The dream detective
“The pressure was greater,” he replied. “The murderer must have had
amazing strength.”
“Ah, yes!” Moris Klaw removed his hat and stared reflectively into the
crown thereof. “Amazing strength? And the surgeon, what does he
think?”
“He thinks the same.”
“Ah! but no more, eh? Amazing strength only?”
Grimsby figuratively pricked up his ears.
“I don’t quite follow you, Mr. Klaw,” he said. “Did you notice
something else?”
Moris Klaw placed his hat upon a little table.
“I did take notice of some other thing, Mr. Grimsby,” he replied, “and
for a moment I had dreams that you synchronize with me. It is a
complimentary mistake which I make. Please forgive me. This
ashtray”--he took up an ashtray from the table beside his hat--“is of
great interest. You are agreeable, Mr. Searles”--turning to me--“that
it is of great interest?”
I stared rather helplessly. It was a common brass ashtray containing
match sticks and cigarette ends. I could see nothing unusual about it,
and so presently I shook my head.
“Ah!”
Moris Klaw inserted two long yellow fingers gingerly and plucked out a
cigarette stump. He replaced the tray and held up the stump.
“Behold!” he said, “what I find!”
Grimsby now was frankly amazed and not a little angry. As for myself,
familiar though I was with Klaw’s peculiar methods, I could not divine
at what he was driving.
“My friends,” he continued, looking from one to the other of us, and
holding up the cigarette stump as a lecturer holds up a specimen, “the
cigarette, a vice which has killed many men. I have known a woman to
hang because of a hairpin, but men and women, too, many of them,
because of a cigarette.”
He opened a bulging pocket-case and tenderly deposited the stump
inside. As he was about to close the case:
“One moment, Mr. Klaw!” said Grimsby. “If that is evidence--though I
can’t for the life of me see how it can be…”
“But _I_ see!” cried Moris Klaw--“I, the old foolish from Wapping,
behold in this the hangman’s rope!”
He closed the case.
“But----” Grimsby began again.
“But me no buts!” Moris Klaw implored. “In _my_ hands it is the
evidence, in _your_ hands it is the cigarette stump. But listen!” A
bell rang. “It is Isis. I had arranged with her to meet me here.
Perhaps, Mr. Grimsby, you would be so good as to open the door?”
Grimsby obeying with alacrity, the beautiful Isis presently entered,
exquisitely gowned. She gave me smiling greeting, this lovely daughter
of a singular father, and whilst Grimsby deferentially held the door
wide open, managed to introduce into the studio, without brushing it
against the sides of the door, a large brown paper bag.
“Ah!” Moris Klaw exclaimed, “it is my odically sterilized cushion.
Place it here, my child.” He indicated a spot upon the floor. “My
other engagements do not allow of my sleeping here for more than two
hours, but, in that time, I shall hope to recapture the etheric storm
in the mind of the slayer or the last great emotion in the brain of
the slain. Something, certainly, I shall get, for this was no common
crime.”
From its paper wrappings Isis Klaw took a red silk cushion and placed
it upon the spot where the dead man had been found.
I turned aside, shuddering. That any human being, having seen what we
had seen that day, could lie down and, above all, could sleep upon
that haunted spot, was almost more than I could believe. Yet such was
Moris Klaw’s intention, and that he would carry it out I did not
doubt.
“Isis, my child,” he said, “awake me in two hours.”
Removing his caped coat and revealing the shabby tweed suit which he
wore beneath it, he spread the garment on the carpet, stretched his
gaunt shape upon it, and rested his head on the red cushion.
“Gentlemen,” he said in his queer, rumbling tones, “leave me to my
slumber. When I awake, I perhaps shall know something more about the
man who smoked”--he tapped long fingers upon his breast pocket--“this
cigarette.”
We went out of the studio through the door leading to the garden. Isis
was last to leave and I heard her father’s voice:
“Isis, my child, be pleased to extinguish the lights.”
So, leaving the eccentric investigator to his dark and ghastly vigil,
we went up to the house; and, taking pity upon Grimsby, whose anxiety
to talk to Isis was almost pathetic, I sought out Parker, the dead
artist’s manservant, and endeavoured to obtain from him some useful
information. In this, however, I was wholly unsuccessful.
“He hadn’t an enemy in the world, sir,” the man declared emotionally.
“He was the best employer I’ve ever had or am ever likely to have. I
don’t deny that he had his little affairs, sir, but there was nothing
that left a nasty taste behind. Believe me, there was no woman in it,
like the Scotland Yard men tried to make out.”
And indeed, the more I considered the facts of the case, the more
inexplicable these became.
For instance, there were no signs of a struggle. If one had taken
place the murderer had removed all traces of it before leaving. Upon
the fingerprint evidence which Scotland Yard hoped to obtain, I based
little hope of result. But the astute perceptions of Moris Klaw had
undoubtedly enabled him to pick up a clue where no one else had found
one; and strange though his behaviour appeared to be, I had good
reason to know that his subconscious mind, termed by him “the astral
negative,” rarely failed to obtain some record under conditions such
as those which, he maintained, prevail upon the scene of a crime of
violence.
When at the appointed time we returned to the studio, we found it to
be brightly lighted, and entering, discovered Moris Klaw engaged in
squirting verbena upon his high, bald forehead. He stooped and picked
up the caped coat.
“Ah, my friends,” he said, “there are many laws governing the
functions of mind which have yet to be classified. I think so; yes.
