The Complete Simon Iff Read online

  “D’ye ken, I can hardly believe my ain ears.”

  “When the public demands a law which those in authority don’t like, they either block it in the Commons, or throw it out in the Lords, or get the Judges to interpret it so as to mean nothing at all, or the opposite of what it was intended to mean.”

  “Losh!”

  “You’re a banker. Would you submit your bank to popular management, interference by people who don’t know the first principles of the business?”

  “It wad be the shutters up in just one se’nnight!”

  “Nor will we intrust our country to people who know neither law, nor history, nor geography, nor commerce — except in their own petty trade — nor foreign affairs, not so much as whether our interests lie with those of our neighbors or clash with them; nor any other of the arts necessary to government.”

  “Weel, weel, but these are strange sayings. But I doot ye’re richt.”

  “Let us have our coffee in the lounge, and you shall tell me all about your troubles. I feel I’ve bored you with all my talk about the club.”

  They walked into the lounge and took a seat in the low window which overlooks St. James Park. “See the palace!” said Simon Iff. “The Foreign Secretary is with the King to-night. His Majesty was anxious about the Ultimatum to Russia.”

  “Russia! She’s our ally!”

  “Last night war was thought a certainty. This morning a way out was found. How would it do to let that cat out of the bag, with the press howling for blood? The price of Democracy is eternal Hypocrisy!” Macpherson was by this time completely overwhelmed. He felt himself among the Powers. He thought of Paul caught up into the seventh heaven, and hearing things not lawful for men to speak.

  “Now, then, your little private grief,” said Simon, when the waiter had brought the coffee, a box of Upmanns, and two great Venetian glasses, milky with threads of gold, in which was the special club brandy from the cellars of Frederick the Great of Prussia. “It’s a serious situation, Mr. Iff,” began the banker, who, once on familiar ground, grew confident, lucid, and precise.

  III

  “My bank, as you know, is situated at the corner of London Wall and Copthall Avenue. The chief officials are three; myself, Fraser, who came with me from Edinburgh, has worked with me for 14 years, and Fisher, who has been with me for two years only. Both men are steady in every way. Fisher, for example, though a young man, has already managed to purchase the house in which he lives at Tooting Bec; a charming though compact detached residence with a garden, which he spends most of his leisure in tending. He won a prize in the “Daily Mail” Sweet Pea competition, and his roses are wonderful. An extremely promising young man.

  “Next week is Easter. At this time there is a very great demand in Paris for English Bank-notes; this year we are sending no less than twelve thousand pounds in tens and fives. On Friday, this sum arrived from the Bank of England; it was checked, made into a special parcel ready for transmission today, and stored in the safe.

  “I had noticed some unusual commotion in Fraser during the whole of this past month; on Friday I asked him its cause. He replied that he was in love, having recently met Miss Clavering, a customer of the bank, by the way, with an average monthly balance of some five to seven hundred pounds. I wished him good luck. He was to take her to the Earl’s Court Exhibition that night, he said.

  “So much for Friday. On Saturday I reached the bank at a quarter before nine, as is my custom. I saw Fraser disappear into the bank as I approached it. He did not go to his desk, but was waiting for me to enter. He had his hand to the side of his head. The face was decidedly swollen, and the eyes injected. ‘Mr. Macpherson,’ he said, ‘I had to come down; I’ve not missed a day since we came to London; but I’m in agony of neuralgia; I’ve not slept all night.’ He jerked the words out with evident difficulty. ‘Go right home!’ I said, ‘or why not run down to Brighton for the week-end, and let the sea wind blow the poison out of your system?’ ‘I will that,’ he said, and was gone. Fisher, by the way, had entered the bank and heard this conversation, or all but a few words.

  “On Saturday the bank closes at one o’clock; but several of the clerks stay behind to finish the week’s work. I myself leave at noon, or a few minutes earlier, in order to attend a short conference in connection with our American business. The banks concerned each send a representative. I had intended to go to a matinee last Saturday, but the brightness of the day tempted me to Mitcham, where I had the pleasure of meeting you.

