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

by R. Austin Freeman

  “My dear Jervis,” he exclaimed; “I’m surprised at you. How many times has it happened within our knowledge that women have identified the bodies of total strangers as those of their husbands, fathers or brothers? The thing happens almost every year. As to this old woman, she saw a body with an unrecognisable face, dressed in the clothes of her missing lodger. Of course, it was the clothes that she identified.”

  “I suppose it was,” I agreed; and then I said: “You seem to suggest the possibility of foul play.”

  “Well,” he replied, “if you consider those seven points, you will agree with me that they present a cumulative discrepancy which it is impossible to ignore. The whole significance of the case turns on the question of identity; for, if this was not the body of Thomas Elton, it would appear to have been deliberately prepared to counterfeit that body. And such deliberate preparation would manifestly imply an attempt to conceal the identity of some other body.

  “Then,” he continued, after a pause, “there is this deed. It looks quite regular and is correctly stamped, but it seems to me that the surface of the paper is slightly altered in one or two places and if one holds the document up to the light, the paper looks a little more transparent in those places.” He examined the document for a few seconds with his pocket lens, and then passing lens and document to me, said: “Have a look at it, Jervis, and tell me what you think.”

  I scrutinised the paper closely, taking it over to the window to get a better light; and to me, also, the paper appeared to be changed in certain places.

  “Are we agreed as to the position of the altered places?” Thorndyke asked when I announced the fact.

  “I only see three patches,” I answered. “Two correspond to the name, Thomas Elton, and the third to one of the figures in the policy number.”

  “Exactly,” said Thorndyke, “and the significance is obvious. If the paper has really been altered, it means that some other name has been erased and Elton’s substituted; by which arrangement, of course, the correctly dated stamp would be secured. And this—the alteration of an old document—is the only form of forgery that is possible with a dated, impressed stamp.”

  “Wouldn’t it be rather a stroke of luck,” I asked, “for a forger to happen to have in his possession a document needing only these two alterations?”

  “I see nothing remarkable in it,” Thorndyke replied. “A moneylender would have a number of documents of this kind in hand, and you observe that be was not bound down to any particular date. Any date within a year or so of the issue of the policy would answer his purpose. This document is, in fact, dated, as you see, about six months after the issue of the policy.”

  “I suppose,” said I, “that you will draw Stalker’s attention to this matter.”

  “He will have to be informed, of course,” Thorndyke replied; “but I think it would be interesting in the first place to call on Mr. Hyams. You will have noticed that there are some rather mysterious features in this case, and Mr. Hyams’s conduct, especially if this document should turn out to be really a forgery, suggests that he may have some special information on the subject.” He glanced at his watch and, after a few moments’ reflection, added: “I don’t see why we shouldn’t make our little ceremonial call at once. But it will be a delicate business, for we have mighty little to go upon. Are you coming with me?”

  If I had had any doubts, Thorndyke’s last remark disposed of them; for the interview promised to be quite a sporting event. Mr. Hyams was presumably not quite newly-hatched, and Thorndyke, who utterly despised bluff of any kind, and whose exact mind refused either to act or speak one hair’s breadth beyond his knowledge, was admittedly in somewhat of a fog. The meeting promised to be really entertaining.

  Mr. Hyams was “discovered,” as the playwrights have it, in a small office at the top of a high building in Queen Victoria Street. He was a small gentleman, of sallow and greasy aspect, with heavy eyebrows and a still heavier nose.

  “Are you Mr. Gordon?” Thorndyke suavely inquired as we entered.

  Mr. Hyams seemed to experience a momentary doubt on the subject, but finally decided that he was not. “But perhaps,” he added brightly, “I can do your business for you as well.”

  “I daresay you can,” Thorndyke agreed significantly; on which we were conducted into an inner den, where I noticed Thorndyke’s eye rest for an instant on a large iron safe.

  “Now,” said Mr. Hyams, shutting the door ostentatiously, “what can I do for you?”

  “I want you,” Thorndyke replied, “to answer one or two questions with reference to the claim made by you on the’ Griffin’ Office in respect of Thomas Elton.”

