by Lewis Hockley [Percy Longhurst].
Originally published in The Magnet Library (The Amalgamated Press, Ltd.) vol.1 #2 (22 Feb 1908).
Lomax Puzzles His Chum.
Robert Lomax spoke with such determination and seriousness that his friend looked at him attentively. Surely Bob, who had always laughed at his own predilection for the reading of detective stories, and had so often derided him for the admiration he felt and expressed for these marvellous masters in the art of detecting crime and unravelling mysteries, could not be really meaning to assume the character himself.
And yet Robert did not have the appearance of indulging in a joke; there was resolution in his close-shut lips, his brows were knitted, and his grey eyes alight with a sober enthusiasm.
"D'you mean it, Bob?" Dennis asked.
"Mean it? Why, of course I do!" Lomax replied. "Never more serious in my life."
"But you've always made game of that sort of thing."
"No, I haven't. What I have laughed at is the rot of believing your Sherlock Holmes and such like as wonderful beings such as the world has never seen before. Of course, it looks all right in a book; a chap has got to put down something wonderful or people don't want to read about him, and that's where the rot comes in. Now, I don't say that I'm as clever as Sherlock Holmes, or know as much, but, all the same, I believe that what most people look upon as wonderful and not to be understood would look a mighty lot different to them if only they'd think about it a bit. My idea is that the working out of these mysteries only wants a fair amount of common-sense thinking. Don't the police do some wonderful bits of work? Yet no one puts them into books."
"But the police," objected Frank, "are always such fools; they can't see things which a Sherlock Holmes does: or, if they do see 'em, they don't know what to make of 'em."
"Of course, in books," Lomax said impatiently, "it's got to be like that, or the detective wouldn't be made to appear so clever."
"Well, let's see what your common-sense is going to do with finding the owner of this purse," Dennis retorted, with a mischievous grin.
"We will," Robert said decidedly; "and you're going to help me, Frank. Two heads are always better than one,
even when one of 'em's yours, Frank."
"Right you are! And I vote we go home to think it over. It's just a bit too chilly to stand about here squinting at that purse; besides, a policeman may come along and want to know what we've got hold of."
Home, to these two young fellows, was represented by a big double-bedded bed-sitting-room in a lodging-house in the neighbourhood of Guilford Street, and thither they went.
The friendship between Bob and Frank dated foam tho day of the latter's first acquaintance with the dirty, dingy office of Diver and Diver. Their acquaintance had quickly ripened into a close friendship, and it was at the suggestion of Lomax that the two had combined to share a single lodging together. Robert was a Yorkshireman, with a keen eye to the value of money; and for the pair to live thus, as he pointed out to Dennis, would be economical for both.
In their lodging they were very comfortable, and had so far succeeded in getting into the good graces of the land-lady as to obtain permission for the keeping of Grip with them; though, as the lady assured them very frequently, such a concession was partly due to Grip himself, he bearing such a close resemblance to a wonderful member of the terrier family which she herself once owned.
But the real homes of both the young men were far from London. Lomax was from Yorkshire, where his father was a farmer of some consideration, and blessed with a big family; whereas Frank Dennis's home was in Somersetshire, not far distant from the town of Minehead, where his father was in practice at a doctor. The summer holidays—one week's respite only from the work which neither found interesting—gave the only opportunity for a visit to their people; for six days of each of the other fifty-one weeks of the year they were at the beck and call of Mr. Worritt or his chief clerk. The law might be a profitable profession for some, but neither Bob nor Frank had any great liking for the law.
Once in their room, with Grip squatting down on Robert's foot, the two young fellows surveyed the terrier's find with the closest attention. In turn they examined the purse itself, the clipping from the newspaper, and the visiting-card.
"'George E. Percival, 114, East Sherman Street, Pittsburg, U.S.A.'" read Dennis, aloud. "Well, that's all right: he's the same chap who married Ivy Grace Whincop, as it says here, but that's not much help to show us where he is now. That's a fine yarn, Bob, you've built up out of these things, but it may be miles away from the truth."
