Drury Lane’s Last Case (3 page)

Inspector Thumm, still dazed, sat limply at his desk, in one hand the long manila envelope and in the other the thousand-dollar bill.

“Pat,” he said hoarsely. “Pat, did you see that? Did you hear that? Is he shovin' the queer? Am I crazy, or is he, or what?”

“Oh, father,” she cried, “don't be an
idiot
.” She seized the envelope, her eyes dancing. Her fingers pressed it, and something crackled inside. “Hmm. There's another envelope inside this one. Not the same shape, either. It seems squarish, father dear. I wonder——”

“Oh, no you don't,” said the Inspector hastily, taking the envelope from her. “I've accepted that bird's dough, remember. Pat, it's ten C's, a grand!”

“I think you're mean,” complained Patience. “I can't imagine what——”

“Listen, dovey, this means a new dress for you, and that's
all
.” The Inspector grunted and tucked the envelope into the remotest corner of his office safe. He swung the steel door shut and returned to his desk, where he sat down and wiped his damp brow.

“Should have let me kick him out,” he muttered. “I never saw such a loony business. And I would have, too, if you hadn't buzzed me on the communicator. Cripes, if a guy put this interview in a book, nobody'd believe it!”

Patience's eyes were dreamy. “It's a lovely case. Lovely!”

“For an alienist,” grumbled the Inspector. “If not for that grand, I'd——”

“No! He's—oh, he's
quaint
. I never imagined a grown person with unaddled brains—he's
not
a maniac, father!—could dress himself up like someone out of a fairy tale and … I suppose you were properly impressed with the beard?” said Patience suddenly.

“Beard! More like dyed wool.”

“A work of art. Whimsical art. Those cunning ringlets! No, there's something decidedly queer about this,” murmured Patience. “I can understand a man feeling the necessity of disguising himself——”

“So you saw that, too? It was a phony, all right,” said the Inspector glumly. “But the queerest phony
I
ever saw.”

“No question about it. And the beard, the glasses, the heavy clothes—all meant to conceal his true appearance. But why the
colours
in the beard, father?”

“He's a nut, I tell you. A green and blue beard!”

“Is it possible he meant to convey something? …” Patience sighed. “But that's preposterous. Divested of his camouflage he should be a tall, thin man with sharp features, probably middle-aged, with a twangy voice——”

“Disguised his voice, too,” muttered the Inspector. “But you're right. There
was
a nosey quality about it. But he's not a Down-East Yank, Patty. Not that kind of twang.”

“Of course not. Surely you got it? He's English, father.”

The Inspector slapped his thigh. “By God, Pat, that's right!”

“He couldn't conceal it,” said Patience, frowning. “And some of his locutions were British, too. His accent was Oxford rather than Cambridge. And then he tripped up on your salty synonyms for ‘dollars,' although that may have been deliberate.” She shrugged. “I don't think there's any doubt about his being a man of culture. There was something even professorish about him, don't you think?”

“Something
screwy
about him,” growled Thumm. He stuck a cigar into his mouth and scowled at his daughter. “But there's one thing he said,” he went on in a quieter voice, “that bothers me. If he shouldn't call up on the twentieth and we have to open the envelope, we've got to call in old Drury for the unveiling. In the name of little Cæsar,
why
?”

“Yes, why?” repeated Patience oddly. “I should say that's the most significant feature of your man's visit.”

They sat in silence, staring thoughtfully at each other. The extraordinary parting request of the disguised Englishman overshadowed the other mysteries. Mr. Drury Lane, while a colourful figure, was the least mysterious old gentleman in the world. Over seventy, for more than a dozen years retired from the stage, he lived the secluded life of the opulent and ageing artist in upper Westchester on an estate of broad acreage, its castle and gardens and little manorial village all charming reproductions of Elizabethan England, which he loved. The Hamlet, as he called his estate, was fit setting for the man. In a past generation Drury Lane had been the world's most distinguished Shakespearian actor. At sixty, in the full vigour of his incredible career, he had suddenly and tragically been stricken stone-deaf. Philosophically, for he was supremely sane, he had set about learning to read lips—an art in which he became remarkably proficient—and had retired to The Hamlet to live on the income of his vast personal fortune and to provide a refuge for outcasts of his own profession and indigent members of the allied arts. The Hamlet became a shrine of learning; its theatre a laboratory for the experimental drama; and its library of Elizabethan folios and Shakespeariana the Mecca of ambitious scholars. Purely as a hobby, the grand old man of the stage had turned his sharp, restless intelligence to the investigation of crime. It was in pursuit of this hobby that he met Inspector Thumm, then in active service in the Detective Bureau of the New York Police Department, and their odd friendship sprang up. They had co-operated effectively in numerous murder investigations both before and after Thumm's retirement from the Department to open a private detective agency. And then they had been joined by Thumm's daughter Patience, who, returning to the land of her birth after an adolescence spent in wandering about Europe with a chaperon, had at once and with characteristic zest plunged into a practical detective alliance with her father and the old actor.

