T. S. Stribling

“ Cheswick. He hurried to Trafalgar Square and stared up and down the waterside out over the forest of masts in the Carenage. He strained his attention over the myriad figures that swarmed the waterside. The place worked like a formicary. The hopelessness of finding any particular man in the crowded sun-shot jam forced itself upon the American. Also it told him how safe was Cap McGabe in his waterlogged retreat.
As Poggioli moved up and down the hot wharf, squinting his eyes and rather hopeless of finding any one he knew, he heard his name shouted in the din. ”

“ At that moment Poggioli's thoughts were diverted by the crowd from the cricket game beginning to flow back down Beckles Road into Bay Street. Some lined themselves up in the shade of the mangoes to await the mule tram car which serves Bridgetown; others with inveterate English pedestrianism started walking on down town through the glaring white dust of the thoroughfare. Over the crowd hung a tense shocked atmosphere which held quite different spiritual overtones from the usual English reserve after a cricket game. ”

“ Poggioli subsided again on his belly, deeply grateful for that fact. He supposed he would not be killed. He wondered what Cheswick would do with him to prevent his return to Bathsheba; shanghai him possibly; a voyage on the slaver—
He lifted his head slowly and peered at Cheswick among the cross hatching of the sea grape stems. It seemed to him that he was seeing the man for the first time; a naked foe of all men. ”

“ You are like all the rest of the fellows, seem to think I'm a magician. If I inquire if a man is tall, short, dull or keen, you think that is the clew to the maze. It's all because of that confounded article in the Times. They tooted me up as a sleight-of-hand performer who can run his hand into an empty bag—" here Poggioli made a reaching gesture, "and pull out a murderer!"
Here Poggioli caught Cheswick's lapel and mimicked holding him up to an audience.
Mr. Cheswick's cigar tumbled out of his mouth. He stared for a moment at the American with wide pale eyes, then burst into great laughter. ”

“ The heat pressed down on the American's skull like the thumb of a giant. Poggioli blinked the sting of perspiration out of his eyes and thought doggedly of Codrington College; Cheswick's visit to Codrington College. Presently an explanation filtered into his heat-drugged brain. Cheswick had made that as an excuse to go and bring the rest of his stolen banknotes aboard the schooner preparatory to leaving the country.
The American shook the stuffiness out of his head and planned what to do. He must get in touch with some of the harbor police and seize Cheswick when he reappeared with the notes. ”

“ THAT night Poggioli went around to the police station on Coleridge Street and asked for a plain-clothes man to stand watch on Bathsheba wharf on the following day. At first the police sergeant demanded bruskly enough the reason for such an unusual request, but when he discovered he was addressing Mr. Poggioli he became at once respectful, not to say obsequious.
"Yes, sir, I've heard of you; read about you in the Times. I'd take it as a great privilege to cooperate with such a distinguished criminologist. There will not only be a man down there, Mr. Poggioli, I'll be there myself. ”

“ There is no compulsive logic holding any two human propositions together. The feel of logic is merely our reaction to sequences. Berkely was right and Kant wrong. Great reasoners are simply lucky guessers—or inspired gropers. He himself had groped in this tangle from one hypothesis to another and now here he was with verity arrived at, which was, concretely, a quarter of a million dollars in bank notes. It was one of the happiest moments of Poggioli's life. ”

“ Even in the midst of his danger a kind of understanding of such a gusty, wanton, salty existence crept into Poggioli's chameleon mind. The imbecility of his own approach amazed him, but in the same breath explained itself to him in the highly complimentary terms a man's own mind always explains itself. It was simply because he was a sublimated intellect, and pure intelligence has never yet felt fear or taken a precaution. Only the animal emotions in man make him defensive and crafty. ”

“ If some one would bring me all the data and say, 'Here it is, what happened?' I'd like such a problem, but when human lives depend upon your efforts, very often brilliant men, your friends, and then see them—"
"Hanged?" inquired the gentleman in an odd tone.
"No, trapped and murdered," stated Poggioli hotly, thinking of his Haitian adventure. "I tell you, the detection of crime is a —— occupation. A man who follows it will become a monster. I, for one, will never again engage in the trade or sport of man-hunting. That's why I say I wish I had never come to this island." ”

