by Otto Penzler
“Search the room?”
“Yes, sir. But someone might just have gone over it with a vacuum-cleaner for all there was to find!”
“Landlord take the car number?”
“No. Says he had a rush of customers at the time.”
“He would. Nine o’clock was well chosen. Does he know any facts about Kinley? Did he get any letters?”
“He knows nothing, sir, and swears there were no letters.”
The Superintendent rubbed his chin reflectively.
“You met Kinley fishing at a quarter to ten,” he murmured. “He was then in flannels, yet all his luggage had been collected from the pub three-quarters of an hour earlier. It doesn’t make sense!”
The door opened and two men entered. One, the Chief Constable, was well enough known to Dunsterman, but at first he took his companion for a stranger; then his mind stirred to the memories of a thousand cartoons, and his heart beat quicker with anticipation of great events, good or evil. There was a quality about the tubby little figure and rounded, jovial features that had often struck terror into the hearts of harder-bitten men than Sergeant Dunsterman.
“I want you to describe for me this man Kinley,” said the high, reedy voice. “There is no occasion for you to feel nervous, Sergeant, but I would impress upon you the necessity for absolute accuracy.”
Unwinkingly, the great little man stared into his eyes while the sergeant provided him with a descriptive report which would have done credit to an expert in mnemonics.
“Excellent!” he wheezed at length. “I see that you are an exceptionally efficient officer. You are, then, perfectly clear in your mind that shortly after ten o’clock a young man named Kinley, wearing flannels, carrying a brightly-coloured yellow blazer and a pair of powerful binoculars, vanished from a meadow near the Wych river in very singular circumstances, and in an aeroplane bearing neither identification marks nor a registration number?”
“That is right, sir.”
“No, Sergeant, it is not right. In all innocence, and with the best of intentions, you are reporting an event which has not occurred. I repeat—has—not—occurred. That this is so you will at once perceive when I tell you that at ten-thirty-five, only half an hour after the time you thought you saw Kinley, an aeroplane of the type you describe crashed in some fields on the outskirts of Edinburgh. The police could find no trace of an occupant, but in the pilot’s cockpit they discovered a yellow blazer marked ‘A. Kinley’ and a pair of powerful binoculars of foreign make. Also the parachute and harness, which had been encased in a pack under the cushion of the seat, were missing, while to the instrument-board was pinned a note, signed A. Kinley, explaining to whoever found the wreckage that the writer had no control over the machine and was about to jump in a desperate attempt to save his life. Now all this evidence, Sergeant, is concrete, indisputable, and already in the hands of the police. Also, inevitably, it has already attracted a great deal of attention from pressmen—as you will observe when you look at your paper in the morning. You follow me, I hope?”
“Yes, sir,” croaked Sergeant Dunsterman, seriously wondering if it were he or the Minister who had gone mad.
“I am glad of that because, you see, if you were correct in your previous impression that Kinley and the aeroplane were in Norfolk at ten o’clock they could only have crashed in Edinburgh at ten-thirty if the machine had travelled at something like eight hundred miles an hour; and if some such ridiculous rumour began to spread it might, in the present temperamental conditions of the world, have unforeseen repercussions. You are, I am fully persuaded, far too intelligent an officer not to appreciate this point. Do you not see?”
Not immediately did the sergeant reply, for suddenly and stunningly he certainly did see—saw the jealously-guarded secret ’plane, saw the foreign agent—Kinley—keeping a rendezvous with an accomplice, flying away, losing control of the monster, wrenching open the cockpit door and being whirled away with his parachute like a spider slung from a blown leaf.
With an effort he jerked his thoughts back to realities as the Minister’s voice continued.
“Kinley, I should inform you, was a young ex–flying officer, recently retired, who had just joined the staff of a great national journal. How he came to hear of the existence of this—er—experimental aircraft we shall probably never know. The fact remains that he did, that he proceeded to—er—investigate—no doubt with the object of securing for his paper what I believe is popularly known as a ‘scoop’—and that he has, without the slightest doubt, paid for his temerity with his life. These points are of importance because, of course, the fact of his being a journalist will intensify the interest of the Press in the discovery at Edinburgh. You follow me?”
