Drury Lane’s Last Case

7 “The Passionate Pilgrim”

Miss Brodie stumbled into her employer’s sanctum, her vapid young face working. “Oh, Inspector! It’s — it’s Mr. Lane!”

“What’s that?” asked the Inspector blankly. It was Wednesday, and he had quite forgotten having written Lane the day before.

“Now, now, Brodie,” said Patience kindly, “get a grip on yourself. What’s this about Mr. Lane?”

Miss Brodie made Spartan efforts. She gulped, pointed tremblingly at the door, and said: “He’s outside.”

“Well, for the love of Mike!” bellowed the Inspector, springing for the door. “Why didn’t you say so?” He yanked the door open; a tall old man with a mat of pure white hair sat on the bench in the ante-room, smiling at him and Patience by his side. Miss Brodie sucked her thumb nervously in the background. “Lane! It’s good to see you. What the devil brings you into town?”

Mr. Drury Lane rose, tucked his blackthorn under his arm, and gripped the Inspector’s hand very creditably for a septuagenarian. “Your fascinating letter, of course. Patience! Charming as usual. Well, well, Inspector, aren’t you going to ask me in?”

Miss Brodie slipped by, an agitated wraith awed by a higher Presence. Mr. Drury Lane smiled at her in passing, and she gasped faintly. Then the three retired to the Inspector’s office.

The old gentleman looked about him with affectionate eyes. “It’s been some time, hasn’t it? The same stuffy old hole, Inspector. A sort of modern Teach’s brig. How are you both?”

“Physically prime,” said Patience, “but not so healthy mentally — at the moment. But how have you been, Mr. Lane? The last time—”

“The last time, my dear,” said the old gentleman solemnly, “I was slipping on an earthslide into my grave. Today — as you see me. I feel better than I’ve felt for years.”

“Sure makes me feel good to see you sittin’ here,” growled the Inspector.

Lane spoke with his eyes shifting from the lips of Patience to the lips of Thumm; in a practiced, fluid way they were never still. “The truth is your letter revived me, Inspector. A case! Particularly a case involving my humdrum little Britannic. It seems too good to be true.”

“That’s the difference between you and Father,” said Patience, laughing. “Mysteries irritate him and stimulate you.”

“And what do they do to you, my dear?”

She shrugged. “I’m the Balm of Gilead.”

“The Britannic,” murmured Lane. “Patience, have you met young Gordon Rowe?”

Instantly she blushed, and tears of exasperation came to her eyes. The Inspector muttered bitterly to himself. The old gentleman eyed them with a smile. “Oh — oh, yes, I’ve met him,” said Patience.

“So I gathered,” said Lane dryly. “Smart young chap, eh?”

“Quite, quite.”

The Inspector fidgeted. “Fact of the matter is, Lane, we’re in something crazy. I’m not getting any money out of it, it’s the nuttiest yarn you ever heard, and I’ve got to do something about it for old time’s sake.”

“An unenviable position,” chuckled the old gentleman. “I suggest we go at once to the museum. Something in your description of that shattered cabinet in the Saxon Room, Inspector, makes me want very much to examine it.”

“Oh!” cried Patience. “Something I missed?”

“It’s just a conjecture,” said Mr. Drury Lane thoughtfully. “I dare say it’s nothing. Shall we go? Dromio is downstairs with the car.”

They found Dr. Alonzo Choate in his office deep in conversation with a tall, spidery-limbed man dressed in curiously foreign clothes. He possessed the lean hatchety face of a certain physical type of Englishman — very sharp eyes, too, and screwed easily under the brow-ridge of his right eye there was a rimless monocle, from which a slender black silk ribbon fell to circle his neck. There was a bony clean-shavenness about his face which strongly recalled the scholars of the Renaissance. When he spoke it was with a quiet positiveness, and in the charming accent of the cultured Briton. He was perhaps fifty. Dr. Choate introduced him as Dr. Hamnet Sedlar, the incumbent curator, whose boat from England had docked this morning.

“Mr. Lane!” he exclaimed. “This is a genuine pleasure, sir. Ever since I saw you play the Moor in London twenty years ago, I have wanted to know you. And then your scholarly articles on Shakespeare in the Colophon—”

“Kind of you, I’m sure,” said the old man hastily. “I’m scarcely more than a literary dilettante. I suppose Dr. Choate has told you about the little mystery which preceded your arrival?”

