~~~ Project Gutenberg Australia ~~~

A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title: Dr Thorndyke Short Story Omnibus
Author: R Austin Freeman
eBook No.:  0500391.txt
Edition:    1
Language:   English
Character set encoding:     Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit
Date first posted:          April 2005
Date most recently updated: February 2011

This eBook was produced by: Jon Jermey

Production notes:
[Compiler's note: These short stories consist of those compiled by
Freeman into several earlier volumes--'The Singing Bone' (1912), 'John
Thorndyke's Cases' (1909), and 'The Magic Casket' (1927) along with
others from sources I am not familiar with.

This particular volume has apparently been issued under several names:
'The Famous Cases of Dr Thorndyke' and 'The Dr Thorndyke Omnibus' in
addition to the current title taken from the edition in my possession.

I have used eBook sources for the material from 'The Singing Bone' and
'John Thorndyke's Cases', plus some of the other stories. Others have
been scanned from the omnibus volume to complete the set.

Illustrations to these stories, where available, can be found in the HTML
version at http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500391h.html ]

* * *

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Title: Dr Thorndyke Short Story Omnibus
Author: R Austin Freeman



Dr Thorndyke Short Story Omnibus
First Published as:
The Famous Cases of Dr. Thorndyke (1928)
(published in the USA as The Dr Thorndyke Omnibus)




CONTENTS:


THE SINGING BONE 1912
(a.k.a. The Adventures of Dr. Thorndyke)

ORIGINAL PREFACE TO "THE SINGING BONE"
THE CASE OF OSCAR BRODSKI
A CASE OF PREMEDITATION
THE ECHO OF A MUTINY
A WASTREL'S ROMANCE
THE OLD LAG


THE GREAT PORTRAIT MYSTERY 1918
(This book included 2 Thorndyke Stories)

THE MISSING MORTGAGEE
PERCIVAL BLAND'S PROXY


JOHN THORNDYKE'S CASES 1909
(a.k.a. Dr. Thorndyke's Cases)

ORIGINAL PREFACE TO 'JOHN THORNDYKE'S CASES'
THE MAN WITH THE NAILED SHOES
THE STRANGER'S LATCHKEY
THE ANTHROPOLOGIST AT LARGE
THE BLUE SEQUIN
THE MOABITE CIPHER
THE MANDARIN'S PEARL
THE ALUMINIUM DAGGER
A MESSAGE FROM THE DEEP SEA


THE MAGIC CASKET 1927

THE MAGIC CASKET
THE CONTENTS OF A MARE'S NEST
THE STALKING HORSE
THE NATURALIST AT LAW
MR. PONTING'S ALIBI
PANDORA'S BOX
THE TRAIL OF BEHEMOTH
THE PATHOLOGIST TO THE RESCUE
GLEANINGS FROM THE WRECKAGE


THE PUZZLE LOCK 1925

THE PUZZLE LOCK
THE GREEN CHECK JACKET
THE SEAL OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR
PHYLLIS ANNESLEY'S PERIL
A SOWER OF PESTILENCE
REX V. BURNABY
A MYSTERY OF THE SAND-HILLS
THE APPARITION OF BURLING COURT
THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR


DR. THORNDYKE'S CASE BOOK 1923
(a.k.a. The Blue Scarab)

THE CASE OF THE WHITE FOOTPRINTS
THE BLUE SCARAB
THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX
THE TOUCHSTONE
A FISHER OF MEN
THE STOLEN INGOTS
THE FUNERAL PYRE

* * * * *



ORIGINAL PREFACE TO "THE SINGING BONE"


The peculiar construction of the first four stories in the present
collection will probably strike both reader and critic and seem to call
for some explanation, which I accordingly proceed to supply.

In the conventional "detective story" the interest is made to focus on
the question, "Who did it?" The identity of the criminal is a secret that
is jealously guarded up to the very end of the book, and its disclosure
forms the final climax.

This I have always regarded as somewhat of a mistake. In real life, the
identity of the criminal is a question of supreme importance for
practical reasons; but in fiction, where no such reasons exist, I
conceive the interest of the reader to be engaged chiefly by the
demonstration of unexpected consequences of simple actions, of
unsuspected causal connections, and by the evolution of an ordered train
of evidence from a mass of facts apparently incoherent and unrelated. The
reader's curiosity is concerned not so much with the question "Who did
it?" as with the question "How was the discovery achieved?" That is to
say, the ingenious reader is interested more in the intermediate action
than in the ultimate result.

The offer by a popular author of a prize to the reader who should
identify the criminal in a certain "detective story," exhibiting as it
did the opposite view, suggested to me an interesting question.

Would it be possible to write a detective story in which from the outset
the reader was taken entirely into the author's confidence, was made an
actual witness of the crime and furnished with every fact that could
possibly be used in its detection? Would there be any story left when the
reader had all the facts? I believed that there would; and as an
experiment to test the justice of my belief, I wrote "The Case of Oscar
Brodski." Here the usual conditions are reversed; the reader knows
everything, the detective knows nothing, and the interest focuses on the
unexpected significance of trivial circumstances.

By excellent judges on both sides of the Atlantic--including the editor
of 'Pearson's Magazine'--this story was so far approved of that I was
invited to produce others of the same type.

Three more were written and are here included together with one of the
more orthodox character-, so that the reader can judge of the respective
merits of the two methods of narration.

Nautical readers will observe that I have taken the liberty (for obvious
reasons connected with the law of libel) of planting a screw-pile
lighthouse on the Girdler Sand in place of the light-vessel. I mention
the matter to forestall criticism and save readers the trouble of writing
to point out the error.

R. A. F, Gravesend

* * * * *



THE CASE OF OSCAR BRODSKI


PART I. THE MECHANISM OF CRIME


A surprising amount of nonsense has been talked about conscience. On the
one hand remorse (or the "again-bite," as certain scholars of
ultra-Teutonic leanings would prefer to call it); on the other hand "an
easy conscience": these have been accepted as the determining factors of
happiness or the reverse.

Of course there is an element of truth in the "easy conscience" view, but
it begs the whole question. A particularly hardy conscience may be quite
easy under the most unfavourable conditions--conditions in which the
more feeble conscience might be severely afflicted with the "again-bite."
d, then, it seems to be the fact that some fortunate persons have no
conscience at all; a negative gift that raises them above the mental
vicissitudes of the common herd of humanity.

Now, Silas Hickler was a case in point. No one, looking into his
cheerful, round face, beaming with benevolence and wreathed in perpetual
smiles, would have imagined him to be a criminal. Least of all, his
worthy, high-church housekeeper, who was a witness to his unvarying
amiability, who constantly heard him carolling light-heartedly about the
house and noted his appreciative zest at meal-times.

Yet it is a fact that Silas earned his modest, though comfortable, income
by the gentle art of burglary. A precarious trade and risky withal, yet
not so very hazardous if pursued with judgment and moderation. And Silas
was eminently a man of judgment. He worked invariably alone. He kept his
own counsel. No confederate had he to turn King's Evidence at a pinch; no
one he knew would bounce off in a fit of temper to Scotland Yard. Nor was
he greedy and thriftless, as most criminals are. His "scoops" were few
and far between, carefully planned, secretly executed, and the proceeds
judiciously invested in "weekly property."

In early life Silas had been connected with the diamond industry, and he
still did a little rather irregular dealing. In the trade he was
suspected of transactions with I.D.B.'s, and one or two indiscreet
dealers had gone so far as to whisper the ominous word "fence." But Silas
smiled a benevolent smile and went his way. He knew what he knew, and his
clients in Amsterdam were not inquisitive.

Such was Silas Hickler. As he strolled round his garden in the dusk of an
October evening, he seemed the very type of modest, middle-class
prosperity. He was dressed in the travelling suit that he wore on his
little continental trips; his bag was packed and stood in readiness on
the sitting-room sofa. A parcel of diamonds (purchased honestly, though
without impertinent questions, at Southampton) was in the inside pocket
of his waistcoat, and another more valuable parcel was stowed in a cavity
in the heel of his right boot. In an hour and a half it would be time for
him to set out to catch the boat train at the junction; meanwhile there
was nothing to do but to stroll round the fading garden and consider how
he should invest the proceeds of the impending deal. His housekeeper had
gone over to Welham for the week's shopping, and would probably not be
back until eleven o'clock. He was alone in the premises and just a trifle
dull.

He was about to turn into the house when his ear caught the sound of
footsteps on the unmade road that passed the end of the garden. He paused
and listened. There was no other dwelling near, and the road led nowhere,
fading away into the waste land beyond the house. Could this be a
visitor? It seemed unlikely, for visitors were few at Silas Hickler's
house. Meanwhile the footsteps continued to approach, ringing out with
increasing loudness on the hard, stony path.

Silas strolled down to the gate, and, leaning on it, looked out with some
curiosity. Presently a glow of light showed him the face of a man,
apparently lighting his pipe; then a dim figure detached itself from the
enveloping gloom, advanced towards him and halted opposite the garden.
The stranger removed a cigarette from his mouth and, blowing out a cloud
of smoke, asked:

"Can you tell me if this road will take me to Badsham Junction?"

"No," replied Hickler, "but there is a footpath farther on that leads to
the station."

"Footpath!" growled the stranger. "I've had enough of footpaths. I came
down from town to Catley intending to walk across to the junction. I
started along the road, and then some fool directed me to a short cut,
with the result that I have been blundering about in the dark for the
last half-hour. My sight isn't very good, you know," he added.

"What train do you want to catch?" asked Hickler.

"Seven fifty-eight," was the reply.

"I am going to catch that train myself," said Silas, "but I shan't be
starting for another hour. The station is only three-quarters of a mile
from here. If you like to come in and take a rest, we can walk down
together and then you'll be sure of not missing your way."

"It's very good of you," said the stranger, peering, with spectacled
eyes, at the dark house, "but--I think -?"

"Might as well wait here as at the station," said Silas in his genial
way, holding the gate open, and the stranger, after a momentary
hesitation, entered and, flinging away his cigarette, followed him to the
door of the cottage.

The sitting-room was in darkness, save for the dull glow of the expiring
fire, but, entering before his guest, Silas applied a match to the lamp
that hung from the ceiling. As the flame leaped up, flooding the little
interior with light, the two men regarded one another with mutual
curiosity.

"Brodski, by Jingo!" was Hickler's silent commentary, as he looked at his
guest. "Doesn't know me, evidently--wouldn't, of course, after all these
years and with his bad eyesight. Take a seat, sir," he added aloud. "Will
you join me in a little refreshment to while away the time?"

Brodski murmured an indistinct acceptance, and, as his host turned to
open a cupboard, he deposited his hat (a hard, grey felt) on a chair in a
corner, placed his bag on the edge of the table, resting his umbrella
against it, and sat down in a small arm-chair.

"Have a biscuit?" said Hickler, as he placed a whisky-bottle on the table
together with a couple of his best star-pattern tumblers and a siphon.

"Thanks, I think I will," said Brodski. "The railway journey and all this
confounded tramping about, you know -?"

"Yes," agreed Silas. "Doesn't do to start with an empty stomach. Hope you
don't mind oat-cakes; I see they're the only biscuits I have."

Brodski hastened to assure him that oat-cakes were his special and
peculiar fancy, and in confirmation, having mixed himself a stiff jorum,
he fell to upon the biscuits with evident gusto.

Brodski was a deliberate feeder, and at present appeared to be somewhat
sharp set. His measured munching being unfavourable to conversation, most
of the talking fell to Silas; and, for once, that genial transgressor
found the task embarrassing. The natural thing would have been to discuss
his guest's destination and perhaps the object of his journey; but this
was precisely what Hickler avoided doing. For he knew both, and instinct
told him to keep his knowledge to himself.

Brodski was a diamond merchant of considerable reputation, and in a large
way of business. He bought stones principally in the rough, and of these
he was a most excellent judge. His fancy was for stones of somewhat
unusual size and value, and it was well known to be his custom, when he
had accumulated a sufficient stock, to carry them himself to Amsterdam
and supervise the cutting of the rough stones. Of this Hickler was aware,
and he had no doubt that Brodski was now starting on one of his
periodical excursions; that somewhere in the recesses of his rather
shabby clothing was concealed a paper packet possibly worth several
thousand pounds.

Brodski sat by the table munching monotonously and talking little.
Hickler sat opposite him, talking nervously and rather wildly at times,
and watching his guest with a growing fascination. Precious stones, and
especially diamonds, were Hickler's specialty. "Hard stuff"--silver
plate--he avoided entirely; gold, excepting in the form of specie, he
seldom touched; but stones, of which he could carry off a whole
consignment in the heel of his boot and dispose of with absolute safety,
formed the staple of his industry. And here was a man sitting opposite
him with a parcel in his pocket containing the equivalent of a dozen of
his most successful "scoops"; stones worth perhaps -? Here he pulled
himself up short and began to talk rapidly, though without much
coherence. For, even as he talked, other Words, formed subconsciously,
seemed to insinuate themselves into the interstices of the sentences, and
to carry on a parallel train of thought.

"Gets chilly in the evenings now, doesn't it?" said Hickler.

"It does indeed," Brodski agreed, and then resumed his slow munching,
breathing audibly through his nose.

"Five thousand at least," the subconscious train of thought resumed;
"probably six or seven, perhaps ten." Silas fidgeted in his chair and
endeavoured to concentrate his ideas on some topic of interest. He was
growing disagreeably conscious of a new and unfamiliar state of mind.

"Do you take any interest in gardening?", he asked. Next to diamonds and
weekly "property," his besetting weakness was fuchsias.

Brodski chuckled sourly. "Hatton Garden is the nearest approach -?" He
broke off suddenly, and then added, "I am a Londoner, you know."

The abrupt break in the sentence was not unnoticed by Silas, nor had he
any difficulty in interpreting it. A man who carries untold wealth upon
his person must needs be wary in his speech.

"Yes," he answered absently, "it's hardly a Londoner's hobby." And then,
half consciously, he began a rapid calculation. Put it at five thousand
pounds. What would that represent in weekly property? His last set of
houses had cost two hundred and fifty pounds apiece, and he had let them
at ten shillings and sixpence a week. At that rate, five thousand pounds
represented twenty houses at ten and sixpence a week--say ten pounds a
week--one pound eight shillings a day--five hundred and twenty pounds a
year--for life. It was a competency. Added to what he already had, it
was wealth. With that income he could fling the tools of his trade into
the river and live out the remainder of his life in comfort and security.

He glanced furtively at his guest across the table, and then looked away
quickly as he felt stirring within him an impulse the nature of which he
could not mistake. This must be put an end to. Crimes against the person
he had always looked upon as sheer insanity. There was, it is true, that
little affair of the Weybridge policeman, but that was unforeseen and
unavoidable, and it was the constable's doing after all. And there was
the old housekeeper at Epsom, too, but, of course, if the old idiot would
shriek in that insane fashion--well, it was an accident, very
regrettable, to be sure, and no one could be more sorry for the mishap
than himself. "But deliberate homicide!--robbery from the person! It was
the act of a stark lunatic.

Of course, if he had happened to be that sort of person, here was the
opportunity of a lifetime. The immense booty, the empty house, the
solitary neighbourhood, away from the main road and from other
habitations; the time, the darkness--but, of course, there was the body
to be thought of; that was always the difficulty. What to do with the
body? Here he caught the shriek of the up express, rounding the curve in
the line that ran past the waste land at the back of the house. The sound
started a new train of thought, and, as he followed it out, his eyes
fixed themselves on the unconscious and taciturn Brodski, as he sat
thoughtfully sipping his whisky. At length, averting his gaze with an
effort, he rose suddenly from his chair and turned to look at the clock
on the mantelpiece, spreading out his hands before the dying fire. A
tumult of strange sensations warned him to leave the house. He shivered
slightly, though he was rather hot than chilly, and, turning his head,
looked at the door.

"Seems to be a confounded draught," he said, with another slight shiver;
"did I shut the door properly, I wonder?" He strode across the room and,
opening the door wide, looked out into the dark garden. A desire, sudden
and urgent, had come over him to get out into the open air, to be on the
road and have done with this madness that was knocking at the door of his
brain.

"I wonder if it is worth while to start yet," he said, with a yearning
glance at the murky, starless sky.

Brodski roused himself and looked round. "Is your clock right?" he asked.

Silas reluctantly admitted that it was.

"How long will it take us to walk to the station?" inquired Brodski.

"Oh, about twenty-five minutes to half-an-hour," replied Silas,
unconsciously exaggerating the distance.

"Well," said Brodski, "we've got more than an hour yet, and it's more
comfortable here than hanging about the station. I don't see the use of
starting before we need."

"No; of course not," Silas agreed. A wave of strange emotion,
half-regretful, half-triumphant, surged through his brain. For some
moments he remained standing on the threshold, looking out dreamily into
the night. Then he softly closed the door; and, seemingly without the
exercise of his volition, the key turned noiselessly in the lock.

He returned to his chair and tried to open a conversation with the
taciturn Brodski, but the words came faltering and disjointed. He felt
his face growing hot, his brain full and intense, and there was a faint,
high-pitched singing in his ears. He was conscious of watching his guest
with a new and fearful interest, and, by sheer force of will, turned away
his eyes; only to find them a moment later involuntarily returning to fix
the unconscious man with yet more horrible intensity. And ever through
his mind walked, like a dreadful procession, the thoughts of what that
other man--the man of blood and violence--would do in these
circumstances. Detail by detail the hideous synthesis fitted together the
parts of the imagined crime, and arranged them in due sequence until they
formed a succession of events, rational, connected and coherent.

He rose uneasily from his chair, with his eyes still riveted upon his
guest. He could not sit any longer opposite that man with his hidden
store of precious gems. The impulse that he recognized with fear and
wonder was growing more ungovernable from moment to moment. If he stayed
it would presently overpower him, and then? He shrank with horror from
the dreadful thought, but his fingers itched to handle the diamonds. For
Silas was, after all, a criminal by nature and habit. He was a beast of
prey. His livelihood had never been earned; it had been taken by stealth
or, if necessary, by force. His instincts were predacious, and the
proximity of unguarded valuables suggested to him, as a logical
consequence, their abstraction or seizure. His unwillingness to let these
diamonds go away beyond his reach was fast becoming overwhelming.

But he would make one more effort to escape. He would keep out of
Brodski's actual presence until the moment for starting came.

"If you'll excuse me," he said, "I will go and put on a thicker pair of
boots. After all this dry weather we may get a change, and damp feet are
very uncomfortable when you are travelling."

"Yes; dangerous too," agreed Brodski.

Silas walked through into the adjoining kitchen, where, by the light of
the little lamp that was burning there, he had seen his stout, country
boots placed, cleaned and in readiness, and sat down upon a chair to make
the change. He did not, of course, intend to wear the country boots, for
the diamonds were concealed in those he had on. But he would make the
change and then alter his mind; it would all help to pass the time. He
took a deep breath. It was a relief, at any rate, to be out of that room.
Perhaps if he stayed away, the temptation would pass. Brodski would go on
his way--he wished that he was going alone--and the danger would be
over--at least--and the opportunity would have gone--the diamonds -?

He looked up as he slowly unlaced his boot. From where he sat he could
see Brodski sitting by the table with his back towards the kitchen door.
He had finished eating, now, and was composedly rolling a cigarette.
Silas breathed heavily, and, slipping off his boot, sat for a while
motionless, gazing steadily at the other man's back. Then he unlaced the
other boot, still staring abstractedly at his unconscious guest, drew it
off, and laid it very quietly on the floor.

Brodski calmly finished rolling his cigarette, licked the paper, put away
his pouch, and, having dusted the crumbs of tobacco from his knees, began
to search his pockets for a match. Suddenly, yielding to an
uncontrollable impulse, Silas stood up and began stealthily to creep
along the passage to the sitting-room. Not a sound came from his
stockinged feet. Silently as a cat he stole forward, breathing softly
with parted lips, until he stood at the threshold of the room. His face
flushed duskily, his eyes, wide and staring, glittered in the lamplight,
and the racing blood hummed in his ears.

Brodski struck a match--Silas noted that it was a wooden vesta--lighted
his cigarette, blew out the match and flung it into the fender. Then he
replaced the box in his pocket and commenced to smoke.

Slowly and without a sound Silas crept forward into the room, step by
step, with catlike stealthiness, until he stood close behind Brodski's
chair--so close that he had to turn his head that his breath might not
stir the hair upon the other man's head. So, for half-a-minute, he stood
motionless, like a symbolical statue of Murder, glaring down with
horrible, glittering eyes upon the unconscious diamond merchant, while
his quick breath passed without a sound through his open mouth and his
fingers writhed slowly like the tentacles of a giant hydra. And then, as
noiselessly as ever, he backed away to the door, turned quickly and
walked back into the kitchen.

He drew a deep breath. It had been a near thing. Brodski's life had hung
upon a thread. For it had been so easy. Indeed, if he had happened, as he
stood behind the man's chair, to have a weapon--a hammer, for instance,
or even a stone?

He glanced round the kitchen and his eyes lighted on a bar that had been
left by the workmen who had put up the new greenhouse. It was an odd
piece cut off from a square, wrought-iron stanchion, and was about a foot
long and perhaps three-quarters of an inch thick. Now, if he had had that
in his hand a minute ago--

He picked the bar up, balanced it in his hand and swung it round his
head. A formidable weapon this: silent, too. And it fitted the plan that
had passed through his brain. Bah! He had better put the thing down.

But he did not. He stepped over to the door and looked again at Brodski,
sitting, as before, meditatively smoking, with his back towards the
kitchen.

Suddenly a change came over Silas. His face flushed, the veins of his
neck stood out and a sullen scowl settled on his face. He drew out his
watch, glanced at it earnestly and replaced it. Then he strode swiftly
but silently along the passage into the sitting-room.

A pace away from his victim's chair he halted and took deliberate aim.
The bar swung aloft, but not without some faint rustle of movement, for
Brodski looked round quickly even as the iron whistled through the air.
The movement disturbed the murderer's aim, and the bar glanced off his
victim's head, making only a trifling wound. Brodski sprang up with a
tremulous, bleating cry, and clutched his assailant's arms with the
tenacity of mortal terror.

Then began a terrible struggle, as the two men, locked in a deadly
embrace, swayed to and fro and trampled backwards and forwards. The chair
was overturned, an empty glass swept from the table and, with Brodski's
spectacles, crushed beneath stamping feet. And thrice that dreadful,
pitiful, bleating cry rang out into the night, filling Silas, despite his
murderous frenzy, with terror lest some chance wayfarer should hear it.
Gathering his great strength for a final effort, he forced his victim
backwards onto the table and, snatching up a corner of the tablecloth,
thrust it into his face and crammed it into his mouth as it opened to
utter another shriek. And thus they remained for a full two minutes,
almost motionless, like some dreadful group of tragic allegory. Then,
when the last faint twitchings had died away, Silas relaxed his grasp and
let the limp body slip softly onto the floor.

It was over. For good or for evil, the thing was done. Silas stood up,
breathing heavily, and, as he wiped the sweat from his face, he looked at
the clock. The hands stood at one minute to seven. The whole thing had
taken a little over three minutes. He had nearly an hour in which to
finish his task. The goods train that entered into his scheme came by at
twenty minutes past, and it was only three hundred yards to the line.
Still, he must not waste time. He was now quite composed, and only
disturbed by the thought that Brodski's cries might have been heard. If
no one had heard them it was all plain sailing.

He stooped, and, gently disengaging the table-cloth from the dead man's
teeth, began a careful search of his pockets. He was not long finding
what he sought, and, as he pinched the paper packet and felt the little
hard bodies grating on one another inside, his faint regrets for what had
happened were swallowed up in self-congratulations.

He now set about his task with business-like briskness and an attentive
eye on the clock. A few large drops of blood had fallen on the
table-cloth, and there was a small bloody smear on the carpet by the dead
man's head. Silas fetched from the kitchen some water, a nail-brush and a
dry cloth, and, having washed out the stains from the table-cover--not
forgetting the deal table-top underneath--and cleaned away the smear
from the carpet and rubbed the damp places dry, he slipped a sheet of
paper under the head of the corpse to prevent further contamination. Then
he set the tablecloth straight, stood the chair upright, laid the broken
spectacles on the table and picked up the cigarette, which had been
trodden flat in the struggle, and flung it under the grate. Then there
was the broken glass, which he swept up into a dust-pan. Part of it was
the remains of the shattered tumbler, and the rest the fragments of the
broken spectacles. He turned it out onto a sheet of paper and looked it
over carefully, picking out the larger recognizable pieces of the
spectacle-glasses and putting them aside on a separate slip of paper,
together with a sprinkling of the minute fragments. The remainder he shot
back into the dust-pan and, having hurriedly put on his boots, carried it
out to the rubbish-heap at the back of the house.

It was now time to start. Hastily cutting off a length of string from his
string-box--for Silas was an orderly man and despised the oddments of
string with which many people make shift--he tied it to the dead man's
bag and umbrella and slung them from his shoulder. Then he folded up the
paper of broken glass, and, slipping it and the spectacles into his
pocket, picked up the body and threw it over his shoulder. Brodski was a
small, spare man, weighing not more than nine stone; not a very
formidable burden for a big, athletic man like Silas.

The night was intensely dark, and, when Silas looked out of the back gate
over the waste land that stretched from his house to the railway, he
could hardly see twenty yards ahead. After listening cautiously and
hearing no sound, he went out, shut the gate softly behind him and set
forth at a good pace, though carefully, over the broken ground. His
progress was not as silent as he could have wished, for though
the scanty turf that covered the gravelly land was thick enough to deaden
his footfalls, the swinging bag and umbrella made an irritating noise;
indeed, his movements were more hampered by them than by the weightier
burden.

The distance to the line was about three hundred yards. Ordinarily he
would have walked it in from three to four minutes, but now, going
cautiously with his burden and stopping now and again to listen, it took
him just six minutes to reach the three-bar fence that separated the
waste land from the railway. Arrived here he halted for a moment and once
more listened attentively, peering into the darkness on all sides. Not a
living creature was to be seen or heard in this desolate spot, but far
away, the shriek of an engine's whistle warned him to hasten.

Lifting the corpse easily over the fence, he carried it a few yards
farther to a point where the line curved sharply.

Here he laid it face downwards, with the neck over the near rail. Drawing
out his pocket-knife, he cut through the knot that fastened the umbrella
to the string and also secured the bag; and when he had flung the bag and
umbrella on the track beside the body, he carefully pocketed the string,
excepting the little loop that had fallen to the ground when the knot was
cut.

The quick snort and clanking rumble of an approaching goods train began
now to be clearly audible. Rapidly, Silas; drew from his pockets the
battered spectacles and the packet of broken glass. The former he threw
down by the dead man's head, and then, emptying the packet into his hand,
sprinkled the fragments of glass around the spectacles.

He was none too soon. Already the quick, laboured puffing of the engine
sounded close at hand. His impulse was to stay and watch; to witness the
final catastrophe that should convert the murder into an accident or
suicide. But it was hardly safe: it would be better that he should not be
near lest he should not be able to get away without being seen. Hastily
he climbed back over the fence and strode away across the rough fields,
while the train came snorting and clattering towards the curve.

He had nearly reached his back gate when a sound from the line brought
him to a sudden halt; it was a prolonged whistle accompanied by the groan
of brakes and the loud clank of colliding trucks. The snorting of the
engine had ceased and was replaced by the penetrating hiss of escaping
steam.

The train had stopped!

For one brief moment Silas stood with bated breath and mouth agape like
one petrified; then he strode forward quickly to the gate, and, letting
himself in, silently slid the bolt. He was undeniably alarmed. What could
have happened on the line? It was practically certain that the body had
been seen; but what was happening now? and would they come to the house?
He entered the kitchen, and having paused again to listen--for somebody
might come and knock at the door at any moment--he walked through the
sitting-room and looked round. All seemed in order there. There was the
bar, though, lying where he had dropped it in the scuffle.
He picked it up and held it under the lamp. There was no blood on it;
only one or two hairs. Somewhat absently he wiped it with the
table-cover, and then, running out through the kitchen into the back
garden, dropped it over the wall into a bed of nettles. Not that there
was anything incriminating in the bar, but, since he had used it as a
weapon, it had somehow acquired a sinister aspect to his eye.

He now felt that it would be well to start for the station at once. It
was not time yet, for it was barely twenty-five minutes past seven; but
he did not wish to be found in the house if any one should come. His soft
hat was on the sofa with his bag, to which his umbrella was strapped. He
put on the hat, caught up the bag and stepped over to the door; then he
came back to turn down the lamp. And it was at this moment, when he stood
with his hand raised to the burner, that his eyes, travelling by chance
into the dim corner of the room, lighted on Brodski's grey felt hat,
reposing on the chair where the dead man had placed it when he entered
the house.

Silas stood for a few moments as if petrified, with the chilly sweat of
mortal fear standing in beads upon his forehead. Another instant and he
would have turned the lamp down and gone on his way; and then -? He
strode over to the chair, snatched up the hat and looked inside it. Yes,
there was the name, "Oscar Brodski," written plainly on the lining. If he
had gone away, leaving it to be discovered, he would have been lost;
indeed, even now, if a search-party should come to the house, it was
enough to send him to the gallows.

His limbs shook with horror at the thought, but in spite of his panic he
did not lose his self-possession. Darting through into the kitchen, he
grabbed up a handful of the dry brush-wood that was kept for lighting
fires and carried it to the sitting-room grate where he thrust it on the
extinct, but still hot, embers, and crumpling up the paper that he had
placed under Brodski's head--on which paper he now noticed, for the
first time, a minute bloody smear--he poked it in under the wood, and
striking a wax match, set light to it. As the wood flared up, he hacked
at the hat with his pocket knife and threw the ragged strips into the
blaze.

And all the while his heart was thumping and his hands a-tremble with the
dread of discovery. The fragments of felt were far from inflammable,
tending rather to fuse into cindery masses that smoked and smouldered
than to burn away into actual ash. Moreover, to his dismay, they emitted
a powerful resinous stench mixed with the odour of burning hair, so that
he had to open the kitchen window (since he dared not unlock the front
door) to disperse the reek. And still, as he fed the fire with small cut
fragments, he strained his ears to catch, above the crackling of the
wood, the sound of the dreaded footsteps, the knock on the door that
should be as the summons of Fate.

The time, too, was speeding on. Twenty-one minutes to eight! In a few
minutes more he must set out or he would miss the train. He dropped the
dismembered hat-brim on the blazing wood and ran upstairs to open a
window, since he must close that in the kitchen before he left. When he
came back, the brim had already curled up into a black, clinkery mass
that bubbled and hissed as the fat, pungent smoke rose from it sluggishly
to the chimney.

Nineteen minutes to eight! It was time to start. He took up the poker and
carefully beat the cinders into small particles, stirring them into the
glowing embers of the wood and coal. There was nothing unusual in the
appearance of the grate. It was his constant custom to burn letters and
other discarded articles in the sitting-room fire: his housekeeper would
notice nothing out of the common. Indeed, the cinders would probably be
reduced to ashes before she returned. He had been careful to notice that
there were no metallic fittings of any kind in the hat, which might have
escaped burning.

Once more he picked up his bag, took a last look round, turned down the
lamp and, unlocking the door, held it open for a few moments. Then he
went out, locked the door, pocketed the key (of which his housekeeper
had a duplicate) and set off at a brisk pace for the station.

He arrived in good time after all, and, having taken his ticket, strolled
through onto the platform. The train was not yet signalled, but there
seemed to be an unusual stir in the place. The passengers were collected
in a group at one end of the platform, and were all looking in one
direction down the line; and, even as he walked towards them, with a
certain tremulous, nauseating curiosity, two men emerged from the
darkness and ascended the slope to the platform, carrying a stretcher
covered with a tarpaulin. The passengers parted to let the bearers pass,
turning fascinated eyes upon the shape that showed faintly through the
rough pall; and, when the stretcher had been borne into the lamp-room,
they fixed their attention upon a porter who followed carrying a hand-bag
and an umbrella.

Suddenly one of the passengers started forward with an exclamation.

"Is that his umbrella?" he demanded.

"Yes, sir," answered the porter, stopping and holding it out for the
speaker's inspection.

"My God!" ejaculated the passenger; then, turning sharply to a tall man
who stood close by, he said excitedly: "That's Brodski's umbrella. I
could swear to it. You remember Brodski?" The tall man nodded, and the
passenger, turning once more to the porter, said: "I identify that
umbrella. It belongs to a gentleman named Brodski. If you look in his hat
you will see his name written in it. He always writes his name in his
hat."

"We haven't found his hat yet," said the porter; "but here is the
station-master coming up the line." He awaited the arrival of his
superior and then announced: "This gentleman, sir, has identified the
umbrella."

"Oh," said the station-master, "you recognize the umbrella, sir, do you?
Then perhaps you would step into the lamp-room and see if you can
identify the body."

"Is it--is he--very much injured?" the passenger asked tremulously.

"Well, yes," was the reply. "You see, the engine and six of the trucks
went over him before they could stop the train. Took his head clean off,
in fact."

"Shocking! shocking!" gasped the passenger. "I think, if you don't
mind--I'd--I'd rather not. You don't think it's necessary, doctor, do you?"

"Yes, I do," replied the tall man. "Early identification may be of the
first importance."

"Then I suppose I must," said the passenger.

Very reluctantly he allowed himself to be conducted by the station-master
to the lamp-room, as the clang of the bell announced the approaching
train. Silas Hickler followed and took his stand with the expectant crowd
outside the closed door. In a few moments the passenger burst out, pale
and awe-stricken, and rushed up to his tall friend. "It is!" he exclaimed
breathlessly. "It's Brodski! Poor old Brodski! Horrible! horrible! He was
to have met me here and come on with me to Amsterdam."

"Had he any--merchandize about him?" the tall man asked; and Silas
strained his ears to catch the reply.

"He had some stones, no doubt, but I don't know what.

His clerk will know, of course. By the way, doctor, could you watch the
case for me? Just to be sure it was really an accident or--you know
what. We were old friends, you know, fellow townsmen, too; we were both
born in Warsaw. I'd like you to give an eye to the case."

"Very well," said the other. "I will satisfy myself that there is
nothing more than appears, and let you have a report. Will that do?"

"Thank you. It's excessively good of you, doctor. Ah! here comes the
train. I hope it won't inconvenience you to stay and see to this matter."

"Not in the least," replied the doctor. "We are not due at Warmington
until to-morrow afternoon, and I expect we can find out all that is
necessary to know before that."

Silas looked long and curiously at the tall, imposing man who was, as it
were, taking his seat at the chessboard, to play against him for his
life. A formidable antagonist he looked, with his keen, thoughtful face,
so resolute and calm. As Silas stepped into his carriage he thought with
deep discomfort of Brodski's hat, and hoped that he had made no other
oversight.


PART II. THE MECHANISM OF DETECTION


(Related by Christopher Jervis, M.D.)

The singular circumstances that attended the death of Mr. Oscar Brodski,
the well-known diamond merchant of Hatton Garden, illustrated very
forcibly the importance of one or two points in medico-legal practice
which Thorndyke was accustomed to insist were not sufficiently
appreciated. What those points were, I shall leave my friend and teacher
to state at the proper place; and meanwhile, as the case is in the
highest degree instructive, I shall record the incidents in the order of
their occurrence.

The dusk of an October evening was closing in as Thorndyke and I, the
sole occupants of a smoking compartment, found ourselves approaching the
little station of Ludham; and, as the train slowed down, we peered out at
the knot of country, people who were waiting on the platform. Suddenly
Thorndyke exclaimed in a tone of surprise: "Why, that is surely
Boscovitch!" and almost at the same moment a brisk, excitable little man
darted at the door of our compartment and literally tumbled in.

"I hope I don't intrude on this learned conclave," he said, shaking hands
genially and banging his Gladstone with impulsive violence into the rack;
"but I saw your faces at the window, and naturally jumped at the chance
of such pleasant companionship."

"You are very flattering," said Thorndyke; "so flattering that you leave
us nothing to say. But what in the name of fortune are you doing
at--what's the name of the place--Ludham?"

"My brother has a little place a mile or so from here, and I have been
spending a couple of days with him," Mr. Boscovitch explained. "I shall
change at Badsham Junction and catch the boat train for Amsterdam. But
whither are you two bound? I see you have your mysterious little green
box up on the hat-rack, so I infer that you are on some romantic quest,
eh? Going to unravel some dark and intricate crime?"

"No," replied Thorndyke. "We are bound for Warmington on a quite prosaic
errand. I am instructed to watch the proceedings at an inquest there
to-morrow on behalf of the Griffin Life Insurance Office, and we are
travelling down to-night as it is rather a cross-country journey."

"But why the box of magic?" asked Boscovitch, glancing up at the
hat-rack.

"I never go away from home without it," answered Thorndyke. "One never
knows what may turn up; the trouble of carrying it is small when set off
against the comfort of having appliances at hand in an emergency."

Boscovitch continued to stare up at the little square case covered with
Willesden canvas. Presently he remarked: "I often used to wonder what you
had in it when you were down at Chelmsford in connection with that bank
murder--what an amazing case that was, by the way, and didn't your
methods of research astonish the police!" As he still looked up wistfully
at the case, Thorndyke good-naturedly lifted it down and unlocked it. As
a matter of fact he was rather proud of his "portable laboratory," and
certainly it was a triumph of condensation, for, small as it was--only a
foot square by four inches deep--it contained a fairly complete outfit
for a preliminary investigation.

"Wonderful!" exclaimed Boscovitch, when the case lay open before him,
displaying its rows of little re-agent bottles, tiny test-tubes,
diminutive spirit-lamp, dwarf microscope and assorted instruments on the
same Lilliputian scale; "it's like a doll's house--everything looks as
if it was seen through the wrong end of a telescope. But are these tiny
things really efficient? That microscope now -?"

"Perfectly efficient at low and moderate magnifications," said Thorndyke.
"It looks like a toy, but it isn't one; the lenses are the best that can
be had. Of course a full-sized instrument would be infinitely more
convenient--but I shouldn't have it with me, and should have to make
shift with a pocket-lens. And so with the rest of the under-sized
appliances; they are the alternative to no appliances."

Boscovitch pored over the case and its contents, fingering the
instruments delicately and asking questions innumerable about their uses;
indeed, his curiosity was but half appeased when, half-an-hour later, the
train began to slow down.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, starting up and seizing his bag, "here we are at
the junction already. You change here too, don't you?"

"Yes," replied Thorndyke. "We take the branch train on to Warmington."

As we stepped out onto the platform, we became aware that something
unusual was happening or had happened. All the passengers and most of the
porters and supernumeraries were gathered at one end of the station, and
all were looking intently into the darkness down the line.

"Anything wrong?" asked Mr. Boscovitch, addressing the station-inspector.

"Yes, sir," the official replied; "a man has been run over by the goods
train about a mile down the line. The station-master has gone down with a
stretcher to bring him in, and I expect that is his lantern that you see
coming this way."

As we stood watching the dancing light grow momentarily brighter,
flashing fitful reflections from the burnished rails, a man came out of
the booking-office and joined the group of onlookers. He attracted my
attention, as I afterwards remembered, for two reasons: in the first
place his round, jolly face was excessively pale and bore a strained and
wild expression, and, in the second, though he stared into the darkness
with eager curiosity he asked no questions.

The swinging lantern continued to approach, and then suddenly two men
came into sight bearing a stretcher covered with a tarpaulin, through
which the shape of a human figure was dimly discernible. They ascended
the slope to the platform, and proceeded with their burden to the
lamp-room, when the inquisitive gaze of the passengers was transferred to
a porter who followed carrying a handbag and umbrella and to the
station-master who brought up the rear with his lantern.

As the porter passed, Mr. Boscovitch started forward with sudden
excitement.

"Is that his umbrella?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," answered the porter, stopping and holding it out for the
speaker's inspection.

"My God!" ejaculated Boscovitch; then, turning sharply to Thorndyke, he
exclaimed: "That's Brodski's umbrella. I could swear to it. You remember
Brodski?"

Thorndyke nodded, and Boscovitch, turning once more to the porter, said:
"I identify that umbrella. It belongs to a gentleman named Brodski. If
you look in his hat, you will see his name written in it. He always
writes his name in his hat."

"We haven't found his hat yet," said the porter; "but here is the
station-master." He turned to his superior and announced: "This
gentleman, sir, has identified the umbrella."

"Oh," said the station-master, "you recognize the umbrella, sir, do you?
Then perhaps you would step into the lamp-room and see if you can
identify the body."

Mr. Boscovitch recoiled with a look of alarm. "Is it? is he--very much
injured?" he asked nervously.

"Well, yes," was the reply. "You see, the engine and six of the trucks
went over him before they could stop the train. Took his head clean off,
in fact."

"Shocking! shocking!" gasped Boscovitch. "I think? if you don't
mind--I'd--I'd rather not. You don't think it necessary, doctor, do you?"

"Yes, I do," replied Thorndyke. "Early identification may be of the first
importance."

"Then I suppose I must," said Boscovitch; and, with extreme reluctance,
he followed the station-master to the lamp-room, as the loud ringing of
the bell announced the approach of the boat train. His inspection must
have been of the briefest, for, in a few moments, he burst out, pale and
awe-stricken, and rushed up to Thorndyke.

"It is!" he exclaimed breathlessly. "It's Brodski! Poor old Brodski!
Horrible! horrible! He was to have met me here and come on with me to
Amsterdam."

"Had he any--merchandize about him?" Thorndyke asked; and, as he spoke,
the stranger whom I had previously noticed edged up closer as if to catch
the reply.

"He had some stones, no doubt," answered Boscovitch, "but I don't know
what they were. His clerk will know, of course. By the way, doctor, could
you watch the case for me? Just to be sure it was really an accident or--you
know what. We were old friends, you know, fellow townsmen, too; we
were both born in Warsaw. I'd like you to give an eye to the case."

"Very well," said Thorndyke. "I will satisfy myself that there is nothing
more than appears, and let you have a report. Will that do?"

"Thank you," said Boscovitch. "It's excessively good of you, doctor. Ah,
here comes the train. I hope it won't inconvenience you to stay and see
to the matter."

"Not in the least," replied Thorndyke. "We are not due at Warmington
until to-morrow afternoon, and I expect we can find out all that is
necessary to know and still keep our appointment."

As Thorndyke spoke, the stranger, who had kept close to us with the
evident purpose of hearing what was said, bestowed on him a very curious
and attentive look; and it was only when the train had actually come to
rest by the platform that he hurried away to find a compartment.

No sooner had the train left the station than Thorndyke sought out the
station-master and informed him of the instructions that he had received
from Boscovitch. "Of course," he added, in conclusion, "we must not move
in the matter until the police arrive. I suppose they have been
informed?"

"Yes," replied the station-master; "I sent a message at once to the Chief
Constable, and I expect him or an inspector at any moment. In fact, I
think I will slip out to the approach and see if he is coming." He
evidently wished to have a word in private with the police officer before
committing himself to any statement.

As the official departed, Thorndyke and I began to pace the now empty
platform, and my friend, as was his wont, when entering on a new inquiry,
meditatively reviewed the features of the problem.

"In a case of this kind," he remarked, "we have to decide on one of three
possible explanations: accident, suicide or homicide; and our decision
will be determined by inferences from three sets of facts: first, the
general facts of the case; second, the special data obtained by
examination of the body, and, third, the special data obtained by
examining the spot on which the body was found. Now the only general
facts at present in our possession are that the deceased was a diamond
merchant making a journey for a specific purpose and probably having on
his person property of small bulk and great value. These facts are
somewhat against the hypothesis of suicide and somewhat favourable to
that of homicide. Facts relevant to the question of accident would be the
existence or otherwise of a level crossing, a road or path leading to the
line, an enclosing fence with or without a gate, and any other facts
rendering probable or otherwise the accidental presence of the deceased
at the spot where the body was found. As we do not possess these facts,
it is desirable that we extend our knowledge."

"Why not put a few discreet questions to the porter who brought in the
bag and umbrella?" I suggested. "He is at this moment in earnest
conversation with the ticket collector and would, no doubt, be glad of a
new listener."

"An excellent suggestion, Jervis," answered Thorndyke. "Let us see what
he has to tell us." We approached the porter and found him, as I had
anticipated, bursting to unburden himself of the tragic story.

"The way the thing happened, sir, was this," he said, in answer to
Thorndyke's question: "There's a sharpish bend in the road just at that
place, and the goods train was just rounding the curve when the driver
suddenly caught sight of something lying across the rails. As the engine
turned, the head-lights shone on it and then he saw it was a man. He shut
off steam at once, blew his whistle, and put the brakes down hard, but,
as you know, sir, a goods train takes some stopping; before they could
bring her up, the engine and half-a-dozen trucks had gone over the poor
beggar."

"Could the driver see how the man was lying?" Thorndyke asked.

"Yes, he could see him quite plain, because the headlights were full on
him. He was lying on his face with his neck over the near rail on the
down side. His head was in the four-foot and his body by the side of the
track. It looked as if he had laid himself out a-purpose."

"Is there a level crossing thereabouts?" asked Thorndyke.

"No, sir. No crossing, no road, no path, no nothing," said the porter,
ruthlessly sacrificing grammar to emphasis. "He must have come across the
fields and climbed over the fence to get onto the permanent way.
Deliberate suicide is what it looks like."

"How did you learn all this?" Thorndyke inquired.

"Why, the driver, you see, sir, when him and his mate had lifted the body
off the track, went on to the next signal-box and sent in his report by
telegram. The station-master told me all about it as we walked down the
line."

Thorndyke thanked the man for his information, and, as we strolled back
towards the lamp-room, discussed the bearing of these new facts.

"Our friend is unquestionably right in one respect," he said; "this was
not an accident. The man might, if he were near-sighted, deaf or stupid,
have climbed over the fence and got knocked down by the train. But his
position, lying across the rails, can only be explained by one of two
hypotheses: either it was, as the porter says, deliberate suicide, or
else the man was already dead or insensible. We must leave it at that
until we have seen the body, that is, if the police will allow us to see
it. But here comes the station-master and an officer with him. Let us
hear what they have to say."

The two officials had evidently made up their minds to decline any
outside assistance. The divisional surgeon would make the necessary
examination, and information could be obtained through the usual
channels. The production of Thorndyke's card, however, somewhat altered
the situation. The police inspector hummed and hawed irresolutely, with
the card in his hand, but finally agreed to allow us to view the body,
and we entered the lamp-room together, the station-master leading the way
to turn up the gas.

The stretcher stood on the floor by one wall, its grim burden still
hidden by the tarpaulin, and the hand-bag and umbrella lay on a large
box, together with the battered frame of a pair of spectacles from which
the glasses had fallen out.

"Were these spectacles found by the body?" Thorndyke inquired.

''Yes," replied the station-master. "They were close to the head and the
glass was scattered about on the ballast."

Thorndyke made a note in his pocket-book, and then, as the inspector
removed the tarpaulin, he glanced down on the corpse, lying limply on the
stretcher and looking grotesquely horrible with its displaced head and
distorted limbs. For fully a minute he remained silently stooping over
the uncanny object, on which the inspector was now throwing the light of
a large lantern; then he stood up and said quietly to me: "I think we can
eliminate two out of the three hypotheses."

The inspector looked at him quickly, and was about to ask a question,
when his attention was diverted by the travelling-case which Thorndyke
had laid on a shelf and now opened to abstract a couple of pairs of
dissecting forceps.

"We've no authority to make a post mortem, you know," said the inspector.

"No, of course not," said Thorndyke. "I am merely going to look into the
mouth." With one pair of forceps he turned back the lip and, having
scrutinized its inner surface, closely examined the teeth.

"May I trouble you for your lens, Jervis?" he said; and, as I handed him
my doublet ready opened, the inspector brought the lantern close to the
dead face and leaned forward eagerly. In his usual systematic fashion,
Thorndyke slowly passed the lens along the whole range of sharp, uneven
teeth, and then, bringing it back to the centre, examined with more
minuteness the upper incisors. At length, very delicately, he picked out
with his forceps some minute object from between two of the upper front
teeth and held it in the focus of the lens. Anticipating his next move, I
took a labelled microscope-slide from the case and handed it to him
together with a dissecting needle, and, as he transferred the object to
the slide and spread it out with the needle, I set up the little
microscope on the shelf.

"A drop of Farrant and a cover-glass, please, Jervis,'' said Thorndyke.

I handed him the bottle, and, when he had let a drop of the mounting
fluid fall gently on the object and put on the cover-slip, he placed the
slide on the stage of the microscope and examined it attentively.

Happening to glance at the inspector, I observed on his countenance a
faint grin, which he politely strove to suppress when he caught my eye.

"I was thinking, sir," he said apologetically, "that it's a bit off the
track to be finding out what he had for dinner. He didn't die of
unwholesome feeding."

Thorndyke looked up with a smile. "It doesn't do, inspector, to assume
that anything is off the track in an inquiry of this kind. Every fact
must have some significance, you know."

"I don't see any significance in the diet of a man who has had his head
cut off," the inspector rejoined defiantly.


"Don't you?" said Thorndyke. "Is there no interest attaching to the last
meal of a man who has met a violent death? These crumbs, for instance,
that are scattered over the dead man's waistcoat. Can we learn nothing
from them?"

"I don't see what you can learn," was the dogged rejoinder.

Thorndyke picked off the crumbs, one by one, with his forceps, and having
deposited them on a slide, inspected them, first with the lens and then
through the microscope.

"I learn," said he, "that shortly before his death, the deceased partook
of some kind of whole-meal biscuits, apparently composed partly of
oatmeal."

"I call that nothing," said the inspector. "The question that we have got
to settle is not what refreshments had the deceased been taking, but what
was the cause of his death: did he commit suicide? was he killed by
accident? or was there any foul play?"

"I beg your pardon," said Thorndyke, "the questions that remain to be
settled are, who killed the deceased and with what motive? The others are
already answered as far as I am concerned."

The inspector stared in sheer amazement not unmixed with incredulity.

"You haven't been long coming to a conclusion, sir," he said.

"No, it was a pretty obvious case of murder," said Thorndyke. "As to the
motive, the deceased was a diamond merchant and is believed to have had a
quantity of stones about his person. I should suggest that you search the
body."

The inspector gave vent to an exclamation of disgust. "I see," he said.
"It was just a guess on your part. The dead man was a diamond merchant
and had valuable property about him; therefore he was murdered." He drew
himself up, and, regarding Thorndyke with stern reproach, added: "But you
must understand, sir, that this is a judicial inquiry, not a prize
competition in a penny paper. And, as to searching the body, why, that is
what I principally came for." He ostentatiously turned his back on us and
proceeded systematically to turn out the dead man's pockets, laying the
articles, as he removed them, on the box by the side of the hand-bag and
umbrella.

While he was thus occupied, Thorndyke looked over the body generally,
paying special attention to the soles of the boots, which, to the
inspector's undissembled amusement, he very thoroughly examined with the
lens.

"I should have thought, sir, that his feet were large enough to be seen
with the naked eye," was his comment; "but perhaps," he added, with a sly
glance at the station-master, "you're a little near-sighted."

Thorndyke chuckled good-humouredly, and, while the officer continued his
search, he looked over the articles that had already been laid on the
box. The purse and pocket-book he naturally left for the inspector to
open, but the reading-glasses, pocket-knife and card-case and other small
pocket articles were subjected to a searching scrutiny. The inspector
watched him out of the corner of his eye with furtive amusement; saw him
hold up the glasses to the light to estimate their refractive power, peer
into the tobacco pouch, open the cigarette book and examine the watermark
of the paper, and even inspect the contents of the silver match-box.

"What might you have expected to find in his tobacco pouch?" the officer
asked, laying down a bunch of keys from the dead man's pocket.

"Tobacco," Thorndyke replied stolidly; "but I did not expect to find
fine-cut Latakia. I don't remember ever having seen pure Latakia smoked
in cigarettes."

"You do take an interest in things, sir," said the
inspector, with a side glance at the stolid station-master.

"I do," Thorndyke agreed; "and I note that there are no diamonds among
this collection."

"No, and we don't know that he had any about him; but there's a gold
watch and chain, a diamond scarf-pin, and a purse containing"--he opened
it and tipped out its contents into his hand--"twelve pounds in gold.
That doesn't look much like robbery, does it? What do you say to the
murder theory now?"

"My opinion is unchanged," said Thorndyke, "and I should like to examine
the spot where the body was found. Has the engine been inspected?" he
added, addressing the station-master.

"I telegraphed to Bradfield to have it examined," the official answered.
"The report has probably come in by now. I'd better see before we start
down the line."

We emerged from the lamp-room and, at the door, found the
station-inspector waiting with a telegram. He handed it to the
station-master, who read it aloud.

"The engine has been carefully examined by me. I find small smear of
blood on near leading wheel and smaller one on next wheel following. No
other marks." He glanced questioningly at Thorndyke, who nodded and
remarked: "It will be interesting to see if the line tells the same
tale."

The station-master looked puzzled and was apparently about to ask for an
explanation; but the inspector, who had carefully pocketed the dead man's
property, was impatient to start and, accordingly, when Thorndyke had
repacked his case and had, at his own request, been furnished with a
lantern, we set off down the permanent way, Thorndyke carrying the light
and I the indispensable green case.

"I am a little in the dark about this affair," I said, when we had
allowed the two officials to draw ahead out of earshot; "you came to a
conclusion remarkably quickly. What was it that so immediately determined
the opinion of murder as against suicide?"

"It was a small matter but very conclusive," replied Thorndyke. "You
noticed a small scalp-wound above the left temple? It was a glancing
wound, and might easily have been made by the engine. But the wound had
bled; and it had bled for an appreciable time. There were two streams of
blood from it, and in both the blood was firmly clotted and partially
dried. But the man had been decapitated; and this wound, if inflicted by
the engine, must have been made after the decapitation, since it was on
the side most distant from the engine as it approached. Now, a
decapitated head does not bleed. Therefore, this wound was inflicted
before the decapitation.

"But not only had the wound bled: the blood had trickled down in two
streams at right angles to one another. First, in the order of time as
shown by the appearance of the stream, it had trickled down the side of
the face and dropped on the collar. The second stream ran from the wound
to the back of the head. Now, you know, Jervis, there are no exceptions
to the law of gravity. If the blood ran down the face towards the chin,
the face must have been upright at the time; and if the blood trickled
from the front to the back of the head, the head must have been
horizontal and face upwards. But the man when he was seen by the
engine-driver, was lying face downwards. The only possible inference is
that when the wound was inflicted, the man was in the upright
position--standing or sitting; and that subsequently, and while he was still alive,
he lay on his back for a sufficiently long time for the blood to have
trickled to the back of his head."

"I see. I was a duffer not to have reasoned this out for myself," I
remarked contritely.

"Quick observation and rapid inference come by practice," replied
Thorndyke. "What did you notice about the face?"

"I thought there was a strong suggestion of asphyxia."

"Undoubtedly," said Thorndyke. "It was the face of a suffocated man. You
must have noticed, too, that the tongue was very distinctly swollen and
that on the inside of the upper lip were deep indentations made by the
teeth, as well as one or two slight wounds, obviously caused by heavy
pressure on the mouth. And now observe how completely these facts and
inferences agree with those from the scalp wound. If we knew that the
deceased had received a blow on the head, had struggled with his
assailant and been finally borne down and suffocated, we should look for
precisely those signs which we have found."

"By the way, what was it that you found wedged between the teeth? I did
not get a chance to look through the microscope."

"Ah!" said Thorndyke, "there we not only get confirmation, but we carry
our inferences a stage further. The object was a little tuft of some
textile fabric. Under the microscope I found it to consist of several
different fibres, differently dyed. The bulk of it consisted of wool
fibres dyed crimson, but there were also cotton fibres dyed blue and a
few which looked like jute, dyed yellow. It was obviously a
parti-coloured fabric and might have been part of a woman's dress, though
the presence of the jute is much more suggestive of a curtain or rug of
inferior quality."

"And its importance?"

"Is that, if it is not part of an article of clothing, then it must have
come from an article of furniture, and furniture suggests a habitation."

"That doesn't seem very conclusive," I objected.


"It is not; but it is valuable corroboration."

"Of what?"

"Of the suggestion offered by the soles of the dead man's boots. I
examined them most minutely and could find no trace of sand, gravel or
earth, in spite of the fact that he must have crossed fields and rough
land to reach the place where he was found. What I did find was fine
tobacco ash, a charred mark as if a cigar or cigarette had been trodden
on, several crumbs of biscuit, and, on a projecting brad, some coloured
fibres, apparently from a carpet. The manifest suggestion is that the man
was killed in a house with a carpeted floor, and carried from thence to
the railway."

I was silent for some moments. Well as I knew Thorndyke, I was completely
taken by surprise; a sensation, indeed, that I experienced anew every
time that I accompanied him on one of his investigations. His marvellous
power of co-ordinating apparently insignificant facts, of arranging them
into an ordered sequence and making them tell a coherent story, was a
phenomenon that I never got used to; every exhibition of it astonished me
afresh.

"If your inferences are correct," I said, "the problem is practically
solved. There must be abundant traces inside the house. The only question
is, which house is it?"

"Quite so," replied Thorndyke; "that is the question, and a very
difficult question it is. A glance at that interior would doubtless clear
up the whole mystery. But how are we to get that glance? We cannot enter
houses speculatively to see if they present traces of a murder. At
present, our clue breaks off abruptly. The other end of it is in some
unknown house, and, if we cannot join up the two ends, our problem
remains unsolved. For the question is, you remember, Who killed Oscar
Brodski?"

"Then what do you propose to do?" I asked.

"The next stage of the inquiry is to connect some particular house with
this crime. To that end, I can only gather up all available facts and
consider each in all its possible bearings. If I cannot establish any
such connection, then the inquiry will have failed and we shall have to
make a fresh start--say, at Amsterdam, if it turns out that Brodski
really had diamonds on his person, as I have no doubt he had."

Here our conversation was interrupted by our arrival at the spot where
the body had been found. The station-master had halted, and he and the
inspector were now examining the near rail by the light of their lanterns

"There's remarkably little blood about," said the former. "I've seen a
good many accidents of this kind and there has always been a lot of
blood, both on the engine and on the road. It's very curious."

Thorndyke glanced at the rail with but slight attention: that question
had ceased to interest him. But the light of his lantern flashed onto the
ground at the side of the track--a loose, gravelly soil mixed with
fragments of chalk--and from thence to the soles of the inspector's
boots, which were displayed as he knelt by the rail.

"You observe, Jervis?" he said in a low voice, and I nodded. The
inspector's boot-soles were covered with adherent particles of gravel and
conspicuously marked by the chalk on which he had trodden.

"You haven't found the hat, I suppose?" Thorndyke asked, stooping to pick
up a short piece of string that lay on the ground at the side of the
track.

"No," replied the inspector, "but it can't be far off. You seem to have
found another clue, sir," he added, with a grin, glancing at the piece of
string.

"Who knows," said Thorndyke. "A short end of white twine with a green
strand in it. It may tell us something later. At any rate we'll keep it,"
and, taking from his pocket a small tin box containing, among other
things, a number of seed envelopes, he slipped the string into one of the
latter and scribbled a note in pencil on the outside. The inspector
watched his proceedings with an indulgent smile, and then returned to his
examination of the track, in which Thorndyke now joined.

"I suppose the poor chap was near-sighted," the officer remarked,
indicating the remains of the shattered spectacles; "that might account
for his having strayed onto the line."

"Possibly," said Thorndyke. He had already noticed the fragments
scattered over a sleeper and the adjacent ballast, and now once more
produced his "collecting-box," from which he took another seed envelope.
"Would you hand me a pair of forceps, Jervis," he said; "and perhaps you
wouldn't mind taking a pair yourself and helping me to gather up these
fragments."

As I complied, the inspector looked up curiously.

"There isn't any doubt that these spectacles belonged to the deceased, is
there?" he asked. "He certainly wore spectacles, for I saw the mark on
his nose."

"Still, there is no harm in verifying the fact," said Thorndyke, and he
added to me in a lower tone, "Pick up every particle you can find,
Jervis. It may be most important."

"I don't quite see how," I said, groping amongst the shingle by the light
of the lantern in search of the tiny splinters of glass.

"Don't you?" returned Thorndyke. "Well, look at these fragments; some of
them are a fair size, but many of these on the sleeper are mere grains.
And consider their number. Obviously, the condition of the glass does not
agree with the circumstances in which we find it. These are thick concave
spectacle-lenses broken into a great number of minute fragments. Now how
were they broken? Not merely by falling, evidently: such a lens, when it
is dropped, breaks into a small number of large pieces. Nor were they
broken by the wheel passing over them, for they would then have been
reduced to fine powder, and that powder would have been visible on the
rail, which it is not. The spectacle-frames, you may remember, presented
the same incongruity: they were battered and damaged more than they would
have been by falling, but not nearly so much as they would have been if
the wheel had passed over them."

"What do you suggest, then?" I asked.

"The appearances suggest that the spectacles had been trodden on. But, if
the body was carried here the probability is that the spectacles were
carried here too, and that they were then already broken; for it is more
likely that they were trodden on during the struggle than that the
murderer trod on them after bringing them here. Hence the importance of
picking up every fragment."

"But why?" I inquired, rather foolishly, I must admit.

"Because, if, when we have picked up every fragment that we can find,
there still remains missing a larger portion of the lenses than we could
reasonably expect, that would tend to support our hypothesis and we might
find the missing remainder elsewhere. If, on the other hand, we find as
much of the lenses as we could expect to find, we must conclude that they
were broken on this spot."

While we were conducting our search, the two officials were circling
around with their lanterns in quest of the missing hat; and, when we had
at length picked up the last fragment, and a careful search, even aided
by a lens, failed to reveal any other, we could see their lanterns
moving, like will-o'-the-wisps, some distance down the line.

"We may as well see what we have got before our friends come back," said
Thorndyke, glancing at the twinkling lights. "Lay the case down on the
grass by the fence; it will serve for a table."

I did so, and Thorndyke, taking a letter from his pocket, opened it,
spread it out flat on the case, securing it with a couple of heavy
stones, although the night was quite calm. Then he tipped the contents of
the seed envelope out on the paper, and carefully spreading out the
pieces of glass, looked at them for some moments in silence. And, as he
looked, there stole over his face a very curious expression; with sudden
eagerness he began picking out the large fragments and laying them on two
visiting-cards which he had taken from his card-case. Rapidly and with
wonderful deftness he fitted the pieces together, and, as the
reconstituted lenses began gradually to take shape on their cards I
looked on with growing excitement, for something in my colleague's manner
told me that we were on the verge of a discovery.

At length the two ovals of glass lay on their respective cards, complete
save for one or two small gaps; and the little heap that remained
consisted of fragments so minute as to render further reconstruction
impossible. Then Thorndyke leaned back and laughed softly.

"This is certainly an unlooked-for result," said he.

"What is?" I asked.

"Don't you see, my dear fellow? There's too much glass. We have almost
completely built up the broken lenses, and the fragments that are left
over are considerably more than are required to fill up the gaps."

I looked at the little heap of small fragments and saw at once that it
was as he had said. There was a surplus of small pieces.

"This is very extraordinary," I said. "What do you think can be the
explanation?"

"The fragments will probably tell us," he replied, "if we ask them
intelligently."

He lifted the paper and the two cards carefully onto the ground, and,
opening the case, took out the little microscope, to which he fitted the
lowest-power objective and eye-piece--having a combined magnification of
only ten diameters. Then he transferred the minute fragments of glass to
a slide, and, having arranged the lantern as a microscope-lamp, commenced
his examination.

"Ha!" he exclaimed presently. "The plot thickens. There is too much glass
and yet too little; that is to say, there are only one or two fragments
here that belong to the spectacles; not nearly enough to complete the
building up of the lenses. The remainder consists of a soft, uneven,
moulded glass, easily distinguished from the clear, hard optical glass.
These foreign fragments are all curved, as if they had formed part of a
cylinder, and are, I should say, portions of a wine-glass or tumbler." He
moved the slide once or twice, and then continued: "We are in luck,
Jervis. Here is a fragment with two little diverging lines etched on it,
evidently the points of an eight-rayed star--and here is another with
three points--the ends of three rays. This enables us to reconstruct the
vessel perfectly. It was a clear, thin glass--probably a tumbler--decorated
with scattered stars; I dare say you know the pattern.
Sometimes there is an ornamented band in addition, but generally the
stars form the only decoration. Have a look at the specimen."

I had just applied my eye to the microscope when the station-master and
the inspector came up. Our appearance, seated on the ground with the
microscope between us, was too much for the police officer's gravity, and
he laughed long and joyously.

"You must excuse me, gentlemen," he said apologetically, "but really, you
know, to an old hand, like myself, it does look a little--well--you
understand--I dare say a microscope is a very interesting and amusing
thing, but it doesn't get you much forwarder in a case like this, does
it?"

"Perhaps not," replied Thorndyke. "By the way, where did you find the
hat, after all?"

"We haven't found it," the inspector replied.

"Then we must help you to continue the search," said Thorndyke. "If you
will wait a few moments, we will come with you." He poured a few drops of
xylol balsam on the cards to fix the reconstituted lenses to their
supports and then, packing them and the microscope in the case, announced
that he was ready to start.

"Is there any village or hamlet near?" he asked the station-master.

"None nearer than Corfield. That is about half-a-mile from here."

"And where is the nearest road?"

"There is a half-made road that runs past a house about three hundred
yards from here. It belonged to a building estate that was never built.
There is a footpath from it to the station."

"Are there any other houses near?"

"No. That is the only house for half-a-mile round, and there is no other
road near here."

"Then the probability is that Brodski approached the railway from that
direction, as he was found on that side of the permanent way."

The inspector agreeing with this view, we all set off slowly towards the
house, piloted by the station-master and searching the ground as we went.
The waste land over which we passed was covered with patches of docks and
nettles, through each of which the inspector kicked his way, searching
with feet and lantern for the missing hat. A walk of three hundred yards
brought us to a low wall enclosing a garden, beyond which we could see a
small house; and here we halted while the inspector waded into a large
bed of nettles beside the wall and kicked vigorously. Suddenly there came
a clinking sound mingled with objurgations, and the inspector hopped out
holding one foot and soliloquizing profanely.

"I wonder what sort of a fool put a thing like that into a bed of
nettles!" he exclaimed, stroking the injured foot. Thorndyke picked the
object up and held it in the light of the lantern, displaying a piece of
three-quarter inch rolled iron bar about a foot long. "It doesn't seem to
have been there very long," he observed, examining it closely, "there is
hardly any rust on it."

"It has been there long enough for me," growled the inspector, "and I'd
like to bang it on the head of the blighter that put it there."

Callously indifferent to the inspector's sufferings, Thorndyke continued
calmly to examine the bar. At length, resting his lantern on the wall, he
produced his pocket-lens, with which he resumed his investigation, a
proceeding that so exasperated the inspector that that afflicted official
limped off in dudgeon, followed by the station-master, and we heard him,
presently, rapping at the front door of the house.

"Give me a slide, Jervis, with a drop of Farrant on it," said Thorndyke.
"There are some fibres sticking to this bar."

I prepared the slide, and, having handed it to him together with a
cover-glass, a pair of forceps and a needle, set up the microscope on the
wall.

"I'm sorry for the inspector," Thorndyke remarked, with his eye applied
to the little instrument, "but that was a lucky kick for us. Just take a
look at the specimen."

I did so, and, having moved the slide about until I had seen the whole of
the object, I gave my opinion. "Red wool fibres, blue cotton fibres and
some yellow vegetable fibres that look like jute."

"Yes," said Thorndyke; "the same combination of fibres as that which we
found on the dead man's teeth and probably from the same source. This bar
has probably been wiped on that very curtain or rug with which poor
Brodski was stifled. We will place it on the wall for future reference,
and meanwhile, by hook or by crook, we must get into that house. This is
much too plain a hint to be disregarded."

Hastily repacking the case, we hurried to the front of the house, where
we found the two officials looking rather vaguely up the unmade road.

"There's a light in the house," said the inspector, "but there's no one
at home. I have knocked a dozen times and got no answer. And I don't see
what we are hanging about here for at all. The hat is probably close to
where the body was found, and we shall find it in the morning."

Thorndyke made no reply, but, entering the garden, stepped up the path,
and having knocked gently at the door, stooped and listened attentively
at the key-hole.

"I tell you there's no one in the house, sir," said the inspector
irritably; and, as Thorndyke continued to listen, he walked away,
muttering angrily. As soon as he was gone, Thorndyke flashed his lantern
over the door, the threshold, the path and the small flower-beds; and,
from one of the latter, I presently saw him stoop and pick something up.

"Here is a highly instructive object, Jervis," he said, coming out to the
gate, and displaying a cigarette of which only half-an-inch had been
smoked.

"How instructive?" I asked. "What do you learn from it?"

"Many things," he replied. "It has been lit and thrown away unsmoked;
that indicates a sudden change of purpose. It was thrown away at the
entrance to the house, almost certainly by some one entering it. That
person was probably a stranger, or he would have taken it in with him.
But he had not expected to enter the house, or he would not have lit it.
These are the general suggestions; now as to the particular ones. The
paper of the cigarette is of the kind known as the 'Zig-Zag' brand; the
very conspicuous water-mark is quite easy to see. Now Brodski's cigarette
book was a 'Zig-Zag' book--so called from the way in which the papers
pull out. But let us see what the tobacco is like." With a pin from his
coat, he hooked out from the unburned end a wisp of dark, dirty brown
tobacco, which he held out for my inspection.

"Fine-cut Latakia," I pronounced, without hesitation.

"Very well," said Thorndyke. "Here is a cigarette made of an unusual
tobacco similar to that in Brodski's pouch and wrapped in an unusual
paper similar to those in Brodski's cigarette book. With due regard to
the fourth rule of the syllogism, I suggest that this cigarette was made
by Oscar Brodski. But, nevertheless, we will look for corroborative
detail."

"What is that?" I asked.

"You may have noticed that Brodski's match-box contained round wooden
vestas--which are also rather unusual. As he must have lighted the
cigarette within a few steps of the gate, we ought to be able to find the
match with which he lighted it. Let us try up the road in the direction
from which he would probably have approached."

We walked very slowly up the road, searching the ground with the lantern,
and we had hardly gone a dozen paces when I espied a match lying on the
rough path and eagerly picked it up. It was a round wooden vesta.

Thorndyke examined it with interest and having deposited it, with the
cigarette, in his "collecting-box," turned to retrace his steps. "There
is now, Jervis, no reasonable doubt that Brodski was murdered in that
house. We have succeeded in connecting that house with the crime, and now
we have got to force an entrance and join up the other clues." We walked
quickly back to the rear of the premises, where we found the inspector
conversing disconsolately with the station-master.

"I think, sir," said the former, "we had better go back now; in fact, I
don't see what we came here for, but--here! I say, sir, you mustn't do
that!" For Thorndyke, without a word of warning, had sprung up lightly
and thrown one of his long legs over the wall.

"I can't allow you to enter private premises, sir," continued the
inspector; but Thorndyke quietly dropped down on the inside and turned to
face the officer over the wall.


"Now, listen to me, inspector," said he. "I have good reasons for
believing that the dead man, Brodski, has been in this house, in fact, I
am prepared to swear an information to that effect. But time is precious;
we must follow the scent while it is hot. And I am not proposing to break
into the house off-hand. I merely wish to examine the dust-bin."

"The dust-bin!" gasped the inspector. "Well, you really are a most
extraordinary gentleman! What do you expect to find in the dust-bin?"

"I am looking for a broken tumbler or wine-glass. It is a thin glass
vessel decorated with a pattern of small, eight-pointed stars. It may be
in the dust-bin or it may be inside the house."

The inspector hesitated, but Thorndyke's confident manner had evidently
impressed him.

"We can soon see what is in the dust-bin," he said, "though what in
creation a broken tumbler has to do with the case is more than I can
understand. However, here goes." He sprang up onto the wall, and, as he
dropped down into the garden, the station-master and I followed.

Thorndyke lingered a few moments by the gate examining the ground, while
the two officials hurried up the path. Finding nothing of interest,
however, he walked towards the house, looking keenly about him as he
went; but we were hardly half-way up the path when we heard the voice of
the inspector calling excitedly.

"Here you are, sir, this way," he sang out, and, as we hurried forward,
we suddenly came on the two officials standing over a small rubbish-heap
and looking the picture of astonishment. The glare of their lanterns
illuminated the heap, and showed us the scattered fragments of a thin
glass, star-pattern tumbler.

"I can't imagine how you guessed it was here, sir," said the inspector,
with a new-born respect in his tone, "nor what you're going to do with it
now you have found it."

"It is merely another link in the chain of evidence," said Thorndyke,
taking a pair of forceps from the case and stooping over the heap.
"Perhaps we shall find something else." He picked up several small
fragments of glass, looked at them closely and dropped them again.
Suddenly his eye caught a small splinter at the base of the heap. Seizing
it with the forceps, he held it close to his eye in the strong lamplight,
and, taking out his lens, examined it with minute attention. "Yes," he
said at length, "this is what I was looking for. Let me have those two
cards, Jervis."

I produced the two visiting-cards with the reconstructed lenses stuck to
them, and, laying them on the lid of the case, threw the light of the
lantern on them. Thorndyke looked at them intently for some time, and
from them to the fragment that he held. Then, turning to the inspector,
he said: "You saw me pick up this splinter of glass?"

"Yes, sir," replied the officer.

"And you saw where we found these spectacle-glasses and know whose they
were?"

"Yes, sir. They are the dead man's spectacles, and you found them where
the body had been."

"Very well," said Thorndyke; "now observe;" and, as the two officials
craned forward with parted lips, he laid the little splinter in a gap in
one of the lenses and then gave it a gentle push forward, when it
occupied the gap perfectly, joining edge to edge with the adjacent
fragments and rendering that portion of the lens complete.

"My God!" exclaimed the inspector. "How on earth did you know?"

"I must explain that later," said Thorndyke. "Meanwhile we had better
have a look inside the house. I expect to find there a cigarette--or
possibly a cigar--which has been trodden on, some whole-meal biscuits,
possibly a wooden vesta, and perhaps even the missing hat."

At the mention of the hat, the inspector stepped eagerly to the back
door, but, finding it bolted, he tried the window. This also was securely
fastened and, on Thorndyke's advice, we went round to the front door.

"This door is locked too," said the inspector. "I'm afraid we shall have
to break in. It's a nuisance, though."

"Have a look at the window," suggested Thorndyke.

The officer did so, struggling vainly to undo the patent catch with his
pocket-knife.

"It's no go," he said, coming back to the door. "We shall have to -?" He
broke off with an astonished stare, for the door stood open and Thorndyke
was putting something in his pocket.

"Your friend doesn't waste much time--even in picking a lock," he
remarked to me, as we followed Thorndyke into the house; but his
reflections were soon merged in a new surprise. Thorndyke had preceded us
into a small sitting-room dimly lighted by a hanging lamp turned down
low.

As we entered he turned up the light and glanced about the room. A
whisky-bottle was on the table, with a siphon, a tumbler and a
biscuit-box. Pointing to the latter, Thorndyke said to the inspector:
"See what is in that box."

The inspector raised the lid and peeped in, the station-master peered
over his shoulder, and then both stared at Thorndyke.

"How in the name of goodness did you know that there were whole-meal
biscuits in the house, sir?" exclaimed the station-master.

"You'd be disappointed if I told you," replied Thorndyke. "But look at
this." He pointed to the hearth, where lay a flattened, half-smoked
cigarette and a round wooden vesta. The inspector gazed at these objects
in silent wonder, while, as to the station-master, he continued to stare
at Thorndyke with what I can only describe as superstitious awe.

"You have the dead man's property with you, I believe?" said my
colleague.

"Yes," replied the inspector; "I put the things in my pocket for safety."

"Then," said Thorndyke, picking up the flattened cigarette, "let us have
a look at his tobacco-pouch."

As the officer produced and opened the pouch, Thorndyke neatly cut open
the cigarette with his sharp pocket-knife. "Now," said he, "what kind of
tobacco is in the pouch?"

The inspector took out a pinch, looked at it and smelt it distastefully.
"It's one of those stinking tobaccos," he said, "that they put in
mixtures--Latakia, I think."

"And what is this?" asked Thorndyke, pointing to the open cigarette.

"Same stuff, undoubtedly," replied the inspector.

"And now let us see his cigarette papers," said Thorndyke.

The little book, or rather packet--for it consisted of separated papers--was
produced from the officer's pocket and a sample paper abstracted.
Thorndyke laid the half-burnt paper beside it, and the inspector, having
examined the two, held them up to the light.

"There isn't much chance of mistaking that 'Zig-Zag' watermark," he said.
"This cigarette was made by the deceased; there can't be the shadow of a
doubt."

"One more point," said Thorndyke, laying the burnt wooden vesta on the
table. "You have his match-box?"

The inspector brought forth the little silver casket, opened it and
compared the wooden vestas that it contained with the burnt end. Then he
shut the box with a snap.

"You've proved it up to the hilt," said he. "If we could only find the
hat, we should have a complete case."

"I'm not sure that we haven't found the hat," said Thorndyke. "You notice
that something besides coal has been burned in the grate."

The inspector ran eagerly to the fire-place and began with feverish
hands, to pick out the remains of the extinct fire. "The cinders are
still warm," he said, "and they are certainly not all coal cinders. There
has been wood burned here on top of the coal, and these little black
lumps are neither coal nor wood. They may quite possibly be the remains
of a burnt hat, but, lord! who can tell? You can put together the pieces
of broken spectacle-glasses, but you can't build up a hat out of a few
cinders." He held out a handful of little, black, spongy cinders and
looked ruefully at Thorndyke, who took them from him and laid them out on
a sheet of paper.

"We can't reconstitute the hat, certainly," my friend agreed, "but we may
be able to ascertain the origin of these remains. They may not be cinders
of a hat, after all." He lit a wax match and, taking up one of the
charred fragments, applied the flame to it. The cindery mass fused at
once with a crackling, seething sound, emitting a dense smoke, and
instantly the air became charged with a pungent, resinous odour mingled
with the smell of burning animal matter.

"Smells like varnish," the station-master remarked.

"Yes. Shellac," said Thorndyke; "so the first test gives a positive
result. The next test will take more time."

He opened the green case and took from it a little flask, fitted for
Marsh's arsenic test, with a safety funnel and escape tube, a small
folding tripod, a spirit lamp and a disc of asbestos to serve as a
sand-bath. Dropping into the flask several of the cindery masses,
selected after careful inspection, he filled it up with alcohol and
placed it on the disc, which he rested on the tripod. Then he lighted the
spirit lamp underneath and sat down to wait for the alcohol to boil.

"There is one little point that we may as well settle," he said
presently, as the bubbles began to rise in the flask. "Give me a slide
with a drop of Farrant on it, Jervis."

I prepared the slide while Thorndyke, with a pair of forceps, picked out
a tiny wisp from the table-cloth. "I fancy we have seen this fabric
before," he remarked, as he laid the little pinch of fluff in the
mounting fluid and slipped the slide onto the stage of the microscope.
"Yes," he continued, looking into the eye-piece, "here are our old
acquaintances, the red wool fibres, the blue cotton and the yellow jute.
We must label this at once or we may confuse it with the other
specimens."

"Have you any idea how the deceased met his death?" the inspector asked.

"Yes," replied Thorndyke. "I take it that the murderer enticed him into
this room and gave him some refreshments. The murderer sat in the chair
in which you are sitting, Brodski sat in that small arm-chair. Then I
imagine the murderer attacked him with that iron bar that you found among
the nettles, failed to kill him at the first stroke, struggled with him
and finally suffocated him with the table-cloth. By the way, there is
just one more point. You recognize this piece of string?" He took from
his "collecting-box" the little end of twine that had been picked up by
the line. The inspector nodded. "Look behind you, you will see where it
came from."

The officer turned sharply and his eye lighted on a string-box on the
mantelpiece. He lifted it down, and Thorndyke drew out from it a length
of white twine with one green strand, which he compared with the piece in
his hand. "The green strand in it makes the identification fairly
certain," he said. "Of course the string was used to secure the umbrella
and hand-bag. He could not have carried them in his hand, encumbered as
he was with the corpse. But I expect our other specimen is ready now." He
lifted the flask off the tripod, and, giving it a vigorous shake,
examined the contents through his lens. The alcohol had now become
dark-brown in colour, and was noticeably thicker and more syrupy in
consistence.

"I think we have enough here for a rough test," said he, selecting a
pipette and a slide from the case. He dipped the former into the flask
and, having sucked up a few drops of the alcohol from the bottom, held
the pipette over the slide on which he allowed the contained fluid to
drop.


Laying a cover-glass on the little pool of alcohol, he put the slide on
the microscope stage and examined it attentively, while we watched him in
expectant silence.

At length he looked up, and, addressing the inspector, asked: "Do you
know what felt hats are made of?"

"I can't say that I do, sir," replied the officer.

"Well, the better quality hats are made of rabbits' and hares' wool--the
soft under-fur, you know--cemented together with shellac. Now there is
very little doubt that these cinders contain shellac, and with the
microscope I find a number of small hairs of a rabbit. I have, therefore,
little hesitation in saying that these cinders are the remains of a hard
felt hat; and, as the hairs do not appear to be dyed, I should say it was
a grey hat."

At this moment our conclave was interrupted by hurried footsteps on the
garden path and, as we turned with one accord, an elderly woman burst
into the room.

She stood for a moment in mute astonishment, and then, looking from one
to the other, demanded: "Who are you? and what are you doing here?"

The inspector rose. "I am a police officer, madam," said he. "I can't
give you any further information just now, but, if you will excuse me
asking, who are you?"

"I am Mr. Hickler's housekeeper," she replied.

"And Mr. Hickler; are you expecting him home shortly?"

"No, I am not," was the curt reply. "Mr. Hickler is away from home just
now. He left this evening by the boat train."

"For Amsterdam?" asked Thorndyke.

"I believe so, though I don't see what business it is of yours," the
housekeeper answered.

"I thought he might, perhaps, be a diamond broker or merchant," said
Thorndyke. "A good many of them travel by that train."

"So he is," said the woman, "at least, he has something to do with
diamonds."

"Ah. Well, we must be going, Jervis," said Thorndyke, "we have finished
here, and we have to find an hotel or inn. Can I have a word with you,
inspector?"

The officer, now entirely humble and reverent, followed us out into the
garden to receive Thorndyke's parting advice.

"You had better take possession of the house at once, and get rid of the
housekeeper. Nothing must be removed. Preserve those cinders and see that
the rubbish-heap is not disturbed, and, above all, don't have the room
swept. An officer will be sent to relieve you."

With a friendly "good-night" we went on our way, guided by the
station-master; and here our connection with the case came to an end.
Hickler (whose Christian name turned out to be Silas) was, it is true,
arrested as he stepped ashore from the steamer, and a packet of diamonds,
subsequently identified as the property of Oscar Brodski, found upon his
person. But he was never brought to trial, for on the return voyage he
contrived to elude his guards for an instant as the ship was approaching
the English coast, and it was not until three days later, when a
hand-cuffed body was cast up on the lonely shore by Orfordness, that the
authorities knew the fate of Silas Hickler.

"An appropriate and dramatic end to a singular and yet typical case,"
said Thorndyke, as he put down the newspaper. "I hope it has enlarged
your knowledge, Jervis, and enabled you to form one or two useful
corollaries."

"I prefer to hear you sing the medico-legal doxology," I answered,
turning upon him like the proverbial worm and grinning derisively (which
the worm does not).

"I know you do," he retorted, with mock gravity, "and I lament your lack
of mental initiative. However, the points that this case illustrates are
these: First, the danger of delay; the vital importance of instant action
before that frail and fleeting thing that we call a clue has time to
evaporate. A delay of a few hours would have left us with hardly a single
datum. Second, the necessity of pursuing the most trivial clue to an
absolute finish, as illustrated by the spectacles. Third, the urgent need
of a trained scientist to aid the police; and, last," he concluded, with
a smile, "we learn never to go abroad without the invaluable green case."



A CASE OF PREMEDITATION


PART I. THE ELIMINATION OF MR. PRATT


The wine merchant who should supply a consignment of petit vin to a
customer who had ordered, and paid for, a vintage wine, would render
himself subject to unambiguous comment. Nay! more; he would be liable to
certain legal penalties. And yet his conduct would be morally
indistinguishable from that of the railway company which, having accepted
a first-class fare, inflicts upon the passenger that kind of company
which he has paid to avoid. But the corporate conscience, as Herbert
Spencer was wont to explain, is an altogether inferior product to that of
the individual.

Such were the reflections of Mr. Rufus Pembury when, as the train was
about to move out of Maidstone (West) station, a coarse and burly man
(clearly a denizen of the third-class) was ushered into his compartment
by the guard. He had paid the higher fare, not for cushioned seats, but
for seclusion or, at least, select companionship. The man's entry had
deprived him of both, and he resented it.

But if the presence of this stranger involved a breach of contract, his
conduct was a positive affront--an indignity; for, no sooner had the
train started than he fixed upon Mr. Pembury a gaze of impertinent
intensity, and continued thereafter to regard him with a stare as steady
and unwinking as that of a Polynesian idol.

It was offensive to a degree, and highly disconcerting withal. Mr.
Pembury fidgeted in his seat with increasing discomfort and rising
temper. He looked into his pocket-book, read one or two letters and
sorted a collection of visiting-cards. He even thought of opening his
umbrella. Finally, his patience exhausted and his wrath mounting to
boiling-point, he turned to the stranger with frosty remonstrance.

"I imagine, sir, that you will have no difficulty in recognizing me,
should we ever meet again--which God forbid."

"I should recognize you among ten thousand," was the reply, so unexpected
as to leave Mr. Pembury speechless.

"You see," the stranger continued impressively, "I've got the gift of
faces. I never forget."

"That must be a great consolation," said Pembury.

"It's very useful to me," said the stranger, "at least, it used to be,
when I was a warder at Portland--you remember me, I dare say: my name is
Pratt. I was assistant-warder in your time. God-forsaken hole, Portland,
and mighty glad I was when they used to send me up to town on
reckernizing duty. Holloway was the house of detention then, you
remember; that was before they moved to Brixton."

Pratt paused in his reminiscences, and Pembury, pale and gasping with
astonishment, pulled himself together.

"I think," said he, "you must be mistaking me for some one else."

"I don't," replied Pratt. "You're Francis Dobbs, that's who you are.
Slipped away from Portland one evening about twelve years ago. Clothes
washed up on the Bill next day. No trace of fugitive. As neat a mizzle as
ever I heard of. But there are a couple of photographs and a set of
fingerprints at the Habitual Criminals Register. P'r'aps you'd like to
come and see 'em?"

"Why should I go to the Habitual Criminals Register?" Pembury demanded
faintly.

"Ah! Exactly. Why should you? When you are a man of means, and a little
judiciously invested capital would render it unnecessary?"

Pembury looked out of the window, and for a minute or more preserved a
stony silence. At length he turned suddenly to Pratt. "How much?" he
asked.

"I shouldn't think a couple of hundred a year would hurt you," was the
calm reply.

Pembury reflected awhile. "What makes you think I am a man of means?" he
asked presently.

Pratt smiled grimly. "Bless you, Mr. Pembury," said he, "I know all about
you. Why, for the last six months I have been living within half-a-mile
of your house."

"The devil you have!"

"Yes. When I retired from the service, General O'Gorman engaged me as a
sort of steward or caretaker of his little place at Baysford--he's very
seldom there himself--and the very day after I came down, I met you and
spotted you, but, naturally, I kept out of sight myself. Thought I'd find
out whether you were good for anything before I spoke, so I've been
keeping my ears open and I find you are good for a couple of hundred."

There was an interval of silence, and then the ex-warder resumed--"That's
what comes of having a memory for faces. Now there's Jack Ellis,
on the other hand; he must have had you under his nose for a couple of
years, and yet he's never twigged--he never will either," added Pratt,
already regretting the confidence into which his vanity had led him.

"Who is Jack Ellis?" Pembury demanded sharply.

"Why, he's a sort of supernumerary at the Baysford Police Station; does
odd jobs; rural detective, helps in the office and that sort of thing. He
was in the Civil Guard at Portland, in your time, but he got his left
forefinger chopped off, so they pensioned him, and, as he was a Baysford
man, he got this billet. But he'll never reckernize you, don't you fear."

"Unless you direct his attention to me," suggested Pembury.

"There's no fear of that," laughed Pratt. "You can trust me to sit quiet
on my own nest-egg. Besides, we're not very friendly. He came nosing
round our place after the parlourmaid--him a married man, mark you! But
I soon boosted him out, I can tell you; and Jack Ellis don't like me
now."

"I see," said Pembury reflectively; then, after a pause, he asked: "Who
is this General O'Gorman? I seem to know the name."

"I expect you do," said Pratt. "He was governor of Dartmoor when I was
there--that was my last billet--and, let me tell you, if he'd been at
Portland in your time, you'd never have got away."

"How is that?"

"Why, you see, the general is a great man on bloodhounds. He kept a pack
at Dartmoor and, you bet, those lags knew it. There were no attempted
escapes in those days. They wouldn't have had a chance."

"He has the pack still, hasn't he?" asked Pembury.

"Rather. Spends any amount of time on training 'em, too. He's always
hoping there'll be a burglary or a murder in the neighbourhood so as he
can try 'em, but he's never got a chance yet. P'r'aps the crooks have
heard about 'em. But, to come back to our little arrangement: what do you
say to a couple of hundred, paid quarterly, if you like?"

"I can't settle the matter off-hand," said Pembury. "You must give me
time to think it over."

"Very well," said Pratt. "I shall be back at Baysford tomorrow evening.
That will give you a clear day to think it over. Shall I look in at your
place to-morrow night?"

"No," replied Pembury; "you'd better not be seen at my house, nor I at
yours. If I meet you at some quiet spot, where we shan't be seen, we can
settle our business without any one knowing that we have met. It won't
take long, and we can't be too careful."

"That's true," agreed Pratt. "Well, I'll tell you what. There's an avenue
leading up to our house; you know it, I expect. There's no lodge, and the
gates are always ajar, excepting at night. Now I shall be down by the
six-thirty at Baysford. Our place is a quarter of an hour from the
station. Say you meet me in the avenue at a quarter to seven."

"That will suit me," said Pembury; "that is, if you are sure the
bloodhounds won't be straying about the grounds."

"Lord bless you, no!" laughed Pratt. "D'you suppose the general lets his
precious hounds stray about for any casual crook to feed with poisoned
sausage? No, they're locked up safe in the kennels at the back of the
house. Hallo! This'll be Swanley, I expect. I'll change into a smoker
here and leave you time to turn the matter over in your mind. So long.
To-morrow evening in the avenue at a quarter to seven. And, I say, Mr.
Pembury, you might as well bring the first installment with you--fifty,
in small notes or gold."

"Very well," said Mr. Pembury. He spoke coldly enough, but there was a
flush on his cheeks and an angry light in his eyes, which, perhaps, the
ex-warder noticed; for when he had stepped out and shut the door, he
thrust his head in at the window and said threateningly:

"One more word, Mr. Pembury-Dobbs: no hanky-panky, you know. I'm an old
hand and pretty fly, I am. So don't you try any chickery-pokery on me.
That's all." He withdrew his head and disappeared, leaving Pembury to his
reflections.

The nature of those reflections, if some telepathist? transferring his
attention for the moment from hidden courtyards or missing thimbles to
more practical matters--could have conveyed them into the mind of Mr.
Pratt, would have caused that quondam official some surprise and,
perhaps, a little disquiet. For long experience of the criminal, as he
appears when in durance, had produced some rather misleading ideas as to
his behaviour when at large. In fact, the ex-warder had considerably
under-estimated the ex-convict.

Rufus Pembury, to give his real name--for Dobbs was literally a nom de
guerre--was a man of strong character and intelligence. So much so that,
having tried the criminal career and found it not worth pursuing, he had
definitely abandoned it. When the cattle-boat that picked him up off
Portland Bill had landed him at an American port, he brought his entire
ability and energy to bear on legitimate commercial pursuits, and with
such success that, at the end of ten years, he was able to return to
England with a moderate competence. Then he had taken a modest house near
the little town of Baysford, where he had lived quietly on his savings
for the last two years, holding aloof without much difficulty from the
rather exclusive local society; and here he might have lived out the rest
of his life in peace but for the unlucky chance that brought the man
Pratt into the neighbourhood. With the arrival of Pratt his security was
utterly destroyed.

There is something eminently unsatisfactory about a blackmailer. No
arrangement with him has any permanent validity. No undertaking that he
gives is binding. The thing which he has sold remains in his possession
to sell over again. He pockets the price of emancipation, but retains the
key of the fetters. In short, the blackmailer is a totally impossible
person.

Such were the considerations that had passed through the mind of Rufus
Pembury, even while Pratt was making his proposals; and those proposals
he had never for an instant entertained. The ex-warder's advice to him to
"turn the matter over in his mind" was unnecessary. For his mind was
already made up. His decision was arrived at in the very moment when
Pratt had disclosed his identity. The conclusion was self-evident. Before
Pratt appeared he was living in peace and security. While Pratt remained,
his liberty was precarious from moment to moment. If Pratt should
disappear, his peace and security would return. Therefore Pratt must be
eliminated.

It was a logical consequence.

The profound meditations, therefore, in which Pembury remained immersed
for the remainder of the journey, had nothing whatever to do with the
quarterly allowance; they were concerned exclusively with the elimination
of ex-warder Pratt.

Now Rufus Pembury was not a ferocious man. He was not even cruel. But he
was gifted with a certain magnanimous cynicism which ignored the
trivialities of sentiment and regarded only the main issues. If a wasp
hummed over his tea-cup, he would crush that wasp; but not with his bare
hand. The wasp carried the means of aggression. That was the wasp's
look-out. His concern was to avoid being stung.

So it was with Pratt. The man had elected, for his own profit, to
threaten Pembury's liberty. Very well. He had done it at his own risk.
That risk was no concern of Pembury's. His concern was his own safety.

When Pembury alighted at Charing Cross, he directed his steps (after
having watched" Pratt's departure from the station) to Buckingham Street,
Strand, where he entered a quiet private hotel. He was apparently
expected, for the manageress greeted him by his name as she handed him
his key.

"Are you staying in town, Mr. Pembury?" she asked.

"No," was the reply. "I go back to-morrow morning, but I may be coming up
again shortly. By the way, you used to have an encyclopaedia in one of
the rooms. Could I see it for a moment?"

"It is in the drawing-room," said the manageress. "Shall I show you--but
you know the way, don't you?"

Certainly Mr. Pembury knew the way. It was on the first floor; a pleasant
old-world room looking on the quiet old street; and on a shelf, amidst a
collection of novels, stood the sedate volumes of Chambers's
Encyclopaedia.

That a gentleman from the country should desire to look up the subject of
"hounds" would not, to a casual observer, have seemed unnatural. But when
from hounds the student proceeded to the article on blood, and thence to
one devoted to perfumes, the observer might reasonably have felt some
surprise; and this surprise might have been augmented if he had followed
Mr. Pembury's subsequent proceedings, and specially if he had considered
them as the actions of a man whose immediate aim was the removal of a
superfluous unit of the population.

Having deposited his bag and umbrella in his room, Pembury set forth from
the hotel as one with a definite purpose; and his footsteps led, in the
first place, to an umbrella shop on the Strand, where he selected a thick
rattan cane. There was nothing remarkable in this, perhaps; but the cane
was of an uncomely thickness and the salesman protested. "I like a thick
cane," said Pembury.

"Yes, sir; but for a gentleman of your height" (Pembury was a small,
slightly-built man) "I would venture to suggest -?"

"I like a thick cane," repeated Pembury. "Cut it down to the proper
length and don't rivet the ferrule on. I'll cement it on when I get
home."

His next investment would have seemed more to the purpose, though
suggestive of unexpected crudity of method. It was a large Norwegian
knife. But not content with this he went on forthwith to a second
cutler's and purchased a second knife, the exact duplicate of the first.
Now, for what purpose could he want two identically similar knives? And
why not have bought them both at the same shop? It was highly mysterious.

Shopping appeared to be a positive mania with Rufus Pembury. In the
course of the next half-hour he acquired a cheap hand-bag, an artist's
black-japanned brush-case, a three-cornered file, a stick of elastic
glue and a pair of iron crucible-tongs. Still insatiable, he repaired to
an old-fashioned chemist's shop in a by-street, where he further enriched
himself with a packet of absorbent cotton-wool and an ounce of
permanganate of potash; and, as the chemist wrapped up these articles,
with the occult and necromantic air peculiar to chemists, Pembury watched
him impassively.

"I suppose you don't keep musk?" he asked carelessly.

The chemist paused in the act of heating a stick of sealing-wax, and
appeared as if about to mutter an incantation. But he merely replied:
"No, sir. Not the solid musk; it's so very costly. But I have the
essence."

"That isn't as strong as the pure stuff, I suppose?"

"No," replied the chemist, with a cryptic smile, "not so strong, but
strong enough. These animal perfumes are so very penetrating, you know;
and so lasting. Why, I venture to say that if you were to sprinkle a
table-spoonful of the essence in the middle of St. Paul's, the place
would smell of it six months hence."

"You don't say so!" said Pembury. "Well, that ought to be enough for
anybody. I'll take a small quantity, please, and, for goodness' sake, see
that there isn't any on the outside of the bottle. The stuff isn't for
myself, and I don't want to go about smelling like a civet cat."

"Naturally you don't, sir," agreed the chemist. He then produced an ounce
bottle, a small glass funnel and a stoppered bottle labelled "Ess.
Moschi," with which he proceeded to perform a few trifling feats of
legerdemain.

"There, sir," said he, when he had finished the performance, "there is
not a drop on the outside of the bottle, and, if I fit it with a rubber
cork, you will be quite secure."

Pembury's dislike of musk appeared to be excessive, for, when the chemist
had retired into a secret cubicle as if to hold converse with some
familiar spirit (but actually to change half-a-crown), he took the
brush-case from his bag, pulled off its lid, and then, with the
crucible-tongs, daintily lifted the bottle off the counter, slid it
softly into the brush-case, and, replacing the lid, returned the case and
tongs to the bag. The other two packets he took from the counter and
dropped into his pocket, and, when the presiding wizard, having
miraculously transformed a single half-crown into four pennies, handed
him the product, he left the shop and walked thoughtfully back towards
the Strand. Suddenly a new idea seemed to strike him. He halted,
considered for a few moments and then strode away northward to make the
oddest of all his purchases.

The transaction took place in a shop in the Seven Dials, whose strange
stock-in-trade ranged the whole zoological gamut, from water-snails to
Angora cats. Pembury looked at a cage of guinea-pigs in the window and
entered the shop.

"Do you happen to have a dead guinea-pig?" he asked.

"No; mine are all alive," replied the man, adding, with a sinister grin:
"But they're not immortal, you know."

Pembury looked at the man distastefully. There is an appreciable
difference between a guinea-pig and a blackmailer. "Any small mammal
would do," he said.

"There's a dead rat in that cage, if he's any good," said the man. "Died
this morning, so he's quite fresh."

"I'll take the rat," said Pembury; "he'll do quite well."

The little corpse was accordingly made into a parcel and deposited in the
bag, and Pembury, having tendered a complimentary fee, made his way back
to the hotel.

After a modest lunch he went forth and spent the remainder of the day
transacting the business which had originally brought him to town. He
dined at a restaurant and did not return to his hotel until ten o'clock,
when he took his key, and tucking under his arm a parcel that he had
brought in with him, retired for the night. But before undressing--and
after locking his door--he did a very strange and unaccountable thing.
Having pulled off the loose ferrule from his newly-purchased cane, he
bored a hole in the bottom of it with the spike end of the file. Then,
using the latter as a broach, he enlarged the hole until only a narrow
rim of the bottom was left. He next rolled up a small ball of cottonwool
and pushed it into the ferrule; and having smeared the end of the cane
with elastic glue, he replaced the ferrule, warming it over the gas to
make the glue stick.

When he had finished with the cane, he turned his attention to one of the
Norwegian knives. First, he carefully removed with the file most of the
bright, yellow varnish from the wooden case or handle.

Then he opened the knife, and, cutting the string of the parcel that he
had brought in, took from it the dead rat which he had bought at the
zoologist's. Laying the animal on a sheet of paper, he cut off its head,
and, holding it up by the tail, allowed the blood that oozed from the
neck to drop on the knife, spreading it over both sides of the blade and
handle with his finger.

Then he laid the knife on the paper and softly opened the window. From
the darkness below came the voice of a cat, apparently perfecting itself
in the execution of chromatic scales; and in that direction Pembury flung
the body and head of the rat, and closed the window. Finally, having
washed his hands and stuffed the paper from the parcel into the
fire-place, he went to bed.

But his proceedings in the morning were equally mysterious. Having
breakfasted betimes, he returned to his bedroom and locked himself in.
Then he tied his new cane, handle downwards, to the leg of the
dressing-table. Next, with the crucible-tongs, he drew the little bottle
of musk from the brush-case, and, having assured himself, by sniffing at
it, that the exterior was really free from odour, he withdrew the rubber
cork. Then, slowly and with infinite care, he poured a few drops--perhaps
half-a-teaspoonful--of the essence on the cotton-wool that
bulged through the hole in the ferrule, watching the absorbent material
narrowly as it soaked up the liquid. When it was saturated he proceeded
to treat the knife in the same fashion, letting fall a drop of the
essence on the wooden handle--which soaked it up readily. This done, he
slid up the window and looked out. Immediately below was a tiny yard in
which grew, or rather survived, a couple of faded laurel bushes. The body
of the rat was nowhere to be seen; it had apparently been spirited away
in the night. Holding out the bottle, which he still held, he dropped it
into the bushes, flinging the rubber cork after it.

His next proceeding was to take a tube of vaseline from his dressing-bag
and squeeze a small quantity onto his fingers. With this he thoroughly
smeared the shoulder of the brush-case and the inside of the lid, so as
to ensure an air-tight joint. Having wiped his fingers, he picked the
knife up with the crucible-tongs, and, dropping it into the brush-case,
immediately pushed on the lid. Then he heated the tips of the tongs in
the gas flame to destroy the scent, packed the tongs and brush-case in
the bag, untied the cane--carefully avoiding contact with the ferrule--and,
taking up the two bags, went out, holding the cane by its middle.

There was no difficulty in finding an empty compartment, for first-class
passengers were few at that time in the morning. Pembury waited on the
platform until the guard's whistle sounded, when he stepped into the
compartment, shut the door and laid the cane on the seat with its ferrule
projecting out of the off-side window, in which position it remained
until the train drew up in Baysford station.

Pembury left his dressing-bag at the cloak-room, and, still grasping the
cane by its middle, he sallied forth. The town of Baysford lay some
half-a-mile to the east of the station; his own house was a mile along
the road to the west; and half-way between his house and the station was
the residence of General O'Gorman. He knew the place well. Originally a
farmhouse, it stood on the edge of a great expanse of flat meadows and
communicated with the road by an avenue, nearly three hundred yards long,
of ancient trees. The avenue was shut off from the road by a pair of iron
gates, but these were merely ornamental, for the place was unenclosed and
accessible from the surrounding meadows--indeed, an indistinct footpath
crossed the meadows and intersected the avenue about half-way up.

On this occasion Pembury, whose objective was the avenue, elected to
approach it by the latter route; and at each stile or fence that he
surmounted, he paused to survey the country. Presently the avenue arose
before him, lying athwart the narrow track, and, as he entered it between
two of the trees, he halted and looked about him.

He stood listening for a while. Beyond the faint rustle of leaves no
sound was to be heard. Evidently there was no one about, and, as Pratt
was at large, it was probable that the general was absent.

And now Pembury began to examine the adjacent trees with more than a
casual interest. The two between which he had entered were respectively
an elm and a great pollard oak, the latter being an immense tree whose
huge, warty bole divided about seven feet from the ground into three
limbs, each as large as a fair-sized tree, of which the largest swept
outward in a great curve half-way across the avenue. On this patriarch
Pembury bestowed especial attention, walking completely round it and
finally laying down his bag and cane (the latter resting on the bag with
the ferrule off the ground) that he might climb up, by the aid of the
warty outgrowths, to examine the crown; and he had just stepped up into
the space between the three limbs, when the creaking of the iron gates
was followed by a quick step in the avenue. Hastily he let himself down
from the tree, and, gathering up his possessions, stood close behind the
great bole.

"Just as well not to be seen," was his reflection, as he hugged the tree
closely and waited, peering cautiously round the trunk. Soon a streak of
moving shadow heralded the stranger's approach, and he moved round to
keep the trunk between himself and the intruder. On the footsteps came,
until the stranger was abreast of the tree; and when he had passed
Pembury peeped round at the retreating figure. It was only the postman,
but then the man knew him, and he was glad he had kept out of sight.

Apparently the oak did not meet his requirements, for he stepped out and
looked up and down the avenue. Then, beyond the elm, he caught sight of
an ancient pollard hornbeam--a strange, fantastic tree whose trunk
widened out trumpet-like above into a broad crown, from the edge of which
multitudinous branches uprose like the limbs of some weird hamadryad.

That tree he approved at a glance, but he lingered behind the oak until
the postman, returning with brisk step and cheerful whistle, passed down
the avenue and left him once more in solitude. Then he moved on with a
resolute air to the hornbeam.

The crown of the trunk was barely six feet from the ground. He could
reach it easily, as he found on trying. Standing the cane against the
tree--ferrule downwards, this time--he took the brush-case from the
bag, pulled off the lid, and, with the crucible-tongs, lifted out the
knife and laid it on the crown of the tree, just out of sight, leaving
the tongs? also invisible--still grasping the knife. He was about to
replace the brush-case in the bag, when he appeared-to alter his mind.
Sniffing at it, and finding it reeking with the sickly perfume, he pushed
the lid on again and threw the case up into the tree, where he heard it
roll down into the central hollow of the crown. Then he closed the bag,
and, taking the cane by its handle, moved slowly away in the direction
whence he had come, passing out of the avenue between the elm and the
oak.

His mode of progress was certainly peculiar. He walked with excessive
slowness, trailing the cane along the ground, and every few paces he
would stop and press the ferrule firmly against the earth, so that, to
any one who should have observed him, he would have appeared to be
wrapped in an absorbing reverie.

Thus he moved on across the fields, not, however, returning to the high
road, but crossing another stretch of fields until he emerged into a
narrow lane that led out into the High Street. Immediately opposite to
the lane was the police station, distinguished from the adjacent cottages
only by its lamp, its open door and the notices pasted up outside.
Straight across the road Pembury walked, still trailing the cane, and
halted at the station door to read the notices, resting his cane on the
doorstep as he did so. Through the open doorway he could see a man
writing at a desk. The man's back was towards him, but, presently, a
movement brought his left hand into view, and Pembury noted that the
forefinger was missing. This, then, was Jack Ellis, late of the Civil
Guard at Portland.

Even while he was looking the man turned his head, and Pembury recognized
him at once. He had frequently met him on the road between Baysford and
the adjoining village of Thorpe, and always at the same time. Apparently
Ellis paid a daily visit to Thorpe--perhaps to receive a report from the
rural constable--and he started between three and four and returned
between seven and a quarter past.

Pembury looked at his watch. It was a quarter past three. He moved away
thoughtfully (holding his cane, now, by the middle), and began to walk
slowly in the direction of Thorpe--westward.

For a while he was deeply meditative, and his face wore a puzzled frown.
Then, suddenly, his face cleared and he strode forward at a brisker pace.
Presently he passed through a gap in the hedge, and, walking in a field
parallel with the road, took out his purse--a small pigskin pouch.

Having frugally emptied it of its contents, excepting a few shillings, he
thrust the ferrule of his cane into the small compartment ordinarily
reserved for gold or notes.

And thus he continued to walk on slowly, carrying the cane by the middle
and the purse jammed on the end.

At length he reached a sharp double curve in the road whence he could see
back for a considerable distance; and here opposite a small opening, he
sat down to wait. The hedge screened him effectually from the gaze of
passers-by--though these were few enough--without interfering with his
view.

A quarter of an hour passed. He began to be uneasy. Had he been mistaken?
Were Ellis's visits only occasional instead of daily, as he had thought?
That would be tiresome though not actually disastrous. But at this point
in his reflections a figure came into view, advancing along the road with
a steady swing. He recognized the figure. It was Ellis.

But there was another figure advancing from the opposite direction: a
labourer, apparently. He prepared to shift his ground, but another glance
showed him that the labourer would pass first. He waited. The labourer
came on and, at length, passed the opening, and, as he did so, Ellis
disappeared for a moment in a bend of the road. Instantly Pembury passed
his cane through the opening in the hedge, shook off the purse and pushed
it into the middle of the foot-way. Then he crept forward, behind the
hedge, towards the approaching official, and again sat down to wait. On
came the steady tramp of the unconscious Ellis, and, as it passed,
Pembury drew aside an obstructing branch and peered out at the retreating
figure. The question now was, would Ellis see the purse? It was not a
very conspicuous object.

The footsteps stopped abruptly. Looking out, Pembury saw the police
official stoop, pick up the purse, examine its contents and finally stow
it in his trousers pocket. Pembury heaved a sigh of relief; and, as the
dwindling figure passed out of sight round a curve in the road, he rose,
stretched himself and strode away briskly.

Near the gap was a group of ricks, and, as he passed them, a fresh idea
suggested itself. Looking round quickly he passed to the farther side of
one and, thrusting his cane deeply into it, pushed it home with a piece
of stick that he picked up near the rick, until the handle was lost among
the straw. The bag was now all that was left, and it was empty--for his
other purchases were in the dressing-bag, which, by the way, he must
fetch from the station. He opened it and smelt the interior, but, though
he could detect no odour, he resolved to be rid of it if possible.

As he emerged from the gap a wagon jogged slowly past. It was piled high
with sacks, and the tail-board Was down. Stepping into the road, he
quickly overtook the wagon, and, having glanced round, laid the bag
lightly on the tail-board. Then he set off for the station.

On arriving home he went straight up to his bedroom, and, ringing for his
housekeeper, ordered a substantial meal. Then he took off his clothes and
deposited them, even to his shirt, socks and necktie, in a trunk, wherein
his summer clothing was stored with a plentiful sprinkling of naphthol to
preserve it from the moth. Taking the packet of permanganate of potash
from his dressing-bag, he passed into the adjoining bathroom, and,
tipping the crystals into the bath, turned on the water. Soon the bath
was filled with a pink solution of the salt, and into this he plunged,
immersing his entire body and thoroughly soaking his hair. Then he
emptied the bath and rinsed himself in clear water, and, having dried
himself, returned to the bedroom and dressed himself in fresh clothing.
Finally he took a hearty meal, and then lay down on the sofa to rest
until it should be time to start for the rendezvous.

Half-past six found him lurking in the shadow by the station-approach,
within sight of the solitary lamp. He heard the train come in, saw the
stream of passengers emerge, and noted one figure detach itself from the
throng and turn on to the Thorpe road. It was Pratt, as the lamplight
showed him; Pratt, striding forward to the meeting-place with an air of
jaunty satisfaction and an uncommonly creaky pair of boots.

Pembury followed him at a safe distance, and rather by sound than sight,
until he was well past the stile at the entrance to the footpath.
Evidently he was going on to the gates. Then Pembury vaulted over the
stile and strode away swiftly across the dark meadows.

When he plunged into the deep gloom of the avenue, his first act was to
grope his way to the hornbeam and slip his hand up onto the crown and
satisfy himself that the tongs were as he had left them. Reassured by the
touch of his fingers on the iron loops, he turned and walked slowly down
the avenue. The duplicate knife--ready opened--was in his left inside
breast-pocket, and he fingered its handle as he walked.

Presently the iron gate squeaked mournfully, and then the rhythmical
creak of a pair of boots was audible, coming up the avenue. Pembury
walked forward slowly until a darker smear emerged from the surrounding
gloom, when he called out:

"Is that you, Pratt?"

"That's me," was the cheerful, if ungrammatical response, and, as he drew
nearer, the ex-warder asked: "Have you brought the rhino, old man?"

The insolent familiarity of the man's tone was agreeable to Pembury: it
strengthened his nerve and hardened his heart. "Of course," he replied;
"but we must have a definite understanding, you know."

"Look here," said Pratt, "I've got no time for jaw. The General will be
here presently; he's riding over from Bingfield with a friend. You hand
over the dibs and we'll talk some other time."

"That is all very well," said Pembury, "but you must understand -?" He
paused abruptly and stood still. They were now close to the hornbeam,
and, as he stood, he stared up into the dark mass of foliage.

"What's the matter?" demanded Pratt. "What are you staring at?" He, too,
had halted and stood gazing intently into the darkness.

Then, in an instant, Pembury whipped out the knife and drove it, with all
his strength, into the broad back of the ex-warder, below the left
shoulder-blade.

With a hideous yell Pratt turned and grappled with his assailant. A
powerful man and a competent wrestler, too, he was far more than a match
for Pembury unarmed, and, in a moment, he had him by the throat. But
Pembury clung to him tightly, and, as they trampled to and fro and round
and round, he stabbed again and again with the viciousness of a scorpion,
while Pratt's cries grew more gurgling and husky. Then they fell heavily
to the ground, Pembury underneath. But the struggle was over. With a last
bubbling groan, Pratt relaxed his hold and in a moment grew limp and
inert. Pembury pushed him off and rose, trembling and breathing heavily.

But he wasted no time. There had been more noise than he had bargained
for. Quickly stepping up to the hornbeam, he reached up for the tongs.
His fingers slid into the looped handles; the tongs grasped the knife,
and he lifted it out from its hiding-place and carried it to where the
corpse lay, depositing it on the ground a few feet from the body. Then he
went back to the tree and carefully pushed the tongs over into the hollow
of the crown.

At this moment a woman's voice sounded shrilly from the top of the
avenue.

"Is that you, Mr. Pratt?" it called.

Pembury started and then stepped back quickly, on tiptoe, to the body.
For there was the duplicate knife. He must take that away at all costs.

The corpse was lying on its back. The knife was underneath it, driven in
to the very haft. He had to use both hands to lift the body, and even
then he had some difficulty in disengaging the weapon. And, meanwhile,
the voice, repeating its question, drew nearer.

At length he succeeded in drawing out the knife and thrust it into his
breast-pocket. The corpse fell back, and he stood up gasping.

"Mr. Pratt! Are you there?" The nearness of the voice startled Pembury,
and, turning sharply, he saw a light twinkling between the trees. And
then the gates creaked loudly and he heard the crunch of a horse's hoofs
on the gravel.

He stood for an instant bewildered--utterly taken by surprise. He had
not reckoned on a horse. His intended flight across the meadows towards
Thorpe was now impracticable. If he were overtaken he was lost, for he
knew there was blood on his clothes and his hands were wet and
slippery--to say nothing of the knife in his pocket.

But his confusion lasted only for an instant. He remembered the oak tree;
and, turning out of the avenue, he ran to it, and, touching it as little
as he could with his bloody hands, climbed quickly up into the crown. The
great horizontal limb was nearly three feet in diameter, and, as he lay
out on it, gathering his coat closely round him, he was quite invisible
from below.

He had hardly settled himself when the light which he had seen came into
full view, revealing a woman advancing with a stable lantern in her hand.
And, almost at the same moment, a streak of brighter light burst from the
opposite direction. The horseman was accompanied by a man on a bicycle.

The two men came on apace, and the horseman, sighting the woman, called
out: "Anything the matter, Mrs. Parton?" But, at that moment, the light
of the bicycle lamp fell full on the prostrate corpse. The two men
uttered a simultaneous cry of horror; the woman shrieked aloud: and then
the horseman sprang from the saddle and ran forward to the body.

"Why," he exclaimed, stooping over it, "it's Pratt;" and, as the cyclist
came up and the glare of his lamp shone on a great pool of blood, he
added: "There's been foul play here, Hanford."

Hanford flashed his lamp around the body, lighting up the ground for
several yards.

"What is that behind you, O'Gorman?" he said suddenly; "isn't it a
knife?" He was moving quickly towards it when O'Gorman held up his hand.

"Don't touch it!" he exclaimed. "We'll put the hounds onto it. They'll
soon track the scoundrel, whoever he is. By God! Hanford, this fellow has
fairly delivered himself into our hands." He stood for a few moments
looking down at the knife with something uncommonly like exultation, and
then, turning quickly to his friend, said: "Look here, Hanford; you ride
off to the police station as hard as you can pelt. It is only
three-quarters of a mile; you'll do it in five minutes. Send or bring an
officer and I'll scour the meadows meanwhile. If I haven't got the
scoundrel when you come back, we'll put the hounds onto this knife and
run the beggar down."

"Right," replied Hanford, and without another word he wheeled his machine
about, mounted and rode away into the darkness.

"Mrs. Parton," said O'Gorman, "watch that knife. See that nobody touches
it while I go and examine the meadows."

"Is Mr. Pratt dead, sir?" whimpered Mrs. Parton.

"Gad! I hadn't thought of that," said the general. "You'd better have a
look at him; but mind! nobody is to touch that knife or they will confuse
the scent."

He scrambled into the saddle and galloped away across the meadows in the
direction of Thorpe; and, as Pembury listened to the diminuendo of the
horse's hoofs, he was glad that he had not attempted to escape; for that
was the direction in which he had meant to go, and he would surely have
been overtaken.

As soon as the general was gone, Mrs. Parton, with many a terror-stricken
glance over her shoulder, approached the corpse and held the lantern
close to the dead face. Suddenly she stood up, trembling violently, for
footsteps were audible coming down the avenue. A familiar voice reassured
her.

"Is anything wrong, Mrs. Parton?" The question proceeded from one of the
maids who had come in search of the elder woman, escorted by a young man,
and the pair now came out into the circle of light.

"Good God!" ejaculated the man. "Who's that?"

"It's Mr. Pratt," replied Mrs. Parton. "He's been murdered."

The girl screamed, and then the two domestics approached on tiptoe,
staring at the corpse with the fascination of horror.

"Don't touch that knife," said Mrs. Parton, for the man was about to pick
it up. "The general's going to put the bloodhounds onto it."

"Is the general here, then?" asked the man; and, as he spoke, the
drumming of hoofs, growing momentarily louder, answered him from the
meadow.

O'Gorman reined in his horse as he perceived the group of servants
gathered about the corpse. "Is he dead, Mrs. Parton?" he asked.

"I am afraid so, sir," was the reply.

"Ha! Somebody ought to go for the doctor; but not you, Bailey. I want you
to get the hounds ready and wait with them at the top of the avenue until
I call you."

He was off again into the Baysford meadows, and Bailey hurried away,
leaving the two women staring at the body and talking in whispers.

Pembury's position was cramped and uncomfortable. He dared not move,
hardly dared to breathe, for the women below him were not a dozen yards
away; and it was with mingled feelings of relief and apprehension that he
presently saw from his elevated station a group of lights approaching
rapidly along the road from Baysford. Presently they were hidden by the
trees, and then, after a brief interval, the whirr of wheels sounded on
the drive and streaks of light on the tree-trunks announced the new
arrivals. There were three bicycles, ridden respectively by Mr. Hanford,
a police inspector and a sergeant; and, as they drew up, the general came
thundering back into the avenue.

"Is Ellis with you?" he asked, as he pulled up.

"No, sir," was the reply. "He hadn't come in from Thorpe when we left.
He's rather late to-night."

"Have you sent for a doctor?"

"Yes, sir, I've sent for Dr. Hills," said the inspector, resting his
bicycle against the oak. Pembury could smell the reek of the lamp as he
crouched. "Is Pratt dead?"

"Seems to be," replied O'Gorman, "but we'd better leave that to the
doctor. There's the murderer's knife. Nobody has touched it. I'm going to
fetch the bloodhounds now."

"Ah! that's the thing," said the inspector. "The man can't be far away."
He rubbed his hands with a satisfied air as O'Gorman cantered away up the
avenue.

In less than a minute there came out from the darkness the deep baying of
a hound followed by quick footsteps on the gravel. Then into the circle
of light emerged three sinister shapes, loose-limbed and gaunt, and two
men advancing at a shambling trot.

"Here, inspector," shouted the general, "you take one; I can't hold 'em
both."

The inspector ran forward and seized one of the leashes, and the general
led his hound up to the knife, as it lay on the ground. Pembury, peering
cautiously round the bough, watched the great brute with almost
impersonal curiosity; noted its high poll, its wrinkled forehead and
melancholy face as it stooped to snuff suspiciously at the prostrate
knife.

For some moments the hound stood motionless, sniffing at the knife; then
it turned away and walked to and fro with its muzzle to the ground.
Suddenly it lifted its head, bayed loudly, lowered its muzzle and started
forward between the oak and the elm, dragging the general after it at a
run.

The inspector next brought his hound to the knife, and was soon bounding
away to the tug of the leash in the general's wake.

"They don't make no mistakes, they don't," said Bailey, addressing the
gratified sergeant, as he brought forward the third hound; "you'll see--?"
But his remark was cut short by a violent jerk of the leash, and the
next moment he was flying after the others, followed by Mr. Hanford.

The sergeant daintily picked the knife up by its ring, wrapped it in his
handkerchief and bestowed it in his pocket. Then he ran off after the
hounds.

Pembury smiled grimly. His scheme was working out admirably in spite of
the unforeseen difficulties. If those confounded women would only go
away, he could come down and take himself off while the course was clear.
He listened to the baying of the hounds, gradually growing fainter in the
increasing distance, and cursed the dilatoriness of the doctor. Confound
the fellow! Didn't he realize that this was a case of life or death?

Suddenly his ear caught the tinkle of a bicycle bell; a fresh light
appeared coming up the avenue and then a bicycle swept up swiftly to the
scene of the tragedy, and a small elderly man jumped down by the side of
the body. Giving his machine to Mrs. Parton, he stooped over the dead
man, felt the wrist, pushed back an eyelid, held a match to the eye and
then rose. "This is a shocking affair, Mrs. Parton," said he. "The poor
fellow is quite dead. You had better help me to carry him to the house.
If you two take the feet I will take the shoulders."

Pembury watched them raise the body and stagger away with it up the
avenue. He heard their shuffling steps die away and the door of the house
shut. And still he listened. From far away in the meadows came, at
intervals, the baying of the hounds. Other sounds there was none.
Presently the doctor would come back for his bicycle, but, for the
moment, the coast was clear. Pembury rose stiffly. His hands had stuck to
the tree where they had pressed against it, and they were still sticky
and damp. Quickly he let himself down to the ground, listened again for a
moment, and then, making a small circuit to avoid the lamplight, softly
crossed the avenue and stole away across the Thorpe meadows.

The night was intensely dark, and not a soul was stirring in the meadows.
He strode forward quickly, peering into the darkness and stopping now and
again to listen; but no sound came to his ears, save the now faint baying
of the distant hounds. Not far from his house, he remembered, was a deep
ditch spanned by a wooden bridge, and towards this he now made his way;
for he knew that his appearance was such as to convict him at a glance.
Arrived at the ditch, he stooped to wash his hands and wrists; and, as he
bent forward, the knife fell from his breast-pocket into the shallow
water at the margin. He groped for it, and, having found it, drove it
deep into the mud as far out as he could reach. Then he wiped his hands
on some water-weed, crossed the bridge and started homewards.

He approached his house from the rear, satisfied himself that his
housekeeper was in the kitchen, and, letting himself in very quietly with
his key, went quickly up to his bedroom. Here he washed thoroughly--in
the bath, so that he could get rid of the discoloured water--changed his
clothes and packed those that he took off in a portmanteau.

By the time he had done this the gong sounded for supper. As he took his
seat at the table, spruce and fresh in appearance, quietly cheerful in
manner, he addressed his housekeeper. "I wasn't able to finish my
business in London," he said. "I shall have to go up again tomorrow."

"Shall you come home the same day?" asked the housekeeper.

"Perhaps," was the reply, "and perhaps not. It will depend on
circumstances."

He did not say what the circumstances might be, nor did the housekeeper
ask. Mr. Pembury was not addicted to confidences. He was an eminently
discreet man: and discreet men say little.


PART II. RIVAL SLEUTH-HOUNDS


(Related by Christopher Jervis, M.D.)

The half-hour that follows breakfast, when the fire has, so to speak, got
into its stride, and the morning pipe throws up its clouds of incense,
is, perhaps, the most agreeable in the whole day. Especially so when a
sombre sky, brooding over the town, hints at streets pervaded by the
chilly morning air, and hoots from protesting tugs upon the river tell of
lingering mists, the legacy of the lately-vanished night.

The autumn morning was raw; the fire burned jovially. I thrust my
slippered feet towards the blaze and meditated, on nothing in particular,
with cat-like enjoyment. Presently a disapproving grunt from Thorndyke
attracted my attention, and I looked round lazily. He was extracting,
with a pair of office shears, the readable portions of the morning paper,
and had paused with a small cutting between his finger and thumb.
"Bloodhounds again," said he. "We shall be hearing presently of the
revival of the ordeal by fire."

"And a deuced comfortable ordeal, too, on a morning like this," I said,
stroking my legs ecstatically. "What is the case?"

He was about to reply when a sharp rat-tat from the little brass knocker
announced a disturber of our peace. Thorndyke stepped over to the door
and admitted a police inspector in uniform, and I stood up, and,
presenting my dorsal aspect to the fire, prepared to combine bodily
comfort with attention to business.

"I believe I am speaking to Dr. Thorndyke," said the officer, and, as
Thorndyke nodded, he went on: "My name, sir, is Fox, Inspector Fox of the
Baysford Police. Perhaps you've seen the morning paper?"

Thorndyke held up the cutting, and, placing a chair by the fire, asked
the inspector if he had breakfasted.

"Thank you, sir, I have," replied Inspector Fox. "I came up to town by
the late train last night so as to be here early, and stayed at an hotel.
You see, from the paper, that we have had to arrest one of our own men.
That's rather awkward, you know, sir."

"Very," agreed Thorndyke.

"Yes; it's bad for the force and bad for the public too. But we had to do
it. There was no way out that we could see. Still, we should like the
accused to have every chance, both for our sake and his own, so the chief
constable thought he'd like to have your opinion on the case, and he
thought that, perhaps, you might be willing to act for the defence."

"Let us have the particulars," said Thorndyke, taking a writing-pad from
a drawer and dropping into his armchair. "Begin at the beginning," he
added, "and tell us all you know."

"Well," said the inspector, after a preliminary cough, "to begin with the
murdered man: his name is Pratt. He was a retired prison warder, and was
employed as steward by General O'Gorman, who is a retired prison
governor--you may have heard of him in connection with his pack of bloodhounds.
Well, Pratt came down from London yesterday evening by a train arriving
at Baysford at six-thirty. He was seen by the guard, the ticket collector
and the outside porter. The porter saw him leave the station at
six-thirty-seven. General O'Gorman's house is about half-a-mile from the
station. At five minutes to seven the general and a gentleman named
Hanford and the general's housekeeper, a Mrs. Parton, found Pratt lying
dead in the avenue that leads up to the house. He had apparently been
stabbed, for there was a lot of blood about, and a knife--a Norwegian
knife--was lying on the ground near the body. Mrs. Parton had thought
she heard some one in the avenue calling out for help, and, as Pratt was
just due, she came out with a lantern. She met the general and Mr.
Hanford, and all three seem to have caught sight of the body at the same
moment. Mr. Hanford cycled down to us, at once, with the news; we sent
for a doctor, and I went back with Mr. Hanford and took a sergeant with
me. We arrived at twelve minutes past seven, and then the general, who
had galloped his horse over the meadows each side of the avenue without
having seen anybody, fetched out his bloodhounds and led them up to the
knife. All three hounds took up the scent at once--I held the leash of
one of them--and they took us across the meadows without a pause or a
falter, over stiles and fences, along a lane, out into the town, and
then, one after the other, they crossed the road in a bee-line to the
police station, bolted in at the door, which stood open, and made
straight for the desk, where a supernumerary officer, named Ellis, was
writing. They made a rare to-do, struggling to get at him, and it was as
much as we could manage to hold them back. As for Ellis, he turned as
pale as a ghost."

"Was any one else in the room?" asked Thorndyke.

"Oh, yes. There were two constables and a messenger. We led the hounds up
to them, but the brutes wouldn't take any notice of them. They wanted
Ellis."

"And what did you do?"

"Why, we arrested Ellis, of course. Couldn't do anything else--especially
with the general there."

"What had the general to do with it?" asked Thorndyke.

"He's a J.P. and a late governor of Dartmoor, and it was his hounds that
had run the man down. But we must have arrested Ellis in any case."

"Is there anything against the accused man?"

"Yes, there is. He and Pratt were on distinctly unfriendly terms. They
were old comrades, for Ellis was in the Civil Guard at Portland when
Pratt was warder there--he was pensioned off from the service because he
got his left forefinger chopped off--but lately they had had some
unpleasantness about a woman, a parlourmaid of the general's. It seems
that Ellis, who is a married man, paid the girl too much attention--or
Pratt thought he did--and Pratt warned Ellis off the premises. Since
then they had not been on speaking terms."

"And what sort of a man is Ellis?"

"A remarkably decent fellow he always seemed; quiet, steady,
good-natured; I should have said he wouldn't have hurt a fly. We all
liked him--better than we liked Pratt, in fact; poor Pratt was what
you'd call an old soldier--sly, you know, sir--and a bit of a sneak."

"You searched and examined Ellis, of course?"

"Yes. There was nothing suspicious about him except that he had two
purses. But he says he picked up one of them? a small, pigskin pouch--on
the footpath of the Thorpe road yesterday afternoon; and there's no
reason to disbelieve him. At any rate, the purse was not Pratt's."

Thorndyke made a note on his pad, and then asked: "There were no
blood-stains or marks on his clothing?"

"No. His clothing was not marked or disarranged in any way."

"Any cuts, scratches or bruises on his person?"

"None whatever," replied the inspector.

"At what time did you arrest Ellis?"

"Half-past seven exactly."

"Have you ascertained what his movements were? Had he been near the scene
of the murder?"

"Yes; he had been to Thorpe and would pass the gates of the avenue on his
way back. And he was later than usual in returning, though not later than
he has often been before."

"And now, as to the murdered man: has the body been examined?"

"Yes; I had Dr. Hills's report before I left. There were no less than
seven deep knife-wounds, all on the left side of the back. There was a
great deal of blood on the ground, and Dr. Hills thinks Pratt must have
bled to death in a minute or two."

"Do the wounds correspond with the knife that was found?"

"I asked the doctor that, and he said 'Yes,' though he wasn't going to
swear to any particular knife. However, that point isn't of much
importance. The knife was covered with blood, and it was found close to
the body."

"What has been done with it, by the way?" asked Thorndyke.

"The sergeant who was with me picked it up and rolled it in his
handkerchief to carry in his pocket. I took it from him, just as it was,
and locked it in a dispatch-box."

"Has the knife been recognized as Ellis's property?"

"No, sir, it has not."

"Were there any recognizable footprints or marks of a struggle?"
Thorndyke asked.

The inspector grinned sheepishly. "I haven't examined the spot, of
course, sir," said he, "but, after the general's horse and the
bloodhounds and the general on foot and me and the gardener and the
sergeant and Mr. Hanford had been over it twice, going and returning,
why, you see, sir -?"

''Exactly, exactly," said Thorndyke. "Well, inspector, I shall be pleased
to act for the defence; it seems to me that the case against Ellis is in
some respects rather inconclusive."

The inspector was frankly amazed. "It certainly hadn't struck me in that
light, sir," he said.

"No? Well, that is my view; and I think the best plan will be for me to
come down with you and investigate matters on the spot."

The inspector assented cheerfully, and, when we had provided him with a
newspaper, we withdrew to the laboratory to consult time-tables and
prepare for the expedition.

"You are coming, I suppose, Jervis?" said Thorndyke.

"If I shall be of any use," I replied.

"Of course you will," said he. "Two heads are better than one, and, by
the look of things, I should say that ours will be the only ones with any
sense in them. We will take the research case, of course, and we may as
well have a camera with us. I see there is a train from Charing Cross in
twenty minutes."

For the first half-hour of the journey Thorndyke sat in his corner,
alternately conning over his notes and gazing with thoughtful eyes out of
the window. I could see that the case pleased him, and was careful not to
break in upon his train of thought. Presently, however, he put away his
notes and began to fill his pipe with a more companionable air, and then
the inspector, who had been wriggling with impatience, opened fire.

"So you think, sir, that you see a way out for Ellis?"

"I think there is a case for the defence," replied Thorndyke. "In fact, I
call the evidence against him rather flimsy."

The inspector gasped. "But the knife, sir? What about the knife?"

"Well," said Thorndyke, "what about the knife? Whose knife was it? You
don't know. It was covered with blood. Whose blood? You don't know. Let
us assume, for the sake of argument, that it was the murderer's knife.
Then the blood on it was Pratt's blood. But if it was Pratt's blood, when
the hounds had smelt it they should have led you to Pratt's body, for
blood gives a very strong scent. But they did not. They ignored the body.
The inference seems to be that the blood on the knife was not Pratt's
blood."

The inspector took off his cap and gently scratched the back of his head.
"You're perfectly right, sir," he said. "I'd never thought of that. None
of us had."

"Then," pursued Thorndyke, "let us assume that the knife was Pratt's. If
so, it would seem to have been used in self-defence. But this was a
Norwegian knife, a clumsy tool--not a weapon at all--which takes an
appreciable time to open and requires the use of two free hands. Now, had
Pratt both hands free? Certainly not after the attack had commenced.
There were seven wounds, all on the left side of the back; which
indicates that he held the murderer locked in his arms and that the
murderer's arms were around him. Also, incidentally, that the murderer is
right-handed. But, still, let us assume that the knife was Pratt's. Then
the blood on it was that of the murderer. Then the murderer must have
been wounded. But Ellis was not wounded. Then Ellis is not the murderer.
The knife doesn't help us at all."

The inspector puffed out his cheeks and blew softly. "This is getting out
of my depth," he said. "Still, sir, you can't get over the bloodhounds.
They tell us distinctly that the knife is Ellis's knife and I don't see
any answer to that."

"There is no answer because there has been no statement. The bloodhounds
have told you nothing. You have drawn certain inferences from their
actions, but those inferences may be totally wrong and they are certainly
not evidence."

"You don't seem to have much opinion of bloodhounds," the inspector
remarked.

"As agents for the detection of crime," replied Thorndyke, "I regard them
as useless. You cannot put a bloodhound in the witness-box. You can get
no intelligible statement from it. If it possesses any knowledge, it has
no means of communicating it. The fact is," he continued, "that the
entire system of using bloodhounds for criminal detection is based on a
fallacy. In the American plantations these animals were used with great
success for tracking runaway slaves. But the slave was a known
individual. All that was required was to ascertain his whereabouts. That
is not the problem that is presented in the detection of a crime. The
detective is not concerned in establishing the whereabouts of a known
individual, but in discovering the identity of an unknown individual. And
for this purpose bloodhounds are useless. They may discover such
identity, but they cannot communicate their knowledge. If the criminal is
unknown, they cannot identify him: if he is known, the police have no
need of the bloodhound.

"To return to our present case," Thorndyke resumed, after a pause; "we
have employed certain agents--the hounds--with whom we are not en
rapport, as the spiritualists would say; and we have no 'medium.' The
hound possesses a special sense--the olfactory--which in man is quite
rudimentary. He thinks, so to speak, in terms of smell, and his thoughts
are untranslatable to beings in whom the sense of smell is undeveloped.
We have presented to the hound a knife, and he discovers in it certain
odorous properties; he discovers similar or related odorous properties in
a tract of land and a human individual--Ellis. We cannot verify his
discoveries or ascertain their nature. What remains? All that we can say
is that there appears to exist some odorous relation between the knife
and the man Ellis. But until we can ascertain the nature of that
relation, we cannot estimate its evidential value or bearing. All the
other 'evidence' is the product of your imagination and that of the
general. There is, at present, no case against Ellis."

"He must have been pretty close to the place when the murder happened,"
said the inspector.

"So. probably, were many other people," answered Thorndyke; "but had he
time to wash and change? Because he would have needed it."

"I suppose he would," the inspector agreed dubiously.

"Undoubtedly. There were seven wounds which would have taken some time to
inflict. Now we can't suppose that Pratt stood passively while the other
man stabbed him? indeed, as I have said, the position of the wounds shows
that he did not. There was a struggle. The two men were locked together.
One of the murderer's hands was against Pratt's back; probably both hands
were, one clasping and the other stabbing. There must have been blood on
one hand and probably on both. But you say there was no blood on Ellis,
and there doesn't seem to have been time or opportunity for him to wash."

"Well, it's a mysterious affair," said the inspector; "but I don't see
how you are going to get over the bloodhounds."

Thorndyke shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "The bloodhounds are an
obsession," he said. "The whole problem really centres around the knife.
The questions are, Whose knife was it? and what was the connection
between it and Ellis? There is a problem, Jervis," he continued, turning
to me, "that I submit for your consideration. Some of the possible
solutions are exceedingly curious."

As we set out from Baysford station, Thorndyke looked at his watch and
noted the time. "You will take us the way that Pratt went," he said.

"As to that," said the inspector, "he may have gone by the road or by the
footpath; but there's very little difference in the distance."

Turning away from Baysford, we walked along the road westward, towards
the village of Thorpe, and presently passed on our right a stile at the
entrance to a footpath.

"That path," said the inspector, "crosses the avenue about half-way up.
But we'd better keep to the road." A quarter of a mile further on we came
to a pair of rusty iron gates one of which stood open, and, entering, we
found ourselves in a broad drive bordered by two rows of trees, between
the trunks of which a long stretch of pasture meadows could be seen on
either hand. It was a fine avenue, and, late in the year as it was, the
yellowing foliage clustered thickly overhead.

When we had walked about a hundred and fifty yards from the gates, the
inspector halted.

"This is the place," he said; and Thorndyke again noted the time.

"Nine minutes exactly," said he. "Then Pratt arrived here about fourteen
minutes to seven, and his body was found at five minutes to seven--nine
minutes after his arrival. The murderer couldn't have been far away
then."

"No, it was a pretty fresh scent," replied the inspector. "You'd like to
see the body first, I think you said, sir?"

"Yes; and the knife, if you please."

"I shall have to send down to the station for that. It's locked up in the
office."

He entered the house, and, having dispatched a messenger to the police
station, came out and conducted us to the outbuilding where the corpse
had been deposited. Thorndyke made a rapid examination of the wounds and
the holes in the clothing, neither of which presented anything
particularly suggestive. The weapon used had evidently been a
thick-backed, single-edged knife similar to the one described, and the
discolouration around the wounds indicated that the weapon had a definite
shoulder like that of a Norwegian knife, and that it had been driven in
with savage violence.

"Do you find anything that throws any light on the case?" the inspector
asked, when the examination was concluded.

"That is impossible to say until we have seen the knife," replied
Thorndyke; "but while we are waiting for it, we may as well go and look
at the scene of the tragedy. These are Pratt's boots, I think?" He lifted
a pair of stout laced boots from the table and turned them up to inspect
the soles.

"Yes, those are his boots," replied Fox, "and pretty easy they'd have
been to track, if the case had been the other way about. Those Blakey's
protectors are as good as a trademark."

"We'll take them, at any rate," said Thorndyke; and, the inspector having
taken the boots from him, we went out and retraced our steps down the
avenue.

The place where the murder had occurred was easily identified by a large
dark stain on the gravel at one side of the drive, half-way between two
trees--an ancient pollard hornbeam and an elm. Next to the elm was a
pollard oak with a squat, warty bole about seven feet high, and three
enormous limbs, of which one slanted half-way across the avenue; and
between these two trees the ground was covered with the tracks of men and
hounds superimposed upon the hoof-prints of a horse.

"Where was the knife found?" Thorndyke asked.

The inspector indicated a spot near the middle of the drive, almost
opposite the hornbeam and Thorndyke, picking up a large stone, laid it on
the spot. Then he surveyed the scene thoughtfully, looking up and down
the drive and at the trees that bordered it, and, finally, walked slowly
to the space between the elm and the oak, scanning the ground as he went.
"There is no dearth of footprints," he remarked grimly, as he looked down
at the trampled earth.

"No, but the question is, whose are they?" said the inspector.

"Yes, that is the question," agreed Thorndyke; "and we will begin the
solution by identifying those of Pratt."

"I don't see how that will help us," said the inspector. "We know he was
here."

Thorndyke looked at him in surprise, and I must confess that the foolish
remark astonished me too, accustomed as I was to the quick-witted
officers from Scotland Yard.

"The hue and cry procession," remarked Thorndyke, "seems to have passed
out between the elm and the oak; elsewhere the ground seems pretty
clear." He walked round the elm, still looking earnestly at the ground,
and presently continued: "Now here, in the soft earth bordering the turf,
are the prints of a pair of smallish feet wearing pointed boots; a rather
short man, evidently, by the size of foot and length of stride, and he
doesn't seem to have belonged to the procession. But I don't see any of
Pratt's; he doesn't seem to have come off the hard gravel." He continued
to walk slowly towards the hornbeam with his eyes fixed on the ground.
Suddenly he halted and stooped with an eager look at the earth; and, as
Fox and I approached, he stood up and pointed. "Pratt's footprints--faint
and fragmentary, but unmistakable. And now, inspector, you see
their importance. They furnish the time factor in respect of the other
footprints. Look at this one and then look at that." He pointed from one
to another of the faint impressions of the dead man's foot.

"You mean that there are signs of a struggle?" said Fox.

"I mean more than that," replied Thorndyke. "Here is one of Pratt's
footprints treading into the print of a small, pointed foot; and there at
the edge of the gravel is another of Pratt's nearly obliterated by the
tread of a pointed foot. Obviously the first pointed footprint was made
before Pratt's, and the second one after his; and the necessary inference
is that the owner of the pointed foot was here at the same time as
Pratt."

"Then he must have been the murderer!" exclaimed Fox.

"Presumably," answered Thorndyke; "but let us see whither he went. You
notice, in the first place, that the man stood close to this tree"--he
indicated the hornbeam--"and that he went towards the elm. Let us follow
him. He passes the elm, you see, and you will observe that these tracks
form a regular series leading from the hornbeam and not mixed up with the
marks of the struggle. They were, therefore, probably made after the
murder had been perpetrated. You will also notice that they pass along
the backs of the trees--outside the avenue, that is; what does that
suggest to you?"

"It suggests to me," I said, when the inspector had shaken his head
hopelessly, "that there was possibly some one in the avenue when the man
was stealing off."

"Precisely," said Thorndyke. "The body was found not more than nine
minutes after Pratt arrived here. But the murder must have taken some
time. Then the housekeeper thought she heard some one calling and came
out with a lantern, and, at the same time, the general and Mr. Hanford
came up the drive. The suggestion is that the man sneaked along outside
the trees to avoid being seen. However, let us follow the tracks. They
pass the elm and they pass on behind the next tree; but wait! There is
something odd here." He passed behind the great pollard oak and looked
down at the soft earth by its roots. "Here is a pair of impressions much
deeper than the rest, and they are not a part of the track since their
toes point towards the tree. What do you make of that?" Without waiting
for an answer he began closely to scan the bole of the tree and
especially a large, warty protuberance about three feet from the ground.
On the bark above this was a vertical mark, as if something had scraped
down the tree, and from the wart itself a dead twig had been newly broken
off and lay upon the ground. Pointing to these marks Thorndyke set his
foot on the protuberance, and, springing up, brought his eye above the
level of the crown, whence the great boughs branched off.

"Ah!" he exclaimed. "Here is something much more definite." With the aid
of another projection, he scrambled up into the crown of the tree, and,
having glanced quickly round, beckoned to us. I stepped up on the
projecting lump and, as my eyes rose above the crown, I perceived the
brown, shiny impression of a hand on the edge. Climbing into the crown, I
was quickly followed by the inspector, and we both stood up by Thorndyke
between the three boughs. From where we stood we looked on the upper side
of the great limb that swept out across the avenue; and there on its
lichen-covered surface, we saw the imprints in reddish-brown of a pair of
open hands.

"You notice," said Thorndyke, leaning out upon the bough, "that he is a
short man; I cannot conveniently place my hands so low. You also note
that he has both forefingers intact, and so is certainly not Ellis."

"If you mean to say, sir, that these marks were made by the murderer,"
said Fox, "I say it's impossible. Why, that would mean that he was here
looking down at us when we were searching for him with the hounds. The
presence of the hounds proves that this man could not have been the
murderer."

"On the contrary," said Thorndyke, "the presence of this man with bloody
hands confirms the other evidence, which all indicates that the hounds
were never on the murderer's trail at all. Come now, inspector, I put it
to you: Here is a murdered man; the murderer has almost certainly blood
upon his hands; and here is a man with bloody hands, lurking in a tree
within a few feet of the corpse and within a few minutes of its discovery
(as is shown by the footprints); what are the reasonable probabilities?"

"But you are forgetting the bloodhounds, sir, and the murderer's knife,"
urged the inspector.

"Tut, tut, man!" exclaimed Thorndyke; "those bloodhounds are a positive
obsession. But I see a sergeant coming up the drive, with the knife, I
hope. Perhaps that will solve the riddle for us."

The sergeant, who carried a small dispatch-box, halted opposite the tree
in some surprise while we descended, when he came forward with a military
salute and handed the box to the inspector, who forthwith unlocked it,
and, opening the lid, displayed an object wrapped in a
pocket-handkerchief.

"There is the knife, sir," said he, "just as I received it. The
handkerchief is the sergeant's."

Thorndyke unrolled the handkerchief and took from it a large-sized
Norwegian knife, which he looked at critically and then handed to me.
While I was inspecting the blade, he shook out the handkerchief and,
having looked it over on both sides, turned to the sergeant.

"At what time did you pick up this knife?" he asked.

"About seven-fifteen, sir; directly after the hounds had started. I was
careful to pick it up by the ring, and I wrapped it in the handkerchief
at once."

"Seven-fifteen," said Thorndyke. "Less than half-an-hour after the
murder. That is very singular. Do you observe the state of this
handkerchief? There is not a mark on it. Not a trace of any bloodstain;
which proves that when the knife was picked up, the blood on it was
already dry. But things dry slowly, if they dry at all, in the saturated
air of an autumn evening. The appearances seem to suggest that the blood
on the knife was dry when it was thrown down. By the way, sergeant, what
do you scent your handkerchief with?"

"Scent, sir!" exclaimed the astonished officer in indignant accents; "me
scent my handkerchief! No, sir, certainly not. Never used scent in my
life, sir."

Thorndyke held out the handkerchief, and the sergeant sniffed at it
incredulously. "It certainly does seem to smell of scent," he admitted,
"but it must be the knife." The same idea having occurred to me, I
applied the handle of the knife to my nose and instantly detected the
sickly-sweet odour of musk.

"The question is," said the inspector, when the two articles had been
tested by us all, "was it the knife that scented the handkerchief or the
handkerchief that scented the knife?"

"You heard what the sergeant said," replied Thorndyke. "There was no
scent on the handkerchief when the knife was wrapped in it. Do you know,
inspector, this scent seems to me to offer a very curious suggestion.
Consider the facts of the case: the distinct trail leading straight to
Ellis, who is, nevertheless, found to be without a scratch or a spot of
blood; the inconsistencies in the case that I pointed out in the train,
and now this knife, apparently dropped with dried blood on it and scented
with musk. To me it suggests a carefully-planned, coolly-premeditated
crime. The murderer knew about the general's bloodhounds and made use of
them as a blind. He planted this knife, smeared with blood and tainted
with musk, to furnish a scent. No doubt some object, also scented with
musk, would be drawn over the ground to give the trail. It is only a
suggestion, of course, but it is worth considering."

"But, sir," the inspector objected eagerly, "if the murderer had handled
the knife, it would have scented him too."

"Exactly; so, as we are assuming that the man is not a fool, we may
assume that he did not handle it. He will have left it here in readiness,
hidden in some place whence he could knock it down, say, with a stick,
without touching it."

"Perhaps in this very tree, sir," suggested the sergeant, pointing to the
oak.


"No," said Thorndyke, "he would hardly have hidden in the tree where the
knife had been. The hounds might have scented the place instead of
following the trail at once. The most likely hiding-place for the knife
is the one nearest the spot where it was found." He walked over to the
stone that marked the spot, and looking round, continued: "You see, that
hornbeam is much the nearest, and its flat crown would be very convenient
for the purpose--easily reached even by a short man, as he appears to
be. Let us see if there are any traces of it. Perhaps you will give me a
'back up', sergeant, as we haven't a ladder."

The sergeant assented with a faint grin, and stooping beside the tree in
an attitude suggesting the game of leapfrog, placed his hands firmly on
his knees. Grasping a stout branch, Thorndyke swung himself up on the
sergeant's broad back, whence he looked down into the crown of the tree.
Then, parting the branches, he stepped onto the ledge and disappeared
into the central hollow.

When he re-appeared he held in his hands two very singular objects: a
pair of iron crucible-tongs and an artist's brush-case of black-japanned
tin. The former article he handed down to me, but the brush-case he held
carefully by its wire handle as he dropped to the ground.

"The significance of these things is, I think, obvious," he said. "The
tongs were used to handle the knife with and the case to carry it in, so
that it should not scent his clothes or bag. It was very carefully
planned."

"If that is so," said the inspector, "the inside of the case ought to
smell of musk."

"No doubt," said Thorndyke; "but before we open it, there is a rather
important matter to be attended to. Will you give me the Vitogen powder,
Jervis?"

I opened the canvas-covered "research case" and took from it an object
like a diminutive pepper-caster--an iodo-form dredger in fact--and
handed it to him. Grasping the brush-case by its wire handle, he
sprinkled the pale yellow powder from the dredger freely all round the
pull-off lid, tapping the top with his knuckles to make the fine
particles spread. Then he blew off the superfluous powder, and the two
police officers gave a simultaneous gasp of joy; for now, on the black
background, there stood out plainly a number of finger-prints, so clear
and distinct that the ridge-pattern could be made out with perfect ease.

"These will probably be his right hand," said Thorndyke. "Now for the
left." He treated the body of the case in the same way, and, when he had
blown off the powder, the entire surface was spotted with yellow, oval
impressions. "Now, Jervis," said he, "if you will put on a glove and pull
off the lid, we can test the inside."

There was no difficulty in getting the lid off, for the shoulder of the
case had been smeared with vaseline--apparently to produce an airtight
joint--and, as it separated with a hollow sound, a faint, musky odour
exhaled from its interior.

"The remainder of the inquiry," said Thorndyke, when I pushed the lid on
again, "will be best conducted at the police station, where, also, we can
photograph these fingerprints."

"The shortest way will be across the meadows," said Fox; "the way the
hounds went."

By this route we accordingly travelled, Thorndyke carrying the brush-case
tenderly by its handle.

"I don't quite see where Ellis comes in in this job," said the inspector,
as we walked along, "if the fellow had a grudge against Pratt. They
weren't chums."

"I think I do," said Thorndyke. "You say that both men were prison
officers at Portland at the same time. Now doesn't it seem likely that
this is the work of some old convict who had been identified--and
perhaps blackmailed--by Pratt, and possibly by Ellis too? That is where
the value of the finger-prints comes in. If he is an old 'lag' his prints
will be at Scotland Yard. Otherwise they are not of much value as a
clue."

"That's true, sir," said the inspector. "I suppose you want to see
Ellis."

"I want to see that purse that you spoke of, first," replied Thorndyke.
"That is probably the other end of the clue."

As soon as we arrived at the station, the inspector unlocked a safe and
brought out a parcel. "These are Ellis's things," said he, as he
unfastened it, "and that is the purse."

He handed Thorndyke a small pigskin pouch, which my colleague opened, and
having smelt the inside, passed to me. The odour of musk was plainly
perceptible, especially in the small compartment at the back.

"It has probably tainted the other contents of the parcel," said
Thorndyke, sniffing at each article in turn, "but my sense of smell is
not keen enough to detect any scent. They all seem odourless to me,
whereas the purse smells quite distinctly. Shall we have Ellis in now?"

The sergeant took a key from a locked drawer and departed for the cells,
whence he presently re-appeared accompanied by the prisoner--a stout,
burly man, in the last stage of dejection.

"Come, cheer up, Ellis," said the inspector. "Here's Dr. Thorndyke come
down to help us and he wants to ask you one or two questions."

Ellis looked piteously at Thorndyke, and exclaimed: "I know nothing
whatever about this affair, sir, I swear to God I don't."

"I never supposed you did," said Thorndyke. "But there are one or two
things that I want you to tell me. To begin with, that purse: where did
you find it?"

"On the Thorpe road, sir. It was lying in the middle of the footway."

"Had any one else passed the spot lately? Did you meet or pass any one?"

"Yes, sir, I met a labourer about a minute before I saw the purse. I
can't imagine why he didn't see it."

"Probably because it wasn't there," said Thorndyke. "Is there a hedge
there?"

"Yes, sir; a hedge on a low bank."

"Ha! Well, now, tell me: is there any one about here whom you knew when
you and Pratt were together at Portland? Any old lag--to put it bluntly--whom
you and Pratt have been putting the screw on."

"No, sir, I swear there isn't. But I wouldn't answer for Pratt. He had a
rare memory for faces."

Thorndyke reflected. "Were there any escapes from Portland in your time?"
he asked.

"Only one--a man named Dobbs. He made off to the sea in a sudden fog and
he was supposed to be drowned. His clothes washed up on the Bill, but not
his body. At any rate, he was never heard of again."

"Thank you, Ellis. Do you mind my taking your fingerprints?"

"Certainly not, sir," was the almost eager reply; and the office
inking-pad being requisitioned, a rough set of finger-prints was
produced; and when Thorndyke had compared them with those on the
brush-case and found no resemblance, Ellis returned to his cell in quite
buoyant spirits.

Having made several photographs of the strange fingerprints, we returned
to town that evening, taking the negatives with us; and while we waited
for our train, Thorndyke gave a few parting injunctions to the inspector.
"Remember," he said, "that the man must have washed his hands before he
could appear in public. Search the banks of every pond, ditch and stream
in the neighbourhood for footprints like those in the avenue; and, if you
find any, search the bottom of the water thoroughly, for he is quite
likely to have dropped the knife into the mud."

The photographs, which we handed in at Scotland Yard that same night,
enabled the experts to identify the fingerprints as those of Francis
Dobbs, an escaped convict. The two photographs--profile and full-face--which
were attached to his record, were sent down to Baysford with a
description of the man, and were, in due course, identified with a
somewhat mysterious individual, who passed by the name of Rufus Pembury
and who had lived in the neighbourhood as a private gentleman for some
two years. But Rufus Pembury was not to be found either at his genteel
house or elsewhere. All that was known was, that on the day after the
murder, he had converted his entire "personalty" into "bearer
securities," and then vanished from mortal ken. Nor has he ever been
heard of to this day.

"And, between ourselves," said Thorndyke, when we were discussing the
case some time after, "he deserved to escape. It was clearly a case of
blackmail, and to kill a blackmailer--when you have no other defence
against him--is hardly murder. As to Ellis, he could never have been
convicted, and Dobbs, or Pembury, must have known it. But he would have
been committed to the Assizes, and that would have given time for all
traces to disappear. No, Dobbs was a man of courage, ingenuity and
resource; and, above all, he knocked the bottom out of the great
bloodhound superstition."



THE ECHO OF A MUTINY


PART I. DEATH ON THE GIRDLER


Popular belief ascribes to infants and the lower animals certain occult
powers of divining character denied to the reasoning faculties of the
human adult; and is apt to accept their judgment as finally overriding
the pronouncements of mere experience.

Whether this belief rests upon any foundation other than the universal
love of paradox it is unnecessary to inquire. It is very generally
entertained, especially by ladies of a certain social status; and by Mrs.
Thomas Solly it was loyally maintained as an article of faith.

"Yes," she moralized, "it's surprisin' how they know, the little children
and the dumb animals. But they do. There's no deceivin' them. They can
tell the gold from the dross in a moment, they can, and they reads the
human heart like a book. Wonderful, I call it. I suppose it's instinct."

Having delivered herself of this priceless gem of philosophic thought,
she thrust her arms elbow-deep into the foaming wash-tub and glanced
admiringly at her lodger as he sat in the doorway, supporting on one knee
an obese infant of eighteen months and on the other a fine tabby cat.

James Brown was an elderly seafaring man, small and slight in build and
in manner suave, insinuating and perhaps a trifle sly. But he had all the
sailor's love of children and animals, and the sailor's knack of making
himself acceptable to them, for, as he sat with an empty pipe wobbling in
the grasp of his toothless gums, the baby beamed with humid smiles, and
the cat, rolled into a fluffy ball and purring like a stocking-loom,
worked its fingers ecstatically as if it were trying on a new pair of
gloves.

"It must be mortal lonely out at the lighthouse," Mrs. Solly resumed.
"Only three men and never a neighbour to speak to; and, Lord! what a
muddle they must be in with no woman to look after them and keep 'em
tidy. But you won't be overworked, Mr. Brown, in these long days;
daylight till past nine o'clock. I don't know what you'll do to pass the
time."

"Oh, I shall find plenty to do, I expect," said Brown, "what with
cleanin' the lamps and glasses and paintin' up the ironwork. And that
reminds me," he added, looking round at the clock, "that time's getting
on. High water at half-past ten, and here it's gone eight o'clock."

Mrs. Solly, acting on the hint, began rapidly to fish out the washed
garments and wring them out into the form of short ropes. Then, having
dried her hands on her apron, she relieved Brown of the protesting baby.

"Your room will be ready for you, Mr. Brown," said she, "when your turn
comes for a spell ashore; and main glad me and Tom will be to see you
back."

"Thank you, Mrs. Solly, ma'am," answered Brown, tenderly placing the cat
on the floor; "you won't be more glad than what I will." He shook hands
warmly with his landlady, kissed the baby, chucked the cat under the
chin, and, picking up his little chest by its becket, swung it onto his
shoulder and strode out of the cottage.

His way lay across the marshes, and, like the ships in the offing, he
shaped his course by the twin towers of Reculver that stood up
grotesquely on the rim of the land; and as he trod the springy turf, Tom
Solly's fleecy charges looked up at him with vacant stares and
valedictory bleatings. Once, at a dyke-gate, he paused to look back at
the fair Kentish landscape: at the grey tower of St. Nicholas-at-Wade
peeping above the trees and the faraway mill at Sarre, whirling slowly in
the summer breeze; and, above all, at the solitary cottage where, for a
brief spell in his stormy life, he had known the homely joys of
domesticity and peace. Well, that was over for the present, and the
lighthouse loomed ahead. With a half-sigh he passed through the gate and
walked on towards Reculver.

Outside the whitewashed cottages with their official black chimneys a
petty-officer of the coast-guard was adjusting the halyards of the
flagstaff. He looked round as Brown approached, and hailed him cheerily.

"Here you are, then," said he, "all figged out in your new togs, too. But
we're in a bit of a difficulty, d'ye see. We've got to pull up to
Whitstable this morning, so I can't send a man out with you and I can't
spare a boat."

"Have I got to swim out, then?" asked Brown.

The coast-guard grinned. "Not in them new clothes, mate," he answered.
"No, but there's old Willett's boat; he isn't using her to-day; he's
going over to Minster to see his daughter, and he'll let us have the loan
of the boat. But there's no one to go with you, and I'm responsible to
Willett."

"Well, what about it?" asked Brown, with the deep-sea sailor's (usually
misplaced) confidence in his power to handle a sailing-boat. "D'ye think
I can't manage a tub of a boat? Me what's used the sea since I was a kid
of ten?"

"Yes," said the coast-guard; "but who's to bring her back?"

"Why, the man that I'm going to relieve," answered Brown. "He don't want
to swim no more than what I do."

The coast-guard reflected with his telescope pointed at a passing barge.
"Well, I suppose it'll be all right," he concluded; "but it's a pity they
couldn't send the tender round. However, if you undertake to send the
boat back, we'll get her afloat. It's time you were off."

He strolled away to the back of the cottages, whence he presently
returned with two of his mates, and the four men proceeded along the
shore to where Willett's boat lay just above high-water mark.

The Emily was a beamy craft of the type locally known as a "half-share
skiff," solidly built of oak, with varnished planking and fitted with
main and mizzen lugs. She was a good handful for four men, and, as she
slid over the soft chalk rocks with a hollow rumble, the coast-guards
debated the advisability of lifting out the bags of shingle with which
she was ballasted. However, she was at length dragged down, ballast and
all, to the water's edge, and then, while Brown stepped the mainmast, the
petty-officer gave him his directions. "What you've got to do," said he,
"is to make use of the flood-tide. Keep her nose nor'-east, and with this
trickle of nor'-westerly breeze you ought to make the light-house in one
board. Anyhow don't let her get east of the lighthouse, or, when the ebb
sets in, you'll be in a fix."

To these admonitions Brown listened with jaunty indifference as he
hoisted the sails and watched the incoming tide creep over the level
shore. Then the boat lifted on the gentle swell. Putting out an oar, he
gave a vigorous shove off that sent the boat, with a final scrape, clear
of the beach, and then, having dropped the rudder onto its pintles, he
seated himself and calmly belayed the main-sheet.

"There he goes," growled the coast-guard; "makin' fast his sheet. They
will do it" (he invariably did it himself), "and that's how accidents
happen. I hope old Willett'll see his boat back all right."

He stood for some time watching the dwindling boat as it sidled across
the smooth water; then he turned and followed his mates towards the
station.

Out on the south-western edge of the Girdler Sand, just inside the
two-fathom line, the spindle-shanked lighthouse stood a-straddle on its
long screw-piles like some uncouth red-bodied wading bird. It was now
nearly half flood tide. The highest shoals were long since covered, and
the lighthouse rose above the smooth sea as solitary as a slaver becalmed
in the "middle passage."

On the gallery outside the lantern were two men, the entire staff of the
building, of whom one sat huddled in a chair with his left leg propped up
with pillows on another, while his companion rested a telescope on the
rail and peered at the faint grey line of the distant land and the two
tiny points that marked the twin spires of Reculver.

"I don't see any signs of the boat, Harry," said he.

The other man groaned. "I shall lose the tide," he complained, "and then
there's another day gone."

"They can pull you down to Birchington and put you in the train," said
the first man.

"I don't want no trains," growled the invalid. "The boat'll be bad
enough. I suppose there's nothing coming our way, Tom?"

Tom turned his face eastward and shaded his eyes. "There's a brig coming
across the tide from the north," he said. "Looks like a collier." He
pointed his telescope at the approaching vessel, and added: "She's got
two new cloths in her upper fore top-sail, one on each leech."

The other man sat up eagerly. "What's her trysail like, Tom?" he asked.

"Can't see it," replied Tom. "Yes, I can, now: it's tanned. Why, that'll
be the old Utopia, Harry; she's the only brig I know that's got a tanned
trysail."

"Look here, Tom," exclaimed the other, "If that's the Utopia, she's going
to my home and I'm going aboard of her. Captain Mockett'll give me a
passage, I know."

"You oughtn't to go until you're relieved, you know, Barnett," said Tom
doubtfully; "it's against regulations to leave your station."

"Regulations be blowed!" exclaimed Barnett. "My leg's more to me than the
regulations. I don't want to be a cripple all my life. Besides, I'm no
good here, and this new chap, Brown, will be coming out presently. You
run up the signal, Tom, like a good comrade, and hail the brig."

"Well, it's your look-out," said Tom, "and I don't mind saying that if I
was in your place I should cut off home and see a doctor, if I got the
chance." He sauntered off to the flag-locker, and, selecting the two
code-flags, deliberately toggled them onto the halyards. Then, as the
brig swept up within range, he hoisted the little balls of bunting to the
flagstaff-head and jerked the halyards, when the two flags blew out
making the signal "Need assistance."

Promptly a coal-soiled answering pennant soared to the brig's main-truck;
less promptly the collier went about, and, turning her nose down stream,
slowly drifted stern-forwards towards the lighthouse. Then a boat slid
out through her gangway, and a couple of men plied the oars vigorously.

"Lighthouse ahoy!" roared one of them, as the boat came within hail.
"What's amiss?"

"Harry Barnett has broke his leg," shouted the lighthouse keeper, "and he
wants to know if Captain Mockett will give him a passage to Whitstable."

The boat turned back to the brig, and after a brief and bellowed
consultation, once more pulled towards the lighthouse.

"Skipper says yus," roared the sailor, when he was within ear-shot, "and
he says look alive, 'cause he don't want to miss his tide."

The injured man heaved a sigh of relief. "That's good news," said he,
"though, how the blazes I'm going to get down the ladder is more than I
can tell. What do you say, Jeffreys?"

"I say you'd better let me lower you with the tackle," replied Jeffreys.
"You can sit in the bight of a rope and I'll give you a line to steady
yourself with."

"Ah, that'll do, Tom," said Barnett; "but, for the Lord's sake, pay out
the fall-rope gently."

The arrangements were made so quickly that by the time the boat was fast
alongside everything was in readiness, and a minute later the injured
man, dangling like a gigantic spider from the end of the tackle, slowly
descended, cursing volubly to the accompaniment of the creaking of the
blocks. His chest and kit-bag followed, and, as soon as these were
unhooked from the tackle, the boat pulled off to the brig, which was now
slowly creeping stern-foremost past the lighthouse. The sick man was
hoisted up the side, his chest handed up after him, and then the brig was
put on her course due south across the Kentish Flats.

Jeffreys stood on the gallery watching the receding vessel and listening
to the voices of her crew as they grew small and weak in the increasing
distance. Now that his gruff companion was gone, a strange loneliness had
fallen on the lighthouse. The last of the homeward-bound ships had long
since passed up the Princes Channel and left the calm sea desolate and
blank. The distant buoys, showing as tiny black dots on the glassy
surface, and the spindly shapes of the beacons which stood up from
invisible shoals, but emphasized the solitude of the empty sea, and the
tolling of the bell buoy on the Shivering Sand, stealing faintly down the
wind, sounded weird and mournful. The day's work was already done. The
lenses were polished, the lamps had been trimmed, and the little motor
that worked the foghorn had been cleaned and oiled. There were several
odd jobs, it is true, waiting to be done, as there always are in a
lighthouse; but, just now, Jeffreys was not in a working humour. A new
comrade was coming into his life to-day, a stranger with whom he was to
be shut up alone, night and day, for a month on end, and whose temper
and tastes and habits might mean for him pleasant companionship or
jangling and discord without end. Who was this man Brown? What had he
been? and what was he like? These were the questions that passed,
naturally enough, through the lighthouse keeper's mind and distracted him
from his usual thoughts and occupations.

Presently a speck on the landward horizon caught his eye. He snatched up
the telescope eagerly to inspect it. Yes, it was a boat; but not the
coast-guard's cutter, for which he was looking. Evidently a fisherman's
boat and with only one man in it. He laid down the telescope with a sigh
of disappointment, and, filling his pipe, leaned on the rail with a
dreamy eye bent on the faint grey line of the land.

Three long years had he spent in this dreary solitude, so repugnant to
his active, restless nature: three blank, interminable years, with
nothing to look back on but the endless succession of summer calms,
stormy nights and the chilly fogs of winter, when the unseen steamers
hooted from the void and the fog-horn bellowed its hoarse warning.

Why had he come to this God-forsaken spot? and why did he stay, when the
wide world called to him? And then memory painted him a picture on which
his mind's eye had often looked before and which once again arose before
him, shutting out the vision of the calm sea and the distant land. It was
a brightly-coloured picture. It showed a cloudless sky brooding over the
deep blue tropic sea: and in the middle of the picture, see-sawing gently
on the quiet swell, a white-painted barque.

Her sails were clewed up untidily, her swinging yards jerked at the slack
braces and her untended wheel revolved to and fro to the oscillations of
the rudder.

She was not a derelict, for more than a dozen men were on her deck; but
the men were all drunk and mostly asleep, and there was never an officer
among them.

Then he saw the interior of one of her cabins. The chart-rack, the
tell-tale compass and the chronometers marked it as the captain's cabin.
In it were four men, and two of them lay dead on the deck. Of the other
two, one was a small, cunning-faced man, who was, at the moment, kneeling
beside one of the corpses to wipe a knife upon its coat. The fourth man
was himself.

Again, he saw the two murderers stealing off in a quarter-boat, as the
barque with her drunken crew drifted towards the spouting surf of a
river-bar. He saw the ship melt away in the surf like an icicle in the
sunshine; and, later, two shipwrecked mariners, picked up in an open boat
and set ashore at an American port.

That was why he was here. Because he was a murderer. The other scoundrel,
Amos Todd, had turned Queen's Evidence and denounced him, and he had
barely managed to escape. Since then he had hidden himself from the great
world, and here he must continue to hide, not from the law--for his
person was unknown now that his shipmates were dead--but from the
partner of his crime. It was the fear of Todd that had changed him from
Jeffrey Rorke to Tom Jeffreys and had sent him to the Girdler, a prisoner
for life. Todd might die--might even now be dead--but he would never
hear of it: would never hear the news of his release.

He roused himself and once more pointed his telescope at the distant
boat. She was considerably nearer now and seemed to be heading out
towards the lighthouse. Perhaps the man in her was bringing a message; at
any rate, there was no sign of the coast-guard's cutter.

He went in, and, betaking himself to the kitchen, busied himself with a
few simple preparations for dinner. But there was nothing to cook, for
there remained the cold meat from yesterday's cooking, which he would
make sufficient, with some biscuit in place of potatoes. He felt restless
and unstrung; the solitude irked him, and the everlasting wash of the
water among the piles jarred on his nerves.

When he went out again into the gallery the ebb-tide had set in strongly
and the boat was little more than a mile distant; and now, through the
glass, he could see that the man in her wore the uniform cap of the
Trinity House. Then the man must be his future comrade, Brown; but this
was very extraordinary. What were they to do with the boat? There was no
one to take her back.

