Christopher Quarles: College Professor and Master Detective

"I have grave doubts on the subject," Giles answered. "If Mr. Frisby had ever sat down to make a will, I am inclined to think he would have repented of the way in which he had treated his nephew. Personally, if a will exists, I should not be surprised to find my client residuary legatee."

"Our friend Giles has missed his vocation, Wigan," said Quarles, as he walked back to the Heron, where he had ordered a carriage to drive us over to the Towers; "he should have turned his hand to writing romances instead of writing obscure English in legal documents."

"I have no doubt he will do exceedingly well if no will is found," I answered.

"No doubt. A mean man, Wigan, one who cannot help resenting the success of others. He does not forget that James Frisby was once a clerk in his father's office."

"Still, it seems to me there is a great deal of force in what he says," I remarked.

"It would interest me more to know what he really thinks," Quarles returned.

The Towers, exteriorly, was a barrack of a place, deriving its name from two square excrescences at either end of its long façade. Within it was a treasure house. Furniture, pictures, china, silver, books, all were good. The taste displayed was cosmopolitan, even bizarre. Not in a single room was there any attempt at uniformity, nor any fixed plan of decoration. Jacobean furniture, Georgian, examples of Sheraton, Heppelwhite, and other English worthies in the art, rubbed shoulders with the work of the master makers of Italy and France, and were crowded together with marvelous specimens from the East, from India and Japan. The paintings were of many schools; the china, as a private collection, would be hard to beat; much of the silver was unique, and rare books shared shelf room with the modern productions of the printers' and binders' arts.

"An eccentric, Wigan," said Quarles, glancing rapidly around him. "Zena was right in emphasizing that fact. We must bear it in mind."

Before leaving town I had taken the precaution of seeing Messrs. Lacey, the solicitors, and in consequence Edward Oglethorpe was prepared for our visit and welcomed it. His appearance went to confirm the reports we had heard of him. He was an upstanding, straightforward young Englishman of the best type, one with whom it seemed impossible to associate any kind of meanness.

The professor came to the point at once.

"May I take it, Mr. Oglethorpe, you have no reason to suspect that Frisby Morton has had anything to do with the disappearance of this will?"

"The idea never suggested itself to me until he accused me of making such a statement, then – "

"Quite naturally a doubt was raised in your mind," said Quarles. "Did it ever occur to you that Mr. Frisby had treated his nephew badly?"

"No; I knew he did not care for him, but I also knew he had given him ten thousand pounds. Only since his death have I known of the letter he sent with that check. I was, therefore, not aware that he intended to leave him out of his will."

"You feel confident there was a will?"

"Mr. Frisby told me I was his heir, and I took it for granted there was a will. I never saw, I do not think he actually told me he had made it. As it is, of course, I naturally have doubts whether it ever was made."

Quarles nodded.

"I cannot explain what my adopted father was to me," Oglethorpe went on, "nor how keenly I feel his death. The question of his wealth never troubled me. I was too happy and contented with him to give a thought to what my future would be without him. You can understand how hateful this business, this quarreling about his money, is to me."

"I can, I can," said Quarles, with ready sympathy, and with a few dexterous questions he set Oglethorpe talking about the dead man. Never surely has a man had his virtues treated more lovingly or his faults so little remembered. To illustrate some reminiscence of his adopted father, Oglethorpe led us from room to room to show us some cabinet or picture. It seemed to me, as I looked round, that there were a thousand places where a will might be securely hidden, and my sympathy went out to this young fellow who stood to lose what there could be no doubt he was intended to possess.

We came presently to the old man's sanctum. Quarles had not asked to see it. He had followed Oglethorpe, content to listen to him, and only asking a short question at intervals. He seemed to grow keener in this room.

"Was he here a great deal?" the professor asked, looking round.

"He did all his business here, and if he wanted to talk to me seriously we came in here. He always put down the check for my college expenses on this table with, 'There, my dear boy, don't spend it foolishly and don't get into debt' – always the same words. I can hear them now. It is a comfort to me to remember that I gave him no anxiety on that score."

