by Michael Sims
“Why?” he asked.
I hesitated, and perhaps coloured. I had really given it up because, with my diminished practice, it was too expensive. I could only afford a pipe. “I prefer a pipe,” I said laughingly. “But tell me of this robbery. What have you lost?”
He rose, and planting himself before the fire with his hands under his coat tails, looked down upon me reflectively for a moment. “Do you remember the cigar-case presented to me by the Turkish Ambassador for discovering the missing favourite of the Grand Vizier in the fifth chorus girl at the Hilarity Theatre? It was that one. It was incrusted with diamonds. I mean the cigar-case.”
“And the largest one had been supplanted by paste,” I said.
“Ah,” he said with a reflective smile, “you know that?”
“You told me yourself. I remember considering it a proof of your extraordinary perception. But, by Jove, you don’t mean to say you have lost it?”
He was silent for a moment. “No; it has been stolen, it is true, but I shall still find it. And by myself alone! In your profession, my dear fellow, when a member is severely ill he does not prescribe for himself, but calls in a brother doctor. Therein we differ. I shall take this matter in my own hands.”
“And where could you find better?” I said enthusiastically. “I should say the cigar-case is as good as recovered already.”
“I shall remind you of that again,” he said lightly. “And now, to show you my confidence in your judgment, in spite of my determination to pursue this alone, I am willing to listen to any suggestions from you.”
He drew a memorandum book from his pocket, and, with a grave smile, took up his pencil.
I could scarcely believe my reason. He, the great Hemlock Jones! accepting suggestions from a humble individual like myself! I kissed his hand reverently, and began in a joyous tone:
“First I should advertise, offering a reward. I should give the same information in handbills, distributed at the ‘pubs’ and the pastry-cooks. I should next visit the different pawnbrokers; I should give notice at the police station. I should examine the servants. I should thoroughly search the house and my own pockets. I speak relatively,” I added with a laugh, “of course I mean your own.”
He gravely made an entry of these details.
“Perhaps,” I added, “you have already done this?”
“Perhaps,” he returned enigmatically. “Now, my dear friend,” he continued, putting the notebook in his pocket, and rising—“would you excuse me for a few moments? Make yourself perfectly at home until I return; there may be some things,” he added with a sweep of his hand towards his heterogeneously filled shelves, “that may interest you, and while away the time. There are pipes and tobacco in that corner and whiskey on the table.” And nodding to me with the same inscrutable face, he left the room. I was too well accustomed to his methods to think much of his unceremonious withdrawal, and made no doubt he was off to investigate some clue which had suddenly occurred to his active intelligence.
Left to myself, I cast a cursory glance over his shelves. There were a number of small glass jars, containing earthy substances labeled “Pavement and road sweepings,” from the principal thoroughfares and suburbs of London, with the sub-directions “For identifying foot tracks.” There were several other jars labeled “Fluff from omnibus and road-car seats,” “Cocoanut fibre and rope strands from mattings in public places,” “Cigarette stumps and match ends from floor of Palace Theatre, Row A, 1 to 50.” Everywhere were evidences of this wonderful man’s system and perspicacity.
I was thus engaged when I heard the slight creaking of a door, and I looked up as a stranger entered. He was a rough-looking man, with a shabby overcoat, a still more disreputable muffler round his throat, and a cap on his head. Considerably annoyed at his intrusion I turned upon him rather sharply, when, with a mumbled, growling apology for mistaking the room, he shuffled out again and closed the door. I followed him quickly to the landing and saw that he disappeared down the stairs.
With my mind full of the robbery, the incident made a singular impression on me. I knew my friend’s habits of hasty absences from his room in his moments of deep inspiration; it was only too probable that with his powerful intellect and magnificent perceptive genius concentrated on one subject, he should be careless of his own belongings, and, no doubt, even forget to take the ordinary precaution of locking up his drawers. I tried one or two and found I was right—although for some reason I was unable to open one to its fullest extent. The handles were sticky, as if someone had opened them with dirty fingers. Knowing Hemlock’s fastidious cleanliness, I resolved to inform him of this circumstance, but I forgot it, alas! until—but I am anticipating my story.
