The Complete Simon Iff (14 page)

“It seems a very interesting case,” interrupted Simon Iff. “Well, sir,” replied the Assistant Commissioner, “not at all, from your standpoint; there’s no psychology in it. There seems little doubt that Haramzada Swamy killed the girl; he may have had one of fifty reasons, though robbery was evidently one of them. There are certainly some curious features in the affair, but none that would be of any interest to you.” “You make me feel so fiery and martial,” returned Iff, “that I shall certainly order some brandy. I hope you will join me. I originally interrupted your remarks in the hope that you would tell me all about the case. I have theories of my own.” “If I may adopt your theory of drinking — which it gave me much pleasure to hear at the Hemlock Club — I am feeling narrative, and a pot of beer and a church-warden is about my style.”

It was a summer afternoon. The place was the lawn of Skindle’s at Maidenhead. The Assistant Commissioner of Police, Roger Broughton, had motored over to lunch with a friend, Jack Flynn, Editor of the “Emerald Tablet,” an advanced high- class review. They had found “Simple Simon,” who had rowed up the river in a skiff outrigger from his summer cottage at Henley, lunching on the lawn in a peculiarly naive, yet sumptuous, manner. “In summer,” he explained to them, after the first greetings, “meat heats the blood. I am therefore compelled to restrict my diet to foie gras and peaches.”

“But Foie Gras is meat.”

“The animal kingdom,” said the mystic, “is distinguished, roughly speaking, from the vegetable, by the fact that animals have power to move freely in all directions. When therefore a goose is nailed to a board, as I understand is necessary to the production of foie gras, it becomes ipso facto a vegetable; as a strict vegetarian, I will therefore have some more.” And he heaped his plate.

The new-comers laughed; no one ever knew when to take the magician seriously. “What’s the drink?” asked Flynn; “it’s a new one on me.” “This is a Crowley Cup No. 3,” he said. “So named after its discoverer. Take a large jug, the larger the better; half fill with selected strawberries; cover the fruit with Grand Marnier Cordon Rouge; ice carefully; fill up with iced champagne, the best obtainable. Stir the mixture; drink it; order more, and repeat. A simple, harmless, and wholesome beverage.”

“A temperance drink, I suppose?” queried Broughton, laughingly.

“Certainly,” replied the magician; “in my recent journey to America I was careful to obtain an exact definition of what was and what was not alcoholic. Drinks which contain less than 40 per cent alcohol come under the general heading of the Demon Rum; their sale is restricted in every possible way, and in many States prohibited altogether. Drinks containing more than 40 per cent of alcohol are medicines, and are sold in the drug stores without restriction of any kind.”

“But that champagne reduces the percentage, surely?” “Champagne forms no part of the drink; it is used merely to dilute the medicine itself.”

Broughton, who knew Iff but slightly, looked bewildered, and appealed mutely to Flynn, who knew him well. “You mustn’t laugh or cry,” said he; “you must just let your brain expand, and try to get the point of view.”

“You mustn’t think I’m laughing at you, Mr. Iff,” apologized Broughton; “we don’t forget your masterly work in the case of Professor Briggs.”

So lunch proceeded; it was only at the end, as it were by accident, that Broughton had mentioned the murder which had stirred London a few days earlier.

Broughton, having been accommodated with the primitive refreshment indicated as harmonious to narrative, began his story.

“Ananda Haramzada Swamy is a Doctor of Philosophy of the University of London. He is 33 years old, and has a wife, to whom two children have been born ”

“By a previous marriage? I asked because of your phrasing.”

“It’s a long story, and has nothing to do with the case. Haramzada Swamy — let us call him the Swamy for short — is an Eurasian; and curiously enough, it is his father that was black, a Tamil. The mother was an Englishwoman.”

Simon Iff pursed his lips. “He is a man of loose morals,” continued the Commissioner, puffing at his long pipe, “and rents an apartment, or rather a bedroom with bathroom attached, on the fifth floor of St. Noc’s Mansions, near Hyde Park. This room is a mere assignation chamber. It is furnished only with a divan, a wardrobe, and a small cupboard full of liquors and tobacco. The room is, however, sumptuous in the Oriental style, and the walls are covered with obscene pictures and photographs. He allowed no one to enter, naturally enough, but used to send his wife weekly to dust it.”

