Midsummer Mysteries Read online

  ‘So I have caught you, my man!’ said the voice.

  James stared open-mouthed. In the doorway of Mon Desir stood a stranger; a well-dressed man of about forty years of age, his face keen and hawk-like.

  ‘So I have caught you!’ the stranger repeated.

  ‘Who—who are you?’ stammered James.

  ‘Detective-Inspector Merrilees from the Yard,’ said the other crisply. ‘And I will trouble you to hand over that emerald.’

  ‘The—the emerald?’

  James was seeking to gain time.

  ‘That’s what I said, didn’t I?’ said Inspector Merrilees.

  He had a crisp, business-like enunciation. James tried to pull himself together.

  ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ he said with an assumption of dignity.

  ‘Oh, yes, my lad, I think you do.’

  ‘The whole thing,’ said James, ‘is a mistake. I can explain it quite easily—’ He paused.

  A look of weariness had settled on the face of the other.

  ‘They always say that,’ murmured the Scotland Yard man dryly. ‘I suppose you picked it up as you were strolling along the beach, eh? That is the sort of explanation.’

  It did indeed bear a resemblance to it, James recognized the fact, but still he tried to gain time.

  ‘How do I know you are what you say you are?’ he demanded weakly.

  Merrilees flapped back his coat for a moment, showing a badge. Edward stared at him with eyes that popped out of his head.

  ‘And now,’ said the other almost genially, ‘you see what you are up against! You are a novice—I can tell that. Your first job, isn’t it?’

  James nodded.

  ‘I thought as much. Now, my boy, are you going to hand over that emerald, or have I got to search you?’

  James found his voice.

  ‘I—I haven’t got it on me,’ he declared.

  He was thinking desperately.

  ‘Left it at your lodgings?’ queried Merrilees.

  James nodded.

  ‘Very well, then,’ said the detective, ‘we will go there together.’

  He slipped his arm through James’s.

  ‘I am taking no chances of your getting away from me,’ he said gently. ‘We will go to your lodgings, and you will hand that stone over to me.’

  James spoke unsteadily.

  ‘If I do, will you let me go?’ he asked tremulously.

  Merrilees appeared embarrassed.

  ‘We know just how that stone was taken,’ he explained, ‘and about the lady involved, and, of course, as far as that goes—well, the Rajah wants it hushed up. You know what these Indian rulers are?’

  James, who knew nothing whatsoever about Indian rulers, except for one cause célèbre, nodded his head with an appearance of eager comprehension.

  ‘It will be most irregular, of course,’ said the detective; ‘but you may get off scot-free.’

  Again James nodded. They had walked the length of the Esplanade, and were now turning into the town. James intimated the direction, but the other man never relinquished his sharp grip on James’s arm.

  Suddenly James hesitated and half-spoke. Merrilees looked up sharply, and then laughed. They were just passing the police station, and he noticed James’s agonized glances at it.

  ‘I am giving you a chance first,’ he said good-humouredly.

  It was at that moment that things began to happen. A loud bellow broke from James, he clutched the other’s arm, and yelled at the top of his voice:

  ‘Help! thief. Help! thief.’

  A crowd surrounded them in less than a minute. Merrilees was trying to wrench his arm from James’s grasp.

  ‘I charge this man,’ cried James. ‘I charge this man, he picked my pocket.’

  ‘What are you talking about, you fool?’ cried the other.

  A constable took charge of matters. Mr Merrilees and James were escorted into the police station. James reiterated his complaint.

  ‘This man has just picked my pocket,’ he declared excitedly. ‘He has got my note-case in his right-hand pocket, there!’

  ‘The man is mad,’ grumbled the other. ‘You can look for yourself, inspector, and see if he is telling the truth.’

  At a sign from the inspector, the constable slipped his hand deferentially into Merrilees’s pocket. He drew something out and held it up with a gasp of astonishment.

  ‘My God!’ said the inspector, startled out of professional decorum. ‘It must be the Rajah’s emerald.’

  Merrilees looked more incredulous than anyone else.

