The magic casket

By R. Austin Freeman

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Title: The magic casket

Author: R. Austin Freeman

Release date: September 23, 2025 [eBook #76919]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Hodder and Stoughton Limited, 1927

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAGIC CASKET ***





 THE
 MAGIC CASKET

 BY
 R. AUSTIN FREEMAN




 HODDER AND STOUGHTON
 LIMITED LONDON




 CONTENTS

 I. THE MAGIC CASKET
 II. THE CONTENTS OF A MARE’S NEST
 III. THE STALKING HORSE
 IV. THE NATURALIST AT LAW
 V. MR. PONTING’S ALIBI
 VI. PANDORA’S BOX
 VII. THE TRAIL OF BEHEMOTH
 VIII. THE PATHOLOGIST TO THE RESCUE
 IX. GLEANINGS FROM THE WRECKAGE




 I.
 THE MAGIC CASKET

It was in the near neighbourhood of King’s Road, Chelsea, that
chance, aided by Thorndyke’s sharp and observant eyes, introduced us
to the dramatic story of the Magic Casket. Not that there was anything
strikingly dramatic in the opening phase of the affair, nor even in
the story of the casket itself. It was Thorndyke who added the
dramatic touch, and most of the magic, too; and I record the affair
principally as an illustration of his extraordinary capacity for
producing odd items of out-of-the-way knowledge and instantly applying
them in the most unexpected manner.

Eight o’clock had struck on a misty November night when we turned out
of the main road, and, leaving behind the glare of the shop windows,
plunged into the maze of dark and narrow streets to the north. The
abrupt change impressed us both, and Thorndyke proceeded to moralize
on it in his pleasant, reflective fashion.

“London is an inexhaustible place,” he mused. “Its variety is
infinite. A minute ago we walked in a glare of light, jostled by a
multitude. And now look at this little street. It is as dim as a
tunnel, and we have got it absolutely to ourselves. Anything might
happen in a place like this.”

Suddenly he stopped. We were, at the moment, passing a small church or
chapel, the west door of which was enclosed in an open porch; and as
my observant friend stepped into the latter and stooped, I perceived,
in the deep shadow against the wall, the object which had evidently
caught his eye.

“What is it?” I asked, following him in.

“It is a handbag,” he replied; “and the question is, what is it doing
here?”

He tried the church door, which was obviously locked, and coming out,
looked at the windows.

“There are no lights in the church,” said he; “the place is locked up,
and there is nobody in sight. Apparently the bag is derelict. Shall we
have a look at it?”

Without waiting for an answer, he picked it up and brought it out into
the mitigated darkness of the street, where we proceeded to inspect
it. But at the first glance it told its own tale; for it had evidently
been locked, and it bore unmistakable traces of having been forced
open.

“It isn’t empty,” said Thorndyke. “I think we had better see what is
in it. Just catch hold while I get a light.”

He handed me the bag while he felt in his pocket for the tiny electric
lamp which he made a habit of carrying--and an excellent habit it is.
I held the mouth of the bag open while he illuminated the interior,
which we then saw to be occupied by several objects neatly wrapped in
brown paper. One of these Thorndyke lifted out, and untying the string
and removing the paper, displayed a Chinese stoneware jar. Attached to
it was a label, bearing the stamp of the Victoria and Albert Museum,
on which was written:


                     “Miss Mabel Bonney,
               168 Willow Walk, Fulham Road, W.”


“That tells us all that we want to know,” said Thorndyke, re-wrapping
the jar and tenderly replacing it in the bag. “We can’t do wrong in
delivering the things to their owner, especially as the bag itself is
evidently her property, too,” and he pointed to the gilt initials,
“M.B.”, stamped on the morocco.

It took us but a few minutes to reach the Fulham Road, but we then had
to walk nearly a mile along that thoroughfare before we arrived at
Willow Walk--to which an obliging shopkeeper had directed us; and,
naturally, No. 168 was at the farther end.

As we turned into the quiet street we almost collided with two men,
who were walking at a rapid pace, but both looking back over their
shoulders. I noticed that they were both Japanese--well-dressed,
gentlemanly-looking men--but I gave them little attention, being
interested, rather, in what they were looking at. This was a taxi-cab
which was dimly visible by the light of a street lamp at the farther
end of the “Walk,” and from which four persons had just alighted. Two
of these had hurried ahead to knock at a door, while the other two
walked very slowly across the pavement and up the steps to the
threshold. Almost immediately the door was opened; two of the shadowy
figures entered, and the other two returned slowly to the cab; and as
we came nearer, I could see that these latter were policemen in
uniform. I had just time to note this fact when they both got into the
cab and were forthwith spirited away.

“Looks like a street accident of some kind,” I remarked; and then, as
I glanced at the number of the house we were passing, I added: “Now, I
wonder if that house happens to be--yes, by Jove! it is. It is 168!
Things have been happening, and this bag of ours is one of the
dramatis personæ.”

The response to our knock was by no means prompt. I was, in fact, in
the act of raising my hand to the knocker to repeat the summons when
the door opened and revealed an elderly servant-maid, who regarded us
inquiringly, and, as I thought, with something approaching alarm.

“Does Miss Mabel Bonney live here?” Thorndyke asked.

“Yes, sir,” was the reply; “but I am afraid you can’t see her just
now, unless it is something urgent. She is rather upset, and
particularly engaged at present.”

“There is no occasion whatever to disturb her,” said Thorndyke. “We
have merely called to restore this bag, which seemed to have been
lost;” and with this he held it out towards her. She grasped it
eagerly, with a cry of surprise, and as the mouth fell open, she
peered into it.

“Why,” she exclaimed, “they don’t seem to have taken anything, after
all. Where did you find it, sir?”

“In the porch of a church in Spelton Street,” Thorndyke replied, and
was turning away when the servant said earnestly:

“Would you kindly give me your name and address, sir? Miss Bonney will
wish to write and thank you.”

“There is really no need,” said he; but she interrupted anxiously:

“If you would be so kind, sir. Miss Bonney will be so vexed if she is
unable to thank you; and besides, she may want to ask you some
questions about it.”

“That is true,” said Thorndyke (who was restrained only by good
manners from asking one or two questions, himself). He produced his
card-case, and having handed one of his cards to the maid, wished her
“good evening” and retired.

“That bag had evidently been pinched,” I remarked, as we walked back
towards the Fulham Road.

“Evidently,” he agreed, and was about to enlarge on the matter when
our attention was attracted to a taxi, which was approaching from the
direction of the main road. A man’s head was thrust out of the window,
and as the vehicle passed a street lamp, I observed that the head
appertained to an elderly gentleman with very white hair and a very
fresh-coloured face.

“Did you see who that was?” Thorndyke asked.

“It looked like old Brodribb,” I replied.

“It did; very much. I wonder where he is off to.”

He turned and followed, with a speculative eye, the receding taxi,
which presently swept alongside the kerb and stopped, apparently
opposite the house from which we had just come. As the vehicle came to
rest, the door flew open and the passenger shot out like an elderly,
but agile, Jack-in-the-box, and bounced up the steps.

“That is Brodribb’s knock, sure enough,” said I, as the old-fashioned
flourish reverberated up the quiet street. “I have heard it too often
on our own knocker to mistake it. But we had better not let him see us
watching him.”

As we went once more on our way, I took a sly glance, now and again,
at my friend, noting with a certain malicious enjoyment his profoundly
cogitative air. I knew quite well what was happening in his mind; for
his mind reacted to observed facts in an invariable manner. And here
was a group of related facts: the bag, stolen, but deposited intact;
the museum label; the injured or sick person--probably Miss Bonney,
herself--brought home under police escort; and the arrival,
post-haste, of the old lawyer; a significant group of facts. And there
was Thorndyke, under my amused and attentive observation, fitting them
together in various combinations to see what general conclusion
emerged. Apparently my own mental state was equally clear to him, for
he remarked, presently, as if replying to an unspoken comment:

“Well, I expect we shall know all about it before many days have
passed if Brodribb sees my card, as he most probably will. Here comes
an omnibus that will suit us. Shall we hop on?”

He stood at the kerb and raised his stick; and as the accommodation on
the omnibus was such that our seats were separated, there was no
opportunity to pursue the subject further, even if there had been
anything to discuss.

But Thorndyke’s prediction was justified sooner than I had expected.
For we had not long finished our supper, and had not yet closed the
“oak,” when there was heard a mighty flourish on the knocker of our
inner door.

“Brodribb, by Jingo!” I exclaimed, and hurried across the room to let
him in.

“No, Jervis,” he said as I invited him to enter, “I am not coming in.
Don’t want to disturb you at this time of night. I’ve just called to
make an appointment for to-morrow with a client.”

“Is the client’s name Bonney?” I asked.

He started and gazed at me in astonishment. “Gad, Jervis!” he
exclaimed, “you are getting as bad as Thorndyke. How the deuce did you
know that she was my client?”

“Never mind how I know. It is our business to know everything in these
chambers. But if your appointment concerns Miss Mabel Bonney, for the
Lord’s sake come in and give Thorndyke a chance of a night’s rest. At
present, he is on broken bottles, as Mr. Bumble would express it.”

On this persuasion, Mr. Brodribb entered, nothing loath--very much the
reverse, in fact--and having bestowed a jovial greeting on Thorndyke,
glanced approvingly round the room.

“Ha!” said he, “you look very cosy. If you are really sure I am
not----”

I cut him short by propelling him gently towards the fire, beside
which I deposited him in an easy chair, while Thorndyke pressed the
electric bell which rang up in the laboratory.

“Well,” said Brodribb, spreading himself out comfortably before the
fire like a handsome old Tom-cat, “if you are going to let me give you
a few particulars--but perhaps you would rather that I should not talk
shop.”

“Now you know perfectly well, Brodribb,” said Thorndyke, “that ‘shop’
is the breath of life to us all. Let us have those particulars.”

Brodribb sighed contentedly and placed his toes on the fender (and at
this moment the door opened softly and Polton looked into the room. He
took a single, understanding glance at our visitor and withdrew,
shutting the door without a sound.)

“I am glad,” pursued Brodribb, “to have this opportunity of a
preliminary chat, because there are certain things that one can say
better when the client is not present; and I am deeply interested in
Miss Bonney’s affairs. The crisis in those affairs which has brought
me here is of quite recent date--in fact, it dates from this evening.
But I know your partiality for having events related in their proper
sequence, so I will leave to-day’s happenings for the moment and tell
you the story--the whole of which is material to the case--from the
beginning.”

Here there was a slight interruption, due to Polton’s noiseless entry
with a tray on which was a decanter, a biscuit box, and three port
glasses. This he deposited on a small table, which he placed within
convenient reach of our guest. Then, with a glance of altruistic
satisfaction at our old friend, he stole out like a benevolent ghost.

“Dear, dear!” exclaimed Brodribb, beaming on the decanter, “this is
really too bad. You ought not to indulge me in this way.”

“My dear Brodribb,” replied Thorndyke, “you are a benefactor to us.
You give us a pretext for taking a glass of port. We can’t drink
alone, you know.”

“I should, if I had a cellar like yours,” chuckled Brodribb, sniffing
ecstatically at his glass. He took a sip, with his eyes closed,
savoured it solemnly, shook his head, and set the glass down on the
table.

“To return to our case,” he resumed; “Miss Bonney is the daughter of a
solicitor, Harold Bonney--you may remember him. He had offices in
Bedford Row; and there, one morning, a client came to him and asked
him to take care of some property while he, the said client, ran over
to Paris, where he had some urgent business. The property in question
was a collection of pearls of most unusual size and value, forming a
great necklace, which had been unstrung for the sake of portability.
It is not clear where they came from, but as the transaction occurred
soon after the Russian Revolution, we may make a guess. At any rate,
there they were, packed loosely in a leather bag, the string of which
was sealed with the owner’s seal.

“Bonney seems to have been rather casual about the affair. He gave the
client a receipt for the bag, stating the nature of the contents,
which he had not seen, and deposited it, in the client’s presence, in
the safe in his private office. Perhaps he intended to take it to the
bank or transfer it to his strong-room, but it is evident that he did
neither; for his managing clerk, who kept the second key of the
strong-room--without which the room could not be opened--knew nothing
of the transaction. When he went home at about seven o’clock, he left
Bonney hard at work in his office, and there is no doubt that the
pearls were still in the safe.

“That night, at about a quarter to nine, it happened that a couple of
C.I.D. officers were walking up Bedford Row when they saw three men
come out of one of the houses. Two of them turned up towards
Theobald’s Road, but the third came south, towards them. As he passed
them, they both recognized him as a Japanese named Uyenishi, who was
believed to be a member of a cosmopolitan gang and whom the police
were keeping under observation. Naturally, their suspicions were
aroused. The first two men had hurried round the corner and were out
of sight; and when they turned to look after Uyenishi, he had mended
his pace considerably and was looking back at them. Thereupon one of
the officers, named Barker, decided to follow the Jap, while the
other, Holt, reconnoitred the premises.

“Now, as soon as Barker turned, the Japanese broke into a run. It was
just such a night as this: dark and slightly foggy. In order to keep
his man in sight, Barker had to run, too; and he found that he had a
sprinter to deal with. From the bottom of Bedford Row, Uyenishi darted
across and shot down Hand Court like a lamplighter. Barker followed,
but at the Holborn end his man was nowhere to be seen. However, he
presently learned from a man at a shop door that the fugitive had run
past and turned up Brownlow Street, so off he went again in pursuit.
But when he got to the top of the street, back in Bedford Row, he was
done. There was no sign of the man, and no one about from whom he
could make inquiries. All he could do was to cross the road and walk
up Bedford Row to see if Holt had made any discoveries.

“As he was trying to identify the house, his colleague came out on to
the doorstep and beckoned him in; and this was the story that he told.
He had recognized the house by the big lamp-standard; and as the place
was all dark, he had gone into the entry and tried the office door.
Finding it unlocked, he had entered the clerks’ office, lit the gas,
and tried the door of the private office, but found it locked. He
knocked at it, but getting no answer, had a good look round the
clerks’ office; and there, presently, on the floor in a dark corner,
he found a key. This he tried in the door of the private office, and
finding that it fitted, turned it and opened the door. As he did so,
the light from the outer office fell on the body of a man lying on the
floor just inside.

“A moment’s inspection showed that the man had been murdered--first
knocked on the head and then finished with a knife. Examination of the
pockets showed that the dead man was Harold Bonney, and also that no
robbery from the person seemed to have been committed. Nor was there
any sign of any other kind of robbery. Nothing seemed to have been
disturbed, and the safe had not been broken into, though that was not
very conclusive, as the safe key was in the dead man’s pocket.
However, a murder had been committed, and obviously Uyenishi was
either the murderer or an accessory; so Holt had, at once, rung up
Scotland Yard on the office telephone, giving all the particulars.

“I may say at once that Uyenishi disappeared completely and at once.
He never went to his lodgings at Limehouse, for the police were there
before he could have arrived. A lively hue and cry was kept up.
Photographs of the wanted man were posted outside every
police-station, and a watch was set at all the ports. But he was never
found. He must have got away at once on some outward-bound tramp from
the Thames. And there we will leave him for the moment.

“At first it was thought that nothing had been stolen, since the
managing clerk could not discover that anything was missing. But a few
days later the client returned from Paris, and presenting his receipt,
asked for his pearls. But the pearls had vanished. Clearly they had
been the object of the crime. The robbers must have known about them
and traced them to the office. Of course the safe had been opened with
its own key, which was then replaced in the dead man’s pocket.

“Now, I was poor Bonney’s executor, and in that capacity I denied his
liability in respect of the pearls on the ground that he was a
gratuitous bailee--there being no evidence that any consideration had
been demanded--and that being murdered cannot be construed as
negligence. But Miss Mabel, who was practically the sole legatee,
insisted on accepting liability. She said that the pearls could have
been secured in the bank or the strong-room, and that she was morally,
if not legally, liable for their loss; and she insisted on handing to
the owner the full amount at which he valued them. It was a wildly
foolish proceeding, for he would certainly have accepted half the sum.
But still, I take my hat off to a person--man or woman--who can accept
poverty in preference to a broken covenant”; and here Brodribb, being
in fact, that sort of person himself, had to be consoled with a
replenished glass.

“And mind you,” he resumed, “when I speak of poverty, I wish to be
taken literally. The estimated value of those pearls was fifty
thousand pounds--if you can imagine anyone out of Bedlam giving such a
sum for a parcel of trash like that; and when poor Mabel Bonney had
paid it, she was left with the prospect of having to spread her butter
mighty thin for the rest of her life. As a matter of fact, she has had
to sell one after another of her little treasures to pay just her
current expenses, and I’m hanged if I can see how she is going to
carry on when she has sold the last of them. But there, I mustn’t take
up your time with her private troubles. Let us return to our muttons.

“First, as to the pearls. They were never traced, and it seems
probable that they were never disposed of. For, you see, pearls are
different from any other kind of gems. You can cut up a big diamond,
but you can’t cut up a big pearl. And the great value of this necklace
was due not only to the size, the perfect shape and ‘orient’ of the
separate pearls, but to the fact that the whole set was perfectly
matched. To break up the necklace was to destroy a good part of its
value.

“And now as to our friend Uyenishi. He disappeared, as I have said;
but he reappeared at Los Angeles, in custody of the police, charged
with robbery and murder. He was taken red-handed and was duly
convicted and sentenced to death; but for some reason--or more
probably, for no reason, as we should think--the sentence was commuted
to imprisonment for life. Under these circumstances, the English
police naturally took no action, especially as they really had no
evidence against him.

“Now Uyenishi was, by trade, a metal-worker; a maker of those pretty
trifles that are so dear to the artistic Japanese, and when he was in
prison he was allowed to set up a little workshop and practise his
trade on a small scale. Among other things that he made was a little
casket in the form of a seated figure, which he said he wanted to give
to his brother as a keepsake. I don’t know whether any permission was
granted for him to make this gift, but that is of no consequence; for
Uyenishi got influenza and was carried off in a few days by pneumonia;
and the prison authorities learned that his brother had been killed, a
week or two previously, in a shooting affair at San Francisco. So the
casket remained on their hands.

“About this time, Miss Bonney was invited to accompany an American
lady on a visit to California, and accepted gratefully. While she was
there she paid a visit to the prison to inquire whether Uyenishi had
ever made any kind of statement concerning the missing pearls. Here
she heard of Uyenishi’s recent death; and the governor of the prison,
as he could not give her any information, handed over to her the
casket as a sort of memento. This transaction came to the knowledge of
the press, and--well, you know what the Californian press is like.
There were ‘some comments,’ as they would say, and quite an assortment
of Japanese, of shady antecedents, applied at the prison to have the
casket ‘restored’ to them as Uyenishi’s heirs. Then Miss Bonney’s
rooms at the hotel were raided by burglars--but the casket was in the
hotel strong-room--and Miss Bonney and her hostess were shadowed by
various undesirables in such a disturbing fashion that the two ladies
became alarmed and secretly made their way to New York. But there
another burglary occurred, with the same unsuccessful result, and the
shadowing began again. Finally, Miss Bonney, feeling that her presence
was a danger to her friend, decided to return to England, and managed
to get on board the ship without letting her departure be known in
advance.

“But even in England she has not been left in peace. She has had an
uncomfortable feeling of being watched and attended, and has seemed to
be constantly meeting Japanese men in the streets, especially in the
vicinity of her house. Of course, all the fuss is about this infernal
casket; and when she told me what was happening, I promptly popped the
thing in my pocket and took it to my office, where I stowed it in the
strong-room. And there, of course, it ought to have remained. But it
didn’t. One day Miss Bonney told me that she was sending some small
things to a loan exhibition of oriental works of art at the South
Kensington Museum, and she wished to include the casket. I urged her
strongly to do nothing of the kind, but she persisted; and the end of
it was that we went to the museum together, with her pottery and stuff
in a handbag and the casket in my pocket.

“It was a most imprudent thing to do, for there the beastly casket
was, for several months, exposed in a glass case for anyone to see,
with her name on the label; and what was worse, full particulars of
the origin of the thing. However, nothing happened while it was
there--the museum is not an easy place to steal from--and all went
well until it was time to remove the things after the close of the
exhibition. Now, to-day was the appointed day, and, as on the previous
occasion, she and I went to the museum together. But the unfortunate
thing is that we didn’t come away together. Her other exhibits were
all pottery, and these were dealt with first, so that she had her
handbag packed and was ready to go before they had begun on the
metal-work cases. As we were not going the same way, it didn’t seem
necessary for her to wait; so she went off with her bag and I stayed
behind until the casket was released, when I put it in my pocket and
went home, where I locked the thing up again in the strong-room.

“It was about seven when I got home. A little after eight I heard the
telephone ring down in the office, and down I went, cursing the
untimely ringer, who turned out to be a policeman at St. George’s
Hospital. He said he had found Miss Bonney lying unconscious in the
street and had taken her to the hospital, where she had been detained
for a while, but she was now recovered and he was taking her home. She
would like me, if possible, to go and see her at once. Well, of
course, I set off forthwith and got to her house a few minutes after
her arrival, and just after you had left.

“She was a good deal upset, so I didn’t worry her with many questions,
but she gave me a short account of her misadventure, which amounted to
this: She had started to walk home from the museum along the Brompton
Road, and she was passing down a quiet street between that and Fulham
Road when she heard soft footsteps behind her. The next moment, a
scarf or shawl was thrown over her head and drawn tightly round her
neck. At the same moment, the bag was snatched from her hand. That is
all that she remembers, for she was half-suffocated and so terrified
that she fainted, and knew no more until she found herself in a cab
with two policemen, who were taking her to the hospital.

“Now it is obvious that her assailants were in search of that damned
casket, for the bag had been broken open and searched, but nothing
taken or damaged; which suggests the Japanese again, for a British
thief would have smashed the crockery. I found your card there, and I
put it to Miss Bonney that we had better ask you to help us--I told
her all about you--and she agreed emphatically. So that is why I am
here, drinking your port and robbing you of your night’s rest.”

“And what do you want me to do?” Thorndyke asked.

“Whatever you think best,” was the cheerful reply. “In the first
place, this nuisance must be put a stop to--this shadowing and hanging
about. But apart from that, you must see that there is something queer
about this accursed casket. The beastly thing is of no intrinsic
value. The museum man turned up his nose at it. But it evidently has
some extrinsic value, and no small value either. If it is good enough
for these devils to follow it all the way from the States, as they
seem to have done, it is good enough for us to try to find out what
its value is. That is where you come in. I propose to bring Miss
Bonney to see you to-morrow, and I will bring the infernal casket,
too. Then you will ask her a few questions, take a look at the
casket--through the microscope, if necessary--and tell us all about it
in your usual necromantic way.”

Thorndyke laughed as he refilled our friend’s glass. “If faith will
move mountains, Brodribb,” said he, “you ought to have been a civil
engineer. But it is certainly a rather intriguing problem.”

“Ha!” exclaimed the old solicitor; “then it’s all right. I’ve known
you a good many years, but I’ve never known you to be stumped; and you
are not going to be stumped now. What time shall I bring her?
Afternoon or evening would suit her best.”

“Very well,” replied Thorndyke; “bring her to tea--say, five o’clock.
How will that do?”

“Excellently; and here’s good luck to the adventure.” He drained his
glass, and the decanter being now empty, he rose, shook our hands
warmly, and took his departure in high spirits.

It was with a very lively interest that I looked forward to the
prospective visit. Like Thorndyke, I found the case rather intriguing.
For it was quite clear, as our shrewd old friend had said, that there
was something more than met the eye in the matter of this casket.
Hence, on the following afternoon, when, on the stroke of five,
footsteps became audible on our stairs, I awaited the arrival of our
new client with keen curiosity, both as to herself and her mysterious
property.

To tell the truth, the lady was better worth looking at than the
casket. At the first glance, I was strongly prepossessed in her
favour, and so, I think, was Thorndyke. Not that she was a beauty,
though comely enough. But she was an example of a type that seems to
be growing rarer; quiet, gentle, soft-spoken, and a lady to her
finger-tips; a little sad-faced and care-worn, with a streak or two of
white in her prettily-disposed black hair, though she could not have
been much over thirty-five. Altogether a very gracious and winning
personality.

When we had been presented to her by Brodribb--who treated her as if
she had been a royal personage--and had enthroned her in the most
comfortable easy-chair, we inquired as to her health, and were duly
thanked for the salvage of the bag. Then Polton brought in the tray,
with an air that seemed to demand an escort of choristers; the tea was
poured out, and the informal proceedings began.

She had not, however, much to tell; for she had not seen her
assailants, and the essential facts of the case had been fully
presented in Brodribb’s excellent summary. After a very few questions,
therefore, we came to the next stage; which was introduced by
Brodribb’s taking from his pocket a small parcel which he proceeded to
open.

“There,” said he, “that is the _fons et origo mali_. Not much to look
at, I think you will agree.” He set the object down on the table and
glared at it malevolently, while Thorndyke and I regarded it with a
more impersonal interest. It was not much to look at. Just an ordinary
Japanese casket in the form of a squat, shapeless figure with a silly
little grinning face, of which the head and shoulders opened on a
hinge; a pleasant enough object, with its quiet, warm colouring, but
certainly not a masterpiece of art.

Thorndyke picked it up and turned it over slowly for a preliminary
inspection; then he went on to examine it detail by detail, watched
closely, in his turn, by Brodribb and me. Slowly and methodically, his
eye--fortified by a watchmaker’s eyeglass--travelled over every part
of the exterior. Then he opened it, and having examined the inside of
the lid, scrutinized the bottom from within, long and attentively.
Finally, he turned the casket upside down and examined the bottom from
without, giving to it the longest and most rigorous inspection of
all--which puzzled me somewhat, for the bottom was absolutely plain.
At length, he passed the casket and the eyeglass to me without
comment.

“Well,” said Brodribb, “what is the verdict?”

“It is of no value as a work of art,” replied Thorndyke. “The body and
lid are just castings of common white metal--an antimony alloy, I
should say. The bronze colour is lacquer.”

“So the museum man remarked,” said Brodribb.

“But,” continued Thorndyke, “there is one very odd thing about it. The
only piece of fine metal in it is in the part which matters least. The
bottom is a separate plate of the alloy known to the Japanese as
Shakudo--an alloy of copper and gold.”

“Yes,” said Brodribb, “the museum man noted that, too, and couldn’t
make out why it had been put there.”

“Then,” Thorndyke continued, “there is another anomalous feature; the
inside of the bottom is covered with elaborate decoration--just the
place where decoration is most inappropriate, since it would be
covered up by the contents of the casket. And, again, this decoration
is etched; not engraved or chased. But etching is a very unusual
process for this purpose, if it is ever used at all by Japanese
metal-workers. My impression is that it is not; for it is most
unsuitable for decorative purposes. That is all that I observe, so
far.”

“And what do you infer from your observations?” Brodribb asked.

“I should like to think the matter over,” was the reply. “There is an
obvious anomaly, which must have some significance. But I won’t embark
on speculative opinions at this stage. I should like, however, to take
one or two photographs of the casket, for reference; but that will
occupy some time. You will hardly want to wait so long.”

“No,” said Brodribb. “But Miss Bonney is coming with me to my office
to go over some documents and discuss a little business. When we have
finished, I will come back and fetch the confounded thing.”

“There is no need for that,” replied Thorndyke. “As soon as I have
done what is necessary, I will bring it up to your place.”

To this arrangement Brodribb agreed readily, and he and his client
prepared to depart. I rose, too, and as I happened to have a call to
make in Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn, I asked permission to walk with
them.

As we came out into King’s Bench Walk I noticed a smallish,
gentlemanly-looking man who had just passed our entry and now turned
in at the one next door; and by the light of the lamp in the entry he
looked to me like a Japanese. I thought Miss Bonney had observed him,
too, but she made no remark, and neither did I. But, passing up Inner
Temple Lane, we nearly overtook two other men, who--though I got but a
back view of them and the light was feeble enough--aroused my
suspicions by their neat, small figures. As we approached, they
quickened their pace, and one of them looked back over his shoulder;
and then my suspicions were confirmed, for it was an unmistakable
Japanese face that looked round at us. Miss Bonney saw that I had
observed the men, for she remarked, as they turned sharply at the
Cloisters and entered Pump Court:

“You see, I am still haunted by Japanese.”

“I noticed them,” said Brodribb. “They are probably law students. But
we may as well be companionable;” and with this, he, too, headed for
Pump Court.

We followed our oriental friends across the Lane into Fountain Court,
and through that and Devereux Court out to Temple Bar, where we parted
from them; they turning westward and we crossing to Bell Yard, up
which we walked, entering New Square by the Carey Street gate. At
Brodribb’s doorway we halted and looked back, but no one was in sight.
I accordingly went my way, promising to return anon to hear
Thorndyke’s report, and the lawyer and his client disappeared through
the portal.

My business occupied me longer than I had expected, but nevertheless,
when I arrived at Brodribb’s premises--where he lived in chambers over
his office--Thorndyke had not yet made his appearance. A quarter of an
hour later, however, we heard his brisk steps on the stairs, and as
Brodribb threw the door open, he entered and produced the casket from
his pocket.

“Well,” said Brodribb, taking it from him and locking it, for the time
being, in a drawer, “has the oracle spoken; and if so, what did he
say?”

“Oracles,” replied Thorndyke, “have a way of being more concise than
explicit. Before I attempt to interpret the message, I should like to
view the scene of the escape; to see if there was any intelligible
reason why this man, Uyenishi, should have returned up Brownlow Street
into what must have been the danger zone. I think that is a material
question.”

“Then,” said Brodribb, with evident eagerness, “let us all walk up and
have a look at the confounded place. It is quite close by.”

We all agreed instantly, two of us, at least, being on the tip-toe of
expectation. For Thorndyke, who habitually understated his results,
had virtually admitted that the casket had told him something; and as
we walked up the Square to the gate in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, I watched
him furtively, trying to gather from his impassive face a hint as to
what the something amounted to, and wondering how the movements of the
fugitive bore on the solution of the mystery. Brodribb was similarly
occupied, and as we crossed from Great Turnstile and took our way up
Brownlow Street, I could see that his excitement was approaching
bursting-point.

At the top of the street Thorndyke paused and looked up and down the
rather dismal thoroughfare which forms a continuation of Bedford Row
and bears its name. Then he crossed to the paved island surrounding
the pump which stands in the middle of the road, and from thence
surveyed the entrances to Brownlow Street and Hand Court; and then he
turned and looked thoughtfully at the pump.

“A quaint old survivor, this,” he remarked, tapping the iron shell
with his knuckles. “There is a similar one, you may remember, in Queen
Square, and another at Aldgate. But that is still in use.”

“Yes,” Brodribb assented, almost dancing with impatience and inwardly
damning the pump, as I could see, “I’ve noticed it.”

“I suppose,” Thorndyke proceeded, in a reflective tone, “they had to
remove the handle. But it was rather a pity.”

“Perhaps it was,” growled Brodribb, whose complexion was rapidly
developing affinities to that of a pickled cabbage, “but what the
d----”

Here he broke off short and glared silently at Thorndyke, who had
raised his arm and squeezed his hand into the opening once occupied by
the handle. He groped in the interior with an expression of placid
interest, and presently reported: “The barrel is still there, and so,
apparently, is the plunger--” (Here I heard Brodribb mutter huskily,
“Damn the barrel and the plunger too!”) “but my hand is rather large
for the exploration. Would you, Miss Bonney, mind slipping your hand
in and telling me if I am right?”

We all gazed at Thorndyke in dismay, but in a moment Miss Bonney
recovered from her astonishment, and with a deprecating smile, half
shy, half amused, she slipped off her glove, and reaching up--it was
rather high for her--inserted her hand into the narrow slit. Brodribb
glared at her and gobbled like a turkey-cock, and I watched her with a
sudden suspicion that something was going to happen. Nor was I
mistaken. For, as I looked, the shy, puzzled smile faded from her face
and was succeeded by an expression of incredulous astonishment. Slowly
she withdrew her hand, and as it came out of the slit it dragged
something after it. I started forward, and by the light of the lamp
above the pump I could see that the object was a leather bag secured
by a string from which hung a broken seal.

“It can’t be!” she gasped as, with trembling fingers, she untied the
string. Then, as she peered into the open mouth, she uttered a little
cry.

“It is! It is! It is the necklace!”

Brodribb was speechless with amazement. So was I; and I was still
gazing open-mouthed at the bag in Miss Bonney’s hands when I felt
Thorndyke touch my arm. I turned quickly and found him offering me an
automatic pistol.

“Stand by, Jervis,” he said quietly, looking towards Gray’s Inn.

I looked in the same direction, and then perceived three men stealing
round the corner from Jockey’s Fields. Brodribb saw them, too, and
snatching the bag of pearls from his client’s hands, buttoned it into
his breast pocket and placed himself before its owner, grasping his
stick with a war-like air. The three men filed along the pavement
until they were opposite us, when they turned simultaneously and bore
down on the pump, each man, as I noticed, holding his right hand
behind him. In a moment, Thorndyke’s hand, grasping a pistol, flew
up--as did mine, also--and he called out sharply:

“Stop! If any man moves a hand, I fire.”

The challenge brought them up short, evidently unprepared for this
kind of reception. What would have happened next it is impossible to
guess. But at this moment a police whistle sounded and two constables
ran out from Hand Court. The whistle was instantly echoed from the
direction of Warwick Court, whence two more constabulary figures
appeared through the postern gate of Gray’s Inn. Our three attendants
hesitated but for an instant. Then, with one accord, they turned tail
and flew like the wind round into Jockey’s Fields, with the whole
posse of constables close on their heels.

“Remarkable coincidence,” said Brodribb, “that those policemen should
happen to be on the look-out. Or isn’t it a coincidence?”

“I telephoned to the station superintendent before I started,” replied
Thorndyke, “warning him of a possible breach of the peace at this
spot.”

Brodribb chuckled. “You’re a wonderful man, Thorndyke. You think of
everything. I wonder if the police will catch those fellows.”

“It is no concern of ours,” replied Thorndyke. “We’ve got the pearls,
and that finishes the business. There will be no more shadowing, in
any case.”

Miss Bonney heaved a comfortable little sigh and glanced gratefully at
Thorndyke. “You can have no idea what a relief that is!” she
exclaimed; “to say nothing of the treasure-trove.”

We waited some time, but as neither the fugitives nor the constables
reappeared, we presently made our way back down Brownlow Street. And
there it was that Brodribb had an inspiration.

“I’ll tell you what,” said he. “I will just pop these things in my
strong-room--they will be perfectly safe there until the bank opens
to-morrow--and then we’ll go and have a nice little dinner. I’ll pay
the piper.”

“Indeed you won’t!” exclaimed Miss Bonney. “This is my thanksgiving
festival, and the benevolent wizard shall be the guest of the
evening.”

“Very well, my dear,” agreed Brodribb. “I will pay and charge it to
the estate. But I stipulate that the benevolent wizard shall tell us
exactly what the oracle said. That is essential to the preservation of
my sanity.”

“You shall have his _ipsissima verba_,” Thorndyke promised; and the
resolution was carried, _nem. con._

An hour and a half later we were seated around a table in a private
room of a café to which Mr. Brodribb had conducted us. I may not
divulge its whereabouts, though I may, perhaps, hint that we
approached it by way of Wardour Street. At any rate, we had dined,
even to the fulfilment of Brodribb’s ideal, and coffee and liqueurs
furnished a sort of gastronomic doxology. Brodribb had lighted a cigar
and Thorndyke had produced a vicious-looking little black cheroot,
which he regarded fondly and then returned to its abiding-place as
unsuited to the present company.

“Now,” said Brodribb, watching Thorndyke fill his pipe (as understudy
of the cheroot aforesaid), “we are waiting to hear the words of the
oracle.”

“You shall hear them,” Thorndyke replied. “There were only five of
them. But first, there are certain introductory matters to be disposed
of. The solution of this problem is based on two well-known physical
facts, one metallurgical and the other optical.”

“Ha!” said Brodribb. “But you must temper the wind to the shorn lamb,
you know, Thorndyke. Miss Bonney and I are not scientists.”

“I will put the matter quite simply, but you must have the facts. The
first relates to the properties of malleable metals--excepting iron
and steel--and especially of copper and its alloys. If a plate of such
metal or alloy--say, bronze, for instance--is made red-hot and
quenched in water, it becomes quite soft and flexible--the reverse of
what happens in the case of iron. Now, if such a plate of softened
metal be placed on a steel anvil and hammered, it becomes extremely
hard and brittle.”

“I follow that,” said Brodribb.

“Then see what follows. If, instead of hammering the soft plate, you
put on it the edge of a blunt chisel and strike on that chisel a sharp
blow, you produce an indented line. Now the plate remains soft; but
the metal forming the indented line has been hammered and has become
hard. There is now a line of hard metal on the soft plate. Is that
clear?”

“Perfectly,” replied Brodribb; and Thorndyke accordingly continued:

“The second fact is this: If a beam of light falls on a polished
surface which reflects it, and if that surface is turned through a
given angle, the beam of light is deflected through double that
angle.”

“H’m!” grunted Brodribb. “Yes. No doubt. I hope we are not going to
get into any deeper waters, Thorndyke.”

“We are not,” replied the latter, smiling urbanely. “We are now going
to consider the application of these facts. Have you ever seen a
Japanese magic mirror?”

“Never; nor even heard of such a thing.”

“They are bronze mirrors, just like the ancient Greek or Etruscan
mirrors--which are probably ‘magic’ mirrors, too. A typical specimen
consists of a circular or oval plate of bronze, highly polished on the
face and decorated on the back with chased ornament--commonly a dragon
or some such device--and furnished with a handle. The ornament is, as
I have said, chased; that is to say, it is executed in indented lines
made with chasing tools, which are, in effect, small chisels, more or
less blunt, which are struck with a chasing-hammer.

“Now these mirrors have a very singular property. Although the face is
perfectly plain, as a mirror should be, yet, if a beam of sunlight is
caught on it and reflected, say, on to a white wall, the round or oval
patch of light on the wall is not a plain light patch. It shows quite
clearly the ornament on the back of the mirror.”

“But how extraordinary!” exclaimed Miss Bonney. “It sounds quite
incredible.”

“It does,” Thorndyke agreed. “And yet the explanation is quite simple.
Professor Sylvanus Thompson pointed it out years ago. It is based on
the facts which I have just stated to you. The artist who makes one of
these mirrors begins, naturally, by annealing the metal until it is
quite soft. Then he chases the design on the back, and this design
then shows slightly on the face. But he now grinds the face perfectly
flat with fine emery and water so that the traces of the design are
completely obliterated. Finally, he polishes the face with rouge on a
soft buff.

“But now observe that wherever the chasing-tool has made a line, the
metal is hardened right through, so that the design is in hard metal
on a soft matrix. But the hardened metal resists the wear of the
polishing buff more than the soft metal does. The result is that the
act of polishing causes the design to appear in faint relief on the
face. Its projection is infinitesimal--less than the
hundred-thousandth of an inch--and totally invisible to the eye. But,
minute as it is, owing to the optical law which I mentioned--which, in
effect, doubles the projection--it is enough to influence the
reflection of light. As a consequence, every chased line appears on
the patch of light as a dark line with a bright border, and so the
whole design is visible. I think that is quite clear.”

“Perfectly clear,” Miss Bonney and Brodribb agreed.

“But now,” pursued Thorndyke, “before we come to the casket, there is
a very curious corollary which I must mention. Supposing our artist,
having finished the mirror, should proceed with a scraper to erase the
design from the back; and on the blank, scraped surface to etch a new
design. The process of etching does not harden the metal, so the new
design does not appear on the reflection. But the old design would.
For although it was invisible on the face and had been erased from the
back, it would still exist in the substance of the metal and continue
to influence the reflection. The odd result would be that the design
which would be visible in the patch of light on the wall would be a
different one from that on the back of the mirror.

“No doubt, you see what I am leading up to. But I will take the
investigation of the casket as it actually occurred. It was obvious,
at once, that the value of the thing was extrinsic. It had no
intrinsic value, either in material or workmanship. What could that
value be? The clear suggestion was that the casket was the vehicle of
some secret message or information. It had been made by Uyenishi, who
had almost certainly had possession of the missing pearls, and who had
been so closely pursued that he never had an opportunity to
communicate with his confederates. It was to be given to a man who was
almost certainly one of those confederates; and, since the pearls had
never been traced, there was a distinct probability that the
(presumed) message referred to some hiding-place in which Uyenishi had
concealed them during his flight, and where they were probably still
hidden.

“With these considerations in my mind, I examined the casket, and this
was what I found. The thing, itself, was a common white-metal casting,
made presentable by means of lacquer. But the white metal bottom had
been cut out and replaced by a plate of fine bronze--Shakudo. The
inside of this was covered with an etched design, which immediately
aroused my suspicions. Turning it over, I saw that the outside of the
bottom was not only smooth and polished; it was a true mirror. It gave
a perfectly undistorted reflection of my face. At once, I suspected
that the mirror held the secret; that the message, whatever it was,
had been chased on the back, had then been scraped away and an etched
design worked on it to hide the traces of the scraper.

“As soon as you were gone, I took the casket up to the laboratory and
threw a strong beam of parallel light from a condenser on the bottom,
catching the reflection on a sheet of white paper. The result was just
what I had expected. On the bright oval patch on the paper could be
seen the shadowy, but quite distinct, forms of five words in the
Japanese character.

“I was in somewhat of a dilemma, for I have no knowledge of Japanese,
whereas the circumstances were such as to make it rather unsafe to
employ a translator. However, as I do just know the Japanese
characters and possess a Japanese dictionary, I determined to make an
attempt to fudge out the words myself. If I failed, I could then look
for a discreet translator.

“However, it proved to be easier than I had expected, for the words
were detached; they did not form a sentence, and so involved no
questions of grammar. I spelt out the first word and then looked it up
in the dictionary. The translation was ‘pearls.’ This looked hopeful,
and I went on to the next, of which the translation was ‘pump.’ The
third word floored me. It seemed to be ‘jokkis,’ or ‘jokkish,’ but
there was no such word in the dictionary; so I turned to the next
word, hoping that it would explain its predecessor. And it did. The
fourth word was ‘fields,’ and the last word was evidently ‘London.’ So
the entire group read: ‘Pearls, Pump, Jokkis, Fields, London.’

“Now, there is no pump, so far as I know, in Jockey’s Fields, but
there is one in Bedford Row close to the corner of the Fields, and
exactly opposite the end of Brownlow Street. And by Mr. Brodribb’s
account, Uyenishi, in his flight, ran down Hand Court and returned up
Brownlow Street, as if he were making for the pump. As the latter is
disused and the handle-hole is high up, well out of the way of
children, it offers quite a good temporary hiding-place, and I had no
doubt that the bag of pearls had been poked into it and was probably
there still. I was tempted to go at once and explore; but I was
anxious that the discovery should be made by Miss Bonney, herself, and
I did not dare to make a preliminary exploration for fear of being
shadowed. If I had found the treasure I should have had to take it and
give it to her; which would have been a flat ending to the adventure.
So I had to dissemble and be the occasion of much smothered
objurgation on the part of my friend, Brodribb. And that is the whole
story of my interview with the oracle.”


Our mantelpiece is becoming a veritable museum of trophies of victory,
the gifts of grateful clients. Among them is a squat, shapeless figure
of a Japanese gentleman of the old school, with a silly, grinning
little face--The Magic Casket. But its possession is no longer a
menace. Its sting has been drawn; its magic is exploded; its secret is
exposed, and its glory departed.




 II.
 THE CONTENTS OF A MARE’S NEST

“It is very unsatisfactory,” said Mr. Stalker, of the ‘Griffin’ Life
Assurance Company, at the close of a consultation on a doubtful claim.
“I suppose we shall have to pay up.”

“I am sure you will,” said Thorndyke. “The death was properly
certified, the deceased is buried, and you have not a single fact with
which to support an application for further inquiry.”

“No,” Stalker agreed. “But I am not satisfied. I don’t believe that
doctor really knew what she died from. I wish cremation were more
usual.”

“So, I have no doubt, has many a poisoner,” Thorndyke remarked dryly.

Stalker laughed, but stuck to his point. “I know you don’t agree,”
said he, “but from our point of view it is much more satisfactory to
know that the extra precautions have been taken. In a cremation case,
you have not to depend on the mere death certificate; you have the
cause of death verified by an independent authority, and it is
difficult to see how any miscarriage can occur.”

Thorndyke shook his head. “It is a delusion, Stalker. You can’t
provide in advance for unknown contingencies. In practice, your
special precautions degenerate into mere formalities. If the
circumstances of a death appear normal, the independent authority will
certify; if they appear abnormal, you won’t get a certificate at all.
And if suspicion arises only after the cremation has taken place, it
can neither be confirmed nor rebutted.”

“My point is,” said Stalker, “that the searching examination would
lead to discovery of a crime before cremation.”

“That is the intention,” Thorndyke admitted. “But no examination,
short of an exhaustive post-mortem, would make it safe to destroy a
body so that no reconsideration of the cause of death would be
possible.”

Stalker smiled as he picked up his hat. “Well,” he said, “to a cobbler
there is nothing like leather, and I suppose that to a toxicologist
there is nothing like an exhumation,” and with this parting shot he
took his leave.

