American Sherlocks Nick Rennison (best big ereader txt) 📖

have been committed by someone in the house. Naturally it was not one of the family or the guests of the house. As to the servants, they all were honest and trustworthy – I had Mrs Farland’s word for that. There was no reason to suspect the policeman, and thus my process of elimination brought me to Mr Wayne, Harold’s tutor.

Of course it must have been the tutor. In nine-tenths of all the detective stories I ever have read the criminal proved to be a tutor or secretary or some sort of gentlemanly dependent of the family; and now I had come upon a detective story in real life, and here was the regulation criminal ready to fit right into it. It was the tutor of course; but I should be discreet and not name him until I had collected some undeniable evidence.

Next, I went down to the present room to search for clues. The detective had not arrived yet, and I was glad to be first on the ground, for I remembered how much importance Sherlock Holmes always attached to the search. I didn’t really expect that the tutor had left shreds of his clothing clinging to the table-legs, or anything absurd like that; but I fully expected to find a clue of some sort. I hoped that it wouldn’t be cigar ashes; for though detectives in fiction always can tell the name and price of cigar from a bit of ash, yet I’m so ignorant about such things that all ashes are alike to me.

I hunted carefully all over the floor, but I couldn’t find a thing that seemed the least bit like a clue, except a faded white carnation. Of course that wasn’t an unusual thing to find, the day after a wedding; but it was the very flower I had given to Fred Farland the night before, and he had worn it in his buttonhole. I recognized it perfectly, for it was wired and I had twisted it a certain way when I adjusted it for him. This didn’t seem like strong evidence against the tutor; but it was convincing to me, for if Mr Wayne was villain enough to steal Christabel’s crystal, he was wicked enough to manage to get Fred’s boutonniere and leave it in the room, hoping thereby to incriminate Fred. So fearful was I that this trick might make trouble for Fred that I said nothing about the carnation; for I knew that it was in Fred’s coat when he said goodnight, and then we all went directly to our rooms. When the detective came he examined the room, and I know that he didn’t find anything in the way of evidence; but he tried to appear as if he had, and he frowned and jotted down notes in a book after the most approved fashion.

Then he called in everybody who had been in the house overnight and questioned each one. I could see at once that his questions to the family and guests were purely perfunctory, and that he too had his suspicions of the tutor.

Finally, it was Mr Wayne’s turn. He always was a nervous little man, and now he seemed terribly flustered. The detective was gentle with him, and in order to set him more at ease began to converse generally on crystals. He asked Mr Wayne if he had travelled much, if he had ever been to Japan, and if he knew much about the making and polishing of crystal balls.

The tutor fidgeted around a good deal and seemed disinclined to look the detective in the eye; but he replied that he never had been to Japan, and that he never had heard of a Japanese rock crystal until he had seen Miss Farland’s wedding-gift, and that even then he had no idea of its great value until since its disappearance he had heard its price named.

This sounded well; but his manner was so embarrassed, and he had such an effect of a guilty man, that I felt sure my intuitions were correct and that he himself was the thief.

The detective seemed to think so too, for he said at last: ‘Mr Wayne, your words seem to indicate your innocence; but your attitudes do not. Unless you can explain why you are so agitated and apparently afraid, I shall be forced to the conclusion that you know more about this than you have admitted.’

Then Mr Wayne said: ‘Must I tell all I know about it, sir?’

‘Certainly,’ said the detective.

‘Then,’ said Mr Wayne, ‘I shall have to state that when I left my room late last night to get a glass of water from the ice-pitcher, which always stands on the hall-table, I saw Mr Fred Farland just going into the sitting room, or present room, as it has been called for the last few days.’

There was a dead silence. This, then, was why Mr Wayne had acted so embarrassed; this was the explanation of my finding the white carnation there; and I think the detective thought that the sudden turn affairs had taken incriminated Fred Farland.

I didn’t think so at all. The idea of Fred’s stealing his own sister’s wedding-gift was too preposterous to be considered for a moment.

‘Were you in the room late at night, Mr Farland?’ asked the detective.

‘I was,’ said Fred.

‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘You didn’t ask me, and as I didn’t take I saw no reason for referring to the fact that I was in the room.’

‘Why did you go there?’

‘I went,’ said Fred coolly, ‘with the intention of taking the crystal and hiding it, as a practical joke on Christabel.’

‘Why did you not do so?’

‘Because the ball wasn’t there. I didn’t think then that it had been stolen, but that it had been put away safely with the other valuables. Since this is not so, and the crystal is missing, we all must get to work and find it somehow before my sister returns.’

The tutor seemed like a new man after