X
THE MYSTERY OF THE MONTMARTRE HAT
"It was during a foggy, rainy night in November a couple of years ago," the Old Man in the Corner said to me that day, "that the inhabitants of Wicklow Lane, Southwark, were startled by a terrible row proceeding from one of the houses down the street. There was a lot of shouting and banging, then a couple of pistol-shots, after that nothing more. It was then just after midnight. The dwellers in Wicklow Lane are all of them poor, they are all of them worried with the cares of large families, small accommodation, and irregular work, all of which we must take it make for indifference to other people's worries, and above all, to other people's quarrels. Rows were not an unknown occurrence in Wicklow Lane, not always perhaps at dead of night and not necessarily accompanied by pistol-shots, but nevertheless sufficiently frequent not to arouse more than passing interest. Half-a-dozen tousled heads—no more—were thrust out of the windows to ascertain what this particular row was about; but as everything was quiet again, as no police was in sight to whom one might give directions, and as the mixture of rain and fog was particularly unpleasant, the tousled heads after a few minutes disappeared again, and once more peace reigned in Wicklow Lane.
"Of course the next morning the event of the night was mentioned and mildly discussed, both by the men whilst going to their work and by the ladies whilst scrubbing their doorsteps. Every one agreed that the pistol-shots were fired soon after midnight, but no one seemed to be very clear in which particular house the row had occurred. Two or three of the people who lived in No. 11 and No. 15 respectively would have it that it occurred 'next door,' but as the house next door to them both could only be the one between them, namely No. 13, and as No. 13 had been empty for months, this testimony was at first strongly discounted.
"Presently, however, a helmeted and blue-coated representative of the law came striding leisurely down the lane. Within a minute or two he was surrounded by a number of excited ladies, all eager to give him their own version of the affair. You can see him, can't you?" the Old Man in the Corner went on with a grin, "stalking up the street, his thumbs thrust into his belt, his face wearing that marvellous look of impassivity peculiar to the force, and followed by this retinue of gesticulating ladies, dressed in what they happened to have picked up in neighboring 'ole clo'' shops, and by a sprinkling of callow youths and unkempt, unshaven men. You can see him solemnly plying the knocker on the dilapidated front door of No. 13, while for the space of a minute or two the gesticulating ladies, the youths, and the men were silent and motionless. But not a sound came in response to the Bobby's vigorous knocking. The house was silent as the grave; just above the front door a weather-worn board, swaying and creaking in the wind, mutely gave it out that the lease of these desirable premises was to be sold, and that the key could be had on application to Messrs. J D. Whiskin and Sons, of Newnham Road, S.E. The ladies, with cheeks blanched under the grime, looked aghast at one another; the youths tittered nervously, the men swore. No one appeared altogether displeased. Here was a real excitement at last to vary the monotony of life, something that would keep gossip alive at the White Lion for many a day to come. The majestic representative of the law then blew his whistle. This broke the spell of silence and voluble tongues started wagging again. Soon the second representative of the law appeared, as ponderous, as impassive as his mate. He was quickly put in possession of all the known and unknown facts connected with the mysterious occurrence. Leaving his mate in charge, he stalked off to get assistance.
"Well, you remember no doubt what happened after that. A police inspector called straightway on Messrs. Whiskin and Sons, and elicited from them the information that effectively No. 13 Wicklow Lane was for sale, had been for some time, and that on the previous morning—it was, of course, Thursday—a well-dressed gentleman had called to make enquiries about the house. Young Mr. Whiskin gave him the key and asked him to be sure and return it before 1 p.m. as the office closed early on Thursdays. Well, the gentleman hadn't come back yet with the key, but Mr. Whiskin was not troubling much about that, there being nothing in the house—nor for a matter of that in the street—likely to tempt a thief. Young Mr. Whiskin thought that he would be able to identify the gentleman if he saw him again. He had rather a red face and a thick nose, which suggested that he was accustomed to good living, rough ginger-coloured hair, and a straggly ginger beard and walrus moustache, all of which gave him rather a peculiar appearance. He wore a neat brown lounge-suit, a light overcoat, and grey Homburg hat, and he was carrying a large parcel under his arm. Mr. Whiskin added that he had never seen the man before or since.
