“ ‘No, don’t take it to heart — think of the circumstances: your father dies suddenly on the way home from Mr. Aubrey Smith’s, where, as you yourself have told me, he had had something to drink; to Mr. Smith’s he had gone from Madame Rosa’s; to both Mr. Smith and to that lady, as we know, he has left sums of money, so that both stood to profit by his death.’
“ ‘Oh, my poor Papal’ Laura mourned, falling into a sofa, her hands over her face.
“But neither anger nor grief could avail to change the process of the Government machine, and within some days, by the time Hylda’s household effects had been sold, and Hylda herself was a part of Laura’s household, the disinterred coffin of the old baronet lay open one Thursday morning in December under the eyes of the responsible persons.
“Never, maybe, did the eyes of men light on a wilder sight than those eyes that day, on a more woeful, on a more bewildering. They refused to believe their five wits! That sight seemed to be an evil dream that one feels to be a dream:
“1. The baronet’s throat was most brutally butchered right into the inner carotids, with gashes jagged as by some blunt cutter.
“2. His mouth was crowded full of some substance resembling powdered glass.
“3. In his stomach was discovered enough prussic acid to kill thirty persons.
“There,” concluded my Uncle Quintus, “I have now given you by my method of narration far more information than Detective-Sergeant Barker had to go on at this point in the mystery. Indeed, I have provided you with sufficient clues to solve the problem, if you have the aptitude that you claim for such work. Tell me now, before we go up to bed, what do you make of these strange affairs?”
It was a wild night, rags of gusts tormented the tapestries, the flicker only of the fire lighted us. My uncle bent forward and applied a match to a three-branched candelabra. I arranged my few half-illegible notes on my knee and prepared to answer this formidable query.
“Uncle Quintus,” I said, “as I see it, there are nine questions that need answering. If in each instance I surmise right, I should reach the same conclusion — the successful conclusion — that you tell me Detective-Sergeant Barker arrived at. Let me, first of all, read you my questions. I will then attempt to answer them.
“(1) What is the mystery of that ‘strange and ominous date,’ Aubrey Smith the First’s birthday?
“(2) Who stole the black-haired, seven-year-old, Welsh, Ada Price from Clanning?
“(3) Was the O’Donague poisoned when he died in his car?
“(4) Is any significance to be attached to the death of Davenport, the butler?
“(5) Who is the black-haired, seven-year-old, French-speaking little girl found living with Aubrey Smith the Second in the squalid by-street near Russell Square?
“(6) Who uttered the phrase ‘Now that I am seven years of age’ from behind locked doors in Aubrey Smith the First’s new flat?
“(7). Which Aubrey Smith shot the black-haired, seven-year-old, French-speaking little girl?
“(8) What happened to the two Aubrey Smiths subsequent to their chase on the young painter’s wedding day?
“(9) What is the explanation of the atrocities revealed by the exhumation of the O’Donague?”
Editor’s note: Why don’t you too accept Uncle Quintus’s challenge? Can you deduce, determine — or, yes, divine — the answers to the nephew’s nine questions? We use the word “divine” advisedly. As a verb, “divine” means to perceive through sympathy or intuition — and that is perhaps what you will have to do to see all the truth behind Mr. Shiel’s riddle. For remember that M. P. Shiel, that wonderful man, was unique: his “cases for deduction” were never cut-and-dried affairs, susceptible wholly to sheer and unadulterated logic. He always permitted a margin for imagination. As we once wrote of Mr. Shiel’s work, he created a kind of rich and redolent romanticism; a kind of bizarre bravado, full of flamboyant and fantastic felony, wild and wilful wiliness. Take all this into account: allow for Shielesque shenanigans, both in the use of the English language and in the conception of ideas. Only thus can you match wits with that strange man and savor his stories to the deep...
“Now, Uncle, if you will permit, I will expound. If it will not irritate you, I will tabulate my answers in just the same manner as I have tabulated my questions.
“These are my surmises. You can tell me, when I have done, exactly where I have gone astray.
“(1) Aubrey Smith the First was born on the 29th of February in Leap Year, and so only had a birthday every four years, which explains his despair over his legacy (since £175 every fourth year would not be sufficient to marry on) and his appeal that his namesake should collect his money annually for him. On that four-year birthday he wore mourning — perhaps because his birth had cost his mother her life?
“(2) Count Poldoff’s emissaries stole Ada Price, since they had reason to believe that she resembled the child they were searching for. Once the opportunity presented itself, they intended substituting their prisoner for the Count’s daughter.
“(3) The O’Donague was not poisoned when, to all appearance, he died in his car. He was neither poisoned nor dead! — was buried alive in a coma!
“(4) The death of Davenport, the butler, was a natural one; but there was a significance, I suspect, attached to it, a significance which I will explain in answering my last question.
“(5) The black-haired, seven-year-old, French-speaking little girl living in squalor with Aubrey the Second was Count Poldoff’s daughter. Brought over by La Rosa from France, where for some years, no doubt, she had been educated and brought up as French in some obscure convent, she was entrusted by her mother to her agent, Aubrey Smith the Second. You will remember that La Rosa was abroad at the same time as the O’Donagues were in Italy; it was then, I think, that the child came to England. The fact that her mother was financially embarassée explains the squalor, too, of her agent’s circumstances.
“(6) Aubrey Smith the First uttered ‘Now that I am seven years of age’ in his new flat — uttered it to Laura, who, in her unconventional way, was visiting him. He had let her know that his birthday was the 29th of February, and he meant by ‘now that I am seven’ that he had had seven birthdays — or rather six.
“(7) Aubrey Smith the Second shot his little charge — unintentionally. Aubrey Smith the First’s gun was unloaded when he dashed upstairs to take it, to intimidate his betrayer. The child, no doubt, got shot in some scuffle between the two. The initialed gun, of course, belonged to Aubrey Smith the Second, being probably a relic of his British-Indian Army days.
“(8) Aubrey Smith the Second flying before Aubrey Smith the First made for Regent’s Park and La Rosa. Here he found sanctuary, and his pursuer, coming upon him, was seized and imprisoned by man-servants of La Rosa.
“(9) The atrocities on the body of the O’Donague were self-inflicted. Davenport the butler had placed in his master’s coffin before interment a bottle of poison. The only significance of the butler’s death is that when the exhumation took place he was not there to explain. Sir Phipps, I fancy, must once have been nearly buried alive in a coma, and so have made his old servant swear that whenever he was being buried, he, the butler, would put poison in the coffin. Sir Phipps must have waked in the grave, drank the poison. In his agony he ground the glass of the bottle in his teeth, and cut his throat with the broken glass. Barker may well have found a statement among the butler’s papers to the effect that the butler placed the poison there.
“I think, Uncle, that these are the facts, which the police must have discovered. Hylda, I suppose, married her Aubrey the First when, on La Rosa’s mansion being searched, that young man was released. Count Poldoff recovered his daughter from the Hospital. Laura retired to Clanning and painting.”