THE ADVENTURE OF THE UNIQUE DICKENSIANS
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the plethora of Holmesian pastiches produced since the 1880s might have been gratifying to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had not so many of them been so poor.
Among the best of the imitators of the Sacred Writings was August (William) Derleth, who was born in Sauk City, Wisconsin, and who, starting at the age of thirteen, produced a large and varied collection of literary products. Cofounder of Arkham House and Mycraft & Moran, publishers of supernatural and mystery books, he claimed that he was “the most versatile and voluminous writer in quality writing fields.” Mystery fans, however, remember him for his creation of Solar Pons.
“This Christmas season,” said Solar Pons from his place at the windows of our quarters at 7B, Praed Street, “holds the promise of being a merry one, after the quiet week just past. Flakes of snow are dancing in the air, and what I see below enchants me. Just step over here, Parker, and have a look.”
I turned down the book I was reading and went over to stand beside him.
Outside, the snowflakes were large and soft, shrouding the streetlight, which had come on early in the winter dusk, and enclosing, like a vision from the past, the scene at the curb—a hansom cab, no less, drawn by a horse that looked almost as ancient as the vehicle, for it stood with a dejected air while its master got out of the cab, leaning on his stick.
“It has been years since I have seen a hansom cab,” I said. “Ten, at least—if not more. And that must surely be its owner.”
The man getting out of the cab could be seen but dimly, but he wore a coat of ankle length, fitting his thin frame almost like an outer skin, and an old beaver hat that added its height to his, and when he turned to look up at the number above our outer entrance, I saw that he wore a grizzled beard and square spectacles.
“Could he have the wrong address?” I wondered.
“I fervently hope not,” said Pons. “The wrong century, perhaps, but not, I pray, the wrong address.”
“No, he is coming in.”
“Capital, capital!” cried Pons, rubbing his hands together and turning from the window to look expectantly toward the door.
We listened in silence as he applied below to Mrs. Johnson, our landlady, and then to his climbing the stairs, a little wheezily, but withal more like a young man than an old.
“But he clutches the rail,” said Pons, as if he had read my thoughts. “Listen to his nails scrape the wall.”
At the first touch of the old fellow’s stick on the door, Pons strode forward to throw it open.
“Mr. Solar Pons?” asked our visitor in a thin, rather querulous voice.
“Pray come in, sir,” said Pons.
“Before I do, I’ll want to know how much it will cost,” said our client.
“It costs nothing to come in,” said Pons, his eyes dancing.
“Everything is so dear these days,” complained the old fellow as he entered our quarters. “And money isn’t easily come by. And too readily spent, sir, too readily spent.”
I offered him a seat, and took his hat.
He wore, I saw now, the kind of black half-gloves customarily worn by clerks, that came over his wrists to his knuckles. Seeing me as for the first time, he pointed his cane at me and asked of Pons, “Who’s he?”
“Dr. Parker is my companion.”
He looked me up and down suspiciously, pushing his thin lips out and sucking them in, his eyes narrowed. His skin was the color of parchment, and his clothes, like his hat, were green with age.
“But you have the advantage of us, sir,” said Pons.
“My name is Ebenezer Snawley.” Then he turned to me and stuck out an arm. “They’re Pip’s,” he said, referring to the clerical cuffs, which I saw now they were. “No need for him to wear ’em. He’s inside, and I’m out, and it would be a shameful waste to spend good money on gloves for the few times I go out in such weather.” His eyes narrowed a trifle more. “Are you a medical man?”
I assured him that I was.
“Have a look at that, Doctor,” he said, indicating a small growth on one finger.
I examined it and pronounced it the beginning of a wart.
“Ah, then it’s of no danger to my health. I thank you. As you’re not in your office, no doubt there’ll be no fee.”
“Doctor Parker is a poor man,” said Pons.
“So am I, sir. So am I,” said Snawley. “But I had to come to you,” he added in an aggrieved voice. “The police only laugh at me. I applied to them to have the nuisance stopped.”
“What is the nature of the nuisance?” asked Pons.
“Aha! you’ve not told me your fee for consultation,” said Snawley.
“I am accustomed to setting my fee in accordance with the amount of work I must do,” said Pons. “In some cases there is no fee at all.”
“No fee? No fee at all?”
“We do on occasion manifest the spirit of Christmas,” continued Pons.
“Christmas! Humbug!” protested our client.
“Do not say so,” said Pons.
“Christmas is a time for well-meaning fools to go about bestowing useless gifts on other fools,” our client went on testily.
“But you did not come to discuss the season,” said Pons gently.
“You are right, sir. I thank you for reminding me. I came because of late I have been much troubled by some fellow who marches up and down before my house bawling street songs.”
“Are they offensive songs?”
Our visitor shook his head irritably. “Any song is offensive if I do not wish to hear it.”
“Scurrilous?”
“Street songs.”
“Do you know their words?”
