Chapter VIII
The Track Chart
As Thorndyke and I arrived at the main gateway of the Temple and heswung round into the narrow lane, it was suddenly borne in on me that Ihad made no arrangements for the night. Events had followed one anotherso continuously and each had been so engrossing that I had lost sight ofwhat I may call my domestic affairs.
"We seem to be heading for your chambers, Thorndyke," I ventured toremark. "It is a little late to think of it, but I have not yet settledwhere I am to put up to-night."
"My dear fellow," he replied, "you are going to put up in your ownbedroom which has been waiting in readiness for you ever since you leftit. Polton went up and inspected it as soon as you arrived. I take itthat you will consider my chambers yours until such time as you may jointhe benedictine majority and set up a home for yourself."
"That is very handsome of you," said I. "You didn't mention that thebillet you offered was a resident appointment."
"Rooms and commons included," said Thorndyke; and when I protested thatI should at least contribute to the costs of living he impatientlywaved the suggestion away. We were still arguing the question when wereached our chambers--as I will now call them--and a diversion wasoccasioned by my taking the lamp from my pocket and placing it on thetable.
"Ah," my colleague remarked, "that is a little reminder. We will put iton the mantelpiece for Polton to collect and you shall give me a fullaccount of your further adventures in the wilds of Kennington. That wasa very odd affair. I have often wondered how it ended."
He drew our two arm-chairs up to the fire, put on some more coal, placedthe tobacco jar on the table exactly equidistant from the two chairs,and settled himself with the air of a man who is anticipating anagreeable entertainment.
I filled my pipe, and, taking up the thread of the story where I hadbroken off on the last occasion, began to outline my later experiences.But he brought me up short.
"Don't be sketchy, Jervis. To be sketchy is to be vague. Detail, mychild, detail is the soul of induction. Let us have all the facts. Wecan sort them out afterwards."
I began afresh in a vein of the extremest circumstantiality. Withdeliberate malice I loaded a prolix narrative with every triviality thata fairly retentive memory could rake out of the half-forgotten past. Icudgelled my brains for irrelevant incidents. I described with theminutest accuracy things that had not the faintest significance. I drewa vivid picture of the carriage inside and out; I painted a lifelikeportrait of the horse, even going into particulars of the harness--whichI was surprised to find that I had noticed. I described the furniture ofthe dining-room and the cobwebs that had hung from the ceiling; theauction-ticket on the chest of drawers, the rickety table and themelancholy chairs. I gave the number per minute of the patient'srespirations and the exact quantity of coffee consumed on each occasion,with an exhaustive description of the cup from which it was taken; and Ileft no personal details unconsidered, from the patient's finger-nailsto the roseate pimples on Mr. Weiss's nose.
But my tactics of studied prolixity were a complete failure. The attemptto fatigue Thorndyke's brain with superabundant detail was like tryingto surfeit a pelican with whitebait. He consumed it all with calmenjoyment and asked for more; and when, at last, I did really begin tothink that I had bored him a little, he staggered me by reading over hisnotes and starting a brisk cross-examination to elicit fresh facts! Andthe most surprising thing of all was that when I had finished I seemedto know a great deal more about the case than I had ever known before.
"It was a very remarkable affair," he observed, when thecross-examination was over--leaving me somewhat in the condition of acider-apple that has just been removed from a hydraulic press--"a verysuspicious affair with a highly unsatisfactory end. I am not sure that Ientirely agree with your police officer. Nor do I fancy that some of myacquaintances at Scotland Yard would have agreed with him."
"Do you think I ought to have taken any further measures?" I askeduneasily.
"No; I don't see how you could. You did all that was possible under thecircumstances. You gave information, which is all that a privateindividual can do, especially if he is an overworked generalpractitioner. But still, an actual crime is the affair of every goodcitizen. I think we ought to take some action."
"You think there really was a crime, then?"
"What else can one think? What do you think about it yourself?"
"I don't like to think about it at all. The recollection of thatcorpse-like figure in that gloomy bedroom has haunted me ever since Ileft the house. What do you suppose has happened?"
Thorndyke did not answer for a few seconds. At length he said gravely:
"I am afraid, Jervis, that the answer to that question can be given inone word."
"Murder?" I asked with a slight shudder.
He nodded, and we were both silent for a while.
"The probability," he resumed after a pause, "that Mr. Graves is aliveat this moment seems to me infinitesimal. There was evidently aconspiracy to murder him, and the deliberate, persistent manner in whichthat object was being pursued points to a very strong and definitemotive. Then the tactics adopted point to considerable forethought andjudgment. They are not the tactics of a fool or an ignoramus. We maycriticize the closed carriage as a tactical mistake, calculated toarouse suspicion, but we have to weigh it against its alternative."
"What is that?"
