The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  The fall confused me for a moment and as I lay, half-dazed, I was horrified to see Marion dart out of the studio. In an instant she was kneeling by my side with her arm around my neck. “Stephen! Oh, Stephen, darling!” she sobbed and gazed into my face with eyes full of terror and affection, oblivious of everything but my peril. I besought her to go back, and struggled to get out my pistol, for the man, still gaining on his pursuers, was now rapidly approaching. He had flung away his second pistol and had drawn a large knife, and as bore down on us, mad with rage and terror, he gibbered and grinned like a wild cat.

  When he was but a couple of dozen paces away, I saw Thorndyke raise his pistol and take a careful aim. But before he had time to fire, a most singular diversion occurred. From the open door of the studio Miss Boler emerged, swinging a massive stool with amazing ease. The man, whose eyes were fixed on me and Marion, did not observe her until she was within a few paces of him; when, gathering all her strength, she hurled the heavy stool with almost incredible force. It struck him below the knees, knocking his feet from under him, and he fell with a sort of dive or half-somersault, falling with the hand that grasped the knife under him.

  He made no attempt to rise, but lay with slightly twitching limbs but otherwise motionless. Miss Boler stalked up to him and stood looking down on him with grim interest until Thorndyke, still holding his pistol, stooped and, grasping one arm, gently turned him over. Then we could see the handle of the knife sticking out from his chest near the right shoulder.

  “Ha!” said Thorndyke. “Bad luck to the last. It must have gone through the arch of the aorta. But perhaps it is just as well.”

  He rose and, stepping across to where I sat, supported by Marion and still nursing my pistol, bent over me with an anxious face.

  “What is it, Gray?” he asked. “Not a fracture, I hope?”

  “I don’t think so,” I replied. “Damaged muscle and perhaps nerve. It is all numb at present, but it doesn’t seem to be bleeding much. I think I could hobble if you would help me up.”

  He shook his head and beckoned to a couple of constables, with whose aid he carried me into the studio and deposited me on the sofa. Immediately afterwards the two wounded officers were brought in, and I was relieved to hear that neither of them was dangerously hurt, though the sergeant had a fractured arm and Barber a flesh-wound of the chest and a cracked rib. The ladies having been politely ejected into the garden, Thorndyke examined the various injuries and applied temporary dressings, producing the materials from a very business-like-looking bag which he had providently brought with him. While he was thus engaged, three constables entered carrying the corpse, which, with a few words of apology, they deposited on the floor by the side of the sofa.

  I looked down on the ill-omened figure with lively curiosity; and especially was I impressed and puzzled by the very singular appearance of the face. Its general colour was of that waxen pallor characteristic of the faces of the dead, particularly of those who have died from haemorrhage. But the nose and the acne patches remained unchanged. Indeed, their colour seemed intensified, for their vivid red ‘stared’ from the surrounding white like the painted patches on a down’s face. The mystery was solved when, the surgical business being concluded, Barber came and seated himself on the edge of the sofa.

  “Masterly make-up, that,” said he, nodding at the corpse. “Looks queer enough now; but when he was alive you couldn’t spot it, even in daylight.”

  “Make-up!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t know you could make-up off the stage.”

  “You can’t wear a celluloid nose off the stage, or a tie-on beard,” he replied. “But when it is done as well as this—a touch or two of nose-paste or toupee-paste, tinted carefully with grease-paint and finished up with powder—it’s bard to spot. These experts in make-up are a holy terror to the police.”

  “Did you know that he was made up? I asked, looking at Thorndyke.

  “I inferred that he was,” the latter replied, “and so did Sergeant Barber. But now we had better see what his natural appearance is.”

  He stooped over the corpse and with a small ivory paper-knife scraped from the end of the nose and the parts adjacent a layer of coloured plastic material about the consistency of modelling—wax. Then with vaseline and cotton-wool he cleaned away the red pigment until the pallid skin showed unsullied.

  “Why, it is Morris after all!” I exclaimed. “It is perfectly incredible; and you seemed to remove such a very small quantity of paste, too! I wouldn’t have believed that it would make such a change.”

  “Not after that very instructive demonstration that Miss D’Arblay gave us with the day and the plaster mask?” he asked with a smile.

  I smiled sheepishly in return. “I told you I was a fool, sir,” and then, as a new idea burst upon me, I asked: “And that other man—the hook-nosed man?”

  “Morris—that is to say, Bendelow,” he replied, “with a different, more exaggerated make-up.”

  I was pondering with profound relief on this answer when one of the painter-detectives entered in search of the superintendent.

  “We got into the house from the back, sir,” he reported. “The woman is dead. We found her lying on the bed in the first-floor front; and we found a tumbler half-full of water and this by the bedside.”

  He exhibited a small, wide-mouthed bottle labelled ‘Potassium Cyanide,’ which the superintendent took from him.

  “I will come and look over the house presently,” the latter said. “Don’t let anybody in; and let me know when the cabs are here.”

  “There are two here now, sir,” the detective announced, “and they have sent down three wheeled stretchers.”

