by AnonYMous
“Very natural,” murmured Blake, “and very fortunate, for you would thus have seen how it was the statue fell.”
“Ma foi, no!” she replied. “When I heard the crash I had already turned to regain madame’s room and put her jewels away. But at the sound of the breaking stone and madame’s cry I turned again, to see the statue fallen and madame gazing at it, bewildered. And I rushed down, afraid that she was hurt.”
“Even though you saw the count with her?” murmured Blake.
“What will you?” retorted the maid, with a little shrug of her shapely shoulders, “One does not question with such impulses. I saw that the count was at her elbow—yes; but I did not give him a thought. I thought only of my mistress.”
“Thank you!” said Blake, a strange gleam in his eyes. “That is all I want at present.”
“Justine’s replies are quite satisfactory,” said Blake, rejoining Doldorf and his wife in the hall. “I would like now to examine the staircase. I shall he glad, count, if you will stand where you were standing when you heard Countess Doldorf’s cry.”
He ran lightly up the stairs till he reached the point where they gave on to the flying gallery. From the balustrade opposite he could see all the hall, and the count standing almost beneath him, by a table littered with various books and papers. Stepping back into the gallery, he saw that he was completely hidden from anyone in the hall, but in full view of anyone above. Yet it was obvious that, had the statue that had fallen still occupied its niche on the right entrance to the gallery, he would have been able to conceal himself from the view of anyone coming down the stairs.
“So you had only eyes for madam, my catty little Justine?” he murmured, as, following the gallery, he went on to hands and knees and scrutinised the floor of the recess through a powerful lens. Then he stepped through the open window on to the balcony without, and gave a little laugh of satisfaction as he examined the leaded surface, moist with the heavy dew.
He descended to the hall again, consulting his watch.
“Well?” said Doldorf anxiously, “What do you make of it, Mr. Blake? Have you solved the problem? Or docs it baffle you as completely as it mystifies me?”
“I think I have solved the problem,” said Blake coolly.
“What? You know where the pendant has got to?” cried the count.
“Can you recover it?” asked the countess eagerly.
“It is now half-past eight,” said Blake, evading a direct reply. “I understand that your reception does not take place till ten. If you would care to spend an interesting half-hour, I would suggest that you take a box at the Frivolity.”
“You are joking, Mr. Blake!” said the count.
“The turn I particularly want you to see,” pursued Blake, meeting the count’s angry gaze with an enigmatic smile, “begins at five minutes to nine. If you will be good enough to be in your box then, and to follow the instructions I shall send to you, I think I may safely say that by ten o’clock you will have your diamond again in your possession.”
“And shall we not see you there?” asked the countess.
“Oh, certainly, as far as I can anticipate,” said Blake. “I have a few enquiries to make, but I shall be there.”
“We’ll go at once, Paul,” said the countess, as Blake took a hurried leave. “That man inspires me with the utmost confidence. Besides, I’m dying to know what is going to happen!”
III.
“I DON’T know why Blake wanted to bring us here,” said Doldorf, as he gazed, half an hour later, from his box at the Frivolity at the antics of a quick-change artist who was delighting his audience impersonating leading men in London.
His wife’s reply was interrupted by the entrance of an attendant with a note.
Doldorf read it, whispered a message to the attendant, and handed the note to his wife.
In two minutes (it ran) the man on the stage will impersonate you. Lean forward and draw his attention by clapping. Tell the attendant who brings this to bring you the actor after his turn to receive your congratulations. I will come with him.
SEXTON BLAKE.
“Oh, it’s killing!” cried the countess, as the man in front re-appeared, mimicking to the life the appearance, mannerisms, and voice of her husband.
“Applaud, Paul, quickly!”
Doldorf, pink with vexation, leant forward and clapped, the countess joining him. A shout of delight went up from the house as they were recognised, and for a moment the eyes of the actor rested on them with an expression of obvious stupefaction, and his hand flew to his heart. It was his last turn, and, after acknowledging the encore, he disappeared in the wings.
