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Ashton-Kirk, Investigator

<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> <h3>PENDLETON CALLS UPON ASHTON-KIRK</h3> Young Pendleton's car crept carefully around the corner and wound in and out among the push-cart men and dirty children. About midway in the block was a square-built house with tall, small-paned windows and checkered with black-headed brick. It stood slightly back from the street with ancient dignity; upon the shining door-plate, deeply bitten in angular text, was the name "Ashton-Kirk." Here the car stopped; Pendleton got out, ascended the white marble steps and tugged at the polished, old-fashioned bell-handle. A grave-faced German, in dark livery, opened the door. "Mr. Ashton-Kirk will see you, sir," said he. "I gave him your telephone message as soon as he came down." "Thank you, Stumph," said Pendleton. And with the manner of one perfectly acquainted with the house, he ascended a massively balustraded staircase. The walls were darkly paneled; from the shadowy recesses pictured faces of men and women looked down at him. Coming in from the littered street, with its high smells and crowding, gesticulating people, the house impressed one by its quiet, its spaciousness, and the evident means and culture of its owner. Pendleton turned off at the first landing, proceeded along a passage and finally knocked at a door. Without waiting for a reply, he walked in. At the far end of a long, high-ceilinged apartment a young man was lounging in an easy-chair. At his elbow was a jar of tobacco, a sheaf of brown cigarette papers and a scattering of books. He lifted a keen dark face, lit up by singularly brilliant eyes. "Hello, Pen," greeted he. "You've come just in time to smoke up some of this Greek tobacco. Throw those books off that chair and make yourself easy." One by one Pendleton lifted the books and glanced at the titles. "Your morning's reading, if this is such," commented he, "is strikingly catholic. Plutarch, Snarleyow, the Opium Eater, Martin Chuzzlewit." Then came a host of tattered pamphlets, bound in shrieking paper covers, which the speaker handled gingerly. "'The Crimes of Anton Probst,'" he continued to read, "'The Deeds of the Harper Family,' 'The Murder of ——'" here he paused, tossed the pamphlets aside with contempt, sat down and drew the tobacco jar toward him. "Some of the results of your forays into the basements of old booksellers, I suppose," he added, rolling a cigarette with delicate ease. "But what value you see in such things is beyond me." Ashton-Kirk smiled good-humoredly. He took up some of the pamphlets and fluttered their illy-printed pages. "They are not beautiful," he admitted; "the paper could not be worse and the wood cuts are horrors. But they are records of actual things—striking things, as a matter of fact—for a murder which so lifts itself above the thousands of homicides that are yearly occurring, as to gain a place outside the court records and newspapers, must have been one of exceptional execution." "There is a public which delights in being horrified," said Pendleton with a grimace. "The things are put out to get their nickels and dimes." "No doubt," agreed the other. "And the fact that they are willing to pay their nickels and dimes is, to my way of thinking, a proof of the extraordinary nature of the crime chronicled." The speaker dropped the prints upon the floor and lounged back in his big chair. "There is Plutarch," he continued; "the account of the assassination of Caesar is not the least interesting thing in his biography of that statesman. Indeed, I have no doubt but that the chronicler thought Caesar's taking off the most striking incident in his career; that the Roman public thought so is a matter of history. "Countless writers have dwelt upon the taking of human life; some of them were rather commercial gentlemen who always gave an ear to the demands of their public, and their screeds were written for the money that they would put in their pockets; but others, and by long odds the greatest, were fascinated by their subjects. Both Stevenson and Henley were powerfully drawn by deeds of blood. Did you know they planned a great book which was to contain a complete account of the world's most remarkable homicides? I'm sorry they never carried the thing out; for I cannot conceive of two minds more fitted to the task. They would have dressed every event in the grimmest and most subtle horror; why, the soul would have shuddered at each enormity as shaped and presented by such masters." Pendleton regarded his friend with candid distaste. "You are appalling to-day," said he. "If you think it's the Greek tobacco, let me know. For I have to mingle with other human beings, and I'd scarcely care to get into your state of mind." The strong, white teeth of Ashton-Kirk showed in a quick smile. "The tobacco was recommended by old Hosko," he said, "and you'll find nothing violent in it, no matter what you find in my conversation." "What put you into such a frame of mind, anyway? Something happened?" But Ashton-Kirk shook his head. "I don't know," said he. "In fact, I have been strangely idle for