  “One cab will carry our two casualties and I expect the Doctor will want the other. The bodies can be put on two of the stretchers, but you had better send the woman here for Dr. Gray to see.”

  The detective saluted and retired, and in a few minutes a stretcher dismounted from its carriage was borne in by two constables and placed on the floor beside Morris’s corpse. But even now, prepared as I was, and knowing who the new arrival must be, I looked doubtfully at the pitiful effigy that lay before me so limp and passive, that but an hour since had been a strong, courageous, resourceful woman. Not until the white wig, the cap and the spectacles had been removed, the heavy eyebrows detached with spirit and the dark pigment cleaned away from the eyelids, could I say with certainty that this was the corpse of Mrs. Morris.

  “Well, Doctor,” said the superintendent, when the wounded and the dead had been borne away and we were alone in the studio, “you have done your part to a finish, as usual, but ours is a bit of a failure. I should have liked to bring that fellow to trial.”

  “I sympathize with you. Miller,” replied Thorndyke. “The gallows ought to have had him. But yet I am not sure that what has happened is not all for the best. The evidence in both cases—the D’Arblay and the Van Zellen murders—is entirely circumstantial and extremely intricate. That is not good evidence for a jury. A conviction would not have been a certainty either here or in America; and an acquittal would have been a disaster that I don’t dare to think of. No, Miller, I think that, on the whole, I am satisfied, and I think that you ought to be, too.”

  “I suppose I ought,” Miller conceded, “but it would have been a triumph to put him in the dock, after he had been written off as dead and cremated. However, we must take things as we find them, and now I had better go and look over that house.”

  With a friendly nod to me, he took himself off, and Thorndyke went off to notify the ladies that the intruders had departed.

  As he returned with them I heard Marion cross-examining him with regard to my injuries and listened anxiously for his report.

  “So far as I can see. Miss D’Arblay,” he answered, “the damage is confined to one or two muscles. If so, there will be no permanent disablement and he should soon be quite well again. But he will want proper surgical treatment without delay. I propose to take him straight to our ho
spital, if he agrees.”

  “Miss Boler and I were hoping,” said Marion, “that we might have the privilege of nursing him at our house.”

  “That is very good of you,” said Thorndyke, “and perhaps you might look after him during his convalescence. But for the present he needs skilled surgical treatment. If it should not be necessary for him to stay in the hospital after the wound has been attended to, it would be best for him to occupy one of the spare bedrooms at my chambers, where he can be seen daily—the surgeon and I can keep an eye on him. Come,” he added coaxingly, “let us make a compromise. You or Miss Boler shall come to the Temple every day for as long as you please and do what nursing is necessary. There is a spare room of which you can take possession; and as to your work here, Polton will give you any help that he can. How will that do?”

  Marion accepted the offer gratefully (with my concurrence), but begged to be allowed to accompany me to the hospital.

  “That was what I was going to suggest,” said Thorndyke. “The cab will hold the four of us, and the sooner we start the better.”

  Our preparations were very soon made. Then the door was opened, I was assisted out through a lane of hungry-eyed spectators, held at bay by two constables, and deposited in the cab; and when the studio had been locked up, we drove off, leaving the neighbourhood to settle down to its normal condition.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Thorndyke Disentangles the Threads

  The days of my captivity at Number 5A Kings Bench Walk passed with a tranquillity that made me realize the weight of the incubus that had been lifted. Now, in the mornings, when Polton ministered to me—until Arabella arrived and was ungrudgingly installed in office—I could let my untroubled thoughts stray to Marion, working alone in the studio with restored security, free for ever from the hideous menace which hung over her. And later, when she herself, released by her faithful apprentice, came to take her spell of nursing, what a joy it was to see her looking so fresh and rosy, so youthful and buoyant!

  Of Thorndyke—the giver of these gifts—I saw little in the first few days, for he had heavy arrears of work to make up. However, he paid me visits from time to time, especially in the mornings and at night, when I was alone, and very delightful those visits were. For he had now dropped the investigator and there had come into his manner something new, something fatherly or elder-brotherly; and he managed to convey to me that my presence in his chambers was a source of pleasure to him—a refinement of hospitality that filled up the cup of my gratitude to him.

  It was on the fifth day, when I was allowed to sit up in bed—for my injury was no more than a perforating wound of the outer side of the calf, which had missed every important structure—that I sat watching Marion making somewhat premature preparations for tea, and observed with interest that a third cup had been placed on the tray.

  “Yes,” Marion replied to my inquiry, “‘the Doctor’ is coming to tea with us today. Mr. Polton gave me the message when he arrived.” She gave a few further touches to the tea-set and continued: “How sweet Dr. Thorndyke has been to us, Stephen! He treats me as if I were his daughter, and however busy he is, he always walks with me to the Temple gate and puts me into a cab. I am infinitely grateful to him—almost as grateful as I am to you.”

  “I don’t see what you have got to be grateful to me for,” I remarked.