Simon Iff could not restrain another gesture of disgust.

“The whole block of apartments is ‘under the Rose,’ as it were; but — please note this — although in a general way we ask no questions as to the doings of the inhabitants and their visitors, we maintain a correspondingly strict supervision of them, on the watch always for anything outside what I may call honest, straightforward immorality.”

“I see,” said Iff, thoughtfully.

“The last masked ball of the season took place at Covent Garden on the first Saturday in July. Haramzada was present, and won a prize for the magnificence of his costume, that of a Persian prince of the 15 th century. I may mention that he was a critic of art, as well as of philosophy. He left on the arm of a masked lady, who had not competed; no one had seen her face. They went direct in a taxi to the Swami’s flat. This was about 3 a. m.; the time is uncertain. It may have been much earlier. A few minutes before five, however, and this time is accurate within ten minutes, Haramzada was seen, in his ordinary day costume, creeping down the stairs, stealthily and swiftly. The lift man only saw him by chance. He had gone up to the fifth floor on a ring, only to find no one there. Irritated, he left the lift, and looked over the stairs, just chancing to see the Swami as he crossed the hall. He supposed, naturally, that the lady was with him.

“Now comes the hand of Providence. It was the custom of that wicked elevator attendant to search the rooms of the tenants, when he was sure of their absence, and not too likely to be caught off duty; his hope was to find what he has since described to us, in a burst of candor, as ‘perks’; videlicet; any small objects of value which seemed to him unlikely to be missed. So he pulled his lever, and went up to the fifth floor, opened the Swami’s flat with his master key, and entered. The light was switched on.

“The body of a nearly naked woman lay before him. Blood was pouring from a wound in the head; but life was perhaps not extinct. Daniels, as the man was called, acted quickly and properly. He called a doctor on the telephone, describing the nature of the wound, and then notified us. He then had a messenger sent for the man who would normally have relieved him at seven o’clock, so that he might remain on guard.

“When our men arrived, a minute before the doctor, we found Daniels trying various primitive methods of first aid.

“Detective-Inspector Brown took in the situation at a glance. While the doctor attended the wounded woman, he telephoned headquarters, and a general alarm was sent out for the apprehension of the Swamy.

“At 5 45 the doctor, who had been working energetically to restore consciousness to the victim of the outrage, pronounced life extinct. Daniels was dismissed, but two minutes later he reappeared with the news that the Swamy was in the street outside.

“Brown flung open the window, and cautiously looked out. The Swamy, with his coat collar turned up, and his slouch hat pulled well over his face, was approaching the door in a very furtive manner. Brown determined to give him a free hand. He telephoned down to the other porter to go up to the ninth floor, so as to give the Eurasian his chance to enter unobserved. The door of his flat was closed, and the party awaited developments.

“Unfortunately there was no place where our men could hide. The wardrobe would only have concealed one man. In a few minutes the steps of the Swamy were heard coming up the stairs; a key was pushed into the lock; the door opened; our men seized him. The creature collapsed, mentally and physically, in their arms. It was actually found necessary to apply restoratives. The wretch had evidently counted upon ample leisure to dispose of the body.”

“Why had he left the place at all?” This from Jack Flynn.

“Evidently in order to dispose of the proceeds of the robbery. Doubtless he has some safe cache. Well, to continue. When he came to, he was arrested and cautioned. He said, however, that he knew nothing about the matter at all; denied that he knew the woman, or of her presence. Charged at the police court with the murder, he reserved his defence, and was remanded for a week. The same day he wrote out a long rambling statement which I can only call fantastically feeble. The following week he was committed for trial. He then issued another statement, entirely contradicting the former, and endeavoring to explain it away. It is, however, as contrary to ascertained fact as the earlier effort. I expect the truth is that the animal is almost mad with fear. He had probably arranged a safe way of disposing of the boy, which was upset by the chance of the early discovery of the crime.

“The murdered woman was identified by her husband on the afternoon following the crime. As you know, it was old Sybil Lady Brooke-Hunter, a leader of the smart set, fast, alcoholic, a plague to her old husband, who should have divorced her ten years ago. She haunted every shady rendezvous in London in search of adventure ——”

“Well, she found one all right!” put in Jack Flynn.

