THE ENGLISH social historian and author of science and mystery fiction Henry Fitzgerald Heard (1889-1971) was born in London, studied at Cambridge University, then turned to writing essays and books on historical, scientific, religious, mystical, cultural, and social subjects, signing them Gerald Heard, the name under which all his nonfiction appeared. He moved to the United States in 1937 to head a commune in California, and later appeared as a character in several Aldous Huxley novels, notably as William Propter, a mystic, in After Many a Summer Dies the Swan (1939).
A Taste for Honey (1941) introduced Mr. Mycroft, a tall, slender gentleman who had retired to Sussex to keep bees. The story is told by Sydney Silchester, a reclusive man who loves honey, which he obtains from Mr. and Mrs. Heregrove, the village beekeepers, until he discovers the lady’s body, black and swollen from bee stings. After the coroner’s inquest, Silchester turns to Mr. Mycroft for a fresh supply of honey and receives a warning about Heregrove’s killer bees.
Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho (1959) and many other novels and stories, and Anthony Marriott adapted the novel for a truly awful contemporary screenplay titled The Deadly Bees (1966). For an episode of television’s The Elgin Hour, Alvin Sapinsley wrote the script for “Sting of Death,” which starred Boris Karloff as Mr. Mycroft; it aired on February 22, 1955.
Mr. Mycroft appeared in two additional novels by Heard: Reply Paid (1942) and The Notched Hairpin (1949). Among Heard’s other science fiction and mystery novels, perhaps his best-known work is the short story “The President of the United States of America, Detective,” which won the first prize in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s contest in 1947.
“The Enchanted Garden” was originally published in the March 1949 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
By H. F. Heard
NATURE’S A queer one,’ said Mr. Squeers,” I remarked.
“I know what moves you to misquote Dickens,” was Mr. Mycroft’s reply.
Here was a double provocation: first, there was the injury of being told that the subject on which one was going to inform someone was already known to him, and secondly, there was the insult that the happy literary quotation with which the information was to be introduced was dismissed as inaccurate. Still it’s no use getting irritated with Mr. Mycroft. The only hope was to lure his pride onto the brink of ignorance.
“Then tell me,” I remarked demurely, “what I have just been reading?”
“The sad, and it is to be feared, fatal accident that befell Miss Hetty Hess who is said to be extremely rich, and a ‘colorful personality’ and ‘young for her years’—the evidence for these last two statements being a color photograph in the photogravure section of the paper which establishes that her frock made up for its brevity only by the intense viridity of its green color.”
I am seldom untruthful deliberately, even when considerably nonplussed; besides it was no use: Mr. Mycroft was as usual one move ahead. He filled in the silence with: “I should have countered that naturalists are the queer ones.”
I had had a moment to recover, and felt that I could retrieve at least a portion of my lost initiative. “But there’s no reason to link the accident with the death. The notice only mentions that she had had a fall a few weeks previously. The cause of death was ‘intestinal stasis’.”
“Cause!” said Mr. Mycroft. He looked and sounded so like an old raven as he put his head on one side and uttered “caws,” that I couldn’t help laughing.
“Murder’s no laughing matter!” he remonstrated.
“But surely, cher maître, you sometimes are unwilling to allow that death can ever be through natural causes!”
“Cause? There’s sufficient cause here.”
“Post hoc, propter hoc,” I was glad to get off one of my few classic tags. “Because a lady of uncertain years dies considerably after a fall from which her doctor vouched there were no immediate ill effects, you would surely not maintain that it was on account of the fall that the rhythm of her secondary nervous system struck and stopped for good? And even if it was, who’s to blame?”
“Cause.” At this third quothing of the Raven I let my only comment be a rather longer laugh—and waited for my lecture. Mr. Mycroft did not fail me. He went on: “I’ll own I know nothing about causality in the outer world, for I believe no one does really. But I have spent my life, not unprofitably, in tracing human causality. As you’re fond of Dickens, I’ll illustrate from Copperfield’s Mr. Dick. The causes of King Charles’s head coming off may have been due to four inches of iron going through his neck. I feel on safer ground when I say it was due to his failing to get on with his parliament. You say Miss Hess died naturally—that is to say (1) her death, (2) her accident a fortnight before, and (3) the place where that accident took place, all have only a chance connection. Maybe your case would stand were I not watching another line of causality.”
“You mean a motive?”
“Naturally.”
“But motives aren’t proof! Or every natural death would be followed by a number of unnatural ones—to wit, executions of executors and legatees!”
“I don’t know whether I agree with your rather severe view of human nature. What I do know is that when a death proves to be far too happy an accident for someone who survives, then we old sleuths start with a trail which often ends with our holding proofs that not even a jury can fail to see.”
“Still,” I said, “suspicion can’t always be right!”
What had been no more than an after-lunch sparring-match suddenly loomed up as active service with Mr. Mycroft’s, “Well, the police agree with you in thinking that there’s no proof, and with me in suspecting it is murder. That’s why I’m going this afternoon to view the scene of the accident, unaccompanied—unless, of course, you would care to accompany me?”
I may sometimes seem vain but I know my uses. So often I get a ringside seat because, as Mr. Mycroft has often remarked, my appearance disarms suspicion.
“We are headed,” Mr. Mycroft resumed as we bowled along in our taxi, “for what I am creditably informed is in both senses of the word a gem of a sanctuary—gem, because it is both small and jewelled.”
We had been swaying and sweeping up one of those narrow rather desolate canyons in southern California through which the famous “Thirteen suburbs in search of a city” have thrust corkscrew concrete highways. The lots became more stately and secluded, the houses more embowered and enwalled, until the ride, the road, and the canyon itself all ended in a portico of such Hispano-Moorish impressiveness that it might have been the entrance to a veritable Arabian Nights Entertainments. There was no one else about, but remarking, “This is Visitors’ Day,” Mr. Mycroft alit, told our driver to wait, and strolled up to the heavily grilled gate. One of the large gilt nails which bossed the gate’s carved timbers had etched round it in elongated English so as to pretend to be Kufic or at least ordinary Arabic the word PRESS. And certainly it was as good as its word. For not only did the stud sink into the gate, the gate followed suit and sank into the arch, and we strolled over the threshold into as charming an enclosure as I have ever seen. The gate closed softly behind us. Indeed, there was nothing to suggest that we weren’t in an enchanted garden. The ground must have risen steeply on either hand. But you didn’t see any ground—all manner of hanging vines and flowering shrubs rose in festoons, hanging in garlands, swinging in delicate sprays. The crowds of blossom against the vivid blue sky, shot through by the sun, made the place intensely vivid. And in this web of color, like quick bobbins, the shuttling flight of humming-birds was everywhere. The place was, in fact, alive with birds. But not a single human being could I see.