  “Don’t you?” said she. “Is it nothing to me, do you suppose, that in the moment of my terrible grief and desolation, I found a noble chivalrous friend whom I trusted instantly, that I have been guarded through all the dangers that threatened me, and that at last I have been rescued from them and set free to go my ways in peace and security? Surely, Stephen, dear, all this is abundant matter for gratitude. And I owe it all to you.”

  “To me!” I exclaimed in astonishment, recalling secretly what a consummate donkey I had been. “But there, I suppose it is the way of a woman to imagine that her particular gander is a swan.”

  She smiled a superior smile. “Women,” said she, “are very intelligent creatures. They are able to distinguish between swans and ganders, whereas the swans themselves are apt to be muddle-headed and self-depreciatory.”

  “I agree to the muddle-headed factor,” I rejoined, “and I won’t be unduly ostentatious as to the ganderism. But to return to Thorndyke, it is extraordinarily good of him to allow himself to be burdened with me.”

  “With us,” she corrected.

  “It is the same thing, sweetheart. Do you know if he is going to give us a long visit?”

  “I hope so,” she replied. “Mr. Polton said that he had got through his arrears of work and had this afternoon free.”

  “Then,” said I, “perhaps he will give us the elucidation that he promised me some time ago. I am devoured by curiosity as to how he unravelled the web of mystification that the villain, Bendelow, spun round himself.”

  “So am I,” said she; “and I believe I can hear his footsteps on the stair.”

  A few moments later Thorndyke entered the room and, having greeted us with quiet geniality, seated himself in the easy-chair by the table and regarded us with a benevolent smile.

  “We were just saying, sir,” said I, “how very kind it is of you to allow your chambers to be invaded by a stray cripple and his—his belongings.”

  “I believe you were going to say ‘baggage’;” Marion murmured.

  “Well,” said Thorndyke, smiling at the interpolation, “I may tell you both in confidence that you were talking nonsense. It is I who am the beneficiary.”

  “It is a part of your goodness to say so, sir,” I said.

  “But,” he rejoined, “it is the simple truth. You enable me to combine the undoubted economic advantages of bachelordom with the satisfaction of having a family under my roof, and you even allow me to participate in a way, as a sort of supercargo, in a certain voyage of discovery which is to be undertaken by two young adventurers in the near future—in the very near future, as I hope.”

  “As I hope, too,” said I, glancing at Marion, who had become a little more rosy than usual and who now adroitly diverted the current of the conversation.

  “We were also wondering,” said she, “if we might hope for some enlightenment on things which have puzzled us so much lately.”

  “That,” he replied, “was in my mind when I arranged to keep this afternoon and evening free. I wanted to give Stephen—who is my professional offspring, so to speak—a full exposition of this very intricate and remarkable case. If you, my dear, will keep my cup charged as occasion arises, I will begin forthwith. I will address myself to Stephen, who has all the facts first-hand; and if, in my exposition, I should seem somewhat callously to ignore the human aspects of this tragic story—aspects which have meant so much in irreparable loss and bereavement to you, poor child—remember that it is an exposition of evidence, and necessarily passionless and impersonal.”

  “I quite realize that,” said Marion, “and you may trust me to understand.”

  He bowed gravely, and, after a brief pause, began: “I propose to treat the subject historically, so to speak; to take you over the ground that I traversed myself, recounting my observations and inferences in the order in which they occurred. The inquiry falls naturally into certain successive stages, corresponding to the emergence of new facts, of which the first was concerned with the data elicited at the inquest. Let us begin with them.

  “First, as to the crime itself. It was a murder of a very distinctive type. There was evidence, not only of premeditation in the bare legal sense, but of careful preparation and planning. It was a considered act and not a crime of impulse or passion. What could be the motive for such a crime? There appeared to be only two alternative possibilities: either it was a crime of revenge or a crime of expediency. The hypothesis of revenge could not be explored, because there were no data excepting the evidence of the victim’s daughter, which was to the effect that deceased had no enemies, actual or potential; and this evidence was supported by the very d
eliberate character of the crime.

  “We were therefore thrown back on the hypothesis of expediency, which was, in fact, the more probable one, and which became still more probable as the circumstances were further examined. But having assumed, as a working hypothesis, that this crime had been committed in pursuit of a definite purpose which was not revenge, the next question was. What could that purpose have been? And that question could be answered only by a careful consideration of all that was known of the parties to the crime—the criminal and the victim and their possible relations to one another.

  “As to the former, the circumstances indicated that he was a person of some education, that he had an unusual acquaintance with poisons and such social position and personal qualities as would enable him to get possession of them; that he was subtle, ingenious and resourceful, but not far-sighted, since he took risks that could have been avoided. His mentality appeared to be that of the gambler, whose attention tends to be riveted on the winning chances and who makes insufficient provision for possible failure. He staked everything on the chance of the needle-puncture being overlooked and the presence of the poison being undiscovered.

  “But the outstanding and most significant quality was his profound criminality. Premeditated murder is the most atrocious of crimes; and murder for expediency is the most atrocious form of murder. This man, then, was of a profoundly criminal type and was, most probably, a practising criminal.