Читать книгу The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet - Burton Egbert Stevenson - Страница 10

"He was killed!" repeated Godfrey, with conviction; and, at the words, we drew together a little, with a shiver of repulsion. Death is awesome enough at any time; suicide adds to its horror; murder gives it the final touch.

So we all stood silent, staring as though fascinated at the hand which Simmonds held up to us; at those tiny wounds, encircled by discoloured flesh and with a sinister dash of clotted blood running away from them. Then Goldberger, taking a deep breath, voiced the thought which had sprung into my own brain.

"Why, it looks like a snake-bite!" he said, his voice sharp with astonishment.

And, indeed, it did. Those two tiny incisions, scarcely half an inch apart, might well have been made by a serpent's fangs.

The quick glance which all of us cast about the room was, of course, as involuntary as the chill which ran up our spines; yet Godfrey and I—yes, and Simmonds—had the excuse that, once upon a time, we had had an encounter with a deadly snake which none of us was likely ever to forget. We all smiled a little sheepishly as we caught each other's eyes.

"No, I don't think it was a snake," said Godfrey, and again bent close above the hand. "Smell it, Mr. Goldberger," he added.

The coroner put his nose close to the hand and sniffed.

"Bitter almonds!" he said.

"Which means prussic acid," said Godfrey, "and not snake poison." He fell silent a moment, his eyes on the swollen hand. The rest of us stared at it too; and I suppose all the others were labouring as I was with the effort to find some thread of theory amid this chaos. "It might, of course, have been self-inflicted," Godfrey added, quite to himself.

Goldberger sneered a little. No doubt he found the incomprehensibility of the problem rather trying to his temper.

"A man doesn't usually commit suicide by sticking himself in the hand with a fork," he said.

"No," agreed Godfrey, blandly; "but I would point out that we don't know as yet that it is a case of suicide; and I'm quite sure that, whatever it may be, it isn't usual."

Goldberger's sneer deepened.

"Did any reporter for the Record ever find a case that was usual?" he queried.

It was a shrewd thrust, and one that Godfrey might well have winced under. For the Record theory was that nothing was news unless it was strange and startling, and the inevitable result was that the Record reporters endeavoured to make everything strange and startling, to play up the outré details at the expense of the rest of the story, and even, I fear, to invent such details when none existed.

Godfrey himself had been accused more than once of a too-luxuriant imagination. It was, perhaps, a realisation of this which had persuaded him, years before, to quit the detective force and take service with the Record. What might have been a weakness in the first position, was a mighty asset in the latter one, and he had won an immense success.

Please understand that I set this down in no spirit of criticism. I had known Godfrey rather intimately ever since the days when we were thrown together in solving the Holladay case, and I admired sincerely his ready wit, his quick insight, and his unshakable aplomb. He used his imagination in a way which often caused me to reflect that the police would be far more efficient if they possessed a dash of the same quality; and I had noticed that they were usually glad of his assistance, while his former connection with the force and his careful maintenance of the friendships formed at that time gave him an entrée to places denied to less-fortunate reporters. I had never known him to do a dishonourable thing—to fight for a cause he thought unjust, to print a fact given to him in confidence, or to make a statement which he knew to be untrue. Moreover, a lively sense of humour made him an admirable companion, and it was this quality, perhaps, which enabled him to receive Goldberger's thrust with a good-natured smile.

"We've got our living to make, you know," he said. "We make it as honestly as we can. What do you think, Simmonds?"

"I think," said Simmonds, who, if he possessed an imagination, never permitted it to be suspected, "that those little cuts on the hand are merely an accident. They might have been caused in half a dozen ways. Maybe he hit his hand on something when he fell; maybe he jabbed it on a buckle; maybe he had a boil on his hand and lanced it with his knife."

"What killed him, then?" Godfrey demanded.

"Poison—and it's in his stomach. We'll find it there."

"How about the odour?" Godfrey persisted.

"He spilled some of the poison on his hand as he lifted it to his mouth. Maybe he had those cuts on his hand and the poison inflamed them. Or maybe he's got some kind of blood disease."

Goldberger nodded his approval, and Godfrey smiled as he looked at him.

