The Old Man in the Corner

The man in the corner pushed aside his glass, and leant across the table.

“Mysteries!” he commented. “There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence is brought to bear upon its investigation.”

Very much astonished Polly Burton looked over the top of her newspaper, and fixed a pair of very severe, coldly inquiring brown eyes upon him.

She had disapproved of the man from the instant when he shuffled across the shop and sat down opposite to her, at the same marble-topped table which already held her large coffee (3d.), her roll and butter (2d.), and plate of tongue (6d.).

Now this particular corner, this very same table, that special view of the magnificent marble hall⁠—known as the Norfolk Street branch of the Aërated Bread Company’s depots⁠—were Polly’s own corner, table, and view. Here she had partaken of eleven pennyworth of luncheon and one pennyworth of daily information ever since that glorious never-to-be-forgotten day when she was enrolled on the staff of the Evening Observer (we’ll call it that, if you please), and became a member of that illustrious and world-famed organization known as the British Press.

She was a personality, was Miss Burton of the Evening Observer. Her cards were printed thus:

“Everybody in that court already saw Smethurst mounting the gallows. It was uninterested curiosity which caused the elegant audience to wait and hear what Sir Arthur Inglewood had to say. He, of course, is the most fashionable man in the law at the present moment. His lolling attitudes, his drawling speech, are quite the rage, and imitated by the gilded youth of society.

“Even at this moment, when the Siberian millionaire’s neck literally and metaphorically hung in the balance, an expectant titter went round the fair spectators as Sir Arthur stretched out his long loose limbs and lounged across the table. He waited to make his effect⁠—Sir Arthur is a born actor⁠—and there is no doubt that he made it, when in his slowest, most drawly tones he said quietly;

“ ‘With regard to this alleged murder of one William Kershaw, on Wednesday, December the 10th, between 6:15 and 8:45 p.m., your Honour, I now propose to call two witnesses, who saw this same William Kershaw alive on Tuesday afternoon, December the 16th, that is to say, six days after the supposed murder.’

“It was as if a bombshell had exploded in the court. Even his Honour was aghast, and I am sure the lady next to me only recovered from the shock of the surprise in order to wonder whether she need put off her dinner party after all.

“In these days of tubes and motor traction of all kinds, the old-fashioned ‘best, cheapest, and quickest route to City and West End’ is often deserted, and the good old Metropolitan Railway carriages cannot at any time be said to be overcrowded. Anyway, when that particular train steamed into Aldgate at about 4 p.m. on March 18th last, the first-class carriages were all but empty.

“The guard marched up and down the platform looking into all the carriages to see if anyone had left a halfpenny evening paper behind for him, and opening the door of one of the first-class compartments, he noticed a lady sitting in the further corner, with her head turned away towards the window, evidently oblivious of the fact that on this line Aldgate is the terminal station.

“ ‘Where are you for, lady?’ he said.

“The lady did not move, and the guard stepped into the carriage, thinking that perhaps the lady was asleep. He touched her arm lightly and looked into her face. In his own poetic language, he was ‘struck all of a ’eap.’ In the glassy eyes, the ashen colour of the cheeks, the rigidity of the head, there was the unmistakable look of death.

“He had just left the hotel and was about to cross towards St. George’s Hall when a gentleman, in a magnificent fur coat, stepped quickly out of a cab which had been stationed near the kerb, and, touching him lightly upon the shoulder, said with an unmistakable air of authority, at the same time handing him a card:

“ ‘That is my name. I must speak with you immediately.’

“Schwarz glanced at the card, and by the light of the arc lamps above his head read on it the name of ‘Dimitri Slaviansky Burgreneff, de la IIIe Section de la Police Imperial de S.M. le Czar.’

“Quickly the owner of the unpronounceable name and the significant title pointed to the cab from which he had just alighted, and Schwarz, whose every suspicion with regard to his princely customer bristled up in one moment, clutched his bag and followed his imposing interlocutor; as soon as they were both comfortably seated in the cab the latter began, with courteous apology in broken but fluent English:

“ ‘I must ask your pardon, sir, for thus trespassing upon your valuable time, and I certainly should not have done so but for the certainty that our interests in a certain matter which I have in hand are practically identical, in so far that we both should wish to outwit a clever rogue.’

“Instinctively, and his mind full of terrible apprehension, Mr. Schwarz’s hand wandered to his pocketbook, filled to overflowing with the banknotes which he had so lately received from the Prince.