Drury Lane’s Last Case (17 page)

“Ah,” said Lane. “I believe we've struck oil. Well, sir?”

Crabbe stopped laughing as abruptly as he had begun. He half-turned his reptilian head and rasped his dry palms together. “So that's it, eh? Well, well. Wonders never cease.… Yes, there was one. Yes, indeed. A very interesting gentleman. He called several times before I would see him. Then when I did see him, he begged—very prettily, he, he!—if I would not permit him just a glimpse of the famous Saxon collection.”

“Yes?” said Lane sharply.

“He was a book fancier, he said, and he'd heard so much——You know. As a matter of fact,” continued Crabbe slyly, “the man knew books. So I let down the bars once—he looked harmless enough—and showed him this room. He was working on something, he said, and was most anxious to consult a certain volume. It would take just a moment, he said.…”

“What was the book?” demanded Rowe with a frown. “You never told me about this, Crabbe!”

“Didn't I, my boy? I must have forgotten,” chuckled Crabbe. “It was the 1599 edition of the Jaggard
Passionate Pilgrim
!”

For a moment they were silent, scarcely daring to look at one another.

“Go on,” urged Lane softly. “And you brought it out for him?”

Crabbe grinned an ugly grin. “Not Crabbe! No, sir. Couldn't, I said. Standing rule, I said. He nodded as if he'd sort of expected that. Then he looked about a bit. I began to get a little suspicious, but he jabbered on about books.… Finally he got back to the desk here. There was some stationery—paper and envelopes—on it. A queer look came into his eye and he said: ‘Is this your Saxon Library stationery, Mr. Crabbe?' and I said yes, it was. So he turned to me with an appealing look. ‘Ha, ha!' he said. ‘Very interesting. This is a deucedly hard place to get into, you know. I'd wagered a friend of mine, you know, that I could gain entrance to the Saxon Library, and by the Lord Harry I've done it!' ‘Oh, you did, did you?' I said. ‘And,' he said, ‘now that I'm really here, would you be a good chap and let me collect my wager? I'll need proof that I've been here. Ah, yes,' he said, just as if it had struck him at that moment, and he picked up a sheet of the stationery and an envelope and fingered 'em, ‘the very thing! This will prove it. Thank you, Mr. Crabbe, a thousand times!' and before I could say anything he ran out!'

The Inspector had listened to this remarkable story with open mouth. When Crabbe had finished with smacking lips, he thundered: “Of all the hogwash! You let him get away with that? Why, it——”

“So that's how our man secured the stationery,” said Patience slowly.

“My dear,” said Lane in a low voice, “let's not take any more of Mr. Crabbe's valuable time than is absolutely necessary. Mr. Crabbe, can you describe this extraordinary visitor?”

“Oh, yes. Tall, thin, middle-aged chap. Rather English.”

“Good God,” said the Inspector hoarsely. “Patty, that's just——”

“Please, Inspector. Exactly when did this man call? On what day?”

“Let me think. Four, five—about seven weeks ago. Yes, I remember now. It was early in the morning, on a Monday. May sixth.”

“The sixth of May!” exclaimed Patience. “Father, Mr. Lane, did you hear that?”

“I heard it, too, Pat,” complained Mr. Rowe fretfully. “You make it sound like the Ides of March. Queer!”

Crabbe's bright little eyes darted from one to another of them; there was a repressed and malicious mirth in their depths, as if he were holding in an immense joke by main force.

“This man, then, a tall thin Englishman of middle age,” murmured Lane, “called on May sixth and managed by a none too credible ruse to get hold of a sample of your stationery. Very good, Mr. Crabbe, we've progressed. There's one thing more and then I believe we shall have finished. Did he give a name?”

Crabbe regarded him with that irritating half-smile.

“Did he give a name, eh? You
are
a card for asking pertinent questions, Mr. Lane! Did he give a name? Certainly he gave a name. How it all comes back to me.” And he chuckled. He scudded like an aged crab around the desk and began exploring various drawers. “Excuse me, Miss Thumm.… Did he give a name!” and he chuckled once more. “Ah, the very thing!” He handed a small pasteboard to Lane. Patience rose very quickly and the four of them read the name upon it together.

It was an extremely cheap visiting card. On it was printed in bold black characters the name:

There was nothing more—no address, no telephone, no given name.

