The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries
Page 40
When they arrived at Woking, Eustace led the way towards his late uncle’s house, which was some distance out of the town. He addressed Hagar, after a long silence, when they were crossing a piece of waste land and saw the cottage in the distance.
“If you find this money for me,” he said, abruptly, “what service am I to do for you in return?”
“I have thought of that,” replied Hagar, promptly. “Find Goliath—otherwise James Dix.”
“Who is he?” asked Lorn, flushing. “Some one you are fond of?”
“Some one I hate with all my soul!” she flashed out; “but he is the son of my late master, and heir to the pawn-shop. I look after it only because he is absent; and on the day he returns I shall walk out of it, and never set eyes on it, or him again.”
“Why don’t you advertise?”
“I have done so for months; so has Vark, the lawyer; but Jimmy Dix never replies. He was with my tribe in the New Forest, and it was because I hated him that I left the Romany. Since then he has gone away, and I don’t know where he is. Find him if you wish to thank me, and let me get away from the pawn-shop.”
“Very good,” replied Eustace, quietly. “I shall find him. In the mean time, here is the hermitage of my late uncle.”
It was a bare little cottage, small and shabby, set at the end of a square of ground fenced in from the barren moor. Within the quadrangle there were fruit trees—cherry, apple, plum, and pear; also a large fig-tree in the center of the unshaven lawn facing the house. All was desolate and neglected; the fruit trees were unpruned, the grass was growing in the paths, and the flowers were straggling here and there, rich masses of ragged color. Desolate certainly, this deserted hermitage, but not lonely, for as Hagar and her companion turned in at the little gate a figure rose from a stooping position under an apple-tree. It was that of a man with a spade in his hand, who had been digging for some time, as was testified by the heap of freshly-turned earth at his feet.
“Mr. Treadle!” cried Lorn, indignantly. “What are you doing here?”
“Lookin’ fur the old un’s cash!” retorted Mr. Treadle, with a scowl directed equally at the young man and Hagar. “An’ if I gets it I keeps it. Lord! to think as ’ow I pampered that old sinner with figs and such like—to say nothing of French brandy, which he drank by the quart!”
“You have no business here!”
“No more ’ave you!” snapped the irate grocer. “If I ain’t, you ain’t, fur till the ’ouse is let it’s public property. I s’pose you’ve come ’ere with that Jezebel to look fur the money?”
Hagar, hearing herself called names, stepped promptly up to Mr. Treadle, and boxed his red ears. “Now then,” she said, when the grocer fell back in dismay at this onslaught, “perhaps you’ll be civil! Mr. Lorn, sit down on this seat, and I’ll explain the riddle.”
“The Dante!” cried Mr. Treadle, recognizing the book which lay on Hagar’s lap—“an’ she’ll explain the riddle—swindling me out of my rightful cash!”
“The cash belongs to Mr. Lorn, as his uncle’s heir!” said Hagar, wrathfully. “Be quiet, sir, or you’ll get another box on the ears!”
“Never mind him,” said Eustace, impatiently; “tell me the riddle.”
“I don’t know if I have guessed it correctly,” answered Hagar, opening the book; “but I’ve tried by line and page and number, all of which revealed nothing. Now I try by letters, and you will see if the word they make is a proper Italian one.”
She read out the marked line and the date. “ ‘Ficcar lo viso per la luce eterna, 27th December, ’38.’ Now,” said Hagar, slowly, “if you run all the figures together they stand as 271238.”
“Yes, yes!” said Eustace, impatiently; “I see. Go on, please.”
Hagar continued: “Take the second letter of the word ‘Ficcar.’ ”
“ ‘I.’ ”
“Also the seventh letter from the beginning of the line.”
Eustace counted. “ ‘L.’ I see,” he went on, eagerly. “Also the first letter, ‘F,’ the second again, ‘i,’ the third and the eighth, ‘c’ and ‘o.’ ”
“Good!” said Hagar, writing these down. “Now, the whole make up the word ‘Ilfico.’ Is that an Italian word?”
