Drury Lane’s Last Case (14 page)

Miss Brodie stumbled toward Mr. Rowe.

“Wait a minute. How'd you spell that name Sedlar?”

“S-e-d-d-l-e-r,” stuttered Miss Brodie, pale with emotion.

The Inspector's chest heaved. Then he smiled. “Now, now, Brodie,” he said soothingly, “don't faint. It's all right. Only for God's sake can't you even spell? It's S-e-d-l-a-r!”

“Oh, yes, sir,” said Miss Brodie, and fled.

“Poor Brodie,” giggled Patience. “Father, you always scare her out of a year's growth. Or perhaps it's the strange masculine presence.… Why, what's the matter, Mr. Lane?” she cried, alarmed.

The most startling expression had come over the old gentleman's face. He stared at Thumm as if he had never seen him before; and indeed he seemed not to be seeing him now. Then he sprang to his feet.

“Good Lord!” he cried. “So
that's
it!” And he began to stride hungrily about the room, muttering to himself.

“What's it?” asked the Inspector, staring.

“The name, the name! Hamnet Sedlar.… Lord, it—it's incredible! There's simply no justice if it's a coincidence.”

“The name?” Patience wrinkled her forehead. “Why, what's wrong with the name, Mr. Lane? It seems perfectly sound English, if a little quaint.”

Gordon Rowe's mouth was hanging open like the lips of a descending crane. All the mischief had deserted his hazel eyes, to be supplanted by a shocked intelligence.

Lane stopped striding, rubbed his chin, and then burst into a long low chuckle. “Yes, yes, perfectly sound English, Patience; you've a talent for striking at the heart of things. That's precisely what it is. It's English with a history, by Jove! Ah, Gordon, I see the light has burst upon you, too.” He stopped chuckling and sat down suddenly. His voice was grave. “I knew that name had struck a responsive note,” he said slowly. “It's been annoying me ever since we met the gentleman who bears it. Your spelling it.… Inspector, Patience, doesn't ‘Hamnet Sedlar' mean anything to you?”

The Inspector looked blank. “Not a blamed thing.”

“Well, Patience, with all respect to your esteemed father, you've the advantage of a superior education. Didn't you study English literature?”

“Of course.”

“Concentrate at all on the Elizabethan period?”

Patience's cheeks bloomed brightly. “It—it's all very remote.”

The old gentleman nodded sadly. “There's modern education for you. So you've never heard of Hamnet Sedlar. Strange. Gordon, tell them who Hamnet Sedlar was.”

“
Hamnet Sedlar
,” said young Mr. Rowe in a thick, dazed voice, “
was one of William Shakespeare's closest friends
.”

“Shakespeare!” cried Thumm. “Is that right, Lane? You people going dotty, too? What's old Shake got to do with this?”

“A great deal, I'm beginning to think,” murmured Mr. Drury Lane. “Yes, Gordon, that's right,” he said thoughtfully, and shook his head. “Naturally, you would know. Sedlar.… Lord!”

“I'm afraid I don't understand,” complained Patience. “In this, at any rate, I'm one with Father. Surely——”

“This Sedlar bird isn't the Wandering Jew, is he?” jeered the Inspector. “What the devil—he can't be over three hundred years old!” and he guffawed heartily.

“Ha, ha,” said Mr. Rowe with a profound sigh.

“I'm not suggesting our friend is Ahasuerus,” smiled Lane. “There is nothing quite so preposterous in the events to date. But I am suggesting that the present Dr. Hamnet Sedlar, ex-curator of the Kensington Museum in London, incumbent of the Britannic Museum in New York, British, cultured, a bibliophile … oh, no, it's not at all impossible that Dr. Sedlar is a lineal descendant of the man who has come down to us in history only by virtue of the fact that Shakespeare called him friend.”

“A Stratford family?” asked Patience thoughtfully.

The old man shrugged. “We know next to nothing about them.”

“I think,” muttered Rowe, “that the Sedlars hailed from Gloucestershire.”

“But what connection,” protested Patience, “even if Dr. Sedlar is a descendant of Shakespeare's boyfriend, could there possibly be between the old Sedlar family and and this 1599 edition of the Jaggard
Passionate Pilgrim
that's been causing all this fuss?”

