The dream detective
whose reputation was growing by leaps and bounds. Upon Isis his
curious small eyes rested greedily; and that she was repelled, the
girl was unable to disguise. In due course, when the merriment was in
full swing, there were songs, and a certain amount of dancing took
place; and then melting at the right moment to the entreaties of
Hassett, Skobolov agreed to play.
“You know,” said a lady journalist who was sitting on the floor near
me, “Skobolov has composed numerous works but not one of them is
published.”
“Ah!” came a hoarse whisper. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Moris
Klaw standing in the shadow behind us. “How strange! Does he refuse
then to publish his compositions?”
“Absolutely,” the lady declared earnestly. “He maintains that no one
else could play them.”
“Is that so?” wheezed Moris Klaw. “Perhaps he is right. Presently we
shall hear and judge for ourselves.”
He became silent, as the pianist, seating himself, began to speak:
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in his broken English, “you know that
the friend of us all, our good Hassett, takes this studio because it
is haunted. Here, murder is done, yes, and so I shall play to you a
prelude newly composed in which--it is appropriate--I try to express
in music the lust of slaying.”
He paused amid an uncomfortable silence, and then:
“Some of you must know,” he resumed, “that all my compositions are
emotions, attempts to paint in chords things experienced. Some
experiences one cannot have and so can never paint--for atmosphere,
atmosphere, is everything! Now I shall paint for you the story of this
studio.”
With that, he began to play; and although I had never heard him
before, I realized from the outset that he was a master of his
instrument. Indeed, I thought, a genius. His theme and its treatment
alike were unusual, grotesque. There was some quality in the man’s
technique which I found myself unable to define. He possessed uncanny
power. When, at last, the prelude ended, it was greeted by a silence
more eloquent than any applause.
It was only momentary, of course. Then came a wild outburst of
enthusiasm. Yet it had been long enough, that moment of stillness, for
me to hear the squirting of Moris Klaw’s scent spray immediately
behind me. And when at last the clapping and shouting died down:
“That prelude,” came his voice, almost in my ear, “it has a bad smell.
Soon, Isis my child, we must go. It grows late. But perhaps Mr.
Hassett will permit me to telephone to my chauffeur, as I allow him to
go away? It is all right? Very well. How wonderful is that prelude.”
V
Skobolov’s attentions to Isis Klaw became very marked. Presently,
following some whispered words from her father, I noticed with
surprise that she had ceased to avoid the Russian pianist, indeed was
consenting to smile upon him. Hence, when presently Moris Klaw’s car
arrived, I was prepared for Skobolov’s acceptance of an offer of a
lift as far as his hotel.
For my own part I confess quite frankly that I disliked the man. I had
disliked him on sight, and nearer acquaintance did nothing to dispel
that first impression. That Isis disliked him, also, I could not
doubt. Therefore I divined that she was playing a part, although its
purpose defeated my imagination.
Throughout the drive from Chelsea to the hotel Moris Klaw discussed
music, a subject with which I had not hitherto believed him to be
acquainted. Perhaps his intention was to exhibit Skobolov’s intense
egotism, for indeed the man was a monument to his own colossal vanity.
His genius I could not dispute, but his personality was detestable.
I had foreseen that he would try to detain the party at his hotel, or,
rather, that he would try to detain Isis. (I had no doubt whatever
that he would gladly have excused both Moris Klaw and myself.) But I
had not been prepared for Klaw’s acceptance of the offer. However, as
we descended from the car and I hesitated whether to accept Skobolov’s
grudging inclusion of myself in the party, or to walk home, I detected
an unmistakable expression in Moris Klaw’s queer eyes, twinkling
behind the pebbles of his pince-nez.
Suddenly the fact came home to me that I was a minor actor in some
mysterious comedy directed by the genius of Wapping Old Stairs.
The Russian occupied a luxurious suite, and Moris Klaw, with
reluctance which I could see to be feigned, agreed at Skobolov’s
pressing invitation to drink one glass of wine and then to depart for
home.
Skobolov did his best to make himself agreeable, proffering cigars and
cigarettes, and opening a bottle of Bollinger. Moris Klaw and I
declined to smoke, but Isis accepted a cigarette and lay back in a
deep lounge chair blowing smoke rings and watching the vainglorious
Russian musician through half-lowered lashes.
There was a grand piano in the room, and Moris Klaw, who had not
touched his wine, prevailed upon Skobolov to play for us once more the
prelude which we had heard at Hassett’s studio.
The pianist shrugged, glanced at Isis, and then seated himself at the
instrument. Placing his cigarette in a little ashtray, he laid his
fingers caressingly on the keyboard, and once more my soul was
harrowed by those indescribable strains.
As the sound of the last chord died away:
“Good,” said Moris Klaw, “excellent, most excellent. And now,
please”--he stood up--“I am an old nuisance, an absent old foolish. Do
you object that I telephone to my chauffeur? I just remember that Isis
leaves her ermine cloak in the car. Is it not so, my child?”
“Good heavens, yes!” Isis exclaimed.
He crossed the room to the telephone, circling ungainly around the
piano, raised the instrument, and:
“Will you be pleased to ask Mr. Moris Klaw’s chauffeur to bring in
from the car the cloak,” he said, distinctly. “Yes, all right, very
well.” He hung up the receiver and turned to face us again, shrugging
his shoulders. “So greatly tempting,” he explained, “to some prowler
thief.”
