# The Bartenstein Case/Chapter 16

BOOK THE FOURTH
The Contents of the Sword-Stick
CHAPTER I
THE SWORD-STICK AGAIN
Although Inspector Dwayne made all possible speed in leaving his taxi-cab and paying his driver, and wasted no time in waiting for change, the two men whom he had just espied had disappeared when he reached the entrance of the Café Royal. There was at that moment a more than ordinary crush of people going in and out; there were several inner entrances into which the men might have turned, and the Inspector felt as if he stood at the entrance to a sort of rabbit-warren, ignorant of the particular burrow into which his game had bolted. But of one thing he was certain, and that was that he had been right in his recognition. And what were those two men doing together?
He turned into the brasserie and, ordering a modest drink, sat down, and without appearing to do so kept his eyes open to all around him. At that hour the place was filled, and the sound of many voices, the clinking of many glasses, the scent of many cigars and cigarettes, was in the air. All sorts of nationalities were represented; there was a mingling of the tribes and nations ​such as can only be seen in London and New York. There was every language in Europe, and not a few languages outside it, being chattered. The whole place was as busy and as lively as an ant-heap on a working day.
Inspector Dwayne had no desire to move about among this throng. If the man he wanted to see again at close quarters were in that room he would soon find out for himself for, seemingly unobservant, he was observing every group and every individual face. And within a few minutes he knew they were not there. That occasioned him no surprise. They might be supping elsewhere; they might be supping in a private room. But the fact remained that he had seen them together, which, to his mind, meant much. And he determined to make another journey on the morrow to the genuine Mr. Olivares and to ask a few more questions about this clerk, Fernandes.
Just at that moment Fernandes passed the door opposite which Inspector Dwayne had purposely taken his seat. He was alone, and walking as rapidly as he could through the press of people crowding in at the Regent Street entrance. He looked as a man looks who wants to get somewhere in a hurry. The Inspector rose and went after him, keeping his eyes open for a sight of the pseudo Olivares. But of him he saw nothing.
Fernandes went straight up the street, looking neither to the right nor the left; and he walked ​so quickly that Inspector Dwayne, who was neither as young nor as athletic as he had been, found some difficulty in keeping him in view.
But the pursuit was short and simple, and the purpose of the pursued man apparently devoid of anything sinister. Fernandes simply turned into Beak Street, wound round into Golden Square, and entered a small hotel with a foreign name over its door. And the Inspector, considering matters, felt that he could do no more that night, and so went home and, being sensible enough to put all professional matters away from him as soon as he crossed his own threshold, ate a hearty supper, smoked a cigar, and went to bed to sleep the sleep of a tired man.
But he was at his office bright and early next morning, and more resolved than ever to get at the bottom of some of the mysteries which were troubling him. To begin with, however, two things lay on his desk which, instead of doing anything to solve those mysteries, only served to heighten them. One was a long thin parcel, wrapped up in brown paper, sealed and registered; the other was a somewhat dirty envelope, addressed to him and marked "Private". This the Inspector opened first, and drawing out a sheet of equally doubtful note-paper, read:
Mortimer Street, June 11th.
Dear Sir, If you would make it convenient to call here ​any time tomorrow, I have something to tell you that may be of service.
Yours faithfully, Aaron Abrahams.
Inspector Dwayne put this in his pocket and turned his attention to the long thin parcel. A little time before these events some person to whom he had been of service had sent him a gold-mounted silk umbrella; he had a vague idea that this might be another little souvenir of the same sort. There was a good deal of brown-paper wrapping to be unrolled before the object revealed itself, but before the last folds had been removed Inspector Dwayne knew that this was no umbrella. He tore off the final folds of paper with something of a suspicion in his mind.
The sword-stick!
He laid it across the blotting-pad on his desk and stared at it as if it had been a live thing. It was fully two minutes before he picked it up, and then he examined it all over carefully. It was just as he had seen it last, so far as he could see. There was not a scratch on its highly polished surface; the silver head was bright and uninjured, and when he drew out the stiletto-like blade, short, sharp, murderous, the stains which meant Marcus Bartenstein's blood were there as when the stick had last been in his hands.
He saw, as he replaced the blade, a scrap of paper which had been curled around it. Picking this up, he saw that a few words had been written ​upon it not by hand, but with a type-writer. They formed a mere line.
This will now be of more use to you than to me, so I return it.
More mystified than ever, but still practical, Inspector Dwayne picked up the outer wrapping in order to ascertain where the parcel had been sent from. His address was type-written, like the note; the office stamp was Hampstead.
Having had his cupboard mended and fitted with a patent lock the previous day, and feeling that nobody else would want to steal the stick (which, he was now convinced, had been abstracted for some definite—if mysterious—purpose), the Inspector wrapped up the restored property in the numerous folds of paper and locked it up again. The scrap of paper he put away in his pocket-book, together with Mr. Abraham's letter, and to Mr. Abrahams he now took his way.
Mr. Abrahams was breakfasting in his much encumbered room at the back of the shop, and upon this occasion was proving to all and sundry within a reasonable area of his domicile that he had a partiality for kippered herring. He looked more Semitic and benevolent than ever, and greeted Inspector Dwayne with an air of pleasant mystery.