Why is it that some emotions register”--he waved his long hands in the
air--“indelibly; others, impermanently, and some, not at all? I ask
myself the question, and no one replies. We are, then, ignorant, and
stupid. To-night”--he lowered his voice--“I do murder with my bare
hands! Yes! I am the assassin! My motive----”
“Yes, yes!” cried Grimsby, eagerly.
“No, no!” Moris Klaw frowned at him. “My motive beats in my brain, my
second brain, my subconscious brain. Myself I do not see, nor my
victim; but I hear, I _hear_. I hear a _sound!_”
“A sound,” Isis whispered. “Do you mean a horrible sound--his death
cry?”
“No, no!” her father assured her. “I hear a _beautiful_ sound.”
IV
Time passed and no arrest was made. Other matters engaged public
attention, and the Chelsea studio murder gradually dropped out of
sight, occupying less and less space in the press and presently
disappearing altogether.
Between Inspector Grimsby and Moris Klaw a definite breach occurred.
“He’s either bluffing or else hiding something,” the Inspector
declared to me. “Why did he keep that cigarette? What the devil was
the sound he heard, or thought he heard, or pretended he heard? All I
know is that I’ve made a fool of myself. There’s not a ghost of a
clue.”
I was not without sympathy for Grimsby. He had grown so used to
finding his difficulties resolved by the genius of Wapping Old Stairs,
that beyond doubt in the Chelsea case he had promised more than he had
been able to perform, optimistically trusting Klaw to provide light in
the darkness; and the great man had proved to be fallible.
It was a dreadful blow to Detective-Inspector Grimsby, and, I must
confess, a surprise to me. Although I had no definite evidence, I
nevertheless had certain reasons to suppose that Moris Klaw was not
entirely inactive during this time. Twice I met him, accompanied by
the dazzling Isis, in the neighbourhood of Queen’s Hall, and on the
second occasion as he entered a car which was waiting for him:
“Mr. Searles,” he said, “tell him, that Detective Inspector, that all
work and no play makes of Jean a dull fellow. Recommend to him music.
Tell him he should sometimes steal an afternoon and at a concert relax
himself.”
I reported the conversation to Grimsby in due course and had never
seen him more angry.
“He’s pulling my leg!” he said. “It’ll be a long time before I ask him
to help me again. Concerts! What time have _I_ got for concerts?”
Such, then, was the state of affairs at the time that Len Hassett, a
black-and-white artist of my acquaintance whose work was beginning to
attract attention, leased the house and studio of ill-fame where poor
Pyke Webley had met his death.
Hassett was ultra-modern and very morbid, but although he professed to
have taken the place because its murderous atmosphere appealed to him,
I had more than a suspicion that the low rental, consequent upon its
evil reputation, had done much more to influence his decision.
However, in due course I received an invitation to the house-warming,
and on the same day a telephone message from Moris Klaw.
“Good morning, Mr. Searles,” came his rumbling greeting over the
wires; “it is very wet again. This appalling English climate becomes
disastrous. I have lost in one week two marmosets and a Peruvian
squirrel. They see the fog and rain, they sneeze, they cough, they
die. I have to make to you a request, Mr. Searles: it is that you
secure for myself and Isis the invitation to Mr. Len Hassett’s party
at his new studio.”
“Certainly, Mr. Klaw,” I replied, trying to keep a note of surprise
from my voice; “Hassett and I are old friends. I have only to mention
your name and you will be heartily welcomed.”
That Isis would be welcome I did not doubt, but, mentally picturing
the eccentric figure of Moris Klaw at such a gathering, I could not
deny that it seemed out of place. However, I doubted not that some
purpose deeper than amusement underlay the request, and the matter was
arranged accordingly.
Moris Klaw called for me in a Daimler, wherein, queenly, Isis reclined
in an ermine cloak. I think I had never before become so fully
conscious of the mystery enshrouding the life of this oddly assorted
pair as I did during that drive to Chelsea.
Who, I asked myself, was Moris Klaw, the inscrutable genius who so
gladly offered his services to the guardians of law and order?--who
dealt in beasts and birds and reptiles, old furniture and fusty
books?--who lived in one of the most unsavoury quarters of
London?--whose daughter was an unchallenged beauty, possessed of
clothes and jewels which never were purchased out of the profits of
the Wapping business? My reflections, however, availed me nothing.
Arrived at Chelsea, we met our host in the lounge hall of the house,
and, introductions being over and the beauty of Isis having annoyed
every other pretty woman in the place, I presently found myself
escorting Morris Klaw’s daughter through the garden to the studio,
whither some of the party had preceded us. We paused for a moment and
looked in at the window.
A group of a dozen people or so gathered around the piano at the
farther end of the place; but, nearer to us, seated in a high armchair
before the blazing fire and caressing a black cat which rested upon
his knee, was a strange-looking, gaunt-faced man. Upon his harsh
features the dancing firelight painted odd shadows, so that at one
moment it was a smiling, benevolent face, and, in the next, the face
of a devil.
It was a mere illusion, of course, but when I turned again to Isis and
we proceeded toward the door, I saw her biting her lip in sudden
agitation, and:
“What is the matter?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she replied--“but what a queer-looking man that was sitting
before the fire.”
Presently we met him, however, as well as the black cat (which proved
to belong to Len Hassett). He was Serg Skobolov, a Russian pianist