Drury Lane’s Last Case

8 The Beneficent Thief

“What’s the row?” demanded a cheerful voice, and young Gordon Rowe sauntered into the Saxon Room from the corridor. He grinned at Patience and went to her side at once, like a scrap of iron filing drawn to a magnet.

“Ah, Rowe,” said the curator hurriedly. “The very man. The most extraordinary thing’s happened!”

“We seem to be attracting marvels like Mr. Barnum’s freak show,” said young Rowe with a wink at Patience. “Mr. Lane! Glad to see you, sir. Lord, what a solemn congregation! And I see you’ve been initiating Dr. Sedlar into our little domestic difficulties, Dr. Choate. ’Lo, Inspector. What’s the trouble, Doctor?”

Dr. Choate mutely waved the blue volume in his hand.

Rowe dropped his smile instantly. “Not—?” He looked around and saw grave faces. Then he took the book from the curator and slowly opened it. An expression of the most intense amazement came over his face. He looked around again in blank confusion. “It isn’t— Why, this is a 1606 Jaggard!” he shouted. “I thought there weren’t any—”

“Apparently there is,” said the old gentleman dryly. “Beautiful copy, isn’t it, Gordon? There will be shouting in the streets when the news gets out.”

“I know,” muttered Rowe, “but— Where in God’s good name did this come from? Who found it? You didn’t bring it over from London, did you, Dr. Sedlar?”

“Scarcely!” drawled the Englishman.

“You won’t believe it,” said Dr. Choate with a helpless shrug. “But we did have a theft here Monday. Some one left this in the Jaggard case, Rowe, and took away the 1599!”

“Oh,” said the young man. “I—” And he threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Lord, this is rich!” he gasped, wiping his eyes. “Wait until divine Lydia hears this. And Crabbe... Oh, this is too much!” He gulped hard and composed himself. “I beg your pardon. It just struck me... you know. It would be Mrs. Saxon’s luck to have a rare book stolen and an even rarer one left in its place. Crazy, that’s what it is!”

“I think,” said the curator with a nervous tug at his beard, “you’d better get Mrs. Saxon over here at once, Rowe. After all—”

“Of course.” The young man caressed the 1606 Jaggard with tenderness, returned it to Dr. Choate, pressed Patience’s arm, and left the room with a jaunty air.

“Frightfully boisterous young man,” remarked Dr. Sedlar. “I’m afraid I can’t share his levity. You know, we can’t accept this — this remarkable volume at its face value, Dr. Choate. It will have to be more thoroughly examined. It may be difficult to establish its authenticity—”

The hunter’s glare invaded Dr. Choate’s eye. “Quite. Quite.” And he rubbed his hands. He seemed content to have the stolen volume remain in possession of the thief, so long as the thief did not return and demand the unique volume he had left in the case. “I suggest we get to work at once. We’ll have to proceed carefully, Sedlar. We don’t want a breath of this to get out! We might call in old Gaspari of the Metropolitan, swear him to secrecy...”

Dr. Sedlar was strangely pale. He kept staring at the ravished cabinet as if hypnotized.

“Or Professor Crowninshield of the Folger,” he muttered.

Patience sighed. “We all seem to be assuming that the 1599 Jaggard was stolen by the man in the blue hat. There’s really no proof, you know. Why mightn’t the thief have been that second stranger on the bus, or one of the seventeen schoolteachers?”

Inspector Thumm threw up his hands and scowled. It was evident that the entire affair was too much for him.

“I scarcely think so, Patience,” murmured Drury Lane. “There were nineteen persons on the bus, all of whom apparently entered the museum. Eighteen of them returned to the bus terminal after the visit, the eighteenth being the mysterious second stranger, as you so charmingly have christened him. In other words, our friend, the man in the blue hat, disappeared from the museum. And so did Donoghue. The link is too powerful to have been forged by coincidence. I think it extremely probable that the man in the blue hat stole the 1599 Jaggard, leaving this 1606 in its place, and that Donoghue disappeared in following him.”

