Drury Lane’s Last Case

4 Young Mr. Rowe

The Britannic Museum was housed in a tall narrow four-story edifice squeezed between two severe apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue near Sixty-Fifth Street. Its high bronze door faced the greenery of Central Park and on north and south lay the prim canopies of the apartments.

The Thumms mounted the single stone step and stared at the bronze door. It was austerely decorated in bas-relief; the dominating decoration on each panel of the double-leafed portal was a heroic head of Shakespeare. It looked severely solid — a most unfriendly door. There was no mistaking its attitude, for an equally unfriendly sign hung from the bronze knob, and it stated without equivocation that the Britannic Museum was “closed for repairs.”

But the Inspector was made of stern stuff. He closed his right hand and with the resulting fist pounded formidably on the bronze.

“Father!” giggled Patience. “You’re walloping Shakespeare!”

The Inspector grinned and redoubled his pounding upon the Bard of Avon’s nose. There was a frantic scraping and squealing of bolts; and an instant later out popped the gargoylish head of a bulb-nosed old man.

“Hey!” snapped this apparition. “Can’t you read English?”

“One side, brother,” said the Inspector cheerfully. “We’re in a hurry.”

The doorman did not budge; his nose continued to protrude from the crack like a shy lily bulb. “What d’ye want?” he asked surlily.

“Want to get in, of course!”

“Well, you can’t. Closed to the public. Repairs.” And the crack began to vanish.

“Hey!” bellowed the Inspector, making a futile effort to prevent its vanishment. “This is— Hey, this is the police!”

There was a ghostly chuckle from behind the head of Shakespeare, and after that silence.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” exclaimed the Inspector wrathfully. “Why, the old fool, I’ll break his damn’ door down!”

Patience leaned against the door, doubled up with laughter. “Oh, father!” she gasped. “You’re so funny. That’s retribution for having laid irreverent hands on the proboscis of the Immortal Will... I’ve an idea.”

The Inspector grunted.

“And you needn’t look so skeptical, you old sorehead. We’ve a friend in the enemy’s camp, haven’t we?”

“What d’ye mean?”

“The imperishable Drury! Mr. Lane’s one of the patrons of the Britannic, isn’t he? I’m sure a call from him will be open sesame.”

“By God, that’s right! Patty, you’ve got your old man’s brain. Let’s hunt up a ’phone.”

They found a public telephone booth in a drug store on Madison Avenue, a block east. The Inspector put in a long-distance call to The Hamlet.

“Hello! This is Thumm speaking. Who’s this?”

An incredibly ancient voice squeaked: “Quacey. Hello!” Quacey was an old, old man who had been with Drury Lane for more than forty years; originally his wig-maker, now a pensioned friend.

“Lane around?”

“Mr. Drury’s right here, Inspector. He says you are a criminal.”

“Guilty. We sure feel ashamed of ourselves. How is the old duck? Listen, you little monkey. Tell Mr. Lane we want a favour of him.”

There was a mutter of talk from the other end of the wire. The old actor’s deafness, while it did not handicap him in tête-à-tête conversation — his lip-reading ability was uncanny — effectually prevented him from conducting telephonic conversations; and Quacey for years had acted as his master’s ear.

“He wants to know if it’s a case,” piped Quacey at last.

“Well, yes. Tell him we’re on the trail of something mighty mysterious and we’ve got to get into the Britannic Museum. But that nut of a caretaker won’t let us in. Closed for repairs. Can Lane do anything for us?”

There was a silence, and then Thumm was startled to hear the voice of Lane himself pour into the receiver. Despite his age, the old gentleman’s voice still retained the miraculous quality of mellowness and rich flexibility that had made it, at one time, the most famous speaking organ in the world. “Hello, Inspector,” said Drury Lane. “You’ll have to content yourself with listening for a change,” and he chuckled. “As usual, I’m in the throes of a monologue. I hope Patience is well? No, don’t answer, you old Masai; it would fall literally on deaf ears... Something up at the Britannic, eh? I can’t imagine what it might be, really I can’t. It’s the most peaceful place in the world. Of course I’ll telephone the curator at once. Dr. Choate, you know — Alonzo Choate, a dear friend of mine. I’m sure he’s there, but if he’s not I’ll locate him and by the time you get back to the museum — I take it you’re near by — you’ll be granted permission to enter.” The old gentleman sighed. “Well, good-by, Inspector. I do hope you’ll find time — you and Patience, I miss her very much! — to run up to The Hamlet for a visit soon.”

