Grab Bag Page 9

  Already, the rooms of the other guests had been searched. Mrs. Swiveltree’s had yielded a large bill from her milliner, a still larger one from her dressmaker, a picture of her husband looking stern and relentless, another of a foreign-looking gentleman with a pencil-thin mustache and a languorous eye, this latter inscribed with words in a foreign tongue that had caused the searcher’s eyebrows to rise in sardonic amusement. There was also a box of a mysterious powder in a pale pink color, delicately scented and enigmatically labeled “Coty.”

  Mme. Vigée-Lenoir’s room had contained, aside from the expected feminine fripperies, certain articles of interest to the inscrutable searcher. Notable among these were dunning letters in French from her modiste, her coiffeuse, and her boulanger; a cachet of some mysterious powder labeled “For Teething Infants,” and one glorious pendant earring of blazing rubies and sparkling brilliants, along with a note which, translated from the French, read simply but meaningfully, “You know what you must do to get its mate.”

  The late Silas Whipsnade’s luggage, as might have been expected from His Lordship’s recent revelation, contained an identification card from the Eye-Spye Detective Agency; made out, however, in the name of Silas Whipsnade rather than Augustus Fox. It would appear that the detective was determined to preserve his alias at any cost. There was a letter from Lord Ditherby-Stoat engaging the detective to come to Haverings on the weekend of the house party, and enclosing a personal cheque for a sum that sent the eyebrows soaring again. The soi-disant Whipsnade had used the letter for certain private jottings, scribbling Hellespont’s name with a large question mark after it, and Mme. Vigée-Lenoir’s under a caricature that can best be described as rude. He had even added a whimsical bar sinister to the family crest engraved on the letterhead. Other than those vagaries and a box of a mysterious gray powder labeled “For Fingerprints,” the luggage carried nothing of interest.

  Gleanings from the mean apartment of Miss Twiddle were more surprising. Drab and mousy though her outer garments might be, it transpired that the companion possessed unmentionables of flaming scarlet. Cunningly disguised in plain brown paper jackets were a whole row of sensational novels. The searcher had not been able to suppress a low whistle as he scanned the torrid pages of Ouida and the passionate outpourings of Mrs. Aphra Behn. He had also taken a cautious sniff at a small bundle of mysterious packets of a white powder labeled “To Be Taken with Meals.”

  A hasty trip from that secret haven of romantic rodomontade to Figgleton’s basement room was a study in contrasts. Aside from his pantry book and the daily newspaper, the late butler’s reading matter appeared to have been confined to the “Peerage”; and his correctly butlerian wardrobe to have contained but one incongruous item—namely, a baby’s diaper embroidered with the crest of the family he had so loyally served; a Stoat Rampant on a Field Vert. His well-polished shoes had recently been fitted with patent arch supports, and his collar box contained not only the expected neckware but also a small box of a mysterious powder bearing the inscription “Pep-U-Uppo (Patent Applied For).”

  Gerald Potherton’s room had contained little of interest save several fruitless attempts to pen an ode to his “lost love,” a somewhat surprising theme considering Ermentine’s obvious though possibly temporary attachment, a dunning letter from his tailor couched in terms far from poetic, a lurid spy novel, and a tin of a mysterious powder represented as “Mustache Strengthener.”

  Lord Ditherby-Stoat’s sumptuous quarters were hardly more fruitful. Aside from the empty dispatch-box and the copy of Leaves from a Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, there were only such accoutrements as might have been expected: a signed portrait of Her Gracious Majesty in a heavy silver frame, another of Lady Ditherby-Stoat in her presentation gown, a photograph of Lord Ditherby-Stoat himself in full dress with orders standing beside a bust of his great ancestor, a baby’s diaper embroidered with the Ditherby-Stoat coat of arms, and a phial of a mysterious substance labeled “Rhinoceros Horn,” no doubt the gift of some foreign emissary.

  Lady Ditherby-Stoat had not been spared in this relentless search, and some surprises had eventuated. Little would her acquaintances have divined the vein of sentiment that ran behind that “icily regular, splendidly null” façade. Hidden beneath the scented padding in her hosiery drawer were an unsigned lace valentine, a faded rose, and a much-creased note bearing the poignant words, “Although you can never be mine, I shall cherish you in my heart forever,” and signed with the single initial P, these precious tokens all folded inside the sheet music of Tosti’s touching ballad, “Goodbye.” Beside them lay a packet of a mysterious powder marked “For the Nerves.”

