Slane’s Long Shots E-Book

E. Phillips Oppenheim

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

A collection of unconnected but all featuring the same protagonist, gentlemen amateur detective Slane. Sir Jasper Slane, wealthy clubman, and amateur detective, is always willing to help his fellow aristocrats in need. With the able assistance of Inspector Stimpson of Scotland Yard, he solves thefts, rescues kidnapped victims, foils blackmailers, and helps to restore fortunes. Because of his upper class morality, Slane is perhaps more diffident than some other Oppenheim heroes, but, in the end, he succumbs to the attractions of women. Much of Oppenheim’s work possesses a unique escapist charm, featuring protagonists who delight in Epicurean meals, surroundings of intense luxury, and the relaxed pursuit of criminal practice, on either side of the law.

Leseprobe

Contents

I. WHO KILLED MONTAGUE BREST?

II. THE LITTLE MARQUIS

III. MARIOTE’S HOUR OF AGONY

IV. THE THIRTEENTH CARD

V. THE MAN WITHOUT A TIE

VI. NEAP-TIDE MADNESS

VII. NOT SLANE’S STAR TURN

VIII. GENTLEMAN BILL

IX. THE TROUBLESOME KINGDOM OF SELM

X. THE GOLDEN BIRD OF MALLORY

I. WHO KILLED MONTAGUE BREST?

MONTAGUE BREST–Monty to all his friends, and they were many– laid down his cigarette, leaned back in his chair, and swore.

“Ruth,” he exclaimed, “I’m done! I’m a fraud! I can’t make head or tail of it. Tomorrow I’ll have to resign, and then God knows what we shall do. Curse that yellow-skinned, slobbering Manchu, or whoever sat down and wrote this farrago of rubbish to His Majesty’s Government. I’m beat, Ruth! I can’t make a word of sense of it.”

She had crossed the room, and was already leaning over him, her arm around his neck. She looked at the long, stiff sheet of paper, covered with what seemed to be cabalistic signs, and she laughed outright.

“Monty, my dear,” she remonstrated, “how could anyone in the world expect you to make sense of such a medley.”

“Well, the Foreign Office does, for one,” he assured her gloomily. “It looks like the outside of a Chinese teapot to us, but it’s Tibetan all right. I daren’t say I cannot do, it. I’ve had too many failures lately. I thought I might be able to make something of it, but I can’t. I can’t make sense of the opening paragraph, even.”

She patted his cheek soothingly. She was a very pretty girl and her voice would have been enough to make most men forget their troubles.

“I shouldn’t worry, dear,” she advised. “The F.O. would never seriously complain of a man for not being able to make sense of that.”

He rose to his feet, and nervously lit another cigarette. The small sitting-room was already thick with tobacco smoke.

“But that’s just what they will do, Ruth,” he complained. “You see, I made a mess of the Afghan cable. They made use of a word I never heard of, and if I confess to another failure here, they’ll think I’m a fraud so far as the Asiatic languages are concerned.”

“Let’s telephone to Mr. Odane,” she suggested. “He offered to help you at any time.”

The young man’s face lighted.

“It’s an idea, Ruth,” he admitted. “He’s not so good at the Indian dialects as I am, but he’s a marvel at Chinese. This certainly seems a good deal more like his touch than mine.”

“I’ll ring him up,” she decided. “Don’t you worry.”

She threw open the door of the little sitting-room, and made her way to the telephone instrument at the end of the narrow passage. She was back again in less than two minutes.

“He’s coming, Monty,” she announced triumphantly. “He seemed only too pleased. The idea of a manuscript you couldn’t make anything of intrigued him immensely. Let’s have another look at the beastly thing.”

They pored over it together–an official-looking document, covered with curious characters, scratched on a home-made paper which was half yellow, and half white. Ruth’s finger lingered at the middle of one sentence.

“There’s an Englishman’s name,” she pointed out. “The only thing anyone could make any sense of–printed in English characters too–BRETTON. I’ve heard it before somewhere.”

“There’s a Colonel Le Bretton, a great explorer,” her brother reflected. “By Jove, I should wonder if it were he. He started off a year ago for Mount Everest, or somewhere around there. The man who went through Abyssinia a few years ago, you know. I–”

He broke off in his sentence.

His sister was not a nervous person, but the sound of her shriek filled the little room. He started to his feet. She was staring at the bay window, across which the curtain was only half drawn. Her eyes were filled with a very definite terror.

“For God’s sake, what’s the matter, Ruth?” he exclaimed. She pointed to the narrow slit of exposed window-pane.

“There was a man there, looking in,” she cried. “I saw his face distinctly.”