“Well, well,” said the curator briskly, “I’ve no doubt it will all be explained in time. Meanwhile, Dr. Sedlar, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll have the museum searched at once.”

“For what?” demanded the Inspector bitterly.

“There’s the remote chance, you know, that that 1599 Jaggard may not have been taken out of the building.”

“Says you,” growled Thumm.

“Excellent notion, Doctor,” said Dr. Sedlar eagerly, “I... I’ll carry on. But when Mrs. Saxon arrives—” Apparently Dr. Sedlar had heard of Mrs. Saxon’s potentialities, and was properly apprehensive.

“I shan’t be a minute,” said Dr. Choate cheerfully. He deposited the blue book carefully in the case and hurried from the room.

The Englishman hovered over the case like a nervous mother stork over her nest. “Too bad,” he muttered. “Too bad. I really should have liked to see that 1599.”

Drury Lane stared at him, and then sought a chair and sat down. He shaded his eyes with a white-veined hand.

“You sound horribly disappointed, Dr. Sedlar,” said Patience.

He started. “Eh? I beg your pardon... Yes, yes, I am.”

“But why? Didn’t you ever see the 1599? I thought that rare books were common property among bibliophiles.”

“Should be,” replied the Englishman with a grim smile, “but this one was not. It belonged to Samuel Saxon, you know. That made it quite inaccessible.”

“I believe Mr. Rowe and Dr. Choate did say something about Mr. Saxon’s... er... secretiveness.”

Dr. Sedlar grew excited, and his monocle trembled and then fell, to dangle by its cord on his breast. “Secretiveness!” he exploded. “The man was a bibliomaniac. He spent half his declining years in England bidding in at auctions and quite taking away all our precious things... Sorry. But there were items which weren’t universally known. The Lord alone knows where he picked them up. This stolen 1599 Jaggard edition of The Passionate Pilgrim was one of the unknowns. Until a short time ago only two copies of this first edition were known to be in existence; then Saxon dug up a third somewhere, but he never permitted scholars so much as a glimpse of it. He stowed it away in his library like so much fodder in a granary.”

“That sure sounds tragic,” said the Inspector disagreeably.

“Oh, yes,” drawled the Englishman. “I assure you it is. I’d really looked forward to examining it... When Mr. Wyeth told me about the acquisition of the Saxon bequest—”

“He mentioned that the 1599 Jaggard was included in the benefaction?” murmured Lane.

“Yes, indeed.” Dr. Sedlar sighed and bent over the cabinet again. He readjusted his monocle. “Lovely, Lovely. I can scarcely wait— What’s this?” His thin lips parted with excitement as he seized the third of the three volumes in the case and studied its flyleaf.

“What’s the matter now?” asked Lane swiftly, rising and hurrying to the cabinet.

Dr. Sedlar expelled a long whistling breath. “For a moment I thought — I was wrong. I examined this particular copy of Henry V in London some years ago, before it was purchased by Saxon. It bears the date 1608 — jolly well established as a case of deliberate ante-dating by Jaggard, who printed it for the stationer Thomas Pavier. It was probably printed in 1619. But I recalled that the leather was a deeper scarlet. Apparently it’s faded a bit under the tender ministrations of Saxon.”

“I see,” said the old gentleman. “You had me jumping, Doctor! How about the Sir John Oldcastle?”

The incumbent curator fingered the first volume in the cabinet lovingly. “Oh, that’s quite all right,” he said seriously. “Hasn’t changed hue since I last saw it at Sotheby’s in 1913 when it fetched a pretty price at auction — the same golden brown! Mind you, I’m not accusing Saxon of vandalism, please understand—”

Dr. Choate hurried into the room. “I’m afraid I was wrong,” he said brightly. “No sign of the stolen Jaggard. We’ll keep searching, of course.”