Birds are really stupid creatures and their noises, in spite of all the poetry that has been written about them, always seem to me tiring. Their strong point is, of course, plumage. I turned to Mr. Mycroft and remarked that I wished the Polynesian art of making cloaks of birds’ feathers had not died out. He said he preferred them alive but that he believed copies of the famous plumage-mantles could now be purchased for those who liked to appear in borrowed plumes.
“This, I understand,” continued Mr. Mycroft, “is supposed to be the smallest and choicest of all the world’s bird sanctuaries. It is largely reserved for species of that mysterious living automaton, the hummingbird,” and as was the way with the old bird himself, in a moment he seemed to forget why we were there. First, he scanned the whole place. The steep slopes came down till only a curb-path of marble divided the banks of flowers from a floor of water. At the farther end of this was a beautiful little statue holding high a lance, all of a lovely, almost peacock-green hue. And from this lance rose a spray of water, a miniature fountain. This little piece of art seemed to absorb him and as he couldn’t walk on the water and examine it, he took binoculars from his pocket and scanned it with loving care. Then his mind shifted and slipping the glasses back in his pocket, he gave the same interest to the birds. His whole attention now seemed to be involved with these odd little bird-pellets. Hummingbirds are certainly odd. To insist on flying all the time you are drinking nectar from the deep flask of a flower always seems to me a kind of tour de force of pointless energy. In fact, it really fatigues me a little even to watch them. But the general plan of the place was beautiful and restful: there was just this narrow path of marble framing the sheet of water and this wall of flowers and foliage. The path curved round making an oval and at the upper end, balancing the fine Moorish arch through which we had entered, there rose a similar horseshoe arch, charmingly reflected in the water above which it rose. It made a bridge over which one could pass to reach the marble curb on the other side of the water.
“A bower,” remarked Mr. Mycroft. He loitered along, cricking back his neck farther and farther to watch the birds perched on sprays right against the sky. He had now taken a pen from his pocket and was jotting down some ornithological observation. Poor old dear, he never could enjoy but must always be making some blot of comment on the bright mirror of—well, what I mean is that I was really taking it in and he was already busy manufacturing it into some sort of dreary information. And poor Miss Hess, she too must wait till he came back to her actual problem, if indeed there was one.
I watched him as he stepped back to the very edge of the marble curb so that he might better view a spray of deep purple bougainvillea at which a hummingbird was flashing its gorget. Yes, it would have been a pretty enough bit of color contrast, had one had a color camera to snap it, but I had seen a sign on the gate outside asking visitors not to take photographs. So I watched my master. And having my wits about me I suddenly broke the silence. “Take care!” I shouted. But too late. Mr. Mycroft had in his effort to see what was too high above him stepped back too far. The actual edge of the marble curb must have been slippery from the lapping of the ripples. His foot skidded. He made a remarkable effort to recover. I am not hard-hearted but I could not help tittering as I saw him—more raven-like than ever—flap his arms to regain his balance. And the comic maneuver served perfectly—I mean it still gave me my joke and yet saved him from anything more serious than a loss of gravity. His arms whirled. Pen and paper scrap flew from his hands to join some hummingbirds but the Mycroft frame, under whose overarching shadow so many great criminals had cowered, collapsed not gracefully but quite safely just short of the water.
I always carry a cane. It gives poise. The piece of paper and even the pen—which was one of those new “light-as-a-feather” plastic things—were bobbing about on the surface. Of course, Mr. Mycroft who was a little crestfallen at such an absent-minded slip, wouldn’t let me help him up. In fact he was up before I could have offered. My only chance of collecting a “Thank-you” was to salvage the flotsam that he had so spontaneously “cast upon the waters.” I fished in both the sopped sheet and the pen, and noticed that Mr. Mycroft had evidently not had time to record the precious natural-history fact that he had gleaned before his lack of hindsight attention parted the great mind and the small sheet. Nor when I handed him back his salvaged apparatus did he do so; instead he actually put both pen and sopped sheet into his pocket. “Shaken,” I said to myself; “there’s one more disadvantage of being so high up in the clouds of speculation.”
As we continued on our way along the curb and were approaching the horseshoe Moorish arch-bridge, Mr. Mycroft began to limp. My real fondness for him made me ask, “Have you strained anything?”
Mr. Mycroft most uncharacteristically answered, “I think I will rest for a moment.”
We had reached the place where the level marble curb, sweeping round the end of the pond, rose into the first steps of the flight of stairs that ran up the back of the arch. These stairs had a low, fretted rail. It seemed to me that it might have been higher for safety’s sake, but I suppose that would have spoiled the beauty of the arch, making it look too heavy and thick. It certainly was a beautiful piece of work and finished off the garden with charming effectiveness. The steps served Mr. Mycroft’s immediate need well enough, just because they were so steep. He bent down and holding the balustrade with his left hand, lowered himself until he was seated. So he was in a kind of stone chair, his back comfortably against the edge of the step above that one on which he sat. And as soon as he was settled down, the dizziness seemed to pass, and his spirits obviously returned to their old bent. He started once more to peek about him. The irrelevant vitality of being interested in anything mounted once again to its usual unusual intensity.
After he had for a few moments been swinging his head about in the way that led to his fall—the way a new-born baby will loll, roll, and goggle at the sky—he actually condescended to draw me into the rather pointless appreciations he was enjoying. “You see, Mr. Silchester, one of their breeding boxes.” He pointed up into the foliage, which here rose so high that it reared a number of feet above the highest pitch of the arch.
“Surely,” I asked, for certainly it is always safer with Mr. Mycroft to offer information armored in question form, “surely breeding boxes are no new invention?”
Mr. Mycroft’s reply was simply, “No, of course not,” and then he became vague.
I thought: Now he’ll start making notes again. But no, poor old pride-in-perception was evidently more shaken by his fall than I’d thought. I felt a real sympathy for him, as I stood at a little distance keeping him under observation but pretending to glance at the scene which, though undoubtedly pretty, soon began to pall for really it had no more sense or story about it than a kaleidoscope. Poor old thing, I repeated to myself, as out of the corner of my eye, I saw him let that big cranium hang idly. But the restless, nervous energy still fretted him. Though his eyes were brooding out of focus, those long fingers remained symptomatic of his need always to be fiddling and raveling with something. How important it is, I reflected, to learn young how to idle well. Now, poor old dear, he just can’t rest. Yes, Britain can still teach America something: a mellow culture knows how to meander; streams nearer their source burst and rush and tumble.
The Mycroft fingers were running to and fro along the curb of the step against which he was resting his back. I thought I ought to rouse him. He must be getting his fingernails into a horrid condition as they aimlessly scraped along under that ledge and the very thought even of someone rasping and soiling his nails sets my teeth on edge.
