X. Jones—Of Scotland Yard Read online

  “And so now... about decoding those three cryptic cards comprising most of the entire manuscript page of Marceau’s story that you sent me. I suppose you know—or don’t you?—that they’re rough duplications of cards from the Tarot?... The Tarot being a screwy deck of cards used by gypsies to tell fortunes. The reason I know this is because, about ten years ago, I covered one day of the trial of old Mother Scorrentzio, a gypsy woman of New York accused of murdering another gypsy’s child. Her defense was that she’d been instructed to do it by a message that came up to her out of the Tarot cards when she laid them all out... And all the defense lawyers could do—outside of trying to prove that she was cracked—was to put some occultist or metaphysicist—by name, I think, Doctor Arthur Lee Waring, with a whole string of degrees after his name—to testify that the Tarot cards actually do convey pure ideas, above all languages, above all times. The idea presented by a single Tarot card, as I got it that day, can be any one of a hundred ideas, depending on its juxtaposition with other Tarot cards. While the idea of a trio of such cards could represent damn near anything on God’s earth. And are used, no doubt, in some such sense as that in the story. And present some idea or something. Well, that’s one possible meaning: the one Marceau invested ’em with, with the relation to the plot of his story. Then, obviously, there’s another meaning. Namely, the idea of a Jupiterian guy being hanged, underlapped by a Buck Rogerian juggler, and that underlapped by a pack of Martian moons, obviously means also that Marceau wanted to place on record—though in code—that he’d been threatened with some sort of threat to the extent, perhaps, that he’d ‘get strangled to death’... And, as you say, if the threat was all a joke—he’d never be making a fool of himself. But if he ever did catch it up a dark street in London—or on the road to Little Ivington—the only places he presumably felt he could catch it—then Scotland Yard would easily yank the real meaning out of the manuscript quick enough. But, old polecat, there’s also a third meaning to those three Tarot cards: Namely, that...”

  DOCUMENT LXXXIV

  Excerpts, from letter of date January 8, 1937, from Gilbert Whittimore, Ashley Gardens, West­minster, London, addressed to “A. Snide, care Nat McGinty, 9 Rue Oudinot, Paris, France.”

  “I received the Marceau manuscript safely. Yes, ‘Strange Romance.’ And read it over. Not once, but twice. Three times, in fact.

  “Aleck, Marceau never wrote that story!

  “Never, in a thousand years. That story, Aleck, was written by an author with a stupendous fund of all-round information and knowledge—scientific as well as cultural—information acquired from a lot of reading, on a lot of subjects; a man with some brains, if not school education, and an ability to think straight; but never by a cracked nut like Marceau, who believed—certainly, at least 25 years ago—that the midgets would overrun the earth, and humanity would get eaten up by the cockroaches, etc., etc., etc., etc.

  “Sure—sure—Marceau copied the story all right. From some source. The same source, from which, undoubtedly, he copied the first one. (Meaning of course the first one you received—which was, in actuality, the second one he put on paper. Yes, the less erudite one called ‘A Cheque for 200 Guineas.’) And it was presumably that same source from which he always copied stories, when he wanted to ‘villainize’ somebody he didn’t like. And as we both grant, he used both of these two stories—the ones that survived him and which we have—to code in the info, at least as conveyed to him by those putative threats—or else putative practical jokes—about the manner and possible mode of his murder. All that I’m not gainsaying in the least. Since we can read the coded parts so specifically. But I’m claiming only that Marceau positively didn’t have the type of scientific, straight-thinking mind to write a story like that last one.

  “What he doubtlessly did, Aleck, was to transmogrify a bit a couple of stories written by other people. And ‘transmogrify’ is a word invented by Edward Fitzgerald, in trying to indicate how he scrambled Omar Khay...