“That, my dear,” said Mr. Drury Lane quietly, “is precisely the question. It was an inspiration, Inspector, as it's turned out, to cable your British friend at Scotland Yard. Perhaps we'll learn.… Who knows?
The Passionate Pilgrim
itself can't——But then …”

He fell silent. The Inspector sat helplessly, looking from his friend to his daughter. Young Gordon Rowe stared at Lane, and Patience stared at Rowe.

Lane rose suddenly and reached for his blackthorn stick. They watched him in silence.

“Curious,” he said. “Very curious,” and nodding and smiling a little absently, he left the Inspector's office.

11

3HS wM

Dromio cheerfully cursed a traffic officer beneath his breath and swung the black Lincoln off Fifth Avenue into one of the Forties. He picked his way through a labyrinth of traffic and brought the car to rest at the corner of Sixth Avenue, stopped by a red light.

Mr. Drury Lane sat silently in the tonneau of the car, tapping his lips with the sharp edge of a slip of yellow paper. For the dozenth time he glanced at the message typed upon it, and frowned. It was a telegram, its date-line reading: “June 21—12.06 a.m.” The message had been delivered to The Hamlet in Westchester in the early hours of the morning.

“Queer time for Thumm to send me a wire,” thought the old man. “Midnight! He's never done a thing like that before.… Urgent? It isn't possible that——”

Dromio leaned on his klaxon. A car had locked fenders with another at the corner; they were straining at each other like two bulls, and there was an appalling tangle of traffic behind. Lane glanced over his shoulder at the mess extending to Fifth Avenue, and then leaned forward and tapped Dromio's ear.

“I think I shall walk the rest of the way,” he said. “It's only a block. Wait for me near Inspector Thumm's office.”

He got out of the car, still holding the telegram. Then he put it carefully into the breast pocket of his spruce suit and strode off toward Broadway.

He found the Thumm Detective Agency in a strange state of turmoil. The lunar-eyed Miss Brodie in the ante-room seemed to have contracted the general infection: she sat nervously and stared with mournful uneasiness at Patience, who was striding up and down behind the railing like a fuming regimental sergeant-major, biting her lips and hurling passionate glances at the office clock on the wall.

At the sound of the opening door she jumped, and Miss Brodie uttered a gentle scream.

“So you've come!” cried Patience, grasping the old gentleman's arm in a death-grip. “I thought you'd never get here. You're a precious darling!” and to his astonishment she threw her soft arms about his neck and kissed him vigorously on the cheek.

“My dear child,” protested Lane, “you're trembling! What on earth has happened? The Inspector's wire was bursting with suppressed portents, but it told me exactly nothing. I trust he's well?”

“As well as might be expected,” replied Patience grimly. Then her eyes sparkled and she touched a shining ringlet above her ear and said: “And now let's attack the—the corpse.”

She pushed open the Inspector's door and revealed a red-eyed but otherwise pale elderly gentleman who sat stiffly on the edge of his swivel-chair and like a determined boa-constrictor glared at an object on the desk before him.

“Eureka!” he shouted, scrambling to his feet. “Old Faithful, by God. I told you we could depend on the old rascal, Patty! Sit down, Lane, sit down. It's swell of you to come.”

Lane sank into the leather armchair. “Heavens, what a reception! You make me feel like the returning prodigal. Now tell me what's happened. I'm perishing of curiosity.”

Thumm grasped the object he had been so painfully studying. “See this?”

“I've excellent eyesight, as you know. Yes, I see it.”

The Inspector chuckled. “Well, we're going to open it.”

Lane stared from Thumm to Patience. “But——Well, do so, by all means. Is this why you wired me to come in, Inspector?”

“We wired you to come in,” said Patience quickly, “because some maniac insisted that you be present at the grand opening. Father,
please
. I'll go mad myself if you don't open it this instant!”

It was the long brown manila envelope which the curious gentleman with the dappled beard and blue glasses had left in the Inspector's safe keeping almost seven weeks before.

Lane took the envelope from Thumm's hand and examined it with a swift experimental pressure. His eyes narrowed as he felt the contours of the squarish envelope within. “This mystery calls for an explanation. I should like to know the facts before … No, no, my dear, I've told you on several occasions in the past to cultivate—ha, ha—Patience. Proceed, Inspector.”

