Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus Vol 6

by R. Austin Freeman

  "Is that according to plan?" I asked.

  "Yes," he replied. "The result is positive, so far, but we must wait a few minutes for the final answer to our question. If this liquid is nicotine, the precipitate will presently crystallize out in long, slender needles of a very characteristic colour—ruby red by transmitted light and dark blue by reflected light."

  He stood the test tube in a stand, and, seating himself on a high stool, proceeded to fill his pipe, while Polton stationed himself opposite the test tube stand and kept an expectant eye on the little mass of sediment. Presently I saw him pick up the magnifying glass, and, having drawn down an adjustable lamp, make a closer inspection. For three or four minutes be continued to watch the test tube through the glass, assisting his observations by placing a sheet of white paper upright behind the stand. At length he reported progress.

  "It is beginning to crystallize—long, thin blue crystals."

  "Try it against the light," said Thorndyke.

  Very slowly and carefully, to avoid disturbing the formation of the crystals, Polton lifted the tube from its stand and held it between the lamp and his eye.

  "Now they are red," he reported, "like thin splinters of garnet."

  I took the tube from his hand and examined the growing mass of fine, needle-like crystals, crimson against the light and deep blue when the light was behind me, and then passed it to Thorndyke.

  "Yes," he said when he had verified our observations, "that is the characteristic reaction. So now our question is answered. The liquid that we extracted from the cigar is nicotine."

  "Well," I remarked, "it has been a very interesting experiment, and I suppose it was worth doing, but the result is not exactly sensational. Nicotine is what one might expect to extract from a cigar, though I must say that the amount is greater than I should have expected, especially as we haven’t got the whole of it."

  Thorndyke regarded me with an indulgent smile.

  "My learned friend," said he, "has allowed his toxicology to get a little rusty, and thereby has missed the point of this experiment. It is not a question of quantity; there ought not to have been any nicotine at all."

  As I gazed at him in astonishment and was beginning to protest, he continued: "The nicotine that we dissolved out with the ether was free nicotine. But there is no free nicotine in a cigar. The alkaloid is combined with malic acid. If this had been a normal cigar, we should have got no free nicotine until we had treated the cigar—or a decoction of it—with a caustic alkali, preferably caustic potash."

  "Then," I exclaimed, "this nicotine had been artificially introduced into the cigar."

  "Exactly. It was a foreign substance, although it happened to be a natural constituent of a cigar. Probably it was injected into the open end with a hypodermic syringe. But at any rate there it was; and I think that its presence disposes of Miller’s question as to how Inspector Badger was put out of the carriage on to the line."

  "You think that he was suffering from nicotine poisoning?"

  "I have no doubt of it. We have seen that he smoked at least an inch of this cigar. The cigar contained naturally anything up to 8 per cent of combined nicotine, part of which would pass into the smoke. To this had been added not less than half a fluid drachm of free nicotine. Now, when we consider that the lethal dose of nicotine is not more than two or three drops, and that more than that amount must have been contained in the part that was burned, we are pretty safe in assuming that the smoker would have been reduced, at least, to a state of physical helplessness."

  "You have no doubt that he was alive when the train went over him?"

  "No. But though he was undoubtedly alive, I think it quite likely that he was moribund. He had apparently taken nearly, if not quite, the full lethal dose."

  "It is a little surprising," I remarked, "that he went on smoking so long; that he did not grow suspicious, seeing that he knew who his fellow passenger was, as apparently he did."

  "I don’t think it is very surprising," replied Thorndyke. "The procedure had been so well calculated to avert suspicion. Let us suppose—as probably happened—that the stranger produces a cigar-case. There are two cigars in it—one, no doubt, bearing a private mark. The stranger takes the marked cigar and holds out the case to Badger. Now Badger, as we know, usually smoked a pipe, but he was very partial to a cigar, and he preferred a strong one. He would certainly have taken the cigar and would have been impressed by its strength. Probably, owing to the presence of the free nicotine, the cigar would not have burned freely. He would have had to draw at it vigorously to keep it alight, and so would have drawn into his mouth a large amount of the vaporized nicotine.

  "Presently he would begin to feel unwell, but at first he would feel nothing more than ordinary tobacco-sickness, and before he had time to become suspicious, he would be in a state of collapse. Nicotine, you will remember, is probably, with the exception of hydrocyanic acid, the most rapid of all poisons in its action."

  "Yes; but if Badger was really in a moribund state, it would seem that it was a tactical mistake to throw him out on the line. If the murderer had simply sat him up in a corner and got out at the next station, no suspicion of any crime would have arisen. The body might not have been observed until the train reached London, and when it was discovered and examined, death would have appeared to have been due to natural causes, or to excessive smoking, if the nicotine poisoning had been detected."

  "I don’t think that would have done, Jervis," Thorndyke replied. "Your plan would have involved too many contingencies. The next stop was at Dartford—a fairly busy junction. Someone might quite probably have got in there and seen the murderer getting out. And again, Badger might have recovered. You can usually tell when a man is dead, but it is difficult even for an expert to be certain that an insensible man is dying. No, this man was taking no risks, or as few as possible. And he was a desperate man. Probably, Badger was the only officer who knew him, and he was aware of the fact. His safety depended on his getting rid of Badger."

