A Silent Witness

by R. Austin Freeman

  “That rests with you,” replied Thorndyke.

  “Better break the pot, then,” said Woodfield.

  This entailed a further spell of expectant waiting, and we all stood round, gazing impatiently at the crucible as it slowly faded from bright red to dull red and from this to its natural dull drab. It was quite a long time before Woodfield considered it cool enough to be broken, indeed I half suspected him of prolonging our suspense with deliberate malice. At length he took up a peculiarly-shaped hammer which Polton had handed to him, and, laying the crucible on its side, struck it sharply near the bottom with the pointed beak; then he turned the pot over and struck a similar blow on the opposite side; upon which the bottom of the crucible broke off cleanly, exposing the mass of dark, glassy slag, and, embedded in it, a bright button of metal. “What metal is that?” Jervis demanded eagerly.

  The professor struck the button smartly with the hammer, whereupon it detached itself from the slag and rolled on to the plate. “Lead,” said he. “I don’t vouch for its purity, but it is undoubtedly lead.”

  Jervis turned to Thorndyke with a puzzled look. “You can’t be suggesting,” said he, “that this was a case of acute lead poisoning. The circumstances didn’t admit of it, and besides, the quantity of lead is impossibly large.”

  “I should suppose,” interposed Miller, “that the doctor was suggesting a most particularly acute form of lead poisoning, only that it is impossible to imagine that a cremation certificate would be granted in a case where a man had been killed by a pistol shot.”

  “I am not so sure of that,” said Thorndyke; “though it is not likely that a cremation certificate would be applied for under those circumstances. But I am certainly not suggesting lead poisoning.”

  “What do you say is the weight of this button, Thorndyke?” the professor asked.

  “That,” replied Thorndyke, “depends on its relation to the total content of lead in the ashes. What percentage do you suppose has been lost in the process of reduction?”

  “Not more than ten per cent. I hope. You may take this button as representing ninety per cent of the total lead; perhaps a little more.”

  Thorndyke made a rapid calculation on a scrap of paper. “I suggest,” said he, “that the total lead in the ashes was three hundred and eighty-six grains. Deducting a tenth, say thirty-eight and a half grains, we have three hundred and forty-seven and a half grains, which should be the weight of this button.”

  Woodfield picked up the button and striding over to the glass case which contained the chemical balance, slid up the front, and, placing the button in one pan, put the weight corresponding to Thorndyke’s estimate, in the other. On turning the handle that released the balance, it was seen that the button was appreciably heavier than Thorndyke had stated, and Woodfield adjusted the weights with a small pair of forceps until the index stood in the middle of the graduated arc. “The weight is three hundred and forty-nine and a half grains,” said Woodfield. “That means that my assay was rather better than I thought. You were quite right, Thorndyke, as you generally are. I wonder what the object was that weighed three hundred and eighty-six grains. Are you going to tell us?”

  Thorndyke felt in his waistcoat pocket. “It was an object,” said he, “very similar to this.”

  As he spoke, he produced a rather large, dark-coloured bullet, which he handed to Woodfield, who immediately placed it in the pan of the balance and tested its weight. “Just a fraction short of three hundred and eighty-seven grains,” said he.

  The Superintendent peered curiously into the balance-case, and, taking the bullet out of the pan, turned it over in his fingers. “That’s not a modern bullet,” said he. “They don’t make ‘em that size now, and they don’t generally make ‘em of pure lead.”

  “No,” Thorndyke agreed. “They don’t. This is an old French bullet; a chassepot of about 1870.”

  “A chassepot!” exclaimed Humperdinck, with suddenly-awakened interest.

  “Yes,” said Thorndyke; “and this button,”—he picked it up from the floor of the balance-case as he spoke—“was once a chassepot bullet, too. This, Father Humperdinck,” he added, holding out the little mass of metal towards the Jesuit, “was the bullet which struck your friend, Vitalis Reinhardt, near Saarbrück more than thirty years ago.”

