The Blind Barber (Dr. Gideon Fell series Book 4) Read online

  “But, speaking of Great Personages, we now come to the other celebrity aboard the Queen Victoria, also paralysed with sea-sickness. This was none other than Lord Sturton—you know—the one they call the Hermit of Jermyn Street. He’ll see nobody; he has no friends; all he does is collect bits of rare jewellery … ”

  Dr. Fell took the pipe out of his mouth and blinked.

  “Look here,” he said suspiciously, “there’s something I want to know before you go on. Is this by any chance the familiar chestnut about the fabulous diamond known as the Lake of Light, or some such term, which was pinched out of the left eye of an idol at Burma, and is being stalked by a sinister stranger in a turban? Because, if it is, I’ll be damned if I listen to you … ”

  Morgan wrinkled his forehead sardonically.

  “No,” he said. “I told you it was a rummy thing; it’s much queerer than that. But I’m bound to confess that a jewel does figure in the story—it was what tangled us up and raised all the hell when the wires got crossed—but nobody ever intended it to figure at all.”

  “H’m!” said Dr. Fell, peering at him.

  “And also I am bound to admit that the jewel got stolen—”

  “By whom?”

  “By me,” said Morgan unexpectedly. He shifted. “Or by several of us, to be exact. I tell you it was a nightmare. The thing was an emerald elephant, a big pendant thing of no historical interest but of enormous intrinsic value. It was a curiosity, a rarity; that’s why Sturton went after it. It was an open secret that he had been negotiating to buy it from one of the busted millionaires in New York. Well, he’d got it right enough; I had that from Curt Warren. The Great Personage, Curt’s uncle, is a friend of Sturton’s, and Curt’s uncle told him all about it just before Curt sailed. Probably half the people on the boat heard the rumour. I know we were all waiting to catch a glimpse of him when he came aboard—queer, sandy old chap with ancient side-whiskers and a hanging jaw; only attendant a secretary. He popped up the gangway all swathed round in checked comforters, and cursed everybody in reach.

  “Now it’s a very odd thing, for a variety of reasons, that you should have mentioned the old familiar story about the fabulous jewel. Because, on the afternoon when all the trouble started—it was the late afternoon of the fourth day out, and we were to dock three days later—Peggy Glenn and Skipper Valvick and I had been discussing this emerald elephant, in the way you do when you’re lying back in a deck-chair with a robe across your knees, and nothing much to think about except when the bugle will blow for tea. We discussed whether it was in Lord Sturton’s possession or locked in the captain’s safe, and, in either case, how you could steal it. Peggy, I know, had evolved a very complicated and ingenious plan; but I wasn’t listening closely. We had all got to know one another pretty well in those four days, and we stood on very little ceremony.

  “As a matter of fact,” said Morgan, “I was more than half-asleep. Then—”

  2

  Indiscretions of Uncle Warpus

  LOW ALONG THE SKY there was a liquid yellow brightness, but twilight had begun to come down, and the grey sea wore changing lights on its white-caps when the Queen Victoria shouldered down against a heavy swell. The skyline tilted and rose above a boiling hiss; there was a stiff breeze along the almost deserted promenade-deck. Lying back drowsily in a deck-chair, well wrapped against the cold, Morgan was in that lethargic frame of mind when the booming sea-noises are as comfortable as a fire. He reflected that shortly lights would go on along the ship; tea would be set out in the lounge while the orchestra played. Both his companions were momentarily silent, and he glanced at them.

  Margaret Glenn had dropped her book in her lap; she was lying back in the deck-chair with eyes half-closed. Her rather thin, pretty, impish face—which ordinarily wore such a deceptive look of schoolmistress primness—now seemed puzzled and disturbed. She swung shell-rimmed reading-glasses by one ear-piece, and there was a wrinkle above her hazel eyes. She was muffled in a fur coat, with a wildly-blowing batik scarf; and from under her little brown hat a tendril of black hair danced above the windy deck.

  She observed: “I say, what can be keeping Curt? It’s nearly tea-time, and he promised to be here long ago; then we were going to round you two up for cocktails … ” She shifted, and her earnest eyes peered round at the porthole behind as though she expected to see Warren there.

  “I know,” said Morgan lazily. “It’s that bouncing little blonde from Nashville; you know, the one who’s going to Paris for the first time and says she wants to gain experiences for her soul.”