"And what is it this time, Mr. Abrahams?" asked the Inspector when the boy in the shop ​had been told to mind the business, and the parlour door had been closed. "Something that may be of service to me, eh? I'm glad to hear it."
Mr. Abrahams rubbed his hands together. "My dear sir," he said, "anything I can do to oblige! My dear sir"—here he reduced his voice to a whisper and became still more mysterious—"somebody is after Grandfather Punctuality."
The Inspector said to himself that he was after Grandfather Punctuality, through Mitchell, but he merely nodded.
"Yesterday," continued Mr. Abrahams, "I was a good deal interested—and puzzled. There was a person came into my shop at a fairly early hour in the morning, who requested permission to look round in order to see if there was anything that took his fancy, he being, he said, a collector."
"What was he like?" inquired Inspector Dwayne.
Mr. Abrahams raised deprecatory hands.
"A moment, sir, a moment," he said. "He remained so long a time that I became—well—not suspicious, for he was apparently a well-to-do gentleman, dressed fashionably and with a good manner, but curious. Finally he chose some little matter of no great value, paid for it, and went away. But in the afternoon he returned and, making some excuse, again tarried a long time, examining one thing and then another, ​and sometimes holding a little conversation with me. Eventually he bought something more—a trifle—and then suddenly discovered that he had not sufficient money on him to pay for it; it was but a few pounds, my dear sir. So he said he would walk round to his hotel in Berners Street and cash a cheque and come back. Now, my dear sir, I had a suspicion that this gentleman was looking out for something or somebody and, remembering what you had told me, I determined to play a little trick on him—which was to take his photograph, eh?"
"Good idea, Mr. Abrahams," muttered the Inspector; "excellent idea!"
"And I did it, my dear sir, I did it, though he never knew," said Mr. Abrahams, chuckling. "Photography is my little hobby. I got him, and I have developed the plate, and I have a print ready for you. But first, he came back, and when he came back, Grandfather Punctuality was in the shop, looking about as usual with his old peeping-glass fixed to his one eye."
"Eh—what's that?" said the Inspector, suddenly startled.
"His one eye, I said, my dear sir—he only has one, but it's like a ferret's," said Mr. Abrahams; "the other's glass, and very useful to him it is, for he can keep it fixed steady on you when he's bargaining."
"Ah, of course!" said Inspector Dwayne, who was listening intently and thinking hard. "Just so, to be sure. Well, Mr. Abrahams?"
​"Well, sir," continued Mr. Abrahams, "after the stranger had paid me, he still continued to hang about. But after a time he went off, and I made to the door and watched him. He affected to gaze into the neighbouring shops, but I knew he was keeping a watch on mine, so I determined to watch him. I knew old Grandfather wasn't going to buy anything, so I left the boy in charge and, going across the street to a good neighbour of mine, I got into one of his upper rooms and watched through the blinds. The stranger stopped and stopped, hanging about at shop windows, but at last the old man came out and went shuffling away in his usual fashion. Then my gentleman followed him and, of course," concluded Mr. Abrahams, "of course, my dear sir, I could do no more."
"No, of course," said Inspector Dwayne mechanically, "of course. Let's see that photograph."
The curio dealer unlocked a drawer and, producing an envelope, took from it a neatly printed off photograph which he placed in his visitor's hands. Inspector Dwayne gave one glance at it.
The pseudo Señor Olivares!
"You know that person, sir?" said Mr. Abrahams, smiling and rubbing his hands. "I see you do, my dear sir—you———"
"Well, I do," admitted the Inspector, "and I wish I knew where to lay hands on him at this minute," he added, in thought. "Look you here, ​Mr. Abrahams, you've done me a service in this matter, and I'll see that it's not forgotten. Now, keep all this to yourself, you know, eh?"
Mr. Abrahams lifted his hands and wagged. his beard.
"Not a word to anybody," said the Inspector. "And, I say, if Grandfather Punctuality comes here again, just get on to the telephone to me at once, will you? I want to see him particularly, and I haven't been able to find out where he lives yet."
Mr. Abrahams answered that the old gentleman was very close, and having shown his visitor out at the side door, returned to his kippers, chuckling merrily to himself, while Inspector Dwayne drove back to his office, ruminating gloomily over sword-sticks, artificial eyes, and the photograph in his pocket-book. He felt like a man who is given a thousand fragments of a puzzle to piece together.
The Inspector had scarcely gained his room when Mr. Ronald Tyndale called to see him. That young gentleman had come to gratify mere inquisitiveness—he wanted to see the sword-stick. Now Inspector Dwayne had carefully concealed from everybody the fact that his mysterious article had been out of his possession, and he accordingly produced it from his cupboard and placed it in Mr. Tyndale's hands as if it were quite an ordinary thing. Mr. Tyndale received it with interest and examined it closely—so closely that the Inspector, who wanted to ​go out again, grew tired. Suddenly Mr. Tyndale looked up.
"I say," he said, "don't you think me an ass, because I've got a pretty good idea that I'm not. I'll bet you a thousand to one, Inspector, that this sword-stick contains something that'll go a long way to solving these mysteries!"