"As soon as these facts became known there was more voluntary information forthcoming. It appears that one or two of the residents in Wicklow Lane remembered seeing a man in light overcoat and soft grey hat, and carrying a parcel under his arm, enter No. 13 with a latchkey. No one had taken 'pertikler notice,' however, chiefly because the occurrence was not an unusual one. Often people would go in to look at the empty house and come out again after inspection. Unfortunately, too, because of this there was distinct confusion of evidence, some witnesses declaring that the man carried a large parcel, and that he went away again, but not until the evening; others would have it that he had a very small parcel, and that he wore a bowler hat; others that the man with the bowler hat was another person altogether, and did not call till the evening, whilst this, again, was contradicted by another witness who said that the man who called in the evening had very conspicuous ginger-coloured hair and beard, but that he certainly wore a bowler hat. And through this mass of conflicting evidence there was always the fact that the fog was very thick that night and that no one therefore was able to swear very positively to anything.
"This, then, being all the information that could be gathered for the moment from the outside, the police next decided to force an entry into the empty house. Its unlucky number justified, as you know, its sinister reputation, because the first sight that greeted the inspector when he entered the front room on the ground floor was the body of a man lying in a pool of blood. At first glance he looked like a foreigner—youngish, and with jet-black hair and moustache. By the side of him there was a damp towel, also stained with blood. Closer examination revealed the fact that he was not dead, but he seemed in a dead faint, and the inspector sent one of the men off at once to telephone for the divisional surgeon.
"The wounded man was dressed in a dark suit. He had on a gold watch of foreign make, twenty pounds in notes, and some loose silver in his pockets, and a letter addressed to 'Allen Lloyd, Esq.' at an hotel at Boulogne. The letter was a private one, relating unimportant family events; it was signed by a Christian name only, and bore a London postmark, but no address. The police inspector took charge of the letters and the money, and as the divisional surgeon had now arrived and was busy with the wounded man, he proceeded to examine the premises.
"The houses in Wicklow Lane all have small yards at the back. These yards end in a brick wall, the other side of which there is a railway cutting. It was obvious that No. 13 had been untenanted for some time. The dust of ages lay over window and door-frames, over broken mantelpieces and dilapidated stoves. There was not a stick of anything anywhere; even the rubbish in the basement—such as is found in every empty house, residue left over by the last tenant—had been picked over until there was nothing left but dust and a few empty bottles.
"The front room in which the wounded man lay revealed very little. Two bullets were found lodged in one of the walls; one, quite close to the ceiling, suggesting that it had been fired in the air, and the other at a height of seven feet from the ground. The dust on the floor had certainly been disturbed, but by how many pairs of feet it was impossible to say. On the other hand, the back room on the same floor had quite a grim tale to tell. It gave on the small backyard with the wall as a background, beyond which was the railway cutting. The window in this room was open. In one corner there was an ordinary sink which showed that water had been running from the tap quite recently; there was a small piece of soap in the sink which had also recently been used. On the mantelpiece a small oak-framed mirror was propped up against the wall and beside it on the shelf there was the remnant of a burnt-out candle and a box of matches, half empty. And thrown down on the floor, in a corner of the room, were a black Inverness cape and soft black hat with a very wide brim, such as are usually affected by French students.
"It was, of course, difficult to reconstruct the assault just at present, the wounded man being still in a state of stupor and unable to give any account of himself, but the revolver was found lying at the bottom of the yard close to the end wall.
"In the meanwhile the divisional surgeon had concluded his examination. He pronounced the wound to have been caused by one of the bullets that had lodged in the wall of the front room. It had been fired at very close range, as the flesh was singed all round the wound. The bullet had gone right through the left deltoid, front to back, and slightly upwards, just grazed the top of the shoulder, and then lodged in the wall. The surgeon was inclined to think that the wound was self-inflicted, but this theory was thought to be untenable, because if a man was such an obviously poor shot he would surely have chosen some other way of putting an end to himself, unless, indeed, he was a lunatic, which might account for any incongruity in the known facts, even to the noise—the shouting and the banging—that all the neighbours agreed had preceded the revolver shots.
