The Vanishing Man

by R. Austin Freeman

  CHAPTER XII

  A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY

  It was some two or three mornings after my little supper-party that, asI stood in the consulting-room brushing my hat preparatory to startingon my morning round, Adolphus appeared at the door to announce twogentlemen waiting in the surgery. I told him to bring them in, and amoment later Thorndyke entered, accompanied by Jervis. I noted that theylooked uncommonly large in the little apartment, especially Thorndyke,but I had no time to consider this phenomenon, for the latter, when hehad shaken my hand, proceeded at once to explain the object of theirvisit.

  "We have come to ask a favour, Berkeley," he said; "to ask you to do usa very great service in the interests of your friends, the Bellinghams."

  "You know I shall be delighted," I said warmly. "What is it?"

  "I will explain. You know--or perhaps you don't--that the police havecollected all the bones that have been discovered and deposited them inthe mortuary at Woodford, where they are to be viewed by the coroner'sjury. Now, it has become imperative that I should have more definite andreliable information about them than I can get from the newspapers. Thenatural thing would be for me to go down and examine them myself, butthere are circumstances that make it very desirable that my connectionwith the case should not leak out. Consequently, I can't go myself,and, for the same reason, I can't send Jervis. On the other hand, as itis now stated pretty openly that the police consider the bones to bealmost certainly those of John Bellingham, it would seem perfectlynatural that you, as Godfrey Bellingham's doctor, should go down to viewthem on his behalf."

  "I should like to go," I said. "I would give anything to go; but how isit to be managed? It would mean a whole day off and leaving the practiceto take care of itself."

  "I think that could be arranged," said Thorndyke; "and the matter isreally important for two reasons. One is that the inquest opensto-morrow, and someone certainly ought to be there to watch theproceedings on Godfrey's behalf; and the other is that our client hasreceived notice from Hurst's solicitors that the application would beheard in the Probate Court in a few days."

  "Isn't that rather sudden?" I asked.

  "It certainly suggests that there has been a good deal more activitythan we were given to understand. But you see the importance of theaffair. The inquest will be a sort of dress rehearsal for the ProbateCourt, and it is quite essential that we should have a chance ofestimating the management."

  "Yes, I see that. But how are we to manage about the practice?"

  "We shall find you a substitute."

  "Through a medical agent?"

  "Yes," said Jervis. "Turcival will find us a man; in fact, he has doneit. I saw him this morning; he has a man who is waiting up in town tonegotiate for the purchase of a practice and who would do the job for acouple of guineas. Quite a reliable man. Only say the word, and I willrun off to Adam Street and engage him definitely."

  "Very well. You engage the locum tenens, and I will be prepared to startfor Woodford as soon as he turns up."

  "Excellent!" said Thorndyke. "That is a great weight off my mind. And ifyou could manage to drop in this evening and smoke a pipe with us wecould talk over the plan of campaign and let you know what items ofinformation we are particularly in want of."

  I promised to turn up at King's Bench Walk as soon after half-past eightas possible, and my two friends then took their departure, leaving me toset out in high spirits on my scanty round of visits.

  It is surprising what different aspects things present from differentpoints of view; how relative are our estimates of the conditions andcircumstances of life. To the urban workman--the journeyman baker ortailor, for instance, labouring year in year out in a single building--aholiday ramble on Hampstead Heath is a veritable voyage of discovery;whereas to the sailor the shifting panorama of the whole wide world isbut the commonplace of the day's work.

  So I reflected as I took my place in the train at Liverpool Street onthe following day. There had been a time when a trip by rail to theborders of Epping Forest would have been far from a thrillingexperience; now, after vegetating in the little world of Fetter Lane, itwas quite an adventure.

