Trent Intervenes and Other Stories

by E. C. Bentley

  Sir Peregrine stirred in his chair. ‘You had been told the truth – or a part of the truth – about our married life, I suppose?’

  Trent inclined his head. ‘Three days ago I arrived in London, and showed a little of this paste to a friend of mine who is an expert analyst. He has sent me a report, which I have here.’ He handed an envelope across the table. ‘He was deeply interested in what he found, but I have not satisfied his curiosity. He found the salve to be evenly impregnated with a very slight quantity of a rare alkaloid body called purvisine. Infinitesimal doses of it produce effects on the human organism which he describes, as I can testify, with considerable accuracy. It was discovered, he notes, by Henry Purvis twenty-five years ago; and you will remember, Sir Peregrine, what I only found out by inquiry – that you were assistant to Purvis about that time ago in Edinburgh, where he had the Chair of Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology.’

  He ceased to speak, and there was a short silence. Sir Peregrine gazed at the table before him. Once or twice he drew breath deeply, and at length began to speak with composure.

  ‘I shall not waste words,’ he said, ‘in trying to explain fully my state of mind or my action in this matter. But I will tell you enough for your imagination to do the rest. My feeling for my wife was an infatuation from the beginning, and is still. I was too old for her. I don’t think now that she ever cared for me greatly; but she was too strong-minded ever to marry a wealthy fool, and I had won a high position and a fortune. By the time we had been married a year I could no longer hide from myself that she had an incurable weakness for philandering. She has surrendered herself to it with less and less restraint, and without any attempt to deceive me on the subject. If I tried to tell you what torture it has been to me, you wouldn’t understand. The worst was when she was away from me, staying with her friends, and I could not know what was happening. At length I took the step you know. It was undeniably an act of baseness, and we will leave it at that, if you please. If you should ever suffer as I do, you will modify your judgement upon me. I knew of my wife’s habit, discovered by you, of using lip-salve at her evening toilet. On the night before her departure I took what was in that box and combined it with a preparation of the drug purvisine. The infinitesimal amount which would pass into the mouth after the application of the salve was calculated to produce for an hour or two the effects you have described, without otherwise doing any harm. But I knew the impression that would be produced upon normal men and women by the sight of anyone in such a state. I wanted to turn her attractiveness into repulsiveness, and I seem to have succeeded. I was mad when I did it. I have been aghast at my own action ever since. I am glad it has been frustrated. And now I should like to know what you intend to do.’

  Trent took up the box. ‘If you agree, Sir Peregrine, I shall drop this from Westminster Bridge tonight. And so long as nothing of the sort is practised again, the whole affair shall be buried. Yours is a wretched story, and I don’t suppose any of us would find our moral fibre improved by such a situation. I have no more to say.’

  He rose and moved to the door. Sir Peregrine rose also and stood with lowered eyes, apparently deep in thought. Suddenly he looked up.

  ‘I am obliged to you, Mr Trent,’ he said formally. ‘I may say, too, that your account of your proceedings interested me deeply. I should like to ask a question. How did you contrive that the box should disappear without its owner seeing anything remarkable in its absence?’

  ‘Oh, easily,’ Trent replied, his hand on the door-knob. ‘After experimenting on myself I went back to the house before teatime, when no one happened to be in. I went upstairs to a room where a cockatoo was kept – a mischievous brute – took him off his chain, and carried him into Lady Bosworth’s room. There I put him on the dressing-table, and teased him a little with the manicure things to interest him in them. Then I took away one of the pairs of scissors, so that the box shouldn’t be the only thing missing, and left him shut in there to do his worst, while I went out of the house again. When I went he was ripping out the silk lining of the case, and had chewed up the silver handles of the things pretty well. After I had gone he went on to destroy various other things. In the riot that took place when he was found the disappearance of the little box and scissors became a mere detail. Certainly Lady Bosworth suspected nothing.

  ‘I suppose,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘that occasion would be the only time a cockatoo was of any particular use.’