Dr. Sedlar looked blank. “I beg your pardon?”

“Oh, a mere trifle,” rumbled Dr. Choate, fingering his goatee. “I’m astonished that you’ve taken the incident seriously, Mr. Lane.”

“The facts present a rather curious superficial appearance, Doctor,” murmured Drury Lane. His brilliant eyes darted from Choate to Sedlar and back again. “You see, Dr. Sedlar, an old gentleman obviously disguised managed to worm his way into the museum on Monday — two days ago — and apparently attacked a case in one of the new rooms.”

“Really?” said Dr. Sedlar.

“It was nothing,” said the curator impatiently. “He didn’t get away with anything, and that’s the important thing.”

“I should think so,” agreed the Englishman with a smile.

“If I may interrupt this academic dispute,” said the old gentleman, “may I suggest we examine the evidence itself? Or perhaps you gentleman would rather—”

Dr. Choate nodded, but the Englishman said: “Dr. Choate and I are, I believe, already quite well acquainted. At the moment I should like nothing better than to see this shattered case.” He chuckled. “After all, if I’m to direct the destinies of the Britannic Museum I suppose I should learn something about the methods of your American art-thieves. Eh, Doctor?”

“Er... yes,” said the curator, frowning. “As you will, of course.”

They passed through the general reading room, which was empty — as Patience observed with a faint twinge of disappointment; where was Gordon Rowe? — and into the Saxon Room.

The cabinet which yesterday had exhibited a broken glass had been repaired. There was nothing to distinguish its fresh gleaming pane from the tops of the other cases about.

“The glazier repaired it yesterday afternoon,” said Dr. Choate a trifle stiffly to the Inspector. “Let me assure you that he was not left alone for an instant. I myself stood over him until he had completed his job.”

The Inspector grunted.

Mr. Drury Lane and Dr. Hamnet Sedlar looked inquisitively through the glass. Into the eyes of both came a gleam of appreciation.

“Jaggards,” said Dr. Sedlar very softly. “Enormously interesting, Mr. Lane. Did I understand you to say, Dr. Choate, that this is a new room and these items a recent benefaction?”

“Yes. The contents of this wing were left to the Britannic by the will of Samuel Saxon, the collector. They will be on exhibition, of course, when the museum reopens.”

“Oh, yes! I believe Mr. Wyeth did mention something of the sort to me a month ago in London. I’ve often wondered what your American Mr. Saxon had in his library. Secretive soul, wasn’t he? These Jaggards — exquisite!”

“Dr. Choate,” said Mr. Drury Lane dryly, looking up from an unwinking inspection through the glass, “have you a key to this case?”

“Certainly.”

“Will you open the cabinet, please?”

The curator stared, looked faintly uncomfortable for an instant, and then complied. They crowded about as the old gentleman raised the lid and propped it back. The three old volumes lay nakedly exposed on the soft black velvet. Under the harsh light of an overhead lamp their faded colors strengthened to titillate the eye. Carefully Lane lifted each calf volume out in turn, inspected its binding closely, opened to the flyleaf... In one instance he spent some time searching the text. When he had replaced the three volumes in their original positions, he straightened, and Patience, watching his chiseled features attentively, saw them tighten.

“Very odd,” he murmured. “I can scarcely believe it.” And he stared down at the open cabinet.

“What’s the matter?” cried Dr. Choate in a thick voice.

“The matter, my dear Choate,” said the old gentleman calmly, “is that one of the volumes which originally lay in this case has been stolen!”

“Stolen!” they cried simultaneously; and Dr. Choate took a step forward and stopped short.

“That’s impossible,” he said sharply. “I examined these Jaggards myself when young Rowe found the cabinet bashed in.”

“Did you examine them internally?” murmured Lane.

The curator paled. “I didn’t see— No. But then the most cursory examination...”

“Deceived even your trained eye, I fear, Doctor. As I said, this is the most curious thing in my experience.” His silky white brows drew together. “Look here.” He pointed a lean forefinger at the triangular placard which stood behind the central volume of the three, the book bound in blue calf. It read:

Extraordinary and unique item from the Samuel Saxon Library. One of the three known copies extant of this rare work in the first edition. Published by the Elizabethan printer William Jaggard in 1599, it was fraudulently assigned by the notorious Jaggard to Shakespeare, although it contained only five poems from the Bard’s pen among the twenty in the volume. The residue were by Richard Barnfield, Bartholomew Griffin, and other contemporary poets.

