Drury Lane’s Last Case

21 Wickedness in Westchester

And then, as suddenly as if a blight had fallen upon it, the case died. For over a week it lay supine in death; nothing happened, nothing new was learned, and moreover no one seemed greatly to care.

The Inspector was as good as his word; he definitely threw up the case. His investigation into the jewel robbery he had mentioned — a sensational affair involving a valuable rope of pearls and an assault upon a languorous demi-mondaine nesting in the clouds above Park Avenue — consumed the Inspector’s whole attention; he rarely appeared at his office and when he did it was merely for a snatched glance through his mail. The Thumm Detective Agency, except for an occasional visit by Patience, was left to the tearful mercies of Miss Brodie.

As for Patience, she had suddenly acquired a passion for learning. She haunted the Britannic Museum, to the mute approval of various gentlemen of the trades who were still busy applying architectural and ornamental cosmetics to that sadly battered edifice; and she and young Mr. Rowe applied themselves with all outward signs of diligence to research in Shakespeare. The Bard, it was to be feared, did not yield many of his secrets during this collaboration in literary history. Between discussing the enigmatic Dr. Sedlar and themselves. Patience and Rowe made little progress in Rowe’s labors.

But the least concerned of all, it seemed, was Mr. Drury Lane. He sequestered himself in his conveniently impregnable fortress, The Hamlet, and for nine days preserved a monastic silence.

There were picayune interludes. During the week, for example, two letters arrived at the Inspector’s office which had a direct bearing upon the all-but-abandoned investigation. One was from Dr. Leo Schilling, Chief Medical Examiner of New York County, the medico-criminological terror of Manhattan’s murderers. As a chemical symbol, the worthy physician wrote, the characters 3HS wM were absolutely meaningless. At first he had thought of splitting the symbol into its components. 3HS might mean three parts of hydrogen and sulphur; but unfortunately there was no such chemical compound, since one molecule of hydrogen had from Priestley’s day, and before, stubbornly refused to combine chemically with one molecule of sulphur. As for the small w, it possessed various chemical interpretations, Dr. Schilling continued; such as watt, the electrical term, and wolframite, which was a rare metal. Capital M being the generic sign for “metal,” there might be a connection between the M and the w, if the w stood for wolframite. “In general, however,” the Medical Examiner’s report concluded, “my opinion is that this hodge-podge of number plus small and capital letters is plain nonsense. It has no scientific meaning at all.”

The second letter was from Lieutenant Schiff, cipher expert at the Bureau of Intelligence in Washington. Lieutenant Schiff excused himself for the delay in replying to Inspector Thumm’s curious inquiry; he had been very busy; perhaps he had not given the symbol the proper study; but it was his opinion that “as a cipher or crypt it is so much abracadabra.” He did not believe it could be broken down, if it was intended as a cipher; if anything, it was possibly the kind of cipher for which prearranged secret code-meanings had been assigned to the individual characters. An expert might spend months searching for the key or code and still be unsuccessful.

Patience was near tears; she had secretly spent many sleepless nights puzzling over the odd symbol. Rowe comforted her rather helplessly; he had no better luck.

Other reports trickled in, similarly unenlightening. One was a confidential note from Inspector Geoghan: detectives from headquarters had spent fruitless days endeavoring to pick up Dr. Hamnet Sedlar’s trail in New York City between May twenty-second, the day on which the Cyrinthia had docked, and May 29, when he officially presented himself at the Britannic Museum. Inquiry at the Hotel Seneca, where the Englishman had then taken up residence, merely revealed that a Dr. Sedlar had engaged a room on the morning of May 29 — an obvious development, since it was the natural step to take after the man’s false story of having arrived from England on the twenty-ninth. He had had bulky luggage. He was still living at the Seneca, a quiet middle-aged Englishman who took his meals alone in the Hunting Room and, on those occasions when he happened to be in the hotel afternoons, ordered four o’clock tea which he consumed in the staid seclusion of his room.

The unfortunate Irish guard, Donoghue, was still missing. Not the faintest clue to his fate had turned up.

Dr. Ales also had vanished without a trace.

