The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  “Surely,” he said. “Had it not killed his father and his grandfather?”

  “But his grandfather was drowned on the Northwest Coast,” continued Marquis. “He was shooting brant, and the plug came out of the boat.”

  “Some one pulled the plug out,” replied Sir Godfrey.

  “And his father fell from the steeple of the chapel here.”

  Again that vague smile, like a bit of sun on a painted image’s face.

  “Did he fall?”

  Henry Marquis swore under his breath. “Damn it, man,” he said, “you are a companion for the butler’s mother, only the old woman is more satisfactory; she gives an explanation with her theory, and you never give an explanation. If you know what killed old Bradmoor, why don’t you tell us how it killed him?”

  Sir Godfrey Simon looked calmly across the table at the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard. The mask of his face had now the expression of a man of experience regarding the futile chatter of a child.

  “Marquis,” he said, “you sometimes profoundly annoy me. Because one understands one feature of a matter, does it also follow that one must understand equally every other feature of it? I have made this explanation until I am monotonously weary of it: I know what killed the old Duke; I do not know how it killed him. You do not see the interest in this case as I see it. The interest to me lies exclusively in the fact that it did kill him. I am not concerned about the means it took. I don’t care. I am not interested. That is for you to find out, if you care.”

  He took up the glass of whisky beside him, tasted it, and put it down again. He acted to me like an amused man, at a quarrel among children.

  “If you find out how the old Duke was killed, you will see that I am right—if you ever find out.”

  Marquis shrugged his shoulders. He turned again to me and said:

  “We finally reached the dead point. There was no solution to the thing!”

  II

  Lord Dunn now took up the narrative. He had been silent in his chair, moved back from the table. He had lighted a cigar, and enjoyed it while Henry Marquis had been talking; but he enjoyed it like a bookmaker. It was tilted at a rakish angle in his mouth; and he blew the smoke about him like a stableboy. He now took the cigar out of his mouth, and threw it into the fireplace.

  “But there was something in his life,” he declared.

  “It was the last exploration old Bradmoor undertook, the one that used up the remnant of his fortune. I mean that terrible push into the Lybian Desert. He was too old to undertake it, and he was too poor. It broke him down in every direction. The man came out a wreck—a worse wreck than we realized; one could see the physical evidences on him.”

  He made a big, awkward gesture with his hands, precisely like a bookmaker rejecting a bet.

  “I don’t ask anyone to believe it,” he said. “I don’t know that I believe it. I judge, in fact, that I don’t believe it. Of course, it’s a crazy notion; but this whole business is full of crazy notions—nothing but damned crazy notions.”

  He paused to light another big cigar.

  “Anyway, I know the facts, and what happened. I know them better than any other living person, because I considered that expedition before Bradmoor did. The German came to me first; then he went to the old Duke. I was not interested in the Lybian Desert just then. Deserts don’t amuse me. Women go through them and write books about it. I was going into Yucatan, so I sent the German to Bradmoor.

  “I could not determine whether he was a liar, building on some facts, or whether he had been with Rohlfs’ expedition. You know about that—or has everything that happened before the Great Mad War been forgotten? Rohlfs persuaded Kaiser Wilhelm to fit him out with an expedition to explore the plateau of the Lybian Desert. Rohlfs had a theory that the country now desert had been once well watered—the theater of an immense civilization, antedating the later civilizations of which we have any knowledge. He got the professors to back him up. They prepared a monograph for him, and it was published everywhere.

  “Rohlfs persuaded the Kaiser to send him in.

  “Of course, we don’t know how much bluff the Germans were putting up. It is possible that the Kaiser was merely taking a look at Egypt, and the English possessions beyond it, and that the expedition was a scouting party. That would be an explanation of the wide publicity given to the monograph the professors put out, and the money the German Government spent on the expedition. But I don’t believe that was Rohlfs’s motive. I think Rohlfs was really on the trail of a civilization, and that he was sincere about it.

  “Anyhow, the expedition went in, and everybody knows what happened to it, and where it broke down. Rholfs went on with a fragment of what he could get together, and he found some evidences of what he expected to find—not a civilization like that of the Egyptian Nile, but something more like what I found in Yucatan. At least, that’s the story the German came to me with. I mean Slaggerman. He turned up here, a sort of roustabout on a North German Lloyd ship; and he hunted me up.

  “I suppose he saw the name in the newspapers.

  “I sent him to Bradmoor,” Lord Dunn went on. “He had a drawing—very well done. He said Rohlfs made it. It showed a path along a stone ledge. There was one strange feature about the path that he pointed out. He would hold a glass over it, and then he would get excited, and fall into the German language. The path was sunk in the stone of the ledge, but it had not been cut there; it had been worn there. It must have been eight or ten inches deep, and wide enough for a man to pass along it.

  “And it was worn into the ledge!

  “ ‘Ach,’ he would say, ‘it was feet, human feet that wore that path down. How long did it take—one thousand, two thousand, five thousand years? And how many feet—how many generations of feet—and why did they travel on that path, and where did they go?’

