I HAVE BEEN ASKED TO make my contribution to the curious history of the disappearance of Mr. Daniel Penrose, and I accordingly do so; but not without reluctance and a feeling that my contribution is but a retailing of the smallest of small beer. For the truth is that of that strange disappearance I knew nothing at the time, and, even now, my knowledge is limited to what I have learned from those who were directly concerned in the investigation. Still, I am assured that the little that I have to tell will elucidate the accounts which the investigators will presently render of the affair, and I shall, therefore, with the above disclaimer, proceed with my somewhat trivial narrative.
Whenever my thoughts turn to that extraordinary case, there rises before me the picture of a certain antique shop in a by-street of Soho. And quite naturally; for it was in that shop that I first set eyes on Daniel Penrose, and it was in connection with that that my not very intimate relations with Penrose existed.
It was a queer little shop; an antique shop in both senses. For not only were the goods that it contained one and all survivors from the past, but the shop was an antique in itself. Indeed, it was probably a more genuine museum piece than anything in its varied and venerable stock, with its small-paned window bulging in a double curve—as shop-fitters could make them in the eighteenth century—and glazed with the original crown glass, greenish in tone and faintly streaked, like an oyster-shell, with concentric lines. I dated the shop at the first half of the eighteenth century, basing my estimate on a pedimented stone tablet at the corner of the street; which set forth the name, “Nassau Street in Whetten’s Buildings,” and the date, 1734. It was a pleasant and friendly shop, though dingy; dignified and reticent, too, for the fascia above the window bore only, in dull gilt letters, the name of the proprietor, “D. Parrott.”
For some time I remained under the belief that this superscription referred to some former incumbent of the premises whose name was retained for the sake of continuity, since the only persons whom I encountered in my early visits were Mrs. Pettigrew, who appeared to manage the business, and, more rarely, her daughter, Joan, a strikingly good-looking girl of about twenty; a very modern young lady, frank, friendly and self-possessed, quite well informed on the subject of antiques, though openly contemptuous of the whole genus.
Presently, however, I discovered that Parrott, so far from being a mere disembodied name, was a very real person. He was, in fact, the mainspring of the establishment, for he was not only the buyer—and an uncommonly good buyer—but he had quite a genius for converting mere dismembered carcasses into hale and hearty pieces of furniture. Somewhere in the regions behind the shop he had a workshop where, with the aid of an incredibly aged cabinet-maker named Tims, he carried out the necessary restorations. And they were real restorations, not fakes; honest repairs carried out for structural reasons and left open and undisguised. I came to have a great respect for Mr. Parrott.
My first visit was undoubtedly due to the ancient shop-front. But when I crossed the narrow street to examine it and discovered in the window a court cupboard and a couple of Jacobean chairs, I decided to avail myself of the courteous invitation, written on a card, to enter and inspect and indulge a mild passion for ancient furniture.
There were three persons in the shop; a comely woman of about fifty, who greeted me with a smile and a little bow, and thereafter took no further notice of me; a stout, jovial, rather foxy-looking gentleman who was inspecting a trayful of old silver; and a small clerical-looking gentleman who appeared to be disembowelling a bloated verge watch and prying into its interior through a watchmaker’s eye-glass, which stuck miraculously in his eye, giving him somewhat the appearance of a one-eyed lobster.
“Now,” said the stout gentleman, “that’s quite an elegant little milk-jug, in my opinion. Don’t you agree with me, Mrs. Pettigrew?”
I looked at him in some surprise. For the thing was not a milk-jug. It was a coffee-pot. However, Mrs. Pettigrew did not contest the description. She merely agreed that the shape was pleasant and graceful.
“I am glad, Mrs. Pettigrew,” said the stout gentleman, regarding the coffee-pot with his head on one side, “that you regard the lactiferous receptacle with favour. I am encouraged and confirmed. The next question is that of the date of its birthday. I am reluctant to interrupt the erudite Mr. Polton in his studies of the internal anatomy of the Carolean warming-pan, but I have no skill in galactophorous genealogies. May I venture?”
He held out the coffee-pot engagingly towards the small gentleman, who thereupon laid the watch down tenderly, removed the eye-glass from his eye and smiled. And I found Mr. Polton’s smile almost as astonishing as the other gentleman’s vocabulary. It was the most amazingly wrinkly smile that I have ever seen, but yet singularly genial and pleasant. And here I may remark that this amiable little gentleman was for some time a profound mystery to me. I could make nothing of him. I could not place him socially or otherwise. By his appearance, he might—in different raiment—have been a dignitary of the Church. His deferential manner suggested some superlative kind of manservant, but his hands and his comprehensive and inexhaustible knowledge of the products of the ancient crafts hinted at the dealer or expert collector. It was only after I had known him some months that the mystery was resolved through the medium of a legal friend, as will be related in due course. To return to the present incident, Mr. Polton took the coffee-pot in his curiously prehensile hands, beamed on it approvingly, and, having stuck his eye-glass in his eye, examined the hall-mark and the maker’s “touch.”