"Perhaps it is; I think it isn't," Lomax replied doggedly.
"Well, how d'you mean to find out where George E. Percival is now?"
"I've an idea. Have you? What'd you do, Frank? How would you go to work? What'd Sherlock Holmes do now? You've read so much about him—what'd he do?"
"Don't know," Dennis admitted.
"I do."
Frank Dennis looked up quickly.
"What?™ he cried; and then, still more carefully, again examined purse, card, and clipping.
"Well, Sherlock Holmes, Esquire—so I judge from what you've told me—would just look at these bits of things out of the corner of one eye, put his finger-tips together, and tell us off-hand George E. Percival's age, weight, appearance, condition of health, what is the colour of his hair and eyes, whether he's knock-kneed, narrow-chested, or squints; whether he's a millionaire, and, if so, if he made his money out of oil, pork, coal, or railways, and a bookful of other bits of information, in addition to his present whereabouts in London. He'd tell—"
"Shut up," yelled Dennis "or I'll give you that Cornish heave again, and bang all the breath out of you!"
"He'd tell us all we wanted to know and more," went on Lomax heedlessly. "And now I want to know what you'd suggest we should do as we haven't got him here. You oughtn't to have read so much about him for nothing."
"Bite a bit out of his leg, Grip, and stop his rotting!" Dennis suggested to the terrier. "But, seriously, Bob, I know one thing we could do that'd find this Percival's whereabouts."
"Go ahead! What is it?"
"Costs a lot of money, that's the drawback," Dennis said; "and we haven't any to spare. But if we were to cable to his address in—where is it?—oh, yes—Pittsburg, someone there'd be likely to know where he's stopping in London."
"Not bad," Lomax said encouragingly. "Still, we haven't got the cash, and he might not have told anyone where he's staying."
"Be no good, I suppose," went on Dennis, after a pause, "making inquiry at the address he was at when he married. It's probably his father's house, and if his father's still living he'd be likely to know where his son's staying now he's back again."
"H'm! Suppose his father is dead, or the house is pulled down, or empty? We can't tell how many years old that newspaper-cutting is."
Further silence. Lomax stared into the fireplace; his chum, head in hands, stared at the pure, etc. Then the
latter looked up again.
We could look through the Agony column of all the newspapers," he remarked. "If it's something valuable, as you say, perhaps the owner will have advertised for it, offered a reward, perhaps. Or we could put in an advertisement ourselves."
Takes up too much time; means several days delay, and I'm going to get this stuff back to Mr. Percival to-night, at the very latest."
"What d'you mean?" Frank demanded.
"Precisely what I say. I'm going to give Mr. Percival his purse tonight."
"Although you don't know his address!"
"But I do know."
"Well, what is it?" cried Dennis, after a pause.
"Golden Cross Hotel, Charing Cross."
For a full minute there was dead silence in the big room: the two friends eyed one another, the elder imperturbable beneath Frank's blue, wonder-filled eyes.
"Do you mind saying that again?" Frank said at last.
"Certainly I will. Golden Cross Hotel, Charing Cross."
"And that is where George E. Percival is now, you say?"
"No, I don't say that. I say that is the address at which he in staying in London: that's where I'm going to take the purse and its contents back to him."
"Don't make yourself such a silly ass, Bob!" Frank said indignantly. "I'm not a child to be guyed in such a tom-fool's way! This isn't the first of April."
"I know it isn't," was the quiet, smiling answer. "I'm not guying you. Frank. You shall come with me to the Golden Cross, and you'll see for yourself I'm not making a fool of you."
Frank stared hard, shook his head, and declared he couldn't understand it. Lomax laughed, and inquired if Frank thought his beloved Sherlock Holmes could have done any better.
"But how on earth could you have found it out?" the bewildered Dennis asked again: and he fell to making a fresh examination of the various articles the purse had contained, as if he expected the address his chum had just given to be concealed somewhere upon them, but so cunningly that his previous overhaulings had failed to reveal it.
