The Master of Mysteries

by Gelett Burgess

Genres: Mystery Anthologies & Collections; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

"In this exemplary Library of Congress Crime Classics reissue...those seeking quality Sherlock Holmes pastiches in a humorous vein will be well rewarded."— Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Packed with two dozen stories, The Master of Mysteries offers a twentieth-century, mystical twist on the classic consulting detective genre made popular by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. With Astro, the self-proclaimed "seer of secrets," author Gelett Burgess gives us a detective just as observant and brilliant as Sherlock Holmes—but with feelings.

Astro, the Seer of Secrets, and his lovely assistant, Valeska, sound more like a magic act than a private detection team.

Astro hides his powers of observation and reasoning beneath a turban and a cape, pretending to read palms and consult crystals while in fact keenly observing details that most people—police included—miss. Valeska, his beautiful blonde protégé, assists Astro with his investigations, all the while honing her own skills.

Called upon by believers and skeptics both, they adeptly recover what is missing—a rare Shakespeare folio, a missing husband, a kidnapped child—while also solving actual murders. But it is their burgeoning romance, and their mutual zeal to work pro bono where matters of the heart are at stake, that set this crime-solving duo apart.

 

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Release date: January 3, 2023

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press

Print pages: 312

Sample

Missing John Hudson14

The Master of Mysteries bent over the onyx lectern for a moment to gaze at the monograph, and then chuckled derisively. “Oh, these German Symbolists!”15 he said half aloud. “For unadulterated humor, give me a Teuton that has joined the ranks of the metaphysicians. It is hardly to be wondered that ninety per cent of them have died in madhouses, and that Max Nordau has scheduled the rest of them for suicide!”16

He paused again to give a final glance at Ehrenfeld’s little book on tone color in vowels.17 “The letter A,” he translated rapidly, “suggests at once bright red, and symbolizes youth, or joy; the letter I is suggestive of sky-blue, and symbolizes intimacy, or love—et cetera, et cetera.” He stopped from sheer exasperation. “Poor Arthur Rimbaud! Poor old sodden Verlaine!18 What crimes are committed in your cause!”

The door opened softly, and he turned to greet a beautiful blond-haired girl who entered.

“Valeska, if I were making up a list of the tonal essences in vowel sounds, I should say the A was yellow, in disagreement with our friend here, Mr. Ehrenfeld. The U would be purple, verging on maroon. By the way, did you happen to notice that woman who was here this afternoon?” He gazed abstractedly at the floor. “It seemed to me,” he went on after a few moments’ thought, “as if she possessed distinctly purple vibrations, denoting unrest.”

“Which one?” was the quick reply. “The one in black satin, with jet ornaments, who wore gold-bowed eye-glasses, and limped?”

“Of course; but I should describe her as a woman who was worried and was jealous of her husband; very suspicious of him; also abnormally anxious for money.”

“I didn’t talk to her; I was too busy.”

“You must do a few palms some day, just to see how you are getting along in your study of the science of human nature. You noticed nothing else about her?”

Valeska put the end of her pencil to her lips and considered it abstractedly for a few moments. “Let me see—” she began. “She carried two books, didn’t she?”

“Precisely. One was a Baedeker’s Northern Italy,19 and the other was a church report,—Park Avenue Presbyterian. But the point is that she’s coming here again, possibly this evening or to-morrow. She was literally perishing with the desire to ask me something which she did not dare to at the time.”

At this moment there came a ring at the office doorbell.

“There she is now,” went on the mystic. “Did you notice that was a nervous ring? It came twice. She wasn’t quite sure the first time whether she had pressed hard enough. Show her in, Valeska.”

A few minutes intervened before his visitor appeared, pausing undecidedly on the threshold. “Could I see you for a short time about something of importance?” she questioned.

“Have a seat, madam.” Astro had risen, and placed a chair, apparently innocently enough, where the full glare of the drop electric light would illuminate her. His eyes did not appear to survey his client; but under his long lashes they were busy noting detail after detail. She sat down and again hesitated to begin.