Mrs. Lydia Saxon burst into the Saxon Room with the awful irresistibility of an infuriated she-elephant. She was built on the grand scale — an enormous woman with mountainous flanks, a Zeppelin’s stern, the bosom of a sea-cow, and the carriage of a frigate. There was a feral glare in her watery green eyes that boded ill for such unfortunate creatures as scholars, curators, and the whole unhappy tribe of beneficiaries. She was followed by Gordon Rowe, grinning cheerfully, and an attenuated, sidling old man dressed in a rusty tailcoat. There was something of the quality of ancient papyrus in this creature: rasping dry skin, almost a rustle of brittle bones as he walked, and the pale predacious features common to Italian signors, Spanish pirates, and antiquarians. This old gentleman, who could only be the high-handed librarian of the Saxon Collection, Crabbe, ignored the assembled company and made with a gliding pounce for the Jaggard cabinet, where he seized in his claws the curious gift of the thief and examined it with a very sharp and vulturous eye.

“Dr. Choate!” cried Mrs. Saxon in an unpleasantly shrill soprano, “what’s all this about a theft? What’s all this nonsense?”

“Ah — Mrs. Saxon,” murmured the curator with an uneasy smile. “Yes. Most unfortunate. But there’s been an amazing bit of luck, too—”

“Rubbish! Mr. Rowe has told me all about that other book. I assure you it doesn’t impress me in the least. The fact remains that one of the most valuable items of my husband’s bequest seems to have been stolen under your very nose. I demand—”

“Before we go into the distressing details,” said Dr. Choate hastily, “may I present Miss Patience Thumm. Dr. Hamnet Sedlar, who is to be our new curator, you know. Mr. Drury Lane—”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Saxon, turning her watery green eyes on the old gentleman. “Mr. Lane. How d’ye do, Mr. Lane? And the new curator, did you say?” She regarded the stiff figure of the Englishman with cold curiosity, and sniffed like a monstrous fat tabby.

“And Inspector Thumm—”

“Of the police? Inspector, I demand you find the thief at once!”

“Sure,” snarled the Inspector. “And what am I supposed to do — pull him out of my vest pocket?”

She gasped, turning the color of ripe cherries. “Why, I never—”

Crabbe, who had put the blue volume down with a sigh, tapped her arm. “Your blood-pressure, my dear Mrs. Saxon,” he whispered with a smile. Then he straightened his crooked old body and inspected with remarkable sharpness the faces about him. “Very peculiar, this theft, it seems to me.” There was a personal offensiveness in his tone that caused Dr. Choate to pull his tall figure up with dignity. “I find it—” And Crabbe stopped so suddenly that they started. His roving little eyes had lighted upon the face of Dr. Sedlar. They passed on, and then jumped back as if he had received a shock. “Who’s this?” he snapped, jerking a creviced old thumb at the Englishman.

“I beg your pardon,” said Dr. Sedlar coldly.

“Dr. Sedlar, our new curator,” murmured young Rowe. “Come, come, Crabbe, don’t be rude! Mr. Crabbe, the Saxon librarian, Doctor.”

“Sedlar, hey?” grunted Crabbe. “Sedlar, hey? Well, well.” And he cocked his thin head and regarded the Englishman with a faintly malicious smile. Dr. Sedlar stared back, offended and apparently puzzled. Then he shrugged.

“If I may be permitted to explain, Mrs. Saxon,” he said with a charming smile, stepping forward. “This has been a most—” They moved off to one side, and Dr Sedlar proceeded to speak rapidly in a low tone. Mrs. Saxon listened with the detached and hostile air of a judge who has condemned the prisoner in advance.

Drury Lane quietly returned to his chair in the far corner of the room. He shut his eyes and stretched his long limbs. Patience sighed and turned to Gordon Rowe, who pulled her aside and proceeded to whisper energetically in her ear.

Crabbe and Dr. Choate went into cold but earnest conference over the quiet carcass of the 1606 Jaggard. Inspector Thumm, wandering about like a lost soul in a special purgatory, groaned with boredom. He caught snatches of the bibliophiles’ conversation.