The breeze was dying away. As he watched the boat, he saw the man lower
the sail and take to his oars; and something of hurry in the way the man
pulled over the gathering tide, caused Jeffreys to look round the
horizon. And then, for the first time, he noticed a bank of fog creeping
up from the east and already so near that the beacon on the East Girdler
had faded out of sight. He hastened in to start the little motor that
compressed the air for the fog-horn and waited awhile to see that the
mechanism was running properly. Then, as the deck vibrated to the roar of
the horn, he went out once more into the gallery.

The fog was now all round the lighthouse and the boat was hidden from
view. He listened intently. The enclosing wall of vapour seemed to have
shut out sound as well as vision. At intervals the horn bellowed its note
of warning, and then all was still save the murmur of the water among the
piles below, and, infinitely faint and far away, the mournful tolling of
the bell on the Shivering Sand.

At length there came to his ear the muffled sound of oars working in the
holes; then, at the very edge of the circle of grey water that was
visible, the boat appeared through the fog, pale and spectral, with a
shadowy figure pulling furiously. The horn emitted a hoarse growl; the
man looked round, perceived the lighthouse and altered his course towards
it.

Jeffreys descended the iron stairway, and, walking along the lower
gallery, stood at the head of the ladder earnestly watching the
approaching stranger. Already he was tired of being alone. The yearning
for human companionship had been growing ever since Barnett left. But
what sort of comrade was this stranger who was coming into his life? And
coming to occupy so dominant a place in it.

The boat swept down swiftly athwart the hurrying tide. Nearer it came and
yet nearer: and still Jeffreys could catch no glimpse of his new
comrade's face. At length it came fairly alongside and bumped against the
fender-posts; the stranger whisked in an oar and grabbed a rung of the
ladder, and Jeffreys dropped a coil of rope into the boat. And still the
man's face was hidden.

Jeffreys leaned out over the ladder and watched him anxiously, as he made
fast the rope, unhooked the sail from the traveller and unstepped the
mast. When he had set all in order, the stranger picked up a small chest,
and, swinging it over his shoulder, stepped onto the ladder. Slowly, by
reason of his encumbrance, he mounted, rung by rung, with never an upward
glance, and Jeffreys gazed down at the top of his head with growing
curiosity. At last he reached the top of the ladder and Jeffreys stooped
to lend him a hand. Then, for the first time, he looked up, and Jeffreys
started back with a blanched face.

"God Almighty!" he gasped. "It's Amos Todd!"

As the newcomer stepped on the gallery, the fog-horn emitted a roar like
that of some hungry monster. Jeffreys turned abruptly without a word, and
walked to the stairs, followed by Todd, and the two men ascended with
never a sound but the hollow clank of their footsteps on the iron plates.
Silently Jeffreys stalked into the living-room and, as his companion
followed, he turned and motioned to the latter to set down his chest.

"You ain't much of a talker, mate," said Todd, looking round the room in
some surprise; "ain't you going to say 'good-morning'? We're going to be
good comrades, I hope. I'm Jim Brown, the new hand, I am; what might your
name be?"

Jeffreys turned on him suddenly and led him to the window. "Look at me
carefully, Amos Todd," he said sternly, "and then ask yourself what my
name is."

At the sound of his voice Todd looked up with a start and turned pale as
death. "It can't be," he whispered, "it can't be Jeff Rorke!"

The other man laughed harshly, and leaning forward, said in a low voice:
"Hast thou found me, O mine enemy!"

"Don't say that!" exclaimed Todd. "Don't call me your enemy, Jeff. Lord
knows but I'm glad to see you, though I'd never have known you without
your beard and with that grey hair. I've been to blame, Jeff, and I know
it; but it ain't no use raking up old grudges. Let bygones be bygones,
Jeff, and let us be pals as we used to be." He wiped his face with his
handkerchief and watched his companion apprehensively.

"Sit down," said Rorke, pointing to a shabby rep-covered arm-chair; "sit
down and tell me what you've done with all that money. You've blued it
all, I suppose, or you wouldn't be here."

"Robbed, Jeff," answered Todd; "robbed of every penny. Ah! that was an
unfortunate affair, that job on board the old Sea-flower. But it's over
and done with and we'd best forget it. They're all dead but us, Jeff, so
we're safe enough so long as we keep our mouths shut; all at the bottom
of the sea--and the best place for 'em too."

"Yes," Rorke replied fiercely, "that's the best place for your shipmates
when they know too much; at the bottom of the sea or swinging at the end
of a rope." He paced up and down the little room with rapid strides, and
each time that he approached Todd's chair the latter shrank back with an
expression of alarm.

"Don't sit there staring at me," said Rorke. "Why don't you smoke or do
something?"

Todd hastily produced a pipe from his pocket, and having filled it from a
moleskin pouch, stuck it in his mouth while he searched for a match.
Apparently he carried his matches loose in his pocket, for he presently
brought one forth--a red-headed match, which, when he struck it on the
wall, lighted with a pale-blue flame. He applied it to his pipe, sucking
in his cheeks while he kept his eyes fixed on his companion. Rorke,
meanwhile, halted in his walk to cut some shavings from a cake of hard
tobacco with a large clasp-knife; and, as he stood, he gazed with
frowning abstraction at Todd.

"This pipe's stopped," said the latter, sucking ineffectually at the
mouthpiece. "Have you got such a thing as a piece of wire, Jeff?"

"No, I haven't," replied Rorke; "not up here. I'll get a bit from the
store presently. Here, take this pipe till you can clean your own: I've
got another in the rack there." The sailor's natural hospitality
overcoming for the moment his animosity, he thrust the pipe that he had
just filled towards Todd, who took it with a mumbled "Thank you" and an
anxious eye on the open knife. On the wall beside the chair was a
roughly-carved pipe-rack containing several pipes, one of which Rorke
lifted out; and, as he leaned over the chair to reach it, Todd's face
went several shades paler.

"Well, Jeff," he said, after a pause, while Rorke cut a fresh "fill" of
tobacco, "are we going to be pals same as what we used to be?"

Rorke's animosity lighted up afresh. "Am I going to be pals with the man
that tried to swear away my life?" he said sternly; and after a pause he
added: "That wants thinking about, that does; and meantime I must go and
look at the engine."

When Rorke had gone the new hand sat, with the two pipes in his hands,
reflecting deeply. Abstractedly he stuck the fresh pipe into his mouth,
and, dropping the stopped one into the rack, felt for a match. Still with
an air of abstraction he lit the pipe, and having smoked for a minute or
two, rose from the chair and began softly to creep across the room,
looking about him and listening intently. At the door he paused to look
out into the fog, and then, having again listened attentively, he stepped
on tip-toe out onto the gallery and along towards the stairway. Of a
sudden the voice of Rorke brought him up with a start.

"Hallo, Todd! where are you off to?"

"I'm just going down to make the boat secure," was the reply.

"Never you mind about the boat," said Rorke. "I'll see to her."

"Right-o, Jeff," said Todd, still edging towards the stairway. "But, I
say, mate, where's the other man--the man that I'm to relieve?"

"There ain't any other man," replied Rorke; "he went off aboard a
collier."

Todd's face suddenly became grey and haggard. "Then there's no one here
but us two!" he gasped; and then, with an effort to conceal his fear, he
asked: "But who's going to take the boat back?"

"We'll see about that presently," replied Rorke; "you get along in and
unpack your chest."

He came out on the gallery as he spoke, with a lowering frown on his
face. Todd cast a terrified glance at him, and then turned and ran for
his life towards the stairway.

"Come back!" roared Rorke, springing forward along the gallery; but
Todd's feet were already clattering down the iron steps. By the time
Rorke reached the head of the stairs, the fugitive was near the bottom;
but here, in his haste, he stumbled, barely saving himself by the
handrail, and when he recovered his balance Rorke was upon him. Todd
darted to the head of the ladder, but, as he grasped the stanchion, his
pursuer seized him by the collar. In a moment he had turned with his hand
under his coat. There was a quick blow, a loud curse from Rorke, an
answering yell from Todd, and a knife fell spinning through the air and
dropped into the fore-peak of the boat below.

"You murderous little devil!" said Rorke in an ominously quiet voice,
with his bleeding hand gripping his captive by the throat. "Handy with
your knife as ever, eh? So you were off to give information, were you?"

"No, I wasn't Jeff," replied Todd in a choking voice; "I wasn't, s'elp
me, God. Let go, Jeff. I didn't mean no harm. I was only--" With a
sudden wrench he freed one hand and struck out frantically at his
captor's face. But Rorke warded off the blow, and, grasping the other
wrist, gave a violent push and let go. Todd staggered backward a few
paces along the staging, bringing up at the extreme edge; and here, for a
sensible time, he stood with wide-open mouth and starting eye-balls,
swaying and clutching wildly at the air. Then, with a shrill scream, he
toppled backwards and fell, striking a pile in his descent and rebounding
into the water.

In spite of the audible thump of his head on the pile, he was not
stunned, for when he rose to the surface, he struck out vigorously,
uttering short, stifled cries for help. Rorke watched him with set teeth
and quickened breath, but made no move. Smaller and still smaller grew
the head with its little circle of ripples, swept away on the swift
ebb-tide, and fainter the bubbling cries that came across the smooth
water. At length as the small black spot began to fade in the fog, the
drowning man, with a final effort, raised his head clear of the surface
and sent a last, despairing shriek towards the lighthouse. The fog-horn
sent back an answering bellow; the head sank below the surface and was
seen no more; and in the dreadful stillness that settled down upon the
sea there sounded faint and far away the muffled tolling of a bell.

Rorke stood for some minutes immovable, wrapped in thought. Presently the
distant hoot of a steamer's whistle aroused him. The ebb-tide shipping
was beginning to come down and the fog might lift at any moment; and
there was the boat still alongside. She must be disposed of at once. No
one had seen her arrive and no one must see her made fast to the
lighthouse. Once get rid of the boat and all traces of Todd's visit would
be destroyed. He ran down the ladder and stepped into the boat. It was
simple. She was heavily ballasted, and would go down if she filled.

He shifted some of the bags of shingle, and, lifting the bottom boards,
pulled out the plug. Instantly a large jet of water spouted up into the
bottom. Rorke looked at it critically, and, deciding that it would fill
her in a few minutes, replaced the bottom boards; and having secured the
mast and sail with a few turns of the sheet round a thwart, to prevent
them from floating away, he cast off the mooring-rope and stepped on the
ladder.

As the released boat began to move away on the tide, he ran up and
mounted to the upper gallery to watch her disappearance. Suddenly he
remembered Todd's chest. It was still in the room below. With a hurried
glance around into the fog, he ran down to the room, and snatching up the
chest, carried it out on the lower gallery. After another nervous glance
around to assure himself that no craft was in sight, he heaved the chest
over the handrail, and, when it fell with a loud splash into the sea, he
waited to watch it float away after its owner and the sunken boat. But it
never rose; and presently he returned to the upper gallery.

The fog was thinning perceptibly now, and the boat remained plainly
visible as she drifted away. But she sank more slowly than he had
expected, and presently as she drifted farther away, he fetched the
telescope and peered at her with growing anxiety. It would be unfortunate
if any one saw her; if she should be picked up here, with her plug out,
it would be disastrous.

He was beginning to be really alarmed. Through the glass he could see
that the boat was now rolling in a sluggish, water-logged fashion, but
she still showed some inches of free-board, and the fog was thinning
every moment.

Presently the blast of a steamer's whistle sounded close at hand. He
looked round hurriedly and, seeing nothing, again pointed the telescope
eagerly at the dwindling boat. Suddenly he gave a gasp of relief. The
boat had rolled gunwale under; had staggered back for a moment and then
rolled again, slowly, finally, with the water pouring in over the
submerged gunwale.

In a few more seconds she had vanished. Rorke lowered the telescope and
took a deep breath. Now he was safe. The boat had sunk unseen. But he was
better than safe: he was free. His evil spirit, the standing menace of
his life, was gone, and the wide world, the world of life, of action, of
pleasure, called to him.

In a few minutes the fog lifted. The sun shone brightly on the
red-funnelled cattle-boat whose whistle had startled him just now, the
summer blue came back to sky and sea, and the land peeped once more over
the edge of the horizon.

He went in, whistling cheerfully, and stopped the motor; returned to coil
away the rope that he had thrown to Todd; and, when he had hoisted a
signal for assistance, he went in once more to eat his solitary meal in
peace and gladness.


PART II. "THE SINGING BONE"


(Related by Christopher Jervis, M.D.)

To every kind of scientific work a certain amount of manual labour
naturally appertains, labour that cannot be performed by the scientist
himself, since art is long but life is short. A chemical analysis
involves a laborious "clean up" of apparatus and laboratory, for which
the chemist has no time; the preparation of a skeleton--the maceration,
bleaching, "assembling," and riveting together of bones--must be carried
out by some one whose time is not too precious. And so with other
scientific activities. Behind the man of science with his outfit of
knowledge is the indispensable mechanic with his outfit of manual skill.

Thorndyke's laboratory assistant, Polton, was a fine example of the
latter type, deft, resourceful, ingenious and untiring. He was somewhat
of an inventive genius, too; and it was one of his inventions that
connected us with the singular case that I am about to record.

Though by trade a watchmaker, Polton was, by choice, an optician. Optical
apparatus was the passion of his life; and when, one day, he produced for
our inspection an improved prism for increasing the efficiency of
gas-buoys, Thorndyke at once brought the invention to the notice of a
friend at the Trinity House.

As a consequence, we three--Thorndyke, Polton and I--found ourselves
early on a fine July morning making our way down Middle Temple Lane bound
for the Temple Pier. A small oil-launch lay alongside the pontoon, and,
as we made our appearance, a red-faced, white-whiskered gentleman stood
up in the cockpit.

"Here's a delightful morning, doctor," he sang out in a fine, brassy,
resonant, sea-faring voice; "sort of day for a trip to the lower river,
hey? Hallo, Polton! Coming down to take the bread out of our mouths, are
you? Ha, ha!" The cheery laugh rang out over the river and mingled with
the throb of the engine as the launch moved off from the pier.

Captain Grumpass was one of the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House.
Formerly a client of Thorndyke's he had subsided, as Thorndyke's clients
were apt to do, into the position of a personal friend, and his hearty
regard included our invaluable assistant.

"Nice state of things," continued the captain, with a chuckle, "when a
body of nautical experts have got to be taught their business by a parcel
of lawyers or doctors, what? I suppose trade's slack and 'Satan findeth
mischief still,' hey, Polton?"

"There isn't much doing on the civil side, sir," replied Polton, with a
quaint, crinkly smile, "but the criminals are still going strong."

"Ha! mystery department still flourishing, what? And, by Jove! talking of
mysteries, doctor, our people have got a queer problem to work out;
something quite in your line--quite. Yes, and, by the Lord Moses, since
I've got you here, why shouldn't I suck your brains?"

"Exactly," said Thorndyke. "Why shouldn't you?"

"Well, then, I will," said the captain, "so here goes. All hands to the
pump!" He lit a cigar, and, after a few preliminary puffs, began: "The
mystery, shortly stated, is this: one of our lighthousemen has
disappeared--vanished off the face of the earth and left no trace. He
may have bolted, he may have been drowned accidentally or he may have
been murdered. But I'd rather give you the particulars in order. At the
end of last week a barge brought into Ramsgate a letter from the
screw-pile lighthouse on the Girdler. There are only two men there, and
it seems that one of them, a man named Barnett, had broken his leg, and
he asked that the tender should be sent to bring him ashore. Well, it
happened that the local tender, the Warden, was up on the slip in
Ramsgate Harbour, having a scrape down, and wouldn't be available for a
day or two, so, as the case was urgent, the officer at Ramsgate sent a
letter to the lighthouse by one of the pleasure steamers saying that the
man should be relieved by boat on the following morning, which was
Saturday. He also wrote to a new hand who had just been taken on, a man
named James Brown, who was lodging near Reculver, waiting his turn,
telling him to go out on Saturday morning in the coast-guard's boat; and
he sent a third letter to the coast-guard at Reculver asking him to take
Brown out to the lighthouse and bring Barnett ashore. Well, between them,
they made a fine muddle of it. The coast-guard couldn't spare either a
boat or a man, so they borrowed a fisherman's boat, and in this the man
Brown started off alone, like an idiot, on the chance that Barnett would
be able to sail the boat back in spite of his broken leg.

"Meanwhile Barnett, who is a Whitstable man, had signalled a collier
bound for his native town, and got taken off; so that the other keeper,
Thomas Jeffreys, was left alone until Brown should turn up.

"But Brown never did turn up. The coast-guard helped him to put off and
saw him well out to sea, and the keeper, Jeffreys, saw a sailing-boat
with one man in her making for the lighthouse. Then a bank of fog came up
and hit the boat, and when the fog cleared she was nowhere to be seen.
Man and boat had vanished and left no sign."

"He may have been run down," Thorndyke suggested.

"He may," agreed the captain, "but no accident has been reported. The
coast-guards think he may have capsized in a squall--they saw him make
the sheet fast. But there weren't any squalls; the weather was quite
calm."

"Was he all right and well when he put off?" inquired Thorndyke.

"Yes," replied the captain, "the coast-guards' report is highly
circumstantial; in fact, it's full of silly details that have no bearing
on anything. This is what they say." He pulled out an official letter and
read: "'When last seen, the missing man was seated in the boat's stern to
windward of the helm. He had belayed the sheet. He was holding a pipe and
tobacco-pouch in his hands and steering with his elbow. He was filling
the pipe from the tobacco-pouch.' There! 'He was holding the pipe in his
hand,' mark you! not with his toes; and he was filling it from a
tobacco-pouch, whereas you'd have expected him to fill it from a
coalscuttle or a feeding-bottle. Bah!" The captain rammed the letter back
in his pocket and puffed scornfully at his cigar.

"You are hardly fair to the coast-guard," said Thorndyke, laughing at the
captain's vehemence. "The duty of a witness is to give all the facts, not
a judicious selection."

"But, my dear sir," said Captain Grumpass, "what the deuce can it matter
what the poor devil filled his pipe from?"

"Who can say?" answered Thorndyke. "It may turn out to be a highly
material fact. One never knows beforehand. The value of a particular fact
depends on its relation to the rest of the evidence."

"I suppose it does," grunted the captain; and he continued to smoke in
reflective silence until we opened Black-wall Point, when he suddenly
stood up.

"There's a steam trawler alongside our wharf," he announced. "Now what
the deuce can she be doing there?" He scanned the little steamer
attentively, and continued:

"They seem to be landing something, too. Just pass me those glasses,
Polton. Why, hang me! it's a dead body! But why on earth are they landing
it on our wharf? They must have known you were coming, doctor."

As the launch swept alongside the wharf, the captain sprang up lightly
and approached the group gathered round the body. "What's this?" he
asked. "Why have they brought this thing here?"

The master of the trawler, who had superintended the landing, proceeded
to explain.

"It's one of your men, sir," said he. "We saw the body lying on the edge
of the South Shingles Sand, close to the beacon, as we passed at low
water, so we put off the boat and fetched it aboard. As there was nothing
to identify the man by, I had a look in his pockets and found this
letter."

He handed the captain an official envelope addressed to: "Mr. J. Brown,
co Mr. Solly, Shepherd, Reculver, Kent."

"Why, this is the man we were speaking about, doctor," exclaimed Captain
Grumpass. "What a very singular coincidence. But what are we to do with
the body?"

"You will have to write to the coroner," replied Thorndyke. "By the way,
did you turn out all the pockets?" he asked, turning to the skipper of
the trawler.

"No, sir," was the reply. "I found the letter in the first pocket that I
felt in, so I didn't examine any of the others. Is there anything more
that you want to know, sir?"

"Nothing but your name and address, for the coroner," replied Thorndyke,
and the skipper, having given this information and expressed the hope
that the coroner would not keep him "hanging about," returned to his
vessel and pursued his way to Billingsgate.

"I wonder if you would mind having a look at the body of this poor devil,
while Polton is showing us his contraptions," said Captain Grumpass.

"I can't do much without a coroner's order," replied Thorndyke; "but if
it will give you any satisfaction, Jervis and I will make a preliminary
inspection with pleasure."

"I should be glad if you would," said the captain. "We should like to
know that the poor beggar met his end fairly."

The body was accordingly moved to a shed, and, as Polton was led away,
carrying the black bag that contained his precious model, we entered the
shed and commenced our investigation.

The deceased was a small, elderly man, decently dressed in a somewhat
nautical fashion. He appeared to have been dead only two or three days,
and the body, unlike the majority of sea-borne corpses, was uninjured by
fish or crabs. There were no fractured bones or other gross injuries, and
no wounds, excepting a rugged tear in the scalp at the back of the head.

"The general appearance of the body," said Thorndyke, when he had noted
these particulars, "suggests death by drowning, though, of course, we
can't give a definite opinion until a post mortem has been made."

"You don't attach any significance to that scalp-wound, then?" I asked.

"As a cause of death? No. It was obviously inflicted during life, but it
seems to have been an oblique blow that spent its force on the scalp,
leaving the skull uninjured. But it is very significant in another way."

"In what way?" I asked.

Thorndyke took out his pocket-case and extracted a pair of forceps.
"Consider the circumstances," said he. "This man put off from the shore
to go to the lighthouse, but never arrived there. The question is, where
did he arrive?" As he spoke he stooped over the corpse and turned back
the hair round the wound with the beak of the forceps. "Look at those
white objects among the hair, Jervis, and inside the wound. They tell us
something, I think."

I examined, through my lens, the chalky fragments to which he pointed.
"These seem to be bits of shells and the tubes of some marine worm," I
said.

"Yes," he answered; "the broken shells are evidently those of the acorn
barnacle, and the other fragments are mostly pieces of the tubes of the
common serpula. The inference that these objects suggest is an important
one. It is that this wound was produced by some body encrusted by acorn
barnacles and serpula; that is to say, by a body that is periodically
submerged. Now, what can that body be, and how can the deceased have
knocked his head against it?"

"It might be the stem of a ship that ran him down," I suggested.

"I don't think you would find many serpulae on the stem of a ship," said
Thorndyke. "The combination rather suggests some stationary object
between tidemarks, such as a beacon. But one doesn't see how a man could
knock his head against a beacon, while, on the other hand, there are no
other stationary objects out in the estuary to knock against except
buoys, and a buoy presents a flat surface that could hardly have produced
this wound. By the way, we may as well see what there is in his pockets,
though it is not likely that robbery had anything to do with his death."

''No," I agreed, "and I see his watch is in his pocket; quite a good
silver one," I added, taking it out. "It has stopped at 12.13."

"That may be important," said Thorndyke, making a note of the fact; "but
we had better examine the pockets one at a time, and put the things back
when we have looked at them."

The first pocket that we turned out was the left hip-pocket of the monkey
jacket. This was apparently the one that the skipper had rifled, for we
found in it two letters, both bearing the crest of the Trinity House.
These, of course, we returned without reading, and then passed on to the
right pocket. The contents of this were common-place enough, consisting
of a briar pipe, a moleskin pouch and a number of loose matches.

"Rather a casual proceeding, this," I remarked, "to carry matches loose
in the pocket, and a pipe with them, too."

"Yes," agreed Thorndyke; "especially with these very inflammable matches.
You notice that the sticks had been coated at the upper end with sulphur
before the red phosphorous heads were put on. They would light with a
touch, and would be very difficult to extinguish; which, no doubt, is the
reason that this type of match is so popular among seamen, who have to
light their pipes in all sorts of weather." As he spoke he picked up the
pipe and looked at it reflectively, turning it over in his hand and
peering into the bowl. Suddenly he glanced from the pipe to the dead
man's face and then, with the forceps, turned back the lips to look into
the mouth.

"Let us see what tobacco he smokes," said he.

I opened the sodden pouch and displayed a mass of dark, fine-cut tobacco.
"It looks like shag," I said.

"Yes, it is shag," he replied; "and now we will see what is in the pipe.
It has been only half-smoked out." He dug out the "dottle" with his
pocket-knife onto a sheet of paper, and we both inspected it. Clearly it
was not shag, for it consisted of coarsely-cut shreds and was nearly
black.

"Shavings from a cake of 'hard,'" was my verdict, and Thorndyke agreed as
he shot the fragments back into the pipe.

The other pockets yielded nothing of interest, except a pocket-knife,
which Thorndyke opened and examined closely. There was not much money,
though as much as one would expect, and enough to exclude the idea of
robbery.

"Is there a sheath-knife on that strap?" Thorndyke asked, pointing to a
narrow leather belt. I turned back the jacket and looked.

"There is a sheath," I said, "but no knife. It must have dropped out."

"That is rather odd," said Thorndyke. "A sailor's sheath-knife takes a
deal of shaking out as a rule. It is intended to be used in working on
the rigging when the man is aloft, so that he can get it out with one
hand while he is holding on with the other. It has to be and usually is
very secure, for the sheath holds half the handle as well as the blade.
What makes one notice the matter in this case is that the man, as you
see, carried a pocket-knife; and, as this would serve all the ordinary
purposes of a knife, it seems to suggest that the sheath-knife was
carried for defensive purposes: as a weapon, in fact. However, we can't
get much further in the case without a post mortem, and here comes the
captain."

Captain Grumpass entered the shed and looked down commiseratingly at the
dead seaman.

"Is there anything, doctor, that throws any light on the man's
disappearance?" he asked.

"There are one or two curious features in the case," Thorndyke replied;
"but, oddly enough, the only really important point arises out of that
statement of the coastguard's, concerning which you were so scornful."

"You don't say so!" exclaimed the captain.

"Yes," said Thorndyke; "the coast-guard states that when last seen
deceased was filling his pipe from his tobacco-pouch. Now his pouch
contains shag; but the pipe in his pocket contains hard cut."

"Is there no cake tobacco in any of the pockets?"

"Not a fragment. Of course, it is possible that he might have had a piece
and used it up to fill the pipe; but there is no trace of any on the
blade of his pocket-knife, and you know how this juicy black cake stains
a knife-blade. His sheath-knife is missing, but he would hardly have used
that to shred tobacco when he had a pocket-knife."

"No," assented the captain; "but are you sure he hadn't a second pipe?"

"There was only one pipe," replied Thorndyke, "and that was not his own."

"Not his own!" exclaimed the captain, halting by a huge, chequered buoy,
to stare at my colleague. "How do you know it was not his own?"

"By the appearance of the vulcanite mouthpiece," said Thorndyke. "It
showed deep tooth-marks; in fact, it was nearly bitten through. Now a man
who bites through his pipe usually presents certain definite physical
peculiarities, among which is, necessarily, a fairly good set of teeth.
But the dead man had not a tooth in his head."

The captain cogitated a while, and then remarked: "I don't quite see the
bearing of this."

"Don't you?" said Thorndyke. "It seems to me highly suggestive. Here is a
man who, when last seen, was filling his pipe with a particular kind of
tobacco. He is picked up dead, and his pipe contains a totally different
kind of tobacco. Where did that tobacco come from? The obvious suggestion
is that he had met some one."

"Yes, it does look like it," agreed the captain.

"Then," continued Thorndyke, "there is the fact that his sheath-knife is
missing. That may mean nothing, but we have to bear it in mind. And there
is another curious circumstance: there is a wound on the back of the head
caused by a heavy bump against some body that was covered with acorn
barnacles and marine worms. Now there are no piers or stages out in the
open estuary. The question is, what could he have struck?"

"Oh, there is nothing in that," said the captain. "When a body has been
washing about in a tide-way for close on three days--"

"But this is not a question of a body," Thorndyke interrupted. "The wound
was made during life."

"The deuce it was!" exclaimed the captain. "Well, all I can suggest is
that he must have fouled one of the beacons in the fog, stove in his boat
and bumped his head, though, I must admit, that's rather a lame
explanation." He stood for a minute gazing at his toes with a cogitative
frown and then looked up at Thorndyke.

"I have an idea," he said. "From what you say, this matter wants looking
into pretty carefully. Now, I am going down on the tender to-day to make
inquiries on the spot. What do you say to coming with me as adviser--as
a matter of business, of course--you and Dr. Jervis? I shall start about
eleven; we shall be at the lighthouse by three o'clock, and you can get
back to town to-night, if you want to. What do you say?"

"There's nothing to hinder us," I put in eagerly, for even at Bugsby's
Hole the river looked very alluring on this summer morning.

"Very well," said Thorndyke, "we will come. Jervis is evidently hankering
for a sea-trip, and so am I, for that matter."

"It's a business engagement, you know," the captain stipulated.

"Nothing of the kind," said Thorndyke; "it's unmitigated pleasure; the
pleasure of the voyage and your high well-born society."

"I didn't mean that," grumbled the captain, "but, if you are coming as
guests, send your man for your nightgear and let us bring you back
to-morrow evening."

"We won't disturb Polton," said my colleague; "we can take the train from
Blackwall and fetch our things ourselves. Eleven o'clock, you said?"

"Thereabouts," said Captain Grumpass; "but don't put yourselves out."

The means of communication in London have reached an almost undesirable
state of perfection. With the aid of the snorting train and the tinkling,
two-wheeled "gondola," we crossed and re-crossed the town with such
celerity that it was barely eleven when we re-appeared on Trinity Wharf
with a joint Gladstone and Thorndyke's little green case.

The tender had hauled out of Bow Creek, and now lay alongside the wharf
with a great striped can buoy dangling from her derrick, and Captain
Grumpass stood at the gangway, his jolly, red face beaming with pleasure.
The buoy was safely stowed forward, the derrick hauled up to the mast,
the loose shrouds rehooked to the screw-lanyards, and the steamer, with
four jubilant hoots, swung round and shoved her sharp nose against the
incoming tide.

For near upon four hours the ever-widening stream of the "London River"
unfolded its moving panorama. The smoke and smell of Woolwich Reach gave
place to lucid air made soft by the summer haze; the grey huddle of
factories fell away and green levels of cattle-spotted marsh stretched
away to the high land bordering the river valley. Venerable training
ships displayed their chequered hulls by the wooded shore, and whispered
of the days of oak and hemp, when the tall three-decker, comely and
majestic, with her soaring heights of canvas, like towers of ivory, had
not yet given place to the mud-coloured saucepans that fly the white
ensign now-a-days and devour the substance of the British taxpayer: when
a sailor was a sailor and not a mere seafaring mechanic. Sturdily
breasting the flood tide, the tender threaded her way through the endless
procession of shipping; barges, billy-boys, schooners, brigs; lumpish
Black-seamen, blue-funnelled China tramps, rickety Baltic barques with
twirling windmills, gigantic liners, staggering under a mountain of
top-hamper. Erith, Purfleet, Greenhithe, Grays greeted us and passed
astern. The chimneys of Northfleet, the clustering roofs of Gravesend,
the populous anchorage and the lurking batteries, were left behind, and,
as we swung out of the Lower Hope, the wide expanse of sea reach spread
out before us like a great sheet of blue-shot satin.

About half-past twelve the ebb overtook us and helped us on our way, as
we could see by the speed with which the distant land slid past, and the
freshening of the air as we passed through it.

But sky and sea were hushed in a summer calm. Balls of fleecy cloud hung
aloft, motionless in the soft blue; the barges drifted on the tide with
drooping sails, and a big, striped bell buoy--surmounted by a staff and
cage and labelled, "Shivering Sand"--sat dreaming in the sun above its
motionless reflection, to rouse for a moment as it met our wash, nod its
cage drowsily, utter a solemn ding-dong, and fall asleep again.

It was shortly after passing the buoy that the gaunt shape of a
screw-pile lighthouse began to loom up ahead, its dull-red paint turned
to vermilion by the early afternoon sun. As we drew nearer, the name
Girdler, painted in huge, white letters, became visible, and two men
could be seen in the gallery around the lantern, inspecting us through a
telescope.

"Shall you be long at the lighthouse, sir?" the master of the tender
inquired of Captain Grumpass; "because we're going down to the
North-East Pan Sand to fix this new buoy and take up the old one."

"Then you'd better put us off at the lighthouse and come back for us when
you've finished the job," was the reply. "I don't know how long we shall
be."

The tender was brought to, a boat lowered, and a couple of hands pulled
us across the intervening space of water.

"It will be a dirty climb for you in your shore-going clothes," the
captain remarked--he was as spruce as a new pin himself, "but the stuff
will all wipe off." We looked up at the skeleton shape. The falling tide
had exposed some fifteen feet of the piles, and piles and ladder alike
were swathed in sea-grass and encrusted with barnacles and worm-tubes.
But we were not such town-sparrows as the captain seemed to think, for we
both followed his lead without difficulty up the slippery ladder,
Thorndyke clinging tenaciously to his little green case, from which he
refused to be separated even for an instant.

"These gentlemen and I," said the captain, as we stepped on the stage at
the head of the ladder, "have come to make inquiries about the missing
man, James Brown. Which of you is Jeffreys?"

"I am, sir," replied a tall, powerful, square-jawed, beetle-browed man,
whose left hand was tied up in a rough bandage.

"What have you been doing to your hand?" asked the captain.

"I cut it while I was peeling some potatoes," was the reply. "It isn't
much of a cut, sir."

"Well, Jeffreys," said the captain, "Brown's body has been picked up and
I want particulars for the inquest. You'll be summoned as a witness, I
suppose, so come in and tell us all you know."

We entered the living-room and seated ourselves at the table. The captain
opened a massive pocket-book, while Thorndyke, in his attentive,
inquisitive fashion, looked about the odd, cabin-like room as if making a
mental inventory of its contents.

Jeffreys' statement added nothing to what we already knew. He had seen a
boat with one man in it making for the lighthouse. Then the fog had
drifted up and he had lost sight of the boat. He started the fog-horn and
kept a bright look-out, but the boat never arrived. And that was all he
knew. He supposed that the man must have missed the lighthouse and been
carried away on the ebb-tide, which was running strongly at the time.

"What time was it when you last saw the boat?" Thorndyke asked.

"About half-past eleven," replied Jeffreys.

"What was the man like?" asked the captain.

"I don't know, sir; he was rowing, and his back was towards me."

"Had he any kit-bag or chest with him?" asked Thorndyke.

"He'd got his chest with him," said Jeffreys.

"What sort of chest was it?" inquired Thorndyke.

"A small chest, painted green, with rope beckets."

"Was it corded?"

"It had a single cord round, to hold the lid down."

"Where was it stowed?"

"In the stern-sheets, sir."

"How far off was the boat when you last saw it?"

"About half-a-mile."

"Half-a-mile!" exclaimed the captain. "Why, how the deuce could you see
that chest half-a-mile away?"

The man reddened and cast a look of angry suspicion at Thorndyke. "I was
watching the boat through the glass, sir," he replied sulkily.

"I see," said Captain Grumpass. "Well, that will do, Jeffreys. We shall
have to arrange for you to attend the inquest. Tell Smith I want to see
him."

The examination concluded, Thorndyke and I moved our chairs to the
window, which looked out over the sea to the east. But it was not the sea
or the passing ships that engaged my colleague's attention. On the wall,
beside the window, hung a rudely-carved pipe-rack containing five pipes.
Thorndyke had noted it when we entered the room, and now, as we talked, I
observed him regarding it from time to time with speculative interest.

"You men seem to be inveterate smokers," he remarked to the keeper,
Smith, when the captain had concluded the arrangements for the "shift."

"Well, we do like our bit of 'baccy, sir, and that's a fact," answered
Smith. "You see, sir," he continued, "it's a lonely life, and tobacco's
cheap out here."

"How is that?" asked Thorndyke.

"Why, we get it given to us. The small craft from foreign, especially the
Dutchmen, generally heave us a cake or two when they pass close. We're
not ashore, you see, so there's no duty to pay."

"So you don't trouble the tobacconists much? Don't go in for cut
tobacco?"

"No, sir; we'd have to buy it, and then the cut stuff wouldn't keep. No,
it's hard-tack to eat out here and hard tobacco to smoke."

"I see you've got a pipe-rack, too, quite a stylish affair."

"Yes," said Smith, "I made it in my off-time. Keeps the place tidy and
looks more ship-shape than letting the pipes lay about anywhere."

"Some one seems to have neglected his pipe," said Thorndyke, pointing to
one at the end of the rack which was coated with green mildew.

"Yes; that's Parsons, my mate. He must have left it when he went off near
a month ago. Pipes do go mouldy in the damp air out here."

"How soon does a pipe go mouldy if it is left untouched?" Thorndyke
asked.

"It's according to the weather," said Smith. "When it's warm and damp
they'll begin to go in about a week. Now here's Barnett's pipe that he's
left behind--the man that broke his leg, you know, sir--it's just
beginning to spot a little. He couldn't have used it for a day or two
before he went."

"And are all these other pipes yours?"

"No, sir. This here one is mine. The end one is Jeffreys', and I suppose
the middle one is his too, but I don't know it."

"You're a demon for pipes, doctor," said the captain, strolling up at
this moment; "you seem to make a special study of them."

"'The proper study of mankind is man,'" replied Thorndyke, as the keeper
retired, "and 'man' includes those objects on which his personality is
impressed. Now a pipe is a very personal thing. Look at that row in the
rack. Each has its own physiognomy which, in a measure, reflects the
peculiarities of the owner. There is Jeffreys' pipe at the end, for
instance. The mouth-piece is nearly bitten through, the bowl scraped to a
shell and scored inside and the brim battered and chipped. The whole
thing speaks of rude strength and rough handling. He chews the stem as he
smokes, he scrapes the bowl violently, and he bangs the ashes out with
unnecessary force. And the man fits the pipe exactly: powerful,
square-jawed and, I should say, violent on occasion."

"Yes, he looks a tough customer, does Jeffreys," agreed the captain.

"Then," continued Thorndyke, "there is Smith's pipe, next to it; 'coked'
up until the cavity is nearly filled and burnt all round the edge; a
talker's pipe, constantly going out and being relit. But the one that
interests me most is the middle one."

"Didn't Smith say that was Jeffreys' too?" I said.

"Yes," replied Thorndyke, "but he must be mistaken. It is the very
opposite of Jeffreys' pipe in every respect. To begin with, although it
is an old pipe, there is not a sign of any tooth-mark on the mouth-piece.
It is the only one in the rack that is quite unmarked. Then the brim is
quite uninjured: it has been handled gently, and the silver band is
jet-black, whereas the band on Jeffreys' pipe is quite bright."

"I hadn't noticed that it had a band," said the captain. "What has made
it so black?"

Thorndyke lifted the pipe out of the rack and looked at it closely.
"Silver sulphide," said he, "the sulphur no doubt derived from something
carried in the pocket."

"I see," said Captain Grumpass, smothering a yawn and gazing out of the
window at the distant tender. "Incidentally it's full of tobacco. What
moral do you draw from that?"

Thorndyke turned the pipe over and looked closely at the mouth-piece.
"The moral is," he replied, "that you should see that your pipe is clear
before you fill it." He pointed to the mouth-piece, the bore of which was
completely stopped up with fine fluff.

"An excellent moral too," said the captain, rising with another yawn. "If
you'll excuse me a minute I'll just go and see what the tender is up to.
She seems to be crossing to the East Girdler." He reached the telescope
down from its brackets and went out onto the gallery.

As the captain retreated, Thorndyke opened his pocket-knife, and,
sticking the blade into the bowl of the pipe, turned the tobacco out into
his hand.

"Shag, by Jove!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," he answered, poking it back into the bowl. "Didn't you expect it
to be shag?"

"I don't know that I expected anything," I admitted. "The silver band was
occupying my attention."

"Yes, that is an interesting point,'' said Thorndyke, "but let us see
what the obstruction consists of." He opened the green case, and, taking
out a dissecting needle, neatly extracted a little ball of fluff from the
bore of the pipe. Laying this on a glass slide, he teased it out in a
drop of glycerine and put on a cover-glass while I set up the microscope.

"Better put the pipe back in the rack," he said, as he laid the slide on
the stage of the instrument. I did so and then turned, with no little
excitement, to watch him as he examined the specimen. After a brief
inspection he rose and waved his hand towards the microscope.

"Take a look at it, Jervis," he said.

I applied my eye to the instrument, and, moving the slide about,
identified the constituents of the little mass of fluff. The ubiquitous
cotton fibre was, of course, in evidence, and a few fibres of wool, but
the most remarkable objects were two or three hairs--very minute hairs
of a definite zigzag shape and having a flat expansion near the free end
like the blade of a paddle.

"These are the hairs of some small animal," I said; "not a mouse or rat
or any rodent, I should say. Some small insectivorous animal, I fancy.
Yes! Of course! They are the hairs of a mole." I stood up, and, as the
importance of the discovery flashed on me, I looked at my colleague in
silence.

"Yes," he said, "they are unmistakable; and they furnish the keystone of
the argument."

"You think that this is really the dead man's pipe, then?" I said.

"According to the law of multiple evidence," he replied, "it is
practically a certainty. Consider the facts in sequence. Since there is
no sign of mildew on it, this pipe can have been here only a short time,
and must belong either to Barnett, Smith, Jeffreys or Brown. It is an old
pipe, but it has no tooth-marks on it. Therefore it has been used by a
man who has no teeth. But Barnett, Smith and Jeffreys all have teeth and
mark their pipes, whereas Brown has no teeth. The tobacco in it is shag.
But these three men do not smoke shag, whereas Brown had shag in his
pouch. The silver band is encrusted with sulphide; and Brown carried
sulphur-tipped matches loose in his pocket with his pipe. We find hairs
of a mole in the bore of the pipe; and Brown carried a moleskin pouch in
the pocket in which he appears to have carried his pipe. Finally, Brown's
pocket contained a pipe which was obviously not his and which closely
resembled that of Jeffreys; it contained tobacco similar to that which
Jeffreys smokes and different from that in Brown's pouch. It appears to
me quite conclusive, especially when we add to this evidence the other
items that are in our possession."

"What items are they?" I asked.

"First there is the fact that the dead man had knocked his head heavily
against some periodically submerged body covered with acorn barnacles and
serpulae. Now the piles of this lighthouse answer to the description
exactly, and there are no other bodies in the neighbourhood that do: for
even the beacons are too large to have produced that kind of wound. Then
the dead man's sheath-knife is missing, and Jeffreys has a knife-wound on
his hand. You must admit that the circumstantial evidence is
overwhelming."

At this moment the captain bustled into the room with the telescope in
his hand. "The tender is coming up towing a strange boat," he said. "I
expect it's the missing one, and, if it is, we may learn something. You'd
better pack up your traps and get ready to go on board."

We packed the green case and went out into the gallery, where the two
keepers were watching the approaching tender; Smith frankly curious and
interested, Jeffreys restless, fidgety and noticeably pale. As the
steamer came opposite the lighthouse, three men dropped into the boat and
pulled across, and one of them--the mate of the tender--came climbing
up the ladder.

"Is that the missing boat?" the captain sang out.

"Yes, sir," answered the officer, stepping onto the staging and wiping
his hands on the reverse aspect of his trousers, "we saw her lying on the
dry patch of the East Girdler. There's been some hanky-panky in this job,
sir."

"Foul play, you think, hey?"

"Not a doubt of it, sir. The plug was out and lying loose in the bottom,
and we found a sheath-knife sticking into the kelson forward among the
coils of the painter. It was stuck in hard as if it had dropped from a
height."

"That's odd," said the captain. "As to the plug, it might have got out by
accident."

"But it hadn't sir," said the mate. "The ballast-bags had been shifted
along to get the bottom boards up. Besides, sir, a seaman wouldn't let
the boat fill; he'd have put the plug back and baled out."

"That's true," replied Captain Grumpass; "and certainly the presence of
the knife looks fishy. But where the deuce could it have dropped from,
out in the open sea? Knives don't drop from the clouds--fortunately.
What do you say, doctor?"

"I should say that it is Brown's own knife, and that it probably fell
from this staging."

Jeffreys turned swiftly, crimson with wrath. "What d'ye mean?" he
demanded. "Haven't I said that the boat never came here?"

"You have," replied Thorndyke; "but if that is so, how do you explain the
fact that your pipe was found in the dead man's pocket and that the dead
man's pipe is at this moment in your pipe-rack?"

The crimson flush on Jeffreys' face faded as quickly as it had come. "I
don't know what you're talking about," he faltered.

"I'll tell you," said Thorndyke. "I will relate what happened and you
shall check my statements. Brown brought his boat alongside and came up
into the living-room, bringing his chest with him. He filled his pipe and
tried to light it, but it was stopped and wouldn't draw. Then you lent
him a pipe of yours and filled it for him. Soon afterwards you came out
on this staging and quarrelled. Brown defended himself with his knife,
which dropped from his hand into the boat. You pushed him off the staging
and he fell, knocking his head on one of the piles. Then you took the
plug out of the boat and sent her adrift to sink, and you flung the chest
into the sea. This happened about ten minutes past twelve. Am I right?"

Jeffreys stood staring at Thorndyke, the picture of amazement and
consternation; but he uttered no word in reply. "Am I right?" Thorndyke
repeated. "Strike me blind!" muttered Jeffreys. "Was you here, then? You
talk as if you had been. Anyhow," he continued, recovering somewhat, "you
seem to know all about it. But you're wrong about one thing. There was no
quarrel. This chap, Brown, didn't take to me and he didn't mean to stay
out here. He was going to put off and go ashore again and I wouldn't let
him. Then he hit out at me with his knife and I knocked it out of his
hand and he staggered backwards and went overboard."

"And did you try to pick him up?" asked the captain.

"How could I," demanded Jeffreys, "with the tide racing down and me alone
on the station? I'd never have got back."

"But what about the boat, Jeffreys? Why did you scuttle her?"

"The fact is," replied Jeffreys, "I got in a funk, and I thought the
simplest plan was to send her to the cellar and know nothing about it.
But I never shoved him over. It was an accident, sir; I swear it!"

"Well, that sounds a reasonable explanation," said the captain. "What do
you say, doctor?"

"Perfectly reasonable," replied Thorndyke, "and, as to its truth, that is
no affair of ours."

"No. But I shall have to take you off, Jeffreys, and hand you over to the
police. You understand that?"

"Yes, sir, I understand," answered Jeffreys.

"That was a queer case, that affair on the Girdler," remarked Captain
Grumpass, when he was spending an evening with us some six months later.
"A pretty easy let off for Jeffreys, too--eighteen months, wasn't it?"

"Yes, it was a very queer case indeed," said Thorndyke. "There was
something behind that 'accident,' I should say. Those men had probably
met before."

"So I thought," agreed the captain. "But the queerest part of it to me
was the way you nosed it all out. I've had a deep respect for briar pipes
since then. It was a remarkable case," he continued. "The way in which
you made that pipe tell the story of the murder seems to me like sheer
enchantment."

"Yes," said I, "it spoke like the magic pipe--only that wasn't a
tobacco-pipe--in the German folk-story of the 'Singing Bone.' Do you
remember it? A peasant found the bone of a murdered man and fashioned it
into a pipe. But when he tried to play on it, it burst into a song of its
own:

'My brother slew me and buried my bones

Beneath the sand and under the stones.'"

"A pretty story," said Thorndyke, "and one with an excellent moral. The
inanimate things around us have each of them a song to sing to us if we
are but ready with attentive ears."



A WASTREL'S ROMANCE


PART I. THE SPINSTERS' GUEST


The lingering summer twilight was fast merging into night as a solitary
cyclist, whose evening-dress suit was thinly disguised by an overcoat,
rode slowly along a pleasant country road. From time to time he had been
overtaken and passed by a carriage, a car or a closed cab from the
adjacent town, and from the festive garb of the occupants he had made
shrewd guesses at their destination. His own objective was a large house,
standing in somewhat extensive grounds just off the road, and the
peculiar circumstances that surrounded his visit to it caused him to ride
more and more slowly as he approached his goal.

Willowdale--such was the name of the house--was, tonight, witnessing a
temporary revival of its past glories. For many months it had been empty
and a notice-board by the gate-keeper's lodge had silently announced its
forlorn state; but to-night, its rooms, their bare walls clothed in flags
and draperies, their floors waxed or carpeted, would once more echo the
sound of music and cheerful voices and vibrate to the tread of many feet.
For on this night the spinsters of Raynesford were giving a dance; and
chief amongst the spinsters was Miss Halliwell, the owner of Willowdale.

It was a great occasion. The house was large and imposing; the spinsters
were many and their purses were long. The guests were numerous and
distinguished, and included no less a person than Mrs. Jehu B. Chater.
This was the crowning triumph of the function, for the beautiful American
widow was the lion (or should we say lioness?) of the season. Her wealth
was, if not beyond the dreams of avarice, at least beyond the powers of
common British arithmetic, and her diamonds were, at once, the glory and
the terror of her hostesses.

All these attractions notwithstanding, the cyclist approached the
vicinity of Willowdale with a slowness almost hinting at reluctance; and
when, at length, a curve of the road brought the gates into view, he
dismounted and halted irresolutely. He was about to do a rather risky
thing, and, though by no means a man of weak nerve, he hesitated to make
the plunge.

The fact is, he had not been invited.

Why, then, was he going? And how was he to gain admittance? To which
questions the answer involves a painful explanation.

Augustus Bailey lived by his wits. That is the common phrase, and a
stupid phrase it is. For do we not all live by our wits, if we have any?
And does it need any specially brilliant wits to be a common rogue?
However, such as his wits were, Augustus Bailey lived by them, and he had
not hitherto made a fortune.

The present venture arose out of a conversation overheard at a restaurant
table and an invitation-card carelessly laid down and adroitly covered
with the menu. Augustus had accepted the invitation that he had not
received (on a sheet of Hotel Cecil notepaper that he had among his
collection of stationery) in the name of Geoffrey Harrington-Baillie; and
the question that exercised his mind at the moment was, would he or would
he not be spotted? He had trusted to the number of guests and the
probable inexperience of the hostesses. He knew that the cards need not
be shown, though there was the awkward ceremony of announcement.

But perhaps it wouldn't get as far as that. Probably not, if his
acceptance had been detected as emanating from an uninvited stranger.

He walked slowly towards the gates with growing discomfort. Added to his
nervousness as to the present were certain twinges of reminiscence. He
had once held a commission in a line regiment--not for long, indeed; his
"wits" had been too much for his brother officers--but there had been a
time when he would have come to such a gathering as this an invited
guest. Now, a common thief, he was sneaking in under a false name, with a
fair prospect of being ignominiously thrown out by the servants.

As he stood hesitating, the sound of hoofs on the road was followed by
the aggressive bellow of a motor-horn. The modest twinkle of carriage
lamps appeared round the curve and then the glare of acetylene
headlights. A man came out of the lodge and drew open the gates; and Mr.
Bailey, taking his courage in both hands, boldly trundled his machine up
the drive.

Half-way up--it was quite a steep incline--the car whizzed by; a large
Napier filled with a bevy of young men who economized space by sitting on
the backs of the seats and on one another's knees. Bailey looked at them
and decided that this was his chance, and, pushing forward, he saw his
bicycle safely bestowed in the empty coach-house and then hurried on to
the cloak-room. The young men had arrived there before him and, as he
entered, were gaily peeling off their overcoats and flinging them down on
a table. Bailey followed their example, and, in his eagerness to enter
the reception-room with the crowd, let his attention wander from the
business of the moment, and, as he pocketed the ticket and hurried away,
he failed to notice that the bewildered attendant had put his hat with
another man's coat and affixed his duplicate to them both.

"Major Podbury, Captain Barker-Jones, Captain Sparker, Mr. Watson, Mr.
Goldsmith, Mr. Smart, Mr. Harrington-Baillie!"

As Augustus swaggered up the room, hugging the party of officers and
quaking inwardly, he was conscious that his hostesses glanced from one
man to another with more than common interest.

But at that moment the footman's voice rang out, sonorous and clear:

"Mrs. Chater, Colonel Grumpier!" and, as all eyes were turned towards the
new arrivals, Augustus made his bow and passed into the throng. His
little game of bluff had "come off," after all.

He withdrew modestly into the more crowded portion of the room, and there
took up a position where he would be shielded from the gaze of his
hostesses. Presently, he reflected, they would forget him, if they had
really thought about him at all, and then he would see what could be done
in the way of business. He was still rather shaky, and wondered how soon
it would be decent to steady his nerves with a "refresher." Meanwhile he
kept a sharp look-out over the shoulders of neighbouring guests, until a
movement in the crowd of guests disclosed Mrs. Chater shaking hands with
the presiding spinster. Then Augustus got a most uncommon surprise.

He knew her at the first glance. He had a good memory for faces, and Mrs.
Chater's face was-one to remember. Well did he recall the frank and
lovely American girl with whom he had danced at the regimental ball years
ago. That was in the old days when he was a subaltern, and before that
little affair of the pricked court-cards that brought his military career
to an end. They had taken a mutual liking, he remembered, that
sweet-faced Yankee maid and he; had danced many dances and had sat out
others, to talk mystical nonsense which, in their innocence, they had
believed to be philosophy. He had never seen her since. She had come into
his life and gone out of it again, and he had forgotten her name, if he
had ever known it. But here she was, middle-aged now, it was true, but
still beautiful and a great personage withal. And, ye gods! what
diamonds! And here was he, too, a common rogue, lurking in the crowd that
he might, perchance, snatch a pendant or "pinch" a loose brooch.

Perhaps she might recognize him. Why not? He had recognized her. But that
would never do. And thus reflecting, Mr. Bailey slipped out to stroll on
the lawn and smoke a cigarette. Another man, somewhat older than himself,
was pacing to and fro thoughtfully, glancing from time to time through
the open windows into the brilliantly-lighted rooms. When they had passed
once or twice, the stranger halted and addressed him.

"This is the best place on a night like this," he remarked; "it's getting
hot inside already. But perhaps you're keen on dancing."

"Not so keen as I used to be," replied Bailey; and then, observing the
hungry look that the other man was bestowing on his cigarette, he
produced his case and offered it.

"Thanks awfully!" exclaimed the stranger, pouncing with avidity on the
open case. "Good Samaritan, by Jove. Left my case in my overcoat. Hadn't
the cheek to ask, though I was starving for a smoke." He inhaled
luxuriously, and, blowing out a cloud of smoke, resumed: "These chits
seem to be running the show pretty well, h'm? Wouldn't take it for an
empty house to look at it, would you?"

"I have hardly seen it," said Bailey; "only just come, you know."

"We'll have a look round, if you like," said the genial stranger, "when
we've finished our smoke, that is. Have a drink too; may cool us a bit.
Know many people here?"

"Not a soul," replied Bailey. "My hostess doesn't seem to have turned
up."

"Well, that's easily remedied," said the stranger. "My daughter's one of
the spinsters--Granby, my name; when we've had a drink, I'll make her
find you a partner--that is, if you care for the light fantastic."

"I should like a dance or two," said Bailey, "though I'm getting a bit
past it now, I suppose. Still, it doesn't do to chuck up the sponge
prematurely."

"Certainly not," Granby agreed jovially; "a man's as young as he feels.
Well, come and have a drink and then we'll hunt up my little girl." The
two men flung away the stumps of their cigarettes and headed for the
refreshments.

The spinsters' champagne was light, but it was well enough if taken in
sufficient quantity; a point to which Augustus? and Granby too--paid
judicious attention; and when he had supplemented the wine with a few
sandwiches, Mr. Bailey felt in notably better spirits. For, to tell the
truth, his diet, of late, had been somewhat meagre. Miss Granby, when
found, proved to be a blonde and guileless "flapper" of some seventeen
summers, childishly eager to play her part of hostess with due dignity;
and presently Bailey found himself gyrating through the eddying crowd in
company with a comely matron of thirty or thereabouts.

The sensations that this novel experience aroused rather took him by
surprise. For years past he had been living a precarious life of mean and
sordid shifts that oscillated between mere shabby trickery and downright
crime; now conducting a paltry swindle just inside the pale of the law,
and now, when hard pressed, descending to actual theft; consorting with
shady characters, swindlers and knaves and scurvy rogues like himself;
gambling, borrowing, cadging and, if need be, stealing, and always
slinking abroad with an apprehensive eye upon "the man in blue."

And now, amidst the half-forgotten surroundings, once so familiar; the
gaily-decorated rooms, the rhythmic music, the twinkle of jewels, the
murmur of gliding feet and the rustle of costly gowns, the moving vision
of honest gentlemen and fair ladies; the shameful years seemed to drop
away and leave him to take up the thread of his life where it had snapped
so disastrously. After all, these were his own people. The seedy knaves
in whose steps he had walked of late were but aliens met by the way.

He surrendered his partner, in due course, with regret--which was
mutual--to an inarticulate subaltern, and was meditating another pilgrimage to
the refreshment-room, when he felt a light touch upon his arm. He turned
swiftly. A touch on the arm meant more to him than to some men. But it
was no wooden-faced plain-clothes man that he confronted; it was only a
lady. In short, it was Mrs. Chater, smiling nervously and a little
abashed by her own boldness.

"I expect you've forgotten me," she began apologetically, but Augustus
interrupted her with an eager disclaimer.

"Of course I haven't," he said; "though I have forgotten your name, but I
remember that Portsmouth dance as well as if it were yesterday; at least
one incident in it--the only one that was worth remembering. I've often
hoped that I might meet you again, and now, at last, it has happened."

"It's nice of you to remember," she rejoined. "I've often and often
thought of that evening and all the wonderful things that we talked
about. You were a nice boy then; I wonder what you are like now. What a
long time ago it is!"

"Yes," Augustus agreed gravely, "it is a long time. I know it myself; but
when I look at you, it seems as if it could only have been last season."

"Oh, fie!" she exclaimed. "You are not simple as you used to be. You
didn't flatter then; but perhaps there wasn't the need." She spoke with
gentle reproach, but her pretty face flushed with pleasure nevertheless,
and there was a certain wistfulness in the tone of her concluding
sentence.

"I wasn't flattering," Augustus replied, quite sincerely; "I knew you
directly you entered the room and marvelled that Time had been so gentle
with you. He hasn't been as kind to me."

"No. You have gotten a few grey hairs, I see, but after all, what are
grey hairs to a man? Just the badges of rank, like the crown on your
collar or the lace on your cuffs, to mark the steps of your promotion--for
I guess you'll be a colonel by now."

"No," Augustus answered quickly, with a faint flush, "I left the army
some years ago."

"My! what a pity!" exclaimed Mrs. Chater. "You must tell me all about
it--but not now. My partner will be looking for me. We will sit out a dance
and have a real gossip. But I've forgotten your name--never could recall
it, in fact, though that didn't prevent me from remembering you; but, as
our dear W. S. remarks, 'What's in a name--' "

"Ah, indeed," said Mr. Harrington-Baillie; and apropos of that sentiment,
he added: "Mine is Rowland--Captain Rowland. You may remember it now."

Mrs. Chater did not, however, and said so. "Will number six do?" she
asked, opening her programme; and, when Augustus had assented, she
entered his provisional name, remarking complacently: "We'll sit out and
have a right-down good talk, and you shall tell me all about yourself and
if you still think the same about free-will and personal responsibility.
You had very lofty ideals, I remember, in those days, and I hope you have
still. But one's ideals get rubbed down rather faint in the friction of
life. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, I am afraid you're right," Augustus assented gloomily. "The wear
and tear of life soon fetches the gilt off the gingerbread. Middle age is
apt to find us a bit patchy, not to say naked."

"Oh, don't be pessimistic," said Mrs. Chater; "that is the attitude of
the disappointed idealist, and I am sure you have no reason, really, to
be disappointed in yourself. But I must run away now. Think over all the
things you have to tell me, and don't forget that it is number six." With
a bright smile and a friendly nod she sailed away, a vision of glittering
splendour, compared with which Solomon in all his glory was a mere matter
of commonplace bullion.

The interview, evidently friendly and familiar, between the unknown guest
and the famous American widow had by no means passed unnoticed; and in
other circumstances, Bailey might have endeavoured to profit by the
reflected glory that enveloped him. But he was not in search of
notoriety; and the same evasive instinct that had led him to sink Mr.
Harrington-Baillie in Captain Rowland, now advised him to withdraw his
dual personality from the vulgar gaze. He had come here on very definite
business. For the hundredth time he was "stony-broke," and it was the
hope of picking up some "unconsidered trifles" that had brought him. But,
somehow, the atmosphere of the place had proved unfavourable. Either
opportunities were lacking or he failed to seize them. In any case, the
game pocket that formed an unconventional feature of his dress-coat was
still empty, and it looked as if a pleasant evening and a good supper
were all that he was likely to get. Nevertheless, be his conduct never so
blameless, the fact remained that he was an uninvited guest, liable at
any moment to be ejected as an impostor, and his recognition by the widow
had not rendered this possibility any the more remote.

He strayed out onto the lawn, whence the grounds fell away on all sides.
But there were other guests there, cooling themselves after the last
dance, and the light from the rooms streamed through the windows,
illuminating their figures, and among them, that of the too-companionable
Granby. Augustus quickly drew away from the lighted area, and, chancing
upon a narrow path, strolled away along it in the direction of a copse or
shrubbery that he saw ahead. Presently he came to an ivy-covered arch,
lighted by one or two fairy lamps, and, passing through this, he entered
a winding path, bordered by trees and shrubs and but faintly lighted by
an occasional coloured lamp suspended from a branch.

Already he was quite clear of the crowd; indeed, the deserted condition
of the pleasant retreat rather surprised him, until he reflected that to
couples desiring seclusion there were whole ranges of untenanted rooms
and galleries available in the empty house.

The path sloped gently downwards for some distance; then came a long
flight of rustic steps and, at the bottom, a seat between two trees. In
front of the seat the path extended in a straight line, forming a narrow
terrace; on the right the ground sloped up steeply towards the lawn; on
the left it fell away still more steeply towards the encompassing wall of
the grounds; and on both sides it was covered with trees and shrubs.

Bailey sat down on the seat to think over the account of himself that he
should present to Mrs. Chater. It was a comfortable seat, built into the
trunk of an elm, which formed one end and part of the back. He leaned
against the tree, and, taking out his silver case, selected a cigarette.
But it remained unlighted between his fingers as he sat and meditated
upon his unsatisfactory past and the melancholy tale of what might have
been. Fresh from the atmosphere of refined opulence that pervaded the
dancing-rooms, the throng of well-groomed men and dainty women, his mind
travelled back to his sordid little flat in Bermondsey, encompassed by
poverty and squalor, jostled by lofty factories, grimy with the smoke of
the river and the reek from the great chimneys. It was a hideous
contrast. Verily the way of the transgressor was not strewn with flowers.

At that point in his meditations he caught the sound of voices and
footsteps on the path above and rose to walk on along the path. He did
not wish to be seen wandering alone in the shrubbery. But now a woman's
laugh sounded from somewhere down the path. There were people approaching
that way too. He put the cigarette back in the case and stepped round
behind the seat, intending to retreat in that direction, but here the
path ended, and beyond was nothing but a rugged slope down to the wall
thickly covered with bushes. And while he was hesitating, the sound of
feet descending the steps and the rustle of a woman's dress left him to
choose between staying where he was or coming out to confront the
new-comers. He chose the former, drawing up close behind the tree to wait
until they should have passed on.

But they were not going to pass on. One of them--a woman--sat down on
the seat, and then a familiar voice smote on his ear.

"I guess I'll rest here quietly for a while; this tooth of mine is aching
terribly; and, see here, I want you to go and fetch me something. Take
this ticket to the cloak-room and tell the woman to give you my little
velvet bag. You'll find in it a bottle of chloroform and a packet of
cotton-wool."

"But I can't leave you here all alone, Mrs. Chater," her partner
expostulated.

"I'm not hankering for society just now," said Mrs. Chater. "I want that
chloroform. Just you hustle off and fetch it, like a good boy. Here's the
ticket."

The young officer's footsteps retreated rapidly, and the voices of the
couple advancing along the path grew louder. Bailey, cursing the chance
that had placed him in his ridiculous and uncomfortable position, heard
them approach and pass on up the steps; and then all was silent, save for
an occasional moan from Mrs. Chater and the measured creaking of the seat
as she rocked uneasily to and fro. But the young man was uncommonly
prompt in the discharge of his mission, and in a very few minutes Bailey
heard him approaching at a run along the path above and then bounding
down the steps.

"Now I call that real good of you," said the widow gratefully. "You must
have run like the wind. Cut the string of the packet and then leave me to
wrestle with this tooth."

"But I can't leave you here all--"

"Yes, you can," interrupted Mrs. Chater. "There won't be any one about--the
next dance is a waltz. Besides, you must go and find your partners."

"Well, if you'd really rather be alone," the subaltern began; but Mrs.
Chater interrupted him.

"Of course I would, when I'm fixing up my teeth. Now go along, and a
thousand thanks for your kindness."

With mumbled protestations the young officer slowly retired, and Bailey
heard his reluctant feet ascending the steps. Then a deep silence fell on
the place in which the rustle of paper and the squeak of a withdrawn cork
seemed loud and palpable. Bailey had turned with his face towards the
tree, against which he leaned with his lips parted scarcely daring to
breathe. He cursed himself again and again for having thus entrapped
himself for no tangible reason, and longed to get away. But there was no
escape now without betraying himself. He must wait for the woman to go.

Suddenly, beyond the edge of the tree, a hand appeared holding an open
packet of cotton-wool. It laid the wool down on the seat, and, pinching
off a fragment, rolled it into a tiny ball. The fingers of the hand were
encircled by rings, its wrist enclosed by a broad bracelet; and from
rings and bracelet the light of the solitary fairy-lamp, that hung from a
branch of the tree, was reflected in prismatic sparks. The hand was
withdrawn and Bailey stared dreamily at the square pad of cotton-wool.
Then the hand came again into view. This time it held a small phial which
it laid softly on the seat, setting the cork beside it. And again the
light flashed in many-coloured scintillations from the encrusting gems.

Bailey's knees began to tremble, and a chilly moisture broke out upon his
forehead.

The hand drew back, but, as it vanished, Bailey moved his head silently
until his face emerged from behind the tree. The woman was leaning back,
her head resting against the trunk only a few inches away from his face.
The great stones of the tiara flashed in his very eyes. Over her
shoulder, he could even see the gorgeous pendant, rising and falling on
her bosom with ever-changing fires; and both her raised hands were a mass
of glitter and sparkle, only the deeper and richer for the subdued light.

His heart throbbed with palpable blows that drummed aloud in his ears.
The sweat trickled clammily down his face, and he clenched his teeth to
keep them from chattering. An agony of horror--of deadly fear--was
creeping over him? a terror of the dreadful impulse that was stealing
away his reason and his will.

The silence was profound. The woman's soft breathing, the creak of her
bodice, were plainly--grossly--audible; and he checked his own breath
until he seemed on the verge of suffocation.

Of a sudden through the night air was borne faintly the dreamy music of a
waltz. The dance had begun. The distant sound but deepened the sense of
solitude in this deserted spot.

Bailey listened intently. He yearned to escape from the invisible force
that seemed to be clutching at his wrists, and dragging him forward
inexorably to his doom.

He gazed down at the woman with a horrid fascination. He struggled to
draw back out of sight--and struggled in vain.

Then, at last, with a horrible, stealthy deliberation, a clammy, shaking
hand crept forward towards the seat. Without a sound it grasped the wool,
and noiselessly, slowly drew back. Again it stole forth. The fingers
twined snakily around the phial, lifted it from the seat and carried it
back into the shadow.

After a few seconds it reappeared and softly replaced the bottle--now
half empty. There was a brief pause. The measured cadences of the waltz
stole softly through the quiet night and seemed to keep time with the
woman's breathing. Other sound there was none. The place was wrapped in
the silence of the grave.

Suddenly, from the hiding-place, Bailey leaned forward over the back of
the seat. The pad of cotton-wool was in his hand.

The woman was now leaning back as if dozing, and her hands rested in her
lap. There was a swift movement. The pad was pressed against her face and
her head dragged back against the chest of the invisible assailant. A
smothered gasp burst from her hidden lips as her hands flew up to clutch
at the murderous arm; and then came a frightful struggle, made even more
frightful by the gay and costly trappings of the writhing victim. And
still there was hardly a sound; only muffled gasps, the rustle of silk,
the creaking of the seat, the clink of the falling bottle and, afar off,
with dreadful irony, the dreamy murmur of the waltz.

The struggle was but brief. Quite suddenly the jewelled hands dropped,
the head lay resistless on the crumpled shirt-front, and the body, now
limp and inert, began to slip forward off the seat. Bailey, still
grasping the passive head, climbed over the back of the seat and, as the
woman slid gently to the ground, he drew away the pad and stooped over
her. The struggle was over now; the mad fury of the moment was passing
swiftly into the chill of mortal fear.

He stared with incredulous horror into the swollen face, but now so
comely, the sightless eyes that but a little while since had smiled into
his with such kindly recognition.

He had done this! He, the sneaking wastrel, discarded of all the world,
to whom this sweet woman had held out the hand of friendship. She had
cherished his memory, when to all others he was sunk deep under the
waters of oblivion. And he had killed her--for to his ear no breath of
life seemed to issue from those purple lips.

A sudden hideous compunction for this irrevocable thing that he had done
surged through him, and he stood up clutching at his damp hair with a
hoarse cry that was like the cry of the damned.

The jewels passed straightaway out of his consciousness. Everything was
forgotten now but the horror of this unspeakable thing that he had done.
Remorse incurable and haunting fear were all that were left to him.

The sound of voices far away along the path aroused him, and the vague
horror that possessed him materialized into abject bodily fear. He lifted
the limp body to the edge of the path and let it slip down the steep
declivity among the bushes. A soft, shuddering sigh came from the parted
lips as the body turned over, and he paused a moment to listen. But there
was no other sound of life. Doubtless that sigh was only the result of
the passive movement.

Again he stood for an instant as one in a dream, gazing at the huddled
shape half hidden by the bushes, before he climbed back to the path; and
even then he looked back once more, but now she was hidden from sight.
And, as the voices drew nearer, he turned, and ran up the rustic steps.

As he came out on the edge of the lawn the music ceased, and, almost
immediately, a stream of people issued from the house. Shaken as he was,
Bailey yet had wits enough left to know that his clothes and hair were
disordered and that his appearance must be wild. Accordingly he avoided
the dancers, and, keeping to the margin of the lawn, made his way to the
cloak-room by the least frequented route. If he had dared, he would have
called in at the refreshment-room, for he was deadly faint and his limbs
shook as he walked. But a haunting fear pursued him and, indeed, grew
from moment to moment. He found himself already listening for the rumour
of the inevitable discovery.

He staggered into the cloak-room, and, flinging his ticket down on the
table, dragged out his watch. The attendant looked at him curiously and,
pausing with the ticket in his hand, asked sympathetically: "Not feeling
very well, sir?"

"No," said Bailey. "So beastly hot in there."

"You ought to have a glass of champagne, sir, before you start," said the
man.

"No time," replied Bailey, holding out a shaky hand for his coat. "Shall
lose my train if I'm not sharp."

At this hint the attendant reached down the coat and hat, holding up the
former for its owner to slip his arms into the sleeves. But Bailey
snatched it from him, and, flinging it over his arm, put on his hat and
hurried away to the coachhouse. Here, again, the attendant stared at him
in astonishment, which was not lessened when Bailey, declining his offer
to help him on with his coat, bundled the latter under his arm, clicked
the lever of the "variable" on to the ninety gear, sprang onto the
machine and whirled away down the steep drive, a grotesque vision of
flying coat-tails.

"You haven't lit your lamp, sir," roared the attendant; but Bailey's ears
were deaf to all save the clamour of the expected pursuit.

Fortunately the drive entered the road obliquely, or Bailey must have
been flung into the opposite hedge. As it was, the machine, rushing down
the slope, flew out into the road with terrific velocity; nor did its
speed diminish then, for its rider, impelled by mortal terror, trod the
pedals with the fury of a madman. And still, as the machine whizzed along
the dark and silent road, his ears were strained to catch the clatter of
hoofs or the throb of a motor from behind.

He knew the country well, in fact, as a precaution, he had cycled over
the district only the day before; and he was ready, at any suspicious
sound, to slip down any of the lanes or byways, secure of finding his
way. But still he sped on, and still no sound from the rear came to tell
him of the dread discovery.

When he had ridden about three miles, he came to the foot of a steep
hill. Here he had to dismount and push his machine up the incline, which
he did at such speed that he arrived at the top quite breathless. Before
mounting again he determined to put on his coat, for his appearance was
calculated to attract attention, if nothing more. It was only half-past
eleven, and presently he would pass through the streets of a small town.
Also he would light his lamp. It would be fatal to be stopped by a patrol
or rural constable.

Having lit his lamp and hastily put on his coat he once more listened
intently, looking back over the country that was darkly visible from the
summit of the hill. No moving lights were to be seen, no ringing hoofs or
throbbing engines to be heard, and, turning to mount, he instinctively
felt in his overcoat pocket for his gloves.

A pair of gloves came out in his hand, but he was instantly conscious
that they were not his. A silk muffler was there also; a white one. But
his muffler was black.

With a sudden shock of terror he thrust his hand into the ticket-pocket,
where he had put his latch-key. There was no key there; only an amber
cigar-holder, which he had never seen before. He stood for a few moments
in utter consternation. He had taken the wrong coat. Then he had left his
own coat behind. A cold sweat of fear broke out afresh on his face as he
realized this. His Yale latch-key was in its pocket; not that that
mattered very much. He had a duplicate at home, and, as to getting in,
well, he knew his own outside door and his tool-bag contained one or two
trifles not usually found in cyclists' tool-bags. The question was
whether that coat contained anything that could disclose his identity.
And then suddenly he remembered, with a gasp of relief, that he had
carefully turned the pockets out before starting.

No; once let him attain the sanctuary of his grimy little flat, wedged in
as it was between the great factories by the river-side, and he would be
safe: safe from everything but the horror of himself, and the haunting
vision of a jewelled figure huddled up in a silken heap beneath the
bushes.

With a last look round he mounted his machine, and, driving it over the
brow of the hill, swept away into the darkness.


PART II. MUNERA PULVERIS


(Related by Christopher Jervis, M.D.)

It is one of the drawbacks of medicine as a profession that one is never
rid of one's responsibilities. The merchant, the lawyer, the civil
servant, each at the appointed time locks up his desk, puts on his hat
and goes forth a free man with an interval of uninterrupted leisure
before him. Not so the doctor. Whether at work or at play, awake or
asleep, he is the servant of humanity, at the instant disposal of friend
or stranger alike whose need may make the necessary claim.

When I agreed to accompany my wife to the spinsters' dance at Raynesford,
I imagined that, for that evening, at least, I was definitely off duty;
and in that belief I continued until the conclusion of the eighth dance.
To be quite truthful, I was not sorry when the delusion was shattered. My
last partner was a young lady of a slanginess of speech that verged on
the inarticulate. Now it is not easy to exchange ideas in "pidgin"
English; and the conversation of a person to whom all things are either
"ripping" or "rotten" is apt to lack subtlety. In fact, I was frankly
bored; and, reflecting on the utility of the humble sandwich as an aid to
conversation, I was about to entice my partner to the refreshment-room
when I felt some one pluck at my sleeve. I turned quickly and looked into
the anxious and rather frightened face of my wife.

"Miss Halliwell is looking for you," she said. "A lady has been taken
ill. Will you come and see what is the matter?" She took my arm and, when
I had made my apologies to my partner, she hurried me on to the lawn.

"It's a mysterious affair," my wife continued. "The sick lady is a Mrs.
Chater, a very wealthy American widow. Edith Halliwell and Major Podbury
found her lying in the shrubbery all alone and unable to give any account
of herself. Poor Edith is dreadfully upset. She doesn't know what to
think."

"What do you mean?" I began; but at this moment Miss Halliwell, who was
waiting by an ivy-covered rustic arch, espied us and ran forward.

"Oh, do hurry, please, Dr. Jervis," she exclaimed; "such a shocking thing
has happened. Has Juliet told you?" Without waiting for an answer, she
darted through the arch and preceded us along a narrow path at the
curious, flat-footed, shambling trot common to most adult women.
Presently we descended a flight of rustic steps which brought us to a
seat, from whence extended a straight path cut like a miniature terrace
on a steep slope, with a high bank rising to the right and declivity
falling away to the left. Down in the hollow, his head and shoulders
appearing above the bushes, was a man holding in his hand a fairy-lamp
that he had apparently taken down from a tree. I climbed down to him,
and, as I came round the bushes, I perceived a richly-dressed woman lying
huddled on the ground. She was not completely insensible, for she moved
slightly at my approach, muttering a few words in thick, indistinct
accents. I took the lamp from the man, whom I assumed to be Major
Podbury, and, as he delivered it to me with a significant glance and a
faint lift of the eyebrows, I understood Miss Halliwell's agitation.
Indeed, for one horrible moment I thought that she was right--that the
prostrate woman was intoxicated. But when I approached nearer, the
flickering light of the lamp made visible a square reddened patch on her
face, like the impression of a mustard plaster, covering the nose and
mouth; and then I scented mischief of a more serious kind.

"We had better carry her up to the seat," I said, handing the lamp to
Miss Halliwell. "Then we can consider moving her to the house." The major
and I lifted the helpless woman and, having climbed cautiously up to the
path, laid her on the seat.

"What is it, Dr. Jervis?" Miss Halliwell whispered.

"I can't say at the moment," I replied; "but it's not what you feared."

"Thank God for that!" was her fervent rejoinder. "It would have been a
shocking scandal."

I took the dim lamp and once more bent over the half-conscious woman.

Her appearance puzzled me not a little. She looked like a person
recovering from an anaesthetic, but the square red patch on her face,
recalling, as it did, the Burke murders, rather suggested suffocation. As
I was thus reflecting, the light of the lamp fell on a white object lying
on the ground behind the seat, and holding the lamp forward, I saw that
it was a square pad of cotton-wool. The coincidence of its shape and size
with that of the red patch on the woman's face instantly struck me, and I
stooped down to pick it up; and then I saw, lying under the seat, a small
bottle. This also I picked up and held in the lamplight. It was a
one-ounce phial, quite empty, and was labelled "Methylated Chloroform."
Here seemed to be a complete explanation of the thick utterance and
drunken aspect; but it was an explanation that required, in its turn, to
be explained. Obviously no robbery had been committed, for the woman
literally glittered with diamonds. Equally obviously she had not
administered the chloroform to herself.

There was nothing for it but to carry her indoors and await her further
recovery, so, with the major's help, we conveyed her through the
shrubbery and kitchen garden to a side door, and deposited her on a sofa
in a half-furnished room.

Here, under the influence of water dabbed on her face and the plentiful
use of smelling salts', she quickly revived, and was soon able to give an
intelligible account of herself.

The chloroform and cotton-wool were her own. She had used them for an
aching tooth; and she was sitting alone on the seat with the bottle and
the wool beside her when the incomprehensible thing had happened. Without
a moment's warning a hand had come from behind her and pressed the pad of
wool over her nose and mouth. The wool was saturated with chloroform, and
she had lost consciousness almost immediately.

"You didn't see the person, then?" I asked.

"No, but I know he was in evening dress, because I felt my head against
his shirt-front."

"Then," said I, "he is either here still or he has been to the
cloak-room. He couldn't have left the place without an overcoat."

"No, by Jove!" exclaimed the major; "that's true. I'll go and make
inquiries." He strode away all agog, and I, having satisfied myself that
Mrs. Chater could be left safely, followed him almost immediately.

I made my way straight to the cloak-room, and here I found the major and
one or two of his brother officers putting on their coats in a flutter of
gleeful excitement.

"He's gone," said Podbury, struggling frantically into his overcoat;
"went off nearly an hour ago on a bicycle. Seemed in a deuce of a stew,
the attendant says, and no wonder. We're goin' after him in our car. Care
to join the hunt?"

"No, thanks. I must stay with the patient. But how do you know you're
after the right man?"

"Isn't any other. Only one Johnnie's left. Besides--here, confound it!
you've given me the wrong coat!" He tore off the garment and handed it
back to the attendant, who regarded it with an expression of dismay.

"Are you sure, sir?" he asked.

"Perfectly," said the major. "Come, hurry up, my man."

"I'm afraid, sir," said the attendant, "that the gentleman who has gone
has taken your coat. They were on the same peg, I know. I am very sorry,
sir."

The major was speechless with wrath. What the devil was the good of being
sorry; and how the deuce was he to get his coat back--

"But," I interposed, "if the stranger has got your coat, then this coat
must be his."

"I know," said Podbury; "but I don't want his beastly coat."

"No," I replied, "but it may be useful for identification."

This appeared to afford the bereaved officer little consolation, but as
the car was now ready, he bustled away, and I, having directed the man to
put the coat away in a safe place, went back to my patient.

Mrs. Chater was by now fairly recovered, and had developed a highly
vindictive interest in her late assailant. She even went so far as to
regret that he had not taken at least some of her diamonds, so that
robbery might have been added to the charge of attempted murder, and
expressed the earnest hope that the officers would not be foolishly
gentle in their treatment of him when they caught him.

"By the way, Dr. Jervis," said Miss Halliwell, "I think I ought to
mention a rather curious thing that happened in connection with this
dance. We received an acceptance from a Mr. Harrington-Baillie, who wrote
from the Hotel Cecil. Now I am certain that no such name was proposed by
any of the spinsters."

"But didn't you ask them?" I inquired.

"Well, the fact is," she replied, "that one of them, Miss Waters, had to
go abroad suddenly, and we had not got her address; and as it was
possible that she might have invited him, I did not like to move in the
matter. I am very sorry I didn't now. We may have let in a regular
criminal--though why he should have wanted to murder Mrs. Chater I cannot
imagine."

It was certainly a mysterious affair, and the mystery was in no wise
dispelled by the return of the search party an hour later. It seemed that
the bicycle had been tracked for a couple of miles towards London, but
then, at the cross-roads, the tracks had become hopelessly mixed with the
impressions of other machines and the officers, after cruising about
vaguely for a while, had given up the hunt and returned.

"You see, Mrs. Chater," Major Podbury explained apologetically, "the
fellow must have had a good hour's start, and that would have brought him
pretty close to London."

"Do you mean to tell me," exclaimed Mrs. Chater, regarding the major with
hardly-concealed contempt, "that that villain has got off scot-free?"

"Looks rather like it," replied Podbury, "but if I were you I should get
the man's description from the attendants who saw him and go up to
Scotland Yard to-morrow. They may know the Johnny there, and they may
even recognize the coat if you take it with you."

"That doesn't seem very likely," said Mrs. Chater, and it certainly did
not; but since no better plan could be suggested the lady decided to
adopt it; and I supposed that I had heard the last of the matter.

In this, however, I was mistaken. On the following day, just before noon,
as I was drowsily considering the points in a brief dealing with a
question of survivorship, while Thorndyke drafted his weekly lecture, a
smart rat-tat at the door of our chambers announced a visitor. I rose
wearily--I had had only four hours' sleep--and opened the door,
whereupon there sailed into the room no less a person than Mrs. Chater,
followed by Superintendent Miller, with a grin on his face and a
brown-paper parcel under his arm.

The lady was not in the best of tempers, though wonderfully lively and
alert considering the severe shock that she had suffered so recently, and
her disapproval of Miller was frankly obvious.

"Dr. Jervis has probably told you about the attempt to murder me last
night," she said, when I had introduced her to my colleague. "Well, now,
will you believe it? I have been to the police, I have given them a
description of the murderous villain, and I have even shown them the very
coat that he wore, and they tell me that nothing can be done. That, in
short, this scoundrel must be allowed to go his way free and unmolested."

"You will observe, doctor," said Miller, "that this lady has given us a
description that would apply to fifty per cent. of the middle-class men
of the United Kingdom, and has shown us a coat without a single
identifying mark of any kind on it, and expects us to lay our hands on
the owner without a solitary clue to guide us. Now we are not sorcerers
at the Yard; we're only policemen. So I have taken the liberty of
referring Mrs. Chater to you." He grinned maliciously and laid the parcel
on the table.

"And what do you want me to do?" Thorndyke asked quietly.

"Why sir," said Miller, "there is a coat. In the pockets were a pair of
gloves, a muffler, a box of matches, a tram-ticket and a Yale key. Mrs.
Chater would like to know whose coat it is." He untied the parcel with
his eye cocked at our rather disconcerted client, and Thorndyke watched
him with a faint smile.

"This is very kind of you, Miller," said he, "but I think a clairvoyant
would be more to your purpose."

The superintendent instantly dropped his facetious manner.

"Seriously, sir," he said, "I should be glad if you would take a look at
the coat. We have absolutely nothing to go on, and yet we don't want to
give up the case. I have gone through it most thoroughly and can't find
any clue to guide us. Now I know that nothing escapes you, and perhaps
you might notice something that I have overlooked; something that would
give us a hint where to start on, our inquiry. Couldn't you turn the
microscope on it, for instance?" he added, with a deprecating smile.

Thorndyke reflected, with an inquisitive eye on the coat. I saw that the
problem was not without its attractions to him; and when the lady
seconded Miller's request with persuasive eagerness, the inevitable
consequence followed.

"Very well," he said. "Leave the coat with me for an hour or so and I
will look it over. I am afraid there is not the remotest chance of our
learning anything from it, but even so, the examination will have done no
harm. Come back at two o'clock; I shall be ready to report my failure by
then."

He bowed our visitors out and, returning to the table, looked down with a
quizzical smile on the coat and the large official envelope containing
articles from the pockets.

"And what does my learned brother suggest?" he asked, looking up at me.

"I should look at the tram-ticket first," I replied, "and then--well,
Miller's suggestion wasn't such a bad one; to explore the surface with
the microscope."

"I think we will take the latter measure first," said he. "The
tram-ticket might create a misleading bias. A man may take a tram
anywhere, whereas the indoor dust on a man's coat appertains mostly to a
definite locality."

"Yes," I replied; "but the information that it yields is excessively
vague."

"That is true," he agreed, taking up the coat and envelope to carry them
to the laboratory, "and yet, you know, Jervis, as I have often pointed
out, the evidential value of dust is apt to be under-estimated. The
naked-eye appearances? which are the normal appearances--are misleading.
Gather the dust, say, from a table-top, and what have you? A fine powder
of a characterless grey, just like any other dust from any other
table-top. But, under the microscope, this grey powder is resolved into
recognizable fragments of definite substances, which fragments may often
be traced with certainty to the masses from which they have been
detached. But you know all this as well as I do."

"I quite appreciate the value of dust as evidence in certain
circumstances," I replied, "but surely the information that could be
gathered from dust on the coat of an unknown man must be too general to
be of any use in tracing the owner."

"I am afraid you are right," said Thorndyke, laying the coat on the
laboratory bench; "but we shall soon see, if Polton will let us have his
patent dust-extractor."

The little apparatus to which my colleague referred was the invention of
our ingenious laboratory assistant, and resembled in principle the
"vacuum cleaners" used for restoring carpets. It had, however, one
special feature: the receiver was made to admit a microscope-slide, and
on this the dust-laden air was delivered from a jet.

The "extractor" having been clamped to the bench by its proud inventor,
and a wetted slide introduced into the receiver, Thorndyke applied the
nozzle of the instrument to the collar of the coat while Polton worked
the pump. The slide was then removed and, another having been
substituted, the nozzle was applied to the right sleeve near the
shoulder, and the exhauster again worked by Polton. By repeating this
process, half-a-dozen slides were obtained charged with dust from
different parts of the garment, and then, setting up our respective
microscopes, we proceeded to examine the samples.

A very brief inspection showed me that this dust contained matter not
usually met with--at any rate, in appreciable quantities. There were, of
course, the usual fragments of wool, cotton and other fibres derived from
clothing and furniture, particles of straw, husk, hair, various mineral
particles and, in fact, the ordinary constituents of dust from clothing.
But, in addition to these, and in much greater quantity, were a number of
other bodies, mostly of vegetable origin and presenting well-defined
characters in considerable variety, and especially abundant were various
starch granules.

I glanced at Thorndyke and observed he was already busy with a pencil and
a slip of paper, apparently making a list of the objects visible in the
field of the microscope. I hastened to follow his example, and for a time
we worked on in silence. At length my colleague leaned back in his chair
and read over his list.

"This is a highly interesting collection, Jervis," he remarked. "What do
you find on your slides out of the ordinary?"

"I have quite a little museum here," I replied, referring to my list.
"There is, of course, chalk from the road at Raynesford. In addition to
this I find various starches, principally wheat and rice, especially
rice, fragments of the cortices of several seeds, several different
stone-cells, some yellow masses that look like turmeric, black pepper
resin-cells, one 'port wine' pimento cell, and one or two particles of
graphite."

"Graphite!" exclaimed Thorndyke. "I have found no graphite, but I have
found traces of cocoa--spiral vessels and starch grains--and of hops--one
fragment of leaf and several lupulin glands. May I see the graphite?"

I passed him the slide and he examined it with keen interest. "Yes," he
said, "this is undoubtedly graphite, and no less than six particles of
it. We had better go over the coat systematically. You see the importance
of this?"

"I see that this is evidently factory dust and that it may fix a
locality, but I don't see that it will carry us any farther."

"Don't forget that we have a touchstone," said he; and, as I raised my
eyebrows inquiringly, he added, "The Yale latchkey. If we can narrow the
locality down sufficiently, Miller can make a tour of the front doors."

"But can we?" I asked incredulously. "I doubt it."

"We can try," answered Thorndyke. "Evidently some of the substances are
distributed over the entire coat, inside and out, while others, such as
the graphite, are present only on certain parts. We must locate those
parts exactly and then consider what this special distribution means." He
rapidly sketched out on a sheet of paper a rough diagram of the coat,
marking each part with a distinctive letter, and then, taking a number of
labelled slides, he wrote a single letter on each. The samples of
dust taken on the slides could thus be easily referred to the exact
spots whence they had been obtained.

Once more we set to work with the microscope, making, now and again, an
addition to our lists of discoveries, and, at the end of nearly an hour's
strenuous search, every slide had been examined and the lists compared.

"The net result of the examination," said Thorndyke, "is this. The entire
coat, inside and out, is evenly powdered with the following substances:
Rice-starch in abundance, wheat-starch in less abundance, and smaller
quantities of the starches of ginger, pimento and cinnamon; bast fibre of
cinnamon, various seed cortices, stone-cells of pimento, cinnamon, cassia
and black pepper, with other fragments of similar origin, such as
resin-cells and ginger pigment--not turmeric. In addition there are, on
the right shoulder and sleeve, traces of cocoa and hops, and on the back
below the shoulders a few fragments of graphite. Those are the data; and
now, what are the inferences? Remember this is not mere surface dust, but
the accumulation of months, beaten into the cloth by repeated brushing--dust
that nothing but a vacuum apparatus could extract."

"Evidently," I said, "the particles that are all over the coat represent
dust that is floating in the air of the place where the coat habitually
hangs. The graphite has obviously been picked up from a seat and the
cocoa and hops from some factories that the man passes frequently, though
I don't see why they are on the right side only."

"That is a question of time," said Thorndyke, "and incidentally throws
some light on our friend's habits. Going from home, he passes the
factories on his right; returning home, he passes them on his left, but
they have then stopped work. However, the first group of substances is
the more important as they indicate the locality of his dwelling--for he
is clearly not a workman or factory employee. Now rice-starch,
wheat-starch and a group of substances collectively designated 'spices'
suggest a rice-mill, a flour-mill and a spice factory. Polton, may I
trouble you for the Post Office Directory?"

He turned over the leaves of the "Trades" section and resumed: "I see
there are four rice-mills in London, of which the largest is Carbutt's at
Dockhead. Let us look at the spice-factories." He again turned over the
leaves and read down the list of names. "There are six spice-grinders in
London," said he. "One of them, Thomas Williams & Co., is at Dockhead.
None of the others is near any rice-mill. The next question is as to the
flour-mill. Let us see. Here are the names of several flour millers, but
none of them is near either a rice-mill or a spice-grinder, with one
exception: Seth Taylor's, St. Saviour's Flour Mills, Dockhead."

"This is really becoming interesting," said I.

"It has become interesting," Thorndyke retorted. "You observe that at
Dockhead we find the peculiar combination of factories necessary to
produce the composite dust in which this coat has hung; and the directory
shows us that this particular combination exists nowhere else in London.
Then the graphite, the cocoa and the hops tend to confirm the other
suggestions. They all appertain to industries of the locality. The trams
which pass Dockhead, also, to my knowledge, pass at no great distance
from the black-lead works of Pearce Duff & Co. in Rouel Road, and will
probably collect a few particles of black-lead on the seats in certain
states of the wind. I see, too, that there is a cocoa factory--Payne's--in
Goat Street, Horsleydown, which lies to the right of the tram line
going west, and I have noticed several hop warehouses on the right side
of Southwark Street, going west. But these are mere suggestions; the
really important data are the rice and flour mills and the
spice-grinders, which seem to point unmistakably to Dockhead."

"Are there any private houses at Dockhead?" I asked.

"We must look up the 'Street' list," he replied. "The Yale latch-key
rather suggests a flat, and a flat with a single occupant, and the
probable habits of our absent friend offer a similar suggestion." He ran
his eye down the list and presently turned to me with his finger on the
page.

"If the facts that we have elicited--the singular series of agreements
with the required conditions--are only a string of coincidences, here is
another. On the south side of Dockhead, actually next door to the
spice-grinders and opposite to Carbutt's rice-mills, is a block of
workmen's flats, Hanover Buildings. They fulfil the conditions exactly. A
coat hung in a room in those flats, with the windows open (as they would
probably be at this time of year), would be exposed to the air containing
a composite dust of precisely the character of that which we have found.
Of course, the same conditions obtain in other dwellings in this part of
Dockhead, but the probability is in favour of the buildings. And that is
all that we can say. It is no certainty. There may be some radical
fallacy in our reasoning. But, on the face of it, the chances are a
thousand to one that the door that that key will open is in some part of
Dockhead, and most probably in Hanover Buildings. We must leave the
verification to Miller."

"Wouldn't it be as well to look at the tram-ticket?" I asked.

"Dear me!" he exclaimed. "I had forgotten the ticket. Yes, by all means."
He opened the envelope and, turning its contents out on the bench, picked
up the dingy slip of paper. After a glance at it he handed it to me. It
was punched for the journey from Tooley Street to Dockhead.

"Another coincidence," he remarked; "and by yet another, I think I hear
Miller knocking at our door."

It was the superintendent, and, as we let him into the room, the hum of a
motor-car entering from Tudor Street announced the arrival of Mrs.
Chater. We waited for her at the open door, and, as she entered, she held
out her hands impulsively.

"Say, now, Dr. Thorndyke," she exclaimed, "have you gotten something to
tell us?"

"I have a suggestion to make," replied Thorndyke. "I think that if the
superintendent will take this key to Hanover Buildings, Dockhead,
Bermondsey, he may possibly find a door that it will fit."

"The deuce!" exclaimed Miller. "I beg your pardon, madam; but I thought I
had gone through that coat pretty completely. What was it that I had
overlooked, sir? Was there a letter hidden in it, after all?"

"You overlooked the dust on it, Miller; that is all," said Thorndyke.

"Dust!" exclaimed the detective, staring round-eyed at my colleague. Then
he chuckled softly. "Well," said he, "as I said before, I'm not a
sorcerer; I'm only a policeman." He picked up the key and asked: "Are you
coming to see the end of it, sir?"

"Of course he is coming," said Mrs. Chater, "and Dr. Jervis too, to
identify the man. Now that we have gotten the villain we must leave him
no loophole for escape."

Thorndyke smiled dryly. "We will come if you wish it, Mrs. Chater," he
said, "but you mustn't look upon our quest as a certainty. We may have
made an entire miscalculation, and I am, in fact, rather curious to see
if the result works out correctly. But even if we run the man to earth, I
don't see that you have much evidence against him. The most that you can
prove is that he was at the house and that he left hurriedly."

Mrs. Chater regarded my colleague for a moment in scornful silence, and
then, gathering up her skirts, stalked out of the room. If there is one
thing that the average woman detests more than another, it is an entirely
reasonable man.

The big car whirled us rapidly over Blackfriars Bridge into the region of
the Borough, whence we presently turned down Tooley Street towards
Bermondsey.

As soon as Dockhead came into view, the detective, Thorndyke and I,
alighted and proceeded on foot, leaving our client, who was now closely
veiled, to follow at a little distance in the car. Opposite the head of
St. Saviour's Dock, Thorndyke halted and, looking over the wall, drew my
attention to the snowy powder that had lodged on every projection on the
backs of the tall buildings and on the decks of the barges that were
loading with the flour and ground rice. Then, crossing the road, he
pointed to the wooden lantern above the roof of the spice works, the
louvres of which were covered with greyish-buff dust.

"Thus," he moralized, "does commerce subserve the ends of justice--at
least, we hope it does," he added quickly, as Miller disappeared into the
semi-basement of the buildings.

We met the detective returning from his quest as we entered the building.

"No go there," was his report. "We'll try the next floor."

This was the ground-floor, or it might be considered the first floor. At
any rate, it yielded nothing of interest, and, after a glance at the
doors that opened on the landing, he strode briskly up the stone stairs.
The next floor was equally unrewarding, for our eager inspection
disclosed nothing but the gaping keyhole associated with the common type
of night-latch.

"What name was you wanting?" inquired a dusty knight of industry who
emerged from one of the flats.

"Muggs," replied Miller, with admirable promptness.

"Don't know 'im," said the workman. "I expect it's farther up."

Farther up we accordingly went, but still from each door the artless grin
of the invariable keyhole saluted us with depressing monotony. I began to
grow uneasy, and when the fourth floor had been explored with no better
result, my anxiety became acute. A mare's nest may be an interesting
curiosity, but it brings no kudos to its discoverer.

"I suppose you haven't made any mistake, sir?" said Miller, stopping to
wipe his brow.

"It's quite likely that I have." replied Thorndyke, with unmoved
composure. "I only proposed this search as a tentative proceeding, you
know."

The superintendent grunted. He was accustomed--as was I too, for that
matter--to regard Thorndyke's "tentative suggestions" as equal to
another man's certainties.

"It will be an awful suck-in for Mrs. Chater if we don't find him after
all," he growled as we climbed up the last flight. "She's counted her
chickens to a feather." He paused at the head of the stairs and stood for
a few moments looking round the landing. Suddenly he turned eagerly, and,
laying his hand on Thorndyke's arm, pointed to a door in the farthest
corner.

"Yale lock!" he whispered impressively.

We followed him silently as he stole on tip-toe across the landing, and
watched him as he stood for an instant with the key in his land looking
gloatingly at the brass disc. We saw him softly apply the nose of the
fluted key-blade to the crooked slit in the cylinder, and, as we watched,
it slid noiselessly up to the shoulder. The detective looked round with a
grin of triumph, and, silently withdrawing the key, stepped back to us.

"You've run him to earth, sir," he whispered, "but I don't think Mr. Fox
is at home. He can't have got back yet."

"Why not?" asked Thorndyke.

Miller waved his hand towards the door. "Nothing has been disturbed," he
replied. "There's not a mark on the paint. Now he hadn't got the key, and
you can't pick a Yale lock. He'd have had to break in, and he hasn't
broken in."

Thorndyke stepped up to the door and softly pushed in the flap of the
letter-slit, through which he looked into the flat.

"There's no letter-box," said he. "My dear Miller, I would undertake to
open that door in five minutes with a foot of wire and a bit of resined
string."

Miller shook his head and grinned once more. "I am glad you're not on the
lay, sir; you'd be one too many for us. Shall we signal to the lady?"

I went out onto the gallery and looked down at the waiting car. Mrs.
Chater was staring intently up at the building, and the little crowd that
the car had collected stared alternately at the lady and at the object of
her regard. I wiped my face with my handkerchief--the signal agreed
upon--and she instantly sprang out of the car, and in an incredibly short
time she appeared on the landing, purple and gasping, but with the fire
of battle flashing from her eyes.

"We've found his flat, madam," said Miller, "and we're going to enter.
You're not intending to offer any violence, I hope," he added, noting
with some uneasiness the lady's ferocious expression.

"Of course I'm not," replied Mrs. Chater. "In the States ladies don't
have to avenge insults themselves. If you were American men you'd hang
the ruffian from his own bedpost."

"We're not American men, madam," said the superintendent stiffly. "We
are law-abiding Englishmen, and, moreover, we are all officers of the
law. These gentlemen are barristers and I am a police officer."

With this preliminary caution, he once more inserted the key, and as he
turned it and pushed the door open, we all followed him into the
sitting-room.

"I told you so, sir," said Miller, softly shutting the door; "he hasn't
come back yet."

Apparently he was right. At any rate, there was no one in the flat, and
we proceeded unopposed on our tour of inspection. It was a miserable
spectacle, and, as we wandered from one squalid room to another, a
feeling of pity for the starving wretch into whose lair we were intruding
stole over me and began almost to mitigate the hideousness of his crime.
On all sides poverty--utter, grinding poverty--stared us in the face.
It looked at us hollow-eyed in the wretched sitting-room, with its bare
floor, its solitary chair and tiny deal table; its unfurnished walls and
windows destitute of blind or curtain. A piece of Dutch cheese-rind on
the table, scraped to the thinness of paper, whispered of starvation; and
famine lurked in the gaping cupboard, in the empty bread-tin, in the
tea-caddy with its pinch of dust at the bottom, in the jam-jar, wiped
clean, as a few crumbs testified, with a crust of bread. There was not
enough food in the place to furnish a meal for a healthy mouse.

The bedroom told the same tale, but with a curious variation. A miserable
truckle-bed with a straw mattress and a cheap jute rug for bed-clothes,
an orange-case, stood on end, for a dressing-table, and another, bearing
a tin washing-bowl, formed the wretched furniture. But the suit that hung
from a couple of nails was well-cut and even fashionable, though shabby;
and another suit lay on the floor, neatly folded and covered with a
newspaper; and, most incongruous of all, a silver cigarette-case reposed
on the dressing-table.

"Why on earth does this fellow starve," I exclaimed, "when he has a
silver case to pawn?"

"Wouldn't do," said Miller. "A man doesn't pawn the implements of his
trade."

Mrs. Chater, who had been staring about her with the mute amazement of a
wealthy woman confronted, for the first time, with abject poverty, turned
suddenly to the superintendent. "This can't be the man!" she exclaimed.
"You have made some mistake. This poor creature could never have made his
way into a house like Willowdale."

Thorndyke lifted the newspaper. Beneath it was a dress suit with the
shirt, collar and tie all carefully smoothed out and folded. Thorndyke
unfolded the shirt and pointed to the curiously crumpled front. Suddenly
he brought it close to his eye and then, from the sham diamond stud, he
drew a single hair--a woman's hair.

"That is rather significant," said he, holding it up between his finger
and thumb; and Mrs. Chater evidently thought so too, for the pity and
compunction suddenly faded from her face, and once more her eyes flashed
with vindictive fire.

"I wish he would come," she exclaimed viciously. "Prison won't be much
hardship to him after this", but I want to see him in the dock all the
same."

"No," the detective agreed, "it won't hurt him much to swap this for
Portland. Listen!"

A key was being inserted into the outer door, and as we all stood like
statues, a man entered and closed the door after him. He passed the door
of the bedroom without seeing us, and with the dragging steps of a weary,
dispirited man. Almost immediately we heard him go to the kitchen and
draw water into some vessel. Then he went back to the sitting-room.

"Come along," said Miller, stepping silently towards the door. We
followed closely, and as he threw the door open, we looked in over his
shoulder.

The man had seated himself at the table, on which now lay a hunk of
household bread resting on the paper in which he had brought it, and a
tumbler of water. He half rose as the door opened, and as if petrified
remained staring at Miller with a dreadful expression of terror upon his
livid face.

At this moment I felt a hand on my arm, and Mrs. Chater brusquely pushed
past me into the room. But at the threshold she stopped short; and a
singular change crept over the man's ghastly face, a change so remarkable
that I looked involuntarily from him to our client. She had turned, in a
moment, deadly pale, and her face had frozen into an expression of
incredulous horror.

The dramatic silence was broken by the matter-of-fact voice of the
detective.

"I am a police officer," said he, "and I arrest you for -?"

A peal of hysterical laughter from Mrs. Chater interrupted him, and he
looked at her in astonishment. "Stop, stop!" she cried in a shaky voice.
"I guess we've made a ridiculous mistake. This isn't the man. This
gentleman is Captain Rowland, an old friend of mine."

"I'm sorry he's a friend of yours," said Miller, "because I shall have to
ask you to appear against him."

"You can ask what you please," replied Mrs. Chater. "I tell you he's not
the man."

The superintendent rubbed his nose and looked hungrily at his quarry. "Do
I understand, madam," he asked stiffly, "that you refuse to prosecute?"

"Prosecute!" she exclaimed. "Prosecute my friends for offences that I
know they have not committed? Certainly I refuse."

The superintendent looked at Thorndyke, but my colleague's countenance
had congealed into a state of absolute immobility and was as devoid of
expression as the face of a Dutch clock.

"Very well," said Miller, looking sourly at his watch. "Then we have had
our trouble for nothing. I wish you good afternoon, madam."

"I am sorry I troubled you, now," said Mrs. Chater.

"I am sorry you did," was the curt reply; and the superintendent,
flinging the key on the table, stalked out of the room.

As the outer door slammed the man sat down with an air of bewilderment;
and then, suddenly flinging his arms on the table, he dropped his head on
them and burst into a passion of sobbing.

It was very embarrassing. With one accord Thorndyke and I turned to go,
but Mrs. Chater motioned us to stay. Stepping over to the man, she
touched him lightly on the arm.

"Why did you do it?" she asked in a tone of gentle reproach.

The man sat up and flung out one arm in an eloquent gesture that
comprehended the miserable room and the yawning cupboard.

"It was the temptation of a moment," he said. "I was penniless, and those
accursed diamonds were thrust in my face; they were mine for the taking.
I was mad, I suppose."

"But why didn't you take them?" she said. "Why didn't you?"

"I don't know. The madness passed; and then--when I saw you lying
there----Oh, God! Why don't you give me up to the police?" He laid his head
down and sobbed afresh.

Mrs. Chater bent over him with tears standing in her pretty grey eyes.
"But tell me," she said, "why didn't you take the diamonds? You could if
you'd liked, I suppose?"

"What good were they to me?" he demanded passionately. "What did any
thing matter to me? I thought you were dead."

"Well, I'm not, you see," she said, with a rather tearful smile; "I'm
just as well as an old woman like me can expect to be. And I want your
address, so that I can write and give you some good advice."

The man sat up and produced a shabby cardcase from his pocket, and, as he
took out a number of cards and spread them out like the "hand" of a whist
player, I caught a twinkle in Thorndyke's eye.

"My name is Augustus Bailey," said the man. He selected the appropriate
card, and, having scribbled his address on it with a stump of lead
pencil, relapsed into his former position.

"Thank you," said Mrs. Chater, lingering for a moment by the table. "Now
we'll go. Good-bye, Mr. Bailey. I shall write to-morrow, and you must
attend seriously to the advice of an old friend."

I held open the door for her to pass out and looked back before I turned
to follow. Bailey still sat sobbing quietly, with his hand resting on his
arms; and a little pile of gold stood on the corner of the table.

"I expect, doctor," said Mrs. Chater, as Thorndyke handed her into the
car, "you've written me down a sentimental fool."

Thorndyke looked at her with an unwonted softening of his rather severe
face and answered quietly, "It is written: Blessed are the Merciful."



THE OLD LAG


PART I. THE CHANGED IMMUTABLE


Among the minor and purely physical pleasures of life, I am disposed to
rank very highly that feeling of bodily comfort that one experiences on
passing from the outer darkness of a wet winter's night to a cheerful
interior made glad by mellow lamplight and blazing hearth. And so I
thought when, on a dreary November night, I let myself into our chambers
in the Temple and found my friend smoking his pipe in slippered ease, by
a roaring fire, and facing an empty arm-chair evidently placed in
readiness for me.

As I shed my damp overcoat, I glanced inquisitively at my colleague, for
he held in his hand an open letter, and I seemed to perceive in his
aspect something meditative and self-communing--something, in short,
suggestive of a new case.

"I was just considering," he said, in answer to my inquiring look,
"whether I am about to become an accessory after the fact. Read that and
give me your opinion."

He handed me the letter, which I read aloud.

"Dear sir,--I am in great danger and distress. A warrant has been issued
for my arrest on a charge of which I am entirely innocent. Can I come and
see you, and will you let me leave in safety? The bearer will wait for a
reply."

"I said 'Yes,' of course; there was nothing else to do," said Thorndyke.
"But if I let him go, as I have promised to do, I shall be virtually
conniving at his escape."

"Yes, you are taking a risk," I answered. "When is he coming?"

"He was due five minutes ago--and I rather think--yes, here he is."

A stealthy tread on the landing was followed by a soft tapping on the
outer door.

Thorndyke rose and, flinging open the inner door, unfastened the massive
"oak."

"Dr. Thorndyke?" inquired a breathless, quavering voice.

"Yes, come in. You sent me a letter by hand?"

"I did, sir," was the reply; and the speaker entered, but at the sight of
me he stopped short.

"This is my colleague, Dr. Jervis," Thorndyke explained. "You need have
no -?"

"Oh, I remember him," our visitor interrupted in a tone of relief. "I
have seen you both before, you know, and you have seen me too--though I
don't suppose you recognize me," he added, with: a sickly smile.

"Frank Belfield?" asked Thorndyke, smiling also.

Our visitor's jaw fell and he gazed at my colleague in sudden dismay.

"And I may remark," pursued Thorndyke, "that for a man in your perilous
position, you are running most unnecessary risks. That wig, that false
beard and those spectacles--through which you obviously cannot see--are
enough to bring the entire police force at your heels. It is not wise for
a man who is wanted by the police to make up as though he had just
escaped from a comic opera."

Mr. Belfield seated himself with a groan, and, taking off his spectacles,
stared stupidly from one of us to the other.

"And now tell us about your little affair," said Thorndyke. "You say that
you are innocent?"

"I swear it, doctor," replied Belfield; adding, with great earnestness,
"And you may take it from me, sir, that if I was not, I shouldn't be
here. It was you that convicted me last time, when I thought myself quite
safe, so I know your ways too well to try to gammon you."

"If you are innocent," rejoined Thorndyke, "I will do what I can for you;
and if you are not--well, you would have been wiser to stay away."

"I know that well enough," said Belfield, "and I am only afraid that you
won't believe what I am going to tell you."

"I shall keep an open mind, at any rate," replied Thorndyke.

"If you only will," groaned Belfield, "I shall have a look in, in spite
of them all. You know, sir, that I have been on the crook, but I have
paid in full. That job when you tripped me up was the last of it--it
was, sir, so help me. It was a woman that changed me--the best and
truest woman on God's earth. She said she would marry me when I came out
if I promised her to go straight and live an honest life. And she kept
her promise--and I have kept mine. She found me work as clerk in a
warehouse and I have stuck to it ever since, earning fair wages and
building up a good character as an honest, industrious man. I thought all
was going well, and that I was settled for life, when only this very
morning the whole thing comes tumbling about my ears like a house of
cards."

"What happened this morning, then?" asked Thorndyke.

"Why, I was on my way to work when, as I passed the police station, I
noticed a bill with the heading 'Wanted' and a photograph. I stopped for
a moment to look at it, and you may imagine my feelings when I recognized
my own portrait--taken at Holloway--and read my own name and
description. I did not stop to read the bill through, but ran back home
and told my wife, and she ran down to the station and read the bill
carefully. Good God, sir! What do you think I am wanted for?" He paused
for a moment, and then replied in breathless tones to his own question:
"The Camber-well murder!"

Thorndyke gave a low whistle.

"My wife knows I didn't do it," continued Belfield, "because I was at
home all the evening and night; but what use is a man's wife to prove an
alibi?"

"Not much, I fear," Thorndyke admitted; "and you have no other witness?"

"Not a soul. We were alone all the evening."

"However," said Thorndyke, "if you are innocent--as I am assuming--the
evidence against you must be entirely circumstantial and your alibi may
be quite sufficient. Have you any idea of the grounds of suspicion
against you?"

"Not the faintest. The papers said that the police had an excellent clue,
but they did not say what it was. Probably some one has given false
information for the -?"

A sharp rapping at the outer door cut short the explanation, and our
visitor rose, trembling and aghast, with beads of sweat standing upon his
livid face.

"You had better go into the office, Belfield, while we see who it is,"
said Thorndyke. "The key is on the inside."

The fugitive wanted no second bidding, but hurried into the empty
apartment, and, as the door closed, we heard the key turn in the lock.

As Thorndyke threw open the outer door, he cast a meaning glance at me
over his shoulder which I understood when the newcomer entered the room;
for it was none other than Superintendent Miller of Scotland Yard.

"I have just dropped in," said the superintendent, in his brisk, cheerful
way, "to ask you to do me a favour. Good-evening, Dr. Jervis. I hear you
are reading for the bar; learned counsel soon, sir, hey? Medico-legal
expert. Dr. Thorndyke's mantle going to fall on you, sir?"

"I hope Dr. Thorndyke's mantle will continue to drape his own majestic
form for many a long year yet," I answered; "though he is good enough to
spare me a corner--but what on earth have you got there?" For during
this dialogue the superintendent had been deftly unfastening a
brown-paper parcel, from which he now drew a linen shirt, once white, but
now of an unsavoury grey.

"I want to know what this is," said Miller, exhibiting a brownish-red
stain on one sleeve. "Just look at that, sir, and tell me if it is blood,
and, if so, is it human blood?"

"Really, Miller," said Thorndyke, with a smile, "you flatter me; but I am
not like the wise woman of Bagdad who could tell you how many stairs the
patient had tumbled down by merely looking at his tongue. I must examine
this very thoroughly. When do you want to know?"

"I should like to know to-night," replied the detective.

"Can I cut a piece out to put under the microscope?"

"I would rather you did not," was the reply.

"Very well; you shall have the information in about an hour."

"It's very good of you, doctor," said the detective; and he was taking up
his hat preparatory to departing, when Thorndyke said suddenly--"By the
way, there is a little matter that I was going to speak to you about. It
refers to this Camberwell murder case. I understand you have a clue to
the identity of the murderer?"

"Clue!" exclaimed the superintendent contemptuously. "We have spotted our
man all right, if we could only lay hands on him; but he has given us the
slip for the moment."

"Who is the man?" asked Thorndyke.

The detective looked doubtfully at Thorndyke for some seconds and then
said, with evident reluctance: "I suppose there is no harm in telling
you--especially as you probably know already"--this with a sly grin; "it's
an old crook named Belfield."

"And what is the evidence against him?"

Again the superintendent looked doubtful and again relented.

"Why, the case is as clear as--as cold Scotch," he said (here Thorndyke
in illustration of this figure of speech produced a decanter, a syphon
and a tumbler, which he pushed towards the officer). "You see, sir, the
silly fool went and stuck his sweaty hand on the window; and there we
found the marks--four fingers and a thumb, as beautiful prints as you
could wish to see. Of course we cut out the piece of glass and took it up
to the Finger-print Department; they turned up their files and out came
Mr. Belfield's record, with his finger-prints and photograph all
complete."

"And the finger-prints on the window-pane were identical with those on
the prison form?"

"Identical."

"H'm!" Thorndyke reflected for a while, and the superintendent watched
him foxily over the edge of his tumbler.

"I guess you are retained to defend Belfield," the latter observed
presently.

"To look into the case generally," replied Thorndyke.

"And I expect you know where the beggar is hiding," continued the
detective.

"Belfield's address has not yet been communicated to me," said Thorndyke.
"I am merely to investigate the case--and there is no reason, Miller,
why you and I should be at cross purposes. We are both working at the
case; you want to get a conviction and you want to convict the right
man."

"That's so--and Belfield's the right man--but what do you want of us,
doctor?"

"I should like to see the piece of glass with the finger-prints on it,
and the prison form, and take a photograph of each. And I should like to
examine the room in which the murder took place--you have it locked up,
I suppose?"

"Yes, we have the keys. Well, it's all rather irregular, letting you see
the things. Still, you've always played the game fairly with us, so we
might stretch a point. Yes, I will. I'll come back in an hour for your
report and bring the glass and the form. I can't let them go out of my
custody, you know. I'll be off now--no, thank you, not another drop."

The superintendent caught up his hat and strode away, the personification
of mental alertness and bodily vigour.

No sooner had the door closed behind him than Thorndyke's stolid calm
changed instantaneously into feverish energy. Darting to the electric
bell that rang into the laboratories above, he pressed the button while
he gave me my directions.

"Have a look at that blood-stain, Jervis, while I am finishing with
Belfield. Don't wet it; scrape it into a drop of warm normal saline
solution."

I hastened to reach down the microscope and set out on the table the
necessary apparatus and reagents, and, as I was thus occupied, a
latch-key turned in the outer door and our invaluable helpmate, Polton,
entered the room in his habitual silent, unobtrusive fashion.

"Let me have the finger-print apparatus, please, Polton," said Thorndyke;
"and have the copying camera ready by nine o'clock. I am expecting Mr.
Miller with some documents."

As his laboratory assistant departed, Thorndyke rapped at the office
door.

"It's all clear, Belfield," he called; "you can come out."

The key turned and the prisoner emerged, looking ludicrously woebegone in
his ridiculous wig and beard.

"I am going to take your finger-prints, to compare with some that the
police found on the window."

"Finger-prints!" exclaimed Belfield, in a tone of dismay. "They don't say
they're my finger-prints, do they, sir?"

"They do indeed," replied Thorndyke, eyeing the man narrowly. "They have
compared them with those taken when you were at Holloway, and they say
that they are identical."

"Good God!" murmured Belfield, collapsing into a chair, faint and
trembling. "They must have made some awful mistake. But are mistakes
possible with finger-prints?"

"Now look here, Belfield," said Thorndyke. "Were you in that house that
night, or were you not? It is of no use for you to tell me any lies."

"I was not there, sir; I swear to God I was not."

"Then they cannot be your finger-prints, that is obvious." Here he
stepped to the door to intercept Polton, from whom he received a
substantial box, which he brought in and placed on the table.

"Tell me all you know about this case," he continued, as he set out the
contents of the box on the table.

"I know nothing about it whatever," replied Belfield; "nothing, at least,
except -?"

"Except what?" demanded Thorndyke, looking up sharply as he squeezed a
drop from a tube of finger-print ink onto a smooth copper plate.

"Except that the murdered man, Caldwell, was a retired fence."

"A fence, was he?" said Thorndyke in a tone of interest.

"Yes; and I suspect he was a 'nark' too. He knew more than was wholesome
for a good many."

"Did he know anything about you?"

"Yes; but nothing that the police don't know."

With a small roller Thorndyke spread the ink upon the plate into a thin
film. Then he laid on the edge of the table a smooth white card and,
taking Belfield's right hand, pressed the forefinger firmly but quickly,
first on the inked plate and then on the card, leaving on the latter a
clear print of the finger-tip. This process he repeated with the other
fingers and thumb, and then took several additional prints of each.

"That was a nasty injury to your forefinger, Belfield," said Thorndyke,
holding the finger to the light and examining the tip carefully. "How did
you do it?"

"Stuck a tin-opener into it--a dirty one, too. It was bad for weeks; in
fact, Dr. Sampson thought at one time that he would have to amputate the
finger."

"How long ago was that?"

"Oh, nearly a year ago, sir."

Thorndyke wrote the date of the injury by the side of the finger-print
and then, having rolled up the inking plate afresh, laid on the table
several larger cards. "I am now going to take the prints of the four
fingers and the thumb all at once," he said.

"They only took the four fingers at once at the prison," said Belfield.
"They took the thumb separately."

"I know," replied Thorndyke; "but I am going to take the impression just
as it would appear on the window glass."

He took several impressions thus, and then, having looked at his watch,
he began to repack the apparatus in its box. While doing this, he
glanced, from time to time, in meditative fashion, at the suspected man
who sat, the living picture of misery and terror, wiping the greasy ink
from his trembling fingers with his handkerchief.

"Belfield," he said at length, "you have sworn to me that you are an
innocent man and are trying to live an honest life. I believe you; but in
a few minutes I shall know for certain."

"Thank God for that, sir," exclaimed Belfield, brightening up
wonderfully.

"And now," said Thorndyke, "you had better go back into the office, for I
am expecting Superintendent Miller, and he may be here at any moment."

Belfield hastily slunk back into the office, locking the door after him,
and Thorndyke, having returned the box to the laboratory and deposited
the cards bearing the finger-prints in a drawer, came round to inspect my
work. I had managed to detach a tiny fragment of dried clot from the
blood-stained garment, and this, in a drop of normal saline solution, I
now had under the microscope.

"What do you make out, Jervis?" my colleague asked.

"Oval corpuscles with distinct nuclei," I answered.

"Ah," said Thorndyke, "that will be good hearing for some poor devil.
Have you measured them?"

"Yes. Long diameter one twenty-one hundredth of an inch; short diameter
about one thirty-four hundredth of an inch."

Thorndyke reached down an indexed note-book from a shelf of reference
volumes and consulted a table of histological measurements.

"That would seem to be the blood of a pheasant, then, or it might, more
probably, be that of a common fowl." He applied his eye to the microscope
and, fitting in the eyepiece micrometer, verified my measurements. He was
thus employed when a sharp tap was heard on the outer door, and rising to
open it he admitted the superintendent.

"I see you are at work on my little problem, doctor," said the latter,
glancing at the microscope. "What do you make of that stain?"

"It is the blood of a bird--probably a pheasant, or perhaps a common
fowl."

The superintendent slapped his thigh. "Well, I'm hanged!" he exclaimed.
"You're a regular wizard, doctor, that's what you are. The fellow said he
got that stain through handling a wounded pheasant and here are you able
to tell us yes or no without a hint from us to help you. Well, you've
done my little job for me, sir, and I'm much obliged to you; now I'll
carry out my part of the bargain." He opened a hand-bag and drew forth a
wooden frame and a blue foolscap envelope and laid them with extreme care
on the table.

"There you are, sir," said he, pointing to the frame; "you will find Mr.
Belfield's trade-mark very neatly executed, and in the envelope is the
finger-print sheet for comparison."

Thorndyke took up the frame and examined it. It enclosed two sheets of
glass, one being the portion of the window-pane and the other a
cover-glass to protect the fingerprints. Laying a sheet of white paper on
the table, where the light was strongest, Thorndyke held the frame over
it and gazed at the glass in silence, but with that faint lighting up of
his impassive face which I knew so well and which meant so much to me. I
walked round, and looking over his shoulder saw upon the glass the
beautifully distinct imprints of four fingers and a thumb--the
finger-tips, in fact, of an open hand.

After regarding the frame attentively for some time, Thorndyke produced
from his pocket a little wash-leather bag, from which he extracted a
powerful doublet lens, and with the aid of this he again explored the
finger-prints, dwelling especially upon the print of the forefinger.

"I don't think you will find much amiss with those finger-prints,
doctor," said the superintendent, "they are as clear as if he made them
on purpose."

"They are indeed," replied Thorndyke, with an inscrutable smile, "exactly
as if he had made them on purpose. And how beautifully clean the glass
is--as if he had polished it before making the impression."

The superintendent glanced at Thorndyke with quick suspicion; but the
smile had faded and given place to a wooden immobility from which nothing
could be gleaned.

When he had examined the glass exhaustively, Thorndyke drew the
finger-print form from its envelope and scanned it quickly, glancing
repeatedly from the paper to the glass and from the glass to the paper.
At length he laid them both on the table, and turning to the detective
looked him steadily in the face.

"I think, Miller," said he, "that I can give you a hint."

"Indeed, sir? And what might that be?"

"It is this: you are after the wrong man."

The superintendent snorted--not a loud snort, for that would have been
rude, and no officer could be more polite than Superintendent Miller. But
it conveyed a protest which he speedily followed up in words.

"You don't mean to say that the prints on that glass are not the
finger-prints of Frank Belfield?"

"I say that those prints were not made by Frank Belfield," Thorndyke
replied firmly.

"Do you admit, sir, that the finger-prints on the official form were made
by him?"

"I have no doubt that they were."

"Well, sir, Mr. Singleton, of the Finger-print Department, has compared
the prints on the glass with those on the form and he says they are
identical; and I have examined them and I say they are identical."

"Exactly," said Thorndyke; "and I have examined them and I say they are
identical--and that therefore those on the glass cannot have been made
by Belfield."

The superintendent snorted again--somewhat louder this time--and gazed
at Thorndyke with wrinkled brows.

"You are not pulling my leg, I suppose, sir?" he asked, a little sourly.

"I should as soon think of tickling a porcupine," Thorndyke answered,
with a suave smile.

"Well," rejoined the bewildered detective, "if I didn't know you, sir, I
should say you were talking confounded nonsense. Perhaps you wouldn't
mind explaining what you mean."

"Supposing," said Thorndyke, "I make it clear to you that those prints on
the window-pane were not made by Belfield. Would you still execute the
warrant?"

"What do you think?" exclaimed Miller. "Do you suppose we should go into
court to have you come and knock the bottom out of our case, like you did
in that Hornby affair--by the way, that was a finger-print case too, now
I come to think of it," and the superintendent suddenly became
thoughtful.

"You have often complained," pursued Thorndyke, "that I have withheld
information from you and sprung unexpected evidence on you at the trial.
Now I am going to take you into my confidence, and when I have proved to
you that this clue of yours is a false one, I shall expect you to let
this poor devil Belfield go his way in peace."

The superintendent grunted--a form of utterance that committed him to
nothing.

"These prints," continued Thorndyke, taking up the frame once more,
"present several features of interest, one of which, at least, ought not
to have escaped you and Mr. Singleton, as it seems to have done. Just
look at that thumb."

The superintendent did so, and then pored over the official paper.

"Well," he said, "I don't see anything the matter with it. It's exactly
like the print on the paper."

"Of course it is," rejoined Thorndyke, "and that is just the point. It
ought not to be. The print of the thumb on the paper was taken separately
from the fingers. And why? Because it was impossible to take it at the
same time. The thumb is in a different plane from the fingers; when the
hand is laid flat on any surface--as this window-pane, for instance--the
palmar surfaces of the fingers touch it, whereas it is the side of
the thumb which comes in contact and not the palmar surface. But in
this"--he tapped the framed glass with his finger--the prints show the palmar
surfaces of all the five digits in contact at once, which is an
impossibility. Just try to put your own thumb in that position and you
will see that it is so."

The detective spread out his hand on the table and immediately perceived
the truth of my colleague's statement.

"And what does that prove?" he asked.

"It proves that the thumb-print on the window-pane was not made at the
same time as the finger-prints--that it was added separately; and that
fact seems to prove that the prints were not made accidentally, but--as
you ingeniously suggested just now--were put there for a purpose."

"I don't quite see the drift of all this," said the superintendent,
rubbing the back of his head perplexedly; "and you said a while back that
the prints on the glass can't be Belfield's because they are identical
with the prints on the form. Now that seems to me sheer nonsense, if you
will excuse my saying so."

"And yet," replied Thorndyke, "it is the actual fact. Listen: these
prints"--here he took up the official sheet--"were taken at Holloway
six years ago. These"--pointing to the framed glass--"were made within
the present week. The one is, as regards the ridge-pattern, a perfect
duplicate of the other. Is that not so?"

"That is so, doctor," agreed the superintendent.

"Very well. Now suppose I were to tell you that within the last twelve
months something had happened to Belfield that made an appreciable change
in the ridge-pattern on one of his fingers?"

"But is such a thing possible?"

"It is not only possible but it has happened. I will show you."

He brought forth from the drawer the cards on which Belfield had made his
finger-prints, and laid them before the detective.

"Observe the prints of the forefinger," he said, indicating them; "there
are a dozen, in all, and you will notice in each a white line crossing
the ridges and dividing them. That line is caused by a scar, which has
destroyed a portion of the ridges, and is now an integral part of
Belfield's finger-print.

And since no such blank line is to be seen in this print on the glass--in
which the ridges appear perfect, as they were before the injury--it
follows that that print could not have been made by Belfield's finger."

"There is no doubt about the injury, I suppose?"

"None whatever. There is the scar to prove it, and I can produce the
surgeon who attended Belfield at the time."

The officer rubbed his head harder than before, and regarded Thorndyke
with puckered brows.

"This is a teaser," he growled, "it is indeed. What you say, sir, seems
perfectly sound, and yet--there are those finger-prints on the
window-glass. Now you can't get fingerprints without fingers, can you?"

"Undoubtedly you can," said Thorndyke.

"I should want to see that done before I could believe even you, sir,"
said Miller.

"You shall see it done now," was the calm rejoinder. "You have evidently
forgotten the Hornby case--the case of the Red Thumb-mark, as the
newspapers called it."

"I only heard part of it," replied Miller, "and I didn't really follow
the evidence in that."

"Well, I will show you a relic of that case," said Thorndyke. He unlocked
a cabinet and took from one of the shelves a small box labelled "Hornby,"
which, being opened, was seen to contain a folded paper, a little
red-covered oblong book and what looked like a large boxwood pawn.

"This little book," Thorndyke continued, "is a 'thumb-ograph'--a sort of
finger-print album--I dare say you know the kind of thing."

The superintendent nodded contemptuously at the little volume.

"Now while Dr. Jervis is finding us the print we want, I will run up to
the laboratory for an inked slab."

He handed me the little book and, as he left the room, I began to turn
over the leaves--not without emotion, for it was this very "thumbograph"
that first introduced me to my wife, as is related elsewhere--glancing
at the various prints above the familiar names and marvelling afresh at
the endless variations of pattern that they displayed. At length I came
upon two thumb-prints of which one--the left--was marked by a
longitudinal white line--evidently the trace of a scar; and underneath
them was written the signature "Reuben Hornby."

At this moment Thorndyke re-entered the room carrying the inked slab,
which he laid on the table, and seating himself between the
superintendent and me, addressed the former.

"Now, Miller, here are two thumb-prints made by a gentleman named Reuben
Hornby. Just glance at the left one; it is a highly characteristic
print."

"Yes," agreed Miller, "one could swear to that from memory, I should
think."

"Then look at this." Thorndyke took the paper from the box and, unfolding
it, handed it to the detective. It bore a pencilled inscription, and on
it were two blood-smears and a very distinct thumb-print in blood. "What
do you say to that thumb-print?"

"Why," answered Miller, "it's this one, of course; Reuben Hornby's left
thumb."

"Wrong, my friend," said Thorndyke. "It was made by an ingenious
gentleman named Walter Hornby (whom you followed from the Old Bailey and
lost on Ludgate Hill); but not with his thumb."

"How, then?" demanded the superintendent incredulously.

"In this way." Thorndyke took the boxwood "pawn" from its receptacle and
pressed its flat base onto the inked slab; then lifted it and pressed it
onto the back of a visiting-card, and again raised it; and now the card
was marked by a very distinct thumb-print.

"My God!" exclaimed the detective, picking up the card and viewing it
with a stare of dismay, "this is the very devil, sir. This fairly knocks
the bottom out of finger-print identification. May I ask, sir, how you
made that stamp--for I suppose you did make it?"

"Yes, we made it here, and the process we used was practically that used
by photo-engravers in making line blocks; that is to say, we photographed
one of Mr. Hornby's thumb-prints, printed it on a plate of
chrome-gelatine, developed the plate with hot water and this"--here he
touched the embossed surface of the stamp--"is what remained. But we
could have done it in various other ways; for instance, with common
transfer paper and lithographic stone; indeed, I assure you, Miller, that
there is nothing easier to forge than a finger-print, and it can be done
with such perfection that the forger himself cannot tell his own forgery
from a genuine original, even when they are placed side by side."

"Well, I'm hanged," grunted the superintendent, "you've fairly knocked
me, this time, doctor." He rose gloomily and prepared to depart. "I
suppose," he added, "your interest in this case has lapsed, now
Belfield's out of it?"

"Professionally, yes; but I am disposed to finish the case for my own
satisfaction. I am quite curious as to who our too-ingenious friend may
be."

Miller's face brightened. "We shall give you every facility, you know--and
that reminds me that Singleton gave me these two photographs for you,
one of the official paper and one of the prints on the glass. Is there
anything more that we can do for you?"

"I should like to have a look at the room in which the murder took
place."

"You shall, doctor; to-morrow, if you like; I'll meet you there in the
morning at ten, if that will do."

It would do excellently, Thorndyke assured him, and with this the
superintendent took his departure in renewed spirits.

We had only just closed the door when there came a hurried and urgent
tapping upon it, whereupon I once more threw it open, and a
quietly-dressed woman in a thick veil, who was standing on the threshold,
stepped quickly past me into the room.

"Where is my husband?" she demanded, as I closed the door; and then,
catching sight of Thorndyke, she strode up to him with a threatening air
and a terrified but angry face.

"What have you done with my husband, sir?" she repeated. "Have you
betrayed him, after giving your word? I met a man who looked like a
police officer on the stairs."

"Your husband, Mrs. Belfield, is here and quite safe," replied Thorndyke.
"He has locked himself in that room," indicating the office.

Mrs. Belfield darted across and rapped smartly at the door. "Are you
there, Frank?" she called.

In immediate response the key turned, the door opened and Belfield
emerged looking very pale and worn.

"You have kept me a long time in there, sir," he said.

"It took me a long time to prove to Superintendent Miller that he was
after the wrong man. But I succeeded, and now, Belfield, you are free.
The charge against you is withdrawn."

Belfield stood for a while as one stupefied, while his wife, after a
moment of silent amazement, flung her arms round his neck and burst into
tears. "But how did you know I was innocent, sir?" demanded the
bewildered Belfield.

"Ah! how did I? Every man to his trade, you know. Well, I congratulate
you, and now go home and have a square meal and get a good night's rest."

He shook hands with his clients--vainly endeavouring to prevent Mrs.
Belfield from kissing his hand--and stood at the open door listening
until the sound of their retreating footsteps died away.

"A noble little woman, Jervis," said he, as he closed the door. "In
another moment she would have scratched my face--and I mean to find out
the scoundrel who tried to wreck her happiness."


PART II. THE SHIP OF THE DESERT


The case which I am now about to describe has always appeared to me a
singularly instructive one, as illustrating the value and importance of
that fundamental rule in the carrying out of investigations which
Thorndyke had laid down so emphatically--the rule that all facts, in any
way relating to a case, should be collected impartially and without
reference to any theory, and each fact, no matter how trivial or
apparently irrelevant, carefully studied. But I must not anticipate the
remarks of my learned and talented friend on this subject which I have to
chronicle anon; rather let me proceed to the case itself.

I had slept at our chambers in King's Bench Walk--as I commonly did two
or three nights a week--and on coming down to the sitting-room, found
Thorndyke's man, Polton, putting the last touches to the breakfast-table,
while Thorndyke himself was poring over two photographs of fingerprints,
of which he seemed to be taking elaborate measurements with a pair of
hair-dividers. He greeted me with his quiet, genial smile and, laying
down the dividers, took his seat at the breakfast-table.

"You are coming with me this morning, I suppose," said he; "the
Camberwell murder case, you know."

"Of course I am if you will have me, but I know practically nothing of
the case. Could you give me an outline of the facts that are known?"

Thorndyke looked at me solemnly, but with a mischievous twinkle. "This,"
he said, "is the old story of the fox and the crow; you 'bid me
discourse,' and while I 'enchant thine ear,' you claw to windward with
the broiled ham. A deep-laid plot, my learned brother."

"And such," I exclaimed, "is the result of contact with the criminal
classes!"

"I am sorry that you regard yourself in that light," he retorted, with a
malicious smile. "However, with regard to this case. The facts are
briefly these: The murdered man, Caldwell, who seems to have been
formerly a receiver of stolen goods and probably a police spy as well,
lived a solitary life in a small house with only an elderly woman to
attend him.

"A week ago this woman went to visit a married daughter and stayed the
night with her, leaving Caldwell alone in the house. When she returned on
the following morning she found her master lying dead on the floor of his
office, or study, in a small pool of blood.

"The police surgeon found that he had been dead about twelve hours. He
had been killed by a single blow, struck from behind, with some heavy
implement, and a jemmy which lay on the floor beside him fitted the wound
exactly. The deceased wore a dressing-gown and no collar, and a bedroom
candlestick lay upside down on the floor, although gas was laid on in the
room; and as the window of the office appears to have been forced with
the jemmy that was found, and there were distinct footprints on the
flower-bed outside the window, the police think that the deceased was
undressing to go to bed when he was disturbed by the noise of the opening
window; that he went down to the office and, as he entered, was struck
down by the burglar who was lurking behind the door. On the window-glass
the police found the greasy impression of an open right hand, and, as you
know, the finger-prints were identified by the experts as those of an old
convict named Belfield. As you also know, I proved that those
finger-prints were, in reality, forgeries, executed with rubber or
gelatine stamps. That is an outline of the case."

The close of this recital brought our meal to an end, and we prepared for
our visit to the scene of the crime. Thorndyke slipped into his pocket
his queer outfit--somewhat like that of a field geologist--locked up
the photographs, and we set forth by way of the Embankment.

"The police have no clue, I suppose, to the identity of the murderer, now
that the finger-prints have failed?" I asked, as we strode along
together.

"I expect not," he replied, "though they might have if they examined
their material. I made out a rather interesting point this morning, which
is this: the man who made those sham finger-prints used two stamps, one
for the thumb and the other for the four fingers; and the original from
which those stamps were made was the official finger-print form."

"How did you discover that?" I inquired.

"It was very simple. You remember that Mr. Singleton of the Finger-print
Department sent me, by Superintendent Miller, two photographs, one of the
prints on the window and one of the official form with Belfield's
finger-prints on it. Well, I have compared them and made the most minute
measurements of each, and they are obviously duplicates. Not only are all
the little imperfections on the form--due to defective inking--reproduced
faithfully on the window-pane, but the relative positions of
the four fingers on both cases agree to the hundredth of an inch. Of
course the thumb stamp was made by taking an oval out of the rolled
impression on the form."

"Then do you suggest that this murder was committed by some one connected
with the Finger-print Department at Scotland Yard?"

"Hardly. But some one has had access to the forms. There has been leakage
somewhere."

When we arrived at the little detached house in which the murdered man
had lived, the door was opened by an elderly woman, and our friend,
Superintendent Miller, greeted us in the hall.

"We are all ready for you, doctor," said he. "Of course, the things have
all been gone over once, but we are turning them out more thoroughly
now." He led the way into the small, barely-furnished office in which the
tragedy had occurred. A dark stain on the carpet and a square hole in one
of the window-panes furnished memorials of the crime, which were
supplemented by an odd assortment of objects laid out on the
newspaper-covered table. These included silver teaspoons, watches,
various articles of jewellery, from which the stones had been removed--none
of them of any considerable value--and a roughly-made jemmy.

"I don't know why Caldwell should have kept all these odds and ends,"
said the detective superintendent. "There is stuff here, that I can
identify, from six different burglaries--and not a conviction among the
six."

Thorndyke looked over the collection with languid interest; he was
evidently disappointed at finding the room so completely turned out.

"Have you any idea what has been taken?" he asked.

"Not the least. We don't even know if the safe was opened. The keys were
on the writing-table, so I suppose he went through everything, though I
don't see why he left these things if he did. We found them all in the
safe."

"Have you powdered the jemmy?"

The superintendent turned very red. "Yes," he growled, "but some
half-dozen blithering idiots had handled the thing before I saw it--been
trying it on the window, the blighters--so, of course, it showed nothing
but the marks of their beastly paws."

"The window had not really been forced, I suppose?" said Thorndyke.

"No," replied Miller, with a glance of surprise at my colleague, "that
was a plant; so were the footprints. He must have put on a pair of
Caldwell's boots and gone out and made them--unless Caldwell made them
himself, which isn't likely."

"Have you found any letter or telegram?"

"A letter making an appointment for nine o'clock on the night of the
murder. No signature or address, and the handwriting evidently
disguised."

"Is there anything that furnishes any sort of clue?"

"Yes, sir, there is. There's this, which we found in the safe." He
produced a small parcel which he proceeded to unfasten, looking somewhat
queerly at Thorndyke the while. It contained various odds and ends of
jewellery, and a smaller parcel formed of a pocket-handkerchief tied with
tape. This the detective also unfastened, revealing half-a-dozen silver
teaspoons, all engraved with the same crest, two salt-cellars and a gold
locket bearing a monogram. There was also a half-sheet of note-paper on
which was written, in a manifestly disguised hand: "There are the goods I
told you about.? F. B." But what riveted Thorndyke's attention and mine
was the handkerchief itself (which was not a very clean one and was
sullied by one or two small blood-stains), for it was marked in one
corner with the name "F. Belfield," legibly printed in marking-ink with a
rubber stamp.

Thorndyke and the superintendent looked at one another and both smiled.

"I know what you are thinking, sir," said the latter.

"I am sure you do," was the reply, "and it is useless to pretend that you
don't agree with me."

"Well, sir," said Miller doggedly, "if that handkerchief has been put
there as a plant, it's Belfield's business to prove it. You see, doctor,"
he added persuasively, "it isn't this job only that's affected. Those
spoons, those salt-cellars and that locket are part of the proceeds of
the Winchmore Hill burglary, and we want the gentleman who did that
crack--we want him very badly."

"No doubt you do," replied Thorndyke, "but this handkerchief won't help
you. A sharp counsel--Mr. Anstey, for instance--would demolish it in
five minutes. I assure you, Miller, that handkerchief has no evidential
value whatever, whereas it might prove an invaluable instrument of
research. The best thing you can do is to hand it over to me and let me
see what I can learn from it."

The superintendent was obviously dissatisfied, but he eventually agreed,
with manifest reluctance, to Thorndyke's suggestion.

"Very well, doctor," he said; "you shall have it for a day or two. Do you
want the spoons and things as well?"

"No. Only the handkerchief and the paper that was in it."

The two articles were accordingly handed to him and deposited in a tin
box which he usually carried in his pocket, and, after a few more words
with the disconsolate detective, we took our departure.

"A very disappointing morning," was Thorndyke's comment as we walked
away. "Of course the room ought to have been examined by an expert before
anything was moved."

"Have you picked up anything in the way of information?" I asked.

"Very little excepting confirmation of my original theory. You see, this
man Caldwell was a receiver and evidently a police spy. He gave useful
information to the police, and they, in return, refrained from
inconvenient inquiries. But a spy, or 'nark,' is nearly always a
blackmailer too, and the probabilities in this case are that some crook,
on whom Caldwell was putting the screw rather too tightly, made an
appointment for a meeting when the house was empty, and just knocked
Caldwell on the head. The crime was evidently planned beforehand, and the
murderer came prepared to kill several birds with one stone. Thus he
brought with him the stamps to make the sham finger-prints on the window,
and I have no doubt that he also brought this handkerchief and the
various oddments of plate and jewellery from those burglaries that Miller
is so keen about, and planted them in the safe. You noticed, I suppose,
that none of the things were of any value, but all were capable of easy
identification?"

"Yes, I noticed that. His object, evidently, was to put those burglaries
as well as the murder onto poor Belfield."

"Exactly. And you see what Miller's attitude is; Belfield is the bird in
the hand, whereas the other man--if there is another--is still in the
bush; so Belfield is to be followed up and a conviction obtained if
possible. If he is innocent, that is his affair, and it is for him to
prove it."

"And what shall you do next?" I asked.

"I shall telegraph to Belfield to come and see us this evening. He may be
able to tell us something about this handkerchief that, with the clue we
already have, may put us on the right track. What time is your
consultation?"

"Twelve-thirty--and here comes my 'bus. I shall be in to lunch." I
sprang onto the footboard, and as I took my seat on the roof and looked
back at my friend striding along with an easy swing, I knew that he was
deep in thought, though automatically attentive to all that was
happening. My consultation--it was a lunacy case of some importance--was
over in time to allow of my return to our chambers punctually at the
luncheon hour; and as I entered, I was at once struck by something new in
Thorndyke's manner--a certain elation and gaiety which I had learned to
associate with a point scored successfully in some intricate and puzzling
case. He made no confidences, however, and seemed, in fact, inclined to
put away, for a time, all his professional cares and business.

"Shall we have an afternoon off, Jervis?" he said gaily. "It is a fine
day and work is slack just now. What say you to the Zoo? They have a
splendid chimpanzee and several specimens of that remarkable fish
Periophthalmus Kolreuteri. Shall we go?"

"By all means," I replied; "and we will mount the elephant, if you like,
and throw buns to the grizzly bear and generally renew our youth like the
eagle."

But when, an hour later, we found ourselves in the gardens, I began to
suspect my friend of some ulterior purpose in this holiday jaunt; for it
was not the chimpanzee or even the wonderful fish that attracted his
attention. On the contrary, he hung about the vicinity of the lamas and
camels in a way that I could not fail to notice; and even there it
appeared to be the sheds and houses rather than the animals themselves
that interested him.

"Behold, Jervis," he said presently, as a saddled camel of seedy aspect
was led towards its house, "behold the ship of the desert, with raised
saloon-deck amidships, fitted internally with watertight compartments and
displaying the effects of rheumatoid arthritis in his starboard
hip-joint. Let us go and examine him before he hauls into dock." We took
a cross-path to intercept the camel on its way to its residence, and
Thorndyke moralized as we went.

"It is interesting," he remarked, "to note the way in which these
specialized animals, such as the horse, the reindeer and the camel, have
been appropriated by man, and their special character made to subserve
human needs. Think, for instance, of the part the camel has played in
history, in ancient commerce--and modern too, for that matter--and in
the diffusion of culture; and of the role he has enacted in war and
conquest from the Egyptian campaign of Cambyses down to that of
Kitchener. Yes, the camel is a very remarkable animal, though it must be
admitted that this particular specimen is a scurvy-looking beast."

The camel seemed to be sensible of these disparaging remarks, for as it
approached it saluted Thorndyke with a supercilious grin and then turned
away its head.

"Your charge is not as young as he used to be," Thorndyke observed to the
man who was leading the animal.

"No, sir, he isn't; he's getting old, and that's the fact. He shows it
too."

"I suppose," said Thorndyke, strolling towards the house by the man's
side, "these beasts require a deal of attention?"

"You're right, sir; and nasty-tempered brutes they are."

"So I have heard; but they are interesting creatures, the camels and
lamas. Do you happen to know if complete sets of photographs of them are
to be had here?"

"You can get a good many at the lodge, sir," the man replied, "but not
all, I think. If you want a complete set, there's one of our men in the
camel-house that could let you have them; he takes the photos himself,
and very clever he is at it, too. But he isn't here just now."

"Perhaps you could give me his name so that I could write to him," said
Thorndyke.

"Yes, sir. His name is Woodthorpe--Joseph Woodthorpe. He'll do anything
for you to order. Thank you, sir; good-afternoon, sir;" and pocketing an
unexpected tip, the man led his charge towards its lair.

Thorndyke's absorbing interest in the camels seemed now suddenly to
become extinct, and he suffered me to lead him to any part of the gardens
that attracted me, showing an imperial interest in all the inmates from
the insects to the elephants, and enjoying his holiday--if it was one--with
the gaiety and high spirits of a schoolboy. Yet he never let slip a
chance of picking up a stray hair or feather, but gathered up each with
care, wrapped it in its separate paper, on which was written its
description, and deposited it in his tin collecting-box.

"You never know," he remarked, as we turned away from the ostrich
enclosure, "when a specimen for comparison may be of vital importance.
Here, for instance, is a small feather of a cassowary, and here the hair
of a wapiti deer; now the recognition of either of those might, in
certain circumstances, lead to the detection of a criminal or save the
life of an innocent man. The thing has happened repeatedly, and may
happen again to-morrow."

"You must have an enormous collection of hairs in your cabinet," I
remarked, as we walked home.

"I have," he replied, "probably the largest in the world. And as to other
microscopical objects of medico-legal interest, such as dust and mud from
different localities and from special industries and manufactures,
fibres, food-products and drugs, my collection is certainly unique."

"And you have found your collection useful in your work?" I asked.

"Constantly. Over and over again I have obtained, by reference to my
specimens, the most unexpected evidence, and the longer I practise, the
more I become convinced that the microscope is the sheet-anchor of the
medical jurist."

"By the way," I said, "you spoke of sending a telegram to Belfield. Did
you send it?"

"Yes. I asked him to come to see me to-night at half-past eight, and, if
possible, bring his wife with him. I want to get to the bottom of that
handkerchief mystery."

"But do you think he will tell you the truth about it?"

"That is impossible to judge; he will be a fool if he does not. But I
think he will; he has a godly fear of me and my methods."

As soon as our dinner was finished and cleared away, Thorndyke produced
the "collecting-box" from his pocket, and began to sort out the day's
"catch," giving explicit directions to Polton for the disposal of each
specimen. The hairs and small feathers were to be mounted as microscopic
objects, while the larger feathers were to be placed, each in its
separate labelled envelope, in its appropriate box. While these
directions were being given, I stood by the window absently gazing out as
I listened, gathering many a useful hint in the technique of preparation
and preservation, and filled with admiration alike at my colleague's
exhaustive knowledge of practical detail and the perfect manner in which
he had trained his assistant. Suddenly I started, for a well-known figure
was crossing from Crown Office Row and evidently bearing down on our
chambers.

"My word, Thorndyke," I exclaimed, "here's a pretty mess!"

"What is the matter?" he asked, looking up anxiously.

"Superintendent Miller heading straight for our doorway. And it is now
twenty minutes past eight."

Thorndyke laughed. "It will be a quaint position," he remarked, "and
somewhat of a shock for Belfield. But it really doesn't matter; in fact,
I think, on the whole, I am rather pleased that he should have come."

The superintendent's brisk knock was heard a few moments later, and when
he was admitted by Polton, he entered and looked round the room a little,
sheepishly.

"I am ashamed to come worrying you like this, sir," he began
apologetically.

"Not at all," replied Thorndyke, serenely slipping the cassowary's
feather into an envelope, and writing the name, date and locality on the
outside. "I am your servant in this case, you know. Polton, whisky and
soda for the superintendent."

"You see, sir," continued Miller, "our people are beginning to fuss about
this case, and they don't approve of my having handed that handkerchief
and the paper over to you as they will have to be put in evidence."

"I thought they might object," remarked Thorndyke.

"So did I, sir; and they do. And, in short, they say that I have got to
get them back at once. I hope it won't put you out, sir."

"Not in the least," said Thorndyke. "I have asked Belfield to come here
to-night--I expect him in a few minutes--and when I have heard what he
has to say I shall have no further use for the handkerchief."

"You're not going to show it to him!" exclaimed the detective, aghast.

"Certainly I am."

"You mustn't do that, sir. I can't sanction it; I can't indeed."

"Now, look you here, Miller," said Thorndyke, shaking his forefinger at
the officer; "I am working for you in this case, as I have told you.
Leave the matter in my hands. Don't raise silly objections; and when you
leave here tonight you will take with you not only the handkerchief and
the paper, but probably also the name and address of the man who
committed this murder and those various burglaries that you are so keen
about."

"Is that really so, sir?" exclaimed the astonished detective. "Well, you
haven't let the grass grow under your feet. Ah!" as a gentle rap at the
door was heard, "here's Belfield, I suppose."

It was Belfield--accompanied by his wife--and mightily disturbed they
were when their eyes lighted on our visitor.

"You needn't be afraid of me, Belfield," said Miller, with ferocious
geniality; "I am not here after you." Which was not literally true,
though it served to reassure the affrighted ex-convict.

"The superintendent dropped in by chance," said Thorndyke; "but it is
just as well that he should hear what passes. I want you to look at this
handkerchief and tell me if it is yours. Don't be afraid, but just tell
us the simple truth."

He took the handkerchief out of a drawer and spread it on the table; and
I now observed that a small square had been cut out of one of the
bloodstains.

Belfield took the handkerchief in his trembling hands, and as his eye
fell on the stamped name in the corner he turned deadly pale.

"It looks like mine," he said huskily. "What do you say, Liz?" he added,
passing it to his wife.

Mrs. Belfield examined first the name and then the hem. "It's yours,
right enough, Frank," said she. "It's the one that got changed in the
wash. You see, sir," she continued, addressing Thorndyke, "I bought him
half-a-dozen new ones about six months ago, and I got a rubber stamp made
and marked them all. Well, one day when I was looking over his things I
noticed that one of his handkerchiefs had got no mark on it. I spoke to
the laundress about it, but she couldn't explain it, so as the right one
never came back, I marked the one that we got in exchange."

"How long ago was that?" asked Thorndyke.

"About two months ago I noticed it."

"And you know nothing more about it."

"Nothing whatever, sir. Nor you, Frank, do you?"

Her husband shook his head gloomily, and Thorndyke replaced the
handkerchief in the drawer.

"And now," said he, "I am going to ask you a question on another subject.
When you were at Holloway there was a warder--or assistant warder--there,
named Woodthorpe. Do you remember him?"

"Yes, sir, very well indeed; in fact, it was him that -?"

"I know," interrupted Thorndyke. "Have you seen him since you left
Holloway?"

"Yes, sir, once. It was last Easter Monday. I met him at the Zoo; he is a
keeper there now in the camel-house" (here a sudden light dawned upon me
and I chuckled aloud, to Belfield's great astonishment). "He gave my
little boy a ride on one of the camels and made himself very pleasant."

"Do you remember anything else happening?" Thorndyke inquired.

"Yes, sir. The camel had a little accident; he kicked out--he was an
ill-tempered beast--and his leg hit a post; there happened to be a nail
sticking out from that post, and it tore up a little flap of skin. Then
Woodthorpe got out his handkerchief to tie up the wound, but as it was
none of the cleanest, I said to him: 'Don't use that, Woodthorpe; have
mine,' which was quite a clean one. So he took it and bound up the
camel's leg, and he said to me: 'I'll have it washed and send it to you
if you give me your address.' But I told him there was no need for that;
I should be passing the camel-house on my way out and I would look in for
the handkerchief. And I did: I looked in about an hour later, and
Woodthorpe gave me my handkerchief, folded up but not washed."

"Did you examine it to see if it was yours?" asked Thorndyke.

"No, sir. I just slipped it in my pocket as it was."

"And what became of it afterwards?"

"When I got home I dropped it into the dirty-linen basket."

"Is that all you know about it?"

"Yes, sir; that is all I know."

"Very well, Belfield, that will do. Now you have no reason to be uneasy.
You will soon know all about the Camberwell murder--that is, if you read
the papers."

The ex-convict and his wife were obviously relieved by this assurance and
departed in quite good spirits. When they were gone, Thorndyke produced
the handkerchief and the half-sheet of paper and handed them to the
superintendent, remarking--"This is highly satisfactory, Miller; the
whole case seems to join up very neatly indeed. Two months ago the wife
first noticed the substituted handkerchief, and last Easter Monday--a
little over two months ago--this very significant incident took place in
the Zoological Gardens."

"That is all very well, sir," objected the superintendent, "but we've
only their word for it, you know."

"Not so," replied Thorndyke. "We have excellent corroborative evidence.
You noticed that I had cut a small piece out of the blood-stained portion
of the handkerchief?"

"Yes; and I was sorry you had done it. Our people won't like that."

"Well, here it is, and we will ask Dr. Jervis to give us his opinion of
it."

From the drawer in which the handkerchief had been hidden he brought
forth a microscope slide, and setting the microscope on the table, laid
the slide on the stage.

"Now, Jervis," he said, "tell us what you see there."

I examined the edge of the little square of fabric (which had been
mounted in a fluid reagent) with a high-power objective, and was, for a
time, a little puzzled by the appearance of the blood that adhered to it.

"It looks like bird's blood," I said presently, with some hesitation,
"but yet I can make out no nuclei." I looked again, and then, suddenly,
"By Jove!" I exclaimed, "I have it; of course! It's the blood of a
camel!"

"Is that so, doctor?" demanded the detective, leaning forward in his
excitement.

"That is so," replied Thorndyke. "I discovered it after I came home this
morning. You see," he explained, "it is quite unmistakable. The rule is
that the blood corpuscles of mammals are circular; the one exception is
the camel family, in which the corpuscles are elliptical."


"Why," exclaimed Miller, "that seems to connect Woodthorpe with this
Camberwell job."

"It connects him with it very conclusively," said Thorndyke. "You are
forgetting the finger-prints."

The detective looked puzzled. "What about them?" he asked.

"They were made with stamps--two stamps, as a matter of fact--and those
stamps were made by photographic process from the official finger-print
form. I can prove that beyond all doubt."

"Well, suppose they were. What then?"

Thorndyke opened a drawer and took out a photograph, which he handed to
Miller. "Here," he said, "is the photograph of the official finger-print
form which you were kind enough to bring me. What does it say at the
bottom there?" and he pointed with his finger.

The superintendent read aloud: "Impressions taken by Joseph Woodthorpe.
Rank, Warder; Prison, Holloway." He stared at the photograph for a
moment, and then exclaimed--"Well, I'm hanged! You have worked this out
neatly, doctor! and so quick too. We'll have Mr. Woodthorpe under lock
and key the first thing to-morrow morning. But how did he do it, do you
think?"

"He might have taken duplicate finger-prints and kept one form; the
prisoners would not know there was anything wrong; but he did not in this
case. He must have contrived to take a photograph of the form before
sending it in--it would take a skilful photographer only a minute or two
with a suitable hand-camera placed on a table at the proper distance from
the wall; and I have ascertained that he is a skilful photographer. You
will probably find the apparatus, and the stamps too, when you search his
rooms."

"Well, well. You do give us some surprises, doctor. But I must be off now
to see about this warrant. Good-night, sir, and many thanks for your
help."

When the superintendent had gone we sat for a while looking at one
another in silence. At length Thorndyke spoke. "Here is a case, Jervis,"
he said, "which, simple as it is, teaches a most invaluable lesson--a
lesson which you should take well to heart. It is this: The evidential
value of any fact is an unknown quantity until the fact has been
examined. That seems a self-evident truth, but like many other
self-evident truths, it is constantly overlooked in practice. Take this
present case. When I left Caldwell's house this morning the facts in my
possession were these: (1) The man who murdered Caldwell was directly or
indirectly connected with the Finger-print Department. (2) He was almost
certainly a skilled photographer. (3) He probably committed the Winchmore
Hill and the other burglaries. (4) He was known to Caldwell, had had
professional dealings with him and was probably being blackmailed. This
was all; a very vague clue, as you see.

"There was the handkerchief, planted, as I had no doubt; but could not
prove; the name stamped on it was Belfield's, but any one can get a
rubber stamp made. Then it was stained with blood, as handkerchiefs often
are; that blood might or might not be human blood; it did not seem to
matter a straw whether it was or not. Nevertheless, I said to myself: If
it is human, or at least mammalian blood, that is a fact; and if it is
not human blood, that is also a fact. I will have that fact, and then I
shall know what its value is. I examined the stain when I reached home,
and behold! it was camel's blood; and immediately this insignificant fact
swelled up into evidence of primary importance. The rest was obvious. I
had seen Woodthorpe's name on the form, and I knew several other
officials. My business was to visit all places in London where there were
camels, to get the names of all persons connected with them and to
ascertain if any among them was a photographer. Naturally I went first to
the Zoo, and at the very first cast hooked Joseph Woodthorpe. Wherefore I
say again: Never call any fact irrelevant until you have examined it."

The remarkable evidence given above was not heard at the trial, nor did
Thorndyke's name appear among the witnesses; for when the police searched
Woodthorpe's rooms, so many incriminating articles were found (including
a pair of fingerprint stamps which exactly answered to Thorndyke's
description of them, and a number of photographs of finger-print forms)
that his guilt was put beyond all doubt; and society was shortly after
relieved of a very undesirable member.

[Compiler's note: The next set of stories in the omnibus volume consist
of five taken from 'John Thorndyke's Cases'. There are an additional
three stories in 'John Thorndyke's Cases' which are not included in the
omnibus volume, but for the sake of completeness I have retained them
here. They are: 'The Man with the Nailed Shoes', 'The Mandarin's Pearl',
and 'A Message from the Deep Sea'.

The illustrations which should accompany these stories are available from
Project Gutenberg Australia as 'Thorndykepictures.zip']



THE MISSING MORTGAGEE


PART I


Early in the afternoon of a warm, humid November day, Thomas Elton
sauntered dejectedly along the Margate esplanade, casting an eye now on
the slate-coloured sea with its pall of slate-coloured sky, and now on
the harbour, where the ebb tide was just beginning to expose the mud. It
was a dreary prospect, and Elton varied it by observing the few fishermen
and fewer promenaders who walked foot to foot with their distorted
reflections in the wet pavement; and thus it was that his eye fell on a
smartly- dressed man who had just stepped into a shelter to light a
cigar.

A contemporary joker has classified the Scotsmen who abound in South
Africa into two groups: those, namely, who hail from Scotland, and those
who hail from Palestine. Now, something in the aspect of the broad back
that was presented to his view, in that of the curly, black hair and the
exuberant raiment, suggested to Elton a Scotsman of the latter type. In
fact, there was a suspicion of disagreeable familiarity in the figure
which caused him to watch it and slacken his pace. The man backed out of
the shelter, diffusing azure clouds, and, drawing an envelope from his
pocket, read something that was written on it. Then he turned quickly--and
so did Elton, but not quickly enough. For he was a solitary figure on
that bald and empty expanse, and the other had seen him at the first
glance. Elton walked away slowly, but he had not gone a dozen paces when
he felt the anticipated slap on the shoulder and heard the too
well-remembered voice.

"Blow me, if I don't believe you were trying to cut me, Tom," it said.

Elton looked round with ill-assumed surprise. "Hallo, Gordon! Who the
deuce would have thought of seeing you here?"

Gordon laughed thickly. "Not you, apparently; and you don't look as
pleased as you might now you have seen me. Whereas I'm delighted to see
you, and especially to see that things are going so well with you."

"What do you mean?" asked Elton.

"Taking your winter holiday by the sea, like a blooming duke."

"I'm not taking a holiday," said Elton. "I was so worn out that I had to
have some sort of change; but I've brought my work down with me, and I
put in a full seven hours every day."

"That's right," said Gordon. "'Consider the ant.' Nothing like steady
industry! I've brought my work down with me too; a little slip of paper
with a stamp on it. You know the article, Tom."

"I know. But it isn't due till to-morrow, is it?"

"Isn't it, by gum! It's due this very day, the twentieth of the month.
That's why I'm here. Knowing your little weakness in the matter of dates,
and having a small item to collect in Canterbury, I thought I'd just come
on, and save you the useless expense that results from forgetfulness."

Elton understood the hint, and his face grew rigid.

"I can't do it, Gordon; 1 can't really. Haven't got it, and shan't have
it until I'm paid for the batch of drawings that I'm working on now."

"Oh, but what a pity!" exclaimed Gordon, taking the cigar from his thick,
pouting lips to utter the exclamation. "Here you are, blueing your
capital on seaside jaunts and reducing your income at a stroke by a clear
four pounds a year."

"How do you make that out?" demanded Elton.

"Tut, tut," protested Gordon, "what an unbusinesslike chap you are!
Here's a little matter of twenty pounds quarter's interest. If it's paid
now, it's twenty. If it isn't, it goes on to the principal and there's
another four pounds a year to be paid. Why don't you try to be more
economical, dear boy?"

Elton looked askance at the vampire by his side; at the plump blue-shaven
cheeks, the thick black eyebrows, the drooping nose, and the full, red
lips that embraced the cigar, and though he was a mild tempered man he
felt that he could have battered that sensual, complacent face out of all
human likeness, with something uncommonly like enjoyment. But of these
thoughts nothing appeared in his reply, for a man cannot afford to say
all he would wish to a creditor who could ruin him with a word.

"You mustn't be too hard on me, Gordon," said he. "Give me a little time.
I'm doing all I can, you know. I earn every penny that I am able, and I
have kept my insurance paid up regularly. I shall be paid for this work
in a week or two and then we can settle up."

Gordon made no immediate reply, and the two men walked slowly eastward, a
curiously ill-assorted pair: the one prosperous, jaunty, overdressed; the
other pale and dejected, and, with his well-brushed but napless clothes,
his patched boots and shiny-brimmed hat, the very type of decent,
struggling poverty.

They had just passed the pier, and were coming to the base of the jetty,
when Gordon next spoke.

"Can't we get off this beastly wet pavement?" he asked, looking down at
his dainty and highly-polished boots. "What's it like down on the sands?"

"Oh, it's very good walking," said Elton, "between here and Foreness, and
probably drier than the pavement."

"Then," said Gordon, "I vote we go down"; and accordingly they descended
the sloping way beyond the jetty. The stretch of sand left by the
retiring tide was as smooth and firm as a sheet of asphalt, and far more
pleasant to walk upon.

"We seem to have the place all to ourselves," remarked Gordon, "with the
exception of some half- dozen dukes like yourself."

As he spoke, he cast a cunning black eye furtively at the dejected man by
his side, considering how much further squeezing was possible, and what
would be the probable product of a further squeeze; but he quickly
averted his gaze as Elton turned on him a look eloquent of contempt and
dislike. There was another pause, for Elton made no reply to the last
observation; then Gordon changed over from one arm to the other the heavy
fur overcoat that he was carrying. "Needn't have brought this beastly
thing," he remarked, "if I'd known it was going to be so warm."

"Shall I carry it for you a little way?" asked the naturally polite
Elton.

"If you would, dear boy," replied Gordon. "It's difficult to manage an
overcoat, an umbrella and cigar all at once."

He handed over the coat with a sigh of relief, and having straightened
himself and expanded his chest, remarked: "I suppose you're beginning to
do quite well now, Tom?"

Elton shook his head gloomily. "No," he answered, "it's the same old
grind."

"But surely they're beginning to recognise your talents by this time,"
said Gordon, with the persuasive air of a counsel.

"That's just the trouble," said Elton. "You see, I haven't any, and they
recognised the fact long ago. I'm just a journeyman, and journeyman's
work is what I get given to me."

"You mean to say that the editors don't appreciate talent when they see
it."

"I don't know about that," said Elton, "but they're most infernally
appreciative of the lack of it."

Gordon blew out a great cloud of smoke, and raised his eyebrows
reflectively. "Do you think," he said after a brief pause, "you give 'em
a fair chance? I've seen some of your stuff. It's blooming prim, you
know. Why don't you try something more lively? More skittish, you know,
old chap; something with legs, you know, and high shoes. See what I mean,
old chap? High with good full calves and not too fat in the ankle. That
ought to fetch 'em; don't you think so?"

Elton scowled. "You're thinking of the drawings in 'Hold Me Up,'" he said
scornfully, "but you're mistaken. Any fool can draw a champagne bottle
upside down with a French shoe at the end of it."

"No doubt, dear boy," said Gordon, "but I expect that sort of fool knows
what pays."

"A good many fools seem to know that much," retorted Elton; and then he
was sorry he had spoken, for Gordon was not really an amiable man, and
the expression of his face suggested that he had read a personal
application into the rejoinder. So, once more, the two men walked on in
silence.

Presently their footsteps led them to the margin of the weed-covered
rocks, and here, from under a high heap of bladder-wrack, a large green
shorecrab rushed out and menaced them with uplifted claws. Gordon stopped
and stared at the creature with Cockney surprise, prodding it with his
umbrella, and speculating aloud as to whether it was good to eat. The
crab, as if alarmed at the suggestion, suddenly darted away and began to
scuttle over the green-clad rocks, finally plunging into a large, deep
pool. Gordon pursued it, hobbling awkwardly over the slippery rocks,
until he came to the edge of the pool, over which he stooped, raking
inquisitively among the weedy fringe with his umbrella. He was so much
interested in his quarry that he failed to allow for the slippery surface
on which he stood. The result was disastrous. Of a sudden, one foot began
to slide forward, and when he tried to recover his balance, was instantly
followed by the other. For a moment he struggled frantically to regain
his footing, executing a sort of splashing, stamping dance on the margin.
Then, the circling sea birds were startled by a yell of terror, an
ivory-handled umbrella flew across the rocks, and Mr. Solomon Gordon took
a complete header into the deepest part of the pool. What the crab
thought of it history does not relate. What Mr. Gordon thought of it is
unsuitable for publication; but, as he rose, like an extremely up-to-date
merman, he expressed his sentiments with a wealth of adjectives that
brought Elton in the verge of hysteria.

"It's a good job you brought your overcoat, after all," Elton remarked
for the sake of saying something, and thereby avoiding the risk of
exploding into undeniable laughter. The Hebrew made no reply--at least,
no reply that lends itself to verbatim report--but staggered towards the
hospitable overcoat, holding out his dripping arms. Having inducted him
into the garment and buttoned him up, Elton hurried off to recover the
umbrella (and, incidentally, to indulge himself in a broad grin), and,
having secured it, angled with it for the smart billycock which was
floating across the pool.

It was surprising what a change the last minute or two had wrought. The
positions of the two men were now quite reversed. Despite his shabby
clothing, Elton seemed to walk quite jauntily as compared with his
shuddering companion who trotted by his side with short miserable steps,
shrinking into the uttermost depths of his enveloping coat, like an
alarmed winkle into its shell, puffing out his cheeks and anathematising
the Universe in general as well as his chattering teeth would let him.

For some time they hurried along towards the slope by the jetty without
exchanging any further remarks; then suddenly, Elton asked: "What are you
going to do, Gordon? You can't travel like that."

"Can't you lend me a change?" asked Gordon. Elton reflected. He had
another suit, his best suit, which he had been careful to preserve in
good condition for use on those occasions when a decent appearance was
indispensable. He looked askance at the man by his side and something
told him that the treasured suit would probably receive less careful
treatment than it was accustomed to. Still the man couldn't be allowed to
go about in wet clothes.

"I've got a spare suit," he said. "It isn't quite up to your style, and
may not be much of a fit, but I daresay you'll be able to put up with it
for an hour or two."

"It'll be dry anyhow," mumbled Gordon, "so we won't trouble about the
style. How far is it to your rooms?"

