The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet: A Detective Story, Burton Egbert Stevenson [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

mostly, I suppose, since they are the things which need concealment most. Don't you wish this drawer could tell its secrets, Lester?"

"There is one I wish it would tell, if it knows it," I said. "I wish it would tell who killed Philip Vantine. I suppose you will agree with me that our pretty theory has got a knock-out blow, this time."

"It looks that way, doesn't it?"

"There is no poisoned mechanism about that drawer—that's sure," I added.

"No, and never has been," Godfrey agreed.

"And that leaves us all at sea, doesn't it? It leaves the whole affair more mysterious than ever. I can't understand it," and I sat down in my bewilderment and rubbed my head. I really felt for an instant as though I had gone mentally blind. "There is one thing sure," I added. "The killing, whatever its cause, was done out there in the ante-room, not in here."

"What makes you think that?"

"We believe that Drouet came here to get Vantine's permission to open this drawer and get the letters, no doubt representing himself as the agent of their owner."

"I think it's a pretty good guess," said Godfrey, pensively.

"Our theory was that, after being shown into the ante-room, he discovered the cabinet, tried to open the drawer, and was killed in the attempt. But it is evident enough now that there is nothing about that drawer to hurt any one."

"Yes, that's evident, I think," Godfrey agreed.

"If he had opened the drawer, then, he would have taken the letters, since there was nothing to prevent him. Since they were not taken, it follows, doesn't it, that he was killed before he had a chance at the drawer? Perhaps he never saw the cabinet. He must have been killed out there in the ante-room, a few minutes after Parks left."

"And how about Vantine?" Godfrey asked.

"I don't know," I said, helplessly. "He didn't want the letters—if he opened the drawer at all, it was merely out of curiosity to see how it worked. Only, of course, the same agency that killed Drouet, killed him. Yes—and now that I think of it, it's certain he didn't open the drawer, either."

"How do you know it's certain?"

"If he had opened the drawer," I pointed out, "and been killed in the act of opening it, it would have been found open. I had thought that perhaps it closed of itself, but you see that it does not. You have to push it shut, and then snap the handle up into place."

"That's true," Godfrey assented, "and it sounds pretty conclusive. If it is true of Vantine, it is also true of Drouet. The inference is, then, that neither of them opened the drawer. Well, what follows?"

"I don't know," I said helplessly. "Nothing seems to follow."

"There is an alternative," Godfrey suggested.

"What is it?" I demanded.

"The hand that killed Drouet and Vantine may also have closed the drawer," said Godfrey, and looked at me.

"And left the letters in it?" I questioned. "Surely not!"

He glanced at the shuttered window, and I understood to whom he thought that hand belonged.

"Besides," I protested, "how would he get in? How would he get away?
What was he after, if he left the letters behind?" Then I rose
wearily. "I must be getting back to the office," I said. "This is
Saturday, and we close at two. Are you coming?"

"No," he answered; "if you don't mind, I'll sit here a while longer and think things over, Lester. Perhaps I'll blunder on to the truth yet!"

CHAPTER XVII ENTER M. ARMAND

I got back to the office to find that M. Félix Armand, of Armand et Fils, had called, and, finding me out, had left his card with the pencilled memorandum that he would call again Monday morning. There was another caller, who had awaited my return—a tall, angular man, with a long moustache, who introduced himself as Simon W. Morgan, of Osage City, Iowa.

"Poor Philip Vantine's nearest living relative, sir," he added. "I came as soon as possible."

"It was very good of you," I said. "The funeral will be at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, from the house."

"You had a telegram from me?"

"Yes," I answered.

He hitched about in his chair uneasily for a moment. I knew what he wanted to say, but saw no reason to help him.

"He left a will, I suppose?" he asked, at last.

"Oh, yes; we have arranged to probate it Monday. You can examine it then, if you wish."

"Have you examined it?"

"I am familiar with its provisions. It was drawn here in the office."

He was pulling furiously at his moustache.

"Cousin Philip was a very wealthy man, I understand," he managed to say.

"Comparatively wealthy. He had securities worth about a million and a quarter, besides a number of pieces of real property—and, of course, the house he lived in. He owned a very valuable collection of art objects—pictures, furniture, tapestries, and such things; but what they are worth will probably never be known."

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because he left them all to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Outside of a few legacies to old servants, he left his whole fortune to the same institution."

I put it rather brutally, no doubt, but I was anxious to end the interview.

Mr. Morgan's face grew very red.

"He did!" he ejaculated. "Ha—well, I have heard he was rather crazy."

"He was as sane as any man I ever knew," I retorted drily. And then I remembered the doubts which had assailed me that last day, when Vantine was fingering the Boule cabinet. But I kept those doubts to myself.

"Ha—we'll have to see about that!" said my visitor, threateningly.

"By all means, Mr. Morgan," I assented heartily. "If you have any doubt about it, you should certainly look into it. And now, if you will pardon me, I have many things to do, and we close early to-day."