"It's easy to find explanations, isn't it?" he queried.

"It's a blamed sight easier to find a natural and simple explanation," retorted Goldberger hotly, "than it is to find an unnatural and far-fetched one—such as how one man could kill another by scratching him on the hand. I suppose you think this fellow was murdered? That's what you said a minute ago."

"Perhaps I was a little hasty," Godfrey admitted, and I suspected that, whatever his thoughts, he had made up his mind to keep them to himself. "I'm not going to theorise until I've got something to start with. The facts seem to point to suicide; but if he swallowed prussic acid, where's the bottle? He didn't swallow that too, did he?"

"Maybe we'll find it in his clothes," suggested Simmonds.

Thus reminded, Goldberger fell to work looking through the dead man's pockets. The clothes were of a cheap material and not very new, so that, in life, he must have presented an appearance somewhat shabby. There was a purse in the inside coat pocket containing two bills, one for ten dollars and one for five, and there were two or three dollars in silver and four five-centime pieces in a small coin purse which he carried in his trousers' pocket. The larger purse had four or five calling cards in one of its compartments, each bearing a different name, none of them his. On the back of one of them, Vantine's address was written in pencil.

There were no letters, no papers, no written documents of any kind in the pockets, the remainder of whose contents consisted of such odds and ends as any man might carry about with him—a cheap watch, a pen-knife, a half-empty packet of French tobacco, a sheaf of cigarette paper, four or five keys on a ring, a silk handkerchief, and perhaps some other articles which I have forgotten—but not a thing to assist in establishing his identity.

"We'll have to cable over to Paris," remarked Simmonds. "He's French, all right—that silk handkerchief proves it."

"Yes—and his best girl proves it, too," put in Godfrey.

"His best girl?"

For answer, Godfrey held up the watch, which he had been examining. He had opened the case, and inside it was a photograph—the photograph of a woman with bold, dark eyes and full lips and oval face—a face so typically French that it was not to be mistaken.

"A lady's-maid, I should say," added Godfrey, looking at it again. "Rather good-looking at one time, but past her first youth, and so compelled perhaps to bestow her affections on a man a little beneath her—no doubt compelled also to contribute to his support in order to retain him. A woman with many pasts and no future—"

"Oh, come," broke in Goldberger impatiently, "keep your second-hand epigrams for the Record. What we want are facts."

Godfrey flushed a little at the words and laid down the watch.

"There is one fact which you have apparently overlooked," he said quietly, "but it proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that this fellow didn't drift in here by accident. He came here of intention, and the intention wasn't to kill himself, either."

"How do you know that?" demanded Goldberger, incredulously.

Godfrey picked up the purse, opened it, and took out one of the cards.

"By this," he said, and held it up. "You have already seen what is written on the back of it—Mr. Vantine's name and the number of this house. That proves, doesn't it, that this fellow came to New York expressly to see Mr. Vantine?"

"Perhaps you think Mr. Vantine killed him," suggested Goldberger, sarcastically.

"No," said Godfrey; "he didn't have time. You understand, Mr. Vantine," he added, smiling at that gentleman, who was listening to all this with perplexed countenance, "we are simply talking now about possibilities. You couldn't possibly have killed this fellow because Lester has testified that he was with you constantly from the moment this man entered the house until his body was found, with the exception of the few seconds which elapsed between the time you entered this room and the time he joined you here, summoned by your cry. So you are out of the running."

"Thanks," said Vantine, drily.

"I suppose, then, you think it was Parks," said Goldberger.

"It may quite possibly have been Parks," agreed Godfrey, gravely.

"Nonsense!" broke in Vantine, impatiently. "Parks is as straight as a string—he's been with me for eight years."

"Of course it's nonsense," assented Goldberger. "It's nonsense to say that he was killed by anybody. He killed himself. We'll learn the cause when we identify him—jealousy maybe, or maybe just hard luck—he doesn't look affluent."

"I'll cable to Paris," said Simmonds. "If he belongs there, we'll soon find out who he is."

"You'd better call an ambulance and have him taken to the morgue," went on Goldberger. "Somebody may identify him there. There'll be a crowd to-morrow, for, of course, the papers will be full of this affair—"

"The Record, at least, will have a very full account," Godfrey assured him.

