MR. PETER GANNS
Mark Brendon received with mingled emotions the long letter from Jenny Doria. It awaited him at New Scotland Yard and, as he took it from the rack, his heart leaped before the well-remembered handwriting. The past very seldom arose to shadow Mark's strenuous present; but now, once more, it seemed that Robert Redmayne was coming between him and his annual holiday. He told himself that he had lived down his greatest disappointment and believed that he could now permit his thoughts to dwell on Jenny without feeling much more than the ache of an old wound. Her letter came a week before the recipient proposed to start upon his vacation. He had intended going to Scotland, having no mind for Dartmoor again at present; but it was not his failure, so complete and bewildering, that had barred a return to familiar haunts. Memory made the thought too painful and poignant, so he designed to break new ground and receive fresh impressions.
Then came this unexpected challenge and he hesitated before accepting it. Yet a second reading of the woman's appeal determined him, for Jenny wrote for herself as well as her uncle. She reminded Brendon of his goodwill and declared how personally she should welcome him and feel safer and more sanguine for his companionship. She also contrived to let him know that she was not particularly happy. The fact seemed implicitly woven into her long letter, though another, less vitally interested in the writer, might have failed to observe it.
Regretting only that Albert Redmayne's friend must be approached and hoping that Mr. Peter Ganns would at least allow him a few days' start, Brendon sought the famous American and found his direction without difficulty. He had already visited New Scotland Yard, where he numbered several acquaintances, and Mark learned that he was stopping at the Grand Hotel in Trafalgar Square. On sending in his name a messenger boy bade Brendon follow to the smoking-room.
His first glance, however, failed to indicate the great man. The smoking-room was nearly empty on this June morning and Mark observed nobody but a young soldier, writing letters, and a white-haired, somewhat corpulent gentleman sitting with his back to the light reading the Times. He was clean shaved, with a heavy face modelled to suggest a rhinoceros. The features were large; the nose swollen and a little veined with purple, the eyes hidden behind owl-like spectacles with tortoise-shell rims, and the brow very broad, but not high. From it abundant white hair was brushed straight back.
Brendon extended his glance elsewhere, but the messenger stopped, turned, and departed, while the stout man rose, revealing a massive frame, wide shoulders, and sturdy legs.
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Brendon," he said in a genial voice; then he shook hands, took off his spectacles, and sat down again.
"This is a pleasure I had meant to give myself before I quitted the city," declared the big man. "I've heard about you and I've taken off my hat to you more than once during the war. You might know me, too."
"Everybody in our business knows you, Mr. Ganns. But I've not come hero-worshipping to waste your time. I'm proud you're pleased to see me and it's a great privilege to meet you; but I've looked in this morning about something that won't wait; and your name is the big noise in a letter I received from Italy to-day."
"Is that so? I'm bound for Italy in the fall."
"The question is whether this letter may change your plans and send you there sooner."
The elder stared, took a golden box out of his waistcoat pocket, opened it, tapped it, and helped himself to a pinch of snuff. The habit explained his somewhat misshapen nose. It was tobacco, not alcohol, that lent its exaggerated lustre and hypertrophied outline to that organ.
"I hate changing my itinerary, once made," replied Mr. Ganns. "I'm the most orderly cuss on earth. So far as I know, there's but one man in all Italy is likely to knock my arrangements on the head; and I'll see him, if all's well, in September next."
Brendon produced Jenny's letter.
"The writer is niece of that man," he said and handed the communication to Mr. Ganns.
Peter put on his spectacles again and read slowly. Indeed Mark had never seen a letter read so slowly before. It might have been in some cryptic tongue which Mr. Ganns could only with difficulty translate. Having finished he handed the communication back to Brendon and indicated a desire for silence. Mark lit a cigarette and sat surveying the other from the corner of his eye.
At last the American spoke.
"What about you? Can you go?"
"Yes; I've appealed to my chief and got permission to pick this up again. My holiday's due and I'll go to Italy instead of Scotland. I was in it from the first, you know."
"I do know—I know all about it, from my old pal, Albert Redmayne. He wrote me the most lucid dispatch that ever I read."