  "I gather," said I, "that you don’t accept Miller’s view as to the identity of the other passenger. It struck me that he was rather jumping at conclusions."

  "He was, indeed," Thorndyke agreed, "in a most surprising manner for so shrewd and experienced an officer. It was a positive obsession. I never entertained the idea for a moment, for, apart from the total absence of evidence, it bristled with impossibilities. The man was a runaway prisoner. He was, it is true, wearing his own clothes, but he would probably have no hat and his pockets would almost certainly be empty. How could such a man have got a first-class ticket? And how could he have got away from Maidstone to make his appearance so promptly at Strood? The thing is inconceivable.

  "But we had better adjourn this discussion. It is past midnight, and Polton is yawning in a way that threatens us with the job of reducing a dislocation of the lower jaw. The rest of the nicotine extraction can wait till the morning, if it is necessary to pursue the question of quantity. The actual amount is of no great consequence. The presence of free nicotine is the essential fact, and we have established that."

  "And thereby," said I, as the meeting broke up, "prepared quite a pleasant little surprise for Superintendent Miller."

  VII. THE PERSISTENCE OF SUPERINTENDENT MILLER

  As I undressed, and for the short time that I lay awake, I revolved in my mind the amazing events of the evening; and in the morning, no sooner was I in possession of my waking senses than the question presented itself afresh for consideration. What was it that had impelled Thorndyke to secure and preserve that cigar? It had looked like a mere chance shot. But all my knowledge and experience of Thorndyke and his ways was against any such explanation. Thorndyke was not in the habit of making chance shots. Moreover, the act had been deliberate and considered. He had seen the cigar by the instantaneous flash of the lamp; he had walked on for a few paces, and then he had slipped on a glove and gone back to pick up the cigar and bestow it in his pocket with evident care. In those f
ew instants of reflection, something must have occurred to him to suggest the incredible possibility that had been turned into ascertained fact in the laboratory. Now, what could that something have been?

  When we met at the breakfast-table, I proceeded without delay to present my problem for solution.

  "I have been wondering, Thorndyke," said I, "what made you pick up that cigar. Evidently, the results of the examination were not entirely unexpected."

  I could see that my question, also, was not unexpected. But he did not reply immediately, and I continued:

  "That cigar was perfectly normal to look at. Yet it seems as if some intuition had suggested to you the possibility of its amazingly abnormal qualities. It is an utter mystery to me."

  "I pray you, Jervis," he replied, smilingly, "not to accuse me of intuitions. I have always assumed that intuitions are for those who can’t reason. But let us consider the circumstances surrounding that cigar. We will take first the prima facie appearances, disregarding, for the moment, our own personalities and our special knowledge and experience.

  "Here was a cigar which had been lighted and thrown away, less than half-smoked. Now, its condition offered evidence, at a glance, of some sudden change in the state of mind of the smoker. That would be true even of a cigarette. Normally, a man either wants a smoke or he does not. If he does, he lights the cigarette and smokes it. If he does not, he doesn’t light it. But if he lights it and then throws it away, that act is evidence of a change of purpose; and that change is almost certainly determined by some change in his circumstances or surroundings.

  "But what is true of a cigarette, which costs about a penny, is more emphatically true of a cigar of an expensive type, which must have cost at least half a crown. There must have been some definite reason for its having been thrown away. But within a few yards of the place where the cigar was lying, a man had been murdered. There had been two men in a smoking-compartment. If deceased had been smoking a cigar, he would obviously not have finished it; and the same is almost certainly true of the other. Hence there was an appreciable probability that this cigar had some connection with the murder. But, since a cigar which has been smoked is practically certain to bear finger-prints, it would have been reasonable in any case to secure the cigar and see, if possible, whose finger-prints it bore.

  "So much for the general aspects of the incident—which I should have thought would have been obvious to Miller. We, however, were not concerned only with the general aspects. We had special knowledge and special experience. I have told you how, in the early days of my practice, when I had little to do, I used to occupy myself in the invention of crimes of an unusual and ingenious kind and in devising methods of detection to counter them. It was time and effort well spent; for each crime that I invented—and circumvented—though it was imaginary, yet furnished actual experience which prepared me to deal with such a crime if I should encounter it in real life. Now, among the criminal methods which I devised was the use of a cigar as the means for administering poison."

  "Yes," said I, "I remember; and very fortunate it was for you that you did. The fact that the possibility was in your mind probably saved your life when our friend, Hornby, sent you that poisoned cheroot."

  "Exactly," he agreed. "The imaginary case had the effect of a real case; and when the real case occurred, it found me prepared. And now let us apply these facts to the present case. You heard Miller’s sketch of the tragedy as he had heard it told through the telephone, and you will remember that he put his finger on the point that most needed explanation. How had Badger been put out of the carriage on to the line? According to the report, no gross injuries had been found. He had not been shot or stabbed or bludgeoned. He seemed simply to have been thrown out. Yet how could such a thing be possible? A Metropolitan police-officer is a formidable man, and Badger was a fine specimen of his class—big, powerful, courageous, and highly trained in the arts of offence and defence. He could not have been off his guard, for he knew that he was travelling with a criminal and must have been prepared for an attack. How then could he have been thrown out? That was Miller’s difficulty, and it was a real one, assuming that the report had given the true facts.

