Silent Nights (4 page)

There was a long silence, broken only by his heavy breathing, and by the measured tapping of Sherlock Holmes' finger-tips upon the edge of the table. Then my friend rose, and threw open the door.

“Get out!” said he.

“What, sir! Oh, Heaven bless you!”

“No more words. Get out!”

And no more words were needed. There was a rush, a clatter upon the stairs, the bang of a door, and the crisp rattle of running footfalls from the street.

“After all, Watson,” said Holmes, reaching up his hand for his clay pipe, “I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies. If Horner were in danger it would be another thing, but this fellow will not appear against him, and the case must collapse. I suppose that I am commuting a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a soul. This fellow will not go wrong again. He is too terribly frightened. Send him to gaol now, and you make him a gaolbird for life. Besides, it is the season of forgiveness. Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and its solution is its own reward. If you will have the goodness to touch the bell, Doctor, we will begin another investigation, in which also a bird will be the chief feature.”

Parlour Tricks

Ralph Plummer

Ralph Plummer is a long-forgotten writer, and “Parlour Tricks” an exceptionally obscure short story. It appeared in print (for, to the best of my knowledge, the first and only time) in the
Passing Show Christmas Holiday Annual
of 1930. I know nothing of Plummer's life, but am indebted to the late Bob Adey, an expert in “locked room” and impossible crime mysteries, and owner of one of the most impressive collections of detective fiction in the world, for referring me to this story, and kindly supplying me with a copy. I share Bob's view that it deserves to be rescued from oblivion, and I only wish that I had been able to find out more about its author.

***

Peter Mullinger sipped at his drink, chuckled in a rumbling bass at his joke, and smiled encouragingly across the cheery smoke-room of the
Grand Private Hotel
at young Glover.

Eric Glover had just concluded several simple conjuring tricks for the entertainment of a bevy of old ladies, a stern-looking man with side-whiskers, and a retired colonel who divided his time between staring fiercely into space, twisting his moustache, and emptying glasses of port.

“Christmas in a small hotel can be a dull affair,” commented Mr Mullinger, lighting a cigar and looking about the old-fashioned room with a genial eye. “Unless you get the spirit of the thing, that is. I have spent Christmases in similar places to this. Just the same old-fashioned hotels with wide fireplaces, shining brasses and polished oak. For dull days, folks, commend me to an old-world environment with dull people in it. Christmas of itself, despite all this talk of rosy-faced children and merry hours, is a solemn time.

“It is a good job we have a go-ahead youngster among us like Mr Glover. Never knew such a young man for getting things going.”

There was a chorus of assent, and the old ladies beamed archly at the young gentleman himself.

“Such jokes I never heard before,” asserted a dowager with green eyes and multiple chins, “and he tells them so well. I wonder why we are none of us to leave the hotel until given permission?”

“Bit of a mystery,” commented young Glover. “Oh, well, who cares? It's Christmas, and snowing like billy-ho outside.”

“Let it snow,” growled the old colonel, reaching for another port and staring at the logs in the grate.

“I was going to,” agreed Glover. “Did any of you hear about the station-master's dog who always chased up the track in pursuit of every express that dashed through the station?”

“Do tell us,” urged a stout lady of forty, trying to look up at him through distressingly short eyelashes.

Glover plunged into his five-hundredth humorous story since his arrival at the little hotel two days previously. As he progressed, old Mr Mullinger chuckled again.

“Inexhaustible,” he murmured, nodding at Mr Warboys, a permanent resident of the
Grand
. “Tricks, stories, games—he seems to know them all.”

***

“Wonderful young man,” said Mr Warboys, setting his bottom teeth against his top in order that speech may be facilitated. “A great asset here at a time like Christmas. Been the life and soul of the place. What are they keeping us indoors for? The manager requested that no one leaves the hotel until given permission.”

“Some Christmas surprise,” put in a thin lady, ceasing to eat nuts and raisins for the first time since dinner, and nodding brightly as she patted her hair. “I've heard of such things before. Sometimes they have someone to call dressed as Santa Claus, and every guest gets a gift.”

“When?” said a small, sandy man with a tartan tie, emerging from his nap.

“Quite an idea,” agreed Mr Mullinger.

“Confined to barracks, by Gad,” snapped the colonel fiercely, and reached for the decanter.

There came a discreet hurricane of fluttering applause from the table across the room. Young Glover had just completed another conjuring trick.

