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

by R. Austin Freeman

  “It was over, and I had hardly realized that the final stage had begun. In an instant, as it seemed, that yelping, murderous wretch had subsided into a huddled, inert heap. It was a quick and merciful dispatch. By the time I had cleaned the blade and replaced it in its scabbard, the last twitchings had ceased. As I stood and looked down at him, I felt something of the chill of an anticlimax. It had all gone off so easily.

  “Now that it was finished, my thoughts went back to the final purpose of my quest. Was this man, by any chance, the wretch whom I was seeking? It did not seem likely, and yet the possibility must be considered. The first question was as to his hair. Stooping down, with my pocket scissors I cut off a good-sized lock and secured it in an envelope for future examination. Then, taking out my pocketbook, I pressed his fingers on some of the blank leaves. The natural surface of his hands offered a passable substitute for ink and the fingerprints could be further developed at home.

  “Then arose a more difficult question. I naturally wished to add him to my collection; but the thing seemed impossible. I certainly could not take him away with me. But if I left him exposed, he would undoubtedly be found and buried and thus an excellent specimen would be lost to science. There was only one thing to be done. The middle of the chalk pit was occupied by a large area covered with nettles and other large weeds. Probably no human being trod on that space from one year’s end to another, for the stinging nettles, four or five feet high, were enough to keep off stray children. Even now the spring vegetation was coming up apace. If I placed the body inconspicuously in the middle of the weedy area it would soon be overgrown and hidden. Then the natural agencies would do the rougher part of my work. Necrophagous insects and other vermin would come to the aid of air, moisture and bacteria, and I could return in the autumn and gather up the bones all ready for the museum.

  “This rather makeshift plan I proceeded to execute. Transporting the material to the middle of the weed-grown space, I covered it lightly with twigs and various articles of loose rubbish. It was now quite invisible, and I was turning away to go when suddenly I bethought me of the dry preparation of the head that ought to accompany the skeleton. Without that, the specimen would be incomplete; and an incomplete specimen would spoil the series. I reflected awhile. It seemed a pity to spoil the completeness of the series for the sake of a little trouble. I had a good-sized bag with me and a quantity of stout brown paper in it in which the bulbs had been wrapped. Why not?

  “In the end, I decided that the series should not be spoilt. I need not describe the obvious details of the simple procedure. When I came up out of the chalk pit a quarter of an hour later, my bag contained the material for the required preparation of a mummified head.

  “I soon struck the familiar footpath and set forth at a brisk pace to catch the late train from Gravesend. It was a long walk and a pleasant one, though the bag was uncomfortably heavy. I thought, with grim amusement, of Grayson’s gang of footpads. It would be a quaint situation if I encountered some of them and was robbed of my bag. The possibilities that the idea opened out were highly diverting and kept me entertained until I at last reached Gravesend Station and was bundled by the guard into a first-class compartment just as the train was starting. I should have preferred an empty compartment, but there was no choice; and as three of the corners were occupied, I took possession of the fourth. The rack over my seat was occupied by a bag about the size of my own, apparently the property of a clergyman who sat in the opposite corner, so I had to place my bag in the rack over his head.

  “I watched him during the journey as he sat opposite me reading the Church Times and wondered how he would feel if he knew what was in the bag above him. Probably he would have been quite disturbed; for many of these clerics entertain the quaintest of old-world ideas. And he was mighty near to knowing, too; for when the train had stopped at Hither Green and was just about to move off, he suddenly sprang up, exclaiming, ‘God bless my soul!’ and snatching my bag from the rack, darted out on the platform. I immediately grabbed his bag from my rack and rushed out after him as the train started, hailing him to stop. ‘Hi! My good sir! You’ve taken my bag.’

  “‘Not at all,’ he replied indignantly. ‘You’re quite mistaken.’ And then, as I held out his own bag, he looked from one to the other, and, to my horror, pressed the clasp of my bag and pulled it wide open.