Italian Mr. Villa had come in for his share of official surveillance. The Inspector explained one afternoon to Gordon Rowe — having apparently amended his opinion of the young man since Rowe’s encounter with the masked man and his subsequent discovery of the false beard — that when Villa had been apprehended in the museum he, sharp old warrior that he was — ahem! — had excused himself and sought out a telephone. Yes, perhaps it had been at Mr. Drury Lane’s suggestion. At any rate, the purpose of this procedure had been to prepare the hounds to take up the trail of the saturnine Mr. Villa when the Inspector should have finished with him. The particular hound had been one, Gross, an employee of the Thumm Detective Agency; and Gross had quite invisibly followed the entire party from the Britannic to Dr. Ale’s house near Tarrytown, had quietly waited outside until the party emerged, and had then shadowed Villa with his considerable skill, sticking to the Italian’s trail like the shadow of a Comanche. But Gross had nothing to report. The thief had apparently abandoned his attempt to fathom the “secret worth millions.”

Dr. Sedlar came and went at the museum. As did Dr. Choate. Crabbe fondled his books at the Saxon mansion. Mrs. Saxon went about fatly and damply in the late June heat, preparing the exodus of her household to Cannes for the summer season... Everybody performed his normal function. Everybody seemed as innocent as Patience’s blue eyes. As Inspector Thumm remarked to one of his operatives in a moment of relaxation from the rigors of the jewel investigation: “It’s just about the screwiest business I’ve ever had a hand in.”

Maxwell, it was assumed, still held the lonely fort at Dr. Ales’ house.

Then the call came.

It came on the first of July, a broiling Monday morning which found the Inspector two days absent, off on a mysterious hunt connected with his latest investigation; Gordon Rowe peacefully asleep in the family-hotel quarters he had taken during the week — having with dignity packed his meager belongings and left the Saxon house, as he stated to Patience, “for the rest of my natural life”; Miss Brodie in the usual spiritual lather in the ante-room of the Inspector’s office; and Patience at the Inspector’s desk frowning over a note from her father postmarked Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Miss Brodie shouted in through the open door: “Will you take this call, Miss Thumm? Can’t make him out. He sounds drunk or something.”

“Oh, dear,” sighed Patience, reaching for the telephone. Miss Brodie was at times difficult. “Hello,” she said wearily, and then stiffened as if the wire had shot her full of current.

The voice on the other end was unquestionably old Maxwell’s. But what a voice! Choking, weak, wild — it babbled on and on, and Patience could not make out more than a chance word. “Help — at the house — terrible — Inspector Thumm — come” — all amid a mumble of crazy syllables that made no sense.

“Maxwell!” cried Patience. “What’s happened? Did Dr. Ales come back?”

For an instant the old man’s voice, while feeble, was clear. “No. Come,” and there was a hollow thud, as if something heavy had fallen. Patience stared at the receiver. Then she jangled frantically. There was no reply. “Maxwell!” But it was soon evident that poor Maxwell was in no condition to hear or answer her plea.

Patience scrambled into the ante-room, her straw hat askew on her curls. “Brodie! Get Quacey at The Hamlet for me... Quacey! Patience Thumm. Is Mr. Lane there?” But Quacey was desolated: Mr. Drury, he reported, was somewhere about the estate — exactly where he did not know; however, he would find his master as soon as he could and transmit Patience’s message to proceed immediately to Dr. Ales’s house... Then Patience rang up Gordon Rowe’s new number.

“Good God, Pat. That sounds serious. Wait till I get the sleep out of my brain... Have you telephoned the police?”

“Police? What police?”

“The Tarrytown police, ninny! Pat, my girl, your wits are addled this morning. For heaven’s sake, get help to that poor old fellow!”

“Oh, Gordon,” wailed Patience, “I’m such a fool. I’m so sorry. I should have thought of that. I’ll notify them at once. Pick you up in twenty minutes.”

“Put some pep into it, darling!”

But the head of the Tarrytown police, a man named Bolling was out when Patience called; and a fatigued assistant who seemed to have difficulty understanding the urgency of the situation finally promised to “send somebody out.”

As the difficulties mounted, Patience’s lips became grimmer. “I’m going out,” she announced tragically to Miss Brodie. “Lord, what a mess! And poor Maxwell w-weltering there in his blood for all I know. ’By!”

Patience jerked her roadster to a stop just outside the entrance to the lane. Gordon Rowe stood up and squinted hard up the road.

“I think that’s Lane’s car coming now.”

A long black limousine hurtled toward them at breakneck speed. It shrieked to a stop in front of them and they both sighed with satisfaction. The daredevil at the wheel was Dromio. The door of the tonneau opened and Lane’s tall spare figure leaped nimbly out.

