RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
AMONG men well on in years and comfortably retired there is hardly a stronger bond than collecting, and the society of Little Bystowe is a côterie of collectors. Lord Howsden's collection of Hellenic coins is, or rather was, well known to the scholar and the antiquarian all the world over, and not to have heard of it proved you not even the Man in the Street. Sir Walter Keightleys drawings, especially the possible Leonardo, keep "The Rose and Crown" supplied with an unbroken succession of guests, long-haired lovers of painting who come from every part of Europe to see them. Professor Helmsley s collection of Renaissance medals is the very highest achievement to be attained by a man of no great means but of great knowledge, judgment, and patience Major General Bullock's Indian gold work is the joy not only of connoisseurs but of every woman who sets eyes on it and the envious declare that he owes it not so much to his scrupulous as to his judicious use of his opportunities as commander of that famous Irregular Horse, the Bombay Bhustis during the Mutiny; an accusation by no means weakened by the old gentleman's social and domestic ferocity; while my uncle Lord Justice Crowe, is a light of the Philatelic world, the venerated owner of the five-cent yellow Patagonian surcharged twelve cents
Collecting bound this little society in a close bond, but it was as well that their collecting did not clash. They were fiery old gentlemen, and from their hatred of rival collectors it was plain that had any of them met in battle at Christies, there would have been an end at once and for ever of their friendship. The other bond which linked them together was a love of good living. During the autumn and winter they dined at the house of one or the other every week, at dinner they talked of additions made or about to be made to their collections, and told stories of their battles in the auction-room, after dinner they examined, for perhaps the fiftieth time, the collection of their host. It was a matter of give and take, each secured the interest of the others in his collection by taking an interest in theirs, and by dint of taking that interest had come to have a very fair understanding of them.
Only General Bullock could make nothing of Sir Walter Keightley's drawings, as he often said, quite frankly and quite truthfully, he was no artist. I dine with them often, and nowhere do I eat better dinners or drink better wine. General Bullock makes a curry which excuses his kitchen being, so the gossips declare, ankle deep in boiled rice before he has it to his mind, Professor Helmsley has a Madeira, left him by a really thoughtful grandfather, which voyaged twice round the world forty years ago. For talk we have the romance of collecting, and I am growing to believe that there is no romance.
LAST autumn another member was added to the circle. The long-empty Gables was let to Morton Faraday, the traveller, one of the most striking victims of Fortune's caprice. For ten years he had not been within three thousand miles of England, but wandering about the ends of the earth had courted and endured all the dangers which the adventurous can still find beyond the fast extending confines of civilisation. While on an expedition, of the usual filibustering kind, in one of the smaller South American Republics, the news had come to him that an aunt had died leaving him £50,000, and the guardianship of his brother's daughter. Tired of wandering and fighting, he had laid aside his Leo-Metford for good and all, and started for England, only, after coming unscathed through a thousand perils, to lose both arms in an accident on a trumpery Brazilian railway.
He was a big man, with black eyes, black hair, and a long, flowing black beard; he had a thousand good stories of the things that happen at the ends of the earth; his laugh was the heartiest, and probably the loudest, which ever bellowed out of mortal lungs. It was true that, owing to the shock of his accident there wore gaps in his memory; he had forgotten one or two whole countries and most of the friends and the events of his life before he had left England, but even without them he had reminiscences enough to entertain you for a year on end; and he was soon the soul, the hilarious soul, of the Little Bystowe dinners.
He did not eat them, indeed, for he said that it was painful for people to see him fed; he dined in his den beforehand, his servant, a some-what sullen and shifty-looking person named Johnson, feeding him. But he had a drinking machine of his own. invention, worked by his foot, which raised his wineglass to his lips; and he could carry more liquor like a gentleman than any man I ever met.
Besides being a welcome addition to the Little Bystowe circle for his entertaining talk, he was also welcome to it as a collector. His collections were small but good, made, so he told us, partly before his ten years' filibustering, partly after it, and partly Faraday heirlooms from the collection of his grandfather. In particular he had two coins of Himera of the seventh century B.C. for which Lord Howsden, hungered, a Hungarian medal, struck in commemoration of John Sobieski's victory over the Turks, which must have haunted the Professor's dreams, and no less than five Timotheos which Sir Walter Keightley for ever bothered him to sell; while his old colonial stamps were in some respects better than those of my uncle.