  “Now let me tell you what occurred after I had left the bank. A few minutes only had elapsed when Fraser appeared. ‘I’m going to Brighton on the one o’clock train,’ he told Fisher, who was, of course, surprised to see him; ‘but I’m worried to death. I’ve got it into my mind that the Paris parcel was not put into the safe.’ Together they went and opened it; they could not have done it separately, as Fisher had the key, and Fraser the combination. The parcel was duly found. Fraser took it up, looked at it, noted the seals, and replaced it. ‘That’s all right,’ he said with relief; ‘see you Monday.’ ‘So long,’ said Fisher, and Fraser went out.

  “Now, sir, the story becomes bizarre and uncanny in the extreme. We’ll suppose that the Paris package has been tampered with, as turned out to be the case. Then you’ll imagine at least that we’d hear nothing of it until Monday; perhaps not until the packet reached the bank in Paris. Instead, the plot goes off bang! Bang! like the scenario of a moving picture.

  “I return from golf to my rooms in Half Moon street. I find Fisher waiting for me. Fraser had wired him from Brighton to be at my place at once, and wait. The message was so urgent that he could not disregard it. There is a telegram for me on my hall table. From Fraser. ‘Absolutely certain Paris parcel has been stolen. Formally request you make sure.’ Nothing for it but to go down to the Bank. Sure enough the package is a dummy. We warn the police, public and private. By Sunday morning evidence is tumbling in like an avalanche.

  “Fraser was seen at one o’clock at Euston. He bought a return ticket to Edinburgh, and paid for it with one of the stolen notes. He was in no hurry, and bothered the clerk a good deal trying to get some kind of holiday ticket that the railway didn’t issue. He talked of his old mother in Edinburgh; hadn’t seen her for two years. The clerk recognized his photograph at once; remembered him specially, because he had given him his change a shilling short, and, discovering the error immediately, sent a porter to find him; but he could not be seen. This in itself struck the clerk as curious.

  “He was recognized in the luncheon room of the Old Ship Hotel at Brighton, at a time so near that of the Euston incident that he must have jumped into a high-power car after buying the ticket, and broken the speed laws every yard of the way to Brighton. He is known in the hotel; besides, Murray, of the City and Shire Bank, saw him and spoke to him. Fraser said, ‘I’m going back to London. I’m sure there’s something wrong at the Bank. I dreamed it three nights running.’

  “At dawn on Sunday Fraser’s body, horribly mangled, was found at the foot of some cliffs near Ilfracombe — another long drive. His letters and papers were found on the body, and about eighty pounds of the stolen money.

  “I had this news about 11:30. Ten minutes later the telephone rang. It was Fraser’s voice, without any question. ‘I’m worried about the Paris package,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t think me quite mad. Do tell me you went to the bank, and found all well.’ I was so amazed that I could not speak for a moment. Then I saw that the question was one of identity, first of all. I asked him a question which it was most unlikely that anyone else could answer; who was paying teller at the bank when he first joined it, and where did he live? There was no answer. Ten minutes later the bell rang again. ‘They cut us off,’ he said, and then gave the reply correctly.

  “By this time I began to believe myself insane. ‘Where are you?’ I cried, ‘I want to see you at once.’ Again the telephone went dead. Two hours later the front door bell rang. It was Fisher. �
�Has he come?’ he cried. Fisher said that Fraser had driven to his house in a big touring car very early that morning, and called him out by honking. ‘I can’t stop,’ he had said. ‘I’m on the track of the stolen money. Meet me at Macpherson’s at two.’

  “I forgot to tell you that inquiry at Fraser’s rooms showed that he had left about 6 on Friday, saying that he would be out until late. He had not returned, so far as the landlady knew; but he had a latchkey. However, his bed had not been slept in.

  “I waited with Fisher until three o’clock. There was no Fraser, and no further word of him. I had telephoned the police to trace the calls I had received, and obtained the reply that no record had been kept. The operator fancied that it was some exchange in South-West London; but enquiries at those exchanges produced no result.

