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Page 6
The company drew closer together and formed themselves in a more compact
mass about the speaker. It was evident that they were beginning to feel an
unusual interest in this extraordinary person, who had come among them
unheralded and unknown. Even Shylock stopped calculating percentages for
an instant to listen.
"Do you mean to tell us," demanded Shakespeare, "that the unsmoked stub of
a cigar will suggest the story of him who smoked it to your mind?"
"I do," replied the stranger, with a confident smile. "Take this one, for
instance, that I have picked up here upon the wharf; it tells me the whole
story of the intentions of Captain Kidd at the moment when, in utter
disregard of your rights, he stepped aboard your House-boat, and, in his
usual piratical fashion, made off with it into unknown seas."
"But how do you know he smoked it?" asked Solomon, who deemed it the part
of wisdom to be suspicious of the stranger.
"There are two curious indentations in it which prove that. The marks of
two teeth, with a hiatus between, which you will see if you look closely,"
said the stranger, handing the small bit of tobacco to Sir Walter, "make
that point evident beyond peradventure. The Captain lost an eye-tooth in
one of his later raids; it was knocked out by a marline-spike which had
been hurled at him by one of the crew of the treasure-ship he and his
followers had attacked. The adjacent teeth were broken, but not removed.
The cigar end bears the marks of those two jagged molars, with the hiatus,
which, as I have indicated, is due to the destruction of the eye-tooth
between them. It is not likely that there was another man in the pirate's
crew with teeth exactly like the commander's, therefore I say there can be
no doubt that the cigar end was that of the Captain himself."
"Very interesting indeed," observed Blackstone, removing his wig and
fanning himself with it; "but I must confess, Mr. Chairman, that in any
properly constituted law court this evidence would long since have been
ruled out as irrelevant and absurd. The idea of two or three hundred
dignified spirits like ourselves, gathered together to devise a means for
the recovery of our property and the rescue of our wives, yielding the
floor to the delivering of a lecture by an entire stranger on 'Cigar Ends
He Has Met,' strikes me as ridiculous in the extreme. Of what earthly
interest is it to us to know that this or that cigar was smoked by Captain
Kidd?"
"Merely that it will help us on, your honor, to discover the whereabouts
of the said Kidd," interposed the stranger. "It is by trifles, seeming
trifles, that the greatest detective work is done. My friends Le Coq,
Hawkshaw, and Old Sleuth will bear me out in this, I think, however much
in other respects our methods may have differed. They left no stone
unturned in the pursuit of a criminal; no detail, however trifling,
uncared for. No more should we in the present instance overlook the
minutest bit of evidence, however irrelevant and absurd at first blush it
may appear to be. The truth of what I say was very effectually proven in
the strange case of the Brokedale tiara, in which I figured somewhat
conspicuously, but which I have never made public, because it involves a
secret affecting the integrity of one of the noblest families in the
British Empire. I really believe that mystery was solved easily and at
once because I happened to remember that the number of my watch was
86507B. How trivial a thing, and yet how important it was, as the event
transpired, you will realize when I tell you the incident."
The stranger's manner was so impressive that there was a unanimous and
simultaneous movement upon the part of all present to get up closer, so as
the more readily to hear what he said, as a result of which poor old
Boswell was pushed overboard, and fell with a loud splash into the Styx.
Fortunately, however, one of Charon's pleasure-boats was close at hand,
and in a short while the dripping, sputtering spirit was drawn into it,
wrung out, and sent home to dry. The excitement attending this diversion
having subsided, Solomon asked:
"What was the incident of the lost tiara?"
[Illustration: "POOR OLD BOSWELL WAS PUSHED OVERBOARD"]
"I am about to tell you," returned the stranger; "and it must be
understood that you are told in the strictest confidence, for, as I say,
the incident involves a state secret of great magnitude. In life--in the
mortal life--gentlemen, I was a detective by profession, and, if I do say
it, who perhaps should not, I was one of the most interesting for purely
literary purposes that has ever been known. I did not find it necessary to
go about saying 'Ha! ha!' as M. Le Coq was accustomed to do to advertise
his cleverness; neither did I disguise myself as a drum-major and hide
under a kitchen-table for the purpose of solving a mystery involving the
abduction of a parlor stove, after the manner of the talented Hawkshaw. By
mental concentration alone, without fireworks or orchestral accompaniment
of any sort whatsoever, did I go about my business, and for that very
reason many of my fellow-sleuths were forced to go out of real detective
work into that line of the business with which the stage has familiarized
the most of us--a line in which nothing but stupidity, luck, and a yellow
wig is required of him who pursues it."
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