Part 2

“My good sir, I am his executor. It’s my duty to take charge of his papers.”

“Quite, quite. Well, they’re all safe, you know. His death must have been a great shock to you, Colonel.”

“Shock, sir? A blow, a blow. Poor dear Arthur!”

“Yes, too bad,” Lomas mourned: and voice and face were all kindly innocence as he babbled on: “I suppose you heard about it from his son?”

Colonel Osbert paused to clear his throat. Colonel Osbert stopped that one. “Major Dean? No, sir. No. Point of fact, I don’t know who the fellow was. Some fellow called me up on the ’phone and told me poor dear Arthur had fallen down dead on the course. Upon my soul, I was knocked over, absolutely knocked over. When I came to myself I rushed round to secure his papers.”

“Why, did you think somebody would be after them?”

“My dear sir!” Colonel Osbert protested. “Really, now really. It was my duty. Arthur was always very strict with his papers. I thought of his wishes.”

“Quite, quite,” Lomas purred, and artless as ever he went on: “Mrs. Dean was round at the flat too.”

“God bless my soul!” said Colonel Osbert.

“I wonder if you could tell me: is there anyone who would have an interest in getting hold of his papers?”

Colonel Osbert again cleared his throat. “I can tell you this, sir. I don’t understand the position of Mrs. Dean and her husband. And I shall be glad, I don’t mind owning, I shall be very glad to have poor dear Arthur’s papers in my hands.”

“Ah, thank you so much,” said Lomas, and with bland adroitness got Colonel Osbert outside the door.

“He’s not such a fool as he looks,” Reggie murmured. “But there’s better brains in it than his, Lomas old thing. A bad business, quite a bad business.”

And then a clerk came in. Lomas read the letter he brought and said: “Good Gad! You’re an offensive person, Fortune. Why did you tell me to go to the Foreign Office? Here is the Foreign Office. Now we shall be in the affair for life. The Foreign Office wants me to see His Excellency Mustapha Firouz.”

“Accompanied by Sindbad the Sailor and Chu Chin Chow?” said Reggie. “Who is he?”

“Oh, he’s quite real. He’s the Median Minister. He--Why what is it now?” The question was to the clerk, who had come back with a card.

“Says he’s anxious to see you immediately, sir. It’s very urgent, and he won’t keep you long.”

“Major Dean,” Lomas read, and lifted an eyebrow.

“Oh rather. Let ’em all come,” said Reggie.

It was Major Dean, and Major Dean ill at ease. He had a difficulty in beginning. He discovered Reggie. “Hallo! I say, can you tell me anything?” he blurted out.

“I can’t,” said Reggie sharply. “I don’t know why your father died,” and Major Dean winced.

“I thought you had something to tell us, Major,” Lomas said.

“Do you believe he was murdered? I’ve a right to ask that.”

“But it’s a very grave suggestion,” Lomas purred. “Do you know of anyone who had a motive for killing your father?”

“It’s this filthy mystery,” the Major cried. “If he was murdered, I suppose he was poisoned. But how?”

“Or why?” said Reggie.

The Major fidgeted. “I dare say he knew too much,” he said. “You know he was the adviser to the Median Government. He had some pretty serious stuff through his hands. I don’t know what. He was always great on official secrecy. But I know he thought it was pretty damning for some one.”

“Ah, thanks very much,” Lomas said.

But the Major seemed unable to go.

“I mean to say, make sure you have all his papers and stick to ’em.”

Lomas and Reggie studied him. “I wonder why you say that?” Lomas asked. “The papers would naturally pass to Colonel Osbert.”

“I know. Osbert was the guv’nor’s best pal, worse luck. I wouldn’t trust him round the corner. That’s what I mean. Now I’ve done it, I suppose”; he gave a grim chuckle. “It is done, anyway”; and he was in a hurry to go.

Reggie stood up and stretched himself. “This is pretty thick,” said he, “and we’ve got His Excellency the Pasha of Nine Tales on the doorstep.”

Into the room was brought a man who made them feel short, a towering man draped in folds of white. Above that flowing raiment rose a majestic head, a head finely proportioned, framed in hair and beard of black strewn with grey. The face was aquiline and bold, but of a singular calm, and the dark eyes were veiled in thought. He bowed to each man twice, sat down and composed his robe about him, and it was long before he spoke. “I thank you for your great courtesy”: each word came alone as if it was hard to him. “I have this to say. He who is gone he was the friend of my people. To him we turned always and he did not fail. In him we had our trust. Now, sir, I must tell you we have our enemies, who are also, as it seems to us, your enemies. Those whom you call the Turks, they would do evil to us which would be evil to you. Of this we had writings in their hands and the hands of those they use. These I gave to him who is gone that he should tell us what we should do. For your ways are not our ways nor your law our law. Now he is gone, and I am troubled lest those papers fall again into the hands of the Turks.”