  “About one o’clock on Monday morning two cyclist policemen, returning from the patrol of the Ewing road, heard an explosion in front of them. Turning a corner, they came upon a powerful car, its lights out, its identification marks erased. In this car was the body of Fraser, the bowels torn out by a shot from a heavy revolver, one of the Bank revolvers. In the pockets were a signed photograph of Miss Clavering, a watch, a handkerchief, six hundred pounds of the stolen money, and some loose gold and other coins. I saw the body this morning; it was undoubtedly that of Fraser. But the doctors said he had been dead since Sunday afternoon!

  “This was at eight o’clock; I went to the Bank at nine; among my mail was a telegram from Fraser. ‘Everything all right now. Consider the incident closed.’ The police brought me the original, which had been handed in by Fraser himself, apparently, at a near-by office in Cornhill; it was in his own handwriting.

  “There’s the case so far. Man, it defies the imagination!”

  “No, no!” replied Iff briskly, “it defies the conventions of the routine of banking business.”

  IV

  Macpherson opened his eyes in amazement. He did not in the least comprehend the point of view.

  “Let me try to make this matter clear to you.”

  “Clear!”

  “Like all mundane matters, its complexity is illusion. Let us begin at the beginning. The soul of man is free and radiant, like the sun; his mind light or dark as he happens to be illuminated by that soul. We call this night; but it is only that we are in the shadow of the earth itself; the sun is shining gloriously, I make no doubt, in China.”

  “I don’t see how this bears on the robbery and murders, Mr. Iff.”

  “Exactly. Which is why you are only Mr. Macpherson of the Midlothian and Ayrshire, instead of Lord Macpherson, pulling the financial strings of the whole world. Observe; you know all about banking; good. But you make the mistake of not seeing that banking is only one of the smallest fragments of knowledge needed by a banker. Your acquaintance with Shakespeare is a good sign — yet I feel sure that it has never occurred to you to put that bit of your brain to work on the rest of it. The cleverest banker I know is passionately devoted to the Russian Ballet; Nijinsky pirouettes before him; he translates Nijinsky’s legs into the movements of the gold supply, and out comes a scheme to shake the world.”

  The Scot shook his head. “I ken the mon ye mean; but it’s juist an accident.”

  “There are no accidents in this world. There are only ignorances of the causes of certain events.”

  “Oh ay! that’s true. Davie Hume said that.”

  “I see you’re a scholar, Mr. Macpherson. Now do let us try to use these qualities to explain the problems which at present beset you. — To begin: You are puzzled by the complexity of the case. To me, on the other hand, the fact simplifies it at once. I perceive that the entire drama has been staged by a highly-colored and imaginative mind.”

  “Fraser’s mind was as prosaic as his own ledgers.”

  “Precisely. Fraser is clearly an entirely passive agent in the whole business. Note, please, how Mr. Some One Not Fraser has obsessed you with the name Fraser. Even when Fraser’s body is found dead, you somehow feel that he is responsible. In other words, Mr. Some One has shouted Fraser at you till your ears are dinned.

  “Now let us look at the facts in detail. Practically everything you have told me is an Appearance of Fraser, like a ghost story.

  “Either he is there or he writes or telephones. He’s the busiest man in England all this week-end. He has two of his own corpses to play with, and his wire this morning leads you to hope that he is still alive.”

  “I loved that lad like my own son.”

  “Yes, yes; but you must forget that for a moment; or rather, you must detach yourself from it, and regard it merely as one of the facts in the case.

  “Now let us recapitulate the Appearances of Fraser. Check me as I go, please.

  “One. At the bank at nine on Saturday. Anything suspicious?”

  “Well, yes, now you say so. I can imagine a personation, aided by the neuralgia. But I had no suspicion at the time. And if it were not Fraser, why did he come?”

  “To prepare the minds of the others for his visit number two.”

  “But they were surprised to see him.”

  “Just what he wanted, perhaps. Yet I’m not sure. He may have done it merely because that it was unlikely that he should do it. The man’s prime intention was to confuse and bewilder your mind.”

  “He did that!”

  “Number Two. Sure that was the real Fraser?”

  “No; but Fisher didn’t doubt it.”

