Drury Lane’s Last Case (7 page)

“Thanks,” said the Inspector dryly. “Don't let us disturb you, Mr. What's-Your-Name. Maybe we'd better go off somewhere, Dr. Choate, and leave this young feller to his dime novel.”

“Father!” cried Patience. “Oh, Mr. Rowe, please don't mind Father. You see, he probably resents your slur upon the name of Thumm.” Her colour ran high, and the young man, quite unruffled by the Inspector's glare, continued to eye her with cool appreciation. “What name
would
you give me, Mr. Rowe?”

“Darling,” said Mr. Rowe warmly.

“Patience Darling?”

“Er—just darling.”

“Say——” began the Inspector wrathfully.

“Do sit down,” said Dr. Choate with a bland smile. “Rowe, for the Lord's sake, behave yourself. Miss Thumm, please.” Patience, who found the young man's steady gaze faintly disconcerting while it for some unaccountable reason fluttered a suddenly conscious artery in her wrist, sat down, and the Inspector sat down, and Dr. Choate sat down, and Mr. Rowe remained standing and staring.

“It's a weary wait,” said Dr. Choate hurriedly. “They've just barely begun. The painters, I mean. Haven't touched the upper floors.”

“Yeah,” growled Inspector Thumm. “Now I'll tell you——”

Gordon Rowe sat down, vaguely grinning. “If I'm intruding——” he began with cheerfulness.

Inspector Thumm looked hopeful. But Patience, with a charming glance at her father, said to the curator: “Did I understand you to say that you're included in the general house-cleaning, Dr. Choate? … Do stay, Mr. Rowe.”

Dr. Choate leaned back in the swivel-chair behind his long desk and looked about the room. He sighed. “In a manner of speaking. It hasn't been generally announced, but I'm leaving. Retiring. Fifteen years of my life have been spent in this building, and I dare say it's time I thought of myself.” He closed his eyes and murmured: “I know precisely what I shall do. I shall purchase a small English cottage I've had my eye on in upper Connecticut, dig in with my books, and lead the life of a hermit-scholar.…”

“Swell idea,” said the Inspector. “But as I was saying——”

“Charming,” murmured Mr. Rowe, still looking at Patience.

“You certainly deserve your rest, from all Mr. Lane has told me about you,” said Patience hastily. “When are you leaving, Doctor?”

“I've not decided. You see, we're acquiring a new curator. He's expected in from England on to-night's boat, as a matter of fact; he'll be docking to-morrow morning and then we'll see. It will take some time before he acclimatizes himself, and of course I shall stay until he can carry on by himself.”

“Social visit, Miss Darling?” asked the young man suddenly.

“I always thought America restricted her borrowing from England to paintings and books,” said Patience in some confusion. “I take it your incoming curator is something very special in bibliophiles, Dr. Choate. Is he anyone really important?”

The Inspector fidgeted in his chair.

“Oh, he's built up something of a reputation abroad,” said Dr. Choate with a delicate wave of his hand. “I shouldn't say he was first rank. He's been director of a small London museum for many years—the Kensington. His name is Sedlar, Hamnet Sedlar.…”

“There's solid roast-beef Britain for you!” said the young man with enthusiasm.”

“Personally engaged by the chairman of our Board of Directors. James Wyeth, you know.”

Patience, annoyed with herself for being suddenly unable to meet the young man's admiring glance, raised her slender eyebrows. Wyeth was a titan among the mighty, a cold, cultured Crœsus with a passionate devotion to knowledge.

“And then, too, Sedlar was warmly recommended by Sir John Humphrey-Bond,” continued Dr. Choate amiably. “Of course Sir John's endorsement carried weight. He's been England's most distinguished Elizabethan collector for decades, Inspector, as I suppose you know.”

The Inspector started. He cleared his throat. “Sure. Sure thing. But what we——”

“Sure you don't mind my staying?” asked Mr. Rowe suddenly. “I'd been hoping somebody would turn up, you know.” He laughed and snicked shut the heavy old folio he had been reading. “This is my lucky day.”

“Of course not, Mr. Rowe,” murmured Patience; her face was a delicate crimson. “Er—Dr. Choate, I spent a good deal of my adolescence in England——”

“Lucky England, too,” said the young man reverently.

