Читать книгу The Black Box - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 17

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Sanford Quest and Lenora stood side by side upon the steps of the Courthouse, waiting for the automobile which had become momentarily entangled in a string of vehicles. A little crowd of people were elbowing their way out on to the sidewalk. The faces of most of them were still shadowed by the three hours of tense drama from which they had just emerged. Quest, who had lit a cigar, watched them curiously.

“No need to go into Court,” he remarked. “I could have told you, from the look of these people, that Macdougal had escaped the death sentence. They have paid their money—or rather their time, and they have been cheated of the one supreme thrill.”

“Imprisonment for life seems terrible enough,” Lenora whispered, shuddering.

“Can’t see the sense of keeping such a man alive myself,” Quest declared, with purposeful brutality. “It was a cruel murder, fiendishly committed.”

Lenora shivered. Quest laid his fingers for a moment upon her wrist. His voice, though still firm, became almost kind.

“Never be afraid, Lenora,” he said, “to admit the truth. Come, we have finished with Macdougal now. Imprisonment for life will keep him from crossing your path again.”

Lenora sighed. She was almost ashamed of her feeling of immense relief.

“I am very sorry for him,” she murmured. “I wish there were something one could do.”

“There is nothing,” Quest replied shortly, “and if there were, you would not be allowed to undertake it. You didn’t happen to notice the way he looked at you once or twice, did you?”

Once more the terror shone out of Lenora’s eyes.

“You are right,” she faltered. “I had forgotten.”

They were on the point of crossing the pavement towards the automobile when Quest felt a touch upon his shoulder. He turned and found Lord Ashleigh standing by his side. Quest glanced towards Lenora.

“Run and get in the car,” he whispered. “I will be there in a moment.”

She dropped her veil and hastened across the pavement. The Englishman’s face grew sterner as he watched her.

“Macdougal’s accomplice,” he muttered. “We used to trust that girl, too.”

“She had nothing whatever to do with the actual crime, believe me,” Quest assured him. “Besides, you must remember that it was really through her that the man was brought to justice.”

“I harbour no ill-feelings towards the girl,” Lord Ashleigh replied. “Nevertheless, the sight of her for a moment was disconcerting. … I would not have stopped you just now, Mr. Quest, but my brother is very anxious to renew his acquaintance with you. I think you met years ago.”

Sanford Quest held out his hand to the man who had been standing a little in the background. Lord Ashleigh turned towards him.

“This is Mr. Quest, Edgar. You may remember my brother—Professor Ashleigh—as a man of science, Quest? He has just returned from South America.”

The two shook hands, curiously diverse in type, in expression, in all the appurtenances of manhood. Quest was dark, with no sign of greyness in his closely-trimmed black hair. His face was an epitome of forcefulness, his lips hard, his eyes brilliant. He was dressed with the utmost care. His manner was self-possessed almost to a fault. The Professor, on the other hand, though his shoulders were broad, lost much of his height and presence through a very pronounced stoop. His face was pale, his mouth sensitive, his smile almost womanly in its sweetness. His clothes, and a general air of abstraction, seemed rather to indicate the clerical profession. His forehead, however, disclosed as he lifted his hat, was the forehead of a scholar.

“I am very proud to make your acquaintance again, Professor,” Quest said. “Glad to know, too, that you hadn’t quite forgotten me.”

“My dear sir,” the Professor declared, as he released the other’s hand with seeming reluctance, “I have thought about you many times. Your doings have always been of interest to me. Though I have been lost to the world of civilisation for so long, I have correspondents here in New York to keep me in touch with all that is interesting. You have made a great name for yourself, Mr. Quest. You are one of those who have made science your handmaiden in a wonderful profession.”

“You are very kind, Professor,” Quest observed, flicking the ash from his cigar.

“Not at all,” the other insisted. “Not at all. I have the greatest admiration for your methods.”

“I am sorry,” Quest remarked, “that our first meeting here should be under such distressing circumstances.”

The Professor nodded gravely. He glanced towards his brother, who was talking to an acquaintance a few feet away.

“It has been a most melancholy occasion,” he admitted, his voice shaking with emotion. “Still, I felt it my duty to support my brother through the trial. Apart from that, you know, Mr. Quest, a scene such as we have just witnessed has a peculiar—I might almost say fascination for me,” the Professor continued, with a little glint in his eyes. “You, as a man of science, can realise, I am sure, that the criminal side of human nature is always of interest to an anthropologist.”

“That must be so, of course,” Quest agreed, glancing towards the automobile in which Lenora was seated. “If you’ll excuse me, Professor, I think I must be getting along. We shall meet again, I trust.”

