The Arthur Morrison Mystery

by Arthur Morrison

  “Now, I remembered that, when we went into the tap-room on Wednesday, some of his companions were chaffing Crockett about a certain Nancy Webb, and the chaff went home, as was plain to see. The woman, then, who could most easily entice Sammy Crockett away was Nancy Webb. I resolved to find who Nancy Webb was and learn more of her.

  “Meantime, I took a look at the road at the end of the lane. It was damper than the lane, being lower, and overhung by trees. There were many wheel-tracks, but only one set that turned in the road and went back the way it came, toward the town; and they were narrow wheels—carriage wheels. Crockett tells me now that they drove him about for a long time before shutting him up; probably the inconvenience of taking him straight to the hiding-place didn’t strike them when they first drove off.

  “A few inquiries soon set me in the direction of the Plough and Miss Nancy Webb. I had the curiosity to look around the place as I approached, and there, in the garden behind the house, were Steggles and the young lady in earnest confabulation!

  “Every conjecture became a certainty. Steggles was the lover of whom Crockett was jealous, and he had employed the girl to bring Sammy out. I watched Steggles home, and gave you a hint to keep him there.

  “But the thing that remained was to find Steggles’ employer in this business. I was glad to be in when Danby called. He came, of course, to hear if you would blurt out anything, and to learn, if possible, what steps you were taking. He failed. By way of making assurance doubly sure I took a short walk this morning in the character of a deaf gentleman, and got Miss Webb to write me a direction that comprised three of the words on these scraps of paper—‘left,’ ‘right,’ and ‘lane’; see, they correspond, the peculiar ‘f’s,’ ‘t’s,’ and all.

  “Now, I felt perfectly sure that Steggles would go for his pay today. In the first place, I knew that people mixed up with shady transactions in professional pedestrianism are not apt to trust one another far—they know better. Therefore Steggles wouldn’t have had his bribe first. But he would take care to get it before the Saturday heats were run, because once they were over the thing was done, and the principal conspirator might have refused to pay up, and Steggles couldn’t have helped himself. Again I hinted he should not go out till I could follow him, and this afternoon, when he went, follow him I did. I saw him go into Danby’s house by the side way and come away again. Danby it was, then, who had arranged the business; and nobody was more likely, considering his large pecuniary stake against Crockett’s winning this race.

  “But now how to find Crockett? I made up my mind he wouldn’t be in Danby’s own house. That would be a deal too risky, with servants about and so on. I saw that Danby was a builder, and had three shops to let—it was on a paper before his house. What more likely prison than an empty house? I knocked at Danby’s door and asked for the keys of those shops. I couldn’t have them. The servant told me Danby was out (a manifest lie, for I had just seen him), and that nobody could see the shops till Monday. But I got out of her the address of the shops, and that was all I wanted at the time.

  “Now, why was nobody to see those shops till Monday? The interval was suspicious—just enough to enable Crockett to be sent away again and cast loose after the Saturday racing, supposing him to be kept in one of the empty buildings. I went off at once and looked at the shops, forming my conclusions as to which would be the most likely for Danby’s purpose. Here I had another confirmation of my ideas. A poor, half-bankrupt baker in one of the shops had, by the bills, the custody of a set of keys; but he, too, told me I couldn’t have them; Danby had taken them away—and on Thursday, the very day—with some trivial excuse, and hadn’t brought them back. That was all I wanted or could expect in the way of guidance. The whole thing was plain. The rest you know all about.”

  “Well, you’re certainly as smart as they give you credit for, I must say. But suppose Danby had taken down his ‘To Let’ notice, what would you have done, then?”

  “We had our course, even then. We should have gone to Danby, astounded him by telling him all about his little games, terrorized him with threats of the law, and made him throw up his hand and send Crockett back. But, as it is, you see, he doesn’t know at this moment—probably won’t know till tomorrow afternoon—that the lad is safe and sound here. You will probably use the interval to make him pay for losing the game—by some of the ingenious financial devices you are no doubt familiar with.”

  “Ay, that I will. He’ll give any price against Crockett now, so long as the bet don’t come direct from me.”

  “But about Crockett, now,” Hewitt went on. “Won’t this confinement be likely to have damaged his speed for a day or two?”

  “Ah, perhaps,” the landlord replied; “but, bless ye, that won’t matter. There’s four more in his heat tomorrow. Two I know aren’t tryers, and the other two I can hold in at a couple of quid apiece any day. The third round and final won’t be till tomorrow week, and he’ll be as fit as ever by then. It’s as safe as ever it was. How much are you going to have on? I’ll lump it on for you safe enough. This is a chance not to be missed; it’s picking money up.”

  “Thank you; I don’t think I’ll have anything to do with it. This professional pedestrian business doesn’t seem a pretty one at all. I don’t call myself a moralist, but, if you’ll excuse my saying so, the thing is scarcely the game I care to pick tap money at in any way.”

