The master criminal

Time did not touch Mr. Hildebrand Flurscheim's sore with a healing finger. A month after he had been robbed of his treasures the wound was still open, though by that time he had been wise enough to conceal it with a decent bandage from the curious eyes of the public. But his friends and his enemies knew that it was there and condoled or rejoiced, according to their several temperaments. Perhaps there were more who rejoiced than of those who pitied him, for Flurscheim was not a popular man. Even his friends were compelled to admit that he was something of a curmudgeon, and were not quite so sorry as they would have been had the loss fallen upon anyone else.

After the robbery he became more curmudgeonish than ever, and his perpetual growlings at everything and everybody made him so undesirable a companion that even his poor relations began to find that his company was an infliction that was barely endurable, even when sweetened by the prospect of figuring in his will. Yet as people shrank from him he seemed anxious for society. Partly because he realised that if he were cloistered with his own thoughts his broodings would terminate in madness, and partly because he wished to make clear to the world that his loss was a mere triviality to a man of his wealth, he sought to entertain in a manner which was entirely foreign to his earlier habit and his real desire. He had a wide acquaintance, and there were many of the butterflies of fashion and rank who were attracted to his dinner-table once by curiosity. If, after the experience, they decided not to go a second time, it was too early for the connoisseur to have discovered the fact. It was in pursuance of this campaign of detraction that he had found himself at the opera when his stares had proved so discomposing to Meriel Challys and—afterwards—to Guy. The latter, had he known, need have taken no alarm. Flurscheim's scrutiny was not directed towards him. Meriel's face alone had engaged his attention. He had first caught sight of her as she had bent forward to drink in the music, and he recognised that her features were familiar to him, but where and when he had met her he could not for the moment remember. It was not until after he had left the opera house that his memory supplied the answer he sought. Then he remembered that one of the stolen miniatures would have served as a portrait of the girl.

Immediately he began to weave a new theory concerning the burglary. He had woven many theories before; avarice, spite, disappointed rivalry had all supplied motives for them, but never had he considered the possibility of a love motive for the robbery. Supposing that some unfavoured suitor had seen the miniature, and, coveting it, had broken in to steal it. No! Such a theory was too wild for even his own belief. Yet the likeness was so extraordinary that he looked forward to meeting the owner of the strangely attractive face again.

Fortune favoured him, for within a week he found himself at a garden party at which Meriel was also a guest. He sought and obtained an introduction from the hostess, and was quite oblivious to the chilly character of his reception.

"I particularly wanted to meet you, Miss Challys. Indeed, I may say that since I saw you at the opera a week ago your face has really haunted me," said Flurscheim.

Meriel's eyebrows arched. She meditated flight.

"I'm afraid you must have thought me an awful bounder, staring at you the other night," he continued, "but your face was so familiar to me, and yet I could not recall where I had met you. It wasn't until after the opera was over that I remembered that one of my stolen miniatures was a most striking portrait of you; I hope that you will realise that my rudeness was unintentional."

"I certainly did not think so at the time," replied Meriel.

"It was quite a relief when I placed my memory," said the connoisseur. "D'you know that I'm one of those men that are made supremely uncomfortable by a lapse of memory of that sort. I begin to think my brain's failing if it doesn't respond at once to any call I make upon it, and after my recent worry I really began to be anxious."

"Did the burglary worry you so much as all that?" replied Meriel. Usually sympathetic to any story of trouble, she felt it difficult to express any sympathy with the loss the wealthy connoisseur had sustained.

"Worry me?" asked Flurscheim in an astonished tone. "Worry me?" he repeated. "Worry isn't the name for what I've gone through. I can see you don't understand what a collector's treasures mean to him. My dear young lady"—in his excitement an accent became audible which made of the words "ma tear young lady,"—"my pictures are what I've lived for. If I lose them my life is as empty—as empty"—he looked round for an appropriate simile and found one handy—"as most of these people's pockets."

Meriel smiled at the racial revelation. Flurscheim thought she smiled at the simile itself. "Fortunately it was only one of my pictures that was taken," he continued, "but"—he could not resist the wail—"it was the best of the lot. I would rather have lost any two of the others."

Meriel began to be interested in the man. He was manifestly honest in his confession. She even managed to infuse a little sympathy into her enquiry as to whether the police had obtained no clue to the thief. By so asking she struck another chord in the keyboard of the Flurscheim emotions.