For my part, I found his niece, Susannah Parady, an even more welcome addition to Little Bystowe society; and whereas I had been in the habit of coming down to my uncle's for the week-end, I now made shift to find an evening from my briefs in the middle of the week as well. I fell in love with her at first sight, as I believe that most men were bound to do, seeing that she is the very image of her great grandmother, the famous Lady Lettice Paraday, painted twice by Gainsborough and once by Lawrence. But what was a great deal more, I knew at the end of my first evening spent in her society that she was the one woman in the world for me, and that her nature was as charming as her face was beautiful. I bet to work, patiently and sparing no effort, though with a very faint hope, to make myself the one man in the world for her. She was a long while understanding, and when she did, the was at first a little frightened. I was very gentle with her; putting a violent compulsion on myself, I even stayed away from Little Bystowe for ten days to give her time to grow used to the idea, undisturbed by my presence.
WHEN I next came down, I met her, by a happy chance, on my way from the station to my uncle's; and her blush at the sudden sight of me, the light in her soft brown eyes, the new shyness, which did not wear off and let her natural gaiety have play till we had walked nearly a mile together, set my heart throbbing with delightful hopes. After that I began to strive with an even greater strenuousness. I think that the sudden hostility which Morton Paraday showed towards me I mid in my favour; for I had long perceived that Susannah disliked and distrusted her uncle, strive against the feeling and strive to hide it as she might; and naturally the more hostile he showed himself, the kindlier she grew.
WHEN the courts rose for Christmas I went down to Little Bystowe resolved to put my fortune to the test. On the Wednesday before Christmas there was a dinner at the Gables at which Susannah and I were the only non-collectors; and in the course of it I began to remonstrate with Morton Parady on the little regard he paid to the safe-keeping of his treasures, pointing out that his coins were in one cabinet, his drawings in another, or on the wall, and in ten minutes a burglar could make a haul of the lot.
"That's Frank's hobby," said my uncle drily. "He has talked to all of us about our carelessness many times."
"Well, sir," I said, "we're only twenty miles from London. Your collection of stamps is well known; and there are a number of gentlemen whom at different times you have sent into a poorly fed retirement, who would be delighted to do you a bad turn, and themselves a good one, by stealing it."
"I'd rather take the risk than be bothered with a safe," said my uncle.
"That's what I say," said Lord Howsden, who after all had the most to lose; "the risk's very small, and cabinets are trouble enough."
"I agree with Frank," said General Bullock. "I like to be on the safe side, and I am." And he roared at his simple joke.
"Ah, but your collection has a value in the weight of the gold," said my uncle.
"That's the real point," said Morton Parady. "Any one who stole our treasures would not know what to do with them. Every one who can afford to buy them knows who owns the yellow Patagonian, or fifty of Lord Howsden's coins, or my Hungarian medal."
"Yes, yes," said the others; "that's our real safeguard."
"I've yet to learn," said I, a little nettled by the consensus of opinion against me, "that collectors are so scrupulous. If Baron Dierckstein could buy the yellow Patagonian, would he ask how the seller came by it?"
"That rascal! I should think not!" cried my uncle hotly.
"There you have it; and you may be sure that there are collectors of coins and drawings no more inquisitive."
My argument chilled their certainty a little; but Morton Paraday bellowed his jovial laugh, and cried, "Where's your burglar with special knowledge?"
Looking up I saw the eyes of Johnson, his servant, who was standing behind his chair, fixed on me in a very curious stare. For a moment I wondered at it; then as I followed the changing talk, it drifted out of my mind, until later events recalled it.
THE next day I went down to the Gables on my bicycle to take Susannah for a long ride. We went round the house to the coach-house where she kept her machine, and beside it I saw a man's bicycle, a first-grade Humber—nearly new. I asked whose it was, and Susannah said that she had found it there when she first brought hers into the coach-house, and supposed that it belonged to one of the servants. It was clear that Morton Paraday paid good wages.
