my first case!—with what an agreeable thrill a professional man repeats the words to himself. with most men i believe it is as it was with me, not the case that he intrigues for and expects to get but something quite different, that drops out of heaven unexpected and undeserved like most of the good things of life.
every now and then in an expansive moment i tell the story of my case, or part of it, whereupon something like the following invariably succeeds:
"why don't you write it down?"
"i never learned the trade of writing."
"but detective stories are so popular!"
"yes, because the detective is a romantic figure, a hero, gifted with almost superhuman keenness and infallibility. nobody ever accused me of being romantic. i am only an ordinary fellow who plugs away like any other business man. every day i am up against it; i fall down; some crook turns a trick on me. what kind of a story would that make?"
"but that's what people want nowadays, the real thing, stories of the streets day by day."
well, i have succumbed. here goes for better or for worse.
before beginning i should explain that though it was my first case i was no longer in the first bloom of youth. i was along in the thirties before i got my start and had lost a deal of hair from my cranium. this enabled me to pass for ten years older if i wished to, and still with the assistance of my friend oscar nilson the wig-maker i could make a presentable figure of youth and innocence.
during my earlier days i had been a clerk in a railway freight office, a poor slave with only my dreams to keep me going. my father had no sympathy with my aspirations to be a detective. he was a close-mouthed and a close-fisted man. but when he died, after having been kept on scanty rations for years, the old lady and i found ourselves quite comfortably off.
i promptly shook the dust of the freight office from my feet and set about carrying some of the dreams into effect. i rented a little office on fortieth street (twenty dollars a month), furnished it discreetly, and had my name painted in neat characters on the frosted glass of the door: "b. enderby"—no more. lord! how proud i was of the outfit.
i bought a fire-proof document file for cases, and had some note-paper and cards printed in the same neat style:
b. enderby
confidential investigator
you see i wished to avoid the sensational. i was not looking for any common divorce evidence business. since i had enough to exist on, i was determined to wait for important, high-priced, kid-glove cases.
and i waited—more than a year in fact. but it was a delightful time! fellows were always dropping in to smoke and chin. my little office became like our club. you see i had missed all this when i was a boy. any youngster who has ever been speeded up in a big clerical office will understand how good it was. meanwhile i studied crime in all its aspects.
i worked, too, at another ambition which i shared with a few million of my fellow-creatures, viz.: to write a successful play. i started a dozen and finished one. i thought it was a wonder of brilliancy then. i have learned better. in pursuance of this aim i had to attend the theatre a good deal, and from the top gallery i learned something about actors and actresses if not how to write a great play.
i mention the play-writing for it was that which brought me my first case. i used to haunt the office of a certain prominent play-broker who was always promising to read my play and never did. one afternoon in the up-stairs corridor of the building where she had her offices i came face to face with the famous irma hamerton.
nowadays irma is merely a tradition of loveliness and grace. theatregoers of this date have nothing like her to rejoice their eyes. then, to us humble fellows she stood for the rarest essence of life, the ideal, the unattainable—call it what you like. tall, slender and dark, with a voice that played on your heartstrings, she was one of the fortunate ones of earth. she had always been a star, always an idol of the public. not only did i and my gang never miss a show in which she appeared, but we would sit up half the night afterwards talking about her. none of us naturally had ever dreamed of seeing her face to face.
we met at a corner of the corridor, and almost collided. i forgot my manners entirely. my eyes almost popped out of my head. i wished to fix that moment in my life forever. imagine my confusion when i saw that she was crying, that glorious creature!—actually the tears were running down her soft cheeks like any common woman's. do you wonder that a kind of convulsion took place inside me?
seeing me, she quickly turned her head, but it was too late, i had already seen them stealing like diamonds down her cheeks. i stared at her like a clown, and like a clown i blurted out without thinking:
"oh, what's the matter?"
she didn't answer me, of course. she merely hurried faster down the hall, and turned the next corner.
when i realised what i had done i felt like butting my silly head through one of the glass partitions that lined the corridor. i called myself all the names in my vocabulary. i clean forgot my own errand in the building, and went back to my office muttering to myself in the streets like a lunatic.
i was glad no one dropped in. in my mind i went over the scene of the meeting a hundred times i suppose, and made up what i ought to have said and done, more ridiculous i expect than what had happened. what bothered me was that she would think i was just a common fresh guy. i couldn't rest under that. so i started to write her a note. i wrote half a dozen and tore them up. the one i sent ran like this:—i blush to think of it now—
miss irma hamerton,
dear madam:
the undersigned met you in the corridor of the manhattan theatre building this afternoon about three. you seemed to be in distress, and i was so surprised i forgot myself and addressed you. i beg that you will accept my apology for the seeming rudeness. i have seen you in all your plays, many of them several times over, and i have received so much pleasure from your acting, and i respect you so highly that it is very painful to me to think that i may have added to your distress by my rudeness. i assure you that it was only clumsiness, and not intentional rudeness.
yours respectfully,
b. enderby.
the instant after i had posted this letter i would have given half i possessed to get it back again. it suddenly occurred to me that it would only make matters worse. either it would seem like an impertinent attempt to pry into her private affairs, or a bold move to follow up my original rudeness. a real gentleman would not have said anything about the tears, i told myself. my cheeks got hot, but it was too late to recall the letter. i was thoroughly miserable. i did not tell any of my friends what had happened.
that night i went alone to see her play. lost in her part of course and hidden under her makeup she betrayed nothing. there was always a suggestion of sadness about her, even in comedy. when that lovely deep voice trembled, a corresponding shiver went up and down your spine.
i thought about her all the way home. my detective instinct was aroused. i tried to figure out what could be her trouble. there are only four kinds of really desperate trouble: ill-health, death, loss of money, and unrequited love. to look at her in the daylight without make-up was enough to dispose of the first. it was said that she had no close relatives, therefore she couldn't have lost any recently. as for money, surely with her earning capacity she had no need to trouble about that. finally, how could it be an affair of the heart? was there a man alive who would not have cast himself at her feet if she had turned a warm glance in his direction? rich, successful and adored as she was, i had to give it up.
about five o'clock the next afternoon the surprise of my life was administered to me. i received a large, square, buff-coloured envelope with a brown border, and written upon with brown ink in immense, angular characters. on opening it my hand trembled with a delicious foreboding of what was inside, meanwhile better sense was telling me not to be a fool. it contained a card on which was written:
"miss irma hamerton will be glad to see mr. b. enderby if it will be convenient for him to call at the hotel rotterdam at noon on thursday."
for a moment i stared at it, dazed. then i went up in the air. i did a sort of war-dance around the office. finally i rushed out to the most fashionable outfitters to get a new suit before closing time. thursday was the next day.