“ Seated back in the grove Poggioli would glimpse the white walls or roof of a venerable old English manor; the eminently respectable country seat of some ultra English Barbadian aristocrat, like Sir Alexander Hemmingway. An amazing folk, the English; nobody quite like them in the world. Poggioli wondered, where was Cheswick? ”

“ There was more than a touch of the improbable in this theory, but when a man has only one horse he cannot choose his steed.
The moment this solution popped into Poggioli's mind he automatically rejected Cap McGabe as the possible murderer. He believed such complications were beyond the brain of a "red-leg." Then, sliding from one theme into another without any obvious connection, Poggioli found himself trying to recall when it was, and from exactly what direction Mr. Cheswick had entered the piazza of Bay Mansion Hotel. ”

“ Cheswick made a gesture with his cigar,
"That's Mr. Poggioli."
"Master," wailed the woman turning to the American. "I was advised to come to you. They said if ever a gentleman could work a poor boy out of a bad case, it would be you. I haven't any money, Master, but I'll give you an order for my wages at the sugar mills."
"Madam," interposed Poggioli, rather at sea amid these wailing complaints, "may I ask who you are?"
"I'm the Widow McGabe."
"What do you want, Mrs. McGabe?"
"I want you to loose my son, Cap, from the bobbies. You know he didn't kill young Oswald Hemmingway, my master. ”

“ Cheswick's mustache gave a downward quirk.
"I didn't like what you said on the hotel porch; a detective's occupation being the most in the world; and then if I had confided in you, you might have published it in the Times—"
Poggioli was angrier than ever. He brushed the white sand from his clothes, then he did the same for Wilberforce, who couldn't assist himself. On Wilberforce's garments were two or three smudges of blue clay. ”

“ He stared woodenly ahead of him out of respect for the baronet, and tried to touch Poggioli by whom he sat as slightly as possible. The American himself began planning some method to get Cap McGabe out of the island. The ethics of shouldering a murder off on an innocent man crossed his mind. He leaned and murmured this observation to Hodges. The clerk looked around with a certain surprize in his pinkish eyes.
"It would be best for him to go, sir," whispered Hodges. "He'd have to stand his trial which would be expensive. Then we don't know Mr. Oswald killed hisself. ”

“ His escape from the police in the Carenage struck me as a tour de force."
"It was not original," smiled Jones, "that's been done several times."
"It seems to me," interposed Cheswick, "that we are more interested in the question: Will McGabe resist our effort to deport him? However, I am not criticizing any question asked by an expert."
"He probably wouldn't resist if he were approached right," said Jones.
"If it's a matter of diplomacy you'd be a good man to approach him," suggested Poggioli.
"I don't want to go by myself," retreated Jones at once. ”

“ THIS new tragedy coming on top of the American's somber reflections gave the psychologist a thrill of dismay. He got up from his seat nervously, and in default of any other listener addressed the blond gentleman.
"I'd give a month's salary not to have been on this island when this occurred."
The man with the mustache came out of his meditation to look curiously at Poggioli.
"How can it affect a completely detached American like you?" ”

“ Then I knew it wouldn't do for a bank cashier to be seen too often around the cable office. A man in his position has got to keep up appearances. It's a duty he owes his bank."
Poggioli nodded.
"And then he paid me in an odd way," pursued Mr. Dwight hopefully.
"How, send you a check?"
"Oh no, sir," cried Mr. Dwight. "He wouldn't have checks coming to the bank from the cable company. That would have led to questions at once. No, he just mailed me a five-pound note with nothing else in the envelope, just the note, and phoned me what was coming. ”

“ Poggioli."
The American stared at his companion.
"Didn't you just ask me to assist in proving that McGabe had assassinated your son?"
"That was before I knew he had escaped. His flight is an admission of guilt. Now I ask you to help him get away so he may never come to trial."
Poggioli was on the verge of crying, "But I don't understand," when a certain ray of comprehension filtered into the enigma—the baronet's son was a suicide. ”

“ This appealed to Poggioli as being the ideal procedure for a criminal investigator; the planning brain while other men applied the physical force. Poggioli had the Latin aristocrat's dislike for all violent physical contacts which has sublimated even their personal encounters to the finical but deadly aloofness of dueling.
The plan put him in high spirits and sent him walking briskly through the night to his hotel. Once or twice a wonderment came to him as to what could have prompted Mr. Cheswick to make his excursion to Codrington College. ”

