X. Jones—Of Scotland Yard Read online

  Mr. Sheriff: “Well, your Lordship, a number of things. Ray, as I can prove, would have been 40 years old this year. Again, Ray, as a young boy, often used to dress in girls’ clothes—clothes belonging to my sister, of course—and give screamingly funny performances on our farm. He ran away, however, at the age of 18, and we never saw him again. He wrote us now and again, however. When he was 30, a letter he sent us stated that he was just leaving Darwin, North Australia, for Dutch Guinea in the 50-ton steamer “Bandoewy.” As all know, the “Bandoewy” went down in a squall in the Arafura Sea, and crew and passengers were drowned. My sister wrote, of course, to Darwin, Australia, concerning the passenger list of the “Bandoewy,” but there was no record, so crudely were such things conducted, and so small and unimportant the vessel in question. And since we never heard from Ray again, it was confirmed in our minds that he had boarded the “Bandoewy,” all right, and had been drowned. And then, returning from Canada, recently, after a year’s absence up in the wheat country, I ran across the story of some other suit for claim against the remainder of the estate of Gavin Horridge. I wrote to the administrator’s office at London for a photograph of the deceased, and for specifications as to his measurements and so forth. And I was refused utterly.”

  Sir Patrick O’Neill: “And if I may interrupt here, your Lordship, the administrator’s office refuses to submit copies of these data, even to solicitors of record. They grudgingly hand out—though for but momentary inspection, and to solicitors only—a single photograph of this man Horridge, but dressed in a costume representing Rose Sydell or somebody of the ’90’s, all of which confuses one entirely as to Horridge’s weight, height, build, and how he looks. All other data, they refuse. And this is a procedure that, I believe, violates the Code of British Rights.”

  Mr. Buckminster: “We feel, your Lordship, that we have a moral right to keep this record secret.”

  Mr. Justice Bevan: “I think so myself. As otherwise, there would be ten times the claimants to this rapidly diminishing estate.” (Mr. Justice Bevan here turned to the plaintiff.) “Well, Mr. Sheriff, what proofs have you to offer that Horridge might be your cousin—that is, your adopted brother, and that you are heir to his estate?”

  Mr. Sheriff: “Well, your Lordship, I have Ray’s birth certificate. And the papers of adoption. And I have the letter—though but written on a typewriter—and, I’ll concede, but signed on the typewriter as was Ray’s usual custom—that he was boarding the ‘Bandoewy.’”

  Sir Patrick O’Neill: “I will correct that, Robert. That letter is not of evidence here, because it proves nothing.”

  Mr. Sheriff (Addressing Mr. Justice Bevan directly): “Well, Sir Patrick meant, I guess, for me to name the letter from Ray stating that he was suffering from infection due to removal of a tattoo mark done on his left forearm. And from a single newspaper story I obtained on the original finding of Horridge’s body, there was something said about a burn, or scarified area, on his left forearm.”

  Mr. Buckminster: “There, your Lordship, I submit it—that the more the claimants know, the more they claim!”

  Mr. Justice Bevan: “Well, Mr. Sheriff, have you any record of Ray’s baby footprints?”

  Mr. Sheriff: “No, sir.”

  Mr. Justice Bevan: “Well, did your adopted brother have any scars anywhere?”

  Sir Patrick O’Neill: “I cannot let my client answer this.”

  Mr. Justice Bevan: “Why not, Sir Patrick?”

  Sir Patrick O’Neill: “Because the only record extant of this body’s measurements lies in the administrator’s vaults, and is right there now. I submit that it can be altered between now and a further hearing, should my client claim a point that lies upon it.”

  (A long silence ensued here.)

  Mr. Justice Bevan: “Well, we will send for the record and make it a court’s exhib—”

  Voice from Back of Courtroom: “Your Lordship, I have that paper. Though sealed in an envelope. I am custodian of the records of all unidentified dead. Mr. Pundill McGivery, Sir.”

  (Mr. McGivery, at this point, stepped up to the bar.)

