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

it takes to kill a man —how the spirit, or whatever you choose to call it, clings to life."

"How do you explain the address on the card, Mr. Goldberger?" I asked.

"My theory is that this fellow really had some business with Mr. Vantine; probably he wanted to borrow some money, or ask for help; and then, while he was waiting, he suddenly gave the thing up and killed himself. The address has no bearing whatever, that I can see, on the question of suicide. And I'll say this, Mr. Lester, if this isn't suicide, it's the strangest case I ever had anything to do with."

"Yes," I agreed, "if it isn't suicide, we come to a blank wall right away."

"That's it," and Goldberger nodded emphatically. "Here's the ambulance," he added, as the bell rang.

The bearers entered with the stretcher, placed the body on it, and carried it away. Goldberger paused to gather up the articles he had taken from the dead man's pockets.

"You gentlemen will have to give your testimony at the inquest," he said. "So will Parks and Rogers. It will be day after to-morrow, probably at ten o'clock, but I'll notify you of the hour."

"Very well," I said; "we'll be there," and Goldberger bade us good-bye, and left the house. "And now," I added, to Vantine, "I must be getting back to the office. They'll be asking the police to look for me next. Man alive!" and I glanced at my watch, "it's after four o'clock."

"Too late for the office," said Vantine. "Better come upstairs and have a drink. Besides, I want to talk with you."

"At least, I'll let them know I'm still alive," I said, and I called up the office and allayed any anxiety that may have been felt there concerning me. I must admit that it did not seem acute.

"I feel the need of a bracer after all this excitement," Vantine remarked, as he opened the cellarette. "Help yourself. I dare say you're used to this sort of thing—"

"Finding dead men lying around?" I queried, with a smile. "No—it's not so common as you seem to think."

"Tell me, Lester," and he looked at me earnestly, "do you think that poor devil came in here just to get a chance to kill himself quietly?"

"No, I don't," I said.

"Then what did he come in for?"

"I think Goldberger's theory a pretty good one—that he had heard of you as a generous fellow and came in here to ask help; and while he was waiting, suddenly gave it up—"

"And killed himself?" Vantine completed.

I hesitated. I was astonished to find, at the back of my mind, a growing doubt.

"See here, Lester," Vantine demanded, "if he didn't kill himself, what happened to him?"

"Heaven only knows," I answered, in despair. "I've been asking myself the same question, without finding a reasonable answer to it. As I said to Goldberger, it's a blank wall. But if anybody can see through it, Jim Godfrey can."

Vantine seemed deeply perturbed. He took a turn or two up and down the room, then stopped in front of me and looked me earnestly in the eye.

"Tell me, Lester," he said, "do you believe that theory of Godfrey's —that that insignificant wound on the hand caused death?"

"It seems absurd, doesn't it? But Godfrey is a sort of genius at divining such things."

"Then you do believe it?"

I asked myself the same question before I answered.

"Yes, I do," I said, finally.

Vantine walked up and down the room again, his eyes on the floor, his brows contracted.

"Lester," he said, at last, "I have a queer feeling that the business which brought this man here in some way concerned the Boule cabinet I was telling you about. Perhaps it belonged to him."

"Hardly," I protested, recalling his shabby appearance.

"At any rate, I remember, as I was looking at his card, that some such thought occurred to me. It was for that reason I told Parks to ask him to wait."

"It's possible, of course," I admitted. "But that wouldn't explain his excitement. And that reminds me," I added, "I haven't sent off that cable."

"Any time to-night will do. It will be delivered in the morning. But you haven't seen the cabinet yet. Come down and look at it."

He led the way down the stair. Parks met us in the lower hall.

"There's a delegation of reporters outside, sir," he said. "They say they've got to see you."

Vantine made a movement of impatience.

"Tell them," he said, "that I positively refuse to see them or to allow my servants to see them. Let them get their information from the police."

"Very well, sir," said Parks, and turned away grinning.

Vantine passed on through the ante-room in which we had found the body of the unfortunate Frenchman, and into the room beyond. Five or six pieces of furniture, evidently just unpacked, stood there, but, ignorant as I am of such things, he did not have to point out to me the Boule cabinet. It dominated the room, much as Madame de Montespan, no doubt, dominated the court at Versailles.

I looked at it for some moments, for it was certainly a beautiful piece of work, with a wealth of inlay and incrustation little short of marvellous. But I may as well say here that I never really appreciated it. The florid style of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Louis is not at all to my taste; and I am too little of a connoisseur to admire a beauty which has no personal appeal for me. So I am afraid that Vantine found me a little cold.

Certainly there was nothing cold about the way he regarded it. His eyes gleamed with a strange fire as he looked at it; he ran his fingers over the inlay with a touch almost reverent; he pulled out for me the little drawers with much the same air that another friend of mine takes down his Kilmarnock Burns from his bookshelves; he pointed out to me the grace of its curves in the same tone that one uses to discuss the masterpiece of a great artist. And then, finding no echo to his enthusiasm, he suddenly stopped.

"You don't seem to care for it," he said, looking at me.

