Richard Harding Davis

“ They were the names of two brothers. One is well known to you. It is that of the African explorer of whom this gentleman was just speaking. I mean the Earl of Chetney. The other was the name of his brother, Lord Arthur Chetney.”
The men at the table fell back as though a trapdoor had fallen open at their feet.
“Lord Chetney!” they exclaimed in chorus. They glanced at each other and back to the American with every expression of concern and disbelief.
“It is impossible!” cried the Baronet. “Why, my dear sir, young Chetney only arrived from Africa yesterday. ”

“ On the night after the great fog of 1897 there were five members in the Club, four of them busy with supper and one reading in front of the fireplace. There is only one room to the Club, and one long table. At the far end of the room the fire of the grill glows red, and, when the fat falls, blazes into flame, and at the other there is a broad bow window of diamond panes, which looks down upon the street. ”

“ Immediately at my feet was the body of a beautiful woman, lying at full length upon the floor, her arms flung out on either side of her, and her white face and shoulders gleaming dully in the unsteady light of the candle. Around her throat was a great chain of diamonds, and the light played upon these and made them flash and blaze in tiny flames. But the woman who wore them was dead, and I was so certain as to how she had died that without an instant’s hesitation I dropped on my knees beside her and placed my hands above her heart. ”

“ The man with the pearl stud leaned forward with a nervous gesture. “Hush! be careful!” he whispered. But at that instant, for the third time, a servant, hastening through the room, handed him a piece of paper which he scanned eagerly. The message on the paper read, “The light over the Commons is out. The House has risen.”
The man with the black pearl gave a mighty shout, and tossed the paper from him upon the table.
“Hurrah!” he cried. “The House is up! We’ve won!” He caught up his glass, and slapped the Naval Attache violently upon the shoulder. ”

“ It was about one o’clock in the morning, while we were still there, that Inspector Lyle and the officers from Scotland Yard came to arrest Lord Arthur on the charge of murdering his brother. You can imagine our dismay and distress. Like every one else, I had learned from the afternoon papers that Lord Chetney was not dead, but that he had returned to England, and on arriving at Chetney House I had been told that Lord Arthur had gone to the Bath Hotel to look for his brother and to inform him that if he wished to see their father alive he must come to him at once. ”

“ I explained that I had been robbed in a French railway carriage of a diamond necklace belonging to the Queen of England, which her Majesty was sending as a present to the Czarina of Russia. I pointed out to him that if he succeeded in capturing the thief he would be made for life, and would receive the gratitude of three great powers.
“He wasn’t the sort that thinks second thoughts are best. He saw Russian and French decorations sprouting all over his chest, and he hit a bell, and pressed buttons, and yelled out orders like the captain of a penny steamer in a fog. ”

“ I was only too willing to hear any theory which pointed to any one else as the criminal than Arthur, but Lyle’s explanation was too utterly fantastic. I told him that he certainly showed imagination, but that he could not hang a man for what he imagined he had done.
“‘No,’ Lyle answered, ‘but I can frighten him by telling him what I think he has done, and now when I again question the Russian servant I will make it quite clear to him that I believe he is the murderer. I think that will open his mouth. A man will at least talk to defend himself. ”

“ The gentleman with the black pearl shrugged his shoulders.
“It would prevent him speaking in the House to-night. The Navy Increase Bill,” he added gloomily. “It is a Government measure, and Sir Andrew speaks for it. And so great is his influence and so large his following that if he does”—the gentleman laughed ruefully—“if he does, it will go through. Now, had I the spirit of our ancestors,” he exclaimed, “I would bring chloroform from the nearest chemist’s and drug him in that chair. I would tumble his unconscious form into a hansom cab, and hold him prisoner until daylight. ”

“ It is a remarkable crime, to, which, unfortunately, I am the only person who can bear witness. Because I am the only witness, I am, in spite of my immunity as a diplomat, detained in London by the authorities of Scotland Yard. My name,” he said, inclining his head politely, “is Sears, Lieutenant Ripley Sears of the United States Navy, at present Naval Attache to the Court of Russia. Had I not been detained to-day by the police I would have started this morning for Petersburg.” ”

“ I was never better pleased with him in my life.’ He turned to Inspector Lyle, who was sitting at the foot of the bed taking notes of all he told us.
“‘Why in the name of common sense,’ he cried, ‘should I have chosen that moment of all others to send my brother back to the grave!’ For a moment the Inspector did not answer him. I do not know if any of you gentlemen are acquainted with Inspector Lyle, but if you are not, I can assure you that he is a very remarkable man. Our firm often applies to him for aid, and he has never failed us; my father has the greatest possible respect for him. ”

“ Although it was now past one o’clock, Arthur had not returned. None of us knew where Madame Zichy lived, so we could not go to recover Lord Chetney’s body. We spent a most miserable night, hastening to the window whenever a cab came into the square, in the hope that it was Arthur returning, and endeavoring to explain away the facts that pointed to him as the murderer. I am a friend of Arthur’s, I was with him at Harrow and at Oxford, and I refused to believe for an instant that he was capable of such a crime ”

“ He is not a fool, and had he stabbed his brother and this woman, he would have seen that by placing the knife near her he could help to make it appear as if she had killed Chetney and then committed suicide. Besides, Lord Arthur insisted that the evidence in his behalf would be our finding the knife here. He would not have urged that if he knew we would not find it, if he knew he himself had carried it away. This is no suicide. A suicide does not rise and hide the weapon with which he kills himself, and then lie down again. ”

“ Where he has the advantage over the ordinary police official is in the fact that he possesses imagination. He imagines himself to be the criminal, imagines how he would act under the same circumstances, and he imagines to such purpose that he generally finds the man he wants. I have often told Lyle that if he had not been a detective he would have made a great success as a poet, or a playwright. ”