  “My hunch, Aleck, is that both stories are taken from some single-volume of some many-volumed collection of alleged ‘short-story masterpieces,’ of which there are more collections—and all put out for mail order and premium sales—than there are descendants of the original pair of fleas on Noah’s ark. And involving, as one of the stories in this volume did, Tarot cards—that gave Marceau a glorious opportunity to code into it his version of three specific Tarot cards—fantastically altered, of course, to fit the plot of the story—which would show how much and how definitely he knew about his own death—if it ever took place!

  “Now the Stooge here is the bird—and nobody else—from whom to get a lead on this. Not the volume, you understand, nor the collection—but the short-story classic that formed the basis of ‘Strange Romance.’ For he’s not only read up on every damned subject ever heard of—but he’s devoured in his day, to hear him tell it, every damned novel and collection of short-stories ever penned...”

  DOCUMENT LXXXV

  Excerpts, from registered letter of date January 12, 1937, from Gilbert Whittimore, Hotel Bourdonnais, 163 Avenue des Champs Elysées, Paris, France, to Aleck Snide, Hotel Russell, Russell Square, London.

  “For you see, I casually brought up to the Stooge the case of the gypsy woman in New York and the Tarot cards. He knew right away what Tarot cards were... And I commented, idly, that it was strange a subject as potentially rich as the Tarot had never been made the subject of a single short-story or novel.

  “And he blandly tells me it had! And, with a half yawn, I asked him where.

  “Well, he said, he ran across a short-story once in a published book of short-stories called ETCHINGS—a story that had something in it about Tarot cards. ‘Being used,’ he said—and by God if he doesn’t rehearse sketchily the identical plot found in Marceau’s ‘story.’ I was tickled as a boiled owl—because it corroborated my own theory—that Marceau didn’t conceive the tale. And I ‘werry’ gently asked the Stooge then if all the stories in the book were about Tarot cards. Oh no, he said, there was every type of story imaginable in the book. One, he said, dealt neither with scientific nor occult things—it was just a piece of sheer irony—the simple tale of—and so help me, Aleck, if he didn’t sketch out the whole story of ‘A Cheque for 200 Guineas.’

  “...book itself, he said, a sort of ‘half-regular-thickness sized book’ (as he described it) ‘bound in brilliant scarlet’ (as he also described it)...

  “And then and there I laid off. For I had all I wanted.

  “...but I wasn’t so able to find... book of short-stories, for Etchings wasn’t listed in a single bookseller’s catalogue—even Rahcorsters, which lists damned near everything published anywhere. No bookseller, of the several I tried, had ever heard of ETCHINGS. Bradgear’s, the biggest second-hand book dealer in London, had no copy—nor remembered ever having had such. The London public library—and all the circulating private libraries—Mudies, Smiths, Booklovers, Rolandi’s, Times Book Club—all, in fact, had no record of ETCHINGS. Then I realized that it had been privately printed. Privately circulated, moreover, chiefly by autographed gift copies. Nevertheless, I cabled across to America for a possible report on it... even wired Marcella Burns Hahner, in Chicago, manager of the world-famous Marshall Field and Company book department. And even Mrs. Hahner said she could unearth no trace whatsoever of any such book as ETCHINGS. Published on either side, Mrs. Hahner said, of the Atlantic. And it’s said, Aleck, that if Marcella Burns Hahner can’t find it—it isn’t published. Yet, by God, I knew it had been...

  “By this time I’d rustled up, via Kent County probate records, a copy of the listing of the portable assets of Marceau’s estate. And their disposal. Sure enough, amongst his books—all sold after his death—was one called ETCHINGS. No author given; no publisher. With all his other books it was sold (and probably through some favoritism on the part of the Kent County administrator) to a second-hand bookdealer who has—or rather had—a large stall near the Thames. G. Stuart
Ewison. But Ewison is dead. Angina pectoris. His stock all scattered...”

  DOCUMENT LXXXVI

  Letter, of date November 14, 1937, from X. Jones, 136 Grey’s Inn Road, London, England, to Inspector-General Halbord Wilkins of Scotland Yard, at Spa Grunau, Austria.