  Mr. Justice Bevan (He turned to the plaintiff): “Well, Mr. Sheriff, I will make you a sporting proposition. From the bench. Evidently, from Sir Patrick’s objections, your adopted brother did have a scar—or scars. Now suppose I take this record—let me have it, Mr. McGivery.” (Mr. Justice Bevan took the envelope, and ripping it open, removed a tri-folded paper from within it. He turned back only the lower fold, and examined it. And nodded.) “Yes, it is shown here—on the bottom—as having been made by two competent examiners, and duly certified and all. Now if I use this as court’s private evidence, and you state to me a single scar that you knew your adopted brother to have had, and I find such scar listed here, I will remand your motion for a hearing before the King’s Bench Court. And will order this paper to be held there, as Court’s private evidence in this case. While, if I find no such scar, you will accept my word for it and will concede therefore that your adopted brother did go down on the ‘Bandoewy’—and that you are barking up the wrong tree in supposing that this female impersonator was he.” (Mr. Justice Bevan here turned to Sir Patrick O’Neill): “Would that be acceptable to you, Sir Patrick?”

  Sir Patrick O’Neill: “I am a sporting man, your Lordship. If Mr. Sheriff will stake all his claims on that, I am sure I will.”

  Mr. Justice Bevan: “And how about you, Mr. Buckminster?”

  Mr. Buckminster: “I am agreed. Particularly if it will convince Sir Patrick here that we are not trying to block rightful claimants.”

  Mr. Justice Bevan: “And you, Mr. Sheriff? Are you agreed?”

  Mr. Sheriff: “I will take you on—er—that is, your Lordship, I will agree. So confident am I, that I can name two distinct points of identification.”

  Mr. Justice Bevan: “Then let the court reporter take the plaintiff’s words down very carefully.” (Mr. Justice Bevan faced the court reporter.) “I hold here the complete measurements and identifying points—minus fingerprints, which are set down here as being burned off—of Gavin Horridge, deceased actor or female impersonator.” (Mr. Justice Bevan now turned to the plaintiff.) “Where, Mr. Sheriff, on the person of your adopted brother, Ray Oliver, was a scar? Or scars?”

  Mr. Sheriff: “There was a scar, your Lordship, from his navel around his right hip and nearly to his spine—resulting from surgical fixation of a badly floating kidney when he was 19. There was also a scar, at least 3 inches long, across his left biceps.”

  (Mr. Justice Bevan here consulted the record over a period of several minutes.)

  Mr. Justice Bevan: “You lose, Mr. Sheriff! Neither of these two scars were on the body of Gavin Horridge. Special examination, in fact, was made of the biceps for possible atrophy.”

  Mr. Sheriff: “Very well, your Lordship, I stand down. For I am a sporting man.”

  Mr. Justice Bevan (Speaking towards Recorder Alfred Wanlis): “Record, Mr. Wanlis, that by mutual agreement of all parties, the motion is dismissed.” (Turning to Mr. Buckminster.) “And, Mr. Buckminster, I order you to hold your legal fees for this appearance to no more than 30 shillings.” (Turning to Clerk Thomas.) “I would now like to hear, even though slightly out of its turn, the motion in the case of Joy Jencombe, Poetess, vs. Victor Hilliman and Company, Publishers, for libel and breach of contract. As Miss Jencombe has to leave England shortly. And I understand that...

  DOCUMENT LXXVI

  Letter, of date January 3, 1937, from Gerald Wilkins, of 3 Westgate Terrace, off Redcliffe Square, London, England, to X. Jones, of 136 Grey’s Inn Road, London, England.

  Dear Mr. Jones:

  I’ve botched everything! And to say that I’m covered with confusion isn’t saying one-half of it! In fact Mr. Jones, I’m checking out of the Marceau Case. Going back today to—in fact, when you have this letter in your hands, I will be back at—the Isle of Wight. Where I belong. And preparing myself, under my grandfather, for Oxford—as he wishes me to do. />
  Mr. Jones, I’ve not only failed to get that other manuscript which Marceau wrote—but I’ve lost it, for you, to this American detective, Snide!

  For Jane Trotter, you see, returned from Switzerland, with Mrs. Stuyves-Cherryvant, three days ago. The manuscript hadn’t yet gotten back to Redcliffe Square from Australia, where she’d tried to send it to her brother Tom. And, on that first meeting we had, she expressed the greatest willingness to let me see it when it did come.

