by Otto Penzler
Our companion suggested calmly: “It’s getting late and I should like to leave presently. Will you please call up Mr. Roger Thorpe on that telephone? The number is Butterfield 7-8344.”
For want of anything better to do, the truth being that my mind was filled with bewilderment, I followed the suggestion. But I decided not to be too naïve about it. First I called Information and verified that the number was that of Roger Thorpe.
After a minute’s ringing Thorpe himself answered the phone; and since he was already acquainted with the situation, it took little time to tell him what had happened. He received the news with rumbles of excitement. “Let me speak to Tarrant at once,” he snorted through the receiver.
I placed the receiver against my side and turned about. “What is your name?” I asked the man across the room.
He was bending forward, lighting a cigarette. When he had finished, he said: “My name is Trevis Tarrant. Thorpe wants to speak with me?”
I handed the instrument over to him and heard him confirming the information I had just given.… “And kindly speak to this guard here, so I can go home.… Oh, forget it, Roger; and stop that snorting. You’ll have it back by noon to-morrow, one o’clock at the latest.… Yes, I give you my guarantee.”
More bewildered than ever, I hardly caught the end of Murchison’s words through the instrument. The upshot, however, was a complete change in the guard’s attitude. He now treated Tarrant with the utmost respect and seemed prepared to follow any directions the latter might give.
“Well,” said Tarrant, “first of all I’ll take back my little gun. And then I shall bid you good-night, if you will be so good as to show me the way out. How is your arm, young man?”
I winced with pain as he touched it and his concern was apparent at once. “That’s a bad wrench,” he ejaculated. “Worse than I meant. See here, you must come along with me and spend the night. No, I insist. I can fix that arm up for you; I owe you that much at the very least. Yes, yes, it’s decided; let us be getting along.”
I was too tired and in too much pain to argue. I merely went with him.
We picked up a cab opposite the Museum and in a few minutes were set down before a modern apartment house in the East Thirties. As Tarrant opened the door of his apartment a little Jap butler-valet, spick-and-span in a white coat, came hurrying into the entrance hallway, despite the lateness of the hour.
“Katoh,” Tarrant advised him, “this is Mr. Jerry Phelan. He will spend the rest of the night with us. Let us have two stiff whiskies for a nightcap, please.”
In the lounge-like room, pleasant and semi-modernistic, which we entered, the butler was already coming forward with a tray of bottles, glasses, and siphon. The drinks were quickly mixed.
“Bless,” said Tarrant raising his glass. He took a long pull. “Mr. Phelan is suffering from a severe ju-jitsu wrench in his right arm. See what you can do for him, Katoh.”
Once again the man hastened away, to return in a moment with a small bottle of ointment. He indicated a couch upon which he invited me to rest and helped me out of my coat and shirt. The arm was now throbbing with pain and was almost unbearable when he first touched it. His fingers were deft, strong—and gentle; and within a short time the peculiar massage he administered began to have a soothing effect.
To distract my attention, Tarrant was talking. “Katoh is as well educated a man as either you or I,” he was saying. “He is a doctor in his own country in fact. Over here he is a Japanese spy. I found that out some time ago.”
Katoh, busy with the muscles of my shoulder, looked up and grinned impishly. “Yiss.” He poured out more ointment. “Not to mention, pless. Not everybody so broad-minded.”
“Oh, I don’t mind a bit,” my host assured me. “If he wants to draw maps of New York when he could buy much better ones from Rand McNally for fifty cents, it’s entirely all right.… I heartily approve of spy systems that permit me to hire one of my equals as a butler.… A hobby of mine, as you saw to-night, is investigating strange or bizarre occurrences and he’s sometimes invaluable to me there also. No; I’m not only amused by the spy custom but I am actually a beneficiary of it.”
My arm was now so greatly improved that I was becoming aware of a tremendous fatigue. I sat up, mumbling my thanks, and finished off my drink. Tarrant said: “I think you’ll sleep very well. Show him where to do it, Katoh.”
I hardly saw the room to which the little Jap conducted me and where he assisted me out of my clothes and into a pair of silk pyjamas. The events of the evening had worn me out completely; I remember seeing the bed before me, but I don’t remember getting into it.