"Well, consider the circumstances. Suppose Weiss had called you in inthe ordinary way. You would still have detected the use of poison. Butnow you could have located your man and made inquiries about him in theneighbourhood. You would probably have given the police a hint and theywould almost certainly have taken action, as they would have had themeans of identifying the parties. The result would have been fatal toWeiss. The closed carriage invited suspicion, but it was a greatsafeguard. Weiss's method's were not so unsound after all. He is acautious man, but cunning and very persistent. And he could be bold onoccasion. The use of the blinded carriage was a decidedly audaciousproceeding. I should put him down as a gambler of a very discreet,courageous and resourceful type."
"Which all leads to the probability that he has pursued his scheme andbrought it to a successful issue."
"I am afraid it does. But--have you got your notes of thecompass-bearings?"
"The book is in my overcoat pocket with the board. I will fetch them."
I went into the office, where our coats hung, and brought back thenotebook with the little board to which it was still attached by therubber band. Thorndyke took them from me, and, opening the book, ranhis eye quickly down one page after another. Suddenly he glanced at theclock.
"It is a little late to begin," said he, "but these notes look ratheralluring. I am inclined to plot them out at once. I fancy, from theirappearance, that they will enable us to locate the house without muchdifficulty. But don't let me keep you up if you are tired. I can workthem out by myself."
"You won't do anything of the kind," I exclaimed. "I am as keen onplotting them as you are, and, besides, I want to see how it is done. Itseems to be a rather useful accomplishment."
"It is," said Thorndyke. "In our work, the ability to make a rough butreliable sketch survey is often of great value. Have you ever lookedover these notes?"
"No. I put the book away when I came in and have never looked at itsince."
"It is a quaint document. You seem to be rich in railway bridges inthose parts, and the route was certainly none of the most direct, as younoticed at the time. However, we will plot it out and then we shall seeexactly what it looks like and whither it leads us."
He retired to the laboratory and presently returned with a T-square, amilitary protractor, a pair of dividers and a large drawing-board onwhich was pinned a sheet of cartridge paper.
"Now," said he, seating himself at the table with the board before him,"as to the method. You started from a known position and you arrived ata place the position of which is at present unknown. We shall fix theposition of th
at spot by applying two factors, the distance that youtravelled and the direction in which you were moving. The direction isgiven by the compass; and, as the horse seems to have kept up aremarkably even pace, we can take time as representing distance. Youseem to have been travelling at about eight miles an hour, that is,roughly, a seventh of a mile in one minute. So if, on our chart, we takeone inch as representing one minute, we shall be working with a scale ofabout seven inches to the mile."
"That doesn't sound very exact as to distance," I objected.
"It isn't. But that doesn't matter much. We have certain landmarks, suchas these railway arches that you have noted, by which the actualdistance can be settled after the route is plotted. You had better readout the entries, and, opposite each, write a number for reference, sothat we need not confuse the chart by writing details on it. I shallstart near the middle of the board, as neither you nor I seem to havethe slightest notion what your general direction was."
I laid the open notebook before me and read out the first entry:
"'Eight fifty-eight. West by South. Start from home. Horse thirteenhands.'"
"You turned round at once, I understand," said Thorndyke, "so we draw noline in that direction. The next is--?"
"'Eight fifty-eight minutes, thirty seconds, East by North'; and thenext is 'Eight fifty-nine, North-east.'"
"Then you travelled east by north about a fifteenth of a mile and weshall put down half an inch on the chart. Then you turned north-east.How long did you go on?"
"Exactly a minute. The next entry is 'Nine. West north-west.'"
"Then you travelled about the seventh of a mile in a north-easterlydirection and we draw a line an inch long at an angle of forty-fivedegrees to the right of the north and south line. From the end of thatwe carry a line at an angle of fifty-six and a quarter degrees to theleft of the north and south line, and so on. The method is perfectlysimple, you see."
"Perfectly; I quite understand it now."
I went back to my chair and continued to read out the entries from thenotebook while Thorndyke laid off the lines of direction with theprotractor, taking out the distances with the dividers from a scale ofequal parts on the back of the instrument. As the work proceeded, Inoticed, from time to time, a smile of quiet amusement spread over mycolleague's keen, attentive face, and at each new reference to a railwaybridge he chuckled softly.
"What, again!" he laughed, as I recorded the passage of the fifth orsixth bridge. "It's like a game of croquet. Go on. What is the next?"
I went on reading out the notes until I came to the final one:
"'Nine twenty-four. South-east. In covered way. Stop. Wooden gatesclosed.'"
Thorndyke ruled off the last line, remarking: "Then your covered way ison the south side of a street which bears north-east. So we complete ourchart. Just look at your route, Jervis."