“One moment,” the Professor begged eagerly. “Tell me, Mr. Quest—I want your honest opinion. What do you think of my ape?”

“Of your what?” Quest enquired dubiously.

“Of my anthropoid ape which I have just sent to the museum. You know my claim? But perhaps you would prefer to postpone your final decision until after you have examined the skeleton itself.”

A light broke in upon the criminologist.

“Of course!” he exclaimed. “For the moment, Professor, I couldn’t follow you. You are talking about the skeleton of the ape which you brought home from South America, and which you have presented to the museum here?”

“Naturally,” the Professor assented, with mild surprise. “To what else? I am stating my case, Mr. Quest, in the North American Review next month. I may tell you, however, as a fellow scientist, the great and absolute truth. My claim is incontestable. My skeleton will prove to the world, without a doubt, the absolute truth of Darwin’s great theory.”

“That so?”

“You must go and see it,” the Professor insisted, keeping by Quest’s side as the latter moved towards the automobile. “You must go and see it, Mr. Quest. It will be on view to the public next week, but in the meantime I will telephone to the curator. You must mention my name. You shall be permitted a special examination.”

“Very kind of you,” Quest murmured.

“We shall meet again soon, I hope,” the Professor concluded cordially. “Good morning, Mr. Quest!”

The two men shook hands, and Quest took his seat by Lenora’s side in the automobile. The Professor rejoined his brother.

“George,” he exclaimed, as they walked off together, “I am disappointed in Mr. Quest! I am very disappointed indeed. You will not believe what I am going to tell you, but it is the truth. He could not conceal it from me. He takes no interest whatever in my anthropoid ape.”

“Neither do I,” the other replied grimly.

The Professor sighed as he hailed a taxicab.

“You, my dear fellow,” he said gravely, “are naturally not in the frame of mind for the consideration of these great subjects. Besides, you have no scientific tendencies. But in Sanford Quest I am disappointed. I expected his enthusiasm—I may say that I counted upon it.”

“I don’t think that Quest has much of that quality to spare,” his brother remarked, “for anything outside his own criminal hunting.”

They entered the taxicab and were driven almost in silence to the Professor’s home—a large, rambling old house, situated in somewhat extensive but ill-kept grounds on the outskirts of New York. The Englishman glanced around him, as they passed up the drive, with an expression of disapproval.

“A more untidy-looking place than yours, Edgar, I never saw,” he declared. “Your grounds have become a jungle. Don’t you keep any gardeners?”

The Professor smiled.

“I keep other things,” he said serenely. “There is something in my garden which would terrify your nice Scotch gardeners into fits, if they found their way here to do a little tidying up. Come into the library and I’ll give you one of my choice cigars. Here’s Craig waiting to let us in. Any news, Craig?”

The man-servant in plain clothes who admitted them shook his head.

“Nothing has happened, sir,” he replied. “The telephone is ringing in the study now, though.”

“I will answer it myself,” the Professor declared, bustling off.

He hurried across the bare landing and into an apartment which seemed to be half museum, half library. There were skeletons leaning in unexpected corners, strange charts upon the walls, a wilderness of books and pamphlets in all manner of unexpected places, mingled with quaintly-carved curios, gods from West African temples, implements of savage warfare, butterfly nets. It was a room which Lord Ashleigh was never able to enter without a shudder.

The Professor took up the receiver from the telephone. His “Hello” was mild and enquiring. He had no doubt that the call was from some admiring disciple. The change in his face as he listened, however, was amazing. His lips began to twitch. An expression of horrified dismay overspread his features. His first reply was almost incoherent. He held the receiver away from him and turned towards his brother.

“George,” he gasped, “the greatest tragedy in the world has happened! My ape is stolen!”

His brother looked at him blankly.

“Your ape is stolen?” he repeated.

“The skeleton of my anthropoid ape,” the Professor continued, his voice growing alike in sadness and firmness. “It is the curator of the museum who is speaking. They have just opened the box. It has lain for two days in an anteroom. It is empty!”

Lord Ashleigh muttered something a little vague. The theft of a skeleton scarcely appeared to his unscientific mind to be a realisable thing. The Professor turned back to the telephone.

“Mr. Francis,” he said, “I cannot talk to you. I can say nothing. I shall come to you at once. I am on the point of starting. Your news has overwhelmed me.”

He laid down the receiver. He looked around him like a man in a nightmare.

“The taxicab is still waiting, sir,” Craig reminded him.