  Mr. Hyams’s manner underwent a sudden change. He began rapidly to turn over papers, and opened and shut the drawers of his desk, with an air of restless preoccupation.

  “Did the ‘Griffin’ people send you here?” he demanded brusquely.

  “They did not specially instruct me to call on you,” replied Thorndyke.

  “Then,” said Hyams bouncing out of his chair, “I can’t let you occupy my time. I’m not here to answer conundrums from Torn, Dick or Harry.”

  Thorndyke rose from his chair. “Then I am to understand,” he said, with unruffled suavity, “that you would prefer me to communicate with the Directors, and leave them to take any necessary action.”

  This gave Mr. Hyams pause. “What action do you refer to?” he asked. “And, who are you?”

  Thorndyke produced a card and laid it on the table. Mr. Hyams had apparently seen the name before, for he suddenly grew rather pale and very serious.

  “What is the nature of the questions that you wished to ask?” he inquired.

  “They refer to this claim,” replied Thorndyke. “The first question is, where is Mr. Gordon?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hyams.

  “Where do you think he is?” asked Thorndyke.

  “I don’t think at all,” replied Hyams, turning a shade paler and looking everywhere but at Thorndyke.

  “Very well,” said the latter, “then the next question is, are you satisfied that this claim is really payable?”

  “I shouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t been,” replied Hyams.

  “Quite so,” said Thorndyke; “and the third question is, are you satisfied that the mortgage deed was executed as it purports to have been?”

  “I can’t say anything about that,” replied Hyams, who was growing every moment paler and more fidgety, “it was done before my time.”

  “Thank you,” said Thorndyke. “You will, of course, understand why I am making these inquiries.”

  “I don’t,” said Hyams.

  “Then,” said Thorndyke, “perhaps I had better explain. We are dealing, you observe, Mr. Hyams, with the case of a man who has met with a violent death under somewhat mysterious circumstances. We are dealing, also, with another man who has disappeared, leaving his affairs to take care of themselves; and with a claim, put forward by a third party, on behalf of the one man in respect of the other. When I say that the dead man has been imperfectly identified, and that the document supporting the claim presents certain peculiarities, you will see that the matter calls for further inquiry.”

  There was an appreciable interval of silence. Mr. Hyams had turned a tallowy white, and looked furtively about the room, as if anxious to avoid the stony gaze that my colleague had fixed on him.

  “Can you give us no assistance?” Thorndyke inquired, at length.

  Mr. Hyams chewed a pen-holder ravenously, as he considered the question. At length, he burst out in an agitated voice: “Look here, sir, if I tell you what I know, will you treat the information as confidential?

  “I can’t agree to that, Mr. Hyams,” replied Thorndyke. “It might amount to compounding a felony. But you will be wiser to tell me what you know. The document is a side-issue, which my clients may never raise, and my own concern is with the death of this man.”

  Hyams looked distinctly relieved. “If that’s so,�
�� said he, “I’ll tell you all I know, which is precious little, and which just amounts to this: Two days after Elton was killed, someone came to this office in my absence and opened the safe. I discovered the fact the next morning. Someone had been to the safe and rummaged over all the papers. It wasn’t Gordon, because he knew where to find everything; and it wasn’t an ordinary thief, because no cash or valuables had been taken. In fact, the only thing that I missed was a promissory note, drawn by Elton.”

  “You didn’t miss a mortgage deed?” suggested Thorndyke, and Hyams, having snatched a little further refreshment from the pen-holder, said he did not.

  “And the policy,” suggested Thorndyke, “was apparently not taken?”

  “No,” replied Hyams “but it was looked for. Three bundles of policies had been untied, but this one happened to be in a drawer of my desk and I had the only key.”

  “And what do you infer from this visit?” Thorndyke asked.

  “Well,” replied Hyams, “the safe was opened with keys, and they were Gordon’s keys—or at any rate, they weren’t mine—and the person who opened it wasn’t Gordon; and the things that were taken—at least the thing, I mean—chiefly concerned Elton. Naturally I smelt a rat; and when I read of the finding of the body, I smelt a fox.”