“——and it's always been my feeling that most cultured Englishmen consider us rather quaint but slightly offensive barbarians. I suppose the inducement to Mr. Sedlar was sufficiently weighty to——?”

Dr. Choate chuckled in his beard. “Wrong, Miss Thumm. The Britannic's finances didn't permit us to offer Dr. Sedlar even as much as he'd been getting in London. But he seemed genuinely enthusiastic at the prospect of joining us here, and he snapped up Mr. Wyeth's offer. I suppose he's like the rest of us—impractical.”

“How true,” sighed the young man. “Now if I were practical——”

“How curious,” smiled Patience. “It doesn't seem the proper British psychology, somehow.”

The Inspector coughed very loudly. “Now, Patty,” he said in a chiding tone, “Dr. Choate's a busy man, and we can't take up his whole day chinning about something that's not our business.”

“Oh, now really, Inspector——”

“I'm sure it's a pleasure for an old fossil like Choate,” remarked Mr. Rowe warmly, “to converse with as beautiful a creature as your daughter, Inspector——”

A desperate light began to glitter in Thumm's eye. “What we really came for, Dr. Choate,” he said, ignoring the young man, “is to find out about Donoghue.”

“Donoghue?” The curator seemed puzzled, and glanced at Rowe, who sat forward with bright eyes. “What's the matter with Donoghue?”

“What's the
matter
with Donoghue?” growled the Inspector. “Why, Donoghue's disappeared, that's what's the matter with him!”

The young man's smile faded. “Disappeared?” he said swiftly.

Dr. Choate frowned. “Are you sure, Inspector? I suppose you're referring to our special guard?”

“Sure! Say, didn't you know he hadn't turned up for work this morning?”

“Certainly. But I thought nothing of it.” The curator rose and began to pace the drugget behind his desk. “Burch, our caretaker, did mention something to me this morning about Donoghue's failure to turn up, but it didn't occur to me——Matter of fact, Rowe, you remember I mentioned it to you. You see, we like him here and give him rather more freedom than he would have in another situation. And then the museum's being shut down.… What's happened? What's the matter, Inspector?”

“Well, as far as we can find out,” replied the Inspector grimly, “he beat it out of here yesterday afternoon while that party of school-teachers were being shown around and he hasn't been seen since. Hasn't turned up at his boarding-house, didn't keep a date with a friend of his last night—just dropped clean out of sight.”

“It's rather odd, don't you think, Doctor?” murmured Patience.

Gordon Rowe laid his book down very quietly.

“Quite, quite,” said Dr. Choate, who seemed disturbed. “The party of teachers.… They seemed a harmless enough lot, Inspector.”

“When you're a cop as many years as I've been,” retorted the Inspector, “you learn not to depend too much on appearances. I understood it was you who took that bunch around the museum.”

“Yes.”

“How many of them were there, d'ye remember?”

“Really, I don't know. I'm afraid I didn't count, Inspector.”

“You didn't by any chance,” asked Patience softly, “notice a middle-aged man with a bushy grey moustache and a bluish sort of hat among them, did you, Doctor?”

“I've the failing of most shut-ins, Miss Thumm; half the time I'm unconscious of my surroundings.”

“I did,” said Rowe with a snap of his lean jaws. “But it was just a glimpse, blast it.”

“Too bad,” said the Inspector sarcastically. “So you just showed 'em around, eh, Doctor?”

“That's my crime, Inspector,” replied the curator with a shrug. “Why do you ask especially after this man in the blue hat, Miss Thumm?”

“Because the man in the blue hat,” replied Patience, “was an illegitimate member of the party, Dr. Choate, and because we've every reason to believe that Donoghue's disappearance is connected with him in some way.”

“Funny,” muttered young Rowe. “Funny. Intrigue in the museum, Doctor! That sounds like Donoghue, with his incurably romantic Irish temperament.”

“You mean he might have noticed something strange,” said Dr. Choate thoughtfully, “about this chap in the blue hat and permitted himself to be inveigled into a private investigation of his own? It's possible, of course. I'm sure nothing's happened to Donoghue, though, I've every confidence in his ability to handle himself.”

“Then where is he?” said the Inspector dryly.