"You can go, Mr. Ganns?"
"I must go, boy. Albert wants me."
"Could you get off in a week?"
"A week! To-night."
"To-night, sir! Do you reckon that Mr. Redmayne is in any danger?"
"Don't you?'"
"He's forewarned and you see he's taking great precautions."
"Brendon," said Mr. Ganns, "run round and find when the night boat sails from Dover, or Folkestone. We'll reach Paris to-morrow morning, I guess, catch the Rapide for Milan, and be at the Lakes next day. You'll find we can do so. Then telegraph to this dame that we start a week hence. You take me?"
"You want to get there before we're expected?"
"Exactly."
"Then you do think Mr. Albert Redmayne is in danger?"
"I don't think about it. I know he is. But as this mystery has only just let loose on him and he's got his weather eye lifting, it will be all right, I hope, for a few hours. Meantime we arrive."
He took another pinch of snuff and picked up the Times. "Will you lunch with me here in the grillroom at two o'clock?"
"With pleasure, Mr. Ganns."
"Right. And telegraph, right now, that we hope to get off in a week."
Some hours later they met again and over a steak and green peas Brendon reported that the boat train left Victoria at eleven and that the Rapide would start from Paris on the following morning at half past six.
"We reach Bevano some time after noon next day," he said, "and can either go on to Milan and then come back to Como and travel by boat to Menaggio, where Mr. Redmayne lives, or else leave the train at Bevano, take steamer on Maggiore, cross to Lugano, and cross again to Como. That way we land right at Menaggio. There's not much in it for time."
"We'll go that way, then, and I'll see the Lakes."
Peter Ganns spoke little while he partook of a light meal. He picked a fried sole and drank two glasses of white wine. Then he ate a dish of green peas and compared their virtues with green corn. He enjoyed the spectacle of Brendon's hearty appetite and bewailed his inability to join him in red meat and a pint of Burton.
"Lucky dog," he said. "When I was young I did the like. I love food. You need never fear any rough stuff in business as long as you can eat beef and drink beer. But nowadays, I don't go into the rough stuff—too old and fat."
"Of course not, sir. You've done your bit. Nobody on your side has been at closer quarters with the big crooks, or heard their guns oftener."
"That's true."
Mr. Ganns held up his left hand, which was deformed and had lost the third and little finger.
"The last shot that Billy Benyon ever fired. A great man—Billy. I'll never see his like again."
"The Boston murderer? A genius!"
"He was. A marvellous brain. When I sent him to the chair it was like a Bushman killing an elephant."
"You're sorry for the under dog sometimes, I expect?"
"Not always; but now and again I like the bull to get the toreador, and the savage to eat the missionary."
They entered the smoking-room presently and then Brendon, very much to his surprise, heard an astonishing lecture which left him under the emotions of a fourth-form schoolboy after an interview with his head master.
Mr. Ganns ordered coffee, took snuff, and bade Mark listen and not interrupt.
"We're going into this thing together and I want you to get a clear hunch on it," he began, "because at present you have not. I don't say we shall see it through; but if we do, the credit's going to be yours, not mine. We'll come to the Redmayne business in a minute. But first let us have a look at Mr. Mark Brendon, if it won't bore you stiff."
The other laughed.
"He's not a very impressive object, so far as this case is concerned, Mr. Ganns."
"He is not," admitted Peter genially. "Quite the reverse, in fact. And his poor showing has puzzled Mr. Brendon a good bit, and some of his superior officers also. So let us examine the situation from that angle before we get up against the problem itself."
He stirred his coffee, poured a thimbleful of cognac into it, sipped it, and then slid into a comfortable position in his armchair, put his big hands into his trousers pockets, and regarded Mark with a steady and unblinking stare. His eyes were pale blue, deeply set and small, but still of a keen brilliancy.
