The Crooked Hinge Read online

  “Ideas?” said Farnleigh.

  “Yes. Like your old one. A quick cosh and an easy life.”

  The way he spoke seemed to put an unpleasant chill in the air. Farnleigh’s voice went high and rasping. He lifted his hand, and then rubbed it down the side of his old tweed coat, as though in a nervous gesture of controlling himself. With uncanny skill his opponent seemed to pick out exactly the sentences that would sting him. Farnleigh had rather a long neck, which was now much in evidence.

  “Does anybody believe that?” he got out. “Molly—Page—Burrows—do you believe that?”

  “Nobody believes it,” answered Molly, with level eyes. “You’re being foolish to let him put you off balance, which is exactly what he’s trying to do.”

  The claimant turned an interested look on her.

  “You too, madam?”

  “Me too, what?” asked Molly, and then grew furiously annoyed with herself. “Sorry to sound like a musical scale, but you know what I mean.”

  “You believe your husband is John Farnleigh?”

  “I know it.”

  “How?”

  “I’m afraid I must answer woman’s intuition,” said Molly coolly. “But I mean something sensible by it: something that in its own way, and within its own limits, is always right. I knew it the moment I saw him again. Of course I am willing to listen to reasons, but they have got to be the right sort of reasons.”

  “Are you in love with him, may I ask?”

  This time Molly flushed under her tan, but she treated the question in her usual way. “Well, let’s say that I am rather fond of him, if you like.”

  “Exactly. Ex-actly. You are ‘fond’ of him; you will always be ‘fond’ of him, I think. You get on and you will get on very well together. But you are not in love with him and you did not fall in love with him. You fell in love with me. That is to say, you fell in love with an imaginary projection of me from your childhood, which surrounded the impostor when ‘I’ returned home—”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen!” said Mr. Welkyn, like a master of ceremonies to a rowdy banquet. He seemed rather shocked.

  Brian Page entered the conversation with broad amusement, to steady their host.

  “Now we’re being psychoanalytic,” Page said. “Look here, Burrows, what are we to do with this flower of something-or-other?”

  “I only know that we are putting in an awkward half-hour,” returned Burrows coldly. “Also, we are straying from the point again.”

  “Not at all,” the claimant assured him. The claimant seemed genuinely anxious to please. “I hope I haven’t said anything to offend anybody again? You should live with a circus; your skins would grow tougher. However, I appeal to you, sir,” he looked at Page. “Don’t I state a reasonable proposition with regard to this lady? You may make an objection. You may say that, in order to fix her affections on me as a child, she must have been somewhat older—the age, say, of Miss Madeline Dane? Was that your objection?”

  Molly laughed.

  “No,” said Page. “I wasn’t thinking of either a support or an objection. I was thinking of your mysterious profession.”

  “My profession?”

  “The unspecified profession you mentioned, the one you first made a success of at the circus. I can’t decide whether you are (1) a fortune-teller, (2) a psychoanalyst, (3) a memory-expert, (4) a conjuror, or even a combination of them. There are mannerisms of them all about you, and much more besides. You are a little too suggestive of Mephistopheles in Kent. You don’t belong here. You disturb things, somehow, and you give me a pain in the neck.”

  The claimant seemed pleased.

  “Do I? You all need to be stirred up a bit,” he declared. “Regarding my profession, I am perhaps a little of all those things. But there is one person I certainly am: I am John Farnleigh.”

  Across the room the door opened, and Knowles entered.

  “Mr. Kennet Murray to see you, sir,” he said.

  There was a pause. By a trick of the fading light, a last fiery glow of sunset shifted in through the trees and the high window-panes. It kindled the heavy room; then it subsided to a steady, warm light which was just bright enough to make faces and figures a little more than visible.

