Max Carrados, Ernest Bramah [children's books read aloud .TXT] 📗

“‘Alexis Metrobe. Any servant or personal attendant of the late Alexis Metrobe of Fountain Court, Groat’s Heath, possessing special knowledge of his habits and movements may hear of something advantageous on applying to Binstead & Polegate, 77a Bedford Row, W.C.’

“The solicitors had, in fact, discovered that five thousand pounds’ worth of securities had been realized early in 1910. They readily ascertained that Metrobe had drawn that amount in gold out of his bank immediately after, and there the trace ended. He died six months later. There was no hoard of gold and not a shred of paper to show where it had gone, yet Metrobe lived very simply within his income. The house had meanwhile been demolished but there was no hint or whisper of any lucky find.

“Two inquirers presented themselves at 77a Bedford Row. They were informed of the circumstances and offered a reward, varying according to the results, for information that would lead to the recovery of the money. They are both described as thoughtful, slow-spoken men. Each heard the story, shook his head, and departed. The first caller proved to be John Foster, the ex-butler. On the following day Mr Irons, formerly gardener at the Court, was the applicant.

“I must now divert your attention into a side track. In the summer of 1910 Metrobe published a curious work entitled ‘The Flame beyond the Dome.’ In the main it is an eschatological treatise, but at the end he tacked on an epilogue, which he called ‘The Fable of the Chameleon.’ It is even more curious than the rest and with reason, for under the guise of a speculative essay he gives a cryptic account of the circumstances of the five thousand pounds and, what is more important, details the exact particulars of its disposal. His reason for so doing is characteristic of the man. He was conscious by experience that he possessed an utterly treacherous memory, and having had occasion to move the treasure from one spot to another he feared that when the time came his bemuddled shade would be unable to locate it. For future reference, therefore, he embodied the details in his book, and to make sure that plenty of copies should be in existence he circulated it by the only means in his power—in other words, he gave a volume to everyone he knew and to a good many people whom he didn’t.

“So far I have dealt with actualities. The final details are partly speculative but they are essentially correct. Metrobe conveyed his gold to Fountain Court, obtained a stout oak coffer for it, and selected a spot west of the fountain. He chose a favourable occasion for burying it, but by some mischance Irons came on the scene. Metrobe explained the incident by declaring that he was burying a favourite parrot. Irons thought nothing particular about it then, although he related the fact to the butler, and to others, in evidence of the general belief that ‘the old cock was quite barmy.’ But Metrobe himself was much disturbed by the accident. A few days later he dug up the box. In pursuance of his new plan he carried his gold to the Bank of England and changed it into these notes. Then transferring the venue to one due east of the fountain, he buried them in this tin, satisfied that the small space it occupied would baffle the search of anyone not in possession of the exact location.”

“But, I say!” exclaimed Mr Bellmark. “Gold might remain gold, but what imaginable use could be made of bank-notes after the end of the world?”

“That is a point of view, no doubt. But Metrobe, in spite of his foreign name, was a thorough Englishman. The world might come to an end, but he was satisfied that somehow the Bank of England would ride through it all right. I only suggest that. There is much that we can only guess.”

“That is all there is to know, Mr Carrados?”

“Yes. Everything comes to an end, Mrs Bellmark. I sent my car away to call for me at eight. Eight has struck. That is Harris announcing his arrival.”

He stood up, but embarrassment and indecision marked the looks and movements of the other two.

“How can we possibly take all this money, though?” murmured Elsie, in painful uncertainty. “It is entirely your undertaking, Mr Carrados. It is the merest fiction bringing me into it at all.”

“Perhaps in the circumstances,” suggested Bellmark nervously—“you remember the circumstances, Elsie?—Mr Carrados would be willing to regard it as a loan——”

“No, no!” cried Elsie impulsively. “There must be no half measures. We know that a thousand pounds would be nothing to Mr Carrados, and he knows that a thousand pounds are everything to us.” Her voice reminded the blind man of the candle-snuffing recital. “We will take this great gift, Mr Carrados, quite freely, and we will not spoil the generous satisfaction that you must have in doing a wonderful and a splendid service by trying to hedge our obligation.”

“But what can we ever do to thank Mr Carrados?” faltered Bellmark mundanely.

“Nothing,” said Elsie simply. “That is it.”

“But I think that Mrs Bellmark has quite solved that,” interposed Carrados.

“It’s a funny thing, sir,” said Inspector Beedel, regarding Mr Carrados with the pensive respect that he always extended towards the blind amateur, “it’s a funny thing, but nothing seems to go on abroad now but what you’ll find some trace of it here in London if you take the trouble to look.”

“In the right quarter,” contributed Carrados.

“Why, yes,” agreed the inspector. “But nothing comes of it nine times out of ten, because it’s no one’s particular business to look here or the thing’s been taken up and finished from the other end. I don’t mean ordinary murders or single-handed burglaries, of course, but”—a modest ring of professional pride betrayed the quiet enthusiast—“real First-Class Crimes.”

“The State Antonio Five per cent. Bond Coupons?” suggested Carrados.

