by Graeme Davis
“Dr. Kennedy, how can I ever thank you?” she exclaimed, sinking wearily down into a chair and pressing her hands to her throbbing forehead.
“By telling me just how you came by this will, so that when you and Fletcher are married I may be as good a friend, without suspicion, to you as I am to him. I think a full confession would do you good, Miss Bond. Would you prefer to have Dr. Jameson not hear it?”
“No, he may stay.”
“This much I know, Miss Bond. Last summer in Paris with the Greenes you must have chanced to hear, of Pillard, the Apache, one of the most noted cracksmen the world has ever produced. You sought him out. He taught you how to paint your fingers with a rubber composition, how to use an electric drill, how to use the old-fashioned jimmy. You went down to Fletcherwood by the back road about a quarter after eleven the night of the robbery in the Greenes’ little electric runabout.‡‡ You entered the library by an unlocked window, you coupled your drill to the electric light connections of the chandelier. You had to work quickly, for the power would go off at midnight, yet you could not do the job later, when they were sleeping more soundly, for the very same reason.”
It was uncanny as Kennedy rushed along in his reconstruction of the scene, almost unbelievable. The girl watched him, fascinated.
“John Fletcher was wakeful that night. Somehow or other he heard you at work. He entered the library and, by the light streaming from his bedroom, he saw who it was. In anger he must have addressed you, and his passion got the better of his age—he fell suddenly on the floor with a stroke of apoplexy. As you bent over him he died. But why did you ever attempt so foolish an undertaking? Didn’t you know that other people knew of the will and its terms, that you were sure to be traced out in the end, if not by friends, by foes? How did you suppose you could profit by destroying the will, of which others knew the provisions?”
Any other woman than Helen Bond would have been hysterical long before Kennedy had finished pressing home remorselessly one fact after another of her story. But, with her, the relief now after the tension of many hours of concealment seemed to nerve her to go to the end and tell the truth.
What was it? Had she some secret lover for whom she had dared all to secure the family fortune? Or was she shielding someone dearer to her than her own reputation? Why had Kennedy made Fletcher withdraw?
Her eyes dropped and her breast rose and fell with suppressed emotion. Yet I was hardly prepared for her reply when at last she slowly raised her head and looked us calmly in the face.
“I did it because I loved Jack.”
Neither of us spoke. I, at least, had fallen completely under the spell of this masterful woman. Right or wrong, I could not restrain a feeling of admiration and amazement.
“Yes,” she said as her voice thrilled with emotion, “strange as it may sound to you, it was not love of self that made me do it. I was, I am madly in love with Jack. No other man has ever inspired such respect and love as he has. His work in the university I have fairly gloated over. And yet—and yet, Dr. Kennedy, can you not see that I am different from Jack? What would I do with the income of the wife of even the dean of the new school? The annuity provided for me in that will is paltry. I need millions. From the tiniest baby I have been reared that way. I have always expected this fortune. I have been given everything I wanted. But it is different when one is married—you must have your own money. I need a fortune, for then I could have the town house, the country house, the yacht, the motors, the clothes, the servants that I need—they are as much a part of my life as your profession is of yours. I must have them.
“And now it was all to slip from my hands. True, it was to go in such a way by this last will as to make Jack happy in his new school. I could have let that go, if that was all. There are other fortunes that have been laid at my feet. But I wanted Jack, and I knew Jack wanted me. Dear boy, he never could realise how utterly unhappy intellectual poverty would have made me and how my unhappiness would have reacted on him in the end. In reality this great and beneficent philanthropy was finally to blight both our love and our lives.
“What was I to do? Stand by and see my life and my love ruined or refuse Jack for the fortune of a man I did not love? Helen Bond is not that kind of a woman, I said to myself. I consulted the greatest lawyer I knew. I put a hypothetical case to him, and asked his opinion in such a way as to make him believe he was advising me how to make an unbreakable will. He told me of provisions and clauses to avoid, particularly in making benefactions. That was what I wanted to know. I would put one of those clauses in my uncle’s will. I practised uncle’s writing till I was as good a forger of that clause as anyone could have become. I had picked out the very words in his own handwriting to practise from.