“Absolutely, sir, but”—Sergeant Dunsterman hesitated, greatly perturbed lest he should be about to commit an impertinence—“but I was not able to locate the man who was first flying the machine. The man, I mean, in charge when it landed on Wych marshes.”
“Sergeant, you disappoint me! I have already demonstrated to you that no such landing could have taken place.” The thin voice broke into an astonishingly bass chuckle. “You must not forget, Sergeant, that some persons might conclude, were they to learn of your curious and erroneous impressions, that the machine actually had been empty and under the control of—shall we say wireless, or some similar agency?”
Sergeant Dunsterman nodded dumbly. The implied revelation came to him as a shock, not of surprise but of confirmation, for his own astute brain had already read this interpretation of the empty cockpit.
“You do not answer, Sergeant. I wish to know if it is perfectly clear to you that this evening you have seen no unregistered aeroplane, no yellow blazer and no Zeiss binoculars, and that the young man named Kinley, who has been staying at the local inn, left for London, bag and baggage, at nine o’clock.”
“I quite understand, sir,” returned Sergeant Dunsterman earnestly. “There is no connexion whatever between the wreckage found in Scotland at half-past ten and a machine which some people hereabouts may have heard flying half an hour earlier.”
“Exactly. Admirably put. No connexion. That is the whole point. And that is what you will all bear in mind, I beg, when making out official reports or dealing with local gossip.”
The great man had already turned to go when the Superintendent cleared his throat.
“About the monkey, sir?” he began diffidently.
“What?” The word was a squeak.
“The monkey, sir, which jumped out of the machine which the sergeant—which the sergeant didn’t see. It appears to belong to Professor Warnford Durrant. We left it at the station.”
For the first time the fat face lost its air of benign complacency.
“Ring up at once. You, Sergeant. There’s the telephone. Ring up.”
White to the lips, Sergeant Dunsterman turned away from the instrument when the call went through.
“It’s—it’s been taken, sir,” he whispered brokenly. “My wife says a man came with a message from the Superintendent ordering her to hand it over—and she did!”
Not a word of anger or reproach did the Minister utter, but silently nodded dismissal, then took the Chief Constable’s arm and, still in silence, led him from the room, down the long hall, and out along the drive to his waiting car.
“Two first-rate men, those officers,” he said, one neat and podgy foot on the running-board. “I will see that a friendly eye is kept on them.”
The Chief Constable nodded absently.
“Do you know, sir,” he remarked suddenly, “even now I can hardly believe you are right about that new footman of mine. He seemed such a—such a——”
“Nice, quiet, respectful and efficient servant,” completed the Minister with a chuckle. “I have no doubt that he possesses all those qualities and that his references were unimpeachable. Nevertheless, my dear Colonel, I do assure you that his name is not Lovat but Lobley, that he is the Chief of the Secret Service of a Power whic
h has been causing us a lot of anxiety recently, that he entered your service for the specific purpose of spying, that he had installed a dictaphone in that room which we have just left, and that at this very moment he is on his way to his Government with a record of every word that was spoken.”
Again came the surprising bass chuckle.
“All the same,” ended the great man inconsequently, “it’s just as well we added the monkey.”
Flight-Lieutenant Alastair Kinley, enjoying a few days’ leave after his exceedingly fateful spell of “special service,” lounged at ease in a favourite club arm-chair and beamed at his old friend Tony Carew.
“It is pleasant,” he observed amiably, “to see your ugly features blotting the landscape once again. Pleasant but surprising. From your last letter, which I only got a month ago, I gathered that you fully expected to remain in China for at least another year.”
“So I did. Then that war scare flared up and I made a bolt for home. Just in case, you know.”
Kinley laughed.