“Ah, you are right, Mr Carrados.” Beedel shook his head sadly, as though perhaps on that occasion someone ought to have looked. “A man has a fit in the inquiry office of the Agent-General for British Equatoria, and two hundred and fifty thousand pounds’ worth of faked securities is the result in Mexico. Then look at that jade fylfot charm pawned for one-and-three down at the Basin and the use that could have been made of it in the Kharkov ‘ritual murder’ trial.”

“The West Hampstead Lost Memory puzzle and the Baripur bomb conspiracy that might have been smothered if one had known.”

“Quite true, sir. And the three children of that Chicago millionaire—Cyrus V. Bunting, wasn’t it?—kidnapped in broad daylight outside the New York Lyric and here, three weeks later, the dumb girl who chalked the wall at Charing Cross. I remember reading once in a financial article that every piece of foreign gold had a string from it leading to Threadneedle Street. A figure of speech, sir, of course, but apt enough, I don’t doubt. Well, it seems to me that every big crime done abroad leaves a finger-print here in London—if only, as you say, we look in the right quarter.”

“And at the right moment,” added Carrados. “The time is often the present; the place the spot beneath our very noses. We take a step and the chance has gone for ever.”

The inspector nodded and contributed a weighty monosyllable of sympathetic agreement. The most prosaic of men in the pursuit of his ordinary duties, it nevertheless subtly appealed to some half-dormant streak of vanity to have his profession taken romantically when there was no serious work on hand.

“No; perhaps not ‘for ever’ in one case in a thousand, after all,” amended the blind man thoughtfully. “This perpetual duel between the Law and the Criminal has sometimes appeared to me in the terms of a game of cricket, inspector. Law is in the field; the Criminal at the wicket. If Law makes a mistake—sends down a loose ball or drops a catch—the Criminal scores a little or has another lease of life. But if he makes a mistake—if he lets a straight ball pass or spoons towards a steady man—he is done for. His mistakes are fatal; those of the Law are only temporary and retrievable.”

“Very good, sir,” said Mr Beedel, rising—the conversation had taken place in the study at The Turrets, where Beedel had found occasion to present himself—“very apt indeed. I must remember that. Well, sir, I only hope that this ‘Guido the Razor’ lot will send a catch in our direction.”

The ‘this’ delicately marked Inspector Beedel’s instinctive contempt for Guido. As a craftsman he was compelled, on his reputation, to respect him, and he had accordingly availed himself of Carrados’s friendship for a confabulation. As a man—he was a foreigner: worse, an Italian, and if left to his own resources the inspector would have opposed to his sinuous flexibility those rigid, essentially Britannia-metal, methods of the Force that strike the impartial observer as so ponderous, so amateurish and conventional, and, it must be admitted, often so curiously and inexplicably successful.

The offence that had circuitously brought “il Rasojo” and his “lot” within the cognizance of Scotland Yard outlines the kind of story that is discreetly hinted at by the society paragraphist of the day, politely disbelieved by the astute reader, and then at last laid indiscreetly bare in all its details by the inevitable princessly “Recollections” of a generation later. It centred round an impending royal marriage in Vienna, a certain jealous “Countess X.” (here you have the discretion of the paragrapher), and a document or two that might be relied upon (the aristocratic biographer will impartially sum up the contingencies) to play the deuce with the approaching nuptials. To procure the evidence of these papers the Countess enlisted the services of Guido, as reliable a scoundrel as she could probably have selected for the commission. To a certain point—to the abstraction of the papers, in fact—he succeeded, but it was with pursuit close upon his heels. There was that disadvantage in employing a rogue to do work that implicated roguery, for whatever moral right the Countess had to the property, her accomplice had no legal right whatever to his liberty. On half-a-dozen charges at least he could be arrested on sight in as many capitals of Europe. He slipped out of Vienna by the Nordbahn with his destination known, resourcefully stopped the express outside Czaslau and got away across to Chrudim. By this time the game and the moves were pretty well understood in more than one keenly interested quarter. Diplomacy supplemented justice and the immediate history of Guido became that of a fox hunted from covert to covert with all the familiar earths stopped against him. From Pardubitz he passed on to Glatz, reached Breslau and went down the Oder to Stettin. Out of the liberality of his employer’s advances he had ample funds to keep going, and he dropped and rejoined his accomplices as the occasion ruled. A week’s harrying found him in Copenhagen, still with no time to spare, and he missed his purpose there. He crossed to Malmo by ferry, took the connecting night train to Stockholm and the same morning sailed down the Saltsjon, ostensibly bound for Obo, intending to cross to Revel and so get back to central Europe by the less frequented routes. But in this move again luck was against him and receiving warning just in time, and by the mysterious agency that had so far protected him, he contrived to be dropped from the steamer by boat among the islands of the crowded Archipelago, made his way to Helsingfors and within forty-eight hours was back again on the Frihavnen with pursuit for the moment blinked and a breathing-time to the good.

To appreciate the exact significance of these wanderings it is necessary to recall the conditions. Guido was not zigzagging a course about Europe in an aimless search for the picturesque, still less inspired by any love of the melodramatic. To him every step was vital, each tangent or rebound the necessary outcome of his much-badgered plans. In his pocket reposed the papers for which he had run grave risks. The price agreed upon for the service was sufficiently lavish to make the risks worth taking time after time; but in order to consummate the transaction it was necessary that the