“She did. That night she was wearing over ten thousands pounds worth of jewelry, like a fool, as she was. It has all disappeared. Daniels noticed that she was wearing it when she entered St. Noc’s Mansions.

“The curious part of the case is her husband’s attitude. He refuses to believe that she was ever guilty of an indiscretion in her life; insists that her wanderings in London were purely philanthropic, that she must have been drugged or chloroformed or hypnotized or what not. He is an old man of Puritan views; ‘if I believed her guilty of so much as a flirtation,’ he said to Brown; ‘I would thank God that He had punished her!’ And he’s the only man in London who doesn’t know what she was. She was a barmaid, you remember, as common as the bar she served, when he married her. Lord, but there are some fools about!”

“Is that the story?” asked Simple Simon, quietly.

“I think that’s everything. We haven’t found the jewelry. There’s no reason to suspect any other man in the case. The facts are all against Haramzada Swamy, and his six-cylinder double-action lying doesn’t help him.”

“How was she killed?”

“There is a large open fireplace in the room. He had caught up the poker, and brained her. It was lying by the body, with blood on it.”

“So you rest your case there?”

“All right, my lord!”

“Oh no! I’m for the defense,” said Simon Iff. “Here are some facts quite incompatible with the theory that Haramzada Swamy committed the murder. Only last month I happened to be reading his book on Buddhism.” Jack Flynn threw a laughing glance at the Police Commissioner, as much as to say, “now the fun begins.”

“In this book,” pursued the mystic, “he conclusively proves himself innocent of this murder. I will not distress you with the details, but the main argument of the book is that the Buddha was a hedonist, that he called pleasure the greatest good. This argument is based on one fact only; this, that the Buddha declared everything to partake of the nature of sorrow (which is just one-third of the truth) and that his whole system is therefore devoted to the escape from this Everything.

“But pleasure has nothing to do with this. Sensation is only the second of the ‘Skandhas’ in Buddhist psychology; at the very second gate on the path, pleasure and pain must be recognized as illusions, and rooted out of the mind. Why, desire in any form is the very cause of all sorrow and evil in the Buddhist system.

“Now, gentlemen, we are none of us Buddhists; we may dislike Buddhism very much; and we may call it too abstract, too remote, too barren, too bitter, too ascetic, too formal, too metaphysical, too almost anything you please. We may abuse the Buddha as an Atheist, as a nominalist, as a rationalist, as a sceptic; no one can do more than argue the contrary. But if we represent the Buddha as a high-priest of pleasure, and his religion as a religion of pleasure, we should be shut up in an asylum — or, if not, realize that we have given ourselves away. For there is only one type of sane man who can fail to recognize the elevated morality, the self-abnegation and nobility, the lofty compassion, the almost unthinkable passion for renunciation, which mark Buddhism. To this day the Bhikkhus, or rather Poonggis, of Burma, where alone the true canonical doctrine has been preserved free from corruption, are men of the most exalted virtue. They are often ignorant by our standards; but of their sincerity, their purity, their general morality, there is only one opinion. Even the missionaries, whose one chief task is to slander the people among whom they live, have failed to destroy the reputation of these noble men. I lived among them myself for three years; I might have joined their ranks, had I felt myself worthy to do so. My lord and gentlemen of the jury, I confidently leave the fate of my unfortunate client in your hands.”

“Heaven help me!” cried Broughton, “he’s never mentioned the murder at all!”

“Ah that’s what you think — and what I think”; laughed Flynn; “but in reality he has torn your case to pieces!”

“If you’re not convinced of his innocence,” retorted Simple Simon, “I really despair of human reason. However, let us get a few fresh facts. What, besides this book on Buddhism, which I have dealt with so effectively, do we know of his antecedents?”

“As it happens,” said Jack Flynn, “I can tell you a lot. It’s an ugly story, too, and I’d hang him on that alone, if I were judge and jury. It’s not evidence — like what the soldier said — but this being a psychological investigation, it is pertinent. Broughton has told us how he might have done the murder; I will prove to you that he was just the sort of man who would have done it. And I am assuming that the little lecture on Buddhism was intended to prove that he was the sort of man who would not.”