“The inscription on the flyleaf—”

“Halliwell-Phillips said—”

“—inclusion of the pirated sonnets—”

“But was it quarto or octavo?”

“The Bodleian copy—”

“—definitely shows that the two non-Shakespearian poems Jaggard stole from Heywood’s Troia Britannica appearing in the 1612—”

“The format follows closely—”

“Before 1608 Jaggard was merely the publisher, remember. It wasn’t until that date that he purchased James Robert’s press in the Barbican. That would make the 1606—”

The Inspector groaned again, and flung himself about the room in an ecstasy of baffled rage.

Dr. Choate and the saturnine Crabbe looked up, beaming in a temporary truce. “Ladies, gentlemen,” boomed the curator, preening his beard, “Mr. Crabbe and I are thoroughly agreed that this 1606 Jaggard is authentic!”

“Hear, hear,” said the Inspector gloomily.

“You’re positive?” asked Dr. Sedlar, turning from Mrs. Saxon.

“I don’t care!” shrilled Mrs. Saxon. “I still think it an extraordinary way to reward Mr. Saxon’s generosity—”

“Told you she was an unpleasant female,” said young Rowe in a clear voice.

“Hush, you rash young idiot!” whispered Patience fiercely. “The Gorgon will hear you!”

“Let her,” grinned the young man. “She’s a domineering old whale.”

“I really didn’t think it would be a forgery,” said Drury Lane quietly from his corner, when the bulb-nosed caretaker trudged into the room and shuffled toward Dr. Choate.

“What’s this, Burch?” said the curator absently. “That can wait, I’m sure—”

“Suits me,” said Burch stonily, and forthwith proceeded to trudge back.

“Just a moment,” said Drury Lane. He had risen and was staring intently at the package in Burch’s talons. A little wind of intelligence passed over his sharp features. “If I were you, Dr. Choate, I should investigate that package. If this affair is as insane as it appears, there’s an incredible possibility...”

They all looked blankly from his face to the caretaker’s hand.

“You think—?” began Dr. Choate, licking his bearded lips. “Very well, Burch. Let’s have it.”

Like two faithful guards Dr. Sedlar on one side and Crabbe on the other came swiftly forward to flank the curator.

It was a neat flat package done up in common brown wrapping paper and tied with a piece of cheap red string. A small label had been pasted on the wrapper, and Dr. Choate’s name and museum address were lettered in blue ink in small clear block letters upon it.

“Who brought this, Burch?” asked Dr. Choate slowly.

“Young squirt of a messenger,” said Burch in a surly voice.

“I see,” and Dr. Choate began to undo the string,

“Here, you fool!” roared the Inspector suddenly, leaping forward and snatching the package with hasty but cautious fingers. “There’s been so many screwy things happenin’ around here... Might be a bomb!”

The men paled, and Mrs. Saxon’s bosom heaved like a surging sea as she uttered a piercing shriek. Lane smiled sadly at Thumm.

The Inspector pressed his big red cauliflower ear to the brown paper and listened intently. Then he turned the package over and listened on the other side. Still unsatisfied, he shook it gently, very gently indeed.

“Well, I guess it’s all right,” he grumbled, thrusting it back into the curator’s startled hands.

“Perhaps you’d better open it,” said Dr. Choate with a quaver.

“I’m sure it’s quite all right, Doctor,” said the old gentleman with a reassuring smile.

Nevertheless, the curator’s fingers were unwilling as he snapped the string and slowly, very slowly, unfolded the brown paper. Mrs. Saxon oozed toward the door, and Gordon Rowe pulled Patience roughly behind him.

The paper came apart.

Nothing happened.

But if the package had contained a bomb, if it had suddenly exploded in his hands, Dr. Choate could not have shown greater stupefaction. His jaw dropped as his eyes took in what lay exposed, and his fingers fumbled with it, searching out something.

“Why— Good God!” he cried in a strangled voice. “It’s the 1599 Jaggard that was stolen Monday!”