  Kennet Murray himself had been remembering many things in that mid-summer dusk. He was a tall, lean, rather shambling man, who, in spite of a first-rate intelligence, had never been cut out to be a particular success at anything. Though he was hardly fifty, his fair moustache and fair beard, so closely cropped that they looked like stubble, were grayish. He had aged, as Burrows had said; he had grown leaner and more sour out of his former easy good-nature. But there was much of that goodnature remaining, and his look showed it as he ambled into the library. His eyes had the slightly squinted-up look of one who lives under hot suns.

  Then he stopped, frowning as though at a book, and drawing himself up. And, to one of the contestants for the estate, old days returned with old memories and fierce bitterness against dead people; yet Murray himself did not look a day older.

  Murray stood studying the persons before him. He frowned, then he looked quizzical—the eternal tutor—and then grim. He fixed his eyes at a point midway between the holder and the claimant.

  “Well, young Johnny?” he said.

  Chapter Five

  FOR A SECOND OR two neither of the contestants moved or spoke. First it seemed that each was waiting to see what the other would do; and then each went his separate way. Farnleigh moved his shoulder slightly, as though he would not enter this as a debate, but he consented to nod and gesture and even smile stiffly. There had been authority in Murray’s voice. But the claimant, after a slight hesitation, showed no such views. He spoke with quiet affability.

  “Good evening, Murray,” he said; and Brian Page, who knew the ways of students towards their former schoolmasters, suddenly felt the scale-pans dip towards Farnleigh.

  Murray looked round.

  “Someone—er—had better present me,” he said in a pleasant voice.

  It was Farnleigh, stung out of apathy, who did this. By tacit consent Murray was the “old man” of the group, though he was a good deal younger than Welkyn; there was something of the “old man’s” manner about him: something brisk and assured, yet wandering. He sat down at the head of the table, with the light behind his back. Then he gravely fitted on a pair of owlish shell-rimmed reading glasses, and surveyed them.

  “I should never have recognized Miss Bishop or Mr. Burrows,” he went on. “Mr. Welkyn I know slightly. It was through his generosity that I was able to take my first real holiday in a long time.”

  Welkyn, evidently well satisfied, thought that the time had now come for him to take charge and get down to real business.

  “Exactly. Now, Mr. Murray, my client—”

  “Oh, tut, tut, tut!” said Murray, rather testily. “Let me get my breath and talk a moment, as old Sir Dudley used to say.” It was as though he wanted to get his breath literally, for he breathed deeply several times, looked round the room, and then at the two opponents. “However, I must say you seem to have landed yourself in the middle of a very bad mess. The affair has not become public property, has it?”

  “No,” said Burrows. “And you, of course, have not said anything about it?”

  Murray frowned.

  “There I must plead guilty. I have mentioned it to one person. But, when you hear the name of the person, I don’t think you will object. It was my old friend Dr. Gideon Fell, a former schoolmaster like myself, of whose connection with detective work you may have heard. I saw him as I was passing through London. And I—er—mention this to give you a word of warning.” Despite Murray’s benevolence, his squinted gray eyes became bright and hard and interested. “It is possible that Dr. Fell himself may soon be in this part of the world. You know that there is another man staying at the Bull and Butcher besides myself, a man of inquisitive habits?”

  “The private detective?” Farnleigh asked sharply, and to t
he ostensible surprise of the claimant.

  “So it took you in?” said Murray. “He is an official detective from Scotland Yard. It was Dr. Fell’s idea. Dr. Fell maintained that the best way to conceal your identity as an official detective is to act like a private detective.” Though Murray seemed hugely delighted, his eyes remained watchful. “Scotland Yard, on the advice of the Chief Constable of Kent, seem to be curious about the death of Miss Victoria Daly here last summer.”

  Sensation.

  Nathaniel Burrows, who looked fussed, made a vague gesture.

  “Miss Daly was killed by a tramp,” Burrows said, “later killed himself in escaping the police.”

  “I hope so. However, I heard it in passing when I mentioned my own little problem in mixed identities to Dr. Fell. He was interested.” Again Murray’s voice became sharp; and, if the word can be used, opaque. “Now, young Johnny—”

  Even the air of the room seemed to be waiting. The claimant nodded. The host also nodded, but Page thought that there was a faint glitter of sweat on his forehead.

