X. Jones—Of Scotland Yard Read online

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION6

  THE MARCEAU SERIES7

  DEDICATION8

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  A FEW ACKNOWLEDGMENTS!377

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1935, renewed 1963 by Harry Stephen Keeler.

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

  THE MARCEAU SERIES

  The Marceau Case

  X. Jones—Of Scotland Yard

  The Wonderful Scheme of Mr. Christopher Thorne

  Y. Cheung, Business Detective

  DEDICATION

  This novel, most naturally, is dedicated to that unknown reviewer on a London paper who once said, in one of his reviews: “Harry Stephen Keeler’s novels are, of course, all pro-American, spread-eagle, old-gloryish, and told, in addition, in Chicagoese—thus requiring a glossary in order to be understood by British readers”!

  DOCUMENT I

  Night-letter cablegram from X. Jones—as decoded by recipient!—received at Chicago, November 1, 1936, and addressed “C. Chelsing Satterlee, care No. 664 Diversey Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.”

  Thanks a million times for the check-up of the fingerprint in Nebraska. I may now say conclusively that I have the basis for the solution of the Marceau Murder Case sufficiently in my hand that I hope ultimately to hold the full and complete solution itself. The plan proposed in your enthusiastic cable of yesterday morning is wholly and in every respect acceptable to me, and why would it not be? I shall, therefore, issue just the advance news-bulletin which you consider it feasible for me to release—whenever such release is warranted. Because, however, of a curious discovery I have made at Little Ivington, England (and known, in all probability, only to myself), I would not be at all surprised, in case that advance news-bulletin becomes elaborated by some news-syndicate into a feature “rehash” of the case, to see a spurious confession shortly thereafter offered the world. A confession which, though false, will nevertheless be, under the circumstances, 99 per cent convincing. Particularly if offered by a Lilliputian—as it undoubtedly would be. However, as to that, we shall see what we shall see! And I will write you at my first opportunity and explain in detail exactly what I mean. Let me also say that, in compliance with the request in your long code cablegram of October 24, giving me that highly valued information (via Washington, D. C.) in re Sparks Crossing, Iowa, etc., that I mailed you, via ordinary mail, and on the same boat that carried my U.S.A. airmail letter containing fingerprint for Nebraska checkup, a verbatim copy of that strange letter which Marceau wrote to the London Times a quarter century ago, and which letter never got actually reproduced in toto in any newspapers, even though conceded to be the cause for his death 25 years later. Also I shipped you, the same day, in two packets marked “A” and “B”—which packets, however, I fear traveled via different boats!—the photographs of the Marceau family which I uncovered in the secret recess of that old desk of Marceau’s, together with a bit of the Marceau family tree which I tore from a photostat of the complete tree which is on file in English chancery here because of its use in settling the Théophile Marceau estate. Most, if not all, of these photos are obviously the only copies of such extant, and between the occasional faded handwritten notations on the backs of some, and my own more copious remarks written—and too microscopically in some cases, I fear!—thereon, and the bit of the tree itself, you may be able eventually to become official biographer of this most curious tribe—the Tribe Marceau.

  Xenius.

  DOCUMENT II

  A photograph, one of 7 enclosed in a packet marked “A,” received at Chicago, Illinois, November 2, 1936, on the back of which is written:

  “The newspapers would have given much, at the time of André Marceau’s death, for this—as it indisputably is!—only photo extant of him. This is the one he had taken during the year—his 60th—when he grew a beard and mustache, and tried to emulate the general appearance of his father, Theophile Marceau, only to abandon the hirsute adornment eventually after a few months, and destroy the other 11 of the dozen photos he had printed up!

  X. J.”

  DOCUMENT III

  A photograph, one of 7 enclosed in a packet marked “A,” received at Chicago, Illinois, November 2, 1936, on the back of which is written:

  “This is Théophile Marceau, André’s father, who founded the Théophile Marceau Perfumes in France and brought them to England because of what are now conceded to ha
ve been false charges against him in France. He is indisputably a much finer type of man than his son, André, don’t you think? This was taken evidently—judging from the date given above—ten years before his death, in 1920, in the old Marceau home on Tavistock Square, London—which would have been, therefore, five years or so after he sold Marceau Perfumes, Ltd., to Milady’s Scents, Ltd.—and retired!