“Indeed, and I do, Mr. Pons. And I should. ‘Crack ’em and try ’em, before you buy ’em eight-a-penny. All new walnuts. Crack ’em and try ’em, before you buy ’em. A shilling a-hundred. All new walnuts,’ ” he said in mimicry. “And such as ‘Rope mat! Doormat! You really must buy one to save the mud and dust; think of the dirt brought from the street for the want of a mat to wipe your feet!’ Indeed I do know them. They are old London street cries.”
Pons’s eyes now fairly glowed with pleasure. “Ah, he sells walnuts and rope mats.”
“A ragbag of a fellow. Sometimes it is hats—three, four at a time on his head. Sometimes it is cress. Sometimes flowers. And ever and anon walnuts. I could not chew ’em even if I bought ’em—and there’s small likelihood of that. Catch me wasting good money like that! Not likely.”
“He has a right to the street,” observed Pons.
“But Mr. Pons, sir, he limits himself to the street along my property. My house is on the corner, set back a trifle, with a bit of land around it—I like my privacy. He goes no farther than the edge of my property on the one side, then back around the corner to the line of my property on the other. It is all done to annoy me—or for some other reason—perhaps to get into the house and lay hands on my valuables.”
“He could scarcely effect an entrance more noisily,” said Pons, reflectively. “Perhaps he is only observing the Christmas season and wishes to favor you with its compliments.”
“Humbug!” said Snawley in a loud voice, and with such a grimace that it seemed to me he could not have made it more effectively had he practiced it in front of a mirror.
“Is he young?”
“If any young fellow had a voice so cracked, I’d send him to a doctor.” He shook his head vigorously. “He can’t be less than middle-aged. No, sir. Not with a voice like that. He could sour the apples in a barrel with such a voice.”
“How often does he come?”
“Why, sir, it is just about every night. I am plagued by his voice, by his very presence, and now he has taken to adding Christmas songs to his small repertoire, it is all the more trying. But chiefly I am plagued—I will confess it—by my curiosity about the reason for this attention he bestows upon me. I sent Pip—Pip is my clerk, retired, now, like myself, with his wife dead and his children all out in the world, even the youngest, who finally recovered his health—I sent Pip, I say, out to tell him to be off, and he but laughed at him, and gave him a walnut or two for himself, and sent one along for me! The impudence of the fellow!” His chin whiskers literally trembled with his indignation.
Pons had folded his arms across his chest, clasping his elbows with his lean fingers, holding in his mirth, which danced around his mouth and in his eyes. “But,” he said, visibly controlling himself, “if you are a poor man, you can scarcely be in possession of valuables someone else might covet.”
Plainly now our client was torn between the desire to maintain the face he had put upon himself, and to lift a little of it for us to see him a trifle more clearly; for he sat in dour silence.
“Unless,” pursued Pons, “you have valuables of a more intangible nature. I suspect you are a collector.”
Our visitor started violently. “Why do you say so?”
“I submit that coat you are wearing cannot be newer than 1890, the waistcoat likewise. Your cane is gold-headed; I have not seen such a cane about since 1910. Heavy, too. I suspect it is loaded. And what you have left outside is a period piece—obviously your own, since you drove it yourself. No one who had worn your clothing steadily since it was made could present it still in such good condition.”
“You are as sharp as they say you are,” said our client grudgingly. “It’s true I’m a collector.”
“Of books,” said Pons.
“Books and such,” assented Snawley. “Though how you can tell it I don’t pretend to know.”
“The smell of ink and paper make a special kind of mustiness, Mr. Snawley. You carry it. And, I take it, you are particularly fond of Dickens.”
Snawley’s jaw dropped; his mouth hung momentarily agape. “You amaze me,” he said.
“Dr. Parker charges me with amazing him for the past year and a half, since he took up residence here,” said Pons. “It will do you no harm. It has done him none.”
“How, Mr. Pons, do you make out Dickens?”
“Those street songs you know so well are those of Dickens’s day. Since you made a point of saying you should know them, it is certainly not far wide of the mark to suggest that you are a Dickensian.”
A wintry smile briefly touched our client’s lips, but he suppressed it quickly. “I see I have made no mistake in coming to you. It is really the obligation of the police, but they are forever about getting out of their obligations. It is the way of the new world, I fear. But I had heard of you, and I turned it over in mind several days, and I concluded that it would be less dear to call on you than to ask you to call on me. So I came forthwith.”
“Nevertheless,” said Pons, his eyes twinkling, “I fancy we shall have to have a look at that fellow who, you say, is making such a nuisance of himself.”
Our client made a rapid calculation, as was evident by the concentration in his face. “Then you had better come back with me now,” he said, “for if you come at any other time, the price of the conveyance will surely be added to the bill.”
“That is surely agreeable with me,” said Pons. “If it will do for Parker.”
Snawley bridled with apprehension. “Does he come, too?”
“Indeed, he does.”
“Will he be added to the fee?”
“No, Mr. Snawley.”
“Well, then, I will just go below and wait for you to come down,” said our client, coming to his feet and seizing his hat from the mantel, where I had put it next to Pons’s unanswered letters, unfolded and affixed to the mantel by a dagger, a souvenir of one of his adventures.