  The priest was thunderstruck. For some seconds, he gazed from Thorndyke’s face to the button of lead, with his mouth agape and an expression of utter stupefaction. “But,” he exclaimed, at length, “it is impossible! How can it be, in the ashes of a stranger!”

  “I take it,” said Marchmont, “that Dr. Thorndyke is suggesting that this was the body of Vitalis Reinhardt.”

  “Undoubtedly I am,” said Thorndyke.

  “It sounds a rather bold supposition,” Marchmont observed, a little dubiously. “Isn’t it basing a somewhat startling conclusion upon rather slender data? The presence of the lead is a striking fact, but still, taken alone—”

  “But it isn’t taken alone,” Thorndyke interrupted. “It is the final link in a long chain of evidence. You will hear that evidence later, but, as it happens, I can prove the identity of these remains from facts elicited by the examination that we have just made. Let me put the argument briefly.

  “First, I will draw your attention to these plaster casts, which you have seen me make from the original bones, Take, to begin with, these small fragments. Dr. Jervis will tell you what bones they are.”

  He handed the small casts to Jervis, who looked them over—not for the first time—and passed them to me. “I say that they represent two complete fingers and the first, or proximal, joint of a right thumb. What do you say, Jardine?”

  “That is what I had already made them out to be,” I replied.

  “Very well,” said Thorndyke. “That gives us an important initial fact. These remains contained two complete fingers and the first joint of a thumb. But these remains profess to be those of a man named Septimus Maddock. Now this man is known to have had deformed hands, of the kind described as brachydactylous. In such hands all the fingers are incomplete—they have only two joints instead of the normal three—and the first, or proximal joint of the thumb is absent. Obviously, then, these remains cannot be those of Septimus Maddock, as alleged.

  “But, if not Maddock’s remains, whose are they? From certain facts known to me, I had assumed them to be those of Vitalis Reinhardt. Let us see what support that assumption has received. Reinhardt is known to have been wounded in the right hip by a chassepot bullet, and the bullet was never extracted. Now I find, among these remains, a considerable portion of the right hip-bone. In that bone is a mark which plainly shows that it has been perforated and the perforation repaired, and there is a cavity in which a foreign body of about the size of a chassepot bullet has been partly embedded. The chemical composition of that foreign body is plainly indicated by a stain which surrounds the cavity; which stain is evidently due to oxide of lead. Clearly the foreign body was composed of lead, which will have melted in the cremation furnace and run away, but left a small portion, in the cavity, which small portion, becoming oxidized, the oxide will have liquified and become soaked up by the absorbent bone-ash, thus producing the stain.

  “Finally, we find by assay, that this foreign body actually was composed of lead and that its weight was—within a negligible amount of error—three hundred and eighty-six grains, which is the weight of a chassepot bullet.

  “I say that the evidence, from the ashes alone, is conclusive. But this is only corroborative of conclusions that I had already formed on a quite considerable body of evidence. Are you satisfied, Marchmont? I mean, of course, only in respect of a prima facie case.”

  “Perfectly satisfied,” replied Marchmont. “And now I understand why you insisted on my being present at this investigation and bringing Father Humperdinck; which, I must admit, has been puzzling me the whole day. By the way, I rather infer, from what you said, that there has been foul play. Is that so?”

  “I t
hink,” replied Thorndyke, “there can hardly be a doubt that Reinhardt was murdered by Septimus Maddock.”

  Father Humperdinck’s face suddenly turned purple. “And zis man Maddock,” he exclaimed fiercely, “zis murderer of my poor friendt Vitalis, vere is he?”

  “He is being sought by the police at this moment,” replied Thorndyke.

  “He must be caught!” Father Humperdinck shouted in a furious voice, “and ven he is caught he must be bunished as he deserves. I shall not vun moment rest until he is hanged as high as Haman.” Here I caught a quick glance from Marchmont’s eyes and seemed to hear a faint murmur which framed the words “Vengeance is mine.”

