by E.
His next move was to study the patterned rug in front of the fireplace. After a scrutiny he whispered to Merry, who went into the hall and returned with the Box of Tricks. From it he took an envelope, slit the seal and extracted one of the fluffy fragments which had been collected from the overcoat of Canley on the railway lines.
With a pair of tweezers Doctor Manson pulled a fragment of fibre from the rug and compared it with the fragment from the envelope. He made no comment, but tweaked a number of other pieces of varied colours from the rug, and stowed them in another envelope, afterwards resealing the original envelope.
He made only one comment. “It is a point to remember that the coat fragments came from the back of Canley,” he said. “That appears to be of some significance.”
“Significant of what?” asked the Chief Constable.
Doctor Manson smiled. “I don’t know,” he answered, naively.
From the fire the doctor’s attention was directed to the general lay-out of the room. His eyes roved over the area comprising the table. A spot of greyish-white on the floor caught his eye. It lay in a direct line with the end of the table, and beyond it.
“What is that?” he asked, pointing a finger at it.
Merry approached the spot circumferentially and looked down.
“Cigar ash,” he announced. He ringed the ash round with a red chinagraph pencil.
“Dropped from his cigar?” suggested Mackenzie. “We knew he had smoked one.”
“Or half-smoked it,” added Kenway.
Doctor Manson walked along the side of the room and approached the table and chair from behind. He stood beside the chair, regarding the little pile of ash thoughtfully. His eyes strayed to the table and marked the ashtray with its burden. Then, with a steel tape, he measured the distance of the fallen ash from the chair—it showed three feet four and a half inches.
The distance seemed to cause him some perplexity, for furrows appeared on the broad forehead and there were wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. After a sustained contemplation, he examined through a lens the seat of the chair. The scrutiny seemed to satisfy him, for he looked up at the company and beckoned to Inspector Kenway, who was smoking a cigarette.
“Approach from behind, Kenway, and sit in this chair,” he said. “Don’t handle it, and don’t sit back. There are no marks on the seat of any value, but I have not examined the sides and back. Smoke that cigarette until it has a nice long ash and then stand up, and as you do so, flick off the ash.”
The inspector puffed vigorously. Doctor Manson noted the length of the ash and warned the inspector. “Flick the ash fairly strongly away from you in the direction of the cigar ash on the floor, remembering that the ash of a cigar is heavier to dislodge than that of a cigarette,” Doctor Manson advised.
The ash fell a foot or so from the chair.
“Try it again, Kenway, and flick as hard as you can,” the scientist begged. There followed a wait until the cigarette had burned more ash. The inspector flicked it away again, harder. The further effort scaled just over two feet four inches.
“You could not reach the circle of ash we have ringed round?” asked the doctor.
“I should say it is impossible,” replied Kenway.
The Chief Constable, who had watched the proceedings with a measure of fascination, now sought enlightenment. “I don’t see what you are after, Manson,” he said. “But I gather it doesn’t work.”
Manson smiled. “It is not quite so bad as that, Mainforce,” he replied. “I know now how a certain thing did not happen. That is a matter of considerable importance. Having now eliminated the impossible, we are a stage nearer to the possible.” He again measured the distance with his eyes, and chewed the cud of his deductions.
Merry was following the lines of his thought. He whispered a few words to his chief. The doctor nodded. “It might be so, Merry,” he said. “We’ll try it as best we can. But, first, we had better take care of the ash.”
With a piece of litmus paper as a scoop, the ash, ringed round with the red pencil mark, was lifted and deposited in another of the scientist’s seed envelopes, the outside of which was labelled as usual with the description and position of the contents.
Doctor Manson took from a waistcoat pocket the cigar found on the railway lines. He wrapped a little gummed paper round the end of it and handed it to Inspector Kenway. That officer looked more than a little surprised at the sight of it. It seemed to be an accusation of some sort. Doctor Manson explained its presence. “You are supposed, Kenway,” he said, “to be leaning forward slightly and smoking this. Do not be surprised at anything that may happen.”