“Who is it that Your Excellency fears? Can you tell me of any man?” Lomas said.

“I know of none here. For the Turks are not here in the open and this is a great land of many people. Yet in all lands all things can be bought at a price. Even life and death. This only I say. If our papers go to your King and the Ministers of your King it is well and very well. If they are rendered to me that also may be well. But if they go I know not where, I say this is not just.”

“I can promise Your Excellency they will go before the Foreign Office.”

The Median stood up and bowed. “In England I never seek justice in vain,” he said.

And when he was gone, “Good Gad, how little he knows,” said Lomas. “Well, Fortune?” but Reggie only lit a cigar and curled himself up on the sofa. “What I like about you is that you never say I told you so. But you did. It is a Foreign Office touch,” and still Reggie silently smoked. “Why, the thing’s clear enough, isn’t it?”

“Clear?” said Reggie. “Oh Peter! Clear?”

“Well, Sir Arthur had in his hands papers damaging to these blood-and-thunder Young Turks. It occurred to them that if he could die suddenly they might arrange to get the papers into their hands. So Sir Arthur is murdered, and either Osbert the executor or Major Dean the son is bribed to hand over the papers.”

“In the words of the late Tennyson,” said Reggie,

“And if it is so, so it is, you know;

And if it be so, so be it.

But it’s not interesting, Lomas old thing.”

“It would be interesting to hear you find a flaw in it,” said Lomas.

Reggie shook his head. “Nary flaw.”

“For my part,” said Lomas with some heat, “I prefer to understand why a crime was committed. I find it useful. But I am only a policeman.”

“And so say all of us.” Reggie sat up. “Then why talk like a politician? Who did it and how are we going to do him in? That’s our little job.”

“Whoever it was, we’ve bilked him,” said Lomas. “He has got nothing for his pains. The papers will go before the Foreign Office and then back to the Median Legation. A futile crime. I find a good deal of satisfaction in that.”

“You’re easy pleased then.” Reggie’s amiability was passing away. “A futile crime: thanks to the active and intelligent police force. But damn it, the man was murdered.”

“My dear Fortune, can I help it? It’s not the first and it won’t be the last murder in which there is no evidence. You’re pleased to be bitter about it. But you can’t even tell me how the man was murdered. A poison unknown to the twentieth-century expert. No doubt that annoys you. But you needn’t turn and rend me. There is also one more murderer unknown to the twentieth-century policeman. But I can’t make evidence any more than you. We suspect either Osbert or Major Dean had a hand in it. But we don’t know which and we don’t know that either was the murderer. If we could prove that they were mixed up with the Young Turks, if we knew the man they dealt with we should have no case against them. Why, if we could find some Young Turk hireling was in the Royal Enclosure we should have no proof he was the murderer. We couldn’t have,” Lomas shrugged. “Humanly speaking, it’s a case in which there can be no conviction.”

“My only aunt, don’t I know that?” Reggie cried. “And do you remember what the old Caliph said, ‘In England I never seek justice in vain’? Well, that stings, Lomas--humanly speaking.”

“Great heavens, what am I to do? What do you want to do?”

Reggie Fortune looked at him. The benign face of Reggie Fortune was set in hard lines. “There’s something about the voice of a brother’s blood crying from the ground,” he said slowly.

“My dear fellow! Oh, my dear fellow, if you are going to preach,” Lomas protested.

“I’m not. I’m going to tea,” said Reggie Fortune. “Elise has got the trick of some new cakes. They’re somewhat genial.”

They did not meet again till the inquest.

It was horribly hot in court. The newspaper reporters of themselves would have filled, if given adequate space, a larger room. They sat in each other’s pockets and thus yielded places to the general public, represented by a motley collection of those whom the coroner’s officer permitted himself to call Nosey Parkers: frocks which might have come out of a revue chorus beside frocks which would well become a charwoman. And the Hon. Sidney Lomas murmured in the ear of his henchman Superintendent Bell, “I see several people who ought to be hanged, Bell, but no one who will give us the chance.”

