“Two swells fighting,” said one girl, and a policeman pushed her aside. In half a minute they were inside the station, for that policeman had refrained three times in one night from arresting anybody. Even a policeman’s temper is not everlasting.
They almost fought again trying to get the first word, and were plucked roughly apart by another constable.
“Well, what’s this?” said the night inspector.
“Two drunks fighting, sir,” said the policeman.
“He’s poisoned a man at the War Office!” screamed Palmer, who in his rage of fear thought to accuse the other of his own crime.
“It is he that did it!” said Burke readily. “I saw him.”
“Did what?” said the inspector. “Hold your tongue, sir!”
This was to Burke, and as he was fast recovering his cunning and self-control, he bowed.
“Now then, sir, what is this you say?”
“I say that man poisoned Mr. Hetherwick Coutts of the War Office this afternoon. I saw him,” said Palmer, reeling, for he was full to the lips.
“And you say that he did it?”
“Yes,” said Burke; “I saw him.”
The inspector shrugged his shoulders and looked at them curiously. He turned to a sergeant, for he had only just come on duty.
“There is no talk of anything at the War Office?” he said.
“Not that I know of,” said the sergeant stiffly.
“Then I think that we had better accommodate these two gentlemen for the night; for if they have poisoned no one else, they have been poisoning themselves,” said the inspector.
They were marched off and put in the cells.
“This is a rather queer thing, is it not, Bowes?” remarked the inspector, leaving his seat and warming himself at the fire.
“Yes, sir,” said the laconic sergeant.
“Do you think there is anything in it?” The inspector could not refrain from asking the question, for it certainly seemed very curious.
“Drink, sir!” replied Bowes.
“Early tomorrow send down to the War Office and inquire about this man, this Mr. Hetherwick Coutts.”
And in the morning they did so. At eleven o’clock Mr. Hetherwick Coutts was in his usual place, and in answer to the inquiries as to his health, he replied that he was well enough, though he had felt very ill during the previous afternoon and evening. At the inquiry Palmer and Burke held their peace, and knew nothing.
“Yet I gave him enough atropine to have killed two men,” said Palmer to himself.
“Yet I gave him enough muscarine to have killed a donkey,” said Burke.
But these two poisons are antidotes.
Quentin Reynolds
The Bluebeard Murderer
The Bluebeard Murderer, “a fiend in human form,” had strangled to death seven young women in the past month. They seemed such senseless murders — without rhyme or reason.
The late Quentin Reynolds, one of the last great trenchermen in an age when dieting is the fashion, was a many-faceted man and personality — heavyweight boxing champion in college, newspaperman, lawyer, sportswriter, foreign correspondent, renowned war correspondent, writer of best-sellers, highly publicized adversary of Westbrook Pegler, much-sought-after after-dinner speaker, radio and motion picture commentator, biographer, writer of juveniles (including a book on the F.B.I.), friend of most of the famous men and women of his time — and did you know that his first book, PARLOR, BEDLAM AND BATH, was written with S. J. Perelman?
But at heart Quentin Reynolds remained a reporter, and his instinct and integrity for the truth, for accuracy and realism, shined throughout all his fiction...
As we sat down to dinner some-one jokingly remarked, “But there are thirteen of us. How awful!”
“Baron von Genthner phoned to say he’ll be a bit late,” I told them. “But he’ll be here soon and that will make fourteen.”
“I hope,” Sefton Doames sighed, “that he has some news of that Bluebeard Murderer — as I have so aptly named him.”
“You mean ’fiend in human form’ who is ravaging Bavaria,” I said. “You wouldn’t laugh if your paper were playing the story up as mine is,” Doames grumbled. “It was my own fault, I suppose, for calling him the Bluebeard Murderer. It develops that there have been some eighty or so other Bluebeard Murderers in the last hundred years and my paper has been running a series on them. That’s why they are so interested in his capture.”
“How can you look at this beautiful table and even mention anything about murderers?” The Nightingale sighed.
So we sat down, thirteen of us, and when I looked around I couldn’t help but feel proud. It was, for Berlin, a rather notable gathering, but of course, most notable of all was The Nightingale. Her first full-length starring picture was to open in Berlin the following night and this dinner was in the nature of an anticipatory congratulation.
Franz Woolwerth, director of the picture, was present, looking like a chubby and very amiable bear cub. You’d never know that he was probably the greatest film director living. There was Walter Duran, the brilliant Moscow correspondent, just out of Russia, and of course Hubert Nicholas, who traveled all over Europe for an American newspaper syndicate. There was Margaret Cane, the beautiful and gifted English girl who wrote novels with one hand and newspaper features with the other. There was the exuberant Ernst Hanfstaengl.
There were others, too, but first and foremost there was The Nightingale. It was her night and she sat there at the head of my table and, young as she was, she dominated that table as the sun dominates the early dawn. Brilliant, beautiful, mysterious — none of us really knew The Nightingale. She spoke perfect German and beautiful French and her Spanish was good and she spoke very cute English. She had emerged from nowhere a few months before, a discovery of Woolwerth’s, and who she was or what her nationality was apparently only Woolwerth knew; and he wouldn’t tell.
“She is a voice,” he would say, “not a person.”
I knew The Nightingale as well as anyone did but she had told me no more. It was hard to take one’s eyes away from her. I caught hers and saw a reproach in them. At the moment it puzzled me.
Our first course was Aalsuppe, which is eel soup, and laced with claret it was delicious. With it I served Vodka which Duran had brought in from Moscow — vodka in small individual carafes which were imbedded in ice. After that we had baked rolled salmon in which oysters cut finely and spiced with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and parsley were hidden. Margaret Cane raised her eyebrows at this dish. It was strictly an English way of preparing salmon. Once after a particularly dull meal at my place she had reproachfully sent me a cookbook called, aptly enough, Good Things in England. From that I had taught my cook how to prepare the rolled salmon. With the salmon, need I add, we drank Rudesheimer, 1923.
“Whatever made von Genthner take that job?” Doames asked. “I can think of no man who seems less like a detective than von Genthner. Yet here he is heading an organization which is a great deal like our own Scotland Yard.”
“It is a strictly nonpolitical organization,” I told Doames. “It isn’t connected with either the secret police or the Berlin police force. It is entirely independent of them. When a crime or a series of crimes is committed outside of Berlin and the local police are making no headway, they may ask for von Genthner’s help. He took the job because he has always been more or less interested in the study of criminology.”