  X. J.”

  DOCUMENT IV

  A photograph, one of 7 enclosed in a packet marked “A,” received at Chicago, Illinois, November 2, 1936, on the back of which is written:

  “This is a memento of André Marceau’s younger days as a gay blade in London: a theatrical ‘foyer picture,’ in fact—as can be seen from his own handwritten notations on it—of the very act that was playing on the night he climbed over the box railing of the Gaiety Theatre, London, and went upon the stage. The act evidently was called, as seen by his notations, ‘Today’s Girl—and Tomorrow’s Girl’; and now, today, nearly 40 years later, it almost suggests, does it not, the foyer photo for an act to be called ‘Today’s Girl—and Yesterday’s Girl’? These two charming performers would today be elderly white-haired ladies—if, that is, both are still alive!

  X. J.”

  DOCUMENT V

  A photograph, one of 7 enclosed in a packet marked “A,” received at Chicago, Illinois, November 2, 1936, on the back of which is written:

  “This picture, carrying the name ‘Margot LaFarge,’ is of course André Marceau’s mother—a more or less youthful picture, to be sure—but evidently the only photo of her extant. She was, as you probably know, Théophile Marceau’s second wife, married a full 9 years after his first wife left him in Paris and went back to her people in Bordeaux, taking their boy with her; married in Paris, in fact, this second wife, one year after that first wife died in Bordeaux. The woman shown was, it seems, a foundling—history absolutely unknown—out of some Paris foundling asylum. Her name, ‘Margot LaFarge,’ was just a name voluntarily taken on leaving the asylum to be bound out, and is, virtually, when translated, ‘Margaret Smith.’ Théophile Marceau’s own mother had been a foundling—and it seems to have been a characteristic of all the Marceau males that they veered toward women who had no encumbering relatives, or any chance of any!

  X. J.”

  DOCUMENT VI

  A photograph, one of 7 enclosed in a packet marked “A,” received at Chicago, Illinois, November 2, 1936, on the back of which is written:

  “Since the name of the sitter given on the reverse side is ‘Julia Aillaud,’ that places this photo definitely as being that of Théophile Marceau’s first wife, whose death in 1870 permitted him to marry the girl from the foundling asylum. It was this girl who left Théophile Marceau a couple of years after their child was born—presumably because he was but barely keeping his feet on the commercial ladder, and couldn’t provide what she considered the proper luxuries for her—and went back to her people in Bordeaux, taking the child. Théophile Marceau became extremely embittered, it seems, and never again saw that boy.

  X. J.”

  DOCUMENT VII

  A photograph, one of 7 enclosed in a packet marked “A,” received at Chicago, Illinois, November 2, 1936, on the back of which is written:

  “This, obviously, from the notations on it, is a small-boy picture of Julie Aillaud Marceau’s and Théophile Marceau’s son—Henri Filomenon Marceau—the one Théophile Marceau never saw again after Julie took him away—and who was, of course, a half-brother to André, though one whom André never did get to see. For this lad became a sort of wanderer, and drifted to America even in his teens, and married some girl in the wilds of Arkansas—living completely up to the Marceau tradition in that no ‘history’ was subsequently available on her, and that she probably had no relatives. It is from this son that the one American heir to the Marceau estate sprang. Just how André ever got this picture, there is no telling. Possibly Henri Filomenon Marceau, as a boy in Bordeaux, sent it to Théophile—by then in London—to ‘melt’ him; or, possibly again, some of the Aillaud family, in cleaning up Julie’s things after her death, sent it to either Théophile or, years later, to André. Anyway, it was kept by the recipient—and wound up in the old desk where I found it!

  X. J.”

  DOCUMENT VIII

  A photograph, one of 7 enclosed in a packet marked “A,” received at Chicago, Illinois, November 2, 1936, on the back of which is written:

  “This photo is one of three (the other two will be in the other packet marked ‘B’) which carries an allusion to some unsavory scandal—‘La Tache’—that occurred back in the Marceau family, and back of Théophile Marceau himself. What it could be I, of course, have no idea. The brothers and sisters of Théophile’s father, Aristide Marceau, must have entered faithfully into a pact never to speak of it to their children (and there being no brothers and sisters to his mother, there could have been no one there to enter into such a pact) and the said brothers and sisters being all dead!—and their children likewise!—the scandal is completely buried by the Sands of Time. Anyway, the translation of the inscription written above is: ‘The baby in the lap is Théophile Marceau, born December 3, 1841, as seen with the family of Jacques Brizzard, laborer, of Chartre Argenton, France, in whose care he was brought up after his mother died in giving him birth. The Brizzards were an illiterate family who could not even read, and while it was necessary for Aristide to place Théophile somewhere because of inability to take care, himself, of so small a baby, it is conceded that he chose the Brizzards so that there might be at least one Marceau to whom no hint of “The Scandal” might ever reach.’

