The Sleuth of St. James's Square by Melville Davisson Post (black authors fiction txt) π
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- Author: Melville Davisson Post
Read book online Β«The Sleuth of St. James's Square by Melville Davisson Post (black authors fiction txt) πΒ». Author - Melville Davisson Post
The Englishman sprang up with an oath and leaned across the table. Then he saw the thing.
My father's hand held the crystal above the figures of the bequest written in the body of the will. The focused lens of glass magnified to a great diameter, and under the vast enlargement a thing that would escape the eye stood out. The top curl of a figure 3 had been erased, and the bar of a 5 added. One could see the broken fibers of the paper on the outline of the curl, and the bar of the five lay across the top of the three and the top of the o behind it like a black lath tacked across two uprights.
The figure 3 had been changed to 5 so cunningly is to deceive the eye, but not to deceive the vast magnification of the crystal. The thing stood out big and crude like a carpenter's patch.
Gosford's face became expressionless like wood, his body rigid; then he stood up and faced the three men across the table.
βQuite so!β he said in his vacuous English voice. βMarshall wrote a 3 by inadvertence and changed it. He borrowed my penknife to erase the figure.β
My father and Lewis gaped like men who see a penned-in beast slip out through an unimagined passage. There was silence. Then suddenly, in the strained stillness of the room, old Doctor Gaeki laughed.
Gosford lifted his long pink face, with its cropped beard bringing out the ugly mouth.
βWhy do you laugh, my good man?β he said.
βI laugh,β replied Gaeki, βbecause a figure 5 can have so many colors.β
And now my father and Lewis were no less astonished than Mr. Gosford.
βColors!β they said, for the changed figure in the will was black.
βWhy, yes,β replied the old man, βit is very pretty.β
He reached across the table and drew over Mr. Gosford's memorandum beside the will.
βYou are progressive, sir,β he went on; βyou write in iron-nutgall ink, just made, commercially, in this year of fifty-six by Mr. Stephens. But we write here as Marshall wrote in 'fifty-four, with logwood.β
He turned and fumbled in his little case of bottles.
βI carry a bit of acid for my people's indigestions. It has other uses.β He whipped out the stopper of his vial and dabbed Gosford's notes and Marshall's signature.
βSee!β he cried. βYour writing is blue, Mr. Gosford, and Marshall's red!β
With an oath the trapped man struck at Gaeki's hand. The vial fell and cracked on the table. The hydrochloric acid spread out over Marshall's will. And under the chemical reagent the figure in the bequest of fifty thousand dollars changed beautifully; the bar of the 5 turned blue, and the remainder of it a deep purple-red like the body of the will.
βGaeki,β cried my father, βyou have trapped a rogue!β
βAnd I have lost a measure of good acid,β replied the old man. And he began to gather up the bits of his broken bottle from the table.
VIII. The Hole in the Mahogany Panel
Sir Henry paused a moment, his finger between the pages of the ancient diary.
βIt is the inspirational quality in these cases,β he said, βthat impresses me. It is very nearly absent in our modern methods of criminal investigation. We depend now on a certain formal routine. I rarely find a man in the whole of Scotland Yard with a trace of intuitive impulse to lead him.... Observe how this old justice in Virginia bridged the gaps between his incidents.β
He paused.
βWe call it the inspirational instinct, in criminal investigation ... genius, is the right word.β
He looked up at the clock.
βWe have an hour, yet, before the opera will be worth hearing; listen to this final case.β
The narrative of the diary follows:
The girl was walking in the road. Her frock was covered with dust. Her arms hung limp. Her face with the great eyes and the exquisite mouth was the chalk face of a ghost. She walked with the terrible stiffened celerity of a human creature when it is trapped and ruined.
Night was coming on. Behind the girl sat the great old house at the end of a long lane of ancient poplars.
This was a strange scene my father came on. He pulled up his big red-roan horse at the crossroads, where the long lane entered the turnpike, and looked at the stiff, tragic figure. He rode home from a sitting of the county justices, alone, at peace, on this midsummer night, and God sent this tragic thing to meet him.
He got down and stood under the crossroads signboard beside his horse.
The earth was dry; in dust. The dead grass and the dead leaves made a sere, yellow world. It looked like a land of unending summer, but a breath of chill came out of the hollows with the sunset.
The girl would have gone on, oblivious. But my father went down into the road and took her by the arm. She stopped when she saw who it was, and spoke in the dead, uninflected voice of a person in extremity.
βIs the thing a lie?β she said.
βWhat thing, child?β replied my father.
βThe thing he told me!β
βDillworth?β said my father. βDo you mean Hambleton Dillworth?β
The girl put out her free arm in a stiff, circling gesture. βIn all the world,β she said, βis there any other man who would have told me?β
My father's face hardened as if of metal. βWhat did he tell you?β
The girl spoke plainly, frankly, in her dead voice, without equivocation, with no choice of words to soften what she said:
βHe said that my father was not dead; that I was the daughter of a thief; that what I believed about my father was all made up to save the family name; that the truth was my father robbed him, stole his best horse and left the country when I was a baby. He said I was a burden on him, a pensioner, a drone; and to go and seek my father.β
And suddenly she broke into a flood of tears. Her face pressed against my father's shoulder. He took her up in his big arms and got into his saddle.
βMy child,β he said, βlet us take Hambleton Dillworth at his word.β
And he turned the
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