"And I'll call the inquest for the day after," Goldberger continued. "I'll send my physician down to make a post-mortem right away. If there's any poison in this fellow's stomach, we'll find it."

Godfrey did not speak; but I knew what was in his mind. He was thinking that, if such poison existed, the vessel which had contained it had not yet been found. The same thought, no doubt, occurred to Simmonds, for, after ordering the policeman in the hall to call the ambulance, he returned and began a careful search of the room, using his electric torch to illumine every shadowed corner. Godfrey devoted himself to a similar search; but both were without result. Then Godfrey made a minute inspection of the injured hand, while Goldberger looked on with ill-concealed impatience; and finally he moved toward the door.

"I think I'll be going," he said. "But I'm interested in what your physician will find, Mr. Coroner."

"He'll find poison, all right," asserted Goldberger, with decision.

"Perhaps he will," admitted Godfrey. "Strange things happen in this world. Will you be at home to-night, Lester?"

"Yes, I expect to be," I answered.

"You're still at the Marathon?"

"Yes," I said; "suite fourteen."

"Perhaps I'll drop around to see you," he said, and a moment later we heard the door close behind him as Parks let him out.

"Godfrey's a good man," said Goldberger, "but he's too romantic. He looks for a mystery in every crime, whereas most crimes are merely plain, downright brutalities. Take this case. Here's a man kills himself, and Godfrey wants us to believe that death resulted from a scratch on the hand. Why, there's no poison on earth would kill a man as quick as that—for he must have dropped dead before he could get out of the room to summon help. If it was prussic acid, he swallowed it. Remember, he wasn't in this room more than fifteen or twenty minutes, and he was quite dead when Mr. Vantine found him. Men don't die as easily as all that—not from a scratch on the hand. They don't die easily at all. It's astonishing how much it takes to kill a man—how the spirit, or whatever you choose to call it, clings to life."

"How do you explain the address on the card, Mr. Goldberger?" I asked.

"My theory is that this fellow really had some business with Mr. Vantine; probably he wanted to borrow some money, or ask for help; and then, while he was waiting, he suddenly gave the thing up and killed himself. The address has no bearing whatever, that I can see, on the question of suicide. And I'll say this, Mr. Lester, if this isn't suicide, it's the strangest case I ever had anything to do with."

"Yes," I agreed, "if it isn't suicide, we come to a blank wall right away."

"That's it," and Goldberger nodded emphatically. "Here's the ambulance," he added, as the bell rang.

The bearers entered with the stretcher, placed the body on it, and carried it away. Goldberger paused to gather up the articles he had taken from the dead man's pockets.

"You gentlemen will have to give your testimony at the inquest," he said. "So will Parks and Rogers. It will be day after to-morrow, probably at ten o'clock, but I'll notify you of the hour."

"Very well," I said; "we'll be there," and Goldberger bade us good-bye, and left the house. "And now," I added, to Vantine, "I must be getting back to the office. They'll be asking the police to look for me next. Man alive!" and I glanced at my watch, "it's after four o'clock."

"Too late for the office," said Vantine. "Better come upstairs and have a drink. Besides, I want to talk with you."

"At least, I'll let them know I'm still alive," I said, and I called up the office and allayed any anxiety that may have been felt there concerning me. I must admit that it did not seem acute.

"I feel the need of a bracer after all this excitement," Vantine remarked, as he opened the cellarette. "Help yourself. I dare say you're used to this sort of thing—"

"Finding dead men lying around?" I queried, with a smile. "No—it's not so common as you seem to think."

"Tell me, Lester," and he looked at me earnestly, "do you think that poor devil came in here just to get a chance to kill himself quietly?"

"No, I don't," I said.

"Then what did he come in for?"

"I think Goldberger's theory a pretty good one—that he had heard of you as a generous fellow and came in here to ask help; and while he was waiting, suddenly gave it up—"

"And killed himself?" Vantine completed.

I hesitated. I was astonished to find, at the back of my mind, a growing doubt.

"See here, Lester," Vantine demanded, "if he didn't kill himself, what happened to him?"

