“But Elliott is abroad,” I objected.
“True; but his wife isn’t; and she evidently knows all about his affairs. I have invited Miller to come with me in case he would like to put any questions; and you may as well come, too, if you are free.”
It did not sound like a very thrilling adventure, but one never knew with Thorndyke. I decided to go with him, and at that the matter dropped, though I speculated a little curiously on the source of the information. So, apparently, had the superintendent, for when he arrived on the following morning he proceeded to throw out a few cautious feelers, but got nothing for his pains beyond vague generalities.
“It is a purely tentative proceeding,” said Thorndyke, “and you mustn’t be disappointed if nothing comes of it.”
“I shall be, all the same,” replied Miller, with a sly glance at my senior, and with this we set forth on our quest.
The Elliotts’ house was, as I knew, in some part of Wimbledon, and thither we made our way by train. From the station we started along a wide, straight main street from which numbers of smaller streets branched off. At the corner of one of these I noticed a man standing, apparently watching our approach; and something in his appearance seemed to me familiar. Suddenly he took off his hat, looked curiously into its interior, and put it on again. Then he turned about and walked quickly down the side street. I looked at his retreating figure as we crossed the street, wondering who he could be. And then it flashed upon me that the resemblance was to a certain ex-sergeant Barber whom Thorndyke occasionally employed for observation duties. Just as I reached this conclusion, Thorndyke halted and looked about him doubtfully.
I am afraid we have come too far,” said he. “I fancy we ought to have gone down that last turning.” We accordingly faced about and walked back to the corner, where Thorndyke read out the name, Mendoza Avenue.
“Yes,” he said, “this is the way,” and we thereupon turned down the Avenue, following it to the bottom, where it ended in a cross-road, the name of which, Berners Park, I recognised as that which I had seen on Elliott’s letter.
“Sixty-four is the number,” said Thorndyke, “so as this corner house is forty-six and the next is forty-eight, it will be a little way along on this side, just about where you can see that smoke—which, by the way, seems to be coming out of a window.”
“Yes, by Jove!” I exclaimed. “The staircase window, apparently. Not our house, I hope!”
But it was. We read the number and the name, ‘Green Bushes,’ on the gate as we came up to it, and we hurried up the short path to the door. There was no knocker, but when Miller fixed his thumb on the bell-push, we heard a loud ringing within. But there was no response; and meanwhile the smoke poured more and more densely out of the open window above.
“Rum!” exclaimed Miller, sticking to the bell-push like a limpet. “House seems to be empty.”
“I don’t think it is.” Thorndyke replied calmly.
The superintendent looked at him with quick suspicion, and then glanced at the ground-floor window.
“That window is unfastened,” said he, “and here comes a constable.”
Sure enough, a policeman was approaching quickly, looking up at the houses. Suddenly he perceived the smoke and quickened his pace, arriving just as Thorndyke had pulled down the upper window-sash and was preparing to climb over into the room. The, constable hailed him sternly, but a brief explanation from Miller reduced the officer to a state of respectful subservience, and we all followed Thorndyke through the open window, from which smoke now began to filter.
“Send the constable upstairs to give the alarm,” Thorndyke instructed Miller in a low tone. The order was given without question, and the next moment the officer was bounding up the stairs, roaring like a whole fire brigade., Meanwhile, the superintendent browsed along the hall through the dense smoke, sniffing inquisitively, and at length approached the street door. Suddenly, from the heart of the reek, his voice issued in tones of amazement.
“Well, I’m hanged! It’s a plumber’s smoke-rocket. Some fool has stuck it through into the letter-cage!”
In the silence which followed this announcement I heard an angry voice from above demand: “What is all this infernal row about? And what are you doing here?”
“Can’t you see that the house is on fire?” was the constable’s, stern rejoinder. “You’d better come down and help to put it out.”