“It was made,” he reported, “in 1765 by a man named John Hammond, who had a shop in Water Lane, Fleet Street. And an excellent tradesman he must have been.”
“There, now!” exclaimed the stout gentleman. “Just listen to that! It’s my belief that Mr. Polton carries in his head a complete directory of all the artful craftsmen and crafty artists who ever made anything, with the dates of every piece they made. Don’t you agree, Mrs. Pettigrew?”
“Yes, indeed!” she replied. “His knowledge is perfectly wonderful. Perhaps,” she added, addressing Mr. Polton, “you can tell us something about that watch. It is said to have belonged to Prince Charlie, and, of course, that would add to its value if it were really the fact. What do you think, Mr. Polton?”
“Well, ma’am,” was the cautious reply, “I see no reason why it should not have belonged to him, if he was not a very punctual gentleman. It was made in Edinburgh in 1735, and there is a crucifix engraved inside the outer case. I don’t know what the significance of that may be.”
“Neither do I,” said the lady. “What do you think, Mr. Penrose?”
“I should say,” replied the stout gentleman, “that the evidence is conclusive. Charles Edward, being a Scotchman, would have a Scottish watch; and being a papistical Romanist would naturally have a crucifix engraved in it. Q.E.D.”
Mrs. Pettigrew smiled indulgently, and, as Mr. Penrose had indicated his adoption of the coffee-pot, she proceeded to swathe it in tissue-paper and make it up into a presentable parcel; and, meanwhile, I browsed round the premises and inspected those specimens of the stock which were more particularly within my province. But it was not a very peaceful inspection, for Mr. Penrose persisted in accompanying me and expounding and commenting upon the various pieces in terms which I found rather distracting. For Mr. Penrose, as the reader has probably observed, was a wag, and his waggery took the form of calling things by quaintly erroneous names and of using odd and facetious circumlocutions; which was all very well at first and was even mildly amusing, but it very soon became tiresome. A constant effort was necessary to arrive at what he really meant.
However, in the end, I lighted upon a bible-box of dark-brown oak, pleasantly carved and bearing the incised date, 1653, and, as the little chest rather took my fancy and the price marked on the attached ticket seemed less than its value, I closed with Mrs. Pettigrew, and, having paid for my purchase and given the address to which it was to be sent, took my departure. And, as I strolled at a leisurely pace in the direction of Wardour Street, I reflected idly on my late experience, and especially on the three rather unusual persons whose acquaintance I had just made. I am not in general a curious man, but I found in each of these three persons matter for speculation. There was Mrs. Pettigrew, for instance. Admirably as she played her part in the economy of the shop, she did not completely fit her surroundings. One is accustomed nowadays to finding women of a very superior class serving in shops. But not quite of Mrs. Pettigrew’s type. She gave me the impression of being very definitely a lady; and I found myself speculating on the turn of the wheel of Fortune that had brought her there.
Then there was the enigmatical Mr. Polton with his strangely prehensile hands and his astonishing memory for hall-marks. And there was the facetious Penrose. And at this point, being then about halfway along Gerrard Street, the subject of my reflections overtook me and announced himself characteristically by expressing the hope that I was pleased with my bacon cupboard. I replied that I was quite pleased with my purchase and had thought it decidedly cheap.
“So did I,” said he. “But our psittacoid friend has the wisdom to temper the breeze to the shorn collector.”
“Our psittacoid friend?” I repeated.
“I refer to the tropic bird who presides over the museum of domestic archaeology,” he explained, and, as I still looked at him questioningly, he added, by way of elucidation: “The proprietor of the treasure-house of antiquities in which you discovered the repository of ancestral piety.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “You mean Mr. Parrott.”
“Certainly!” he replied. “Did I not say so?”
“Perhaps you did,” I admitted, with a slightly sour laugh; at which he smiled his peculiar, foxy smile, looking at me out of the corners of his eyes, and evidently pleased at having “stumped” me. It was a pleasure that he must have enjoyed pretty often.
“I take it,” he resumed, after a short pause, “that you, like myself, are a devotee of St. Margaret Pie?”
I considered this fresh puzzle and decided that the solution was “magpie”; and apparently I was right as he did not correct me.
“No,” I replied, “there is nothing of the magpie about me. I don’t accumulate old things for the sake of forming a collection. I buy old furniture and use it. One must have furniture of some kind, old or new, and I prefer the old. It was made by men who knew all about it and who enjoyed making it and took their time. It is much more companionable to live with than new machine-made stuff, turned out by the thousand by people who don’t care a straw what it is like. But my object is quite utilitarian. I am no collector.”