“I—I suppose that what I am about to say, sir, will be kept in perfect confidence?”

“Assuredly, madam. You are worried about your husband, I presume.”

She started in surprise, looked curiously at him, and then said, “Yes,” in a faint tremulous whisper. At once she added, “You told me things this afternoon which were so wonderfully true that I thought I might trust you to give me some help on a far more important affair which has been worrying me for some time. The fact is, Mr. Hudson, my husband, has disappeared. I haven’t seen him for over a week.”

At this Astro manifested no surprise, and merely remarked, “I was aware that he was away, madam, when I read your palm this afternoon. No doubt I can find him, if that is what you wish; but it may take some time; for I shall have to gaze into my crystals and go into a trance. It will also be necessary for me to go to your house—into his room, in fact—in order that I may first take his atmosphere.”

“Oh, I understand,” she exclaimed. “To tell the truth, I’m very, very much worried, and anxious to have you go to work as soon as possible. I daren’t go to the police; for, after all, there may be nothing serious the matter, and it would cause a lot of talk; and I shouldn’t want him ever to know that I’d employed a detective for anything like this. But of course you are different.”

“I am ‘different,’ as you say,” responded Astro, smiling. “I shall be able to trace him, no doubt, without any one ever suspecting me. Just when did you see him for the last time?”

“On Tuesday, the tenth.”

“And now it is the twentieth. He has had no business troubles?”

“On the contrary, he was doing remarkably well in his real estate business. We’ve been saving up to go abroad, you see; it has been a plan we’ve had ever since we were married. It’s a sort of delayed honeymoon, I suppose. We hoped to live in Italy for a year.” She sighed.

“You are a church-member, I presume?”

“Yes, I go to the Park Avenue Presbyterian church. Mr. Hudson is a deacon there.”

“I see. He is well-off, you say?”

“Oh, no; not that. But we have been quite encouraged of late. Mr. Hudson was quite hopeful about our European trip.”

“Very well, Mrs. Hudson; I shall be at your house at nine o’clock to-morrow.”

Valeska entered the room again as soon as the visitor had left, and looked at the palmist, with a question in her eyes.

Astro waved his hand carelessly. “As I thought,” he began, turning to his narghile,20 lighting it, and blowing the fumes through his nose luxuriously, “John Hudson has disappeared. She asked several pointed questions about him this afternoon, although she thought that she guarded herself well. They are both church-members, and their ambition is to go abroad. He is in the real estate business. Can you put two and two together?”

Valeska’s pretty eyebrows creased themselves in thought. “Let me see. Judging from her appearance, they can’t have been making very much money in the real estate business. You say they wanted to go to Europe,—wanted to stay a year in Italy, wasn’t it?—and wanted all this badly. He’d naturally try to get the money in other ways; perhaps illegitimately. It might even lead him into crime. Being religious, he would naturally want to hide this from his wife. Perhaps he has been suspected and has escaped.” She looked up at him anxiously.

“You’re improving,” said the Seer impassively. “In fact, that’s just what I’ve been thinking myself. What we must find out is, what crime, if any, he has committed. Perhaps he is dead; perhaps he has run away with another woman. We must consider every possibility. Now, I can’t very well take you up to the Hudson house, as this is a delicate case; so I wish you’d go over all the

newspapers since the tenth and see what you can find that will help us.”

At ten o’clock next day Astro appeared in his psychic studio, where appointments with his fashionable clients kept him till two in the afternoon. At that time he called Valeska into his favorite corner of the studio where he did his lounging and studying.

“Well,” he asked, “what did you get out of the newspapers?”

“I found so much that it’s worse than if I’d found nothing at all,—several murders, an elopement, and a bank robbery. I don’t see how any of them help, though. The criminals all seem to be known. Perhaps Hudson was an accomplice.”

