The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  “Certain particulars that Mr. Brodribb gave concerning Owen made a considerable impression on me. For instance, it appeared that Owen was originally a photo-engraver by trade and that he had later owned a small type-foundry. Also that he had fractured his left kneecap and that this injury was certainly never completely repaired. But the first thing that struck me on looking at this party of three was that whereas Blake appears to have been a respectable man and most unlikely to have committed an atrocious crime such as the one we were investigating, the same could not be said of his two companions, and inevitably I found the question creeping into my mind: Is it certain that those remains were really the remains of Owen? Or may it have been that they were those of Arthur Blake? That these two criminals had murdered Blake when Brodribb’s letter arrived: that Owen had taken the papers and credentials and come to England personating Blake, and that Levinsky had come by another route?

  “It seemed, perhaps, a rather violent supposition; but it was quite possible; and the instant it was adopted as a working hypothesis, all the difficulties of the case vanished as if by magic. We could now account for the mysterious woman. We could also account for Halliburton, for the letters on the mascot could be read either way-o h for Oscar Halliburton or h o for Hugh Owen; and Owen had possessed and used in his type-foundry steel punches exactly like those with which the letters had been made; and further, Owen was a native of Tasmania and had lived many years in Australia. He fitted the mascot perfectly.

  “Then Owen had been a photo-engraver; that is to say, he possessed the very kind of knowledge and skill that was necessary to make the stamps for the fingerprints; and he agreed with the taller of the two criminals in that he had a marked weakness of the left leg. In short, the agreements were so striking as to leave little doubt in my mind that our two criminals were Owen and Levinsky, and that the former was in possession of Beauchamp Blake, personating the murdered owner.

  “One point only remained to be verified in order to complete this aspect of the case. We had to ascertain whether the man who was posing as Arthur Blake had, in fact, fractured knee-cap. I was casting about for some means of getting this information when the third attempt was made on Miss Blake’s life, and it became evident that the danger to her was too great to admit of further delay. Just then Sir Lawrence asked me to go down with him to Aylesbury, and that proposal suggested to me the plan of visiting Beauchamp Blake and making an unmistakable demonstration. I had learned from Mr. Brodribb something of the squire’s habits, and I got further details from the landlord of the ‘King’s Head.’ With the help of the latter I obtained access to the park at the time when the squire would be coming out, and I planted myself, with Anstey, where we were bound to be noticed.

  “My object was twofold. First, I wanted to ascertain, if possible, whether the squire had any abnormal condition of the left leg, and if so, whether that condition was probably due to a fractured knee-cap, and secondly, I proposed to make such a demonstration as would convince him (if he were really Owen) that it was useless to murder Miss Blake until he had settled with me, and that it would be highly unsafe to make any further attempts. To this latter end I attached Polton’s facsimile of the mascot to my watch-guard, where it could hardly fail to be seen, and then, as I have said, I planted myself on the road leading to the gate.

  “Both purposes were achieved. I was able to verify with my own eyes the landlord’s statement that the squire habitually mounted his horse from the off-side, a most inconvenient method of mounting, but one that would be rendered absolutely necessary by a fractured left knee-cap. Then, as I had expected, he recognised me instantly—no doubt from the portrait published in the newspapers—and dismounted to examine me more closely; and when he came near, he saw the mascot and it was obvious that he recognised it. I detached it and handed it to him, giving him such details as must have made clear to him that I knew its history and knew of his connection with it. His manner left me in no doubt that he fully understood the hint and that he accepted my challenge, and further proof was furnished by the fact that he sent a man to shadow us home and ascertain for certain who we were. So that matters were now on a perfectly definite footing, and I may add that further verification, if it had been needed, was supplied by the circumstance that, on this very day, Anstey caught a glimpse of Levinsky, disguised as a man, in the market square at Aylesbury. The rest of the story I think you all know.”

  “Yes,” said Drayton, “we gathered that from your written statement. But what is not clear to me is why you considered it necessary to thrust your head into the lion’s jaws. You seem to have had a complete case against these two wretches. Why couldn’t you have lodged an information and had them arrested?”

  “I was afraid to take the risk,” replied Thorndyke. “To us the case looks complete. But how would it have looked to the police? or to a possibly unimaginative magistrate? or, especially to a jury of ordinary, and perhaps thick-headed, tradesmen and artisans? Juries like direct evidence, and that was what I was trying to produce. I had no doubt that these two persons would try to murder me and Anstey, and that we should prevent them from succeeding. Then we could charge them with the attempt and prove it by direct evidence, after which we could have proceeded confidently with the second charge of the murder of Andrew Drayton.”

  “I think Thorndyke was right,” said I, seeing that Sir Lawrence still looked doubtful. “From my large experience of juries in criminal cases, I feel that this intricate train of inferential evidence would have been rather unconvincing by itself, but that it would have been quite effective if it had come after a charge supported by the testimony of eye-witnesses, such as we should have been.”

