With a crinkly smile of satisfaction, Polton went to a cupboard, from which he brought out a second enamelled iron bowl, and, with the greatest care, carried it across to the bench.
“It is quite a primitive arrangement, you see,” said he. “I have just put a few celluloid films in the bowl, and on the top one I have put a ring of this powder, which is a mixture of loaf sugar and chlorate of potash, both finely powdered and thoroughly stirred together. In the middle of the ring is this little wide mouthed bottle, containing a small quantity of strong sulphuric acid. Now, as soon as any of the acid touches the mixture, it will burst into flame; so all that is necessary to start the fire is to capsize the bottle and spill the acid on the chlorate mixture.
“You see how I did that. When the escapement discharged, it released this small wheel, which was driven by a separate spring, and the wheel then began to spin and wind up this thin cord, the other end of which was attached to this spindle carrying this long wire lever. As soon as the cord tightened up, it carried the lever across the bowl until it struck the little bottle and knocked it over. You notice that I stood the bottle inside an iron washer so that it couldn’t slide, but must fall over when it was struck.”
“A most remarkable monument of human ingenuity,” commented Blandy, beaming benevolently on our gratified artificer. “I regard you, Mr. Polton, with respectful astonishment as a worker of mechanical miracles. Would it be possible to repeat the experiment for the benefit of the less gifted observer?”
Poiton was only too delighted to repeat his triumph. Removing the first bowl, in which the fire had now died out, he replaced it with the second one and then proceeded to wind up the separate spring.
“There is no need to set it to the exact day,” said he, “as it is only the ignition that you want to see. I will give you notice when it is ready to discharge; and you had better not stand too close to the bowl in case the acid should fly about. Now, there are two days to run; that is one minute.”
We gathered round the bowl as near as was safe, and I noticed with interest the perfect simplicity of the arrangement and its infallible efficiency—so characteristic of Polton. In a couple of minutes the warning was given to “look out” and we all stepped back a pace. Then we heard the double click, and the cord—actually bookbinder’s thread—which had fallen slack when the spring had been re-wound—began to tighten. As soon as it was at full tension the spindle of the long wire lever began to turn, carrying the latter at increasing speed towards the bowl. Passing the rim, it skimmed across until it met the bottle, and, giving it a little tap, neatly capsized it. Instantly, a cloud of white smoke shot up; the powder disappeared and a tongue of flame arose from the heap of films at the bottom of the bowl.
Blandy watched them with a smile of concentrated benevolence until the flame had died out. Then he turned to Polton with a ceremonious bow.
“Sir,” said he, “you are a benefactor to humanity, an unraveller of criminal mysteries. I am infinitely obliged to you. Now I know how the fire in Billington Street arose, and who is responsible for the lamented death of the unfortunate gentleman whose body we found.”
Polton received these tributes with his characteristic smile, but entered a modest disclaimer. “I don’t suggest, sir, that this is exactly the method that was used.”
“No,” said Blandy, “but that is of no consequence. You have demonstrated the possibility and the existence of the means. That is enough for our purposes. But as to the details; have you formed any opinion on the methods by which the fire was communicated to the room from its starting-point?”
“Yes, sir,” Polton replied; “I have considered the matter and thought out a possible plan, which I feel sure must be more or less right. From Mr. Green’s evidence at the inquest we learned that the whole room was littered with parcels filled with used films; and it appeared that these parcels were stacked all round the walls, and even piled round the clock and under the bed. It looked as if those parcels, stacked round and apparently in contact, formed a sort of train from the clock round the room to the heap under the bed.