  ‘This is monstrous,’ he spluttered; ‘monstrous. The man must have put it into my pocket himself as we were walking along together. It’s a plant.’

  The forceful personality of Merrilees caused the inspector to waver. His suspicions swung round to James. He whispered something to the constable, and the latter went out.

  ‘Now then, gentlemen,’ said the inspector, ‘let me have your statements please, one at a time.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said James. ‘I was walking along the beach, when I met this gentleman, and he pretended he was acquainted with me. I could not remember having met him before, but I was too polite to say so. We walked along together. I had my suspicions of him, and just when we got opposite the police station, I found his hand in my pocket. I held on to him and shouted for help.’

  The inspector transferred his glance to Merrilees.

  ‘And now you, sir.’

  Merrilees seemed a little embarrassed.

  ‘The story is very nearly right,’ he said slowly; ‘but not quite. It was not I who scraped acquaintance with him, but he who scraped acquaintance with me. Doubtless he was trying to get rid of the emerald, and slipped it into my pocket while we were talking.’

  The inspector stopped writing.

  ‘Ah!’ he said impartially. ‘Well, there will be a gentleman here in a minute who will help us to get to the bottom of the case.’

  Merrilees frowned.

  ‘It is really impossible for me to wait,’ he murmured, pulling out his watch. ‘I have an appointment. Surely, inspector, you can’t be so ridiculous as to suppose I’d steal the emerald and walk along with it in my pocket?’

  ‘It is not likely, sir, I agree,’ the inspector replied. ‘But you will have to wait just a matter of five or ten minutes till we get this thing cleared up. Ah! here is his lordship.’

  A tall man of forty strode into the room. He was wearing a pair of dilapidated trousers and an old sweater.

  ‘Now then, inspector, what is all this?’ he said. ‘You have got hold of the emerald, you say? That’s splendid, very smart work. Who are these people you have got here?’

  His eyes ranged over James and came to rest on Merrilees. The forceful personality of the latter seemed to dwindle and shrink.

  ‘Why—Jones!’ exclaimed Lord Edward Campion.

  ‘You recognize this man, Lord Edward?’ asked the inspector sharply.

  ‘Certainly I do,’ said Lord Edward dryly. ‘He is my valet, came to me a month ago. The fellow they sent down from London was on to him at once, but there was not a trace of the emerald anywhere among his belongings.’

  ‘He was carrying it in his coat pocket,’ the inspector declared. ‘This gentleman put us on to him.’ He indicated James.

  In another minute James was being warmly congratulated and shaken by the hand.

  ‘My dear fellow,’ said Lord Edward Campion. ‘So you suspected him all along, you say?’

  ‘Yes,’ said James. ‘I had to trump up the story about my pocket being picked to get him into the police station.’

  ‘Well, it is splendid,’ said Lord Edward, ‘absolutely splendid. You must come back and lunch with us, that is if you haven’t lunched. It is late, I know, getting on for two o’clock.’

  ‘No,’ said James; ‘I haven’t lunched—but—’

  ‘Not a word, not a word,’ said Lord Edward. ‘The Rajah, you know, will want to thank you for
getting back his emerald for him. Not that I have quite got the hang of the story yet.’

  They were out of the police station by now, standing on the steps.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said James, ‘I think I should like to tell you the true story.’

  He did so. His lordship was very much entertained.

  ‘Best thing I ever heard in my life,’ he declared. ‘I see it all now. Jones must have hurried down to the bathing-hut as soon as he had pinched the thing, knowing that the police would make a thorough search of the house. That old pair of trousers I sometimes put on for going out fishing, nobody was likely to touch them, and he could recover the jewel at his leisure. Must have been a shock to him when he came today to find it gone. As soon as you appeared, he realized that you were the person who had removed the stone. I still don’t quite see how you managed to see through that detective pose of his, though!’

  ‘A strong man,’ thought James to himself, ‘knows when to be frank and when to be discreet.’