  "The train journey down gave us time to think it over. That time I employed in turning over every explanation that I could think of. Since direct violence seemed to be ruled out, the only reasonable supposition was that, in some way, Badger must have been rendered insensible or helpless. But in what way? You heard Miller’s suggestions; and you could see that none of them was practicable. To me, it appeared that poison in some form was the most likely method. But how do you set to work to poison a man in a railway carriage?

  "I considered the various methods that were physically possible. The most obvious was to offer a drink from a flask. That would be effective enough—but not with a detective inspector of the C.I.D. Badger would have refused to a certainty; and poisoned sweets would have been still more hopeless. Then the possibility of a poisoned cigar occurred to me. The idea seemed a little extravagant; but, still, the method had actually been used within my own experience. And there was no denying that it would have met the case perfectly. The offer of a cigar would have appeared, even to a cautious police officer, a quite unsuspicious action. And we know that Badger liked a cigar and would almost certainly have accepted one. So, in spite of the fact that, as I have said, the suggestion seemed rather far-fetched, I made a mental note to keep the possibility in mind.

  "At Greenhithe the absence of any traces of violence was confirmed. Then we went into the tunnel; and behold! almost the first object that we notice is a half-smoked cigar. There was not much need for intuitions."

  I admitted a little shamefacedly that there was not. It was the old story. An item of knowledge or experience that was once in Thorndyke’s mind was there for ever; and what is more, it was available for use at any moment, and in any set of circumstances. I had not this gift. My memory was good enough; but I had not his constructive imagination. I could only use my experiences when analogous circumstances recurred. The poisoned cheroot had come by post. Thereafter, I should have looked with suspicion on any cigar that arrived by post from an unknown source. But Thorndyke had the idea in his mind, ready to apply it to any new set of circumstances. It was a vital difference.

  Having settled this question, I passed on to another that had exercised my mind a good deal.

  "You seem," I said, "to have decided pretty clearly how the actual murder was carried out. Have you carried the matter any farther? Have you any theory of the general modus operandi of the crime?"

  "Only in quite general terms," he replied. "I think we are forced to certain conclusions. For instance, the fact that the murderer had the poisoned cigar available compels us to assume that the crime was not only premeditated but very definitely planned. My impression is that poor Badger was under a delusion. He thought that he was stalking a criminal, whereas, in fact, the criminal was stalking him. I suspect that he knew what was going on at Maidstone, and that he kept Badger in sight. I believe that he saw him into the train at Maidstone and travelled with him in that train to Strood."

  "There seem to be at least two objections to that theory," said I. "To begin with, he could hardly have avoided being seen at Maidstone. For, leaving Badger out of the picture, there was Cummings, who certainly knew him by sight and would surely have spotted him at the station."

  "I see," said Thorndyke, "that you are adopting Miller’s view that the murderer was the man Smith. That view seems to me quite untenable. I have never entertained it for a moment."

  "You are not forgetting the resemblance between the two men? That both men had red hair and a noticeably red nose? It would be a remarkable coincidence, if they were different men."

  "Very true," he agreed. "But don’t let us lose sight of the collateral circumstances. If we assume that this was a carefully planned murder, as it appears to have been, we have to be on the look-out for such ordinary precautions as a murderer would probabl
y take. Now a red nose with red hair is a rather uncommon combination; and, as you say, its occurrence in two men in these peculiar circumstances would be a remarkable coincidence. But there are such things as wigs and rouge and grease-paint; and these are just the circumstances in which we might look to see them used. The very simplest make-up would do. Consider how easy it would have been. Supposing a dark man with close-cropped hair gets into an empty carriage at Maidstone. Just before reaching Strood, he slips on a red wig and gives his nose an infinitesimal touch of rouge. On arriving at Strood, he hops out, and at once makes for the stairs leading to the subway. There, or elsewhere, he waits for the arrival of the London train, and, when it comes in, he emerges, boldly, on to the platform, and lets himself be plainly seen."

  "But don’t you think Badger would have spotted the wig?" I objected.

  "I feel pretty sure that he would," Thorndyke replied. "But why not? The stranger was there for the express purpose of being spotted. And you notice a further use that the make-up would have had. For, after the murder, he could have doffed the wig and cleaned off the rouge; and forthwith he would have been a different person. The description of him, as he had been seen at Strood, no longer applied to him. He could show himself boldly at Dartford and leave no trace. What is the second objection?"

  "I was thinking of the fact—if it is a fact—that he took the risk of stealing Smith’s finger-print papers from the body. It was a very serious risk. For if he had been stopped and searched and they had been found on his person, that would have convicted him of the murder beyond any question. And, moreover, the very fact that they were taken furnishes evidence of murder and effectually excludes the possibility of misadventure. The taking of such a risk points to a very strong motive. But they were Smith’s finger-prints; and if he were not Smith, what strong motive could he have had for taking them?"