“Now, I think that the means of communication was celluloid varnish. We know that there was a lot of it about the room, including a row of bottles on the mantelpiece. This varnish is extremely inflammable. If some of it got spilt on the floor, alight, it would run about, carrying the flame with it and lighting up the films as it went. I think that is the way the fire was led away from the clock. You probably know, sir, that the cases of these tall clocks are open at the bottom. The plinth doesn’t make a watertight contact with the floor; and, even if it did, it would be easy to raise it an eighth of an inch with little wedges. My idea is that the stuff for starting the fire was in the bottom of the clock-case. It must have been; for we know that the mechanism was inside the clock, and there couldn’t have been anything showing outside. I think that the bottom of the clock was filled with loose films, but underneath them were two or three bottles of celluloid varnish, loosely corked, and on top, the arrangement that you have just seen, or some other.
“When the escapement tipped the bottle over—or started the fire in some other way—the films would be set alight, and the flames would either crack the varnish-bottles right away or heat the varnish and blow out the corks. In any case, there would be lighted varnish running about inside the clock, and it would soon run out under the plinth, stream over the floor of the room and set fire to the parcels of films; and when one parcel was set alight, the fire would spread from that to the next, and so all over the room. That is my idea as to the general arrangement. Of course, I may be quite wrong.”
“I don’t think you are, Polton,” said Thorndyke, “at least in principle. But, to come to details; wouldn’t your suggested arrangement take up a good deal of space? Wouldn’t it interfere with the pendulum and the weights?”
“I think there would be plenty of room, sir,” replied Polton. “Take the pendulum first. Now, these tall-case clocks are usually about six feet high, sometimes a little more. The pendulum is about forty-five inches over all and suspended from near the top. That brings the rating-nut to about twenty-four inches above the floor level—a clear two feet to spare for the films and the apparatus. Then as to the weights; there was only one weight, as the striking-gear had been taken away. It is a rule that the weight ought not to touch the floor even when the clock is quite run down. But supposing it did; there would be about four feet from the bottom of the weight to the floor when the clock was fully wound—and we can assume that it was fully wound when the firing mechanism was started. As the fall per day would be not more than seven inches, the weight would be thirteen inches from the floor at the end of the fifth day, or at three A.M. on the fifth day, twenty inches.
“That leaves plenty of room in any case. But you have to remember that the weight, falling straight down, occupies a space of not more than four inches square. All round that space there would be the full two feet or even more at the sides, keeping clear of the pendulum. I don’t think, sir, that the question of space raises any difficulty.”
“I agree with you, Polton,” said Thorndyke. “You have disposed of my objection completely. What do you say, Inspector?”
The inspector smiled benignly and shook his head. “What can I say?” he asked. “I am rendered almost speechless by the contemplation of such erudition, such insight, and such power of mental synthesis. I feel a mere dilettante.”
Thorndyke smiled appreciatively. “We are all gratified,” said he, “by your recognition of Mr. Polton’s merits. But, compliments apart, how does his scheme strike you?
“It strikes me,” replied Blandy, subsiding into a normal manner (excepting his smile, which was of the kind that “won’t come off”), “as supplying an explanation that is not only plausible but is probably the true explanation. Mr. Polton has shown that our belief that it was impossible for Mr. Haire to have raised the fire was a mistaken belief, that the raising of the fire was perfectly possible, that the means and appliances nec
essary for raising it were there, and that those means and appliances could have no other purpose. From which we are entitled to infer that those means were so used, and that the fire was actually raised, and was raised by Mr. Gustavus Haire.”
“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed, “I think that is the position; and with that we retire, temporarily, at any rate, and the initiative passes to you. Mr. Haire is a presumptive fire-raiser. But he is your Haire, and it is for you to catch him, if you can.”
CHAPTER XVII
Further Surprises
The air of finality with which Thorndyke had, so to speak, handed the baby back to Inspector Blandy might have been deceptive; but I don’t think it even deceived the inspector. Certainly it did not deceive me. Never had I known Thorndyke to resign from an unsolved problem, and I felt pretty certain that he was at least keeping this particular problem in view, and, in his queer, secretive way, trying over the various possible solutions in his mind.