His absence was strangely prolonged. I at last seated myself by the fire, and lulled by warmth and the patter of the rain on the window, I fell asleep. I may have dreamt, for during my sleep I had a vague semi-consciousness as of hands being softly pressed on my pockets—no doubt induced by the story of the robbery. When I came fully to my senses, I found Hemlock Jones sitting on the other side of the hearth, his deeply concentrated gaze fixed on the fire.
“I found you so comfortably asleep that I could not bear to waken you,” he said with a smile.
I rubbed my eyes. “And what news?” I asked. “How have you succeeded?”
“Better than I expected,” he said, “and I think,” he added, tapping his note-book—“I owe much to you.”
Deeply gratified, I awaited more. But in vain. I ought to have remembered that in his moods Hemlock Jones was reticence itself. I told him simply of the strange intrusion, but he only laughed.
Later, when I rose to go, he looked at me playfully. “If you were a married man,” he said, “I would advise you not to go home until you had brushed your sleeve. There are a few short, brown seal-skin hairs on the inner side of the fore-arm—just where they would have adhered if your arm had encircled a seal-skin sacque with some pressure!”
“For once you are at fault,” I said triumphantly, “the hair is my own as you will perceive; I had just had it cut at the hair-dressers, and no doubt this arm projected beyond the apron.”
He frowned slightly, yet nevertheless, on my turning to go he embraced me warmly—a rare exhibition in that man of ice. He even helped me on with my overcoat and pulled out and smoothed down the flaps of my pockets. He was particular, too, in fitting my arm in my overcoat sleeve, shaking the sleeve down from the armhole to the cuff with his deft fingers. “Come again soon!” he said, clapping me on the back.
“At any and all times,” I said enthusiastically. “I only ask ten minutes twice a day to eat a crust at my office and four hours sleep at night, and the rest of my time is devoted to you always—as you know.”
“It is, indeed,” he said, with his impenetrable smile.
Nevertheless I did not find him at home when I next called. One afternoon, when nearing my own home I met him in one of his favourite disguises—a long, blue, swallow-tailed coat, striped cotton trousers, large turn-over collar, blacked face, and white hat, carrying a tambourine. Of course to others the disguise was perfect, although it was known to myself, and I passed him—according to an old understanding between us—without the slightest recognition, trusting to a later explanation. At another time, as I was making a professional visit to the wife of a publican at the East End, I saw him in the disguise of a broken down artisan looking into the window of an adjacent pawnshop. I was delighted to see that he was evidently following my suggestions, and in my joy I ventured to tip him a wink; it was abstractedly returned.
Two days later I received a note appointing a meeting at his lodgings that night. That meeting, alas! was the one memorable occurrence of my life, and the last meeting I ever had with Hemlock Jones! I will try to set it down calmly, though my pulses still throb with the recollection of it.
I found him standing before the fire with that look upon his face which I had seen only once or twice in our acquaintance—a look which I ma
y call an absolute concatenation of inductive and deductive ratiocination—from which all that was human, tender, or sympathetic, was absolutely discharged. He was simply an icy algebraic symbol! Indeed his whole being was concentrated to that extent that his clothes fitted loosely, and his head was absolutely so much reduced in size by his mental compression that his hat tipped back from his forehead and literally hung on his massive ears.
After I had entered, he locked the doors, fastened the windows, and even placed a chair before the chimney. As I watched those significant precautions with absorbing interest, he suddenly drew a revolver and presenting it to my temple, said in low, icy tones:
“Hand over that cigar-case!”
Even in my bewilderment, my reply was truthful, spontaneous, and involuntary. “I haven’t got it,” I said.
He smiled bitterly, and threw down his revolver. “I expected that reply! Then let me now confront you with something more awful, more deadly, more relentless and convincing than that mere lethal weapon—the damning inductive and deductive proofs of your guilt!” He drew from his pocket a roll of paper and a notebook.