My diagnosis that the dear old fellow was badly shaken was confirmed when I suggested, “Shall we be getting on?” and he answered, “Certainly.” And I must say that I was trebly pleased when, first, Mr. Mycroft took my extended hand to pull him to his feet, then accepted my arm as we went up the bridge and down its other side, and once we were outside the gate let me hold the door of the cab open for him. At that moment from an alcove in the gate-arch popped a small man with a book. Would we care to purchase any of the colored photographs he had for sale, and would we sign the visitors’ book? I bought a couple and said to Mr. Mycroft, “May I sign Mr. Silchester and friend?”—for this was a ready way for him to preserve his anonymity, when he remarked, “I will sign,” and in that large stately hand the most famous signature was placed on the page.
As we swirled down the canyon, Mr. Mycroft gave his attention to our new surroundings. Suddenly he exclaimed, “Stop!” The cab bumped to a standstill. The spot he had chosen was certainly a contrast to our last stop. Of course, once outside the houses of the rich, this countryside is pretty untidy. We had just swished round one of those hairpin curves all these canyon roads make as they wiggle down the central cleft. The cleft itself was in slow process of being filled by the cans and crocks that fall from the rich man’s kitchen. Something, disconcerting to a sane eye even at this distance, had caught Mr. Mycroft’s vulture gaze. Even before the cab was quite still, he was out and went straight for the garbage heap. I need not say that not only did I stay where I was, I turned away. For that kind of autopsy always makes me feel a little nauseated. Mr. Mycroft knows my reasonable limits. He had not asked me to go with him and when he came back he spared me by not displaying his trophy, whatever it might be. I caught sight of him stuffing a piece of some gaudy colored wrapping-paper into his pocket as he climbed into the seat beside me, but I was certainly more anxious not to notice than he to conceal.
Nor, when we reached home, did Mr. Mycroft become any more communicative. Indeed, he went straight to his study and there, no doubt, unloaded his quarry. He did not, as a matter of fact, put in an appearance till dinner. Nor did the dinner rouse him. I can hardly blame him for that. For I, too, was a little abstracted and so have to confess that I had ordered a very conventional repast, the kind of meal that you can’t remember five minutes after you have ordered it or five minutes after it has been cleared away—a dinner so lacking in art that it can arouse neither expectation nor recollection.
Truth to tell, I was not a little disconcerted at the tameness of our “adventure.” Mr. M. had as good as told me that he would disclose a plot and a pretty ugly one, but all we had seen was a charming enough stage, set for comedy rather than tragedy. And not a soul in view, far less a body.
The only incident, and surely that was tamely comic and I had to enjoy even that by myself, was Mr. Mycroft’s skid. Indeed, as we sat on in silence I was beginning to think I might say something—perhaps a little pointed—about pointless suspicion. But on looking across at Mr. M. who was sitting dead still at the other side of the table, I thought the old fellow looked more than a little tired. So I contented myself with the feeling that his fall had shaken him considerably more than he chose to allow.
But as I rose to retire, after reading my half-chapter of Jane Austen—for me an unfailing sedative—the old fellow roused himself.
“Thank you for your company, Mr. Silchester. Quite a fruitful day.” Perhaps he saw I was already “registering surprise.” For he added, “I believe we sowed and not only reaped this afternoon but if you will again give me your company, we will go tomorrow to gather the harvest.”
“But I thought today was Visitors’ Day?”
“Oh,” he carelessly remarked, “I expect the proprietor will be glad of callers even the day after. The place was quite deserted, wasn’t it? Maybe he’s thinking of closing it. And that would be a pity before we had seen all that it may have to offer.”
Well, I had enjoyed the little place and was not averse to having one more stroll round it. So, as it was certain we should go anyhow, I agreed with the proviso, “I must tell you that though I agree the place is worth a second visit for its beauty, nevertheless I am still convinced that to throw a cloud of suspicion over its innocent brightness might almost be called professional obsessionalism.”
I was rather pleased at that heavy technical-sounding ending and even hoped it might rouse the old man to spar back. But he only replied, “Excellent, excellent. That’s what I hoped you’d think and say. For that, of course, is the reaction I trust would be awakened in any untrained—I mean, normal mind.”
The next afternoon found us again in the garden, I enjoying what was there and Mr. M. really liking it as much as I did but having to spin all over its brightness the gossamer threads of his suspicions and speculations. The water was flashing in the sun, the small spray-fountain playing, birds dancing—yes, the place was the nicest miseen-scène for a meditation on murder that anyone could ask. Again we had the place to ourselves. Indeed, I had just remarked on the fact to Mr. M. and he had been gracious enough to protrude from his mystery mist and reply that perhaps people felt there might still be a shadow over the place, when a single other visitor did enter. He entered from the other end. I hadn’t thought there was a way in from that direction but evidently behind the bridge and the thicket there must have been. He strolled down the same side of the small lake as we were advancing up. But I didn’t have much chance to study him for he kept on turning round and looking at the bridge and the fountain. I do remember thinking what a dull and ugly patch his dreary store suit made against the vivid living tapestries all around us. The one attempt he made to be in tune was rather futile: he had stuck a bright red hibiscus flower in his button-hole. And then that thought was put out of my mind by an even juster judgment. Mr. M. was loitering behind—sometimes I think that I really do take things in rather more quickly than he—at least, when what is to be seen is what is meant to be seen. He pores and reflects too much even on the obvious. So it was I who saw what was going forward and being of a simple forthright nature took the necessary steps at once. After all, I did not feel that I had any right to be suspicious of our host who was certainly generous and as certainly had been put in a very unpleasant limelight by police and press. My duty was to see that what he offered so freely to us should not be abused or trespassed on. As the man ahead turned round again to study the fountain and the arch I saw what he was doing. He had a small color camera pressed against him and was going to take a photo of the fountain and the bridge. Now, as we knew, visitors were asked expressly not to do this. So I stepped forward and tapped him on the shoulder, remarking that as guests of a public generosity we should observe the simple rule requested of us. He swung round at my tap. My feelings had not been cordial at first sight, his action had alienated them further, and now a close-up clinched the matter. His hat was now pushed back and showed a head of billiard-baldness; his eyes were weak and narrowed-up at me through glasses, rimless glasses that like some colorless fly perched on his nose—that hideous sight-aid called rightly a pince-nez.
