# The Bartenstein Case/Chapter 23

CHAPTER III
IN AT THE DEATH
The sick man, restored to consciousness, but very weak and gradually drawing nearer and nearer to the end, heard Inspector Dwayne's exclamation, and opening his eyes looked up from under the bandages which swathed his head. And to the astonishment of those about him, the doctors, Mitchell, the policeman, and Mr. Marrett, who, by virtue of his position, had been allowed to enter the room, he smiled faintly—and tried to wink.
"Hullo, Dwayne!" he said, in a feeble whisper. "You're—you're in at the death, eh?"
Inspector Dwayne looked at him fixedly, and not without some pity. He motioned to the elder of the two doctors and drew him out of the room into a little parlour on the same landing.
"Are this man's injuries fatal?" he asked.
"Absolutely," answered the doctor.
"How long can he live?" asked the Inspector.
"Possibly an hour and a half—possibly two hours," the doctor replied. "He will go quickly at the last."
​"I wonder where the nearest magistrate is?" said Inspector Dwayne impatiently. "I want this man's depositions."
"It so happens," remarked the doctor, "that I am a magistrate!"
"That's very fortunate, sir," said the Inspector. "I suppose he can talk?"
"With an occasional resort to a stimulant," the doctor replied.
Inspector Dwayne took a turn or two round the apartment.
"This is an extraordinary case, sir," he said. "I used to know this man—in fact, he has been through my hands before today, but not for a long time. I knew him as Dick the Tale-pitcher. His lay was to get hold of mugs and flats on the race-courses, and spin them yarns about this, that, and the other, connected with racing, and as he was always a swell sort of customer, he used to fleece a good many—he was never one of the broken-down, seen-better-days sort, you know. I have heard, though, that he was once an officer in the army—what his real name is, I don't know. But if he is strong enough, sir, I want some information."
They went back into the sick-room, and at Inspector Dwayne's request everybody but himself and the two doctors retired. The younger doctor gave the dying man a little brandy, and once more he smiled at the Inspector.
"I'm sorry to find you like this, Dick," said Inspector Dwayne. Then, as the doctors had ​already told him that they had at the man's special request informed him of his fate, he added, "You're going, you know."
"I don't want to stop—with a broken back," the man whispered. "That would be fun, wouldn't it?"
"Well, hadn't you better make a clean breast of it?" suggested the Inspector. "It's no good carrying secrets away with you, and you may help somebody else."
Something like a flash—whether of humour or of anger Inspector Dwayne could not tell, because it came and went so quickly—gleamed in the dying man's eyes.
"If you want the diamonds," he said, "and as they're no use to me now, they're done up in a neat little package in the wash-leather pocket of my waistcoat."
"They are quite safe—at least that package is," murmured the younger doctor.
Inspector Dwayne sat down by the bed and prepared to write out what the injured man had to say.
"Now, Dick," he said, "what about these diamonds? What diamonds are they?"
"Why, the diamonds that came out of that cursed sword-stick, of course!" said the man, in his feeble whisper. "What else? Give me some more of that brandy and I'll tell you all about it."
The younger doctor gave him a teaspoonful of the stimulant. His voice grew a little stronger.
​"Dwayne," he said, "that was a rattling make-up of mine—it bluffed you! Well, this was how the thing began. That fellow Fernandes, who looked so very good and proper, no doubt, when he was at his work, did a good deal of betting on the quiet, and that was how I got to know him. I came across him at Kempton Park—where you once came across me, Dwayne, confound you, though I bear you no grudge, old———"
"Save your strength," said the Inspector. "Go on about Fernandes."
"Well, Fernandes and I got pretty thick, and I introduced him to a few of the boys, and especially to Billy Lightolwer (it was Billy, Dwayne, who carried the sword-stick off from your room, but you won't get him, for Billy's hopped it out of anybody's reach), and he and Billy and I got quite chummy. And it was Fernandes who put us on to the sword-stick and its contents."
He paused there, and when he spoke again it was in slower time and with something of an effort, and the doctors watched him keenly.
"There was a lot of truth in the tale I pitched you, Dwayne," he went on, after an interval. "The fact was, old Olivares gave Fernandes the run of that place, and as he was often away, and Fernandes had very little to do, the business being quiet—though good—Fernandes used to amuse himself by rummaging about. Olivares once got a boxful of old papers from some relation in Spain, and opened it in Fernandes' presence, ​and pished and pshawed at the whole thing for a parcel of rubbish, and bade Fernandes stick it on a shelf and gave no further heed to it—give me some more brandy."
They let him take his own time, but he soon resumed, as if anxious to tell all he knew before the end came.