Our client had hardly taken himself off before Pons’s laughter burst forth.
When he relieved himself, he turned to me. “What do you make of that fellow, Parker?”
“I have never seen the like,” I replied. “Parsimonious, suspicious, and, I suspect, not nearly as poor as he would have us believe.”
“Capital! Capital! It is all too human for the rich to affect poverty and the poor to affect wealth. We may take it that Mr. Snawley is not poor. If he has a corner house and room enough for someone to walk from one end of the property, around the corner, to the other, we may assume that Mr. Snawley’s ‘bit of land,’ as he puts it, is appreciably more than what the average individual would take for a ‘bit.’ ”
He was getting into his greatcoat as he spoke, and I got into mine. As I reached for my bowler, he clapped his deerstalker to his head, and we were off down the stairs to where our equipage waited at the curb.
Snawley ushered me into the cab.
Behind me, Pons paused briefly to ask, “How long does this fellow stay on his beat?”
“Two, three hours a night. Rain, fog, or shine. And now, with Christmas almost upon us, he has brought along some bells to ring. It is maddening, sir, maddening,” said our client explosively.
Pons got in, Snawley closed the door and mounted to the box, and we were off toward Edgware Road, and from there to Lambeth and Brixton and Dulwich, seeing always before us, from every clear vantage point, the dome of the Crystal Palace, and at every hand the color and gayety of the season. Yellow light streamed from the shops into the falling snow, tinsel and glass globes, aglow with red and green and other colors shone bright, decorations framed the shop windows, holly and mistletoe hung in sprays and bunches here and there. Coster’s barrows offered fruit and vegetables, Christmas trees, fish and meat, books, cheap china, carpets. Street sellers stood here and there with trays hung from their necks, shouting their wares—Christmas novelties, balloons, tricks, bonbons, comic-papers, and praising the virtues of Old Moore’s Almanack. At the poultry shops turkeys, geese, and game hung to entice the late shoppers, for it was the day before Christmas Eve, only a trifle more than two years after the ending of the great conflict, and all London celebrated its freedom from the austerities of wartime. The dancing snowflakes reflected the colors of the shops—sometimes red, sometimes yellow or pink or blue or even pale green—and made great halos around the streetlamps.
Snawley avoided crowded thoroughfares as much as possible, and drove with considerable skill; but wherever we went, people turned on the street to look at the hansom cab as it went by—whether they were children or strollers, policemen on their rounds or shoppers with fowl or puddings in their baskets—startled at sight of this apparition from the past.
II
Our destination proved to be Upper Norwood.
Ebenezer Snawley’s home was an asymmetric Jacobean pile, dominated by a small tower, and with Elizabethan bay windows that faced the street. It rose in the midst of a small park that occupied the corner of a block and spread over a considerable portion of that block. A dim glow shone through the sidelights at the door; there was no other light inside. The entire neighborhood had an air of decayed gentility, but the falling snow and the gathering darkness sufficiently diminished the glow of the street-lamp so that it was not until we had descended from the cab, which had driven in along one side of the property, bound for a small coach house at the rear corner—directly opposite the street corner—and walked to the door of the house that it became evident how much the house, too, had decayed for want of adequate care, though it was of mid-Victorian origin, and not, therefore, an ancient building—little more than half a century old.
Leaving his steed to stand in the driveway, where the patient animal stood with its head lowered in resignation born of long experience, our client forged ahead of us to the entrance to his home, and there raised his cane and made such a clatter on the door as might have awakened the neighborhood, had it slept, at the same time raising his voice petulantly to shout, “Pip! Pip! Pip Scratch! Up and about!”
There was a scurrying beyond the door, the sound of a bar being lifted, a key in the lock, and the door swung open, to reveal there holding aloft a bracket of three candles a man of medium height, clad in tight broadcloth black breeches and black stockings, and a sort of green-black jacket from the sleeves of which lace cuffs depended. He wore buckled shoes on his feet. He was stooped and wore on his thin face an expression of dubiety and resignation that had been there for long enough to have become engraved upon his features. His watery blue eyes looked anxiously out until he recognized his master; then he stepped aside with alacrity and held the candles higher still, so as to light our way into the shadowed hall.
“No songs yet, Pip? Eh? Speak up.”
“None, sir.”
“Well, he will come, he will come,” promised our client, striding past his man. “Lay a fire in the study, and we will sit by it and watch. Come along, gentlemen, come along. We shall have a fire by and by, to warm our bones—and perhaps a wee drop of sherry.”
Pip Scratch stepped forward with a springy gait and thrust the light of the candles ahead, making the shadows to dance in the study whither our client led us. He put the bracket of candles up on the wall, and backed away before Snawley’s command.
“Light up, Pip, light up.” And to us, “Sit down, gentlemen.” And to Pip Scratch’s retreating back, “And a few drops of sherry. Bring—yes, yes, bring the Amontillado. It is as much as I can do for my guest.”