"Of course this room has been searched very thoroughly?"

"The whole house has been searched from garret to cellar, but you are at liberty to look where you please."

"It would be superfluous labor, no doubt," Quarles answered. "Tell me, Mr. Oglethorpe, during this search were there any surprises? It seems certain that if a will exists it must be in an altogether unexpected place. Now were things generally found in unexpected places? For example, there is a safe in that corner, I see; did you by any chance find a pair of old slippers securely locked up in it?"

"There was nothing so eccentric as that," said Oglethorpe, "but certainly we did come across unexpected things. Some old pipes were locked in a cabinet in the drawing-room. We found a mass of worthless papers in that safe, while some valuable documents were under some old clothes at the bottom of a drawer in his bedroom. In that chest by the window, which a burglar would find difficult to pick, he had locked some fragments of a worthless china vase, and in this table drawer, which has no lock at all, he kept the few letters he had received from my mother. He looked upon them as one of the greatest treasures he possessed, yet anyone might have opened the drawer and read the letters. Yes, the dear old man was a little eccentric in that way."

"Kept his old clothes, useless papers, broken fragments. He did not like throwing things away."

"That is true."

"I suppose this room is much as he left it," said Quarles, picking up the waste-paper basket and turning over the papers in it.

"Yes; practically nothing has been moved or altered in the whole house. I had everything put back exactly where it was found. You notice that even the paper basket has not been emptied."

"May I open one or two drawers?" asked Quarles.

"You may search wherever you like," said Oglethorpe.

For a few minutes Quarles wandered round the room, opening a drawer here, a cabinet there, and apparently looking at the contents in a casual manner.

"I should like to see the room where Mr. Frisby died, if I may," he said presently.

We went upstairs, and with a slow glance round it, Quarles seemed to take in every item it contained and every corner that was in it. Here, too, he opened several drawers.

"He died in the evening, I understand," said the professor.

"Just before midnight," Oglethorpe returned.

"He was unconscious, wasn't he?"

"He could not speak, but I do not think he was altogether unconscious. I believe he knew me."

"It has been suggested that he appeared to have something on his mind," said Quarles.

"I think it was the light that troubled him, but whether he wanted more or less in the room we could not determine. We tried both without being able to satisfy him."

"Reviewing the circumstances of those last few hours, was there anything which might point to the cause of this trouble?"

"I do not think so," Oglethorpe answered. "He moved his hands continuously, but not in the least as if he were anxious to write. Such an idea did not occur to any of us. It was only afterward that we wondered whether he was troubled about his will."

"Who first started that idea?"

"I think it was Morton, but I am not sure."

"How did Mr. Frisby move his hands?"

"Like this, very slowly and feebly."

Oglethorpe held his hands before him an inch or two apart, the knuckles uppermost. The left hand he tilted slowly forward and downward; the right upward and backward.

"You are quite sure that those were the exact movements?" said Quarles after watching him closely.

"Quite sure."

"They were the same the whole time? He did not vary them?"

"Not once."

Quarles turned and walked out of the room, and we followed him. He paused to examine a bronze figure standing on a pedestal on the landing.

"Do you intend to begin your search at once?" Oglethorpe asked.

The professor did not answer.

"You can do so when you like," Oglethorpe went on.

"No," said Quarles with a start. He was not really examining the bronze, he was lost in thought. "No, not at once. I must think it out first. To-morrow, perhaps. I cannot say for certain."

It was by no means a hopeful answer, and I wondered if Quarles had already made some discovery which entirely destroyed his theory. His questions and his insistency on certain points told me that he had some theory.

We had kept our carriage waiting.

"I'm going to walk, Wigan," said the professor. "I must be alone. That road looks pretty flat and uninteresting; I shall go that way. It's impossible to think in that room at the Heron. I may be some hours. By the way, you might try and find out if Frisby Morton is in Boston. I might want to see him."

I drove back to the Heron, and in the afternoon I made inquiries about Morton. I found that a rumor had already been circulated in the town that a great detective had come to the Towers, and there was some excitement as to the reason of his visit. Mr. Giles must surely have mentioned our call, I thought. I also heard that Frisby Morton had left for London by the mid-day train, and I wondered if there was any significance in the fact of his departure coinciding with Quarles's arrival.

