The Darrow Enigma, Melvin L. Severy [free biff chip and kipper ebooks TXT] 📗
- Author: Melvin L. Severy
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work. I know of nothing Maitland would sooner do than argue, and,
if attacked on a subject upon which he feels strongly, he is, for
the time being, totally oblivious of everything else. For this
reason I trapped him into this argument. I abominate what is now
known as “realism” just as much as he does, but you don’t have much
of an argument without some apparent difference of opinion, so, for
the nonce, I became a realist of whom Zola himself would have been
proud. “Why, man,” I said, “realism is truth. You certainly can’t
have any quarrel with that.” I knew this would have the effect of
a red rag flaunted in the face of a bull.
“Truth! Bah!” he exclaimed excitedly. “I have no patience with
such aesthetic hod-carriers! Truth, indeed! Is there no other truth
in art but that coarse verisimilitude, that vulgar trickery, which
appeals to the eyes and the ears of the rabble? Are there not
psychological truths of immensely greater importance? What sane man
imagines for a moment that the pleasure he derives from seeing that
greatest of all tragedians, Edwin Booth, in one of Shakespeare’s
matchless tragedies, is dependent upon his believing that this or
that character is actually killed? Why, even the day of the
cranberry-juice dagger is long since passed. When Miss Davenport
shrieks in ‘Fedora,’ the shriek is literal - ‘real,’ you would call
it - and you find yourself instinctively saying, ‘Don’t! - don’t!’
and wishing you were out of the house. When Mr. Booth, as ‘Shylock’
shrieks at ‘Tubal’s’ news, the cry is not real, is not literal, but
is suggestive, and you see at once the fiendish glee of which it is
the expression. The difference between the two is the difference
between vocal cords and grey matter.”
“But surely,” I rejoined, “one doesn’t want untruth; one wants - “
but he did not let me finish.
“Always that cry of truth!” he retorted. “Do you not see how absurd
it is, as used by your exponents of realism? With a bit of charcoal
some Raphael draws a face with five lines, and some photographer
snaps a camera at the same face. Which would any sane man choose as
the best work of art? The five-line face, of course. Why? Is the
work of the camera unreal? Is it not more accurate in drawing, more
subtle in gradation than the less mechanical picture? To be sure.
What, then, makes the superiority of the few lines of our Raphael?
That which makes the superiority of all noble art - its truth,, not
on a low, but on a high, plane: its power of interpreting. See!”
he said, fairly aglow with excitement. “What does your realist do,
even assuming that he has reached that never-to—be-attained
perfection which is the lifelong Mecca of his desires? He gives
you, by his absolutely realistic goes with you, and interprets its
grandeur to you. Stand before his canvas and enjoy it as you would
Nature herself if there. Surely, you say, nothing more could be
desired, and you clap your hands, and shout, ‘Bravo!’ But wait a
bit; the other side is yet to be heard from. What does the true
artist do for you by his picture of Yosemite Valley? He not only
gives you a free conveyance to it, but he goes with you, and
interprets its grandeur to you. He translates into the language of
your consciousness beauties which, without him, you would entirely
miss. It is this very capability of seeing more in Nature than is
ever perceived by the common throng that constitutes the especial
genius of the artist, and a work that is not aglow with its creator’s
personality - personality, mind you, not coarse realism - can never
rank as a masterpiece. But, come, this won’t do. Why did you want
to get me astride my hobby?”
I thought it advisable to answer this question by asking another,
so I said: “But how about Davenport? Will you go?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Anything with a Cleopatra to it interests me.
I’ll go now and see about the tickets,” and he left me.
I have related Maitland’s aesthetic views as expressed to me upon
this occasion, not because they have any particular bearing upon the
mystery I am narrating, but because they cast a strong side-light
upon the young man’s character, and also for the reason that I
believe his personality to be sufficiently strong and unique to be
of general interest.
We went that same night to see Sardou’s “Cleopatra.” I asked Maitland
how he liked the piece, and the only reply he vouchsafed was: “I have
recently read Shakespeare’s treatment of the same theme.”=20
If events spread themselves out fanwise from the past into the
future, then must the occurrences of the present exhibit
convergence toward some historical burning-point, - some focal
centre whereat the potential was warmed=20into the kinetic.
It was nearly a week after the events last narrated before I saw
Maitland again, and then only by chance. We happened to meet in the
Parker House, and, as he had some business pertaining to a case he
was on, to transact at the Court House, I walked up Beacon Street
with him. There is a book or stationery store, on Somerset Street,
just before you turn down toward Pemberton Square. As we were
passing this store, Maitland espied a large photographic reproduction
of some picture.
“Let us cross over and see what it is,” he said. We did so. It was
a photograph of L. Alma-Tadema’s painting of Antony and Cleopatra.
