Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1999

“After Mr. Stamaty was here, you took another look in Mr. Strode’s room and noticed those marks your shoes had made on the quilt. So you hid it, and you sent Mr. Bland to get it out of the house along with the loot.”

They took Mrs. Helm downtown to be booked, leaving her surviving boarders (two of whom had learned to play chess while serving stretches in prison) to fend for themselves and thank their stars they kept their meagre financial resources in the bank and had always been punctual with the rent.

At the Sign of Mercury

by Maurice Leblanc

To Madame Danie                          Paris 30 November

La Roncière

NEAR BASSICOURT

My dearest friend—

There has been no letter from you for a fortnight, so I don’t expect now to receive one for that troublesome date of the fifth of December which we fixed as the last day of our partnership. I rather wish it would come because you will then be released from a contract which no longer seems to give you pleasure. To me the seven battles which we fought and won together were a time of endless delight and enthusiasm. I was living beside you. I was conscious of all the good which that more active and stirring existence was doing you. My happiness was so great that I dared not speak of it to you or let you see anything of my secret feelings except my desire to please you and my passionate devotion. Today you have had enough of your brother in arms. Your will shall be law.

But, though I bow to your decree, may I remind you what it was that I always believed our final adventure would be? May I repeat your words, not one of which I have forgotten?

“I demand,” you said, “that you shall restore to me a small, antique clasp made of a cornelian set in a filigree mount. It came to me from my mother; and everyone knew that it used to bring her happiness and me too. Since the day when it vanished from my jewel case, I have had nothing but unhappiness. Restore it to me, my good genius.”

And when I asked you when the clasp had disappeared, you answered with a laugh, “Seven years ago... or eight... or nine: I don’t know exactly... I don’t know when... I don’t know how... I know nothing about it...”

You were challenging me, were you not, and you set me that condition because it was one which I could not fulfill? Nevertheless, I promised, and I should like to keep my promise. What I have tried to do, in order to place life before you in a more, favorable light, would seem purposeless if your confidence feels the lack of this talisman to which you attach so great a value. We must not laugh at these little superstitions. They are often the mainspring of our best actions.