“Dr. Ales!” said Patience with a frown.

“Dr. Ales!” said the Inspector with a grunt.

“Dr. Ales!” said Rowe with a thoughtful look.

“Dr. Ales!” nodded Crabbe with a leer.

“Dr. Ales,” said the old gentleman, and something in his voice made them look at him swiftly. But he was staring at the card. “Heavens, it doesn't seem possible. Dr. Ales.… Patience, Inspector, Gordon,' he said abruptly, “do you know who Dr. Ales is?”

“Totally unfamiliar name,” said Patience with a keen glance at his intent face.

“Never heard of him,” said the Inspector.

“There's
something
about it,” said Rowe thoughtfully.

“Ah, Gordon. I might have known he would strike a responsive chord in the student's memory. He——”

Crabbe made a grotesque dancing movement, like a trained monkey. His gold-rimmed spectacles slipped down the bridge of his nose and he grinned in a horrible way. “
I
can tell you who Dr. Ales is,” he said, pursing his shrivelled lips like a perfumed old dandy.

“You can, eh?” said Lane quickly.

“I mean I can tell you who he
really
is, where he is, and everything!” cackled Crabbe. “Oh, it's an enormous joke! It came over me all of a sudden.”

“Well, for God's sake,” said the Inspector harshly, “who
is
he?”

“I knew him the minute I saw him that day at the museum. Oh, yes,” gurgled the old librarian. “Did you see him look away? He knew I knew him, the precious scoundrel! I tell you the man who visited me seven weeks ago and left this card, the man who called himself Dr. Ales, is—
Hamnet Sedlar
!”

14

A Battle of Bibliophiles

Over the luncheon-table in a private dining-room at one of the midtown hotels they tried to collect their scattered thoughts. Crabbe's ironical and triumphant revelation had left them, for the moment, witless. Hamnet Sedlar the mysterious Dr. Ales! Crabbe had seen them to the door in a perfect ecstasy of lip-licking exultation, and the last glimpse they had of him was his spare angular figure framed in the Ionic doorway of the Saxon house, his hands scratching ceaselessly against each other like the hind-legs of a cricket. Yes, his cocked little head had seemed to say as he watched them speed off, your worthy Dr. Sedlar is also your Dr. Ales; and what do you think of that? Old Crabbe's no fool, eh? For there was a personal triumph in his entire bearing which baffled them, a cruel and smug satisfaction like the powerful mass pleasure of a mob bent on lynching.

Gordon Rowe, who had despite his preoccupation managed to insinuate himself into the little party, sat very quietly watching the sun on Patience's hair as it pulsed in through the window of the limousine. But for once he did not seem to see it.

“There's something remarkably peculiar here,” said Mr. Drury Lane when they had seated themselves at their table. “I confess it's beyond me. That terrible old creature impressed me—with all his dramatic grimaces—as essentially truthful. He's the sort who delights in rubbing the truth in, especially if he knows that it will hurt. And yet—Hamnet Sedlar! Of course, it's impossible.”

“If Crabbe said that his visitor was Sedlar,” remarked young Rowe with a grim muttering, “then you can bet your crusading boots it
was
Sedlar.”

“No, Gordon,” sighed Patience. “Sedlar couldn't possibly have been the man who called on Crabbe May sixth. We've learned that the directors of the Kensington Museum in London had given a farewell banquet in Dr. Sedlar's honour on May seventh. Dr. Ales called on Crabbe in New York on May sixth. The man isn't a spirit. He couldn't have crossed the Atlantic overnight.”

“Oh! That's damnably queer. I know Crabbe, and I tell you he wasn't lying. He always gets that devilishly satisfied air when he's rubbing the truth in, as Mr. Lane says.”

“Crabbe was so
certain
,” said Patience, jabbing at her chop in pure exasperation. “He said he'd swear it was Sedlar on a stack of Bibles.”

“What's all the fuss about?” growled the Inspector, eyeing young Mr. Rowe with disfavour. “The old bird's lying, that's all.”

“Hmm,” said Lane. “It's possible, of course, that he invented the tale out of sheer malice. These old bookworms have a capacity for professional jealousy—Come, come, we'll never get anywhere this way. The whole thing's uncommonly mysterious.… There's something I must tell you. About. Dr. Ales.”