  Turning a wind-flushed face, the girl was about to rise to the remark when she saw his expression, and stuck out her tongue at him instead.

  “Bah!” she said, without heat. “That little faker; I know her type. Dresses like a trollop and won’t let a man get within a yard of her. You take my advice,” said Miss Glenn, nodding and winking wisely. “You stay clear of women who want to gain deep experience for the soul. All that means is that they don’t want to employ the body in doing it.” She frowned. “But I say, what can have happened to Curt? I mean, even with the notorious unpunctuality of American men—”

  “Ha-ha-ha!” said Captain Thomassen Valvick, with an air of inspiration. “I tell you, maybe. Maybe it is like de horse.”

  “What horse?” asked Morgan.

  Captain Valvick uttered one of his amiable snorts and bent his big shoulders. Even though the deck was rolling and pitching in a way that made the deck-chairs slide into each other, he stood upright without difficulty. His long sandy-reddish face was etched out in wrinkles of enjoyment, and behind very small gilt-rimmed spectacles his pale-blue eyes had an almost unholy twinkle. He wrinkled them up; he snorted again, hoarsely, through his sandy moustache, pulled down his large tweed cap over one ear, and made a massive gesture that would have been as heavy as a smaller man’s blow.

  “Ha-ha-HA!” thundered Captain Valvick. “Ay tell you. In my country, in Norway, we haff a custom. When you wont to make a horse stop, you say, ‘Whoa!’ But we don’t. We say, ‘Brubublubluoooo-bloooo!’”

  Shaking his jowls and lifting his head like Tarzan over a fresh kill, Captain Valvick here uttered the most extraordinary noise Morgan had ever heard. It cannot be reproduced into phonetic sounds, and so loses its beauty and poignancy. It was something like the noise of water running out of a bath-tub, but rising on a triumphant note like a battle-cry, and trembling on in shadings of defective drains and broken water-pipes; as though Mr. Paul Whiteman (say) had built a symphony round it, and come out strongly with his horns and strings.

  “Bru-bloo-bulooooluloo-buloooooo!” crowed Captain Valvick, starting low with his shakings of head and jowl, and then rearing up his head at the climax.

  “Isn’t that a lot of trouble?” inquired Morgan.

  “Oh, no! Ay do it easy,” scoffed the other, nodding complacently. “But ay was going to tell you, de first time I try it on a English-speaking ’orse, de ’orse didn’t understand me. Ay tell you how it was. At dat time, when I was young, I was courting a girl who lived in Vermont, where it always snow like Norway. So ay t’ink ay take her out for a sleigh-ride, all nice and fine. I hire de best horse and sleigh dey got, I tell de girl to be ready at two o’clock in de afternoon, and I come for her. So of course I want to make a good impression on my girl, and I come dashing up de road to her house, and I see her standing on de porch, waiting for me. So ay t’ink it be fine ting to make de grand entrance, and ay say, ‘Brubu-bluooo-bloo!’ fine and strong to de ’orse so ay can turn in de gates. But he don’t stop. And ay t’ink, ‘Coroosh! What is wrong wit’ de goddam ’orse?’” Here Captain Valvick made a dramatic gesture, “So I shout, ‘Brubu-bloooo-bloooo!’ and lean over de footboard and say it again. And dis time de ’orse turn its head round to look at me. But it don’t stop, you bet. It keep right on going, straight past de house where de girl is standing, and it only gallop faster when I keep saying, ‘Brubu-blubluoooo-bl-oooo!’ And my girl open her eye
s at me and look fonny, but de ’orse fly straight on up de road; and all I can do is stand up in de sleigh and keep taking off my hat and bowing to her w’ile all de time ay go farder and farder away from her; and still ay am doing dat we’en we go round a bend and ay can’t see her no more … ”

  All this was recited with much pantomime and urging the reins of an imaginary horse. With an expiring sigh Captain Valvick shook his head in a melancholy fashion, and then twinkled benevolently.

  “Ay could never get dat girl to go out again. Ha-ha-ha!”

  “But I don’t see the point,” protested Peggy Glenn, who was regarding him in some perplexity. “How is that like Curt Warren?”

