The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet | Page 9

feel the need of a bracer after all this excitement," Vantine remarked, as he opened the cellarette. "Help yourself. I dare say you're used to this sort of thing--"
"Finding dead men lying around?" I queried, with a smile. "No--it's not so common as you seem to think."
"Tell me, Lester," and he looked at me earnestly, "do you think that poor devil came in here just to get a chance to kill himself quietly?"
"No, I don't," I said.
"Then what did he come in for?"
"I think Goldberger's theory a pretty good one--that he had heard of you as a generous fellow and came in here to ask help; and while he was waiting, suddenly gave it up--"
"And killed himself?" Vantine completed.
I hesitated. I was astonished to find, at the back of my mind, a growing doubt.
"See here, Lester," Vantine demanded, "if he didn't kill himself, what happened to him?"
"Heaven only knows," I answered, in despair. "I've been asking myself the same question, without finding a reasonable answer to it. As I said to Goldberger, it's a blank wall. But if anybody can see through it, Jim Godfrey can."
Vantine seemed deeply perturbed. He took a turn or two up and down the room, then stopped in front of me and looked me earnestly in the eye.
"Tell me, Lester," he said, "do you believe that theory of Godfrey's --that that insignificant wound on the hand caused death?"
"It seems absurd, doesn't it? But Godfrey is a sort of genius at divining such things."
"Then you do believe it?"
I asked myself the same question before I answered.
"Yes, I do," I said, finally.
Vantine walked up and down the room again, his eyes on the floor, his brows contracted.
"Lester," he said, at last, "I have a queer feeling that the business which brought this man here in some way concerned the Boule cabinet I was telling you about. Perhaps it belonged to him."
"Hardly," I protested, recalling his shabby appearance.
"At any rate, I remember, as I was looking at his card, that some such thought occurred to me. It was for that reason I told Parks to ask him to wait."
"It's possible, of course," I admitted. "But that wouldn't explain his excitement. And that reminds me," I added, "I haven't sent off that cable."
"Any time to-night will do. It will be delivered in the morning. But you haven't seen the cabinet yet. Come down and look at it."
He led the way down the stair. Parks met us in the lower hall.
"There's a delegation of reporters outside, sir," he said. "They say they've got to see you."
Vantine made a movement of impatience.
"Tell them," he said, "that I positively refuse to see them or to allow my servants to see them. Let them get their information from the police."
"Very well, sir," said Parks, and turned away grinning.
Vantine passed on through the ante-room in which we had found the body of the unfortunate Frenchman, and into the room beyond. Five or six pieces of furniture, evidently just unpacked, stood there, but, ignorant as I am of such things, he did not have to point out to me the Boule cabinet. It dominated the room, much as Madame de Montespan, no doubt, dominated the court at Versailles.
I looked at it for some moments, for it was certainly a beautiful piece of work, with a wealth of inlay and incrustation little short of marvellous. But I may as well say here that I never really appreciated it. The florid style of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Louis is not at all to my taste; and I am too little of a connoisseur to admire a beauty which has no personal appeal for me. So I am afraid that Vantine found me a little cold.
Certainly there was nothing cold about the way he regarded it. His eyes gleamed with a strange fire as he looked at it; he ran his fingers over the inlay with a touch almost reverent; he pulled out for me the little drawers with much the same air that another friend of mine takes down his Kilmarnock Burns from his bookshelves; he pointed out to me the grace of its curves in the same tone that one uses to discuss the masterpiece of a great artist. And then, finding no echo to his enthusiasm, he suddenly stopped.
"You don't seem to care for it," he said, looking at me.
"That's my fault and not the fault of the cabinet," I pointed out. "I'm not educated up to it; I'm too little of an artist, perhaps."
He was flushed, as a man might be should another make a disparaging remark about his wife, and he led the way from the room at once.
"Remember, Lester," he said, a little sternly, pausing with his hand on the front door, "there is to be no foolishness about securing that cabinet