“I’m not sure,” said Eustace, thoughtfully. “ ‘Ilfico.’ No.”
“Shows what eddication ’e’s got!” growled Mr. Treadle, who was leaning on his spade.
Eustace raised his eyes to dart a withering glance at the grocer, and in doing so his vision passed on to the tree looming up behind the man. At once the meaning of the word flashed on his brain.
“ ‘Il fico!’ ” he cried, rising. “Two words instead of one! You have found it, Hagar! It means the fig-tree—the one yonder. I believe the money is buried under it.”
Before he could advance a step Treadle had leaped forward, and was slashing away at the tangled grass round the fig-tree like a madman.
“If ’tis there, ’tis mine!” he shouted. “Don’t you come nigh me, young Lorn, or I’ll brain you with my spade! I fed up that old uncle of yours like a fighting cock, and now I’m going to have his cash to pay me!”
Eustace leaped forward in the like manner as Treadle had done, and would have wrenched the spade out of his grip, but that Hagar laid a detaining hand on his arm.
“Let him dig,” she said, coolly. “The money is yours; I can prove it. He’ll have the work and you the fortune.”
“Hagar! Hagar! how can I thank you!”
The girl stepped back, and a blush rose in her cheeks. “Find Goliath,” she said, “and let me get rid of the pawn-shop.”
At this moment Treadle gave a shout of glee, and with both arms wrenched a goodly-sized tin box out of the hole he had dug.
“Mine! mine!” he cried, plumping this down on the grass. “This will pay for the dinners I gave him, the presents I made him. I’ve bin castin’ my bread on the waters, and here it’s back again.”
He fell to forcing the lid of the box with the edge of the spade, all the time laughing and crying like one demented. Lorn and Hagar drew near, in the expectation of seeing a shower of gold pieces rain on the ground when the lid was opened. As Treadle gave a final wrench it flew wide, and they saw—an empty box.
“Why—what,” stammered Treadle, thunderstruck—“what does it mean?”
Eustace, equally taken aback, bent down and looked in. There was absolutely nothing in the box but a piece of folded paper. Unable to make a remark, he held it out to the amazed Hagar.
“What the d——l does it mean?” said Treadle again.
“This explains,” said Hagar, running her eye over the writing. “It seems that this wealthy Uncle Ben was a pauper.”
“A pauper!” cried Eustace and Treadle together.
“Listen!” said Hagar, and read out from the page: “When I returned to England I was thought wealthy, so that all my friends and relations fawned on me for the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. But I had just enough money to rent the cottage for a term of years, and to purchase an annuity barely sufficient for the necessities of life. But, owing to the report of my wealth, the luxuries have been supplied by those who hoped for legacies. This is my legacy to one and all—these golden words, which I have proved true: ‘It is better to be thought rich than to be rich.’ ”
The paper fell from the hand of Eustace, and Treadle, with a howl of rage, threw himself on the grass, loading the memory of the deceased with opprobrious names. Seeing that all was over, that the expected fortune had vanished into thin air, Hagar left the disappointed grocer weeping with rage over the deceptive tin box, and led Eustace away. He followed her as in a dream, and all the time during their sad journey back to town he spoke hardly a word. What they did say—how Eustace bewailed his fate and Hagar comforted him—is not to the
point. But on arriving at the door of the pawn-shop Hagar gave the copy of Dante to the young man. “I give this back to you,” she said, pressing his hand. “Sell it, and with the proceeds build up your own fortune.”
“But shall I not see you again?” he asked, piteously.
“Yes, Mr. Lorn; you shall see me when you bring back Goliath.”
Then she entered the pawn-shop and shut the door. Left alone in the deserted crescent, Eustace sighed and walked slowly away. Hugging to his breast the Florentine Dante, he went away to make his fortune, to find Goliath, and—although he did not know it at the time—to marry Hagar.