  “Oh, very well! if you think so, I won’t persuade ye, though I don’t think so much of your smartness as I did, after that. Still, we won’t quarrel; you’ve done me a mighty good turn, that I must say, and I only feel I aren’t level without doing something to pay the debt. Come, now, you’ve got your trade as I’ve got mine. Let me have the bill, and I’ll pay it like a lord, and feel a deal more pleased than if you made a favor of it—not that I’m above a favor, of course. But I’d prefer paying, and that’s a fact.”

  “My dear sir, you have paid,” Hewitt said, with a smile. “You paid in advance. It was a bargain, wasn’t it, that I should do your business if you would help me in mine? Very well; a bargain’s a bargain, and we’ve both performed our parts. And you mustn’t be offended at what I said just now.”

  “That I won’t! But as to that Raggy Steggles, once those heats are over tomorrow, I’ll—well—”

  It was on the following Sunday week that Martin Hewitt, in his rooms in London, turned over his paper and read, under the head “Padfield Annual 135 Yards Handicap,” this announcement: “Final heat: Crockett, first; Willis, second; Trewby, third; Owen, 0; Howell, 0. A runaway win by nearly three yards.”

  THE CASE OF MR. FOGGATT

  Almost the only dogmatism that Martin Hewitt permitted himself in regard to his professional methods was one on the matter of accumulative probabilities. Often when I have remarked upon the apparently trivial nature of the clews by which he allowed himself to be guided—sometimes, to all seeming, in the very face of all likelihood—he has replied that two trivialities, pointing in the same direction, became at once, by their mere agreement, no trivialities at all, but enormously important considerations. “If I were in search of a man,” he would say, “of whom I knew nothing but that he squinted, bore a birthmark on his right hand, and limped, and I observed a man who answered to the first peculiarity, so far the clue would be trivial, because thousands of men squint. Now, if that man presently moved and exhibited a birthmark on his right hand, the value of that squint and that mark would increase at once a hundred or a thousand fold. Apart they are little; together much. The weight of evidence is not doubled merely; it would be only doubled if half the men who squinted had right-hand birthmarks; whereas the proportion, if it could be ascertained, would be, perhaps, more like one in ten thousand. The two trivialities, pointing in the same direction, become very strong evidence. And, when the man is seen to walk with a limp, that limp (another triviality), re-enforcing the others, brings the matter to the rank of a practical certainty. The Ber
tillon system of identification—what is it but a summary of trivialities? Thousands of men are of the same height, thousands of the same length of foot, thousands of the same girth of head—thousands correspond in any separate measurement you may name. It is when the measurements are taken together that you have your man identified forever. Just consider how few, if any, of your friends correspond exactly in any two personal peculiarities.” Hewitt’s dogma received its illustration unexpectedly close at home.

  The old house wherein my chambers and Hewitt’s office were situated contained, besides my own, two or three more bachelors’ dens, in addition to the offices on the ground and first and second floors. At the very top of all, at the back, a fat, middle-aged man, named Foggatt, occupied a set of four rooms. It was only after a long residence, by an accidental remark of the housekeeper’s, that I learned the man’s name, which was not painted on his door or displayed, with all the others, on the wall of the ground-floor porch.

  Mr. Foggatt appeared to have few friends, but lived in something as nearly approaching luxury as an old bachelor living in chambers can live. An ascending case of champagne was a common phenomenon of the staircase, and I have more than once seen a picture, destined for the top floor, of a sort that went far to awaken green covetousness in the heart of a poor journalist.

  The man himself was not altogether prepossessing. Fat as he was, he had a way of carrying his head forward on his extended neck and gazing widely about with a pair of the roundest and most prominent eyes I remember to have ever seen, except in a fish. On the whole, his appearance was rather vulgar, rather arrogant, and rather suspicious, without any very pronounced quality of any sort. But certainly he was not pretty. In the end, however, he was found shot dead in his sitting-room.

  It was in this way: Hewitt and I had dined together at my club, and late in the evening had returned to my rooms to smoke and discuss whatever came uppermost. I had made a bargain that day with two speculative odd lots at a book sale, each of which contained a hidden prize. We sat talking and turning over these books while time went unperceived, when suddenly we were startled by a loud report. Clearly it was in the building. We listened for a moment, but heard nothing else, and then Hewitt expressed his opinion that the report was that of a gunshot. Gunshots in residential chambers are not common things, wherefore I got up and went to the landing, looking up the stairs and down.

  At the top of the next flight I saw Mrs. Clayton, the housekeeper. She appeared to be frightened, and told me that the report came from Mr. Foggatt’s room. She thought he might have had an accident with the pistol that usually lay on his mantel-piece. We went upstairs with her, and she knocked at Mr. Foggatt’s door.

  There was no reply. Through the ventilating fanlight over the door it could be seen that there were lights within, a sign, Mrs. Clayton maintained, that Mr. Foggatt was not out. We knocked again, much more loudly, and called, but still ineffectually. The door was locked, and an application of the housekeeper’s key proved that the tenant’s key had been left in the lock inside. Mrs. Clayton’s conviction that “something had happened” became distressing, and in the end Hewitt pried open the door with a small poker.

  Something had happened. In the sitting-room Mr. Foggatt sat with his head bowed over the table, quiet and still. The head was ill to look at, and by it lay a large revolver, of the full-sized army pattern. Mrs. Clayton ran back toward the landing with faint screams.