"But there certainly was one fact which discounted the attempted suicide theory, and that was the undoubted presence of another man upon the scene—the man with the ginger hair and the thick nose who had called for the key at Messrs. Whiskin and Sons, and whom several witnesses had actually seen entering the empty house, the man with the parcel. Now no one saw him come out again by the front door. He must have been in the house when the foreigner with the jet-black hair came and joined him, and he must have slipped out later on in the dark, under cover of the fog and rain, either by the front door when nobody happened to be passing by, or over the wall and then by the railway cutting. Now what had brought these two men together in an empty house, in one of the worst slums in London? One man was wounded; where was the other? Had the revolver been dropped by one of them in his flight or flung out of the window by a lunatic? Was it attempted suicide by a madman, or murder consequent on a quarrel, or blackmail? None of these questions was ever answered, nor was the man with the ginger-coloured hair ever found. There was absolutely no clue by which he might be traced; the earth just swallowed him up as if he had been a spook.
"Nor was the identity of the wounded man ever satisfactorily established. Who he was, where he came from, who were his associates and what were his antecedents, he never revealed. He was detained in hospital for a time, as he certainly was suffering from loss of memory. But presently they had to let him go. He had money and he was otherwise perfectly sane, but to every question put to him he only answered, 'I don't know! I can't remember!' He spoke English without the slightest trace of foreign accent; all that was foreign about him was his jet-black hair and beard. Nor was the history of the revolver ever traced to its source. Where was it bought? To whom was it sold, and by whom? Nobody ever knew."
"But where did the man go after he left the hospital?" I now asked, seeing that the funny creature looked like curling himself up in his corner and going to sleep. "Surely he was kept under observation when they let him out!"
"Of course he was," he replied glibly, "and for some time after that."
"Then where did he go," I reiterated, impatiently, "when he was discharged from hospital?"
"He asked the way to the nearest public library and went straight there; he looked down the columns of the Morning Post, scribbled a few addresses on a scrap of paper, then he took a taxi and drove to one of the private hotels in Mexborough Gate, where he engaged a room, paying a fortnight's board and lodging in advance. Here he lived for some considerable time. He was always plentifully supplied with money, he bought himself clothes and linen, but where he got the money from was never discovered. For a time he was watched both by the police and by amateur detectives eager for copy, but nothing was ever discovered that would clear up the mystery. From time to time letters came for him at the hotel in Mexborough Gate. They were addressed to 'Allen Lloyd, Esq.' which may or may not have been a taken-up name. Presumably these letters contained remittances in cash. They were never traced to their source. Anyway he always paid his weekly bills at the hotel; but he never spoke to any one in the place, nor, as far as could be ascertained, did he ever meet any one or enter any house except the one he lodged in.
"Then one fine day he left the hotel, never to return. He went out one afternoon and nothing has been seen or heard of him from that day to this. The mysterious Mr. Allen Lloyd has disappeared in the whirlpool of London, leaving no trace of his identity. He had paid his bill at the hotel that very day. He left no debts and just a very few personal belongings behind. To all intents and purposes the matter was relegated in the public mind to the category of unsolved and unsolvable mysteries.”
The Old Man in the Corner had paused. From the capacious pocket of his tweed ulster he now extracted a thick piece of string; his claw-like fingers set to work. The problem which police and public had never been able to solve had, I had no doubt, presented few difficulties to his agile brain.
"Tell me," I suggested.
He went on working away for a little while at an intricate knot, then he said, "If you want to know more, you will have to listen to what will seem to you an irrelevant story."
I professed my willingness to listen to anything he might choose to tell me.
"Very well, then," he said. "Let me take your mind back to that same winter two years ago. Do you remember the extraordinary theft of a valuable collection of gems, the property of Sir James Narford?"
"I do."
"Do you know who Sir James Narford was?"
"I would prefer you to tell me," I replied.
"Sir James Narford," the funny creature went on glibly, "was a young gentleman who had been employed during the war in one of the Government departments; he was the only son of his father who was an impoverished Irish baronet. Soon after the Armistice, Sir James went to South America to visit some relations. He must have made a very favourable impression on one of these—an eccentric old cousin who died a very few months later and left to his English relative a marvellous collection of pearls and other gems. Some of these were of priceless value, and as is the way with anything that is out of the common, all sorts of stories grew around the romantic legacy. The great worth and marvellous beauty of the jewels were told and retold, with many embellishments no doubt, in the English papers. It was asserted that the Brazilian Government had valued them for probate at a million pounds sterling; that there were diamonds—some still uncut—that would make the Koh-i-noor or the Orloff look like small bits of glass, and so on. I daresay you can remember some of the legends that gathered around Sir James Narford's gems. By the time the lucky owner of the fabulous treasure, who had gone out again to Brazil in order to fetch away his jewels, had returned to England, he was the object of universal interest and he and his gems were photographed and paragraphed all over the place.