  The Honourable Ermentine’s boudoir had revealed all the froufrous and whimsies to be expected of a pleasure-loving young lady. There was a box of bonbons, half its sugary contents devoured. There was a veritable snowstorm of dance cards, on which the names of General Potherton and A. Lysander Hellespont appeared frequently. More surprisingly, on the topmost card, Count Bratvuschenko had written himself down for a galop. And shuffled in among the heap, as if to conceal it from the eyes of her maid or possibly her mother, was an unsigned note on lilac-coloured paper bearing the perhaps teasing, perhaps ominous, words, “I know your secret.”

  Also attracting the searcher’s notice was an ornate crystal jar full of some mysterious scented substance labeled enigmatically “Bath Salts.” He was turning this bit of evidence over in his strong, well-shaped hands when, as chance would have it, the Honourable Ermentine flew into the room on the urgent mission of tucking up a stray ringlet. Catching sight of the intruder, she stopped short, her eyes blazing fearlessly.

  “What,” she demanded imperiously, “are you doing with my bath salts?”

  “I am doing this.”

  The tall man snatched up a delicate porcelain pin tray, ruthlessly dumped its contents on the dressing table, sending hatpins and glove stretchers in every direction, and spilled out the bath salts into the tray. Picking up an ivory-handled buttonhook, he then stirred the crystalline mass, wafting a fragrance as of violets throughout the chamber. In horrified fascination, Ermentine watched. Then she gasped.

  “What is that?”

  Her quivering finger pointed to a small glass ampoule that now glistened atop the heap of bath salts.

  “Well you may ask,” said the unknown in portentous tone. “Unless I am mistaken, which I must say has never happened thus far, this little ampoule contains at least one more lethal dose of the unknown Asiatic poison by means of which the late Silas Whipsnade was so recently and efficaciously done to death under our very eyes.”

  “Then don’t tell me who did it. If you dropped dead in the midst, like Mr. Whipsnade, I should never be able to explain to Mama how a strange man’s corpse got into my bedroom.”

  She was to have trouble enough explaining the presence of a live one, judging from the expression on her mother’s face as Lady Ditherby-Stoat entered the room, followed by the rest of the party.

  “Ermentine, who is this person?”

  “I have not yet got round to asking him his name, Mama,” replied the minx. “I found him fishing an unknown poison out of my bath salts.”

  “Confound you, villain!” cried Gerald Potherton, springing to the fore with his fists at the ready for a knockdown blow. “How dare you attempt to defame the name of a lady?”

  “Nothing was farther from my mind, I assure you,” replied the stranger. “I am but attempting to defend my own.”

  With a low bow, he proffered an engraved calling card, which Potherton could not but read.

  “Augustus Fox, forsooth! Ruffian, you are making sport of me. Augustus Fox lies a stiffening corpse in the … Ermy dearest, would you happen to recall what the footman did with Mr. Whipsnade?”

  “Mr. Whipsnade is in the butler’s pantry with the late Percival Figgleton,” Fox informed Potherton. “Though this was not the first time he has taken my name in vain, Whipsnade was in fact none other than himself, an insi
gnificant employee of a third-rate detective agency. His only genuine ability lay in his adroitness at aiding unscrupulous persons in their fell designs and blackmailing them when their perfidies had been accomplished.”

  “What perfidies?” demanded Lady Ermentine.

  “Any perfidies,” Fox replied with a tolerant smile. “Let us suppose, for instance, that an unlucky gambler determined upon doping the Derby favorite but needed help in obtaining the requisite potion. Or a cocaine smuggler wished to expand her already thriving market. Or the young wife of an elderly tycoon had fallen in love with a handsome adventurer and required a means of rendering the old man unconscious so that she could join her paramour in the happy task of turning her gems to paste so that he and she would have a tidy nest egg with which to elope.”

