X. Jones—Of Scotland Yard Read online

  11He was one, Captain Grinstead Hyssop of Baswell Road, Lavender Hill, London, who six years ago published a brief thesis attempting to prove that there is no limitation to the possibilities of human stature, which tends, he maintained, to gradually increase. It is plain from the entry in Marceau’s book that the latter called on Hyssop under the name “Etienne Flandru,” and presumably between the publication date of the thesis and Hyssop’s death. And obviously to find if Hyssop’s scientific theories might conform to his own secret theory that the size of mankind was threatened with microplasia due to gradual infiltration of Lilliputianism.

  12It was set forth in the widely syndicated feature news story in America previously alluded to, that I personally stated to the correspondent who wrote that story that these two particular unlocatable individuals were at a certain point in the Brazilian jungles, and that I indicated the precise point in question. I should like to take occasion here to say, for the first time, that I never made any such statement. For surmising on the date I gave the interview which formed the basis of that story, i.e., November 4, last year, that one or the other of these two individuals might possibly ultimately prove to be confirmatory of this or that aspect of certain hypotheses already even then worked out by my “deviational theory,” I naturally did not desire to reveal their identity for other investigators to utilize, at least prior to the release date I had set for myself. And so what I said to the correspondent who subsequently wrote that story—pointing, as I did so, to a map of Brazil which hung on the wall of my living room—to a point, in fact, on the Parana River in Brazil’s most inpenetrable jungles—was that it was not beyond the bounds of possibility that the two individuals were “at that exact spot at that moment. Though,” I added, I could not “give any complete assurances with respect to that supposition.” Since one of these men was at the South Pole—though but putatively so!—and one was in Africa—again but putatively so!—it was assuredly physically possible that substitutes for both might in reality be in both places—and that both men were right then where my finger pointed! Or at any other point indicated thus haphazardly. For I speak always—and trust that all news correspondents will note this for future reference—mathematically. Always!

  For the first of these individuals was—at least so far as anyone could know otherwise!—in the Antarctic with the Llewellyn-Barker Geodetic Expedition, at the time Marceau met his death. The two radio-receiving sets of the expedition, at that time encamped on the edge of the ice pack in the Great Ross Barrier, were out of commisssion, as will be remembered by some, for many weeks; the cause being the explosion of the dynamite stores in Byrd explosives cached near by—which explosion shattered every radio vacuum tube on the Barrier; and it was not until some 60 days later that missing parts were dropped to it by the daring New Zealand hydroplane, the Auckland Gull. Yet nevertheless, it is quite doubtful whether, had this individual heard the broadcast news story of the Marceau Case in the far polar reaches, in the highly condensed form in which the records of Station 3-LO―Melbourne show it was transmitted from Australia, he would even have known he had met the principal actor in it. At the time of my first statement to the press, this individual had not yet returned to Melbourne via the whaling ship Bluenose and the pickup plane sent out to bring him to Melbourne in time to board the S.S. Trafalgar for England.

  The second of these individuals was in Africa—according to all known records!—when Marceau met his death; lying with fever in the hut of a small African village in the Belgian Congo. And at the time of my statement to the press, this individual was on safari in the Belgian Congo. Living, between times, as he did, more or less a recluse, on Lake Victoria Nyanza, he never did come to know that he himself once contacted the principal actor, André Marceau, of the famous British murder case: indeed, as it now develops, he never even heard of the case!

  Both individuals, because of peculiar exigencies contingent to their positions in life, had to be in London and Paris, respectively, by at least positively the dates of February 25th and 24th, respectively, making it thus almost certain that any confirmatory or explicatory affidavits which they might be able to render could be included in any report which was to be released upon February 24th.

  13This transferred name and address was that of a Marceau—the American member of the tribe: Oliver Edward Marceau, nephew; and from certain interpretable notations alongside the entry, the latter had evidently once called upon André Marceau, in London, when on a brief pleasure trip to England.

  14I shall have to call it just the “Y Employment Agency of London”); I am not able to give its name because the circumstances under which Marceau got Jane from it—and the circumstances under which it again placed her out—are unusual; in short, it would be a clew to her present location and identity in England, and I have promised her to maintain that a secret. How I traced her through the entry is merely a routine matter. Since she does not figure in this analysis—even “deviationally”—we cease to regard it.

  15But this last fact has never been officially of record! I heard about it, indirectly, so early as last November 24th. Heard, that is, merely of the existence of the cryptified messages—and that they had gone into the hands of an American detective who was investigating the Marceau Case. Officially, I learned it only this morning.

  For just as I was about to leave London by air, a few hours ago, a registered letter from Jane Trotter was delivered at my door. And glad I am that all registered letters are postmarked!—for this particular letter appears, in a certain sense, to contain all that I myself have had to do by sheer analysis of deviations! The letter, incidentally, was from Spain. And it states that its sender, Jane Trotter, has just been married. More or less unexpectedly. To a young Spanish farmer who has a farm near Madrid. And whose name, of course, need not be given here. He is very much in love with her, she tells me, and she very much in love with him, and, in the enthusiasm of her sudden marriage, she is naïvely confident that she is never going to return to England. At any rate, she now no longer fears divulgement of a certain old shadow that lay over her head, with respect to a former berth, but has learned moreover that, in Spain, she is immune to the English law relating to penalties for suppressing evidence in the matter of a murder.

