The Gilded Man

Author:John Dickson Carr [Carr, John Dickson]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Morrow
Published: 1942-03-14T18:30:00+00:00

"Dwight Stanhope dresses up as a burglar, and is found under somewhat rummy circumstances. First conclusion: he was just goin' out to crack another crib, probably Buller Naseby's house. Second conclusion: somebody in this house spots him, mistakes him for an intruder here, stabs him, and then takes a peek under the mask and finds with horror that it's the old man. So the person in question hares away before the alarm, and won't own up even yet."

Christabel did not speak.

Her shiny-looking eyelids were lowered. She seemed to be studying the tips of her dark-green shoes. But Nick could sense about her an intense watchfulness.

"Of course," H.M. growled, "that theory won't explain the cut window-pane or the almost-pinched El Greco. But you can't have everything. Ma'am, that's not good enough."

"I don't want everything," said Christabel. "I want well!"

"That's to say, ma'am," explained H.M., "that fun and games below-stairs oughtn't to bother you as much as that. But you are worried. No end. Why is it? Why this obsession about a burglar, and your husband in particular?"

'1'd like to know the answer to that too," said Nick. "After all, Mrs. Stanhope thought I was a burglar last night."

Christabel eyed him with reproach.

"My dear man, that was only a dream. And I told it to you in confidence."

"Dream?" exploded H.M. "What dream?"

"Oh, I dreamed all sorts of ghastly things. It was just some talk of the night before: mixed up, as I told Mr. Wood, with what I'd read in the papers. Perhaps I wasn't quite frank with you about all of it. - But when I came out and found you in the hall, and then Dwight downstairs stabbed-" She paused. She spoke quietly. "You're not trying to trap me? You honestly don't think Dwight was even mixed up in any crooked dealings of any kind? You swear that?"

"I swear it, Mrs. Stanhope," replied Nick.

Christabel sat back. It was an odd transformation: as though her face, which had grown faintly withered, got back its bloom again. .

"I don't know how many burglaries you have in your books for the past year," she said. `But I can recall two country-house ones. One was at… Cataract House, Crowborough, June the eighth," supplied Nick.

"And the other at . . ."

"Pensbury Old Hall, Yate, September the twenty-seventh."

"Thank you, Inspector. My husband was a guest at the house on both occasions; and I wasn't there.

"Please don't run away with the idea that I ran away with the idea. But it did seem, since then, that references to pictures or rare manuscripts or precious stones were always cropping up. Dwight wasn't himself, either. On top of that, in walked a stranger, a presumed friend of Dwight-" she looked at Nick-"who was obviously not what he pretended to be."

"Thanks," grunted Nick.

"You were seen coming out of Dwight's room. When I spoke about it to a friend, I covered it up by suggesting you might have been ransacking it. Actually, you were talking to Dwight. Weren't you?"

"Yes, Mrs. Stanhope."

"You see, I thought you might be his accomplice.

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