  “Can’t we get on with this?” Farnleigh demanded. “It’s no good playing cat and mouse, Mr.—it’s no good playing cat and mouse, Murray. It’s not decent, and it’s not like you. If you’ve got those fingerprints, trot ’em out and then we shall see.”

  Murray’s eyes opened, and then narrowed. He sounded annoyed.

  “So you know about that. I was reserving it. And may I ask,” his voice grew professionally poised and sarcastic, “which of you thought that the final test would be fingerprints?”

  “I think I can establish that honor,” answered the claimant, looking round as though inquiringly. “My friend Patrick Gore here claims to have remembered it afterwards. But he seems to have been under the impression that you took fingerprints on a sheet of glass.”

  “And so I did,” said Murray.

  “That’s a lie,” said the claimant.

  It was an unexpected change of voice. Brian Page suddenly realized that, under his mild and Mephistophelian airs, the claimant concealed a violent temper.

  “Sir,” said Murray, looking him up and down, “I am not in the habit—”

  Then it was as though old days returned; the claimant seemed involuntarily about to move back and beg Murray’s pardon. But he conquered this. His face smoothed itself out, and the usual mocking expression reappeared.

  “Let us say, then, that I have an alternative suggestion. You took my fingerprints in a ‘Thumbograph.’ You had several such Thumbographs; you bought them in Tunbridge Wells. And you took the fingerprints of myself and my brother Dudley on the same day.”

  “That,” agreed Murray, “is quite true. The Thumbograph with the fingerprints I have here.” He touched the inside breast pocket of his sports-coat.

  “I smell blood,” said the claimant.

  It was true that a different atmosphere seemed to surround the group at the table.

  “At the same time,” Murray went on, as though he had not heard this, “the first experiments I made with fingerprints were on small glass slides.” He grew even more inscrutable and sharp. “Now, sir, as the claimant or plaintiff here, you must tell me a few things. If you are Sir John Farnleigh, certain things are known to me which are known to nobody else. In those days you were an omnivorous reader. Sir Dudley, who you will admit was an enlightened man, made out a list of books which you were permitted to read. You never spoke your views on these books to anyone else: Sir Dudley once spoke a word of harmless ridicule to you about your notions, and tortures would not have opened your mouth afterwards. But you expressed yourself to me in no uncertain terms. Do you remember all that?”

  “Very well indeed,” said the claimant.

  “Then kindly tell me which of those books you liked best, and which made the most impression on you.”

  “With pleasure,” answered the claimant, casting up his eyes. “All of Sherlock Holmes. All of Poe. The Cloister and the Hearth. The Count of Monte Cristo. Kidnapped. A Tale of Two Cities. All ghost stories. All stories dealing with pirates, murders, ruined castles, or—”

  “That will do,” said Murray noncommittally. “And the books you intensely disliked?”

  “Every deadly line of Jane Austen and George Eliot. All snivelling school-stories about ‘the honor of the school’ and so on. All ‘useful’ books telling you how to make mechanical things or run them. All animal-stories. I may add that these, in general, are still my views.”

  Brian Page was beginning to like the claimant.

  “Let us take the younger children who were hereabouts,” Murray continued. “For instance, the present Lady Farnleigh, whom I used to know as little Molly Bishop. If you are John Farnleigh, what was your private nickname for her?”

  “ ‘The gipsy,’ ” answered the claimant instantly.

  “Why?”

  “Because she was always tanned, and was always playing with the children in the gipsy tribe that used to camp at the other side of the Chart.”

  He glanced at a furious Molly, smiling a little.

  “And Mr. Burrows, there—what was your nickname for him?”

  “Uncas.”

  “The reason for that?”

  “At any I-Spy games, or things like that, he could slide through the shrubbery without making a sound.”