“That is most fortunate,” the Professor pronounced. “I remember now that I had no change with which to pay him. I must go back. Look after my brother. And, Craig, telephone at once to Mr. Sanford Quest. Ask him to meet me at the museum in twenty minutes. Tell him that nothing must stand in the way. Do you hear?”

The man hesitated. There was protest in his face.

“Mr. Sanford Quest, sir?” he muttered, as he followed his master down the hall.

“The great criminologist,” the Professor explained eagerly. “Certainly! Why do you hesitate?”

“I was wondering, sir,” Craig began.

The Professor waved his servant on one side.

“Do as you are told,” he ordered. “Do as you are told, Craig. You others—you do not realise. You cannot understand what this means. Tell the taxi man to drive to the museum. I am overcome.”

The taxicab man drove off, glad enough to have a return fare. In about half-an-hour’s time the Professor strode up the steps of the museum and hurried into the office. There was a little crowd of officials there whom the curator at once dismissed. He rose slowly to his feet. His manner was grave but bewildered.

“Professor,” he said, “we will waste no time in words. Look here.”

He threw open the door of an anteroom behind his office. The apartment was unfurnished except for one or two chairs. In the middle of the uncarpeted floor was a long wooden box from which the lid had just been pried.

“Yesterday, as you know from my note,” the curator proceeded, “I was away. I gave orders that your case should be placed here and I myself should enjoy the distinction of opening it. An hour ago I commenced the task. That is what I found.”

The Professor gazed blankly at the empty box.

“Nothing left except the smell,” a voice from the open doorway remarked.

They glanced around. Quest was standing there, and behind him Lenora. The Professor welcomed them eagerly.

“This is Mr. Quest, the great criminologist,” he explained to the curator. “Come in, Mr. Quest. Let me introduce you to Mr. Francis, the curator of the museum. Ask him what questions you will. Mr. Quest, you have the opportunity of earning the undying gratitude of a brother scientist. If my skeleton cannot be recovered, the work of years is undone.”

Quest strolled thoughtfully around the room, glancing out of each of the windows in turn. He kept close to the wall, and when he had finished he drew out a magnifying-glass from his pocket and made a brief examination of the box. Then he asked a few questions of the curator, pointed out one of the windows to Lenora and whispered a few directions to her. She at once produced what seemed to be a foot-rule from the bag which she was carrying, and hurried into the garden.

“A little invention of my own for measuring foot-prints,” Quest explained. “Not much use here, I am afraid.”

“What do you think of the affair so far, Mr. Quest?” the Professor asked eagerly.

The criminologist shook his head.

“Incomprehensible,” he confessed. “Can you think, by-the-bye, of any other motive for the theft besides scientific jealousy?”

“There could be no other,” the Professor declared sadly, “and it is, alas! too prevalent. I have had to suffer from it all my life.”

Quest stood over the box for a moment or two and looked once more out of the window. Presently Lenora returned. She carried in her hand a small object, which she brought silently to Quest. He glanced at it in perplexity. The Professor peered over his shoulder.

“It is the little finger!” he cried—“the little finger of my ape!”

Quest held it away from him critically.

“From which hand?” he asked.

“The right hand.”

Quest examined the fastenings of the window before which he had paused during his previous examination. He turned away with a shrug of the shoulders.

“See you later, Mr. Ashleigh,” he concluded laconically. “Nothing more to be done at present.”

The Professor followed him to the door.

“Mr. Quest,” he said, his voice broken with emotion, “it is the work of my lifetime of which I am being robbed. You will use your best efforts, you will spare no expense? I am rich. Your fee you shall name yourself.”

“I shall do my best,” Quest promised, “to find the skeleton. Come, Lenora. Good morning, gentlemen!”

With his new assistant, Quest walked slowly from the museum and turned towards his home.

“Make anything of this, Lenora?” he asked her.

She smiled.

“Of course not,” she answered. “It looks as though the skeleton had been taken away through that window.”

Quest nodded.

“Marvellous!” he murmured.

“You are making fun of me,” she protested.

“Not I! But you see, my young friend, the point is this. Who in their senses would want to steal an anthropoid skeleton except a scientific man, and if a scientific man stole it out of sheer jealousy, why in thunder couldn’t he be content with just mutilating it, which would have destroyed its value just as well—What’s that?”

He stopped short. A newsboy thrust the paper at them. Quest glanced at the headlines. Lenora clutched at his arm. Together they read in great black type—

ESCAPE OF CONVICTED PRISONER!

MACDOUGAL, ON HIS WAY TO PRISON,

GRAPPLES WITH SHERIFF AND JUMPS

FROM TRAIN! STILL AT LARGE

THOUGH SEARCHED FOR BY

POSSE OF POLICE