The Peacock of Jewels

To find Barkers Inn was much the same to an ordinary person as looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack. Dick Latimer, however, knew its exact whereabouts, because he lived there, and on this foggy November night he was making for it unerringly with the homing instinct of a bee. Leaving Fleet Street behind him, somewhere about eleven-thirty, he turned into Chancery Lane, and then struck off to the right down a by-road which narrowed to an alley, and finally ended in a cul-de-sac. Here the young man hurried through the rusty iron gates of a granite archway, and found himself in an oblong courtyard paved with cobble-stones and surrounded by tumble-down houses with steep roofs of discolored tiles. A few steps took him across this to a crooked little door, which he entered to mount a crooked little staircase, and in one minute he was on the first-floor landing, where a tiny gas-jet pricked the gloom with a bluish spot of light. Hastily using his latchkey, he admitted himself through a door on the left into a stuffy dark passage, technically called the entrance hall. Eventually entering the sitting-room, he hurled himself into a creaking basket-chair, and gave thanks to the gods of home that he had arrived.

The friend with whom Latimer shared these Barkers Inn chambers was seated by the fire clothed comfortably in a suit of shabby old flannels, reading a letter and smoking a briar-root, complacently at ease. He nodded when Dick stormed into the room, and spoke with his pipe between his teeth.

“Beastly night, isn’t it?” remarked Mr. Fuller, who had been spending the evening at home very pleasantly.

“You’d say much more than that, Alan, my boy, if you’d been out in the fog,” retorted Latimer. “Bur-r-r I’m glad to be indoors and to find you still out of bed at the eleventh hour. I’ve had adventures: official adventures.”

“Connected with your employment as a journalist, I suppose,” said Fuller in a lazy manner, and tucking the letter into his breast pocket, “but seriously speaking, Dicky, are adventures to be found in this over-civilized city?”

“Romance stalks the London streets, more or less disguised as the commonplace, my son. I can a tale unfold, but sha’n’t do so until I change my kit and have a Scotch hot on the way to my mouth. Is the water boiling?” he demanded, directing his gaze towards the old-fashioned grate where a small black kettle fumed and hissed on the hob.

“It’s been boiling for me,” said Fuller, indicating an empty tumbler at his elbow, “but I’ve enough water for your needs.”

“I only hope you’ve left enough whisky, which is far more precious. Poke up the fire and warm my slippers and make a fuss over me. I want to be fussed,” said Dick plaintively, as he retreated to his bedroom, “for I’m a poor orphan boy alone in this foggy world.”

“Ass!” observed Alan politely, and exposed the soles of his friend’s slippers to the fire, “what about supper?”

“I’ve had that,” sang out Latimer, “at someone else’s cost.”

“You must have ruined him then with your appetite,” answered Fuller, laughing; while he tilted back his chair to place his feet against the mantelpiece and his hands behind his head. In this position he smoked quietly and admired the photograph of an extremely pretty girl, which stood beside the clock, while the small black kettle sang the song of home.

The room was both long and broad with a low whitewash ceiling, crossed with black oak beams, a somewhat slanting floor—owing to the great age of the building—and three squat windows which overlooked the dingy courtyard. These were draped with faded curtains of green rep, drawn at this late hour to exclude the cold, and before one stood the writing-table of Latimer, while the escritoire of Fuller bulked largely against the other. Between the two, and blocking the approach to the middle window, stretched a slippery horse-hair sofa, covered with a rugged Eastern shawl to hide its many deficiencies. A shabby Kidderminster carpet concealed the worn floor, but its sad hues were brightened by three or four gayly colored mats, purchased at a cheap price. The round table, the unmatched chairs, the heavy sideboard, the sofa aforesaid, and the chipped bookcase, were all the flotsam and jetsam of auction rooms, belonging, more or less, to the comfortably ugly style of the Albert period. On the plain green-papered walls were various photographs of men and women, with sundry college groups; pictures of football teams, cricketers and boating-crews; odd bits of china and miniature statues on brackets; likewise foils, fencing masks, boxing gloves and such-like paraphernalia of sport. It was a real man’s room, suggestive of exuberant virility, and remarkably untidy. All the same there was order in its disorder, as both Latimer and Fuller knew exactly where to lay their hands on any article they wanted. The room was chaotic enough to drive a woman to distraction, but comfortable and home-like for all that.