“ As a rule, my confreres carry the official packages in a despatch-box, which is just as obvious as a lady’s jewel bag in the hands of her maid. Every one knows they are carrying something of value. They put a premium on dishonesty. Well, after I saw the ‘Scrap of Paper’ play, I determined to put the government valuables in the most unlikely place that any one would look for them. So I used to hide the documents they gave me inside my riding-boots, and small articles, such as money or jewels, I carried in an old cigar-case. ”

“ So I decided that the younger brother had better murder the older one. The Princess Zichy I invented out of a clear sky. The fog I did not have to invent. Since last night I know all that there is to know about a London fog. I was lost in one for three hours.”
The Baronet turned grimly upon the Queen’s Messenger.
“But this gentleman,” he protested, “he is not a writer of short stories; he is a member of the Foreign Office. I have often seen him in Whitehall, and, according to him, the Princess Zichy is not an invention. He says she is very well known, that she tried to rob him.” ”

“ I ran to the screen and, kneeling beside the dead man, began a search through his pockets. My hand at once fell upon a card-case, and I found on all the cards it contained the title of the Earl of Chetney. His watch and cigarette-case also bore his name. These evidences, and the fact of his bronzed skin, and that his cheekbones were worn with fever, convinced me that the dead man was the African explorer, and the boy who had fled past me in the night was Arthur, his younger brother. ”

“ Sir Andrew’s face bloomed with brilliant color. His body shook with suppressed emotion.
“My dear sir!” he cried, “you should spend more time at the House and less at your Club. The Navy Bill was brought up on its third reading at eight o’clock this evening. I spoke for three hours in its favor. My only reason for wishing to return again to the House to-night was to sup on the terrace with my old friend, Admiral Simons; for my work at the House was completed five hours ago, when the Navy Increase Bill was passed by an overwhelming majority.” ”

“ Lyle pointed at the modern French paintings and the heavy silk rugs which hung upon the walls.
“‘The unknown is a man of taste and of some fortune,’ he said, ‘not the sort of man to send a stupid peasant to guard the woman he loves. So I am not content to believe, with Mr. Sears, that the servant is a boor. I believe him instead to be a very clever ruffian. I believe him to be the protector of his master’s honor, or, let us say, of his master’s property, whether that property be silver plate or the woman his master loves. ”

“ He hears the woman declare that she has had no admirer but himself, that this unknown Russian was, and is, nothing to her, that there is no man she loves but him, and that she cannot live, knowing that he is alive, without his love. Suppose Chetney believed her, suppose his former infatuation for her returned, and that in a moment of weakness he forgave her and took her in his arms. That is the moment the Russian master has feared. ”

“ So a dead man, for the single reason that he is dead, does not repel me, and, though I knew that there was no hope that this man was alive, still for decency’s sake, I felt his pulse, and while I kept my ears alert for any sound from the floors above me, I pulled open his shirt and placed my hand upon his heart. ”

“ Once started on a tale of murder, robbery, and sudden death, nothing can tear him from it, not even the call of the division bell, nor of hunger, nor the prayers of the party Whip. He gave up his country house because when he journeyed to it in the train he would become so absorbed in his detective stories that he was invariably carried past his station.” The member of Parliament twisted his pearl stud nervously, and bit at the edge of his mustache. ”

“ The infatuation of his elder brother, Lord Chetney, for a Russian princess, so Inspector Lyle tells me, is well known to every one. About two years ago the Princess Zichy, as she calls herself, and he were constantly together, and Chetney informed his friends that they were about to be married. The woman was notorious in two continents, and when Lord Edam heard of his son’s infatuation he appealed to the police for her record. ”

“ I was told to take them to the Russian Ambassador in Paris who was to deliver them at Moscow. I am a Queen’s Messenger,” he added.
“Oh, I see,” exclaimed Sir Andrew in a tone of relief. “And you say that this same Princess Zichy, one of the victims of this double murder, endeavored to rob you of—of—that cigar-case.”
“And the Czarina’s diamonds,” answered the Queen’s Messenger imperturbably. “It’s not much of a story, but it gives you an idea of the woman’s character. The robbery took place between Paris and Marseilles.” ”

“ For a flash of time I was too startled to act, but in the same flash I was convinced that the man had met his death from no accident, that he had not died through any ordinary failure of the laws of nature. ”

“ I told them that the house they must at once find was one set back from the street within a radius of two hundred yards from the Knightsbridge Barracks, that within fifty yards of it some one was giving a dance to the music of a Hungarian band, and that the railings before it were as high as a man’s waist and filed to a point. With that to work upon, twenty men were at once ordered out into the fog to search for the house, and Inspector Lyle himself was despatched to the home of Lord Edam, Chetney’s father, with a warrant for Lord Arthur’s arrest. ”

“ For this reason the four strangers at supper were seated together, with the candles grouped about them, and the long length of the table cutting a white path through the outer gloom.
“I repeat,” said the gentleman with the black pearl stud, “that the days for romantic adventure and deeds of foolish daring have passed, and that the fault lies with ourselves. Voyages to the pole I do not catalogue as adventures. That African explorer, young Chetney, who turned up yesterday after he was supposed to have died in Uganda, did nothing adventurous. ”

“ That Lord Chetney is not dead, that his Solicitor did not find a letter of yours written from your post in Petersburg, and that just now, when he charged you with murder, he was in jest?”
“I am really very sorry,” said the American, “but you see, sir, he could not have found a letter written by me in St. Petersburg because I have never been in Petersburg. Until this week, I have never been outside of my own country. I am not a naval officer. I am a writer of short stories. ”