  “Run, Brett!” said Hewitt; “a doctor and a policeman!”

  I bounced down the stairs half a flight at a time. “First,” I thought, “a doctor. He may not be dead.” I could think of no doctor in the immediate neighborhood, but ran up the street away from the Strand, as being the more likely direction for the doctor, although less so for the policeman. It took me a good five minutes to find the medico, after being led astray by a red lamp at a private hotel, and another five to get back, with a policeman.

  Foggatt was dead, without a doubt. Probably had shot himself, the doctor thought, from the powder-blackening and other circumstances. Certainly nobody could have left the room by the door, or he must have passed my landing, while the fact of the door being found locked from the inside made the thing impossible. There were two windows to the room, both of which were shut, one being fastened by the catch, while the catch of the other was broken—an old fracture. Below these windows was a sheer drop of fifty feet or more, without a foot or hand-hold near. The windows in the other rooms were shut and fastened. Certainly it seemed suicide—unless it were one of those accidents that will occur to people who fiddle ignorantly with firearms. Soon the rooms were in possession of the police, and we were turned out.

  We looked in at the housekeeper’s kitchen, where her daughter was reviving and calming Mrs. Clayton with gin and water.

  “You mustn’t upset yourself, Mrs. Clayton,” Hewitt said, “or what will become of us all? The doctor thinks it was an accident.”

  He took a small bottle of sewing-machine oil from his pocket and handed it to the daughter, thanking her for the loan.

  * * * *

  There was little evidence at the inquest. The shot had been heard, the body had been found—that was the practical sum of the matter. No friends or relatives of the dead man came forward. The doctor gave his opinion as to the probability of suicide or an accident, and the police evidence tended in the same direction. Nothing had been found to indicate that any other person had been near the dead man’s rooms on the night of the fatality. On the other hand, his papers, bankbook, etc., proved him to be a man of considerable substance, with no apparent motive for suicide. The police had been unable to trace any relatives, or, indeed, any nearer connections than casual acquaintances, fellow-clubmen, and so on. The jury found that Mr. Foggatt had died by accident.

  “Well, Brett,” Hewitt asked me afterward, “what do you think of the verdict?”

  I said that it seemed to be the most reasonable one possible, and to square with the common-sense view of the case.

  “Yes,” he replied, “perhaps it does. From the point of view of the jury, and on their information, their verdict was quite reasonable. Nevertheless, Mr. Foggatt did not shoot himself. He was shot by a rather tall, active young man, perhaps a sailor, but certainly a gymnast—a young man whom I think I could identify if I saw him.”

  “But how do you know this?”

  “By the simplest possible inferences, which you may easily guess, if you will but think.”

  “But, then, why didn’t you say this at the inquest?”

  “My dear fellow, they don’t want any inferences and conjectures at an inquest; they only want evidence. If I had traced the murderer, of course then I should have communicated with the police. As a matter of fact, it is quite possible that the police have observed and know as much as I do—or more. They don’t give everything away at an inquest, you know. It wouldn’t do.”

  “But, if you are right, how did the man get away?”

  “Come, we are near home now. Let us take a look at the back of the house. He couldn’t have left by Foggatt’s landing door, as we know; and as he was there (I am certain of that), and as the chimney is out of the question—for there was a good fire in the grate—he must have gone out by the window. Only one window is possible—that with the broken catch—for all the others were fastened inside. Out of that window, then, he went.”

  “But how? The window is fifty feet up.”

  “Of course it is. But why will you persist in assuming that the only way of escape by a window is downward? See, now, look up there. The window is at the top floor, and it has a very broad sill. Over the window is nothing but the flat face of the gable-end; but to the right, and a foot or two above the level of the top of the window, an iron gutter ends. Observe, it is not of lead composition, but a strong iron gutter, supported, just at its end, by an iron bracket. If a tall man stood on the end of the window-sill, steadying himself by the left
hand and leaning to the right, he could just touch the end of this gutter with his right hand. The full stretch, toe to finger, is seven feet three inches. I have measured it. An active gymnast, or a sailor, could catch the gutter with a slight spring, and by it draw himself upon the roof. You will say he would have to be very active, dexterous, and cool. So he would. And that very fact helps us, because it narrows the field of inquiry. We know the sort of man to look for. Because, being certain (as I am) that the man was in the room, I know that he left in the way I am telling you. He must have left in some way, and, all the other ways being impossible, this alone remains, difficult as the feat may seem. The fact of his shutting the window behind him further proves his coolness and address at so great a height from the ground.”

  All this was very plain, but the main point was still dark.

  “You say you know that another man was in the room,” I said; “how do you know that?”

  “As I said, by an obvious inference. Come, now, you shall guess how I arrived at that inference. You often speak of your interest in my work, and the attention with which you follow it. This shall be a simple exercise for you. You saw everything in the room as plainly as I myself. Bring the scene back to your memory, and think over the various small objects littering about, and how they would affect the case. Quick observation is the first essential for my work. Did you see a newspaper, for instance?”