Mr. Reginald Fortune, that eminent surgeon, pathologist and what not, called to the witness-box, was languid and visibly bored with the whole affair. He surveyed the court in one weary, dreamy glance and gazed at the coroner as if seeking, but without hope, some reason for his unpleasant existence. Yes, he had seen Sir Arthur immediately after death. He had formed the opinion that Sir Arthur died of asphyxia and heart failure. Yes, heart failure and asphyxia. He was, however, surprised.

From the reporters’ table there was a general look of hungry interest. But one young gentleman who had grown fat in the service of crime breathed heavily in his neighbour’s ear: “Nothing doing: I know old Fortune. This is a wash-out.”

Mr. Fortune had lost interest in his own evidence. He was looking sleepily round the court. The coroner had to recall his wandering mind. “You were surprised, Mr. Fortune?”

“Oh, ah. Well, I couldn’t explain the suddenness of the attack, the symptoms and so forth. So with the assistance of Dr. Harvey I made a further examination. We went into the matter with care and used every known test. There is no evidence to be found that any other factor was present than the natural causes of death.”

“But that does not explain the sudden failure of the heart.”

“I don’t explain it,” said Reggie. “I can’t.”

“Medicine,” said the coroner sagely, “still has its mysteries. We must remember, gentlemen, that Sir Arthur had already completed our allotted span, the Psalmist’s threescore years and ten. I am much obliged to you, Mr. Fortune.”

And after that, as the fat young gentleman complained, there was nothing in it. The jury found that Sir Arthur’s death was from natural causes and that they sympathized with the family. So much for the Ascot mystery. There remains the sequel.

When the court broke up and sought, panting, the open air, “He is neat, sir, isn’t he?” said Lomas’s henchman, Superintendent Bell. “Very adroit, is Mr. Fortune. That couldn’t have been much better done.” And Lomas smiled. It was in each man’s simple heart that the Criminal Investigation Department was well rid of a bad business. They sought Reggie to give him lunch.

But Reggie was already outside; Reggie was strolling, as one for whom time has no meaning, towards the station. He was caught up by the plump young reporter, who would like you to call him a crime specialist. “Well, Mr. Fortune,” he said in his ingratiating way, “good morning. How are you, sir? I say, you have put it across us in the Dean case.”

The crime specialist then had opportunities for psychological study as Mr. Fortune’s expression performed a series of quick changes. But it settled down into bland and amiable surprise. “My dear fellow,” said Mr. Fortune, “how are you? But what’s the trouble? There’s nothing in the Dean case, never was.”

“No, that’s just it. And we were all out for a first-class crime story. After all the talk there’s been, natural causes is pretty paltry.”

Reggie laughed. “Sorry, sorry. We can’t make crimes for you. But why did you talk? There was nothing to talk about.”

“I say, you know, that’s a bit thick,” the crime specialist protested.

“My dear chap,” said Reggie modestly, “if the doctor on the spot hadn’t happened to be me, you would never have thought of the case. Nothing else in it.”

“Oh, well, come now, Mr. Fortune! I mean to say--what about the C.I.D. holding up all the old man’s papers and turning down his executor?”

Reggie was not surprised, he was bewildered. “Say it again slowly and distinctly,” he entreated, and when that was done he was as one who tries not to laugh. “And very nice too. My dear fellow, what more do you want? There’s a story for you.”

“Well, it’s never been officially denied,” said the young man.

“Fancy that!” Reggie chuckled.

“But between ourselves, Mr. Fortune----”

“It’s a great story,” Reggie chuckled. “But really--Well, I ask you!” and he slid away.

In the hotel lounge he found Bell and Lomas and cocktails. “Pleasure before business, as ever,” he reproached them, and ordered one for himself.

“And what have you been doing, then?” Lomas asked.

“I have been consoling the Fourth Estate. That great institution the Press, Mr. Lomas, sir. Through one of Gilligan’s young lions. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings----”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk to reporters,” Lomas complained.

“You’re so haughty. By the way, what was Ludlow Blenkinhorn doing here?” He referred to a solicitor of more ability than standing. “Osbert was here and his solicitor, the young Deans and their solicitor. Who was old Blenkinhorn representing?”

Bell and Lomas looked at each other. “Didn’t see the fellow,” said Lomas.

“Mr. Fortune’s quite right, sir. Blenkinhorn was standing with the public. And that’s odd, too.”

“Highly odd. Lomas, my dear old thing, I wish you’d watch Blenkinhorn’s office and Osbert’s flat for any chaps who look a bit exotic, a bit foreign--and follow him up if you find one.”