  “But,” the Jesuit continued, after a momentary pause, in the same loud, angry tone: “Zis villain has a double grime gommitted; he has murdered a goot, a chenerous, a bious man; and he has robbed ze boor, ze suffering and ze unfortunate.”

  “How has he done that?” asked Marchmont.

  “By murdering ze benefactor of our zoziety,” was the answer.

  “Yes, to be sure,” agreed the solicitor. “I hadn’t thought of that. Of course, the original will in favour of Miss Vyne probably stands without modification.”

  At this point Superintendent Miller interposed. “You were saying, sir, that the man Maddock is now being sought by the police. Do you mean under that name?”

  “No,” answered Thorndyke. “I mean under the name of Samway. Septimus Maddock, alias Isaac Van Damme, is written off as deceased. But Samway, alias Maddock, alias Burton of Bruges, alias Gill, is his re-incarnation, and, as such, I commend him to your attention; and I hope, Miller, you will be able to produce him shortly, in the flesh. The evidence, as you see, is now ready, and all that is lacking is the prisoner.”

  “He shan’t be lacking long, sir, if any efforts of mine can bring him to light. I see a case here that will pay for all the work that we can put into it; and now, with your permission, doctor, I will take possession of this urn and get off, to see that everything necessary is being done.”

  The Superintendent, as so often happens with departing guests, infected our other two visitors with a sudden desire to be gone. Father Humperdinck, especially, seemed unwilling to lose sight of the police officer—who was correspondingly anxious to escape—and, having wished us a very hasty adieu, hurried down the stairs in his wake, followed, at a greater interval, by his legal adviser.

  * * *

  XXII — THORNDYKE REVIEWS THE CASE

  WHEN Professor Woodfield, having deliberately packed his bag and—to my great relief and Jervis’s—declined Thorndyke’s invitation to stay and take tea with us, presently took his departure, we descended to the sitting-room, whither Polton followed us almost immediately with a tea-tray, having, apparently, boiled the kettle in the adjacent workshop while the final act of the analysis was in progress. He placed the tray on a small table by Thorndyke’s chair, and, evidently, anticipating the inevitable discussion on the results of the analysis, made up the fire on a liberal scale and retired with unconcealed reluctance.

  As soon as we were alone, Jervis opened the subject by voicing his and my joint desire for “more light.”

  “This has been a great surprise to me, Thorndyke,” said he.

  “A complete surprise?” Thorndyke asked.

  “No, I can’t say that. The solution of the problem was one that I had proposed to myself, but I had rejected it as impossible; and it looks impossible still, though I now know it to be the true solution.”

  “I quite appreciate your difficulty,” said Thorndyke, “and I see that if you did not happen to light on the answer to it, the difficulty was insuperable. That was the really brilliant feature in Maddock’s plan. But for a single fact which was almost certain to be overlooked, the real explanation of the circumstances would appear utterly incredible. Even if suspicion had been aroused later and the true explanation suggested, there seemed to be one fact with which it was absolutely irreconcilable.”

  “Yes,” agreed Jervis; “that is what I have felt.”

  “The truth is,” said Thorndyke, “that this crime was planned with the most diabolical cleverness and subtlety. We realize that when we consider by what an infinitely narrow margin it failed. Indeed, we can hardly say that it did fail. As far as we can see, it succeeded completely, and if the criminal could only have accepted its success, there seems to be no reason why any discovery should ever have taken place. Looking back on the case, we see that our experience has been the same as O’Donnell’s; we had no clue whatever excepting the one that was furnished by the criminal himself in his unnecessary efforts to obtain even greater security. Suppose Maddock, having carried out his plan successfully, had been content to leave it at that, who would have known, or even suspected, that a crime had been committed? Not a soul, I believe. But instead of that he must needs do what the criminal almost invariably does; he must tinker at the crime when all is going well and surround himself by a number of needless safeguards by which, in the end, attention is attracted to his doings. He knows, or believes he knows, that Jardine has in his possession certain knowledge of a highly dangerous character; he does not ask himself whether Jardine is aware that he possesses such knowledge, but, appraising that knowledge at what he, himself, knows to be its value, he decides to get rid of Jardine as the one element of danger. And that was where he failed. If he had left Jardine alone, the whole affair would have passed off as perfectly normal and its details would soon have been lost sight of and forgotten. Even as it was, he missed complete success only by a hair’s breadth. But for the most trivial coincidence, Jardine’s body might be lying undiscovered in that cellar at this very moment.”