  But late last night, Mr. Jones, I got a brief telephone call from Jane to see her without fail this morning at 7 o’clock in Victoria Station. I presumed that maybe she and Mrs. Stuyves-Cherryvant were running over to Paris. And I was there of course. And, Mr. Jones, they were leaving not for Paris, but for Spain. More or less unexpectedly. And to be gone for weeks, if not the rest of the entire winter.

  And in the brief ten minutes that I had with her, she told me that the script had gotten back yesterday morning, and that she’d mailed it to Snide.

  I reproached her, of course, telling her that she had promised to let me see it. But her only answer was that I couldn’t have made anything of it anyway (you see I haven’t dared to let her think I’ve much of an intellect—and, as I see now, I’m a dumhead anyway!) and that she was terribly in fear of this man Snide. And then the call for their train came—and Mrs. Stuyves-Cherryvant summoned her peremptorily to help with the baggage—and off they went.

  So you see—everything and all I’ve done for you in this case has been—nothing! I’ve failed—at every angle. I might just as well never have come in. And when I say I’m sorry—well, what’s the use? For even though the script detailed what we already know, now that Marceau’s dead, i.e., that he was to be garroted—it might, at that, have contained an oblique suggestion as to why his murderers tipped him off in advance.

  I will be at Shadwell Cottage (not Cliff Cottage, as before) with my grandfather, if you do deign to write me.

  And I need not add that everything I have had to do with the case, and with you, is as locked within my brain as though it never took place. And will forever remain so.

  Gerald.

  DOCUMENT LXXVII

  Exact copy of a notation in pencil and in André Marceau’s handwriting, appearing upon the top of the first page of a short fiction manuscript, entitled “Strange Romance” typewritten by him on May 5, 1935.

  May 5, 1935

  If ever I am found dead under mysterious circumstances, here, in this purely fictitious story from my pen, lies concealed the undoubted explanation of exactly how my mysterious death was brought about; the mechanics, as it were, of my dispatchal.

  André Marceau.

  DOCUMENT LXXVIII

  Excerpts from a letter, of date January 5, 1937, from Aleck Snide, at 9 Rue Oudinot, Paris, France—to Gilbert Whittimore, Ashley Gardens, Westminster, London.

  “Dear Gillie:

  “I got both of your frantic notes of December 28th and January 3rd asking where the hell was I and what the god-damned double hell was I doing on the Marceau Case, and it was for just that reason, Gillie-boy—so’s you wouldn’t be sitting astride my neck from morning to night after you got back to London from Leningrad—that I entrusted my whereabouts to only John Bull’s postal department.

  “...But calm down, calm down! All this don’t mean, I tell you, that I’m asleep on the job. For I’m arriving to where I’m trying to get as sure as ships and planes and mails arrive places... In short, I’m patiently waiting for several detached items of info to reach me; and if I’ve figured out correctly my mail schedules via plane to... Thence via same... chain of islands to Australia!—and thence... across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand!... all these items should be in my hands by shortly before the end of the month—and without even a ripple in a country newspaper.

  “Which, Gillie, with Brother Jones squatting atop his ‘story’ there in London, is exactly the way we have to work. Quiet—quiet—quiet! For if he suspected we might get in ahead of him on any fase of it—he might blow the works, see?...

  “And now, in case you’re restive as hell because you simply can’t see what I’m doing, here’s a little something to sink your pearly teeth in. A page out of that second script. Yes, the one Marceau wrote. Though by ‘second script,’ Gillie, I mean only the one that came to me second. For, in actuality, it’s the first of the two that Marceau wrote. The Trotter gal, you see, got back with her missus to London after I left, and the script got back from chasing her brother, too—and, before loping off with her missus to Spain, she sent it on to me—via forwarding. of course—by registered mail.

  “The section of the page between the top lines and the bottom lines—in short, the drawing! is the point where, plainly, Marceau ‘coded’ into it his explanation—to all legally and otherwise concerned!—or how he thought he might eventually catch the bumpoff. For this part, as I can tell you from having read the whole script, was literally dragged into the yarn by its very heels—as you yourself will see when you get the script from me in a day or two—and you can ‘decode’ it easily yourself.