The servant had now vanished into the darkness outside the study. I was now accustomed to the light, and saw that it was lined with books from floor to ceiling on three walls, excepting only that facing the street along which we had just come, for this wall consisted of the two Elizabethan bay windows we had seen from outside, each of them flanking the fireplace. Most of the shelves of books were encased; their glass doors reflected the flickering candles.
“He will be back in a moment or two,” our client assured us.
Hard upon his words came Pip Scratch, carrying a seven-branched candelabrum and a salver on which was a bottle of Amontillado with scarcely enough sherry in it to more than half fill the three glasses beside it. He bore these things to an elegant table and put them down, then scurried to the bracket on the wall for a candle with which to light those in the candelabrum, and, having accomplished this in the dour silence with which his master now regarded him, poured the sherry, which, true to my estimate, came only to half way in each of the three glasses—but this, clearly, was approved by Mr. Snawley, for his expression softened a trifle. This done, Pip Scratch hurried from the room.
“Drink up, gentlemen,” said our client, with an air rather of regret at seeing his good wine vanish. “Let us drink to our success!”
“Whatever that may be,” said Pons enigmatically, raising his glass.
Down went the sherry, a swallow at a time, rolled on the tongue—and a fine sherry it proved to be, for all that there was so little of it, and while we drank, Pip Scratch came in again and laid the fire and scurried out once more, and soon the dark study looked quite cheerful, with flames growing and leaping higher and higher, and showing row after row of books, and a locked case with folders and envelopes and boxes in it, a light bright enough so that many of the titles of the books could be seen—and most of them were by Dickens—various editions, first and late, English and foreign, and associational items.
“And these are your valuables, I take it, Mr. Snawley,” said Pons.
“I own the finest collection of Dickens in London,” said our client. After another sip of wine, he added, “In all England.” And after two more sips, “If I may say so, I believe it to be the best in the world.” Then his smile faded abruptly, his face darkened, and he added, “There is another collector who claims to have a better—but it is a lie, sir, a dastardly lie, for he cannot substantiate his claim.”
“You have seen his collection?” asked Pons.
“Not I. Nor he mine.”
“Do you know him?”
“No, nor wish to. He wrote me three times in as little as ten days. I have one of his letters here.”
He pulled open a drawer in the table, reached in, and took out a sheet of plain paper with a few lines scrawled upon it. He handed it to Pons, and I leaned over to read it, too.
Mr. Ebenezer Snawley
Dear Sir,
I take my pen in hand for the third time to ask the liberty of viewing your collection of Dickens which, I am told, may be equal to my own. Pray set a date, and I will be happy to accommodate myself to it. I am sir, gratefully yours,
Micah Auber
“Dated two months ago, I see,” said Pons.
“I have not answered him. I doubt I would have done so had he sent a stamp and envelope for that purpose. In his case, stamps are too dear.”
He drank the last of his sherry, and at that moment Pip Scratch came in again, and stood there wordlessly pointing to the street.
“Aha!” cried our client “The fellow is back. A pox on him! Pip, remove the light for the nonce. There is too much of it—it reflects on the panes. We shall have as good a look at him as we can.”
Out went the light, leaving the study lit only by the flames on the hearth, which threw the glow away from the bay windows, toward which our client was now walking, Pons at his heels, and I behind.
“There he is!” cried Snawley. “The rascal! The scoundrel!”
We could hear him now, jingling his bells, and singing in a lusty voice which was not, indeed, very musical—quite the opposite. Singing was not what I would have called it; he was, rather, bawling lustily.
“Walnuts again!” cried our client in disgust. We could see the fellow now—a short man, stout, who, when he came under the streetlamp, revealed himself to be as much of an individualist as Snawley, for he wore buskins and short trousers, and a coat that reached scarcely to his waist, and his head was crowned with an absurd hat on which a considerable amount of snow had already collected. He carried a basket, presumably for his walnuts.
Past the light he went, bawling about his walnuts, and around the corner.
“Now, you will see, gentlemen, he goes only to the line of my property, and then back. So it is for my benefit that he is about this buffoonery.”
“Or his,” said Pons.
“How do you say that?” asked Snawley, bending toward Pons so that his slightly curved hawk-like nose almost touched my companion.
“In all seriousness,” said Pons. “It does not come from the sherry.”
“It cannot be to his benefit,” answered our client, “for I have not bought so much as a walnut. Nor shall I!”
Pons stood deep in thought, watching the streetsinger, fingering the lobe of his left ear, as was his custom when preoccupied. Now that all of us were silent, the voice came clear despite the muffling snow.
“He will keep that up for hours,” cried our host, his dark face ruddy in the glow of the fire. “Am I to have no peace? The police will do nothing. Nothing! Do we not pay their salaries? Of course, we do. Am I to tolerate this botheration and sit helplessly by while that fellow out there bawls his wares?”
“You saw how he was dressed?” inquired Pons.
“He is not in fashion,” replied Snawley, with a great deal of sniffing.
I suppressed my laughter, for the man in the street was no more out of the fashion than our client.
“I have seen enough of him for the time being,” said Pons.
Snawley immediately turned and called out. “Pip! Pip! Bring the lights!”