We had not seen the last of him, however. In the course of the same
week he looked in to consult us on a fresh matter.

“A rather queer case has turned up,” said he. “I don’t know that we
are deeply concerned in it, but we should like to have your opinion as
to how we stand. The position is this: Eighteen months ago, a man
named Ingle insured with us for fifteen hundred pounds, and he was
then accepted as a first-class life. He has recently died--apparently
from heart failure, the heart being described as fatty and
dilated--and his wife, Sibyl, who is the sole legatee and executrix,
has claimed payment. But just as we were making arrangements to pay, a
caveat has been entered by a certain Margaret Ingle, who declares that
she is the wife of the deceased and claims the estate as next-of-kin.
She states that the alleged wife, Sibyl, is a widow named Huggard who
contracted a bigamous marriage with the deceased, knowing that he had
a wife living.”

“An interesting situation,” commented Thorndyke, “but, as you say, it
doesn’t particularly concern you. It is a matter for the Probate
Court.”

“Yes,” agreed Stalker. “But that is not all. Margaret Ingle not only
charges the other woman with bigamy; she accuses her of having made
away with the deceased.”

“On what grounds?”

“Well, the reasons she gives are rather shadowy. She states that
Sibyl’s husband, James Huggard, died under suspicious
circumstances--there seems to have been some suspicion that he had
been poisoned--and she asserts that Ingle was a healthy, sound man and
could not have died from the causes alleged.”

“There is some reason in that,” said Thorndyke, “if he was really a
first-class life only eighteen months ago. As to the first husband,
Huggard, we should want some particulars: as to whether there was an
inquest, what was the alleged cause of death, and what grounds there
were for suspecting that he had been poisoned. If there really were
any suspicious circumstances, it would be advisable to apply to the
Home Office for an order to exhume the body of Ingle and verify the
cause of death.”

Stalker smiled somewhat sheepishly. “Unfortunately,” said he, “that is
not possible. Ingle was cremated.”

“Ah!” said Thorndyke, “that is, as you say, unfortunate. It clearly
increases the suspicion of poisoning, but destroys the means of
verifying that suspicion.”

“I should tell you,” said Stalker, “that the cremation was in
accordance with the provisions of the will.”

“That is not very material,” replied Thorndyke. “In fact, it rather
accentuates the suspicious aspect of the case; for the knowledge that
the death of the deceased would be followed by cremation might act as
a further inducement to get rid of him by poison. There were two death
certificates, of course?”

“Yes. The confirmatory certificate was given by Dr. Halbury, of
Wimpole Street. The medical attendant was a Dr. Barber, of Howland
Street. The deceased lived in Stock-Orchard Crescent, Holloway.”

“A good distance from Howland Street,” Thorndyke remarked. “Do you
know if Halbury made a post-mortem? I don’t suppose he did.”

“No, he didn’t,” replied Stalker.

“Then,” said Thorndyke, “his certificate is worthless. You can’t tell
whether a man has died from heart failure by looking at his dead body.
He must have just accepted the opinion of the medical attendant. Do I
understand that you want me to look into this case?”

“If you will. It is not really our concern whether or not the man was
poisoned, though I suppose we should have a claim on the estate of the
murderer. But we should like you to investigate the case; though how
the deuce you are going to do it I don’t quite see.”

“Neither do I,” said Thorndyke. “However, we must get into touch with
the doctors who signed the certificates, and possibly they may be able
to clear the whole matter up.”

“Of course,” said I, “there is the other body--that of Huggard--which
might be exhumed--unless he was cremated, too.”

“Yes,” agreed Thorndyke; “and for the purposes of the criminal law,
evidence of poisoning in that case would be sufficient. But it would
hardly help the Griffin Company, which is concerned exclusively with
Ingle deceased. Can you let us have a précis of the facts relating to
this case, Stalker?”

“I have brought one with me,” was the reply; “a short statement,
giving names, addresses, dates, and other particulars. Here it is”;
and he handed Thorndyke a sheet of paper bearing a tabulated
statement.

When Stalker had gone Thorndyke glanced rapidly through the précis
and then looked at his watch. “If we make our way to Wimpole Street at
once,” said he, “we ought to catch Halbury. That is obviously the
first thing to do. He signed the ‘C’ certificate, and we shall be able
to judge from what he tells us whether there is any possibility of
foul play. Shall we start now?”

As I assented, he slipped the précis in his pocket and we set forth.
At the top of Middle Temple Lane we chartered a taxi by which we were
shortly deposited at Dr. Halbury’s door, and a few minutes later were
ushered into his consulting room, and found him shovelling a pile of
letters into the waste-paper basket.

“How d’ye do?” he said briskly, holding out his hand. “I’m up to my
eyes in arrears, you see. Just back from my holiday. What can I do for
you?”

“We have called,” said Thorndyke, “about a man named Ingle.”

“Ingle--Ingle,” repeated Halbury. “Now, let me see----”

“Stock-Orchard Crescent, Holloway,” Thorndyke explained.

“Oh, yes. I remember him. Well, how is he?”

“He’s dead,” replied Thorndyke.

“Is he really?” exclaimed Halbury. “Now that shows how careful one
should be in one’s judgments. I half suspected that fellow of
malingering. He was supposed to have a dilated heart, but I couldn’t
make out any appreciable dilatation. There was excited, irregular
action. That was all. I had a suspicion that he had been dosing
himself with trinitrine. Reminded me of the cases of cordite chewing
that I used to meet with in South Africa. So he’s dead, after all.
Well, it’s queer. Do you know what the exact cause of death was?”

“Failure of a dilated heart is the cause stated on the
certificates--the body was cremated; and the ‘C’ Certificate was
signed by you.”

“By me!” exclaimed the physician. “Nonsense! It’s a mistake. I signed
a certificate for a Friendly Society--Mrs. Ingle brought it here for
me to sign--but I didn’t even know he was dead. Besides, I went away
for my holiday a few days after I saw the man, and only came back
yesterday. What makes you think I signed the death certificate?”

Thorndyke produced Stalker’s précis and handed it to Halbury, who
read out his own name and address with a puzzled frown. “This is an
extraordinary affair,” said he. “It will have to be looked into.”

“It will, indeed,” assented Thorndyke; “especially as a suspicion of
poisoning has been raised.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Halbury. “Then it was trinitrine, you may depend. But
I suspected him unjustly. It was somebody else who was dosing him;
perhaps that sly-looking baggage of a wife of his. Is anyone in
particular suspected?”

“Yes. The accusation, such as it is, is against the wife.”

“H’m. Probably a true bill. But she’s done us. Artful devil. You can’t
get much evidence out of an urnful of ashes. Still, somebody has
forged my signature. I suppose that is what the hussy wanted that
certificate for--to get a specimen of my handwriting. I see the ‘B’
certificate was signed by a man named Meeking. Who’s he? It was Barber
who called me in for an opinion.”

“I must find out who he is,” replied Thorndyke. “Possibly Dr. Barber
will know. I shall go and call on him now.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Halbury, shaking hands as we rose to depart, “you
ought to see Barber. He knows the history of the case, at any rate.”

From Wimpole Street we steered a course for Howland Street, and here
we had the good fortune to arrive just as Dr. Barber’s car drew up at
the door. Thorndyke introduced himself and me, and then introduced the
subject of his visit, but said nothing, at first, about our call on
Dr. Halbury.

“Ingle,” repeated Dr. Barber. “Oh, yes, I remember him. And you say he
is dead. Well, I’m rather surprised. I didn’t regard his condition as
serious.”

“Was his heart dilated?” Thorndyke asked.

“Not appreciably. I found nothing organic; no valvular disease. It was
more like a tobacco heart. But it’s odd that Meeking didn’t mention
the matter to me--he was my locum, you know. I handed the case over to
him when I went on my holiday. And you say he signed the death
certificate?”

“Yes; and the ‘B’ certificate for cremation, too.”

“Very odd,” said Dr. Barber. “Just come in and let us have a look at
the day book.”

We followed him into the consulting room, and there, while he was
turning over the leaves of the day book, I ran my eye along the shelf
over the writing-table from which he had taken it; on which I observed
the usual collection of case books and books of certificates and
notification forms, including the book of death certificates.

“Yes,” said Dr. Barber, “here we are; ‘Ingle, Mr., Stock-Orchard
Crescent.’ The last visit was on the 4th of September, and Meeking
seems to have given some sort of certificate. Wonder if he used a
printed form.” He took down two of the books and turned over the
counterfoils.

“Here we are,” he said presently; “‘Ingle, Jonathan, 4th September.
Now recovered and able to resume duties.’ That doesn’t look like
dying, does it? Still, we may as well make sure.”

He reached down the book of death certificates and began to glance
through the most recent entries.

“No,” he said, turning over the leaves, “there doesn’t seem to be----
Hullo! What’s this? Two blank counterfoils; and about the date, too;
between the 2nd and 13th of September. Extraordinary! Meeking is such
a careful, reliable man.”

He turned back to the day book and read through the fortnight’s
entries. Then he looked up with an anxious frown.

“I can’t make this out,” he said. “There is no record of any patient
having died in that period.”

“Where is Dr. Meeking at present?” I asked.

“Somewhere in the South Atlantic,” replied Barber. “He left here three
weeks ago to take up a post on a Royal Mail Boat. So he couldn’t have
signed the certificate in any case.”

That was all that Dr. Barber had to tell us, and a few minutes later
we took our departure.

“This case looks pretty fishy,” I remarked, as we turned down
Tottenham Court Road.

“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed. “There is evidently something radically
wrong. And what strikes me especially is the cleverness of the fraud;
the knowledge and judgment and foresight that are displayed.”

“She took pretty considerable risks,” I observed.

“Yes, but only the risks that were unavoidable. Everything that could
be foreseen has been provided for. All the formalities have been
complied with--in appearance. And you must notice, Jervis, that the
scheme did actually succeed. The cremation has taken place. Nothing
but the incalculable accident of the appearance of the real Mrs. Ingle
and her vague and apparently groundless suspicions, prevented the
success from being final. If she had not come on the scene, no
questions would ever have been asked.”

“No,” I agreed. “The discovery of the plot is a matter of sheer bad
luck. But what do you suppose has really happened?”

Thorndyke shook his head.

“It is very difficult to say. The mechanism of the affair is obvious
enough, but the motives and purpose are rather incomprehensible. The
illness was apparently a sham, the symptoms being produced by
nitro-glycerine or some similar heart poison. The doctors were called
in, partly for the sake of appearances and partly to get specimens of
their handwriting. The fact that both the doctors happened to be away
from home and one of them at sea at the time when verbal questions
might have been asked--by the undertaker, for instance--suggests that
this had been ascertained in advance. The death certificate forms were
pretty certainly stolen by the woman when she was left alone in
Barber’s consulting room, and, of course, the cremation certificates
could be obtained on application to the crematorium authorities. That
is all plain sailing. The mystery is, what is it all about? Barber or
Meeking would almost certainly have given a death certificate,
although the death was unexpected, and I don’t suppose Halbury would
have refused to confirm it. They would have assumed that their
diagnosis had been at fault.”

“Do you think it could have been suicide, or an inadvertent overdose
of trinitrine?”

“Hardly. If it was suicide, it was deliberate, for the purpose of
getting the insurance money for the woman, unless there was some
further motive behind. And the cremation, with all its fuss and
formalities, is against suicide; while the careful preparation seems
to exclude inadvertent poisoning. Then, what was the motive for the
sham illness except as a preparation for an abnormal death?”

“That is true,” said I. “But if you reject suicide, isn’t it rather
remarkable that the victim should have provided for his own
cremation?”

“We don’t know that he did,” replied Thorndyke. “There is a suggestion
of a capable forger in this business. It is quite possible that the
will itself is a forgery.”

“So it is!” I exclaimed. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“You see,” continued Thorndyke, “the appearances suggest that
cremation was a necessary part of the programme; otherwise these
extraordinary risks would not have been taken. The woman was sole
executrix and could have ignored the cremation clause. But if the
cremation was necessary, why was it necessary? The suggestion is that
there was something suspicious in the appearance of the body;
something that the doctors would certainly have observed or that would
have been discovered if an exhumation had taken place.”

“You mean some injury or visible signs of poisoning?”

“I mean something discoverable by examination even after burial.”

“But what about the undertaker? Wouldn’t he have noticed anything
palpably abnormal?”

“An excellent suggestion, Jervis. We must see the undertaker. We have
his address: Kentish Town Road--a long way from deceased’s house, by
the way. We had better get on a bus and go there now.”

A yellow omnibus was approaching as he spoke. We hailed it and sprang
on, continuing our discussion as we were borne northward.

Mr. Burrell, the undertaker, was a pensive-looking, profoundly civil
man who was evidently in a small way, for he combined with his
funereal functions general carpentry and cabinet making. He was
perfectly willing to give any required information, but he seemed to
have very little to give.

“I never really saw the deceased gentleman,” he said in reply to
Thorndyke’s cautious inquiries. “When I took the measurements, the
corpse was covered with a sheet; and as Mrs. Ingle was in the room, I
made the business as short as possible.”

“You didn’t put the body in the coffin, then?”

“No. I left the coffin at the house, but Mrs. Ingle said that she and
the deceased gentleman’s brother would lay the body in it.”

“But didn’t you see the corpse when you screwed the coffin-lid down?”

“I didn’t screw it down. When I got there it was screwed down already.
Mrs. Ingle said they had to close up the coffin, and I dare say it was
necessary. The weather was rather warm; and I noticed a strong smell
of formalin.”

“Well,” I said, as we walked back down the Kentish Town Road, “we
haven’t got much more forward.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” replied Thorndyke. “We have a further instance
of the extraordinary adroitness with which this scheme was carried
out; and we have confirmation of our suspicion that there was
something unusual in the appearance of the body. It is evident that
this woman did not dare to let even the undertaker see it. But one can
hardly help admiring the combination of daring and caution, the
boldness with which these risks were taken, and the care and judgment
with which they were provided against. And again I point out that the
risks were justified by the result. The secret of that man’s death
appears to have been made secure for all time.”

It certainly looked as if the mystery with which we were concerned
were beyond the reach of investigation. Of course, the woman could be
prosecuted for having forged the death certificates, to say nothing of
the charge of bigamy. But that was no concern of ours or Stalker’s.
Jonathan Ingle was dead, and no one could say how he died.

On our arrival at our chambers we found a telegram that had just
arrived, announcing that Stalker would call on us in the evening; and
as this seemed to suggest that he had some fresh information we looked
forward to his visit with considerable interest. Punctually at six
o’clock he made his appearance and at once opened the subject.

“There are some new developments in this Ingle case,” said he. “In the
first place, the woman, Huggard, has bolted. I went to the house to
make a few inquiries and found the police in possession. They had come
to arrest her on the bigamy charge, but she had got wind of their
intentions and cleared out. They made a search of the premises, but I
don’t think they found anything of interest except a number of rifle
cartridges; and I don’t know that they are of much interest either,
for she could hardly have shot him with a rifle.”

“What kind of cartridges were they?” Thorndyke asked.

Stalker put his hand in his pocket.

“The inspector let me have one to show you,” said he; and he laid on
the table a military cartridge of the pattern of some twenty years
ago. Thorndyke picked it up, and taking from a drawer a pair of pliers
drew the bullet out of the case and inserted into the latter a pair of
dissecting forceps. When he withdrew the forceps, their points grasped
one or two short strings of what looked like cat-gut.

“Cordite!” said I. “So Halbury was probably right, and this is how she
got her supply.” Then, as Stalker looked at me inquiringly, I gave him
a short account of the results of our investigations.

“Ha!” he exclaimed, “the plot thickens. This juggling with the death
certificates seems to connect itself with another kind of juggling
that I came to tell you about. You know that Ingle was Secretary and
Treasurer to a company that bought and sold land for building estates.
Well, I called at their office after I left you and had a little talk
with the chairman. From him I learned that Ingle had practically
complete control of the financial affairs of the company, that he
received and paid all moneys and kept the books. Of late, however,
some of the directors have had a suspicion that all was not well with
the finances, and at last it was decided to have the affairs of the
company thoroughly overhauled by a firm of chartered accountants. This
decision was communicated to Ingle, and a couple of days later a
letter arrived from his wife saying that he had had a severe heart
attack and asking that the audit of the books might be postponed until
he recovered and was able to attend at the office.”

“And was it postponed?” I asked.

“No,” replied Stalker. “The accountants were asked to get to work at
once, which they did; with the result that they discovered a number of
discrepancies in the books and a sum of about three thousand pounds
unaccounted for. It isn’t quite obvious how the frauds were carried
out, but it is suspected that some of the returned cheques are fakes
with forged endorsements.”

“Did the company communicate with Ingle on the subject?” asked
Thorndyke.

“No. They had a further letter from Mrs. Ingle--that is,
Huggard--saying that Ingle’s condition was very serious; so they
decided to wait until he had recovered. Then, of course, came the
announcement of his death, on which the matter was postponed pending
the probate of the will. I suppose a claim will be made on the estate,
but as the executrix has absconded, the affair has become rather
complicated.”

“You were saying,” said Thorndyke, “that the fraudulent death
certificates seem to be connected with these frauds on the company.
What kind of connexion do you assume?”

“I assume--or, at least, suggest,” replied Stalker, “that this was a
case of suicide. The man, Ingle, saw that his frauds were discovered,
or were going to be, and that he was in for a long term of penal
servitude, so he just made away with himself. And I think that if the
murder charge could be dropped, Mrs. Huggard might be induced to come
forward and give evidence as to the suicide.”

Thorndyke shook his head.

“The murder charge couldn’t be dropped,” said he. “If it was suicide,
Huggard was certainly an accessory; and in law, an accessory to
suicide is an accessory to murder. But, in fact, no official charge of
murder has been made, and at present there are no means of sustaining
such a charge. The identity of the ashes might be assumed to be that
stated in the cremation order, but the difficulty is the cause of
death. Ingle was admittedly ill. He was attended for heart disease by
three doctors. There is no evidence that he did not die from that
illness.”

“But the illness was due to cordite poisoning,” said I.

“That is what we believe. But no one could swear to it. And we
certainly could not swear that he died from cordite poisoning.”

“Then,” said Stalker, “apparently there is no means of finding out
whether his death was due to natural causes, suicide, or murder?”

“There is only one chance,” replied Thorndyke. “It is just barely
possible that the cause of death might be ascertainable by an
examination of the ashes.”

“That doesn’t seem very hopeful,” said I. “Cordite poisoning would
certainly leave no trace.”

“We mustn’t assume that he died from cordite poisoning,” said
Thorndyke. “Probably he did not. That may have masked the action of a
less obvious poison, or death might have been produced by some new
agent.”

“But,” I objected, “how many poisons are there that could be detected
in the ashes? No organic poison would leave any traces, nor would
metallic poisons such as mercury, antimony, or arsenic.”

“No,” Thorndyke agreed. “But there are other metallic poisons which
could be easily recovered from the ashes; lead, tin, gold, and silver,
for instance. But it is useless to discuss speculative probabilities.
The only chance that we have of obtaining any new facts is by an
examination of the ashes. It seems infinitely improbable that we shall
learn anything from it, but there is the bare possibility and we ought
not to leave it untried.”

Neither Stalker nor I made any further remark, but I could see that
the same thought was in both our minds. It was not often that
Thorndyke was “gravelled”; but apparently the resourceful Mrs. Huggard
had set him a problem that was beyond even his powers. When an
investigator of crime is reduced to the necessity of examining a
potful of ashes in the wild hope of ascertaining from them how the
deceased met his death, one may assume that he is at the very end of
his tether. It is a forlorn hope indeed.

Nevertheless, Thorndyke seemed to view the matter quite cheerfully,
his only anxiety being lest the Home Secretary should refuse to make
the order authorizing the examination. And this anxiety was dispelled
a day or two later by the arrival of a letter giving the necessary
authority, and informing him that a Dr. Hemming--known to us both as
an expert pathologist--had been deputed to be present at the
examination and to confer with him as to the necessity for a chemical
analysis.

On the appointed day Dr. Hemming called at our chambers and we set
forth together for Liverpool Street; and as we drove thither it became
evident to me that his view of our mission was very similar to my own.
For, though he talked freely enough, and on professional topics, he
maintained a most discreet silence on the subject of the forthcoming
inspection; indeed, the first reference to the subject was made by
Thorndyke himself just as the train was approaching Corfield, where
the crematorium was situated.

“I presume,” said he, “you have made all necessary arrangements,
Hemming?”

“Yes,” was the reply. “The superintendent will meet us and will
conduct us to the catacombs, and there, in our presence, will take the
casket from its niche in the columbarium, and have it conveyed to the
office, where the examination will be made. I thought it best to use
these formalities, though, as the casket is sealed and bears the name
of the deceased, there is not much point in them.”

“No,” said Thorndyke, “but I think you were right. It would be easy to
challenge the identity of a mass of ashes if all precautions were not
taken, seeing that the ashes themselves are unidentifiable.”

“That was what I felt,” said Hemming; and then, as the train slowed
down, he added: “This is our station, and that gentleman on the
platform, I suspect, is the superintendent.”

The surmise turned out to be correct; but the cemetery official was
not the only one present bearing that title; for as we were mutually
introducing ourselves, a familiar tall figure approached up the
platform from the rear of the train--our old friend Superintendent
Miller of the Criminal Investigation Department.

“I don’t wish to intrude,” said he, as he joined the group and was
presented by Thorndyke to the strangers, “but we were notified by the
Home Office that an investigation was to be made, so I thought I would
be on the spot to pick up any crumbs of information that you may drop.
Of course, I am not asking to be present at the examination.”

“You may as well be present as an additional witness to the removal of
the urn,” said Thorndyke; and Miller accordingly joined the party,
which now made its way from the station to the cemetery.

The catacombs were in a long, low arcaded building at the end of the
pleasantly-wooded grounds, and on our way thither we passed the
crematorium, a smallish, church-like edifice with a perforated
chimney-shaft partly concealed by the low spire. Entering the
catacombs, we were conducted to the “columbarium,” the walls of which
were occupied by a multitude of niches or pigeon-holes, each niche
accommodating a terra-cotta urn or casket. The superintendent
proceeded to near the end of the gallery, where he halted, and opening
the register, which he had brought with him, read out a number and the
name “Jonathan Ingle,” and then led us to a niche bearing that number
and name, in which reposed a square casket, on which was inscribed the
name and date of death. When we had verified these particulars, the
casket was tenderly lifted from its place by two attendants, who
carried it to a well-lighted room at the end of the building, where a
large table by a window had been covered with white paper. Having
placed the casket on the table, the attendants retired, and the
superintendent then broke the seals and removed the cover.

For a while we all stood looking in at the contents of the casket
without speaking; and I found myself contrasting them with what would
have been revealed by the lifting of a coffin-lid. Truly corruption
had put on incorruption. The mass of snow-white, coral-like fragments,
delicate, fragile, and lace-like in texture, so far from being
repulsive in aspect, were almost attractive. I ran my eye, with an
anatomist’s curiosity, over these dazzling remnants of what had lately
been a man, half-unconsciously seeking to identify and give a name to
particular fragments, and a little surprised at the difficulty of
determining that this or that irregularly-shaped white object was a
part of any one of the bones with which I had thought myself so
familiar.

Presently Hemming looked up at Thorndyke and asked: “Do you observe
anything abnormal in the appearance of these ashes? I don’t.”

“Perhaps,” replied Thorndyke, “we had better turn them out on to the
table, so that we can see the whole of them.”

This was done very gently, and then Thorndyke proceeded to spread out
the heap, touching the fragments with the utmost delicacy--for they
were extremely fragile and brittle--until the whole collection was
visible.

“Well,” said Hemming, when we had once more looked them over
critically, “what do you say? I can see no trace of any foreign
substance. Can you?”

“No,” replied Thorndyke. “And there are some other things that I can’t
see. For instance, the medical referee reported that the proposer had
a good set of sound teeth. Where are they? I have not seen a single
fragment of a tooth. Yet teeth are far more resistant to fire than
bones, especially the enamel caps.”

Hemming ran a searching glance over the mass of fragments and looked
up with a perplexed frown.

“I certainly can’t see any sign of teeth,” he admitted; “and it _is_
rather curious, as you say. Does the fact suggest any particular
significance to you?”

By way of reply, Thorndyke delicately picked up a flat fragment and
silently held it out towards us. I looked at it and said nothing; for
a very strange suspicion was beginning to creep into my mind.

“A piece of a rib,” said Hemming. “Very odd that it should have broken
across so cleanly. It might have been cut with a saw.”

Thorndyke laid it down and picked up another, larger fragment, which I
had already noticed.

“Here is another example,” said he, handing it to our colleague.

“Yes,” agreed Hemming. “It is really rather extraordinary. It looks
exactly as if it had been sawn across.”

“It does,” agreed Thorndyke. “What bone should you say it is?”

“That is what I was just asking myself,” replied Hemming, looking at
the fragment with a sort of half-vexed smile. “It seems ridiculous
that a competent anatomist should be in any doubt with as large a
portion as this, but really I can’t confidently give it a name. The
shape seems to me to suggest a tibia, but of course it is much too
small. Is it the upper end of the ulna?”

“I should say no,” answered Thorndyke. Then he picked out another of
the larger fragments, and handing it to Hemming, asked him to name it.

Our friend began to look somewhat worried.

“It is an extraordinary thing, you know,” said he, “but I can’t tell
you what bone it is part of. It is clearly the shaft of a long bone,
but I’m hanged if I can say which. It is too big for a metatarsal and
too small for any of the main limb bones. It reminds one of a
diminutive thigh bone.”

“It does,” agreed Thorndyke; “very strongly.” While Hemming had been
speaking he had picked out four more large fragments, and these he now
laid in a row with the one that had seemed to resemble a tibia in
shape. Placed thus together, the five fragments bore an obvious
resemblance.

“Now,” said he, “look at these. There are five of them. They are parts
of limb bones, and the bones of which they are parts were evidently
exactly alike, excepting that three were apparently from the left side
and two from the right. Now, you know, Hemming, a man has only four
limbs, and of those only two contain similar bones. Then two of them
show distinct traces of what looks like a saw-cut.”

Hemming gazed at the row of fragments with a frown of deep cogitation.

“It is very mysterious,” he said. “And looking at them in a row they
strike me as curiously like tibiæ--in shape; not in size.”

“The size,” said Thorndyke, “is about that of a sheep’s tibia.”

“A sheep’s!” exclaimed Hemming, staring in amazement, first at the
calcined bones and then at my colleague.

“Yes; the upper half, sawn across in the middle of the shank.”

Hemming was thunderstruck.

“It is an astounding affair!” he exclaimed. “You mean to suggest----”

“I suggest,” said Thorndyke, “that there is not a sign of a human bone
in the whole collection. But there are very evident traces of at least
five legs of mutton.”

For a few moments there was a profound silence, broken only by a
murmur of astonishment from the cemetery official and a low chuckle
from Superintendent Miller, who had been listening with absorbed
interest. At length Hemming spoke.

“Then, apparently, there was no corpse in the coffin at all?”

“No,” answered Thorndyke. “The weight was made up, and the ashes
furnished, by joints of butcher’s meat. I dare say, if we go over the
ashes carefully, we shall be able to judge what they were. But it is
hardly necessary. The presence of five legs of mutton and the absence
of a single recognizable fragment of a human skeleton, together with
the forged certificates, gives us a pretty conclusive case. The rest,
I think we can leave to Superintendent Miller.”


“I take it, Thorndyke,” said I, as the train moved out of the station,
“that you came here expecting to find what you did find?”

“Yes,” he replied. “It seemed to me the only possibility, having
regard to all the known facts.”

“When did it first occur to you?”

“It occurred to me as a possibility as soon as we discovered that the
cremation certificates had been forged; but it was the undertaker’s
statement that seemed to clench the matter.”

“But he distinctly stated that he measured the body.”

“True. But there was nothing to show that it was a dead body. What was
perfectly clear was that there was something that must on no account
be seen; and when Stalker told us of the embezzlement we had a body of
evidence that could point to only one conclusion. Just consider that
evidence.

“Here we had a death, preceded by an obviously sham illness and
followed by cremation with forged certificates. Now, what was it that
had happened? There were four possible hypotheses. Normal death,
suicide, murder, and fictitious death. Which of these hypotheses
fitted the facts?

“Normal death was apparently excluded by the forged certificates.

“The theory of suicide did not account for the facts. It did not agree
with the careful, elaborate preparation. And why the forged
certificates? If Ingle had really died, Meeking would have certified
the death. And why the cremation? There was no purpose in taking those
enormous risks.

“The theory of murder was unthinkable. These certificates were almost
certainly forged by Ingle himself, who we know was a practised forger.
But the idea of the victim arranging for his own cremation is an
absurdity.

“There remained only the theory of fictitious death; and that theory
fitted all the facts perfectly. First, as to the motive. Ingle had
committed a felony. He had to disappear. But what kind of
disappearance could be so effectual as death and cremation? Both the
prosecutors and the police would forthwith write him off and forget
him. Then there was the bigamy--a criminal offence in itself. But
death would not only wipe that off; after ‘death’ he could marry
Huggard regularly under another name, and he would have shaken off his
deserted wife for ever. And he stood to gain fifteen hundred pounds
from the Insurance Company. Then see how this theory explained the
other facts. A fictitious death made necessary a fictitious illness.
It necessitated the forged certificates, since there was no corpse. It
made cremation highly desirable; for suspicion might easily have
arisen, and then the exhumation of a coffin containing a dummy would
have exploded the fraud. But successful cremation would cover up the
fraud for ever. It explained the concealment of the corpse from the
undertaker, and it even explained the smell of formalin which he
noticed.”

“How did it?” I asked.

“Consider, Jervis,” he replied. “The dummy in this coffin had to be a
dummy of flesh and bone which would yield the correct kind of ash.
Joints of butcher’s meat would fulfil the conditions. But the quantity
required would be from a hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds. Now
Ingle could not go to the butcher and order a whole sheep to be sent
the day before the funeral. The joints would have to be bought
gradually and stored. But the storage of meat in warm weather calls
for some kind of preservative; and formalin is highly effective, as it
leaves no trace after burning.

“So you see that the theory of fictitious death agreed with all the
known circumstances, whereas the alternative theories presented
inexplicable discrepancies and contradictions. Logically, it was the
only possible theory, and as you have seen, experiment proved it to be
the true one.”

As Thorndyke concluded, Dr. Hemming took his pipe from his mouth and
laughed softly.

“When I came down to-day,” said he, “I had all the facts which you had
communicated to the Home Office, and I was absolutely convinced that
we were coming to examine a mare’s nest. And yet, now I have heard
your exposition, the whole thing looks perfectly obvious.”

“That is usually the case with Thorndyke’s conclusions,” said I. “They
are perfectly obvious--when you have heard the explanation.”

Within a week of our expedition, Ingle was in the hands of the police.
The apparent success of the cremation adventure had misled him to a
sense of such complete security that he had neglected to cover his
tracks, and he had accordingly fallen an easy prey to our friend
Superintendent Miller. The police were highly gratified, and so were
the directors of the Griffin Life Assurance Company.




 III.
 THE STALKING HORSE

As Thorndyke and I descended the stairs of the footbridge at
Densford Junction we became aware that something unusual had happened.
The platform was nearly deserted save at one point, where a small but
dense crowd had collected around the open door of a first-class
compartment of the down train; heads were thrust out of the windows of
the other coaches, and at intervals doors opened and inquisitive
passengers ran along to join the crowd, from which an excited porter
detached himself just as we reached the platform.

“You’d better go for Dr. Pooke first,” the station-master called after
him.

On this, Thorndyke stepped forward.

“My friend and I,” said he, “are medical men. Can we be of any service
until the local doctor arrives?”

“I’m very much afraid not, sir,” was the reply, “but you’ll see.” He
cleared a way for us and we approached the open door.

At the first glance there appeared to be nothing to account for the
awe-stricken expression with which the bystanders peered into the
carriage and gazed at its solitary occupant. For the motionless figure
that sat huddled in the corner seat, chin on breast, might have been a
sleeping man. But it was not. The waxen pallor of the face and the
strange, image-like immobility forbade the hope of any awakening.

“It looks almost as if he had passed away in his sleep,” said the
station-master when we had concluded our brief examination and
ascertained certainly that the man was dead. “Do you think it was a
heart attack, sir?”

Thorndyke shook his head and touched with his finger a depressed spot
on the dead man’s waistcoat. When he withdrew his finger it was
smeared with blood.

“Good God!” the official gasped, in a horrified whisper. “The man has
been murdered!” He stared incredulously at the corpse for a few
moments and then turned and sprang out of the compartment, shutting
the door behind him, and we heard him giving orders for the coach to
be separated and shunted into the siding.

“This is a gruesome affair, Jervis,” my colleague said as he sat down
on the seat opposite the dead man and cast a searching glance round
the compartment. “I wonder who this poor fellow was and what was the
object of the murder? It looks almost too determined for a common
robbery; and, in fact, the body does not appear to have been robbed.”
Here he stooped suddenly to pick up one or two minute fragments of
glass which seemed to have been trodden into the carpet, and which he
examined closely in the palm of his hand. I leaned over and looked at
the fragments, and we agreed that they were portions of the bulb of an
electric torch or flash-lamp.

“The significance of these--if they have any,” said Thorndyke, “we can
consider later. But if they are recent, it would appear that the metal
part of the bulb has been picked up and taken away. That might be an
important fact. But, on the other hand, the fragments may have been
here some time and have no connexion with the tragedy; though you
notice that they were lying opposite the body and opposite the seat
which the murderer must have occupied when the crime was committed.”

As he was speaking, the uncoupled coach began slowly to move towards
the siding, and we both stooped to make a further search for the
remainder of the lamp-bulb. And then, almost at the same moment, we
perceived two objects lying under the opposite seat--the seat occupied
by the dead man. One was a small pocket-handkerchief, the other a
sheet of notepaper.

“This,” said I, as I picked up the former, “accounts for the strong
smell of scent in the compartment.”

“Possibly,” Thorndyke agreed, “though you will notice that the odour
does not come principally from the handkerchief, but from the back
cushion of the corner seat. But here is something more distinctive--a
most incriminating piece of evidence, unless it can be answered by an
undeniable alibi.” He held out to me a sheet of letter paper, both
pages of which were covered with writing in bright blue ink, done with
a Hectograph or some similar duplicator. It was evidently a circular
letter, for it bore the printed heading, “Women’s Emancipation League,
16 Barnabas Square, S.W.,” and the contents appeared to refer to a
“militant demonstration” planned for the near future.

“It is dated the day before yesterday,” commented Thorndyke, “so that
it might have been lying here for twenty-four hours, though that is
obviously improbable; and as this is neither the first sheet nor the
last, there are--or have been--at least two more sheets. The police
will have something to start on, at any rate.”

He laid the letter on the seat and explored both of the hat-racks,
taking down the dead man’s hat, gloves, and umbrella, and noting in
the hat the initials “F.B.” He had just replaced them when voices
became audible outside, and the station-master climbed up on the
foot-board and opened the door to admit two men, one of whom I assumed
to be a doctor, the other being a police inspector.

“The station-master tells me that this is a case of homicide,” said
the former, addressing us jointly.

“That is what the appearances suggest,” replied Thorndyke. “There is a
bullet wound, inflicted apparently at quite short range--the waistcoat
is perceptibly singed--and we have found no weapon in the
compartment.”

The doctor stepped past us and proceeded to make a rapid examination
of the body.

“Yes,” he said, “I agree with you. The position of the wound and the
posture of the body both suggest that death was practically
instantaneous. If it had been suicide, the pistol would have been in
the hand or on the floor. There is no clue to the identity of the
murderer, I suppose?”

“We found these on the floor under the dead man’s seat,” replied
Thorndyke, indicating the letter and the handkerchief; “and there is
some glass trodden into the carpet--apparently the remains of an
electric flash-lamp.”

The inspector pounced on the handkerchief and the letter, and having
scrutinized the former vainly in search of name or initials, turned to
the letter.

“Why, this is a suffragist’s letter!” he exclaimed. “But it can’t have
anything to do with this affair. They are mischievous beggars, but
they don’t do this sort of thing.” Nevertheless, he carefully bestowed
both articles in a massive wallet, and approaching the corpse,
remarked: “We may as well see who he is while we are waiting for the
stretcher.”

With a matter-of-fact air, which seemed somewhat to shock the
station-master, he unbuttoned the coat of the passive figure in the
corner and thrust his hand into the breast pocket, drawing out a
letter-case which he opened, and from which he extracted a visiting
card. As he glanced at it, his face suddenly took on an expression of
amazement.

“God!” he exclaimed in a startled tone. “Who do you think he is,
doctor? He is Mr. Francis Burnham!”

The doctor looked at him with an interrogative frown.
“Burnham--Burnham,” he repeated. “Let me see, now----”

“Don’t you know? The anti-suffrage man. Surely----”

“Yes, yes,” interrupted the doctor. “Of course I remember him. The
arch-enemy of the suffrage movement and--yes, of course.” The doctor’s
brisk speech changed abruptly into a hesitating mumble. Like the
inspector, he had suddenly “seen a great light”; and again, like the
officer, his perception had begotten a sudden reticence.

Thorndyke glanced at his watch. “Our train is a minute overdue,” said
he. “We ought to get back to the platform.” Taking a card from his
case, he handed it to the inspector, who looked at it and slightly
raised his eyebrows.

“I don’t think my evidence will be of much value,” said he; “but, of
course, I am at your service if you want it.” With this and a bow to
the doctor and the station-master, he climbed down to the ground; and
when I had given the inspector my card, I followed, and we made our
way to the platform.


The case was not long in developing. That very evening, as Thorndyke
and I were smoking our after-dinner pipes by the fire, a hurried step
was heard on the stair and was followed by a peremptory knock on our
door. The visitor was a man of about thirty, with a clean-shaved face,
an intense and rather neurotic expression, and a restless, excited
manner. He introduced himself by the name of Cadmus Bawley, and
thereby, in effect, indicated the purpose of his visit.

“You know me by name, I expect,” he said, speaking rapidly and with a
sharp, emphatic manner, “and probably you can guess what I have come
about. You have seen the evening paper, of course?”

“I have not,” replied Thorndyke.

“Well,” said Mr. Bawley, “you know about the murder of the man
Burnham, because I see that you were present at the discovery; and you
know that part of a circular letter from our League was found in the
compartment. Perhaps you will not be surprised to learn that Miss
Isabel Dalby has been arrested and charged with the murder.”

“Indeed!” said Thorndyke.

“Yes. It’s an infamous affair! A national disgrace!” exclaimed Bawley,
banging the table with his fist. “A manifest plot of the enemies of
social reform to get rid of a high-minded, noble-hearted lady whose
championship of this great Cause they are unable to combat by fair
means in the open. And it is a wild absurdity, too. As to the fellow,
Burnham, I can’t pretend to feel any regret----”

“May I suggest”--Thorndyke interrupted somewhat stiffly--“that the
expression of personal sentiments is neither helpful nor discreet? My
methods of defence--if that is what you have come about--are based on
demonstration rather than rhetoric. Could you give us the plain
facts?”

Mr. Cadmus Bawley looked unmistakably sulky, but after a short pause,
he began his recital in a somewhat lower key.

“The bald facts,” he said, “are these: This afternoon, at half-past
two, Miss Dalby took the train from King’s Cross to Holmwood. This is
the train that stops at Densford Junction and is the one in which
Burnham travelled. She took a first-class ticket and occupied a
compartment for ladies only, of which she was the only occupant. She
got out at Holmwood and went straight to the house of our
Vice-President, Miss Carleigh--who has been confined to her room for
some days--and stayed there about an hour. She came back by the
four-fifteen train, and I met her at the station--King’s Cross--at a
quarter to five. We had tea at a restaurant opposite the station, and
over our tea we discussed the plans for the next demonstration, and
arranged the rendezvous and the most convenient routes for retreat and
dispersal when the police should arrive. This involved the making of
sketch plans, and these Miss Dalby drew on a sheet of paper that she
took from her pocket, and which happened to be part of the circular
letter referring to the raid. After tea we walked together down Gray’s
Inn Road and parted at Theobald’s Road, I going on to the
head-quarters and she to her rooms in Queen Square. On her arrival
home, she found two detectives waiting outside her house, and
then--and then, in short, she was arrested, like a common criminal,
and taken to the police station, where she was searched and the
remainder of the circular letter found in her pocket. Then she was
formally charged with the murder of the man Burnham, and she was
graciously permitted to send a telegram to head-quarters. It arrived
just after I got there, and, of course, I at once went to the police
station. The police refused to accept bail, but they allowed me to see
her to make arrangements for the defence.”

“Does Miss Dalby offer any suggestion,” asked Thorndyke, “as to how a
sheet of her letter came to be in the compartment with the murdered
man?”

“Oh, yes!” replied Mr. Bawley. “I had forgotten that. It wasn’t her
letter at all. She destroyed her copy of the letter as soon as she had
read it.”

“Then,” inquired Thorndyke, “how came the letter to be in her pocket?”

“Ah,” replied Bawley, “that is the mystery. She thinks someone must
have slipped it into her pocket to throw suspicion on her.”

“Did she seem surprised to find it in her pocket when you were having
tea together?”

“No. She had forgotten having destroyed her copy. She only remembered
it when I told her that the sheet had been found in Burnham’s
carriage.”

“Can she produce the fragments of the destroyed letter?”

“No, she can’t. Unfortunately she burned it.”

“Do these circular letters bear any distinguishing mark? Are they
addressed to members by name?”

“Only on the envelopes. The letters are all alike. They are run off a
duplicator. Of course, if you don’t believe the story----”

“I am not judging the case,” interrupted Thorndyke; “I am simply
collecting the facts. What do you want me to do?”

“If you feel that you could undertake the defence, I should like you
to do so. We shall employ the solicitors to the League, Bird &
Marshall, but I know they will be willing and glad to act with you.”

“Very well,” said Thorndyke. “I will investigate the case and consult
with your solicitors. By the way, do the police know about the sheet
of the letter on which the plans were drawn?”

“No. I thought it best to say nothing about that, and I have told Miss
Dalby not to mention it.”

“That is just as well,” said Thorndyke. “Have you the sheet with the
plan on it?”

“I haven’t it about me,” was the reply. “It is in my desk at my
chambers.”

“You had better let me have it to look at,” said Thorndyke.

“You can have it if you want it, of course,” said Bawley, “but it
won’t help you. The letters are all alike, as I have told you.”

“I should like to see it, nevertheless,” said Thorndyke; “and perhaps
you could give me some account of Mr. Burnham. What do you know about
him?”

Mr. Bawley shut his lips tightly, and his face took on an expression
of vindictiveness verging on malignity.

“All I know about Burnham,” he said, “is that he was a fool and a
ruffian. He was not only an enemy of the great reform that our League
stands for; he was a treacherous enemy--violent, crafty, and
indefatigably active. I can only regard his death as a blessing to
mankind.”

“May I ask,” said Thorndyke, “if any members of your League have ever
publicly threatened to take personal measures against him?”

“Yes,” snapped Bawley. “Several of us--including myself--have
threatened to give him the hiding that he deserved. But a hiding is a
different thing from murder, you know.”

“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed somewhat dryly; then he asked: “Do you know
anything about Mr. Burnham’s occupation and habits?”

“He was a sort of manager of the London and Suburban Bank. His job was
to supervise the suburban branches, and his habit was to visit them in
rotation. He was probably going to the branch at Holmwood when he was
killed. That is all I can tell you about him.”

“Thank you,” said Thorndyke; and as our visitor rose to depart he
continued: “Then I will look into the case and arrange with your
solicitors to have Miss Dalby properly represented at the inquest; and
I shall be glad to have that sheet of the letter as soon as you can
send or leave it.”

“Very well,” said Bawley, “though, as I have told you, it won’t be of
any use to you. It is only a duplicated circular.”

“Possibly,” Thorndyke assented. “But the other sheets will be produced
in Court, so I may as well have an opportunity of examining it
beforehand.”

For some minutes after our client had gone Thorndyke remained silent
and reflective, copying his rough notes into his pocket-book and
apparently amplifying and arranging them. Presently he looked up at me
with an unspoken question in his eyes.

“It is a queer case,” said I. “The circumstantial evidence seems to be
strongly against Miss Dalby, but it is manifestly improbable that she
murdered the man.”

“It seems so,” he agreed. “But the case will be decided on the
evidence; and the evidence will be considered by a judge, not by a
Home Secretary. You notice the importance of Burnham’s destination?”

“Yes. He was evidently dead when the train arrived at Holmwood. But it
isn’t clear how long he had been dead.”

“The evidence,” said Thorndyke, “points strongly to the tunnel between
Cawden and Holmwood as the place where the murder was committed. You
will remember that the up-express passed our train in the tunnel. If
the adjoining compartments were empty, the sound of a pistol shot
would be completely drowned by the noise of the express thundering
past. Then you will remember the fragments of the electric bulb that
we picked up, and that there was no light on in the carriage. That is
rather significant. It not only suggests that the crime was committed
in the dark, but there is a distinct suggestion of
preparation--arrangement and premeditation. It suggests that the
murderer knew what the circumstances would be and provided for them.”