“Ah!” said he, “that isn’t my case. I am a convinced disciple of the great John Daw, a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles, a hoarder of miscellaneous treasure. Nothing comes amiss to me, from a blue diamond to a Staffordshire dog.”
“Have you no special fancy?” I asked.
“I have a special fancy for any relic of the past that I can lay hands on,” he replied. “But perhaps, like the burglars, I have a particular leaning towards precious stones—those and the other kind of stones—the siliceous variety—with which our impolite forefathers used to fracture one another’s craniums.”
“Your collection must take up a lot of space,” I remarked.
“It does,” said he. “That’s the trouble. John Daw’s nest has a tendency to overflow. And still they come. I’m always finding fresh treasures.”
“By the way,” said I, “where do you find the stuff?”
“Oh, call it not stuff,” he protested, regarding me with a foxy smile. “I spoke of treasures. As to where I discover them; well, well, surely there is a mine for silver and a place for gold where they refine it; a place also—many places, mostly cottage parlours, that no bird of prey knoweth, neither hath the travelling dealer’s eye seen them, where may be found ancestral Wrotham pots and Staffordshire figures, to say nothing of venerable tickers and crocks from far Cathay. These the wise collector makes a note of—and locks up the note.”
I was half amused and half exasperated by his evasive verbiage and his unabashed, and quite unnecessary caution. A mighty secretive gentleman, this, I reflected; and proceeded to fire a return shot.
“In effect,” said I, “you go rooting about in cottage parlours, snapping up rustic heirlooms, probably at a fraction of their value.”
“Undoubtedly,” he agreed, with a snigger. “That is the essence of the sport. I once, in a labourer’s cottage, picked up a genuine ‘Vicar and Moses’ by Ralph Wood for five shillings. But that was a windfall.”
“It wasn’t much of a windfall for the owner,” I remarked.
“He was quite satisfied,” said Penrose, “and so was I. What more would you have? But windfalls are not frequent, and when they fail I fall back on the popinjay.”
“The pop—Oh, you mean Mr. Parrott?”
“Exactly,” said he. “Our friend Monsieur le Perroquet. Actually, I let him do most of the rooting about. He knows all the ropes, and, as we agreed, he doesn’t demand payment through the proboscis.”
“No,” said I, “he doesn’t appear to be grasping, to judge by the price of my own purchase; and I gather that you have got most of your stuff—I beg pardon; treasure—from him.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he replied. “Mere purchase from a dealer is a dull affair, though necessary. But one wants the sport as well, the pleasure of the chase, not to mention those of the pick and shovel.”
“The pick and shovel!” I repeated. “That sounds as if you did a little in the resurrection line. You are not a tomb-robber, I trust?”
I was, of course, only jesting, but he took me up quite seriously.
“But why not? We may grant the impropriety of disturbing the repose of the freeholders in Finchley Cemetery. Besides, they have nothing but their bones, which, at present, are not collector’s pieces. But our rude forefathers had a foolish—but, for us, convenient—habit of taking their goods and chattels to bed with them, so to speak. Now, a man’s title to his goods, after his decease, does not extend to an indefinite period. When a deceased gentleman has enjoyed the possession of his chattels for a couple of thousand years or more, I think he ought to be satisfied. His title has lapsed by the effluxion of time; and my title, by right of discovery, has come into being. The expression ‘tomb-robber’ is not applicable to an archaeological excavator. Don’t you agree?”
I admitted that excavation for scientific purposes seemed to be a permissible proceeding, though I had secret doubts as to whether the expression was properly applicable to his activities. He did not impress me as a scientific investigator.
“But,” I asked, “what sort of things do you turn up when you go a-digging?”
“All sorts of things,” he replied. “Mostly preposterous stone substitutes for cutlery, decayed and fragmentary pots and pans, with an occasional—very occasional—torque or brooch and portions of the deceased proprietor. But I leave those. I don’t collect proprietors.”
“And I suppose,” said I, “that when you find a gold or silver ornament you notify the coroner of the discovery of treasure trove?”
“That,” he replied with his queer, foxy smile, “is indispensable. But you seem to be interested in my miscellaneous gleanings. I wonder if you would care to cast a supercilious eye on my little hoard. I don’t often display my treasures because your regular collector is usually a man of one idea—indefinitely repeated—and he is disappointed to find that I am not. But you, like myself, are more eclectic in taste and I should have great pleasure in introducing you to Aladdin’s Cave, if you would care to inspect its contents.”
