The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet Part 5

"Perhaps he will," admitted G.o.dfrey. "Strange things happen in this world. Will you be at home to-night, Lester?"

"Yes, I expect to be," I answered.

"You're still at the Marathon?"

"Yes," I said; "suite fourteen."

"Perhaps I'll drop around to see you," he said, and a moment later we heard the door close behind him as Parks let him out.

"G.o.dfrey's a good man," said Goldberger, "but he's too romantic. He looks for a mystery in every crime, whereas most crimes are merely plain, downright brutalities. Take this case. Here's a man kills himself, and G.o.dfrey wants us to believe that death resulted from a scratch on the hand. Why, there's no poison on earth would kill a man as quick as that--for he must have dropped dead before he could get out of the room to summon help. If it was prussic acid, he swallowed it. Remember, he wasn't in this room more than fifteen or twenty minutes, and he was quite dead when Mr. Vantine found him. Men don't die as easily as all that--not from a scratch on the hand. They don't die easily at all. It's astonis.h.i.+ng how much it takes to kill a man --how the spirit, or whatever you choose to call it, clings to life."

"How do you explain the address on the card, Mr. Goldberger?" I asked.

"My theory is that this fellow really had some business with Mr.

Vantine; probably he wanted to borrow some money, or ask for help; and then, while he was waiting, he suddenly gave the thing up and killed himself. The address has no bearing whatever, that I can see, on the question of suicide. And I'll say this, Mr. Lester, if this isn't suicide, it's the strangest case I ever had anything to do with."

"Yes," I agreed, "if it isn't suicide, we come to a blank wall right away."

"That's it," and Goldberger nodded emphatically. "Here's the ambulance," he added, as the bell rang.

The bearers entered with the stretcher, placed the body on it, and carried it away. Goldberger paused to gather up the articles he had taken from the dead man's pockets.

"You gentlemen will have to give your testimony at the inquest," he said. "So will Parks and Rogers. It will be day after to-morrow, probably at ten o'clock, but I'll notify you of the hour."

"Very well," I said; "we'll be there," and Goldberger bade us good-bye, and left the house. "And now," I added, to Vantine, "I must be getting back to the office. They'll be asking the police to look for me next. Man alive!" and I glanced at my watch, "it's after four o'clock."

"Too late for the office," said Vantine. "Better come upstairs and have a drink. Besides, I want to talk with you."

"At least, I'll let them know I'm still alive," I said, and I called up the office and allayed any anxiety that may have been felt there concerning me. I must admit that it did not seem acute.

"I feel the need of a bracer after all this excitement," Vantine remarked, as he opened the cellarette. "Help yourself. I dare say you're used to this sort of thing--"

"Finding dead men lying around?" I queried, with a smile. "No--it's not so common as you seem to think."

"Tell me, Lester," and he looked at me earnestly, "do you think that poor devil came in here just to get a chance to kill himself quietly?"

"No, I don't," I said.

"Then what did he come in for?"

"I think Goldberger's theory a pretty good one--that he had heard of you as a generous fellow and came in here to ask help; and while he was waiting, suddenly gave it up--"

"And killed himself?" Vantine completed.

I hesitated. I was astonished to find, at the back of my mind, a growing doubt.

"See here, Lester," Vantine demanded, "if he didn't kill himself, what happened to him?"

"Heaven only knows," I answered, in despair. "I've been asking myself the same question, without finding a reasonable answer to it. As I said to Goldberger, it's a blank wall. But if anybody can see through it, Jim G.o.dfrey can."

Vantine seemed deeply perturbed. He took a turn or two up and down the room, then stopped in front of me and looked me earnestly in the eye.

"Tell me, Lester," he said, "do you believe that theory of G.o.dfrey's --that that insignificant wound on the hand caused death?"

"It seems absurd, doesn't it? But G.o.dfrey is a sort of genius at divining such things."

"Then you _do_ believe it?"

I asked myself the same question before I answered.

"Yes, I do," I said, finally.

Vantine walked up and down the room again, his eyes on the floor, his brows contracted.

"Lester," he said, at last, "I have a queer feeling that the business which brought this man here in some way concerned the Boule cabinet I was telling you about. Perhaps it belonged to him."

"Hardly," I protested, recalling his shabby appearance.

"At any rate, I remember, as I was looking at his card, that some such thought occurred to me. It was for that reason I told Parks to ask him to wait."

"It's possible, of course," I admitted. "But that wouldn't explain his excitement. And that reminds me," I added, "I haven't sent off that cable."

"Any time to-night will do. It will be delivered in the morning. But you haven't seen the cabinet yet. Come down and look at it."

He led the way down the stair. Parks met us in the lower hall.

"There's a delegation of reporters outside, sir," he said. "They say they've got to see you."

Vantine made a movement of impatience.

"Tell them," he said, "that I positively refuse to see them or to allow my servants to see them. Let them get their information from the police."

"Very well, sir," said Parks, and turned away grinning.

Vantine pa.s.sed on through the ante-room in which we had found the body of the unfortunate Frenchman, and into the room beyond. Five or six pieces of furniture, evidently just unpacked, stood there, but, ignorant as I am of such things, he did not have to point out to me the Boule cabinet. It dominated the room, much as Madame de Montespan, no doubt, dominated the court at Versailles.

I looked at it for some moments, for it was certainly a beautiful piece of work, with a wealth of inlay and incrustation little short of marvellous. But I may as well say here that I never really appreciated it. The florid style of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Louis is not at all to my taste; and I am too little of a connoisseur to admire a beauty which has no personal appeal for me. So I am afraid that Vantine found me a little cold.

Certainly there was nothing cold about the way he regarded it. His eyes gleamed with a strange fire as he looked at it; he ran his fingers over the inlay with a touch almost reverent; he pulled out for me the little drawers with much the same air that another friend of mine takes down his Kilmarnock Burns from his bookshelves; he pointed out to me the grace of its curves in the same tone that one uses to discuss the masterpiece of a great artist. And then, finding no echo to his enthusiasm, he suddenly stopped.

"You don't seem to care for it," he said, looking at me.

"That's my fault and not the fault of the cabinet," I pointed out.

"I'm not educated up to it; I'm too little of an artist, perhaps."

He was flushed, as a man might be should another make a disparaging remark about his wife, and he led the way from the room at once.

"Remember, Lester," he said, a little sternly, pausing with his hand on the front door, "there is to be no foolishness about securing that cabinet for me. Don't you let it get away. I'm in deadly earnest."