The plural number was superfluous. Elton's room was in a little ancient
flint house at the bottom of a narrow close in the old quarter of the
town. You reached it without any formal preliminaries of bell or knocker
by simply letting yourself in by a street door, crossing a tiny room,
opening the door of what looked like a narrow cupboard, and squeezing up
a diminutive flight of stairs, which was unexpectedly exposed to view. By
following this procedure, the two men reached a small bed-sitting-room;
that is to say, it was a bed room, but by sitting down on the bed, you
converted it into a sitting-room.

Gordon puffed out his cheeks and looked round distastefully.

"You might just ring for some hot water, old chappie," he said.

Elton laughed aloud. "Ring!" he exclaimed. "Ring what? Your clothes are
the only things that are likely to get wrung."

"Well, then, sing out for the servant," said Gordon.

Elton laughed again. "My dear fellow," said he, "we don't go in for
servants. There is only my land lady and she never comes up here. She's
too fat to get up the stairs, and besides, she's got a game leg. I look
after my room myself. You'll be all right if you have a good rub down."

Gordon groaned, and emerged reluctantly from the depths of his overcoat,
while Elton brought forth from the chest of drawers the promised suit and
the necessary undergarments. One of these latter Gordon held up with a
sour smile, as he regarded it with extreme disfavour.

"I shouldn't think," said he, "you need have been at the trouble of
marking them so plainly. No one's likely to want to run away with them."

The undergarments certainly contrasted very unfavourably with the
delicate garments which he was peeling off, excepting in one respect;
they were dry; and that had to console him for the ignominious change.

The clothes fitted quite fairly, notwithstanding the difference between
the figures of the two men; for while Gordon was a slender man grown fat,
Elton was a broad man grown thin; which, in a way, averaged their
superficial area.

Elton watched the process of investment and noted the caution with which
Gordon smuggled the various articles from his own pockets into those of
the borrowed garments without exposing them to view; heard the jingle of
money; saw the sumptuous gold watch and massive chain transplanted and
noted with interest the large leather wallet that came forth from the
breast pocket of the wet coat. He got a better view of this from the fact
that Gordon himself examined it narrowly, and even opened it to inspect
its contents.

"Lucky that wasn't an ordinary pocketbook." he remarked. "If it had been,
your receipt would have got wet, and so would one or two other little
articles that wouldn't have been improved by salt water. And, talking of
the receipt, Tom, shall I hand it over now?"

"You can if you like," said Elton; "but as I told you, I haven't got the
money"; on which Gordon muttered: "Pity, pity," and thrust the wallet
into his, or rather, Elton's breast pocket.

A few minutes later, the two men came out together into the gathering
darkness, and as they walked slowly up the close, Elton asked: "Are you
going up to town to-night, Gordon?"

"How can I?" was the reply. "I can't go without my clothes. No, I shall
run over to Broadstairs. A client of mine keeps a boarding-house there.
He'll have to put me up for the night, and if you can get my clothes
cleaned and dried I can come over for them to-morrow."

These arrangements having been settled, the two men adjourned, at
Gordon's suggestion, for tea at one of the restaurants on the Front; and
after that, again at Gordon's suggestion, they set forth together along
the cliff path that leads to Broadstairs by way of Kingsgate.

"You may as well walk with me into Broadstairs," said Gordon; "I'll stand
you the fare back by rail"; and to this Elton had agreed, not because he
was desirous of the other man's company, but because he still had some
lingering hopes of being able to adjust the little difficulty respecting
the instalment.

He did not, however, open the subject at once. Profoundly as he loathed
and despised the human spider whom necessity made his associate for the
moment, he exerted himself to keep up a current of amusing conversation.
It was not easy; for Gordon, like most men whose attention is focussed on
the mere acquirement of money, looked with a dull eye on the ordinary
interests of life. His tastes in art he had already hinted at, and his
other tastes lay much in the same direction. Money first, for its own
sake, and then those coarser and more primitive gratifications that it
was capable of purchasing. This was the horizon that bounded Mr. Solomon
Gordon's field of vision.

Nevertheless, they were well on their way before Elton alluded to the
subject that was uppermost in both their minds.

"Look here, Gordon," he said at length, "can't you manage to give me a
bit more time to pay up this instalment? It doesn't seem quite fair to
keep sending up the principal like this."

"Well, dear boy," replied Gordon, "it's your own fault, you know. If you
would only bear the dates in mind, it wouldn't happen."

"But," pleaded Elton, "just consider what I'm paying you. I originally
borrowed fifty pounds from you, and I'm now paying you eighty pounds a
year in addition to the insurance premium. That's close on a hundred a
year; just about half that I manage to earn by slaving like a nigger. If
you stick it up any farther you won't leave me enough to keep body and
soul together; which really means that I shan't be able to pay you at
all."

There was a brief pause; then Gordon said dryly: "You talk about not
paying, dear boy, as if you had forgotten about that promissory note."

Elton set his teeth. His temper was rising rapidly. But he restrained
himself.

"I should have a pretty poor memory if I had," he replied, "considering
the number of reminders you've given me."

"You've needed them, Tom," said the other. "I've never met a slacker man
in keeping to his engagements."

At this Elton lost his temper completely.

"That's a damned lie!" he exclaimed, "and you know it, you infernal,
dirty, blood-sucking parasite "

Gordon stopped dead.

"Look here, my friend," said he; "none of that. If I've any of your
damned sauce, I'll give you a sound good hammering."

"The deuce you will!" said Elton, whose fingers were itching, not for the
first time, to take some recompense for all that he had suffered from the
insatiable usurer. "Nothing's preventing you now, you know, but I fancy
cent. per cent. is more in your line than fighting."

"Give me any more sauce and you'll see," said Gordon.

"Very well," was the quiet rejoinder. "I have great pleasure in informing
you that you are a human maw-worm. How does that suit you?"

For reply, Gordon threw down his overcoat and umbrella on the grass at
the side of the path, and deliberately slapped Elton on the cheek.

The reply followed instantly in the form of a smart left-hander, which
took effect on the bridge of the Hebrew's rather prominent nose. Thus the
battle was fairly started, and it proceeded with all the fury of
accumulated hatred on the one side and sharp physical pain on the other.
What little science there was appertamed to Elton, in spite of which,
however, he had to give way to his heavier, better nourished and more
excitable opponent. Regardless of the punishment he received, the
infuriated Jew rushed at him and, by sheer weight of onslaught, drove him
backward across the little green.

Suddenly, Elton, who knew the place by daylight, called out in alarm.

"Look out, Gordon! Get back, you fool!"

But Gordon, blind with fury, and taking this as attempt to escape, only
pressed him harder. Elton's pugnacity died out instantly in mortal
terror. He shouted out another warning and as Gordon still pressed him,
battering furiously, he did the only thing that was possible: he dropped
to the ground. And then, in the twinkling of an eye came the catastrophe.
Borne forward by his own momentum, Gordon stumbled over Elton's prostrate
body, staggered forward a few paces, and fell. Elton heard a muffled
groan that faded quickly, and mingled with the sound of falling earth and
stones. He sprang to his feet and looked round and saw that he was alone.

For some moments he was dazed by the suddenness of the awful thing that
had happened. He crept timorously towards the unseen edge of the cliff,
and listened.

There was no sound save the distant surge of the breakers, and the scream
of an invisible sea-bird. It was useless to try to look over. Near as he
was, he could not, even now, distinguish the edge of the cliff from the
dark beach below. Suddenly he bethought him of a narrow cutting that led
down from the cliff to the shore. Quickly crossing the green, and
mechanically stooping to pick up Gordon's overcoat and umbrella, he made
his way to the head of the cutting and ran down the rough chalk roadway.
At the bottom he turned to the right and, striding hurriedly over the
smooth sand, peered into the darkness at the foot of the cliff.

Soon there loomed up against the murky sky the shadowy form of the little
headland on which he and Gordon had stood; and, almost at the same
moment, there grew out of the darkness of the beach a darker spot amidst
a constellation of smaller spots of white. As he drew nearer the dark
spot took shape; a horrid shape with sprawling limbs and a head strangely
awry. He stepped forward, trembling, and spoke the name that the thing
had borne. He grasped the flabby hand, and laid his fingers on the wrist;
but it only told him the same tale as did that strangely misplaced head.
The body lay face downwards, and he had not the courage to turn it over;
but that his enemy was dead he had not the faintest doubt. He stood up
amidst the litter of fallen chalk and earth and looked down at the
horrible, motionless thing, wondering numbly and vaguely what he should
do. Should he go and seek assistance? The answer to that came in another
question. How came that body to be lying on the beach? And what answer
should he give to the inevitable questions? And swiftly there grew up in
his mind, born of the horror of the thing that was, a yet greater horror
of the thing that might be.

A minute later, a panic-stricken man stole with stealthy swiftness up the
narrow cutting and set forth towards Margate, stopping anon to listen,
and stealing away off the path into the darkness, to enter the town by
the inland road.

Little sleep was there that night for Elton in his room in the old flint
house. The dead man's clothes, which greeted him on his arrival, hanging
limply on the towel-horse where he had left them, haunted him through the
night. In the darkness, the sour smell of damp cloth assailed him with an
endless reminder of their presence, and after each brief doze, he would
start up in alarm and hastily light his candle; only to throw its
flickering light on those dank, drowned-looking vestments. His thoughts,
half-controlled, as night thoughts are, flitted erratically from the
unhappy past to the unstable present, and thence to the incalculable
future. Once he lighted the candle specially to look at his watch to see
if the tide had yet crept up to that solitary figure on the beach; nor
could he rest again until the time of high water was well past. And all
through these wanderings of his thoughts there came, recurring like a
horrible refrain, the question what would happen when the body was found?
Could he be connected with it and, if so, would he be charged with
murder? At last he fell asleep and slumbered on until the landlady
thumped at the staircase door to announce that she had brought his
breakfast.

As soon as he was dressed he went out. Not, how ever, until he had
stuffed Gordon's still damp clothes and boots, the cumbrous overcoat and
the smart billy-cock hat into his trunk, and put the umbrella into the
darkest corner of the cupboard. Not that anyone ever came up to the room,
but that, already, he was possessed with the uneasy secretiveness of the
criminal. He went straight down to the beach; with what purpose he could
hardly have said, but an irresistible impulse drove him thither to see if
it was there. He went down by the jetty and struck out eastward over the
smooth sand, looking about him with dreadful expectation for some small
crowd or hurrying messenger. From the foot of the cliffs, over the rocks
to the distant line of breakers, his eye roved with eager dread, and
still he hurried eastward, always drawing nearer to the place that he
feared to look on. As he left the town behind, so he left behind the one
or two idlers on the beach, and when he turned Foreness Point he lost
sight of the last of them and went forward alone. It was less than half
an hour later that the fatal head land opened out beyond Whiteness.

Not a soul had he met along that solitary beach, and though, once or
twice, he had started at the sight of some mass of drift wood or heap of
seaweed, the dreadful thing that he was seeking had not yet appeared. He
passed the opening of the cutting and approached the headland, breathing
fast and looking about him fearfully. Already he could see the larger
lumps of chalk that had fallen, and looking up, he saw a clean, white
patch at the summit of the cliff. But still there was no sign of the
corpse. He walked on more slowly now, considering whether it could have
drifted out to sea, or whether he should find it in the next bay. And
then, rounding the head land, he came in sight of a black hole at the
cliff foot, the entrance to a deep cave. He approached yet more slowly,
sweeping his eye round the little bay, and looking apprehensively at the
cavity before him. Suppose the thing should have washed in there. It was
quite possible. Many things did wash into that cave, for he had once
visited it and had been astonished at the quantity of seaweed and jetsam
that had accumulated within it. But it was an uncomfortable thought. It
would be doubly horrible to meet the awful thing in the dim twilight of
the cavern. And yet, the black archway seemed to draw him on, step by
step, until he stood at the portal and looked in. It was an eerie place,
chilly and damp, the clammy walls and roof stained green and purple and
black with encrusting lichens. At one time, Elton had been told, it used
to be haunted by smugglers, and then communicated with an underground
passage; and the old smuggler's look-out still remained; a narrow tunnel,
high up the cliff, looking out into Kingsgate Bay; and even some vestiges
of the rude steps that led up to the look-out platform could still be
traced, and were not impossible to climb. Indeed, Elton had, at his last
visit, climbed to the platform and looked out through the spy-hole. He
recalled the circumstance now, as he stood, peering nervously into the
darkness, and straining his eyes to see what jetsam the ocean had brought
since then.

At first he could see nothing but the smooth sand near the opening; then,
as his eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom, he could make out the
great heap of seaweed on the floor of the cave. Insensibly, he crept in,
with his eyes riveted on the weedy mass and, as he left the daylight
behind him, so did the twilight of the cave grow clearer. His feet left
the firm sand and trod the springy mass of weed, and in the silence of
the cave he could now hear plainly the rain-like patter of the leaping
sand-hoppers. He stopped for a moment to listen to the unfamiliar sound,
and still the gloom of the cave grew lighter to his more accustomed eyes.

And then, in an instant, he saw it. From a heap of weed, a few paces
ahead, projected a boot; his own boot; he recognised the patch on the
sole; and at the sight, his heart seemed to stand still. Though he had
somehow expected to find it here, its presence seemed to strike him with
a greater shock of horror from that very circumstance.

He was standing stock still, gazing with fearful fascination at the boot
and the swelling mound of weed, when, suddenly, there struck upon his ear
the voice of a woman, singing.

He started violently. His first impulse was to run out of the cave. But a
moment's reflection told him what madness this would be. And then the
voice drew nearer, and there broke out the high, rippling laughter of a
child. Elton looked in terror at the bright opening of the cavern's
mouth, expecting every moment to see it frame a group of figures. If that
happened, he was lost, for he would have been seen actually with the
body. Suddenly he bethought him of the spy-hole and the platform, both of
which were invisible from the entrance; and turning, he ran quickly over
the sodden weed till he came to the remains of the steps. Climbing
hurriedly up these, he reached the platform, which was enclosed in a
large niche, just as the reverberating sound of voices told him that the
strangers were within the mouth of the cave. He strained his ears to
catch what they were saying and to make out if they were entering
farther. It was a child's voice that he had first heard, and very weird
were the hollow echoes of the thin treble that were flung back from the
rugged walls. But he could not hear what the child had said. The woman's
voice, however, was quite distinct, and the words seemed significant in
more senses than one.

"No, dear," it said, "you had better not go in. It's cold and damp. Come
out into the sunshine."

Elton breathed more freely. But the woman was more right than she knew.
It was cold and damp, that thing under the black tangle of weed. Better
far to be out in the sunshine. He himself was already longing to escape
from the chill and gloom, of the cavern. But he could not escape yet.
Innocent as he actually was, his position was that of a murderer. He must
wait until the coast was clear, and then steal out, to hurry away
unobserved.

He crept up cautiously to the short tunnel and peered out through the
opening across the bay. And then his heart sank. Below him, on the sunny
beach, a small party of visitors had established themselves just within
view of the mouth of the cave; and even as he looked, a man approached
from the wooden stairway down the cliff, carrying a couple of deck
chairs. So, for the present his escape was hopelessly cut off.

He went back to the platform and sat down to wait for his release; and,
as he sat, his thoughts went back once more to the thing that lay under
the weed. How long would it lie there undiscovered? And what would happen
when it was found? What was there to connect him with it? Of course,
there was his name on the clothing, but there was nothing incriminating
in that, if he had only had the courage to give information at once. But
it was too late to think of that now. Besides, it suddenly flashed upon
him, there was the receipt in the wallet. That receipt mentioned him by
name and referred to a loan. Obviously, its suggestion was most sinister,
coupled with his silence. It was a deadly item of evidence against him.
But no sooner had he realised the appalling significance of this document
than he also realised that it was still within his reach. Why should he
leave it there to be brought in evidence--in false evidence, too--against him?

Slowly he rose and, creeping down the tunnel, once more looked out. The
people were sitting quietly in their chairs, the man was reading, and the
child was digging in the sand. Elton looked across the bay to make sure
that no other person was approaching, and then, hastily climbing down the
steps, walked across the great bed of weed, driving an army of
sand-hoppers before him. He shuddered at the thought of what he was going
to do, and the clammy chill of the cave seemed to settle on him in a cold
sweat.

He came to the little mound from which the boot projected, and began,
shudderingly and with faltering hand, to lift the slimy, tangled weed. As
he drew aside the first bunch, be gave a gasp of horror and quickly
replaced it. The body was lying on its back, and, as he lifted the weed
he had uncovered--not the face, for the thing had no face. It had struck
either the cliff or a stone upon the beach and--but there is no need to
go into particulars: it had no face. When he had recovered a little,
Elton groped shudderingly among the weed until he found the breast-pocket
from which he quickly drew out the wallet, now clammy, sodden and
loathsome. He was rising with it in his hand when an apparition, seen
through the opening of the cave, arrested his movement as if he had been
suddenly turned into stone. A man, apparently a fisherman or sailor, was
sauntering past some thirty yards from the mouth of the cave, and at his
heels trotted a mongrel dog. The dog stopped, and, lifting his nose,
seemed to sniff the air; and then he began to walk slowly and
suspiciously towards the cave. The man sauntered on and soon passed out
of view; but the dog still came on towards the cave, stopping now and
again with upraised nose.

The catastrophe seemed inevitable. But just at that moment the man's
voice rose, loud and angry, evidently calling the dog. The animal
hesitated, looking wist fully from his master to the cave; but when the
summons was repeated, he turned reluctantly and trotted away.

Elton stood up and took a deep breath. The chilly sweat was running clown
his face, his heart was thumping and his knees trembled, so that he could
hardly get back to the platform. What hideous peril had he escaped and
how narrowly! For there he had stood; and had the man entered, he would
have been caught in the very act of stealing the incriminating document
from the body. For that matter, he was little better off now, with the
dead man's property on his person, and he resolved instantly to take out
and destroy the receipt and put back the wallet. But this was easier
thought of than done. The receipt was soaked with sea water, and refused
utterly to light when he applied a match to it. In the end, he tore it up
into little fragments and deliberately swallowed them, one by one.

But to restore the wallet was more than he was equal to just now. He
would wait until the people had gone home to lunch, and then he would
thrust it under the weed as he ran past. So he sat down again and once
more took up the endless thread of his thoughts.

The receipt was gone now, and with it the immediate suggestion of motive.
There remained only the clothes with their too legible markings. They
certainly connected him with the body, but they offered no proof of his
presence at the catastrophe. And then, suddenly, another most startling
idea occurred to him. Who could identify the body--the body that had no
face? There was the wallet, it was true, but he could take that away with
him, and there was a ring on the finger and some articles in the pockets
which might be identified. But--a voice seemed to whisper to him--these
things were removable, too. And if he removed them, what then? Why, then,
the body was that of Thomas Elton, a friendless, poverty-stricken artist,
about whom no one would trouble to ask any questions.

He pondered on this new situation profoundly. It offered him a choice of
alternatives. Either he might choose the imminent risk of being hanged
for a murder that he had not committed, or he might surrender his
identity for ever and move away to a new environment.

He smiled faintly. His identity! What might that be worth to barter
against his life? Only yesterday he would gladly have surrendered it as
the bare price of emancipation from the vampire who had fastened on to
him.

He thrust the wallet into his pocket and buttoned his coat. Thomas Elton
was dead; and that other man, as yet unnamed, should go forth, as the
woman had said, into the sunshine.


PART II


(Related by Christopher Jervis, M.D.)

From various causes, the insurance business that passed through
Thorndyke's hands had, of late, considerably increased. The number of
societies which regularly employed him had grown larger, and, since the
remarkable case of Percival Bland, the "Griffin" had made it a routine
practice to send all inquest cases to us for report.

[Compiler's note: the Percival Bland case actually follows directly after
this one in the book: clearly the order of stories has been transposed.]

It was in reference to one of these latter that Mr. Stalker, a senior
member of the staff of that office, called on us one afternoon in
December; and when he had laid his bag on the table and settled himself
comfortably before the fire, he opened the business without preamble.

"I've brought you another inquest case," said he; "a rather queer one,
quite interesting from your point of view. As far as we can see, it has
no particular interest for us excepting that it does rather look as if
our examining medical officer had been a little casual."

"What is the special interest of the case from our point of view?" asked
Thorndyke.

"I'll just give you a sketch of it," said Stalker, "and I think you will
agree that it's a case after your own heart.

"On the 24th of last month, some men who were collecting seaweed, to use
as manure, discovered in a cave at Kingsgate, in the Isle of Thanet, the
body of a man, lying under a mass of accumulated weed. As the tide was
rising, they put the body into their cart and conveyed it to Margate,
where, of course, an inquest was held, and the following facts were
elicited. The body was that of a man named Thomas Elton. It was
identified by the name-marks on the clothing, by the visiting-cards and a
couple of letters which were found in the pockets. From the address on
the letters it was seen that Elton had been staying in Margate, and on
inquiry at that address, it was learnt from the old woman who let the
lodgings, that he had been missing about four days. The landlady was
taken to the mortuary, and at once identified the body as that of her
lodger. It remained only to decide how the body came into the cave; and
this did not seem to present much difficulty; for the neck had been
broken by a tremendous blow, which had practically destroyed the face,
and there were distinct evidences of a breaking away of a portion of the
top of the cliff, only a few yards from the position of the cave. There
was apparently no doubt that Elton had fallen sheer from the top of the
overhanging cliff on to the beach. Now, one would suppose with the
evidence of this fall of about a hundred and fifty feet, the smashed face
and broken neck, there was not much room for doubt as to the cause of
death. I think you will agree with me, Dr. Jervis?"

Certainly," I replied; "it must be admitted that a broken neck is a
condition that tends to shorten life."

"Quite so," agreed Stalker; "but our friend, the local coroner, is a
gentleman who takes nothing for granted--a very Thomas Didymus, who
apparently agrees with Dr. Thorndyke that if there is no post mortem,
there is no inquest. So he ordered a post mortem, which would have
appeared to me an absurdly unnecessary proceeding, and I think that even
you will agree with me, Dr. Thorndyke."

But Thorndyke shook his head.

"Not at all," said he. "It might, for instance, be much more easy to push
a drugged or poisoned man over a cliff than to put over the same man in
his normal state. The appearance of violent accident is an excellent mask
for the less obvious forms of murder."

"That's perfectly true," said Stalker; "and I suppose that is what the
coroner thought. At any rate, he had the post-mortem made, and the result
was most curious; for it was found, on opening the body, that the
deceased had suffered from a smallish thoracic aneurism, which had burst.
Now, as the aneurism must obviously have burst during life, it leaves the
cause of death--so I understand--uncertain; at any rate, the medical
witness was unable to say whether the deceased fell over the cliff in
consequence of the bursting of the aneurism or burst the aneurism in
consequence of falling over the cliff. Of course, it doesn't matter to us
which way the thing happened; the only question which interests us is,
whether a comparatively recently insured man ought to have had an
aneurism at all."

"Have you paid the claim?" asked Thorndyke.

"No, certainly not. We never pay a claim until we have had your report.
But, as a matter of fact, there is another circumstance that is causing
delay. It seems that Elton had mortgaged his policy to a money lender,
named Gordon, and it is by him that the claim has been made, or rather,
by a clerk of his, named Hyams. Now, we have had a good many dealings
with this man Gordon, and hitherto be has always acted in person; and as
he is a somewhat slippery gentleman we have thought it desirable to have
the claim actually signed by him. And that is the difficulty. For it
seems that Mr. Gordon is abroad, and his whereabouts unknown to Hyams;
so, as we certainly couldn't take Hyams's receipt for payment, the matter
is in abeyance until Hyams can communicate with his principal. And now, I
must be running away. I have brought you, as you will see, all the
papers, including the policy and the mortgage deed."

As soon as he was gone, Thorndyke gathered up the bundle of papers and
sorted them out in what be apparently considered the order of their
importance. First be glanced quickly through the proposal form, and then
took up the copy of the coroner's depositions.

"The medical evidence," be remarked, "is very full and complete. Both the
coroner and the doctor seem to know their business."

Seeing that the man apparently fell over a cliff," said I, "the medical
evidence would not seem to be of first importance. It would seem to be
more to the point to ascertain how he came to fall over."

"That's quite true," replied Thorndyke; "and yet, this report contains
some rather curious matter. The deceased had an aneurism of the arch;
that was probably rather recent. But he also had some slight,
old-standing aortic disease, with full compensatory hypertrophy. He also
had a nearly complete set of false teeth. Now, doesn't it strike you,
Jervis, as rather odd that a man who was passed only five years ago as a
first-class life, should, in that short interval, have become actually
uninsurable?"

'Yes, it certainly does look," said I, " as if the fellow had had rather
bad luck. What does the proposal form say?"

I took the document up and ran my eyes over it. On Thorndyke's advice,
medical examiners for the "Griffin" were instructed to make a somewhat
fuller report than is usual in some companies. In this case, the ordinary
answers to questions set forth that the heart was perfectly healthy and
the teeth rather exceptionally good, and then, in the summary at the end,
the examiner remarked: "the proposer seems to be a completely sound and
healthy man; he presents no physical defects whatever, with the exception
of a bony ankylosis of the first joint of the third finger of the left
hand, which he states to have been due to an injury."

Thorndyke looked up quickly. "Which finger, did you say?" he asked.

"The third finger of the left hand," I replied.

Thorndyke looked thoughtfully at the paper that he was reading. "It's
very singular," said he, "for I see that the Margate doctor states that
the deceased wore a signet ring on the third finger of the left hand.
Now, of course, you couldn't get a ring on to a finger with bony
ankylosis of the joint."

"He must have mistaken the finger," said I, "or else the insurance
examiner did."

"That is quite possible," Thorndyke replied; "but, doesn't it strike you
as very singular that, whereas the insurance examiner mentions the
ankylosis, which was of no importance from an insurance point of view,
the very careful man who made the post-mortem should not have mentioned
it, though, owing to the unrecognisable condition of the face, it was of
vital importance for the purpose of identification?"

I admitted that it was very singular indeed, and we then resumed our
study of the respective papers. But presently I noticed that Thorndyke
had laid the report upon his knee, and was gazing speculatively into the
fire.

I gather," said I, "that my learned friend finds some matter of interest
in this case."

For reply, he handed me the bundle of papers, recommending me to look
through them.

"Thank you," said I, rejecting them firmly, "but I think I can trust you
to have picked out all the plums."

Thorndyke smiled indulgently. "They're not plums, Jervis," said he;
"they're only currants, but they make quite a substantial little heap."

I disposed myself in a receptive attitude (somewhat after the fashion of
the juvenile pelican) and he continued: "If we take the small and
unimpressive items and add them together, you will see that a quite
considerable sum of discrepancy results, thus:

"In 1903, Thomas Elton, aged thirty-one, had a set of sound teeth. In
1908, at the age of thirty-six, he was more than half toothless. Again,
at the age of thirty-one, his heart was perfectly healthy. At the age of
thirty-six, he had old aortic disease, with fully established
compensation, and an aneurism that was possibly due to it. When he was
examined he had a noticeable incurable malformation; no such malformation
is mentioned in connection with the body.

"He appears to have fallen over a cliff; and he had also burst an
aneurism. Now, the bursting of the aneurism must obviously have occurred
during life; but it would occasion practically instantaneous death.
Therefore, if the fall was accidental, the rupture must have occurred
either as he stood at the edge of the cliff, as he was in the act of
falling, or on striking the beach.

"At the place where he apparently fell, the footpath is some thirty yards
distant from the edge of the cliff.

"It is not known how he came to that spot, or whether he was alone at the
time.

"Someone is claiming five hundred pounds as the immediate result of his
death.

"There, you see, Jervis, are seven propositions, none of them extremely
striking, but rather suggestive when taken together."

"You seem," said I, "to suggest a doubt as to the identity of the body."

"I do," he replied. "The identity was not clearly established."

"You don't think the clothing and the visiting-cards conclusive."

"They're not parts of the body," he replied. "Of course, substitution is
highly improbable. But it is not impossible."

"And the old woman--" I suggested, but he interrupted me.

"My dear Jervis," he exclaimed; "I'm surprised at you. How many times has
it happened within our knowledge that women have identified the bodies of
total strangers as those of their husbands, fathers or brothers? The
thing happens almost every year. As to this old woman, she saw a body
with an unrecognisable face, dressed in the clothes of her missing
lodger. Of course, it was the clothes that she identified."

"I suppose it was," I agreed; and then I said: "You seem to suggest the
possibility of foul play."

"Well," he replied, "if you consider those seven points, you will agree
with me that they present a cumulative discrepancy which it is impossible
to ignore. The whole significance of the case turns on the question of
identity; for, if this was not the body of Thomas Elton, it would appear
to have been deliberately prepared to counterfeit that body. And such
deliberate preparation would manifestly imply an attempt to conceal the
identity of some other body.

"Then," he continued, after a pause, "there is this deed. It looks quite
regular and is correctly stamped, but it seems to me that the surface of
the paper is slightly altered in one or two places and if one holds the
document up to the light, the paper looks a little more transparent in
those places." He examined the document for a few seconds with his pocket
lens, and then passing lens and document to me, said: "Have a look at it,
Jervis, and tell me what you think."

I scrutinised the paper closely, taking it over to the window to get a
better light; and to me, also, the paper appeared to be changed in
certain places.

"Are we agreed as to the position of the altered places?" Thorndyke asked
when I announced the fact.

"I only see three patches," I answered. "Two correspond to the name,
Thomas Elton, and the third to one of the figures in the policy number."

"Exactly," said Thorndyke, "and the significance is obvious. If the paper
has really been altered, it means that some other name has been erased
and Elton's substituted; by which arrangement, of course, the correctly
dated stamp would be secured. And this--the alteration of an old
document--is the only form of forgery that is possible with a dated,
impressed stamp."

"Wouldn't it be rather a stroke of luck," I asked, "for a forger to
happen to have in his possession a document needing only these two
alterations?"

"I see nothing remarkable in it," Thorndyke replied. "A moneylender would
have a number of documents of this kind in hand, and you observe that be
was not bound down to any particular date. Any date within a year or so
of the issue of the policy would answer his purpose. This document is, in
fact, dated, as you see, about six months after the issue of the policy."

"I suppose," said I, "that you will draw Stalker's attention to this
matter."

"He will have to be informed, of course," Thorndyke replied; "but I think
it would be interesting in the first place to call on Mr. Hyams. You will
have noticed that there are some rather mysterious features in this case,
and Mr. Hyams's conduct, especially if this document should turn out to
be really a forgery, suggests that he may have some special information
on the subject." He glanced at his watch and, after a few moments'
reflection, added: "I don't see why we shouldn't make our little
ceremonial call at once. But it will be a delicate business, for we have
mighty little to go upon. Are you coming with me?"

If I had had any doubts, Thorndyke's last remark disposed of them; for
the interview promised to be quite a sporting event. Mr. Hyams was
presumably not quite newly-hatched, and Thorndyke, who utterly despised
bluff of any kind, and whose exact mind refused either to act or speak
one hair's breadth beyond his knowledge, was admittedly in somewhat of a
fog. The meeting promised to be really entertaining.

Mr. Hyams was "discovered," as the playwrights have it, in a small office
at the top of a high building in Queen Victoria Street. He was a small
gentleman, of sallow and greasy aspect, with heavy eyebrows and a still
heavier nose.

"Are you Mr. Gordon?" Thorndyke suavely inquired as we entered.

Mr. Hyams seemed to experience a momentary doubt on the subject, but
finally decided that he was not. "But perhaps," he added brightly, "I can
do your business for you as well."

"I daresay you can," Thorndyke agreed significantly; on which we were
conducted into an inner den, where I noticed Thorndyke's eye rest for an
instant on a large iron safe.

"Now," said Mr. Hyams, shutting the door ostentatiously, "what can I do
for you?"

"I want you," Thorndyke replied, "to answer one or two questions with
reference to the claim made by you on the' Griffin' Office in respect of
Thomas Elton."

Mr. Hyams's manner underwent a sudden change. He began rapidly to turn
over papers, and opened and shut the drawers of his desk, with an air of
restless preoccupation.

"Did the 'Griffin' people send you here?" he demanded brusquely.

"They did not specially instruct me to call on you," replied Thorndyke.

"Then," said Hyams bouncing out of his chair, "I can't let you occupy my
time. I'm not here to answer conundrums from Torn, Dick or Harry."

Thorndyke rose from his chair. "Then I am to understand," he said, with
unruffled suavity, "that you would prefer me to communicate with the
Directors, and leave them to take any necessary action."

This gave Mr. Hyams pause. "What action do you refer to?" he asked. "And,
who are you?"

Thorndyke produced a card and laid it on the table. Mr. Hyams had
apparently seen the name before, for he suddenly grew rather pale and
very serious.

"What is the nature of the questions that you wished to ask?" he
inquired.

"They refer to this claim," replied Thorndyke. "The first question is,
where is Mr. Gordon?"

"I don't know," said Hyams.

"Where do you think he is?" asked Thorndyke.

"I don't think at all," replied Hyams, turning a shade paler and looking
everywhere but at Thorndyke.

"Very well," said the latter, "then the next question is, are you
satisfied that this claim is really payable?"

"I shouldn't have made it if I hadn't been," replied Hyams.

"Quite so," said Thorndyke; "and the third question is, are you satisfied
that the mortgage deed was executed as it purports to have been?"

"I can't say anything about that," replied Hyams, who was growing every
moment paler and more fidgety, "it was done before my time."

"Thank you," said Thorndyke. "You will, of course, understand why I am
making these inquiries."

"I don't," said Hyams.

"Then," said Thorndyke, "perhaps I had better explain. We are dealing,
you observe, Mr. Hyams, with the case of a man who has met with a violent
death under somewhat mysterious circumstances. We are dealing, also, with
another man who has disappeared, leaving his affairs to take care of
themselves; and with a claim, put forward by a third party, on behalf of
the one man in respect of the other. When I say that the dead man has
been imperfectly identified, and that the document supporting the claim
presents certain peculiarities, you will see that the matter calls for
further inquiry."

There was an appreciable interval of silence. Mr. Hyams had turned a
tallowy white, and looked furtively about the room, as if anxious to
avoid the stony gaze that my colleague had fixed on him.

"Can you give us no assistance?" Thorndyke inquired, at length.

Mr. Hyams chewed a pen-holder ravenously, as he considered the question.
At length, he burst out in an agitated voice: "Look here, sir, if I tell
you what I know, will you treat the information as confidential?

"I can't agree to that, Mr. Hyams," replied Thorndyke. "It might amount
to compounding a felony. But you will be wiser to tell me what you know.
The document is a side-issue, which my clients may never raise, and my
own concern is with the death of this man."

Hyams looked distinctly relieved. "If that's so," said he, "I'll tell you
all I know, which is precious little, and which just amounts to this: Two
days after Elton was killed, someone came to this office in my absence
and opened the safe. I discovered the fact the next morning. Someone had
been to the safe and rummaged over all the papers. It wasn't Gordon,
because he knew where to find everything; and it wasn't an ordinary
thief, because no cash or valuables had been taken. In fact, the only
thing that I missed was a promissory note, drawn by Elton."

"You didn't miss a mortgage deed?" suggested Thorndyke, and Hyams, having
snatched a little further refreshment from the pen-holder, said he did
not.

"And the policy," suggested Thorndyke, "was apparently not taken?"

"No," replied Hyams "but it was looked for. Three bundles of policies had
been untied, but this one happened to be in a drawer of my desk and I had
the only key."

"And what do you infer from this visit?" Thorndyke asked.

"Well," replied Hyams, "the safe was opened with keys, and they were
Gordon's keys--or at any rate, they weren't mine--and the person who
opened it wasn't Gordon; and the things that were taken--at least the
thing, I mean--chiefly concerned Elton. Naturally I smelt a rat; and
when I read of the finding of the body, I smelt a fox."

"And have you formed any opinion about the body that was found?"

"Yes, I have," he replied. "My opinion is that it was Gordon's body: that
Gordon had been putting the screw on Elton, and Elton had just pitched
him over the cliff and gone down and changed clothes with the body. Of
course, that's only my opinion. I may be wrong; but I don't think I am."

As a matter of fact, Mr. Hyams was not wrong. An exhumation, consequent
on Thorndyke's challenge of the identity of the deceased, showed that the
body was that of Solomon Gordon. A hundred pounds reward was offered for
information as to Elton's whereabouts. But no one ever earned it. A
letter, bearing the post mark of Marseilles, and addressed by the missing
man to Thorndyke, gave a plausible account of Gordon's death; which was
represented as having occurred accidentally at the moment when Gordon
chanced to be wearing a suit of Elton's clothes.

Of course, this account may have been correct, or again, it may have been
false; but whether it was true or false, Elton, from that moment,
vanished from our ken and has never since been heard of.



PERCIVAL BLAND'S PROXY


PART I


Mr. Percival Bland was a somewhat uncommon type of criminal. In the first
place he really had an appreciable amount of common-sense. If he had only
had a little more, he would not have been a criminal at all. As it was,
he had just sufficient judgment to perceive that the consequences of
unlawful acts accumulate as the acts are repeated; to realise that the
criminal's position must, at length, become untenable; and to take what
he considered fair precautions against the inevitable catastrophe.

But in spite of these estimable traits of character and the precautions
aforesaid, Mr. Bland found himself in rather a tight place and with a
prospect of increasing tightness. The causes of this uncomfortable
tension do not concern us, and may be dismissed with the remark, that, if
one perseveringly distributes flash Bank of England notes among the
money-changers of the Continent, there will come a day of reckoning when
those notes are tendered to the exceedingly knowing old lady who lives in
Threadneedle Street.

Mr. Bland considered uneasily the approaching storm-cloud as he raked
over the "miscellaneous property" in the Sale-rooms of Messrs. Plimpton.
He was a confirmed frequenter of auctions, as was not unnatural, for the
criminal is essentially a gambler. And criminal and gambler have one
quality in common: each hopes to get something of value without paying
the market price for it.

So Percival turned over the dusty oddments and his own difficulties at
one and the same time. The vital questions were: When would the storm
burst? And would it pass by the harbour of refuge that he bad been at
such pains to construct? Let us inspect that harbour of refuge.

A quiet flat in the pleasant neighbourhood of Battersea bore a name-plate
inscribed, Mr. Robert Lindsay; and the tenant was known to the porter and
the char woman who attended to the flat, as a fair-haired gentle man who
was engaged in the book trade as a travelling agent, and was consequently
a good deal away from home. Now Mr. Robert Lindsay bore a distinct
resemblance to Percival Bland; which was not sur prising seeing that they
were first cousins (or, at any rate, they said they were; and we may
presume that they knew). But they were not very much alike. Mr. Lindsay
had flaxen, or rather sandy, hair; Mr. Bland's hair was black. Mr. Bland
had a mole under his left eye; Mr. Lindsay had no mole under his eye--but
carried one in a small box in his waistcoat pocket.

At somewhat rare intervals the Cousins called on one another; but they
had the very worst of luck, for neither of them ever seemed to find the
other at home. And what was even more odd was that whenever Mr. Bland
spent an evening at home in his lodgings over the oil shop in Bloomsbury,
Mr. Lindsay's flat was empty; and as sure as Mr. Lindsay was at home in
his flat so surely were Mr. Bland's lodgings vacant for the time being.
It was a queer coincidence, if anyone had noticed it; but nobody ever
did.

However, if Percival saw little of his cousin, it was not a case of "out
of sight, out of mind." On the contrary; so great was his solicitude for
the latter's welfare that he not only had made a will constituting him
his executor and sole legatee, but he had actually insured his life for
no less a sum than three thousand pounds; and this will, together with
the insurance policy, investment securities and other necessary
documents, he had placed in the custody of a highly respectable
solicitor. All of which did him great credit. It isn't every man who is
willing to take so much trouble for a mere cousin.

Mr. Bland continued his perambulations, pawing over the miscellaneous
raffle from sheer force of habit, reflecting on the coming crisis in his
own affairs, and on the provisions that he had made for his cousin
Robert. As for the latter, they were excellent as far as they went, but
they lacked definiteness and perfect completeness. There was the
contingency of a "stretch," for instance; say fourteen years' penal
servitude. The insurance policy did not cover that. And, meanwhile, what
was to become of the estimable Robert?

He had bruised his thumb somewhat severely in a screw-cutting lathe, and
had abstractedly turned the handle of a bird-organ until politely
requested by an attendant to desist, when he came upon a series of boxes
containing, according to the catalogue, "a collection of surgical
instruments the property of a lately deceased practitioner." To judge by
the appearance of the instruments, the practitioner must have commenced
practice in his early youth and died at a very advanced age. They were an
uncouth set of tools, of no value whatever excepting as testimonials to
the amazing tenacity of life of our ancestors; but Percival fingered them
over according to his wont, working the handle of a complicated brass
syringe and ejecting a drop of greenish fluid on to the shirt of a dressy
Hebrew (who requested him to "point the dam' thing at thomeone elth
nectht time"), opening musty leather cases, clicking off spring
scarifiers and feeling the edges of strange, crooked, knives. Then he
came upon a largish black box, which, when he raised the lid, breathed
out an ancient and fish-like aroma and exhibited a collection of bones,
yellow, greasy and spotted in places with mildew. The catalogue described
them as" a complete set of human osteology" but they were not an ordinary
"student's set," for the bones of the hands and feet, instead of being
strung together on cat-gut, were united by their original ligaments and
were of an unsavoury brown colour.

"I thay, misther," expostulat the Hebrew, "shut that bocth. Thmellth like
a blooming inquetht."

But the contents of the black box seemed to have a fascination for
Percival. He looked in at those greasy remnants of mortality, at the
brown and mouldy hands and feet and the skull that peeped forth eerily
from the folds of a flannel wrapping; and they breathed out something
more than that stale and musty odour. A suggestion--vague and general at
first, but rapidly crystallising into distinct shape--seemed to steal
out of the black box into his consciousness; a suggestion that somehow
seemed to connect itself with his estimable cousin Robert.

For upwards of a minute he stood motionless, as one immersed in reverie,
the lid poised in his hand and a dreamy eye fixed on the half skull. A
stir in the room roused him. The sale was about to begin. The members of
the knock-out and other habitués seated themselves on benches around a
long, baize table; the attendants took possession of the first lots and
opened their catalogues as if about to sing an introductory chorus; and a
gentleman with a waxed moustache and a striking resemblance to his late
Majesty, the third Napoleon, having ascended to the rostrum bespoke the
attention of the assembly by a premonitory tap with his hammer.

How odd are some of the effects of a guilty conscience! With what absurd
self-consciousness do we read into the minds of others our own undeclared
intentions, when those intentions are unlawful! Had Percival Bland wanted
a set of human bones for any legitimate purpose--such as anatomical
study--he would have bought it openly and unembarrassed. Now, he found
himself earnestly debating whether he should not bid for some of the
surgical instruments, just for the sake of appearances; and there being
little time in which to make up his mind--for the deceased
practitioner's effects came first in the catalogue--he was already the
richer by a set of cupping- glasses, a tooth-key, and an instrument of
unknown use and diabolical aspect, before the fateful lot was called.

At length the black box was laid on the table, an object of obscene mirth
to the knockers-out, and the auctioneer read the entry: "Lot seventeen; a
complete set of human osteology. A very useful and valuable set of
specimens, gentlemen."

He looked round at the assembly majestically, oblivious of sundry
inquiries as to the identity of the deceased and the verdict of the
coroner's jury, and finally suggested five shillings.

"Six," said Percival.

An attendant held the box open, and, chanting the mystic word
"Loddlemen!" (which, being interpreted, meant " Lot, gentlemen "), thrust
it under the rather bulbous nose of the smart Hebrew; who remarked that
"they 'ummed a bit too much to thoot him " and pushed it away.

"Going at six shillings," said the auctioneer, reproachfully; and as
nobody contradicted him, he smote the rostrum with his hammer and the box
was delivered into the hands of Percival onthe payment of that modest
sum.

Having crammed the cupping-glasses, the tooth-key and the unknown
instrument into the box, Percival obtained from one of the attendants a
length of cord, with which he secured the lid. Then he carried his
treasure out into the street, and, chartering a four- wheeler, directed
the driver to proceed to Charing Cross Station. At the station he booked
the box in the cloak (in the name of Simpson) and left it for a couple of
hours; at the expiration of which he returned, and, employing a different
porters had it conveyed to a hansom, in which it was borne to his
lodgings over the oil-shop in Bloomsbury. There he, himself, carried it,
unobserved, up the stairs, and, depositing it in a large cupboard, locked
the door and pocketed the key.

And thus was the curtain rung down on the first act. The second act
opened only a couple of days later, the office of call-boy--to pursue
the metaphor to the bitter end--being discharged by a Belgian police
official who emerged from the main entrance to the Bank of England. What
should have led Percival Bland into so unsafe a neighbourhood it is
difficult to imagine, unless it was that strange fascination that seems
so frequently to lure the criminal to places associated with his crime.
But there he was within a dozen paces of the entrance when the officer
came forth, and mutual recognition was instant. Almost equally
instantaneous was the self-possessed Percival's decision to cross the
road.

It is not a nice road to cross. The old horse would condescend to shout a
warning to the indiscreet wayfarer. Not so the modern chauffeur, who
looks stonily before him and leaves you to get out of the way of
Juggernaut. He knows his "exonerating" coroner's jury. At the moment,
however, the procession of Juggernauts was at rest; but Percival had seen
the presiding policeman turn to move away and he darted across the fronts
of the vehicles even as they started. The foreign officer followed. But
in that moment the whole procession had got in motion. A motor omnibus
thundered past in front of him; another was bearing down on him
relentlessly. He hesitated, and sprang back; and then a taxi-cab, darting
out from behind, butted him heavily, sending him sprawling in the road,
whence he scrambled as best he could back on to the pavement.

Percival, meanwhile, had swung himself lightly on to the footboard of the
first omnibus just as it was gathering speed. A few seconds saw him
safely across at the Mansion House, and in a few more, he was whirling
down Queen Victoria Street. The danger was practically over, though he
took the precaution to alight at St. Paul's, and, crossing to Newgate
Street, board another west-bound omnibus.

That night he sat in his lodgings turning over his late experience. It
had been a narrow shave. That sort of thing mustn't happen again. In
fact, seeing that the law was undoubtedly about to be set in motion, it
was high time that certain little plans of his should be set in motion,
too. Only, there was a difficulty; a serious difficulty. And as Percival
thought round and round that difficulty his brows wrinkled and he hummed
a soft refrain.

"Then is the time for disappearing,

Take a header--down you go--"

A tap at the door cut his song short. It was his landlady, Mrs. Brattle;
a civil woman, and particularly civil just now. For she had a little
request to make.

"It was about Christmas Night, Mr. Bland," said Mrs. Brattle. "My husband
and me thought of spending the evening with his brother at Hornsey, and
we were going to let the maid go home to her mother's for the night, if
it wouldn't put you out."

"Wouldn't put me out in the least, Mrs. Brattle," said Percival.

"You needn't sit up for us, you see," pursued Mrs. Brattle, "if you just
leave the side door unbolted. We shan't be home before two or three; but
we'll come in quiet not to disturb you."

"You won't disturb me," Percival replied with a genial laugh. "I'm a
sober man in general but 'Christmas comes but once a year'. When once I'm
tucked up in bed, I shall take a bit of waking on Christmas Night."

Mrs. Brattle smiled indulgently. "And you won't feel lonely, all alone in
the house?"

"Lonely!" exclaimed Percival. "Lonely! With a roaring fire, a jolly book,
a box of good cigars and a bottle of sound port--ah, and a second bottle
if need be. Not I."

Mrs. Brattle shook her head. "Ah," said she, "you bachelors! Well, well.
It's a good thing to be independent," and with this profound reflection
she smiled herself out of the room and descended the stairs.

As her footsteps died away Percival sprang from his chair and began
excitedly to pace the room. His eyes sparkled and his face was wreathed
with smiles. Presently he halted before the fireplace and, gazing into
the embers, laughed aloud.

"Damn funny!" said he. "Deuced rich! Neat! Very neat! Ha! Ha!" And here
he resumed his interrupted song: "When the sky above is clearing, When
the sky above is clearing, Bob up serenely, bob up serenely, Bob up
serenely from below!"

Which may be regarded as closing the first scene, of the second act.

During the few days that intervened before Christmas Percival went abroad
but little; and yet be was a busy man. He did a little surreptitious
shopping, venturing out as far as Charing Cross Road; and his purchases
were decidedly miscellaneous. A porridge saucepan, a second-hand copy of
"Gray's Anatomy," a rabbit skin, a large supply of glue and upwards of
ten pounds of shin of beef seems a rather odd assortment; and it was a
mercy that the weather was frosty, for otherwise Percival's bedroom, in
which these delicacies were deposited under lock and key, would have
yielded odorous traces of its wealth.

But it was in the long evenings that his industry was most conspicuous;
and then it was that the big cupboard with the excellent lever lock,
which he himself had fixed on, began to fill up with the fruits of his
labours. In those evenings the porridge saucepan would simmer on the hob
with a rich lading of good Scotch glue, the black box of the deceased
practitioner would be hauled forth from its hiding-place, and the
well-thumbed "Gray" laid open on the table.

It was an arduous business though; a stiffer task than he had bargained
for. The right and left bones were so confoundedly alike, and the bones
that joined were so difficult to fit together. However, the plates in
"Gray" were large and very clear, so it was only a question of taking
enough trouble.

His method of work was simple and practical. Having fished a bone out of
the box, he would compare it with the illustrations in the book until he
had identified it beyond all doubt, when he would tie on it a paper label
with its name and side--right or left. Then he would search for the
adjoining bone, and, having fitted the two together, would secure them
with a good daub of glue and lay them in the fender to dry. It was a
crude and horrible method of articulation that would have made a museum
curator shudder. But it seemed to answer Percival's purpose--whatever
that may have been--for gradually the loose "items" came together into
recognisable members such as arms and legs, the vertebra--which were,
fortunately, strung in their order on a thick cord--were joined up into
a solid backbone, and even the ribs, which were the toughest job of all,
fixed on in some semblance of a thorax. It was a wretched performance.
The bones were plastered with gouts of glue and yet would have broken
apart at a touch. But, as we have said, Percival seemed satisfied, and as
he was the only person concerned, there was no more to be said.

In due course, Christmas Day arrived. Percival dined with the Brattles at
two, dozed after dinner, woke up for tea, and then, as Mrs. Brattle, in
purple and fine raiment, came in to remove the tea-tray, he spread out on
the table the materials for the night's carouse. A quarter of an hour
later, the side slammed, and, peering out of the window, he saw the
shopkeeper and his wife hurrying away up the gas-lit street towards the
nearest omnibus route.

Then Mr. Percival Bland began his evening's entertainment; and a most
remark entertainment it was, even for a solitary bachelor, left alone in
a house on Christmas Night. First, he took off his clothing and dressed
himself in a fresh suit. Then, from the cupboard he brought forth the
reconstituted "set of osteology" and, laying the various members on the
table, returned to the bedroom, whence he presently reappeared with a
large, savoury parcel which he had disinterred from a trunk. The parcel
being opened revealed his accumulated purchases in the matter of shin of
beef.

With a large knife, providently sharpened before hand, he cut the beef
into large, thin slices which he proceed to wrap around the various bones
that formed the "complete set"; whereby their nakedness was certainly
mitigated though their attractiveness was by no means increased. Having
thus "clothed the dry bones," he gathered up the scraps of offal that
were left, to be placed presently inside the trunk. It was an
extraordinary proceeding, but the next was more extraordinary still.

Taking up the newly clothed members one by one, he began very carefully
to insinuate them into the garments that he had recently shed. It was a
ticklish business, for the glued joints were as brittle as glass. Very
cautiously the legs were separately inducted, first into underclothing
and then into trousers, the skeleton feet were fitted with the cast-off
socks and delicately persuaded into the boots. The arms, in like manner,
were gingerly pressed into their various sleeves and through the
arm-holes of the waistcoat; and then came the most difficult task of
all--to fit the garments on the trunk. For the skull and ribs, secured to
the back-bone with mere spots of glue, were ready to drop off at a shake;
and yet the garments had to be drawn over them with the arms enclosed in
the sleeves. But Percival managed it at last by resting his "restoration"
in the big, padded arm-chair and easing the garments on inch by inch.

It now remained only to give the finishing touch; which was done by
cutting the rabbit-skin to the requisite shape and affixing it to the
skull with a thin coat of stiff glue; and when the skull had thus been
finished with a sort of crude, makeshift wig, its appearance was so
appalling as even to disturb the nerves of the matter-of-fact Percival.
However, this was no occasion for cherishing sentiment. A skull in an
extemporised wig or false scalp might be, and in fact was, a highly
unpleasant object; but so was a Belgian police officer.

Having finished the "restoration," Percival fetched the water-jug from
his bedroom, and, descending to the shop, the door of which had been left
unlocked, tried the taps of the various drums and barrels until he came
to the one which contained methylated spirit; and from this he filled his
jug and returned to the bedroom. Pouring the spirit out into the basin,
he tucked a towel round his neck and filling his sponge with spirit
proceeded very vigorously to wash his hair and eyebrows; and as, by
degrees, the spirit in the basin grew dark and turbid, so did his hair
and eyebrows grow lighter in colour until, after a final energetic rub
with a towel, they had acquired a golden or sandy hue indistinguishable
from that of the hair of his cousin Robert. Even the mole under his eye
was susceptible to the changing conditions, for when he had wetted it
thoroughly with spirit, he was able, with the blade of a penknife to peel
it off as neatly as if it had been stuck on with spirit-gum. Having done
which, he deposited it in a tiny box which he carried in his waistcoat
pocket.

The proceedings which followed were unmistakable as to their object.
First he carried the basin of spirit through into the sitting-room and
deliberately poured its contents on to the floor by the arm-chair. Then,
having returned the basin to the bedroom, he again went down to the shop,
where he selected a couple of galvanised buckets from the stock, filled
them with paraffin oil from one of the great drums and carried them
upstairs. The oil from one bucket he poured over the armchair and its
repulsive occupant; the other bucket he simply emptied on the carpet, and
then went down to the shop for a fresh supply.

When this proceeding had been repeated once or twice the entire floor and
all the furniture were saturated, and such a reek of paraffin filled the
air of the room that Percival thought it wise to turn out the gas.
Returning to the shop, be poured a bucketful of oil over the stack of
bundles of firewood, another over the counter and floor and a third over
the loose articles on the walls and hanging from the ceiling. Looking up
at the latter be now perceived a number of greasy patches where the oil
had soaked through from the floor above, and some of these were beginning
to drip on to the shop floor.

He now made his final preparations. Taking a bundle of "Wheel"
firelighters, he made a small pile against the stack of firewood. In the
midst of the firelighters he placed a ball of string saturated in
paraffin; and in the central hole of the ball he stuck a half-dozen
diminutive Christmas candles. This mine was now ready. Providing himself
with a stock of firelighters, a few balls of paraffined string and a
dozen or so of the little candles, he went upstairs to the sitting-room,
which was immediately above the shop. Here, by the glow of the fire, he
built up one or two piles of firelighters around and partly under the
arm-chair, placed the balls of string on the piles and stuck two or three
bundles in each ball. Everything was now ready. Stepping into the
bedroom, he took from the cupboard a spare overcoat, a new hat and a new
umbrella--for he must leave his old hats, coat and umbrella in the hall.
He put on the coat and hat, and, with the umbrella in his hand, returned
to the sitting-room.

Opposite the arm-chair he stood awhile, irresolute, and a pang of horror
shot through him. It was a terrible thing that he was going to do; a
thing the consequences of which no one could foresee. He glanced
furtively at the awful shape that sat huddled in the chair, its horrible
head all awry and its rigid limbs sprawling in hideous grotesque
deformity. It was but a dummy, a mere scarecrow; but yet, in the dim
firelight, the grisly face under that horrid wig seemed to leer
intelligently, to watch him with secret malice out of its shadowy
eye-sockets, until he looked away with clammy skin and a shiver of
half-superstitious terror.

But this would never do. The evening had run out, consumed by these
engrossing labours; it was nearly eleven o'clock, and high time for him
to be gone. For if the Brattles should return prematurely he was lost.
Pulling himself together with an effort, he struck a match and lit the
little candles one after the other. In a quarter of an hour or so, they
would have burned down to the balls of string, and then--He walked
quickly out of the room; but, at the door, he paused for a moment to look
back at the ghastly figure, seated rigidly in the chair with the lighted
candles at its feet, like some foul fiend appeased by votive fires. The
unsteady flames threw flickering shadows on its face that made it seem to
mow and gibber and grin in mockery of all his care and caution. So he
turned and tremblingly ran down the stairs--opening the staircase window
as he went. Running into the shop, he lit the candles there and ran out
again, shutting the door after him.

Secretly and guiltily he crept down the hall, and opening the door a few
inches peered out. A blast of icy wind poured in with a light powdering
of dry snow. He opened his umbrella, flung open the door, looked up and
down the empty street, stepped out, closed the door softly and strode
away over the whitening pavement.


PART II


(Related by Christopher Jervis, M.D.)

It was one of the axioms of medico-legal practice laid down by my
colleague, John Thorndyke, that the investigator should be constantly on
his guard against the effect of suggestion. Not only must all prejudices
and preconceptions be avoided, but when information is received from
outside, the actual, undeniable facts must be carefully sifted from the
inferences which usually accompany them. Of the necessity for this
precaution our insurance practice furnished an excellent instance in the
case of the fire at Mr. Brattle's oil-shop.

The case was brought to our notice by Mr. Stalker of the "Griffin" Fire
and Life Insurance Society a few days after Christmas. He dropped in,
ostensibly to wish us a Happy New Year, but a discreet pause in the
conversation on Thorndyke's part elicited a further purpose.

"Did you see the account of that fire in Bloomsbury?" Mr. Stalker asked.

"The oil-shop? Yes. But I didn't note any details, excepting that a man
was apparently burnt to death and that the affair happened on the
twenty-fifth of December."

"Yes, I know," said Mr. Stalker. "It seems uncharitable, but one can't
help looking a little askance at these quarter-day fires. And the date
isn't the only doubtful feature in this one; the Divisional Officer of
the Fire Brigade, who has looked over the ruins, tells me that there are
some appearances suggesting that the fire broke out in two different
places--the shop and the first-floor room over it. Mind you, he doesn't
say that it actually did. The place is so thoroughly gutted that very
little is to be learned from it; but that is his impression; and it
occurred to me that if you were to take a look at the ruins, your
radiographic eye might detect something that he had overlooked."

"It isn't very likely," said Thorndyke. "Every man to his trade. The
Divisional Officer looks at a burnt house with an expert eye, which I do
not. My evidence would not carry much weight if you were contesting the
claim."

"Perhaps not," replied Mr. Stalker, "and we are not anxious to contest
the claim unless there is manifest fraud. Arson is a serious matter."

"It is wilful murder in this case," remarked Thorndyke.

"I know," said Stalker. "And that reminds me that the man who was burnt
happens to have been insured in our office, too. So we stand a double
loss."

"How much?" asked Thorndyke.

"The dead man, Percival Bland, had insured his life for three thousand
pounds."

Thorndyke became thoughtful. The last statement had apparently made more
impression on him than the former ones.

"If you want me to look into the case for you," said he, "you had better
let me have all the papers connected with it, including the proposal
forms."

Mr. Stalker smiled. "I thought you would say that--I know you of old,
you see--so I slipped the papers in my pocket before coming here."

He laid the documents on the table and asked: "Is there anything that you
want to know about the case?"

"Yes," replied Thorndyke. "I want to know all that you can tell me."

"Which is mighty little," said Stalker; "but such as it is, you shall
have it.

"The oil-shop man's name is Brattle and the dead man, Bland, was his
lodger. Bland appears to have been a perfectly steady, sober man in
general; but it seems that he had announced his intention of spending a
jovial Christmas Night and giving himself a little extra indulgence. He
was last seen by Mrs. Brattle at about half-past six, sitting by a
blazing fire, with a couple of unopened bottles of port on the table and
a box of cigars. He had a book in his hand and two or three newspapers
lay on the floor by his chair. Shortly after this, Mr. and Mrs. Brattle
went out on a visit to Hornsey, leaving him alone in the house."

"Was there no servant?" asked Thorndyke.

"The servant had the day and night off duty to go to her mother's. That,
by the way, looks a trifle fishy. However, to return to the Brattles;
they spent the evening at Hornsey and did not get home until past three
in the morning, by which time their house was a heap of smoking ruins.
Mrs. Brattle's idea is that Bland must have drunk himself sleepy, and
dropped one of the newspapers into the fender, where a chance cinder may
have started the blaze. Which may or may not be the true explanation. Of
course, an habitually sober man can get pretty mimsey on two bottles of
port."

"What time did the fire break out?" asked Thorndyke.

"It was noticed about half-past eleven that flames were issuing from one
of the chimneys, and the alarm was given at once. The first engine
arrived ten minutes later, but, by that time, the place was roaring like
a furnace. Then the water-plugs were found to be frozen hard, which
caused some delay; in fact, before the engines were able to get to work
the roof had fallen in, and the place was a mere shell. You know what an
oil-shop is, when once it gets a fair start."

"And Mr. Bland's body was found in the ruins, I suppose?"

"Body!" exclaimed Mr. Stalker; "there wasn't much body! Just a few
charred bones, which they dug out of the ashes next day."

"And the question of identity?"

"We shall leave that to the coroner. But there really isn't any question.
To begin with, there was no one else in the house; and then the remains
were found mixed up with the springs and castors of the chair that Bland
was sitting in when he was last seen. Moreover, there were found, with
the bones, a pocket knife, a bunch of keys and a set of steel waistcoat
buttons, all identified by Mrs. Brattle as belonging to Bland. She
noticed the cut steel buttons on his waistcoat when she wished him
'good-night.'"

"By the way," said Thorndyke, "was Bland reading by the light of an oil
lamp?"

"No," replied Stalker. "There was a two-branch gasalier with a porcelain
shade to one burner, and he had that burner alight when Mrs. Brattle
left."

Thorndyke reflectively picked up the proposal form, and, having glanced
through it, remarked: "I see that Bland is described as unmarried. Do you
know why he insured his life for this large amount?"

"No; we assumed that it was probably in connection with some loan that he
had raised. I learn from the solicitor who notified us of the death, that
the whole of Bland's property is left to a cousin--a Mr. Lindsay, I
think. So the probability is that this cousin had lent him money. But it
is not the life claim that is interesting us. We must pay that in any
case. It is the fire claim that we want you to look into."

"Very well," said Thorndyke; "I will go round presently and look over the
ruins, and see if I can detect any substantial evidence of fraud."

"If you would," said Mr. Stalker, rising to take his departures "we
should be very much obliged. Not that we shall probably contest the claim
in any case."

When he had gone, my colleague and I glanced through the papers, and I
ventured to remark: "It seems to me that Stalker doesn't quite appreciate
the possibilities of this case."

"No," Thorndyke agreed. "But, of course, it is an insurance company's
business to pay, and not to boggle at anything short of glaring fraud.
And we specialists too," he added with a smile, "must beware of seeing
too much. I suppose that, to a rhinologist, there is hardly such a thing
as a healthy nose--unless it is his own--and the uric acid specialist
is very apt to find the firmament studded with dumb-bell crystals. We
mustn't forget that normal cases do exist, after all."

That is true," said I; "but, on the other hand, the rhinologist's
business is with the unhealthy nose, and our concern is with abnormal
cases."

Thorndyke laughed. "'A Daniel come to judgement,'" said he. "But my
learned friend is quite right. Our function is to pick holes. So let us
pocket the documents and wend Bloomsbury way. We can talk the case over
as we go."

We walked at an easy pace, for there was no hurry, and a little
preliminary thought was useful. After a while, as Thorndyke made no
remark, I reopened the subject.

"How does the case present itself to you?" I asked.

"Much as it does to you, I expect," he replied. "The circumstances invite
inquiry, and I do not find myself connecting them with the shopkeeper. It
is true that the fire occurred on quarter-day; but there is nothing to
show that the insurance will do more than cover the loss of stock,
chattels and the profits of trade. The other circumstances are much more
suggestive. Here is a house burned down and a man killed. That man was
insured for three thousand pounds, and, consequently, some person stands
to gain by his death to that amount. The whole set of circumstances is
highly favourable to the idea of homicide. The man was alone in the house
when he died; and the total destruction of both the body and its
surroundings seems to render investigation impossible. The cause of death
can only be inferred; it cannot be proved; and the most glaring evidence
of a crime will have vanished utterly. I think that there is a quite
strong prima facie suggestion of murder. Under the known conditions, the
perpetration of a murder would have been easy, it would have been safe
from detection, and there is an adequate motive.

"On the other hand, suicide is not impossible. The man might have set
fire to the house and then killed himself by poison or otherwise. But it
is intrinsically less probable that a man should kill him self for
another person's benefit than that he should kill another man for his own
benefit.

"Finally, there is the possibility that the fire and the man's death were
the result of accident; against which is the' official opinion that the
fire started in two places. If this opinion is correct, it establishes,
in my opinion, a strong presumption of murder against some person who may
have obtained access to the house."

This point in the discussion brought us to the ruined house, which stood
at the corner of two small streets. One of the firemen in charge admitted
us, when we had shown our credentials, through a temporary door and down
a ladder into the basement, where we found a number of men treading
gingerly, ankle deep in white ash, among a litter of charred wood-work,
fused glass, warped and broken china, and more or less recognisable metal
objects.

"The coroner and the jury," the fireman explained; "come to view the
scene of the disaster." He introduced us to the former, who bowed stiffly
and continued his investigations.

"These," said the other fireman, "are the springs of the chair that the
deceased was sitting in. We found the body--or rather the bones--lying
among them under a heap of hot ashes; and we found the buttons of his
clothes and the things from his pockets among the ashes, too. You'll see
them in the mortuary with the remains."

"It must have been a terrific blaze," one of the jurymen remarked. "Just
look at this, sir," and he handed to Thorndyke what looked like part of a
gas-fitting, of which the greater part was melted into shapeless lumps
and the remainder encrusted into fused porcelain.

"That," said the fireman, "was the gasalier of the first-floor room,
where Mr. Bland was sitting. Ah! you won't turn that tap, sir; nobody'll
ever turn that tap again."

Thorndyke held the twisted mass of brass towards me in silence, and,
glancing up the blackened walls, remarked: "I think we shall have to come
here again with the Divisional Officer, but meanwhile, we had better see
the remains of the body. It is just possible that we may learn something
from them."

He applied to the coroner for the necessary authority to make the
inspection, and, having obtained a rather ungracious and grudging
permission to examine the remains when the jury had "viewed" them, began
to ascend the ladder.

"Our friend would have liked to refuse permission," he remarked when we
had emerged into the street, "but he knew that I could and should have
insisted."

So I gathered from his manner," said I. "But what is he doing here? This
isn't his district."

"No; he is acting for Bettsford, who is laid up just now; and a very poor
substitute he is. A non-medical coroner is an absurdity in any case, and
a coroner who is hostile to the medical profession is a public scandal.
By the way, that gas-tap offers a curious problem. You noticed that it
was turned off?"

"Yes."

"And consequently that the deceased was sitting in the dark when the fire
broke out. I don't see the bearing of the fact, but it is certainly
rather odd. Here is the mortuary. We had better wait and let the jury go
in first."

We had not long to wait. In a couple of minutes or so the "twelve good
men and true" made their appearance with a small attendant crowd of
ragamuffins. We let them enter first, and then we followed. The mortuary
was a good-sized room, well lighted by a glass roof, and having at its
centre a long table on which lay the shell containing the remains. There
was also a sheet of paper on which had been laid out a set of blackened
steel waistcoat buttons, a bunch of keys, a steel-handled pocket-knife, a
steel-cased watch on a partly-fused rolled-gold chain, and a pocket
corkscrew. The coroner drew the attention of the jury to these objects,
and then took possession of them, that they might be identified by
witnesses. And meanwhile the jurymen gathered round the shell and stared
shudderingly at its gruesome contents.

"I am sorry, gentlemen," said the coroner, "to have to subject you to
this painful ordeal. But duty is duty. We must hope, as I think we may,
that this poor creature met a painless if in some respects a rather
terrible death."

At this point, Thorndyke, who had drawn near to the table, cast a long
and steady glance down into the shell; and immediately his ordinarily
rather impassive face seemed to congeal; all expression faded from it,
leaving it as immovable and uncommunicative as the granite face of an
Egyptian statue. I knew the symptom of old and began to speculate on its
present significance.

"Are you taking any medical evidence?" he asked.

"Medical evidence!" the coroner repeated, scornfully. "Certainly not,
sir! I do not waste the public money by employing so-called experts to
tell the jury what each of them can see quite plainly for himself. I
imagine," he added, turning to the foreman, "that you will not require a
learned doctor to explain to you how that poor fellow mortal met his
death?"

And the foreman, glancing askance at the skull, replied, with a pallid
and sickly smile, that "he thought not."

"Do you, sir," the coroner continued, with a dramatic wave of the hand
towards the plain coffin, "suppose that we shall find any difficulty in
determining how that man came by his death?"

"I imagine," replied Thorndyke, without moving a muscle, or, indeed,
appearing to have any muscles to move, "I imagine you will find no
difficulty what ever."

"So do I," said the coroner.

"Then," retorted Thorndyke, with a faint, inscrutable smile, "we are, for
once, in complete agreement."

As the coroner and jury retired, leaving my colleague and me alone in the
mortuary, Thorndyke remarked: "I suppose this kind of farce will be
repeated periodically so long as these highly technical medical inquiries
continue to be conducted by lay persons."

I made no reply, for I had taken a long look into the shell, and was lost
in astonishment.

"But my dear Thorndyke!" I exclaimed; "what on earth does it mean? Are we
to suppose that a woman can have palmed herself off as a man on the
examining medical officer of a London Life Assurance Society?"

Thorndyke shook his head. "I think not," said he. "Our friend, Mr. Bland,
may conceivably have been a woman in disguise, but he certainly was not a
negress."

"A negress!" I gasped. "By Jove! So it is! I hadn't looked at the skull.
But that only makes the mystery more mysterious. Because, you remember,
the body was certainly dressed in Bland's clothes."

"Yes, there seems to be no doubt about that. And you may have noticed, as
I did," Thorndyke continued dryly, "the remarkably fire-proof character
of the waistcoat buttons, watch-case, knife-handle, and other
identifiable objects."

"But what a horrible affair!" I exclaimed. "The brute must have gone out
and enticed some poor devil of a negress into the house, have murdered
her in cold blood and then deliberately dressed the corpse in his own
clothes! It is perfectly frightful!"

Again Thorndyke shook his head. "It wasn't as bad as that, Jervis," said
he, "though I must confess that I feel strongly tempted to let your
hypothesis stand. It would be quite amusing to put Mr. Bland on trial for
the murder of an unknown negress, and let him explain the facts himself.
But our reputation is at stake. Look at the bones again and a little more
critically. You very probably looked for the sex first; then you looked
for racial characters. Now carry your investigations a step farther."

"There is the stature," said I. "But that is of no importance, as these
are not Bland's bones. The only other point that I notice is that the
fire seems to have acted very unequally on the different parts of the
body."

"Yes," agreed Thorndyke, "and that is the point. Some parts are more
burnt than others; and the parts which are burnt most are the wrong
parts. Look at the back-bone, for instance. The vertebrae are as white as
chalk. They are mere masses of bone ash. But, of all parts of the
skeleton, there is none so completely protected from fire as the
back-bone, with the great dorsal muscles behind, and the whole mass of
the viscera in front. Then look at the skull. Its appearance is quite
inconsistent with the suggested facts. The bones of the face are bare and
calcined and the orbits contain not a trace of the eyes or other
structures; and yet there is a charred mass of what may or may not be
scalp adhering to the crown. But the scalp, as the most exposed and the
thinnest covering, would be the first to be destroyed, while the last to
be consumed would be the structures about the jaws and the base, of
which, you see, not a vestige is left."

Here he lifted the skull carefully from the shell, and, peering in
through the great foramen at the base, handed it to me.

"Look in," he said, "through the Foramen Magnum--you will see better if
you hold the orbits towards the skylight--and notice an even more
extreme inconsistency with the supposed conditions. The brain and
membranes have vanished without leaving a trace. The inside of the skull
is as clean as if it had been macerated. But this is impossible. The
brain is not only protected from the fire; it is also protected from
contact with the air. But without access of oxygen, although it might
become carbonised, it could not be consumed. No, Jervis; it won't do."

I replaced the skull in the coffin and looked at him in surprise. "What
is it that you are suggesting?" I asked.

"I suggest that this was not a body at all, but merely a dry skeleton."

"But," I objected, "what about those masses of what looks like charred
muscle adhering to the bones?"

"Yes," he replied, "I have been noticing them. They do, as you say, look
like masses of charred muscle. But they are quite shapeless and
structureless; I cannot identify a single muscle or muscular group; and
there is not a vestige of any of the tendons. Moreover, the distribution
is false. For instance, will you tell me what muscle you think that is?"

He pointed to a thick, charred mass on the inner surface of the left
tibia or shin-bone. "Now this portion of the bone--as many a
hockey-player has had reason to realise--has no muscular covering at
all. It lies immediately under the skin."

"I think you are right, Thorndyke," said I. "That lump of muscle in the
wrong place gives the whole fraud away. But it was really a rather smart
dodge. This fellow Bland must be an ingenious rascal."

"Yes," agreed Thorndyke; "but an unscrupulous villain too. He might have
burned down half the street and killed a score of people. He'll have to
pay the piper for this little frolic."

"What shall you do now? Are you going to notify the coroner?"

"No; that is not my business. I think we will verify our conclusions and
then inform our clients and the police. We must measure the skull as well
as we can without callipers, but it is, fortunately, quite typical. The
short, broad, flat nasal bones, with the 'Simian groove,' and those
large, strong teeth, worn flat by hard and gritty food, are highly
characteristic." He once more lifted out the skull, and, with a spring
tape, made a few measurements, while I noted the lengths of the principal
long bones and the width across the hips.

"I make the cranial-nasal index 55 said he, as he replaced the skull,
"and the cranial index about 72, which are quite representative numbers;
and, as I see that your notes show the usual disproportionate length of
arm and the characteristic curve of the tibia, we may be satisfied. But
it is fortunate that the specimen is so typical. To the experienced eye,
racial types have a physiognomy which is unmistakable on mere inspection.
But you cannot transfer the experienced eye. You can only express
personal conviction and back it up with measurements.

"And now we will go and look in on Stalker, and inform him that his
office has saved three thousand pounds by employing us. After which it
will be West ward Ho! for Scotland Yard, to prepare an unpleasant little
surprise for Mr. Percival Bland."

There was joy among the journalists on the following day. Each of the
morning papers devoted an entire column to an unusually detailed account
of the inquest on the late Percival Bland--who, it appeared, met his
death by misadventure--and a verbatim report of the coroner's eloquent
remarks on the danger of solitary, fireside tippling, and the stupefying
effects of port wine. An adjacent column contained an equally detailed
account of the appearance of the deceased at Bow Street Police Court to
answer complicated charges of arson, fraud and forgery; while a third
collated the two accounts with gleeful commentaries.

Mr. Percival Bland, alias Robert Lindsay, now resides on the breezy
uplands of Dartmoor, where, in his abundant leisure, he, no doubt,
regrets his misdirected ingenuity. But he has not laboured in vain. To
the Lord Chancellor he has furnished an admirable illustration of the
danger of appointing lay coroners; and to me an unforgettable warning
against the effects of suggestion.



ORIGINAL PREFACE TO 'JOHN THORNDYKE'S CASES'


The stories in this collection, inasmuch as they constitute a somewhat
new departure in this class of literature, require a few words of
introduction. The primary function of all fiction is to furnish
entertainment to the reader, and this fact has not been lost sight of.
But the interest of so-called 'detective' fiction is, I believe, greatly
enhanced by a careful adherence to the probable, and a strict avoidance
of physical impossibilities; and, in accordance with this belief, I have
been scrupulous in confining myself to authentic facts and practicable
methods. The stories have, for the most part, a medico-legal motive, and
the methods of solution described in them are similar to those employed
in actual practice by medical jurists. The stories illustrate, in fact,
the application to the detection of crime of the ordinary methods of
scientific research. I may add that the experiments described have in all
cases been performed by me, and that the micro-photographs are, of
course, from the actual specimens.

I take this opportunity of thanking those of my friends who have in
various ways assisted me, and especially the friend to whom I have
dedicated this book; by whom I have been relieved of the very
considerable labour of making the micro-photographs, and greatly assisted
in procuring and preparing specimens. I must also thank Messrs. Pearson
for kindly allowing me the use of Mr. H. M. Brock's admirable and
sympathetic drawings, and the artist himself for the care with which he
has maintained strict fidelity to the text.

R. A. F.

Gravesend, September 21, 1909.



THE MAN WITH THE NAILED SHOES


There are, I suppose, few places even on the East Coast of England more
lonely and remote than the village of Little Sundersley and the country
that surrounds it. Far from any railway, and some miles distant from any
considerable town, it remains an outpost of civilization, in which
primitive manners and customs and old-world tradition linger on into an
age that has elsewhere forgotten them. In the summer, it is true, a small
contingent of visitors, adventurous in spirit, though mostly of sedate
and solitary habits, make their appearance to swell its meagre
population, and impart to the wide stretches of smooth sand that fringe
its shores a fleeting air of life and sober gaiety; but in late September--the
season of the year in which I made its acquaintance--its
pasture-lands lie desolate, the rugged paths along the cliffs are seldom
trodden by human foot, and the sands are a desert waste on which, for
days together, no footprint appears save that left by some passing
sea-bird.

I had been assured by my medical agent, Mr. Turcival, that I should find
the practice of which I was now taking charge 'an exceedingly soft
billet, and suitable for a studious man;' and certainly he had not misled
me, for the patients were, in fact, so few that I was quite concerned for
my principal, and rather dull for want of work. Hence, when my friend
John Thorndyke, the well-known medico-legal expert, proposed to come down
and stay with me for a weekend and perhaps a few days beyond, I hailed
the proposal with delight, and welcomed him with open arms.

"You certainly don't seem to be overworked, Jervis," he remarked, as we
turned out of the gate after tea, on the day of his arrival, for a stroll
on the shore. "Is this a new practice, or an old one in a state of senile
decay?"

"Why, the fact is," I answered, "there is virtually no practice. Cooper--my
principal--has been here about six years, and as he has private means
he has never made any serious effort to build one up; and the other man,
Dr. Burrows, being uncommonly keen, and the people very conservative,
Cooper has never really got his foot in. However, it doesn't seem to
trouble him."

"Well, if he is satisfied, I suppose you are," said Thorndyke, with a
smile. "You are getting a seaside holiday, and being paid for it. But I
didn't know you were as near to the sea as this."

We were entering, as he spoke, an artificial gap-way cut through the low
cliff, forming a steep cart-track down to the shore. It was locally known
as Sundersley Gap, and was used principally, when used at all, by the
farmers' carts which came down to gather seaweed after a gale.

"What a magnificent stretch of sand!" continued Thorndyke, as we reached
the bottom, and stood looking out seaward across the deserted beach.
"There is something very majestic and solemn in a great expanse of sandy
shore when the tide is out, and I know of nothing which is capable of
conveying the impression of solitude so completely. The smooth, unbroken
surface not only displays itself untenanted for the moment, but it offers
convincing testimony that it has lain thus undisturbed through a
considerable lapse of time. Here, for instance, we have clear evidence
that for several days only two pairs of feet besides our own have trodden
this gap."

"How do you arrive at the 'several days'?" I asked.

"In the simplest manner possible," he replied. "The moon is now in the
third quarter, and the tides are consequently neap-tides. You can see
quite plainly the two lines of seaweed and jetsam which indicate the
high-water marks of the spring-tides and the neap-tides respectively. The
strip of comparatively dry sand between them, over which the water has
not risen for several days, is, as you see, marked by only two sets of
footprints, and those footprints will not be completely obliterated by
the sea until the next spring-tide--nearly a week from to-day."

"Yes, I see now, and the thing appears obvious enough when one has heard
the explanation. But it is really rather odd that no one should have
passed through this gap for days, and then that four persons should have
come here within quite a short interval of one another."

"What makes you think they have done so?" Thorndyke asked.

"Well," I replied, "both of these sets of footprints appear to be quite
fresh, and to have been made about the same time."

"Not at the same time, Jervis," rejoined Thorndyke. "There is certainly
an interval of several hours between them, though precisely how many
hours we cannot judge, since there has been so little wind lately to
disturb them; but the fisherman unquestionably passed here not more than
three hours ago, and I should say probably within an hour; whereas the
other man--who seems to have come up from a boat to fetch something of
considerable weight--returned through the gap certainly not less, and
probably more, than four hours ago."

I gazed at my friend in blank astonishment, for these events befell in
the days before I had joined him as his assistant, and his special
knowledge and powers of inference were not then fully appreciated by me.

"It is clear, Thorndyke," I said, "that footprints have a very different
meaning to you from what they have for me. I don't see in the least how
you have reached any of these conclusions."

"I suppose not," was the reply; "but, you see, special knowledge of this
kind is the stock-in-trade of the medical jurist, and has to be acquired
by special study, though the present example is one of the greatest
simplicity. But let us consider it point by point; and first we will take
this set of footprints which I have inferred to be a fisherman's. Note
their enormous size. They should be the footprints of a giant. But the
length of the stride shows that they were made by a rather short man.
Then observe the massiveness of the soles, and the fact that there are no
nails in them. Note also the peculiar clumsy tread--the deep toe and
heel marks, as if the walker had wooden legs, or fixed ankles and knees.
From that character we can safely infer high boots of thick, rigid
leather, so that we can diagnose high boots, massive and stiff, with
nailless soles, and many sizes too large for the wearer. But the only
boot that answers this description is the fisherman's thigh-boot--made
of enormous size to enable him to wear in the winter two or three pairs
of thick knitted stockings, one over the other. Now look at the other
footprints; there is a double track, you see, one set coming from the sea
and one going towards it. As the man (who was bow-legged and turned his
toes in) has trodden in his own footprints, it is obvious that he came
from the sea, and returned to it. But observe the difference in the two
sets of prints; the returning ones are much deeper than the others, and
the stride much shorter. Evidently he was carrying something when he
returned, and that something was very heavy. Moreover, we can see, by the
greater depth of the toe impressions, that he was stooping forward as he
walked, and so probably carried the weight on his back. Is that quite
clear?"

"Perfectly," I replied. "But how do you arrive at the interval of time
between the visits of the two men?"

"That also is quite simple. The tide is now about halfway out; it is thus
about three hours since high water. Now, the fisherman walked just about
the neap-tide, high-water mark, sometimes above it and sometimes below.
But none of his footprints have been obliterated; therefore he passed
after high water--that is, less than three hours ago; and since his
footprints are all equally distinct, he could not have passed when the
sand was very wet. Therefore he probably passed less than an hour ago.
The other man's footprints, on the other hand, reach only to the
neap-tide, high-water mark, where they end abruptly. The sea has washed
over the remainder of the tracks and obliterated them. Therefore he
passed not less than three hours and not more than four days ago--probably
within twenty-four hours."

As Thorndyke concluded his demonstration the sound of voices was borne to
us from above, mingled with the tramping of feet, and immediately
afterwards a very singular party appeared at the head of the gap
descending towards the shore. First came a short burly fisherman clad in
oilskins and sou'-wester, clumping along awkwardly in his great
sea-boots, then the local police-sergeant in company with my professional
rival Dr. Burrows, while the rear of the procession was brought up by two
constables carrying a stretcher. As he reached the bottom of the gap the
fisherman, who was evidently acting as guide, turned along the shore,
retracing his own tracks, and the procession followed in his wake.

"A surgeon, a stretcher, two constables, and a police-sergeant," observed
Thorndyke. "What does that suggest to your mind, Jervis?"

"A fall from the cliff," I replied, "or a body washed up on the shore."

"Probably," he rejoined; "but we may as well walk in that direction."

We turned to follow the retreating procession, and as we strode along the
smooth surface left by the retiring tide Thorndyke resumed: "The subject
of footprints has always interested me deeply for two reasons. First, the
evidence furnished by footprints is constantly being brought forward, and
is often of cardinal importance; and, secondly, the whole subject is
capable of really systematic and scientific treatment. In the main the
data are anatomical, but age, sex, occupation, health, and disease all
give their various indications. Clearly, for instance, the footprints of
an old man will differ from those of a young man of the same height, and
I need not point out to you that those of a person suffering from
locomotor ataxia or paralysis agitans would be quite unmistakable."

"Yes, I see that plainly enough," I said.

"Here, now," he continued, "is a case in point." He halted to point with
his stick at a row of footprints that appeared suddenly above high-water
mark, and having proceeded a short distance, crossed the line again, and
vanished where the waves had washed over them. They were easily
distinguished from any of the others by the clear impressions of circular
rubber heels.

"Do you see anything remarkable about them?" he asked.

"I notice that they are considerably deeper than our own," I answered.

"Yes, and the boots are about the same size as ours, whereas the stride
is considerably shorter--quite a short stride, in fact. Now there is a
pretty constant ratio between the length of the foot and the length of
the leg, between the length of leg and the height of the person, and
between the stature and the length of stride. A long foot means a long
leg, a tall man, and a long stride. But here we have a long foot and a
short stride. What do you make of that?" He laid down his stick--a
smooth partridge cane, one side of which was marked by small lines into
inches and feet--beside the footprints to demonstrate the discrepancy.

"The depth of the footprints shows that he was a much heavier man than
either of us," I suggested; "perhaps he was unusually fat."

"Yes," said Thorndyke, "that seems to be the explanation. The carrying of
a dead weight shortens the stride, and fat is practically a dead weight.
The conclusion is that he was about five feet ten inches high, and
excessively fat." He picked up his cane, and we resumed our walk, keeping
an eye on the procession ahead until it had disappeared round a curve in
the coast-line, when we mended our pace somewhat. Presently we reached a
small headland, and, turning the shoulder of cliff, came full upon the
party which had preceded us. The men had halted in a narrow bay, and now
stood looking down at a prostrate figure beside which the surgeon was
kneeling.

"We were wrong, you see," observed Thorndyke. "He has not fallen over the
cliff, nor has he been washed up by the sea. He is lying above high-water
mark, and those footprints that we have been examining appear to be his."

As we approached, the sergeant turned and held up his hand.

"I'll ask you not to walk round the body just now, gentlemen," he said.
"There seems to have been foul play here, and I want to be clear about
the tracks before anyone crosses them."

Acknowledging this caution, we advanced to where the constables were
standing, and looked down with some curiosity at the dead man. He was a
tall, frail-looking man, thin to the point of emaciation, and appeared to
be about thirty-five years of age. He lay in an easy posture, with
half-closed eyes and a placid expression that contrasted strangely enough
with the tragic circumstances of his death.

"It is a clear case of murder," said Dr. Burrows, dusting the sand from
his knees as he stood up. "There is a deep knife-wound above the heart,
which must have caused death almost instantaneously."

"How long should you say he has been dead, Doctor?" asked the sergeant.

"Twelve hours at least," was the reply. "He is quite cold and stiff."

[Illustration: PLAN OF ST. BRIDGET'S BAY. + Position of body. D D D,
Tracks of Hearn's shoes. A, Top of Shepherd's Path. E, Tracks of the
nailed shoes. B, Overhanging cliff. F, Shepherd's Path ascending shelving
cliff. C, Footpath along edge of cliff.]

"Twelve hours, eh?" repeated the officer. "That would bring it to about
six o'clock this morning."

"I won't commit myself to a definite time," said Dr. Burrows hastily. "I
only say not less than twelve hours. It might have been considerably
more."

"Ah!" said the sergeant. "Well, he made a pretty good fight for his life,
to all appearances." He nodded at the sand, which for some feet around
the body bore the deeply indented marks of feet, as though a furious
struggle had taken place. "It's a mighty queer affair," pursued the
sergeant, addressing Dr. Burrows. "There seems to have been only one man
in it--there is only one set of footprints besides those of the deceased--and
we've got to find out who he is; and I reckon there won't be much
trouble about that, seeing the kind of trade-marks he has left behind
him."

"No," agreed the surgeon; "there ought not to be much trouble in
identifying those boots. He would seem to be a labourer, judging by the
hob-nails."

"No, sir; not a labourer," dissented the sergeant. "The foot is too
small, for one thing; and then the nails are not regular hob-nails.
They're a good deal smaller; and a labourer's boots would have the nails
all round the edges, and there would be iron tips on the heels, and
probably on the toes too. Now these have got no tips, and the nails are
arranged in a pattern on the soles and heels. They are probably
shooting-boots or sporting shoes of some kind." He strode to and fro with
his notebook in his hand, writing down hasty memoranda, and stooping to
scrutinize the impressions in the sand. The surgeon also busied himself
in noting down the facts concerning which he would have to give evidence,
while Thorndyke regarded in silence and with an air of intense
preoccupation the footprints around the body which remained to testify to
the circumstances of the crime.

"It is pretty clear, up to a certain point," the sergeant observed, as he
concluded his investigations, "how the affair happened, and it is pretty
clear, too, that the murder was premeditated. You see, Doctor, the
deceased gentleman, Mr. Hearn, was apparently walking home from Port
Marston; we saw his footprints along the shore--those rubber heels make
them easy to identify--and he didn't go down Sundersley Gap. He probably
meant to climb up the cliff by that little track that you see there,
which the people about here call the Shepherd's Path. Now the murderer
must have known that he was coming, and waited upon the cliff to keep a
lookout. When he saw Mr. Hearn enter the bay, he came down the path and
attacked him, and, after a tough struggle, succeeded in stabbing him.
Then he turned and went back up the path. You can see the double track
between the path and the place where the struggle took place, and the
footprints going to the path are on top of those coming from it."

"If you follow the tracks," said Dr. Burrows, "you ought to be able to
see where the murderer went to."

"I'm afraid not," replied the sergeant. "There are no marks on the path
itself--the rock is too hard, and so is the ground above, I fear. But
I'll go over it carefully all the same."

The investigations being so far concluded, the body was lifted on to the
stretcher, and the cortege, consisting of the bearers, the Doctor, and
the fisherman, moved off towards the Gap, while the sergeant, having
civilly wished us "Good-evening," scrambled up the Shepherd's Path, and
vanished above.

"A very smart officer that," said Thorndyke. "I should like to know what
he wrote in his notebook."

"His account of the circumstances of the murder seemed a very reasonable
one," I said.

"Very. He noted the plain and essential facts, and drew the natural
conclusions from them. But there are some very singular features in this
case; so singular that I am disposed to make a few notes for my own
information."

He stooped over the place where the body had lain, and having narrowly
examined the sand there and in the place where the dead man's feet had
rested, drew out his notebook and made a memorandum. He next made a rapid
sketch-plan of the bay, marking the position of the body and the various
impressions in the sand, and then, following the double track leading
from and to the Shepherd's Path, scrutinized the footprints with the
deepest attention, making copious notes and sketches in his book.

"We may as well go up by the Shepherd's Path," said Thorndyke. "I think
we are equal to the climb, and there may be visible traces of the
murderer after all. The rock is only a sandstone, and not a very hard one
either."

We approached the foot of the little rugged track which zigzagged up the
face of the cliff, and, stooping down among the stiff, dry herbage,
examined the surface. Here, at the bottom of the path, where the rock was
softened by the weather, there were several distinct impressions on the
crumbling surface of the murderer's nailed boots, though they were
somewhat confused by the tracks of the sergeant, whose boots were heavily
nailed. But as we ascended the marks became rather less distinct, and at
quite a short distance from the foot of the cliff we lost them
altogether, though we had no difficulty in following the more recent
traces of the sergeant's passage up the path.

When we reached the top of the cliff we paused to scan the path that ran
along its edge, but here, too, although the sergeant's heavy boots had
left quite visible impressions on the ground, there were no signs of any
other feet. At a little distance the sagacious officer himself was
pursuing his investigations, walking backwards and forwards with his body
bent double, and his eyes fixed on the ground.

"Not a trace of him anywhere," said he, straightening himself up as we
approached. "I was afraid there wouldn't be after all this dry weather. I
shall have to try a different tack. This is a small place, and if those
boots belong to anyone living here they'll be sure to be known."

"The deceased gentleman--Mr. Hearn, I think you called him," said
Thorndyke as we turned towards the village--"is he a native of the
locality?"

"Oh no, sir," replied the officer. "He is almost a stranger. He has only
been here about three weeks; but, you know, in a little place like this a
man soon gets to be known--and his business, too, for that matter," he
added, with a smile.

"What was his business, then?" asked Thorndyke.

"Pleasure, I believe. He was down here for a holiday, though it's a good
way past the season; but, then, he had a friend living here, and that
makes a difference. Mr. Draper up at the Poplars was an old friend of
his, I understand. I am going to call on him now."

We walked on along the footpath that led towards the village, but had
only proceeded two or three hundred yards when a loud hail drew our
attention to a man running across a field towards us from the direction
of the cliff.

"Why, here is Mr. Draper himself," exclaimed the sergeant, stopping short
and waving his hand. "I expect he has heard the news already."

Thorndyke and I also halted, and with some curiosity watched the approach
of this new party to the tragedy. As the stranger drew near we saw that
he was a tall, athletic-looking man of about forty, dressed in a Norfolk
knickerbocker suit, and having the appearance of an ordinary country
gentleman, excepting that he carried in his hand, in place of a
walking-stick, the staff of a butterfly-net, the folding ring and bag of
which partly projected from his pocket.

"Is it true, Sergeant?" he exclaimed as he came up to us, panting from
his exertions. "About Mr. Hearn, I mean. There is a rumour that he has
been found dead on the beach."

"It's quite true, sir, I am sorry to say; and, what is worse, he has been
murdered."

"My God! you don't say so!"

He turned towards us a face that must ordinarily have been jovial enough,
but was now white and scared and, after a brief pause, he exclaimed:

"Murdered! Good God! Poor old Hearn! How did it happen, Sergeant? and
when? and is there any clue to the murderer?"

"We can't say for certain when it happened," replied the sergeant, "and
as to the question of clues, I was just coming up to call on you."

"On me!" exclaimed Draper, with a startled glance at the officer. "What
for?"

"Well, we should like to know something about Mr. Hearn--who he was, and
whether he had any enemies, and so forth; anything, in fact, that would
give as a hint where to look for the murderer. And you are the only
person in the place who knew him at all intimately."

Mr Draper's pallid face turned a shade paler, and he glanced about him
with an obviously embarrassed air.

"I'm afraid." he began in a hesitating manner, "I'm afraid I shan't be
able to help you much. I didn't know much about his affairs. You see he
was--well--only a casual acquaintance--"

"Well," interrupted the sergeant, "you can tell us who and what he was,
and where he lived, and so forth. We'll find out the rest if you give us
the start."

"I see," said Draper. "Yes, I expect you will." His eyes glanced
restlessly to and fro, and he added presently: "You must come up
to-morrow, and have a talk with me about him, and I'll see what I can
remember."

"I'd rather come this evening," said the sergeant firmly.

"Not this evening," pleaded Draper. "I'm feeling rather--this affair,
you know, has upset me. I couldn't give proper attention--"

His sentence petered out into a hesitating mumble, and the officer looked
at him in evident surprise at his nervous, embarrassed manner. His own
attitude, however, was perfectly firm, though polite.

"I don't like pressing you, sir," said he, "but time is precious--we'll
have to go single file here; this pond is a public nuisance. They ought
to bank it up at this end. After you, sir."

The pond to which the sergeant alluded had evidently extended at one time
right across the path, but now, thanks to the dry weather, a narrow
isthmus of half-dried mud traversed the morass, and along this Mr. Draper
proceeded to pick his way. The sergeant was about to follow, when
suddenly he stopped short with his eyes riveted upon the muddy track. A
single glance showed me the cause of his surprise, for on the stiff,
putty-like surface, standing out with the sharp distinctness of a wax
mould, were the fresh footprints of the man who had just passed, each
footprint displaying on its sole the impression of stud-nails arranged in
a diamond-shaped pattern, and on its heel a group of similar nails
arranged in a cross.

The sergeant hesitated for only a moment, in which he turned a quick
startled glance upon us; then he followed, walking gingerly along the
edge of the path as if to avoid treading in his predecessor's footprints.
Instinctively we did the same, following closely, and anxiously awaiting
the next development of the tragedy. For a minute or two we all proceeded
in silence, the sergeant being evidently at a loss how to act, and Mr.
Draper busy with his own thoughts. At length the former spoke.

"You think, Mr. Draper, you would rather that I looked in on you
to-morrow about this affair?"

"Much rather, if you wouldn't mind," was the eager reply.

"Then, in that case," said the sergeant, looking at his watch, "as I've
got a good deal to see to this evening, I'll leave you here, and make my
way to the station."

With a farewell flourish of his hand he climbed over a stile, and when, a
few moments later, I caught a glimpse of him through an opening in the
hedge, he was running across the meadow like a hare.

The departure of the police-officer was apparently a great relief to Mr.
Draper, who at once fell back and began to talk with us.

"You are Dr. Jervis, I think," said he. "I saw you coming out of Dr.
Cooper's house yesterday. We know everything that is happening in the
village, you see." He laughed nervously, and added: "But I don't know
your friend."

I introduced Thorndyke, at the mention of whose name our new acquaintance
knitted his brows, and glanced inquisitively at my friend.

"Thorndyke," he repeated; "the name seems familiar to me. Are you in the
Law, sir?"

Thorndyke admitted the impeachment, and our companion, having again
bestowed on him a look full of curiosity, continued: "This horrible
affair will interest you, no doubt, from a professional point of view.
You were present when my poor friend's body was found, I think?"

"No," replied Thorndyke; "we came up afterwards, when they were removing
it."

Our companion then proceeded to question as about the murder, but
received from Thorndyke only the most general and ambiguous replies. Nor
was there time to go into the matter at length, for the footpath
presently emerged on to the road close to Mr. Draper's house.

"You will excuse my not asking you in to-night," said he, "but you will
understand that I am not in much form for visitors just now."

We assured him that we fully understood, and, having wished him
"Good-evening," pursued our way towards the village.

"The sergeant is off to get a warrant, I suppose," I observed.

"Yes; and mighty anxious lest his man should be off before he can execute
it. But he is fishing in deeper waters than he thinks, Jervis. This is a
very singular and complicated case; one of the strangest, in fact, that I
have ever met. I shall follow its development with deep interest."

"The sergeant seems pretty cocksure, all the same," I said.

"He is not to blame for that," replied Thorndyke. "He is acting on the
obvious appearances, which is the proper thing to do in the first place.
Perhaps his notebook contains more than I think it does. But we shall
see."

When we entered the village I stopped to settle some business with the
chemist, who acted as Dr. Cooper's dispenser, suggesting to Thorndyke
that he should walk on to the house; but when I emerged from the shop
some ten minutes later he was waiting outside, with a smallish
brown-paper parcel under each arm. Of one of these parcels I insisted on
relieving him, in spite of his protests, but when he at length handed it
to me its weight completely took me by surprise.

"I should have let them send this home on a barrow," I remarked.

"So I should have done," he replied, "only I did not wish to draw
attention to my purchase, or give my address."

Accepting this hint I refrained from making any inquiries as to the
nature of the contents (although I must confess to considerable curiosity
on the subject), and on arriving home I assisted him to deposit the two
mysterious parcels in his room.

When I came downstairs a disagreeable surprise awaited me. Hitherto the
long evenings had been spent by me in solitary and undisturbed enjoyment
of Dr. Cooper's excellent library, but to-night a perverse fate decreed
that I must wander abroad, because, forsooth, a preposterous farmer, who
resided in a hamlet five miles distant, had chosen the evening of my
guest's arrival to dislocate his bucolic elbow. I half hoped that
Thorndyke would offer to accompany me, but he made no such suggestion,
and in fact seemed by no means afflicted at the prospect of my absence.

"I have plenty to occupy me while you are away," he said cheerfully; and
with this assurance to comfort me I mounted my bicycle and rode off
somewhat sulkily along the dark road.

My visit occupied in all a trifle under two hours, and when I reached
home, ravenously hungry and heated by my ride, half-past nine had struck,
and the village had begun to settle down for the night.

"Sergeant Payne is a-waiting in the surgery, sir," the housemaid
announced as I entered the hall.

"Confound Sergeant Payne!" I exclaimed. "Is Dr. Thorndyke with him?"

"No, sir," replied the grinning damsel. "Dr. Thorndyke is hout."

"Hout!" I repeated (my surprise leading to unintentional mimicry).

"Yes, sir. He went hout soon after you, sir, on his bicycle. He had a
basket strapped on to it--leastways a hamper--and he borrowed a basin
and a kitchen-spoon from the cook."

I stared at the girl in astonishment. The ways of John Thorndyke were,
indeed, beyond all understanding.

"Well, let me have some dinner or supper at once," I said, "and I will
see what the sergeant wants."

The officer rose as I entered the surgery, and, laying his helmet on the
table, approached me with an air of secrecy and importance.

"Well, sir," said he, "the fat's in the fire. I've arrested Mr. Draper,
and I've got him locked up in the court-house. But I wish it had been
someone else."

"So does he, I expect," I remarked.

"You see, sir," continued the sergeant, "we all like Mr. Draper. He's
been among us a matter of seven years, and he's like one of ourselves.
However, what I've come about is this; it seems the gentleman who was
with you this evening is Dr. Thorndyke, the great expert. Now Mr. Draper
seems to have heard about him, as most of us have, and he is very anxious
for him to take up the defence. Do you think he would consent?"

"I expect so," I answered, remembering Thorndyke's keen interest in the
case; "but I will ask him when he comes in."

"Thank you, sir," said the sergeant. "And perhaps you wouldn't mind
stepping round to the court-house presently yourself. He looks uncommon
queer, does Mr. Draper, and no wonder, so I'd like you to take a look at
him, and if you could bring Dr. Thorndyke with you, he'd like it, and so
should I, for, I assure you, sir, that although a conviction would mean a
step up the ladder for me, I'd be glad enough to find that I'd made a
mistake."

I was just showing my visitor out when a bicycle swept in through the
open gate, and Thorndyke dismounted at the door, revealing a square
hamper--evidently abstracted from the surgery--strapped on to a carrier
at the back. I conveyed the sergeant's request to him at once, and asked
if he was willing to take up the case.

"As to taking up the defence," he replied, "I will consider the matter;
but in any case I will come up and see the prisoner."

With this the sergeant departed, and Thorndyke, having unstrapped the
hamper with as much care as if it contained a collection of priceless
porcelain, bore it tenderly up to his bedroom; whence he appeared, after
a considerable interval, smilingly apologetic for the delay.

"I thought you were dressing for dinner," I grumbled as he took his seat
at the table.

"No," he replied. "I have been considering this murder. Really it is a
most singular case, and promises to be uncommonly complicated, too."

"Then I assume that you will undertake the defence?"

"I shall if Draper gives a reasonably straightforward account of
himself."

It appeared that this condition was likely to be fulfilled, for when we
arrived at the court-house (where the prisoner was accommodated in a
spare office, under rather free-and-easy conditions considering the
nature of the charge) we found Mr. Draper in an eminently communicative
frame of mind.

"I want you, Dr. Thorndyke, to undertake my defence in this terrible
affair, because I feel confident that you will be able to clear me. And I
promise you that there shall be no reservation or concealment on my part
of anything that you ought to know."

"Very well," said Thorndyke. "By the way, I see you have changed your
shoes."

"Yes, the sergeant took possession of those I was wearing. He said
something about comparing them with some footprints, but there can't be
any footprints like those shoes here in Sundersley. The nails are fixed
in the soles in quite a peculiar pattern. I had them made in Edinburgh."

"Have you more than one pair?"

"No. I have no other nailed boots."

"That is important," said Thorndyke. "And now I judge that you have
something to tell us that bears on this crime. Am I right?"

"Yes. There is something that I am afraid it is necessary for you to
know, although it is very painful to me to revive memories of my past
that I had hoped were buried for ever. But perhaps, after all, it may not
be necessary for these confidences to be revealed to anyone but
yourself."

"I hope not," said Thorndyke; "and if it is not necessary you may rely
upon me not to allow any of your secrets to leak out. But you are wise to
tell me everything that may in any way bear upon the case."

At this juncture, seeing that confidential matters were about to be
discussed, I rose and prepared to withdraw; but Draper waved me back into
my chair.

"You need not go away, Dr. Jervis," he said. "It is through you that I
have the benefit of Dr. Thorndyke's help, and I know that you doctors can
be trusted to keep your own counsel and your clients' secrets. And now
for some confessions of mine. In the first place, it is my painful duty
to tell you that I am a discharged convict--an 'old lag,' as the cant
phrase has it."

He coloured a dusky red as he made this statement, and glanced furtively
at Thorndyke to observe its effect. But he might as well have looked at a
wooden figure-head or a stone mask as at my friend's immovable visage;
and when his communication had been acknowledged by a slight nod, he
proceeded:

"The history of my wrong-doing is the history of hundreds of others. I
was a clerk in a bank, and getting on as well as I could expect in that
not very progressive avocation, when I had the misfortune to make four
very undesirable acquaintances. They were all young men, though rather
older than myself, and were close friends, forming a sort of little
community or club. They were not what is usually described as 'fast.'
They were quite sober and decently-behaved young follows, but they were
very decidedly addicted to gambling in a small way, and they soon
infected me. Before long I was the keenest gambler of them all. Cards,
billiards, pool, and various forms of betting began to be the chief
pleasures of my life, and not only was the bulk of my scanty salary often
consumed in the inevitable losses, but presently I found myself
considerably in debt, without any visible means of discharging my
liabilities. It is true that my four friends were my chief--in fact,
almost my only--creditors, but still, the debts existed, and had to be
paid.

"Now these four friends of mine--named respectively Leach, Pitford,
Hearn, and Jezzard--were uncommonly clever men, though the full extent
of their cleverness was not appreciated by me until too late. And I, too,
was clever in my way, and a most undesirable way it was, for I possessed
the fatal gift of imitating handwriting and signatures with the most
remarkable accuracy. So perfect were my copies that the writers
themselves were frequently unable to distinguish their own signatures
from my imitations, and many a time was my skill invoked by some of my
companions to play off practical jokes upon the others. But these jests
were strictly confined to our own little set, for my four friends were
most careful and anxious that my dangerous accomplishment should not
become known to outsiders.

"And now follows the consequence which you have no doubt foreseen. My
debts, though small, were accumulating, and I saw no prospect of being
able to pay them. Then, one night, Jezzard made a proposition. We had
been playing bridge at his rooms, and once more my ill luck had caused me
to increase my debt. I scribbled out an IOU, and pushed it across the
table to Jezzard, who picked it up with a very wry face, and pocketed it.

"'Look here, Ted,' he said presently, 'this paper is all very well, but,
you know, I can't pay my debts with it. My creditors demand hard cash.'

"'I'm very sorry,' I replied, 'but I can't help it.'

"'Yes, you can,' said he, 'and I'll tell you how.' He then propounded a
scheme which I at first rejected with indignation, but which, when the
others backed him up, I at last allowed myself to be talked into, and
actually put into execution. I contrived, by taking advantage of the
carelessness of some of my superiors at the bank, to get possession of
some blank cheque forms, which I filled up with small amounts--not more
than two or three pounds--and signed with careful imitations of the
signatures of some of our clients. Jezzard got some stamps made for
stamping on the account numbers, and when this had been done I handed
over to him the whole collection of forged cheques in settlement of my
debts to all of my four companions.

"The cheques were duly presented--by whom I do not know; and although,
to my dismay, the modest sums for which I had drawn them had been
skilfully altered into quite considerable amounts, they were all paid
without demur excepting one. That one, which had been altered from three
pounds to thirty-nine, was drawn upon an account which was already
slightly overdrawn. The cashier became suspicious; the cheque was
impounded, and the client communicated with. Then, of course, the mine
exploded. Not only was this particular forgery detected, but inquiries
were set afoot which soon brought to light the others. Presently
circumstances, which I need not describe, threw some suspicion on me. I
at once lost my nerve, and finally made a full confession.

"The inevitable prosecution followed. It was not conducted vindictively.
Still, I had actually committed the forgeries, and though I endeavoured
to cast a part of the blame on to the shoulders of my treacherous
confederates, I did not succeed. Jezzard, it is true, was arrested, but
was discharged for lack of evidence, and, consequently, the whole burden
of the forgery fell upon me. The jury, of course, convicted me, and I was
sentenced to seven years' penal servitude.

"During the time that I was in prison an uncle of mine died in Canada,
and by the provisions of his will I inherited the whole of his very
considerable property, so that when the time arrived for my release, I
came out of prison, not only free, but comparatively rich. I at once
dropped my own name, and, assuming that of Alfred Draper, began to look
about for some quiet spot in which I might spend the rest of my days in
peace, and with little chance of my identity being discovered. Such a
place I found in Sundersley, and here I have lived for the last seven
years, liked and respected, I think, by my neighbours, who have little
suspected that they were harbouring in their midst a convicted felon.

"All this time I had neither seen nor heard anything of my four
confederates, and I hoped and believed that they had passed completely
out of my life. But they had not. Only a month ago I met them once more,
to my sorrow, and from the day of that meeting all the peace and security
of my quiet existence at Sundersley have vanished. Like evil spirits they
have stolen into my life, changing my happiness into bitter misery,
filling my days with dark forebodings and my nights with terror."

Here Mr. Draper paused, and seemed to sink into a gloomy reverie.

"Under what circumstances did you meet these men?" Thorndyke asked.

"Ah!" exclaimed Draper, arousing with sudden excitement, "the
circumstances were very singular and suspicious. I had gone over to
Eastwich for the day to do some shopping. About eleven o'clock in the
forenoon I was making some purchases in a shop when I noticed two men
looking in the window, or rather pretending to do so, whilst they
conversed earnestly. They were smartly dressed, in a horsy fashion, and
looked like well-to-do farmers, as they might very naturally have been
since it was market-day. But it seemed to me that their faces were
familiar to me. I looked at them more attentively, and then it suddenly
dawned upon me, most unpleasantly, that they resembled Leach and Jezzard.
And yet they were not quite like. The resemblance was there, but the
differences were greater than the lapse of time would account for.
Moreover, the man who resembled Jezzard had a rather large mole on the
left cheek just under the eye, while the other man had an eyeglass stuck
in one eye, and wore a waxed moustache, whereas Leach had always been
clean-shaven, and had never used an eyeglass.

"As I was speculating upon the resemblance they looked up, and caught my
intent and inquisitive eye, whereupon they moved away from the window;
and when, having completed my purchases, I came out into the street, they
were nowhere to be seen.

"That evening, as I was walking by the river outside the town before
returning to the station, I overtook a yacht which was being towed
down-stream. Three men were walking ahead on the bank with a long
tow-line, and one man stood in the cockpit steering. As I approached, and
was reading the name Otter on the stern, the man at the helm looked
round, and with a start of surprise I recognized my old acquaintance
Hearn. The recognition, however, was not mutual, for I had grown a beard
in the interval, and I passed on without appearing to notice him; but
when I overtook the other three men, and recognized, as I had feared, the
other three members of the gang, I must have looked rather hard at
Jezzard, for he suddenly halted, and exclaimed: 'Why, it's our old friend
Ted! Our long-lost and lamented brother!' He held out his hand with
effusive cordiality, and began to make inquiries as to my welfare; but I
cut him short with the remark that I was not proposing to renew the
acquaintance, and, turning off on to a footpath that led away from the
river, strode off without looking back.

"Naturally this meeting exercised my mind a good deal, and when I thought
of the two men whom I had seen in the town, I could hardly believe that
their likeness to my quondam friends was a mere coincidence. And yet when
I had met Leach and Jezzard by the river, I had found them little
altered, and had particularly noticed that Jezzard had no mole on his
face, and that Leach was clean-shaven as of old.

"But a day or two later all my doubts were resolved by a paragraph in the
local paper. It appeared that on the day of my visit to Eastwich a number
of forged cheques had been cashed at the three banks. They had been
presented by three well-dressed, horsy-looking men who looked like
well-to-do farmers. One of them had a mole on the left cheek, another was
distinguished by a waxed moustache and a single eyeglass, while the
description of the third I did not recognize. None of the cheques had
been drawn for large amounts, though the total sum obtained by the
forgers was nearly four hundred pounds; but the most interesting point
was that the cheque-forms had been manufactured by photographic process,
and the water-mark skilfully, though not quite perfectly, imitated.
Evidently the swindlers were clever and careful men, and willing to take
a good deal of trouble for the sake of security, and the result of their
precautions was that the police could make no guess as to their identity.

"The very next day, happening to walk over to Port Marston, I came upon
the Otter lying moored alongside the quay in the harbour. As soon as I
recognized the yacht, I turned quickly and walked away, but a minute
later I ran into Leach and Jezzard, who were returning to their craft.
Jezzard greeted me with an air of surprise. 'What! Still hanging about
here, Ted--' he exclaimed. 'That is not discreet of you, dear boy. I
should earnestly advise you to clear out.'

"'What do you mean--' I asked.

"'Tut, tut!' said he. 'We read the papers like other people, and we know
now what business took you to Eastwich. But it's foolish of you to hang
about the neighbourhood where you might be spotted at any moment.'

"The implied accusation took me aback so completely that I stood staring
at him in speechless astonishment, and at that unlucky moment a
tradesman, from whom I had ordered some house-linen, passed along the
quay. Seeing me, he stopped and touched his hat.

"'Beg pardon, Mr. Draper,' said he, 'but I shall be sending my cart up to
Sundersley to-morrow morning if that will do for you.'

"I said that it would, and as the man turned away, Jezzard's face broke
out into a cunning smile.

"So you are Mr. Draper, of Sundersley, now, are you--' said he. 'Well, I
hope you won't be too proud to come and look in on your old friends. We
shall be staying here for some time.'

"That same night Hearn made his appearance at my house. He had come as an
emissary from the gang, to ask me to do some work for them--to execute
some forgeries, in fact. Of course I refused, and pretty bluntly, too,
whereupon Hearn began to throw out vague hints as to what might happen if
I made enemies of the gang, and to utter veiled, but quite intelligible,
threats. You will say that I was an idiot not to send him packing, and
threaten to hand over the whole gang to the police; but I was never a man
of strong nerve, and I don't mind admitting that I was mortally afraid of
that cunning devil, Jezzard.

"The next thing that happened was that Hearn came and took lodgings in
Sundersley, and, in spite of my efforts to avoid him, he haunted me
continually. The yacht, too, had evidently settled down for some time at
a berth in the harbour, for I heard that a local smack-boy had been
engaged as a deck-hand; and I frequently encountered Jezzard and the
other members of the gang, who all professed to believe that I had
committed the Eastwich forgeries. One day I was foolish enough to allow
myself to be lured on to the yacht for a few minutes, and when I would
have gone ashore, I found that the shore ropes had been cast off, and
that the vessel was already moving out of the harbour. At first I was
furious, but the three scoundrels were so jovial and good-natured, and so
delighted with the joke of taking me for a sail against my will, that I
presently cooled down, and having changed into a pair of rubber-soled
shoes (so that I should not make dents in the smooth deck with my
hobnails), bore a hand at sailing the yacht, and spent quite a pleasant
day.

"From that time I found myself gradually drifting back into a state of
intimacy with these agreeable scoundrels, and daily becoming more and
more afraid of them. In a moment of imbecility I mentioned what I had
seen from the shop-window at Eastwich, and, though they passed the matter
off with a joke, I could see that they were mightily disturbed by it.
Their efforts to induce me to join them were redoubled, and Hearn took to
calling almost daily at my house--usually with documents and signatures
which he tried to persuade me to copy.

"A few evenings ago he made a new and startling proposition. We were
walking in my garden, and he had been urging me once more to rejoin the
gang--unsuccessfully, I need not say. Presently he sat down on a seat
against a yew-hedge at the bottom of the garden, and, after an interval
of silence, said suddenly:

"'Then you absolutely refuse to go in with us--'

"'Of course I do,' I replied. 'Why should I mix myself up with a gang of
crooks when I have ample means and a decent position--'

"'Of course,' he agreed, 'you'd be a fool if you did. But, you see, you
know all about this Eastwich job, to say nothing of our other little
exploits, and you gave us away once before. Consequently, you can take it
from me that, now Jezzard has run you to earth, he won't leave you in
peace until you have given us some kind of a hold on you. You know too
much, you see, and as long as you have a clean sheet you are a standing
menace to us. That is the position. You know it, and Jezzard knows it,
and he is a desperate man, and as cunning as the devil.'

"'I know that,' I said gloomily.

"'Very well,' continued Hearn. 'Now I'm going to make you an offer.
Promise me a small annuity--you can easily afford it--or pay me a
substantial sum down, and I will set you free for ever from Jezzard and
the others.'

"'How will you do that--' I asked.

"'Very simply,' he replied. 'I am sick of them all, and sick of this
risky, uncertain mode of life. Now I am ready to clean off my own slate
and set you free at the same time; but I must have some means of
livelihood in view.'

"'You mean that you will turn King's evidence--' I asked.

"'Yes, if you will pay me a couple of hundred a year, or, say, two
thousand down on the conviction of the gang.'

"I was so taken aback that for some time I made no reply, and as I sat
considering this amazing proposition, the silence was suddenly broken by
a suppressed sneeze from the other side of the hedge.

"Hearn and I started to our feet. Immediately hurried footsteps were
heard in the lane outside the hedge. We raced up the garden to the gate
and out through a side alley, but when we reached the lane there was not
a soul in sight. We made a brief and fruitless search in the immediate
neighbourhood, and then turned back to the house. Hearn was deathly pale
and very agitated, and I must confess that I was a good deal upset by the
incident.

"'This is devilish awkward,' said Hearn.

"'It is rather,' I admitted; 'but I expect it was only some inquisitive
yokel.'

"'I don't feel so sure of that,' said he. 'At any rate, we were stark
lunatics to sit up against a hedge to talk secrets.'

"He paced the garden with me for some time in gloomy silence, and
presently, after a brief request that I would think over his proposal,
took himself off.

"I did not see him again until I met him last night on the yacht. Pitford
called on me in the morning, and invited me to come and dine with them. I
at first declined, for my housekeeper was going to spend the evening with
her sister at Eastwich, and stay there for the night, and I did not much
like leaving the house empty. However, I agreed eventually, stipulating
that I should be allowed to come home early, and I accordingly went.
Hearn and Pitford were waiting in the boat by the steps--for the yacht
had been moved out to a buoy--and we went on board and spent a very
pleasant and lively evening. Pitford put me ashore at ten o'clock, and I
walked straight home, and went to bed. Hearn would have come with me, but
the others insisted on his remaining, saying that they had some matters
of business to discuss."

"Which way did you walk home?" asked Thorndyke.

"I came through the town, and along the main road."

"And that is all you know about this affair?"

"Absolutely all," replied Draper. "I have now admitted you to secrets of
my past life that I had hoped never to have to reveal to any human
creature, and I still have some faint hope that it may not be necessary
for you to divulge what I have told you."

"Your secrets shall not be revealed unless it is absolutely indispensable
that they should be," said Thorndyke; "but you are placing your life in
my hands, and you must leave me perfectly free to act as I think best."

With this he gathered his notes together, and we took our departure.

"A very singular history, this, Jervis," he said, when, having wished the
sergeant "Good-night," we stepped out on to the dark road. "What do you
think of it?"

"I hardly know what to think," I answered, "but, on the whole, it seems
rather against Draper than otherwise. He admits that he is an old
criminal, and it appears that he was being persecuted and blackmailed by
the man Hearn. It is true that he represents Jezzard as being the leading
spirit and prime mover in the persecution, but we have only his word for
that. Hearn was in lodgings near him, and was undoubtedly taking the most
active part in the business, and it is quite possible, and indeed
probable, that Hearn was the actual deus ex machina."

Thorndyke nodded. "Yes," he said, "that is certainly the line the
prosecution will take if we allow the story to become known. Ha! what is
this? We are going to have some rain."

"Yes, and wind too. We are in for an autumn gale, I think."

"And that," said Thorndyke, "may turn out to be an important factor in
our case."

"How can the weather affect your case?" I asked in some surprise. But, as
the rain suddenly descended in a pelting shower, my companion broke into
a run, leaving my question unanswered.

On the following morning, which was fair and sunny after the stormy
night, Dr. Burrows called for my friend. He was on his way to the
extemporized mortuary to make the post-mortem examination of the murdered
man's body. Thorndyke, having notified the coroner that he was watching
the case on behalf of the accused, had been authorized to be present at
the autopsy; but the authorization did not include me, and, as Dr.
Burrows did not issue any invitation, I was not able to be present. I met
them, however, as they were returning, and it seemed to me that Dr.
Burrows appeared a little huffy.

"Your friend," said he, in a rather injured tone, "is really the most
outrageous stickler for forms and ceremonies that I have ever met."

Thorndyke looked at him with an amused twinkle, and chuckled indulgently.

"Here was a body," Dr. Burrows continued irritably, "found under
circumstances clearly indicative of murder, and bearing a knife-wound
that nearly divided the arch of the aorta; in spite of which, I assure
you that Dr. Thorndyke insisted on weighing the body, and examining every
organ--lungs, liver, stomach, and brain--yes, actually the brain!--as
if there had been no clue whatever to the cause of death. And then, as a
climax, he insisted on sending the contents of the stomach in a jar,
sealed with our respective seals, in charge of a special messenger, to
Professor Copland, for analysis and report. I thought he was going to
demand an examination for the tubercle bacillus, but he didn't; which,"
concluded Dr. Burrows, suddenly becoming sourly facetious, "was an
oversight, for, after all, the fellow may have died of consumption."

Thorndyke chuckled again, and I murmured that the precautions appeared to
have been somewhat excessive.

"Not at all," was the smiling response. "You are losing sight of our
function. We are the expert and impartial umpires, and it is our business
to ascertain, with scientific accuracy, the cause of death. The prima
facie appearances in this case suggest that the deceased was murdered by
Draper, and that is the hypothesis advanced. But that is no concern of
ours. It is not our function to confirm an hypothesis suggested by
outside circumstances, but rather, on the contrary, to make certain that
no other explanation is possible. And that is my invariable practice. No
matter how glaringly obvious the appearances may be, I refuse to take
anything for granted."

Dr. Burrows received this statement with a grunt of dissent, but the
arrival of his dogcart put a stop to further discussion.

Thorndyke was not subpoenaed for the inquest. Dr. Burrows and the
sergeant having been present immediately after the finding of the body,
his evidence was not considered necessary, and, moreover, he was known to
be watching the case in the interests of the accused. Like myself,
therefore, he was present as a spectator, but as a highly interested one,
for he took very complete shorthand notes of the whole of the evidence
and the coroner's comments.

I shall not describe the proceedings in detail. The jury, having been
taken to view the body, trooped into the room on tiptoe, looking pale and
awe-stricken, and took their seats; and thereafter, from time to time,
directed glances of furtive curiosity at Draper as he stood, pallid and
haggard, confronting the court, with a burly rural constable on either
side.

The medical evidence was taken first. Dr. Burrows, having been sworn,
began, with sarcastic emphasis, to describe the condition of the lungs
and liver, until he was interrupted by the coroner.

"Is all this necessary?" the latter inquired. "I mean, is it material to
the subject of the inquiry?"

"I should say not," replied Dr. Burrows. "It appears to me to be quite
irrelevant, but Dr. Thorndyke, who is watching the case for the defence,
thought it necessary."

"I think," said the coroner, "you had better give us only the facts that
are material. The jury want you to tell them what you consider to have
been the cause of death. They don't want a lecture on pathology."

"The cause of death," said Dr. Burrows, "was a penetrating wound of the
chest, apparently inflicted with a large knife. The weapon entered
between the second and third ribs on the left side close to the sternum
or breast-bone. It wounded the left lung, and partially divided both the
pulmonary artery and the aorta--the two principal arteries of the body."

"Was this injury alone sufficient to cause death?" the coroner asked.

"Yes," was the reply; "and death from injury to these great vessels would
be practically instantaneous."

"Could the injury have been self-inflicted?"

"So far as the position and nature of the wound are concerned," replied
the witness, "self-infliction would be quite possible. But since death
would follow in a few seconds at the most, the weapon would be found
either in the wound, or grasped in the hand, or, at least, quite close to
the body. But in this case no weapon was found at all, and the wound must
therefore certainly have been homicidal."

"Did you see the body before it was moved?"

"Yes. It was lying on its back, with the arms extended and the legs
nearly straight; and the sand in the neighbourhood of the body was
trampled as if a furious struggle had taken place."

"Did you notice anything remarkable about the footprints in the sand?"

"I did," replied Dr. Burrows. "They were the footprints of two persons
only. One of these was evidently the deceased, whose footmarks could be
easily identified by the circular rubber heels. The other footprints were
those of a person--apparently a man--who wore shoes, or boots, the
soles of which were studded with nails; and these nails were arranged in
a very peculiar and unusual manner, for those on the soles formed a
lozenge or diamond shape, and those on the heel were set out in the form
of a cross."

"Have you ever seen shoes or boots with the nails arranged in this
manner?"

"Yes. I have seen a pair of shoes which I am informed belong to the
accused; the nails in them are arranged as I have described."

"Would you say that the footprints of which you have spoken were made by
those shoes?"

"No; I could not say that. I can only say that, to the best of my belief,
the pattern on the shoes is similar to that in the footprints."

This was the sum of Dr. Burrows' evidence, and to all of it Thorndyke
listened with an immovable countenance, though with the closest
attention. Equally attentive was the accused man, though not equally
impassive; indeed, so great was his agitation that presently one of the
constables asked permission to get him a chair.

The next witness was Arthur Jezzard. He testified that he had viewed the
body, and identified it as that of Charles Hearn; that he had been
acquainted with deceased for some years, but knew practically nothing of
his affairs. At the time of his death deceased was lodging in the
village.

"Why did he leave the yacht?" the coroner inquired. "Was there any kind
of disagreement!"

"Not in the least," replied Jezzard. "He grew tired of the confinement of
the yacht, and came to live ashore for a change. But we were the best of
friends, and he intended to come with us when we sailed."

"When did you see him last?"

"On the night before the body was found--that is, last Monday. He had
been dining on the yacht, and we put him ashore about midnight. He said
as we were rowing him ashore that he intended to walk home along the
sands us the tide was out. He went up the stone steps by the watch-house,
and turned at the top to wish us good-night. That was the last time I saw
him alive."

"Do you know anything of the relations between the accused and the
deceased?" the coroner asked.

"Very little," replied Jezzard. "Mr. Draper was introduced to us by the
deceased about a month ago. I believe they had been acquainted some
years, and they appeared to be on excellent terms. There was no
indication of any quarrel or disagreement between them."

"What time did the accused leave the yacht on the night of the murder?"

"About ten o'clock. He said that he wanted to get home early, as his
housekeeper was away and he did not like the house to be left with no one
in it."

This was the whole of Jezzard's evidence, and was confirmed by that of
Leach and Pitford. Then, when the fisherman had deposed to the discovery
of the body, the sergeant was called, and stepped forward, grasping a
carpet-bag, and looking as uncomfortable as if he had been the accused
instead of a witness. He described the circumstances under which he saw
the body, giving the exact time and place with official precision.

"You have heard Dr. Burrows' description of the footprints?" the coroner
inquired.

"Yes. There were two sets. One set were evidently made by deceased. They
showed that he entered St. Bridget's Bay from the direction of Port
Marston. He had been walking along the shore just about high-water mark,
sometimes above and sometimes below. Where he had walked below high-water
mark the footprints had of course been washed away by the sea."

"How far back did you trace the footprints of deceased?"

"About two-thirds of the way to Sundersley Gap. Then they disappeared
below high-water mark. Later in the evening I walked from the Gap into
Port Marston, but could not find any further traces of deceased. He must
have walked between the tide-marks all the way from Port Marston to
beyond Sundersley. When these footprints entered St. Bridget's Bay they
became mixed up with the footprints of another man, and the shore was
trampled for a space of a dozen yards as if a furious struggle had taken
place. The strange man's tracks came down from the Shepherd's Path, and
went up it again; but, owing to the hardness of the ground from the dry
weather, the tracks disappeared a short distance up the path, and I could
not find them again."

"What were these strange footprints like?" inquired the coroner.

"They were very peculiar," replied the sergeant. "They were made by shoes
armed with smallish hob-nails, which were arranged in a diamond-shaped
pattern on the holes and in a cross on the heels. I measured the
footprints carefully, and made a drawing of each foot at the time." Here
the sergeant produced a long notebook of funereal aspect, and, having
opened it at a marked place, handed it to the coroner, who examined it
attentively, and then passed it on to the jury. From the jury it was
presently transferred to Thorndyke, and, looking over his shoulder, I saw
a very workmanlike sketch of a pair of footprints with the principal
dimensions inserted.

Thorndyke surveyed the drawing critically, jotted down a few brief notes,
and returned the sergeant's notebook to the coroner, who, as he took it,
turned once more to the officer.

"Have you any clue, sergeant, to the person who made these footprints?"
he asked.

By way of reply the sergeant opened his carpet-bag, and, extracting
therefrom a pair of smart but stoutly made shoes, laid them on the table.

"Those shoes," he said, "are the property of the accused; he was wearing
them when I arrested him. They appear to correspond exactly to the
footprints of the murderer. The measurements are the same, and the nails
with which they are studded are arranged in a similar pattern."

[Illustration: The Sergeant's Sketch. Extreme length, 11 and
three-quarter inches. Width at A, 4 and a half inches. Length of heel, 3
and one quarter inches Width of heel at cross, 3 inches.]

"Would you swear that the footprints were made with these shoes?" asked
the coroner.

"No, sir, I would not," was the decided answer. "I would only swear to
the similarity of size and pattern."

"Had you ever seen these shoes before you made the drawing?"

"No, sir," replied the sergeant; and he then related the incident of the
footprints in the soft earth by the pond which led him to make the
arrest.

The coroner gazed reflectively at the shoes which he held in his hand,
and from them to the drawing; then, passing them to the foreman of the
jury, he remarked:

"Well, gentlemen, it is not for me to tell you whether these shoes answer
to the description given by Dr. Burrows and the sergeant, or whether they
resemble the drawing which, as you have heard, was made by the officer on
the spot and before he had seen the shoes; that is a matter for you to
decide. Meanwhile, there is another question that we must consider." He
turned to the sergeant and asked: "Have you made any inquiries as to the
movements of the accused on the night of the murder?"

"I have," replied the sergeant, "and I find that, on that night, the
accused was alone in the house, his housekeeper having gone over to
Eastwich. Two men saw him in the town about ten o'clock, apparently
walking in the direction of Sundersley."

This concluded the sergeant's evidence, and when one or two more
witnesses had been examined without eliciting any fresh facts, the
coroner briefly recapitulated the evidence, and requested the jury to
consider their verdict. Thereupon a solemn hush fell upon the court,
broken only by the whispers of the jurymen, as they consulted together;
and the spectators gazed in awed expectancy from the accused to the
whispering jury. I glanced at Draper, sitting huddled in his chair, his
clammy face as pale as that of the corpse in the mortuary hard by, his
hands tremulous and restless; and, scoundrel as I believed him to be, I
could not but pity the abject misery that was written large all over him,
from his damp hair to his incessantly shifting feet.

The jury took but a short time to consider their verdict. At the end of
five minutes the foreman announced that they were agreed, and, in answer
to the coroner's formal inquiry, stood up and replied:

"We find that the deceased met his death by being stabbed in the chest by
the accused man, Alfred Draper."

"That is a verdict of wilful murder," said the coroner, and he entered it
accordingly in his notes. The Court now rose. The spectators reluctantly
trooped out, the jurymen stood up and stretched themselves, and the two
constables, under the guidance of the sergeant, carried the wretched
Draper in a fainting condition to a closed fly that was waiting outside.

"I was not greatly impressed by the activity of the defence," I remarked
maliciously as we walked home.

Thorndyke smiled. "You surely did not expect me to cast my pearls of
forensic learning before a coroner's jury," said he.

"I expected that you would have something to say on behalf of your
client," I replied. "As it was, his accusers had it all their own way."

"And why not?" he asked. "Of what concern to us is the verdict of the
coroner's jury?"

"It would have seemed more decent to make some sort of defence," I
replied.

"My dear Jervis," he rejoined, "you do not seem to appreciate the great
virtue of what Lord Beaconsfield so felicitously called 'a policy of
masterly inactivity'; and yet that is one of the great lessons that a
medical training impresses on the student."

"That may be so," said I. "But the result, up to the present, of your
masterly policy is that a verdict of wilful murder stands against your
client, and I don't see what other verdict the jury could have found."

"Neither do I," said Thorndyke.

I had written to my principal, Dr. Cooper, describing the stirring events
that were taking place in the village, and had received a reply from him
instructing me to place the house at Thorndyke's disposal, and to give
him every facility for his work. In accordance with which edict my
colleague took possession of a well-lighted, disused stable-loft, and
announced his intention of moving his things into it. Now, as these
"things" included the mysterious contents of the hamper that the
housemaid had seen, I was possessed with a consuming desire to be present
at the "flitting," and I do not mind confessing that I purposely lurked
about the stairs in the hopes of thus picking up a few crumbs of
information.

But Thorndyke was one too many for me. A misbegotten infant in the
village having been seized with inopportune convulsions, I was compelled,
most reluctantly, to hasten to its relief; and I returned only in time to
find Thorndyke in the act of locking the door of the loft.

"A nice light, roomy place to work in," he remarked, as he descended the
steps, slipping the key into his pocket.

"Yes," I replied, and added boldly: "What do you intend to do up there?"

"Work up the case for the defence," he replied, "and, as I have now heard
all that the prosecution have to say, I shall be able to forge ahead."

This was vague enough, but I consoled myself with the reflection that in
a very few days I should, in common with the rest of the world, be in
possession of the results of his mysterious proceedings. For, in view of
the approaching assizes, preparations were being made to push the case
through the magistrate's court as quickly as possible in order to obtain
a committal in time for the ensuing sessions. Draper had, of course, been
already charged before a justice of the peace and evidence of arrest
taken, and it was expected that the adjourned hearing would commence
before the local magistrates on the fifth day after the inquest.

The events of these five days kept me in a positive ferment of curiosity.
In the first place an inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department
came down and browsed about the place in company with the sergeant. Then
Mr. Bashfield, who was to conduct the prosecution, came and took up his
abode at the "Cat and Chicken." But the most surprising visitor was
Thorndyke's laboratory assistant, Polton, who appeared one evening with a
large trunk and a sailor's hammock, and announced that he was going to
take up his quarters in the loft.

As to Thorndyke himself, his proceedings were beyond speculation. From
time to time he made mysterious appearances at the windows of the loft,
usually arrayed in what looked suspiciously like a nightshirt. Sometimes
I would see him holding a negative up to the light, at others
manipulating a photographic printing-frame; and once I observed him with
a paintbrush and a large gallipot; on which I turned away in despair, and
nearly collided with the inspector.

"Dr. Thorndyke is staying with you, I hear," said the latter, gazing
earnestly at my colleague's back, which was presented for his inspection
at the window.

"Yes," I answered. "Those are his temporary premises."

"That is where he does his bedevilments, I suppose?" the officer
suggested.

"He conducts his experiments there," I corrected haughtily.

"That's what I mean," said the inspector; and, as Thorndyke at this
moment turned and opened the window, our visitor began to ascend the
steps.

"I've just called to ask if I could have a few words with you, Doctor,"
said the inspector, as he reached the door.

"Certainly," Thorndyke replied blandly. "If you will go down and wait
with Dr. Jervis, I will be with you in five minutes."

The officer came down the steps grinning, and I thought I heard him
murmur "Sold!" But this may have been an illusion. However, Thorndyke
presently emerged, and he and the officer strode away into the shrubbery.
What the inspector's business was, or whether he had any business at all,
I never learned; but the incident seemed to throw some light on the
presence of Polton and the sailor's hammock. And this reference to Polton
reminds me of a very singular change that took place about this time in
the habits of this usually staid and sedate little man; who, abandoning
the somewhat clerical style of dress that he ordinarily affected, broke
out into a semi-nautical costume, in which he would sally forth every
morning in the direction of Port Marston. And there, on more than one
occasion, I saw him leaning against a post by the harbour, or lounging
outside a waterside tavern in earnest and amicable conversation with
sundry nautical characters.

On the afternoon of the day before the opening of the proceedings we had
two new visitors. One of them, a grey-haired spectacled man, was a
stranger to me, and for some reason I failed to recall his name, Copland,
though I was sure I had heard it before. The other was Anstey, the
barrister who usually worked with Thorndyke in cases that went into
Court. I saw very little of either of them, however, for they retired
almost immediately to the loft, where, with short intervals for meals,
they remained for the rest of the day, and, I believe, far into the
night. Thorndyke requested me not to mention the names of his visitors to
anyone, and at the same time apologized for the secrecy of his
proceedings.

"But you are a doctor, Jervis," he concluded, "and you know what
professional confidences are; and you will understand how greatly it is
in our favour that we know exactly what the prosecution can do, while
they are absolutely in the dark as to our line of defence."

I assured him that I fully understood his position, and with this
assurance he retired, evidently relieved, to the council chamber.

The proceedings, which opened on the following day, and at which I was
present throughout, need not be described in detail. The evidence for the
prosecution was, of course, mainly a repetition of that given at the
inquest. Mr. Bashfield's opening statement, however, I shall give at
length, inasmuch as it summarized very clearly the whole of the case
against the prisoner.

"The case that is now before the Court," said the counsel, "involves a
charge of wilful murder against the prisoner Alfred Draper, and the
facts, in so far as they are known, are briefly these: On the night of
Monday, the 27th of September, the deceased, Charles Hearn, dined with
some friends on board the yacht Otter. About midnight he came ashore, and
proceeded to walk towards Sundersley along the beach. As he entered St.
Bridget's Bay, a man, who appears to have been lying in wait, and who
came down the Shepherd's Path, met him, and a deadly struggle seems to
have taken place. The deceased received a wound of a kind calculated to
cause almost instantaneous death, and apparently fell down dead.

"And now, what was the motive of this terrible crime? It was not robbery,
for nothing appears to have been taken from the corpse. Money and
valuables were found, as far as is known, intact. Nor, clearly, was it a
case of a casual affray. We are, consequently, driven to the conclusion
that the motive was a personal one, a motive of interest or revenge, and
with this view the time, the place, and the evident deliberateness of the
murder are in full agreement.

"So much for the motive. The next question is, Who was the perpetrator of
this shocking crime? And the answer to that question is given in a very
singular and dramatic circumstance, a circumstance that illustrates once
more the amazing lack of precaution shown by persons who commit such
crimes. The murderer was wearing a very remarkable pair of shoes, and
those shoes left very remarkable footprints in the smooth sand, and those
footprints were seen and examined by a very acute and painstaking
police-officer, Sergeant Payne, whose evidence you will hear presently.
The sergeant not only examined the footprints, he made careful drawings
of them on the spot--on the spot, mind you, not from memory--and he
made very exact measurements of them, which he duly noted down. And from
those drawings and those measurements, those tell-tale shoes have been
identified, and are here for your inspection.

"And now, who is the owner of those very singular, those almost unique
shoes? I have said that the motive of this murder must have been a
personal one, and, behold! the owner of those shoes happens to be the one
person in the whole of this district who could have had a motive for
compassing the murdered man's death. Those shoes belong to, and were
taken from the foot of, the prisoner, Alfred Draper, and the prisoner,
Alfred Draper, is the only person living in this neighbourhood who was
acquainted with the deceased.

"It has been stated in evidence at the inquest that the relations of
these two men, the prisoner and the deceased, were entirely friendly; but
I shall prove to you that they were not so friendly as has been supposed.
I shall prove to you, by the evidence of the prisoner's housekeeper, that
the deceased was often an unwelcome visitor at the house, that the
prisoner often denied himself when he was really at home and disengaged,
and, in short, that he appeared constantly to shun and avoid the
deceased.

"One more question and I have finished. Where was the prisoner on the
night of the murder? The answer is that he was in a house little more
than half a mile from the scene of the crime. And who was with him in
that house? Who was there to observe and testify to his going forth and
his coming home? No one. He was alone in the house. On that night, of all
nights, he was alone. Not a soul was there to rouse at the creak of a
door or the tread of a shoe--to tell as whether he slept or whether he
stole forth in the dead of the night.

"Such are the facts of this case. I believe that they are not disputed,
and I assert that, taken together, they are susceptible of only one
explanation, which is that the prisoner, Alfred Draper, is the man who
murdered the deceased, Charles Hearn."

Immediately on the conclusion of this address, the witnesses were called,
and the evidence given was identical with that at the inquest. The only
new witness for the prosecution was Draper's housekeeper, and her
evidence fully bore out Mr. Bashfield's statement. The sergeant's account
of the footprints was listened to with breathless interest, and at its
conclusion the presiding magistrate--a retired solicitor, once well
known in criminal practice--put a question which interested me as
showing how clearly Thorndyke had foreseen the course of events,
recalling, as it did, his remark on the night when we were caught in the
rain.

"Did you," the magistrate asked, "take these shoes down to the beach and
compare them with the actual footprints?"

"I obtained the shoes at night," replied the sergeant, "and I took them
down to the shore at daybreak the next morning. But, unfortunately, there
had been a storm in the night, and the footprints were almost obliterated
by the wind and rain."

When the sergeant had stepped down, Mr. Bashfield announced that that was
the case for the prosecution. He then resumed his seat, turning an
inquisitive eye on Anstey and Thorndyke.

The former immediately rose and opened the case for the defence with a
brief statement.

"The learned counsel for the prosecution," said he, "has told us that the
facts now in the possession of the Court admit of but one explanation--that
of the guilt of the accused. That may or may not be; but I shall now
proceed to lay before the Court certain fresh facts--facts, I may say,
of the most singular and startling character, which will, I think, lead
to a very different conclusion. I shall say no more, but call the
witnesses forthwith, and let the evidence speak for itself."

The first witness for the defence was Thorndyke; and as he entered the
box I observed Polton take up a position close behind him with a large
wicker trunk. Having been sworn, and requested by Anstey to tell the
Court what he knew about the case, he commenced without preamble:

"About half-past four in the afternoon of the 28th of September I walked
down Sundersley Gap with Dr. Jervis. Our attention was attracted by
certain footprints in the sand, particularly those of a man who had
landed from a boat, had walked up the Gap, and presently returned,
apparently to the boat.

"As we were standing there Sergeant Payne and Dr. Burrows passed down the
Gap with two constables carrying a stretcher. We followed at a distance,
and as we walked along the shore we encountered another set of
footprints--those which the sergeant has described as the footprints of the
deceased. We examined these carefully, and endeavoured to frame a
description of the person by whom they had been made."

"And did your description agree with the characters of the deceased?" the
magistrate asked.

"Not in the least," replied Thorndyke, whereupon the magistrate, the
inspector, and Mr. Bashfield laughed long and heartily.

"When we turned into St. Bridget's Bay, I saw the body of deceased lying
on the sand close to the cliff. The sand all round was covered with
footprints, as if a prolonged, fierce struggle had taken place. There
were two sets of footprints, one set being apparently those of the
deceased and the other those of a man with nailed shoes of a very
peculiar and conspicuous pattern. The incredible folly that the wearing
of such shoes indicated caused me to look more closely at the footprints,
and then I made the surprising discovery that there had in reality been
no struggle; that, in fact, the two sets of footprints had been made at
different times."

"At different times!" the magistrate exclaimed in astonishment.

"Yes. The interval between them may have been one of hours or one only of
seconds, but the undoubted fact is that the two sets of footprints were
made, not simultaneously, but in succession."

"But how did you arrive at that fact?" the magistrate asked.

"It was very obvious when one looked," said Thorndyke. "The marks of the
deceased man's shoes showed that he repeatedly trod in his own
footprints; but never in a single instance did he tread in the footprints
of the other man, although they covered the same area. The man with the
nailed shoes, on the contrary, not only trod in his own footprints, but
with equal frequency in those of the deceased. Moreover, when the body
was removed, I observed that the footprints in the sand on which it was
lying were exclusively those of the deceased. There was not a sign of any
nail-marked footprint under the corpse, although there were many close
around it. It was evident, therefore, that the footprints of the deceased
were made first and those of the nailed shoes afterwards."

As Thorndyke paused the magistrate rubbed his nose thoughtfully, and the
inspector gazed at the witness with a puzzled frown.

"The singularity of this fact," my colleague resumed, "made me look at
the footprints yet more critically, and then I made another discovery.
There was a double track of the nailed shoes, leading apparently from and
back to the Shepherd's Path. But on examining these tracks more closely,
I was astonished to find that the man who had made them had been walking
backwards; that, in fact, he had walked backwards from the body to the
Shepherd's Path, had ascended it for a short distance, had turned round,
and returned, still walking backwards, to the face of the cliff near the
corpse, and there the tracks vanished altogether. On the sand at this
spot were some small, inconspicuous marks which might have been made by
the end of a rope, and there were also a few small fragments which had
fallen from the cliff above. Observing these, I examined the surface of
the cliff, and at one spot, about six feet above the beach, I found a
freshly rubbed spot on which were parallel scratches such as might have
been made by the nailed sole of a boot. I then ascended the Shepherd's
Path, and examined the cliff from above, and here I found on the extreme
edge a rather deep indentation, such as would be made by a taut rope,
and, on lying down and looking over, I could see, some five feet from the
top, another rubbed spot with very distinct parallel scratches."

"You appear to infer," said the chairman, "that this man performed these
astonishing evolutions and was then hauled up the cliff?"

"That is what the appearances suggested," replied Thorndyke.

The chairman pursed up his lips, raised his eyebrows, and glanced
doubtfully at his brother magistrates. Then, with a resigned air, he
bowed to the witness to indicate that he was listening.

"That same night," Thorndyke resumed, "I cycled down to the shore,
through the Gap, with a supply of plaster of Paris, and proceeded to take
plaster moulds of the more important of the footprints." (Here the
magistrates, the inspector, and Mr. Bashfield with one accord sat up at
attention; Sergeant Payne swore quite audibly; and I experienced a sudden
illumination respecting a certain basin and kitchen spoon which had so
puzzled me on the night of Thorndyke's arrival.) "As I thought that
liquid plaster might confuse or even obliterate the prints in sand, I
filled up the respective footprints with dry plaster, pressed it down
lightly, and then cautiously poured water on to it. The moulds, which are
excellent impressions, of course show the appearance of the boots which
made the footprints, and from these moulds I have prepared casts which
reproduce the footprints themselves.

"The first mould that I made was that of one of the tracks from the boat
up to the Gap, and of this I shall speak presently. I next made a mould
of one of the footprints which have been described as those of the
deceased."

"Have been described!" exclaimed the chairman. "The deceased was
certainly there, and there were no other footprints, so, if they were not
his, he must have flown to where he was found."

"I will call them the footprints of the deceased," replied Thorndyke
imperturbably. "I took a mould of one of them, and with it, on the same
mould, one of my own footprints. Here is the mould, and here is a cast
from it." (He turned and took them from the triumphant Polton, who had
tenderly lifted them out of the trunk in readiness.) "On looking at the
cast, it will be seen that the appearances are not such as would be
expected. The deceased was five feet nine inches high, but was very thin
and light, weighing only nine stone six pounds, as I ascertained by
weighing the body, whereas I am five feet eleven and weigh nearly
thirteen stone. But yet the footprint of the deceased is nearly twice as
deep as mine--that is to say, the lighter man has sunk into the sand
nearly twice as deeply as the heavier man."

The magistrates were now deeply attentive. They were no longer simply
listening to the despised utterances of a mere scientific expert. The
cast lay before them with the two footprints side by side; the evidence
appealed to their own senses and was proportionately convincing.

"This is very singular," said the chairman; "but perhaps you can explain
the discrepancy?"

"I think I can," replied Thorndyke; "but I should prefer to place all the
facts before you first."

"Undoubtedly that would be better," the chairman agreed. "Pray proceed."

"There was another remarkable peculiarity about these footprints,"
Thorndyke continued, "and that was their distance apart--the length of
the stride, in fact. I measured the steps carefully from heel to heel,
and found them only nineteen and a half inches. But a man of Hearn's
height would have an ordinary stride of about thirty-six inches--more if
he was walking fast. Walking with a stride of nineteen and a half inches
he would look as if his legs were tied together.

"I next proceeded to the Bay, and took two moulds from the footprints of
the man with the nailed shoes, a right and a left. Here is a cast from
the mould, and it shows very clearly that the man was walking backwards."

"How does it show that?" asked the magistrate.

"There are several distinctive points. For instance, the absence of the
usual 'kick off' at the toe, the slight drag behind the heel, showing the
direction in which the foot was lifted, and the undisturbed impression of
the sole."

"You have spoken of moulds and casts. What is the difference between
them?"

"A mould is a direct, and therefore reversed, impression. A cast is the
impression of a mould, and therefore a facsimile of the object. If I pour
liquid plaster on a coin, when it sets I have a mould, a sunk impression,
of the coin. If I pour melted wax into the mould I obtain a cast, a
facsimile of the coin. A footprint is a mould of the foot. A mould of the
footprint is a cast of the foot, and a cast from the mould reproduces the
footprint."

"Thank you," said the magistrate. "Then your moulds from these two
footprints are really facsimiles of the murderer's shoes, and can be
compared with these shoes which have been put in evidence?"

"Yes, and when we compare them they demonstrate a very important fact."

"What is that?"

"It is that the prisoner's shoes were not the shoes that made those
footprints." A buzz of astonishment ran through the court, but Thorndyke
continued stolidly: "The prisoner's shoes were not in my possession, so I
went on to Barker's pond, on the clay margin of which I had seen
footprints actually made by the prisoner. I took moulds of those
footprints, and compared them with these from the sand. There are several
important differences, which you will see if you compare them. To
facilitate the comparison I have made transparent photographs of both
sets of moulds to the same scale. Now, if we put the photograph of the
mould of the prisoner's right shoe over that of the murderer's right
shoe, and hold the two superposed photographs up to the light, we cannot
make the two pictures coincide. They are exactly of the same length, but
the shoes are of different shape. Moreover, if we put one of the nails in
one photograph over the corresponding nail in the other photograph, we
cannot make the rest of the nails coincide. But the most conclusive fact
of all--from which there is no possible escape--is that the number of
nails in the two shoes is not the same. In the sole of the prisoner's
right shoe there are forty nails; in that of the murderer there are
forty-one. The murderer has one nail too many."


There was a deathly silence in the court as the magistrates and Mr.
Bashfield pored over the moulds and the prisoner's shoes, and examined
the photographs against the light. Then the chairman asked: "Are these
all the facts, or have you something more to tell us?" He was evidently
anxious to get the key to this riddle.

"There is more evidence, your Worship," said Anstey. "The witness
examined the body of deceased." Then, turning to Thorndyke, he asked:

"You were present at the post-mortem examination?"

"I was."

"Did you form any opinion as to the cause of death?"

"Yes. I came to the conclusion that death was occasioned by an overdose
of morphia."

A universal gasp of amazement greeted this statement. Then the presiding
magistrate protested breathlessly:

"But there was a wound, which we have been told was capable of causing
instantaneous death. Was that not the case?"

"There was undoubtedly such a wound," replied Thorndyke. "But when that
wound was inflicted the deceased had already been dead from a quarter to
half an hour."

"This is incredible!" exclaimed the magistrate. "But, no doubt, you can
give us your reasons for this amazing conclusion?"

"My opinion," said Thorndyke, "was based on several facts. In the first
place, a wound inflicted on a living body gapes rather widely, owing to
the retraction of the living skin. The skin of a dead body does not
retract, and the wound, consequently, does not gape. This wound gaped
very slightly, showing that death was recent, I should say, within half
an hour. Then a wound on the living body becomes filled with blood, and
blood is shed freely on the clothing. But the wound on the deceased
contained only a little blood-clot. There was hardly any blood on the
clothing, and I had already noticed that there was none on the sand where
the body had lain."

"And you consider this quite conclusive?" the magistrate asked
doubtfully.

"I do," answered Thorndyke. "But there was other evidence which was
beyond all question. The weapon had partially divided both the aorta and
the pulmonary artery--the main arteries of the body. Now, during life,
these great vessels are full of blood at a high internal pressure,
whereas after death they become almost empty. It follows that, if this
wound had been inflicted during life, the cavity in which those vessels
lie would have become filled with blood. As a matter of fact, it
contained practically no blood, only the merest oozing from some small
veins, so that it is certain that the wound was inflicted after death.
The presence and nature of the poison I ascertained by analyzing certain
secretions from the body, and the analysis enabled me to judge that the
quantity of the poison was large; but the contents of the stomach were
sent to Professor Copland for more exact examination."

"Is the result of Professor Copland's analysis known?" the magistrate
asked Anstey.

"The professor is here, your Worship," replied Anstey, "and is prepared
to swear to having obtained over one grain of morphia from the contents
of the stomach; and as this, which is in itself a poisonous dose, is only
the unabsorbed residue of what was actually swallowed, the total quantity
taken must have been very large indeed."

"Thank you," said the magistrate. "And now, Dr. Thorndyke, if you have
given us all the facts, perhaps you will tell us what conclusions you
have drawn from them."

"The facts which I have stated," said Thorndyke, "appear to me to
indicate the following sequence of events. The deceased died about
midnight on September 27, from the effects of a poisonous dose of
morphia, how or by whom administered I offer no opinion. I think that his
body was conveyed in a boat to Sundersley Gap. The boat probably
contained three men, of whom one remained in charge of it, one walked up
the Gap and along the cliff towards St. Bridget's Bay, and the third,
having put on the shoes of the deceased, carried the body along the shore
to the Bay. This would account for the great depth and short stride of
the tracks that have been spoken of as those of the deceased. Having
reached the Bay, I believe that this man laid the corpse down on his
tracks, and then trampled the sand in the neighbourhood. He next took off
deceased's shoes and put them on the corpse; then he put on a pair of
boots or shoes which he had been carrying--perhaps hung round his
neck--and which had been prepared with nails to imitate Draper's shoes. In
these shoes he again trampled over the area near the corpse. Then he
walked backwards to the Shepherd's Path, and from it again, still
backwards, to the face of the cliff. Here his accomplice had lowered a
rope, by which he climbed up to the top. At the top he took off the
nailed shoes, and the two men walked back to the Gap, where the man who
had carried the rope took his confederate on his back, and carried him
down to the boat to avoid leaving the tracks of stockinged feet. The
tracks that I saw at the Gap certainly indicated that the man was
carrying something very heavy when he returned to the boat."

"But why should the man have climbed a rope up the cliff when he could
have walked up the Shepherd's Path?" the magistrate asked.

"Because," replied Thorndyke, "there would then have been a set of tracks
leading out of the Bay without a corresponding set leading into it; and
this would have instantly suggested to a smart police-officer--such as
Sergeant Payne--a landing from a boat."

"Your explanation is highly ingenious," said the magistrate, "and appears
to cover all the very remarkable facts. Have you anything more to tell
us?"

"No, your Worship," was the reply, "excepting" (here he took from Polton
the last pair of moulds and passed them up to the magistrate) "that you
will probably find these moulds of importance presently."

As Thorndyke stepped from the box--for there was no
cross-examination--the magistrates scrutinized the moulds with an air of perplexity; but
they were too discreet to make any remark.

When the evidence of Professor Copland (which showed that an
unquestionably lethal dose of morphia must have been swallowed) had been
taken, the clerk called out the--to me--unfamiliar name of Jacob
Gummer. Thereupon an enormous pair of brown dreadnought trousers, from
the upper end of which a smack-boy's head and shoulders protruded, walked
into the witness-box.

Jacob admitted at the outset that he was a smack-master's apprentice, and
that he bad been "hired out" by his master to one Mr. Jezzard as
deck-hand and cabin-boy of the yacht Otter.

"Now, Gummer," said Anstey, "do you remember the prisoner coming on board
the yacht?"

"Yes. He has been on board twice. The first time was about a month ago.
He went for a sail with us then. The second time was on the night when
Mr. Hearn was murdered."

"Do you remember what sort of boots the prisoner was wearing the first
time he came?"

"Yes. They were shoes with a lot of nails in the soles. I remember them
because Mr. Jezzard made him take them off and put on a canvas pair."

"What was done with the nailed shoes?"

"Mr. Jezzard took 'em below to the cabin."

"And did Mr. Jezzard come up on deck again directly?"

"No. He stayed down in the cabin about ten minutes."

"Do you remember a parcel being delivered on board from a London
boot-maker?"

"Yes. The postman brought it about four or five days after Mr. Draper had
been on board. It was labelled 'Walker Bros., Boot and Shoe Makers,
London.' Mr. Jezzard took a pair of shoes from it, for I saw them on the
locker in the cabin the same day."

"Did you ever see him wear them?"

"No. I never see 'em again."

"Have you ever heard sounds of hammering on the yacht?"

"Yes. The night after the parcel came I was on the quay alongside, and I
heard someone a-hammering in the cabin."

"What did the hammering sound like?"

"It sounded like a cobbler a-hammering in nails."

"Have you over seen any boot-nails on the yacht?"

"Yes. When I was a-clearin' up the cabin the next mornin', I found a
hobnail on the floor in a corner by the locker."

"Were you on board on the night when Mr. Hearn died?"

"Yes. I'd been ashore, but I came aboard about half-past nine."

"Did you see Mr. Hearn go ashore?"

"I see him leave the yacht. I had turned into my bunk and gone to sleep,
when Mr. Jezzard calls down to me: 'We're putting Mr. Hearn ashore,' says
he; 'and then,' he says, 'we're a-going for an hour's fishing. You
needn't sit up,' he says, and with that he shuts the scuttle. Then I got
up and slid back the scuttle and put my head out, and I see Mr. Jezzard
and Mr. Leach a-helpin' Mr. Hearn acrost the deck. Mr. Hearn he looked as
if he was drunk. They got him into the boat--and a rare job they had--and
Mr. Pitford, what was in the boat already, he pushed off. And then I
popped my head in again, 'cause I didn't want them to see me."

"Did they row to the steps?"

"No. I put my head out again when they were gone, and I heard 'em row
round the yacht, and then pull out towards the mouth of the harbour. I
couldn't see the boat, 'cause it was a very dark night."

"Very well. Now I am going to ask you about another matter. Do you know
anyone of the name of Polton?"

"Yes," replied Gummer, turning a dusky red. "I've just found out his real
name. I thought he was called Simmons."

"Tell us what you know about him," said Anstey, with a mischievous smile.


"Well," said the boy, with a ferocious scowl at the bland and smiling
Polton, "one day he come down to the yacht when the gentlemen had gone
ashore. I believe he'd seen 'em go. And he offers me ten shillin' to let
him see all the boots and shoes we'd got on board. I didn't see no harm,
so I turns out the whole lot in the cabin for him to look at. While he
was lookin' at 'em he asks me to fetch a pair of mine from the fo'c'sle,
so I fetches 'em. When I come back he was pitchin' the boots and shoes
back into the locker. Then, presently, he nips off, and when he was gone
I looked over the shoes, and then I found there was a pair missing. They
was an old pair of Mr. Jezzard's, and what made him nick 'em is more than
I can understand."

"Would you know those shoes if you saw them!"

"Yes, I should," replied the lad.

"Are these the pair?" Anstey handed the boy a pair of dilapidated canvas
shoes, which he seized eagerly.

"Yes, these is the ones what he stole!" he exclaimed.

Anstey took them back from the boy's reluctant hands, and passed them up
to the magistrate's desk. "I think," said he, "that if your Worship will
compare these shoes with the last pair of moulds, you will have no doubt
that these are the shoes which made the footprints from the sea to
Sundersley Gap and back again."

The magistrates together compared the shoes and the moulds amidst a
breathless silence. At length the chairman laid them down on the desk.

"It is impossible to doubt it," said he. "The broken heel and the tear in
the rubber sole, with the remains of the chequered pattern, make the
identity practically certain."

As the chairman made this statement I involuntarily glanced round to the
place where Jezzard was sitting. But he was not there; neither he, nor
Pitford, nor Leach. Taking advantage of the preoccupation of the Court,
they had quietly slipped out of the door. But I was not the only person
who had noted their absence. The inspector and the sergeant were already
in earnest consultation, and a minute later they, too, hurriedly
departed.

The proceedings now speedily came to an end. After a brief discussion
with his brother-magistrates, the chairman addressed the Court.

"The remarkable and I may say startling evidence, which has been heard in
this court to-day, if it has not fixed the guilt of this crime on any
individual, has, at any rate, made it clear to our satisfaction that the
prisoner is not the guilty person, and he is accordingly discharged. Mr.
Draper, I have great pleasure in informing you that you are at liberty to
leave the court, and that you do so entirely clear of all suspicion; and
I congratulate you very heartily on the skill and ingenuity of your legal
advisers, but for which the decision of the Court would, I am afraid,
have been very different."

That evening, lawyers, witnesses, and the jubilant and grateful client
gathered round a truly festive board to dine, and fight over again the
battle of the day. But we were scarcely halfway through our meal when, to
the indignation of the servants, Sergeant Payne burst breathlessly into
the room.

"They've gone, sir!" he exclaimed, addressing Thorndyke. "They've given
us the slip for good."

"Why, how can that be?" asked Thorndyke.

"They're dead, sir! All three of them!"

"Dead!" we all exclaimed.

"Yes. They made a burst for the yacht when they left the court, and they
got on board and put out to sea at once, hoping, no doubt, to get clear
as the light was just failing. But they were in such a hurry that they
did not see a steam trawler that was entering, and was hidden by the
pier. Then, just at the entrance, as the yacht was creeping out, the
trawler hit her amidships, and fairly cut her in two. The three men were
in the water in an instant, and were swept away in the eddy behind the
north pier; and before any boat could put out to them they had all gone
under. Jezzard's body came up on the beach just as I was coming away."

We were all silent and a little awed, but if any of us felt regret at the
catastrophe, it was at the thought that three such cold-blooded villains
should have made so easy an exit; and to one of us, at least, the news
came as a blessed relief.



THE STRANGER'S LATCHKEY


The contrariety of human nature is a subject that has given a surprising
amount of occupation to makers of proverbs and to those moral
philosophers who make it their province to discover and expound the
glaringly obvious; and especially have they been concerned to enlarge
upon that form of perverseness which engenders dislike of things offered
under compulsion, and arouses desire of them as soon as their attainment
becomes difficult or impossible. They assure us that a man who has had a
given thing within his reach and put it by, will, as soon as it is beyond
his reach, find it the one thing necessary and desirable; even as the
domestic cat which has turned disdainfully from the preferred saucer, may
presently be seen with her head jammed hard in the milk-jug, or, secretly
and with horrible relish, slaking her thirst at the scullery sink.

To this peculiarity of the human mind was due, no doubt, the fact that no
sooner had I abandoned the clinical side of my profession in favour of
the legal, and taken up my abode in the chambers of my friend Thorndyke,
the famous medico-legal expert, to act as his assistant or junior, than
my former mode of life--that of a locum tenens, or minder of other men's
practices--which had, when I was following it, seemed intolerably
irksome, now appeared to possess many desirable features; and I found
myself occasionally hankering to sit once more by the bedside, to puzzle
out the perplexing train of symptoms, and to wield that power--the
greatest, after all, possessed by man--the power to banish suffering and
ward off the approach of death itself.

Hence it was that on a certain morning of the long vacation I found
myself installed at The Larches, Burling, in full charge of the practice
of my old friend Dr. Hanshaw, who was taking a fishing holiday in Norway.
I was not left desolate, however, for Mrs. Hanshaw remained at her post,
and the roomy, old-fashioned house accommodated three visitors in
addition. One of these was Dr. Hanshaw's sister, a Mrs. Haldean, the
widow of a wealthy Manchester cotton factor; the second was her niece by
marriage, Miss Lucy Haldean, a very handsome and charming girl of
twenty-three; while the third was no less a person than Master Fred, the
only child of Mrs. Haldean, and a strapping boy of six.

"It is quite like old times--and very pleasant old times, too--to see
you sitting at our breakfast-table, Dr. Jervis." With these gracious
words and a friendly smile, Mrs. Hanshaw handed me my tea-cup.

I bowed. "The highest pleasure of the altruist," I replied, "is in
contemplating the good fortune of others."

Mrs. Haldean laughed. "Thank you," she said. "You are quite unchanged, I
perceive. Still as suave and as--shall I say oleaginous?"

"No, please don't!" I exclaimed in a tone of alarm.

"Then I won't. But what does Dr. Thorndyke say to this backsliding on
your part? How does he regard this relapse from medical jurisprudence to
common general practice?"

"Thorndyke," said I, "is unmoved by any catastrophe; and he not only
regards the 'Decline and Fall-off of the Medical Jurist' with philosophic
calm, but he even favours the relapse, as you call it. He thinks it may
be useful to me to study the application of medico-legal methods to
general practice."

"That sounds rather unpleasant--for the patients, I mean," remarked Miss
Haldean.

"Very," agreed her aunt. "Most cold-blooded. What sort of man is Dr.
Thorndyke? I feel quite curious about him. Is he at all human, for
instance?"

"He is entirely human," I replied; "the accepted tests of humanity being,
as I understand, the habitual adoption of the erect posture in
locomotion, and the relative position of the end of the thumb--"

"I don't mean that," interrupted Mrs. Haldean. "I mean human in things
that matter."

"I think those things matter," I rejoined. "Consider, Mrs. Haldean, what
would happen if my learned colleague were to be seen in wig and gown,
walking towards the Law Courts in any posture other than the erect. It
would be a public scandal."

"Don't talk to him, Mabel," said Mrs. Hanshaw; "he is incorrigible. What
are you doing with yourself this morning, Lucy?"

Miss Haldean (who had hastily set down her cup to laugh at my imaginary
picture of Dr. Thorndyke in the character of a quadruped) considered a
moment.

"I think I shall sketch that group of birches at the edge of Bradham
Wood," she said.

"Then, in that case," said I, "I can carry your traps for you, for I have
to see a patient in Bradham."

"He is making the most of his time," remarked Mrs. Haldean maliciously to
my hostess. "He knows that when Mr. Winter arrives he will retire into
the extreme background."

Douglas Winter, whose arrival was expected in the course of the week, was
Miss Haldean's fiance. Their engagement had been somewhat protracted, and
was likely to be more so, unless one of them received some unexpected
accession of means; for Douglas was a subaltern in the Royal Engineers,
living, with great difficulty, on his pay, while Lucy Haldean subsisted
on an almost invisible allowance left her by an uncle.

I was about to reply to Mrs. Haldean when a patient was announced, and,
as I had finished my breakfast, I made my excuses and left the table.

Half an hour later, when I started along the road to the village of
Bradham, I had two companions. Master Freddy had joined the party, and he
disputed with me the privilege of carrying the "traps," with the result
that a compromise was effected, by which he carried the camp-stool,
leaving me in possession of the easel, the bag, and a large bound
sketching-block.

"Where are you going to work this morning?" I asked, when we had trudged
on some distance.

"Just off the road to the left there, at the edge of the wood. Not very
far from the house of the mysterious stranger." She glanced at me
mischievously as she made this reply, and chuckled with delight when I
rose at the bait.

"What house do you mean?" I inquired.

"Ha!" she exclaimed, "the investigator of mysteries is aroused. He saith,
'Ha! ha!' amidst the trumpets; he smelleth the battle afar off."

"Explain instantly," I commanded, "or I drop your sketch-block into the
very next puddle."

"You terrify me," said she. "But I will explain, only there isn't any
mystery except to the bucolic mind. The house is called Lavender Cottage,
and it stands alone in the fields behind the wood. A fortnight ago it was
let furnished to a stranger named Whitelock, who has taken it for the
purpose of studying the botany of the district; and the only really
mysterious thing about him is that no one has seen him. All arrangements
with the house-agent were made by letter, and, as far as I can make out,
none of the local tradespeople supply him, so he must get his things from
a distance--even his bread, which really is rather odd. Now say I am an
inquisitive, gossiping country bumpkin."

"I was going to," I answered, "but it is no use now."

She relieved me of her sketching appliances with pretended indignation,
and crossed into the meadow, leaving me to pursue my way alone; and when
I presently looked back, she was setting up her easel and stool, gravely
assisted by Freddy.

My "round," though not a long one, took up more time than I had
anticipated, and it was already past the luncheon hour when I passed the
place where I had left Miss Haldean. She was gone, as I had expected, and
I hurried homewards, anxious to be as nearly punctual as possible. When I
entered the dining-room, I found Mrs. Haldean and our hostess seated at
the table, and both looked up at me expectantly.

"Have you seen Lucy?" the former inquired.

"No," I answered. "Hasn't she come back? I expected to find her here. She
had left the wood when I passed just now."

Mrs. Haldean knitted her brows anxiously. "It is very strange," she said,
"and very thoughtless of her. Freddy will be famished."

I hurried over my lunch, for two fresh messages had come in from outlying
hamlets, effectually dispelling my visions of a quiet afternoon; and as
the minutes passed without bringing any signs of the absentees, Mrs.
Haldean became more and more restless and anxious. At length her suspense
became unbearable; she rose suddenly, announcing her intention of cycling
up the road to look for the defaulters, but as she was moving towards the
door, it burst open, and Lucy Haldean staggered into the room.

Her appearance filled us with alarm. She was deadly pale, breathless, and
wild-eyed; her dress was draggled and torn, and she trembled from head to
foot.

"Good God, Lucy!" gasped Mrs. Haldean. "What has happened? And where is
Freddy?" she added in a sterner tone.

"He is lost!" replied Miss Haldean in a faint voice, and with a catch in
her breath. "He strayed away while I was painting. I have searched the
wood through, and called to him, and looked in all the meadows. Oh! where
can he have gone?" Her sketching "kit," with which she was loaded,
slipped from her grasp and rattled on to the floor, and she buried her
face in her hands and sobbed hysterically.

