Mrs. Vanderstein's jewels

“He said that he wished to have possession of the house from midday of Monday last; told me to get a charwoman in on Monday morning, in case any cleaning up remained to be done, and that he wished me to meet him at the house on Monday for the purpose of going over the inventory. Then he took out a pocket book, which seemed to be stuffed full of bank notes, paid me thirty guineas, the rent for half the first month, and asked me to get the agreement for him to sign. I got him two agreement forms such as we use, as a rule, when letting furnished houses, and he signed them both and put one in his pocket.”

“Perhaps Mr. Gimblet would like to glance at our copy,” said Mr. Ennidge, diving into a drawer. “Here it is,” and he handed a paper to the detective, who turned it over thoughtfully. There was nothing on it beyond the ordinary printed clauses setting forth the terms of the contract. At the end the tenant had signed his name, “Henry West,” in large, sprawling characters, the strokes of which seemed a trifle uncertain, as if the hand that held the pen had not been absolutely steady. Below, in a neat business-like writing, was the clerk’s signature: “A. W. Tremmels, for Messrs. Ennidge and Pring.”

Gimblet put it in his pocket. “I may keep it for the present, I suppose?” he asked Mr. Ennidge, who looked rather as if he would have liked to object, but on the whole decided not to.

“Can you describe what Mr. West looked like?” Gimblet asked the clerk. “But perhaps you had better tell me that on the way to the house. Mr. Ennidge has promised to send you down with me. One thing, however, before we start: I should like to see the inventory, if I may.”

“By all means,” Mr. Ennidge replied. “Just get it, Tremmels, and the key too. You know where they are kept,” and as the clerk went into the outer office he turned again to Gimblet.

“If you would like me to come myself?” he suggested.

“Oh no, thanks,” Gimblet answered, “do not trouble to come. As the clerk is the only one who met Mr. West, I think he will really be more useful to me. I suppose he can stand a walk down to Scholefield Avenue? He looks dreadfully ill, poor chap; what’s wrong with him? Consumptive?”

“He is ill, I’m afraid,” said Mr. Ennidge regretfully, “but it will do him good to get a walk and a breath of fresh air. The hot weather we had last week was very trying; Tremmels certainly looks very bad since the heat. I have told him to take a holiday to-morrow,” he added kindly, “a day in the country will be the best thing for him, and there is not very much to be done in the office at this time of the year. Business is very slack, Mr. Gimblet. I daresay, now, yours keeps your nose to the grindstone, at one season as much as another?”

“Well, yes,” said Gimblet. “I’m afraid the criminal classes aren’t very regular in their holiday-making. It’s very inconsiderate of them, but I’m afraid they’re a selfish lot.”

The house agent’s ever-present smile broadened, and at that moment young Tremmels made his reappearance with the inventory. In an instant Gimblet’s keen nose had told him that with the clerk there now entered the room a pervading smell of brandy, and his quick eye noted a tinge of colour in the pale cheek of the young man, which had previously not been visible there. “O-ho,” he said to himself, “so that’s the trouble, is it?” Then, with a word of thanks to Mr. Ennidge, Gimblet led the way out into the street, and turned his steps towards Scholefield Avenue.

“Now then,” he said to his companion as they hurried along, “about this Mr. West. What is he like?”

“He’s an elderly, rather horsey-looking gentleman, and odd in his manner,” said the clerk. “What I mean to say is, he has a very pleasant way of talking, and yet somehow he doesn’t talk like an ordinary gentleman might. Seems rather fond of what I may term the habit of using bad language.”

“What does he look like?”

“He isn’t what you’d call a tall man; not that I should call him short either; and thin, very thin. Don’t know if I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” said Gimblet patiently, “would you know him again?”

“Oh yes. He’s a very uncommon sort to meet about. I’d know him anywhere. He’s got a leather coloured face, which looks as if he’d been out in the sun more than a few weeks, and a funny little bit of a pointed beard on his chin. Tell you what he looks like,” said Tremmels, with more show of animation than he had so far exhibited, “he looks more like an American than he does an Indian; and, come to think of it, he’s got a nasty sort of voice, same as they have, but not very strong.”