“My dear girl, never go on general principles; general principles are the refuge of the hopelessly incompetent and inane. If you will follow general principles long enough, you will find yourself in a class that is unlimited in its generalities and hidebound in its principles. If there is no significant detail that dovetails into Hudson’s disappearance, we’ll simply have to go about it in another way. You will be better able to judge when I tell you what happened this forenoon before I came down to the studio here.

“Mrs. Hudson was ready for me with the news that she had found her husband’s check-book, and that it showed him to have an unexpected deposit in the bank of some six thousand dollars.21 Then she showed me into the bedroom; but as they shared this apartment I thought it unnecessary to look there for anything significant. Hudson’s own den was a bare office-like sort of place, small, and furnished with a leather couch, a bookcase, and an old office desk. In this, all the drawers were unlocked except one. I got Mrs. Hudson’s permission to pick that lock, and here is what I found.” He smiled. “Of course, you understand these were absolutely necessary for me to get my vibrations.”

They both laughed at the remark, and he took from his pocket several articles, which he laid upon the table. There were, first, two advertising pictures posed by a pretty woman; evidently the same model in each instance, though used in connection with different products. In one pose the girl held a loaf of bread in her hand; in the other she displayed her gleaming teeth whitened by “Dentabella,” a new proprietary toothpaste. She was pretty and quite young. Next was a card, curiously covered with an intricate series of interlaced curves in purple ink,—a beautiful, symmetrical pattern, as accurately drawn as the lathe engraving on a bank-note. Last, there was a small printed page containing a calendar with all the months given. Oddly enough, the year was not printed at the top; instead, above the calendar proper appeared the caption, “Number fourteen.”

Valeska looked at the collection curiously. “Well,” she said at last, “I can’t make much of anything except the girl’s picture. It looks to me as if Hudson must have some special interest in her, to have two pictures of the same woman. We might find out who she is.”

“That’s important, surely; unless, of course, we can get hold of a better clue. But do you know what this is?” He held up the card.

“No, it looks to me like a fairy’s lace handkerchief design or a sea-shell.”

“That is a harmonic curve,” said Astro. “Sometimes it’s called a vibration curve, and it is traced by a compound or twin elliptic pendulum.”

“What’s that? I am getting farther away than ever.”

“Suppose,” continued Astro, “you tie one end of a string to a nail in the ceiling, while the other end is looped up to another nail, also in the ceiling. Now, from the lower point of this V, hang a string with a weight on the end. You observe, the weight will be at the end of a Y, and if you give a rotary motion to the compound pendulum so formed, the weight will travel in an intricate but regular curve, dependent on the relative lengths of the two parts of the pendulum as it swings forward and backward and right and left at the same time. This curve was made by such a one, only more complicated, and arranged so as to trace a line on a plane surface. The curves so formed, curious to say, correspond actually to the musical vibrations of various chords.”

“It’s interesting, but rather intricate, and I don’t see how it helps us much with Hudson,” said Valeska. “How about this calendar, and what’s the ‘Number fourteen’ for?”

“That,” said the Master of Mysteries, “is a page from a universal calendar; that is, a calendar that can be used for any year. This is the last page of the pamphlet, as it takes just fourteen different diagrams to include all the calendar possibilities,—seven different diagrams in which the year begins on a different day of the week, and another set of seven for the leap years. There’s a list in front, probably giving the number of the diagram to be used for each individual year.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the girl. “That reminds me, now. I did see something about a ‘two-hundred-year calendar.’ Where was it? Let me think. Yes, I have it. It was in an account of a body that was found drowned. Stupid of me to overlook that! I’ll see if I can find it.”

“Get it,” Astro said, “while I think this over.”