  “And have you formed any opinion about the body that was found?”

  “Yes, I have,” he replied. “My opinion is that it was Gordon’s body: that Gordon had been putting the screw on Elton, and Elton had just pitched him over the cliff and gone down and changed clothes with the body. Of course, that’s only my opinion. I may be wrong; but I don’t think I am.”

  As a matter of fact, Mr. Hyams was not wrong. An exhumation, consequent on Thorndyke’s challenge of the identity of the deceased, showed that the body was that of Solomon Gordon. A hundred pounds reward was offered for information as to Elton’s whereabouts. But no one ever earned it. A letter, bearing the post mark of Marseilles, and addressed by the missing man to Thorndyke, gave a plausible account of Gordon’s death; which was represented as having occurred accidentally at the moment when Gordon chanced to be wearing a suit of Elton’s clothes.

  Of course, this account may have been correct, or again, it may have been false; but whether it was true or false, Elton, from that moment, vanished from our ken and has never since been heard of.

  PERCIVAL BLAND’S PROXY (1918)

  PART I

  Mr. Percival Bland was a somewhat uncommon type of criminal. In the first place he really had an appreciable amount of common-sense. If he had only had a little more, he would not have been a criminal at all. As it was, he had just sufficient judgment to perceive that the consequences of unlawful acts accumulate as the acts are repeated; to realise that the criminal’s position must, at length, become untenable; and to take what he considered fair precautions against the inevitable catastrophe.

  But in spite of these estimable traits of character and the precautions aforesaid, Mr. Bland found himself in rather a tight place and with a prospect of increasing tightness. The causes of this uncomfortable tension do not concern us, and may be dismissed with the remark, that, if one perseveringly distributes flash Bank of England notes among the money-changers of the Continent, there will come a day of reckoning when those notes are tendered to the exceedingly knowing old lady who lives in Threadneedle Street.

  Mr. Bland considered uneasily the approaching storm-cloud as he raked over the “miscellaneous property” in the Sale-rooms of Messrs. Plimpton. He was a confirmed frequenter of auctions, as was not unnatural, for the criminal is essentially a gambler. And criminal and gambler have one quality in common: each hopes to get something of value without paying the market price for it.

  So Percival turned over the dusty oddments and his own difficulties at one and the same time. The vital questions were: When would the storm burst? And would it pass by the harbour of refuge that he had been at such pains to construct? Let us inspect that harbour of refuge.

  A quiet flat in the pleasant neighbourhood of Battersea bore a name-plate inscribed, Mr. Robert Lindsay; and the tenant was known to the porter and the char woman who attended to the flat, as a fair-haired gentle man who was engaged in the book trade as a travelling agent, and was consequently a good deal away from home. Now Mr. Robert Lindsay bore a distinct resemblance to Percival Bland; which was not sur prising seeing that they were first cousins (or, at any rate, they said they were; and we may presume that they knew). But they were not very much alike. Mr. Lindsay had flaxen, or rather sandy, hair; Mr. Bland’s hair was black. Mr. Bland had a mole under his left eye; Mr. Lindsay had no mole under his eye—but carried one in a small box in his waistcoat pocket.

  At somewhat rare intervals the Cousins called on one another; but they had the very worst of luck, for neither of them ever seemed to find the other at home. And what was even more odd was that whenever Mr. Bland spent an evening at home in his lodgings over the oil shop in Bloomsbury, Mr. Lindsay’s flat was empty; and as sure as Mr. Lindsay was at home in his flat so surely were Mr. Bland’s lodgings vacant for the time being. It was a queer coincidence, if anyone had noticed it; but nobody ever did.

  However, if Percival saw little of his cousin, it was not a case of “out of sight, out of mind.” On the contrary; so great was his solicitude for the latter’s welfare that he not only had made a will constituting him his executor and sole legatee, but he had actually insured his life for no less a sum than three thousand pounds; and this will, together with the insurance policy, investment securities and other necessary documents, he had placed in the custody of a highly respectable solicitor. All of which did him great credit. It isn’t every man who is willing to take so much trouble for a mere cousin.