I was not, really, particularly interested, but yet I was faintly curious as to the nature of his “hoard.” It sounded like a very queer collection, and might include some objects of real interest. Besides which, the man, himself, despite his exasperating verbosity and obscurities of speech, rather attracted me. Accordingly, I accepted his invitation, and, when we had exchanged visiting cards and arranged the day and hour of my visit, we separated; he shaping a course in a westerly direction and I bearing east, towards my chambers in Lincoln’s Inn.
MR. PENROSE’S RESIDENCE OR JOHN Daw’s Nest, as he would have called it, was situated in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, and, what is more, it was one of the few remaining original houses, dating back to the time when residents could look out of their windows through the open end of the square, across the meadows to the heights of Highgate. Appropriately to the house of a collector of antiquities, its door was garnished with a pair of link-extinguishers, as well as with a fine brass knocker and an old-fashioned bell-handle.
A flourish on the knocker, reinforced by a hearty tug at the bell-pull, resulted in the opening of the door and the appearance thereat of an elderly man of depressed and nephritic aspect, with puffy eyelids and a complexion like that of a suet pudding. He received the announcement of my identity with resignation, and, having admitted me, took my hat and stick and silently introduced me to a small room, the window of which commanded a view of the leaden statue of Her late Majesty, Queen Anne. At this window I had taken up a position from which I could contemplate that rather neglected example of an extinct art when the door opened briskly and Mr. Penrose entered.
“Ha!” said he, “I see you are admiring the mimic rendering of our proverbially deceased twenty-shilling Lady.”
“I am afraid,” said I, as we shook hands, “that your paraphrase fails in precision. You would have to pay thirty shillings to-day to buy a sovereign, if you could find one.”
“There,” he retorted, “is exemplified the pedantic accuracy of the legal mind. But I spoke in terms of the past. The aureous reality is now as dead as madame herself. But what think you of that masterpiece of the plumber’s art? I rather like it; and it is the genuine metal. I have tried it with my pocket-knife. To tell you a little secret, I had thought of making an offer for it.”
“Do you mean,” I exclaimed, “that you want to buy it?”
“If it should come into the market,” he replied. “Unfortunately it has not, up to the present.”
“But what on earth could you do with a leaden statue?” I protested.
“Put it in my gallery,” he replied, “if the floor would stand it.”
“You can take it,” said I, “that it would not. Why, the thing must weigh tons. Besides, it is much better in the place that it was made to occupy and which it does really adorn in its rather mouldy way.”
“In short,” said he, “you think me a bit of a vandal” (which was the literal truth). “Well, you needn’t be alarmed. It is safe from my acquisitive instincts for the present.”
He turned to a nondescript piece of furniture, half cupboard and half armoire, and, opening a door, took out a decanter and two glasses, which he placed on the table.
“Before we venture into Aladdin’s Cave,” said he, taking out the stopper of the decanter, “shall we fortify ourselves with a morsel of cake?”
He looked at me interrogatively as he picked up the decanter. Of course, there was no cake visible; but my growing skill in interpreting his verbal puzzles enabled me to diagnose the dark-brown wine as Madeira.
Without giving me time to refuse, he filled the two glasses, and, having handed me one, proceeded in a very deliberate and workmanlike fashion to empty the other.
“The vintages of the Fortunate Isles,” said he, as he refilled his glass, “have always commended themselves to me, rivalled only in my affection by the product of the vines of Xeres” (he pronounced the name in the Spanish manner, “Hereth,” as a slight additional precaution against being too readily understood), “preferably the elderly and fuscous variety.”
I noted the fact—while he filled his third glass—as explaining the vinous aroma which I had noticed in Parrott’s shop as apparently exhaling from his person. It turned out later to be not without significance. Madeira and old brown sherry by no means share the innocuousness of what Penrose would probably have called “the celestial herb.”
When I had resolutely declined a refill, he reluctantly returned the decanter to its abiding-place and locked the door thereof.
“And now,” said he, “we shall proceed to explore the secret recesses of the cavern.”
He conducted me out into the fine, spacious hall, from which a noble staircase gave access to the upper floors. In one swift glance I noted that the appointments were not worthy of the architecture, for the furniture—of which there was a good deal too much—consisted of undeniable “dentist’s oak,” and there were one or two shabby-looking busts, the obvious plaster of which had been varnished by some optimist in the hope that they might thereby be mistaken for bronze. But I had little opportunity for detailed inspection, for my host threw open, with something of a flourish, an adjacent door and motioned to me to enter; which I did, and found myself in one of a pair of great, lofty communicating rooms, and forthwith began my tour of inspection.