"The police! Fools! Dolts! Idiots!" he exclaimed. "Of what use are the police but to strut about and direct the traffic? When it comes to catching thieves they are just about as useful as the pigeons in the parks. Some of them call themselves detectives," he continued with virulent scorn. "There's one of them called Kenly, an inspector with a reputation of being one of the smartest men at Scotland Yard! Got it, I should think, the same way as an owl gets a reputation for wisdom. Cocks his ears, opens his eyes wide, and keeps his mouth shut. For nearly six weeks he has been doing nothing else but investigate my robbery. And what has he found out? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Detectives, bah!" He pulled himself up with an effort. "I've promised myself I wouldn't talk about the matter to anyone, Miss Challys. I can't do so without losing my temper, and it will give you a very bad opinion of me if I have to apologise to you twice in one day."

"You seem to lose it pretty easily, Mr. Flurscheim," she answered.

"Can't help it, Miss Challys. So I'll apologise straight away for doing so and for staring at you the other night, for I know you were annoyed. It never struck me that you might be annoyed, you know. Most girls to-day take it as a compliment when a man looks 'em over."

Meriel stiffened and, looking away, met Guy's eyes. She had known that he expected to be present, and at the recognition her whole face brightened. Guy had already recognised Flurscheim, and though the fact that he was apparently engaged in earnest conversation with Meriel gave him a twinge of apprehension, he did not hesitate to come forward.

Flurscheim looked upon the young man disapprovingly as Meriel put her hand in his. He saw that his existence was momentarily obliterated from the girl's mind. But he did not move from her side, and when, still forgetful, she strolled away with Guy across the lawn without even turning her head in his direction, he muttered a curse in which Guy was included amongst things in general, but from which Meriel herself was just as certainly excluded.

No sooner were they out of hearing than Guy gave expression to the curiosity which the sight of Flurscheim in conversation with Meriel had excited in him.

"However did that bounder Flurscheim manage to corner you, Miss Challys?" he asked.

Meriel glanced round. "Oh! I had quite forgotten him," she said laughing, "although I was wondering how I should manage to escape him when I saw you."

"After staring at you the other night in so impertinent a manner I wonder he had the cheek to face you," continued Guy irritably.

"Oh! he explained all that," replied Meriel. "He sought me out to-day in order to apologise." She told how the connoisseur had been puzzled to account for his familiarity with her face and his ultimate recognition of her as the autotype of one of his missing miniatures.

Guy smiled at the explanation. He realised with an exceptional degree of pleasure that the miniature was now in his own possession. He had long ago carefully removed the picture from the lid of the snuff-box in which it had been set and had reset it himself in a simple gold frame with a circlet of brilliants. It was his by right of possession, and he determined that it should remain his. Incidentally the information Meriel had given him that she had been the object of Flurscheim's scrutiny came as a relief. It was proof that he himself was in no way suspected. At the same time it seemed to Guy an added impertinence on the part of the connoisseur that he should have sought to make Meriel's acquaintance. It gave him pleasure to think that he had despoiled the Jew of his treasures. He would have liked to have confided his thoughts to the girl at his side. He was almost on the point of doing so when his common sense bade him pause. She would not understand. She was not tutored in the doctrine of the rights of the individual to possess everything upon which he may lay his hand. But he could not resist the opportunity which seemed to offer to open her eyes to some of his own beliefs. If he presented them delicately they might not offend. Crudely expressed, he knew that she would not listen.

"Flurscheim is hardly the sort of person who deserves to possess beautiful things," he hazarded.

"There seems something incongruous in the idea," she said smiling her reply. "But there can be no doubt but that he has a very real love for them."

"Can't believe it," said Guy emphatically. "The capacity to acquire beautiful things and the capacity to see their beauties rarely go together."

"I should think that your argument would rather apply to the burglar who stole Mr. Flurscheim's valuables than to Mr. Flurscheim," replied Meriel merrily.

"Not necessarily," answered Guy. "It might be that the person in whose possession they are now is far more capable of appreciating the Greuze or of the miniature which he declares is so like yourself, than he is, and if such should happen to be the case hasn't the present possessor as much right as Flurscheim to the enjoyment of them?"

He spoke lightly and Meriel replied in the same tone.

"Isn't that an argument which might apply to anything of the nature of personal possessions?" she asked.

"Certainly," he responded quickly. "Is the man or woman, who wants a thing, to go without it when somebody else has more of the same article than he knows what to do with? Look at that fat old woman over there"—the disrespectful allusion referred to the maternal relative of the latest American addition by marriage to the list of British peeresses—"she's so loaded up with jewels that she absolutely clanks as she walks. She has enough on her to satisfy the aspirations of a hundred ordinary women. Why should she have all those pretty stones and trinkets and lots of other women go without?"