"But as I told you, the recipient of this princely legacy had always been a poor man. We may take it that the payment of legacy duty on forty thousand pounds' worth of gems had impoverished him still further. Busybodies, of course, tried to persuade him to sell the gems; he had numberless letters from diamond and pearl merchants, asking for permission to see them with a view to purchase, but, naturally enough, he didn't want to do anything in a hurry; he deposited his treasure at the bank and then thought things over. He didn't want to sell, for he was inordinately proud of his new possession and of the notoriety which it had conferred upon him. It was even rumoured that he had received more than one hint from fair lips that if he proposed marriage, the owner of such beautiful jewels would be certain of acceptance.
"I don't know who first suggested the idea to Sir James Narford that he should exhibit the gems for the benefit of disabled soldiers and sailors. It was a splendid idea; 2s. 6d. was to be charged for admission, and after deducting expenses of rent and attendants, the profits were to go to that very laudable charity. Suitable premises were secured in Sackville Street. These consisted of a shop with a large plate-glass front and a small room at the back; the entrance was through a front door and passage, which were common to the rest of the house, and there were two doors in the passage, one of which gave into the shop, and the other into the back room. Sir James spent a little money in getting up the place in modern style, and he had some cases made for the display of the gems. The door which gave from the passage into the shop was condemned, and a heavy piece of furniture placed against it. The back room was only to be used as an office and ante-room with communicating doors leading into the shop.
"In the daytime the gems were displayed in glass cases ranged right and left of the shop; at night they were locked up in a safe which stood in the middle of the shop, facing the plate-glass window and with a blazing electric light kept on all night, just above the safe. This is a very usual device with jewellers in a smaller way of business. The policeman on night duty can see at once if there is anything wrong.
"Everything being ready, Sir James Narford asked a distinguished lady friend of his to declare the show open, and for the first fortnight—this, I must tell you, was in October—there was a steady stream of visitors, ladies for the most part, who came to gaze on the much-advertised gems. You might wonder what pleasure there could be in looking at things one could never hope to possess, especially at loose gems, however precious, which, to my mind, only become beautiful when they are mounted and set in artistic designs. However, I do not profess to understand feminine mentality; all I know is that Sir James Narford declared himself on more than one occasion satisfied with the result of his little venture. True that after the first fortnight the attendance at the show fell off considerably, and a few people did wonder why Sir James should continue to keep it open for so long. Those who had been most curious to see the gems of fabulous value had flocked in the first few days, after that there was only a very thin sprinkling of people up from the country, or foreigners, who paid their 2s. 6d. admission for the sight. But be that as it may, the jewels were certainly getting an additional amount of advertisement, and when presently the owner would put them for sale, as no doubt he intended to do, they would fetch a higher figure in consequence. In the meanwhile Sir James went on living very quietly in a small service flat in George Street, waited on by a faithful servant, a man named Ruggles, whom he had known for years. Every day he would stroll round to Sackville Street to look at his treasure and to talk to one or two friends. At six o'clock the exhibition would be closed, and Sir James would himself deposit all the gems into the safe, lock up the premises, and take the keys back with him to his flat. He went out very little in society, and only occasionally to his club. His one extravagance appeared to be a mania for travelling in all sorts of out-of-the-way places; he had been seemingly in every corner of Europe—in Czecho-Slovakia and Yugoslavia, in Montenegro, Bosnia, and Bessarabia. Before this whenever he went off on his travels he would take his man with him and shut up the flat, but on the occasion which presently arose he left Ruggles in charge of the exhibition in Sackville Street. This was early in November, about a fortnight after the opening of the exhibition; and when Sir James had gone it was Ruggles who every night at six o'clock put the gems away in the safe and locked up the premises. He then made a point of going for a brisk walk, and returned to the flat at about half-past seven, had his supper, read his paper, and then went to bed at about ten o'clock with the keys of the safe and of the Sackville Street premises underneath his pillow.
"One of the staff in the flats at George Street always got his supper ready for him—some cold meat, bread and cheese, and half a pint of beer, which the lift-boy invariably fetched for him from the Crown and Sceptre round the corner. He prepared his own breakfast in the morning, and his other meals he took in Sackville Street. They were sent in from one of the cheaper restaurants in Piccadilly.
