The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  “Yes,” I agreed. “I suppose we are, since the other two suppositions cannot be reasonably entertained. But I could wish that it were a little more easy to accept. It involves an uncomfortable amount of unproved assumptions.”

  “So it does,” he admitted. “But there it is. All three hypotheses seem to be full of improbabilities. But, as one of them must be the true one, since there are no others, we have no choice but to adopt the one that presents the smallest number of improbabilities and the greatest number of probabilities. Still, as I have said, our acceptance is only provisional. We may have to revise our opinions when we have the evidence of the witnesses at the inquest before us.”

  In the event, however, we did not. On the contrary, when, late in the evening, our very expert stenographer delivered the copy of his notes—typed in duplicate—the report of the witnesses’ evidence tended rather to confirm Thorndyke’s conclusions. There was nothing very definite, it is true; but the few additional facts all pointed in the same direction.

  There was, for instance, the station-master’s evidence. It seemed that, in the interval, he had thought matters over, and his statements were now more decided. He was able, moreover, to amplify his description of the suspected stranger. The latter he described as a well-dressed man of about middle age, carrying a good-sized handbag of brown leather, but no stick or umbrella, and wearing a soft felt hat. The man had a rather conspicuously red nose. He had noticed that particularly—“thought the gentleman looked as if he were in the habit of taking a drop.” And he was quite clear about the colour of the man’s hair. He noticed it as the stranger was getting into the carriage and the sun shone on the back of his head. It was distinctly red; dark red or auburn—not bright red, and certainly not sandy. Probably, in the sunlight, it may have looked rather redder than it really was. But it was definitely red hair.

  “Do you think that you would recognise the man if you were to see him?” the coroner asked.

  “I don’t much think I should,” was the cautious reply. “At any rate, I shouldn’t be able to swear to him.”

  Here the coroner apparently produced the prison form with the two photographs and handed it to the witness.

  “I want you to look at those two portraits,” said he, “and tell us whether you recognize them.”

  The witness examined them and replied that he did not recognize them.

  “Does the face that is shown in those photographs seem to you to resemble the face of the red-haired stranger?”

  “I don’t see any resemblance,” the witness replied.

  “Do you mean,” the coroner pursued, “that you simply don’t recognize the face, or that it seems to you to be a different face?”

  “I should say that it is a different face. The man I saw looked more like a gentleman.”

  “You are definitely of opinion that these photographs are not portraits of the man that you saw. Is that so?”

  “Well, sir, I shouldn’t like to be positive, but these photos don’t look to me like the man I saw on the platform.”

  That was all that was to be got out of the station-master; and, so far, it tended to support Thorndyke’s view; as also did the evidence of the ticket collector at Dartford, who was the next witness. He, like the station-master, seemed to have turned the matter over in his mind, though he was not able to give much more information. He did, however, remember collecting a first-class ticket, and recalled noticing that it was from Maidstone to London.

  “That,” said the coroner, “is a point of some significance. This passenger started from Maidstone with the intention of going to London, but at Dartford—the next station after Greenhithe—he suddenly changed his mind. It is a fact to be noted. Do you remember what this man was like?”

  “I can’t say that I remember him very clearly,” the witness answered. “You see, sir, I was looking at the tickets. But I do remember that he was carrying a largish brown handbag.”

  “Do you remember anything peculiar in his appearance? You have heard the last witness’s description of him. Can you say whether this passenger agreed with that description?”

  “I wouldn’t like to say positively whether he did or whether he didn’t. I can only say that I didn’t notice that he had a particularly red nose, and I didn’t notice the colour of his hair. As far as I remember him, he seemed an ordinary, gentlemanly sort of man; the sort of man that you would expect to hand in a first-class ticket.”

  So much for the ticket collector. His evidence did not carry us very far. Nevertheless, such as it was, its tendency was to support Thorndyke’s suggestion. There could be little doubt that the man who had given up the first-class ticket was the Strood man; and the fact—though it was only a negative fact and of little weight at that—that the special peculiarities of nose and hair had not been observed, seemed to lend a faint support to Thorndyke’s further suggestion that, as soon as the murder had been committed, those special peculiarities would be eliminated.

  There was little else in the evidence that was of interest to us. The engine-driver’s evidence had practically no bearing; for poor Badger’s body was unquestionably on the line, and the details as to how long it could have been there did not affect our enquiry. As to the body itself, the fact that no injuries could be discovered other than those inflicted by the train now caused us no surprise, though, to the coroner, it was naturally rather puzzling. Indeed, the problem that had so exercised the mind of Superintendent Miller was the problem that the coroner discussed at the greatest length and with complete failure to find any plausible solution. I read his very just and reasonable comments with considerable sympathy, not without a twinge of compunction as I reflected on the way in which we had withheld from him the one conclusive and material fact.