  “On what small chances do great events turn! But for the brown paper in my bag, there would have been a catastrophe. As it was, when his eye lighted on that rough, globular paper parcel he handed me my bag with an apologetic smirk and received his own in exchange. But after that, I kept my property in my hand until I was safe within the precincts of my laboratory.

  “The usual disappointment awaited me when I came to examine the hair and fingerprints. He was not the man whom I sought. But he made an acceptable addition to the Series of Criminal Anthropology in my museum, for I duly collected the bones from the great nettle bed in the chalk pit early in the following September, and set them, properly bleached and riveted together, in the large wall-case. But this specimen had a further, though indirect, value. From him I gathered a useful hint by which I was subsequently guided into a new and fruitful field of research.

  “(See Catalogue, Numbers 6A and 6B.)”

  CHAPTER V

  BY-PRODUCTS OF INDUSTRY

  The next entry in the amazing “Museum Archives” exhibited my poor friend Humphrey Challoner in circumstances that were to me perfectly incredible. When I recall that learned, cultivated man as I knew him, I find it impossible to picture him living amidst the indescribably squalid surroundings of the London Ghetto, the tenant of a sordid little shop in an East End by-street. Yet this appears actually to have been his condition at one time—but let me quote the entry in his own words, which need no comments of mine to heighten their strangeness.

  “Events connected with the acquirement of Numbers 7, 8 and 9 in the Anthropological Series:

  “We are the creatures of circumstance. Blind chance, which guided that unknown wretch to my house in the dead of the night and which led my dear wife to her death at his murderous hands, also impelled that other villain (Number 6, Anthropological Series) to pursue me to the lonely chalk pit, where he would have done me to death had I not fortunately anticipated his intentions. So, too, it was by a mere chance that I presently found myself the proprietor of a shop in a Whitechapel back-street.

  “Let me trace the connections of events.

  “The first link in the chain was a visit that I had paid in my younger days to Moscow and Warsaw, where I had stayed long enough to acquire a useful knowledge of Russian and Yiddish. The second link was the failure of my plan to lure the murderer of my wife—and, incidentally, other criminals—to my house. The trap had been scented not only by the criminals but also by the police, of whom one had visited my museum with very evident suspicion as to the nature of my specimens.

  “After the visit of the detective, I was rather at a loose end. That unknown wretch was still at large. He had to be found and I had to find him since the police could not. But how? That detective had completely upset my plans and, for a time, I could think of no other. Then came the dirty rascal who had tried to murder me in the chalk pit; and from his mongrel jargon, half cockney, half foreign, I had gathered a vague hint. If I could not entice the criminal population into my domain, how would it be to reconnoiter theirs? The alien area of London was well known to me, for it had always seemed interesting since my visit to Warsaw, and, judging from the police reports, it appeared to be a veritable happy hunting ground for the connoisseur in criminals.

  “Hence it was that my unrest led me almost daily to perambulate that strange region east of Aldgate where uncouth foreign names stare out from the shop signs and almost every public or private notice is in the Hebrew character. Dressed in my shabbiest clothes, I trudged, hour after hour and day after day, through the gray and joyless streets and alleys, looking earnestly into the beady eyes and broad faces of the
East-European wayfarers and wondering whether any of them was the man I sought.

  “One evening, as I was returning homeward through the district that lies at the rear of Middlesex Street, my attention was arrested by a large card tacked on the door of a closed shop. A dingy barber’s pole gave a clue to the nature of the industry formerly carried on, and the card—which was written upon in fair and even scholarly Hebrew characters—supplied particulars. I had stopped to read the inscription, faintly amused at the incongruity between the recondite Oriental lettering and the matter-of-fact references to ‘eligible premises’ and ‘fixtures and goodwill,’ when the door opened and two men came out. One was a typical English Jew, smart, chubby and prosperous; the other was evidently a foreigner.

  “Both men stood aside to enable me to continue my reading, and, as I was about to turn away, the smarter of the two addressed me.

  “‘Good chanth here, misther. Nithe little bithness going for nothing. No charge for goodwill or fixtures. Ready-made bithneth and nothing to pay but rent.’