I now became aware that Isis had suddenly grown very pale. She had
stood up and was watching Skobolov intently. He seemed rather to be
enjoying the scrutiny of her fine dark eyes--when there came a
peremptory rap upon the door.
“Come in!” said the Russian sharply.
The door opened--and Detective-Inspector Grimsby stood on the
threshold!
Moris Klaw nodded in Skobolov’s direction, and, literally stupefied
with astonishment, I heard Grimsby say:
“Serg Skobolov, I arrest you on a charge of having murdered Mr. Pyke
Webley at his studio on the night of November the fourteenth. I must
warn you----” But he got no further.
Uttering a sound which I can only describe as the roar of a wild
beast, Skobolov leapt upon him, clasped his hands about the speaker’s
throat, and hurled him to the floor!
To Moris Klaw, Grimsby owed his life. The Russian was kneeling on the
detective’s chest and literally squeezing life out of him, when Klaw,
surprisingly agile, sprang forward. He stooped over the would-be
murderer and performed some simple operation which threw Skobolov upon
his back.
In two seconds the madman was up again; and, even now, I sometimes see
in my dreams that devil face, transfigured by such evil as I could not
have supposed to reside in any human being. He opened and closed his
hands in a horrible, writhing, suggestive movement, looked at Grimsby
who was trying slowly, painfully to struggle to his feet, looked at
Isis, looked at Moris Klaw, looked at myself. Then, bursting into
peals of laughter, he ran to the French windows, threw one open,
sprang on to the parapet outside, and uttering one final frenzied
shriek, leapt into the courtyard sixty feet below!
VI
“Everyone will say,” Moris Klaw declared, “‘he was a failure, that old
fool from Wapping’--for how can a dead man confess, and what use for
the newspapers to tell the public why this poor Russian leaps from his
window?” He shrugged his shoulders, looking around my study. “You say
to me,” he continued, addressing Grimsby: ‘What is the sound you hear
when you sleep in the studio?’ and I do not tell you because you would
not understand. But now I shall tell you. I hear, my friend, a chord
in G Minor!
“Ah! you wag your head. I knew you would wag your head! But beware
that your brains do not rattle. This is what I hear, and this is the
thing in the mind of the murderer at the moment that he does the
murder--a chord in G Minor, Mr. Grimsby! I, the old fool, have the
music sense, and this chord it intrigues me. Why? because it is not
playable--yet it is a chord upon a piano.”
“Not playable!” Grimsby exclaimed.
“Not playable, my friend, except by a man having enormous hands! And
also, my good Grimsby, the poor Webley could not have been strangled
as he was except by one having enormous hands.
“This is what I first perceive when I see his body, and what for one
absurd moment I dream that you have perceived also. I, myself, have
large hands, but although I try I cannot span within inches of the
marks made upon his throat by the monster who kills him. And so, when
I hear this chord, and I question and I try and I find that it cannot
be played by any normal hand, I say, ‘Yes! it is a musician with
abnormal hands!’ And I look for him and I listen for him. And to him I
have one other clue--a _hashish_ cigarette.”
“_What_ kind of cigarette?” Grimsby muttered.
“I said _hashish_, my friend--a cigarette containing the drug Indian
hemp; a kind of cigarette very rarely met in England. In that ashtray,
among a dozen others, I detect it immediately. Is it not strange”--he
turned to me--“how the murderer is drawn to the place of the murder?
It is why, when I hear of the house-warming, I plan to go. Perhaps it
is accident--perhaps something else.
“He was a mad genius, that Skobolov. He tries to know supreme emotion
that he may write supreme music. Perhaps he succeeds. Who can say? But
his compositions cannot live--for no other man can play them, on the
piano at any rate. Where did he meet the poor Webley? Who can say?
Perhaps they were acquainted, perhaps they met in the street. Webley
was Bohemian. He invites Skobolov into the lonely studio. Good! There
could be no evidence. It was his opportunity--to know the emotion of
_murder_ and to get safe away!
“To-night I hear it again--the dream chord: I see his great hands. But
he smokes no cigarette in the studio, not until he has returned to his
own rooms. For this I waited, this last piece of evidence. Behold!”
From his pocket-case he took out _two_ cigarette stumps.
“To-night, in the studio, at last I hear again my dream chord--the
chord in G, in G Minor; yet when I telephone to you, my good Grimsby,
you think I am the old fool. I say, ‘Hurry to Chelsea. I await.’ You
obey, but you reluct. I say, ‘When at the place we go I send a
message, “the cloak is in the car.” Enter.’ You enter and you permit
the strangler to escape the law.”
He shrugged, stooped to where his brown bowler rested upon the floor
beside him, took out the scent spray and squirted verbena upon his
forehead.
“I have the hot brain,” he explained; “it is the activity. But yours,
my friend”--turning to Grimsby--“is as cool as a lemon.”
EIGHTH EPISODE.
CASE OF THE HEADLESS MUMMIES
I
The mysteries which my eccentric friend, Moris Klaw, was most
successful in handling undoubtedly were those which had their origin
in kinks of the human brain or in the mysterious history of some relic
of ancient times.
I have seen his theory of the Cycle of Crime proved triumphantly time
and time again; I have known him successfully to demonstrate how the
history of a valuable gem or curio automatically repeats itself,
subject, it would seem, to that obscure law of chance into which he
had made particular inquiry. Then his peculiar power--assiduously