“Yes; and that is rather a point against our client. But I don’t quite
see what you expect to get out of that sheet of the letter. It is the
presence of the letter, rather than its matter, that constitutes the
evidence against Miss Dalby.”

“I don’t expect to learn anything from it,” replied Thorndyke; “but
the letter will be the prosecution’s trump card, and it is always well
to know in advance exactly what cards your opponent holds. It is a
mere matter of routine to examine everything, relevant or irrelevant.”


The inquest was to be held at Densford on the third day after the
discovery of the body. But in the interval certain new facts had come
to light. One was that the deceased was conveying to the Holmwood
branch of the bank a sum of three thousand pounds, of which one
thousand was in gold and the remainder in Bank of England notes, the
whole being contained in a leather handbag. This bag had been found,
empty, in a ditch by the side of the road which led from the station
to the house of Miss Carleigh, the Vice-President of the Women’s
Emancipation League. It was further stated that the ticket-collector
at Holmwood had noticed that Miss Dalby--whom he knew by sight--was
carrying a bag of the kind described when she passed the barrier, and
that when she returned, about an hour later, she had no bag with her.
On the other hand, Miss Carleigh had stated that the bag which Miss
Dalby brought to her house was her (Miss Carleigh’s) property, and she
had produced it for the inspection of the police. So that already
there was some conflict of evidence, with a balance distinctly against
Miss Dalby.

“There is no denying,” said Thorndyke, as we discussed the case at the
breakfast table on the morning of the inquest, “that the
circumstantial evidence is formidably complete and consistent, while
the rebutting evidence is of the feeblest. Miss Dalby’s statement that
the letter had been put into her pocket by some unknown person will
hardly be taken seriously, and even Miss Carleigh’s statement with
reference to the bag will not carry much weight unless she can furnish
corroboration.”

“Nevertheless,” said I, “the general probabilities are entirely in
favour of the accused. It is grossly improbable that a lady like Miss
Dalby would commit a robbery with murder of this cold-blooded,
deliberate type.”

“That may be,” Thorndyke retorted, “but a jury has to find in
accordance with the evidence.”

“By the way,” said I, “did Bawley ever send you that sheet of the
letter that you asked for?”

“No, confound him! But I have sent Polton round to get it from him, so
that I can look it over carefully in the train. Which reminds me that
I can’t get down in time for the opening of the inquest. You had
better travel with the solicitors and see the shorthand writers
started. I shall have to come down by a later train.”

Half an hour later, just as I was about to start, a familiar step was
heard on the stair, and then our laboratory assistant, Polton, let
himself in with his key.

“Just caught him, sir, as he was starting for the station,” he said,
with a satisfied, crinkly smile, laying an envelope on the table, and
added, “Lord! how he did swear!”

Thorndyke chuckled, and having thanked his assistant, opened the
envelope and handed it to me. It contained a single sheet of
letter-paper, exactly similar to the one that we had found in the
railway carriage, excepting that the writing filled one side and a
quarter only, and, since it concluded with the signature “Letitia
Humboe, President,” it was evidently the last sheet. There was no
water-mark nor anything, so far as I could see, to distinguish it from
the dozens of other impressions that had been run off the duplicator
with it, excepting the roughly-pencilled plan on the blank side of the
sheet.

“Well,” I said as I put on my hat and walked towards the door, “I
suspect that Bawley was right. You won’t get much help from this to
support Miss Dalby’s rather improbable statement.” And Thorndyke
agreed that appearances were not very promising.


The scene in the coffee-room of “The Plough” Inn at Densford was one
with which I was familiar enough. The quiet, business-like coroner,
the half-embarrassed jurors, the local police and witnesses and the
spectators, penned up at one end of the room, were all well-known
characters. The unusual feature was the handsome,
distinguished-looking young lady who sat on a plain Windsor chair
between two inscrutable policemen, watched intently by Mr. Cadmus
Bawley. Miss Dalby was pale and obviously agitated, but quiet,
resolute, and somewhat defiant in manner. She greeted me with a
pleasant smile when I introduced myself, and hoped that I and my
colleague would have no difficulty in disposing of “this grotesque and
horrible accusation.”

I need not describe the proceedings in detail. Evidence of the
identity of the deceased having been taken, Dr. Pooke deposed that
death was due to a wound of the heart produced by a spherical bullet,
apparently fired from a small, smooth-bore pistol at very short range.
The wound was in his opinion not self-inflicted. The coroner then
produced the sheet of the circular letter found in the carriage, and I
was called to testify to the finding of it. The next witness was
Superintendent Miller of the Criminal Investigation Department, who
produced the two sheets of the letter which were taken from Miss
Dalby’s pocket when she was arrested. These he handed to the coroner
for comparison with the one found in the carriage with the body of
deceased.

“There appears,” said the coroner, after placing the three sheets
together, “to be one or more sheets missing. The two you have handed
me are sheets one and three, and the one found in the railway carriage
is sheet two.”

“Yes,” the witness agreed, “sheet four is missing, but I have a
photograph of it. Here is a set of the complete letter,” and he laid
four unmounted prints on the table.

The coroner examined them with a puzzled frown. “May I ask,” he said,
“how you obtained these photographs?”

“They are not photographs of the copy that you have,” the witness
explained, “but of another copy of the same letter which we
intercepted in the post. That letter was addressed to a stationer’s
shop to be called for. We have considered it necessary to keep
ourselves informed of the contents of these circulars, so that we can
take the necessary precautions; and as the envelopes are marked with
the badge and are invariably addressed in blue ink, it is not
difficult to identify them.”

“I see,” said the coroner, glaring stonily at Mr. Bawley, who had
accompanied the Superintendent’s statement with audible and
unfavourable comments. “Is that the whole of your evidence? Thank you.
Then, if there is no cross-examination, I will call the next witness.
Mr. Bernard Parsons.”

Mr. Parsons was the general manager of the London and Suburban Bank,
and he deposed that deceased was, on the day when he met his death,
travelling to Holmwood to visit and inspect the new local branch of
the bank, and that he was taking thither the sum of three thousand
pounds, of which one thousand was in gold and the remainder in Bank of
England notes--mostly five-pound notes. He carried the notes and
specie in a strong leather handbag.

“Can you say if either of these is the bag that he carried?” the
coroner asked, indicating two largish, black leather bags that his
officer had placed on the table.

Mr. Parsons promptly pointed to the larger of the two, which was
smeared externally with mud. The coroner noted the answer and then
asked:

“Did anyone besides yourself know that deceased was making this
visit?”

“Many persons must have known,” was the reply. “Deceased visited the
various branches in a fixed order. He came to Holmwood on the second
Tuesday in the month.”

“And would it be known that he had this great sum of money with him?”

“The actual amount would not be generally known, but he usually took
with him supplies of specie and notes--sometimes very large sums--and
this would be known to many of the bank staff, and probably to a good
many persons outside. The Holmwood Branch consumes a good deal of
specie, as most of the customers pay in cheques and draw out cash for
local use.”

This was the substance of Mr. Parsons’ evidence, and when he sat down
the ticket-collector was called. That official identified Miss Dalby
as one of the passengers by the train in which the body of deceased
was found. She was carrying a bag when she passed the barrier. He
could not identify either of the bags, but both were similar to the
one that she was carrying. She returned about an hour later and caught
an up-train, and he noticed that she was then not carrying a bag. He
could not say whether any of the other passengers was carrying a bag.
There were very few first-class passengers by that train, but a large
number of third-class--mostly fruit-pickers--and they made a dense
crowd at the barrier, so that he did not notice individual passengers
particularly. He noticed Miss Dalby because he knew her by sight, as
she often came to Holmwood with other suffragist ladies. He did not
see which carriage Miss Dalby came from, and he did not see any
first-class compartment with an open door.

The coroner noted down this evidence with thoughtful deliberation, and
I was considering whether there were any questions that it would be
advisable to ask the witness when I felt a light touch on my shoulder,
and looking up perceived a constable holding out a telegram. Observing
that it was addressed to “Dr. Jervis, Plough Inn, Densford,” I nodded
to the constable, and taking the envelope from him, opened it and
unfolded the paper. The telegram was from Thorndyke, in the simple
code that he had devised for our private use. I was able to decode it
without referring to the key--which each of us always carried in his
pocket--and it then read:


 “I am starting for Folkestone _in re_ Burnham deceased. Follow
 immediately and bring Miller if you can for possible arrest. Meet me
 on pier near Ostend boat. Thorndyke.”


Accustomed as I was to my colleague’s inveterate habit of acting in
the least expected manner, I must confess that I gazed at the decoded
message in absolute stupefaction. I had been totally unaware of the
faintest clue beyond the obvious evidence to which I had been
listening, and behold! here was Thorndyke with an entirely fresh case,
apparently cut-and-dried, and the unsuspected criminal in the hollow
of his hand. It was astounding.

Unconsciously I raised my eyes--and met those of Superintendent
Miller, fixed on me with devouring curiosity. I held up the telegram
and beckoned, and immediately he tip-toed across and took a seat by my
side. I laid the decoded telegram before him, and when he had glanced
through it, I asked in a whisper: “Well, what do you say?”

By way of reply, he whisked out a time-table, conned it eagerly for a
few minutes, and then held it towards me with his thumb-nail on the
words “Densford Junction.”

“There’s a fast train up in seven minutes,” he whispered hoarsely.
“Get the coroner to excuse us and let your solicitors carry on for
you.”

A brief, and rather vague, explanation secured the assent of the
coroner--since we had both given our evidence--and the less willing
agreement of my clients. In another minute the superintendent and I
were heading for the station, which we reached just as the train swept
up alongside the platform.

“This is a queer start,” said Miller, as the train moved out of the
station; “but, Lord! there is never any calculating Dr. Thorndyke’s
moves. Did you know that he had anything up his sleeve?”

“No; but then one never does know. He is as close as an oyster. He
never shows his hand until he can play a trump card. But it is
possible that he has struck a fresh clue since I left.”

“Well,” rejoined Miller, “we shall know when we get to the other end.
And I don’t mind telling you that it will be a great relief to me if
we can drop this charge against Miss Dalby.”

From time to time during the journey to London, and from thence to
Folkestone, the superintendent reverted to Thorndyke’s mysterious
proceedings. But it was useless to speculate. We had not a single fact
to guide us; and when, at last, the train ran into Folkestone Central
Station, we were as much in the dark as when we started.

Assuming that Thorndyke would have made any necessary arrangements for
assistance from the local police, we chartered a cab and proceeded
direct to the end of Rendez-vous Street--a curiously appropriate
destination, by the way. Here we alighted in order that we might make
our appearance at the meeting place as inconspicuously as possible,
and, walking towards the harbour, perceived Thorndyke waiting on the
quay, ostensibly watching the loading of a barge, and putting in their
case a pair of prismatic binoculars with which he had apparently
observed our arrival.

“I am glad you have come, Miller,” he said, shaking the
superintendent’s hand. “I can’t make any promises, but I have no doubt
that it is a case for you even if it doesn’t turn out all that I hope
and expect. The _Cornflower_ is our ship, and we had better go on
board separately in case our friends are keeping a look-out. I have
arranged matters with the captain, and the local superintendent has
got some plain-clothes men on the pier.”

With this we separated. Thorndyke went on in advance, and Miller and I
followed at a discreet interval.

As I descended the gangway a minute or so after Miller, a steward
approached me, and having asked my name, requested me to follow him,
when he conducted me to the purser’s office, in which I found
Thorndyke and Miller in conversation with the purser.

“The gentlemen you are inquiring for,” said the latter, “are in the
smoking-room playing cards with another passenger. I have put a
tarpaulin over one of the ports, in case you want to have a look at
them without being seen.”

“Perhaps you had better make a preliminary inspection, Miller,” said
Thorndyke. “You may know some of them.”

To this suggestion the superintendent agreed, and forthwith went off
with the purser, leaving me and Thorndyke alone. I at once took the
opportunity to demand an explanation.

“I take it that you struck some new evidence after I left you?”

“Yes,” Thorndyke replied. “And none too soon, as you see. I don’t
quite know what it will amount to, but I think we have secured the
defence, at any rate; and that is really all that we are concerned
with. The positive aspects of the case are the business of the police.
But here comes Miller, looking very pleased with himself, and with the
purser.”

The superintendent, however, was not only pleased; he was also not a
little puzzled.

“Well!” he exclaimed, “this is a quaint affair. We have got two of the
leading lights of the suffrage movement in there. One is Jameson, the
secretary of the Women’s Emancipation League, the other is Pinder,
their chief bobbery-monger. Then there are two men named Dorman and
Spiller, both of them swell crooks, I am certain, though we have never
been able to fix anything on them. The fifth man I don’t know.”

“Neither do I,” said Thorndyke. “My repertoire includes only four. And
now we will proceed to sort them out. Could we have a few words with
Mr. Thorpe--in here, if you don’t mind.”

“Certainly,” replied the purser. “I’ll go and fetch him.” He bustled
away in the direction of the smoking-room, whence he presently
reappeared, accompanied by a tall, lean man who wore large bi-focal
spectacles of the old-fashioned, split-lens type, and was smoking a
cigar. As the new-comer approached down the alley-way, it was evident
that he was nervous and uneasy, though he maintained a certain jaunty
swagger that accorded ill with a pronounced, habitual stoop. As he
entered the cabin, however, and became aware of the portentous group
of strangers, the swagger broke down completely; suddenly his face
became ashen and haggard, and he peered through his great spectacles
from one to the others with an expression of undisguisable terror.

“Mr. Thorpe?” queried Thorndyke; and the superintendent murmured:
“Alias Pinder.”

“Yes,” was the reply, in a husky undertone. “What can I do for you?”

Thorndyke turned to the superintendent.

“I charge this man,” said he, “with having murdered Francis Burnham in
the train between London and Holmwood.”

The superintendent was visibly astonished, but not more so than the
accused, on whom Thorndyke’s statement produced the most singular
effect. In a moment, his terror seemed to drop from him; the colour
returned to his face, the haggard expression of which gave place to
one of obvious relief.

Miller stood up, and addressing the accused, began:

“It is my duty to caution you--” but the other interrupted:

“Caution your grandmother! You are talking a parcel of dam’ nonsense.
I was in Birmingham when the murder was committed. I can prove it,
easily.”

The superintendent was somewhat taken aback, for the accused spoke
with a confidence that carried conviction.

“In that case,” said Thorndyke, “you can probably explain how a letter
belonging to you came to be found in the carriage with the murdered
man.”

“Belonging to me!” exclaimed Thorpe. “What the deuce do you mean? That
letter belonged to Miss Dalby. The rest of it was found in her
pocket.”

“Precisely,” said Thorndyke. “One sheet had been placed in the railway
carriage and the remainder in Miss Dalby’s pocket to fix suspicion on
her. But it was your letter, and the inference is that you disposed of
it in that manner for the purpose that I have stated.”

“But,” persisted Thorpe, with visibly-growing uneasiness, “this was a
duplicated circular. You couldn’t tell one copy from another.”

“Mr. Pinder,” said Thorndyke, in an impressively quiet tone, “if I
tell you that I ascertained from that letter that you had taken a
passage on this ship in the name of Thorpe, you will probably
understand what I mean.”

Apparently he did understand, for, once more, the colour faded from
his face and he sat down heavily on a locker, fixing on Thorndyke a
look of undisguised dismay. Thus he sat for some moments, motionless
and silent, apparently thinking hard.

Suddenly he started up. “My God!” he exclaimed, “I see now what has
happened. The infernal scoundrel! First he put it on to Miss Dalby,
and now he has put it on to me. Now I understand why he looked so
startled when I ran against him.”

“What do you mean?” asked Thorndyke.

“I’ll tell you,” replied Pinder. “As I move about a good deal--and for
other reasons--I used to have my suffrage letters sent to a
stationer’s shop in Barlow Street----”

“I know,” interrupted the superintendent; “Bedall’s. I used to look
them over and take photographs of them.” He grinned craftily as he
made this statement, and, rather to my surprise, the accused grinned
too. A little later I understood that grin.

“Well,” continued Pinder, “I used to collect these letters pretty
regularly. But this last letter was delivered while I was away at
Birmingham. Before I came back I met a man who gave me
certain--er--instructions--you know what they were,” he added,
addressing Thorndyke--“so I did not need the letter. But, of course, I
couldn’t leave it there uncollected, so when I got back to London, I
called for it. That was two days ago. To my astonishment Miss Bedall
declared that I had collected it three days previously. I assured her
that I was not in London on that day, but she was positive that I had
called. ‘I remember clearly,’ she said, ‘giving you the letter
myself.’ Well, there was no arguing. Evidently she had given the
letter to the wrong person--she is very nearsighted, I should say,
judging by the way she holds things against her nose--but how it
happened I couldn’t understand. But I think I understand now. There is
one person only in the world who knew that I had my letters addressed
there: a sort of pal of mine named Payne. He happened to be with me
one evening when I called to collect my letters. Now, Payne chanced to
be a good deal like me--at least, he is tall and thin and stoops a
bit; but he does not wear spectacles. He tried on my spectacles once
for a joke, and then he really looked extremely like me. He looked in
a mirror and remarked on the resemblance himself. Now, Payne did not
belong to the Women’s League, and I suggest that he took advantage of
this resemblance to get possession of this letter. He got a pair of
spectacles like mine and personated me at the shop.”

“Why should he want to get possession of that letter?” Miller
demanded.

“To plant it as he has planted it,” replied Pinder, “and set the
police on a false trail.”

“This sounds pretty thin,” said Miller. “You are accusing this man of
having murdered Mr. Burnham. What grounds have you for this
accusation?”

“My grounds,” replied Pinder, “are, first, that he stole this letter
which has been found, obviously planted; and, second, that he had a
grudge against Burnham and knew all about his movements.”

“Indeed!” said Miller, with suddenly increased interest. “Then who and
what is this man Payne?”

“Why,” replied Pinder, “until a month ago, he was assistant cashier at
the Streatham branch of the bank. Then Burnham came down and hoofed
him out without an hour’s notice. I don’t know what for, but I can
guess.”

“Do you happen to know where Payne is at this moment?”

“Yes, I do. He is on this ship, in the smoking-room--only he is Mr.
Shenstone now. And mighty sick he was when he found me on board.”

The superintendent looked at Thorndyke.

“What do you think about it, doctor?” he asked.

“I think,” said Thorndyke, “that we had better have Mr. Shenstone in
here and ask him a few questions. Would you see if you can get him to
come here?” he added, addressing the purser, who had been listening
with ecstatic enjoyment.

“I’ll get him to come along all right,” replied the purser, evidently
scenting a new act in this enthralling drama; and away he bustled, all
agog. In less than a minute we saw him returning down the alley-way,
with a tall, thin man, who, at a distance, was certainly a good deal
like Pinder, though the resemblance diminished as he approached. He,
too, was obviously agitated, and seemed to be plying the purser with
questions. But when he came opposite the door of the cabin he stopped
dead and seemed disposed to shrink back.

“Is that the man?” Thorndyke demanded sharply and rather loudly,
springing to his feet as he spoke.

The effect of the question was electrical. As Thorndyke rose, the
new-comer turned, and, violently thrusting the purser aside, raced
madly down the alley-way and out on to the deck.

“Stop that man!” roared Miller, darting out in pursuit; and at the
shout a couple of loitering deck-hands headed the fugitive off from
the gangway. Following, I saw the terrified man swerving this way and
that across the littered deck to avoid the seamen, who joined in the
pursuit; I saw him make a sudden frantic burst for a baggage-slide
springing from a bollard up to the bulwark-rail. Then his foot must
have tripped on a lashing, for he staggered for a moment, flung out
his arms with a wild shriek, and plunged headlong into the space
between the ship’s side and the quay wall.

In an instant the whole ship was in an uproar. An officer and two
hands sprang to the rail with ropes and a boathook, while others
manned the cargo derrick and lowered a rope with a running bowline
between the ship and the quay.

“He’s gone under,” a hoarse voice proclaimed from below; “but I can
see him jammed against the side.”

There were a couple of minutes of sickening suspense. Then the voice
from below was heard again.

“Heave up!”

The derrick-engine rattled, the taut rope came up slowly, and at
length out of that horrid gulf arose a limp and dripping shape that,
as it cleared the bulwark, was swung inboard and let down gently on
the deck. Thorndyke and I stooped over him. But it was a dead man’s
face that we looked into; and a tinge of blood on the lips told the
rest of the tale.

“Cover him up,” said the superintendent. “He’s out of our jurisdiction
now. But what’s going on there?”

Following his look, I perceived a small, scattered crowd of men all
running furiously along the quay towards the town. Some of them I
judged to be the late inmates of the smoking-room and some
plain-clothes men. The only figure that I recognized was that of Mr.
Pinder, and he was already growing small in the distance.

“The local police will have to deal with them,” said Miller. Then
turning to the purser, he asked: “What baggage had this man?”

“Only two cabin trunks,” was the reply. “They are both in his
state-room.”

To the state-room we followed the purser, when Miller had possessed
himself of the dead man’s keys, and the two trunks were hoisted on to
the bunk and opened. Each trunk contained a large cash-box, and each
cash-box contained five hundred pounds in gold and a big bundle of
notes. The latter Miller examined closely, checking their numbers by a
column of entries in his pocket-book.

“Yes,” he reported at length; “it’s a true bill. These are the notes
that were stolen from Mr. Burnham. And now I will have a look at the
baggage of those other four sportsmen.”

This being no affair of ours, Thorndyke and I went ashore and slowly
made our way towards the town. But presently the superintendent
overtook us in high glee, with the news that he had discovered what
appeared to be the accumulated “swag” of a gang of swell burglars for
whom he had been for some months vainly on the look-out.


“How was it done?” repeated Thorndyke in reply to Miller’s question,
as we sat at a retired table in the “Lord Warden” Hotel. “Well, it was
really very simple. I am afraid I shall disappoint you if you expect
anything ingenious and recondite. Of course, it was obvious that Miss
Dalby had not committed this atrocious murder and robbery; and it was
profoundly improbable that this extremely incriminating letter had
been dropped accidentally. That being so, it was almost certain that
the letter had been ‘planted,’ as Pinder expressed it. But that was a
mere opinion that helped us not at all. The actual solution turned
upon a simple chemical fact with which I happened to be acquainted;
which is this: that all the basic coal-tar dyes, and especially
methylene blue, dye oxycellulose without requiring a mordant, but do
not react in this way on cellulose. Now, good paper is practically
pure cellulose; and if you dip a sheet of such paper into certain
oxidizing liquids, such as a solution of potassium chlorate with a
slight excess of hydrochloric acid, the paper is converted into
oxycellulose. But if instead of immersing the paper, you write on it
with a quill or glass pen dipped in the solution, only the part which
has been touched by the pen is changed into oxycellulose. No change is
visible to the eye: but if a sheet of paper written on with this
colourless fluid is dipped in a solution of, say, methylene blue, the
invisible writing immediately becomes visible. The oxycellulose takes
up the blue dye.

“Now, when I picked up that sheet of the letter in the railway
carriage and noted that the ink used appeared to be methylene blue,
this fact was recalled to my mind. Then, on looking at it closely, I
seemed to detect a certain slight spottiness in the writing. There
were points on some of the letters that were a little deeper in colour
than the rest; and it occurred to me that it was possible that these
circulars might be used to transmit secret messages of a less innocent
kind than those that met the unaided eye, just as these political
societies might form an excellent cover for the operations of criminal
associations. But if the circulars had been so used, it is evident
that the secret writing would not be on all the circulars. The
prepared sheets would be used only for the circulars that were to be
sent to particular persons, and in those cases the secret writing
would probably be in the nature of a personal communication, either to
a particular individual or to a small group. The possible presence of
a secret message thus became of vital evidential importance; for if it
could be shown that this letter was addressed to some person other
than Miss Dalby, that would dispose of the only evidence connecting
her with the crime.

“It happened, most fortunately, that I was able to get possession of
the final sheet of this letter----”

“Of course it did,” growled Miller, with a sour smile.

“It reached me,” continued Thorndyke, “only after Dr. Jervis had
started for Densford. The greater part of one side was blank,
excepting for a rough plan drawn in pencil, and this blank side I laid
down on a sheet of glass and wetted the written side with a small wad
of cotton-wool dipped in distilled water. Of course, the blue writing
began to run and dissolve out; and then, very faintly, some other
writing began to show through in reverse. I turned the paper over, and
now the new writing, though faint, was quite legible, and became more
so when I wiped the blue-stained cotton-wool over it a few times. A
solution of methylene blue would have made it still plainer, but I
used water only, as I judged that the blue writing was intended to
furnish the dye for development. Here is the final result.”

He drew from his pocket a letter-case, from which he extracted a
folded paper which he opened and laid on the table. It was stained a
faint blue, through which the original writing could be seen, dim and
blurred, while the secret message, though very pale, was quite sharp
and clear. And this was the message:


 “… so although we are not actually blown on, the position is getting
 risky and it’s time for us to hop. I have booked passages for the four
 of us to Ostend by the _Cornflower_, which sails on Friday evening
 next (20th). The names of the four illustrious passengers are, Walsh
 (that’s me), Grubb (Dorman), Jenkins (Spiller), and Thorpe (that’s
 you). Get those names well into your canister--better make a note of
 them--and turn up in good time on Friday.”


“Well,” said Miller, as he handed back the letter, “we can’t know
everything--unless we are Dr. Thorndyke. But there’s one thing I do
know.”

“What is that?” I asked.

“I know why that fellow, Pinder, grinned when I told him that I had
photographed his confounded letters.”




 IV.
 THE NATURALIST AT LAW

A hush had fallen on the court as the coroner concluded his brief
introductory statement and the first witness took up his position by
the long table. The usual preliminary questions elicited that Simon
Moffet, the witness aforesaid, was fifty-eight years of age, that he
followed the calling of a shepherd and that he was engaged in
supervising the flocks that fed upon the low-lying meadows adjoining
the little town of Bantree in Buckinghamshire.

“Tell us how you came to discover the body,” said the coroner.

“’Twas on Wednesday morning, about half-past five,” Moffet began. “I
was getting the sheep through the gate into the big meadow by Reed’s
farm, when I happened to look down the dyke, and then I noticed a boot
sticking up out of the water. Seemed to me as if there was a foot in
it by the way it stuck up, so as soon as all the sheep was in, I shut
the gate and walked down the dyke to have a look at un. When I got
close I see the toe of another boot just alongside. Looks a bit queer,
I thinks, but I couldn’t see anything more, ’cause the duck-weed is
that thick as it looks as if you could walk on it. Howsever, I clears
away the weed with my stick, and then I see ’twas a dead man. Give me
a rare turn, it did. He was a-layin’ at the bottom of the ditch with
his head near the middle and his feet up close to the bank. Just then
young Harry Walker comes along the cart-track on his way to work, so I
shows him the body and sends him back to the town for to give notice
at the police station.”

“And is that all you know about the affair?”

“Ay. Later on I see the sergeant come along with a man wheelin’ the
stretcher, and I showed him where the body was and helped to pull it
out and load it on the stretcher. And that’s all I know about it.”

On this the witness was dismissed and his place taken by a
shrewd-looking, business-like police sergeant, who deposed as follows:

“Last Wednesday, the 8th of May, at 6.15 a.m., I received information
from Henry Walker that a dead body was lying in the ditch by the
cart-track leading from Ponder’s Road to Reed’s farm. I proceeded
there forthwith, accompanied by Police-Constable Ketchum, and taking
with us a wheeled stretcher. On the track I was met by the last
witness, who conducted me to the place where the body was lying and
where I found it in the position that he has described; but we had to
clear away the duck-weed before we could see it distinctly. I examined
the bank carefully, but could see no trace of footprints, as the grass
grows thickly right down to the water’s edge. There were no signs of a
struggle or any disturbance on the bank. With the aid of Moffet and
Ketchum, I drew the body out and placed it on the stretcher. I could
not see any injuries or marks of violence on the body or anything
unusual about it. I conveyed it to the mortuary, and with Constable
Ketchum’s assistance removed the clothing and emptied the pockets,
putting the contents of each pocket in a separate envelope and writing
the description on each. In a letter-case from the coat pocket were
some visiting cards bearing the name and address of Mr. Cyrus Pedley,
of 21 Hawtrey Mansions, Kensington, and a letter signed Wilfred
Pedley, apparently from deceased’s brother. Acting on instructions, I
communicated with him and served a summons to attend this inquest.”

“With regard to the ditch in which you found the body,” said the
coroner, “can you tell us how deep it is?”

“Yes; I measured it with Moffet’s crook and a tape measure. In the
deepest part, where the body was lying, it is four feet two inches
deep. From there it slopes up pretty sharply to the bank.”

“So far as you can judge, if a grown man fell into the ditch by
accident, would he have any difficulty in getting out?”

“None at all, I should say, if he were sober and in ordinary health. A
man of medium height, standing in the middle at the deepest part would
have his head and shoulders out of water; and the sides are not too
steep to climb up easily, especially with the grass and rushes on the
bank to lay hold of.”

“You say there were no signs of disturbance on the bank. Were there
any in the ditch itself?”

“None that I could see. But, of course, signs of disturbance soon
disappear in water. The duck-weed drifts about as the wind drives it,
and there are creatures moving about on the bottom. I noticed that
deceased had some weed grasped in one hand.”

This concluded the sergeant’s evidence, and as he retired, the name of
Dr. Albert Parton was called. The new witness was a young man of grave
and professional aspect, who gave his evidence with an extreme regard
for clearness and accuracy.

“I have made an examination of the body of the deceased,” he began,
after the usual preliminaries. “It is that of a healthy man of about
forty-five. I first saw it about two hours after it was found. It had
then been dead from twelve to fifteen hours. Later I made a complete
examination. I found no injuries, marks of violence or any definite
bruises, and no signs of disease.”

“Did you ascertain the cause of death?” the coroner asked.

“Yes. The cause of death was drowning.”

“You are quite sure of that?”

“Quite sure. The lungs contained a quantity of water and duck-weed,
and there was more than a quart of water mixed with duck-weed and
water-weed in the stomach. That is a clear proof of death by drowning.
The water in the lungs was the immediate cause of death, by making
breathing impossible, and as the water and weed in the stomach must
have been swallowed, they furnish conclusive evidence that deceased
was alive when he fell into the water.”

“The water and weed could not have got into the stomach after death?”

“No, that is quite impossible. They must have been swallowed when the
head of the deceased was just below the surface; and the water must
have been drawn into the lungs by spasmodic efforts to breathe when
the mouth was under water.”

“Did you find any signs indicating that deceased might have been
intoxicated?”

“No. I examined the water from the stomach very carefully with that
question in view, but there was no trace of alcohol--or, indeed, of
anything else. It was simple ditch-water. As the point is important I
have preserved it, and----” here the witness produced a paper parcel
which he unfastened, revealing a large glass jar containing about a
quart of water plentifully sprinkled with duck-weed. This he presented
to the coroner, who waved it away hastily and indicated the jury; to
whom it was then offered and summarily rejected with emphatic
head-shakes. Finally it came to rest on the table by the place where I
was sitting with my colleague, Dr. Thorndyke, and our client, Mr.
Wilfred Pedley. I glanced at it with faint interest, noting how the
duck-weed plants had risen to the surface and floated, each with its
tassel of roots hanging down into the water, and how a couple of tiny,
flat shells, like miniature ammonites, had sunk and lay on the bottom
of the jar. Thorndyke also glanced at it; indeed, he did more than
glance, for he drew the jar towards him and examined its contents in
the systematic way in which it was his habit to examine everything.
Meanwhile the coroner asked:

“Did you find anything abnormal or unusual, or anything that could
throw light on how deceased came to be in the water?”

“Nothing whatever,” was the reply. “I found simply that deceased met
his death by drowning.”

Here, as the witness seemed to have finished his evidence, Thorndyke
interposed.

“The witness states, sir, there were no definite bruises. Does he mean
that there were any marks that might have been bruises?”

The coroner glanced at Dr. Parton, who replied:

“There was a faint mark on the outside of the right arm, just above
the elbow, which had somewhat the appearance of a bruise, as if the
deceased had been struck with a stick. But it was very indistinct. I
shouldn’t like to swear that it was a bruise at all.”

This concluded the doctor’s evidence, and when he had retired, the
name of our client, Wilfred Pedley, was called. He rose, and having
taken the oath and given his name and address, deposed:

“I have viewed the body of deceased. It is that of my brother, Cyrus
Pedley, who is forty-three years of age. The last time I saw deceased
alive was on Tuesday morning, the day before the body was found.”

“Did you notice anything unusual in his manner or state of mind?”

The witness hesitated but at length replied:

“Yes. He seemed anxious and depressed. He had been in low spirits for
some time past, but on this occasion he seemed more so than usual.”

“Had you any reason to suspect that he might contemplate taking his
life?”

“No,” the witness replied, emphatically, “and I do not believe that he
would, under any circumstances, have contemplated suicide.”

“Have you any special reason for that belief?”

“Yes. Deceased was a highly conscientious man and he was in my debt.
He had occasion to borrow two thousand pounds from me, and the debt
was secured by an insurance on his life. If he had committed suicide
that insurance would be invalidated and the debt would remain unpaid.
From my knowledge of him, I feel certain that he would not have done
such a thing.”

The coroner nodded gravely, and then asked:

“What was deceased’s occupation?”

“He was employed in some way by the Foreign Office, I don’t know in
what capacity. I know very little about his affairs.”

“Do you know if he had any money worries or any troubles or
embarrassments of any kind?”

“I have never heard of any; but deceased was a very reticent man. He
lived alone in his flat, taking his meals at his club, and no one
knew--at least, I did not--how he spent his time or what was the state
of his finances. He was not married, and I am his only near relative.”

“And as to deceased’s habits. Was he ever addicted to taking more
stimulants than was good for him?”

“Never,” the witness replied emphatically. “He was a most temperate
and abstemious man.”

“Was he subject to fits of any kind, or fainting attacks?”

“I have never heard that he was.”

“Can you account for his being in this solitary place at this
time--apparently about eight o’clock at night?”

“I cannot. It is a complete mystery to me. I know of no one with whom
either of us was acquainted in this district. I had never heard of the
place until I got the summons to the inquest.”

This was the sum of our client’s evidence, and, so far, things did not
look very favourable from our point of view--we were retained on the
insurance question, to rebut, if possible, the suggestion of suicide.
However, the coroner was a discreet man, and having regard to the
obscurity of the case--and perhaps to the interests involved--summed
up in favour of an open verdict; and the jury, taking a similar view,
found that deceased met his death by drowning, but under what
circumstances there was no evidence to show.

“Well,” I said, as the court rose, “that leaves it to the insurance
people to make out a case of suicide if they can. I think you are
fairly safe, Mr. Pedley. There is no positive evidence.”

“No,” our client replied. “But it isn’t only the money I am thinking
of. It would be some consolation to me for the loss of my poor brother
if I had some idea how he met with his death, and could feel sure that
it was an unavoidable misadventure. And for my own
satisfaction--leaving the insurance out of the question--I should like
to have definite proof that it was not suicide.”

He looked half-questioningly at Thorndyke, who nodded gravely.

“Yes,” the latter agreed, “the suggestion of suicide ought to be
disposed of if possible, both for legal and sentimental reasons. How
far away is the mortuary?”

“A couple of minutes’ walk,” replied Mr. Pedley. “Did you wish to
inspect the body?”

“If it is permissible,” replied Thorndyke; “and then I propose to have
a look at the place where the body was found.”

“In that case,” our client said, “I will go down to the Station Hotel
and wait for you. We may as well travel up to town together, and you
can then tell me if you have seen any further light on the mystery.”

As soon as he was gone, Dr. Parton advanced, tying the string of the
parcel which once more enclosed the jar of ditch-water.

“I heard you say, sir, that you would like to inspect the body,” said
he. “If you like, I will show you the way to the mortuary. The
sergeant will let us in, won’t you, sergeant? This gentleman is a
doctor as well as a lawyer.”

“Bless you, sir,” said the sergeant, “I know who Dr. Thorndyke is, and
I shall feel it an honour to show him anything he wishes to see.”

Accordingly we set forth together, Dr. Parton and Thorndyke leading
the way.

“The coroner and the jury didn’t seem to appreciate my exhibit,” the
former remarked with a faint grin, tapping the parcel as he spoke.

“No,” Thorndyke agreed; “and it is hardly reasonable to expect a
layman to share our own matter-of-fact outlook. But you were quite
right to produce the specimen. That ditch-water furnishes conclusive
evidence on a vitally material question. Further, I would advise you
to preserve that jar for the present, well covered and under lock and
key.”

Parton looked surprised.

“Why?” he asked. “The inquest is over and the verdict pronounced.”

“Yes, but it was an open verdict, and an open verdict leaves the case
in the air. The inquest has thrown no light on the question as to how
Cyrus Pedley came by his death.”

“There doesn’t seem to me much mystery about it,” said the doctor.
“Here is a man found drowned in a shallow ditch which he could easily
have got out of if he had fallen in by accident. He was not drunk.
Apparently he was not in a fit of any kind. There are no marks of
violence and no signs of a struggle, and the man is known to have been
in an extremely depressed state of mind. It looks like a clear case of
suicide, though I admit that the jury were quite right, in the absence
of direct evidence.”

“Well,” said Thorndyke, “it will be my duty to contest that view if
the insurance company dispute the claim on those grounds.”

“I can’t think what you will have to offer in answer to the suggestion
of suicide,” said Parton.

“Neither can I, at present,” replied Thorndyke. “But the case doesn’t
look to me quite so simple as it does to you.”

“You think it possible that an analysis of the contents of this jar
may be called for?”

“That is a possibility,” replied Thorndyke. “But I mean that the case
is obscure, and that some further inquiry into the circumstances of
this man’s death is by no means unlikely.”

“Then,” said Parton, “I will certainly follow your advice and lock up
this precious jar. But here we are at the mortuary. Is there anything
in particular that you want to see?”

“I want to see all that there is to see,” Thorndyke replied. “The
evidence has been vague enough so far. Shall we begin with that bruise
or mark that you mentioned?”

Dr. Parton advanced to the grim, shrouded figure that lay on the
slate-topped table, like some solemn effigy on an altar tomb, and drew
back the sheet that covered it. We all approached, stepping softly,
and stood beside the table, looking down with a certain awesome
curiosity at the still, waxen figure that, but a few hours since, had
been a living man like ourselves. The body was that of a good-looking,
middle-aged man with a refined, intelligent face--slightly disfigured
by a scar on the cheek--now set in the calm, reposeful expression that
one so usually finds on the faces of the drowned; with drowsy,
half-closed eyes and slightly parted lips that revealed a considerable
gap in the upper front teeth.

Thorndyke stood awhile looking down on the dead man with a curious
questioning expression. Then his eye travelled over the body, from the
placid face to the marble-like torso and the hand which, though now
relaxed, still lightly grasped a tuft of water-weed. The latter
Thorndyke gently disengaged from the limp hand, and, after a glance at
the dark green, feathery fronds, laid it down and stooped to examine
the right arm at the spot above the elbow that Parton had spoken of.

“Yes,” he said, “I think I should call it a bruise, though it is very
faint. As you say, it might have been produced by a blow with a stick
or rod. I notice that there are some teeth missing. Presumably he wore
a plate?”

“Yes,” replied Parton; “a smallish gold plate with four teeth on
it--at least, so his brother told me. Of course, it fell out when he
was in the water, but it hasn’t been found; in fact, it hasn’t been
looked for.”

Thorndyke nodded and then turned to the sergeant.

“Could I see what you found in the pockets?” he asked.

The sergeant complied readily, and my colleague watched his orderly
procedure with evident approval. The collection of envelopes was
produced from an attaché-case and conveyed to a side table, where the
sergeant emptied out the contents of each into a little heap, opposite
which he placed the appropriate envelope with its written description.
Thorndyke ran his eye over the collection--which was commonplace
enough--until he came to the tobacco pouch, from which protruded the
corner of a scrap of crumpled paper. This he drew forth and smoothed
out the creases, when it was seen to be a railway receipt for an
excess fare.

“Seems to have lost his ticket or travelled without one,” the sergeant
remarked. “But not on this line.”

“No,” agreed Thorndyke. “It is the Tilbury and Southend line. But you
notice the date. It is the 18th; and the body was found on the morning
of Wednesday, the 19th. So it would appear that he must have come into
this neighbourhood in the evening; and that he must have come either
by way of London or by a very complicated cross-country route. I
wonder what brought him here.”

He produced his note-book and was beginning to copy the receipt when
the sergeant said:

“You had better take the paper, sir. It is of no use to us now, and it
isn’t very easy to make out.”

Thorndyke thanked the officer, and, handing me the paper, asked:

“What do you make of it, Jervis?”

I scrutinized the little crumpled scrap and deciphered with difficulty
the hurried scrawl, scribbled with a hard, ill-sharpened pencil.

“It seems to read Ldn to ‘C.B. or S.B., Hlt’--that is some ‘Halt,’ I
presume. But the amount, 4/9, is clear enough, and that will give us a
clue if we want one.” I returned the paper to Thorndyke, who bestowed
it in his pocket-book and then remarked:

“I don’t see any keys.”

“No, sir,” replied the sergeant, “there aren’t any. Rather queer,
that, for he must have had at least a latch-key. They must have fallen
out into the water.”

“That is possible,” said Thorndyke, “but it would be worth while to
make sure. Is there anyone who could show us the place where the body
was found?”

“I will walk up there with you myself, sir, with pleasure,” said the
sergeant, hastily repacking the envelopes. “It is only a quarter of an
hour’s walk from here.”

“That is very good of you, sergeant,” my colleague responded; “and as
we seem to have seen everything here, I propose that we start at once.
You are not coming with us, Parton?”

“No,” the doctor replied. “I have finished with the case and I have
got my work to do.” He shook hands with us heartily and watched
us--with some curiosity, I think--as we set forth in company with the
sergeant.

His curiosity did not seem to me to be unjustified. In fact, I shared
it. The presence of the police officer precluded discussion, but as we
took our way out of the town I found myself speculating curiously on
my colleague’s proceedings. To me, suicide was written plainly on
every detail of the case. Of course, we did not wish to take that
view, but what other was possible? Had Thorndyke some alternative
theory? Or was he merely, according to his invariable custom, making
an impartial survey of everything, no matter how apparently trivial,
in the hope of lighting on some new and informative fact?

The temporary absence of the sergeant, who had stopped to speak to a
constable on duty, enabled me to put the question.

“Is this expedition intended to clear up anything in particular?”

“No,” he replied, “excepting the keys, which ought to be found. But
you must see for yourself that this is not a straightforward case.
That man did not come all this way merely to drown himself in a ditch.
I am quite in the dark at present, so there is nothing for it but to
examine everything with our own eyes and see if there is anything that
has been overlooked that may throw some light on either the motive or
the circumstances. It is always desirable to examine the scene of a
crime or a tragedy.”

Here the return of the sergeant put a stop to the discussion and we
proceeded on our way in silence. Already we had passed out of the
town, and we now turned out of the main road into a lane or by-road,
bordered by meadows and orchards and enclosed by rather high
hedgerows.

“This is Ponder’s Road,” said the sergeant. “It leads to Renham, a
couple of miles farther on, where it joins the Aylesbury Road. The
cart track is on the left a little way along.”

A few minutes later we came to our turning, a narrow and rather muddy
lane, the entrance to which was shaded by a grove of tall elms.
Passing through this shady avenue, we came out on a grass-covered
track, broken by deep wagon-ruts and bordered on each side by a ditch,
beyond which was a wide expanse of marshy meadows.

“This is the place,” said the sergeant, halting by the side of the
right-hand ditch and indicating a spot where the rushes had been
flattened down. “It was just as you see it now, only the feet were
just visible sticking out of the duck-weed, which had drifted back
after Moffet had disturbed it.”

We stood awhile looking at the ditch, with its thick mantle of bright
green, spotted with innumerable small dark objects and showing here
and there a faint track where a water-vole had swum across.

“Those little dark objects are water-snails, I suppose,” said I, by
way of making some kind of remark.

“Yes,” replied Thorndyke; “the common Amber shell, I think--_Succinea
putris_.” He reached out his stick and fished up a sample of the
duck-weed, on which one or two of the snails were crawling. “Yes,” he
repeated. “_Succinea putris_ it is; a queer little left-handed shell,
with the spire, as you see, all lop-sided. They have a habit of
swarming in this extraordinary way. You notice that the ditch is
covered with them.”

I had already observed this, but it hardly seemed to be worth
commenting on under the present circumstances--which was apparently
the sergeant’s view also, for he looked at Thorndyke with some
surprise, which developed into impatience when my colleague proceeded
further to expand on the subject of natural history.

“These water-weeds,” he observed, “are very remarkable plants in their
various ways. Look at this duck-weed, for instance. Just a little
green oval disc with a single root hanging down into the water, like a
tiny umbrella with a long handle; and yet it is a complete plant, and
a flowering plant, too.” He picked a specimen off the end of his stick
and held it up by its root to exhibit its umbrella-like form; and as
he did so, he looked in my face with an expression that I felt to be
somehow significant; but of which I could not extract the meaning. But
there was no difficulty in interpreting the expression on the
sergeant’s face. He had come here on business and he wanted to “cut
the cackle and get to the hosses.”

“Well, sergeant,” said Thorndyke, “there isn’t much to see, but I
think we ought to have a look for those keys. He must have had keys of
some kind, if only a latch-key; and they must be in this ditch.”