  “‘Ja!’ the other man broke in, ‘dat shop is a leedle goldmine; und you buys ’im for noding.’

  “It was an absurd situation. I was beginning smilingly to shake my head when the Jew resumed eagerly:

  “I tell you, misther, itth a chanth in a million. A firth clath bithneth and not a brown to pay for the goodwill. Come in and have a look round,’ he added persuasively.

  “I suppose I am curious by nature. At any rate, I am sure it was nothing but idle curiosity to see what the interior of a Whitechapel house was like that led me to follow the two men into the dark and musty smelling shop. But hardly had my eyes lighted on the frowsy fixtures and appurtenances of the trade when there flashed into my mind a really luminous idea.

  “‘Why did the last man leave?’ I asked.

  “The Jew caught the lapel of my coat and exclaimed impressively:

  “‘The lath man wath a fool. Got himself mixthed up with the crookth. Thet up a roulette table in the thellar and let ’em come and gamble away their thwag. Thtoopid thing to do, though, mind you, he did a rare good line while it lathted. Got the sthuff for nothing, you thee.’ His tone at this point was regretfully sympathetic.

  “‘What happened in the end?’ I asked.

  “‘The copperth dropped on him. Thomebody gave him away.’

  “‘Some of the ladies, perhaps,’ I suggested.

  “‘Ach! Zo!’ the other man burst in fiercely, ‘Of gourse it vas der vimmen! It is always der vimmen. Dese dam vimmen, dey makes all der drabble!’ He thumped the table with his fist, and then, catching the Hebrew’s eye, suddenly subsided into silence.

  “From the shop we proceeded to the little parlor behind, from which a door gave access, by a flight of most dangerous stone steps, to the large cellar. This was lighted by a grating from the back yard, with which it also communicated by a flight of steps and a door. We next examined the yard itself, a small paved enclosure with a gate opening on an alley, and occupied at the moment by an empty beer barrel, a builder’s handcart and a dead cat.

  “‘Like to thee the upstairth roomth?’ inquired the Hebrew gentleman, whose name I understood to be Nathan. I nodded abstractedly and followed him up the stairs, gathering a general impression of all-pervading dirt. The upper rooms were of no interest to me after what I had seen downstairs.

  “‘Well,’ said Mr. Nathan when we were once more back in the shop, ‘what do you think of it?’

  “I did not answer his question literally. If I had, I should have startled him. For I thought the place absolutely ideal for my purpose. Just consider its potentialities! I was searching for a criminal whom I could identify by his hair. Here was a barber’s shop in the heart of a criminal neighborhood and admittedly the late haunt of criminals. Those criminals were certain to come back. I could examine their hair at my leisure; and—there was the cellar. It was, I repeat, absolutely ideal.

  “‘I think the place will suit me,’ I said.

  “Mr. Nathan beamed on me. ‘Of courth,’ he said, ‘referentheth will be nethethary, or rent in advanthe.’

  “‘A year’s rent in advance will do, I suppose?’ said I; and Mr. Nathan nearly jumped clear off the floor. A few minutes later I departed, the accepted tenant (under the pseudonym of Simon Vosper) of Samuel Nathan, with the understanding that I should deliver my advance rent in banknotes and that he should have the top-dressing of dirt removed from the house and the name of Vosper painted over the shop.

  “My preparations for the new activities on which I was to enter were quickly made. In my Bloomsbury house I installed as caretaker a retired sergeant-major of incomparable taciturnity. I locked up the museum wing and kept the keys. I took a few lessons in haircutting from a West-End barber. I paid my advance rent, sent in a set of bedroom furniture to my new premises in Saul Street, Whitechapel, abandoned the habit of shaving for some ten days, and then took possession of the shop.

  “At first the customers were few and far between. A stray coster or carman came in from time to time, but mostly the shop was silent and desolate. But this did not distress me. I had various preparations to make and a plan of campaign to settle. There were the cellar stairs, for instance; a steep flight of stone steps, unguarded by baluster or handrail. They were very dangerous. But when I had fitted a sort of giant stride by suspending a stout rope from the ceiling, I was able to swing myself down the whole flight in perfect safety. Other preparations consisted in the placing, of an iron safe in the parlor (with a small mirror above it) and the purchase of a tin of stiff cart-grease and a few large barrels. These latter I bought from a cooper in the form of staves and hoops, and built them up in the cellar in my rather extensive spare time.

