Ashton-Kirk, Investigator

To my Friend
Grant Gibney

Introduction

Ashton-Kirk, who has solved so many mysteries, is himself something of a problem even to those who know him best. Although young, wealthy, and of high social position, he is nevertheless an indefatigable worker in his chosen field. He smiles when men call him a detective. “No; only an investigator,” he says.

He has never courted notoriety; indeed, his life has been more or less secluded. However, let a man do remarkable work in any line and, as Emerson has observed, “the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

Those who have found their way to Ashton-Kirk’s door have been of many races and interests. Men of science have often been surprised to find him in touch with the latest discoveries, scholars searching among strange tongues and dialects, and others deep in tattered scrolls, ancient tablets and forgotten books have been his frequent visitors. But among them come many who seek his help in solving problems in crime.

“I’m more curious than some other fellows, that’s all,” is the way he accounts for himself. “If a puzzle is put in front of me I can’t rest till I know the answer.” At any rate his natural bent has always been to make plain the mysterious; each well hidden step in the perpetration of a crime has always been for him an exciting lure; and to follow a thread, snarled by circumstances or by another intelligence has been, he admits, his chief delight.

There are many strange things to be written of this remarkable man—but this, the case of the numismatist Hume, has been selected as the first because it is one of the simplest, and yet clearly illustrates Ashton-Kirk’s peculiar talents. It will also throw some light on the question, often asked, as to how his cases come to him.

A second volume that shows the investigator deep in another mystery, even more intricate and puzzling than this, is entitled Ashton-Kirk and the Scarlet Scapular.

I

Pendleton Calls Upon Ashton-Kirk

Young Pendleton’s car crept carefully around the corner and wound in and out among the pushcart men and dirty children.

About midway in the block was a square-built house with tall, small-paned windows and checkered with black-headed brick. It stood slightly back from the street with ancient dignity; upon the shining doorplate, deeply bitten in angular text, was the name “Ashton-Kirk.”

Here the car stopped; Pendleton got out, ascended the white marble steps and tugged at the polished, old-fashioned bell-handle.

A grave-faced German, in dark livery, opened the door.

“Mr. Ashton-Kirk will see you, sir,” said he. “I gave him your telephone message as soon as he came down.”

“Thank you, Stumph,” said Pendleton. And with the manner of one perfectly acquainted with the house, he ascended a massively balustraded staircase. The walls were darkly paneled; from the shadowy recesses pictured faces of men and women looked down at him.

Coming in from the littered street, with its high smells and crowding, gesticulating people, the house impressed one by its quiet, its spaciousness, and the evident means and culture of its owner. Pendleton turned off at the first landing, proceeded along a passage and finally knocked at a door. Without waiting for a reply, he walked in.

At the far end of a long, high-ceilinged apartment a young man was lounging in an easy-chair. At his elbow was a jar of tobacco, a sheaf of brown cigarette papers and a scattering of books. He lifted a keen dark face, lit up by singularly brilliant eyes.

“Hello, Pen,” greeted he. “You’ve come just in time to smoke up some of this Greek tobacco. Throw those books off that chair and make yourself easy.”

One by one Pendleton lifted the books and glanced at the titles.

“Your morning’s reading, if this is such,” commented he, “is strikingly catholic. Plutarch, ‘Snarleyow,’ the Opium-Eater, Martin Chuzzlewit.” Then came a host of tattered pamphlets, bound in shrieking paper covers, which the speaker handled gingerly. “ ‘The Crimes of Anton Probst,’ ” he continued to read, “ ‘The Deeds of the Harper Family,’ ‘The Murder of ———’ ” here he paused, tossed the pamphlets aside with contempt, sat down and drew the tobacco jar toward him.

“Some of the results of your forays into the basements of old booksellers, I suppose,” he added, rolling a cigarette with delicate ease. “But what value you see in such things is beyond me.”

Ashton-Kirk smiled good-humoredly. He took up some of the pamphlets and fluttered their illy-printed pages.

“They are not beautiful,” he admitted; “the paper could not be worse and the wood cuts are horrors. But they are records of actual things—striking things, as a matter of fact—for a murder which so lifts itself above the thousands of homicides that are yearly occurring, as to gain a place outside the court records and newspapers, must have been one of exceptional execution.”

“There is a public which delights in being horrified,” said Pendleton with a grimace. “The things are put out to get their nickels and dimes.”

“No doubt,” agreed the other. “And the fact that they are willing to pay their nickels and dimes is, to my way of thinking, a proof of the extraordinary nature of the crime chronicled.” The speaker dropped the prints upon the floor and lounged back in his big chair. “There is Plutarch,” he continued; “the account of the assassination of Caesar is not the least interesting thing in his biography of that statesman. Indeed, I have no doubt but that the chronicler thought Caesar’s taking off the most striking incident in his career; that the Roman public thought so is a matter of history.

“Countless writers have dwelt upon the taking of human life; some of them were rather commercial gentlemen who always gave an ear to the demands of their public, and their screeds were written for the money that they would put in their pockets; but others, and by long odds the greatest, were fascinated by their subjects. Both Stevenson and Henley were powerfully drawn by deeds of blood. Did you know they planned a great book which was to contain a complete account of the world’s most remarkable homicides? I’m sorry they never carried the thing out; for I cannot conceive of two minds more fitted to the task. They would have dressed every event in the grimmest and most subtle horror; why, the soul would have shuddered at each enormity as shaped and presented by such masters.”

Pendleton regarded his friend with candid distaste.

“You are appalling today,” said he. “If you think it’s the Greek tobacco, let me know. For I have to mingle with other human beings, and I’d scarcely care to get into your state of mind.”

The strong, white teeth of Ashton-Kirk showed in a quick smile.

“The tobacco was recommended by old Hosko,” he said, “and you’ll find nothing violent in it, no matter what you find in my conversation.”

“What put you into such a frame of mind, anyway? Something happened?”

But Ashton-Kirk shook his head.

“I don’t know,” said he. “In fact, I have been strangely idle for the last fortnight. The most exciting things that have appeared above my personal horizon have been a queer little edition of Albertus-Magnus, struck off in an obscure printing shop in Florence in the early part of the sixteenth century, and a splendid, large paper Poe, to which I fortunately happened to be a subscriber.”