Lord Hammerton put up his monocle and favored me with a truly British stare. “It is unusual,” he remarked slowly, “to find such a clear comprehension of this subject in a feminine mind.”
They all laughed at this; but I went on: “It is easy enough to make the spectacular detective of fiction show marvellous penetration and logical deduction when the antecedent circumstances are arranged carefully to prove it all; but place even Sherlock Holmes face to face with a total stranger, and I, for one, don’t believe that he could tell anything definite about him.”
“Oh, come now! I can’t agree to that,” said Lord Hammerton, more interestedly than he had spoken before. “I believe there is much in the detective instinct besides the exotic and the artificial. There is a substantial basis of divination built on minute observation, and which I have picked up in some measure myself.”
“Let us test that statement,” cried Herbert Gay. “Here comes Mr. Wayne, Harold’s tutor. Lord Hammerton never has seen him, and before Wayne even speaks let Lord Hammerton tell us some detail, which he divines by observation.”
All agreed to this, and a few minutes later Mr. Wayne came up. We laughingly explained the situation to him and asked him to have himself deduced.
Lord Hammerton looked at Arthur Wayne for a few minutes, and then said, still in his deliberate drawl: “You have lived in Japan for the past seven years, in Government service in the interior, and only recently have returned.”
A sudden silence fell upon us all—not so much because Lord Hammerton made deductions from no apparent evidence, but because we all knew Mr. Wayne had told Detective Prout that he never had been in Japan.
Fred Farland recovered himself first, and said: “Now that you’ve astonished us with your results, tell us how you attained them.”
“It is simple enough,” said Lord Hammerton, looking at young Wayne, who had turned deathly white. “It is simple enough, sir. The breast-pocket on the outside of your coat is on the right-hand side. Now it never is put there. Your coat is a good one—Poole, or some London tailor of that class. He never made a coat with an outer breast-pocket on the right side. You have had the coat turned—thus the original left-hand pocket appears now on the right side.
“Looking at you, I see that you have not the constitution which could recover from an acute attack of poverty. If you had it turned from want, you would not have your present effect of comfortable circumstances. Now, you must have had it turned because you were in a country where tailoring is not frequent, but sewing and delicate manipulation easy to find. India? You are not bronzed. China? The same. Japan? Probable; but not treaty ports—there are plenty of tailors there. Hence, the interior of Japan.
“Long residence, to make it incumbent on you to get the coat turned, means Government service, because unattached foreigners are allowed only as tourists. Then the cut of the coat is not so very old, and as contracts run seven or fourteen years with the Japanese, I repeat that you probably resided seven years in the interior of Japan, possibly as an irrigation engineer.”
I felt sorry then for poor Mr. Wayne. Lord Hammerton’s deductions were absolutely true, and coming upon the young man so suddenly he made no attempt to refute them.
And so as he had been so long in Japan, and must have been familiar with rock crystals for years, Fred questioned him sternly in reference to his false statements.
Then he broke down completely and confessed that he had taken Christabel’s crystal because it had fascinated him.
He declared that he had a morbid craving for crystals; that he had crept down to the present-room late that night, merely to look at the wonderful, beautiful ball; that it had so possessed him that he carried it to his room to gaze at for awhile, intending to return with it after an hour or so. When he returned he saw Fred Farland, and dared not carry out his plan.
“And the footprints?” I asked eagerly.
“I made them myself,” he explained with a dogged shamefacedness. “I did have a moment of temptation to keep the crystal, and so tried to make you think that a burglar had taken it; but the purity and beauty of the ball itself so reproached me that I tried to return it. I didn’t do so then, and since——”
“Since?” urged Fred, not unkindly.
“Well, I’ve been torn between fear and the desire to keep the ball. You will find it in my trunk. Here is the key.”
There was a certain dignity about the young man that made him seem unlike a criminal, or even a wrong-doer.
As for me, I entirely appreciated the fact that he was hypnotized by the crystal and in a way was not responsible. I don’t believe that man would steal anything else in the world.