The journalist returned in a well-worn smoking suit, and proceeded to light his pipe. Fuller brewed him a glass of grog, and handed it across as he sat down in the saddleback chair on the verge of the hearthrug. The two men were fine specimens of humanity in their different ways. Latimer was large and fair and heavily built, with big limbs, and a suggestion of great strength. He had untidy yellow hair and a yellow mustache which he tugged at hard when perplexed. His blue eyes were keen, but on the whole he did not reveal much brain power in his face, which undoubtedly told the truth, since he was more of an athlete than a scholar. Fuller, on the contrary, was brilliantly clever, and as a solicitor was doing very well for himself in a dingy Chancery Lane office. He was tall and slim, with a wiry frame, and a lean, clean-shaven face, clearly cut and bronzed. Indeed with his steady dark eyes and closely clipped black hair, and remarkably upright figure, he suggested the soldier. This was probably due to heredity, since he came of a fighting line for generations, although his father was a country vicar. Also, in spite of his sedentary occupation, the young man lived as much as possible in the open, and when not running down to his native village for weekends, haunted the parks on every possible occasion, or walked four miles on Hampstead Heath and into the country beyond. It was no wonder that he looked tanned, alert, bright-eyed, and active, more like a squire of the Midlands than a votary of Themis. Since Fuller senior was poor, the boy had to earn his bread and butter somehow, and after he left Cambridge had elected to become a lawyer. Shortly after he blossomed out into a full-blown solicitor, he chanced upon his old school friend, Dick Latimer, who had taken to journalism, and the two had set up house together in the ancient Inn. On the whole they were fairly comfortable, if not blessed with an excess of the world’s goods. Finally, being young, both were healthy and happy and hopeful and extremely enterprising.

“Well now, Dicky, what have you been doing?” asked Alan, when his friend, clothed and in his right mind, sipped his grog and puffed smoke-clouds.

“Attending an inquest at Rotherhithe.”

“Oh, that murder case!”

Latimer nodded and stared into the fire. “It’s a queer affair.”

“So far as I have read the newspaper reports, it seems to be a very commonplace one.”

“I told you that Romance was often disguised as the Commonplace, Alan.”

“As how, in this instance?”

His friend did not reply directly. “What do you know of the matter?” he asked so abruptly that Fuller looked up in surprise.

“Why, what can I know save what I have read in the papers?”

“Nothing, of course. I never suggested that you do know anything. But it’s no use my going over old ground, so I wish to hear what you have learned from the reports.”

“Very little, if you will be so precise,” said Alan after a pause. “In a fourth-class Rotherhithe boarding-house frequented chiefly by seamen, a man called Baldwin Grison was found dead in his bedroom and on his bed, a few days ago. The Dagoes and Lascars and such British seamen as live under the same roof are not accused of committing the crime, and as Grison was desperately poor and degraded, there was no reason why he should be murdered, since he wasn’t worth powder and shot. Old Mother Slaig, who keeps the house, declared that Grison retired to his room at ten o’clock, and it was only next morning, when he did not come down, that she learned of his death.”

Latimer nodded again. “All true and plainly stated. You certainly think in a methodical manner, Alan. The man was found lying on his bed in the usual shabby suit of clothes he wore. But his breast was bare, and he had been pierced to the heart by some fine instrument which cannot be found. Death must have been instantaneous according to the report of the doctor who was called in. But you are wrong in thinking that the crime was motiveless. I believe that robbery was the motive.”

“The papers didn’t report any belief of the police that such was the case.”

“The police don’t know everything—at least the inspector didn’t, although he knows a great deal more now,” said Latimer, removing his pipe, “but the single room occupied by the deceased was tumbled upside down, so it is evident that the assassin was looking for the fruits of his crime. Whether he found what he wanted is questionable.”

“What was it?” asked Fuller, interested in the mystery.

“I’ll tell you that later, although I really can’t say for certain if I am right. Let us proceed gradually and thresh out the matter thoroughly.”

“Fire ahead. I am all attention.”

“The police,” continued Dick meditatively, “hunted out evidence as to the identity and the status of the dead man, between the time of death and the holding of the inquest. Inspector Moon—he’s the Rotherhithe chap in charge of the case—advertised, or made inquiries, or got hold of the sister somehow. At all events she turned up yesterday and appeared at the inquest this very day.”

“Who is the sister?”

“An elderly shrimp of a woman with light hair and a shrill voice, and a pair of very hard blue eyes. She heard that her brother was murdered, or Moon hunted her up in some way, and willingly came forward with her story.”

“What is her story?”

“I’m just coming to it. What an impatient chap you are, Alan. Miss Grison—Louisa is her Christian name—keeps a shabby boarding-house in Bloomsbury, and is one of those people who have seen better days. It seems that her brother Baldwin was secretary to a person, whose name I shall tell you later, and was kicked out of his billet twenty years ago, because he couldn’t run straight.”

“What had he done?”

“I can’t say. Miss Grison wouldn’t confess, and as the story wasn’t pertinent to the murder she wasn’t pressed to confess. All she said was that her brother was an opium-smoker and after losing his billet drifted to Rotherhithe, where he could indulge in his vice. She tried to keep him respectable, and allowed him ten shillings a week to live on. But he sank lower and lower, so she saw very little of him. All she knew was that she sent the ten shilling postal order regularly every Friday so that Baldwin might get it on Saturday. He never visited her and he never wrote to her, but lived more or less like a hermit in Mother Slaig’s boarding-house, and went out every night to smoke opium in some den kept by a Chinaman called Chin-Chow. Miss Grison sobbed bitterly when she gave her evidence and insisted that her brother owed his degradation to the enmity of people.”