  “Ay don’t know,” admitted the other, scratching his head. “Ay yust wanted to tell de story, ay guess … Maybe he is sea-sick, eh? Ha-ha-ha! Ah! Dat remind me. Haff ay ever told you de story about de mutiny ay ’ave when de cook always eat all de peas out of de soup and—”

  “Sea-sick?” the girl exclaimed indignantly. “Bosh! At least—poor old fellow, I hope not. My uncle is having a terrible time of it, and he’s suffering worse because he’s promised to give a performance of his marionettes at the ship’s concert … Do you think we’d better go and see what’s wrong with Curt?”

  She paused as a white-coated steward struggled out of a door near by and peered round in the darkening light. Morgan recognised him as his own cabin steward—a cheerful-faced young man with flat black hair and a long jaw. He had, now, a rather conspiratorial manner. Sliding down the gusty deck, he beckoned towards Morgan and raised his voice above the crash and hiss of water.

  “Sir,” he said, “it’s Mr. Warren, sir. ’Is compliments, and ’e’d like to see you. And ’is friends too … ”

  Peggy Glenn sat up. “There’s nothing wrong, is there? Where is he? What’s the matter?”

  The steward looked dubious, and then reassuring, “Oh no, miss! Nothing wrong. Only I think somebody’s ’it him.”

  “What?”

  “Hin the eye, miss. And on the back of th ’ead. But ’e’s not a bit upset, miss, not ’im. I left ’im sitting on the floor in the cabin,” said the steward, rather admiringly, “with a towel to ’is ’ead and a piece of movie film in ’is ’and, swearing something ’andsome. And ’e’d taken a nasty knock, miss; that’s a fact.”

  They stared at each other, and then they all hurried after the steward. Captain Valvick, puffing and snorting through his moustache, threatened dire things. Tearing open one of the doors, they were kicked by its recoil in the wind into the warm, paint-and-rubbery odour of the corridor. Warren’s cabin, a large double which he occupied alone, was an outside one on C deck, starboard side. They descended heaving stairs, struck off past the gloomy staircase to the dining-room, and knocked at the door of C 91.

  Mr. Curtis G. Warren’s ordinarily lazy and good-humoured face was now malevolent. The odour of recent profanity hung about him like garlic. Round his head a wet towel had been wound like a turban; there was a slight cut of somebody’s knuckles. Mr. Warren’s greenish eyes regarded them bitterly out of a lean, newly-scrubbed face; his hair, over the bandage, stuck up like a goblin’s; and in his hand he had a strip of what resembled motion-picture film with perforations for sound, torn at one end. He sat on the edge of his berth, faintly visible in the yellowish twilight through the porthole, and the whole cabin was wildly disarranged.

  “Come in,” said Mr. Warren. Then he exploded. “When I catch,” he announced, drawing a deep breath like one who begins an oration, and spacing his words carefully—“when I catch the white-livered, greenly empurpled so-and-so who tried to get away with this—when I get one look at the ugly mug of the lascivious-habited son of a bachelor who runs around beaning people with a black-jack—”

  Peggy Glenn wailed, “Curt!” and rushed over to examine his head, which she turned to one side and the other as though she were looking behind his ears. Warren broke off and said, “Ow!”

  “But, my dear, what happened?” the girl demanded. “Oh, why do you let things like this happen? Are you hurt?”

  “Baby,” said Warren in a tone of dignity, “I can tell you that it is not alone my dignity which has suffered. By the time they have finished stitching up my head, I shall probably resemble a baseball. As to my deliberately encouraging all this to happen … Boys,” he said, appealing moodily to Morgan and the captain, “I need help. I’m in a jam, and that’s no lie.”

  “Ha!” growled Valvick, rubbing a large hand down across his moustache. “You yust tell me who smack you, eh? Ha! Den ay take him and—”

  “I don’t know who did it. That’s the point.”

  “But why … ?” asked Morgan, who was surveying the litter in the cabin; and the other grinned sourly.

  “This, old son,” Warren told him, “is right in your line. Do you know if there are any international crooks on board? The Prince or Princess Somebody kind, who always hang out at Monte Carlo? Because an important State document has been pinched … No, I’m not kidding. I didn’t know I had the damned thing; never occurred to me; I thought it had been destroyed … I tell you I’m in bad trouble, and it’s not funny. Sit down somewhere and I’ll tell you about it.”