"Fernandes," he continued, "had nothing particular to do one afternoon, and as old Olivares had gone to Brighton, and there was nobody to interrupt him, he thought he would go through those papers, and see if there was anything interesting in them, and what they were all about. And it was then that he found out the secret of the sword-stick. That stick, Dwayne, did once belong to the great Gaspar de Guzman, Count Duke of Olivares, and had been an heirloom, and its story was set forth in a parchment which told its history, down to the time when it was foolishly given by a daughter of the house to her English lover. But there was something a good deal more interesting than that, Dwayne—at least to Fernandes, who was always wasting money to back horses with, and so it would have been to most folks."
Once more he paused, and once more the doctor gave him another teaspoonful of brandy.
"There's not such a lot more," he said. "Well, it was this. There was a note at the foot of that parchment saying that there was a tradition in the family, that while the family held that stick in hand it would never be poor. Now, Fernandes ​was a fanciful chap, and had read a lot, and he puzzled over that, and he used to say to me and to Billy, whom he'd told about this story, that he'd lay any odds that stick contained something. 'Because,' he said, 'it was a well-known fact that valuables were concealed in all sorts of places in troublous times—boot-heels and false bottoms of snuff-boxes, and I don't know what.' He used to say he'd give anything to get hold of that sword-stick, but, of course, he didn't know what had become of it. And then came the Bartenstein murder."
He paused, and the three men listening to him looked at one another, wondering what he was going to say next.
"You know your own business best, Dwayne," he went on, "but you just happened to play into our hands when you let the newspaper men get hold of all the particulars about that cursed sword-stick. Of course, Fernandes was certain it was the one we were after. Then he coached me up in all the palaver I afterwards reeled off to you, and we laid out good money on that make-up and I came. Of course, I never expected to get the stick from you—all we wanted was that I should see it and know where you kept it. To get hold of it after that was an easy matter. Billy got into your room, opened the cupboard, stuck the stick into the tin case—he was an architect's clerk once, was Billy—and walked away with it. And sure enough when we examined the stick we found that the handle was hollow—only there was nothing in it."
​"Nothing in it?" involuntarily exclaimed the Inspector.
The dying man motioned the doctor to give him more brandy and presently resumed.
"Not a stiver in any shape!" he replied. "But from what we saw we came to the conclusion that Fernandes's theory about valuables—gems—having been concealed in such things was right. And then we—at least, I—had a fine scoop. You remember that lame chap who was in your office?"
"Hasleton?" said Inspector Dwayne.
"The same—an eccentric sort who talks like a first reading-book. Well, I met him in Regent Street, and got him to have a glass of wine, and drew him on to the Bartenstein case and the sword-stick, and he told me all about your going to old Abraham's place, and about the old man they call Grandfather Punctuality, and it struck me, from Hasleton's description of that old man, that of all the people who had handled that stick, since it was stolen from Lauderdale, Grandfather was the most likely to have annexed whatever was in it. So we had a look around for him—at least, I had, because we didn't want the others to show. And as that lame chap had given me a good idea of Grandfather's habits, as revealed by Abrahams, I didn't have much difficulty. I came across the old gentleman after a visit or two to Abraham's shop, and I introduced myself to him as a wealthy American who wanted to buy curios. He offered to bring some to my hotel ​next day, but I explained that I was in a great hurry and suggested going to his place. He demurred at that, but that old man's vice is greed, Dwayne, and the sight of a choice collection of flash notes made his mouth water. And he took me to his place—and you may be sure that I took care on the way to give Fernandes the office as to where we were going."
"Where is the place?" inquired Inspector Dwayne, conscious that he was asking the, to him, most critical question.
"I'll tell you in good time. It's no use keeping anything back now," said the man, with a grimace. "You'll find Grandfather there yet, I think, but he's plenty to eat and drink and he has got his rum and tobacco. It's an empty house in an alley off Fleet Street—his own, he told me, and I don't wonder!—and I don't know the name of that alley nor the number of the house, because I never saw either, but I scratched three crosses on the door with my penknife, and you'll find it———"
"Wait!" said the younger doctor, who was watching the grey shade on the dying man's face.
Inspector Dwayne glanced at the Tale-pitcher, and saw there was little time to lose. He waited impatiently while the doctor gave his patient more brandy.
"We got the diamonds out of him," whispered the man at last. "You know where they are."
"And the Golden Square affair?" said the ​Inspector. "You gave Fernandes the poison, of course?"
"You may take it at that now," answered the man. "And serve him right—he'd done us once before."
"You may as well give your real name, you know," said the Inspector, finishing his writing. "Come, now!"
But the Tale-pitcher gave him a look before which even Inspector Dwayne felt uneasy. He scrawled some initials at the foot of the sheet, dropped the paper, and turned his head. away with closed eyes.
"Glad you were in at the death, Dwayne," he murmured feebly. "I've had a good run."
Ten minutes later Inspector Dwayne and his assistant were speeding back to London with a package of diamonds in their possession, and more food for thought in their minds.