  “That’s a comfortable thought for you, Jardine,” my younger colleague remarked.

  “Very,” I agreed, with a slight shudder at the recollecting of that horrible death-trap. “But what was the coincidence? I never understood how you came to be in that most unlikely place at that very opportune moment.”

  “It was the merest chance,” replied Thorndyke. “I happened to have called in at the hospital that evening, and, having an hour to spare, it occurred to me to look in at Batson’s and see if you were getting on quite happily in your new command. As I had induced you to take charge, I felt some sort of responsibility in the matter.”

  “It was exceedingly kind of you, sir,” said I.

  “Not in the least,” said Thorndyke. “It was just the ordinary solicitude of the teacher for a promising pupil. Well, when I arrived at the house, I found that excellent girl, Maggie, standing on the doorstep, looking anxiously up and down the street. It seemed that, on reflection, she was still convinced that the works were untenanted, and the oddity of the whole set of circumstances had made her somewhat uneasy. I waited a few minutes and disposed of one or two patients, and then, as you did not return, after what seemed an unaccountably long absence, I very easily induced her to show me where the place was; and when we arrived there, the deserted aspect of the building and the notice board over the gate seemed rather to justify her anxiety.

  “I rang the bell loudly, as I daresay you know, but I did not wait very long. When I failed to get any response, I too, became suspicious, and proceeded without delay to pick the lock of the wicket—and it is most fortunate that the wicket was unprovided with a bolt, which would have delayed me very considerably. You know the rest. When I shouted your name you must have tried to answer, for I caught a kind of muffled groan and the sound of tapping, which guided me and Maggie to your prison. But it was a near thing; for, when I opened the cellar door, you fell out quite unconscious and accompanied by a gush of carbon dioxide that was absolutely stifling.”

  “Yes,” said I, “it was touch and go. A few minutes more and it would have been all up with me. I realised that as soon as I recovered consciousness. But I couldn’t, for the life of me understand why anybody should want to murder me, and I am not so very clear on the subject now. I really knew nothing about Maddock.”

  “You knew more
than anyone else knew, and he thought you knew more than you did. But perhaps it would be instructive to review the case in detail.”

  “It would be very instructive to me,” said Jervis, “for I don’t, even now, see how you managed to bridge over those gaps that stopped me in my attempts to make a hypothesis that covered all the circumstances.”

  “Very well,” said Thorndyke, “then we will begin at the beginning; and the beginning, for me, was the finding of Jardine, as I have described it. Here was a pretty plain case of attempted murder, evidently premeditated and apparently committed by some person who had access to these works; evidently, also, conceived and planned with considerable knowledge, skill and foresight, though with how much foresight I did not realize until I had heard Jardine’s story. When I had Jardine’s account of the affair, I saw that the crime had been planned with quite remarkable ingenuity and judgment; in fact, the circumstances had been so carefully considered, and contingencies so well provided for that, but for a single tactical error the plan would have succeeded. That error was in making the pretended emergency a surgical injury. If the letter to Jardine had stated that a man was in a fit, instead of suffering from a wound, our friend would have had no need to call at the surgery for appliances but would have gone straight to the works. And there, in all probability, his body would still be lying, for no one would have known whither he had gone; and even if his body had been accidentally discovered, all traces of the means by which he had been killed would probably have been removed. There would have been nothing to show that he had not strayed into the deserted factory and turned on the gas himself; indeed, it is pretty certain that matters would have been so arranged as to convey that impression to the persons who made the discovery.”