"She certainly is wearing far too much jewellery for a garden party," replied Meriel, her eyes twinkling.

"Yet if any other woman were to relieve her of even the smallest of her extraneous adornments the mere possession of which would probably give her far more pleasure than it does to the present possessor, there's not a man or woman here who would not cry 'to gaol with the thief,'" said Guy.

Despite his intention, Guy had warmed to the argument, and he awoke a corresponding earnestness in his companion.

"I don't think I should," she said quietly. "I should pity her too much."

"But why?" he asked. "She would merely have shown herself to have the courage of her desires."

Meriel shook her head. "I always pity people who cannot control their desires, particularly when those desires are for things that don't belong to them."

"But," urged Guy, "everyone is born with the right to enjoy. That fat old woman has long ago ceased to find enjoyment in many of her trinkets. Why pity anyone who would at one stroke relieve her of her burden and at the same time provide themselves with a new pleasure?"

Meriel knitted her brows. "I'm no good at an ethical argument, Mr. Hora," she said. "And I am quite sure you only want to get me to agree with you so that you may laugh at me afterwards."

"No," he answered. "I've no arrière pensée of the sort you imagine. I know you would think it wrong, the majority think it wrong for anyone to help themselves to other people's things. I want to know why."

Meriel looked at him archly. "Suppose I were to slip behind that comfortable old lady and snip off that little watch all studded with diamonds from her chatelaine, what would you think of me?"

"I wish to Heaven you would," he answered.

Meriel laughed. "I should never have thought that you could be so strongly provoked by mere ostentation."

"I was not thinking of the old woman," he answered. "My admiration would be entirely attributable to your pluck in defying the conventions."

"But afterwards?" she objected. "You could never have the slightest respect for me."

"On the contrary——" he began.

She interrupted him. "No," she said. "You would no more respect me than I could you, if, for instance, you had stolen poor Mr. Flurscheim's picture."

He was taken aback by the apposite allusion. For a second, and for a second only, he imagined that there was intention in her selection of the simile. But a glance into the smiling eyes which met his so frankly disabused his mind of the idea. Clearly, the girl never thought that he could possibly have engaged in such an adventure. She had not the slightest idea that he was guilty—no, that was the wrong word, the coward's word, no guilt attached to his actions—that he was capable of such a feat. She saw that he was disturbed and continued gaily.

"Why, even the supposition of such a thing is repugnant to you, and yet you ask why?"

"Even suppose that the idea is repugnant," he replied, "I still ask why it is so. Reason could justify the action."

"For reason say sophistry," she answered quickly. "You know that the repugnance of the thought is inbred. It's inherited. We can't help thinking like that because the knowledge of right and wrong is intuitive."

"A woman's answer," he answered lightly.

"A man's still more," she said with earnestness. "One might possibly forgive a woman's theft. We are the weaker creatures and the more easily swayed by our desires. But the man should be strong enough to resist. No man worthy the name could stoop to dishonour himself in so petty a manner, nor could he have aught but contempt for the woman who so gave way to her covetousness. No, Mr. Hora. You could never persuade me that you could have an atom of respect for me if I were to so forget my principles as to filch any one of the over-jewelled dowager's trinkets? Now, would you?"

He sought refuge from the direct answer in a side issue. "But if your principles were such that you honestly believed that the good lady had no more right than yourself to her jewels and that only the fear of punishment restrained you from taking possession of them?"

Meriel laughed gaily. "I cannot even conceive such a possibility," she said. "It seems to me you are preaching anarchy, and I'm not the least little bit of an anarchist."

The approach of a third person interrupted Guy's reply. Looking away from Meriel he saw Captain Marven standing beside him. The Captain had heard his niece's concluding words and he corroborated them.

"I can safely swear that a more tyrannical dictator of law and order than Meriel never stepped over a man's threshold. You must accuse her of something else, Hora."

Guy laughed and the subject dropped. But the conversation had made an impression upon him. It had destroyed, though at the time he did not recognise the fact, the delight he had felt in being something apart from other men, the exhilaration of being in conflict with the world. The obvious scorn which the girl felt for the thief, her absolute belief that the idea of theft was as repugnant to him as it was to herself, were deadly blows to the philosophy which Lynton Hora fondly imagined he had planted so deeply as to be ineradicable. Guy felt that his belief was crumbling. He knew that if he were to be true to the man he knew as father he should forswear the bewitching companionship of the girl who exercised so unsettling an influence upon him, nevertheless when a little later Captain Marven asked him to visit them at their country home when the season was over, he accepted eagerly.