“Then I went to Paris and, as you have guessed, learned how to get things out of a safe like that of uncle’s. Before God, all I planned to do was to get that will, change it, replace it, and trust that uncle would never notice the change. Then when he was gone, I would have contested the will. I would have got my full share either by court proceedings or by settlement out of court. You see, I had planned it all out. The school would have been founded—I, we would have founded it. What difference, I said, did thirty millions or fifty millions make to an impersonal school, a school not yet even in existence? The twenty million dollars or so difference, or even half of it, meant life and love to me.
“I had planned to steal the cash in the safe, anything to divert attention from the will and make it look like a plain robbery. I would have done the altering of the will that night and have returned it to the safe before morning. But it was not to be. I had almost opened the safe when my uncle entered the room. His anger completely unnerved me, and from the moment I saw him on the floor to this I haven’t had a sane thought. I forgot to take the cash, I forgot everything but that will. My only thought was that I must get it and destroy it. I doubt if I could have altered it with my nerves so upset. There, now you have my whole story. I am at your mercy.”
“No,” said Kennedy, “believe me, there is a mental statute of limitations that as far as Jameson and myself are concerned has already erased this affair. Walter, will you find Fletcher?”
I found the professor pacing up and down the gravel walk impatiently.
“Fletcher,” said Kennedy, “a night’s rest is all Miss Bond really needs. It is simply a case of overwrought nerves, and it will pass off of itself. Still, I would advise a change of scene as soon as possible. Good afternoon, Miss Bond, and my best wishes for your health.”
“Good afternoon, Dr. Kennedy. Good afternoon, Dr. Jameson.”
I for one was glad to make my escape.
A half-hour later, Kennedy, with well-simulated excitement, was racing me in the car up to the Greenes’ again. We literally burst unannounced into the tête-à-tête on the porch.
“Fletcher, Fletcher,” cried Kennedy, “look what Walter and I have just discovered in a tin strong-box poked off in the back of your uncle’s desk!”
Fletcher seized the will and by the dim light that shone through from the hall read it hastily. “Thank God,” he cried; “the school is provided for as I thought.”
“Isn’t it glorious!” murmured Helen.
True to my instinct I muttered, “Another good newspaper yarn killed.”
* A covered porch, built to protect arriving and departing cars and carriages from the weather.
† Argentinian police adopted fingerprints as an investigative tool in the 1890s. The Fingerprint Branch at Scotland Yard was created in 1901; the New York State Prison system began fingerprinting prisoners in 1903.
‡ Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914) was a pioneering forensic scientist.
§ “Yellow journalism” was a term applied to newspapers that relied on sensation to sell papers, neglecting proper research and ethics.
¶ Neurasthenia was a medical term, now obsolete, for “weak nerves.”
# An instrument for recording and measuring variation in the volume of a
part of the body, especially as caused by changes in blood pressure.
** A highly accurate stopwatch.
†† An instrument to measure blood pressure.
‡‡ Electric cars were popular in the early twentieth century; gasoline-powered vehicles did not become predominant until the early 1920s.
THE COIN OF DIONYSIUS
by Ernest Bramah
1910
In his day, Ernest Bramah was compared to Jerome K. Jerome for his humorous writing, to H. G. Wells for his politically-tinged science fiction, and to Conan Doyle for his detective stories.
Born Ernest Brammah Smith, he dropped out of the Manchester Grammar School aged sixteen and went into farming with the support of his father. He began to contribute small items to a local newspaper, and when his farming enterprise failed he obtained a position as secretary to the popular humorous writer Jerome K. Jerome, eventually becoming editor of one of his magazines.
