“Yes, my lord.”
“Stop fiddling about in there, and get yourself the proper things to drink and join the merry throng.”
“Certainly, my lord.”
“Mr. Parker has a new trick: The Vanishing Financier. Absolutely no deception. Hey, presto, pass! and where is he? Will some gentleman from the audience kindly step upon the platform and inspect the cabinet? Thank you, sir. The quickness of the ’and deceives the heye.”
“I’m afraid mine isn’t much of a story,” said Parker. “It’s just one of those simple things that offer no handle. Sir Reuben Levy dined last night with three friends at the Ritz. After dinner the friends went to the theatre. He refused to go with them on account of an appointment. I haven’t yet been able to trace the appointment, but anyhow, he returned home to his house – 9a, Park Lane – at twelve o’clock.”
“Who saw him?”
“The cook, who had just gone up to bed, saw him on the doorstep, and heard him let himself in. He walked upstairs, leaving his greatcoat on the hall peg and his umbrella in the stand – you remember how it rained last night. He undressed and went to bed. Next morning he wasn’t there. That’s all,” said Parker abruptly, with a wave of the hand.
“It isn’t all, it isn’t all. Daddy, go on, that’s not half a story,” pleaded Lord Peter.
“But it is all. When his man came to call him he wasn’t there. The bed had been slept in. His pyjamas and all his clothes were there, the only odd thing being that they were thrown rather untidily on the ottoman at the foot of the bed, instead of being neatly folded on a chair, as is Sir Reuben’s custom – looking as though he had been rather agitated or unwell. No clean clothes were missing, no suit, no boots – nothing. The boots he had worn were in his dressing-room as usual. He had washed and cleaned his teeth and done all the usual things. The housemaid was down cleaning the hall at half-past six, and can swear that nobody came in or out after that. So one is forced to suppose that a respectable middle-aged Hebrew financier either went mad between twelve and six a.m. and walked quietly out of the house in his birthday suit on a November night, or else was spirited away like the lady in the ‘Ingoldsby Legends,’ body and bones, leaving only a heap of crumpled clothes behind him.”
“Was the front door bolted?”
“That’s the sort of question you would ask, straight off; it took me an hour to think of it. No; contrary to custom, there was only the Yale lock on the door. On the other hand, some of the maids had been given leave to go to the theatre, and Sir Reuben may quite conceivably have left the door open under the impression they had not come in. Such a thing has happened before.”
“And that’s really all?”
“Really all. Except for one very trifling circumstance.”
“I love trifling circumstances,” said Lord Peter, with childish delight; “so many men have been hanged by trifling circumstances. What was it?”
“Sir Reuben and Lady Levy, who are a most devoted couple, always share the same room. Lady Levy, as I said before, is in Mentonne at the moment for her health. In her absence, Sir Reuben sleeps in the double bed as usual, and invariably on his own side – the outside – of the bed. Last night he put the two pillows together and slept in the middle, or, if anything, rather closer to the wall than otherwise. The housemaid, who is a most intelligent girl, noticed this when she went up to make the bed, and, with really admirable detective instinct, refused to touch the bed or let anybody else touch it, though it wasn’t till later that they actually sent for the police.”
“Was nobody in the house but Sir Reuben and the servants?”
“No; Lady Levy was away with her daughter and her maid. The valet, cook, parlourmaid, housemaid and kitchenmaid were the only people in the house, and naturally wasted an hour or two squawking and gossiping. I got there about ten.”
“What have you been doing since?”
“Trying to get on the track of Sir Reuben’s appointment last night, since, with the exception of the cook, his ‘appointer’ was the last person who saw him before his disappearance. There may be some quite simple explanation, though I’m dashed if I can think of one for the moment. Hang it all, a man doesn’t come in and go to bed and walk away again ‘mid nodings on’ in the middle of the night.”
“He may have been disguised.”
“I thought of that – in fact, it seems the only possible explanation. But it’s deuced odd, Wimsey. An important city man, on the eve of an important transaction, without a word of warning to anybody, slips off in the middle of the night, disguised down to his skin, leaving behind his watch, purse, cheque-book, and – most mysterious and important of all – his spectacles, without which he can’t see a step, as he is extremely short-sighted. He —”
“That is important,” interrupted Wimsey. “You are sure he didn’t take a second pair?”
“His man vouches for it that he had only two pairs, one of which was found on his dressing-table, and the other in the drawer where it is always kept.”
Lord Peter whistled.
“You’ve got me there, Parker. Even if he’d gone out to commit suicide he’d have taken those.”
“So you’d think – or the suicide would have happened the first time he started to cross the road. However, I didn’t overlook the possibility. I’ve got particulars of all today’s street accidents, and I can lay my hand on my heart and say that none of them is Sir Reuben. Besides, he took his latchkey with him, which looks as though he’d meant to come back.”
“Have you seen the men he dined with?”
“I found two of them at the club. They said that he seemed in the best of health and spirits, spoke of looking forward to joining Lady Levy later on – perhaps at Christmas – and referred with great satisfaction to this morning’s business transaction, in which one of them – a man called Anderson of Wyndham’s – was himself concerned.”
“Then up till about nine o’clock, anyhow, he had no apparent intention or expectation of disappearing.”
“None – unless he was a most consummate actor. Whatever happened to change his mind must have happened either at the mysterious appointment which he kept after dinner, or while he was in bed between midnight and 5.30 a.m.”
“Well, Bunter,” said Lord Peter, “what do you make of it?”
“Not in my department, my lord. Except that it is odd that a gentleman who was too flurried or unwell to fold his clothes as usual should remember to clean his teeth and put his boots out. Those are two things that quite frequently get overlooked, my lord.”
“If you mean anything personal, Bunter,” said Lord Peter, “I can only say that I think the speech an unworthy one. It’s a sweet little problem, Parker mine. Look here, I don’t want to butt in, but I should dearly love to see that bedroom tomorrow. ’Tis not that I mistrust thee, dear, but I should uncommonly like to see it. Say me not nay – take another drop of brandy and a Villar Villar, but say not, say not nay!”
“Of course you can come and see it – you’ll probably find lots of things I’ve overlooked,” said the other, equably, accepting the proffered hospitality.
“Parker, acushla, you’re an honour to Scotland Yard. I look at you, and Sugg appears a myth, a fable, an idiot-boy, spawned in a moonlight hour by some fantastic poet’s brain. Sugg is too perfect to be possible. What does he make of the body, by the way?”
“Sugg says,” replied Parker, with precision, “that the body died from a blow on the back of the neck. The doctor told him that. He says it’s been dead a day or two. The doctor told him that, too. He says it’s the body of a well-to-do Hebrew of about fifty. Anybody could have told him that. He says it’s ridiculous to suppose it came in through the window without anybody knowing anything about it. He says it probably walked