AT breakfast on Christmas morning the butler startled us with the news that the night before there had been a burglary at the Gables, and that the conscientious operator had made a clean sweep of Morton Paraday's coins, stamps, and drawings.
As soon as we had eaten our meal my uncle and I hurried round to condole with him, and found Lord Howsden and Keightley already there. We were unfeignedly sorry for him; and the way in which he took his loss increased our sympathy. We had expected to find him storming like a true filibuster; but he was not storming at all; he was dejected, and only said ruefully: "I'd grown attached to the things, and I shall miss them. I shan't be able to match you fellows any longer, and I haven't many amusements." He looked down at his armless sleeves with a pathetic wistfulness.
We were sorrier than ever, and Howsden said, "Never mind, old fellow, you'll pick up others."
"No," said Morton Paraday sadly; "I can't afford it. I've spent more on it already than I ought to have done."
We learned that the burglar had entered the room through, the window, made his haul, and departed unseen and unheard. The detective, who came down from Scotland Yard the next day, elicited no more by all his examinations and inquiries; and widely circulated descriptions of the stolen treasures brought no further information.
The need of discussing the burglary, of speculating as to how it had been committed, of forming theories about the criminal threw me even more with Susannah; and at last I put my hopes and fears to the test, and to my joy my hopes proved justified. It was perhaps no time to ask Morton Paraday's consent, smarting as he was under his late loss; but I was impatient, and anxious also to act quite openly in the matter.
In a stormy interview he refused it on the ground that, though my means and prospects were good enough, Susannah ought, with her beauty and her blood, to make a splendid match. His reason was sound enough, but in his manner of urging it a curious underbred strain showed itself, which filled me with a now and hearty dislike of him. He ended the interview by forbidding all private intercourse between me and Susannah. I told him frankly that I should disregard his prohibition, seeing that Susannah was within three months of being of age, quite enough to know her own mind.
THAT night there was a burglary at the Court, and the cream, and just the cream, of Lord Howsden's collection was stolen. We were indeed in an excitement; the actual value of the coins was between fourteen and fifteen thousand pounds, not a very great loss perhaps to a man of Lord Howsden's wealth, but some twenty of them could never be replaced. It was clear, moreover, that they had not only been stolen by an expert in ancient coins, but by some one who knew the collection; two cabinets containing the less rare coins had not even been opened. Lord Howsden's anger was doubled by the irritating fact that the safe, which he had ordered immediately after the burglary at the Gables, had arrived late in the evening, and stood in the hall waiting to be set up next day. It seemed likely that tho burglar had known that evening would be his last chance.
In the afternoon I met Susannah, by appointment, out bicycling; and Susannah, had a genuine clue. It chanced that late on the night before she had gone out to her bicycle to fetch some patterns which she had left in the spanner-case, and was certain that the man's Humber, which was kept beside it, was perfectly clean. Going through the stableyard before breakfast to feed her pigeons, she had come upon Johnson cleaning the Humber, which was covered with mud.
"Well," said I, "your uncle may have sent him to fetch something earlier in the morning."
"Ah, but the mud on the bicycle was dry. It must have been used in the middle of the night, after tho rain fell; and it did not begin to fall till eleven."
"My dear girl," I said, kissing her warmly, "henceforth your name shall be Sherlock!"
After our ride I went up to the Court, and, as I expected, found the detective there, and told him Susannah's discovery. He was properly impressed by it, and said that he would have Johnson watched so as, if possible, to catch him in the very act of flight, with his booty on him, since the main thing was to recover the coins. For my part, I had a fancy that Johnson would not fly yet, he was too secure for suspicion—but that he would have a try for Professor Helmsley's medals, or the yellow Patagonian. But that fancy I kept to myself.
