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

for me."

"Perhaps the owner won't sell," I suggested.

"Oh yes, he will. Anything can be bought—for a price."

"You mean you're going to have this cabinet, whatever the cost?"

"I mean just that."

"But, surely, there's a limit."

"No, there isn't."

"At least you'll tell me where to begin," I said. "I don't know anything of the value of such things."

"Well," said Vantine, "suppose you begin at ten thousand francs. We mustn't seem too eager. It's because I'm so eager, I want you to carry it through for me. I can't trust myself."

"And the other end?"

"There isn't any other end. Of course, strictly speaking, there is, because my money isn't unlimited; but I don't believe you will have to go over five hundred thousand francs."

I gasped.

"You mean you're willing to give a hundred thousand dollars for this cabinet?"

Vantine nodded.

"Maybe a little more. If the owner won't accept that, you must let me know before you break off negotiations. I'm a little mad about it, I fancy—all collectors are a little mad. But I want that cabinet, and I'm going to have it."

I did not reply. I only looked at him. And he laughed as he caught my glance.

"I can see you share that opinion, Lester," he said. "You fear for me. I don't blame you—but come and see it."

He led the way out of the room and down the stairs; but when we reached the lower hall, he paused.

"Perhaps I'd better see my visitor first," he said. "You'll find a new picture or two over there in the music-room—I'll be with you in a minute."

I started on, and he turned through a doorway at the left.

An instant later, I heard a sharp exclamation; then his voice calling me.

"Lester! Come here!" he cried.

I ran back along the hall, into the room which he had entered. He was standing just inside the door.

"Look there," he said, with a queer catch in his voice, and pointed with a trembling hand to a dark object on the floor.

I moved aside to see it better. Then my heart gave a sickening throb; for the object on the floor was the body of a man.

CHAPTER II THE FIRST TRAGEDY

It needed but a glance to tell me that the man was dead. There could be no life in that livid face, in those glassy eyes.

"Don't touch him," I said, for Vantine had started forward. "It's too late."

I drew him back, and we stood for a moment shaken as one always is by sudden and unexpected contact with death.

"Who is he?" I asked, at last.

"I don't know," answered Vantine hoarsely. "I never saw him before." Then he strode to the bell and rang it violently. "Parks," he went on sternly, as that worthy appeared at the door, "what has been going on in here?"

"Going on, sir?" repeated Parks, with a look of amazement, not only at the words, but at the tone in which they were uttered. "I'm sure I don't know what—"

Then his glance fell upon the huddled body, and he stopped short, his eyes staring, his mouth open.

"Well," said his master, sharply. "Who is he? What is he doing here?"

"Why—why," stammered Parks, thickly, "that's the man who was waiting to see you, sir."

"You mean he has been killed in this house?" demanded Vantine.

"He was certainly alive when he came in, sir," said Parks, recovering something of his self-possession. "Maybe he was just looking for a quiet place where he could kill himself. He seemed kind of excited."

"Of course," agreed Vantine, with a sigh of relief, "that's the explanation. Only I wish he had chosen some place else. I suppose we shall have to call the police, Lester?"

"Yes," I said, "and the coroner. Suppose you leave it to me. We'll lock up this room, and nobody must leave the house until the police arrive."

"Very well," assented Vantine, visibly relieved, "I'll see to that," and he hastened away, while I went to the 'phone, called up police headquarters, and told briefly what had happened.

Twenty minutes later, there was a ring at the bell, and Parks opened the door and admitted four men.

"Why, hello, Simmonds," I said, recognising in the first one the detective-sergeant who had assisted in clearing up the Marathon mystery. And back of him was Coroner Goldberger, whom I had met in two previous cases; while the third countenance, looking at me with a quizzical smile, was that of Jim Godfrey, the Record's star reporter. The fourth man was a policeman in uniform, who, at a word from Simmonds, took his station at the door.

"Yes," said Godfrey, as we shook hands, "I happened to be talking to Simmonds when the call came in, and I thought I might as well come along. What is it?"

"Just a suicide, I think," and I unlocked the door into the room where the dead man lay.

Simmonds, Goldberger and Godfrey stepped inside. I followed and closed the door.

"Nothing has been disturbed," I said. "No one has touched the body."

Simmonds nodded, and glanced inquiringly about the room; but Godfrey's eyes, I noticed, were on the face of the dead man. Goldberger dropped to his knees beside the body, looked into the eyes and touched his fingers to the left wrist. Then he stood erect again and looked down at the body, and as I followed his gaze, I noted its attitude more accurately than I had done in the first shock of discovering it.

It was lying on its right side, half on its stomach, with its right arm doubled under it, and its left hand clutching at the floor above its head. The knees were drawn up as though in a convulsion, and the face was horribly contorted, with a sort of purple tinge under the skin, as though the blood had been suddenly congealed. The eyes were wide open, and their glassy stare added not a little to the apparent terror and suffering of the face. It was not a pleasant sight, and after a moment, I turned my eyes away with a shiver of repugnance.

The coroner glanced at Simmonds.

"Not much question as to the cause," he said. "Poison of course."

"Of course," nodded Simmonds.