"Every morning the charwoman who cleaned the steps outside the block of flats in George Street would see Ruggles come out of the house and walk away in the direction of Sackville Street. Even on Sundays he would stroll round as far as the shop to see that everything was all right.
"It was on a snowy morning in January that the charwoman failed to see Ruggles at his accustomed time. As the quiet neighbourhood did not as a rule lend itself much to gossip, the present opportunity was not to be missed. The charwoman, on meeting with the lift-boy, imparted to him the priceless news that Mr. Ruggles must either be ill or had gone and overslept himself. Whereupon the lift-boy was ready with the startling information that he had just observed that one of the glass panels in the front door of Sir James Narford's flat was broken. 'The glass wasn't broke in the evening, ten-thirty,' he went on to say, 'when I took a party down who'd been visitin' Miss Jenkins.'
"It seems that Miss Jenkins was maid to a lady who had a flat on the same floor as Sir James Narford. But there was the length of a passage with staircase and lift between the two flats, and neither the lady nor the maid, when spoken to by the lift-boy about the broken glass panel, had heard anything during the night. Now all this seemed very strange, more especially as the morning hours wore on and there was still no sign of Mr. Ruggles. The lift-boy was kept busy for the next hour taking the staff of the service flats up and down in his lift, as every one wished to have a look at the broken panel, and wanted to add their quota of opinion as to what had gone on last night in Sir James Narford's flat. At ten o'clock the housekeeper, more responsible or more enterprising than the rest of the staff, resolved to knock at the flat door. No answer came. She then tried to peep through the broken glass panel, and to apply her ear to it. For a time all was silence. The charwoman, the lift-boy, the scullery-maid, and the head housemaid stood by on the landing, holding their breath. Suddenly they all gave a simultaneous gasp! A groan—distinctly a groan—was heard issuing from inside the flat! The group of watchers looked at one another in dismay. 'What's to be done?' they murmured.
"The lift-boy had the key of the flat, but as the front door was bolted on the inside, the key in itself was no use. The housekeeper with the air of a general in command about to order a deathly charge, said resolutely, 'I shall force my way in!' And it was the lift-boy who gasped, awe-stricken, 'You kin put your 'and through the broken panel, mum, and pull the bolt.'
"Somehow this bright idea which had occurred to the lift-boy made every one there feel still more uncomfortable. The housekeeper, who had been so bold a while ago, stammered something about fetching the police, and when at that precise moment the lift-bell rang, the head housemaid declared herself ready to faint. But it was only Sir James Narford who had rung for the lift from below. He had arrived by the night mail from Paris, and had only his small suit-case with him. The lift-boy had the satisfaction of being the first to impart the exciting news to him. ''E took it badly, 'e did!' was that young gentleman's comment on Sir James's reception of the news. Without taking the slightest notice of the group of excited women on the landing, Sir James went straight to his front door, thrust his hand through the broken panel, drew back the inside bolt, and stepped into his flat. The next moment the agitated crowd on the landing heard him cry out, 'My God, Ruggles, what has happened?' A feeble voice which was scarcely recognisable as that of Ruggles was then heard talking in short, jerky sentences, and a few moments later Sir James's voice could be distinctly heard speaking on the telephone.
"'He is telephoning for the police,' the housekeeper solemnly announced to the staff.
"Well," the Old Man in the Corner continued after a while, "let me shorten my tale by telling you briefly the story which Ruggles told the police. It did not amount to a great deal, but such as it was it revealed a degree of cunning and of daring in the ways of burglary that have seldom been equalled. Ruggles, it seems, had as usual put away the gems in the safe and locked up the premises in Sackville Street and then walked home to the flat, very glad, he declared, that his responsibility would cease before another day went by, as he expected Sir James home from abroad the following morning. He had his supper as usual, but when he settled down to read his paper, he felt so sleepy that he just went and bolted the front door, placed the keys underneath his pillow, and went straight to bed. He remembered nothing more until he felt himself roughly shaken and heard his master's voice calling to him. It took him some time to collect himself; he felt dazed and his head ached terribly. When Sir James told him that it was past ten o'clock he could not conceive how he could have overslept himself in this way. Through force of habit he put his hand under his pillow to grope for the keys. They had gone! Then Sir James telephoned to the police. That was all that Ruggles could say. His condition was pitiable; alternately bemoaning his fate and cursing himself for a fool, he knelt at his master's feet and with hands clasped begged for forgiveness.
