The dream detective
entrance to my apartments. We then entered the Museum together by the
iron door into the Greek Room and relieved Conway of the keys. There
are several little matters to be attended to in the morning before
admitting the public, and the other door is never unlocked before ten
o’clock.”
“Did you lock the door behind you when you came through this morning?”
“Immediately on finding poor Conway.”
“Could any one have come through this door in the night, provided he
had a duplicate key?”
“No. There is a bolt on the private side.”
“And you were in your rooms all last night?”
“From twelve o’clock, yes.”
The police looked at one another silently; then the inspector gave an
embarrassed laugh. “Frankly, sir,” he said, “I’m completely puzzled!”
We passed upstairs again and Coram turned to the doctor. “Anything
else to report about poor Conway?” he asked.
“His face is all cut by the broken glass and he seems to have had a
desperate struggle, although, curiously enough, his body bears no
other marks of violence. The direct cause of death was, of course, a
broken neck.”
“And how should you think he came by it?”
“I should say that he was hurled upon the floor by an opponent
possessing more than ordinary strength!”
Thus the physician, and was about to depart when there came a knocking
upon the iron door.
“It is Hilda,” said Coram, slipping the key in the lock--“my
daughter,” he added, turning to the detective.
II
The heavy door swinging open, there entered Hilda Coram, a slim,
classical figure, with the regular features of her father and the pale
gold hair of her dead mother. She looked unwell, and stared about her
apprehensively.
“Good morning, Mr. Searles,” she greeted me. “Is it not dreadful about
poor Conway!”--and then glanced at Coram. I saw that she held a card
in her hand. “Father, there is such a singular old man asking to see
you.”
She handed the card to Coram, who in turn passed it to me. It was that
of Douglas Glade of the _Daily Cable_, and had written upon it in
Glade’s hand the words, “To introduce Mr. Moris Klaw.”
“I suppose it is all right if Mr. Glade vouches for him,” said Coram.
“But does anybody here know Moris Klaw?”
“I do,” replied the Scotland Yard man, smiling shortly. “He’s an
antique dealer or something of the kind; got a ramshackle old place by
Wapping Old Stairs--sort of a cross between Jamrach’s and a rag shop.
He’s lately been hanging about the Central Criminal Court a lot. Seems
to fancy his luck as an amateur investigator. He’s certainly smart,”
he added, grudgingly, “but cranky.”
“Ask Mr. Klaw to come through, Hilda,” said Coram.
Shortly afterward entered a strange figure. It was that of a tall man
who stooped, so that his apparent height was diminished--a very old
man who carried his many years lightly, or a younger man prematurely
aged; none could say which. His skin had the hue of dirty vellum, and
his hair, his shaggy brows, his scanty beard were so toneless as to
defy classification in terms of colour. He wore an archaic brown
bowler, smart, gold-rimmed pince-nez, and a black silk muffler. A
long, caped black cloak completely enveloped the stooping figure; from
beneath its mud-spattered edge peeped long-toed continental boots.
He removed his hat.
“Good morning, Mr. Coram,” he said. His voice reminded me of the
distant rumbling of empty casks; his accent was wholly indescribable.
“Good morning” (to the detective), “Mr. Grimsby. Good morning, Mr.
Searles. Your friend, Mr. Glade, tells me I shall find you here. Good
morning, Inspector. To Miss Coram I already have said good morning.”
From the lining of the flat-topped hat he took out one of those small
cylindrical scent sprays and played its contents upon his high, bald
brow. An odour of verbena filled the air. He replaced the spray in the
hat, the hat upon his scantily thatched crown.
“There is here a smell of dead men!” he explained.
I turned aside to hide my smiles, so grotesque was my first impression
of the amazing individual known as Moris Klaw.
“Mr. Coram,” he continued, “I am an old fool who sometimes has wise
dreams. Crime has been the hobby of a busy life. I have seen crime
upon the Gold Coast, where the black fever it danced in the air above
the murdered one like a lingering soul, and I have seen blood flow in
Arctic Lapland, where it was frozen up into red ice almost before it
left the veins. Have I your permit to see if I can help?”
All of us, the police included, were strangely impressed now.
“Certainly,” said Coram; “will you step this way?”
Moris Klaw bent over the dead man.
“You have moved him!” he said, sharply.
It was explained that this had been for the purpose of a medical
examination. He nodded absently. With the aid of a large magnifying
glass he was scrutinizing poor Conway. He examined his hair, his eyes,
his hands, his fingernails. He rubbed long, flexible fingers upon the
floor beside the body--and sniffed at the dust.
“Someone so kindly will tell me all about it,” he said, turning out
the dead man’s pockets.
Coram briefly recounted much of the foregoing, and replied to the
oddly chosen questions which from time to time Moris Klaw put to him.
Throughout the duologue, the singular old man conducted a detailed
search of every square inch, I think, of the Greek Room. Before the
case containing the harp he stood, peering.
“It is here that the trouble centres,” he muttered. “What do I know of
such a Grecian instrument? Let me think.”
He threw back his head, closing his eyes.
“Such valuable curios,” he rumbled, “have histories--and the crimes
they occasion operate in cycles.” He waved his hand in a slow circle.
“If I but knew the history of this harp! Mr. Coram!”
He glanced toward my friend.
“Thoughts are things, Mr. Coram. If I might spend a night here--upon
the very spot of floor where the poor Conway fell--I could from the
surrounding atmosphere (it is a sensitive plate) recover a picture of
the thing in his mind”--indicating Conway--“at the last!”