  “Thank you. And now for you, sir.” Murray turned to Farnleigh, and eyed him as though he were about to tell him to straighten his tie. “I do not wish to convey the impression that I am playing cat-and-mouse. So I have only one question for you before I proceed to take the fingerprints. On this question, actually, will depend my private judgment before I see the proof in the prints. The question is this. What is the Red Book of Appin?”

  It was almost dark in the library. The heat was still strong, but a small breeze had begun to stir with sundown. It moved through the one or two opened panes of the windows; and the trees stirred with it. A grim—a rather unpleasant—smile moved across Farnleigh’s face. He nodded. Taking a notebook and a little gold pencil from his pocket, he tore out a sheet and wrote some words on it. This he folded up and pushed across to Murray.

  “It has never caught me,” Farnleigh said. And then: “Is that the right answer?”

  “That is the right answer,” agreed Murray. He looked at the claimant. “You, sir: will you answer the same question?”

  For the first time the claimant seemed uncertain. His gaze flashed from Farnleigh to Murray with an expression which Page could not read. Without a word he beckoned flatly for the notebook and pencil, which Farnleigh handed over. The claimant wrote only two or three words before he ripped out the sheet and gave it to Murray.

  “And now, gentlemen,” said Murray, rising. “I think we can take the fingerprints. Here I have the original Thumbograph: much aged, you see. Here is an ink-pad, and here are two white cards. If you will just—may I have some light, please?”

  It was Molly who went across and touched the electric switch beside the door. In the library there was a chandelier in tiers of wrought iron which had once supported crowns of candles; now there were small electric bulbs, not all of which worked, so that the light was not overly bright. But it pushed back the summer night; a hundred little reflections of bulbs were thrown back from the window-panes; and the books on the tall shelves looked more grimy still. On the table Murray had spread out his paraphernalia. The Thumbograph, at which they all looked first, was a rickety little book with gray paper covers grown thin from use: the title in red letters, and a large red print of a thumb underneath.

  “An old friend,” said Murray, patting it. “Now, gentlemen. ‘Rolled’ prints are better than flat ones; but I did not bring a roller because I wished to reproduce the original conditions. I want only your left thumbprint; there is only one print to compare. Here is a handkerchief with an end doused in benzoline: it will take away the perspiration. Use it. Next—”

  It was done.

  During that time Page’s heart was in his mouth; he could not have sa
id why. But they were all in unnatural states of agitation. For some reason Farnleigh insisted on rolling up his sleeve before making the print, as though he were going to have a blood-transfusion. The mouths of both solicitors, Page was glad to observe, were open. Even the claimant used the handkerchief briskly before he leaned against the table. But what impressed Page most was the confidence of both contestants. The wild thought occurred to Page: suppose those two thumbprints turn out to be exactly alike?

  The chances of this happening, he recalled, were just one in sixty-four thousand millions. All the same, nobody faltered or cried off before the test. Nobody—

  Murray had a bad fountain-pen. It scratched as he wrote names and markings at the foot of each white (unglazed) card. Then he blotted them carefully, while the contestants wiped their fingers.

  “Well?” demanded Farnleigh.

  “Well! Now if you will be good enough to give me a quarter of an hour to myself, I can get down to work. Forgive my unsociability; but I realize the importance of this as much as you do.”

  Burrows blinked. “But can’t you—that is, aren’t you going to tell us—?”

  “My good sir,” said Murray, whose own nerves appeared to be feeling the strain, “are you under the impression that a glance at these prints will be enough to compare them? Especially with the print of a boy done in faded ink twenty-five years ago? They will require many points of agreement. It can be done, but a quarter of an hour is an unnaturally modest estimate. Double that: you will be nearer the truth. Now may I settle down?”

  From the claimant came a low chuckle.

  “I expected that,” he said. “But I warn you, it is unwise. I smell blood. You will have to be murdered. No, don’t scowl; twenty-five years ago you would have relished the position and revelled in your own importance.”

  “I see nothing funny in the matter.”