“What did you do?” asked Ricardo.
“The only thing there was to do,” replied Clements with a shrug of the shoulders. “I cabled Favart some money and he dealt the cards again. She came to me beaming. Oh, she had been so distressed to put me in the cart! But what could she do? Now there was a red queen next to the ace of hearts, so she could sing without a scruple so long, of course, as she didn’t pass a funeral on the way down to the opera house. Luckily she didn’t. But my money brought Favart over here, and now I’m living on a volcano. For he’s the greatest scoundrel unhung. He never has a farthing, however much she gives him; he’s a blackmailer, he’s a swindler, he has no manners and no graces, he looks like a butcher and treats her as if she were dirt, he never goes near the opera except when she is singing in this part, and she worships the ground he walks on. Well, I suppose it’s time to go.”
The lights had been turned off, the great room was emptying. Mr. Ricardo and his friends rose to go, but at the door Hanaud detained Mr. Clements, and they talked together alone for some little while, greatly to Mr. Ricardo’s annoyance. Hanaud’s good humour, however, when he rejoined his friend, was enough for two.
“I apologise, my friend, with my hand on my heart. But it was for your sake that I stayed behind. You have a meretricious taste for melodrama which I deeply deplore, but which I mean to gratify. I ought to leave for Paris to-morrow, but I shall not. I shall stay until Thursday.” And he skipped upon the pavement as they walked home to Grosvenor Square.
Mr. Ricardo bubbled with questions, but he knew his man. He would get no answer to any one of them to-night. So he worked out the problem for himself as he lay awake in his bed, and he came down to breakfast next morning fatigued but triumphant. Hanaud was already chipping off the top of his egg at the table.
“So I see you have found it all out, my friend,” he said.
“Not all,” replied Ricardo modestly, “and you will not mind, I am sure, if I follow the usual custom and wish you a good morning.”
“Not at all,” said Hanaud. “I am all for good manners myself.”
He dipped his spoon into his egg.
“But I am longing to hear the line of your reasoning.”
Mr. Ricardo did not need much pressing.
“Joan Carew saw André Favart at Mrs. Starlingshield’s party, and saw him with Carmen Valeri. For Carmen Valeri was there. I remember that you asked Joan for the names of the artists who sang, and Carmen Valeri was amongst them.”
Hanaud nodded his head.
“Exactly.”
“No doubt Joan Carew noticed Carmen Valeri particularly, and so took unconsciously into her mind an impression of the man who was with her, André Favart — of his build, of his walk, of his type.”
Again Hanaud agreed.
“She forgets the man altogether, but the picture remains latent in her mind — an undeveloped film.”
Hanaud looked up in surprise, and the surprise flattered Mr. Ricardo. Not for nothing had he tossed about in his bed for the greater part of the night.
“Then came the tragic night at the Semiramis. She does not consciously recognise her assailant, but she dreams the scene again and again, and by a process of unconscious cerebration the figure of the man becomes familiar. Finally she makes her début, is entertained at supper afterwards, and meets once more Carmen Valeri.”
“Yes, for the first time since Mrs. Starlingshield’s party,” interjected Hanaud.
“She dreams again, she remembers asleep more than she remembers when awake. The presence of Carmen Valeri at her supper-party has its effect. By a process of association, she recalls Favart, and the mask slips on the face of her assailant. Some days later she goes to the opera. She hears Carmen Valeri sing in The Jewels of the Madonna. No doubt the passion of her acting, which I am more prepared to acknowledge this morning than I was last night, affects Joan Carew powerfully, emotionally. She goes to bed with her head full of Carmen Valeri, and she dreams not of Carmen Valeri, but of the man who is unconsciously associated with Carmen Valeri in her thoughts. The mask vanishes altogether. She sees her assailant now, has his portrait limned in her mind, would know him if she met him in the street, though she does not know by what means she identified him.”
“Yes,” said Hanaud. “It is curious the brain working while the body sleeps, the dream revealing what thought cannot recall.”
Mr. Ricardo was delighted. He was taken seriously.