"And you have dared to come back without him?" exclaimed Mrs. Haldean.

"I was getting exhausted. I came back for help," was the faint reply.

"Of course she was exhausted," said Mrs. Hanshaw. "Come, Lucy: come,
Mabel; don't make mountains out of molehills. The little man is safe
enough. We shall find him presently, or he will come home by himself.
Come and have some food, Lucy."

Miss Haldean shook her head. "I can't, Mrs. Hanshaw--really I can't,"
she said; and, seeing that she was in a state of utter exhaustion, I
poured out a glass of wine and made her drink it.

Mrs. Haldean darted from the room, and returned immediately, putting on
her hat. "You have got to come with me and show me whore you lost him,"
she said.

"She can't do that, you know," I said rather brusquely. "She will have to
lie down for the present. But I know the place, and will cycle up with
you."

"Very well," replied Mrs. Haldean, "that will do. What time was it," she
asked, turning to her niece, "when you lost the child? and which way--"

She paused abruptly, and I looked at her in surprise. She had suddenly
turned ashen and ghastly; her face had set like a mask of stone, with
parted lips and staring eyes that were fixed in horror on her niece.

There was a deathly silence for a few seconds. Then, in a terrible voice,
she demanded: "What is that on your dress, Lucy?" And, after a pause, her
voice rose into a shriek. "What have you done to my boy?"


I glanced in astonishment at the dazed and terrified girl, and then I saw
what her aunt had seen--a good-sized blood-stain halfway down the front
of her skirt, and another smaller one on her right sleeve. The girl
herself looked down at the sinister patch of red and then up at her aunt.
"It looks like--like blood," she stammered. "Yes, it is--I think--of
course it is. He struck his nose--and it bled--"

"Come," interrupted Mrs. Haldean, "let us go," and she rushed from the
room, leaving me to follow.

I lifted Miss Haldean, who was half fainting with fatigue and agitation,
on to the sofa, and, whispering a few words of encouragement into her
ear, turned to Mrs. Hanshaw.

"I can't stay with Mrs. Haldean," I said. "There are two visits to be
made at Rebworth. Will you send the dogcart up the road with somebody to
take my place?"

"Yes," she answered. "I will send Giles, or come myself if Lucy is fit to
be left."

I ran to the stables for my bicycle, and as I pedalled out into the road
I could see Mrs. Haldean already far ahead, driving her machine at
frantic speed. I followed at a rapid pace, but it was not until we
approached the commencement of the wood, when she slowed down somewhat,
that I overtook her.

"This is the place," I said, as we reached the spot where I had parted
from Miss Haldean. We dismounted and wheeled our bicycles through the
gate, and laying them down beside the hedge, crossed the meadow and
entered the wood.

It was a terrible experience, and one that I shall never forget--the
white-faced, distracted woman, tramping in her flimsy house-shoes over
the rough ground, bursting through the bushes, regardless of the thorny
branches that dragged at skin and hair and dainty clothing, and sending
forth from time to time a tremulous cry, so dreadfully pathetic in its
mingling of terror and coaxing softness, that a lump rose in my throat,
and I could barely keep my self-control.

"Freddy! Freddy-boy! Mummy's here, darling!" The wailing cry sounded
through the leafy solitude; but no answer came save the whirr of wings or
the chatter of startled birds. But even more shocking than that terrible
cry--more disturbing and eloquent with dreadful suggestion--was the way
in which she peered, furtively, but with fearful expectation, among the
roots of the bushes, or halted to gaze upon every molehill and hummock,
every depression or disturbance of the ground.

So we stumbled on for a while, with never a word spoken, until we came to
a beaten track or footpath leading across the wood. Here I paused to
examine the footprints, of which several were visible in the soft earth,
though none seemed very recent; but, proceeding a little way down the
track, I perceived, crossing it, a set of fresh imprints, which I
recognized at once as Miss Haldean's. She was wearing, as I knew, a pair
of brown golf-boots, with rubber pads in the leather soles, and the
prints made by them were unmistakable.

"Miss Haldean crossed the path here," I said, pointing to the footprints.

"Don't speak of her before me!" exclaimed Mrs. Haldean; but she gazed
eagerly at the footprints, nevertheless, and immediately plunged into the
wood to follow the tracks.

"You are very unjust to your niece, Mrs. Haldean," I ventured to protest.

She halted, and faced me with an angry frown.

"You don't understand!" she exclaimed. "You don't know, perhaps, that if
my poor child is really dead, Lucy Haldean will be a rich woman, and may
marry to-morrow if she chooses?"

"I did not know that," I answered, "but if I had, I should have said the
same."

"Of course you would," she retorted bitterly. "A pretty face can muddle
any man's judgment."

She turned away abruptly to resume her pursuit, and I followed in
silence. The trail which we were following zigzagged through the thickest
part of the wood, but its devious windings eventually brought us out on
to an open space on the farther side. Here we at once perceived traces of
another kind. A litter of dirty rags, pieces of paper, scraps of stale
bread, bones and feathers, with hoof-marks, wheel ruts, and the ashes of
a large wood fire, pointed clearly to a gipsy encampment recently broken
up. I laid my hand on the heap of ashes, and found it still warm, and on
scattering it with my foot a layer of glowing cinders appeared at the
bottom.

"These people have only been gone an hour or two," I said. "It would be
well to have them followed without delay."

A gleam of hope shone on the drawn, white face as the bereaved mother
caught eagerly at my suggestion.

"Yes," she exclaimed breathlessly; "she may have bribed them to take him
away. Let us see which way they went."

We followed the wheel tracks down to the road, and found that they turned
towards London. At the same time I perceived the dogcart in the distance,
with Mrs. Hanshaw standing beside it; and, as the coachman observed me,
he whipped up his horse and approached.

"I shall have to go," I said, "but Mrs. Hanshaw will help you to continue
the search."

"And you will make inquiries about the gipsies, won't you?" she said.

I promised to do so, and as the dogcart now came up, I climbed to the
seat, and drove off briskly up the London Road.

The extent of a country doctor's round is always an unknown quantity. On
the present occasion I picked up three additional patients, and as one of
them was a case of incipient pleurisy, which required to have the chest
strapped, and another was a neglected dislocation of the shoulder, a
great deal of time was taken up. Moreover, the gipsies, whom I ran to
earth on Rebworth Common, delayed me considerably, though I had to leave
the rural constable to carry out the actual search, and, as a result, the
clock of Burling Church was striking six as I drove through the village
on my way home.

I got down at the front gate, leaving the coachman to take the dogcart
round, and walked up the drive; and my astonishment may be imagined when,
on turning the corner, I came suddenly upon the inspector of the local
police in earnest conversation with no less a person than John Thorndyke.

"What on earth has brought you here?" I exclaimed, my surprise getting
the better of my manners.

"The ultimate motive-force," he replied, "was an impulsive lady named
Mrs. Haldean. She telegraphed for me--in your name."

"She oughtn't to have done that," I said.

"Perhaps not. But the ethics of an agitated woman are not worth
discussing, and she has done something much worse--she has applied to
the local J.P. (a retired Major-General), and our gallant and unlearned
friend has issued a warrant for the arrest of Lucy Haldean on the charge
of murder."

"But there has been no murder!" I exclaimed.

"That," said Thorndyke, "is a legal subtlety that he does not appreciate.
He has learned his law in the orderly-room, where the qualifications to
practise are an irritable temper and a loud voice. However, the practical
point is, inspector, that the warrant is irregular. You can't arrest
people for hypothetical crimes."

The officer drew a deep breath of relief. He knew all about the
irregularity, and now joyfully took refuge behind Thorndyke's great
reputation.

When he had departed--with a brief note from my colleague to the
General--Thorndyke slipped his arm through mine, and we strolled towards the
house.

"This is a grim business, Jervis," said he. "That boy has got to be found
for everybody's sake. Can you come with me when you have had some food?"

"Of course I can. I have been saving myself all the afternoon with a view
to continuing the search."

"Good," said Thorndyke. "Then come in and feed."

A nondescript meal, half tea and half dinner, was already prepared, and
Mrs. Hanshaw, grave but self-possessed, presided at the table.

"Mabel is still out with Giles, searching for the boy," she said. "You
have heard what she has done!"

I nodded.

"It was dreadful of her," continued Mrs. Hanshaw, "but she is half mad,
poor thing. You might run up and say a few kind words to poor Lucy while
I make the tea."

I went up at once and knocked at Miss Haldean's door, and, being bidden
to enter, found her lying on the sofa, red-eyed and pale, the very ghost
of the merry, laughing girl who had gone out with me in the morning. I
drew up a chair, and sat down by her side, and as I took the hand she
held out to me, she said:

"It is good of you to come and see a miserable wretch like me. And Jane
has been so sweet to me, Dr. Jervis; but Aunt Mabel thinks I have killed
Freddy--you know she does--and it was really my fault that he was lost.
I shall never forgive myself!"

She burst into a passion of sobbing, and I proceeded to chide her gently.

"You are a silly little woman," I said, "to take this nonsense to heart
as you are doing. Your aunt is not responsible just now, as you must
know; but when we bring the boy home she shall make you a handsome
apology. I will see to that."

She pressed my hand gratefully, and as the bell now rang for tea, I bade
her have courage and went downstairs.

"You need not trouble about the practice," said Mrs. Hanshaw, as I
concluded my lightning repast, and Thorndyke went off to get our
bicycles. "Dr. Symons has heard of our trouble, and has called to say
that he will take anything that turns up; so we shall expect you when we
see you."

"How do you like Thorndyke?" I asked.

"He is quite charming," she replied enthusiastically; "so tactful and
kind, and so handsome, too. You didn't tell us that. But here he is.
Good-bye, and good luck."

She pressed my hand, and I went out into the drive, where Thorndyke and
the coachman were standing with three bicycles.

"I see you have brought your outfit," I said as we turned into the road;
for Thorndyke's machine bore a large canvas-covered case strapped on to a
strong bracket.

"Yes; there are many things that we may want on a quest of this kind. How
did you find Miss Haldean?"

"Very miserable, poor girl. By the way, have you heard anything about her
pecuniary interest in the child's death?"

"Yes," said Thorndyke. "It appears that the late Mr. Haldean used up all
his brains on his business, and had none left for the making of his
will--as often happens. He left almost the whole of his property--about
eighty thousand pounds--to his son, the widow to have a life-interest in
it. He also left to his late brother's daughter, Lucy, fifty pounds a
year, and to his surviving brother Percy, who seems to have been a
good-for-nothing, a hundred a year for life. But--and here is the utter
folly of the thing--if the son should die, the property was to be
equally divided between the brother and the niece, with the exception of
five hundred a year for life to the widow. It was an insane arrangement."

"Quite," I agreed, "and a very dangerous one for Lucy Haldean, as things
are at present."

"Very; especially if anything should have happened to the child."

"What are you going to do now?" I inquired, seeing that Thorndyke rode on
as if with a definite purpose.

"There is a footpath through the wood," he replied. "I want to examine
that. And there is a house behind the wood which I should like to see."

"The house of the mysterious stranger," I suggested.

"Precisely. Mysterious and solitary strangers invite inquiry."

We drew up at the entrance to the footpath, leaving Willett the coachman
in charge of the three machines, and proceeded up the narrow track. As we
went, Thorndyke looked back at the prints of our feet, and nodded
approvingly.

"This soft loam," he remarked, "yields beautifully clear impressions, and
yesterday's rain has made it perfect."

We had not gone far when we perceived a set of footprints which I
recognized, as did Thorndyke also, for he remarked: "Miss Haldean--running,
and alone." Presently we met them again, crossing in the
opposite direction, together with the prints of small shoes with very
high heels. "Mrs. Haldean on the track of her niece," was Thorndyke's
comment; and a minute later we encountered them both again, accompanied
by my own footprints.

"The boy does not seem to have crossed the path at all," I remarked as we
walked on, keeping off the track itself to avoid confusing the
footprints.

"We shall know when we have examined the whole length," replied
Thorndyke, plodding on with his eyes on the ground. "Ha! here is
something new," he added, stopping short and stooping down eagerly--"a
man with a thick stick--a smallish man, rather lame. Notice the
difference between the two feet, and the peculiar way in which he uses
his stick. Yes, Jervis, there is a great deal to interest us in these
footprints. Do you notice anything very suggestive about them?"

"Nothing but what you have mentioned," I replied. "What do you mean?"

"Well, first there is the very singular character of the prints
themselves, which we will consider presently. You observe that this man
came down the path, and at this point turned off into the wood; then he
returned from the wood and went up the path again. The imposition of the
prints makes that clear. But now look at the two sets of prints, and
compare them. Do you notice any difference?"

"The returning footprints seem more distinct--better impressions."

"Yes; they are noticeably deeper. But there is something else." He
produced a spring tape from his pocket, and took half a dozen
measurements. "You see," he said, "the first set of footprints have a
stride of twenty-one inches from heel to heel--a short stride; but he is
a smallish man, and lame; the returning ones have a stride of only
nineteen and a half inches; hence the returning footprints are deeper
than the others, and the steps are shorter. What do you make of that?"

"It would suggest that he was carrying a burden when he returned," I
replied.

"Yes; and a heavy one, to make that difference in the depth. I think I
will get you to go and fetch Willett and the bicycles."

I strode off down the path to the entrance, and, taking possession of
Thorndyke's machine, with its precious case of instruments, bade Willett
follow with the other two.

When I returned, my colleague was standing with his hands behind him,
gazing with intense preoccupation at the footprints. He looked up sharply
as we approached, and called out to us to keep off the path if possible.

"Stay here with the machines, Willett," said he. "You and I, Jervis, must
go and see where our friend went to when he left the path, and what was
the burden that he picked up."

We struck off into the wood, where last year's dead leaves made the
footprints almost indistinguishable, and followed the faint double track
for a long distance between the dense clumps of bushes. Suddenly my eye
caught, beside the double trail, a third row of tracks, smaller in size
and closer together. Thorndyke had seen them, too, and already his
measuring-tape was in his hand.

"Eleven and a half inches to the stride," said he. "That will be the boy,
Jervis. But the light is getting weak. We must press on quickly, or we
shall lose it."

Some fifty yards farther on, the man's tracks ceased abruptly, but the
small ones continued alone; and we followed them as rapidly as we could
in the fading light.

"There can be no reasonable doubt that these are the child's tracks,"
said Thorndyke; "but I should like to find a definite footprint to make
the identification absolutely certain."

A few seconds later he halted with an exclamation, and stooped on one
knee. A little heap of fresh earth from the surface-burrow of a mole had
been thrown up over the dead leaves; and fairly planted on it was the
clean and sharp impression of a diminutive foot, with a rubber heel
showing a central star. Thorndyke drew from his pocket a tiny shoe, and
pressed it on the soft earth beside the footprint; and when he raised it
the second impression was identical with the first.

"The boy had two pairs of shoes exactly alike," he said, "so I borrowed
one of the duplicate pair."

He turned, and began to retrace his steps rapidly, following our own
fresh tracks, and stopping only once to point out the place where the
unknown man had picked the child up. When we regained the path we
proceeded without delay until we emerged from the wood within a hundred
yards of the cottage.

"I see Mrs. Haldean has been here with Giles," remarked Thorndyke, as he
pushed open the garden-gate. "I wonder if they saw anybody."

He advanced to the door, and having first rapped with his knuckles and
then kicked at it vigorously, tried the handle.

"Locked," he observed, "but I see the key is in the lock, so we can get
in if we want to. Let us try the back."

The back door was locked, too, but the key had been removed.

"He came out this way, evidently," said Thorndyke. "though he went in at
the front, as I suppose you noticed. Let us see where he went."

The back garden was a small, fenced patch of ground, with an earth path
leading down to the back gate. A little way beyond the gate was a small
barn or outhouse.

"We are in luck," Thorndyke remarked, with a glance at the path.
"Yesterday's rain has cleared away all old footprints, and prepared the
surface for new ones. You see there are three sets of excellent
impressions--two leading away from the house, and one set towards it.
Now, you notice that both of the sets leading from the house are
characterized by deep impressions and short steps, while the set leading
to the house has lighter impressions and longer steps. The obvious
inference is that he went down the path with a heavy burden, came back
empty-handed, and went down again--and finally--with another heavy
burden. You observe, too, that he walked with his stick on each
occasion."

By this time we had reached the bottom of the garden. Opening the gate,
we followed the tracks towards the outhouse, which stood beside a
cart-track; but as we came round the corner we both stopped short and
looked at one another. On the soft earth were the very distinct
impressions of the tyres of a motor-car leading from the wide door of the
outhouse. Finding that the door was unfastened, Thorndyke opened it, and
looked in, to satisfy himself that the place was empty. Then he fell to
studying the tracks.

"The course of events is pretty plain," he observed. "First the fellow
brought down his luggage, started the engine, and got the car out--you
can see where it stood, both by the little pool of oil, and by the
widening and blurring of the wheel-tracks from the vibration of the free
engine; then he went back and fetched the boy--carried him pick-a-back,
I should say, judging by the depth of the toe-marks in the last set of
footprints. That was a tactical mistake. He should have taken the boy
straight into the shed."

He pointed as he spoke to one of the footprints beside the wheel-tracks,
from the toe of which projected a small segment of the print of a little
rubber heel.

We now made our way back to the house, where we found Willett pensively
rapping at the front door with a cycle-spanner. Thorndyke took a last
glance, with his hand in his pocket, at an open window above, and then,
to the coachman's intense delight, brought forth what looked uncommonly
like a small bunch of skeleton keys. One of these he inserted into the
keyhole, and as he gave it a turn, the lock clicked, and the door stood
open.

The little sitting-room, which we now entered, was furnished with the
barest necessaries. Its centre was occupied by an oilcloth-covered table,
on which I observed with surprise a dismembered "Bee" clock (the works of
which had been taken apart with a tin-opener that lay beside them) and a
box-wood bird-call. At these objects Thorndyke glanced and nodded, as
though they fitted into some theory that he had formed; examined
carefully the oilcloth around the litter of wheels and pinions, and then
proceeded on a tour of inspection round the room, peering inquisitively
into the kitchen and store-cupboard.

"Nothing very distinctive or personal here," he remarked. "Let us go
upstairs."

There were three bedrooms on the upper floor, of which two were evidently
disused, though the windows were wide open. The third bedroom showed
manifest traces of occupation, though it was as bare as the others, for
the water still stood in the wash-hand basin, and the bed was unmade. To
the latter Thorndyke advanced, and, having turned back the bedclothes,
examined the interior attentively, especially at the foot and the pillow.
The latter was soiled--not to say grimy--though the rest of the
bed-linen was quite clean.

"Hair-dye," remarked Thorndyke, noting my glance at it; then he turned
and looked out of the open window. "Can you see the place where Miss
Haldean was sitting to sketch?" he asked.

"Yes," I replied; "there is the place well in view, and you can see right
up the road. I had no idea this house stood so high. From the three upper
windows you can see all over the country excepting through the wood."

"Yes," Thorndyke rejoined, "and he has probably been in the habit of
keeping watch up here with a telescope or a pair of field-glasses. Well,
there is not much of interest in this room. He kept his effects in a
cabin trunk which stood there under the window. He shaved this morning.
He has a white beard, to judge by the stubble on the shaving-paper, and
that is all. Wait, though. There is a key hanging on that nail. He must
have overlooked that, for it evidently does not belong to this house. It
is an ordinary town latchkey."

He took the key down, and having laid a sheet of notepaper, from his
pocket, on the dressing-table, produced a pin, with which he began
carefully to probe the interior of the key-barrel. Presently there came
forth, with much coaxing, a large ball of grey fluff, which Thorndyke
folded up in the paper with infinite care.

"I suppose we mustn't take away the key," he said, "but I think we will
take a wax mould of it."

He hurried downstairs, and, unstrapping the case from his bicycle,
brought it in and placed it on the table. As it was now getting dark, he
detached the powerful acetylene lamp from his machine, and, having
lighted it, proceeded to open the mysterious case. First he took from it
a small insufflator, or powder-blower, with which he blew a cloud of
light yellow powder over the table around the remains of the clock. The
powder settled on the table in an even coating, but when he blew at it
smartly with his breath, it cleared off, leaving, however, a number of
smeary impressions which stood out in strong yellow against the black
oilcloth. To one of these impressions he pointed significantly. It was
the print of a child's hand.

He next produced a small, portable microscope and some glass slides and
cover-slips, and having opened the paper and tipped the ball of fluff
from the key-barrel on to a slide, set to work with a pair of mounted
needles to tease it out into its component parts. Then he turned the
light of the lamp on to the microscope mirror and proceeded to examine
the specimen.

"A curious and instructive assortment this, Jervis," he remarked, with
his eye at the microscope: "woollen fibres--no cotton or linen; he is
careful of his health to have woollen pockets--and two hairs; very
curious ones, too. Just look at them, and observe the root bulbs."

I applied my eye to the microscope, and saw, among other things, two
hairs--originally white, but encrusted with a black, opaque, glistening
stain. The root bulbs, I noticed, were shrivelled and atrophied.

"But how on earth," I exclaimed, "did the hairs get into his pocket?"

"I think the hairs themselves answer that question," he replied, "when
considered with the other curios. The stain is obviously lead sulphide;
but what else do you see?"

"I see some particles of metal--a white metal apparently--and a number
of fragments of woody fibre and starch granules, but I don't recognize
the starch. It is not wheat-starch, nor rice, nor potato. Do you make out
what it is?"

Thorndyke chuckled. "Experientia does it," said he. "You will have,
Jervis, to study the minute properties of dust and dirt. Their evidential
value is immense. Let us have another look at that starch; it is all
alike, I suppose."

It was; and Thorndyke had just ascertained the fact when the door burst
open and Mrs. Haldean entered the room, followed by Mrs. Hanshaw and the
police inspector. The former lady regarded my colleague with a glance of
extreme disfavour.

"We heard that you had come here, sir," said she, "and we supposed you
were engaged in searching for my poor child. But it seems we were
mistaken, since we find you here amusing yourselves fiddling with these
nonsensical instruments."

"Perhaps, Mabel," said Mrs. Hanshaw stiffly, "it would be wiser, and
infinitely more polite, to ask if Dr. Thorndyke has any news for us."

"That is undoubtedly so, madam," agreed the inspector, who had apparently
suffered also from Mrs. Haldean's impulsiveness.

"Then perhaps," the latter lady suggested, "you will inform us if you
have discovered anything."

"I will tell you." replied Thorndyke, "all that we know. The child was
abducted by the man who occupied this house, and who appears to have
watched him from an upper window, probably through a glass. This man
lured the child into the wood by blowing this bird-call; he met him in
the wood, and induced him--by some promises, no doubt--to come with
him. He picked the child up and carried him--on his back, I think--up
to the house, and brought him in through the front door, which he locked
after him. He gave the boy this clock and the bird-call to amuse him
while he went upstairs and packed his trunk. He took the trunk out
through the back door and down the garden to the shed there, in which he
had a motor-car. He got the car out and came back for the boy, whom he
carried down to the car, locking the back door after him. Then he drove
away."

"You know he has gone," cried Mrs. Haldean, "and yet you stay here
playing with these ridiculous toys. Why are you not following him?"

"We have just finished ascertaining the facts," Thorndyke replied calmly,
"and should by now be on the road if you had not come."

Here the inspector interposed anxiously. "Of course, sir, you can't give
any description of the man. You have no clue to his identity, I suppose?"

"We have only his footprints," Thorndyke answered, "and this fluff which
I raked out of the barrel of his latchkey, and have just been examining.
From these data I conclude that he is a rather short and thin man, and
somewhat lame. He walks with the aid of a thick stick, which has a knob,
not a crook, at the top, and which he carries in his left hand. I think
that his left leg has been amputated above the knee, and that he wears an
artificial limb. He is elderly, he shaves his beard, has white hair dyed
a greyish black, is partly bald, and probably combs a wisp of hair over
the bald place; he takes snuff, and carries a leaden comb in his pocket."

As Thorndyke's description proceeded, the inspector's mouth gradually
opened wider and wider, until he appeared the very type and symbol of
astonishment. But its effect on Mrs. Haldean was much more remarkable.
Rising from her chair, she leaned on the table and stared at Thorndyke
with an expression of awe--even of terror; and as he finished she sank
back into her chair, with her hands clasped, and turned to Mrs. Hanshaw.

"Jane!" she gasped, "it is Percy--my brother-in-law! He has described
him exactly, even to his stick and his pocket-comb. But I thought he was
in Chicago."

"If that is so," said Thorndyke, hastily repacking his case, "we had
better start at once."

"We have the dogcart in the road," said Mrs. Hanshaw.

"Thank you," replied Thorndyke. "We will ride on our bicycles, and the
inspector can borrow Willett's. We go out at the back by the cart-track,
which joins the road farther on."

"Then we will follow in the dogcart," said Mrs. Haldean. "Come, Jane."

The two ladies departed down the path, while we made ready our bicycles
and lit our lamps.

"With your permission, inspector," said Thorndyke, "we will take the key
with us."

"It's hardly legal, sir," objected the officer. "We have no authority."

"It is quite illegal," answered Thorndyke; "but it is necessary; and
necessity--like your military J.P.--knows no law."

The inspector grinned and went out, regarding me with a quivering eyelid
as Thorndyke locked the door with his skeleton key. As we turned into the
road, I saw the light of the dogcart behind us, and we pushed forward at
a swift pace, picking up the trail easily on the soft, moist road.

"What beats me," said the inspector confidentially, as we rode along, "is
how he knew the man was bald. Was it the footprints or the latchkey? And
that comb, too, that was a regular knock-out."

These points were, by now, pretty clear to me. I had seen the hairs with
their atrophied bulbs--such as one finds at the margin of a bald patch;
and the comb was used, evidently, for the double purpose of keeping the
bald patch covered and blackening the sulphur-charged hair. But the
knobbed stick and the artificial limb puzzled me so completely that I
presently overtook Thorndyke to demand an explanation.

"The stick," said he, "is perfectly simple. The ferrule of a knobbed
stick wears evenly all round; that of a crooked stick wears on one side--the
side opposite the crook. The impressions showed that the ferrule of
this one was evenly convex; therefore it had no crook. The other matter
is more complicated. To begin with, an artificial foot makes a very
characteristic impression, owing to its purely passive elasticity, as I
will show you to-morrow. But an artificial leg fitted below the knee is
quite secure, whereas one fitted above the knee--that is, with an
artificial knee-joint worked by a spring--is much less reliable. Now,
this man had an artificial foot, and he evidently distrusted his
knee-joint, as is shown by his steadying it with his stick on the same
side. If he had merely had a weak leg, he would have used the stick with
his right hand--with the natural swing of the arm, in fact--unless he
had been very lame, which he evidently was not. Still, it was only a
question of probability, though the probability was very great. Of
course, you understand that those particles of woody fibre and starch
granules were disintegrated snuff-grains."

This explanation, like the others, was quite simple when one had heard
it, though it gave me material for much thought as we pedalled on along
the dark road, with Thorndyke's light flickering in front, and the
dogcart pattering in our wake. But there was ample time for reflection;
for our pace rather precluded conversation, and we rode on, mile after
mile, until my legs ached with fatigue. On and on we went through village
after village, now losing the trail in some frequented street, but
picking it up again unfailingly as we emerged on to the country road,
until at last, in the paved High Street of the little town of Horsefield,
we lost it for good. We rode on through the town out on to the country
road; but although there were several tracks of motors, Thorndyke shook
his head at them all. "I have been studying those tyres until I know them
by heart," he said. "No; either he is in the town, or he has left it by a
side road."

There was nothing for it but to put up the horse and the machines at the
hotel, while we walked round to reconnoitre; and this we did, tramping up
one street and down another, with eyes bent on the ground, fruitlessly
searching for a trace of the missing car.

Suddenly, at the door of a blacksmith's shop, Thorndyke halted. The shop
had been kept open late for the shoeing of a carriage horse, which was
just being led away, and the smith had come to the door for a breath of
air. Thorndyke accosted him genially.

"Good-evening. You are just the man I wanted to see. I have mislaid the
address of a friend of mine, who, I think, called on you this afternoon--a
lame gentleman who walks with a stick. I expect he wanted you to pick a
lock or make him a key."

"Oh, I remember him!" said the man. "Yes, he had lost his latchkey, and
wanted the lock picked before he could get into his house. Had to leave
his motor-car outside while he came here. But I took some keys round with
me, and fitted one to his latch."

He then directed us to a house at the end of a street close by, and,
having thanked him, we went off in high spirits.

"How did you know he had been there?" I asked.

"I didn't; but there was the mark of a stick and part of a left foot on
the soft earth inside the doorway, and the thing was inherently probable,
so I risked a false shot."

The house stood alone at the far end of a straggling street, and was
enclosed by a high wall, in which, on the side facing the street, was a
door and a wide carriage-gate. Advancing to the former, Thorndyke took
from his pocket the purloined key, and tried it in the lock. It fitted
perfectly, and when he had turned it and pushed open the door, we entered
a small courtyard. Crossing this, we came to the front door of the house,
the latch of which fortunately fitted the same key; and this having been
opened by Thorndyke, we trooped into the hall. Immediately we heard the
sound of an opening door above, and a reedy, nasal voice sang out:

"Hello, there! Who's that below?"

The voice was followed by the appearance of a head projecting over the
baluster rail.

"You are Mr. Percy Haldean, I think," said the inspector.

At the mention of this name, the head was withdrawn, and a quick tread
was heard, accompanied by the tapping of a stick on the floor. We
started to ascend the stairs, the inspector leading, as the authorized
official; but we had only gone up a few steps, when a fierce, wiry
little man danced out on to the landing, with a thick stick in one hand
and a very large revolver in the other.

"Move another step, either of you," he shouted, pointing the weapon at
the inspector, "and I let fly; and mind you, when I shoot I hit."

He looked as if he meant it, and we accordingly halted with remarkable
suddenness, while the inspector proceeded to parley.

"Now, what's the good of this, Mr. Haldean?" said he. "The game's up, and
you know it."

"You clear out of my house, and clear out sharp," was the inhospitable
rejoinder, "or you'll give me the trouble of burying you in the garden."

I looked round to consult with Thorndyke, when, to my amazement, I found
that he had vanished--apparently through the open hall-door. I was
admiring his discretion when the inspector endeavoured to reopen
negotiations, but was cut short abruptly.

"I am going to count fifty," said Mr. Haldean, "and if you aren't gone
then, I shall shoot."

He began to count deliberately, and the inspector looked round at me in
complete bewilderment. The flight of stairs was a long one, and well
lighted by gas, so that to rush it was an impossibility. Suddenly my
heart gave a bound and I held my breath, for out of an open door behind
our quarry, a figure emerged slowly and noiselessly on to the landing. It
was Thorndyke, shoeless, and in his shirt-sleeves.

Slowly and with cat-like stealthiness, he crept across the landing until
he was within a yard of the unconscious fugitive, and still the nasal
voice droned on, monotonously counting out the allotted seconds.

"Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three--"

There was a lightning-like movement--a shout--a flash--a bang--a
shower of falling plaster, and then the revolver came clattering down the
stairs. The inspector and I rushed up, and in a moment the sharp click of
the handcuffs told Mr. Percy Haldean that the game was really up.

Five minutes later Freddy-boy, half asleep, but wholly cheerful, was
borne on Thorndyke's shoulders into the private sitting-room of the Black
Horse Hotel. A shriek of joy saluted his entrance, and a shower of
maternal kisses brought him to the verge of suffocation. Finally, the
impulsive Mrs. Haldean, turning suddenly to Thorndyke, seized both his
hands, and for a moment I hoped that she was going to kiss him, too. But
he was spared, and I have not yet recovered from the disappointment.



THE ANTHROPOLOGIST AT LARGE


Thorndyke was not a newspaper reader. He viewed with extreme disfavour
all scrappy and miscellaneous forms of literature, which, by presenting a
disorderly series of unrelated items of information, tended, as he
considered, to destroy the habit of consecutive mental effort.

"It is most important," he once remarked to me, "habitually to pursue a
definite train of thought, and to pursue it to a finish, instead of
flitting indolently from one uncompleted topic to another, as the
newspaper reader is so apt to do. Still, there is no harm in a daily
paper--so long as you don't read it."

Accordingly, he patronized a morning paper, and his method of dealing
with it was characteristic. The paper was laid on the table after
breakfast, together with a blue pencil and a pair of office shears. A
preliminary glance through the sheets enabled him to mark with the pencil
those paragraphs that were to be read, and these were presently cut out
and looked through, after which they were either thrown away or set aside
to be pasted in an indexed book.

The whole proceeding occupied, on an average, a quarter of an hour.

On the morning of which I am now speaking he was thus engaged. The pencil
had done its work, and the snick of the shears announced the final stage.
Presently he paused with a newly-excised cutting between his fingers,
and, after glancing at it for a moment, he handed it to me.

"Another art robbery," he remarked. "Mysterious affairs, these--as to
motive, I mean. You can't melt down a picture or an ivory carving, and
you can't put them on the market as they stand. The very qualities that
give them their value make them totally unnegotiable."

"Yet I suppose," said I, "the really inveterate collector--the pottery
or stamp maniac, for instance--will buy these contraband goods even
though he dare not show them."

"Probably. No doubt the cupiditas habendi, the mere desire to possess, is
the motive force rather than any intelligent purpose--"

The discussion was at this point interrupted by a knock at the door, and
a moment later my colleague admitted two gentlemen. One of these I
recognized as a Mr. Marchmont, a solicitor, for whom we had occasionally
acted; the other was a stranger--a typical Hebrew of the blonde
type--good-looking, faultlessly dressed, carrying a bandbox, and obviously in a
state of the most extreme agitation.

"Good-morning to you, gentlemen," said Mr. Marchmont, shaking hands
cordially. "I have brought a client of mine to see you, and when I tell
you that his name is Solomon Loewe, it will be unnecessary for me to say
what our business is."

"Oddly enough," replied Thorndyke, "we were, at the very moment when you
knocked, discussing the bearings of his case."

"It is a horrible affair!" burst in Mr. Loewe. "I am distracted! I am
ruined! I am in despair!"

He banged the bandbox down on the table, and flinging himself into a
chair, buried his face in his hands.

"Come, come," remonstrated Marchmont, "we must be brave, we must be
composed. Tell Dr. Thorndyke your story, and let us hear what he thinks
of it."

He leaned back in his chair, and looked at his client with that air of
patient fortitude that comes to us all so easily when we contemplate the
misfortunes of other people.

"You must help us, sir," exclaimed Loewe, starting up again--"you must,
indeed, or I shall go mad. But I shall tell you what has happened, and
then you must act at once. Spare no effort and no expense. Money is no
object--at least, not in reason," he added, with native caution. He sat
down once more, and in perfect English, though with a slight German
accent, proceeded volubly: "My brother Isaac is probably known to you by
name."

Thorndyke nodded.

"He is a great collector, and to some extent a dealer--that is to say,
he makes his hobby a profitable hobby."

"What does he collect?" asked Thorndyke.

"Everything," replied our visitor, flinging his hands apart with a
comprehensive gesture--"everything that is precious and
beautiful--pictures, ivories, jewels, watches, objects of art and
vertu--everything. He is a Jew, and he has that passion for things that are rich
and costly that has distinguished our race from the time of my namesake
Solomon onwards. His house in Howard Street, Piccadilly, is at once a
museum and an art gallery. The rooms are filled with cases of gems, of
antique jewellery, of coins and historic relics--some of priceless
value--and the walls are covered with paintings, every one of which is a
masterpiece. There is a fine collection of ancient weapons and armour,
both European and Oriental; rare books, manuscripts, papyri, and valuable
antiquities from Egypt, Assyria, Cyprus, and elsewhere. You see, his
taste is quite catholic, and his knowledge of rare and curious things is
probably greater than that of any other living man. He is never mistaken.
No forgery deceives him, and hence the great prices that he obtains; for
a work of art purchased from Isaac Loewe is a work certified as genuine
beyond all cavil."

He paused to mop his face with a silk handkerchief, and then, with the
same plaintive volubility, continued:

"My brother is unmarried. He lives for his collection, and he lives with
it. The house is not a very large one, and the collection takes up most
of it; but he keeps a suite of rooms for his own occupation, and has two
servants--a man and wife--to look after him. The man, who is a retired
police sergeant, acts as caretaker and watchman; the woman as housekeeper
and cook, if required, but my brother lives largely at his club. And now
I come to this present catastrophe."

He ran his fingers through his hair, took a deep breath, and continued:

"Yesterday morning Isaac started for Florence by way of Paris, but his
route was not certain, and he intended to break his journey at various
points as circumstances determined. Before leaving, he put his collection
in my charge, and it was arranged that I should occupy his rooms in his
absence. Accordingly, I sent my things round and took possession.

"Now, Dr. Thorndyke, I am closely connected with the drama, and it is my
custom to spend my evenings at my club, of which most of the members are
actors. Consequently, I am rather late in my habits; but last night I was
earlier than usual in leaving my club, for I started for my brother's
house before half-past twelve. I felt, as you may suppose, the
responsibility of the great charge I had undertaken; and you may,
therefore, imagine my horror, my consternation, my despair, when, on
letting myself in with my latchkey, I found a police-inspector, a
sergeant, and a constable in the hall. There had been a robbery, sir, in
my brief absence, and the account that the inspector gave of the affair
was briefly this:

"While taking the round of his district, he had noticed an empty hansom
proceeding in leisurely fashion along Howard Street. There was nothing
remarkable in this, but when, about ten minutes later, he was returning,
and met a hansom, which he believed to be the same, proceeding along the
same street in the same direction, and at the same easy pace, the
circumstance struck him as odd, and he made a note of the number of the
cab in his pocket-book. It was 72,863, and the time was 11.35.

"At 11.45 a constable coming up Howard Street noticed a hansom standing
opposite the door of my brother's house, and, while he was looking at it,
a man came out of the house carrying something, which he put in the cab.
On this the constable quickened his pace, and when the man returned to
the house and reappeared carrying what looked like a portmanteau, and
closing the door softly behind him, the policeman's suspicions were
aroused, and he hurried forward, hailing the cabman to stop.

"The man put his burden into the cab, and sprang in himself. The cabman
lashed his horse, which started off at a gallop, and the policeman broke
into a run, blowing his whistle and flashing his lantern on to the cab.
He followed it round the two turnings into Albemarle Street, and was just
in time to see it turn into Piccadilly, where, of course, it was lost.
However, he managed to note the number of the cab, which was 72,863, and
he describes the man as short and thick-set, and thinks he was not
wearing any hat.

"As he was returning, he met the inspector and the sergeant, who had
heard the whistle, and on his report the three officers hurried to the
house, where they knocked and rang for some minutes without any result.
Being now more than suspicious, they went to the back of the house,
through the mews, where, with great difficulty, they managed to force a
window and effect an entrance into the house.

"Here their suspicions were soon changed to certainty, for, on reaching
the first-floor, they heard strange muffled groans proceeding from one of
the rooms, the door of which was locked, though the key had not been
removed. They opened the door, and found the caretaker and his wife
sitting on the floor, with their backs against the wall. Both were bound
hand and foot, and the head of each was enveloped in a green-baize bag;
and when the bags were taken off, each was found to be lightly but
effectively gagged.

"Each told the same story. The caretaker, fancying he heard a noise,
armed himself with a truncheon, and came downstairs to the first-floor,
where he found the door of one of the rooms open, and a light burning
inside. He stepped on tiptoe to the open door, and was peering in, when
he was seized from behind, half suffocated by a pad held over his mouth,
pinioned, gagged, and blindfolded with the bag.

"His assailant--whom he never saw--was amazingly strong and skilful,
and handled him with perfect ease, although he--the caretaker--is a
powerful man, and a good boxer and wrestler. The same thing happened to
the wife, who had come down to look for her husband. She walked into the
same trap, and was gagged, pinioned, and blindfolded without ever having
soon the robber. So the only description that we have of this villain is
that furnished by the constable."

"And the caretaker had no chance of using his truncheon?" said Thorndyke.

"Well, he got in one backhanded blow over his right shoulder, which he
thinks caught the burglar in the face; but the fellow caught him by the
elbow, and gave his arm such a twist that he dropped the truncheon on the
floor."

"Is the robbery a very extensive one?"

"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Loewe, "that is just what we cannot say. But I fear
it is. It seems that my brother had quite recently drawn out of his bank
four thousand pounds in notes and gold. These little transactions are
often carried out in cash rather than by cheque"--here I caught a
twinkle in Thorndyke's eve--"and the caretaker says that a few days ago
Isaac brought home several parcels, which were put away temporarily in a
strong cupboard. He seemed to be very pleased with his new acquisitions,
and gave the caretaker to understand that they were of extraordinary
rarity and value.

"Now, this cupboard has been cleared out. Not a vestige is left in it but
the wrappings of the parcels, so, although nothing else has been touched,
it is pretty clear that goods to the value of four thousand pounds have
been taken; but when we consider what an excellent buyer my brother is,
it becomes highly probable that the actual value of those things is two
or three times that amount, or even more. It is a dreadful, dreadful
business, and Isaac will hold me responsible for it all."

"Is there no further clue?" asked Thorndyke. "What about the cab, for
instance?"

"Oh, the cab," groaned Loewe--"that clue failed. The police must have
mistaken the number. They telephoned immediately to all the police
stations, and a watch was set, with the result that number 72,863 was
stopped as it was going home for the night. But it then turned out that
the cab had not been off the rank since eleven o'clock, and the driver
had been in the shelter all the time with several other men. But there is
a clue; I have it here."

Mr. Loewe's face brightened for once as he reached out for the bandbox.

"The houses in Howard Street," he explained, as he untied the fastening,
"have small balconies to the first-floor windows at the back. Now, the
thief entered by one of these windows, having climbed up a rain-water
pipe to the balcony. It was a gusty night, as you will remember, and this
morning, as I was leaving the house, the butler next door called to me
and gave me this; he had found it lying in the balcony of his house."

He opened the bandbox with a flourish, and brought forth a rather shabby
billycock hat.

"I understand," said he, "that by examining a hat it is possible to
deduce from it, not only the bodily characteristics of the wearer, but
also his mental and moral qualities, his state of health, his pecuniary
position, his past history, and even his domestic relations and the
peculiarities of his place of abode. Am I right in this supposition?"

The ghost of a smile flitted across Thorndyke's face as he laid the hat
upon the remains of the newspaper. "We must not expect too much," he
observed. "Hats, as you know, have a way of changing owners. Your own
hat, for instance" (a very spruce, hard felt), "is a new one, I think."

"Got it last week," said Mr. Loewe.

"Exactly. It is an expensive hat, by Lincoln and Bennett, and I see you
have judiciously written your name in indelible marking-ink on the
lining. Now, a new hat suggests a discarded predecessor. What do you do
with your old hats?"

"My man has them, but they don't fit him. I suppose he sells them or
gives them away."

"Very well. Now, a good hat like yours has a long life, and remains
serviceable long after it has become shabby; and the probability is that
many of your hats pass from owner to owner; from you to the
shabby-genteel, and from them to the shabby ungenteel. And it is a fair
assumption that there are, at this moment, an appreciable number of
tramps and casuals wearing hats by Lincoln and Bennett, marked in
indelible ink with the name S. Loewe; and anyone who should examine those
hats, as you suggest, might draw some very misleading deductions as to
the personal habits of S. Loewe."

Mr. Marchmont chuckled audibly, and then, remembering the gravity of the
occasion, suddenly became portentously solemn.

"So you think that the hat is of no use, after all?" said Mr. Loewe, in a
tone of deep disappointment.

"I won't say that," replied Thorndyke. "We may learn something from it.
Leave it with me, at any rate; but you must let the police know that I
have it. They will want to see it, of course."

"And you will try to get those things, won't you?" pleaded Loewe.

"I will think over the case. But you understand, or Mr. Marchmont does,
that this is hardly in my province. I am a medical jurist, and this is
not a medico-legal case."

"Just what I told him," said Marchmont. "But you will do me a great
kindness if you will look into the matter. Make it a medico-legal case,"
he added persuasively.

Thorndyke repeated his promise, and the two men took their departure.

For some time after they had left, my colleague remained silent,
regarding the hat with a quizzical smile. "It is like a game of
forfeits," he remarked at length, "and we have to find the owner of 'this
very pretty thing.'" He lifted it with a pair of forceps into a better
light, and began to look at it more closely.

"Perhaps," said he, "we have done Mr. Loewe an injustice, after all. This
is certainly a very remarkable hat."

"It is as round as a basin," I exclaimed. "Why, the fellow's head must
have been turned in a lathe!"

Thorndyke laughed. "The point," said he, "is this. This is a hard hat,
and so must have fitted fairly, or it could not have been worn; and it
was a cheap hat, and so was not made to measure. But a man with a head
that shape has got to come to a clear understanding with his hat. No
ordinary hat would go on at all.

"Now, you see what he has done--no doubt on the advice of some friendly
hatter. He has bought a hat of a suitable size, and he has made it
hot--probably steamed it. Then he has jammed it, while still hot and soft, on
to his head, and allowed it to cool and set before removing it. That is
evident from the distortion of the brim. The important corollary is, that
this hat fits his head exactly--is, in fact, a perfect mould of it; and
this fact, together with the cheap quality of the hat, furnishes the
further corollary that it has probably only had a single owner.

"And now let us turn it over and look at the outside. You notice at once
the absence of old dust. Allowing for the circumstance that it had been
out all night, it is decidedly clean. Its owner has been in the habit of
brushing it, and is therefore presumably a decent, orderly man. But if
you look at it in a good light, you see a kind of bloom on the felt, and
through this lens you can make out particles of a fine white powder which
has worked into the surface."

He handed me his lens, through which I could distinctly see the particles
to which he referred.

"Then," he continued, "under the curl of the brim and in the folds of the
hatband, where the brush has not been able to reach it, the powder has
collected quite thickly, and we can see that it is a very fine powder,
and very white, like flour. What do you make of that?"

"I should say that it is connected with some industry. He may be engaged
in some factory or works, or, at any rate, may live near a factory, and
have to pass it frequently."

"Yes; and I think we can distinguish between the two possibilities. For,
if he only passes the factory, the dust will be on the outside of the hat
only; the inside will be protected by his head. But if he is engaged in
the works, the dust will be inside, too, as the hat will hang on a peg in
the dust-laden atmosphere, and his head will also be powdered, and so
convey the dust to the inside."

He turned the hat over once more, and as I brought the powerful lens to
bear upon the dark lining, I could clearly distinguish a number of white
particles in the interstices of the fabric.

"The powder is on the inside, too," I said.

He took the lens from me, and, having verified my statement, proceeded
with the examination. "You notice," he said, "that the leather
head-lining is stained with grease, and this staining is more pronounced
at the sides and back. His hair, therefore, is naturally greasy, or he
greases it artificially; for if the staining were caused by perspiration,
it would be most marked opposite the forehead."

He peered anxiously into the interior of the hat, and eventually turned
down the head-lining; and immediately there broke out upon his face a
gleam of satisfaction.

"Ha!" he exclaimed. "This is a stroke of luck. I was afraid our neat and
orderly friend had defeated us with his brush. Pass me the small
dissecting forceps, Jervis."

I handed him the instrument, and he proceeded to pick out daintily from
the space behind the head-lining some half a dozen short pieces of hair,
which he laid, with infinite tenderness, on a sheet of white paper.

"There are several more on the other side," I said, pointing them out to
him.

"Yes, but we must leave some for the police," he answered, with a smile.
"They must have the same chance as ourselves, you know."

"But surely," I said, as I bent down over the paper, "these are pieces of
horsehair!"

"I think not," he replied; "but the microscope will show. At any rate,
this is the kind of hair I should expect to find with a head of that
shape."

"Well, it is extraordinarily coarse," said I, "and two of the hairs are
nearly white."

"Yes; black hairs beginning to turn grey. And now, as our preliminary
survey has given such encouraging results, we will proceed to more exact
methods; and we must waste no time, for we shall have the police here
presently to rob us of our treasure."

He folded up carefully the paper containing the hairs, and taking the hat
in both hands, as though it were some sacred vessel, ascended with me to
the laboratory on the next floor.

"Now, Polton," he said to his laboratory assistant, "we have here a
specimen for examination, and time is precious. First of all, we want
your patent dust-extractor."

The little man bustled to a cupboard and brought forth a singular
appliance, of his own manufacture, somewhat like a miniature vacuum
cleaner. It had been made from a bicycle foot-pump, by reversing the
piston-valve, and was fitted with a glass nozzle and a small detachable
glass receiver for collecting the dust, at the end of a flexible metal
tube.

"We will sample the dust from the outside first," said Thorndyke, laying
the hat upon the work-bench. "Are you ready, Polton?"

The assistant slipped his foot into the stirrup of the pump and worked
the handle vigorously, while Thorndyke drew the glass nozzle slowly along
the hat-brim under the curled edge. And as the nozzle passed along, the
white coating vanished as if by magic, leaving the felt absolutely clean
and black, and simultaneously the glass receiver became clouded over with
a white deposit.

"We will leave the other side for the police," said Thorndyke, and as
Polton ceased pumping he detached the receiver, and laid it on a sheet of
paper, on which he wrote in pencil, "Outside," and covered it with a
small bell-glass. A fresh receiver having been fitted on, the nozzle was
now drawn over the silk lining of the hat, and then through the space
behind the leather head-lining on one side; and now the dust that
collected in the receiver was much of the usual grey colour and fluffy
texture, and included two more hairs.

"And now," said Thorndyke, when the second receiver had been detached and
set aside, "we want a mould of the inside of the hat, and we must make it
by the quickest method; there is no time to make a paper mould. It is a
most astonishing head," he added, reaching down from a nail a pair of
large callipers, which he applied to the inside of the hat; "six inches
and nine-tenths long by six and six-tenths broad, which gives us"--he
made a rapid calculation on a scrap of paper--"the extraordinarily high
cephalic index of 95.6."

Polton now took possession of the hat, and, having stuck a band of wet
tissue-paper round the inside, mixed a small bowl of plaster-of-Paris,
and very dexterously ran a stream of the thick liquid on to the
tissue-paper, where it quickly solidified. A second and third application
resulted in a broad ring of solid plaster an inch thick, forming a
perfect mould of the inside of the hat, and in a few minutes the slight
contraction of the plaster in setting rendered the mould sufficiently
loose to allow of its being slipped out on to a board to dry.

We were none too soon, for even as Polton was removing the mould, the
electric bell, which I had switched on to the laboratory, announced a
visitor, and when I went down I found a police-sergeant waiting with a
note from Superintendent Miller, requesting the immediate transfer of the
hat.

"The next thing to be done," said Thorndyke, when the sergeant had
departed with the bandbox, "is to measure the thickness of the hairs, and
make a transverse section of one, and examine the dust. The section we
will leave to Polton--as time is an object, Polton, you had better imbed
the hair in thick gum and freeze it hard on the microtome, and be very
careful to cut the section at right angles to the length of the
hair--meanwhile, we will get to work with the microscope."

The hairs proved on measurement to have the surprisingly large diameter
of one one-hundred-and-thirty-fifth of an inch--fully double that of
ordinary hairs, although they were unquestionably human. As to the white
dust, it presented a problem that even Thorndyke was unable to solve. The
application of reagents showed it to be carbonate of lime, but its source
for a time remained a mystery.

"The larger particles," said Thorndyke, with his eye applied to the
microscope, "appear to be transparent, crystalline, and distinctly
laminated in structure. It is not chalk, it is not whiting, it is not any
kind of cement. What can it be?"

"Could it be any kind of shell?" I suggested. "For instance--"

"Of course!" he exclaimed, starting up; "you have hit it, Jervis, as you
always do. It must be mother-of-pearl. Polton, give me a pearl
shirt-button out of your oddments box."

The button was duly produced by the thrifty Polton, dropped into an agate
mortar, and speedily reduced to powder, a tiny pinch of which Thorndyke
placed under the microscope.

"This powder," said he, "is, naturally, much coarser than our specimen,
but the identity of character is unmistakable. Jervis, you are a
treasure. Just look at it."

I glanced down the microscope, and then pulled out my watch. "Yes," I
said, "there is no doubt about it, I think; but I must be off. Anstey
urged me to be in court by 11.30 at the latest."

With infinite reluctance I collected my notes and papers and departed,
leaving Thorndyke diligently copying addresses out of the Post Office
Directory.

My business at the court detained me the whole of the day, and it was
near upon dinner-time when I reached our chambers. Thorndyke had not yet
come in, but he arrived half an hour later, tired and hungry, and not
very communicative.

"What have I done?" he repeated, in answer to my inquiries. "I have
walked miles of dirty pavement, and I have visited every pearl-shell
cutter's in London, with one exception, and I have not found what I was
looking for. The one mother-of-pearl factory that remains, however, is
the most likely, and I propose to look in there to-morrow morning.
Meanwhile, we have completed our data, with Polton's assistance. Here is
a tracing of our friend's skull taken from the mould; you see it is an
extreme type of brachycephalic skull, and markedly unsymmetrical. Here is
a transverse section of his hair, which is quite circular--unlike yours
or mine, which would be oval. We have the mother-of-pearl dust from the
outside of the hat, and from the inside similar dust mixed with various
fibres and a few granules of rice starch. Those are our data."

"Supposing the hat should not be that of the burglar after all?" I
suggested.

"That would be annoying. But I think it is his, and I think I can guess
at the nature of the art treasures that were stolen."

"And you don't intend to enlighten me?"

"My dear fellow," he replied, "you have all the data. Enlighten yourself
by the exercise of your own brilliant faculties. Don't give way to mental
indolence."

I endeavoured, from the facts in my possession, to construct the
personality of the mysterious burglar, and failed utterly; nor was I more
successful in my endeavour to guess at the nature of the stolen property;
and it was not until the following morning, when we had set out on our
quest and were approaching Limehouse, that Thorndyke would revert to the
subject.

"We are now," he said, "going to the factory of Badcomb and Martin, shell
importers and cutters, in the West India Dock Road. If I don't find my
man there, I shall hand the facts over to the police, and waste no more
time over the case."

"What is your man like?" I asked.

"I am looking for an elderly Japanese, wearing a new hat or, more
probably, a cap, and having a bruise on his right cheek or temple. I am
also looking for a cab-yard; but here we are at the works, and as it is
now close on the dinner-hour, we will wait and see the hands come out
before making any inquiries."

We walked slowly past the tall, blank-faced building, and were just
turning to re-pass it when a steam whistle sounded, a wicket opened in
the main gate, and a stream of workmen--each powdered with white, like a
miller--emerged into the street. We halted to watch the men as they came
out, one by one, through the wicket, and turned to the right or left
towards their homes or some adjacent coffee-shop; but none of them
answered to the description that my friend had given.

The outcoming stream grew thinner, and at length ceased; the wicket was
shut with a bang, and once more Thorndyke's quest appeared to have
failed.

"Is that all of them, I wonder?" he said, with a shade of disappointment
in his tone; but even as he spoke the wicket opened again, and a leg
protruded. The leg was followed by a back and a curious globular head,
covered with iron-grey hair, and surmounted by a cloth cap, the whole
appertaining to a short, very thick-set man, who remained thus, evidently
talking to someone inside.

Suddenly he turned his head to look across the street; and immediately I
recognized, by the pallid yellow complexion and narrow eye-slits, the
physiognomy of a typical Japanese. The man remained talking for nearly
another minute; then, drawing out his other leg, he turned towards us;
and now I perceived that the right side of his face, over the prominent
cheekbone, was discoloured as though by a severe bruise.

"Ha!" said Thorndyke, turning round sharply as the man approached,
"either this is our man or it is an incredible coincidence." He walked
away at a moderate pace, allowing the Japanese to overtake us slowly, and
when the man had at length passed us, he increased his speed somewhat, so
as to maintain the distance.

Our friend stepped along briskly, and presently turned up a side street,
whither we followed at a respectful distance, Thorndyke holding open his
pocket-book, and appearing to engage me in an earnest discussion, but
keeping a sharp eye on his quarry.

"There he goes!" said my colleague, as the man suddenly disappeared--"the
house with the green window-sashes. That will be number thirteen."

It was; and, having verified the fact, we passed on, and took the next
turning that would lead us back to the main road.

Some twenty minutes later, as we were strolling past the door of a
coffee-shop, a man came out, and began to fill his pipe with an air of
leisurely satisfaction. His hat and clothes were powdered with white like
those of the workmen whom we had seen come out of the factory. Thorndyke
accosted him.

"Is that a flour-mill up the road there?"

"No, sir; pearl-shell. I work there myself."

"Pearl-shell, eh?" said Thorndyke. "I suppose that will be an industry
that will tend to attract the aliens. Do you find it so?"

"No, sir; not at all. The work's too hard. We've only got one foreigner
in the place, and he ain't an alien--he's a Jap."

"A Jap!" exclaimed Thorndyke. "Really. Now, I wonder if that would chance
to be our old friend Kotei--you remember Kotei?" he added, turning to
me.

"No, sir; this man's name is Futashima. There was another Jap in the
works, a chap named Itu, a pal of Futashima's, but he's left."

"Ah! I don't know either of them. By the way, usen't there to be a
cab-yard just about here?"

"There's a yard up Rankin Street where they keep vans and one or two
cabs. That chap Itu works there now. Taken to horseflesh. Drives a van
sometimes. Queer start for a Jap."

"Very." Thorndyke thanked the man for his information, and we sauntered
on towards Rankin Street. The yard was at this time nearly deserted,
being occupied only by an ancient and crazy four-wheeler and a very
shabby hansom.

"Curious old houses, these that back on to the yard," said Thorndyke,
strolling into the enclosure. "That timber gable, now," pointing to a
house, from a window of which a man was watching us suspiciously, "is
quite an interesting survival."

"What's your business, mister?" demanded the man in a gruff tone.

"We are just having a look at these quaint old houses," replied
Thorndyke, edging towards the back of the hansom, and opening his
pocket-book, as though to make a sketch.

"Well, you can see 'em from outside," said the man.

"So we can," said Thorndyke suavely, "but not so well, you know."

At this moment the pocket-book slipped from his hand and fell, scattering
a number of loose papers about the ground under the hansom, and our
friend at the window laughed joyously.

"No hurry," murmured Thorndyke, as I stooped to help him to gather up the
papers--which he did in the most surprisingly slow and clumsy manner.
"It is fortunate that the ground is dry." He stood up with the rescued
papers in his hand, and, having scribbled down a brief note, slipped the
book in his pocket.

"Now you'd better mizzle," observed the man at the window.

"Thank you," replied Thorndyke, "I think we had;" and, with a pleasant
nod at the custodian, he proceeded to adopt the hospitable suggestion.

"Mr. Marchmont has been here, sir, with Inspector Badger and another
gentleman," said Polton, as we entered our chambers. "They said they
would call again about five."

"Then," replied Thorndyke, "as it is now a quarter to five, there is just
time for us to have a wash while you get the tea ready. The particles
that float in the atmosphere of Limehouse are not all mother-of-pearl."

Our visitors arrived punctually, the third gentleman being, as we had
supposed, Mr. Solomon Loewe. Inspector Badger I had not seen before, and
he now impressed me as showing a tendency to invert the significance of
his own name by endeavouring to "draw" Thorndyke; in which, however, he
was not brilliantly successful.

"I hope you are not going to disappoint Mr. Loewe, sir," he commenced
facetiously. "You have had a good look at that hat--we saw your marks on
it--and he expects that you will be able to point us out the man, name
and address all complete." He grinned patronizingly at our unfortunate
client, who was looking even more haggard and worn than he had been on
the previous morning.

"Have you--have you made any--discovery?" Mr Loewe asked with pathetic
eagerness.

"We examined the hat very carefully, and I think we have established a
few facts of some interest."

"Did your examination of the hat furnish any information as to the nature
of the stolen property, sir?" inquired the humorous inspector.

Thorndyke turned to the officer with a face as expressionless as a wooden
mask.

"We thought it possible," said he, "that it might consist of works of
Japanese art, such as netsukes, paintings, and such like."

Mr. Loewe uttered an exclamation of delighted astonishment, and the
facetiousness faded rather suddenly from the inspector's countenance.

"I don't know how you can have found out," said he. "We have only known
it half an hour ourselves, and the wire came direct from Florence to
Scotland Yard."

"Perhaps you can describe the thief to us," said Mr. Loewe, in the same
eager tone.

"I dare say the inspector can do that," replied Thorndyke.

"Yes, I think so," replied the officer. "He is a short strong man, with a
dark complexion and hair turning grey. He has a very round head, and he
is probably a workman engaged at some whiting or cement works. That is
all we know; if you can tell us any more, sir, we shall be very glad to
hear it."

"I can only offer a few suggestions," said Thorndyke, "but perhaps you
may find them useful. For instance, at 13, Birket Street, Limehouse,
there is living a Japanese gentleman named Futashima, who works at
Badcomb and Martin's mother-of-pearl factory. I think that if you were to
call on him, and let him try on the hat that you have, it would probably
fit him."

The inspector scribbled ravenously in his notebook, and Mr. Marchmont--an
old admirer of Thorndyke's--leaned back in his chair, chuckling
softly and rubbing his hands.

"Then," continued my colleague, "there is in Rankin Street, Limehouse, a
cab-yard, where another Japanese gentleman named Itu is employed. You
might find out where Itu was the night before last; and if you should
chance to see a hansom cab there--number 22,481--have a good look at
it. In the frame of the number-plate you will find six small holes. Those
holes may have held brads, and the brads may have held a false number
card. At any rate, you might ascertain where that cab was at 11.30 the
night before last. That is all I have to suggest."

Mr. Loewe leaped from his chair. "Let us go--now--at once--there is no
time to be lost. A thousand thanks to you, doctor--a thousand million
thanks. Come!"

He seized the inspector by the arm and forcibly dragged him towards the
door, and a few moments later we heard the footsteps of our visitors
clattering down the stairs.

"It was not worth while to enter into explanations with them," said
Thorndyke, as the footsteps died away--"nor perhaps with you?"

"On the contrary," I replied, "I am waiting to be fully enlightened."

"Well, then, my inferences in this case were perfectly simple ones, drawn
from well-known anthropological facts. The human race, as you know, is
roughly divided into three groups--the black, the white, and the yellow
races. But apart from the variable quality of colour, these races have
certain fixed characteristics associated especially with the shape of the
skull, of the eye-sockets, and the hair.

"Thus in the black races the skull is long and narrow, the eye-sockets
are long and narrow, and the hair is flat and ribbon-like, and usually
coiled up like a watch-spring. In the white races the skull is oval, the
eye-sockets are oval, and the hair is slightly flattened or oval in
section, and tends to be wavy; while in the yellow or Mongol races, the
skull is short and round, the eye-sockets are short and round, and the
hair is straight and circular in section. So that we have, in the black
races, long skull, long orbits, flat hair; in the white races, oval
skull, oval orbits, oval hair; and in the yellow races, round skull,
round orbits, round hair.

"Now, in this case we had to deal with a very short round skull. But you
cannot argue from races to individuals; there are many short-skulled
Englishmen. But when I found, associated with that skull, hairs which
were circular in section, it became practically certain that the
individual was a Mongol of some kind. The mother-of-pearl dust and the
granules of rice starch from the inside of the hat favoured this view,
for the pearl-shell industry is specially connected with China and Japan,
while starch granules from the hat of an Englishman would probably be
wheat starch.

"Then as to the hair: it was, as I mentioned to you, circular in section,
and of very large diameter. Now, I have examined many thousands of hairs,
and the thickest that I have ever seen came from the heads of Japanese;
but the hairs from this hat were as thick as any of them. But the
hypothesis that the burglar was a Japanese received confirmation in
various ways. Thus, he was short, though strong and active, and the
Japanese are the shortest of the Mongol races, and very strong and
active.

"Then his remarkable skill in handling the powerful caretaker--a retired
police-sergeant--suggested the Japanese art of ju-jitsu, while the
nature of the robbery was consistent with the value set by the Japanese
on works of art. Finally, the fact that only a particular collection was
taken, suggested a special, and probably national, character in the
things stolen, while their portability--you will remember that goods of
the value of from eight to twelve thousand pounds were taken away in two
hand-packages--was much more consistent with Japanese than Chinese
works, of which the latter tend rather to be bulky and ponderous. Still,
it was nothing but a bare hypothesis until we had seen Futashima--and,
indeed, is no more now. I may, after all, be entirely mistaken."

He was not, however; and at this moment there reposes in my drawing-room
an ancient netsuke, which came as a thank-offering from Mr. Isaac Loewe
on the recovery of the booty from a back room in No. 13, Birket Street,
Limehouse. The treasure, of course, was given in the first place to
Thorndyke, but transferred by him to my wife on the pretence that but for
my suggestion of shell-dust the robber would never have been traced.
Which is, on the face of it, preposterous.



THE BLUE SEQUIN


Thorndyke stood looking up and down the platform with anxiety that
increased as the time drew near for the departure of the train.

"This is very unfortunate," he said, reluctantly stepping into an empty
smoking compartment as the guard executed a flourish with his green flag.
"I am afraid we have missed our friend." He closed the door, and, as the
train began to move, thrust his head out of the window.

"Now I wonder if that will be he," he continued. "If so, he has caught
the train by the skin of his teeth, and is now in one of the rear
compartments."

The subject of Thorndyke's speculations was Mr. Edward Stopford, of the
firm of Stopford and Myers, of Portugal Street, solicitors, and his
connection with us at present arose out of a telegram that had reached
our chambers on the preceding evening. It was reply-paid, and ran thus:

"Can you come here to-morrow to direct defence? Important case. All costs
undertaken by us.--STOPFORD AND MYERS."

Thorndyke's reply had been in the affirmative, and early on this present
morning a further telegram--evidently posted overnight--had been
delivered: "Shall leave for Woldhurst by 8.25 from Charing Cross. Will
call for you if possible. EDWARD STOPFORD."

He had not called, however, and, since he was unknown personally to us
both, we could not judge whether or not he had been among the passengers
on the platform.

"It is most unfortunate," Thorndyke repeated, "for it deprives us of that
preliminary consideration of the case which is so invaluable." He filled
his pipe thoughtfully, and, having made a fruitless inspection of the
platform at London Bridge, took up the paper that he had bought at the
bookstall, and began to turn over the leaves, running his eye quickly
down the columns, unmindful of the journalistic baits in paragraph or
article.

"It is a great disadvantage," he observed, while still glancing through
the paper, "to come plump into an inquiry without preparation--to be
confronted with the details before one has a chance of considering the
case in general terms. For instance--"

He paused, leaving the sentence unfinished, and as I looked up
inquiringly I saw that he had turned over another page, and was now
reading attentively.

"This looks like our case, Jervis," he said presently, handing me the
paper and indicating a paragraph at the top of the page. It was quite
brief, and was headed "Terrible Murder in Kent," the account being as
follows:

"A shocking crime was discovered yesterday morning at the little town of
Woldhurst, which lies on the branch line from Halbury Junction. The
discovery was made by a porter who was inspecting the carriages of the
train which had just come in. On opening the door of a first-class
compartment, he was horrified to find the body of a fashionably-dressed
woman stretched upon the floor. Medical aid was immediately summoned, and
on the arrival of the divisional surgeon, Dr. Morton, it was ascertained
that the woman had not been dead more than a few minutes.

"The state of the corpse leaves no doubt that a murder of a most brutal
kind has been perpetrated, the cause of death being a penetrating wound
of the head, inflicted with some pointed implement, which must have been
used with terrible violence, since it has perforated the skull and
entered the brain. That robbery was not the motive of the crime is made
clear by the fact that an expensively fitted dressing-bag was found on
the rack, and that the dead woman's jewellery, including several valuable
diamond rings, was untouched. It is rumoured that an arrest has been made
by the local police."

"A gruesome affair," I remarked, as I handed back the paper, "but the
report does not give us much information."

"It does not," Thorndyke agreed, "and yet it gives us something to
consider. Here is a perforating wound of the skull, inflicted with some
pointed implement--that is, assuming that it is not a bullet wound. Now,
what kind of implement would be capable of inflicting such an injury? How
would such an implement be used in the confined space of a
railway-carriage, and what sort of person would be in possession of such
an implement? These are preliminary questions that are worth considering,
and I commend them to you, together with the further problems of the
possible motive--excluding robbery--and any circumstances other than
murder which might account for the injury."

"The choice of suitable implements is not very great," I observed.

"It is very limited, and most of them, such as a plasterer's pick or a
geological hammer, are associated with certain definite occupations. You
have a notebook?"

I had, and, accepting the hint, I produced it and pursued my further
reflections in silence, while my companion, with his notebook also on his
knee, gazed steadily out of the window. And thus he remained, wrapped in
thought, jotting down an entry now and again in his book, until the train
slowed down at Halbury Junction, where we had to change on to a branch
line.

As we stepped out, I noticed a well-dressed man hurrying up the platform
from the rear and eagerly scanning the faces of the few passengers who
had alighted. Soon he espied us, and, approaching quickly, asked, as he
looked from one of us to the other:

"Dr. Thorndyke?"

"Yes," replied my colleague, adding: "And you, I presume, are Mr. Edward
Stopford?"

The solicitor bowed. "This is a dreadful affair," he said, in an agitated
manner. "I see you have the paper. A most shocking affair. I am immensely
relieved to find you here. Nearly missed the train, and feared I should
miss you."

"There appears to have been an arrest," Thorndyke began.

"Yes--my brother. Terrible business. Let us walk up the platform; our
train won't start for a quarter of an hour yet."

We deposited our joint Gladstone and Thorndyke's travelling-case in an
empty first-class compartment, and then, with the solicitor between us,
strolled up to the unfrequented end of the platform.

"My brother's position," said Mr. Stopford, "fills me with dismay--but
let me give you the facts in order, and you shall judge for yourself.
This poor creature who has been murdered so brutally was a Miss Edith
Grant. She was formerly an artist's model, and as such was a good deal
employed by my brother, who is a painter--Harold Stopford, you know,
A.R.A. now--"

"I know his work very well, and charming work it is."

"I think so, too. Well, in those days he was quite a youngster--about
twenty--and he became very intimate with Miss Grant, in quite an
innocent way, though not very discreet; but she was a nice respectable
girl, as most English models are, and no one thought any harm. However, a
good many letters passed between them, and some little presents, amongst
which was a beaded chain carrying a locket, and in this he was fool
enough to put his portrait and the inscription, 'Edith, from Harold.'

"Later on Miss Grant, who had a rather good voice, went on the stage, in
the comic opera line, and, in consequence, her habits and associates
changed somewhat; and, as Harold had meanwhile become engaged, he was
naturally anxious to get his letters back, and especially to exchange the
locket for some less compromising gift. The letters she eventually sent
him, but refused absolutely to part with the locket.

"Now, for the last month Harold has been staying at Halbury, making
sketching excursions into the surrounding country, and yesterday morning
he took the train to Shinglehurst, the third station from here, and the
one before Woldhurst.

"On the platform here he met Miss Grant, who had come down from London,
and was going on to Worthing. They entered the branch train together,
having a first-class compartment to themselves. It seems she was wearing
his locket at the time, and he made another appeal to her to make an
exchange, which she refused, as before. The discussion appears to have
become rather heated and angry on both sides, for the guard and a porter
at Munsden both noticed that they seemed to be quarrelling; but the
upshot of the affair was that the lady snapped the chain, and tossed it
together with the locket to my brother, and they parted quite amiably at
Shinglehurst, where Harold got out. He was then carrying his full
sketching kit, including a large holland umbrella, the lower joint of
which is an ash staff fitted with a powerful steel spike for driving into
the ground.

"It was about half-past ten when he got out at Shinglehurst; by eleven he
had reached his pitch and got to work, and he painted steadily for three
hours. Then he packed up his traps, and was just starting on his way back
to the station, when he was met by the police and arrested.

"And now, observe the accumulation of circumstantial evidence against
him. He was the last person seen in company with the murdered woman--for
no one seems to have seen her after they left Munsden; he appeared to be
quarrelling with her when she was last seen alive, he had a reason for
possibly wishing for her death, he was provided with an implement--a
spiked staff--capable of inflicting the injury which caused her death,
and, when he was searched, there was found in his possession the locket
and broken chain, apparently removed from her person with violence.

"Against all this is, of course, his known character--he is the gentlest
and most amiable of men--and his subsequent conduct--imbecile to the
last degree if he had been guilty; but, as a lawyer, I can't help seeing
that appearances are almost hopelessly against him."

"We won't say 'hopelessly,'" replied Thorndyke, as we took our places in
the carriage, "though I expect the police are pretty cocksure. When does
the inquest open?"

"To-day at four. I have obtained an order from the coroner for you to
examine the body and be present at the post-mortem."

"Do you happen to know the exact position of the wound?"

"Yes; it is a little above and behind the left ear--a horrible round
hole, with a ragged cut or tear running from it to the side of the
forehead."

"And how was the body lying?"

"Right along the floor, with the feet close to the off-side door."

"Was the wound on the head the only one?"

"No; there was a long cut or bruise on the right cheek--a contused wound
the police surgeon called it, which he believes to have been inflicted
with a heavy and rather blunt weapon. I have not heard of any other
wounds or bruises."

"Did anyone enter the train yesterday at Shinglehurst?" Thorndyke asked.

"No one entered the train after it left Halbury."

Thorndyke considered these statements in silence, and presently fell into
a brown study, from which he roused only as the train moved out of
Shinglehurst station.

"It would be about here that the murder was committed," said Mr.
Stopford; "at least, between here and Woldhurst."

Thorndyke nodded rather abstractedly, being engaged at the moment in
observing with great attention the objects that were visible from the
windows.

"I notice," he remarked presently, "a number of chips scattered about
between the rails, and some of the chair-wedges look new. Have there been
any platelayers at work lately?"

"Yes," answered Stopford, "they are on the line now, I believe--at
least, I saw a gang working near Woldhurst yesterday, and they are said
to have set a rick on fire; I saw it smoking when I came down."

"Indeed; and this middle line of rails is, I suppose, a sort of siding?"

"Yes; they shunt the goods trains and empty trucks on to it. There are
the remains of the rick--still smouldering, you see."

Thorndyke gazed absently at the blackened heap until an empty
cattle-truck on the middle track hid it from view. This was succeeded by
a line of goods-waggons, and these by a passenger coach, one compartment
of which--a first-class--was closed up and sealed. The train now began
to slow down rather suddenly, and a couple of minutes later we brought up
in Woldhurst station.

It was evident that rumours of Thorndyke's advent had preceded us, for
the entire staff--two porters, an inspector, and the station-master--were
waiting expectantly on the platform, and the latter came forward,
regardless of his dignity, to help us with our luggage.

"Do you think I could see the carriage?" Thorndyke asked the solicitor.

"Not the inside, sir," said the station-master, on being appealed to.
"The police have sealed it up. You would have to ask the inspector."

"Well, I can have a look at the outside, I suppose?" said Thorndyke, and
to this the station-master readily agreed, and offered to accompany us.

"What other first-class passengers were there?" Thorndyke asked.

"None, sir. There was only one first-class coach, and the deceased was
the only person in it. It has given us all a dreadful turn, this affair
has," he continued, as we set off up the line. "I was on the platform
when the train came in. We were watching a rick that was burning up the
line, and a rare blaze it made, too; and I was just saying that we should
have to move the cattle-truck that was on the mid-track, because, you
see, sir, the smoke and sparks were blowing across, and I thought it
would frighten the poor beasts. And Mr. Felton he don't like his beasts
handled roughly. He says it spoils the meat."

"No doubt he is right," said Thorndyke. "But now, tell me, do you think
it is possible for any person to board or leave the train on the off-side
unobserved? Could a man, for instance, enter a compartment on the
off-side at one station and drop off as the train was slowing down at the
next, without being seen?"

"I doubt it," replied the station-master. "Still, I wouldn't say it is
impossible."

"Thank you. Oh, and there's another question. You have a gang of men at
work on the line, I see. Now, do those men belong to the district?"

"No, sir; they are strangers, every one, and pretty rough diamonds some
of 'em are. But I shouldn't say there was any real harm in 'em. If you
was suspecting any of 'em of being mixed up in this--"

"I am not," interrupted Thorndyke rather shortly. "I suspect nobody; but
I wish to get all the facts of the case at the outset."

"Naturally, sir," replied the abashed official; and we pursued our way in
silence.

"Do you remember, by the way," said Thorndyke, as we approached the empty
coach, "whether the off-side door of the compartment was closed and
locked when the body was discovered?"

"It was closed, sir, but not locked. Why, sir, did you think -?"

"Nothing, nothing. The sealed compartment is the one, of course?"

Without waiting for a reply, he commenced his survey of the coach, while
I gently restrained our two companions from shadowing him, as they were
disposed to do. The off-side footboard occupied his attention specially,
and when he had scrutinized minutely the part opposite the fatal
compartment, he walked slowly from end to end with his eyes but a few
inches from its surface, as though he was searching for something.

Near what had been the rear end he stopped, and drew from his pocket a
piece of paper; then, with a moistened finger-tip he picked up from the
footboard some evidently minute object, which he carefully transferred to
the paper, folding the latter and placing it in his pocket-book.

He next mounted the footboard, and, having peered in through the window
of the sealed compartment, produced from his pocket a small insufflator
or powder-blower, with which he blew a stream of impalpable smoke-like
powder on to the edges of the middle window, bestowing the closest
attention on the irregular dusty patches in which it settled, and even
measuring one on the jamb of the window with a pocket-rule. At length he
stepped down, and, having carefully looked over the near-side footboard,
announced that he had finished for the present.

As we were returning down the line, we passed a working man, who seemed
to be viewing the chairs and sleepers with more than casual interest.

"That, I suppose, is one of the plate-layers?" Thorndyke suggested to the
station-master.

"Yes, the foreman of the gang," was the reply.

"I'll just step back and have a word with him, if you will walk on
slowly." And my colleague turned back briskly and overtook the man, with
whom he remained in conversation for some minutes.

"I think I see the police inspector on the platform," remarked Thorndyke,
as we approached the station.

"Yes, there he is," said our guide. "Come down to see what you are after,
sir, I expect." Which was doubtless the case, although the officer
professed to be there by the merest chance.

"You would like to see the weapon, sir, I suppose?" he remarked, when he
had introduced himself.

"The umbrella-spike," Thorndyke corrected. "Yes, if I may. We are going
to the mortuary now."

"Then you'll pass the station on the way; so, if you care to look in, I
will walk up with you."

This proposition being agreed to, we all proceeded to the police-station,
including the station-master, who was on the very tiptoe of curiosity.

"There you are, sir," said the inspector, unlocking his office, and
ushering us in. "Don't say we haven't given every facility to the
defence. There are all the effects of the accused, including the very
weapon the deed was done with."

"Come, come," protested Thorndyke; "we mustn't be premature." He took the
stout ash staff from the officer, and, having examined the formidable
spike through a lens, drew from his pocket a steel calliper-gauge, with
which he carefully measured the diameter of the spike, and the staff to
which it was fixed. "And now," he said, when he had made a note of the
measurements in his book, "we will look at the colour-box and the sketch.
Ha! a very orderly man, your brother. Mr. Stopford. Tubes all in their
places, palette-knives wiped clean, palette cleaned off and rubbed
bright, brushes wiped--they ought to be washed before they stiffen--all
this is very significant." He unstrapped the sketch from the blank canvas
to which it was pinned, and, standing it on a chair in a good light,
stepped back to look at it.

"And you tell me that that is only three hours' work!" he exclaimed,
looking at the lawyer. "It is really a marvellous achievement."

"My brother is a very rapid worker," replied Stopford dejectedly.

"Yes, but this is not only amazingly rapid; it is in his very happiest
vein--full of spirit and feeling. But we mustn't stay to look at it
longer." He replaced the canvas on its pins, and having glanced at the
locket and some other articles that lay in a drawer, thanked the
inspector for his courtesy and withdrew.

"That sketch and the colour-box appear very suggestive to me," he
remarked, as we walked up the street.

"To me also," said Stopford gloomily, "for they are under lock and key,
like their owner, poor old fellow."

He sighed heavily, and we walked on in silence.

The mortuary-keeper had evidently heard of our arrival, for he was
waiting at the door with the key in his hand, and, on being shown the
coroner's order, unlocked the door, and we entered together; but, after a
momentary glance at the ghostly, shrouded figure lying upon the slate
table, Stopford turned pale and retreated, saying that he would wait for
us outside with the mortuary-keeper.

As soon as the door was closed and locked on the inside, Thorndyke
glanced curiously round the bare, whitewashed building. A stream of
sunlight poured in through the skylight, and fell upon the silent form
that lay so still under its covering-sheet, and one stray beam glanced
into a corner by the door, where, on a row of pegs and a deal table, the
dead woman's clothing was displayed.

"There is something unspeakably sad in these poor relics, Jervis," said
Thorndyke, as we stood before them. "To me they are more tragic, more
full of pathetic suggestion, than the corpse itself. See the smart,
jaunty hat, and the costly skirts hanging there, so desolate and forlorn;
the dainty lingerie on the table, neatly folded--by the mortuary-man's
wife, I hope--the little French shoes and open-work silk stockings. How
pathetically eloquent they are of harmless, womanly vanity, and the gay,
careless life, snapped short in the twinkling of an eye. But we must not
give way to sentiment. There is another life threatened, and it is in our
keeping."

He lifted the hat from its peg, and turned it over in his hand. It was, I
think, what is called a "picture-hat"--a huge, flat, shapeless mass of
gauze and ribbon and feather, spangled over freely with dark-blue
sequins. In one part of the brim was a ragged hole, and from this the
glittering sequins dropped off in little showers when the hat was moved.

"This will have been worn tilted over on the left side," said Thorndyke,
"judging by the general shape and the position of the hole."

"Yes," I agreed. "Like that of the Duchess of Devonshire in
Gainsborough's portrait."

"Exactly."

He shook a few of the sequins into the palm of his hand, and, replacing
the hat on its peg, dropped the little discs into an envelope, on which
he wrote, "From the hat," and slipped it into his pocket. Then, stepping
over to the table, he drew back the sheet reverently and even tenderly
from the dead woman's face, and looked down at it with grave pity. It was
a comely face, white as marble, serene and peaceful in expression, with
half-closed eyes, and framed with a mass of brassy, yellow hair; but its
beauty was marred by a long linear wound, half cut, half bruise, running
down the right cheek from the eye to the chin.

"A handsome girl," Thorndyke commented--"a dark-haired blonde. What a
sin to have disfigured herself so with that horrible peroxide." He
smoothed the hair back from her forehead, and added: "She seems to have
applied the stuff last about ten days ago. There is about a quarter of an
inch of dark hair at the roots. What do you make of that wound on the
cheek?"

"It looks as if she had struck some sharp angle in falling, though, as
the seats are padded in first-class carriages, I don't see what she could
have struck."

"No. And now let us look at the other wound. Will you note down the
description?" He handed me his notebook, and I wrote down as he dictated:
"A clean-punched circular hole in skull, an inch behind and above margin
of left ear--diameter, an inch and seven-sixteenths; starred fracture of
parietal bone; membranes perforated, and brain entered deeply; ragged
scalp-wound, extending forward to margin of left orbit; fragments of
gauze and sequins in edges of wound. That will do for the present. Dr.
Morton will give us further details if we want them."

He pocketed his callipers and rule, drew from the bruised scalp one or
two loose hairs, which he placed in the envelope with the sequins, and,
having looked over the body for other wounds or bruises (of which there
were none), replaced the sheet, and prepared to depart.

As we walked away from the mortuary, Thorndyke was silent and deeply
thoughtful, and I gathered that he was piecing together the facts that he
had acquired. At length Mr. Stopford, who had several times looked at him
curiously, said:

"The post-mortem will take place at three, and it is now only half-past
eleven. What would you like to do next?"

Thorndyke, who, in spite of his mental preoccupation, had been looking
about him in his usual keen, attentive way, halted suddenly.

"Your reference to the post-mortem," said he, "reminds me that I forgot
to put the ox-gall into my case."

"Ox-gall!" I exclaimed, endeavouring vainly to connect this substance
with the technique of the pathologist. "What were you going to do with--"

But here I broke off, remembering my friend's dislike of any discussion
of his methods before strangers.

"I suppose," he continued, "there would hardly be an artist's colourman
in a place of this size?"

"I should think not," said Stopford. "But couldn't you got the stuff from
a butcher? There's a shop just across the road."

"So there is," agreed Thorndyke, who had already observed the shop. "The
gall ought, of course, to be prepared, but we can filter it ourselves--that
is, if the butcher has any. We will try him, at any rate."

He crossed the road towards the shop, over which the name "Felton"
appeared in gilt lettering, and, addressing himself to the proprietor,
who stood at the door, introduced himself and explained his wants.

"Ox-gall?" said the butcher. "No, sir, I haven't any just now; but I am
having a beast killed this afternoon, and I can let you have some then.
In fact," he added, after a pause, "as the matter is of importance, I can
have one killed at once if you wish it."

"That is very kind of you," said Thorndyke, "and it would greatly oblige
me. Is the beast perfectly healthy?"

"They're in splendid condition, sir. I picked them out of the herd
myself. But you shall see them--ay, and choose the one that you'd like
killed."

"You are really very good," said Thorndyke warmly. "I will just run into
the chemist's next door, and get a suitable bottle, and then I will avail
myself of your exceedingly kind offer."

He hurried into the chemist's shop, from which he presently emerged,
carrying a white paper parcel; and we then followed the butcher down a
narrow lane by the side of his shop. It led to an enclosure containing a
small pen, in which were confined three handsome steers, whose glossy,
black coats contrasted in a very striking manner with their long,
greyish-white, nearly straight horns.

"These are certainly very fine beasts, Mr. Felton," said Thorndyke, as we
drew up beside the pen, "and in excellent condition, too."

He leaned over the pen and examined the beasts critically, especially as
to their eyes and horns; then, approaching the nearest one, he raised his
stick and bestowed a smart tap on the under-side of the right horn,
following it by a similar tap on the left one, a proceeding that the
beast viewed with stolid surprise.

"The state of the horns," explained Thorndyke, as he moved on to the next
steer, "enables one to judge, to some extent, of the beast's health."

"Lord bless you, sir," laughed Mr. Felton, "they haven't got no feeling
in their horns, else what good 'ud their horns be to 'em?"

Apparently he was right, for the second steer was as indifferent to a
sounding rap on either horn as the first. Nevertheless, when Thorndyke
approached the third steer, I unconsciously drew nearer to watch; and I
noticed that, as the stick struck the horn, the beast drew back in
evident alarm, and that when the blow was repeated, it became manifestly
uneasy.

"He don't seem to like that," said the butcher. "Seems as if--Hullo,
that's queer!"

Thorndyke had just brought his stick up against the left horn, and
immediately the beast had winced and started back, shaking his head and
moaning. There was not, however, room for him to back out of reach, and
Thorndyke, by leaning into the pen, was able to inspect the sensitive
horn, which he did with the closest attention, while the butcher looked
on with obvious perturbation.

"You don't think there's anything wrong with this beast, sir, I hope,"
said he.

"I can't say without a further examination," replied Thorndyke. "It may
be the horn only that is affected. If you will have it sawn off close to
the head, and sent up to me at the hotel, I will look at it and tell you.
And, by way of preventing any mistakes, I will mark it and cover it up,
to protect it from injury in the slaughter-house."

He opened his parcel and produced from it a wide-mouthed bottle labelled
"Ox-gall," a sheet of gutta-percha tissue, a roller bandage, and a stick
of sealing-wax. Handing the bottle to Mr. Felton, he encased the distal
half of the horn in a covering by means of the tissue and the bandage,
which he fixed securely with the sealing-wax.

"I'll saw the horn off and bring it up to the hotel myself, with the
ox-gall," said Mr. Felton. "You shall have them in half an hour."

He was as good as his word, for in half an hour Thorndyke was seated at a
small table by the window of our private sitting-room in the Black Bull
Hotel. The table was covered with newspaper, and on it lay the long grey
horn and Thorndyke's travelling-case, now open and displaying a small
microscope and its accessories. The butcher was seated solidly in an
armchair waiting, with a half-suspicious eye on Thorndyke for the report;
and I was endeavouring by cheerful talk to keep Mr. Stopford from sinking
into utter despondency, though I, too, kept a furtive watch on my
colleague's rather mysterious proceedings.

I saw him unwind the bandage and apply the horn to his ear, bending it
slightly to and fro. I watched him, as he scanned the surface closely
through a lens, and observed him as he scraped some substance from the
pointed end on to a glass slide, and, having applied a drop of some
reagent, began to tease out the scraping with a pair of mounted needles.
Presently he placed the slide under the microscope, and, having observed
it attentively for a minute or two, turned round sharply.

"Come and look at this, Jervis," said he.

I wanted no second bidding, being on tenterhooks of curiosity, but came
over and applied my eye to the instrument.

"Well, what is it?" he asked.

"A multipolar nerve corpuscle--very shrivelled, but unmistakable."

"And this?"

He moved the slide to a fresh spot.

"Two pyramidal nerve corpuscles and some portions of fibres."

"And what do you say the tissue is?"

"Cortical brain substance, I should say, without a doubt."

"I entirely agree with you. And that being so," he added, turning to Mr.
Stopford, "we may say that the case for the defence is practically
complete."

"What, in Heaven's name, do you mean?" exclaimed Stopford, starting up.

"I mean that we can now prove when and where and how Miss Grant met her
death. Come and sit down here, and I will explain. No, you needn't go
away, Mr. Felton. We shall have to subpoena you. Perhaps," he continued,
"we had better go over the facts and see what they suggest. And first we
note the position of the body, lying with the feet close to the off-side
door, showing that, when she fell, the deceased was sitting, or more
probably standing, close to that door. Next there is this." He drew from
his pocket a folded paper, which he opened, displaying a tiny blue disc.
"It is one of the sequins with which her hat was trimmed, and I have in
this envelope several more which I took from the hat itself.

"This single sequin I picked up on the rear end of the off side
footboard, and its presence there makes it nearly certain that at some
time Miss Grant had put her head out of the window on that side.

"The next item of evidence I obtained by dusting the margins of the
off-side window with a light powder, which made visible a greasy
impression three and a quarter inches long on the sharp corner of the
right-hand jamb (right-hand from the inside, I mean).

"And now as to the evidence furnished by the body. The wound in the skull
is behind and above the left ear, is roughly circular, and measures one
inch and seven-sixteenths at most, and a ragged scalp-wound runs from it
towards the left eye. On the right cheek is a linear contused wound three
and a quarter inches long. There are no other injuries.

"Our next facts are furnished by this." He took up the horn and tapped it
with his finger, while the solicitor and Mr. Felton stared at him in
speechless wonder. "You notice it is a left horn, and you remember that
it was highly sensitive. If you put your ear to it while I strain it, you
will hear the grating of a fracture in the bony core. Now look at the
pointed end, and you will see several deep scratches running lengthwise,
and where those scratches end the diameter of the horn is, as you see by
this calliper-gauge, one inch and seven-sixteenths. Covering the
scratches is a dry blood-stain, and at the extreme tip is a small mass of
a dried substance which Dr. Jervis and I have examined with the
microscope and are satisfied is brain tissue."

"Good God!" exclaimed Stopford eagerly. "Do you mean to say--"

"Let us finish with the facts, Mr. Stopford," Thorndyke interrupted.
"Now, if you look closely at that blood-stain, you will see a short piece
of hair stuck to the horn, and through this lens you can make out the
root-bulb. It is a golden hair, you notice, but near the root it is
black, and our calliper-gauge shows us that the black portion is fourteen
sixty-fourths of an inch long. Now, in this envelope are some hairs that
I removed from the dead woman's head. They also are golden hairs, black
at the roots, and when I measure the black portion I find it to be
fourteen sixty-fourths of an inch long. Then, finally, there is this."

He turned the horn over, and pointed to a small patch of dried blood.
Embedded in it was a blue sequin.

Mr. Stopford and the butcher both gazed at the horn in silent amazement;
then the former drew a deep breath and looked up at Thorndyke.

"No doubt," said he, "you can explain this mystery, but for my part I am
utterly bewildered, though you are filling me with hope."

"And yet the matter is quite simple," returned Thorndyke, "even with
these few facts before us, which are only a selection from the body of
evidence in our possession. But I will state my theory, and you shall
judge." He rapidly sketched a rough plan on a sheet of paper, and
continued: "These were the conditions when the train was approaching
Woldhurst: Here was the passenger-coach, here was the burning rick, and
here was a cattle-truck. This steer was in that truck. Now my hypothesis
is that at that time Miss Grant was standing with her head out of the
off-side window, watching the burning rick. Her wide hat, worn on the
left side, hid from her view the cattle-truck which she was approaching,
and then this is what happened." He sketched another plan to a larger
scale. "One of the steers--this one--had thrust its long horn out
through the bars. The point of that horn struck the deceased's head,
driving her face violently against the corner of the window, and then, in
disengaging, ploughed its way through the scalp, and suffered a fracture
of its core from the violence of the wrench. This hypothesis is
inherently probable, it fits all the facts, and those facts admit of no
other explanation."

The solicitor sat for a moment as though dazed; then he rose impulsively
and seized Thorndyke's hands. "I don't know what to say to you," he
exclaimed huskily, "except that you have saved my brother's life, and for
that may God reward you!"

The butcher rose from his chair with a slow grin.

"It seems to me," said he, "as if that ox-gall was what you might call a
blind, eh, sir?"

And Thorndyke smiled an inscrutable smile.

When we returned to town on the following day we were a party of four,
which included Mr. Harold Stopford. The verdict of "Death by
misadventure," promptly returned by the coroner's jury, had been shortly
followed by his release from custody, and he now sat with his brother and
me, listening with rapt attention to Thorndyke's analysis of the case.

"So, you see," the latter concluded, "I had six possible theories of the
cause of death worked out before I reached Halbury, and it only remained
to select the one that fitted the facts. And when I had seen the
cattle-truck, had picked up that sequin, had heard the description of the
steers, and had seen the hat and the wounds, there was nothing left to do
but the filling in of details."

"And you never doubted my innocence?" asked Harold Stopford.

Thorndyke smiled at his quondam client.

"Not after I had seen your colour-box and your sketch," said he, "to say
nothing of the spike."



THE MOABITE CIPHER


[Illustrations to this and other Thorndyke stories can be found in a
ZIPped file at http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#letterF]

A large and motley crowd lined the pavements of Oxford Street as
Thorndyke and I made our way leisurely eastward. Floral decorations and
drooping bunting announced one of those functions inaugurated from time
to time by a benevolent Government for the entertainment of fashionable
loungers and the relief of distressed pickpockets. For a Russian Grand
Duke, who had torn himself away, amidst valedictory explosions, from a
loving if too demonstrative people, was to pass anon on his way to the
Guildhall; and a British Prince, heroically indiscreet, was expected to
occupy a seat in the ducal carriage.

Near Rathbone Place Thorndyke halted and drew my attention to a
smart-looking man who stood lounging in a doorway, cigarette in hand.

"Our old friend Inspector Badger," said Thorndyke. "He seems mightily
interested in that gentleman in the light overcoat. How d'ye do, Badger?"
for at this moment the detective caught his eye and bowed. "Who is your
friend?"

"That's what I want to know, sir," replied the inspector. "I've been
shadowing him for the last half-hour, but I can't make him out, though I
believe I've seen him somewhere. He don't look like a foreigner, but he
has got something bulky in his pocket, so I must keep him in sight until
the Duke is safely past. I wish," he added gloomily, "these beastly
Russians would stop at home. They give us no end of trouble."

"Are you expecting any--occurrences, then?" asked Thorndyke.

"Bless you, sir," exclaimed Badger, "the whole route is lined with
plain-clothes men. You see, it is known that several desperate characters
followed the Duke to England, and there are a good many exiles living
here who would like to have a rap at him. Hallo! What's he up to now?"

The man in the light overcoat had suddenly caught the inspector's too
inquiring eye, and forthwith dived into the crowd at the edge of the
pavement. In his haste he trod heavily on the foot of a big,
rough-looking man, by whom he was in a moment hustled out into the road
with such violence that he fell sprawling face downwards. It was an
unlucky moment. A mounted constable was just then backing in upon the
crowd, and before he could gather the meaning of the shout that arose
from the bystanders, his horse had set down one hind-hoof firmly on the
prostrate man's back.

The inspector signalled to a constable, who forthwith made a way for us
through the crowd; but even as we approached the injured man, he rose
stiffly and looked round with a pale, vacant face.

"Are you hurt?" Thorndyke asked gently, with an earnest look into the
frightened, wondering eyes.

"No, sir," was the reply; "only I feel queer--sinking--just here."

He laid a trembling hand on his chest, and Thorndyke, still eyeing him
anxiously, said in a low voice to the inspector: "Cab or ambulance, as
quickly as you can."

A cab was led round from Newman Street, and the injured man put into it.
Thorndyke, Badger, and I entered, and we drove off up Rathbone Place. As
we proceeded, our patient's face grew more and more ashen, drawn, and
anxious; his breathing was shallow and uneven, and his teeth chattered
slightly. The cab swung round into Goodge Street, and then--suddenly, in
the twinkling of an eye--there came a change. The eyelids and jaw
relaxed, the eyes became filmy, and the whole form subsided into the
corner in a shrunken heap, with the strange gelatinous limpness of a body
that is dead as a whole, while its tissues are still alive.

"God save us! The man's dead!" exclaimed the inspector in a shocked
voice--for even policemen have their feelings. He sat staring at the corpse,
as it nodded gently with the jolting of the cab, until we drew up inside
the courtyard of the Middlesex Hospital, when he got out briskly, with
suddenly renewed cheerfulness, to help the porter to place the body on
the wheeled couch.

"We shall know who he is now, at any rate," said he, as we followed the
couch to the casualty-room. Thorndyke nodded unsympathetically. The
medical instinct in him was for the moment stronger than the legal.

The house-surgeon leaned over the couch, and made a rapid examination as
he listened to our account of the accident. Then he straightened himself
up and looked at Thorndyke.

"Internal haemorrhage, I expect," said he. "At any rate, he's dead, poor
beggar!--as dead as Nebuchadnezzar. Ah! here comes a bobby; it's his
affair now."

A sergeant came into the room, breathing quickly, and looked in surprise
from the corpse to the inspector. But the latter, without loss of time,
proceeded to turn out the dead man's pockets, commencing with the bulky
object that had first attracted his attention; which proved to be a
brown-paper parcel tied up with red tape.

"Pork-pie, begad!" he exclaimed with a crestfallen air as he cut the tape
and opened the package. "You had better go through his other pockets,
sergeant."

The small heap of odds and ends that resulted from this process tended,
with a single exception, to throw little light on the man's identity; the
exception being a letter, sealed, but not stamped, addressed in an
exceedingly illiterate hand to Mr. Adolf Schoenberg, 213, Greek Street,
Soho.

"He was going to leave it by hand, I expect," observed the inspector,
with a wistful glance at the sealed envelope. "I think I'll take it round
myself, and you had better come with me, sergeant."

He slipped the letter into his pocket, and, leaving the sergeant to take
possession of the other effects, made his way out of the building.

"I suppose, Doctor," said he, as we crossed into Berners Street, "you are
not coming our way! Don't want to see Mr. Schoenberg, h'm?"

Thorndyke reflected for a moment. "Well, it isn't very far, and we may as
well see the end of the incident. Yes; let us go together."

No. 213, Greek Street, was one of those houses that irresistibly suggest
to the observer the idea of a church organ, either jamb of the doorway
being adorned with a row of brass bell-handles corresponding to the
stop-knobs.

These the sergeant examined with the air of an expert musician, and
having, as it were, gauged the capacity of the instrument, selected the
middle knob on the right-hand side and pulled it briskly; whereupon a
first-floor window was thrown up and a head protruded. But it afforded us
a momentary glimpse only, for, having caught the sergeant's upturned eye,
it retired with surprising precipitancy, and before we had time to
speculate on the apparition, the street-door was opened and a man
emerged. He was about to close the door after him when the inspector
interposed.

"Does Mr. Adolf Schoenberg live here?"

The new-comer, a very typical Jew of the red-haired type, surveyed us
thoughtfully through his gold-rimmed spectacles as he repeated the name.

"Schoenberg--Schoenberg? Ah, yes! I know. He lives on the third-floor. I
saw him go up a short time ago. Third-floor back;" and indicating the
open door with a wave of the hand, he raised his hat and passed into the
street.

"I suppose we had better go up," said the inspector, with a dubious
glance at the row of bell-pulls. He accordingly started up the stairs,
and we all followed in his wake.

There were two doors at the back on the third-floor, but as the one was
open, displaying an unoccupied bedroom, the inspector rapped smartly on
the other. It flew open almost immediately, and a fierce-looking little
man confronted us with a hostile stare.

"Well?" said he.

"Mr. Adolf Schoenberg?" inquired the inspector.

"Well? What about him?" snapped our new acquaintance.

"I wished to have a few words with him," said Badger.

"Then what the deuce do you come banging at my door for?" demanded the
other.

"Why, doesn't he live here?"

"No. First-floor front," replied our friend, preparing to close the door.

"Pardon me," said Thorndyke, "but what is Mr. Schoenberg like? I mean--"

"Like?" interrupted the resident. "He's like a blooming Sheeny, with a
carroty beard and gold gig-lamps!" and, having presented this
impressionist sketch, he brought the interview to a definite close by
slamming the door and turning the key.

With a wrathful exclamation, the inspector turned towards the stairs,
down which the sergeant was already clattering in hot haste, and made his
way back to the ground-floor, followed, as before, by Thorndyke and me.
On the doorstep we found the sergeant breathlessly interrogating a
smartly-dressed youth, whom I had seen alight from a hansom as we entered
the house, and who now stood with a notebook tucked under his arm,
sharpening a pencil with deliberate care.

"Mr. James saw him come out, sir," said the sergeant. "He turned up
towards the Square."

"Did he seem to hurry?" asked the inspector.

"Rather," replied the reporter. "As soon as you were inside, he went off
like a lamplighter. You won't catch him now."


"We don't want to catch him," the detective rejoined gruffly; then,
backing out of earshot of the eager pressman, he said in a lower tone:
"That was Mr. Schoenberg, beyond a doubt, and it is clear that he has
some reason for making himself scarce; so I shall consider myself
justified in opening that note."

He suited the action to the word, and, having cut the envelope open with
official neatness, drew out the enclosure.

"My hat!" he exclaimed, as his eye fell upon the contents. "What in
creation is this? It isn't shorthand, but what the deuce is it?"

He handed the document to Thorndyke, who, having held it up to the light
and felt the paper critically, proceeded to examine it with keen
interest. It consisted of a single half-sheet of thin notepaper, both
sides of which were covered with strange, crabbed characters, written
with a brownish-black ink in continuous lines, without any spaces to
indicate the divisions into words; and, but for the modern material which
bore the writing, it might have been a portion of some ancient manuscript
or forgotten codex.

"What do you make of it, Doctor?" inquired the inspector anxiously, after
a pause, during which Thorndyke had scrutinized the strange writing with
knitted brows.

"Not a great deal," replied Thorndyke. "The character is the Moabite or
Phoenician--primitive Semitic, in fact--and reads from right to left.
The language I take to be Hebrew. At any rate, I can find no Greek words,
and I see here a group of letters which may form one of the few Hebrew
words that I know--the word badim, 'lies.' But you had better get it
deciphered by an expert."

"If it is Hebrew," said Badger, "we can manage it all right. There are
plenty of Jews at our disposal."

"You had much better take the paper to the British Museum," said
Thorndyke, "and submit it to the keeper of the Phoenician antiquities for
decipherment."

Inspector Badger smiled a foxy smile as he deposited the paper in his
pocket-book. "We'll see what we can make of it ourselves first," he said;
"but many thanks for your advice, all the same, Doctor. No, Mr. James, I
can't give you any information just at present; you had better apply at
the hospital."

"I suspect," said Thorndyke, as we took our way homewards, "that Mr.
James has collected enough material for his purpose already. He must have
followed us from the hospital, and I have no doubt that he has his
report, with 'full details,' mentally arranged at this moment. And I am
not sure that he didn't get a peep at the mysterious paper, in spite of
the inspector's precautions."

"By the way," I said, "what do you make of the document?"

"A cipher, most probably," he replied. "It is written in the primitive
Semitic alphabet, which, as you know, is practically identical with
primitive Greek. It is written from right to left, like the Phoenician,
Hebrew, and Moabite, as well as the earliest Greek, inscriptions. The
paper is common cream-laid notepaper, and the ink is ordinary indelible
Chinese ink, such as is used by draughtsmen. Those are the facts, and
without further study of the document itself, they don't carry us very
far."

"Why do you think it is a cipher rather than a document in
straightforward Hebrew?"

"Because it is obviously a secret message of some kind. Now, every
educated Jew knows more or less Hebrew, and, although he is able to read
and write only the modern square Hebrew character, it is so easy to
transpose one alphabet into another that the mere language would afford
no security. Therefore, I expect that, when the experts translate this
document, the translation or transliteration will be a mere farrago of
unintelligible nonsense. But we shall see, and meanwhile the facts that
we have offer several interesting suggestions which are well worth
consideration."

"As, for instance -?"

"Now, my dear Jervis," said Thorndyke, shaking an admonitory forefinger
at me, "don't, I pray you, give way to mental indolence. You have these
few facts that I have mentioned. Consider them separately and
collectively, and in their relation to the circumstances. Don't attempt
to suck my brain when you have an excellent brain of your own to suck."

On the following morning the papers fully justified my colleague's
opinion of Mr. James. All the events which had occurred, as well as a
number that had not, were given in the fullest and most vivid detail, a
lengthy reference being made to the paper "found on the person of the
dead anarchist," and "written in a private shorthand or cryptogram."

The report concluded with the gratifying--though untrue--statement that
"in this intricate and important case, the police have wisely secured the
assistance of Dr. John Thorndyke, to whose acute intellect and vast
experience the portentous cryptogram will doubtless soon deliver up its
secret."

"Very flattering," laughed Thorndyke, to whom I read the extract on his
return from the hospital, "but a little awkward if it should induce our
friends to deposit a few trifling mementoes in the form of
nitro-compounds on our main staircase or in the cellars. By the way, I
met Superintendent Miller on London Bridge. The 'cryptogram,' as Mr.
James calls it, has set Scotland Yard in a mighty ferment."

"Naturally. What have they done in the matter?"

"They adopted my suggestion, after all, finding that they could make
nothing of it themselves, and took it to the British Museum. The Museum
people referred them to Professor Poppelbaum, the great palaeographer, to
whom they accordingly submitted it."

"Did he express any opinion about it?"

"Yes, provisionally. After a brief examination, he found it to consist of
a number of Hebrew words sandwiched between apparently meaningless groups
of letters. He furnished the Superintendent off-hand with a translation
of the words, and Miller forthwith struck off a number of hectograph
copies of it, which he has distributed among the senior officials of his
department; so that at present"--here Thorndyke gave vent to a soft
chuckle--"Scotland Yard is engaged in a sort of missing word--or,
rather, missing sense--competition. Miller invited me to join in the
sport, and to that end presented me with one of the hectograph copies on
which to exercise my wits, together with a photograph of the document."

"And shall you?" I asked.

"Not I," he replied, laughing. "In the first place, I have not been
formally consulted, and consequently am a passive, though interested,
spectator. In the second place, I have a theory of my own which I shall
test if the occasion arises. But if you would like to take part in the
competition, I am authorized to show you the photograph and the
translation. I will pass them on to you, and I wish you joy of them."

He handed me the photograph and a sheet of paper that he had just taken
from his pocket-book, and watched me with grim amusement as I read out
the first few lines.

[Illustration: THE CIPHER.]

"Woe, city, lies, robbery, prey, noise, whip, rattling, wheel, horse,
chariot, day, darkness, gloominess, clouds, darkness, morning, mountain,
people, strong, fire, them, flame."

"It doesn't look very promising at first sight," I remarked. "What is the
Professor's theory?"

"His theory--provisionally, of course--is that the words form the
message, and the groups of letters represent mere filled-up spaces
between the words."

"But surely," I protested, "that would be a very transparent device."

Thorndyke laughed. "There is a childlike simplicity about it," said he,
"that is highly attractive--but discouraging. It is much more probable
that the words are dummies, and that the letters contain the message. Or,
again, the solution may lie in an entirely different direction. But
listen! Is that cab coming here?"

It was. It drew up opposite our chambers, and a few moments later a brisk
step ascending the stairs heralded a smart rat-tat at our door. Flinging
open the latter, I found myself confronted by a well-dressed stranger,
who, after a quick glance at me, peered inquisitively over my shoulder
into the room.

"I am relieved, Dr. Jervis," said he, "to find you and Dr. Thorndyke at
home, as I have come on somewhat urgent professional business. My name,"
he continued, entering in response to my invitation, "is Barton, but you
don't know me, though I know you both by sight. I have come to ask you if
one of you--or, better still, both--could come to-night and see my
brother."

"That," said Thorndyke, "depends on the circumstances and on the
whereabouts of your brother."

"The circumstances," said Mr. Barton, "are, in my opinion, highly
suspicious, and I will place them before you--of course, in strict
confidence."

Thorndyke nodded and indicated a chair.

"My brother," continued Mr. Barton, taking the proffered seat, "has
recently married for the second time. His age is fifty-five, and that of
his wife twenty-six, and I may say that the marriage has been--well, by
no means a success. Now, within the last fortnight, my brother has been
attacked by a mysterious and extremely painful affection of the stomach,
to which his doctor seems unable to give a name. It has resisted all
treatment hitherto. Day by day the pain and distress increase, and I feel
that, unless something decisive is done, the end cannot be far off."

"Is the pain worse after taking food?" inquired Thorndyke.

"That's just it!" exclaimed our visitor. "I see what is in your mind, and
it has been in mine, too; so much so that I have tried repeatedly to
obtain samples of the food that he is taking. And this morning I
succeeded." Here he took from his pocket a wide-mouthed bottle, which,
disengaging from its paper wrappings, he laid on the table. "When I
called, he was taking his breakfast of arrowroot, which he complained had
a gritty taste, supposed by his wife to be due to the sugar. Now I had
provided myself with this bottle, and, during the absence of his wife, I
managed unobserved to convey a portion of the arrowroot that he had left
into it, and I should be greatly obliged if you would examine it and tell
me if this arrowroot contains anything that it should not."

He pushed the bottle across to Thorndyke, who carried it to the window,
and, extracting a small quantity of the contents with a glass rod,
examined the pasty mass with the aid of a lens; then, lifting the
bell-glass cover from the microscope, which stood on its table by the
window, he smeared a small quantity of the suspected matter on to a glass
slip, and placed it on the stage of the instrument.

"I observe a number of crystalline particles in this," he said, after a
brief inspection, "which have the appearance of arsenious acid."

"Ah!" ejaculated Mr. Barton, "just what I feared. But are you certain?"

"No," replied Thorndyke; "but the matter is easily tested."

He pressed the button of the bell that communicated with the laboratory,
a summons that brought the laboratory assistant from his lair with
characteristic promptitude.

"Will you please prepare a Marsh's apparatus, Polton," said Thorndyke.

"I have a couple ready, sir," replied Polton.

"Then pour the acid into one and bring it to me, with a tile."

As his familiar vanished silently, Thorndyke turned to Mr. Barton.

"Supposing we find arsenic in this arrowroot, as we probably shall, what
do you want us to do?"

"I want you to come and see my brother," replied our client.

"Why not take a note from me to his doctor?"

"No, no; I want you to come--I should like you both to come--and put a
stop at once to this dreadful business. Consider! It's a matter of life
and death. You won't refuse! I beg you not to refuse me your help in
these terrible circumstances."

"Well," said Thorndyke, as his assistant reappeared, "let us first see
what the test has to tell us."

Polton advanced to the table, on which he deposited a small flask, the
contents of which were in a state of brisk effervescence, a bottle
labelled "calcium hypochlorite," and a white porcelain tile. The flask
was fitted with a safety-funnel and a glass tube drawn out to a fine jet,
to which Polton cautiously applied a lighted match. Instantly there
sprang from the jet a tiny, pale violet flame. Thorndyke now took the
tile, and held it in the flame for a few seconds, when the appearance of
the surface remained unchanged save for a small circle of condensed
moisture. His next proceeding was to thin the arrowroot with distilled
water until it was quite fluid, and then pour a small quantity into the
funnel. It ran slowly down the tube into the flask, with the bubbling
contents of which it became speedily mixed. Almost immediately a change
began to appear in the character of the flame, which from a pale violet
turned gradually to a sickly blue, while above it hung a faint cloud of
white smoke. Once more Thorndyke held the tile above the jet, but this
time, no sooner had the pallid flame touched the cold surface of the
porcelain, than there appeared on the latter a glistening black stain.

"That is pretty conclusive," observed Thorndyke, lifting the stopper out
of the reagent bottle, "but we will apply the final test." He dropped a
few drops of the hypochlorite solution on to the tile, and immediately
the black stain faded away and vanished. "We can now answer your
question, Mr. Barton," said he, replacing the stopper as he turned to our
client. "The specimen that you brought us certainly contains arsenic, and
in very considerable quantities."

"Then," exclaimed Mr. Barton, starting from his chair, "you will come and
help me to rescue my brother from this dreadful peril. Don't refuse me,
Dr. Thorndyke, for mercy's sake, don't refuse."

Thorndyke reflected for a moment.

"Before we decide," said he, "we must see what engagements we have."

With a quick, significant glance at me, he walked into the office,
whither I followed in some bewilderment, for I knew that we had no
engagements for the evening.

"Now, Jervis," said Thorndyke, as he closed the office door, "what are we
to do?"

"We must go, I suppose," I replied. "It seems a pretty urgent case."

"It does," he agreed. "Of course, the man may be telling the truth, after
all."

"You don't think he is, then?"

"No. It is a plausible tale, but there is too much arsenic in that
arrowroot. Still, I think I ought to go. It is an ordinary professional
risk. But there is no reason why you should put your head into the
noose."

"Thank you," said I, somewhat huffily. "I don't see what risk there is,
but if any exists I claim the right to share it."

"Very well," he answered with a smile, "we will both go. I think we can
take care of ourselves."

He re-entered the sitting-room, and announced his decision to Mr. Barton,
whose relief and gratitude were quite pathetic.


"But," said Thorndyke, "you have not yet told us where your brother
lives."

"Rexford," was the reply--"Rexford, in Essex. It is an out-of-the-way
place, but if we catch the seven-fifteen train from Liverpool Street, we
shall be there in an hour and a half."

"And as to the return? You know the trains, I suppose?"

"Oh yes," replied our client; "I will see that you don't miss your train
back."

"Then I will be with you in a minute," said Thorndyke; and, taking the
still-bubbling flask, he retired to the laboratory, whence he returned in
a few minutes carrying his hat and overcoat.

The cab which had brought our client was still waiting, and we were soon
rattling through the streets towards the station, where we arrived in
time to furnish ourselves with dinner-baskets and select our compartment
at leisure.

During the early part of the journey our companion was in excellent
spirits. He despatched the cold fowl from the basket and quaffed the
rather indifferent claret with as much relish as if he had not had a
single relation in the world, and after dinner he became genial to the
verge of hilarity. But, as time went on, there crept into his manner a
certain anxious restlessness. He became silent and preoccupied, and
several times furtively consulted his watch.

"The train is confoundedly late!" he exclaimed irritably. "Seven minutes
behind time already!"

"A few minutes more or less are not of much consequence," said Thorndyke.

"No, of course not; but still--Ah, thank Heaven, here we are!"

He thrust his head out of the off-side window, and gazed eagerly down the
line; then, leaping to his feet, he bustled out on to the platform while
the train was still moving.

Even as we alighted a warning bell rang furiously on the up-platform, and
as Mr. Barton hurried us through the empty booking-office to the outside
of the station, the rumble of the approaching train could be heard above
the noise made by our own train moving off.

"My carriage doesn't seem to have arrived yet," exclaimed Mr. Barton,
looking anxiously up the station approach. "If you will wait here a
moment, I will go and make inquiries."

He darted back into the booking-office and through it on to the platform,
just as the up-train roared into the station. Thorndyke followed him with
quick but stealthy steps, and, peering out of the booking-office door,
watched his proceedings; then he turned and beckoned to me.

"There he goes," said he, pointing to an iron footbridge that spanned the
line; and, as I looked, I saw, clearly defined against the dim night sky,
a flying figure racing towards the "up" side.

It was hardly two-thirds across when the guard's whistle sang out its
shrill warning.

"Quick, Jervis," exclaimed Thorndyke; "she's off!"

He leaped down on to the line, whither I followed instantly, and,
crossing the rails, we clambered up together on to the foot-board
opposite an empty first-class compartment. Thorndyke's magazine knife,
containing, among other implements, a railway-key, was already in his
hand. The door was speedily unlocked, and, as we entered, Thorndyke ran
through and looked out on to the platform.

"Just in time!" he exclaimed. "He is in one of the forward compartments."

He relocked the door, and, seating himself, proceeded to fill his pipe.

"And now," said I, as the train moved out of the station, "perhaps you
will explain this little comedy."

"With pleasure," he replied, "if it needs any explanation. But you can
hardly have forgotten Mr. James's flattering remarks in his report of the
Greek Street incident, clearly giving the impression that the mysterious
document was in my possession. When I read that, I knew I must look out
for some attempt to recover it, though I hardly expected such promptness.
Still, when Mr. Barton called without credentials or appointment, I
viewed him with some suspicion. That suspicion deepened when he wanted us
both to come. It deepened further when I found an impossible quantity of
arsenic in his sample, and it gave place to certainty when, having
allowed him to select the trains by which we were to travel, I went up to
the laboratory and examined the time-table; for I then found that the
last train for London left Rexford ten minutes after we were due to
arrive. Obviously this was a plan to get us both safely out of the way
while he and some of his friends ransacked our chambers for the missing
document."

"I see; and that accounts for his extraordinary anxiety at the lateness
of the train. But why did you come, if you knew it was a 'plant'?"

"My dear fellow," said Thorndyke, "I never miss an interesting experience
if I can help it. There are possibilities in this, too, don't you see?"

"But supposing his friends have broken into our chambers already?"

"That contingency has been provided for; but I think they will wait for
Mr. Barton--and us."

Our train, being the last one up, stopped at every station, and crawled
slothfully in the intervals, so that it was past eleven o'clock when we
reached Liverpool Street. Here we got out cautiously, and, mingling with
the crowd, followed the unconscious Barton up the platform, through the
barrier, and out into the street. He seemed in no special hurry, for,
after pausing to light a cigar, he set off at an easy pace up New Broad
Street.

Thorndyke hailed a hansom, and, motioning me to enter, directed the
cabman to drive to Clifford's Inn Passage.

"Sit well back," said he, as we rattled away up New Broad Street. "We
shall be passing our gay deceiver presently--in fact, there he is, a
living, walking illustration of the folly of underrating the intelligence
of one's adversary."

At Clifford's Inn Passage we dismissed the cab, and, retiring into the
shadow of the dark, narrow alley, kept an eye on the gate of Inner Temple
Lane. In about twenty minutes we observed our friend approaching on the
south side of Fleet Street. He halted at the gate, plied the knocker, and
after a brief parley with the night-porter vanished through the wicket.
We waited yet five minutes more, and then, having given him time to get
clear of the entrance, we crossed the road.

The porter looked at us with some surprise.

"There's a gentleman just gone down to your chambers, sir," said he. "He
told me you were expecting him."

"Quite right," said Thorndyke, with a dry smile, "I was. Good-night."

We slunk down the lane, past the church, and through the gloomy
cloisters, giving a wide berth to all lamps and lighted entries, until,
emerging into Paper Buildings, we crossed at the darkest part to King's
Bench Walk, where Thorndyke made straight for the chambers of our friend
Anstey, which were two doors above our own.

"Why are we coming here?" I asked, as we ascended the stairs.

But the question needed no answer when we reached the landing, for
through the open door of our friend's chambers I could see in the
darkened room Anstey himself with two uniformed constables and a couple
of plain-clothes men.

"There has been no signal yet, sir," said one of the latter, whom I
recognized as a detective-sergeant of our division.

"No," said Thorndyke, "but the M.C. has arrived. He came in five minutes
before us."

"Then," exclaimed Anstey, "the ball will open shortly, ladies and gents.
The boards are waxed, the fiddlers are tuning up, and--"

"Not quite so loud, if you please, sir," said the sergeant. "I think
there is somebody coming up Crown Office Row."

The ball had, in fact, opened. As we peered cautiously out of the open
window, keeping well back in the darkened room, a stealthy figure crept
out of the shadow, crossed the road, and stole noiselessly into the entry
of Thorndyke's chambers. It was quickly followed by a second figure, and
then by a third, in which I recognized our elusive client.

"Now listen for the signal," said Thorndyke. "They won't waste time.
Confound that clock!"

The soft-voiced bell of the Inner Temple clock, mingling with the harsher
tones of St. Dunstan's and the Law Courts, slowly told out the hour of
midnight; and as the last reverberations were dying away, some metallic
object, apparently a coin, dropped with a sharp clink on to the pavement
under our window.

At the sound the watchers simultaneously sprang to their feet.

"You two go first," said the sergeant, addressing the uniformed men, who
thereupon stole noiselessly, in their rubber-soled boots, down the stone
stairs and along the pavement. The rest of us followed, with less
attention to silence, and as we ran up to Thorndyke's chambers, we were
aware of quick but stealthy footsteps on the stairs above.

"They've been at work, you see," whispered one of the constables,
flashing his lantern on to the iron-bound outer door of our sitting-room,
on which the marks of a large jemmy were plainly visible.

The sergeant nodded grimly, and, bidding the constables to remain on the
landing, led the way upwards.

As we ascended, faint rustlings continued to be audible from above, and
on the second-floor landing we met a man descending briskly, but without
hurry, from the third. It was Mr. Barton, and I could not but admire the
composure with which he passed the two detectives. But suddenly his
glance fell on Thorndyke, and his composure vanished. With a wild stare
of incredulous horror, he halted as if petrified; then he broke away and
raced furiously down the stairs, and a moment later a muffled shout and
the sound of a scuffle told us that he had received a check. On the next
flight we met two more men, who, more hurried and less self-possessed,
endeavoured to push past; but the sergeant barred the way.

"Why, bless me!" exclaimed the latter, "it's Moakey; and isn't that Tom
Harris?"

"It's all right, sergeant," said Moakey plaintively, striving to escape
from the officer's grip. "We've come to the wrong house, that's all."

The sergeant smiled indulgently. "I know," he replied. "But you're always
coming to the wrong house, Moakey; and now you're just coming along with
me to the right house."

He slipped his hand inside his captive's coat, and adroitly fished out a
large, folding jemmy; whereupon the discomforted burglar abandoned all
further protest.

On our return to the first-floor, we found Mr. Barton sulkily awaiting
us, handcuffed to one of the constables, and watched by Polton with
pensive disapproval.

"I needn't trouble you to-night, Doctor," said the sergeant, as he
marshalled his little troop of captors and captives. "You'll hear from us
in the morning. Good-night, sir."

The melancholy procession moved off down the stairs, and we retired into
our chambers with Anstey to smoke a last pipe.

"A capable man, that Barton," observed Thorndyke--"ready, plausible, and
ingenious, but spoilt by prolonged contact with fools. I wonder if the
police will perceive the significance of this little affair."

"They will be more acute than I am if they do," said I.

"Naturally," interposed Anstey, who loved to "cheek" his revered senior,
"because there isn't any. It's only Thorndyke's bounce. He is really in a
deuce of a fog himself."

However this may have been, the police were a good deal puzzled by the
incident, for, on the following morning, we received a visit from no less
a person than Superintendent Miller, of Scotland Yard.

"This is a queer business," said he, coming to the point at once--"this
burglary, I mean. Why should they want to crack your place, right here in
the Temple, too? You've got nothing of value here, have you? No 'hard
stuff,' as they call it, for instance?"

"Not so much as a silver teaspoon," replied Thorndyke, who had a
conscientious objection to plate of all kinds.

"It's odd," said the superintendent, "deuced odd. When we got your note,
we thought these anarchist idiots had mixed you up with the case--you
saw the papers, I suppose--and wanted to go through your rooms for some
reason. We thought we had our hands on the gang, instead of which we find
a party of common crooks that we're sick of the sight of. I tell you,
sir, it's annoying when you think you've hooked a salmon, to bring up a
blooming eel."

"It must be a great disappointment," Thorndyke agreed, suppressing a
smile.

"It is," said the detective. "Not but what we're glad enough to get these
beggars, especially Halkett, or Barton, as he calls himself--a mighty
slippery customer is Halkett, and mischievous, too--but we're not
wanting any disappointments just now. There was that big jewel job in
Piccadilly, Taplin and Horne's; I don't mind telling you that we've not
got the ghost of a clue. Then there's this anarchist affair. We're all in
the dark there, too."

"But what about the cipher?" asked Thorndyke.

"Oh, hang the cipher!" exclaimed the detective irritably. "This Professor
Poppelbaum may be a very learned man, but he doesn't help us much. He
says the document is in Hebrew, and he has translated it into Double
Dutch. Just listen to this!" He dragged out of his pocket a bundle of
papers, and, dabbing down a photograph of the document before Thorndyke,
commenced to read the Professor's report. "'The document is written in
the characters of the well-known inscription of Mesha, King of Moab' (who
the devil's he? Never heard of him. Well known, indeed!) 'The language is
Hebrew, and the words are separated by groups of letters, which are
meaningless, and obviously introduced to mislead and confuse the reader.
The words themselves are not strictly consecutive, but, by the
interpellation of certain other words, a series of intelligible sentences
is obtained, the meaning of which is not very clear, but is no doubt
allegorical. The method of decipherment is shown in the accompanying
tables, and the full rendering suggested on the enclosed sheet. It is to
be noted that the writer of this document was apparently quite
unacquainted with the Hebrew language, as appears from the absence of any
grammatical construction.' That's the Professor's report, Doctor, and
here are the tables showing how he worked it out. It makes my head spin
to look at 'em."

He handed to Thorndyke a bundle of ruled sheets, which my colleague
examined attentively for a while, and then passed on to me.

"This is very systematic and thorough," said he. "But now let us see the
final result at which he arrives."

"It may be all very systematic," growled the superintendent, sorting out
his papers, "but I tell you, sir, it's all BOSH!" The latter word he
jerked out viciously, as he slapped down on the table the final product
of the Professor's labours. "There," he continued, "that's what he calls
the 'full rendering,' and I reckon it'll make your hair curl. It might be
a message from Bedlam."

Thorndyke took up the first sheet, and as he compared the constructed
renderings with the literal translation, the ghost of a smile stole
across his usually immovable countenance.

"The meaning is certainly a little obscure," he observed, "though the
reconstruction is highly ingenious; and, moreover, I think the Professor
is probably right. That is to say, the words which he has supplied are
probably the omitted parts of the passages from which the words of the
cryptogram were taken. What do you think, Jervis?"

[Illustration: THE PROFESSOR'S ANALYSIS. Handwritten: Analysis of the
cipher with translation into modern square Hebrew characters + a
translation into English. N.B. The cipher reads from right to left.]

He handed me the two papers, of which one gave the actual words of the
cryptogram, and the other a suggested reconstruction, with omitted words
supplied. The first read:

"Woe city lies robbery prey noise whip rattling wheel horse chariot day
darkness gloominess cloud darkness morning mountain people strong fire
them flame."

Turning to the second paper, I read out the suggested rendering: "'Woe to
the bloody city! It is full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not.
The noise of a whip, and the noise of the rattling of the wheels, and of
the prancing horses, and of the jumping chariots.

"'A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds, and of thick
darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains, a great people and a
strong.

"'A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a flame burneth.'"

Here the first sheet ended, and, as I laid it down, Thorndyke looked at
me inquiringly.

"There is a good deal of reconstruction in proportion to the original
matter," I objected. "The Professor has 'supplied' more than
three-quarters of the final rendering."

"Exactly," burst in the superintendent; "it's all Professor and no
cryptogram."

"Still, I think the reading is correct," said Thorndyke. "As far as it
goes, that is."

"Good Lord!" exclaimed the dismayed detective. "Do you mean to tell me,
sir, that that balderdash is the real meaning of the thing?"

"I don't say that," replied Thorndyke. "I say it is correct as far as it
goes; but I doubt its being the solution of the cryptogram."

"Have you been studying that photograph that I gave you?" demanded
Miller, with sudden eagerness.

"I have looked at it," said Thorndyke evasively, "but I should like to
examine the original if you have it with you."

"I have," said the detective. "Professor Poppelbaum sent it back with the
solution. You can have a look at it, though I can't leave it with you
without special authority."

He drew the document from his pocket-book and handed it to Thorndyke, who
took it over to the window and scrutinized it closely. From the window he
drifted into the adjacent office, closing the door after him; and
presently the sound of a faint explosion told me that he had lighted the
gas-fire.

"Of course," said Miller, taking up the translation again, "this
gibberish is the sort of stuff you might expect from a parcel of
crack-brained anarchists; but it doesn't seem to mean anything."

"Not to us," I agreed; "but the phrases may have some pre-arranged
significance. And then there are the letters between the words. It is
possible that they may really form a cipher."

"I suggested that to the Professor," said Miller, "but he wouldn't hear
of it. He is sure they are only dummies."

"I think he is probably mistaken, and so, I fancy, does my colleague. But
we shall hear what he has to say presently."

"Oh, I know what he will say," growled Miller. "He will put the thing
under the microscope, and tell us who made the paper, and what the ink is
composed of, and then we shall be just where we were." The superintendent
was evidently deeply depressed.

We sat for some time pondering in silence on the vague sentences of the
Professor's translation, until, at length, Thorndyke reappeared, holding
the document in his hand. He laid it quietly on the table by the officer,
and then inquired: "Is this an official consultation?"

"Certainly," replied Miller. "I was authorized to consult you respecting
the translation, but nothing was said about the original. Still, if you
want it for further study, I will get it for you."

"No, thank you," said Thorndyke. "I have finished with it. My theory
turned out to be correct."

"Your theory!" exclaimed the superintendent, eagerly. "Do you mean to say--?"

"And, as you are consulting me officially, I may as well give you this."

He held out a sheet of paper, which the detective took from him and began
to read.

"What is this?" he asked, looking up at Thorndyke with a puzzled frown.
"Where did it come from?"

"It is the solution of the cryptogram," replied Thorndyke.

The detective re-read the contents of the paper, and, with the frown of
perplexity deepening, once more gazed at my colleague.

"This is a joke, sir; you are fooling me," he said sulkily.

"Nothing of the kind," answered Thorndyke. "That is the genuine
solution."

"But it's impossible!" exclaimed Miller. "Just look at it, Dr. Jervis."

I took the paper from his hand, and, as I glanced at it, I had no
difficulty in understanding his surprise. It bore a short inscription in
printed Roman capitals, thus:

"THE PICKERDILLEY STUF IS UP THE CHIMBLY 416 WARDOUR ST 2ND FLOUR BACK IT
WAS HID BECOS OF OLD MOAKEYS JOOD MOAKEY IS A BLITER."

"Then that fellow wasn't an anarchist at all?" I exclaimed.

"No," said Miller. "He was one of Moakey's gang. We suspected Moakey of
being mixed up with that job, but we couldn't fix it on him. By Jove!" he
added, slapping his thigh, "if this is right, and I can lay my hands on
the loot! Can you lend me a bag, doctor? I'm off to Wardour Street this
very moment."

We furnished him with an empty suit-case, and, from the window, watched
him making for Mitre Court at a smart double.

"I wonder if he will find the booty," said Thorndyke. "It just depends on
whether the hiding-place was known to more than one of the gang. Well, it
has been a quaint case, and instructive, too. I suspect our friend Barton
and the evasive Schoenberg were the collaborators who produced that
curiosity of literature."

"May I ask how you deciphered the thing?" I said. "It didn't appear to
take long."

"It didn't. It was merely a matter of testing a hypothesis; and you ought
not to have to ask that question," he added, with mock severity, "seeing
that you had what turn out to have been all the necessary facts, two days
ago. But I will prepare a document and demonstrate to you to-morrow
morning."

"So Miller was successful in his quest," said Thorndyke, as we smoked our
morning pipes after breakfast. "The 'entire swag,' as he calls it, was
'up the chimbly,' undisturbed."

He handed me a note which had been left, with the empty suit-case, by a
messenger, shortly before, and I was about to read it when an agitated
knock was heard at our door. The visitor, whom I admitted, was a rather
haggard and dishevelled elderly gentleman, who, as he entered, peered
inquisitively through his concave spectacles from one of us to the other.

"Allow me to introduce myself, gentlemen," said he. "I am Professor
Poppelbaum."

Thorndyke bowed and offered a chair.

"I called yesterday afternoon," our visitor continued, "at Scotland Yard,
where I heard of your remarkable decipherment and of the convincing proof
of its correctness. Thereupon I borrowed the cryptogram, and have spent
the entire night in studying it, but I cannot connect your solution with
any of the characters. I wonder if you would do me the great favour of
enlightening me as to your method of decipherment, and so save me further
sleepless nights? You may rely on my discretion."

"Have you the document with you?" asked Thorndyke.

The Professor produced it from his pocket-book, and passed it to my
colleague.


"You observe, Professor," said the latter, "that this is a laid paper,
and has no water-mark?"

"Yes, I noticed that."

"And that the writing is in indelible Chinese ink?"

"Yes, yes," said the savant impatiently; "but it is the inscription that
interests me, not the paper and ink."

"Precisely," said Thorndyke. "Now, it was the ink that interested me when
I caught a glimpse of the document three days ago. 'Why,' I asked myself,
'should anyone use this troublesome medium'--for this appears to be
stick ink--'when good writing ink is to be had?' What advantages has
Chinese ink over writing ink? It has several advantages as a drawing ink,
but for writing purposes it has only one: it is quite unaffected by wet.
The obvious inference, then, was that this document was, for some reason,
likely to be exposed to wet. But this inference instantly suggested
another, which I was yesterday able to put to the test--thus."

He filled a tumbler with water, and, rolling up the document, dropped it
in. Immediately there began to appear on it a new set of characters of a
curious grey colour. In a few seconds Thorndyke lifted out the wet paper,
and held it up to the light, and now there was plainly visible an
inscription in transparent lettering, like a very distinct water-mark. It
was in printed Roman capitals, written across the other writing, and
read:

"THE PICKERDILLEY STUF IS UP THE CHIMBLY 416 WARDOUR ST 2ND FLOUR BACK IT
WAS HID BECOS OF OLD MOAKEYS JOOD MOAKEY IS A BLITER."

The Professor regarded the inscription with profound disfavour.

"How do you suppose this was done?" he asked gloomily.

"I will show you," said Thorndyke. "I have prepared a piece of paper to
demonstrate the process to Dr. Jervis. It is exceedingly simple."

He fetched from the office a small plate of glass, and a photographic
dish in which a piece of thin notepaper was soaking in water.

"This paper," said Thorndyke, lifting it out and laying it on the glass,
"has been soaking all night, and is now quite pulpy."

He spread a dry sheet of paper over the wet one, and on the former wrote
heavily with a hard pencil, "Moakey is a bliter." On lifting the upper
sheet, the writing was seen to be transferred in a deep grey to the wet
paper, and when the latter was held up to the light the inscription stood
out clear and transparent as if written with oil.

"When this dries," said Thorndyke, "the writing will completely
disappear, but it will reappear whenever the paper is again wetted."

The Professor nodded.

"Very ingenious," said he--"a sort of artificial palimpsest, in fact.
But I do not understand how that illiterate man could have written in the
difficult Moabite script."

"He did not," said Thorndyke. "The 'cryptogram' was probably written by
one of the leaders of the gang, who, no doubt, supplied copies to the
other members to use instead of blank paper for secret communications.
The object of the Moabite writing was evidently to divert attention from
the paper itself, in case the communication fell into the wrong hands,
and I must say it seems to have answered its purpose very well."

The Professor started, stung by the sudden recollection of his labours.

"Yes," he snorted; "but I am a scholar, sir, not a policeman. Every man
to his trade."

He snatched up his hat, and with a curt "Good-morning," flung out of the
room in dudgeon.

Thorndyke laughed softly.

"Poor Professor!" he murmured. "Our playful friend Barton has much to
answer for."



THE MANDARIN'S PEARL


Mr. Brodribb stretched out his toes on the kerb before the blazing fire
with the air of a man who is by no means insensible to physical comfort.

"You are really an extraordinarily polite fellow, Thorndyke," said he.

He was an elderly man, rosy-gilled, portly, and convivial, to whom a mass
of bushy, white hair, an expansive double chin, and a certain prim
sumptuousness of dress imparted an air of old-world distinction. Indeed,
as he dipped an amethystine nose into his wine-glass, and gazed
thoughtfully at the glowing end of his cigar, he looked the very type of
the well-to-do lawyer of an older generation.

"You are really an extraordinarily polite fellow, Thorndyke," said Mr.
Brodribb.

"I know," replied Thorndyke. "But why this reference to an admitted
fact?"

"The truth has just dawned on me," said the solicitor. "Here am I,
dropping in on you, uninvited and unannounced, sitting in your own
armchair before your fire, smoking your cigars, drinking your
Burgundy--and deuced good Burgundy, too, let me add--and you have not dropped a
single hint of curiosity as to what has brought me here."

"I take the gifts of the gods, you see, and ask no questions," said
Thorndyke.

"Devilish handsome of you, Thorndyke--unsociable beggar like you, too,"
rejoined Mr. Brodribb, a fan of wrinkles spreading out genially from the
corners of his eyes; "but the fact is I have come, in a sense, on
business--always glad of a pretext to look you up, as you know--but I
want to take your opinion on a rather queer case. It is about young
Calverley. You remember Horace Calverley? Well, this is his son. Horace
and I were schoolmates, you know, and after his death the boy, Fred, hung
on to me rather. We're near neighbours down at Weybridge, and very good
friends. I like Fred. He's a good fellow, though cranky, like all his
people."

"What has happened to Fred Calverley?" Thorndyke asked, as the solicitor
paused.

"Why, the fact is," said Mr. Brodribb, "just lately he seems to be going
a bit queer--not mad, mind you--at least, I think not--but undoubtedly
queer. Now, there is a good deal of property, and a good many highly
interested relatives, and, as a natural consequence, there is some talk
of getting him certified. They're afraid he may do something involving
the estate or develop homicidal tendencies, and they talk of possible
suicide--you remember his father's death--but I say that's all bunkum.
The fellow is just a bit cranky, and nothing more."

"What are his symptoms?" asked Thorndyke.

"Oh, he thinks he is being followed about and watched, and he has
delusions; sees himself in the glass with the wrong face, and that sort
of thing, you know."

"You are not highly circumstantial," Thorndyke remarked.

Mr. Brodribb looked at me with a genial smile.

"What a glutton for facts this fellow is, Jervis. But you're right,
Thorndyke; I'm vague. However, Fred will be here presently. We travel
down together, and I took the liberty of asking him to call for me. We'll
get him to tell you about his delusions, if you don't mind. He's not shy
about them. And meanwhile I'll give you a few preliminary facts. The
trouble began about a year ago. He was in a railway accident, and that
knocked him all to pieces. Then he went for a voyage to recruit, and the
ship broke her propeller-shaft in a storm and became helpless. That
didn't improve the state of his nerves. Then he went down the
Mediterranean, and after a month or two, back he came, no better than
when he started. But here he is, I expect."

He went over to the door and admitted a tall, frail young man whom
Thorndyke welcomed with quiet geniality, and settled in a chair by the
fire. I looked curiously at our visitor. He was a typical neurotic--slender,
fragile, eager. Wide-open blue eyes with broad pupils, in which
I could plainly see the characteristic "hippus"--that incessant change
of size that marks the unstable nervous equilibrium--parted lips, and
wandering taper fingers, were as the stigmata of his disorder. He was of
the stuff out of which prophets and devotees, martyrs, reformers, and
third-rate poets are made.

"I have been telling Dr. Thorndyke about these nervous troubles of
yours," said Mr. Brodribb presently. "I hope you don't mind. He is an old
friend, you know, and he is very much interested."

"It is very good of him," said Calverley. Then he flushed deeply, and
added: "But they are not really nervous, you know. They can't be merely
subjective."

"You think they can't be?" said Thorndyke.

"No, I am sure they are not." He flushed again like a girl, and looked
earnestly at Thorndyke with his big, dreamy eyes. "But you doctors," he
said, "are so dreadfully sceptical of all spiritual phenomena. You are
such materialists."

"Yes," said Mr. Brodribb; "the doctors are not hot on the supernatural,
and that's the fact."

"Supposing you tell us about your experiences," said Thorndyke
persuasively. "Give us a chance to believe, if we can't explain away."

Calverley reflected for a few moments; then, looking earnestly at
Thorndyke, he said: "Very well; if it won't bore you, I will. It is a
curious story."

"I have told Dr. Thorndyke about your voyage and your trip down the
Mediterranean," said Mr. Brodribb.

"Then," said Calverley, "I will begin with the events that are actually
connected with these strange visitations. The first of these occurred in
Marseilles. I was in a curio-shop there, looking over some Algerian and
Moorish tilings, when my attention was attracted by a sort of charm or
pendant that hung in a glass case. It was not particularly beautiful, but
its appearance was quaint and curious, and took my fancy. It consisted of
an oblong block of ebony in which was set a single pear-shaped pearl more
than three-quarters of an inch long. The sides of the ebony block were
lacquered--probably to conceal a joint--and bore a number of Chinese
characters, and at the top was a little gold image with a hole through
it, presumably for a string to suspend it by. Excepting for the pearl,
the whole thing was uncommonly like one of those ornamental tablets of
Chinese ink.

"Now, I had taken a fancy to the thing, and I can afford to indulge my
fancies in moderation. The man wanted five pounds for it; he assured me
that the pearl was a genuine one of fine quality, and obviously did not
believe it himself. To me, however, it looked like a real pearl, and I
determined to take the risk; so I paid the money, and he bowed me out
with a smile--I may almost say a grin--of satisfaction. He would not
have been so well pleased if he had followed me to a jeweller's to whom I
took it for an expert opinion; for the jeweller pronounced the pearl to
be undoubtedly genuine, and worth anything up to a thousand pounds.

"A day or two later, I happened to show my new purchase to some men whom
I knew, who had dropped in at Marseilles in their yacht. They were highly
amused at my having bought the thing, and when I told them what I had
paid for it, they positively howled with derision.

"'Why, you silly guffin,' said one of them, a man named Halliwell, 'I
could have had it ten days ago for half a sovereign, or probably five
shillings. I wish now I had bought it; then I could have sold it to you.'

"It seemed that a sailor had been hawking the pendant round the harbour,
and had been on board the yacht with it.

"'Deuced anxious the beggar was to get rid of it, too,' said Halliwell,
grinning at the recollection. 'Swore it was a genuine pearl of priceless
value, and was willing to deprive himself of it for the trifling sum of
half a jimmy. But we'd heard that sort of thing before. However, the
curio-man seems to have speculated on the chance of meeting with a
greenhorn, and he seems to have pulled it off. Lucky curio man!'

"I listened patiently to their gibes, and when they had talked themselves
out I told them about the jeweller. They were most frightfully sick; and
when we had taken the pendant to a dealer in gems who happened to be
staying in the town, and he had offered me five hundred pounds for it,
their language wasn't fit for a divinity students' debating club.
Naturally the story got noised abroad, and when I left, it was the talk
of the place. The general opinion was that the sailor, who was traced to
a tea-ship that had put into the harbour, had stolen it from some Chinese
passenger; and no less than seventeen different Chinamen came forward to
claim it as their stolen property.

"Soon after this I returned to England, and, as my nerves were still in a
very shaky state, I came to live with my cousin Alfred, who has a large
house at Weybridge. At this time he had a friend staying with him, a
certain Captain Raggerton, and the two men appeared to be on very
intimate terms. I did not take to Raggerton at all. He was a good-looking
man, pleasant in his manners, and remarkably plausible. But the fact is--I
am speaking in strict confidence, of course--he was a bad egg. He had
been in the Guards, and I don't quite know why he left; but I do know
that he played bridge and baccarat pretty heavily at several clubs, and
that he had a reputation for being a rather uncomfortably lucky player.
He did a good deal at the race-meetings, too, and was in general such an
obvious undesirable that I could never understand my cousin's intimacy
with him, though I must say that Alfred's habits had changed somewhat for
the worse since I had left England.

"The fame of my purchase seems to have preceded me, for when, one day, I
produced the pendant to show them, I found that they knew all about it.
Raggerton had heard the story from a naval man, and I gathered vaguely
that he had heard something that I had not, and that he did not care to
tell me; for when my cousin and he talked about the pearl, which they did
pretty often, certain significant looks passed between them, and certain
veiled references were made which I could not fail to notice.

"One day I happened to be telling them of a curious incident that
occurred on my way home. I had travelled to England on one of Holt's big
China boats, not liking the crowd and bustle of the regular
passenger-lines. Now, one afternoon, when we had been at sea a couple of
days, I took a book down to my berth, intending to have a quiet read till
tea-time. Soon, however, I dropped off into a doze, and must have
remained asleep for over an hour. I awoke suddenly, and as I opened my
eyes, I perceived that the door of the state-room was half-open, and a
well-dressed Chinaman, in native costume, was looking in at me. He closed
the door immediately, and I remained for a few moments paralyzed by the
start that he had given me. Then I leaped from my bunk, opened the door,
and looked out. But the alley-way was empty. The Chinaman had vanished as
if by magic.

"This little occurrence made me quite nervous for a day or two, which was
very foolish of me; but my nerves were all on edge--and I am afraid they
are still."

"Yes," said Thorndyke. "There was nothing mysterious about the affair.
These boats carry a Chinese crew, and the man you saw was probably a
Serang, or whatever they call the gang-captains on these vessels. Or he
may have been a native passenger who had strayed into the wrong part of
the ship."

"Exactly," agreed our client. "But to return to Raggerton. He listened
with quite extraordinary interest as I was telling this story, and when I
had finished he looked very queerly at my cousin.

"'A deuced odd thing, this, Calverley,' said he. 'Of course, it may be
only a coincidence, but it really does look as if there was something,
after all, in that--'

"'Shut up, Raggerton,' said my cousin. 'We don't want any of that rot.'

"'What is he talking about?" I asked.

"'Oh, it's only a rotten, silly yarn that he has picked up somewhere.
You're not to tell him, Raggerton.'

"'I don't see why I am not to be told,' I said, rather sulkily. 'I'm not
a baby.'

"'No,' said Alfred, 'but you're an invalid. You don't want any horrors.'

"In effect, he refused to go into the matter any further, and I was left
on tenter-hooks of curiosity.

"However, the very next day I got Raggerton alone in the smoking-room,
and had a little talk with him. He had just dropped a hundred pounds on a
double event that hadn't come off, and I expected to find him pliable.
Nor was I disappointed, for, when we had negotiated a little loan, he was
entirely at my service, and willing to tell me everything, on my
promising not to give him away to Alfred.

"'Now, you understand,' he said, 'that this yarn about your pearl is
nothing but a damn silly fable that's been going the round in Marseilles.
I don't know where it came from, or what sort of demented rotter invented
it; I had it from a Johnnie in the Mediterranean Squadron, and you can
have a copy of his letter if you want it.'

"I said that I did want it. Accordingly, that same evening he handed me a
copy of the narrative extracted from his friend's letter, the substance
of which was this: "About four months ago there was lying in Canton
Harbour a large English barque. Her name is not mentioned, but that is
not material to the story. She had got her cargo stowed and her crew
signed on, and was only waiting for certain official formalities to be
completed before putting to sea on her homeward voyage. Just ahead of
her, at the same quay, was a Danish ship that had been in collision
outside, and was now laid up pending the decision of the Admiralty Court.
She had been unloaded, and her crew paid off, with the exception of one
elderly man, who remained on board as ship-keeper. Now, a considerable
part of the cargo of the English barque was the property of a certain
wealthy mandarin, and this person had been about the vessel a good deal
while she was taking in her lading.

"One day, when the mandarin was on board the barque, it happened that
three of the seamen were sitting in the galley smoking and chatting with
the cook--an elderly Chinaman named Wo-li--and the latter, pointing out
the mandarin to the sailors, expatiated on his enormous wealth, assuring
them that he was commonly believed to carry on his person articles of
sufficient value to buy up the entire lading of a ship.

"Now, unfortunately for the mandarin, it chanced that these three sailors
were about the greatest rascals on board; which is saying a good deal
when one considers the ordinary moral standard that prevails in the
forecastle of a sailing-ship. Nor was Wo-li himself an angel; in fact, he
was a consummate villain, and seems to have been the actual originator of
the plot which was presently devised to rob the mandarin.

"This plot was as remarkable for its simplicity as for its cold-blooded
barbarity. On the evening before the barque sailed, the three seamen,
Nilsson, Foucault, and Parratt, proceeded to the Danish ship with a
supply of whisky, made the ship-keeper royally drunk, and locked him up
in an empty berth. Meanwhile Wo-li made a secret communication to the
mandarin to the effect that certain stolen property, believed to be his,
had been secreted in the hold of the empty ship. Thereupon the mandarin
came down hot-foot to the quay-side, and was received on board by the
three seamen, who had got the covers off the after-hatch in readiness.
Parratt now ran down the iron ladder to show the way, and the mandarin
followed; but when they reached the lower deck, and looked down the hatch
into the black darkness of the lower hold, he seems to have taken fright,
and begun to climb up again. Meanwhile Nilsson had made a running bowline
in the end of a loose halyard that was rove through a block aloft, and
had been used for hoisting out the cargo. As the mandarin came up, he
leaned over the coaming of the hatch, dropped the noose over the
Chinaman's head, jerked it tight, and then he and Foucault hove on the
fall of the rope. The unfortunate Chinaman was dragged from the ladder,
and, as he swung clear, the two rascals let go the rope, allowing him to
drop through the hatches into the lower hold. Then they belayed the rope,
and went down below. Parratt had already lighted a slush-lamp, by the
glimmer of which they could see the mandarin swinging to and fro like a
pendulum within a few feet of the ballast, and still quivering and
twitching in his death-throes. They were now joined by Wo-li, who had
watched the proceedings from the quay, and the four villains proceeded,
without loss of time, to rifle the body as it hung. To their surprise and
disgust, they found nothing of value excepting an ebony pendant set with
a single large pearl; but Wo-li, though evidently disappointed at the
nature of the booty, assured his comrades that this alone was well worth
the hazard, pointing out the great size and exceptional beauty of the
pearl. As to this, the seamen know nothing about pearls, but the thing
was done, and had to be made the best of; so they made the rope fast to
the lower deck-beams, cut off the remainder and unrove it from the block,
and went back to their ship.

"It was twenty-four hours before the ship-keeper was sufficiently sober
to break out of the berth in which he had been locked, by which time the
barque was well out to sea; and it was another three days before the body
of the mandarin was found. An active search was then made for the
murderers, but as they were strangers to the ship-keeper, no clues to
their whereabouts could be discovered.

"Meanwhile, the four murderers were a good deal exercised as to the
disposal of the booty. Since it could not be divided, it was evident that
it must be entrusted to the keeping of one of them. The choice in the
first place fell upon Wo-li, in whose chest the pendant was deposited as
soon as the party came on board, it being arranged that the Chinaman
should produce the jewel for inspection by his confederates whenever
called upon.

"For six weeks nothing out of the common occurred; but then a very
singular event befell. The four conspirators were sitting outside the
galley one evening, when suddenly the cook uttered a cry of amazement and
horror. The other three turned to see what it was that had so disturbed
their comrade, and then they, too, were struck dumb with consternation;
for, standing at the door of the companion-hatch--the barque was a
flush-decked vessel--was the mandarin whom they had left for dead. He
stood quietly regarding them for fully a minute, while they stared at him
transfixed with terror. Then he beckoned to them, and went below.

"So petrified were they with astonishment and mortal fear that they
remained for a long time motionless and dumb. At last they plucked up
courage, and began to make furtive inquiries among the crew; but no
one--not even the steward--knew anything of any passengers, or, indeed, of
any Chinaman, on board the ship, excepting Wo-li.

"At day-break the next morning, when the cook's mate went to the galley
to fill the coppers, he found Wo-li hanging from a hook in the ceiling.
The cook's body was stiff and cold, and had evidently been hanging
several hours. The report of the tragedy quickly spread through the ship,
and the three conspirators hurried off to remove the pearl from the dead
man's chest before the officers should come to examine it. The cheap lock
was easily picked with a bent wire, and the jewel abstracted; but now the
question arose as to who should take charge of it. The eagerness to be
the actual custodian of the precious bauble, which had been at first
displayed, now gave place to equally strong reluctance. But someone had
to take charge of it, and after a long and angry discussion Nilsson was
prevailed upon to stow it in his chest.

"A fortnight passed. The three conspirators went about their duties
soberly, like men burdened with some secret anxiety, and in their leisure
moments they would sit and talk with bated breath of the apparition at
the companion-hatch, and the mysterious death of their late comrade.

"At last the blow fell.

"It was at the end of the second dog-watch that the hands were gathered
on the forecastle, preparing to make sail after a spell of bad weather.
Suddenly Nilsson gave a husky shout, and rushed at Parratt, holding out
the key of his chest.

"'Here you, Parratt,' he exclaimed, 'go below and take that accursed
thing out of my chest.'

"'What for--' demanded Parratt; and then he and Foucault, who was
standing close by, looked aft to see what Nilsson was staring at.

"Instantly they both turned white as ghosts, and fell trembling so that
they could hardly stand; for there was the mandarin, standing calmly by
the companion, returning with a steady, impassive gaze their looks of
horror. And even as they looked he beckoned and went below.

"'D'ye hear, Parratt--' gasped Nilsson; 'take my key and do what I say,
or else--'

"But at this moment the order was given to go aloft and set all plain
sail; the three men went off to their respective posts, Nilsson going up
the fore-topmast rigging, and the other two to the main-top. Having
finished their work aloft, Foucault and Parratt who were both in the port
watch, came down on deck, and then, it being their watch below, they went
and turned in.

"When they turned out with their watch at midnight, they looked about for
Nilsson, who was in the starboard watch, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Thinking he might have slipped below unobserved, they made no remark,
though they were very uneasy about him; but when the starboard watch came
on deck at four o'clock, and Nilsson did not appear with his mates, the
two men became alarmed, and made inquiries about him. It was now
discovered that no one had seen him since eight o'clock on the previous
evening, and, this being reported to the officer of the watch, the latter
ordered all hands to be called. But still Nilsson did not appear. A
thorough search was now instituted, both below and aloft, and as there
was still no sign of the missing man, it was concluded that he had fallen
overboard.

"But at eight o'clock two men were sent aloft to shake out the
fore-royal. They reached the yard almost simultaneously, and were just
stepping on to the foot-ropes when one of them gave a shout; then the
pair came sliding down a backstay, with faces as white as tallow. As soon
as they reached the deck, they took the officer of the watch forward,
and, standing on the heel of the bowsprit, pointed aloft. Several of the
hands, including Foucault and Parratt, had followed, and all looked up;
and there they saw the body of Nilsson, hanging on the front of the
fore-topgallant sail. He was dangling at the end of a gasket, and
bouncing up and down on the taut belly of the sail as the ship rose and
fell to the send of the sea.

"The two survivors were now in some doubt about having anything further
to do with the pearl. But the great value of the jewel, and the
consideration that it was now to be divided between two instead of four,
tempted them. They abstracted it from Nilsson's chest, and then, as they
could not come to an agreement in any other way, they decided to settle
who should take charge of it by tossing a coin. The coin was accordingly
spun, and the pearl went to Foucault's chest.

"From this moment Foucault lived in a state of continual apprehension.
When on deck, his eyes were for ever wandering towards the companion
hatch, and during his watch below, when not asleep, he would sit moodily
on his chest, lost in gloomy reflection. But a fortnight passed, then
three weeks, and still nothing happened. Land was sighted, the Straits of
Gibraltar passed, and the end of the voyage was but a matter of days. And
still the dreaded mandarin made no sign.

"At length the ship was within twenty-four hours of Marseilles, to which
port a large part of the cargo was consigned. Active preparations were
being made for entering the port, and among other things the shore tackle
was being overhauled. A share in this latter work fell to Foucault and
Parratt, and about the middle of the second dog-watch--seven o'clock in
the evening--they were sitting on the deck working an eye-splice in the
end of a large rope. Suddenly Foucault, who was facing forward, saw his
companion turn pale and stare aft with an expression of terror. He
immediately turned and looked over his shoulder to see what Parratt was
staring at. It was the mandarin, standing by the companion, gravely
watching them; and as Foucault turned and met his gaze, the Chinaman
beckoned and went below.

"For the rest of that day Parratt kept close to his terrified comrade,
and during their watch below he endeavoured to remain awake, that he
might keep his friend in view. Nothing happened through the night, and
the following morning, when they came on deck for the forenoon watch,
their port was well in sight. The two men now separated for the first
time, Parratt going aft to take his trick at the wheel, and Foucault
being set to help in getting ready the ground tackle.

"Half an hour later Parratt saw the mate stand on the rail and lean
outboard, holding on to the mizzen-shrouds while he stared along the
ship's side. Then he jumped on to the deck and shouted angrily: 'Forward,
there! What the deuce is that man up to under the starboard cat-head--'

"The men on the forecastle rushed to the side and looked over; two of
them leaned over the rail with the bight of a rope between them, and a
third came running aft to the mate. 'It's Foucault, sir,' Parratt heard
him say. 'He's hanged hisself from the cat-head.'

"As soon as he was off duty, Parratt made his way to his dead comrade's
chest, and, opening it with his pick-lock, took out the pearl. It was now
his sole property, and, as the ship was within an hour or two of her
destination, he thought he had little to fear from its murdered owner. As
soon as the vessel was alongside the wharf, he would slip ashore and get
rid of the jewel, even if he sold it at a comparatively low price. The
thing looked perfectly simple.

"In actual practice, however, it turned out quite otherwise. He began by
accosting a well-dressed stranger and offering the pendant for fifty
pounds; but the only reply that he got was a knowing smile and a shake of
the head. When this experience had been repeated a dozen times or more,
and he had been followed up and down the streets for nearly an hour by a
suspicious gendarme, he began to grow anxious. He visited quite a number
of ships and yachts in the harbour, and at each refusal the price of his
treasure came down, until he was eager to sell it for a few francs. But
still no one would have it. Everyone took it for granted that the pearl
was a sham, and most of the persons whom he accosted assumed that it had
been stolen. The position was getting desperate. Evening was
approaching--the time of the dreaded dog-watches--and still the pearl was in his
possession. Gladly would he now have given it away for nothing, but he
dared not try, for this would lay him open to the strongest suspicion.

"At last, in a by-street, he came upon the shop of a curio-dealer.
Putting on a careless and cheerful manner, he entered and offered the
pendant for ten francs. The dealer looked at it, shook his head, and
handed it back.

"'What will you give me for it--' demanded Parratt, breaking out into a
cold sweat at the prospect of a final refusal.

"The dealer felt in his pocket, drew out a couple of francs, and held
them out.

"'Very well,' said Parratt. He took the money as calmly as he could, and
marched out of the shop, with a gasp of relief, leaving the pendant in
the dealer's hand.

"The jewel was hung up in a glass case, and nothing more was thought
about it until some ten days later, when an English tourist, who came
into the shop, noticed it and took a liking to it. Thereupon the dealer
offered it to him for five pounds, assuring him that it was a genuine
pearl, a statement that, to his amazement, the stranger evidently
believed. He was then deeply afflicted at not having asked a higher
price, but the bargain had been struck, and the Englishman went off with
his purchase.

"This was the story told by Captain Raggerton's friend, and I have given
it to you in full detail, having read the manuscript over many times
since it was given to me. No doubt you will regard it as a mere
traveller's tale, and consider me a superstitious idiot for giving any
credence to it."

"It certainly seems more remarkable for picturesqueness than for
credibility," Thorndyke agreed. "May I ask," he continued, "whether
Captain Raggerton's friend gave any explanation as to how this singular
story came to his knowledge, or to that of anybody else?"

"Oh yes," replied Calverley; "I forgot to mention that the seaman,
Parratt, very shortly after he had sold the pearl, fell down the hatch
into the hold as the ship was unloading, and was very badly injured. He
was taken to the hospital, where he died on the following day; and it was
while he was lying there in a dying condition that he confessed to the
murder, and gave this circumstantial account of it."

"I see," said Thorndyke; "and I understand that you accept the story as
literally true?"

"Undoubtedly." Calverley flushed defiantly as he returned Thorndyke's
look, and continued: "You see, I am not a man of science: therefore my
beliefs are not limited to things that can be weighed and measured. There
are things, Dr. Thorndyke, which are outside the range of our puny
intellects; things that science, with its arrogant materialism, puts
aside and ignores with close-shut eyes. I prefer to believe in things
which obviously exist, even though I cannot explain them. It is the
humbler and, I think, the wiser attitude."

"But, my dear Fred," protested Mr. Brodribb, "this is a rank fairy-tale."

Calverley turned upon the solicitor. "If you had seen what I have seen,
you would not only believe: you would know."

"Tell us what you have seen, then," said Mr. Brodribb.

"I will, if you wish to hear it," said Calverley. "I will continue the
strange history of the Mandarin's Pearl."

He lit a fresh cigarette and continued:

"The night I came to Beechhurst--that is my cousin's house, you know--a
rather absurd thing happened, which I mention on account of its
connection with what has followed. I had gone to my room early, and sat
for some time writing letters before getting ready for bed. When I had
finished my letters, I started on a tour of inspection of my room. I was
then, you must remember, in a very nervous state, and it had become my
habit to examine the room in which I was to sleep before undressing,
looking under the bed, and in any cupboards and closets that there
happened to be. Now, on looking round my new room, I perceived that there
was a second door, and I at once proceeded to open it to see where it led
to. As soon as I opened the door, I got a terrible start. I found myself
looking into a narrow closet or passage, lined with pegs, on which the
servant had hung some of my clothes; at the farther end was another door,
and, as I stood looking into the closet, I observed, with startled
amazement, a man standing holding the door half-open, and silently
regarding me. I stood for a moment staring at him, with my heart thumping
and my limbs all of a tremble; then I slammed the door and ran off to
look for my cousin.

"He was in the billiard-room with Raggerton, and the pair looked up
sharply as I entered.

"'Alfred,' I said, 'where does that passage lead to out of my room--'

"'Lead to--' said he. 'Why, it doesn't lead anywhere. It used to open
into a cross corridor, but when the house was altered, the corridor was
done away with, and this passage closed up. It is only a cupboard now.'

"'Well, there's a man in it--or there was just now.'

"'Nonsense!' he exclaimed; 'impossible! Let us go and look at the place.'

"He and Raggerton rose, and we went together to my room. As we flung open
the door of the closet and looked in, we all three burst into a laugh.
There were three men now looking at us from the open door at the other
end, and the mystery was solved. A large mirror had been placed at the
end of the closet to cover the partition which cut it off from the cross
corridor.

"This incident naturally exposed me to a good deal of chaff from my
cousin and Captain Raggerton; but I often wished that the mirror had not
been placed there, for it happened over and over again that, going to the
cupboard hurriedly, and not thinking of the mirror, I got quite a bad
shock on being confronted by a figure apparently coming straight at me
through an open door. In fact, it annoyed me so much, in my nervous
state, that I even thought of asking my cousin to give me a different
room; but, happening to refer to the matter when talking to Raggerton, I
found the Captain so scornful of my cowardice that my pride was touched,
and I let the affair drop.

"And now I come to a very strange occurrence, which I shall relate quite
frankly, although I know beforehand that you will set me down as a liar
or a lunatic. I had been away from home for a fortnight, and as I
returned rather late at night, I went straight to my room. Having partly
undressed, I took my clothes in one hand and a candle in the other, and
opened the cupboard door. I stood for a moment looking nervously at my
double, standing, candle in hand, looking at me through the open door at
the other end of the passage; then I entered, and, setting the candle on
a shelf, proceeded to hang up my clothes. I had hung them up, and had
just reached up for the candle, when my eye was caught by something
strange in the mirror. It no longer reflected the candle in my hand, but
instead of it, a large coloured paper lantern. I stood petrified with
astonishment, and gazed into the mirror; and then I saw that my own
reflection was changed, too; that, in place of my own figure, was that of
an elderly Chinaman, who stood regarding me with stony calm.

"I must have stood for near upon a minute, unable to move and scarce able
to breathe, face to face with that awful figure. At length I turned to
escape, and, as I turned, he turned also, and I could see him, over my
shoulder, hurrying away. As I reached the door, I halted for a moment,
looking back with the door in my hand, holding the candle above my head;
and even so he halted, looking back at me, with his hand upon the door
and his lantern held above his head.

"I was so much upset that I could not go to bed for some hours, but
continued to pace the room, in spite of my fatigue. Now and again I was
impelled, irresistibly, to peer into the cupboard, but nothing was to be
seen in the mirror save my own figure, candle in hand, peeping in at me
through the half-open door. And each time that I looked into my own
white, horror-stricken face, I shut the door hastily and turned away with
a shudder; for the pegs, with the clothes hanging on them, seemed to call
to me. I went to bed at last, and before I fell asleep I formed the
resolution that, if I was spared until the next day, I would write to the
British Consul at Canton, and offer to restore the pearl to the relatives
of the murdered mandarin.

"On the following day I wrote and despatched the letter, after which I
felt more composed, though I was haunted continually by the recollection
of that stony, impassive figure; and from time to time I felt an
irresistible impulse to go and look in at the door of the closet, at the
mirror and the pegs with the clothes hanging from them. I told my cousin
of the visitation that I had received, but he merely laughed, and was
frankly incredulous; while the Captain bluntly advised me not to be a
superstitious donkey.

"For some days after this I was left in peace, and began to hope that my
letter had appeased the spirit of the murdered man; but on the fifth day,
about six o'clock in the evening, happening to want some papers that I
had left in the pocket of a coat which was hanging in the closet, I went
in to get them. I took in no candle, as it was not yet dark, but left the
door wide open to light me. The coat that I wanted was near the end of
the closet, not more than four paces from the mirror, and as I went
towards it I watched my reflection rather nervously as it advanced to
meet me. I found my coat, and as I felt for the papers, I still kept a
suspicious eye on my double. And, even as I looked, a most strange
phenomenon appeared: the mirror seemed for an instant to darken or cloud
over, and then, as it cleared again, I saw, standing dark against the
light of the open door behind him, the figure of the mandarin. After a
single glance, I ran out of the closet, shaking with agitation; but as I
turned to shut the door, I noticed that it was my own figure that was
reflected in the glass. The Chinaman had vanished in an instant.

"It now became evident that my letter had not served its purpose, and I
was plunged in despair; the more so since, on this day, I felt again the
dreadful impulse to go and look at the pegs on the walls of the closet.
There was no mistaking the meaning of that impulse, and each time that I
went, I dragged myself away reluctantly, though shivering with horror.
One circumstance, indeed, encouraged me a little; the mandarin had not,
on either occasion, beckoned to me as he had done to the sailors, so that
perhaps some way of escape yet lay open to me.

"During the next few days I considered very earnestly what measures I
could take to avert the doom that seemed to be hanging over me. The
simplest plan, that of passing the pearl on to some other person, was out
of the question; it would be nothing short of murder. On the other hand,
I could not wait for an answer to my letter; for even if I remained
alive, I felt that my reason would have given way long before the reply
reached me. But while I was debating what I should do, the mandarin
appeared to me again; and then, after an interval of only two days, he
came to me once more. That was last night. I remained gazing at him,
fascinated, with my flesh creeping, as he stood, lantern in hand, looking
steadily in my face. At last he held out his hand to me, as if asking me
to give him the pearl; then the mirror darkened, and he vanished in a
flash; and in the place where he had stood there was my own reflection
looking at me out of the glass.

"That last visitation decided me. When I left home this morning the pearl
was in my pocket, and as I came over Waterloo Bridge, I leaned over the
parapet and flung the thing into the water. After that I felt quite
relieved for a time; I had shaken the accursed thing off without
involving anyone in the curse that it carried. But presently I began to
feel fresh misgivings, and the conviction has been growing upon me all
day that I have done the wrong thing. I have only placed it for ever
beyond the reach of its owner, whereas I ought to have burnt it, after
the Chinese fashion, so that its non-material essence could have joined
the spiritual body of him to whom it had belonged when both were clothed
with material substance.

"But it can't be altered now. For good or for evil, the thing is done,
and God alone knows what the end of it will be."

As he concluded, Calverley uttered a deep sigh, and covered his face with
his slender, delicate hands. For a space we were all silent and, I think,
deeply moved; for, grotesquely unreal as the whole thing was, there was a
pathos, and even a tragedy, in it that we all felt to be very real
indeed.

Suddenly Mr. Brodribb started and looked at his watch.

"Good gracious, Calverley, we shall lose our train."

The young man pulled himself together and stood up. "We shall just do it
if we go at once," said he. "Good-bye," he added, shaking Thorndyke's
hand and mine. "You have been very patient, and I have been rather prosy,
I am afraid. Come along, Mr. Brodribb."

Thorndyke and I followed them out on to the landing, and I heard my
colleague say to the solicitor in a low tone, but very earnestly: "Get
him away from that house, Brodribb, and don't let him out of your sight
for a moment."

I did not catch the solicitor's reply, if he made any, but when we were
back in our room I noticed that Thorndyke was more agitated than I had
ever seen him.

"I ought not to have let them go," he exclaimed. "Confound me! If I had
had a grain of wit, I should have made them lose their train."