"You're a detective inspector of Scotland Yard," continued Ganns, "and Scotland Yard is still the high-water mark of police organization in the world. The Central Bureau in New York is pretty close up, and I've nothing but admiration for the French and Italian Secret Services; but the fact remains: The Yard is first; and you've won, and fairly won your place there. That's a big thing and you didn't get it without some work and some luck, Brendon. But now—this Redmayne racket. You were right on the spot, hit the trail before it was cold, had everything to help you that heart of man could wish for; yet a guy who had joined the force only a week before could have done no worse. In a word, your conduct of the affair don't square with your reputation. Your dope never cut any ice from the start. And why? Because, without a doubt, you had a theory and got lost in it."
"Don't think that. I never had a theory."
"Is that so? Then failure lies somewhere else. The hopeless way you bitched up this thing interests me quite a lot. Remember that I know the case inside out and I'm not talking through my hat. So now let's see how and why you barked your shins so bad.
"Now, Mark, take a cinema show and consider it. Perhaps it's going to throw some light for you. A cinema film presents two entirely different achievements. It presents ten for that matter; but we'll take just two. It shows you a white sheet with a light thrown on it; it passes the light through a series of stains and shadows and the stains are magnified by lenses before they reach the screen. A most elaborate mechanism, you see, but the spectator never thinks about all that, because the machine produces an appeal to another part of his mind altogether. He forgets sheet, lantern, film, and all they are doing, in the illusion which they create.
"We accept the convention of the moving picture, the light and darkness, the tones and half tones, because these moving stains and shadows take the shape of familiar objects and tell a coherent story, showing life in action. But we know, subconsciously, all the time that it is merely an imitation of reality, as in the case of a picture, a novel, or a stage play. Certain ingenious applications of science and art combined have created the appearance of truth and told a story. Well, in the Redmayne case, certain ingenious operations have combined to tell you a story; and you have found yourself so interested in the yarn that you have quite overlooked the mechanism. But the mechanism should have been the first consideration, and the conjurers, by distracting your attention from it, did just what they were out to do. Let us take a look at the mechanism, my son, and see where the archcrooks behind this thing bluffed you."
Brendon did not hide his emotion, but kept silence while Mr. Ganns helped himself to a pinch of snuff.
"Now the little I've done in the world," he continued, "is thanks not so much to the deductive mind we hear such a lot about, but to the synthetic mind. The linking up of facts has been my strong suit. That's the backbone of success; and where facts can't be linked up, then failure is usually the result. I never waste one moment on a theory until I've got a tough skeleton of facts back of it. It was up to you to hunt facts, Mark; and you didn't hunt facts."
"I had an encyclopedia of facts."
"Granted. But your encyclopedia began at the letter 'B,' instead of the letter 'A.' We'll turn to that in a minute."
"My facts, such as they were, cannot be denied," argued Brendon, a little aggrieved. "They are cast-iron. My eyes and observation are trained to be exact and jealous of facts. No amount of synthesis can prevent two and one from being three, Ganns."
"On the contrary, two and one may be twenty-one, or twelve, or a half. Why jump to any conclusion? You had facts; but you did not have all the available facts—or anything like all. You tried to put on the roof before the walls were up; and, what's more, a great many of your 'cast-iron facts' were no facts at all."
"What were they then?"
"Elaborate and deliberate fictions, Mark."
At this challenge Brendon felt a hot wave of colour mount his cheek; but the other was far too generous and genial a spirit ever to seek any triumph over a younger man. Neither did Brendon feel angry with Mr. Ganns even though his remarks were provocative enough. He was angry with himself. Peter, however, knew his power. He read the detective's mind like a book and well understood that, both by his position and rank, Mark must be far too good a man to chafe at the criticism of a better than himself. He explained.
"Where I've got the pull on you, for the minute, is merely because I've been in the world a few years longer. A time's coming when you'll talk to your juniors as I can talk to you; and they'll listen, with all proper respect and attention, as you are listening. When you are my age, you'll command that perfect confidence which I command. Folks can't trust youth all the way; but you'll win to it; and believe me, in our business, there's no greater asset than the power to command absolute trust. You can't pretend to that power if you haven't got it. Human nature damn soon sees through you, if you're pretending what you don't command. But I'm playing straight across the board, Mark, as my custom is, and I know you are too sane and ambitious a lad to let false pride or self-assurance resent my calling you an ass over this thing."