“But of course,” he said, “I could not have worked the problem out but for you. You knew of André Favart and the kind of man he was.”
Hanaud laughed.
“Yes. That is always my one little advantage. I know all the cosmopolitan blackguards of Europe.” His laughter ceased suddenly, and he brought his clenched fist heavily down upon the table. “Here is one of them who will be very well out of the world, my friend,” he said very quietly, but there was a look of force in his face and a hard light in his eyes which made Mr. Ricardo shiver.
For a few moments there was silence. Then Ricardo asked: “But have you evidence enough?”
“Yes.”
“Your two chief witnesses, Calladine and Joan Carew — you said it yourself — there are facts to discredit them. Will they be believed?”
“But they won’t appear in the case at all,” Hanaud said. “Wait, wait!” and once more he smiled. “By the way, what is the number of Calladine’s house?”
Ricardo gave it, and Hanaud therefore wrote a letter. “It is all for your sake, my friend,” he said with a chuckle.
“Nonsense,” said Ricardo. “You have the spirit of the theatre in your bones.”
“Well, I shall not deny it,” said Hanaud, and he sent out the letter to the nearest pillar-box.
Mr. Ricardo waited in a fever of impatience until Thursday came. At breakfast Hanaud would talk of nothing but the news of the day. At luncheon he was no better. The affair of the Semiramis Hotel seemed a thousand miles from any of his thoughts. But at five o’clock he said as he drank his tea:
“You know, of course, that we go to the opera to-night?”
“Yes. Do we?”
“Yes. Your young friend Calladine, by the way, will join us in your box.”
“That is very kind of him, I am sure,” said Mr. Ricardo.
The two men arrived before the rising of the curtain, and in the crowded lobby a stranger spoke a few words to Hanaud, but what he said Ricardo could not hear. They took their seats in the box, and Hanaud looked at his programme.
“Ah! It is Il Ballo de Maschera to-night. We always seem to hit upon something appropriate, don’t we?”
Then he raised his eyebrows.
“Oh-o! Do you see that our pretty young friend, Joan Carew, is singing in the rôle of the page? It is a showy part. There is a particular melody with a long-sustained trill in it, as far as I remember.”
Mr. Ricardo was not deceived by Hanaud’s apparent ignorance of the opera to be given that night and of the part Joan Carew was to take. He was, therefore, not surprised when Hanaud added:
“By the way, I should let Calladine find it all out for himself.”
Mr. Ricardo nodded sagely.
“Yes. That is wise. I had thought of it myself.” But he had done nothing of the kind. He was only aware that the elaborate stage-management in which Hanaud delighted was working out to the desired climax, whatever that climax might be. Calladine entered the box a few minutes later and shook hands with them awkwardly.
“It was kind of you to invite me,” he said and, very ill at ease, he took a seat between them and concentrated his attention on the house as it filled up.
“There’s the overture,” said Hanaud. The curtains divided and were festooned on either side of the stage. The singers came on in their turn; the page appeared to a burst of delicate applause (Joan Carew had made a small name for herself that season), and with a stifled cry Calladine shot back in the box as if he had been struck. Even then Mr. Ricardo did not understand. He only realise
d that Joan Carew was looking extraordinarily trim and smart in her boy’s dress. He had to look from his programme to the stage and back again several times before the reason of Calladine’s exclamation dawned on him. When it did, he was horrified. Hanaud, in his craving for dramatic effects, must have lost his head altogether. Joan Carew was wearing, from the ribbon in her hair to the scarlet heels of her buckled satin shoes, the same dress as she had worn on the tragic night at the Semiramis Hotel. He leaned forward in his agitation to Hanaud.
“You must be mad. Suppose Favart is in the theatre and sees her. He’ll be over on the Continent by one in the morning.”