THREE or four nights later, having dreamed my fill, over a couple of pipes, of Susannah, I was lighting by bedroom candle, when it occurred to me that it was a perfect burglar's night, pitch dark and a south-westerly gale. I began to wonder if the man watching Johnson was doing his duty—my experience as a barrister has left little trust in the paid watcher—or snugly asleep in his own bed. The latter seemed to me most likely, and I began to consider whether I should not go down and watch myself. Why shouldn't I? I was fairly wakeful: I would. In ten minutes I was changed and on my bicycle, struggling down to the Gables against the wind; it took me a quarter of an hour to do the mile and a half. I dismounted at the gates of the drive, put my bicycle under a tree on the other side of the road, and crossed to the gates. One half stood wide open, and I did not like the look of it at all on such a night gates should be shut. A fusee showed me that the drive was unmarked by fresh tracks: I walked ten yards down it, and posted myself fairly warmly and comfortably among the lower branches of a deodora. I was so hidden that I ventured to light ray pipe, and moving pleasantly from memory to memory of Susannah, I waited.
It must have been nearly two when tho reward of my patience came; there was a little clink, just audible in the sheltered drive, and very dim, a mere shadow on the darkness, a figure on a bicycle passed me.
I slipped out of my hiding-place, and strained my eyes after it; would he turn to the right to the Professor's, or to the left to my uncle's, to the Renaissance medals, or to the yellow Patagonian? He turned to the left, with the wind behind him, and was gone. I found my bicycle, mounted and followed slowly, for since he had to get into the house, I had time and to spare. I left my bicycle outside against the hedge, slipped into the garden, and peeped round the corner of the house. Very faintly I could see a figure against the library window. I stole round to the back, and let myself in very quietly, took off my shoes in the kitchen, gave the burglar some five minutes' grace to get in and to business, and crept to the library door. A faint scratching assured me that my I man was at work. I knelt down, and looked through the keyhole. The bottom of the stamp album cabinet, lighted by a strong ray from a lantern, was full in my view. Apparently the burglar was leaning over it, plying a steel tool in two huge hands against the lock of the drawer which held tho yellow Patagonian.
I rose to my feet, opened the door, stepped into the room, and as I did so, switched on the electric light. Then I fairly fell back against the door in my amazement. I could not believe my eyes; Morton Paraday sat on the cabinet, working the steel tool with bare and muddy feet.
At the sight of me his face filled for a breath with tho savageness of a trapped wild beast; then he fell smiling, and said cheerfully, "You've caught me."
"Very much so," said I, closing the door
"You won't give the joke away? You tumble to it?" he said anxiously.
"Only to the felony," I said quietly. "My dear follow, don't you see? It's your joke; you gave me the idea by your talk of burglary; and yon must not give it away. I wouldn't for the world miss the faces of tho dear old fellows when I take them to my room one night after dinner, and show them their lost treasures on the table!"
"Of all the jokes I ever heard of it's the stupidest and most idiotic. It's felony."
"Felony! My dear chap! The intention makes the crime. It's a mere prank, a freak."
"It's a pity that freak and felony both begin with f." I said grimly. "I know my uncle; he'll prosecute."
"You'd never inform! Ah, of course you can't." His face suddenly brightened. "There's Susannah."
"By your own act you've made Susannah nothing to me. I'm going to raise the house," said I, walking to the bell.
"But my dear fellow!" he cried in genuine terror.
I stopped, and half turned.
"I might sell you my silence?" I suggested.
"For Susannah—blackmail!" He said, jumping to my meaning.
"In love—true love—there is no blackmail," I said severely, laying my hand on the bell.
"Don't ring: I consent. I'm bound to," he said with a rueful laugh.
"My dear Mr. Paraday, you've made me the happiest of men!" I said warmly. "I need not assure you of my ever-lasting gratitude, and of my firm resolve to make Susannah as happy as myself."
"To think that I am going to be connected by marriage with a blackmailer!" he said, with a wry face.
"And I with a felon," said I, with a deep sigh. "We must bear with one another."
"Well, I'm going through with my joke," he said, bending over to look at the lock, and fixing the tool in it.
"That you're not!" said I sharply. "You don't know my uncle, or Howsden; they'd never forgive you."