As the inspector put the cigar, with a gingerliness approaching repugnance, between his lips, Doctor Manson moved behind him. Without warning, he pushed the smoker violently on the top of the shoulders. The cigar shot from his victim’s mouth, and dropped within an inch or two of the marked circle.
“What the devil . . .” began Kenway, and he swung round in the chair.
“Sorry,” said Manson. But he did not look it. On the contrary, he appeared to be well-pleased with the result of his assault. “All in the interests of justice, you know. I should say that you have enacted the role of Canley, as he played it in this room last night. Only you have survived the ordeal—he did not.”
“God bless me soul.” The drift of the experiment had dawned upon the Chief Constable. “You mean that Canley was killed in that chair?”
“I think it highly probable, Colonel. The ash on the floor had a characteristic which interested me greatly, and which seemed to negative the more likely explanation that the smoker stood up, moved towards the fireplace and flicked off the ash, so that it fell to the floor—”
“Seemed a perfectly natural explanation, Manson,” the Chief Constable frowned.
“What made you doubt its likelihood?” asked Kenway.
“The fact that, when you drop ash like that, it falls to the floor lightly. Now, this ash has marked the polished floor. There is a distinct sign of contact when examined through the lens. You can still see it, though the ash has been removed from the floor.”
The Chief Constable came forward and bent over the pencil ring. “I see what you mean,” he admitted. “The ash is, shall I say, impinged, on the floor.”
“Perhaps he dropped his cigar,” hazarded Kenway.
“I had considered that.” Doctor Manson nodded approval of the suggestion. “But there seems to have been a little more force, and an obliqueness of the mark which, I think, discounts the suggestion. The room shows no sign of disturbance. From that fact we are entitled to assume that there was no quarrel. Accordingly, Canley must have been knocked out unsuspectingly.”
“And, of course, you have already deduced that he was knocked out by a blow at the bottom of the neck which the decapitation by the train was to hide.” Inspector Kenway spoke slowly, and with emphasis.
“Exactly, Kenway. Hence my testing the theory that a sudden blow from behind on the unsuspecting man would jerk the cigar from his lips with considerable force—enough to send it flying just over three feet and make it land obliquely. As you have seen, the experiment in which you shared, lends colour to the view. I cannot, of course, say that that is what actually occurred, but it is feasible.”
“Then that would explain the other man upon whom you have been harking all the time,” said the Colonel.
“Shall we say the other person, Mainforce?” This was too much for Inspector Mackenzie. He rose in open rebellion at the theory.
“How did he get here at all?” he demanded. “Where did he come from?”
There was in him that routine mind which insisted that crime should be solved by police work, not book learning. He now enlarged on his question. “There are no signs of entry in the lane or along the garden path, and we’ve been all over the garden at the back, and there are still no signs of any approach.”
“That is of secondary importance, Mackenzie, compared with the evidence we already
have on the line and in this room.” Doctor Manson spoke chidingly. “I should draw your attention to the fact that the entire length of the lane has a grass verge, and that a man may walk in that long grass at night-time and leave no sign, since by the early morning the trampled grass of a single footstep would spring back to its upright position, and show no indication of ever having been disturbed. That would be particularly so if the person walked, for instance, in stockinged feet which would not bruise the grass—a trick which the Red Indians learned in America generations ago.”
Inspector Mackenzie gave it up. But he shook a doubting head.
Colonel Mainforce at this stage felt that the time had come to take an active part in the proceedings. He was, he remembered, the Chief Constable, and this was his murder.