This being so, I made no pretence of having dismissed the case, but took every opportunity of discussing it, not only with Thorndyke but especially with Polton, who was the actual fountain of information. And there were, about this time, abundant opportunities for discussion, for we were still engaged, in our spare time, in the great work of re-arranging and weeding out our large collection of microscopical slides for which Polton had recently made a new set of cabinets. Naturally, that artist assisted us in sorting out the specimens, and it was in the intervals of these activities that I endeavoured to fill in the blanks of my knowledge of the case.
“I have been thinking,” I remarked on one of these occasions, “of what you told us, Polton, about that clock of Mr. Haire’s. You are of opinion that it is actually the clock to which you fitted the calendar for Mr. Parrish. I don’t know that it is a point of any importance, but I should like to know what convinces you that this is the identical clock, and not one which might have been copied from yours, or invented independently.”
“My principal reason for believing that it is the same clock is that it is made from the same kind of oddments of material that I used. For instance, I made the pallet-bar from an old hack-saw blade which I happened to have by me. It was not specially suitable, and an ordinary clock-maker would almost certainly have used a strip of brass. But the pallet-bar of this clock has been made from a hack-saw blade.”
He paused and seemed to reflect for a while. Then he continued: “But there is another point; and the more I have thought about it the more it has impressed me. Mr. Parrish had a nephew who lived with him and worked as a pupil in the workshop; a lad of about my own age or a little younger. Now this lad’s name was Haire, and he was always called Gus. I supposed at the time that Gus stood for Augustus, but when I heard at the inquest the name of Gustavus Haire, I wondered if it might happen to be the same person. You can’t judge by a mere similarity of names, since there are so many people of the same name. But when I saw this clock, I thought at once of Gus Haire. For he was in the workshop when I made the calendar, and he watched me as I was working on it and got me to explain all about it; though the principle on which it worked was obvious enough to any mechanic.”
“Should you describe Gus Haire as a mechanic?” I asked.
“Yes, of a sort,” Polton replied. “He was a poor workman, but he was equal to a simple job like the making of this calendar, especially when he had been shown; and certainly to the addition that had been made to it.”
“And what sort of fellow was he—morally, I mean?” Polton took time to consider this question. At length he replied: “It is not for me to judge any man’s character, and I didn’t know very much about him. But I do know this as a fact: that on a certain occasion when I was making a new key for Mr. Parrish’s cash drawer to replace one which was broken, Gus pinched a piece of my moulding wax and took a squeeze of the broken key; and that, later, Mr. Parrish accused me of having opened that drawer with a false key and taken money from it. Now, I don’t know that Gus made a false key and I don’t know that any money was actually stolen; but when a man takes a squeeze of the key of another man’s cash drawer, he lays himself open to a reasonable suspicion of an unlawful intention.”
“Yes, indeed,” said I. “A decidedly fishy proceeding; and from what you have just told us, it looks as if you were right—as if the clock were the original clock and Mr. Gustavus Haire the original Gus, though it is not quite clear how Mr. Parrish’s clock came into his possession.”
I don’t think, sir,” said he, “that it is difficult to imagine. Mr. Parrish was his uncle, and, as he was an old man even then, he must be dead long since. The clock must have gone to someone, and why not to his nephew?”
“Yes,” I agreed, “that is reasonable enough. However, we don’t know for certain, and, after all, I don’t see that the identity of either the clock or the man is of much importance. What do you think, Thorndyke?”
My colleague removed his eye from the microscope, and, laying the slide in its tray, considered the question. At length he replied: “The importance of the point depends on how much Polton remembers. Blandy’s difficulty at the moment is that he has no description of Gustavus Haire sufficiently definite for purposes of identification. Now, can we supply that deficiency? What do you say, Polton? Do you think that if you were to meet Gus Haire after all these years you would recognize him?”
“I think I should, sir,” was the reply. And then he added as an afterthought: “I certainly should if he hadn’t lost his teeth.”
“His teeth!” I exclaimed. “Was there anything very distinctive about his teeth?”