A few minutes later the door of the count’s box opened again, and the attendant introduced “Professor Julius Hake,” still garbed in his last impersonation, and at the same moment Blake stepped in and softly bolted the door.
The professor seemed anything but at his ease as he listened to the count’s congratulations, and, stammering his acknowledgments, made to back out. He was interrupted by Sexton Blake, who, slipping an arm through his, held him in a grip of iron.
“You are forgetting something, Julius, my friend,” said the detective pleasantly. “When one impersonates so courteous a gentleman as the count, one should be complete in every detail.”
“Sexton Blake!” stuttered Hake, blanching under his grease-paint.
“Yes, your old acquaintance, Sexton Blake,” said the detective, in a gently ironic tone. “Come, Julius, play up to your part. Do you not see that the countess is overwhelmed with anxiety lest you should lose her diamond pendant.”
“I don’t know what you mean!” said Hake. And, with a sudden violent contortion, he tried to wrench himself free. But Blake’s grip hardened, and at a sign from him the attendant laid hands on Hake’s other arm.
“Yes, you do, Julius!” said Blake. “But, as you are so stubborn, I must do the honours.”
He dived his hand into the opening of Hake’s shirt, and drew out a little chamois-leather bag.
“If you will open that,” he said to the count, “you will find the pendant inside. And now, Tony, you had better take Hake outside and accompany him to Bow Street.”
“But how on earth did you hit on it, Mr. Blake?” said the delighted Russian, as Hake was conveyed away.
“It was really very simple,” said Blake. “Thanks to your immediate search, it was at once evident that the diamond must have gone by way of the gallery and the window—that is to say, someone must have been concealed there. An examination of the balcony assured me that no one would have dared to enter or escape that way into the street. He would have been immediately caught. I picked up the marks of the man’s feet on the balcony. He had evidently waited there for some time, probably till you had finished dinner, before venturing to slip out and leave the house by the front door. Of course, the maid Justine was an accomplice. She gave herself away when she told me that she saw you at your wife’s elbow at the moment when she turned as the statue fell. Hake, got up as you, had been lying concealed in the gallery. Probably his intention was to raid your room while you were at dinner, but, seeing the black diamond on your wife’s neck, he was seized with the idea of throwing down the statue, grabbing the diamond, and fleeing back to cover. What renders Justine’s complicity beyond a doubt is the fact that she left the imprint of her shoes on the dew-drenched balcony. She evidently went there to warn him of the madness of making any attempt on your safe that night.”
“But how could he get in and out?” asked the count. “There is always a footman on my door.”
“The footman took him for you,” replied Blake, “when he entered. And Justine got rid of him to let the scoundrel out. I cleared up that point when I left you.”
“And you spotted the fellow straight off as this impersonator of the halls?” asked Doldorf.
“Ah, Julius Hake is an old
acquaintance of mine!” said Blake, “I knew he was impersonating you at the Frivolity, and I knew his insatiable appetite for unique gems. The association of ideas was too strong not to subject him to suspicion. The chances were a hundred to one against the jewel being anywhere but on his person; and he betrayed its whereabouts by the instinctive gesture he gave when he caught sight of you in the box.”
THE MISSING WILL
December 18, 1909
I.
“Great Scott! Flinders, of Corpus! And up at eight!”
Sexton Blake sat back from his breakfast-table and stared in unaffected astonishment at the lantern-jawed, sallow-cheeked, heavy-eyed man whom Simmons had just shown into his room at Messenger Square this December morning as the clock was striking eight.
His visitor gave a somewhat sickly smile, placed his silk hat carefully on a side-table, and advanced with outstretched hand towards the detective.
Blake looked at the big, blue, rather flaccid paw, and coolly shook his head.
“Not much!” he said drily. “Too beastly cold! Go and warm. Have some brekker?”
