Drury Lane’s Last Case

30 Mr. Drury Lane’s Solution

The Inspector was not a subtle man; his emotions were raw and spontaneous, like the leaping juice of a squeezed lemon. He had accepted fatherhood with a mixture of bewilderment, delight, and trepidation. The more he saw of his daughter the more he adored her and the less he understood her. Consequently she kept him in a stew of excitement; the poor man never succeeded, no matter how desperately he tried, either in anticipating her next mood or grasping the mystery of her last one.

In the turbulent depths of his misery he was suddenly glad to turn over to Mr. Gordon Rowe the task of calming the young woman so inexplicably stricken with hysteria. And Mr. Gordon Rowe, who until now had loved only books, realized with a despairing groan what it meant to love a woman.

For Patience remained a puzzle, neither to be grasped nor solved. When her weeping had run its course, she dried her eyes on the young man’s handkerchief, smiled at him, and retired to her room. Neither threats nor pleas moved her. She advised Mr. Gordon Rowe to go away. No, she would not see a physician. Yes, she was perfectly well; just a headache. And not another word out of her in response to the Inspector’s frantic bellowings. Mr. Gordon Rowe and his prospective father-in-law looked gloomily at each other, and then Mr. Rowe went away, already obeying orders.

Patience did not emerge for dinner. She uttered a choked “good night” without opening her door. During the night the Inspector, finding his old heart strangely pounding, rose from his bed and went to her room. He heard a wild sobbing. He raised his hand to knock on her door and then dropped it helplessly. He returned to bed and stared bitterly at the black wall for half the night.

In the morning he peered into her room; she was asleep, traces of tears still on her cheeks, her honey-colored hair tumbled about the pillow. She stirred restlessly, sighing in her sleep; and he retreated in haste to a lonely breakfast and his office.

He moved listlessly through the routine work of the day. Patience failed to make her appearance in the office. At 4.30 he uttered a loud curse, grabbed his hat, dismissed Miss Brodie for the day, and returned to the apartment.

“Pat!” he called anxiously from the foyer.

He heard a movement from her room, and he quickly crossed the living-room. She was standing, pale and strange, before the closed door of her bedroom dressed in a severe suit, a dark little turban over her curls.

“You goin’ out?” he rumbled, kissing her.

“Yes, father.”

“Why’ve you got the door closed that way?”

“I’m—” She bit her lip. “Father, I’m packing.”

His huge jaw dropped. “Pat! Darlin’! What’s up? Where you going?”

She opened her door slowly. The Inspector saw through a sudden mist a full suit-case lying on her bed. “I’m going away for a few days,” she said in a quivering voice. “I... it’s very important.”

“But what—”

“No, father.” She snapped the case shut and buckled the straps. “Please don’t ask me where or why. Or anything. Please. Just for a few days. I... I want to...”

The Inspector sank into a living-room chair and stared at her. She snatched up the suit-case and ran across the room. Then she dropped the bag with a little choked cry, ran back to him, and flung her arms about his neck and kissed him. Before he could collect his stupefied wits she was gone.

He sat there limply, in the empty apartment, a dead cigar in his mouth and his hat still on his head. The slam of the apartment-door kept thundering in his ears. In his slow deliberate way, as he calmed down, he thought things over. And the longer he thought the more uneasy he became. His lifetime of dealing with criminals and policemen had given him a certain shrewd insight into human nature. When he forgot that Patience was flesh of his flesh he began to appreciate the especial oddity of her conduct. His daughter was a level-headed, grown woman. She was not given to the customary feminine tantrums or emotional storms. The strangeness of her actions... He sat in the darkening room for hours, without moving. At midnight he rose, switched on the light, and made himself a cup of strong coffee. Then he went heavily to bed.

Two days passed with agonizing slowness. Gordon Rowe made his life miserable. The young man telephoned, he dropped into the office at odd hours, he clung to the Inspector with the grim tenacity of a leech. He did not seem even remotely satisfied with Thumm’s grunted explanation that Patience had gone away for a few days “for a rest.”

“Then why didn’t she call me up, or drop me a note, or something?”

The Inspector shrugged. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, younker, but who the hell are you?”

Rowe flushed. “She loves me, damn it all!”

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

But when six days had passed and there was no word, no smallest sign, from Patience, the Inspector caved in. He dropped his tightly casual air and for the first time in his life experienced real terror. He forgot his elaborate pretences at working; he paced his office floor with slow wavering steps; and finally on the sixth day he could bear the agony no longer. He took his hat and left the building. Patience had not taken her roadster; it stood as she had left it in the public garage near the Thumm apartment. The Inspector climbed in wearily and headed its nose toward Westchester.