“ The enmity between the red-legs and the negroes had begun when both were slaves in the Barbadan sugar fields, and time had only strengthened the rancor between them.
"I wouldn't want to go with the niggers, sir—after being a gentleman in a gentleman's cricket club."
Poggioli stepped to the rail. He looked down but could see nothing as the fugitive kept himself covered by the schooner's overhang.
"It will be a lot better than soaking here in the Carenage, Cap; you'll be with the schooner for three or four days, then you'll be turned loose in Santo a free man." ”

“ The American pondered and fished for his cigaret case, an action habitual with him when he started thinking.
"Hodges, that's an extraordinary sequence."
"That's what I was saying, sir."
"It is not only extraordinary, but I should say for sheer undirected fortuity, it is impossible, that is practically impossible."
"I don't see why you say it is impossible, sir; he did it, here it is."
"Mathematically impossible, I mean. It is just as unlikely to bet eighteen times and lose every time as it would be to bet eighteen times and win every time. ”

“ It's not every clerk could have done as I did, sir—tipped off a great detective with a clew—eh?"
Hodges's thoughts evidently were running along the same lines as Poggioli's, only with more naïvete.
HAD the Imperial Bank of Barbados been located in London or New York, its furnishings would have been described by the simple word "marble," but in the dusty sunstruck port of Bridgetown the only adjective which could properly qualify the Imperial's grandeur is the polysyllable marmoreal. For the force of adjectives, like gravitation, the speed of light and the beauty of women, is relative. ”

“ He moved slowly back up through the hotly illuminated dullness of Bridgetown, gazing steadfastly at certain mental objects: The five hundred pounds withdrawn from the bank, the speculative losses which balanced the five hundred—It occurred to Poggioli that five hundred pounds was a sum large enough to tempt an ordinary man to almost any crime, whereas to a baronet's son it would be mere spending money. Oswald Hemmingway might well have wagered that whole amount on one cricket game and thought little of it. ”

“ It pursued its way up Broad Street where the smartest shops in Bridgetown possess dingy windows crisscrossed with iron bars so that they display nothing whatever. As Poggioli stared at these dull respectable shops, a thought struck him.
"Sir Alexander, doesn't it strike you as incongruous for your son to commit suicide just after winning a cricket game? It is very unnatural that he should have picked a moment filled with the elation of victory for such an act."
The baronet made a hopeless gesture. ”

“ All us young fellows in the street, sir, follow the stock reports. We say to each other at the club, 'Reading jumped five points' or in a big flurry, such as we've just had, 'Amalgamated hopped thirty-nine in two hours.' And none of us can help thinking, 'Five thousand pounds in this or that would have made us rich men.' It's a queer thing, sir, to see fortunes, motor cars, villas, wives and even private yachts, swing so easy back and forth in the stock reports, when a lucky shot of say five thousand pounds would bring 'em down ”

“ MASTER MIND UNRAVELS MURDER
MYSTERY
DEDUCING HIS WHOLE CLEW FROM STAIN ON
BANK NOTE AMERICAN SHERLOCK HOLMES
BRINGS MURDERER TO GALLOWS.
Professor Henry Poggioli, the celebrated American criminologist who is spending a few days in Barbados, once more exhibited his uncanny powers of deduction in bringing to justice one of the cleverest rogues and the most bloodthirsty murderer our island empire has ever known. The story of the arrest of one Charles Wilberforce reads more like a romance from the pen of A. Conan Doyle than a recountal of sober fact. ”

“ The American deserted the remnants of his breakfast and hurried down to the beach to look for his—he decided on the term "man." Then he recalled that police officers, detectives, sheriffs, etc., etc., always used the word "man." Looking for their "man"; catching their "man"; hanging their "man"—a loathsome euphemism by which they disguised their treacherous trade!
ON THE beach, only a fat old man and two Barbadian women were bathing. Just as he saw there was no Mr. Cheswick visible, he heard the distant rattle of a tram on Bay Street. ”

“ It is not correct psychology for a boatman to leave his boat and grope among bushes for his passenger. An intimation that he had made some strange and fundamental error began to move in Poggioli. He lifted his head and stared through the bushes with wide speculative eyes. ”