Somehow the others agreed with me, and as they had recovered the ball, they took no steps to prosecute Mr. Wayne.
He went away at once, still in that dazed, uncertain condition. We never saw him again; but I hope for his own sake that he never was subjected to such a temptation.
Just before he left, I said to him out of sheer curiosity: “Please explain one point, Mr. Wayne. Since you opened and closed that window purposely to mislead us, since you made those footprints in the flower-bed for the same reason, and since to do it you must have gone out and then come back, why were the outgoing footprints made over the incoming ones?”
“I walked backward on purpose,” said Mr. Wayne simply.
The Crime at Big Tree Portage
Hesketh Prichard
Although many might think that Sherlock Holmes had superhuman abilities, there were real-life individuals who were remarkable at understanding their environment and tracking animals and people. During the height of Holmes’s popularity, The Strand highlighted the abilities of the Bedouin trackers in Egypt and of aborigines in Australia. The British explorer, hunter, soldier and cricketer Major Hesketh Vernon Prichard (1876–1922) also possessed these skills and utilised them for his series of stories about November Joe—so named because of when he was born—set in the wilds of Canada. These were serialized in Pearson’s Magazine in 1912 and published in book form as November Joe, Detective of the Woods in 1913. The book version expanded and revised many of the stories, changing Joe’s relationship with the narrator James Quaritch. I prefer the original magazine version of which the following was the first in the series. Prichard wrote at the start of the book edition that Holmes’s abilities for observation and deduction were “the every-day routine of a woodsman.” In November Joe, therefore, we see someone who is not so much larger-than-life or transcendent, but genuinely skilled.
Hesketh Prichard was born into a military family in India, but his father died just before his birth, so he returned home to England with his mother, with whom he would later collaborate on much of his writing. Under the joint pseudonym of E. and H. Heron they wrote one of the first series of occult detective stories featuring psychic specialist Flaxman Low, collected as Ghosts (1899). Prichard was best known for his many stories about Don Q, a Spanish nobleman wrongly accused of murder, who escapes to the mountains and operates like a modern Robin Hood. Prichard was himself a remarkable marksman and was appointed as a sniping expert to the Third Army during the First World War. He taught soldiers not only better marksmanship but how to improve their observational skills from the trenches. Prichard was only forty-five when he died, reportedly of some form of blood disorder, though it was subsequently believed to be malaria.
B EFORE I set out upon my narrative, I should like the reader to give a few thoughts to the very marked difference which surrounds the great subject of crime and its detection when the locality is shifted from a populous or even settled country to the loneliness of some wild region.
In the midst of a city any crime of magnitude is most frequently discovered within a few hours of its committal, but in the woods it is far otherwise. There, nature is the criminal’s best ally. She covers his deeds with her leaves and her snow; his trail she washes away with her rain and, more than all, she provides him with a vast stage of refuge over which she sends the appointed
hours of darkness. Life in the wilderness is beautiful and sweet, but it has its sombre places, and they are often difficult indeed to unveil.
On the other hand, observation and deduction are part and parcel of the woodman’s daily existence. He reads as he runs. The earth at his feet makes a page for him to peruse. Where he who is town-bred sees nothing but a series of slurred footsteps in the morning dew, the ordinary dweller in the woods can learn something from them, sometimes in a manner and with an exactitude that seems little short of a miracle.
Along the borders of Beauce and Maine, between the States and Canada, lies a land of spruce forest and of hardwood ridges. Here little farms stand on the edge of the big timber, and far beyond them, in the depths of the woodlands, lie lumber-camps and the wide-flung paths of trappers and pelt-hunters.
I recall a certain night early in the fall when I visited Harding’s, the house of the Beauce farmer where I meant to put up for the night. Mrs. Harding received me genially and placed an excellent supper before me. While I was eating it a squall blew up with the fall of darkness and I was glad enough to find myself in safe shelter. Outside the wind was swishing among the pines which enclosed the farmhouse, when, inside, the bell of the telephone, which connected us with St. George, forty miles distant, rang suddenly and incongruously.
