Chapter V

There are speeches so entirely unexpected that their effect is unappreciable until some little time after the utterance. This speech of Moris Klaw’s was of that description. For some moments no one seemed to grasp exactly what he had said, simple though his words had been. Then, it was borne home to us--that grotesque declaration; and I think I have never seen men more amazed.

Could he be jesting?

“Mr. Klaw----” began Sir John Carron. But--

“One moment, Sir John,” interrupted Klaw. “Let all remain here for one moment. I shall return.”

Whilst we stared, like so many fools, he shuffled from the office with his awkward gait. During his brief absence no one spoke. We were restrained, undoubtedly, by the presence of Isis Klaw, who, one hand upon her hip and with the other swinging her big ermine muff, smiled at us with a sort of pitying scorn for our stupidity.

Moris Klaw returned.

“Let me see,” he rumbled, reflectively, “have you, Sir John Carron or Mr. Chinje, a specimen of the handwriting of the Gaekwar of Nizam?”

Chinje and Sir John stared.

“At the office--possibly,” replied Sir John.

“I have my instructions, signed by him,” said Mr. Chinje. “But not here.”

“At your hotel, yes?”

“Yes,” replied Chinje, shortly.

He gave me the impression that he resented Moris Klaw’s catechizing as that of a fool and an incompetent meddler with affairs of great importance.

“Then, gentlemen,” said Klaw, “we must adjourn to examine that signature.”

“Really,” the younger Mr. Anderson burst out, “I must protest against this! You will pardon me, Mr. Klaw; I believe you to be sincere in your efforts on our behalf, but such an expedition can be no more than a wild-goose chase! What can the Gaekwar’s signature have to do with the theft of the diamond?”

“I will tell you something, my feverish friend,” said Moris Klaw, slowly. “The Blue Rajah is not on these premises. It is gone! It went before I came. If it is ever to come back you will put on your hat and accompany me to examine the signature to Mr. Chinje’s instructions.”

“I must add my protest to Mr. Anderson’s,” remarked Chinje. “This is mere waste of time.”

“Mr. Grimsby,” resumed Klaw, placidly, “it is a case to be hushed up, this. There must be no arrests!”

“Eh?” cried Grimsby.

“Sir John Carron will ring up the Commissioner and he will say that Detective-Inspector Grimsby has traced the Blue Rajah, which was stolen, but that, for reasons of state, Detective-Inspector Grimsby will make a confidential report and no arrest!”

“Really----” began Sir John.

“Mr. Klaw,” cried Anderson, interrupting excitedly. “You are jesting with men who are faced by a desperate position! I ask you, as man to man, if you know who stole the Blue Rajah and where it is?”

“I reply,” rumbled Moris Klaw, “that I suspect who stole it, that I am doubtful how it was stolen, and that when I have examined the Gaekwar’s signature I may know where it is!”

His reply had a tone of finality quite unanswerable. His attitude was that of a stone wall; and he had, too, something of the rugged strength of such a wall--of a Roman wall, commanding respect.

Sir John got into communication with the Commissioner, as desired by Klaw, and we all left the office and went down in the lift to the hall.

“Two cabs will be needful,” said Moris Klaw; and two cabs were summoned.

Sir John Carron, the Andersons, and Moris Klaw entered one; Isis Klaw, Grimsby, Chinje, and I the other.

“The Hotel Astoria,” directed Chinje.

Throughout the drive to the Strand, Isis chatted to Grimsby, to his great delight. Mr. Chinje contented himself with monosyllabic replies to my occasional observations. He seemed to be disgusted with the manner in which the inquiry was being conducted. When the two cabs drove into the courtyard of the hotel, the one in which I was seated followed the other. Mr. Chinje, on my left, descended first, and Moris Klaw also descended first from the cab in front. As he did so he stumbled on the step and clutched at Chinje for support. Isis leapt forward to his assistance.

“Ah,” growled Klaw, hobbling painfully, and resting one hand upon Chinje’s shoulder and the other upon his daughter’s. “That foolish ankle of mine! How unfortunate! An accident, Mr. Chinje, which I met with in Egypt. I fell quite twenty feet in the shaft of a tomb and broke my ankle. At the least strain, I suffer yet.”

“Allow me, Mr. Chinje,” said Grimsby, stepping forward.

“No, no!” rumbled Klaw. “If you will hand me my hat which I have dropped, and see that my verbena has not fallen out--thank you--Mr. Chinje and Isis will be so good as to walk with me to the lift. A few moments’ rest in Mr. Chinje’s apartments will restore me.”

This arrangement accordingly was adopted, and we presently came to the rooms occupied by the Gaekwar’s representative, upon the fourth floor of the hotel. At the door, Mr. Chinje asked me to take his place whilst he found his key.

I did so and Chinje opened the door. To my great surprise he entered first. To my greater surprise, Moris Klaw, scorning my assistance and apparently forgetting his injury, rapidly followed him in. The rest of us flocked behind, possessed with a sense of something impending. We little knew _what_ impended.

One thing, as I entered the little sitting room, struck my vision with a sensation almost of physical shock. It was a large, empty parrot cage standing on the table!