There was a little pause, and then a reluctant click.

“Good-by,” said Inspector Thumm soberly to the dead wire; and scowled in sheer self-defense as he avoided his daughter’s inquiring eye outside the telephone booth.

Shakespeare’s beard looked less grim on the return visit to the portals of the Britannic Museum; and indeed the door actually stood ajar. In the doorway, awaiting them, stood a tall elderly man with an elegant goatee à la mode du sud, his dark face smiling, teeth shining above the resplendent beard; while behind him, like an apologetic shadow, hovered the bulb-nosed old man who had defended the door.

“Inspector Thumm?” said the bearded man, extending limp fingers. “I’m Alonzo Choate. And this is Miss Thumm! I remember quite well your last visit to our museum with Mr. Lane. Come in, come in! Frightfully sorry about Burch’s stupid little mistake. I dare say he won’t be so precipitate next time; eh, Burch?” The caretaker muttered something impolite beneath his breath and retreated into a shadow.

“Wasn’t any fault of his,” said the Inspector handsomely. “Orders are orders. You’ve heard from old Drury, I guess.”

“Yes. His man Quacey just had me on the wire. Don’t mind the condition of the Britannic, Miss Thumm,” smiled Dr. Choate. “I feel like a conscientious housewife apologizing for the mess in her kitchen to an unexpected visitor. We’re going through a long-deferred process of redecoration, you know. General house-cleaning. Including your humble servant the curator.”

They stepped through a marble vestibule into a small reception-room. The reception-room smelled pungently of fresh paint; its furniture was collected in the centre of the chamber and covered with the strange color-washed shroud that house-painters supply in the performance of their duty. Members of the guild crawled about scaffolds swishing damp brushes over walls and ceiling. Looking on sightlessly from niches were the draped busts of the great English literary dead. On the far side of the room stood the grilled door to an elevator.

“I’m not sure I’m charmed, Dr. Choate,” remarked Patience, wrinkling her small nose, “at the idea of... er... gilding the lily in this fashion. Wouldn’t it have been more reverent to permit the bones of Shakespeare and Jonson and Marlowe to moulder undisturbed?”

“And a very good point, too,” said the curator. “I was against the idea myself. But we’ve a progressive Board. We had all we could do to keep them from getting somebody to do a series of modern murals in the Shakespeare Room!” He chuckled and looked at the Inspector sideways. “Suppose we go to my office? It’s right off here, and, thank heaven, no brush has touched it yet!”

He led the way across the smeary canvas to a door in an alcove. The wood panel was chastely lettered with his name. He ushered them into a bright large room with a high ceiling and oak-boarded walls comfortably lined with books.

A young man reading with absorption in an armchair looked up at their entrance.

“Ah, Rowe,” boomed Dr. Choate. “Sorry to disturb you. I want you to meet some friends of Drury Lane’s.” The young man rose quickly and stood by his chair with a friendly smile. With a slow gesture he removed a pair of horn-rimmed eyeglasses. He was a tall fellow with a pleasant face, now that he had taken off his spectacles; there was something athletic in the cut of his shoulders that belied the tired scholar’s look in his hazel eyes. “Miss Thumm, this is Mr. Gordon Rowe, one of the Britannic’s most devoted neophytes. Inspector Thumm.”

The young man, who had not taken his eyes from Patience, shook hands with the Inspector. “Hello! Doctor, you know what’s good for sore eyes, I’ll say that for you. Thumm... Hmm. No, I’m afraid I don’t approve the name. Completely inappropriate. Let’s see, now... Ah, Inspector! Seems to me I’ve heard of you.”