He lit his pipe and fell to pacing the room with long strides, his eyes
bent on the floor with an expression sternly reflective. At last, finding
him hopelessly taciturn, I knocked out my pipe and went to bed.

As I was dressing on the following morning, Thorndyke entered my room.
His face was grave even to sternness, and he held a telegram in his hand.

"I am going to Weybridge this morning," he said shortly, holding the
"flimsy" out to me. "Shall you come?"

I took the paper from him, and read:

"Come, for God's sake! F. C. is dead. You will understand.--BRODRIBB."

I handed him back the telegram, too much shocked for a moment to speak.
The whole dreadful tragedy summed up in that curt message rose before me
in an instant, and a wave of deep pity swept over me at this miserable
end to the sad, empty life.

"What an awful thing, Thorndyke!" I exclaimed at length. "To be killed by
a mere grotesque delusion."

"Do you think so?" he asked dryly. "Well, we shall see; but you will
come?"

"Yes," I replied; and as he retired, I proceeded hurriedly to finish
dressing.

Half an hour later, as we rose from a rapid breakfast, Polton came into
the room, carrying a small roll-up case of tools and a bunch of skeleton
keys.

"Will you have them in a bag, sir?" he asked.

"No," replied Thorndyke; "in my overcoat pocket. Oh, and here is a note,
Polton, which I want you to take round to Scotland Yard. It is to the
Assistant Commissioner, and you are to make sure that it is in the right
hands before you leave. And here is a telegram to Mr. Brodribb."

He dropped the keys and the tool-case into his pocket, and we went down
together to the waiting hansom.

At Weybridge Station we found Mr. Brodribb pacing the platform in a state
of extreme dejection. He brightened up somewhat when he saw us, and wrung
our hands with emotional heartiness.

"It was very good of you both to come at a moment's notice," he said
warmly, "and I feel your kindness very much. You understood, of course,
Thorndyke?"

"Yes," Thorndyke replied. "I suppose the mandarin beckoned to him."

Mr. Brodribb turned with a look of surprise. "How did you guess that?" he
asked; and then, without waiting for a reply, he took from his pocket a
note, which he handed to my colleague. "The poor old fellow left this for
me," he said. "The servant found it on his dressing-table."

Thorndyke glanced through the note and passed it to me. It consisted of
but a few words, hurriedly written in a tremulous hand.

"He has beckoned to me, and I must go. Good-bye, dear old friend."

"How does his cousin take the matter?" asked Thorndyke.

"He doesn't know of it yet," replied the lawyer. "Alfred and Raggerton
went out after an early breakfast, to cycle over to Guildford on some
business or other, and they have not returned yet. The catastrophe was
discovered soon after they left. The maid went to his room with a cup of
tea, and was astonished to find that his bed had not been slept in. She
ran down in alarm and reported to the butler, who went up at once and
searched the room; but he could find no trace of the missing one, except
my note, until it occurred to him to look in the cupboard. As he opened
the door he got rather a start from his own reflection in the mirror; and
then he saw poor Fred hanging from one of the pegs near the end of the
closet, close to the glass. It's a melancholy affair--but here is the
house, and here is the butler waiting for us. Mr. Alfred is not back yet,
then, Stevens?"

"No, sir." The white-faced, frightened-looking man had evidently been
waiting at the gate from distaste of the house, and he now walked back
with manifest relief at our arrival. When we entered the house, he
ushered us without remark up on to the first-floor, and, preceding us
along a corridor, halted near the end. "That's the room, sir," said he;
and without another word he turned and went down the stairs.

We entered the room, and Mr. Brodribb followed on tiptoe, looking about
him fearfully, and casting awe-struck glances at the shrouded form on the
bed. To the latter Thorndyke advanced, and gently drew back the sheet.

"You'd better not look, Brodribb," said he, as he bent over the corpse.
He felt the limbs and examined the cord, which still remained round the
neck, its raggedly-severed end testifying to the terror of the servants
who had cut down the body. Then he replaced the sheet and looked at his
watch. "It happened at about three o'clock in the morning," said he. "He
must have struggled with the impulse for some time, poor fellow! Now let
us look at the cupboard."

We went together to a door in the corner of the room, and, as we opened
it, we were confronted by three figures, apparently looking in at us
through an open door at the other end.

"It is really rather startling," said the lawyer, in a subdued voice,
looking almost apprehensively at the three figures that advanced to meet
us. "The poor lad ought never to have been here."

It was certainly an eerie place, and I could not but feel, as we walked
down the dark, narrow passage, with those other three dimly-seen figures
silently coming towards us, and mimicking our every gesture, that it was
no place for a nervous, superstitious man like poor Fred Calverley. Close
to the end of the long row of pegs was one from which hung an end of
stout box-cord, and to this Mr. Brodribb pointed with an awe-struck
gesture. But Thorndyke gave it only a brief glance, and then walked up to
the mirror, which he proceeded to examine minutely. It was a very large
glass, nearly seven feet high, extending the full width of the closet,
and reaching to within a foot of the floor; and it seemed to have been
let into the partition from behind, for, both above and below, the
woodwork was in front of it. While I was making these observations, I
watched Thorndyke with no little curiosity. First he rapped his knuckles
on the glass; then he lighted a wax match, and, holding it close to the
mirror, carefully watched the reflection of the flame. Finally, laying
his cheek on the glass, he held the match at arm's length, still close to
the mirror, and looked at the reflection along the surface. Then he blew
out the match and walked back into the room, shutting the cupboard door
as we emerged.

"I think," said he, "that as we shall all undoubtedly be subpoenaed by
the coroner, it would be well to put together a few notes of the facts. I
see there is a writing-table by the window, and I would propose that you,
Brodribb, just jot down a precis of the statement that you heard last
night, while Jervis notes down the exact condition of the body. While you
are doing this, I will take a look round."

"We might find a more cheerful place to write in," grumbled Mr. Brodribb;
"however--"

Without finishing the sentence, he sat down at the table, and, having
found some sermon paper, dipped a pen in the ink by way of encouraging
his thoughts. At this moment Thorndyke quietly slipped out of the room,
and I proceeded to make a detailed examination of the body: in which
occupation I was interrupted at intervals by requests from the lawyer
that I should refresh his memory.

We had been occupied thus for about a quarter of an hour, when a quick
step was heard outside, the door was opened abruptly, and a man burst
into the room. Brodribb rose and held out his hand.

"This is a sad home-coming for you, Alfred," said he.

"Yes, my God!" the newcomer exclaimed. "It's awful."

He looked askance at the corpse on the bed, and wiped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Alfred Calverley was not extremely prepossessing. Like
his cousin, he was obviously neurotic, but there were signs of
dissipation in his face, which, just now, was pale and ghastly, and wore
an expression of abject fear. Moreover, his entrance was accompanied by
that of a perceptible odour of brandy.

He had walked over, without noticing me, to the writing-table, and as he
stood there, talking in subdued tones with the lawyer, I suddenly found
Thorndyke at my side. He had stolen in noiselessly through the door that
Calverley had left open.

"Show him Brodribb's note," he whispered, "and then make him go in and
look at the peg."

With this mysterious request, he slipped out of the room as silently as
he had come, unperceived either by Calverley or the lawyer.

"Has Captain Raggerton returned with you?" Brodribb was inquiring.

"No, he has gone into the town," was the reply; "but he won't be long.
This will be a frightful shock to him."

At this point I stepped forward. "Have you shown Mr. Calverley the
extraordinary letter that the deceased left for you?" I asked.

"What letter was that?" demanded Calverley, with a start.

Mr. Brodribb drew forth the note and handed it to him. As he read it
through, Calverley turned white to the lips, and the paper trembled in
his hand.

"'He has beckoned to me, and I must go,'" he read. Then, with a furtive
glance at the lawyer: "Who had beckoned? What did he mean?"

Mr. Brodribb briefly explained the meaning of the allusion, adding: "I
thought you knew all about it."

"Yes, yes," said Calverley, with some confusion; "I remember the matter
now you mention it. But it's all so dreadful and bewildering."

At this point I again interposed. "There is a question," I said, "that
may be of some importance. It refers to the cord with which the poor
fellow hanged himself. Can you identify that cord, Mr. Calverley?"

"I!" he exclaimed, staring at me, and wiping the sweat from his white
face; "how should I? Where is the cord?"

"Part of it is still hanging from the peg in the closet. Would you mind
looking at it?"

"If you would very kindly fetch it--you know I--er--naturally--have a--"

"It must not be disturbed before the inquest," said I; "but surely you
are not afraid--"

"I didn't say I was afraid," he retorted angrily. "Why should I be?"

With a strange, tremulous swagger, he strode across to the closet, flung
open the door, and plunged in.

A moment later we heard a shout of horror, and he rushed out, livid and
gasping.

"What is it, Calverley?" exclaimed Mr. Brodribb, starting up in alarm.

But Calverley was incapable of speech. Dropping limply into a chair, he
gazed at us for a while in silent terror; then he fell back uttering a
wild shriek of laughter.

Mr. Brodribb looked at him in amazement. "What is it, Calverley?" he
asked again.

As no answer was forthcoming, he stepped across to the open door of the
closet and entered, peering curiously before him. Then he, too, uttered a
startled exclamation, and backed out hurriedly, looking pale and
flurried.

"Bless my soul!" he ejaculated. "Is the place bewitched?"

He sat down heavily and stared at Calverley, who was still shaking with
hysteric laughter; while I, now consumed with curiosity, walked over to
the closet to discover the cause of their singular behaviour. As I flung
open the door, which the lawyer had closed, I must confess to being very
considerably startled; for though the reflection of the open door was
plain enough in the mirror, my own reflection was replaced by that of a
Chinaman. After a momentary pause of astonishment, I entered the closet
and walked towards the mirror; and simultaneously the figure of the
Chinaman entered and walked towards me. I had advanced more than halfway
down the closet when suddenly the mirror darkened; there was a whirling
flash, the Chinaman vanished in an instant, and, as I reached the glass,
my own reflection faced me.

I turned back into the room pretty completely enlightened, and looked at
Calverley with a new-born distaste. He still sat facing the bewildered
lawyer, one moment sobbing convulsively, the next yelping with hysteric
laughter. He was not an agreeable spectacle, and when, a few moments
later, Thorndyke entered the room, and halted by the door with a stare of
disgust, I was moved to join him. But at this juncture a man pushed past
Thorndyke, and, striding up to Calverley, shook him roughly by the arm.

"Stop that row!" he exclaimed furiously. "Do you hear? Stop it!"

"I can't help it, Raggerton," gasped Calverley. "He gave me such a
turn--the mandarin, you know."

"What!" ejaculated Raggerton.

He dashed across to the closet, looked in, and turned upon Calverley with
a snarl. Then he walked out of the room.

"Brodribb," said Thorndyke, "I should like to have a word with you and
Jervis outside." Then, as we followed him out on to the landing, he
continued: "I have something rather interesting to show you. It is in
here."

He softly opened an adjoining door, and we looked into a small
unfurnished room. A projecting closet occupied one side of it, and at the
door of the closet stood Captain Raggerton, with his hand upon the key.
He turned upon us fiercely, though with a look of alarm, and demanded:

"What is the meaning of this intrusion? and who the deuce are you? Do you
know that this is my private room?"

"I suspected that it was," Thorndyke replied quietly. "Those will be your
properties in the closet, then?"

Raggerton turned pale, but continued to bluster. "Do I understand that
you have dared to break into my private closet?" he demanded.

"I have inspected it," replied Thorndyke, "and I may remark that it is
useless to wrench at that key, because I have hampered the lock."

"The devil you have!" shouted Raggerton.

"Yes; you see, I am expecting a police-officer with a search warrant, so
I wished to keep everything intact."

Raggerton turned livid with mingled fear and rage. He stalked up to
Thorndyke with a threatening air, but, suddenly altering his mind,
exclaimed, "I must see to this!" and flung out of the room.

Thorndyke took a key from his pocket, and, having locked the door, turned
to the closet. Having taken out the key to unhamper the lock with a stout
wire, he reinserted it and unlocked the door. As we entered, we found
ourselves in a narrow closet, similar to the one in the other room, but
darker, owing to the absence of a mirror. A few clothes hung from the
pegs, and when Thorndyke had lit a candle that stood on a shelf, we could
see more of the details.

"Here are some of the properties," said Thorndyke. He pointed to a peg
from which hung a long, blue silk gown of Chinese make, a mandarin's cap,
with a pigtail attached to it, and a beautifully-made papier-mache mask.
"Observe," said Thorndyke, taking the latter down and exhibiting a label
on the inside, marked "Renouard a Paris," "no trouble has been spared."

He took off his coat, slipped on the gown, the mask, and the cap, and
was, in a moment, in that dim light, transformed into the perfect
semblance of a Chinaman.

"By taking a little more time," he remarked, pointing to a pair of
Chinese shoes and a large paper lantern, "the make-up could be rendered
more complete; but this seems to have answered for our friend Alfred."

"But," said Mr. Brodribb, as Thorndyke shed the disguise, "still, I don't
understand--"

"I will make it clear to you in a moment," said Thorndyke. He walked to
the end of the closet, and, tapping the right-hand wall, said: "This is
the back of the mirror. You see that it is hung on massive well-oiled
hinges, and is supported on this large, rubber-tyred castor, which
evidently has ball bearings. You observe three black cords running along
the wall, and passing through those pulleys above. Now, when I pull this
cord, notice what happens."

He pulled one cord firmly, and immediately the mirror swung noiselessly
inwards on its great castor, until it stood diagonally across the closet,
where it was stopped by a rubber buffer.

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Mr. Brodribb. "What an extraordinary thing!"

The effect was certainly very strange, for, the mirror being now exactly
diagonal to the two closets they appeared to be a single, continuous
passage, with a door at either end. On going up to the mirror, we found
that the opening which it had occupied was filled by a sheet of plain
glass, evidently placed there as a precaution to prevent any person from
walking through from one closet into the other, and so discovering the
trick.

"It's all very puzzling," said Mr. Brodribb; "I don't clearly understand
it now."

"Let us finish here," replied Thorndyke, "and then I will explain. Notice
this black curtain. When I pull the second cord, it slides across the
closet and cuts off the light. The mirror now reflects nothing into the
other closet; it simply appears dark. And now I pull the third cord."

He did so, and the mirror swung noiselessly back into its place.

"There is only one other thing to observe before we go out," said
Thorndyke, "and that is this other mirror standing with its face to the
wall. This, of course, is the one that Fred Calverley originally saw at
the end of the closet; it has since been removed, and the larger swinging
glass put in its place. And now," he continued, when we came out into the
room, "let me explain the mechanism in detail. It was obvious to me, when
I heard poor Fred Calverley's story, that the mirror was 'faked,' and I
drew a diagram of the probable arrangement, which turns out to be
correct. Here it is." He took a sheet of paper from his pocket and handed
it to the lawyer. "There are two sketches. Sketch 1 shows the mirror in
its ordinary position, closing the end of the closet. A person standing
at A, of course, sees his reflection facing him at, apparently, A 1.
Sketch 2 shows the mirror swung across. Now a person standing at A does
not see his own reflection at all; but if some other person is standing
in the other closet at B, A sees the reflection of B apparently at B 1--that
is, in the identical position that his own reflection occupied when
the mirror was straight across."


"I see now," said Brodribb; "but who set up this apparatus, and why was
it done?"

"Let me ask you a question," said Thorndyke. "Is Alfred Calverley the
next-of-kin?"

"No; there is Fred's younger brother. But I may say that Fred has made a
will quite recently very much in Alfred's favour."

"There is the explanation, then," said Thorndyke. "These two scoundrels
have conspired to drive the poor fellow to suicide, and Raggerton was
clearly the leading spirit. He was evidently concocting some story with
which to work on poor Fred's superstitions when the mention of the
Chinaman on the steamer gave him his cue. He then invented the very
picturesque story of the murdered mandarin and the stolen pearl. You
remember that these 'visitations' did not begin until after that story
had been told, and Fred had been absent from the house on a visit.
Evidently, during his absence, Raggerton took down the original mirror,
and substituted this swinging arrangement; and at the same time procured
the Chinaman's dress and mask from the theatrical property dealers. No
doubt he reckoned on being able quietly to remove the swinging glass and
other properties and replace the original mirror before the inquest."

"By God!" exclaimed Mr. Brodribb, "it's the most infamous, cowardly plot
I have ever heard of. They shall go to gaol for it, the villains, as sure
as I am alive."

But in this Mr. Brodribb was mistaken; for immediately on finding
themselves detected, the two conspirators had left the house, and by
nightfall were safely across the Channel; and the only satisfaction that
the lawyer obtained was the setting aside of the will on facts disclosed
at the inquest.

As to Thorndyke, he has never to this day forgiven himself for having
allowed Fred Calverley to go home to his death.



THE ALUMINIUM DAGGER


[Illustrations to this and other Thorndyke stories can be found in a
ZIPped file at http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#letterF]

The "urgent call"--the instant, peremptory summons to professional
duty--is an experience that appertains to the medical rather than the legal
practitioner, and I had supposed, when I abandoned the clinical side of
my profession in favour of the forensic, that henceforth I should know it
no more; that the interrupted meal, the broken leisure, and the jangle of
the night-bell, were things of the past; but in practice it was
otherwise. The medical jurist is, so to speak, on the borderland of the
two professions, and exposed to the vicissitudes of each calling, and so
it happened from time to time that the professional services of my
colleague or myself were demanded at a moment's notice. And thus it was
in the case that I am about to relate.

The sacred rite of the "tub" had been duly performed, and the
freshly-dried person of the present narrator was about to be insinuated
into the first instalment of clothing, when a hurried step was heard upon
the stair, and the voice of our laboratory assistant, Polton, arose at my
colleague's door.

"There's a gentleman downstairs, sir, who says he must see you instantly
on most urgent business. He seems to be in a rare twitter, sir--"

Polton was proceeding to descriptive particulars, when a second and more
hurried step became audible, and a strange voice addressed Thorndyke.

"I have come to beg your immediate assistance, sir; a most dreadful thing
has happened. A horrible murder has been committed. Can you come with me
now?"

"I will be with you almost immediately," said Thorndyke. "Is the victim
quite dead?"

"Quite. Cold and stiff. The police think--"

"Do the police know that you have come for me?" interrupted Thorndyke.

"Yes. Nothing is to be done until you arrive."

"Very well. I will be ready in a few minutes."

"And if you would wait downstairs, sir," Polton added persuasively, "I
could help the doctor to get ready."

With this crafty appeal, he lured the intruder back to the sitting-room,
and shortly after stole softly up the stairs with a small breakfast tray,
the contents of which he deposited firmly in our respective rooms, with a
few timely words on the folly of "undertaking murders on an empty
stomach." Thorndyke and I had meanwhile clothed ourselves with a celerity
known only to medical practitioners and quick-change artists, and in a
few minutes descended the stairs together, calling in at the laboratory
for a few appliances that Thorndyke usually took with him on a visit of
investigation.

As we entered the sitting-room, our visitor, who was feverishly pacing up
and down, seized his hat with a gasp of relief. "You are ready to come?"
he asked. "My carriage is at the door;" and, without waiting for an
answer, he hurried out, and rapidly preceded us down the stairs.

The carriage was a roomy brougham, which fortunately accommodated the
three of us, and as soon as we had entered and shut the door, the
coachman whipped up his horse and drove off at a smart trot.

"I had better give you some account of the circumstances, as we go," said
our agitated friend. "In the first place, my name is Curtis, Henry
Curtis; here is my card. Ah! and here is another card, which I should
have given you before. My solicitor, Mr. Marchmont, was with me when I
made this dreadful discovery, and he sent me to you. He remained in the
rooms to see that nothing is disturbed until you arrive."

"That was wise of him," said Thorndyke. "But now tell us exactly what has
occurred."

"I will," said Mr. Curtis. "The murdered man was my brother-in-law,
Alfred Hartridge, and I am sorry to say he was--well, he was a bad man.
It grieves me to speak of him thus--de mortuis, you know--but, still,
we must deal with the facts, even though they be painful."

"Undoubtedly," agreed Thorndyke.

"I have had a great deal of very unpleasant correspondence with
him--Marchmont will tell you about that--and yesterday I left a note for him,
asking for an interview, to settle the business, naming eight o'clock
this morning as the hour, because I had to leave town before noon. He
replied, in a very singular letter, that he would see me at that hour,
and Mr. Marchmont very kindly consented to accompany me. Accordingly, we
went to his chambers together this morning, arriving punctually at eight
o'clock. We rang the bell several times, and knocked loudly at the door,
but as there was no response, we went down and spoke to the hall-porter.
This man, it seems, had already noticed, from the courtyard, that the
electric lights were full on in Mr. Hartridge's sitting-room, as they had
been all night, according to the statement of the night-porter; so now,
suspecting that something was wrong, he came up with us, and rang the
bell and battered at the door. Then, as there was still no sign of life
within, he inserted his duplicate key and tried to open the
door--unsuccessfully, however, as it proved to be bolted on the inside.
Thereupon the porter fetched a constable, and, after a consultation, we
decided that we were justified in breaking open the door; the porter
produced a crowbar, and by our unified efforts the door was eventually
burst open. We entered, and--my God! Dr. Thorndyke, what a terrible
sight it was that met our eyes! My brother-in-law was lying dead on the
floor of the sitting-room. He had been stabbed--stabbed to death; and
the dagger had not even been withdrawn. It was still sticking out of his
back."

He mopped his face with his handkerchief, and was about to continue his
account of the catastrophe when the carriage entered a quiet side-street
between Westminster and Victoria, and drew up before a block of tall,
new, red-brick buildings. A flurried hall-porter ran out to open the
door, and we alighted opposite the main entrance.

"My brother-in-law's chambers are on the second-floor," said Mr. Curtis.
"We can go up in the lift."

The porter had hurried before us, and already stood with his hand upon
the rope. We entered the lift, and in a few seconds were discharged on to
the second floor, the porter, with furtive curiosity, following us down
the corridor. At the end of the passage was a half-open door,
considerably battered and bruised. Above the door, painted in white
lettering, was the inscription, "Mr. Hartridge"; and through the doorway
protruded the rather foxy countenance of Inspector Badger.

"I am glad you have come, sir," said he, as he recognized my colleague.
"Mr. Marchmont is sitting inside like a watch-dog, and he growls if any
of us even walks across the room."

The words formed a complaint, but there was a certain geniality in the
speaker's manner which made me suspect that Inspector Badger was already
navigating his craft on a lee shore.

We entered a small lobby or hall, and from thence passed into the
sitting-room, where we found Mr. Marchmont keeping his vigil, in company
with a constable and a uniformed inspector. The three rose softly as we
entered, and greeted us in a whisper; and then, with one accord, we all
looked towards the other end of the room, and so remained for a time
without speaking.

There was, in the entire aspect of the room, something very grim and
dreadful. An atmosphere of tragic mystery enveloped the most commonplace
objects; and sinister suggestions lurked in the most familiar
appearances. Especially impressive was the air of suspense--of ordinary,
every-day life suddenly arrested--cut short in the twinkling of an eye.
The electric lamps, still burning dim and red, though the summer sunshine
streamed in through the windows; the half-emptied tumbler and open book
by the empty chair, had each its whispered message of swift and sudden
disaster, as had the hushed voices and stealthy movements of the waiting
men, and, above all, an awesome shape that was but a few hours since a
living man, and that now sprawled, prone and motionless, on the floor.

"This is a mysterious affair," observed Inspector Badger, breaking the
silence at length, "though it is clear enough up to a certain point. The
body tells its own story."

We stepped across and looked down at the corpse. It was that of a
somewhat elderly man, and lay, on an open space of floor before the
fireplace, face downwards, with the arms extended. The slender hilt of a
dagger projected from the back below the left shoulder, and, with the
exception of a trace of blood upon the lips, this was the only indication
of the mode of death. A little way from the body a clock-key lay on the
carpet, and, glancing up at the clock on the mantelpiece, I perceived
that the glass front was open.

"You see," pursued the inspector, noting my glance, "he was standing in
front of the fireplace, winding the clock. Then the murderer stole up
behind him--the noise of the turning key must have covered his
movements--and stabbed him. And you see, from the position of the dagger on the
left side of the back, that the murderer must have been left-handed. That
is all clear enough. What is not clear is how he got in, and how he got
out again."

"The body has not been moved, I suppose," said Thorndyke.

"No. We sent for Dr. Egerton, the police-surgeon, and he certified that
the man was dead. He will be back presently to see you and arrange about
the post-mortem."

"Then," said Thorndyke, "we will not disturb the body till he comes,
except to take the temperature and dust the dagger-hilt."

He took from his bag a long, registering chemical thermometer and an
insufflator or powder-blower. The former he introduced under the dead
man's clothing against the abdomen, and with the latter blew a stream of
fine yellow powder on to the black leather handle of the dagger.
Inspector Badger stooped eagerly to examine the handle, as Thorndyke blew
away the powder that had settled evenly on the surface.

"No finger-prints," said he, in a disappointed tone. "He must have worn
gloves. But that inscription gives a pretty broad hint."

He pointed, as he spoke, to the metal guard of the dagger, on which was
engraved, in clumsy lettering, the single word, "TRADITORE."

"That's the Italian for 'traitor,'" continued the inspector, "and I got
some information from the porter that fits in with that suggestion. We'll
have him in presently, and you shall hear."

"Meanwhile," said Thorndyke, "as the position of the body may be of
importance in the inquiry, I will take one or two photographs and make a
rough plan to scale. Nothing has been moved, you say? Who opened the
windows?"

"They were open when we came in," said Mr. Marchmont. "Last night was
very hot, you remember. Nothing whatever has been moved."

Thorndyke produced from his bag a small folding camera, a telescopic
tripod, a surveyor's measuring-tape, a boxwood scale, and a sketch-block.
He set up the camera in a corner, and exposed a plate, taking a general
view of the room, and including the corpse. Then he moved to the door and
made a second exposure.

"Will you stand in front of the clock, Jervis," he said, "and raise your
hand as if winding it? Thanks; keep like that while I expose a plate."

I remained thus, in the position that the dead man was assumed to have
occupied at the moment of the murder, while the plate was exposed, and
then, before I moved, Thorndyke marked the position of my feet with a
blackboard chalk. He next set up the tripod over the chalk marks, and
took two photographs from that position, and finally photographed the
body itself.

The photographic operations being concluded, he next proceeded, with
remarkable skill and rapidity, to lay out on the sketch-block a
ground-plan of the room, showing the exact position of the various
objects, on a scale of a quarter of an inch to the foot--a process that
the inspector was inclined to view with some impatience.

"You don't spare trouble, Doctor," he remarked; "nor time either," he
added, with a significant glance at his watch.

"No," answered Thorndyke, as he detached the finished sketch from the
block; "I try to collect all the facts that may bear on a case. They may
prove worthless, or they may turn out of vital importance; one never
knows beforehand, so I collect them all. But here, I think, is Dr.
Egerton."

The police-surgeon greeted Thorndyke with respectful cordiality, and we
proceeded at once to the examination of the body. Drawing out the
thermometer, my colleague noted the reading, and passed the instrument to
Dr. Egerton.

"Dead about ten hours," remarked the latter, after a glance at it. "This
was a very determined and mysterious murder."

"Very," said Thorndyke. "Feel that dagger, Jervis."

I touched the hilt, and felt the characteristic grating of bone.

"It is through the edge of a rib!" I exclaimed.

"Yes; it must have been used with extraordinary force. And you notice
that the clothing is screwed up slightly, as if the blade had been
rotated as it was driven in. That is a very peculiar feature, especially
when taken together with the violence of the blow."

"It is singular, certainly," said Dr. Egerton, "though I don't know that
it helps us much. Shall we withdraw the dagger before moving the body?"

"Certainly," replied Thorndyke, "or the movement may produce fresh
injuries. But wait." He took a piece of string from his pocket, and,
having drawn the dagger out a couple of inches, stretched the string in a
line parallel to the flat of the blade. Then, giving me the ends to hold,
he drew the weapon out completely. As the blade emerged, the twist in the
clothing disappeared. "Observe," said he, "that the string gives the
direction of the wound, and that the cut in the clothing no longer
coincides with it. There is quite a considerable angle, which is the
measure of the rotation of the blade."

"Yes, it is odd," said Dr. Egerton, "though, as I said, I doubt that it
helps us."

"At present," Thorndyke rejoined dryly, "we are noting the facts."

"Quite so," agreed the other, reddening slightly; "and perhaps we had
better move the body to the bedroom, and make a preliminary inspection of
the wound."

We carried the corpse into the bedroom, and, having examined the wound
without eliciting anything new, covered the remains with a sheet, and
returned to the sitting-room.

"Well, gentlemen," said the inspector, "you have examined the body and
the wound, and you have measured the floor and the furniture, and taken
photographs, and made a plan, but we don't seem much more forward. Here's
a man murdered in his rooms. There is only one entrance to the flat, and
that was bolted on the inside at the time of the murder. The windows are
some forty feet from the ground; there is no rain-pipe near any of them;
they are set flush in the wall, and there isn't a foothold for a fly on
any part of that wall. The grates are modern, and there isn't room for a
good-sized cat to crawl up any of the chimneys. Now, the question is, How
did the murderer get in, and how did he get out again?"

"Still," said Mr. Marchmont, "the fact is that he did get in, and that he
is not here now; and therefore he must have got out; and therefore it
must have been possible for him to get out. And, further, it must be
possible to discover how he got out."

The inspector smiled sourly, but made no reply.

"The circumstances," said Thorndyke, "appear to have been these: The
deceased seems to have been alone; there is no trace of a second occupant
of the room, and only one half-emptied tumbler on the table. He was
sitting reading when apparently he noticed that the clock had
stopped--at ten minutes to twelve; he laid his book, face downwards, on the table,
and rose to wind the clock, and as he was winding it he met his death."

"By a stab dealt by a left-handed man, who crept up behind him on
tiptoe," added the inspector.

Thorndyke nodded. "That would seem to be so," he said. "But now let us
call in the porter, and hear what he has to tell us."

The custodian was not difficult to find, being, in fact, engaged at that
moment in a survey of the premises through the slit of the letter-box.

"Do you know what persons visited these rooms last night?" Thorndyke
asked him, when he entered looking somewhat sheepish.

"A good many were in and out of the building," was the answer, "but I
can't say if any of them came to this flat. I saw Miss Curtis pass in
about nine."

"My daughter!" exclaimed Mr. Curtis, with a start. "I didn't know that."

"She left about nine-thirty," the porter added.

"Do you know what she came about?" asked the inspector.

"I can guess," replied Mr. Curtis.

"Then don't say," interrupted Mr. Marchmont. "Answer no questions."

"You're very close, Mr. Marchmont," said the inspector; "we are not
suspecting the young lady. We don't ask, for instance, if she is
left-handed."

He glanced craftily at Mr. Curtis as he made this remark, and I noticed
that our client suddenly turned deathly pale, whereupon the inspector
looked away again quickly, as though he had not observed the change.

"Tell us about those Italians again," he said, addressing the porter.
"When did the first of them come here?"

"About a week ago," was the reply. "He was a common-looking man--looked
like an organ-grinder--and he brought a note to my lodge. It was in a
dirty envelope, and was addressed 'Mr. Hartridge, Esq., Brackenhurst
Mansions,' in a very bad handwriting. The man gave me the note and asked
me to give it to Mr. Hartridge; then he went away, and I took the note up
and dropped it into the letter-box."

"What happened next?"

"Why, the very next day an old hag of an Italian woman--one of them
fortune-telling swines with a cage of birds on a stand--came and set up
just by the main doorway. I soon sent her packing, but, bless you! she
was back again in ten minutes, birds and all. I sent her off again--I
kept on sending her off, and she kept on coming back, until I was reg'lar
wore to a thread."

"You seem to have picked up a bit since then," remarked the inspector
with a grin and a glance at the sufferer's very pronounced bow-window.

"Perhaps I have," the custodian replied haughtily. "Well, the next day
there was a ice-cream man--a reg'lar waster, he was. Stuck outside as if
he was froze to the pavement. Kept giving the errand-boys tasters, and
when I tried to move him on, he told me not to obstruct his business.
Business, indeed! Well, there them boys stuck, one after the other,
wiping their tongues round the bottoms of them glasses, until I was fit
to bust with aggravation. And he kept me going all day.

"Then, the day after that there was a barrel-organ, with a mangy-looking
monkey on it. He was the worst of all. Profane, too, he was. Kept mixing
up sacred tunes and comic songs: 'Rock of Ages,' 'Bill Bailey,' 'Cujus
Animal,' and 'Over the Garden Wall.' And when I tried to move him on,
that little blighter of a monkey made a run at my leg; and then the man
grinned and started playing, 'Wait till the Clouds roll by.' I tell you,
it was fair sickening."

He wiped his brow at the recollection, and the inspector smiled
appreciatively.

"And that was the last of them?" said the latter; and as the porter
nodded sulkily, he asked: "Should you recognize the note that the Italian
gave you?"

"I should," answered the porter with frosty dignity.

The inspector bustled out of the room, and returned a minute later with a
letter-case in his hand.

"This was in his breast-pocket," said he, laying the bulging case on the
table, and drawing up a chair. "Now, here are three letters tied
together. Ah! this will be the one." He untied the tape, and held out a
dirty envelope addressed in a sprawling, illiterate hand to "Mr.
Hartridge, Esq." "Is that the note the Italian gave you?"

The porter examined it critically. "Yes," said he; "that is the one."

The inspector drew the letter out of the envelope, and, as he opened it,
his eyebrows went up.

"What do you make of that, Doctor?" he said, handing the sheet to
Thorndyke.

Thorndyke regarded it for a while in silence, with deep attention. Then
he carried it to the window, and, taking his lens from his pocket,
examined the paper closely, first with the low power, and then with the
highly magnifying Coddington attachment.

"I should have thought you could see that with the naked eye," said the
inspector, with a sly grin at me. "It's a pretty bold design."

"Yes," replied Thorndyke; "a very interesting production. What do you
say, Mr. Marchmont?"

The solicitor took the note, and I looked over his shoulder. It was
certainly a curious production. Written in red ink, on the commonest
notepaper, and in the same sprawling hand as the address, was the
following message: "You are given six days to do what is just. By the
sign above, know what to expect if you fail." The sign referred to was a
skull and crossbones, very neatly, but rather unskilfully, drawn at the
top of the paper.

"This," said Mr. Marchmont, handing the document to Mr. Curtis, "explains
the singular letter that he wrote yesterday. You have it with you, I
think?"

"Yes," replied Mr. Curtis; "here it is."

He produced a letter from his pocket, and read aloud: "'Yes: come if you
like, though it is an ungodly hour. Your threatening letters have caused
me great amusement. They are worthy of Sadler's Wells in its prime.

"'ALFRED HARTRIDGE.'"

"Was Mr. Hartridge ever in Italy?" asked Inspector Badger.

"Oh yes," replied Mr. Curtis. "He stayed at Capri nearly the whole of
last year."

"Why, then, that gives us our clue. Look here. Here are these two other
letters; E.C. postmark--Saffron Hill is E.C. And just look at that!"

He spread out the last of the mysterious letters, and we saw that,
besides the memento mori, it contained only three words: "Beware!
Remember Capri!"

"If you have finished, Doctor, I'll be off and have a look round Little
Italy. Those four Italians oughtn't to be difficult to find, and we've
got the porter here to identify them."

"Before you go," said Thorndyke, "there are two little matters that I
should like to settle. One is the dagger: it is in your pocket, I think.
May I have a look at it?"

The inspector rather reluctantly produced the dagger and handed it to my
colleague.

"A very singular weapon, this," said Thorndyke, regarding the dagger
thoughtfully, and turning it about to view its different parts. "Singular
both in shape and material. I have never seen an aluminium hilt before,
and bookbinder's morocco is a little unusual."

"The aluminium was for lightness," explained the inspector, "and it was
made narrow to carry up the sleeve, I expect."

"Perhaps so," said Thorndyke.

He continued his examination, and presently, to the inspector's delight,
brought forth his pocket lens.

"I never saw such a man!" exclaimed the jocose detective. "His motto
ought to be, 'We magnify thee.' I suppose he'll measure it next."

The inspector was not mistaken. Having made a rough sketch of the weapon
on his block, Thorndyke produced from his bag a folding rule and a
delicate calliper-gauge. With these instruments he proceeded, with
extraordinary care and precision, to take the dimensions of the various
parts of the dagger, entering each measurement in its place on the
sketch, with a few brief, descriptive details.

"The other matter," said he at length, handing the dagger back to the
inspector, "refers to the houses opposite."

He walked to the window, and looked out at the backs of a row of tall
buildings similar to the one we were in. They were about thirty yards
distant, and were separated from us by a piece of ground, planted with
shrubs and intersected by gravel paths.

"If any of those rooms were occupied last night," continued Thorndyke,
"we might obtain an actual eyewitness of the crime. This room was
brilliantly lighted, and all the blinds were up, so that an observer at
any of those windows could see right into the room, and very distinctly,
too. It might be worth inquiring into."

"Yes, that's true," said the inspector; "though I expect, if any of them
have seen anything, they will come forward quick enough when they read
the report in the papers. But I must be off now, and I shall have to lock
you out of the rooms."

As we went down the stairs, Mr. Marchmont announced his intention of
calling on us in the evening, "unless," he added, "you want any
information from me now."

"I do," said Thorndyke. "I want to know who is interested in this man's
death."

"That," replied Marchmont, "is rather a queer story. Let us take a turn
in that garden that we saw from the window. We shall be quite private
there."

He beckoned to Mr. Curtis, and, when the inspector had departed with the
police-surgeon, we induced the porter to let us into the garden.

"The question that you asked," Mr. Marchmont began, looking up curiously
at the tall houses opposite, "is very simply answered. The only person
immediately interested in the death of Alfred Hartridge is his executor
and sole legatee, a man named Leonard Wolfe. He is no relation of the
deceased, merely a friend, but he inherits the entire estate--about
twenty thousand pounds. The circumstances are these: Alfred Hartridge was
the elder of two brothers, of whom the younger, Charles, died before his
father, leaving a widow and three children. Fifteen years ago the father
died, leaving the whole of his property to Alfred, with the understanding
that he should support his brother's family and make the children his
heirs."

"Was there no will?" asked Thorndyke.

"Under great pressure from the friends of his son's widow, the old man
made a will shortly before he died; but he was then very old and rather
childish, so the will was contested by Alfred, on the grounds of undue
influence, and was ultimately set aside. Since then Alfred Hartridge has
not paid a penny towards the support of his brother's family. If it had
not been for my client, Mr. Curtis, they might have starved; the whole
burden of the support of the widow and the education of the children has
fallen upon him.

"Well, just lately the matter has assumed an acute form, for two reasons.
The first is that Charles's eldest son, Edmund, has come of age. Mr.
Curtis had him articled to a solicitor, and, as he is now fully
qualified, and a most advantageous proposal for a partnership has been
made, we have been putting pressure on Alfred to supply the necessary
capital in accordance with his father's wishes. This he had refused to
do, and it was with reference to this matter that we were calling on him
this morning. The second reason involves a curious and disgraceful story.
There is a certain Leonard Wolfe, who has been an intimate friend of the
deceased. He is, I may say, a man of bad character, and their association
has been of a kind creditable to neither. There is also a certain woman
named Hester Greene, who had certain claims upon the deceased, which we
need not go into at present. Now, Leonard Wolfe and the deceased, Alfred
Hartridge, entered into an agreement, the terms of which were these: (1)
Wolfe was to marry Hester Greene, and in consideration of this service
(2) Alfred Hartridge was to assign to Wolfe the whole of his property,
absolutely, the actual transfer to take place on the death of Hartridge."

"And has this transaction been completed?" asked Thorndyke.

"Yes, it has, unfortunately. But we wished to see if anything could be
done for the widow and the children during Hartridge's lifetime. No
doubt, my client's daughter, Miss Curtis, called last night on a similar
mission--very indiscreetly, since the matter was in our hands; but, you
know, she is engaged to Edmund Hartridge--and I expect the interview was
a pretty stormy one."

Thorndyke remained silent for a while, pacing slowly along the gravel
path, with his eyes bent on the ground: not abstractedly, however, but
with a searching, attentive glance that roved amongst the shrubs and
bushes, as though he were looking for something.

"What sort of man," he asked presently, "is this Leonard Wolfe? Obviously
he is a low scoundrel, but what is he like in other respects? Is he a
fool, for instance?"

"Not at all, I should say," said Mr. Curtis. "He was formerly an
engineer, and, I believe, a very capable mechanician. Latterly he has
lived on some property that came to him, and has spent both his time and
his money in gambling and dissipation. Consequently, I expect he is
pretty short of funds at present."

"And in appearance?"

"I only saw him once," replied Mr. Curtis, "and all I can remember of him
is that he is rather short, fair, thin, and clean-shaven, and that he has
lost the middle finger of his left hand."

"And he lives at?"

"Eltham, in Kent. Morton Grange, Eltham," said Mr. Marchmont. "And now,
if you have all the information that you require, I must really be off,
and so must Mr. Curtis."

The two men shook our hands and hurried away, leaving Thorndyke gazing
meditatively at the dingy flower-beds.

"A strange and interesting case, this, Jervis," said he, stooping to peer
under a laurel-bush. "The inspector is on a hot scent--a most palpable
red herring on a most obvious string; but that is his business. Ah, here
comes the porter, intent, no doubt, on pumping us, whereas--" He smiled
genially at the approaching custodian, and asked: "Where did you say
those houses fronted?"

"Cotman Street, sir," answered the porter. "They are nearly all offices."

"And the numbers? That open second-floor window, for instance?"

"That is number six; but the house opposite Mr. Hartridge's rooms is
number eight."

"Thank you."

Thorndyke was moving away, but suddenly turned again to the porter.

"By the way," said he, "I dropped something out of the window just now--a
small flat piece of metal, like this." He made on the back of his
visiting card a neat sketch of a circular disc, with a hexagonal hole
through it, and handed the card to the porter. "I can't say where it
fell," he continued; "these flat things scale about so; but you might ask
the gardener to look for it. I will give him a sovereign if he brings it
to my chambers, for, although it is of no value to anyone else, it is of
considerable value to me."

The porter touched his hat briskly, and as we turned out at the gate, I
looked back and saw him already wading among the shrubs.

The object of the porter's quest gave me considerable mental occupation.
I had not seen Thorndyke drop any thing, and it was not his way to finger
carelessly any object of value. I was about to question him on the
subject, when, turning sharply round into Cotman Street, he drew up at
the doorway of number six, and began attentively to read the names of the
occupants.

"'Third-floor,'" he read out, "'Mr. Thomas Barlow, Commission Agent.'
Hum! I think we will look in on Mr. Barlow."

He stepped quickly up the stone stairs, and I followed, until we arrived,
somewhat out of breath, on the third-floor. Outside the Commission
Agent's door he paused for a moment, and we both listened curiously to an
irregular sound of shuffling feet from within. Then he softly opened the
door and looked into the room. After remaining thus for nearly a minute,
he looked round at me with a broad smile, and noiselessly set the door
wide open. Inside, a lanky youth of fourteen was practising, with no mean
skill, the manipulation of an appliance known by the appropriate name of
diabolo; and so absorbed was he in his occupation that we entered and
shut the door without being observed. At length the shuttle missed the
string and flew into a large waste-paper basket; the boy turned and
confronted us, and was instantly covered with confusion.

"Allow me," said Thorndyke, rooting rather unnecessarily in the
waste-paper basket, and handing the toy to its owner. "I need not ask if
Mr. Barlow is in," he added, "nor if he is likely to return shortly."

"He won't be back to-day," said the boy, perspiring with embarrassment;
"he left before I came. I was rather late."

"I see," said Thorndyke. "The early bird catches the worm, but the late
bird catches the diabolo. How did you know he would not be back?"

"He left a note. Here it is."

He exhibited the document, which was neatly written in red ink. Thorndyke
examined it attentively, and then asked:

"Did you break the inkstand yesterday?"

The boy stared at him in amazement. "Yes, I did," he answered. "How did
you know?"

"I didn't, or I should not have asked. But I see that he has used his
stylo to write this note."

The boy regarded Thorndyke distrustfully, as he continued:

"I really called to see if your Mr. Barlow was a gentleman whom I used to
know; but I expect you can tell me. My friend was tall and thin, dark,
and clean-shaved."

"This ain't him, then," said the boy. "He's thin, but he ain't tall or
dark. He's got a sandy beard, and he wears spectacles and a wig. I know a
wig when I see one," he added cunningly, "'cause my father wears one. He
puts it on a peg to comb it, and he swears at me when I larf."

"My friend had injured his left hand," pursued Thorndyke.

"I dunno about that," said the youth. "Mr. Barlow nearly always wears
gloves; he always wears one on his left hand, anyhow."

"Ah well! I'll just write him a note on the chance, if you will give me a
piece of notepaper. Have you any ink?"

"There's some in the bottle. I'll dip the pen in for you."

He produced, from the cupboard, an opened packet of cheap notepaper and a
packet of similar envelopes, and, having dipped the pen to the bottom of
the ink-bottle, handed it to Thorndyke, who sat down and hastily
scribbled a short note. He had folded the paper, and was about to address
the envelope, when he appeared suddenly to alter his mind.

"I don't think I will leave it, after all," he said, slipping the folded
paper into his pocket. "No. Tell him I called--Mr. Horace Budge--and
say I will look in again in a day or two."

The youth watched our exit with an air of perplexity, and he even came
out on to the landing, the better to observe us over the balusters;
until, unexpectedly catching Thorndyke's eye, he withdrew his head with
remarkable suddenness, and retired in disorder.

To tell the truth, I was now little less perplexed than the office-boy by
Thorndyke's proceedings; in which I could discover no relevancy to the
investigation that I presumed he was engaged upon: and the last straw was
laid upon the burden of my curiosity when he stopped at a staircase
window, drew the note out of his pocket, examined it with his lens, held
it up to the light, and chuckled aloud.

"Luck," he observed, "though no substitute for care and intelligence, is
a very pleasant addition. Really, my learned brother, we are doing
uncommonly well."

When we reached the hall, Thorndyke stopped at the housekeeper's box, and
looked in with a genial nod.

"I have just been up to see Mr. Barlow," said he. "He seems to have left
quite early."

"Yes, sir," the man replied. "He went away about half-past eight."

"That was very early; and presumably he came earlier still?"

"I suppose so," the man assented, with a grin; "but I had only just come
on when he left."

"Had he any luggage with him?"

"Yes, sir. There was two cases, a square one and a long, narrow one,
about five foot long. I helped him to carry them down to the cab."

"Which was a four-wheeler, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir."

"Mr. Barlow hasn't been here very long, has he?" Thorndyke inquired.

"No. He only came in last quarter-day--about six weeks ago."

"Ah well! I must call another day. Good-morning;" and Thorndyke strode
out of the building, and made directly for the cab-rank in the adjoining
street. Here he stopped for a minute or two to parley with the driver of
a four-wheeled cab, whom he finally commissioned to convey us to a shop
in New Oxford Street. Having dismissed the cabman with his blessing and a
half-sovereign, he vanished into the shop, leaving me to gaze at the
lathes, drills, and bars of metal displayed in the window. Presently he
emerged with a small parcel, and explained, in answer to my inquiring
look: "A strip of tool steel and a block of metal for Polton."

His next purchase was rather more eccentric. We were proceeding along
Holborn when his attention was suddenly arrested by the window of a
furniture shop, in which was displayed a collection of obsolete French
small-arms--relics of the tragedy of 1870--which were being sold for
decorative purposes. After a brief inspection, he entered the shop, and
shortly reappeared carrying a long sword-bayonet and an old Chassepot
rifle.

"What may be the meaning of this martial display?" I asked, as we turned
down Fetter Lane.

"House protection," he replied promptly. "You will agree that a discharge
of musketry, followed by a bayonet charge, would disconcert the boldest
of burglars."

I laughed at the absurd picture thus drawn of the strenuous
house-protector, but nevertheless continued to speculate on the meaning
of my friend's eccentric proceedings, which I felt sure were in some way
related to the murder in Brackenhurst Chambers, though I could not trace
the connection.

After a late lunch, I hurried out to transact such of my business as had
been interrupted by the stirring events of the morning, leaving Thorndyke
busy with a drawing-board, squares, scale, and compasses, making
accurate, scaled drawings from his rough sketches; while Polton, with the
brown-paper parcel in his hand, looked on at him with an air of anxious
expectation.

As I was returning homeward in the evening by way of Mitre Court, I
overtook Mr. Marchmont, who was also bound for our chambers, and we
walked on together.

"I had a note from Thorndyke," he explained, "asking for a specimen of
handwriting, so I thought I would bring it along myself, and hear if he
has any news."

When we entered the chambers, we found Thorndyke in earnest consultation
with Polton, and on the table before them I observed, to my great
surprise, the dagger with which the murder had been committed.

"I have got you the specimen that you asked for," said Marchmont. "I
didn't think I should be able to, but, by a lucky chance, Curtis kept the
only letter he ever received from the party in question."

He drew the letter from his wallet, and handed it to Thorndyke, who
looked at it attentively and with evident satisfaction.

"By the way," said Marchmont, taking up the dagger, "I thought the
inspector took this away with him."

"He took the original," replied Thorndyke. "This is a duplicate, which
Polton has made, for experimental purposes, from my drawings."

"Really!" exclaimed Marchmont, with a glance of respectful admiration at
Polton; "it is a perfect replica--and you have made it so quickly, too."

"It was quite easy to make," said Polton, "to a man accustomed to work in
metal."

"Which," added Thorndyke, "is a fact of some evidential value."

At this moment a hansom drew up outside. A moment later flying footsteps
were heard on the stairs. There was a furious battering at the door, and,
as Polton threw it open, Mr. Curtis burst wildly into the room.

"Here is a frightful thing, Marchmont!" he gasped. "Edith--my
daughter--arrested for the murder. Inspector Badger came to our house and took her.
My God! I shall go mad!"

Thorndyke laid his hand on the excited man's shoulder. "Don't distress
yourself, Mr. Curtis," said he. "There is no occasion, I assure you. I
suppose," he added, "your daughter is left-handed?"

"Yes, she is, by a most disastrous coincidence. But what are we to do?
Good God! Dr. Thorndyke, they have taken her to prison--to prison--think
of it! My poor Edith!"

"We'll soon have her out," said Thorndyke. "But listen; there is someone
at the door."

A brisk rat-tat confirmed his statement; and when I rose to open the
door, I found myself confronted by Inspector Badger. There was a moment
of extreme awkwardness, and then both the detective and Mr. Curtis
proposed to retire in favour of the other.

"Don't go, inspector," said Thorndyke; "I want to have a word with you.
Perhaps Mr. Curtis would look in again, say, in an hour. Will you? We
shall have news for you by then, I hope."

Mr. Curtis agreed hastily, and dashed out of the room with his
characteristic impetuosity. When he had gone, Thorndyke turned to the
detective, and remarked dryly:

"You seem to have been busy, inspector?"

"Yes," replied Badger; "I haven't let the grass grow under my feet; and
I've got a pretty strong case against Miss Curtis already. You see, she
was the last person seen in the company of the deceased; she had a
grievance against him; she is left-handed, and you remember that the
murder was committed by a left-handed person."

"Anything else?"

"Yes. I have seen those Italians, and the whole thing was a put-up job. A
woman, in a widow's dress and veil, paid them to go and play the fool
outside the building, and she gave them the letter that was left with the
porter. They haven't identified her yet, but she seems to agree in size
with Miss Curtis."

"And how did she get out of the chambers, with the door bolted on the
inside?"

"Ah, there you are! That's a mystery at present--unless you can give us
an explanation." The inspector made this qualification with a faint grin,
and added: "As there was no one in the place when we broke into it, the
murderer must have got out somehow. You can't deny that."

"I do deny it, nevertheless," said Thorndyke. "You look surprised," he
continued (which was undoubtedly true), "but yet the whole thing is
exceedingly obvious. The explanation struck me directly I looked at the
body. There was evidently no practicable exit from the flat, and there
was certainly no one in it when you entered. Clearly, then, the murderer
had never been in the place at all."

"I don't follow you in the least," said the inspector.

"Well," said Thorndyke, "as I have finished with the case, and am handing
it over to you, I will put the evidence before you seriatim. Now, I think
we are agreed that, at the moment when the blow was struck, the deceased
was standing before the fireplace, winding the clock. The dagger entered
obliquely from the left, and, if you recall its position, you will
remember that its hilt pointed directly towards an open window."

"Which was forty feet from the ground."

"Yes. And now we will consider the very peculiar character of the weapon
with which the crime was committed."

He had placed his hand upon the knob of a drawer, when we were
interrupted by a knock at the door. I sprang up, and, opening it,
admitted no less a person than the porter of Brackenhurst Chambers. The
man looked somewhat surprised on recognizing our visitors, but advanced
to Thorndyke, drawing a folded paper from his pocket.

"I've found the article you were looking for, sir," said he, "and a rare
hunt I had for it. It had stuck in the leaves of one of them shrubs."

Thorndyke opened the packet, and, having glanced inside, laid it on the
table.

"Thank you," said he, pushing a sovereign across to the gratified
official. "The inspector has your name, I think?"

"He have, sir," replied the porter; and, pocketing his fee, he departed,
beaming.

"To return to the dagger," said Thorndyke, opening the drawer. "It was a
very peculiar one, as I have said, and as you will see from this model,
which is an exact duplicate." Here he exhibited Polton's production to
the astonished detective. "You see that it is extraordinarily slender,
and free from projections, and of unusual materials. You also see that it
was obviously not made by an ordinary dagger-maker; that, in spite of the
Italian word scrawled on it, there is plainly written all over it
'British mechanic.' The blade is made from a strip of common
three-quarter-inch tool steel; the hilt is turned from an aluminium rod;
and there is not a line of engraving on it that could not be produced in
a lathe by any engineer's apprentice. Even the boss at the top is
mechanical, for it is just like an ordinary hexagon nut. Then, notice the
dimensions, as shown on my drawing. The parts A and B, which just project
beyond the blade, are exactly similar in diameter--and such exactness
could hardly be accidental. They are each parts of a circle having a
diameter of 10.9 millimetres--a dimension which happens, by a singular
coincidence, to be exactly the calibre of the old Chassepot rifle,
specimens of which are now on sale at several shops in London. Here is
one, for instance."

He fetched the rifle that he had bought, from the corner in which it was
standing, and, lifting the dagger by its point, slipped the hilt into the
muzzle. When he let go, the dagger slid quietly down the barrel, until
its hilt appeared in the open breech.

"Good God!" exclaimed Marchmont. "You don't suggest that the dagger was
shot from a gun?"

"I do, indeed; and you now see the reason for the aluminium hilt--to
diminish the weight of the already heavy projectile--and also for this
hexagonal boss on the end?"

"No, I do not," said the inspector; "but I say that you are suggesting an
impossibility."

"Then," replied Thorndyke, "I must explain and demonstrate. To begin
with, this projectile had to travel point foremost; therefore it had to
be made to spin--and it certainly was spinning when it entered the body,
as the clothing and the wound showed us. Now, to make it spin, it had to
be fired from a rifled barrel; but as the hilt would not engage in the
rifling, it had to be fitted with something that would. That something
was evidently a soft metal washer, which fitted on to this hexagon, and
which would be pressed into the grooves of the rifling, and so spin the
dagger, but would drop off as soon as the weapon left the barrel. Here is
such a washer, which Polton has made for us."

He laid on the table a metal disc, with a hexagonal hole through it.

"This is all very ingenious," said the inspector, "but I say it is
impossible and fantastic."

"It certainly sounds rather improbable," Marchmont agreed.

"We will see," said Thorndyke. "Here is a makeshift cartridge of Polton's
manufacture, containing an eighth charge of smokeless powder for a
20-bore gun."

He fitted the washer on to the boss of the dagger in the open breech of
the rifle, pushed it into the barrel, inserted the cartridge, and closed
the breech. Then, opening the office-door, he displayed a target of
padded strawboard against the wall.

"The length of the two rooms," said he, "gives us a distance of
thirty-two feet. Will you shut the windows, Jervis?"

I complied, and he then pointed the rifle at the target. There was a dull
report--much less loud than I had expected--and when we looked at the
target, we saw the dagger driven in up to its hilt at the margin of the
bull's-eye.

"You see," said Thorndyke, laying down the rifle, "that the thing is
practicable. Now for the evidence as to the actual occurrence. First, on
the original dagger there are linear scratches which exactly correspond
with the grooves of the rifling. Then there is the fact that the dagger
was certainly spinning from left to right--in the direction of the
rifling, that is--when it entered the body. And then there is this,
which, as you heard, the porter found in the garden."

He opened the paper packet. In it lay a metal disc, perforated by a
hexagonal hole. Stepping into the office, he picked up from the floor the
washer that he had put on the dagger, and laid it on the paper beside the
other. The two discs were identical in size, and the margin of each was
indented with identical markings, corresponding to the rifling of the
barrel.

The inspector gazed at the two discs in silence for a while; then,
looking up at Thorndyke, he said:

"I give in, Doctor. You're right, beyond all doubt; but how you came to
think of it beats me into fits. The only question now is, Who fired the
gun, and why wasn't the report heard?"

"As to the latter," said Thorndyke, "it is probable that he used a
compressed-air attachment, not only to diminish the noise, but also to
prevent any traces of the explosive from being left on the dagger. As to
the former, I think I can give you the murderer's name; but we had better
take the evidence in order. You may remember," he continued, "that when
Dr. Jervis stood as if winding the clock, I chalked a mark on the floor
where he stood. Now, standing on that marked spot, and looking out of the
open window, I could see two of the windows of a house nearly opposite.
They were the second-and third-floor windows of No. 6, Cotman Street. The
second-floor is occupied by a firm of architects; the third-floor by a
commission agent named Thomas Barlow. I called on Mr. Barlow, but before
describing my visit, I will refer to another matter. You haven't those
threatening letters about you, I suppose?"

"Yes, I have," said the inspector; and he drew forth a wallet from his
breast-pocket.

"Lot us take the first one, then," said Thorndyke. "You see that the
paper and envelope are of the very commonest, and the writing illiterate.
But the ink does not agree with this. Illiterate people usually buy their
ink in penny bottles. Now, this envelope is addressed with Draper's
dichroic ink--a superior office ink, sold only in large bottles--and
the red ink in which the note is written is an unfixed, scarlet ink, such
as is used by draughtsmen, and has been used, as you can see, in a
stylographic pen. But the most interesting thing about this letter is the
design drawn at the top. In an artistic sense, the man could not draw,
and the anatomical details of the skull are ridiculous. Yet the drawing
is very neat. It has the clean, wiry line of a machine drawing, and is
done with a steady, practised hand. It is also perfectly symmetrical; the
skull, for instance, is exactly in the centre, and, when we examine it
through a lens, we see why it is so, for we discover traces of a
pencilled centre-line and ruled cross-lines. Moreover, the lens reveals a
tiny particle of draughtsman's soft, red, rubber, with which the pencil
lines were taken out; and all these facts, taken together, suggest that
the drawing was made by someone accustomed to making accurate mechanical
drawings. And now we will return to Mr. Barlow. He was out when I called,
but I took the liberty of glancing round the office, and this is what I
saw. On the mantelshelf was a twelve-inch flat boxwood rule, such as
engineers use, a piece of soft, red rubber, and a stone bottle of
Draper's dichroic ink. I obtained, by a simple ruse, a specimen of the
office notepaper and the ink. We will examine it presently. I found that
Mr. Barlow is a new tenant, that he is rather short, wears a wig and
spectacles, and always wears a glove on his left hand. He left the office
at 8.30 this morning, and no one saw him arrive. He had with him a square
case, and a narrow, oblong one about five feet in length; and he took a
cab to Victoria, and apparently caught the 8.51 train to Chatham."

"Ah!" exclaimed the inspector.

"But," continued Thorndyke, "now examine those three letters, and compare
them with this note that I wrote in Mr. Barlow's office. You see that the
paper is of the same make, with the same water-mark, but that is of no
great significance. What is of crucial importance is this: You see, in
each of these letters, two tiny indentations near the bottom corner.
Somebody has used compasses or drawing-pins over the packet of notepaper,
and the points have made little indentations, which have marked several
of the sheets. Now, notepaper is cut to its size after it is folded, and
if you stick a pin into the top sheet of a section, the indentations on
all the underlying sheets will be at exactly similar distances from the
edges and corners of the sheet. But you see that these little dents are
all at the same distance from the edges and the corner." He demonstrated
the fact with a pair of compasses. "And now look at this sheet, which I
obtained at Mr. Barlow's office. There are two little indentations--rather
faint, but quite visible--near the bottom corner, and when we
measure them with the compasses, we find that they are exactly the same
distance apart as the others, and the same distance from the edges and
the bottom corner. The irresistible conclusion is that these four sheets
came from the same packet."

The inspector started up from his chair, and faced Thorndyke. "Who is
this Mr. Barlow?" he asked.

"That," replied Thorndyke, "is for you to determine; but I can give you a
useful hint. There is only one person who benefits by the death of Alfred
Hartridge, but he benefits to the extent of twenty thousand pounds. His
name is Leonard Wolfe, and I learn from Mr. Marchmont that he is a man of
indifferent character--a gambler and a spendthrift. By profession he is
an engineer, and he is a capable mechanician. In appearance he is thin,
short, fair, and clean-shaven, and he has lost the middle finger of his
left hand. Mr. Barlow is also short, thin, and fair, but wears a wig, a
board, and spectacles, and always wears a glove on his left hand. I have
seen the handwriting of both these gentlemen, and should say that it
would be difficult to distinguish one from the other."

"That's good enough for me," said the inspector. "Give me his address,
and I'll have Miss Curtis released at once."

* * * * *

The same night Leonard Wolfe was arrested at Eltham, in the very act of
burying in his garden a large and powerful compressed-air rifle. He was
never brought to trial, however, for he had in his pocket a more portable
weapon--a large-bore Derringer pistol--with which he managed to
terminate an exceedingly ill-spent life.

"And, after all," was Thorndyke's comment, when he heard of the event,
"he had his uses. He has relieved society of two very bad men, and he has
given us a most instructive case. He has shown us how a clever and
ingenious criminal may take endless pains to mislead and delude the
police, and yet, by inattention to trivial details, may scatter clues
broadcast. We can only say to the criminal class generally, in both
respects, 'Go thou and do likewise.'"



A MESSAGE FROM THE DEEP SEA


The Whitechapel Road, though redeemed by scattered relics of a more
picturesque past from the utter desolation of its neighbour the
Commercial Road, is hardly a gay thoroughfare. Especially at its eastern
end, where its sordid modernity seems to reflect the colourless lives of
its inhabitants, does its grey and dreary length depress the spirits of
the wayfarer. But the longest and dullest road can be made delightful by
sprightly discourse seasoned with wit and wisdom, and so it was that, as
I walked westward by the side of my friend John Thorndyke, the long,
monotonous road seemed all too short.

We had been to the London Hospital to see a remarkable case of
acromegaly, and, as we returned, we discussed this curious affection, and
the allied condition of gigantism, in all their bearings, from the origin
of the "Gibson chin" to the physique of Og, King of Bashan.

"It would have been interesting," Thorndyke remarked as we passed up
Aldgate High Street, "to have put one's finger into His Majesty's
pituitary fossa--after his decease, of course. By the way, here is
Harrow Alley; you remember Defoe's description of the dead-cart waiting
out here, and the ghastly procession coming down the alley." He took my
arm and led me up the narrow thoroughfare as far as the sharp turn by the
"Star and Still" public-house, where we turned to look back.

"I never pass this place," he said musingly, "but I seem to hear the
clang of the bell and the dismal cry of the carter--"

He broke off abruptly. Two figures had suddenly appeared framed in the
archway, and now advanced at headlong speed. One, who led, was a stout,
middle-aged Jewess, very breathless and dishevelled; the other was a
well-dressed young man, hardly less agitated than his companion. As they
approached, the young man suddenly recognized my colleague, and accosted
him in agitated tones.

"I've just been sent for to a case of murder or suicide. Would you mind
looking at it for me, sir? It's my first case, and I feel rather
nervous."

Here the woman darted back, and plucked the young doctor by the arm.

"Hurry! hurry!" she exclaimed, "don't stop to talk." Her face was as
white as lard, and shiny with sweat; her lips twitched, her hands shook,
and she stared with the eyes of a frightened child.

"Of course I will come, Hart," said Thorndyke; and, turning back, we
followed the woman as she elbowed her way frantically among the
foot-passengers.

"Have you started in practice here?" Thorndyke asked as we hurried along.

"No, sir," replied Dr. Hart; "I am an assistant. My principal is the
police-surgeon, but he is out just now. It's very good of you to come
with me, sir."

"Tut, tut," rejoined Thorndyke. "I am just coming to see that you do
credit to my teaching. That looks like the house."

We had followed our guide into a side street, halfway down which we could
see a knot of people clustered round a doorway. They watched us as we
approached, and drew aside to let us enter. The woman whom we were
following rushed into the passage with the same headlong haste with which
she had traversed the streets, and so up the stairs. But as she neared
the top of the flight she slowed down suddenly, and began to creep up on
tiptoe with noiseless and hesitating steps. On the landing she turned to
face us, and pointing a shaking forefinger at the door of the back room,
whispered almost inaudibly, "She's in there," and then sank half-fainting
on the bottom stair of the next flight.

I laid my hand on the knob of the door, and looked back at Thorndyke. He
was coming slowly up the stairs, closely scrutinizing floor, walls, and
handrail as he came. When he reached the landing, I turned the handle,
and we entered the room together, closing the door after us. The blind
was still down, and in the dim, uncertain light nothing out of the common
was, at first, to be seen. The shabby little room looked trim and orderly
enough, save for a heap of cast-off feminine clothing piled upon a chair.
The bed appeared undisturbed except by the half-seen shape of its
occupant, and the quiet face, dimly visible in its shadowy corner, might
have been that of a sleeper but for its utter stillness and for a dark
stain on the pillow by its side.

Dr. Hart stole on tiptoe to the bedside, while Thorndyke drew up the
blind; and as the garish daylight poured into the room, the young surgeon
fell back with a gasp of horror.

"Good God!" he exclaimed; "poor creature! But this is a frightful thing,
sir!"

The light streamed down upon the white face of a handsome girl of
twenty-five, a face peaceful, placid, and beautiful with the austere and
almost unearthly beauty of the youthful dead. The lips were slightly
parted, the eyes half closed and drowsy, shaded with sweeping lashes; and
a wealth of dark hair in massive plaits served as a foil to the
translucent skin.

Our friend had drawn back the bedclothes a few inches, and now there was
revealed, beneath the comely face, so serene and inscrutable, and yet so
dreadful in its fixity and waxen pallor, a horrible, yawning wound that
almost divided the shapely neck.

Thorndyke looked down with stern pity at the plump white face.

"It was savagely done," said he, "and yet mercifully, by reason of its
very savagery. She must have died without waking."

"The brute!" exclaimed Hart, clenching his fists and turning crimson with
wrath. "The infernal cowardly beast! He shall hang! By God, he shall
hang!" In his fury the young fellow shook his fists in the air, even as
the moisture welled up into his eyes.

Thorndyke touched him on the shoulder. "That is what we are here for,
Hart," said he. "Get out your notebook;" and with this he bent down over
the dead girl.

At the friendly reproof the young surgeon pulled himself together, and,
with open notebook, commenced his investigation, while I, at Thorndyke's
request, occupied myself in making a plan of the room, with a description
of its contents and their arrangements. But this occupation did not
prevent me from keeping an eye on Thorndyke's movements, and presently I
suspended my labours to watch him as, with his pocket-knife, he scraped
together some objects that he had found on the pillow.

"What do you make of this?" he asked, as I stepped over to his side. He
pointed with the blade to a tiny heap of what looked like silver sand,
and, as I looked more closely, I saw that similar particles were
sprinkled on other parts of the pillow.

"Silver sand!" I exclaimed. "I don't understand at all how it can have
got there. Do you?"

Thorndyke shook his head. "We will consider the explanation later," was
his reply. He had produced from his pocket a small metal box which he
always carried, and which contained such requisites as cover-slips,
capillary tubes, moulding wax, and other "diagnostic materials." He now
took from it a seed-envelope, into which he neatly shovelled the little
pinch of sand with his knife. He had closed the envelope, and was writing
a pencilled description on the outside, when we were startled by a cry
from Hart.

"Good God, sir! Look at this! It was done by a woman!"

He had drawn back the bedclothes, and was staring aghast at the dead
girl's left hand. It held a thin tress of long, red hair.

Thorndyke hastily pocketed his specimen, and, stepping round the little
bedside table, bent over the hand with knitted brows. It was closed,
though not tightly clenched, and when an attempt was made gently to
separate the fingers, they were found to be as rigid as the fingers of a
wooden hand. Thorndyke stooped yet more closely, and, taking out his
lens, scrutinized the wisp of hair throughout its entire length.

"There is more here than meets the eye at the first glance," he remarked.
"What say you, Hart?" He held out his lens to his quondam pupil, who was
about to take it from him when the door opened, and three men entered.
One was a police-inspector, the second appeared to be a plain-clothes
officer, while the third was evidently the divisional surgeon.

"Friends of yours, Hart?" inquired the latter, regarding us with some
disfavour.

Thorndyke gave a brief explanation of our presence to which the newcomer
rejoined:

"Well, sir, your locus standi here is a matter for the inspector. My
assistant was not authorized to call in outsiders. You needn't wait,
Hart."

With this he proceeded to his inspection, while Thorndyke withdrew the
pocket-thermometer that he had slipped under the body, and took the
reading.

The inspector, however, was not disposed to exercise the prerogative at
which the surgeon had hinted; for an expert has his uses.

"How long should you say she'd been dead, sir?" he asked affably.

"About ten hours," replied Thorndyke.

The inspector and the detective simultaneously looked at their watches.
"That fixes it at two o'clock this morning," said the former. "What's
that, sir?"

The surgeon was pointing to the wisp of hair in the dead girl's hand.

"My word!" exclaimed the inspector. "A woman, eh? She must be a tough
customer. This looks like a soft job for you, sergeant."

"Yes," said the detective. "That accounts for that box with the hassock
on it at the head of the bed. She had to stand on them to reach over. But
she couldn't have been very tall."

"She must have been mighty strong, though," said the inspector; "why, she
has nearly cut the poor wench's head off." He moved round to the head of
the bed, and, stooping over, peered down at the gaping wound. Suddenly he
began to draw his hand over the pillow, and then rub his fingers
together. "Why," he exclaimed, "there's sand on the pillow--silver sand!
Now, how can that have come there?"

The surgeon and the detective both came round to verify this discovery,
and an earnest consultation took place as to its meaning.

"Did you notice it, sir?" the inspector asked Thorndyke.

"Yes," replied the latter; "it's an unaccountable thing, isn't it?"

"I don't know that it is, either," said the detective, he ran over to the
washstand, and then uttered a grunt of satisfaction. "It's quite a simple
matter, after all, you see," he said, glancing complacently at my
colleague. "There's a ball of sand-soap on the washstand, and the basin
is full of blood-stained water. You see, she must have washed the blood
off her hands, and off the knife, too--a pretty cool customer she must
be--and she used the sand-soap. Then, while she was drying her hands,
she must have stood over the head of the bed, and let the sand fall on to
the pillow. I think that's clear enough."

"Admirably clear," said Thorndyke; "and what do you suppose was the
sequence of events?"

The gratified detective glanced round the room. "I take it," said he,
"that the deceased read herself to sleep. There is a book on the table by
the bed, and a candlestick with nothing in it but a bit of burnt wick at
the bottom of the socket. I imagine that the woman came in quietly, lit
the gas, put the box and the hassock at the bedhead, stood on them, and
cut her victim's throat. Deceased must have waked up and clutched the
murderess's hair--though there doesn't seem to have been much of a
struggle; but no doubt she died almost at once. Then the murderess washed
her hands, cleaned the knife, tidied up the bed a bit, and went away.
That's about how things happened, I think, but how she got in without
anyone hearing, and how she got out, and where she went to, are the
things that we've got to find out."

"Perhaps," said the surgeon, drawing the bedclothes over the corpse, "we
had better have the landlady in and make a few inquiries." He glanced
significantly at Thorndyke, and the inspector coughed behind his hand. My
colleague, however, chose to be obtuse to these hints: opening the door,
he turned the key backwards and forwards several times, drew it out,
examined it narrowly, and replaced it.

"The landlady is outside on the landing," he remarked, holding the door
open.

Thereupon the inspector went out, and we all followed to hear the result
of his inquiries.

"Now, Mrs. Goldstein," said the officer, opening his notebook, "I want
you to tell us all that you know about this affair, and about the girl
herself. What was her name?"

The landlady, who had been joined by a white-faced, tremulous man, wiped
her eyes, and replied in a shaky voice: "Her name, poor child, was Minna
Adler. She was a German. She came from Bremen about two years ago. She
had no friends in England--no relatives, I mean. She was a waitress at a
restaurant in Fenchurch Street, and a good, quiet, hard-working girl."

"When did you discover what had happened?"

"About eleven o'clock. I thought she had gone to work as usual, but my
husband noticed from the back yard that her blind was still down. So I
went up and knocked, and when I got no answer, I opened the door and went
in, and then I saw--" Here the poor soul, overcome by the dreadful
recollection, burst into hysterical sobs.

"Her door was unlocked, then; did she usually lock it?"

"I think so," sobbed Mrs. Goldstein. "The key was always inside."

"And the street door; was that secure when you came down this morning?"

"It was shut. We don't bolt it because some of the lodgers come home
rather late."

"And now tell us, had she any enemies? Was there anyone who had a grudge
against her?"

"No, no, poor child! Why should anyone have a grudge against her? No, she
had no quarrel--no real quarrel--with anyone; not even with Miriam."

"Miriam!" inquired the inspector. "Who is she?"

"That was nothing," interposed the man hastily. "That was not a quarrel."

"Just a little unpleasantness, I suppose, Mr. Goldstein?" suggested the
inspector.

"Just a little foolishness about a young man," said Mr. Goldstein. "That
was all. Miriam was a little jealous. But it was nothing."

"No, no. Of course. We all know that young women are apt to--"

A soft footstep had been for some time audible, slowly descending the
stair above, and at this moment a turn of the staircase brought the
newcomer into view. And at that vision the inspector stopped short as if
petrified, and a tense, startled silence fell upon us all. Down the
remaining stairs there advanced towards us a young woman, powerful though
short, wild-eyed, dishevelled, horror-stricken, and of a ghastly pallor:
and her hair was a fiery red.

Stock still and speechless we all stood as this apparition came slowly
towards us; but suddenly the detective slipped back into the room,
closing the door after him, to reappear a few moments later holding a
small paper packet, which, after a quick glance at the inspector, he
placed in his breast pocket.

"This is my daughter Miriam that we spoke about, gentlemen," said Mr.
Goldstein. "Miriam, those are the doctors and the police."

The girl looked at us from one to the other. "You have seen her, then,"
she said in a strange, muffled voice, and added: "She isn't dead, is she?
Not really dead?" The question was asked in a tone at once coaxing and
despairing, such as a distracted mother might use over the corpse of her
child. It filled me with vague discomfort, and, unconsciously, I looked
round towards Thorndyke.

To my surprise he had vanished.

Noiselessly backing towards the head of the stairs, where I could command
a view of the hall, or passage, I looked down, and saw him in the act of
reaching up to a shelf behind the street door. He caught my eye, and
beckoned, whereupon I crept away unnoticed by the party on the landing.
When I reached the hall, he was wrapping up three small objects, each in
a separate cigarette-paper; and I noticed that he handled them with more
than ordinary tenderness.

"We didn't want to see that poor devil of a girl arrested," said he, as
he deposited the three little packets gingerly in his pocket-box. "Let us
be off." He opened the door noiselessly, and stood for a moment, turning
the latch backwards and forwards, and closely examining its bolt.

I glanced up at the shelf behind the door. On it were two flat china
candlesticks, in one of which I had happened to notice, as we came in, a
short end of candle lying in the tray, and I now looked to see if that
was what Thorndyke had annexed; but it was still there.

I followed my colleague out into the street, and for some time we walked
on without speaking. "You guessed what the sergeant had in that paper, of
course," said Thorndyke at length.

"Yes. It was the hair from the dead woman's hand; and I thought that he
had much better have left it there."

"Undoubtedly. But that is the way in which well-meaning policemen destroy
valuable evidence. Not that it matters much in this particular instance;
but it might have been a fatal mistake."

"Do you intend to take any active part in this case?" I asked.

"That depends on circumstances. I have collected some evidence, but what
it is worth I don't yet know. Neither do I know whether the police have
observed the same set of facts; but I need not say that I shall do
anything that seems necessary to assist the authorities. That is a matter
of common citizenship."

The inroads made upon our time by the morning's adventures made it
necessary that we should go each about his respective business without
delay; so, after a perfunctory lunch at a tea-shop, we separated, and I
did not see my colleague again until the day's work was finished, and I
turned into our chambers just before dinner-time.

Here I found Thorndyke seated at the table, and evidently full of
business. A microscope stood close by, with a condenser throwing a spot
of light on to a pinch of powder that had been sprinkled on to the slide;
his collecting-box lay open before him, and he was engaged, rather
mysteriously, in squeezing a thick white cement from a tube on to three
little pieces of moulding-wax.

"Useful stuff, this Fortafix," he remarked; "it makes excellent casts,
and saves the trouble and mess of mixing plaster, which is a
consideration for small work like this. By the way, if you want to know
what was on that poor girl's pillow, just take a peep through the
microscope. It is rather a pretty specimen."

I stepped across, and applied my eye to the instrument. The specimen was,
indeed, pretty in more than a technical sense. Mingled with crystalline
grains of quartz, glassy spicules, and water-worn fragments of coral,
were a number of lovely little shells, some of the texture of fine
porcelain, others like blown Venetian glass.

"These are Foraminifera!" I exclaimed.

"Yes."

"Then it is not silver sand, after all?"

"Certainly not."

"But what is it, then?"


Thorndyke smiled. "It is a message to us from the deep sea, Jervis; from
the floor of the Eastern Mediterranean."

"And can you read the message?"

"I think I can," he replied, "but I shall know soon, I hope."

I looked down the microscope again, and wondered what message these tiny
shells had conveyed to my friend. Deep-sea sand on a dead woman's pillow!
What could be more incongruous? What possible connection could there be
between this sordid crime in the east of London and the deep bed of the
"tideless sea"?

Meanwhile Thorndyke squeezed out more cement on to the three little
pieces of moulding-wax (which I suspected to be the objects that I had
seen him wrapping up with such care in the hall of the Goldsteins'
house); then, laying one of them down on a glass slide, with its cemented
side uppermost, he stood the other two upright on either side of it.
Finally he squeezed out a fresh load of the thick cement, apparently to
bind the three objects together, and carried the slide very carefully to
a cupboard, where he deposited it, together with the envelope containing
the sand and the slide from the stage of the microscope.

He was just locking the cupboard when a sharp rat-tat on our knocker sent
him hurriedly to the door. A messenger-boy, standing on the threshold,
held out a dirty envelope.

"Mr. Goldstein kept me a awful long time, sir," said he; "I haven't been
a-loitering."

Thorndyke took the envelope over to the gas-light, and, opening it, drew
forth a sheet of paper, which he scanned quickly and almost eagerly; and,
though his face remained as inscrutable as a mask of stone, I felt a
conviction that the paper had told him something that he wished to know.

The boy having been sent on his way rejoicing, Thorndyke turned to the
bookshelves, along which he ran his eye thoughtfully until it alighted on
a shabbily-bound volume near one end. This he reached down, and as he
laid it open on the table, I glanced at it, and was surprised to observe
that it was a bi-lingual work, the opposite pages being apparently in
Russian and Hebrew.

"The Old Testament in Russian and Yiddish," he remarked, noting my
surprise. "I am going to get Polton to photograph a couple of specimen
pages--is that the postman or a visitor?"

It turned out to be the postman, and as Thorndyke extracted from the
letter-box a blue official envelope, he glanced significantly at me.

"This answers your question, I think, Jervis," said he. "Yes; coroner's
subpoena and a very civil letter: 'sorry to trouble you, but I had no
choice under the circumstances'--of course he hadn't--'Dr. Davidson has
arranged to make the autopsy to-morrow at 4 p.m., and I should be glad if
you could be present. The mortuary is in Barker Street, next to the
school.' Well, we must go, I suppose, though Davidson will probably
resent it." He took up the Testament, and went off with it to the
laboratory.

We lunched at our chambers on the following day, and, after the meal,
drew up our chairs to the fire and lit our pipes. Thorndyke was evidently
preoccupied, for he laid his open notebook on his knee, and, gazing
meditatively into the fire, made occasional entries with his pencil as
though he were arranging the points of an argument. Assuming that the
Aldgate murder was the subject of his cogitations, I ventured to ask:

"Have you any material evidence to offer the coroner?"

He closed his notebook and put it away. "The evidence that I have," he
said, "is material and important; but it is disjointed and rather
inconclusive. If I can join it up into a coherent whole, as I hope to do
before I reach the court, it will be very important indeed--but here is
my invaluable familiar, with the instruments of research." He turned with
a smile towards Polton, who had just entered the room, and master and man
exchanged a friendly glance of mutual appreciation. The relations of
Thorndyke and his assistant were a constant delight to me: on the one
side, service, loyal and whole-hearted; on the other, frank and full
recognition.

"I should think those will do, sir," said Polton, handing his principal a
small cardboard box such as playing-cards are carried in. Thorndyke
pulled off the lid, and I then saw that the box was fitted internally
with grooves for plates, and contained two mounted photographs. The
latter were very singular productions indeed; they were copies each of a
page of the Testament, one Russian and the other Yiddish; but the
lettering appeared white on a black ground, of which it occupied only
quite a small space in the middle, leaving a broad black margin. Each
photograph was mounted on a stiff card, and each card had a duplicate
photograph pasted on the back.

Thorndyke exhibited them to me with a provoking smile, holding them
daintily by their edges, before he slid them back into the grooves of
their box.

"We are making a little digression into philology, you see," he remarked,
as he pocketed the box. "But we must be off now, or we shall keep
Davidson waiting. Thank you, Polton."

The District Railway carried us swiftly eastward, and we emerged from
Aldgate Station a full half-hour before we were due. Nevertheless,
Thorndyke stepped out briskly, but instead of making directly for the
mortuary, he strayed off unaccountably into Mansell Street, scanning the
numbers of the houses as he went. A row of old houses, picturesque but
grimy, on our right seemed specially to attract him, and he slowed down
as we approached them.

"There is a quaint survival, Jervis," he remarked, pointing to a crudely
painted, wooden effigy of an Indian standing on a bracket at the door of
a small old-fashioned tobacconist's shop. We halted to look at the little
image, and at that moment the side door opened, and a woman came out on
to the doorstop, where she stood gazing up and down the street.

Thorndyke immediately crossed the pavement, and addressed her, apparently
with some question, for I heard her answer presently: "A quarter-past six
is his time, sir, and he is generally punctual to the minute."

"Thank you," said Thorndyke; "I'll bear that in mind;" and, lifting his
hat, he walked on briskly, turning presently up a side-street which
brought us out into Aldgate. It was now but five minutes to four, so we
strode off quickly to keep our tryst at the mortuary; but although we
arrived at the gate as the hour was striking, when we entered the
building we found Dr. Davidson hanging up his apron and preparing to
depart.

"Sorry I couldn't wait for you," he said, with no great show of
sincerity, "but a post-mortem is a mere farce in a case like this; you
have seen all that there was to see. However, there is the body; Hart
hasn't closed it up yet."

With this and a curt "good-afternoon" he departed.

"I must apologize for Dr. Davidson, sir," said Hart, looking up with a
vexed face from the desk at which he was writing out his notes.

"You needn't," said Thorndyke; "you didn't supply him with manners; and
don't let me disturb you. I only want to verify one or two points."

Accepting the hint, Hart and I remained at the desk, while Thorndyke,
removing his hat, advanced to the long slate table, and bent over its
burden of pitiful tragedy. For some time he remained motionless, running
his eye gravely over the corpse, in search, no doubt, of bruises and
indications of a struggle. Then he stooped and narrowly examined the
wound, especially at its commencement and end. Suddenly he drew nearer,
peering intently as if something had attracted his attention, and having
taken out his lens, fetched a small sponge, with which he dried an
exposed process of the spine. Holding his lens before the dried spot, he
again scrutinized it closely, and then, with a scalpel and forceps,
detached some object, which he carefully washed, and then once more
examined through his lens as it lay in the palm of his hand. Finally, as
I expected, he brought forth his "collecting-box," took from it a
seed-envelope, into which he dropped the object--evidently something
quite small--closed up the envelope, wrote on the outside of it, and
replaced it in the box.

"I think I have seen all that I wanted to see," he said, as he pocketed
the box and took up his hat. "We shall meet to-morrow morning at the
inquest." He shook hands with Hart, and we went out into the relatively
pure air.

On one pretext or another, Thorndyke lingered about the neighbourhood of
Aldgate until a church bell struck six, when he bent his steps towards
Harrow Alley. Through the narrow, winding passage he walked, slowly and
with a thoughtful mien, along Little Somerset Street and out into Mansell
Street, until just on the stroke of a quarter-past we found ourselves
opposite the little tobacconist's shop.

Thorndyke glanced at his watch and halted, looking keenly up the street.
A moment later he hastily took from his pocket the cardboard box, from
which he extracted the two mounted photographs which had puzzled me so
much. They now seemed to puzzle Thorndyke equally, to judge by his
expression, for he held them close to his eyes, scrutinizing them with an
anxious frown, and backing by degrees into the doorway at the side of the
tobacconist's. At this moment I became aware of a man who, as he
approached, seemed to eye my friend with some curiosity and more
disfavour; a very short, burly young man, apparently a foreign Jew, whose
face, naturally sinister and unprepossessing, was further disfigured by
the marks of smallpox.

"Excuse me," he said brusquely, pushing past Thorndyke; "I live here."

"I am sorry," responded Thorndyke. He moved aside, and then suddenly
asked: "By the way, I suppose you do not by any chance understand
Yiddish?"

"Why do you ask?" the newcomer demanded gruffly.

"Because I have just had these two photographs of lettering given to me.
One is in Greek, I think, and one in Yiddish, but I have forgotten which
is which." He held out the two cards to the stranger, who took them from
him, and looked at them with scowling curiosity.

"This one is Yiddish," said he, raising his right hand, "and this other
is Russian, not Greek." He held out the two cards to Thorndyke, who took
them from him, holding them carefully by the edges as before.

"I am greatly obliged to you for your kind assistance," said Thorndyke;
but before he had time to finish his thanks, the man had entered, by
means of his latchkey, and slammed the door.

Thorndyke carefully slid the photographs back into their grooves,
replaced the box in his pocket, and made an entry in his notebook.

"That," said he, "finishes my labours, with the exception of a small
experiment which I can perform at home. By the way, I picked up a morsel
of evidence that Davidson had overlooked. He will be annoyed, and I am
not very fond of scoring off a colleague; but he is too uncivil for me to
communicate with."

* * * * *

The coroner's subpoena had named ten o'clock as the hour at which
Thorndyke was to attend to give evidence, but a consultation with a
well-known solicitor so far interfered with his plans that we were a
quarter of an hour late in starting from the Temple. My friend was
evidently in excellent spirits, though silent and preoccupied, from which
I inferred that he was satisfied with the results of his labours; but, as
I sat by his side in the hansom, I forbore to question him, not from mere
unselfishness, but rather from the desire to hear his evidence for the
first time in conjunction with that of the other witnesses.

The room in which the inquest was held formed part of a school adjoining
the mortuary. Its vacant bareness was on this occasion enlivened by a
long, baize-covered table, at the head of which sat the coroner, while
one side was occupied by the jury; and I was glad to observe that the
latter consisted, for the most part, of genuine working men, instead of
the stolid-faced, truculent "professional jurymen" who so often grace
these tribunals.

A row of chairs accommodated the witnesses, a corner of the table was
allotted to the accused woman's solicitor, a smart dapper gentleman in
gold pince-nez, a portion of one side to the reporters, and several ranks
of benches were occupied by a miscellaneous assembly representing the
public.

There were one or two persons present whom I was somewhat surprised to
see. There was, for instance, our pock-marked acquaintance of Mansell
Street, who greeted us with a stare of hostile surprise; and there was
Superintendent Miller of Scotland Yard, in whose manner I seemed to
detect some kind of private understanding with Thorndyke. But I had
little time to look about me, for when we arrived, the proceedings had
already commenced. Mrs. Goldstein, the first witness, was finishing her
recital of the circumstances under which the crime was discovered, and,
as she retired, weeping hysterically, she was followed by looks of
commiseration from the sympathetic jurymen.

The next witness was a young woman named Kate Silver. As she stepped
forward to be sworn she flung a glance of hatred and defiance at Miriam
Goldstein, who, white-faced and wild of aspect, with her red hair
streaming in dishevelled masses on to her shoulders, stood apart in
custody of two policemen, staring about her as if in a dream.

"You were intimately acquainted with the deceased, I believe?" said the
coroner.

"I was. We worked at the same place for a long time--the Empire
Restaurant in Fenchurch Street--and we lived in the same house. She was
my most intimate friend."

"Had she, as far as you know, any friends or relations in England?"

"No. She came to England from Bremen about three years ago. It was then
that I made her acquaintance. All her relations were in Germany, but she
had many friends here, because she was a very lively, amiable girl."

"Had she, as far as you know, any enemies--any persons, I mean, who bore
any grudge against her and were likely to do her an injury?"

"Yes. Miriam Goldstein was her enemy. She hated her."

"You say Miriam Goldstein hated the deceased. How do you know that?"

"She made no secret of it. They had had a violent quarrel about a young
man named Moses Cohen. He was formerly Miriam's sweetheart, and I think
they were very fond of one another until Minna Adler came to lodge at the
Goldsteins' house about three months ago. Then Moses took a fancy to
Minna, and she encouraged him, although she had a sweetheart of her own,
a young man named Paul Petrofsky, who also lodged in the Goldsteins'
house. At last Moses broke off with Miriam, and engaged himself to Minna.
Then Miriam was furious, and complained to Minna about what she called
her perfidious conduct; but Minna only laughed, and told her she could
have Petrofsky instead."

"And what did Minna say to that?" asked the coroner.

"She was still more angry, because Moses Cohen is a smart, good-looking
young man, while Petrofsky is not much to look at. Besides, Miriam did
not like Petrofsky; he had been rude to her, and she had made her father
send him away from the house. So they were not friends, and it was just
after that that the trouble came."

"The trouble?"

"I mean about Moses Cohen. Miriam is a very passionate girl, and she was
furiously jealous of Minna, so when Petrofsky annoyed her by taunting her
about Moses Cohen and Minna, she lost her temper, and said dreadful
things about both of them."

"As, for instance -?"

"She said that she would kill them both, and that she would like to cut
Minna's throat."

"When was this?"

"It was the day before the murder."

"Who heard her say these things besides you?"

"Another lodger named Edith Bryant and Petrofsky. We were all standing in
the hall at the time."

"But I thought you said Petrofsky had been turned away from the house."

"So he had, a week before; but he had left a box in his room, and on this
day he had come to fetch it. That was what started the trouble. Miriam
had taken his room for her bedroom, and turned her old one into a
workroom. She said he should not go to her room to fetch his box."

"And did he?"

"I think so. Miriam and Edith and I went out, leaving him in the hall.
When we came back the box was gone, and, as Mrs. Goldstein was in the
kitchen and there was nobody else in the house, he must have taken it."

"You spoke of Miriam's workroom. What work did she do?"

"She cut stencils for a firm of decorators."

Here the coroner took a peculiarly shaped knife from the table before
him, and handed it to the witness.

"Have you ever seen that knife before?" he asked.

"Yes. It belongs to Miriam Goldstein. It is a stencil-knife that she used
in her work."

This concluded the evidence of Kate Silver, and when the name of the next
witness, Paul Petrofsky, was called, our Mansell Street friend came
forward to be sworn. His evidence was quite brief, and merely
corroborative of that of Kate Silver, as was that of the next witness,
Edith Bryant. When these had been disposed of, the coroner announced:

"Before taking the medical evidence, gentlemen, I propose to hear that of
the police-officers, and first we will call Detective-sergeant Alfred
Bates."

The sergeant stepped forward briskly, and proceeded to give his evidence
with official readiness and precision.

"I was called by Constable Simmonds at eleven-forty-nine, and reached the
house at two minutes to twelve in company with Inspector Harris and
Divisional Surgeon Davidson. When I arrived Dr. Hart, Dr. Thorndyke, and
Dr. Jervis were already in the room. I found the deceased woman, Minna
Adler, lying in bed with her throat cut. She was dead and cold. There
were no signs of a struggle, and the bed did not appear to have been
disturbed. There was a table by the bedside on which was a book and an
empty candlestick. The candle had apparently burnt out, for there was
only a piece of charred wick at the bottom of the socket. A box had been
placed on the floor at the head of the bed and a hassock stood on it.
Apparently the murderer had stood on the hassock and leaned over the head
of the bed to commit the murder. This was rendered necessary by the
position of the table, which could not have been moved without making
some noise and perhaps disturbing the deceased. I infer from the presence
of the box and hassock that the murderer is a short person."

"Was there anything else that seemed to fix the identity of the
murderer?"

"Yes. A tress of a woman's red hair was grasped in the left hand of the
deceased."

As the detective uttered this statement, a simultaneous shriek of horror
burst from the accused woman and her mother. Mrs. Goldstein sank
half-fainting on to a bench, while Miriam, pale as death, stood as one
petrified, fixing the detective with a stare of terror, as he drew from
his pocket two small paper packets, which he opened and handed to the
coroner.

"The hair in the packet marked A," said he, "is that which was found in
the hand of the deceased; that in the packet marked B is the hair of
Miriam Goldstein."

Here the accused woman's solicitor rose. "Where did you obtain the hair
in the packet marked B?" he demanded.

"I took it from a bag of combings that hung on the wall of Miriam
Goldstein's bedroom," answered the detective.

"I object to this," said the solicitor. "There is no evidence that the
hair from that bag was the hair of Miriam Goldstein at all."

Thorndyke chuckled softly. "The lawyer is as dense as the policeman," he
remarked to me in an undertone. "Neither of them seems to see the
significance of that bag in the least."

"Did you know about the bag, then?" I asked in surprise.

"No. I thought it was the hair-brush."

I gazed at my colleague in amazement, and was about to ask for some
elucidation of this cryptic reply, when he held up his finger and turned
again to listen.

"Very well, Mr. Horwitz," the coroner was saying, "I will make a note of
your objection, but I shall allow the sergeant to continue his evidence."

The solicitor sat down, and the detective resumed his statement.

"I have examined and compared the two samples of hair, and it is my
opinion that they are from the head of the same person. The only other
observation that I made in the room was that there was a small quantity
of silver sand sprinkled on the pillow around the deceased woman's head."

"Silver sand!" exclaimed the coroner. "Surely that is a very singular
material to find on a woman's pillow?"

"I think it is easily explained," replied the sergeant. "The wash-hand
basin was full of bloodstained water, showing that the murderer had
washed his--or her--hands, and probably the knife, too, after the
crime. On the washstand was a ball of sand-soap, and I imagine that the
murderer used this to cleanse his--or her--hands, and, while drying
them, must have stood over the head of the bed and let the sand sprinkle
down on to the pillow."

"A simple but highly ingenious explanation," commented the coroner
approvingly, and the jurymen exchanged admiring nods and nudges.

"I searched the rooms occupied by the accused woman, Miriam Goldstein,
and found there a knife of the kind used by stencil cutters, but larger
than usual. There were stains of blood on it which the accused explained
by saying that she cut her finger some days ago. She admitted that the
knife was hers."

This concluded the sergeant's evidence, and he was about to sit down when
the solicitor rose.

"I should like to ask this witness one or two questions," said he, and
the coroner having nodded assent, he proceeded: "Has the finger of the
accused been examined since her arrest?"

"I believe not," replied the sergeant. "Not to my knowledge, at any
rate."

The solicitor noted the reply, and then asked: "With reference to the
silver sand, did you find any at the bottom of the wash-hand basin?"

The sergeant's face reddened. "I did not examine the wash-hand basin," he
answered.

"Did anybody examine it?"

"I think not."

"Thank you." Mr. Horwitz sat down, and the triumphant squeak of his quill
pen was heard above the muttered disapproval of the jury.

"We shall now take the evidence of the doctors, gentlemen," said the
coroner, "and we will begin with that of the divisional surgeon. You saw
the deceased, I believe, Doctor," he continued, when Dr. Davidson had
been sworn, "soon after the discovery of the murder, and you have since
then made an examination of the body?"

"Yes. I found the body of the deceased lying in her bed, which had
apparently not been disturbed. She had been dead about ten hours, and
rigidity was complete in the limbs but not in the trunk. The cause of
death was a deep wound extending right across the throat and dividing all
the structures down to the spine. It had been inflicted with a single
sweep of a knife while deceased was lying down, and was evidently
homicidal. It was not possible for the deceased to have inflicted the
wound herself. It was made with a single-edged knife, drawn from left to
right; the assailant stood on a hassock placed on a box at the head of
the bed and leaned over to strike the blow. The murderer is probably
quite a short person, very muscular, and right-handed. There was no sign
of a struggle, and, judging by the nature of the injuries, I should say
that death was almost instantaneous. In the left hand of the deceased was
a small tress of a woman's red hair. I have compared that hair with that
of the accused, and am of opinion that it is her hair."

"You were shown a knife belonging to the accused?"

"Yes; a stencil-knife. There were stains of dried blood on it which I
have examined and find to be mammalian blood. It is probably human blood,
but I cannot say with certainty that it is."

"Could the wound have been inflicted with this knife?"

"Yes, though it is a small knife to produce so deep a wound. Still, it is
quite possible."

The coroner glanced at Mr. Horwitz. "Do you wish to ask this witness any
questions?" he inquired.

"If you please, sir," was the reply. The solicitor rose, and, having
glanced through his notes, commenced: "You have described certain
blood-stains on this knife. But we have heard that there was
blood-stained water in the wash-hand basin, and it is suggested, most
reasonably, that the murderer washed his hands and the knife. But if the
knife was washed, how do you account for the bloodstains on it?"

"Apparently the knife was not washed, only the hands."

"But is not that highly improbable?"

"No, I think not."

"You say that there was no struggle, and that death was practically
instantaneous, but yet the deceased had torn out a lock of the
murderess's hair. Are not those two statements inconsistent with one
another?"

"No. The hair was probably grasped convulsively at the moment of death.
At any rate, the hair was undoubtedly in the dead woman's hand."

"Is it possible to identify positively the hair of any individual?"

"No. Not with certainty. But this is very peculiar hair."

The solicitor sat down, and, Dr. Hart having been called, and having
briefly confirmed the evidence of his principal, the coroner announced:
"The next witness, gentleman, is Dr. Thorndyke, who was present almost
accidentally, but was actually the first on the scene of the murder. He
has since made an examination of the body, and will, no doubt, be able to
throw some further light on this horrible crime."

Thorndyke stood up, and, having been sworn, laid on the table a small box
with a leather handle. Then, in answer to the coroner's questions, he
described himself as the lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence at St.
Margaret's Hospital, and briefly explained his connection with the case.
At this point the foreman of the jury interrupted to ask that his opinion
might be taken on the hair and the knife, as these were matters of
contention, and the objects in question were accordingly handed to him.

"Is the hair in the packet marked A in your opinion from the same person
as that in the packet marked B?" the coroner asked.

"I have no doubt that they are from the same person," was the reply.

"Will you examine this knife and tell us if the wound on the deceased
might have been inflicted with it?"

Thorndyke examined the blade attentively, and then handed the knife back
to the coroner.

"The wound might have been inflicted with this knife," said he, "but I am
quite sure it was not."

"Can you give us your reasons for that very definite opinion?"

"I think," said Thorndyke, "that it will save time if I give you the
facts in a connected order." The coroner bowed assent, and he proceeded:
"I will not waste your time by reiterating facts already stated. Sergeant
Bates has fully described the state of the room, and I have nothing to
add on that subject. Dr. Davidson's description of the body covers all
the facts: the woman had been dead about ten hours, the wound was
unquestionably homicidal, and was inflicted in the manner that he has
described. Death was apparently instantaneous, and I should say that the
deceased never awakened from her sleep."

"But," objected the coroner, "the deceased held a lock of hair in her
hand."

"That hair," replied Thorndyke, "was not the hair of the murderer. It was
placed in the hand of the corpse for an obvious purpose; and the fact
that the murderer had brought it with him shows that the crime was
premeditated, and that it was committed by someone who had had access to
the house and was acquainted with its inmates."

As Thorndyke made this statement, coroner, jurymen, and spectators alike
gazed at him in open-mouthed amazement. There was an interval of intense
silence, broken by a wild, hysteric laugh from Mrs. Goldstein, and then
the coroner asked:

"How did you know that the hair in the hand of the corpse was not that of
the murderer?"

"The inference was very obvious. At the first glance the peculiar and
conspicuous colour of the hair struck me as suspicious. But there were
three facts, each of which was in itself sufficient to prove that the
hair was probably not that of the murderer.

"In the first place there was the condition of the hand. When a person,
at the moment of death, grasps any object firmly, there is set up a
condition known as cadaveric spasm. The muscular contraction passes
immediately into rigor mortis, or death-stiffening, and the object
remains grasped by the dead hand until the rigidity passes off. In this
case the hand was perfectly rigid, but it did not grasp the hair at all.
The little tress lay in the palm quite loosely and the hand was only
partially closed. Obviously the hair had been placed in it after death.
The other two facts had reference to the condition of the hair itself.
Now, when a lock of hair is torn from the head, it is evident that all
the roots will be found at the same end of the lock. But in the present
instance this was not the case; the lock of hair which lay in the dead
woman's hand had roots at both ends, and so could not have been torn from
the head of the murderer. But the third fact that I observed was still
more conclusive. The hairs of which that little tress was composed had
not been pulled out at all. They had fallen out spontaneously. They were,
in fact, shed hairs--probably combings. Let me explain the difference.
When a hair is shed naturally, it drops out of the little tube in the
skin called the root sheath, having been pushed out by the young hair
growing up underneath; the root end of such a shed hair shows nothing but
a small bulbous enlargement--the root bulb. But when a hair is forcibly
pulled out, its root drags out the root sheath with it, and this can be
plainly seen as a glistening mass on the end of the hair. If Miriam
Goldstein will pull out a hair and pass it to me, I will show you the
great difference between hair which is pulled out and hair which is
shed."

The unfortunate Miriam needed no pressing. In a twinkling she had tweaked
out a dozen hairs, which a constable handed across to Thorndyke, by whom
they were at once fixed in a paper-clip. A second clip being produced
from the box, half a dozen hairs taken from the tress which had been
found in the dead woman's hand were fixed in it. Then Thorndyke handed
the two clips, together with a lens, to the coroner.

"Remarkable!" exclaimed the latter, "and most conclusive." He passed the
objects on to the foreman, and there was an interval of silence while the
jury examined them with breathless interest and much facial contortion.

"The next question," resumed Thorndyke, "was, Whence did the murderer
obtain these hairs? I assumed that they had been taken from Miriam
Goldstein's hair-brush; but the sergeant's evidence makes it pretty clear
that they were obtained from the very bag of combings from which he took
a sample for comparison."

"I think, Doctor," remarked the coroner, "you have disposed of the hair
clue pretty completely. May I ask if you found anything that might throw
any light on the identity of the murderer?"

"Yes," replied Thorndyke, "I observed certain things which determine the
identity of the murderer quite conclusively." He turned a significant
glance on Superintendent Miller, who immediately rose, stepped quietly to
the door, and then returned, putting something into his pocket. "When I
entered the hall," Thorndyke continued, "I noted the following facts:
Behind the door was a shelf on which were two china candlesticks. Each
was fitted with a candle, and in one was a short candle-end, about an
inch long, lying in the tray. On the floor, close to the mat, was a spot
of candle-wax and some faint marks of muddy feet. The oil-cloth on the
stairs also bore faint footmarks, made by wet goloshes. They were
ascending the stairs, and grew fainter towards the top. There were two
more spots of candle-wax on the stairs, and one on the handrail; a burnt
end of a wax match halfway up the stairs, and another on the landing.
There were no descending footmarks, but one of the spots of wax close to
the balusters had been trodden on while warm and soft, and bore the mark
of the front of the heel of a golosh descending the stairs. The lock of
the street door had been recently oiled, as had also that of the bedroom
door, and the latter had been unlocked from outside with a bent wire,
which had made a mark on the key. Inside the room I made two further
observations. One was that the dead woman's pillow was lightly sprinkled
with sand, somewhat like silver sand, but greyer and less gritty. I shall
return to this presently.

"The other was that the candlestick on the bedside table was empty. It
was a peculiar candlestick, having a skeleton socket formed of eight flat
strips of metal. The charred wick of a burnt-out candle was at the bottom
of the socket, but a little fragment of wax on the top edge showed that
another candle had been stuck in it and had been taken out, for otherwise
that fragment would have been melted. I at once thought of the candle-end
in the hall, and when I went down again I took that end from the tray and
examined it. On it I found eight distinct marks corresponding to the
eight bars of the candlestick in the bedroom. It had been carried in the
right hand of some person, for the warm, soft wax had taken beautifully
clear impressions of a right thumb and forefinger. I took three moulds of
the candle-end in moulding wax, and from these moulds have made this
cement cast, which shows both the fingerprints and the marks of the
candlestick." He took from his box a small white object, which he handed
to the coroner.

"And what do you gather from these facts?" asked the coroner.

"I gather that at about a quarter to two on the morning of the crime, a
man (who had, on the previous day visited the house to obtain the tress
of hair and oil the locks) entered the house by means of a latchkey. We
can fix the time by the fact that it rained on that morning from
half-past one to a quarter to two, this being the only rain that has
fallen for a fortnight, and the murder was committed at about two
o'clock. The man lit a wax match in the hall and another halfway up the
stairs. He found the bedroom door locked, and turned the key from outside
with a bent wire. He entered, lit the candle, placed the box and hassock,
murdered his victim, washed his hands and knife, took the candle-end from
the socket and went downstairs, where he blew out the candle and dropped
it into the tray.

"The next clue is furnished by the sand on the pillow. I took a little of
it, and examined it under the microscope, when it turned out to be
deep-sea sand from the Eastern Mediterranean. It was full of the minute
shells called 'Foraminifera,' and as one of these happened to belong to a
species which is found only in the Levant, I was able to fix the
locality."

"But this is very remarkable," said the coroner. "How on earth could
deep-sea sand have got on to this woman's pillow?"

"The explanation," replied Thorndyke, "is really quite simple. Sand of
this kind is contained in considerable quantities in Turkey sponges. The
warehouses in which the sponges are unpacked are often strewn with it
ankle deep; the men who unpack the cases become dusted over with it,
their clothes saturated and their pockets filled with it. If such a
person, with his clothes and pockets full of sand, had committed this
murder, it is pretty certain that in leaning over the head of the bed in
a partly inverted position he would have let fall a certain quantity of
the sand from his pockets and the interstices of his clothing. Now, as
soon as I had examined this sand and ascertained its nature, I sent a
message to Mr. Goldstein asking him for a list of the persons who were
acquainted with the deceased, with their addresses and occupations. He
sent me the list by return, and among the persons mentioned was a man who
was engaged as a packer in a wholesale sponge warehouse in the Minories.
I further ascertained that the new season's crop of Turkey sponges had
arrived a few days before the murder.

"The question that now arose was, whether this sponge-packer was the
person whose fingerprints I had found on the candle-end. To settle this
point, I prepared two mounted photographs, and having contrived to meet
the man at his door on his return from work, I induced him to look at
them and compare them. He took them from me, holding each one between a
forefinger and thumb. When he returned them to me, I took them home and
carefully dusted each on both sides with a certain surgical
dusting-powder. The powder adhered to the places where his fingers and
thumbs had pressed against the photographs, showing the fingerprints very
distinctly. Those of the right hand were identical with the prints on the
candle, as you will see if you compare them with the cast." He produced
from the box the photograph of the Yiddish lettering, on the black margin
of which there now stood out with startling distinctness a
yellowish-white print of a thumb.

Thorndyke had just handed the card to the coroner when a very singular
disturbance arose. While my friend had been giving the latter part of his
evidence, I had observed the man Petrofsky rise from his seat and walk
stealthily across to the door. He turned the handle softly and pulled, at
first gently, and then with more force. But the door was locked. As he
realized this, Petrofsky seized the handle with both hands and tore at it
furiously, shaking it to and fro with the violence of a madman, and his
shaking limbs, his starting eyes, glaring insanely at the astonished
spectators, his ugly face, dead white, running with sweat and hideous
with terror, made a picture that was truly shocking.

Suddenly he let go the handle, and with a horrible cry thrust his hand
under the skirt of his coat and rushed at Thorndyke. But the
superintendent was ready for this. There was a shout and a scuffle, and
then Petrofsky was born down, kicking and biting like a maniac, while
Miller hung on to his right hand and the formidable knife that it
grasped.

"I will ask you to hand that knife to the coroner," said Thorndyke, when
Petrofsky had been secured and handcuffed, and the superintendent had
readjusted his collar. "Will you kindly examine it, sir," he continued,
"and tell me if there is a notch in the edge, near to the point--a
triangular notch about an eighth of an inch long?"

The coroner looked at the knife, and then said in a tone of surprise:
"Yes, there is. You have seen this knife before, then?"

"No, I have not," replied Thorndyke. "But perhaps I had better continue
my statement. There is no need for me to tell you that the fingerprints
on the card and on the candle are those of Paul Petrofsky; I will proceed
to the evidence furnished by the body.

"In accordance with your order, I went to the mortuary and examined the
corpse of the deceased. The wound has been fully and accurately described
by Dr. Davidson, but I observed one fact which I presume he had
overlooked. Embedded in the bone of the spine--in the left transverse
process of the fourth vertebra--I discovered a small particle of steel,
which I carefully extracted."

He drew his collecting-box from his pocket, and taking from it a
seed-envelope, handed the latter to the coroner. "That fragment of steel
is in this envelope," he said, "and it is possible that it may correspond
to the notch in the knife-blade."

Amidst an intense silence the coroner opened the little envelope, and let
the fragment of steel drop on to a sheet of paper. Laying the knife on
the paper, he gently pushed the fragment towards the notch. Then he
looked up at Thorndyke.

"It fits exactly," said he.

There was a heavy thud at the other end of the room and we all looked
round.

Petrofsky had fallen on to the floor insensible.

* * * * *

"An instructive case, Jervis," remarked Thorndyke, as we walked homewards--"a
case that reiterates the lesson that the authorities still refuse to
learn."

"What is that?" I asked.

"It is this. When it is discovered that a murder has been committed, the
scene of that murder should instantly become as the Palace of the
Sleeping Beauty. Not a grain of dust should be moved, not a soul should
be allowed to approach it, until the scientific observer has seen
everything in situ and absolutely undisturbed. No tramplings of excited
constables, no rummaging by detectives, no scrambling to and fro of
bloodhounds. Consider what would have happened in this case if we had
arrived a few hours later. The corpse would have been in the mortuary,
the hair in the sergeant's pocket, the bed rummaged and the sand
scattered abroad, the candle probably removed, and the stairs covered
with fresh tracks.

"There would not have been the vestige of a clue."

"And," I added, "the deep sea would have uttered its message in vain."



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 moralise 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 BONNET,

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 taxicab 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 ir 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
personae."

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
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 of 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 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, her self--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
response 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 s 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 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
today'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
recognised 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, he 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 lamp- lighter. 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
recognised 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 clerk's 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 any thing 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 to 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 borne, where I locked the thing up again in the strong-room.

"It was about seven when I got borne. 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 bad 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
bad 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 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 for ward 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 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 I having examined the inside of the
lid, scrutinised 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 cornpanionable"; 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, I 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 step 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 im passive 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 im patience 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' 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 be. "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 ipissima 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." I said.

"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 complete
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
buffer 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 be 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 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 re turned 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.



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," be 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. 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 con 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, 4 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 un
expected, 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 in advertent 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 funeral
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 connection 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," 1 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 authorising 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 tibia 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 recognisable fragment of a human skeleton, together with the
forged certificates, gives us a pretty I 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 he 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.



THE STALKING HORSE


As Thorndyke and I descended the stairs of the foot bridge 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
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 connection 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
scrutinised 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 after noon, 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 on 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 appear," 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 be 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 newcomer
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 un easiness, "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
near-sighted, 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 recognised 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 oxidising 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."



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 1 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. How
ever, 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 reason able 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 notebook 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 scrutinised 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 be 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 latchkey; 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 forrader 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 forrader."

"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 standardised 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 notebook, 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 standardised 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 latchkey. He had a
spare bedroom which he let me use if I wanted to stay in town." As be
spoke, he produced his key-bunch and exhibited a small Chubb latchkey. "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 inure 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 latchkey. 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
latchkey 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 latchkey, 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 be 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 some thing. 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 some thing 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 succinea 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 succinea. What do you
think of it, Jervis?"

I looked distastefully at the repulsive mess, but yet with attention, for
I realised 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 notebook, 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 measure ments 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 Duckweed. 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 succinea, 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.



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 Mlillicent 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 realise that her marriage will render that
will null and void?"

"Apparently not," replied Meade; "nor, to tell the truth, did I realise
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
wills 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 some thing 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 bloodstain 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 Idown. 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 an 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 foot print 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 lamplight 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 recognisable 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
connection 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 to 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 re
ported 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 scrutinised 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 recognise 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."

"Precisely," 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 connection 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 fingerprint. 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 Pouting?" 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 Panting. "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 Panting. "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 bad 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 Panting 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 he 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 practice. 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 connection 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 I 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 coy ness, 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 eyeballs 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 bad 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 be 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--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."



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 apologising 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, recognised 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 particular 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 recognised 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 seem 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 authorisation 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 who 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 scrutinised 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 notebook, 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's 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 notebook,
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 recognised 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 tile 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 9 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 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 can not 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 latchkey. Then there is a man named Gamble, with whom Mings was on
terms of great intimacy. Now Gamble was formerly a dealer in tattooed
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 connection with the dates.

"On July the 29th Chapman came to town from Stoke Varley. On the 30th he
was arrested as a pick pocket. 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."



THE TRAIL OF BEHEMOTH


Or 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 unauthorised persons to
these chambers."

"We are not unauthorised 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 tile 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 tile
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 notebook
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 realised 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 1 wrapped them with ostentatious care in a piece of note 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. 1 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 connection 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 reinstatement 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 micro- scope will tell us what it is. I will
take it up to him." 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 reopened 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 be 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 mys terious 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 recognisable 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 investigation 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 over took
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 house-breaking, 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 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 pick- lock, 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 any one 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
workman ship.

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 forrader even then. In fact, I am not so very much forrader 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 doorpost 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 with drawn, the door
opened a short distance, and in the interval a black race 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 no thing, 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 there fore, 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.



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. How ever," 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 favour able
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
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's 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. 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 police man when she encountered me at a corner
and burst out with her dreadful tidings. 1 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 fail 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 oilcloth. 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 dispatched 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 over-estimated
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 realise 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; Abu sum 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 realise 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," be 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 tomorrow
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 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 connection what ever
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,
scrutinising 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 connection
with the big right foot; but I must admit that it is not a very obvious
foot-print."

"I shouldn't have taken it for a foot-print at all, or at any rate, not a
human foot-print. 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 recognise the mark as a
foot-print, 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 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 bad 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, 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 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 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 considerable 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 halt 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 no 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 at 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 con fined 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 filaria 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 recognised 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 recognised?

"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 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' 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 urn. 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, be link I come for teef someting. So I tink
I go away.

"Den someting make 'Ping!' same like gun. I hear someting faIl 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
ale man on de floor. I look dat pistol. I sabby dat ole man kill himself.
Den I frighten too much. I run out. D 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 Mensab, 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.



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 in exhaustible 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
civilised 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 moralising 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 tail 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 be, when he had wished us good-evening," of
the stories of the vultures that make their a 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 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 recognise 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 recognise 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 band 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 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 which 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. Von 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 the 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 realise 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. 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 recognised 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 percieved 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 recognised 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 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 a 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 am 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--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 realised 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 emphasised 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 scrutinised 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 inc. And it was a
mere group of smudges, after all. You are sure that it was a left hand?"

"Quite," be 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 recognisable 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 unrecognisable, 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 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 the company of some woman 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 PUZZLE LOCK


I uo not remember what was the occasion of my dining with Thorndyke at
Giamborini's on the particular evening that is now in my mind. Doubtless,
some piece of work completed had seemed to justify the modest festival.
At any rate, there we were, seated at a somewhat retired table, selected
by Thorndyke, with our backs to the large window through which the late
June sunlight streamed. We had made our preliminary arrangements,
including a bottle of Barsac, and were inspecting dubiously a collection
of semi- edible hors d'oeuvres, when a man entered and took possession of
a table just in front of ours, which had apparently been reserved for
him, since he walked directly to it and drew away the single chair that
had been set aslant against it.

I watched with amused interest his methodical procedure, for he was
clearly a man who took his dinner seriously. A regular customer, too, I
judged by the waiter's manner and the reserved table with its single
chair. But the man himself interested me. He was out of the common and
there was a suggestion of character, with perhaps a spice of oddity, in
his appearance. He appeared to be about sixty years of age, small and
spare, with a much-wrinkled, mobile and rather whimsical face, surmounted
by a crop of white, upstanding hair. From his waistcoat pocket protruded
the ends of a fountain-pen, a pencil and a miniature electric torch such
as surgeons use; a silver-mounted Coddington lens hung from his
watch-guard and the middle finger of his left hand bore the largest seal
ring that I have ever seen.

"Well," said Thorndyke, who had been following my glance, "what do you
make of him?"

"I don't quite know," I replied. "The Coddington suggests a naturalist or
a scientist of some kind, but that blatant ring doesn't. Perhaps he is an
antiquary or a numismatist or even a philatelist. He deals with small
objects of some kind."

At this moment a man who had just entered strode up to our friend's table
and held out his hand, which the other shook, with no great enthusiasm,
as I thought. Then the newcomer fetched a chair, and setting it by the
table, seated himself and picked up the menu card, while the other
observed him with a shade of disapproval. I judged that he would rather
have dined alone, and that the personality of the new arrival--a flashy,
bustling, obtrusive type of man--did not commend him.

From this couple my eye was attracted to a tall man who had halted near
the door and stood looking about the room as if seeking someone. Suddenly
he spied an empty, single table, and, bearing down on it, seated himself
and began anxiously to study the menu under the supervision of a waiter.
I glanced at him with slight disfavour. One makes allowances for the
exuberance of youth, but when a middle-aged man presents the combination
of heavily-greased heir parted in the middle, a waxed moustache of a
suspiciously intense black, a pointed imperial and a single eye-glass,
evidently ornamental in function, one views him with less tolerance.
However, his get-up was not my concern, whereas my dinner was, and I had
given this my undivided attention for some minutes when I heard Thorndyke
emit a soft chuckle.

"Not bad," he remarked, setting down his glass.

"Not at all," I agreed, "for a restaurant wine."

"I was not alluding to the wine," said he "but to our friend Badger."

"The inspector!" I exclaimed. "He isn't here, is he? I don't see him."

"I am glad to hear you say that, Jervis," said he. "It is a better effort
than I thought. Still, he might manage his properties a little better.
That is the second time his eye-glass has been in the soup."

Following, the direction of his glance, I observed the man with the waxed
moustache furtively wiping his eye-glass; and the temporary absence of
the monocular grimace enabled me to note a resemblance to the familiar
features of the detective officer.

"If you say that is Badger, I suppose it is," said I. "He is certainly a
little like our friend. But I shouldn't have recognised him."

"I don't know that I should," said Thorndyke, "but for the little
unconscious tricks of movement. You know the habit he has of stroking the
back of his head, and of opening his mouth and scratching the side of his
chin. I saw him do it just now. He had forgotten his imperial until he
touched it, and then the sudden arrest of movement was very striking. It
doesn't do to forget a false beard."

"I wonder what his game is," said I. "The disguise suggests that he is on
the look-out for somebody who might know him; but apparently that
somebody has not turned up yet. At any rate, he doesn't seem to be
watching anybody in particular."

"No," said Thorndyke. "But there is somebody whom he seems rather to
avoid watching. Those two men at the table in front of ours are in his
direct line of vision, but he hasn't looked at them once since he sat
down, though I noticed that he gave them one quick glance before he
selected his table. I wonder if he has observed us. Probably not, as we
have the strong light of the window behind us and his attention is
otherwise occupied."

I looked at the two men and from them to the detective, and I judged that
my friend was right. On the inspector's table was a good-sized fern in an
ornamental pot, and this he had moved so that it was directly between him
and the two strangers, to whom he must have been practically invisible;
and now I could see that he did, in fact, steal an occasional glance at
them over the edge of the menu card. Moreover, as their meal drew to an
end, he hastily finished his own and beckoned to the waiter to bring the
bill.

"We may as well wait and see them off," said Thorndyke, who had already
settled our account. "Badger always interests me. He is so ingenious and
he has such shockingly bad luck."

We had not long to wait. The two men rose from the table and walked
slowly to the door, where they paused to light their cigars before going
out. Then Badger rose, with his back towards them and his eyes on the
mirror opposite; and as they went out, he snatched up his hat and stick
and followed. Thorndyke looked at me inquiringly.

"Do we indulge in the pleasures of the chase?" he asked, and as I replied
in the affirmative, we, too, made our way out and started in the wake of
the inspector.

As we followed Badger at a discreet distance, we caught an occasional
glimpse of the quarry ahead, whose proceedings evidently caused the
inspector some embarrassment, for they had a way of stopping suddenly to
elaborate some point that they were discussing, whereby it became
necessary for the detective to drop farther in the rear than was quite
safe, in view of the rather crowded state of the pavement. On one of
these occasions, when the older man was apparently delivering himself of
some excruciating joke, they both turned suddenly and looked back, the
joker pointing to some object on the opposite side of the road. Several
people turned to see what was being pointed at, and, of course, the
inspector had to turn, too, to avoid being recognised. At this moment the
two men popped into an entry, and when the inspector once more turned
they were gone.

As soon as he missed them, Badger started forward almost at a run, and
presently halted at the large entry of the Celestial Bank Chambers, into
which he peered eagerly. Then, apparently sighting his quarry, he darted
in, and we quickened our pace and followed. Half-way down the long hall
we saw him standing at the door of a lift, frantically pressing the
call-button.

"Poor Badger!" chuckled Thorndyke, as we walked past him unobserved. "His
usual luck! He will hardly run them to earth now in this enormous
building. We may as well go through to the Blenheim Street entrance."

We pursued our way along the winding corridor and were close to the
entrance when I noticed two men coming down the staircase that led to the
ball.

"By Jingo I Here they are!" I exclaimed. "Shall we run back and give
Badger the tip?"

Thorndyke hesitated. But it was too late. A taxi had just driven up and
was discharging its fare. The younger man, catching the driver's eye, ran
out and seized the door-handle; and when his companion had entered the
cab, he gave an address to the driver, and, stepping in quickly, slammed
the door. As the cab moved off, Thorndyke pulled out his notebook and
pencil and jotted down the number of the vehicle. Then we turned and
retraced our steps; but when we reached the lift-door, the inspector had
disappeared. Presumably, like the incomparable Tom Bowling, he had gone
aloft.

"We must give it up, Jervis," said Thorndyke. "I will send him
anonymously the number of the cab, and that is all we can do. But I am
sorry for Badger."

With this we dismissed the incident from our minds--at least, I did;
assuming that I had seen the last of the two strangers. Little did I
suspect how soon and under what strange and tragic circumstances I should
meet with them again!

It was about a week later that we received a visit from our old friend,
Superintendent Miller of the Criminal Investigation Department. The
passing years had put us on a footing of mutual trust and esteem, and the
capable, straightforward detective officer was always a welcome visitor.

I've just dropped in," said Miller, cutting off the end of the inevitable
cigar, "to tell you about a rather queer case that we've got in hand. I
know you are always interested in queer cases."

Thorndyke smiled blandly. He had heard that kind of preamble before, and
he knew, as did I, that when Miller became communicative we could safely
infer that the Millerian bark was in shoal water.

"It is a case," the superintendent continued, "of a very special brand of
crook. Actually there is a gang, but it is the managing director that we
have particularly got our eye on."

"Is he a regular 'habitual,' then?" asked Thorndyke.

Well," replied Miller, "as to that, I can't positively say. The fact is
that we haven't actually seen the man to be sure of him."

"I see," said Thorndyke, with a grim smile. "You mean to say that you
have got your eye on the place where he isn't."

"At the present moment," Miller admitted, "that is the literal fact. We
have lost sight of the man we suspected, but we hope to pick him up again
presently. We want him badly, and his pals too. It is probably quite a
small gang, but they are mighty fly; a lot too smart to be at large. And
they'll take some catching, for there is someone running the concern with
a good deal more brains than crooks usually have."

"What is their lay?" I asked.

"Burglary," he replied. "Jewels and plate, but principally jewels; and
the special feature of their work is that the swag disappears completely
every time. None of the stuff has ever been traced. That is what drew our
attention to them. After each robbery we made a round of all the fences,
but there was not a sign. The stuff seemed to have vanished into smoke.
Now that is very awkward. If you never see the men and you can't trace
the stuff, where are you? You've got nothing to go on."

"But you seem to have got a clue of some kind." I said.

"Yes. There isn't a lot in it; but it seemed worth following up. One of
our men happened to travel down to Colchester with a certain man, and
when he came back two days later, he noticed this same man on the
platform at Colchester and saw him get out at Liverpool Street. In the
interval there had been a jewel robbery at Colchester. Then there was a
robbery at Southampton, and our man went at once to Waterloo and saw all
the trains in. On the second day, behold! the Colchester sportsman turns
up at the barrier, so our man, who had a special taxi waiting, managed to
track him home and afterwards got some particulars about him. He is a
chap named Shemmonds; belongs to a firm of outside brokers. But nobody
seems to know much about him and he doesn't put in much time at the
office.

"Well, then, Badger took him over and shadowed him for a day or two, but
just as things were looking interesting, he slipped off the hook. Badger
followed him to a restaurant, and, through the glass door, saw him go up
to an elderly man at a table and shake hands with him. Then he took a
chair at the table himself, so Badger popped in and took a seat near them
where he could keep them in view. They went out together and Badger
followed them, but he lost them in the Celestial Bank Chambers. They went
up in the lift just before he could get to the door and that was the last
he saw of them. But we have ascertained that they left the building in a
taxi and that the taxi set them down at Great Turnstile."

"It was rather smart of you to trace the cab," Thorndyke remarked.

"You've got to keep your eyes skinned in our line of business," said
Miller. "But now we come to the real twister. From the time those two men
went down Great Turnstile, nobody has set eyes on either of them. They
seem to have vanished into thin air."

"You found out who the other man was, then?" said I.

"Yes. The restaurant manager knew him; an old chap named Luttrell. And we
knew him, too, because he has a thumping burglary insurance, and when he
goes out of town he notifies his company, and they make arrangements with
us to have the premises watched."

"What is Luttrell?" I asked.

"Well, he is a bit of a mug, I should say, at least that's his character
in the trade. Goes in for being a dealer in jewels and antiques, but
he'll buy anything--furniture, pictures, plate, any blooming thing. Does
it for a hobby, the regular dealers say. Likes the sport of bidding at
the sales. But the knock-out men hate him; never know what he's going to
do. Must have private means, for though he doesn't often drop money, he
can't make much. He's no salesman. It is the buying that he seems to
like. But he is a regular character, full of cranks and oddities. His
rooms in Thavies Inn look like the British Museum gone mad. He has got
electric alarms from all the doors up to his bedroom and the strong-room
in his office is fitted with a puzzle lock instead of keys."

"That doesn't seem very safe," I remarked.

"It is," said Miller. "This one has fifteen alphabets. One of our men has
calculated that it has about forty billion changes. No one is going to
work that out, and there are no keys to get lost. But it is that strong-room
that is worrying us, as well as the old joker himself. The Lord
knows how much valuable stuff there is in it. What we are afraid of is
that Shemmonds may have made away with the old chap and be lying low,
waiting to swoop down on that strong-room."

"But you said that Luttrell goes away sometimes," said I.

"Yes; but then he always notifies his insurance company and he seals up
his strong-room with a tape round the door-handle and a great seal on the
door-post. This time he hasn't notified the company and the door isn't
sealed. There's a seal on the door-post--left from last time, I expect--but
only the cut ends of tape. I got the caretaker to let me see the
place this morning; and, by the way, doctor, I have taken a leaf out of
your book. I always carry a bit of squeezing wax in my pocket now and a
little box of French chalk. Very handy they are, too. As I had 'em with
me this morning, I took a squeeze of the seal. May want it presently for
identification."

He brought out of his pocket a small tin box from which he carefully
extracted an object wrapped in tissue paper. When the paper had been
tenderly removed there was revealed a lump of moulding wax, one side of
which was flattened and bore a sunk design.

"It's quite a good squeeze," said Miller, handing it to Thorndyke. "I
dusted the seal with French chalk so that the wax shouldn't stick to it."

My colleague examined the "squeeze" through his lens, and passing it and
the lens to me, asked: "Has this been photographed, Miller?"

"No," was the reply, "but it ought to be before it gets damaged."

"It ought, certainly," said Thorndyke, "if you value it. Shall I get
Polton to do it now?"

The superintendent accepted the offer gratefully and Thorndyke
accordingly took the squeeze up to the laboratory, where he left it for
our assistant to deal with. When he returned, Miller remarked: "It is a
baffling case, this. Now that Shemmonds has dropped out of sight, there
is nothing to go on and nothing to do but wait for something else to
happen; another burglary or an attempt on the strong-room."

"Is it clear that the strong-room has not been opened?" asked Thorndyke.

No, it isn't," replied Miller. "That's part of the trouble. Luttrell has
disappeared and he may be dead. If he is, Shemmonds will probably have
been through his pockets. Of course there is no strong-room key. That is
one of the advantages of a puzzle lock. But it is quite possible that
Luttrell may have kept a note of the combination and carried it about
him. It would have been risky to trust entirely to memory. And he would
have had the keys of the office about him. Any one who had those could
have slipped in during business hours without much difficulty. Luttrell's
premises are empty, but there are people in and out all day going to the
other offices. Our man can't follow them all in. I suppose you can't make
any suggestion, doctor?"

"I am afraid I can't," answered Thorndyke. "The case is so very much in
the air. There is nothing against Shemmonds but bare suspicion. He has
disappeared only in the sense that you have lost sight of him, and the
same is true of Luttrell--though there is an abnormal element in his
case. Still, you could hardly get a search-warrant on the facts that are
known at present."

"No," Miller agreed, "they certainly would not authorise us to break open
the strong-room, and nothing short of that would be much use."

Here Polton made his appearance with the wax squeeze in a neat little box
such as jewellers use.

"I've got two enlarged negatives," said he; "nice clear ones. How many
prints shall I make for Mr. Miller?"

"Oh, one will do, Mr. Polton," said the superintendent. "If I want any
more I'll ask you." He took up the little box, and, slipping it in his
pocket, rose to depart. "I'll let you know, doctor, how the case goes on,
and perhaps you wouldn't mind turning it over a bit in the interval.
Something might occur to you."

Thorndyke promised to think over the case, and when we had seen the
superintendent launched down the stairs, we followed Polton up to the
laboratory, where we each picked up one of the negatives and examined it
against the light. I had already identified the seal by its shape--a
vesica piscis or boat-shape--with the one that I had seen on Mr.
Luttrell's finger. Now, in the photograph, enlarged three diameters, I
could clearly make out the details. The design was distinctive and
curious rather than elegant. The two triangular spaces at the ends were
occupied respectively by a memento mori and a winged hour-glass and the
central portion was filled by a long inscription in Roman capitals, of
which I could at first make nothing.

"Do you suppose this is some kind of cryptogram?" I asked.

"No," Thorndyke replied. "I imagine the words were run together merely to
economise space. This is what I make of it."

He held the negative in his left hand, and with his right wrote down in
pencil on a slip of paper the following four lines of doggerel verse

Eheu alas how fast the dam fugaces

Labuntur anni especially in the cases

Of poor old blokes like you and me Posthumus

Who only wait for vermes to consume us."

"Well," I exclaimed, "it is a choice specimen; one of old Luttrell's
merry conceited jests, I take it. But the joke was hardly worth the
labour of engraving on a seal."

"It is certainly a rather mild jest," Thorndyke admitted. "But there may
be something more in it than meets the eye."

He looked at the inscription reflectively and appeared to read it through
once or twice. Then he replaced the negative in the drying rack, and,
picking up the paper, slipped it into his pocket-book.

"I don't quite see," said I, "why Miller brought this case to us or what
he wants you to think over. In fact, I don't see that there is a case at
all."

"It is a very shadowy case," Thorndyke admitted. "Miller has done a good
deal of guessing, and so has Badger; and it may easily turn out that they
have found a mare's nest. Nevertheless there is something to think
about."

"As, for instance--?"

"Well, Jervis, you saw the men; you saw how they behaved; you have heard
Miller's story and you have seen Mr. Luttrell's seal. Put all those data
together and you have the material for some very interesting speculation,
to say the least. You might even carry it beyond speculation."

I did not pursue the subject, for I knew that when Thorndyke used the
word "speculation," nothing would induce him to commit himself to an
opinion. But later, bearing in mind the attention that he had seemed to
bestow on Mr. Luttrell's schoolboy verses, I got a print from the
negative and studied the foolish in exhaustively. But if it had any
hidden meaning--and I could imagine no reason for supposing that it
had--that meaning remained hidden; and the only conclusion at which I could
arrive was that a man of Luttrell's age might have known better than to
write such nonsense.

The superintendent did not leave the matter long in suspense. Three days
later he paid us another visit. and half-apologetically reopened the
subject.

"I am ashamed to come badgering you like this," he said, "but I can't get
this case out of my head. I've a feeling that we ought to, get a move of
some kind on. And, by the way--though that is nothing to do with it--I've
copied out the stuff on that seal and I can't make any sense of it.
What the deuce are fugaces? I suppose 'vermes' are worms, though I don't
see why he spelt it that way."

"The verses," said Thorndyke, "are apparently a travesty of a Latin poem;
one of the odes of Horace which begins:

Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume, Labuntur anni,'

which means, in effect, 'Alas! Postume, the flying years slip by.'

"Well," said Miller, "any fool knows that--any middle-aged fool, at any
rate. No need to put it into Latin. However, it's of no consequence. To
return to this case; I've got an authority to look over Luttrell's
premises--not to pull anything about, you know, just to look round. I
called in on my way here to let the caretaker know that I should be
coming in later. I thought that perhaps you might like to come with me. I
wish you would, doctor. You've got such a knack of spotting things that
other people overlook."

He looked wistfully at Thorndyke, and as the latter was considering the
proposal, he added: "The caretaker mentioned a rather odd circumstance.
It seems that he keeps an eye on the electric meters in the building and
that he has noticed a leakage of current in Mr. Luttrell's. It is only a
small leak; about thirty watts an hour. But he can't account for it in
any way. He has been right through the premises to see if any lamp has
been left on in any of the rooms. But all the switches are off
everywhere, and it can't be a short circuit. Funny, isn't it?

It was certainly odd, but there seemed to me nothing in it to account for
the expression of suddenly awakened interest that I detected in
Thorndyke's face. However, it evidently had some special significance for
him, for he asked almost eagerly "When are you making your inspection?"

"I am going there now," replied Miller, and he added coaxingly, "Couldn't
you manage to run round with me?"

Thorndyke stood up. "Very well," said he. "Let us go together. You may as
well come, too, Jervis, if you can spare an hour."

I agreed readily, for my colleague's hardly disguised interest in the
inspection suggested a definite problem in his mind; and we at once
issued forth and made our way by Mitre Court and Fetter Lane to the abode
of the missing dealer, an old-fashioned house near the end of Thavies
Inn.

"I've been over the premises once," said Miller, as the caretaker
appeared with the keys, "and I think we had better begin the regular
inspection with the offices. We can examine the stores and living-rooms
afterwards."

We accordingly entered the outer office, and as this was little more than
a waiting-room, we passed through into the private office, which had the
appearance of having been used also as a sitting-room or study. It was
furnished with an easy-chair, a range of book-shelves and a handsome
bureau book-case, while in the end wall was the massive iron door of the
strong-room. On this, as the chief object of interest, we all bore down,
and the superintendent expounded its peculiarities.

It is quite a good idea," said he, "this letter-lock. There's no keyhole--though
a safe-lock is pretty hopeless to pick even if there was a
keyhole--and no keys to get lost. As to guessing what the 'open sesame'
may be--well, just look at it. You could spend a life time on it and be
no forrader."

The puzzle lock was contained in the solid iron door post, through a slot
in which a row of fifteen A's seemed to grin defiance on the would-be
safe-robber. I put my finger on the milled edges of one or two of the
letters and rotated the discs, noticing how easily and smoothly they
turned.

"Well," said Miller, "it's no use fumbling with that. I'm just going to
have a look through his ledger and see who his customers were. The
book-case is unlocked. I tried it last time. And we'd better leave this
as we found it."

He put back the letters that I had moved, and turned away to explore the
book-case; and as the letter-lock appeared to present nothing but an
insoluble riddle, I followed him, leaving Thorndyke earnestly gazing at
the meaningless row of letters.

The superintendent glanced back at him with an indulgent smile.

"The doctor is going to work out the combination," he chuckled. "Well,
well. There are only forty billion changes and he's a young man for his
age."

With this encouraging comment, he opened the glass door of the book-case,
and reaching down the ledger, laid it on the desk-like slope of the
bureau.

"It is a poor chance," said he, opening the ledger at the index, "but
some of these people may be able to give us a hint where to look for Mr.
Luttrell, and it is worth while to know what sort of business he did."

He ran his finger down the list of names and had just turned to the
account of one of the customers when we were startled by a loud click
from the direction of the strong-room. We both turned sharply and beheld
Thorndyke grasping the handle of the strong-room door, and I saw with
amazement that the door was now slightly ajar.

"God!" exclaimed Miller, shutting the ledger and starting forward, "he's
got it open!" He strode over to the door, and directing an eager look at
the indicator of the lock, burst into a laugh. "Well, I'm hanged!" he
exclaimed. "Why, it was unlocked all the time! To think that none of us
had the sense to tug the handle! But isn't it just like old Luttrell to
have a fool's answer like that to the blessed puzzle!"

I looked at the indicator, not a little astonished to observe the row of
fifteen A's, which apparently formed the key combination. It may have
been a very amusing joke on Mr. Luttrell's part, but it did not look very
secure. Thorndyke regarded us with an inscrutable glance and still
grasped the handle, holding the door a bare half-inch open.

"There is something pushing against the door," said he. "Shall I open it?

"May as well have a look at the inside," replied Miller. Thereupon
Thorndyke released the handle and quickly stepped aside. The door swung
slowly open and the dead body of a man fell out into the room and rolled
over on to its back.

"Mercy on us!" gasped Miller, springing back hastily and staring with
horror and amazement at the grim apparition. "That is not Luttrell."
Then, suddenly starting forward and stooping over the dead man, be
exclaimed "Why, it is Shemmonds. So that is where be disappeared to. I
wonder what became of Luttrell?"

"There is somebody else in the strong-room," said Thorndyke; and now,
peering in through the doorway, I perceived a dim light, which seemed to
come from a hidden recess, and by which I could see a pair of feet
projecting round the corner. In a moment Miller had sprung in, and I
followed. The strong-room was L shaped in plan, the arm of the L formed
by a narrow passage at right angles to the main room. At the end of this
a single small electric bulb was burning, the light of which showed the
body of an elderly man stretched on the floor of the passage. I
recognised him instantly in spite of the dimness of the light and the
disfigurement caused by a ragged wound on the forehead.

"We had better get him out of this," said Miller, speaking in a flurried
tone, partly due to the shock of the horrible discovery and partly to the
accompanying physical unpleasantness, "and then we will have a look
round, This wasn't just a mere robbery. We are going to find things out."

With my help he lifted Luttrell's corpse and together we carried it out,
laying it on the floor of the room at the farther end, to which we also
dragged the body of Shemmonds.

"There is no mystery as to how it happened," I said, after a brief
inspection of the two corpses. "Shemmonds evidently shot the old man from
behind with the pistol close to the back of the head. The hair is all
scorched round the wound of entry and the bullet came out at the
forehead."

"Yes," agreed Miller, "that is all clear enough. But the mystery is why
on earth Shemmonds didn't let himself out. He must have known that the
door was unlocked. Yet instead of turning the handle, he must have stood
there like a fool, battering at the door with his fists. Just look at his
hands."

"The further mystery," said Thorndyke who, all this time, had been making
a minute examination of the lock both front without and within, "is how
the door came to be shut. That is quite a curious problem."

"Quite," agreed Miller. "But it will keep. And there is a still more
curious problem inside there. There is nearly all the swag from that
Colchester robbery. Looks as if Luttrell was in it."

Half reluctantly he re-entered the strong-room and Thorndyke and I
followed. Near the angle of the passage he stooped to pick up an
automatic pistol and a small, leather book, which he opened and looked
into by the light of the lamp. At the first glance he uttered an
exclamation and shut the book with a snap.

"Do you know what this is?" he asked, holding it out to us. "It is the
nominal roll, address book and journal of the gang. We've got them in the
hollow of our hand; and it is dawning upon me that old Luttrell was the
managing director whom I have been looking for so long. Just run your
eyes along those shelves. That's loot; every bit of it. I can identify
the articles from the lists that I made out."

He stood looking gloatingly along the shelves with their burden of
jewellery, plate and other valuables. Then his eye lighted on a drawer in
the end wall just under the lamp; an iron drawer with a
disproportionately large handle and bearing a very legible label
inscribed "unmounted stones."

"We'll have a look at his stock of unmounted gems," said Miller; and with
that he bore down on the drawer, and seizing the handle, gave a vigorous
pull. "Funny," said he. "It isn't locked, but something seems to be
holding it back."

He planted his foot on the wall and took a fresh purchase on the handle.
"Wait a moment, Miller," said Thorndyke; but even as he spoke, the
superintendent gave a mighty heave; the drawer came out a full two feet;
there was a loud click, and a moment later the strong-room door slammed.

"Good God!" exclaimed Miller, letting go the drawer, which immediately
slid in with another click. "What was that?"

"That was the door shutting," replied Thorndyke. "Quite a clever
arrangement; like the mechanism of a repeater watch. Pulling out the
drawer wound up and released a spring that shut the door. Very
ingenious."

"But," gasped Miller, turning an ashen face to my colleague, "we're shut
in."

"You are forgetting," said I--a little nervously, I must admit--"that
the lock is as we left it."

The superintendent laughed, somewhat hysterically. "What a fool I am!"
said he. "As bad as Shemmonds. Still we may as well--" Here he started
along the passage and I heard him groping his way to the door, and later
heard the handle turn. Suddenly the deep silence of the tomb-like chamber
was rent by a yell of terror.

"The door won't move! It's locked fast!"

On this I rushed along the passage with a sickening fear at my heart. And
even as I ran, there rose before my eyes the horrible vision of the
corpse with the battered hands that had fallen out when we opened the
door of this awful trap. He had been caught as we were caught. How soon
might it not be that some stranger would be looking in on our corpses.

In the dim twilight by the door I found Miller clutching the handle and
shaking it like a madman. His self-possession was completely shattered.
Nor was my own condition much better. I flung my whole weight on the door
in the faint hope that the lock was not really closed, but the massive
iron structure was as immovable as a stone wall. I was nevertheless,
gathering myself up for a second charge when I heard Thorndyke's voice
close behind me.

"That is no use, Jervis. The door is locked. But there is nothing to
worry about."

As he spoke, there suddenly appeared a bright circle of light from the
little electric lamp that he always carried in his pocket. Within the
circle, and now clearly visible, was a second indicator of the puzzle
lock on the inside of the door-post. Its appearance was vaguely
reassuring, especially in conjunction with Thorndyke's calm voice; and it
evidently appeared so to Miller, for he remarked, almost in his natural
tones:

"But it seems to be unlocked still. There is the same AAAAAA that it
showed when we came in."

It was perfectly true. The slot of the letter-lock still showed the range
of fifteen A's, just as it had when the door was open. Could it be that
the lock was a dummy and that there was some other means of opening the
door? I was about to put this question to Thorndyke when he put the lamp
into my hand, and, gently pushing me aside, stepped up to the indicator.

"Keep the light steady, Jervis," said he, and forth with he began to
manipulate the milled edges of the letter discs, beginnings as I noticed,
at the right or reverse end of the slot and working backwards. I watched
him with feverish interest and curiosity, as also did Miller, looking to
see some word of fifteen letters develop in the slot. Instead of which, I
saw, to my amazement and bewilderment my colleague's finger transforming
the row of A's into a succession of M's, which, however, were presently
followed by an L and some X's. When the row was completed it looked like
some remote, antediluvian date set down in Roman numerals.

"Try the handle now, Miller," said Thorndyke.

The superintendent needed no second bidding. Snatching at the handle, he
turned it and bore heavily on the door. Almost instantly a thin line of
light appeared at the edge; there was a sharp click, and the door swung
right open. We fell out immediately--at least the superintendent and I
did--thankful to find ourselves outside and alive. But, as we emerged,
we both became aware of a man, white-faced and horror-stricken of aspect,
stooping over the two corpses at the other end of the room. Our
appearance was so sudden and unexpected--for the massive solidity of the
safe-door had rendered our movements inaudible outside--that, for a
moment or two, he stood immovable, staring at us, wild-eyed and
open-mouthed. Then, suddenly, he sprang up erect, and, darting to the
door, opened it and rushed out with Miller close on his heels.

He did not get very far. Following the superintendent, I saw the fugitive
wriggling in the embrace of a tall man on the pavement, who, with
Miller's assistance, soon had a pair of handcuffs snapped on the man's
wrists and then departed with his captive in search of a cab.

"That's one of 'em, I expect," said Miller, as we returned to the office;
then, as his glance fell on the open strong-room door, he mopped his face
with his handkerchief. "That door gives me the creeps to look at it,"
said he. "Lord I what a shake-up that was! I've never had such a scare in
my life. When I heard that door shut and I remembered how that poor
devil, Shemmonds, came tumbling out--phoo!" He wiped his brow again,
and, walking towards the strong-room door, asked: "By the way, what was
the magic word after all?" He stepped up to the indicator, and, after a
quick glance, looked round at me in surprise. "Why!" he exclaimed, "blow
me if it isn't AAAA still! But the doctor altered it, didn't he?"

At this moment Thorndyke appeared from the strong- room, where he had
apparently been conducting some explorations, and to him the
superintendent turned for an explanation.

"It is an ingenious device," said he; "in fact, the whole strong-room is
a monument of ingenuity, somewhat misapplied, but perfectly effective, as
Mr. Shemmonds's corpse testifies. The key-combination is a number
expressed in Roman numerals, but the lock has a fly-back mechanism which
acts as soon as the door begins to open. That was how Shemmonds was
caught. He, no doubt purposely, avoided watching Luttrell set the lock--or
else Luttrell didn't let him--but as he went in with his intended
victim, he looked at the indicator and saw the row of A's, which he
naturally assumed to be the key. Then, when he tried to let himself out,
of course, the lock wouldn't open."

"It is rather odd that he didn't try some other combinations," said I.

"He probably did," replied Thorndyke "but when they failed he would
naturally come back to the A's, which be had seen when the door was open.
This is how it works."

He shut the door, and then, closely watched by the superintendent and me,
turned the milled rims of the letter-discs until the indicator showed a
row of numerals thus: MMMMMMMCCCLXXXV. Grasping the handle, he turned it
and gave a gentle pull, when the door began to open. But the instant it
started from its bed, there was a loud click and all the letters of the
indicator flew back to A.

"Well, I'm jiggered!" exclaimed Miller. "It must have been an awful
suck-in for that poor blighter, Shemmonds. Took me in, too. I saw those
A's and the door open, and I thought I knew all about it. But what beats
me, doctor, is how you managed to work it out. I can't see what you had
to go on. Would it be allowable to ask how it was done?"

"Certainly," replied Thorndyke "but we had better defer the explanation.
You have got those two bodies to dispose of and some other matters, and
we must get back to our chambers. I will write down the key-combination,
in case you want it, and then you must come and see us and let us know
what luck you have had."

He wrote the numerals on a slip of paper, and when he had handed it to
the superintendent, we took our leave.

"I find myself," said I, as we walked home, "in much the same position as
Miller. I don't see what you had to go on. It is clear to me that you not
only worked out the lock-combination--from the seal inscription, as I
assume--but that you identified Luttrell as the director of the gang. I
don't, in the least, understand how you did it."

"And yet, Jervis," said he, "it was an essentially simple case. If you
review it and cast up the items of evidence, you will see that we really
had all the facts. The problem was merely to co-ordinate them and extract
their significance. Take first the character of Luttrell. We saw the man
in company with another, evidently a fairly intimate acquaintance. They
were being shadowed by a detective, and it is pretty clear that they
detected the sleuth, for they shook him off quite neatly. Later, we learn
from Miller that one of these men is suspected to be a member of a firm
of swell burglars and that the other is a well-to-do, rather eccentric
and very miscellaneous dealer, who has a strong-room fitted with a puzzle
lock. I am astonished that the usually acute Miller did not notice how
well Luttrell fitted the part of the managing director whom he was
looking for. Here was a dealer who bought and sold all sorts of queer but
valuable things, who must have had unlimited facilities for getting rid
of stones, bullion and silver, and who used a puzzle lock. Now, who uses
a puzzle lock? No one, certainly, who can conveniently use a key. But to
the manager of a gang of thieves it would be a valuable safeguard, for he
might at any moment be robbed of his keys, and perhaps made away with.
But he could not be robbed of the secret passwords and his possession of
it would be a security against murder. So you see that the simple
probabilities pointed to Luttrell as the head of the gang.

"And now consider the problem of the lock. First, we saw that Luttrell
wore on his left hand a huge, cumbrous seal ring, that he carried a
Coddington lens on his watch-guard, and a small electric lamp in his
pocket. That told us very, little. But when Miller told us about the lock
and showed us the squeeze of the seal, and when we saw that the seal bore
a long inscription in minute lettering, a connection began to appear. As
Miller justly observed, no man--especially no elderly man--could trust
the key combination exclusively to his memory. He would carry about him
some record to which he could refer in case his memory failed him. But
that record would hardly be one that anybody could read, or the secrecy
and safety of the lock would be gone. It would probably be some kind of
cryptogram; and when we saw this inscription and considered it in
conjunction with the lens and the lamp, it seemed highly probable that
the key-combination was contained in the inscription; and that
probability was further increased when we saw the nonsensical doggerel of
which the inscription was made up. The suggestion was that the verses bad
been made for some purpose independent of their sense. Accordingly I gave
the inscription very careful consideration.

Now we learned from Miller that the puzzle lock had fifteen letters. The
key might be one long word, such as 'superlativeness', a number of short
words, or some chemical or other formula. Or it was possible that it
might be of the nature of a chronogram. I have never heard of chronograms
being used for secret records or messages, but it has often occurred to
me that they would be extremely suitable. And this was an exceptionally
suitable case."

"Chronogram," said I. "Isn't that something connected with medals?"

"They have often been used on medals," he replied. "In effect, a
chronogram is an inscription some of the letters of which form a date
connected with the subject of the inscription. Usually the date letters
are or cut larger than the others for convenience in reading, but, of
course, this is not essential. The principle of a chronogram is this. The
letters of the Roman alphabet are of two kinds: those that are simply
letters and nothing else, and those that are numerals as well as letters.
The numeral letters are M = a thousand, D = five hundred, C = one
hundred, L = fifty, X = ten, V = five, and I = one. Now, in deciphering a
chronogram, you pick out all the numeral letters and add them up without
regard to their order. The total gives you the date.

"Well, as I said, it occurred to me that this might be of the nature of a
chronogram; but as the lock had letters and not figures, the number, if
there was one, would have to be expressed in Roman numerals, and it would
have to form a number of fifteen numeral letters. As it was thus quite
easy to put my hypothesis to the test, I proceeded to treat the
inscription as a chronogram and decipher it; and behold! it yielded a
number of fifteen letters, which, of course, was as near certainty as was
possible, short of actual experiment."

"Let us see how you did the decipherment," I said, as we entered our
chambers and shut the door. I procured a large note-block and pencil,
and, laying them on the table, drew up two chairs.

"Now," said I, "fire away."

"Very well," he said. "We will begin by writing the inscription in proper
chronogram form with the numeral letters double size and treating the U's
as V's and the W's as double V's according to the rules."

Here he wrote out the inscription in Roman capitals thus:

"eheV aLas hoVV fast the DaM fVgaCes
LabVntVr annI espeCIaLLy In the Cases
of poor oLD bLokes LIke yoV anD Me posthVMVs
VVho onLy VVaIt for VerMes to ConsVMe Vs."

[Compiler's note: I have replaced the small caps in the original with
lower-case letters.]

"Now," said he, "let us make a column of each line and add them up, thus:

1. V=5, L=50, VV=10, D=500, M=1000, V=5, C=100--Total 1670

2. L=50, V=5, V=5, I=1, C=100, I=1, L=50, L=50, I=1, C=100--Total 363

3. L=50, D=500, L=50, L=50, I=1, V=5, D=500, M=1000, V=5, M=1000, V=5--Total 3166

4. VV=10, L=50, VV=10, I=1, V=5, M=1000, C=100, V=5, M=1000, V=5--Total 2186

"Now," he continued "we take the four totals and add them together, thus:

1670+363+3166+2186 = 7385

and we get the grand total of seven thousand three hundred and
eighty-five and this, expressed in Roman numerals, is MMMMMMMCCCLXXXV.
Here, then, is a number consisting of fifteen letters, the exact number
of spaces in the indicator of the puzzle lock; and I repeat that this
striking coincidence, added to, or rather multiplied into, the other
probabilities, made it practically certain that this was the
key-combination. It remained only to test it by actual experiment."

"By the way," said I," I noticed that you perked up rather suddenly when
Miller mentioned the electric meter."

"Naturally," he replied. "It seemed that there must be a small lamp
switched on somewhere in the building, and the only place that had not
been examined was the strong-room. But if there was a lamp alight there,
someone had been in the strong-room. And, as, the only person who was
known to be able to get in was missing, it seemed probable that he was in
there still. But if he was, he was pretty certainly dead; and there was
quite a considerable probability that some one else was in there with
him, since his companion was missing, too, and both had disappeared at
the same time. But I must confess that that spring drawer was beyond my
expectations, though I suspected it as soon as I saw Miller pulling at
it. Luttrell was an ingenious old rascal; he almost deserved a better
fate. However, I expect his death will have delivered the gang into the
hands of the police."

Events fell out as Thorndyke surmised. Mr. Luttrell's little journal, in
conjunction with the confession of the spy who had been captured on the
premises, enabled the police to swoop down on the disconcerted gang
before any breath of suspicion had reached them; with the result that
they are now secured in strong-rooms of another kind whereof the doors
are fitted with appliances as effective as, though less ingenious than,
Mr. Luttrell's puzzle lock.



THE GREEN CHECK JACKET


The visits of our old friend, Mr. Brodribb, even when strictly
professional, usually took the outward form of a friendly call. On the
present occasion there was no such pretence. The old solicitor entered
our chambers carrying a small suit-case (the stamped initials on which,
"R.M.," I noticed, instantly attracted an inquisitive glance from
Thorndyke, being obviously not Mr. Brodribb's own) which he placed on the
table and then shook hands with an evident air of business.

"I have come, Thorndyke," he said, with unusual directness, "to ask your
advice on a matter which is causing me some uneasiness. Do you know
Reginald Merrill?"

"Slightly," was the reply. "I meet him occasionally in court; and, of
course, I know him as the author of that interesting book on Prehistoric
Flint-mines."

"Well," said Brodribb, "he has disappeared. He is missing. I don't like
to use the expression; but when a responsible man is absent from his
usual places of resort, when he apparently had no expectation of being so
absent, and when he has made no provision for such absence, I think we
may regard him as having disappeared in a legal sense. His absence calls
for active inquiry."

"Undoubtedly," agreed Thorndyke; "and I take it that you are the person
on whom the duty devolves?"

I think so. I am his solicitor and the executor of his will--at least I
believe so; and the only near relative of his whom I know is his nephew
and heir, Ethelbert Crick, his sister's son. But Crick seems to have
disappeared, too; and about the same time as Merrill. It is an
extraordinary affair."

"You say that you believe you are Merrill's executor. Haven't you seen
the will?"

"I have seen a will. I have it in my safe. But Merrill said he was going
to draw up another, and he may have done so. But if he has, he will
almost certainly have appointed me his executor, and I shall assume that
he has and act accordingly."

""Was there any special reason for making a new will?" Thorndyke asked.

"Yes," replied Brodribb. "He has just come into quite a considerable
fortune, and he was pretty well off before. Under the old will,
practically the whole of his property went to Crick. There was a small
bequest to a man named Samuel Horder, his cousin's son; and Horder was
the alternative legatee if Crick should die before Merrill. Now, I
understood Merrill to say that, in view of this extra fortune, he wished
to do rather more for Horder, and I gathered that he proposed to divide
the estate more or less equally between the two men. The whole estate was
more than he thought necessary for Crick. And now, as we have cleared up
the preliminaries, I will give you the circum stances of the
disappearance.

"Last Wednesday, the 5th, I had a note from him saying that he would have
some reports ready for me on the following day, but that he would be away
from his office from 10.30 a.m. to about 6.30, and suggesting that I
should send round in the evening if I wanted the papers particularly. Now
it happened that my clerk, Page, had to go to a place near London Bridge
on Thursday morning, and, oddly enough, he saw Mr. Merrill come out of
Edginton's, the ship-fitters, with a man who was carrying a largish
hand-bag. There was nothing in it, of course, but Page is an observant
man and he noticed Merrill's companion so far as to observe that he was
wearing a Norfolk jacket of a greenish shepherd's plaid and a grey tweed
hat. He also noted the time by the big clock in the street near to
Edginton's--11.46--and that Merrill looked up at it, and that the two
men then walked off rather quickly in the direction of the station. Well,
in the evening, I sent Page round to Merrill's chambers in Fig-tree Court
to get the papers. He arrived there just after 6.30, but he found the oak
shut, and though he rapped at the door on the chance that Merrill might
have come in--he lives in the chambers adjoining the office--there was
no answer. So he went for a walk round the Temple, deciding to return a
little later.

"Well, he had gone as far as the cloisters and was loitering there to
look in the window of the wig shop when he saw a man in a greenish
shepherd's plaid jacket and a tweed hat coming up Pump Court. As the man
approached Page thought he recognised him; in fact, he felt so sure that
he stopped him and asked him if he knew what time Mr. Merrill would be
home. But the man looked at him in astonishment. 'Merrill?' said he. 'I
don't know anyone of that name.' Thereupon Page apologised and explained
how be bad been misled by the pattern and colour of the jacket.

"After walking about for nearly half an hour, Page went back to Merrill's
chambers; but the oak was shut and he could get no answer by rapping with
his stick, so he scribbled a note and dropped it into the letter- box and
came away. The next morning I sent him round again, but the chambers were
still shut up, and they have been shut up ever since; and nothing what
ever has been seen or heard of Merrill.

"On Saturday, thinking it possible that Crick might be able to give me
some news of his uncle, I called at his lodgings; and then, to my
astonishment, I learned that he also was missing. He had gone away early
on Thursday morning, saying that he had to go on business to Rochester,
and that he might not be home to dinner. But he never came home at all. I
called again on Sunday evening, and, as he had still not returned, I
decided to take more active measures.

"This afternoon, immediately after lunch, I called at the Porter's Lodge,
and, having briefly explained the circumstances and who I was, asked the
porter to bring the duplicate key--which he had for the laundress--and
accompany me to Mr. Merrill's chambers to see if, by chance, the tenant
might be lying in them dead or insensible. He assured me that this could
not be the case, since he had given the key every morning to the
laundress, who had, in fact, returned it to him only a couple of hours
previously. Nevertheless, he took the key and looked up the laundress,
who had rooms near the lodge, who was fortunately at home and who turned
out to be a most respectable and intelligent elderly woman; and we went
together to Merrill's chambers. The porter admitted us, and when we had
been right I through the set and ascertained definitely that Merrill was
not there, he handed the key to the laundress, Mrs. Butler, and went
away.

"When he was gone, I had a talk with Mrs. Butler, from which some rather
startling facts transpired. It seemed that on Thursday, as Merrill was
going to be out all day, she took the opportunity to have a grand
clean-up of the chambers, to tidy up the lobby, and to look over the
chests of drawers and the wardrobe and shake out and brush the clothes
and see that no moths had got in. 'When I had finished,' she said, 'the
place was like the inside of a band-box; just as he liked to see it.'

"'And, after all, Mrs. Butler,' said I, 'he never did see it.'

"'Oh, yes, he did,' says she. 'I don't know when he came in, but when I
let myself in the next morning, I could see that he had been in since I
left.'

"'How did you know that?' I asked.

"'Well,' says she,' I left the carpet-sweeper standing against the
wardrobe door. I remembered it after I left and would have gone back and
moved it, but I had already handed the key in at the Porter's Lodge. But
when I went in next morning it wasn't there. It had been moved into the
corner by the fireplace. Then the looking-glass had been moved. I could
see that, because, before I went away, I had tidied my hair by it, and
being short, I had to tilt it to see my face in it. Now it was tilted to
suit a tall person and I could not see myself in it. Then I saw that the
shaving had been moved, and when I put it back in its place, I found it
was damp. It wouldn't have kept damp for twenty- four hours at this time
of year.' That was perfectly true, you know, Thorndyke."

"Perfectly," agreed Thorndyke, "that woman is an excellent observer."

"Well," continued Brodribb, "on this she examined the shaving soap and
the sponge and found them both perceptibly damp. It appeared practically
certain that Merrill had been in on the preceding evening and had shaved;
but by way of confirmation, I suggested that she should look over his
clothes and see whether he had changed any of his garments. She did so,
beginning with those that were hanging in the wardrobe, which she took
down one at a time. Suddenly she gave a cry of surprise, and I got a bit
of a start myself when she handed out a greenish shepherd's plaid Norfolk
jacket.

'That,' she said, 'was not here when I brushed these clothes,' and it was
obvious from its dusty condition that it could not have been; 'and,' she
added,' I have never seen it before to my knowledge, and I think I should
have remembered it.' I asked her if there was any coat missing and she
answered that she had brushed a grey tweed jacket that seemed to have
disappeared.

"Well, it was a queer affair. The first thing to be done was to
ascertain, if possible whether that jacket was or was not Merrill's.
That, I thought, you would be able to judge better than I; so I borrowed
his suit-case and popped the jacket into it, together with another jacket
that was undoubtedly his, for comparison. Here is the suit-case and the
two jackets are inside."

"It is really a question that could be better decided by a tailor," said
Thorndyke. "The differences of measurement can't be great if they could
both be worn by the same person. But we shall see." He rose, and having
spread some sheets of newspaper over the table, opened the suit-case and
took out the two jackets, which ho laid out side by side. Then, with his
spring-tape, he proceeded systematically to measure the two garments,
entering each pair of measurements on a slip of paper divided into two
columns. Mr. Brodribb and I watched him expectantly and compared the two
sets of figures as they were written down; and very soon it became
evident that they were, at least, not identical. At length Thorndyke laid
down the tape, and picking up the paper, studied it closely.

"I think," he said, "we may conclude that these two jackets were not made
for the same person. The differences are not great, but they are
consistent. The elbow creases, for instance, agree with the total length
of the sleeves. The owner of the green jacket has longer arms and a
bigger span than Merrill, but his chest measurement is nearly two inches
greater and he has much more sloping shoulders. He could hardly have
buttoned Merrill's jacket."

"Then," said Brodribb, "the next question is, did Merrill come home in
some other man's coat or did some other man enter his chambers? From what
Page has told us it seems pretty evident that a stranger must have got
into those chambers. But if that is so, the questions arise : What the
deuce was the fellow's object in changing into Merrill's clothes and
shaving? How did he get into Merrill's chambers? What was he doing there?
What has become of Merrill? And what is the meaning of the whole affair?"

"To some of those questions," said Thorndyke, "the answers are fairly
obvious. If we assume, as I do, that the owner of the green jacket is the
man whom Page saw at London Bridge and afterwards in the cloisters, the
reason for the change of garments becomes plain enough. Page told the man
that he had identified him by this very distinctive jacket as the person
with whom Merrill was last seen alive. Evidently that man's safety
demanded hat he should get rid of the incriminating jacket without delay.
Then, as to his having shaved: did Page give you any description of the
man?"

"Yes; he was a tallish man, about thirty-five, with a large dark
moustache and a torpedo beard."

"Very well," said Thorndyke; "then we may say that the man who went into
Merrill's chambers was a moustached bearded man in a green jacket and
that he man who came out was a clean-shaved man in a grey jacket, whom
Page himself would probably have passed without a second glance. That is
clear enough. And as to how he got into the chambers, evidently he let
himself in with Merrill's key; and if he did, I am afraid we can make a
pretty shrewd guess as to what has become of Merrill, and only hope that
we are guessing wrong. As to what this man was doing in those chambers
and what is the meaning of the whole affair, that is a more difficult
question. If the man had Merrill's latchkey, we may assume that he had
the rest of Merrill's keys; that he had, in fact, free access to any
locked receptacles in those chambers. The circumstances suggest that he
entered the chambers for the purpose of getting possession of some
valuable objects contained in them. Do you happen to know whether Merrill
had any property of considerable value on the premises?"

"I don't," replied Brodribb. "He had a safe, but I don't know what he
kept in it. Principally documents, I should think. Certainly not money,
in any considerable amounts. The only thing of value that I actually know
of is the new will; and that would only be valuable in certain
circumstances."

The abrupt and rather ambiguous conclusion of Mr. Brodribb's statement
was not lost either on Thorndyke or on me. Apparently the cautious old
lawyer had suddenly realised, as I had, that if anything had happened to
Merrill, those "certain circumstances" had already come into being. From
what he had told us it appeared that, under the new will, Crick stood to
inherit a half of Mr. Merrill's fortune, whereas under the old will he
stood to inherit nearly the whole. And it was a great fortune. The loss
or destruction of the new will would be worth a good many thousand pounds
to Mr. Crick.

"Well," said Brodribb, after a pause, "what is to be done? I suppose I
ought to communicate with the police."

"You will have to, sooner or later," said Thorndyke; "but meanwhile,
leave these two jackets--or, at least, the green one--with me for the
present and let me see if I can extract any further information from it."

"You won't find anything in the pockets but dirt. I've tried them."

"I hope you left the dirt," said Thorndyke.

I did," replied Brodribb, "excepting what came out on my fingers. Very
well; I'll leave the coats with you for to-day, and I will see if I can
get any further news of Crick from his landlady."

With this the old solicitor shook hands and went off with such an evident
air of purpose that I remarked: "Brodribb is off to find out whether Mr.
Crick was the proprietor of a green plaid Norfolk jacket."

Thorndyke smiled. "It was rather quaint," said he, "to see the sudden way
in which he drew in his horns when the inwardness of the affair dawned on
him. But we mustn't start with a preconceived theory. Our business is to
get hold of some more facts. There is little enough to go on at present.
Let us begin by having a good look at this green jacket."

He picked it up and carried it to the window, where we both looked it
over critically.

"It is rather dusty," I remarked, "especially on the front, and there is
a white mark on the middle button."

"Yes. Chalk, apparently; and if you look closely, there are white traces
on the other buttons and on the front of the coat. The back is much less
dusty."

As he spoke, Thorndyke turned the garment round, and then, from the side
of the skirt, picked a small, hair-like object which he felt between his
finger and thumb, looked at closely and handed to me.

"A bit of barley beard," said I, "and there are two more on the other
side. He must have walked along a narrow path through a barley field--the
state of the front of his coat almost suggests that he had crawled."

"Yes; it is earthy dust; but Polton's extractor will give us more
information about that. We had better hand it over to him; but first we
will go through the pockets in spite of Brodribb's discouragement."

"By Jove!" I exclaimed, as I thrust my hand into one of the side pockets,
"he was right about the dirt. Look at this." I drew out my hand with a
quite considerable pinch of dry earth and one or two little fragments of
chalk. "It looks as if he had been crawling in loose earth."

"It does," Thorndyke agreed, inspecting his own "catch"--a pinch of
reddish earth and a fragment of chalk of the size of a large pea. "The
earth is very characteristic, this red-brown loam that you find overlying
the chalk. All his outside pockets seem to have caught more or less of
it. However, we can leave Polton to collect it and prepare it for
examination. I'll take the coat up to him now, and while he is working at
it I think I will walk round to Edginton's and see if I can pick up any
further particulars."

He went up to the laboratory floor, where our assistant, Polton, carried
on his curious and varied activities, and when he returned we sallied
forth together. In Fleet Street we picked up a disengaged taxicab, by
which we were whisked across Blackfriars Bridge and a few minutes later
set down at the corner of Tooley Street. We made our way to the
ship-chandler's shop, where Thorndyke proceeded to put a few discreet
questions to the manager, who listened politely and with sympathetic
interest.