  The enforced inactivity of a railway journey is favourable to thought,and I had much to think about. The last few weeks had witnessedmomentous changes in my outlook. New interests had arisen, newfriendships had grown up; and, above all, there had stolen into my lifethat supreme influence that, for good or for evil, according to myfortune, was to colour and pervade it even to its close. Those few daysof companionable labour in the reading-room, with the homelyhospitalities of the milk-shop and the pleasant walks homeward throughthe friendly London streets, had called into existence a new world--aworld in which the gracious personality of Ruth Bellingham was the onedominating reality. And thus, as I leaned back in a corner of therailway carriage with an unlighted pipe in my hand, the events of theimmediate past, together with those more problematical ones of theimpending future, occupied me rather to the exclusion of the business ofthe moment, which was to review the remains collected in the Woodfordmortuary, until, as the train approached Stratford, the odours of thesoap and bone-manure factories poured in at the open window and (by anatural association of ideas) brought me back to the object of my quest.

  As to the exact purpose of this expedition, I was not very clear; but Iknew that I was acting as Thorndyke's proxy and thrilled with pride atthe thought. But what particular light my investigations were to throwupon the intricate Bellingham case I had no very definite idea. With aview to fixing the course of procedure in my mind, I took Thorndyke'swritten instructions from my pocket and read them over carefully. Theywere very full and explicit, making ample allowance for my lack ofexperience in medico-legal matters:--

  1. Do not appear to make minute investigations or in any way excite remark.

  2. Ascertain if all the bones belonging to each region are present, and if not, which are missing.

  3. Measure the extreme length of the principal bones and compare those of opposite sides.

  4. Examine the bones with reference to the age, sex, and muscular development of the deceased.

  5. Note the presence or absence of signs of constitutional disease, local disease of bone or adjacent structures, old or recent injuries, and any other departures from the normal or usual.

  6. Observe the presence or absence of adipocere and its position, if present.

  7. Note any remains of tendons, ligaments, or other soft structures.

  8. Examine the Sidcup hand with reference to the question as to whether the finger was separated before or after death.

  9. Estimate the probable period of submersion and note any changes (as, e.g., mineral or organic staining) due to the character of the water or mud.

  10. Ascertain the circumstances (immediate and remote) that led to the discovery of the bones and the names of the persons concerned in those circumstances.

  11. Commit all information to writing as soon as possible, and make plans and diagrams on the spot, if circumstances permit.

  12. Preserve an impassive exterior; listen attentively but without eagerness; ask as few questions as possible; pursue any inquiry that your observations on the spot may suggest.

  These were my instructions, and, considering that I was going merely toinspect a few dry bones, they appeared rather formidable; in fact, themore I read them over the greater became my misgivings as to myqualifications for the task.

  As I approached the mortuary it became evident that some, at least, ofThorndyke's admonitions were by no means unnecessary. The place was incharge of a police-sergeant, who watched my approach suspiciously; andsome half-dozen men, obviously newspaper reporters, hovered about theentrance like a pack of jackals. I presented the coroner's order whichMr. Marchmont had obtained, and which the sergeant read with his backagainst the wall, to prevent the newspaper men from looking over hisshoulder.

&n
bsp; My credentials being found satisfactory, the door was unlocked and Ientered, accompanied by three enterprising reporters, whom, however, thesergeant summarily ejected and locked out, returning to usher me intothe presence and to observe my proceedings with intelligent but highlyembarrassing interest.

  The bones were laid out on a large table and covered with a sheet, whichthe sergeant slowly turned back, watching my face intently as he did soto note the impression that the spectacle made upon me. I imagine thathe must have been somewhat disappointed by my impassive demeanour, forthe remains suggested to me nothing more than a rather shabby set of"student's osteology." The whole collection had been set out (by thepolice-surgeon, as the sergeant informed me) in their proper anatomicalorder; notwithstanding which I counted them over carefully to make surethat none were missing, checking them by the list with which Thorndykehad furnished me.

  "I see you have found the left thigh-bone," I remarked, observing thatthis did not appear in the list.

  "Yes," said the sergeant; "that turned up yesterday evening in a bigpond called Baldwin's Pond in the Sand-pit plain, near Little MonkWood."

  "Is that near here?" I asked.

  "In the forest up Loughton way," was the reply.

