“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 overhanging 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 subpœna this morning for Friday afternoon at 2.30, at the Welsbury Town Hall.”
At this moment footsteps were heard hurriedly ascending 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 that 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 number of 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-boiler 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 some one 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 on 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 the eye and slipped the loop over his shoulders, drawing it 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. As 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 blow-lamp, 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. Then 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 blow-lamp, 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 vertebrae 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 scrutinizing 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 see 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 on 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 towards 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 passed 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 slowly 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 manœuvre 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 might have been produced by a blow with a heavy, blunt 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 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 anything——” 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 recognize 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 was 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 been 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 objects 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.
“The man,” observed Thorndyke, “who would successfully practice 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 hand-bag. 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 another 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 clothes-brush 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 us what it suggests to you.”
“It suggests to me,” replied Thorndyke, laying down the lens through which he had been inspecting the hairbrushes, “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 household, 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 toothbrush and the dental-brush. He has lost some teeth, since he wears a plate, but not many; and he is free from pyorrhea 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 recognized the characteristic swellings.
“Yes,” said I, “it is an early case of trichorrexis 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 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—there 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. Montague, being satisfied with the new settings, replaced the necklace in its case, put the latter into his bag—which he had brought with him from the inner room—and a minute or so later left the shop. That was about 5 p.m.; and he seems to have gone direct to the flat of his partner, Mr. Salaman, with whom he had been staying for a fortnight, at Queen’s Gate. There he remained until about half-past eight, when he came out accompanied by Mr. Salaman. The latter carried a small suit-case, while Montague carried a handbag in which was the necklace. It is not known whether it contained anything else.
“From Queen’s Gate the two men proceeded to Waterloo, walking part of the way and covering the remainder by omnibus.”
“By omnibus!” I exclaimed, “with seventy thousand pounds worth of diamonds about them!”
“Yes, it sounds odd. But people who habitually handle portable property of great value seem to resemble those who habitually handle explosives. They gradually become unconscious of the risks. At any rate, that is how they went, and they arrived safely at Waterloo in time to catch the 9.15 train for Isleworth. Mr. Salaman saw his partner established in an empty first-class compartment and stayed with him, chatting, until the train started.
“Mr. Montague’s destination was Isleworth, in which rather unlikely neighbourhood Mr. Jacob Lowenstein, late of Chicago, and now Berkeley Square, has a sort of river-side villa with a motor boat-house attached. Lowenstein had secured the option of purchasing the blue diamond necklace, and Montague was taking it down to exhibit it and carry out the deal. He was proposing to stay a few days with Lowenstein, and then he was proceeding to Brussels on one of his periodic tours. But he never reached Isleworth. When the train stopped at Brentford, a porter noticed a suit-case on the luggage-rack of an apparently empty first-class compartment. He immediately entered to take possession of it, and was in the act of reaching up to the rack when his foot came in contact with something soft under the seat. Considerably startled, he stooped and peered under, when, to his horror, he perceived the body of a man, quite motionless and apparently dead. Instantly he darted out and rushed up the platform in a state of wild panic until he, fortunately, ran against the station master, with whom and another porter he returned to the compartment. When they drew the body out from under the seat it was found to be still breathing, and they proceeded at once to apply such restoratives as cold water and fresh air, pending the arrival of the police and the doctor, who had been sent for.
“In a few minutes the police arrived accompanied by the police surgeon, and the latter, after a brief examination, decided that the unconscious man was suffering from the effects of a large dose of chloroform, violently and unskilfully administered, and ordered him to be carefully removed to a local nursing home. Meanwhile, the police had been able, by inspecting the contents of his pockets, to identify him as Mr. Lionel Montague.”
“The diamonds had vanished, of course?” said I.
“Yes. The handbag was not in the compartment, and later an empty handbag was picked up on the permanent way between Barnes and Chiswick, which seems to indicate the locality where the robbery took place.”
“And what is our present objective?”
“We are going, on instructions from Mr. Salaman, to the nursing home to see what information we can pick up. If Montague has recovered sufficiently to give an account of the robbery, the police will have a description of the robber, and there may not be much for us to do. But you will have noticed that they do not seem to have any information at Scotland Yard at present, beyond what I have given you. So there is a chance yet that we may earn our fees.”