At quarter of ten the next morning Katoh came into the room just as I was preparing to open one eye. As he advanced toward me, he grinned cheerfully and observed, “Stiff, yiss?”
In a moment I was sufficiently awake to perceive the justice of the remark. My whole arm and shoulder were incapable of movement and as I inadvertently rolled over on my side, I gave a grunt of pain.
“Pless.”
The butler very gently removed my pyjama top and got to work with the same bottle of ointment. His ability was amazing; it could have been no more than a minute before the arm was limbering up. Within five minutes the pain had gone completely.
“All right now. You rub to-night, then all finish. Your shower ready, sair.”
Tarrant was waiting for me in the lounge, beside a table upon which two breakfast places had been laid out. As soon as we had greeted each other I lost no time in attacking the ice-cold grapefruit before my place. I was hungrier, in fact, than I can ever remember being.
During an excellent repast, of which I evidenced my appreciation in the most practical way, little was said. But when we had finished the last cup of coffee and were leaning back enjoying that first, and best, cigarette of the day, Tarrant remarked: “I see you know Marius Hartmann.”
This was surprising. I was sure I had not mentioned Hartmann to him during our brief acquaintance.
He smiled at my puzzled expression. “No,” he remonstrated, “I am not trying to emulate Holmes and bewilder a Dr. Watson. His card dropped out of your pocket last night when Katoh helped you out of your coat. There it is, over on the smoking stand.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, I know him, worse luck. And by golly I shall have to step round and see him this morning.” I explained how I had come to be in the Museum the night before and related the matter of the wager. “So there it stands,” I finished. “I’m out a hundred dollars I certainly never expected to lose.”
“Bad luck,” my host observed. “Still, it was a foolish bet to have made. As I believe I mentioned last night, I interest myself in the sort of peculiar affairs with which we had to do; and whatever else may be said about them, they always come out unexpectedly. Very poor subjects for wagers. I should never risk anything on them myself.”
“I am altogether in the dark,” I confessed. “I can’t imagine what happened to the Codex. You—you don’t think it’s possible that that Aztlan Curse thing really worked, do you?” With the sunlight streaming in brightly I was viewing the matter quite differently than a few hours before. And yet, what could have happened?
“If you are asking whether I take a seven-hundred-year-old Mexican threat literally, I can tell you I don’t. I have seen older warnings than that take a miss; very much older. You heard me talking to Thorpe over the phone; he was afraid something would happen and, at my suggestion, he smuggled me into the room in the basement to discover what it might be.”
I grinned. “So I’m not the only one out of luck this morning.”
“I’m afraid you are,” Tarrant stated calmly. “In spite of your own unexpected presence which kept me much closer to the charmingly immoral Astarte than I had intended, I know exactly what occurred, and why.”
“Well——”
“Yes, I think you are entitled to an explanation, but I should rather let you have it a little later. Before the morning is out, I’ll be glad to tel
l you. Meantime, if you intend calling on Marius Hartmann, I should like to go with you, provided you have no objection. It happens that I should like to meet him and this will be a good opportunity, if you are sure you don’t mind.”
I expressed my entire willingness; indeed I was finding my new friend a pleasant companion. And presently we alighted in front of Hartmann’s sumptuous apartment on upper Fifth Avenue, somewhat above the Museum.
His rooms were ornate, with the stuffiness of classic furnishing, and filled with objets, as I am sure he called them. We had little time to notice them, however, for he made an immediate appearance. His smile was just what I had expected, as he greeted me. “I take it you have come to make a little settlement? You’re very prompt, Jerry.”
With the best grace I could summon I admitted his victory; and seeing a spindly kind of desk against one wall, I sat down and wrote out a cheque for him without more ado.
As I got up and waved the paper in the air to dry it (the desk had a sand trough instead of a blotter), I remembered Tarrant with sudden embarrassment. Hartmann had so exasperated me that I had forgotten my manners. I stammered some apologies and made the introduction.
They shook hands and Tarrant appropriated the only decent chair in the room. “By the way, Mr. Hartmann,” he asked, “how did you know so soon what happened at the Museum last night?”
“Eh? Oh, I telephoned Roger Thorpe first thing this morning and he told me all about it. I felt pretty sure something unusual would occur; the ancients possessed strange powers on this continent as well as in the East. But this is more remarkable than I imagined. Really inexplicable.”
