There again! Back came his mind to eating, though all the year round he would breakfast without a moment’s thought for the alimentary process.
Suddenly Wimsey thrust back his chair from the table. “My dream!” he cried hoarsely, striking his forehead with his hand, which at the moment was holding a spoon filled with marmalade. “Eating! That was the concept which the Unknown I was pushing at the Conscious Me! What did young B.F. say? They eat them!”
Wimsey dashed impetuously from the room.
Scene: The library at the Spoopendyke Professor’s house. Present: Topsy, her husband, Lord Peter Wimsey and the corpse. Armed with a letter-opener taken from the writing-table, Wimsey knelt beside all that was mortal of Dermot, and gently pried apart the firm-set jaws. From the open mouth he drew forth a piece of printed paper, and smoothed it out upon the table-top beside the novel that still lay there, open at a page of which a part had been torn away. In silence he fitted the scrap into its place in the mutilated page, then pointed to the title at its head.
“Strong poison!” he said in a low voice. “Too strong indeed for poor Dermot. Such is the magic of that incisive, compelling style that even the very printed word is saturated with the essence of what it imparts. Others eat her works in a figurative sense only; Dermot began to eat this one in truth and in fact, and so rushed, all unknowingly, to his doom.”
Topsy burst into tears. “Uh! Uh! Uh!” she said. “Why did you leave the bub-bub-book about, Bill? You knew he never could resist an open book.”
“But how was I to know the story was such a powerful one?” the Professor groaned. “I am no judge of any literature later than 1300 b.c.”
Wimsey stood with bowed head. “You have one small consolation,” he said, laying a hand on Topsy’s shoulder. “Death must have been instantaneous. Dear old Dermot!” he mused. “He was a priceless old bird.”
“Well, not exactly priceless,” the Professor said with academic care for the niceties of expression. “Topsy bought him in Caledonian Market for three pounds, including the cage.”
“You ought to have put him bub-bub-back in it when you went out,” Topsy sobbed.
“I know. I shall never forgive myself,” said the Professor dismally. “I did think of it, in fact, but when I suggested it Dermot cursed me so frightfully that I left him at liberty.”
“He was chu-chu-cheap at the money,” Topsy howled. “When once I had heard him sus-sus-swear I would have gone to a fuf-fuf-fiver. I had never heard anything lul-lul-like it.”
“No! Hadn’t you though?” Wimsey was interested. “And you were at Somerville, too.”
The Obscure Move
by Wadsworth Camp
The familiar theme of the man-hunter and his quarry, always a fascinating subject for detective fiction, is here given a refreshingly sympathetic treatment. For a story that originally appeared twenty years ago, “The Obscure Move” is an astonishingly up-to-date study, conceived and executed with understanding and humor.
His friends have never understood why Morgan, one of the best of private detectives, gave up the excitements of the trail for the stupid dignity of office management. Morgan, naturally, didn’t care to talk about it at first. Time is a good carpenter, however, and Morgan feels now that he may safely stand on the record. Here it is:
To begin with, Morgan was an odd one. If you had questioned him about the deductive method he would have laughed good-naturedly. It is equally certain that the mention of psychological analysis would have sent him to the dictionary for a clue. Common-sense and a sense of humour were his own stock in trade. His specialty was the smooth crook who keeps the money of the carelessly avaricious in circulation. Consequently he wore expensive clothing himself. He smoked large, fragrant cigars of Havana. When on the road — which was nine tenths of the time in those days — he frequented only the most luxurious hotels. Furthermore, he was fast acquiring an appearance of rotund prosperity quite out of key with the best-loved traditions of the stealthy profession. Still, as has been said, he was one of the most successful in that business.
Therefore, when the Duncan Investment Company closed its doors it was not surprising that the victims should have carried their resentment from the formal optimism of police headquarters to Morgan’s agency.
Duncan, they explained, had fled with large sums which he had persuaded them to invest through a trifling lure of from fifty to a hundred per cent. They were law-abiding citizens none the less, and they felt it their duty to society to see that Duncan, who had taken so much, should also receive what was judicially owing to him.
Morgan lighted a fresh perfecto.
“Rest easy,” he told his clients. “I’ll place Mr. Duncan in an iron cage where you can poke your fingers at him all you like.”
After the sheep had flocked out, he gazed about his comfortable office, filled his pockets with cigars, locked his cellarette, and set forth on his adventures.
Morgan took the customary precautions in case the confidence man had his heart set on Canada or a trip abroad. But Duncan was too wary to thrust his head in the lion’s jaw through any such first-offense methods. Instead he revealed the attributes of an eel, squirming, dodging, and once or twice nearly slipping across the Mexican border. The stout, good-natured detective, however, seemed to possess a special intuition. Time and again he made Duncan turn on his tracks. Then a very natural thing happened. When the chase got too hot, Duncan, who had been born and raised in Florida, sought ground which would be far more familiar to him than to his pursuer. Yet Morgan, entering Florida, was reminiscent of nothing so much as a fat, grinning cat, approaching the holeless corner into which he has driven his mouse.
When the police channels had run dry, the detective called on that peculiar intuition of his and bothered the lumber, turpentine, and phosphate men until he had located the fugitive in a timber camp far in the wilderness. Morgan was justly proud. Few men, if they had studied Duncan’s record, would have dreamed of looking for him in the vicinity of manual labour.
Morgan’s work had chiefly lain in comfort-furnished cities, but, by rail, by boat, by springless wagon, he bravely followed the trail. One crisp morning he reached his destination — a group of tiny, unpainted cabins clustered about a sawmill and a commissary.
With a look of high achievement lighting his face, Morgan shook the camp superintendent’s hand.
“Peary and Amundsen and Doctor Cook have nothing on me,” he said. “Just remind me to jot down my latitude and longitude so people’ll believe I’ve really been here.”
The superintendent stared.
“And it’s inhabited!” Morgan went on with awe in his voice. “I’ll write a book, and maybe get decorated by the Swiss — or the Swedes, is it? Well, I made my dash on your word.”
“How come you to suspect he was here?” the superintendent asked.
Morgan’s voice fell.
“Perhaps a fortune teller saw it in the cards.”
He laughed.
“What you laughing at?” the superintendent asked suspiciously.
“The idea of Beau Duncan’s living here! Which may be his stylish bungalow?”
“His quarters, you mean? The shanty yonder with the busted window light.”
“And some of the best hotels have stopped paying dividends since he left town. The lobster palaces are all in heliotrope for him. Where’s old Beau Brummel Duncan now? At the golf club or leading a black-face cotillion?”