“What's the noise about?” demanded the old colonel, preening his moustache, and vaguely trying to light a match with a cigarette.

“Astoundin',” remarked a stout commercial traveller. “Dipped a piece of white paper right into a glass of ink? an' when he pulled the paper out again? it was all black but the ink in the glass had changed to pure water. Makes Maskylion look silly he does; makes Maskylion look silly. Dipped a piece of white paper—”

***

“Quite simple,” said young Glover modestly. “You see it was only a glass of clean water with some black silk inside the glass, sticking lightly against the side. When I stuck the paper in the water I drew it out with the black silk on it.”

There was enthusiastic applause.

“Talking about conjuring,” said Mr Mullinger lightly, “I once heard a chap say that it was possible for him to leave a glass full of water on a table in the room, that he would go out, and when he walked into the room again within a few minutes, the glass would be empty.”

“Confederate in the room,” said the stout dowager excitedly.

“No, he said not,” said Mr Mullinger. “No one else in the room was to touch the glass at all. All bunk, of course. Quite impossible. I would bet a sovereign it couldn't be done. Don't know whether the chap was trying to impress us with psychic stuff or whatever you call it, but—”

“I could do it!”

***

Mr Mullinger stared at Eric Glover's eager face with surprise.

“You would leave a glass full of water inside this room, go out, and when you walked in again the glass would be empty. Impossible!”

“You spoke about a pound bet,” said Mr Glover playfully. “I'll call you!”

Mr Mullinger stared in silence. Chairs scraped near in an interested circle.

“There is a glass here,” said the ancient Mr Warboys, snapping his upper set more tightly into position.

“I shall want that,” snapped the old colonel, irritably removing the other's fingers from the stem. What about that glass young Glover has been using? Use that, dammit!”

“I'd like to see that glass,” muttered Mr Mullinger. He got up, examined the glass carefully and flicked it ringingly with his fingernail.

“No false bottom there,” grinned Glover.

“Let's know where we stand,” grunted the older man. “Do you know what you have undertaken to do?”

Glover nodded.

“I will go out of this room, leaving that glass full of water. No one else is to touch it; it shall stand on the table in full view of everybody. When I walk in again—which I shall do within five minutes of walking out—the glass will still be on the table BUT EMPTY.”

“Impossible,” declared Mr Mullinger.

Glover smiled quietly. He filled the glass from a decanter of water and set it on the table, where it stood palely agleam against the dark polish of the oak.

“I know a good way of keeping milk from going sour,” put in the commercial traveller suddenly.

“What way?” demanded a sour-looking woman, looking up from a woollen pullover she was committing for a nephew.

“Leave it in the cow,” said the commercial traveller, laughing uproariously and turning it into a cough as no one took any notice.

When Glover reached the door, leaving everybody seated and waiting expectantly, he turned and spoke:

“When I walk in again, that glass will be empty.”

The door closed behind him.

“Watch that glass,” counselled Mr Warboys, staring at the table with tense eyes. “Watch it!”

They watched it. There fell a dead silence.

***

The door opened within the minute. Grinning wickedly, Mr Glover made his appearance and progressed to the table on his hands and knees.

He coolly lifted the glass, drank its contents with a solemn “Good health, everybody,” and set the glass back as he had found it.

Amid some laughs and partial surprise, he crawled out of the room again. Brows puckered in thought until the commercial traveller burst in with enlightenment.

“That's what it is,” he boomed. “He didn't
walk
in that time! HE CRAWLED IN! Now, when he walks in the glass will be empty, won't it?”

Smilingly, Glover returned, walked calmly up to the table, and raised the glass.

Mullinger nodded with a little shrug.

“I owe you a pound,” he admitted. “Will you give me an opportunity to win it back? A thought-reading trick, it is called. It isn't really, but I'd like to bet you a pound that I can be taken out of this room, blindfolded, brought back, twisted round several times if you like, and then led by the hand round the room.

“Before we start making the round of the room, though, you will name some object which has been hidden whilst I have been out being blindfolded. I will undertake to call a halt when I am directly opposite the place where the object is hidden. Come, you are game?”

***

“That's new on me,” nodded Glover.

“But how do I know you won't choose a confederate to signal to you while you are being guided by him? No offence, of course; simply look at the thing from a fool-proof standpoint.”

