i
in none of the cases of investigation by martin hewitt which i have as yet recorded had i any direct and substantial personal interest. in the case i am about to set forth, however, i had some such interest, though legally, i fear, it amounted to no more than the cost of a smashed pane of glass. but the case in some ways was one of the most curious which came under my notice, and completely justified hewitt’s oft repeated dictum that there was nothing, however romantic or apparently improbable, that had not happened at some time in london.
it was late on a summer evening, two or three years back, that i drowsed in my armchair over a particularly solid and ponderous volume of essays on social economy. i was doing a good deal of reviewing at the time, and i remember that this particular volume had a property of such exceeding toughness that i had already made three successive attacks on it, on as many successive evenings, each attack having been defeated in the end by sleep. the weather was hot, my chair was very comfortable, the days were tiring, and the book had somewhere about its strings of polysyllables an essence as of laudanum. still something had been done on each evening, and now on the fourth i strenuously endeavoured to finish the book. late as it was, my lamp had been lighted but an hour or so, for there had been light enough to read by, near the window, till well past nine o’clock. i was just beginning to feel that the words before me were sliding about and losing their meanings, and that i was about to fall asleep after all, when a sudden crash and a jingle of broken glass behind me woke me with a start, and i threw the book down. a pane of glass in my window was smashed, and i hurried across and threw up the sash to see, if i could, whence the damage had come.
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“a pane of glass in my window was smashed.”
i think i have somewhere said (i believe it was in describing the circumstances of the extraordinary death of mr. foggatt) that the building in which my chambers (and hewitt’s office) were situated was accessible—or rather visible, for there was no entrance—from the rear. there was, in fact, a small courtyard, reached by a passage from the street behind, and into this courtyard my sitting-room window looked.
“hullo, there!” i shouted. but there came no reply. nor could i distinguish anybody in the courtyard. it was at best a shadowy place at night, with no artificial light after the news agent—who had a permanent booth there—had shut up and gone home. gone he was now, and to me the yard seemed deserted. some men had been at work during the day on a drain-pipe near the booth, and i reflected that probably their litter had provided the stone wherewith my window had been smashed. as i looked, however, two men came hurrying from the passage into the court, and going straight into the deep shadow of one corner, presently appeared again in a less obscure part, hauling forth a third man, who must have already been there in hiding. the man—who appeared, so far as i could see, to be smaller than either of his assailants—struggled fiercely, but without avail, and was dragged across toward the passage leading to the street beyond. but the most remarkable feature of the whole thing was the silence of all three men. no cry, no exclamation, or expostulation escaped any one of them. in perfect silence the two hauled the third across the courtyard, and in perfect silence he swung and struggled to resist and escape. the matter astonished me not a little, and the men were entering the passage before i found voice to shout at them. but they took no notice, and disappeared. soon after i heard cab wheels in the street beyond, and had no doubt that the two men had carried off their prisoner.
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“the man . . . struggled fiercely.”
i turned back into my room a little perplexed. it seemed probable that the man who had been borne off had broken my window. but why? i looked about on the floor, and presently found the missile. it was, as i had expected, a piece of broken concrete, but it was wrapped up in a worn piece of paper, which had partly opened out again as it lay on my carpet, thus indicating that it had only just been hastily crumpled round the stone. but again, why? it might be considered a trifle more polite to hand a gentleman a clinker decently wrapped up than to give it him in its raw state; but it came to much the same thing after all if it were passed through a shut window. and why a clinker at all? i disengaged the paper and spread it out. then i saw it to be a rather hastily written piece of manuscript music, whereof i append a reduced facsimile:—
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this gave me no help. i turned the paper this way and that, but could make nothing of it. there was not a mark on it that i could discover, except the music and the scrawled title, “flitterbat lancers,” at the top. the paper was old, dirty, and cracked. what did it all mean? one might conceive of a person in certain circumstances sending a message—possibly an appeal for help—through a friend’s window, wrapped round a stone, but this seemed to be nothing of that sort. it was not a message, but a hastily written piece of music, with no bars or time marked, just as might have been put down by somebody anxious to make an exact note of an air, the time of which he could remember. moreover, it was years old, not a thing just written in a recent emergency. what lunatic could have chosen this violent way of presenting me with an air from some forgotten “flitterbat lancers”? that indeed was an idea. what more likely than that the man taken away was a lunatic and the others his keepers? a man under some curious delusion, which led him not only to fling his old music notes through my window, but to keep perfectly quiet while struggling for his freedom. i looked out of the window again, and then it seemed plain to me that the clinker and the paper could not have been intended for me personally, but had been flung at my window as being the only one that showed a light within a reasonable distance of the yard. most of the windows about mine were those of offices, which had been deserted early in the evening.
once more i picked up the paper, and with an idea to hear what the flitterbat lancers sounded like, i turned to my little pianette and strummed over the notes, making my own time and changing it as seemed likely. but i make nothing of it, and could by no means extract from the notes anything resembling an air. i considered the thing a little more, and half thought of trying martin hewitt’s office door, in case he might still be there and could offer a guess at the meaning of my smashed window and the scrap of paper. it was most probable, however, that he had gone home, and i was about resuming my social economy when hewitt himself came in. he had stayed late to examine a bundle of papers in connection with a case just placed in his hands, and now, having finished, came to find if i were disposed for an evening stroll before turning in—a thing i was in the habit of. i handed him the paper and the piece of concrete, observing, “there’s a little job for you, hewitt, instead of the stroll. what do those things mean?” and i told him the complete history of my smashed window.
hewitt listened attentively, and examined both the paper and the fragment of paving. “you say these people made absolutely no sound whatever?” he asked.
“none but that of scuffling, and even that they seemed to do quietly.”
“could you see whether or not the two men gagged the other, or placed their hands over his mouth?”
“no, they certainly didn’t do that. it was dark, of course, but not so dark as to prevent my seeing generally what they were doing.”
“and when you first looked out of the window after the smash, you called out, but got no answer, although the man you suppose to have thrown these things must have been there at the time, and alone?”
“that was so.”
hewitt stood for half a minute in thought, and then said, “there’s something in this; what, i can’t guess at the moment, but something deep, i fancy. are you sure you won’t come out now?”
on this my mind was made up. that dreadful volume had vanquished me altogether three times already, and if i let it go again it would haunt me like a nightmare. there was indeed very little left to read, and i determined to master that and draft my review before i slept. so i told hewitt that i was sure, and that i should stick to my work.
“very well,” he said; “then perhaps you will lend me these articles?” holding up the paper and the stone as he spoke.
“delighted to lend ’em, i’m sure,” i said. “if you get no more melody out of the clinker than i did out of the paper, you won’t have a musical evening. good-night!”
hewitt went away with the puzzle in his hand, and i turned once more to my social economy, and, thanks to the gentleman who smashed my window, conquered. i am sure i should have dropped fast asleep had it not been for that.