  Dear Chief Wilkins:

  I am more than exceedingly happy to hear that the knee shows signs of improvement at last, but sorry also to hear that it looks as though it will be a 2-month affair yet before complete recovery can be accomplished.

  Gerald, as you may or may not know, has returned home to prepare himself for Oxford under his grandfather. Which, undoubtedly, is the thing he should do! He was of some definite assistance to me here in London in—well—in throwing an additional beam of light upon the character and personality of André Marceau, that—to me—strangest of all individuals.

  I myself, I don’t mind telling you, have been working in my off times turning on a few further beams of my own (it seems, indeed, that ever and always I bring out further bizarre depths in this case!) and I am taking occasion now to write you personally and very confidentially about a matter brought to light by a particular one of my “beams” which, I regret to say, has not itself plumbed bottom yet! For it occurs to me that, under the circumstances, the facts I have to relate might best be suppressed, since their revealment cannot, at this late date, do anyone any good.

  But here are the facts themselves, constituting, as no doubt you will note after you have read the whole of this letter, a quite prosaic and quite routine investigation of a certain specific angle of the Marceau Case—an investigation entirely free from all “higher-dimensional” considerations and other aspects about which certain of my critics, across the water, like for some reason to rag me! An investigation, indeed, no different in any way than old John Lawton, at the Yard, or young Roy Herringshaw—“Routine Roy,” as I’ve heard you call him—would make, were they seeking light upon the precise problem that bothered me.

  But—to the facts!

  You may recall, if you read that gargantuan story anent my criminological theories written by the American All-America News Service correspondent, Whittimore, a mention of André Marceau’s having had his monthly copy of a certain American magazine, known as World Humor, sent to him with a specific department known as “Chinaboy Chuckles”—containing bits of humor allegedly culled from Chinese humor weeklies, and allegedly translated—deleted. This apparently harmless idiosyncrasy of his did not, it seems, ever come out during the original investigation, and Whittimore unearthed it more or less accidentally in talking with somebody who had, in the 18 months or so interim, talked with the butler Grimes—or someone else in the house.

  There was, as you know, a slight suggestion in the matter of Marceau’s not having a single Chinese curio among his many oddities, that he might have an antagonism towards things Chinese. In fact, Whittimore’s story brushed this hypothesis more or less casually. And it stood out somewhat foremost, apparently, in the mind of a widely syndicated American column conductor called Winchell who saw one of the versions of this story in advance of its publication release date, for in his column, published one day ahead of Whittimore’s full story, Winchell made an oblique yet serious reference to Marceau’s presumed hatred of things Chinese, within a purely facetious reference to some ossified Chinese Lilliputian residing today in Paris. Of course, Marceau’s not having had any Chinese curios could very easily have come about simply because—he never happened to acquire any! And for no other reason! But, in that case, why then did he have that department cut from the magazine?

  Was it, perchance, I queried myself, that he knew the author—or translator—or conductor—or departmental editor—or somebody, whose name was perhaps always printed in connection with that department? And that he hated this party? And that he was indulging in a characteristic bit of adult-infantilism by having the other’s work cut out? Or, even more, casting reflection on the work in the eyes of the publishers, in the hopes that the consequent repercussions against its translator, or collator, would cause the latter to lose his berth?

  Through Heath’s Magazine Store here, on the Strand, I ordered up a set of copies of World Humor, for the year September, 1934, to September, 1935. The magazine consisted of departments of jokes translated—and most ably, I believe—from all of the well-known humor magazines in the world, including a department of original humor apparently written by American joke-writers, though I am forced to say that I caught one or two jokes there that were cribbed by the “original contributors” from Punch— a complete file of which I happened to have from date to 5 years back. The department of Chinese humor, i.e., “Chinaboy Chuckles” looked very genuine to me, particularly adorned, as its items were, by little silhouettes of fish, and pagodas, and whatnot else, obviously cut out of the text section of Chinese newspapers and photo-engraved in reverse so that the oriental ideographs stood out white on the black background of the silhouette. This department was, if I may so say, the “high spot” of the whole publication.