And Pip Scratch, as if he had been waiting in the wings, immediately came hurrying into the room with the candelabrum he had taken out at his employer’s command, set it down once more on the table, and departed.
“Mr. Snawley,” said Pons as we sat down again near the table, Pons half turned so that he could still look out on occasion through the bay windows toward the street-lamp, “I take it you are constantly adding to your collection?”
“Very cautiously, sir—ve-ry cautiously. I have so much now I scarcely know where to house it. There is very little—ve-ry little I do not have. Why, I doubt that I add two or three items a year.”
“What was your last acquisition, Mr. Snawley?”
Once again our client’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why do you ask that, Mr. Pons?”
“Because I wish to know.”
Snawley bent toward Pons and said in a voice that was unusually soft for him, almost as with affection, “It is the most precious of all the items in my collection. It is a manuscript in Dickens’s hand!”
“May I see it?”
Our client got up, pulled out of his pocket a keyring, and walked toward the locked cabinet I had previously noticed. He unlocked it and took from it a box that appeared to be of ebony, inlaid with ivory, and brought it back to the table. He unlocked this, in turn, and took from it the manuscript in a folder. He laid it before Pons almost with reverence, and stood back to watch Pons with the particular pride of possession that invariably animates the collector.
Pons turned back the cover.
The manuscript was yellowed, as with age, but the paper was obviously of good quality. Master Humphrey’s Clock was written at the top, and the signature of Charles Dickens meticulously below it, and below that, in the same script, began the text of the manuscript, which consisted of at least a dozen pages.
“Ah, it is a portion of The Old Curiosity Shop not used in the published versions of that book,” said Pons.
“You know it, sir!” cried our client with evident delight.
“Indeed, I do. And I recognize the script.”
“You do?” Snawley rubbed his hands together in his pleasure.
“Where did you acquire it?”
Snawley blinked at him. “It was offered to me by a gentleman who had fallen on evil days and needed the money—a trifle over a month and a half ago.”
“Indeed,” said Pons. “So you got it at a bargain?”
“I did, I did. The circumstances made it possible. He was desperate. He wanted five hundred pounds—a ridiculous figure.”
“I see. You beat him down?”
“Business is business, Mr. Pons. I bought it at two hundred pounds.”
Pons took one of the sheets and held it up against the candles.
“Take care, sir! Take care!” said our client nervously.
Pons lowered the sheet. “You have had it authenticated?”
“Authenticated? Sir, I am an authority on Dickens. Why should I pay some ‘expert’ a fee to disclose what I already know? This is Dickens’s handwriting. I have letters of Dickens by which to authenticate it. Not an i is dotted otherwise but as Dickens dotted his i’s, not a t is crossed otherwise. This is Dickens’s script, word for word, letter for letter.”
Offended, our client almost rudely picked up his treasure and restored it to box and cabinet. As he came back to his chair, he reminded Pons, “But you did not come here to see my collection. There is that fellow outside. How will you deal with him?”
“Ah, I propose to invite him to dinner,” answered Pons. “No later than tomorrow night—Christmas Eve. Or, rather, shall we put it that you will invite him here for dinner at that time?”
Our client’s jaw dropped. “You are surely joking,” he said in a strangled voice.
“It is Christmas, Mr. Snawley. We shall show him some of the spirit of the season.”
“I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry,” replied Snawley sourly. “Least of all that fellow out there. It is an ill-conceived and ill-timed jest.”
“It is no jest, Mr. Snawley.”
Pons’s eyes danced in the candlelight.
“I will have none of it,” said our client, coming to his feet as if to dismiss us.
“It is either that,” said Pons inexorably, “or my fee.”
“Name it, then! Name it—for I shall certainly not lay a board for that infernal rogue,” cried our client raising his voice.
“Five hundred pounds,” said Pons coldly.
“Five hundred pounds!” screamed Snawley.
Pons nodded, folded his arms across his chest, and looked as adamant as a rock.
Our client leaned and caught hold of the table as if he were about to fall. “Five hundred pounds!” he whispered. “It is robbery! Five hundred pounds!” He stood for a minute so, Pons unmoved the while, and presently a crafty expression came into his narrowed eyes. He began to work his lips out and in, as was his habit, and he turned his head to look directly at Pons. “You say,” he said, still in a whisper, “it is either five hundred pounds or—a dinner…”
“For four. The three of us and that lusty bawler out there,” said Pons.
“It would be less expensive,” agreed our client, licking his lips.
“Considerably. Particularly since I myself will supply the goose,” said Pons with the utmost savior faire.
“Done!” cried Snawley at once, as if he had suddenly got much the better of a bad bargain. “Done!” He drew back. “But since I have retained you, I leave it to you to invite him—for I will not!”
“Dinner at seven, Mr. Snawley?”
Our client nodded briskly. “As you like.”
“I will send around the goose in the morning.”
“There is no other fee, Mr. Pons! I have heard you aright? And you will dispose of that fellow out there?’ He inclined his head toward the street.