The sergeant was not enthusiastic. “I’ve no doubt you are right, sir,”
said he; “but I don’t see that we should be much forrarder if we found
them. However, we may as well have a look, only I can’t stay more than
a few minutes. I’ve got my work to do at the station.”

“Then,” said Thorndyke, “let us get to work at once. We had better
hook out the weed and look it over; and if the keys are not in that,
we must try to expose the bottom where the body was lying. You must
tell us if we are working in the right place.”

With this he began, with the crooked handle of his stick, to rake up
the tangle of weed that covered the bottom of the ditch and drag the
detached masses ashore, piling them on the bank and carefully looking
them through to see if the keys should chance to be entangled in their
meshes. In this work I took my part under the sergeant’s direction,
raking in load after load of the delicate, stringy weed, on the pale
green ribbon-like leaves of which multitudes of the water-snails were
creeping; and sorting over each batch in hopeless and fruitless search
for the missing keys. In about ten minutes we had removed the entire
weedy covering from the bottom of the ditch over an area of from eight
to nine feet--the place which, according to the sergeant, the body had
occupied; and as the duck-weed had been caught by the tangled masses
of water-weed that we had dragged ashore, we now had an uninterrupted
view of the cleared space save for the clouds of mud that we had
stirred up.

“We must give the mud a few minutes to settle,” said Thorndyke.

“Yes,” the sergeant agreed, “it will take some time; and as it doesn’t
really concern me now that the inquest is over, I think I will get
back to the station if you will excuse me.”

Thorndyke excused him very willingly, I think, though politely and
with many thanks for his help. When he had gone I remarked:

“I am inclined to agree with the sergeant. If we find the keys we
shan’t be much forrarder.”

“We shall know that he had them with him,” he replied. “Though, of
course, if we don’t find them, that will not prove that they are not
here. Still, I think we should try to settle the question.”

His answer left me quite unconvinced; but the care with which he
searched the ditch and sorted out the weed left me in no doubt that,
to him, the matter seemed to be of some importance. However, nothing
came of the search. If the keys were there they were buried in the
mud, and eventually we had to give up the search and make our way back
towards the station.

As we passed out of the lane into Ponder’s Road, Thorndyke stopped at
the entrance, under the trees, by a little triangle of turf which
marked the beginning of the lane, and looked down at the muddy ground.

“Here is quite an interesting thing, Jervis,” he remarked, “which
shows us how standardized objects tend to develop an individual
character. These are the tracks of a car, or more probably a
tradesman’s van, which was fitted with Barlow tyres. Now there must be
thousands of vans fitted with these tyres; they are the favourite type
for light covered vans, and when new they are all alike and
indistinguishable. Yet this tyre--of the off hind-wheel--has acquired
a character which would enable one to pick it out with certainty from
ten thousand others. First, you see, there is a deep cut in the tyre
at an angle of forty-five, then a kidney-shaped ‘Blakey’ has stuck in
the outer tyre without puncturing the inner; and finally some adhesive
object--perhaps a lump of pitch from a newly-mended road--has become
fixed on just behind the ‘Blakey.’ Now, if we make a rough sketch of
those three marks and indicate their distance apart, thus”--here he
made a rapid sketch in his note-book, and wrote in the intervals in
inches--“we have the means of swearing to the identity of a vehicle
which we have never seen.”

“And which,” I added, “had for some reason swerved over to the wrong
side of the road. Yes, I should say that tyre is certainly unique. But
surely most tyres are identifiable when they have been in use for some
time.”

“Exactly,” he replied. “That was my point. The standardized thing is
devoid of character only when it is new.”

It was not a very subtle point, and as it was fairly obvious I made no
comment, but presently reverted to the case of Pedley deceased.

“I don’t quite see why you are taking all this trouble. The insurance
claim is not likely to be contested. No one can prove that it was a
case of suicide, though I should think no one will feel any doubt that
it was, at least that is my own feeling.”

Thorndyke looked at me with an expression of reproach.

“I am afraid that my learned friend has not been making very good use
of his eyes,” said he. “He has allowed his attention to be distracted
by superficial appearances.”

“You don’t think that it was suicide, then?” I asked, considerably
taken aback.

“It isn’t a question of thinking,” he replied. “It was certainly not
suicide. There are the plainest indications of homicide; and, of
course, in the particular circumstances, homicide means murder.”

I was thunderstruck. In my own mind I had dismissed the case somewhat
contemptuously as a mere commonplace suicide. As my friend had truly
said, I had accepted the obvious appearances and let them mislead me,
whereas Thorndyke had followed his golden rule of accepting nothing
and observing everything. But what was it that he had observed? I knew
that it was useless to ask, but still I ventured on a tentative
question.

“When did you come to the conclusion that it was a case of homicide?”

“As soon as I had had a good look at the place where the body was
found,” he replied promptly.

This did not help me much, for I had given very little attention to
anything but the search for the keys. The absence of those keys was,
of course, a suspicious fact, if it was a fact. But we had not proved
their absence; we had only failed to find them.

“What do you propose to do next?” I asked.

“Evidently,” he answered, “there are two things to be done. One is to
test the murder theory--to look for more evidence for or against it;
the other is to identify the murderer, if possible. But really the two
problems are one, since they involve the questions, Who had a motive
for killing Cyrus Pedley? and Who had the opportunity and the means?”

Our discussion brought us to the station, where, outside the hotel, we
found Mr. Pedley waiting for us.

“I am glad you have come,” said he. “I was beginning to fear that we
should lose this train. I suppose there is no new light on this
mysterious affair?”

“No,” Thorndyke replied. “Rather there is a new problem. No keys were
found in your brother’s pockets, and we have failed to find them in
the ditch; though, of course, they may be there.”

“They must be,” said Pedley. “They must have fallen out of his pocket
and got buried in the mud, unless he lost them previously, which is
most unlikely. It is a pity, though. We shall have to break open his
cabinets and drawers, which he would have hated. He was very
fastidious about his furniture.”

“You will have to break into his flat, too,” said I.

“No,” he replied, “I shan’t have to do that. I have a duplicate of his
latch-key. He had a spare bedroom which he let me use if I wanted to
stay in town.” As he spoke, he produced his key-bunch and exhibited a
small Chubb latch-key. “I wish we had the others, though,” he added.

Here the up-train was heard approaching and we hurried on to the
platform, selecting an empty first-class compartment as it drew up. As
soon as the train had started, Thorndyke began his inquiries, to which
I listened attentively.

“You said that your brother had been anxious and depressed lately. Was
there anything more than this? Any nervousness or foreboding?”

“Well, yes,” replied Pedley. “Looking back, I seem to see that the
possibility of death was in his mind. A week or two ago he brought his
will to me to see if it was quite satisfactory to me as the principal
beneficiary; and he handed to me his last receipt for the insurance
premium. That looks a little suggestive.”

“It does,” Thorndyke agreed. “And as to his occupation and his
associates, what do you know about them?”

“His private friends are mostly my own, but of his official associates
I know nothing. He was connected with the Foreign Office; but in what
capacity I don’t know at all. He was extremely reticent on the
subject. I only know that he travelled about a good deal, presumably
on official business.”

This was not very illuminating, but it was all our client had to tell;
and the conversation languished somewhat until the train drew up at
Marylebone, when Thorndyke said, as if by an after-thought:

“You have your brother’s latch-key. How would it be if we just took a
glance at the flat? Have you time now?”

“I will make time,” was the reply, “if you want to see the flat. I
don’t see what you could learn from inspecting it; but that is your
affair. I am in your hands.”

“I should like to look round the rooms,” Thorndyke answered; and as
our client assented, we approached a taxi-cab and entered while Pedley
gave the driver the necessary directions. A quarter of an hour later
we drew up opposite a tall block of buildings, and Mr. Pedley, having
paid off the cab, led the way to the lift.

The dead man’s flat was on the third floor, and, like the others, was
distinguished only by the number on the door. Mr. Pedley inserted the
key into the latch, and having opened the door, preceded us across the
small lobby into the sitting-room.

“Ha!” he exclaimed, as he entered, “this solves your problem.” As he
spoke, he pointed to the table, on which lay a small bunch of keys,
including a latch-key similar to the one that he had shown us.

“But,” he continued, “it is rather extraordinary. It just shows what a
very disturbed state his mind must have been in.”

“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed, looking critically about the room; “and as
the latch-key is there, it raises the question whether the keys may
have been out of his possession. Do you know what the various locked
receptacles contain?”

“I know pretty well what is in the bureau; but as to the cupboard
above it, I have never seen it open and don’t know what he kept in it.
I always assumed that he reserved it for his official papers. I will
just see if anything seems to have been disturbed.”

He unlocked and opened the flap of the old-fashioned bureau and pulled
out the small drawers one after the other, examining the contents of
each. Then he opened each of the larger drawers and turned over the
various articles in them. As he closed the last one, he reported:
“Everything seems to be in order--cheque-book, insurance policy, a few
share certificates, and so on. Nothing seems to have been touched. Now
we will try the cupboard, though I don’t suppose its contents would be
of much interest to anyone but himself. I wonder which is the key.”

He looked at the keyhole and made a selection from the bunch, but it
was evidently the wrong key. He tried another and yet another with a
like result, until he had exhausted the resources of the bunch.

“It is very remarkable,” he said. “None of these keys seems to fit. I
wonder if he kept this particular key locked up or hidden. It wasn’t
in the bureau. Will you try what you can do?”

He handed the bunch to Thorndyke, who tried all the keys in succession
with the same result. None of them was the key belonging to the lock.
At length, having tried them all, he inserted one and turned it as far
as it would go. Then he gave a sharp pull; and immediately the door
came open.

“Why, it was unlocked after all!” exclaimed Mr. Pedley. “And there is
nothing in it. That is why there was no key on the bunch. Apparently
he didn’t use the cupboard.”

Thorndyke looked critically at the single vacant shelf, drawing his
finger along it in two places and inspecting his finger-tips. Then he
turned his attention to the lock, which was of the kind that is
screwed on the inside of the door, leaving the bolt partly exposed. He
took the bolt in his fingers and pushed it out and then in again; and
by the way it moved I could see that the spring was broken. On this he
made no comment, but remarked:

“The cupboard has been in use pretty lately. You can see the trace of
a largish volume--possibly a box-file--on the shelf. There is hardly
any dust there, whereas the rest of the shelf is fairly thickly
coated. However, that does not carry us very far; and the appearance
of the rooms is otherwise quite normal.”

“Quite,” agreed Pedley. “But why shouldn’t it be? You didn’t
suspect----”

“I was merely testing the suggestion offered by the absence of the
keys,” said Thorndyke. “By the way, have you communicated with the
Foreign Office?”

“No,” was the reply, “but I suppose I ought to. What had I better say
to them?”

“I should merely state the facts in the first instance. But you can,
if you like, say that I definitely reject the idea of suicide.”

“I am glad to hear you say that,” said Pedley. “Can I give any reasons
for your opinion?”

“Not in the first place,” replied Thorndyke. “I will consider the case
and let you have a reasoned report in a day or two, which you can show
to the Foreign Office and also to the insurance company.”

Mr. Pedley looked as if he would have liked to ask some further
questions, but as Thorndyke now made his way to the door, he followed
in silence, pocketing the keys as we went out. He accompanied us down
to the entry and there we left him, setting forth in the direction of
South Kensington Station.

“It looked to me,” said I, as soon as we were out of ear-shot, “as if
that lock had been forced. What do you think?”

“Well,” he answered, “locks get broken in ordinary use, but taking all
the facts together, I think you are right. There are too many
coincidences for reasonable probability. First, this man leaves his
keys, including his latch-key, on the table, which is an extraordinary
thing to do. On that very occasion, he is found dead under
inexplicable circumstances. Then, of all the locks in his rooms, the
one which happens to be broken is the one of which the key is not on
the bunch. That is a very suspicious group of facts.”

“It is,” I agreed. “And if there is, as you say--though I can’t
imagine on what grounds--evidence of foul play, that makes it still
more suspicious. But what is the next move? Have you anything in
view?”

“The next move,” he replied, “is to clear up the mystery of the dead
man’s movements on the day of his death. The railway receipt shows
that on that day he travelled down somewhere into Essex. From that
place, he took a long, cross-country journey of which the destination
was a ditch by a lonely meadow in Buckinghamshire. The questions that
we have to answer are, What was he doing in Essex? Why did he make
that strange journey? Did he make it alone? and, if not, Who
accompanied him?

“Now, obviously, the first thing to do is to locate that place in
Essex; and when we have done that, to go down there and see if we can
pick up any traces of the dead man.”

“That sounds like a pretty vague quest,” said I; “but if we fail, the
police may be able to find out something. By the way, we want a new
_Bradshaw_.”

“An excellent suggestion, Jervis,” said he. “I will get one as we go
into the station.”

A few minutes later, as we sat on a bench waiting for our train, he
passed to me the open copy of _Bradshaw_, with the crumpled railway
receipt.

“You see,” said he, “it was apparently ‘G.B.Hlt.’ and the fare from
London was four and ninepence. Here is Great Buntingfield Halt, the
fare to which is four and ninepence. That must be the place. At any
rate, we will give it a trial. May I take it that you are coming to
lend a hand? I shall start in good time to-morrow morning.”

I assented emphatically. Never had I been more completely in the dark
than I was in this case, and seldom had I known Thorndyke to be more
positive and confident. Obviously, he had something up his sleeve; and
I was racked with curiosity as to what that something was.


On the following morning we made a fairly early start, and half-past
ten found us seated in the train, looking out across a dreary waste of
marshes, with the estuary of the Thames a mile or so distant. For the
first time in my recollection Thorndyke had come unprovided with his
inevitable “research case,” but I noted that he had furnished himself
with a botanist’s vasculum--or tin collecting-case--and that his
pocket bulged as if he had some other appliances concealed about his
person. Also that he carried a walking-stick that was strange to me.

“This will be our destination, I think,” he said, as the train slowed
down; and sure enough it presently came to rest beside a little
makeshift platform on which was displayed the name “Great Buntingfield
Halt.” We were the only passengers to alight, and the guard, having
noted the fact, blew his whistle and dismissed the little station with
a contemptuous wave of his flag.

Thorndyke lingered on the platform after the train had gone, taking a
general survey of the country. Half a mile away to the north a small
village was visible; while to the south the marshes stretched away to
the river, their bare expanse unbroken save by a solitary building
whose unredeemed hideousness proclaimed it a factory of some kind.
Presently the station-master approached deferentially, and as we
proffered our tickets, Thorndyke remarked:

“You don’t seem overburdened with traffic here.”

“No, sir. You’re right,” was the emphatic reply. “’Tis a dead-alive
place. Excepting the people at the Golomite Works and one now and then
from the village, no one uses the halt. You’re the first strangers
I’ve seen for more than a month.”

“Indeed,” said Thorndyke. “But I think you are forgetting one. An
acquaintance of mine came here last Tuesday--and by the same token, he
hadn’t got a ticket and had to pay his fare.”

“Oh, I remember,” the station-master replied. “You mean a gentleman
with a scar on his cheek. But I don’t count him as a stranger. He has
been here before; I think he is connected with the works, as he always
goes up their road.”

“Do you happen to remember what time he came back?” Thorndyke asked.

“He didn’t come back at all,” was the reply. “I am sure of that,
because I work the halt and level crossing by myself. I remember
thinking it queer that he didn’t come back, because the ticket that he
had lost was a return. He must have gone back in the van belonging to
the works--that one that you see coming towards the crossing.”

As he spoke, he pointed to a van that was approaching down the factory
road--a small covered van with the name “Golomite Works” painted, not
on the cover, but on a board that was attached to it. The
station-master walked towards the crossing to open the gates, and we
followed; and when the van had passed, Thorndyke wished our friend
“Good morning,” and led the way along the road, looking about him with
lively interest and rather with the air of one looking for something
in particular.

We had covered about two-thirds of the distance to the factory when
the road approached a wide ditch; and from the attention with which my
friend regarded it, I suspected that this was the something for which
he had been looking. It was, however, quite unapproachable, for it was
bordered by a wide expanse of soft mud thickly covered with rushes and
trodden deeply by cattle. Nevertheless, Thorndyke followed its margin,
still looking about him keenly, until, about a couple of hundred yards
from the factory, I observed a small decayed wooden staging or quay,
apparently the remains of a vanished footbridge. Here Thorndyke
halted, and unbuttoning his coat, began to empty out his pockets,
producing first the vasculum, then a small case containing three
wide-mouthed bottles--both of which he deposited on the ground--and
finally a sort of miniature landing-net, which he proceeded to screw
on to the ferrule of his stick.

“I take it,” said I, “that these proceedings are a blind to cover some
sort of observations.”

“Not at all,” he replied. “We are engaged in the study of pond and
ditch natural history, and a most fascinating and instructive study it
is. The variety of forms is endless. This ditch, you observe, like the
one at Bantree, is covered with a dense growth of duck-weed: but
whereas that ditch was swarming with succineæ, here there is not a
single succinea to be seen.”

I grunted a sulky assent, and watched suspiciously as he filled the
bottles with water from the ditch and then made a preliminary sweep
with his net.

“Here is a trial sample,” said he, holding the loaded net towards me.
“Duck-weed, horn-weed, Planorbis nautileus, but no succineæ. What do
you think of it, Jervis?”

I looked distastefully at the repulsive mess, but yet with attention,
for I realized that there was a meaning in his question. And then,
suddenly, my attention sharpened. I picked out of the net a strand of
dark green, plumy weed and examined it.

“So this is horn-weed,” I said. “Then it was a piece of horn-weed that
Cyrus Pedley held grasped in his hand; and now I come to think of it,
I don’t remember seeing any horn-weed in the ditch at Bantree.”

He nodded approvingly. “There wasn’t any,” said he.

“And these little ammonite-like shells are just like those that I
noticed at the bottom of Dr. Parton’s jar. But I don’t remember seeing
any in the Bantree ditch.”

“There were none there,” said he. “And the duck-weed?”

“Oh, well,” I replied, “duck-weed is duck-weed, and there’s an end of
it.”

He chuckled aloud at my answer, and quoting:


 “_A primrose by the river’s brim_
 _A yellow primrose was to him_,”


bestowed a part of the catch in the vasculum, then turned once more to
the ditch and began to ply his net vigorously, emptying out each
netful on the grass, looking it over quickly and then making a fresh
sweep, dragging the net each time through the mud at the bottom. I
watched him now with a new and very lively interest; for enlightenment
was dawning, mingled with some self-contempt and much speculation as
to how Thorndyke had got his start in this case.

But I was not the only interested watcher. At one of the windows of
the factory I presently observed a man who seemed to be looking our
way. After a few seconds’ inspection he disappeared, to reappear
almost immediately with a pair of field-glasses, through which he took
a long look at us. Then he disappeared again, but in less than a
minute I saw him emerge from a side door and advance hurriedly towards
us.

“We are going to have a notice of ejectment served on us, I fancy,”
said I.

Thorndyke glanced quickly at the approaching stranger but continued to
ply his net, working, as I noticed, methodically from left to right.
When the man came within fifty yards he hailed us with a brusque
inquiry as to what our business was. I went forward to meet him and,
if possible, to detain him in conversation; but this plan failed, for
he ignored me and bore straight down on Thorndyke.

“Now, then,” said he, “what’s the game? What are you doing here?”

Thorndyke was in the act of raising his net from the water, but he now
suddenly let it fall to the bottom of the ditch while he turned to
confront the stranger.

“I take it that you have some reason for asking,” said he.

“Yes, I have,” the other replied angrily and with a slight foreign
accent that agreed with his appearance--he looked like a Slav of some
sort. “This is private land. It belongs to the factory. I am the
manager.”

“The land is not enclosed,” Thorndyke remarked.

“I tell you the land is private land,” the fellow retorted excitedly.
“You have no business here. I want to know what you are doing.”

“My good sir,” said Thorndyke, “there is no need to excite yourself.
My friend and I are just collecting botanical and other specimens.”

“How do I know that?” the manager demanded. He looked round
suspiciously and his eye lighted on the vasculum. “What have you got
in that thing?” he asked.

“Let him see what is in it,” said Thorndyke, with a significant look
at me.

Interpreting this as an instruction to occupy the man’s attention for
a few moments, I picked up the vasculum and placed myself so that he
must turn his back to Thorndyke to look into it. I fumbled awhile with
the catch, but at length opened the case and began to pick out the
weed strand by strand. As soon as the stranger’s back was turned
Thorndyke raised his net and quickly picked out of it something which
he slipped into his pocket. Then he advanced towards us, sorting out
the contents of his net as he came.

“Well,” he said, “you see we are just harmless naturalists. By the
way, what did you think we were looking for?”

“Never mind what I thought,” the other replied fiercely. “This is
private land. You have no business here, and you have got to clear
out.”

“Very well,” said Thorndyke. “As you please. There are plenty of other
ditches.” He took the vasculum and the case of bottles, and having put
them in his pocket, unscrewed his net, wished the stranger “Good
morning,” and turned back towards the station. The man stood watching
us until we were near the level crossing, when he, too, turned back
and retired to the factory.

“I saw you take something out of the net,” said I. “What was it?”

He glanced back to make sure that the manager was out of sight. Then
he put his hand in his pocket, drew it out closed, and suddenly opened
it. In his palm lay a small gold dental plate with four teeth on it.

“My word!” I exclaimed; “this clenches the matter with a vengeance.
That is certainly Cyrus Pedley’s plate. It corresponds exactly to the
description.”

“Yes,” he replied, “it is practically a certainty. Of course, it will
have to be identified by the dentist who made it. But it is a foregone
conclusion.”

I reflected as we walked towards the station on the singular sureness
with which Thorndyke had followed what was to me an invisible trail.
Presently I said:

“What is puzzling me is how you got your start in this case. What gave
you the first hint that it was homicide and not suicide or
misadventure?”

“It was the old story, Jervis,” he replied; “just a matter of
observing and remembering apparently trivial details. Here, by the
way, is a case in point.”

He stopped and looked down at a set of tracks in the soft, earth
road--apparently those of the van which we had seen cross the line. I
followed the direction of his glance and saw the clear impression of a
Blakey’s protector, preceded by that of a gash in the tyre and
followed by that of a projecting lump.

“But this is astounding!” I exclaimed. “It is almost certainly the
same track that we saw in Ponder’s Road.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I noticed it as we came along.” He brought out his
spring-tape and note-book, and handing the latter to me, stooped and
measured the distances between the three impressions. I wrote them
down as he called them out, and then we compared them with the note
made in Ponder’s Road. The measurements were identical, as were the
relative positions of the impressions.

“This is an important piece of evidence,” said he. “I wish we were
able to take casts, but the notes will be pretty conclusive. And now,”
he continued as we resumed our progress towards the station, “to
return to your question. Parton’s evidence at the inquest proved that
Cyrus Pedley was drowned in water which contained duck-weed. He
produced a specimen and we both saw it. We saw the duck-weed in it and
also two Planorbis shells. The presence of those two shells proved
that the water in which he was drowned must have swarmed with them. We
saw the body, and observed that one hand grasped a wisp of horn-weed.
Then we went to view the ditch and we examined it. That was when I
got, not a mere hint, but a crucial and conclusive fact. The ditch was
covered with duck-weed, as we expected. _But it was the wrong
duck-weed._”

“The wrong duck-weed!” I exclaimed. “Why, how many kinds of duck-weed
are there?”

“There are four British species,” he replied. “The Greater Duck-weed,
the Lesser Duck-weed, the Thick Duck-weed, and the Ivy-leaved
Duck-weed. Now the specimens in Parton’s jar I noticed were the
Greater Duck-weed, which is easily distinguished by its roots, which
are multiple and form a sort of tassel. But the duck-weed on the
Bantree ditch was the Lesser Duck-weed, which is smaller than the
other, but is especially distinguished by having only a single root.
It is impossible to mistake one for the other.

“Here, then, was practically conclusive evidence of murder. Cyrus
Pedley had been drowned in a pond or ditch. But not in the ditch in
which his body was found. Therefore his dead body had been conveyed
from some other place and put into this ditch. Such a proceeding
furnishes _prima facie_ evidence of murder. But as soon as the
question was raised, there was an abundance of confirmatory evidence.
There was no horn-weed or Planorbis shells in the ditch, but there
were swarms of succineæ, some of which would inevitably have been
swallowed with the water. There was an obscure linear pressure mark on
the arm of the dead man, just above the elbow: such a mark as might be
made by a cord if a man were pinioned to render him helpless. Then the
body would have had to be conveyed to this place in some kind of
vehicle; and we found the traces of what appeared to be a motor-van,
which had approached the cart-track on the wrong side of the road, as
if to pull up there. It was a very conclusive mass of evidence; but it
would have been useless but for the extraordinarily lucky chance that
poor Pedley had lost his railway ticket and preserved the receipt; by
which we were able to ascertain where he was on the day of his death
and in what locality the murder was probably committed. But that is
not the only way in which Fortune has favoured us. The
station-master’s information was, and will be, invaluable. Then it was
most fortunate for us that there was only one ditch on the factory
land; and that that ditch was accessible at only one point, which must
have been the place where Pedley was drowned.”

“The duck-weed in this ditch is, of course, the Greater Duck-weed?”

“Yes. I have taken some specimens as well as the horn-weed and
shells.”

He opened the vasculum and picked out one of the tiny plants,
exhibiting the characteristic tassel of roots.

“I shall write to Parton and tell him to preserve the jar and the
horn-weed if it has not been thrown away. But the duck-weed alone,
produced in evidence, would be proof enough that Pedley was not
drowned in the Bantree ditch; and the dental plate will show where he
was drowned.”

“Are you going to pursue the case any farther?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “I shall call at Scotland Yard on my way home and
report what I have learned and what I can prove in court. Then I shall
have finished with the case. The rest is for the police, and I imagine
they won’t have much difficulty. The circumstances seem to tell their
own story. Pedley was employed by the Foreign Office, probably on some
kind of secret service. I imagine that he discovered the existence of
a gang of evil-doers--probably foreign revolutionaries, of whom we may
assume that our friend the manager of the factory is one; that he
contrived to associate himself with them and to visit the factory
occasionally to ascertain what was made there besides Golomite--if
Golomite is not itself an illicit product. Then I assume that he was
discovered to be a spy, that he was lured down here; that he was
pinioned and drowned some time on Tuesday night and his body put into
the van and conveyed to a place miles away from the scene of his
death, where it was deposited in a ditch apparently identical in
character with that in which he was drowned. It was an extremely
ingenious and well-thought-out plan. It seemed to have provided for
every kind of inquiry, and it very narrowly missed being successful.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “But it didn’t provide for Dr. John Thorndyke.”

“It didn’t provide for a searching examination of all the details,” he
replied; “and no criminal plan that I have ever met has done so. The
completeness of the scheme is limited by the knowledge of the
schemers, and, in practice, there is always something overlooked. In
this case, the criminals were unlearned in the natural history of
ditches.”


Thorndyke’s theory of the crime turned out to be substantially
correct. The Golomite Works proved to be a factory where high
explosives were made by a gang of cosmopolitan revolutionaries who
were all known to the police. But the work of the latter was
simplified by a detailed report which the dead man had deposited at
his bank and which was discovered in time to enable the police to raid
the factory and secure the whole gang. When once they were under lock
and key, further information was forthcoming; for a charge of murder
against them jointly soon produced King’s Evidence sufficient to
procure a conviction of the three actual perpetrators of the murder.




 V.
 MR. PONTING’S ALIBI

Thorndyke looked doubtfully at the pleasant-faced, athletic-looking
clergyman who had just come in, bearing Mr. Brodribb’s card as an
explanatory credential.

“I don’t quite see,” said he, “why Mr. Brodribb sent you to me. It
seems to be a purely legal matter which he could have dealt with
himself, at least as well as I can.”

“He appeared to think otherwise,” said the clergyman. (“The Revd.
Charles Meade” was written on the card.) “At any rate,” he added with
a persuasive smile, “here I am, and I hope you are not going to send
me away.”

“I shouldn’t offer that affront to my old friend Brodribb,” replied
Thorndyke, smiling in return; “so we may as well get to business,
which, in the first place, involves the setting out of all the
particulars. Let us begin with the lady who is the subject of the
threats of which you spoke.”

“Her name,” said Mr. Meade, “is Miss Millicent Fawcett. She is a
person of independent means, which she employs in works of charity.
She was formerly a hospital sister, and she does a certain amount of
voluntary work in the parish as a sort of district nurse. She has been
a very valuable help to me and we have been close friends for several
years; and I may add, as a very material fact, that she has consented
to marry me in about two months’ time. So that, you see, I am properly
entitled to act on her behalf.”

“Yes,” agreed Thorndyke. “You are an interested party. And now, as to
the threats. What do they amount to?”

“That,” replied Meade, “I can’t tell you. I gathered quite by chance
from some words that she dropped, that she had been threatened. But
she was unwilling to say more on the subject, as she did not take the
matter seriously. She is not at all nervous. However, I told her I was
taking advice; and I hope you will be able to extract more details
from her. For my own part, I am decidedly uneasy.”

“And as to the person or persons who have uttered the threats. Who are
they? and out of what circumstances have the threats arisen?”

“The person is a certain William Ponting, who is Miss Fawcett’s
step-brother--if that is the right term. Her father married, as his
second wife, a Mrs. Ponting, a widow with one son. This is the son.
His mother died before Mr. Fawcett, and the latter, when he died, left
his daughter, Millicent, sole heir to his property. That has always
been a grievance to Ponting. But now he has another. Miss Fawcett made
a will some years ago by which the bulk of her rather considerable
property is left to two cousins, Frederick and James Barnett, the sons
of her father’s sister. A comparatively small amount goes to Ponting.
When he heard this he was furious. He demanded a portion at least
equal to the others, and has continued to make this demand from time
to time. In fact, he has been extremely troublesome, and appears to be
getting still more so. I gathered that the threats were due to her
refusal to alter the will.”

“But,” said I, “doesn’t he realize that her marriage will render that
will null and void?”

“Apparently not,” replied Meade; “nor, to tell the truth, did I
realize it myself. Will she have to make a new will?”

“Certainly,” I replied. “And as that new will may be expected to be
still less favourable to him, that will presumably be a further
grievance.”

“One doesn’t understand,” said Thorndyke, “why he should excite
himself so much about her will. What are their respective ages?”

“Miss Fawcett is thirty-six and Ponting is about forty.”

“And what kind of man is he?” Thorndyke asked.

“A very unpleasant kind of man, I am sorry to say. Morose, rude, and
violent-tempered. A spendthrift and a cadger. He has had quite a lot
of money from Miss Fawcett--loans, which, of course, are never repaid.
And he is none too industrious, though he has a regular job on the
staff of a weekly paper. But he seems to be always in debt.”

“We may as well note his address,” said Thorndyke.

“He lives in a small flat in Bloomsbury--alone, now, since he
quarrelled with the man who used to share it with him. The address is
12 Borneo House, Devonshire Street.”

“What sort of terms is he on with the cousins, his rivals?”

“No sort of terms now,” replied Meade. “They used to be great friends.
So much so that he took his present flat to be near them--they live in
the adjoining flat, number 12 Sumatra House. But since the trouble
about the will, he is hardly on speaking terms with them.”

“They live together, then?”

“Yes, Frederick and his wife and James, who is unmarried. They are
rather a queer lot, too. Frederick is a singer on the variety stage,
and James accompanies him on various instruments. But they are both
sporting characters of a kind, especially James, who does a bit on the
turf and engages in other odd activities. Of course, their musical
habits are a grievance to Ponting. He is constantly making complaints
of their disturbing him at his work.”

Mr. Meade paused and looked wistfully at Thorndyke, who was making
full notes of the conversation.

“Well,” said the latter, “we seem to have got all the facts excepting
the most important--the nature of the threats. What do you want us to
do?”

“I want you to see Miss Fawcett--with me, if possible--and induce her
to give you such details as would enable you to put a stop to the
nuisance. You couldn’t come to-night, I suppose? It is a beast of a
night, but I would take you there in a taxi--it is only to Tooting
Bec. What do you say?” he added eagerly, as Thorndyke made no
objection. “We are sure to find her in, because her maid is away on a
visit to her home and she is alone in the house.”

Thorndyke looked reflectively at his watch.

“Half-past eight,” he remarked, “and half an hour to get there. These
threats are probably nothing but ill-temper. But we don’t know. There
may be something more serious behind them; and, in law as in medicine,
prevention is better than a post-mortem. What do you say, Jervis?”

What could I say? I would much sooner have sat by the fire with a book
than turn out into the murk of a November night. But I felt it
necessary, especially as Thorndyke had evidently made up his mind.
Accordingly I made a virtue of necessity; and a couple of minutes
later we had exchanged the cosy room for the chilly darkness of Inner
Temple Lane, up which the gratified parson was speeding ahead to
capture a taxi. At the top of the Lane we perceived him giving
elaborate instructions to a taxi-driver as he held the door of the cab
open; and Thorndyke, having carefully disposed of his
research-case--which, to my secret amusement, he had caught up, from
mere force of habit, as we started--took his seat, and Meade and I
followed.

As the taxi trundled smoothly along the dark streets, Mr. Meade filled
in the details of his previous sketch, and, in a simple, manly,
unaffected way dilated upon his good fortune and the pleasant future
that lay before him. It was not, perhaps, a romantic marriage, he
admitted; but Miss Fawcett and he had been faithful friends for years,
and faithful friends they would remain till death did them part. So he
ran on, now gleefully, now with a note of anxiety, and we listened by
no means unsympathetically, until at last the cab drew up at a small,
unpretentious house, standing in its own little grounds in a quiet
suburban road.

“She is at home, you see,” observed Meade, pointing to a lighted
ground-floor window. He directed the taxi-driver to wait for the
return journey, and striding up the path, delivered a characteristic
knock at the door. As this brought no response, he knocked again and
rang the bell. But still there was no answer, though twice I thought I
heard the sound of a bolt being either drawn or shot softly. Again Mr.
Meade plied the knocker more vigorously, and pressed the push of the
bell, which we could hear ringing loudly within.

“This is very strange,” said Meade, in an anxious tone, keeping his
thumb pressed on the bell-push. “She can’t have gone out and left the
electric light on. What had we better do?”

“We had better enter without more delay,” Thorndyke replied. “There
were certainly sounds from within. Is there a side gate?”

Meade ran off towards the side of the house, and Thorndyke and I
glanced at the lighted window, which was slightly open at the top.

“Looks a bit queer,” I remarked, listening at the letter-box.

Thorndyke assented gravely, and at this moment Meade returned,
breathing hard.

“The side gate is bolted inside,” said he; and at this I recalled the
stealthy sound of the bolt that I had heard. “What is to be done?”

Without replying, Thorndyke handed me his research-case, stepped
across to the window, sprang up on the sill, drew down the upper sash
and disappeared between the curtains into the room. A moment later the
street door opened and Meade and I entered the hall. We glanced
through the open doorway into the lighted room, and I noticed a heap
of needlework thrown hastily on the dining table. Then Meade switched
on the hall light, and Thorndyke walked quickly past him to the
half-open door of the next room. Before entering, he reached in and
switched on the light; and as he stepped into the room he partly
closed the door behind him.

“Don’t come in here, Meade!” he called out. But the parson’s eye, like
my own, had seen something before the door closed: a great, dark stain
on the carpet just within the threshold. Regardless of the admonition,
he pushed the door open and darted into the room. Following him, I saw
him rush forward, fling his arms up wildly, and with a dreadful,
strangled cry, sink upon his knees beside a low couch on which a woman
was lying.

“Merciful God!” he gasped. “She is dead! Is she dead, doctor? Can
nothing be done?”

Thorndyke shook his head. “Nothing,” he said in a low voice. “She is
dead.”

Poor Meade knelt by the couch, his hands clutching at his hair and his
eyes riveted on the dead face, the very embodiment of horror and
despair.

“God Almighty!” he exclaimed in the same strangled undertone. “How
frightful! Poor, poor Millie! Dear, sweet friend!” Then
suddenly--almost savagely--he turned to Thorndyke. “But it can’t be,
doctor! It is impossible--unbelievable. That, I mean!” and he pointed
to the dead woman’s right hand, which held an open razor.

Our poor friend had spoken my own thought. It was incredible that this
refined, pious lady should have inflicted those savage wounds that
gaped scarlet beneath the waxen face. There, indeed, was the razor
lying in her hand. But what was its testimony worth? My heart rejected
it; but yet, unwillingly, I noted that the wounds seemed to support
it; for they had been made from left to right, as they would have been
if self-inflicted.

“It is hard to believe,” said Thorndyke, “but there is only one
alternative. Someone should acquaint the police at once.”

“I will go,” exclaimed Meade, starting up. “I know the way and the cab
is there.” He looked once more with infinite pity and affection at the
dead woman. “Poor, sweet girl!” he murmured. “If we can do no more for
you, we can defend your memory from calumny and call upon the God of
Justice to right the innocent and punish the guilty.”

With these words and a mute farewell to his dead friend, he hurried
from the room, and immediately afterwards we heard the street door
close.

As he went out, Thorndyke’s manner changed abruptly. He had been
deeply moved--as who would not have been--by this awful tragedy that
had in a moment shattered the happiness of the genial, kindly parson.
Now he turned to me with a face set and stern.

“This is an abominable affair, Jervis,” he said in an ominously quiet
voice.

“You reject the suggestion of suicide, then?” said I, with a feeling
of relief that surprised me.

“Absolutely,” he replied. “Murder shouts at us from everything that
meets our eye. Look at this poor woman, in her trim nurse’s dress,
with her unfinished needlework lying on the table in the next room and
that preposterous razor loose in her limp hand. Look at the savage
wounds. Four of them, and the first one mortal. The great bloodstain
by the door, the great blood-stain on her dress from the neck to the
feet. The gashed collar, the cap-string cut right through. Note that
the bleeding had practically ceased when she lay down. That is a group
of visible facts that is utterly inconsistent with the idea of
suicide. But we are wasting time. Let us search the premises
thoroughly. The murderer has pretty certainly got away, but as he was
in the house when we arrived, any traces will be quite fresh.”

As he spoke he took his electric lamp from the research-case and
walked to the door.

“We can examine this room later,” he said, “but we had better look
over the house. If you will stay by the stairs and watch the front and
back doors, I will look through the upper rooms.”

He ran lightly up the stairs while I kept watch below, but he was
absent less than a couple of minutes.

“There is no one there,” he reported, “and as there is no basement we
will just look at this floor and then examine the grounds.”

After a rapid inspection of the ground-floor rooms, including the
kitchen, we went out by the back door, which was unbolted, and
inspected the grounds. These consisted of a largish garden with a
small orchard at the side. In the former we could discover no traces
of any kind, but at the end of the path that crossed the orchard we
came on a possible clue. The orchard was enclosed by a five-foot
fence, the top of which bristled with hooked nails; and at the point
opposite to the path, Thorndyke’s lantern brought into view one or two
wisps of cloth caught on the hooks.

“Someone has been over here,” said Thorndyke, “but as this is an
orchard, there is nothing remarkable in the fact. However, there is no
fruit on the trees now, and the cloth looks fairly fresh. There are
two kinds, you notice: a dark blue and a black and white mixture of
some kind.”

“Corresponding, probably, to the coat and trousers,” I suggested.

“Possibly,” he agreed, taking from his pocket a couple of the little
seed-envelopes of which he always carried a supply. Very delicately he
picked the tiny wisps of cloth from the hooks and bestowed each kind
in a separate envelope. Having pocketed these, he leaned over the
fence and threw the light of his lamp along the narrow lane or alley
that divided the orchard from the adjoining premises. It was
ungravelled and covered with a growth of rank grass, which suggested
that it was little frequented. But immediately below was a small patch
of bare earth, and on this was a very distinct impression of a foot,
covering several less distinct prints.

“Several people have been over here at different times,” I remarked.

“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed. “But that sharp footprint belongs to the last
one over, and he is our concern. We had better not confuse the issues
by getting over ourselves. We will mark the spot and explore from the
other end.” He laid his handkerchief over the top of the fence and we
then went back to the house.

“You are going to take a plaster cast, I suppose?” said I; and as he
assented, I fetched the research-case from the drawing-room. Then we
fixed the catch of the front-door latch and went out, drawing the door
to after us.

We found the entrance to the alley about sixty yards from the gate,
and entering it, walked slowly forwards, scanning the ground as we
went. But the bright lamp-light showed nothing more than the vague
marks of trampling feet on the grass until we came to the spot marked
by the handkerchief on the fence.

“It is a pity,” I remarked, “that this footprint has obliterated the
others.”

“On the other hand,” he replied, “this one, which is the one that
interests us, is remarkably clear and characteristic: a circular heel
and a rubber sole of a recognizable pattern mended with a patch of
cement paste. It is a footprint that could be identified beyond a
doubt.”

As he was speaking, he took from the research-case the water-bottle,
plaster-tin, rubber mixing-bowl and spoon, and a piece of canvas with
which to “reinforce” the cast. Rapidly, he mixed a bowlful--extra
thick, so that it should set quickly and hard--dipped the canvas into
it, poured the remainder into the footprint, and laid the canvas on
it.

“I will get you to stay here, Jervis,” said he, “until the plaster has
set. I want to examine the body rather more thoroughly before the
police arrive, particularly the back.”

“Why the back?” I asked.

“Did not the appearance of the body suggest to you the advisability of
examining the back?” he asked, and then, without waiting for a reply,
he went off, leaving the inspection-lamp with me.

His words gave me matter for profound thought during my short vigil. I
recalled the appearance of the dead woman very vividly--indeed, I am
not likely ever to forget it--and I strove to connect that appearance
with his desire to examine the back of the corpse. But there seemed to
be no connexion at all. The visible injuries were in front, and I had
seen nothing to suggest the existence of any others. From time to time
I tested the condition of the plaster, impatient to rejoin my
colleague but fearful of cracking the thin cast by raising it
prematurely. At length the plaster seemed to be hard enough, and
trusting to the strength of the canvas, I prised cautiously at the
edge, when, to my relief, the brittle plate came up safely and I
lifted it clear. Wrapping it carefully in some spare rag, I packed it
in the research-case, and then, taking this and the lantern, made my
way back to the house.

When I had let down the catch and closed the front door, I went into
the drawing-room, where I found Thorndyke stooping over the dark stain
at the threshold and scanning the floor as if in search of something.
I reported the completion of the cast and then asked him what he was
looking for.

“I am looking for a button,” he replied. “There is one missing from
the back; the one to which the collar was fastened.”

“Is it of any importance?” I asked.

“It is important to ascertain when and where it became detached,” he
replied. “Let us have the inspection-lamp.”

I gave him the lamp, which he placed on the floor, turning it so that
its beam of light travelled along the surface. Stooping to follow the
light, I scrutinized the floor minutely but in vain.

“It may not be here at all,” said I; but at that moment the bright
gleam, penetrating the darkness under a cabinet, struck a small object
close to the wall. In a moment I had thrown myself prone on the
carpet, and reaching under the cabinet, brought forth a largish
mother-of-pearl button.

“You notice,” said Thorndyke, as he examined it, “that the cabinet is
near the window, at the opposite end of the room to the couch. But we
had better see that it is the right button.”

He walked slowly towards the couch, still stooping and searching the
floor with the light. The corpse, I noticed, had been turned on its
side, exposing the back and the displaced collar. Through the strained
button-hole of the latter Thorndyke passed the button without
difficulty.

“Yes,” he said, “that is where it came from. You will notice that
there is a similar one in front. By the way,” he continued, bringing
the lamp close to the surface of the grey serge dress, “I picked off
one or two hairs--animal hairs; cat and dog they looked like. Here are
one or two more. Will you hold the lamp while I take them off?”

“They are probably from some pets of hers,” I remarked, as he picked
them off with his forceps and deposited them in one of the invaluable
seed-envelopes. “Spinsters are a good deal addicted to pets,
especially cats and dogs.”

“Possibly,” he replied. “But I could see none in front, where you
would expect to find them, and there seem to be none on the carpet.
Now let us replace the body as we found it and just have a look at our
material before the police arrive. I expected them here before this.”

We turned the body back into its original position, and taking the
research-case and the lamp, went into the dining-room. Here Thorndyke
rapidly set up the little travelling microscope, and bringing forth
the seed-envelopes, began to prepare slides from the contents of some
while I prepared the others. There was time only for a very hasty
examination, which Thorndyke made as soon as the specimens were
mounted.

“The clothing,” he reported, with his eye at the microscope, “is
woollen in both cases. Fairly good quality. The one a blue serge,
apparently indigo dyed; the other a mixture of black and white, no
other colour. Probably a fine tabby or a small shepherd’s plaid.”

“Serge coat and shepherd’s plaid trousers,” I suggested. “Now see what
the hairs are.” I handed him the slide, on which I had roughly mounted
the collection in oil of lavender, and he placed it on the stage.

“There are three different kinds of hairs here,” he reported, after a
rapid inspection. “Some are obviously from a cat--a smoky Persian.
Others are long, rather fine tawny hairs from a dog. Probably a
Pekinese. But there are two that I can’t quite place. They look like
monkey’s hairs, but they are a very unusual colour. There is a
perceptible greenish tint, which is extremely uncommon in mammalian
hairs. But I hear the taxi approaching. We need not be expansive to
the local police as to what we have observed. This will probably be a
case for the C.I.D.”