Suddenly his face relaxed. It actually smiled, and he said, “That is really very kind of you. It is a pity when the rule is not kept for it does deprive the pension house for pets of a little income—almost all that one can spare for that excellent work. I am grateful, grateful.” I was taken aback, even more so with the explanation. “I have the responsibility for this place. Owing to a very ungenerous press campaign we are not getting the visitors we used to. So I thought I would take a few more photos for the sales-rack at the gate. Yes, I am the owner of this little place, or as I prefer to say, the trustee of it in the joint interests of the public and philanthropy. May I introduce myself?—I am Hiram Hess, Jr.”
After my faux pas I stumbled out some kind of apology.
“Please don’t make any excuse. I only wish all my guests felt the same way in our common responsibility,” he replied. “Indeed, now that you have done me one kindness, you embolden me to ask for another. I believe that the public has been scared away and this seems a heavensent opportunity.”
All this left me somewhat in the dark. I am not averse to being treated as an honored guest and murmured something about being willing to oblige. Then I remembered Mr. M. and that I was actually taking the leading part in a scene and with the “mystery character” to whom he had in fact introduced me. I turned round and found Mr. M. at my heels. I think I made the introduction well and certainly the two of them showed no signs of not wishing to play the parts in which I was now the master of ceremonies. Mr. Hess spoke first: “I was just about to ask your friend. . .”—“Mr. Silchester,” I prompted—“whether he would add another kindness. I was told only yesterday by a friend that natural history photos sell better if they can be combined with human interest of some sort. Of course when I was told that, I saw at once he was right. It must be, musn’t it?” Mr. M. made a “Lord Burleigh nod.”
“I am glad you agree. So I suggested that I might ask a movie star to pose. But my friend said No, I should get a handsome young man whose face has not been made wearisome to the public and that would give a kind of mystery element to the photo. People would ask, ‘In what movie did that face appear?’” I own that at this personal reference—I am a Britisher, you know—I felt a little inclined to blush. “And,” hurried on Mr. Hess, “now, the very day after I am told what to do, I am offered the means to do it!”
Frankness has always been my forte. Like many distinguished and good-looking people, I like being photographed and these new colored ones are really most interesting. “I would be most happy to oblige,” I said, and turned to see how Mr. M. would react to my taking the play out of his hands. Of course this odd little man couldn’t be a murderer. I’m not a profound student of men but that was now perfectly clear to me. Mr. M. merely treated us to another of his “Lord Burleigh nods” and then, “While you are posing Mr. Silchester, may I walk about?”
“Please look upon the place as your own,” left Mr. M. free to stroll away and he seemed quite content to use his fieldglasses looking at the birds and blooms.
“Now,” said Mr. Hess, all vivacity and I must confess, getting more likable every moment, “my idea is that we put the human interest, if I may so describe my collaborator, right in the middle of the scene. You will be the focus round which the garden is, as it were, draped.” Then he paused and exclaimed, “Why, of course, that’s the very word—why didn’t I think of it before? I wonder whether you would be kind enough to agree—it would make the picture really wonderful.”
Again I was a little at a loss, but the small man’s enthusiasm was quite infectious. “How can I help further?” I asked.
“Well, it was the word drape that shot the idea into my head, darting like one of these sweet birdkins. Don’t you think, Mr. Silchester, that men’s clothes rather spoil the effect here?”
He looked down on his own little store suit and smiled. It was true enough but a sudden qualm shook my mind. The thought of stripping and posing, with Mr. Mycroft in the offing—well, I felt that awkward blush again flowing all over me. Whether my little host guessed my confusion or not, his next words put me at ease. “Do you think that you’d consent to wear just for the photo a robe I have?”
My relief that I was not to be asked to disrobe but to robe made me say, “Of course, of course,” and without giving me any further chance to qualify my consent, off hurried little Hess. He was not gone more than a couple of minutes—not enough time for me to go back to where Mr. Mycroft was loitering near the gate at the other end of the pool—before once again he appeared, but nearly hidden even when he faced me. For what he was holding in his arms and over his shoulder was one of those Polynesian feather cloaks of which I had remarked to Mr. Mycroft that I thought they were one of the finest of all dresses ever made by man.
“Of course,” Hess said, “this isn’t one of the pieces that go to museums. I always hoped that somehow I would make a picture of this place in which this cloak would play the leading part.”
All the while he said this he was holding out the lovely wrap for me to examine and as he finished he lightly flung the robe over my shoulder. “Oh, that’s it, that’s it!” he said, standing back with his head on one side like a bird. And looking down, I could not help thinking that I too was now like a bird and, to be truthful, a very handsome one.
So, without even casting a look behind me to see if Mr. Mycroft was watching and perhaps smiling, I followed Mr. Hess as he led the way, saying over his shoulder, heaped with the Polynesian robe, “I said right in the center and I mean to keep my word.” It was clear what he meant, for already he was mounted on the steps of the horseshoe-arch bridge and was going up them. Yes, I was to be the clou of the whole composition. When we reached the very apex of the arch, he held out the cloak to me, remarking, “You will find it hangs better if you’ll just slip off your coat.” I agreed and obeyed. I had already laid aside my cane. He was evidently quite an artist and was determined to pose me to best possible effect. He tried a number of poses and none seemed to him good enough. “I have it!” he finally clicked out. “Oh, the thing gets better and better! Why you aren’t in the movies . . . But of course after this . . . photogenic—why, it’s a mild word! I’m not asking for anything theatrical—only an accent, as it were—just the natural inevitable drama, one might say. The cloak itself sets the gesture. You see, the sun is high above and you are the center of this pool of flowers and birds. And so we would get perfect action, perfect face lighting, and perfect hang of drapery if you would just stretch up your arms to the sun and let the light pour on your face. You stand here, with your back to the garden—its high-priest offering all its life to the sun.”
While the little man had been saying this, he had been arranging the robe to make it hang well, tucking it in at my feet. “The shoes mustn’t show, you know,” he said, as he stooped like a little bootblack and arranged my train; then he shifted my stance until he had me close to the balustrade, for only there could he get the light falling full on my upturned face. One couldn’t help falling in with his fancy—it was infectious. I rolled up my sleeves so that now, as I stood looking into the sun, I confess I could not help feeling the part. I forgot all about my old spider, Mr. Mycroft. I was one with nature, transformed by the robe which covered every sign of the civilized man on me, and by my setting. Mr. Hess darted back to the other side of the arch, up which we had come, and began—I could see out of the corner of my upturned eye—to focus his camera.
And then he seemed to spoil it all. After some delay he became uncertain. Finally, he came back up to me. “It’s magnificent. I’ve never had the chance to take such a photo. But that’s what so often happens with really great opportunities and insights into art and high beauty, isn’t it?”
I was more than a little dashed. “Do you mean that you have decided not to take the photo?” I asked. Perhaps there was a touch of resentment in my voice. After all, I had been to a great deal of inconvenience; I had lent myself to a very unusual amount of free model work and laid myself open to Mr. Mycroft’s wry humor which would be all the more pointed if the photo was never taken.
