It was, therefore, with a desire to do what he could for his friend that he opened his note. Mr. Ricardo read that Hanaud had put off his visit to the unpronounceable city owing to the persistence of a surprising idea. He himself must see this Septimus Crottle. He had no authority by which he could claim an interview. He was of no account in this Horbury affair. It was even possible that Septimus had never heard the name of Hanaud, for nothing was more curious than the smallness of the orbits within which fame was circumscribed. As Mr. Ricardo had himself observed, no one could answer what Mr. Gladstone had said in 1884. Well, then, it would be desirable that Hanaud should have an introduction to Septimus Crottle, and who could give it but that excellent Mister the Captain Mordaunt, who, one might think—No? Yes?—had a passion for introducing strangers to Septimus Crottle. Monsieur Hanaud threw himself at the feet of his dear friend. ‘I understand, the note concluded, that Septimus Crottle is difficult, but as you know I am at my best with difficult people. You have seen me at work. I am inspired, I soar.’ and he signed in his usual style as a peer of the realm.
Mr. Ricardo derided the signature and scoffed in his mild way at the vanity of the writer. But he, too, was reluctant to leave this odd matter of Horbury’s letter to Septimus Crottle undiscovered. He wanted to know the answer to a host of other questions besides. Who had come to the house and lifted the telephone receiver in the early morning? Why had Olivia Horbury locked her door? And when? And why, with Horbury’s Newsbag ready to become Horbury’s Nosebag, had Horbury drawn that unusual blue-handled knife across his carotid artery—if he had?
Mr. Ricardo accordingly rose, dressed with his usual circumspection, and found Captain Mordaunt preparing to eat his luncheon at his club and more than a little worried. He drew Ricardo into the bar as if he had been his dearest friend. “A cocktail before we lunch?”
The invitation was, in the modern phrase, telescoped. “I’d rather have a Manzanilla,” said Mr. Ricardo, and the barman gazed at him with the awe due to a customer who knew of a drink unknown to the barman.
“We’re just out of it, sir,” he said. He thought of embroidering his statement with the news that there had been a great run lately on that there drink, but the theme was dangerous.
“A glass of your driest sherry, then,” said Mr. Ricardo, and with Uncle Pepe the barman walked on solid ground.
At luncheon, Mordaunt began whilst Mr. Ricardo was still twittering. Maltby had called on him this morning, Maltby with an infernal fellow with a notebook. Where was Bryan Devisher? Why wasn’t his arrival notified to the authorities? Etcetera, etcetera.
“I am bound to say that Maltby was pleasant,” Mordaunt continued. “He seemed to know already all that I was telling him.”
Mr. Ricardo smiled wisely. “He was checking up the statement I had already made.”
Mordaunt stared at his companion and leaned forward eagerly. “Perhaps you can help, Mr. Ricardo. I must leave England on Monday. Ticket taken, cabin booked. All that could stop me would be the police.”
“You’re not involved in any way,” said Mr. Ricardo confidently. “You did all that a reasonable man in a hurry could be expected to do. I am here. We told the same story, no doubt. I am sure that Maltby won’t want you to stay.”
Captain Mordaunt was greatly relieved. His voice lightened, his face lost its gloom and, as he looked at the trim and decorous Mr. Ricardo, a smile came and went upon his lips.
“So there is an affair of a kind?” he suggested. Mr. Ricardo seemed to weigh his inclination to talk against his reticence as an unofficial sleuth. “Yes. I can say so much—there is,” he said darkly.
“And you are in it, of course.”
In a whisper, attended by a knowing smile, Mr. Ricardo replied: “Up to the neck.”
“Crime, then?”
Crime, the wonderful word. It drew the two men together in a net. That crime fascinated Mr. Ricardo was known to all his acquaintances. But were they not fascinated, too? Let a man say in any company that he has been present at the Old Bailey when an crime is being probed and established, a silence will follow upon his words, however carelessly he may speak them. He may be merely the dullard, the last-wicket-rabbit brought in to make up the party, but at once he becomes the cynosure. He will be plied with questions. He will not relapse into obscurity until all that he can contribute on the characters, the passions, and the event which have woven the dark pattern, has been brought to light. And even then each one of the party with a small pang of regret, reflect: “If only I had been in his place, I should have noticed so much more.”
So now Captain Mordaunt, though his hopes were cast overseas, leaned forward with shining eyes. “Yes. You are known to be a student of crime, Mr. Ricardo.”
At such moments Mr. Ricardo was apt to become a trifle fatuous. He laughed affectedly. “Not really? A dilettante, perhaps. But a student? Well, perhaps others might say so.”
“Maltby said that you had got the little Frenchman with you.”
“Little! My dear Mordaunt! He’s as big as a bull and quite as obstreperous.”
“I’d like to meet him,” said Mordaunt; and there was a great deal more than mere curiosity in the warmth of his voice.
“My dear fellow,” said Ricardo, “nothing could be easier.”
He had his cue, and over the luncheon table he told Mordaunt all that he knew of the Horbury puzzle.
“Devisher has disappeared. Yes, an ominous fact. Yet Hanaud seems to set as much—no, I am inexact—more importance upon the sealed letter with the enclosures addressed by Horbury to Septimus Crottle. Has he received it? If so, why does he keep it to himself? Does he know nothing about it? Hanaud would very much like to make Crottle’s acquaintance.”
“Septimus Crottle is a queer old bird,” said Mordaunt doubtfully.
“A crotchety patriarch, I think you called him,” Mr. Ricardo added. “Hanaud is aware that he must tread gently.”
“Yes, but the old man doesn’t,” replied Mordaunt. “He’s a trampler.” He thought for a moment. “I tell you what. We’ll have some coffee and a cigar upstairs whilst I see what I can do.”
They went upstairs to the smoking-room. Coffee and liqueurs of brandy were put beside them on small stools.
“Cigars,” ordered Mordaunt, and at once Mr. Ricardo broke in.
“Claro, please! At this hour not a Colorado.”
“Good God, man,” Mordaunt exclaimed, “I’m not offering you a beetle”; and, having established Mr. Ricardo in comfort, he went off to the telephone office. He returned in a quarter of an hour.
“It is all right. I didn’t mention the letter or, indeed, anything about Horbury’s death. I should think he’ll go straight up in the air when he hears that Horbury has written to him at all. But that’s your pigeon. All I said was that Hanaud and you want to have a word with him.”
“And he’s willing?”
“Yes. A nice bit of crime, you know! I am going to him on Sunday evening and I’ll take you and the Frenchman with me. But I warn you. You have got to fit in. Sunday night is his company night. There’s a ritual. The family, one or two friends. We have a glass of port, then someone reads a book, then the girls—there isn’t one of them under thirty—are sent off to bed, and then you’ll get your conversation. You’re not to dress, and you have your dinner before you go. I’ll come to your house at ten minutes to eight.”
Mr. Ricardo drew back. The order of the day was not to him a phrase for committees.
“Then we must dine at seven!” he exclaimed incredulously.
“Yes, the old man moves with the times,” said Mordaunt. “When he was captain of the steam-packet Tunis he dined at six.”