The fact that Yard officers were present made no difference to him. It was Surrey’s murder trail, not Scotland Yard’s. He proceeded therefore, to summarize the investigation as it so far stood. A preparatory cough warned the company to listen to his conclusions; and the Colonel began them:
“I am convinced by the evidence of my eyes, and senses, that this man Canley was not knocked down and killed by the train,” he said. “I am convinced that he was killed, and his body deposited on the line, in the belief that the decapitation would hide the evidence of violence on his person.” He looked round at the company. Sergeant Bunny nearly sprang to attention. He had heard the Chief use that tone when giving orders on the barrack square.
“I am also convinced that there were two people concerned in the same affair in this room,” the Chief Constable proceeded, “and that it was here that Canley met his death. Canley, therefore, was one of the persons. The question we now have to answer is—who was the other?” He turned a waiting gaze on Doctor Manson.
The scientist smiled, and shook his head. “I am no magician, Colonel.” The Chief Constable appeared unconvinced by the denial. “And I am no spiritualist medium. I think it probable that there were two persons in this room, but there is, as yet, no positive proof of that.”
The Chief Constable registered frustration. His moustache bristled out like the quills of a porcupine. “Well, the point is—can we prove it, and how?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” confessed Doctor Manson. “This room knows whether there were or were not two people here, and it knows the identity of them both, if there were two. Walls have eyes and ears, you know—”
“Then let’s pull ’em out and sight ’em,” said the Chief Constable. “How do we start?”
“Possibly with the floor,” Doctor Manson retorted. “After we have covered that, or uncovered it, we can all come into the room without any danger of destroying evidence. Perhaps you will switch on all the lights, and Merry and I will go over the surface. Once we have cleared that, you can tramp about to your heart’s content.”
The two men began a methodical exploration, starting with the floor in the vicinity of the furniture. Once or twice Doctor Manson brought his lens into use, but apparently derived nothing of importance.
“Plenty of marks, but nothing at all likely to be helpful,” he said.
It was Merry, who, from behind the chair standing at the side of the table, first sounded the tocsin. On hands and knees he had been crawling over the floor.
“He ought to have brought his rompers,” whispered Inspector Mackenzie to his sergeant. “What the devil does he suppose he is looking for?” As he ceased speaking, Merry stopped his crawling and examined something which the officers could not see. He called to the scientist. “What do you make of these, Doctor?” he asked.
Doctor Manson crossed the room and bent over two indentures in the polished floor. They were slightly under half an inch long, and were scored in parallel lines. He frowned at the sight of them. “They look to me like scratches from nails, Jim,” he said.
After a further scrutiny, he measured them. “I make them one thirty-second of an inch in diameter, and one two-hundredth of an inch deep—one slightly less,” he announced. “They are one and a half inches apart, and dead parallel in their entire length. Now, what does that suggest?”
“That, since they are dead parallel all the way, the nails are fixed in some object,” hazarded Merry.
“A boot?” suggested the Chief Constable.
Merry turned up Canley’s shoes. They were hand-sewn, and the heels contained only the usual rim nails. None was projecting, and none missing.
“Well, they weren’t made by these shoes,” he announced. “It would have been a remarkable coincidence had two nails been sticking up in one shoe, as these must have been, without some very good reason. And heel nails are never so wide apart as these.”
“Unless—” Doctor Manson began, and stopped. He searched the floor in the vicinity of the scratches, and then went wider, in circles. “There are no other signs of abrasions,” he said. “Can anyone conjure up anything out of that?”
“Rubber-soled shoes any good?” suggested Merry.
The doctor sought enlightenment.
“I mean, rubber bottoms, not just rubber circular heels,” explained the deputy scientist. “The heels have generally a couple of nails through the centre of the heels. It might be—”
“I’m wearing that kind, sir.” The police constable broke into the dialogue. He had been listening with eager interest from the door. He held up a foot to prove his interruption. The scientist nodded, and the constable unlaced his boot and passed it across to Merry, who bent over it with Doctor Manson.
“There are two nails in the heel,” decided Manson, and produced a micrometer rule. “They measure an inch and three-quarters apart.” He compared the size of the boot with those of Canley. “About two sizes larger,” he announced. “That should bring the distance about right.”
