The Bradmoor Murder (3 page)

Marquis paused again. He lighted his cigarette at one of the candles on the table, drew the smoke through it an instant, and then came back to his narrative.

“I have been giving you this case in extended detail,” he said, “because I am trying to make you realize the difficulties that it presented, and how carefully those difficulties were considered. I wish you to understand, as we presently came
to understand, how incapable the thing was of any solution. We returned again and again to it, as I have returned here in my narrative again and again to it, because we were constantly assailed with the belief that we had overlooked something. There must be some evidences that had escaped us—a way into that room, or a way out of it, by which an assassin could have encompassed Bradmoor's death. But we got no further. There was no way into that room, nor any way out of it, and there was no way from above it in which an assassin could have killed Bradmoor; and yet there he was, shot to death in his chair!”

Henry Marquis laughed. It was an ironical chuckle of a laugh.

“The butler's mother was the only person with a theory, and by Heaven, there were evidences to support it. She assembled them and fitted them together. She convinced the countryside. The very impossible things we found connected with the irrational explanations of the matter, were the strongest evidences of her theory.

“One had to consider them, no matter how practical one was.

“The very fact that we were able to show that old Bradmoor could not have been killed by any human agency of which we had any knowledge, proved, as she pointed out, that he could have been killed by a supernatural agency only. Certainly only a Devil's imp could leave no marks on a wall, and could leap off, disappearing into the sea. Besides, Bradmoor had been afraid of the Devil!”

Henry Marquis hesitated a moment. He broke the cigarette in his fingers into fragments, crumbling them on the table.

“Now, there,” he said, “one came upon a series of evidences that had to be admitted. Bradmoor had been noticed to act queerly for some time. It was only after his death that the various trivial instances were precisely recalled, and fitted together. But they had been beyond doubt observed, and, now when they were connected up, they took on an unquestioned significance.

“The man had been afraid of something!

“He would lock himself into his room at night; he never sat long in one position; he would not stand before a window, nor sit with his back to an open door. It was recalled that
he had been clever with an explanation of these idiosyncrasies—extremely clever. It was a draft he avoided before an open door. Or his eyes were sensitive to the strong light of a window; or he was nervous—too many pipes—he must find a milder tobacco, and so forth.

“The explanations covered the peculiarities while the man was living, and there was nothing to create a suspicion of some unusual motive; but after his death they became signboards that all pointed in one direction—the morale of the man had been gradually breaking down under an increasing monomania of fear!

“These evidences were all bright-colored threads for the Devil theory. Bradmoor had been afraid of the Devil! And he had not been afraid without a reason! The butler's mother had a fine, lurid theory that pleased the countryside.”

Henry Marquis suddenly smote the table with his hand.

“But it could not be considered by us. There is only one thing of which I am absolutely certain, and that is that the supernatural does not exist. This is a physical world. Every
problem in it has an explanation. The Devil is a myth.

“There was one thing only to do now,” he pursued, “and that was to go back over the man's life to see if it contained any adventure that might be in any way connected with the tragedy. We began to investigate his life.”

The face of Sir Godfrey Simon beyond him at the table lifted unmoving, like a mask:

“There is where you made a mistake,” he said; “it was not enough to go back over Bradmoor's life; you had to go farther than that.”

“Farther than Bradmoor's life?” Marquis interrogated. “How could we go farther than that? What was farther than his life?”

A faint smile appeared on Sir Godfrey Simon's face, but he made no reply.

Henry Marquis was annoyed.

“You mean the curse that killed Bradmoor!”

“Precisely that,” replied Sir Godfrey, his face unmoving.

“If you had come to me, I could have predicted what would happen to Bradmoor. He could not escape it.”

Marquis interrupted.

“Then you knew it was going to kill Bradmoor?”

“Surely,” he said. “Had it not killed his father and his grandfather?”

“But his grandfather was drowned on the Northwest Coast,” continued Marquis. “He was shooting brant, and the plug came out of the boat.”

“Some one pulled the plug out,” replied Sir Godfrey.

“And his father fell from the steeple of the chapel here.”

Again that vague smile, like a bit of sun on a painted image's face.

“Did he fall?”

Henry Marquis swore under his breath. “Damn it, man,” he said, “you are a companion for the butler's mother, only the old woman is more satisfactory; she gives an explanation with her theory, and you never give an explanation. If you know what killed old Bradmoor, why don't you tell us how it killed him?”

Sir Godfrey Simon looked calmly across the table at the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard. The mask of his face had now the expression of a man
of experience regarding the futile chatter of a child.

“Marquis,” he said, “you sometimes profoundly annoy me. Because one understands one feature of a matter, does it also follow that one must understand equally every other feature of it? I have made this explanation until I am monotonously weary of it: I know what killed the old Duke; I do not know how it killed him. You do not see the interest in this case as I see it. The interest to me lies exclusively in the fact that it did kill him. I am not concerned about the means it took. I don't care. I am not interested. That is for you to find out, if you care.”

He took up the glass of whisky beside him, tasted it, and put it down again. He acted to me like an amused man, at a quarrel among children.

“If you find out how the old Duke was killed, you will see that I am right—if you ever find out.”

Marquis shrugged his shoulders. He turned again to me and said:

“We finally reached the dead point. There was no solution to the thing!”

Lord Dunn now took up the narrative. He had been silent in his chair, moved back from the table. He had lighted a cigar, and enjoyed it while Henry Marquis had been talking; but he enjoyed it like a bookmaker. It was tilted at a rakish angle in his mouth; and he blew the smoke about him like a stableboy. He now took the cigar out of his mouth, and threw it into the fireplace.

“But there
was
something in his life,” he declared.