The professor did not return to the Heron until late. He was tired and hungry, and would neither talk nor listen to me until he had made a square meal.

"I found a splendid spot to think in, Wigan," he said, when the three of us were in our sitting-room. "A disused gravel-pit. I shared it with a frog for a time, but he worried me so I took him by the leg and threw him out. I looked for him afterward with the intention of throwing him in again. I could not find him, but as I was turning away, would you believe it, he hopped in again of his own accord."

I was not in the mood for an Æsop fable, and with some impatience I told him the results of my inquiries that afternoon.

"Gone, has he? Business called him to town, I presume?"

"Perhaps his solicitor wanted him to be out of reach of questions," I suggested.

"Our friend Giles is quite capable of it," Quarles returned. "He has not impressed me; but to return to my frog. There were quite a number of places near that gravel-pit which would have suited him equally well; but no, he would get back to the pit. I cannot say he gave me an idea, but he helped to confirm one. The mind, be it frog's or man's, is certain to be biased by circumstances and environment. If you watched a frog through a period of time, apart from his actions necessary to life and well-being, you would find him doing certain other things, doing them to-day because he did them yesterday. He acquires a habit. Men do the same. The more curious these actions are, the more eccentric the individual becomes. You remember Zena warned us that we had to do with an eccentric in this affair, and therefore was inclined to believe in the existence of a will."

Zena nodded.

"She based her belief on one point. When Mr. Frisby gave his nephew such a large sum of money, disliking him as he did, he would take special care that he should never touch another penny. A strong argument. Besides, there was the testimony of the two servants who had witnessed their master's signature to some document. On the other side was the outstanding fact that no will was forthcoming. Men do not put off making their wills until too late. A man like Mr. Frisby, it might reasonably be argued, when making his will, would go to a solicitor. He had a very large fortune to dispose of; he wished to benefit a person who had no legal claim on him; he was particularly anxious that his nephew should not get anything more. His early years in a lawyer's office would have shown him something of the pitfalls which await the amateur in legal matters. Further, there was the obvious distress of the dying man which might mean that he had neglected to make a will. On the whole, perhaps, the weight of evidence was against the existence of a will."

"He was eccentric," murmured Zena.

"And more than that – he had made a fortune," said Quarles. "Now, to make money a man usually requires to be business-like; and since he was smart enough to make money, he would probably be smart enough to see that it was disposed of as he wished. Rich and eccentric. In his case these two facts meant much. I came to the conclusion, Wigan, that there was a will. If I was right three possibilities existed. It might have been destroyed, it might have been stolen, or it was concealed in some unexpected place. That Mr. Frisby could destroy it by mistake was hardly worth consideration, but he might destroy it purposely either, as Giles hinted, because he felt he had treated his nephew badly, or because he was dissatisfied with his adopted son. There is nothing to suggest that his feelings toward either of these persons had changed in the least. I think Oglethorpe's conversation to-day bears that out, Wigan."

"Certainly," I answered.

"It might have been stolen. Such a theft could only profit one person – Frisby Morton, and incidentally, of course, Mr. Giles, since he would be able to run up a handsome bill of costs and secure a wealthy client. We may not like Mr. Giles, but I do not think he would do anything illegal. What we hear of Frisby Morton does not tend to prepossess us in his favor. Having worried his uncle a great deal, he was quickly upon the scene when he heard that no will had been found. He knew of the signing of a document from one of the witnesses. There is a possibility that his conversation with the servant might have given him an idea where the document was placed afterward. Further, Mr. Morton was almost suspiciously ready to resent all gossip concerning himself, and at once attributed it to Edward Oglethorpe. At the same time, it must be remembered that he was Mr. Frisby's only living relative, that, in a sense, young Oglethorpe was an interloper, that at least he might expect something substantial from his uncle. He got it, and appears not to have troubled his uncle any more. When Mr. Frisby died, apparently intestate, it was only natural he should come forward; in his peculiar position it was natural he should resent the gossip. Any man would. Oglethorpe was nothing to him. From his point of view he had got more right to the fortune than Oglethorpe, and if chance was to give him his rights so much the better."