He found Drury Lane sunning himself in one of the crisp little gardens of The Hamlet; and for an instant the Inspector was shocked out of his own misery at the old gentleman’s appearance. Lane had aged incredibly in less than a week. His skin was waxy yellow and exhibited the appalling texture of crumbling chalk; he sat wrapped in an Indian blanket, despite the hot sun, as if he were cold. His body seemed to have shrunken; and Thumm, recalling the astonishing vigor and youthful vitality of this man only a few years before, himself shivered and sat down with averted eyes.

“Well, well, Inspector,” said Lane in a feeble, almost croaking voice. “It’s good of you to come here... I suppose you’re sickened by my appearance?”

“Uh — no, no,” said the Inspector hastily. “You look fine.”

Lane smiled. “You’re a poor liar, old friend. I look ninety and feel a hundred. It comes over you suddenly. Do you remember Cyrano in that fifth act seated beneath the tree? How many times I’ve played that part, a withered old buckaroo, while underneath my doublet my heart beat with the surging strength of youth! Now...” He closed his eyes for an instant. “Martini is openly worried. These medical men! They won’t recognize the fact that old age is, in Seneca’s phrase, an incurable disease.” He opened his eyes. Then he said sharply: “Thumm, old man! What’s happened? What’s the matter?”

The Inspector buried his face in his hands. When he took them away his eyes were like wet marbles. “It’s... it’s Patty,” he muttered. “She’s gone — Lane, for the love of God, you’ve got to help me find her!”

The old gentleman’s pallor deepened. He said slowly: “She’s — disappeared?”

“Yes. I mean no. She went off by herself.” The story tumbled out. A score of wrinkles appeared about Lane’s unwavering eyes as they watched the Inspector’s lips. “I don’t know what to do. It’s my fault. I see now what must have happened,” cried Thumm. “She got a clue, some damn notion that sent her off on a wild chase. It might be dangerous, Lane. It’s about a week now. Maybe...” He faltered and stopped, unable to phrase the horrible uncertainty in his mind.

“You think, then,” murmured Lane, “that she was perilously close to the truth, somehow. That she’s gone off on the trail of the third man, the murderer. That he has possibly turned on her...”

The Inspector nodded dumbly; his big gnarled fist was pounding the seat of the rustic bench in a steady tattoo.

Both men were silent for a long time. A robin perched on a nearby bough burst into song; from somewhere behind them Thumm heard Quacey’s querulous old voice raised in argument with a gardener. But Lane’s dead ears head nothing; he sat studying the grass at his feet. Finally he sighed and laid his veined hand on Thumm’s, and Thumm looked at him with tortured hope.

“Poor old friend. I can’t tell you how sorry I feel. Patience... Shakespeare once said a remarkable thing. He said:

You’re much too honest and primitively masculine, my friend, to understand what has happened to Patience. Women have an inexhaustible capacity for concocting exquisite tortures for their menfolk, many times in all innocence.” Thumm’s haggard eyes devoured his face. “Have you a pencil and paper about you?”

“Penc— Sure, sure!” The Inspector fumbled in an agony of eagerness in his pockets and produced the requested articles. He watched his friend fiercely. Lane wrote steadily. When he had finished he looked up.

“Insert this in the personal columns of all the New York newspapers, Inspector,” he said quietly. “Perhaps — who knows? — it may do good.”

Thumm dazedly took the paper.

“And let me know the moment anything happens.”

“Sure, sure.” His voice broke. “Thanks a lot, Lane.”

The queerest spasm of pain twisted the old gentleman’s pale face for an instant. Then his lips curled in a smile that was just as queer. “It’s little enough.” He gave Thumm his hand. “Good-by.”

“’By,” muttered Thumm. Their hands clasped. The Inspector strode abruptly off toward his car. Before he started the motor he read the message Lane had scribbled:

He sighed with relief, grinned, sent the engine roaring, waved his hand, and disappeared in a cloud of gravel and dust. Lane had risen and smiled very peculiarly until the car was gone. Then he shivered a little and sat down again, wrapping the blanket more closely about him.

The next afternoon found two men seated opposite each other, an old man and a young; and both were haggard and biting their nails. The apartment was cool and quiet. An ashtray at each man’s elbow was filled with dead butts. Between them, on the floor, lay a tumbled heap of morning newspapers.

“Do you think she will—?” said Gordon Rowe hoarsely for the twentieth time.

“I don’t know, son.”

And then they heard the scrape of a key in the lock of the front door. They sprang to their feet and dashed into the foyer. The door opened. It was Patience. With a little cry she fell into the Inspector’s arms. Rowe waited quietly. Not a word was said. The Inspector was uttering formless little noises that had no meaning, and Patience began to sob. She seemed harried, exhausted; white and drawn, as if she had undergone unbearable suffering. The suit-case lay on the sill, keeping the door open.

Patience looked up, and her eyes widened. “Gordon!”

“Pat.”

The Inspector turned and went into the living-room.

“Pat. I never knew until now—”

“I know, Gordon.”

“I love you, darling. I couldn’t stand it—”

“Oh, Gordon.” She placed her hands on his shoulders. “You’re a dear sweet boy. I was foolish to do what I did.” He seized her suddenly and held her so tightly that she could feel his heart straining against her breast. They stood that way for a moment, and then they kissed.

Without another word they went into the living-room.

The Inspector whirled; he was all a-grin, and a fresh cigar spurted smoke from his mouth. “All made up, hey?” he chortled. “That’s swell, just swell. Gordon, my boy, congratulations. Now, damn it all, we’ll have some peace—”

“Father,” whispered Patience; and he stopped and the joy went out of his face. Rowe gripped her lifeless hand; she returned the pressure faintly. “He knows everything? Really?”

“Everything? Who — oh, Lane! Well, that’s what he said, Patty.” He came forward and put his long ape-like arms about her. “What the devil’s the difference? The point is you’ve come back, and that’s all that counts with me.”

She pushed him back gently. “No. There’s something—”

“He told me,” frowned Thumm, “to let him know the minute you returned. Maybe I’d better put in a call...”

“He did?” Patience’s pallor fled; her eyes were suddenly feverish. Both men stared at her as if she had gone insane. “No, I tell you! It’s better if we tell him personally. Oh, what a stupid, whining, revolting fool I’ve been!” She stood fiercely biting her lower lip. Then she sprang toward the foyer. “He’s in the most horrible danger!” she cried. “Come on!”

“But, Pat—” protested Rowe.

“Come on, I tell you. I might have known... Oh, we may be too late!” and she turned and raced out of the apartment. Rowe and Thumm looked at each other, their faces mirroring a sudden disturbance; and then they grabbed their hats and darted after her.

They squeezed into the roadster and were off. Young Rowe drove; and if he was a gentle bookworm under a lamp, at the wheel he was a fiend. For some time — until they fought clear of the city traffic — they were all silent; Rowe grimly intent on the rushing road ahead, Patience white and, from the peculiar expression in her eyes, faintly nauseated, big Thumm watchful as the Sphinx.

It was he who broke the silence when the city lay behind them and the open road stretched like white elastic before them. “Tell us all about it, Patty,” he said quietly. “Evidently Lane’s in trouble. I don’t get you at all. You should have told me—”

“Yes,” she said in cracked voice. “It’s all my fault... It’s not fair that you shouldn’t know, father. And you, Gordon. It’s important that both of you know, now. Gordon, faster! There’s... there’s blood ahead, I tell you!”

Rowe’s lips tightened; the roadster fled like a chased hare.

“Toward the end,” began Patience, her nostrils quivering inexplicably, “—but you saw it, too. We had come to the point of saying that the victim and the murderer were the Sedlars. We thought one of them had killed the other in the house. But then it changed. Last week — in the museum — it changed. We knew then that the dead man in the ruins was Hamnet, that the survivor was his brother William, and that William couldn’t have been one of the two men in the house on the murder-night; you remember how I proved that: by the keys. So that meant our theory was exploded; we knew the victim, Hamnet Sedlar, but we didn’t know the first visitor to the house that night, the man who tied up Maxwell, the hacker... And when that struck me, I went back in my mind to things half-forgotten, never wholly grasped at the time they happened or I saw them. It was like a — like a streak of lightning.”