“No—Oh, of course not!” But the tone had so much reservation in it that I was not in the slightest reassured, and even less so when he showed his hand, for then I was certain he had just thought up a none-too-unclever way of getting out of the whole business. “But as I’ve said, and as I know you know, whenever one glimpses a true summit of beauty one catches sight of something even more remarkable beyond.”
I snapped out, “Am I to presume that on reconsideration you would prefer not a high light but a foil, not myself but my old sober friend down by the gate?”
I had been growing quite resentful. But my resentment changed to outrage at the absurdity of his answer. It was a simple “Yes.” Then seeing me flush, he hurriedly added, “I do believe that majestic old figure would make a perfect foil to yours.”
Of course, this was an amend of sorts, but of a very silly sort. For could the man be such a fool as to think that while I might be generous and accommodating to a fault, my old friend would fall in with this charade?
“I think,” I said with considerable dignity, beginning to draw the robe away from my shoulders, “that when you want models, Mr. Hess, you had better pay for them.”
But my arm got no further than halfway down the coat-sleeve. For my eyes were held. Looking up at the sun makes you a little dizzy and your sight blotchy, but there was no doubt what I was seeing. That silly little Hess had run along the curb and as I watched was buttonholing Mr. Mycroft. I didn’t wait to struggle into my jacket but running down the steps went to where they stood together by the exit. I couldn’t hear what was being said but was sure I guessed. Yet, in a moment, I was again at a loss. For instead of Mr. Mycroft turning down the grotesque offer, beckoning to me, and going out of the gate, Mr. M. was coming toward me, and he and Hess were talking quite amicably. Of course, I could only conclude that Hess had been spinning some new kind of yarn but all I could do was to go right up to them and say, “Perhaps you will be good enough to tell me what you have arranged!”
I was still further bewildered when it was Mr. M. who answered, “I think Mr. Hess’s idea is excellent. If the picture is to be the success which he hopes, it should have contrast and, if I may put it in that way, significance—a picture with a story. Wasn’t that your telling phrase, Mr. Hess?”
Hess beamed: “Precisely, precisely! Mr. Mycroft is so instantly intuitive.” And the little fellow looked Mr. M. up and down with a mixture of surprise and complacency that I found very comic and sedative to my rightly ruffled feelings. Still I was quite in the dark as to what had happened to make the three of us so suddenly and so unexpectedly a happy family with—of all people—Mr. M. as the matchmaker. Hess, however, was bubbling over to tell me:
“Do forgive me, rushing off like that. So impulsive. But that’s the way I am—‘stung with the sudden splendor of a thought.’ You see, that was the way I was with you, wasn’t I? And I know you’re an artist too and so you must know that when one idea comes, generally an even brighter one comes rushing on its heels,” he tittered. “I was also a bit frightened, I must confess,” he ran on. “What if Mr. Mycroft had refused? I knew if I asked you, you’d say he would; and of course you’d have been right. So I just rushed on to my fate, risked losing the whole picture—the best so often risks the good, doesn’t it?”
While the little fellow had been pouring out this excited rigmarole, he had been leading us back to the bridge and as Mr. M. followed without any kind of unwillingness, I fell in too. After all, it looked as though we were going to get the photo. As we reached the steps it was Mr. M. who forestalled Hess just as Hess was about to give us some directions. “You would like us, wouldn’t you, to pose on the other side of the bridge-top?”
“Yes, that’s it—just where I had Mr. Silchester.”
I took up my position, picking up the robe, putting down my jacket. Hess arranged the fall of the robe as before. I must admit he was neat at that sort of thing. He moved me to exactly the spot I had held, asked me once more to raise my bared arms to the sun and throw back my head—“Just like a priest of Apollo,” was his phrase, a phrase which I didn’t quite like Mr. M. hearing. And even when Hess remarked to Mr. Mycroft, “with Mr. Silchester it’s an inevitable piece of casting, isn’t it?”—Mr. M. replied only, “Yes, quite a pretty piece of casting.” I could only imagine that now Mr. Mycroft saw that the little fellow was obviously as harmless as a hummingbird—and about as brainless.
But Hess couldn’t stay content with one triumph; he must try to crown it with another. “And you, Mr. Mycroft, you too are going to be perfectly cast,” and he chuckled.
“I am ready to fall in with any of your plans for philanthropy,” was Mr. Mycroft’s answer. The pomposity might have been expected but the agreeability was certainly one more shock of surprise.
“Now,” and the little man had put down his camera and was fussing like a modiste round a marchioness client whom she was fitting for a ball dress, “now, Mr. Silchester is set and ready. You, Mr. Mycroft, would you please just sit here, just behind him, on the balustrade. You see, my idea has about it something of what great artists call inevitability! The group casts itself—it’s a great piece of moving sculpture. Here is Mr. Silchester gazing with stretched-out arms at the glorious orb of day, his face flooded with its splendor, the very symbol of youth accepting life—life direct, warm, pulsing, torrential . . .” As he ran on like this I began to have a slight crick in my neck, and with one’s head thrown back my head began to throb a little and my eyes got quite dizzy with the sunlight. “Now, please, Mr. Silchester,” said the voice at my feet, “hold the pose for just a moment more while I place Mr. Mycroft,” and I heard our little artist in tableau vivant cooing to Mr. Mycroft. “And you, you see, are the wisdom of age, grey, wise, reflective, a perfect contrast, looking down into the deep waters of contemplation.”
Evidently Mr. Mycroft fell in with all this, even to having himself shifted until he was right behind me. I remember I was a little amused at the thought of Mr. Mycroft being actually put at my feet and, more, that there I stood with the leading role and with my back to him—he who was so used to being looked up to. Perhaps it was this thought that gave one more stretch to the tiring elastic of my patience. And in a moment more evidently Mr. Mycroft’s cooperation had been so full that Hess was content. The little fellow ran back down the steps of the other side of the bridge and I could just see from the corner of my rather swimming eyes that he had picked up his camera and was going to shoot us. But again he was taken with a fussy doubt. He ran back to us. We were still too far apart. He pushed us closer till my calves were actually against Mr. Mycroft’s shoulder blades.
“The composition is perfect in line and mass,” murmured Hess, “it is a spot of high-lighting color that’s wanted and right near the central interest, the upturned, sun-flooded face. Mr. Silchester, please don’t move an inch. I have the very thing here.”