The Robbery in Phillimore Terrace
EMMUSKA ORCZY
To detective fiction aficionados, Baroness Emmuska Orczy (1865–1947) is best known as the creator of “The Old Man in the Corner,” an armchair detective who relied entirely on his cerebral faculties to solve crimes. It is extraordinary to note that, in view of the fact that she became one of the world’s most successful authors in her time, Orczy was born in Hungary and spoke no English until she was fifteen years old. Her family moved to England; she learned the language and wrote all her novels, plays, and short stories in English.
The series began when a nameless detective seated himself at the same corner table that Polly Burton occupied and, as a newly hired newspaper reporter, she had been much taken with the account of a mystery when he intruded.
“Mysteries!” he commented. “There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence is brought to bear upon its investigation.”
It became common for Miss Burton to visit him, provide details of a crime while he listened and played with a piece of string, then solved the case without ever leaving his chair. The stories were collected in the eponymous The Old Man in the Corner (1909); as masterpieces of pure ratiocination, the collection was selected as a Queen’s Quorum title, one of the hundred and six greatest mystery short story volumes of all time.
In spite of the respect for the old man stories, the character who brought Orczy worldwide popularity, although without critical acclaim, was Sir Percy Blakeney, an effete English gentleman who secretly was a courageous espionage agent during the days of the French Revolution, daringly saving the lives of countless French aristocrats who had been condemned to the guillotine.
Unsuccessful in selling her novel about Sir Percy, she and her husband converted it into a stage play in 1905 and The Scarlet Pimpernel was published as a novel of the same title in the same year. His success inspired the doggerel:
We seek him here…
We seek him there…
Those Frenchies seek him…
Everywhere.
Is he in heaven?
Is he in h–ll?
That demmed elusive
Pimpernel?
“The Robbery in Phillimore Terrace” was originally published in the June 1901 issue of The Royal Magazine; it was first collected in The Old Man in the Corner (London, Greening & Co., 1909).
THE ROBBERY IN PHILLIMORE TERRACE
Emmuska Orczy
I
Whether Miss Polly Burton really did expect to see the man in the corner that Saturday afternoon, ’twere difficult to say; certain it is that when she found her way to the table close by the window and realized that he was not there, she felt conscious of an overwhelming sense of disappointment. And yet during the whole of the week she had, with more pride than wisdom, avoided this particular A.B.C. shop.
“I thought you would not keep away very long,” said a quiet voice close to her ear.
She nearly lost her balance—where in the world had he come from? She certainly had not heard the slightest sound, and yet there he sat, in the corner, like a veritable Jack-in-the-box, his mild blue eyes staring apologetically at her, his nervous fingers toying with the inevitable bit of string.
The waitress brought him his glass of milk and a cheese-cake. He ate it in silence, while his piece of string lay idly beside him on the table. When he had finished he fumbled in his capacious pockets, and drew out the inevitable pocket-book.
Placing a small photograph before the girl, he said quietly:
“That is the back of the houses in Phillimore Terrace, which overlook Adam and Eve Mews.”
She looked at the photograph, then at him, with a kindly look of indulgent expectancy.
“You will notice that the row of back gardens have each an exit into the mews. These mews are built in the shape of a capital F. The photograph is taken looking straight down the short horizontal line, which ends, as you see, in a cul-de-sac. The bottom of the vertical line turns into Phillimore Terrace, and the end of the upper long horizontal line into High Street, Kensington. Now, on that particular night, or rather early morning, of January 15th, Constable D 21, having turned into the mews from Phillimore Terrace, stood for a moment at the angle formed by the long vertical artery of the mews and the short horizontal one which, as I observed before, looks on to the back gardens of the Terrace houses, and ends in a cul-de-sac.
“How long D 21 stood at that particular corner he could not exactly say, but he thinks it must have been three or four minutes before he noticed a suspicious-looking individual shambling along under the shadow of the garden walls. He was working his way cautiously in the direction of the cul-de-sac, and D 21, also keeping well within the shadow, went noiselessly after him.