Brest hastened from the room, along the few feet of passage, and threw open the front door. He looked up and down in vain. Their house was the last but four in a long row of seven-roomed villas near Barnes Commons and the space opposite was still unbuilt upon. There was not a soul to be seen except a man and a girl strolling arm in arm, passing from under a lamp-post into invisibility. He closed the door, and returned to the sitting-room.

“Ruth, my dear, you’re fancying things,” he told her. “There isn’t a human being in sight.”

“A man looked in at the window,” she insisted.

“Then he climbed up the side of the house on to the roof. There was no other means of getting away.”

She lit a cigarette, and laughed nervously.

“I hope I’m not beginning to see things’.”

“There was nobody there,” he assured her. “Look here, Ruth, there’s one thing you’ve got to promise me. Whatever happens, in no case–not under any circumstances–must you ever let a soul know that I consulted Odane about this manuscript. I should get the sack straightaway.”

“Am I a gossip?” she scoffed. “Did you ever know me to talk?”

“Never,” he acknowledged. “The new regulations are very strict, though. It is ridiculous that you shouldn’t be able to ask help of a man in Odane’s position, but it would cost me my job if they knew I’d done it.”

“Then they never shall, dear,” she promised. “I’ll get the whisky and soda out for Mr. Odane.”

She patted his cheek. He looked at her in surprise.

“Why, Ruth,” he exclaimed, “your hands are as cold as ice, and you’re trembling. What’s the matter?”

“I’m not used to visions,” she confided with a little shiver.

*     *

*

TWO hours later, Mark Odane, Professor of Oriental Languages and a scholar of some repute, confessed himself partially beaten.

“I’ll have to take the thing home, Monty,” he announced finally. “I’ve got some dictionaries there that will help, and a phrase book in manuscript. I’ll do it for you–word for word, too– but you’ll have to give me a few hours. I can’t stay any longer now. I’ve got a committee meeting of the Royal Geographical Society. Lend me your dispatch box.”

“You must take it away, I suppose?” the young man asked wistfully. “It’s against the regulations.”

“I can do nothing here,” Odane admitted. “Besides, who cares about those regulations? They are broken every day. You know that. Say good-by to your sister for me, there’s a good fellow.”

The Professor hurried out to his taxicab. The young man saw him off, and watched the vehicle turn the corner. There were a few promenading couples on the waste piece of common opposite –not another person in sight. He closed the front door, and called up the stairs to his sister: “Gone to bed, Ruth?”

“Long ago,” came the sleepy reply. “Good-night, and don’t forget to lock up.”

He made his way back to the sitting-room, mixed himself a whisky and soda, and settled himself in an easy-chair, with the evening paper. The cricket scores failed to interest him. The Stock Exchange news left him unmoved. The illness of a great statesman did not affect him in the least. He was conscious of a curious tingling of the nerves. There was something– what was it that had happened that evening? He remembered suddenly Ruth’s moment of panic, and smiled. Then, conscious of what seemed to be a draft, he turned his head. The newspaper slid from his nerveless fingers. Before he could call out, there was a hand upon his throat, and the glitter of steel before his eyes. Almost immediately the room was plunged into darkness. He could see nothing but the dim shadow of the man leaning over him, in whose grasp he was like an infant.

“I want the paper you brought home this evening from the Foreign Office. Will you give it to me? Decide quickly. If you refuse you have less than ten seconds to live.”

The grasp upon his throat relaxed a little. He was able to mumble.

“It isn’t here. I have had to pass it on to someone else.”

There was a brutal, choking sound, a short laugh of contempt.

“Usual thing to part with manuscripts from the Foreign Office, isn’t it? Five seconds left. Will you give it to me?”

“I swear that it isn’t here.”

In the darkness, the thread of steel was like an electric shaft. Then that one, long-drawn-out moment of hideous pain, and blackness greater than the gloom of the room. The young man lay a crumpled-up heap upon his easy-chair, and his visitor proceeded with his task.

*     *

*

DETECTIVE Inspector Stimpson suddenly abandoned the attitude of casual caller which he had assumed during the first few minutes of his visit to Sir Jasper Slane, his acquaintance and occasional fellow worker. He drew his chair nearer to the desk. He was a small, sandy man, neatly dressed, with a freckled face and a mass of unruly hair. His queer, shrewd little eyes were studying Slane speculatively.

“Sir Jasper,” he acknowledged, “we are in some slight trouble down at the Yard.”

“The Montague Brest affair?”