The command was followed by the sound of descending footsteps, on which Thorndyke ran quickly up the stairs, followed by the superintendent and me. We met the descending party on the landing, opposite a window, and here we all stopped, gazing at one another with mutual curiosity. The man who accompanied the constable looked distinctly alarmed—as well he might—and somewhat hostile.
“Who put that smoke in the hall?” Miller demanded fiercely. “And why didn’t you come down when you heard us ringing the bell?”
“I don’t know what you a talking about,” the man replied sulkily, “or what business this is of yours. Who are you? And what are you doing in my house?”
“In your house?” repeated Thorndyke. “Then you will be Mr. Elliott?”
The man turned a startled glance on him and replied angrily: “Never you mind who I am. Get out of this house.”
“But I do mind who you are,” Thorndyke rejoined mildly. “I came here to see Mr. Elliott. Are you Mr. Elliott?
“No, I am not. Mr. Elliott is abroad. If you like to send a letter here for him, I will forward it when I get his address.”
While this conversation had been going on, I had been examining the stranger, not without curiosity. For his appearance was somewhat unusual. In the first place, he wore an unmistakable wig, and his shaven face bore an abundance of cuts and scratches, suggesting a recently and unskilfully mown beard. His spectacles did not disguise a pronounced divergent squint of the left eye; but what specially caught my attention was the ear—large ear, lobeless and pointed at the tip like the ear of a satyr. As I looked at this, and at the scraped face, the squint and the wig, a strange suspicion flashed into my mind; and then, as I noted that the nose was markedly deflected to the left, I turned to glance at Thorndyke.
“Would you mind telling us your name?” the latter asked blandly.
“My name is—is—Johnson; Frederick Johnson.”
“Ah,” said Thorndyke. “I thought it was Manford—James Manford—and I think so still. I suggest that you have a scar on the right side of your forehead, just under the wig. May we see?”
As Thorndyke spoke the name, the man turned a horrible livid grey and started back as if to retreat up the stairs. But the constable blocked the way; and as the man was struggling to push past, Miller adroitly snatched off the wig; and there, on the forehead, was the tell-tale scar.
For an appreciable time we all stood stock-still like the figures of a tableau. Then Thorndyke turned to the superintendent.
“I charge this man, James Manford, with the murder of Stephan Bilsky.”
Again there was a brief interval of intolerable silence. In the midst of it, we heard the street door open and shut, and a woman’s voice called up the stairs: “Whatever is all this smoke? Are you up there, Jim?
I pass over the harrowing details of the double arrest. I am not a policeman, and to me such scenes are intensely repugnant. But we must needs stay until two taxis and four constables had conveyed the prisoners away from the still reeking house to the caravanserai of the law. Then, at last, we went forth with relief into the fresh air and bent our steps towards the station.
“I take it,” Miller said reflectively, “that you never suspected Bilsky?”
“I did at first. But when Mrs. Manford and the solicitor told their tale I realised that he was the victim and that Manford must be the murderer.”
“Let us have the argument,” said I. “It is obvious that I have been a blockhead, but I don’t mind our old friend here knowing it.”
“Not a blockhead, Jervis,” he corrected. “You were h
alf asleep that night and wholly uninterested. If you had been attending to the matter, you would have observed several curious and anomalous appearances. For instance, you would have noticed that the body was, in parts, completely charred, and brittle. Now we saw the outbreak of the fire and we found it extinguished when we reached the building. Its duration was a matter of minutes; quite insufficient to reduce a body to that state. For, as you know, a human body is an extremely incombustible thing. The appearance suggested the destruction of a body which had been already burnt; and this suggestion was emphasised by the curiously unequal distribution of the charring. The right hand was burnt to a cinder and blown to pieces. The left hand was only scorched. The right foot was utterly destroyed, but the left foot was nearly intact. The face was burned away completely, and yet there were parts of the head where the hair was only singed.
“Naturally, with these facts in mind, I scrutinised those remains narrowly. And presently something much more definite and sinister came to light. On the left hand, there was a faint impression of another hand—very indistinct and blurred, but still unmistakably a hand.”