“And instead of finding the recruiting offices doing a brisk trade,” he murmured, “you discover the good old British Public happily wrangling about the Test matches, and all our international bothers referred to Geneva for polite arbitration.”
“A dashed good job, too,” responded Tony soberly. “You can bet I’m not disappointed. Even now, though, I can hardly believe the danger’s over. D’you know I was told by one chap, who’s usually pretty well informed, that a week ago to-day we were within one hour of general mobilization! Is that true, d’you think?”
“I happen to know that it’s perfectly true.”
Tony looked up with sudden quick interest.
“Aha!” he exclaimed softly. “So you’ve been up to your hush-hush tricks again! Excellent! I will lend you my ears, both of ’em, for half an hour. Tell the tale. Say your piece. Spill the beans.”
“It’s all so dashed confidential,” demurred Kinley.
Very red in the face, Tony became busy with cigarette and lighter.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Shouldn’t have asked, I suppose. Still, I’m not a blamed reporter, you know, and——”
“Don’t be an ass, old man,” Kinley put in hastily. “Of course I know you’re as safe as houses, but in this game one gets so into the habit of swearing chaps to secrecy, and all that sort of thing, that—well—that it becomes second nature.”
“Consider me sworn,” grunted Tony.
“Good enough. Here goes, then.… You saw all that gaff in the papers last week about a marvellous and mysterious aeroplane which crashed near Edinburgh?”
“I did. Some of the papers hinted that it was controlled by wireless, and flew at eight hundred miles per hour, and heaven knows what! Silly season stuff, I thought it was. You don’t mean to say it was genuine?”
“Genuine enough to frighten a Great Power into preferring arbitration to war.”
“Great Scot!”
“You see, luckily the Chief of their Secret Service, an awfully nice chap whom we all know and love by the name of ‘Little Lobley,’ happened to be in England on business, and although, of course, he was travelling strictly incognito, our fellows were unobtrusively by his side night and day.
“Now a certain fat and fanciful statesman, sometimes irreverently spoken of as the Cherubic Cham, conceived the really bright idea of persuading Little Lobley that we possessed an aeroplane of such fearsome potentialities that his country was absolutely bound to get it in the neck if it came to a scrap. Little Lobley was therefore allowed to hear strange and wonderful rumours. He was told, for example, that the famous Professor Warnford Durrant had himself designed the secret ’plane. Then he was instructed where to go to witness a trial flight, and was given a job as footman in the household of a Chief Constable in East Anglia. Every facility was allowed him to install his little dictaphones and other gadgets, and as soon as he was all set and comfortable, on Wednesday, the twenty-seventh instant, the curtain went up on the first and only performance of ‘The Monkey Trick,’ a fine and fruity melodrama with a highly original plot which I will now proceed to divulge.”
With a wealth of picturesque and flippant detail Kinley related the events of the memorable Wednesday evening.
“And really,” he concluded, “one can hardly blame Little Lobley for jumping to conclusions. The sergeant, stout fellow, was the most transparently honest and reliable witness that ever said ‘swelp me’—in fact, he was chosen for that very quality, plus the commendable habit of being at a certain spot at a certain time every Wednesday evening. Then consider the monkey—an artistic touch, that! which Little Lobley was permitted to scrounge from the local police station. That inestimable animal proved quite indisputably to belong to Warnford Durrant. And remember the stuff the Cherubic Cham spouted, for the benefit of the dictaphone. Surely that was nicely calculated to prove that a sinister aircraft must have travelled from Norfolk to Edinburgh in some thirty minutes?”
“Quite neat,” allowed Tony. “I must confess I don’t see the catch myself. Expound.”