  Mr. Bland continued his perambulations, pawing over the miscellaneous raffle from sheer force of habit, reflecting on the coming crisis in his own affairs, and on the provisions that he had made for his cousin Robert. As for the latter, they were excellent as far as they went, but they lacked definiteness and perfect completeness. There was the contingency of a “stretch,” for instance; say fourteen years’ penal servitude. The insurance policy did not cover that. And, meanwhile, what was to become of the estimable Robert?

  He had bruised his thumb somewhat severely in a screw-cutting lathe, and had abstractedly turned the handle of a bird-organ until politely requested by an attendant to desist, when he came upon a series of boxes containing, according to the catalogue, “a collection of surgical instruments the property of a lately deceased practitioner.” To judge by the appearance of the instruments, the practitioner must have commenced practice in his early youth and died at a very advanced age. They were an uncouth set of tools, of no value whatever excepting as testimonials to the amazing tenacity of life of our ancestors; but Percival fingered them over according to his wont, working the handle of a complicated brass syringe and ejecting a drop of greenish fluid on to the shirt of a dressy Hebrew (who requested him to “point the dam’ thing at thomeone elth nectht time”), opening musty leather cases, clicking off spring scarifiers and feeling the edges of strange, crooked, knives. Then he came upon a largish black box, which, when he raised the lid, breathed out an ancient and fish-like aroma and exhibited a collection of bones, yellow, greasy and spotted in places with mildew. The catalogue described them as” a complete set of human osteology” but they were not an ordinary “student’s set,” for the bones of the hands and feet, instead of being strung together on cat-gut, were united by their original ligaments and were of an unsavoury brown colour.

  “I thay, misther,” expostulat the Hebrew, “shut that bocth. Thmellth like a blooming inquetht.”

  But the contents of the black box seemed to have a fascination for Percival. He looked in at those greasy remnants of mortality, at the brown and mouldy hands and feet and the skull that peeped forth eerily from the folds of a flannel wrapping; and they breathed out something more than that stale and musty odour. A suggestion—vague and general at first, but rapidly crys
tallising into distinct shape—seemed to steal out of the black box into his consciousness; a suggestion that somehow seemed to connect itself with his estimable cousin Robert.

  For upwards of a minute he stood motionless, as one immersed in reverie, the lid poised in his hand and a dreamy eye fixed on the half skull. A stir in the room roused him. The sale was about to begin. The members of the knock-out and other habitués seated themselves on benches around a long, baize table; the attendants took possession of the first lots and opened their catalogues as if about to sing an introductory chorus; and a gentleman with a waxed moustache and a striking resemblance to his late Majesty, the third Napoleon, having ascended to the rostrum bespoke the attention of the assembly by a premonitory tap with his hammer.

  How odd are some of the effects of a guilty conscience! With what absurd self-consciousness do we read into the minds of others our own undeclared intentions, when those intentions are unlawful! Had Percival Bland wanted a set of human bones for any legitimate purpose—such as anatomical study—he would have bought it openly and unembarrassed. Now, he found himself earnestly debating whether he should not bid for some of the surgical instruments, just for the sake of appearances; and there being little time in which to make up his mind—for the deceased practitioner’s effects came first in the catalogue—he was already the richer by a set of cupping-glasses, a tooth-key, and an instrument of unknown use and diabolical aspect, before the fateful lot was called.

  At length the black box was laid on the table, an object of obscene mirth to the knockers-out, and the auctioneer read the entry: “Lot seventeen; a complete set of human osteology. A very useful and valuable set of specimens, gentlemen.”

  He looked round at the assembly majestically, oblivious of sundry inquiries as to the identity of the deceased and the verdict of the coroner’s jury, and finally suggested five shillings.

  “Six,” said Percival.

  An attendant held the box open, and, chanting the mystic word “Loddlemen!” (which, being interpreted, meant “Lot, gentlemen”), thrust it under the rather bulbous nose of the smart Hebrew; who remarked that “they ’ummed a bit too much to thoot him” and pushed it away.