She flew to her file and began to go hurriedly through the sheets of paper. “Here it is! Here it is!” she cried. Then she read breathlessly:

“The body of an unknown man was found this morning floating in the East River near Thirty-eighth Street. The corpse was that of a man of fifty-five or sixty years, and had evidently been in the water some ten days. The lower part of the face was completely covered by a full beard. The body was dressed in a black diagonal cutaway coat and striped trousers, and was doubtless that of a gentleman in reduced circumstances. In the trousers pocket was found a bunch of keys, a small sum of money, and a two-hundred-year calendar. No marks indicating foul play were discovered on the body, which is awaiting identification at the morgue.”

“That corresponds in a general way with the description of Hudson that his wife gave me,” said Astro. “She had no photograph of him taken within the last twenty years. There’s a chance that it may be he, in which case it looks to me like murder; but I’ll have to go down to the morgue and see, anyway, on account of the calendar. I think you’d better let me do that alone, while you try to discover something about this ‘Dentabella’ girl. Come back here as soon as you have located her.”

No one would have recognized in the smart, stylishly dressed man who emerged from the studio a half-hour later, the languid picturesque Master of Mysteries, Astro the Seer. He walked briskly along, his eyes eager and alert to every impression. At the morgue he had no difficulty in obtaining permission to view the remains of the man he sought, and to inspect the clothing and the articles that had been found in the pocket.

The body was that of a middle-aged man of benevolent appearance, the face showing weakness rather than resolution in its features. The hands were delicately shaped, with pointed slender fingers. He had been apparently a dreamer, a mystic, rather than a man of vigorous life and practical affairs. Astro turned to inspect the articles displayed before his gaze. The two-hundred-year calendar which had been mentioned in the newspaper corresponded exactly to the page found in Hudson’s desk; and on opening it he found that page twenty-nine, containing table number fourteen, had been torn out. What was more remarkable, however, was the fact that with it was a collection of water-soaked, purple-stained cards. Each contained a “harmonic curve,” such as had been found in Hudson’s drawer. One such coincidence was unusual. Two pointed conclusively to some connection between the two men; if, indeed, the corpse were not that of Hudson himself.

This point, however, was soon settled. Calling up Mrs. Hudson, he found that her husband’s hair was scant and brown. The hair of the dead man was strong, slightly curly, and reddish. It was not Hudson.

Astro walked slowly home, plunged in thought, and looked neither to the right nor the left as he advanced. A block before he reached his studio he stopped stock-still for a moment, gazing in front of him; then, with a quick turn, he walked rapidly back, took a cross-town car, and got off at Second Avenue. Along this he hurried till he came to a second-hand bookstore, where on one of the stands outside the window, there was a collection of pamphlets and magazines. He ran his eye over the names: The Swastika, Universal Brotherhood, Vibrations, The New Wisdom, and Cosmos.22 He took up one of these and turned to the advertising pages in the rear; then he tried another. It was not till he had read through the Swastika that he was satisfied and smiled. He paid for the copy, hailed a passing cab, and was driven to his studio, where Valeska was already waiting for him.

He announced to her at once that the dead man was not Hudson, and gave a brief description of the latter, whereupon she told Astro the story of her own search.

“I didn’t find the girl; but I traced her antecedents. First I went to the advertising manager of the ‘Dentabella’ company, and told him I wanted to get hold of the model he had used in the ad. Finally I wheedled her name out of him—it was Agnes Vivian—and went up to the Harlem address he gave me. The young lady, however, no longer lived there; but I got the woman of the house to talking and found out that our little friend had left without settling her bill. So I intimated that I was looking for Miss Vivian to pay her some money I had borrowed, and in this way got the landlady to tell me everything she could that would help me to locate the missing girl. She had been posing for photographers; but now it seems as if she had got another job. At all events, a gentleman answering to Hudson’s description had called on her

several times, with the result that one day she had left and had never come back. She had sent for her trunk next day; but the landlady would not let it go, and could not ascertain where it was to be taken. She had an idea, though, that the girl was working on East Thirty-ninth Street somewhere; for she had overheard her telephoning one day previous to her departure. So you see,” Valeska concluded, “our friend Hudson has probably left his wife for good and all; or rather for evil, perhaps.”

