The Darrow Enigma by Melvin L. Severy (best fiction novels of all time TXT) 📖

If events spread themselves out fanwise from the past into the

future, then must the occurrences of the present exhibit

convergence toward some historical burning-point, - some focal

centre whereat the potential was warmed=20into the kinetic.

It was nearly a week after the events last narrated before I saw

Maitland again, and then only by chance. We happened to meet in the

Parker House, and, as he had some business pertaining to a case he

was on, to transact at the Court House, I walked up Beacon Street

with him. There is a book or stationery store, on Somerset Street,

just before you turn down toward Pemberton Square. As we were

passing this store, Maitland espied a large photographic reproduction

of some picture.

“Let us cross over and see what it is,” he said. We did so. It was

a photograph of L. Alma-Tadema’s painting of Antony and Cleopatra.

Maitland started a little as he read the title, and then said

lightly: “Do you suppose, Doc, that woman’s mummy is in existence?

I should like to find it. I’ve an idea she left some hieroglyphic

message for me on her mummy-case, and doesn’t propose to let me

rest easy until I find and translate it. Now, if I believed in

transmigration of souls - do you see any mark of Antony about me?

Say, though, just imagine the spirit of Marcus Antonius in a rubber

apron, making an analysis of oleomargarine! But here we are;

goodbye,” and he left me without awaiting any reply. He seemed to

me to be in decidedly better spirits than formerly, and I was at

the time at a loss to account for it. The cause of his levity,

however, was soon explained, for that night, as Gwen, my sister, and

I were sitting cosily in the study according to our usual custom,

Maitland walked in, unannounced. He had come now to be a regular

visitor, and I invented not a few subterfuges to get him to call

even oftener than he otherwise would, for I perceived that his

coming gave pleasure to Gwen. She exhibited less depression when

in his presence than at any other time. I had learned that hers

was one of those deep natures in which grief crystallises slowly,

but with an unconquerable persistence. Instead of her forgetting

her bereavement, or the sense thereof waxing weaker by time, she

seemed to be drifting toward that ever-present consciousness of

loss in which the soul feels itself gradually, but surely, sinking

under an insupportable burden - a burden so long borne, so well

known, that the mind no longer thinks of it. The heart beats

stolidly under its load, and seems to forget the time when it was

not so oppressed. No one knows better than we physicians the danger

of this autocracy of grief, and I watched Gwen with a solicitude at

times almost bordering on despair. But, as I said before, she always

seemed to show more interest in affairs when Maitland was present,

and, on the night in question, his abrupt and unexpected entrance

surprised her into the betrayal of more pleasure than she would have

wished us to note, and, indeed, so quickly did she conceal her

confusion that I was the only one who noticed it. Maitland was too

busy with the news he brought.

“Well, Miss Darrow,” he began at once, “at last your detective has

got a clue - not much of a one - but still a clue. I can pick the

man for whom we are looking from among a million of his fellows - if

I am ever fortunate enough to get the chance.”

Somebody has already called attention to the fact that women are

more or less curious, and there are well-authenticated cases on

record where this inquisitiveness has even extended to things which

did not immediately concern themselves; so I have little doubt I

shall be believed when I say the women folk were in a fever of

expectancy, and besought Maitland with an earnestness quite

unnecessary - (it would have required a great deal to have prevented

his telling it) - to begin at the beginning, and relate the whole

thing. He readily acceded to this request, and began by telling

them the experiences which I have just narrated. It was, he said,

during the last act of Sardou’s “Cleopatra” that the idea had

suddenly come to him to change the plan of search from the analytical

to the synthetical.

“You see,” he continued, “I had from the first been trying to find

the assassin without knowing the exact way in which the crime was

committed. I now determined to ascertain how, under the same

circumstances, I could commit such a crime, and leave behind no

other evidences of the deed than those which are in our possession.

I began to read detective stories, with all the avidity of a Western

Union Telegraph messenger, and, of course, read those by Conan Doyle.

The assertion of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ that there is no novelty in crime;

that crimes, like history, repeat themselves; and that criminals read

and copy each other’s methods, deeply impressed me, and I at once

said to myself: ‘If our assassin was not original, whom did he copy?’

“It was while reading ‘The Sign of the Four,’ which I had procured

at the Public Library, that I made the first discovery. The crime

therein narrated had been committed in such a singular manner that

it at once attracted my attention. The victim had apparently been

murdered without anyone having either entered or left the room. In

this respect it was like the problem we are trying to solve. Might

not this book, I said to myself, have suggested to your father’s

assassin the course he pursued. I concluded to go to the library

and ask for a list of the names of persons who had taken out this

book for a few months prior to your father’s death. I was fully

aware that the chance of my learning anything in this way was very

slight, In the first place; I reasoned that it was not especially

likely your father’s murderer had read ‘The Sign of the Four,’

and, in the second place, even if he had, what assurance had I that

he had read this particular copy of it? Notwithstanding this,

however, I felt impelled to give my synthetical theory a fair

experimental trial. I was informed by the Library attendants that

the book had been much read, and given the list of some twenty

names of persons who had borrowed the book during the time I had

specified. With these twenty-odd names before me, I sat down to

think what my next step should be. I went carefully over this chain

of reasoning link by link. ‘I wish to find a certain murderer, and

have adopted this method in the hope that it may help me. If I

derive any assistance at all from it, it will be because my man has

read this particular copy of this work; therefore, I may as well

assume at the start that