"'I'd have done anything in the world for Sir James,' he kept reiterating to the police officer, 'and 'ere I've been the ruin of 'im, just through over-sleepin'.'
"The police inspector got quite impatient with him, and at one time, I think, he thought that the man was acting a part. But Sir James Narford himself indignantly repudiated any suggestion of the sort. 'I would trust Ruggles,' he said emphatically, 'as I would myself. I have known him for thirty years, and he was in my father's service before that. I trust him with my keys, with money, with everything. He would have plenty of opportunity to rob me comfortably if he had a mind. What would a man of his class do with valuable gems?'
"All the same I fancy that the police did not altogether lose sight of the possibility that Ruggles might know something about the affair, but in spite of very clever questioning and cross-questioning, his story never varied even in the minutest detail. All that he added to his original statement that was of any value was the description of a foreign visitor at Sackville Street whom, in his own words, he 'didn't like the looks of.' This was a youngish man, with very sallow complexion, jet-black hair and moustache, and wearing a peculiar-looking caped overcoat and black soft hat with a very wide brim, who had remained over half an hour in the shop, apparently deeply interested in the gems. At one time he asked Ruggles whether he might have the glass cases opened, so that he could examine the stones and pearls more closely. This request Ruggles very naturally refused. The young man then put a lot of questions to him: 'Where did the gems come from? What was their value? Were they insured? Where were they kept at night? Was the safe burglar-proof or only fireproof?' and so on.
"It seems that two ladies who were visiting the exhibition at the same time noticed this same young man with the sallow complexion and the jet-black hair. They heard him questioning Ruggles and remarked upon his foreign accent, which was neither Italian nor Spanish; they thought he might be Portuguese. His clothes were certainly very outlandish. The ladies had noticed the caped coat, a kind of black Inverness, and the hat à la Montmartre. The presence of this foreigner in the shop in Sackville Street became still more significant later on, when another fact came to light—a fact in connection with the half-pint of beer which the lift-boy from the flats in George Street had fetched as usual on the evening preceding the robbery, from the Crown and Sceptre public house. A few drops of the beer had remained in the mug beside the remnants of Ruggles's supper. On examination the beer was found to contain chloral. The lift-boy at first was probably too scared to throw any light on this circumstance. He had, he declared, fetched the beer as usual from the Crown and Sceptre, taken it up to No. 4, Sir James Narford's flat, and put it upon the table in the sitting-room, where Mr. Ruggles's supper was already laid for him. After repeated questions from the police inspector, however, he recollected that on his way from the public house to the flats, a gentleman accosted him and asked him the way to Regent Street. The boy, holding the mug of beer in one hand, pointed out the way with the other and probably turned his head in the same direction as he did so. He couldn't say for certain. The gentleman seemed stupid and didn't understand the directions all at once; the boy had to repeat them again and again, and altogether was in conversation with the gentleman quite a while. It was dark at the time, but he did see that the gentleman wore a funny sort of coat and a funny hat, and as the boy picturesquely put it, ''E spoke queer-like, as if 'e wor a Frenchman.' To a lift-boy presumably every foreigner is a Frenchman if he be not a German, and though the lad's description of the coat and hat only amounted to his calling them 'funny,' there seemed little doubt but that the man who visited the shop in Sackville Street and the one who accosted the lift-boy in George Street were one and the same. There was also little doubt but that he poured the drug into the mug of beer while the boy's head was turned away. And finally all doubts were set at rest when the 'funny coat and hat' were discovered tied up in a bundle in the area of an empty house, two doors higher up the street.
"Unfortunately, although these few facts were definitely established, all traces of the man himself vanished after that. How he got into the block of flats could not be ascertained. He might have slipped in after the lift-boy, while the latter went upstairs with the beer, and concealed himself somewhere in the basement. It was impossible to say. The street-door was kept open as usual until eleven o'clock, and until that hour the boy was in attendance at the lift; he had been up and down several times, taking up residents or their visitors, and while he ran to fetch the beer one of the maids saw to the lift, if the bell rang. At eleven o'clock every evening the street-door was closed, but not bolted; it was provided with a Yale lock and every resident had one key, in case they came in late; the lift was not worked after that hour, but there was a light kept on every landing. These lights the housemaid switched off the first thing every morning when she did the stairs, and as a matter of fact she remembered that on that memorable morning the light on the top floor landing—which is the landing outside Sir James Narford's flat—was already switched off when she went to do it.