  “The greatest mystery in this strange case,” he observed, “is the absence of any traces of injury. Here was a powerful, highly trained police-officer, flung out on the line by a man whom he had apparently intended to arrest. He had not been shot, or stabbed, or stunned by a blow on the head, or in any way disabled. He had been simply thrown out. It seemed incredible; but there were the facts. But for the known presence in that carriage of another person, and that person a suspected criminal, the condition of the body would have pointed to an accident of a quite ordinary kind. But the presence of that other man, and especially the fact—which has been quite conclusively proved by the evidence of Chief Officer Cummings—that a certain document was taken from the pocket of the deceased, puts accident entirely out of the question.

  “But it adds enormously to the difficulty of understanding how this crime could have been committed. For, obviously, deceased would not have allowed this document to be taken from him without very energetic resistance. The great mystery is how any ordinary man could have taken this document forcibly from this powerful, capable officer and then opened the door and thrown him out on to the line. I must confess that I cannot understand it at all.

  “However, our failure to unravel the mystery of the actual method employed by the murderer does not leave us in any doubt as to how deceased met his death; which is the subject of our inquiry. The presence of that unknown man, his immediate disappearance at the very first opportunity, and the theft of that document, are facts that are too significant to allow of any but one interpretation.

  “The next question presents much more difficulty—the question as to the identity of that man. If we think that we can give him a name, it is our duty to do so. But it is not the concern of a coroner’s inquest to prove the guilt of any particular person. That is the office of a court of criminal jurisdiction. Unlike such a court, we have the choice of returning an open verdict—open, that is to say, as regards the identity of the criminal. And, if we have any doubt as to his identity, that is our proper course. Now, you have heard the evidence relating to the identity of the man who shared the compartment with deceased. You cannot have failed to notice the conflicting nature of that evidence, nor can you have failed to be impressed by the unlikel
iness of an escaped prisoner showing himself openly on the platform of Maidstone Station. Still, if you are satisfied with such proof of his identity as has been given, your finding must be to that effect; but, if you have any doubts, you will be wiser to leave the investigation of that point to the police.”

  This eminently judicious advice the jury accepted, eventually returning a verdict of “Murder by some person unknown.”

  “Well,” said Thorndyke, as I handed him back the copy of the notes, “has my learned friend any comments to make?”

  “Only,” I replied, “that the evidence, such as it is, seems rather to justify your choice of the third hypothesis.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “There is not much that is new. But there is one point that I dare say you noticed. The Strood man was carrying a fair-sized handbag. That supports the ‘make-up’ theory to this extent: that a handbag would be almost a necessity, seeing that a wig is a rather bulky article, and one that must not be too roughly treated, as it would be by being stuffed in the pocket. Then, the ticket collector’s evidence, little as it was worth, leaned to our side. He did not notice that the passenger had either a red nose or red hair; which might mean either that those characters were not there to notice, or simply that he took no note of the man’s appearance. There isn’t much in it either way.

  “But there is one other point that emerges—a slightly speculative point, but very important in its bearing if we accept it, though rather obvious. If we assume that this man was made up to pass, at least in a printed description, as Frederick Smith, that points to some kind of connection between him and Smith. He must, as you very justly observed, have made his preparations in advance. That is to say, he had decided, at least a few days previously, and probably more, to adopt Smith’s peculiarities to cover some unlawful proceedings of his own. Now, it is highly improbable that he would have selected a complete stranger as the model for his disguise; and, as a stranger, he could not have known that Smith was under suspicion of being a member of the habitual criminal class. But it was this suspicion that gave the disguise its special value. The evident probability is that he had some rather intimate knowledge of Smith.”

  “That does seem to be so,” I agreed. “But, if it is true, another interesting probability emerges. If he knew something about Smith, then there must have been something to know. That is to say, our friend Badger’s suspicions of Smith were not without some real foundation. And, again, the connection that you suggest might account for the theft of the fingerprint document. It might not suit the murderer to have the fingerprints of his under-study—or over-study—at Scotland Yard.”

  “I think you are right,” said Thorndyke, “as to the probable facts, though I am doubtful about your view of the motive. The theft of the document threw the suspicion at once on Smith, since they were his fingerprints and description. That would appear to have been the object of the theft as it was the object of the disguise.”

  “If it was,” said I, “it was a diabolical scheme.”

  “Very true,” Thorndyke agreed; “but murderers are not a peculiarly scrupulous class, and this specimen seems to have been even below the average in that respect. But, to revert to your suggestion that Badger’s suspicions probably had some foundation, you notice that the fact of Smith’s having taken the chance to escape tends to confirm your view. Taking his position at its face value, that escape was really not worth while. He was apparently innocent of the offence with which he was charged, and pretty secure of an acquittal. His escape merely complicated the position. But, if he was a regular criminal who ran the risk of being recognized by some visiting detective, it might well have appeared to him to be worth while to try the chance of getting away in the hope that he might keep away.”

  At this point our discussion was interrupted by the sound of a visitor approaching our landing. A moment later the identity of that visitor was disclosed by a characteristic knock at the door.