Thorndyke’s narrative of this somewhat commonplace crime, with the discussion which followed it, occupied us until the train stopped at Brentford Station. A few minutes later we halted in one of the quiet by-streets of this old-world town, at a soberly painted door on which was a brass plate inscribed “St. Agnes Nursing Home.” Our arrival had apparently been observed, for the door was opened by a middle-aged lady in a nurse’s uniform.
“Dr. Thorndyke?” she inquired; and as my colleague bowed assent she continued: “Mr. Salaman told me you would probably call. I am afraid I haven’t very good news for you. The patient is still quite unconscious.”
“That is rather remarkable,” said Thorndyke.
“It is. Dr. Kingston, who is in charge of the case, is somewhat puzzled by this prolonged stupor. He is inclined to suspect a narcotic—possibly a large dose of morphine—in addition to the effects of the chloroform and the shock.”
“He is probably right,” said I; “and the marvel is that the man is alive at all after such outrageous treatment.”
“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed. “He must be pretty tough. Shall we be able to see him?”
“Oh, yes,” the matron replied. “I am instructed to give you every assistance. Dr. Kingston would like to have your opinion on the case.”
With this she conducted us to a pleasant room on the first floor where, in a bed placed opposite a large window—purposely left uncurtained—with the strong light falling full on his face, a man lay with closed eyes, breathing quietly and showing no sign of consciousness when we somewhat noisily entered the room. For some time Thorndyke stood by the bedside, looking down at the unconscious man, listening to the breathing and noting its frequency by his watch. Then he felt the pulse, and raising both eyelids, compared the two pupils.
“His condition doesn’t appear alarming,” was his conclusion. “The breathing is rather shallow, but it is quite regular, and the pulse is not bad though slow. The contracted pupils strongly suggest opium, or more probably morphine. But that could easily be settled by a chemical test. Do you notice the state of the face, Jervis?”
“You mean the chloroform burns? Yes, the handkerchief or pad must have been saturated. But I was also noticing that he corresponds quite remarkably with the description you were giving Badger of the owner of the dressing wallet. He is about the age you mentioned—roughly about fifty—and he has the same old-fashioned treatment of the beard, the shaven upper lip and the monkey-fringe under the chin. It is rather an odd coincidence.”
Thorndyke looked at me keenly. “The coincidence is closer than that, Jervis. Look at the beard itself.”
He handed me his lens, and, stooping down, I brought it to bear on the patient’s beard. And then I started back in astonishment; for by the bright light I could see plainly that a considerable proportion of the hairs were distinctly moniliform. This man’s beard, too, was affected by an early stage of trichorrexis nodosa!
“Well!” I exclaimed, “this is really an amazing coincidence. I wonder if it is anything more.”
“I wonder,” said Thorndyke. “Are those Mr. Montague’s things, Matron?”
“Yes,” she replied, turning to the side table on which the patient’s effects were neatly arranged. “Those are his clothes and the things which were taken from his pockets, and that is his bag. It was found on the line and sent on here a couple of hours ago. There is nothing in it.”
Thorndyke looked over the various objects—keys, card-case, pocket-book, etc.—that had been turned out of the patient’s pockets, and then picked up the bag, which he turned over curiously and then opened to inspect the interior. There was nothing distinctive about it. It was just a plain, imitation leather bag, fairly new, though rather the worse for its late vicissitudes, lined with coarse linen to which two large, wash-leather pockets had been roughly stitched. As he laid the bag down and picked up his own canvas case, he asked: “What time did Mr. Salaman come to see the patient?”
“He came here about ten o’clock this morning, and he was not able to stay more than half an hour as he had an appointment. But he said he would look in again this evening. You can’t stay to see him, I suppose?”
“I’m afraid not,” Thorndyke replied; “in fact, we must be off now for both Dr. Jervis and I have some other matters to attend to.”
“Are you going straight back to the chambers, Jervis?” Thorndyke asked, as we walked down the main street towards the station.
“Yes,” I replied in some surprise. “Aren’t you?”