He lost his temper, argued, entreated, threatened, and swore, for all the world like a big spoiled child. But I was not to be moved, and at last I calmed him. Then I got him some whiskey and soda-water out of the store my uncle kept to hand in a cupboard, and appeased him by compliments on the extraordinary dexterity he had attained in using his feet. He held his glass in his foot, and raised it to his lips with a seemingly jointless leg, a very disconcerting sight.
He softened presently, and told me how. during the year which had elapsed since his accident, he had spent hours every day exercising the muscles. At last I had him in such a good temper that I ventured to suggest to him that he should return Lord Howsden's coins by post the very next day. It was, indeed, a business to persuade him; but at last he yielded, and promised to go up to London and despatch them.
I took him out of tho house by the back door, and at the garden gate I said, "By the way, how did you open the library window?"
"With my mouth, a knife in my teeth. People don't half use their mouths; you can almost make extra hands of them."
I helped him on to his bicycle, which stood against the hedge not ten yards from my own. He admitted that he had expected to have a devil of a job mounting in that high wind, but declared that he would have done it in three tries, and promised to show me how easily he could mount on a still day. He would not hear of my riding back with him to help him to dismount, for Johnson would be waiting for him.
I went back to the house, therefore, bolted the library window, took away the glasses and soda-water bottles, and the lamp he had used to light him in his burglarious task; and then went to bed, overjoyed at having removed the obstacle to my marriage with Susannah, and feeling far kindlier towards Morton Paraday than ever I had expected to feel.
THE next morning I told my uncle that I had interrupted a burglar in an attempt upon his stamps; but as I bad not seized the rascal, I had seen no use in alarming the house. He was, indeed, grateful, and immediately after breakfast sat down to write for a safe. At about eleven o'clock I went down to the Gables to Susannah, and finding that her uncle had not told her of the withdrawal of his refusal, had the pleasure of telling her the news myself. For a while her eyes shone with delight; but soon the mischievous strain in her led her to play the provoking indifferent. Presently, she broke away from my subject to tell me that a telegram had come for her uncle at breakfast, and that he had felt for London immediately afterwards, taking Johnson with him. It set my mind at ease about the return of Lord Howsden's coins; and I spent the most delightful morning and afternoon with Susannah, for all that she teased me to the top of her bent by refusing even to consider my proposal that we should marry in February.
At four o'clock, since she was driving out to make calls, I left her, after inviting myself to return to dinner. On my way home I met the detective from the Court, who told me that his watcher had followed Johnson. I said nothing of my discovery of the real burglar: Lord Howsden's coins would come back, and the matter would drop.
After tea, a talk with my uncle, and a pipe, I walked down to the station to meet the 6.15 and get the evening paper. The train came in, and the usual two or three passengers got out of it, among them Morton Paraday. To my surprise, for he had said nothing of having ordered them, he had been fitted with two excellent artificial arms.
He stepped on to the platform just in front of me, and looked round the station in a fashion somewhat odd in him, as though he had never set eyes on the place before; his eyes wandered over me unlighted by a spark of recognition, and a strange, incredible suspicion seized me. Then he passed his artificial fingers through his beard, and the suspicion became a. certainty.
I stepped forward, and said rather breathlessly. "Have you arranged for their return?"
"My dear sir, you have the advantage of me," he said in a voice. I did not know, "and I suspect I shall find a good many others in the same position. You seem to know me; but I don't know you."
"You're Morton Paraday," I gasped.
"I am indeed," he said.
As the words fell from his lips a keen-looking, hatchet-faced man, who had got out of the train a few compartments down, gripped his arm, and said in a high, nasal voice, ringing with triumph, "Bonamy, my boy, I've got you at last! Don't let's have any fuss!" And then he cried in a shrill scream, "What's this? The arm's real! It's not the man!"
"What man?" said this new Morton Paraday quietly.
"What man?" cried the stranger shrilly. "Why Bonamy Pitt, the freak forger, the armless burglar!"
"Oh, so that's his real name," paid Morton Paraday. "When I know him he was called Wonderful Timbs."
"I've hunted him half round the world, and missed him again!" cried the stranger, his face working in the extreme of disappointment and mortification.