"Prove it, Ganns, and I'll be the first to climb down. I know I've been an ass for that matter—knew it long ago," confessed Brendon.
"Yes, I'll prove it—that's easy. But what's going to be harder is to find out why you've been an ass. You've no right to be an ass. It's unlike your record and unlike your looks and your general make-up of mind. I mostly read a strange man's brain through his eyes; and your eyes do you justice. So perhaps you'll tell me presently where you went off your rocker. Or perhaps you don't know and I shall have to tell you—when I find the nigger in the woodpile. Now take a look round, and its dollars to doughnuts you'll begin to see the light."
He paused again, applied himself to his gold box, and then proceeded.
"To put it bluntly and drop everybody else but you out of it, for the minute, you went on false assumption from the kick-off, Brendon. To start wrong was not strange. I should have done exactly the same and nobody outside a detective story would have done differently; but to go on wrong—to pile false assumption on false assumption in face of your own reasoning powers and native wits—that strikes me as a very curious catastrophe."
"But you can't get away from facts."
"Nothing easier, surely. You said good-bye to facts when you left Princetown. You don't know the facts any more than I do—or anybody but those responsible for the appearances. You have assumed that the phenomena observed by yourself and reported by other professionals and various members of the public were facts, whereas a little solid thinking must have convinced you that they couldn't be. You didn't give your reason a chance, Mark.
"Now follow me and be honest. You say certain things have happened. I say they didn't, for the very sound reason that they couldn't. I am not going to tell you the truth, because I am a long way from that myself, and I dare say you'll strike it yet before I do; but I am going to prove that a good few things you think are true can't be—that events you take for granted never happened at all. We've got but few senses and they are easily deluded. In fact a man's a darned clumsy box of tricks at his best and I wouldn't swap a hill of beans for what my senses can assure me; but, as a wise man says, 'Art is with us to save us from too much truth,' so I say 'Reason is with us to save us from too much evidence of our senses—often false.'
"Now see how reason bears on the evidence of Robert Redmayne and his trick acts since first he disappeared. A thing occurs and there are only certain ways—very limited in number—to explain it. Either Robert Redmayne killed Michael Pendean, or else he did not. And if he did, he was sane or insane at the time. That much can't be denied and is granted. If he was sane, he committed the murder with a motive; and pretty careful inquiry proves that no motive existed. I attach no importance to words, no matter who may utter them, and the fact that Mrs. Pendean herself said that her husband and her uncle were the best of friends don't weigh; but the fact that Robert Redmayne stopped at Princetown with the Pendeans for over a week in friendship and asked them to Paignton, is of some weight. I'm inclined to believe that Redmayne was perfectly friendly with Michael Pendean up to the time of the latter's disappearance, and that there was no shadow of motive to explain why Redmayne did in his brother-in-law. Then, assuming him to be sane, he would not have committed such a murder. The alternative is that he was mad at the time and did homicide on Pendean while out of his mind.
"But what happens to a madman after a crime of this sort? Does he get off with it and wander over Europe as a free man for a year? Granted the resources of maniacal cunning and all the rest of it, was it ever heard that a lunatic went at large as this man did, and laughed at Scotland Yard's attempt to run him down and capture him? Is it reasonable that he runs away with a corpse, disposes of it safely, returns to his lodgings, makes a meal, and then, in broad daylight, vanishes off the face of the earth for six months, presently to reappear, hoodwink fresh people, and commit another crime? Once more he scorns law and order, vanishes for another six months, and now flaunts his red waistcoat and red mustache in Italy at his remaining brother's door. No, Mark, the man responsible for these impossible things isn't mad. And that brings me back to my preliminary alternative.
"I said just now, 'Either Robert Redmayne killed Michael Pendean, or else he did not.' And we may add that either Robert Redmayne killed Bendigo Redmayne or else he did not. But we'll stick to the first proposition for the moment. And the next question you must ask yourself is this. 'Did Robert Redmayne kill Michael Pendean?' That's where your 'facts,' as you call them, begin to sag a bit, my son. There's only one sure and certain way of knowing that a man is dead; and that is by seeing his body and convincing the law, by the testimony of those who knew the man in life, that the corpse belongs to him and nobody else."