"Heaven only knows," I answered, in despair. "I've been asking myself the same question, without finding a reasonable answer to it. As I said to Goldberger, it's a blank wall. But if anybody can see through it, Jim Godfrey can."

Vantine seemed deeply perturbed. He took a turn or two up and down the room, then stopped in front of me and looked me earnestly in the eye.

"Tell me, Lester," he said, "do you believe that theory of Godfrey's—that that insignificant wound on the hand caused death?"

"It seems absurd, doesn't it? But Godfrey is a sort of genius at divining such things."

"Then you do believe it?"

I asked myself the same question before I answered.

"Yes, I do," I said, finally.

Vantine walked up and down the room again, his eyes on the floor, his brows contracted.

"Lester," he said, at last, "I have a queer feeling that the business which brought this man here in some way concerned the Boule cabinet I was telling you about. Perhaps it belonged to him."

"Hardly," I protested, recalling his shabby appearance.

"At any rate, I remember, as I was looking at his card, that some such thought occurred to me. It was for that reason I told Parks to ask him to wait."

"It's possible, of course," I admitted. "But that wouldn't explain his excitement. And that reminds me," I added, "I haven't sent off that cable."

"Any time to-night will do. It will be delivered in the morning. But you haven't seen the cabinet yet. Come down and look at it."

He led the way down the stair. Parks met us in the lower hall.

"There's a delegation of reporters outside, sir," he said. "They say they've got to see you."

Vantine made a movement of impatience.

"Tell them," he said, "that I positively refuse to see them or to allow my servants to see them. Let them get their information from the police."

"Very well, sir," said Parks, and turned away grinning.

Vantine passed on through the ante-room in which we had found the body of the unfortunate Frenchman, and into the room beyond. Five or six pieces of furniture, evidently just unpacked, stood there, but, ignorant as I am of such things, he did not have to point out to me the Boule cabinet. It dominated the room, much as Madame de Montespan, no doubt, dominated the court at Versailles.

I looked at it for some moments, for it was certainly a beautiful piece of work, with a wealth of inlay and incrustation little short of marvellous. But I may as well say here that I never really appreciated it. The florid style of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Louis is not at all to my taste; and I am too little of a connoisseur to admire a beauty which has no personal appeal for me. So I am afraid that Vantine found me a little cold.

Certainly there was nothing cold about the way he regarded it. His eyes gleamed with a strange fire as he looked at it; he ran his fingers over the inlay with a touch almost reverent; he pulled out for me the little drawers with much the same air that another friend of mine takes down his Kilmarnock Burns from his bookshelves; he pointed out to me the grace of its curves in the same tone that one uses to discuss the masterpiece of a great artist. And then, finding no echo to his enthusiasm, he suddenly stopped.

"You don't seem to care for it," he said, looking at me.

"That's my fault and not the fault of the cabinet," I pointed out.

"I'm not educated up to it; I'm too little of an artist, perhaps."

He was flushed, as a man might be should another make a disparaging remark about his wife, and he led the way from the room at once.

"Remember, Lester," he said, a little sternly, pausing with his hand on the front door, "there is to be no foolishness about securing that cabinet for me. Don't you let it get away. I'm in deadly earnest."

"I won't let it get away," I promised. "Perhaps it's just as well I'm not over-enthusiastic about it."

"Let me know as soon as you have any news," he said, and opened the door for me.

I had intended walking home, but as I turned up the Avenue, I met sweeping down it a flood of girls just released from the workshops of the neighbourhood. I struggled against it for a few moments, then gave it up, hailed a cab, and settled back against the cushions with a sigh of relief. I was glad to be out of Vantine's house; something there oppressed me and left me ill at ease. Was Vantine quite normal, I wondered? Could any man be normal who was willing to pay a hundred thousand dollars for a piece of furniture? Especially a man who could not afford such extravagance? I knew the size of Vantine's fortune; it was large, but a hundred thousand dollars represented more than a year's income. And then I smiled to myself. Of course Vantine had been merely jesting when he named that limit. The cabinet could be bought for a tenth of it, at the most. And, still smiling, I left the cab, paid the driver, and mounted to my rooms.