“Why, I wouldn’t say that exactly.” Tarrant crossed one long leg over the other, as he lounged back comfortably. “I was there myself last night during the—phenomenon and a rather simple explanation occurs to me.”
“Is that so? You have discovered what type of power is in the Codex?” Hartmann leaned forward with every appearance of interest.
“There is undoubtedly a certain force in the Codex,” my companion agreed, “though not quite the sort you are thinking of. The recent phenomenon, however, was modern, very modern. And in a way estimable; scheduled simplicity is always a characteristic of the best phenomena. I almost regret that it didn’t come off.”
“How do you mean? I thought——”
“Oh, surely, the Codex vanished. But I have the strongest reasons to believe that it will return before one o’clock this afternoon. If you know what I mean?”
“But I don’t know at all. I can’t imagine. You suppose that in some way it became invisible last night and will materialise again to-day?”
“No, Mr. Hartmann,” said Tarrant softly, “I do not look for anything so astonishing. The Codex will reappear in a much more prosaic manner, I expect. It would not surprise me, for instance, if it should be handed in at the entrance of the Museum by a messenger, addressed to the Curator of Central American Antiquities. Of course, it might be delivered otherwise, but that, I should think, would be perhaps the best way.”
“You surprise me,” Hartmann declared. “Why should such a thing happen?”
“Chiefly because a certain Deputy Inspector Brown is a great friend of mine. He is a very busy man, handling cases turned over to him by the District Attorney, signing search warrants, but I am sure he would be glad to take a few minutes any time to see me. Ours is a very close friendship; he has actually sent two of his men with me this morning, simply on the chance that I might have some unexpected use for them.… Yes, that, I think, is the real reason why the Codex may be expected to reappear before my time limit runs out. It would embarrass me somewhat if the prediction I made to Roger Thorpe should fail in any particular.”
Hartmann had plainly been giving the words his serious attention. He said, “I see.”
Tarrant got unconcernedly out of his chair and, on his feet, extended his right hand. “It has been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Hartmann, I should be glad of your opinion about my little prediction. Of course, I can come back later—I should be delighted to see you again—but in that case I fear it will be too late to justify all my claims as prophet.”
The other apparently failed to observe Tarrant’s hand. He said, “I should really prefer not to interfere further with your day. Pleasant as your visit has been, I feel that we might not get on if we saw too much of each other. On the other hand, I may say I feel certain that so brilliant a man as you cannot be mistaken, especially when he has gone so far as to confide his expectations to one of the Museum Directors.”
It was evidently our cue to leave and I followed Tarrant across the room puzzled by the enigmatic fencing with words to which I had been a witness. At the doorway he turned.
“Oh, I’m afraid I nearly forgot something, Mr. Hartmann. Experiments of the kind we engaged in last night naturally carry no other penalty than failure. There is, however, a small fine of one hundred dollars, to cover the necessary experimental expenses and I have arranged that my friend Phelan should be empowered to deal with it rather than my other friend, Inspector Brown. To save every one’s time and trouble. Brown, as I said, is so busy he has doubtless forgotten all about it by now and it would be a shame to impose on his time unnecessarily.”
Marius Hartmann did a most surprising thing. He said, “I fear I shall be forced to agree with you again. Fortunately the matter is simple, as you have arranged it.”
He took from his pocket the cheque I had given him and, tearing it into small bits, dropped them into a tall vase.
In the taxi, on the way downtown, I turned to Tarrant. “But what—how—what is this all about?”
Tarrant’s expression was one of amusement. “Surely you realise that Hartmann has the Codex?”
“Well, yes; I suppose so. I couldn’t make head or tail of most of the conversation, but when he tore up my cheque, I realised he must be on a spot somehow. But I don’t see how he can have gotten hold of it. He was at the Waldorf telephoning me just before it disappeared.… Or was that a fake? Wasn’t he at the Waldorf at all?”
“Oh, no,” said Tarrant, “I’m sure he was at the Waldorf; and almost certainly had a friend with him at the telephone booth, to make sure of his alibi. His accomplice took the Codex, of course, and delivered it to him later.”
“His accomplice?”