“Distinctive isn’t the word, sir,” he replied. “They were most extraordinary teeth. I have never seen anything like them. They looked as if they were made of tortoiseshell.”
“You don’t mean that they were decayed?”
“Lord, no, sir. They were sound enough; good strong teeth and rather large. But they were such a queer colour. All mottled over with brown spots. And those spots wouldn’t come off. He tried all sorts of things to get rid of them—Armenian bole, charcoal, even jeweller’s red stuff—but it was no use. Nothing would shift those spots.”
“Well,” I said, “if those teeth are still extant, they would be a godsend to Blandy, for a written description would enable a stranger to identify the man.”
“I doubt if it would, sir,” Polton remarked with a significant smile. “Gus was extremely sensitive about those teeth, and showed them as little as possible when he talked or smiled. In those days he couldn’t produce much in the way of a moustache, but I expect he does now, and I’ll warrant he doesn’t crop it too close.”
“That is so,” Thorndyke confirmed. “The only description of Haire that the police have, as I understand, is that given by Mr. Green and that of the man who interviewed Haire in Dublin. Green’s description is very vague and sketchy, while the Dublin man hardly remembered him at all except by name, and that only because he had kept the card which Haire had presented. But both of these men mentioned that Haire wore a full, drooping moustache.”
Still,” I persisted, “the teeth are a very distinctive feature, and it would seem only fair to Blandy to give him the information.”
“Perhaps it might be as well,” Thorndyke agreed. Then, returning to the subject of Polton’s old acquaintance, he asked: “You say that Gus lived with his uncle. Why was that? Was he an orphan?”
“Oh, no, sir. Only his people lived in the country, not very far away, for he used to go down and stay with them occasionally at weekends. It was somewhere in Essex. I have forgotten the name of the place, but it was a small town near the river.”
“It wouldn’t be Maldon?” Thorndyke suggested.
“That’s the place, sir. Yes, I remember now.” He stopped suddenly and, gazing at his principal with an expression of astonishment, exclaimed: “Now, I wonder, sir, how you knew that he lived at Maldon.”
Thorndyke chuckled. “But, my dear Polton, I didn’t know. I was only making a suggestion. Maldon happe
ns to agree with your description.”
Polton shook his head and crinkled sceptically. “It isn’t the only waterside town in Essex,” he remarked, and added: “No, sir. It’s my belief that you knew that he lived at Maldon, though how you knew I can’t imagine.”
I was disposed to agree with Polton. There was something a little suspicious in the way in which Thorndyke had dropped pat on the right place. But further questions on my part elicited nothing but an exasperating grin and the advice to me to turn the problem over in my mind and consider any peculiarities that distinguished Maldon from other Essex towns; advice that I acted upon at intervals during the next few days with disappointingly negative results.
Nevertheless, Polton’s conviction turned out to be justified. I realized it when, one morning about a week later, I found Polton laying the breakfast-table and placing the “catch” from the letter-box beside our respective plates. As I entered the room, he looked at me with a most portentous crinkle and pointed mysteriously to a small package which he had just deposited by my colleague’s plate. I stooped over it to examine the typewritten address, but at first failed to discover anything significant about it; then, suddenly, my eye caught the postmark, and I understood. That package had been posted at Maldon.
“The Doctor is a most tantalizing person, sir,” Polton exclaimed. “I don’t mind admitting that I am bursting with curiosity as to what is in that package. But I suppose we shall find out presently.”
Once more he was right; in fact, the revelation came that very evening. We were working our way through the great collection of test specimens, examining and discussing each slide, when Thorndyke looked up from the microscope and electrified Polton and me by saying:
“By the way, I have got a specimen of another kind that I should like to take your opinion on. I’ll show it to you.”
He rose and stepped across the room to a cabinet, from which he took a small cardboard box of the kind that dentists use for the packing of dental plates. Opening this, he took from it the wax model of an upper denture, complete with teeth, and laid it on the table.
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 260