“But surely,” I gasped, “you are joking! You could not for a moment believe—”
“Silence!” he roared. “Sit down!”
I obeyed.
“You have condemned yourself,” he went on pitilessly. “Condemned yourself on my processes—processes familiar to you, applauded by you, accepted by you for years! We will go back to the time when you first saw the cigar-case. Your expressions,” he said in cold, deliberate tones, consulting his paper, “were: ‘How beautiful! I wish it were mine.’ This was your first step in crime—and my first indication. From ‘I wish it were mine’ to ‘I will have it mine,’ and the mere detail, ‘How can I make it mine,’ the advance was obvious. Silence! But as in my methods, it was necessary that there should be an overwhelming inducement to the crime, that unholy admiration of yours for the mere trinket itself was not enough. You are a smoker of cigars.”
“But,” I burst out passionately, “I told you I had given up smoking cigars.”
“Fool!” he said coldly, “that is the second time you have committed yourself. Of course, you told me! what more natural than for you to blazon forth that prepared and unsolicited statement to prevent accusation. Yet, as I said before, even that wretched attempt to cover up your tracks was not enough. I still had to find that overwhelming, impelling motive necessary to affect a man like you. That motive I found in passion, the strongest of all impulses—love, I suppose you would call it,” he added bitterly; “that night you called! You had brought the damning proofs of it in your sleeves.”
“But,” I almost screamed.
“Silence,” he thundered, “I know what you would say. You would say that even if you had embraced some young person in a sealskin sacque what had that to do with the robbery. Let me tell you then, that that sealskin sacque represented the quality and character of your fatal entanglement! If you are at all conversant with light sporting literature you would know that a sealskin sacque indicates a love induced by sordid mercenary interests. You bartered your honour for it—that stolen cigar-case was the purchaser of the sealskin sacque! Without money, with a decreasing practice, it was the only way you could insure your passion being returned by that young person, whom, for your sake, I have not even pursued. Silence! Having thoroughly established your motive, I now proceed to the commission of the crime itself. Ordinary people would have begun with that—with an attempt to discover the whereabouts of the missing object. These are not my methods.”
So overpowering was his penetration, that although I knew myself innocent, I licked my lips with avidity to hear the further details of this lucid exposition of my crime.
“You committed that theft the night I showed you the cigar-case and after I had carelessly thrown it in that drawer. You were sitting in that chair, and I had risen to take something from that shelf. In that instant you secured your booty without rising. Silence! Do you remember when I helped you on with your overcoat the other night? I was particular about fitting your arm in. While doing so I measured your arm with a spring tape measure from the shoulder to the cuff. A later visit to your tailor confirmed that measurement. It proved to be the exact distance between your chair and that drawer!”
I sat stunned.
“The rest are mere corroborative details! You were again tampering with the drawer when I discovered you doing so. Do not start! The stranger that blundered into the room with the muffler on—was myself. More, I had placed a little soap on the drawer handles when I purposely left you alone. The soap was on your hand when I shook it at parting. I softly felt your pockets when you were asleep for further developments. I embraced you when you left—that I might feel if you had the cigar-case, or any other articles, hidden on your body. This confirmed me in the belief that you had already disposed of it in the manner and for the purpose I have shown you. As I still believed you capable of remorse and confession, I allowed you to see I was on your track twice, once in the garb of an itinerant negro minstrel, and the second time as a workman looking in the window of the pawnshop where you pledged your booty.”
“But,” I burst out, “if you had asked the pawnbroker you would have seen how unjust—”
“Fool!” he hissed; “that was one of your suggestions to search the pawnshops. Do you suppose I followed any of your suggestions—the suggestions of the thief? On the contrary, they told me what to avoid.”
“And I suppose,” I said bitterly, “you have not even searched your drawer.”
“No,” he said calmly.
I was for the first time really vexed. I went to the nearest drawer and pulled it out sharply. It stuck as it had before, leaving a part of the drawer unopened. By working it, however, I discovered that it was impeded by some obstacle that had slipped to the upper part of the drawer, and held it firmly fast. Inserting my hand, I pulled out the impeding object. It was the missing cigar-case. I turned to him with a cry of joy.