He had never particularly cared for Flinders of Corpus in his Oxford days; for he was a soulless, rather spineless individual, curiously but insistently suggestive of an aquarium; and Blake was ever of too vivid a temperament to care for gelatinous vitalities. But some years had passed since then, and Septimus Flinders was now by way of being one of the most closely-marked successful solicitors in London, and was generally spoken of as being a sounder lawyer than many a K.C.; while his reputation among the criminal classes approached the dimensions of a public scandal, so craftily did he pilot past conviction and into liberty men whose guilt no sane man could doubt.
He had even plucked from punishment one or two men that Blake himself had earmarked as destined to a lengthy sojourn at the expense of a grateful country; and though the detective had not the small and bitter mind that bears grudges, yet he could not help regarding this cadaverous faced lawyer as a distinct danger to the public. Nor was he at all inclined to waste any time in pretending to be more cordial than he felt.
“Thank you, I have breakfasted,” said Flinders, stepping over to the fire and looking moodily at Blake. “I must apologise for disturbing you so early, but as my firm insisted on consulting you, I thought I had better make sure of finding you in and laying the matter before you myself.”
“The case concerns the will of a distant relative of my own,” proceeded Flinders, in his drab, monotonous voice. “Our senior partner drew the will up some years ago; but old Joshua Flinders was a very stubborn and suspicious old man and insisted on keeping the will himself. He died a fortnight ago, at his house in Hampstead. But despite the most careful search the will has not been found.”
“He may have changed his mind, and destroyed it,” suggested Blake.
“I think not,” drawled Flinders. “I was there when he died, and in the presence of the doctor he indicated an escritoire in a corner of his room, and said, ‘You will find my will there.’ But his memory must have been at fault. It was not there. And where it is has so far completely baffled us to imagine. The firm would like you to look into the matter. There will be, of course, your usual tee, whatever the result. But if you succeed in finding the will, I am authorised to offer you a bonus of two hundred and fifty pounds.”
“Are you interested under the will?” asked Blake nonchalantly. “Was your relative wealthy?”
“He was probably worth some three million pounds,” said Flinders, in a tone devoid of the slightest emotion. “Under the missing will, I was practically his heir. He has a son, who has been wild beyond all forgiveness. The old man was adamant against him. He would not even have his name mentioned in the will. His son—Harry is his name—came home when his father was dying, and was in the house for a few days before his death. He had also a niece—Miss Marion Hammond—er—a very beautiful girl.”
He paused for a moment, and Blake, in the cover of the dish opposite him, saw Flinders’ tongue moisten his thick lips, while a kind of angry, baffled light flecked his dark eyes.
It was a moment’s exhibition, but to so keen, a student of psychology as was Blake it spoke eloquently.
“And was this niece also a beneficiary?” asked Blake suavely.
“On conditions,” replied Flinders. “It was Joshua’s desire that she should become my wife. And she was to receive ten thousand a year in her own right, and all his collection of pearls, on her marriage to me. If she married otherwise, she was to receive a legacy of one hundred pounds, and no more. She had been living with him. And I may add at once that the day before her uncle died she clandestinely married old Joshua’s son Harry, at the Hampstead Registrar’s Office, by special licence. And this brings me, also, to the fact that old Joshua’s collection of pearls, valued at something like sixty thousand pounds, is also missing. They were in their case in his collection-room at ten o’clock of the morning of his death, for I saw them myself. But at noon—he died at eleven fifteen—they had disappeared, and no trace of them has been discovered.”
Blake’s brow was thoughtful, and he drummed lightly on the table with his fingers.
“In case the will is not found,” he said abruptly, “the whole estate vests, I presume, in the son?”
“That is so,” said Flinders.
“H’m!” said Blake. “On the mere face of it, and without prejudice, as you lawyers say, there would seem to be a very heavy burden of suspicion resting on Mr. Harry Flinders—if not also on his bride.”