  “You go straight to the doctor!” Peggy Glenn said, warmly. “If you think I’m going to have you laid up with amnesia or something—”

  “Baby, listen,” the other begged, with a sort of wild patience; “you don’t seem to get it yet. This is dynamite. It’s—well, it’s like one of Hank’s spy stories, only it’s something new along that line, now that I come to think of it … Look here. You see this film?”

  He handed it to Morgan, who held it up for examination against the fading light through the porthole. The pictures were all of a portly, white-haired gentleman in evening clothes, who had one fist lifted as though making a speech and whose mouth was split wide as though it were a very explosive speech. There was, moreover, a very curious, bleary look about the dignified person; his tie was skewered under one ear, and over his head and shoulders had been sprinkled what Morgan at first presumed to be snow. It was, in fact, confetti.

  And the face was vaguely familiar. Morgan stared at it for some time before he realised that it was none other than a certain Great Personage, the most pompous starched-shirt of the Administration, the potent rain-maker and high priest of quackdoodle. His cheerful, soothing voice over the radio had inspired millions of Americans with dreams of a fresh, effulgent era of national prosperity in which there should be instalment plans without ever any payments demanded, and similar American conceptions of the millennium. His dignity, his scholarship, his courtly manners—

  “Yes, you’re right,” Warren said wryly. “It’s my uncle. Now I’ll tell you about it … and don’t laugh, because it’s absolutely serious.

  “He’s a very good fellow, Uncle Warpus is; you’ve got to understand that. He got into this position through the ordinary, human behaviour that might happen to anybody, but others mightn’t think so. All politicians ought to have a chance every once in a while to blow off steam. Otherwise they’re apt to go mad and chew off an ambassador’s ear, or something. With the whole country in a mix-up, and everything going wrong, and wooden-heads trying to block every reasonable measure, there are times when they explode. Especially if they’re in congenial company and have a social highball or two.

  “Well—my hobby is the taking of amateur moving-pictures, with, Lord help me, sound. So about a week before I was to sail I was due to visit Uncle Warpus in Washington for a good-by call.” Warren put his chin in his hands and looked sardonically on the others, who had moved backwards to find seats. “I couldn’t take my movie apparatus abroad with me; it was much too elaborate. Uncle Warpus suggested that I should leave it with him. He was interested in such things; he thought he might get some pleasure in tinkering with it, and I should show him how to work everything …

  “On the first night I got there,” pursued Warren, taking a deep breath, “there was a very large, very dignified
party at Uncle Warpus’s. But he and a few of his Cabinet and senatorial cronies had sneaked away from the dancing; they were upstairs in the library, playing poker and drinking whisky. When I arrived they thought it would be an excellent idea if I arranged my apparatus, and we took a few friendly talking-pictures there in the library. It took me some time, with the assistance of the butler, to get it all arranged. Meanwhile, they were having a few friendly drinks. Some of ’em were a good deal the strong, silent, rough-diamond administrators from the prairies; and even Uncle Warpus was relaxing considerably.”

  Warren blinked with reminiscent pleasure at the ceiling.

  “It all began with much seriousness and formality. The butler was camera man, and I recorded the sound. First the Honourable William T. Pinkis recited Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. That was all right. Then the Honourable Secretary of Interstate Agriculture did the dagger scene from Macbeth, a very powerful piece of acting, with a bottle of gin as the dagger. One thing led to another. Senator Borax sang ‘Annie Laurie,’ and then they got up a quartet to render ‘Where is my Wandering Boy Tonight?’ and ‘Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet.’ …”

  Sitting back in the berth with her back against the wall, Peggy Glenn was regarding him with a shocked expression. Her pink lips were open, her eyebrows raised.

  “Oh, I say!” she protested. “Curt, you’re pulling our legs. I mean to say, just fancy our House of Commons … ”

  Warren raised his hand fervently. “Baby, as Heaven is my witness, that is precisely—” He broke off to scowl as Morgan began laughing. “I tell you, Hank, this is serious!”

  “I know it,” agreed Morgan, growing thoughtful. “I think I begin to see what’s coming. Go on.”

  “Ay t’ank dey did right,” said Captain Valvick, nodding vigorously and approvingly. “Ay haff always wanted to try one of dem t’ings too. Den ay giff my imitation of de two cargo-boats in de fog. It is very good, dat one. I show you. Ha-ha-ha!”