I went out into the hall and opened the door as Meade came up the
path, followed by two men; and as the latter came into the light, I
was astonished to recognize in one of them our old friend,
Detective-Superintendent Miller, the other being, apparently, the
station superintendent.

“We have kept Mr. Meade a long time,” said Miller, “but we knew you
were here, so the time wouldn’t be wasted. Thought it best to get a
full statement before we inspected the premises. How do, doctor,” he
added, shaking hands with Thorndyke. “Glad to see you here. I suppose
you have got all the facts. I understood so from Mr. Meade.”

“Yes,” replied Thorndyke, “we have all the antecedents of the case,
and we arrived within a few minutes of the death of the deceased.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Miller. “Did you? And I expect you have formed an
opinion on the question as to whether the injuries were
self-inflicted?”

“I think,” said Thorndyke, “that it would be best to act on the
assumption that they were not--and to act promptly.”

“Pre--cisely,” Miller agreed emphatically. “You mean that we had
better find out at once where a certain person was at--what time did
you arrive here?”

“It was two minutes to nine when the taxi stopped,” replied Thorndyke;
“and, as it is now only twenty-five minutes to ten, we have good time
if Mr. Meade can spare us the taxi. I have the address.”

“The taxi is waiting for you,” said Mr. Meade, “and the man has been
paid for both journeys. I shall stay here in case the superintendent
wants anything.” He shook our hands warmly, and as we bade him
farewell and noted the dazed, despairing expression and lines of grief
that had already eaten into the face that had been so blithe and
hopeful, we both thought bitterly of the few fatal minutes that had
made us too late to save the wreckage of his life.

We were just turning away when Thorndyke paused and again faced the
clergyman.

“Can you tell me,” he asked, “whether Miss Fawcett had any pets? Cats,
dogs, or other animals?”

Meade looked at him in surprise, and Superintendent Miller seemed to
prick up his ears. But the former answered simply: “No. She was not
very fond of animals; she reserved her affections for men and women.”

Thorndyke nodded gravely, and picking up the research-case walked
slowly out of the room, Miller and I following.

As soon as the address had been given to the driver and we had taken
our seats in the taxi, the superintendent opened the
examination-in-chief.

“I see you have got your box of magic with you, doctor,” he said,
cocking his eye at the research-case. “Any luck?”

“We have secured a very distinctive footprint,” replied Thorndyke,
“but it may have no connexion with the case.”

“I hope it has,” said Miller. “A good cast of a footprint which you
can let the jury compare with the boot is first-class evidence.” He
took the cast, which I had produced from the research-case, and
turning it over tenderly and gloatingly, exclaimed: “Beautiful!
beautiful! Absolutely distinctive! There can’t be another exactly like
it in the world. It is as good as a finger-print. For the Lord’s sake
take care of it. It means a conviction if we can find the boot.”

The superintendent’s efforts to engage Thorndyke in discussion were
not very successful, and the conversational brunt was borne by me. For
we both knew my colleague too well to interrupt him if he was disposed
to be meditative. And such was now his disposition. Looking at him as
he sat in his corner, silent but obviously wrapped in thought, I knew
that he was mentally sorting out the data and testing the hypotheses
that they yielded.

“Here we are,” said Miller, opening the door as the taxi stopped. “Now
what are we going to say? Shall I tell him who I am?”

“I expect you will have to,” replied Thorndyke, “if you want him to
let us in.”

“Very well,” said Miller. “But I shall let you do the talking, because
I don’t know what you have got up your sleeve.”

Thorndyke’s prediction was verified literally. In response to the
third knock, with an obbligato accompaniment on the bell, wrathful
footsteps--I had no idea footsteps could be so expressive--advanced
rapidly along the lobby, the door was wrenched open--but only for a
few inches--and an angry, hairy face appeared in the opening.

“Now then,” the hairy person demanded, “what the deuce do you want?”

“Are you Mr. William Ponting?” the superintendent inquired.

“What the devil is that to do with you?” was the genial answer--in the
Scottish mode.

“We have business,” Miller began persuasively.

“So have I,” the presumable Ponting replied, “and mine won’t wait.”

“But our business is very important,” Miller urged.

“So is mine,” snapped Ponting, and would have shut the door but for
Miller’s obstructing foot, at which he kicked viciously, but with
unsatisfactory results, as he was shod in light slippers, whereas the
superintendent’s boots were of constabulary solidity.

“Now, look here,” said Miller, dropping his conciliatory manner very
completely, “you’d better stop this nonsense. I am a police officer,
and I am going to come in”; and with this he inserted a massive
shoulder and pushed the door open.

“Police officer, are you?” said Ponting. “And what might your business
be with me?”

“That is what I have been waiting to tell you,” said Miller. “But we
don’t want to do our talking here.”

“Very well,” growled Ponting. “Come in. But understand that I am busy.
I’ve been interrupted enough this evening.”

He led the way into a rather barely furnished room with a wide
bay-window in which was a table fitted with a writing-slope and
lighted by an electric standard lamp. A litter of manuscript explained
the nature of his business and his unwillingness to receive casual
visitors. He sulkily placed three chairs, and then, seating himself,
glowered at Thorndyke and me.

“Are they police officers, too?” he demanded.

“No,” replied Miller, “they are medical gentlemen. Perhaps you had
better explain the matter, doctor,” he added, addressing Thorndyke,
who thereupon opened the proceedings.

“We have called,” said he, “to inform you that Miss Millicent Fawcett
died suddenly this evening.”

“The devil!” exclaimed Ponting. “That’s sudden with a vengeance. What
time did this happen?”

“About a quarter to nine.”

“Extraordinary!” muttered Ponting. “I saw her only the day before
yesterday, and she seemed quite well then. What did she die of?”

“The appearances,” replied Thorndyke, “suggest suicide.”

“Suicide!” gasped Ponting. “Impossible! I can’t believe it. Do you
mean to tell me she poisoned herself?”

“No,” said Thorndyke, “it was not poison. Death was caused by injuries
to the throat inflicted with a razor.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Ponting. “What a horrible thing! But,” he added
after a pause, “I can’t believe she did it herself, and I don’t. Why
should she commit suicide? She was quite happy, and she was just going
to be married to that mealy-faced parson. And a razor, too! How do you
suppose she came by a razor? Women don’t shave. They smoke and drink
and swear, but they haven’t taken to shaving yet. I don’t believe it.
Do you?”

He glared ferociously at the superintendent, who replied:

“I am not sure that I do. There’s a good deal in what you’ve just
said, and the same objections had occurred to us. But, you see, if she
didn’t do it herself, someone else must have done it, and we should
like to find out who that someone is. So we begin by ascertaining
where any possible persons may have been at a quarter to nine this
evening.”

Ponting smiled like an infuriated cat.

“So you think me a possible person, do you?” said he.

“Everyone is a possible person,” Miller replied blandly, “especially
when he is known to have uttered threats.”

The reply sobered Ponting considerably. For a few moments he sat,
looking reflectively at the superintendent; then, in comparatively
quiet tones, he said:

“I have been working here since six o’clock. You can see the stuff for
yourself, and I can prove that it has been written since six.”

The superintendent nodded, but made no comment, and Ponting gazed at
him fixedly, evidently thinking hard. Suddenly he broke into a harsh
laugh.

“What is the joke?” Miller inquired stolidly.

“The joke is that I have got another alibi--a very complete one. There
are compensations in every evil. I told you I had been interrupted in
my work already this evening. It was those fools next door, the
Barnetts--cousins of mine. They are musicians, save the mark! Variety
stage, you know. Funny songs and jokes for mental defectives. Well,
they practise their infernal ditties in their rooms, and the row comes
into mine, and an accursed nuisance it is. However, they have agreed
not to practise on Thursdays and Fridays--my busy nights--and usually
they don’t. But to-night, just as I was in the thick of my writing, I
suddenly heard the most unholy din; that idiot, Fred Barnett, bawling
one of his imbecile songs--‘When the pigs their wings have folded,’
and balderdash of that sort--and the other donkey accompanying him on
the clarinet, if you please! I stuck it for a minute or two. Then I
rushed round to their flat and raised Cain with the bell and knocker.
Mrs. Fred opened the door, and I told her what I thought of it. Of
course she was very apologetic, said they had forgotten that it was
Thursday and promised that she would make her husband stop. And I
suppose she did, for by the time I got back to my rooms the row had
ceased. I could have punched the whole lot of them into a jelly, but
it was all for the best as it turns out.”

“What time was it when you went round there?” asked Miller.

“About five minutes past nine,” replied Ponting. “The church bell had
struck nine when the row began.”

“Hm!” grunted Miller, glancing at Thorndyke. “Well, that is all we
wanted to know, so we need not keep you from your work any longer.”

He rose, and being let out with great alacrity, stumped down the
stairs, followed by Thorndyke and me. As we came out into the street,
he turned to us with a deeply disappointed expression.

“Well,” he exclaimed, “this is a suck in. I was in hopes that we had
pounced on our quarry before he had got time to clear away the traces.
And now we’ve got it all to do. You can’t get round an alibi of that
sort.”

I glanced at Thorndyke to see how he was taking this unexpected check.
He was evidently puzzled, and I could see by the expression of
concentration in his face that he was trying over the facts and
inferences in new combinations to meet this new position. Probably he
had noticed, as I had, that Ponting was wearing a tweed suit, and that
therefore the shreds of clothing from the fence could not be his
unless he had changed. But the alibi put him definitely out of the
picture, and, as Miller had said, we now had nothing to give us a
lead.

Suddenly Thorndyke came out of his reverie and addressed the
superintendent.

“We had better put this alibi on the basis of ascertained fact. It
ought to be verified at once. At present we have only Ponting’s
unsupported statement.”

“It isn’t likely that he would risk telling a lie,” Miller replied
gloomily.

“A man who is under suspicion of murder will risk a good deal,”
Thorndyke retorted, “especially if he is guilty. I think we ought to
see Mrs. Barnett before there is any opportunity of collusion.”

“There has been time for collusion already,” said Miller. “Still, you
are quite right, and I see there is a light in their sitting-room, if
that is it, next to Ponting’s. Let us go up and settle the matter now.
I shall leave you to examine the witness and say what you think it
best to say.”

We entered the building and ascended the stairs to the Barnetts’ flat,
where Miller rang the bell and executed a double knock. After a short
interval the door was opened and a woman looked out at us
inquisitively.

“Are you Mrs. Frederick Barnett?” Thorndyke inquired. The woman
admitted her identity in a tone of some surprise, and Thorndyke
explained: “We have called to make a few inquiries concerning your
neighbour, Mr. Ponting, and also about certain matters relating to
your family. I am afraid it is a rather unseasonable hour for a visit,
but as the affair is of some importance and time is an object, I hope
you will overlook that.”

Mrs. Barnett listened to this explanation with a puzzled and rather
suspicious air. After a few moments’ hesitation, she said:

“I think you had better see my husband. If you will wait here a moment
I will go and tell him.” With this, she pushed the door to, without
actually closing it, and we heard her retire along the lobby,
presumably to the sitting-room. For, during the short colloquy, I had
observed a door at the end of the lobby, partly open, through which I
could see the end of a table covered with a red cloth.

The “moment” extended to a full minute, and the superintendent began
to show signs of impatience.

“I don’t see why you didn’t ask her the simple question straight out,”
he said, and the same question had occurred to me. But at this point
footsteps were heard approaching, the door opened, and a man
confronted us, holding the door open with his left hand, his right
being wrapped in a handkerchief. He looked suspiciously from one to
the other of us, and asked stiffly:

“What is it that you want to know? And would you mind telling me who
you are?”

“My name is Thorndyke,” was the reply. “I am the legal adviser of the
Reverend Charles Meade, and these two gentlemen are interested
parties. I want to know what you can tell me of Mr. Ponting’s recent
movements--to-day, for instance. When did you last see him?”

The man appeared to be about to refuse any conversation, but suddenly
altered his mind, reflected for a few moments, and then replied:

“I saw him from my window at his--they are bay-windows--about
half-past eight. But my wife saw him later than that. If you will come
in she can tell you the time exactly.” He led the way along the lobby
with an obviously puzzled air. But he was not more puzzled than I, or
than Miller, to judge by the bewildered glance that the superintendent
cast at me, as he followed our host along the lobby. I was still
meditating on Thorndyke’s curiously indirect methods when the
sitting-room door was opened; and then I got a minor surprise of
another kind. When I had last looked into the room, the table had been
covered by a red cloth. It was now bare; and when we entered the room
I saw that the red cover had been thrown over a side table, on which
was some bulky and angular object. Apparently it had been thought
desirable to conceal that object, whatever it was, and as we took our
seats beside the bare table, my mind was busy with conjectures as to
what that object could be.

Mr. Barnett repeated Thorndyke’s question to his wife, adding: “I
think it must have been a little after nine when Ponting came round.
What do you say?”

“Yes,” she replied, “it would be, for I heard it strike nine just
before you began your practice, and he came a few minutes after.”

“You see,” Barnett explained, “I am a singer, and my brother, here,
accompanies me on various instruments, and of course we have to
practise. But we don’t practise on the nights when Ponting is
busy--Thursdays and Fridays--as he said that the music disturbed him.
To-night, however, we made a little mistake. I happen to have got a
new song that I am anxious to get ready--it has an illustrative
accompaniment on the clarinet, which my brother will play. We were so
much taken up with the new song that we all forgot what day of the
week it was, and started to have a good practise. But before we had
got through the first verse, Ponting came round, battering at the door
like a madman. My wife went out and pacified him, and of course we
shut down for the evening.”

While Mr. Barnett was giving his explanation, I looked about the room
with vague curiosity. Somehow--I cannot tell exactly how--I was
sensible of something queer in the atmosphere of this place; of a
certain indefinite sense of tension. Mrs. Barnett looked pale and
flurried. Her husband, in spite of his volubility, seemed ill at ease,
and the brother, who sat huddled in an easy-chair, nursing a
dark-coloured Persian cat, stared into the fire, and neither moved nor
spoke. And again I looked at the red table-cloth and wondered what it
covered.

“By the way,” said Barnett, after a brief pause, “what is the point of
these inquiries of yours? About Ponting, I mean. What does it matter
to you where he was this evening?”

As he spoke, he produced a pipe and tobacco-pouch and proceeded to
fill the former, holding it in his bandaged right hand and filling it
with his left. The facility with which he did this suggested that he
was left-handed, an inference that was confirmed by the ease with
which he struck the match with his left hand, and by the fact that he
wore a wrist-watch on his right wrist.

“Your question is a perfectly natural one,” said Thorndyke. “The
answer to it is that a very terrible thing has happened. Miss
Millicent Fawcett, who is, I think, a connexion of yours, met her
death this evening under circumstances of grave suspicion. She died,
either by her own hand or by the hand of a murderer, a few minutes
before nine o’clock. Hence it has become necessary to ascertain the
whereabouts at that time of any persons on whom suspicion might
reasonably fall.”

“Good God!” exclaimed Barnett. “What a shocking thing!”

The exclamation was followed by a deep silence, amidst which I could
hear the barking of a dog in an adjacent room, the unmistakable sharp,
treble yelp of a Pekinese. And again I seemed to be aware of a strange
sense of tension in the occupants of this room. On hearing Thorndyke’s
answer, Mrs. Barnett had turned deadly pale and let her head fall
forward on her hand. Her husband had sunk on to a chair, and he, too,
looked pale and deeply shocked, while the brother continued to stare
silently into the fire.

At this moment Thorndyke astonished me by an exhibition of what
seemed--under the tragic circumstances--the most outrageous bad
manners and bad taste. Rising from his chair with his eyes fixed on a
print which hung on the wall above the red-covered table, he said:

“That looks like one of Cameron’s etchings,” and forthwith stepped
across the room to examine it, resting his hand, as he leaned forward,
on the object covered by the cloth.

“Mind where you are putting your hand, sir!” Fred Barnett called out,
springing to his feet.

Thorndyke looked down at his hand, and deliberately raising a corner
of the cloth, looked under. “There is no harm done,” he remarked
quietly, letting the cloth drop; and with another glance at the print,
he went back to his chair.

Once more a deep silence fell upon the room, and I had a vague feeling
that the tension had increased. Mrs. Barnett was as white as a ghost
and seemed to catch at her breath. Her husband watched her with a
wild, angry expression and smoked furiously, while the
superintendent--also conscious of something abnormal in the atmosphere
of the room--looked furtively from the woman to the man and from him
to Thorndyke.

Yet again in the silence the shrill barking of the Pekinese dog broke
out, and somehow that sound connected itself in my mind with the
Persian cat that dozed on the knees of the immovable man by the fire.
I looked at the cat and at the man, and even as I looked, I was
startled by a most extraordinary apparition. Above the man’s shoulder,
slowly rose a little round head like the head of a diminutive,
greenish-brown man. Higher and higher the tiny monkey raised itself,
resting on its little hands to peer at the strangers. Then, with
sudden coyness, like a shy baby, it popped down out of sight.

I was thunderstruck. The cat and the dog I had noted merely as a
curious coincidence. But the monkey--and such an unusual monkey,
too--put coincidences out of the question. I stared at the man in
positive stupefaction. Somehow that man was connected with that
unforgettable figure lying upon the couch miles away. But how? When
that deed of horror was doing, he had been here in this very room.
Yet, in some way, he had been concerned in it. And suddenly a
suspicion dawned upon me that Thorndyke was waiting for the actual
perpetrator to arrive.

“It is a most ghastly affair,” Barnett repeated presently in a husky
voice. Then, after a pause, he asked: “Is there any sort of evidence
as to whether she killed herself or was killed by somebody else?”

“I think that my friend, here, Detective-Superintendent Miller, has
decided that she was murdered.” He looked at the bewildered
superintendent, who replied with an inarticulate grunt.

“And is there any clue as to who the--the murderer may be? You spoke
of suspected persons just now.”

“Yes,” replied Thorndyke, “there is an excellent clue, if it can only
be followed up. We found a most unmistakable footprint; and what is
more, we took a plaster cast of it. Would you like to see the cast?”

Without waiting for a reply, he opened the research-case and took out
the cast, which he placed in my hands.

“Just take it round and show it to them,” he said.

The superintendent had witnessed Thorndyke’s amazing proceedings with
an astonishment that left him speechless. But now he sprang to his
feet, and, as I walked round the table, he pressed beside me to guard
the precious cast from possible injury. I laid it carefully down on
the table, and as the light fell on it obliquely, it presented a most
striking appearance--that of a snow-white boot-sole on which the
unshapely patch, the circular heel, and the marks of wear were clearly
visible.

The three spectators gathered round, as near as the superintendent
would let them approach, and I observed them closely, assuming that
this incomprehensible move of Thorndyke’s was a device to catch one or
more of them off their guard. Fred Barnett looked at the cast stolidly
enough, though his face had gone several shades paler, but Mrs.
Barnett stared at it with starting eye-balls and dropped jaw--the very
picture of horror and dismay. As to James Barnett, whom I now saw
clearly for the first time, he stood behind the woman with a
singularly scared and haggard face, and his eyes riveted on the white
boot-sole. And now I could see that he wore a suit of blue serge and
that the front both of his coat and waistcoat were thickly covered
with the shed hairs of his pets.

There was something very uncanny about this group of persons gathered
around that accusing footprint, all as still and rigid as statues and
none uttering a sound. But something still more uncanny followed.
Suddenly the deep silence of the room was shattered by the shrill
notes of a clarinet, and a brassy voice burst forth:


 “_When the pigs their wings have folded_
 _And the cows are in their nest----_”


We all spun round in amazement, and at the first glance the mystery of
the crime was solved. There stood Thorndyke with the red table-cover
at his feet, and at his side, on the small table, a
massively-constructed phonograph of the kind used in offices for
dictating letters, but fitted with a convoluted metal horn in place of
the rubber ear-tubes.

A moment of astonished silence was succeeded by a wild confusion. Mrs.
Barnett uttered a piercing shriek and fell back on to a chair, her
husband broke away and rushed at Thorndyke, who instantly gripped his
wrist and pinioned him, while the superintendent, taking in the
situation at a glance, fastened on the unresisting James and forced
him down into a chair. I ran round, and having stopped the
machine--for the preposterous song was hideously incongruous with the
tragedy that was enacting--went to Thorndyke’s assistance and helped
him to remove his prisoner from the neighbourhood of the instrument.

“Superintendent Miller,” said Thorndyke, still maintaining a hold on
his squirming captive, “I believe you are a justice of the peace?”

“Yes,” was the reply, “ex officio.”

“Then,” said Thorndyke, “I accuse these three persons of being
concerned in the murder of Miss Millicent Fawcett; Frederick Barnett
as the principal who actually committed the murder, James Barnett as
having aided him by holding the arms of the deceased, and Mrs. Barnett
as an accessory before the fact in that she worked this phonograph for
the purpose of establishing a false alibi.”

“I knew nothing about it!” Mrs. Barnett shrieked hysterically. “They
never told me why they wanted me to work the thing.”

“We can’t go into that now,” said Miller. “You will be able to make
your defence at the proper time and place. Can one of you go for
assistance or must I blow my whistle?”

“You had better go, Jervis,” said Thorndyke. “I can hold this man
until reinforcements arrive. Send a constable up and then go on to the
station. And leave the outer door ajar.”

I followed these directions, and having found the police station,
presently returned to the flat with four constables and a sergeant in
two taxis.

When the prisoners had been removed, together with the three
animals--the latter in charge of a zoophilist constable--we searched
the bedrooms. Frederick Barnett had changed his clothing completely,
but in a locked drawer--the lock of which Thorndyke picked neatly, to
the superintendent’s undisguised admiration--we found the discarded
garments, including a pair of torn shepherd’s plaid trousers, covered
with blood-stains, and a new, empty razor-case. These things, together
with the wax cylinder of the phonograph, Miller made up into a neat
parcel and took away with him.


“Of course,” said I, as we walked homewards, “the general drift of
this case is quite obvious. But it seemed to me that you went to the
Barnetts’ flat with a definite purpose already formed, and with a
definite suspicion in your mind. Now, I don’t see how you came to
suspect the Barnetts.”

“I think you will,” he replied, “if you will recall the incidents in
their order from the beginning, including poor Meade’s preliminary
statement. To begin with the appearances of the body: the suggestion
of suicide was transparently false. To say nothing of its incongruity
with the character and circumstances of the deceased and the very
unlikely weapon used, there were the gashed collar and the cut
cap-string. As you know, it is a well-established rule that suicides
do not damage their clothing. A man who cuts his own throat doesn’t
cut his collar. He takes it off. He removes all obstructions.
Naturally, for he wishes to complete the act as easily and quickly as
possible, and he has time for preparation. But the murderer must take
things as he finds them and execute his purpose as best he can.

“But further; the wounds were inflicted near the door, but the body
was on the couch at the other end of the room. We saw, from the
absence of bleeding, that she was dying--in fact, apparently
dead--when she lay down. She must therefore have been carried to the
couch after the wounds were inflicted.

“Then there were the blood-stains. They were all in front, and the
blood had run down vertically. Then she must have been standing
upright while the blood was flowing. Now there were four wounds, and
the first one was mortal. It divided the common carotid artery and the
great veins. On receiving that wound she would ordinarily have fallen
down. But she did not fall, or there would have been a blood-stain
across the neck. Why did she not fall? The obvious suggestion was that
someone was holding her up. This suggestion was confirmed by the
absence of cuts on her hands--which would certainly have been cut if
someone had not been holding them. It was further confirmed by the
rough crumpling of the collar at the back: so rough that the button
was torn off. And we found that button near the door.

“Further, there were the animal hairs. They were on the back only.
There were none on the front--where they would have been if derived
from the animals--or anywhere else. And we learned that she kept no
animals. All these appearances pointed to the presence of two persons,
one of whom stood behind her and held her arms while the other stood
in front and committed the murder. The cloth on the fence supported
this view, being probably derived from two different pairs of
trousers. The character of the wounds made it nearly certain that the
murderer was left-handed.

“While we were returning in the cab, I reflected on these facts and
considered the case generally. First, what was the motive? There was
nothing to suggest robbery, nor was it in the least like a robber’s
crime. What other motive could there be? Well, here was a
comparatively rich woman who had made a will in favour of certain
persons, and she was going to be married. On her marriage the will
would automatically become void, and she was not likely to make
another will so favourable to those persons. Here, then, was a
possible motive, and that motive applied to Ponting, who had actually
uttered threats and was obviously suspect.

“But, apart from those threats, Ponting was not the principal suspect,
for he benefited only slightly under the will. The chief beneficiaries
were the Barnetts, and Miss Fawcett’s death would benefit them, not
only by securing the validity of the will, but by setting the will
into immediate operation. And there were two of them. They therefore
fitted the circumstances better than Ponting did. And when we came to
interview Ponting, he went straight out of the picture. His manuscript
would probably have cleared him--with his editor’s confirmation. But
the other alibi was conclusive.

“What instantly struck me, however, was that Ponting’s alibi was also
an alibi for the Barnetts. But there was this difference: Ponting had
been seen; the Barnetts had only been heard. Now, it has often
occurred to me that a very effective false alibi could be worked with
a gramophone or a phonograph--especially with one on which one can
make one’s own records. This idea now recurred to me; and at once it
was supported by the appearance of an arranged effect. Ponting was
known to be at work. It was practically certain that a blast of
‘music’ would bring him out. Then he would be available, if necessary,
as a witness to prove an alibi. It seemed to be worth while to
investigate.

“When we came to the flat we encountered a man with an injured
hand--the right. It would have been more striking if it had been his
left. But it presently turns out that he is left-handed; which is
still more striking as a coincidence. This man is extraordinarily
ready to answer questions which most persons would have refused to
answer at all. Those answers contain the alibi.

“Then there was the incident of the table-cover--I think you noticed
it. That cover was on the large table when we arrived, but it was
taken off and thrown over something, evidently to conceal it. But I
need not pursue the details. When I had seen the cat, heard the dog,
and then seen the monkey, I determined to see what was under the
table-cover; and finding that it was a phonograph with the cylinder
record still on the drum, I decided to ‘go Nap’ and chance making a
mistake. For until we had tried the record, the alibi remained. If it
had failed, I should have advised Miller to hold a boot parade.
Fortunately we struck the right record and completed the case.”


Mrs. Barnett’s defence was accepted by the magistrate and the charge
against her was dismissed. The other two were committed for trial, and
in due course paid the extreme penalty. “Yet another illustration,”
was Thorndyke’s comment, “of the folly of that kind of criminal who
won’t let well alone, and who will create false clues. If the Barnetts
had not laid down those false tracks, they would probably never have
been suspected. It was their clever alibi that led us straight to
their door.”




 VI.
 PANDORA’S BOX

“I see our friend, S. Chapman, is still a defaulter,” said I, as I
ran my eye over the “personal” column of _The Times_.

Thorndyke looked up interrogatively.

“Chapman?” he repeated; “let me see, who is he?”

“The man with the box. I read you the advertisement the other day.
Here it is again. ‘If the box left in the luggage-room by S. Chapman
is not claimed within a week from this date, it will be sold to defray
expenses.--Alexander Butt, “Red Lion” Hotel, Stoke Varley, Kent.’ That
sounds like an ultimatum; but it has been appearing at intervals for
the last month. As the first notice expired about three weeks ago, the
question is, why doesn’t Mr. Butt sell the box and have done with it?”

“He may have some qualms as to the legality of the proceeding,” said
Thorndyke. “It would be interesting to know what expenses he refers to
and what is the value of the box.”

The latter question was resolved a day or two later by the appearance
in our chambers of an agitated gentleman, who gave his name as George
Chapman. After apologizing for his unannounced visit he explained:

“I have come to you on the advice of my solicitor and on behalf of my
brother, Samuel, who has become involved in a most extraordinary and
horrible set of complications. At present he is in custody of the
police charged with an atrocious murder.”

“That is certainly a rather serious complication,” Thorndyke observed
dryly. “Perhaps you had better give us an account of the
circumstances--the whole set of circumstances, from the beginning.”

“I will,” said Mr. Chapman, “without any reservations. The only
question is, which is the beginning? There are the business and the
domestic affairs. Perhaps I had better begin with the business
concerns. My brother was a sort of travelling agent for a firm of
manufacturing jewellers. He held a stock of the goods, which he used
as samples for large orders, but in the case of small retailers he
actually supplied the goods himself. When travelling, he usually
carried his stock in a small Gladstone bag, but he kept the bulk of it
in a safe in his house, and he used to go home at week-ends, or
oftener, to replenish his travelling stock. Now, about two months ago
he left home on a trip, but instead of taking a selection of his
goods, he took the entire stock in a largish wooden box, leaving the
safe empty. What he meant to do I don’t know, and that’s the fact. I
offer no opinion. The circumstances were peculiar, as you will hear
presently, and his proceedings were peculiar; for he went down to
Stoke Varley--a village not far from Folkestone--put up at the ‘Red
Lion,’ and deposited his box in the luggage-room that is kept for the
use of commercial travellers; and then, after staying there for a few
days, came up to London to make some arrangements for selling or
letting his house--which, it seems, he had decided to leave. He came
up in the evening, and the very next morning the first of his
adventures befell, and a very alarming one it was.

“It appears that, as he was walking down a quiet street, he saw a
lady’s purse lying on the pavement. Naturally he picked it up, and as
it contained nothing to show the name or address of the owner, he put
it in his pocket, intending to hand it in at a police station. Shortly
after this, he got into an omnibus, and a well-dressed woman entered
at the same time and sat down next to him. Just as the conductor was
coming in to collect the fares, the woman began to search her pocket
excitedly, and then, turning to my brother, called on him loudly to
return her purse. Of course, he said that he knew nothing about her
purse, whereupon she roundly accused him of having picked her pocket,
declaring to the conductor that she had felt him take out her purse,
and demanding that the omnibus should be stopped and a policeman
fetched. At this moment a policeman was seen on the pavement. The
conductor stopped the omnibus and hailed the constable, who came, and
having examined the floor of the vehicle without finding the missing
purse, and taken the conductor’s name and number, took my brother into
custody and conducted him and the woman to the police station. Here
the inspector took down from the woman a description of the stolen
purse and its contents, which my brother, to his utter dismay,
recognized as that of the purse which he had picked up and which was
still in his pocket. Immediately, he gave the inspector an account of
the incident and produced the purse; but it is hardly necessary to say
that the inspector refused to take his explanation seriously.

“Then my brother did a thing which was natural enough, but which did
not help him. Seeing that he was practically certain to be
convicted--for there was really no answer to the charge--he gave a
false name and refused his address. He was then locked up in a cell
for the night, and the next morning was brought before the magistrate,
who, having heard the evidence of the woman and the inspector and
having listened without comment to my brother’s story, committed him
for trial at the Central Criminal Court, and refused bail. He was then
removed to Brixton, where he was detained for nearly a month, pending
the opening of the sessions.

“At length the day of his trial drew near. But it was then found that
the woman who had accused him had left her lodgings and could not be
traced. As there was no one to prosecute, and as the disappearance of
the woman put a rather new light upon my brother’s story, the case
against him was allowed to drop, and he was released.

“He went home by train, and at the station he bought a copy of _The
Times_ to read on the way. Before opening it he chanced to run his eye
over the ‘personal’ column, and there his attention was arrested by
his own name in an advertisement----”

“Relating to a box?” said I.

“Precisely. Then you have seen it. Well, considering the value of the
contents of that box, he was naturally rather anxious. At once he sent
off a telegram saying that he would call on the following day before
noon to claim the box and pay what was owing. And he did so. Yesterday
morning he took an early train down to Stoke Varley and went straight
to the ‘Red Lion.’ On his arrival he was asked to step into the
coffee-room, which he did; and there he found three police officers,
who forthwith arrested him on a charge of murder. But before going
into the particulars of that charge, I had better give you an account
of his domestic affairs, on which this incredible and horrible
accusation turns.

“My brother, I am sorry to say, was living with a woman who was not
his wife. He had originally intended to marry her, but his association
with her--which lasted over several years--did not encourage that
intention. She was a terrible woman, and she led him a terrible life.
Her temper was ungovernable; and when she had taken too much to
drink--which was a pretty frequent occurrence--she was not only noisy
and quarrelsome, but physically violent as well. Her antecedents were
disreputable--she had been connected with the seamy side of the
music-hall stage; her associations were disreputable; she brought
questionable women to my brother’s house; she consorted with men of
doubtful character, and her relations with them were equally doubtful.
Indeed, with one of them, a man named Gamble, I should say that her
relations were not doubtful at all, though I understand he was a
married man.

“Well, my brother put up with her for years, living a life that cut
him off from all decent society. But at last his patience gave way
(and I may add that he made the acquaintance of a very desirable lady,
who was willing to condone his past and marry him if he could secure a
possible future). After a particularly outrageous scene, he ordered
the woman--Rebecca Mings was her name--out of the house and declared
their relationship at an end.

“But she refused to be shaken off. She kept possession of the
street-door key, and she returned again and again, and made a public
scandal. The last time she created such an uproar when the door was
bolted against her that a crowd collected in the street and my brother
was forced to let her in. She stayed with him some hours, alone in the
house--for the only servant he had was a ‘daily girl’ who left at
three o’clock--and went away quite quietly about ten at night. But,
although a good many people saw her go into the house, no one but my
brother seems to have seen her leave it; a most disastrous
circumstance, for, from the moment when she left the house, no one
ever saw her again. She did not go to her lodgings that night. She
disappeared utterly--until--but I must go back now to the ‘Red Lion’
at Stoke Varley.

“When my brother was arrested on the charge of having murdered Rebecca
Mings, certain particulars were given to him; and when I went down
there in response to a telegram, I gathered some more. The
circumstances are these: About a fortnight after my brother had left
to come to London, some of the ‘commercials’ who used the luggage-room
complained of an unpleasant odour in it, which was presently traced to
my brother’s box. As that box appeared to have been abandoned, the
landlord became suspicious, and communicated with the police. They
telephoned to the London police, who found my brother’s house shut up
and his whereabouts unknown. Thereupon the local police broke open the
box and found in it a woman’s left arm and a quantity of blood-stained
clothing. On which they caused the advertisement to be put in _The
Times_, and meanwhile they made certain inquiries. It appeared that my
brother had spent part of his time at Stoke Varley fishing in the
little river. On learning this, the police proceeded to dredge the
river, and presently they brought up a right arm--apparently the
fellow of the one found in the box--and a leg divided into three
parts, evidently a woman’s. Now, as to the arm found in the box, there
could be no question about its identity, for it bore a very distinct
tattooed inscription consisting of the initials R.M. above a heart
transfixed by an arrow, with the initials J.B. underneath. A few
inquiries elicited the fact that the woman, Rebecca Mings, who had
disappeared, bore such a tattooed mark on her left arm; and certain
persons who had known her, having been sworn to secrecy, were shown
the arm, and recognized the mark without hesitation. Further inquiries
showed that Rebecca Mings was last seen alive entering my brother’s
house, as I have described; and on this information, the police broke
into the house and searched it.”

“Do you know if they found anything?” Thorndyke asked.

“I don’t,” replied Chapman, “but I infer that they did. The police at
Stoke Varley were very courteous and kind, but they declined to give
any particulars about the visit to the house. However, we shall hear
at the inquest if they made any discoveries.”

“And is that all that you have to tell us?” asked Thorndyke.

“Yes,” was the reply, “and enough, too. I make no comment on my
brother’s story, and I won’t ask whether you believe it. I don’t
expect you to. The question is whether you would undertake the
defence. I suppose it isn’t necessary for a lawyer to be convinced of
his client’s innocence in order to convince the jury.”

“You are thinking of an advocate,” said Thorndyke. “I am not an
advocate, and I should not defend a man whom I believed to be guilty.
The most that I can do is to investigate the case. If the result of
the investigation is to confirm the suspicions against your brother, I
shall go no farther in the case. You will have to get an ordinary
criminal barrister to defend your brother. If, on the other hand, I
find reasonable grounds for believing him innocent, I will undertake
the defence. What do you say to that?”

“I’ve no choice,” replied Chapman; “and I suppose, if you find all the
evidence against him, the defence won’t matter much.”

“I am afraid that is so,” said Thorndyke. “And now there are one or
two questions to be cleared up. First, does your brother offer any
explanation of the presence of these remains in his box?”

“He supposes that somebody at the ‘Red Lion’ must have taken the
jewellery out and put the remains in. Anyone could get access to the
luggage-room by asking for the key at the office.”

“Well,” said Thorndyke, “that is conceivable. Then, as to the person
who might have made this exchange. Is there anyone who had any reason
for wishing to make away with deceased?”

“No,” replied Chapman. “Plenty of people disliked her, but no one but
my brother had any motive for getting rid of her.”

“You spoke of a man with whom she was on somewhat intimate terms.
There had been no quarrel or breach there, I suppose?”

“The man, Gamble, you mean. No, I should say they were the best of
friends. Besides, Gamble had no responsibilities in regard to her. He
could have dropped her whenever he was tired of her.”

“Do you know anything about him?” Thorndyke asked.

“Very little. He has been a rolling stone, and has been in all sorts
of jobs, I believe. He was in the New Zealand trade for some time and
dealt in all sorts of things--among others, in smoked human heads;
sold them to collectors and museums, I understand. So he would have
had some previous experience,” Chapman added with a faint grin.

“Not in dismemberment,” said Thorndyke. “Those will have been ancient
Maori heads--relics of the old head hunters. There are some in the
Hunterian Museum. But, as you say, there seems to be no motive in
Gamble’s case, even if there had been the opportunity; whereas, in
your brother’s case, there seems to have been both the motive and the
opportunity. I suppose your brother never threatened the deceased?”

“I am sorry to say he did,” replied Chapman. “On several occasions,
and before witnesses, too, he threatened to put her out of the way. Of
course he never meant it--he was really the mildest of men. But it was
a foolish thing to do and most unfortunate, as things have turned
out.”

“Well,” said Thorndyke, “I will look into the matter and let you know
what I think of it. It is unnecessary to remark that appearances are
not very encouraging.”

“No, I can see that,” said Chapman, rising and producing his
card-case. “But we must hope for the best.” He laid his card on the
table, and having shaken hands with us gloomily, took his departure.

“It doesn’t do to take things at their face value,” I remarked, when
he had gone; “but I don’t think we have ever had a more
hopeless-looking case. All it wants to complete it is the discovery of
remains in Chapman’s house.”

“In that respect,” said Thorndyke, “it may already be complete. But it
hardly wants that finishing touch. On the evidence that we have, any
jury would find a verdict of ‘guilty’ without leaving the box. The
only question for us is whether the face value of the evidence is its
real value. If it is, the defence will be a mere formality.”

“I suppose,” said I, “you will begin the investigation at Stoke
Varley?”

“Yes,” he replied. “We begin by checking the alleged facts. If they
are really as stated, we shall probably need to go no farther. And we
had better lose no time, as the remains may be moved into the
jurisdiction of a London coroner, and we ought to see everything _in
situ_ as far as possible. I suggest that we postpone the rest of
to-day’s business and start at once, taking Scotland Yard on the way
to get authority to inspect the remains and the premises.”

In a few minutes we were ready for the expedition. While Thorndyke
packed the “research-case” with the necessary instruments, I gave
instructions to our laboratory assistant, Polton, as to what was to be
done in our absence, and then, when we had consulted the time-table,
we set forth by way of the Embankment.

At Scotland Yard, on inquiring for our friend, Superintendent Miller,
we received the slightly unwelcome news that he was at Stoke Varley,
inquiring into the case. However, the authorization was given readily
enough, and, armed with this, we made our way to Charing Cross
Station, arriving there in good time to catch our train.

We had just given up our tickets and turned out into the pleasant
station approach of Stoke Varley when Thorndyke gave a soft chuckle. I
looked at him inquiringly, and he explained: “Miller has had a
telegram, and we are going to have facilities, with a little
supervision.” Following the direction of his glance, I now observed
the superintendent strolling towards us, trying to look surprised, but
achieving only a somewhat sheepish grin.

“Well, I’m sure, gentlemen!” he exclaimed. “This is an unexpected
pleasure. You don’t mean to say you are engaged in this treasure-trove
case?”

“Why not?” asked Thorndyke.

“Well, I’ll tell you why not,” replied Miller. “Because it’s no go.
You’ll only waste your time and injure your reputation. I may as well
let you know, in confidence, that we’ve been through Chapman’s house
in London. It wasn’t very necessary; but still, if there was a vacancy
in his coffin for one or two more nails, we’ve knocked them in.”

“What did you find in his house?” Thorndyke asked.

“We found,” replied Miller, “in a cupboard in his bedroom, a
good-sized bottle of hyoscine tablets, about two-thirds
full--one-third missing. No great harm in that; he might have taken
’em himself. But when we went down into the cellar, we noticed that
the place smelt--well, a bit graveyardy, so to speak. So we had a look
round. It was a stone-floored cellar, not very even, but so far as we
could see, none of the flagstones seemed to have been disturbed. We
didn’t want the job of digging the whole of them up, so I just filled
a bucket with water and poured it over the floor. Then I watched.

“In less than a minute one big flagstone near the middle went nearly
dry, while the water still stood on all the others. ‘What O!’ says I.
‘Loose earth underneath here.’ So we got a crow-bar and prised up that
big flag; and sure enough, underneath it we found a good-sized bundle
done up in a sheet. I won’t go into unpleasant particulars--not that
it would upset you, I suppose--but that bundle contained human
remains.”

“Any bones?” inquired Thorndyke.

“No. Mostly in’ards and some skin from the front of the body. We
handed them over to the Home Office experts, and they examined them
and made an analysis. Their report states that the remains are those
of a woman of about thirty-five--that was about Mings’ age--and that
the various organs contained a large quantity of hyoscine; more than
enough to have caused death. So there you are. If you are going to
conduct the defence, you won’t get much glory from it.”

“It is very good of you, Miller,” said Thorndyke, “to have given us
this private information. It is very helpful, though I have not
undertaken the defence. I have merely come down to check the facts and
see if there is any material for a defence. And I shall go through the
routine, as I am here. Where are the remains?”

“In the mortuary. I’ll show you the way, and as I happen to have the
key in my pocket, I can let you in.”

We passed through the outskirts of the village--gathering a small
train of stealthy followers, who dogged us to the door of the mortuary
and hungrily watched us as the superintendent let us in and locked the
door after us.

“There you are,” said Miller, indicating the slate table on which the
remains lay, covered by a sheet soaked in an antiseptic. “I’ve seen
all I want to see.” And he retired into a corner and lit his pipe.

The remnants of mortality, disclosed by the removal of the sheet, were
dreadfully suggestive of crime in its most brutal and horrible form,
but they offered little information. The dismemberment had been
manifestly rude and unskilful, and the remains were clearly those of a
woman of medium size and apparently in the prime of life. The
principal interest centred in the left arm, the waxen skin of which
bore a very distinct tattoo-mark, consisting of the initials R.M. over
a very symmetrical heart, transfixed by an arrow, beneath which were
the initials J.B. The letters were Roman capitals about half an inch
high, well-formed and finished with serifs, and the heart and arrow
quite well drawn. I looked reflectively at the device, standing out in
dull blue from its ivory-like background, and speculated vaguely as to
whom J.B. might have been and how many predecessors and successors he
had had. And then my interest waned, and I joined the superintendent
in the corner. It was a sordid case, and a conviction being a foregone
conclusion, it did not seem to call for further attention.

Thorndyke, however, seemed to think otherwise. But that was his way.
When he was engaged in an investigation he put out of his mind
everything that he had been told and began from the very beginning.
That was what he was doing now. He was inspecting these remains as if
they had been the remains of some unidentified person. He made, and
noted down, minute measurements of the limbs; he closely examined
every square inch of surface; he scrutinized each finger separately,
and then with the aid of his portable inking-plate and roller, took a
complete set of finger-prints. He measured all the dimensions of the
tattoo-marks with a delicate calliper-gauge, and then examined the
marks themselves, first with a common lens and then with the
high-power Coddington. The principles that he laid down in his
lectures at the hospital were: “Accept no statement without
verification; observe every fact independently for yourselves; and
keep an open mind.” And, certainly, no one ever carried out more
conscientiously his own precepts.

“Do you know, Dr. Jervis,” the superintendent whispered to me as
Thorndyke brought his Coddington to bear on the tattoo-marks, “I
believe this lens business is becoming a habit with the doctor. It’s
my firm conviction that if somebody were to blow up the Houses of
Parliament, he’d go and examine the ruins through a magnifying glass.
Just look at him poring over those tattooed letters that you could
read plainly twenty feet away!”

Meanwhile, Thorndyke, unconscious of these criticisms, placidly
continued his inspection. From the table, with its gruesome burden, he
transferred his attention to the box, which had been placed on a bench
by the window, examining it minutely inside and out; feeling with his
fingers the dark grey paint with which it was coated and the
white-painted initials, “S.C.,” on the lid, which he also measured
carefully. He even copied into his note-book the maker’s name, which
was stamped on a small brass label affixed to the inside of the lid,
and the name of the lock-maker, and inspected the screws which had
drawn from the wood when it was forced open. At length he put away his
note-book, closed the research-case and announced that he had
finished, adding the inquiry: “How do you get to the ‘Red Lion’ from
here?”