He held up the board with a quizzical smile and I stared in astonishmentat the chart. The single line, which represented the route of thecarriage, zigzagged in the most amazing manner, turning, re-turning andcrossing itself repeatedly, evidently passing more than once down thesame thoroughfares and terminating at a comparatively short distancefrom its commencement.
"Why!" I exclaimed, the "rascal must have lived quite near toStillbury's house!"
Thorndyke measured with the dividers the distance between the startingand arriving points of the route and took it off from the scale.
"Five-eighths of a mile, roughly," he said. "You could have walked it inless than ten minutes. And now let us get out the ordnance map and seeif we can give to each of those marvellously erratic lines 'a localhabitation and a name.'"
He spread the map out on the table and placed our chart by its side.
"I think," said he, "you started from Lower Kennington Lane?"
"Yes, from this point," I replied, indicating the spot with a pencil.
"Then," said Thorndyke, "if we swing the chart round twenty degrees tocorrect the deviation of the compass, we can compare it with theordnance map."
He set off with the protractor an angle of twenty degrees from thenorth and south line and turned the chart round to that extent. Afterclosely scrutinizing the map and the chart and comparing the one withthe other, he said:
"By mere inspection it seems fairly easy to identify the thoroughfaresthat correspond to the lines of the chart. Take the part that is nearyour destination. At nine twenty-one you passed under a bridge, goingwestward. That would seem to be Glasshouse Street. Then you turnedsouth, apparently along the Albert Embankment, where you heard the tug'swhistle. Then you heard a passenger train start on your left; that wouldbe Vauxhall Station. Next you turned round due east and passed under alarge railway bridge, which suggests the bridge that carries the Stationover Upper Kennington Lane. If that is so, your house should be on thesouth side of Upper Kennington Lane, some three hundred yards from thebridge. But we may as well test our inferences by one or twomeasurements."
"How can you do that if you don't know the exact scale of the chart?"
"I will show you," said Thorndyke. "We shall establish the true scaleand that will form part of the proof."
He rapidly constructed on the upper blank part of the paper, aproportional diagram consisting of two intersecting lines with a singlecross-line.
"This long line," he explained, "is the distance from Stillbury's houseto the Vauxhall railway bridge as it appears on the chart; the shortercross-line is the same distance taken from the ordnance map. If ourinference is correct and the chart is reasonably accurate, all the otherdistances will show a similar proportion. Let us try some of them. Takethe distance from Vauxhall bridge to the Glasshouse Street bridge."
The Track Chart, showing the route followed by Weiss'scarriage.
A.--Starting-point in Lower Kennington Lane.
B.--Position of Mr. Weiss's house. The dotted lines connecting thebridges indicate probable railway lines.]
He made the two measurements carefully, and, as the point of thedividers came down almost precisely in the correct place on the diagram,he looked up at me.
"Considering the roughness of the method by which the chart was made, Ithink that is pretty conclusive, though, if you look at the variousarches that you passed under and see how nearly they appear to followthe position of the South-Western Railway line, you hardly need furtherproof. But I will take a few more proportional measurements for thesatisfaction of proving the case by scientific methods before we proceedto verify our conclusions by a visit to the spot."
He took off one or two more distances, and on comparing them with theproportional distances on the ordnance map, found them in every case asnearly correct as could be expected.
"Yes," said Thorndyke, laying down the dividers, "I think we havenarrowed down the locality of Mr. Weiss's house to a few yards in aknown street. We shall get further help from your note of ninetwenty-three thirty, which records a patch of newly laid macadamextending up to the house."
"That new macadam will be pretty well smoothed down by now," I objected.
"Not so very completely," answered Thorndyke. "It is only a little overa month ago, and there has been very little wet weather since. It may besmooth, but it will be easily distinguishable from the old."
"And do I understand that you propose to go and explore theneighbourhood?"
"Undoubtedly I do. That is to say, I intend to convert the locality ofthis house into a definite address; which, I think, will now beperfectly easy, unless we should have the bad luck to find more than onecovered way. Even then, the difficulty would be trifling."
"And when you have ascertained where Mr. Weiss lives? What then?"
"That will depend on circumstances. I think we shall probably call atScotland Yard and have a little talk with our friend Mr. SuperintendentMiller; unless, for any reason, it seems better to look into the caseourselves."
"When is this voyage of exploration to take place?"
Thorndyke considered this question, and, taking out his pocket-book,glanced throu
gh his engagements.
"It seems to me," he said, "that to-morrow is a fairly free day. Wecould take the morning without neglecting other business. I suggest thatwe start immediately after breakfast. How will that suit my learnedfriend?"
"My time is yours," I replied; "and if you choose to waste it on mattersthat don't concern you, that's your affair."
"Then we will consider the arrangement to stand for to-morrow morning,or rather, for this morning, as I see that it is past twelve."
With this Thorndyke gathered up the chart and instruments and weseparated for the night.
The Mystery of 31 New Inn Page 8