  I made a note of the fact (on which the sergeant looked as if he wassorry he had mentioned it), and then turned my attention to a generalconsideration of the bones before examining them in detail. Theirappearance would have been improved and examination facilitated by athorough scrubbing, for they were just as they had been taken from theirrespective resting-places, and it was difficult to decide whether theirreddish-yellow colour was an actual stain or due to a deposit on thesurface. In any case, as it affected them all alike, I thought it aninteresting feature and made a note of it. They bore numerous traces oftheir sojourn in the various ponds from which they had been recovered,but these gave me little help in determining the length of time duringwhich they had been submerged. They were, of course, encrusted with mud,and little wisps of pond-weed stuck to them in places; but these factsfurnished only the vaguest measure of time.

  Some of the traces were, indeed, more informing. To several of thebones, for instance, there adhered the dried egg-clusters of the commonpond-snail, and in one of the hollows of the right shoulder-blade (the"infra-spinous fossa") was a group of the mud-built tubes of the redriver-worm. These remains gave proof of a considerable period ofsubmersion, and since they could not have been deposited on the bonesuntil all the flesh had disappeared, they furnished evidence that sometime--a month or two, at any rate--had elapsed since this had happened.Incidentally, too, their distribution showed the position in which thebones had lain, and though this appeared to be of no importance in theexisting circumstances, I made careful notes of the situation of eachadherent body, illustrating their position by rough sketches.

  The sergeant watched my proceedings with an indulgent smile.

  "You're making a regular inventory, sir," he remarked, "as if you weregoing to put 'em up for auction. I shouldn't think those snails' eggswould be much help in identification. And all that has been donealready," he added as I produced my measuring-tape.

  "No doubt," I replied; "but my business is to make independentobservations, to check the others, if necessary." And I proceeded tomeasure each of the principal bones separately and to compare those ofthe opposite sides. The agreement in dimensions and generalcharacteristics of the pairs of bones left little doubt that all wereparts of one skeleton, a conclusion that was confirmed by the eburnatedpatch on the head of the right thigh-bone and the corresponding patch inthe socket of the right hip-bone. When I had finished my measurements Iwent over the entire series of bones in detail, examining each with theclosest attention for any of those signs which Thorndyke had indicated,and eliciting nothing but a monotonously reiterated negative. They weredistressingly and disappointingly normal.

  "Well, sir, and what do you make of 'em?" the sergeant asked cheerfullyas I shut up my note-book and straightened my back. "Whose bones arethey? Are they Mr. Bellingham's, think ye?"

  "I should be very sorry to say whose bones they are," I replied. "Onebone is very much like another, you know."

  "I suppose it is," he agreed; "but I thought that, with all thatmeasuring and all those notes, you might have arrived at somethingdefinite." Evidently he was disappointed in me; and I was somewhatdisappointed in myself when I contrasted Thorndyke's elaborateinstructions with the meagre result of my investigations. For what didmy discoveries amount to? And how much was the inquiry advanced by thefew entries in my note-book?

  The bones were apparently those of a man of fair though not remarkablemuscular development; over thirty years of age, but how much older I wasunable to say. His height I judged roughly to be five feet eight inches,but my measurements would furnish data for a more exact estimate byThorndyke. Beyond this the bones were quite uncharacteristic. There wereno signs of disease either local or general, no indications of injurieseither old or recent, no departures of any kind from the normal orusual; and the dismemberment had been effected with such care that therewas not a single scratch on any of the separated surfaces. Of adipocere(the peculiar waxy or soapy substance that is commonly found in bodiesthat have slowly decayed in damp situations) there was not a trace; andthe only remnant of the soft structures was a faint indication, like aspot of dried glue, of the tendon on the tip of the right elbow.

  The sergeant was in the act of replacing the sheet, with the air of ashowman who has just given an exhibition, when there came a sharprapping on the mortuary door. The officer finished spreading the sheetwith official precision, and having ushered me out into the lobby,turned the key and admitted three persons, holding the door open afterthey had entered for me to go out. But the appearance of the new-comersinclined me to linger. One of them was a local constable, evidently inofficial charge; a second was a labouring man, very muddy and wet, whocarried a small sack; while in the third I thought I scented aprofessional brother.

  The sergeant continued to hold the door open.

  "Nothing more I can do for you, sir?" he asked genially.

  "Is that the divisional surgeon?" I inquired.

