“That muslin box, Captain Drummond, contained mosquitoes carrying the germs of yellow fever. And the owner of the rod succeeded in reaching the Castle and liberating those mosquitoes. Only he set them free in the wrong room. This afternoon Mr. Stedman died of yellow fever in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases.”
There was a long silence; then Drummond rose and began pacing up and down the room.
“You may further remember,” continued Andrews, “that you told me you hadn’t overlooked the point when I alluded to the nocturnal visitor coming to my window. That now requires elucidation. Have you any idea as to why he went to Mr. Stedman’s? Or was it a fluke?”
“It wasn’t a fluke,” said Drummond gravely. “I sent him there.”
“You sent him there?” The Inspector shot out of his chair as if he had been stung. “What on earth do you mean?”
“You needn’t think that I took him by the hand and led him there,” answered Drummond with a faint smile. “Until this moment I didn’t even know he’d been there. In fact I’ve never seen him or spoken to him. For all that, I sent him there. Listen, Andrews, and I’ll tell you.”
“You remember the billiard room, don’t you, with its broad window sill? Before we went to bed that night a tray of newly painted toy soldiers was placed on the sill. They had been painted by Stedman for the little boy, and we were all of us instructed not to touch them. They were arranged in single file — twelve infantrymen and one large man on a prancing horse. And one of the infantrymen was a Highlander in whom I was particularly interested, because of an argument on kilts that I had had with the artist. And my Highlander was placed so that he was just in front of the horseman.
“Then quite unexpectedly it was announced that the Comte de Dinard was going to change his room. He protested but complied and everybody went to bed — everybody, that is, except me. I wasn’t feeling sleepy, and I sat down in an alcove in the room with a book. I was practically hidden, so that when Stedman returned he didn’t see me. And he crossed to the window, remained there a second and then went out again.
“So, after a moment or two, I also went to the window, and there I noticed a very strange thing. My Highlander, in whom I was so interested, had changed places with the Field Marshal!”
“Good heavens!” whispered Andrews.
“You see it, don’t you,” said Drummond gravely. “Stedman neither knew nor cared anything about soldiers, but hearing that little Billy did, he thought of a darned original scheme for indicating the Comte’s bedroom to someone on the outside. Soldiers that had to be painted and so couldn’t be moved: a tray placed on the window sill so that any man looking in from outside could see it and see where the Field Marshal was. Thirteen bedrooms there were on our floor: thirteen soldiers there were on the tray. And when the Comte moved into the next room...”
Drummond shrugged his shoulders.
“I wonder why Stedman wanted to have him murdered,” he went on thoughtfully.
For a space there was silence whilst Andrews stared at him.
“Stedman’s bedroom was third from the other end,” he said at length.
“I know. That’s why the Field Marshal made yet another move. Just before I turned out the lights and went to bed, I placed two men in front of him. Have a drink.”
Some time ago, the eminent Mr. Orson Welles, in answering a question submitted by your Editor to “Information Please,” insisted that Arsène Lupin was not a detective. “The Lady With the Hatchet” is only one of many proofs that even Mr. Welles can be wrong. Of course, in the early days of his career, Arsène Lupin was the Prince of Thieves; but anyone who can become Chief of the Paris Detective-Service — as Lupin did under the name of M. Lenormand in the novel “813” — must be considered a detective with a vengeance.
The Lady with the Hatchet
by Maurice Leblanc
One of the most incomprehensible incidents that preceded the great war was certainly the one which was known as the episode of the lady with the hatchet. The solution of the mystery was unknown and would never have been known, had not circumstances in the cruellest fashion obliged Prince Rénine — or should I say, Arsène Lupin? — to take up the matter and had I not been able today to tell the true story from the details supplied by him.
Let me recite the facts. In a space of eighteen months, five women disappeared, five women of different stations in life, all between twenty and thirty years of age and living in Paris or the Paris district.
I will give their names: Madame Ladoue, the wife of a doctor; Mlle. Ardant, the daughter of a banker; Mlle. Covereau, a washer-woman of Courbevoie; Mlle. Honorine Vernisset, a dressmaker; and Madame Grollinger, an artist. These five women disappeared without the possibility of discovering a single particular to explain why they had left their homes, why they did not return to them, who had enticed them away, and where and how they were detained.
Each of these women, a week after her departure, was found somewhere or other in the western outskirts of Paris; and each time it was a dead body that was found, the dead body of a woman who had been killed by a blow on the head from a hatchet. And each time, not far from the woman, who was firmly bound, her face covered with blood and her body emaciated by lack of food, the marks of carriage-wheels proved that the corpse had been driven to the spot.
The five murders were so much alike that there was only a single investigation, embracing all the five enquiries and, for that matter, leading to no result. A woman disappeared; a week later, to a day, her body was discovered; and that was all. The bonds that fastened her were similar in each case; so were the tracks left by the wheels; so were the blows of the hatchet, all of which were struck vertically at the top and right in the middle of the forehead.
The motive of the crime? The five women had been completely stripped of their jewels, purses and other objects of value. But the robberies might well have been attributed to marauders or any passers-by, since the bodies were lying in deserted spots. Were the authorities to believe in the execution of a plan of revenge or of a plan intended to do away with the series of persons mutually connected, persons, for instance, likely to benefit by a future inheritance? Here again the same obscurity prevailed. Theories were built up, only to be demolished forthwith by an examination of the facts. Trails were followed and at once abandoned.
And suddenly there was a sensation. A woman engaged in sweeping the roads picked up on the pavement a little notebook which she brought to the local policestation. The leaves of this notebook were all blank, excepting one, on which was written a list of the murdered women, with their names set down in order of date and accompanied by three figures: Ladoue, 132; Vernisset, 118; and so on.
Certainly no importance would have been attached to these entries, which anybody might have written, since everyone was acquainted with the sinister list. But, instead of five names, it included six! Yes, below the words “Grollinger, 128,” there appeared “Williamson, 114.” Did this indicate a sixth murder?
The obviously English origin of the name limited the field of the investigations, which did not in fact take long. It was ascertained that, a fortnight ago, a Miss Hermione Williamson, a governess in a family at Auteuil, had left her place to go back to England and that, since then, her sisters, though she had written to tell them that she was coming over, had heard no more of her.
A fresh enquiry was instituted. A postman found the body in the Meudon woods. Miss Williamson’s skull was split down the middle.
I need not describe the public excitement at this stage nor the shudder of horror which passed through the crowd when it read this list, written without a doubt in the murderer’s own hand. What could be more frightful than such a record, kept up to date like a careful tradesman’s ledger: