “I’m knocked out. Haven’t seen the color of a bed since night before last. None of you chaps have heard anything new about him, of course?”

  “Guess not. About whom?”

  “Greaves, of course. Did you think I meant the Shah of Persia?” inquired Guise, with a fine irony.

  “All we know about Greaves here is, that he promised to be here last night and didn’t materialize,” said Gawtrey, with a yawn. “He owes me my revenge—”

  “Do you mean to say you chaps haven’t heard?” interrupted Guise, sitting up and speaking slowly, as if astonishment weighted his utterance. “Why it’s nearly a day old!”

  “Is its father known?” asked Allardice, languidly.

  “What’s the matter, Fred?” demanded Tinling, struck by something peculiar in Guise’s manner. “We’ve only just got up, you know, and you’re the first man that’s come in since—”

  “Why, good God, the man’s disappeared,” exclaimed Guise, always in his characteristic low but distinct voice. “He vanished like the blowing out of a candle! He was with me one moment, and the next, he was—well, he was gone!”

  “I say,” grunted Gawtrey, “draw it mild. What are you giving us?”

  “What are the circumstances? How disappeared? When? Where?” put in Tinling, erecting himself, and shaking back his long gray hair.

  “Why, I supposed the report would have got here the first thing. It’s the most inexplicable thing I ever came across. Let me see—to begin at the beginning, I’d breakfasted with him in the forenoon yesterday at his rooms. He was quite jolly—rather more so than usual, I thought. I took it for natural high spirits—going to be married soon, and all that sort of thing, you know. But I’ve thought since it may have been excitement from some other cause, you know. He talked a bit about his private affairs—we’re pretty intimate, you know—but nothing was said in particular that I remember. We talked of the Ingledew’s ball, and that escapade of Mrs. Revell’s, you know, and that Mlle. Saki, the Persian dancer—whom he didn’t seem to think much of, by the by—and of the gold-find in Alaska; he said he thought that looked promising, and that he might like to take some stock in that; and then—”

  “For pity’s sake, do tell us the story first, and we can join you in your comments afterward,” someone exclaimed. “Get to the point, can’t you?”

  “I was only trying to recall anything that might possibly throw some light on the thing, you know,” rejoined Fred, unhurriedly. “I can’t make out any motive for it myself. Everything was all right about him—property, health, love affair—well, everything. And it’s inconceivable to me that he could have planned anything beforehand—to make away with himself, or anything of that sort; but then it’s even more inconceivable he should have vanished involuntarily, don’t you know. I can’t make it out,” and here Fred accepted the absinthe cocktail that Thomas silently extended to him, and emptied it with deliberate circumspection.

  Allardice elevated one eyebrow, and hunted in his pocket for a cigar. “Take your time, my dear boy,” said he. “We’ve got the afternoon before us, and we’re none of us curious. Won’t you take another absinthe before you continue?”

  Guise leaned back in his chair, seemed to consult his memory, and finally went on:

  “Well, after breakfast, you know, we lay about for a while, looking over his books and pictures, and talking philosophy and art. Toward three or four o’clock—just about this time, you know—we agreed to go out for a little stroll. It looked as if it might rain, and Greaves put on a light gray Mackintosh overcoat, that he’d just had over from London—rather a peculiar looking thing it was, by the by—and a soft felt hat, and out we went. We turned into Broadway, and walked on the west side up past the hotels toward Thirty-Fourth Street. There were comparatively few people out. I remember we passed a long file of those sandwich men, you know, with Persian turbans on, and boards with Saki’s portrait on them. She’s at the Fifth Avenue, you know. Just as we reached the corner of Twenty-Eighth Street, we came across a bit of an excitement. There was a man running down the middle of the street, with his hat in his hand, and making good time; and about a dozen yards behind him were a couple of bobbies. Greaves and I stopped on the corner, to see what would happen. Greaves said he was a fool to run in that direction, because he could never get across Broadway. The bobbies thought so, too, I fancy, and it threw them off their guard. Almost at the entrance of the street the chap turned like a flash, and dashed straight at them. Before they knew where they were he had tripped them both and sent them sprawling, and was flying up the street. Halfway along the block there’s an empty house, going to be torn down. The basement door was open and he went through it, and that was the last ever seen of him, I fancy. I turned round to Greaves, who had spoken to me, you know, just the instant before, and saw him across the other side of Broadway, walking on toward Thirtieth. There he was, you know, in his gray Mackintosh and soft felt hat. I hurried to catch up with him, and took his arm. I said, ‘He was no fool, after all, that chap. I fancy he must have played on a football team.’