“We’ll soon find out,” said Astro. “We’ll go up and call on him this afternoon.”

“What! Have you found out where he is already?”

“I’m inclined to think he’s living, temporarily at least, at 198 East Thirty-ninth Street.”

“With that girl?” Valeska’s eyes blazed.

“Not at all. The only trouble with him is that he loves his wife too much.”

Valeska still stared. “That isn’t likely,—there are very few men like that nowadays. But I’m very much relieved; for I rather liked the Vivian girl’s face; it’s attractive.”

“Yes,” Astro assented, “and Hudson is paying her to be attractive. He has a good business head, this man Hudson. But we must find out first what is the cause of the death of Professor Dove.”

“Why, who is he?”

“He is the man whose body is now lying in the morgue.”

“How did you find that out?”

“Look at this,” said Astro. He pointed to an advertisement in The Swastika:

LET ME HELP YOU!

Get into your own Vibration; develop your latent faculties, inherent possibilities; and develop your power, health, success, beauty, and love. Send 50c with name and birth date for trial reading and Vibratory Curve. Prof. Dove, 198 East 39th-St., N. Y.

“And that’s what those curves are for, then?” Valeska asked.

“Well, that’s what Professor Dove used them for; to mystify his dupes; or, by the looks of him, it’s more than likely that he believed in them himself.”

“Hudson must have believed in them too, then,” she remarked, “or he wouldn’t have been keeping them in his desk drawer. Was he a dupe, do you think?”

“You’ll recall that Hudson had several of them in his possession. If he had had only one, I’d say he might have been a dupe.”

“But what if he did have several?” queried Valeska. “Do you think Hudson murdered the professor?”

“Ah, my dear, that’s what I’d like to know myself. I propose that we call at the Vibratory office, or whatever they call it. You see, I doubt if Professor Dove ever had six thousand dollars, or even six thousand cents; he was not worth murdering for his money. One thing is certain, Hudson didn’t murder Miss Vivian; and I’m glad of that, for I’d really like to see her. Suppose we go up to Thirty-ninth Street and find out what sort of place it is.”

As they walked across town the Master of Mysteries said, “That’s a very clever graft, that vibration curve business. The more I think of it, the more I like it. You see, as there are two adjustments,—the length of the upper and the length of the lower pendulum,—you can get an infinite number of vibrations, and consequently an infinite number of curves. Therefore, you can attach any significance you please to the ratio between the two. Suppose, for instance, you divide off the top arm—that corresponds to the upper part of the Y—into inches, and call each inch a certain year. Then divide the lower arm in a similar way into days; say these are eighths of an inch each. If you set your compound pendulum to the two marks—any day and any year—you can produce a curve for any birthday you please, and you can always reproduce it to order. It’s a very good plan to have some sort of scientific basis for this kind of thing, on account of the inquisitiveness of the post-office authorities. If you simply have a set of form letters for answers, the chances are that you’ll have a fraud order against you and you’ll not get your mail—with its desirable money-orders and stamp enclosures.”

“And the calendar?”

“Merely to tell easily what day of the week any birthday fell on. For instance, December 22, 1883, was on a Saturday, and so on.”

“What I am most interested in is the life readings,” said the girl, “and the advice on how to acquire beauty.”

“Or love?” Astro added, with a smile.

“I’ll try to do that myself. It’s more exciting.”

From across the street the two now reconnoitered number 198. Below, at the musty stairway, appeared, among other signs, the legend, “Prof. Dove, Astrologer.” It was already growing dark, and above, in a window on the third floor, a dim light appeared. The shade was drawn.

“I’m going to investigate more closely,” said Astro. “You wait outside here and watch the window. If I raise the shade, come up!” So saying, he crossed, and ascended the stairs. As he reached the landing, however, he met a young woman coming down, ...