The Twelve Crimes of Christmas (38 page)

Pons chuckled.

“But, I don’t believe, sir, we’ve been properly
introduced.”

“We have not,” said Pons. “My companion is Dr.
Lyndon Parker, and I am Solar Pons.”

Auber acknowledged both introductions with a
sweeping bow, then brought himself up short. “Solar Pons, did ye say?” He
savored the name, cocked an eye at Pons, and added, “I have a knowledge of
London ye might say is extensive and peculiar. I’ve heard the name. Give me a
moment—it’ll come to me. Ah, yes, the detective. Well, well, we are well met,
sir. I have a need for your services, indeed I do. I’ve had stolen from me a val’able
manuscript—and I have reason to believe our host has it. A prize, sir, a prize.
A rare prize.”

“We shall see, Mr. Auber, we shall see,” said
Pons.

“I will pay a reasonable sum, sir, for its
recovery—a reasonable sum.”

Pons seized hold of the knocker and rapped it
sharply against the door. Almost at once our client’s voice rose.

“Pip! Pip! The door! The gentlemen are here.”

We could hear Pip Scratch coming down the hall,
and then the door was thrown open. The only concession Pip had made to the occasion
was a bracket of seven candles instead of three.

“A Merry Christmas to you, Pip,” said Pons.

“Thank you, sir. And to you, gentlemen,” said
Pip in a scarcely audible whisper, as if he feared his master might hear him
say it.

“Come in! Come in! Let us have done with it,”
called our client from the study.

The table was laid in the study, and the wine
glasses were filled to the brim. Snawley stood at its head, frock-coated, and
wearing a broad black tie with a pin in it at the neck, though he was as grizzled
as ever, and his eyes seemed to be even more narrowed as he looked past Pons
toward Auber with no attempt to conceal his distaste.

“Mr. Snawley,” said Pons with a wave of his
hand toward Auber, “let me introduce our lusty-voiced friend.”

“A voice not meant for singing,” put in our
client.

“Mr. Auber,” finished Pons.

Snawley started back as if he had been struck. “Micah
Auber?” he cried.

“The same,” said Auber, bowing, his bald head
gleaming in the candlelight, and all in the same movement producing a monocle
on a thing black cord, which he raised to one eye and looked through at our
client, who was still so thunderstruck that he was incapable of speech. “Ye do
me the honor to ask me to dine.”

All Snawley could think to say in this
contretemps was, “To save five hundred pounds!”

“As good a reason as any,” said Auber urbanely.

At this juncture Pip Scratch made his
appearance, bearing a large platter on which rested the goose Pons had had sent
over that morning, all steaming and brown and done to a turn. He lowered it to
the table and set about at once to carve it, while our host, recovering
himself, though with as sour an expression as he could put upon his face, waved
us to our seats.

Pons seized his glass of Amontillado and raised
it aloft. “Let us drink to the success of your various enterprises!”

“Done,” said Auber.

“And to a Merry Christmas!” continued Pons.

“Humbug!” cried Snawley.

“I would not say so, Mr. Snawley,” said Auber. “Christmas
is a very useful occasion.”

“Useful?” echoed our client. “And for whom,
pray?”

“Why, for us all,” answered Auber with spirit. “It
is a season for forbearance, perseverance, and usefulness.”

“Humbug!” said Snawley again. “If I had my way,
I should have every Christmas merrymaker boiled in his own pudding!”

“Ye need a bit more sherry, Mr. Snawley. Come,
man, this dinner cannot have cost ye that much!”

So it went through that Christmas Eve dinner,
with the two collectors exchanging hard words, and then less hard words, and then
softer words, mellowed by the wine for which Pons kept calling. The goose was
disposed of in large part, and the dressing, and the potatoes, the carrots, the
fruit, the green salad—all in good time, and slowly—and finally came the plum
pudding, brought flaming to the table; while the hours went by, eight o’clock
struck, then nine—and it was ten before we sat there at coffee and brandy, and
by this time both Snawley and Auber were mellow, and Pip Scratch, who had
cleared the table of all but the coffee cups and liqueur glasses, had come in
to sit down away a little from the table, but yet a party to what went on
there.

And it was then that Auber, calculating that
the time was right for it, turned to our client and said, “And now, if ye’ve no
mind, I’d like a look at your collection of Dickens, Mr. Snawley.”

“I daresay you would,” said Snawley. “I have
the largest such in the world.”

“It is you who says it.”

“I wait to hear you say it, too!”

Auber smiled and half closed his eyes. “If it
is all that matters to ye, I will agree to it.”

“Hear! Hear!” cried Snawley, and got a little
unsteadily to his feet and went over to his shelves, followed like a shadow by
the faithful Pip, and with Auber’s eyes on him as if he feared that Snawley and
his collection might escape him after all.

Snawley unlocked his cabinet and handed Pip a
book or two, and carried another himself. They brought them to the table, and
Snawley took one after the other of them and laid them down lovingly. They were
inscribed copies of
David
Copperfield, Edwin Drood,
and
The Pickwick Papers.
After Auber had fittingly admired and
exclaimed over them, our client went back for more, and returned this time with
copies of
The
Monthly Magazine
containing
Sketches
by Boz,
with interlineations
in Dickens’s hand.