“I remember,” said I, “the inspector pointed it out as evidence that the deceased had been standing with his hands clasped before or behind him; and I must admit that it seemed a reasonable inference.”
“So it did, because you were both assuming that the man had been alone and that it must therefore have been the impression of his own hand. For that reason, neither of you looked at it critically. If you had, you would have seen at once that it was the impression of a left hand.”
“You are quite right,” I confessed ruefully. “As the man was stated to have been alone, the hand impression did not interest inc. And it was a mere group of smudges, after all. You are sure that it was a left hand?”
“Quite,” be replied. “Blurred as the smudges were, one could make out the relative lengths of the fingers. And there was the thumb mark at the distal end of the palm, but pointing to the outer side of the hand. Try how you may, you can’t get a right hand into that position.
“Well, then, here was a crucial fact. The mark of a left hand on a left hand proved the presence of a second person, and at once raised a strong presumption of homicide, especially when considered in conjunction with the unaccountable state of the body. During the evening, a visitor had come and gone, and on him—Bilsky—the suspicion naturally fell. But Mrs. Manford unwittingly threw an entirely new light on the case. You remember she told us that her husband had opened a new bottle of hair dye on the very morning before the explosion and had applied it with unusual care. Then his hair was dyed. But the hair of the corpse was not dyed. Therefore the corpse was not the corpse of Manford. Further, the presumption of murder applied now to Manford, and the body almost certainly was that of Bilsky.”
“How did you deduce that the hair of the corpse was not dyed?” I asked.
“I didn’t deduce it at all. I observed it. You remember a little patch of hair above the right ear, very much singed but still recognisable as hair? Well, in that patch I made out distinctly two or three white hairs. Naturally, when Mrs. Manford spoke of the dye, I recalled those white hairs, for though you may find silver hairs among the gold, you don’t find them among the dyed. So the corpse could not be Manford’s and was presumably that of Bilsky.
“But the instant that this presumption was made, a quantity of fresh evidence arose to support it. The destruction of the body was now understandable. Its purpose was to prevent identification. The parts destroyed were the parts that had to be destroyed for that purpose: the face was totally unrecognisable, and the right hand and right foot were burnt and shattered to fragments. But these were Bilsky’s personal marks. His right hand was mutilated and his right foot deformed. And the fact that the false teeth found were undoubtedly Manford’s was conclusive evidence of the intended deception.
“Then there were those very queer financial transactions, of which my interpretation was this: Manford borrowed two thousand pounds from Clines. With this he opened an account in the name of Elliott. As Elliott, he lent himself two thousand pounds which he repaid Clines—subject to an insurance of his life for that amount, taken out in Elliott’s name.”
“Then he would have gained nothing,” I objected.
“On the contrary, he would have stood to gain two thousand pounds on proof of his own death. That, I assumed, was his scheme: to murder Bilsky, to arrange for Bilsky’s corpse to personate his own, and then, when the insurance was paid, to abscond the company of some woman this sum, with the valuables that he had taken from Bilsky, and the five hundred pounds that he had withdrawn from the bank.
“But this was only theory. It had to be tested; and as we had Elliott’s address, I did the only thing that was possible. I employed our friend, ex-Sergeant Barber, to watch the house. He took lodgings in a house nearly opposite and kept up continuous observation, which soon convinced him that there was someone on the premises besides Mrs. Elliott. Then, late one night, he saw a man come out and walk away quickly. He followed the man for some distance, until the stranger turned back and began to retrace his steps. Then Barber accosted him, asking for a direction, and carefully inspecting him. The man’s appearance tallied exactly with the description that I had given—I had assumed that he would probably shave off his beard—and with the photograph; so Barber, having seen him home, reported to me. And that is the whole story.”
“Not quite the whole,” said Miller, with a sly grin. “There is that smoke-rocket. If it hadn’t been for the practical joker who slipped that through the letter-slit, we could never have got into that house. I call it a most remarkable coincidence.”