Bramah’s first success as a writer was the creation of the itinerant Chinese storyteller Kai Lung, who appeared in three novels and two story collections published between 1900 and 1940. Max Carrados, the blind detective, first appeared in 1913, and his adventures appeared in the News of the World, Pearson’s Magazine, and The Strand. Despite the widespread claim that Carrados stories appeared in The Strand alongside the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and often received higher billing, only one, “The Bunch of Violets,” ever seems to have been published in that magazine, in July 1924. While Conan Doyle did contribute to the same issue, it was not with a Holmes story, but rather with the ninth installment of his ten-part memoir, “Memories and Adventures.”
“The Coin of Dionysius” is the first Carrados story. Published in The News of the World on August 17, 1913 as “The Master Coiner Unmasked,” its title was changed in the 1914 collection Max Carrados. Blinded in a riding accident, Carrados has refined his other senses to a level that most sighted people never achieve—so much so that his blindness is not immediately apparent. His manservant Parkinson acts as his eyes when necessary, and is possessed of faculties of observation that rival those of Holmes himself. Interestingly, Carrados is not presented as a detective, in this story at least. Instead, he is consulted as an expert in numismatics, by a private investigator who will go on to become a regular companion.
It was eight o’clock at night and raining, scarcely a time when a business so limited in its clientele as that of a coin dealer could hope to attract any customer, but a light was still showing in the small shop that bore over its window the name of Baxter, and in the even smaller office at the back the proprietor himself sat reading the latest Pall Mall. His enterprise seemed to be justified, for presently the door bell gave its announcement, and throwing down his paper Mr. Baxter went forward.
As a matter of fact the dealer had been expecting someone and his manner as he passed into the shop was unmistakably suggestive of a caller of importance. But at the first glance towards his visitor the excess of deference melted out of his bearing, leaving the urbane, self-possessed shopman in the presence of the casual customer.
“Mr. Baxter, I think?” said the latter. He had laid aside his dripping umbrella and was unbuttoning overcoat and coat to reach an inner pocket. “You hardly remember me, I suppose? Mr. Carlyle—two years ago I took up a case for you—”
“To be sure. Mr. Carlyle, the private detective—”
“Inquiry agent,” corrected Mr. Carlyle precisely.
“Well,” smiled Mr. Baxter, “for that matter I am a coin dealer and not an antiquarian or a numismatist. Is there anything in that way that I can do for you?”
“Yes,” replied his visitor; “it is my turn to consult you.” He had taken a small wash-leather bag from the inner pocket and now turned something carefully out upon the counter. “What can you tell me about that?”
The dealer gave the coin a moment’s scrutiny.
“There is no question about this,” he replied. “It is a Sicilian tetradrachm of Dionysius.”
“Yes, I know that—I have it on the label out of the cabinet. I can tell you further that it’s supposed to be one that Lord Seastoke gave two hundred and fifty pounds for at the Brice sale in ’94.”
“It seems to me that you can tell me more about it than I can tell you,” remarked Mr. Baxter. “What is it that you really want to know?”
“I want to know,” replied Mr. Carlyle, “whether it is genuine or not.”
“Has any doubt been cast upon it?”
“Certain circumstances raised a suspicion—that is all.”
The dealer took another look at the tetradrachm through his magnifying glass, holding it by the edge with the careful touch of an expert. Then he shook his head slowly in a confession of ignorance.
“Of course I could make a guess—”
“No, don’t,” interrupted Mr. Carlyle hastily. “An arrest hangs on it and nothing short of certainty is any good to me.”
“Is that so, Mr. Carlyle?” said Mr. Baxter, with increased interest. “Well, to be quite candid, the thing is out of my line. Now if it was a rare Saxon penny or a doubtful noble I’d stake my reputation on my opinion, but I do very little in the classical series.”
Mr. Carlyle did not attempt to conceal his disappointment as he returned the coin to the bag and replaced the bag in the inner pocket.
“I had been relying on you,” he grumbled reproachfully. “Where on earth am I to go now?”
“There is always the British Museum.”
“Ah, to be sure, thanks. But will anyone who can tell me be there now?”