"But he would probably have acted in the same way if he had stolen the will," I said.

"True, but I have not ended my argument," said Quarles. "What opportunity had he for stealing it? He was an unwelcome visitor at the Towers, and does not appear to have stayed there during his uncle's lifetime. An accomplice is possible, but not probable. However, we cannot altogether dismiss Frisby Morton from our calculations, that is why I asked you to find out whether he was in Boston, Wigan."

"And he left when you came, perhaps because you came."

"At the instigation of friend Giles?" asked Quarles.

"Possibly."

"Let us examine the third proposition before we apply for a warrant," said Quarles. "The will may have been hidden. If so, it must be in an unexpected place, all the likely places having been looked into. We must try and look into the mind of an eccentric. For a moment let us take any ordinary man, and you will find that he exhibits certain peculiarities. He is a creature of sequences, and he goes on repeating himself. He will continue to wear the same kind of clothes, even though the fashion changes. He will always put certain things into a certain pocket. He will arrange his papers, not in the best way, but in the way he has always arranged them. He can only write on a certain kind of paper with a particular make of pen. Such habits as these are acquired by quite an ordinary man, and no one thinks much about them. Now take a man not quite so ordinary. He gets a mania for storing up useless odds and ends, dislikes destroying anything, touches every second post he passes in his walks, lives on one meal a day, perhaps, or becomes a vegetarian. We say of this man that he is rather eccentric. In short, we notice him because he exaggerates our own peculiarities. Man repeats himself, that is the point. He does a thing his way, not yours. Now take a really eccentric man – Mr. Frisby. We may speak of specific peculiarities in his case, Wigan. He accumulated useless papers and locked them up. He left valuable papers in an open drawer. Broken fragments he carefully concealed in a chest; letters which he treasured he left where anyone might find them. Even if he did destroy a paper he did not tear it up, he twisted it up. Some men invariably tear paper across and across, others crumple it into a ball. Mr. Frisby twisted it. You remember my looking into the paper basket. There were no torn pieces in it, nor crumpled; they were all twisted. A small thing, but significant. I looked into several drawers, you remember. In one was a duster, not just thrown in as you would do, but twisted up. In his bedroom an old alpaca coat had been thrown into a drawer, twisted up. Twisting was a habit of his. How it was acquired I cannot say, but I should guess that in Australia the act of twisting or turning something was a necessary part of his day's work. I have known many sailors acquire the habit. This habit, I argued, might help us in our search. The will was not under lock and key, Mr. Frisby did not keep his valuables like that; unless the search was incomplete it was not lying in an unlocked drawer. Was it twisted up somewhere?"

"His hands," I said excitedly, moving my own as I had seen Oglethorpe move his.

"Exactly, Wigan, twisting, and more. You are making the motion correctly, I was careful to ascertain that. It is the action of unscrewing. The will was screwed into something, and the dying man was trying to make them understand that something had to be unscrewed."

"What is that something, dear?" asked Zena.

"They thought it was the light that troubled him," Quarles went on. "We'll go to the Towers to-morrow, Wigan, and I think we shall find some candelabrum, or, more likely, some old silver candlestick which unscrews. If we do not, I think we shall have to get an interview with Frisby Morton somehow. That is why I wanted to know if he were in Boston. You see, there was a riddle to read, and a bare possibility exists that Morton has read it already."

I thought this most unlikely, but the fact that Quarles had conceived the possibility showed how exceedingly careful he was of details. The will, a very short one, leaving everything to Edward Oglethorpe, was found in an old silver candlestick, which stood, as a rule, on a table in Mr. Frisby's dressing-room.

It was a heavy candlestick which unscrewed just below the cup which held the candle, and the will was in the hollow stem.