  And Trent went out.

  IV

  The Vanishing Lawyer

  What made the Gayles affair such an especially bad business was the culprit’s standing in his profession and in the eyes of the world. The firm of Gayles & Sims had a position as family solicitors that was second to none, and its head was a very important person indeed.

  So it was that John Charlton Gayles, after the fact of his disappearance became known, was one of the most badly wanted men who had ever attracted the attention of the police. According to the information furnished by his partner, he had always had the sole control of the firm’s accounts and financial business. An enormous amount of property entrusted to his care could not be traced; and neither could Mr Gayles, of whom nothing had been seen or heard since he retired to his bedroom one Tuesday night in May. During the following two days matters had been brought to the notice of Mr Sims which made it clear that there was a great deal requiring explanation from the senior partner; and on the Friday it was decided to give information to the police of his disappearance and of the firm’s predicament.

  Philip Trent, at the opening of his first article as the Record’s special investigator of this unusual case, dwelt upon the rock-ribbed respectability of the missing man.

  ‘It is a safe statement,’ he wrote, ‘that no lawyer has ever enjoyed a more spotless reputation. He has for some years been chairman of the Law Society’s Disciplinary Committee, whose duty is to examine and act upon cases of professional misconduct. In his own life he has always been a model of probity and high principle.

  ‘On Tuesday last, Mr Gayles returned by an early train after a long weekend at Preakness, and drove from Victoria to his office in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. This, at least, was his own account of how he had spent his time; but it is now established that nothing was seen of him that weekend at the hotel where he always stayed in Preakness. He did a normal day’s work, and a little after six o’clock went home to his house in Castle Terrace, Knightsbridge. At 9.30, as usual, he went to bed; for Mr Gayles believed in very early hours both night and morning.

  ‘He was not called next day, as he preferred to rise at his own time, and often did so before the servants were stirring. But at eight, his hour for breakfast, he did not appear; and when his butler went to call him he found no sign anywhere of Mr Gayles. His bed had been slept in, and he had washed and shaved in the bathroom opening out of the bedroom. It would seem that he left the house before seven, the servants’ time for rising, and that he did not go out by either of the house doors, which were still bolted inside. Mr Gayles had his bedroom on the ground floor; it opens on the garden by way of a french window, and through this, it appears, he went to the end of the garden and out by a door in the wall, which was found unlocked with the key in its place. This door gives on a narrow blind alley leading into Knightsbridge, where an early bus or cab could have been taken. Mr Gayles, an old-fashioned man in many ways, did not own a car and had never learnt to drive one.

  ‘His partner, Mr Sims, when told of his disappearance, was completely mystified. Why Mr Gayles, the sanest of men, should have chosen so to absent himself without a word to anyone was quite incomprehensible; but Mr Sims was naturally unwilling to take any hasty action which might prejudice the reputation of the firm. When facts came to light, however, which made Mr Gayles’ presence desirable, to say the least, the police were called in. After a day of investigation they are believed to be still at a loss.

  ‘Mr Gayles recently drew from his bank a large sum in cash, being the whole of the amou
nt standing to his credit.’

  The photograph accompanying this article showed a firm, grave face, of which the most striking details were the bushy brows over dark-rimmed glasses, the rather heavy jowls, and, by contrast, the hair not yet at all receded from the forehead. This was from a Press picture of the high table at a City banquet; for Gayles, as far as could be discovered, had never been photographed on his own account.

  Trent had added little to the bare facts given to the newspapers from Scotland Yard. He set out now to follow his own hunting nose; and on the morning of the appearance of this article he had an interview at the firm’s office with the junior partner. Mr Sims was a man in the forties, smart, worldly, and with competence stamped on his hard, clean-shaven face. He looked jaded and harassed.