  "Yes. I am the divisional surgeon," the new-comer answered. "Did youwant anything of me?"

  "This," said the sergeant, "is a medical gentleman who has gotpermission from the coroner to inspect the remains. He is acting for thefamily of the deceased--I mean, for the family of Mr. Bellingham," headded in answer to an inquiring glance from the surgeon.

  "I see," said the latter. "Well, they have found the rest of the trunk,including, I understand, the ribs that were missing from the other part.Isn't that so, Davis?"

  "Yes, sir," replied the constable. "Inspector Badger says all the ribsis here, and all the bones of the neck as well."

  "The inspector seems to be an anatomist," I remarked.

  The sergeant grinned. "He's a very knowing gentleman, is Mr. Badger. Hecame down here this morning quite early and spent a long time lookingover the bones and checking them by some notes in his pocket-book. Ifancy he's got something on, but he was precious close about it."

  Here the sergeant shut up rather suddenly--perhaps contrasting his ownconduct with that of his superior.

  "Let us have these new bones out on the table," said the police-surgeon."Take that sheet off, and don't shoot them out as if they were coals.Hand them out carefully."

  The labourer fished out the wet and muddy bones one by one from thesack, and as he laid them on the table the surgeon arranged them intheir proper relative positions.

  "This has been a neatly executed job," he remarked; "none of your clumsyhacking with a chopper or a saw. The bones have been cleanly separatedat the joints. The fellow who did this must have had some anatomicalknowledge, unless he was a butcher, which, by the way, is notimpossible. He has used his knife uncommonly skilfully, and you noticethat each arm was taken off with the scapula attached, just as a butchertakes off a shoulder of mutton. Are there any more bones in that bag?"

>   "No, sir," replied the labourer, wiping his hands with an air offinality on the posterior aspect of his trousers; "that's the lot."

  The surgeon looked thoughtfully at the bones as he gave a final touchto their arrangement, and remarked:

  "The inspector is right. All the bones of the neck are there. Very odd.Don't you think so?"

  "You mean--"

  "I mean that this very eccentric murderer seems to have given himselfsuch an extraordinary amount of trouble for no reason that one can see.There are these neck vertebrae, for instance. He must have carefullyseparated the skull from the atlas instead of just cutting through theneck. Then there is the way he divided the trunk; the twelfth ribs havejust come in with this lot, but the twelfth dorsal vertebra to whichthey belong was attached to the lower half. Imagine the trouble he musthave taken to do that, and without cutting or hacking the bones about,either. It is extraordinary. This is rather interesting, by the way.Handle it carefully."

  He picked up the breast-bone daintily--for it was covered with wetmud--and handed it to me with the remark: "That is the most definitepiece of evidence we have."

  "You mean," I said, "that the union of the two parts into a single massfixes this as the skeleton of an elderly man?"

  "Yes, that is the obvious suggestion, which is confirmed by the depositof bone in the rib-cartilages. You can tell the inspector, Davis, that Ihave checked this lot of bones and that they are all here."

  "Would you mind writing it down, sir?" said the constable. "InspectorBadger said I was to have everything in writing."

  The surgeon took out his pocket-book, and, while he was selecting asuitable piece of paper, he asked: "Did you form any opinion as to theheight of the deceased?"

  "Yes, I thought he would be about five feet eight" (here I caught thesergeant's eyes fixed on me with a knowing leer).

  "I made it five eight and a half," said the police-surgeon; "but weshall know better when we have seen the lower leg-bones. Where was thislot found, Davis?"

  "In the pond just off the road in Lord's Bushes, sir, and the inspectorhas gone off now to--"

  "Never mind where he's gone," interrupted the sergeant. "You just answerquestions and attend to your business."

  The sergeant's reproof conveyed a hint to me on which I was not slow toact. Friendly as my professional colleague was, it was clear that thepolice were disposed to treat me as an interloper who was to be kept outof the "know" as far as possible. Accordingly I thanked my colleague andthe sergeant for their courtesy, and bidding them adieu until we shouldmeet at the inquest, took my departure and walked away quickly until Ifound an inconspicuous position from which I could keep the door of themortuary in view. A few moments later I saw Constable Davis emerge andstride away up the road.