"And those are all the facts," the Old Man in the Corner went on slowly, while he paused in his work of fashioning intricate knots in his beloved bit of string, "all the facts that were ever known in connection with the theft of Sir James Narford's gems. Of course, as you may well suppose, not only the official but also the public mind at once flew to the mysterious personage, originally found wounded in an empty house in Wicklow Lane. There could be no shadow of doubt that this man and the one who visited the shop in Sackville Street, who accosted the lift-boy, drugged Ruggles's beer and robbed him of his keys, were one and the same. There was the black caped coat, the Montmartre hat, the jet-black hair and foreign look. True, the wounded man of Wicklow Lane spoke English without any foreign accent, but the latter could easily be assumed. Indeed, it all seemed plain sailing, and as soon as the word went round about the robbery in Sackville Street and the description was given of the foreign-looking individual with the jet-black hair, the police thought they had a perfectly clear case.
"A clear case, yes!" the funny creature went on, with a grin, "but not an easy one, because when the police called at the hotel in Mexborough Gate they learned that the mysterious Mr. Allen Lloyd had been gone three days. Having paid his bill, he had walked out of the house one dark afternoon and not been seen or heard of since. He went off carrying a paper parcel, which no doubt contained the few belongings he had bought of late.
"Of course he was the thief and a marvellous cunning one. Just think what it meant. It meant, first of all, immense presence of mind and daring to accost the lift-boy and engage him in conversation whilst pouring a drug into a mug of beer; then it meant sneaking into the block of flats in George Street, breaking the glass panel of a door, entering the flat, stealing the keys, sneaking out of the building again, going round to Sackville Street, watching until the police on duty had passed by, entering the house, opening the safe, collecting the gems—all in full view of the street, mind you, or else in absolute darkness—then relocking the safe and again watching for the opportunity to sneak out of the house until the man on duty was out of sight. Clever? I should think it would have been clever, if it had ever been done!"
"How do you mean, if it had ever been done?" I ejaculated, with some impatience. "Whoever the thief was—and I suppose that you have your theory—he must have done all those things."
"Oh no, he did not!" the funny creature asserted emphatically, "he merely put all the gems away in his own pocket after the exhibition was closed for the night, instead of locking them up in the safe."
"Then you think it was Ruggles?" I exclaimed.
"In conjunction with his master."
"Sir James Narford? But why?"
"For the sake of the insurance money."
"But, man alive!" I ejaculated, "that was the tragedy of the whole thing. I remember reading about it at the time. I suppose that it was either out of meanness or because he had so little ready money, but Sir James Narford had only insured his treasure for £20,000, whereas the jewels——"
"Were not worth a penny more than that," the Old Man in the Corner broke in with his bland smile. "The public may have been bamboozled with tales of fabulous value—nowadays people talk as glibly of millions as the past generation did of thousands—but insurance companies don't usually listen to fairy tales."
"But even so," I argued, "the jewels must have been worth more than the insurance after all the advertisement they got. Why shouldn't Sir James have sold them, rather than take the risk of stealing them?"
"But, my dear young lady," he retorted, "can't you see that the jewels can still be sold and that they will be—abroad—presently—one by one? Twenty thousand pounds insurance money is good, but you double the amount and it is better."
"But what about the wounded man in Wicklow Lane?" I asked.
"A red herring across the trail," he replied, with a smile, "only with this difference, that it was dragged across before the hounds were on the scent. And that is where the immense cleverness of the man comes in. To create a personality on whom to draw suspicion of a crime and then make that personality disappear before the crime is committed, is as clever a bit of rascality as I have ever seen. It needed absolute coolness and a knowledge of facial make-up, in both of which we must take it Sir James Narford was a past-master. Think then how easy everything else would be for him.