Thumm tersely related the story of the disguised Englishman's visit on the sixth of May. With interpolations by Patience, it was a very complete tale, down to a minute description of the visitor. When the Inspector had finished, Lane glanced thoughtfully at the envelope. “But why didn't you tell me this before? That's not like you, Inspector.”

“Didn't think it was necessary. Come on, let's go!”

“Just a moment. I take it, then, that this being the twenty-first of the month, your mysterious client failed to telephone you yesterday on schedule?”

“He called up on the twentieth of May, though,” said the Inspector glumly.

“We sat here all the livelong day,” snapped Patience, “until midnight yesterday. Not a peep out of him. And now——”

“Did you by any chance make a transcript of the man's conversation?” asked Lane absently. “I know you've a detectograph here.”

Thumm jabbed a button. “Miss Brodie. Get that transcript of the envelope case.”

They sat in agony while the old man very deliberately read the word-for-word report of the visitor's call.

“Hmm,” he said, putting down the report. “Very strange. Quite true, of course, that the creature was disguised. Clumsy, clumsy! No slightest effort, apparently, at realism. The beard …” He shook his head. “Very well, Inspector, I think we may proceed. Do the honours.”

He rose, tossed the envelope on Thumm's desk, sat down in a chair beside the desk, and leaned forward intently. Patience hurried around the desk to stand behind her father's chair; she was breathing quickly and her usually serene features were pale and agitated. With shaking fingers Thumm pulled out the sliding leaf on the side of the desk near Lane, placed the envelope upon it, and sank into his swivel-chair. He was perspiring freely. Then he looked up at Lane—they faced each other across the utility board—and grinned feebly.

“Well, here goes,” he jeered. “And I hope it doesn't jump out at me and say ‘April Fool' or something.”

Behind him Patience sighed for sheer need of breath.

The Inspector grasped a letter-knife, hesitated, and then plunged the blade beneath the flap of the manila envelope. He cut the flap swiftly, dropped the knife, squeezed the ends of the envelope, and peered inside.

“Well?” cried Patience.

“You were right, Patty,” he muttered. “It's another envelope.” And he took out a small square envelope, neutral-grey in tone, which was in turn sealed. The face was blank.

“What's that on the flap?” asked the old gentleman sharply.

The Inspector turned the envelope over. His face went as grey as the paper.

Patience, scanning the flap over his shoulder, gasped.

Thumm licked his lips. “It says,” he said hoarsely, “it says—cripes!—it says: T
HE
S
AXON
L
IBRARY
!”

It was the first indication they had had that the visit of the mysterious man with the Joseph's beard might have been connected with the strange events at the Britannic Museum.

“The Saxon Library,” murmured Lane. “How curious.”

“So that's how it is!” cried Thumm. “Good God, what've we run into?”

“Apparently,” said the old man with difficulty, “a coincidence, Inspector. It happens sometimes. With sufficient frequency to make one wonder at——” His voice trailed off, but he did not remove his gaze from the Inspector's lips. Yet they saw nothing, for there was a gloss over them, as if a veil had dropped—a veil to mask the blinding realization that had leaped into them.

“But I can't understand——” began Patience dazedly.

Lane shivered, and the veil disintegrated. “Open it, Inspector,” he said, leaning forward and cupping his chin in his hands. “Please.”

Thumm picked up the letter-knife again. He inserted the blade behind the flap and slowly exerted pressure. The paper was tough and yielded reluctantly.

Neither Lane nor Patience so much as blinked.

Thumm's large fingers dipped into the envelope and emerged with a sheet of light grey stationery of the same tint as the envelope, neatly folded. He unfolded it. There was printing at one of the short ends of the sheet. The Inspector turned the sheet around; the legend at the top said simply:
THE SAXON LIBRARY
, in a darker grey printing ink. He spread the paper flat on the sliding board between him and Lane and stared. They all stared, and there was utter stillness in the office.

And reason for it. For if the disguised Englishman had been a mysterious figure, the message he had deposited in the Inspector's care was even more mysterious. More than mysterious, it was cryptic. It made no sense at all.

At the top of the sheet there was the imprint of the Saxon Library. The rest of the sheet was as virgin as the day it had rolled off the printer's press, except for a single inscription, or cryptogram. Roughly in the centre of the sheet below the imprint appeared the lettering shown on the opposite page.