"The difficulty is," said he, "that there were a good many gentlemen in
here last Thursday. You say they came about I I.45. If you could tell me
what they bought, we could look at the bill-duplicate book and that might
help us."

"I don't actually know what they bought," said Thorndyke. "It might have
been a length of rope; a rope, perhaps, say twelve or fourteen fathoms or
perhaps more. But I may be wrong."

I stared at Thorndyke in amazement. Long as I known him, this
extraordinary faculty of instantaneous induction always came on me as a
fresh surprise. I had supposed that in this case we had absolutely
nothing to go on; and yet here he was with at least a tentative
suggestion before the inquiry appeared to have begun. And that suggestion
was clear evidence that he had already arrived at a hypothetical solution
of the mystery. I was still pondering on this astonishing fact when the
manager approached with an open book and accompanied by an assistant.

"I see," said he, "that there is an entry, apparently about mid-day on
Thursday, of the sale of a fifteen-fathom length of deep-sea lead-line,
and my friend, here, remembers selling it."

"Yes," the assistant confirmed, "I remember it because he wanted to get
it into his hand-bag, and it took the three of us to stuff it in. Thick
lead-line is pretty stiff when it's new."

"Do you remember what these gentlemen were like and how they were
dressed?"

"One was a rather elderly gentleman, clean-shaved, I think. The other I
remember better because he had rather queer-looking eyes--very pale
grey. He had a pointed beard and he wore a greenish check coat and a
cloth hat. That's all I remember about him."

"It is more than most people would have remembered," said Thorndyke. "I
am very much obliged to you; and I think I will ask you to let me have a
fifteen-fathom length of that same lead-line."

By this time my capacity for astonishment was exhausted. What on earth
could my colleague want with a deep-sea lead-line? But, after all, why
not? If he had then and there purchased a Trotman's anchor, a shark-hook
and a set of International code signals, I should have been prepared to
accept the proceeding with out comment. Thorndyke was a law unto himself.

Nevertheless, as I walked homeward by his side, carrying the coil of
rope, I continued to speculate on this singular case. Thorndyke had
arrived at a hypothetical solution of Mr. Brodribb's problem; and it was
evidently correct, so far, as the entry in the bill-book proved. But what
was the connection between a dusty jacket and a length of thin rope? And
why this particular length? I could make nothing of it. But I determined,
as soon as we got home, to see what new facts Polton's activities had
brought to light.

The results were disappointing. Polton's dust extractor had been busy,
and the products in the form of tiny heaps of dust, were methodically set
out on a sheet of white paper, each little heap covered with a
watch-glass and accompanied by its written particulars as to the part of
the garment from which it had come. I examined a few samples under the
microscope, but though curious and interesting, as all dust is, they
showed nothing very distinctive. The dust might have come from anyone's
coat. There was, of course, a good deal of yellowish sandy loam, a few
particles of chalk, a quantity of fine ash, clinker and particles of coal--railway
dust from a locomotive--ordinary town and house dust and some
oddments such as pollen grains, including those of the sow-thistle,
mallow, poppy and valerian, and in one sample I found two scales from the
wing of the common blue butterfly. That was all; and it told me nothing
but that the owner of the coat had recently been in a chalk district and
that he had taken a railway journey.

While I was working with the microscope, Polton was busy with an
occupation that I did not understand. He had cemented the little pieces
of chalk that we had found in the pockets to a plate of glass by means of
pitch, and he was now brushing them under water with a soft brush and
from time to time decanting the milky water into a tall sediment glass.
Now, as most people know, chalk is largely composed of microscopic
shells--foraminifera--which can be detached by gently brushing the chalk under
water. But what was the object? There was no doubt that the material was
chalk, and we knew that foraminifera were there. Why trouble to prove
what is common knowledge? I questioned Polton, but he knew nothing of the
purpose of the investigation. He merely beamed on me like a crinkly old
graven image and went on brushing. I dipped up a sample of the white
sediment and examined it under the microscope. Of course there were
foraminifera, and very beautiful they were. But what about it? The whole
proceeding looked purposeless. And yet I knew that it was not. Thorndyke
was the last man in the world to expend his energies in flogging a dead
horse.

Presently he came up to the laboratory, and, when he had looked at the
dust specimens and confirmed my opinion of them, he fell to work on the
chalk sediment. Having prepared a number of slides, he sat down at the
microscope with a sharp pencil and a block of smooth paper with the
apparent purpose of cataloguing and making drawings of the foraminifera.
And at this task I left him while I went forth to collect some books that
I had ordered from a bookseller in the Charing Cross Road.

When I returned with my purchases about an hour later I found him putting
back in a press a portfolio of large-scale Ordnance maps of Kent which he
had apparently been consulting, and I noticed on the table his sheet of
drawings and a monograph of the fossil foraminifera.

"Well, Thorndyke," I said cheerfully," I suppose this time, you know
exactly what has become of Merrill."

"I can guess," he replied, "and so can you. But the actual data are
distressingly vague. We have certain indications, as you will have
noticed. The trouble will be to bring them to a focus. It is a case for
constructive imagination on the one hand and the method of exclusion on
the other. I shall make a preliminary circle-round tomorrow."

"Meaning by that?"

"I have a hypothesis. It is probably wrong. If it is, we must try
another, and yet another. Every time we fail we shall narrow the field of
inquiry until by eliminating one possibility after another, we may hope
to arrive at the solution. My first essay will take me down into Kent."

"You are not going into those wild regions alone, Thorndyke," said I.
"You will need my protection and support to say nothing of my invaluable
advice. I presume you realise that?"

"Undoubtedly." he replied gravely. "I was reckoning on a two-man
expedition. Besides, you are as much interested in the case as I am. And
now, let us go forth and dine and fortify ourselves for the perils of
tomorrow."

In the course of dinner I led the conversation to the products of
Polton's labours and remarked upon their very indefinite significance;
but Thorndyke was more indefinite still, as he usually was in cases of a
highly speculative character.

"You are expecting too much from Polton," he said with a smile. "This is
not a matter of foraminifera or pollen or butterfly-scales; they are only
items of circumstantial evidence. What we have to do is to consider the
whole body of facts in our possession; what Brodribb has told us, what we
know for ourselves and what we have ascertained by investigation. The
case is still very much in the air, but it is not so vague as you seem to
imply."

This was all I could get out of him; and as the "whole body of facts"
yielded no suggestion at all to me, I could only possess my soul in
patience and hope for some enlightenment on the morrow.

About a quarter to eleven on the following morning, while Thorndyke was
giving final instructions to Polton and I was speculating on the contents
of the suit-case that was going to accompany us, footsteps became audible
on our stairs. Their crescendo terminated in a flourish on our little
brass knocker which I recognised as Brodribb's knock. I accordingly
opened the door, and in walked our old friend. His keen blue eye took in
at once our informal raiment and the suit-case and lighted up with
something like curiosity.

"Off on an expedition?" he asked.

"Yes," replied Thorndyke. "A little trip down into Kent. Gravesend, in
fact."

"Gravesend," repeated Brodribb with further awakened interest. "That was
rather a favourite resort of poor Merrill's. By the way, your expedition
is not connected with his disappearance, I suppose?"

"As a matter of fact it is," replied Thorndyke. "Just a tentative
exploration, you know."

"I know," said Brodribb, all agog now, "and I'm coming with you. I've got
a clear day and I'm not going to take a refusal."

"No refusal was contemplated," rejoined Thorndyke. "You'll probably waste
a day, but we shall benefit by your society. Polton will let your clerk
know that you haven't absconded, or you can look in at the office
yourself. We have plenty of time."

Brodribb chose the latter plan, which enabled him to exchange his tall
hat and morning coat for a soft hat and jacket, and we accordingly made
our way to Charing Cross via Lincoln's Inn, where Brodribb's office was
situated. I noticed that Brodribb, with his customary discretion, asked
no questions, though he must have observed, as I had, the striking fact
that Thorndyke had in some way connected Merrill with Gravesend; and in
fact with the exception of Brodribb's account of his failure to get any
news of Mr. Crick, no reference was made to the nature of our expedition
until we alighted at our destination.

On emerging from the station, Thorndyke turned to the left and led the
way out of the approach into a street, on the opposite side of which a
rather grimy statue of Queen Victoria greeted us with a supercilious
stare. Here we turned to the south along a prosperous thoroughfare, and
presently crossing a main road, followed its rather sordid continuation
until the urban squalor began to be tempered by traces of rusticity, and
the suburb became a village. Passing a pleasant 1ooking inn and a smithy,
which seemed to have an out-patient department for invalid carts, we came
into a quiet lane offering a leafy vista with glimpses of thatched and
tiled cottages whose gardens were gay with summer flowers. Opposite
these, some rough stone steps led up to a stile by the side of an open
gate which gave access to a wide cart-track. Here Thorndyke halted, and
producing his pocket map-case, com pared the surroundings with the map.
At length he pocketed the case, and turning towards the cart-track, said:
"This is our way, for better or worse. In a few minutes we shall probably
know whether we have found a clue or a mare's nest."

We followed the track up a rise until, reaching the crest of the hill, we
saw stretching away below us a wide, fertile valley with wooded heights
beyond, over the brow of which peeped the square tower of some village
church.

"Well," said Brodribb, taking off his hat to enjoy the light breeze,
"clue or no clue, this is perfectly delightful and well worth the
journey. Just look at those charming little blue butterflies fluttering
round that mallow. What a magnificent prospect And where, but in Kent,
will you see such a barley field as that?"

It was, indeed, a beautiful landscape. But as my eye travelled over the
enormous barley field, its tawny surface rippling, in golden waves before
the summer breeze, it was not the beauty of the scene that occupied my
mind. I was thinking of those three ends of barley beard that we had
picked from the skirts of the green jacket. The cart-track had now
contracted to a foot path; but it was a broader path than I should have
looked for, running straight across the great field to a far-away stile;
and half way along it on the left hand side I could see, rising above the
barley, the top of a rough fence around a small, square enclosure that
looked like a pound--though it was in an unlikely situation.

We pursued the broad path across the field until we were nearly abreast
of the pound, and I was about to draw Thorndyke's attention to it, when I
perceived a narrow lane through the barley--hardly a path, but rather a
track, trodden through the crop by some persons who had gone to the
enclosure. Into this track Thorndyke turned as if he had been looking for
it, and walked towards the enclosure, closely scrutinising the ground as
he went. Brodribb and I, of course, followed in single file, brushing
through the barley as we went; and as we drew nearer we could see that
there was an opening in the enclosing fence and that inside was a deep
hollow the edges of which were fringed with clumps of pink valerian. At
the opening of the fence Thorndyke halted and looked back.

"Well," said Brodribb, "is it going to be a mare's nest? "

"No," replied Thorndyke. "It is a clue, and something more!"

As he spoke, he pointed to the foot of one of the principal posts of the
fence, to which was secured a short length of rope, the frayed ends of
which suggested that it had broken under a heavy strain. And now I could
see what the enclosure was. Inside it was a deep pit, and at the bottom
of the pit, to one side, was a circular hole, black as night, and
apparently leading down into the bowels of the earth.

"That must be a dene hole," said I, looking at the yawning cavity.

"It is," Thorndyke replied.

"Ha," said Brodribb, "so that is a dene hole, is it? Damned unpleasant
looking place. Dene holes were one of poor Merrill's hobbies. He used to
go down to explore them. I hope you are not suggesting that he went down
this one."

"I am afraid that is what has happened, Brodribb," was the reply. "That
end of rope looks like his. It is deep-sea lead-line. I have a length of
it here, bought at the same place as he bought his, and probably cut from
the same sample." He opened the suit-case, and taking out the coil of
line that we had bought, flung it down by the foot of the post. Obviously
it was identical with the broken end. "However," he added," we shall
see."

"We are going down, are we?" asked Brodribb.

"We?" repeated Thorndyke. "I am going down if it is practicable. Not
otherwise. If it is an ordinary seventy-foot shaft with perpendicular
sides, we shall have to get proper appliances. But you had better stay
above, in any case."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Brodribb. "I am not such a back number as you
think. I have been a mountain-climber in my time and I'm not a bit
nervous. I can get down all right if there is any foothold, and I've got
a rope to hang on to. And you can see for yourself that somebody has been
down with a rope only."

"Yes," replied Thorndyke, "but I don't see that that somebody has come up
again."

"No," Brodribb admitted; "that's true. The rope seems to have broken; and
you say your rope is the same stuff?

Thorndyke looked at me inquiringly as I stooped and examined the frayed
end of the strange rope.

"What do you say, Jervis?" he asked.

"That rope didn't break," I replied. "It has been, chafed or sawn
through. It is quite different in appearance from a broken end."

"That was what I decided as soon as I saw it," said Thorndyke. "Besides,
a new rope of this size and quality couldn't possibly break under the
weight of a man."

Brodribb gazed at the frayed end with an expression of horror.

"What a diabolical thing!" he exclaimed. "You mean that some wretch
deliberately cut the rope and let another man drop down the shaft! But it
can't be. I really think you must be mistaken. It must have been a
defective rope."

"Well, that is what it looks like," replied Thorndyke. He made a 'running
bowline" at the end of our rope and slipped the loop over his shoulders,
drawing it tight under his arms. Then he turned towards the pit. "You had
better take a couple of turns round the foot of the post, Jervis," said
he, "and pay out just enough to keep the rope taut."

He took an electric inspection-lamp from the suit case, slipped the
battery in his pocket and hooked the bull's-eye to a button-hole, and
when all was ready, he climbed down into the pit, crossed the sloping
floor, and crouching down, peered into the forbidding hole, throwing down
it a beam of light from his bull's-eye. Then he stood up and grasped the
rope.

"It is quite practicable," said he; "only about twenty feet deep, and
good foothold all the way." With this he crouched once more, backed into
the hole and disappeared from view. He evidently descended pretty
quickly, to judge by the rate at which I had to pay out the rope, and in
quite a short time I felt the tension slacken and began to haul up the
line. As the loop came out of the hole, Mr. Brodribb took possession of
it, and regardless of my protests, proceeded to secure it under his arms.

"But how the deuce am I going to get down?" I demanded.

"That's all right, Jervis," he replied persuasively. "I'll just have a
look round and then come up and let you down."

It being obviously useless to argue, I adjusted the rope and made ready
to pay out. He climbed down into the pit with astonishing agility, backed
into the hole and disappeared; and the tension of the rope informed me
that he was making quite a rapid descent. He had nearly reached the
bottom when there were borne to my ears the hollow reverberations of what
sounded like a cry of alarm. But all was apparently well, for the rope
continued to draw out steadily, and when at last its tension relaxed, I
felt an unmistakable signal shake, and at once drew it up.

As my curiosity made me unwilling to remain passively waiting for
Brodribb's return, I secured the end of the rope to the post with a
"fisherman's bend" and let myself down into the pit. Advancing to the
hole, I lay down and put my head over the edge. A dim light from
Thorndyke's lamp came up the shaft and showed me that we were by no means
the first explorers, for there were foot-holes cut in the chalk all the
way down, apparently of some considerable age. With the aid of these and
the rope, it appeared quite easy to descend and I decided to go down
forthwith. Accordingly I backed towards the shaft, found the first of the
foot-holes, and grasping the rope with one hand and using the other to
hang on to the upper cavities, easily let myself down the well-like
shaft. As I neared the bottom the light of the lamp was thrown full on
the shaft-wall; a pair of hands grasped me and I heard Thorndyke's voice
saying: "Look where you are treading, Jervis"; on which I looked down and
saw immediately below me a man lying on his face by an irregular coil of
rope.

I stepped down carefully on to the chalk floor and looked round. We were
in a small chamber in one side of which was the black opening of a low
tunnel. Thorndyke and Brodribb were standing at the feet of the prostrate
figure examining a revolver which the solicitor held.

"It has certainly been fired," said the latter. "One chamber is empty and
the barrel is foul."

"That may be," replied Thorndyke; "but there is no bullet wound. This man
died from a knife wound in the chest." He threw the light of his lamp on
the corpse and as I turned it partly over to verify his statement, he
added: "This is poor Mr. Merrill. We found the revolver lying by his
side."

"The cause of death is clear enough," said I, "and it certainly wasn't
suicide. The question is--" At this moment Thorndyke stooped and threw a
beam of light down the tunnel, and Brodribb and I simultaneously uttered
an exclamation. At the extreme end, about forty feet away, the body of
another man lay. Instantly Brodribb started forward, and stooping to
clear the low roof--it was about four feet six inches high--hurried
along the tunnel. Thorndyke and I followed close behind. As we reached
the body, which was lying supine with a small electric torch by its side,
and the light of Thorndyke's lamp fell on the upturned face, Brodribb
gasped: " God save us! it's Crick! And here is the knife." He was about
to pick up the weapon when Thorndyke put out his hand.

"That knife," said he, "must be touched by no hand but the one that dealt
the blow. It may be crucial evidence."

"Evidence of what?" demanded Brodribb. "There is Merrill with a knife
wound in his chest and a pistol by his side. Here is Crick with a bullet
wound in his breast, a knife by his side and the empty sheath secured
round his waist. What more evidence do you want?"

"That depends on what you seek to prove," said Thorndyke. "What is your
interpretation of the facts that you have stated?

"Why, it is as plain as daylight," answered Brodribb, "incredible as the
affair seems, having regard to the characters of the two men. Crick
stabbed Merrill and Merrill shot him dead. Then Merrill tried to escape,
but the rope broke, he was trapped and he bled to death at the foot of
the shaft."

"And who do you say died first?" Thorndyke asked.

It was a curious question and it caused me to look inquisitively at my
colleague. But Brodribb answered promptly: "Why, Crick, of course. Here
he lies where he fell. There is a track of blood along the floor of the
tunnel, as you can see, and there is Merrill at the entrance, dead in the
act of trying to escape."

Thorndyke nodded in a rather mysterious way and there was a brief
silence. Then I ventured to remark: "You seem to be losing sight of the
man with the green jacket."

Brodribb started and looked at me with a frown of surprise.

Bless my soul!" he exclaimed, "so I am. I had clean forgotten him in
these horrors. But what is your point? Is there any evidence that he has
been here?"

"I don't know," said I. "He bought the rope and he was seen with Merrill
apparently going towards London Bridge Station. And I gather that it was
the green jacket that piloted Thorndyke to this place."

In a sense," Thorndyke admitted, "that is so. But we will talk about that
later. Meanwhile there are one or two facts that I will draw your
attention to. First as to the wounds; they are almost identical in
position. Each is on the left side, just below the nipple; a vital spot,
which would be fully exposed by a man who was climbing down holding on to
a rope. Then, if you look along the floor where I am throwing the light,
you can see a distinct trace of something having been dragged along,
although there seems to have been an effort to obliterate it; and the
blood marks are more in the nature of smears than drops." He gently
turned the body over and pointed to the back, which was thickly covered
with chalk. "This corpse has obviously been dragged along the floor," he
continued. "It wouldn't have been marked in that way by merely falling.
Further, the rope, when last seen, was being stuffed into a hand-bag. The
rope is here, but where is the hand-bag? Finally, the rope was cut by
some one outside, and evidently after the murders had been committed."

As he concluded, he spread his handkerchief over the knife, and wrapping
it up carefully without touching it with his fingers, placed it in his
outside breast-pocket. Then we went back towards the shaft, where
Thorndyke knelt down by the body of Merrill and systematically emptied
the pockets.

"What are you searching for?" asked Brodribb.

"Keys," was the reply; "and there aren't any, It is a vital point, seeing
that the man with the green jacket evidently let himself into Merrill's
chambers that same day."

"Yes," Brodribb agreed with a reflective frown; "it is. But tell us,
Thorndyke, how you reconstruct this horrible crime."

"My theory," said Thorndyke "is that the three men came here together.
They made the rope fast to the post. The stranger in the green jacket
came down first and waited at the foot of the shaft. Merrill came down
next, and the stranger stabbed him just as he reached the bottom, while
his arms were still up hanging on to the rope. Crick followed and was
shot in the same place and the same manner. Then the stranger dragged
Crick's body along the tunnel, swept away the marks as well as he could,
put the knife and the lamp by the body, dropped the revolver by Merrill's
corpse, took the keys and went up, sawed through the rope--probably with
a pocket saw--and threw the end down the shaft. Then he took the next
train to London and went straight to Merrill's chambers, where he opened
the safe or other receptacles and took possession of what he wanted."

Brodribb nodded. "It was a diabolically clever scheme," said he.

"The scheme was ingenious enough," Thorndyke agreed, "but the execution
was contemptible. He has left traces at every turn. Otherwise we
shouldn't be here. He has acted on the assumption that the world contains
no one but fools. But that is a fool's assumption."

When we had ascended, in the reverse order of our descent, Thorndyke
detached our rope and also the frayed end, which we took with us, and we
then took our way back towards the town; and I noted that as we stood by
the dene hole, there was not a human creature in sight; nor did we meet a
single person until we were close to the village. It was an ideal spot
for a murder.

"I suppose you will notify the police?" said Brodribb.

"Yes," replied Thorndyke. "I shall call on the Chief Constable and give
him the facts and advise him to keep some of them to himself for the
present, and also to arrange for an adjournment of the inquest. Our
friend with the green jacket must be made to think that he has played a
trump card."

Apparently the Chief Constable was a man who knew all the moves of
criminal investigation, for at the inquest the discovery was attributed
to the local police acting on information received from somebody who had
"noticed the broken rope."

None of us was summoned to give evidence nor were our names mentioned,
but the inquest was adjourned for three weeks, for further inquiries.

But in those three weeks there were some singular developments, of which
the scene was the clerks' office at Mr. Brodribb's premises in Lincoln's
Inn. There late on a certain forenoon, Thorndyke and I arrived, each
provided with a bag and a sheaf of documents, and were duly admitted by
Mr. Page.

"Now," said Thorndyke, "are you quite confident, Mr. Page, that you would
recognise this man, even if he had shaved off his beard and moustache?"

"Quite confident," replied Page. "I should know him by his eyes. Very
queer eyes they were; light, greenish grey. And I should know his voice,
too."

"Good," said Thorndyke; and as Page disappeared into the private office,
we sat down and examined our documents, eyed furtively by the junior
clerk. Some ten minutes later the door opened and a man entered; and the
first glance at him brought my nerves to concert pitch. He was a
thick-set, muscular man, clean-shaved and rather dark. But my attention
was instantly arrested by his eyes--singularly pale eyes which gave an
almost unhuman character to his face. He reminded me of a certain species
of lemur that I once saw.

"I have got an appointment with Mr. Brodribb," he said, addressing the
clerk. "My name is Horder."

The clerk slipped off his stool and moved towards the door of the private
office, but at that moment Page came out. As his eyes met Horder's, he
stopped dead; and instantly the two men seemed to stiffen like a couple
of dogs that have suddenly met at a street corner. I watched Horder
narrowly. He had been rather pale when he came in. Now he was ghastly,
and his whole aspect indicated extreme nervous tension.

"Did you wish to see Mr. Brodribb?" asked Page, still gazing intently at
the other.

"Yes," was the irritable reply; "I have given my name once--Horder."

Mr. Page turned and re-entered the private office, leaving the door ajar.

Mr. Horder to see you, sir," I heard him say. He came out and shut the
door. "If you will sit down, Mr. Brodribb will see you in a minute or
two," he said, offering a chair; he then took his hat from a peg, glanced
at his watch and went out.

A couple of minutes passed. Once, I thought I heard stealthy footsteps
out in the entry; but no one came in or knocked. Presently the door of
the private office opened and a tall gentleman came out. And then, once
more, my nerves sprang to attention. The tall gentleman was
Detective-Superintendent Miller.

The superintendent walked across the office, opened the door, looked out,
and then, leaving it ajar, came back to where Horder was sitting.

"You are Mr. Samuel Horder, I think," said he.

"Yes, I am," was the reply. "What about it?"

"I am a police officer, and I arrest you on a charge of having unlawfully
entered the premises of the late Reginald Merrill; and it is my duty to
caution you--"

Here Horder, who had risen to his feet, and slipped his right hand under
the skirt of his coat, made a sudden spring at the officer. But in that
instant Thorndyke had gripped his right arm at the elbow and wrist and
swung him round; the superintendent seized his left arm while I pounced
upon the revolver in his right hand and kept its muzzle pointed to the
floor. But it was an uncomfortable affair. Our prisoner was a strong man
and he fought like a wild beast; and he had his finger hooked round the
trigger of the revolver. The four of us, locked together, gyrated round
the office, knocking over chairs and bumping against the walls, the
junior clerk skipped round the room with his eyes glued on the pistol and
old Brodribb charged out of his sanctum, flourishing a long ruler.
However, it did not last long. In the midst of the uproar, two massive
constables stole in and joined the fray. There was a yell from the
prisoner, the revolver rattled to the floor and then I heard two
successive metallic clicks.

"He'll be all right now," murmured the constable who had fixed on the
handcuffs, with the manner of one who has administered a soothing remedy.

"I notice," said Thorndyke, when the prisoner had been removed, "that you
charged him only with unlawful entry."

"Yes," replied Miller, "until we have taken his finger-prints. Mr.
Singleton has developed up three fingers and a thumb, beautifully clear,
on that knife that you gave us. If they prove to be Horder's finger
prints, of course, it is a true bill for the murder."

The finger-prints on the knife proved undoubtedly to be Horder's. But the
case did not rest on them alone. When his rooms were searched, there were
found not only Mr. Merrill's keys but also Mr. Merrill's second will,
which had been missed from the safe when it was opened by the maker's
locksmith; thus illustrating afresh the perverse stupidity of the
criminal mind.

"A satisfactory case," remarked Thorndyke, "in respect of the result; but
there was too much luck for us to take much credit from it. On Brodribb's
opening statement, it was pretty clear that a crime had been committed.
Merrill was missing and some one had possession of his keys and had
entered his premises. It also appeared nearly certain that the thing
stolen must be the second will, since there was nothing else of value to
steal; and the will was of very great value to two persons, Crick and
Horder, to each of whom its destruction was worth many thousands of
pounds. To both of them its value was conditional on the immediate death
of Merrill, before another will could be made; and to Horder it was
further conditional on the death of Crick and that he should die before
Merrill--for otherwise the estate would go to Crick's heirs or next of
kin. The prima facie suspicion therefore fell on these two men. But Crick
was missing; and the question was, had he absconded or was he dead?

"And now as to the investigation. The green jacket showed earthy dust and
chalk on the front and chalk-marks on the buttons. The indication was
that the wearer had either crawled on chalky ground or climbed up a
chalky face. But the marks on the buttons suggested climbing; for a
horizontal surface is usually covered by soil, whereas on a vertical
surface the chalk is exposed. But the time factor showed us that this man
could not have travelled far from London. He was seen going towards
London Bridge Station about the time when a train was due to go down to
Kent. That train went to Maidstone and Gillingham, calling at Gravesend,
Strood, Snodland, Rochester, Chatham and other places abounding in chalk
and connected with the cement industry. In that district there were no
true cliffs, but there were numerous chalk-pits, railway embankments and
other excavations. The evidence pointed to one of these excavations. Then
Crick was known to have gone to Rochester--earlier in the day--which
further suggested the district, though Rochester is the least chalky part
of it.

"The question was, what kind of excavation had been climbed into? And for
what purpose had the climbing been performed? But here the personality of
the missing man gave us a hint. Merrill had written a book to prove that
dene holes were simply prehistoric flint-mines. He had explored a number
of dene holes and described them in his book. Now the district through
which this train had passed was peculiarly rich in dene holes; and then
there was the suggestive fact that Merrill had been last seen coming out
of a rope- seller's shop. This latter fact was so important that I
followed it up at once by calling at Edginton's. There I ascertained that
Merrill or his companion had bought a fifteen-fathom length of deep-sea
lead-line. Now this was profoundly significant. The maximum depth of a
dene hole is about seventy feet. Fifteen fathoms--ninety feet--is
therefore the exact length required, allowing for loops and fastenings.
This new fact converted the dene-hole hypothesis into what was virtually
a certainty, especially when one considered how readily these dangerous
pits lent themselves either to fatal accidents or to murder. I
accordingly adopted the dene-hole suggestion as a working hypothesis.

"The next question was, 'Where was this dene-hole?' And an uncommonly
difficult question it was. I began to fear that the inquiry would fail
from the impossibility of solving it. But at this point I got some help
from a new quarter. I had given the coat to Polton to extract the dust
and I had told him to wash the little lumps of chalk for foraminifera."

"What are foraminifera?" asked Brodribb.

"They are minute sea shells. Chalk js largely composed of them; and
although chalk is in no sense a local rock, there is nevertheless a good
deal of variation in the species of foraminifera found in different
localities. So I had the chalk washed out as a matter of routine. Well,
the dust was confirmatory but not illuminating. There was railway dust,
of the South Eastern type--I expect you know it--chalk, loam dust,
pollen-grains of the mallow and valerian (which grows in chalk-pits and
railway cuttings) and some wing scales of the common blue butterfly,
which haunts the chalk--I expect he had touched a dead butterfly. But
all this would have answered for a good part of Kent. Then I examined the
foraminifera and identified the species by the plates in Warnford's
Monograph. The result was most encouraging. There were nine species in
all, and of these five were marked as 'found in the Gravesend chalk,' two
more 'from the Kentish chalk' and the other two 'from the English chalk.'
This was a very striking result. More than half the contained
foraminifera were from the Gravesend chalk.

"The problem now was to determine the geologic meaning of the term
Gravesend. I ruled out Rochester, as I had heard of no dene holes in that
neighbourhood, and I consulted Merrill's book and the large-scale
Ordnance map. Merrill had worked in the Gravesend district and the
adjacent part of Essex and he gave a list of the dene holes that he had
explored, including the Clapper Napper Hole in Swanscombe Wood. But,
checking his list by the Ordnance map, I found that there was one dene
hole marked on the map which was not in his list. As it was evidently
necessary to search all the dene holes in the district, I determined to
begin with the one that he seemed to have missed. And there luck favoured
us. It turned out to be the right one."

"I don't see that there was much luck in it," said Brodribb. "You
calculated the probabilities and adopted the greatest."

"At any rate," said Thorndyke, "there was Merrill and there was Crick;
and as soon as I saw them I knew that Horder was the murderer. For the
whole tableau had obviously been arranged to demonstrate that Crick died
before Merrill and establish Horder as Merrill's heir."

"A diabolical plot," commented Brodribb. "Horribly ingenious, too. By the
way--which of them did die first in your opinion?"

"Merrill, I should say, undoubtedly," replied Thorndyke.

"That will be good hearing for Crick's next of kin," said Brodribb. "And
you haven't done with this case yet, Thorndyke. I shall retain you on the
question of survivorship."



THE SEAL OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR


"I suppose, Thorndyke," said I, "footprints yield quite a lot of
information if you think about them enough?"

The question was called forth by the circumstance of my friend halting
and stooping to examine the little pit made in the loamy soil of the path
by the walking stick of some unknown wayfarer. Ever since we had entered
this path--to which we had been directed by the station-master of
Pinwell Junction as a short cut to our destination--I had noticed my
friend scanning its surface, marked with numerous footprints, as if he
were mentally reconstructing the personalities of the various travellers
who had trodden it before us. This I knew to be a habit of his, almost
unconsciously pursued; and the present conditions certainly favoured it,
for here, as the path traversed a small wood, the slightly moist, plastic
surface took impressions with the sharpness of moulding wax.

"Yes," he answered, "but you must do more than think. You need to train
your eyes to observe in conspicuous characteristics."

"Such as these, for instance," said. I, with a grin, pointing to a
blatant print of a Cox's "Invicta" rubber sole with its prancing-horse
trade-mark.

Thorndyke smiled. "A man," said he, "who wears a sole like that is a mere
advertising agent. He who runs may read those characteristics, but as
there are thousands of persons wearing 'Invicta' soles, the observation
merely identifies the wearer as a member of a large genus. It has to be
carried a good deal further to identify him as an individual; otherwise,
a standardised sole is apt to be rather misleading than helpful, Its
gross distinctiveness tends to divert the novice's attention from the
more specific characteristics which he would seek in a plain footprint
like that of this man's companion."

"Why companion?" I asked. "The two men were walking the same way, but
what evidence is there that they were companions?"

"A good deal, if you follow the series of tracks, as I have been doing.
In the first place, there is the stride. Both men were rather tall, as
shown by the size of their feet, but both have a distinctly short stride.
Now the leather-soled man's short stride is accounted for by the way in
which he put down his stick. He held it stiffly, leaning upon it to some
extent and helping himself with it. There is one impression of the stick
to every two paces; every impression of his left foot has a stick
impression opposite to it. The suggestion is that he was old, weak or
infirm. But the rubber-soled man walked with his stick in the ordinary
way--one stick impression to every four paces. His abnormally short
stride is not to be accounted for excepting by the assumption that he
stepped short to keep pace with the other man.

"Then the two sets of footprints are usually separate. Neither man has
trodden nor set his stick on the other man's tracks, excepting in those
places where the path is too narrow for them to walk abreast, and there,
in the one case I noticed the rubber soles treading on the prints of the
leather soles, whereas at this spot the prints of the leather soles are
imposed on those of the rubber soles. That, of course, is conclusive
evidence that the two men were here at the same time."

"Yes," I agreed, "that settles the question without troubling about the
stride. But after all, Thorndyke, this is a matter of reasoning, as I
said; of thinking about the footprints and their meaning. No special
acuteness of observation or training of vision comes into it. The mere
facts are obvious enough; it is their interpretation that yields the
knowledge."

"That is true so far," said he, "but we haven't exhausted our material.
Look carefully at the impressions of the two sticks and tell me if you
see any thing remarkable in either of them?"

I stooped and examined the little pits that the two sticks had made in
the path, and, to tell the truth, found them extremely unilluminating.

"They seem very much alike," I said. "The rubber-soled man's stick is
rather larger than the other and the leather-soled man's stick has made
deeper holes--probably because it was smaller and he was leaning on it
more heavily."

Thorndyke shook his head. "You've missed the point, Anstey, and you've
missed it because you have failed to observe the visible facts. It is
quite a neat point, too, and might in certain circumstances be a very
important one."

"Indeed," said I. "What is the point?"

"That," said he, "I shall leave you to infer from the visible facts,
which are these: first, the impressions of the smaller stick are on the
right-hand side of the man who made them, and second, that each
impression is shallowest towards the front and the right-hand side."

I examined the impressions carefully and verified Thorndyke's statement.

Well," I said, "what about it? What does it prove?"

Thorndyke smiled in his exasperating fashion. "The proof," said he, "is
arrived at by reasoning from the facts. My learned friend has the facts.
If he will consider them, the conclusion will emerge."

"But," said I, "I don't see your drift. The impression is shallower on
one side, I suppose, because the ferrule of the stick was worn away on
that side. But I repeat, what about it? Do you expect me to infer why the
fool that it belonged to wore his stick away all at one side?"

"Now, don't get irritable, Anstey," said he. "Preserve a philosophic
calm. I assure you that this is quite an interesting problem."

So it may be," I replied. "But I'm hanged if I can imagine why he wore
his stick down in that way. However, it doesn't really matter. It isn't
my stick--and by Jingo, here is old Brodribb--caught us in the act of
wasting our time on academic chin-wags and delaying his business. The
debate is adjourned."

Our discussion had brought us to the opening of the wood, which now
framed the figure of the solicitor. As he caught sight of us, he hurried
forward, holding out his hand.

"Good men and true!" he exclaimed. "I thought you would probably come
this way, and it is very good of you to have come at all, especially as
it is a mere formality."

"What is?" asked Thorndyke. "Your telegram spoke of an 'alleged suicide.'
I take it that there is some ground for inquiry?"

"I don't know that there is," replied Brodribb. "But the deceased was
insured for three thousand pounds, which will be lost to the estate if
the suicide is confirmed. So I put it to my fellow that it was worth an
expert's fee to make sure whether or not things are what they seem. A
verdict of death by misadventure will save us three thousand pounds.
Verbum sap." As he concluded, the old lawyer winked with exaggerated
cunning and stuck his elbow into my ribs.

Thorndyke ignored the facetious suggestion of bribery and corruption and
inquired dryly: "What are the circumstances of the case?"

"I'd better give you a sketch of them before we get to the house,"
replied Brodribb. "The dead man is Martin Rowlands, the brother of my
neighbour in New Square, Tom Rowlands. Poor old Tom found the telegram
waiting when he got to his office this morning and immediately rushed
into my office with it and begged me to come down here with him. So I
came. Couldn't refuse a brother solicitor. He's waiting at the house now.

"The circumstances are these. Last evening, when he bad finished dinner,
Rowlands went out for a walk. That is his usual habit in the summer
months--it is light until nearly half-past nine nowadays. Well, that is
the last time he was seen alive by the servants. No one saw him come in.
But there was nothing unusual in that, for he had a private entrance to
the annexe in which his library, museum and workrooms were situated, and
when he returned from his walk, he usually entered the house that way and
went straight to his study or workroom and spent the evening there. So
the servants very seldom saw him after dinner.

"Last night he evidently followed his usual custom. But, this morning,
when the housemaid went to his bedroom with his morning tea, she was
astonished to find the room empty and the bed undisturbed. She at once
reported to the housekeeper, and the pair made their way to the annexe.
There they found the study door locked, and as there was no answer after
repeated knockings, they went out into the grounds to reconnoitre. The
study window was closed and fastened, but the workroom window was
unbolted, so that they were able to open it from outside. Then the
housemaid climbed in and went to the side door, which she opened and
admitted the housekeeper. The two went to the workroom, and as the door
which communicated with the study was open, they were able to enter the
latter, and there they found Martin Rowlands, sitting in an arm-chair by
the table, stone-dead, cold and stiff. On the table were a whisky
decanter, a siphon of soda water, a box of cigars, an ash-bowl with the
stump of a cigar in it, and a bottle of photographic tabloids of cyanide
of potassium.

"The housekeeper immediately sent off for a doctor and dispatched a
telegram to Tom Rowlands at his office. The doctor arrived about nine and
decided that the deceased had been dead about twelve hours. The cause of
death was apparently cyanide poisoning, but, of course, that will be
ascertained or disproved by the post-mortem. Those are all the known
facts at present. The doctor helped the servants to place the body on a
sofa, but as it is as stiff as a frozen sheep, they might as well have
left it where it was."

"Have the police been communicated with?" I asked.

"No," replied Brodribb. "There were no suspicious circumstances, so far
as any of us could see, and I don't know that I should have felt
justified in sending for you--though I always like to have Thorndyke's
opinion in a case of sudden death--if it had not been for the
insurance."

Thorndyke nodded. "It looks like a straightforward case of suicide," said
he. "As to the state of deceased's affairs, his brother will be able to
give us any necessary information, I suppose?

"Yes," replied Brodribb. "As a matter of fact, I think Martin has been a
bit worried just lately; but Tom will tell you about that. This is the
place."

We turned in at a gateway that opened into the grounds of a substantial
though unpretentious house, and as we approached the front door, it was
opened by a fresh-coloured, white-haired man whom we both knew pretty
well in our professional capacities. He greeted us cordially, and though
he was evidently deeply shocked by the tragedy, struggled to maintain a
calm, business-like manner.

"It is good of you to come down," said he; "but I am afraid we have
troubled you rather unnecessarily. Still, Brodribb thought it best--ex
abundantia cautelce, you know--to have the circumstances reviewed by a
competent authority. There is nothing abnormal in the affair excepting
its having happened. My poor brother was the sanest of men, I should say,
and we are not a suicidal family. I suppose you had better see the body
first?"

As Thorndyke assented, he conducted us to the end of the hall and into
the annexe, where we entered the study, the door of which was now open,
though the key was still in the lock. The table still bore the things
that Brodribb had described, but the chair was empty, and its late
occupant lay on a sofa, covered with a large table-cloth. Thorndyke
advanced to the sofa and gently drew away the cloth, revealing the body
of a man, fully dressed, lying stiffly and awkwardly on its back with the
feet raised and the stiffened limbs extended. There was something
strangely and horribly artificial in the aspect of the corpse, for,
though it was lying down, it had the posture of a seated figure, and thus
bore the semblance of a hideously realistic effigy which had been picked
up from a chair and laid down. I stood looking at it from a little
distance with a layman's distaste for the presence of a dead body, but
still regarding it with attention and some curiosity. Presently my glance
fell on the soles of the shoes--which were, indeed, exhibited plainly
enough--and I noted, as an odd coincidence that they were "Invicta"
rubber soles, like those which we had just been discussing in the wood;
that it was even possible that those very footprints had been made by the
feet of this grisly lay figure.

"I expect, Thorndyke," Brodribb said tactfully, "you would rather make
your inspection alone. If you should want us, you will find us in the
dining room," and with this he retired, taking Mr. Rowlands with him.

As soon as they were gone I drew Thorndyke's attention to the rubber
soles.

"It is a queer thing," said I, "but we may have actually been discussing
this poor fellow's own prints."

"As a matter of fact, we were," he replied, pointing to a drawing-pin
that had been trodden on and had stuck into one of the rubber heels. "I
noticed this at the time, and apparently you did not, which illustrates
what I was saying about the tendency of these very distinctive types of
sole to distract attention from those individual peculiarities which are
the ones that really matter."

"Then," said I, "if they were his footprints, the man with the remarkable
stick was with him. I wonder who he was. Some neighbour who was walking
home from the station with him, I expect."

"Probably," said Thorndyke, "and as the prints were quite recent--they
might even have been made last night--that person may be wanted as a
witness at the inquest as the last person who saw deceased alive. That
depends on the time the prints were made."

He walked back to the sofa and inspected the corpse very methodically,
giving close attention to the mouth and hands. Then he made a general
inspection of the room, examined the objects on the table and the floor
under it, strayed into the adjoining workshop, where he peered into the
deep laboratory sink, took an empty tumbler from a shelf, held it up to
the light and inspected the shelf--where a damp ring showed that the
tumbler had been put there to drain--and from the workshop wandered into
a little lobby and from thence out at the side door, down the flagged
path to the side gate and back again.

"It is all very negative," he remarked discontentedly, as we returned to
the study, "except that bottle of tabloids, which is pretty positive
evidence of premeditation. That looks like a fresh box of cigars. Two
missing. One stump in the ash-tray and more ash than one cigar would
account for. However, let us go into the dining and hear what Rowlands
has to tell us," and with this he walked out and crossed the hall and I
followed him.

As we entered the dining the two men looked at us and Brodribb asked:
"Well, what is the verdict?"

"At present," Thorndyke replied, "it is an open verdict. Nothing has come
to light that disagrees with the obvious appearances. But I should like
to hear more of the antecedents of the tragedy. You were saying that
deceased had been somewhat worried lately. What does that amount to?"

It amounts to nothing," said Rowlands "at least, I should have thought
so, in the case of a level-headed man like my brother. Still as it is all
there is, so far as I know, to account for what has happened, I had
better give you the story, It seems trivial enough.

"Some short time ago, a Major Cohen, who h just come home from
Mesopotamia, sold to dealer named Lyon a small gold cylinder seal that he
had picked up in the neighbourhood of Baghdad. The Lord knows how he came
by it, but he had it and he showed it to Lyon, who bought it of him for a
matter of twenty pounds. Cohen, of course, knew nothing about the thing,
and Lyon didn't know much more, for although he is a dealer, he is no
expert. But he is a very clever faker--or rather, I should say,
restorer, for he does quite a legitimate trade. He was a jeweller and
watch-jobber originally, a most ingenious workman, and his line is to buy
up damaged antiques and restore them. Then he sells them to minor
collectors, though quite honestly as restorations, so I oughtn't to call
him a faker. But, as I said, he has no real knowledge of antiques, and
all he saw in Cohen's seal was a gold cylinder seal, apparently ancient
and genuine, and on that he bought it for about twice the value of the
gold and thought no more about it.

"About a fortnight later, my brother Martin went to his shop in Petty
France, Westminster, to get some repairs done, and Lyon, knowing that my
brother was a collector of Babylonian antiquities, showed him the seal;
and Martin, seeing at once that it was genuine and a thing of some
interest and value, bought it straight-way for forty pounds without
examining it at all minutely, as it was obviously worth that much in any
case. But when he got home and took a rolled impression of it on moulding
wax, he made a most astonishing discovery. The impression showed a mass
of minute cuneiformic characters, and on deciphering these he learned
with amazement and delight that this was none other than the seal of
Nebuchadnezzar.

"Hardly able to believe in his good fortune, he hurried off to the
British Museum and showed his treasure to the Keeper of the Babylonian
Antiquities, who fully confirmed the identity of the seal and was
naturally eager to acquire it for the Museum. Of course, Martin wouldn't
sell it, but he allowed the keeper to take a record of its weight and
measurements and to make an impression on clay to exhibit in the case of
seal-rollings.

"Meanwhile, it seems that Cohen, before disposing of the seal, had amused
himself by making a number of rolled impressions on clay. Some of these
he took to Lyon, who bought them for a few shillings and put one of them
in his shop window as a curio. There it was seen and recognised by an
American Assyriologist, who went in and bought it and then began to
question Lyon closely as to whence he had obtained it. The dealer made no
secret of the matter, but gave Cohen's name and address, saying nothing,
however, about the seal. In fact, he was unaware of the connection
between the seal and the rollings as Cohen had sold him the latter as
genuine clay tablets which he said he had found in Mesopotamia. But, of
course, the expert saw that it was a recent rolling and that some one
must have the seal.

"Accordingly, off he went to Cohen and questioned him closely, whereupon
Cohen began to smell a rat. He admitted that he had had the seal, but
refused to say what had become of it until the expert told him what it
was and how much it was worth. This the expert did, very reluctantly and
in strict confidence, and when Cohen learned that it was the seal of
Nebuchadnezzar and that it was worth anything up to ten thousand pounds,
he nearly fainted; and then he and the expert together bustled off to
Lyon's shop.

"But now Lyon smelt a rat, too. He refused absolutely to disclose the
whereabouts of the seal; and having, by now, guessed that the
seal-rollings were those of the seal, he took one of them to the British
Museum, and then, of course, the murder was out. And further to
complicate the matter, the Assyriologist, Professor Bateman, seems to
have talked freely to his American friends at his hotel, with the result
that Lyon's shop was besieged by wealthy American collectors, all.
roaring for the seal and all perfectly regardless of cost. Finally, as
they could get no change out of Lyon, they went to the British Museum,
where they learned that my brother had the seal and got his address--or
rather mine, for he had, fortunately for himself, given my office as his
address. Then they proceeded to bombard him with letters, as also did
Cohen and Lyon.

"It was an uncomfortable situation. Cohen was like a madman. He swore
that Lyon had swindled him and he demanded to have the seal returned or
the proper price paid. Lyon, for his part, went about like a roaring lion
of Judah, making a similar demand; and the millionaire collectors offered
wild sums for the seal. Poor Martin was very much worried about it. He
was particularly unhappy about Cohen, who had actually found the seal and
who was a disabled soldier--he had been wounded in both legs and was
permanently lame. As to Lyon, he had no grievance, for he was a dealer
and it was his business to know the value of his own stock; but still it
was hard luck even on him. And then there were the collectors, pestering
him daily with entreaties and extravagant offers. It was very worrying
for him. They would probably have come down here to see him, but he kept
his private address a close secret.

"I don't know what he meant to do about it. What he did was to arrange
with me for the loan of my private office and have a field day,
interviewing the whole lot of them--Lyon, the Professor and the assorted
millionaires. That was three days ago, and the whole boiling of them
turned up; and by the same token one of them was the kind of pestilent
fool that walks off with the wrong hat or umbrella."

"Did he walk off with your hat?" asked Brodribb.

"No, but he took my stick; a nice old stick that belonged to my father."

"What sort of stick did he leave in its place?" Thorndyke asked.

"Well," replied Rowlands, "I must admit that there was some excuse, for
the stick that he left was almost a facsimile of my own. I don't think I
should have noticed it but for the feel. When I began to walk with it, I
was aware of something unusual in the feel of it."

"Perhaps it was not quite the same length as yours," Thorndyke suggested.

"No, it wasn't that," said Rowlands. "The length was all right, but there
was some more subtle difference. Possibly, as I am left-handed and carry
my stick on the left side, it may in the course of years have acquired a
left-handed bias, if such a thing is possible. I'll go and get the stick
for you to see."

He went out of the room and returned in a few moments with an
old-fashioned Malacca cane, the ivory handle of which was secured by a
broad silver band. Thorndyke took it from him and looked it over with a
degree of interest and attention that rather surprised me. For the loss
of Rowlands' stick was a trivial incident and no concern of ours.
Nevertheless, my colleague inspected it most methodically, handle, silver
band and ferrule; especially the ferrule, which he examined as if it were
quite a rare and curious object.

"You needn't worry about your stick, Tom," said Brodribb with a
mischievous smile. "Thorndyke will get it back if you ask him nicely."

"It oughtn't to be very difficult," said Thorndyke, handing back the
stick," if you have a list of the visitors who called that day."

"Their names will be in the appointments book," said Rowlands. "I must
look them up. Some of them I remember--Cohen, Lyon, Bateman and two or
three of the collectors. But to return to our history. I don't know what
passed at the interviews or what Martin intended to do, but I have no
doubt he made some notes on the subject. I must search for them, for, of
course, we shall have to dispose of the seal."

"By the way," said Thorndyke, "where is the seal?"

"Why, it is here in the safe," replied Rowlands; "and it oughtn't to be.
It should have been taken to the bank."

"I suppose there is no doubt that it is in the safe?" said Thorndyke.

"No," replied Rowlands; "at least--" He stood up suddenly. "I haven't
seen it," he said. "Perhaps we had better make sure."

He led the way quickly to the study, where he halted and stood looking at
the shrouded corpse. "The key will be in his pocket," he said, almost in
a whisper. Then, slowly and reluctantly, he approached the sofa, and
gently drawing away the cover from the body, began to search the dead
man's pockets.

"Here it is," he said at length, producing a bunch of keys and separating
one, which he apparently knew. He crossed to the safe, and inserting the
key, threw open the door.

"Ha!" he exclaimed with evident relief, "it is all right.. Your question
gave me quite a start. Is it necessary to open the packet?"

He held out a little sealed parcel on which was written "The Seal of
Nebuchadnezzar," and looked inquiringly at Thorndyke.

"You spoke of making sure," the latter replied with a faint smile.

"Yes, I suppose it would be best," said Rowlands; and with that, he cut
the thread with which it was fastened, broke the seal and opened the
package, disclosing a small cardboard box in which lay a cylindrical
abject rolled up in a slip of paper.

Rowlands picked it out, and removing the paper, displayed a little
cylinder of gold pitted all over with minute cuneiform characters. It was
about an inch and a quarter long by half an inch thick and had a hole
bored through its axis from end to end.

"This paper, I see," said Rowlands, "contains a copy of the keeper's
description of the seal--its weight, dimensions and so on. We may as
well take care of that."

He handed the little cylinder to Thorndyke, who held it delicately in his
fingers and looked at it with a gravely reflective air. Indeed, small as
it was, there was some thing very impressive in its appearance and in the
thought that it had been handled by and probably worn on the person of
the great king in those remote, almost mythical times, so familiar and
yet so immeasurably far away. So I reflected as I watched Thorndyke
inspecting the venerable little object in his queer, exact, scientific
way, examining the minute characters through his lens, scrutinising the
ends and even peering through the central hole.

"I notice," he said, glancing at the paper which Rowlands held, "that the
keeper has given only one transverse diameter, apparently assuming that
it is a true cylinder. But it isn't. The diameter varies. It is not quite
circular in section and the sides are not perfectly parallel."

He produced his pocket calliper-gauge, and, closing the jaws on the
cylinder, took the reading of the vernier. Then he turned the cylinder,
on which the gauge became visibly out of contact.

"There is a difference of nearly two millimetres," he said when he had
again closed the gauge and taken the reading.

"Ah, Thorndyke," said Brodribb," that keeper hadn't got your
mathematically exact eye; and, in fact, the precise measurements don't
seem to matter much."

"On the other hand," retorted Thorndyke, "inexact measurements are of no
use at all."

When we had all handled and inspected the seal, Rowlands repacked it and
returned it to the safe, and we went back to the dining-room.

"Well, Thorndyke," said Brodribb, "how does the insurance question stand?
What is our position?"

"I think," Thorndyke replied, "that we will leave the question open until
the inquest has been held. You must insist on an expert analysis, and
perhaps that may throw fresh light on the matter. And now we must be off
to the station. I expect you have plenty to do."

"We have," said Brodribb, "so I won't offer to walk with you. You know
the way."

Politely but firmly declining Rowlands' offer of material hospitality,
Thorndyke took up his research-case, and having shaken hands with our
hosts, we followed them to the door and took our departure.

"Not a very satisfactory case," I remarked as we set forth along the
road, "but you can't make a bull's-eye every time."

"No," he agreed; "you can only observe and note the facts. Which reminds
me that we have some data to collect in the wood. I shall take casts of
those foot prints in case they should turn out to be of importance. It is
always a useful precaution, seeing that footprints are fugitive."

It seemed to me an excessive precaution, but I made no comment; and when
we arrived at the footpath through the wood and he had selected the
sharpest foot prints, I watched him take out from his case the
plaster-tin, water-bottle, spoon and little rubber bowl, and wondered
what was in his mind. The "Invicta" footprints were obviously those of
the dead man. But what if they were? And of what use were the casts of
the other man's feet? The man was unknown, and as far as I could see,
there was nothing suspicious in his presence here. But when Thorndyke had
poured the liquid plaster into the two pairs of footprints, he went on to
a still more incomprehensible proceeding. Mixing some fresh plaster, he
filled up with it two adjoining impressions of the strange man's stick.
Then, taking a reel of thread from the case, he cut off about two yards,
and stretching it taut, held it exactly across the middle of the two
holes, until the plaster set and fixed it in position. After waiting for
the plaster to set hard, and having, meanwhile, taken up and packed the
casts of the footprints, he gently raised, first the one and then the
other cast; each of which was a snowy-white facsimile of the tip of the
stick which had made the impression the two casts, being joined by a
length of thread which gave the exact distance apart of the two
impressions.

"I suppose," said I, as he made a pencil mark on one of the casts, "the
thread is to show the length of the stride?"

"No," he answered. "It is to show the exact direction in which the man
was walking and to mark the front and back of the stick."

I could make nothing of this. It was highly ingenious, but what on earth
was the use of it? What could it possibly prove?

I put a few tentative questions, but could get no explanation beyond the
obvious truth that it was of no use to postpone the collection of
evidence until after the event. What event he was referring to, I did not
gather; nor was I any further enlightened when, on arriving at Victoria,
he hailed a taxicab and directed the driver to set him down at Scotland
Yard.

"You had better not wait," he said, as he got out. I have some business
to talk over with Miller or the Assistant Commissioner and may be
detained some time. But I shall be at home all the evening."

Taking this as an invitation to drop in at his chambers, I did so after
dinner and made another ineffectual attempt to pump him.

I am sorry to be so evasive," said he, "but this case is so extremely
speculative that I cannot come to any definite conclusion until I have
more data. I may have been theorising in the air. But I am going forth
tomorrow morning at half-past eight in the hope of putting some of my
inferences to the test. If my learned friend would care to lend his
distinguished support to the expedition, his society would be
appreciated. But it will be a case of passive observation and quite
possibly nothing will happen."

"Well, I will come and look on," said I. "Passive observation is my
speciality"; and with this I took my departure, rather more mystified
than ever.

Punctually, next morning at half-past eight, I arrived at the entry of
Thorndyke's chambers. A taxicab was already waiting at the kerb, and, as
I stepped on the threshold, my colleague appeared on the stairs. Together
we entered the cab which at once moved off, and proceeding down Middle
Temple Lane to the Embankment, headed westward. Our first stopping-place
was New Scotland Yard, but there Thorndyke remained only a minute or two.
Our further progress was in the direction of Westminster, and in a few
minutes we drew up at the corner of Petty France, where we alighted and
paid off the taxi. Sauntering slowly westward and passing a large,
covered car that was drawn up by the pavement, we presently encountered
no less a person than Mr. Superintendent Miller, dressed in the height of
fashion and smoking a cigar. The meeting was not, apparently, unexpected,
for Miller began, without preamble: "It's all right, so far, doctor,
unless we are too late. It will be an awful suck-in if we are. Two
plain-clothes men have been here ever since you called yesterday evening,
and nothing has happened yet."

"You mustn't treat it as a certainty, Miller," said Thorndyke. "We are
only acting on reasonable probabilities. But it may be a false shot,
after all."

Miller smiled indulgently. "I know, sir. I've heard you say that sort of
thing before. At any rate, he's there at present; I saw him just now
through the shop window--and, by gum! here he is!"

I followed the superintendent's glance and saw a tallish, elderly man
advancing on the opposite side of the street. He walked stiffly with the
aid of a stick and with a pronounced stoop as if suffering from some
weakness of the back, and he carried in his free hand a small wooden case
suspended by a rug-strap. But what instantly attracted my attention was
his walking-stick, which appeared, so far as I could remember, to be an
exact replica of the one that Tom Rowlands had shown us.

We continued to walk westward, allowing Mr. Lyon--as I assumed him to
be--to pass us. Then we turned back and followed at a little distance; and
I noticed that two tall, military-looking men whom we had met kept close
behind us. At the corner of Petty France Mr. Lyon hailed a taxicab; and
Miller quickened his pace and bore down on the big covered car.

"Jump in," he said, opening the door as Lyon entered the cab. "We mustn't
lose sight of him," and with this he fairly shoved Thorndyke and me into
the car, and having spoken a word to the driver, stepped in himself and
was followed by the two plain-clothes men. The car started forward, and
having made a spurt which brought it within a few yards of the taxi,
slowed down to the pace of the latter and followed it through the
increasing traffic until we turned into Whitehall, where our driver
allowed the taxi to draw ahead somewhat. At Charing Cross, however, we
closed up and kept immediately behind our quarry in the dense traffic of
the Strand; and when it turned to cross opposite the Acropolis Hotel, we
still followed and swept past it in the hotel courtyard so that we
reached the main entrance first. By the time that Mr. Lyon had paid his
fare we had already entered and were waiting in the hall of the hotel.

As he followed us in, he paused and looked about him until his glance
fell on a stoutish, clean-shaved man who was sitting in a wicker chair,
who, on catching his eye, rose and advanced towards him. At this moment
Superintendent Miller touched him on the shoulder, causing him to spin
round with an expression of very distinct alarm.

"Mr. Maurice Lyon, I think," said Miller. "I am a detective officer." He
paused and looked hard at the dealer, who had turned deathly pale. Then
he continued: "You are carrying a walking-stick which I believe is not
your property."

Lyon gave a gasp of relief. "You are quite right," said he. "But I don't
know whose property it is. If you do, I shall be pleased to return it in
exchange for my own, which I left by mistake."

He held it out in an irresolute fashion, and Miller took it from him and
handed it to Thorndyke.

"Is that the stick?" he asked.

Thorndyke looked the stick over quickly, and then, inverting it, made a
minute examination of the ferrule, finishing up by taking its dimensions
in two diameters and comparing the results with some written notes.

Mr. Lyon fidgeted impatiently. "There's no need for all this fuss," said
he. "I have told you that the stick is not mine."

"Quite so," said Miller, "but we must have a few words privately about
that stick."

Here he turned to an hotel official, who had just arrived under the
guidance of one of the plain-clothes men, and who suggested rather
anxiously that our business would be better transacted in a private room
at the back of the building than in the public hall. He was just moving
off to show us the way when the clean-shaved stranger edged up to Lyon
and extended his hand towards the wooden case.

"Shall I take this?" he asked suavely.

"Not just now, sir," said Miller, firmly fending him off. "Mr. Lyon will
talk to you presently."

"But that case is my property," the other objected truculently; "and who
are you, anyway?"

"I am a police officer," replied Miller. "But if that is your property,
you had better come with us and keep an eye on it."

I have never seen a man look more uncomfortable than did the owner of
that case--with the exception of Mr. Lyon; whose complexion had once
more taken on a tallowy whiteness. But as the manager led the way to the
back of the hall the two men followed silently, shepherded by the
superintendent and the rest of our party, until we reached a small,
marble-floored lobby or ante-room, when our conductor shut us in and
retired.

"Now," said Miller, "I want to know what is in that case."

"I can tell you," said the stranger. "It is a piece of sculpture, and it
belongs to me."

Miller nodded. "Let us have a look at it," said he.

There being no table, Lyon sat down on a chair, and resting the case on
his knees, unfastened the straps with trembling fingers on which a drop
of sweat fell now and again from his forehead. When the case was free, he
opened the lid and displayed the head of a small plaster bust, a
miniature copy of Donatello's "St. Cecilia," the shoulders of which were
wedged in with balls of paper. These Lyon picked out clumsily, and when
he had removed the last of them, he lifted out the bust with infinite
care and held it out for Miller's inspection. The officer took it from
him tenderly--after an eager glance into the empty case--and holding it
with both hands, looked at it rather blankly.

"Feels rather damp," he remarked with a some what nonplussed air; and
then he cast an obviously inquiring glance at Thorndyke, who took the
bust from him, and holding it poised in the palm of his hand, appeared to
be estimating its weight. Glancing past him at Lyon, I noticed with
astonishment that the dealer was watching him with a ghastly stare of
manifest terror, while the stranger was hardly less disturbed.

"For God's sake, man, be careful!" the latter exclaimed, starting
forward. "You'll drop it!"

The prediction was hardly uttered before it was verified. Drop it he did;
and in a perfectly deliberate, purposeful manner, so that the bust fell
on its back on the marble floor and was instantly shattered into a
hundred fragments. It was an amazing affair. But what followed was still
more amazing. For, as the snowy fragments scattered to right and left,
from one of them a little yellow metal cylinder detached itself and
rolled slowly along the floor. The stranger darted forward and stooped to
seize it; but Miller stooped, too, and I judged that the superintendent's
cranium was the harder, for he rose, rubbing his head with one hand and
with the other holding out the cylinder to Thorndyke.

"Can you tell us what this is, doctor?" he asked.

"Yes," was the reply. "It is the seal of Nebuchadnezzar, and it is the
property of the executors of the late Martin Rowlands, who was murdered
the night before last."

As he finished speaking, Lyon slithered from his chair and lay upon the
floor insensible, while the stranger made a sudden burst for the door,
where he was instantly folded in the embrace of a massive plain-clothes
man, who held him immovable while his colleague clicked on the handcuffs.

"So," I remarked, as we walked home, "your casts of the stick and the
footprints were not wanted after all."

"On the contrary," he replied," they are wanted very much. If the seal
should fail to hang Mr. Lyon, the casts will assuredly fit the rope round
his neck." (This, by the way, actually happened. The defence that Lyon
received the seal from some unknown person was countered by the
unexpected production in court of the casts of Lyon's feet and the stick,
which proved that the prisoner had been at Pinwell, and in the company of
the deceased at or about the date of the murder, and secured his
conviction.)

"By the way," said I," how did you fix this crime on Lyon? It began, I
think, with those stick impressions in the wood. What was there peculiar
about those impressions?"

"Their peculiarity was that they were the impressions of a stick which
apparently did not belong to the person who was carrying it."

"Good Lord, Thorndyke!" I exclaimed, "is that possible? How could an
impression on the ground suggest ownership?

"It is a curious point," he replied, "though essentially simple, which
turns on the way in which the ferrule of a stick becomes worn. In a
plain, symmetrical stick with out a handle, the ferrule wears evenly all
round; but in a stick with a crook or other definite handle, which is
grasped in a particular way and always put down in the same position, the
ferrule becomes worn on one side--the side opposite the handle, or the
front of the stick. But the important point is that the bevel of wear is
not exactly opposite the handle. It is slightly to one side, for this
reason. A man puts his stick down with the handle fore and aft; but as he
steps forward, his hand swings away from his body, rotating the stick
slightly outward. Consequently, the wear on the ferrule is slightly
inward. That is to say, that in a right-handed man's stick the wear is
slightly to the left and in a left-handed man's stick the wear is
slightly to the right. But if a right-handed man walks with a left-handed
stick, the impression on the ground will show the bevel of wear on the
right side--which is the wrong side; and the right-handed rotation will
throw it still farther to the right. Now in this case, the impressions
showed a shallow part, corresponding to the bevel of wear, on the right
side. Therefore it was a left-handed stick. But it was being carried in
the right hand. Therefore it--apparently--did not belong to the person
who was carrying it.

"Of course, as the person was unknown, the point was merely curious and
did not concern us. But see how quickly circumstantial evidence mounts
up. When we saw the feet of deceased, we knew that the footprints in the
wood were his. Consequently the man with the stick was in his company;
and that man at once came into the picture. Then Tom Rowlands told us
that he had lost his stick and that he was left-handed; arid he showed us
the stick that he had got in exchange, and behold! that is a right-handed
stick, as I ascertained by examining the ferrule. Here, then, is a
left-handed man who has lost a stick and got a right-handed one in
exchange; and there, in the wood, was a right-handed man who was carrying
a left-handed stick and who was in company with the deceased. It was a
striking coincidence. But further, the suggestion was that this unknown
man was one of those who had called at Tom's office, and therefore one
who wanted to get possession of the seal. This instantly suggested the
question, Did he succeed in getting possession of the seal? We went to
the safe and at once it became obvious that he did."

"The seal in the safe was a forgery, of course?"

"Yes; and a bad forgery, though skilfully done. It was an electrotype ;
it was unsymmetrical ; it did not agree with the keeper's measurements;
and the perforation, though soiled at the ends, was bright in the middle
from the boring tool."

"But how did you know that Lyon had made it?"

"I didn't. But he was by far the most probable person. He had a
seal-rolling, from which an electro could be made, and he had the great
skill that was necessary to turn a flat electro into a cylinder. He was
an experienced faker of antiques, and he was a dealer who would have
facilities for getting rid of the stolen seal. But it was only a
probability, though, as time pressed, we had to act on it. Of course,
when we saw him with the stick in his hand, it became virtually a
certainty."

"And how did you guess that the seal was in the bust?"

"I had expected to find it enclosed in some plaster object, that being
the safest way to hide it and smuggle it out of this country and into the
United States. When I saw the bust, it was obvious. It was a hastily-made
copy of one of Brucciani's busts. The plaster was damp--Brucciani's bake
theirs dry--and had evidently been made only a few hours. So I broke it.
If I had been mistaken 1 could have replaced it for five shillings, but
the whole circumstances made it practically a certainty."

"Have you any idea as to how Lyon administered the poison?"

"We can only surmise," he replied. "Probably he took with him some
solution of cyanide--if that was what was used--and poured it into
Rowlands' whisky when his attention was otherwise occupied. It would be
quite easy; and a single gulp of a quick-acting poison like that would
finish the business in a minute or two. But we are not likely ever to
know the details."

The evidence at the inquest showed that Thorndyke was probably right, and
his evidence at the trial clenched the case against Lyon. As to the other
man--who proved to be an American dealer well known to the New York
Customs officials--the case against him broke down from lack of evidence
that he was privy either to the murder or the theft. And so ended the
case of Nebuchadnezzar's seal: a case that left Mr. Brodribb more than
ever convinced that Thorndyke was either gifted with a sixth sense which
enabled him to smell out evidence or was in league with some familiar
demon who did it for him.



PHYLLIS ANNESLEY'S PERIL


"One is sometimes disposed to regret," said Thorndyke, as we sat waiting
for the arrival of Mr. Mayfield, the solicitor, "that our practice is so
largely concerned with the sordid and the unpleasant."

"Yes," I agreed. "Medical Jurisprudence is not always a particularly
delicate subject. But it is our line of practice and we have got to take
it as we find it."

"A philosophic conclusion, Jervis," he rejoined," and worthy of my
learned friend. It happens that the most intimate contact of Law and
Medicine is in crimes against the person and consequently the proper
study of the Medical Jurist is crime of that type. It is a regrettable
fact, but we must accept it."

"At the same time," said I, "there don't seem to be any Medico-legal
issues in this Bland case. The woman was obviously murdered. The only
question is, who murdered her? And the answer to that question seems
pretty obvious."

"It does," said Thorndyke. "But we shall be better able to judge when we
have heard what Mayfield has to tell us. And I think I hear him coming up
the stairs now."

I rose to open the door for our visitor, and, as he entered, I looked at
him curiously. Mr. Mayfield was quite a young man, and the mixture of
deference and nervousness in his manner as he entered the room suggested
no great professional experience.

"I am afraid, sir," said he, taking the easy-chair that Thorndyke offered
him, "that I ought to have come to you sooner, for the inquest, or, at
least, the police court proceedings."

"You reserved your defence, I think?" said Thorndyke.

"Yes," replied the solicitor, with a wry smile. "I had to. There seemed
to be nothing to say. So I put in a plea of Not Guilty and reserved the
defence in the hope that something might turn up. But I am gravelled
completely. It looks a perfectly hopeless case. I don't know how it
strikes you, sir."

"I have seen only the newspaper reports," said Thorndyke. "They are
certainly not encouraging. But let us disregard them. I suggest that you
recite the facts of the case and I can ask any questions that are
necessary to elucidate it further."

"Very well, sir," said Mayfield. "Then I will begin with the
disappearance of Mrs. Lucy Bland. That occurred about the eighteenth of
last May. At that time she was living, apart from her husband, at
Wimbledon, in furnished lodgings. After lunch on the eighteenth she went
out, saying that she should not be home until nght. She was seen by
someone who knew her at Wimbledon Station on the down side about three
o'clock. At shortly after six probably on the same day, she went to the
Post Office at Lower Ditton to buy some stamps. The postmistress, who
knew her by sight, is certain that she called there, but cannot swear to
the exact date. At any rate, she did not go home that night and was never
seen alive again. Her landlady communicated with her husband and he at
once applied to the police. But all the inquiries that were made led to
nothing. She had disappeared without leaving a trace.

"The discovery was made four months later, on the sixteenth of September.
On that day some workmen went to 'The Larches,' a smallish,
old-fashioned, river side house just outside Lower Ditton, to examine the
electric wiring. The house was let to a new tenant, and as the meter had
shown an unaccountable leakage of current during the previous quarter,
they went to see what was wrong.

"To get at the main, they had to take up part of the floor of the
dining-room; and when they got the boards up, they were horrified to
discover a pair of feet--evidently a woman's feet--projecting from
under the next board. They immediately went to the police station and
reported what they had seen, whereupon the inspector and a sergeant
accompanied them back to the house and directed them to take up several
more boards--which they did; and there, jammed in between the joists,
was the body of a woman who was subsequently identified as Mrs. Lucy
Bland. The corpse appeared to be perfectly fresh and only quite recently
dead; but at the post mortem it was discovered that it had been embalmed
or preserved by injecting a solution of formaldehyde and might have been
dead three or four months. The cause of death was given at the inquest as
suffocation, probably preceded by the forcible administration of
chloroform."

"The house, I understand," said Thorndyke," belongs to one of the
accused?"

"Yes. Miss Phyllis Annesley. It is her freehold, and she lived in it
until recently. Last autumn, however, she took to travelling about and
then partly dismantle the house and stored most of the furniture; but she
kept two bedrooms furnished and the kitchen and dining, room in just
usable condition, and she used to put up there for a day or two in the
intervals of her journeys, either alone or with her maid."

"And as to Miss Annesley's relations with the Blands?"

"She had known them both for some years. With Leonard Bland she was
admittedly on affectionate terms, though there is no suggestion of
improper relations between them. But Bland used to visit her when she
lived there and they used to go for picnics on the river in the boat
belonging to the house. Mrs. Bland also occasionally visited Miss
Annesley, and they seem to have been on quite civil terms. Of course, she
knew about her husband's affection for the lady, but she doesn't seem to
have had any strong feeling about it."

"And what were the relations of the husband and wife?" asked Thorndyke.

"Rather queer. They didn't suit one another, so they simply agreed to go
their own ways. But they don't seem to have been unfriendly, and Mr.
Bland was most scrupulous in regard to his financial obligations to his
wife. He not only allowed her liberal maintenance but went out of his way
to make provision for her. I will give you an instance, which impressed
me very much.

"An old acquaintance of his, a Mr. Julius Wicks, who had been working for
some years in the film studio at Los Angeles, came to England about a
year ago and proposed to Bland that they should start one or two picture
theatres in the provinces, Bland to find the money--which he was able to
do--and Wicks to provide the technical knowledge and do the actual
management. Bland agreed, and a partnership was arranged on the basis of
two-thirds of the profits to Bland and one-third to Wicks; with the
proviso that if Bland should die, all his rights as partner should be
vested in his wife."

"And supposing Wicks should die?"

"Well, Wicks was not married, though he was engaged to a film actress. On
his death, his share would go to Bland, and similarly, on Bland's death,
if he should die after his wife, his share would go to his partner."

"Bland seems to have been a fairly good business man," said I.

"Yes," Mayfield agreed. "The arrangement was all in his favour. But he
was the capitalist, you see. However, the point is that Bland was quite
mindful of his wife's interests. There was nothing like enmity."

"Then," said Thorndyke, "one motive is excluded. Was the question of
divorce ever raised?"

It couldn't be," said Mayfield. "There were no grounds on either side.
But it seems to have been recognised and admitted that if Bland had been
free he would have married Miss Annesley. They were greatly attached to
one another."

"That seems a fairly solid motive," said I.

"It appears to be," Mayfield admitted. "But to me, who have known these
people for years and have always had the highest opinion of them, it
seems--Well, I can't associate this atrocious crime with them at all.
However, that is not to the point. I must get on with the facts.

"Very soon after the discovery at 'The Larches,' the police learned that
there had been rumours in Lower Ditton for some time past of strange
happenings at the house and that two labourers named Brodie and Stanton
knew something definite. They accordingly looked up these two men and
examined them separately, when both men made substantially identical
statements, which were to this effect:

"About the middle of May--neither of them was able to give an exact
date--between nine and ten in the evening, they were walking together along
the lane in which 'The Larches' is situated when they saw a man lurking
in the front garden of the house. As they were passing, he came to the
gate and beckoned to them, and when they approached he whispered: 'I say,
mates, there's something rummy going on in this house.'

"'How do you know?' asked Brodie.

"'I've been looking in through a hole in the shutter,' the man replied.
'They seem to be hiding something under the floor. Come and have a look.'

"The two men followed him up the garden to the back of the house, where
he took them to one of the windows of a ground-floor room and pointed to
two holes in the outside shutters.

"'Just take a peep in through them,' said he.

"Each of the men put an eye to one of the holes and looked in; and this
is what they both saw :--There were two rooms, communicating, with a
wide arch between them. Through the arch and at the far end of the second
room were two persons, a man and a woman. They were on their hands and
knees, apparently doing something to the floor. Presently the man, who
had on a painter's white blouse, rose and picked up a board which he
stood on end against the wall. Then he stooped again and seemed to lay
hold of something that lay on the floor--something that looked like a
large bundle or a roll of carpet. At this moment something passed across
in front of the holes and shut out the view--so that there must have
been a third person in the room. When the obstructing body moved away
again, the man was kneeling on the floor looking down at the bundle and
the woman had come forward and was standing just in the arch with a pair
of pincers in her hand. She was dressed in a spotted pinafore with a
white sailor collar, and both the men recognised her at once as Miss
Annesley."

"They knew her by sight, then?" said Thorndyke.

"Yes. They were Ditton men. It is a small place and everybody in it must
have known Miss Annesley and Bland, too, for that matter. Well, they saw
her standing in the archway quite distinctly. Neither of the men has the
least doubt as to her identity. They watched her for perhaps half a
minute. Then the invisible person inside moved in front of the peepholes
and shut out the scene.

"When the obstruction moved away, the woman was back in the farther room,
kneeling on the floor. The bundle had disappeared and the man was in the
act of taking the board, which he had rested against the wall, and laying
it in its place in the floor. After this, the obstruction kept coming and
going, so that the watchers only got occasional glimpses of what was
going on. They saw the man apparently hammering nails into the floor and
they heard faint sounds of knocking. On one occasion, towards the end of
the proceedings, they saw the man standing in the archway with his face
towards them, apparently looking at something in his hand. They couldn't
see what the thing was, but they clearly recognised the man as Mr. Bland,
whom they both knew well by sight. Then the view was shut out again, and
when they next saw Mr. Bland, he was standing by Miss Annesley in the
farther room, looking down at the floor and taking off his blouse. As it
seemed that the business was over and that Bland and Miss Annesley would
probably be coming out, the men thought it best to clear off, lest they
should be seen.

"As they walked up the lane, they discussed the mysterious proceedings
that they had witnessed, but could make nothing of them. The stranger
suggested that perhaps Miss Annesley was hiding her plate or valuables to
keep them safe while she was travelling, and hinted that it might be
worth someone's while to take the floor up later on and see what was
there. But this suggestion Brodie and Stanton, who are most respectable
men, condemned strongly, and they agreed that, as the affair was no
concern of theirs, they had better say nothing about it. But they
evidently must have talked to some extent, for the affair got to be
spoken about in the village, and, of course, when the body was discovered
under the floor, the gossip soon reached the ears of the police."

"Has the third man come forward to give evidence?" Thorndyke asked.

"No, he has not been found yet. He was a stranger to both the men;
apparently a labourer or farm-hand on tramp. But nothing is known about
him. So that is the case; and it is about as hopeless as it is possible
to be. Of course, there is the known character of the accused; but
against that is a perfectly intelligible motive and the evidence of two
eye-witnesses. Do you think you would be disposed to undertake the
defence, sir? I realise that it is asking a great deal of you."

"I should like to think the matter over," said Thorndyke, "and make a few
preliminary inquiries. And I should want to read over the depositions in
full detail. Can you let me have them?"

"I have a verbatim report of the police court proceedings and of the
inquest. I will leave them with you now. And when may I hope to have your
decision? "

"By the day after to-morrow at the latest," was the reply, on which the
young solicitor produced a bundle of papers from his bag, and having laid
them on the table, thanked us both and took his leave.

"Well, Thorndyke," I said when Mayfield had gone, "I am fairly mystified.
I know you would not undertake a merely formal defence, but what else you
could do is, I must confess, beyond my imagination. It seems to me that
the prosecution have only to call the witnesses and the verdict of '
Guilty ' follows automatically."

"That is how it appears to me," said Thorndyke. "And if it still appears
so when I have read the reports and made my preliminary investigations, I
shall decline the brief. But appearances are sometimes misleading."

With this he took the reports and the notebook, in which he had made a
few brief memoranda of Mayfield's summary of the case, and drawing a
chair to the table, proceeded, with quiet concentration, to read through
and make notes on the evidence. When he had finished, he passed the
reports to me and rose, pocketing his note book and glancing at his
watch.

"Read the evidence through carefully, Jervis," said he," and tell me if
you see any possible way out. I have one or two calls to make, but I
shall not be more than an hour. When I come back, I should like to hear
your views on the case."

During his absence I read the reports through with the closest attention.
Something in Thorndyke's tone had seemed to hint at a possible flaw in
the case for the prosecution. But I could find no escape from the
conviction that these two persons were guilty. The reports merely
amplified what Mayfield had told us; and the added detail, especially in
the case of the eye witnesses, only made the evidence more conclusive. I
could not see the material for even a formal defence.

In less than an hour my colleague re-entered the room, and I was about to
give him my impressions of the evidence when he said "It is rather early,
Jervis, but I think we had better go and get some lunch. I have arranged
to go down to Ditton this afternoon and have a look at the house.
Mayfield has given me a note to the police sergeant, who has the key and
is virtually in possession."

"I don't see what you will gain by looking at the house," said I.

"Neither do I," he replied. "But it is a good rule always to inspect the
scene of a crime and o the evidence as far as possible."

"Well," I said, "it is a forlorn hope. I have read through the evidence
and it seems to me that the accused are as good as convicted. I can see
no line of defence at all. Can you?"

"At present I cannot," he replied. "But there are one or two points that
I should like to clear up before I decide whether or not to undertake the
defence. And I have a great belief in first-hand observation."

We consumed a simplified lunch at one of our regular haunts in Fleet
Street and from thence were conveyed by a taxi to Waterloo, where we
caught the selected train to Lower Ditton. I had put the reports in my
pocket, and during our journey I read them over again, to see if I could
discover any point that would be cleared up by an inspection of the
premises.

For, in spite of the rather vague purpose implied by Thorndyke's
explanation, something in my colleague's manner, coupled with long
experience of his method made me suspect that he had some definite object
in L view. But nothing was said by either of us during the journey, nor
did we discuss the case; indeed, so far as 1 could see, there was nothing
to discuss.

Our reception at the Lower Ditton Police Station was something more than
cordial. The sergeant recognised Thorndyke instantly--it appeared that
he was an enthusiastic admirer of my colleague--and after a brief glance
at Mayfield's note, took a key from his desk and put on his helmet.

"Lord bless you, sir," said he, "I don't need to be told who you are.
I've seen you in court, and heard you. I'll come along with you to the
house myself."

I suspected that Thorndyke would have gladly dispensed with this
attention, but he accepted it with genial courtesy, and we went forth
through the village and along the quiet lane in which the ill-omened
house was situated. And as we went, the sergeant commented on the case
with curiously unofficial freedom.

"You've got your work cut out, sir, if you are going to conduct the
defence. But I wish you luck. I've known Miss Annesley for some years--she
was well known in the village here--and a nicer, gentler, more
pleasant lady you wouldn't wish to meet. To think of her in connection
with a murder--and such a murder, too--such a brutal, callous affair!
Well, it's beyond me. And yet there it is, unless those two men are
lying."

"Is there any reason to suppose that they are?" I asked.

"Well, no; there isn't. They are good, sober, decent men. And it would be
such an atrociously wicked lie. And they both knew the prisoners, and
liked them. Everybody liked Mr. Bland and Miss Annesley, though their
friendship for one another may not have been quite in order. But I can
tell you, sir, these two men are frightfully cut up at having to give
evidence. This is the house!"

He opened a gate and we entered the garden, beyond which was a smallish,
old-fashioned house, of which the ground-floor windows were protected by
outside shutters. We walked round to the back of the house, where was
another garden with a lawn and a path leading down to the river.

"Is that a boat-house?" Thorndyke asked, pointing to a small gable that
appeared above a clump of lilac bushes.

"Yes, replied the sergeant. "And there is a boat in it; a good, beamy,
comfortable tub that Miss Annesley and her friend used to go out
picnicking in. This is the window that the men peeped in at, but you
can't see much now because the room is all dark."

I looked at the two French windows, which opened on to the lawn, and
reflected on this new instance of the folly of wrong-doers. Each window
was fitted with a pair of strong shutters, which bolted on the inside,
and each shutter was pierced, about five feet from the sill, by a
circular hole a little over an inch in diameter. It seemed incredible
that two sane persons, engaged in the concealment of a murdered body,
should have left those four holes uncovered for any chance eavesdropper
to spy on their doings.

But my astonishment at this lack of precaution was still greater when the
sergeant admitted us and we stood inside the room, for both the windows,
as well as the pair in the farther room, were furnished with heavy
curtains.

"Yes," said the sergeant, in answer to my comment "it's a queer thing how
people overlook matters of vital importance. You see, they drew the
drawing-room curtains all right, but they forgot these. Is there anything
in particular that you want to see, sir?"

"I should like to see where the body was hidden,' said Thorndyke, "but I
will just look round the rooms first."

He walked slowly to and fro, looking about him and evidently fixing the
appearance of the rooms on his memory. Not that there was much to see or
remember. The two nearly square rooms communicated through a wide arch,
once closed by curtains, as shown by the brass curtain-rod. The back room
had been completely dismantled with the exception of the window curtains,
but the front room, although the floor and the walls, were bare, was not
entirely unfurnished. The sideboard was still in position and bore at
each end a tall electric light standard, as did also the mantelpiece.
There were three dining chairs and a good-sized gate-leg table stood
closed against the wall.

"I see you have not had the floor-boards nailed down," said Thorndyke.

"No, sir; not yet. So we can see where the body was hidden and where the
electric main is. The electricians took up the wrong board at first--that
is how they came to discover the body. And one of them said that the
boards over the main had been raised recently, and he thought that the--er--the
accused had meant to hide the body there, but when they got the
floor up they struck the main and had to choose a fresh place."

He stooped, and lifting the loose boards, which he stood on end against
the mantelpiece, exposed the joists and the earth floor about a foot
below them. In one of the spaces the electric main ran and in the
adjoining one the apparently disused gas main.

"This is where we found poor Mrs. Bland," said the sergeant, pointing to
an empty space. "It was an awful sight. Gave me quite a turn. The poor
lady was lying on her side jammed down between the joists and her nose
flattened up against one of the timbers. They must have been brutes that
did it, and I can't--I really can't believe that Miss Annesley was one
of them."

"It looks a narrow place for a body to lie in," said I.

"The joists are sixteen inches apart," said Thorndyke, laying his pocket
rule across the space, "and two and a half inches thick. Heavy timber and
wide spaces."

He stood up, and turning round, looked towards the windows of the back
room. I followed his glance and noted, almost with a start, the two holes
in the shutter of the left-hand window (the right-hand window, of course,
from outside) glaring into the darkened room like a pair of inquisitive,
accusing eyes. The holes in the other window were hardly visible, and the
reason for the difference was obvious. The one window had small panes and
thick muntins, or sash-bars, whereas the other was glazed, with large
sheets of plate glass and had no muntins.

"Of course it would be dark at the time," I said in response to his
unspoken comment, "and this room would be lighted up, more or less."

"Not so very dark in May," he replied. "There is a furnished bedroom,
isn't there, sergeant?"

"Two, sir," was the reply; and the sergeant forthwith opened the door and
led the way across the hall and up the stairs.

"This is Miss Annesley's room," he said, opening a door gingerly and
peering in.

We entered the room and looked about us with vague curiosity. It was a
simply-furnished room, but dainty and tasteful, with its small four-post
bedstead, light easy-chair and little, ladylike writing-table.

"That's Mr. Bland," said the sergeant, pointing to a double
photograph-frame on the table, "and the lady is Miss Annesley herself."

I took up the frame and looked curio at the two portraits. For a pair of
murderers they were certainly uncommonly prepossessing. The man, who
looked about thirty-five, was a typical good-looking, middle- class
Englishman, while the woman was distinctly handsome, with a thoughtful,
refined and gentle cast of face.

"She has something of a Japanese air," said I, "with that coil on the top
of the head and the big ivory hairpin stuck through it."

I passed the frame to Thorndyke, who regarded each portrait attentively,
and then, taking both photograph out of the frame, closely examined each
in turn, back and front, before replacing them.

"The other bedroom," said the sergeant as Thorndyke laid down the frame,
"is the spare room. There's nothing to see in it."

Nevertheless he conducted us into it, and when we I had verified his
statement we returned downstairs.

"Before we go," said Thorndyke, "I will just see what is opposite those
holes."

He walked to the window and was just looking out through one of the holes
when the sergeant, who had followed him closely, suddenly slid along the
floor and nearly fell.

"Well, I never!" he exclaimed, recovering himself and stooping to pick up
some small object. "There's a dangerous thing to leave lying about the
floor. Bit of slate pencil--at least, that is what it looks like."

He handed it to Thorndyke, who glanced at it and remarked "Yes, things
that roll under the foot are apt to produce broken bones; but I think you
had better take care of it. I may have to ask you something about it at
the trial."

We bade the sergeant farewell at the bottom of the lane, and as we turned
into the footpath to the station I said: "We don't seem to have picked up
very much more than Mayfield told us--excepting that bit of slate
pencil. By the way, why did you tell the sergeant to keep it?"

"On the broad principle of keeping everything, relevant or irrelevant.
But it wasn't slate pencil; it was a fragment of a small carbon rod."

"Presumably dropped by the electricians who had been working in the
room," said I, and then asked "Have you come to any decision about this
case?"

"Yes; I shall undertake the defence."

"Well," I said, "I can't imagine what line you will take. Strong
suspicion would have fallen on these two persons even if there had been
no witnesses; but the evidence of those two eye-witnesses seems to clench
the matter."

"Precisely," said Thorndyke. "That is my position. I rest my case on the
evidence of those two men--as I hope it will appear under
cross-examination."

This statement of Thorndyke's gave me much food or reflection during the
days that followed. But it was not very nourishing food, for the case
still remained perfectly incomprehensible. To be sure, if the evidence of
the two eye-witnesses could be shown to be false, the ease against the
prisoners would break down, since it would bring another suspected person
into view. But their evidence was clearly not false. They were men of
known respectability and no one doubted the truth of their statements.

Nor was the obscurity of the case lightened in any way by Thorndyke's
proceedings. We called together on the two prisoners, but from neither
did we elicit any fresh facts. Neither could establish a clear alibi or
suggest any explanation of the eye-witnesses' statements. They gave a
simple denial of having been in the house at that time or of having ever
taken up the floor.

Both prisoners, however, impressed me favourably. Bland, whom we
interviewed at Brixton, seemed a pleasant, manly fellow, frank and
straightforward though quite shrewd and business-like; while Miss
Annesley, whom we saw at Holloway, was a really charming young
lady--sweet-faced, dignified and very gracious and gentle in manner. In one
respect, indeed, I found her disappointing. The picturesque coil had
disappeared from the top of her head and her hair had been shortened
("bobbed" is, I believe, the correct term) into a mere fringe. Thorndyke
also noticed the change, and in fact commented on it.

"Yes," she admitted, "it is a disimprovement in my case. It doesn't suit
me. But I really had no choice. When I was in Paris in the spring I had
an accident. I was having my hair cleaned with petrol when it caught
fire. It was most alarming. The hairdresser had the presence of mind to
throw a damp towel over my head, and that saved my life. But my hair was
nearly all burnt. There was nothing for it but to have it trimmed as
evenly as possible. But it looked horrid at first. I had my photograph
taken by Barton soon after I came home, just as a record, you know, and
it looks awfully odd. I look like a Bluecoat boy."

"By the way," said Thorndyke, "when did you return?"

"I landed in England about the middle of April and went straight to my
little flat at Paddington, where I have been living ever since."

"You don't remember where you were on the eighteenth of May?

"I was living at my flat, but I can't remember what I did on that day.
You don't, as a rule, unless you keep a diary, which I do not."

This was not very promising. As we came away from the prison, I felt, on
the one hand, a conviction that this sweet, gracious lady could have had
no hand in this horrible crime, and on the other an utter despair of
extricating her from the web of circumstances in which she had become
enmeshed.

From Thorndyke I could gather nothing, except that he was going on with
his investigations--a significant fact, in his case. To my artfully
disguised questions he had one invariable reply: "My dear Jervis, you
have read the evidence, you have seen the house, you have all the facts.
Think the case over and consider the possibilities of cross-examination."
And that was all I could get out of him.

He was certainly very busy, but his activities only increased my
bewilderment. He sent a well-known architect down to make a scale-plan of
the house and grounds; and he dispatched Polton to take photographs of
the place from every possible point of view. The latter, indeed, was up
to his eyes in work, and enjoying himself amazingly, but as secret as an
oyster. As he went about, beaming with happiness and crinkling with
self-complacency, he exasperated me to that extent that I could have
banged his little head against the wall. In short, though I had watched
the development of the case from the beginning, I was still without a
glimmer of understanding of it even when I took my seat in court on the
morning of the trial.

It was a memorable occasion, and every incident in it is still vivid in
my memory. Particularly do I remember looking with a sort of horrified
fascination at the female prisoner, standing by her friend in the dock,
pale but composed and looking the very type and picture of womanly beauty
and dignity; and reflecting with a shudder that the graceful neck--looking
longer and more slender from the shortness of the hair--might
very probably be, within a matter of days, encircled by the hangman's
rope. These lugubrious reflections were interrupted by the entrance of
two persons, a man and a woman, who were apparently connected with the
case, since as they took their seats they both looked towards the dock
and exchanged silent greetings with the prisoners.

"Do you know who those people are, Mayfield?" I asked.

"That is Mr. Julius Wicks, Mr. Bland's partner, and his fiancée, Miss
Eugenia Kropp, the film actress," he replied.

I was about to ask him if they were here to give evidence when, the
preliminaries having come to an end, the counsel for the Crown, Sir John
Turville, rose and began his opening speech.

It was a good speech and eminently correct; but its very moderation made
it the more damaging. It began with an outline of the facts, almost
identical with Mayfield's summary, and a statement of the evidence which
would presently be given by the principal witnesses.

"And now," said Sir John, when he had finished his recital, "let us bring
these facts to a focus. Considered as a related group, this is what they
show us. On the sixteenth of September there is found, concealed under
the floor of a certain room in a certain house, the body of a woman who
has evidently been murdered. That woman is the separated wife of a man
who is on affectionate terms with another woman whom he would admittedly
wish to marry and who would be willing to marry him. This murdered woman
is, in short, the obstacle to the marriage desired by these two persons.
Now the house in which the corpse is concealed is the property of one of
those two persons, and both of them have access to it; and no other
person has access to it. Here, then, to begin with, is a set of
profoundly suspicious circumstances.

"But there are others far more significant. That unfortunate lady, the
unwanted wife of the prisoner, Bland, disappeared mysteriously on the
eighteenth of last May; and witnesses will prove that the body was
deposited under the floor on or about that date. Now, on or about that
same date, in that same house, in that same room, in the same part of
that room, those two persons, the prisoners at the bar, were seen by two
eminently respectable witnesses in the act of concealing some large
object under the floor. What could that object have been? The floor of
the room has been taken up and nothing whatever but the corpse of this
poor murdered lady has been found under it. The irresistible conclusion
is that those two persons were then and there engaged in concealing that
corpse.

"To sum up, then, the reasons or believing that the prisoners are guilty
of the crime with which they are charged are threefold. They had an
intelligible and strong motive to commit that crime; they had the
opportunity to commit it; and we have evidence from two eye-witnesses
which makes it practically an observed fact that the prisoners did
actually commit that crime."

As the Crown counsel sat down, pending the swearing of the first witness,
I turned to Thorndyke and said anxiously: "I can't imagine what you are
going to reply to that."

"My reply," he answered quietly, "will be largely governed by what I am
able to elicit in cross-examination." Here the first witness was called--the
electrician who discovered the body--and gave his evidence, but
Thorndyke made no cross-examination. He was followed by the sergeant, who
described the discovery in more detail. As the Crown counsel sat down,
Thorndyke rose, and I pricked up my ears.

"Have you mentioned everything that you saw or found in this room?" he
asked.

"Yes, at that time. Later--on the second of October--I found a small
piece of a carbon pencil on the floor of the front room near the window."

He produced from his pocket an envelope from which he extracted the
fragment of the alleged "slate pencil" and passed it to Thorndyke, who,
having passed to the judge with the intimation that he wished it to be
put in evidence, sat down. The judge inspected the fragment curiously and
then cast an inquisitive glance at Thorndyke--as he had done once or
twice before. For my colleague's appearance in the role of counsel was a
rare event, and one usually productive of surprises.

To the long succession of witnesses who followed Thorndyke listened
attentively but did not cross-examine, I saw the judge look at him
curiously from time to time and my own curiosity grew more and more
intense. Evidently he was saving himself up for the crucial witnesses. At
length the name of James Brodie was called, and a serious-looking elderly
workman entered the box. He gave his evidence clearly and confidently,
though with manifest reluctance, and I could see that his vivid
description of that sinister scene made a great impression on the jury.
When the examination in chief was finished, Thorndyke rose, and the judge
settled himself to listen with an air of close attention.

"Have you ever been inside 'The Larches'?" Thorndyke asked.

"No, sir. I've passed the house twice every day for years, but I've never
been inside it."

"When you looked in through the shutter, was the room well lighted?"

"No, 'twas very dim. I could only just see what the people were doing."

"Yet you recognised Miss Annesley quite clearly?"

"Not at first, I didn't. Not until she came and stood in the archway. The
light seemed quite good there."

"Did you see her come out of the front room and walk to the arch?"

"No. I saw her in the front room and then something must have stopped up
the hole, for 'twas all dark. Then the hole got clear again and I saw her
standing in the arch. But I only saw her for a moment or two. Then the
hole got stopped again and when it opened she was back in the front
room."

"How did you know that the woman in the front room was Miss Annesley?
Could you see her face in that dim light?"

"No, but I could tell her by her dress. She wore a striped pinafore with
a big, white sailor-collar. Besides, there wasn't nobody else there."

"And with regard to Mr. Bland. Did you see him walk out of the front room
and up to the arch?"

"No. 'Twas the same as with Miss Annesley. Something kept passing across
the hole. I see him in the front room; then I see him in the arch and
then I see him in the front room again."

"When they were in the archway, were they moving or standing still?"

"They both seemed to be standing quite still."

"Was Miss Annesley looking straight towards you?"

"No. Her face was turned away a little."

"I want you to look at these photographs and tell us if any of them shows
the head in the position in which you saw it."

He handed a bundle of photographs to the witness, who looked at them, one
after another, and at length picked out one.

"That is exactly how she looked," said he. "She might have been standing
for this very picture."

He passed the photograph to Thorndyke, who noted the number written on it
and passed it to the judge, who also noted the number and laid it on his
desk. Thorndyke then resumed: "You say the light was very dim in the
front room, Were the electric lamps alight?"

"None that I could see were alight."

"How many electric lamps could you see?"

"Well, there was three hanging from the ceiling and there was two
standards on the mantelpiece and one on the sideboard. None of them was
alight."

"Was there only one standard on the sideboard?"

"There may have been more, but I couldn't see 'em because I could only
see just one corner of the sideboard."

"Could you see the whole of the mantelpiece?"

"Yes. There was a standard lamp at each end."

"Could you see anything on the near side of the mantelpiece?"

"There was a table there: a folding table with twisted legs. But I could
only see part of that. The side of the arch cut it off."

"You have said that you could see Miss Annesley quite clearly and could
see how she was dressed. Could you see how her hair was arranged?"

"Yes. 'Twas done up on the top of her head in what they calls a bun and
there was a sort of a skewer stuck through it."

As the witness gave this answer, a light broke on me. Not a very clear
light, for the mystery was still unsolved. But I could see that Thorndyke
had a very definite strategic plan. And, glancing at the dock, I was
immediately aware that the prisoners had seen the light, too.

"You have described what looked like a hole in the floor," Thorndyke
resumed, "where some boards had been raised, near the middle of the room.
Was that hole nearer the sideboard or nearer the mantel piece?"

"It was nearer the mantelpiece," the witness replied; on which Thorndyke
sat down, the witness left the box, and both the judge and the counsel
for the prosecution rapidly turned over their notes with evident
surprise.

The next witness was Albert Stanton and his evidence was virtually a
repetition of Brodie's; and when, in cross Thorndyke put over again the
same series of questions, he elicited precisely the same answers even to
the recognition of the same photograph. And again I began to see a
glimmer of light. But only a glimmer.

Stanton being the last of the witnesses for the Crown, his brief
re-examination by Sir John Turville completed the case for the
prosecution. Thereupon Thorndyke rose and announced that he called
witnesses, and forth with the first of them appeared in the box. This was
Frederick Stokes, A.R.I.B.A., architect, and he deposed that he had made
a careful survey of the house called "The Larches" at Lower Ditton and
prepared a plan on the scale of half an inch to a foot. He swore that the
plan--of which he produced the original and a number of lithographed
duplicates--was true and exact in every respect. Thorndyke took the
plans from him and passing them to the judge asked that the original
should be put in evidence and the duplicates handed to the jury.

The next witness was Joseph Barton of Kensington, photographer. He
deposed to having taken photographs of Miss Annesley on various
occasions, the last being on the twenty-third of last April. He produced
copies of them all with the date written on each. He swore that the dates
written were the correct dates. The photographs were handed up to the
judge, who looked them over, one by one. Suddenly he seemed, as it were,
to stiffen and turned quickly from the photographs to his notes; and I
knew that he had struck the last portrait--the one with the short hair.

As the photographer left the box, his place was taken by no less a person
than our ingenious laboratory assistant; who, having taken his place,
beamed on the judge, the jury and the court in general, with a face
wreathed in crinkly smiles. Nathaniel Polton, being sworn, deposed that,
on the fifteenth of October, he proceeded to "The Larches" at Lower
Ditton and took three photographs of the ground-floor rooms. The first
was taken through the right-hand hole of the shutter marked A in the
plan; the second through the left-hand hole, and the third from a point
inside the back room between the windows and nearer to the window marked
B. He produced those photographs with the particulars written on each. He
had also made some composite photographs showing the two prisoners
dressed as the witnesses, Brodie and Stanton, had described them. The
bodies in those photographs were the bodies of Miss Winifred Blake and
Mr. Robert Anstey, K.C., respectively. On these bodies the heads of the
prisoners had been printed; and here Polton described the method of
substitution in detail. The purpose of the photographs was to show that a
photograph could be produced with the head of one person and the body of
another. He also deposed to having seen and taken possession of two
photographs, one of each of the two prisoners, which he found in the
bedroom and which he now produced and passed to the judge. And this
completed his evidence.

Thorndyke now called the prisoner, Bland, and having elicited from him a
sworn denial of the charge, proceeded to examine him respecting the
profits from his three picture theatres; which, it appeared, amount to
over six thousand pounds per annum.

"In the event of your death, what becomes of this valuable property?"

"If my wife had been alive it would have gone to her, but as she is dead,
it goes to my partner and manager, Mr. Julius Wicks."

"In whose custody was the house at Ditton while Miss Annesley was in
France?"

"In mine. The keys were in my possession."

"Were the keys ever out of your possession?"

Only for one day. My partner, Mr. Wicks, asked to be allowed to use the
boat for a trip on the river and to take a meal in the house. So lent him
the keys, which he returned the next day."

After a short cross-examination, Bland returned to the dock and was
succeeded by Miss Annesley, who, having given a sworn denial of the
charge, described her movements in France and in London about the period
of the crime. She also described, in answer to a question, the
circumstances under which she had lost her hair.

"Can you remember the date on which this accident happened?" Thorndyke
asked.

"Yes. It was on the thirtieth of March. I made a note of the date, so
that I could see how long my hair took to grow."

As Thorndyke sat down, the counsel for the prosecution rose and made a
somewhat searching cross-examination, but without in any way shaking the
prisoner's evidence. When this was concluded and Miss Annesley had
returned to the dock, Thorndyke rose to address the court for the
defence.

"I shall not occupy your time, gentlemen," he began, "by examining the
whole mass of evidence nor by arguing the question of motive. The guilt
or innocence of the prisoners turns on the accuracy or inaccuracy of the
evidence of the two witnesses, Brodie and Stanton; and to the examination
of that evidence I shall confine myself.

"Now that evidence, as you may have noticed, presents some remarkable
discrepancies. In the first place, both witnesses describe what they saw
in identical terms. They saw exactly the same things in exactly the same
relative positions. But this is a physical impossibility, if they were
really looking into a room; for they were looking in from different
points of view; through different holes, which were two feet six inches
apart. But there is another much more striking discrepancy. Both these
men have described, most intelligently, fully and clearly, a number of
objects in that room which were totally invisible to both of them; and
they have described as only partly visible other objects which were in
full view. Both witnesses, for instance, have described the mantelpiece
with its two standard lamps and a table with twisted legs on the near
side of it; and both saw one corner only of the sideboard. But if you
look at the architect's plan and test it with a straight-edge, you will
see that neither the mantelpiece nor the table could possibly be seen by
either. The whole of that side of the room was hidden from them by the
jamb of the arch. While as to the sideboard, the whole of it, with its
two standards, was visible to Brodie, and to Stanton the whole of it
excepting a small portion of the near side. But further, if you lay the
straight-edge on the point marked C and test it against the sides of the
arch, you will see that a person standing at that spot would get the
exact view described by both the witnesses. I pass round duplicate plans
with pencil lines ruled on them; but in case you find any difficulty in
following the plans, I have put in the photographs of the room taken by
Polton. The first photograph was taken through the hole used by Brodie,
and shows exactly what he would have seen on looking through that hole;
and you see that it agrees completely with the plan but disagrees totally
with his description. The second photograph shows what was visible to
Stanton; and the third photograph, taken from the point marked C, shows
exactly the view described by both the witnesses, but which neither of
them could possibly have seen under the circumstances stated.

"Now what is the explanation of these extraordinary discrepancies? No
one, I suppose, doubts the honesty of, these witnesses. I certainly do
not. I have no doubt whatever that they were telling the truth to the
best of their belief. Yet they have stated that they saw things which it
is physically impossible that they could have seen. How can these amazing
contradictions be reconciled?"

He paused, and in the breathless silence, I noticed that the judge was
gazing at him with an expression of intense expectancy; an expression
that was reflected on the jury and indeed on every person present.

"Well, gentlemen," he resumed, "there is one explanation which completely
reconciles these contradictions; and that explanation also reconciles all
the other strange contradictions and discrepancies which you may have
noticed. If we assume that these two men, instead of looking through an
arch into a room, as they believed, were really looking at a moving
picture thrown on a screen stretched across the arch, all the
contradictions vanish. Everything becomes perfectly plain, consistent and
understandable.

[ILLUSTRATIONS SEE http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#letterF

ILLUSTRATION 1--PHYLLIS ANNESLEY'S PERIL 1

ILLUSTRATION 2--PHYLLIS ANNESELEY'S PERIL 2]

"Thus both men, from two different points of view, saw exactly the same
scene; naturally, if they were both looking at the same picture, but
otherwise quite impossible. Again, both men, from the point A, saw a view
which was visible only from the point C. Perfectly natural if they were
both looking at a picture taken from the point C ; for a picture is the
same picture from whatever point of view it is seen. But otherwise a
physical impossibility.

"You may object that these men would have seen the difference between a
picture and a real room. Per haps they would, even in that dim light--if
they had looked at the scene with both eyes. But each man was looking
with only one eye--through a small hole. Now it requires the use of both
eyes to distinguish between a solid object and a flat picture. To a
one-eyed man there is no difference--which is probably the reason that
one-eyed artists are such accurate draughtsmen--they see the world
around them as a flat picture, just as they draw it, whereas a two-eyed
artist has to turn the solid into the flat. For the same reason, if you
look at a picture with one eye shut it tends to look solid, really
because the frame and the solid objects around it have gone flat. So
that, if this picture was coloured, as it must have been, it would have
been indistinguishable, to these one-eyed observers, from the solid
reality.

"Then, let us see how the other contradictions disappear. There is the
appearance of the prisoner Annesley. She was seen--on or after the
eighteenth of May--with her long hair coiled on the top of her head. But
at that date her hair was quite short. You have heard the evidence and
you have the photograph taken on the twenty-third of April showing her
with short hair, like a man's. Here is a contradiction which vanishes at
once if you realise that these men were not looking at Miss Annesley at
all, but at a photograph of her taken more than a year previously.

"And everything agrees with this assumption. The appearance of Miss
Annesley has been declared by the witnesses to be identical with that
photograph--a copy of which was in the house and could have been copied
by anyone who had access to the house. Her figure was perfectly
stationary. She appeared suddenly in the arch and then disappeared; she
was not seen to come or to go. And the light kept coming and going, with
intervals of darkness which are inexplicable, but that exactly fitted
these appearances and disappearances. Then the figure was well lighted,
though the room was nearly dark. Of course it was well lighted. It had to
be recognised. And of course the rest of the room was dimly lighted,
because the film-actors in the background had to be unrecognised.

"Then there is the extraordinary dress; the striped pinafore with the
great white collar and the painter's blouse worn by Bland. Why this
ridiculous masquerade? Its purpose is obvious. It was to make these
observers believe that the portraits in the arch--which they mistook for
real people--were the same persons as the film-actors in the background,
whose features they could not distinguish. And Mr. Polton has shown us
how the clothing of the portraits was managed.

"Then there is the lighting of the room. How was it lighted? None of the
electric lamps was alight. But--a piece of a carbon pencil from an arc
lamp, such as kinematographers use, has been found near the point C, from
which spot the picture would have been taken and exhibited ; and the
electric light meter showed, about this date, an unaccountable leakage of
current such as would be explained by the use of an arc lamp.

"Then the evidence of the witnesses shows the hole in the floor in the
wrong place. Of course it could not have been a real hole, for the gas
and electric mains were just underneath. It was probably an oblong of
black paper. But why was it in the wrong place? The explanation, I
suggest, is that the picture was taken before the murder (and probably
shown before the murder, too); that the spot shown was the one in which
it was intended to bury the body, but that when the floor was taken up
after the murder, the mains were found underneath and a new spot had to
be chosen.

"Finally--as to the discrepancies--what has become of the third
spectator? The mysterious man who came to the gate and called in these
two men from the lane--along which they were known to pass every day at
about the same time? Who is this mysterious individual? And where is he?
Can we give him a name? Can we say that he is at this moment in this
court, sitting amongst the spectators, listening to the pleadings in
defence of his innocent victims, the prisoners who stand at the bar on
their deliverance? I affirm, gentlemen, that we can. And more than that
it is not permitted to me to say."

He paused, and a strange, impressive hush fell on the court. Men and
women furtively looked about them; the jury stared openly into the body
of the court, and the judge, looking up from his notes, cast a searching
glance among the spectators. Suddenly my eye lighted on Mr. Wicks and his
fiancée. The man was wiping away the sweat that streamed down his ashen,
ghastly face; the woman had rested her head in her hands, and was
trembling as if in an ague-fit.

I was not the only observer. One after another--spectators, ushers,
jurymen, counsel, judge--noticed the terror-stricken pair, until every
eye in the court was turned on them. And the silence that fell on the
place was like the silence of the grave.

It was a dramatic moment. The air was electric; the crowded court tense
with emotion. And Thorndyke, looking, with his commanding figure and
severe impassive face, like a personification of Fate and Justices stood
awhile motionless and silent, letting emotion set the coping-stone on
reason.

At length he resumed his address. "Before concluding," he began, "I have
to say a few words on another aspect of the case. The learned counsel for
the prosecution, referring to the motive for this crime, has suggested a
desire on the part of the prisoners to remove the obstacle to their
marriage. But it has been given in evidence that there are other persons
who had a yet stronger and more definite motive for getting rid of the
deceased Lucy Bland. You have heard that in the event of Bland's death,
his partner, Julius Wicks, stood to inherit property of the value of six
thousand pounds per annum, provided that Bland's wife was already dead.
Now, the murder of Lucy Bland has fulfilled one of the conditions for the
devolution of this property; and if you should convict and his lordship
should sentence the prisoner, Bland, then his death on the gallows would
fulfil the other condition and this great property would pass to his
partner, Julius Wicks--This is a material point; as is also the fact
that Wicks is, as you have heard, an expert film-producer and kinema
operator; that he has been proved to have had access to the house at
Ditton, and that he is engaged to a film-actress.

"In conclusion, I submit that the evidence of Brodie and Stanton makes it
certain that they were looking at a moving picture, and that all the
other evidence confirms that certainty. But the evidence of this moving
picture is the evidence of a conspiracy to throw suspicion on the
prisoners. But a conspiracy implies conspirators. And there can be no
doubt that those conspirators were the actual murderers of Lucy Bland.
But if this be so, and I affirm that there can be no possible doubt that
it is so, then it follows that the prisoners are innocent of the crime
with which they are charged, and I accordingly ask you for a verdict of'
Not Guilty.'"

As Thorndyke sat down a faint hum arose in the court; but still all eyes
were turned towards Wicks and Eugenia Kropp. A moment later the pair rose
and walked unsteadily towards the door. But here, I noticed,
Superintendent Miller had suddenly appeared and stood at the portal with
a uniformed constable. As Wicks and Miss Kropp reached the door, I saw
the constable shake his head. With, or without authority, he was refusing
to let them leave the court. There was a brief pause. Suddenly there
broke out a confused uproar; a scuffle, a loud shriek, the report of a
pistol and the shattering of glass; and then I saw Miller grasping the
man's wrists and pinning him to the wall, while the shrieking woman
struggled with the constable to get to the door.

After the removal of the disturbers--in custody--events moved swiftly.
The Crown counsel's reply was brief and colourless, practically
abandoning the charge, while the judge's summing-up was a mere précis of
Thorndyke's argument with a plain direction for an acquittal. But nothing
more was needed; for the jury had so clearly made up their minds that the
clerk had hardly uttered his challenge when the foreman replied with the
verdict of "Not Guilty." A minute later, when the applause had subsided
and after brief congratulations by the judge, the prisoners came down
from the dock, into the court, moist-eyed but smiling, to wring
Thorndyke's hands and thank him for this wonderful deliverance.

"Yes," agreed Mayfield--himself disposed furtively to wipe his eyes--"that
is the word. It was wonderful. And yet it was all so obvious--when
you knew."



A SOWER OF PESTILENCE


The affectionate relations that existed between Thorndyke and his devoted
follower, Polton, were probably due, at least in part, to certain
similarities in their characters. Polton was an accomplished and
versatile craftsman, a man who could do anything, and do it well; and
Thorndyke has often said that if he had not been a man of science, he
would, by choice, have; been a skilled craftsman. Even as things were, he
was a masterly manipulator of all instruments of research, and a good
enough workman to devise new appliances and processes and to collaborate
with his assistant ix carrying them out.

Such a collaboration was taking place when the present case opened. It
had occurred to Thorndyke that lithography might be usefully applied to
medico-legal research, and on this particular morning he and Polton were
experimenting in the art of printing from the stone. In the midst of
their labours the bell from our chambers below was heard to ring, and
Polton, reluctantly laying down the inking roller and wiping his hands on
the southern aspect of his trousers, departed to open the door.

"It's a Mr. Rabbage," he reported on his return. "Says he has an
appointment with you, sir."

"So he has," said Thorndyke. "And, as I under stand that he is going to
offer us a profound mystery for solution, you had better come down with
me, Jervis, and hear what be has to say."

Mr. Rabbage turned out to be a elderly gentleman who, as we entered,
peered at us through a pair of deep, concave spectacles and greeted us
"with a smile that was child like and bland." Thorndyke looked him over
and adroitly brought him to the point.

"Yes," said Mr. Rabbage, "it is really a most mysterious affair that has
brought me here. I have already laid it before a very talented detective
officer whom I know slightly--a Mr. Badger; but he frankly admitted that
it was beyond him and strongly advised me to consult you."

"Inspector Badger was kind enough to pay me a very handsome compliment,"
said Thorndyke.

"Yes. He said that you would certainly be able to solve this mystery
without any difficulty. So here I am. And perhaps I had better explain
who I am, in case you don't happen to know my name. I am the director of
the St. Francis Home of Rest for aged, invalid and destitute cats: an
institution where these deserving animals are enabled to convert the
autumn of their troubled lives into a sort of Indian summer of comfort
and repose. The home is, I may say, my own venture. I support it out of
my own means. But I am open to receive contributions; and to that end
there is secured to the garden railings a large box with a wide slit and
an inscription inviting donations of money, of articles of value, or of
food or delicacies for the inmates."

"And do you get much?" I asked.

Of money," he replied, "very little. Of articles of value, none at all.
As to gifts of food, they are numerous, but they often display a strange
ignorance of the habits of the domestic cat. Such things, for instance,
as pickles and banana-skins, though doubtless kindly meant, are quite
unsuitable as diet. But the most singular donation that I have ever
received was that which I found in the box the day before yesterday.
There were a number of articles, but all apparently from the same donor ;
and their character was so mysterious that I showed them to Mr. Badger,
as I have told you, who was as puzzled as I was and referred me to you.
The collection comprised three ladies' purses, a morocco-leather wallet
and a small aluminium case. I have brought them with me to show you."

"What did the purses contain? "Thorndyke asked.

"Nothing," replied Mr. Rabbage, gazing at us with wide-open eyes. "They
were perfectly empty. That is the astonishing circumstance."

"And the leather wallet? "

"Empty, too, excepting for a few odd papers."

"And the aluminium case?"

"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Rabbage, "that was the most amazing of all. It
contained a number of glass tubes! and those tubes contained--now, what
do you suppose?" He paused impressively, and then, as neither of us
offered a suggestion, be answered his own question. "Fleas and lice! Yes,
actually! Fleas and lice! Isn't that an extraordinary donation?"

"It is certainly," Thorndyke agreed. "Anyone might have known that, with
a houseful of cats, you could produce your own fleas."

"Exactly," said Mr. Rabbage. "That is what instantly occurred to me, and
also, I may say, to Mr. Badger. But let me show you the things."

He produced from a hand-bag and spread out on the table a collection of
articles which were, evidently, the "husks" of the gleanings of some
facetious pickpocket, to whom Mr. Rabbage's donation-box must have
appeared as a perfect God-send. Thorndyke picked up the purses, one after
the other, and having glanced at their empty interiors, put them aside.
The letter-wallet he looked through more attentively, but without
disturbing its contents, and then he took up and opened the aluminium
case. This certainly was a rather mysterious affair. It opened like a
cigarette case. One side was fitted with six glass specimen-tubes, each
provided with a well-fitting parchment cap, perforated with a number of
needle-holes; and of the six tubes, four contained fleas--about a dozen
in each tube--some of which were dead, but others still alive, and the
remaining two lice, all of which were dead. In the opposite side of the
case, secured with a catch, was a thin celluloid note-tablet on which
some numbers had been written in pencil.

"Well," said Mr. Rabbage, when the examination was finished, "can you
offer any solution of the mystery?"

Thorndyke shook his head gravely. "Not offhand," he replied. "This is a
matter which will require careful consideration. Leave these things with
me for further examination and I will let you know, in the course of a
few days, what conclusion we arrive at."

"Thank you," said Mr. Rabbage, rising and holding out his hand. "You have
my address, I think."

He glanced at his watch, snatched up his hand-bag and darted to the door;
and a moment later we heard him bustling down the stairs in the hurried,
strenuous manner that is characteristic of persons who spend most of
their lives doing nothing.

"I'm surprised at you, Thorndyke," I said when he had gone, "encouraging
that ass, Badger, in his silly practical jokes. Why didn't you tell this
old nincompoop that he had just got a pick-pocket's leavings and have
done with it?"

"For the reason, my learned brother, that I haven't done with it. I am a
little curious as to whose pocket has been picked, and what that person
was doing with a collection of fleas and lice."

I don't see that it is any business of yours," said I. "And as to the
vermin, I should suggest that the owner of the case is an entomologist
who specialises in epizoa. Probably he is collecting varieties and
races."

"And how," asked Thorndyke, opening the case and handing it to me, "does
my learned friend account for the faint scent of aniseed that exhales
from this collection?

"I don't account for it at all," said I. "It is a nasty smell. I noticed
it when you first opened the case. I can only suppose that the
flea-merchant likes it, or thinks that the fleas do."

"The latter seems the more probable," said Thorndyke, "for you notice
that the odour seems to principally from the parchment caps of the four
tubes that contain fleas. The caps of the louse tubes don't seem to be
scented. And now let us have a little closer look at the letter-wallet."

He opened the wallet and took out its contents, which were unilluminating
enough. Apparently it had been gutted by the pickpocket and only the
manifestly valueless articles left. One or two bills, recording purchases
at shops, a time-table, a brief letter in French, without its envelope
and bearing neither address, date, nor signature, and a set of small maps
mounted on thin card: this was the whole collection, and not one of the
articles appeared to furnish the slightest clue to the identity of the
owner.

Thorndyke looked at the letter curiously and read it aloud.

It is just a little singular," he remarked, "that this note should be
addressed to nobody by name, should bear neither address, date, nor
signature, and should have had its envelope removed. There is almost an
appearance of avoiding the means of identification. Yet the matter is
simple and innocent enough: just an appointment to meet at the Mile End
Picture Palace. But these maps are more interesting; in fact, they are
quite curious."

He took them out of the wallet--lifting them carefully by the edges, I
noticed--and laid them out on the table. There were seven cards, and
each had a map, or rather a section, pasted on both sides. The sections
had been cut out of a three map of London, and as each card was three
inches by four and a half, each section represented an area of one mile
by a mile and a half. They had been very carefully prepared neatly stuck
on the cards and varnished, and every section bore a distinguishing
letter. But the most curious feature was a number of small circles drawn
in pencil on various parts of the maps, each circle enclosing a number.

"What do you make of those circles, Thorndyke?" I asked.

"One can only make a speculative hypothesis," be replied. "I am disposed
to associate them with the fleas and lice. You notice that the maps all
represent the most squalid parts of East London--Spitalfields, Bethnal
Green, Whitechapel, and so forth, where the material would be plentiful;
and you also notice that the celluloid tablet in the insect case bears a
number of pencilled jottings that might refer to these maps. Here, for
instance, is a note, 'B 21 a + b--,' and you observe that each entry has
an a and a b with either a plus or a minus sign. Now, if we assume that a
means fleas and b lice, or vice versa, the maps and the notes together
might form a record of collections or experiments with a geographical
basis."

"They might," I agreed, "but there isn't a particle of evidence that they
do. It is a most fantastic hypothesis. We don't know, and we have no
reason to suppose, that the insect-case and the wallet were the property
of the same person. And we have no means of finding out whether they were
or were not."

"There I think you do us an injustice, Jervis," said he. "Are we not
lithographers?"

"I don't see where the lithography comes in," said I.

"Then you ought to. This is a test case. These maps are varnished, and
are thus virtually lithographic transfer paper; and the celluloid tablet
also has a non-absorbent surface. Now, if you handle transfer paper
carelessly when drawing on it, you are apt to find, when you have
transferred to the stone, that your finger prints ink up, as well as the
drawing. So it is possible that if we put these maps and the note-tablet
on the stone, we may be able to ink up the prints of the fingers that
have handled them and so prove whether they were or were not the same
fingers."

"That would be interesting as an experiment," said I," though I don't see
that it matters two straws whether they were the same or not."

"Probably it doesn't," he replied, "though it may. But we have a new
method and we may as well try it."

We took the things up to the laboratory and explained the problem to
Polton, who entered into the inquiry with enthusiasm. Producing from a
cupboard a fresh stone, he picked the maps out of the wallet one by one
(with a pair of watchmaker's tweezers) and fell to work forthwith on the
task of transferring the invisible--and possibly non-existent--fingerprints
from the maps and the note-tablet to the stone. I watched
him go through the various processes in his neat, careful, dexterous
fashion and hoped that all his trouble would not be in vain. Nor was it;
for when he began cautiously ink up the stone, it was evident that
something was there, though it was not so evident what that something
was. Presently, however, the vague markings took more definite shape, and
now could be recognised eight rather confused masses of finger-prints,
badly smeared, some incomplete, and all mixed up and superimposed so as
to make the identification of any one print almost an impossibility.

Thorndyke looked them over dubiously. "It is a dreadful muddle," said he,
"but I think we can pick out the prints well enough for identification if
that should be necessary. Which of these is the notes tablet, Polton?"

"The one in the right-hand top corner, sir," was the reply.

"Ah!" said Thorndyke, "then that answers our question. Confused as the
impressions are, you can see quite plainly that the left thumb is the
same thumb as that on the maps."

"Yes," I agreed after making the comparison, "there is not much doubt
that they are the same. And now the question is, what about it?"

"Yes," said Thorndyke; "that is the question." And with this we retired
from the laboratory, leaving Polton joyfully pulling off proofs.

During the next few days I had a vague impression that my colleague was
working at this case, though with what object I could not imagine. Mr.
Rabbage's problem was too absurd to take seriously, and Thorndyke was
beyond working out cases, as he used to at one time, for the sake of mere
experience. However, a day or two later, a genuine case turned up and
occupied our attention to some purpose.

It was about six in the evening when Mr. Nicholas Balcombe called on us
by appointment, and proceeded, in a business-like fashion, to state his
case.

"I was advised by my friend Stalker, of the Griffin Life Assurance
Office, to consult you," said he. "Stalker tells me that you have got him
out of endless difficulties, and I am hoping that you will be able to
help me out of mine, though they are not so clearly within your province
as Stalker's. But you will know about that better than I do.

"I am the manager of Rutherford's Bank--the Cornhill Branch--and I have
just had a very alarming experience. The day before yesterday, about
three in the afternoon, a deed-box was handed in with a note from one of
our customers--Mr. Pilcher, the solicitor, of Pilcher, Markham and
Sudburys--asking us to deposit it in our strong-room and give the bearer
a receipt for it. Of course this was done, in the ordinary way of
business; but there was one exceptional circumstance that turns out to
have been, as it would appear, providential. Owing to the increase of
business our strong-room had become insufficient for our needs, and we
have lately had a second one built on the most modern lines and perfectly
fire-proof. This had not been taken into use when Pilcher's deed-box
arrived, but as the old room was very full, I opened the new room and saw
the deed-box deposited in it.

"Well, nothing happened up to the time that I left the bank, but about
two o'clock in the morning the night watchman noticed a smell of burning,
and on investigating, located the smell as apparently proceeding from the
door of the new strong-room. He at once reported to the senior clerk,
whose turn it was to sleep on the premises, and the latter at once
telephoned to the police station. In a few minutes a police officer
arrived with a couple of firemen and a hand-extinguisher. The clerk took
them down to the strong-room and unlocked the door. As soon as it was
opened, a volume of smoke and fumes burst out, and then they saw the
deed-box--or rather the distorted remains of it--lying on the floor.
The police took possession of what was left, but a very cursory
examination on the spot showed that the box was, in effect, an incendiary
bomb, with a slow time fuse or some similar arrangement."

"Was any damage done?" Thorndyke asked.

"Mercifully, no," replied Mr. Balcombe. "But just think of what might
have happened! If I had put the box in the old strong-room it is certain
that thousands of pounds' worth of valuable property would have been
destroyed. Or again, if instead of an incendiary bomb the box had
contained a high explosive, the whole building would probably have been
blown to pieces."

"What explanation does Pilcher give?"

"A very simple one. He knows nothing about it. The note was a forgery;
and on the firm's headed paper, or a perfect imitation of it. And mind
you," Mr. Balcombe continued, "my experience is not a solitary one. I
have made private inquiries of other bank managers, and I find that
several of them have been subjected to similar outrages, some with
serious results. And probably there are more. They don't talk about these
things, you know. Then there are those fires: the great timber fire at
Stepney, and those big warehouse fires near the London Docks; there is
something queer about them. It looks as if some gang was at work for
purposes of pure mischief and destruction."

"You have consulted the police, of course?"

"Yes. And they know something, I feel sure. But they are extremely
reticent; so I suppose they don't know enough. At any rate, I should like
you to investigate the case independently and so would my directors. The
position is most alarming."

"Could you let me see Pilcher's letter?" Thorndyke asked.

"1 have brought it with me," said Balcombe. "Thought you would probably
want to examine it. I will leave it with you; and if we can give you any
other information or assistance, we shall be only too glad."

"Was the box brought by hand?" inquired Thorndyke.

"Yes," replied Balcombe, "but I didn't see the bearer. I can get you a
description from the man who received the package, if that would be any
use."

"We may as well have it," said Thorndyke, "and the name and address of
the person giving it, in case he is wanted as a witness."

"You shall have it," said Balcombe, rising and picking up his hat. "I
will see to it myself. And you will let me know, in due course, if any
information comes to hand?"

Thorndyke gave the required promise and our client took his leave.

"Well," I said with a laugh, as the brisk footsteps died away on the
stairs, "you have had a very handsome compliment paid you. Our friend
seems to think that you are one of those master craftsmen who can make
bricks, not only without straw, but without clay. There's absolutely
nothing to go on."

"It is certainly rather in the air," Thorndyke agreed. "There is this
letter and the description of the man who left the packet, when we get
it, and neither of them is likely to help us much."

He looked over the letter and its envelope, held the former up to the
light and then handed them to me.

"We ought to find out whether this is Pilcher's own paper or an
imitation," said I, when I had examined the letter and envelope without
finding anything in the least degree distinctive or characteristic;
"because, if it is their paper, the unknown man must have had some sort
of connection with their establishment or staff."

"There must have been some sort of connection in any case," said
Thorndyke. "Even an imitation implies possession of an original. But you
are quite right. It is a line of inquiry, and practically the only one
that offers."

The inquiry was made on the following day, and the fact clearly
established that the paper was Pitcher's paper, but the ink was not their
ink. The handwriting appeared to be disguised, and no one connected with
the firm was able to recognise it. The staff, even to the caretaker, were
all eminently respectable and beyond suspicion of being implicated in an
affair of the kind.

"But after all," said Mr. Pitcher, "there are a hundred ways in which a
sheet of paper may go astray if anyone wants it : at the printer's, the
stationer's, or even in this office--for the paper is always in the
letter-rack on the table."

Thus our only clue--if so it could be called--came to an end, and I
waited with some curiosity to see what Thorndyke would do next. But so
far as I could see, he did nothing, nor did he make any reference to this
obscure case during the next few days. We had a good deal of other work
on hand, and I assumed that this fully occupied his attention.

One evening, about a week later, he made the first reference to the case
and a very mysterious communication it seemed to me.

"I have projected a little expedition for to-morrow," said he. "I am
proposing to spend the day, or part of it, in the pastoral region of
Bethnal Green."

"In connection with any of our cases?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied. "Balcombe's. I have been making some cautious
inquiries with Polton's assistance, principally among hawkers and
coffee-shop keepers, and I think I have struck a promising track."

"What kind of inquiries have you been making?" said I.

"I have been looking for a man, or men, engaged in giving street
entertainments. That is what our data seemed to suggest, among other
possibilities."

"Our data!" I exclaimed. "1 didn't know we had any."

"We had Balcombe's account of the attempt to burn the bank. That gave us
some hint as to the kind of man to look for. And there were certain other
data, which my learned friend may recall."

"I don't recall anything suggesting a street entertainer," said I.

"Not directly," he replied. "It was one of several hypotheses, but it is
probably the correct one, as I have heard of such a person as I had
assumed, and have ascertained where he is likely to be found on certain
days. To-morrow I propose to go over his beat in the hope of getting a
glimpse of him. If you think of coming with me, I may remind you that it
is not a dressy neighbourhood."

On the following morning we set forth about ten o'clock, and as raiment
which is inconspicuous at Bethnal Green may be rather noticeable in the
Temple, we slipped out by the Tudor Street gate and made our way to
Blackfriars Station. In place of the usual "research-case," I noticed
that Thorndyke was carrying a somewhat shabby wood-fibre attaché case,
and that he had no walking-stick. We got out at Aldgate and presently
struck up Vallance Street in the direction of Bethnal Green; and by the
brisk pace and the direct route adopted, I judged that Thorndyke had a
definite objective. However, when we entered the maze of small streets
adjoining the Bethnal Green Road, our pace was reduced to a saunter, and
at corners and crossroads Thorndyke halted from time to time to look
along the streets; and occasionally he referred to a card which he
produced from his pocket, on which were written the names of streets and
days of the week.

A couple of hours passed in this apparently aimless perambulation of the
back streets.

"It doesn't look as if you were going to have much luck," I remarked,
suppressing a yawn. "And I am not sure that we are not, in our turn,
being 'spotted'. I have noted a man--a small, shabby-looking fellow,
apparently keeping us in view from a distance, though I don't see him at
the moment."

"It is quite likely," said Thorndyke. "This is a shady neighbourhood, and
any native could see that we don't belong to it. Good morning! Taking a
little fresh air?"

The latter question was addressed to a man who was standing at the door
of a small coffee-shop, having apparently come to the surface for a
"breather."

"Dunno about fresh," was the reply, "but it's the best there is. By the
by, I saw one of them blokes what I was a-tellin' you about go by just
now. Foreigner with the rats. If you want to see him give a show, I
expect you'll find him in that bit of waste ground off Bolter's Rents."

"Bolter's Rents?" Thorndyke repeated. "Is that a turning out of Salcombe
Street?"

"Quite right," was the reply. "Half-way up on the right-hand side."

Thanking our informant, Thorndyke strode off up the street, and as we
turned the next corner I glanced back. At the moment, the small man whom
I had noticed before stepped out of a doorway and came after us at a pace
suggesting anxiety not to lose sight of us.

Bolter's Rents turned out to be a wide paved alley, one side of which
opened into a patch of waste ground where a number of old houses had been
demolished. This space had an unspeakably squalid appearance; for not
only had the debris of the demolished houses been left in unsavoury
heaps, but the place had evidently been adopted by the neighbourhood as a
general dumping-ground for household refuse. The earth was strewn with
vegetable, and even animal, leavings; flies and bluebottles hummed around
and settled in hundreds on the garbage, and the air was pervaded by an
odour like that of an old-fashioned brick dust-bin.

But in spite of these trifling disadvantages, a consider able crowd had
collected, mainly composed of women and children; and at the centre of
the crowd a man was giving an entertainment with a troupe of performing
rats. We had sauntered slowly up the "Rents" and now halted to look on.
At the moment, a white rat was climbing a pole at the top of which a
little flag was stuck in a socket. We watched him rapidly climb the pole,
seize the flagstaff in his teeth, lift it out of the socket, climb down
the pole and deliver the flag to his master. Then a little carriage was
produced and the rat harnessed into it, another white rat being dressed
in a cloak and placed in the seat, and the latter--introduced to the
audience as Lady Murphy--was taken for a drive round the stage.

While the entertainment was proceeding I inspected the establishment and
its owner. The stage was composed of light hinged boards opened out on a
small four-wheeled hand-cart, apparently home-made. At one end was a
largish cage, divided by a wire partition into two parts, one of which
contained a number of white and piebald rats, while the inmates of the
other compartment were all wild rats; but not, I noted, the common brown
or Norway rat, but the old-fashioned British black rat. I remarked upon
the circumstance to Thorndyke.

"Yes," he said, "they were probably caught locally. The sewers here will
be inhabited by brown rats, but the houses, in an old neighbourhood like
this, will be infested principally by the black rat. What do you make of
the exhibitor?"

I had already noticed him, and now unobtrusively examined him again. He
was a medium-sized man with a sallow complexion, dark, restless eyes--which
frequently wandered in our direction--a crop of stiff, bushy,
upstanding hair--he wore no hat--and a ragged beard.

"A Slav of some kind, I should think," was my reply; "a Russian, or
perhaps a Lett. But that beard is not perfectly convincing."

"No," Thorndyke agreed, "but it is a good makes up. Perhaps we had better
move on flow; we have a deputy, you observe."

As he spoke, the small man whom I had observed following us strolled up
the Rents; and as he drew nearer, revealed to my astonished gaze no less
a person than our ingenious laboratory assistant, Polton. Strangely
altered, indeed, was our usually neat and spruce artificer with his seedy
clothing and grubby hands; but as he sauntered up, profoundly unaware of
our existence, a faint reminiscence of the familiar crinkly smile stole
across his face.

We were just moving off when a chorus of shrieks mingled with laughter
arose from the spectators, who hastily scattered right and left, and I
had a momentary glimpse of a big black rat bounding across the space, to
disappear into one of the many heaps of debris. It seemed that the
exhibitor had just opened the cage to take out a black rat when one of
the waiting performers--presumably a new recruit--had seized the
opportunity to spring out and escape.

"Well," a grinning woman remarked to me, genially, "there's plenty more
where that one came from. You should see this place on a moonlight night!
Fair alive with 'em it is."

We sauntered up the Rents and along the cross street at the top; and as
we went, I reflected on the very singular inquiry in which Thorndyke
seemed to be engaged. The rat-tamer's appearance was suspicious. He
didn't quite look the part, and his beard was almost certainly a make-up--and
a skilful one, too, for it was no mere "property" beard ; and the
restless, furtive eyes, and a certain suppressed excitement in his
bearing, hinted at something more than met the eye. But if this was Mr.
Balcombe's incendiary, how had Thorndyke arrived at his identity, and,
above all, by what process of reasoning had he contrived to associate the
bank outrage with performing rats,? That he had done so, his systematic
procedure made quite clear. But how? It had seemed to me that we had not
a single fact on which to start an investigation.

We had walked the length of the cross street, and had halted before
turning, when a troop of children emerged from the Rents. Then came the
exhibitor, towing his cart, with the cage shrouded in a cloth, then more
children, and finally, at a little distance, Polton, slouching along idly
but keeping the cart in view.

"I think," said Thorndyke, "it would be instructive, as a study in urban
sanitation, to have a look round the scene of the late exhibition."

We retraced our steps down Bolter's Rents, now practically deserted, and
wandered around the patch of waste land and in among the piles of bricks
and rotting timber where the houses had been pulled down.

"Your lady friend was right," said Thorndyke. "This is a perfect Paradise
for rats. Convenient residences among the ruins and unlimited provisions
to be had for the mere picking up."

"Apparently you were right, too," said I, "as to the species inhabiting
these eligible premises. That seems to be a black rat," and I pointed to
a deceased specimen that lay near the entrance to a burrow.

Thorndyke stooped over the little corpse, and after a brief inspection,
drew a glove on his right hand.

"Yes," he said, "this is a typical specimen of Mus rattus, though it is
unusually light in colour. I think it will be worth taking away to
examine at our leisure."

Glancing round to see that we were unobserved, he opened his attaché case
and took from it a largish tin canister and removed the lid--which, I
noted, was anointed at the joint with vaseline. Stooping, he picked up
the dead rat by the tail with his gloved fingers dropped it into the
canister, clapped on the lid, and replaced it in the attache case. Then
he pulled off the glove and threw it on a rubbish heap.

"You are mighty particular," said I.

"A dead rat is a dirty thing," said he, "and it was only an old glove."

On our way home I made various cautious attempt to extract from Thorndyke
some hint as to the purpose of his investigation and his mode of
procedure. But I could extract nothing from him beyond certain
generalities.

"When a man," said he, "introduces an incendiary bomb into the
strong-room of a bank, we may reasonably inquire as to his motives. And
when we have reached the fairly obvious conclusion as to what those
motives must be, we may ask ourselves what kind of conduct such motives
will probably generate; that is, what sort of activities will be likely
to be associated with such motives and with the appropriate state of
mind. And when we have decided on that, too, we may look for a person
engaged in those activities; and if we find such a person we may consider
that we have a prima facie case. The rest is a matter of verification."

"That is all very well, Thorndyke," I objected, "but if I find a man
trying to set fire to a bank, I don't immediately infer that his
customary occupation is exhibiting performing rats in a back street of
Bethnal Green."

Thorndyke laughed quietly. "My learned friend's observation is perfectly
just. It is not a universal rule. But we are dealing with a specific case
in which certain other facts are known to us. Still, the connection, if
there is one, has yet to be established. This exhibitor may turn out not
to be Balcombe's man after all."

"And if he is not?"

"I think we shall want him all the same; but I shall know better in a
couple of hours' time."

What transpired during those two hours I did not discover at the time,
for I had an engagement to dine with some legal friends and must needs
hurry away as soon as I had purified myself from the effects of our
travel in the unclean East. When I returned to our chambers, about
half-past ten, I found Thorndyke seated in his easy chair immersed in a
treatise on old musical instruments. Apparently he had finished with the
case.

"How did Polton get on?" I asked.

"Admirably," replied Thorndyke. "He shadowed our entertaining friend from
Bethnal Green to a by street in Ratcliff, where he apparently resides.
But he did more than that. We had made up a little book of a dozen leaves
of transfer paper in which I wrote in French some infallible rules for
taming rats. Just as the man was going into his house, Polton accosted
him and asked him for an expert opinion on these directions. The foreign
gentleman was at first impatient and huffy, but when he had glanced at
the book, he became interested, and a good deal amused, and finally read
the whole set of rules through attentively. Then he handed the book back
to Polton and recommended him to follow the rules carefully, offering to
supply him with a few rats to experiment on, an offer which Polton asked
him to hold over for a day or two.

"As soon as he got home, Polton dismembered the book and put the leaves
down on the stone, with this result."

He took from his pocket-book a number of small pieces of paper, each of
which was marked more or less distinctly with lithographed reproductions
of fingerprints, and laid them on the table. I looked through them
attentively, and with a faint sense of familiarity.

"Isn't that left thumb," said I, "rather similar to the print on the maps
from Mr. Rabbage's letter wallet?"

"It is identical," he replied. "Here are the proofs of the map-prints and
the note-tablet. If you compare them you can see that not only the left
thumb but the other prints are the same in all."

Careful comparison showed that this was so.

"But," I exclaimed, "I don't understand this at all. These are the
finger-prints of Mr. Rabbage's mysterious entomologist. I thought you
were looking for Balcombe's man."

"My impression," he replied "is that they are t same person, though the
evidence is far from conclusive. But we shall soon know. I have sworn an
information against the foreign gent, and Miller has arranged to raid the
house at Ratcliff early to-morrow and as it promises to be a highly
interesting event, I propose to be present. Shall I have the pleasure of
my learned friend's company? "

"Most undoubtedly," I replied, "though I am absolutely in the dark as to
the meaning of the whole affair."

"Then," said Thorndyke, "I recommend you to go over the history of both
cases systematically in the interval."

Six o'clock on the following morning found us in an empty house in Old
Gravel Lane, Ratcliff, in company with Superintendent Miller and three
stalwart plain clothes men, awaiting the report of a patrol. We were all
dressed in engineers' overalls, reeking with naphthalin. Our trousers
were tucked into our socks, and socks and boots were thickly smeared with
vaseline, as were our wrists, around which our sleeves were bound closely
with tape. These preparations, together with an automatic pistol served
out to each of us, gave me some faint inkling of the nature of the case,
though it was still very confused in my mind.

About a quarter-past six a messenger arrived and reported that the house
which was to be raided was open. Thereupon Miller and one of his men set
forth, and the rest of us followed at short intervals. On arriving at the
house, which was but a short distance from our rendezvous, we found a
stolid plain-clothes man guarding the open door and a frowsy-looking
woman, who carried a jug of milk, angrily demanding in very imperfect
English to be allowed to pass into her house. Pushing past the protesting
housekeeper, we entered the grimy passage, where Miller was just emerging
from a ground-floor room.

"That is the woman's quarters," said he, "and the kitchen seems to be a
sort of rat-menagerie. We'd better try the first-floor."

He led the way up the stairs, and when he reached the landing he tried
the handle of the front room. Finding the door locked or bolted, he
passed on to the back room and tried the door of that, with the same
result. Then, holding up a warning finger, he proceeded to whistle a
popular air in a fine, penetrating tone, and to perform a double shuffle
on the bare floor. Almost immediately an angry voice was heard in the
front room, and slippered feet padded quickly across the floor. Then a
bolt was drawn noisily, the door flew open, and for an instant I had a
view of the rat-show man, clothed in a suit of very soiled pyjamas. But
it was only for an instant. Even as our eyes met, he tried to slam the
door to, and failing--in consequence of an intruding constabulary foot--he
sprang back, leaped over a bed and darted through a communicating
doorway into the back room and shut and bolted the door.

"That's unfortunate," said Miller. "Now we're going to have trouble."

The superintendent was right. On the first attempt to force the door, a
pistol-shot from within blew a hole in the top panel and made a notch in
the ear of the would-be invader. The latter replied through the hole, and
there followed a sort of snarl and the sound of a shattered bottle. Then,
as the constable stood aside and shot after shot came from within, the
door became studded with ragged holes. Meanwhile Miller, Thorndyke and I
tiptoed out on the landing, and taking as long a run as was possible,
flung ourselves, simultaneously on the back-room door. The weight of
three large men was too much for the crazy woodwork. As we fell on it
together, there was a bursting crash, the hinges tore away, the door flew
inwards, and we staggered into the room.

It was a narrow shave for some of us. Before we could recover our
footing, the showman had turned with his pistol pointing straight at
Miller's head. A bare instant before it exploded, Thorndyke, whose
momentum had carried him half-way across the room, caught it with an
upward snatch, and its report was followed by a harmless shower of
plaster from the ceiling. Immediately our quarry changed his tactics.
Leaving the pistol in Thorndyke's grasp, he darted across the room
towards a work-bench on which stood a row of upright, cylindrical tins.
He was in the act of reaching out for one of these when Thorndyke grasped
his pyjamas between the shoulders and dragged him back, while Miller
rushed forward and seized him. For a few moments there was a frantic and
furious struggle, for the fellow fought with hands and feet and teeth
with the ferocity of a wild cat, and, overpowered as he was, still strove
to drag his captors towards the bench. Suddenly, once more, a pistol-shot
rang out, and then all was still. By accident or design the struggling
man had got hold of the pistol that Thorndyke still grasped and pressed
the trigger, and the bullet had entered his own head just above the ear.

"Pooh!" exclaimed Miller, rising and wiping his forehead, "that was a
near one. If you hadn't stopped him, doctor, we'd all have gone up like
rockets."

"You think those things are bombs, then?" said I.

"Think!" he repeated. "I removed two exactly like them from the General
Post Office, and they turned out to be charged with T.N.T. And those
square ones on the shelf are twin brothers of the one that went off in
Rutherford's Bank."

As we were speaking, I happened to glance round at the doorway, and
there, to my surprise, was the woman whom we had seen below, still
holding the jug of milk and staring in with an expression of horror at
the dead revolutionary. Thorndyke also observed her, and stepping across
to where she stood, asked: "Can you tell me if there has been, or is now,
anyone sick in this house?

"Yes," the woman replied, without removing her eyes from the dead man.
"Dere is a chentleman sick upstairs. I haf not seen him. He used to look
after him," and she nodded to the dead body of the showman.

"I think we will go up and have a look at this sick gentleman," said
Thorndyke. "You had better not come, Miller."

We started together up the stairs, and as we went I asked: "Do you
suppose this is a case of plague?"

"No," he replied. "I fancy the plague department is in the kitchen; but
we shall see."

He looked round the landing which we had now reached and then opened the
door of the front room, Immediately I was aware of a strange, intensely
fetid odour, and glancing into the room, I perceived a man lying,
apparently in a state of stupor, in a bed covered with indescribably
filthy bed-clothes. Thorndyke entered and approached the bed, and I
followed. The light was rather dim, and it was not until we were quite
close that I suddenly recognised the disease.

"Good God!" I exclaimed, "it is typhus!"

"Yes," said Thorndyke; "and look at the bed clothes, and look at the poor
devil's neck. We can see now how that villain collected his specimens."

I stooped over the poor, muttering, unconscious wretch and was filled
with horror. Bed-clothes, pillow and patient were all alike crawling with
vermin.

* * * * *

"Of course," I said as we walked homewards, "I see the general drift of
this case, but what I can't under stand is how you connected up the
facts."

"Well," replied Thorndyke, "let us set out the argument and trace the
connections. The starting--point was the aluminium case that Mr. Rabbage
brought us. Those tubes of fleas and lice were clearly an abnormal
phenomenon. They might, as you suggested, have belonged to a scientific
collector; but that was not probable. The fleas were alive, and were
meant to remain alive, as the perforated caps of the tubes proved,' And
the lice had merely died, as lice quickly do if they are not fed. They
did not appear to have been killed, But against your view there were two
very striking facts, one of which I fancy you did not observe. The fleas
were not the common human flea; they were Asiatic rat-fleas."

"You are quite right," I admitted. "I did not notice that."

"Then," he continued, "there was the aniseed with which the parchment
caps of the tubes were scented. Now aniseed is irresistible to rats. It
is an infallible bait. But it is not specially attractive to fleas. What
then was the purpose of the scent? The answer, fantastic as it was, had
to be provisionally accepted because it was the only one that suggested
itself. If one of these tubes had been exposed to rats--dropped down a
rat-hole, for instance--it is certain that the rats would have gnawed
off the parchment cap. Then the fleas would have been liberated, and as
they were rat-fleas, they would have immediately fastened upon the rats.
The tubes, therefore, appeared to be an apparatus for disseminating
rat-fleas.

"But why should anyone want to disseminate rat- fleas? That question at
once brought into view another striking fact, Here, in these tubes, were
rat-fleas and body-lice: both carriers of deadly disease. The rat-flea is
a carrier of plague; the body-louse is a carrier of typhus. It was an
impressive coincidence. It suggested that the dissemination of rat-fleas
might be really the dissemination of plague; and if the lice were
distributed, too, that might mean the distribution of typhus.

"And now consider the maps. The circles on them all marked old slum-areas
tenanted by low-class aliens. But old slums abound in rats; and low-class
aliens abound in body-lice. Here was another coincidence. Then there was
the note-tablet bearing numbers associated with the letters a and b and
plus and minus signs. The letters a and b might mean rat and louse or
plague and typhus, and the plus and minus might mean a success or a
failure to produce an outbreak of disease. That was merely speculative,
but it was quite consistent.

"So far we were dealing with a hypothesis based on simple observation.
But that hypothesis could be proved or disproved. The question was: Were
these insects infected insects, or were they not? To settle this I took
one flea from each of the four tubes and 'sowed' it on agar, with the
result that from each flea I got a typical culture of plague bacillus,
which I verified with Haffkine's 'Stalactite test.' I also examined one
louse from each of the two tubes, and in each case got a definite typhus
reaction. So the insects were infected and the hypothesis was confirmed.

"The next thing was to find the owner of the tubes, Now the circles on
the maps indicated some sort of activity, presumably connected with rats
and carried on in these areas.

I visited those areas and got into conversation with the inhabitants on
the subject of rats, rat-catchers, rat pits, sewermen, and everything
bearing on rats; and at length I heard of an exhibitor of performing
rats. You know the rest. We found the man, we observe that all his rats,
excepting the tame white ones, were I black rats--the special
plague-carrying species--and we found on this spot a dead rat, which I
ascertained on examining the body, had died of plague. Finally there was
Polton's little book giving us the finger prints of the owner of the
aluminium case. That completed the identification; and inquiries at the
Local Government Board showed that cases of plague and typhus had
occurred in the marked areas."

"Had not the authorities taken any steps in the matter?" I asked.

Oh, yes," he replied. "They had carried out an energetic rat campaign in
the London Docks, the likeliest source of infection. Naturally, they
would not think of a criminal lunatic industriously sowing plague broad
cast."

"Then how did you connect this man with the bank outrage?"

"I never did, very conclusively," he replied. "It was mostly a matter of
inference. You see, the two crimes were essentially similar. They were
varieties of the same type. Both were cases of idiotic destructiveness,
and the agent in each was evidently a moral imbecile who was a professed
enemy of society. Such persons are rare in this country, and when they
occur are usually foreigners, most commonly Russians, or East Europeans
of some kind. The only actual clue was the date on Pilcher's letter, the
rather peculiar figures of which were extraordinarily like those on the
maps and the note-tablet. Still, it was little more than a guess, though
it happens to have turned out correct."

"And how do you suppose this fellow avoided getting plague and typhus
himself?"

"It was quite likely that he had had both. But he could easily avoid the
typhus by keeping himself clean and his clothing disinfected; and as to
the plague, he could have used Haffkine's plague-prophylactic and given
it to the woman. Clearly it would not have suited him to have a case of
plague in the house and have the health officer inspecting the premises."

That was the end of the case, unless I should include in the history a
very handsome fee sent to my colleague by the President of the Local
Government Board.

"I think we have earned it," said Thorndyke; "and yet I am not sure that
Mr. Rabbage is not entitled to a share."

And in fact, when that benevolent person called a few days later to
receive a slightly ambiguous report and tender his fee, he departed
beaming, bearing a donation wherewith to endow an additional bed, cot, or
basket, in the St. Francis Home of Rest.



REX V. BURNABY


IT is a normal incident in general medical practice that the family
doctor soon drifts into the position of a family friend. The Burnabys had
been among my earliest patients, and mutual sympathies had quickly
brought about the more intimate relationship. It was a pleasant
household, pervaded by a quiet geniality and a particularly attractive
homely, unaffected culture. It was an interesting household, too, for the
disparity in age between the husband and wife made the domestic
conditions a little unusual and invited speculative observation. And
there were other matters, to be referred to presently.

Frank Burnaby was a somewhat delicate man of about fifty: quiet, rather
shy, gentle, kindly, and singularly innocent and trustful. He held a post
at the Records Office, and was full of quaint and curious lore derive
from the ancient documents on which he worked: selections from which he
would retail in the family circle with a picturesque imagination and a
fund of quiet, dry humour that made them delightful to listen to. I have
never met a more attractive man, or one whom 1 liked better or respected
more.

Equally attractive, in an entirely different way, was his wife: an
extremely charming and really beautiful woman of under thirty--little
more than a girl, in fact: amiable, high-spirited and full of fun and
frolic, but nevertheless an accomplished, cultivated woman with a strong
interest in her husband's pursuits. They appeared to me an exceedingly
happy and united couple deeply attached to one another and in perfect
sympathy. There were four children--three boys and a girl--of Burnaby's
by his first wife; and their devotion to their young stepmother spoke
volumes for her care of them.

But there was a fly in the domestic ointment: at least, that was what I
felt. There was another family friend, a youngish man named Cyril Parker.
Not that I had anything against him, personally, but I was not quite
happy about the relationship. He was a markedly good-looking man,
pleasant, witty, and extremely well informed; for he was a partner in a
publishing house and acted as reader for the firm; whence it happened
that he, like Mr. Burnaby, gathered stores of interesting matter from his
professional reading. But I could not disguise from myself that his
admiration and affection for Mrs. Burnaby were definitely inside the
danger zone, and that the intimacy--on his side, at any rate--was
growing rather ominously. On her side there seemed nothing more than
frank, though very pronounced, friendship. But I looked at the
relationship askance. She was a woman whom any man might have fallen in
love with, and I did not like the expression that I sometimes detected in
Parker's eyes when he was looking at her. Still, there was nothing in the
conduct of either to which the slightest exception could have been taken
or which in any way foreshadowed the terrible disaster which was so
shortly to befall.

The starting-point of the tragedy was a comparatively trivial event. By
much poring over crabbed manuscripts, Mr. Burnaby developed symptoms of
eye-strain which caused me to send him to an oculist for an opinion and a
prescription for suitable spectacles. On the evening of the day on which
he had consulted the oculist, I received an urgent summons from Mrs.
Burnaby, and, on arriving at the house, found her husband somewhat
seriously ill. His symptoms were rather puzzling, for they corresponded
to no known disease. His face was flushed, his temperature slightly
raised, his pulse rapid, though the breathing was slow, his throat was
excessively dry, and his pupils widely dilated. It was an extraordinary
condition, resembling nothing within my knowledge excepting atropine
poisoning.

"Has he been taking medicine of any kind?" I asked.

Mrs. Burnaby shook her head. "He never takes any drugs or medicine but
what you prescribe; and it couldn't be anything that he has taken,
because the attack came on quite soon after he came home, before he had
either food or drink."

It was very mysterious and the patient himself could throw no light on
the origin of the attack. While I was reflecting on the matter, I
happened to glance at the mantelpiece, on which I noticed a drop labelled
"The Eye Drops" and a prescription envelope. Opening the latter I found
the oculist's prescription for the drops--a very weak solution of
atropine sulphate.

"Has he had any of these drops?" I asked.

"Yes," replied Mrs. Burnaby. "I dropped some into his eyes as soon as he
came in; two drops in each eye, according to the directions."

It was very odd. The amount of atropine in those four drops was less than
a hundredth of a grain; an impossibly small dose to produce the symptoms.
Yet he had all the appearance of having taken a poisonous dose, which he
obviously had not, since the drop-bottle was nearly full. I could make
nothing of it. However, I treated it as a case of atropine poisoning; and
as the treatment produced marked improvement, I went home, more mystified
than ever.

When I called on the following morning, I learned that he was practically
well, and had gone to his office. But that evening I had another urgent
message, and on hurrying round to Burnaby's house, found him suffering
from an attack similar to, but even more severe than, the one on the
previous day. I immediately administered an injection of pilocarpine and
other appropriate remedies, and had the satisfaction of seeing a rapid
improvement in his condition. But whereas the efficacy of the treatment
proved that the symptoms were really due to atropine, no atropine
appeared to have been taken excepting the minute quantity contained in
the eye-drops.

It was very mysterious. The most exhaustive inquiries failed to suggest
any possible source of the poison excepting the drops; and as each attack
had occurred a short time after the use of them, it was impossible to
ignore the apparent connection, in spite of the absurdly minute dose.

"I can only suppose," said I, addressing Mrs. Burnaby and Mr. Parker, who
had called to make inquiries, "that Burnaby is the subject of an
idiosyncrasy--that he is abnormally sensitive to this drug."

"Is that a known condition?" asked Parker.

"Oh, yes," I replied. "People vary enormously in the way in which they
react to drugs. Some are so intolerant of particular drugs--iodine, for
instance--that ordinary medicinal doses produce poisonous effects, while
others have the most extraordinary tolerance. Christisori, in his
Treatise on Poisons, gives a case of a man, unaccustomed to opium, who
took nearly an ounce of laudanum without any effect--a dose that would
have killed an ordinary man. These drugs are terrible pitfalls for the
doctor who doesn't know his patient. Just think what might have happened
to Burnaby if someone had given him a full medicinal dose of belladonna."

"Does belladonna have the same effect as atropine?" asked Mrs. Burnaby.

"It is the same," I replied. "Atropine is the active principle of
belladonna."

"What a mercy," she exclaimed, "that we discovered this idiosyncrasy in
time. I suppose he had better discontinue the drops?"

"Yes," I answered, "most emphatically; and I will write to Mr. Haines and
let him know that the atropine is impracticable."

I accordingly wrote to the oculist, who was politely sceptical as to the
connection between the drops and the attacks. However, Burnaby settled
the matter by refusing point-blank to have any further dealings with
atropine; and his decision was so far justified that, for the time being,
the attacks did not recur.

A couple of months passed. The incident had, to a great extent, faded
from my mind. But then it was revived in a way that not only filled me
with astonishment but caused me very grave anxiety. I was just about to
set out on my morning round when Burnaby's housemaid met me at my door,
breathing quickly and carrying a note. It was from Mrs. Burnaby, begging
me to call at once and telling me that her husband had been seized by an
attack similar to the previous ones. I ran back for my emergency bag and
then hurried round to the house, where I found Burnaby lying on a sofa,
very flushed, rather alarmed, and exhibiting well-marked symptoms of
atropine poisoning. The attack, however, was not a very severe one, and
the application of the appropriate remedies soon produced a change for
the better.

"Now, Burnaby," I said, as he sat up with a sigh of relief. "what have
you been up to? Haven't been tinkering with those drops again?"

"No," he replied. "Why should I? Haines has finished with my eyes."

"Well, you've been taking something with atropine in it."

"I suppose I have, but I can't imagine what. I have had no medicine of
any kind."

"No pills, lozenges, liniment, plaster, or ointment?"

"Nothing medicinal of any sort," he replied. "In fact, I have swallowed
nothing to-day but my breakfast; and the attack came on directly after,
though it was a simple enough meal, goodness knows--just a couple of
pigeon's eggs and some toast and tea."

"Pigeon's eggs," said I, with a grin, "why not sparrow's?"

"Cyril sent them--as a joke, I think," Mrs. Burnaby explained (Cyril, of
course, was Mr. Parker), "but I must say Frank enjoyed them. You see,
Cyril has taken lately to keeping pigeons and rabbits and other edible
beasts, and I think he has done it principally for Frank's sake, as you
have ordered him a special diet. We are constantly getting things from
Cyril now--pigeons and rabbits especially; and much younger than we can
buy them at the shops."

"Yes," said Burnaby, "he is most generous. I should think he supplies
more than half my diet. I hardly like to accept so much from him.'

"It gives him pleasure to send these gifts," said Mrs. Burnaby; "but I
wish it gave him pleasure to slaughter the creatures first. He always
brings or sends them alive, and the cook hates killing them. As to me, I
couldn't do it, though I deal with the corpses afterwards. I prepare
nearly all Frank's food myself."

"Yes," said Burnaby, with a glance of deep affection at his wife,
"Margaret is an artist in kickshaws and I consume the works of art. I can
tell you, doctor, I live like a fighting cock."

This was all very well, but it was beside the question; which was, where
did the atropine come from? If Burnaby had swallowed nothing but his
breakfast, it would seem that the atropine must have been in that. I
pointed this out.

"But you know, doctor," said Burnaby," that isn't possible. We can write
the eggs off. You can't get poison into an egg without making a hole in
the shell, and these eggs were intact. And as to the bread and butter,
and the tea, we all had the same, and none of the others seem any the
worse."

That isn't very conclusive," said I. "A dose of atropine that would be
poisonous to you would probably have no appreciable effect on the others.
But, of course, the real mystery is how on earth atropine could have got
into any of the food."

It couldn't," said Burnaby and that really was my own conviction. But it
was an unsatisfactory conclusion, for it left the mystery unexplained;
and when a length I took my leave, to continue my rounds of visits, it
was with the uncomfortable feeling that I had failed to trace the origin
of the danger or to secure my patient against its recurrence.

Nor was my uneasiness unjustified. Little more than a week had passed
when a fresh summons brought me to Burnaby's house, full of bewilderment
and apprehension. And indeed there was good cause for apprehension; for
when I arrived, to find Burnaby lying speechless and sightless his blue
eyes turned to blank discs of black, glittering with the unnatural
"belladonna sparkle,"--when I felt his racing pulse and watched his vain
efforts to swallow a sip of water,--I began to ask myself whether he was
not beyond recall. The same question was asked mutely by the terrified
eyes of his wife, who rose like a ghost from his bedside as I entered the
room. But once more he responded to the remedies, though more slowly this
time, and at the end of an hour I was relieved to see that the urgent
danger was past, although he still remained very ill.

Meanwhile, inquiries failed utterly to elicit any explanation of the
attack. The symptoms had set in shortly after dinner; a simple meal,
consisting of a pigeon cooked en casserole by Mrs. Burnaby herself,
vegetables and a light pudding which had been shared by the rest of the
family, and a little Chablis from a bottle that I been unsealed and
opened in the dining-room. Nothing else had been taken and no medicaments
of any kind used. On the other hand, any doubts as to the nature of the
attack were set at rest by a chemical test made by me and confirmed by
the Clinical Research Association, Atropine was demonstrably present,
though the amount was comparatively small. But its source remained an
impenetrable mystery.

It was a profoundly disturbing state of affairs. The last attack had
narrowly missed a fatal termination and the poison was still untraced.
From the same unknown source a fresh charge might be delivered at any
moment, and who could say what the result would be? Poor Burnaby was in a
state of chronic terror and his wife began to look haggard and worn with
constant anxiety and apprehension. Nor was I in much better case myself,
for, whatever should befall, the responsibility was mine. I racked my
brains for some possible explanation, but could think of none, though
there were times when a horrible thought would creep into my mind, only
to be indignantly cast out.

One evening a few days after the last attack, I received a visit from
Burnaby's brother, a pathologist attached to one of the London hospitals,
but not in practice. Very different was Dr. Burnaby from his gentle,
amiable brother; a strong, resolute, energetic man and none too suave in
manner. We were already acquainted, so no introductions were necessary,
and he came to the point with characteristic directness.

"You can guess what I have come about, Jardine--this atropine business.
What is being done in the matter?"

"I don't know that anything is being done," I answered lamely. "I can
make nothing of it."

"Waiting for the next attack and the inquest, h'm? Well, that won't do,
you know. This affair has got to be stopped before it is too late. If you
don't know where the poison comes from, somebody does. H'm! And it is
time to find out who that somebody is. There aren't many to choose from.
I am going there now to have a look round and make a few inquiries. You'd
better come with me."

"Are they expecting you?" I asked.

"No," he answered gruffly; "but I'm not a stranger and neither are you."

I decided to go round with him, though I didn't much like his manner.
This was evidently meant to be a surprise visit, and I had no great
difficulty in guessing at what was in his mind. On the other hand, I was
not sorry to share the responsibility with a man of his position and a
relative of the patient. Accordingly, I set forth with him willingly
enough; and it is significant of my state of mind at this time, that I
took my emergency bag with me.

When we arrived Burnaby and his wife were just sitting down to dinner--the
children took their evening meal by themselves--and they welcomed us
with the ready hospitality that made this such a pleasant household. Dr.
Burnaby's place was laid opposite mine, and I was faintly amused to note
his eye furtively travelling over the table, evidently assessing each
article of food as a possible vehicle of atropine. "If you had only let
us know you were coming, Jim," said Mrs. Burnaby when the joint made its
appearance, "we would have had something better than saddle of mutton. As
it is, you must take pot-luck."

"Saddle of mutton is good enough for me," replied Dr. Burnaby. "But what
on earth is that stuff that Frank has got?" he added, as Burnaby lifted
the lid from a little casserole.

"That," she answered, "is a fricassee of rabbit. Such a tiny creature it
was; a mere infant. Cook nearly wept at having to kill it."

"Kill it!" exclaimed the doctor; "do you buy your rabbits alive?"

"We didn't buy this one," she replied. "It was brought by Cyril--Mr.
Parker, you know," she added hastily and with a slight flush, as she
caught a grim glance of interrogation. "He sends quite a lot of poultry
and rabbits and things for Frank from his little farm."

"Ha!" said the doctor with a reflective eye on the casserole. "H'm!
Breeds them himself, hey? Whereabouts is his farm?"

"At Eltham. But it isn't really a farm. He just keeps rabbits and fowls
and pigeons in a place at the back of his garden."

"Is your cook English?" Dr. Burnaby asked, glancing again at the
casserole. "That affair of Frank's has rather a French look."

"Bless you, Jim," said Burnaby, "I am not dependent on mere cooks. I am a
pampered gourmet. Margaret prepares most of my food with her own sacred
hands. Cooks can't do this sort of thing"; and he helped himself afresh
from the casserole.

Dr. Burnaby seemed to reflect profoundly upon this explanation. Then he
abruptly changed the subject from cookery to the Lindisfarne Gospels and
thereby set his brother's chin wagging to a new tune. For Burnaby's
affections as a scholar were set on seventh- and eighth-century
manuscripts and his knowledge of them was as great as his enthusiasm.

"Oh, get on with your dinner, Frank, you old windbag," exclaimed Mrs.
Burnaby. "You are letting everything get cold."

So I am, dear," he admitted, "but--I won't be a minute. I just want Jim
to see those collotypes of the Durham Book. Excuse me."

He sprang up from the table and darted into the adjoining library, whence
he returned almost immediately carrying a small portfolio.

"These are the plates," he said, handing the portfolio to his brother.
"Have a look at them while I dispose of the arrears."

He took up his knife and fork and made as if to resume his meal. Then he
laid them down and leaned back in his chair. "I don't think I want any
more, after all," he said.

The tone in which he spoke caused me to look at him critically; for my
talk with his brother had made me a little nervous and apprehensive of
further trouble. What I now saw was by no means reassuring. A slight
flush and a trace of anxiety in his expression made me ask, with outward
composure but inward alarm: "You are feeling quite fit, I hope, Burnaby?"

"Well, not so very," he replied. "My eyes are going a bit misty and my
throat--" Here he worked his lips and swallowed as if with some effort.

I rose hastily, and, catching a terrified glance from his wife, went to
him and looked into his eyes. And thereupon my heart sank. For already
his pupils were twice their natural size and the darkened eyes exhibited
the too-familiar sparkle. I was sensible of a thrill of terror, and, as I
looked into Burnaby's now distinctly alarmed face, his brother's ominous
words echoed in my ears. Had I waited "for the next attack and the
inquest"?

The symptoms, once started, developed apace. From moment to moment he
grew worse, and the rapid enlargement of the pupils gave an alarming hint
as to the intensity of the poisoning. I darted out into the hail for my
bag, and as I re-entered, I saw him rise, groping blindly with his hands,
until his wife, ashen-faced and trembling, took his arm and led him to
the door.

"I had better give him a dose of pilocarpine at once," I said, getting
out my hypodermic syringe and glancing at Dr. Burnaby, who watched me
with stony composure.

"Yes," he agreed, "and a little morphine, too! and he will probably need
some stimulant. I won't come up; only be in the way."

I followed the patient up to the bedroom and administered the antidotes
forthwith. Then, while he was getting partially undressed with his wife's
help, I went downstairs in search of brandy and hot water, I was about to
enter the dining-room when, through the partly-open door, I saw Dr.
Burnaby standing by the fireplace with his open hand-bag--which he had
fetched in from the hall--on the table before him, and in his hand a
little Bohemian glass jar from the mantel piece. Involuntarily, I halted
for a moment; and as I did so, he carefully deposited the little ornament
in the bag and closed the latter, locking it with a small key which he
then put in his pocket.

It was an excessively odd proceeding, but, of course, it was no concern
of mine. Nevertheless, instead of entering the dining-room, I stole
softly towards the kitchen and fetched the hot water myself. When I
returned, the bag was back on the hall table and I found Dr. Burnaby
grimly pacing up and down the dining room. He asked me a few questions
while I was looking for the brandy, and then, somewhat to my surprise,
proposed to come up and lend a hand with the patient.

On entering the bedroom, we found poor Burnaby lying half-undressed on
the bed and in a very pitiable state; terrified, physically distressed
and inclined to ramble mentally. His wife knelt by the bed, white-faced,
red-eyed and evidently panic-stricken, though she was quite quiet and
self-restrained. As we entered, she rose to make way for us, and while we
were examining the patient's pulse and listening to his racing heart, she
silently busied herself with the preparations for administering the
stimulants.

"You don't think he is going to die, do you?" she whispered, as Dr.
Burnaby handed me back my stethoscope.

"It is no use thinking," he replied dryly--and I thought rather
callously--"we shall see" ; and with this he turned his back to her and
looked at his brother with a gloomy frown.

For more than an hour that question was an open one. From moment to
moment I expected to feel the wildly-racing pulse flicker out; to hear
the troubled breathing die away in an expiring rattle. From time to time
we cautiously increased the antidotes and administered restoratives, but
I must confess that I had little hope. Dr. Burnaby was undisguisedly
pessimistic. And as the weary minutes dragged on, and I looked
momentarily for the arrival of the dread messenger, there would keep
stealing into my mind a question that I hardly dared to entertain. What
was the meaning of it all? Whence had the poison come? And why, in this
household, had it found its way to Burnaby alone--the one inmate to whom
it was specially deadly?

At last--at long last--there came a change; hardly perceptible at
first, and viewed with little confidence. But after a time it became more
pronounced; and then, quite rapidly, the symptoms began to clear up. The
patient swallowed with ease, and great relish, a cup of coffee; the heart
slowed down, the breathing became natural, and presently, as the morphine
began to take effect, he sank into a doze which passed by degrees into a
quiet sleep.

"I think he will do now," said Dr. Burnaby, "so I won't stay any longer.
But it was a near thing, Jardine; most uncomfortably near."

