When did Moris Klaw first appear in London? It is a question which I am asked sometimes and to which I reply, “To the best of my knowledge, shortly before the commencement of the strange happenings at the Menzies Museum.”
What I know of him I have gathered from various sources; and in these papers, which represent an attempt to justify the methods of one frequently accused of being an insane theorist, I propose to recount all the facts which have come to my knowledge. In some few of the cases I was personally though slightly concerned; but regard me merely as the historian and on no account as the principal or even minor character in the story. My friendship with Martin Coram led, then, to my first meeting with Moris Klaw--a meeting which resulted in my becoming his biographer, inadequate though my information unfortunately remains.
It was some three months after the appointment of Coram to the curatorship of the Menzies Museum that the first of a series of singular occurrences took place there.
This occurrence befell one night in August, and the matter was brought to my ears by Coram himself on the following morning. I had, in fact, just taken my seat at the breakfast table, when he walked in unexpectedly and sank into an armchair. His dark, clean-shaven face looked more gaunt than usual and I saw, as he lighted the cigarette which I proffered, that his hand shook nervously.
“There’s trouble at the Museum!” he said, abruptly. “I want you to run around.”
I looked at him for a moment without replying, and, knowing the responsibility of his position, feared that he referred to a theft from the collection.
“Something gone?” I asked.
“No; worse!” was his reply.
“What do you mean, Coram?”
He threw the cigarette, unsmoked, into the hearth. “You know Conway?” he said; “Conway, the night attendant? Well--he’s dead!”
I stood up from the table, my breakfast forgotten, and stared incredulously. “Do you mean that he died in the night?” I inquired.
“Yes. Done for, poor devil!”
“What! murdered?”
“Without a doubt, Searles! He’s had his neck broken!”
I waited for no further explanations, but, hastily dressing, accompanied Coram to the Museum. It consists, I should mention, of four long, rectangular rooms, the windows of two overlooking South Grafton Square, those of the third giving upon the court that leads to the curator’s private entrance, and the fourth adjoining an enclosed garden attached to the building. This fourth room is on the ground floor and is entered through the hall from the Square, the other three, containing the principal and more valuable exhibits, are upon the first floor and are reached by a flight of stairs from the hall. The remainder of the building is occupied by an office and the curator’s private apartments, and is completely shut off from that portion open to the public, the only communicating door--an iron one--being kept locked.
The room described in the catalogue as the “Greek Room” proved to be the scene of the tragedy. This room is one of the two overlooking the Square and contains some of the finest items of the collection. The Museum is not open to the public until ten o’clock, and I found, upon arriving there, that the only occupants of the Greek Room were the commissionaire on duty, two constables, a plain-clothes officer and an inspector--that is, if I except the body of poor Conway.
He had not been touched, but lay as he was found by Beale, the commissionaire who took charge of the upper rooms during the day, and, indeed, it was patent that he was beyond medical aid. In fact, the position of his body was so extraordinary as almost to defy description.
There are three windows in the Greek Room, with wall cases between, and, in the gap corresponding to the east window and just by the door opening into the next room, is a chair for the attendant. Conway lay downward on the polished floor with his limbs partly under this chair and his clenched fists thrust straight out before him. His head, turned partially to one side, was doubled underneath his breast in a most dreadful manner, indisputably pointing to a broken neck, and his commissionaire’s cap lay some distance away, under a table supporting a heavy case of vases.
So much was revealed at a glance, and I immediately turned blankly to Coram.
“What do you make of it?” he said.
I shook my head in silence. I could scarce grasp the reality of the thing; indeed, I was still staring at the huddled figure when the doctor arrived. At his request we laid the dead man flat upon the floor to facilitate an examination, and we then saw that he was greatly cut and bruised about the head and face, and that his features were distorted in a most extraordinary manner, almost as though he had been suffocated.
The doctor did not fail to notice this expression. “Made a hard fight of it!” he said. “He must have been in the last stages of exhaustion when his neck was broken!”
“My dear fellow!” cried Coram, somewhat irritably, “what do you mean when you say that he made a hard fight? There could not possibly have been any one else in these rooms last night!”
“Excuse me, sir!” said the inspector, “but there certainly was something going on here. Have you seen the glass case in the next room?”
“Glass case?” muttered Coram, running his hand distractedly through his thick black hair. “No; what of a glass case?”
“In here, sir,” explained the inspector, leading the way into the adjoining apartment.
At his words, we all followed, and found that he referred to the glass front of a wall case containing statuettes and images of Egyptian deities. The centre pane of this was smashed into fragments, the broken glass strewing the floor and the shelves inside the case.
“That looks like a struggle, sir, doesn’t it?” said the inspector.
“Heaven help us! What does it mean?” groaned poor Coram. “Who could possibly have gained access to the building in the night, or, having done so, have quitted it again, when all the doors remained locked?”
“That we must try and find out!” replied the inspector. “Meanwhile, here are his keys. They lay on the floor in a corner of the Greek Room.”