  He shrugged. “But this is mere speculation. And so, I fear, is the question of what prompted Whipsnade’s impromptu funeral oration. Did such scruples as he might still possess prompt his attempted denouncement of a crime too heinous even for him to stomach? Was it rather part of a subtle ruse devised between himself and his final employer? Or was he endeavoring to make a public example of his latest victim in order to stimulate the payment of Danegeld from the others? We shall never know. May I suggest that we descend to the drawing room before we attack the problem of who concealed the poison capsule in Miss Ermentine’s bath salts? I quite agree with Mr. Potherton as to the unsuitability of polluting these chaste walls with further sordid revelations.”

  With one accord they made for the staircase, Fox stooping to retrieve the delicately perfumed lace handkerchief which Mme. Vigée-Lenoir dropped at his feet, and restoring it to her with a gentlemanly gesture that yet made plain he was not the man to be trapped by so transparent a ruse.

  When all were reassembled in the majestic salon, Fox indicated that he was ready to resume his narrative, though not before the Honourable Ermentine had observed, “I never knew Figgleton’s given name was Percival.”

  “Ah,” said Fox, whom the aside had naturally not escaped. “But therein lies the gist, or nub, of my tale. Miss Twiddle, you are, are you not, the sister of the late Percival Figgleton?”

  As though by necromantic means, the drabness and mousiness disappeared. An inch of scarlet petticoat showed beneath the drooping gray hem as Miss Twiddle drew herself up proudly. “I am.”

  “Then you must know what weighty secret it was that your brother carried for lo, these many years.”

  Figgleton carried lots of secrets,” Lord Ditherby-Stoat interrupted peevishly. “I trusted him, damme.”

  “And worthily did he uphold that trust,” said Lady Ditherby-Stoat most unexpectedly.

  “Percival could do no other,” cried Miss Twiddle. “Ne’er drew he an ignoble breath.”

  “What does she mean, ne’er drew he?” Gerald muttered to Ermentine.

  “I don’t know. I think it’s poetry.” For once, that ebullient young woman was sober, gazing at Miss Twiddle’s scarlet petticoat as if gripped by some force she could not understand.

  “Trustworthy is an adjective that cannot be applied to at least one other person in this room.” Fox’s keen, penetrating eyes traveled among the assemblage, resting first on Mme. Vigée-Lenoir, then on Hellespont, and lastly on Mrs. Swiveltree. “To get at the root of this matter, we must ask ourselves, who benefits most from the theft of the plans for the Beaird-Wynnington Dirigible Airship? Or, as we used to say at Harrow, cui bono!”

  “Mrs. Swiveltree,” said Ermentine promptly. “Mr. Swiveltree will be so pleased they’re gone that he’ll pay her dressmaker’s bills without a murmur.”

  “I should be rather inclined to vote for Mme. Vigée-Lenoir,” drawled A. Lysander Hellespont. “I fancy a certain cabinet minister in a certain country not more than a Channel’s swim from here will do rather more than pay her dressmaker’s bills.”

  “And I, on ze ozzer hand, wondaire how zese plans may affect ze plans of Monsieur Hellespont’s bookmakaire,” retorted the Frenchwoman viciously.

  “These are all points to consider,” said Fox blandly. “And now let us ask ourselves who benefits the least.”

  “Cui malo,” interjected Gerald Potherton, much to Ermentine’s admiration.

  “The malo is mine, naturally,” said Lord Ditherby-Stoat. “Unless the plans are recovered, I am a ruined man.”

  “However, my brother is in any case a dead man,” rejoined Miss Twiddle sharply.

  “My dear,” Lord Ditherby-Stoat turned to his wife, “might you not drop a hint to Twiddle that she oversteps herself?”

  “She does not,” replied Lady Ditherby-Stoat. “Her logic is irrefutable.”

  “There is also the matter of the defunct Silas Whipsnade,” Fox went on, “although strictly speaking it was not the loss of the plans that hastened his demise.”

  “Then what was it?” demanded Ermentine.

  “It was his rapacious greed,” the famous detective responded. “You see, Whipsnade had ferreted out that weighty secret which the late Percival Figgleton and the discreet Miss Twiddle had guarded so jealously for so many years. He planned not to guard it, but to exploit it to the hilt.”