  Which, she admits now frankly, is what she has done in the Marceau Case.

  Her letter is accompanied by two peculiar items: one, a handwritten paragraph—with a meticulously carefully handwritten line some distance beneath it—upon a sheet of stationery of the Hotel St. Ursanne, Bern, Switzerland; the other, a piece of transparent tissue on which is an ink drawing, or picture. And across its top another handwritten paragraph. Since I received the letter just as I was about to start for the airfield—and have had my hands full aplenty since then!—I have had time, at most—and that only on the plane coming over to Paris—to examine in detail the single isolated line, and to read the letter proper. The missive tells me that both of the enclosures alluded to above contain excerpts from two typewritten manuscripts which Jane took from Marceau’s desk the night of his death. The paragraph at the top of the Hotel St. Ursanne sheet is, Jane says, a copy—and in her own handwriting—of a certain notation, though in Marceau’s own handwriting, appearing at the top of the first page of one of those scripts. While the paragraph at the top of the tracing tissue is her copy of a notation of Marceau’s appearing at the top of the other script. The material below the paragraphs is, in each case, an excerpt from the particular script which that paragraph headed. Both of the actual scripts—though, to be sure, long after Marceau’s death—Jane turned over to this American investigator of whom I have spoken. Before sending one, however, which she sent him from Switzerland, she carefully copied the handwritten paragraph at its head and—for a reason which will in a few seconds be apparent—its 106th typewritten line. And before sending the second, later in London, she made a meticulously accurate tissue paper tracing of a certain rough drawing—or illustration—appearing in it. Supplementing that draw
ing with a careful copy of the paragraph which, in Marceau’s handwriting, appeared at the top of the script which carried the original illustration.

  The reason that she made copies of all of these elements was not, she indicates, mere feminine intuition—but was a matter of self-protection; downright caution—operating against the possibility that some day new evidence in the Marceau Case might be found, and might even veer against herself—or someone close to her.

  Each of these scripts, she tells me, was written by Marceau directly after having received in the mails a bright green envelope containing, obviously, a threat of some kind. And the handwritten notations on the top of each declare that information has been cryptified in the scripts by Marceau as to the mode of his killing, and the identity of his murderer. And Jane had reason, at least at the time, to fear that a brother of hers was mixed up somehow in all that happened at Little Ivington. But long afterward, she found definitely that her brother could not possibly have been mixed up in the matter. And, corresponding with him finally, though with considerable difficulty because he has been on the other side of the world with respect to her, and moving about in addition, she recently heard from him—this time from Chile, South America—in a letter forwarded to her during the last week from London, and he definitely clears up this particular incident of Marceau’s life related above: i.e., the receipt of the bright green envelopes. For he states that he was the one, all right, who sent the envelopes: that they were children’s play stationery, picked up by him in some 3d/6d store on Whitechapel Road, and that they contained just anonymous scurrilities against Marceau, whom he thought had designs against his sister—and not threats.

  It becomes evident, then, that the bright green color of the missives—for some obscure reason—and not their rabid contents, suggested to Marceau the advisability of coding certain vital information, known to him alone, into messages for possible posthumous perusal.

  My assistant Sepoona, who has been quite a reader of fiction during his life, and who possesses, in addition, one of the most remarkable memories for details I have ever encountered, took occasion to glance over Jane’s letter while on the plane coming over to Paris. And thanks to her having named the titles of both of those scripts—i.e., “Strange Romance” and “A Cheque for 200 Guineas”—and also thanks to the fact that Marceau evidently considered those titles very apropos for the pieces in questions—Sepoona is, he says, in a position to tell me that he once read a story which appeared in a book in company with both of these tales. A book of short-stories, he says, which he once picked up somewhere back in India. A collection of stories evidently privately published, and, Sepoona says, all written by the same author. And whose name, Sepoona claims, was Broe. F. N. Broe he recollects the whole name, with initials, to have been. And is certain about the Broe part of it. The particular story that he read was the first one in the book: a tale about a sailor marooned on a desert island, who succeeded in breeding bedbugs so great that they finally destroyed him.

  It is evident from this then that Marceau, deciding he ought to leave behind him some sort of explicatory—and also incriminatory, as it appears!—memoranda concerning his death should it ever take place in the way he had reason to fear it might—and inexplicably, in fact, too—but memoranda, of course, that, were it to get accidentally and temporarily into the hands of some of his servants, or anyone else, while he was alive, would not start tongues to wagging, and reveal his private affairs—took down this Broe book from a shelf of hooks in his bedroom, and used its stories. Sepoona’s description of that first story in the book indicates why Marceau picked the book up in the first place—he was intensely interested in alteration of size through breeding. And so Marceau used the stories in this book as mechanisms for the cryptification of his accusatory memos. In short, “transmogrified” them a bit—to suit his purpose. The reason he used this already published book was, obviously, so that should he ever die inexplicably—and no one could be found who was able to decode his cryptifications—the stories, being allegedly by him, would undoubtedly get publication in some newspaper or magazine—and then the real book or real author would pop up—and the difference between Marceau’s versions and the real author’s original versions would show exactly where and how the cryptified information was concealed.