  He smiled deprecatingly whilst his fingers passed gently over the inside of his coat lapel feeling the small silver badge of that little-known club, the Merton Park Super Cycling Club. An astonishing coincidence that the man Jones should also be a member, but there it was!

  ‘Hallo, James!’

  He turned. Grace and the Sopworth girls were calling to him from the other side of the road. He turned to Lord Edward.

  ‘Excuse me a moment?’

  He crossed the road to them.

  ‘We are going to the pictures,’ said Grace. ‘Thought you might like to come.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said James. ‘I am just going back to lunch with Lord Edward Campion. Yes, that man over there in the comfortable old clothes. He wants me to meet the Rajah of Maraputna.’

  He raised his hat politely and rejoined Lord Edward.

  The Oracle at Delphi

  Mrs Willard J. Peters did not really care for Greece. And of Delphi she had, in her secret heart, no opinion at all.

  Mrs Peters’ spiritual homes were in Paris, London and the Riviera. She was a woman who enjoyed hotel life, but her idea of a hotel bedroom was a soft-pile carpet, a luxurious bed, a profusion of different arrangements of electric light, including a shaded bedside lamp, plenty of hot and cold water and a telephone beside the bed, by means of which you could order tea, meals, mineral waters, cocktails and speak to your friends.

  In the hotel at Delphi there were none of these things. There was a marvellous view from the windows, the bed was clean and so was the whitewashed room. There was a chair, a wash-stand and a chest of drawers. Baths took place by arrangement and were occasionally disappointing as regarded hot water.

  It would, she supposed, be nice to say that you had been to Delphi, and Mrs Peters had tried hard to take an interest in Ancient Greece, but she found it difficult. Their statuary seemed so unfinished; so lacking in heads and arms and legs. Secretly, she much preferred the handsome marble angel complete with wings which was erected on the late Mr Willard Peters’ tomb.

  But all these secret opinions she kept carefully to herself, for fear her son Willard should despise her. It was for Willard’s sake that she was here, in this chilly and uncomfortable room, with a sulky maid and a disgusted chauffeur in the offing.

  For Willard (until recently called Junior—a title which he hated) was Mrs Peters’ eighteen-year-old son, and she worshipped him to distraction. It was Willard who had this strange passion for bygone art. It was Willard, thin, pale, spectacled and dyspeptic, who had dragged his adoring mother on this tour through Greece.

  They had been to Olympia, which Mrs Peters thought a sad mess. She had enjoyed the Parthenon, but she considered Athens a hopeless city. And a visit to Corinth and Mycenae had been agony to both her and the chauffeur.

  Delphi, Mrs Peters thought unhappily, was the last straw. Absolutely nothing to do but walk along the road and look at the ruins. Willard spent long hours on his knees deciphering Greek inscriptions, saying, ‘Mother, just listen to this! Isn’t it splendid?’ And then he would read out something that seemed to Mrs Peters the quintessence of dullness.

  This morning Willard had started early to see some Byzantine mosaics. Mrs Peters, feeling instinctively that Byzantine mosaics would leave her cold (in the literal as well as the spiritual sense), had excused herself.

  ‘I understand, Mother,’ Willard had said. ‘You want to be alone just to sit in the theatre or up in the stadium and look down over it and let it sink in.’

  ‘That’s right, pet,’ said Mrs Peters.

  ‘I knew this place would get you,’ said Willard exultantly and departed.

  Now, with a sigh, Mrs Peters prepared to rise and breakfast.

  She came into the dining-room to find it empty save for four people. A mother and daughter, dressed in what seemed to Mrs Peters a most peculiar style (not recognizing the peplum as such), who were discoursing on the art of self-expression in dancing; a plump, middle-aged gentleman who had rescued a suitcase for her when she got off the train and whose name was Thompson; and a newcomer, a middle-aged gentleman with a bald head who had arrived on the preceding evening.

  This personage was the last left in the breakfast room, and Mrs Peters soon fell into conversation with him. She was a friendly woman and liked someone to talk to. Mr Thompson had been distinctly discouraging in manner (British reserve, Mrs Peters called it), and the mother and daughter had been very superior and highbrow, though the girl had got on rather well with Willard.