The Scotland Yard man blew down his nose.
“You snort, my friend,” said Moris Klaw, turning upon him. “You would
snort less if you had waked screaming, out in the desert; screaming
out with fear of the dripping beaks of the vultures--the last dreadful
fear which the mind had known of him who had died of thirst upon that
haunted spot!”
The words and the manner of their delivery thrilled us all.
“What is it,” continued the weird old man, “but the odic force, the
ether--say it how you please--which carries the wireless message, the
lightning? It is a huge, subtile, sensitive plate. Inspiration, what
you call bad luck and good luck--all are but reflections from it. The
supreme thought preceding death is imprinted on the surrounding
atmosphere like a photograph. I have trained this”--he tapped his
brow--“to reproduce those photographs! May I sleep here to-night, Mr.
Coram?”
Somewhere beneath the ramshackle exterior we had caught a glimpse of a
man of power. From behind the thick pebbles momentarily had shone out
the light of a tremendous and original mind.
“I should be most glad of your assistance,” answered my friend.
“No police must be here to-night,” rumbled Moris Klaw. “No
heavy-footed constables, filling the room with thoughts of large cooks
and small Basses, must fog my negative!”
“Can that be arranged?” asked Coram of the inspector.
“The men on duty can remain in the hall, if you wish it, sir.”
“Good!” rumbled Moris Klaw.
He moistened his brow with verbena, bowed uncouthly, and shuffled from
the Greek Room.
III
Moris Klaw reappeared in the evening, accompanied by a strikingly
beautiful brunette.
The change of face upon the part of Mr. Grimsby of New Scotland Yard
was singular.
“My daughter--Isis,” explained Moris Klaw. “She assists to develop my
negatives.”
Grimsby became all attention. Leaving two men on duty in the hall,
Moris Klaw, his daughter, Grimsby, Coram, and I went up to the Greek
Room. Its darkness was relieved by a single lamp.
“I’ve had the stones in the Athenean Harp examined by a lapidary,”
said Coram. “It occurred to me that they might have been removed and
paste substituted. It was not so, however.”
“No,” rumbled Klaw. “I thought of that, too. No visitors have been
admitted here during the day?”
“The Greek Room has been closed.”
“It is well, Mr. Coram. Let no one disturb me until my daughter comes
in the morning.”
Isis Klaw placed a red silk cushion upon the spot where the dead man
had lain.
“Some pillows and a blanket, Mr. Klaw?” suggested the suddenly
attentive Mr. Grimsby.
“I thank you, no,” was the reply. “They would be saturated with alien
impressions. My cushion it is odically sterilized! The ‘etheric storm’
created by Conway’s last mental emotion reaches my brain unpolluted.
Good-night, gentlemen. Good-night, Isis!”
We withdrew, leaving Moris Klaw to his ghostly vigil.
“I suppose Mr. Klaw is quite trustworthy?” whispered Coram to the
detective.
“Oh, undoubtedly!” was the reply. “In any case, he can do no harm. My
men will be on duty downstairs here all night.”
“Do you speak of my father, Mr. Grimsby?” came a soft, thrilling
voice.
Grimsby turned, and met the flashing black eyes of Isis Klaw.
“I was assuring Mr. Coram,” he answered, readily, “that Mr. Klaw’s
methods have several times proved successful!”
“Several times!” she cried, scornfully. “What! has he ever failed?”
Her accent was certainly French, I determined; her voice, her entire
person, was certainly charming--to which the detective’s manner bore
witness.
“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with all his cases, miss,” he said. “Can
I call you a cab?”
“I thank you, no.” She rewarded him with a dazzling smile.
“Good-night.”
Coram opened the doors of the Museum, and she passed out. Leaving the
men on duty in the hall, Coram and I shortly afterward also quitted
the Museum by the main entrance, in order to avoid disturbing Moris
Klaw by using the curator’s private door.
To my friend’s study Hilda Coram brought us coffee. She was
unnaturally pale, and her eyes were feverishly bright. I concluded
that the tragedy was responsible.
“Perhaps, to an extent,” said Coram; “but she is studying music and, I
fear, overworking in order to pass a stiff exam.”
Coram and I surveyed the Greek Room problem from every conceivable
standpoint, but were unable to surmise how the thief had entered, how
left, and why he had fled without his booty.
“I don’t mind confessing,” said Coram, “that I am very ill at ease. We
haven’t the remotest idea how the murderer got into the Greek Room or
how he got out again. Bolts and bars, it is evident, do not prevail
against him, so that we may expect a repetition of the dreadful
business at any time!”
“What precautions do you propose to take?”
“Well, there will be a couple of police on duty in the Museum for the
next week or so, but, after that, we shall have to rely upon a night
watchman. The funds only allow of the appointment of four attendants:
three for day and one for night duty.”
“Do you think you’ll find any difficulty in getting a man?”
“No,” replied Coram. “I know of a steady man who will come as soon as
we are ready for him.”
I slept but little that night, and was early afoot and around to the
Museum. Isis Klaw was there before me, carrying the red cushion, and
her father was deep in conversation with Coram.
Detective-Inspector Grimsby approached me.
“I see you’re looking at the cushion, sir!” he said, smilingly. “But
it’s not a ‘plant.’ He’s not an up-to-date cracksman. Nothing’s
missing!”
“You need not assure me of that,” I replied. “I do not doubt Mr.
Klaw’s honesty of purpose.”
“Wait till you hear his mad theory, though!” he said, with a glance