“Oh, yes!” cried Patience. “You were going to say when Crabbe interrupted.… Then the name isn't fictitious?”

“Lord, no! That's what's so extraordinary about it, my dear. Gordon, you seemed to be hovering on the verge of recollection back at the house. Do you remember now who Dr. Ales is—or was?”

“Sorry, sir. I thought I did. I may have run across his name in connection with my work somewhere.”

“Quite possible. The fact is that I never met Dr. Ales in the flesh, and I know nothing whatever about him personally; but one thing I do know. Unless it's an astounding coincidence, such a man actually exists, and moreover is a very clever and well-informed student of research literature.” The old gentleman chewed thoughtfully on a sprig of parsley. “Some years ago—oh, eight or ten years—an article appeared in
The Stratford Quarterly
, a publication devoted to the advancement of book knowledge.…”

“Oh, of course!” cried Rowe. “I got it regularly in my undergraduate days.”

“That accounts for the faint recollection. The point is that this article was signed ‘Dr. Ales.'”

“An English magazine?” demanded Thumm.

“Yes. I don't recall the precise details, but this Dr. Ales was writing on a new development in the fatuous and eternal Baconian controversy, and there were some things he said to which I took violent issue. I wrote a lengthy rebuttal to the
Quarterly
, which appeared under my name; and Dr. Ales, quite nettled, replied in the correspondence columns of the publication. We wrangled back and forth through the
Quarterly
for several issues.” He chuckled at the memory. “A sharp pen, my adversary! He called me everything but a doddering old idiot.”

“I remember now,” said Rowe eagerly, thrusting his firm jaw forward. “The fur flew. That's the chap, all right!”

“Know where he lives?” inquired the Inspector abruptly.

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Well, we can find out through this magazine——”

“I'm afraid not, Inspector. Mr. Rowe can undoubtedly tell you that
The Stratford Quarterly
collapsed five years ago.”

“Damn! Well, I'll cable Trench again and make another pest of myself. Do you think——?”

“By the way, Gordon,” said the old gentleman, “have you had time to look into those little matters we talked about? About the binding of the 1599 Jaggard, and traces of a possible secret connected with the binding?”

Rowe shrugged. “I haven't been too successful. I succeeded in tracing the binding back about a hundred and fifty years—it's been a hellish job. The present binding is at least that old. As for the document hidden in it—blank. Haven't run across a clue.”

“Hmm.” Lane's eyes flashed for an instant, and then he lowered them and devoted himself to his salad.

Patience pushed her plate aside. “Oh, I can't eat,” she said fretfully. “This pernickety case is getting on my nerves. It's preposterous, of course, this business of Dr. Sedlar being Dr. Ales, but it keeps going round and round in my head in the most frightful fashion. And yet other things are so clear.…”

“As for instance?” said the Inspector with a scowl.

“The trail left by Dr. Ales. It
was
Dr. Ales, you know,” she said suddenly, “who was the bearded man in our office May sixth, father.”

“And how do you arrive at that?” murmured young Rowe.

“He visited the Saxon place early that morning. There he got hold of the Saxon Library stationery. He must have cached his ridiculous disguise somewhere in midtown. Perhaps a hotel washroom. He wrote down the symbol—damn that symbol!—got into his doohickeys, and hurried up to father's office. That much is clear.” Her blue-water eyes appealed to Lane.

“It seems probable,” said the old gentleman.

“He didn't expect to be—to be bumped off,” said Patience, biting her lip. “He thought no one knew his secret, the secret worth millions. Doesn't it sound silly? … But he's a canny devil and he wasn't taking any chances. If he called on the twentieth, if he was all right, there was no harm done; the envelope would remain unopened. If he didn't call we'd open the envelope, see the Saxon stationery, hunt up Crabbe, find out about this queer Dr. Ales—he must have told Crabbe that impossible story purposely, so that Crabbe would remember it—and be in a very advanced position to pursue the hunt for him. Because by the time we did we would know the name of the man we were looking for, something of his profession.…”

“What an appallingly logical analysis!” said young Rowe with a feeble grin.

“That was why he asked you not to open the envelope except in my presence,” said Drury Lane quietly. “He knew I would remember our
Quarterly
controversy. So I was asked in to supply the confirmation that Dr. Ales is a bibliophile.”