“I daresay he will not trouble you after tomorrow night,” said Pons.
“Then, since there is no further fee, you will not take it amiss if I do not drive you back? There is an underground nearby.”
“We will take it, Mr. Snawley.”
Snawley saw us to the door, the bracket of candles in his hand. At the threshold Pons paused.
“There must be nothing spared at dinner, Mr. Snawley,” he said. “We’ll want potatoes, dressing, vegetables, fruit, green salad, plum pudding—and a trifle more of that Amontillado.”
Our client sighed with resignation. “It will be done, though I may rue it.”
“Rue it you may,” said Pons cheerfully. “Good night, sir. And the appropriate greetings of the season to you.”
“Humbug! All humbug!” muttered our client, retreating into his house.
We went down the walk through the now much-thinned snowfall, and stood at its juncture with the street until the object of our client’s ire came around again. He was a stocky man with a good paunch on him, cherry-red cheeks and a nose of darker red, and merry little eyes that looked out of two rolls of fat, as it were. Coming close, he affected not to see us, until Pons strode out into his path, silencing his bawling of walnuts.
“Good evening, Mr. Auber.”
He started back, peering at Pons. “I don’t know ye, sir,” he said.
“But it is Mr. Auber, isn’t it? Mr. Micah Auber?”
Auber nodded hesitantly.
“Mr. Ebenezer Snawley would like your company at dinner tomorrow night at seven.”
For a long moment, mouth agape, Auber stared at him. “God bless my soul!” he said, finding his voice, “Did he know me, then?”
“No,” said Pons, “but who else would be walking here affecting to be a hawker of such wares if not Micah Auber, on hand in case anything turned up?”
“God bless my soul!” said Auber again, fervently.
“You will meet us at the door, Mr. Auber, and go in with us,” said Pons. “Good evening, sir.”
“I will be there,” said Auber.
“And leave off this bawling,” said Pons over his shoulder.
We passed on down the street, and Auber, I saw, looking back, went scuttling off in the other direction, in silence.
We hurried on through the snow. The evening was mellow enough so that much of it underfoot had melted, and the falling flakes dissolved on our clothing. But Pons set the pace, and it was not until we were in the underground, on the way back to our quarters, that I had opportunity to speak.
“How did you know that fellow was Micah Auber?” I asked.
“Why, that is as elementary a deduction as it seems to me possible to make,” replied Pons. “Consider—Snawley’s valuables consist of his collection, which is primarily of Dickensians. Our client acquired his most recent treasure a trifle over six weeks ago. With a fortnight thereafter Micah Auber writes, asking to see his collection. Having had no reply, and assessing our client’s character correctly by inquiry or observation—perhaps both—Auber has adopted this novel method of attracting his attention. His object is clearly to get inside that house and have a look at our client’s collection.”
“But surely this is all very roundabout,” I cried.
“I fancy Snawley himself is rather roundabout—though not so roundabout as Auber. They are all a trifle mad, some more so than others. This pair is surely unique, even to the dress of the period!”
“How could Auber know that Snawley had acquired that manuscript?”
“I fancy it is for the reason that Snawley has laid claim to possession of the largest Dickens collection in London…”
“In the world,” I put in.
“And because the manuscript was undoubtedly stolen from Auber’s collection,” finished Pons. “Hence Auber’s persistence. We shall have a delightful dinner tomorrow evening, I fancy.”
III
Pons spent some time next day looking through references and making a telephone call or two, but he was not long occupied at this, and went about looking forward to dinner that evening, and from time to time throughout the day hummed a few bars of a tune, something to which he was not much given, and which testified to the warmth of his anticipation.
We set out early, and reached Ebenezer Snawley’s home at a quarter to seven, but Micah Auber had preceded us to the vicinity; for we had no sooner posted ourselves before Snawley’s door than Auber made his appearance, bearing in upon us from among a little group of yew trees off to one side of the driveway, where he had undoubtedly been standing to wait upon our coming. He approached with a skip and a hop, and came up to us a little short of breath. Though he was dressed for dinner, it was possible to see by the light of the moon, which lacked but one day of being full, that his clothing was as ancient as our client’s.
“Ah, good evening, Mr. Auber,” Pons greeted him. “I am happy to observe that you are in time for what I trust will be a good dinner.”
“I don’t know as to how good it will be. Old Snawley’s tight, mighty tight,” said Auber.
Pons chuckled.
“But, I don’t believe, sir, we’ve been properly introduced.”
“We have not,” said Pons. “My companion is Dr. Lyndon Parker, and I am Solar Pons.”
Auber acknowledged both introductions with a sweeping bow, then brought himself up short. “Solar Pons, did ye say?” He savored the name, cocked an eye at Pons, and added, “I have a knowledge of London ye might say is extensive and peculiar. I’ve heard the name. Give me a moment—it’ll come to me. Ah, yes, the detective. Well, well, we are well met, sir. I have a need for your services, indeed I do. I’ve had stolen from me a val’able manuscript—and I have reason to believe our host has it. A prize, sir, a prize. A rare prize.”
