The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack: 27 Mystery Tales of Dr. Thorndyke & Others

by R. Austin Freeman

  PART II

  RIVAL SLEUTH-HOUNDS

  (Related by Christopher Jervis, M.D.)

  The half-hour that follows breakfast, when the fire has, so to speak, got into its stride, and the morning pipe throws up its clouds of incense, is, perhaps, the most agreeable in the whole day. Especially so when a sombre sky, brooding over the town, hints at streets pervaded by the chilly morning air, and hoots from protesting tugs upon the river tell of lingering mists, the legacy of the lately-vanished night.

  The autumn morning was raw: the fire burned jovially. I thrust my slippered feet towards the blaze and meditated, on nothing in particular, with catlike enjoyment. Presently a disapproving grunt from Thorndyke attracted my attention, and I looked round lazily. He was extracting, with a pair of office shears, the readable portions of the morning paper, and had paused with a small cutting between his finger and thumb. “Bloodhounds again,” said he. “We shall be hearing presently of the revival of the ordeal by fire.”

  “And a deuced comfortable ordeal, too, on a morning like this,” I said, stroking my legs ecstatically. “What is the case?”

  He was about to reply when a sharp rat-tat from the little brass knocker announced a disturber of our peace. Thorndyke stepped over to the door and admitted a police inspector in uniform, and I stood up, and, presenting my dorsal aspect to the fire, prepared to combine bodily comfort with attention to business.

  “I believe I am speaking to Dr. Thorndyke,” said the officer, and, as Thorndyke nodded, he went on: “My name, sir, is Fox, Inspector Fox of the Baysford Police. Perhaps you’ve seen the morning paper?”

  Thorndyke held up the cutting, and, placing a chair by the fire, asked the inspector if he had breakfasted.

  “Thank you, sir, I have,” replied Inspector Fox. “I came up to town by the late train last night so as to be here early, and stayed at an hotel. You see, from the paper, that we have had to arrest one of our own men. That’s rather awkward, you know, sir.”

  “Very,” agreed Thorndyke.

  “Yes; it’s bad for the force and bad for the public too. But we had to do it. There was no way out that we could see. Still, we should like the accused to have every chance, both for our sake and his own, so the chief constable thought he’d like to have your opinion on the case, and he thought that, perhaps, you might be willing to act for the defence.”

  “Let us have the particulars,” said Thorndyke, taking a writing-pad from a drawer and dropping into his armchair. “Begin at the beginning,” he added, “and tell us all you know.”

  “Well,” said the inspector, after a preliminary cough, “to begin with the murdered man: his name is Pratt. He was a retired prison warder, and was employed as steward by General O’Gorman, who is a retired prison governor—you may have heard of him in connection with his pack of bloodhounds. Well, Pratt came down from London yesterday evening by a train arriving at Baysford at six-thirty. He was seen by the guard, the ticket collector and the outside porter. The porter saw him leave the station at six-thirty-seven. General O’Gorman’s house is about half-a-mile from the station. At five minutes to seven the general and a gentleman named Hanford and the general’s housekeeper, a Mrs. Parton, found Pratt lying dead in the avenue that leads up to the house. He had apparently been stabbed, for there was a lot of blood about, and a knife—a Norwegian knife—was lying on the ground near the body. Mrs. Parton had thought she heard some one in the avenue calling out for help, and, as Pratt was just due, she came out with a lantern. She met the general and Mr. Hanford, and all three seem to have caught sight of the body at the same moment. Mr. Hanford cycled down to us, at once, with the news; we sent for a doctor, and I went back with Mr. Hanford and took a sergeant with me. We arrived at twelve minutes past seven, and then the general, who had galloped his horse over the meadows each side of the avenue without having seen anybody, fetched out his bloodhounds and led them up to the knife. All three hounds took up the scent at once—I held the leash of one of them—and they took us across the meadows without a pause or a falter, over stiles and fences, along a lane, out into the town, and then, one after the other, they crossed the road in a bee-line to the police station, bolted in at the door, which stood open, and made straight for the desk, where a supernumerary officer, named Ellis, was writing. They made a rare to-do, struggling to get at him, and it was as much as we could manage to hold them back. As for Ellis, he turned as pale as a ghost.”