“It’s only a few minutes’ walk,” said Miller. “I’ll show you the way.
But you’re wasting your time, doctor, you are indeed. You see,” he
continued, when he had locked up the mortuary and pocketed the key,
“that suggestion of Chapman’s is ridiculous on the face of it. Just
imagine a man bringing a portmanteau full of human remains into the
luggage-room of a commercial hotel, opening it and opening another
man’s box, and swapping the contents of the one for the other with the
chance of one of the commercials coming in at any moment. Supposing
one of ’em had, what would he have had to say? ‘Hallo!’ says the
baggy, ‘you seem to have got somebody’s arm in your box.’ ‘So I have,’
says Chapman. ‘I expect it’s my wife’s. Careless woman! must have
dropped it in when she was packing the box.’ Bah! It’s a fool’s
explanation. Besides, how could he have got Chapman’s box open? We
couldn’t. It was a first-class lock. We had to break it open, but it
hadn’t been broken open before. No, sir, that cat won’t jump. Still,
you needn’t take my word for it. Here is the place, and here is Mr.
Butt, himself, standing at his own front door looking as pleasant as
the flowers in May, like the lump of sugar that you put in a fly-trap
to induce ’em to walk in.”

The landlord, who had overheard--without difficulty--the concluding
passage of Miller’s peroration, smiled genially; and when the purpose
of the visit had been explained, suggested a “modest quencher” in the
private parlour as an aid to conversation.

“I wanted,” said Thorndyke, waiving the suggestion of the “quencher,”
“to ascertain whether Chapman’s theory of an exchange of contents
could be seriously entertained.”

“Well, sir,” said the landlord, “the fact is that it couldn’t. That
room is a public room, and people may be popping in there at any time
all day. We don’t usually keep it locked. It isn’t necessary. We know
most of our customers, and the contents of the packages that are
stowed in the room are principally travellers’ samples of no
considerable value. The thing would have been impossible in the
daytime, and we lock the room up at night.”

“Have you had any strangers staying with you in the interval between
Chapman’s going away and the discovery of the remains?”

“Yes. There was a Mr. Doler; he had two cabin trunks and a uniform
case which went to the luggage-room. And then there was a lady, Mrs.
Murchison. She had a lot of stuff in there: a small, flat trunk, a
hat-box, and a big dress-basket--one of these great basket
pantechnicons that ladies take about with them. And there was another
gentleman--I forget his name, but you will see it in the visitors’
book--he had a couple of largish portmanteaux in there. Perhaps you
would like to see the book?”

“I should,” said Thorndyke; and when the book was produced and the
names of the guests pointed out, he copied the entries into his
note-book, adding the particulars of their luggage.

“And now, sir,” said Miller, “I suppose you won’t be happy until
you’ve seen the room itself?”

“Your insight is really remarkable, superintendent,” my colleague
replied. “Yes, I should like to see the room.”

There was little enough to see, however, when we arrived there. The
key was in the door, and the latter was not only unlocked but stood
ajar; and when we pushed it open and entered we saw a small room,
empty save for a collection of portmanteaux, trunks, and Gladstone
bags. The only noteworthy fact was that it was at the end of a
corridor, covered with linoleum, so that anyone inside would have a
few seconds’ notice of another person’s approach. But evidently that
would have been of little use in the alleged circumstances. For the
hypothetical criminal must have emptied Chapman’s box of the jewellery
before he could put the incriminating objects into it; so that, apart
from the latter, the arrival of an inopportune visitor would have
found him apparently in the act of committing a robbery. The
suggestion was obviously absurd.

“By the way,” said Thorndyke, as we descended the stairs, “where is
the central character of this drama--Chapman? He is not here, I
suppose?”

“Yes, he is,” replied Miller. “He is committed for trial, but we are
keeping him here until we know where the inquest is to be held. You
would probably like to have a few words with him? Well, I’ll take you
along to the police station and tell them who you are, and then
perhaps you would like to come back here and have some lunch or dinner
before you return to town.”

I warmly seconded the latter proposal, and the arrangement having been
made, we set forth for the police station, which we gathered from
Miller was incorporated with a small local prison. Here we were shown
into what appeared to be a private office, and presently a sergeant
entered, ushering in a man whom we at once recognized from his
resemblance to our client, Mr. George Chapman, disguised though it was
by his pallor, his unshaven face, and his air of abject misery. The
sergeant, having announced him by name, withdrew with the
superintendent and locked the door on the outside. As soon as we were
alone, Thorndyke rapidly acquainted the prisoner with the
circumstances of his brother’s visit and then continued:

“Now, Mr. Chapman, you want me to undertake your defence. If I do so,
I must have all the facts. If there is anything known to you that your
brother has not told me, I ask you to tell it to me without
reservation.”

Chapman shook his head wearily.

“I know nothing more than you know,” said he. “The whole affair is a
mystery that I can make nothing of. I don’t expect you to believe me.
Who would, with all this evidence against me? But I swear to God that
I know nothing of this abominable crime. When I brought that box down
here, it contained my stock of jewellery and nothing else; and after I
put it in the luggage-room, I never opened it.”

“Do you know of anybody who might have had a motive for getting rid of
Rebecca Mings?”

“Not a soul,” replied Chapman. “She led me the devil’s own life, but
she was popular enough with her own friends. And she was an attractive
woman in her way: a fine, well-built woman, rather big--she stood
five-feet-seven--with a good complexion and very handsome golden hair.
Such as her friends were--they were a shady lot--I think they were
fond of her, and I don’t believe she had any enemies.”

“Some hyoscine was found in your house,” said Thorndyke. “Do you know
anything about it?”

“Yes. I got it when I suffered from neuralgia. But I never took any.
My doctor heard about it and sent me to the dentist. The bottle was
never opened. It contained a hundred tablets.”

“And with regard to the box,” said Thorndyke. “Had you had it long?”

“Not very long. I bought it at Fletchers, in Holborn, about six months
ago.”

“And you have nothing more to tell us?”

“No,” he replied. “I wish I had;” and then, after a pause, he asked
with a wistful look at Thorndyke: “Are you going to undertake my
defence, sir? I can see that there is very little hope, but I should
like to be given just a chance.”

I glanced at Thorndyke, expecting at the most a cautious and
conditional reply. To my astonishment he answered:

“There is no need to take such a gloomy view of the case, Mr. Chapman.
I shall undertake the defence, and I think you have quite a fair
chance of an acquittal.”

On this amazing reply I reflected, not without some self-condemnation,
during our walk to the hotel and the meal that preceded our departure.
For it was evident that I had missed something vital. Thorndyke was a
cautious man and little given to making promises or forecasts of
results. He must have picked up some evidence of a very conclusive
kind; but what that evidence could be, I found it impossible to
imagine. The superintendent, too, was puzzled, I could see, for
Thorndyke made no secret of his intention to go on with the case. But
Miller’s delicate attempts to pump him came to nothing; and when he
had escorted us to the station and our train moved off, I could see
him standing on the platform, gently scratching the back of his head
and gazing speculatively at our retreating carriage.

As soon as we were clear of the station, I opened my attack.

“What on earth,” I demanded, “did you mean by giving that poor devil,
Chapman, hopes of acquittal? I can’t see that he has a dog’s chance.”

Thorndyke looked at me gravely.

“My impression is, Jervis,” he said, “that you have not kept an open
mind in this case. You have allowed yourself to fall under the
suggestive influence of the obvious; whereas the function of the
investigator is to consider the possible alternatives of the obvious
inference. And you have not brought your usual keen attention to bear
on the facts. If you had considered George Chapman’s statement
attentively, you would have noticed that it contained some very
curious and significant suggestions; and if you had examined those
dismembered remains critically, you would have seen that they
confirmed those suggestions in a very remarkable manner.”

“As to George Chapman’s statement,” said I, “the only suggestive point
that I recall is the reference to those Maori heads. But, as you,
yourself, pointed out, the dealers in those heads don’t do the
dismemberment.”

Thorndyke shook his head a little impatiently.

“Tut, tut, Jervis,” said he, “that isn’t the point at all. Any fool
can cut up a dead body as this one has been cut up. The point is that
that statement, carefully considered, yields a definite and consistent
alternative to the theory that Samuel Chapman killed this woman and
dismembered her body; and that alternative theory is supported by the
appearance of these remains. I think you will see the point if you
recall Chapman’s statement, and reflect on the possible bearing of the
various incidents that he described.”

In this, however, Thorndyke was unduly optimistic. I recalled the
statement completely enough, and reflected on it frequently and
profoundly during the next few days; but the more I thought of it the
more conclusive did the case against the accused appear.

Meanwhile, my colleague appeared to be taking no steps in the matter,
and I assumed that he was waiting for the inquest. It is true that,
when, on one occasion, he had accompanied me towards the City, and
leaving me in Queen Victoria Street disappeared into the premises of
Messrs. Burden Brothers, lock manufacturers, I was inclined to
associate his proceedings with his minute examination of the lock at
Stoke Varley. And, again, when our laboratory assistant, Polton, was
seen to issue forth, top-hatted and armed with an umbrella and an
attaché-case, I suspected some sort of “private inquiries,” possibly
connected with the case. But from Thorndyke I could get no information
at all. My tentative “pumpings” elicited one unvarying reply. “You
have the facts, Jervis. You heard George Chapman’s statement, and you
have seen the remains. Give me a reasonable theory and I will discuss
it with pleasure.” And that was how the matter remained. I had no
reasonable theory--other than that of the police--and there was
accordingly no discussion.

On a certain evening, a couple of days before the inquest--which had
been postponed in the hope that some further remains might be
discovered--I observed signs of an expected visitor: a small table
placed by the supernumerary arm-chair and furnished with a tray
bearing a siphon, a whisky-decanter and a box of cigars. Thorndyke
caught my inquiring glance at these luxuries, for which neither of us
had any use, and proceeded to explain.

“I have asked Miller to look in this evening--he is due now. I have
been working at this Chapman case, and as it is now complete, I
propose to lay my cards on the table.”

“Is that safe?” said I. “Supposing the police still go for a
conviction and try to forestall your evidence?”

“They won’t,” he replied. “They couldn’t. And it would be most
improper to let the case go for trial on a false theory. But here is
Miller; and a mighty twitter he is in, I have no doubt.”

He was. Without even waiting for the customary cigar, he plumped down
into the chair, and dragging a letter from his pocket, fixed a glare
of astonishment on my placid colleague.

“This letter of yours, sir,” said he, “is perfectly incomprehensible
to me. You say that you are prepared to put us in possession of the
facts of this Chapman case. But we are in possession of the facts
already. We are absolutely certain of a conviction. Let me remind you,
sir, of what those facts are. We have got a dead body which has been
identified beyond all doubt. Part of that body was found in a box
which is the property of Samuel Chapman, which was brought by him and
deposited by him at the ‘Red Lion’ Hotel. Another part of that body
was found in his dwelling-house. A supply of poison--an uncommon
poison, too--similar to that which killed the dead person, has also
been found in his house; and the dead body is that of a woman with
whom Chapman was known to be on terms of enmity and whom he has
threatened, in the presence of witnesses, to kill. Now, sir, what have
you got to say to those facts?”

Thorndyke regarded the agitated detective with a quiet smile. “My
comments, Miller,” said he, “can be put in a nut-shell. You have got
the wrong man, you have got the wrong box, and you have got the wrong
body.”

The superintendent was thunderstruck, and no wonder. So was I. As to
Miller, he drew himself forward until he was sitting on the extreme
edge of the chair, and for some moments stared at my impassive
colleague in speechless amazement. At length he burst out:

“But, my dear sir! This is sheer nonsense--at least, that’s what it
sounds like, though I know it can’t be. Let’s begin with the body. You
say it’s the wrong one.”

“Yes. Rebecca Mings was a biggish woman. Her height was
five-feet-seven. This woman was not more than five-feet-four.”

“Bah!” exclaimed Miller. “You can’t judge to an inch or two from parts
of a dismembered body. You are forgetting the tattoo-mark. That
clenches the identity beyond any possible doubt.”

“It does, indeed,” said Thorndyke. “That is the crucial evidence.
Rebecca Mings had a certain tattoo-mark on her left forearm. This
woman had not.”

“Had not!” shrieked Miller, coming yet farther forward on his chair.
(I expected, every moment, to see him sitting on the floor.) “Why, I
saw it; and so did you.”

“I am speaking of the woman, not of the body,” said Thorndyke. “The
mark that you saw was a post-mortem tattoo-mark. It was made after
death. But the fact that it was made after death is good evidence that
it was not there during life.”

“Moses!” exclaimed the superintendent. “This is a facer. Are you
perfectly sure it was done after death?”

“Quite sure. The appearance, through a powerful lens, is unmistakable.
Tattoo-marks are made, as you know, of course, by painting Indian ink
on the skin and pricking it in with fine needles. In the living skin
the needle wounds heal up at once and disappear, but in the dead skin
the needle-holes remain unclosed and can be easily seen with a lens.
In this case the skin had been well washed and the surface pressed
with some smooth object; but the holes were plainly visible and the
ink was still in them.”

“Well, I’m sure!” said Miller. “I never heard of tattooing a dead body
before.”

“Very few people have, I expect,” said Thorndyke. “But there is one
class of persons who know all about it: the persons who deal in Maori
heads.”

“Indeed?” queried Miller. “How does it concern them?”

“Those heads are usually elaborately tattooed, and the value of a head
depends on the quality of the tattooing. Now, when those heads became
objects of trade, the dealers conceived the idea of touching up
defective specimens by additional tattooing on the dead head, and from
this they proceeded to obtain heads which had no tattoo-marks, and
turn them into tattooed heads.”

“Well, to be sure,” said the superintendent, with a grin, “what wicked
men there are in the world, aren’t there, Dr. Jervis?”

I murmured a vague assent, but I was principally conscious of a desire
to kick myself for having failed to pick this invaluable clue out of
George Chapman’s statement.

“And now,” said Miller, “we come to the box. How do you know it is the
wrong one?”

“That,” replied Thorndyke, “is proved even more conclusively. The
original box was made by Fletchers, in Holborn. It was sold to
Chapman, and his initials painted on it, on the 9th of last April. I
have seen the entry in the day-book. The locks of these boxes are made
by Burden Brothers of Queen Victoria Street, and as they are quite
high-class locks each is given a registered number, which is stamped
on the lock. The number on the lock of the box that you have is 5007,
and Burden’s books show that it was made and sold to Fletchers about
the middle of July--the sale was dated the 13th. Therefore this cannot
be Chapman’s box.”

“Apparently not,” Miller agreed. “But whose box is it? And what has
become of Chapman’s box?”

“That,” replied Thorndyke, “was presumably taken away in Mrs.
Murchison’s dress-basket.”

“Then who the deuce is Mrs. Murchison?” demanded the superintendent.

“I should say,” replied Thorndyke, “that she was formerly known as
Rebecca Mings.”

“The deceased!” exclaimed Miller, falling back in his chair with a
guffaw. “My eye! What a lark it is! But she must have some sauce, to
walk off with the jewellery and leave her own dismembered remains in
exchange! By the way, whose remains are they?”

“We shall come to that presently,” Thorndyke answered. “Now we have to
consider the man you have in custody.”

“Yes,” agreed Miller, “we must settle about him. Of course if it isn’t
his box, and the body isn’t Mings’ body, that puts him out of it so
far. But there are those remains that we dug up in his cellar. What
about them?”

“That question,” replied Thorndyke, “will, I think, be answered by a
general review of the case. But I must remind you that if the box is
not Chapman’s, it is some other person’s; that is to say, that if
Chapman goes out of the case, as to the Stoke Varley incidents,
someone else comes in. So, if the body is not Mings’ body, it is some
other woman’s, and that other woman must have disappeared. And now let
us review the case as a whole.

“You know about the pocket-picking charge. It was obviously a false
charge, deliberately prepared by ‘planting’ the purse; that is, it was
a conspiracy. Now what was the object of this conspiracy? Clearly it
was to get Chapman out of the way while the boxes were exchanged at
Stoke Varley, and the remains deposited in the river and elsewhere.
Then who were the conspirators--other than the agent who planted the
purse?

“They--if there were more than one--must have had access to Mings,
dead or alive, in order to make the exact copy, or tracing, of her
tattoo-mark. They must have had some knowledge of the process of
post-mortem tattooing. They must have had access to Chapman’s house.
And, since they had in their possession the dead body of a woman, they
must have been associated with some woman who has disappeared.

“Who is there who answers this description? Well, of course, Mings had
access to herself, though she could hardly have taken a tracing from
her own arm, and she had access to Chapman’s house, since she had
possession of the latch-key. Then there is a man named Gamble, with
whom Mings was on terms of great intimacy. Now Gamble was formerly a
dealer in tattoed Maori heads, so he may be assumed to know something
about post-mortem tattooing. And I have ascertained that Gamble’s wife
has disappeared from her usual places of resort. So here are two
persons who, together, agree with the description of the conspirators.
And now let us consider the train of events in connexion with the
dates.

“On July the 29th Chapman came to town from Stoke Varley. On the 30th
he was arrested as a pickpocket. On the 31st he was committed for
trial. On the 2nd of August Mrs. Gamble went away to the country. No
one seems to have seen her go, but that is the date on which she is
reported to have gone. On August the 5th Mrs. Murchison deposited at
Stoke Varley a box which must have been purchased between the 13th of
July and the 4th of August, and which contained a woman’s arm. On the
14th of August that box was opened by the police. On the 18th human
remains were discovered in Chapman’s house. On the 27th Chapman was
released from Brixton. On the 28th he was arrested for murder at Stoke
Varley. I think, Miller, you will agree that that is a very striking
succession of dates.”

“Yes,” Miller agreed. “It looks like a true bill. If you will give me
Mr. Gamble’s address, I’ll call on him.”

“I’m afraid you won’t find him at home,” said Thorndyke. “He has gone
into the country, too; and I gather from his landlord, who holds a
returned cheque, that Mr. Gamble’s banking account has gone into the
country with him.”

“Then,” said the superintendent, “I suppose I must take a trip into
the country, too.”


“Well, Thorndyke,” I said, as I laid down the paper containing the
report of the trial of Gamble and Mings for the murder of Theresa
Gamble, one morning about four months later, “you ought to be very
highly gratified. After sentencing Gamble to death and Mings to
fifteen years’ penal servitude, the judge took the opportunity to
compliment the police on their ingenuity in unravelling this crime,
and the Home Office experts on their skill in detecting the
counterfeit tattoo-marks. What do you think of that?”

“I think,” replied Thorndyke, “that his lordship showed a very proper
and appreciative spirit.”




 VII.
 THE TRAIL OF BEHEMOTH

Of all the minor dissipations in which temperate men indulge there
is none, I think, more alluring than the after-breakfast pipe. I had
just lit mine and was standing before the fire with the unopened paper
in my hand when my ear caught the sound of hurried footsteps ascending
the stair. Now experience has made me somewhat of a connoisseur in
footsteps. A good many are heard on our stair, heralding the advent of
a great variety of clients, and I have learned to distinguish those
which are premonitory of urgent cases. Such I judged the present ones
to be, and my judgment was confirmed by a hasty, importunate tattoo on
our small brass knocker. Regretfully taking the much-appreciated pipe
from my mouth, I crossed the room and threw the door open.

“Good morning, Dr. Jervis,” said our visitor, a barrister whom I knew
slightly. “Is your colleague at home?”

“No, Mr. Bidwell,” I replied. “I am sorry to say he is out of town. He
won’t be back until the day after to-morrow.”

Mr. Bidwell was visibly disappointed.

“Ha! Pity!” he exclaimed; and then with quick tact he added: “But
still, you are here. It comes to the same thing.”

“I don’t know about that,” said I. “But, at any rate, I am at your
service.”

“Thank you,” said he. “And in that case I will ask you to come round
with me at once to Tanfield Court. A most shocking thing has happened.
My old friend and neighbour, Giles Herrington, has been--well, he is
dead--died suddenly, and I think there can be no doubt that he was
killed. Can you come now? I will give you the particulars as we go.”

I scribbled a hasty note to say where I had gone, and having laid it
on the table, got my hat and set forth with Mr. Bidwell.

“It has only just been discovered,” said he, as we crossed King’s
Bench Walk. “The laundress who does his chambers and mine was
battering at my door when I arrived--I don’t live in the Temple, you
know. She was as pale as a ghost and in an awful state of alarm and
agitation. It seems that she had gone up to Herrington’s chambers to
get his breakfast ready as usual; but when she went into the
sitting-room she found him lying dead on the floor. Thereupon she
rushed down to my chambers--I am usually an early bird--and there I
found her, as I said, battering at my door, although she has a key.

“Well, I went up with her to my friend’s chambers--they are on the
first floor, just over mine--and there, sure enough, was poor old
Giles lying on the floor, cold and stiff. Evidently he had been lying
there all night.”

“Were there any marks of violence on the body?” I asked.

“I didn’t notice any,” he replied, “but I didn’t look very closely.
What I did notice was that the place was all in disorder--a chair
overturned and things knocked off the table. It was pretty evident
that there had been a struggle and that he had not met his death by
fair means.”

“And what do you want us to do?” I asked.

“Well,” he replied, “I was Herrington’s friend; about the only friend
he had, for he was not an amiable or a sociable man; and I am the
executor of his will.

“Appearances suggest very strongly that he has been murdered, and I
take it upon myself to see that his murderer is brought to account.
Our friendship seems to demand that. Of course, the police will go
into the affair, and if it turns out to be all plain sailing, there
will be nothing for you to do. But the murderer, if there is one, has
got to be secured and convicted, and if the police can’t manage it, I
want you and Thorndyke to see the case through. This is the place.”

He hurried in through the entry and up the stairs to the first-floor
landing, where he rapped loudly at the closed “oak” of a set of
chambers above which was painted the name of “Mr. Giles Herrington.”

After an interval, during which Mr. Bidwell repeated the summons, the
massive door opened and a familiar face looked out: the face of
Inspector Badger of the Criminal Investigation Department. The
expression that it bore was not one of welcome, and my experience of
the inspector caused me to brace myself up for the inevitable contest.

“What is your business?” he inquired forbiddingly.

Mr. Bidwell took the question to himself and replied:

“I am Mr. Herrington’s executor, and in that capacity I have
instructed Dr. Jervis and his colleague, Dr. Thorndyke, to watch the
case on my behalf. I take it that you are a police officer?”

“I am,” replied Badger, “and I can’t admit any unauthorized persons to
these chambers.”

“We are not unauthorized persons,” said Mr. Bidwell. “We are here on
legitimate business. Do I understand that you refuse admission to the
legal representatives of the deceased man?”

In the face of Mr. Bidwell’s firm and masterful attitude, Badger
began, as usual, to weaken. Eventually, having warned us to convey no
information to anybody, he grudgingly opened the door and admitted us.

“I have only just arrived, myself,” he said. “I happened to be in the
porter’s lodge on other business when the laundress came and gave the
alarm.”

As I stepped into the room and looked round, I saw at a glance the
clear indications of a crime. The place was in the utmost disorder.
The cloth had been dragged from the table, littering the floor with
broken glass, books, a tobacco jar, and various other objects. A chair
sprawled on its back, the fender was dislodged from its position, the
hearth-rug was all awry; and in the midst of the wreckage, on the
space of floor between the table and the fireplace, the body of a man
was stretched in a not uneasy posture.

I stooped over him and looked him over searchingly; an elderly man,
clean-shaved and slightly bald, with a grim, rather forbidding
countenance, which was not, however, distorted or apparently unusual
in expression. There were no obvious injuries, but the crumpled state
of the collar caused me to look more closely at the throat and neck,
and I then saw pretty plainly a number of slightly discoloured marks,
such as would be made by fingers tightly grasping the throat.
Evidently Badger had already observed them, for he remarked:

“There’s no need to ask you what he died of, doctor; I can see that
for myself.”

“The actual cause of death,” said I, “is not quite evident. He doesn’t
appear to have died from suffocation, but those are very unmistakable
marks on the throat.”

“Uncommonly,” agreed Badger; “and they are enough for my purpose
without any medical hair-splittings. How long do you think he has been
dead?”

“From nine to twelve hours,” I replied, “but nearer nine, I should
think.”

The inspector looked at his watch.

“That makes it between nine o’clock and midnight, but nearer
midnight,” said he. “Well, we shall hear if the night porter has
anything to tell us. I’ve sent word for him to come over, and the
laundress, too. And here is one of ’em.”

It was, in fact, both of them, for when the inspector opened the door,
they were discovered conversing eagerly in whispers.

“One at a time,” said Badger. “I’ll have the porter in first;” and
having admitted the man, he unceremoniously shut the door on the
woman. The night porter saluted me as he came in--we were old
acquaintances--and then halted near the door, where he stood stiffly,
with his eyes riveted on the corpse.

“Now,” said Badger, “I want you to try to remember if you let in any
strangers last night, and if so, what their business was.”

“I remember quite well,” the porter replied. “I let in three strangers
while I was on duty. One was going to Mr. Bolter in Fig Tree Court,
one was going to Sir Alfred Blain’s chambers, and the third said he
had an appointment with Mr. Herrington.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Badger, rubbing his hands. “Now, what time did you let
him in?”

“It was just after ten-fifteen.”

“Can you tell us what he was like and how he was dressed?”

“Yes,” was the reply. “He didn’t know where Tanfield Court was, and I
had to walk down and show him, so I was able to have a good look at
him. He was a middle-sized man, rather thin, dark hair, small
moustache, no beard, and he had a long, sharp nose with a bump on the
bridge. He wore a soft felt hat, a loose light overcoat, and he
carried a thickish rough stick.”

“What class of man was he? Seem to be a gentleman?”

“He was quite a gentlemanly kind of man, so far as I could judge, but
he looked a bit shabby as to his clothes.”

“Did you let him out?”

“Yes. He came to the gate a few minutes before eleven.”

“And did you notice anything unusual about him then?”

“I did,” the porter replied impressively. “I noticed that his collar
was all crumpled and his hat was dusty and dented. His face was a bit
red, and he looked rather upset, as if he had been having a tussle
with somebody. I looked at him particularly and wondered what had been
happening, seeing that Mr. Herrington was a quiet, elderly gentleman,
though he was certainly a bit peppery at times.”

The inspector took down these particulars gleefully in a large
note-book and asked:

“Is that all you know of the affair?” And when the porter replied that
it was, he said: “Then I will ask you to read this statement and sign
your name below it.”

The porter read through his statement and carefully signed his name at
the foot. He was about to depart when Badger said:

“Before you go, perhaps you had better help us to move the body into
the bedroom. It isn’t decent to leave it lying there.”

Accordingly the four of us lifted the dead man and carried him into
the bedroom, where we laid him on the undisturbed bed and covered him
with a rug. Then the porter was dismissed, with instructions to send
in Mrs. Runt.

The laundress’s statement was substantially a repetition of what Mr.
Bidwell had told me. She had let herself into the chambers in the
usual way, had come suddenly on the dead body of the tenant, and had
forthwith rushed downstairs to give the alarm. When she had concluded,
the inspector stood for a few moments looking thoughtfully at his
notes.

“I suppose,” he said presently, “you haven’t looked round these
chambers this morning? Can’t say if there is anything unusual about
them, or anything missing?”

The laundress shook her head.

“I was too upset,” she said, with another furtive glance at the place
where the corpse had lain; “but,” she added, letting her eyes roam
vaguely round the room, “there doesn’t seem to be anything missing, so
far as I can see--wait! Yes, there is. There’s something gone from
that nail on the wall; and it was there yesterday morning, because I
remember dusting it.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Badger. “Now what was it that was hanging on that
nail?”

“Well,” Mrs. Runt replied hesitatingly, “I really don’t know what it
was. Seemed like a sort of sword or dagger, but I never looked at it
particularly, and I never took it off its nail. I used to dust it as
it hung.”

“Still,” said Badger, “you can give us some sort of description of it,
I suppose?”

“I don’t know that I can,” she replied. “It had a leather case, and
the handle was covered with leather, I think, and it had a sort of
loop, and it used to hang on that nail.”

“Yes, you said that before,” Badger commented sourly. “When you say it
had a case, do you mean a sheath?”

“You can call it a sheath if you like,” she retorted, evidently
ruffled by the inspector’s manner, “I call it a case.”

“And how big was it? How long, for instance?”

Mrs. Runt held out her hands about a yard apart, looked at them
critically, shortened the interval to a foot, extended it to two, and
still varying the distance, looked vaguely at the inspector.

“I should say it was about that,” she said.

“About what?” snorted Badger. “Do you mean a foot or two feet or a
yard? Can’t you give us some idea?”

“I can’t say no clearer than what I have,” she snapped. “I don’t go
round gentlemen’s chambers measuring the things.”

It seemed to me that Badger’s questions were rather unnecessary, for
the wall-paper below the nail gave the required information. A
coloured patch on the faded ground furnished a pretty clear silhouette
of a broad-bladed sword or large dagger, about two feet six inches
long, which had apparently hung from the nail by a loop or ring at the
end of the handle. But it was not my business to point this out. I
turned to Bidwell and asked:

“Can you tell us what the thing was?”

“I am afraid I can’t,” he replied. “I have very seldom been in these
chambers. Herrington and I usually met in mine and went to the club.
I have a dim recollection of something hanging on that nail, but I
have not the least idea what it was or what it was like. But do you
think it really matters? The thing was almost certainly a curio of
some kind. It couldn’t have been of any appreciable value. It is
absurd, on the face of it, to suppose that this man came to
Herrington’s chambers, apparently by appointment, and murdered him for
the sake of getting possession of an antique sword or dagger. Don’t
you think so?”

I did, and so, apparently, did the inspector, with the qualification
that “the thing seemed to have disappeared, and its disappearance
ought to be accounted for”; which was perfectly true, though I did not
quite see how the “accounting for” was to be effected. However, as the
laundress had told all that she knew, Badger gave her her dismissal
and she retired to the landing, where I noticed that the night porter
was still lurking. Mr. Bidwell also took his departure, and happening,
a few moments later, to glance out of the window, I saw him walking
slowly across the court, apparently conferring with the laundress and
the porter.

As soon as we were alone, Badger assumed a friendly and confidential
manner and proceeded to give advice.

“I gather that Mr. Bidwell wants you to investigate this case, but I
don’t fancy it is in your line at all. It is just a matter of tracing
that stranger and getting hold of him. Then we shall have to find out
what property there was on these premises. The laundress says that
there is nothing missing, but of course no one supposes that the man
came here to take the furniture. It is most probable that the motive
was robbery of some kind. There’s no sign of anything broken open; but
then, there wouldn’t be, as the keys were available.”

Nevertheless he prowled round the room, examining every receptacle
that had a lock and trying the drawers of the writing table and of
what looked like a file cabinet.

“You will have your work cut out,” I remarked, “to trace that man. The
porter’s description was pretty vague.”

“Yes,” he replied; “there isn’t much to go on. That’s where you come
in,” he added with a grin, “with your microscopes and air-pumps and
things. Now if Dr. Thorndyke was here he would just sweep a bit of
dust from the floor and collect any stray oddments and have a good
look at them through his magnifier, and then we should know all about
it. Can’t you do a bit in that line? There’s plenty of dust on the
floor. And here’s a pin. Wonderful significant thing is a pin. And
here’s a wax vesta; now, that ought to tell you quite a lot. And here
is the end of a leather boot-lace--at least, that is what it looks
like. That must have come out of somebody’s boot. Have a look at it,
doctor, and see if you can tell me what kind of boot it came out of
and whose boot it was.”

He laid the fragment, and the match, and the pin, on the table and
grinned at me somewhat offensively. Inwardly I resented his
impertinence--perhaps the more so since I realized that Thorndyke
would probably not have been so completely gravelled as I undoubtedly
was. But I considered it politic to take his clumsy irony in good
part, and even to carry on his elephantine joke. Accordingly, I picked
up the three “clues,” one after the other, and examined them gravely,
noting that the supposed boot-lace appeared to be composed of
whalebone or vulcanite.

“Well, inspector,” I said, “I can’t give you the answer off-hand.
There’s no microscope here. But I will examine these objects at my
leisure and let you have the information in due course.”

With that I wrapped them with ostentatious care in a piece of
note-paper and bestowed them in my pocket, a proceeding which the
inspector watched with a sour smile.

“I’m afraid you’ll be too late,” said he. “Our men will probably pick
up the tracks while you are doing the microscope stunt. However, I
mustn’t stay here any longer. We can’t do anything until we know what
valuables there were on the premises; and I must have the body removed
and examined by the police surgeon.”

He moved towards the door, and as I had no further business in the
rooms, I followed, and leaving him to lock up, I took my way back to
our chambers.

When Thorndyke returned to town a couple of days later, I mentioned
the case to him. But what Badger had said appeared to be true. It was
a case of ascertaining the identity of the stranger who had visited
the dead man on that fatal night, and this seemed to be a matter for
the police rather than for us. So the case remained in abeyance until
the evening following the inquest, when Mr. Bidwell called on us,
accompanied by a Mr. Carston, whom he introduced as an old friend of
his and of Herrington’s family.

“I have called,” he said, “to bring you a full report of the evidence
at the inquest. I had a shorthand writer there, and this is a typed
transcript of his notes. Nothing fresh transpired beyond what Dr.
Jervis knows and has probably told you, but I thought you had better
have all the information in writing.”

“There is no clue as to who the suspicious visitor was, I suppose?”
said Thorndyke.

“Not the slightest,” replied Bidwell. “The porter’s description is all
they have to go on, and of course it would apply to hundreds of
persons. But, in connexion with that, there is a question on which I
should like to take your opinion. Poor Herrington once mentioned to me
that he was subjected to a good deal of annoyance by a certain person
who from time to time applied to him for financial help. I gathered
that some sort of claim was advanced, and that the demands for money
were more or less of the nature of blackmail. Giles didn’t say who the
person was, but I got the impression that he was a relative. Now, my
friend Carston, who attended the inquest with me, noticed that the
porter’s description of the stranger would apply fairly well to a
nephew of Giles’s, whom he knows slightly and who is a somewhat shady
character; and the question that Carston and I have been debating is
whether these facts ought to be communicated to the police. It is a
serious matter to put a man under suspicion on such very slender data;
and yet----”

“And yet,” said Carston, “the facts certainly fit the circumstances.
This fellow--his name is Godfrey Herrington--is a typical
ne’er-do-weel. Nobody knows how he lives. He doesn’t appear to do any
work. And then there is the personality of the deceased. I didn’t know
Giles Herrington very well, but I knew his brother, Sir Gilbert,
pretty intimately, and if Giles was at all like him, a catastrophe
might easily have occurred.”

“What was Sir Gilbert’s special characteristic?” Thorndyke asked.

“Unamiability,” was the reply. “He was a most cantankerous,
overbearing man, and violent at times. I knew him when I was at the
Colonial Office with him, and one of his official acts will show the
sort of man he was. You may remember it, Bidwell--the Bekwè affair.
There was some trouble in Bekwè, which is one of the minor kingdoms
bordering on Ashanti, and Sir Gilbert was sent out as a special
commissioner to settle it. And settle it he did with a vengeance. He
took up an armed force, deposed the king of Bekwè, seized the royal
stool, message stick, state sword, drums, and the other insignia of
royalty, and brought them away with him. And what made it worse was
that he treated these important things as mere loot: kept some of them
himself and gave away others as presents to his friends.

“It was an intolerably high-handed proceeding, and it caused a rare
outcry. Even the Colonial Governor protested, and in the end the
Secretary of State directed the Governor to reinstate the king and
restore the stolen insignia, as these things went with the royal title
and were necessary for the ceremonies of re-instatement or the
accession of a new king.”

“And were they restored?” asked Bidwell.

“Most of them were. But just about this time Gilbert died, and as the
whereabouts of one or two of them were unknown, it was impossible to
collect them then. I don’t know if they have been found since.”

Here Thorndyke led Mr. Carston back to the point from which he had
digressed.

“You are suggesting that certain peculiarities of temper and
temperament on the part of the deceased might have some bearing on the
circumstances of his death.”

“Yes,” said Carston. “If Giles Herrington was at all like his
brother--I don’t know whether he was----” here he looked inquiringly
at Bidwell, who nodded emphatically.

“I should say he was, undoubtedly,” said he. “He was my friend, and I
was greatly attached to him; but to others, I must admit, he must have
appeared a decidedly morose, cantankerous, and irascible man.”

“Very well,” resumed Carston. “If you imagine this cadging,
blackmailing wastrel calling on him and trying to squeeze him, and
then you imagine Herrington refusing to be squeezed and becoming
abusive and even violent, you have a fair set of antecedents for--for
what, in fact, did happen.”

“By the way,” said Thorndyke, “what exactly did happen, according to
the evidence?”

“The medical evidence,” replied Bidwell, “showed that the immediate
cause of death was heart failure. There were marks of fingers on the
throat, as you know, and various other bruises. It was evident that
deceased had been violently assaulted, but death was not directly due
to the injuries.”

“And the finding of the jury?” asked Thorndyke.

“Wilful murder, committed by some person unknown.”

“It doesn’t appear to me,” said I, “that Mr. Carston’s suggestion has
much present bearing on the case. It is really a point for the
defence. But we are concerned with the identity of the unknown man.”

“I am inclined to agree with Dr. Jervis,” said Bidwell. “We have got
to catch the hare before we go into culinary details.”

“My point is,” said Carston, “that Herrington’s peculiar temper
suggests a set of circumstances that would render it probable that his
visitor was his nephew Godfrey.”

“There is some truth in that,” Thorndyke agreed. “It is highly
speculative, but a reasonable speculation cannot be disregarded when
the known facts are so few. My feeling is that the police ought to be
informed of the existence of this man and his possible relations with
the deceased. As to whether he is or is not the suspected stranger,
that could be settled at once if he were confronted with the night
porter.”

“Yes, that is true,” said Bidwell. “I think Carston and I had better
call at Scotland Yard and give the Assistant Commissioner a hint on
the subject. It will have to be a very guarded hint, of course.”

“Was the question of motive raised?” Thorndyke asked. “As to robbery,
for instance.”

“There is no evidence of robbery,” replied Bidwell. “I have been
through all the receptacles in the chambers, and everything seems
intact. The keys were in poor Giles’s pocket and nothing seems to have
been disturbed; indeed, it doesn’t appear that there was any portable
property of value on the premises.”

“Well,” said Thorndyke, “the first thing that has to be done is to
establish the identity of the nocturnal visitor. That is the business
of the police. And if you call and tell them what you have told us,
they will, at least, have something to investigate. They should have
no difficulty in proving either that he is or is not the man whom the
porter let in at the gate; and until they have settled that question,
there is no need for us to take any action.”

“Exactly,” said Bidwell, rising and taking up his hat. “If the police
can complete the case, there is nothing for us to do. However, I will
leave you the report of the inquest to look over at your leisure, and
will keep you informed as to how the case progresses.”

When our two friends had gone, Thorndyke sat for some time turning
over the sheets of the report and glancing through the depositions of
the witnesses. Presently he remarked:

“If it turns out that this man, Godfrey Herrington, is not the man
whom the porter let in, the police will be left in the air. Apart from
Bidwell’s purely speculative suggestion, there seems to be no clue
whatever to the visitor’s identity.”

“Badger would like to hear you say that,” said I. “He was very
sarcastic respecting our methods of research,” and here I gave him an
account of my interview with the inspector, including the “clues” with
which he had presented me.

“It was like his impudence,” Thorndyke commented smilingly, “to pull
the leg of my learned junior. Still, there was a germ of sense in what
he said. A collection of dust from the floor of that room, in which
two men had engaged in a violent struggle, would certainly yield
traces of both of them.”

“Mixed up with the traces of a good many others,” I remarked.

“True,” he admitted. “But that would not affect the value of a
positive trace of a particular individual. Supposing, for instance,
that Godfrey Herrington were known to have dyed hair; and suppose that
one or more dyed male hairs were found in the dust from the floor of
the room. That would establish a probability that he had been in that
room, and also that he was the person who had struggled with the
deceased.”

“Yes, I see that,” said I. “Perhaps I ought to have collected some of
the dust. But it isn’t too late now, as Bidwell has locked up the
chambers. Meanwhile, let me present you with Badger’s clues. They came
off the floor.”

I searched in my pocket and produced the paper packet, the existence
of which I had forgotten, and having opened it, offered it to him with
an ironical bow. He looked gravely at the little collection, and,
disregarding the pin and the match, picked out the third object and
examined it curiously.

“That is the alleged boot-lace end,” he remarked. “It doesn’t do much
credit to Badger’s powers of observation. It is as unlike leather as
it could well be.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “it is obviously whalebone or vulcanite.”

“It isn’t vulcanite,” said he, looking closely at the broken end and
getting out his pocket lens for a more minute inspection.

“What do you suppose it is?” I asked, my curiosity stimulated by the
evident interest with which he was examining the object.

“We needn’t suppose,” he replied. “I fancy that if we get Polton to
make a cross section of it, the microscope will tell us what it is. I
will take it up to him now.”

As he went out and I heard him ascending to the laboratory where our
assistant, Polton, was at work, I was conscious of a feeling of
vexation and a sense of failure. It was always thus. I had treated
this fragment with the same levity as had the inspector, just dropping
it into my pocket and forgetting it. Probably the thing was of no
interest or importance; but whether it was or not, Thorndyke would not
be satisfied until he knew for certain what it was. And that habit of
examining everything, of letting nothing pass without the closest
scrutiny, was one of the great secrets of his success as an
investigator.

When he came down again I re-opened the subject.

“It has occurred to me,” I said, “that it might be as well for us to
have a look at that room. My inspection was rather perfunctory, as
Badger was there.”

“I have just been thinking the same,” he replied. “If Godfrey is not
the man, and the police are left stranded, Bidwell will look to us to
take up the inquiry, and by that time the room may have been
disturbed. I think we will get the key from Bidwell to-morrow morning
and make a thorough examination. And we may as well adopt Badger’s
excellent suggestion respecting the dust. I will instruct Polton to
come over with us and bring a full-sized vacuum-cleaner, and we can go
over what he collects at our leisure.”

Agreeably to this arrangement, we presented ourselves on the following
morning at Mr. Bidwell’s chambers, accompanied by Polton, who,
however, being acutely conscious of the vacuum-cleaner which was
thinly disguised in brown paper, sneaked up the stairs and got out of
sight. Bidwell opened the door himself, and Thorndyke explained our
intentions to him.

“Of course you can have the key,” he said, “but I don’t know that it
is worth your while to go into the matter. There have been
developments since I saw you last night. When Carston and I called at
Scotland Yard we found that we were too late. Godfrey Herrington had
come forward and made a voluntary statement.”

“That was wise of him,” said Thorndyke, “but he would have been wiser
still to have notified the porter of what had happened and sent for a
doctor. He claims that the death was a misadventure, of course?”

“Not at all,” replied Bidwell. “He states that when he left, Giles was
perfectly well; so well that he was able to kick him--Godfrey--down
the stairs and pitch him out on to the pavement. It seems, according
to his account, that he called to try to get some financial help from
his uncle. He admits that he was rather importunate and persisted
after Giles had definitely refused. Then Giles got suddenly into a
rage, thrust him out of the chambers, ran him down the stairs, and
threw him out into Tanfield Court. It is a perfectly coherent story,
and quite probable up to a certain point, but it doesn’t account for
the bruises on Giles’s body or the finger-marks on his throat.”

“No,” agreed Thorndyke; “either he is lying, or he is the victim of
some very inexplicable circumstances. But I gather that you have no
further interest in the case?”

Bidwell reflected.

“Well,” he said, “I don’t know about that. Of course I don’t believe
him, but it is just possible that he is telling the truth. My feeling
is that, if he is guilty I want him convicted; but if by any chance he
is innocent--well, he is Giles’s nephew, and I suppose it is my duty
to see that he has a fair chance. Yes, I think I would like you to
watch the case independently--with a perfectly open mind, neither for
nor against. But I don’t see that there is much that you can do.”

“Neither do I,” said Thorndyke. “But one can observe and note the
visible facts, if there are any. Has anything been done to the rooms?”

“Nothing whatever,” was the reply. “They are just as Dr. Jervis and I
found them the morning after the catastrophe.”

With this he handed Thorndyke the key and we ascended to the landing,
where we found Polton on guard with the vacuum-cleaner, like a sentry
armed with some new and unorthodox weapon.

The appearance of the room was unchanged. The half-dislodged
table-cloth, the litter of broken glass on the floor, even the
displaced fender and hearth-rug, were just as I had last seen them.
Thorndyke looked about him critically and remarked:

“The appearances hardly support Godfrey’s statement. There was clearly
a prolonged and violent struggle, not a mere ejectment. And look at
the table-cloth. The uncovered part of the table is that nearest the
door, and most of the things have fallen off at the end nearest the
fireplace. Obviously, the body that dislodged the cloth was moving
away from the door, not towards it, which again suggests something
more than an unresisted ejectment.”

He again looked round, and his glance fell on the nail and the
coloured silhouette on the wall-paper.

“That, I presume,” said he, “is where the mysterious sword or dagger
hung. It is rather large for a dagger and somewhat wide for a sword,
though barbaric swords are of all shapes and sizes.”