"But what kind?" asked Godfrey.

"It will take a post-mortem to tell that," and Goldberger bent for another close look at the distorted face. "I'm free to admit the symptoms aren't the usual ones."

Godfrey shrugged his shoulders.

"I should say not," he agreed, and turned away to an inspection of the room.

"What can you tell us about it, Mr. Lester?" Goldberger questioned.

I told all I knew—how Parks had announced a man's arrival, how Vantine and I had come downstairs together, how Vantine had called me, and finally how Parks had identified the body as that of the strange caller.

"Have you any theory about it?" Goldberger asked.

"Only that the call was merely a pretext—that what the man was really looking for was a place where he could kill himself unobserved."

"How long a time elapsed after Parks announced the man before you and
Mr. Vantine came downstairs?"

"Half an hour, perhaps."

Goldberger nodded.

"Let's have Parks in," he said.

I opened the door and called to Parks, who was sitting on the bottom step of the stair.

Goldberger looked him over carefully as he stepped into the room; but there could be no two opinions about Parks. He had been with Vantine for eight or ten years, and the earmarks of the competent and faithful servant were apparent all over him.

"Do you know this man?" Goldberger asked, with a gesture toward the body.

"No, sir," said Parks. "I never saw him till about an hour ago, when
Rogers called me downstairs and said there was a man to see Mr.
Vantine."

"Who is Rogers?"

"He's the footman, sir. He answered the door when the man rang."

"Well, and then what happened?"

"I took his card up to Mr. Vantine, sir."

"Did Mr. Vantine know him?"

"No, sir; he wanted to know what he wanted."

"What did he want?"

"I don't know, sir; he couldn't speak English hardly at all—he was
French, I think."

Goldberger looked down at the body again and nodded.

"Go ahead," he said.

"And he was so excited," Parks added, "that he couldn't remember what little English he did know."

"What made you think he was excited?"

"The way he stuttered, and the way his eyes glinted. That's what makes me think he just come in here to kill hisself quiet like—I shouldn't be surprised if you found that he'd escaped from somewhere. I had a notion to put him out without bothering Mr. Vantine—I wish now I had—but I took his card up, and Mr. Vantine said for him to wait; so I come downstairs again, and showed the man in here, and said Mr. Vantine would see him presently, and then Rogers and me went back to our lunch and we sat there eating till the bell rang, and I came in and found Mr. Vantine here."

"Do you mean to say that you and Rogers went away and left this stranger here by himself?"

"The servants' dining-room is right at the end of the hall, sir. We left the door open so that we could see right along the hall, clear to the front door. If he'd come out into the hall, we'd have seen him."

"And he didn't come out into the hall while you were there?"

"No, sir."

"Did anybody come in?"

"Oh, no, sir; the front door has a snap-lock. It can't be opened from the outside without a key."

"So you are perfectly sure that no one either entered or left the house by the front door while you and Rogers were sitting there?"

"Nor by the back door either, sir; to get out the back way, you have to pass through the room where we were."

"Where were the other servants?"

"The cook was in the kitchen, sir. This is the housemaid's afternoon out."

The coroner paused. Godfrey and Simmonds had both listened to this interrogation, but neither had been idle. They had walked softly about the room, had looked through a door opening into another room beyond, had examined the fastenings of the windows, and had ended by looking minutely over the carpet.

"What is the room yonder used for?" asked Godfrey, pointing to the connecting door.

"It's a sort of store-room just now, sir," said Parks. "Mr. Vantine is just back from Europe, and we've been unpacking in there some of the things he bought while abroad."

"I guess that's all," said Goldberger, after a moment. "Send in Mr.
Vantine, please."

Parks went out, and Vantine came in a moment later. He corroborated exactly the story told by Parks and myself, but he added one detail.

"Here is the man's card," he said, and held out a square of pasteboard.

Goldberger took the card, glanced at it, and passed it on to
Simmonds.

"That don't tell us much," said the latter, and gave the card to Godfrey. I looked over his shoulder and saw that it contained a single engraved line:

M. THÉOPHILE D'AURELLE

"Except that he's French, as Parks suggested," said Godfrey. "That's evident, too, from the cut of his clothes."

"Yes, and from the cut of his hair," added Goldberger. "You say you didn't know him, Mr. Vantine?"

"I never before saw him, to my knowledge," answered Vantine. "The name is wholly unknown to me."

"Well," said Goldberger, taking possession of the card again and slipping it into his pocket, "suppose we lift him onto that couch by the window and take a look through his clothes."

The man was slightly built, so that Simmonds and Goldberger raised the body between them without difficulty and placed it on the couch. I saw Godfrey's eyes searching the carpet.

"What I should like to know," he said, after a moment, "is this: if this fellow took poison, what did he take it out of? Where's the paper, or bottle, or whatever it was?"

"Maybe it's in his hand," suggested Simmonds, and lifted the right hand, which hung trailing over the side of the couch.

Then, as he raised it into the light, a sharp cry burst from him.

"Look here," he said, and held the hand so that we all could see.

It was swollen and darkly discoloured.

"See there," said Simmonds, "something