I had expected to find Mr. Penrose’s collection something of an oddity, but the reality far exceeded my expectations. It was an amazing hoard. Alike, in respect of matter and manner, it was astonishing and bewildering. Of the ordinary collector’s fastidious selection, prim tidiness and orderly arrangement there was no trace. The things that jostled one another on the crowded shelves and tables were in every respect incongruous; for, on the one hand, rare and valuable pieces, such as the “Vicar and Moses” and a fine slip-ware tyg, stood check by jowl with common, worthless oddments, and, on the other, the objects themselves were devoid of any sort of kinship or relation. The “Vicar,” for instance, was accompanied by a broken Roman pot, a few worthless fragments of Samian ware, a dried crab covered with acorn barnacles and half a dozen horse-brasses; while the tyg had as its immediate neighbour a Sheffield coffee-pot, a Tunbridge-ware wafer-box, a pewter candlestick and one or two flint implements.
The confusion and disorder that prevailed were perfectly astounding. These fine old rooms, with such splendid possibilities, suggested nothing more or less than the store of some curio dealer or the premises of an auctioneer on the day preceding a sale of miscellaneous property. I ventured tentatively to comment on the lack of arrangement.
“You have certainly got a very remarkable collection,” said I, “but don’t you think that its interest would be increased if you adopted some sort of classification? Here, for instance, is a wine-glass, a Jacobite glass, apparently.”
“Not apparently,” he objected. “Actually. An undoubtedly genuine piece. An appropriate memorial, too. ‘Charlie loved good ale and wine.’”
“So he did, as ‘his nose doth show’ in the portraits. But why put this glass next to that barbaric-looking pot? There is no relation whatever between the two things.”
“There is the relation of unlikeness,” he replied. “And don’t disparage that rare and precious pot. It is extremely ancient. Prehistoric. Neolithic, I believe, is the correct word.”
“But why not put all the prehistoric pots together instead of mixing them up with table-glass and Scandinavian carvings?”
“That would seem a dull arrangement,” said he. “You would lose the effect of variety, the thrill of unexpectedness. How delightful, for instance, after considering this book of hours and this highly ornate sternutatorium"—he indicated a handsome tortoise-shell snuff-box—"to come upon these siliceous relics of the childhood of the race—also neolithic, I believe—the products of my own fossatory activities.”
The “relics” referred to consisted of half a dozen rough flint nodules which looked as if they might have been gathered from a road-mender’s heap. They may have been genuine flint implements, but they were certainly not neolithic. No one with the most elementary knowledge of stone implements could have supposed that they were. But my host’s easy-going acceptance of them, and his indifference as to the actual facts, brought home to me a state of mind at which I wondered more and more as I examined this amazing collection.
For, in the first place, Mr. Penrose displayed the most complete and comprehensive ignorance of “antiques” of every kind. He knew no more of them than their names, and he frequently got those wrong. But not only was he ignorant. He was quite indifferent. He seemed to be totally devoid of interest in the individual things which he had accumulated; and the question that I asked myself was what earthly object he could have had in making this enormous and miscellaneous collection. Apparently, he was possessed by an insatiable acquisitiveness, with no other motive behind it. Mere possession seemed to be the object of his desire; and with mere possession he appeared to be satisfied. Not without reason had he likened himself to “The Great John Daw.”
My long tour of inspection came at last to an end. I had examined the collection very thoroughly, not only to please my host—though he was evidently gratified and flattered by the interest that I displayed in his “hoard"—but because it contained, mingled with a good deal of rubbish, many curious and beautiful objects that invited examination. The last piece that I inspected was an ancient gold brooch, richly decorated with gilt filigree work and set with garnets. I lifted it tenderly from the dusty scrap of paper (marked in pencil with the number 963) on which it rested and carried it to the window to look at it in a better light.
“This is a very fine piece of work, Mr. Penrose,” I remarked.
“Ha!” said he, “the papistical fibula commends itself. I am glad you like it.”
“A Roman fibula!” I exclaimed in surprise. “I should have taken it for a Saxon brooch.”
“You may be right,” he admitted; “in fact, I am inclined to think that you are. At any rate, it is one or the other.”
“But,” I protested, “surely you keep some sort of record. I see that the pieces are numbered. Haven’t you a catalogue?”
“To be sure I have,” he replied. “Excellent idea! We’ll get out the Domesday Book and see which of us is right.”
He pulled out the drawer of a table and produced therefrom a manuscript book which he opened and began to turn over the leaves. Still holding the brooch, I stepped across to him and looked over his shoulder. And then I got a fresh surprise, though I ought to have been prepared for something unusual. For if the collection was eccentric, the catalogue was positively fantastic. It seemed to be (and probably was) expressly designed to be as completely unintelligible as possible. The brief entries, scribbled illegibly in pencil, were apparently worded in Mr. Penrose’s peculiar, cryptic dialect, and, for the most part, I could make nothing of them. Running my eye down the pages, I deciphered with difficulty such entries as: “Up +. Mudlarks,” “Sammy. Pot sand. Sinbad,” “Funereal flower-pot, Julie-Polly,” “Carver, Jul. Pop.”