  “Well,” said Drayton, “we will agree that the circumstances justified the risk, and certainly the unravelment of this case by means of such almost invisible data is a most remarkable achievement. This exposition has whetted my appetite for the explanation of the other mystery.”

  “Yes,” said Winifred. “I am on tenterhooks to hear how you made the ‘little Sphinx’ answer its own riddle. Shall I hand you the locket?”

  “If you please; and the Book of Hours. And if we can get Polton to put the microscope on the table with the slide that is on the stage, we shall have all that we want for the demonstration.”

  At this Polton emerged unblushingly from the office, and having put the microscope on the table, carefully adjusted the mirror and then, with brazen effrontery, took a long and intent look through the instrument, under the pretence of seeing that the specimen was properly lighted.

  “There is no need for you to go back to the office, Polton,” my colleague said with a smile at his familiar. “We shall want your help with the microscope presently. Draw up a chair for yourself.”

  Polton seated himself opposite the instrument with a smile of intense gratification, and Thorndyke then resumed:

  “This investigation was a much simpler affair than the other. You may remember, Miss Blake, showing me the locket that night when I called with Anstey at your studio, and you will remember that we noted the very unusual construction; the evident purpose of the maker to render it as strong and durable as workmanship could make it. This curious construction—which I pointed out at the time—caused me to examine it rather closely. And then I made a rather strange discovery.”

  Winifred leaned forward and gazed at him with breathless expectancy.

  “It was concerned with the hallmark,” he continued. “There are, as you see, four punch-marks. The first is a capital A with two palm-leaves surmounted by a crown. The second is an escutcheon or shape with the initials A.H. surmounted by a crown and over that a fleur-de-lis. The third is a capital L, and the fourth is the head of an animal which looks like a horse. This grouping shows that the piece is French. The first mark is the town mark, the second the maker’s mark, the third is the date letter, and the fourth is the mark of the Farmer of the Duty. Now, I happened to have had occasion to give some attention to the marks on old French plate, and I
happened to have read, only an hour or two previously, the fragmentary narrative of Percival Blake. Accordingly, when I examined the hallmark and learned from it that this locket had been made in Paris in the year 1751, that fact at once arrested my attention.”

  “How did you learn that from the hallmark?” Winifred asked.

  “It is the function of the hallmark to give that information,” he replied. “The town-mark of Paris is a capital A surmounted by a crown, but it varies in style from year to year. This one is a Roman capital with two palm-leaves and a very small crown. That is the form used in the middle of the eighteenth century, but the date is definitely fixed by the date-letter—in this case a capital L, which indicates the year 1751.

  “It was, of course, a very remarkable coincidence that this locket should have been made at the place and in the year of Judith Blake’s death, and it naturally caused me to look at the little trinket more narrowly. Hitherto I had assumed, as you did, that the object that Percival referred to was the cat’s eye pendant. But I now recalled that he had not specifically mentioned the pendant, and that he had spoken of it as ‘the bauble’ or ‘the trinket,’ never as ‘the jewel.’ It was thus just barely conceivable that this mysterious little object might be the one to which he was referring; and the instant the question was raised, the evidence supporting it began to run together like drops of water.

  “First, there was the inscription, ‘O BIOC BPAXYO H AE TEXNH MAKPH,’ ‘Life is short but Art is long.’ It was the motto of the practitioner of some art or craft. But artists and craftsmen almost invariably use the Latin form, ‘Ars longa, Vita brevis,’ ‘Art is long. Life is short. But there is one body of craftsmen who use the Greek form. It is the motto of the London College of Physicians, and moreover it is written by them in the same uncial characters, with the round, C-shaped sigma. Now Percival was a physician and a fellow of this very college, and he was an enthusiast who originally practised his profession for love and not from necessity or for a livelihood. What more natural than that he should use the motto of his own college?

  “Then there was the construction of the locket—everything sacrificed to permanence and durability. It fitted the circumstances perfectly. And there were the unusual suspension rings, specially adapted to take a cord or thong. I recalled the enigmatic words ‘gave me a string from his bass viol, which he says will be the best of all.’ Remembering that the bass viol would be a viol da gamba or violoncello, not a double-bass, we see that this was true; the stout gut string would last for a century or more.

  “Then again there were the scripture references which you showed me. The first was ‘And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return.’ That was a most striking passage. It was an exact statement of Percival’s aim—incidentally illustrating the way in which the other passages were to be treated; and when I noted that the principal word in the last reference was ‘parchments,’ I felt that a prima facie case had been made out. I had little doubt that this locket was the ‘precious bauble’ that was handed to—and presumably lost by—Jenifer.

  “But after all this was only guesswork. We had to get down to certainties. And, fortunately, there was available an excellent and conclusive test. If the locket was Percival’s, the hair in it was almost certainly Judith’s. Now there was something very unusual about Judith’s hair. During her imprisonment it had undergone a most extraordinary change. Percival tells us that when she was released, ‘her hair, that had been like spun gold, was turned to a strange black.’ This was very remarkable. Judith was evidently a true blonde, and when she was arrested, she must have been getting on for thirty years of age. But the hair of a blonde adult does not turn black from ill-health and grief. It tends rather to turn white. What could be the explanation of the change?