  ‘You want to hear about Gayles as a personality?’ Sims said. ‘Well, I thought that if anybody knew John Gayles, I did. I would have trusted him with every shilling I had in the world. And now we find he has gambled away his own fortune and God knows how much of other people’s money. So much for being a very reserved character! Gayles was always that; and after his wife’s death he became very much more so. He was devoted to her – even he couldn’t help showing that – and it wasn’t until after she died, as far as we can make out, that this Stock Exchange mania got hold of him. It was a distraction, perhaps; anyhow, it seems to have begun the year after she died.’

  ‘I am told he was a Cambridge man,’ Trent said. ‘Did you ever hear of his doing any gambling in those days? It’s one of the tastes that can be acquired at the Universities, I know.’

  ‘Oh no! Far from it. His father – the founder of the firm – was very proud of Gayles’ Cambridge record. He carried off two prizes, I remember, and got an excellent degree, besides being President of the Union. I never heard of his making a bet in his life.’

  ‘Did he take any interest in sport or games?’

  ‘Not the faintest. He never seemed to need exercise himself.’

  ‘Was his health good, then?’ Trent asked.

  ‘Why, he never looked healthy, because of that pale face of his,’ Sims said. ‘But as a matter of fact I never knew him have an illness until the time when he took a holiday five years ago. He used always to go abroad for a month in the summer, not having letters forwarded. Well, this time, when the month was up, instead of Gayles came a post card from him saying he was obliged to prolong his holiday for a week or two. There was no address on the card, but it was postmarked Freiburg im Breisgau. This was very unlike Gayles, because he had always been keen to get back to his work – that and his garden at home. When he did return, it came out that he had travelled straight to Freiburg, arrived there feeling very ill, and been sent straight into the Heiliggeist Hospital with scarlet fever.’

  ‘Then was he there all by himself all that time?’

  ‘Absolutely. He only sent me that one disinfected post card, and remained there till he was out of quarantine. He had had it badly, and all his hair had fallen out. He was wearing a wig, a very expensive one he said it was, but it never looked like his own hair. He was evidently feeling very disgusted about it; and he said he wished never to have it referred to again. It wasn’t, either; it didn’t do to annoy Gayles. I suspect he had been rather proud of having a thick crop of dark hair at his age.’

  ‘And didn’t the illness mark him in any other way?’

  ‘Only that it had affected his eyes – he had to wear tinted glasses all the time. But his health recovered completely, in spite of the fact that he never took a proper holiday after that. He had had enough of long holidays, he said; and he made up for it by spending most of his weekends inhaling sea air at Preakness.’

  ‘Why at Preakness?’ Trent wondered. ‘I barely know its name, and I’ve never met anyone who has been there.’

  Sims made a grimace. ‘You wouldn’t. It’s on a branch off the main line to Mewstone, and once when I was there I ran over in my car to have a look at Preakness. Gayles always said it was the quietest spot on the South Coast, and I should say he wasn’t far wrong. Five minutes of it was ample for me. I believe the inn Gayles stayed at is good enough, though – people go there for the trout fishing. Anyhow, it did Gayles good. The only thing he has ever had wrong with him since that illness is neuralgia, which he began to suffer from intermittently some time ago. Now and then he would come to the office with his jaws tied up in a scarf – he was that way the last time he was here.’

  Trent considered a few moments. ‘His hair was entirely gone, you say. I suppose you never saw him without his wig.’

  ‘No, not I. Some of the staff have done, though. There’s Willis, the clerk who went to his room to take letters at eleven each morning. Once or twice he has caught Gayles with his wig off at the glass over by the window. Of course, Willis had the sense to pretend not to have seen, and Gayles had shoved it on again in a moment. Then there’s the office boy who had to take in Gayles’ cup of tea at 4.30. He caught him once in just the same way, Willis told me.’

  Trent smiled. ‘Would you describe Gayles as at all an eccentric man?’ he said as he got up to go.