"Come in here, and you, sir," said Morton Paraday, opening the waiting room door; for the porters had grown very attentive to our conversation.
In that dingy little room we constructed the history of the late soul, the hilarious soul, of Little Bystowe society. The stranger, Detective-Inspector Bramick of the New York Police, began the tale.
Bonamy Pitt was a congenitally armless native of Cincinnati, who from his earliest years had shown great intelligence. He had at first applied it to making the best of his unfortunate condition, with such success that he had obtained at age of fifteen, a remunerative post in the freak exhibition of Messrs. Barnum and Bailey. In it he had spent seven comfortable years, improving his mind by voluminous reading, and the patient study of the weaknesses of human nature among the many people with whom his travels brought him into contact. At the age of 21 he found himself admirably equipped for a campaign against the laws and police of the Western hemisphere, and entered upon it without delay. For many years he waged a successful war, becoming an expert hotel-thief; but his forte was the robbery of museum and collections. The curators and owners took no pains to watch an armless man; his feet could be slipped in and out of his shoes with the greatest ease; and he would walk out of a museum on two or three of its rarest coins, or stamps, pitied but unsuspected.
Then flying at higher game and larger sums, he turned his talents to forgery, until at last the evidence of an accomplice outweighed his infirmity, and he was convicted and imprisoned in one of those American institutions in which criminals are reformed by instruction in literature, dancing, and polite conversation. Three years ago he had been discharged reformed, one of their brightest cases: and three months later had by a skilful burglary made a clean sweep of the treasures of a collecting pork millionaire. Inspector Bramick had been put on his track, followed it to Paraguay, and there lost it. Lately he had heard of him in London, had traced him to Little Bystowe, and arrived in the very nick of time to arrest the wrong man.
Morton Paraday took up the tale. He had seen perform at a theatre at Rio Janeiro an armless trick bicyclist called Wonderful Timbs.
"That's him! He learnt it in prison," interjected Bramick.
"Nice prison—better than mine," said Morton Paraday, and went on with the story.
Struck by the bicyclist's extraordinary likeness to himself—"He was me with a clipped beard and without the arms,": he said—he had made his acquaintance, and found him a most entertaining, well-mannered fellow. Later they had travelled together into Paraguay, and there Morton Paraday had left him, and going on his revolutionary way into a neighbouring Republic, the revolution failing, had found himself a political prisoner. The letters announcing his aunt's death had fallen into Bonamy's hands, who had doubtless heard the widespread report of his death; and he had jumped at the chance of impersonating him. The simple invention of the Brazilian railway accident had accounted for his double loss of arms and memory, and prevented all suspicion. Morton Paraday had arrived in England the day before; he had called on his lawyers that morning, learned of the imposture, and having taken all necessary steps to save the unspent portion of his inheritance (fortunately some £35,000) had hurried down to Little Bystowe to unmask the impostor who was already in full flight, warned probably by some accomplice who had seen the list of passengers from America.
I finished the story with the relation of Bonamy's social success, the sham burglary at the Gables, the real burglary at the court. When I let fall that the detective had a man watching Johnson, giving me no time to tell of the attempt on the yellow Patagonian, Bramick cried, "Come along to the police station," and hurried us out. When we reached it, we learned that two hours be-fore the detective had had a telegram from his watcher saying that Johnson had eluded him, and hurried up to London to help him to pick up the trail.
"They never will, never!" groaned Bramick. He was perfectly right.
HE took the next train to London; I took Morton Paraday up to the Gables to introduce him to Susannah; and there was a fine commotion in Little Bystowe when the news of the imposture spread. Very soon things settled down with the real Morton Paraday in the place of the false, but he by no means fills that place, and is by no means so popular; he lacks his impersonator's social brilliance, and he can talk neither of coins, stamps, nor drawings.
Susannah, however, is far fonder of him; and so am I, for he supports warmly my desire for an early marriage. Only she knows how I caught the vanished Bonamy in the very act of burgling, and how beautifully he threw dust in my eyes.
Poor Lord Howsden's coins have never been recovered. They have begun already to filter through many channels, one or two at a time, into the great continental collections.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.