Maitland started a little as he read the title, and then said
lightly: “Do you suppose, Doc, that woman’s mummy is in existence?
I should like to find it. I’ve an idea she left some hieroglyphic
message for me on her mummy-case, and doesn’t propose to let me
rest easy until I find and translate it. Now, if I believed in
transmigration of souls - do you see any mark of Antony about me?
Say, though, just imagine the spirit of Marcus Antonius in a rubber
apron, making an analysis of oleomargarine! But here we are;
goodbye,” and he left me without awaiting any reply. He seemed to
me to be in decidedly better spirits than formerly, and I was at
the time at a loss to account for it. The cause of his levity,
however, was soon explained, for that night, as Gwen, my sister, and
I were sitting cosily in the study according to our usual custom,
Maitland walked in, unannounced. He had come now to be a regular
visitor, and I invented not a few subterfuges to get him to call
even oftener than he otherwise would, for I perceived that his
coming gave pleasure to Gwen. She exhibited less depression when
in his presence than at any other time. I had learned that hers
was one of those deep natures in which grief crystallises slowly,
but with an unconquerable persistence. Instead of her forgetting
her bereavement, or the sense thereof waxing weaker by time, she
seemed to be drifting toward that ever-present consciousness of
loss in which the soul feels itself gradually, but surely, sinking
under an insupportable burden - a burden so long borne, so well
known, that the mind no longer thinks of it. The heart beats
stolidly under its load, and seems to forget the time when it was
not so oppressed. No one knows better than we physicians the danger
of this autocracy of grief, and I watched Gwen with a solicitude at
times almost bordering on despair. But, as I said before, she always
seemed to show more interest in affairs when Maitland was present,
and, on the night in question, his abrupt and unexpected entrance
surprised her into the betrayal of more pleasure than she would have
wished us to note, and, indeed, so quickly did she conceal her
confusion that I was the only one who noticed it. Maitland was too
busy with the news he brought.
“Well, Miss Darrow,” he began at once, “at last your detective has
got a clue - not much of a one - but still a clue. I can pick the
man for whom we are looking from among a million of his fellows - if
I am ever fortunate enough to get the chance.”
Somebody has already called attention to the fact that women are
more or less curious, and there are well-authenticated cases on
record where this inquisitiveness has even extended to things which
did not immediately concern themselves; so I have little doubt I
shall be believed when I say the women folk were in a fever of
expectancy, and besought Maitland with an earnestness quite
unnecessary - (it would have required a great deal to have prevented
his telling it) - to begin at the beginning, and relate the whole
thing. He readily acceded to this request, and began by telling
them the experiences which I have just narrated. It was, he said,
during the last act of Sardou’s “Cleopatra” that the idea had
suddenly come to him to change the plan of search from the analytical
to the synthetical.
“You see,” he continued, “I had from the first been trying to find
the assassin without knowing the exact way in which the crime was
committed. I now determined to ascertain how, under the same
circumstances, I could commit such a crime, and leave behind no
other evidences of the deed than those which are in our possession.
I began to read detective stories, with all the avidity of a Western
Union Telegraph messenger, and, of course, read those by Conan Doyle.
The assertion of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ that there is no novelty in crime;
that crimes, like history, repeat themselves; and that criminals read
and copy each other’s methods, deeply impressed me, and I at once
said to myself: ‘If our assassin was not original, whom did he copy?’
“It was while reading ‘The Sign of the Four,’ which I had procured
at the Public Library, that I made the first discovery. The crime
therein narrated had been committed in such a singular manner that
it at once attracted my attention. The victim had apparently been
murdered without anyone having either entered or left the room. In
this respect it was like the problem we are trying to solve. Might
not this book, I said to myself, have suggested to your father’s
assassin the course he pursued. I concluded to go to the library
and ask for a list of the names of persons who had taken out this
book for a few months prior to your father’s death. I was fully
aware that the chance of my learning anything in this way was very
slight, In the first place; I reasoned that it was not especially
likely your father’s murderer had read ‘The Sign of the Four,’
and, in the second place, even if he had, what assurance had I that
he had read this particular copy of it? Notwithstanding this,
however, I felt impelled to give my synthetical theory a fair
experimental trial. I was informed by the Library attendants that
the book had been much read, and given the list of some twenty
names of persons who had borrowed the book during the time I had
specified. With these twenty-odd names before me, I sat down to
think what my next step should be. I went carefully over this chain
of reasoning link by link. ‘I wish to find a certain murderer, and
have adopted this method in the hope that it may help me. If I
derive any assistance at all from it, it will be because my man has
read this particular copy of this work; therefore, I may as well
assume at the start that
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