Dr. Choate shrugged again; it was evident he considered the entire affair a trifle. He rose with a pleasant smile.

“And now that your business has been transacted, would you like to look about, Inspector? And you, Miss Thumm? I know you've been through the Britannic before, but we've recently acquired an important benefaction and I'm sure you'll be interested in it. It's housed in what we've named the Saxon Room. Samuel Saxon, you know. He died not long——”

“Well——” snarled the Inspector.

“I'm sure we should love it,” said Patience quickly.

Dr. Choate led the way, like Moses, between the painted seas of canvas on the reception-room floor along a corridor to a large reading-room whose book-crammed walls were also hung with canvas. Inspector Thumm trudged wearily by his side, and behind them came Patience and the tall young man—an arrangement which was effected with a cool dexterity that brought a new blush to Patience's cheeks.

“You don't mind my trailing along this way, do you, darling?” murmured the young man.

“I've never shunned the company of good-looking men yet,” said Patience stiffly, “and I'm sure I shan't start now just to swell
your
head, Mr. Rowe. Did any one ever tell you that you're an extremely offensive young man?”

“My brother,” said Rowe with gravity, “once when I handed him a black eye. Darling, I don't know when I've met a girl——”

Dr. Choate led the way across the reading-room to a far door. “As a matter of fact,” he called out, “Mr. Rowe has almost more right to do the honours of the Saxon Room than I, Miss Thumm. He was one of those infant prodigies you read about.”

“How horrible,” said Patience, tossing her head.

“Don't believe a word of it,” said Rowe instantly. “Choate, I'll strangle you! What the estimable Doctor means, Miss Thumm——”

“Oh, it's Miss Thumm now, is it?”

He flushed. “I'm sorry. I get this way sometimes. What Dr. Choate means is that it was my good fortune to attract old Sam Saxon's eye. He left a lot of rare books to the Britannic in his will; died a few months ago, you know; and as his protégé I'm here in a sort of semi-official capacity to see that they're started off in their new home properly.”

“More and more horrible, Mr. Rowe. I'm chiefly interested in brainless young men with no visible means of support.”

“Now you're being cruel,” he whispered. Then his eyes danced. “Except for the means of support, I assure you I qualify! Fact is, I'm doing some original research in Shakespeare. Mr. Saxon tucked me under his wing and I'm continuing my researches here, now that he's dead and a good deal of the Shakespearian stuff has been willed to the museum.”

They entered a long, narrow room which, from its fresh look, turpentine odour, and lack of draping proclaimed it recently redecorated. It contained perhaps a thousand volumes, most of them on open shelves. A small number reposed in wooden cases on slender metal legs, the tops of the cases covered with glass; apparently the more valuable items.

“Just finished,” said Dr. Choate. “There are some really unique things here; eh, Rowe? Of course the contents of this wing have not yet been placed on exhibition; the collection was delivered only a few weeks ago, after we had shut down.” The Inspector leaned against a wall near the door and looked bored. “Now here,” continued Dr. Choate in a Chautauqua voice, strolling over to the nearest cabinet, “is an item——”

“Say!” exclaimed the Inspector sharply. “What the devil's happened to that cabinet over there?”

Dr. Choate and Gordon Rowe wheeled like startled birds of passage. Patience felt her breath come thickly.

The Inspector was pointing to a case in the centre of the room, quite like the others in appearance; but it differed from the others in a signal respect. Its glass top had been shattered and only a few fragments of jagged glass clung to the frame!

5

The Jaggard Case

The expressions of acute alarm on the face of the curator and the young man turned instantly to relief.

“Phew!” said Rowe. “Go easy on my heart, Inspector. I thought for a moment something was really wrong. Just an accident we had yesterday, that's all.”

Patience and the Inspector exchanged very rapid and illuminated glances. “An accident, hey?” said the Inspector. “Well, well. Glad I decided to soak in a little of your culture at that, Doc. What d'ye mean ‘accident,' Rowe?”

“Oh, I assure you that's all it was,” smiled the curator. “No significance at all. It's really Mr. Rowe's story. He was working in the reading-room next door yesterday afternoon and had occasion to come in here to consult one of the Saxon books. It was he who found the glass top of this case shattered.”