  At any rate, the handwritten notation at the top of what Jane claims was the shorter of the two scripts, is dated May 8, 1935, and reads: “If ever I am found dead under mysterious circumstances, the name of my murderer will be found concealed within the 106th line of this script, excluding in the count the titular material. André Marceau.” Fortunately Jane understood what he meant by “exclusion of the titular material” and the 106th line, counting from the first one of the story proper—a careful copy of which she sends me—reads:

  “Blimey, ’Erb! Little?” Lu Caslow’s dreary eyes.

  There is much less of a direct clew as to how and where to attack the cryptogram, in the case of the other and—according to Jane—longer manuscript; but nevertheless we shall turn our attention to that problem a little while later—perhaps between a pair of long cable “takes”—and see whether, while we are still cabling this report, we can include something concerning that particular cryptification.

  But in the specified line of the shorter manuscript, set forth above, there is but one name—one name, that is, which comprises both given and family names. And it stares forth rather plainly, so it seems to me.

  It is the name of a man who—according to a very recent and interesting acquaintance of mine in London, one Elfterios Demos, a giant who runs an eating place in Oxford Street, London, and is “up” on all freak classifications—catalogues as a giant. For his height is of record as 6 feet 6½ inches! And Demos tells me that all persons over 6½ feet classify technically as giants. And Demos, I take it, knows whereof he speaks, since he has a vast collection of freaks’ photographs gathered from all over the world. A collection which will, perhaps, provide—or perhaps already has by now—this American investigator of whom I spoke, with one or more photographs of known Lilliputians. Providing, that is, that this investigator has by now succeeded in riveting upon some Lilliputian the murder of André Marceau.

  The name stares forth from the 4th to 11th letters, inclusive, of the specified line,

  And is Meyer B. Li.

  A man whose mother—as I am in a position to know—is of record as being a Jewess; and whose father—as would naturally be expected from that name—is of record as being a Chinaman!

  16In collating deviations, last fall, I was delayed from obtaining the above deviation till November and, due to the fact that the books of a business such as Woborn and Westwill’s contain, in their entries of morphine and cocaine sales, much material for possible blackmail; and without Mr. Woborn’s personal permission, those of Woborn and Westwill could not be examined. Mr. Woborn was himself somewhere in Siam, but, when located, granted me permission via a cablegram.

  17The finding of the Marceau ancestor who provided this strain—rather, finding his full relationship to the life and death of André Marceau—has been, to me, the real clearing up of the Marceau Case. Indeed, I was never personally satisfied that I had cleared it up—until I had run this individual—and this relationship—down.

  For there is no record whatsoever of epilepsy in the Marceau family history. Copious old medical records which are filed in English chancery as addenda to the Marceau family tree, for the purpose of refuting charges (if any) made by false and disqualified heirs as to congenital mental incapacity on the part of Théophile Marceau, evidence that not only André Marceau’s father and mother—Théophile and Margot LaFarge Marceau—were free of disease taint such as epilepsy, but that his grandfather and grandmother—Aristide and Henriette de Fontnouvelle Marceau—were likewise free of such; and also that Aristide Marceau’s brothers and sisters (if his wife, Henriette de Fontnouvelle, had any brothers or sisters, it is not known, since she, of course, had been a foundling) were likewise
free. And there kept recurring to me, then, mentions made upon the backs of certain photographs of the Marceau family that I had unearthed, of “Le Tache”—some unsavory scandal which obviously had taken place ’way back in the days of Aristide Marceau, André’s grandfather, but plainly preceding the existence of Théophile.

  The allusions indicated that Aristide had been the aggrieved one—and not the aggriever. Hence it would seem that Henriette de Fontnouvelle Marceau, his wife, and of course André’s grandmother—had been the one involved. But since the records show that André’s grandmother had died giving birth to his own father, then the scandal must of necessity—to have been a scandal “in the family”—had had to take place between the date of Aristide’s marriage to her—and Théophile’s birth. For, had it taken place before, there obviously would have been no marriage. And it could not take place after, because she was then dead. And so I had a small Paris scandal paper of that era searched between those dates only, i.e., June 12, 1838, and December 3, 1841. And without going into details, will say that I found that a certain American, known presumably around Paris as “M. Bernard Lincoln” had plainly seduced Henriette de Fontnouvelle Marceau whilst her husband was in Brazil—and that, because of the chronology of the affair, the resulting child could by no means whatsoever have been Aristide’s. So, blood that was 100 per cent other than true Marceau blood, created him who became Théophile Marceau, André’s father!