“Anything else you can remember about him?” Gimblet asked. He was listening with intense interest.

“Well, he has got a way of standing with his legs apart, and getting up on his tiptoes; and then down he lets himself go with a jerk, if I make myself plain. His wool is a bit grey and is commencing to get baldish on the top. He seems to dislike seeing strangers or making new acquaintances, as you may say. He gave me to understand that he’s a scholar, and going in for reading and what not when he’s settled in Scholefield Avenue; says his health’s bad too, but I shouldn’t wonder if it was more likely something else. More this sort of thing.” The clerk made an upward movement with his right arm and hand, of which, as Gimblet was walking on his other side, the significance was lost on him.

“I beg your pardon?” he inquired doubtfully.

“Granted,” said Tremmels; “what I mean is, if you understand me, I shouldn’t be surprised if anyone was to tell me that he takes a drop too much. Rather rosy about the beak, I thought, and when he left the office I watched him go down the street till he was nearly out of sight, when what should he do but nip across into the private bar of the Lion and Crown.”

“Ah,” said Gimblet, “I observed a certain shakiness in the signature of the lease.” In his own mind he was thinking that it was more than probable that the clerk had accompanied Mr. West to the Lion and Crown. “Did you notice anything else?”

“I don’t know that I did,” said Tremmels thoughtfully. “He wore ordinary sort of clothes. Gent’s lounge suit with a large check pattern, brown boots, and a very genteel diamond pin in the centre of his tie. Altogether quite the gentleman, and very civil-spoken and pleasant when not swearing. He told me that he wouldn’t want any coals ordered in, as his cooking would be done chiefly on the gas stove with which the kitchen of No. 13 is fitted. There is every convenience, as you may say,” concluded the clerk.

As Gimblet pondered over what he had heard, and reflected that the powers of observation that his companion showed were greater than he had given him credit for, they drew near to Scholefield Avenue and passed beneath its lines of branching plane trees to the gate of Mr. Mill’s house. Higgs was at his post before it and reported that nothing had stirred during the detective’s absence. Sir Gregory came from the back of the house in the company of Mr. Brampton, who had joined him there. The artist was plainly excited.

“Your friend tells me,” he said, as he came up to Gimblet’s side, “that you think that the two ladies of whose disappearance the papers are so full – Mrs. Vanderstein and her companion – came to this house on the night that they vanished. It will be the greatest favour if you will allow me to witness your methods of investigating this affair.”

“By all means,” said Gimblet ungraciously, “why shouldn’t the whole street come? I think it is very probable that it will do so, since Sir Gregory Aberhyn Jones appears to be perfectly incapable of keeping his own counsel, no matter whether the safety of his friends is endangered or not.” So saying he turned and held out his hand for the key of the house to the clerk, who, panting and gasping after his walk, now leant against the door as if no longer able to support himself unaided.

Sir Gregory and the artist, off whom Gimblet’s right and left shots had glanced with a sting but produced no permanent wounds, fell back silenced for the moment, though unflinchingly determined to see anything there was to be seen. The quick, searching eyes of Brampton rested on the clerk, and he took in his woeful condition with the rapidity of his trade.

“That young fellow ought to be in bed,” he said, in a low voice, in Sir Gregory’s ear, “but I suppose, like the rest of us, he won’t be able to tear himself away from this exciting spot.”

They followed Gimblet, who had opened the door and passed through it into the hall. He looked round him in despair.

“Really, gentleman,” he cried, “you must stay at the door for the present. If this house has anything to tell, it will never do so after you have trampled all traces from the very floors with your innumerable feet. I will just see if there is anyone here; and, if not, you can come in after I have begun my thorough examination, as long as you keep out of my way and do as I tell you. Otherwise I warn you, Sir Gregory, that you will ruin every chance of success.”

“He talks as if we were centipedes,” murmured Brampton.

Sir Gregory motioned him to silence, and they remained obediently in the doorway while the detective and Higgs ran over the house, opening all the doors and glancing into the rooms to see if there were anyone in them. Whatever secret might lurk beneath that roof, for the moment at least there was no visible human occupant to divulge it; and, if he was to arrive at any answer to the problem of what had taken place on Monday night after the arrival of the ladies, it was clear to Gimblet that he must do so with no help other than the dumb aid he might receive from the inanimate objects still within the walls, or even from the very walls themselves.