“You mean?” The Chief Constable waited the answer.
“If the heels of the boots were well worn it is possible that the nails would be liable to score parallel grooves in certain circumstances.”
“As for example?” asked Inspector Kenway.
“If a sudden violent pressure was exerted on the worn rubber so that the back of the heel was braced to give power, it would depress the rubber and leave the nails exposed. If the foot was then drawn backwards—that, by the way, is plainly evidenced from the scoring as having happened—then scratches like these would possibly be made, whereas in ordinary pressure, such as from walking, the rubber, though worn down to the level of the nails, would be sufficiently resilient to prevent markings.”
“Such as—leverage—for—a—blow?” asked the Chief Constable. He spoke deliberately, with pauses between each word.
“It could be, Mainforce, but again I remind you that we are theorizing without any substantial evidence upon which to base a theory.”
“Every muckle helps,” burst out Mackenzie, suddenly stricken with enthusiasm—and Scottish.
“Well, you can all come inside now,” said Doctor Manson. He beckoned to the Yard inspector. “Kenway, take that chair and go over it for prints. You’ll find another insufflator in the Box of Tricks. Use the one marked ‘charcoal powder’. And bring me the one marked ‘Hydrag c. Creta’—that is the grey powder.”
Kenway busied himself with the chair. Merry and Manson paid attention to the table. Seated on a chair brought forward from the wall, with the Chief Constable in another, the doctor looked over the bottle and the glass. He produced a handkerchief, and with it between his fingers, lifted up the glass by the extreme tip of the rim. He sniffed at the interior, which was smeared, and which still contained a few drops of liquid in the bottom.
“Whisky,” he pronounced.
“Elementary,” said the Chief Constable. “Doctor Gaunt’s post mortem showed that Canley had had a drink of whisky shortly before his death.”
Doctor Manson grunted, held the vehicle up to the light and peered at it closely. Then, placing it back on the table, he puffed over it from the insufflator a little of the grey powder. On the surface of the glass, there
appeared, as though by magic, the marks of fingers.
“A right hand,” said Merry.
The scientist puffed powder on the other side of the cylindrical surface of the tumbler. Another print appeared—that of a thumb.
“Canley’s, of course.” The Chief Constable deducted. “He’d be the drinker.”
Doctor Manson started in annoyance. “That reminds me,” he said. “A very grave oversight, Mainforce. Could anyone else drive that car of yours? Could Mackenzie do it, for instance?”
The Chief Constable scratched his head. “Dashed if I know whether he could,” he said.
“I’ve driven it before,” volunteered Mackenzie. He caught sight of his Chief Constable’s facial expression, and wished he had kept his tongue between his teeth.
“The devil you have,” roared the Colonel. “Now, when would that be? I’ve—”
“Never mind when it was, Colonel.” Doctor Manson grinned. “Mackenzie ought to have a medal for it. Let him drive again. I want some finger impressions of Canley’s fingers, and he’s in the mortuary—and I want them quickly. Off you go, Mackenzie.”
He handed the officer from the Box of Tricks a fingerprint roller, paper and pad for taking the impressions.
“When the devil did he drive Ypres?” the Colonel asked himself, aloud, as his eyes watched the exit of the inspector. “That probably accounts for its condition.”
“It doesn’t,” said Manson, with a wink at Merry. “The only thing to account for the condition of Ypres is its age, so give up worrying.” As he spoke, the scientist was puffing more of the grey powder, this time on the surface of the bottle of whisky. Again prints appeared, about half-way up the sides of the bottle. They encircled the circumference, the fingers being on one half of the circumference and a large thumb on the other.
Doctor Manson now began to show signs of keener interest. He pushed the bottle and glass to one side, and concentrated his attention on the surface of the table around the positions in which the vessels had been resting. Some three or four rings showed up plainly on the polished surface. Colonel Mainforce leaned forward.