The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ®. Морис Леблан
room, close to the green light, rolled up his sleeve, and held his arm before Sir Charles. There, in blood-red letters, my brother-in-law read the name, “Charles Vandrift,” in his own handwriting!
“I see how that’s done,” Sir Charles murmured, drawing back. “It’s a clever delusion; but still, I see through it. It’s like that ghost-book. Your ink was deep green; your light was green; you made me look at it long; and then I saw the same thing written on the skin of your arm in complementary colours.”
“You think so?” the Seer replied, with a curious curl of the lip.
“I’m sure of it,” Sir Charles answered.
Quick as lightning the Seer again rolled up his sleeve. “That’s your name,” he cried, in a very clear voice, “but not your whole name. What do you say, then, to my right? Is this one also a complementary colour?” He held his other arm out. There, in sea-green letters, I read the name, “Charles O’Sullivan Vandrift.” It is my brother-in-law’s full baptismal designation; but he has dropped the O’Sullivan for many years past, and, to say the truth, doesn’t like it. He is a little bit ashamed of his mother’s family.
Charles glanced at it hurriedly. “Quite right,” he said, “quite right!” But his voice was hollow. I could guess he didn’t care to continue the séance. He could see through the man, of course; but it was clear the fellow knew too much about us to be entirely pleasant.
“Turn up the lights,” I said, and a servant turned them. “Shall I say coffee and benedictine?” I whispered to Vandrift.
“By all means,” he answered. “Anything to keep this fellow from further impertinences! And, I say, don’t you think you’d better suggest at the same time that the men should smoke? Even these ladies are not above a cigarette—some of them.”
There was a sigh of relief. The lights burned brightly. The Seer for the moment retired from business, so to speak. He accepted a partaga with a very good grace, sipped his coffee in a corner, and chatted to the lady who had suggested Strafford with marked politeness. He was a polished gentleman.
Next morning, in the hall of the hotel, I saw Madame Picardet again, in a neat tailor-made travelling dress, evidently bound for the railway-station.
“What, off, Madame Picardet?” I cried.
She smiled, and held out her prettily-gloved hand. “Yes, I’m off,” she answered archly. “Florence, or Rome, or somewhere. I’ve drained Nice dry—like a sucked orange. Got all the fun I can out of it. Now I’m away again to my beloved Italy.”
But it struck me as odd that, if Italy was her game, she went by the omnibus which takes down to the train de luxe for Paris. However, a man of the world accepts what a lady tells him, no matter how improbable; and I confess, for ten days or so, I thought no more about her, or the Seer either.
At the end of that time our fortnightly pass-book came in from the bank in London. It is part of my duty, as the millionaire’s secretary, to make up this book once a fortnight, and to compare the cancelled cheques with Sir Charles’s counterfoils. On this particular occasion I happened to observe what I can only describe as a very grave discrepancy—in fact, a discrepancy of 5000 pounds. On the wrong side, too. Sir Charles was debited with 5000 pounds more than the total amount that was shown on the counterfoils.
I examined the book with care. The source of the error was obvious. It lay in a cheque to Self or Bearer, for 5000 pounds, signed by Sir Charles, and evidently paid across the counter in London, as it bore on its face no stamp or indication of any other office.
I called in my brother-in-law from the salon to the study. “Look here, Charles,” I said, “there’s a cheque in the book which you haven’t entered.” And I handed it to him without comment, for I thought it might have been drawn to settle some little loss on the turf or at cards, or to make up some other affair he didn’t desire to mention to me. These things will happen.
He looked at it and stared hard. Then he pursed up his mouth and gave a long low “Whew!” At last he turned it over and remarked, “I say, Sey, my boy, we’ve just been done jolly well brown, haven’t we?”
I glanced at the cheque. “How do you mean?” I inquired.
“Why, the Seer,” he replied, still staring at it ruefully. “I don’t mind the five thou., but to think the fellow should have gammoned the pair of us like that—ignominious, I call it!”
“How do you know it’s the Seer?” I asked.
“Look at the green ink,” he answered. “Besides, I recollect the very shape of the last flourish. I flourished a bit like that in the excitement of the moment, which I don’t always do with my regular signature.”
“He’s done us,” I answered, recognising it. “But how the dickens did he manage to transfer it to the cheque? This looks like your own handwriting, Charles, not a clever forgery.”
“It is,” he said. “I admit it—I can’t deny it. Only fancy his bamboozling me when I was most on my guard! I wasn’t to be taken in by any of his silly occult tricks and catch-words; but it never occurred to me he was going to victimise me financially in this way. I expected attempts at a loan or an extortion; but to collar my signature to a blank cheque—atrocious!”
“How did he manage it?” I asked.
“I haven’t the faintest conception. I only know those are the words I wrote. I could swear to them anywhere.”
“Then you can’t protest the cheque?”
“Unfortunately, no; it’s my own true signature.”
We went that afternoon without delay to see the Chief Commissary of Police at the office. He was a gentlemanly Frenchman, much less formal and red-tapey than usual, and he spoke excellent English with an American accent, having acted, in fact, as a detective in New York for about ten years in his early manhood.
“I guess,” he said slowly, after hearing our story, “you’ve been victimised right here by Colonel Clay, gentlemen.”
“Who is Colonel Clay?” Sir Charles asked.
“That’s just what I want to know,” the Commissary answered, in his curious American-French-English. “He is a Colonel, because he occasionally gives himself a commission; he is called Colonel Clay, because he appears to possess an india-rubber face, and he can mould it like clay in the hands of the potter. Real name, unknown. Nationality, equally French and English. Address, usually Europe. Profession, former maker of wax figures to the Museé Grévin. Age, what he chooses. Employs his knowledge to mould his own nose and cheeks, with wax additions, to the character he desires to personate. Aquiline this time, you say. Hein! Anything like these photographs?”
He rummaged in his desk and handed us two.
“Not in the least,” Sir Charles answered. “Except, perhaps, as to the neck, everything here is quite unlike him.”
“Then that’s the Colonel!” the Commissary answered, with decision, rubbing his hands in glee. “Look here,” and he took out a pencil and rapidly sketched the outline of one of the two faces—that of a bland-looking young man, with no expression worth mentioning. “There’s the Colonel in his simple disguise. Very good. Now watch me: figure to yourself that he adds here a tiny patch of wax to his nose—an aquiline bridge—just so; well, you have him right there; and the chin, ah, one touch: now, for hair, a wig: for complexion, nothing easier: that’s the profile of your rascal, isn’t it?”
“Exactly,” we both murmured. By two curves of the pencil, and a shock of false hair, the face was transmuted.
“He had very large eyes, with very big pupils, though,” I objected, looking close; “and the man in the photograph here has them small and boiled-fishy.”
“That’s so,” the Commissary answered. “A drop of belladonna expands—and produces the Seer; five grains of opium contract—and give a dead-alive, stupidly-innocent