“Is that all, Mr. Snawley?”
“No, no, I see now there are three letters, very small, at the base of the stem-KTC.”
Pons held out his hand for the page, and took up another. This one he handed to Auber. “Examine it, Mr. Auber.”
Auber in turn held it up to the candles. “Yes, we’ve made no mistake, Mr. Snawley. It is a rose, delicately done-a fine rose. And the letters are clear-KTC, all run together.”
“That is the watermark of Kehnaway, Teape & Company, in Aldgate,” said Pons.
“I know of them,” said Snawley. “A highly reputable firm.”
“They were established in 1871,” continued Pons. “Mr. Dickens died on June 8, 1870.”
For a moment of frozen horror for the collectors there was not a sound.
“It cannot be!” cried our client then.
“Ye cannot mean it!” echoed Auber.
“The watermark cannot lie, gentlemen,” said Pons dryly, “but alas! the script can.”
“I bought it in good faith,” said Auber, aghast.
“And had it stolen in good faith,” said Pons, chuckling.
“I bought it from a reputable dealer,” said Auber.
“From the shop of Jason Brompton, in Edgware Road,” said Pons. “But not from him-rather from his assistant.”
Auber gazed at Pons in astonishment. “How did ye know?”
“Because there is only one forger in London with the skill and patience to have wrought this manuscript,” said Pons. “His name is Dennis Golders.”
“I will charge him!” cried Auber.
“Ah, I fear that cannot be done. Mr. Golders left Brompton’s last January, and is now in His Majesty’s service. I shall see, nevertheless, what I can do in the matter, but do not count on my success.”
Snawley fell back into his chair.
Auber did likewise.
Pip Scratch came quietly forward and poured them both a little sherry.
Midnight struck.
“It is Christmas day, gentlemen,” said Pons. “It is time to leave you. Now you have had a sad blow in common, perhaps you may find something to give you mutual pleasure in all these shelves! Even collectors must take the fraudulent with the genuine.”
Snawley raised his head. “You are right, Mr. Pons. Pip! Pip!” he shouted, as if Pip Scratch were not standing behind him. “Put on your coat and bring out the cab. Drive the gentlemen home!”
Our client and his visitor accompanied us to the door and saw us into the hansom cab Pip Scratch had brought down the driveway from the coach house.
“Merry Christmas, gentlemen!” cried Pons, leaning out.
“It burns my lips,” said Snawley with a wry smile. “But I will say it.”
He wished us both a Merry Christmas, and then, arm in arm, the two collectors turned and went a trifle unsteadily back into the house.
“This has been a rare Christmas, Parker, a rare Christmas, indeed,” mused Pons, as we rode toward our quarters through the dark London streets in our client’s hansom cab.
“I doubt we’ll ever see its like again,” I agreed.
“Do not deny us hope, Parker,” replied Pons. He cocked his head in my direction and looked at me quizzically. “Did I not see you eyeing the clock with some apprehension in the course of the past half hour?”
“You did, indeed,” I admitted. “I feared-I had the conviction, indeed I did-that the three of them would vanish at the stroke of midnight!”
BLIND MAN’S HOOD by John Dickson Carr
Well known for his “locked-room” mysteries, John Dickson Carr was a master practitioner of the true detective story, and played fair with the reader. Under his own name and a pseudonym, Carter Dickson, he produced a long list of short stories, mysteries and historical novels, several of which were made into movies and radio plays. Although most of his works were set in England, Carr was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, the son of a criminal lawyer. The best of his works weave a marvelous sense of time and place into their fabric.
Although one snowflake had already sifted past the lights, the great doors of the house stood open. It seemed less a snowflake than a shadow; for a bitter wind whipped after it, and the doors creaked. Inside, Rodney and Muriel Hunter could see a dingy, narrow hall paved in dull red tiles, with a Jacobean staircase at the rear. (At that time, of course, there was no dead woman lying inside.)
To find such a place in the loneliest part of the Weald of Kent-a seventeenth-century country house whose floors had grown humped and its beams scrubbed by the years-was what they had expected. Even to find electricity was not surprising. But Rodney Hunter thought he had seldom seen so many lights in one house, and Muriel had been equally startled by the display. “Clearlawns” lived up to its name. It stood in the midst of a slope of flat grass, now wiry white with frost, and there was no tree or shrub within twenty yards of it. Those lights contrasted with a certain inhospitable and damp air about the house as though the owner were compelled to keep them burning all the time.
“But why is the front door open?” insisted Muriel.
In the driveway, the engine of their car coughed and died. The house was now a secret blackness of gables, emitting light at every chink, and silhouetting the stalks of the wisteria vines which climbed it. On either side of the front door were little-paned windows, whose curtains had not been drawn. Towards their left they could see into a low dining room, with table and sideboard set for a cold supper; towards their right was a darkish library moving with the reflections of a bright fire.
The sight of the fire warmed Rodney Hunter, but it made him feel guilty. They were very late. At five o’clock, without fail, he had promised Jack Bannister, they would be at “Clearlawns” to inaugurate the Christmas party.
Engine trouble in leaving London was one thing; idling at a country pub along the way, drinking hot ale and listening to the wireless sing carols until a sort of Dickensian jollity stole into you, was something else. But both he and Muriel were young; they were very fond of each other and of things in general; and they had worked themselves into a glow of Christmas, which-as they stood before the creaking doors of “Clearlawns”-grew oddly cool.
There was no real reason, Rodney thought, to feel disquiet. He hoisted their luggage, including a big box of presents for Jack and Molly’s children, out of the rear of the car. That his footsteps should sound loud on the gravel was only natural. He put his head into the doorway and whistled. Then he began to bang the knocker. Its sound seemed to seek out every corner of the house and then come back like a questing dog; but there was no response.
“I’ll tell you something else,” he said. “There’s nobody in the house.”
Muriel ran up the three steps to stand beside him. She had drawn her fur coat close around her, and her face was bright with cold.
“But that’s impossible!” she said. “I mean, even if they’re out, the servants-! Molly told me she keeps a cook and two maids. Are you sure we’ve got the right place?”
“Yes. The name’s on the gate, and there’s no other house within a mile.”
With the same impulse they craned their necks to look through the windows of the dining room, on the left. Cold fowl on the sideboard, a great bowl of chestnuts; and, now they could see it, another good fire, before which stood a chair with a piece of knitting put aside on it. Rodney tried the knocker again, vigorously, but the sound was all wrong. It was as though they were even more lonely in that core of light, with the east wind rushing across the Weald, and the door creaking again.
“I suppose we’d better go in,” said Rodney. He added, with a lack of Christmas spirit: “Here, this is a devil of a trick! What do you think has happened? I’ll swear that fire has been made up in the last fifteen minutes.”