“Thanks,” said the Inspector dryly. “Don’t let us disturb you, Mr. What’s-Your-Name. Maybe we’d better go off somewhere, Dr. Choate, and leave this young feller to his dime novel.”

“Father!” cried Patience. “Oh, Mr. Rowe, please don’t mind Father. You see, he probably resents your slur upon the name of Thumm.” Her color ran high, and the young man, quite unruffled by the Inspector’s glare, continued to eye her with cool appreciation. “What name would you give me, Mr. Rowe?”

“Darling,” said Mr. Rowe warmly.

“Patience Darling?”

“Er — just darling.”

“Say—” began the Inspector wrathfully.

“Do sit down,” said Dr. Choate with a bland smile. “Rowe, for the Lord’s sake, behave yourself. Miss Thumm, please.” Patience, who found the young man’s steady gaze faintly disconcerting while it for some unaccountable reason fluttered a suddenly conscious artery in her wrist, sat down, and the Inspector sat down, and Dr. Choate sat down, and Mr. Rowe remained standing and staring.

“It’s a weary wait,” said Dr. Choate hurriedly. “They’ve just barely begun. The painters, I mean. Haven’t touched the upper floors.”

“Yeah,” growled Inspector Thumm. “Now I’ll tell you—”

Gordon Rowe sat down, vaguely grinning. “If I’m intruding—” he began with cheerfulness.

Inspector Thumm looked hopeful. But Patience, with a charming glance at her father, said to the curator: “Did I understand you to say that you’re included in the general house-cleaning, Dr. Choate?... Do stay, Mr. Rowe.”

Dr. Choate leaned back in the swivel-chair behind his long desk and looked about the room. He sighed. “In a manner of speaking. It hasn’t been generally announced, but I’m leaving. Retiring. Fifteen years of my life have been spent in this building, and I dare say it’s time I thought of myself.” He closed his eyes and murmured: “I know precisely what I shall do. I shall purchase a small English cottage I’ve had my eye on in upper Connecticut, dig in with my books, and lead the life of a hermit-scholar...”

“Swell idea,” said the Inspector. “But as I was saying—”

“Charming,” murmured Mr. Rowe, still looking at Patience.

“You certainly deserve your rest, from all Mr. Lane has told me about you,” said Patience hastily. “When are you leaving, Doctor?”

“I’ve not decided. You see, we’re acquiring a new curator. He’s expected in from England on to-night’s boat, as a matter of fact; he’ll be docking tomorrow morning and then we’ll see. It will take some time before he acclimatizes himself, and of course I shall stay until he can carry on by himself.”

“Social visit, Miss Darling?” asked the young man suddenly.

“I always thought America restricted her borrowing from England to paintings and books,” said Patience in some confusion. “I take it your incoming curator is something very special in bibliophiles, Dr. Choate. Is he anyone really important?”

The Inspector fidgeted in his chair.

“Oh, he’s built up something of a reputation abroad,” said Dr. Choate with a delicate wave of his hand. “I shouldn’t say he was first rank. He’s been director of a small London museum for many years — the Kensington. His name is Sedlar, Hamnet Sedlar...”

“There’s solid roast-beef Britain for you!” said the young man with enthusiasm.”

“Personally engaged by the chairman of our Board of Directors. James Wyeth, you know.”

Patience, annoyed with herself for being suddenly unable to meet the young man’s admiring glance, raised her slender eyebrows. Wyeth was a titan among the mighty, a cold, cultured Crœsus with a passionate devotion to knowledge.

“And then, too, Sedlar was warmly recommended by Sir John Humphrey-Bond,” continued Dr. Choate amiably. “Of course Sir John’s endorsement carried weight. He’s been England’s most distinguished Elizabethan collector for decades, Inspector, as I suppose you know.”

The Inspector started. He cleared his throat. “Sure. Sure thing. But what we—”

“Sure you don’t mind my staying?” asked Mr. Rowe suddenly. “I’d been hoping somebody would turn up, you know.” He laughed and snicked shut the heavy old folio he had been reading. “This is my lucky day.”