  “Fisher’s mind was prepared by your recognition of him earlier in the day. Or — wait a minute. That may be merely what clever Mr. Some One wants us to think. Wait a moment.”

  There was a long pause.

  “If that were so,” continued Simon Iff, “it would look as if Mr. Some One were trying to make things easier for Fisher. Has Fisher acted naturally throughout?”

  “Perfectly. He’s an exemplary man for a subordinate position.”

  “Yet he grows roses. That’s a suspicious trait. Rose gardening is a devilish pursuit!”

  “Ye’re joking, man.”

  “Oh, a Scotsman can see a joke when there isn’t one there! However, to go on to Number Three. Vision of Fraser at Euston. Now that was certainly not Fraser.”

  “Why not?”

  “He didn’t count his change. You tell me he’s the most accurate man you ever had.”

  “Never made an error or so much as an erasure in ten years.”

  “You see! If that man were walking in his sleep he’d still get his figures right. It’s part of his being.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “Note too that he does everything, not too unusual, to get the clerk to remember him. In fact, we might think that he took the short change on purpose to attract notice. It would strike Fraser to do such a thing. So he may have been Fraser after all.

  “Number Four. Brighton. Again the identification is very doubtful.

  “Number Five. Ilfracombe. Here the corpse is certainly not Fraser’s; yet all pains are taken to make us think that it is his.”

  “But that’s so silly, when he is going to bob up again a few hours later.”

  “All done to keep you happy during the week-end!

  “Number Six. The first telephone call.”

  “That was his voice. He spoke as if in pain, as on the Saturday.”

  “Still doubtful, then. Number Seven. The second telephone call.”

  “It’s most improbable that anyone else could have got the information. He could have no idea that I would ask.”

  “But he might have got it from Fraser in the intervals between the calls.”

  “And why should Fraser give it, if he’s not in the game?”

  “Ah!”

  “But I’m dead sure of his voice. On the Saturday I might have doubted; I was not paying attention. But this time I was concentrating my whole mind on the question of identity. And, ye ken, identity’s a question of constant and primary importance to a banker.”

  “I agree with yo
u. Number Eight. Fraser at Tooting. Here we have only Fisher’s identification, which we suspected once before, though there’s no reason to do so in either case. Yet we note that Fraser makes an appointment which he does not keep; nor does he refer to it in his telephone call. Number Nine. Fraser’s corpse again, this time the real thing. No doubt possible?”

  “None. The face was quite uninjured. I knew every freckle by heart.”

  “And no disguise possible, of course. It would have been easy to blow away the head; so Mr. Some One Clever wanted you to find him. Yet the doctors say the man had been dead twelve hours?”

  “Nearly that; an hour more or less.”

  “I wonder if Mr. Clever thought that might have been overlooked. You see, I’m sure it wasn’t suicide, though it was made to look like it. I’m sure this last scene — for I shall dismiss Number Ten, this morning’s telegram, as an obvious fake; the wire was written out long beforehand — this last scene was most carefully stage-managed. And what is the significant article, the one thing to attract our attention? The picture of Miss Clavering!”

  “I can’t see the bearing of that, on any theory.”

  “Luckily, I’ve got no theory, so far. Let’s boil down these facts. The only visions you are sure of are not visions at all. You heard Fraser on Sunday morning; but so far as you can be absolutely certain, he has not been seen alive since Friday night.”

  “That’s so, by heaven!”

  “Did he ever meet Miss Clavering that night?”

  “No; she had made the appointment with him, as it chanced, in the bank itself, where she called on Friday morning to draw a hundred pounds. She looked ill, and I remarked on it. She replied that she had drawn the money for the very purpose of resting over Easter at Ostend. But she did not go. That afternoon, shopping in Bond street, she slipped on a banana skin, and twisted her ankle. A doctor took her to her house in John street. Her servants had been given a holiday from Saturday to correspond with her own, and she allowed them to go as if nothing had happened; a nurse is with her, and prepares her food. The doctor calls twice daily. Of course she was the first person whom we questioned. It is extraordinary that Fraser should not have called there that evening.”