“No, he won’t,” replied Hanaud. “For one thing, he never comes to Covent Garden unless one opera, with Carmen Valeri in the chief part, is being played, as you heard the other night at supper. For a second thing, he isn’t in the house. I know where he is. He is gambling in Dean Street, Soho. For a third thing, my friend, he couldn’t leave by the nine o’clock train for the Continent if he wanted to. Arrangements have been made. For a fourth thing, he wouldn’t wish to. He has really remarkable reasons for desiring to stay in London. But he will come to the theatre later. Clements will send him an urgent message, with the result that he will go straight to Clements’ office. Meanwhile, we can enjoy ourselves, eh?”
Never was the difference between the amateur dilettante and the genuine professional more clearly exhibited than by the behaviour of the two men during the rest of the performance. Mr. Ricardo might have been sitting on a coal fire from his jumps and twistings; Hanaud stolidly enjoyed the music, and when Joan Carew sang her famous solo his hands clamoured for an encore louder than anyone’s in the boxes. Certainly, whether excitement was keeping her up or no, Joan Carew had never sung better in her life. Her voice was clear and fresh as a bird’s — a bird with a soul inspiring its song. Even Calladine drew his chair forward again and sat with his eyes fixed upon the stage and quite carried out of himself. He drew a deep breath at the end.
“She is wonderful,” he said, like a man waking up.
“She is very good,” replied Mr. Ricardo, correcting Calladine’s transports.
“We will go round to the back of the stage,” said Hanaud.
They passed through the iron door and across the stage to a long corridor with a row of doors on one side. There were two or three men standing about in evening dress, as if waiting for friends in the dressing-rooms. At the third door Hanaud stopped and knocked. The door was opened by Joan Carew, still dressed in her green and gold. Her face was troubled, her eyes afraid.
“Courage, little one,” said Hanaud, and he slipped past her into the room. “It is as well that my ugly, familiar face should not be seen too soon.”
The door closed and one of the strangers loitered along the corridor and spoke to a call-boy. The call-boy ran off. For five minutes more Mr. Ricardo waited with a beating heart. He had the joy of a man in the centre of things. All those people driving homewards in their motor-cars along the Strand — how he pitied them! Then, at the end of the corridor, he saw Clements and André Favart. They approached, discussing the possibility of Carmen Valeri’s appearance in London opera during the next season.
“We have to look ahead, my dear friend,” said Clements, “and though I should be extremely sorry — —”
At that moment they were exactly opposite Joan Carew’s door. It opened, she came out; with a nervous movement she shut the door behind her. At the sound André Favart turned, and he saw drawn up against the panels of the door, with a look of terror in her face, the same gay figure which had interrupted him in Mrs. Blumenstein’s bedroom. There was no need for Joan to act. In the presence of this man her fear was as real as it had been on the night of the Semiramis ball. She trembled from head to foot. Her eyes closed; she seemed about to swoon.
Favart stared and uttered an oath. His face turned white; he staggered back as if he had seen a ghost. Then he made a wild dash along the corridor, and was seized and held by two of the men in evening dress. Favart recovered his wits. He ceased to struggle.
“What does this outrage mean?” he asked, and one of the men drew a warrant and notebook from his pocket.
“You are arrested for the murder of Mrs. Blumenstein in the Semiramis Hotel,” he said, “and I have to warn you that anything you may say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you.”
“Preposterous!” exclaimed Favart. “There’s a mistake. We will go along to the police and put it right. Where’s your evidence against me?”
Hanaud stepped out of the doorway of the dressing-room.
“In the property-room of the theatre,” he said.
At the sight of him Favart uttered a violent cry of rage. “You are here, too, are you?” he screamed, and he sprang at Hanaud’s throat. Hanaud stepped lightly aside. Favart was borne down to the ground, and when he stood up again the handcuffs were on his wrists.
Favart was led away, and Hanaud turned to Mr. Ricardo and Clements.
“Let us go to the property-room,” he said. They passed along the corridor, and Ricardo noticed that Calladine was no longer with them. He turned and saw him standing outside Joan Carew’s dressing-room.
“He would like to come, of course,” said Ricardo.
“Would he?” asked Hanaud. “Then why doesn’t he? He’s quite grown up, you know,” and he slipped his arm through Ricardo’s and led him back across the stage. In the property-room there was already a detective in plain clothes. Mr. Ricardo had still not as yet guessed the truth.