“Of course not, Mr. Rowe,” murmured Patience; her face was a delicate crimson. “Er — Dr. Choate, I spent a good deal of my adolescence in England—”

“Lucky England, too,” said the young man reverently.

“—and it’s always been my feeling that most cultured Englishmen consider us rather quaint but slightly offensive barbarians. I suppose the inducement to Mr. Sedlar was sufficiently weighty to—?”

Dr. Choate chuckled in his beard. “Wrong, Miss Thumm. The Britannic’s finances didn’t permit us to offer Dr. Sedlar even as much as he’d been getting in London. But he seemed genuinely enthusiastic at the prospect of joining us here, and he snapped up Mr. Wyeth’s offer. I suppose he’s like the rest of us — impractical.”

“How true,” sighed the young man. “Now if I were practical—”

“How curious,” smiled Patience. “It doesn’t seem the proper British psychology, somehow.”

The Inspector coughed very loudly. “Now, Patty,” he said in a chiding tone, “Dr. Choate’s a busy man, and we can’t take up his whole day chinning about something that’s not our business.”

“Oh, now really, Inspector—”

“I’m sure it’s a pleasure for an old fossil like Choate,” remarked Mr. Rowe warmly, “to converse with as beautiful a creature as your daughter, Inspector—”

A desperate light began to glitter in Thumm’s eye. “What we really came for, Dr. Choate,” he said, ignoring the young man, “is to find out about Donoghue.”

“Donoghue?” The curator seemed puzzled, and glanced at Rowe, who sat forward with bright eyes. “What’s the matter with Donoghue?”

“What’s the matter with Donoghue?” growled the Inspector. “Why, Donoghue’s disappeared, that’s what’s the matter with him!”

The young man’s smile faded. “Disappeared?” he said swiftly.

Dr. Choate frowned. “Are you sure, Inspector? I suppose you’re referring to our special guard?”

“Sure! Say, didn’t you know he hadn’t turned up for work this morning?”

“Certainly. But I thought nothing of it.” The curator rose and began to pace the drugget behind his desk. “Burch, our caretaker, did mention something to me this morning about Donoghue’s failure to turn up, but it didn’t occur to me— Matter of fact, Rowe, you remember I mentioned it to you. You see, we like him here and give him rather more freedom than he would have in another situation. And then the museum’s being shut down... What’s happened? What’s the matter, Inspector?”

“Well, as far as we can find out,” replied the Inspector grimly, “he beat it out of here yesterday afternoon while that party of schoolteachers were being shown around and he hasn’t been seen since. Hasn’t turned up at his boarding-house, didn’t keep a date with a friend of his last night — just dropped clean out of sight.”

“It’s rather odd, don’t you think, Doctor?” murmured Patience.

Gordon Rowe laid his book down very quietly.

“Quite, quite,” said Dr. Choate, who seemed disturbed. “The party of teachers... They seemed a harmless enough lot, Inspector.”

“When you’re a cop as many years as I’ve been,” retorted the Inspector, “you learn not to depend too much on appearances. I understood it was you who took that bunch around the museum.”

“Yes.”

“How many of them were there, d’ye remember?”

“Really, I don’t know. I’m afraid I didn’t count, Inspector.”

“You didn’t by any chance,” asked Patience softly, “notice a middle-aged man with a bushy grey moustache and a bluish sort of hat among them, did you, Doctor?”

“I’ve the failing of most shut-ins, Miss Thumm; half the time I’m unconscious of my surroundings.”

“I did,” said Rowe with a snap of his lean jaws. “But it was just a glimpse, blast it.”

“Too bad,” said the Inspector sarcastically. “So you just showed ’em around, eh, Doctor?”

“That’s my crime, Inspector,” replied the curator with a shrug. “Why do you ask especially after this man in the blue hat, Miss Thumm?”

“Because the man in the blue hat,” replied Patience, “was an illegitimate member of the party, Dr. Choate, and because we’ve every reason to believe that Donoghue’s disappearance is connected with him in some way.”