  “Meanwhile trade gradually increased. The harmless coster and laborer began to be varied by customers rather more in my line; in fact, I had not quite completed my arrangements when I got the first windfall.

  “It was a Wednesday evening. I had nearly finished shaving a large, military looking laborer when the door opened very quietly and a seedy, middle-aged man entered and sat down. His movements were silent—almost stealthy; and, when he had seated himself, he picked up a newspaper from behind which I saw him steal furtive and suspicious glances at the patient in the operating chair. The latter, being scraped clean, rose to depart, and the newcomer underwent a total eclipse behind the newspaper.

  “‘Oo’s ’e?’ he demanded, when the laborer was safely outside.

  “‘I don’t know him,’ I replied, ‘but I should say, by his hands, a laborer.’

  “‘Looked rather like a copper,’ said my customer. He took his place in the vacated chair with a laconic ‘’Air cut,’ and then became conversational.

  “‘So you’ve took on Polensky’s job?’

  “I nodded at the mirror that faced us (Polensky was my predecessor) and he continued, ‘Polensky’s doing time, ain’t he?’

  “I believed he was and said so, and my friend then asked:

  “‘Young Pongo ever come in here now?’

  “Naturally I had never heard of young Pongo, but I felt that I must not appear too ignorant. It were better to invent a little.

  “‘Pongo,’ I ruminated; ‘Pongo. Is that the fellow who was with Joe Bartels in that job at—er—you know?’

  “‘No, I don’t,’ said my friend. ‘And ’oo’s Joe Bartels?’

  “‘Oh, I thought you knew him; but if you don’t I’d better say no more. You see, I don’t know who you are.’

  “‘Don’t yer. Then I’ll tell yer. I’m Spotty Bamber, of Spitalfields, that’s ’oo I am. So now you know.’

  “I made a mental note of the name (the first part of which had apparently been suggested by Mr. Bamber’s complexion) and my attention must have wandered somewhat, for my patient suddenly shouted: ‘’Ere! I say! I didn’t come ’ere to be scalped. I come to ’ave my ’air cut.’

  “I apologized and led the conversation back to Polensky.

  “‘Ah,’ said Bambe
r, ‘’e was a downy ’un, ’e was. Bit too downy. Opened his mouth too wide. Wanted it all for nix. That was why he got peached on—’ Here Spotty turned his head with a jerk—‘What are you looking at me through that thing for? My ’ed ain’t as small as all that.’

  “‘That thing’ was a Coddington lens, through which I examined the hair of every customer with a view to identification. But I did not tell Mr. Bamber this. My explanation was recondite and rather obscure, but it seemed to satisfy him.

  “‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’re a rum cove. Talk like a blooming toff too, you do.’ I made a careful mental note of that fact and determined to study the local dialect. Meanwhile I explained, ‘I wasn’t always a hairdresser, you know.’

  “‘So I should suppose,’ answered Spotty, twisting his neck to get a look at his poll in the glass. ‘What you’d call a bloomin’ ammerchewer.’ He stood up, shook himself and tendered a half crown in payment, which I examined carefully before giving change. Then I brought out of my pocket a handful of assorted coins, including two sovereigns, a quantity of silver and some coppers. I do not ordinarily carry my money mixed up in this slovenly fashion, but had adopted the habit, since I came to the shop, for a definite reason; and was now justified by the avaricious glare that lighted up in Spotty’s eye at the sight of the coins in my hand.

  “I picked out his change deliberately and handed it to him, when he took it and stood for a few seconds, evidently thinking hard. Suddenly he thrust his hand into his pocket and said, ‘I suppose, mister, you haven’t got such a thing as a fi-pun-note what you can give me in exchange for five jimmies?’ He held out five sovereigns, which I took from him and inspected critically.