“It was the last exploration old Bradmoor undertook, the one that used up the remnant of his fortune. I mean that terrible push into the Lybian Desert. He was too old to undertake it, and he was too poor. It broke him down in every direction. The man came out a wreck—a worse wreck than we realized; one could see the physical evidences on him.”

He made a big, awkward gesture with his hands, precisely like a bookmaker rejecting a bet.

“I don't ask anyone to believe it,” he said. “I don't know that I believe it. I judge, in fact, that I don't believe it. Of course, it's a crazy notion; but this whole business is full of crazy notions—nothing but damned crazy notions.”

He paused to light another big cigar.

“Anyway, I know the facts, and what happened. I know them better than any other living person, because I considered that expedition before Bradmoor did. The German came to me first; then he went to the old Duke. I was not interested in the Lybian Desert just then. Deserts don't amuse me. Women go through them and write books about it. I was going into Yucatan, so I sent the German to Bradmoor.

“I could not determine whether he was a liar, building on some facts, or whether he had been with Rohlfs' expedition. You know about that—or has everything that happened before the Great Mad War been forgotten? Rohlfs persuaded Kaiser Wilhelm to fit him out with an expedition to explore the plateau of the Lybian Desert. Rohlfs had a theory that the country now desert had been once well watered—the theater of an immense civilization, antedating
the later civilizations of which we have any knowledge. He got the professors to back him up. They prepared a monograph for him, and it was published everywhere.

“Rohlfs persuaded the Kaiser to send him in.

“Of course, we don't know how much bluff the Germans were putting up. It is possible that the Kaiser was merely taking a look at Egypt, and the English possessions beyond it, and that the expedition was a scouting party. That would be an explanation of the wide publicity given to the monograph the professors put out, and the money the German Government spent on the expedition. But I don't believe that was Rohlfs' motive. I think Rohlfs was really on the trail of a civilization, and that he was sincere about it.

“Anyhow, the expedition went in, and everybody knows what happened to it, and where it broke down. Rholfs went on with a fragment of what he could get together, and he found some evidences of what he expected to find—not a civilization like that of the Egyptian Nile, but something more like what I found in Yucatan. At least, that's the story the German came to me with. I mean Slaggerman. He turned
up here, a sort of roustabout on a North German Lloyd ship; and he hunted me up.

“I suppose he saw the name in the newspapers.

“I sent him to Bradmoor,” Lord Dunn went on. “He had a drawing—very well done. He said Rohlfs made it. It showed a path along a stone ledge. There was one strange feature about the path that he pointed out. He would hold a glass over it, and then he would get excited, and fall into the German language. The path was sunk in the stone of the ledge, but it had not been cut there; it had been
worn
there. It must have been eight or ten inches deep, and wide enough for a man to pass along it.

“And it was worn into the ledge!

“‘
Ach
,' he would say, ‘it was feet, human feet that wore that path down. How long did it take—one thousand, two thousand, five thousand years? And how many feet—how many generations of feet—and why did they travel on that path, and where did they go?'

“He said that Rohlfs, after the expedition had gone to pieces, had escaped from the surveillance of the desert sheiks, and had gone on,
with only Slaggerman, disguised as an Arab cook. They had pushed on for a fortnight before they were overtaken and brought back. He said they reached the peak of a mountain, ascending out of the sand to the southwest.

“It was not a range that extended like a geological formation across the whole plateau. It stood up abruptly out of it, as though a peak of mountain had thrust up suddenly from below. He said that it was possible to travel around it, that the native tribes did, in fact, travel around it. There was no reason for anyone undertaking to ascend it, in the opinion of the desert tribes.

“It was evidently a peak of barren rocks, without water or vegetation. The stone was hard, and rose-colored. The sharp peaks at a distance, the German said, with the sun on them, looked like a beautiful rose-colored cathedral. There was a certain harmony in the outline at a distance. Rohlfs thought it was a mirage. Neither of the two men had any other idea until they finally arrived at its base. They had time enough to go entirely around it before they were overtaken.

“There was no way to ascend it; in fact, they
did not think of the possibility of anyone going up until by chance Rohlfs discovered this path. They were amazed, but they had no opportunity to follow the thing up. They were overtaken by the desert tribes and hurried out of the region. Rohlfs made a drawing of the path that night, while the memory of it was fresh in his mind. It was correct, Slaggerman said. He helped him with the details.”

Lord Dunn put his cigar on the fruit plate before him. It was half burned out; the long ash crumbled, and a thin line of smoke ascended, rippling at the top like a fantastic flower. He seemed to reflect on the story he was telling. His voice was firmer, less harsh.

“When you come to think about it,” he said, “there could have been nothing that would so pique the curiosity as that bit of drawing. There was just enough of it. One's imagination winged off at once with every sort of extravaganza. In the waste places of the earth two things have an unfailing fascination for the lone explorer—a human footprint, and a path. If one finds a human footprint, or a path, one can never turn aside from it; one must find out whither it leads.

“I remember the effect on me when the German got out his drawing.

“I was not much interested before that. I was considering a method to dismiss him. But that fragment of drawing attached my interest. The whole picture at once came up in vivid detail, with its absorbing enigma!

“Well, as I have said, I sent him on to old Bradmoor. We know what happened. The old Duke went bankrupt on an expedition to go in; and he did go in. It took a lot of time, and endless negotiations. He had to get the permits from the English Government, and from the Egyptian authorities, and the rights to pass, from the sheiks of the desert tribes. The English Government was willing to help him. They wished to verify Rohlfs' narrative. The report had not been translated into English; but it was in the German language, in the bulletins issued by the learned societies at Berlin.

“It took a lot of money.

“In fact, as we know, it cleaned old Bradmoor out, and encumbered his estate as it now stands—on the verge of the bankrupt court. But the old Duke had the patience of every
great explorer; once on the way, once taken with the big idea, he stopped at nothing.