“So do I,” Thorndyke agreed, without moving a muscle; “but there is a special providence that watches over medical jurists.”
We were silent for a few moments. Then I remarked: “This will come as a terrible shock to Mrs. Manford.”
“I am afraid it will,” Thorndyke agreed. “But it will be better for her than if Manford had absconded with this woman, taking practically every penny that he possessed with him. She stood to lose a worthless husband in either event. At least we have saved her from poverty. And, knowing the facts, we were morally and legally bound to further the execution of justice.”
“A very proper sentiment,” said the superintendent, “though I am not quite clear as to the legal aspects of that smoke-rocket.”
A CERTAIN DR THORNDYKE (1927) [Part 1]
BOOK 1
The Ishmaelite
CHAPTER I
The Fugitive
The tropic moon shone brightly on the village of Adaffia in the Bight of Benin as a fishing-canoe steered warily through the relatively quiet surf of the dry season towards the steep beach. Out in the roadstead an anchored barque stood up sharply against the moonlit sky, the yellow spark of her riding light glimmering warmly, and a white shape dimly discernible in the approaching canoe hinted of a visitor from the sea. Soon the little craft, hidden for a while in the white smother of a breaking wave, emerged triumphant and pushed her pointed nose up the beach; the occupants leaped out and, seizing her by her inturned gunwales, hauled her forthwith out of reach of the following wave.
“You know where to go?” the Englishman demanded, turning a grim, hatchet face towards the ‘headman.’ “Don’t take me to the wrong house.”
The headman grinned. “Only one white man live for Adaffia. Me sabby him proper.” He twisted a rag of cotton cloth into a kind of turban, clapped it on his woolly pate and, poising on top a battered cabin-trunk, strode off easily across the waste of blown sand that separated the beach from a forest of coconut palms that hid the village. The Englishman followed less easily, his shod feet sinking into the loose sand; and as he went, he peered with a stranger’s curiosity along the deserted beach and into the solemn gloom beneath the palms, whence came the rhythmical clamour of drums and the sound of many voices joining in a strange, monotonous chant.
Through the ghostly colonnade of pal
m trunks, out into the narrow, tortuous alleys that served for streets, between rows of mud-built hovels roofed with unkempt grass thatch, where all was inky blackness in the shadow and silvery grey in the light, the stranger followed his guide; and ever the noise of the drums and the melancholy chant drew nearer. Suddenly the two men emerged from an alley into a large open space and in an instant passed from the stillness of the empty streets into a scene of the strangest bustle and uproar. In the middle of the space was a group of men, seated on low stools, who held between their knees drums of various sizes, which they were beating noisily, though by no means unskillfully, some with crooked sticks, others with the flat of the hand. Around the musicians a circle of dancers moved in an endless procession, the men and the women forming separate groups; and while the former danced furiously, writhing with starting muscles and streaming skins, in gestures grotesque and obscene, the latter undulated languorously with half-closed eyes and rhythmically moving arms.
The Englishman had halted in the black shadow to look on at this singular scene and to listen to the strange chant that rang out at intervals from dancers and spectators alike, when his guide touched him on the arm and pointed.
“Look, Mastah!” said he; “dem white man live. You look um?”
The stranger looked over the heads of the dancers, and, sure enough, in the very midst of the revellers, he espied a fellow-countryman seated on a green-painted gin-case, the sides of which he was pounding with his fists in unsuccessful emulation of the drummers. He was not a spectacle to engender undue pride of race. To begin with, he was obviously drunk, and as he drummed on the case and bellowed discordantly at intervals, he was not dignified. Perhaps to be drunk and dignified at one and the same time is not easy, and assuredly the task is made no easier by a costume consisting of a suit of ragged pyjamas, the legs tucked into scarlet socks, gaudy carpet slippers, and a skullcap of plaited grass. But such was the garb of this representative of a superior race, and the final touch was given to a raffish ensemble by an unlit cigar that waggled from the corner of his mouth.
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 25