Ngaio Marsh - Death In Ecstasy

“Maybe I seemed a mite too eager about that book,” he said. “Maybe I kinda gave you the works.”

“My inspiration dates a little further back than that,” said Alleyn. “You told us last night that you were interested in gold-refining. A letter which we found in your pockets referred rather fully to a new process. It assumed a certain knowledge of chemistry on your part. The book is an American publication. It was a little suggestive, you see.”

“Yup,” said Mr. Ogden, “I see. Now listen. I bought that book years ago, way back in the pre-war period when I first began to sit up and take notice. I was a junior clurk at the time in the offices of a gold-refining company. Junior clurk is a swell name for office-boy. I lit on that book layout in the rain on a five-cent stall, and I was ambitious to educate myself. It’s kinda stayed around ever since. The book, I mean. When I came over here it was laying in one of my grips, and I let it lay. I know a bit more than I useter, and some of them antique recipes tickled me. Well, anyhow, it stuck, and when I got fixed where I am now I packed it in the bookshelves along with the Van Dines and the National Geographics and the Saturday Evening Posts . I never opened it. And get this, Chief, I never missed it till last night.”

“Last night? At what time?”

“After I got home. I got to thinking about Cara, and I figured it out that she passed in her checks very, very sudden, and that the suddenest poison I knew was prussic acid. Hydrocyanic acid if you want to talk Ritzy. I thought maybe I’d refresh my memory and I looked for the old book. Nothing doing. It was gone. What do you know about that?”

“What do you know about it?” rejoined Alleyn.

“Listen,” said Mr. Ogden for about the twentieth time that afternoon. “I know this far. It was there four weeks back. Four weeks back from tonight I threw a party. All the Sacred Flame crowd was there. Garnette was there. And Raveenje. And Cara Quayne. All the gang, even Miss Wade, who has a habit of getting mislaid or overlooked: she was there and cracking hardy. Well, Raveenje, he’s enthusiastic about literature. First editions are all published by Pep and Kick as he sees it. I saw him looking along the shelves and I yanked down the old Curiosities for him to have a slant at. Well, maybe it hadn’t enough whiskers on it, but it seemed to excite him about as much as a raspberry drink at a departmental store. He gave it a polite once-over and lost interest. But that’s how I remember it was there. From that night till last evening I never gave it a thought.”

“Did anyone take it away that night?”

“How should I know? I never missed the blamed thing.”

“You can’t remember anything that would help? The next time you looked at your bookshelves?”

“Nope. Wait a while. Wait a while.”

Mr. Ogden clapped a plump hand to the top of his head as if to prevent an elusive thought from escaping him.

“The next day or maybe the day after — it was around that time — Claude stopped in and he took Garnette’s books away with him. I was out at the time.”

“Mr. Garnette’s books? What books?”

Mr. Ogden looked remarkably sheepish.

“Aw Gee!” he said. “Just something for a rainy day. He loaned ’em to me. He said they were classics. Classics? And how! Boy, they were central-heated.”

“Are they among the lot in brown paper covers, behind the others?”

“You said it.”

“And Claude Wheatley took them away?”

“Sure. He told the maid Garnette had sent him for them. He wanted to keep hold of them because they were rare. I’ll say they were rare! Anyhow, that’s when I last remember anything about books. I suppose Garnette told Claude where they were.”

“Was the Curiosities in your shelves then?”

“Isn’t that what I’m aiming to remember!” exclaimed Mr. Ogden desperately. “Lemme think! Next day Claude told me he’d called for Garnette’s books and I said: ‘Those were the ones in brown paper overalls,’ and he said he’d recognised them by that.”

“The Curiosities was not in brown paper, then?”

“No, sir. I’d no call to camouflage it. It was respectable.”

Alleyn laughed.

“Can you remember noticing it that day?”

“Nope.”

“Would you have noticed if it had already gone?”

“Lordy, no!” said Mr. Ogden.

He stared wildly into space for an appreciable time and then said slowly:

“Not in that way. I wouldn’t have definitely missed it. But in another way I seem to remember not seeing it, if you get me. It’s a red book. Seems like I remember not seeing a red book. That sounds crazy, I guess.”

“On the contrary, this is all extremely interesting,” said Alleyn.

“Yeah? Well, here’s hoping it doesn’t interest you in Sam J. Ogden. Maybe Raveenje will recall me showing him the book. Or maybe one of the rest will. That,” added Mr. Ogden with a naïve smile, “is just why I thought I’d better come clean.”

“Do you incline to think somebody took the book that evening, Mr. Ogden?”

“What the hell? I haven’t a notion when it was lifted.”

“Have any of the Initiates been to see you since then?”

“Sure, they have. I gave a little lunch last Wednesday for Cara and Raveenje and Garnette and Dagmar. Lemme see. Maurice and Janey were around last Sunday. That was the night Dr. Kasbek came in. I haven’t had Claude and Lionel come in again. Those two queens give me a pain.”

“Now look here, Mr. Ogden, you’ve got your own ideas on the subject, haven’t you? You practically stated, just now, that you believed Mr. Garnette had taken those bonds.”

Mr. Ogden looked extremely uncomfortable.

“Didn’t you?” pressed Alleyn.

“I’m not saying a thing.”

“Very well,” said Alleyn shortly, “I can’t do anything against that.”

Ogden gave him a sidelong but not unattractive grin.

“Seems like the British police is kinda helpless,” he said.

“Seems like it,” agreed Alleyn dryly. “How many of you are in this thing with Garnette?”

“What the hell? In what thing?”

He broke off, got to his feet, and stood glaring down at Alleyn, his face white and his eyes very angry.

“See here,” he said. “Just what do you mean? I’m not muscling in on any homicide rackets. I’ve told you a straight story about that book and I’m sticking to it. If you don’t believe me — find out.”

“Mr. Ogden, I fully believe your story. But there are more rackets than one, you know.”

“Yeah? Just what are you aiming to insinuate?”

“Merely that I have far too high an opinion of your intelligence to suppose that you would allow yourself to become as enamoured of transcendental mumbo-jumbo as you would have me believe.”

“Are you telling me the spiritual dope we hand out here is phoney?”

“I’m saying that you aren’t so hypnotised by it that you’ve lost your business man’s acumen.”

Mr. Ogden looked very hard at the inspector and a slow grin began to dawn on his face.

“And I’m saying,” Alleyn continued, “that you don’t float anything with big fat cheques unless you’re going to get a more tangible return for your money than a dose of over-proof spiritual uplift.”

“Maybe,” said Mr. Ogden with a fat chuckle.

“In short, Mr. Ogden, I want to know how you stand as regards the finance of this affair. I’ve got to find out how everybody stands. It’s not good mincing matters. All of the Initiates come under suspicion of this crime; yourself as much as anyone. Believe me, you cannot afford to keep back any information when there’s a capital charge in the offing.”