“Now? No fear!” replied Mr. Baxter. “Go round in the morning—”
“But I must know to-night,” explained the visitor, reduced to despair again. “To-morrow will be too late for the purpose.”
Mr. Baxter did not hold out much encouragement in the circumstances.
“You can scarcely expect to find anyone at business now,” he remarked. “I should have been gone these two hours myself only I happened to have an appointment with an American millionaire who fixed his own time.” Something indistinguishable from a wink slid off Mr. Baxter’s right eye. “Offmunson he’s called, and a bright young pedigree-hunter has traced his descent from Offa, King of Mercia. So he—quite naturally—wants a set of Offas as a sort of collateral proof.”
“Very interesting,” murmured Mr. Carlyle, fidgeting with his watch. “I should love an hour’s chat with you about your millionaire customers—some other time. Just now—look here, Baxter, can’t you give me a line of introduction to some dealer in this sort of thing who happens to live in town? You must know dozens of experts.”
“Why, bless my soul, Mr. Carlyle, I don’t know a man of them away from his business,” said Mr. Baxter, staring. “They may live in Park Lane or they may live in Petticoat Lane for all I know. Besides, there aren’t so many experts as you seem to imagine. And the two best will very likely quarrel over it. You’ve had to do with ‘expert witnesses,’ I suppose?”
“I don’t want a witness; there will be no need to give evidence. All I want is an absolutely authoritative pronouncement that I can act on. Is there no one who can really say whether the thing is genuine or not?”
Mr. Baxter’s meaning silence became cynical in its implication as he continued to look at his visitor across the counter. Then he relaxed.
“Stay a bit; there is a man—an amateur—I remember hearing wonderful things about some time ago. They say he really does know.”
“There you are,” exclaimed Mr. Carlyle, much relieved. “There always is someone. Who is he?”
“Funny name,” replied Baxter. “Something Wynn or Wynn something.” He craned his neck to catch sight of an important motor car that was drawing to the kerb before his window. “Wynn Carrados! You’ll excuse me now, Mr. Carlyle, won’t you? This looks like Mr. Offmunson.”
Mr. Carlyle hastily scribbled the name down on his cuff.
“Wynn Carrados, right. Where does he live?”
�
��Haven’t the remotest idea,” replied Baxter, referring the arrangement of his tie to the judgment of the wall mirror. “I have never seen the man myself. Now, Mr. Carlyle, I’m sorry I can’t do any more for you. You won’t mind, will you?”
Mr. Carlyle could not pretend to misunderstand. He enjoyed the distinction of holding open the door for the transatlantic representative of the line of Offa as he went out, and then made his way through the muddy streets back to his office. There was only one way of tracing a private individual at such short notice—through the pages of the directories, and the gentleman did not flatter himself by a very high estimate of his chances.
Fortune favoured him, however. He very soon discovered a Wynn Carrados living at Richmond, and, better still, further search failed to unearth another. There was, apparently, only one householder at all events of that name in the neighbourhood of London. He jotted down the address and set out for Richmond.
The house was some distance from the station, Mr. Carlyle learned. He took a taxicab and drove, dismissing the vehicle at the gate. He prided himself on his power of observation and the accuracy of the deductions which resulted from it—a detail of his business. “It’s nothing more than using one’s eyes and putting two and two together,” he would modestly declare, when he wished to be deprecatory rather than impressive, and by the time he had reached the front door of “The Turrets” he had formed some opinion of the position and tastes of the man who lived there.
A man-servant admitted Mr. Carlyle and took in his card—his private card with the bare request for an interview that would not detain Mr. Carrados for ten minutes. Luck still favoured him; Mr. Carrados was at home and would see him at once. The servant, the hall through which they passed, and the room into which he was shown, all contributed something to the deductions which the quietly observant gentleman was half unconsciously recording.
“Mr. Carlyle,” announced the servant.
The room was a library or study. The only occupant, a man of about Carlyle’s own age, had been using a typewriter up to the moment of his visitor’s entrance. He now turned and stood up with an expression of formal courtesy.