Pip kept the fire going on the hearth, and
between this task and dancing attendance upon his master, he was continually
occupied, going back and forth, to and fro, with the firelight flickering on
his bony face and hands, and the candle flames leaping up and dying away to
fill the room with grotesque shadows, as the four of us bent over one treasure
after another, and the clock crept around from ten to eleven, and moved upon
midnight. A parade of books and papers moved from the cabinet to the table and
back to the cabinet again—letters in Dickens’s hand, letters to Dickens from
his publishers, old drawings by Cruikshank and ‘Phiz’ of Dickens’
characters—Oliver Twist, Fagin, Jonas Chuzzlewit, Mr. Bumble, Little Amy
Dorrit, Uriah Heep, Caroline Jellyby, Seth Pecksniff, Sam Weller, Samuel
Pickwick, and many another—so that it was late when at last Snawley came to his
recently acquired treasure, and brought this too to the table.

“And this, Mr. Auber, is the crown jewel, you
might say, of my collection,” he said.

He made to turn back the cover, but Auber
suddenly put forth a hand and held the cover down. Snawley started back a
little, but did not take his own hands from his prized manuscript.

“Let me tell ye what it is, Mr. Snawley,” said
Auber. “It is a manuscript in Dickens’s hand—a part of that greater work known
as
Master Humphrey’s Clock,
and specifically that portion of it which
became
The
Old Curiosity Shop.
But
this portion of it was deleted from the book. It is a manuscript of fourteen
and a half pages, with Dickens’s signature beneath the title on the first page.”

Snawley regarded him with wide, alarmed eyes. “How
can you know this, Mr. Auber?”

“Because it was stolen from me two months ago.”

A cry of rage escaped Snawley. He pulled the
precious manuscript away from Auber’s restraining hand.

“It is mine!” he cried. “I bought it!”

“For how much?”

“Two hundred pounds.”

“The precise sum I paid for it a year ago.”

“You shall not have it,” cried Snawley.

“I mean to have it,” said Auber, springing up.

Pons, too, came to his feet. “Pray, gentlemen,
one moment. You will allow, I think, that I should have a few words in this
matter. Permit me to have that manuscript for a few minutes, Mr. Snawley.”

“On condition it comes back to my hand, sir!”

“That is a condition easy for me to grant, but
one the fulfilment of which you may not so readily demand.”

“This fellow speaks in riddles,” said Snawley
testily, as he handed the manuscript to Pons.

Pons took it, opened the cover, and picked up
the first page of the manuscript, that with the signature of Dickens on it. He
handed it back to Snawley.

“Pray hold it up to the light and describe the
watermark, Mr. Snawley.”

Our client held it before the candles. After
studying it for a few moments he said hesitantly, “Why, I believe it is a rose
on a stem, sir.”

“Is that all, Mr. Snawley?”

“No, no, I see now there are three letters,
very small, at the base of the stem—KTC.”

Pons held out his hand for the page, and took
up another. This one he handed to Auber. “Examine it, Mr. Auber.”

Auber in turn held it up to the candles. “Yes,
we’ve made no mistake, Mr. Snawley. It is a rose, delicately done—a fine rose.
And the letters are clear—KTC, all run together.”

“That is the watermark of Kehnaway, Teape &
Company, in Aldgate,” said Pons.

“I know of them,” said Snawley. “A highly
reputable firm.”

“They were established in 1871,” continued
Pons. “Mr. Dickens died on June 8, 1870.”

For a moment of frozen horror for the
collectors there was not a sound.

“It cannot be!” cried our client then.

“Ye cannot mean it!” echoed Auber.

“The watermark cannot lie, gentlemen,” said
Pons dryly, “but alas! the script can.”

“I bought it in good faith,” said Auber,
aghast.

“And had it stolen in good faith,” said Pons,
chuckling.

“I bought it from a reputable dealer,” said
Auber.

“From the shop of Jason Brompton, in Edgware
Road,” said Pons. “But not from him—rather from his assistant.”

Auber gazed at Pons in astonishment. “How did
ye know?”

“Because there is only one forger in London
with the skill and patience to have wrought this manuscript,” said Pons. “His
name is Dennis Golders.”

“I will charge him!” cried Auber.

“Ah, I fear that cannot be done. Mr. Golders
left Brompton’s last January, and is now in His Majesty’s service. I shall see,
nevertheless, what I can do in the matter, but do not count on my success.”

Snawley fell back into his chair.

Auber did likewise.

Pip Scratch came quietly forward and poured
them both a little sherry.

Midnight struck.

“It is Christmas day, gentlemen,” said Pons. “It
is time to leave you. Now you have had a sad blow in common, perhaps you may
find something to give you mutual pleasure in all these shelves! Even
collectors must take the fraudulent with the genuine.”

Snawley raised his head. “You are right, Mr.
Pons. Pip! Pip!” he shouted, as if Pip Scratch were not standing behind him. “Put
on your coat and bring out the cab. Drive the gentlemen home!”

Our client and his visitor accompanied us to
the door and saw us into the hansom cab Pip Scratch had brought down the
driveway from the coach house.

“Merry Christmas, gentlemen!” cried Pons,
leaning out.

“It burns my lips,” said Snawley with a wry
smile. “But I will say it.”

He wished us both a Merry Christmas, and then,
arm in arm, the two collectors turned and went a trifle unsteadily back into
the house.

“This has been a rare Christmas, Parker, a rare
Christmas, indeed,” mused Pons, as we rode toward our quarters through the dark
London streets in our client’s hansom cab.