Mr Turner had a craze for buying fiddles which he never did, and never could, play upon, and I mentally placed him in the same position as a bibliomaniac, who would sell his soul to get hold of some old musty volume not worth reading, simply because it happened to be the only copy in existence. Such a man, I had no hesitation in deciding, would steal as readily as a man drunk with opium. My only difficulty was how to make sure that the fiddle had been stolen at his instigation, and, if that were made clear, how to get at the stolen article.
The cab stopped at a little hamlet about three miles from the city, and I was shown into the drawing-room of Mr Turner’s house, in which we were speedily joined by a dirty-looking man, very shabbily and raggedly attired, and evidently straight from digging in the garden, whom I had difficulty in believing to be the wealthy gentleman I had come to see.
The face was rather repulsive, on the whole, until my companion spoke of his rare fiddles, when it became animated and bright with the ruling passion of his life. Then he turned to a cabinet in the room, and unlocked it as solemnly as if it had been an iron safe full of diamonds and gold, and brought out several old fiddles, very much cracked and mended, and every one, if possible, uglier than another, and which were placed successively in my hands, with a triumphant look, which evidently meant, “Admire that, or be for ever condemned as ignorant and stupid.”
I examined them closely as I had been instructed by Mr Cleffton, and even brightened a little when I found one which had the printed ticket inside of which he had spoken, but on referring the matter to my companion, he only smiled and said—
“Oh, that’s a Strad., too, but it’s only a copy, and a very poor one. The other was a real Cremona. By the by, Mr Turner,” he abruptly added aloud, in response to a signal from me, and while I pretended to bend over the fiddle in my hand in wrapt devotion and admiration, “Do you remember that Stradivarius which Cleffton refused to sell you?”
“Yes; what of it?” The words were somewhat hastily thrown out, and I fancied I noticed a kind of nervous flutter in his voice as he spoke.
“It has been stolen.”
“Stolen? Impossible!”
These were his words, and natural enough under the circumstances, but it is impossible to convey in print the whole effect of the exclamation. There is more in the manner in which words are spoken than in the words themselves. The appearance of surprise and incredulity was—or appeared to me to be—manifestly forced; the eyes of the man had an absent and uneasy expression, as if, while he was mechanically pronouncing the words, he was saying to himself—“Is there any danger? Can any one have hinted to him that I might have been the thief?”
“It is not only possible, but a fact,” pursued my companion.