“It isn’t only that. Let me explain. If you’ll believe me. Sir Jasper, there is scarcely a job done in London that we don’t know who’s behind it, even when we can’t get the evidence to make an arrest. There are plenty of people walking down Piccadilly and Bond Street at this moment whom we know to be guilty of certain offenses. We can’t touch them, but we don’t worry. Their time will come.

“Just now, we’re up against a different proposition. There’s a new body of criminals at work, and they’ve got us guessing. They don’t link up anywhere with any of the old gangs. My conviction is that this new crowd comes from a different class of society altogether. I’ll give you one example: There’s an amazing packet of precious stones–mostly rubies–being discreetly offered amongst the high-class fences, and the curious part of it is that they don’t correspond in the least with any missing jewelry we have on our list. They are far more magnificent, and unique.

“Where did they come from, Sir Jasper? Certainly they are not being handled by any one of the known jewel thieves in Europe. That’s why I’m pretty well convinced that there’s a new organization at work with whom we have not yet clicked.”

Slane, from the depths of his easy-chair, smiled in tolerant and comprehending assent. He was a cheery-looking person, with humorous eyes and mouth, the complexion of a Devonshire farmer, and with scarcely a line upon his face. There was nothing whatever in his appearance to suggest any abnormal intelligence. Only every now and then, at odd moments, there was a quick flash of his blue eyes, a tightening of the lips, an incisive word, the subtleties of a partially concealed personality.

“I shouldn’t be at all surprised. A very intelligent assumption of yours as a matter of fact. We’ve too many amateur bookmakers, wine merchants, stockbrokers’ representatives, motor car agents, and all that sort of thing. Why not a course in crime for the indigent aristocrat? Your idea appeals to me, Stimpson!”

“Then perhaps you will help me to find out who killed Montague Brest.” Sir Jasper leaned back a little in his chair.

“I am not a detective,” he observed.

“What else are you, Sir Jasper?” his visitor asked him bluntly.

“I am interested in research,” was the indulgent reply. “It amuses me to attempt to solve any social problem which is baffling my friends. Criminology attracts me. The science of detection excites my admiration, but I am not a detective, Stimpson. You will never find me in competition with Scotland Yard.”

“That may be so, but it was you who discovered, and returned to her, Lady Darnwell’s jewels after we’d been months trying in vain. It was owing to your influence that Maurice Grayson left the country at a moment’s notice, and–”

“That will do,” Slane interrupted. “Precisely what do you want of me this afternoon? You haven’t traveled all the way up to Hampstead for the sake of a friendly little chat?”

“You have this immense advantage over us,” the detective continued thoughtfully, avoiding for the moment a direct reply. “You are able to penetrate easily and naturally into a class of society from which we are debarred. It isn’t that we can’t go there, but when we do we are noticeable, and our quarry is on guard all the time. Club life, too, is unfortunately barred to us. Now you are a member, I believe, Sir Jasper, of the Lavender Club.”

“No place in London where I am happier,” was the enthusiastic admission. “A very delightful gathering of cultured cosmopolitans, Stimpson. You must dine with me there one night.”

The detective shook his head.

“No place for me, sir,” he acknowledged frankly, “but we have come now to the object of my visit. We were talking a few minutes ago about the murder of Montague Brest. I should like you to go to the Lavender Club as often as you can during the next few days with this idea always in your brain– that one of those with whom you are lunching or dining, or playing bridge, or drinking a cocktail, killed, or knows who killed, Montague Brest. You are something of a psychologist. I will leave it at that. At the end of a day or two, ask yourself which of the men with whom you have conversed could possibly have been the murderer? Tell me their names. A little tactful and harmless espionage will hurt no one.”

“Anything to go on?” Slane inquired, with a sudden gravity.

“A trifle, sir. No more than that.”

The other considered for a few moments.

“What you ask is, after all, not a difficult matter,” he decided, “and commits me to nothing. I will do as you wish.”

*     *

*

DINNER at the long table at the Lavender Club was always a cheerful affair. That particular night it was even hilarious. Two of the most popular men in the Club–Sir Jasper Slane, who rejoiced in the dual nicknames of “the tec” and “the Bart” and Colonel Le Bretton, the explorer, generally called “the tramp”–sat opposite to one another, and the conversation and chaff centering around them was insistent. A popular play had just come to the end of its run, and a famous actor, Harold Tennant, was able to dine at a reasonable hour, a circumstance of which he showed his appreciation by an inspiring appetite and thirst, and a continual flow of anecdotes. Several other well-known members of the Club had moved up their chairs to join the cheerful company. The atmosphere was charged with the genial spirit of club life at its best.