  “As you’ll notice, first crack out of the box, it involves ‘juggling’—our little ‘dead’ friend Lucas’ profesh. In short, it screams aloud that ‘some night’ ‘some juggler’ (our little ‘dead’ friend Lucas, yes, no?) is going to ‘cut off somebody’s wind’ (that latter ‘somebody’ being Monsieur Marceau). For us, of course, the coded ‘info’ is what is known as ‘purely academic’—for, since Marceau eventually caught the said bumpoff, all advance descriptions thereof are like looking at hands tossed face down on a poker table. But cast your own optics, anyway, Gillie, over the page I enclose—the midmost and pictorial section thereof, to be exact!—and turn the brilliant battery of your brains onto it—and see whether by any chance you can dope out something still further in it than the general conditions of the demise.

  “I want to re-read old Marceau’s brainstorm once more, before I ship it all on to you...

  “Now hold yourself in patience. About the 27th—28th—29th—more or less (though probably less) of this month, I should hold in my mitt a conglomeration of info which will, for you and me, put the Marceau Case solution virtually ‘in the bag.’ By—let me so much assure you—telling me where, in London, Ezekiah is hiding right today. Or being held by... And all this, Gillie, a full 25 days ahead of Jones’ release date (on whatever he has). The while he’s snoring away on his evening plumpudding, waiting for that fateful date.”

  DOCUMENT LXXIX

  Manuscript page, enclosed with letter of January 5, 1937, from Aleck Snide, Paris, France, to Gilbert Whittimore, London, England.

  a drawing of the faces of those three cards—even their positions as well—while every detail of faces and positions was still keen and clear in my mind.

  And I surveyed my drawing, in front of me, which was thus:

  And attempted to analyze the three elements of the resulting picture.

  The top card.

  The middle card.

  And the bottom card.

  DOCUMENT LXXX

  Quotation from pages 38, 40 and 83 of “Le Symbolisme Hermétique” by Oswald Wirth.

  “A symbol can always be studied from an infinite number of points of view; and each thinker has the right to discover in the symbol a new meaning corresponding to the logic of his own conceptions.

  “As a matter of fact, symbols are precisely intended to awaken ideas sleeping in our consciousness. They arouse a thought by means of suggestion and thus cause the truth which lies hidden in the depths of our spirit to reveal itself.

  “In order that symbols could speak, it is essential that we should have in ourselves the germs of the ideas, the revelation of which constitutes the mission of the symbols. But no revelation whatever is possible if the mind is empty, sterile and inert.”

  DOCUMENT LXXXI

  A manuscript page from a story entitled “Strange Romance” typed by André Marceau, May 5, 1935.

  and, to use downrigh
t Anglo-Saxon, glass! For that’s all that any solid transparent matter was, in the final analysis, unless, of course, its molecules had really lined themselves up like soldiers on inspection—in which case the transparent material was—well—whatever one might then want to call it. Molecularly adjusted glass!—glass-plus!—super-glass!—or what. And, if it were this, then—what?

  On both sides of the outer upper telescope end—on all sides, indeed—as I saw by glancing out of the roof aperture from the top of the light aluminum stairs, was a cluster of indistinct stars—that is, merely relatively indistinct to many others—and by sighting first down the telescope towards the floor, and then straight out towards the sky, I saw that there, towards this cluster, indeed, was where the tube was pointing. The cluster was not far from a constellation which I recognized as being Orion; in fact, not so far from a star so bright that it must be the famed Sirius. To be sure, here in Arizona, despite the month being March—a month so stormy elsewhere—all the stars, because of the utter mistlessness, foglessness and smokelessness of this part of the world, seemed immutably heightened in brilliancy; but Sirius, as he always did, marked himself indubitably by his super-brilliancy. Had I been capable of reading that great revolving clock of the heavens, I would have found that it was right now decreeing the time to be slightly this side of 8 in the evening. But now, having seen approximately where the ’scope was pointing, I ran lightly down the aluminum stairs, drew up a small wooden stool—which sat near the telescope mechanism—and placed my eye to

  DOCUMENT LXXXII

  Star map of the heavens as seen at 8 p.m. during the month of March, from the entire state of Arizona, U.S.A.

  DOCUMENT LXXXIII

  Excerpts from a letter of date January 6, 1937, from Gilbert Whittimore, Ashley Gardens, West­minster, London, addressed to “A. Snide, care Mr. and Mrs. Nat McGinty, 9 Rue Oudinot, Paris, France.