  I watched his rapidly diminishing figure until he had gone as far as Iconsidered desirable, and then I set forth in his wake. The road ledstraight away from the village, and in less than half a mile entered theoutskirts of the forest. Here I quickened my pace to close up somewhat,and it was well that I did so, for suddenly he diverged from the roadinto a green lane, where for a while I lost sight of him. Stillhurrying forward, I again caught sight of him just as he turned off intoa narrow path that entered a beech wood with a thickish undergrowth ofholly, along which I followed him for several minutes, graduallydecreasing the distance between us, until suddenly there fell on my eara rhythmical, metallic sound like the clank of a pump. Soon after Icaught the sound of men's voices, and then the constable struck off thepath into the wood.

  I now advanced more cautiously, endeavouring to locate the search partyby the sound of the pump, and when I had done this I made a littledetour so that I might approach from the opposite direction to that fromwhich the constable had appeared.

  Still guided by the noise of the pump, I at length came out into a smallopening among the trees and halted to survey the scene. The centre ofthe opening was occupied by a small pond, not more than a dozen yardsacross, by the side of which stood a builder's handcart. The littletwo-wheeled vehicle had evidently been used to convey the applianceswhich were deposited on the ground near it, and which consisted of alarge tub--now filled with water--a shovel, a rake, a sieve, and aportable pump, the latter being fitted with a long delivery hose. Therewere three men besides the constable, one of whom was working the handleof the pump, while another was glancing at a paper that the constablehad just delivered to him. He looked up sharply as I appeared, andviewed me with unconcealed disfavour.

  "Hallo, sir!" said he. "You can't come here."

  Now, seeing that I actually was here, this was clearly a mistake, and Iventured to point out the fallacy.

  "Well, I can't allow you to stay here. Our business is of a privatenature."

  "I know exactly what your business is, Inspector Badger."

  "Oh, do you?" said he, surveying me with a foxy smile. "And I expect Iknow what yours is, too. But we can't have any of you newspaper gentryspying on us just at present, so you just be off."

  I thought it best to undeceive him at once, and accordingly, havingexplained who I was, I showed him the coroner's permit, which he readwith manifest annoyance.

  "This is all very well, sir," said he as he handed me back the paper,"but it doesn't authorise you to come spying on the proceedings of thepolice. Any remains that we discover will be deposited in the mortuary,where you can inspect them to your heart's content; but you can't stayhere and watch us."

  I had no defined object in keeping a watch on the inspector'sproceedings; but the sergeant's indiscreet hint had aroused mycuriosity, which was further excited by Mr. Badger's evident desire toget rid of me. Moreover, while we had been talking, the pump had stopped(the muddy floor of the pond being now pretty fully exposed), and theinspector's assistant was handling the shovel impatiently.

  "Now, I put it to you, Inspector," said I, persuasively, "is it politicof you to allow it to be said that you refused an authorisedrepresentative of the family facilities for verifying any statementsthat you may make hereafter?"

  "What do you mean?" he asked.

  "I mean that if you should happen to find some bone which could beidentified as part of the body of Mr. Bellingham, that fact would be ofmore importance to his family than to anyone else. You know that thereis a very valuable estate and a rather difficult will."

  "I didn't know it, and I don't see the bearing of it now" (neither didI, for that matter); "but if you make such a point of being present atthe search, I can't very well refuse. Only you mustn't get in our way,that's all."

  On hearing this conclusion, his assistant, who looked like aplain-clothes officer, took up his shovel and stepped into the mud thatformed the bottom of the pond, stooping as he went and peering among themasses of weed that had been left stranded by the withdrawal of thewater. The inspector watched him anxiously, cautioning him from time totime to "look out where he was treading"; the labourer left the pump andcraned forward from the margin of the mud, and the constable and Ilooked on from our respective points of vantage. For some time thesearch was fruitless. Once the searcher stooped and picked up whatturned out to be a fragment of decayed wood; then the remains of along-deceased jay were discovered, examined, and rejected. Suddenly theman bent down by the side of a small pool that had been left in one ofthe deeper hollows, stared intently into the mud, and stood up.