He got to his feet and went slowly out; and that was the last I ever saw of him. I suppose he consulted an attorney, learned the hopeless nature of his case, and took the first train back to Osage City. He did not even wait for the funeral.

Few people, indeed, put themselves out for it. There was a sprinkling of old family friends, representatives of the museum and of various charities in which Vantine had been interested, a few friends of his own, and that was all. He had dropped out of the world with scarcely a ripple; of all who had known him, I dare say Parks felt his departure most. For Vantine had been, in a sense, a solitary man; not many men nodded oftener during a walk up the Avenue, and yet not many dined oftener alone; for there was about him a certain self-detachment which discouraged intimacy. He was a man, like many another, with acquaintances in every country on the globe, and friends in none.

All this I thought over a little sadly, as I sat at home that night; and not without some self-questioning as to my own place in the world. Most of us, I think, are a little saddened when we realise our unimportance; most of us, no doubt, would be a little shocked could we return a day or two after our death and see how merrily the world wags on! I would be missed, I knew, scarcely more than Vantine. It was not a pleasant thought, for it seemed to argue some deficiency in myself.

Then, too, the mystery of Vantine's death had a depressing effect upon me. So long as there seemed some theory to build on, so long as there was a ray of light ahead, I had hoped that the tragedy would be explained and expiated; but now my theory had crumbled to pieces; I was left in utter darkness, from which there seemed no way out. Never before, in the face of any mystery, had I felt so blind and helpless, and the feeling took such a grip upon me that it kept me awake for a long time after I got to bed. It seemed, in some mysterious way, that I was contending with a power greater than myself, a power threatening and awful, which could crush me with a turn of the wrist.

Vantine's will was probated next morning. He had directed that his collection of art objects be removed to the museum, and that the house and such portion of its contents as the museum did not care for be sold for the museum's benefit. I had already notified Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke of the terms of the will, and the museum's attorney was present when it was read. He stated that he had been requested to ask me to remain in charge of things for a week or two, until arrangements for the removal could be made. It would also be necessary to make an inventory of Vantine's collection, and the assistant director of the museum was to get this under way at once.

I acquiesced in all these arrangements, but I was feeling decidedly blue when I started back to the office. Vantine's collection had always seemed to me somehow a part of himself; more especially a part of the house in which it had been assembled. It would lose much of its beauty and significance ticketed and arranged stiffly along the walls of the museum, and the thought came to me that it would be a splendid thing for New York if this old house and its contents could be kept intact as an object lesson to the nervous and hurrying younger generation of the easier and more finished manner of life of the older one; something after the fashion that the beautiful old Plantin-Moretus mansion at Antwerp is a rebuke to those present-day publishers who reckon literature a commodity, along with soap and cheese.

That, of course, it would be impossible to do; the last barrier to the commercial invasion of the Avenue would be removed; that heroic rear-guard of the old order of things would be destroyed; in a year or two, a monster of steel and stone would rise on the spot where three generations of Vantines had lived their lives; and the collection, so unified and coherent, to which the last Vantine had devoted his life, would be merged and lost in the vast collections of the museum. It was a sad ending.

"Gentleman to see you, sir," said the office-boy, as I sat down at my desk, and a moment later, M. Félix Armand was shown in to me.

I have only to close my eyes to call again before me that striking personality, for Felix Armand was one of the most extraordinary men I ever had the pleasure of meeting. Ruddy-faced, bright-eyed, with dark full beard and waving hair almost jet black—hair that crinkled about his ears in a way that I can describe by no other word than fascinating—he gave the impression of tremendous strength and virility. There was about him, too, an air of culture not to be mistaken; the air of a man who had travelled much, seen much, and mixed with many people, high and low; the air of a man at home anywhere, in any society. It is impossible for me, by mere words, to convey any adequate idea of his vivid personality; but I confess that, from the first moment, I was both impressed and charmed by him. And I am still impressed; more, perhaps, than at first, now that I know the whole story—but you shall hear.

"I speak English very badly, sir," he said, as he sat down. "If you speak French…."

"Not half so well as you speak English," I laughed. "I can tell that from your first sentence."

"In that event, I will do the best that I can," he said, smiling, "and you must pardon my blunders. First, Mr. Lester, on behalf of Armand et Fils, I must ask your pardon for this mistake, so inexcusable."

"It was a mistake, then?" I asked.

"One most embarrassing to us. We can not find for it an explanation. Believe me, Mr. Lester, it is not our habit to make mistakes; we have a reputation of which we are very proud; but the cabinet which was purchased by Mr. Vantine remained in our warehouse, and this other one was boxed and shipped to him. We are investigating most rigidly."

"Then Mr. Vantine's cabinet is still in Paris?"

"No, Mr. Lester; the error was discovered some days ago and the cabinet belonging to Mr. Vantine was shipped to