“Two of everything, dear old idiot. Two machines, two yellow blazers, two conspicuous Zeisses. Aircraft carrier Number One, lounging about the North Sea, sends up machine A, which lands and collects me after I’ve duly impressed my personality upon the honest sergeant. We return to our ocean home and our own little turn is over. Aircraft carrier Number Two, idling away the hours in the Firth, sends up exactly similar machine B, complete with trimmings in the shape of blazer, binoculars, and perfectly genuine note, written by myself, at a moment nicely chosen to pile up on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Whereupon the inquisitive and intelligent observer will not unnaturally assume that machine A and machine B are one and the same, and that a journey of some three hundred miles has been accomplished with remarkable celerity.”
Tony laughed.
“A pretty idea! I didn’t know, though, that they actually could control ’planes by wireless.”
“Ass! Alan Arkwright was in mine, nicely tucked away in the front cockpit. You couldn’t see him unless you climbed up on the wing, and I took jolly good care the excellent sergeant didn’t do that. Grimshaw flew the Edinburgh bus, got it heading for the appointed mark, and floated gracefully away into the darkness with his parachute. With which, my good Tony, I bring my enthralling narrative to a close. Now what about a cocktail? Shall it be a ‘Little Lobley’ or a ‘Monkey Trick’? They know how to mix ’em both here.”
“So it seems,” said Tony.
THE ORDINARY HAIRPINS
IN THE HISTORIC CORNERSTONE of detective fiction, Trent’s Last Case (1913; titled The Woman in Black in the United States), Philip Trent makes his debut and breaks several of the unwritten, if widely accepted, rules of the genre: he falls in love with the chief suspect and, after delivering a brilliant solution to the mystery, discovers that he is completely wrong.
Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956) is often credited with being the father of the modern detective story (even though his first novel was written a century ago) in that he insisted that his protagonist be human, which is to say fallible, unlike such contemporary characters as Sherlock Holmes, Craig Kennedy, and Martin Hewitt. Born in a suburb of London, Bentley attended Oxford University, then left to study law; he was admitted to the bar in 1902. He also turned to journalism at this time, making it his lifelong career.
In 1905, he published Biography for Beginners under the name E. Clerihew, a collection of nonsense poems in a four-line form that he invented and that still bears the name Clerihew, which for years rivaled the limerick in popularity. It was illustrated by Bentley’s closest friend, G. K. Chesterton, who influenced his colleague’s literary style in its clarity and humor.
Trent’s Last Case was filmed three times: as a 1920 silent with Gregory Scott as Trent, as a Howard Hawks–directed version in 1929 with Raymond Griffith in the titular role, and in 1952 with Michael Wilding as Trent, Margaret Lockwood as the prime suspect, and Orson Welles as the mu
rdered millionaire. Bentley wrote only two other books featuring the amateur detective Trent: the novel Trent’s Own Case (1936) and Trent Intervenes (1938), a short-story collection.
“The Ordinary Hairpins” was first published in the October 1916 issue of The Strand Magazine; it was first collected in Trent Intervenes (London, Nelson, 1938).
E. C. BENTLEY
A SMALL COMMITTEE of friends had persuaded Lord Aviemore to sit for a presentation portrait, and the painter to whom they gave the commission was Philip Trent. It was a task that fascinated him, for he had often seen and admired, in public places, the high, half-bald skull, vulture nose, and grim mouth of the peer who was said to be deeper in theology than any other layman, and all but a few of the clergy; whose devotion to charitable work had made him nationally honoured. It was not until the third sitting that Lord Aviemore’s sombre taciturnity was laid aside.
“I believe, Mr. Trent,” he said abruptly, “you used to have a portrait of my late sister-in-law here. I was told that it hung in the studio.”
Trent continued his work quietly. “It was just a rough drawing I made after seeing her in Carmen—before her marriage. It has been hung in here ever since. Before your first visit I removed it.”
The sitter nodded slowly. “Very thoughtful of you. Nevertheless, I should like very much to see it, if I may.”
“Of course.” Trent drew the framed sketch from behind a curtain. Lord Aviemore gazed long in silence at Trent’s very spirited likeness of the famous singer, while the artist worked busily to capture the first expression of feeling that he had so far seen on that impassive face. Lighted and softened by melancholy, it looked for the first time noble.