  It was conducted—written—translated—or whatever one might wish to term it!—presumably by a “Thomas Tai Yong.” But had ceased entirely with the issue of July, 1935.

  So I wrote to World Humor, at New York City. And inquired very specifically who this chap Yong might be.

  The publisher, a man named Theodore Frankel, was very decent with respect to my inquiry. He sent me back a letter that had been sent him, on June 12, 1935, by an inspector of postal-mailing laws, or something like that, in New York City, questioning the authenticity of this department. And he enclosed also a carbon copy of his own letter to this postal inspector, in which he had had to admit to the postoffice there that the department had been—though not conclusively known to him then—“faked”—as they term it over there. He also enclosed, for my use in following up the matter on this side, should I so desire, a couple of pages of the original copy, submitted by this “T. T. Yong.” And his letter, incidentally, stated to the above-mentioned postal-inspector that the last check sent to the Chinese author’s literary agent had been returned marked “Deceased, May 27. No connections known. Return to sender.” And it rendered to this inspector complete confirmation, as obtained from an examination of checks, manuscripts, handwritten revisions, etc., in the editorial and correspondence files of World Humor, that “agent” and “translator” were one and the same person!

  And now it will surprise you, I am sure, to learn this—but the “agent” in question was none other than this Gavin Horridge who killed himself May 27, 1935, on Goodge Street here. The mystery-man whose fingertip markings were successfully destroyed in the long ago—the chap who did female impersonations between such times as he drank himself to death and took some kind of Chinese drug. And you’ll probably recall—I, of course, not having been in England at the time of his death, have had to refer solely to the printed stories about him—that he wrote a little bit, on a rickety typewriter—presumably double-entendre lines for songs in his act.

  Well, Chief, knowing as I did then and there, that Horridge created these alleged “translations,” it occurred to me that there might be a clew—in the translations themselves—as to who he might be.

  So I went over a considerable selection of the “Chinaboy Chuckle” items—and clews there were therein—and plenty!

  Even some apparent “clews” did I find to something—“clews” which might have misled one under purely superficial consideration thereof!—for in two distinct items Lilliputianism was treated by the author (or translator) as though it were positively a gift of the gods! And which might have indicated that the author—or translator—himself had been a Lilliputian—except that, as it so happened, he was very much not that! And, besides, the two “clews” in question happened to be in copies which were received by Marceau deleted—and hence he never even read those particular items.

  But, as I said above, clews of another—and far more important and significant kind, at least to Scotland Yard—there
were in the material. Here—and there—like plums within a plum pudding.

  As follows:

  Horridge, alias “Thomas Tai Yong” was, in his jokes, more or less unobjective—as has, I take it, to be the technique of writing small items which consist at most of a single final humorous fillip—unobjective, let me say, except where he touched upon a certain particular feature—or institution—of Hong Kong! And there, whether the joke called for “action” inside or outside this institution—his material became—well—far more objective than the brief item constituting the joke warranted. It was a purely subconscious manifestation, on his part, of course, and a gesture which anyone of us tends to unknowingly make when writing anything which veers close to some real experience in his life.

  For instance, Chief, in a certain joke which I will not bother to give in toto here, Horridge placed a couple of Chinamen in a waiting line within the British Importers and Exporters Bank of Hong Kong. That should have been quite enough for the extremely brief discussion between them which developed the point of the joke. But he—Horridge—waxed “voluminous” there, and placed the two speakers within the line underneath “the great glass dome, with its British Lion portrayed in bits of coloured glass.”

  Again, in another joke, he spoke of one “Ching Fat Ho” going to a great animal store that, “across the street therefrom, faces the British Importers and Exporters Bank of Hong Kong.” Moreover, Mr. Ching Fat Ho in surveying the animal store before entering, “reconnoitred the great scarlet and yellow front, all dappled with animals drawn upon it in black silhouette.” Truly, for the particular joke presented, it would have been quite sufficient if Mr. Ching Fat Ho had but gone to an animal store. That, and no more.