“Children!” he cried. “I’m frightfully sorry. You’ve just come? I was out swimming and Quacey, poor fool, couldn’t find me. Have you telephoned the police?”

“They should be there now,” said Patience with a gulp.

“No,” murmured the old gentleman, keenly eyeing the gravel of the lane. “It poured during the night; the gravel is still black and soft; no marks of tires... For some reason they’ve failed. We’ll have to see this out ourselves. Your arm, I see, Gordon, is healed... Proceed, my dear. Not too fast. There’s no telling what we may find.”

He returned to his car and Patience swung the roadster into the lane. Dromio followed with the bigger machine. The trees closed in over their heads. The early-morning downpour had washed the gravel and its bed of earth clean; it was like an uncontaminated sheet of paper. The young man and the young woman were silent, Patience intent on the whimsies of the narrow road, Rowe’s eyes straining ahead. They did not know what to expect. Had an armed man jumped out of a clump of bushes, or a gang appeared ahead bristling with machine-guns, neither would have been surprised. The two cars crashed along; and nothing happened.

When they reached the entrance to the narrow drive which led to Dr. Ales’s house, Patience stopped. Lane got out behind them, and the three held a council of war. The countryside was cheerful and brisk with the usual summer noises; but there was no sign or sound of human proximity. They decided to leave the two cars in the lane in Dromio’s charge and proceed on foot.

They walked down the driveway cautiously, Rowe in the van, Lane holding up the rear, and Patience nervously between them. The trees thinned and they peered into the clearing before the house. It was quite deserted. The front door was solidly closed, the windows were as before shuttered, the garage door was closed — nothing seemed amiss.

“But where’s Maxwell?” whispered Patience.

“Let’s get into the house and see. I don’t like the look of this,” said Rowe grimly. “Stick close, Pat; no telling what we may run into.”

They crossed the clearing quickly and mounted the rickety steps to the porch. Rowe pounded hard on the thick panels of the door. He pounded again, and again. But there was no answer. They glanced at Lane; the old man’s lips were set in a thin line and there was a curious glitter in his eyes.

“Why not force the door?” he suggested mildly.

“Bully idea.” Rowe moved back to the edge of the porch, waved them aside, braced himself, and then took a long leaping step forward. His right foot came up sharply and crashed against the lock in a vicious kick that shivered the stout wood and set up a faint jangling above the door inside. He returned to the edge of the porch and tried again. On the fifth attempt the door burst inward, its lock shattered, while the coiled-spring bell above it set up a wild protest.

“The savate,” panted Rowe triumphantly, springing through the doorway. “A French wrestler taught it to me in Marseilles last spring... For the love of God!”

They stopped short beyond the threshold, stricken dumb by what they saw. The tiny hall was a wreck; it looked as if a bomb had burst in it. An old chair which stood near an umbrella-stand lay broken into four pieces. A mirror which had hung above the wall carpeted the hall floor with glass fragments. The umbrella-stand had rolled crazily down the hall. A small table lay overturned, like a dead beetle.

In silence they went into the parlor. It was demolished.

They looked into the study, and Patience paled. It was as if an elephant, or a family of famished tigers, had swept through it. Not a single piece of furniture was left standing. There were peculiar gashes all over the walls. The chandelier had been demolished. Books were scattered over the floor. Glass. Splinters... In the same silence they investigated the kitchen at the rear. It had been left comparatively untouched; comparatively only, for its table-drawer had been turned out, and the shelves of its closets had been ravaged, dishes and pans being scattered over the floor.

Upstairs the same condition prevailed. The gashes...

They returned to the ground floor. There was no sign of Maxwell in the house, although his clothes were in his bedroom.

“Wasn’t there a garage outside?” murmured Lane thoughtfully. “It’s barely possible—”

“Let’s see,” said Rowe; and they went outside. Rowe prowled about the garage. It had only one window, and that was so crusted with dirt and carbon that it was opaque. Lane hammered on the thin door, from whose hasp hung a rusty lock. There was no response.

“I’ll have to smash the window in,” said the young man. “Pat, stand off; don’t want you hurt by flying glass.” He found a heavy stone and tossed it at the window. The glass shattered, and he fumbled with the catch inside. Then he scrambled through the window and an instant later called out: “Get away from the door!” The door burst outward, its hasp wrenched from the wood... Gordon Rowe, his lean face flushed, stood in the doorway without moving. Then he said tightly: “He’s here, all right. But I think he’s dead.”