“I sometimes wonder, Le Bretton,” Sir Jasper Slane observed, “how you manage to pass the time in the tranquillity of London after these hair-raising expeditions of yours.”

Le Bretton, a long, lean sunburnt man, with sunken eyes, protruding eyebrows, and a disfiguring scar on one side of his face, which effectively concealed his natural expression, sipped his wine approvingly, and smiled.

“So do a good many other people,” he observed. “Traveling’s really my hobby, but the vital savor of life is variety. One has to come to London, for instance, to drink vintage port, and, so long as I don’t have to stay here too long, I am perfectly comfortable in my little flat dictating lies about my adventures in the daytime, and joining some of you fellows at night.”

“The ideal modern Münchausen,” Harold Tennant pronounced. “We all read them, of course, but you don’t suppose that anyone really believes these amazing stories of yours?”

“I should be very hurt if they did,” was the calm retort. “Every traveler must write with imagination. Bald facts would interest no one. Oh, London suits me all right for a time. What I wonder is, how the Bart here passes his evenings when there are no jewels to be restored, or family mysteries to be solved, or aristocratic sinners to be caught and cast out. You must have a dull time between cases, Slane.”

Sir Jasper grinned amiably.

“I am always preparing for the next one,” he confided.

“The real sleuth hound is always agog,” a noble lord, who was president of the club, remarked. “Goes about scenting crime and mystery all the time, don’t you, Bart?”

“Jolly useful chap to have about the place,” a member of the committee put in. “They tell me there hasn’t been even a spoon stolen since his real profession became known.”

Sir Jasper sighed.

“My profession,” he decided, “is becoming difficult. Years ago, there was a certain pleasing ingenuousness about the criminal, and a certain amount of science about the detective. The latter generally got his quarry in the long run. Today it is the criminal who has the science and the detective who is left guessing. The betting odds have changed at least twenty-five per cent.

“Look at the Montague Brest case, for instance. Who killed Montague Brest? There’s a mystery for you, if you like –a pleasant, insignificant young man occupying a minor post in a Government office, stabbed through the heart in his study in a seven-roomed villa at Barnes. No evidence of any visitor, no robbery, so far as anyone knows, nothing to steal apparently, for he and his sister seem to have been in straitened circumstances. The cleverest detective in Scotland Yard has even confided to me that he doesn’t know where to start his investigations. That’s a mystery worth solving. Who killed Montague Brest?”

A small man, pale, almost anemic in appearance, who had been dining alone, seated just outside the enchanted circle, had been listening with absorbed attention to Jasper Slane’s speech. In the momentary silence that followed it, he replenished his glass from the modest half bottle of claret which stood by his side, and leaned towards the little group.

“I think that I can tell you,” he said quietly.

There was a sudden paralysis of attention, a dramatic dumbness of mind and thought. They all stared at him.

“It’s Professor Odane,” his neighbor whispered to Jasper Slane. “Oriental languages, and that sort of stuff. Got a Chair somewhere. Doesn’t often come in here. Quite a decent chap, but he must have gone balmy.”

Slane, the first to recover himself, leaned tolerantly forward in his place.

“You mean that you have a theory, Odane, I suppose?” he suggested. “Move up and join us.”

The little man, glass in hand, rose and accepted the invitation.

“Another decanter of port, and a glass for Mr. Odane,” Jasper Slane ordered from the steward. “You mean, I suppose,” he repeated, looking across at the newcomer, “that you have a theory.”

“I have something more than a theory,” was the calm reply. “I know who killed Montague Brest, and why.”

A thrill shivered through the circle. Odane was not very well known–a recent member, in fact–but he had occupied a Chair at one of the Universities. He was a man of repute, and his manner was convincing. Le Bretton rose to his feet. It was a June night, and the room was warm.

“Let’s have a little air for a few minutes,” he proposed, crossing the floor, and throwing open one of the windows. “I’ve lived in the open spaces too long to stand these stuffy nights… . Whew, that’s good!”

He returned to his place. Odane, the small man with the shrewd eyes, incisive voice, and almost waxen pallor, had become the center of attention.

“Were you at the inquest?” Jasper Slane asked him.

“Unofficially. I knew more about Montague Brest, perhaps, than anyone else. He was a neighbor of mine at Barnes, and I knew something of the work upon which he was engaged. I went to the inquest to see if there was any evidence offered. When I found that there was none, I decided to wait for a short time before I spoke. I see no one here whom I could suspect of a breach of confidence. In an hour or two’s time, I have an appointment with an important person at the Foreign Office, and I shall be able to lay before him certain information which I believe beyond a doubt will lead to the arrest of the murderer. The whole affair will be public property before the morning, so I see no reason why I should not confide in you.”