As soon as he had completed the first hurried general survey, the detective began a systematic examination of the house, starting with the hall and passage of the ground floor. The other men had to move away from the steps while he was here, as their figures crowding in the open doorway blocked the light, and he wanted all he could get. There was no electric light. In Scholefield Avenue, Brampton told Sir Gregory, all the houses were dependent on gas for their illumination. Gimblet knelt down and examined the carpet of the hall on his hands and knees. He took a small magnifying lens from his pocket, and applied it to certain spots, which he lingered over longer than the rest of the floor; at the foot of the stairs he picked up a small object from under the corner of the mat; he held it to the light for a moment between finger and thumb, and then put it carefully away in a little box like a pill-box, which he also produced from his pocket. Then he stood up, and examined the furniture with the same patient deliberation. Presently he spoke to the clerk, who was standing before the door, a little apart from the others.

“Have you got that inventory?” he asked. “Just read out the contents of the hall.”

Tremmels came up the steps and opened the book he carried.

“Two oak chairs, one oak table, one mirror, one mat,” he read. “One umbrella stand; two chairs on landing, eight engravings in frames.”

“Wait a bit,” interposed the detective, “we haven’t got there yet.”

He went to the door, and called to Sir Gregory and Brampton.

“I’ve finished the hall,” he said. “If you want to come in, you can, as long as you stay behind me and don’t bother me with talking.”

Then he turned back to his search, and began to subject each tread of the staircase to the same minute examination as the hall had received. From time to time he added another tiny object to the one he had already placed in the pill-box; four or five were deposited there before they reached the first floor.

In this way the party ascended, a step at a time, till Brampton’s curiosity began to succumb to the boredom of such ineffably slow, crawling, snail-like progress.

“I think I’ll not inflict my presence any longer, Mr. Gimblet,” said he, “it is time I dressed for dinner, or my wife will have to wait for me.”

Receiving no answer from Gimblet, who was now absolutely absorbed in his work, he whispered to Sir Gregory that he would come back after dinner, and retired from the scene, escorted to the door by Higgs, who let him out and shut it behind him before he returned to his post at the foot of the staircase.

At the top of the house Gimblet straightened himself and turned to Sir Gregory and the clerk, who were on the stairs a few steps below him.

Sir Gregory, who was nearly choking with pent-up questions, seized the opportunity.

“Have you found anything?” he cried, and Tremmels, though he said nothing, was a living echo of the words, as he strained forward behind Sir Gregory to catch the reply.

“Nothing definite as yet,” said Gimblet, “but I may say it appears to me probable that, if Mrs. Vanderstein did come here on Monday night, she did not stay in the house long. I should say she went no higher, at all events, than the drawing-room floor.” And he proceeded to the examination of the rooms working his way downwards.

The bedrooms yielded no harvest; they wore the dismal look of unoccupied rooms and had apparently not been entered since, having been swept and cleaned with great thoroughness, they had been left ready for the use of the tenant. None of the beds were made, there was no water in the jugs, there was absolutely no indication of so much as one of them having been used since the departure of Mr. and Mrs. Mill. Gimblet did not spend so long over them as he had over the staircase, but it was past eight o’clock when at length he came out of the last one and descended to the first floor.

“I can always try upstairs again if there is nothing conclusive here,” he said to Sir Gregory, as they went down.

With his hand on the knob of the drawing-room door he paused an instant, looking with more sympathy than he had lately shown at the anxious face of the old soldier. A feeling crept over him that it would not be good for Sir Gregory to enter this room; it was a vague impalpable feeling, which he could not explain; and in a moment it had passed. He opened the door and went into the drawing-room, leaving the baronet, in obedience to instructions received, faithfully standing on the landing, the white face of the clerk showing over his shoulder, framed in the square of the doorway against the dusky shadows beyond.