He walked to the door, where, as he went out, he turned and bowed stiffly
to his sister-in-law. I followed him down the stairs, rather expecting
him to revert to the subject of his visit to me. But he made no reference
to it, nor, indeed, did he say anything until he stood on the doorstep
with his bag in his hand. Then he made a somewhat cryptic remark: "Well,
Jardine," he said, "the Durham Book saved him. But for those collotypes,
he would be a dead man."; and with that he walked away, leaving me to
interpret as best I could this decidedly obscure remark.

A quarter of an hour later, as Burnaby was peacefully asleep and
apparently out of all danger, I took my own departure, and as soon as I
was outside the house, I proceeded to put into execution a plan that had
been forming in my mind during the last hour. There was some mystery in
this case that was evidently beyond my powers to solve. But solved it had
to be, if Burnaby's life was to be saved, to say nothing of my own
reputation; so I had decided to put the facts before my friend and former
teacher, Dr. Thorndyke, and seek his advice, and if necessary, his
assistance.

It was now past ten o'clock, but I determined to take my chance of
finding him at his chambers, and accordingly, having found a taxi, I
directed the driver to set me down at the gate of Inner Temple Lane. My
former experience of Thorndyke's habits led me to be hopeful, and my
hopes were not unjustified on this occasion, for when I had mounted to
the first pair landing of No. 5A King's Bench Walk, and assaulted the
knocker of the inner door, I was relieved to find him not only at home,
but alone and disengaged. "It's a deuce of a time to come knocking you
up," I said, as he shook my hand, "but I am in rather a hole, and the
matter is urgent, so--"

"So you paid me the compliment of treating me as a friend," said he.
"Very proper of you. What is the nature of your difficulty?"

"Why, I've got a case of recurrent atropine poisoning and I can make
absolutely nothing of it."

Here I began to give a brief outline sketch of the facts, but after a
minute or two he stopped me.

"It is of no use being sketchy, Jardine," said he. "The night is young.
Let us have a complete history of the case, with particulars of all the
persons concerned and their mutual relations. And don't spare detail."

He seated himself with a notebook on his knee, and when he had lighted
his pipe, I plunged into the narrative of the case, beginning with the
eye-drop incident and finishing with the alarming events of the present
evening.

He listened with close attention, refraining from interrupting me
excepting occasionally to ask for a date, which he jotted down with a few
other notes. When I had finished, he laid aside his notebook, and, as he
knocked out his pipe, observed: "A very remarkable case, Jardine, and
interesting by reason of the unusual nature of the poison."

"Oh, hang the interest!" I exclaimed. "I am not a toxicologist. I am a
general practitioner; and I want to know what the deuce I ought to do."

I think," said he, "that your duty is perfectly obvious. You ought to
communicate with the police, either alone or in conjunction with some
member of the family."

I looked at him in dismay. "But," I faltered, "what have I got to tell
the police?"

"What you have told me," he replied; "which, put in a nutshell, amounts
to this: Frank Burnaby has had three attacks of atropine poisoning,
disregarding the eye-drops. Each attack has appeared to be associated
with some article of food prepared by Mrs. Burnaby and supplied by Mr.
Cyril Parker."

"But, good God!" I exclaimed, "you don't suspect Mrs. Burnaby?"

"I suspect nobody," he replied. "It may not be criminal poisoning at all.
But Mr. Burnaby has to be protected, and the case certainly needs
investigation."

"You don't think I could make a few inquiries myself first? " I
suggested.

He shook his head. "The risk is too great," he replied. "The man might
die before you reached a conclusion; whereas a few inquiries made by the
police would probably put a stop to the affair, unless the poisoning is
in some inconceivable way inadvertent."

That was what his advice amounted to, and I felt that he was right. But
it put on me a horribly unpleasant duty; and as I wended homewards I
tried to devise some means of mitigating its unpleasantness Finally I
decided to try to persuade Mrs. Burnaby to make a joint communication
with me.

But the necessity never arose. When I made my morning visit, I found a
taxicab drawn up opposite the door and the housemaid who admitted me
looked as if she had seen a ghost.

"Why, what is the matter, Mabel?" I asked, as she ushered me funereally
into the drawing-room.

She shook her head. "I don't know, sir. Something awful, I'm afraid. I'll
tell them you are here." With this she shut the door and departed.

The housemaid's manner and the unusually formal reception filled me with
vague forebodings. But even as I was wondering what could have happened,
the question was answered by the entry of a tall man who looked like a
guardsman in mufti.

"Dr. Jardine?" he asked; and as I nodded, he explained, presenting his
card, "I am Detective Lane. I have been instructed to make some inquiries
in respect of certain information which we have received. It is stated
that Mr. Frank Burnaby is suffering from the effects of poison. So far as
you know, is that true?"

"I hope he is recovered now," I replied, "but he was suffering last night
from what appeared to be atropine poisoning."

"Have there been any previous attacks of the same kind?" the sergeant
asked.

"Yes," I answered. "This was the fifth attack; but the first two were
evidently due to some eye-drops that he had used."

"And in the case of the other three; have you any idea as to how the
poison came to be taken? Whether it was in the food, for instance?"

"I have no idea, sergeant. I know nothing more than what I have told you;
and, of course, I am not going to make any guesses. Is it admissible to
ask who gave the information?"

"I am afraid not, sir," he replied. "But you will soon know. There is a
definite charge against Mrs. Burnaby--I have just made the arrest--and
we shall want your evidence for the prosecution."

I stared at him in utter consternation. "Do you mean," I gasped, "that
you have arrested Mrs. Burnaby?"

"Yes," he replied; "on a charge of having administered poison to her
husband."

I was absolutely thunderstruck. And yet, when I remembered Thorndyke's
words and recalled my own dim and hastily-dismissed surmises, there was
nothing so very surprising in this shocking turn of events.

"Could I have a few words with Mrs. Burnaby?" I asked.

"Not alone," he replied, "and better not at all. Still, if you have any
business--"

"I have," said I; whereupon he led the way to the dining-room, where I
found Mrs. Burnaby seated rigidly in a chair, pale as death, but quite
calm though rather dazed. Opposite her a military-looking man sat stiffly
by the table with an air of being unconscious of her presence, and he
took no notice as I walked over to his prisoner and silently pressed her
hand.

"I've come, Mrs. Burnaby," said I, "to ask if there is anything that you
want me to do. Does Burnaby know about this horrible affair?

No," she answered. "You will have to tell him if he is fit to hear it;
and if not, I want you to let my father know as soon as you can. That is
all; and you had better go now, as we mustn't detain these gentlemen.
Good-bye."

She shook my hand unemotionally, and when I had faltered a few words of
vague encouragement and sympathy, I went out of the room, but waited in
the hall to see the last of her.

The police officers were most polite and considerate. When she came out,
they attended her in quite a deferential manner. As the sergeant was in
the act of opening the street door, the bell rang; and when the door
opened it disclosed Mr. Parker standing on threshold. He was about to
address Mrs. Burnaby but she passed him with a slight bow, and descended
the steps, preceded by the sergeant and followed by the detective. The
former held the door of the cab open while she entered, when he entered
also and shut the door. The detective took his seat beside the driver and
the cab moved off.

"What is in the wind, Jardine?" Parker asked looking at me with a
distinctly alarmed expression. "Those fellows look like plain-clothes
policemen."

"They are," said I. "They have just arrest Mrs. Burnaby on a charge of
having attempted to poison her husband."

I thought Parker would have fallen. As it was, he staggered to a hall
chair and dropped on it in a state of collapse. "Good God!" he gasped.
"What a frightful thing! But there can't possibly be any evidence--any
real grounds for suspecting her. It must be just a wild guess. I wonder
who started it."

On this subject I had pretty strong suspicions, but I did not mention
them; and when I had seen Parker into the dining-room and explained
matters a little further I went upstairs, bracing myself for my very
disagreeable task.

Burnaby was quite recovered, though rather torpid from the effects of the
morphine. But my news roused him most effectually. In a moment he was out
of bed, hurriedly preparing to dress; and though his pale, set face told
how deeply the catastrophe had shocked him, he was quite collected and
had all his wits about him.

"It's of no use letting our emotions loose, doctor," said he, in reply to
my expressions of sympathy. "Margaret is in a very dangerous position.
You have only to consider what she is--a young, beautiful woman--and
what I am, to realise that. We must act promptly. I shall go and see her
father; he is a very capable lawyer; and we must get a first-class
counsel."

This seemed to be an opportunity for mentioning Thorndyke's peculiar
qualifications in a case of this kind, and I did so. Burnaby listened
attentively, apparently not unimpressed; but he replied cautiously: "We
shall have to leave the choice of the counsel to Harratt; but if you
care, meanwhile, to consult with Dr. Thorndyke, you have my authority. I
will tell Harratt."

On this I took my departure, not a little relieved at the way he had
taken the evil tidings; and as soon as I had disposed of the more urgent
part of my work, I betook myself to Thorndyke's chambers, just in time to
catch him on his return from the Courts.

"Well, Jardine," he said, when I had brought the history up to date,
"what is it that you want me to do?"

"I want you to do what you can to establish Mrs. Burnaby's innocence," I
replied.

He looked at me reflectively for a few moments; then he said, quietly but
rather significantly: "It is not my practice to give ex parte evidence.
An expert witness cannot act as an advocate. If I investigate the
evidence in this case, it will have to be at your risk, as representing
the accused, since any fact, no matter how damaging, which is in the
possession of the witness must be disclosed in accordance with the terms
of the oath, to say nothing of the obvious duty of every person to
further the ends of justice. Speaking as a lawyer, and taking the known
facts at their face value, I do not advise you to employ me to
investigate the case at large. You might find that you had merely
strengthened the hand of the prosecution.

"But I will make a suggestion. There seems to me to be in this case a
very curious and interesting possibility. Let me investigate that
independently. If my inquiries yield a positive result, I will let you
know and you can call me as a witness. If they yield a negative result,
you had better leave me out of the case."

To this suggestion I necessarily agreed; but when I took my leave of
Thorndyke I went away with a sense of discouragement and failure. His
reference to "the face value of the known facts" clearly implied that
those facts were adverse to the accused; while the " curious possibility"
suggested nothing but a forlorn hope from which he had no great
expectations.

I need not follow the weary business in detail. At the first hearing
before the magistrate the police merely stated the charge and gave
evidence of arrest, both they and the defence asking for a remand and
neither apparently desiring to show their hand. Accordingly the case was
adjourned for seven days, and as bail was refused, the prisoner was
detained in custody.

During those seven dreary days I spent as much time as I could with
Burnaby, and though I was filled with admiration of his fortitude and
self his drawn and pallid face wrung my heart. In those few days he
seemed to have changed into an old man. At his house I also met Mr.
Harratt, Mrs. Burnaby's father, a fine, dignified man and a typical old
lawyer; and it was unspeakably pathetic to see the father and the husband
of the accused woman each trying to support the courage of the other
while both were torn with anxiety and apprehension. On one occasion Mr.
Parker was present and looked more haggard and depressed than either. But
Mr. Harratt's manner towards him was so frigid and forbidding that he did
not repeat his visit. At these meetings we discussed the case freely,
which was a further affliction to me. For even I could not fail to see
that any evidence that I could give directly supported the case for the
prosecution.

So six of the seven days ran out, and all the time there was no word from
Thorndyke. But on the evening of the sixth day I received a letter from
him, curt and dry, but still giving out a ray of hope. This was the brief
message:

"I have gone into the question of which I spoke to you and consider that
the point is worth raising. I have accordingly written to Mr. Harratt
advising him to that effect."

It was a somewhat colourless communication. But I knew Thorndyke well
enough to realise that his promises usually understated his intentions.
And when, on the following morning, I met Mr. Harratt and Burnaby at the
court, something in their manner--a new vivacity and expectancy--suggested
that Thorndyke had been more explicit in his communication to
the lawyer. But, all the same, their anxiety, for all their outward
courage, was enough to have touched a heart of stone.

The spectacle that that court presented when the case was called forms a
tableau that is painted on my memory in indelible colours. The mingling
of squalor and tragedy, of frivolity and dread solemnity--the grave
magistrate on the bench, the stolid policemen, the busy, preoccupied
lawyers, and the gibbering crowd of spectators, greedy for sensation,
with eager eyes riveted on the figure in the dock--offered such a medley
of contrasts as I hope never to look upon again.

As to the prisoner herself, her appearance brought my heart into my
mouth. Rigid as a marble statue and nearly as void of colour, she stood
in the dock, guarded by two constables, looking with stony bewilderment
on the motley scene, outwardly calm, but with the calm of one who looks
death in the face; and when the prosecuting counsel rose to open the case
for the police, she looked at him as a victim on the scaffold might look
upon the executioner.

As I listened to the brief opening address, my heart sank, though the
counsel, Sir Harold Layton, K.C., presented his case with that scrupulous
fairness to the accused that makes an English court of justice a thing
without parallel in the world. But the mere facts, baldly stated without
comment, were appalling. No persuasive rhetoric was needed to show that
they led direct to the damning conclusion.

Frank Burnaby, an elderly man, married to a young and beautiful woman,
had on three separate occasions had administered to him a certain deadly
poison, to wit, atropine. It would be proved that he had suffered from
the effects of that poison; that the symptoms followed the taking of
certain articles of food of which he alone had partaken; that the said
food did actually contain the said poison; and that the food which
contained the poison was specially prepared for his sole consumption by
his wife, the accused, with her own hands. No evidence was at present
available as to how the accused obtained the poison or that she had any
such poison in her possession, nor would any suggestion be offered as to
the motive of the crime. But, on the evidence of the actual
administration of the poison, he would ask that the prisoner be committed
for trial. He then proceeded to call the witnesses, of whom I was
naturally the first. When I had been sworn and given my description, the
counsel asked a few questions which elicited the history of the case and
which I need not repeat. He then continued:

"Have you any doubt as to the cause of Mr. Burnaby's symptoms?"

"No. They were certainly due to atropine poisoning."

"Has Mr. Burnaby any constitutional peculiarity in respect of atropine?"

"Yes. He is abnormally susceptible to the effects of atropine."

"Was this peculiar susceptibility known to the accused?"

"Yes. It was communicated to her by me."

"Was it known, so far as you are aware, to any other persons?"

"Mr. Parker was present when I told her, and Mr. Burnaby and his brother,
Dr. Burnaby, were also informed."

"Is there any way, so far as you know, in which the accused could have
obtained possession of atropine?"

"Only by having the oculist's prescription for the eye-drops made up."

"Do you know of any medium, other than the food, by which atropine might
have been taken by Mr. Burnaby?"

"I do not," I replied; and this concluded my evidence. But as I stepped
out of the witness-box, I reflected gloomily that every word that I had
spoken was a rivet in the fetters of the silent figure in the dock.

The next witness was the cook. She testified that she had killed and
skinned the rabbit and had then handed it to the accused, who made it
into a fricassee and prepared it for the table. Witness took no part in
the preparation and she was absent from the kitchen on one occasion for
several minutes, leaving the accused there alone.

When the cook had concluded her evidence, the name of James Burnaby was
called, and the doctor entered the witness-box, looking distinctly
uncomfortable, but grim and resolute. The first few questions elicited
the circumstances of his visit to his brother's house and of the sudden
attack of illness. That illness he had at once recognised as acute
atropine poisoning, and had assumed that the poison was in the specially
prepared food.

"Did you take any measures to verify this opinion?" counsel asked.

"Yes. As soon as I was alone, I took part of the remainder of the rabbit
and put it in a glass jar which I found on the mantelpiece and which I
first rinsed out with water. Later, I carried the sample of food to
Professor Berry, who analysed it in my presence and found it to contain
atropine. He obtained from it a thirtieth of a grain of atropine
sulphate."

"Is that a poisonous dose?"

"Not to an ordinary person, though it is considerably beyond the
medicinal dose. But it would have been a poisonous dose to Frank Burnaby.
If he had swallowed this, in addition to what he had already taken, I
feel no doubt that it would have killed him."

This concluded the case for the prosecution, and a black case it
undoubtedly looked. There was no cross-examination; and as Thorndyke had
arrived some time previously and conferred with Mr. Harratt and his
counsel, I concluded that the defence would take the form of a
counter-attack by the raising of a fresh issue. And so it turned out.
When Thorndyke entered the witness-box and had disposed of the
preliminaries, the counsel for the defence "gave him his head."

"You have made certain investigations in regard to this case, I believe?"
Thorndyke assented, and the counsel continued: "I will not ask you
specific questions, but will request you to describe your investigations
and their result, and tell us what caused you to make them."

"This case," Thorndyke began, "was brought to my notice by Dr. Jardine,
who gave me all the facts known to him. These facts were very remarkable,
and, taken together, they suggested a possible explanation of the
poisoning. There were four striking points in the case. First, there was
the very unusual nature of the poison. Second, the abnormal
susceptibility of Mr. Burnaby to this particular poison. Third, the fact
that all the food in which the poison appeared to have been conveyed came
from the same source: it was sent by Mr. Cyril Parker. Fourth, that food
consisted of pigeon's eggs, pigeon's flesh, and rabbit's flesh."

"What is there remarkable about that?" the counsel asked.

"The remarkable point is that the pigeon and the rabbit have an
extraordinary immunity to atropine. Most vegetable-feeding birds and
animals are more or less immune to vegetable poisons. Many birds and
animals are largely immune to atropine; but among birds the pigeon is
exceptionally immune, while the rabbit is the most extreme instance among
animals. A single rabbit can take without the slightest harm more than a
hundred times the quantity of atropine that would kill a man; and rabbits
habitually feed freely on the leaves and berries of the belladonna or
deadly nightshade."

"Does the deadly nightshade contain atropine?" the counsel asked.

"Yes. Atropine is the active principle of the belladonna plant and gives
to it its poisonous properties."

"And if an animal, such as a rabbit, were to feed on the nightshade
plant, would its flesh be poisonous?"

"Yes. Cases of belladonna poisoning from eating rabbit have been
recorded--by Firth and Bentley, for instance."

"And you suspected that the poison in this case had been contained in the
pigeon and the rabbit themselves?"

"Yes. It was a striking coincidence that the poisoning should follow the
consumption of these two specially immune animals. But there was a
further reason for connecting them. The symptoms were strictly
proportionate to the probable amount of poison in each case. Thus the
symptoms were only slight after eating the pigeon's eggs. But the eggs of
a poisoned pigeon could contain only a minute quantity of the poison.
After eating the pigeon the symptoms were much more severe, and the body
of a pigeon which had fed on belladonna would contain much more atropine
than could be contained in an egg. Finally, after eating the rabbit, the
symptoms were extremely violent; but a rabbit has the greatest immunity
and is the most likely to have eaten large quantities of belladonna
leaves."

"Did you take any measures to put your theory to the test? "

"Yes. Last Monday I went to Eltham, where I had ascertained that Mr.
Cyril Parker lives, and inspected his premises from the outside. At the
end of his garden is a small paddock enclosed by a wall. Approaching this
across a meadow and looking over the wall, I saw that the enclosure was
provided with small fowl-houses, pigeon-cotes, and rabbit hutches. All
these were open and their inmates were roaming about the paddock. On one
side of the enclosure, by the wall was a dense mass of deadly nightshade
plants, extending the whole length of the wall and about a couple of
yards in width. At one part of this was a ring fence of wire netting, and
inside it were five half-grown rabbits, There was a basket containing a
small quantity of cabbage leaves and other green stuff, but as I watched,
I saw the young rabbits browsing freely on the nightshade plants in
preference to the food provided for them.

"On the following day I went to Eltham again taking with me an assistant
who carried a young rabbit in a small hamper. We watched the paddock
until the coast was clear. Then my assistant got over the wall and
abstracted a young rabbit from inside the ring fence and handed it to me.
He then took the rabbit from the hamper and dropped it inside the fence.
As soon as we were clear of the meadow, we killed the captured rabbit--to
prevent any possible elimination of any poison that it might have
swallowed. On arriving in London, I at once took the dead rabbit to St.
Margaret's Hospital, where, in the chemical laboratory, and in the
presence of Dr. Woodford, the Professor of Chemistry, I skinned it and
prepared it as if for cooking by removing the viscera. I then separated
the flesh from the bones and handed the former to Dr. Woodford, who, in
my presence, carried out an exhaustive chemical test for atropine. The
result was that atropine was found to be present in all the muscles; and,
on making a quantitative test, the muscles alone yielded no less than .93
grain."

"Is that a poisonous dose?" the counsel asked.

"Yes; it is a poisonous dose for a normal man. In the case of an
abnormally susceptible person like Mr. Burnaby it would certainly be a
fatal dose."

This completed Thorndyke's evidence. There was no cross and the
magistrate put no questions. When Dr. Woodford had been called and had
given confirmatory evidence, Mrs. Burnaby's counsel proceeded to address
the bench. But the magistrate cut him short.

"There is really no case to argue," said he. "The evidence of the expert
witnesses makes it perfectly clear that the poison was already in the
food when it came into the hands of the accused. Consequently the charge
against her of introducing the poison falls to the ground and the case
must be dismissed. I am sure everyone will sympathise with the
unfortunate lady who has been the victim of these extraordinary
circumstances, and will rejoice, as I do, at the clearing up of the
mystery. The prisoner is discharged."

It was a dramatic moment when, amidst the applause of the spectators,
Mrs. Burnaby stepped down from the dock and clasped her husband's
outstretched hand But, overwhelmed as they both were by the sudden
relief, I thought it best not to linger, but, after congratulations, to
take myself off with Thorndyke, But one pleasant incident I witnessed
before I went Dr. Burnaby had been standing apart, evidently some what
embarrassed, when suddenly Mrs. Burnaby ran to him and held out her hand.

"I suppose, Margaret," he said gruffly, "you think I'm an old beast?"

"Indeed I don't," she replied. "You acted quite properly, and I respect
you for having the moral courage to do it. And don't forget, Jim, that
you action has saved Frank's life. But for you, there would have been no
Dr. Thorndyke; and but for Dr. Thorndyke, there would have been another
poisoned rabbit."

"What do you make of this case?" I asked, as Thorndyke and I walked away
from the court. "Do you suppose the poisoning was accidental?

He shook his head. "No, Jardine," he replied. "There are too many
coincidences. You notice that the poisoned animals did not appear until
after Mr Parker had learned from you that Burnaby was abnormally
sensitive to atropine and could consequently be poisoned by an ordinary
medicinal dose. Then the sending of the animals alive looks like a
precaution divert suspicion from himself and confuse the issue Again,
that ring fence among the belladonna plans has a fishy look, and the
plants themselves were not only abnormally numerous but many of them very
young and looked as if they had been planted. Further, I happen to know
that Parker's firm published, only last year, a book on toxicology in
which the immunity of pigeons and rabbits was mentioned and which Parker
probably read."

"Then do you believe that he intended to let Mrs. Burnaby--the woman
with whom he was in love--bear the brunt of his crime? It seems
incredibly villainous and cowardly."

"I do not," he replied. "I imagine that the rabbit that I captured, or
one of the others, would have been sent to Burnaby in a few days' time.
The cook would probably have prepared it for him and it would almost
certainly have killed him; and his death would have been proof of Mrs.
Burnaby's innocence. Suspicion would have been transferred to the cook.
But I don't suppose any action will be taken against him, for it is
practically certain that no jury would convict him on my evidence."

Thorndyke was right in his opinion. No proceedings were taken against
Parker. But the house of the Burnabys knew him no more.



A MYSTERY OF THE SAND-HILLS


I have occasionally wondered how often Mystery and Romance present
themselves to us ordinary men of affairs only to be passed by without
recognition. More often, I suspect than most of us imagine. The uncanny
tendency of my talented friend John Thorndyke to become involved in
strange, mysterious and abnormal circumstances has almost become a joke
against him. But yet, on reflection, I am disposed to think that his
experiences have not differed essentially from those of other men, but
that his extraordinary powers of observation and rapid inference have
enabled him to detect abnormal elements in what, to ordinary men,
appeared to be quite commonplace occurrences. Certainly this was so in
the singular Roscoff case, in which, if I had been alone, I should
assuredly have seen nothing to merit more than a passing attention.

It happened that on a certain summer morning--it was the fourteenth of
August, to be exact--we were discussing this very subject as we walked
across the golf-links from Sandwich towards the sea. I was spending a
holiday in the old town with my wife, in order that she might paint the
ancient streets, and we had induced Thorndyke to come down and stay with
us for a few days. This was his last morning, and we had come forth
betimes to stroll across the sand-hills to Shellness.

It was a solitary place in those days. When we came off the sand-hills
on to the smooth, sandy beach, there was not a soul in sight, and our
own footprints were the first to mark the firm strip of sand between
high-water mark and the edge of the quiet surf.

We had walked a hundred yards or so when Thorndyke stopped and looked
down at the dry sand above tide-marks and then along the wet beach.

"Would that be a shrimper?" he cogitated, referring to some impressions
of bare feet in the sand. "If so, he couldn't have come from Pegwell,
for the River Stour bars the way. But he came out of the sea and seems
to have made straight for the sand-hills."

"Then he probably was a shrimper," said I, not deeply interested.

"Yet," said Thorndyke, "it was an odd time for a shrimper to be at
work."

"What was an odd time?" I demanded. "When was he at work?"

"He came out of the sea at this place," Thorndyke replied, glancing at
his watch, "at about half-past eleven last night, or from that to
twelve."

"Good Lord, Thorndyke!" I exclaimed, "how on earth do you know that?"

"But it is obvious, Anstey," he replied. "It is now half-past nine, and
it will be high-water at eleven, as we ascertained before we came out.
Now, if you look at those footprints on the sand, you see that they stop
short--or rather begin--about two-thirds of the distance from
high-water mark to the edge of the surf. Since they are visible and
distinct, they must have been made after last high-water. But since they
do not extend to the water's edge, they must have been made when the tide
was going out; and the place where they begin is the place where the edge
of the surf was when the footprints were made. But the place is, as we
see, about an hour below the high-water mark, Therefore, when the man
came out of the sea, the tide had been going down for an hour, roughly.
As it is high-water at eleven this morning, it was high-water at about
ten-forty last night; and as the man came out of the sea about an hour
after high-water, he must have come out at, or about, eleven-forty. Isn't
that obvious?"

"Perfectly," I replied, laughing. "It is as simple as sucking eggs when
you think it out. But how the deuce do you manage always to spot these
obvious things at a glance? Most men would have just glanced at those
footprints and passed them without a second thought."

"That", he replied, "is a mere matter of habit; the habit of trying to
extract the significance of simple appearances. It has become almost
automatic with me."

During our discussion we had been walking forward slowly, straying on to
the edge of the sand-hills. Suddenly, in a hollow between the hills, my
eye lighted upon a heap of clothes, apparently, to judge by their orderly
disposal, those of a bather. Thorndyke also had observed them and we
approached together and looked down on them curiously.

"Here is another problem for you," said I. "Find the bather. I don't see
him anywhere."

"You won't find him here," said Thorndyke. "These clothes have been out
all night. Do you see the little spider's web on the boots with a few
dewdrops still clinging to it? There has been no dew forming for a good
many hours. Let us have a look at the beach."

We strode out through the loose sand and stiff, reedy grass to the smooth
beach, and here we could plainly see a line of prints of naked feet
leading straight down to the sea, but ending abruptly about two-thirds of
the way to the water's edge.

"This looks like our nocturnal shrimper," said I. "He seems to have gone
into the sea here and come out at the other place. But if they are the
same footprints, he must have forgotten to dress before he went home. It
is a quaint affair."

"It is a most remarkable affair," Thorndyke agreed; "and if the
footprints are not the same it will be still more inexplicable."

He produced from his pocket a small spring tape-measure with which he
carefully took the lengths of two of the most distinct footprints and the
length of the stride. Then we walked back along the beach to the other
set of tracks, two of which he measured in the same manner.

"Apparently they are the same," he said, putting away his tape; "indeed,
they could hardly be otherwise. But the mystery is, what has become of
the man? He couldn't have gone away without his clothes, unless he is a
lunatic, which his proceedings rather suggest. There is just the
possibility that he went into the sea again and was drowned. Shall we
walk along towards Shellness and see if we can find any further traces?"

We walked nearly half a mile along the beach, but the smooth surface of
the sand was everywhere unbroken. At length we turned to retrace our
steps; and at this moment I observed two men advancing across the
sand-hills. By the time we had reached the mysterious heap of garments
they were quite near, and, attracted no doubt by the intentness with
which we were regarding the clothes, they altered their course to see
what we were looking at. As they approached, I recognized one of them as
a barrister named Hallet, a neighbour of mine in the Temple, whom I had
already met in the town, and we exchanged greetings.

"What is the excitement?" he asked, looking at the heap of clothes and
then glancing along the deserted beach; "and where is the owner of the
togs? I don't see him anywhere."

"That is the problem," said I. "He seems to have disappeared."

"Gad!" exclaimed Hallett, "if he has gone home without his clothes, He'll
create a sensation in the town! What?"

Here the other man, who carried a set of golf clubs, stooped over the
clothes with a look of keen interest.

"I believe I recognize these things, Hallett; in fact, I am sure I do.
That waistcoat, for instance. You must have noticed that waistcoat. I saw
you playing with the chap a couple of days ago. Tall, clean-shaven, dark
fellow. Temporary member, you know. What was his name? Popoff, or
something like that?"

"Roscoff," said Hallett. "Yes, by Jove, I believe you are right. And now
I come to think of it, he mentioned to me that he sometimes came up here
for a swim. He said he particularly liked a paddle by moonlight, and I
told him he was a fool to run the risk of bathing in a lonely place like
this, especially at night."

"Well, that is what he seems to have done," said Thorndyke, "for these
clothes have certainly been here all night, as you can see by that
spider's web."

"Then he has come to grief, poor beggar!" said Hallett; "probably got
carried away by the current. There is a devil of a tide here on the
flood."

He started to walk towards the beach, and the other man, dropping his
clubs, followed.

"Yes," said Hallett, "that is what has happened. You can see his
footprints plainly enough going down to the sea; but there are no tracks
coming back."

"There are some tracks of bare feet coming out of the sea farther up the
beach," said I, "which seem to be his."

Hallett shook his head. "They can't be his," he said, "for it is obvious
that he never did come back. Probably they are the tracks of some
shrimper. The question is, what are we to do! Better take his things to
the dormy-house and then let the police know what has happened."

We went back and began to gather up the clothes, each of us taking one or
two articles.

"You were right, Morris," said Hallett, as he picked up the shirt.
"Here's his name, "P. Roscoff", and I see it is on the vest and the
shorts, too. And I recognize the stick now not that that matters, as the
clothes are marked."

On our way across the links to the dormy-house mutual introductions took
place. Morris was a London solicitor, and both he and Hallett knew
Thorndyke by name.

"The coroner will have an expert witness," Hallett remarked as we entered
the house. "Rather a waste in a simple case like this. We had better put
the things in here."

He opened the door of a small room furnished with a good-sized table and
a set of lockers, into one of which he inserted a key.

"Before we lock them up," said Thorndyke, "I suggest that we make and
sign a list of them and of the contents of the pockets to put with them."

"Very well," agreed Hallett. "You know the ropes in these cases. I"ll
write down the descriptions, if you will call them out."

Thorndyke looked over the collection and first enumerated the articles: a
tweed jacket and trousers, light, knitted wool waistcoat, black and
yellow stripes, blue cotton shirt, net vest and shorts, marked in ink "P.
Roscoff", brown merino socks, brown shoes, tweed cap, and a walking-stick--a
mottled Malacca cane with a horn crooked handle. When Hallett had
written down this list, Thorndyke laid the clothes on the table and began
to empty the pockets, one at a time, dictating the descriptions of the
articles to Hallett while Morris took them from him and laid them on a
sheet of newspaper. In the jacket pockets were a handkerchief, marked
"P.R."; a letter-case containing a few stamps, one or two hotel bills and
local tradesmen's receipts, and some visiting cards inscribed "Mr. Peter
Roscoff, Bell Hotel, Sandwich"; a leather cigarette-case, a 3B pencil
fitted with a point-protector, and a fragment of what Thorndyke decided
to be vine charcoal.

"That lot is not very illuminating," remarked Morris, peering into the
pockets of the letter-case. "No letter or anything indicating his
permanent address. However, that isn't our concern." He laid aside the
letter-case, and picking up a pocket-knife that Thorndyke had just taken
from the trousers pocket, examined it curiously. "Queer knife, that," he
remarked. 'steel blade--mighty sharp, too--nail file and an ivory
blade. Silly arrangement, it seems. A paperknife is more convenient
carried loose, and you don't want a handle to it."

"Perhaps it was meant for a fruit-knife," suggested Hallett, adding it to
the list and glancing at a little heap of silver coins that Thorndyke had
just laid down. "I wonder", he added, "what has made that money turn so
black. Looks! as if he had been taking some medicine containing sulphur.
What do you think, doctor?"

"It is quite a probable explanation," replied Thorndyke, "though we
haven't the means of testing it. But you notice that this vesta-box from
the other pocket is quite bright, which is rather against your theory."

He held out a little silver box bearing the engraved monogram "P.R.", the
burnished surface of which contrasted strongly with the dull
brownish-black of the coins. Hallett looked at it with an affirmative
grunt, and having entered it in his list and added a bunch of keys and a
watch from the waistcoat pocket, laid down his pen.

"That's the lot, is it?" said he, rising and beginning to gather up the
clothes. "My word! Look at the sand on the table! Isn't it astonishing
how saturated with sand one's clothes become after a day on the links
here? When I undress at night, the bathroom floor is like the bottom of a
bird-cage. Shall I put the things in the locker now?"

"I think", said Thorndyke, "that, as I may have to give evidence, I
should like to look them over before you put them away."

Hallett grinned. "There's going to be some expert evidence after all," he
said. "Well, fire away, and let me know when you have finished. I am
going to smoke a cigarette outside."

With this, he and Morris sauntered out, and I thought it best to go with
them, though I was a little curious as to my colleague's object in
examining these derelicts. However, my curiosity was not entirely
baulked, for my friends went no farther than the little garden that
surrounded the house, and from the place where we stood I was able to
look in through the window and observe Thorndyke's proceedings.

Very methodical they were. First he laid on the table a sheet of
newspaper and on this deposited the jacket, which he examined carefully
all over, picking some small object off the inside near the front, and
giving special attention to a thick smear of paint which I had noticed on
the left cuff. Then, with his spring tape he measured the sleeves and
other principal dimensions. Finally, holding the jacket upside down, he
beat it gently with his stick, causing a shower of sand to fall on the
paper. He then laid the jacket aside, and, taking from his pocket one or
two seed envelopes (which I believe he always carried), very carefully
shot the sand from the paper into one of them and wrote a few words on
it--presumably the source of the sand--and similarly disposing of the
small object that he had picked off the surface.

This rather odd procedure was repeated with the other garments--a fresh
sheet of newspaper being used for each and with the socks, shoes, and
cap. The latter he examined minutely, especially as to the inside, from
which he picked out two or three small objects, which I could not see,
but assumed to be hairs. Even the walking-stick was inspected and
measured, and the articles from the pockets scrutinized afresh,
particularly the curious pocket-knife, the ivory blade of which he
examined on both sides through his lens.

Hallett and Morris glanced in at him from time to time with indulgent
smiles, and the former remarked:

"I like the hopeful enthusiasm of the real pukka expert, and the way he
refuses to admit the existence of the ordinary and commonplace. I wonder
what he has found out from those things. But here he is. Well, doctor,
what's the verdict? Was it temporary insanity or misadventure?"

Thorndyke shook his head. "The inquiry is adjourned pending the
production of fresh evidence," he replied, adding: "I have folded the
clothes up and put all the effects together in a paper parcel, excepting
the stick."

When Hallett had deposited the derelicts in the locker, he came out and
looked across the links with an air of indecision.

"I suppose," said he, "we ought to notify the police. I"ll do that. When
do you think the body is likely to wash up, and where?"

"It is impossible to say," replied Thorndyke. "The set of the current is
towards the Thames, but the body might wash up anywhere along the coast.
A case is recorded of a bather drowned off Brighton whose body came up
six weeks later at Walton-on-the-Naze. But that was quite exceptional. I
shall send the coroner and the Chief Constable a note with my address,
and I should think you had better do the same. And that is all that we
can do, until we get the summons for the inquest, if there ever is one."

To this we all agreed; and as the morning was now spent we walked back
together across the links to the town, where we encountered my wife
returning homeward with her sketching kit. This Thorndyke and I took
possession of and having parted from Hallett and Morris opposite the
Barbican, we made our way to our lodgings in quest of lunch. Naturally,
the events of the morning were related to my wife and discussed by us
all, but I noted that Thorndyke made no reference to his inspection of
the clothes, and accordingly I said nothing about the matter before my
wife; and no opportunity of opening the subject occurred until the
evening, when I accompanied him to the station. Then, as we paced the
platform while waiting for his train, I put my question:

"By the way, did you extract any information from those garments? I saw
you going through them very thoroughly."

"I got a suggestion from them," he replied, "but it is such an odd one
that I hardly like to mention it. Taking the appearances at their face
value, the suggestion was that the clothes were not all those of the same
man. There seemed to be traces of two men, one of whom appeared to belong
to this district, while the other would seem to have been associated with
the eastern coast of Thanet between Ramsgate and Margate, and by
preference, on the scale of probabilities, to Dumpton or Broadstairs."

"How on earth did you arrive at the localities?" I asked.

"Principally," he replied, "by the peculiarities of the sand which fell
from the garments and which was not the same in all of them. You see,
Anstey," he continued, 'sand is analogous to dust. Both consist of minute
fragments detached from larger masses; and just as, by examining
microscopically the dust of a room, you can ascertain the colour and
material of the carpets, curtains, furniture coverings, and other
textiles, detached particles of which form the dust of that room, so, by
examining sand, you can judge of the character of the cliffs, rocks, and
other large masses that occur in the locality, fragments of which become
ground off by the surf and incorporated in the sand of the beach. Some of
the sand from these clothes is very characteristic and will probably be
still more so when I examine it under the microscope."

"But", I objected, "isn't there a fallacy in that line of reasoning?
Might not one man have worn the different garments at different times and
in different places?"

"That is certainly a possibility that has to be borne in mind," he
replied. "But here comes my train. We shall have to adjourn this
discussion until you come back to the mill."

As a matter of fact, the discussion was never resumed, for, by the time
that I came back to "the mill", the affair had faded from my mind, and
the accumulations of grist monopolized my attention; and it is probable
that it would have passed into complete oblivion but for the circumstance
of its being revived in a very singular manner, which was as follows.

One afternoon about the middle of October my old friend, Mr. Brodribb, a
well-known solicitor, called to give me some verbal instructions. When he
had finished our business, he said:

"I've got a client waiting outside, whom I am taking up to introduce to
Thorndyke. You'd better come along with us."

"What is the nature of your client's case?" I asked.

"Hanged if I know," chuckled Brodribb. "He won't say. That's why I am
taking him to our friend. I've never seen Thorndyke stumped yet, but I
think this case will put the lid on him. Are you coming?"

"I am, most emphatically," said I, "if your client doesn't object."

"He's not going to be asked," said Brodribb. "He'll think you are part of
the show. Here he is."

In my outer office we found a gentlemanly, middle-aged man to whom
Brodribb introduced me, and whom he hustled down the stairs and up King's
Bench Walk to Thorndyke's chambers. There we found my colleague earnestly
studying a will with the aid of a watchmaker's eye-glass, and Brodribb
opened the proceedings without ceremony.

"I've brought a client of mine, Mr. Capes, to see you, Thorndyke. He has
a little problem that he wants you to solve."

Thorndyke bowed to the client and then asked:

"What is the nature of the problem?"

"Ah!" said Brodribb, with a mischievous twinkle, "that's what you've got
to find out. Mr. Capes is a somewhat reticent gentleman."

Thorndyke cast a quick look at the client and from him to the solicitor.
It was not the first time that old Brodribb's high spirits had overflowed
in the form of a "leg-pull", though Thorndyke had no more whole-hearted
admirer than the shrewd, facetious old lawyer.

Mr. Capes smiled a deprecating smile. "It isn't quite so bad as that," he
said. "But I really can't give you much information. It isn't mine to
give. I am afraid of telling someone else's secrets, if I say very much."

"Of course you mustn't do that," said Thorndyke. "But, I suppose you can
indicate in general terms the nature of your difficulty and the kind of
help you want from us."

"I think I can," Mr. Capes replied. "At any rate, I will try. My
difficulty is that a certain person with whom I wish to communicate has
disappeared in what appears to me to be a rather remarkable manner. When
I last heard from him, he was staying at a certain seaside resort and he
stated in his letter that he was returning on the following day to his
rooms in London. A few days later, I called at his rooms and found that
he had not yet returned. But his luggage, which he had sent on
independently, had arrived on the day which he had mentioned. So it is
evident that he must have left his seaside lodgings. But from that day to
this I have had no communication from him, and he has never returned to
his rooms nor written to his landlady."

"About how long ago was this?" Thorndyke asked.

"It is just about two months since I heard from him."

"You don't wish to give the name of the seaside resort where he was
staying."

"I think I had better not," answered Mr. Capes. "There are circumstances--they
don't concern me, but they do concern him very much--which seem
to make it necessary for me to say as little as possible."

"And there is nothing further that you can tell us?"

"I am afraid not, excepting that, if I could get into communication with
him, I could tell him of something very much to his advantage and which
might prevent him from doing something which it would be much better that
he should not do."

Thorndyke cogitated profoundly while Brodribb watched him with
undisguised enjoyment. Presently my colleague looked up and addressed our
secretive client.

"Did you ever play the game of "Clump", Mr. Capes? It is a somewhat legal
form of game in which one player asks questions of the others, who are
required to answer "yes" or "no" in the proper witness-box style."

"I know the game," said Capes, looking a little puzzled, "but--"

"Shall we try a round or two?" asked Thorndyke, with an unmoved
countenance. "You don't wish to make any statements, but if I ask you
certain specific questions, will you answer "yes or no"?"

Mr. Capes reflected awhile. At length he said: "I am afraid I can't
commit myself to a promise. Still, if you like to ask a question or two,
I will answer them if I can."

"Very well," said Thorndyke, "then, as a start, supposing I suggest that
the date of the letter that you received was the thirteenth of August?
What do you say? Yes or no?"

Mr. Capes sat bolt upright and stared at Thorndyke open-mouthed.

"How on earth did you guess that?" he exclaimed in an astonished tone.
"It's most extraordinary! But you are right. It was dated the
thirteenth."

"Then," said Thorndyke, "as we have fixed the time we will have a try at
the place. What do you say if I suggest that the seaside resort was in
the neighbourhood of Broadstairs?"

Mr. Capes was positively thunderstruck. As he sat gazing at Thorndyke he
looked like amazement personified.

"But," he exclaimed, "you can't be guessing! You know! You know that he
was at Broadstairs. And yet, how could you? I haven't even hinted at who
he is."

"I have a certain man in my mind," said Thorndyke, "who may have
disappeared from Broadstairs. Shall I suggest a few personal
characteristics?"

Mr. Capes nodded eagerly and Thorndyke continued:

"If I suggest, for instance, that he was an artist--a painter in oil"--Capes
nodded again--"that he was somewhat fastidious as to his
pigments?"

"Yes," said Capes. "Unnecessarily so in my opinion, and I am an artist
myself. What else?"

"That he worked with his palette in his right hand and held his brush
with his left?"

"Yes, yes," exclaimed Capes, half-rising from his chair; "and what was he
like?"

"By gum," murmured Brodribb, "we haven't stumped him after all."

Evidently we had not, for he proceeded:

"As to his physical characteristics, I suggest that he was a shortish
man--about five feet seven--rather stout, fair hair, slightly bald and
wearing a rather large and ragged moustache."

Mr. Capes was astounded--and so was I, for that matter--and for some
moments there was a silence, broken only by old Brodribb, who sat
chuckling softly and rubbing his hands. At length Mr. Capes said:

"You have described him exactly, but I needn't tell you that. What I do
not understand at all is how you knew that I was referring to this
particular man, seeing that I mentioned no name. By the way, sir, may I
ask when you saw him last?"

"I have no reason to suppose," replied Thorndyke, "that I have ever seen
him at all"; an answer that reduced Mr. Capes to a state of stupefaction
and brought our old friend Brodribb to the verge of apoplexy. "This man,"
Thorndyke continued, "is a purely hypothetical individual whom I have
described from certain traces left by him. I have reason to believe that
he left Broadstairs on the fourteenth of August and I have certain
opinions as to what became of him thereafter. But a few more details
would be useful, and I shall continue my interrogation. Now this man sent
his luggage on separately. That suggests a possible intention of breaking
his journey to London. What do you say?"

"I don't know," replied Capes, "but I think it probable."

"I suggest that he broke his journey for the purpose of holding an
interview with some other person."

"I cannot say," answered Capes, "but if he did break his journey it would
probably be for that purpose."

"And supposing that interview to have taken place, would it be likely to
be an amicable interview?"

"I am afraid not. I suspect that my--er--acquaintance might have made
certain proposals which would have been unacceptable, but which he might
have been able to enforce. However, that is only surmise," Capes added
hastily. "I really know nothing more than I have told you, except the
missing man's name, and that I would rather not mention."

"It is not material," said Thorndyke, "at least, not at present. If it
should become essential, I will let you know."

"M--yes," said Mr. Capes. "But you were saying that you had certain
opinions as to what has become of this person."

"Yes," Thorndyke replied; 'speculative opinions. But they will have to be
verified. If they turn out to be correct--or incorrect either--I will
let you know in the course of a few days. Has Mr. Brodribb your address?"

"He has; but you had better have it, too."

He produced his card, and, after an ineffectual effort to extract a
statement from Thorndyke, took his departure.

The third act of this singular drama opened in the same setting as the
first, for the following Sunday morning found my colleague and me
following the path from Sandwich to the sea. But we were not alone this
time. At our side marched Major Robertson, the eminent dog trainer, and
behind him trotted one of his superlatively educated fox-hounds.

We came out on the shore at the same point as on the former occasion, and
turning towards Shellness, walked along the smooth sand with a careful
eye on the not very distinctive landmarks. At length Thorndyke halted.

"This is the place," said he. "I fixed it in my mind by that distant
tree, which coincides with the chimney of that cottage on the marshes.
The clothes lay in that hollow between the two big sand-hills."

We advanced to the spot, but, as a hollow is useless as a landmark,
Thorndyke ascended the nearest sand-hill and stuck his stick in the
summit and tied his handkerchief to the handle.

"That," he said, "will serve as a centre which we can keep in sight, and
if we describe a series of gradually widening concentric circles round
it, we shall cover the whole ground completely."

"How far do you propose to go?" asked the major.

We must be guided by the appearance of the ground," replied Thorndyke.
"But the circumstances suggest that if there is anything buried, it can't
be very far from where the clothes were laid. And it is pretty certain to
be in a hollow."

The major nodded; and when he had attached a long leash to the dog's
collar, we started, at first skirting the base of the sand-hill, and
then, guided by our own footmarks in the loose sand, gradually increasing
the distance from the high mound, above which Thorndyke's handkerchief
fluttered in the light breeze. Thus we continued, walking slowly, keeping
close to the previously made circle of footprints and watching the dog;
who certainly did a vast amount of sniffing, but appeared to let his mind
run unduly on the subject of rabbits.

In this way half an hour was consumed, and I was beginning to wonder
whether we were going after all to draw a blank, when the dog's demeanour
underwent a sudden change. At the moment we were crossing a range of high
sand-hills, covered with stiff, reedy grass and stunted gorse, and before
us lay a deep hollow, naked of vegetation and presenting a bare, smooth
surface of the characteristic greyish-yellow sand. On the side of the
hill the dog checked, and, with upraised muzzle, began to sniff the air
with a curiously suspicious expression, clearly unconnected with the
rabbit question. On this, the major unfastened the leash, and the dog,
left to his own devices, put his nose to the ground and began rapidly to
cast to and fro, zig-zagging down the side of the hill and growing every
moment more excited. In the same sinuous manner he proceeded across the
hollow until he reached a spot near the middle; and here he came to a
sudden stop and began to scratch up the sand with furious eagerness.

"It's a find, sure enough!" exclaimed the major, nearly as excited as his
pupil; and, as he spoke, he ran down the hillside, followed by me and
Thorndyke, who, as he reached the bottom, drew from his "poacher's
pocket" a large fern-trowel in a leather sheath. It was not a very
efficient digging implement, but it threw up the loose sand faster than
the scratchings of the dog.

It was easy ground to excavate. Working at the spot that the dog had
located, Thorndyke had soon hollowed out a small cavity some eighteen
inches deep. Into the bottom of this he thrust the pointed blade of the
big trowel. Then he paused and looked round at the major and me, who were
craning eagerly over the little pit.

"There is something there," said he. "Feel the handle of the trowel."

I grasped the wooden handle, and, working it gently up and down, was
aware of a definite but somewhat soft resistance. The major verified my
observation, and then Thorndyke resumed his digging, widening the pit and
working with increased caution. Ten minutes" more careful excavation
brought into view a recognizable shape--a shoulder and upper arm; and
following the lines of this, further diggings disclosed the form of a
head and shoulders plainly discernable though still shrouded in sand.
Finally, with the point of the trowel and a borrowed handkerchief--mine--the
adhering sand was cleared away; and then, from the bottom of the
deep, funnel-shaped hole, there looked up at us, with a most weird and
horrible effect, the discoloured face of a man.

In that face, the passing weeks had wrought inevitable changes, on which
I need not dwell. But the features were easily recognizable, and I could
see at once that the man corresponded completely with Thorndyke's
description. The cheeks were full; the hair on the temples was of a pale,
yellowish brown; a straggling, fair moustache covered the mouth; and,
when the sand had been sufficiently cleared away, I could see a small,
tonsure-like bald patch near the back of the crown. But I could see
something more than this. On the left temple, just behind the eyebrow,
was a ragged, shapeless wound such as might have been made by a hammer.

"That turns into certainty what we have already surmised," said
Thorndyke, gently pressing the scalp around the wound. "It must have
killed him instantly. The skull is smashed in like an egg-shell. And this
is undoubtedly the weapon," he added, drawing out of the sand beside the
body a big, hexagon-headed screw-bolt, "very prudently buried with the
body. And that is all that really concerns us. We can leave the police to
finish the disinterment; but you notice, Anstey, that the corpse is nude
with the exception of the vest and probably the pants. The shirt has
disappeared. Which is exactly what we should have expected."

Slowly, but with the feeling of something accomplished, we took our way
back to the town, having collected Thorndyke's stick on the way.
Presently, the major left us, to look up a friend at the club house on
the links. As soon as we were alone, I put in a demand for an
elucidation.

"I see the general trend of your investigations," said I "but I can't
imagine how they yielded so much detail; as to the personal appearance of
this man, for instance."

"The evidence in this case," he replied, "was analogous to circumstantial
evidence. It depended on the cumulative effect of a number of facts, each
separately inconclusive, but all pointing to the same conclusion. Shall I
run over the data in their order and in accordance with their
connections?"

I gave an emphatic affirmative, and he continued:

"We begin, naturally, with the first fact, which is, of course, the most
interesting and important; the fact which arrests attention, which shows
that something has to be explained and possibly suggests a line of
inquiry. You remember that I measured the footprints in the sand for
comparison with the other footprints. Then I had the dimensions of the
feet of the presumed bather. But as soon as I looked at the shoes which
purported to be those of that bather, I felt a conviction that his feet
would never go into them.

"Now, that was a very striking fact--if it really was a fact--and it
came on top of another fact hardly less striking, The bather had gone
into the sea; and at a considerable distance he had unquestionably come
out again. Then, could be no possible doubt. In foot-measurement an,
length of stride the two sets of tracks were indentical; and there were
no other tracks. That man had come ashore and he had remained ashore. But
yet he had not put on his clothes. He couldn't have gone away naked; but
obviously he was not there. As a criminal lawyer, you must admit that
there was prima fade evidence of something very abnormal and probably
criminal.

On our way to the dormy-house, I carried the stick in the same hand as my
own and noted that it was very little shorter. Therefore it was a tall
man's stick. Apparently, then, the stick did not belong to the shoes, but
to the man who had made the footprints. Then, when we came to the
dormy-house, another striking fact presented itself. You remember that
Hallett commented on the quantity of sand that fell from the clothes on
to the table. I am astonished that he did not notice the very peculiar
character of that sand. It was perfectly unlike the sand which would fall
from his own clothes. The sand on the sand-hills is dune sand--wind-borne
sand, or, as the legal term has it, æolian sand; and it is
perfectly characteristic. As it has been carried by the wind, it is
necessarily fine. The grains are small; and as the action of the wind
sorts them out, they are extremely uniform in size. Moreover, by being
continually blown about and rubbed together, they become rounded by
mutual attrition. And then dune sand is nearly pure sand, composed of
grains of silica unmixed with other substances.

"Beach sand is quite different. Much of it is half-formed, freshly broken
down silica and is often very coarse; and, as I pointed out at the time,
it is mixed with all sorts of foreign substances derived from masses in
the neighbourhood. This particular sand was loaded with black and white
particles, of which the white were mostly chalk, and the black particles
of coal. Now there is very little chalk in the Shellness sand, as there
are no cliffs quite near, and chalk rapidly disappears from sand by
reason of its softness; and there is no coal."

"Where does the coal come from?" I asked.

"Principally from the Goodwins," he replied. "It is derived from the
cargoes of colliers whose wrecks are embedded in those sands, and from
the bunkers of wrecked steamers. This coal sinks down through the seventy
odd feet of sand and at last works out at the bottom, where it drifts
slowly across the floor of the sea in a north- westerly direction until
some easterly gale throws it up on the Thanet shore between Ramsgate and
Foreness Point. Most of it comes up at Dumpton and Broadstairs, there you
may see the poor people, in the winter, gathering coal pebbles to feed
their fires.

"This sand, then, almost certainly came from the Thanet coast; but the
missing man, Roscoff, had been staying in Sandwich, playing golf on the
sand-hills. This was another striking discrepancy, and it made me decide
to examine the clothes exhaustively, garment by garment. I did so; and
this is what I found.

"The jacket, trousers, socks and shoes were those of a shortish, rather
stout man, as shown by measurements, and the cap was his, since it was
made of the same cloth as the jacket and trousers.

"The waistcoat, shirt, underclothes and stick were those of a tall man.

"The garments, socks and shoes of the short man were charged with Thanet
beach sand, and contained no dune sand, excepting the cap, which might
have fallen off on the sand-hills.

"The waistcoat was saturated with dune sand and contained no beach sand,
and a little dune sand was obtained from the shirt and under-garments.
That is to say, that the short man's clothes contained beach sand only,
while the tall man's clothes contained only dune sand.

"The short man's clothes were all unmarked; the tall man's clothes were
either marked or conspicuously recognizable, as the waistcoat and also
the stick.

"The garments of the short man which had been left were those that could
not have been worn by a tall man without attracting instant attention and
the shoes could not have been put on at all; whereas the garments of the
short man which had disappeared--the waistcoat, shirt and
underclothes--were those that could have been worn by a tall man without attracting
attention. The obvious suggestion was that the tall man had gone off in
the short man's shirt and waistcoat but otherwise in his own clothes.

"And now as to the personal characteristics of the short man. From the
cap I obtained five hairs. They were all blond, and two of them were of
the peculiar, atrophic, "point of exclamation" type that grow at the
margin of a bald area. Therefore he was a fair man and partially bald. On
the inside of the jacket, clinging to the rough tweed, I found a single
long, thin, fair moustache hair, which suggested a long, soft moustache.
The edge of the left cuff was thickly marked with oil-paint-not a single
smear, but an accumulation such as a painter picks up when he reaches
with his brush hand across a loaded palette. The suggestion--not very
conclusive--was that he was an oil-painter and left-handed. But there
was strong confirmation. There was an artist's pencil--3B--and a stump
of vine charcoal such as an oil-painter might carry. The silver coins in
his pocket were blackened with sulphide as they would be if a piece of
artist's soft, vulcanized rubber has been in the pocket with them. And
there was the pocket-knife. It contained a sharp steel pencil-blade, a
charcoal file and an ivory palette-blade; and that palette-blade had been
used by a left-handed man."

"How did you arrive at that?" I asked.

"By the bevels worn at the edges," he replied. "An old palette-knife used
by a right-handed man shows a bevel of wear on the under side of the
left-hand edge and the upper side of the right-hand edge; in the case of
a left handed man the wear shows on the under side of the right hand edge
and the upper side of the left-hand edge. This being an ivory blade,
showed the wear very distinctly and proved conclusively that the user was
left-handed; and as an ivory palette-knife is used only by fastidiously
careful painters for such pigments as the cadmiums, which might be
discoloured by a steel blade, one was justified in assuing that he was
somewhat fastidious as to his pigments."

As I listened to Thorndyke's exposition I was profoundly impressed. His
conclusions, which had sounded like mere speculative guesses, were, I now
realized, based upon an analysis of the evidence as careful and as
impartial as the summing up of a judge. And these conclusions he had
drawn instantaneously from the appearances of things that had been before
my eyes all the time and from which I had learned nothing.

"What do you suppose is the meaning of the affair?" I asked presently.
"What was the motive of the murder?"

"We can only guess," he replied. "But, interpreting Capes" hints, I
should suspect that our artist friend was a blackmailer; that he had come
over here to squeeze Roscoff--perhaps not for the first time--and that
his victim lured him out on the sand-hills for a private talk and then
took the only effective means of ridding himself of his persecutor. That
is my view of the case; but, of course, it is only surmise."

Surmise as it was, however, it turned out to be literally correct. At the
inquest Capes had to tell all that he knew, which was uncommonly little,
though no one was able to add to it. The murdered man, Joseph Bertrand,
had fastened on Roscoff and made a regular income by blackmailing him.
That much Capes knew; and he knew that the victim had been in prison and
that that was the secret. But who Roscoff was and what was his real
name--for Roscoff was apparently a nom de guerre--he had no idea. So he
could not help the police. The murderer had got clear away and there was
no hint as to where to look for him; and so far as I know, nothing has
ever been heard of him since.



THE APPARITION OF BURLING COURT


Thorndyke seldom took a formal holiday. He did not seem to need one. As
he himself put it, "A holiday implies the exchange of a less pleasurable
occupation for one more pleasurable. But there is no occupation more
pleasurable than the practice of Medical Jurisprudence." Moreover, his
work was less affected by terms and vacations than that of an ordinary
barrister, and the Long Vacation often found him with his hands full.
Even when he did appear to take a holiday the appearance tended to be
misleading, and it was apt to turn out that his disappearance from his
usual haunts was associated with a case of unusual interest at a
distance.

Thus it was on the occasion when our old friend, Mr. Brodribb, of
Lincoln's Inn, beguiled him into a fortnight's change at St.
David's-at-Cliffe, a seaside hamlet on the Kentish coast. There was a
case in the background, and a very curious case it turned out to be,
though at first it appeared to me quite a commonplace affair; and the
manner of its introduction was as follows.

One hot afternoon in the early part of the Long Vacation the old
solicitor dropped in for a cup of tea and a chat. That, at least, was how
he explained his visit; but my experience of Mr. Brodribb led me to
suspect some ulterior purpose in the call, and as he sat by the open
window, teacup in hand, looking, with his fine pink complexion, his silky
white hair and his faultless "turn out," the very type of the courtly,
old-fashioned lawyer, I waited expectantly for the matter of his visit to
transpire. And, presently, out it came.

"I am going to take a little holiday down at St. David's," said he. "Just
a quiet spell by the sea, you know. Delightful place. So quiet and
restful and so breezy and fresh. Ever been there?"

"No," replied Thorndyke. "I only just know the name."

"Well, why shouldn't you come down for a week or so? Both of you. I shall
stay at Burling Court, the Lumleys' place. I can't invite you there as
I'm only a guest, but I know of some comfortable rooms in the village
that I could get for you. I wish you would come down, Thorndyke," he
added after a pause. "I'm rather unhappy about young Lumley--I'm the
family lawyer, you know, and so was my father and my grandfather, so I
feel almost as if the Lumleys were my own kin--and I should like to have
your advice and help."

"Why not have it now?" suggested Thorndyke.

"I will," he replied; "but I should like your help on the spot too. I'd
like you to see Lumley have a talk with him and tell me what you think of
him."

"What is amiss with him?" Thorndyke asked.

"Well," answered Brodribb, "it looks uncomfortably like insanity. He has
delusions--sees apparitions and that sort of thing. And there is some
insanity in the family. But I had better give you the facts in their
natural order.

"About four months ago Giles Lumley of Burling Court died; and as he was
a widower without issue, the estate passed to his nearest male relative,
my present client, Frank Lumley, who was also the principal beneficiary
under the will. At the time of Giles' death Frank was abroad, but a
cousin of his, Lewis Price, was staying at the house with his wife as a
more or less permanent guest; and as Price's circumstances were not very
flourishing, and as he is the next heir to the estate, Frank--who is a
bachelor--wrote to him at once telling him to look upon Burling Court as
his home for as long as he pleased."

That was extremely generous of him," I remarked

"Yes," Brodribb agreed; "Frank is a good fellow; a very high-minded
gentleman and a very sweet man but a little queer--very queer just now.
Well, Frank came back from abroad and took up his abode at the house; and
for a time all went well. Then, one day, Price called on me and gave me
some very unpleasant news. It seemed that Frank, who had always been
rather neurotic and imaginative, had been interesting himself a good deal
in psychical research and--and balderdash of that kind, you know. Well,
there was no great harm in that, perhaps. But just lately he had taken to
seeing visions and--what was worse--talking about them; so much so that
Price got uneasy and privately invited a mental specialist down to lunch
; and the specialist, having had a longish talk with Frank, Price
confidentially that he (Frank) was obviously suffering from insane
delusions. Thereupon Price called me and begged me to see Frank myself
and what ought to be done; so I made an occasion for him to come and see
me at the office."

"And what did you think of him?" asked Thorndyke.

I was horrified--horrified," said Mr. Brodribb. "I assure you,
Thorndyke, that that poor young man sat in my office and talked like a
stark lunatic. Quite quietly, you know. No excitement, though he was
evidently anxious and unhappy. But there he sat gravely talking the
damnedest nonsense you ever heard."

"As, for instance--?"

"Well, his infernal visions. Luminous birds flying about in the dark, and
a human head suspended in mid air--upside down, too. But I had better
give you his story as he told it. I made full shorthand notes as he was
talking, and I've brought them with me, though I hardly need them.

"His trouble seems to have begun soon after he took up his quarters at
Burling Court. Being a bookish sort of fellow, he started to go through
his library systematically; and presently he came across a small
manuscript book, which turned out to be a soft of family history, or
rather a collection of episodes. It was rather a lurid little book, for
it apparently dwelt chiefly on the family crime, the family spectre and
the family madness."

"Did you know about these heirlooms?" Thorndyke asked.

"No; it was the first I'd heard of "em. Price knew there was some soft of
family superstition, but he didn't know what it was; and Giles knew about
it--so Price tells me--but didn't care to talk about it. He never
mentioned it to me."

"What is the nature of the tradition? " inquired Thorndyke.

"I'll tell you," said Brodribb, taking out his notes. "I've got it all
down, and poor Frank reeled the stuff off as if he had learned it by
heart. The book, which is dated 1819, was apparently written by a Walter
Lumley and the story of the crime and the spook runs thus:

"About 1720 the property passed to a Gilbert Lumley, a naval officer, who
then gave up the sea, married and settled down at Burling Court. A year
or two later some trouble arose about his wife and a man named Glynn, a
neighbouring squire. With or without cause, Lumley became violently
jealous, and the end of it was that he lured Glynn to a large cavern in
the cliffs and there murdered him. It was a most ferocious and vindictive
crime. The cavern, which was then used by smugglers, had a beam across
the roof bearing a tackle for hoisting out boat cargoes, and this tackle
Lumley fastened to Glynn's ankles--having first pinioned him--and
hoisted him up so that he hung head downwards a foot or so clear of the
floor of the cave. And there he left him hanging until the rising tide
flowed into the cave and drowned him.

"The very next day the murder was discovered, and as Lumley was the
nearest justice of the peace, the discoverers reported to him and took
him to the cave to the body. When he entered the cave the corpse was
stilt hanging as he had left the living man, and a bat was flittering
round and round the dead man's head. He had the body taken down and
carried to Glynn's house and took the necessary measures for the inquest.
Of course, everyone suspected him of the murder, but there was no
evidence against him. The verdict was murder by some person unknown, and
as Gilbert Lumley was not sensitive, everything seemed to have gone quite
satisfactorily.

"But it hadn't. One night, exactly a month after murder, Gilbert retired
to his bedroom in the dark. He was in the act of feeling along the
mantelpiece for the tinder-box, when he became aware of a dim light
moving about the room. He turned round quickly and then s that it was a
bat--a most uncanny and abnormal bat that seemed to give out a greenish
ghostly light--flitting round and round his bed. On this, remembering
the bat in the cavern, he rushed out of the room in the very devil of a
fright. Presently he returned with one of the servants and a couple of
candles; but the bat had disappeared.

"From that time onward, the luminous bat haunted Gilbert, appearing in
dark rooms, on staircases and passages and corridors, until his nerves
were all on end and he did not dare to move about the house at night
without a candle or a lantern. But that was not the worst. Exactly two
months after the murder the next stage of the haunting began. He had
retired to his bedroom and was just about to get into bed when he
remembered that he had left his watch in the little dressing-room that
adjoined his chamber. With a candle in his hand he went to the
dressing-room and flung open the door. And then he stopped dead and stood
as if turned into stone; for, within a couple of yards of him, suspended
in mid-air, was a man's head hanging upside down.

"For some seconds he stood rooted to the spot, unable to move. Then he
uttered a cry of horror and rushed back to his room and down to the hall.
There was no doubt whose head it was, strange and horrible as it looked
in that unnatural, inverted position; for he had seen it twice before in
that very position hanging in the cavern. Evidently he had not got rid of
Glynn.

"That night, and every night henceforward, he slept in his wife's room.
And all through the night he was conscious of a strange and dreadful
impulse to rise and go down to the shore; to steal into the cavern and
wait for the flowing tide. He lay awake, fighting against the invisible
power that seemed to be drawing him to destruction, and by the morning
the horrid impulse began to weaken. But he went about in terror, not
daring to go near the shore and afraid to trust himself alone.

"A month passed. The effect of the apparition grew daily weaker and an
abundance of lights in the house protected him from the visitation of the
bat. Then, exactly three months after the murder, he saw the head again.
This time it was in the library, where he had gone to fetch a book. He
was standing by the book shelves and had just taken out a volume, when,
as he turned away, there the hideous thing was, hanging in hat awful,
grotesque posture, chin upwards and the scanty hair dropping down like
wet fringe. Gilbert dropped the book that he was holding and fled from
the room with a shriek; and all that night invisible hands seemed to be
plucking at him to draw him away to where he voices of the waves were
reverberating in the cavern.

"This second visitation affected him profoundly. He could not shake off
that sinister impulse to steal away to the shore. He was a broken man,
the victim of an abiding terror, clinging for protection to the very
servants, creeping abroad with shaking limbs and an apprehensive eye
towards the sea. And ever in his ears was the murmur of the surf and the
hollow echoes of the cavern.

Already he had sought forgetfulness in drink; and sought it in vain. Now
he took refuge in opiates. Every night, before retiring to the dreaded
bed, he mingled laudanum with the brandy that brought him stupor if not
repose. And brandy and opium began to leave their traces in the tremulous
hand, the sallow cheek and the bloodshot eye. And so another month
passed.

"As the day approached that would mark the fourth month, his terror of
the visitation that he now anticipated reduced him to a state of utter
prostration. Sleep--even drugged sleep--appeared that night to be out
of the question, and he decided to sit up with his family, hoping by that
means to escape the dreaded visitor. But it was a vain hope. Hour after
hour he sat in his elbow chair by the fire, while his wife dozed in her
chair opposite, until the clock in the hall struck twelve. He listened
and counted the strokes of the bell, leaning back with his eyes closed.
Half the weary night was gone. As the last stroke sounded and a deep
silence fell on the house, he opened his eyes--and looked into the face
of Glynn within a few inches of his own.

"For some moments he sat with dropped jaw and dilated eyes staring in
silent horror at this awful thing; then with an agonised screech he slid
from his chair into a heap on the floor.

"At noon on the following day he was missed from the house. A search was
made in the grounds and in the neighbourhood, but he was nowhere to be
found. At last some one thought of the cavern, of which he had spoken in
his wild mutterings and a party of searchers made their way thither. And
there they found him when the tide went out, lying on the wet sand with
the brown sea-tangle wreathed about his limbs and the laudanum
bottle--now full of sea water--by his side.

"With the death of Gilbert Lumley it seemed that the murdered man's
spirit was appeased. During the life- lime of Gilbert's son, Thomas, the
departed Glynn made no sign. But on his death and the succession of his
son Arthur--then a middle-aged man--the visitations began again, and in
the same order. At the end of the first month the luminous bat appeared;
at the end of the second, the inverted head made its entry, and again at
the third and the fourth months; and within twenty-four hours of the last
visitation, the body of Arthur Lumley was found in the cavern. And so it
has been from that time onward. One generation escapes untouched by the
curse; but in the next, Glynn and the sea claim their own."

"Is that true, so far as you know?" asked Thorndyke.

"I can't say," answered Brodribb. "I am now only quoting Walter Lumley's
infernal little book. But I remember that, in fact, Giles' father was
drowned. I understood that his boat capsized, but that may have been only
a story to cover the suicide.

"Well now, I have given you the gruesome history from this book that poor
Frank had the misfortune to find. You see that had had it all off by
heart and had evidently read it again and again. Now I come to his own
story, which he told me very quietly but with intense conviction and very
evident forebodings.

"He found this damned book a few days after his arrival at Burling Court,
and it was clear to him that, if the story was true, he was the next
victim, since his predecessor, Giles, had been left in peace. And so it
turned out. Exactly a month after his arrival, going up to his bedroom in
the dark--no doubt expecting this apparition--as soon as he opened the
door he saw a thing like a big glow-worm or firefly flitting round the
room. It is evident that he was a good deal upset, for he rushed
downstairs in a state of great agitation and fetched Price up to see it.
But the strange thing was--though perhaps not so very strange, after
all--that, although the thing was still there, flitting about the room,
Price could see nothing. However, he pulled up the blind--the window
was wic open--and the bat flopped out and disappeared.

"During the next month the bat reappeared several times, in the bedroom,
in corridors and once in a garret, when it flew out as Frank opened the
door."

"What was he doing in the garret?" asked Thorndyke.

"He went up to fetch an ancient coffin-stool that Mrs. Price had seen
there and was telling him about. Well, this went on until the end of the
second month. And then came the second act. It seems that by some
infernal stupidity, he was occupying the bedroom that had been used by
Gilbert. Now on this night, as soon as he had gone up, he must needs pay
a visit to the little dressing-room, which is now known as" Gilbert's
cabin"--so he tells me, for I was not aware of it--and where Gilbert's
cutlass, telescope, quadrant and the old navigator's watch are kept."

"Did he take a light with him?" inquired Thorndyke.

"I think not. There is a gas jet in the corridor and presumably he lit
that. Then he opened the door of the cabin; and immediately he saw, a few
feet in front of him, a man's head, upside down, apparently hanging in
mid-air. It gave him a fearful shock--the more so, perhaps, because he
half expected it--and, as before, he ran downstairs, all of a tremble.
Price had gone to bed but Mrs. Price came up with him, and he showed hr
the horrible thing which was still hanging in the middle of the dark
room.

"But Mrs. Price could see nothing. She assured him that it was all his
imagination; and in proof of it, she walked into the room, right through
the head, as it seemed, and when she had found the matches, she lit the
gas. Of course, there was nothing whatever in the room.

"Another month passed. The bat appeared at intervals and kept poor
Frank's nerves in a state of constant tension. On the night of the
appointed day, as you will anticipate, Frank went again to Gilbert's
cabin, drawn there by an attraction that one can quite understand. And
there, of course, was the confounded head as before. That was a fortnight
ago. So, you see, the affair is getting urgent. Either there is some
truth in this weird story--which I don't believe for a moment--or poor
old Frank is ripe for the asylum. But in any case something will have to
be done."

"You spoke just now," said Thorndyke, "of some insanity in the family.
What does it amount to, leaving these apparitions out of the question?"

"Well, a cousin of Frank's committed suicide in an asylum."

"And Frank's parents?

"They were quite sane. The cousin was the son of Frank's mother's sister;
and she was all right, too. But the boy's father had to be put away."

"Then," said Thorndyke, "the insanity doesn't seem to be in Frank's
family at all, in a medical sense. Legal inheritance and physiological
inheritance do not follow the same lines. If his mother's sister married
a lunatic, he might inherit that lunatic's property, but he could not
inherit his insanity. There was no blood relationship."

"No, that's true," Brodribb admitted, "though Frank certainly seems as
mad as a hatter. But now, to come back to the holiday question, what do
you say to a week or so at St. David's?"

Thorndyke looked at me interrogatively. "What says my learned friend?" he
asked.

"I say: Let us put up the shutters and leave Polton in charge," I
replied; and Thorndyke assented without a murmur.

Less than a week later, we were installed in the very comfortable rooms
that Mr. Brodribb had found for us in the hamlet of St. David's, within
five minutes' walk of the steep gap-way that led down to the beach.
Thorndyke entered into the holiday with an enthusiasm that would have
astonished the denizens of King Bench Walk. He explored the village, he
examined the church, inside and out, he sampled all the footpaths with
the aid of the Ordnance map, he foregathered with the fishermen on the
beach and renewed his acquaintance with boat-craft, and he made a
pilgrimage to the historic cavern--it was less than a mile along the
shore--arid inspected its dark and chilly interior with the most lively
curiosity.

We had not been at St. David's twenty-four hours before we made the
acquaintance of Frank Lumley. Mr. Brodribb saw to that. For the old
solicitor was profoundly anxious about his client--he took his
responsibilities very seriously, did Mr. Brodribb. His "family" clients
were to him as his own kin, and their interests his own interests--and
his confidence in Thorndyke's wisdom was unbounded. We were very
favourably impressed by the quiet, gentle, rather frail young man, and
for my part, I found him, for a certifiable lunatic, a singularly
reasonable and intelligent person. Indeed, apart from his delusions--or
rather hallucinations--he seemed perfectly sane; for a somewhat eager
interest in psychical and supernormal phenomena (of which he made no
secret) is hardly enough to create a suspicion of a man's sanity.

But he was clearly uneasy about his own mental condition. He realised
that the apparitions might be the products of a disordered brain, though
that not his own view of them; and he discussed them us in the most open
and ingenuous manner.

"You don't think," Thorndyke suggested, "that these apparitions may
possibly be natural appearances which you have misinterpreted or
exaggerated in consequence of having read that very circumstantial
story?"

Lumley shook his head emphatically. "It is impossible," said he. "How
could I? Take the case of the bat. I have seen it on several occasions
quite distinctly. It was obviously a bat; but yet it seemed full of a
ghostly, greenish light like that of a glow-worm. If it was not what it
appeared, what was it? And then the head. There it was, perfectly clear
and solid and real, hanging in mid-air within three or four feet of me. I
could have touched it if I had dared."

"What size did it appear?" asked Thorndyke.

Lumley reflected. "It was not quite life-size. I should say about
two-thirds the size of an ordinary head."

"Should you recognise the face if you saw it again?

"I can't say," replied Lumley. "You see, it was upside down. I haven't a
very clear picture of it--I mean as to what the face would have been
like the right way up."

"Was the room quite dark on both occasions?" Thorndyke asked.

"Yes, quite. The gas jet in the corridor is just above the door and does
not any light into the room."

"And what is there opposite the door?"

"There is a small window, but that is usually kept shuttered nowadays.
Under the window is a small folding dressing-table that belonged to
Gilbert Lumley. He had it made when he came home from sea."

Thus Lumley was quite lucid and coherent in his answers. His manner was
perfectly sane; it was only the matter that was abnormal. Of the reality
of the apparitions he had not the slightest doubt, and he never varied in
the smallest degree in his description of their appearance. The fact that
they had been invisible both to Mr. Price and his wife he explained by
pointing out that the curse applied only to the direct descendants of
Gilbert Lumley, and to those only in alternate generations.

After one of our conversations, Thorndyke expressed a wish to see the
little manuscript book that had been the cause of all the trouble--or at
least had been the forerunner; and Lumley promised to bring it to our
rooms on the following afternoon. But then came an interruption to our
holiday, not entirely unexpected; an urgent telegram from one of our
solicitor friends asking consultation on an important and intricate case
that had just been put into his hands, and making it necessary for us to
go up to town by an early train on the following morning.

We sent a note to Brodribb, telling him that we should be away from St.
David's for perhaps a day or two, and on our way to the station he
overtook us.

"I am sorry you have had to break your holiday," he said; " but I hope
you will be back before Thursday."

"Why Thursday, in particular?" inquired Thorndyke.

"Because Thursday is the day on which that damned head is due to make its
third appearance. It will be an anxious time. Frank hasn't said anything,
but I know his nerves are strung up to concert pitch."

"You must watch him," said Thorndyke. "Don't let him out of your sight if
you can help it."

"That's all very well," said Brodribb, "but he isn't a child, and I am
not his keeper. He is the master of the house and I am just his guest. I
can't follow him about if he wants to be alone."

"You mustn't stand on politeness, Brodribb," rejoined Thorndyke. "It will
be a critical time and you must keep him in sight."

"I shall do my best," Brodribb said anxiously, "but I do hope you will be
back by then."

He accompanied us dejectedly to the platform and stayed with us until our
train came in. Suddenly, just as we were entering our carriage, he thrust
his hand into his pocket.

"God bless me!" he exclaimed, "I had nearly forgotten this book. Frank
asked me to give it to you." As he spoke, he drew out a little rusty
calf-bound volume and handed it to Thorndyke. "You can look through it at
your leisure," said he, "and if you think it best to chuck the infernal
thing out of the window, do so. I suspect poor Frank is none the better
for conning it over perpetually as he does."

I thought there was a good deal of reason in Brodribb's opinion. If
Lumley's illusions were, as I suspected, the result of suggestion
produced by reading the narrative, that suggestion would certainly tend
to be reinforced by conning it over and over again. But the old lawyer's
proposal was hardly practicable.

As soon as the train had fairly started, Thorndyke proceeded to inspect
the little volume; and his manner of doing so was highly characteristic.
An ordinary person would have opened the book and looked through the
contents, probably seeking out at once the sinister history of Gilbert
Lumley.

Not so Thorndyke. His inspection began at the very beginning and
proceeded systematically to deal with every fact that the book had to
disclose. First he made an exhaustive examination of the cover;
scrutinised the corners; inspected the bottom edges and compared them
with the top edges; and compared the top and bottom head-caps. Then he
brought out his lens and examined the tooling, which was simple in
character and worked in "blind"--i.e. not gilt. He also inspected the
head-bands through the glass, and then he turned his attention to the
interior. He looked carefully at both end-papers, he opened the sections
and examined the sewing-thread, he held the leaves up to the light and
tested the paper by eye and by touch and he viewed the writing in several
places through his lens. Finally he handed the book and the lens to me
without remark.

It was a quaint little volume, with a curiously antique air, though it
was but a century old. The cover was of rusty calf, a good deal rubbed,
but not in bad condition; for the joints were perfectly sound; but then
it had probably had comparatively little use. The paper--a laid paper
with very distinct wire-lines but no watermark--had turned with age to a
pale, creamy buff; the writing had faded to a warm brown, but was easily
legible and very clearly and carefully written. Having noted these
points, I turned over the leaves until I came to the story of Gilbert
Lumley and the ill-fated Glynn, which I read through attentively,
observing that Mr. Brodribb's notes had given the whole substance of the
narrative with singular completeness.

"This story," I said, as I handed the book back to Thorndyke, "strikes me
as rather unreal and unconvincing. One doesn't see how Walter Lumley got
his information."

"No," agreed Thorndyke. "It is on the plane of fiction. The narrator
speaks in the manner of a novelist with complete knowledge of events and
actions which were apparently known only to the actors."

"Do you think it possible that Walter Lumley was simply romancing?"

"I think it quite possible, and in fact very probable that the whole
narrative is fictitious," he replied. "We shall have to go into that
question later on. For the present, I suppose, we had better give our
attention to the case that we have in hand at the moment."

The little volume was accordingly put away, and for the rest of the
journey our conversation was occupied with the matter of the consultation
that formed our immediate business. As this, however, had no connection
with the present history, I need make no further reference to it beyond
stating that it kept us both busy for three days and that we finished
with it on the evening of the third.

"Do you propose to go down to St. David's to-night or to-morrow?" I
asked, as we let ourselves into our chambers.

"To-night," replied Thorndyke. "This is Thursday, you know, and Brodribb
was anxious that we should be back some time to-day. I have sent him a
telegram saying that we shall go down by the train that arrives about ten
o'clock. So if he wants us, he can meet us it the station or send a
message."

"I wonder," said I, "if the apparition of Glynn's head will make its
expected visitation to-night."

"It probably will if there is an opportunity," Thorndyke replied. "But I
hope that Brodribb will manage to prevent the opportunity from occurring.
And, talking of Lumley, as we have an hour to spare, we may as well
finish our inspection of his book. I snipped off a corner of one of the
leaves and gave it to Polton to boil up in weak caustic soda. It will be
ready for examination by now."

"You don't suspect that the book has been faked, do you?" said I.

"I view that book with the deepest suspicion," he replied, opening a
drawer and producing the little volume. "Just look at it, Jervis. Look at
the cover, for instance."

"Well," I said, turning the book over in my hand, "the cover looks
ancient enough to me; typical old, rusty calf with a century's wear on
it."

"Oh, there's no doubt that it is old calf," said he; "just the sort of
leather that you could skin off the cover of an old quarto or folio. But
don't you see that the signs of wear are all in the wrong places? How
does a book wear in use? Well, first there are the bottom edges, which
rub on the shelf. Then the corners, which are the thinnest leather and
the most exposed. Then the top head-cap, which the finger hooks into in
pulling the book from the shelf. Then the joint or hinge, which wears
through from frequent opening and shutting. The sides get the least wear
of all. But in this book, the bottom edges, the corners, the top head-cap
and the joints are perfectly sound. They are not more worn than the
sides; and the tooling is modern in character. It looks quite fresh and
the tool-marks are impressed on the marks of wear instead of being
themselves worn. The appearances suggest to me a new binding with old
leather.

"Then look at the paper. It professes to be discoloured by age. But the
discoloration of the leaves of an old book occurs principally at the
edges, where the paper has become oxidised by exposure to the air. The
leaves of this book are equally discoloured all over. To me they suggest
a bath of weak tea rather than old age.

"Again, there is the writing. Its appearance is that of faded writing
done with the old-fashioned writing ink--made with iron sulphate and
oak-galls. But it doesn't look quite the right colour. However, we can
easily test that. If it is old iron-gall ink, a drop of ammonium sulphide
will turn it black. Let us take the book up to the laboratory and try it--and
we had better have a "control" to compare it with."

He ran his eye along the book-shelves and took down a rusty-looking
volume of Humphry Clinker, the end- paper of which bore several brown and
faded signatures.

Here is a signature dated 1803," said he. "That will be near enough"; and
with the two books in his hand he led the way upstairs to the laboratory.
Here he took down the ammonium sulphide bottle, and dipping up a little
of the liquid in a fine glass tube, opened the cover of Humphry Clinker
and carefully deposited a tiny drop on the figure 3 in the date. Almost
immediately the. ghostly brown began to darken until it at length became
jet black. Then, in the same way, he opened Walter Lumley's manuscript
book and on the 9 of the date, 1819, he deposited a drop of the solution.
But this time there was no darkening of the pale brown writing; on the
contrary, it faded rapidly to a faint and muddy violet.

"It is not an iron ink," said Thorndyke, and it looks suspiciously like
an aniline brown. But let us see what the paper is made of. Have you
boiled up that fragment, Polton?"

"Yes, sir," answered our laboratory assistant, "and I've washed the soda
out of it, so it's all ready."

He produced a labelled test-tube containing a tiny corner of paper
floating in water, which he carefully emptied into a large watch-glass.
From this Thorndyke transferred the little pulpy fragment to a microscope
slide and, with a pair of mounted needles, broke it up into its
constituent fibres. Then he dropped on it a drop of aniline stain,
removed the surplus with blotting- paper, added a drop of glycerine and
put on it a large cover-slip.

"There, Jervis," said he, handing me the slide, "let us have your opinion
on Walter Lumley's paper."

I placed the slide on the stage of the microscope and proceeded to
inspect the specimen. But no exhaustive examination was necessary. The
first glance settled the matter.

"It is nearly all wood," I said. "Mechanical wood fibre, with some
esparto, a little cotton and a few linen fibres."

"Then," said Thorndyke, "it is a modern paper. Mechanical
wood-pulp--prepared by Keller's process--was first used in paper-making in 1840.
'Chemical wood-pulp' came in later; and esparto was not used until 1860.
So we can say with confidence that this paper was not made until more
than twenty years after the date that is written on it. Probably it is of
quite recent manufacture."

"In that case," said I, "this book is a counterfeit--presumably
fraudulent."

"Yes. In effect it is a forgery."

"But that seems to suggest a conspiracy."

It does," Thorndyke agreed; "especially if it is considered in
conjunction with the apparitions. The suggestion is that this book was
prepared for the purpose of inducing a state of mind favourable to the
acceptance of supernatural appearances. The obvious inference is that the
apparitions themselves were an imposture produced for fraudulent
purposes. But it is time for us to go."

We shook hands with Polton, and, having collected our suit-cases from the
sitting-room, set forth for the station.

During the journey down I reflected on the new turn that Frank Lumley's
affairs had taken. Apparently, Brodribb had done his client an injustice.
Lumley was not so mad as the old lawyer had supposed. He was merely
credulous and highly suggestible. The "hallucinations" were real
phenomena which he had simply misinterpreted. But who was behind these
sham illusions? And what was it all about? I tried to open the question
with Thorndyke; but though he was willing to discuss the sham manuscript
book and the technique of its production, he would commit himself to
nothing further.

On our arrival at St. David's, Thorndyke looked up and down the platform
and again up the station approach. "No sign of Brodribb or any
messenger," he remark 'so we may assume that all is well at Burling Court
up to the present. Let us hope that Brodribb's presence has had an
inhibitory effect on the apparitions."

Nevertheless, it was evident that he was not quite easy in his mind.
During supper he appeared watchful and preoccupied, and when, after the
meal, he proposed a stroll down to the beach, he left word with our
landlady as to where he was to be found if he should be wanted.

It was about a quarter to eleven when we arrived at the shore, and the
tide was beginning to run out. The beach was deserted with the exception
of a couple of fishermen who had apparently come in with the tide and who
were making their boat secure for the before going home. Thorndyke
approached them, addressing the older fisherman, remarked: "That is a
big, powerful boat. Pretty fast, too, isn't she?"

"Ay, sir," was the reply; "fast and weatherly, she is. What we calls a
galley-punt. Built at Deal for the hovelling trade--salvage, you know,
sir--but there ain't no hovelling nowadays, not to speak of."

"Are you going out to-morrow?" asked Thorndyke.

"Not as I knows of, sir. Was you thinking of a bit of fishing?"

"If you are free," said Thorndyke, "I should like to charter the boat for
to-morrow. I don't know what time I shall be able to start, but if you
will stand by ready to put off at once when I come down we can count the
waiting as sailing."

"Very well, sir," said the fisherman; "the boat's yours for the day
to-morrow. Any time after six, or earlier, if you like, if you come down
here you'll find me and my mate standing by with a stock of bait and the
boat ready to push off."

"That will do admirably," said Thorndyke; and the morrow's programme
being thus settled, we wished the fishermen good-night and walked slowly
back to our lodgings, where, after a final pipe, we turned in.

On the following morning, just as we were finishing a rather leisurely
breakfast, we saw from our window our friend Mr. Brodribb hurrying down
the street towards our house. I ran out and opened the door, and as he
entered I conducted him into our sitting-room. From his anxious and
flustered manner it was obvious that something had gone wrong, and his
first words con firmed the sinister impression.

"I'm afraid we're in for trouble, Thorndyke," said he. "Frank is
missing."

"Since when?" asked Thorndyke.

"Since about eight o'clock this morning. He is nowhere about the house
and he hasn't had any breakfast."

"When was he last seen?" Thorndyke asked. "And where?"

"About eight o"clock, in the breakfast-room. Apparently he went in there
to say "good-bye" to the Prices--they have gone on a visit for the day
to Folkestone and were having an early breakfast so as to catch the
eight-thirty train. But he didn't have breakfast with them. He just went
in and wished them a pleasant journey and then it appears that he went
out for a stroll in the grounds. When I came down to breakfast at
half-past eight, the Prices had gone and Frank hadn't come in. The maid
sounded the gong, and as Frank still did not appear, she went out into
the grounds to look for him; and presently I went out myself. But he
wasn't there and he wasn't anywhere in the house. I don't like the look
of it at all. He is usually very regular and punctual at meals. What do
you think we had better do, Thorndyke?"

My colleague looked at his watch and rang the bell.

I think, Brodribb," said he, "that we must act on the obvious
probabilities and provide against the one great danger that is known to
us. Mrs. Robinson," he added, addressing the landlady, who, had answered
the bell in person, " can you let us have a jug of strong coffee at
once?"

Mrs. Robinson could, and bustled away to prepare it, while Thorndyke
produced from a cupboard a large vacuum flask.

I don't quite follow you, Thorndyke," said Mr. Brodribb. "What
probabilities and what danger do you mean?"

"I mean that, up to the present, Frank Lumley has exactly reproduced in
his experiences and his actions the experiences and actions of Gilbert
Lumley as set forth in Walter Lumley's narrative. The overwhelming
probability is that he will continue to reproduce the story of Gilbert to
the end. He probably saw the apparition for the third time last night,
and is even now preparing for the final act."

"Good God!" gasped Brodribb. "What a fool I am! You mean the cave? But we
can never get there now. It will be high water in an hour and the beach
at St. David's Head will be covered already. Unless we can get a boat,"
he added despairingly.

"We have got a boat," said Thorndyke. "I chartered one last night."

"Thank the Lord!" exclaimed Brodribb. "But you always think of
everything--though I don't know what you want that coffee for."

"We may not want it at all," said Thorndyke, as he poured the coffee,
which the landlady had just brought, into the vacuum flask," but on the
other hand we may."

He deposited the flask in a hand-bag, in which I observed a small
emergency-case, and then turned to Brodribb.

"We had better get down to the beach now," said he.

As we emerged from the bottom of the gap-way we saw our friends of the
previous night laying a double line of planks across the beach from the
boat to the margin of the surf; for the long galley-punt, with her load
of ballast, was too heavy, over the shingle. They had just got the last
plank laid as we reached the boat, and as they observed us they came
running back with half a dozen of their mates.

"Jump aboard, gentlemen," said our skipper, with a slightly dubious eye
on Mr. Brodribb--for the boat's gunwale was a good four feet above the
beach. "We'll have her afloat in a jiffy."

We climbed in and hauled Mr. Brodribb in after us. The tall mast was
already stepped--against the middle thwart in the odd fashion of
galley-punts--and the great sail was hooked to the traveller and the
tack-hook ready for hoisting. The party of boatmen gathered round and
each took a tenacious hold of gunwale or thole. The skipper gave time
with a jovial "Yo-ho!" his mates joined in with a responsive howl and
heaved as one man. The great boat moved forward, and gathering way, slid
swiftly along the greased planks towards the edge of the surf. Then her
nose splashed into the sea; the skipper and his mate sprang in over the
transom; the tall lug-sail soared up the mast and filled and the skipper
let the rudder slide down its pintles and grasped the tiller.

"Did you want to go anywheres in particklar?" he inquired.

"We want to make for the big cave round St. David's Head," said
Thorndyke, " and we want to get there well before high water."

"We'll do that easy enough, sir," said the skipper "with this breeze.
"Tis but about a mile and we've got three-quarters of an hour to do it
in."

He took a pull at the main sheet and, putting the helm down, brought the
boat on a course parallel to the coast. Quietly but swiftly the water
slipped past, one after another fresh headlands opened out till, in about
a quarter of an hour, we were abreast of St. David's Head with the
sinister black shape of the cavern in full view over the port bow.
Shortly afterwards the sail was lowered and our crew, reinforced by
Thorndyke and me, took to the oars, pulling straight towards the shore
with the cavern directly ahead.

As the boat grounded on the beach Thorndyke Brodribb and I sprang out and
hurried across the sand and shingle to the gloomy and forbidding hole in
white cliff. At first, coming out of the bright sunlight we seemed to be
plunged in absolute darkness, and groped our way insecurely over the
heaps of slippery sea-tangle that littered the floor. Presently our eyes
grew accustomed to the dim light, and we could trace faintly the narrow,
tunnel-like passage with its slimy green and the jagged roof nearly black
with age. At the farther end it grew higher; and here I could see the
small, dark bodies of bats hanging from the roof and clinging to the
walls, and one or two fluttering blindly and noiselessly like large moths
in the hollows of the vault above. But it was not the bats that engrossed
my attention. Far away, at the extreme end, I could dimly discern the
prostrate figure of a man lying motionless on a patch of smooth sand; a
dreadful shape that seemed to sound the final note of tragedy to which
the darkness, the clammy chill of the cavern and the ghostly forms of he
bats had been a fitting prelude.

"My God!" gasped Brodribb, "we're too late!" He broke into a shambling
run and Thorndyke and I darted on ahead. The man was Frank Lumley, of
course, and a glance at him gave us at least a ray of hope. He was lying
in an easy posture with closed eyes and was still breathing, though his
respiration was shallow and slow. Beside him on the sand lay a little
bottle and near it a cork. I picked up the former and read on the label
"Laudanum: Poison" and a local druggist's name and address. But it was
empty save for a few drops, the appearance and smell of which confirmed
the label.

Thorndyke, who had been examining the unconscious man's eyes with a
little electric lamp, glanced at the bottle.

"Well," said he, "we know the worst. That is a two-drachm phial, so if he
took the lot his condition is not hopeless."

As he spoke he opened the hand-bag, and taking out the emergency-case,
produced from it a hypodermic syringe and a tiny bottle of atropine
solution. I drew up Lumley's sleeve while the syringe was filled and
Thorndyke then administered the injection.

"It is opium poisoning, I suppose?" said I.

"Yes," was the answer. "His pupils are like pin points; but his pulse is
not so bad. I think we can safely move him down to the boat."

Thereupon we lifted him, and with Brodribb supporting his feet, we moved
in melancholy procession down the cave. Already the waves were lapping
the beach at the entrance and even trickling in amongst the seaweed; and
the boat, following the rising tide, had her bows within the cavern. The
two fishermen, who were steadying the boat with their oars, greeted our
appearance, carrying the body, with exclamations of astonishment. But
they asked no questions, simply taking the unconscious man from us and
laying him gently on the grating in the stern-sheets.

"Why, 'tis Mr. Lumley!" exclaimed the skipper.

"Yes," said Thorndyke; and having given them a few words of explanation,
he added: "I look to you to keep this affair to yourselves."

To this the two men agreed heartily, and the boat having been pushed off
and the sail hoisted, the skipper asked: "Do we sail straight back, sir?"

"Yes," replied Thorndyke, "but we won't land yet. Stand on and off
opposite the gap-way."

Already, as a result of the movement, the patient stupor appeared less
profound. And now Thorndyke took definite measures to rouse him, shaking
him gently and constantly changing his position. Presently Lumley drew a
deep sighing breath, and opened his eyes for a moment. Then Thorndyke sat
him up, and producing the vacuum-flask, made him swallow a few
teaspoonful of coffee. This procedure was continued for over an hour
while the boat cruised up and down opposite the landing-place half a mile
or so from the shore. Con. stantly our patient relapsed into stuporous
sleep, only to be roused again and given a sip of coffee.

At length he recovered so far as to be able to sit up--lurching from
side to side as the boat rolled--and drowsily answer questions spoken
loudly in his ears. A quarter of an hour later, as he still continued to
improve, Thorndyke ordered the skipper to bring the boat to the
landing-place.

"I think he could walk now," said he, "and the exercise will rouse him
more completely."

The boat was accordingly beached and Lumley assisted to climb out; and
though at first he staggered as if he would fall, after a few paces he
was able to walk fairly steadily, supported on either side by me and
Thorndyke. The effort of ascending the steep gap-way revived him further;
and by the time we reached the gate of Burling Court--half a mile across
the fields--he was almost able to stand alone.

But even when he had arrived home he was not allowed to rest, earnestly
as he begged to be left in peace. First Thorndyke insisted on his taking
a light meal, and then proceeded to question him as to the events of the
previous night.

"I presume, Lumley," said he, "that you saw the apparition of Glynn's
head?"

"Yes. After Mr. Brodribb had seen me to bed, I got up and went to
Gilbert's cabin. Something seemed to draw me to it. And as soon as I
opened the door, there was the head hanging in the air within three feet
of me. Then I knew that Glynn was calling me, and--well, you know the
rest."

"I understand," said Thorndyke. "But now I want you to come to Gilbert's
cabin with me and show me exactly where you were and where the head was."

Lumley was profoundly reluctant and tried to postpone the demonstration.
But Thorndyke would listen to no refusal, and at last Lumley rose wearily
and conducted his tormentor up the stairs, followed by Brodribb and me.

We went first to Lumley's bedroom and from that into a corridor, into
which some other bedrooms opened. The corridor was dimly lighted by a
single window, and when Thorndyke had drawn the thick curtain over this,
the place was almost completely dark. At one end of the corridor was the
small, narrow door of the "cabin," over which was a gas bracket.
Thorndyke lighted the gas and opened the door and we then saw that the
room was in total darkness, its only window being closely shuttered and
the curtains drawn. Thorndyke struck a match and lit the gas and we then
looked curiously about the little room.

It was a quaint little apartment, to which its antique furniture and
contents gave an old-world air. An ancient hanger, quadrant and spy-glass
hung on the wall, a large, dropsical-looking watch, inscribed "Thomas
Tompion, Londini fecit," reposed on a little velvet cushion in the middle
of a small, black mahogany table by the window, and a couple of
Cromwellian chairs stood against the wall. Thorndyke looked curiously at
the table, which was raised on wooden blocks, and Lumley explained: "That
was Gilbert's dressing-table. He had it made for his cabin on board
ship."

"Indeed," said Thorndyke. "Then Gilbert was a rather up-to-date
gentleman. There wasn't much mahogany furniture before 1720. Let us have
a look I at the interior arrangements."

He lifted the watch, and having placed it on a chair, raised the lid of
the table, disclosing a small wash basin, a little squat ewer and other
toilet appliances. The table lid, which was held upright by a brass
strut, held a rather large dressing-mirror enclosed in a projecting case.

"I wonder," said I, "why the table was stood on those blocks."

"Apparently," said Thorndyke, "for the purpose of bringing the mirror to
the eye-level of a person standing up."

The answer gave Brodribb an idea. "I suppose, Frank," said he, "it was
not your own reflection in the mirror that you saw?"

"How could it be?" demanded Lumley. "The head was upside down, and
besides, it was quite near to me."

No, that's true," said Brodribb; and turning away from the table he
picked up the old navigator's watch "A queer old timepiece, this," he
remarked.

"Yes," said Lumley; "but it's beautifully made. Let me show you the
inside."

He took off the outer case and opened the inner one, exhibiting the
delicate workmanship of the interior to Brodribb and me, while Thorndyke
continued to pore over the inner fittings of the table. Suddenly my
colleague said: "Just go outside, you three, and shut the door. I want to
try an experiment."

Obediently we all filed out and closed the door, waiting expectantly in
the corridor. In a couple of minutes Thorndyke came out and before he
shut the door I noticed that the little room was now in darkness. He
walked us a short distance down the corridor and then, halting, said

"Now, Lumley, I want you to go into the cabin and tell us what you see."

Lumley appeared a little reluctant to go in alone, but eventually he
walked towards the cabin and opened the door. Instantly he uttered a cry
of horror, and closing the door, ran back to us, trembling, agitated,
wild-eyed.

"It is there now!" he exclaimed. "I saw it distinctly."

"Very well," said Thorndyke. "Now you go and look, Brodribb."

Mr. Brodribb showed no eagerness. With very obvious trepidation he
advanced to the door and threw it open with a jerk. Then, with a sharp
exclamation, he slammed it to, and came hurrying back, his usually pink
complexion paled down to a delicate mauve.

"Horrible! Horrible!" he exclaimed. "What the devil is it, Thorndyke?"

A sudden suspicion flashed into my mind. I strode forward, and turning
the handle of the door, pulled it open. And then I was not surprised that
Brodribb had been startled. Within a yard of my face, clear, distinct and
solid, was an inverted head, floating in mid-air in the pitch-dark room.
Of course, being prepared for it, I saw at a glance what it was;
recognised my own features, strangely and horribly altered as they were
by their inverted position. But even now that I knew what it was, the
thing had a most appalling, uncanny aspect.

"Now," said Thorndyke, "let us go in and explode the mystery. Just stand
outside the door, Jervis, while I demonstrate."

He produced a sheet of white paper from his pocket, and smoothing it out,
let our two friends into the room. First," said he, holding the paper out
flat at the eye-level, "you see on this paper a picture of Dr. Jervis's
head upside down."

So there is," said Brodribb; "like a magic-lantern picture."

"Exactly like," agreed Thorndyke; "and of exactly the same nature. Now
let us see how it is produced."

He struck a match and lit the gas; and instantly all our eyes turned
towards the open dressing-table.

"But that is not the same mirror that we saw just now," said Brodribb.

"No," replied Thorndyke. "The frame is reversible on a sliding hinge and
I have turned it round. On one side is the ordinary flat looking-glass
which you saw before ; on the other is this concave shaving-mirror. You
observe that, if you stand close to it, you see your face the right way
up and magnified; if you go back to the door, you see your head upside
down and smaller."

"But," objected Lumley, "the head looked quite solid and seemed to be
right out in the room."

So it was, and is still. But the effect of reality is destroyed by the
fact that you can now see the frame of the mirror enclosing the image, so
that the head appears to be in the mirror. But in the dark, you could
only see the image. The mirror was invisible."

Brodribb reflected on this explanation. Presently he said: "I don't think
I quite understand it now."

Thorndyke took a pencil from his pocket and began to draw a diagram on
the sheet of paper that he still held.

[ILLUSTRATION: THE APPARITION OF BURLING COURT. See
http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#letterF]

"The figure that you see in an ordinary flat looking glass," he
explained," is what is called a "virtual image." It appears to be behind
the mirror, but of course it is not there. It is an optical illusion. But
the image from a concave mirror is in front of the mirror and is a real
image like that of a magic-lantern or a camera, and, like them, inverted.
This diagram will explain matters. Here is Lumley standing at the open
door of the room. His figure is well lighted by the gas over the door
(which, however, throws no light into the room) and is clearly reflected
by the mirror, which throws forward a bright inverted image. But, as the
room is dark and the mirror invisible, he sees only the image, which
looks like--and in fact is--a real object standing in mid-air."

"But why did I see only the head?" asked Lumley.

"Because the head occupied the whole of the mirror. If the mirror had
been large enough you would have seen the full-length figure."

Lumley reflected for a moment. "It almost looks if this had been
arranged," he said at length.

"Of course it has been arranged," said Thorndyke "and very cleverly
arranged, too. And now let us go and see if anything else has been
arranged. Which is Mr. Price's room?"

"He has three rooms, which open out of this corridor," said Lumley; and
he conducted us to a door at the farther end, which Thorndyke tried and
found locked.

"It is a case for the smoker's companion," said he, producing from his
pocket an instrument that went by that name, but which looked
suspiciously like a lock-pick. At any rate, after one or two trials--which
Mr Brodribb watched with an appreciative smile--the bolt shot back
and the door opened.

We entered what was evidently the bedroom, around which Thorndyke cast a
rapid glance and then asked: "What are the other rooms?"

I think he uses them to tinker in," said Lumley, "but I don't quite know
what he does in them. All three rooms communicate."

We advanced to the door of communication and, finding it unlocked, passed
through into the next room. Here, on a large table by the window, was a
litter of various tools and appliances.

"What is that thing with the wooden screws? " Brodribb asked.

"A bookbinder's sewing-press," replied Thorndyke. "And here are some
boxes of finishing tools. Let us look over them."

He took up the boxes one after the other and inspected the ends of the
tools--brass stamps for impressing the ornaments on book covers.
Presently he lifted out two, a leaf and a flower. Then he produced from
his coat pocket the little manuscript book, and laying it on the table,
picked up from the floor a little fragment of leather. Placing this also
on the table, he pressed two of the tools on it, leaving a clear
impression of a leaf and a flower. Finally he laid the scrap of leather
on the book, when it was obvious that the leaf and flower were identical
replicas of the leaves and flowers which formed the decoration of the
book cover.

"This is very curious," said Lumley. "They seem to be exactly alike."

"They are exactly alike," said Thorndyke. "I affirm that the tooling on
that book was done with these tools, and the leaves sewn on that press."

"But the book is a hundred years old," objected Lumley.

Thorndyke shook his head. "The leather is old," said he, "but the book is
new. We have tested the paper and found it to be of recent manufacture.
But now let us see what is in that little cupboard. There seem to be some
bottles there."

He ran his eye along the shelves, crowded with bottles and jars of
varnish, glair, oil, cement and other material.

"Here," he said, taking down a small bottle of dark- coloured powder, "is
some aniline brown. That probably produced the ancient and faded writing.
But this is more illuminating--in more senses than one." He picked out a
little, wide-mouthed bottle labelled "Radium Paint for the hands and
figures of luminous watches."

"Ha!" exclaimed Brodribb; "a very illuminating discovery, as you say."

"And that," said Thorndyke, looking keenly round the room," seems to be
all there is here. Shall we take a glance at the third room?"

We passed through the communicating doorway and found ourselves in a
small apartment practically unfurnished and littered with trunks, bags
and various lumber. As we stood looking about us, Thorndyke sniffed
suspiciously.

"I seem to detect a sort of mousy odour," said he, glancing round
inquisitively. "Do you notice it, Jervis?"

I did; and with the obvious idea in my mind began I to prowl round the
room in search of the source, Suddenly my eye lighted on a smallish box,
in the top of which a number of gimlet-holes had been bored. I raised the
lid and peered in. The interior was covered with filth and on the bottom
lay a dead bat.

We all stood for a few seconds looking in silence at the little corpse.
Then Thorndyke closed the box and tucked it under his arm.

"This completes the case, I think," said he. "What time does Price
return?"

He is expected home about seven o'clock," said Lumley. Then he added with
a troubled expression: "I don't understand all this. What does it mean?"

It is very simple," replied Thorndyke. "You have a sham ancient book
containing an evidently fabulous story of supernatural events; and you
have a series of appliances and arrangements for producing illusions
which seem to repeat those events. The book was planted where it was
certain to be found and read, and the illusions began after it was known
that it actually had been read. It is a conspiracy."

"But why?" demanded Lumley. "What was the object?"

"My dear Frank," said Brodribb, "you seem forget that Price is the next
of kin and the heir to your estate on your death."

Lumley's eyes filled. He seemed overcome with grief and disgust. "It is
incredible," he murmured huskily. "Thu baseness of it is beyond belief."

Price and his wife arrived home at about seven o'clock, A meal had been
prepared for them, and when they had finished, a servant was sent in to
ask Mr. Price to speak with Mr. Brodribb in the study. There we all
awaited him, Lumley being present by his own wish; and on the table were
deposited the little book, the scrap of leather, the two finishing tools,
the pot of radium paint and the box containing the dead bat. Presently
Price entered, accompanied by his wife; and at the sight of the objects
on the table they both turned deathly pale. Mr. Brodribb placed chairs
for them, and when they were seated he began in a dry, stern voice:

"I have sent for you, Mr. Price, to give you certain information. These
two gentlemen, Dr. Thorndyke and Dr. Jervis, are eminent criminal lawyers
whom I have commissioned to make investigations and to advise me in this
matter. Their investigations have discloser the existence of a forged
manuscript, a dead bat, a pot of luminous paint and a concave mirror. I
need not enlarge on those discoveries. My intention is to prosecute you
and your wife for conspiracy to procure the suicide of Mr. Frank Lumley.
But, at Mr. Lumley's request, I have consented to delay the proceedings
for forty-eight hours. During that period you will be at liberty to act
as you think best."

For some seconds there was a tense silence. The two crestfallen
conspirators sat with their eyes fixed on the floor, and Mrs. Price
choked down a half-hysterical sob. Then they rose; and Price, without
looking at any of us, said in a low voice: "Very well. Then I suppose we
had better clear out."

"And the best thing, too," remarked Brodribb, when they had gone; "for I
doubt if we could have carried our bluff into court."

On the wall of our sitting-room in the Temple there hang, to this day,
two keys. One is that of the postern gate of Burling Court, and the other
belongs to the suite of rooms that were once occupied by Mr. Lewis Price;
and they hang there, by Frank Lumley's wish, as a token that Burling
Court is a country home to which we have access at all hours and seasons
as tenants in virtue of an inalienable right.


THE MYSTERIOUS VISITOR


"So," said Thorndyke, looking at me reflectively, "you are a full-blown
medical practitioner with a practice of your own. How the years slip by!
It seems but the other day that you were a student, gaping at me from the
front bench of the lecture theatre."

"Did I gape?" I asked incredulously.

"I use the word metaphorically," said he, " to denote ostentatious
attention. You always took my lecture very seriously. May I ask if you
have ever found them of use in your practice?"

"I can't say that I have ever had any very thrilling medico-legal
experiences since that extraordinary cremation case that you
investigated--the case of Septimus Maddock, you know. But that reminds me that there
is a little matter that I meant to speak to you about. It is of no
interest, but I just wanted your advice, though it even my business,
strictly speaking. It concerns a patient of mine, a man named Crofton,
who has disappeared rather unaccountably."

"And do you call that a case of no medico-legal interest?" demanded
Thorndyke.

"Oh, there's nothing in it. He just went away for a holiday and he hasn't
communicated with his friends very recently. That is all. What makes me a
little uneasy is that there is a departure from his usual habits--he is
generally a fairly regular correspondent--that seems a little
significant in view of his personality. He is markedly neurotic and his
family history is by means what one would wish."

"That is an admirable thumb-nail sketch, Jardine," said Thorndyke "but it
lacks detail. Let us have a full-size picture."

"Very well," said I, "but you mustn't let me bore you. To begin with
Crofton: he is a nervous, anxious, worrying sort of fellow, everlastingly
fussing about money affairs, and latterly this tendency has been getting
worse. He fairly got the jumps about his financial position; felt that he
was steadily drifting into bankruptcy and couldn't get that out of his
mind. It was all bunkum. I am more or less a friend of the family, and I
know that there was nothing to worry about. Mrs. Crofton assured me that,
although they were a trifle hard up, they could rub along quite safely.

"As he seemed to be getting the hump worse and worse, I advised him to go
away for a change and stay in a boarding-house where he would see some
fresh faces. Instead of that, he elected to go down to a bungalow that he
has at Seasalter, near Whitstable, and lets out in the season. He
proposed to stay by himself and spend his time in sea-bathing and country
walks. I wasn't very keen on this, for solitude was the last thing that
he wanted. There was a strong family history of melancholia and some
unpleasant rumours of suicide. I didn't like his being alone at all.
However, another friend of the family, Mrs. Crofton's brother in fact, a
chap named Ambrose, offered to go down and spend a week-end with him to
give him a start, and afterwards to run down for an afternoon whenever he
was able. So off he went with Ambrose on Friday, the sixteenth of June,
and for a time all went well. He seemed to be improving in health and
spirits and wrote to his wife regularly two or three times a week.
Ambrose went down as often as he could to cheer him up, and the last time
brought back the news that Crofton thought of moving on to Margate for a
further change. So, of course, he didn't go down to the bungalow again.

"Well, in due course, a letter came from Margate; it had been written at
the bungalow, but the postmark was Margate and bore the same date--the
sixteenth of July--as the letter itself. I have it with me. Mrs. Crofton
sent it for me to see and I haven't returned it yet. But there is nothing
of interest in it beyond the statement that he was going on to Margate by
the next train and would write again when he had found rooms there. That
was the last that was heard of him. He never wrote and nothing is known
of his movements excepting that he left Seasalter and arrived at Margate.
This is the letter."

I handed it to Thorndyke, who glanced at the mark and then laid it on the
table for examination later. "Have any inquiries been made?" he asked.

"Yes. His photograph has been sent to the Margate police, but, of
course--well, you know what Margate like in July. Thousands of strangers coming
and gong every day. It is hopeless to look for him in that crowd and it
is quite possible that he isn't there now. But his disappearance is most
inopportune, for a big legacy hats just fallen in, and, naturally, Mrs.
Crofton is frantically anxious to let him know. It is a matter of about
thirty thousand pounds."

"Was this legacy expected?" asked Thorndyke.

"No. The Croftons knew nothing about it. They didn't know that the old
lady--Miss Shuler--had made a will or that she had very much to leave;
and they didn't know that she was likely to die, or even that she was
ill. Which is rather odd; for she was ill for a month or two and, as she
suffered from a malignant abdominal tumour, it was known that she
couldn't recover."

"When did she die?"

"On the thirteenth of July."

Thorndyke raised his eyebrows. "Just three days before the date of this
letter," he remarked; "so that if he should never reappear, this letter
will be the sole evidence that he survived her. It is an important
document. It may come to represent a value of f thousand pounds."

"It isn't so important as it looks," said I. " Miss Shuler's will
provides that if Crofton should die before the estatrix, the legacy
should go to his wife. So whether he is alive or not, the legacy is quite
safe. But we must hope that he is alive, though I must confess to some
little anxiety on his account."

Thorndyke reflected a while on this statement. Presently he asked: "Do
you know if Crofton has made a will?"

"Yes, he has," I replied; "quite recently. I was one of the witnesses and
I read it through at Crofton's request. It was full of the usual legal
verbiage, but it might have been stated in a dozen words. He leaves
practically everything to his wife, but instead of saying so it
enumerates the property item by item."

"It was drafted, I suppose, by the solicitor?"

"Yes; another friend of the family named Jobson, and he is the executor
and residuary legatee."

Thorndyke nodded and again became deeply reflective. Still meditating, he
took up the letter, and as he inspected it, I watched him curiously and
not without a certain secret amusement. First he looked over the
envelope, back and front. Then he took from his pocket powerful
Coddington lens and with this examined the flap and the postmark. Next,
he drew out the letter, held ii up to the light, then read it through and
finally examined various parts of the writing through his lens. "Well," I
asked, with an irreverent grin, "I should think you have extracted the
last grain of meaning from it."

He smiled as he put away his lens and handed the letter back to me.

"As this may have to be produced in proof of survival," said he," it had
better be put in a place of safety. I notice that he speaks of returning
later to the bungalow. I take it that it has been ascertained that he did
not return there?"

"I don't think so. You see, they have been waiting for him to write. You
think that some one ought--"

I paused; for it began to be borne in on me that Thorndyke was taking a
somewhat gloomy view of the case.

"My dear Jardine," said he, "I am merely following your own suggestion.
Here is a man with an inherited tendency to melancholia and suicide who
has suddenly disappeared. He went away from an empty house and announced
his intention of returning to it later. As that house is the only known
locality in which he could be sought, it is obvious that it ought to have
been examined. And even if he never came back there, the house might
contain some clues to his present whereabouts."

This last sentence put an idea into my mind which I was a little shy of
broaching. What was a clue to Thorndyke might be perfectly meaningless to
an ordinary person. I recalled his amazing interpretations of most
commonplace facts in the mysterious Maddock case and the idea took fuller
possession. At length I said tentatively: "I would go down myself if I
felt competent. To morrow is Saturday, and I could get a colleague to
look after my practice; there isn't much doing just now. But when you
speak of clues, and when I remember what duffer I was last time--I wish
it were possible for you to have a look at the place."

To my surprise, he assented almost with enthusiasm.

"Why not?" said he. "It is a week-end. We can put up at the bungalow, I
suppose, and have a little gipsy holiday. And there are undoubtedly
points of interest in the case. Let us go down to-morrow. We can lunch in
the train and have the afternoon before us. You had better get a key from
Mrs. Crofton, or, if she hasn't got one, an authority to visit the house.
We may want that if we have to enter without a key. And we go alone, of
course."

I assented joyfully. Not that I had any expectations as to what we might
learn from our inspection. But something in Thorndyke's manner gave me
the impression that he had extracted from my account of the case some
significance that was not apparent to me.

The bungalow stood on a space of rough ground a little way behind the
sea-wall, along which we walked towards it from Whitstable, passing on
our way a ship-builder's yard and a slipway, on which a collier
brigantine was hauled up for repairs. There were one or two other
bungalows adjacent, but a considerable distance apart, and we looked at
them as we approached to make out the names painted on the gates.

"That will probably be the one," said Thorndyke, indicating a small
building enclosed within a wooden fence and provided, like the others,
with a bathing hut just above high-water mark. Its solitary, deserted
aspect and lowered blinds supported his opinion, and when we reached the
gate, the name "Middlewick" painted on it settled the matter.

"The next question is," said I, "how the deuce we are going to get in?
The gate is locked, and there is no bell. Is it worth while to hammer at
the fence?"

"I wouldn't do that," replied Thorndyke. "The place is pretty certainly
empty or the gate wouldn't be locked. We shall have to climb over unless
there is a back gate unlocked, so the less noise we make the better."

We walked round the enclosure, but there was no other gate, nor was there
any tree or other cover to disguise our rather suspicious proceedings.

"There's no help for it, Jardine," said Thorndyke, "so here goes."

He put his green canvas suit-case on the ground, grasped the top of the
fence with both hands and went over like a harlequin. I picked up the
case and handed it over to him, and, having taken a quick glance round,
followed my leader.

"Well," I said," here we are. And now, how are we to get into the house?"

"We shall have to pick a lock if there is no door open, or else go in by
a window. Let us take a look round."--We walked round the house to the
back door, but found it not only locked, but bolted top and bottom, as
Thorndyke ascertained with his knifeblade. The windows were all casements
and all fastened with their catches.

"The front door will be the best," said Thorndyke. "It can't be bolted
unless he got out by the chimney and I think my 'smoker's companion' will
be able to cope with an ordinary door-lock. It looked like a common
builder's fitting."

As he spoke, we returned to the front of the house and he produced the
'smoker's companion' from his pocket (I don't know what kind of smoker it
was designed to accompany). The lock was apparently a simple affair, for
the second trial with the 'companion' shot back the bolt, and when I
turned the handle, the door opened. As a precaution, I called out to
inquire if there was anybody within, and then, as there was no answer, we
entered, walking straight into the living-room, as there was no hall or
lobby.

A couple of paces from the threshold we halted to look round the room,
and on me the aspect of the place produced a vague sense of discomfort.
Though it was early in a bright afternoon, the room was almost completely
dark, for not only were the blinds lowered, but the curtains were drawn
as well.

"It looks," said I, peering about the dim and gloomy apartment with
sun-dazzled eyes, "as if he had gone away at night. He wouldn't have
drawn the curtains in the daytime."

"One would think not," Thorndyke agreed; "but it doesn't follow."

He stepped to the front window and drawing back the curtains pulled up
the blind, revealing a half-curtain of green serge over the lower part of
the window. As the bright daylight flooded the room, he stood with his
back to the window looking about with deep attention, letting his eyes
travel slowly over the walls, the furniture, and especially the floor.
Presently he stooped to pick up a short match-end which lay just under
the table opposite the door, and as he looked at it thoughtfully, he
pointed to a couple of spots of candle grease on the linoleum near the
table. Then he glanced at the mantelpiece and from that to an ash-bowl on
the table.

These are only trifling discrepancies," said he, "but they are worth
noting. You see," he continued in response to my look of inquiry, "that
this room is severely trim and orderly. Everything seems to be in place.
The match-box, for instance, has its fixed receptacle above the
mantelpiece, and there is a bowl for the burnt matches, regularly used,
as its contents show. Yet there is a burnt match thrown on the floor,
although the bowl is on the table quite handy. And the match, you notice,
is not of the same kind as those in the box over the mantelpiece, which
is a large Bryant and May, or as the burnt matches in the bowl which have
evidently come from it. But if you look in the bowl," he continued,
picking it up, "you will see two burnt matches of this same kind--apparently
the small size Bryant and May--one burnt quite short and one
only half burnt. The suggestion is fairly obvious, but, as I say, there
is a slight discrepancy."

I don't know," said I, "that either the suggestion or the discrepancy is
very obvious to me."

He walked over to the mantelpiece and took the match box from its case.

"You see," said he, opening it, "that this box is nearly full. It has an
appointed place and it was in that place. We find a small match, burnt
right out, under the table opposite the door, and two more in the bowl
under the hanging lamp. A reasonable inference is that some one came in
in the dark and struck a match as he entered. That match must have come
from a box that he brought with him in his pocket. It burned out and he
struck another, which also burned out while he was raising the chimney of
the lamp, and he struck a third to light the lamp. But if that person was
Crofton, why did he need to strike a match to light the room when the
match-box was in its usual place ; and why did he throw the match-end on
the floor?"

"You mean that the suggestion is that the person was not Crofton ; and I
think you are right. Crofton doesn't carry matches in his pocket. He uses
wax vestas and carries them in a silver case."

"It might possibly have been Ambrose," Thorndyke suggested.

"I don't think so," said I. "Ambrose uses a petrol lighter."

Thorndyke nodded. "There may be nothing in it," said he, "but it offers a
suggestion. Shall we look over the rest of the premises? "

He paused for a moment to glance at a small key board on the wall on
which one or two keys were hanging, each distinguished by a little ivory
label and by the name written underneath the peg; then he opened a door
in the corner of the room. As this led into the kitchen, I closed it and
opened an adjoining one which gave access to a bedroom.

"This is probably the extra bedroom," he remarked as we entered. "The
blinds have not been drawn down, and there is a general air of trimness
that suggests the tidy up of an unoccupied room. And the bed looks if it
had been out of use."

After an attentive look round, he returned to the living room and crossed
to the remaining door. As he opened it, we looked into a nearly dark
room, both the windows being covered by thick serge curtains.

"Well," he observed, when he had drawn back the curtains and raised the
blinds, "there is nothing painfully tidy here. That is a very
roughly-made bed, and the blanket is outside the counterpane."

He looked critically about the room and especially the bedside table.

"Here are some more discrepancies," said he. "There are two candlesticks,
in one of which the candle has burned itself right out, leaving a
fragment of wick. There are five burnt matches in it, two large ones from
the box by its side and three small ones, of which two are mere stumps.
The second candle is very much guttered, and I think "--he lifted it out
of the socket--" yes, it has been used out of the candlestick. You see
that the grease has run down right to the bottom and there is a distinct
impression of a thumb--apparently a left thumb--made while the grease
was warm. Then you notice the mark on the table of a tumbler which had
contained some liquid that was not water, but there is no tumbler.
However, it may be an old mark, though it looks fresh."

It is hardly like Crofton to leave an old mark on the table," said I. "He
is a regular old maid. We had better see if the tumbler is in the
kitchen."

"Yes," agreed Thorndyke. "But I wonder what he was doing with that
candle. Apparently he took it out-of-doors, as there is a spot on the
floor of the living-room ; and you see that there are one or two spots on
the floor here." He walked over to a chest of drawers near the door and
was looking into a drawer which he had pulled out, and which I could see
was full of clothes, when I observed a faint smile spreading over his
face. "Come round here, Jardine," he said in a low voice, "and take a
peep through the crack of the door."

I walked round, and, applying my eye to the crack, looked across the
living-room at the end window. Above the half-curtain I could distinguish
the unmistakable top of a constabulary helmet.

"Listen," said Thorndyke. "They are in force."

As he spoke, there came from the neighbourhood of the kitchen a furtive
scraping sound, suggestive of a pocket knife persuading a window-catch.
It was followed by the sound of an opening window and then of a stealthy
entry. Finally, the kitchen door opened softly, some one tip-toed across
the living-room and a burly police-sergeant appeared, framed in the
bedroom doorway.

"Good afternoon, sergeant," said Thorndyke, with a genial smile.

"Yes, that's all very well," was the response, "but the question is, who
might you be, and what might you be doing in this house?"

Thorndyke briefly explained our business, and, when, we had presented our
cards and Mrs. Crofton's written authority, the sergeant's professional
stiffness vanished like magic.

"It's all right, Tomkins," he sang out to an invisible myrmidon. "You had
better shut the window and go out by the front door. You must excuse me,
gentlemen," he added; "but the tenant of the next bungalow cycled down
and gave us the tip. He watched you through his glasses and saw you pick
the front-door lock. It did look a bit queer, you must admit."

Thorndyke admitted it freely with a faint chuckle, and we walked across
the living-room to the kitchen. Here, the sergeant's presence seemed to
inhibit comments, but I noticed that my colleague cast a significant
glance at a frying-pan that rested on a Primus stove. The congealed fat
in it presented another "discrepancy"; for I could hardly imagine the
fastidious Crofton going away and leaving it in that condition.

Noting that there was no unwashed tumbler in evidence, I followed my
friend back to the living-room, where he paused with his eye on the
key-board.

"Well," remarked the sergeant, "if he ever did come back here, it's
pretty clear that he isn't here now. You've been all over the premises, I
think?"

"All excepting the bathing-hut," replied Thorndyke; and, as he spoke, he
lifted the key so labelled from its hook.

The sergeant laughed softly. "He's not very likely to have taken up
quarters there," said he. "Still, there nothing like being thorough. But
you notice that the key of the front door and that of the gate have both
been taken away, so we can assume that he has taken himself away too."

"That is a reasonable inference," Thorndyke admitted; "but we may as well
make our survey complete."

With this he led the way out into the garden and to the gate, where he
unblushingly produced the 'smoker's companion' and insinuated its prongs
into the keyhole.

"Well, I'm sure!" exclaimed the sergeant as the lock clicked and the gate
opened. "That's a funny sort of tool; and you seem quite handy with it,
too. Might I have a look at it?"

He looked at it so very long and attentively, when Thorndyke handed it to
him, that I suspected him of an intention to infringe the patent. By the
time he had finished his inspection we were at the bottom of the bank
below the sea-wall and Thorndyke had inserted the key into the lock of
the bathing-hut. As the sergeant returned the 'companion' Thorndyke took
it and pocketed it then he turned the key and pushed the door open; and
the officer started back with a shout of amazement.

It was certainly a grim spectacle that we looked in on. The hut was a
small building about six feet square, devoid of any furniture or
fittings, excepting one or two pegs high up the wall. The single,
unglazed window was closely shuttered, and on the bare floor in the
farther corner a man was sitting, leaning back into the corner, with his
head dropped forward on his breast. The man was undoubtedly Arthur
Crofton. That much I could say with certainty, notwithstanding the
horrible changes wrought by death and the lapse of time. "But," I added
when I had identified the body, "I should have said that he had been dead
more than a fortnight. He must have come straight back from Margate and
done this. And that will probably be the missing tumbler," I concluded,
pointing to one that stood on the floor close to the right hand of the
corpse.

"No doubt," replied Thorndyke, somewhat abstractedly. He had been looking
critically about the interior of the hut, and now remarked: "I wonder why
he did not shoot the bolt instead of locking himself in; and what has
become of the key? He must have taken it out of the lock and put it in
his pocket."

He looked interrogatively at the sergeant, who having no option but to
take the hint, advanced with an expression of horrified disgust and
proceeded very gingerly to explore the dead man's clothing.

"Ah!" he exclaimed at length, "here we are." He drew from the waistcoat
pocket a key with a small ivory label attached to it. "Yes, this is the
one. You see, it is marked " Bathing-hut."

He handed it to Thorndyke, who looked at it attentively, and even with an
appearance of surprise, and then, producing an indelible pencil from his
pocket, wrote on the label, "Found on body."

The first thing," said he, "is to ascertain it fits the lock."

"Why, it must," said the sergeant, "if he locked himself in with it."

"Undoubtedly," Thorndyke agreed, "but that is the point. It doesn't look
quite similar to the other one."

He drew out the key which we had brought from the house and gave it to me
to hold. Then he tried the key from the dead man's pocket; but it not
only did not fit, it would not even enter the keyhole.

The sceptical indifference faded suddenly from the sergeant's face. He
took the key from Thorndyke, having tried it with the same result, stood
up and stared, round-eyed, at my colleague.

"Well!" he exclaimed. "This is a facer! It's the wrong key!"

"There may be another key on the body," said Thorndyke. "It isn't likely,
but, you had better make sure."

The sergeant showed no reluctance this time. He searched the dead man's
pockets thoroughly and produced a bunch of keys. But they were all quite
small keys, none of them in the least resembling that of the hut door.
Nor, I noticed, did they include those of the bungalow door or the garden
gate. Once more the officer drew himself up and stared at Thorndyke.

"There's something rather fishy about this affair," said he.

"There is," Thorndyke agreed. "The door was certainly locked; and as it
was not locked from within, it must have been locked from without. Then
that key--the wrong key--was presumably placed in the dead man's pocket
by some other person. And there are some other suspicious facts. A
tumbler has disappeared from the bedside table, and there is a tumbler
here. You notice one or two spots of candle-grease on the floor here, and
it looks as if a candle had been stood in that corner near the door.
There is no candle here now; but in the bedroom there is a candle which
has been carried without a candle stick and which, by the way, bears an
excellent impression of a thumb. The first thing to do will be to take
the deceased's finger-prints. Would you mind fetching my case from the
bedroom, Jardine?"

I ran back to the house (not unobserved by the gentleman in the next
bungalow) and, catching up the case, carried it down to the hut. When I
arrived there I found Thorndyke holding the tumbler delicately in his
gloved left hand while he examined it against the light with the aid of
his lens. He handed the latter to me and observed.

"If you look at this carefully, Jardine, you will see a very interesting
thing. There are the prints of two different thumbs--both left hands,
and therefore of different persons. You will remember that the tumbler
stood by the right hand of the body and that the table, which bore the
mark of a tumbler, was at the left-hand side of the bed."

When I had examined the thumb-prints he placed the tumbler carefully on
the floor and opened his "research- case," which was fitted as a sort of
portable laboratory. From this he took a little brass box containing an
ink- tube, a tiny roller and some small cards, and, using the box-lid as
an inking plate, he proceeded methodically to take the dead man's
finger-prints, writing the particulars on each card.

"I don't quite see what you want with Crofton's finger-prints," said I.
"The other man's would be more to the point."

"Undoubtedly," Thorndyke replied. "But we have to prove that they are
another man's--that they are not Crofton's. And there is that print on
the candle. That is a very important point to settle; and as we have
finished here, we had better go and settle it at once."

He closed his case, and, taking up the tumbler with his gloved hand, led
the way back to the house, the sergeant following when he had locked the
door. We proceeded directly to the bedroom, where Thorndyke took the
candle from its socket and, with the aid of his lens, compared it
carefully with the two thumb-prints on the card, and then with the
tumbler.

"It is perfectly clear," said he. "This is a mark of a left thumb. It is
totally unlike Crofton's and it appears to be identical with the strange
thumb-print on the tumbler. From which it seems to follow that the
stranger took the candle from this room to the hut and brought it back.
But he probably blew it out before leaving the house and lit it again in
the hut."

The sergeant and I examined the cards, the candle and the tumbler, and
then the former asked: "I suppose you have no idea whose thumb-print that
might be? You don't know, for instance, of anyone who might have had any
motive for making away with Mr. Crofton?

"That," replied Thorndyke, "is rather a question for the coroner's jury."

"So it is," the sergeant agreed. "But there won't be much question about
their verdict. It is a pretty clear case of wilful murder."

To this Thorndyke made no reply excepting to give some directions as to
the safe-keeping of the candle and tumbler; and our proposed "gipsy
holiday" being now evidently impossible, we took our leave of the
sergeant--who already had our cards--and wended back to the station.

"I suppose," said I, "we shall have to break the news to Mrs. Crofton."

That is hardly our business," he replied. "We can leave that to the
solicitor or to Ambrose. If you know the lawyer's address, you might send
him a telegram, arranging a meeting at eight o'clock to-night. Give no
particulars. Just say "Crofton found," but mark the telegram "urgent" so
that he will keep the appointment."

On reaching the station, I sent off the telegram, and very soon
afterwards the London train was signalled. It turned out to be a slow
train, which gave us ample time to discuss the case and me ample time for
reflection. And, in fact, I reflected a good deal; for there was a rather
uncomfortable question in my mind--the very question that the sergeant
had raised and that Thorndyke had obviously evaded. Was there anyone who
might have had a motive for making away with Crofton? It was an awkward
question when one remembered the great legacy that had just fallen in and
the terms of Miss Shuler's will; which expressly provided that, if
Crofton died before his wife, the legacy should go to her. Now, Ambrose
was the wife's brother; and Ambrose had been in the bungalow alone with
Crofton, and nobody else was known to have been there at all. I meditated
on these facts uncomfortably and would have liked to put the case to
Thorndyke; but his reticence, his evasion of the sergeant's question and
his decision to communicate with the solicitor rather than with the
family showed pretty clearly what was in his mind and that he did not
wish to discuss the matter.

Promptly at eight o'clock, having dined at a restaurant, we presented
ourselves at the solicitor's house and were shown into the study, where
we found Mr. Jobson seated at a writing-table. He looked at Thorndyke
with some surprise, and when the introductions had been made, said
somewhat dryly: "We may take it that Dr. Thorndyke is in some way
connected with our rather confidential business?"

"Certainly," I replied. "That is why he is here."

Jobson nodded. "And how is Crofton?" he asked, "and where did you dig him
up?"

"I am sorry to say," I replied, "that he is dead. It is a dreadful
affair. We found his body locked in the bathing-hut. He was sitting in a
corner with a tumbler on the floor by his side."

"Horrible ! horrible!" exclaimed the solicitor. "He ought never to have
gone there alone. I said so at the time. And it is most unfortunate on
account of the insurance, though that is not a large amount. Still the
suicide clause, you know--"

"I doubt whether the insurance will be affected," said Thorndyke. "The
coroner's finding will almost certainly be wilful murder."

Jobson was thunderstruck. In a moment his face grew livid and he gazed at
Thorndyke with an expression of horrified amazement.

"Murder!" he repeated incredulously. "But you said he was locked in the
hut. Surely that is clear proof of suicide."

"He hadn't locked himself in, you know. There was no key inside."

"Ah!" The solicitor spoke almost in a tone relief. "But, perhaps--did
you examine his pockets?"

"Yes; and we found a key labelled 'Bathing hut.' But it was the wrong
key. It wouldn't go into the lock. There is no doubt whatever that the
door was locked from the outside."

"Good God!" exclaimed Jobson, in a faint voice. "It does look suspicious.
But still, I can't believe--It seems quite incredible."

"That may be," said Thorndyke, "but it is all perfectly clear. There is
evidence that a stranger entered the bungalow at night and that the
affair took place in the bedroom. From thence the stranger carried the
body down to the hut and he also took a tumbler and a candle from the
bedside table. By the light of the candle--which was stood on the floor
of the hut in a corner--he arranged the body, having put into its pocket
a key from the board in the living-room. Then he locked the hut, went
back to the house, put the key on its peg and the candle in its
candlestick. Then he locked up the house and the garden gate and took the
keys away with him."

The solicitor listened to this recital in speechless amazement. At length
he asked: "How long ago do you suppose this happened?"

"Apparently on the night of the fifteenth of this month," was the reply.

"But," objected Jobson, "he wrote home on the sixteenth."

"He wrote," said Thorndyke," on the sixth. Somebody put a one in front of
the six and posted the letter at Margate on the sixteenth. I shall give
evidence to that effect at the inquest."

I was becoming somewhat mystified. Thorndyke's dry, stern manner--so
different from his usual suavity--and the solicitor's uncalled-for
agitation, seemed to hint at something more than met the eye. I watched
Jobson as he lit a cigarette--with a small Bryant and May match, which
he threw on the floor--and listened expectantly for his next question.
At length he asked: "Was there any sort of--er--clue as to who this
stranger might be?"

"The man who will be charged with the murder? Oh, yes. The police have
the means of identifying him with absolute certainty."

"That is, if they can find him," said Jobson.

"Naturally. But when all the very remarkable facts have transpired at the
inquest, that individual will probably come pretty clearly into view."

Jobson continued to smoke furiously with his eyes fixed on the floor, as
if he were thinking hard. Presently he asked, without looking up:
"Supposing they do find this man. What then? What evidence is there that
he murdered Crofton?"

"You mean direct evidence?" said Thorndyke. "I can't say, as I did not
examine the body; but the circumstantial evidence that I have given you
would be enough to convict unless there were some convincing explanation
other than murder. And I may say," he added, "that if the suspected
person has a plausible explanation to offer, he would be well advised to
produce it before he is charged. A voluntary statement has a good deal
more weight than the same statement made by a prisoner in answer to a
charge."

There was an interval of silence, in which I looked bewilderment from
Thorndyke's stern visage to the pale face of the solicitor. At length the
latter rose abruptly and, after one or two quick strides up and down the
room, halted by the fireplace, and, still avoiding Thorndyke's eye, said,
somewhat brusquely, though in a low, husky voice: "I will tell you how it
happened. I went down to Seasalter, as you said, on the night of the
fifteenth, on the chance of finding Crofton at the bungalow. I wanted to
tell him of Miss Shuler's death and of the provisions her will."

"You had some private information on that subject, I presume?" said
Thorndyke.

"Yes. My cousin was her solicitor and he kept me informed about the
will."

"And about the state of her health?"

"Yes. Well, when I arrived at the bungalow, it was in darkness. The gate
and the front door were unlocked, so I entered, calling out Crofton's
name. As no one answered, I struck a match and lit the lamp. Then I went
into the bedroom and struck a match there; and by its light I could see
Crofton lying on the bed, quite still. I spoke to him, but he did not
answer or move. Then I lighted a candle on his table; and now I could see
what I had already guessed, that he was dead, and that he had been dead
some time--probably more than a week.

"It was an awful shock to find a dead man in this solitary house, and my
first impulse was to rush out and give the alarm. But when I went into
the living-room, I happened to see a letter lying on writing-table and
noticed that it was in his own hand and addressed to his wife.
Unfortunately, I had the curiosity to take it out of the unsealed
envelope and read it. It was dated the sixth and stated his intention of
going to Margate for a time and then coming back to the bungalow.

"Now, the reading of that letter exposed me to an enormous temptation. By
simply putting a one in front of the six and thus altering the date from
the sixth to the sixteenth and posting the letter at Margate, I stood to
gain thirty thousand pounds. I saw that at a glance. But I did not decide
immediately to do it. I pulled down the blinds, drew the curtains and
locked up the house while I thought it over. There seemed to be
practically no risk, unless someone should come to the bungalow and
notice that the state of the body did not agree with the altered date on
the letter. I went back and looked at the dead man. There was a burnt-out
candle by his side and a tumbler containing the dried-up remains of some
brown liquid. He had evidently poisoned himself. Then it occurred to me
that, if I put the body and the tumbler in some place where they were not
likely to be found for some time, the discrepancy between the condition
of the body and the date of the letter would not be noticed.

"For some time I could think of no suitable place, but at last I
remembered the bathing-hut. No one would look there for him. If they came
to the bungalow and didn't find him there, they would merely conclude
that he had not come back from Margate. I took the candle and the key
from the key-board and went down to the hut; but there was a key in the
door already, so I brought the other key back and put it in Crofton's
pocket, never dreaming that it might not be the duplicate. Of course, I
ought to have tried it in the door.

"Well, you know the rest. I took the body down about two in the morning,
locked up the hut, brought away the key and hung it on the board, took
the counterpane off the bed, as it had some marks on it, and re-made the
bed with the blanket outside. In the morning I took the train to Margate,
posted the letter, after altering the date, and threw the gate-key and
that of the front door into the sea.

"That is what really happened. You may not believe me; but I think you
will as you have seen the body and will realise that I had no motive for
killing Crofton before the fifteenth, whereas Crofton evidently died
before that date."

"I would not say 'evidently,' said Thorndyke; "but, as the date of his
death is the vital point in your defence, you would be wise to notify the
coroner of the importance of the issue."

* * * * *

"I don't understand this case," I said, as we walked homewards (I was
spending the evening with Thorndyke). "You seemed to smell a rat from the
very first. And I don't see how you spotted Jobson. It is a mystery to
me."

It wouldn't be if you were a lawyer," he replied. "The case against
Jobson was contained in what you told me at our first interview. You
yourself commented on the peculiarity of the will that he drafted for
Crofton. The intention of the latter was to leave all his property to his
wife. But instead of saying so, the will specified each item of property,
and appointed a residuary legatee, which was Jobson himself. This might
have appeared like mere legal verbiage; but when Miss Shuler's legacy was
announced, the transaction took on a rather different aspect. For this
legacy was not among the items specified in the will. Therefore it did
not go to Mrs. Crofton. It would be included in the residue of the estate
and would go to the residuary legatee."

"The deuce it would!" I exclaimed.

"Certainly; until Crofton revoked his will or made a fresh one. This was
rather suspicious. It suggested that Jobson had private information as to
Miss Shuler's will and had drafted Crofton's will in accordance with it;
and as she died of malignant disease, her doctor must have known for some
time that she was dying and it looked as if jobson had information on
that point, too. Now the position of affairs that you described to me was
this:

"Crofton, a possible suicide, had disappeared, and had made no fresh
will.

"Miss Shuler died on the thirteenth, leaving thirty thousand pounds to
Crofton, if he survived her, or if he did not, then to Mrs. Crofton. The
important question then was whether Crofton was alive or dead; and if he
was dead, whether he had died before or after the thirteenth. For if he
died before the thirteenth the legacy went to Mrs. Crofton, but if he
died after that date the legacy went to Jobson.

"Then you showed me that extraordinarily opportune letter dated the
sixteenth. Now, seeing that that date was worth thirty thousand pounds to
Jobson, I naturally scrutinised it narrowly. The letter was written with
ordinary blue-black ink. But this ink, even in the open, takes about a
fortnight to blacken completely. In a closed envelope it takes
considerably longer. On examining this date through a lens, the one was
very perceptibly bluer than the six. It had therefore been added later.
But for what reason? And by whom?

"The only possible reason was that Crofton was dead and had died before
the thirteenth. The only person who had any motive for making the
alteration was Jobson. Therefore, when we started for Seasalter I already
felt sure that Crofton was dead and that the letter had been posted at
Margate by Jobson. I had further no doubt that Crofton's body was
concealed somewhere on the premises of the bungalow. All that I had to do
was to verify those conclusions."

"Then you believe that Jobson has told us the truth?"

"Yes. But I suspect that he went down there with the deliberate intention
of making away with Crofton before he could make a fresh will. The
finding of Crofton's body must have been a fearful disappointment, but I
must admit that he showed considerable resource in dealing with the
situation; and he failed only by the merest chance. I think his defence
against the murder charge will be admitted; but, of course, it will
involve plea of guilty to the charge of fraud in connection with the
legacy."

Thorndyke's forecast turned out to be correct. Jobson was acquitted of
the murder of Arthur Crofton, but is at present "doing time" in respect
of the forged letter and the rest of his too-ingenious scheme.



THE CASE OF THE WHITE FOOTPRINTS


"Well," said my friend Foxton, pursuing a familiar and apparently
inexhaustible topic, "I'd sooner have your job than my own."

"I've no doubt you would," was my unsympathetic reply. "I never met a man
who wouldn't. We all tend to consider other men's jobs in terms of their
advantages and our own in terms of their drawbacks. It is human nature."

"Oh, it's all very well for you to be so beastly philosophical," retorted
Foxton. "You wouldn't be if you were in my place. Here, in Margate, it's
measles, chicken-pox and scarlatina all the summer, and bronchitis, colds
and rheumatism an the winter. A deadly monotony. Whereas you and
Thorndyke sit there in your chambers and let your clients feed you up
with the raw material of romance. Why, your life is a sort of everlasting
Adelphi drama."

"You exaggerate, Foxton," said I. "We, like you, have our routine work,
only it is never heard of outside the Law Courts; and you, like every
other doctor, must run up against mystery and romance from time to time."

Foxton shook his head as he held out his hand for my cup. "I don't," said
be. "My practice yields nothing but an endless round of dull routine."

And then, as if in commentary on this last statement, the housemaid burst
into the room and, with hardly dissembled agitation, exclaimed:

"If you please, sir, the page from Beddingfield's Boarding-house says
that a lady has been found dead in her bed and would you go round there
immediately."

"Very well, Jane," said Foxton, and as the maid retired, he deliberately
helped himself to another fried egg and, looking across the table at me,
exclaimed: "Isn't that always the way? Come immediately--now--this very
instant, although the patient may have been considering for a day or two
whether he'll send for you or not. But directly he decides you must
spring out of bed, or jump up from your breakfast, and run."

"That's quite true," I agreed; "but this really does seem to be an urgent
case."

"What's the urgency?" demanded Foxton. "The woman is already dead. Anyone
would think she was in imminent danger of coming to life again and that
my instant arrival the only thing that could prevent such a catastrophe."

"You've only a third-hand statement that she is dead," said I. "It is
just possible that she isn't; and even if she is, as you will have to
give evidence at the inquest, you do want the police to get there first
and turn out the room before you've made your inspection."

"Gad!" exclaimed Foxton. "I hadn't thought of that. Yes. You're right.
I'll hop round at once."

He swallowed the remainder of the egg at a single gulp rose from the
table. Then he paused and stood for a few moments looking down at me
irresolutely.

"I wonder, Jervis," he said, "if you would mind coming round with me. You
know all the medico-legal ropes, and I don't. What do you say?"

I agreed instantly, having, in fact, been restrained only by delicacy
from making the suggestion myself; and when I had fetched from my room my
pocket camera and telescopic tripod, we set forth together without
further delay.

Beddingfield's Boarding-house was but a few minutes walk from Foxton's
residence being situated near the middle of Ethelred Road, Cliftonville,
a quiet, suburban street which abounded in similar establishments, many
of which, I noticed, were undergoing a spring-cleaning and renovation to
prepare them for the approaching season.

"That's the house," said Foxton, "where that woman is standing at the
front door. Look at the boarders, collected at the dining-room window.
There's a rare commotion in that house, I'll warrant."

Here, arriving at the house, he ran up the steps and accosted in
sympathetic tones the elderly woman who stood by the open street door.

"What a dreadful thing this is, Mrs. Beddingfield! Terrible! Most
distressing for you!"

"Ah, you're right, Dr. Foxton," she replied. "It's an awful affair.
Shocking. So bad for business, too. I do hope, and trust there won't be
any scandal."

"I'm sure I hope not," said Foxton. "There shan't be I can help it. And
as my friend Dr. Jervis, who is staying with me for a few days, is a
lawyer as well as a doctor, we shall have the best advice. When was the
affair discovered?"

"Just before I sent for you, Dr. Foxton. The maid, noticed that Mrs.
Toussaint--that is the poor creature's name--had not taken in her hot
water, so she knocked at the door. As she couldn't get any answer, she
tried the door and found it bolted on the inside, and then she came and
told me. I went up and knocked loudly, and then, as I couldn't get any
reply, I told our boy, James, to force the door open with a case-opener,
which he did quite easily as the bolt was only a small one. Then I went
in, all of a tremble, for I had a presentiment that there was something
wrong; and there she was lying stone dead, with a most 'orrible stare on
her face and an empty bottle in her hand."

"A bottle, eh!" said Foxton.

"Yes. She'd made away with herself, poor thing; and all on account of
some silly love affair--and it was hardly even that."

"Ah," said Foxton. "The usual thing. You must tell us about that later.
Now we'd better go up and see the patient--at least the--er--perhaps
you'll show us the room, Mrs. Beddingfield."

The landlady turned and preceded us up the stairs to the first-floor
back, where she paused, and softly opening a door, peered nervously into
the room. As we stepped past her and entered, she seemed inclined to
follow, but, at a significant glance from me, Foxton persuasively ejected
her and closed the door. Then we stood silent for a while and looked
about us.

In the aspect of the room there was something strangely incongruous with
the tragedy that had been enacted within its walls; a mingling of the
commonplace and the terrible that almost amounted to anticlimax. Through
the wide-open window the bright spring sunshine streamed in on the garish
wallpaper and cheap furniture; from the street below, the periodic shouts
of a man selling 'sole and mack-ro!" broke into the brisk staccato of a
barrel-organ and both sounds mingled with a raucous voice close at hand,
cheerfully trolling a popular song, and accounted for by a linen-clad
elbow that bobbed in front of the window and evidently appertained to a
house-painter on an adjacent ladder.

It was all very commonplace and familiar and discordantly out of
character with the stark figure that lay on the bed like a waxen effigy
symbolic of tragedy. Here was none of that gracious somnolence in which
death often presents itself with a suggestion of eternal repose. This
woman was dead; horribly, aggressively dead. The thin, sallow face was
rigid as stone, the dark eyes stared into infinite space with a horrid
fixity that was quite disturbing to look on. And yet the posture of the
corpse was not uneasy, being, in fact, rather curiously symmetrical, with
both arms outside the bedclothes and both hands closed, the right
grasping, as Mrs. Beddingfield had said, an empty bottle.

"Well," said Foxton, as he stood looking down on the dead woman, "it
seems a pretty clear case. She appears to have laid herself out and kept
hold of the bottle so that there should be no mistake. How long do you
suppose this woman has been dead, Jervis?"

I felt the rigid limbs and tested the temperature of the body surface.

"Not less than six hours," I replied. "Probably more. I should say that
she died about two o'clock this morning."

"And that is about all we can say," said Foxton, "until the post-mortem
has been made. Everything looks quite straightforward. No signs of a
struggle or marks of violence. That blood on the mouth is probably due to
her biting her lip when she drank from the bottle. Yes; here's a little
cut on the inside of the lip, corresponding to the upper incisors. By the
way, I wonder if there is anything left in the bottle."

As he spoke, he drew the small, unlabelled, green glass phial from the
closed hand--out of which it slipped quite easily--and held it up to
the light.

"Yes," he exclaimed, "there's more than a drachm left; quite enough for
an analysis. But I don't recognize the smell. Do you?"

I sniffed at the bottle and was aware of a faint unfamiliar vegetable
odour.

"No," I answered. "It appears to be a watery solution of some kind, but I
can't give it a name. Where is the cork?"

"I haven't seen it," he replied. "Probably it is on the floor somewhere."

We both stooped to look for the missing cork and presently found it in
the shadow, under the little bedside table. But, in the course of that
brief search, I found something else, which had indeed been lying in full
view all the time--a wax match. Now a wax match is a perfectly innocent
and very commonplace object, but yet the presence of this one gave me
pause. In the first place, women do not, as a rule, use wax matches,
though there was not much in that. What was more to the point was that
the candlestick by the bedside contained a box of safety matches, and
that, as the burnt remains of one lay in the tray, it appeared to have
been used to light the candle. Then why the wax match?

While I was turning over this problem Foxton had corked the bottle,
wrapped it carefully in a piece of paper which he took from the
dressing-table and bestowed it in his pocket.

"Well, Jervis," said he, "I think we've seen everything. The analysis and
the post-mortem will complete the case. Shall we go down and hear what
Mrs. Beddingfield has to say?"

But that wax match, slight as was its significance, taken alone, had
presented itself to me as the last of a succession of phenomena each of
which was susceptible of a sinister interpretation; and the cumulative
effect of these slight suggestions began to impress me somewhat strongly.

"One moment, Foxton," said I. "Don't let us take anything for granted. We
are here to collect evidence, and we must go warily. There is such a
thing as homicidal poisoning, you know."

"Yes, of course," he replied, "but there is nothing to suggest it in this
case; at least, I see nothing. Do you?"

"Nothing very positive," said I; "but there are some facts that seem to
call for consideration. Let us go over what we have seen. In the first
place, there is a distinct discrepancy in the appearance of the body. The
general easy, symmetrical posture, like that of a figure on a tomb,
suggests the effect of a slow, painless poison. But look at the face.
There is nothing reposeful about that. It is very strongly suggestive of
pain or terror or both."

"Yes," said Foxton, "that is so. But you can't draw any satisfactory
conclusions from the facial expression of dead bodies. Why, men who have
been hanged, or even, stabbed, often look as peaceful as babes."

"Still," I urged "it is a fact to be noted. Then there is that cut on the
lip. It may have been produced in the way you suggest; but it may equally
well be the result of pressure on the mouth."

Foxton made no comment on this beyond a slight shrug of the shoulders,
and I continued: "Then there is the state of the hand. It was closed,
but, it did not really grasp the object it contained. You drew the bottle
out without any resistance. It simply lay in the closed hand. But that is
not a normal state of affairs. As you know, when a person dies grasping
any object, either the hand relaxes and lets it drop, or the muscular
action passes into cadaveric spasm and grasps the object firmly. And
lastly, there is this wax match. Where did it come from? The dead woman
apparently lit her candle with a safety match from the box. It is a small
matter, but it wants explaining."

Foxton raised his eyebrows protestingly. "You're like all specialists,
Jervis," said he. "You see your speciality in everything. And while you
are straining these flimsy suggestions to turn a simple suicide into
murder, you ignore the really conclusive fact that the door was bolted
and had to be broken open before anyone could get in."

"You are not forgetting, I suppose," said I, "that the window was wide
open and that there were house-painters about and possibly a ladder left
standing against the house."

"As to the ladder," said Foxton, "that is a pure assumption; but we can
easily settle the question by asking that fellow out there if it was or
was not left standing last night."

Simultaneously we moved towards the window; but halfway we both stopped
short. For the question of the ladder had in a moment became negligible.
Staring up at us from the dull red linoleum which covered the floor were
the impressions of a pair of bare feet, imprinted in white paint with the
distinctness of a woodcut. There was no need to ask if they had been made
by the dead woman: they were unmistakably the feet of a man, and large
feet at that. Nor could there be any doubt as to whence those feet had
come. Beginning with startling distinctness under the window, the tracks
shed rapidly in intensity until they reached the carpeted portion of the
room, where they vanished abruptly; and only by the closest scrutiny was
it possible to detect the faint traces of the retiring tracks.

Foxton and I stood for some moments gazing in, silence at the sinister
white shapes; then we looked at one another.

"You've saved me from a most horrible blunder, Jervis," said Foxton.
"Ladder or no ladder, that fellow came in at the window; and he came in
last night, for I saw them painting these window-sills yesterday
afternoon. Which side did he come from, I wonder?"

We moved to the window and looked out on the sill. A set of distinct,
though smeared impressions on the new paint gave unneeded confirmation
and showed that the intruder had approached from the left side, close to
which was a cast-iron stack-pipe, now covered with fresh green paint.

"So," said Foxton, "the presence or absence of the ladder is of no
significance. The man got into the window somehow, and that's all that
matters."

"On the contrary," said I, "the point may be of considerable importance
in identification. It isn't everyone who could climb up a stack-pipe,
whereas most people could make shift to climb a ladder, even if it were
guarded by a plank. But the fact that the man took off his boots and
socks suggests that he came up by the pipe. If he had merely aimed at
silencing his footfalls, he would probably have removed his boots only."

From the window we turned to examine more closely the footprints on the
floor, and while I took a series of measurements with my spring tape
Foxton entered them in my notebook.

"Doesn't it strike you as rather odd, Jervis," said he, "that neither of
the little toes has made any mark?"

"It does indeed," I replied. "The appearances suggest that the little
toes were absent, but I have never met with such a condition. Have you?"

"Never. Of course one is acquainted with the supernumerary toe deformity,
but I have never heard of congenitally deficient little toes."

Once more we scrutinized the footprints, and even examined those on the
window-sill, obscurely marked on the fresh paint; but, exquisitely
distinct as were those on the linoleum, showing every wrinkle and minute
skin-marking, not the faintest hint of a little toe was to be seen on
either foot.

"It's very extraordinary," said Foxton. "He has certainly lost his little
toes, if he ever had any. They couldn't have failed to make some mark.
But it's a queer affair. Quite a windfall for the police, by the way; I
mean for purposes of identification."

"Yes," I agreed, "and having regard to the importance of the footprints,
I think it would be wise to get a photograph of them."

"Oh, the police will see to that," said Foxton. "Besides, we haven't got
a camera, unless you thought of using that little toy snapshotter of
yours."

As Foxton was no photographer I did not trouble to explain that my
camera, though small, had been specially made for scientific purposes.

"Any photograph is better than none," I said, and with this I opened the
tripod and set it over one of the most distinct of the footprints,
screwed the camera to the goose-neck, carefully framed the footprint in
the finder and adjusted the focus, finally making the exposure by means
of an Antinous release. This process I repeated four times, twice on a
right footprint and twice on a left.

"Well," Foxton remarked, "with all those photographs the police ought to
be able to pick up the scent."

"Yes, they've got something to go on; but they'll have to catch their
hare before they can cook him. He won't be walking about barefooted, you
know."

"No. It's a poor clue in that respect. And now we may as well be off as
we've seen all there is to see. I think we won't have much to say to Mrs.
Beddingfield. This is a police case, and the less I'm mixed up in it the
better it will be for my practice."

I was faintly amused at Foxton's caution when considered by the light of
his utterances at the breakfast-table. Apparently his appetite for
mystery and romance was easily satisfied. But that was no affair of mine.
I waited on the doorstep while he said a few--probably evasive--words
to the landlady and then, as we started off together in the direction of
the police station, I began to turn over in my mind the salient features
of the case. For some time we walked on in silence, and must have been
pursuing a parallel train of thought for, when he at length spoke, he
almost put my reflections into words.

"You know, Jervis," said he, "there ought to be a clue in those
footprints. I realize that you can't tell how many toes a man has by
looking at his booted feet. But those unusual footprints ought to give an
expert a hint as to what sort of man to look for. Don't they convey any
hint to you?"

I felt that Foxton was right; that if my brilliant colleague, Thorndyke,
had been in my place he would have extracted from those footprints some
leading fact that would have given the police a start along some definite
line of inquiry; and that belief, coupled with Foxton's challenge, put me
on my mettle.

"They offer no particular suggestions to me at this moment," said I, "but
I think that, if we consider them systematically, we may be able to draw
some useful deductions."

"Very well," said Foxton, "then let us consider them systematically. Fire
away. I should like to hear how you work these things out."

Foxton's frankly spectatorial attitude was a little disconcerting,
especially as it seemed to commit me to a result that I was by no means
confident of attaining. I therefore began a little diffidently.

"We are assuming that both the feet that made those prints were from some
cause devoid of little toes. That assumption--which is almost certainly
correct--we treat as a fact, and, taking it as our starting point, the
first step in the inquiry is to find some explanation of it. Now there
are three possibilities, and only three: deformity, injury, and disease.
The toes may have been absent from birth, they may have been lost as a
result of mechanical injury, or they may have been lost by disease. Let
us take those possibilities in order.

"Deformity we exclude since such a malformation is unknown to us.

"Mechanical injury seems to be excluded by the fact that the two little
toes are on opposite sides of the body and could not conceivably be
affected by any violence which left the intervening feet uninjured. This
seems to narrow the possibilities down to disease; and the question that
arises is, What diseases are there which might result in the loss of both
little toes?"

I looked inquiringly at Foxton, but he merely nodded encouragingly. His
rôle was that of listener.

"Well," I pursued, "the loss of both toes seems to exclude local disease,
just as it excluded local injury; and as to general diseases, I can think
only of three which might produce this condition--Raynaud's disease,
ergotism, and frost-bite."

"You don't call frost-bite a general disease, do you?" objected Foxton.

"For our present purpose, I do. The effects are local, but the cause--low
external temperature--affects the whole body and is a general cause.
Well, now, taking the diseases in order. I think we can exclude Raynaud's
disease. It does, it is true, occasionally cause the fingers or toes to
die and drop off, and the little toes would be especially liable to be
affected as being most remote from the heart. But in such a severe case
the other toes would be affected. They would be shrivelled and tapered,
whereas, if you remember, the toes of these feet were quite plump and
full, to judge by the large impressions they made. So I think we may
safely reject Raynaud's disease. There remain ergotism and frost-bite;
and the choice between them is just a question of relative frequency.
Frost-bite is more common; therefore frost-bite is more probable."

"Do they tend equally to affect the little toes?" asked Foxton.

"As a matter of probability, yes. The poison of ergot acting from within,
and intense cold acting from without, contract the small blood-vessels
and arrest, the circulation. The feet, being the most distant parts of
the body from the heart, are the first to feel the effects; and the
little toes, which are the most distant parts of the feet, are the most
susceptible of all."

Foxton reflected awhile, and then remarked:

"This is all very well, Jervis, but I don't see that you are much
forrarder. This man has lost both his little toes and on your showing,
the probabilities are that the loss was due either to chronic ergot
poisoning or to frost-bite, with a balance of probability in favour of
frost-bite. That's all. No proof, no verification, just the law of
probability applied to a particular case, which is always unsatisfactory.
He may have lost his toes in some totally different way. But even if the
probabilities work out correctly, I don't see what use your conclusions
would be to the police. They wouldn't tell them what sort of man to look
for."

There was a good deal of truth in Foxton's objection. A man who has
suffered from ergotism or frost-bite is not externally different from any
other man. Still, we had not exhausted the case, as I ventured to point
out.

"Don't be premature, Foxton," said I. "Let us pursue our argument a
little farther. We have established a probability that this unknown man
has suffered either from ergotism or frost-bite. That, as you say, is of
no use by itself; but supposing we can show that these conditions tend to
affect a particular class of persons, we shall have established a fact
that will indicate a line of investigation. And I think we can. Let us
take the case of ergotism first.

"Now how is chronic ergot poisoning caused? Not by the medicinal use of
the drug, but, by the consumption of the diseased rye in which ergot
occurs. It is therefore peculiar to countries in which rye is used
extensively as food. Those countries, broadly speaking, are the countries
of North-Eastern Europe, and especially Russia and Poland.

"Then take the case of frost-bite. Obviously, the most likely person to
get frost-bitten is the inhabitant of a country with a cold climate. The
most rigorous climates inhabited by white people are North America and
North-Eastern Europe, especially Russia and Poland. So you see, the areas
associated with ergotism and frost-bite overlap to some extent. In fact
they do more than overlap; for a person even slightly affected by ergot
would be specially liable to frost-bite, owing to the impaired
circulation. The conclusion is that, racially, in both ergotism and
frost-bite, the balance of probability is in favour of a Russian, a Pole,
or a Scandinavian.

"Then in the case of frost-bite there is the occupation factor. What
class of men tend most to become frost-bitten? Well, beyond all doubt,
the greatest sufferers from frost-bite are sailors, especially those on
sailing ships, and, naturally, on ships trading to Arctic and sub-Arctic
countries. But the bulk of such sailing ships are those engaged in the
Baltic and Archangel trade; and the crews of those ships are almost
exclusively Scandinavians, Finns, Russians and Poles. So that, again, the
probabilities point to a native of North-Eastern Europe, and, taken as a
whole, by the over-lapping of factors, to a Russian, a Pole, or a
Scandinavian."

Foxton smiled sardonically. "Very ingenious, Jervis," said he. "Most
ingenious. As an academic statement of probabilities, quite excellent.
But for practical purposes absolutely useless. However, here we are at
the police-station. I'll just run in and give them the facts and then go
on to the coroner's office."

"I suppose I'd better not come in with you?" I said.

"Well, no," he replied. "You see, you have no official connection with
the case, and they mightn't like it. You'd better go and amuse yourself
while I get the morning's visits done. We can talk things over at lunch."

With this he disappeared into the police-station, and I turned away with
a smile of grim amusement. Experience is apt to make us a trifle
uncharitable, and experience had taught me that those who are the most
scornful of academic reasoning are often not above retailing it with some
reticence as to its original authorship. I had a shrewd suspicion that
Foxton was at this very moment disgorging my despised "academic statement
of probabilities" to an admiring police-inspector.

My way towards the sea lay through Ethelred Road, and I had traversed
about half its length and was approaching the house of the tragedy when I
observed Mrs. Beddingfield at the bay window. Evidently she recognized
me, for a few moments later she appeared in outdoor clothes on the
doorstep and advanced to meet me.

"Have you seen the police?" she asked, as we met.

I replied that Dr. Foxton was even now at the police-station.

"Ah!" she said, "it's a dreadful affair; most unfortunate, too, just at
the beginning of the season. A scandal is absolute ruin to a
boarding-house. What do you think of the case? Will it be possible to
hush it up? Dr. Foxton said you were a lawyer, I think, Dr. Jervis?"

"Yes, I am a lawyer, but really I know nothing of the circumstances of
this case. Did I understand that there had been something in the nature
of a love affair?"

"Yes--at least--well, perhaps I oughtn't to have said that. But hadn't
I better tell you the whole story?--that is, if I am not taking up too
much of your time."

"I should be interested to hear what led to the disaster," said I.

"Then," she said, "I will tell you all about it. Will you come indoors,
or shall I walk a little way with you?"

As I suspected that the police were at that moment on their way to the
house, I chose the latter alternative and led her away seawards at a
pretty brisk pace.

"Was this poor lady a widow?" I asked, as we started up the street.

"No, she wasn't," replied Mrs. Beddingfield, "and that was the trouble.
Her husband was abroad--at least, he had been, and he was just coming
home. A pretty home-coming it will be for him, poor man. He is an officer
in the Civil Police at Sierra Leone, but he hasn't been there long. He
went there for his health."

"What! To Sierra Leone!" I exclaimed, for the "White Man's Grave" seemed
a queer health resort.

"Yes. You see, Mr. Toussaint is a French Canadian, and it seems that he
has always been somewhat of a rolling stone. For some time he was in the
Klondyke, but he suffered so much from the cold that he had to come away.
It injured his health very severely; I don't quite know in what way, but
I do know that he was quite a cripple for a time. When he got better he
looked out for a post in a warm climate and eventually obtained the
appointment of Inspector of Civil Police at Sierra Leone. That was about
ten months ago, and when he sailed for Africa his wife came to stay with
me, and has been here ever since."

"And this love affair that you spoke of?"

"Yes, but I oughtn't to have called it that. Let me explain what
happened. About three months ago a Swedish gentleman--a Mr.
Bergson--came to stay here, and he seemed to be very much smitten with Mrs.
Toussaint."

"And she?"

"Oh, she liked him well enough. He is a tall, good-looking man--though
for that matter he is no taller than her husband, nor any better-looking.
Both men are over six feet. But there was no harm so far as she was
concerned, excepting that she didn't see the position quite soon enough.
She wasn't very discreet, in fact I thought it necessary to give her a
little advice. However, Mr. Bergson left here and went to live at
Ramsgate to superintend the unloading of the iceships (he came from
Sweden in one), and I thought the trouble was at an end. But it wasn't,
for he took to coming over to see Mrs. Toussaint, and of course I
couldn't have that. So at last I had to tell him that he mustn't come to
the house again. It was very unfortunate, for on that occasion I think he
had been "tasting", as they say in Scotland. He wasn't drunk, but he was
excitable and noisy, and when I told him he mustn't come again he made
such a disturbance that two of the gentlemen boarders--Mr. Wardale and
Mr. Macauley--had to interfere. And then he was most insulting to them,
especially to Mr. Macauley, who is a coloured gentleman; called him a
"buck nigger" and all sorts of offensive names."

"And how did the coloured gentleman take it?"

"Not very well, I am sorry to say, considering that he is a gentleman--a
law student with chambers in the Temple. In fact, his language was so
objectionable that Mr. Wardale insisted on my giving him notice on the
spot. But I managed to get him taken in next door but one; you see, Mr.
Wardale had been a Commissioner at, Sierra Leone--it was through him
that Mr. Toussaint got his appointment--so I suppose he was rather on
his dignity with coloured people."

"And was that the last you heard of Mr. Bergson?"

"He never came here again, but he wrote several times to Mrs. Toussaint,
asking her to meet him. At last, only a few days ago, she wrote to him
and told him that the acquaintance must cease."

"And has it ceased?"

"As far as I know, it has."

"Then, Mrs. Beddingfield," said I, "what makes you connect the affair
with--with what has happened?"

"Well, you see," she explained, "there is the husband. He was coming
home, and is probably in England already."

"Indeed!" said I.

"Yes," she continued. "He went up into the bush to arrest some natives
belonging to one of these gangs of murderers--Leopard Societies, I think
they are called--and he got seriously wounded. He wrote to his wife from
hospital saying that he would be sent home as soon as he was fit to
travel, and about ten days ago she got a letter from him saying that he
was coming by the next ship.

"I noticed that she seemed very nervous and upset when she got the
letters from hospital, and still more so when the last letter came. Of
course, I don't know what he said to her in those letters. It may be that
he had heard something about Mr. Bergson, and threatened to take some
action. Of course, I can't say. I only know that she was very nervous and
restless, and when we saw in the paper four days ago that the ship he
would be coming by had arrived in Liverpool she seemed dreadfully upset.
And she got worse and worse until--well, until last night."

"Has anything been heard of the husband since the ship arrived?" I asked.

"Nothing whatever," replied Mrs. Beddingfield, with a meaning look at me
which I had no difficulty in interpreting. "No letter, no telegram, not a
word. And you see, if he hadn't come by that ship he would almost
certainly have sent a letter to her. He must have arrived in England, but
why hasn't he turned up, or at least sent a wire? What is he doing? Why
is be staying away? Can he have heard something? And what does he mean to
do? That's what kept the poor thing on wires, and that, I feel certain,
is what drove her to make away with herself."

It was not my business to contest Mrs. Beddingfield's erroneous
deductions. I was seeking information--it seemed that I had nearly
exhausted the present source. But one point required amplifying.

"To return to Mr. Bergson, Mrs. Beddingfield," said I "Do I understand
that he is a seafaring man?"