  “Was any one else in the room?” asked Thorndyke.

  “Oh, yes. There were two constables and a messenger. We led the hounds up to them, but the brutes wouldn’t take any notice of them. They wanted Ellis.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “Why, we arrested Ellis, of course. Couldn’t do anything else—especially with the general there.”

  “What had the general to do with it?” asked Thorndyke.

  “He’s a J.P. and a late governor of Dartmoor, and it was his hounds that had run the man down. But we must have arrested Ellis in any case.”

  “Is there anything against the accused man?”

  “Yes, there is. He and Pratt were on distinctly unfriendly terms. They were old comrades, for Ellis was in the Civil Guard at Portland when Pratt was warder there—he was pensioned off from the service because he got his left forefinger chopped off—but lately they had had some unpleasantness about a woman, a parlourmaid of the general’s. It seems that Ellis, who is a married man, paid the girl too much attention—or Pratt thought he did—and Pratt warned Ellis off the premises. Since then they had not been on speaking terms.”

  “And what sort of a man is Ellis?”

  “A remarkably decent fellow he always seemed; quiet, steady, good-natured; I should have said he wouldn’t have hurt a fly. We all liked him—better than we liked Pratt, in fact; poor Pratt was what you’d call an old soldier—sly, you know, sir—and a bit of a sneak.”

  “You searched and examined Ellis, of course?”

  “Yes. There was nothing suspicious about him except that he had two purses. But he says he picked up one of them—a small, pigskin pouch—on the footpath of the Thorpe road yesterday afternoon; and there’s no reason to disbelieve him. At any rate, the purse was not Pratt’s.”

  Thorndyke made a note on his pad, and then asked: “There were no blood-stains or marks on his clothing?”

  “No. His clothing was not marked or disarranged in any way.”

  “Any cuts, scratches or bruises on his person?”

  “None whatever,” replied the inspector.

  “At what time did you arrest Ellis?”

  “Half-past seven exactly.”

  “Have you ascertained what his movements were? Had he been near the scene of the murder?”

  “Yes; he had been to Thorpe and would pass the gates of the avenue on his way back. And he was later than usual in returning, though not later than he has often been before.”

  “And now, as to the murdered man: has the body been examined?”

  “Yes; I had Dr. Hills’s report before I left. There were no less than seven deep knife-wounds, all on the left side of the back. There was a great deal of blood on the ground, and Dr. Hills thinks Pratt must have bled to death in a minute or two.”

  “Do the wounds correspond with the knife that was found?”

  “I asked the doctor that, and he said ‘Yes,’ though he wasn’t going to swear to any particular knife. However, that point isn’t of much importance. The knife was covered with blood, and it was found close to the body.”

  “What has been done with it, by the way?” asked Thorndyke.

  “The sergeant who was with me picked it up and rolled it in his handkerchief to carry in his pocket. I took it from him, just as it was, and locked it in a dispatch-box.”

  “Has the knife been recognized as Ellis’s property?”

  “No, sir, it has not.”

  “Were there any recognizable footprints or marks of a struggle?” Thorndyke asked.

  The inspe
ctor grinned sheepishly. “I haven’t examined the spot, of course, sir,” said he, “but, after the general’s horse and the bloodhounds and the general on foot and me and the gardener and the sergeant and Mr. Hanford had been over it twice, going and returning, why, you see, sir—?”

  “Exactly, exactly,” said Thorndyke. “Well, inspector, I shall be pleased to act for the defence; it seems to me that the case against Ellis is in some respects rather inconclusive.”

  The inspector was frankly amazed. “It certainly hadn’t struck me in that light, sir,” he said.

  “No? Well, that is my view; and I think the best plan will be for me to come down with you and investigate matters on the spot.”