Lomas groaned. “Surely we’ve done with the case.”

“Ye-es. But there’s some fellow who hasn’t. And he has a pretty taste in poisons. And he’s still wanting papers.”

“We’ve nothing to act on, you know,” Lomas protested.

“Oh, not a thing, not a thing. But he might have.” Lomas nodded and Superintendent Bell went to the telephone.

When Mr. Fortune read “The Daily Post” in the morning he smiled upon his devilled kidneys. Its report of the inquest was begun with a little pompous descriptive work. “The mystery of the Ascot Tragedy was solved yesterday. In the cold sanity of the coroner’s court the excitement of the last few days received its quietus. Two minutes of scientific evidence from Mr. Fortune--” and so on until young omniscience worked up to its private little scoop. “The melodramatic rumours of sensational developments in the case have thus only availed to expose the fatuity of their inventors.” (This was meant for some rival papers.) “It may now be stated bluntly that nothing in the case ever gave rise to speculation among well-informed people, and that the stories of impounding documents and so forth have no foundation in fact.”

But about lunch time Mr. Fortune received a curt summons from the Hon. Sidney Lomas and instantly obeyed it. “Well, you know, I thought I should be hearing from you,” he smiled. “I felt, as it were, you couldn’t live without me long.”

“Did you, by Jove!” said Lomas bitterly. “I’ve been wishing all the morning you had been dead some time. Look at that!” He tossed across the table a marked copy of “The Daily Post.”

“Yes, I was enjoying that at breakfast. A noble institution, the British Press, Lomas. A great power. If you know how to use it.”

“I wish to God you wouldn’t spoof reporters. It’s a low taste. And it’s a damned nuisance. I can’t contradict the rag and----”

“No, you can’t contradict it. I banked on that,” Reggie chuckled.

“Did you indeed? And pray what the devil are you at? I have had Osbert here raving mad----”

“Yes, I thought it would stir up Osbert. What’s his line?”

“Wants the papers, of course. And as you very well know, confound you, they’re all at the Foreign Office, the cream of them, and likely to be. He says we’ve no right to keep them after this. Nonsense, of course, but devilish inconvenient to answer. And at last the old man was quite pathetic, says it isn’t fair to him to give out we haven’t touched the papers. No more it is. He was begging me to contradict it officially. I could hardly get rid of him.”

“Busy times for Lomas.”

“Damme, I have been at it all the morning. Old Ludlow Blenkinhorn turned up, too.”

“I have clicked, haven’t I?” Reggie chuckled.

“Confound you. He says he has a client with claims on the estate and is informed by the executor that all papers have been taken by us. Now he has read your damned article and he wants to know if the executor is lying.”

“That is a conundrum, isn’t it? And who is Mr. Ludlow Blenkinhorn’s client?”

“He didn’t say, of course.”

“What a surprise. And your fellows watching his office, do they say?”

Lomas took up a scrap of paper. “They have sent us something. A man of foreign or mulatto appearance called on him first thing this morning. Was followed to a Bayswater lodging-house. Is known there as Sherif. Mr. A. Sherif. Thought to be an Egyptian.”

“The negro or Hamitic heel!” Reggie murmured. “Do you remember, Lomas old thing?”

“Good Gad!” Lomas dropped his eyeglass. “But what the devil can we do?”

“Watch and pray,” said Reggie. “Your fellows watch Sherif and Blenkinhorn and Osbert and you pray. Do you pray much, Lomas?”

They went in fact to lunch. They were not long back when a detective speaking over the telephone reported that a man of mulatto appearance had called on Colonel Osbert. Reggie sprang up. “Come on, Lomas. We’ll have them in the act and bluff the whole thing out of them.”

“What act?”

“Collusion. This Egyptian-Syrian-negroid-Young Turk and the respectable executor. Come on, man.”

In five minutes they were mounting to Colonel Osbert’s flat. His servant could not say whether Colonel Osbert was at home. Lomas produced his card. “Colonel Osbert will see me,” he announced, and fixed the man with a glassy stare.

“Well, sir, I beg pardon, sir. There’s a gentleman with him.”

“At once,” said Lomas and walked into the hall.

The man still hesitated. From one of the rooms could be heard voices in some excitement. Lomas and Reggie made for that door. But as they approached there was a cry, a horrible shrill cry, and the sound of a scuffle. Reggie sprang forward. Some one rushed out of the room and Reggie, the smaller man, went down before him. Lomas clutched at him and was kicked in the stomach. The fellow was off. Reggie picked himself out of the hatstand and ran after him. Lomas, in a heap, gasping and hiccoughing, fumbled in his pocket. “B-b-blow,” he stammered to the stupefied servant, and held out a whistle. “Like hell. Blow!”