  “It is a very curious one. Judith had been labouring in the mines in the Harz Mountains. These mines yield a number of different metals, and some of them are extremely poisonous. They are ancient mines, and in the Middle Ages, when the properties of metals were less understood, the terrible condition to which persons who worked in them were reduced by chronic poisoning was put down to the influence of a race of malignant gnomes who were believed to inhabit the mines and who were known as kobolds. In particular, the influence of the kobolds came to be associated with a particular, uncanny ore from which no metal could be—in those days—extracted, and in the end this ore came to be known by the name of these mine-gnomes or kobolds, and that name it bears this day, in the slightly altered form of cobalt.

  “Now, the metal, cobalt, has one or two very distinctive properties. One is that of imparting a powerful and beautiful blue colour to substances with which it combines. This was the value of the ore, and for this it has been prized from quite ancient times. We find it in use everywhere. The blue of all the Chinese porcelain is cobalt. The blue of the old Delft pottery is cobalt. The blue in all the old stained-glass windows—and modern ones too—is cobalt.

  “Then this metal has another curious property which it shares with arsenic and one or two other metals. It is capable of being absorbed into the body and producing poisonous effects, and when so absorbed, it becomes deposited in the skin, or, more correctly speaking, in the epidermis and its appendages—the fingernails and the hair. But whereas the outer skin and the nails wear away and are cast off, the hair—especially a woman’s hair—remains attached for long periods. Consequently, in chronic cobalt poisoning, the hair becomes charged with a cobalt compound—probably an oxide—and is stained blue.

  “Bearing these facts in mind, we can now understand what had happened to Judith. She had been sent to labour in a mine which yielded cobalt, and probably nickel. Her hair had not turned black, it had turned blue, though, in the mass, it would appear black—a strange, unnatural black, as Percival tells us. Thus, if the hair in this locket was the hair of Judith Blake, it would appear blue when properly examined. I took an opportunity to get possession of the locket, and that very night I removed the remains of the cover-glass and picked out a single hair, which I mounted in Canada balsam and examined under the microscope. That hair is on the stage of the microscope now. Polton will bring it round and let you see it.”

  Our assistant tenderly carried the microscope round and set it before Winifred, and having adjusted the light and the focus, stepped back to watch the effect.

  “But how extraordinary!” she exclaimed as she looked into the eyepiece. “It looks like a thread of blue glass! And how strange and romantic!”

  Brodribb and Drayton rose from their chairs and came round, all agog to see this prodigy. In succession they gazed at it with murmurs of astonishment and then went back to their seats, still muttering.

  “The appearance of that hair,” Thorndyke resumed, “settled the question conclusively. This was Percival’s trinket beyond a doubt, and all that remained was to read the message inside. As we now knew what to look for, this presented no difficulty at all. It was no cipher or cryptogram. It was simply a collection of texts, from each of which, as the first one showed, the instructed reader would have no difficulty in picking out the significant word or phrase. We may as well just run through them and see what they tell us.

  “Number one, Leviticus 25. 41, we have already considered. It is the preamble which indicates the purport of the remainder. I see you have your notebook. Will you read us out the next?”

  “Number two,” said Winifred, “is Psalms 121, 1: ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help!’ That is the passage, but it doesn’t convey any intelligible meaning to me.”

  “No,” said Thorndyke, “it doesn’t, because you have got the wrong Psalm. You looked up your reference in the English Authorised Version, overlooking the fact that Percival was probably a Catholic and certainly a resident in France, and also that the references were given with Latin titles, suggesting that he used the Latin Vulgate. This happens to be matter of
vital importance in this case, as the Psalms are not numbered quite alike in the two Bibles. Psalm 121 in the Vulgate is 122 in the Authorised Version. Here is the Douay Bible, which is the official translation of the Vulgate, and if we refer to Psalm 121.1 in it, we find ‘I rejoiced at the things that were said to me; We shall go into the house of the Lord.’ That is quite illuminating. It tells us that we are concerned with a church, and the next reference tells us what church. It is Actus Apostolorum 10.5”

  “Yes,” said Winifred, “‘And now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter.’”

  “That,” said Thorndyke, “gives us the church of St Peter. The next,” he continued, glancing at the notebook which Winifred had handed to him, “is Nehemias 8. 4. ‘And Ezra the scribe stood upon a pulpit of wood’—we need not complete the passage. The pulpit of wood is obviously the significant part. Then we come to 3 Lib. Regum 7. 41—by the way, that third book of Kings might have given you a hint that you were not dealing with the Authorised Version. It reads: ‘The two pillars, and the two bowls of the chapiters that were on the top of the two pillars,’ etc. The meaning of this passage was not very clear. It had some connection with the pulpit of St Peters Church, but what the connection was, it was not easy to guess. Of course, directly one saw the pulpit, the meaning was obvious.