I squinted down and saw the little fellow flick out from his button-hole the hibiscus blossom which he was wearing. I saw what was coming. The beautiful Samoans did always at their feasts wear a scarlet hibiscus set behind the ear so that the blossom glowed alongside their eye. In silence I submitted as Hess fitted the flower behind my left ear and arranged the long trumpet of the blossom so that it rested on my cheek bone. Then at last he was content, skipped back to his camera, raised it on high, focussed. . . . There was a click—I am sure I heard that. And I’m equally sure there was a buss, or twang. And then involuntarily I clapped my hands to my face and staggered back to avoid something that was dashing at my eye. I stumbled heavily backwards against Mr. Mycroft, felt my balance go completely, the cloak swept over my head and I plunged backwards and downwards into the dark.
My next sensation was that I was being held. I hadn’t hit anything. But I was in as much pain as though I had. For one of my legs was caught in some kind of grip and by this I was hanging upside down. For suddenly the bell-like extinguisher in which I was pending dropped away—as when they unveil statues—and I was exposed. Indeed, I could now see myself in the water below like a grotesque narcissus, a painfully ludicrous pendant.
How had I managed to make such a grotesque stumble? I could only suppose that the long gazing at the sun had made me dizzy and then some dragon-fly or other buzzing insect had darted at me—probably at that idiotic flower—which in spite of my fall still stuck behind my ear. That had made me start and I had overturned. For though the flower held its place, the cloak was gone and now lay mantling the surface of the pond some six feet below me.
These observations, however, were checked by another dose of even more severe pain. I was being hauled up to the balustrade above me by my leg and the grip that paid me in foot by foot was Mr. Mycroft’s sinewy hands. When my face came up far enough for me to see his, his was quite without expression. He did have the kindness to say, “Sun dizziness, of course,” and then over his shoulder where I next caught sight of the anxious face of little Hess, “Don’t be alarmed. I caught him just in time. I fear, however, that your valuable cloak will not be the better for a wetting.”
The little fellow was full of apologies. While this went on Mr. Mycroft had helped me into my jacket, given me my cane and led me, still shaken, to the gate, accompanied all the way by a very apologetic Hess. When we were there Mr. Mycroft closed the incident quietly. “Don’t apologize, Mr. Hess. It was a brilliant idea, if the execution fell a little below expectation,” and then putting his hand up to my ear, “I am sure you would like this flower as a souvenir of an eventful day. I hope the picture-with-a-meaning will develop.”
As we swirled away in a taxi, every sway of the car made me nearly sick. When we were home Mr. Mycroft broke the silence: “I have a call to make and one or two small things to arrange.”
Mr. Mycroft didn’t come back till dinner was actually being put on the table and he too looked as fresh as snow, after a hot shower and a clean change of linen, I felt. He was kind, too, about the meal. The avocado-and-chive paste served on hot crackers he praised by the little joke that the paste showed symbolically how well my suavity and his pungency really blended. The Pacific lobster is a creature of parts but it needs skill to make it behave really à la Thermidor, and I was pleased that the chef and I had made my old master confess that he would not know that it was not a Parisian langouste. The chicken à la King he smilingly said had something quite regal about it while the bananes flambées he particularly complimented because I had made them out of a locally grown banana which, because it is more succulent than the standard varieties, lends itself to better blending with alcohol. Indeed, he was so pleased that while the coffee was before us he asked whether I’d like to hear the end of the story in which I had played so important a part. Of course I admitted that nothing would give me more pleasure. But I was more than usually piqued when he said quietly, “Let me begin at the end. As we parted I said I was going to make a call. It has been answered as I wished. Do not fear that we shall have to visit the bird sanctuary again. It is closed—permanently. Now for my story. It seemed for both of us to be marked by a series of silly little misadventures. First, it was my turn to fall and you kindly helped me. Then, on our second call, it was your turn to endure the humiliation of an upset. But each served its purpose.”
“But what did you gain from skidding on our first visit?” I asked.
“This,” said Mr. Mycroft, rising and taking from the mantelshelf, where I had seen him place his fountain pen when he sat down to dinner, the little tube.
“That was only a recovery, not a gain,” I said.
“No,” he replied, “it garnered something when it fell. To misquote—as both of us like doing—‘Cast your pen upon the waters and in a few moments it may pick up more copy than if you’d written for a week with it!’”
My “What do you mean?” was checked as he carefully unscrewed the top.
“See those little holes,” he said, pointing to small openings just under the shoulder of the nib; then he drew out the small inner tube. It wasn’t of rubber—it was of glass and was full of fairly clear water.
“This is water—water from the pond in the bird sanctuary. It looks like ordinary pond-water. As a matter of fact, it contains an unusually interesting form of life in it.”
I began to feel a faint uneasiness.
“Oh, don’t be alarmed. It is safely under screw and stopper now and is only being kept as Exhibit A—or, if you like it better, a stage-property in a forthcoming dramatic performance which will be Act Three of the mystery play in which you starred in Act Two, Scene Two.”
“But I don’t quite see . . .” was met by Mr. Mycroft more graciously than usual with, “There’s really no reason why you should. I couldn’t quite see myself, at the beginning. Yes, I do indeed admire such richness of double-dyed thoroughness when I come across it. It is rare for murderers to give one such entertainment, so elaborate and meticulous. They usually shoot off their arrows almost as soon as it enters their heads that they can bring down their bird and without a thought of how it may strike a more meditative mind afterward. But this man provided himself with a second string of rather better weave than his first.”
Well, when Mr. Mycroft gets into that kind of strain it is no use saying anything. So I swallowed the I.D.S. formula that was again rising in my throat and waited.
“You remember, when you helped me to my feet and the pen had been salvaged, that with your aid we completed the round of the little lake. But when we had gone no farther than the beginning of the high-backed bridge, I felt I must rest. Do you recall what I did then?”
Could I recall! Naturally, for that was the very incident that had confirmed my suspicion that Mr. Mycroft was really shaken. I answered brightly:
“You sat, I can see it now, and for a moment you appeared to be dazed. And while you rested, as the beautiful old song, “The Lost Chord,” expresses it, your ‘fingers idly wandered.’ But I noticed that they must be getting dirty, because, whether you knew it or not, they were feeling along under the jutting edge of the slab that made the step against which your back was resting.”
“Admirable. And the quotation is happy, for my fingers were idly wandering (to go on with the old song) over the ‘keys’!”
Mr. Mycroft cocked his old head at me and went on gaily, “And may I add that I am not less pleased that you thought the old man was so shaken that he really didn’t know what he was doing! For that is precisely the impression that I had to give to another pair of eyes watching us from nearby cover. Well, after that little rest and glance about at those sentimental birdy-homes, the breeding boxes, I told you we could go home. And now may I ask you three questions?” I drew myself up and tried to sharpen my wits. “First,” said my examiner, “did you observe anything about the garden generally?”
“Well,” I replied, “I remember you called my attention to the little Nereid who held a spear from which the jet of the small fountain sprang?”