CHAPTER XVIII

In the preliminary hasty search over the house, it had fallen to Higgs to reach the first floor earlier than his master. Gimblet had left it to him to examine, while he himself hurried to the upper stories; so that he now entered the drawing-room for the first time.

He stood for a moment turning his head to right and left, taking in the principal features of the apartment with quick, comprehensive glances. Then, of a sudden, the whole figure of the man stiffened; and it was hard to recognise Mr. Gimblet, the dilettante, the frequenter of curiosity shops, the lounger in picture galleries, in the tense, motionless form of Gimblet, the detective, at this moment. He stood, as a pointer stands when it catches the wind of game, erect and stiff, in an attitude of interrupted movement, one knee still bent for the step he had been in the very act of making; his whole form absolutely still, save for a series of short, successive intakings of the breath, as, with head thrown back and his eyes shining with the keen, well-balanced excitement of the hunter, he sniffed the air.

What was it he smelt? Something so faint, so indefinite, that after the first arresting instant he had lost it altogether; and with it the knowledge of what it was – which in that one second had seemed almost his – slipped away and was gone, nor could his most strenuous effort recall it. Oh, for one more whiff of that evasive, troubling odour! But sniff as he might he could no longer detect anything, and slowly his attitude relaxed, and he brought other senses to bear upon the scene.

The room was divided, by its shape, into a front and back drawing-room, as is commonly the case in London houses; but the two had been thrown into one and the door led into the narrower back part, so that the light from the window overlooking the garden, which was obscured by trees, while it still illumined all that lay on Gimblet’s right, hardly penetrated into the front and larger portion of the place. There the closed shutters of the three windows leading to the balcony prevented the light from finding an entrance, and it was very dark. The detective lit the gas and looked around him.

It was a cheerful, pleasant room; not overcrowded with furniture, and showing taste and judgment in its arrangement and decoration, though there was nothing very original about it. On the walls, which were covered with some light coloured paper, were hung three or four good modern pictures; the mantelpiece was an eighteenth century one, and on either side of it was placed a Chippendale cabinet, with shelves for china, of which some good pieces could be seen through the small panes of the glass doors. At the opposite end of the room was a long, low bookcase and, except for a large writing bureau, the rest of the furniture consisted of sofas and chairs, with one or two small tables. It was a room at once dainty and desolate, gay and forlorn. The empty flower vases which stood on the tables, the absence of stray books, work, papers, or other signs of human occupancy, gave it a look of discomfort and dreariness; but it was plain, from the bright chintzes and curtains and the soft luxury of the carpet, that it only needed the presence of its owners to assume a cheerful and lively aspect.

Gimblet began his examination in his usual methodical manner, working his way over the floor on hands and knees, gazing at the carpet through his lens at any place where there appeared a doubtful mark or change in the appearance of its surface from that of the surrounding parts. As he came to chairs or tables he moved them to one side, and continued his quest on the spot where they had stood. There were two small Chesterfield sofas, one of which jutted out at right angles to the fire-place before the right hand window of the front part of the room, the other facing the door with its back against the wall.

When the detective came to the sofa by the fireplace, he pushed it to one side as he had pushed each piece of furniture in its turn, and as his eyes fell on the floor beneath it a low whistle escaped him: there was a patch of reddish stain on the green Wilton carpet, about three inches in diameter, and a smaller spot or two near by of the same rusty colour.

With his head on one side, and his lips still pursed as if to emit a whistling sound, but with no audible noise issuing from them, Gimblet gazed at the stain on the carpet; and the longer he looked the sterner his face became; the whistling expression vanished, and he opened and shut his mouth with a grinding sound as the teeth met. He rubbed his finger over the marks, and the patch seemed to crumble away at his touch, till a hole appeared in the carpet and the white boards of the flooring were exposed to view. He applied his lens to the edges of the hole and plucked at the frayed wool with his fingers. A small piece that he pulled off he bestowed in one of the little specimen boxes with which he had provided himself.