“Well?” asked Dr. Choate quietly. Hamnet Sedlar stood squinting through his monocle at the central volume; he seemed scarcely to have read the placard behind it.

“Is it... is it a forgery, a dummy?” asked Patience breathlessly.

“No, Patience, my dear. I do not claim to be an expert, but I know enough about these things to venture the opinion that the volume you see here is a genuine Jaggard edition of The Passionate Pilgrim.”

Dr. Choate grew angry. “Then I don’t see—” He picked up the blue-bound book and turned to the flyleaf. His jaw sagged ludicrously. Dr. Sedlar, startled, peered over his shoulder. And he, too, exhibited a shocked surprise that was as intense as it was fleeting.

Lane paced hugely up and down behind the case, head bent.

“Well, but—” began the Inspector, bewildered. Then he threw up his hands and muttered anathemas.

“But if it’s a genuine Jaggard,” cried Patience, “what—”

“Utterly, starkly impossible. Impossible,” murmured Dr. Choate over and over.

“It’s mad,” said the Englishman in an awed voice.

Together they bent over the volume, searching its pages feverishly. They looked at each other and nodded with something like reverence. Then they returned their attention to the title-page. Patience, peeping over their shoulders, read:

“I see,” said Patience slowly. “This isn’t the 1599 Jaggard, then, which was the first edition, but a copy of the 1606 Jaggard, or the second edition. Obviously a less valuable volume—”

“My dear Miss Thumm,” said Dr. Choate sharply over his shoulder, “you have never been in greater error.”

“You mean it’s more valuable?”

The Inspector began to exhibit signs of awakened interest. Lane continued to pace the floor, deep in thought.

There was no reply, and Patience, flushing, retreated.

“Patience,” said the old gentleman suddenly. She went gratefully to him, and he put his long arm about her shoulders. “Patience, my dear, do you know what makes this incident so astonishing?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea, sir.”

He squeezed her shoulders gently. “Mr. William Jaggard was a well-meaning patron of the arts. He was apparently in the thick of things in London during the period when Shakespeare, Jonson, Fletcher, Marlowe, and the illustrious rest dripped gold from their quills. There was probably a good deal of competition among the publishers. Mr. William Jaggard sought names, just as some of our current theatrical producers and book publishers seek them today. And so he became something very like a pirate. He printed The Passionate Pilgrim. In it he included two previously unpublished sonnets by Shakespeare, and three poems drawn from the already published play, Love’s Labour’s Lost. The rest was padding. He assigned them, with colossal nerve, all of them, to Shakespeare. I’ve no doubt they sold well; and as for Shakespeare, he seems to have been a curiously indifferent dramatist as far as publication was concerned.” Lane sighed. “I tell you this to give you something of an appreciation of the background. I’m sure they sold well because after printing a first edition in 1599, he reprinted in 1606, and still a third time in 1612. Now what makes the present situation so amazing is this: There are three copies of the 1599 Jaggard extant. There are two copies of the 1612 Jaggard extant. But until a few moments ago the entire bibliophilic world thought there was no copy of the 1606 Jaggard extant!”

“Then this book is priceless?” whispered Patience.

“Priceless?” echoed Dr. Choate absently.

“I said,” replied the old man in dulcet tones, “that this was an odd case, my dear. Inspector, I scarcely blame you for being puzzled; although you didn’t grasp the full intricacies of the puzzle quite clearly. Patience, my child, the situation becomes slightly insane. Apparently your man of the blue hat went to vast trouble, at great personal risk, to wheedle his way into a closed group, illicitly visit the Britannic Museum, drift away from the group while Dr. Choate expounded on the glories of his museum, make his way to this Saxon Room, smash in the glass of the Jaggard cabinet... Throughout, this odd thief ran the enormous risk of arrest for grand larceny and vandalism — all for what?” Lane’s voice sharpened. “To steal one rare and valuable book, and then to leave in its place a book even rarer and more valuable than the one he stole!”