Mrs. Harding answered it and this is what I heard.
“My husband won’t be home to-night; he’s gone into St. George …No, I’ve no one to send...but how can I? There is no one here but me and the children…Well, there’s Mr. Quaritch, a sport, staying here. No, I couldn’t ask him.”
I came forward. “Why not?” I inquired.
Mrs. Harding shook her head as she stood still holding the receiver. She was a matron of distinct comeliness, and she cooked excellently.
“You can ask me anything,” I urged.
“They want you to carry a message to November Joe, the Woods Detective,” she explained. “It’s the Provincial Police on the ’phone.”
“November is a friend of mine,” I said.
Mrs. Harding looked at me doubtfully. “He made me promise that I wouldn’t send any sports after him. They all want him now he’s famous.”
“I hunted with him years ago when he lived on the Montmorency.”
Her face relaxed at this. “Well, perhaps…” she conceded.
“So, I’d like to carry the message,” I said, “if I can.”
“Oh, yes, you can, though it’s quite a way to his place. November doesn’t care about strangers; he’s a solitary man. You must follow the tote-road you were on to-day, fifteen miles, turn west at the deserted lumber-camp, cross Charley’s Brook; Joe lives about two acres up the far bank.” She lifted the receiver. “Shall I say you’ll go?”
“By all means.”
A few seconds later I was at the ’phone taking my instructions. It appeared that the speaker was the Chief of Police in Quebec, who was, of course, well known to me. I will let you have his own words.
“Very good of you, I’m sure, Mr. Quaritch. Yes, we want you to tell November Joe that a man named Henry Lyon has been shot in his camp down at Big Tree Portage, on Depot River. The news came in just now, telephoned through by a lumber-jack who found the body. Tell Joe success means fifty dollars for him. Yes, that’s all. Much obliged. Good-night.”
I hung up the receiver, turned to Mrs. Harding and told her the facts. That capable woman nodded decisively.
“You won’t have much time to lose, then. I’ll put you up a bite to eat.”
As I hastily got my things together, I began asking questions about Joe. “Is November connected with the Police now?”
Mrs. Harding answered me by another question. “Didn’t you read in the newspapers about the New York Sportsman?”
I remembered the case at once; it had been a nine-days’ wonder of headline and comment, and I could hardly have forgotten it even if I had not previously known November Joe, whose name was prominently connected with it.
“November was the man who put together that puzzle for them,” she said. “Ever since they’ve got him to work for them when they can. The Americans offered him a hundred dollars a month to go to New York and take on detective jobs there.”
“And he refused?” I questioned, for this was news to me.
She nodded. “Said he wouldn’t leave the woods for a thousand.”
“Well?”
“Then they offered him the thousand.”
“With what result?”
“He started out in the night for his shack. Came in here as he passed, and told my husband he would rather be tied to a tree in the woods for the rest of his life than live on Fifth Avenue. The lumber-jacks and guides hereabouts think no end of him. Now you’d best saddle Laura—the big grey mare you’ll find in the near stall of the stable—and get off. There’ll be a moon when the storm blows itself out.”
By the help of a lantern, I saddled Laura and stumbled away into the dark and the wind. For the chief part of the way I had to lead the mare, and the dawn was grey in the open places before I reached the deserted lumber-camp, and all the time my mind was busy with memories of November.
The fact was, I knew him exceedingly well, having spent two seasons with him when he was engaged as a guide at a big hunting-camp in Maine; and, indeed, at the time I write I was in hopes of securing him again. It chanced that in those past days I had been able to be of service to him with the result that something of a bond of friendship existed between us.
The sun was showing over the tree-tops when I drew rein by the door of the shack and came in view of the slim but powerful figure of a young man, who was busy rolling some gear into a pack. He raised himself and, just as I was about to speak, drawled out,
“My! Mr. Quaritch. Who’d ’a thought it?”