“No. I have a little expedition in view.”
“Oh, have you?” I exclaimed, and as I spoke it began to dawn on me that I had overestimated the importance of my other business.
“Yes,” said Thorndyke; “the fact is that—ha! excuse me one moment, Jervis.” He had halted abruptly outside a fishing tackle shop and now, after a brief glance in through the window, entered with an air of business. I immediately bolted in after him, and was just in time to hear him demand a fishing rod of a light and inexpensive character. When this had been supplied he asked for a line and one or two hooks; and I was a little surprised—and the vendor was positively scandalized—at his indifference to the quality or character of these appliances. I believe he would have accepted cod-line and a shark-hook if they had been offered.
“And now I want a float,” said he.
The shopkeeper produced a tray containing a varied assortment of floats over which Thorndyke ran a critical eye, and finally reduced the shopman to stupefaction by selecting a gigantic, pot-bellied, scarlet-and-green atrocity that looked like a juvenile telegraph buoy.
I could not let this outrage pass without comment. “You must excuse me, Thorndyke,” I said, “if I venture to point out that the Greenland whale no longer frequents the upper reaches of the Thames.”
“You mind your own business,” he retorted, stolidly pocketing the telegraph buoy when he had paid for his purchases. “I like a float that you can see.”
Here the shopman, recovering somewhat from the shock of surprise, remarked deferentially that it was a long time since a really large pike had been caught in the neighbourhood; whereupon Thorndyke finished him off by replying: “Yes, I’ve no doubt. They don’t use the right sort of floats, you know. Now, when the pike see my float, they will just come tumbling over one another to get on the hook.” With this he tucked the rod under his arm and strolled out, leaving the shopman breathing hard and staring harder.
“But what on earth,” I asked, as we walked down the street (watched by the shopman, who had come out on the pavement to see the last of us), “do you want with such an enormous float? Why, it will be visible a quarter of a mile away.”
“Exactly,” said Thorndyke. “And what more could a fisher of men require?”
This rejoinder gave me pause. Evidently Thorndyke had something in hand of more than common interest; and again it occurred to me that my own business engagements were of no special urgency. I was about to mention this fact when Thorndyke again halted—at an oilshop this time.
“I think I will step in here and get a little burnt umber,” said he.
I followed him into the shop, and while the powder-colour was being weighed and made up into a little packet I reflected profoundly. Fishing tackle and burnt umber had no obvious associations. I began to be mystified and correspondingly inquisitive.
“What do you want the burnt umber for?” I asked as soon as we were outside.
“To mix with plaster,” he replied readily.
“But why do you want to colour the plaster? And what are you going to do with it?”
“Now, Jervis,” he admonished with mock severity, “you are not doing yourself justice. An investigator of your experience shouldn’t ask for explanations of the obvious.”
“And why,” I continued, “did you want to know if I was going straight back to the chambers?”
“Because I may want some assistance later. Probably Polton will be able to do all that I want, but I wished to know that you would both be within reach of a telegram.”
“But,” I exclaimed, “what nonsense it is to talk of sending a telegram to me when I’m here!”
“But I may not want any assistance, after all.”
“Well,” I said doggedly, “you are going to have it whether you want it or not. You’ve got something on and I’m going to be in it.”
“I like your enthusiasm, Jervis,” he chuckled; “but it is quite possible that I shall merely find a mare’s nest.”
“Very well,” said I. “Then I’ll help you to find it. I’ve had plenty of experience in that line, to say nothing of my natural gifts. So lead on.”
He led on, with a resigned smile, to the station, where we were fortunate enough to find a train just ready to start. But our journey was not a long one, for at Chiswick Thorndyke got out of the train, and on leaving the station struck out eastward with a very evident air of business. As we entered the outskirts of Hammersmith he turned into a by-street which presently brought us out into Bridge Road. Here he turned sharply to the right and, at the same brisk pace, crossed Hammersmith Bridge and made his way to the towing path. As he now slowed down perceptibly, I ventured to inquire whether this was the spot on which he proposed to exhibit his super-float.
“This, I think, will be our fishing-ground,” he replied; “but we will look over it carefully and select a suitable pitch.”