Then he replaced the sofa in its original position, and continued his examination of the floor. Under the fender he discovered another of the little objects he had picked up on the stairs, but nothing else did he find of any interest till he began to turn his attention to the furniture. Almost the first thing he looked at was the sofa that concealed the hole in the carpet; he was drawn back to it with an irresistible attraction. A careful scrutiny, however, did not reveal much more than the fact that the chintz cover was rather tumbled. Gimblet dug his hand down at the back of the seat, and pulled out the part of it which was tucked down. As he did so he felt a little lump under his fingers, and holding it up saw that it was yet another tiny shining thing for his pill-box collection, and as he looked at the piece of chintz he had pulled out he perceived several more of the same kind.

They glittered in the gaslight like little diamonds, but had evidently come off the spangled tulle of a lady’s dress. Gimblet remembered that Mrs. Vanderstein’s dress had been described by her maid as “diamantée”; but then it was possible, indeed probable, that Mrs. Mill, or her friends, possessed gowns of similar material. Gimblet stooped again, and tugged up the rest of the sofa covering from the depths behind the cushions. This time he pulled it all up; the whole covering lay spread before him in an untidy, unwieldy mass, and from the end, as he plucked it out, there shot two small objects, which fell to the floor at his feet. In a moment he had lifted them from the ground and stood staring at them: they were a piece of crushed and folded paper and a minute powder puff.

The detective unfolded the paper, and held it to the light; it was a sheet of thick white notepaper, and on it was embossed a crown and device in heavy gold lettering. Below these was written in a fine, slanting foreign hand

“Most adored, I count the hours, the minutes, till I shall hear for the first time the sound of your voice. Heaven be praised that I have not long to wait, and you, whom heaven has sent to me, accept the thanks of my grateful heart. I send this by Madame Q.”

The signature that followed made Gimblet open his eyes. “Felipe,” in conjunction with the crown at the head of the paper and the foreign character of the penmanship, could refer to one person only. Gimblet was well aware that the Prince of Targona was honouring London with his presence. He glanced carefully round the room to make sure no one was near, folded the paper carefully, and placed it in his notebook. Then he turned his attention to the powder puff.

It was an ordinary little powder puff of pink silk and white down – very small, very dainty, if very commonplace. Gimblet turned it over and over, but could see nothing about it which stamped it as different from other powder puffs. Not that it was a curio in the peculiarities of which he was very well versed; he could not help realising that in the matter of powder puffs his education had been neglected. A French detective, he told himself sadly, would have read a whole history in this soft toy. He brushed it across the back of his hand, but it left no mark; he shook it into the palm, but no powder fell from it. It was plain to him that, whatever uses it might have served in the white hands that had formerly clasped it, it was not of any use at all in his, and in his irritation he was inclined to hurl it from him. But his methodical habits prevailed and he felt in his coat for a box to contain it. And suddenly, with what seemed like an involuntary movement, he lifted the hand that held the powder puff, and held it to his nose.

“Ah,” he sighed, and it was a sigh of deep content. Then he stored away the precious fluffy thing, and put it in his pocket. He finished the tour of the furniture without further discovery; at the end of it he requested Tremmels to read out the contents of the room from the inventory, as he had done at the conclusion of his visits to each room or landing, checking off each object as the clerk read out its description.

“I am in hopes,” he said to Sir Gregory, “of finding something not mentioned in the inventory, which we might take to be the property of Mr. West. But so far there is nothing that can possibly be his, not so much as a toothbrush. He certainly seems to be a leader of the simple life.” Then he turned to Tremmels again. “Is there no mention of the chair covers?” he asked. But the young man only stared at him open-mouthed, and he seized the book from his hand.

“Let me see,” he murmured, running a finger down the page. “Here we are. ‘Two Chesterfield sofas and five arm-chairs with loose chintz covers.’ Might mean anything. Look here!” he turned to the clerk again, “you went over the inventory. What do you remember about that sofa?” He pointed to the one opposite the door, which, unlike the other sofas and chairs, had no chintz covering. Tremmels was flurried by the detective’s sharp tone.

“I – I don’t remember anything at all,” he stammered.

“What, don’t you remember that it had a cover?”

Gimblet’s second question was still more sharply spoken. The clerk shot a glance at him in which suspicion, timidity, and bewilderment were oddly mixed, and he answered stubbornly, repeating his former words as if he imagined a trap were being laid for him.