“On both, I think,” said Flinders. “They stood to lose all. They now stand to gain all.”
“And we have an uncommonly poor chance,” said Blake, rising and loading his pipe; “for, unless the man is a born fool—and the woman too—they will have promptly consigned the will to the flames the moment they had it.”
“Yes,” admitted Septimus Flinders, with a sudden yellow gleam of passion in his sombre eyes, and the flicker of a smile that made Blake think of the eating of acid into steel, so venomous was it and corrosive—”yes; they will probably have done that. But, Mr. Blake”—he bent forward, and his voice grew suddenly hoarse and trembling with age and the lust of vengeance—”they will not throw into the flames sixty thousand pounds’ worth of pearls. That is what we have got to seek and to find, and what will yet place Harry Flinders and his wife in the dock.”
“We shall see,” said Blake coldly. “Anyway, I’ll look into the matter for you.”
“Then I will conduct you at once to Hampstead,” said Flinders. “My motor is waiting.”
II.
Blake was very silent on the journey out. Of all things that he mistrusted in criminal cases, he most mistrusted an obvious case presented by an interested and vindictive party.
It was, therefore, with a mind strung to very high tension that he arrived at White Gables, the residence of the late Joshua Flinders, a large, somewhat gloomy-looking Victorian house in the East Heath Road, overlooking that part of the heath known as the Vale of Health.
The hall door opened as they advanced up the steps, giving egress to a man and woman, whom Blake instantly dubbed as the finest-looking couple he had ever seen.
The man was carrying two pairs of skates, and, together, he and the woman formed as pleasant a picture of winter’s delight as could be imagined.
“Harry Flinders and his wife!” whispered Septimus Flinders in a choked voice.
He presented Blake more formally, as they reached the couple, who were regarding them with a sort of bantering good-humour in their eyes.
“Well, Mr. Blake,” said young Flinders, “I am sure I hope you may succeed in your search. I am afraid it is ail up with our skating, Marion. I should like to be here, if anything is found, chiefly, Mr. Blake, because my cousin here has hardly taken the pains to conceal his suspicions that I or my wife—or both of us—are responsible for the disappeara
nce of my father’s pearls, and of the will which would have given him my father’s fortune.”
“It will be as well that you should be here,” said Blake gravely. “I would like first to see the room where the pearls were kept, then the room in which Mr. Flinders died, and then the rooms occupied by the various parties interested.”
It was only when Blake eventually reached the room sacred to the use of Harry Flinders that his interest seemed to quicken into a lively curiosity. It was a large room, situated on the ground floor, next door to the collection-room, and, like it, looking out on to the garden and the heath beyond.
In the bay-window was a table and an arm-chair, and a revolving book case. In a far corner of the room was a four-foot brass bedstead, with a double-glassed wardrobe to the right of it, and a dressing-table to the left, whilst the rest of the floor space was free; and in a corner opposite the bedstead a couple of guns, a cricket-bat, and various golfing-clubs were piled together in careless disorder.
Blake stood at the door leaning on his stick, his eyes appearing to roam the room, though in reality his whole attention was fixed on a little mirror that was let into the outside link in his left shirt-cuff.
Presently, with a little jerk of his head, he crossed the room, and, taking up one gun after another, opened the breaches and squinted down the barrels. Then he tapped the stocks, against the wall, as if to make sure they were solid. He next turned his attention to the golf-clubs, and treated them to the same experimental investigation.
Harry Flinders looked on with a broad grin of amusement on his handsome face, though his wife looked grave and concerned. Septimus had drawn nearer and nearer to Blake. His jaw was thrust forward; a light sweat made his cheeks greasy, and his eyes were positively wolfish in the intensity of their anticipation as he followed Blake’s every movement about the room.
Blake, though his back was half towards him, lost nothing of the play of his face in the mirror in his link, and a peculiar smile flickered an instant on his lips as he lifted up the only article he had not as yet touched.