  ‘Oh no,’ Sims said, rising also to his feet. ‘He was much like a hundred other lawyers of fifty-five to look at – more old-fashioned and black-coated than some, perhaps; but that’s all. And he was a perfect devil for punctuality and system in the office. But many of us are like that, and all of us ought to be. And it is just that, you see, Mr Trent, that makes this affair so completely bewildering. Gayles was almost inhumanly correct. It’s what makes me wonder’ – Sims lowered his voice impressively here – ‘if there can have been anything wrong with him mentally after all. Well, goodbye. Look me up again if you want to ask about anything more.’

  Trent had no difficulty, later in the day, in prevailing on Perfitt and his wife, the butler and cook–housekeeper in the Gayles household, to talk about their employer’s disappearance, and to allow an inspection of the bedroom from which the bird had so mysteriously flown. They found a gloomy enjoyment in their connexion with fraud on such a scale, and the collapse of such a reputation. None of the four servants had had much liking for Gayles, but they had esteemed him a just man and a tower of respectability. It was, Mrs Perfitt said, like as if the world had turned upside down to think of Mr Gayles having took money, and being in hiding from the police.

  The bedroom was a large, airy, rather monastic apartment, with a small shelf of bedside books as its only humane feature. This, thought Trent, would be Gayles’ idea of light reading. His roving eye fell upon Serjeant Ballantine’s Experiences; Anomalies of the Law of England; Stories from the Law Reports; Life in the Law. Fiction was represented by The Pilgrim’s Progress, with the excellent illustrations of J D Watson.

  A little chilled by this glimpse into the mental privacy of John Gayles, Trent turned to the french window, still open upon a beautifully tended garden. Beds of tulips in luxuriant variety flanked the smooth lawn. Gayles, it could be seen, was an enthusiast. Companies of different blooms were arrayed in a carpet-work of diagonal stripes. Mr Gayles, said the butler, did most of the work himself in the early morning or after office hours; when he was not planting and trimming he would just sit and look at them.

  A garden book lay open on a table by the window, and Trent looked down on a list of tulips, in the order of the time of their flowering. Albino; Bronze Knight; Sieraad van Flora; Mewstone Glory; Rijnland; Pollux; Mr Zimmerman; Malicorne – so the list went on. With what a wrench must Gayles have torn himself away from all this! In a corner of the room stood a strange-looking standard lamp, topped by a metal cowl with wires attached, and stamped with a maker’s name and the words ‘Ultra-Violet Ray.’ Gayles used it, the butler said, for his neuralgia.

  There was a bathroom, with the usual outfit of toilet accessories, opening out of the bedroom. None of these things, nor, as far as Perfitt could say, any clothing or requisites of travel, had been taken away by Gayles. He seemed to have taken nothing but the clothes he stood up in – those
he had worn the day before. This was as much as an inquirer without authority could gather from the household of the much-wanted man.

  Three days later Trent was closeted with Chief-Inspector Murch in his bare little office at Scotland Yard; a room which the visitor knew well. He had even contributed to its scanty decoration a charcoal sketch of Mrs Murch, which beamed from above the fireplace.

  ‘Yes,’ Mr Murch said as he stuffed tobacco into a pipe, ‘we have been in communication with the police at Freiburg. What to make of it I don’t know; and I can’t think what put you on to suggesting this line. Nor how it’s going to help us, either. But the fact, for what it’s worth, is that the whole story about Gayles having scarlet fever in Freiburg is simply a lie.’

  Trent jumped to his feet. ‘Three ringing cheers! And just what did you hear from the police there?’

  Mr Murch got his pipe going, then said, ‘They’re very thorough; very anxious to be helpful too. They say there was no Englishman, or any other foreigner, in that hospital with scarlet fever or with anything else all that summer. Not only that, but there wasn’t a single case of scarlet fever in the town all that year. So there you are – Gayles cooked up the whole thing. Presumably he did go there, because of the post card; but nobody calling himself Gayles stayed at any of the hotels at that time. And now, what about it?’

  ‘It depends,’ Trent said, ‘on the answer to another question. Do you know when he began helping himself to his clients’ money?’