"Just let me reconstruct the whole thing for you from beginning to end, that is from the moment when Sir James Narford first conceived the idea of doubling the value of his gems, and took his man Ruggles as partner in that fine piece of rascality. He couldn't have done it without a partner, of course, and probably this was not the first villainy those two scoundrels had carried through together. Well then, Narford having given instructions to Ruggles and arranged certain matters of detail with him, begins his campaign by ostensibly starting on a journey. He crossed over to France probably and then back to England. It is easy enough for a man to disappear in crowded trains or railway stations if there is no one on his track; easy enough for him to stay in one hotel after another in any big town if he chooses hotels whose proprietors have reason to dread the police, and will not volunteer information if any of their visitors are 'wanted.' A month only of such wanderings and Sir James Narford, habitually a very dapper man, with sleek, sandy hair cropped very close, a tiny tooth-brush moustache and shaven cheeks and chin, can easily be transformed into one with shaggy hair and beard and walrus moustache. Add to this a nose built out with grease-paint and highly coloured, and cheeks stained a dull red, and you have the man who called for the key of the empty house at Messrs. Whiskin and Sons, with a parcel under his arm, which contained the black cape and Montmartre hat purchased abroad at some time previously, during the course of his wanderings. That's simple, is it not?" the funny creature continued, while his thin, claw-like fingers worked away feverishly at his piece of string. "Now, all that our rascal wants is to change his clothes and his face; so, late that evening, by preconcerted plan, Ruggles meets him at the empty house under cover of the fog. Here he and his precious master change clothes with one another. Narford then completes his toilet by applying to his shaggy hair and beard one of those modern dyes that are so much advertised for the use of ladies desiring to possess raven locks. And so we have the explanation of all the conflicting evidence of the witnesses who saw a man with a parcel, and yet were so much at variance both as to the time when they saw him, as to his appearance, and even as to the size of the parcel.
"Having thus created the personality of a foreign-looking individual in black clothes, you will easily see how important it was for the general scheme that the comedy of the row and the pistol-shots in the empty house should be enacted. Attention had to be drawn to the created personage, attention coupled with mystery, and at this stage of the scheme there was not the slightest danger of the wounded man in Wicklow Lane being in any way connected with Sir James Narford of George Street, Mayfair. Time was no object. The mysterious Mr. Allen Lloyd of Wicklow Lane might be detained days, weeks, even months, but he would have to be let out some time or other. He was perfectly harmless apparently, and otherwise sane; he could not be kept for ever at the country's expense. He was eventually discharged; went to an hotel, and lived there quietly a while longer until he thought that the time was ripe for complete disappearance. In the meanwhile we must suppose that he was in touch with Ruggles. Ruggles made a point of taking a brisk walk every evening. Well, winter evenings are dark and London is a very crowded place. Ruggles would bring what money was required. What more easy than to meet in a crowd?
"Then at last the two rascals thought that the time was ripe. The mysterious Mr. Allen Lloyd disappeared from the hotel in Mexborough Gate; he went to Sackville Street, where he shaved off his shaggy moustache and beard, and cut his hair once more so close that nothing of the dyed ends could be seen. He changed into his own clothes, which Ruggles kept there ready for him. Then he slipped round to Victoria Station and crossed over to France, only in order to return to England, openly this time, as Sir James Narford, and just in time to find Ruggles just aroused from a drugged sleep and the whole flat seething with excitement. But it was he who in black cape and Montmartre hat visited the shop in Sackville Street, it was Ruggles who the following night spoke to the lift-boy, even while Narford was procuring for himself a perfect alibi by crossing over quite openly from France.
"Ruggles's task was, of course, much easier. All he had to do was to put the gems in his pocket, and these Narford took over from him in the morning at the flat before he telephoned for the police. To put on the black cape and hat and to accost the lift-boy was easy enough on a dark, snowy night in January. And now all the excitement has died down. The whole thing was so cleverly planned that the real rascal was never suspected. Ruggles may have been but nothing could really be brought up against him. The gems haven't been found and to all appearances he has not benefited by the robbery. He is just the faithful, trusted servant of his master.
"Sir James Narford has got his money from the Insurance Company and since then has left for abroad. By the way," the Old Man in the Corner concluded, as he gathered up his precious bit of string and slipped it in the pocket of his ulster, "I heard recently that he has bought some property in Argentina and has settled down there permanently with his friend Ruggles. I think he was wise to do that, and if you care to publish my version of that mysterious affair, you are at liberty to do so. I don't think that our friend would sue you for defamation of character, and, anyway, I'll undertake to pay damages if the case comes into court.”