“Yes, that’s true and indeed in every sense of the word, to the point. But did you notice something about—I will give you a clue—the flowers?”
“There were a lot of them!”
“Well, I won’t hold you to that longer. I couldn’t make out myself whether it had any significance. Then in the end I saw the light—yes, the light of the danger signal! Does that help you?”
“No,” I said, “I remain as blind as a bat to your clue.”
“Then, secondly, if the flowers failed to awake your curiosity, what about the birds?”
“Again, a lot of them and I did like that minah bird with its charmingly anaemic hostess voice.”
“No, that was off the trail. I’ll give you another clue—what about the breeding boxes?”
“Well, they’re common enough little things, aren’t they?”
“All right,” he replied with cheerful patience, “now for my last question. When we were coming back do you remember any special incident?”
Then I did perk up. “Yes, of course—the contrast stuck in my mind. After being bathed in all that beauty we passed a dump corner and you got out and hunted for curios in the garbage.”
“And brought back quite a trophy,” said the old hunter as he pulled something out of his pocket, remarking “Exhibit B.”
And then, do you know, my mind suddenly gave a dart—I do things like that every now and then. The thing he had pulled out and placed on the table was only a piece of cellophane or celluloid. It was also of a very crude and common red. It was the color that made my mind take its hop, a hop backwards. “I don’t know what that dirty piece of road-side flotsam means but I now recall something about the garden—there wasn’t a single red flower in it!”
Mr. Mycroft positively beamed. His uttered compliment was of course the “left-handed” sort he generally dealt me. “Mr. Silchester, I have always known it. It is laziness, just simple laziness, that keeps you from being a first-rate observer. You can’t deny that puzzles interest you, but you can’t be bothered to put out your hand and pluck the fruit of insight crossed with foresight.”
I waved the tribute aside by asking what the red transparency might signify.
“Well,” he said, “it put an idea into your head by what we may call a negative proof. Now, go one better and tell me something about it, itself, from its shape.”
“Well, it’s sickle-shaped, rather like a crescent moon. No,” I paused, “no, you know I never can do anything if I strain. I have to wait for these flashes.”
“All right,” he said, “we will humor your delicate genius. But I will just say that it is a beautiful link. The color and the shape—yes, the moment I saw it lying there like a petal cast aside, my mind suddenly took wings like yours.” He stopped and then remarked, “Well, the time has come for straight narrative. We have all the pieces of the board, yourself being actually the queen. It only remains to show you how the game was played. First, a tribute to Mr. Hess not as a man but as a murderer—an artist, without any doubt. Here are the steps by which he moved to his first check and how after the first queen had been taken—I refer to his aunt and her death—he was himself checkmated.
“You have noted that the garden has no red flowers and I have also suggested that the breeding box by the bridge interested me. About the water from the pond I have been frank and will shortly be franker. So we come to our second visit. It was then that our antagonist played boldly. How often have I had occasion to remind you that murderers love living over again the deaths they dealt, repeating a kill. That was Mr. Hess’s wish. Of course, it wasn’t pure love of art—he certainly knew something about me.” Mr. Mycroft sighed, “I know you don’t believe it, but I don’t think you can imagine how often and how strongly a detective wishes to be unknown. To recognize you must remain unrecognized.” He smiled again.
“Now note: You go up to him and ask him not to take photos. He shows first a startled resentment at your impudence, then a generous courtesy as proprietor for your interference on his behalf. Next, a sudden happy thought—how well you would look as part of the picture he was planning. He dresses you up, taking care to place you in a position in which you’ll trip and fall. Now he has the middle link in his chain. But you were merely a link. You see, his real plan is to get me down too. He could, you will admit, hardly have hoped to lure me to act as model for a sun worshipper. But put you in that role and then he might persuade me to get into the picture also. Then, when you went over backwards, you would pull me into the pond as well.”
“But,” I said, “we should have had no more than a bad wetting.”
“I see you are going to call for all my proofs before you will yield to the fact that we were really in the hands of a man as sane as all careful murderers are. You remember that charming little statuette which so took my fancy when we first visited the garden? It was of bronze. Not one of those cheap cement objects that people buy at the road-side and put in their gardens. It is a work of art, a museum-piece.”
“It had patinated very nicely,” I remarked, just to show I could talk objet d’art gossip as well as the master.
“I’m glad you observed that,” he replied. “Yes, bronze is a remarkable material and worthy of having a whole Age named after it. More remarkable, indeed, than iron, for though iron has a better edge, it won’t keep if constantly watered.”
“What are you driving at?” For now I was getting completely lost in the old spider’s spinning.
“That pretty little sham spear from which the water sprayed wasn’t sham at all. It was a real spear, or shall we say, a giant hollow-needle. Because it was bronze it would keep its point unrusted. The only effect the water would have—and that would add to its lethal efficacy—would be to give it a patina. Further, I feel sure from the long close look I was able to give when we were being posed for our plunge, the blade of the spear had been touched up with a little acetic acid. That would no doubt corrode the fine edge a little but would make it highly poisonous—though not to the life in the pool.”
“Why are you so interested in the pond-life?” I asked.
Mr. Mycroft picked up the small tube which he had removed from the fountain pen and which was now standing on a small side-table. “You’ll remember, I said this pippet contains an interesting form of life—a very powerful form, if not itself poisoned. So powerful that, like most power-types, it tends to destroy others, yes, far higher types. This is really a remarkably fecund culture of a particularly virulent strain of typhoid bacillus.”
I drew back. I don’t like things like that near where I eat.
“Oh, it is safe enough so long as you don’t drink it.” I gasped. “So, you see, that was his plan. But, thoughtful man that he was, it was only his second string. He was a very thorough worker and had two concealed tools. If you fall over a bridge headlong and just underneath you is a Nereid holding a charming little wand, there is a good chance that you will fall, like the heroic Roman suicides, on your spear and so end yourself; and if the spear has round its socket some poison, the wound is very likely to give you blood-poisoning. But of course you may miss the point. People falling through the air are apt to writhe which may alter quite considerably the point at which they make their landing, or in this case, their watering. Well, thoughtful Mr. Hess realized how much human nature will struggle against gravitational fate—so he provided himself with a wider net. For when people fall headlong over a bridge, the natural reaction of panic is to open the mouth. So when they strike the water, they inevitably swallow a mouthful. And a little of this brew goes a long way.”
“Now, now,” I broke in, “I don’t think any jury will send the nephew to join the aunt on that evidence.”
“Why not?” was Mr. Mycroft’s unexpectedly quiet rejoinder.