  “He said that Rohlfs, after the expedition had gone to pieces, had escaped from the surveillance of the desert sheiks, and had gone on, with only Slaggerman, disguised as an Arab cook. They had pushed on for a fortnight before they were overtaken and brought back. He said they reached the peak of a mountain ascending out of the sand to the southwest.

  “It was not a range that extended like a geological formation across the whole plateau. It stood up abruptly out of it, as though a peak of mountain had thrust up suddenly from below. He said that it was possible to travel around it, that the native tribes did, in fact, travel around it. There was no reason for anyone undertaking to ascend it, in the opinion of the desert tribes.

  “It was evidently a peak of barren rocks, without water or vegetation. The stone was hard, and rose-colored. The sharp peaks at a distance, the German said, with the sun on them, looked like a beautiful rose-colored cathedral. There was a certain harmony in the outline at a distance. Rohlfs thought it was a mirage. Neither of the two men had any other idea until they finally arrived at its base. They had time enough to go entirely around it before they were overtaken.

  “There was no way to ascend it; in fact, they did not think of the possibility of anyone going up until by chance Rohlfs discovered this path. They were amazed, but they had no opportunity to follow the thing up. They were overtaken by the desert tribes and hurried out of the region. Rohlfs made a drawing of the path that night, while the memory of it was fresh in his mind. It was correct, Slaggerman said. He helped him with the details.”

  Lord Dunn put his cigar on the fruit plate before him. It was half burned out; the long ash crumbled, and a thin line of smoke ascended, rippling at the top like a fantastic flower. He seemed to reflect on the story he was telling. His voice was firmer, less harsh.

  “When you come to think about it,” he said, “there could have been nothing that would so pique the curiosity as that bit of drawing. There was just enough of it. One’s imagination winged off at once with every sort of extravaganza. In the waste places of the earth two things have an unfailing fascination for the lone explorer—a human footprint, an
d a path. If one finds a human footprint, or a path, one can never turn aside from it; one must find out whither it leads.

  “I remember the effect on me when the German got out his drawing.

  “I was not much interested before that. I was considering a method to dismiss him. But that fragment of drawing attached my interest. The whole picture at once came up in vivid detail, with its absorbing enigma!

  “Well, as I have said, I sent him on to old Bradmoor. We know what happened. The old Duke went bankrupt on an expedition to go in; and he did go in. It took a lot of time, and endless negotiations. He had to get the permits from the English Government, and from the Egyptian authorities, and the rights to pass, from the sheiks of the desert tribes. The English Government was willing to help him. They wished to verify Rohlfs’s narrative. The report had not been translated into English; but it was in the German language, in the bulletins issued by the learned societies at Berlin.

  “It took a lot of money.

  “In fact, as we know, it cleaned old Bradmoor out, and encumbered his estate as it now stands—on the verge of the bankrupt court. But the old Duke had the patience of every great explorer; once on the way, once taken with the big idea, he stopped at nothing.

  “Of course, everybody knows what he found. It’s in the monograph he furnished the Royal Society; but everybody does not know all that he found. Bradmoor talked it over with me when he returned. He came to see me. He was very much perplexed. He asked me what he ought to do. I told him to make a conventional report to the Royal Society, covering what the exploration discovered, and omit the remainder of it—keep it to himself.

  “My reason for urging Bradmoor to this decision was not only in the interest, as I pointed out, of his own reputation, but it was in the interest of the reputation of all persons engaged in exploration. It was necessary to retain the public confidence in the accuracy of our explorers. Anything taken to be incredible, or improbable, or fantastic, would not only injure Bradmoor before the great English reading public, but it would injure every other man who undertook a like exploration.

  “We talked it over.

  “The result was that the old Duke’s monograph contained only the journal of the expedition, and the general verification of what Rohlfs had reported—that is to say, no evidence of any ancient civilization on the plateau.

  “He found precisely what one would have expected him to find in the desert.

  “The only unusual thing which his monograph indicated was the peak of rose-colored stone which stood up out of the plateau; and this, under my suggestion, he described from the unimaginative view of the geologist.

  “He tells us that he found this stone formation precisely where Rohlfs said it was, and with the physical characteristics set out in the German report. He had the same difficulty that confronted Rohlfs; the desert tribes would not permit him to make any very careful examination of it. It was only with extreme difficulty that he was permitted to approach it. He was not able to learn why they objected to this inspection. He was impressed that it was merely the accumulated suspicion which would attach to any expedition going into that region—only one or two white men had ever entered it.

  “He reported also the death of Slaggerman on the way out. He had strayed from the expedition, and been killed. And that was all!”

  Lord Dunn leaned over in his chair, got the half-burned cigar out of the plate, and relighted it.

  “But that was not all: Rohlfs’s drawing was genuine, and Slaggerman had told the truth. Bradmoor said that when the peak of stone began first to form itself before him, he was amazed beyond any words to express it. The thing did look like a cathedral, like an airy rose-colored Gothic thing in the sky. In spite of Slaggerman at his elbow, he was quite sure, as Rohlfs had been, that the thing was a mirage. It could not be anything else.

  “It was too delicate, too artistically perfect to be anything real.