“We shall see, Mr. Auber, we shall see,” said Pons.
“I will pay a reasonable sum, sir, for its recovery—a reasonable sum.”
Pons seized hold of the knocker and rapped it sharply against the door. Almost at once our client’s voice rose.
“Pip! Pip! The door! The gentlemen are here.”
We could hear Pip Scratch coming down the hall, and then the door was thrown open. The only concession Pip had made to the occasion was a bracket of seven candles instead of three.
“A Merry Christmas to you, Pip,” said Pons.
“Thank you, sir. And to you, gentlemen,” said Pip in a scarcely audible whisper, as if he feared his master might hear him say it.
“Come in! Come in! Let us have done with it,” called our client from the study.
The table was laid in the study, and the wine glasses were filled to the brim. Snawley stood at its head, frock-coated, and wearing a broad black tie with a pin in it at the neck, though he was as grizzled as ever, and his eyes seemed to be even more narrowed as he looked past Pons toward Auber with no attempt to conceal his distaste.
“Mr. Snawley,” said Pons with a wave of his hand toward Auber, “let me introduce our lusty-voiced friend.”
“A voice not meant for singing,” put in our client.
“Mr. Auber,” finished Pons.
Snawley started back as if he had been struck. “Micah Auber?” he cried.
“The same,” said Auber, bowing, his bald head gleaming in the candlelight, and all in the same movement producing a monocle on a thing black cord, which he raised to one eye and looked through at our client, who was still so thunderstruck that he was incapable of speech. “Ye do me the honor to ask me to dine.”
All Snawley could think to say in this contretemps was, “To save five hundred pounds!”
“As good a reason as any,” said Auber urbanely.
At this juncture Pip Scratch made his appearance, bearing a large platter on which rested the goose Pons had had sent over that morning, all steaming and brown and done to a turn. He lowered it to the table and set about at once to carve it, while our host, recovering himself, though with as sour an expression as he could put upon his face, waved us to our seats.
Pons seized his glass of Amontillado and raised it aloft. “Let us drink to the success of your various enterprises!”
“Done,” said Auber.
“And to a Merry Christmas!” continued Pons.
“Humbug!” cried Snawley.
“I would not say so, Mr. Snawley,” said Auber. “Christmas is a very useful occasion.”
“Useful?” echoed our client. “And for whom, pray?”
“Why, for us all,” answered Auber with spirit. “It is a season for forbearance, perseverance, and usefulness.”
“Humbug!” said Snawley again. “If I had my way, I should have every Christmas merrymaker boiled in his own pudding!”
“Ye need a bit more sherry, Mr. Snawley. Come, man, this dinner cannot have cost ye that much!”
So it went through that Christmas Eve dinner, with the two collectors exchanging hard words, and then less hard words, and then softer words, mellowed by the wine for which Pons kept calling. The goose was disposed of in large part, and the dressing, and the potatoes, the carrots, the fruit, the green salad—all in good time, and slowly—and finally came the plum pudding, brought flaming to the table; while the hours went by, eight o’clock struck, then nine—and it was ten before we sat there at coffee and brandy, and by this time both Snawley and Auber were mellow, and Pip Scratch, who had cleared the table of all but the coffee cups and liqueur glasses, had come in to sit down away a little from the table, but yet a party to what went on there.
And it was then that Auber, calculating that the time was right for it, turned to our client and said, “And now, if ye’ve no mind, I’d like a look at your collection of Dickens, Mr. Snawley.”
“I daresay you would,” said Snawley. “I have the largest such in the world.”
“It is you who says it.”
“I wait to hear you say it, too!”
Auber smiled and half closed his eyes. “If it is all that matters to ye, I will agree to it.”
“Hear! Hear!” cried Snawley, and got a little unsteadily to his feet and went over to his shelves, followed like a shadow by the faithful Pip, and with Auber’s eyes on him as if he feared that Snawley and his collection might escape him after all.
Snawley unlocked his cabinet and handed Pip a book or two, and carried another himself. They brought them to the table, and Snawley took one after the other of them and laid them down lovingly. They were inscribed copies of David Copperfield, Edwin Drood, and The Pickwick Papers. After Auber had fittingly admired and exclaimed over them, our client went back for more, and returned this time with copies of The Monthly Magazine containing Sketches by Boz, with interlineations in Dickens’s hand.
Pip kept the fire going on the hearth, and between this task and dancing attendance upon his master, he was continually occupied, going back and forth, to and fro, with the firelight flickering on his bony face and hands, and the candle flames leaping up and dying away to fill the room with grotesque shadows, as the four of us bent over one treasure after another, and the clock crept around from ten to eleven, and moved upon midnight. A parade of books and papers moved from the cabinet to the table and back to the cabinet again—letters in Dickens’s hand, letters to Dickens from his publishers, old drawings by Cruikshank and ‘Phiz’ of Dickens’ characters—Oliver Twist, Fagin, Jonas Chuzzlewit, Mr. Bumble, Little Amy Dorrit, Uriah Heep, Caroline Jellyby, Seth Pecksniff, Sam Weller, Samuel Pickwick, and many another—so that it was late when at last Snawley came to his recently acquired treasure, and brought this too to the table.