The eyes of the Thumms were troubled. What connection could exist between their mysterious, faintly raffish visitor with his Oppenheimish insinuations of a secret worth millions and their deaf, ailing—Lane had of late years succumbed to the ills of aged flesh—upright, dearly belvoed, and brilliant old friend?

“Shall I write him?” murmured Patience.

The Inspector flung his cigar away in distaste. “I wouldn't. Patty, I tell you this whole business is cock-eyed. Old Drury's connection with us is pretty common knowledge, and this funny galoot with the phony chin-whiskers may be just using Lane's name to impress us. That bird's playing a deep game! No sense in bothering Lane about it now. We've got till the twentieth. I tell you, kid, on the twentieth Whiskers
won't
call up—doesn't intend to call up. He
wants
us to open that envelope. Something's primed, and I don't like the smell of it.… Time enough to let Lane in on it.”

“As you say,” said Patience meekly; but her eyes wandered to the locked door of the safe, and a deep pucker appeared between her brows.

As it turned out, the Inspector was a poor and therefore bitterly astonished prophet. Promptly at noon on the twentieth of May, Thumm's telephone rang. A slightly rusty English voice said: “Inspector Thumm?”

“Yeah?”

Patience, listening on the extension telephone, felt her heart leap.

“This is the man from Nowhere. Millions!” said the rusty English voice; there was a chuckle from the other end of the wire and, before the Inspector could recover from his stupefaction, there was a click and the line went dead.

1

The Man in the Blue Hat

On the twenty-eighth of May, which was a Tuesday, Miss Patience Thumm, whose office hours were elastic, entered the ante-room of the Thumm Detective Agency at a few minutes to ten, smiled cheerily at the sad, moon-eyed Miss Brodie, the agency's official stenographer, and burst into the inner sanctum to find her father listening intently to the heavy earnest tones of a visitor.

“Ah, Patty,” said the Inspector. “Glad you came so early. This is Mr. George Fisher and he's got an interesting little story. My daughter, Fisher. Sort of her father's keeper,” he chuckled. “The brains of this outfit, so you'd better spill it to her.”

The visitor scraped his chair back and rose awkwardly, fumbling with his cap. It was a peaked cap with a soft crown; a small enamelled plate above the peak said: “Rivoli Bus Co.” He was a tall, broad, pleasant-looking young man with unholy red hair; a smart uniform of blue-grey fitted his bulky figure snugly; his chest was bisected obliquely by a black strap which met his broad belt at the waist; and his stout calves were encased in leather.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss Thumm,” he mumbled. “Ain't much of a case——”

“Do sit down, Mr. Fisher,” said Patience with the smile she reserved exclusively for good-looking young clients. “What's the trouble?”

“Well, I was just givin' the Inspector an earful,” said Fisher, his own ears reddening. “Don't know if it's anything, y'see. But it might be. This bird Donoghue's my pal, see, and——”

“Whoa,” said the Inspector. “We'd better start at the beginning, Fisher. Fisher drives one of those big sightseeing buses that park around Times Square, Patty. Rivoli Bus Company. He's worried about a friend of his; and the reason he's come to see us is because this friend, fellow by the name of Donoghue, often mentioned my name to him. Donoghue's an ex-cop; I seem to remember him as a nice husky old boy, good record on the force.”

“Is Donoghue employed by your company, too?” Patience asked, inwardly sighing at the prosaic beginning of the story.