  “That’s what I said, and then Greaves pulled away his arm and turned round on me, and you may imagine I was surprised when I found it wasn’t Greaves at all, nor anyone a bit like him. It was a fellow of fifty, with a stubble of gray beard a week old, a red potato nose, and one eye gone. ‘I beg your pardon, young fellow,’ he said to me, ‘I guess you’ve made a mistake.’

  “Well, you know, at first I didn’t think so much of it; I’d been misled by the similarity of dress, that was all. Greaves must be somewhere, of course, and close at hand, too; it was hardly thirty seconds since he’d spoken to me, and there were only three directions in which he could have gone—up Broadway, or down or up the side street toward Fifth Avenue. If he had gone down the street toward Sixth Avenue I should have seen him, for that was the direction I’d been looking. But the Broadway sidewalks in both directions were nearly empty, the crowd having run down Twenty-Eighth after the fellow and the bobbies. There was nobody going toward Fifth Avenue either, and he couldn’t have got away more than a dozen rods, anyhow. I should have recognized him at any distance in that gray Mackintosh. It was true, he might have gone into some shop, so I looked into all of them up and down the blocks, but it was no use. Unless he’d dropped through a manhole in the pavement, there was nowhere he could have gone; but he was gone just the same. There never was a disappearance on the stage managed quicker or neater, or half so inexplicable. I began to feel mighty queer about it—something as if I’d seen a ghost. Here was an effect without a cause. I assure you it was as unpleasant a shock as ever I had in my life.”

  We all stared at one another. At last Gawtrey said:

  “See here, Fred, make a clean breast of it; how many bottles of the Grand Vin Sec did you polish off at the breakfast?”

  “I’m entirely serious, gentlemen,” returned Fred, gravely; “and recollect, even if Greaves could have eluded me in any ordinary way, he would still have been heard from somewhere by this time. But he’s given no sign. Whether he went voluntarily or not, he’s vanished, and I’m afraid when news does come it will not be the sort of news we shall like to hear.”

  Gawtrey now poured his pony of brandy into a tumbler, added a dash of water, swallowed the mixture, looked in the bottom of the glass for inspiration, and said, “I don’t believe, for my part, that Greaves has been kidnapped in broad daylight in the center of New York; and on the other hand, I don’t believe in miracles—this year, anyway. What he did, depend upon it, was just to step quietly out of sight somewhere, when you
weren’t looking. Probably he saw Miss Baddely on a horse car, and boarded it to join her.”

  “There’s something in that idea,” said Allardice.

  Guise shook his head. “There wasn’t, as it happens, a single car passing, for there was a block across both tracks at Twenty-Fifth Street. And as for Miss Baddely, I afterward ascertained that she was at home at the time. No, gentlemen; ordinary explanations won’t work. Last evening, I went down and had a talk with Inspector Byrnes, and he has put two of his best men on the case. But they had found out nothing when I looked in at Headquarters just now.”

  “You called on Miss Baddely, did you? How does she take it?” inquired Tinling.

  “I saw her father; she was not to be seen. Of course they are all upset. I told him all I’ve told you. He said one thing—the old man did—that struck me as a bit odd; he said that both his daughter and Greaves were persons of arbitrary will and extraordinary whims. They were capable of almost anything. If one of them did a crazy thing, the other would be apt to do something to cap it. He said he had no control over either of ’em, and never had had. But he said this last business did surprise him. I thought that was queer language to use on such an occasion. It might mean that he suspected something.”

  “A quarrel, for instance, and desperation on Greaves’s part.”

  “A wager of some kind, maybe.”

  “I never did think much of that fellow Baddely. He’s a poor sort of an old dude. Where does he get his pocket money from? He never made a cent in his life. Shouldn’t wonder if his daughter supported him somehow. Takes in sewing on the quiet, or paints fans, or gives music lessons. Rum things go on in some of these old families.” It was Gawtrey who made these observations.

  “Upon the whole,” said another of the party, “it looks to me as if Greaves’s kidnapper must have been Greaves himself. But how he arranged it—the circumstances being what they were—I can’t figure out. My impression is, Guise should have followed up that fellow in the gray Mackintosh.”