He was silent for a moment, glancing behind as though to assure himself that the waiters were out of hearing. Then he looked at the expectant little group of faces by which he was surrounded.

There was Harold Tennant, the actor, the humorous lines gone now from his face, his expression stern and eager; Jasper Slane, as tranquil and genial as ever, but rigid in his attention; Le Bretton, with a suggestion of slight incredulity about his cynical lips, leaning towards the window as though to enjoy the freshness of the night air; Matterson, the musician, his crumpled hair all awry, his mouth open, staring through his enormous spectacles like a frightened child; Jarrett, the sculptor, sprawling across the table, also open-mouthed and breathless; Holland Gordon, the novelist, his thin, esthetic face drawn into intense furrows.

They were all old members of the club, men of repute, and to be trusted. The little man who had cast this bombshell into their midst raised his glass and drank slowly of its contents. It was as the glass left his lips that the amazing thing happened. There was seen something like a flash of lightning, dimly heard the singing sound of a bullet. The glass was shattered into a thousand pieces. The little man gave one groan, and fell backwards in his chair –dead.

*     *

*

JASPER SLANE, seated in the smoking-room of his Hampstead residence a few mornings later, glanced from the card which he held in his hand to the young lady in black clothes, who had just been ushered in. Perhaps because he saw that she had violet eyes, and was on the point of tears, he rose quickly to his feet, and placed a chair for her by the side of his desk.

“Miss Brest?” he repeated. “You must forgive me if I find the name interesting. Am I to understand that you were related in any way to the young man who–to Montague Brest?”

“I was his sister.”

There was a momentary silence. The girl was very pretty and very distressed. Sir Jasper could see the tears dimming her eyes, and he decided that perhaps speech was best.

“Everyone was so sorry to hear of the tragedy of your brother’s death,” he ventured compassionately. “He was likely to have done so well.”

“He was very clever,” she agreed, “but he was always very nervous about his position. He was good at Chinese, and a great many of the Indian dialects, but he knew very little Afghanistan and Tibetan.”

“I see,” Jasper Slane murmured. “Well, I wonder who does? Now, my dear young lady,” he went on, “I should like you to feel that you are with a friend. Tell me in your own way, just as you please, why you have come to me.”

She sighed.

“I had to come to see someone,” she told him, speaking almost in a whisper. “I dared not go to the police. I have heard that you are so clever in arranging things just outside the law. That is why I came to you.”

“Capital!” he declared. “You shall have my help, if help is possible. Don’t hurry. Tell your story your own way, and in your own time.”

“How kind you are,” she murmured. “Well, on that awful night, Montague brought home, as he used to sometimes, a manuscript from the Foreign Office to translate. Directly he opened his case, I heard him groan. It was in Tibetan.”

“Hard luck!” Jasper commiserated. “What did he do about it?”

“He telephoned at once for a friend,” she confided. “You know that is against regulations, and he made me promise upon my honor that, whatever happened, I would never let anyone know that he had shown the document to anyone else.”

“I see,” Jasper Slane reflected. “So that was why you gave no evidence at the inquest.”

“That was why,” she admitted. “It may have been wrong of me, but I kept my word to the dead. Besides, when the inquest upon Monty was held, nothing had happened to the other man–his friend. I knew that Monty was alive and well, even happy, after he had left, so you see there didn’t seem any reason why I should not keep my word and forget his visit.”

“Precisely,” Slane assented. “Well, to continue. The friend came, and what happened about the manuscript?”

“He was very interested. He took it away, and promised a translation within three days.”

“And the name of the man?”

“It was Mark Odane, who was murdered at the Lavender Club two days ago,” she replied, in an awe-stricken tone.

Slane was very grave indeed.

“This is a very serious affair. Miss Brest,” Slane said.

“I know that it is,” she acquiesced. “That is why I felt that I must not keep my promise to Monty any longer. I know, of course, why he asked me to make it. You are never allowed to let a document pass into anyone else’s hands. Now Mr. Odane took that manuscript away with him.”

“Has no one from the Foreign Office been to you to ask for it?”

“Of course. A gentleman came down with the police before anything had been touched. I think they took it for granted that it had been stolen by the man who murdered Monty. As a matter of fact, I know that it wasn’t. I know that Mr. Odane took it away with him.”

“That Tibetan document seems to have been badly wanted by someone,” Slane reflected. “Miss Brest, I am afraid your story will have to go to the police.”

“If you think it ought to,” she assented with a little sigh.

She looked at him wistfully.