CHAPTER XVIII

FREYBERGER was up betimes next morning, and having called at the Yard and found his chief not yet arrived, and no further news concerning the Gyde case, he betook himself to Old Compton Street, Soho.

In Old Compton Street you may buy a French newspaper or a German sausage. You can get anything in an Italian way, from a pound of macaroni to a knife in your back, if you know the right way to look for it. It is a street of many nations and its kerb is trodden by all sorts of celebrities, from the new tenor at the Italian opera in furs, to Enrico Malatesta in rags.

A dingy looking Hebrew boy was just taking down the shutters of Antonides’ dusty-looking shop, when Freyberger arrived a few minutes after nine.

The boy asked him to be seated, whilst he apprised his master of the presence of a customer.

“He ain’t down yet,” said the youth. “Never comes into the shop till half after eleven. I’m lockin’ the shop door on you whilst I go up, for Mr Antonides said no one was to be left alone in the shop, unless the door was locked on them, for fear they’d be carryin’ off sumefin.”

He locked the door, went upstairs and presently returned, saying that Mr Antonides would be down in a minute.

Freyberger sat looking about him at the various objects of art, the cracked china, the dingy pictures, the dented armour.

The old Greek did not make much money out of these things; his fortune was derived from the occasional great deal that his genius was able to bring off. The Hermes, dredged up from the sea by fishermen off Cape Matapan, and now in possession of Droch, the German manure-millionaire of Chicago, passed through the hands of Antonides and left three thousand pounds in his pocket. Half a dozen broken pieces of marble, bought from a fellow Greek for a few pounds, and restored, had resulted in an almost perfect bust of Clytie, worth—the value of the cheque it brought him is unknown.

He was the prince of restorers, whether in marble or canvas.

As Freyberger sat looking around him, he suddenly became aware of a new object in his purview, that was not an object of art.

Through the half-opened door leading from the shop to the house, a long, lean, claw-like hand was beckoning to him.

He arose and came towards it. It was the hand of Antonides, and Antonides himself was waiting for him in the passage beyond the door.

The passage was dark, and so were the stairs up which Antonides led him.

“It’s done,” said the old man, pausing in the middle of the stairs and speaking backwards over his shoulder at Freyberger. “I have completed it.”

“I’m glad to hear that, but don’t stop; this staircase of yours is not cheerful.”

Antonides went up two more steps and stopped again.

“I think you said fifteen guineas, Mr Freyberger?”

“Pounds.”

“Guineas.”

“Pounds.”

“Mr Freyberger!”

“Go on—I don’t mean go on talking, go on up the stairs. I’m not going to give you a penny more than the fifteen pounds.”

“Why, God bless my soul!” shouted the old fellow, falling into one of his simulated rages, “guineas were what I bargained for, guineas were in my head; they kept me alive all last night working for you, and now you say pounds.” Then, suddenly falling calm, “Never mind; wait till you see it and you won’t say ‘pounds.’”

He led the way across a dingy and dimly lit landing into a room that was simply packed with all sorts of lumber. Canvases, six deep, with their faces turned to the wall, a torso just restored, a lay figure, masks and moulds, a huge mass of plasticine on a board, strange-looking instruments, and, on a bench near the window, something over which a cloth was thrown.

“That’s it,” said Antonides, pointing to the object under the cloth. “I have covered it that the plaster of the joinings may not dry too quickly. You are on the Gyde case, Mr Freyberger?”

“How did you know that?”

“I’ll tell you soon, and I’ll tell you something more.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve lost fifteen shillings by making me that answer. You should have answered me, ‘What makes you think that?’ That would have been non-committal. You have as good as told me you are on the Gyde case; never give information away for nothing, Mr Freyberger, unless it is false.”

“Or useless.”

“True information is never useless—see, here, there’s my work.”

He took the covering from the object on the table and disclosed to view the bust of a man.

It was an extraordinarily fine piece of work, full of life and vigour. It represented a bearded man of about fifty.

Even a person who had never seen the original would say, on looking at it: “That must be a good portrait.”

It had individuality.

That is to say, it had, what nearly all modern sculpture lacks, Life.

In portraiture there is only one real medium—marble. Paint, photography, Berlin woolwork, all are pretty much on the same level when compared to marble, cut by the chisel of a master.

Whoever has seen the statue of Demosthenes, by Praxiteles, has heard Demosthenes speak; has seen him as he once stood in the Agora.