“First,” I said, picking off the points on my fingers just as Mr. Mycroft sometimes does when closing a case, “granted this tube does contain typhoid germs, they may have been in this water from natural pollution. Proof that Hess poisoned the water cannot be sustained. Secondly, let me call the attention of judge and jury to the fact that when Miss Hess died a fortnight after her slight ducking, she did not die of typhoid. The cause of death was ‘intestinal stasis.’ Typhoid kills by a form of dysentery. Emphatically, that condition is polar to stasis.”
“You are quite right,” rejoined Mr. Mycroft, “the old-fashioned typhoid used to kill as you have described. But, would you believe it, the typhus germ has had the cunning to reverse his tactics completely. I remember a friend of mine telling me some years ago of this, and he had it from the late Sir Walter Fletcher, an eminent student of Medical Research in Britain. It stuck in my mind: the typhoid victim can now die with such entirely different symptoms that the ordinary doctor, unless he has quite other reasons to detect the presence of the disease, does not even suspect that his patient has died of typhoid, and with the best faith in the world fills in the death certificate never suggesting the true cause. “Yes,” he went on meditatively, “I have more than once noticed that when a piece of information of that sort sticks in my mind, it may be prophetic. Certainly in this case it was.”
I felt I might have to own defeat on that odd point when Mr. Mycroft remarked, “Well, let’s leave Miss Hess and the medical side alone for a moment. Let’s go back to the garden. I referred to you as the middle link. I have to be personal and even perhaps put myself forward. Mr. Hess was not averse to murdering you—if that was the only way of murdering me. We see how he maneuvered you to pose and then having got you in place, he set out to get me. You would stagger back, knock me off my perch, and both of us would plunge into the poisonous water, and one might be caught on the poisonous point. It was beautifully simple, really.”
“You have got to explain how he would know that I would suddenly get dizzy, that a dragonfly or something would buzz right into my eyes and make me stagger.”
“Quite easy—I was just coming to that. That was the first link in the chain. Now we can bring everything together and be finished with that really grim garden. Please recall the thing you noticed.”
“No red flowers,” I said dutifully and he bowed his acknowledgment.
“Next, the two things which you couldn’t be expected to puzzle over. The breeding box which you did see but did not understand, and the undercurb of the step which even I didn’t see but felt with my hand. That breeding box had the usual little doorway or round opening for the nesting bird to enter by, but to my surprise the doorway had a door and the door was closed. Now, that’s going too far in pet-love sentimentality and although very cruel people are often very kind to animals, that kind of soapy gesture to birdmother comfort seemed to me strange—until I noticed, on the under-side of the next box, a small wheel. When I felt under the jamb of the step, I found two more such wheels—flanged wheels, and running along from one to the other, a black thread. Then when I knew what to look for, I could see the same black thread running up to the wheel fixed in the bird-box. I couldn’t doubt my deduction any longer. That little door could be opened if someone raised his foot slightly and trod on the black thread that ran under the step curb.
“Now, one doesn’t have to be a bird fancier to know that birds don’t want to breed in boxes where you shut them up with a trap-door. What then could this box be for? You do, however, have to be something of a bird specialist to know about hawking and hummingbirds. The main technique of the former is the hood. When the bird is hooded it will stay quietly for long times on its perch. Cut off light and it seems to have its nervous reactions all arrested. Could that box be a hood not merely for the head of a bird but for an entire bird? Now we must switch back, as swoopingly as a hummingbird, to Miss Hess. You remember the description?”
It was my turn to be ready. I reached round to the paper rack and picked out the sheet that had started the whole adventure. I read out, “The late Miss Hess, whose huge fortune has gone to a very quiet recluse nephew whose one interest is birds, was herself a most colorful person and wonderfully young for her years.” I added, “There’s a colored photo of the colorful lady. She’s wearing a vivid green dress. Perhaps that’s to show she thought herself still in her salad days?”
“A good suggestion,” replied Mr. Mycroft generously, “but I think we can drive our deductions even nearer home. Of course, I needed first-hand information for that. But I had my suspicions before I called.”
“Called where?”
“On the doctor of the late lady. He was willing to see me when I could persuade him that his suspicions were right and that his patroness had really been removed by foul means. Then he told me quite a lot about the very odd person she was. She was shrewd in her way. She kept her own doctor and she paid him handsomely and took the complementary precaution of not remembering him in her will. Yes, he had every reason for keeping her going and being angry at her being gone. She was keen on staying here and not only that but on keeping young. But her colorfulness in dress was something more, he told me, than simply ‘mutton dressing itself up to look like lamb.’ She was color-blind and like that sort—the red-green colorblindness—she was very loath to admit it. That bright green dress of the photo pretty certainly seemed to her bright red.”
I was still at a loss and let the old man see it.
“Now comes Hess’s third neat piece of work. Note these facts: the aunt is persuaded to come to the garden—just to show that the nephew has turned over a new page and is being the busy little bird lover—sure way to keep in the maiden lady’s good graces. He takes her round.” Suddenly Mr. Mycroft stopped and picked up the celluloid red crescent. “Many color-blind persons have eyes that do not like a glare. The thoughtful nephew, having led auntie round the garden, takes her up the bridge to view the dear little birdie’s home. She has to gaze up at it and he has thoughtfully provided her with an eye-shade—green to her, red to him, and red to something else. “Certain species of hummingbirds are particularly sensitive to red—all animals, of course, preferred to any other color. When young these particular hummingbirds have been known to dash straight at any object that is red and thrust their long bill toward it, thinking no doubt it is a flower. They will dart at a tomato held in your hand. Well, the aunt is gazing up to see the birdie’s home; she’s at the top of the bridge, just where you stood. Nephew has gone on, sure that aunt is going to follow. He is, in fact, now down by that lower step. He just treads on the concealed black thread. The door flies open, the little feathered bullet which had been brooding in the dark sees a flash of light and in it a blob of red. The reflex acts also like a flash. It dashes out right at Miss Hess’s face. Again a reflex. This time it is the human one. She staggers back, hands to face—not knowing what has swooped at her—the flight of some of these small birds is too quick for the human eye. Of course she falls, takes her sup of the water, goes home shaken, no doubt not feeling pleased with nephew but not suspicious. After a fortnight we have a condition of stasis. The sound, but naturally not very progressive doctor, sees no connection. The police and public are also content. Nevertheless, she dies.”
“And then?” I said, for I was on tiptoe of interest now.
“Well, Hess couldn’t put a red eye-hood over your eyes, hoping you’d think it green and so make you a mark for his bird-bullet. So he put a hibiscus behind your ear. Each fish must be caught with its own bait, though the hook is the same. His effort with us was even more elaborate than with his aunt. What a pity that artists can’t be content with a good performance but must always be trying to better it! Well, the bird sanctuary is closed and with it the sanctuary of a most resourceful murderer.”