The young woodsman came forward with a lazy stride and gave me welcome with a curious gentleness that was one of his characteristics, but which left me in no doubt as to its geniality. That gentle voice grew, I knew from old experience, only more soft in the presence of peril.
I feel that I shall never be able to describe November. Suffice it to say that he was one of the finest specimens of manhood that ever grew up among the balsam trees: near six feet tall, lithe and powerful, with a neck like a column, and a straight-featured face, the sheer good looks of this son of the woods were disturbing. He was clearly the master of his environment.
“Well, well, Mr. Quaritch, I’m glad you come along today. There’s a fine buck using a round by Widdeney Pond. Maybe we will get a look at him come sunset, for he most always moves out of the thick bush about dark.” Then humour lit a spark in his splendid grey eyes as he looked up at me. “But we’ll have a cup o’ tea first.”
November Joe’s weakness for tea had long been a target upon which I had often exercised my faculty for irony and banter. The weakness was evidently still alive. I smiled; perhaps it was a relief to find a weak point in this alarmingly adequate young man.
“I don’t know about hunting, November,” I said. “I’ve come with a message for you. It appears that a man named Henry Lyon has been shot in his camp at Big Tree Portage. A lumberman found him, and ’phoned the news into Quebec. The Chief of Police wants you to take on the case. He told me to say that success would mean fifty dollars.”
“That’s too bad,” said Joe. “I’d sooner hunt a deer than a man any day. Makes a fellow feel less bad-like when he comes up with him. Well, Mr. Quaritch, I must be getting off, but you’ll be wanting another guide. There’s Charley Paul down to St. Amiel.”
“How far is it to Big Tree Portage?” I asked.
“Five miles to the river and eight up it.”
“I’d like to go with you.”
He gave me one of his quick smiles. “Then I guess you’ll have to wait for your breakfast till we are in the canoe. Turn the mare loose. She’ll make Harding’s by afternoon.”
Joe entered the shack and came out again with one or two articles. In five minutes he had put
together a tent, my sleeping-things, food, ammunition, and all necessaries. The whole bundle he secured with his packing-strap, lifted it and set out through the woods.
I have sometimes wondered whether he was not irked at the prospect of my proffered companionship, and whether he did not at first intend to shake me off by obvious and primitive methods. He has in later days assured me that neither of my suppositions was correct, but there has been a far-off look in his eyes while he denied them, which leaves me still half-doubtful.
However these things may be, it is certain that I had my work, and more than my work, cut out for me in keeping up with November, who, although he was carrying a pack while I was unloaded, travelled through the woods at an astonishing pace.
He moved from the thighs, bending a little forward. However thick the underbush and the trees, he never once halted nor even wavered, but passed onward with neither check nor pause. Meanwhile, I blundered in his tracks until at last, when we came out on the bank of a strong and swiftly flowing river, I was fairly done, and felt that, had the journey continued much longer, I must have been forced to give in.
November threw down his pack and signed to me to remain beside it, while he walked off downstream, only to reappear with a canoe. We were soon aboard her. Of the remainder of our journey I am sorry to say I can recall very little. The rustle of the water as it hissed against our stern and the wind in the birches and junipers on the banks soon lulled me. I was only awakened by the canoe touching the bank at Big Tree.
Big Tree Portage is a recognized camping-place, situated between the great main lumber-camp of Briston and Harpur and the settlement of St. Amiel, and it lies about equidistant from both. Old fire-scars in the clearing showed grey not more than thirty yards from the water. Thus from the canoe we were in full sight of the scene of the tragedy.
A small shelter of boughs stood beneath the spreading branches of a large fir, the ground all about was strewn with tins and debris. On a bare space in front of the shelter, beside the charred logs of a campfire, a patch of blue caught my eye. This resolved itself into the shape of a huge man. He lay upon his face, and the wind fluttered the blue blouse which he was wearing. It came upon me with a shock that I was looking at the body of Henry Lyon, the murdered man.
Toward the Golden Age Page 3