A long peal sounded through the block of flats.

Down below a solid man strolled out of the porter’s lodge just as a gentleman of dark complexion and large feet was hurrying through the door. The solid man put out a leg. Another solid man outside received the gentleman on his bosom. They had then some strenuous moments. By the time Reggie reached them three hats were on the ground, but a pair of handcuffs clasped the coffee-coloured wrists.

“His pockets,” Reggie panted, “his waistcoat pockets.”

The captive said something which no one understood, and struggled. One of the detectives held out a small white-metal case. Reggie took from it a hypodermic syringe. “I didn’t think you were so up-to-date,” said Reggie. “What did you put in it? Well, well, I suppose you won’t tell me. Take him away.”

He went back to find Lomas and the servant looking at Colonel Osbert. Colonel Osbert lay on the floor. There was froth at his lips and on his wrist a spot of blood. Reggie knelt down beside him. . . .

“Too late?” Lomas said hoarsely.

Reggie rose. “Well, you can put it that way,” he said. “It’s the end.”

In Lomas’s room Reggie spread himself on a sofa and watched Lomas drink whisky and soda. “A ghastly business,” Lomas said: he was still pale and unsteady. “That creature is a wild beast.”

“He’ll go where he belongs,” said Reggie, who was eating bread and butter. “All according to plan.”

“Plan? My God, the man runs amuck!”

“Oh, no, no, no. He wanted those papers for his employers. He contracted with Osbert to hand them over when Dean was dead. He murdered Dean and Osbert couldn’t deliver the goods. So I told him through the papers that Osbert had them. He thought Osbert was bilking him and went to have it out with him. Osbert didn’t satisfy him, he was sure he had been done and he made Osbert pay for it. All according to plan.”

Lomas set down his glass. “Fortune,” he said nervously, “Fortune--do you mean--when you put that in the paper--you meant the thing to end like this?”

“Well, what are we here for?” said Reggie. “But you know you’re forgetting the real interest of the case.”

“Am I?” said Lomas weakly.

“Yes. What is his poison?”

“Oh, good Gad,” said Lomas.

CASE II

THE PRESIDENT OF SAN JACINTO

MR. REGINALD FORTUNE lay in a long chair. On his right hand a precipice fell to still black water. On his left the mountains rose into a tiara of snow. Far away in front sunlight found the green flood of a glacier. But Mr. Fortune saw none of these things. He was eating strawberries and cream.

The Hon. Sidney Lomas, Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, disguised as a bloodthirsty fisherman, arrived stiffly but happy, and behind him a large Norwegian bore the corpses of two salmon into the farm-house. “The lord high detective,” Reggie murmured. “An allegorical picture, by the late Mr. Watts.”

“Great days,” Lomas said, and let himself down gingerly into a chair. “Hallo, has there been a post?” He reached for one of the papers at Reggie’s feet. “My country, what of thee?”

“They’re at it again, Lomas. They’ve murdered a real live lord.”

“Thank heaven I’m not there. Who is it?”

“One Carwell. In the wilds of the Midlands.”

“Young Carwell? He’s a blameless youth to slay. What happened?”

“They found him in his library with his head smashed. Queer case.”

Lomas read the report, which had nothing more to tell. “Burglary, I suppose,” he pronounced.

“Well, I have an alibi,” said Reggie.

Neither the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department nor his scientific adviser saw any reason to end a good holiday for the sake of avenging Lord Carwell. The policemen who dealt with the affair did not call for help. Mr. Fortune and Mr. Lomas continued to catch the salmon and eat the strawberries of Norway and let the world go by and became happily out of date. It was not till they were on the North Sea that they met the Carwell case again.

The Newcastle packet was rolling in a slow, heavy rhythm. Most of the passengers had succumbed. Lomas and Reggie fitted themselves and two chairs into a corner of the upper deck with all the London newspapers that were waiting for them at Bergen. Lomas, a methodical man, began at the beginning. Reggie worked back from the end. And in a moment, “My only aunt!” he said softly. “Lomas, old thing, they’re doing themselves proud. Who do you think they’ve taken for that Carwell murder? The cousin, the heir, one Mark Carwell. This is highly intriguing.”

“Good Gad!”