She kept her eyes on the road ahead. “The whole problem resolved itself, then, into discovering if possible the identity of that first visitor to the house. What had happened? After leaving Maxwell bound and gagged in the garage, this man had re-entered the house, using Maxwell’s duplicate key. The door had shut behind him automatically, due to its spring lock. He had taken the small ax from the wood-box in the kitchen and attacked the study, obviously on the theory that the study would be the most likely hiding-place for the document which he was seeking. He hadn’t the faintest idea where the document might have been hidden in the study: witness his indiscriminate attack on all sorts of objects. First, presumably, he had looked through the books, thinking the paper might be in one of them. Not finding it, he had attacked the furniture with the ax — the wood-paneled walls, the floor. At precisely midnight, we know from the position of the hands, he shattered the clock, I suppose thinking it might have been the repository of the paper. But he was completely baffled; he could not find it in the study. Nor in the rest of the ground floor. So he went upstairs to William Sedlar’s bedroom as the next most likely location.”

“We know all that, Pat,” said Thumm, looking at her strangely.

“Please, father... We know he was in the bedroom at twelve-twenty-four from the smashed bedroom clock. Now Hamnet was killed in that house at twelve-twenty-six, according to his smashed wrist-watch — only two minutes after the hacker shattered the bedroom clock upstairs’ The question was: At what time had Hamnet entered the house? He had to unlock the door, go to the study, see the wreckage there, go to the hollow panel above the bookshelves, take out the document, descend the ladder, perhaps examine the paper, then encounter his murderer, struggle, and be killed. Certainly this involved more than two minutes! Certainly, then, Hamnet must have entered the house while the hacker was still in the house.”

“Well, well?” growled Thumm.

“I’m getting there,” said Patience dully. “We know from William Sedlar’s last statement that Hamnet was the one who wanted the document only to destroy it. What would Hamnet do, then, when he finally did lay hands on it in the study? Proceed immediately to destroy it. How? Well, by fire as the surest and quickest means. He must have struck a match, holding the document in his hand, and started to touch the flame to the paper.” She sighed. “This is only a theory, of course, and accomplishes nothing except to clear up one point. It explains the presence of the slashes on Hamnet’s wrist-watch and wrist. For if at the moment Hamnet applied the match to the document the hacker came downstairs from the bedroom and saw what was happening, he would naturally — being interested in the salvation, not the destruction, of the document — attack Hamnet to prevent its destruction by fire. Therefore he would have swung like a flash at Hamnet’s hand with the ax he still carried, striking Hamnet’s wrist and wrist-watch, causing the vandal probably to drop both document and match. Undoubtedly Hamnet then put up a fight; in the struggle the hacker shot him dead. The struggle probably started in the study, where the hacker dropped the ax, and moved by degrees into the hall, where we found Hamnet’s shattered monocle and where Hamnet was probably shot to death... The hacker dragged Hamnet’s body downstairs into the cellar nor knowing the bomb was there, and then — if the document hadn’t been consumed before he struck at Hamnet’s wrist — took the document and left the house. The important thing about the slash and the struggle is that the hacker was willing to go to any lengths — physical combat, murder — to preserve that document.”

The steep ascent to the cliff-tops on which The Hamlet was perched occupied young Rowe’s whole attention; and Patience fell silent as the young man skilfully wrestled the roadster around the hairpin turns. Then suddenly they came to the outpost of the estate; and were passed across the quaint little bridge. The tires sang against the gravel road.

“I still don’t see,” said Rowe with a frown, “even if all this is true, Pat, where it gets you. You’re still as far from the murderer as you were before.”

“You think so?” cried Patience. She closed her eyes and winced, like a child swallowing bitter medicine. “I tell you it’s all clear as — as sin! The man’s characteristics — his characteristics, Gordon. They’re betrayed by what happened in the house.”

The two men looked at her blankly. They were through the main gates now, bowling along the curving main driveway. The gnomish little figure of Quacey, his hump a leathery knob on his shoulders, popped out of a clump of syringa, stared, then broke into a thousand-wrinkled grin, waved, and darted into the road.

Rowe stopped the car. “Quacey!” said Patience in a stiff voice, half-rising between the two men. “Is... is Mr. Lane all right?”

“Hello, Miss Thumm!” squeaked Quacey cheerfully. “He’s better today, thank you. Feeling almost chipper. Inspector, I was just going to mail this letter to you!”

“Letter?” echoed Thumm, puzzled. “That’s funny. Let’s have it.” Quacey handed him a square large envelope and he tore an edge off.

“Letter?” said Patience in the blankest of voices, and she sat down between the two men again and stared up at the blue sky. Once she murmured: “Thank God, he’s all right.”

The Inspector read it silently; and then, with a deep pucker between his brows, read it aloud:

The Inspector wrinkled his flat nose. “I don’t see—”

Rowe looked about quickly. But the scene was peaceful; the spires and turrets of The Hamlet loomed serenely above the treetops.