But I was appalled at his expression. A look of contempt was now added to his acute, penetrating gaze. “I have been mistaken,” he said slowly. “I had not allowed for your weakness and cowardice. I thought too highly of you even in your guilt; but I see now why you tampered with that drawer the other night. By some incredible means—possibly another theft—you took the cigar-case out of pawn, and like a whipped hound restored it to me in this feeble, clumsy fashion. You thought to deceive me, Hemlock Jones: more, you thought to destroy my infallibility. Go! I give you your liberty. I shall not summon the three policemen who wait in the adjoining room—but out of my sight for ever.”
As I stood once more dazed and petrified, he took me firmly by the ear and led me into the hall, closing the door behind him. This re-opened presently wide enough to permit him to thrust out my hat, overcoat, umbrella and overshoes, and then closed against me for ever!
I never saw him again. I am bound to say, however, that thereafter my business increased—I recovered much of my old practice—and a few of my patients recovered also. I became rich. I had a brougham and a house in the West End. But I often wondered, pondering on that wonderful man’s penetration and insight, if, in some lapse of consciousness, I had not really stolen his cigar-case!
Robert Barr
(1849–1912)
Sometimes a perfectly good character gets demoted to mere ancestor when a descendant comes along who is more colorful and more successful. Such has been the case with Robert Barr’s amusing, vainglorious detective Eugène Valmont, who seems likely to have inspired Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. In the entertaining series of stories about him, Valmont is a smart and energetic detective whose vanity sometimes gets in his way. The Frenchman’s outsider take on English life afforded Barr an opportunity for gentle satire.
About a year after the publication of the first Valmont story, “The Mystery of the Five Hundred Diamonds,” the Saturday Evening Post published “The Absent-Minded Coterie” in its May 13, 1905, iss
ue. The story then appeared in England in the May 1906 issue of the Windsor Magazine. Barr wrote only eight Valmont stories, which in 1906 he gathered into an ironically titled collection, The Triumphs of Eugène Valmont. The series opens with Valmont in Paris, ultimately losing his high position in the French police because of what can only be described as flamboyant incompetence. He retires to London and launches a second career as a private investigator. Christie’s Poirot is Belgian, not French, and he winds up in England as a World War I refugee, but he too metamorphoses from continental policeman to English private detective.
Barr was born in Glasgow but his family moved to Ontario when he was five. He began his writing career by contributing to Grip, a satirical weekly magazine published in Toronto by pioneer Canadian cartoonist John Wilson Bengough. (Bengough named the periodical after the talking raven in Charles Dickens’s novel Barnaby Rudge—who was in turn named after Dickens’s own pet raven.) Barr studied teaching in Toronto and by 1874 was principal of Windsor’s Central School. Two years later he went to work for the Detroit Free Press as a reporter and columnist. His nomadic life took him to England in the early 1880s, and in 1892 he founded an illustrated glossy monthly, The Idler, specifically aimed at “gentlemen,” who by definition had plenty of idle time on their hands. Barr hired humorist Jerome K. Jerome, famous for the farcical novel Three Men in a Boat, as editor. During its almost twenty-year run of lightweight entertainment, The Idler published contributions by renowned writers such as Barr’s friends Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle, along with many stories by Barr and Jerome themselves. Barr knew everyone from Joseph Conrad to Mark Twain.
Barr was a prolific writer and his stories show up in the contents pages of many Victorian and Edwardian magazines in the U.K. and the United States—McClure’s, The Strand, Everybody’s, Argosy. Valmont is not Barr’s only contribution to detective stories. He also wrote collections such as Revenge! and The Face and the Mask. His many novels include A Woman Intervenes and The Speculations of John Steele. Today most of his work is completely forgotten, except among crime-fiction fans who are determined to keep alive the memory of Eugène Valmont, as in this surprising outing about a clever con artist.