  X. J.”

  DOCUMENT IX

  Verbatim reproduction of a letter written March 9, 1910, by Andre Marceau, of 29 Tavistock Square, London, and published March 10, 1910, in the Reader’s Column of the London Times.

  March 9, 1910.

  To the Editor,

  The Times, London

  My Dear Sir,

  As a reader of your esteemed journal, I beg leave to call the attention of yourself—and your subscribers—to one of the direst and most sinister menaces hanging over the head of mankind today, yet one which, providing radical measures are immediately taken, can be completely counteracted. I refer, in short, to the phenomenon of birth, to and among normally sized individuals, of miniature humans—as embodied in the three classifications: dwarfs, midgets and cretins. No scientist has ever yet perceived, it would apparently seem, that the production of such minikins by Nature is a covert attempt on her part to draw down the size of mankind to a microscopic scale—not merely a small or reduced scale—but a microscopic scale—making mankind subject thereby to complete destruction by the insect world. For it must be kept ever in mind that the insectivora are just as much Nature’s children as are human beings—and that Nature possesses, in the huge ramifications and diversifications of the vast insect world, a far richer laboratory for her to work out her many experiments than she has at hand in the relatively fixed human types. Anything, therefore, that works—as man has done with his thousands of death-dealing sprays and insect extermination devices—to destroy Nature’s more fruitful laboratory material, she herself will attempt desperately to destroy.

  And it must be kept in mind that every minikin who has offspring—and all but the cretins do have and have had—sows the seed of nanism in multiplicate, as it were, where, through further reduplication later down the same familial branches, and the similar process going on all the while at other branches of the human tree, the concealed nanlegic strain may cross, at some future time, with the like strains, virtually advancing toward it. Indeed, this strain may be said to lie right today over mankind like a reticulated invisible network, though with—fortunately as yet—large loops to the network, and large gaps in most of the loops. But mankind evidently possesses no realization that some fine day—in some particular year not known to me, of course—the newspapers will be puzzledly reporting the somewhat bewildering fact that midgets and dw
arfs and cretins are suddenly being produced at a hyper-advanced rate—at a rate, indeed, as great as the production of normal people—if not, perhaps, faster—for such things, as is known, rise in geometrical progression. And with staggering swiftness! And the moment that that unprecedented rise in the minikin birthrate takes place—even commences to take place—all will probably be lost!

  For let it be considered how diminutive would be the offspring of midget parents, were the offspring itself dwarfed in accordance with that unknown law covering the upset of the germ plasm which causes nanism. And how much smaller, in turn, would be the dwarfed offspring of such dwarfed offspring of midget parents. Indeed, the size of man will, after the first noticeable rise in the rate of midget births, fall like lightning, by each successive generation, till of a sudden the entire human race will be fighting for its life against our present-day type of cockroaches, the latter being then as big, relatively, to a human individual, as dinosaurs—such as the ferocious Rex Tyrannosaurus, or the Spine-Armored Dinosaur—would be to a present-day man. And men will be running and hiding desperately from the present-day mosquitoes, then as large, relatively, to a human being, as those kite-like aereoplanes which are being effectively flown today by the Messrs. Wright Brothers of Kittyhawk, United States, New York, and as dangerous, for instance, as such aereoplanes would be if outfitted with Maxim rapid-fire Gatling guns.

  The foregoing picture to which I should like to add a brief Kodak snapshot, as it were, of mankind being eaten alive, swallowed whole, dismembered, by ravenous insects, is but a brief segment of the picture of the future if nanism is not obliterated from the human race.

  And there is, of course, but one way to avert the certain eventuality the future holds.

  That is by stamping out nanism completely—and at once. In short, all dwarfs, midgets—and, for good measure, cretins—should be ruthlessly exterminated. Exterminated, the world over, through joint action taken by parliaments and congresses and royal decrees, directed by biological committees enlightened to the menace.