“Murchison, the guard. That is the only way it could have happened. The affair was run off on a time schedule. Murchison turned the lights off at an arranged time. A few minutes later Hartmann phoned, calling you into the other part of the room, and while you were talking to him, the guard quietly opened the door, secured the Codex in the dark and locked the door again. His cue to do so was the ringing of the telephone bell. I’ve no doubt Hartmann did everything he could to upset you while the lights were out so that you would be too nervous to connect anything you might hear with an ordinary opening of the door.”
“Yes, he certainly did. He pretended to be frightened half out of his wits about me. Told me I must get as far away from the Codex as I could. But look here, Hartmann was the one to suggest that I be there, in the first place. Surely he wouldn’t have done that, if——”
“A brilliant idea; he is really a smart chap. He didn’t know I was going to be there; didn’t know anything about me. But if no one was present, it is obvious the guard would be suspected, as the only person to have a key, and be grilled unmercifully. He might break down. But this way, here was some one else, present at Hartmann’s own suggestion, who would give evidence that the door had not been opened at the crucial time. Provided everything worked out as planned. No, that was a clever notion of his.”
“How could you figure all this out, when you were inside that crate, if I’m right, during the theft?”
“Why, it’s the only way it could have happened. Although I didn’t see it, I was there in the room and knew just what the conditions were. If you attack the problem simply with reason—dismiss the smoke screen, an Aztec Curse this time—there ca
nnot be any other solution.”
I thought that over. After a few moments I said: “That might do for Murchison. But how did you know who had bribed him?”
“Oh, that. Well, it was a longer shot. But Thorpe had some suspicions of him, to begin with. Hartmann had suggested the possibility of something supernatural about the Codex when his offer was turned down. And when he heard about the opening warning, he mentioned it again. He slipped there. Thorpe felt sure, though, that Hartmann wouldn’t plan an ordinary theft; that was why he fell in with the idea that I should be smuggled in. I wasn’t entirely certain, until he made that other slip, giving away his knowledge of what had happened, when he first saw you just now. I talked with Thorpe this morning myself and asked especially whether Hartmann had called him. He hadn’t.”
“The man’s no better than a common thief. It will be a good thing to have him arrested.” By golly, I never had liked that man; and for the first time I was beginning to feel my animosity justified.
“Wouldn’t think of having him arrested,” was Tarrant’s calm comment.
“Why not? He’s a thief,” I repeated.
“Nonsense. The episode was more in the nature of good entertainment than theft. The Codex will be back unharmed within an hour, which in itself is a very mitigating circumstance. All that talk of mine about Inspector Brown was pure bluff. Arrest one of the future benefactors of the Museum? He’ll be on the Board some day. Don’t be silly.
“As for me,” Tarrant concluded, “I should dislike greatly seeing him arrested. There are far too few such clever fellows at large as it is. With Hartmann confined there would be just one less chance for my own amusement.”
THE POISONED DOW ’08
REMEMBERED TODAY MAINLY AS the creator of the great aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893–1957) was a renowned intellectual who produced numerous books on other, more rarified, subjects during a full, rich career. The only child of the headmaster of Christ Church Cathedral Choir Church, Oxford, she learned Latin by the age of seven and spoke fluent French as a child. A brilliant scholar at Somerville College, Oxford, she received her degree in 1915—one of the first English women to do so. Volumes of her poetry were published in 1916 and 1918, and she began a lifelong interest in religious literature at that time. Needing more remunerative employment than poetry or religious research could offer, she took a job as a copywriter at an advertising agency and, in 1920, conceived the foppish detective who was to make her fortune. In Wimsey’s first case, Whose Body? (1923), the amateur detective is about to attend a sale of rare books when his mother asks him to help a friend who has inconveniently discovered a corpse in his bathtub. Her second mystery, Clouds of Witness (1926), established her as a major figure in the Golden Age of detective fiction, those years between the world wars that featured the fair-play school of pure detection, exemplified by such authors as Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, Christianna Brand, and S. S. Van Dine. After only fourteen novels and some short stories, she stopped writing mysteries; her last novel was Busman’s Honeymoon in 1937. Apart from a few short stories, her literary efforts from that point produced mainly religious articles and books, as well as a highly praised translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy.