The Complete Simon Iff Read Free Page B

novelist-detectives would fabricate a mystery of revenge in connection with the date. Ezra, too, would be away to meet Maud. There was, of course, a possibility that poignancy of memory would keep the old lady awake on that particular night; but he must chance that.
    Things turned out for him even better that he had hoped. Three nights before the proposed crime the vicar mentioned casually that he had met young Robinson— “the charming lad whom you defended so brilliantly”—motoring to London—called away suddenly on business. He expected to be back in a week or ten days. No, Mrs. Robinson was not with him; “she is slightly ailing, poor lady, it appears.”
    When the great night came Ffoulkes made his master-stroke by proposing to the vicar’s daughter. He was obviously accepted, and the young people, after dinner, went gaily arm-in-arm through the village, and received the congratulations of the few belated travelers in that early-to-bed-and-early-to-rise corner of the planet. But Ffoulkes had the spanner in his pocket, and after bestowing his fiancée at the vicarage, went, deviously at first, then swiftly and directly, over the downs. Luck followed him to the last; he found his victim fast asleep. A single blow of the spanner, which he had wrapped in a paper bag to deaden the sound, smashed in the skull; he made his way home without being seen or heard by anybody.
    Two days later he wrote to Flynn, with a cutting from the local paper.
    “My dear Jack, here’s a terrible sequal to the Marsden murder. It is now clear that there is some family feud connected with the fatal date. Probably an affair going back a generation. Shocking, indeed, even to a hardened lawyer like myself; but you see how right I was to insist that there must have been a strong motive for Marsden’s murder. Shall we ever know the truth? It sounds like an Arabian Nights’ tale.”
    A month later he returned to London; he had had no answer from Flynn, and supposed him to be still away on his holiday.
    There were no arrests, and no clues, in the matter of Mrs. Robinson. The spanner, which Ffoulkes had dropped by the veranda, served merely to suggest a tramp, who might conceivably have been a chauffeur gone to the bad. But the mystery was deepened by an amazing development; her husband had disappeared completely. There was no question of his complicity in the crime; for on the previous evening he had dined with the British Vice-Consul in Marseilles; and it was physically impossible for him to have returned in time to commit the murder.
    The obvious deduction was that whoever hated the Marsdens had included him in the schedule.
    “Well,” soliloquized Ffoulkes in his chambere, “at least I shall not lose that thousand pounds. But now I’ve got to edge away from Miss Bread-and-Butter-and-Kisses. Ugh!”
III
    When you have dined at Basso’s, which is the summit of human felicity, you should avoid too sharp a declension to this vale of tears by taking a stroll along the quays to the old quarter on the west of the Bassin. There you will find streets almost worthy to rank with the Fishmarket at Cairo, and decidedly superior to even the best that Hong Kong or Honolulu or New Orleans can produce. In particular, there is an archway called by initiates the Gate of Hell, for it forms an entrance to this highly fascinating and exceedingly disreputable district.
    Under this archway, on the night of the exploit of Sir Richard Ffoulkes, stood a young man, quietly dressed in the English style, though with a trifling tendency to over-indulgence in jewelry.
    He glanced at a watch upon his wrist; ten minutes before midnight. He then took a little bottle from his pocket, after a quick inspection of the vicinity. From the bottle he shook a few grains of powder on the back of his hand, and drew them into his nostrils. Next came a moment’s indecision; then, swinging his cane, he walked briskly out of the archway, and paced up and down a strange little square of