“What is it you really want, sir?” the property-master asked of the director.
“Only the jewels of the Madonna,” Hanaud answered.
The property-master unlocked a cupboard and took from it the sparkling cuirass. Hanaud pointed to it, and there, lost amongst the huge glittering stones of paste and false pearls, Mrs. Blumenstein’s necklace was entwined.
“Then that is why Favart came always to Covent Garden when The Jewels of the Madonna was being performed!” exclaimed Ricardo.
Hanaud nodded.
“He came to watch over his treasure.”
Ricardo was piecing together the sections of the puzzle.
“No doubt he knew of the necklace in America. No doubt he followed it to England.”
Hanaud agreed.
“Mrs. Blumenstein’s jewels were quite famous in New York.”
“But to hide them here!” cried Mr. Clements. “He must have been mad.”
“Why?” asked Hanaud. “Can you imagine a safer hiding-place? Who is going to burgle the property-room of Covent Garden? Who is going to look for a priceless string of pearls amongst the stage jewels of an opera house?”
“You did,” said Mr. Ricardo.
“I?” replied Hanaud, shrugging his shoulders. “Joan Carew’s dreams led me to André Favart. The first time we came here and saw the pearls of the Madonna, I was on the look-out, naturally. I noticed Favart at the back of the stalls. But it was a stroke of luck that I noticed those pearls through my opera glasses.”
“At the end of the second act?” cried Ricardo suddenly. “I remember now.”
“Yes,” replied Hanaud. “But for that second act the pearls would have stayed comfortably here all through the season. Carmen Valeri — a fool as I told you — would have tossed them about in her dressing-room without a notion of their value, and at the end of July, when the murder at the Semiramis Hotel had been forgotten, Favart would have taken them to Amsterdam and made his bargain.”
“Shall we go?”
They left the theatre together and walked down to the grill-room of the Semiramis. But as Hanaud looked through the glass door he drew back.
“We will not go in, I think, eh?”
“Why?” asked Ricardo.
Hanaud pointed to a table. Calladine and Joan Carew were seated at it taking their supper.
“Perhaps,” said Hanaud with a smile, “perhaps, my friend — what? Who shall say that the rooms in the Adelphi will not be gi
ven up?”
They turned away from the hotel. But Hanaud was right, and before the season was over Mr. Ricardo had to put his hand in his pocket for a wedding present.
The House of the Arrow (1924)
This novel was published in 1924 by Hodder and Stoughton in Britain and George H. Doran in America. In this tale, Julius Ricardo does not make an appearance – instead, Hanaud’s ‘sidekick’ is played by one Jim Frobisher, a young solicitor. Mason continues to develop Hanaud’s aptitude for delving into the darkest recesses of the human mind – poison pen letters are a feature of this narrative and Hanaud’s explanation of how such a phenomenon can flourish in a small town reflects his skill at analysing the motives and actions of his fellow citizens.
The London firm of solicitors, Frobisher and Haslitt (established 1806), has a proud tradition of maintaining two branches of their practice – their British office in Russell Square and the busy French office. It was therefore no surprise to receive a daily bundle of letters from the continent, but the morning the story begins, a letter from Dijon arrives. A client, the widow Mrs. Harlowe, has a brother-in-law, Boris Waberski, who has written to ask if he may have an advance on his relative’s estate, which he is convinced he will inherit (she is very much alive, but in poor health). However, Mr Jeremy Haslitt has in his office the deceased woman’s will, which leaves her entire estate to her niece, Betty; Waberski is to be denied his £500 that no doubt would have gone towards clearing his gambling debts.
Three weeks later, Mrs. Harlowe passes away and the funeral is held. Inevitably, another letter from Waberski arrives in London, denouncing the details of the will. The brother-in-law seems dangerously erratic – ‘The sort of man who might go off at the deep end at any moment’ and young Betty is living in the old house of her aunt’s with this man who is unpredictable and potentially dangerous. Very soon after the letter arrives, a telegram arrives from Betty, a message of utter desperation:
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 28