“No, ma'am. He retired from the force about five years ago an' took a job as special guard at that museum on Fifth an' Sixty-Fifth—the Britannic.” Patience nodded; the Britannic Museum was a small but highly esteemed institution for the preservation and exhibition of old English manuscripts and books. She had visited it several times in the company of Mr. Drury Lane, who was one of its patrons. “Donoghue an' my old man were together in harness, see, an' I've known him all my life, ma'am.”

“And something's happened to him?”

Fisher fumbled with his cap. “He's—ma'am, he's disappeared!”

“Ah,” said Patience. “Well, father, that seems to be more in
your
line. When a staid and respectable gentleman of past middle age vanishes it's generally a woman, isn't it?”

“Oh, no, ma'am,” said the bus-driver, “not Donoghue!”

“Have you notified the Missing Persons Bureau?”

“No, ma'am. I—I didn't know if I'd ought to. Old Donoghue would be sorer'n a pup if I raised a fuss for no good reason. Y'see, Miss Thumm,” said Fisher earnestly, “it may be nothin'. I don't know. But it looked damned funny to me.”

“And it is funny,” said the Inspector. “Queer set-up, Pat. Go ahead and tell Miss Thumm what you told me, Fisher.”

Fisher told a strange tale. A party of school-teachers from Indianapolis, in New York on a combined group vacation and educational tour, had chartered one of the Rivoli Bus Company's mammoth machines to conduct them about the city on an itinerary arranged in advance of their visit. Fisher had been told off to drive the party about the city on the previous day, Monday. They had embarked promptly at noon from the company's starting-point, Forty-Fourth Street off Broadway. The last destination on the day's itinerary had been the Britannic Museum. The museum was not on the bus company's regular sightseeing route for obvious reasons: it was a distinctly “highbrow joint,” remarked Fisher without rancour, and most sightseers were content with viewing Chinatown, the Empire State Building, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (from its classic exterior), Radio City, the East Side, and Grant's Tomb. However, the party of visiting schoolteachers was not composed of the usual sightseers; they were teachers of Fine Arts and English in the hinterland and, in Fisher's unadmiring proletarian phrase, were “a bunch of highbrows.” Inspection of the famous Britannic Museum had long been contemplated by the visiting æsthetes as one of the features of their New York tour. At first it had seemed as if they would be doomed to disappointment; for the museum for several weeks past had been closed pending extensive repairs and alterations of the interior, and indeed was not scheduled to be reopened to the public for at least two months to come. But finally the curator and the Board of Directors of the Britannic had granted special permission for the party to visit the museum during its restricted stay in the city.

“Now here's the funny part, Miss Thumm,” said Fisher slowly, “I counted 'em as they climbed into my bus—didn't have to, because on a special like this the bus-starter takes care of the arrangements, and all I have to do is drive; but I counted 'em out of habit, I guess, and there were nineteen of 'em. Nineteen men and women.…”

“How many of each?” asked Patience, her blue eyes kindling.

“Can't say, ma'am. So there were nineteen when we started from our terminal. And what do you think?”

Patience laughed. “I haven't the faintest of brainstorms, Mr. Fisher. What do
you
think?”

“Plenty,” said the bus-driver grimly. “When we gets back to the terminal, see, late afternoon—company rule always to start and finish at the Forty-Fourth Street station, ma'am—when we gets back there and my passengers start gettin' out, I counts 'em again and by God if there wasn't only
eighteen
!”

“I see,” said Patience. “Very odd, to be sure. But what has that to do with the disappearance of your friend Donoghue?”

“His friend Donoghue,” drawled the Inspector, “comes in later. You notice the plot's thickening. Go on, Fisher.” He stared out of the window at the grey walls of Times Square.

“Who was missing?” asked Patience. “Did you check up with the party?”

“No, ma'am. It all happened so fast. But in thinkin' it over I thought I knew who the bird was that hadn't come back with me,” replied Fisher, hunching his big torso forward. “I'd noticed him on the trip up because he was a queer-lookin' duck. Sort of middle-aged, and he wore a big bushy grey moustache—the kind you see in the movies. Regular soup-strainer. Tall gent. And he wore a funny hat, too—kind of blue colour. He'd kept to himself all day, now that I came to think of it—didn't pal with the others or talk to 'em. And now he was missing—hadn't been on the return trip with us.”