  The inspector assented cheerfully, and, when we had provided him with a newspaper, we withdrew to the laboratory to consult time-tables and prepare for the expedition.

  “You are coming, I suppose, Jervis?” said Thorndyke.

  “If I shall be of any use,” I replied.

  “Of course you will,” said he. “Two heads are better than one, and, by the look of things, I should say that ours will be the only ones with any sense in them. We will take the research case, of course, and we may as well have a camera with us. I see there is a train from Charing Cross in twenty minutes.”

  For the first half-hour of the journey Thorndyke sat in his corner, alternately conning over his notes and gazing with thoughtful eyes out of the window. I could see that the case pleased him, and was careful not to break in upon his train of thought. Presently, however, he put away his notes and began to fill his pipe with a more companionable air, and then the inspector, who had been wriggling with impatience, opened fire.

  “So you think, sir, that you see a way out for Ellis?”

  “I think there is a case for the defence,” replied Thorndyke. “In fact, I call the evidence against him rather flimsy.”

  The inspector gasped. “But the knife, sir? What about the knife?”

  “Well,” said Thorndyke, “what about the knife? Whose knife was it? You don’t know. It was covered with blood. Whose blood? You don’t know. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that it was the murderer’s knife. Then the blood on it was Pratt’s blood. But if it was Pratt’s blood, when the hounds had smelt it they should have led you to Pratt’s body, for blood gives a very strong scent. But they did not. They ignored the body. The inference seems to be that the blood on the knife was not Pratt’s blood.”

  The inspector took off his cap and gently scratched the back of his head. “You’re perfectly right, sir,” he said. “I’d never thought of that. None of us had.”

  “Then,” pursued Thorndyke, “let us assume that the knife was Pratt’s. If so, it would seem to have been used in self-defence. But this was a Norwegian knife, a clumsy tool—not a weapon at all—which takes an appreciable time to open and requires the use of two free hands. Now, had Pratt both hands free? Certainly not after the attack had commenced. There were seven wounds, all on the left side of the back; which indicates that he held the murderer locked in his arms and that the murderer’s arms were around him. Also, incidentally, that the murderer is right-handed. But, still, let us assume that the knife was Pratt’s. Then the blood on it was that of the murderer. Then the murderer must have been wounded. But Ellis was not wounded. Then Ellis is not the murderer. The knife doesn’t help us at all.”

  The inspector puffed out his cheeks and blew softly. “This is getting out of my depth,” he said. “Still, sir, you can’t get over the bloodhounds. They tell us distinctly that the knife is Ellis’s knife and I don’t see any answer to that.”

  “There is no answer because there has been no statement. The bloodhounds have told you nothing. You have drawn certain inferences from their actions, but those inferences may be totally wrong and they are certainly not evidence.”

  “You don’t seem to have much opinion of bloodhounds,” the inspector remarked.

  “As agents for the detection of crime,” replied Thorndyke, “I regard them as useless. You cannot put a bloodhound in the witness-box. You can get no intelligible statement from it. If it possesses any knowledge, it has no means of communicating it. The fact is,” he continued, “that the entire system of using bloodhounds for criminal detection is based on a fallacy. In the American plantations these animals were used with great success for tracking runaway slaves. But the slave was a known individual. All that was required was to ascertain his whereabouts. That is not the problem that is presented in the detection of a crime. The detective is not concerned in establishing the whereabouts of a known individual, but in discovering the identity of an unknown individual. And for this purpose bloodhounds are useless. They may discover such identity, but they cannot communicate their knowledge. If the criminal is unknown, they cannot identify him: if he is known, the police have no need of the bloodhound.

  “To return to our present case,” Thorndyke resumed, after a pause; “we have employed certain agents—the hounds—with whom we are not en rapport, as the spiritualists would say; and we have no ‘medium.’ The hound possesses a special sense—the olfactory—which in man is quite rudimentary. He thinks, so to speak, in terms of smell, and his thoughts are untranslatable to beings in whom the sense of smell is undeveloped. We have presented to the hound a knife, and he discovers in it certain odorous properties; he discovers similar or related odorous properties in a tract of land and a human individual—Ellis. We cannot verify his discoveries or ascertain their nature. What remains? All that we can say is that there appears to exist some odorous relation between the knife and the man Ellis. But until we can ascertain the nature of that relation, we cannot estimate its evidential value or bearing. All the other ‘evidence’ is the product of your imagination and that of the general. There is, at present, no case against Ellis.”