  "There's something here that looks like a bone, sir," he sang out.

  "Don't grub about, then," said the inspector. "Drive your shovel rightinto the mud where you saw it and bring it to the sieve."

  The man followed out these instructions, and as he came shorewards witha great pile of the slimy mud on his shovel we all converged on thesieve, which the inspector took up and held over the tub, directing theconstable and labourer to "lend a hand," meaning thereby that they wereto crowd round the tub and exclude me as completely as possible. This,in fact, they did very effectively with his assistance, for, when theshovelful of mud had been deposited on the sieve, the four men leanedover it an
d so nearly hid it from view that it was only by craning over,first on one side and then on the other, that I was able to catch anoccasional glimpse of it and to observe it gradually melting away as thesieve, immersed in the water, was shaken to and fro.

  Presently the inspector raised the sieve from the water and stooped overit more closely to examine its contents. Apparently the examinationyielded no very conclusive results, for it was accompanied by a seriesof rather dubious grunts.

  At length the officer stood up, and turning to me with a genial but foxysmile, held out the sieve for my inspection.

  "Like to see what we have found, Doctor?" said he.

  I thanked him and stooped over the sieve. It contained the sort oflitter of twigs, skeleton leaves, weed, pond-snails, dead shells, andfresh-water mussels that one would expect to strain out from the mud ofan ancient pond; but in addition to these there were three small boneswhich at the first glance gave me quite a start until I saw what theywere.

  The inspector looked at me inquiringly. "H'm?" said he.

  "Yes," I replied. "Very interesting."

  "Those will be human bones, I fancy; h'm?"

  "I should say so, undoubtedly," I answered.

  "Now," said the inspector, "could you say, off-hand, which finger thosebones belong to?"

  I smothered a grin (for I had been expecting this question), andanswered:

  "I can say off-hand that they don't belong to any finger. They are thebones of the left great toe."

  The inspector's jaw dropped. "The deuce they are!" he muttered. "H'm. Ithought they looked a bit stout."

  "I expect," said I, "that if you go through the mud close to where thiscame from you'll find the rest of the foot."

  The plain-clothes man proceeded at once to act on my suggestion, takingthe sieve with him to save time. And sure enough, after filling it twicewith the mud from the bottom of the pool, the entire skeleton of thefoot was brought to light.

  "Now you're happy, I suppose," said the inspector when I had checked thebones and found them all present.

  "I should be more happy," I replied, "if I knew what you were searchingfor in this pond. You weren't looking for the foot, were you?"

  "I was looking for anything that I might find," he answered. "I shall goon searching until we have the whole body. I shall go through all thestreams and ponds around here, except Connaught Water. That I shallleave to the last, as it will be a case of dredging from a boat andisn't so likely as the smaller ponds. Perhaps the head will be there;it's deeper than any of the others."

  It now occurred to me that as I had learned all that I was likely tolearn, which was little enough, I might as well leave the inspector topursue his researches unembarrassed by my presence. Accordingly Ithanked him for his assistance and departed by the way I had come.

  But as I retraced my steps along the shady path I speculated profoundlyon the officer's proceedings. My examination of the mutilated hand hadyielded the conclusion that the finger had been removed either afterdeath or shortly before, but more probably after. Someone else hadevidently arrived at the same conclusion, and had communicated hisopinion to Inspector Badger; for it was clear that that gentleman was infull cry after the missing finger. But why was he searching for it herewhen the hand had been found at Sidcup? And what did he expect to learnfrom it when he found it? There is nothing particularly characteristicabout a finger, or, at least, the bones of one; and the object of thepresent researches was to determine the identity of the person of whomthese bones were the remains. There was something mysterious about theaffair, something suggesting that Inspector Badger was in possession ofprivate information of some kind. But what information could he have?And whence could he have obtained it? These were questions to which Icould find no answer, and I was still fruitlessly revolving them when Iarrived at the modest inn where the inquest was to be held, and where Iproposed to fortify myself with a correspondingly modest lunch as apreparation for my attendance at that inquiry.