A man’s face is individuality, expressed by a million curves; in a portrait these curves are suggested; in a bust they are reproduced.

This bust, reconstructed and unveiled by Antonides, was a triumph of art.

“Ah!” said the old Greek, forgetting even gold for a moment and staring at the thing he had unveiled. “What Philistine smashed it? If he wanted to use his hammer why did he not wait for the next opening of the English Royal Academy? But if he had done that, of course, he would not have been a Philistine, but a lover of art.”

“It is a fine piece of work,” said Freyberger, “and you have done the restoration not badly.”

“Which reminds me of my fifteen shillings,” replied the other.

“How?”

“This way. Detective Freyberger brings me a bust to reconstruct. Now, detective officers, however clever, do not as a rule call upon me with busts to be reconstructed without a motive. Do you know whom that piece of marble represents?”

“No.”

Antonides rubbed his hands together. “Would you give me fifteen shillings to learn?”

“I would.”

“Well, I already know that you are on the Gyde case, which is in all the papers.”

“Who told you?”

“That bust, and you confirmed my knowledge by admitting the fact.”

“It may be a speaking likeness of some one, but I doubt if it is so full of speech as that.”

“Oh, yes, it is; now do you know whom it represents?”

“I tell you again, No.”

“It is a bust of Sir Anthony Gyde.”

“Hum,” said Freyberger, concealing the satisfaction that this confirmation of his already formed suspicion gave him. “And how do you know that?”

“Good Lord,” said Antonides. “How do I know that? Why, he has been in my shop twenty times, if once.”

“Here’s your fifteen shillings,” said the detective.

“And how about my fifteen pounds?”

“Here they are.”

“Thanks, and remember the words of an old man. If you had kept your mouth shut, it might have saved you fifteen shillings, if I hadn’t known for a certainty that you were on the Gyde case. Then I would have said, ‘Oh, he knows whom the thing represents,’ and I would have talked about it and given information for nothing. You wish to take the thing away?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you can’t till this evening, for the joinings will not be firmly set till then. I will send it for you to the Yard. It will be quite safe here.”

“Very well. But don’t send it; one of our men will call for it. Yes, you have made a very good job of it and I congratulate you. I know something about art.”

“You?” said Antonides, contemptuously, pocketing the notes. “And what branch of art do you know something about?”

“Cookery. I am going over to the Itala to have some breakfast; come with me.”

“You pay?”

“Yes.”

Antonides grinned, wriggled out of the gabardine he wore, got into an old frock coat that was hanging from a nail on the wall, put on an old top-hat, led the way downstairs, set the Jew boy to clean some bronzes, locked him into the shop, and, pocketing the key, followed Freyberger across the way to the restaurant.

During breakfast he talked and Freyberger listened. He talked of the bargains he had made, of the sales he had attended, of the men he had seen swindled, omitting, by some lapse of memory, the men he had swindled. He talked of modern and ancient art. “Sculptors,” he said; “the race has vanished. Except the unknown man who chiselled that bust I have just repaired, I know of no living sculptor.”

“You knew Sir Anthony Gyde well?” asked Freyberger.

“I knew him for years,” replied the art dealer, through whose brains the fumes of the chianti he had drunk were pleasantly straying; “for years; and mark you this, Mr Freyberger, I don’t believe that man could have committed a murder, unless he went mad.”

“Why not?”

“He had not the eyes of a murderer, the cheek bones of a murderer, or the thumbs of a murderer.”

“Oh, you are evidently a dilettante in murder.”

“No, I am not, but I am a man of the world, and I have seen much of people. Sir Anthony Gyde—God help me! I sold him a Corot once that was—well, no matter. What was I saying? Oh yes! murderers, as a rule, are men with blue eyes, pale blue eyes. A murderer ought to have broad, flat cheekbones, it’s a desperate bad sign in a man; Gyde had neither of these points, nor the thumbs. Tropmann had enormous thumbs, but it is not so much the size of the thumb as the character of it. I can’t describe a brutal thumb no more than I can describe a beautiful face, but I know it when I see it. A glass of Benedictine, please. Murderers come into my shop, I won’t say every day, but often. My dear friend, the world is full of them. You will ask, if that is so why are so comparatively few murders committed? For this reason, very few people have the motive for slaying a fellow man or woman. I myself cannot remember a single time in my life when the commission of a murder would have benefited me much, and when that murder could have been committed by me with reasonable chance of not being discovered.