Finally be sat down, and gaped at Robert as if he were some new and exceedingly hideous monstrosity. The more he thought, the more puzzling it seemed; the further he got away from any reasonable explanation of Robert's quiet, matter-of-fact declaration. Was it a fake? Nothing more than an elaborate hoax that Robert was playing on him? A carefully arranged joke for the purpose of bringing ridicule upon him, and his faith and belief in the deductive heroes of fiction? Frank was almost inclined to think so.
And yet it could not be so. He had seen Grip find the purse: it would be impossible that that could have been arranged. He recalled Lomax's first expressions of genuine surprise and ignorance of the meaning of the find, and when he came to contrast this with his present assurance and confidence he was still more bewildered.
"Say, Bob," he said at last, raising his head and regarding his friends with a sheepish sort of a smile, "have you turned a blessed magician, or what? Otherwise I don't see how you could have found out what you have."
"No," Robert answered tranquilly, but secretly enjoying his friend's bewilderment. "There's nothing magical about it; just observation, common-sense, and a decent memory, that's all."
Frank Dennis made a gesture of despair; he was farther off than ever from comprehending; the belief that Lomax was guying him again awoke.
"Tell me!" he howled. "I give it up; it's beyond me, and you're driving me crazy! How did you find out?"
*Common-sense, observation, and a good memory," repeated Robert, putting a hand in his jacket-pocket and bringing out a folded-up newspaper. "Did you see the 'Mail' this morning, Frank?"
"'Mail'? Yes: had a look at yours before old Worritt turned up. What on earth's that got to do with it?"
Lomax had been carefully unfolding his paper and running his eye down its columns, by way of reply to his chum's question he passed the paper over to him, indicating with his thumb a particular paragraph.
"Did you read that?" he asked curtly.
The paragraph was headed, in large type: "An American Visitor in Trouble." It ran—"George Edward Percival,
giving an address at the Golden Cross Hotel, Charing Cross, was charged at Bow Street with disorderly conduct. Constable J. O'Mara stated that Percival, who is said to be a naturalised American, but of English birth, was creating a disturbance at 10:35 p.m. the evening before in the neighbourhood of Russell Square. Percival, who was drunk, or labouring under great excitement, was directing some twenty or thirty men and boys who were searching in the gutters and in the roadway for a purse which, it was alleged, he had lost; the traffic around the square being greatly interfered with thereby. Prisoner admitted this to be correct, although he was was not drunk, and had offered a sovereign to the person who should find his purse—one of faded green leather—it containing some personal belongings of the greatest value to him. He was discharged on payment of the customary court fees. The purse has not yet been found."
"Well," observed Lomax, when his chum had read this, "now do you understand?"
"Yes; but— Why, you—"
"I read the case this morning, and while we were walking back home from our walk the name on the card was running in my head. It seemed familiar, and five minutes after we sat down here I recollected where I'd seen it before. Perhaps you recollect I left off to look at the paper while you were puzzling over the cutting? And it just proves what I've said, that the detective business isn't what such chaps as Conan Dole and the rest of 'em make it out. And now are you coming with me to Charing Cross?"
Disillusioned or not, Dennis did not decline, and without further loss of time the friends walked down to the Golden Cross Hotel and inguired for Mr. George Percival. That gentleman was out, but after they had waited half en hour he returned to dine, and when he learned that visitors were awaiting him concerning his lost purse, he asked for Lomax and Dennis to be shown up to his private sitting-room. And when the purse was laid in his hands, and he was assured its contents were safe and intact, the relief and delight which were expressed in his hard, shrewd-looking face were sufficient to prove of what value were to him the cutting and the miniature.
Later on, Lomax and Dennis went straight to Simpson's, in the Strand. "You paid half-a-crown, and you got all you wanted," as Robert explained; for they felt that they had got to celebrate, in some way or other, the possession of the bill Mr. Percival had insisted upon them accepting, and which they changed into two crisp five-pound notes.
They didn't talk much over their meal, but as they left the entrance to the restaurant Dennis, speaking almost in a whisper, said to Robert:
"What do you say, Bob, to taking this up in dead earnest?"
And Lomax's reply, also very low, was:
"It's worth thinking of, Frank."