  Mrs Peters found the newcomer a very pleasant person. He was informative without being highbrow. He told her several interesting, friendly little details about the Greeks, which made her feel much more as though they were real people and not just tiresome history out of a book.

  Mrs Peters told her new friend all about Willard and what a clever boy he was, and how Culture might be said to be his middle name. There was something about this benevolent and bland personage which made him easy to talk to.

  What he himself did and what his name was, Mrs Peters did not learn. Beyond the fact that he had been travelling and that he was having a complete rest from business (what business?), he was not communicative about himself.

  Altogether, the day passed more quickly than might have been anticipated. The mother and daughter and Mr Thompson continued to be unsociable. They encountered the latter coming out of the museum, and he immediately turned in the opposite direction.

  Mrs Peters’ new friend looked after him with a little frown.

  ‘Now I wonder who that fellow is!’ he said.

  Mrs Peters supplied him with the other’s name, but could do no more.

  ‘Thompson—Thompson. No, I don’t think I’ve met him before and yet somehow or other his face seems familiar. But I can’t place him.’

  In the afternoon Mrs Peters enjoyed a quiet nap in a shady spot. The book she took with her to read was not the excellent one on Grecian Art recommended to her by her son but was, on the contrary, entitled The River Launch Mystery. It had four murders in it, three abductions, and a large and varied gang of dangerous criminals. Mrs Peters found herself both invigorated and soothed by the perusal of it.

  It was four o’clock when she returned to the hotel. Willard, she felt sure, would be back by this time. So far was she from any presentiment of evil that she almost forgot to open a note which the proprietor said had been left for her by a strange man during the afternoon.

  It was an extremely dirty note. Idly she ripped it open. As she read the first few lines her face blanched and she put out a hand to steady herself. The handwriting was foreign but the language employed was English.

  Lady (it began),—This to hand to inform you that your son is being held captive by us in place of great security. No harm shall happen to honoured young gentleman if you obey orders of yours truly. We demand for him ransom of ten thousand English pounds sterling. If you speak of this to hotel proprietor or police or any such person your son will be killed. This is given you t
o reflect. Tomorrow directions in way of paying money will be given. If not obeyed the honoured young gentleman’s ears will be cut off and sent you. And following day if still not obeyed he will be killed. Again this is not idle threat. Let the Kyria reflect again—above all—be silent.

  Demetrius the Black Browed

  It were idle to describe the poor lady’s state of mind. Preposterous and childishly worded as the demand was, it yet brought home to her a grim atmosphere of peril. Willard, her boy, her pet, her delicate, serious Willard.

  She would go at once to the police; she would rouse the neighbourhood. But perhaps, if she did—she shivered.

  Then, rousing herself, she went out of her room in search of the hotel proprietor—the sole person in the hotel who could speak English.

  ‘It is getting late,’ she said. ‘My son has not returned yet.’

  The pleasant little man beamed at her. ‘True. Monsieur dismissed the mules. He wished to return on foot. He should have been here by now, but doubtless he has lingered on the way.’ He smiled happily.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Mrs Peters abruptly, ‘have you any bad characters in the neighbourhood?’

  Bad characters was a term not embraced by the little man’s knowledge of English. Mrs Peters made her meaning plainer. She received in reply an assurance that all around Delphi were very good, very quiet people—all well disposed towards foreigners.

  Words trembled on her lips, but she forced them back. That sinister threat tied her tongue. It might be the merest bluff. But suppose it wasn’t? A friend of hers in America had had a child kidnapped, and on her informing the police, the child had been killed. Such things did happen.

  She was nearly frantic. What was she to do? Ten thousand pounds—what was that?—between forty or fifty thousand dollars! What was that to her in comparison with Willard’s safety? But how could she obtain such a sum? There were endless difficulties just now as regarded money and the drawing of cash. A letter of credit for a few hundred pounds was all she had with her.