Coram took them, mechanically. “Beale,” he said to the commissionaire, “see if any of the cases are unlocked.”
The man proceeded to go around the rooms. He had progressed no farther than the Greek Room when he made a discovery. “Here’s the top of this unfastened, sir!” he suddenly cried, excitedly.
We hurriedly joined him, to find that he stood before a marble pedestal surmounted by a thick glass case containing what Coram had frequently assured me was the gem of the collection--the Athenean Harp.
It was alleged to be of very ancient Greek workmanship, and was constructed of fine gold inlaid with jewels. It represented two reclining female figures, their arms thrown above their heads, their hands meeting; and the strings, several of which were still intact, were of incredibly fine gold wire. The instrument was said to have belonged to a Temple of Pallas in an extremely remote age, and at the time it was brought to light much controversy had waged concerning its claims to authenticity, several connoisseurs proclaiming it the work of a famous goldsmith of mediæval Florence, and nothing but a clever forgery. However, Greek or Florentine, amazingly ancient or comparatively modern, it was a beautiful piece of workmanship and of very great intrinsic value, apart from its artistic worth and unique character.
“I thought so!” said the plain-clothes man. “A clever museum thief!”
Coram sighed wearily. “My good fellow,” he replied, “can you explain, by any earthly hypothesis, how a man could get into these apartments and leave them again during the night?”
“Regarding that, sir,” remarked the detective, “there are a few questions I should like to ask you. In the first place, at what time does the Museum close?”
“At six o’clock in the summer.”
“What do you do when the last visitor has gone?”
“Having locked the outside door, Beale, here, thoroughly examines every room to make certain that no one remains concealed. He next locks the communicating doors and comes down into the hall. It was then his custom to hand me the keys. I gave them into poor Conway’s keeping when he came on duty at half-past six, and every hour he went through the Museum, relocking all the doors behind him.”
“I understand that there is a tell-tale watch in each room?”
“Yes. That in the Greek Room registers 4 A.M., so that it was about then that he met his death. He had evidently opened the door communicating with the next room--that containing the broken glass case; but he did not touch the detector and the door was found open this morning.”
“Someone must have lain concealed there and sprung upon him as he entered.”
“Impossible! There is no other means of entrance or exit. The three windows are iron-barred and they have not been tampered with. Moreover, the watch shows that he was there at three o’clock, and nothing larger than a mouse could find shelter in the place; there is nowhere a man could hide.”
“Then the murderer followed him into the Greek Room.”
“Might I venture to point out that, had he done so, he would have been there this morning when Beale arrived? The door of the Greek Room was locked and the keys were found inside upon the floor!”
“The thief might have had a duplicate set.”
“Quite impossible; but, granting the impossible, how did he get in, since the hall door was bolted and barred?”
“We must assume that he succeeded in concealing himself before the Museum was closed.”
“The assumption is not permissible, in view of the fact that Beale and I both examined the rooms last night prior to handing the keys to Conway. However, again granting the impossible, how did he get out?”
The Scotland Yard man removed his hat and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. “I must say, sir, it is a very strange thing,” he said; “but how about the iron door here?”
“It leads to my own apartments. I, alone, hold a key. It was locked.”
A brief examination served to show that exit from any of the barred windows was impossible.
“Well, sir,” said the detective, “if the man had keys he could have come down into the hall and the lower room.”
“Step down and look,” was Coram’s invitation.
The windows of the room on the ground floor were also heavily protected, and it was easy to see that none of them had been opened.
“Upon my word,” exclaimed the inspector, “it’s uncanny! He couldn’t have gone out by the hall door, because you say it was bolted and barred on the inside.”
“It was,” replied Coram.
“One moment, sir,” interrupted the plain-clothes man. “If that was so, how did you get in this morning?”
“It was Beale’s custom,” said Coram, “to come around by the private entrance to my apartments. We then entered the Museum together by the iron door into the Greek Room and relieved Conway of the keys. There are several little matters to be attended to in the morning before admitting the public, and the other door is never unlocked before ten o’clock.”
“Did you lock the door behind you when you came through this morning?”
“Immediately on finding poor Conway.”
“Could any one have come through this door in the night, provided he had a duplicate key?”
“No. There is a bolt on the private side.”
“And you were in your rooms all last night?”
“From twelve o’clock, yes.”
The police looked at one another silently; then the inspector gave an embarrassed laugh. “Frankly, sir,” he said, “I’m completely puzzled!”
We passed upstairs again and Coram turned to the doctor. “Anything else to report about poor Conway?” he asked.
“His face is all cut by the broken glass and he seems to have had a desperate struggle, although, curiously enough, his body bears no other marks of violence. The direct cause of death was, of course, a broken neck.”
“And how should you think he came by it?”
“I should say that he was hurled upon the floor by an opponent possessing more than ordinary strength!”
Thus the physician, and was about to depart when there came a knocking upon the iron door.
“It is Hilda,” said Coram, slipping the key in the lock--“my daughter,” he added, turning to the detective.