Patience said in a strangled voice: “Where is Mr. Lane, Quacey?”

Quacey’s batrachian little eyes twinkled. “Sunning himself in the west gardens, Miss Thumm. He’ll be surprised to see you, I dare say. I know he wasn’t expecting anybody.”

The men jumped out of the roadster and, rather stiffly, Patience stepped down to the gravel. Between them, with Quacey pattering quietly along at their heels, she began to stroll across the velvet grass toward the west gardens.

“You see,” she said so softly that they had to strain their ears, “the hacker did betray himself. He made no mistakes; he didn’t know he was making mistakes; Fate made them for him. Fate in the shape of a cheap alarm-clock.”

“Alarm clock?” muttered the Inspector.

“When we examined the study and came upon Maxwell’s alarm-clock on the mantel above the fireplace, we saw that its alarm was still set. What did this mean? That the alarm went off at the time it was set for — twelve o’clock, midnight, of the night before (because we examined it before noon of the following morning and Maxwell had set it before midnight the previous evening). The little lever still pointed to Alarm, you’ll remember, when we examined it. But if we found the lever still pointed to Alarm, then the alarm must have rung. But what’s significant about the fact that the alarm rang? The fact that, if it rang and we found the alarm still set, then it must have rung itself out. Had it been stopped, while it rang, by a human hand, we should have found the little lever at Silent, not Alarm. So it was not turned off; the alarm rang and rang until it exhausted itself, the spring of the alarm unwinding; and died off, spent, with its lever still set at Alarm...”

“But what the devil does that mean, Patty?” cried Rowe.

“Everything. We know the hacker was in the room precisely at midnight; so he must have been in the room when the alarm began to ring. We know this from two facts: Maxwell said he kept all the clocks perfectly synchronized, and the grandfather-clock had been shattered exactly at twelve.”

Rowe stepped back a little, quietly; he was very pale.

“All right, I’ll follow along,” growled the Inspector. “Why didn’t this ax-wielder of yours turn off the alarm when it started to ring? Must have made him jump. Anyone prowling about somebody else’s house would have jumped like a shot and turned it off, whether there was anyone to hear it or not.”

They paused under an ancient oak and Patience felt rather blindly for the rough bark. “Exactly,” she whispered. “The fact remains that even though he was in the same room, even though every instinct would have impelled him to turn the alarm off, he didn’t.”

“Well, it’s too much for me,” muttered Thumm. “Come on. Come on, Gordon,” and he strode past the tree. The other followed slowly. Not far away, over a low wall of privets, they saw the quiet shrunken figure of Lane seated on a rustic bench, his back to them.

Patience made a sick little sound and the Inspector turned sharply. Rowe, death in his eyes, bounded forward and caught her about the waist.

“What is this?” said the Inspector slowly.

“Father, wait,” sobbed Patience. “Wait. You don’t understand. You don’t see. Why didn’t the hacker discover that ticking bomb in the cellar when he took Hamnet Sedlar’s dead body down there? Why did he hack at the walls of the study in the first place? He was obviously looking for hollow places. What’s the normal way of looking for hollow places? Rapping for them, rapping for them, father! Why didn’t he tap those paneled walls?”

Thumm looked from one to the other, baffled, uneasy. “Why?”

Patience put a trembling hand on his big arm. “Please. Before you — see him. The hacker didn’t stop the alarm-clock’s ringing, he didn’t investigate the ticking of the bomb in the cellar, he didn’t tap the walls — for the same reason, father. Oh, don’t you see? It struck me so hard, such a horrible blow, that I ran, blindly, like a child; I wanted to get away, anywhere... He couldn’t hear the alarm. He couldn’t hear the tick of the bomb. He couldn’t hear a hollow sound even if he did tap. HE WAS DEAF!”

The little glade was quiet. The Inspector’s jaw dropped like the iron floor of a portcullis; a concentrated horror of realization charged into his eyes. Rowe stood stonily, his arm a rigid brace about Patience’s quivering torso. Quacey, hovering in the background, suddenly uttered a choking, squealing animal cry and sank like dead to the grass.

The Inspector took an unsteady step forward and touched Lane’s quiet shoulder. Patience whirled and buried her face in Rowe’s coat, sobbing as if her heart would break.

The old gentleman’s head was sunk on his breast; there was no response to Thumm’s touch.

More swiftly than it seemed possible for a man of his bulk and weight, the Inspector charged around the bench and grasped Lane’s hand.

It was icy cold, and a small stained empty phial dropped from its white fingers to the green grass.