the last fortnight. The most exciting things that have appeared above my personal horizon have been a queer little edition of Albertus-Magnus, struck off in an obscure printing shop in Florence in the early part of the sixteenth century, and a splendid, large paper Poe, to which I fortunately happened to be a subscriber." A volume of the Poe and the Albertus-Magnus were lying at hand; Pendleton ignored the dumpy, stained little Latin volume; its strong-smelling leather binding and faded text had no attractions for him. But he took up the Poe and began idly turning its leaves. "It is a mistake to suppose that some specific thing must be the cause of an action, or a train of thought," resumed the other, from the comfortable depths of his chair. "Sometimes thousands of things go to the making of a single thought, countless others to the doing of a single deed. And yet again, a thing entirely unassociated with a result may be the beginning of the result, so to speak. For example, a volume of Henry James which I was reading last night might be the cause of my turning to the literature of assassination this morning; your friendly visit may result in my coming in contact with a murder that will make any of these," with a nod toward the scattered volumes, "seem tame." Pendleton threw away his cigarette and proceeded to roll another. "It is my earnest desire to remain upon friendly terms with you, Kirk," stated he, with a smile. "Therefore, I will make no comment except to say that your last reflection was entirely uncalled for." Lighting the cigarette, he turned the tall leaves of the beautiful volume upon his knee. "This edition is quite perfection," he remarked admiringly. "And I'm sorry that I was not asked to subscribe. However," and Pendleton glanced humorously at his friend, "I don't suppose its beauty is what attracts you to-day. It is because certain pages are spread with the records of crime. I notice that this volume holds both 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' and the 'Mystery of Marie Roget.'" "Right," smiled Ashton-Kirk. "I admit I was browsing among the details of those two masterpieces when you came in. A great fellow, Poe. His peculiar imagination gave him a marvelous grasp of criminal possibilities." Ashton-Kirk took up the "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" and turned the leaves until he came to "Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts." "In some things I have detected an odd similarity in the work of De Quincey and Poe. Mind you, I say in some things. As to what entered into the structure of an admirably conceived murder they were as far apart as the poles. The ideals of the 'Society of Connoisseurs in Murder' must have excited in Poe nothing but contempt. A coarse butchery—a wholesale slaughter was received by this association with raptures; a pale-eyed, orange-haired blunderer, with a ship carpenter's mallet hidden under his coat, was hailed as an artist. "You don't find Poe wasting time on uncouth monsters who roar like tigers, bang doors and smear whole rooms with blood. His assassins had a joy in planning their exploits as well as in the execution of them. They were intelligent, secret, sure. And in every case they accomplished their work and escaped detection." "You must not forget, however," complained Pendleton, "that De Quincey's assassin, John Williams, was a real person, and his killings actual occurrences. Poe's workmen were creatures of his imagination, their crimes, with the possible exception of 'Marie Roget,' were purely fanciful. The creator of the doer and the deed had a clear field; and in that, perhaps, lies the superiority of Poe." Ashton-Kirk sighed humorously. "Perhaps," said he. "At any rate the select crimes are usually the conceptions of men who have no idea of putting them into execution. And that, upon consideration, is a fortunate thing for society. But, at the same time, it is most irritating to a man of a speculative turn of mind. Fiction teems with most splendid murders. Captain Marryat, in Snarleyow, created an almost perfect horror in the attempted slaughter of the boy Smallbones by the hag mother of Vanslyperken; the lad's reversal of the situation and his plunging a bayonet into the wrinkled throat, makes the chapter an accomplishment difficult to displace. Remember it?" Pendleton arose and opened one of the windows. "Even the noise and smell of this street of yours are grateful after what I have been listening to," said he. Then, after a moment spent in examining the adjacent outdoors, he added in a tone of wonderment. "I say, Kirk, this is really a hole of a place to live! Why don't you move?" The other arose and joined him at the window. Old-fashioned streets alter wonderfully after the generations of the elect have passed; but when Eastern Europe takes to dumping its furtive hordes into one, the change is marked indeed. In this one peddler's wagons replaced the shining carriages of a former day—wagons drawn by large-jointed horses and driven by bearded men who cried their wares in strange, throaty voices. Everything exhaled a thick, semi-oriental smell. Dully painted fire-escapes clung hideously