"That's my fault and not the fault of the cabinet," I pointed out.
"I'm not educated up to it; I'm too little of an artist, perhaps."

He was flushed, as a man might be should another make a disparaging remark about his wife, and he led the way from the room at once.

"Remember, Lester," he said, a little sternly, pausing with his hand on the front door, "there is to be no foolishness about securing that cabinet for me. Don't you let it get away. I'm in deadly earnest."

"I won't let it get away," I promised. "Perhaps it's just as well I'm not over-enthusiastic about it."

"Let me know as soon as you have any news," he said, and opened the door for me.

I had intended walking home, but as I turned up the Avenue, I met sweeping down it a flood of girls just released from the workshops of the neighbourhood. I struggled against it for a few moments, then gave it up, hailed a cab, and settled back against the cushions with a sigh of relief. I was glad to be out of Vantine's house; something there oppressed me and left me ill at ease. Was Vantine quite normal, I wondered? Could any man be normal who was willing to pay a hundred thousand dollars for a piece of furniture? Especially a man who could not afford such extravagance? I knew the size of Vantine's fortune; it was large, but a hundred thousand dollars represented more than a year's income. And then I smiled to myself. Of course Vantine had been merely jesting when he named that limit. The cabinet could be bought for a tenth of it, at the most. And, still smiling, I left the cab, paid the driver, and mounted to my rooms.

CHAPTER IV THE THUNDERBOLT

It was about eight o'clock that evening that Godfrey tapped at my door, and when I let him in, I could tell by the way his eyes were shining that he had some news.

"I can't stay long," he said. "I've got to get down to the office and put the finishing touches on that story;" but nevertheless he took the cigar I proffered him and sank into the chair opposite my own.

I knew Godfrey, so I waited patiently until the cigar was going nicely, then—

"Well?" I asked.

"It's like old times, isn't it, Lester?" and he smiled across at me. "How many conferences have we had in this room? How many of your cigars have I made away with?"

"Not half enough recently," I said. "You haven't been here for months."

"I'm sure to drift back, sooner or later, because you seem to have a knack of getting in on the interesting cases. And I want to say this, Lester, that of all I ever had, not one has promised better than this one does. If it only keeps up—but one mustn't expect too much!"

"You've been working on it, of course?"

"I haven't been idle, and just now I'm feeling rather pleased with myself. The coroner's physician finished his post-mortem half an hour or so ago."

"Well?" I said again.

"The stomach was absolutely normal. It showed no trace of poison of any kind."

He stretched himself, lay back in his chair, sent a smoke-ring circling toward the ceiling, and watched it, smiling absently.

"Rather a facer for our friend Goldberger," he added, after a minute.

"What's the matter with Goldberger? He seemed rather peeved with you this afternoon."

"No wonder. He's Grady's man, and we're after Grady. Grady isn't fit to head the detective bureau—he got the job through his pull with Tammany—he's stupid, and I suspect he's crooked. The Record says he has got to go."

"So, of course, he will go," I commented, smiling.

"He certainly will," assented Godfrey seriously, "and that before long. But meanwhile it's a little difficult for me, because his people don't know which way to jump. Once he's out, everything will be serene again."

I wasn't interested in Grady, so I came back to the case in hand.

"Look here, Godfrey," I said, "if it wasn't poison, what was it?"

"But it was poison."

"Inserted at the hand?"

He nodded.

"Goldberger says there's no poison known which could be used that way and which would act so quickly."

"Goldberger is right in that," agreed Godfrey; "but there's a poison unknown that will—because it did."

"It wasn't a snake bite?"

"Oh, no; snake poison wouldn't kill a man that quickly—not even a fer-de-lance. That fellow practically dropped where he was struck."

"Then what was it?"

Godfrey was sitting erect again. He was not smiling now. His face was very stern.

"That is what I am going to find out, Lester," he said; "that is the problem I've set myself to solve—and it's a pretty one. There is one thing certain—that fellow was killed by some agency outside himself. In some way, a drop or two of poison was introduced into his blood by an instrument something like a hypodermic needle; and that poison was so powerful that almost instantly it caused paralysis of the heart. After all, that isn't so remarkable as it might seem. The blood in the veins of the hand would be carried back to the heart in four or five seconds."

"But you've already said there's no poison so powerful as all that."

"I said we didn't know of any. I wouldn't be so sure that Catherine de Medici didn't."

"What has Catherine de Medici to do with it?"

"Nothing—except that what has been done may always be done again. Those old stories are, no doubt, exaggerated; but it seems fairly certain that the Queen of Navarre was killed with a pair of poisoned gloves, the Duc d'Anjou with the scent of a poisoned rose, and the Prince de Porcian with the smoke of a poisoned lamp. This case isn't as extraordinary as those."

"No," I agreed, and fell silent, shivering a little, for there is something horrible and revolting about the poisoner.

"After all," went on Godfrey, at last, "there is one thing that neither you nor I nor any reasonable man can believe, and that is that this Frenchman came from heaven knows where—from Paris, perhaps—with Vantine's address in his pocket, and hunted up the house