  “You mean more blackmail?” cried Hellespont.

  “I do.”

  “How dastardly!”

  “And how dangerous. Whipsnade reckoned not with the primitive ferocity that lies beneath his intended victim’s suavely correct façade.”

  All eyes turned toward Hellespont.

  “Don’t look at me,” he drawled, essaying a light laugh. “I’m not all that correct.”

  “Then it was Count Bratvuschenko,” exclaimed Mrs. Swiveltree, who appeared not yet to have grasped the import of those grotesque habiliments so recently discovered in the vanished guest’s bedroom. “One sensed the primitive ferocity merely from the way he attacked his soup. But where is he now?”

  “If you will wait one moment, I shall bring him to you.”

  Fox wheeled and ran lightly up the majestic staircase. In little more than the promised moment, the bearlike Bratvuschenko was back among them, glowering around in search of the brandy decanter.

  “And now,” cried a merry voice, “I shall make him disappear again.”

  With an airy gesture, the brown wig was lifted, the bushy beard detached. Behold, Augustus Fox stood before them!

  “When I learned through dark and devious sources,” he explained, “that Silas Whipsnade was up to his old tricks at Haverings, I determined to safeguard my own unblemished reputation and foil his evil scheme by being on hand myself to ferret out whatever miching mallecho had brought him here. The true Count Bratvuschenko, who I may say owed me a little service for reasons I am not free to divulge, was only too happy to have me take his place while he remained in his secluded country seat poring over his chessboard and making notes for the novel he plans some day to write. I foxed you, did I not?”

  “He is a veritable master of disguise,” ejaculated Gerald Potherton, in whom clear signs of dawning hero worship were now discernible.

  “If the ladies will forgive me,” said Fox, “I shall also divest myself of this somewhat uncomfortable padded waistcoat. It spoils the drape of one’s coat. As does a bulky sheaf of papers, such as the plans for the Beaird-Wynnington Dirigible Airship. May I relieve you of them, Lord Ditherby-Stoat?”

  Before anyone could make a move, the plans were in the hands of Augustus Fox. Amid the startled cries he calmly tucked them inside his own impeccably tailored garment.

  “I have a hansom cab waiting. Within the hour, I shall have hied myself straight to Buck House and placed these documents in Her Majesty’s own hands. As for you, Lord Ditherby-Stoat, I fear the cui malo you thought to avoid by your stratagem has caught up with you. When you staged a cunning robbery as a pretext to drive your gold-mounted dagger into the most loyal heart that ever beat even as Figgleton was in the act of informing you that the plans were gone, you sealed your own fate.”

  “How so?” cried Hellespont.

 
“For one thing,” replied Fox, “the hilt of the dagger bore His Lordship’s own monogram. No such slip would have occurred, of course, had you been able to rely on your accustomed guide and mentor, Lord Ditherby-Stoat. Few persons realized that the brain behind the Beaird-Wynnington coup, and in deed behind all your brilliant acts of statesmanship, was that of your elder cousin, the alleged Percival Figgleton, who was in fact the true Lord Ditherby-Stoat.”

  “Good heavens, Honoria,” drawled Mrs. Swiveltree. “You married the wrong cousin.”

  “Oh no,” replied Lady Ditherby-Stoat with her usual calm aplomb. “I married the right one. No doubt Mr. Fox will be able to explain.”

  “I believe so,” said the great detective. “The original contretemps arose from the fact that the late Cedric Ditherby-Stoat, eldest son of the third Lord Ditherby-Stoat, was killed in the hunting field at the age of thirty-one, supposedly unmarried although not without issue. In fact, Cedric had been united in lawful wedlock seven years previously with the daughter of a publican in a neighboring village, by whom he had a son and a daughter, both of them quite legitimate but not recognized as such by Cedric’s parents because of their mother’s lowly origin. Upon Cedric’s death, therefore, the succession passed not to his son Percival, the rightful heir, but to Cedric’s younger brother, the present Lord Ditherby-Stoat. I may say in exculpation that I believe the present Lord Ditherby-Stoat to have been kept in ignorance of his nephew’s legitimacy until he was apprised of the truth by the late Silas Whipsnade not long since.”