I had an impression that Chinje dashed forward in a vain attempt to conceal the cage ere Moris Klaw entered. I saw, as one sees figures in a dream, a pretty, fair-haired girl in the room. Then the Hindu had leapt to an inner door--and was gone!

“Quick!” cried Klaw, in a loud voice. “The door! The door!”

He brushed the girl aside with a sweep of his arm and hurled himself against the locked door.

“Mr. Grimsby! Mr. Searles! Someone! Help with this door. Isis! hold her back, this foolish girl!”

The inner meaning of the scene was a mystery to us all, but the urgency of Moris Klaw’s instructions brooked no denial. With a shrill scream the girl threw herself upon him, but Isis, exhibiting unsuspected strength, drew her away.

Then Sir John Carron joined Klaw at the door and they applied their combined weights to the task of forcing it open.

Once they put their shoulders to it; twice--and there was a sound of tearing woodwork; a third time--and it flew open, almost precipitating them both into the room beyond. Hard on the din of the opening rang the crack of a pistol shot. A wisp of smoke came floating out.

“Ah, just God!” said Moris Klaw, hoarsely, “we are too late!”

And, at his words, with a leap like that of a wild thing, the fair girl broke from Isis, and passing us all, entered the room beyond. Awed and fearful, we followed and looked upon a pitiful scene.

Gautami Chinje lay dead upon the floor, a revolver yet between his nerveless fingers and a red spot in his temple. Beside him knelt the girl, plucking with both hands at her lower lip, her face as white as paper and her eyes glaring insanely at the distorted features.

“Dearest,” she kept whispering, in a listless way, “my dearest--what is the matter? I have the diamond--I have it in my bag. What is it, my dearest?”

We got her away at last.

“He had only been in London six months,” Moris Klaw rumbled in my ear, “and you see, she adored him--helped him to steal. It is wonderful, snake-like, the power of fascination some Hindus have over women--and always over blondes, Mr. Searles, always blondes. It is a psychological problem.”

So ended the case of the Blue Rajah robbery, one of the most brief in the annals of Moris Klaw. The great diamond we found in the girl’s handbag, wrapped in a curious little rubber covering, apparently made to fit it.

“You see,” explained Moris Klaw, later, to his wondering audience, “this girl--I have yet to find out who she is--was perhaps married to Mr. Chinje. He would, of course, have deserted her directly he returned to India. But here at the Astoria she was known as Mrs. Chinje. Who would have been the losers by the robbery? The insurance company, if I do not mistake the case. For the Gaekwar, through his representative, Chinje, had the diamond insured for all the time it was his property and in England, and the Committee had it insured from the time it became their property. It had become their property. The Gaekwar would have got his check. He gets it now; it is in Chinje’s pocket-case. The city would have lost its Blue Rajah, and the insurance company would have paid the city for the loss!

“The next office along the corridor from Mr. Anderson’s is the Central London Electric Lighting Company. Many consumers call. Mrs. Chinje was not suspected of any felonious purpose when she was seen in that corridor--and she was seen by a clerk and by an engineer. After my mental negative had told me of a pretty young lady of whom the thief thinks at the moment of his theft, I went to inquire--you recall?--if such a one had been seen near the office.

“From the first my suspicions are with Chinje. The emotions have each a note, distinct, like the notes of a piano, though only audible to the trained mind. Both Isis and myself detect from Chinje the note of _fear_. I arrange, then, that he remains. My talk of examining the Gaekwar’s writing is a ruse. It is Chinje’s apartment and the fair lady I expect to find there that I am anxious to see.

“Then, in spite that he is the most cool of us all, I see that he suspects me and I have to hold him fast; for, if he could have got first to his room and hidden the parrot cage, where had been our evidence? Indeed, only that I have the power to secure the astral negative, there had been no evidence at all. There is a third accomplice--him who howled in the courtyard; but I fear, as he so cleverly vanished, we shall never know his name.

“And how was it done, and why did this someone howl?”

Moris Klaw paused and looked around. We awaited his next words in tense silence.

“He howled because Chinje had looked out from the window (which, though hidden, the howler was watching) and made him some signal. The signal meant: ‘The Blue Rajah has been placed upon the table--_howl!_’

“The one below obeyed, and the Committee, like foolish sheep--yes, gentlemen, like no-headed cattle things!--flocked to the window. But Chinje did not flock with them! Like a deft-handed conjurer he was at the table, the diamond was in the little rubber purse held ready, and Mrs. Chinje, with her large handbag open, was waiting outside the door, in the corridor, like some new kind of wicket-keeper. Chinje tossed the diamond through the little square ventilator!

“He had been practising for weeks--ever since he knew that the Committee would meet in that room--tossing peanuts into the square opening of a parrot cage, placed at the same height from the floor as the ventilator over Mr. Anderson’s doorway! He had practised until he could do it twelve times without missing. He had nerves like piano wires, yet he was a deadly anxious man; and he knew that a woman cannot catch!

“But she caught--or, if she dropped it, no one saw her pick it up.

“Gentlemen, these Hindus are very clever, but talking of their cleverness makes one very thirsty. I think I heard Mr. Anderson make some cooling speech about a bottle of wine!”

SIXTH EPISODE. CASE OF THE WHISPERING POPLARS