“Yes, want of motive and fear of the gallows, which is stronger in man than the fear of God, keeps numerous people from figuring in wax in the Chamber of Horrors of Madame Tussaud’s. But want of motive chiefly—”

Freyberger paid the bill, and leaving the gruesome old man to his cigarettes and Benedictine, returned to the Yard. He felt himself a step nearer to that unseen adversary, whose subtleties he was disclosing piecemeal.

Why had Kolbecker a bust of Sir Anthony Gyde in his possession, a bust most possibly constructed by himself? Why had he destroyed it?

It was only another unanswerable question amidst the many unanswerable questions contained in this mysterious case, but in it Freyberger felt, by instinct, lay the answer to all the other questions and the solution of the whole riddle.

So completely had the dominating mind with which he was at war succeeded in its work, that every clue the case presented added confusion to confusion.

Yet at any moment some spark of information might make all these conflicting pieces of evidence fly together and form a whole, just as the electric spark in an atmosphere of oxygen and hydrogen causes the atoms of gas to fly together and form clear water.

The chief received Freyberger and his evidence, and complimented him on what he had done.

“We have little else,” said he. “Nothing material has turned up, only this. Gyde called at Smith and Wilkinson’s, the jewellers, in Regent Street, yesterday, signed a cheque for ten pounds and got them to cash it. He called shortly after ten. That is to say, a few minutes after he left Coutts’s.”

“Good Heavens,” said Freyberger, “when will the wonders of this case cease? He had just left Coutts’s, where he could have cashed a cheque for five hundred, and he goes into a jeweller’s and cashes a cheque for ten.

“Mind you, the man is in fear of his life; he has collected all his jewels. One would suppose he wanted to collect all the money he could, too, yet he makes a cheque out for ten pounds only, and adds to his traces by cashing it at a jeweller’s, when he could easily have cashed it at his bankers.”

“That is so,” said the chief. “Yet the fact remains. The manager of Smith and Wilkinson’s called at Vine Street this morning with the news. Go to their shop and see what you can discover.”

Freyberger did not need to be told twice.

He found the manager of Smith and Wilkinson’s in.

He was a stout, florid man, with a short manner.

His tale was that at ten-fifteen or ten-twenty a.m. on the preceding day Sir Anthony Gyde, a customer well-known to the firm, entered the shop and asked him (Mr Freeman the manager) to cash a cheque for ten pounds. Sir Anthony took his cheque book from his pocket and wrote out a cheque for ten pounds, payable to himself, endorsed it, and handed it to him, Freeman, who cashed it, giving gold.

“I should like to see the cheque,” said Freyberger.

The manager produced it. It was uncrossed.

“Have you presented it for payment yet?” asked the detective.

“Of course not, else it would not be here.”

“I have a grim suspicion that it would.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I believe it to be a forgery.”

“Nonsense,” said Freeman. There was an arrogance and a dash of impudence in this man’s manner that irritated our friend Freyberger.

“You come with me to Coutts’s,” said he, “and we will see.”

“Yes,” said Freeman, “we will see.”

They took a hansom, and neither of them spoke a word till they drew up at Coutts’s.

Freeman strutted in ahead of his companion and asked to see the manager on important business; when the clerk showed the way to the manager’s office, Freeman went first, Freyberger following humbly in his wake. “Never mind,” thought Freyberger, “he’ll soon be playing another tune.”

The manager, an aristocratic-looking man with long white hands, side whiskers and a bald head, turned over the cheque in a meditative manner. “This cheque is perfectly in order,” he said.

“This gentleman seems to think otherwise,” said Freeman.

“Decidedly,” said Freyberger. “I am unacquainted with Sir Anthony Gyde’s handwriting, but I have every reason to believe the signature on that cheque to be a forgery.”

“Excuse me,” said the manager. “Er—your authority—you are?”

“Inspector Freyberger, of Scotland Yard.”

“Ah!” He rang the bell and ordered the chief cashier to be called. “Mr S——,” said the manager, when that functionary appeared, “we have here a cheque of Sir Anthony Gyde’s; cast your eye upon it and tell me, would you cash it were it presented to you in the ordinary course of business?”

The chief cashier cast his eye over the cheque just once.

“I would cash it,” he replied.

“It is, in your opinion, the writing of Sir Anthony Gyde?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you,” said the manager, and the cashier withdrew.