“And this, Mr. Auber, is the crown jewel, you might say, of my collection,” he said.
He made to turn back the cover, but Auber suddenly put forth a hand and held the cover down. Snawley started back a little, but did not take his own hands from his prized manuscript.
“Let me tell ye what it is, Mr. Snawley,” said Auber. “It is a manuscript in Dickens’s hand—a part of that greater work known as Master Humphrey’s Clock, and specifically that portion of it which became The Old Curiosity Shop. But this portion of it was deleted from the book. It is a manuscript of fourteen and a half pages, with Dickens’s signature beneath the title on the first page.”
Snawley regarded him with wide, alarmed eyes. “How can you know this, Mr. Auber?”
“Because it was stolen from me two months ago.”
A cry of rage escaped Snawley. He pulled the precious manuscript away from Auber’s restraining hand.
“It is mine!” he cried. “I bought it!”
“For how much?”
“Two hundred pounds.”
“The precise sum I paid for it a year ago.”
“You shall not have it,” cried Snawley.
“I mean to have it,” said Auber, springing up.
Pons, too, came to his feet. “Pray, gentlemen, one moment. You will allow, I think, that I should have a few words in this matter. Permit me to have that manuscript for a few minutes, Mr. Snawley.”
“On condition it comes back to my hand, sir!”
“That is a condition easy for me to grant, but one the fulfilment of which you may not so readily demand.”
“This fellow speaks in riddles,” said Snawley testily, as he handed the manuscript to Pons.
Pons took it, opened the cover, and picked up the first page of the manuscript, that with the signature of Dickens on it. He handed it back to Snawley.
“Pray hold it up to the light and describe the watermark, Mr. Snawley.”
Our client held it before the candles. After studying it for a few moments he said hesitantly, “Why, I believe it is a rose on a stem, sir.”
“Is that all, Mr. Snawley?”
“No, no, I see now there are three letters, very small, at the base of the stem—KTC.”
Pons held out his hand for the page, and took up another. This one he handed to Auber. “Examine it, Mr. Auber.”
Auber in turn held it up to the candles. “Yes, we’ve made no mistake, Mr. Snawley. It is a rose, delicately done—a fine rose. And the letters are clear—KTC, all run together.”
“That is the watermark of Kehnaway, Teape & Company, in Aldgate,” said Pons.
“I know of them,” said Snawley. “A highly reputable firm.”
“They were established in 1871,” continued Pons. “Mr. Dickens died on June 8, 1870.”
For a moment of frozen horror for the collectors there was not a sound.
“It cannot be!” cried our client then.
“Ye cannot mean it!” echoed Auber.
“The watermark cannot lie, gentlemen,” said Pons dryly, “but alas! the script can.”
“I bought it in good faith,” said Auber, aghast.
“And had it stolen in good faith,” said Pons, chuckling.
“I bought it from a reputable dealer,” said Auber.
“From the shop of Jason Brompton, in Edgware Road,” said Pons. “But not from him—rather from his assistant.”
Auber gazed at Pons in astonishment. “How did ye know?”
“Because there is only one forger in London with the skill and patience to have wrought this manuscript,” said Pons. “His name is Dennis Golders.”
“I will charge him!” cried Auber.
“Ah, I fear that cannot be done. Mr. Golders left Brompton’s last January, and is now in His Majesty’s service. I shall see, nevertheless, what I can do in the matter, but do not count on my success.”
Snawley fell back into his chair.
Auber did likewise.
Pip Scratch came quietly forward and poured them both a little sherry.
Midnight struck.
“It is Christmas day, gentlemen,” said Pons. “It is time to leave you. Now you have had a sad blow in common, perhaps you may find something to give you mutual pleasure in all these shelves! Even collectors must take the fraudulent with the genuine.”
Snawley raised his head. “You are right, Mr. Pons. Pip! Pip!” he shouted, as if Pip Scratch were not standing behind him. “Put on your coat and bring out the cab. Drive the gentlemen home!”
Our client and his visitor accompanied us to the door and saw us into the hansom cab Pip Scratch had brought down the driveway from the coach house.
“Merry Christmas, gentlemen!” cried Pons, leaning out.
“It burns my lips,” said Snawley with a wry smile. “But I will say it.”
He wished us both a Merry Christmas, and then, arm in arm, the two collectors turned and went a trifle unsteadily back into the house.
“This has been a rare Christmas, Parker, a rare Christmas, indeed,” mused Pons, as we rode toward our quarters through the dark London streets in our client’s hansom cab.
“I doubt we’ll ever see its like again,” I agreed.
“Do not deny us hope, Parker,” replied Pons. He cocked his head in my direction and looked at me quizzically. “Did I not see you eyeing the clock with some apprehension in the course of the past half hour?”
“You did, indeed,” I admitted. “I feared—I had the conviction, indeed I did—that the three of them would vanish at the stroke of midnight!”