Chapter II

“Excellent, Bunter,” said Lord Peter, sinking with a sigh into a luxurious armchair. “I couldn’t have done better myself. The thought of the Dante makes my mouth water – and the ‘Four Sons of Aymon.’ And you’ve saved me £60 – that’s glorious. What shall we spend it on, Bunter? Think of it – all ours, to do as we like with, for as Harold Skimpole so rightly observes, £60 saved is £60 gained, and I’d reckoned on spending it all. It’s your saving, Bunter, and properly speaking, your £60. What do we want? Anything in your department? Would you like anything altered in the flat?”

“Well, my lord, as your lordship is so good” – the man-servant paused, about to pour an old brandy into a liqueur glass.

“Well, out with it, my Bunter, you imperturbable old hypocrite. It’s no good talking as if you were announcing dinner – you’re spilling the brandy. The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau. What does that blessed darkroom of yours want now?”

“There’s a Double Anastigmat with a set of supplementary lenses, my lord,” said Bunter, with a note almost of religious fervour. “If it was a case of forgery now – or footprints – I could enlarge them right up on the plate. Or the wide-angled lens would be useful. It’s as though the camera had eyes at the back of its head, my lord. Look – I’ve got it here.”

He pulled a catalogue from his pocket, and submitted it, quivering, to his employer’s gaze.

Lord Peter perused the description slowly, the corners of his long mouth lifted into a faint smile.

“It’s Greek to me,” he said, “and £50 seems a ridiculous price for a few bits of glass. I suppose, Bunter, you’d say £750 was a bit out of the way for a dirty old book in a dead language, wouldn’t you?”

“It wouldn’t be my place to say so, my lord.”

“No, Bunter, I pay you £200 a year to keep your thoughts to yourself. Tell me, Bunter, in these democratic days, don’t you think that’s unfair?”

“No, my lord.”

“You don’t. D’you mind telling me frankly why you don’t think it unfair?”

“Frankly, my lord, your lordship is paid a nobleman’s income to take Lady Worthington in to dinner and refrain from exercising your lordship’s undoubted powers of repartee.”

Lord Peter considered this.

“That’s your idea, is it, Bunter? Noblesse oblige – for a consideration. I daresay you’re right. Then you’re better off than I am, because I’d have to behave myself to Lady Worthington if I hadn’t a penny. Bunter, if I sacked you here and now, would you tell me what you think of me?”

“No, my lord.”

“You’d have a perfect right to, my Bunter, and if I sacked you on top of drinking the kind of coffee you make, I’d deserve everything you could say of me. You’re a demon for coffee, Bunter – I don’t want to know how you do it, because I believe it to be witchcraft, and I don’t want to burn eternally. You can buy your cross-eyed lens.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“Have you finished in the dining-room?”

“Not quite, my lord.”

“Well, come back when you have. I have many things to tell you. Hullo! who’s that?”

The doorbell had rung sharply.

“Unless it’s anybody interestin’ I’m not at home.”

“Very good, my lord.”

Lord Peter’s library was one of the most delightful bachelor rooms in London. Its scheme was black and primrose; its walls were lined with rare editions, and its chairs and Chesterfield sofa suggested the embraces of the houris. In one corner stood a black baby grand, a wood fire leaped on a wide old-fashioned hearth, and the Sèvres vases on the chimneypiece were filled with ruddy and gold chrysanthemums. To the eyes of the young man who was ushered in from the raw November fog it seemed not only rare and unattainable, but friendly and familiar, like a colourful and gilded paradise in a mediaeval painting.

“Mr. Parker, my lord.”

Lord Peter jumped up with genuine eagerness.

“My dear man, I’m delighted to see you. What a beastly foggy night, ain’t it? Bunter, some more of that admirable coffee and another glass and the cigars. Parker, I hope you’re full of crime – nothing less than arson or murder will do for us tonight. ‘On such a night as this – ’ Bunter and I were just sitting down to carouse. I’ve got a Dante, and a Caxton folio that is practically unique, at Sir Ralph Brocklebury’s sale. Bunter, who did the bargaining, is going to have a lens which does all kinds of wonderful things with its eyes shut, and

We both have got a body in a bath,

We both have got a body in a bath —

For in spite of all temptations

To go in for cheap sensations

We insist upon a body in a bath —

Nothing less will do for us, Parker. It’s mine at present, but we’re going shares in it. Property of the firm. Won’t you join us? You really must put something in the jack-pot. Perhaps you have a body. Oh, do have a body. Every body welcome.

Gin a body meet a body

Hauled before the beak,

Gin a body jolly well knows who murdered a body and that old Sugg is on the wrong tack,

Need a body speak?

Not a bit of it. He tips a glassy wink to yours truly and yours truly reads the truth.”

“Ah,” said Parker, “I knew you’d been round to Queen Caroline Mansions. So’ve I, and met Sugg, and he told me he’d seen you. He was cross, too. Unwarrantable interference, he calls it.”

“I knew he would,” said Lord Peter. “I love taking a rise out of dear old Sugg, he’s always so rude. I see by the Star that he has excelled himself by taking the girl, Gladys What’s-her-name, into custody. Sugg of the evening, beautiful Sugg! But what were you doing there?”

“To tell you the truth,” said Parker, “I went round to see if the Semitic-looking stranger in Mr. Thipps’s bath was by any extraordinary chance Sir Reuben Levy. But he isn’t.”

“Sir Reuben Levy? Wait a minute, I saw something about that. I know! A headline: ‘Mysterious disappearance of famous financier.’ What’s it all about? I didn’t read it carefully.”

“Well, it’s a bit odd, though I daresay it’s nothing really – old chap may have cleared for some reason best known to himself. It only happened this morning, and nobody would have thought anything about it, only it happened to be the day on which he had arranged to attend a most important financial meeting and do some deal involving millions – I haven’t got all the details. But I know he’s got enemies who’d just as soon the deal didn’t come off, so when I got wind of this fellow in the bath, I buzzed round to have a look at him. It didn’t seem likely, of course, but unlikelier things do happen in our profession. The funny thing is, old Sugg had got bitten with the idea it is him, and is wildly telegraphing to Lady Levy to come and identify him. But as a matter of fact, the man in the bath is no more Sir Reuben Levy than Adolf Beck, poor devil, was John Smith. Oddly enough, though, he would be really extraordinarily like Sir Reuben if he had a beard, and as Lady Levy is abroad with the family, somebody may say it’s him, and Sugg will build up a lovely theory, like the Tower of Babel, and destined so to perish.”

“Sugg’s a beautiful, braying ass,” said Lord Peter. “He’s like a detective in a novel. Well, I don’t know anything about Levy, but I’ve seen the body, and I should say the idea was preposterous upon the face of it. What do you think of the brandy?”

“Unbelievable, Wimsey – sort of thing makes one believe in heaven. But I want your yarn.”

“D’you mind if Bunter hears it, too? Invaluable man, Bunter – amazin’ fellow with a camera. And the odd thing is, he’s always on the spot when I want my bath or my boots. I don’t know when he develops things – I believe he does ’em in his sleep. Bunter!”

“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.”