Freeman gave a self-satisfied and contemptuous sniff.

There is more, sometimes, in a sniff than can be conveyed by any number or combination of words, and this sniff of Freeman’s went to the detective’s marrow; it contained quite a lot of things, self-commendation and contempt for the intelligence of Freyberger included.

“Considering,” said Freeman, “that I have the pen in my pocket with which I saw Sir Anthony write the cheque, I would have been justified in presenting the thing for payment, notwithstanding the doubt cast upon it by this man,” indicating Freyberger; “but he was so sure, that I accompanied him here, losing precious time in the transaction. I shall take care that the matter is represented to his superiors at New Scotland Yard.”

“Oh,” said Freyberger, who had been plunged for a moment in thought, and who seemed quite oblivious to the insulting remark just uttered. “You have the pen in your pocket, have you, with which Sir Anthony wrote this cheque? Please produce it.”

Freeman produced it with a compassionate smile. He was beginning to feel almost sorry for the man he had brought to confusion.

Freyberger’s steel grey eyes sparkled for a second when he saw the pen. It was a stylograph, not a fountain.

He wrote a few words on a piece of paper with the pen and then handed it, with Sir Anthony’s cheque, to the manager.

“Could those two writings have come from the point of the same pen?” he asked.

“Oh, dear no,” said the manager. “This,” pointing to Freyberger’s writing, “is written with a stylograph; this,” pointing to the cheque of Sir Anthony, “is written with an ordinary pen. The writing varies in thickness. It is quite clear.”

“Quite,” said Freyberger.

Freeman flew into a rage. “You mean to suspect me——” he cried.

“I suspect you of nothing,” said Freyberger; “if I did I would take you into custody. You have been simply imposed upon. That cheque of Anthony Gyde’s is genuine. This is what has happened. A person whom you took for Sir Anthony Gyde entered your shop yesterday morning. He had in his pocket a stolen cheque of Sir Anthony’s.

“He asked you to cash a cheque; you consented, and lent him your pen. He took a cheque book from his pocket, and wrote or pretended to write out a cheque for ten pounds. He never gave you that cheque; by a sleight of hand, simple enough, he gave you the genuine cheque, and you cashed it.”

“But why,” said the manager, “did he go to all this trouble? Why did he not simply walk into Mr er—Freeman’s place of business and say, ‘I have a cheque of mine here for ten pounds, will you cash it for me?’”

“I suspect,” said Freyberger, “that he wished to confuse the police. He wished to make us believe that Sir Anthony Gyde was alive and well at ten-twenty a.m. yesterday morning. The fact that he wrote that cheque at ten o’clock yesterday morning would, I confess, have helped to shake a certain theory that I have concerning the case.”

“But surely,” said the manager, “Sir Anthony is alive. It is a dreadful business, but I gather, from the papers, that he is alive and being searched for.”

“That is as may be,” said Freyberger. Then, suddenly, “Hullo! hullo! what’s this?”

He seized the cheque from the table. “It only shows how limited our powers of perception are, and how, in fixing one’s eyes upon one part of a thing, one loses sight of another. To-day is the eighth of the month. What day of the month was yesterday, Mr Freeman?”

“The seventh,” said Freeman, in a sulky tone.

“And this cheque is dated the sixth.”

It was so. In considering the signature they had overlooked the fact that the cheque was anti-dated.

“I think,” said Freyberger, “that this fact confirms my suspicion that the cheque was not written yesterday in Messrs Smith and Wilkinson’s shop.”

“You may be right,” said Freeman, “but I will swear that the person who gave me that cheque was Sir Anthony Gyde.”

“Ah, Mr Freeman,” said Freyberger, in a bitter tone of voice, “if you had only examined that cheque properly, if you had only said to yourself, ‘This could not possibly have been written with my stylograph,’ if you had only jumped across the counter and seized Sir Anthony Gyde, as you call him, you would have helped Justice a long way down a difficult road. But you are a tradesman, suspicious towards the needy, unsuspicious towards the rich. Well, no matter—we will require your evidence at the proper time. Meanwhile, I will impound this cheque, giving the bank a receipt for it.”

He did this.

“If you will apply to our cashier,” said the manager to Freeman, “you will receive the amount due on the cheque, as it is in order, and we have absolute belief in your integrity in the matter, and the cheque has not been stopped by the only person capable of stopping it, Sir Anthony Gyde.”