  “He must have been pretty close to the place when the murder happened,” said the inspector.

  “So, probably, were many other people,” answered Thorndyke; “but had he time to wash and change? Because he would have needed it.”

  “I suppose he would,” the inspector agreed dubiously.

  “Undoubtedly. There were seven wounds which would have taken some time to inflict. Now we can’t suppose that Pratt stood passively while the other man stabbed him—indeed, as I have said, the position of the wounds shows that he did not. There was a struggle. The two men were locked together. One of the murderer’s hands was against Pratt’s back; probably both hands were, one clasping and the other stabbing. There must have been blood on one hand and probably on both. But you say there was no blood on Ellis, and there doesn’t seem to have been time or opportunity for him to wash.”

  “Well, it’s a mysterious affair,” said the inspector; “but I don’t see how you are going to get over the bloodhounds.”

  Thorndyke shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “The bloodhounds are an obsession,” he said. “The whole problem really centres around the knife. The questions are, Whose knife was it? And what was the connection between it and Ellis? There is a problem, Jervis,” he continued, turning to me, “that I submit for your consideration. Some of the possible solutions are exceedingly curious.”

  As we set out from Baysford station, Thorndyke looked at his watch and noted the time. “You will take us the way that Pratt went,” he said.

  “As to that,” said the inspector, “he may have gone by the road or by the footpath; but there’s very little difference in the distance.”

  Turning away from Baysford, we walked along the road westward, towards the village of Thorpe, and presently passed on our right a stile at the entrance to a footpath.

  “That path,” said the inspector, “crosses the avenue about half-way up. But we’d better keep to the road.” A quarter of a mile further on we came to a pair of rusty iron gates one of which stood open, and, entering, we found ourselves in a broad drive bordered by two rows of trees, between the trunks of which a long stretch of pasture meadows could be seen on either hand. It was a fine
avenue, and, late in the year as it was, the yellowing foliage clustered thickly overhead.

  When we had walked about a hundred and fifty yards from the gates, the inspector halted.

  “This is the place,” he said; and Thorndyke again noted the time.

  “Nine minutes exactly,” said he. “Then Pratt arrived here about fourteen minutes to seven, and his body was found at five minutes to seven—nine minutes after his arrival. The murderer couldn’t have been far away then.”

  “No, it was a pretty fresh scent,” replied the inspector. “You’d like to see the body first, I think you said, sir?”

  “Yes; and the knife, if you please.”

  “I shall have to send down to the station for that. It’s locked up in the office.”

  He entered the house, and, having dispatched a messenger to the police station, came out and conducted us to the outbuilding where the corpse had been deposited. Thorndyke made a rapid examination of the wounds and the holes in the clothing, neither of which presented anything particularly suggestive. The weapon used had evidently been a thick-backed, single-edged knife similar to the one described, and the discolouration around the wounds indicated that the weapon had a definite shoulder like that of a Norwegian knife, and that it had been driven in with savage violence.

  “Do you find anything that throws any light on the case?” the inspector asked, when the examination was concluded.

  “That is impossible to say until we have seen the knife,” replied Thorndyke; “but while we are waiting for it, we may as well go and look at the scene of the tragedy. These are Pratt’s boots, I think?” He lifted a pair of stout laced boots from the table and turned them up to inspect the soles.

  “Yes, those are his boots,” replied Fox, “and pretty easy they’d have been to track, if the case had been the other way about. Those Blakey’s protectors are as good as a trademark.”

  “We’ll take them, at any rate,” said Thorndyke; and, the inspector having taken the boots from him, we went out and retraced our steps down the avenue.