He produced his spring tape and carefully measured the phantom shape
on the wall. “Thirty-one inches long,” he reported, “including the
loop at the end of the handle, by which it hung; seven and a half
inches at the top of the scabbard, tapering rather irregularly to
three inches at the tip. A curious shape. I don’t remember ever having
seen a sword quite like it.”

Meanwhile Polton, having picked up the broken glass and other objects,
had uncovered the vacuum-cleaner and now started the motor--which was
driven by an attached dry battery--and proceeded very systematically
to trundle the machine along the floor. At every two or three sweeps
he paused to empty the receiver, placing the grey, felt-like mass on a
sheet of paper, with a pencilled note of the part of the room from
whence it came. The size of these masses of felted dust and the
astonishing change in the colour of the carpet that marked the trail
of the cleaner, suggested that Mrs. Runt’s activities had been of a
somewhat perfunctory character. Polton’s dredgings apparently
represented the accumulations of years.

“Wonderful lot of hairs in this old dust,” Polton remarked as he
deposited a fresh consignment on the paper, “especially in this lot.
It came from under that looking-glass on the wall. Perhaps that
clothes brush that hangs under the glass accounts for it.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “they will be hairs brushed off Mr. Herrington’s
collar and shoulders. But,” I added, taking the brush from its nail
and examining it, “Mrs. Runt seems to have used the glass, too. There
are three long hairs still sticking to the brush.”

As Thorndyke was still occupied in browsing inquisitively round the
room, I proceeded to make a preliminary inspection of the heaps of
dust, picking out the hairs and other recognizable objects with my
pocket forceps, and putting them on a separate sheet of paper. Of the
former, the bulk were pretty obviously those of the late tenant--white
or dull black male hairs--but Mrs. Runt had contributed quite
liberally, for I picked out of the various heaps over a dozen long
hairs, the mousy brown colour of which seemed to identify them as
hers. The remainder were mostly ordinary male hairs of various
colours, eyebrow hairs and eyelashes, of no special interest, with one
exception. This was a black hair which lay flat on the paper in a
close coil, like a tiny watch-spring.

“I wonder who this negro was,” said I, inspecting it through my lens.

“Probably some African or West Indian Law student,” Thorndyke
suggested. “There are always a good many about the Inns of Court.”

He came round to examine my collection, and while he was viewing the
negro hair with the aid of my lens, I renewed my investigations of the
little dust-heaps. Presently I made a new discovery.

“Why,” I exclaimed, “here is another of Badger’s boot-laces--another
piece of the same one, I think. By the way, did you ascertain what
that boot-lace really was?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Polton made a section of it and mounted it; and
furthermore, he made a magnified photograph of it. I have the
photograph in my pocket, so you can answer your own question.”

He produced from his letter-case a half-plate print which he handed to
me and which I examined curiously.

“It is a singular object,” said I, “but I don’t quite make it out. It
looks rather like a bundle of hairs embedded in some transparent
substance.”

“That, in effect,” he replied, “is what it is. It is an elephant’s
hair, probably from the tail. But, as you see, it is a compound hair;
virtually a group of hairs agglutinated into a single stem. Most very
large hairs are compound. A tiger’s whiskers, for instance, are large,
stiff hairs which, if cut across, are seen to be formed of several
largish hairs fused together; and the colossal hair which grows on the
nose of the rhinoceros--the so-called nasal horn--is made up of
thousands of subordinate hairs.”

“It is a remarkable-looking thing,” I said, handing back the
photograph; “very distinctive--if you happen to know what it is. But
the mystery is how on earth it came here. There are no elephants in
the Temple.”

“I certainly haven’t noticed any,” he replied; “and, as you say, the
presence of an elephant’s hair in a room in the middle of London is a
rather remarkable circumstance. And yet, perhaps, if we consider all
the other circumstances, it may not be impossible to form a conjecture
as to how it came here. I recommend the problem to my learned friend
for consideration at his leisure; and now, as we have seen all that
there is to see--which is mighty little--we may as well leave Polton
to finish the collection of data from the floor. We can take your
little selection with us.”

He folded the paper containing the hairs that I had picked out into a
neat packet, which he slipped into his pocket; then, having handed the
key of the outer door to Polton, for return to Mr. Bidwell, he went
out and I followed. We descended the stairs slowly, both of us deeply
reflective. As to the subject of his meditations I could form no
opinion, but my own were occupied by the problem which he had
suggested; and the more I reflected on it, the less capable of
solution did it appear.

We had nearly reached the ground floor when I became aware of quick
footsteps descending the stairs behind us. Near the entry our follower
overtook us, and as we stood aside to let him pass, I had a brief
vision of a shortish, dapper, smartly-dressed coloured man--apparently
an African or West Indian--who carried a small suit-case and a set of
golf-clubs.

“Now,” said I, in a low tone, “I wonder if that gentleman is the late
owner of that negro hair that I picked up. It seems intrinsically
probable as he appears to live in this building, and would be a near
neighbour of Herrington’s.” I halted at the entry and read out the
only name painted on the door-post as appertaining to the second
floor--Mr. Kwaku Essien, which, I decided, seemed to fit a gentleman
of colour.

But Thorndyke was not listening. His long legs were already carrying
him, with a deceptively leisurely air, across Tanfield Court in the
wake of Mr. Essien, and at about the same pace. I put on a spurt and
overtook him, a little mystified by his sudden air of purpose and by
the fact that he was not walking in the direction of our chambers.
Still more mystified was I when it became clear that Thorndyke was
following the African and keeping at a constant distance in rear of
him; but I made no comment until, having pursued our quarry to the top
of Middle Temple Lane, we saw him hail a taxi and drive off. Then I
demanded an explanation.

“I wanted to see him fairly out of the precincts,” was the reply,
“because I have a particular desire to see what his chambers are like.
I only hope his door has a practicable latch.”

I stared at him in dismay.

“You surely don’t contemplate breaking into his chambers!” I
exclaimed.

“Certainly not,” he replied. “If the latch won’t yield to gentle
persuasion, I shall give it up. But don’t let me involve you, Jervis.
I admit that it is a slightly irregular proceeding.”

“Irregular!” I repeated. “It is housebreaking, pure and simple. I can
only hope that you won’t be able to get in.”

The hope turned out to be a vain one, as I had secretly feared. When
we had reconnoitred the stairs and established the encouraging fact
that the third floor was untenanted, we inspected the door above which
our victim’s name was painted; and a glance at the yawning
key-hole--diagnostic of an old-fashioned draw-latch--told me that the
deed was as good as done.

“Now, Jervis,” said Thorndyke, producing from his pocket the curious
instrument that he described as a “smoker’s companion”--it was an
undeniable picklock, made by Polton under his direction--“you had
better clear out and wait for me at our chambers.”

“I shall do nothing of the kind,” I replied. “I am an accessory before
the fact already, so I may as well stay and see the crime committed.”

“Then in that case,” said he, “you had better keep a look-out from the
landing window and call me if anyone comes to the house. That will
make us perfectly safe.”

I accordingly took my station at the window, and Thorndyke, having
knocked several times at the “oak” without eliciting any response, set
to work with the smoker’s companion. In less than a minute the latch
clicked, the outer door opened, and Thorndyke, pushing the inner door
open, entered, leaving both doors ajar. I was devoured by curiosity as
to what his purpose was. Obviously it must be a very definite one to
justify this most extraordinary proceeding. But I dared not leave my
post for a moment seeing that we were really engaged in a very serious
breach of the law, and it was of vital importance that we should not
be surprised in the act. I was therefore unable to observe my
colleague’s proceedings, and I waited impatiently to see if anything
came of this unlawful entry.

I had waited thus some ten minutes, keeping a close watch on the
pavement below, when I heard Thorndyke quickly cross the room and
approach the door. A moment later he came out on the landing, bearing
in his hand an object which, while it enlightened me as to the purpose
of the raid, added to my mystification.

“That looks like the missing sword from Herrington’s room!” I
exclaimed, gazing at it in amazement.

“Yes,” he replied. “I found it in a drawer in the bedroom. Only it
isn’t a sword.”

“Then, what the deuce is it?” I demanded, for the thing looked like a
broad-bladed sword in a soft leather scabbard of somewhat rude native
workmanship.

By way of reply he slowly drew the object from its sheath, and as it
came into sight, I uttered an exclamation of astonishment. To the
inexpert eye it appeared an elongated body about nine inches in length
covered with coarse, black leather, from either side of which sprang a
multitude of what looked like thick, black wires. Above, it was
furnished with a leather handle which was surmounted by a suspension
loop of plaited leather.

“I take it,” said I, “that this is an elephant’s tail.”

“Yes,” he replied, “and a rather remarkable specimen. The hairs are of
unusual length. Some of them, you see, are nearly eighteen inches
long.”

“And what are you going to do now?” I asked.

“I am going to put it back where I found it. Then I shall run down to
Scotland Yard and advise Miller to get a search warrant. He is too
discreet to ask inconvenient questions.”

I must admit that it was a great relief to me when, a minute later,
Thorndyke came out and shut the door; but I could not deny that the
raid had been justified by the results. What had, presumably, been a
mere surmise had been converted into a definite fact on which action
could confidently be taken.

“I suppose,” said I, as we walked down towards the Embankment en route
for Scotland Yard, “I ought to have spotted this case.”

“You had the means,” Thorndyke replied. “At your first visit you
learned that an object of some kind had disappeared from the wall. It
seemed to be a trivial object of no value, and not likely to be
connected with the crime. So you disregarded it. But it had
disappeared. Its disappearance was not accounted for, and that
disappearance seemed to coincide in time with the death of Herrington.
It undoubtedly called for investigation. Then you found on the floor
an object the nature of which was unknown to you. Obviously, you ought
to have ascertained what it was.”

“Yes, I ought,” I admitted, “though I am not sure that I should have
been much forrarder even then. In fact, I am not so very much
forrarder even now. I don’t see how you spotted this man Essien, and I
don’t understand why he took all this trouble and risk and even
committed a murder to get possession of this trumpery curio. Of course
I can make a vague guess. But I should like to hear how you ran the
man and the thing to earth.”

“Very well,” said Thorndyke. “Let me retrace the train of discoveries
and inferences in their order. First I learned that an object,
supposed to be a barbaric sword of some kind, had disappeared about
the time of the murder--if it _was_ a murder. Then we heard from
Carston that Sir Gilbert Herrington had appropriated the insignia and
ceremonial objects belonging to the King of Bekwè; that some had
subsequently been restored, but others had been given to friends as
curios. As I listened to that story, the possibility occurred to me
that this curio which had disappeared might be one of the missing
ceremonial objects. It was not only possible: it was quite probable.
For Giles Herrington was a very likely person to have received one of
these gifts, and his morose temper made it unlikely that he would
restore it. And then, since such an object would be of great value to
somebody, and since it was actually stolen property, there would be
good reasons why some interested person should take forcible
possession of it. This, of course, was mere hypothesis of a rather
shadowy kind. But when you produced an object which I at once
suspected, and then proved, to be an elephant’s hair, the hypothesis
became a reasonable working theory. For, among the ceremonial objects
which form what we may call the regalia of a West African king, is the
elephant’s tail which is carried before him by a special officer as a
symbol of his power and strength. An elephant’s tail had pretty
certainly been stolen from the king, and Carston said nothing about
its having been restored.

“Well, when we went to Herrington’s chambers just now, it was clear to
me that the thing which had disappeared was certainly not a sword. The
phantom shape on the wall did not show much, but it did show plainly
that the object had hung from the nail by a large loop at the end of
the handle. But the suspension loop of a sword or dagger is always on
the scabbard, never on the hilt. But if the thing was not a sword,
what was it? The elephant’s hair that you found on the floor seemed to
answer the question.

“Now, as we came in, I had noticed on the door-post the West African
name, Kwaku Essien. A man whose name is Kwaku is pretty certainly a
negro. But if this was an elephant’s tail, its lawful owner was a
negro, and that owner wanted to recover it and was morally entitled to
take possession of it. Here was another striking agreement. The
chambers over Herrington’s were occupied by a negro. Finally, you
found among the floor dust a negro’s hair. Then a negro had actually
been in this room. But from what we know of Herrington, that negro was
not there as an invited visitor. All the probabilities pointed to Mr.
Essien. But the probabilities were not enough to act on. Then we had a
stroke of sheer luck. We got the chance to explore Essien’s chambers
and seek the crucial fact. But here we are at Scotland Yard.”


That night, at about eight o’clock, a familiar tattoo on our knocker
announced the arrival of Mr. Superintendent Miller, not entirely
unexpected, as I guessed.

“Well,” he said, as I let him in, “the coloured nobleman has come
home. I’ve just had a message from the man who was detailed to watch
the premises.”

“Are you going to make the arrest now?” asked Thorndyke.

“Yes, and I should be glad if you could come across with me. You know
more about the case than I do.”

Thorndyke assented at once, and we set forth together. As we entered
Tanfield Court we passed a man who was lurking in the shadow of an
entry, and who silently indicated the lighted windows of the chambers
for which we were bound. Ascending the stairs up which I had lately
climbed with unlawful intent, we halted at Mr. Essien’s door, on which
the superintendent executed an elaborate flourish with his stick,
there being no knocker. After a short interval we heard a bolt
withdrawn, the door opened a short distance, and in the interval a
black face appeared, looking out at us suspiciously.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” the owner of the face demanded
gruffly.

“You are Mr. Kwaku Essien, I think?” said Miller, unostentatiously
insinuating his foot into the door opening.

“Yes,” was the reply. “But I don’t know you. What is your business?”

“I am a police officer,” Miller replied, edging his foot in a little
farther, “and I hold a warrant to arrest you on the charge of having
murdered Mr. Giles Herrington.”

Before the superintendent had fairly finished his sentence, the dusky
face vanished and the door slammed violently--on to the
superintendent’s massive foot. That foot was instantly reinforced by a
shoulder and for a few moments there was a contest of forces, opposite
but not equal. Suddenly the door flew open and the superintendent
charged into the room. I had a momentary vision of a flying figure,
closely pursued, darting through into an inner room, of the slamming
of a second door--once more on an intercepting foot. And then--it all
seemed to have happened in a few seconds--a dejected figure, sitting
on the edge of a bed, clasping a pair of manacled hands and watching
Miller as he drew the elephant’s tail out of a drawer in the dressing
chest.

“This--er--article,” said Miller, “belonged to Mr. Herrington, and was
stolen from his premises on the night of the murder.”

Essien shook his head emphatically.

“No,” he replied. “You are wrong. I stole nothing, and I did not
murder Mr. Herrington. Listen to me and I will tell you all about it.”

Miller administered the usual caution and the prisoner continued:

“This elephant-brush is one of many things stolen, years ago, from the
king of Bekwè. Some of those things--most of them--have been
restored, but this could not be traced for a long time. At last it
became known to me that Mr. Herrington had it, and I wrote to him
asking him to give it up and telling him who I was--I am the eldest
living son of the king’s sister, and therefore, according to our law,
the heir to the kingdom. But he would not give it up or even sell it.
Then, as I am a student of the Inn, I took these chambers above his,
intending, when I had an opportunity, to go in and take possession of
my uncle’s property. The opportunity came that night that you have
spoken of. I was coming up the stairs to my chambers when, as I passed
his door, I heard loud voices inside as of people quarrelling. I had
just reached my own door and opened it when I heard his door open, and
then a great uproar and the sound of a struggle. I ran down a little
way and looked over the banisters, and then I saw him thrusting a man
across the landing and down the lower stairs. As they disappeared, I
ran down, and finding his door ajar, I went in to recover my property.
It took me a little time to find it, and I had just taken it from the
nail and was going out with it when, at the door, I met Mr. Herrington
coming in. He was very excited already, and when he saw me he seemed
to go mad. I tried to get past him, but he seized me and dragged me
back into the room, wrenching the thing out of my hand. He was very
violent. I thought he wanted to kill me, and I had to struggle for my
life. Suddenly he let go his hold of me, staggered back a few paces,
and then fell on the floor. I stooped over him, thinking that he was
taken ill, and wondering what I had better do. But soon I saw that he
was not ill; he was dead. Then I was very frightened. I picked up the
elephant-brush and put it back into its case, and I went out very
quietly, shut the door, and ran up to my rooms. That is what happened.
There was no robbery and murder.”


“Well,” said Miller, as the prisoner and his escort disappeared
towards the gate, “I suppose, in a technical sense, it is murder, but
they are hardly likely to press the charge.”

“I don’t think it is even technically,” said Thorndyke. “My feeling is
that he will be acquitted if he is sent for trial. Meanwhile, I take
it that my client, Godfrey Herrington, will be released from custody
at once.”

“Yes, doctor,” replied Miller, “I will see to that now. He has had
better luck than he deserved, I suspect, in having his case looked
after by you. I don’t fancy he would have got an acquittal if he had
gone for trial.”

Thorndyke’s forecast was nearly correct, but there was no acquittal,
since there was no trial. The case against Kwaku Essien never got
farther than the Grand Jury.




 VIII.
 THE PATHOLOGIST TO THE RESCUE

“I hope,” said I, as I looked anxiously out of our window up King’s
Bench Walk, “that our friend, Foxley, will turn up to time, or I shall
lose the chance of hearing his story. I must be in court by half-past
eleven. The telegram said that he was a parson, didn’t it?”

“Yes,” replied Thorndyke. “The Reverend Arthur Foxley.”

“Then perhaps this may be he. There is a parson crossing from the Row
in this direction, only he has a girl with him. He didn’t say anything
about a girl, did he?”

“No. He merely asked for the appointment. However,” he added, as he
joined me at the window and watched the couple approaching with their
eyes apparently fixed on the number above our portico, “this is
evidently our client, and punctual to the minute.”

In response to the old-fashioned flourish on our little knocker, he
opened the inner door and invited the clergyman and his companion to
enter; and while the mutual introductions were in progress, I looked
critically at our new clients. Mr. Foxley was a typical and favourable
specimen of his class: a handsome, refined, elderly gentleman, prim as
to his speech, suave and courteous in bearing, with a certain engaging
simplicity of manner which impressed me very favourably. His companion
I judged to be a parishioner, for she was what ladies are apt to
describe as “not quite”; that is to say, her social level appeared to
appertain to the lower strata of the middle-class. But she was a fine,
strapping girl, very sweet-faced and winsome, quiet and gentle in
manner and obviously in deep trouble, for her clear grey eyes--fixed
earnestly, almost devouringly, on Thorndyke--were reddened and
swimming with unshed tears.

“We have sought your aid, Dr. Thorndyke,” the clergyman began, “on the
advice of my friend, Mr. Brodribb, who happened to call on me on some
legal business. He assured me that you would be able to solve our
difficulties if it were humanly possible, so I have come to lay those
difficulties before you. I pray to God that you may be able to help
us, for my poor young friend here, Miss Markham, is in a most terrible
position, as you will understand when I tell you that her future
husband, a most admirable young man named Robert Fletcher, is in the
custody of the police, charged with robbery and murder.”

Thorndyke nodded gravely, and the clergyman continued:

“I had better tell you exactly what has happened. The dead man is one
Joseph Riggs, a maternal uncle of Fletcher’s, a strange, eccentric
man, solitary, miserly, and of a violent, implacable temper. He was
quite well-to-do, though penurious and haunted constantly by an absurd
fear of poverty. His nephew, Robert, was apparently his only known
relative, and, under his will, was his sole heir. Recently, however,
Robert has become engaged to my friend, Miss Lilian, and this
engagement was violently opposed by his uncle, who had repeatedly
urged him to make, what he called a profitable marriage. For Miss
Lilian is a dowerless maiden--dowerless save for those endowments with
which God has been pleased to enrich her, and which her future husband
has properly prized above mere material wealth. However, Riggs
declared, in his brutal way, that he was not going to leave his
property to the husband of a shop-woman, and that Robert might look
out for a wife with money or be struck out of his will.

“The climax was reached yesterday when Robert, in response to a
peremptory summons, went to see his uncle. Mr. Riggs was in a very
intractable mood. He demanded that Robert should break off his
engagement unconditionally and at once, and when Robert bluntly
insisted on his right to choose his own wife the old man worked
himself up into a furious rage, shouting, cursing, using the most
offensive language and even uttering threats of personal violence.
Finally, he drew his gold watch from his pocket and laid it with its
chain on the table; then, opening a drawer, he took out a bundle of
bearer bonds and threw them down by the watch.

“‘There, my friend,’ said he, ‘that is your inheritance. That is all
you will get from me, living or dead. Take it and go, and don’t let me
ever set eyes on you again.’

“At first Robert refused to accept the gift, but his uncle became so
violent that eventually, for peace’ sake, he took the watch and the
bonds, intending to return them later, and went away. He left at
half-past five, leaving his uncle alone in the house.”

“How was that?” Thorndyke asked. “Was there no servant?”

“Mr. Riggs kept no resident servant. The young woman who did his
housework came at half-past eight in the morning and left at half-past
four. Yesterday she waited until five to get tea ready, but then, as
the uproar in the sitting-room was still unabated, she thought it best
to go. She was afraid to go in to lay the tea-things.

“This morning, when she arrived at the house, she found the front door
unlocked, as it always was during the day. On entering, her attention
was at once attracted by two or three little pools of blood on the
floor of the hall, or passage. Somewhat alarmed by this, she looked
into the sitting-room, and finding no one there, and being impressed
by the silence in the house, she went along the passage to a back
room--a sort of study or office, which was usually kept locked when
Mr. Riggs was not in it. Now, however, it was unlocked and the door
was ajar; so having first knocked and receiving no answer, she pushed
open the door and looked in; and there, to her horror, she saw her
employer lying on the floor, apparently dead, with a wound on the side
of his head and a pistol on the floor by his side.

“Instantly she turned and rushed out of the house, and she was running
up the street in search of a policeman when she encountered me at a
corner and burst out with her dreadful tidings. I walked with her to
the police station, and as we went she told me what had happened on
the previous afternoon. Naturally, I was profoundly shocked and also
alarmed, for I saw that--rightly or wrongly--suspicion must
immediately fall on Robert Fletcher. The servant, Rose Turnmill, took
it for granted that he had murdered her master; and when we found the
station inspector and Rose had repeated her statement to him, it was
evident that he took the same view.

“With him and a sergeant, we went back to the house; but on the way we
met Mr. Brodribb, who was staying at the ‘White Lion’ and had just
come out for a walk. I told him, rapidly, what had occurred and begged
him to come with us, which, with the inspector’s consent, he did; and
as we walked I explained to him the awful position that Robert
Fletcher might be placed in, and asked him to advise me what to do.
But, of course, there was nothing to be said or done until we had seen
the body and knew whether any suspicion rested on Robert.

“We found the man Riggs lying, as Rose had said. He was quite dead,
cold and stiff. There was a pistol wound on the right temple, and a
pistol lay on the floor at his right side. A little blood--but not
much--had trickled from the wound and lay in a small pool on the
oil-cloth. The door of an iron safe was open and a bunch of keys hung
from the lock; and on a desk one or two share certificates were spread
out. On searching the dead man’s pockets it was found that the gold
watch which the servant told us he usually carried was missing, and
when Rose went to the bedroom to see if it was there, it was nowhere
to be found.

“Apart from the watch, however, the appearances suggested that the man
had taken his own life. But against this view was the blood on the
hall floor. The dead man appeared to have fallen at once from the
effects of the shot, and there had been very little bleeding. Then how
came the blood in the hall? The inspector decided that it could not
have been the blood of the deceased; and when we examined it and saw
that there were several little pools and that they seemed to form a
track towards the street door, he was convinced that the blood had
fallen from some person who had been wounded and was escaping from the
house. And, under the circumstances, he was bound to assume that that
person was Robert Fletcher; and on that assumption, he despatched the
sergeant forthwith to arrest Robert.

“On this I held a consultation with Mr. Brodribb, who pointed out that
the case turned principally on the blood in the hall. If it was the
blood of deceased, and the absence of the watch could be explained, a
verdict of suicide could be accepted. But if it was the blood of some
other person, that fact would point to murder. The question, he said,
would have to be settled, if possible, and his advice to me, if I
believed Robert to be innocent--which, from my knowledge of him, I
certainly did--was this: Get a couple of small, clean, labelled
bottles from a chemist and--with the inspector’s consent--put in one a
little of the blood from the hall and in the other some of the blood
of the deceased. Seal them both in the inspector’s presence and mine
and take them up to Dr. Thorndyke. If it is possible to answer the
question, Are they or are they not from the same person? he will
answer it.

“Well, the inspector made no objection, so I did what he advised. And
here are the specimens. I trust they may tell us what we want to
know.”

Here Mr. Foxley took from his attaché-case a small cardboard box, and
opening it, displayed two little wide-mouthed bottles carefully packed
in cotton wool. Lifting them out tenderly, he placed them on the table
before Thorndyke. They were both neatly corked, sealed--with
Brodribb’s seal, as I noticed--and labelled; the one inscribed “Blood
of Joseph Riggs,” and the other “Blood of unknown origin,” and both
signed “Arthur Foxley” and dated. At the bottom of each was a small
mass of gelatinous blood-clot.

Thorndyke looked a little dubiously at the two bottles, and addressing
the clergyman, said:

“I am afraid Mr. Brodribb has rather overestimated our resources.
There is no known method by which the blood of one person can be
distinguished with certainty from that of another.”

“Dear, dear!” exclaimed Mr. Foxley. “How disappointing! Then these
specimens are useless, after all?”

“I won’t say that; but it is in the highest degree improbable that
they will yield any information. You must build no expectations on
them.”

“But you will examine them and see if anything is to be gleaned,” the
parson urged, persuasively.

“Yes, I will examine them. But you realize that if they should yield
any evidence, that evidence might be unfavourable?”

“Yes; Mr. Brodribb pointed that out, but we are willing to take the
risk, and so, I may say, is Robert Fletcher, to whom I put the
question.”

“Then you have seen Mr. Fletcher since the discovery?”

“Yes, I saw him at the police station after his arrest. It was then
that he gave me--and also the police--the particulars that I have
repeated to you. He had to make a statement, as the dead man’s watch
and the bonds were found in his possession.”

“With regard to the pistol. Has it been identified?”

“No. It is an old-fashioned derringer which no one has ever seen
before, so there is no evidence as to whose property it was.”

“And as to those share certificates which you spoke of as lying on the
desk. Do you happen to remember what they were?”

“Yes, they were West African mining shares; Abusum Pa-pa was the name,
I think.”

“Then,” said Thorndyke,” Mr. Riggs had been losing money. The Abusum
Pa-pa Company has just gone into liquidation. Do you know if anything
had been taken from the safe?”

“It is impossible to say, but apparently not, as there was a good deal
of money in the cash-box, which we unlocked and inspected. But we
shall hear more to-morrow at the inquest, and I trust we shall hear
something there from you. But in any case I hope you will attend to
watch the proceedings on behalf of poor Fletcher. And if possible, to
be present at the autopsy at eleven o’clock. Can you manage that?”

“Yes. And I shall come down early enough to make an inspection of the
premises if the police will give the necessary facilities.”

Mr. Foxley thanked him effusively, and when the details as to the
trains had been arranged, our clients rose to depart. Thorndyke shook
their hands cordially, and as he bade farewell to Miss Markham he
murmured a few words of encouragement. She looked up at him gratefully
and appealingly as she naïvely held his hand.

“You will try to help us, Dr. Thorndyke, won’t you?” she urged. “And
you will examine that blood very, very carefully. Promise that you
will. Remember that poor Robert’s life may hang upon what you can tell
about it.”

“I realize that, Miss Markham,” he replied gently, “and I promise you
that the specimens shall be most thoroughly examined; and further,
that no stone shall be left unturned in my endeavours to bring the
truth to light.”

At his answer, spoken with infinite kindliness and sympathy, her eyes
filled and she turned away with a few broken words of thanks, and the
good clergyman--himself not unmoved by the little episode--took her
arm and led her to the door.

“Well,” I remarked as their retreating footsteps died away, “old
Brodribb’s enthusiasm seems to have let you in for a queer sort of
task; and I notice that you appear to have accepted Fletcher’s
statement.”

“Without prejudice,” he replied. “I don’t know Fletcher, but the
balance of probabilities is in his favour. Still, that blood-track in
the hall is a curious feature. It certainly requires explanation.”

“It does, indeed!” I exclaimed, “and you have got to find the
explanation! Well, I wish you joy of the job. I suppose you will carry
out the farce to the bitter end as you have promised?”

“Certainly,” he replied. “But it is hardly a farce. I should have
looked the specimens over in any case. One never knows what
illuminating fact a chance observation may bring into view.”

I smiled sceptically.

“The fact that you are asked to ascertain is that these two samples of
blood came from the same person. If there are any means of proving
that, they are unknown to me. I should have said it was an
impossibility.”

“Of course,” he rejoined, “you are quite right, speaking academically
and in general terms. No method of identifying the blood of individual
persons has hitherto been discovered. But yet I can imagine the
possibility, in particular and exceptional cases, of an actual,
personal identification by means of blood. What does my learned friend
think?”

“He thinks that his imagination is not equal to the required effort,”
I answered; and with that I picked up my brief bag and went forth to
my duties at the courts.

That Thorndyke would keep his promise to poor Lilian Markham was a
foregone conclusion, preposterous as the examination seemed. But even
my long experience of my colleague’s scrupulous conscientiousness had
not prepared me for the spectacle which met my eyes when I returned to
our chambers. On the table stood the microscope, flanked by three
slide-boxes. Each box held six trays, and each tray held six slides--a
hundred and eight slides in all!

But why three boxes? I opened one. The slides--carefully mounted
blood-films--were labelled “Joseph Riggs.” Those in the second box
were labelled, “Blood from hall floor.” But when I opened the third
box, I beheld a collection of empty slides labelled “Robert Fletcher”!

I chuckled aloud. Prodigious! Thorndyke was going even one better than
his promise. He was not only going to examine--probably had
examined--the two samples produced; he was actually going to collect a
third sample for himself!

I picked out one of Mr. Riggs’s slides and laid it on the stage of the
microscope. Thorndyke seemed to have been using a low-power
objective--the inch-and-a-half. After a glance through this, I swung
round the nose-piece to the high power. And then I got a further
surprise. The brightly-coloured “white” corpuscles showed that
Thorndyke had actually been to the trouble of staining the films with
eosin! Again I murmured, “Prodigious!” and put the slide back in its
box. For, of course, it showed just what one expected: blood--or
rather, broken-up blood-clot. From its appearance, I could not even
have sworn that it was human blood.

I had just closed the box when Thorndyke entered the room. His quick
eye at once noted the changed objective and he remarked:

“I see you have been having a look at the specimens.”

“A specimen,” I corrected. “Enough is as good as a feast.”

“Blessed are they who are easily satisfied,” he retorted; and then he
added: “I have altered my arrangements, though I needn’t interfere
with yours. I shall go down to Southaven to-night; in fact, I am
starting in a few minutes.”

“Why?” I asked.

“For several reasons. I want to make sure of the post-mortem to-morrow
morning, I want to pick up any further facts that are available, and
finally, I want to prepare a set of blood-films from Robert Fletcher.
We may as well make the series complete,” he added with a smile, to
which I replied by a broad grin.

“Really, Thorndyke,” I protested, “I’m surprised at you, at your age,
too. She is a nice girl, but she isn’t so beautiful as to justify a
hundred and eight blood-films.”

I accompanied him to the taxi, followed by Polton, who carried his
modest luggage, and then returned to speculate on his probable plan of
campaign. For, of course, he had one. His purposive, resolute manner
told me that he had seen farther into this case than I had. I accepted
that as natural and inevitable. Indeed, I may admit that my
disrespectful badinage covered a belief in his powers hardly second
even to old Brodribb’s. I was, in fact, almost prepared to discover
that those preposterous blood-films had, after all, yielded some
“illuminating fact” which had sent him hurrying down to Southaven in
search of corroboration.

When I alighted from the train on the following day at a little past
noon, I found him waiting on the platform, ready to conduct me to his
hotel for an early lunch.

“All goes well, so far,” he reported. “I attended the post-mortem, and
examined the wound thoroughly. The pistol was held in the right hand
not more than two inches from the head; probably quite close, for the
skin is scorched and heavily tattooed with black powder grains. I find
that Riggs was right-handed. So the prima facie probabilities are in
favour of suicide; and the recent loss of money suggests a reasonable
motive.”

“But what about that blood in the hall?”

“Oh, we have disposed of that. I completed the blood-film series last
night.”

I looked at him quickly to see if he was serious or only playing a
facetious return-shot. But his face was as a face of wood.

“You are an exasperating old devil, Thorndyke!” I exclaimed with
conviction. Then, knowing that cross-examination would be futile, I
asked:

“What are we going to do after lunch?”

“The inspector is going to show us over ‘the scene of the tragedy,’ as
the newspapers would express it.”

I noted gratefully that he had reserved this item for me, and
dismissed professional topics for the time being, concentrating my
attention on the old-world, amphibious streets through which we were
walking. There is always something interesting in the aspect of a
sea-port town, even if it is only a small one like Southaven.

The inspector arrived with such punctuality that he found us still at
the table and was easily induced to join us with a cup of coffee and
to accept a cigar--administered by Thorndyke, as I suspected, with the
object of hindering conversation. I could see that his interest in my
colleague was intense and not unmingled with awe, a fact which, in
conjunction with the cigar, restrained him from any undue
manifestations of curiosity, but not from continuous, though furtive,
observation of my friend. Indeed, when we arrived at the late Mr.
Riggs’s house, I was secretly amused by the close watch that he kept
on Thorndyke’s movements, unsensational as the inspection turned out
to be.

The house, itself, presented very little of interest excepting its
picturesque, old-world exterior, which fronted on a quiet by-street
and was furnished with a deep bay-window, which--as Thorndyke
ascertained--commanded a clear view of the street from end to end. It
was a rather shabby, neglected little house, as might have been
expected, and our examination of it yielded, so far as I could see,
only a single fact of any significance: which was that there appeared
to be no connexion whatever between the blood-stain on the study floor
and the train of large spots from the middle of the hall to the street
door. And on this piece of evidence--definitely unfavourable from our
point of view--Thorndyke concentrated his attention when he had made a
preliminary survey.

Closely followed by the watchful inspector, he browsed round the
little room, studying every inch of the floor between the blood-stain
and the door. The latter he examined minutely from top to bottom,
especially as to the handle, the jambs, and the lintel. Then he went
out into the hall, scrutinizing the floor inch by inch, poring over
the walls and even looking behind the framed prints that hung on them.
A reflector lamp suspended by a nail on the wall received minute and
prolonged attention, as did also a massive lamp-hook screwed into one
of the beams of the low ceiling, of which Thorndyke remarked as he
stooped to pass under it, that it must have been fixed there by a
dwarf.

“Yes,” the inspector agreed, “and a fool. A swinging lamp hung on that
hook would have blocked the whole fairway. There isn’t too much room
as it is. What a pity we weren’t a bit more careful about footprints
in this place. There are plenty of tracks of wet feet here on this
oil-cloth; faint, but you could have made them out all right if they
hadn’t been all on top of one another. There’s Mr. Foxley’s, the
girl’s, mine, and the men who carried out the body, but I’m hanged if
I can tell which is which. It’s a regular mix up.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “it is all very confused. But I notice one rather odd
thing. There are several faint traces of a large right foot, but I
can’t see any sign of the corresponding left foot. Can you?”

“Perhaps this is it,” said Thorndyke, pointing to a large, vague oval
mark. “I have noticed that it seems to occur in some sort of connexion
with the big right foot; but I must admit that it is not a very
obvious footprint.”

“I shouldn’t have taken it for a footprint at all, or at any rate, not
a human footprint. It is more like the spoor of some big animal.”

“It is,” Thorndyke agreed; “but whatever it is, it seems to have been
here before any of the others arrived. You notice that wherever it
occurs, it seems to have been trodden on by some of the others.”

“Yes, I had noticed that, and the same is true of the big right foot,
so it seems probable that they are connected, as you say. But I am
hanged if I can make anything of it. Can you, inspector?”

The inspector shook his head. He could not recognize the mark as a
footprint, but he could see very plainly that he had been a fool not
to have taken more care to protect the floor.

When the examination of the hall was finished, Thorndyke opened the
door and looked at the big, flat doorstep.

“What was the weather like, here, on Wednesday evening?” he asked.

“Showery,” the inspector replied; “and there were one or two heavy
showers during the night. You were noticing that there are no
blood-tracks on the doorstep. But there wouldn’t be in any case; for
if a man had come out of this door dropping blood, the blood would
have dropped on wet stone and got washed away at once.”

Thorndyke admitted the truth of this; and so another item of
favourable evidence was extinguished. The overwhelming probability
that the blood in the hall was that of some person other than the
deceased remained undisturbed; and I could not see that a single fact
had been elicited by our inspection of the house that was in any way
helpful to our client. Indeed, it appeared to me that there was
absolutely no case for the defence, and I even asked myself whether we
were not, in fact, merely trying to fudge up a defence for an
obviously guilty man. It was not like Thorndyke to do that. But how
did the case stand? There was a suggestion of suicide, but a clear
possibility of homicide. There was strong evidence that a second
person had been in the house, and that person appeared to have
received a wound. But a wound suggested a struggle; and the servant’s
evidence was to the effect that when she left the house a violent
altercation was in progress. The deceased was never again seen alive;
and the other party to the quarrel had been found with property of the
dead man in his possession. Moreover, there was a clear motive for the
crime, stupid as that crime was. For the dead man had threatened to
revoke his will; but as he had presumably not done so, his death left
the will still operative. In short, everything pointed to the guilt of
our client, Robert Fletcher.

I had just reached this not very gratifying conclusion when a
statement of Thorndyke’s shattered my elaborate summing up into
impalpable fragments.

“I suppose, sir,” said the inspector, “there isn’t anything that you
would care to tell us, as you are for the defence. But we are not
hostile to Fletcher. In fact, he hasn’t been charged. He is only being
detained in custody until we have heard what turns up at the inquest.
I know you have examined that blood that Mr. Foxley took, and
Fletcher’s blood, too, and you’ve seen the premises. We have given all
the facilities that we could, and if you could give us any sort of
hint that might be useful--well, I should be very much obliged.”

Thorndyke reflected for a few moments. Then he replied:

“There is no reason for secrecy in regard to you, inspector, who have
been so helpful and friendly, so I will be quite frank. I have
examined both samples of blood and Fletcher’s, and I have inspected
the premises, and what I am able to say definitely is this: the blood
in the hall is not the blood of the deceased----”

“Ah!” exclaimed the inspector, “I was afraid it wasn’t.”

“And it is not the blood of Robert Fletcher.”

“Isn’t it now! Well, I am glad to hear that.”

“Moreover,” continued Thorndyke, “it was shed well after nine o’clock
at night, probably not earlier than midnight.”

“There, now!” the inspector exclaimed, with an admiring glance at
Thorndyke, “just think of that. See what it is to be a man of science!
I suppose, sir, you couldn’t give us any sort of description of the
person who dropped that blood in the hall?”

Staggered as I had been by Thorndyke’s astonishing statements, I could
not repress a grin at the inspector’s artless question. But the grin
faded rather abruptly as Thorndyke replied in matter-of-fact tones:

“A detailed description is, of course, impossible. I can only sketch
out the probabilities. But if you should happen to meet with a
negro--a tall negro with a bandaged head or a contused wound of the
scalp and a swollen leg--you had better keep your eye on him. The leg
which is swollen is probably the left.”

The inspector was thrilled; and so was I, for that matter. The thing
was incredible; but yet I knew that Thorndyke’s amazing deductions
were the products of perfectly orthodox scientific methods. Only I
could form no sort of guess as to how they had been arrived at. A
negro’s blood is no different from any other person’s, and certainly
affords no clue to his height or the condition of his legs. I could
make nothing of it; and as the dialogue and the inspector’s
note-takings brought us to the little town hall in which the inquest
was to be held, I dismissed the puzzle until such time as Thorndyke
chose to solve it.

When we entered the town hall we found everything in readiness for the
opening of the proceedings. The jury were already in their places and
the coroner was just about to take his seat at the head of the long
table. We accordingly slipped on to the two chairs that were found for
us by the inspector, and the latter took his place behind the jury and
facing us. Near to him Mr. Foxley and Miss Markham were seated, and
evidently hailed our arrival with profound relief, each of them
smiling us a silent greeting. A professional-looking man sitting next
to Thorndyke I assumed to be the medical witness, and a rather
good-looking young man who sat apart with a police constable I
identified as Robert Fletcher.

The evidence of the “common” witnesses who deposed to the general
facts, told us nothing that we did not already know, excepting that it
was made clear that Fletcher had left his uncle’s house not later than
seven o’clock and that thereafter until the following morning his
whereabouts were known. The medical witness was cautious, and kept an
uneasy eye on Thorndyke. The wound which caused the death of deceased
might have been inflicted by himself or by some other person. He had
originally given the probable time of death as six or seven o’clock on
Wednesday evening. He now admitted--in reply to a question from
Thorndyke--that he had not taken the temperature of the body, and that
the rigidity and other conditions were not absolutely inconsistent
with a considerably later time of death. Death might even have
occurred after midnight.

In spite of this admission, however, the sum of the evidence tended
strongly to implicate Fletcher, and one or two questions from jurymen
suggested a growing belief in his guilt. I had no doubt whatever that
if the case had been put to the jury at this stage, a unanimous
verdict of “wilful murder” would have been the result. But, as the
medical witness returned to his seat, the coroner fixed an inquisitive
eye on Thorndyke.

“You have not been summoned as a witness, Dr. Thorndyke,” said he,
“but I understand that you have made certain investigations in this
case. Are you able to throw any fresh light on the circumstances of
the death of the deceased, Joseph Riggs?”

“Yes,” Thorndyke replied. “I am in a position to give important and
material evidence.”

Thereupon he was sworn, and the coroner, still watching him curiously,
said:

“I am informed that you have examined samples of the blood of deceased
and the blood which was found in the hall of deceased’s house. Did you
examine them, and if so, what was the object of the examination?”

“I examined both samples and also samples of the blood of Robert
Fletcher. The object was to ascertain whether the blood on the hall
floor was the blood of the deceased or of Robert Fletcher.”

The coroner glanced at the medical witness, and a faint smile appeared
on the face of each.

“And did you,” the former asked in a slightly ironical tone, “form any
opinion on the subject?”

“I ascertained definitely that the blood in the hall was neither that
of the deceased nor that of Robert Fletcher.”

The coroner’s eyebrows went up, and once more he glanced significantly
at the doctor.

“But,” he demanded incredulously, “is it possible to distinguish the
blood of one person from that of another?”

“Usually it is not, but in certain exceptional cases it is. This
happened to be an exceptional case.”

“In what respect?”

“It happened,” Thorndyke replied, “that the person whose blood was
found in the hall suffered from the parasitic disease known as
filariasis. His blood was infested with swarms of a minute worm named
_Filaria nocturna_. I have here,” he continued, taking out of his
research-case the two bottles and the three boxes, “thirty-six mounted
specimens of this blood, and in every one of them one or more of the
parasites is to be seen. I have also thirty-six mounted specimens each
of the blood of the deceased and the blood of Robert Fletcher. In not
one of these specimens is a single parasite to be found. Moreover, I
have examined Robert Fletcher and the body of the deceased, and can
testify that no sign of filarial disease was to be discovered in
either. Hence it is certain that the blood found in the hall was not
the blood of either of these two persons.”

The ironic smile had faded from the coroner’s face. He was evidently
deeply impressed, and his manner was quite deferential as he asked:

“Do these very remarkable observations of yours lead to any further
inferences?”

“Yes,” replied Thorndyke. “They render it certain that this blood was
shed not earlier than nine o’clock and probably nearer midnight.”

“Really!” the astonished coroner exclaimed. “Now, how is it possible
to fix the time in that exact manner?”

“By inference from the habits of the parasite,” Thorndyke explained.
“This particular filaria is distributed by the mosquito, and its
habits are adapted to the habits of the mosquito. During the day, the
worms are not found in the blood; they remain hidden in the tissues of
the body. But about nine o’clock at night they begin to migrate from
the tissues into the blood, and remain in the blood during the hours
when the mosquitoes are active. Then, about six o’clock in the
morning, they leave the blood and migrate back into the tissues.

“There is another very similar species--_Filaria diurna_--which has
exactly opposite habits, adapted to day-flying suctorial insects. It
appears in the blood about eleven in the forenoon and goes back into
the tissues about six o’clock in the evening.”

“Astonishing!” exclaimed the coroner. “Wonderful! By the way, the
parasites that you found could not, I suppose, have been _Filaria
diurna_?”

“No,” Thorndyke replied. “The time excludes that possibility. The
blood was certainly shed after six. They were undoubtedly _nocturna_,
and the large numbers found suggest a late hour. The parasites come
out of the tissues very gradually, and it is only about midnight that
they appear in the blood in really large numbers.”

“That is very important,” said the coroner. “But does this disease
affect any particular class of persons?”

“Yes,” Thorndyke replied. “As the disease is confined to tropical
countries, the sufferers are naturally residents of the tropics, and
nearly always natives. In West Africa, for instance, it is common
among the negroes but practically unknown among the white residents.”

“Should you say that there is a distinct probability that this unknown
person was a negro?”