  “It was a fairy mosque, raised by some enchantment—like a Baghdad story; and as they traveled toward it, it grew more clearly outlined. It was only at the very base of the thing that one lost the illusion; then it became the peak of a mountain thrusting up through the desert sand, composed of some hard, reddish stone.

  “Bradmoor said they had only a day; the sheik of the desert tribes treated him precisely as he had treated Rohlfs—he gave him a day. But he was luckier than Rohlfs. He did not put in the time traveling around this stone formation. He set out with Slaggerman alone, leaving a guard in his camp.

  “Bradmoor said that the German went at once to the path he and Rohlfs had discovered. It was there precisely as the drawing showed it.

  “They at once set out on this path.

  “It was narrow, worn into the stone, as Rohlfs’s drawing showed. The wearing was uneven, as though the rock had been softer in places; but the path was at no point worn in the stone to a less depth than eight or ten inches. Bradmoor was able to go along it, but the big German traveled with extreme difficulty.

  “Bradmoor thought the path had been made by persons of a smaller stature than the modern European.

  “The path wound about among the peaks of stone until it reached a beetling ledge at the top.”

  Lord Dunn paused, ground out the lighted end of the cigar on the plate, and put it down.

  “I forget the precise details,” he said. “Bradmoor had them minutely. I suppose by the very accuracy of his detail he hoped to make the story so realistic that it could not be doubted. Anyway, what he found was a small chamber, cut out in the highest peak of stone, and an image on a sort of stone bench.

  “Bradmoor said this image was carved out of blue ivory. Of course, there isn’t any such thing as blue ivory, and there could have been no piece of ivory in the world large enough. The image was about four feet high, and in proportion.

  “He said the thing profoundly puzzled him. He could not understand where a piece of ivory that size could have been found in any age of the world. And then, when he began to examine it carefully with a magnifying glass, he found that it was made of a number of pieces, fitted together so that they interlocked.

  “He thought the ivory had been dyed. But it was a dye of which we have no knowledge, for it had entered the grain of the ivory, and soaked through it. Bradmoor thought it was blue all the way through—at any rate so far as he could determine by scratching it with any implement that he had. He said that the image sat on a sort of bench cut out of the red stone, with its hands together, the palms up, extended between its knees. He said that the features and the whole attitude of the figure, very closely resembled the Baal or Moloch of some of the early Sumerian tribes.

  “There was an inscription cut on the face of the stone below the image. It was in the wedge characters of the old Sumerian priests; it was partly defaced—the opening lines had scaled. Bradmoor and I got his copy of the inscription deciphered. It ran like a verse of Isaiah.

  “ ‘His right hand shall be his enemy, and the son of another shall sit in his seat. I will encourage his right hand to destroy him. And I will bring the unborn through the Gate of Life. And they shall lean upon me. And I will enrich them, and guide their feet and strengthen their hearts. And they shall laugh in his gardens, and sit down in his pleasant palaces.’

  “You see,” Lord Dunn went on, “it was a threat against anyone who should disturb the god.

  “Bradmoor said the expression on the face of the image was one of inconceivable menace, an expression of eternal calm—a vast Satanic serenity—laid down over features exquisitely cruel. The menace in it struck one as with the impact of a blow.

  “It stopped even old Bradmoor and Slaggerman when they came to the top of the path before it, and sent their hands to their pistol holsters. The old Duke said he had to compose himself a bit before he could go in.

  “Now, that was a good deal for Bradmoor to say. He was a cold-blooded, hard-hearted man on an expedition—not a person to be affected by an image.

  “The thing must have been pretty bad. />
  “They found nothing in the cell with the image. The bench on which it sat had been cut out of the red stone, and there was nothing about in the place, except the partly defaced inscription and a hole in the bench of stone directly under the extended, open hands of the image, between its knees. The hole was circular—about six inches in diameter, and smooth. It seemed to descend into the stone. Bradmoor said he was profoundly puzzled about what this opening could mean. They had nothing with which to explore it, and the whole chamber about them was entirely bare. He went outside where the path began to ascend, and with a small hammer broke off some fragments of stone, and dropped one into the opening. He heard it tumble against something at a short distance, as though it were a piece of parchment—there was a crackling as of paper.

  “He bared his arm, and put it down into the opening.

  “The hole was perfectly smooth, and descended for about two feet; then it made a slight turn toward the face of the image. Here his fingers came in contact with something that felt like a piece of parchment. He got hold of it with difficulty, and finally brought it up.

  “It was a bladder, containing a handful of something that rattled like pebbles.

  “It had been dropped into the opening, but had been too large to make the turn to the front as it descended. They cut the bladder open. It was partly full of rubies. They were magnificent rubies—big, pigeon-blood stones, such as are now only found in Burma; and there was a whole handful of them.

  “The reason for the hole descending into the stone was now clear. It was a contribution box for the god. The position of the hands open between the knees of the image was also clear—anything placed in them dropped into his contribution box.

  “Bradmoor tried it with fragments of stone. They fell out of the hand into the open hole below, and descended. He said he could hear the pieces of stone rattle for a long distance. He could not tell how far. He had no line, and no method of judging how far the hole descended; but it was evident that it was some sort of chute leading to a treasure house, and that it descended for a great distance.