Christopher Quarles insisted on dividing the reward into three parts. Zena certainly had had a definite conviction about the affair from the first, so perhaps earned her share; but I am very sure I did nothing to deserve mine.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CASE OF THE MURDERED FINANCIER

The division of the thousand-pound reward made the three of us inclined for frivolity and pleasure. I happened to have little to do, so we made several excursions and visited many theaters. Relaxation is good, but one may have too much of it; certainly it was not the best training for the next case I was called upon to investigate.

I remember a man of many convictions once telling me that he rather enjoyed picking oakum, a proof that one may become used to anything. In the course of my career I have become accustomed to ghastly sights, yet when I entered that room in Hampstead a feeling of nausea seized me which had something of fear in it. Without attempting any close observation, I went out and sent a line to Christopher Quarles, asking him to come to me at once.

It was chiefly my desire for companionship in my investigations which made me do so, I think; still, it may be that subconsciously I realized that this was a case for the professor. The force of contrast, too, may have had something to do with my attitude. Two nights ago, the professor, Zena, and I had been to the opera, mainly to see a Hungarian dancer who had recently caused a sensation. She was a very beautiful woman, and her dancing, which was illustrative of abstract ideas, was impressive, if bizarre. Quarles had pointed out a man in a box who seemed literally absorbed in the performance, and said he was a wealthy German named Seligmann, who was financially interested in the opera season.

This morning Seligmann was dead, lying limply in a deep arm-chair in the study of his home in Hampstead. Owing to some misunderstanding I had arrived before the doctor who had been sent for, and, as I have said, the sight nauseated me. Downward, through his neck, a stiletto had been driven, a death-dealing blow delivered from behind, apparently, but besides this his face and throat were torn as though some great bird had attacked him with powerful talons. The description is inadequate, perhaps, but it was too terrible a sight to enlarge upon.

Quarles and the doctor arrived at the same time, and the three of us entered the room together. After looking at the dead man for a few moments, Quarles stood apart while the doctor made his examination, but I noticed that his eyes were particularly alive behind his round goggles.

The doctor was puzzled.

"The stiletto killed him," he said, slowly, looking at me, "but these other wounds – the sudden explosion of some vessel might have caused them, but there are no fragments. It almost looks as if the flesh had been torn by a rake. He has been dead some hours."

"Yesterday was Sunday," I replied, "and this room was not opened."

"That accounts for the time," he said. "The work of a madman, perhaps. Murder, undoubtedly."

When the doctor had gone, after he had superintended the removal of the dead man to a small room off the hall, Quarles moved to the writing-table.

"Glad you sent for me, Wigan. What has the wife to say? He was married, I suppose? There is a feminine note about the house."

"Mrs. Seligmann is away," I answered, "and as yet I have only interviewed the man who found his master. He was inclined to be hysterical. Two women-servants had a day off yesterday, and are not expected back until this morning."

"Dead many hours," said Quarles; "was probably lying here yesterday, and we saw him on Saturday. I don't think he left the house before the fall of the curtain."

"No, I think not."

"He couldn't have got here before midnight, then," said Quarles. "That helps us to the time of the murder. It would be a late hour for a visitor, and I see no card lying about."

"My dear professor, visitors of this sort do not leave their cards."

"Look at this pen on the blotting-pad, Wigan; it might have been just put down – put down, not dropped from paralyzed fingers, nor from a hand raised in self-defense. It was used, probably, to make these meaningless lines and curves upon the pad. A man engaged in a serious conversation might draw them as he talked. That chair there was pushed back by the doctor, but it was close to the table, just where a visitor would sit to talk to a man seated at the table. Now mark, the dead man is found in an arm-chair removed from the table, yet his cigar was put carefully into the ash tray, half smoked, you see, and the ash not knocked off. Oh, yes, Mr. Seligmann had a visitor of whom he had no fear, and who might reasonably have left a card."

"He would be careful not to leave it lying about after the murder," I said.

"It wasn't a man, I fancy, but a woman. Had it been a man, the glasses on the tray yonder would probably have been used. Besides, if criminals were always as careful as you suggest, there are few detectives who would be able to hunt them down. The very essence of your profession is looking for mistakes."