to the fronts of the buildings; stagnant-looking men, wearing their hats, leaned from bedroom windows. The once decent hallways were smutted with grimy hands; the wide marble steps were huddled with alien, unclean people. A splendidly spired church stood almost shoulder to shoulder with the Ashton-Kirk house. Once it had been a place of dignified Episcopal worship; but years of neglect had made it unwholesome and cavern-like; and finally it was given over to a tribe of stolid Lithuanians who stuck a cheaply gilded Greek cross over the door and thronged the street with their wedding and christening processions. "Perhaps," said Ashton-Kirk, after a moment's study of the prospect, "yes, perhaps it is a hole of a place in which to live. But you see we've had this house since shortly after the Revolution; four generations have been born here. As I have no fashionable wife and I live alone, I am content to stay. Then, the house suits me; everything is arranged to my taste. The environment may not be the most desirable; but, my visitors are seldom of the sort that object to externals." "Well, you have one just now who is not what you might call partial to such neighborhoods," said Pendleton. "And," looking at his watch, "you will shortly have another who will be, perhaps, still less favorably impressed." "Ah!" said Ashton-Kirk. He curled himself up upon the deep window sill while Pendleton went back to his chair and the tobacco. "It's a lady," resumed Pendleton, the brown paper crackling between his fingers, "a lady of condition, quality and beauty." "It sounds pleasant enough," smiled the other. "But why is she coming?" "To consult you—ah—I suppose we might call it—professionally. No, I don't know what it is about; but judging from her manner, it is something of no little consequence." "She sent you to prepare the way for her, then?" "Yes. It is Miss Edyth Vale, daughter of James Vale, the 'Structural Steel King,' you remember they used to call him before he died a few years ago. She was an only child, and except for the four millions which he left to found a technical school, she inherited everything. And when you say everything in a case like this, it means considerable." Ashton-Kirk nodded. "She is a distant relative of mine," resumed Pendleton; "her mother was connected in some vague way with my mother; and because of this indefinite link, we've always been"—here he hesitated for an instant—"well, rather friendly. Last night we happened to meet at Upton's, and I took her in to dinner. Edyth is a nice girl, but I've noticed of late that she's not had a great deal to say. Sort of quiet and big-eyed and all that, you know. Seems healthy enough, but does a great deal of thinking and looking away at nothing. I've talked to her for ten minutes straight, only to find that she hadn't heard a word I'd said. "So, as you will understand, I did not expect a great deal of her at dinner. But directly across from us was young Cartwright—" "Employed in the Treasury Department?" "That's the man. Well, he began to talk departmental affairs with some one well down the table—you know how some of these serious kids are—and as there seemed to be nothing else to do, I gave my whole attention to the interesting performance of Mrs. Upton's cook. I must have been falling into a dreamy rapture; but at any rate I suddenly awoke, so to speak. To my surprise Edyth was talking—quite animatedly—with Cartwright, and about you." "Ah!" said Ashton-Kirk. "That's very pleasant. It is not given to every man that the mention of him should stir a melancholy young lady into animation." "Have you done anything in your line for the Treasury Department lately?" asked Pendleton. "Oh, a small matter of some duplicate plates," said Ashton-Kirk. "It had some interest, but there was nothing extraordinary in it." "Well, Cartwright didn't think that. I did not come to in time to catch the nature of your feat, but he seemed lost in admiration of your cleverness. He was quite delighted, too, at securing Edyth's attention. You see, it was a thing he had scarcely hoped for. So he proceeded to relate all he had ever heard about you. That queer little matter of the Lincoln death-mask, you know, and the case of the Belgian Consul and the spurious Van Dyke. And he had even heard some of the things you did in the university during your senior year. His recital of your recovery of the silver figure of the Greek runner which went as the Marathon prize in 1902 made a great hit, I assure you. "But when he answered 'No' to Edyth's earnest question as to whether he were acquainted with you, she lost interest; and when I promptly furnished the information that I was, he was forgotten. During the remainder of the dinner I had time for little else but Edyth's questions. When she learned that you had taken up investigation as a sort of profession, she was quite delighted, and before we parted I was asked to arrange a consultation." "She will be here this morning, then?" asked Ashton-Kirk. Pendleton once more looked at his watch. "Within a very few minutes," said he. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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