“He had almost overtaken him—was, in fact, not more than thirty yards from him—when from out of one of the two end houses—No. 22, Phillimore Terrace, in fact—a man, in nothing but his night-shirt, rushed out excitedly, and, before D 21 had time to intervene, literally threw himself upon the suspected individual, rolling over and over with him on the hard cobble-stones, and frantically shrieking, ‘Thief! Thief! Police!’
“It was some time before the constable succeeded in rescuing the tramp from the excited grip of his assailant, and several minutes before he could make himself heard.
“ ‘There! there! that’ll do!’ he managed to say at last, as he gave the man in the shirt a vigorous shove, which silenced him for the moment. ‘Leave the man alone now, you mustn’t make that noise this time o’ night, wakin’ up all the folks.’ The unfortunate tramp, who in the meanwhile had managed to get onto his feet again, made no attempt to get away; probably he thought he would stand but a poor chance. But the man in the shirt had partly recovered his power of speech, and was now blurting out jerky, half-intelligible sentences:
“ ‘I have been robbed—robbed—I—that is—my master—Mr. Knopf. The desk is open—the diamonds gone—all in my charge—and—now they are stolen! That’s the thief—I’ll swear—I heard him—not three minutes ago—rushed downstairs—the door into the garden was smashed—I ran across the garden—he was sneaking about here still—Thief! Thief! Police! Diamonds! Constable, don’t let him go—I’ll make you responsible if you let him go—’
“ ‘Now then—that’ll do!’ admonished D 21 as soon as he could get a word in, ‘stop that row, will you?’
“The man in the shirt was gradually recovering from his excitement.
“ ‘Can I give this man in charge?’ he asked.
“ ‘What for?’
“ ‘Burglary and housebreaking. I heard him, I tell you. He must have Mr. Knopf’s diamonds about him at this moment.’
“ ‘Where is Mr. Knopf?’
“ ‘Out of town,’ groaned the man in the shirt. ‘He went to Brighton last night, and left me in charge, and now this thief has been and—’
“The tramp shrugged his shoulders and suddenly, without a word, he quietly began taking off his coat and waistcoat. These he handed across to the constable. Eagerly the man in the shirt fell on them, and turned the ragged pockets inside out. From one of the windows a hilarious voice made some facetious remark, as th
e tramp with equal solemnity began divesting himself of his nether garments.
“ ‘Now then, stop that nonsense,’ pronounced D 21 severely, ‘what were you doing here this time o’ night, anyway?’
“ ‘The streets o’ London is free to the public, ain’t they?’ queried the tramp.
“ ‘This don’t lead nowhere, my man.’
“ ‘Then I’ve lost my way, that’s all,’ growled the man surlily, ‘and p’raps you’ll let me get along now.’
“By this time a couple of constables had appeared upon the scene. D 21 had no intention of losing sight of his friend the tramp, and the man in the shirt had again made a dash for the latter’s collar at the bare idea that he should be allowed to ‘get along.’
“I think D 21 was alive to the humor of the situation. He suggested that Robertson (the man in the night-shirt) should go in and get some clothes on, whilst he himself would wait for the inspector and the detective, whom D 15 would send round from the station immediately.
“Poor Robertson’s teeth were chattering with cold. He had a violent fit of sneezing as D 21 hurried him into the house. The latter, with another constable, remained to watch the burglared premises both back and front, and D 15 took the wretched tramp to the station with a view to sending an inspector and a detective round immediately.
“When the two latter gentlemen arrived at No. 22, Phillimore Terrace, they found poor old Robertson in bed, shivering, and still quite blue. He had got himself a hot drink, but his eyes were streaming and his voice was terribly husky. D 21 had stationed himself in the dining-room, where Robertson had pointed the desk out to him, with its broken lock and scattered contents.