"Good God! You think—"
"I think nothing. I want you to think. This is your funeral—so far; but I want you to come out like the sun from behind a cloud and surprise us yet. Just grasp that matters couldn't have happened as you supposed, and go on from there. Remember, incidentally, that you are quite unable to swear that either Pendean or Bendigo Redmayne is dead at all. They may both be just as much alive as we are. Chew it over. This is a very pretty thing and I believe we're up against some great rascals; but I don't even know that yet for sure. I can see many points that are vital which you are more likely to clear than I. You've been badly handicapped, for reasons I have yet to find out; but if you think over what I told you and look into your brain-pan without prejudice, maybe you'll begin to see them yourself."
"It's sporting of you to suggest that, but I can't offer any such excuse," answered Brendon thoughtfully. "Never did a man go into a case with less handicap. I even had peculiar incentives to make good. I came into it on the top of the tide with everything under my hands. No—what you've said throws rather too bright a light on the truth. Everything looked so straight-forward that I never thought the appearances hid an utterly different reality. Now I know they probably did."
"That's what I guess. Somebody palmed a marked card on you, Brendon; and you took it like a lamb. We all have in our time—even the smartest of us. Gaboriau says somewhere, 'Above all, regard with supreme suspicion that which seems probable and begin always by believing what seems incredible.' French exaggeration, of course; but there's truth in it. The obvious always makes me uncomfortable. If a thing is jumping just the way that suits you, distrust it at once. That holds of life as well as business."
They chatted for half an hour and Mr. Ganns attained his object, which was to fling his companion back to the beginning of the whole problem that had brought them together. He desired that Mark should travel the ground again with an open mind and all preconceptions put behind him.
"To-night, in the train," said Peter, "I shall ask you to give me your version of the case from the moment that Mrs. Pendean invited you to take it up—or from earlier still, if you had to do with any of the people before the catastrophe. I want the whole yarn again from your angle; and after what I've told you, it may be that, as you retrace every incident, light may flash that wasn't there before."
"It is very probable indeed," admitted Mark. Then his generous nature prompted him to praise the elder.
"You're a big man, Peter Ganns, and you've said things to-day that no doubt were elementary to you, but mean a lot to me. You've made me feel mighty small—which I wouldn't own to anybody else; but you know that much without my telling you. I only differ from you on one point and that is the sequel. If this thing is ever cleared, you'll be responsible for clearing it, and I shall see you get the credit."
The other laughed and flung snuff into his purple nostrils.
"Nonsense, nonsense! I'm a back number—almost out of the game now—virtually retired to take my ease and follow my hobbies. This is nothing to do with me. I'm only going to watch you."
"A detective's hobby is generally his old business," said Mark, and Mr. Ganns admitted it. "Literature and crime, nice things to eat and drink, snuff and acrostics—these serve to fill my leisure and represent my vices and virtues," he confessed.
"Each has its appointed place in my life; and now I'm adding travel. I've wanted to see Europe once again before I went into my shell for good; and to enjoy the society of my dear friend, Albert Redmayne, visit his home, and hear his bland and childlike wisdom once more.
"The only shadow thrown by a devoted friendship, Brendon, is the knowledge that it must some day come to an end. And when I say 'good-bye' to the old bookworm I shall know that we are little likely to meet again. Yet who would deny himself the glory of friendship, before the menace that it must sooner or later finish? A close amity and understanding, a discovery of kindred spirits, is among the most precious experiences within the reach of mankind. Love, no doubt, proves a more glorious adventure still; but lightning lurks near the rosy chariot of love, my lad, and we who win the ineffable gift must not whine if the full price has to be paid. For me, cool friendship!"
He chattered amiably and Mark guessed that on the simple and human side Mr. Ganns found himself much at one with his friend, Albert Redmayne. Peter's philosophy seemed to Brendon of a very mild quality, and he wondered how a man who looked at human nature in a spirit so hopeful, if not credulous, should yet own those extraordinary gifts the American possessed. Upon these, surely, and not his genial and elemental faith, was his fame founded.