“Easy,” agreed Mr Mullinger, counter sly. “You can guide me yourself, Glover.”

Blindfolded very thoroughly, Mr Mullinger was led back into the smoking room. There was general laughter as Glover rotated him several times, and little Mullinger swayed dizzily upon his feet.

“If he has the slightest idea of the lay-out of the room now,” grinned Glover, “I'll eat my boots, rubber heels and all!”

He took Mr Mullinger's hand and led him slowly along the sides of the room. Interestedly, the others stared as the pair approached the dish of wax fruit secreted within the gramophone cabinet. There was a general gasp of wonder as the pair reached the instrument and Mr Mullinger called a halt.

“Here,” he chuckled, removed the bandage from his eyes and took in his surroundings. His eye lit on the gramophone before which they had paused. In a moment he opened the doors of the cabinet, looked in and spotted the imitation fruit.

“Yes,” he suggested.

“You couldn't see?” demanded Mr Warboys.

“Let us do it again,” said Mr Mullinger. “We'll start again from the door. Bandage my eyes very tightly, Glover. That is the idea, my boy. Lead me to the door. Good. Now, turn me several times.”

***

Glover did as instructed. He took the older man's hand and steadied him as he reeled dizzily.

“Now,” Mr Mullinger spoke very steadily, “we will walk slowly round the walls again. I don't know where it is, but I shall undertake to call ‘halt' opposite eighty-five pounds and some securities.”

There was an electric silence.

The man in the tartan tie emerged again from a doze.

“Eighty-five pounds and some securities. Where?”

“I don't know,” confessed Mr Mullinger quietly. “But if Mr Glover will take my hand and lead me round the room. I shall stop by them! Something weird about this? Come on, Glover!”

Eric Glover forced a smile which found no support in his eyes. A little muscle in his neck showed momentarily.

The pair progressed slowly along the first wall. There was a pause as they turned. It was Mr Mullinger who began the second wall with slow, deliberate, shuffling steps.

“Halt!” he called suddenly, and stopped at a point halfway across the width of the second wall.

Glover's gasp was lost in the triumph of the word. Mullinger tore off the bandage, stared at the floor, at the wall.

***

There was no furniture at that point. But Mr Mullinger raised his eyes and smiled gently at a picture, massive, ancient, which graced the wall directly opposite where he stood.

“Of course,” he chuckled. “Quite simple, really. I had expected somewhere more subtle. A hidden panel or something like that. Well, well!”

There was a mild chaos as the others crowded around. Mr Mullinger had taken down the picture carefully. He released the twist-catches holding the wooden back in position, and forced out the sheet of shrivelled boarding. There was a fluttering of papers to the floor.

“Eighty-five pounds, I imagine,” said Mr Mullinger smoothly. “And securities to the value of another three hundred.
The contents of the hotel safe robbed in the early hours of Christmas Eve morning
.”

“Extraordinary,” whispered Glover.

“Nothing extraordinary, really,” drawled Mr Mullinger. “You were good enough to explain your trick, so I'll do the same. When you led me round the room. Glover, after the hiding of the wax fruit in the gramophone cabinet, you gave me the tip when I reached the spot with you holding my hand. Psychological reason, of course. You squeezed my hand slightly. Quite unconsciously, you squeezed it, though.

“The knowledge that we were at the very point where the object was hidden caused a keying up of your nervous system. Suspense, really. Your balance, as it were—will he stop or won't he?—was affected. The suspense of the moment causes a contraction of your fingers holding mine. You see, it had to be someone leading me who
knew
when we would reach the object. THAT WAS WHY I CHOSE YOU AGAIN WHEN SETTING OUT TO DISCOVER WHERE THE PROCEEDS FROM THE SAFE HAD BEEN HIDDEN!”

Glover started violently.

“By heaven, do you dare to suggest that I knew…that I—?”

“You and none other,” nodded Mr Mullinger. “You knew where the notes and securities had been hidden—naturally, seeing that
you hid them there till opportunity offered to get them away from the hotel
.”

“It is a lie,” grated Glover. He laughed harshly. “You can prove nothing, either.”

“No?” Mr Mullinger never took his hand from his pocket. He stared dispassionately at the pale face of the other. “The emptying of the glass trick over which you—again most obligingly—tumbled, was one I have done myself for the amusement of parties. I guessed you would know it, hence my affording you the opportunity.