  “I happened to be passing this way,” said Miller, as I let him in, “so I thought I would just drop in and see if your shorthand notes were available. I have seen the newspaper reports of the inquest.”

  “Then you will have seen that the station-master did not recognise the prison photographs,” said Thorndyke, as he handed the Superintendent his copy of the typed notes.

  “Yes,” growled Miller. “That’s rather disappointing. But you can’t expect an ordinary, unskilled person to spot a face after just one casual glance. Of course, Badger spotted him. But he was a genius in that way. It was a special gift.”

  “A rather dangerous one, as it turned out,” I remarked.

  “It was, under the circumstances,” said Miller. “But what made it dangerous was poor Badger’s secretiveness. He liked to hold the monopoly—to feel he was the only detective officer who could identify some man who was wanted but unknown. Even in cases that he was not really concerned in, he would keep a criminal’s personal description up his sleeve, as it were. I remember, for instance, in that Hornby case—the Red Thumb Mark case, as they called it—how close he was.”

  “But he wasn’t on that case, was he?” I asked.

  “No. That was my case, and a pretty mess I made of it. But Badger was in court on another case, and it seems that, for some reason, he kept an eye on that man, Hornby—the one I had a warrant for, you know—while the experts were giving their evidence. Well, as you remember, Hornby slipped off, and I went after him and missed him; and when it came to making out a description of him, I had to apply to you for details. I doubt if I could have spotted him if I had met him in the street. But long afterwards, Badger told me that he had a perfectly clear mental picture of the man’s face, and that he was certain that he could spot him at a glance if ever they should meet. And he was like that with quite a number of crooks of the more uncommon kind. He could recognize them when no one else could. It was a valuable gift—to him. Not so valuable to us. And, as you say, it has its dangers. If a really vicious crook got to know what the position was, he might show his teeth, as this man did in the train. Badger would have been wiser in several respects to have shared his information with his brother officers.”

  “Yes,” said Thorndyke, “it is not very safe to be the sole repository of a secret that threatens another man’s life or liberty. I have had reason to realize that more than once. By the way, have you had an opportunity of getting that strange fingerprint examined—the one, I mean, that we found on the cigar?”

  “Yes; and drawn another blank. I took it to the Finger-print Bureau, but they haven’t got it in any of the files. So your poison-monger is a ‘person unknown’ at present. What you might expect. Probably sits in the background and supplies his infernal wares to crooks of a less subtle kind. However, your photo has been filed in the ‘Scene of the Crime’ series of single fingerprints. So we shall be able to place him, if we ever get him in custody. That will be quite a nice little surprise for him. But I mustn’t stay here gossiping. I’ve got a lot to do before I knock off for the day. Among other things, I must go carefully through these notes that you have been so kind as to let me have, though I am afraid there is nothing very helpful in them.”

  As he retired down the stairs, Thorndyke stood looking after him with a faint smile.

  “You observe,” he remarked, “that our friend is still under the influence of the Smith obsession. I have never known Miller to be like this before. We have given him a piece of evidence of cardinal importance, and he treats it as something merely incidental. And that thumb-print, which is, almost beyond any doubt, the thumb-print of Badger’s murderer, he files away as a thing that may possibly be of some slight interest on some unvisualized future occasion. It is an astonishing state of mind for an officer of his experience and real ability. We shall have to watch this case for his sake as well as our own. We must try to prevent him from making a false move; and we have got to find poor Badger’s murderer, if any efforts of ours are equal to a task that looks so unpromising.”

  “It certainl
y looks unpromising enough,” said I. “The man whom we have to find is a mere phantom, a disembodied fingerprint, so to speak. We don’t know his name; we don’t even know what he is like, since the only description we have of him is the description of a disguise, not of a man. We can only assume that he has neither red hair nor a red nose. But that description applies to a good many other people.”

  Thorndyke smiled at my pessimism, but was fain to agree that I had not overstated the case. “Still,” he continued, hopefully, “things might have been worse. After all, a fingerprint is a tangible asset. We can identify the man if we are ever able to lay hands on him.”

  “No doubt,” I agreed, less hopefully, “but the laying hands on him is the whole problem. And it seems to be a problem with no solution.”

  “Well,” he rejoined, “what we have done before we can do again. We have had to deal with unknown quantities, and we have resolved them into known quantities. It is not the first time that we have been confronted with the uncompleted equation, ‘x=?’.”

  “No, indeed,” said I. “You used that very formula, I remember, in the case of that man whom Miller was speaking of just now, Walter Hornby, and on the very occasion he referred to. I recall the incident very vividly. Don’t you remember? When you passed me that slip of paper with the scribbled note on it, ‘x=Walter Hornby’?”

  “I remember it very well,” he replied. “And I have quite good hopes that we shall complete the equation in this case, too, if we are patient and watchful.”

  “Knowing you as I do,” said I, “and remembering those other cases, I, also, am not without hope. But I cannot imagine how you are going to get a start. At present there is absolutely nothing to go on.”