“Funny,” muttered young Rowe. “Funny. Intrigue in the museum, Doctor! That sounds like Donoghue, with his incurably romantic Irish temperament.”

“You mean he might have noticed something strange,” said Dr. Choate thoughtfully, “about this chap in the blue hat and permitted himself to be inveigled into a private investigation of his own? It’s possible, of course. I’m sure nothing’s happened to Donoghue, though, I’ve every confidence in his ability to handle himself.”

“Then where is he?” said the Inspector dryly.

Dr. Choate shrugged again; it was evident he considered the entire affair a trifle. He rose with a pleasant smile.

“And now that your business has been transacted, would you like to look about, Inspector? And you, Miss Thumm? I know you’ve been through the Britannic before, but we’ve recently acquired an important benefaction and I’m sure you’ll be interested in it. It’s housed in what we’ve named the Saxon Room. Samuel Saxon, you know. He died not long—”

“Well—” snarled the Inspector.

“I’m sure we should love it,” said Patience quickly.

Dr. Choate led the way, like Moses, between the painted seas of canvas on the reception-room floor along a corridor to a large reading room whose book-crammed walls were also hung with canvas. Inspector Thumm trudged wearily by his side, and behind them came Patience and the tall young man — an arrangement which was effected with a cool dexterity that brought a new blush to Patience’s cheeks.

“You don’t mind my trailing along this way, do you, darling?” murmured the young man.

“I’ve never shunned the company of good-looking men yet,” said Patience stiffly, “and I’m sure I shan’t start now just to swell your head, Mr. Rowe. Did any one ever tell you that you’re an extremely offensive young man?”

“My brother,” said Rowe with gravity, “once when I handed him a black eye. Darling, I don’t know when I’ve met a girl—”

Dr. Choate led the way across the reading room to a far door. “As a matter of fact,” he called out, “Mr. Rowe has almost more right to do the honors of the Saxon Room than I, Miss Thumm. He was one of those infant prodigies you read about.”

“How horrible,” said Patience, tossing her head.

“Don’t believe a word of it,” said Rowe instantly. “Choate, I’ll strangle you! What the estimable Doctor means, Miss Thumm—”

“Oh, it’s Miss Thumm now, is it?”

He flushed. “I’m sorry. I get this way sometimes. What Dr. Choate means is that it was my good fortune to attract old Sam Saxon’s eye. He left a lot of rare books to the Britannic in his will; died a few months ago, you know; and as his protégé I’m here in a sort of semi-official capacity to see that they’re started off in their new home properly.”

“More and more horrible, Mr. Rowe. I’m chiefly interested in brainless young men with no visible means of support.”

“Now you’re being cruel,” he whispered. Then his eyes danced. “Except for the means of support, I assure you I qualify! Fact is, I’m doing some original research in Shakespeare. Mr. Saxon tucked me under his wing and I’m continuing my researches here, now that he’s dead and a good deal of the Shakespearian stuff has been willed to the museum.”

They entered a long, narrow room which, from its fresh look, turpentine odor, and lack of draping proclaimed it recently redecorated. It contained perhaps a thousand volumes, most of them on open shelves. A small number reposed in wooden cases on slender metal legs, the tops of the cases covered with glass; apparently the more valuable items.

“Just finished,” said Dr. Choate. “There are some really unique things here; eh, Rowe? Of course the contents of this wing have not yet been placed on exhibition; the collection was delivered only a few weeks ago, after we had shut down.” The Inspector leaned against a wall near the door and looked bored. “Now here,” continued Dr. Choate in a Chautauqua voice, strolling over to the nearest cabinet, “is an item—”

“Say!” exclaimed the Inspector sharply. “What the devil’s happened to that cabinet over there?”

Dr. Choate and Gordon Rowe wheeled like startled birds of passage. Patience felt her breath come thickly.

The Inspector was pointing to a case in the centre of the room, quite like the others in appearance; but it differed from the others in a signal respect. Its glass top had been shattered and only a few fragments of jagged glass clung to the frame!