I stood gazing in speechless astonishment at this amazing record while Penrose slowly turned the leaves, glancing slyly at me from time to time, apparently to see how I took it. At length—at unnecessary length—Number 963 was found; but it was not very illuminating—to me—for it consisted only of the laconic statement, “Sweeney’s resurrection.” Apparently, however, it conveyed something to him, for he said, “Yes, you are right. I recollect now.” But he did not enter into any particulars.
I laid the brooch down on its slip of paper and began to think of departing; and meanwhile he looked at me with a very odd expression; an expression of mingled anxiety and hesitation.
“I have to thank you, Mr. Penrose,” said I, “for a very pleasant and profitable afternoon. It was very good of you to let me see all your treasures. I have seen them all, I suppose?”
He did not reply for a few moments, but continued to look at me in that queer, anxious, irresolute fashion. Suddenly, his hesitation gave way and he burst out in low, impressive tones, in a manner of the deepest secrecy:
“The fact is that you haven’t. There is another little hoard, which I don’t show to any one, but just float over in secret. I don’t even mention its existence. But, somehow I feel tempted to make an exception in your case. What do you say? Would you like to have a peep at the contents of Bluebeard’s chamber?”
“This sounds rather alarming,” said I. “Were there not certain penalties for undue curiosity?”
“I hold you immune from those,” he replied. “Only I stipulate that this private view shall be a really private view, to be spoken of to nobody. I can rely on you to keep my secret?”
I did not much like this. Like most lawyers, I am a cautious man, and cautious men do not care to be made the unprivileged repositories of other people’s secrets. But I could hardly refuse; and when I had, rather reluctantly, given the required undertaking, he moved off towards a door in a corner of the room and I followed, wondering anxiously what he was going to show me and whether it would commit me to any unlawful knowledge.
The room into which he led me—and of which he closed and bolted the door—was a smallish apartment, at one end of which was a massive mahogany cupboard or armoire. When he had unlocked this and thrown open the doors, there was revealed the steel front of a large safe or small strong-room. Apparently the safe-key was not in his bunch, for he returned the latter to his pocket and then, retiring a few paces, stood with his back to me while he dived into some secret recesses of his clothing. In a few moments he turned round, rather red from his exertions, and stepped up to the safe with the key in his hand, while I watched with growing curiosity.
The lock clicked softly, a turn of the handle withdrew the bolts and the ponderous door swung open, disclosing a range of shallow drawers which occupied the whole of the interior. My host, first withdrawing the key and slipping it into his waistcoat pocket, proceeded to pull out the top drawer and carry it to a table under the window. And then I breathed a sigh of relief. There was nothing incriminating, after all. The drawer was simply filled with jewellery, looking, indeed, like a tray from a jeweller’s window. My host’s secrecy was naturally and reasonably explained by the value of his treasures and their highly portable and negotiable character.
I looked over the contents of the drawer with keen interest, for I am rather fond of gems, though I have no special knowledge of them. My host, too, showed a pleasure and enthusiasm in regard to the things, themselves, which contrasted strikingly with the indifference that he had displayed towards the general collection.
Yet, even here, there was no glimmer of connoisseur-ship. His manner suggested mere miserly gloating; and his ignorance of these beautiful baubles astonished me. It was suggested by the absence of any classification, by the way in which totally unrelated stones were jumbled together, and the suggestion was confirmed by his comments. For instance, in this first drawer were two cat’s-eyes placed side by side; but they belonged to totally different categories. One, a dark yellowish-green stone with a bright band of bluish light, was a cymophane or true cat’s-eye—a chrysoberyl. The other, a charming stone of the hue known as “honey yellow,” was a quartz cat’s-eye and should have been placed with the other quartz gems. I ventured to comment on the fact, referring to the cymophane as a chrysoberyl, but he interrupted me with the protest:
“Chrysoberyl! Violin-bows, my dear sir! Gall not the optic of the fair Tabitha a chrysoberyl.”
As he obviously knew—and cared—nothing of the actual characters of precious stones, I did not pursue the question, but continued my inspection of the really interesting and remarkable collection. The admiration that I expressed evidently gave him considerable pleasure and he also made admiring comments from time to time, though without much appearance of taste or discrimination. But his enthusiasm did really wake up when he brought forth the third drawer, which was devoted entirely to opals, and as these beautiful gems are special favourites of mine, we examined them with sympathetic pleasure.