“Yes. But apart from the filariæ, there is direct evidence that he
was. Searching for some cause of the bleeding, I noticed a lamp-hook
screwed into the ceiling and low enough to strike a tall man’s head. I
examined it closely, and observed on it a dark, shiny mark, like a
blood-smear, and one or two short coiled hairs which I recognized as
the scalp-hairs of a negro. I have no doubt that the unknown man is a
negro, and that he has a wound of the scalp.”

“Does filarial disease produce any effects that can be recognized?”

“Frequently it does. One of the commonest effects produced by _Filaria
nocturna_, especially among negroes, is the condition known as
elephantiasis. This consists of an enormous swelling of the
extremities, most usually of one leg, including the foot; whence the
name. The leg and foot look like those of an elephant. As a matter of
fact, the negro who was in the hall suffered from elephantiasis of the
left leg. I observed prints of the characteristically deformed foot on
the oil-cloth covering the floor.”

Thorndyke’s evidence was listened to with intense interest by everyone
present, including myself. Indeed, so spell-bound was his audience
that one could have heard a pin drop; and the breathless silence
continued for some seconds after he had ceased speaking. Then, in the
midst of the stillness, I heard the door creak softly behind me.

There was nothing particularly significant in the sound. But its
effects were amazing. Glancing at the inspector, who faced the door, I
saw his eyes open and his jaw drop until his face was a very mask of
astonishment. And as this expression was reflected on the faces of the
jurymen, the coroner and everyone present, excepting Thorndyke, whose
back was towards the door, I turned to see what had happened. And then
I was as astonished as the others.

The door had been pushed open a few inches and a head thrust in--a
negro’s head, covered with a soiled and blood-stained rag forming a
rough bandage. As I gazed at the black, shiny, inquisitive face, the
man pushed the door farther open and shuffled into the room; and
instantly there arose on all sides a soft rustle and an inarticulate
murmur followed by breathless silence, while every eye was riveted on
the man’s left leg.

It certainly was a strange, repulsive-looking member, its monstrous
bulk exposed to view through the slit trouser and its great shapeless
foot--shoeless, since no shoe could have contained it--rough and horny
like the foot of an elephant. But it was tragic and pitiable, too; for
the man, apart from this horrible excrescence, was a fine, big,
athletic-looking fellow.

The coroner was the first to recover. Addressing Thorndyke, but
keeping an eye on the negro, he said:

“Your evidence, then, amounts to this: On the night of Joseph Riggs’s
death, there was a stranger in the house. That stranger was a negro,
who seems to have wounded his head and who, you say, had a swelled
left leg.”

“Yes,” Thorndyke admitted, “that is the substance of my evidence.”

Once more a hush fell on the room. The negro stood near the door,
rolling his eyes to and fro over the assembly as if uneasily conscious
that everyone was looking at him. Suddenly, he shuffled up to the foot
of the table and addressed the coroner in deep, buzzing, resonant
tones.

“You tink I kill dat ole man! I no kill um. He kill himself. I look
um.”

Having made this statement, he rolled his eyes defiantly round the
court, and then turned his face expectantly towards the coroner, who
said:

“You say you know that Mr. Riggs killed himself?”

“Yas. I look um. He shoot himself. You tink I shoot um. I tell you I
no shoot um. Why I fit kill this man? I no sabby um.”

“Then,” said the coroner, “if you know that he killed himself, you
must tell us all that you know; and you must swear to tell us the
truth.”

“Yas,” the negro agreed, “I tell you eberyting one time. I tell you de
troof. Dat ole man kill himself.”

When the coroner had explained to him that he was not bound to make
any statement that would incriminate him, as he still elected to give
evidence, he was sworn and proceeded to make his statement with
curious fluency and self-possession.

“My name Robert Bruce. Dat my English name. My country name Kwaku
Mensah. I live for Winnebah on de Gold Coast. Dis time I cook’s mate
for dat steamer _Leckie_. On Wednesday night I lay in my bunk. I no
fit sleep. My leg he chook me. I look out of de porthole. Plenty moon
live. In my country when de moon big, peoples walk about. So I get up.
I go ashore to walk about de town. Den de rain come. Plenty rain. Rain
no good for my sickness. So I try for open house doors. No fit. All
doors locked. Den I come to dis ole man’s house. I turn de handle. De
door open. I go in. I look in one room. All dark. Nobody live. Den I
look annudder room. De door open a little. Light live inside. I no
like dat. I tink, spose somebody come out and see me, he tink I come
for teef someting. So I tink I go away.

“Den someting make ‘Ping!’ same like gun. I hear someting fall down in
dat room. I go to de door and I sing out, ‘Who live in dere?’ Nobody
say nutting. So I open de door and look in. De room full ob smoke. I
look dat ole man on de floor. I look dat pistol. I sabby dat ole man
kill himself. Den I frighten too much. I run out. De place all dark.
Someting knock my head. He make blood come plenty. I go back for ship.
I no say nutting to nobody. Dis day I hear peoples talk ’bout dis
inquess to find out who kill dat ole man. So I come to hear what
peoples say. I hear dat gentleman say I kill dat ole man. So I tell
you eberyting. I tell you de troof. Finish.”

“Do you know what time it was when you came ashore?” the coroner
asked.

“Yas. When I come down de ladder I hear eight bells ring. I get back
to de ship jus’ before dey ring two bells in de middle watch.”

“Then you came ashore at midnight and got back just before one
o’clock?”

“Yas. Dat is what I say.”

A few more questions put by the coroner having elicited nothing fresh,
the case was put briefly to the jury.

“You have heard the evidence, gentlemen, and most remarkable evidence
it was. Like myself, you must have been deeply impressed by the
amazing skill with which Dr. Thorndyke reconstructed the personality
of the unknown visitor to that house, and even indicated correctly the
very time of the visit, from an examination of a mere chance
blood-stain. As to the statement of Kwaku Mensah, I can only say that
I see no reason to doubt its truth. You will note that it is in
complete agreement with Dr. Thorndyke’s evidence, and it presents no
inconsistencies or improbabilities. Possibly the police may wish to
make some further inquiries, but for our purposes it is the evidence
of an eyewitness, and as such must be given full weight. With these
remarks, I leave you to consider your verdict.”

The jury took but a minute or two to deliberate. Indeed, only one
verdict was possible if the evidence was to be accepted, and that was
agreed on unanimously--suicide whilst temporarily insane. As soon as
it was announced, the inspector, formally and with congratulations,
released Fletcher from custody, and presently retired in company with
the negro to make a few inquiries on board the ship.

The rising of the court was the signal for a wild demonstration of
enthusiasm and gratitude to Thorndyke. To play his part efficiently in
that scene he would have needed to be furnished, like certain
repulsive Indian deities, with an unlimited outfit of arms. For
everyone wanted to shake his hand, and two of them--Mr. Foxley and
Miss Markham--did so with such pertinacity as entirely to exclude the
other candidates.


“I can never thank you enough,” Miss Markham exclaimed, with swimming
eyes, “if I should live to be a hundred. But I shall think of you with
gratitude every day of my life. Whenever I look at Robert, I shall
remember that his liberty, and even his life, are your gifts.”

Here she was so overcome by grateful emotion that she again seized and
pressed his hand. I think she was within an ace of kissing him; but
being, perhaps, doubtful how he would take it, compromised by kissing
Robert instead. And, no doubt, it was just as well.




 IX.
 GLEANINGS FROM THE WRECKAGE

There was a time, and not so very long ago, when even the main
streets of London, after midnight, were as silent as--not the grave;
that is an unpleasant simile. Besides, who has any experience of
conditions in the grave? But they were nearly as silent as the streets
of a village. Then the nocturnal pedestrian could go his way
encompassed and soothed by quiet, which was hardly disturbed by the
rumble of a country wagon wending to market or the musical tinkle of
the little bells on the collar of the hansom-cab horse sedately
drawing some late reveller homeward.

Very different is the state of those streets nowadays. Long after the
hour when the electric trams have ceased from troubling and the motor
omnibuses are at rest, the heavy road transport from the country
thunders through the streets; the air is rent by the howls of the
electric hooter, and belated motor-cyclists fly past, stuttering
explosively like perambulant Lewis guns with an inexhaustible charge.

“Let us get into the by-streets,” said Thorndyke, as a car sped past
us uttering sounds suggestive of a dyspeptic dinosaur. “We don’t want
our conversation seasoned with mechanical objurgations. In the
back-streets it is still possible to hear oneself speak and forget the
march of progress.”

We turned into a narrow by-way with the confidence of the born and
bred Londoner in the impossibility of losing our direction, and began
to thread the intricate web of streets in the neighbourhood of a
canal.

“It is a remarkable thing,” Thorndyke resumed anon, “that every new
application of science seems to be designed to render the environment
of civilized man more and more disagreeable. If the process goes much
farther, as it undoubtedly will, we shall presently find ourselves
looking back wistfully at the Stone-age as the golden age of human
comfort.”

At this point his moralizing was cut short by a loud, sharp explosion.
We both stopped and looked about from the parapet of the bridge that
we were crossing.

“Quite like old times,” Thorndyke remarked. “Carries one back to 1915,
when friend Fritz used to call on us. Ah! There is the place; the top
story of that tall building across the canal.” He pointed as he spoke
to a factory-like structure, from the upper windows of which a lurid
light shone and rapidly grew brighter.

“It must be down the next turning,” said I, quickening my pace. But he
restrained me, remarking: “There is no hurry. That was the sound of
high explosive, and those flames suggest nitro compounds burning.
_Festina lente._ There may be some other packets of high explosives.”

He had hardly finished speaking when a flash of dazzling violet light
burst from the burning building. The windows flew out bodily, the roof
opened in places, and almost at the same moment the clang of a violent
explosion shook the ground under our feet, a puff of wind stirred our
hair, and then came a clatter of falling glass and slates.

We made our way at a leisurely pace towards the scene of the
explosion, through streets lighted up by the ruddy glare from the
burning factory. But others were less cautious. In a few minutes the
street was filled by one of those crowds which, in London, seem
mysteriously to spring up in an instant where but a moment before not
a person was to be seen. Before we had reached the building, a
fire-engine had rumbled past us, and already a sprinkling of policemen
had appeared as if, like the traditional frogs, they had dropped from
the clouds.

In spite of the ferocity of its outbreak, the fire seemed to be no
great matter, for even as we looked and before the fire-hose was fully
run out, the flames began to die down. Evidently, they had been dealt
with by means of extinguishers within the building, and the services
of the engine would not be required after all. Noting this flat ending
to what had seemed so promising a start, we were about to move off and
resume our homeward journey when I observed a uniformed inspector who
was known to us, and who, observing us at the same instant, made his
way towards us through the crowd.

“You remind me, sir,” said he, when he had wished us good evening, “of
the stories of the vultures that make their appearance in the sky from
nowhere when a camel drops dead in the desert. I don’t mean anything
uncomplimentary,” he hastened to add. “I was only thinking of the
wonderful instinct that has brought you to this very spot at this
identical moment, as if you had smelt a case afar off.”

“Then your imagination has misled you,” said Thorndyke, “for I haven’t
smelt a case, and I don’t smell one now. Fires are not in my
province.”

“No, sir,” replied the inspector, “but bodies are, and the fireman
tells me that there is a dead man up there--or at least the remains of
one. I am going up to inspect. Do you care to come up with me?”

Thorndyke considered for a moment, but I knew what his answer would
be, and I was not mistaken.

“As a matter of professional interest, I should,” he replied, “but I
don’t want to be summoned as a witness at the inquest.”

“Of course you don’t, sir,” the inspector agreed, “and I will see that
you are not summoned, unless an expert witness is wanted. I need not
mention that you have been here; but I should be glad of your opinion
for my own guidance in investigating the case.”

He led us through the crowd to the door of the building, where we were
joined by a fireman--whose helmet I should have liked to borrow--by
whom we were piloted up the stairs. Half-way up we met the
night-watchman, carrying an exhausted extinguisher and a big electric
lantern, and he joined our procession, giving us the news as we
ascended.

“It’s all safe up above,” said he, “excepting the roof; and that isn’t
so very much damaged. The big windows saved it. They blew out and let
off the force of the explosion. The floor isn’t damaged at all. It’s
girder and concrete. But poor Mr. Manford caught it properly. He was
fairly blown to bits.”

“Do you know how it happened?” the inspector asked.

“I don’t,” was the reply. “When I came on duty Mr. Manford was up
there in his private laboratory. Soon afterwards a friend of his--a
foreign gentleman of the name of Bilsky--came to see him. I took him
up, and then Mr. Manford said he had some business to do, and after
that he had got a longish job to do and would be working late. So he
said I might turn in and he would let me know when he had finished.
And he did let me know with a vengeance, poor chap! I lay down in my
clothes, and I hadn’t been asleep above a couple of hours when some
noise woke me up. Then there came a most almighty bang. I rushed for
an extinguisher and ran upstairs, and there I found the big laboratory
all ablaze, the windows blown out and the ceiling down. But it wasn’t
so bad as it looked. There wasn’t very much stuff up there; only the
experimental stuff, and that burned out almost at once. I got the rest
of the fire out in a few minutes.”

“What stuff is it that you are speaking of?” the inspector asked.

“Celluloid, mostly, I think,” replied the watchman. “They make films
and other celluloid goods in the works. But Mr. Manford used to do
experiments in the material up in his laboratory. This time he was
working with alloys, melting them on the gas furnace. Dangerous thing
to do with all that inflammable stuff about. I don’t know what there
was up there, exactly. Some of it was celluloid, I could see by the
way it burned, but the Lord knows what it was that exploded. Some of
the raw stuff, perhaps.”

At this point we reached the top floor, where a door blown off its
hinges and a litter of charred wood fragments filled the landing.
Passing through the yawning doorway, we entered the laboratory and
looked on a hideous scene of devastation. The windows were mere holes,
the ceiling a gaping space fringed with black and ragged lathing,
through which the damaged roof was visible by the light of the
watchman’s powerful lantern. The floor was covered with the fallen
plaster and fragments of blackened woodwork, but its own boards were
only slightly burnt in places, owing, no doubt, to their being
fastened directly to the concrete which formed the actual floor.

“You spoke of some human remains,” said the inspector.

“Ah!” said the watchman, “you may well say ‘remains.’ Just come here.”
He led the way over the rubbish to a corner of the laboratory, where
he halted and threw the light of his lantern down on a brownish,
dusty, globular object that lay on the floor half buried in plaster.
“That’s all that’s left of poor Mr. Manford; that and a few other odd
pieces. I saw a hand over the other side.”

Thorndyke picked up the head and placed it on the blackened remnant of
a bench, where, with the aid of the watchman’s lantern and the
inspection lamp which I produced from our research-case, he examined
it curiously. It was extremely, but unequally, scorched. One ear was
completely shrivelled, and most of the face was charred to the bone.
But the other ear was almost intact; and though most of the hair was
burned away to the scalp, a tuft above the less-damaged ear was only
singed, so that it was possible to see that the hair had been black,
with here and there a stray white hair.

Thorndyke made no comments, but I noticed that he examined the
gruesome object minutely, taking nothing for granted. The inspector
noticed this, too; and when the examination was finished, looked at
him inquiringly.

“Anything abnormal, sir?” he asked.

“No,” replied Thorndyke; “nothing that is not accounted for by fire
and the explosion. I see he had no natural teeth, so he must have worn
a complete set of false teeth. That should help in the formal
identification, if the plates are not completely destroyed.”

“There isn’t much need for identification,” said the watchman, “seeing
that there was nobody in the building but him and me. His friend went
away about half-past twelve. I heard Mr. Manford let him out.”

“The doctor means at the inquest,” the inspector explained. “Somebody
has got to recognize the body if possible.”

He took the watchman’s lantern, and throwing its light on the floor,
began to search among the rubbish. Very soon he disinterred from under
a heap of plaster the headless trunk. Both legs were attached, though
the right was charred below the knee and the foot blown off, and one
complete arm. The other arm--the right--was intact only to the elbow.
Here, again, the burning was very unequal. In some parts the clothing
had been burnt off or blown away completely; in others, enough was
left to enable the watchman to recognize it with certainty. One leg
was much more burnt than the other; and whereas the complete arm was
only scorched, the dismembered one was charred almost to the bone.
When the trunk had been carried to the bench and laid there beside the
head, the lights were turned on it for Thorndyke to make his
inspection.

“It almost seems,” said the police officer, as the hand was being
examined, “as if one could guess how he was standing when the
explosion occurred. I think I can make out finger-marks--pretty dirty
ones, too--on the back of the hand, as if he had been standing with
his hands clasped together behind him while he watched something that
he was experimenting with.” The inspector glanced for confirmation at
Thorndyke, who nodded approvingly.

“Yes,” he said, “I think you are right. They are very indistinct, but
the marks are grouped like fingers. The small mark near the wrist
suggests a little finger, and the separate one near the knuckle looks
like a fore-finger, while the remaining two marks are close together.”
He turned the hand over and continued: “And there, in the palm, just
between the roots of the third and fourth fingers, seems to be the
trace of a thumb. But they are all very faint. You have a quick eye,
inspector.”

The gratified officer, thus encouraged, resumed his explorations among
the debris in company with the watchman--the fireman had retired after
a professional look round--leaving Thorndyke to continue his
examination of the mutilated corpse, at which I looked on
unsympathetically. For we had had a long day and I was tired and
longing to get home. At length I drew out my watch, and with a
portentous yawn, entered a mild protest.

“It is nearly two o’clock,” said I. “Don’t you think we had better be
getting on? This really isn’t any concern of ours, and there doesn’t
seem to be anything in it, from our point of view.”

“Only that we are keeping our intellectual joints supple,” Thorndyke
replied with a smile. “But it _is_ getting late. Perhaps we had better
adjourn the inquiry.”

At this moment, however, the inspector discovered the missing
forearm--completely charred--with the fingerless remains of the hand,
and almost immediately afterwards the watchman picked up a dental
plate of some white metal, which seemed to be practically uninjured.
But our brief inspection of these objects elicited nothing of
interest, and having glanced at them, we took our departure, avoiding
on the stairs an eager reporter, all agog for “copy.”

A few days later we received a visit, by appointment from a Mr.
Herdman, a solicitor who was unknown to us and who was accompanied by
the widow of Mr. James Manford, the victim of the explosion. In the
interval the inquest had been opened but had been adjourned for
further examination of the premises and the remains. No mention had
been made of our visit to the building, and so far as I knew nothing
had been said to anybody on the subject.

Mr. Herdman came to the point with business-like directness.

“I have called,” he said, “to secure your services, if possible, in
regard to the matter of which I spoke in my letter. You have probably
seen an account of the disaster in the papers?”

“Yes,” replied Thorndyke. “I read the report of the inquest.”

“Then you know the principal facts. The inquest, as you know, was
adjourned for three weeks. When it is resumed, I should like to retain
you to attend on behalf of Mrs. Manford.”

“To watch the case on her behalf?” Thorndyke suggested.

“Well, not exactly,” replied Herdman. “I should ask you to inspect the
premises and the remains of poor Mr. Manford, so that, at the
adjourned inquest, you could give evidence to the effect that the
explosion and the death of Mr. Manford were entirely due to accident.”

“Does anyone say that they were not?” Thorndyke asked.

“No, certainly not,” Mr. Herdman replied hastily. “Not at all. But I
happened, quite by chance, to see the manager of the ‘Pilot’ Insurance
Society, on another matter, and I mentioned the case of Mr. Manford.
He then let drop a remark which made me slightly uneasy. He observed
that there was a suicide clause in the policy, and that the
possibility of suicide would have to be ruled out before the claim
could be settled. Which suggested a possible intention to contest the
claim.”

“But,” said Thorndyke, “I need not point out to you that if he sets up
the theory of suicide, it is for him to prove it, not for you to
disprove it. Has anything transpired that would lend colour to such a
suggestion?”

“Nothing material,” was the reply. “But we should feel more happy if
you could be present and give positive evidence that the death was
accidental.”

“That,” said Thorndyke, “would be hardly possible. But my feeling is
that the suicide question is negligible. There is nothing to suggest
it, so far as I know. Is there anything known to you?”

The solicitor glanced at his client and replied somewhat evasively:

“We are anxious to secure ourselves. Mrs. Manford is left very badly
off, unless there is some personal property that we don’t know about.
If the insurance is not paid, she will be absolutely ruined. There
isn’t enough to pay the debts. And I think the suicide question might
be raised--even successfully--on several points. Manford had been
rather queer lately: jumpy and rather worried. Then, he was under
notice to terminate his engagement at the works. His finances were in
a confused state; goodness knows why, for he had a liberal salary. And
then there was some domestic trouble. Mrs. Manford had actually
consulted me about getting a separation. Some other woman, you know.”

“I should like to forget that,” said Mrs. Manford; “and it wasn’t that
which worried him. Quite the contrary. Since it began he had been
quite changed. So smart in his dress and so particular in his
appearance. He even took to dyeing his hair. I remember that he opened
a fresh bottle of dye the very morning before his death and took no
end of trouble putting it on. It wasn’t that entanglement that made
him jumpy. It was his money affairs. He had too many irons in the
fire.”

Thorndyke listened with patient attention to these rather irrelevant
details and inquired: “What sort of irons?”

“I will tell you,” said Herdman. “About three months ago he had need
for two thousand pounds; for what purpose, I can’t say, but Mrs.
Manford thinks it was to invest in certain valuables that he used to
purchase from time to time from a Russian dealer named Bilsky. At any
rate, he got this sum on short loan from a Mr. Clines, but meanwhile
arranged for a longer loan with a Mr. Elliott on a note of hand and an
agreement to insure his life for the amount.

“As a matter of fact, the policy was made out in Elliott’s name, he
having proved an insurable interest. So if the insurance is paid,
Elliott is settled with. Otherwise the debt falls on the estate, which
would be disastrous; and to make it worse, the day before his death,
he drew out five hundred pounds--nearly the whole balance--as he was
expecting to see Mr. Bilsky, who liked to be paid in bank-notes. He
did see him, in fact, at the laboratory, but they couldn’t have done
any business, as no jewels were found.”

“And the bank-notes?”

“Burned with the body, presumably. He must have had them with him.”

“You mentioned,” said Thorndyke, “that he occasionally bought jewels
from this Russian. What became of them?”

“Ah!” replied Herdman, “there is a gleam of hope there. He had a safe
deposit somewhere. We haven’t located it yet, but we shall. There may
be quite a nice little nest-egg in it. But meanwhile there is the debt
to Elliott. He wrote to Manford about it a day or two ago. You have
the letter, I think,” he added, addressing Mrs. Manford, who thereupon
produced two envelopes from her handbag and laid them on the table.

“This is Mr. Elliott’s letter,” she said. “Merely a friendly reminder,
you see, telling him that he is just off to the continent and that he
has given his wife a power of attorney to act in his absence.”

Thorndyke glanced through the letter and made a few notes of its
contents. Then he looked inquiringly at the other envelope.

“That,” said Mrs. Manford, “is a photograph of my husband. I thought
it might help you if you were going to examine the body.”

As Thorndyke drew the portrait out and regarded it thoughtfully, I
recalled the shapeless, blackened fragments of its subject; and when
he passed it to me I inspected it with a certain grim interest, and
mentally compared it with those grisly remains. It was a commonplace
face, rather unsymmetrical--the nose was deflected markedly to the
left, and the left eye had a pronounced divergent squint. The bald
head, with an abundant black fringe and an irregular scar on the right
side of the forehead, sought compensation in a full beard and
moustache, both apparently jet-black. It was not an attractive
countenance, and it was not improved by a rather odd-shaped ear--long,
lobeless, and pointed above, like the ear of a satyr.

“I realize your position,” said Thorndyke, “but I don’t quite see what
you want of me. If,” he continued, addressing the solicitor, “you had
thought of my giving _ex parte_ evidence, dismiss the idea. I am not a
witness-advocate. All I can undertake to do is to investigate the case
and try to discover what really happened. But in that case, whatever I
may discover I shall disclose to the coroner. Would that suit you?”

The lawyer looked doubtful and rather glum, but Mrs. Manford
interposed, firmly:

“Why not? We are not proposing any deception, but I am certain that he
did not commit suicide. Yes, I agree unreservedly to what you
propose.”

With this understanding--which the lawyer was disposed to boggle
at--our visitors took their leave. As soon as they were gone, I gave
utterance to the surprise with which I had listened to Thorndyke’s
proposal.

“I am astonished at your undertaking this case. Of course, you have
given them fair warning, but still, it will be unpleasant if you have
to give evidence unfavourable to your client.”

“Very,” he agreed. “But what makes you think I may have to?”

“Well, you seem to reject the probability of suicide, but have you
forgotten the evidence at the inquest?”

“Perhaps I have,” he replied blandly. “Let us go over it again.”

I fetched the report from the office, and spreading it out on the
table began to read it aloud. Passing over the evidence of the
inspector and the fireman, I came to that of the night-watchman.

“Shortly after I came on duty at ten o’clock, a foreign gentleman
named Bilsky called to see Mr. Manford. I knew him by sight, because
he had called once or twice before at about the same time. I took him
up to the laboratory, where Mr. Manford was doing something with a big
crucible on the gas furnace. He told me that he had some business to
transact with Mr. Bilsky and when he had finished he would let him
out. Then he was going to do some experiments in making alloys, and as
they would probably take up most of the night he said I might as well
turn in. He said he would call me when he was ready to go. So I told
him to be careful with the furnace and not set the place on fire and
burn me in my bed, and then I went downstairs. I had a look round to
see that everything was in order, and then I took off my boots and
laid down. About half-past twelve I heard Mr. Manford and Bilsky come
down. I recognized Mr. Bilsky by a peculiar cough that he had and by
the sound of his stick and his limping tread--he had something the
matter with his right foot and walked quite lame.”

“You say that the deceased came down with him,” said the coroner. “Are
you quite sure of that?”

“Well, I suppose Mr. Manford came down with him, but I can’t say I
actually heard him.”

“You did not hear him go up again?”

“No, I didn’t. But I was rather sleepy and I wasn’t listening very
particular. Well, then I went to sleep and slept till about half-past
one, when some noise woke me. I was just getting up to see what it was
when I heard a tremendous bang, right overhead. I ran down and turned
the gas off at the main and then I got a fire extinguisher and ran up
to the laboratory. The place seemed to be all in a blaze, but it
wasn’t much of a fire after all, for by the time the fire engines
arrived I had got it practically out.”

The witness then described the state of the laboratory and the finding
of the body, but as this was already known to us, I passed on to the
evidence of the next witness, the superintendent of the fire brigade,
who had made a preliminary inspection of the premises. It was a
cautious statement and subject to the results of a further
examination; but clearly the officer was not satisfied as to the cause
of the outbreak. There seemed to have been two separate explosions,
one near a cupboard and another--apparently the second--in the
cupboard itself; and there seemed to be a burned track connecting the
two spots. This might have been accidental or it might have been
arranged. Witness did not think that the explosive was celluloid. It
seemed to be a high explosive of some kind. But further investigations
were being made.

The superintendent was followed by Mrs. Manford, whose evidence was
substantially similar to what she and Mr. Herdman had told us, and by
the police surgeon, whose description of the remains conveyed nothing
new to us. Finally, the inquest was adjourned for three weeks to allow
of further examination of the premises and the remains.

“Now,” I said, as I folded up the report, “I don’t see how you are
able to exclude suicide. If the explosion was arranged to occur when
Manford was in the laboratory, what object, other than suicide, can be
imagined?”

Thorndyke looked at me with an expression that I knew only too well.

“Is it impossible,” he asked, “to imagine that the object might have
been homicide?”

“But,” I objected, “there was no one there but Manford--after Bilsky
left.”

“Exactly,” he agreed, dryly; “after Bilsky left. But up to that time
there were two persons there.”

I must confess that I was startled, but as I rapidly reviewed the
circumstances I perceived the cogency of Thorndyke’s suggestion.
Bilsky had been present when Manford dismissed the night-watchman. He
knew that there would be no interruption. The inflammable and
explosive materials were there, ready to his hand. Then Bilsky had
gone down to the door alone instead of being conducted down and let
out; a very striking circumstance, this. Again, no jewels had been
found, though the meeting had been ostensibly for the purpose of a
deal; and the bank-notes had vanished utterly. This was very
remarkable. In view of the large sum, it was nearly certain that the
notes would be in a close bundle, and we all know how difficult it is
to burn tightly-folded paper. Yet they had vanished without leaving a
trace. Finally, there was Bilsky himself. Who was he? Apparently a
dealer in stolen property--a hawker of the products of robbery and
murder committed during the revolution.

“Yes,” I admitted, “the theory of homicide is certainly tenable. But
unless some new facts can be produced, it must remain a matter of
speculation.”

“I think, Jervis,” he rejoined, “you must be overlooking the facts
that are known to us. We were there. We saw the place within a few
minutes of the explosion and we examined the body. What we saw
established a clear presumption of homicide, and what we have heard
this morning confirms it. I may say that I communicated my suspicions
the very next day to the coroner and to Superintendent Miller.”

“Then you must have seen more than I did,” I began. But he shook his
head and cut short my protestations.

“You saw what I saw, Jervis, but you did not interpret its meaning.
However, it is not too late. Try to recall the details of our
adventure and what our visitors have told us. I don’t think you will
then entertain the idea of suicide.”

I was about to put one or two leading questions, but at this moment
footsteps became audible ascending our stairs. The knock which
followed informed me that our visitor was Superintendent Miller, and I
rose to admit him.

“Just looked in to report progress,” he announced as he subsided into
an arm-chair. “Not much to report, but what there is supports your
view of the case. Bilsky has made a clean bolt. Never went home to his
hotel. Evidently meant to skedaddle, as he has left nothing of any
value behind. But it was a stupid move, for it would have raised
suspicion in any case. The notes were a consecutive batch. All the
numbers are known, but, of course, none of them have turned up yet. We
have made inquiries about Bilsky, and gather that he is a shady
character; practically a fence who deals in the jewellery stolen from
those unfortunate Russian aristocrats. But we shall have him all
right. His description has been circulated at all the seaports, and he
is an easy man to spot with his lame foot and his stick and a finger
missing from his right hand.”

Thorndyke nodded, and seemed to reflect for a moment. Then he asked:

“Have you made any other inquiries?”

“No; there is nothing more to find out until we get hold of our man,
and when we do, we shall look to you to secure the conviction. I
suppose you are quite certain as to your facts?”

Thorndyke shook his head with a smile.

“I am never certain until after the event. We can only act on
probabilities.”

“I understand,” said the superintendent, casting a sly look at me;
“but your probabilities are good enough for me.”

With this, he picked up his hat and departed, leaving us to return to
the occupations that our visitors had interrupted.

I heard no more of the Manford case for about a week, and assumed that
Thorndyke’s interest in it had ceased. But I was mistaken, as I
discovered when he remarked casually one evening:

“No news of Bilsky, so far; and time is running on. I am proposing to
make a tentative move in a new direction.” I looked at him
inquiringly, and he continued: “It appears, ‘from information
received,’ that Elliott had some dealings with him, so I propose to
call at his house to-morrow and see if we can glean any news of the
lost sheep.”

“But Elliott is abroad,” I objected.

“True; but his wife isn’t; and she evidently knows all about his
affairs. I have invited Miller to come with me in case he would like
to put any questions; and you may as well come, too, if you are free.”

It did not sound like a very thrilling adventure, but one never knew
with Thorndyke. I decided to go with him, and at that the matter
dropped, though I speculated a little curiously on the source of the
information. So, apparently, had the superintendent, for when he
arrived on the following morning he proceeded to throw out a few
cautious feelers, but got nothing for his pains beyond vague
generalities.

“It is a purely tentative proceeding,” said Thorndyke, “and you
mustn’t be disappointed if nothing comes of it.”

“I shall be, all the same,” replied Miller, with a sly glance at my
senior, and with this we set forth on our quest.

The Elliotts’ house was, as I knew, in some part of Wimbledon, and
thither we made our way by train. From the station we started along a
wide, straight main street from which numbers of smaller streets
branched off. At the corner of one of these I noticed a man standing,
apparently watching our approach; and something in his appearance
seemed to me familiar. Suddenly he took off his hat, looked curiously
into its interior, and put it on again. Then he turned about and
walked quickly down the side street. I looked at his retreating figure
as we crossed the street, wondering who he could be. And then it
flashed upon me that the resemblance was to a certain ex-sergeant
Barber whom Thorndyke occasionally employed for observation duties.
Just as I reached this conclusion, Thorndyke halted and looked about
him doubtfully.

“I am afraid we have come too far,” said he. “I fancy we ought to have
gone down that last turning.”

We accordingly faced about and walked back to the corner, where
Thorndyke read out the name, Mendoza Avenue.

“Yes,” he said, “this is the way,” and we thereupon turned down the
Avenue, following it to the bottom, where it ended in a cross-road,
the name of which, Berners Park, I recognized as that which I had seen
on Elliott’s letter.

“Sixty-four is the number,” said Thorndyke, “so as this corner house
is forty-six and the next is forty-eight, it will be a little way
along on this side, just about where you can see that smoke--which, by
the way, seems to be coming out of a window.”

“Yes, by Jove!” I exclaimed. “The staircase window, apparently. Not
our house, I hope!”

But it was. We read the number and the name, “Green Bushes,” on the
gate as we came up to it, and we hurried up the short path to the
door. There was no knocker, but when Miller fixed his thumb on the
bell-push, we heard a loud ringing within. But there was no response;
and meanwhile the smoke poured more and more densely out of the open
window above.

“Rum!” exclaimed Miller, sticking to the bell-push like a limpet.
“House seems to be empty.”

“I don’t think it is,” Thorndyke replied calmly.

The superintendent looked at him with quick suspicion, and then
glanced at the ground-floor window.

“That window is unfastened,” said he, “and here comes a constable.”

Sure enough, a policeman was approaching quickly, looking up at the
houses. Suddenly he perceived the smoke and quickened his pace,
arriving just as Thorndyke had pulled down the upper window-sash and
was preparing to climb over into the room. The constable hailed him
sternly, but a brief explanation from Miller reduced the officer to a
state of respectful subservience, and we all followed Thorndyke
through the open window, from which smoke now began to filter.

“Send the constable upstairs to give the alarm,” Thorndyke instructed
Miller in a low tone. The order was given without question, and the
next moment the officer was bounding up the stairs, roaring like a
whole fire brigade. Meanwhile, the superintendent browsed along the
hall through the dense smoke, sniffing inquisitively, and at length
approached the street door. Suddenly, from the heart of the reek, his
voice issued in tones of amazement.

“Well, I’m hanged! It’s a plumber’s smoke-rocket. Some fool has stuck
it through into the letter-cage!”

In the silence which followed this announcement I heard an angry voice
from above demand:

“What is all this infernal row about? And what are you doing here?”

“Can’t you see that the house is on fire?” was the constable’s stern
rejoinder. “You’d better come down and help to put it out.”

The command was followed by the sound of descending footsteps, on
which Thorndyke ran quickly up the stairs, followed by the
superintendent and me. We met the descending party on the landing,
opposite a window, and here we all stopped, gazing at one another with
mutual curiosity. The man who accompanied the constable looked
distinctly alarmed--as well he might--and somewhat hostile.

“Who put that smoke-rocket in the hall?” Miller demanded fiercely.
“And why didn’t you come down when you heard us ringing the bell?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” the man replied sulkily,
“or what business this is of yours. Who are you? And what are you
doing in my house?”

“In your house?” repeated Thorndyke. “Then you will be Mr. Elliott?”

The man turned a startled glance on him and replied angrily:

“Never you mind who I am. Get out of this house.”

“But I do mind who you are,” Thorndyke rejoined mildly. “I came here
to see Mr. Elliott. Are you Mr. Elliott?”

“No, I’m not. Mr. Elliott is abroad. If you like to send a letter here
for him, I will forward it when I get his address.”

While this conversation had been going on, I had been examining the
stranger, not without curiosity. For his appearance was somewhat
unusual. In the first place, he wore an unmistakable wig, and his
shaven face bore an abundance of cuts and scratches, suggesting a
recently and unskilfully mown beard. His spectacles did not disguise a
pronounced divergent squint of the left eye; but what specially caught
my attention was the ear--a large ear, lobeless and pointed at the tip
like the ear of a satyr. As I looked at this, and at the scraped face,
the squint and the wig, a strange suspicion flashed into my mind; and
then, as I noted that the nose was markedly deflected to the left, I
turned to glance at Thorndyke.

“Would you mind telling us your name?” the latter asked blandly.

“My name is--is--Johnson; Frederick Johnson.”

“Ah,” said Thorndyke. “I thought it was Manford--James Manford, and I
think so still. I suggest that you have a scar on the right side of
your forehead, just under the wig. May we see?”

As Thorndyke spoke the name, the man turned a horrible livid grey and
started back as if to retreat up the stairs. But the constable blocked
the way; and as the man was struggling to push past, Miller adroitly
snatched off the wig; and there, on the forehead, was the tell-tale
scar.

For an appreciable time we all stood stock-still like the figures of a
tableau. Then Thorndyke turned to the superintendent.

“I charge this man, James Manford, with the murder of Stephan Bilsky.”

Again there was a brief interval of intolerable silence. In the midst
of it, we heard the street door open and shut, and a woman’s voice
called up the stairs: “Whatever is all this smoke? Are you up there,
Jim?”


I pass over the harrowing details of the double arrest. I am not a
policeman, and to me such scenes are intensely repugnant. But we must
needs stay until two taxis and four constables had conveyed the
prisoners away from the still reeking house to the caravanserai of the
law. Then, at last, we went forth with relief into the fresh air and
bent our steps towards the station.

“I take it,” Miller said reflectively, “that you never suspected
Bilsky?”

“I did at first. But when Mrs. Manford and the solicitor told their
tale I realized that he was the victim and that Manford must be the
murderer.”

“Let us have the argument,” said I. “It is obvious that I have been a
blockhead, but I don’t mind our old friend here knowing it.”

“Not a blockhead, Jervis,” he corrected. “You were half asleep that
night and wholly uninterested. If you had been attending to the
matter, you would have observed several curious and anomalous
appearances. For instance, you would have noticed that the body was,
in parts, completely charred and brittle. Now we saw the outbreak of
the fire and we found it extinguished when we reached the building.
Its duration was a matter of minutes; quite insufficient to reduce a
body to that state. For, as you know, a human body is an extremely
incombustible thing. The appearance suggested the destruction of a
body which had been already burnt; and this suggestion was emphasized
by the curiously unequal distribution of the charring. The right hand
was burnt to a cinder and blown to pieces. The left hand was only
scorched. The right foot was utterly destroyed, but the left foot was
nearly intact. The face was burned away completely, and yet there were
parts of the head where the hair was only singed.

“Naturally, with these facts in mind, I scrutinized those remains
narrowly. And presently something much more definite and sinister came
to light. On the left hand, there was a faint impression of another
hand--very indistinct and blurred, but still unmistakably a hand.”

“I remember,” said I, “the inspector pointed it out as evidence that
the deceased had been standing with his hands clasped before or behind
him; and I must admit that it seemed a reasonable inference.”

“So it did--because you were both assuming that the man had been alone
and that it must therefore have been the impression of his own hand.
For that reason, neither of you looked at it critically. If you had,
you would have seen at once that it was the impression of a left
hand.”

“You are quite right,” I confessed ruefully. “As the man was stated to
have been alone, the hand impression did not interest me. And it was
a mere group of smudges, after all. You are sure that it was a left
hand?”

“Quite,” he replied. “Blurred as the smudges were, one could make out
the relative lengths of the fingers. And there was the thumb mark at
the distal end of the palm, but pointing to the outer side of the
hand. Try how you may, you can’t get a right hand into that position.

“Well, then, here was a crucial fact. The mark of a left hand on a
left hand proved the presence of a second person, and at once raised a
strong presumption of homicide, especially when considered in
conjunction with the unaccountable state of the body. During the
evening, a visitor had come and gone, and on him--Bilsky--the
suspicion naturally fell. But Mrs. Manford unwittingly threw an
entirely new light on the case. You remember she told us that her
husband had opened a new bottle of hair dye on the very morning before
the explosion and had applied it with unusual care. Then his hair was
dyed. But the hair of the corpse was not dyed. Therefore the corpse
was not the corpse of Manford. Further, the presumption of murder
applied now to Manford, and the body almost certainly was that of
Bilsky.”

“How did you deduce that the hair of the corpse was not dyed?” I
asked.

“I didn’t deduce it at all. I observed it. You remember a little patch
of hair above the right ear, very much singed but still recognizable
as hair? Well, in that patch I made out distinctly two or three white
hairs. Naturally, when Mrs. Manford spoke of the dye, I recalled those
white hairs, for though you may find silver hairs among the gold, you
don’t find them among the dyed. So the corpse could not be Manford’s
and was presumably that of Bilsky.

“But the instant that this presumption was made, a quantity of fresh
evidence arose to support it. The destruction of the body was now
understandable. Its purpose was to prevent identification. The parts
destroyed were the parts that had to be destroyed for that purpose:
the face was totally unrecognizable, and the right hand and right foot
were burnt and shattered to fragments. But these were Bilsky’s
personal marks. His right hand was mutilated and his right foot
deformed. And the fact that the false teeth found were undoubtedly
Manford’s was conclusive evidence of the intended deception.

“Then there were those very queer financial transactions, of which my
interpretation was this: Manford borrowed two thousand pounds from
Clines. With this he opened an account in the name of Elliott. As
Elliott, he lent himself two thousand pounds--with which he repaid
Clines--subject to an insurance of his life for that amount, taken out
in Elliott’s name.”

“Then he would have gained nothing,” I objected.

“On the contrary, he would have stood to gain two thousand pounds on
proof of his own death. That, I assumed, was his scheme: to murder
Bilsky, to arrange for Bilsky’s corpse to personate his own, and then,
when the insurance was paid, to abscond--in the company of some
woman--with this sum, with the valuables that he had taken from
Bilsky, and the five hundred pounds that he had withdrawn from the
bank.

“But this was only theory. It had to be tested; and as we had
Elliott’s address, I did the only thing that was possible. I employed
our friend, ex-sergeant Barber, to watch the house. He took lodgings
in a house nearly opposite and kept up continuous observation, which
soon convinced him that there was someone on the premises besides Mrs.
Elliott. Then, late one night, he saw a man come out and walk away
quickly. He followed the man for some distance, until the stranger
turned back and began to retrace his steps. Then Barber accosted him,
asking for a direction, and carefully inspecting him. The man’s
appearance tallied exactly with the description that I had given--I
had assumed that he would probably shave off his beard--and with the
photograph; so Barber, having seen him home, reported to me. And that
is the whole story.”

“Not quite the whole,” said Miller, with a sly grin. “There is that
smoke-rocket. If it hadn’t been for the practical joker who slipped
that through the letter-slit, we could never have got into that house.
I call it a most remarkable coincidence.”

“So do I,” Thorndyke agreed, without moving a muscle; “but there is a
special providence that watches over medical jurists.”

We were silent for a few moments. Then I remarked:

“This will come as a terrible shock to Mrs. Manford.”

“I am afraid it will,” Thorndyke agreed. “But it will be better for
her than if Manford had absconded with this woman, taking practically
every penny that he possessed with him. She stood to lose a worthless
husband in either event. At least we have saved her from poverty. And,
knowing the facts, we were morally and legally bound to further the
execution of justice.”

“A very proper sentiment,” said the superintendent, “though I am not
quite clear as to the legal aspects of that smoke-rocket.”

 THE END




 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

The edition hosted on Fadedpage was consulted for most of the changes
listed below.

Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. notepaper/note-paper,
tattoed/tattooed, writing-table/writing table, etc.) have been
preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Punctuation: fix some quotation mark pairings, and a few missing
periods and commas.

[I. THE MAGIC CASKET]

Change “we heard his brisk _step_ on the stairs” to _steps_.

[II. THE CONTENTS OF A MARE’S NEST]

“and I suppose that to a toxicologist, there is nothing like an”
delete the comma.

“Yet teeth are far more _resistent_ to fire than bones” to
_resistant_.

[III. THE STALKING HORSE]

“I am starting for Folkestone in _re_ Burnham deceased.”
italicize _in_.

“but do not _re-act_ in this way on cellulose paper” to _react_.

[IV. THE NATURALIST AT LAW]

“Who had a motive for killing Cyrus Pedley? and Who had the
opportunity and the means.” change the period to a question mark.

[V. MR. PONTING’S ALIBI]

“But since the trouble about the will, he is hardly on speaking terms
with them?” change the question mark to a period.

[VI. PANDORA’S BOX]

“opening it and opening _another’s_ man’s box” to _another_.

[VII. THE TRAIL OF BEHEMOTH]

“I became aware of quick footsteps descending the _staris_ behind us”
to _stairs_.

[VIII. THE PATHOLOGIST TO THE RESCUE]

Change “is in the custody of the robbery and no murder.” to “is in the
custody of the police, charged with robbery and murder.”

(“Yes,” Thorndyke replied. “I am in a position to give important and
material evidence?”) change the question mark to a period.

“I get back to de ship jus’ before dey ring two bells in _the_ middle
watch.” to _de_.

[IX. GLEANINGS FROM THE WRECKAGE]

“in the palm, just between the roots of the third and fourth _finger_”
to _fingers_.

“in a full beard and moustache, both apparently jet-_back_” to _black_.

 [End of text]








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