"He was," she replied. "At present he is settled at Ramsgate as manager
of a company in the ice trade, but formerly he was a sailor. I have heard
him say that he was one, of the crew of an exploring ship that went in
search of the North Pole and that he was locked up in the ice for months
and months. I should have thought he would have had enough of ice after
that."

With this view I expressed warm agreement, and having now obtained all
the information that appeared to be available I proceeded to bring the
interview to an end.

"Well, Mrs. Beddingfield," I said, "it is a rather mysterious affair.
Perhaps more light may be thrown on it at the inquest. Meanwhile, I
should think that it will be wise of you to keep your own counsel as far
as outsiders are concerned."

The remainder of the morning I spent pacing the smooth stretch of sand
that lies to the east of the jetty, and reflecting on the evidence that I
had acquired in respect of this singular crime. Evidently there was no
lack of clues in this case. On the contrary, there were two quite obvious
lines of inquiry, for both the Swede and the missing husband presented
the characters of the hypothetical murderer. Both had been exposed to the
conditions which tend to produce frost-bite; one of them had probably
been a consumer of rye meal, and both might be said to have a
motive--though, to be sure, it was a very insufficient one--for committing the
crime. Still in both cases the evidence was merely speculative; it
suggested a line of investigation but it did nothing more.

When I met Foxton at lunch I was sensible of a curious change in his
manner. His previous expansiveness had given place to marked reticence
and a certain official secretiveness.

"I don't think, you know, Jervis," he said, when I opened the subject
"that we had better discuss this affair. You see, I am the principal
witness, and while the case is sub judice--well, in fact the police
don't want the case talked about."

"But surely I am a witness, too, and in expert witness, moreover--"

"That isn't the view of the police. They look on you as more or less of
an amateur, and as you have no official connection with the case, I don't
think they propose to subpoena you. Superintendent Platt, who is in charge
of the case, wasn't very pleased at my having taken you to the house.
Said it was quite irregular. Oh, and by the way, he says you must hand
over those photographs."

"But isn't Platt going to have the footprints photographed on his own
account?" I objected.

"Of course he is. He is going to have a set of proper photographs taken
by an expert photographer--he was mightily amused when he heard about
your little snapshot affair. Oh, you can trust Platt. He is a great man.
He has had a course of instruction at the Fingerprint Department in
London."

"I don't see how that is going to help him, as there aren't any
fingerprints in this case."

This was a mere fly-cast on my part, but Foxton rose at once at the
rather clumsy bait.

"Oh, aren't there?" he exclaimed. "You didn't happen to spot them, but
they were there. Platt has got the prints of a complete right hand. This
is in strict confidence, you know," he added, with somewhat belated
caution.

Foxton's sudden reticence restrained me from uttering the obvious comment
on the superintendent's achievement. I returned to the subject of the
photographs.

"Supposing I decline to hand over my film?" said I.

"But I hope you won't--and in fact you mustn't. I am officially
connected with the case, and I've got to live with these people. As the
police-surgeon, I am responsible for the medical evidence, and Platt
expects me to get those photographs from you. Obviously you can't keep
them. It would be most irregular."

It was useless to argue. Evidently the police did not want me to be
introduced into the case, and after all the superintendent was within his
rights, if he chose to regard me, as a private individual and to demand
the surrender of the film.

Nevertheless I was loath to give up the photographs, at least until I had
carefully studied them. The case was within my own speciality of
practice, and was a strange and interesting one. Moreover, it appeared to
be in unskilful hands, judging from the fingerprint episode, and then
experience had taught me to treasure up small scraps of chance evidence,
since one never knew when one might be drawn into a case in a
professional capacity. In effect, I decided not to give up the
photographs, though that decision committed me to a ruse that I was not
very willing to adopt. I would rather have acted quite straightforwardly.

"Well if you insist, Foxton," I said, "I will hand over the film or, if
you like, I will destroy it in your presence."

"I think Platt would rather have the film uninjured," said Foxton. "Then
he'll know, you know," he added, with a sly grin.

In my heart, I thanked Foxton for that grin. It made my own guileful
proceedings so much easier; for a suspicious man invites you to get the
better of him if you can.

After lunch I went up to my room, locked the door and took the little
camera from my pocket. Having fully wound up the film, I extracted it,
wrapped it up carefully and bestowed it in my inside breast-pocket. Then
I inserted a fresh film, and going to the open window, took four
successive snapshots of the sky. This done, I closed the camera, slipped
it into my pocket and went downstairs. Foxton was in the hall, brushing
his hat, as I descended, and at once renewed his demand.

"About those photographs, Jervis," said he; "I shall be looking in at the
police-station presently, so if you wouldn't mind--"

"To be sure," said I. "I will give you the film now if you like."

Taking the camera from my pocket, I solemnly wound up the remainder of
the film, extracted it, stuck down the loose end with ostentatious care,
and handed it to him.

"Better not expose it to the light," I said, going the whole hog of
deception, "or you may fog the exposures."

Foxton took the spool from me as if it were hot--he was not a
photographer--and thrust it into his handbag. He was still thanking me
the quite profusely when the front-door bell rang.

The visitor who stood revealed when Foxton opened the door was a small,
spare gentleman with a complexion of peculiar brown-papery quality that
suggests long residence the tropics. He stepped in briskly and introduced
himself and his business without preamble.

"My name is Wardale--boarder at Beddingfield's. I called with reference
to the tragic event which--"

Here Foxton interposed in his frostiest official tone. "I am afraid, Mr.
Wardale, I can't give you any information about the case at present."

"I saw you two gentlemen at the house this morning--" Mr. Wardale
continued, but Foxton again cut him short.

"You did. We were there--or at least, I was--as representative of the
Law, and while the case is sub judice--"

"It isn't yet," interrupted Wardale.

"Well, I can't enter into any discussion of it--"

"I am not asking you to," said Wardale a little impatiently. "But I
understand that one of you is Dr. Jervis."

"I am," said I.

"I must really warn you--" Foxton began again; but Mr. Wardale
interrupted testily:

"My dear sir, I am a lawyer and a magistrate and understand perfectly
well what is and what is not permissible. I have come simply to make a
professional engagement with Dr. Jervis."

"In what way can I be of service to you?" I asked.

"I will tell you," said Mr. Wardale. "This poor lady, whose death has
occurred in so mysterious a manner, was the wife of a man who was, like
myself a servant of the Government of Sierra Leone. I was the friend of
both of them, and in the absence of the husband I should like to have the
inquiry into the circumstances of this lady's death watched by a
competent lawyer with the necessary special knowledge of medical
evidence. Will you or your colleague, Dr. Thorndyke, undertake to watch
the case for me?"

Of course I was willing to undertake the case and said so.

"Then," said Mr. Wardale, "I will instruct my solicitor to write to you
and formally retain you in the case. Here is my card. You will find my
name in the Colonial Office List, and you know my address here."

He handed me his card, wished us both good afternoon, and then, with a
stiff little bow, turned and took his departure.

"I think I had better run up to town and confer with Thorndyke," said I.
"How do the trains run?"

"There is a good train in about three-quarters of an hour," replied
Foxton.

"Then I will go by it, but I shall come down again to-morrow or the next
day, and probably Thorndyke will come down with me."

"Very well," said Foxton. "Bring him in to lunch or dinner, but I can't
put him up, I am afraid."

"It would be better not," said I. "Your friend Platt wouldn't like it. He
won't want Thorndyke--or me either for that matter. And what about those
photographs? Thorndyke will want them, you know."

"He can't have them," said Foxton doggedly, "unless Platt is willing to
hand them back; which I don't suppose he will be."

I had private reasons for thinking otherwise, but I kept them to myself;
and as Foxton went forth on his afternoon round, I returned upstairs to
pack my suitcase and write the telegram to Thorndyke informing him of my
movements.

It was only a quarter past five when I let myself into our chambers in
King's Bench Walk. To my relief I found my colleague at home and our
laboratory assistant, Polton, in the act of laying tea, for two.

"I gather," said Thorndyke, as we shook hands, "that my learned brother
brings grist to the mill?"

"Yes," I replied. "Nominally a watching brief, but I think you will agree
with me that it is a case for independent investigation."

"Will there be anything in my line, sir?" inquired Polton, who was always
agog at the word 'investigation'.

"There is a film to be developed. Four exposures of white footprints on a
dark ground."

"Ah!" said Polton, "you'll want good strong negatives, and they ought to
be enlarged if they are, from the little camera. Can you give me the
dimensions?"

I wrote out the measurements from my notebook and handed him the paper
together with the spool of film, with which he retired gleefully to the
laboratory.

"And now, Jervis," said Thorndyke, "while Polton is operating on the film
and we are discussing our tea, let us have a sketch of the case."

I gave him more than a sketch, for the events were recent and I had
carefully sorted out the facts during my journey to town, making rough
notes, which I now consulted. To my rather lengthy recital he listened in
his usual attentive manner, without any comment, excepting in regard to
my manoeuvre to retain possession of the exposed film.

"It's almost a pity you didn't refuse." said he. "They could hardly have
enforced their demand, and my feeling is that it is more convenient as
well as more dignified to avoid direct deception unless one is driven to
it. But perhaps you considered that you were."

As a matter of fact I had at the time, but I had since come to
Thorndyke's opinion. My little manoeuvre was going to be a source of
inconvenience presently.

"Well," said Thorndyke, when I had finished my recital, "I think we may
take it that the police theory is, in the main, your own theory derived
from Foxton."

"I think so, excepting that I learned from Foxton that Superintendent
Platt has obtained the complete fingerprints of a right hand."

Thorndyke raised his eyebrows. "Fingerprints!" he exclaimed. "Why, the
fellow must be a mere simpleton. But there," he added, "everybody--police,
lawyers, judges, even Galton himself--seems to lose every
vestige of common sense as soon as the subject of fingerprints is raised.
But it would be interesting to know how he got them and what they are
like. We must try to find that out. However, to return to your case,
since your theory and the police theory are probably the same, we may as
well consider the value of your inferences.

"At present we are dealing with the case in the abstract. Our data are
largely assumptions, and our inferences are largely derived from an
application of the mathematical laws of probability. Thus we assume that
a murder has been committed, whereas it may turn out to have been
suicide. We assume the murder to have been committed by the person, who
made the footprints, and we assume that that person has no little toes,
whereas he may have retracted little toes which do not touch the ground
and so leave no impression. Assuming the little toes to be absent, we
account for their absence by considering known causes in the order of
their probability. Excluding--quite properly, I think--Raynaud's
disease, we arrive at frost-bite and ergotism.

"But two persons, both of whom are of a stature corresponding to the size
of the footprints, may have had a motive--though a very inadequate one--for
committing the crime, and both have been exposed to the conditions
which tend to produce frost-bite, while one of them has, probably, been
exposed to the conditions which tend to produce ergotism. The laws of
probability point to both of these two men; and the chances in favour of
the Swede being the murderer rather than the Canadian would be
represented by the common factor--frost-bite--multiplied by the
additional factor, ergotism. But this is purely speculative at present.
There is no evidence that either man has ever been frost-bitten or has
ever eaten spurred rye. Nevertheless, it is a perfectly sound method at
this stage. It indicates a line of investigation. If it should transpire
that either man has suffered from frost-bite or ergotism, a definite
advance would have been made. But here is Polton with a couple of
finished prints. How on earth did you manage it in the time, Polton?"

"Why, you see, sir, I just dried the film with spirit," replied Polton.
"It saved a lot of time. I will let you have a pair of enlargements in
about a quarter of an hour."

Handing us the two wet prints, each stuck on a glass plate, he retired to
the laboratory, and Thorndyke and I proceeded to scrutinize the
photographs with the aid of our pocket lenses. The promised enlargements
were really hardly necessary excepting for the purpose of comparative
measurements, for the image of the white footprint, fully two inches
long, was so microscopically sharp that, with the assistance of the lens,
the minutest detail could be clearly seen.

"There is certainly not a vestige of little toe," remarked Thorndyke,
"and the plump appearance of the other toes supports your rejection of
Raynaud's disease. Does the character of the footprint convey any other
suggestion to you, Jervis?"

"It gives me the impression that the man had been accustomed to go
bare-footed in early life and had only taken to boots comparatively
recently. The position of the great toe suggests this, and the presence
of a number of small scars on the toes and ball of the foot seems to
confirm it. A person walking bare-foot would sustain innumerable small
wounds from treading on small, sharp objects."

Thorndyke looked dissatisfied. "I agree with you," he said, "as to the
suggestion offered by the undeformed state of the great toes; but those
little pits do not convey to me the impression of scars produced as you
suggest. Still, you may be right."

Here our conversation was interrupted by a knock on the outer oak.
Thorndyke stepped out through the lobby and I heard him open the door. A
moment or two later he re-entered, accompanied by a short, brown-faced
gentleman whom I instantly recognized as Mr. Wardale.

"I must have come up by the same train as you," he remarked, as we shook
hands, "and to a certain extent, I suspect, on the same errand. I thought
I would like to put our arrangement on a business footing, as I am a
stranger to both of you."

"What do you want us to do?" asked Thorndyke.

"I want you to watch the case, and, if necessary, to look into the facts
independently."

"Can you give us any information that may help us?"

Mr. Wardale reflected. "I don't think I can," he said at length. "I have
no facts that you have not, and any surmises of mine might be misleading.
I had rather you kept an open mind. But perhaps we might go into the
question of costs."

This, of course, was somewhat difficult, but Thorndyke contrived to
indicate the probable liabilities involved, to Mr. Wardale's
satisfaction.

"There is one other little matter," said Wardale, as he rose to depart.
"I have got a suitcase here which Mrs. Beddingfield lent me to bring some
things up to town. It is one that Mr. Macauley left behind when he went
away from the boarding-house. Mrs. Beddingfield suggested that I might
leave it at his chambers when I had finished with it; but I don't know
his address, excepting that it is somewhere in the Temple, and I don't
want to meet the fellow if he should happen to have come up to town."

"Is it empty?" asked Thorndyke.

"Excepting for a suit of pyjamas and a pair of shocking old slippers." He
opened the suitcase as he spoke and exhibited its contents with a grin.

"Characteristic of a negro, isn't it? Pink silk pyjamas and slippers
about three sizes too small."

"Very well," said Thorndyke. "I will get my man to find out the address
and leave it there."

As Mr. Wardale went out, Polton entered with the enlarged photographs,
which showed the footprints the natural size. Thorndyke handed them to
me, and as I sat down to examine them he followed his assistant to the
laboratory. He returned in a few minutes, and after a brief inspection of
the photographs, remarked:

"They show us nothing more than we have seen, though they may be useful
later. So your stock of facts is all we have to go on at present. Are you
going home to-night?"

"Yes, I shall go back to Margate to-morrow."

"Then, as I have to call at Scotland Yard, we may as well walk to Charing
Cross together."

As we walked down the Strand we gossiped on general topics, but before we
separated at Charing Cross, Thorndyke reverted to the case.

"Let me know the date of the inquest," said he, "and try to find out what
the poison was--if it was really a poison."

"The liquid that was left in the bottle seemed to be a watery solution of
some kind," said I, "as I think I mentioned."

"Yes," said Thorndyke. "Possibly a watery infusion of strophanthus."

"Why strophanthus?" I asked.

"Why not?" demanded Thorndyke. And with this and an inscrutable smile, he
turned and walked down Whitehall.

Three days later I found myself at Margate--sitting beside Thorndyke in
a room adjoining the Town Hall, in which the inquest on the death of Mrs.
Toussaint was to be held. Already the coroner was in his chair, the jury
were in their seats and the witnesses assembled in a group of chairs
apart. These included Foxton, a stranger who sat by him--presumably the
other medical witness--Mrs. Beddingfield, Mr. Wardale, the police
superintendent and a well-dressed coloured man, whom I correctly assumed
to be Mr. Macauley.

As I sat by my-rather sphinx-like colleague my mind recurred for the
hundredth time to his extraordinary powers of mental synthesis. That
parting remark of his as to the possible nature of the poison had brought
home to me in a flash the fact that he already had a definite theory of
this crime, and that his theory was not mine nor that of the police.
True, the poison might not be strophanthus, after all, but that would not
alter the position. He had a theory of the crime, but yet he was in
possession of no facts excepting those with which I had supplied him.
Therefore those facts contained the material for a theory, whereas I had
deduced from them nothing but the bald, ambiguous mathematical
probabilities.

The first witness called was naturally Dr. Foxton, who described the
circumstances already known to me. He further stated that he bad been
present at the autopsy, that he had found on the throat and limbs of the
deceased bruises that suggested a struggle and violent restraint. The
immediate cause of death was heart failure, but whether that failure was
due to shock, terror, or the action of a poison he could not positively
say.

The next witness was a Dr. Prescott, an expert pathologist and
toxicologist. He had made the autopsy and agreed with Dr. Foxton as to
the cause of death. He had examined the liquid contained in the bottle
taken from the hand of the deceased and found it to be a watery infusion
or decoction of strophanthus seeds. He had analysed the fluid contained
in the stomach and found it to consist largely of the same infusion.

"Is infusion of strophanthus seeds used in medicine?" the coroner asked.

"No," was the reply. "The tincture is the form in which strophanthus is
administered unless it is given in the form of strophanthine."

"Do you consider that the strophanthus caused or contributed to death?"

"It is difficult to say," replied Dr. Prescott. "Strophanthus is a heart
poison, and there was a very large poisonous dose. But very little had
been absorbed, and the appearances were not inconsistent with death from
shock."

"Could death have been self-produced by the voluntary taking of the
poison?" asked the coroner.

"I should say, decidedly not. Dr. Foxton's evidence shows that the bottle
was almost certainly placed in the hands of the deceased after death, and
this is in complete agreement with the enormous dose and small
absorption."

"Would you say that appearances point to suicidal or homicidal
poisoning?"

"I should say that they point to homicidal poisoning, but that death was
probably due mainly to shock."

This concluded the expert's evidence. It was followed by that of Mrs.
Beddingfield, which brought out nothing new to me but the fact that a
trunk had been broken open and a small attaché-case belonging to the
deceased abstracted and taken away.

"Do you know what the deceased kept in that case?" the coroner asked.

"I have seen her put her husband's letters into it. She had quite a
number of them. I don't know what else she kept in it except, of course,
her cheque-book."

"Had she any considerable balance at the bank?"

"I believe she had. Her husband used to send most of his pay home and she
used to pay it in and leave it with the bank. She might have two or three
hundred pounds to her credit."

As Mrs. Beddingfield concluded Mr. Wardale was called, and he was
followed by Mr. Macauley. The evidence of both was quite brief and
concerned entirely with the disturbance made by Bergson, whose absence
from the court I had already noted.

The last witness was the police superintendent, and he, as I had
expected, was decidedly reticent. He did refer to the footprints, but,
like Foxton--who presumably had his instructions--he abstained from
describing their peculiarities. Nor did he say anything about
fingerprints. As to the identity of the criminal, that had to be further
inquired into. Suspicion had at first fastened upon Bergson, but it had
since transpired that the Swede sailed from Ramsgate on an ice-ship two
days before the occurrence of the tragedy. Then suspicion had pointed to
the husband, who was known to have landed at Liverpool four days before
the death of his wife and who had mysteriously disappeared. But he (the
superintendent) had only that morning received a telegram from the
Liverpool police informing him that the body of Toussaint had been found
floating in the Mersey, and that it bore a number of wounds of an
apparently homicidal character. Apparently he had been murdered and his
corpse thrown into the river.

"This is very terrible," said the coroner. "Does this second murder throw
any light on the case which we are investigating?"

"I think it does," replied the officer, without any great conviction,
however; "but it is not advisable to go into details."

"Quite so," agreed the coroner. "Most inexpedient. But are we to
understand that you have a clue to the perpetrator of this
crime--assuming a crime to have been committed?"

"Yes," replied Platt. "We have several important clues."

"And do they point to any particular individual?"

The superintendent hesitated. "Well . . ." he began with some
embarrassment, but the coroner interrupted him:

"Perhaps the question is indiscreet. We mustn't hamper the police,
gentlemen, and the point is not really material to our inquiry. You would
rather we waived that question, Superintendent?"

"If you please, sir," was the emphatic reply.

"Have any cheques from the deceased woman's cheque book been presented at
the bank?"

"Not since her death. I inquired at the bank only this morning."

This concluded the evidence, and after a brief but capable summing-up by
the coroner, the jury returned a verdict of "Wilful murder against some
person unknown".

As the proceedings terminated, Thorndyke rose and turned round, and then
to my surprise I perceived Superintendent Miller, of the Criminal
Investigation Department, who had come in unperceived by me and was
sitting immediately behind us.

"I have followed your instructions, sir," said he, addressing Thorndyke,
"but before we take any definite action I should like to have a few words
with you."

He led the way to an adjoining room and, as we entered we were followed
by Superintendent Platt and Dr. Foxton.

"Now, Doctor," said Miller, carefully closing the door, "I have carried
out your suggestions. Mr. Macauley is being detained, but before we
commit ourselves to an arrest we must have something to go upon. I shall
want you to make out a prima facie case."

"Very well," said Thorndyke, laying upon the table the small green
suitcase that was his almost invariable companion.

"I've seen that prima facie case before," Miller remarked with a grin, as
Thorndyke unlocked it and drew out a large envelope. "Now, what have you
got there?"

As Thorndyke extracted from the envelope Polton's enlargements of my
small photographs, Platt's eyes appeared to bulge, while Foxton gave me a
quick glance of reproach.

"These," said Thorndyke "are the full-sized photographs of the footprints
of the suspected murderer. Superintendent Platt can probably verify
them."

Rather reluctantly Platt produced from his pocket a pair of whole-plate
photographs, which he laid beside the enlargements.

"Yes," said Miller, after comparing them, "they are the same footprints.
But you say, Doctor, that they are Macauley's footprints. Now, what
evidence have you?"

Thorndyke again had recourse to the green case, from which he produced
two copper plates mounted on wood and coated with printing ink.

"I propose," said he, lifting the plates out of their protecting frame,
"that we take prints of Macauley's feet and compare them with the
photographs."

"Yes," said Platt. "And then there are the fingerprints that we've got.
We can test those, too."

"You don't want fingerprints if you've got a set of toeprints," objected
Miller.

"With regard to those fingerprints," said Thorndyke. "May I ask if they
were obtained from the bottle?"

"They were," Platt admitted.

"And were there any other fingerprints?"

"No," replied Platt. "These were the only ones."

As he spoke he laid on the table a photograph showing the prints of the
thumb and fingers of a right hand.

Thorndyke glanced at the photograph and, turning to Miller, said:

"I suggest that those are Dr. Foxton's fingerprints."

"Impossible!" exclaimed Platt, and then suddenly fell silent.

"We can soon see," said Thorndyke, producing from the case a pad of white
paper. "If Dr. Foxton will lay the finger-tips of his right hand first on
this inked plate and then on the paper, we can compare the prints with
the photograph."

Foxton placed his fingers on the blackened plate and then pressed them on
the paper pad, leaving on the latter four beautifully clear, black
fingerprints. These Superintendent Platt scrutinized eagerly, and as his
glance travelled from the prints to the photographs he broke into a
sheepish grin.

"Sold again!" he muttered. "They are the same prints."

"Well," said Miller, in a tone of disgust, "you must have been a mug not
to have thought of that when you knew that Dr. Foxton had handled the
bottle."

"The fact, however, is important," said Thorndyke. "The absence of any
fingerprints but Dr. Foxton's not only suggests that the murderer took
the precaution to wear gloves, but especially it proves that the bottle
was not handled by the deceased during life. A suicide's hands will
usually be pretty moist and would leave conspicuous, if not very clear,
impressions."

"Yes," agreed Miller, "that is quite true. But with regard to these
footprints. We can't compel this man to let us examine his feet without
arresting him. Don't think, Dr. Thorndyke, that I suspect you of
guessing. I've known you too long for that. You've got your facts all
right, I don't doubt, but you must let us have enough to justify our
arrest."

Thorndyke's answer was to plunge once more into the inexhaustible green
case, from which he now produced two objects wrapped in tissue-paper. The
paper being removed, there was revealed what looked like a model of an
excessively shabby pair of brown shoes.

"These," said Thorndyke, exhibiting the "models" to Superintendent
Miller--who viewed them with an undisguised grin--"are plaster casts of the
interiors of a pair of slippers--very old and much too tight--belonging
to Mr. Macauley. His name was written inside them. The casts have been
waxed and painted with raw umber, which has been lightly rubbed off, thus
accentuating the prominences and depressions. You will notice that the
impressions of the toes on the soles and of the "knuckles" on the uppers
appear as prominences; in fact we have in these casts a sketchy
reproduction of the actual feet.

"Now, first as to dimensions. Dr. Jervis's measurements of the footprints
give us ten inches and three-quarters as, the extreme length and four
inches and five-eighths as the extreme width at the heads of the
metatarsus. On these casts, as you see, the extreme length is ten inches
and five-eighths--the loss of one-eighth being accounted for by the
curve of the sole--and the extreme width is four inches and a
quarter--three-eighths being accounted for by the lateral compression of a tight
slipper. The agreement of the dimensions is remarkable, considering the
unusual size. And now as to the peculiarities of the feet.

"You notice that each toe has made a perfectly distinct impression on the
sole, excepting the little toe; of which there is no trace in either
cast. And, turning to the uppers, you notice that the knuckles of the
toes appear quite distinct and prominent--again excepting the little
toes, which have made no impression at all. Thus it is not a case of
retracted little toes, for they would appear as an extra prominence.
Then, looking at the feet as a whole, it is evident that the little toes
are absent; there is a distinct hollow, where there should be a
prominence."

"M'yes," said Miller dubiously, "it's all very neat. But isn't it just a
bit speculative?"

"Oh, come, Miller," protested Thorndyke; "just consider the facts. Here
is a suspected murderer known to have feet of an unusual size and
presenting a very rare deformity; and they are the feet of a man who had
actually lived in the same house as the murdered woman and who, at the
date of the crime, was living only two doors away. What more would you
have?"

"Well, there is the question of motive," objected Miller.

"That hardly belongs to a prima facie case," said Thorndyke, "But even if
it did, is there not ample matter for suspicion? Remember who the
murdered woman was, what her husband was, and who this Sierra Leone
gentleman is."

"Yes, yes; that's true," said Miller somewhat hastily, either perceiving
the drift of Thorndyke's argument (which I did not), or being unwilling
to admit that he was still in the dark. "Yes, we'll have the fellow in
and get his actual footprints."

He went to the door and, putting his head out, made some sign, which was
almost immediately followed by a trampling of feet, and Macauley entered
the room, followed by two large plain-clothes policemen. The negro was
evidently alarmed, for he looked about him with the wild expression of a
hunted animal. But his manner was aggressive and truculent.

"Why am I being interfered with in this impertinent manner?" he demanded
in the deep buzzing voice characteristic of the male negro.

"We want to have a look at your feet, Mr. Macauley," said Miller. "Will
you kindly take off your shoes and socks?"

"No," roared Macauley. "I'll see you damned first!"

"Then," said Miller, "I arrest you on a charge of having murdered--"

The rest of the sentence was drowned in a sudden uproar. The tall,
powerful negro, bellowing like an angry bull, had whipped out a large,
strangely-shaped knife and charged furiously at the Superintendent. But
the two plain-clothes men had been watching him from behind and now
sprang upon him, each seizing an arm. Two sharp, metallic clicks in quick
succession, a thunderous crash and an ear-splitting yell, and the
formidable barbarian lay prostrate on the floor with one massive
constable sitting astride his chest and the other seated on his knees.

"Now's your chance, Doctor," said Miller. "I'll get his shoes and socks
off."

As Thorndyke re-inked his plates, Miller and the local superintendent
expertly removed the smart patent shoes and the green silk socks from the
feet of the writhing, bellowing negro. Then Thorndyke rapidly and
skilfully applied the inked plates to the soles of the feet--which I
steadied for the purpose--and followed up with a dexterous pressure of
the paper pad, first to one foot and then--having torn off the printed
sheet-to the other. In spite of the difficulties occasioned by Macauley's
struggles, each sheet presented a perfectly clear and sharp print of the
sole of the foot, even the ridge-patterns of the toes and ball of the
foot being quite distinct. Thorndyke laid each of the new prints on the
table beside the corresponding large photograph, and invited the two
superintendents to compare them.

"Yes," said Miller--and Superintendent Platt nodded his acquiescence--"there
can't be a shadow of a doubt. The ink-prints and the photographs
are identical, to every line and skin-marking. You've made out your case,
Doctor, as you always do."

"So you see," said Thorndyke, as we smoked our evening pipes on the old
stone pier, "your method was a perfectly sound one, only you didn't apply
it properly. Like too many mathematicians, you started on your
calculations before you had secured your data. If you had applied the
simple laws of probability to the real data, they would have pointed
straight to Macauley."

"How do you suppose he lost his little toes?" I asked.

"I don't suppose at all. Obviously it was a clear case of double ainhum."

"Ainhum!" I exclaimed with a sudden flash of recollection.

"Yes; that was what you overlooked, you compared the probabilities of
three diseases either of which only very rarely causes the loss of even
one little toe and infinitely rarely causes the loss of both, and none of
which conditions is confined to any definite class of persons; and you
ignored ainhum, a disease which attacks almost exclusively the little
toe, causing it to drop off, and quite commonly destroys both little toes--a
disease, moreover, which is confined to the black-skinned races. In
European practice ainhum is unknown, but in Africa, and to a less extent
in India, it is quite common.

"If you were to assemble all the men in the world who have lost both
little toes more than nine-tenths of them would be suffering from ainhum;
so that, by the laws of probability, your footprints were, by nine
chances to one, those of a man who had suffered from ainhum, and
therefore a black-skinned man. But as soon as you had established a black
man as the probable criminal, you opened up a new field of corroborative
evidence. There was a black man on the spot. That man was a native of
Sierra Leone and almost certainly a man of importance there. But the
victim's husband had deadly enemies in the native secret societies of
Sierra Leone. The letters of the husband to the wife probably contained
matter incriminating certain natives of Sierra Leone. The evidence became
cumulative, you see. Taken as a whole, it pointed plainly to Macauley,
apart from the new fact of the murder of Toussaint in Liverpool, a city
with a considerable floating population of West Africans."

"And I gather from your reference to the African poison, strophanthus,
that you fixed on Macauley at once when I gave you my sketch of the
case?"

"Yes; especially when I saw your photographs of the footprints with the
absent little toes and those characteristic chigger-scars on the toes
that remained. But it was sheer luck that enabled me to fit the keystone
into its place and turn mere probability into virtual certainty. I could
have embraced the magician Wardale when he brought us the magic slippers.
Still, it isn't an absolute certainty, even now, though I expect it will
be by to-morrow."

And Thorndyke was right. That very evening the police entered Macauley's
chambers in Tanfield Court, where they discovered the dead woman's
attaché-case. It still contained Toussaint's letters to his wife, and one
of those letters mentioned by name, as members of a dangerous secret
society, several prominent Sierra Leone men, including the accused, David
Macauley.



THE BLUE SCARAB


Medico-legal practice is largely concerned with crimes against the
person, the details of which are often sordid, gruesome and unpleasant.
Hence the curious and romantic case of the Blue Scarab (though really
outside our speciality) came as somewhat of a relief. But to me it is of
interest principally as illustrating two of the remarkable gifts which
made my friend, Thorn unique as an investigator: his uncanny power of
picking out the one essential fact at a glance, and his capacity to
produce, when required, inexhaustible stores of unexpected knowledge of
the most out-of-the-way subjects.

It was late in the afternoon when Mr. James Blowgrave arrived, by
appointment, at our chambers, accompanied by his daughter, a rather
strikingly pretty girl of about twenty-two; and when we had mutually
introduced ourselves, the consultation began without preamble.

"I didn't give any details in my letter to you," said Mr. Blowgrave. "I
thought it better not to, for fear you might decline the case. It is
really a matter of a robbery, but not quite an ordinary robbery. There
are some unusual and rather mysterious features in the case. And as the
police hold out very little hope, I have come to ask if you will give me
your opinion on the case and perhaps look into it for me. But first I had
better tell you how the affair happened.

"The robbery occurred just a fortnight ago, about half-past nine o'clock
in the evening. I was sitting in my study with my daughter, looking over
some things that I had taken from a small deed-box, when a servant rushed
in to tell us that one of the outbuildings was on fire. Now, my study
opens by a French window on the garden at the back, and, as the
outbuilding was in a meadow at the side of the garden, I went out that
way, leaving the French window open; but before going I hastily put the
things back in the deed-box and locked it.

"The building--which I used partly as a lumber store and partly as a
workshop--was well alight and the whole household was already on the
spot, the boy working the pump and the two maids carrying the buckets and
throwing water on the fire. My daughter and I joined the party and helped
to carry the buckets and take out what goods we could reach from the
burning building. But it was nearly half an hour before we got the fire
completely extinguished, and then my daughter and I went to our rooms to
wash and tidy ourselves up. We returned to the study together, and when I
had shut the French window my daughter proposed that we should resume our
interrupted occupation. Thereupon I took out of my pocket the key of the
deed-box and turned to the cabinet on which the box always stood.

"But there was no deed-box there.

"For a moment I thought I must have moved it, and cast my eyes round the
room in search of it. But it was nowhere to be seen, and a moment's
reflection reminded me that I had left it in its usual place. The only
possible conclusion was that during our absence at the fire, somebody
must have come in by the window and taken it. And it looked as if that
somebody had deliberately set fire to the outbuilding for the express
purpose of luring us all out of the house."

"That is what the appearances suggest," Thorndyke agreed. "Is the study
window furnished with a blind, or curtains?"

"Curtains," replied Mr. Blowgrave. "But they were not drawn. Anyone in
the garden could have seen into the room; and the garden is easily
accessible to an active person who could climb over a low wall."

"So far, then," said Thorndyke, "the robbery might be the work of a
casual prowler who had got into the garden and watched you through the
window, and assuming that the things you had taken from the box were of
value, seized an easy opportunity to make off with them. Were the things
of any considerable value?"

"To a thief they were of no value at all. There were a number of share
certificates, a lease, one or two agreements, some family photographs and
a small box containing an old letter and a scarab. Nothing worth
stealing, you see, for the certificates were made out in my name and were
therefore unnegotiable."

"And the scarab?"

"That may have been lapis lazuli, but more probably it was a blue glass
imitation. In any case it was of no considerable value. It was about an
inch and a half long. But before you come to any conclusion, I had better
finish the story. The robbery was on Tuesday, the 7th of June. I gave
information to the police, with a description of the missing property,
but nothing happened until Wednesday, the 15th, when I received a
registered parcel bearing, the Southampton postmark. On opening it I
found, to my astonishment, the entire contents of the deed-box, with the
exception of the scarab, and this rather mysterious communication."

He took from his pocket and handed to Thorndyke an ordinary envelope
addressed in typewritten characters, and sealed with a large, elliptical
seal, the face of which was covered with minute hieroglyphics.

"This," said Thorndyke," I take to be an impression of the scarab; and an
excellent impression it is."

"Yes," replied Mr. Blowgrave," I have no doubt that it is the scarab. It
is about the same size."

Thorndyke looked quickly at our client with an expression of surprise.
"But," he asked, "don't you recognise the hieroglyphics on it?"

Mr. Blowgrave smiled deprecatingly. "The fact is," said he, "I don't know
anything about hieroglyphics, but I should say, as far as I can judge,
these look the same. What do you think, Nellie?"

Miss Blowgrave looked at the seal vaguely and replied, "I am in the same
position. Hieroglyphics are to me just funny things that don't mean
anything. But these look the same to me as those on our scarab, though I
expect any other hieroglyphics would, for that matter."

Thorndyke made no comment on this statement, but examined the seal
attentively through his lens. Then he drew out the contents of the
envelope, consisting of two letters, one typewritten and the other in a
faded brown handwriting. The former he read through and then inspected
the paper closely, holding it up to the light to observe the watermark.

"The paper appears to be of Belgian manufacture," he remarked, passing it
to me. I confirmed this observation and then read the letter, which was
headed " Southampton" and ran thus:

DEAR OLD PAL,

I am sending you back some trifles removed in error. The ancient document
is enclosed with this, but the curio is at present in the custody of my
respected uncle. Hope its temporary loss will not inconvenience you, and
that I may be able to return it to you later. Meanwhile, believe me,

Your ever affectionate,

RUDOLPHO.

"Who is Rudolpho?" I asked.

"The Lord knows," replied Mr. Blowgrave. "A pseudonym of our absent
friend, I presume. He seems to be a facetious sort of person."

"He does," agreed Thorndyke. "This letter and the seal appear to be what
the schoolboys would call a leg-pull. But still, this is all quite
normal. He has returned you the worthless things and has kept the one
thing that has any sort of negotiable value. Are you quite clear that the
scarab is not more valuable than you have assumed?"

"Well," said Mr. Blowgrave, "I have had an expert's opinion on it. I
showed it to M. Fouquet, the Egyptologist, when he was over here from
Brussels a few months ago, and his opinion was that it was a worthless
imitation. Not only was it not a genuine scarab, but the inscription was
a sham, too; just a collection of hieroglyphic characters jumbled
together without sense or meaning."

"Then," said Thorndyke, taking another look at the seal through his lens,
"it would seem that Rudolpho, or Rudolpho's uncle, has got a bad bargain.
Which doesn't throw much light on the affair."

At this point Miss Blowgrave intervened. "I think, father," said she,
"you have not given Dr. Thorndyke quite all the facts about the scarab.
He ought to be told about its connection with Uncle Reuben."

As the girl spoke Thorndyke looked at her with curious expression of
suddenly awakened interest. Later I understood the meaning of that look,
but at the time there seemed to me nothing particularly arresting in her
words.

"It is just a family tradition," Mr. Blowgrave said deprecatingly.
"probably it is all nonsense."

"Well, let us have it, at any rate," said Thorndyke. "We may get some
light from it."

Thus urged, Mr. Blowgrave hemmed a little shyly and began:

"The story concerns my great-grandfather Silas Blowgrave, and his doings
during the war with France. It seems that he commanded a privateer of
which he and his brother Reuben were the joint owners, and that in the
course of their last cruise they acquired a very remarkable and valuable
collection of jewels. Goodness knows how they got them; not very
honestly, I suspect, for they appear to have been a pair of precious
rascals. Something has been said about the loot from a South American
church or cathedral, but there is really nothing known about the affair.
There are no documents. It is mere oral tradition and very vague and
sketchy. The story goes that when they had sold off the ship, they came
down to live at Shawstead in Hertfordshire, Silas occupying the manor
house--in which I live at present--and Reuben a farm adjoining. The
bulk of the loot they shared out at the end of the cruise, but the jewels
were kept apart to be dealt with later--perhaps when the circumstances
under which they had been acquired had been forgotten. However, both men
were inveterate gamblers and it seems--according to the testimony of a
servant of Reuben's who overheard them--that on a certain night when
they had been playing heavily, they decided to finish up by playing for
the whole collection of jewels as a single stake. Silas, who had the
jewels in his custody, was seen to go to the manor house and return to
Reuben's house carrying a small, iron chest.

"Apparently they played late into the night, after everyone else but the
servant had gone to bed, and the luck was with Reuben, though it seems
probable that he gave luck some assistance. At any rate, when the play
was finished and the chest handed over, Silas roundly accused him of
cheating, and we may assume that a pretty serious quarrel took place.
Exactly what happened is not clear, for when the quarrel began Reuben
dismissed the servant, who retired to her bedroom in distant part of the
house. But in the morning it was discovered that Reuben and the chest of
jewels had both disappeared, and there were distinct traces of blood in
the room in which the two men had been playing. Silas professed to know
nothing about the disappearance; but a strong--and probably just--suspicion
arose that he had murdered his brother and made away with the
jewels. The result was that Silas also disappeared, and for a long time
his whereabouts was not known even by his wife.

"Later it transpired that he had taken up his abode under an assumed
name, in Egypt, and that he had developed an enthusiastic interest in the
then new science of Egyptology--the Rosetta Stone had been deciphered
only a few years previously. After a time he resumed communication with
his wife, but never made any statement as to the mystery of his brother's
disappearance. A few months before his death he visited his home in
disguise and he then handed to his wife a little sealed packet which was
to be delivered to his only son, William, on his attaining the age of
twenty-one. That packet contained the scarab and the letter which you
have taken from the envelope."

"Am I to read it?" asked Thorndyke.

"Certainly, if you think it worth while," was the reply. Thorndyke opened
the yellow sheet of paper and, glancing through the brown and faded
writing, read aloud:

CAIRO, 4 March, 1833.

MY DEAR SON,

I am sending you, as my last gift, a valuable scarab and a few words of
counsel on which I would bid you meditate. Believe me, there is much
wisdom in the lore of Old Egypt. Make it your own. Treasure the scarab as
a precious inheritance. Handle it often but show it to none. Give your
Uncle Reuben Christian burial. It is your duty, and you will have your
reward. He robbed your father, but he shall make restitution.

Farewell!

Your affectionate father,

SILAS BLOWGRAVE.

As Thorndyke laid down the letter he looked inquiringly at our client.

"Well," he said, "here are some plain instructions. How have they been
carried out?

"They haven't been carried out at all," replied Mr. Blowgrave. "As to his
son William, my grandfather, he was not disposed to meddle in the matter.
This seemed to be a frank admission that Silas killed his brother and
concealed the body, and William didn't choose to reopen the scandal.
Besides, the instructions are not so very plain. It is all very well to
say, 'Give your Uncle Reuben Christian burial,' but where the deuce is
Uncle Reuben?"

"It is plainly hinted," said Thorndyke," that whoever gives the body
Christian burial will stand to benefit, and the word 'restitution' seems
to suggest a clue to the whereabouts of the jewels. Has no one thought it
worth while to find out where the body is deposited?"

"But how could they?" demanded Blowgrave. "He doesn't give the faintest
clue. He talks as if his son knew where the body was. And then, you know,
even supposing Silas did not take the jewels with him, there was the
question, whose property were they? To begin with, they were pretty
certainly stolen property, though no one knows where they came from. Then
Reuben apparently got them from Silas by fraud, and Silas got them back
by robbery and murder. If William had discovered them he would have had
to give them up to Reuben's sons, and yet they weren't strictly Reuben's
property. No one had an undeniable claim to them, even if they could have
found them."

"But that is not the case now," said Miss Blowgrave.

"No," said Mr. Blowgrave, in answer to Thorndyke's look of inquiry. "The
position is quite clear now. Reuben's grandson, my cousin Arthur, has
died recently, and as he had no children, he has dispersed his property.
The old farm-house and the bulk of his estate he has left to a nephew,
but he made a small bequest to my daughter and named her as the residuary
legatee. So that what ever rights Reuben had to the jewels are now vested
in her, and on my death she will be Silas's heir, too. As a matter of
fact," Mr. Blowgrave continued, "we were discussing this very question on
the night of the robbery. I may as well tell you that my girl will be
left pretty poorly off when I go, for there is a heavy mortgage on our
property and mighty little capital. Uncle Reuben's jewels would have made
the old home secure for her if we could have laid our hands on them.
However, I mustn't take up your time with our domestic affairs."

"Your domestic affairs are not entirely irrelevant," said Thorndyke. "But
what is it that you want me to do in the matter?"

"Well," said Blowgrave, "my house has been robbed and my premises set
fire to. The police can apparently do nothing. They say there is no clue
at all unless the robbery was committed by somebody in the house, which
is absurd, seeing that the servants were all engaged in putting out the
fire. But I want the robber traced punished, and I want to get the scarab
back. It may be intrinsically valueless, as M. Fouquet said, but Silas's
testamentary letter seems to indicate that it had some value. At any
rate, it is an heirloom, and I am loath to lose it. It seems a
presumptuous thing to ask you to investigate a trumpery robbery, but I
should take it as a great kindness if you would look into the matter."

"Cases of robbery pure and simple," replied Thorndyke, "are rather alien
to my ordinary practice, but in this one there are certain curious
features that seem to make an investigation worth while. Yes, Mr.
Blowgrave, I will look into the case, and I have some hope that we may be
able to lay our hands on the robber, in spite of the apparent absence of
clues. I will ask you to leave both these letters for me to examine more
minutely, and I shall probably want to make an inspection of the
premises--perhaps to-morrow."

"Whenever you like," said Blowgrave. "I am delighted that you are willing
to undertake the inquiry. I have heard so much about you from my friend
Stalker, of the Griffin Life Assurance Company, for whom you have acted
on several occasions."

"Before you go," said Thorndyke," there is one point that we must clear
up. Who is there besides yourselves that knows of the existence of the
scarab and this letter and the history attaching to them?"

"I really can't say," replied Blowgrave. "No one has seen them but my
cousin Arthur. I once showed them to him, and he may have talked about
them in the family. I didn't treat the matter as a secret."

When our visitors had gone we discussed the bearings of the case.

"It is quite a romantic story," said I, "and the robbery has its points
of interest, but I am rather inclined to agree with the police--there is
mighty little to go on."

"There would have been less," said Thorndyke, "if our sporting friend
hadn't been so pleased with himself. That typewritten letter was a piece
of gratuitous impudence. Our gentleman overrated his security and crowed
too loud."

"I don't see that there is much to be gleaned from the letter, all the
same," said I.

"I am sorry to hear you say that, Jervis," he exclaimed, "because I was
proposing to hand the letter over to you to examine and report on."

"I was only referring to the superficial appearances," I said hastily.
"No doubt a detailed examination will bring something more distinctive
into view."

"I have no doubt it will," he said, "and as there are reasons for pushing
on the investigation as quickly as possible, I suggest that you get to
work at once. I will occupy myself with the old letter and the envelope."

On this I began my examination without delay, and as a preliminary I
proceeded to take a facsimile photograph of the letter by putting it in a
large printing frame with a sensitive plate and a plate of clear glass.
The resulting negative showed not only the typewritten lettering, but
also the watermark and wire lines of the paper, and a faint grease spot.
Next I turned my attention to the lettering itself, and here I soon began
to accumulate quite a number of identifiable peculiarities. The machine
was apparently a Corona, fitted with the, small "Elite" type, and the
alignment was markedly defective. The "lower case"--or small--"a" was
well below the line, although the capital "A" appeared to be correctly
placed ; the "u" was slightly above the line, and the small "m" was
partly clogged with dirt.

Up to this point I had been careful to manipulate the letter with forceps
(although it had been handled by at least three persons, to my
knowledge), and I now proceeded to examine it for finger-prints. As I
could detect none by mere inspection, I dusted the back of the paper with
finely powdered fuchsin, and distributed the powder by tapping the paper
lightly. This brought into view quite a number of finger-prints,
especially round the edges of the letter, and though most of them were
very faint and shadowy, it was possible to make out the ridge pattern
well enough for our purpose. Having blown off the excess of powder, I
took the letter to the room where the large copying camera was set up, to
photograph it before developing the finger-prints on the front. But here
I found our laboratory assistant, Polton, in possession, with the sealed
envelope fixed to the copying easel. "I shan't be a minute, sir," said
he. "The doctor wants an enlarged photograph of this seal. I've got the
plate in."

I waited while he made his exposure and then proceeded to take the
photograph of the letter, or rather of the finger-prints on the back of
it. When I had developed the negative I powdered the front of the letter
and brought out several more finger-prints--thumbs this time. They were
a little difficult to see where they were imposed on the lettering, but,
as the latter was bright blue and the fuchsin powder was red, this
confusion disappeared in the photograph, in which the lettering was
almost invisible while the finger-prints were more distinct than they had
appeared to the eye. This completed my examination, and when I had
verified the make of typewriter by reference to our album of specimens of
typewriting, I left the negatives for Polton to dry and print and went
down to the sitting-room to draw up my little report. I had just finished
this and was speculating on what had become of Thorndyke, when I heard
his quick step on the stair and a few moments later he entered with a
roll of paper in his hand. This he unrolled on the table, fixing it open
with one or two lead paper-weights, and I came round to inspect it, when
I found it to be a sheet of the Ordnance map on the scale of twenty-five
inches to the mile.

"Here is the Blowgraves' place," said Thorndyke, "nearly in the middle of
the sheet. This is his house--Shawstead Manor--and that will probably
be the out-building that was on fire. I take it that the house marked
Dingle Farm is the one that Uncle Reuben occupied."

"Probably," I agreed. "But I don't see why you wanted this map if you are
going down to the place itself tomorrow."

"The advantage of a map," said Thorndyke, "is that you can see all over
it at once and get the lie of the land well into your mind; and you can
measure all distances accurately and quickly with a scale and a pair of
dividers. When we go down to-morrow, we shall know our way about as well
as Blowgrave himself."

"And what use will that be?" I asked. "Where does the topography come
into the case?

"Well, Jervis," he replied, "there is the robber, for instance; he came
from somewhere and he went somewhere. A study of the map may give us a
hint as to his movements. But here comes Polton 'with the documents,' as
poor Miss Flite would say. What have you got for us, Polton?

[ILLUSTRATION: Thorndyke's tracing of the impression of the scarab.
Illustrations to these stories, where available, can be found in a ZIPped
file at http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#letterF]

"They aren't quite dry, sir," said Polton, laying four large bromide
prints on the table. "There's the enlargement of the seal--ten by eight,
mounted--and three unmounted prints of Dr. Jervis's."

Thorndyke looked at my photographs critically. "They're excellent,
Jervis," said he. "The finger prints are perfectly legible, though faint.
I only hope some of them are the right ones. That is my left thumb. I
don't see yours. The small one is presumably Miss Blowgrave's. We must
take her finger-prints to-morrow, and her father's, too. Then we shall
know if we have got any of the robber's." He ran his eye over my report
and nodded approvingly. "There is plenty there to enable us to identify
the typewriter if we can get hold of it, and the paper is very
distinctive. What do you think of the seal?" he added, laying the
enlarged photograph before me.

It is magnificent," I replied, with a grin. "Perfectly monumental."

"What are you grinning at?" he demanded.

"I was thinking that you seem to be counting your chickens in pretty good
time," said I. "You are making elaborate preparations to identify the
scarab, but you are rather disregarding the classical advice of the
prudent Mrs. Glasse."

"I have a presentiment that we shall get that scarab," said he. "At any
rate we ought to be in a position to 926 identify it instantly and
certainly if we are able to get a sight of it."

"We are not likely to," said I. "Still, there is no harm in providing for
the improbable."

This was evidently Thorndyke's view, and he certainly made ample
provision for this most improbable contingency; for, having furnished
himself with a drawing- board and a sheet of tracing-paper, he pinned the
latter over the photograph on the board and proceeded, with a fine pen
and hectograph ink, to make a careful and minute tracing of the intricate
and bewildering hieroglyphic inscription on the seal. When he had
finished it he transferred it to a clay duplicator and took off
half-a-dozen copies, one of which he handed to me. I looked at it
dubiously and remarked : "You have said that the medical jurist must make
all knowledge his province. Has he got to be an Egyptologist, too?"

"He will be the better medical jurist if he is," was the reply, of which
I made a mental note for my future guidance. But meanwhile Thorndyke's
proceedings were, to me, perfectly incomprehensible. What was his object
in making this minute tracing? The seal itself was sufficient for
identification. I lingered, awhile hoping that some fresh development
might throw a light on the mystery. But his next proceeding was like to
have reduced me to stupefaction. I saw him go to the book-shelves and
take down a book. As he laid it on the table I glanced at the title, and
when I saw that it was Raper's Navigation Tables I stole softly out into
the lobby, put on my hat and went for a walk.

When I returned the investigation was apparently concluded, for Thorndyke
was seated in his easy chair, placidly reading The Compleat Angler. On
the table lay a large circular protractor, a straight-edge, an
architect's scale and a sheet of tracing-paper on which was a tracing in
hectograph ink of Shawstead Manor.

"Why did you make this tracing?" I asked. "Why not take the map itself? "

"We don't want the whole of it," he replied, "and I dislike cutting up
maps."

By taking an informal lunch in the train, we arrived at Shawstead Manor
by half-past two. Our approach up the drive had evidently been observed,
for Blowgrave and his daughter were waiting at the porch to receive us.
The former came forward with outstretched hand, but a distinctly
woebegone expression, and exclaimed:

"It is most kind of you to come down; but alas! you are too late."

"Too late for what?" demanded Thorndyke.

"I will show you," replied Blowgrave, and seizing my colleague by the
arm, he strode off excitedly to a little wicket at the side of the house,
and, passing through it, hurried along a narrow alley that skirted the
garden wall and ended in a large meadow, at one end of which stood a
dilapidated windmill. Across this meadow he bustled, dragging my
colleague with him, until he reached a heap of freshly-turned earth,
where he halted and pointed tragically to a spot where the turf had evi
dently been raised and untidily replaced.

"There!" he exclaimed, stooping to pull up the loose turfs and thereby
exposing what was evidently a large hole, recently and hastily filled in.
"That was done last night or early this morning, for I walked over this
meadow only yesterday evening and there was no sign of disturbed ground
then."

Thorndyke stood looking down at the hole with a faint smile. "And what do
you infer from that?" he asked.

"Infer!" shrieked Blowgrave. "Why, I infer that whoever dug this hole was
searching for Uncle Reuben and the lost jewels!"

"I am inclined to agree with you," Thorndyke said calmly. "He happened to
search in the wrong place, but that is his affair."

"The wrong place!" Blowgrave and his daughter exclaimed in unison. "How
do you know it is the wrong place?"

"Because," replied Thorndyke, "I believe I know the right place, and this
is not it. But we can put the matter to the test, and we had better do
so. Can you get a couple of men with picks and shovels? Or shall we
handle the tools ourselves?"

"I think that would be better," said Blowgrave, who was quivering with
excitement. "We don't want to take anyone into our confidence if we can
help it."

"No," Thorndyke agreed. "Then I suggest that you fetch the tools while I
locate the spot."

Blowgrave assented eagerly and went off at a brisk trot, while the young
lady remained with us and watched Thorndyke with intense curiosity.

"I mustn't interrupt you with questions," said she "but I can't imagine
how you found out where Uncle Reuben was buried."

"We will go into that later," he replied; "but first we have got to find
Uncle Reuben." He laid his research case down on the ground, and opening
it, took out three sheets of paper, each bearing a duplicate of his
tracing of the map; and on each was marked a spot on this meadow from
which a number of lines radiated like the spokes of a wheel.

"You see, Jervis," he said, exhibiting them to me "the advantage of a
map. I have been able to rule off these sets of bearings regardless of
obstructions, such as those young trees, which have arisen since Silas's
day, and mark the spot in its correct place. If the recent obstructions
prevent us from taking the bearings, we can still find the spot by
measurements with the land- chain or tape."

"Why have you got three plans?" I asked.

"Because there are three imaginable places. No. 1 is the most likely; No.
2 less likely, but possible; No. 3 is impossible. That is the one that
our friend tried last night. No. 1 is among those young trees, and we
will now see if we can pick up the bearings in spite of them."

We moved on to the clump of young trees, where Thorndyke took from the
research-case a tall, folding camera-tripod and a large prisma compass
with an aluminium dial. With the latter he one or two trial bearings and
then, setting up the tripod, fixed the compass on it. For some minutes
Miss Blowgrave and I watched him as he shifted the tripod from spot to
spot, peering through the sight-vane of the compass and glancing
occasionally at the map. At length he turned to us and said: "We are in
luck. None of these trees interferes with our bearings." He took from the
research-case a surveyor's arrow, and sticking it in the ground under the
tripod, added: "That is the spot. But we may have to dig a good way round
it, for a compass is only a rough instrument."

At this moment Mr. Blowgrave staggered up, breathing hard, and flung down
on the ground three picks, two shovels and a spade. "I won't hinder you,
doctor, by asking for explanations," said he, "but I am utterly
mystified. You must tell us what it all means when we have finished our
work."

This Thorndyke promised to do, but meanwhile he took off his coat, and
rolling up his shirt sleeves, seized the spade and began cutting out a
large square of turf. As the soil was uncovered, Blowgrave and I attacked
it with picks and Miss Blowgrave shovelled away the loose earth.

"Do you know how far down we have to go?" I asked.

"The body lies six feet below the surface," Thorndyke replied; and as he
spoke he laid down his spade, and taking a telescope from the
research-case, swept it round the margin of the meadow and finally
pointed it at a farm house some six hundred yards distant, of which he
made a somewhat prolonged inspection, after which he took the remaining
pick and fell to work on the opposite corner of the exposed square of
earth.

For nearly half-an-hour we worked on steadily, gradually eating our way
downwards, plying pick and shovel alternately, while Miss Blowgrave
cleared the loose earth away from the edges of the deepening pit. Then a
halt was called and we came to the surface, wiping our faces.

"I think, Nellie," said Blowgrave, divesting himself of his waistcoat, "a
jug of lemonade and four tumblers would be useful, unless our visitors
would prefer beer."

We both gave our votes for lemonade, and Miss Nellie tripped away towards
the house, while Thorndyke, taking up his telescope, once more inspected
the farm house.

"You seem greatly interested in that house," I remarked.

"I am," he replied, handing me the telescope "Just take a look at the
window in the right-hand gable, but keep under the tree."

I pointed the telescope at the gable and there observed an open window at
which a man was seated. He held a binocular glass to his eyes and the
instrument appeared to be directed at us.

"We are being spied on, I fancy," said I, passing the telescope to
Blowgrave, "but I suppose it doesn't matter. This is your land, isn't
it?"

"Yes," replied Blowgrave, "but still, we didn't want any spectators. That
is Harold Bowker," he added steadying the telescope against a tree, "my
cousin Arthur's nephew, whom I told you about as having inherited the
farm-house. He seems mighty interested in us; but small things interest
one in the country."

Here the appearance of Miss Nellie, advancing across the meadow with an
inviting-looking basket, diverted our attention from our inquisitive
watcher. Six thirsty eyes were riveted on that basket until it drew near
and presently disgorged a great glass jug and four tumblers, when we each
took off a long and delicious draught and then jumped down into the pit
to resume our labours.

Another half-hour passed. We had excavated in some places to nearly the
full depth and were just discussing the advisability of another short
rest when Blowgrave, who was working in one corner, uttered a loud cry
and stood up suddenly, holding something in his fingers. A glance at the
object showed it to be a bone, brown and earth-stained, but evidently a
bone. Evidently, too, a human bone, as Thorndyke decided when Blowgrave
handed it to him triumphantly.

"We have been very fortunate," said he, "to get so near at the first
trial. This is from the right great toe, so we may assume that the
skeleton lies just outside this pit, but we had better excavate carefully
in your corner and see exactly how the bones lie." This he proceeded to
do himself, probing cautiously with the spade and clearing the earth away
from the corner. Very soon the remaining bones of the right foot came
into view and then the ends of the two leg-bones and a portion of the
left foot.

"We can see now," said he, "how the skeleton lies, and all we have to do
is to extend the excavation in that direction. But there is only room for
one to work down here. I think you and Mr. Blowgrave had better dig down
from the surface."

On this, I climbed out of the pit, followed reluctantly by Blowgrave, who
still held the little brown bone in his hand and was in a state of wild
excitement and exultation that somewhat scandalised his daughter.

"It seems rather ghoulish," she remarked, "to be gloating over poor Uncle
Reuben's body in this way."

"I know," said Blowgrave, "it isn't reverent. But I didn't kill Uncle
Reuben, you know, whereas--well it was a long time ago." With this
rather inconsequent conclusion he took a draught of lemonade, seized his
pick and fell to work with a will. I, too, indulged in a draught and
passed a full tumbler down to Thorndyke. But before resuming my labours I
picked up the telescope and once more inspected the farm-house. The
window was still open, but the watcher had apparently become bored with
the not very thrilling spectacle. At any rate he had disappeared.

From this time onward every few minutes brought some discovery. First, a
pair of deeply rusted steel shoe buckles; then one or two buttons, and
presently a fine gold watch with a fob-chain and a bunch of seals,
looking uncannily new and fresh and seeming more fraught with tragedy
than even the bones themselves In his cautious digging, Thorndyke was
careful not to disturb the skeleton; and looking down into the narrow
trench that was growing from the corner of the pit, I could see both
legs, with only the right foot missing, projecting from the miniature
cliff. Meanwhile our of the trench was deepening rapidly, so that
Thorndyke presently warned us to stop digging and bade us come down and
shovel away the earth as he disengaged it.

At length the whole skeleton, excepting the head, was uncovered, though
it lay undisturbed as it might have lain in its coffin. And now, as
Thorndyke picked away the earth around the head, we could see that the
skull was propped forward as if it rested on a high pillow. A little more
careful probing with the pick-point served to explain this appearance.
For as the earth fell away and disclosed the grinning skull, there came
into view the edge and ironbound corners of a small chest.

It was an impressive spectacle; weird, solemn and rather dreadful. There
for over a century the ill-fated gambler had lain, his mouldering head
pillowed on the booty of unrecorded villainy, booty that had been won by
fraud, retrieved by violence, and hidden at last by the final winner with
the witness of his crime.

"Here is a fine text for a moralist who would preach on the vanity of
riches," said Thorndyke.

We all stood silent for a while, gazing, not without awe, at the stark
figure that lay guarding the ill-gotten treasure. Miss Blowgrave--who
had been helped down when we descended--crept closer to her father and
murmured that it was "rather awful"; while Blowgrave himself displayed a
queer mixture of exultation and shuddering distaste.

Suddenly the silence was broken by a voice from above, and we all looked
up with a start. A youngish man was standing on the brink of the pit,
looking down on us with very evident disapproval.

"It seems that I have come just in the nick of time," observed the
new-comer. "I shall have to take pos session of that chest, you know, and
of the remains, too, I suppose. That is my ancestor, Reuben Blowgrave."

"Well, Harold," said Blowgrave, "you can have Uncle Reuben if you want
him. But the chest belongs to Nellie."

Here Mr. Harold Bowker--I recognised him now as the watcher from the
window--dropped down into the pit and advanced with something of a
swagger.

"I am Reuben's heir," said he, "through my Uncle Arthur, and I take
possession of this property and the remains."

"Pardon me, Harold," said Blowgrave, "but Nellie is Arthur's residuary
legatee, and this is the residue of the estate."

"Rubbish!" exclaimed Bowker. "By the way, how did you find out where he
was buried?"

Oh, that was quite simple," replied Thorndyke with unexpected geniality.
"I'll show you the plan." He climbed up to the surface and returned in a
few moments with the three tracings and his letter-case. "This is how we
located the spot." He handed the plan numbered 3 to Bowker, who took it
from him and stood looking at it with a puzzled frown.

"But this isn't the place," he said at length.

"Isn't it?" queried Thorndyke. "No, of course; I've given you the wrong
one. This is the plan." He handed Bowker the plan marked No. 1, and took
the other from him, laying it down on a heap of earth. Then, as Bowker
pored gloomily over No. 1, he took a knife and a pencil from his pocket,
and with his back to our visitor; scraped the lead of the pencil, letting
the black powder fall on the plan that he had just laid down. I watched
him with some curiosity; and when I observed that the black scrapings
fell on two spots near the edges of the paper, a sudden suspicion flashed
into my mind, which j was confirmed when I saw him tap the paper lightly
with his pencil, gently blow away the powder, and quickly producing my
photograph of the typewritten letter from his case, hold it for a moment
beside the plan.

"This is all very well," said Bowker, looking up i from the plan, "but
how did you find out about these bearings?"

Thorndyke swiftly replaced the letter in his case, and turning round,
replied, "I am afraid I can't give you any further information."

"Can't you, indeed!" Bowker exclaimed insolently. "Perhaps I shall compel
you to. But, at any rate, I forbid any of you to lay hands on my
property."

Thorndyke looked at him steadily and said in an ominously quiet tone:
"Now, listen to me, Mr. Bowker. Let us have an end of this nonsense. You
have played a risky game and you have lost. How much you have lost I
can't say until I know whether Mr. Blowgrave intends to prosecute."

"To prosecute!" shouted Bowker. "What the deuce do you mean by
prosecute?"

"I mean," said Thorndyke, "that on the 7th of June, after nine o'clock at
night, you entered the dwelling-house of Mr. Blowgrave and stole and
carried away certain of his goods and chattels. A part of them you have
restored, but you are still in possession of some of the stolen property,
to wit, a scarab and a deed-box."

As Thorndyke made this statement in his calm, level tones, Bowker's face
blanched to a tallowy white, and he stood staring at my colleague, the
very picture of astonishment and dismay. But he fired a last shot.

"This is sheer midsummer madness," he exclaimed huskily; "and you know
it."

Thorndyke turned to our host. "It is for you to settle, Mr. Blowgrave,"
said he. "I hold conclusive evidence that Mr. Bowker stole your deed-box.
If you decide to prosecute I shall produce that evidence in court and he
will certainly be convicted."

Blowgrave and his daughter looked at the accused man with an
embarrassment almost equal to his own.

I am astounded," the former said at length; "but I don't want to be
vindictive. Look here, Harold, hand over the scarab and we'll say no more
about it."

"You can't do that," said Thorndyke. "The law doesn't allow you to
compound a robbery. He can return the property if he pleases and you can
do as you think best about prosecuting. But you can't make conditions."

There was silence for some seconds; then, without another word, the
crestfallen adventurer turned, and scrambling up out of the pit, took a
hasty departure.

It was nearly a couple of hours later that, after a leisurely wash and a
hasty, nondescript meal, we carried the little chest from the dining-room
to the study. Here, when he had closed the French window and drawn the
curtains, Mr. Blowgrave produced a set of tools and we fell to work on
the iron fastenings of the chest. It was no light task, though a
century's rust had thinned the stout bands, but at length the lid yielded
to the thrust of a long case-opener and rose with a protesting creak. The
chest was lined with a double thickness of canvas, apparently part of a
sail, and contained a number of small leathern bags, which, as we lifted
them out, one by one, felt as if they were filled with pebbles. But when
we untied the thongs of one and emptied its contents into a wooden bowl,
Blowgrave heaved a sigh of ecstasy and Miss Nellie uttered a little
scream of delight. They were all cut stones, and most of them of
exceptional size; rubies, emeralds, sapphires and a few diamonds. As to
their value, we could forn but the vaguest guess; but Thorndyke, who was
a fair, judge of gem-stones, gave it as his opinion that they were fine
specimens of their kind, though roughly cut, and that they had probably
formed the enrichment of some shrine.

"The question is," said Blowgrave, gazing gloatingly on the bowl of
sparkling gems, "what are we to do with them?"

"I suggest," said Thorndyke, "that Dr. Jervis stay here to-night to help
you to guard them and that in the morning you take them up to London and
deposit them, at your bank."

Blowgrave fell in eagerly with this suggestion, which I seconded. "But,"
said he, "that chest is a queer-looking package to be carrying abroad.
Now, if we only had that confounded deed-box--"

"There's a deed-box on the cabinet behind you," said Thorndyke.

Blowgrave turned round sharply. "God bless us!" he exclaimed. "It has
come back the way it went. Harold must have slipped in at the window
while we were at tea. Well, I'm glad he has made restitution. When I look
at that bowl and think what he must have narrowly missed, I don't feel
inclined to be hard on him. I suppose the scarab is inside--not that it
matters much now."

The scarab was inside in an envelope; and as Thorndyke turned it over in
his hand and examined the hieroglyphics on it through his lens, Miss
Blowgrave asked: "Is it of any value, Dr. Thorndyke? It can't have any
connection with the secret of the hiding-place, because you found the
jewels without it."

"By the way, doctor, I don't know whether it is permissible for me to
ask, but how on earth did you find out where the jewels were hidden? To
me it looks like black magic."

Thorndyke laughed in a quiet, inward fashion. "There is nothing magical
about it," said he. "It was a perfectly simple, straightforward problem.
But Miss Nellie is wrong. We had the scarab; that is to say we had the
wax impression of it, which is the same thing. And the scarab was the key
to the riddle. You see," he continued, "Silas's letter and the scarab
formed together a sort of intelligence test."

"Did they?" said Blowgrave. "Then he drew a blank every time."

Thorndyke chuckled. "His descendants were certainly a little lacking in
enterprise," he admitted. "Silas's instructions were perfectly plain and
explicit. Whoever would find the treasure must first acquire some
knowledge of Egyptian lore and must study the scarab attentively. It was
the broadest of hints, but no one--excepting Harold Bowker, who must
have heard about the scarab from his Uncle Arthur--seems to have paid
any attention to it.

"Now it happens that I have just enough elementary knowledge of the
hieroglyphic characters to enable me to spell them out when they are used
alphabetically; and as soon as I saw the seal, I could see that these
hieroglyphics formed English words. My attention was first attracted by
the second group of signs, which spelled the word 'Reuben,' and then I
saw that the first group spelled 'Uncle.' Of course, the instant I heard
Miss Nellie speak of the connection between the scarab and Uncle Reuben,
the murder was out. I saw at a glance that the scarab contained all the
required information. Last night I made a careful tracing of the
hieroglyphics and then rendered them into our own alphabet. This is the
result."

[ILLUSTRATION: The transliteration of the hieroglyphics.
Illustrations to these stories, where available, can be found in a ZIPped
file at http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-a-m.html#letterF]

He took from his letter-case and spread out on the table a duplicate of
the tracing which I had seen him make, and of which he had given me a
copy. But since I had last seen it, it had received an addition; under
each group of signs the equivalents in modern Roman lettering had been
written, and these made the following words:

"UNKL RUBN IS IN TH MILL FIELD SKS FT DOWN CHURCH SPIR NORTH TEN THIRTY
EAST DINGL SOUTH GABL NORTH ATY FORTY FIF WEST GOD SAF KING JORJ."

Our two friends gazed at Thorndyke's transliteration in blank
astonishment. At length Blowgrave remarked: "But this translation must
have demanded a very profound knowledge of the Egyptian writing."

"Not at all," replied Thorndyke. "Any intelligent person could master the
Egyptian alphabet in an hour. The language, of course, is quite another
matter. The spelling of this is a little crude, but it is quite
intelligible and does Silas great credit, considering how little was
known in his time."

"How do you suppose M. Fouquet came to overlook this?" Blowgrave asked.

"Naturally enough," was the reply. "He was looking for an Egyptian
inscription. But this is not an Egyptian inscription. Does he speak
English?"

"Very little. Practically not at all."

"Then, as the words are English words and imperfectly spelt, the
hieroglyphics must have appeared to him mere nonsense. And he was right
as to the scarab being an imitation."

"There is another point," said Blowgrave. "How was it that Harold made
that extraordinary mistake about the place? The directions are clear
enough. All you had to do was to go out there with a compass and take the
bearings just as they were given."

"But," said Thorndyke," that is exactly what he did, and hence the
mistake. He was apparently unaware of the phenomenon known as the Secular
Variation of the Compass. As you know, the compass does not--usually--point
to true north, hut to the Magnetic North; and the Magnetic North is
continually changing its position. When Reuben was buried---about 1810--it
was twenty-four degrees, twenty-six minutes west of true north; at the
present time it is fourteen degrees, forty-eight minutes west of true
north. So Harold's bearings would be no less than ten degrees out, which
of course, gave him a totally wrong position. But Silas was a
ship-master, a navigator, and of course knew all about the vagaries of
the compass; and, as his directions were intended for use at some date
unknown to him, I assumed that the bearings that he gave were true
bearings--that when he said 'north' he meant true north, which is always
the same; and this turned out to be the case. But I also prepared a plan
with magnetic bearings corrected up to date. Here are the three plans:
No. 1--the one we used--showing true bearings; No. 2, showing corrected
magnetic bearings which might have given us the correct spot; and No. 3,
with uncorrected magnetic bearings, giving us the spot where Harold dug,
and which could not possibly have been the right spot."

On the following morning I escorted the deed-box, filled with the booty
and tied up and sealed with the scarab, to Mr. Blowgrave's bank. And that
ended our connection with the case; excepting that, a month or two later,
we attended by request the unveiling in Shawstead churchyard of a fine
monument to Reuben Blowgrave. This took the slightly inappropriate form
of an obelisk, on which were cut the name and approximate dates, with the
added inscription: "Cast thy bread upon the waters and it shall return
after many days"; concerning which Thorndyke remarked dryly that he
supposed the exhortation applied equally even if the bread happened to
belong to someone else.



THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX


"A rather curious neighbourhood this, Jervis," my friend Thorndyke
remarked as we turned into Upper Bedford Place; "a sort of aviary for
cosmopolitan birds of passage, especially those of the Oriental variety.
The Asiatic and African faces that one sees at the windows of these
Bloomsbury boarding houses almost suggest an overflow from the
ethnographical galleries of the adjacent British Museum."

"Yes," I agreed," there must be quite a considerable population of
Africans, Japanese and Hindus in Bloomsbury; particularly Hindus."

As I spoke, and as if in illustration of my statement, a dark-skinned man
rushed out of one of the houses farther down the street and began to
advance towards us in a rapid, bewildered fashion, stopping to look at
each street door as he came to it. His hatless condition--though he was
exceedingly well dressed--and his agitated manner immediately attracted
my attention, and Thorndyke's too, for the latter remarked, " Our friend
seems to be in trouble. An accident, perhaps, or a case of sudden
illness."

Here the stranger, observing our approach, ran for ward to meet us and
asked in an agitated tone, "Can you tell me, please, where I can find a
doctor?"

"I am a medical man," replied Thorndyke, "and so is my friend."

Our acquaintance grasped Thorndyke's sleeve and exclaimed eagerly, "Come
with me, then, quickly, if you please. A most dreadful thing has
happened."

He hurried us along at something between a trot and a quick walk, and as
we proceeded he continued excitedly, "I am quite confused and terrified;
it is all so strange and sudden and terrible."

"Try," said Thorndyke, "to calm yourself a little and tell us what has
happened."

"I will," was the agitated reply. "It is my cousin, Dinanath Byramji--his
surname is the same as mine. Just now I went to his room and was
horrified to find him lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling and
blowing--like this," and he puffed out his cheeks with a soft blowing
noise. "I spoke to him and shook his hand, but he was like a dead man.
This is the house."

He darted up the steps to an open door at which a rather scared page-boy
was on guard, and running along the hall, rapidly ascended the stairs.
Following him closely, we reached a rather dark first-floor landing
where, at a half-open door, a servant-maid stood listening with an
expression of awe to a rhythmical snoring sound that issued from the
room.

The unconscious man lay as Mr. Byramji had said staring fixedly at the
ceiling with wide-open, glazy eyes, puffing out his cheeks slightly at
each breath. But the breathing was shallow and slow, and it grew
perceptibly slower, with lengthening pauses. And even as I was timing it
with my watch while Thorndyke examined the pupils with the aid of a wax
match, it stopped. I laid my finger on the wrist and caught one or two
slow, flickering beats. Then the pulse stopped too.

"He is gone, said I. "He must have burst one of the large arteries."

"Apparently," said Thorndyke, "though one would not have expected it at
his age. But wait! What is this?"

He pointed to the right ear, in the hollow of which a few drops of blood
had collected, and as he spoke he drew his hand gently over the dead
man's head and moved it slightly from side to side.

"There is a fracture of the base of the skull," said he, "and quite
distinct signs of contusion of the scalp." He turned to Mr. Byramji, who
stood wringing his hand and gazing incredulously at the dead man, and
asked: "Can you throw any light on this?"

The Indian looked at him vacantly. The sudden tragedy seemed to have
paralysed his brain. "I don't understand," said he. "What does it mean?"

"It means," replied Thorndyke, "that he has received a heavy blow on the
head."

For a few moments Mr. Byramji continued to stare vacantly at my
colleague. Then he seemed suddenly to realise the import of Thorndyke's
remark, for he started up excitedly and turned to the door, outside which
the two servants were hovering.

"Where is the person gone who came in with my cousin?" he demanded.

"You saw him go out, Albert," said the maid. "Tell Mr. Byramji where he
went to."

The page tiptoed into the room with a fearful eye fixed on the corpse,
and replied falteringly, "I only see the back of him as he went out, and
all I know is that he turned to the left. P'raps he's gone for a doctor."

"Can you give us any description of him?" asked Thorndyke.

"I only see the back of him," repeated the page. "He was a shortish
gentleman and he had on a dark suit of clothes and a hard felt hat.
That's all I know."

"Thank you," said Thorndyke. "We may want to ask you some more questions
presently." and having conducted the page to the door, he shut it and
turned to Mr. Byramji.

"Have you any idea who it was that was with your cousin?" he asked.

"None at all," was the reply. "I was sitting in my room opposite,
writing, when I heard my cousin come up the stairs with another person,
to whom he was talking. I could not hear what he was saying. They went
into his room--this room--and I could occasionally catch the sound of
their voices. In about a quarter of an hour I heard the door open and
shut, and then someone went downstairs, softly and rather quickly. I
finished the letter that I was writing, and when I had addressed it I
came in here to ask my cousin who the visitor was. I thought it might be
someone who had come to negotiate for the ruby."

"The ruby!" exclaimed Thorndyke. "What ruby do you refer to?"

"The great ruby," replied Byramji. "But of course you have not--" He
broke off suddenly and stood for a few moments staring at Thorndyke with
parted lips and wide-open eyes; then abruptly he turned, and kneeling
beside the dead man he began, in a curious, caressing, half-apologetic
manner, first to pass his hands gently over the body at the waist and
then to unfasten the clothes. This brought into view a handsome, soft
leather belt, evidently of native workmanship, worn next to the skin and
furnished with three pockets. Mr. Byramji unbuttoned and explored them in
quick succession, and it was evident that they were all empty.

"It is gone!" he exclaimed in low, intense tones, "Gone! Ah! But how
little would it signify! But thou, dear Dinanath, my brother, my friend,
thou art gone, too!"

He lifted the dead man's hand and pressed it to his cheek, murmuring
endearments in his own tongue. Presently he laid it down reverently, and
sprang up, and I was startled at the change in his aspect. The delicate,
gentle, refined face had suddenly become the face of a Fury--fierce,
sinister, vindictive.

"This wretch must die!" he exclaimed huskily. "This sordid brute who,
without compunction, has crushed out a precious life as one would
carelessly crush a fly, for the sake of a paltry crystal--he must die,
if I have to follow him and strangle him with my own hands!"

Thorndyke laid his hand on Byramji's shoulder. "I sympathise with you
most cordially," said he. "If it is as you think, and appearances
suggest, that your cousin has been murdered as a mere incident of
robbery, the murderer's life is forfeit, and Justice cries aloud for
retribution. The fact of murder will be determined, for or against, by a
proper inquiry. Meanwhile we have to ascertain who this unknown man is
and what happened while he was with your cousin."

Byramji made a gesture of despair. "But the man has disappeared, and
nobody has seen him! What can we do?"

"Let us look around us," plied Thorndyke, "and see if we can judge what
has happened in this room. What, for instance, is this?"

He picked up from a corner near the door a small leather object, which he
handed to Mr. Byramji. The Indian seized it eagerly, exclaiming: "Ah! It
is the little bag in which my cousin used to carry the ruby. So he had
taken it from his belt."

"It hasn't been dropped, by any chance?" I suggested.

In an instant Mr. Byramji was down on his knees, peering and groping
about the floor, and Thorndyke and I joined in the search. But, as might
have been expected there was no sign of the ruby, nor, indeed, of
anything else, excepting a hat which I picked up from under the table.

"No," said Mr. Byramji, rising with a dejected air. "It is gone--of
course it is gone, and the murderous villain--"

Here his glance fell on the hat, which I had laid on the table, and he
bent forward to look at it.

"Whose hat is this?" he demanded, glancing at the chair on which
Thorndyke's hat and mine had been placed.

"Is it not your cousin's?" asked Thorndyke. "No, certainly not. His hat
was like mine--we bought them both together. It had a white silk lining
with his initials, D. B., in gold. This has no lining and is a much older
hat. It must be the murderer's hat."

"If it is," said Thorndyke, "that is a most important fact--important in
two respects. Could you let us see your hat?"

"Certainly," replied Byramji, walking quickly, but with a soft tread, to
the door. As he went out, shutting the door silently behind him,
Thorndyke picked up the derelict hat and swiftly tried it on the head of
the dead man. As far as I could judge, it appeared to fit, and this
Thorndyke confirmed as he replaced it on the table.

"As you see," said he, "it is at least a practical fit, which is a fact
of some significance."

Here Mr. Byramji returned with his own hat, which he placed on the table
by the side of the other, and thus placed, crown uppermost, the two hats
were closely similar. Both were black, hard felts of the prevalent
"bowler" shape, and of good quality, and the difference in their age and
state of preservation was not striking; but when Byramji turned them over
and exhibited their interiors it was seen that whereas the strange hat
was unlined save for the leather head-band, Byramji's had a white silk
lining and bore the owner's initials in embossed gilt letters.

"What happened," said Thorndyke, when he had carefully compared the two
hats, "seems fairly obvious, The two men, on entering, placed their hats
crown upwards on the table. In some way--perhaps during a struggle--the
visitor's hat was knocked down and rolled under the table. Then the
stranger, on leaving, picked up the only visible hat--almost identically
similar to his own--and put it on."

"Is it not rather singular," I asked, "that he should not have noticed
the different feel of a strange hat?"

"I think not," Thorndyke replied. "If he noticed anything unusual he
would probably assume that he had put it on the wrong way round. Remember
that he would be extremely hurried and agitated. And when once he had
left the house he would not dare to take the risk of returning, though he
would doubtless realise the gravity of the mistake. And now," he
continued, "would you mind giving us a few particulars? You have spoken
of a great ruby, which your cousin had, and which seems to be missing."

"Yes. You shall come to my room and I will tell you about it; but first
let us lay my poor cousin decently on his bed."

"I think," said Thorndyke, "the body ought not to be moved until the
police have seen it."

"Perhaps you are right," Byramji agreed reluctantly, "though it seems
callous to leave him lying there." With a sigh he turned to the door, and
Thorndyke fol lowed, carrying the two hats.

"My cousin and I," said our host, when we were seated in his own large
bed-sitting-room, "were both interested in gem-stones. I deal in all
kinds of stones that are found in the East, but Dinanath dealt almost
exclusively in rubies. He was a very fine judge of those beautiful gems,
and he used to make periodical tours in Burma in search of uncut rubies
of unusual size or quality. About four months ago he acquired at Mogok,
in Upper Burma, a magnificent specimen over twenty- eight carats in
weight, perfectly flawless and of the most gorgeous colour. It had been
roughly cut, but my cousin was intending to have it recut unless he
should receive an advantageous offer for it in the meantime."

"What would be the value of such a stone?" I asked.

"It is impossible to say. A really fine large ruby of perfect colour is
far, far more valuable than the finest diamond of the same size. It is
the most precious of all gems, with the possible exception of the
emerald. A fine ruby of five carats is worth about three thousand pounds,
but of course, the value rises out of all proportion with increasing
size. Fifty thousand pounds would be a moderate price for Dinanath's
ruby."

During this recital I noticed that Thorndyke, while listening
attentively, was turning the stranger's hat over in his hands, narrowly
scrutinising it both inside and outside. As Byramji concluded, he
remarked:

"We shall have to let the police know what has happened, but, as my
friend and I will be called as witnesses, I should like to examine this
hat a little more closely before you hand it over to them. Could you let
me have a small, hard brush? A dry nail-brush would do." Our host
complied readily--in fact eagerly. Thorndyke's authoritative, purposeful
manner had clearly impressed him, for he said as he handed my colleague a
new nail-brush: "I thank you for your help and value it. We must not
depend on the police only."

Accustomed as I was to Thorndyke's methods, his procedure was not
unexpected, but Mr. Byramji watched him with breathless interest and no
little surprise as, laying a sheet of notepaper on the table, he brought
the hat close to it and brushed firmly but slowly, so that the dust
dislodged should fall on it. As it was not a very well-kept hat, the
yield was considerable, especially when the brush was drawn under the
curl of the brim, and very soon the paper held quite a little heap. Then
Thorndyke folded the paper into a small packet and having written
"outside" on it, put it in his pocket book.

"Why do you do that? "Mr. Byramji asked. "What will the dust tell you?"

"Probably nothing," Thorndyke replied. "But this hat is our only direct
clue to the identity of the man who was with your cousin, and we must
make the most of it. Dust, you know, is only a mass of fragments detached
from surrounding objects. If the objects are unusual the dust may be
quite distinctive. You could easily identify the hat of a miller or a
cement worker." As he was speaking he reversed the hat and turned down
the leather head-lining, whereupon a number of strips of folded paper
fell down into the crown.

"Ah!" exclaimed Byramji, "perhaps we shall learn something now."

He picked out the folded slips and began eagerly to open them out, and we
examined them systematically- one by one. But they were singularly
disappointing and uninforming. Mostly they consisted of strips of
newspaper, with one or two circulars, a leaf from a price list of gas
stoves, a portion of a large envelope on which were the remains of an
address which read "--n--don, W.C.," and a piece of paper evidently cut
down vertically and bearing the right-hand half of some kind of list.
This read:

"--el 3 oz. 5 dwts.

--eep 9½ oz."

"Can you make anything of this?" I asked, handing the paper to Thorndyke.

He looked at it reflectively, and answered, as he copied it into his
notebook : "It has, at least, some character. If we consider it with the
other data we should get some sort of hint from it. But these scraps of
paper don't tell us much. Perhaps their most suggestive feature is their
quantity and the way in which, as you have no doubt noticed, they were
arranged at the sides of the hat. We had better replace them as we found
them for the benefit of the police."

The nature of the suggestion to which he referred was not very obvious to
me, but the presence of Mr. Byramji rendered discussion inadvisable; nor
was there any opportunity, for we had hardly reconstituted the hat when
we became aware of a number of persons ascending the stairs, and then we
heard the sound of rather peremptory rapping at the door of the dead
man's room.

Mr. Byramji opened the door and went out on to the landing, where several
persons had collected, including the two servants and a constable.

"I understand," said the policeman, "that there is something wrong here.
Is that so?"

"A very terrible thing has happened," replied Byramji. "But the doctors
can tell you better than I can." Here he looked appealingly at Thorndyke,
and we both went out and joined him.

"A gentleman--Mr. Dinanath Byramji--has met with his death under
somewhat suspicious circumstances," said Thorndyke, and, glancing at the
knot of naturally curious persons on the landing, he continued: "If you
will come into the room where the death occurred, I will give you the
facts so far as they are known to us."

With this he opened the door and entered the room with Mr. Byramji, the
constable, and me. As the door opened, the bystanders craned forward and
a middle- aged woman uttered a cry of horror and followed us into the
room.

"This is dreadful!" she exclaimed, with a shuddering glance at the
corpse. "The servants told me about it when I came in just now and I sent
Albert for the police at once. But what does it mean? You don't think
poor Mr. Dinanath has been murdered?"

"We had better get the facts, ma'am," said the constable, drawing out a
large black notebook and laying his helmet on the table. He turned to Mr.
Byramji, who had sunk into a chair and sat, the picture of grief, gazing
at his dead cousin. "Would you kindly tell me what you know about how it
happened?"

Byramji repeated the substance of what he had told us, and when the
constable had taken down his statement, Thorndyke and I gave the few
medical particulars that we could furnish and handed the constable our
cards. Then, having helped to lay the corpse on the bed and cover it with
a sheet, we turned to take our leave.

"You have been very kind," Mr. Byramji said as he shook our hands warmly.
"I am more than grateful. Perhaps I may be permitted to call on you and
hear if--if you have learned anything fresh," he concluded discreetly.

"We shall be pleased to see you," Thorndyke replied, "and to give you any
help that we can"; and with this we took our departure, watched
inquisitively down the stairs by the boarders and the servants who still
lurked in the vicinity of the chamber of death.

"If the police have no more information than we have," I remarked as we
walked homeward, "they won't have much to go on."

"No," said Thorndyke. "But you must remember that this crime--as we are
justified in assuming it to be--is not an isolated one. It is the fourth
of practically the same kind within the last six months. I understand
that the police have some kind of information respecting the presumed
criminal, though it can't be worth much, seeing that no arrest has been
made. But there is some new evidence this time. The exchange of hats may
help the police considerably."

"In what way? What evidence does it furnish?"

"In the first place it suggests a hurried departure, which seems to
connect the missing man with the crime. Then, he is wearing the dead
man's hat, and though he is not likely to continue wearing it, it may be
seen and furnish a clue. We know that that hat fits him fairly well and
we know its size, so that we know the size of his head. Finally, we have
the man's own hat."

"I don't fancy the police will get much information from that," said I.

"Probably not," he agreed. "Yet it offered one or two interesting
suggestions, as you probably observed."

"It made no suggestions whatever to me," said I.

"Then," said Thorndyke, "I can only recommend you to recall our simple
inspection and consider the significance of what we found."

This I had to accept as closing the discussion for the time being, and as
I had to make a call at my bookseller's concerning some reports that I
had left to be bound, I parted from Thorndyke at the corner of Chichester
Rents and left him to pursue his way alone. My business with the
bookseller took me longer than I had expected, for I had to wait while
the lettering on the backs was completed, and when I arrived at our
chambers in King's Bench Walk, I found Thorndyke apparently at the final
stage of some experiment evidently connected with our late adventure. The
microscope stood on the table with one slide on the stage and a second
one beside it; but Thorndyke had apparently finished his microscopical
researches, for as I entered he held in his hand a test-tube filled with
a smoky-coloured fluid.

"I see that you have been examining the dust from the hat," said I. "Does
it throw any fresh light on the case?"

"Very little," he replied. "It is just common dust--assorted fibres and
miscellaneous organic and mineral particles. But there are a couple of
hairs from the in side of the hat--both lightish brown, and one of the
atrophic, note-of-exclamation type that one finds at the margin of bald
patches; and the outside dust shows minute traces of lead, apparently in
the form of oxide. What do you make of that?"

"Perhaps the man is a plumber or a painter," I suggested.

"Either is possible and worth considering," he replied ; but his tone
made clear to me that this was not his own inference; and a row of five
consecutive Post Office Directories, which I had already noticed ranged
along the end of the table, told me that he had not only formed a
hypothesis on the subject, but had probably either confirmed or disproved
it. For the Post Office Directory was one of Thorndyke's favourite books
of reference; and the amount of curious and recondite information that he
succeeded in extracting from its matter-of-fact pages would have
surprised no one more than it would the compilers of the work.

At this moment the sound of footsteps ascending our stairs became
audible. It was late for business callers, but we were not unaccustomed
to late visitors; and a familiar rat-tat of our little brass knocker
seemed to explain the untimely visit.

"That sounds like Superintendent Miller's knock," said Thorndyke, as he
strode across the room to open the door. And the superintendent it turned
out to be. But not alone.

As the door opened the officer entered with two gentlemen, both natives
of India, and one of whom was our friend Mr. Byramji.

"Perhaps," said Miller," I had better look in a little later."

"Not on my account," said Byramji. "I have only a few words to say and
there is nothing secret about my business. May I introduce my kinsman,
Mr. Khambata, a student of the Inner Temple?"

Byramji's companion bowed ceremoniously. "Byramji came to my chambers
just now," he explained, "to consult me about this dreadful affair, and
he chanced to show me your card. He had not heard of you, but supposed
you to be an ordinary medical practitioner. He did not realise that he
had entertained an angel unawares. But I, who knew of your great
reputation, advised him to put his affairs in your hands--without
prejudice to the official investigations," Mr. Khambata added hastily,
bowing to the superintendent.

"And I," said Mr. Byramji, "instantly decided to act on my kinsman's
advice. I have come to beg you to leave no stone unturned to secure the
punishment of my cousin's murderer. Spare no expense. I am a rich man and
my poor cousin's property will come to me. As to the ruby, recover it if
you can, but it is of no consequence. Vengeance--justice is what I seek.
Deliver the wretch into my hands, or into the hands of justice, and I
give you the ruby or its value, freely--gladly."

"There is no need," said Thorndyke, "of such extraordinary inducement. If
you wish me to investigate this case, I will do so and will use every
means at my disposal, without prejudice, as your friend says, to the
proper claims of the officers of the law. But you under stand that I can
make no promises. I cannot guarantee success."

"We understand that," said Mr. Khambata. "But we know that if you
undertake the case, everything that is possible will be done. And now we
must leave you to your consultation."

As soon as our clients had gone, Miller rose from his chair with his hand
in his breast pocket. "I dare say, doctor," said he, "you can guess what
I have come about. I was sent for to look into this Byramji case and I
heard from Mr. Byramji that you had been there and that you had made a
minute examination of the missing man's hat. So have I; and I don't mind
telling you that I could learn nothing from it."

"I haven't learnt much myself," said Thorndyke.

"But you've picked up something," urged Miller, "if it is only a hint;
and we have just a little clue. There is very small doubt that this is
the same man--'The New Jersey Sphinx,' as the papers call him--that
committed those other robberies; and a very difficult type of criminal he
is to get hold of. He is bold, he is wary, he plays a lone hand, and he
sticks at nothing. He has no confederates, and he kills every time. The
American police never got near him but once; and that once gives us the
only clues we have."

"Finger-prints?" inquired Thorndyke.

"Yes, and very poor ones, too. So rough that you can hardly make out the
pattern. And even those are not absolutely guaranteed to be his; but in
any case, finger-prints are not much use until you've got the man. And
there is a photograph of the fellow himself, But it is only a snapshot,
and a poor one at that. All it shows is that he has a mop of hair and a
pointed beard--or at least he had when the photograph was taken. But for
identification purposes it is practically worthless. Still, there it is;
and what I propose is this: we want this man and so do you; we've worked
together before and can trust one another. I am going to lay my cards on
the table and ask you to do the same."

"But, my dear Miller," said Thorndyke, "I haven't any cards. I haven't a
single solid fact."

The detective was visibly disappointed. Nevertheless, he laid two
photographs on the table and pushed them towards Thorndyke, who inspected
them through his lens and passed them to me.

"The pattern is very indistinct and broken up," he remarked.

"Yes," said Miller; "the prints must have been made on a very rough
surface, though you get prints something like those from fitters or other
men who use files and handle rough metal. And now, doctor, can't you give
us a lead of any kind?"

Thorndyke reflected a few moments. "I really have not a single real
fact," said he, "and I am unwilling to make merely speculative
suggestions."

"Oh, that's all right," Miller replied cheerfully. "Give us a start. I
shan't complain if it comes to nothing."

"Well," Thorndyke said reluctantly, "I was thinking of getting a few
particulars as to the various tenants of No. 51 Clifford's Inn. Perhaps
you could do it more easily and it might be worth your while."

"Good!" Miller exclaimed gleefully. "He 'gives to airy nothing a local
habitation and a name.'"

"It is probably the wrong name," Thorndyke reminded him.

"I don't care," said Miller. "But why shouldn't we go together? It's too
late to-night, and I can't manage to-morrow morning. But say to-morrow
after noon. Two heads are better than one, you know, especially when the
second one is yours. Or perhaps," he added, with a glance at me, "three
would be better still."

Thorndyke considered for a moment or two and then looked at me.

"What do you say, Jervis?" he asked.

As my afternoon was unoccupied, I agreed with enthusiasm, being as
curious as the superintendent to know how Thorndyke had connected this
particular locality with the vanished criminal, and Miller departed in
high spirits with an appointment for the morrow three o'clock in the
afternoon.

For some time after the superintendent's depart I sat wrapped in profound
meditation. In some mysterious way the address, 51 Clifford's Inn, had
emerged from the formless data yielded by the derelict hat. But what had
been the connection? Apparently the fragment of the addressed envelope
had furnished the clue. But how had Thorndyke extended "--n" into "51,
Clifford's Inn"? It was to me a complete mystery.

Meanwhile, Thorndyke had seated himself at writing-table, and I noticed
that of the two letters which he wrote, one was written on our headed
paper and other on ordinary plain notepaper. I was speculating on the
reason for this when he rose, and as he stuck on the stamps, said to me,
"I am just going out to post these two letters. Do you care for a short
stroll through the leafy shades of Fleet Street? The evening is still
young."

"The rural solitudes of Fleet Street attract me I all hours," I replied,
fetching my hat from the adjoining office, and we accordingly sallied
forth together, strolling up King's Bench Walk and emerging into Fleet
Street by way of Mitre Court. When Thorndyke had dropped his letters into
the post office box he stood awhile gazing up at the tower of St.
Dunstan's Church."

"Have you ever been in Clifford's Inn, Jervis?" he inquired.

"Never," I replied (we passed through it together on an average a dozen
times a week), "but it is not too late for an exploratory visit."

We crossed the road, and entering Clifford's Inn Passage, passed through
the still half-open gate, crossed the outer court and threaded the
tunnel-like entry by the hall to the inner court, in the middle of which
Thorndyke halted, and lookj up at one of the ancient houses, remarked,
"No. 51."

"So that is where our friend hangs out his flag," said I.

"Oh come, Jervis," he protested, "I am surprised at you; you are as bad
as Miller. I have merely suggested a possible connection between these
premises and the hat that was left at Bedford Place. As to the nature of
that connection I have no idea, and there may be no connection at all. I
assure you, Jervis, that I am on the thinnest possible ice. I am working
on a hypo thesis which is in the highest degree speculative, and I should
not have given Miller a hint but that he was so eager and so willing to
help--and also that I wanted his finger-prints. But we are really only
at the beginning, and may never get any farther."

I looked up at the old house. It was all in darkness excepting the top
floor, where a couple of lighted windows showed the shadow of a man
moving rapidly about the room. We crossed to the entry and inspected the
names painted on the door-posts. The ground floor was occupied by a firm
of photo-engravers, the first floor by a Mr. Carrington, whose name stood
out conspicuously on its oblong of comparatively fresh white paint, while
the tenants of the second floor--old residents, to judge by the faded
and discoloured paint in which their names were announced--were Messrs.
Burt & Highley, metallurgists.

"Burt has departed," said Thorndyke, as I read out the names; and he
pointed to two red lines of erasure which I had not noticed in the dim
light, "so the active gentleman above is presumably Mr. Highley, and we
may take it that he has residential as well as business premises. I
wonder who and what Mr. Carrington is--but I dare say we shall find out
to-morrow."

With this he dismissed the professional aspects of Clifford's Inn, and,
changing the subject to its history and associations, chatted in his
inimitable, picturesque manner until our leisurely perambulations brought
us at length to the Inner Temple Gate.

On the following morning we bustled through our work in order to leave
the afternoon free, making several joint visits to solicitors from whom
we were taking instructions. Returning from the last of these--a City
lawyer--Thorndyke turned into St. Helen's Place and halted at a doorway
bearing the brass plate of a firm of assayists and refiners. I followed
him into the outer office, where, on his mentioning his name, an elderly
man came to the counter.

"Mr. Grayson has put out some specimens for you, sir," said he. "They are
about thirty grains to the ton--you said that the content was of no
importance--I am to tell you that you need not return them. They are not
worth treating." He went to a large safe from which he took a canvas bag,
and returning to the counter, turned out on it the contents of the bag,
consisting , about a dozen good-sized lumps of quartz and a glittering
yellow fragment, which Thorndyke picked out and dropped in his pocket.

"Will that collection do?" our friend inquired.

"It will answer my purpose perfectly," Thorndyke replied, and when the
specimens had been replaced the bag, and the latter deposited in
Thorndyke's hand-bag, my colleague thanked the assistant and we went on
our way.

"We extend our activities into the domain of mineralogy," I remarked.

Thorndyke smiled an inscrutable smile. "We also employ the suction pump
as an instrument of research," he observed. "However, the strategic uses
of chunks of quartz--otherwise than as missiles--will develop
themselves in due course, and the interval may be used for reflection."

It was. But my reflection brought no solution. I noticed, however, that
when at three o'clock we set forth in company with the superintendent,
the bag went with us; and having offered to carry it and having had my
offer accepted with a sly twinkle, its weight assured me that the quartz
was still inside.

"Chambers and Offices to let," Thorndyke read aloud as we approached the
porter's lodge. "That lets us in, I think. And the porter knows Dr.
Jervis and me by sight, so he will talk more freely."

"He doesn't know me," said the superintendent, "but I'll keep in the
background, all the same."

A pull at the bell brought out a clerical-looking man in a tall hat and a
frock coat, who regarded Thorndyke and me through his spectacles with an
amiable air of recognition.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Larkin," said Thorndyke. "I am asked to get
particulars of vacant chambers. What have you got to let?

Mr. Larkin reflected. "Let me see. There's a ground floor at No. 5--rather
dark--and a small second- pair set at No. 12. And then there is--oh,
yes, there is a good first-floor set at No. 51. They wouldn't have
been vacant until Michaelmas, but Mr. Carrington, the tenant, has had to
go abroad suddenly. I had a letter from him this morning, enclosing the
key. Funny letter, too." He dived into his pocket, and hauling out a
bundle of letters, selected one and handed it to Thorndyke with a broad
smile.

Thorndyke glanced at the postmark ("London, E."), and having taken out
the key, extracted the letter, which he opened and held so that Miller
and I could see it. The paper bore the printed heading, "Baltic Shipping
Company, Wapping," and the further written heading, "S.S. Gothenburg,"
and the letter was brief and to the point:

DEAR SIR,

I am giving up my chambers at No. 51, as I have been suddenly called
abroad. I enclose the key, but am not troubling you with the rent. The
sale of my costly furniture will more than cover it, and the surplus can
be expended on painting the garden railings,

Yours sincerely,

A. CARRINGTON.

Thorndyke smilingly replaced the letter and the key in the envelope and
asked: "What is the furniture like?"

"You'll see," chuckled the porter, "if you care to look at the rooms. And
I think they might suit, They're a good set."

"Quiet?"

""Yes, pretty quiet. There's a metallurgist overhead--Highley--used to
be Burt & Highley, but Burt has gone to the City, and I don't think
Highley does much business now."

"Let me see," said Thorndyke, "I think I used to meet Highley
sometimes--a tall, dark man, isn't he?"

"No, that would be Burt. Highley is a little, fairish man, rather bald,
with a pretty rich complexion"--here Mr. Larkin tapped his nose
knowingly and raised his little finger--"which may account for the
falling off of business."

"Hadn't we better have a look at the rooms?" Miller interrupted a little
impatiently.

"Can we see them, Mr. Larkin?" asked Thorndyke.

"Certainly," was the reply. "You've got the key. Let me have it when
you've seen the rooms; and whatever ever you do," he added with a broad
grin, "be careful of the furniture."

"It looks," the superintendent remarked as we crossed the inner court,
"as if Mr. Carrington had done a mizzle. That's hopeful. And I see," he
continued, glancing at the fresh paint on the door-post as we passed
through the entry, "that he hasn't been here long. That's hopeful, too."

We ascended to the first floor, and as Thorndyke unlocked and threw open
the door, Miller laughed aloud. The "costly furniture" consisted of a
small kitchen table, a Windsor chair and a dilapidated deck- chair. The
kitchen contained a gas ring, a small saucepan and a frying-pan, and the
bedroom was furnished with a camp-bed devoid of bed-clothes, a wash-hand
basin on a packing-case, and a water can.

"Hallo!" exclaimed the superintendent. "He's left a hat behind. Quite a
good hat, too." He took it down from the peg, glanced at its exterior and
then, turning it over, looked inside. And then his mouth opened with a
jerk.

"Great Solomon Eagle!" he gasped. "Do you see, doctor? It's THE hat."

He held it out to us, and sure enough on the white silk lining of the
crown were the embossed, gilt letters, D.B., just as Mr. Byramji had
described them.

"Yes," Thorndyke agreed, as the superintendent snatched up a
greengrocer's paper bag from the kitchen floor and persuaded the hat into
it, "it is undoubtedly the missing link. But what are you going to do
now?"

"Do!" exclaimed Miller. "Why, I am going to collar the man. These Baltic
boats put in at Hull and Newcastle--perhaps he didn't know that--and
they are pretty slow boats, too. I shall wire to Newcastle to have the
ship detained and take Inspector Badger down to make the arrest. I'll
leave you to explain to the porter, and I owe you a thousand thanks for
your valuable tip."

With this he bustled away, clasping the precious hat and from the window
we saw him hurry across the court and dart out through the postern into
Fetter Lane.

"I think Miller was rather precipitate," said Thorndyke. "He should have
got a description of the man and some further particulars."

"Yes," said I. "Miller had much better have waited until you had finished
with Mr. Larkin. But you can get some more particulars when we take back
the key."

"We shall get more information from the gentleman who lives on the floor
above, and I think we will go up and interview him now. I wrote to him
last night and made a metallurgical appointment, signing myself W.
Polton. Your name, if he should ask, is Stevenson."

As we ascended the stairs to the next floor, I meditated on the rather
tortuous proceedings of my usually straightforward colleague. The use of
the lumps of quartz was now obvious; but why these mysterious tactics?
And why, before knocking at the door, did Thorndyke carefully take the
reading of the gas meter on the landing?

The door was opened in response to our knock--a shortish, alert-looking,
clean-shaved man in a white overall, who looked at us keenly and rather
forbiddingly. But Thorndyke was geniality personified.

"How do you do, Mr. Highley?" said he, holding out his hand, which the
metallurgist shook coolly. "You got my letter, I suppose?"

"Yes. But I am not Mr. Highley. He's away and I am carrying on. I think
of taking over his business if there is any to take over. My name is
Sherwood. Have you got the samples?"

Thorndyke produced the canvas bag, which Mr. Sherwood took from him and
emptied out on a bench, picking up the lumps of quartz one by one and
examining them closely. Meanwhile Thorndyke took a rapid survey of the
premises. Against the wall were two cupel furnaces and a third larger
furnace like a small pottery kiln. On a set of narrow shelves were
several rows of bone-ash cupels, looking like little white flower-pots,
and near them was the cupel-press--an appliance into which powdered
bone-ash was fed and compressed by a plunger to form the cupels--while
by the side of the press was a tub of bone-ash--a good deal coarser, I
noticed, than the usual fine powder. This coarseness was also observed by
Thorndyke, who edged up to the tub and dipped his hand into the ash and
then wiped his fingers on his handkerchief.

"This stuff doesn't seem to contain much gold," said Mr. Sherwood. "But
we shall see when we make the assay."

"What do you think of this?" asked Thorndyke, taking from his pocket the
small lump of glittering, golden-looking mineral that he had picked out
at the assayist's. Mr. Sherwood took it from him and examined it closely.
"This looks more hopeful," said he; "rather rich, in fact."

Thorndyke received this statement with an unmoved countenance; but as for
me, I stared at Mr. Sherwood in amazement. For this lump of glittering
mineral was simply a fragment of common iron pyrites! It would not have
deceived a schoolboy, much less a metallurgist.

Still holding the specimen, and taking a watchmaker's lens from a shelf,
Mr. Sherwood moved over to the window. Simultaneously, Thorndyke stepped
softly to the cupel shelves and quickly ran his eye along the rows of
cupels. Presently he paused at one, examined it more closely, and then,
taking it from the shelf, began to pick at it with his finger-nail.

At this moment Mr. Sherwood turned and observed him; and instantly there
flashed into the metallurgist's face an expression of mingled anger and
alarm.

"Put that down!" he commanded peremptorily, and then, as Thorndyke
continued to scrape with his finger nail, he shouted furiously, "Do you
hear? Drop it!"

Thorndyke took him literally at his word and let the cupel fall on the
floor, when it shattered into innumerable fragments, of which one of the
largest separated itself from the rest. Thorndyke pounced upon it, and in
an instantaneous glance, as he picked it up, I recognised it as a
calcined tooth.

Then followed a few moments of weird, dramatic silence. Thorndyke,
holding the tooth between his finger and thumb, looked steadily into the
eyes of the metallurgist; and the latter, pallid as a corpse, glared at
Thorndyke and furtively unbuttoned his overall.

Suddenly the silence broke into a tumult as bewildering as the crash of a
railway collision. Sherwood's right hand darted under his overall.
Instantly, Thorndyke snatched up another cupel and hurled it with such
truth of aim that it shattered on the metallurgist's forehead. And as he
flung the missile, he sprang forward, and delivered a swift upper-cut.
There was a thunderous crash, a cloud of white dust, and an automatic
pistol clattered along the floor.

I snatched up the pistol and rushed to my friend's assistance. But there
was no need. With his great strength and his uncanny skill--to say
nothing of the effects of the knock-out blow--Thorndyke had the man
pinned down immovably.

"See if you can find some cord, Jervis," he said a calm, quiet tone that
seemed almost ridiculously out of character with the circumstances.

There was no difficulty about this, for several corded boxes stood in a
corner of the laboratory. I cut off two lengths, with one of which I
secured the prostrate man's arms. and with the other fastened his knees
and ankles.

"Now," said Thorndyke, "if you will take charge of his hands, we will
make a preliminary inspection. Let us first see if he wears a belt."

Unbuttoning the man's waistcoat, he drew up the shirt, disclosing a
broad, webbing belt furnished with several leather pockets, the buttoned
flaps of which he felt carefully, regardless of the stream of threats and
imprecations that poured from our victim's swollen lips. From the front
pockets he proceeded to the back, passing an exploratory hand under the
writhing body.

"Ah!" he exclaimed suddenly, "just turn him over, and look out for his
heels."

We rolled our captive over, and as Thorndyke "skinned the rabbit," a
central pocket came into view, into which, when he had unbuttoned it, he
inserted his fingers. "Yes," he continued, "I think this is what we are
looking for." He withdrew his fingers, between which he held a small
packet of Japanese paper, and with feverish excitement I watched him open
out layer after layer of the soft wrapping. As he turned back the last
fold a wonderful crimson sparkle told me that the "great ruby" was found.

"There, Jervis," said Thorndyke, holding the magnificent gem towards me
in the palm of his hand, "look on this beautiful, sinister thing, charged
with untold potentialities of evil--and thank the gods that it is not
yours."

He wrapped it up again carefully and, having bestowed it in an inner
pocket, said, "And now give me the pistol and run down to the telegraph
office and see if you can stop Miller. I should like him to have the
credit for this."

I handed him the pistol and made my way out into Fetter Lane and so down
to Fleet Street, where at the post office my urgent message was sent off
to Scotland Yard immediately. In a few minutes the reply came that
Superintendent Miller had not yet left and that he was starting
immediately for Clifford's Inn. A quarter of an hour later he drove up in
a hansom to the Fetters Lane gate and I conducted him up to the second
floor, where Thorndyke introduced him to his prisoner and witnessed the
official arrest.

"You don't see how I arrived at it," said Thorndyke as we walked homeward
after returning the key. "Well, I am not surprised. The initial evidence
was of the weakest; it acquired significance only by cumulative effect.
Let us reconstruct it as it developed.

"The derelict hat was, of course, the starting-point. Now, the first
thing one noticed was that it appeared to have had more than one owner.
No man would buy a new hat that fitted so badly as to need all that
packing; and the arrangement of the packing suggested a long-headed man
wearing a hat that had belonged to a man with a short head. Then there
were the suggestions offered by the slips of paper. The fragmentary
address referred to a place the name of which ended in ' n' and the
remainder was evidently 'London, W.C.' Now what West Central place names
end in 'n'? It was not a street, a square or a court, and Barbican is not
in the W.C. district. It was almost certainly one of the half- dozen
surviving Inns of Court or Chancery. But, of course, it was not
necessarily the address of the owner of the hat.

"The other slip of paper bore the end of a word ending in 'el,' and
another word ending in 'eep,' and connected with these were quantities
stated in ounces and pennyweights troy weight. But the only persons who I
troy weight are those who deal in precious metals. I inferred therefore
that the 'el' was part of 'lemel,' and that the 'eep ' was part of
'floor-sweep,' an inference that was supported by the respective
quantities, three ounces five pennyweights of lemel and nine and a half
ounces of floor-sweep."

"What is lemel?" I asked.

"It is the trade name for the gold or silver filings that collect in the
'skin' of a jeweller's bench. Floor-sweep is, of course, the dust swept
up on the floor of a jeweller's or goldsmith's workshop. The lemel is
actual metal, though not of uniform fineness, but the sweep is a mixture
of dirt and metal. Both are saved and sent to the refiners to have the
gold and silver extracted.

"This paper, then, was connected either with a gold smith or a gold
refiner--who might call himself an assayist or a metallurgist. The
connection was supported by the leaf of a price list of gas stoves. A
metallurgist would be kept well supplied with lists of gas stoves and
furnaces. The traces of lead in the dust from the hat gave us another
straw blowing the same direction, for gold assayed by the dry process is
fused in the cupel furnace with lead; and as the lead oxidises and the
oxide is volatile, traces of lead would tend to appear in the dust
deposited in the laboratory.

"The next thing to do was to consult the directory; and when I did so, I
found that there were no goldsmiths in any of the Inns and only one
assayist--Mr. Highley, of Clifford's Inn. The probabilities therefore,
slender as they were, pointed to some connection between this stray hat
and Mr. Highley. And this was positively all the information that we had
when we came out this afternoon.

"As soon as we got to Clifford's Inn, however, the evidence began to grow
like a rolling snowball. First there was Larkin's contribution; and then
there was the discovery of the missing hat. Now, as soon as I saw that
hat my suspicions fell upon the man upstairs. I felt a conviction that
the hat had been left there purposely and that the letter to Larkin was
just a red herring to create a false trail. Nevertheless, the presence of
that hat completely confirmed the other evidence. It showed that the
apparent connection was a real connection."

"But," I asked, "what made you suspect the man upstairs?"

"My dear Jervis!" he exclaimed, "consider the facts. That hat was enough
to hang the man who left it there. Can you imagine this astute, wary
villain making such an idiot's mistake--going away and leaving the means
of his conviction for anyone to find? But you are forgetting that whereas
the missing hat was found on the first floor, the murderer's hat was
connected with the second floor. The evidence suggested that it was
Highley's hat. And now, before we go on to the next stage, let me remind
you of those finger-prints. Miller thought that their rough appearance
was due to the surface on which they had been made, But it was not. They
were the prints of a person who was suffering from ichthyosis, palmar
psoriasis or sonic dry dermatitis.

"There is one other point. The man we were looking for was a murderer.
His life was already forfeit. To such a man another murder more or less
is of no consequence. If this man, having laid the false trail, had
determined to take sanctuary in Highley's rooms, it was probable that he
had already got rid of Highley. And remember that a metallurgist has
unrivalled means disposing of a body; for not only is each of his muffle
furnaces a miniature crematorium, but the very residue of a cremated
body--bone-ash--is one of the materials of his trade.

"When we went upstairs, I first took the reading of the gas meter and
ascertained that a large amount of gas had been used recently. Then, when
we entered I took the opportunity to shake hands with Mr. Sherwood, and
immediately I became aware that he suffered from a rather extreme form of
ichthyosis. That was the first point of verification. Then we discovered
that he actually could not distinguish between iron pyrites and
auriferous quartz. He was not a metallurgist at all. He was a
masquerader. Then the bone-ash in the tub was mixed with fragments of
calcined bone, and the cupels all showed similar fragments. In one of
them I could see part of the crown of a tooth. That was pure luck. But
observe that by that time I had enough evidence to justify an arrest. The
tooth served only to bring the affair to a crisis; and his response to my
unspoken accusation saved us the trouble of further search for
confirmatory evidence."

"What is not quite clear to me," said I, "is when and why he made away
with Highley. As the body has been completely reduced to bone-ash,
Highley must have been dead at least some days."

"Undoubtedly," Thorndyke agreed. "I take it that the course of events was
like this: The police have been searching eagerly for this man, and every
new crime must have made his position more unsafe--for a criminal can
never be sure that he has not dropped some clue. It began to be necessary
for him to make some arrangements for leaving the country and mean while
to have a retreat in case his whereabouts should chance to be discovered.
Highley's chambers were admirable for both purposes. Here was a solitary
man who seldom had a visitor, and who would probably not be missed for
some considerable time; and in those chambers were the means of rapidly
and completely disposing of the body. The mere murder would be a
negligible detail to this ruffian.

"I imagine that Highley was done to death at least a week ago, and that
the murderer did not take up his new tenancy until the body was reduced
to ash. With that large furnace in addition to the small ones, this would
not take long. When the new premises were ready, he could make a sham
disappearance to cover his actual flight later; and you must see how
perfectly misleading that sham disappearance was. If the police had
discovered that hat in the empty room only a week later, they would have
been certain that he had escaped to one of the Baltic ports; and while
they were following his supposed tracks, he could have gone off
comfortably via Folkestone or Southampton."

"Then you think he had only just moved into Highley's rooms?"

"I should say he moved in last night. The murder of Byramji was probably
planned on some information that the murderer had picked up, and as soon
as it was accomplished he began forthwith to lay down the false tracks.
When he reached his rooms yesterday afternoon, he must have written the
letter to Larkin and gone off at once to the East End to post it. Then he
probably had his bushy hair cut short and shaved off his beard and
moustache--which would render him quite unrecognisable by Larkin--and
moved into Highley's chambers, from which he would have quietly sallied
forth in a few days' time to take his passage to the Continent. It was
quite a good plan, and but for the accident of taking the wrong hat,
would almost certainly have succeeded."

Once every year, on the second of August, there is delivered with
unfailing regularity at No. 5A King's Bench Walk a large box of carved
sandal-wood filled with the choicest Trichinopoly cheroots and
accompanied by an affectionate letter from our late client, Mr. Byramji.
For the second of August is the anniversary of the death (in the
execution shed at Newgate) of Cornelius Barnett, otherwise known as the
"New Jersey Sphinx."



THE TOUCHSTONE


It happened not uncommonly that the exigencies of practice committed my
friend Thorndyke to investigations that lay more properly within the
province of the police. For problems that had arisen as secondary
consequences of a criminal act could usually not be solved until the
circumstances of that act were fully elucidated and, incidentally, the
identity of the actor established. Such a problem was that of the
disappearance of James Harewood's will, a problem that was propounded to
us by our old friend, Mr. Marchmont, when he called on us, by
appointment, with the client of whom he had spoken in his note.

It was just four o'clock when the solicitor arrived at our chambers, and
as I admitted him he ushered in a gentlemanly-looking man of about
thirty-five, whom he introduced as Mr. William Crowhurst.

"I will just stay," said he with an approving glance at the tea-service
on the table, "and have a cup of tea with you, and give you an outline of
the case. Then I must run away and leave Mr. Crowhurst to fill in the
details."

He seated himself in an easy chair within comfortable reach of the table,
and as Thorndyke poured out the tea, he glanced over a few notes
scribbled on a sheet of paper.

"I may say," he began, stirring his tea thoughtfully, "that this is a
forlorn hope. I have brought the case to you, but I have not the
slightest expectation that you will be able to help us."

"A very wholesome frame of mind," Thorndyke commented with a smile. "I
hope it is that of your client also."

It is indeed," said Mr. Crowhurst; " in fact, it seems to me a waste of
your time to go into the matter. Probably you will think so too, when you
have heard the particulars."

"Well, let us hear the particulars," said Thorndyke. "A forlorn hope has,
at least, the stimulating quality of difficulty. Let us have your outline
sketch, Marchmont."

The solicitor, having emptied his cup and pushed it towards the tray for
replenishment, glanced at his notes and began: "The simplest way in which
to present the problem is to give a brief recital of the events that have
given rise to it, which are these: The day before yesterday--that is
last Monday--at a quarter to two in the afternoon, Mr. James Harewood
executed a will at his house at Merbridge, which is about two miles from
Welsbury. There were present four persons: two of his servants, who
signed as witnesses, and the two principal beneficiaries--Mr. Arthur
Baxfield, a nephew of the testator, and our friend here, Mr. William
Crowhurst. The will was a holograph written on the two pages of a sheet
of letter-paper. When the witnesses signed, the will was covered by
another sheet of paper so that only the space for the signatures was
exposed. Neither of the witnesses read the will, nor did either of the
beneficiaries; and so far as I am aware, no one but the testator knew
what were its actual provisions, though, after the servants had left the
room, Mr. Harewood explained its general purport to the beneficiaries."

"And what was its general purport?" Thorndyke asked.

"Broadly speaking," replied Marchmont, "it divided the estate in two very
unequal portions between Mr. Baxfield and Mr. Crowhurst. There were
certain small legacies of which neither the amounts nor the names of the
legatees are known. Then, to Baxfield was given a thousand pounds to
enable him either to buy a partnership or to start a small factory--he
is a felt hat manufacturer by trade--and the remainder to Crowhurst, who
was made executor and residuary legatee. But, of course, the residue of
the estate is an unknown quantity, since we don't know either the number
or the amounts of the legacies.

"Shortly after the signing of the will, the parties separated. Mr.
Harewood folded up the will and put it in a leather wallet which he
slipped into his pocket, stating his intention of taking the will
forthwith to deposit with his lawyer at Welsbury. A few minutes after his
guests had departed, he was seen by one of the servants to leave the
house, and afterwards was seen by a neighbour walking along a footpath
which, after passing through a small wood, joins the main road about a
mile and a quarter from Welsbury. From that time, he was never again seen
alive. He never visited the lawyer, nor did anyone see him at or near
Welsbury or elsewhere else.

"As he did not return home that night, his housekeeper (he was a widower
and childless) became extremely alarmed, and in the morning she
communicated with the police. A search-party was organised, and,
following the path on which he was last seen, explored the wood--which
is known as Gilbert's Copse--and here, at the bottom of an old
chalk-pit, they found him lying dead with a fractured skull and a
dislocated neck. How he came by these injuries is not at present known;
but as the body had been robbed of all valuables, including his watch,
purse, diamond ring and the wallet containing the will, there is
naturally a strong suspicion that he has been murdered. That, however, is
not our immediate concern--at least not mine. I am concerned with the
will, which, as you see, has disappeared, and as it has presumably been
carried away by a thief who is under suspicion of murder, it is not
likely to be returned."

"It is almost certainly destroyed by this time," said Mr. Crowhurst.

"That certainly seems probable," Thorndyke agreed. "But what do you want
me to do? You haven't come for counsel's opinion?"

"No," replied Marchmont. "I am pretty clear about the legal position. I
shall claim, as the will has presumably been destroyed, to have the
testator's wishes carried out in so far as they are known. But I am
doubtful as to the view the court may take. It may decide that the
testator's wishes are not known, that the provisions of the will are too
uncertain to admit of administration."

"And what would be the effect of that decision?" asked Thorndyke.

"In that case," said Marchmont, "the entire estate would go to Baxfield,
as he is the next of kin and there was no previous will."

"And what is it that you want me to do?"

Marchmont chuckled deprecatingly. "You have to pay the penalty of being a
prodigy, Thorndyke. We are asking you to do an impossibility--but we
don't really expect you to bring it off. We ask you to help us to recover
the will."

"If the will has been completely destroyed, it can't be recovered," said
Thorndyke. "But we don't know that it has been destroyed. The matter is,
at least, worth investigating; and if you wish me to look into it, I
will."

The solicitor rose with an air of evident relief.

"Thank you, Thorndyke," said he. "I expect nothing--at least, I tell
myself that I do--but I can now feel that everything that is possible
will be done. And now I must be off. Crowhurst can give you any details
that you want."

When Marchmont had gone, Thorndyke turned to our client and asked, "What
do you suppose Baxfield will do, if the will is irretrievably lost? Will
he press his claim as next of kin?"

"I should say yes," replied Crowhurst. "He is a business man and his
natural claims are greater than mine. He is not likely to refuse what the
law assigns to him as his right. As a matter of fact, I think he felt
that his uncle had treated him unfairly in alienating the property."

"Was there any reason for this diversion of the estate?"

"Well," replied Crowhurst, "Harewood and I have been very good friends
and he was under some obligations to me; and then Baxfield had not made
himself very acceptable to his uncle. But the principal factor, I think,
was a strong tendency of Baxfield's to gamble. He had lost quite a lot of
money by backing horses, and a careful, thrifty man like James Harewood
doesn't care to leave his savings to a gambler. The thousand pounds that
he did leave to Baxfield was expressly for the purpose of investment in a
business."

"Is Baxfield in business now?"

"Not on his own account. He is a sort of foreman or shop-manager in a
factory just outside Welsbury, and I believe he is a good worker and
knows his trade thoroughly."

"And now," said Thorndyke, "with regard to Mr Harewood's death. The
injuries might, apparently, have been either accidental or homicidal.
What are the probabilities of accident--disregarding the robbery?

"Very considerable, I should say. It is a most dangerous place. The
footpath runs close beside the edge of a disused chalk-pit with
perpendicular or over hanging sides, and the edge is masked by bushes and
brambles. A careless walker might easily fall over--or be pushed over,
for that matter."

"Do you know when the inquest is to take place?"

"Yes. The day after to-morrow. I had the subpoena this morning for Friday
afternoon at 2.30, at the Welsbury Town Hall."

At this moment footsteps were heardhurriedly ascend ing the stairs and
then came a loud and peremptory rat-tat at our door. I sprang across to
see who our visitor was, and as I flung open the door, Mr. Marchmont
rushed in, breathing heavily and flourishing a newspaper.

"Here is a new development," he exclaimed. "It doesn't seem to help us
much, but I thought you had better know about it at once." He sat down,
and putting on his spectacles, read aloud as follows: "A new and curious
light has been thrown on the mystery of the death of Mr. James Harewood,
whose body was found yesterday in a disused chalk-pit near Merbridge. It
appears that on Monday--the day on which Mr. Harewood almost certainly
was killed--a passenger alighting from a train at Barwood Junction
before it had stopped, slipped and fell between the train and the
platform. He was quickly extricated, and as he had evidently sustained
internal injuries, he was taken to the local hospital, where he was found
to be suffering from a fractured pelvis. He gave his name as Thomas
Fletcher, but refused to give any address, saying that he had no
relatives. This morning he died, and on his clothes being searched for an
address, a parcel, formed of two handkerchiefs tied up with string, was
found in his pocket. When it was opened it was found to contain five
watches, three watch-chains, a tie-pin and a number of bank-notes. Other
pockets contained a quantity of loose money--gold and silver mixed--and
a card of the Welsbury Races, which were held on Monday. Of the five
watches, one has been identified as the one taken from Mr. Harewood; and
the bank-notes have been identified as a batch handed to him by the
cashier, of his bank at Welsbury last Thursday and presumably carried in
the leather wallet which was stolen from his pocket. This wallet, by the
way, has also been found. It was picked up--empty--last night on the
railway embankment just outside Welsbury Station. Appearances thus
suggest that the man, Fletcher, when on his way to the races, encountered
Mr. Harewood in the lonely copse, and murdered and robbed him; or perhaps
found him dead in the chalk-pit and robbed the body--a question that is
now never likely to be solved."

As Marchmont finished reading, he looked up at Thorndyke. "It doesn't
help us much, does it?" said he. "As the wallet was found empty, it is
pretty certain that the will has been destroyed."

"Or perhaps merely thrown away," said Thorndyke. "In which case an
advertisement offering a substantial reward may bring it to light."

The solicitor shrugged his shoulders sceptically, but agreed to publish
the advertisement. Then, once more he turned to go; and as Mr. Crowhurst
had no further information to give, he departed with his lawyer.

For some time after they had gone, Thorndyke sat with his brief notes
before him, silent and deeply reflective. I, too, maintained a discreet
silence, for I knew from long experience that the motionless pose and
quiet, impassive face were the outward signs of a mind in swift and
strenuous action. Instinctively, I gathered that this apparently chaotic
case was being quietly sorted out and arranged in a logical order; that
Thorndyke, like a skilful chess-player, was "trying over the moves"
before he should lay his hand upon the pieces.

Presently he looked up. "Well?" he asked. "What do you think, Jervis? Is
it worth while?"

"That," I replied," depends on whether the will is or is not in
existence. If it has been destroyed, an investigation would be a waste of
our time and our client's money."

"Yes," he agreed. "But there is quite a good chance that it has not been
destroyed. It was probably dropped loose into the wallet, and then might
have been picked out and thrown away before the wallet was examined. But
we mustn't concentrate too much on the will. If we take up the case--which
I am inclined to do--we must ascertain the actual sequence of
events. We have one clear day before the inquest. If we run down to
Merbridge to-morrow and go thoroughly over the ground, and then go on to
Barwood and find out all we can about the man Fletcher, we may get some
new light from the evidence at the inquest."

I agreed readily to Thorndyke's proposal, not that I could see any way
into the case, but I felt a conviction that my colleague had isolated
some leading fact and had a definite line of research in his mind. And
this conviction deepened when, later in the evening, he laid his
research-case on the table, and rearranged its contents with evident
purpose. I watched curiously the apparatus that he was packing in it and
tried--not very successfully--to infer the nature of the proposed
investigation. The box of powdered paraffin wax and the spirit blowpipe
were obvious enough; but the "dust-aspirator"--a sort of miniature
vacuum cleaner--the portable microscope, the coil of Manila line, with
an eye spliced into one end, and especially the abundance of
blank-labelled microscope slides, all of which I saw him pack in the case
with deliberate care, defeated me utterly.

About ten o'clock on the following morning we stepped from the train in
Welsbury Station, and having recovered our bicycles from the luggage van,
wheeled them through the barrier and mounted. During the train journey we
had both studied the one-inch Ordnance map to such purpose that we were
virtually in familiar surroundings and immune from the necessity of
seeking directions from the natives. As we cleared the town we glanced up
the broad by-road to the left which led to the race-course; then we rode
on briskly for a mile, which brought us to the spot where the footpath to
Merbridge joined the road. Here we dismounted and, lifting our bicycles
over the stile, followed the path towards a small wood which we could see
ahead, crowning a low hill.

"For such a good path," Thorndyke remarked as we approached the wood, "it
is singularly unfrequented. I haven't seen a soul since we left the
road." He glanced at the map as the path entered the wood, and when we
had walked on a couple of hundred yards, he halted and stood his bicycle
against a tree. "The chalk-pit should be about here," said he, "though it
is impossible to see. He grasped a stem of one of the small bushes that
crowded on to the path and pulled it aside. Then he uttered an
exclamation.

"Just look at that, Jervis. It is a positive scandal that a public path
should be left in this condition."

Certainly Mr. Crowhurst had not exaggerated. It was a most dangerous
place. The parted branches revealed a chasm some thirty feet deep, the
brink of which, masked by the bushes, was but a matter of inches from the
edge of the path.

"We had better go back," said Thorndyke," and find the entrance to the
pit, which seems to be to the right. The first thing is to ascertain
exactly where Harewood fell. Then we can come back and examine the place
from above."

We turned back, and presently found a faint track which we followed
until, descending steeply, it brought us out into the middle of the pit.
It was evidently an ancient pit, for the sides were blackened by age, and
the floor was occupied by a trees, some of considerable size. Against one
of these we leaned our bicycles and then walked slowly round at the foot
of the frowning cliff.

"This seems to be below the path," said Thorndyke, glancing up at the
grey wall which jutted out above in stages like an inverted flight of
steps. "Somewhere hereabouts we should find some traces of the tragedy."

Even as he spoke my eye caught a spot of white on a block of chalk, and
on the freshly fractured surface a significant brownish-red stain. The
block lay opposite the mouth of an artificial cave--an old wagon-shelter
but now empty and immediately under a markedly overhanging part of the
cliff.

"This is undoubtedly the place where he fell," said Thorndyke. "You can
see where the stretcher was placed--an old-pattern stretcher with
wheel-runners--and there is a little spot of broken soil at the top
where he came over. Well, apart from the robbery, a clear fall of over
thirty feet is enough to account for a fractured skull. Will you stay
here, Jervis, while I run up and look at the path?"

He went off towards the entrance, and presently I heard him above,
pulling aside the bushes, and after one or two trials, he appeared
directly overhead.

"There are plenty of footprints on the path," said he, "but nothing
abnormal. No trampling or signs of a struggle. I am going on a little
farther."

He withdrew behind the bushes, and I proceeded to inspect the interior of
the cave, noting the smoke-blackened roof and the remains of a recent
fire, which, with a number of rabbit bones and a discarded tea of the
kind used by the professional tramp, seemed not without a possible
bearing on our investigation. I was thus engaged when I heard Thorndyke
hail me from above and coming out of the cave, I saw his head thrust
between the branches. He seemed to be lying down, for his face was nearly
on a level with the top of the cliff.

"I want to take an impression," he called out. "Will you bring up the
paraffin and the blower? And you might bring the coil of line, too."

I hurried away to the place where our bicycles were standing, and opening
the research-case, took out the coil of line, the tin of paraffin wax and
the spirit blowpipe, and having ascertained that the container of the
latter was full, I ran up the incline and made my way along the path.
Some distance along, I found my colleague nearly hidden in the bushes,
lying prone, with his head over the edge of the cliff.

"You see, Jervis," he said, as I crawled alongside and looked over, "this
is a possible way down, and someone has used it quite recently. He
climbed down with his face to the cliff--you can see the clear
impression of the toe of a boot in the loam of that projection, and you
can even make out the shape of an iron toe-tip. Now the problem is how to
get down to take the impression without, dislodging the earth above it. I
think I will secure myself with the line."

"It is hardly worth the risk of a broken neck," said I. "Probably the
print is that of some schoolboy."

"It is a man's foot," he replied. "Most likely it has no connection with
our case. But it may have, and as a shower of rain would obliterate it we
ought to secure it." As he spoke, he passed the end of the cord through
eye and slipped the loop over his shoulders, drawing tight under his
arms. Then, having made the line fast to the butt of a small tree, he
cautiously lowered himself over the edge and climbed down to the
projection. A soon as he had a secure footing, I passed the spare cord
through the ring on the lid of the wax tin and lowered it to him, and
when he had unfastened it, I drew up the cord and in the same way let
down the blowpipe. Then I watched his neat, methodical procedure. First
he took out a spoonful of the powdered, or grated, wax and very
delicately sprinkled it on the toe-print until the latter was evenly but
very thinly covered. Next he lit the blowlamp, and as soon as the blue
flame began to roar from the pipe, he directed it on to the toe-print.
Almost instantly the powder melted, glazing the impression like a coat of
varnish. The flame was removed and the film of wax at once solidified and
became dull and opaque. A second, heavier, sprinkling with the powder,
followed by another application of the flame, thickened the film of wax,
and this process, repeated four or five times, eventually produced a
solid cake. Then Thorndyke extinguished the blowlamp, and securing it and
the tin to the cord, directed me to pull them up. "And you might send me
down the field-glasses," he added. "There is something farther down that
I can't quite make out."

I slipped the glasses from my shoulder, and opening the case, tied the
cord to the leather sling and lowered it down the cliff; and then I
watched with some curiosity as Thorndyke stood on his insecure perch
steadily gazing through the glasses (they were Zeiss 8-prismatics) at a
clump of wallflowers that grew from a boss of chalk about half-way down.
Presently he lowered the glasses and, slinging them round his neck by
their lanyard, turned his attention to the cake of wax. It was by this
time quite solid, and when he had tested it, he lifted it carefully, and
placed it in the empty binocular case, when I drew it up.

"I want you, Jervis," Thorndyke called up, "to steady the line. I am
going down to that wallflower clump."

It looked extremely unsafe, but I knew it was useless to protest, so I
hitched the line around a massive stump and took a firm grip of the
"fall."

"Ready," I sang out; and forthwith Thorndyke began to creep across the
face of the cliff with feet and hands clinging to almost invisible
projections. Fortunately, there was at this part no overhang, and though
my heart was in my mouth as I watched, I saw him cross the perilous space
in safety. Arrived at the clump, he drew an envelope from his pocket,
stooped and picked up some small object, which he placed in the envelope,
returning the latter to his pocket. Then he gave me another bad five
minutes while he recrossed the nearly vertical surface to his
starting-point; but at length this, too, was safely accomplished, and
when he finally climbed up over the edge and stood beside me on solid
earth, I drew a deep breath and turned to revile him.

"Well?" I demanded sarcastically, "what have you gathered at the risk of
your neck? Is it samphire or edelweiss?"

He drew the envelope from his pocket, and dipping into it, produced a
cigarette-holder--a cheap bone affair, black and clammy with long
service and still holding the butt of a hand-made cigarette--and handed
it to me. I turned it over, smelled it and hastily handed it back. "For
my part," said I, "I wouldn't have risked the cervical vertebra of a
yellow cat for it. What do you expect to learn from it?"

"Of course, I expect nothing. We are just collecting facts on the chance
that they may turn out to be relevant. Here, for instance, we find that a
man has descended, within a few yards of where Harewood fell, by this
very inconvenient route, instead of going round to the entrance to the
pit. He must have had some reason for adopting this undesirable mode of
descent. Possibly he was in a hurry, and probably he belonged to the
district, since a stranger would not know of the existence of this short
cut. Then it seems likely that this was his cigarette tube. If you look
over, you will see by those vertical scrapes on the chalk that he slipped
and must have nearly fallen. At that moment he probably dropped the tube,
for you notice that the wallflower clump is directly under the marks of
his toes."

"Why do you suppose he did not recover the tube?"

"Because the descent slopes away from the position of the clump, and he
had no trusty Jervis with a stout cord to help him to cross the space.
And if he went down this way because he was hurried, he would not have
time to search for the tube. But if the tube was not his, still it
belonged to somebody who has been here recently."

"Is there anything that leads you to connect this man with the crime?"

"Nothing but time and place," he replied. "The man has been down into the
pit close to where Harewood was robbed and possibly murdered, and as the
traces are quite recent, he must have been there near about the time of
the robbery. That is all. I am considering the traces of this man in
particular because there are no traces of any other. But we may as well
have a look at the path, which, as you see, yields good impressions."

We walked slowly along the path towards Merbridge, keeping at the edges
and scrutinising the surface closely. In the shady hollows, the soft loam
bore prints of many feet, and among them we could distinguish one with an
iron toe-tip, but it was nearly obliterated by another studded with
hob-nails.

"We shan't get much information here," said Thorndyke as he turned about.
"The search-party have trodden out the important prints. Let us see if we
can find out where the man with the toe-tips went to."

We searched the path on the Welsbury side of the chalk- pit, but found no
trace of him. Then we went into the pit, and having located the place
where he descended, sought for some other exit than the track leading to
the path. Presently, half-way up the slope, we found a second track,
bearing away in the direction of Merbridge. Following this for some
distance, we came to a small hollow at the bottom of which was a muddy
space. And here we both halted abruptly, for in the damp ground were the
clear imprints of a pair of boots which we could sec had, in addition to
the toe-tips, half-tips to the heels.

"We had better have wax casts of these," said Thorndyke, "to compare with
the boots of the man Fletcher. I will do them while you go back for the
bicycles."

By the time that I returned with the machines two of the footprints were
covered with a cake each of wax, and Thorndyke had left the track, and
was peering among the bushes. I inquired what he was looking for.

"It is a forlorn hope, as Marchmont would say," he replied, "but I am
looking to see if the will has been thrown away here. It was quite
probably jettisoned at once, and this is the most probable route for the
robber to have taken, if he knew of it. You see by the map that it must
lead nearly directly to the race-course, and it avoids both the path and
the main road. While the wax is setting we might as well look round."

It seemed a hopeless enough proceeding and I agreed to it without
enthusiasm. Leaving the track on the opposite side to that which
Thorndyke was searching, I wandered among the bushes and the little open
spaces, peering about me and reminding myself of that "aged, aged man"
who

"Sometimes searched the grassy knolls,

For wheels of hansom cabs."

I had worked my way nearly back to where I could see Thorndyke, also
returning, when my glance fell on a small, brown object caught among the
branches of a bush. It was a man's pigskin purse; and as I picked it out
of the bush I saw that it was open and empty.

With my prize in my hand, I hastened to the spot where Thorndyke was
lifting the wax casts. He looked up and asked, "No luck, I suppose?"

I held out the purse, on which he pounced eagerly. "But this is most
important, Jervis," he exclaimed. "It is almost certainly Harewood's
purse. You see the initials, 'J. H.,' stamped on the flap. Then we were
right as to the direction that the robber took. And it would pay to
search this place exhaustively for the will, though we can't do that now,
as we have to go to Barwood, I wrote to say we were coming. We had better
get back to the path now and make for the road. Barwood is only
half-an-hour's run."

We packed the casts in the research-case (which was strapped to
Thorndyke's bicycle), and turning back, made our way to the path. As it
was still deserted, we ventured to mount, and soon reached the road,
along which we started at a good pace toward Barwood.

Half-an-hour's ride brought us into the main Street of the little town,
and when we dismounted at the police station we found the Chief Constable
himself waiting to receive us, courteously eager to assist us, but
possessed by a devouring curiosity which was somewhat inconvenient.

"I have done as you asked me in your letter, sir," he said. "Fletcher's
body is, of course, in the mortuary, but I have had all his clothes and
effects brought here; and I have had them put in my private office, so
that you can look them over in comfort."

"It is exceedingly good of you," said Thorndyke, "and most helpful." He
unstrapped the research-case, and following the officer into his sanctum,
looked round with deep approval. A large table had been cleared for the
examination, and the dead pickpocket's clothes and effects neatly
arranged at one end.

Thorndyke's first proceeding was to pick up the dead man's boots--a
smart but flimsy pair of light brown leather, rather down at heel and in
need of re-soling. Neither toes nor heels bore any tips or even nails
excepting the small fastening brads. Having exhibited them to me without
remark, Thorndyke placed them on a sheet of white paper and made a
careful tracing of the soles, a proceeding that seemed to surprise the
Chief Constable, for he remarked, "I should hardly have thought that the
question of footprints would arise in this case. You can't charge a dead
man."

Thorndyke agreed that this seemed to be true; and then he proceeded to an
operation that fairly made the officer's eyes bulge. Opening the
research-case--into which the officer cast an inquisitive glance--he
took out the dust-aspirator, the nozzle of which he inserted into one
after another of the dead thief's pockets while I worked the pump. When
he had gone through them all, he opened the receiver and extracted quite
a considerable ball of dusty fluff. Placing this on a glass slide, he
tore it in halves with a pair of mounted needles and passing one half to
me, when we both fell to work "teasing", it out into an open mesh,
portions of which we separated and laid--each in a tiny pool of
glycerine--on blank labelled glass slides, applying to each slide its
cover-glass and writing on the label, "Dust from Fletcher's pockets."

When the series was complete, Thorndyke brought out the microscope, and
fitting on a one-inch objective, quickly examined the slides, one after
another, and then pushed the microscope to me. So far as I could see, the
dust was just ordinary dust--principally made up of broken cotton fibres
with a few fibres of wool, linen, wood, jute, and others that I could not
name and some undistinguishable mineral particles. But I made no comment,
and resigning the microscope to the Chief Constable--who glared through
it, breathing hard, and remarked that the dust was "rummy-looking
stuff"--watched Thorndyke's further proceedings. And very odd proceedings they
were.

First he laid the five stolen watches in a row, and with a Coddington
lens minutely examined the dial of each, Then he opened the back of each
in turn and copied into his notebook the watch-repairers' scratched
inscriptions. Next he produced from the case a number of little vulcanite
rods, and laying out five labelled slides, dropped a tiny drop of
glycerine on each, covering it at once with a watch-glass to protect it
from falling dust. Then he stuck a little label on each watch, wrote a
number on it and similarly numbered the five slides. His next proceeding
was to take out the glass of watch No. 1 and pick up one of the vulcanite
rods, which he rubbed briskly on a silk handkerchief and passed across
and around the dial of the watch, after which he held the rod close to
the glycerine on slide No. 1 and tapped it sharply with the blade of his
pocket-knife. Then he dropped a cover- glass on to the glycerine and made
a rapid inspection of the specimen through the microscope.

This operation he repeated on the other four watches, using a fresh rod
for each, and when he had finished he turned to the open-mouthed officer.
"I take it," said he, "that the watch which has the chain attached to it
is Mr. Harewood's watch?"

"Yes, sir. That helped us to identify it." Thorndyke looked at the watch
reflectively. Attached to the bow by a short length of green tape was a
small, rather elaborate key. This my friend picked up, and taking a fresh
mounted needle, inserted it into the barrel of the key, from which he
then withdrew it with a tiny ball of fluff on its point. I hastily
prepared a slide and handed it to him, when, with a pair of dissecting
scissors, he cut off a piece of the fluff and let it fall into the
glycerine. He repeated this manoeuvre with two more slides and then
labelled the three " Key, outside," "middle" and "inside," and in that
order examined them under the microscope.

My own examination of the specimens yielded very little. They all seemed
to be common dust, though that from the face of watch No. 3 contained a
few broken fragments of what looked like animal hairs--possibly cat's--as
also did the key-fluff marked "outside." But if this had any
significance, I could not guess what it was. As to the Chief Constable,
he clearly looked on the whole proceeding as a sort of legerdemain with
no obvious purpose, for he remarked, as we were packing up to go, " I am
glad I've seen how you do it, sir. But all the same, I think you are
flogging a dead horse. We know who committed the crime and we know he's
beyond the reach of the law."

"Well," said Thorndyke, "one must earn one's fee, you know. I shall put
Fletcher's boots and the five watches in evidence at the inquest
to-morrow, and I will ask you to leave the labels on the watches." With
renewed thanks and a hearty handshake he bade the courteous officer
adieu, and we rode off to catch the train to London.

That evening, after dinner, we brought out the specimens and went over
them at our leisure; and Thorndyke added a further specimen by drawing a
knotted piece of twine through the cigarette-holder that he had salved
from the chalk-pit, and teasing out the unsavoury, black substance that
came out on the string in glycerine on a slide. When he had examined it,
he passed it to me, The dark, tarry liquid somewhat obscured the detail,
but I could make out fragments of the same animal hairs that I had noted
in the other specimens, only here they were much more numerous. I
mentioned my observation to Thorndyke. "They are certainly parts of
mammalian hairs," I said, "and they look like the hairs of a cat. Are
they from a cat?"

"Rabbit," Thorndyke replied curtly; and even then, I am ashamed to admit,
I did not perceive the drift of the investigation.

The room in the Welsbury Town Hall had filled up some minutes before the
time fixed for the opening of the inquest, and in the interval, when the
jury had retired to view the body in the adjacent mortuary, I looked
round the assembly. Mr. Marchmont and Mr. Crowhurst were present, and a
youngish, horsey-looking man in cord breeches and leggings, whom I
correctly guessed to be Arthur Baxfield. Our friend the Chief Constable
of Barwood was also there, and with him Thorndyke exchanged a few words
in a retired corner. The rest of the company were strangers.

As soon as the coroner and the jury had taken their places the medical
witness was called. The cause of death, he stated, was dislocation of the
neck, accompanied by a depressed fracture of the skull. The fracture have
been produced by a blow with a heavy weapon, or by the deceased falling
on his head. The witness adopted the latter view, as the dislocation
showed that deceased had fallen in that manner.

The next witness was Mr. Crowhurst, who repeated to the court what he had
told us, and further stated that on leaving deceased's house he went
straight home, as he had an appointment with a friend. He was followed by
Baxfield, who gave evidence to the same effect, and stated that on
leaving the house of the deceased he went to his place of business at
Welsbury. He was about to retire when Thorndyke rose to cross-examine.

"At what time did you reach your place of business?" he asked.

The witness hesitated for a few moments and then replied, "Half-past
four."

"And what time did you leave deceased's house?"

"Two o'clock," was the reply.

"What is the distance?"

"In a direct line, about two miles. But I didn't go direct. I took a
round in the country by Lenfield."

"That would take you near the race-course on the way back. Did you go to
the races?

"No. The races were just over when I returned."

There was a slight pause and then Thorndyke asked, "Do you smoke much,
Mr. Baxfield?"

The witness looked surprised, and so did the jury, but the former
replied, "A fair amount. About fifteen cigarettes a day."

"What brand of cigarettes do you smoke, and what kind of tobacco is it?"

"I make my own cigarettes. I make them of shag."

Here protesting murmurs arose from the jury, and the coroner remarked
stiffly, "These questions do not appear to have much connection with the
subject of this inquiry."

"You may take it, sir," replied Thorndyke, "that they have a very direct
bearing on it." Then, turning to the witness he asked, "Do you use a
cigarette-tube?

"Sometimes I do," was the reply.

"Have you lost a cigarette-tube lately?"

The witness directed a startled glance at Thorndyke and replied after
some hesitation, "I believe I mislaid one a little time ago."

"When and where did you lose that tube?" Thorndyke asked.

"I--I really couldn't say," replied Baxfield, turning perceptibly pale.

Thorndyke opened his dispatch-box, and taking out the tube that he had
salved at so much risk, handed it to the witness. "Is that the tube that
you lost?" he asked.

At this question Baxfield turned pale as death, and the hand in which he
received the tube shook as if with a palsy. "It may be," he faltered. "I
wouldn't swear to it. It is like the one I lost."

Thorndyke took it from him and passed it to the coroner. "I am putting
this tube in evidence, sir," said he. Then addressing the witness, he
said, "You stated that you did not go to the races. Did you go on the
course or inside the grounds at all?"

Baxfield moistened his lips and replied, "I just went in for a minute or
two, but I didn't stay. The races were over, and there was a very rough
crowd."

"While you were in that crowd, Mr Baxfield, did you have your pocket
picked?"

There was an expectant silence in the court as Baxfield replied in a low
voice: "Yes. I lost my watch."

Again Thorndyke opened the dispatch-box, and taking out a watch (it was
the one that had been labelled 3), handed it to the witness. "Is that the
watch that you lost?" he asked.

Baxfield held the watch in his trembling hand and replied hesitatingly,
"I believe it is, but I won't swear to it."

There was a pause. Then, in grave, impressive tones, Thorndyke said,"
Now, Mr. Baxfield, I am going to ask you a question which you need not
answer if you consider that by doing so you would prejudice your position
in any way. That question is, When your pocket was picked, were any
articles besides this watch taken from your person? Don't hurry. Consider
your answer carefully."

For some moments Baxfield remained silent, regarding Thorndyke with a
wild, affrighted stare. At length he began falteringly, "I don't remember
missing any thing--" and then stopped.

"Could the witness be allowed to sit down, sir?" Thorndyke asked. And
when the permission had been given and a chair placed, Baxfield sat down
heavily and cast a bewildered glance round the court. "I think," he said,
addressing Thorndyke, "I had better tell you exactly what happened and
take my chance of the consequences. When I left my uncle's house on
Monday, I took a circuit through the fields and then entered Gilbert's
Copse to wait for my uncle and tell him what I thought of his conduct in
leaving the bulk of his property to a stranger. I struck the path that I
knew my uncle would take and walked along it slowly to meet him. I did
meet him--on the path, just above where he was found--and I began to
say what was in my mind. But he wouldn't listen. He flew into a rage, and
as I was standing in the middle of the path, he tried to push past me. In
doing so he caught his foot in a bramble and staggered back, then he
disappeared through the bushes and a few seconds after I heard a thud
down below. I pulled the bushes aside and looked down into the chalk-pit,
and there I saw him lying with his head all on one side. Now, I happened
to know of a short cut down into the pit. It was rather a dangerous
climb, but I took it to get down as quickly as possible. It was there
that I dropped the cigarette-tube. When I got to my uncle I could see
that he was dead. His skull was battered and his neck was broken. Then
the devil put into my head the idea of making away with the will. But I
knew that if I took the will only, suspicion would fall on me. So I took
most of his valuables--the wallet, his watch and chain, his purse and
his ring. The purse I emptied and threw away, and flung the ring after
it. I took the will out of the wallet--it had just been dropped in loose--and
put it in an inner pocket. Then I dropped the wallet and the watch
and chain into my outside coat pocket.

"I struck across country, intending to make for the race-course and drop
the things among the crowd, so that they might be picked up and safely
carried away. But when I got there a gang of pickpockets saved me the
trouble; they mobbed and hustled me and cleared my pockets of everything
but my keys and the will."

"And what has become of the will?" asked Thorndyke.

"I have it here." He dipped into his breast pocket and produced a folded
paper, which he handed to Thorndyke, who opened it, and having glanced at
it, passed it to the coroner.

That was practically the end of the inquest. The jury decided to accept
Baxfield's statement and recorded a verdict of "Death by Misadventure,"
leaving Baxfield to be dealt with by the proper authorities.

"An interesting and eminently satisfactory case," remarked Thorndyke, as
we sat over a rather late dinner. "Essentially simple, too. The
elucidation turned, as you probably noticed, on a single illuminating
fact."

"I judged that it was so," said I, "though the illumination of that fact
has not yet reached me."

"Well," said Thorndyke, "let us first take the general aspect of the case
as it was presented by Marchmont. The first thing, of course, that struck
one was that the loss of the will might easily have converted Baxfield
from a minor beneficiary to the sole heir. But even if the court agreed
to recognise the will, it would have to be guided by the statements of
the only two men to whom its provisions were even approximately known,
and Baxfield could have made any statement he pleased. It was impossible
to ignore the fact that the loss of the will was very greatly to
Baxfield's advantage.

"When the stolen property was discovered in Fletcher's possession it
looked, at the first glance, as if the mystery of the crime were solved.
But there were several serious inconsistencies. First, how came Fletcher
to be in this solitary wood, remote from any railway or even road? He
appeared to be a London pickpocket. When he was killed he was travelling
to London by train. It seemed probable that he had come from London by
train to ply his trade at the races. Then, as you know, criminological
experience shows that the habitual criminal is a rigid specialist. The
burglar, the coiner, the pickpocket, each keeps strictly to his own
special line Now, Fletcher was a pickpocket, and had evidently be picking
pockets on the race-course. The probabilities were against his being the
original robber and in favour of his having picked the pocket of the
person who robbed Harewood. But if this were so, who was that person?
Once more the probabilities suggested Baxfield. There was the motive, as
I have said, and further, the pocket-picking had apparently taken place
on the race-course, and Baxfield was known to be a frequenter of
race-courses. But again, if Baxfield were the person robbed by Fletcher,
then one of the five watches was probably Baxfield's watch. Whether it
was so or not might have been very difficult to prove, but here came in
the single illuminating fact that I have spoken of.

"You remember that when Marchmont opened the case he mentioned that
Baxfield was a manufacturer of felt hats, and Crowhurst told us that he
was a sort of foreman or manager of the factory."

"Yes, I remember, now you speak of it. But what is the bearing of the
fact?"

"My dear Jervis!" exclaimed Thorndyke. "Don't you see that it gave us a
touchstone? Consider, now. What is a felt hat? It is just a mass of
agglutinated rabbits' hair. The process of manufacture consists in
blowing a jet of the more or less disintegrated hair on to a revolving
steel cone which is moistened by a spray of an alcoholic solution of
shellac. But, of course, a quantity of the finer and more minute
particles of the broken hairs miss the cone and float about in the air.
The air of the factory is thus charged with the dust of broken rabbit
hairs; and this dust settles on and penetrates the clothing of the
workers. But when clothing becomes charged with dust, that dust tends to
accumulate in the pockets and find its way into the hollows and
interstices of any object carried in those pockets. Thus, if one of the
five watches was Baxfield's it would almost certainly show traces where
this characteristic dust had crept under the bezel and settled on the
dial. And so it turned out to be. When I inspected those five watches
through the Coddington lens, on the dial of No. 3 I saw a quantity of
dust of this character. The electrified vulcanite rod picked it all up
neatly and transferred it to the slide, and under the microscope its
nature was obvious. The owner of this watch was therefore, almost
certainly, employed in a felt hat factory. But, of course, it was
necessary to show not only the presence of rabbit hair in this watch but
its absence in the others and in Fletcher's pockets; which I did.

"Then with regard to Harewood's watch. There was no rabbit hair on the
dial, but there was a small quantity on the fluff from the key barrel.
Now, if that rabbit hair had come from Harewood's pocket it would have
been uniformly distributed through the fluff. But it was not. It was
confined exclusively to the part of the fluff that was exposed. Thus it
had come from some pocket other than Harewood's and the owner of that
pocket was almost certainly employed in a felt hat factory, and was most
probably the owner of watch No. 3. Then there was the cigarette-tube. Its
bore was loaded with rabbit hair. But its owner had unquestionably been
at the scene of the crime. There was a clear suggestion that his was the
pocket in which the stolen watch had been carried and that he was the
owner of watch No. 3. The problem was to piece this evidence together and
prove definitely who this person was. And that I was able to do by means
of a fresh item of evidence, which I acquired when I saw Baxfield at the
inquest. I suppose you noticed his boots?"

"I am afraid I didn't," I had to admit.

"Well, I did. I watched his feet constantly, and when he crossed his legs
I could see that he had iron toe-tips on his boots. That was what gave me
confidence to push the cross-examination."

"It was certainly a rather daring cross-examination and rather irregular,
too," said I.

It was extremely irregular," Thorndyke agreed. "The coroner ought not to
have permitted it. But it was all for the best. If the coroner had
disallowed my questions we should have had to take criminal proceedings
against Baxfield, whereas now that we have recovered the will, it is
possible that no one will trouble to prosecute him."

Which, I subsequently ascertained, is what actually happened.



A FISHER OF MEN


"The man," observed Thorndyke, "who would successfully practise the
scientific detection of crime must take all knowledge for his province.
There is no single fact which may not, in particular circumstances,
acquire a high degree of evidential value; and in such circumstances
success or failure is determined by the possession or non-possession of
the knowledge wherewith to interpret the significance of that fact."

This obiter dictum was thrown off apropos of our investigation of the
case rather magniloquently referred to in the press as "The Blue Diamond
Mystery"; and more particularly of an incident which occurred in the
office of our old friend, Superintendent Miller, at Scotland Yard.
Thorndyke had called to verify the few facts which had been communicated
to him, and having put away his notebook and picked up his green
canvas-covered research-case, had risen to take his leave, when his glance fell
on a couple of objects on a side-table--a leather handbag and a
walking-stick, lashed together with string, to which was attached a
descriptive label.

He regarded them for a few moments reflectively and then glanced at the
superintendent.

"Derelicts?" he inquired, "or jetsam?"

"Jetsam," the superintendent replied, "literally jetsam--thrown
overboard to lighten the ship."

Here Inspector Badger, who had been a party to the conference, looked up
eagerly.

"Yes," he broke in. "Perhaps the doctor wouldn't mind having a look at
them. It's quite a nice little problem, doctor, and entirely in your
line."

"What is the problem?" asked Thorndyke.

"It's just this," said Badger. "Here is a bag. Now the question is, whose
bag is it? What sort of person is the owner? Where did he come from and
where has he gone to?"

Thorndyke chuckled. "That seems quite simple," said he. "A cursory
inspection ought to dispose of trivial details like those. But how did
you come by the bag?"

"The history of the derelicts," said Miller, "is this: About four o'clock
this morning, a constable on duty in King's Road, Chelsea, saw a man
walking on the opposite side of the road, carrying a handbag. There was
nothing particularly suspicious in this, but still the constable thought
he would cross and have a closer look at him. As he did so the man
quickened his pace and, of course, the constable quickened his. Then the
man broke into a run, and so did the constable, and a fine, stern chase
started. Suddenly the man shot down a by-street, and as the constable
turned the corner he saw his quarry turn into a sort of alley. Following
him into this, and gaining on him perceptibly, he saw that the alley
ended in a rather high wall. When the fugitive reached the wall he
dropped his bag and stick and went over like a harlequin. The constable
went over after him, but not like a harlequin--he wasn't dressed for the
part. By the time he got over, into a large garden with a lot of fruit
trees in it, my nabs had disappeared. He traced him by his footprints
across the garden to another wall, and when he climbed over that he found
himself in by-street. But there was no sign of our agile friend. The
constable ran up and down the street to the next crossings, blowing his
whistle, but of course it was no go. So he went back across the garden
and secured the bag and stick, which were at once sent here for
examination."

"And no arrest has been made?"

"Well," replied Miller with a faint grin, "a constable in Oakley Street
who had heard the whistle arrested a man who was carrying a
suspicious-looking object. But he turned out to be a cornet player coming
home from the theatre."

"Good," said Thorndyke. "And now let us have a look at the bag, which I
take it has already been examined?"

"Yes, we've been through it," replied Miller, "but everything has been
put back as we found it."

Thorndyke picked up the bag and proceeded to make a systematic inspection
of its exterior.

"A good bag," he commented; "quite an expensive one originally, though it
has seen a good deal of service. You noticed the muddy marks on the
bottom?"

"Yes," said Miller. "Those were probably made when he dropped the bag to
jump over the wall."

"Possibly," said Thorndyke, "though they don't look like street mud. But
we shall probably get more information from the contents." He opened the
bag, and after a glance at its interior, spread out on the table a couple
of sheets of foolscap from the stationery rack, on which he began
methodically to deposit the contents of the bag, accompanying the process
with a sort of running commentary on their obvious characteristics.

"Item one: a small leather dressing-wallet. Rather shabby, but originally
of excellent quality. It contains two Swedish razors, a little Washita
hone, a diminutive strop, a folding shaving-brush, which is slightly damp
to the fingers and has a scent similar to that of the stick of shaving
soap. You notice that the hone is distinctly concave in the middle and
that the inscription on the razors, 'Arensburg, Eskilstuna, Sweden,' is
partly ground away. Then there is a box containing a very dry cake of
soap, a little manicure set, a well-worn toothbrush, a nailbrush,
dental-brush, button-hook, corn-razor, a small clothesbrush and a pair of
small hairbrushes. It seems to me, Badger, that this wallet suggests--mind,
I only say 'suggests'--a pretty complete answer to one of your
questions."

"I don't see how," said the inspector. "Tell u what it suggests to you."

"It suggests to me," replied Thorndyke, laying down the lens through
which he had been inspecting the hair- brushes, "a middle-aged or elderly
man with a shaven upper lip and a beard; a well-preserved, healthy man,
neat, orderly, provident and careful as to his appearance; a man long
habituated to travelling, and--though I don't insist on this, but the
appearances suggest that he had been living for some time in a particular
households and that at the time when he lost the bag, he was changing his
residence."

"He was that," cackled the inspector, "if the constable's account of the
way he went over that wall is to be trusted. But still, I don't see how
you have arrived at all those facts."

"Not facts, Badger," Thorndyke corrected. "I said suggestions. And those
suggestions may be quite misleading. There may be some factor, such as
change of ownership of the wallet, which we have not allowed for. But,
taking the appearances at their face value, that is what they suggest.
There is the wallet itself, for instance--strong, durable, but shabby
with years of wear. And observe that it is a travelling-wallet and would
be subjected to wear only during travel. Then further, as to the time
factor, there are the hone and the razors. It takes a good many years to
wear a Washita hone hollow or to wear away the blade of a Swedish razor
until the maker's mark is encroached on. The state of health, and to some
extent the age, are suggested by the tooth brush and the dental-brush. He
has lost some teeth, since he wears a plate, but not many; and he is free
from pyorrhoea and alveolar absorption. You don't wear a toothbrush down
like this on half a dozen rickety survivors. But a man whose teeth will
bear hard brushing is probably well-preserved and healthy."

"You say that he shaves his upper lip but wears a beard," said the
inspector. "How do you arrive at that?"

"It is fairly obvious," replied Thorndyke. "We see that he has razors and
uses them, and we also see that he has a beard."

"Do we?" exclaimed Badger. "How do we?"

Thorndyke delicately picked a hair from one of the hairbrushes and held
it up. "That is not a scalp hair," said he. "I should say that it came
from the side of the chin."

Badger regarded the hair with evident disfavour. "Looks to me," he
remarked," as if a small tooth-comb might have been useful."

It does," Thorndyke agreed, "but the appearance is deceptive. This is
what is called a moniliform hair--like a string of beads. But the
bead-like swellings are really parts of the hair. It is a diseased, or
perhaps we should say an abnormal, condition." He handed me the hair
together with his lens, through which I examined it and easily recognised
the characteristic swellings.

"Yes," said I, "it is an early case of tricliorrexis nodosa."

"Good Lord!" murmured the inspector. "Sounds like a Russian nobleman. Is
it a common complaint?

"It is not a rare disease--if you can call it a disease," I replied,"
but it is a rare condition, taking the population as a whole."

It is rather a remarkable coincidence that it should happen to occur in
this particular case," the superintendent observed.

"My dear Miller," exclaimed Thorndyke, "surely your experience must have
impressed on you the astonishing frequency of the unusual and the utter
failure of the mathematical laws of probability in practice. Believe me,
Miller, the bread-and-butterfly was right. It is the exceptional that
always happens."

Having discharged this paradox, he once more dived into the bag, and this
time handed out a singular and rather unsavoury-looking parcel, the outer
investment of which was formed by what looked like an excessively dirty
towel, but which, as Thorndyke delicately unrolled it, was seen to be
only half a towel which was supplemented by a still dirtier and
excessively ragged coloured handkerchief. This, too, being opened out,
disclosed an extremely soiled and rather frayed collar (which, like the
other articles, bore no name or mark), and a mass of grass, evidently
used as packing material.

The inspector picked up the collar and quoted reflectively, "He is a man,
neat, orderly and careful as to his appearance," after which he dropped
the collar and ostentatiously wiped his fingers.

Thorndyke smiled grimly but refrained from repartee as he carefully
separated the grass from the contained objects, which turned out to be a
small telescopic jemmy, a jointed auger, a screwdriver and a bunch of
skeleton keys.

"One understands his unwillingness to encounter the constable with these
rather significant objects in his possession," Thorndyke remarked. "They
would have been difficult to explain away." He took up the heap of grass
between his hands and gently compressed it to test its freshness. As he
did so a tiny, cigar-shaped object dropped on the paper.

"What is that?" asked the superintendent. "It looks like a chrysalis."

It isn't," said Thorndyke. "It is a shell, a species of Clausilia, I
think." He picked up the little shell and closely examined its mouth
through his lens. "Yes," he continued, "it is a Clausilia. Do you study
our British mollusca, Badger?"

"No, I don't," the inspector replied with emphasis.

"Pity," murmured Thorndyke. "If you did, you would be interested to learn
that the name of this little shell is Clausilia biplicata."

"I don't care what its beastly name is," said Badger. "I want to know
whose bag this is; what the owner is like; and where he came from and
where he has gone to. Can you tell us that?"

Thorndyke regarded the inspector with wooden gravity. "It is all very
obvious," said he, "very obvious. But still, I think I should like to
fill in a few details before making a definite statement. Yes, I think I
will reserve my judgment until I have considered the matter a little
further."

The inspector received this statement with a dubious grin. He was in
somewhat of a dilemma. My colleague was addicted to a certain dry
facetiousness, and was probably pulling the inspector's leg. But, on the
other hand, I knew, and so did both the detectives, that it was perfectly
conceivable that he had actually solved Badger's problem, impossible as
it seemed, and was holding back his knowledge until he had seen whither
it led.

"Shall we take a glance at the stick?" said he, picking it up as he spoke
and running his eye over its not very distinctive features. It was a
common ash stick, with a crooked handle polished and darkened by
prolonged contact with an apparently ungloved hand, and it was smeared
for about three inches from the tip with a yellowish mud. The iron shoe
of the ferrule was completely worn away and the deficiency had been made
good by driving a steel boot-stud into the exposed end.

"A thrifty gentleman, this," Thorndyke remarked, pointing to the stud as
he measured the diameter of the ferrule with his pocket calliper-gauge.
"Twenty-three thirty-seconds is the diameter," he added, looking gravely
at the inspector. "You had better make a note of that, Badger."

The inspector smiled sourly as Thorndyke laid down the stick, and once
more picking up the little green canvas case that contained his research
outfit, prepared to depart.

"You will hear from us, Miller," he said, "if we pick up anything that
will be useful to you. And now, Jervis, we must really take ourselves
off."

As the tinkling hansom bore us down Whitehall towards Waterloo, I
remarked, "Badger half suspects you of having withheld from him some
valuable information in respect of that bag."

"He does," Thorndyke agreed with a mischievous smile; "and he doesn't in
the least suspect me of having given him a most illuminating hint."

"But did you?" I asked, rapidly reviewing the conversation and deciding
that the facts elicited from the dressing-wallet could hardly be
described as hints.

"My learned friend," he replied, "is pleased to counterfeit obtuseness.
It won't do, Jervis. I've known you too long."

I grinned with vexation. Evidently I had missed the point of a subtle
demonstration, and I knew that it was useless to ask further questions;
and for the remainder of our journey, in the cab I struggled vainly to
recover the "illuminating hint" that the detectives--and I--had failed
to note. Indeed, so preoccupied was I with this problem that I rather
overlooked the fact that the jettisoned bag was really no concern of
ours, and that we were actually engaged in the investigation of a crime
of which, at present, I knew practically nothing. It was not until we had
secured an empty compartment and the train had begun to move that this
suddenly dawned on me; whereupon I dismissed the bag problem and applied
to Thorndyke for details of the "Brentford Train Mystery."

To call it a mystery," said he, "is a misuse of words. It appears to be a
simple train robbery. The identity of the robber is unknown, but there is
nothing very mysterious in that; and the crime otherwise is quite
commonplace. The circumstances are these:

"Some time ago, Mr. Lionel Montague, of the firm, Lyons, Montague &
Salaman, art dealers, bought from a Russian nobleman a very valuable
diamond necklace and pendant. The peculiarity of this necklace was that
the stones were all of a pale blue colour and pretty accurately matched,
so that in addition to the aggregate value of the stones--which were all
of large size and some very large--was the value of the piece as a whole
due to this uniformity of colour. Mr. Montague gave £70,000 for it, and
considered that he had made an excellent bargain. I should mention that
Montague was the chief buyer for the firm, and that he spent most of his
time travelling about the Continent in search of works of art and other
objects suitable for the purposes of his firm, and that, naturally, he
was an excellent judge of such things. Now, it seems that he was not
satisfied with the settings of this necklace, and as soon as he had
purchased it he handed it over to Messrs. Binks, of Old Bond Street, to
have the settings replaced by others of better design. Yesterday morning
he was notified by Binks that the resetting was completed, and in the
afternoon he called to inspect the work and take the necklace away if it
was satisfactory. The interview between Binks and Montague took place in
a room behind the shop, but it appears that Montague came out into the
shop to get a better light for his inspection and Mr. Binks states that
as his customer stood facing the door, examining the new settings, he,
Binks, noticed a man standing by the doorway furtively watching Mr.
Montague."

"There is nothing very remarkable in that," said I. "If a man stands at a
shop door with a necklace of blue diamonds in his hand, he is rather
likely to attract attention."

"Yes," Thorndyke agreed. "But the significance of an antecedent is apt to
be more appreciated after the consequences have developed. Binks is now
very emphatic about the furtive watcher. However, to continue: Mr.
M