It was a really magnificent collection, and what rather surprised me (considering the collector’s comprehensive ignorance) was its genuinely representative character. There were specimens of every variety of the gem. Of the noble, or precious, opal a long range of examples was shown, of all the varied rainbow hues and of various sizes up to nearly an inch in diameter; some in plain mounts but most of them encircled with borders of rose diamonds or brilliants. There were harlequin opals, Mexican fire opals, glowing like blazing coals, black opals, a large series of the common, non-prismatic form, of various hues, and one or two examples of the dark, pitchy “root” or matrix streaked and speckled with points of prismatic colour.
But the gem of the collection, in interest if not in beauty, was a cameo, cut in a disc of precious opal embedded in its dark matrix. The oval slab of matrix, carrying the glowing cameo, was worked into a pendant with a broad border of small rose diamonds and coloured stones forming the design of a rose, a thistle and a central star, while, at the bottom, worked in tiny diamonds, was the word “Fiat”; which, with the engraved portrait of a middle-aged gentleman in a wig, gave a clue to the significance of the jewel.
As I pored over this curious memorial, Penrose watched me with a smile of evident gratification.
“My favourite child,” he remarked, taking it out of its compartment and handing it to me, together with a magnifying glass. “Just look at the detail of the face.”
I examined it through the lens and was greatly impressed by the perfection of the modelling on so minute a scale.
“Yes,” I said, “it is quite a wonderful piece of work. One gets the impression that it might be a really good portrait. And now I know,” I added, as I returned the jewel to him, “why you swore me to secrecy.”
He paused with the trinket in his hand, looking at me with a distinctly startled expression.
“What do you mean?” he demanded.
“Well,” I replied, “you must admit that it is a rather incriminating object to have in your possession.”
He gazed at me uneasily, almost with an appearance of alarm, and rejoined: “I don’t understand you. How, incriminating?”
I chuckled with mischievous satisfaction. For an inveterate joker, he seemed decidedly “slow in the uptake.”
“Doesn’t it occur to you,” I replied, “that a portrait of James Francis Edward, the King over the water, cherished secretly by a presumably loyal subject of His Majesty George the Fifth, tends to suggest highly improper political sentiments? I call it rank sedition.”
“Oh, I see what you mean,” said he, with an uneasy laugh, apparently relieved—and slightly annoyed—at my schoolboy jest, “but sedition of that kind is a trifle threadbare in these days.”
He returned the jewel to its place in the drawer and carried the latter back to the safe. As he slid it in, he remarked:
“That’s the last of the gem collection. The other drawers contain coins. You may as well see them, too.”
I went through the coin collection and was rather surprised at its range, for it included ancient coins, Greek, Roman, Gaulish and British and English coins from the Middle Ages down to the late spade guineas. But all that remains in my memory concerning them is that the different periods seemed to be mixed up, with an almost total lack of order, and that there appeared to be an abnormal proportion of gold coins. When the last of the drawers had been examined and returned and the safe and its enclosing cupboard had been closed and locked, I began once more to think of taking my leave. But my host pressed me to stay and take a cup of tea with him, and, when I had accepted his invitation, he conducted me back through the large gallery to the room into which I had first been shown. Here, the melancholy manservant—who answered to the name of Kickweed—presently brought us tea and drew a couple of arm-chairs up to the table.
“This collection of yours,” I remarked, as my host poured out the tea, “must represent a large amount of sunk capital.”
“I hardly regard it as sunk,” he replied, “seeing that I have the use and enjoyment of my treasures; but the collection is worth a lot of money—at least, I hope it is. It has cost a lot.”
“So I should suppose,” said I; “and it must cost you something quite substantial in the matter of insurance.”
“Ah!” said he, “I am glad you raised that question. For the fact is that the collection is not insured at all. I have intended to go into the matter, but there are certain difficulties that have put me off. Now, I dare say you know a good deal about insurance.”
“I know something about the legal aspects,” I replied, “and such knowledge as I possess is at your disposal. You certainly ought to be secured against what might be a very heavy loss. What are the difficulties that you refer to?”
“Well,” he answered in a low voice, leaning across the table, “I don’t want to go about proclaiming myself as the owner of a priceless collection. Might arouse interest in the wrong quarter, you see. And as to the gems, as I told you, they are a secret hoard the existence of which I disclose to nobody excepting yourself. You are the only person to whom I have shown them.”
“But,” I protested, “somebody must have sold them to you and must be aware that you have them.”
“They know that I have—or had—the individual jewels that they sold me, but they don’t know that I have a great and valuable collection. And I don’t want them to know; but that is the difficulty about the insurance. Before I could insure the collection, I should have to get it valued; and the valuer would have to see the gems; and then the cat would be out of the bag. At least, that is what I suppose. Perhaps I am wrong. Could I effect an insurance for a certain definite sum without calling in a valuer?”
“You mean,” I replied, “on a declaration that you had certain property of a certain value? No. I think a Company would want evidence that the property insured actually existed and was of the value alleged; and in the event of a fire or a burglary, they certainly would not pay on property alleged to have been lost but which had never been proved to exist. But I think you are raising imaginary difficulties. You could stipulate that the valuation should be a strictly confidential transaction. Remember that the company’s interests are the same as your own. If they insure you against burglary, they won’t want you to be burgled.”
“No, that is true,” he admitted. “And you think I could rely on the secrecy of the valuer?”
“I have no doubt of it,” I replied, “particularly if you made clear your reasons for insisting on secrecy.”
“I am glad you think that,” said he, “and I shall act on your advice without delay. I will put the case to the manager of the Society which has insured this house.”
“I think you ought to do so at once,” I urged. “There must be many thousands of pounds’ worth of property in your collections and a fire or a burglary might sweep away the bulk of it in a night.”
He repeated, with emphasis, his intention to attend to the matter without further delay, and the subject then dropped. After a little more desultory conversation, I rose to take my leave; and the lugubrious Kickweed, having presented me with my hat and stick, let me out at the street door with the air of admitting me to the family vault.
As I wended homewards I found ample matter for reflection in the incidents of my visit; but chiefly my thoughts concerned themselves with my eccentric host. Mr. Penrose was certainly a very strange man, and the more I thought about him, the less did I feel able to understand him. He had so many oddities, and each of them suggested problems to which I could find no solution. There was the collection, for instance. Including the gems and coins, it must have been of very great value, and its accumulation must have entailed a vast expenditure of time and effort, to say nothing of the prodigious sums of money that must have been spent. But with what object? He had none of the ordinary collector’s expertness and enthusiasm. He had no special knowledge of any single class of objects, not even of the gems for which he professed so much affection. The motive force that impelled him to collect seemed to be simple acquisitiveness, the mere cupiditas habendi.
But the outstanding feature of his character was secretiveness. He was a secret man of the very deepest dye. His inveterate habit of secrecy coloured every word and action. The ridiculous jargon that he used, his silly circumlocutions and ellipses and paraphrases, were but phases of the tendency, as if he grudged to disclose the whole of his meaning. Even the preposterous catalogue revealed the same trait, for, while it seemed to have been made deliberately unintelligible, it was clear that the absurd entries held some hidden meaning which was intelligible to him.
It was not an endearing trait. None of us likes a secret man. And very naturally. For secrecy implies distrust; and, moreover, we are apt—again very naturally—to assume some reason for the secrecy, and to suspect that it is a discreditable reason. Thus it was with me in the present case; and my general dislike of the secret habit of mind was aggravated by the fact that I had become involved in the secrecy. The promise that had been exacted from me in regard to the gems recurred to me with a certain distaste and resentment. I was committed to the concealment of a fact which was no concern of mine and of the bearings of which I knew nothing. The explanations that Penrose had given for keeping secret his precious hoard were not unreasonable. But suppose there were other reasons. The thing was possible. Some collectors are not over-scrupulous; and I recalled not for the first time, the singular, startled expression with which he had looked at me when I made my foolish joke about the Jacobite jewel.
In short, I was not quite comfortable about that promise. There is something a little disturbing about a secret hoard of valuable gems; and, but for the fact that Penrose was obviously a man of ample means, my professional experiences might have caused me to ask myself whether this very odd collection might not cover some activities of a more questionable kind.
I DID NOT SEE PENROSE again for about a fortnight. Then, having occasion to call at Parrott’s shop to inquire after a gate-leg table which I had purchased and which was undergoing some necessary restorations, I encountered him, standing opposite to a lantern clock which had been fixed on a temporary bracket and was ticking cheerfully with every sign of robust health. Noting his evident interest in the venerable timepiece, I stopped to discuss it with him.
“You are looking at that clock, Mr. Penrose,” said I, “as if you contemplated making an investment.”
“I don’t contemplate,” he replied. “I investigated in it some time ago. It is a poor thing, but mine own.”
“I shouldn’t call it a poor thing,” said I. “It is quite a good clock and it looks to me as if it were absolutely intact and in its original condition. Which is unusual in the case of lantern clocks. People will tinker at them and spoil them. You were lucky to find an untouched specimen.”
“I didn’t,” said he. “When it came to me—through the usual psittacoid channel—it was a mere wreck. Some misbegotten Daedalus had eviscerated it and wrought havoc with its entrails. Thereupon I sought medicinal advice for the invalid and had it put under treatment.”
“You sent it to a clockmaker?” I suggested.
“I did not,” he replied. “It had had too much clockmaker already. I consulted the erudite and podophthalmate horologer, and behold!—it has renewed its youth like the eagle.”