“The late Arthur Constant came to live nearly opposite me. I cultivated his acquaintance—he was a lovable young fellow, an excellent subject for experiment. I do not know when I have ever taken to a man more. From the moment I first set eyes on him, there was a peculiar sympathy between us. We were drawn to each other. I felt instinctively he would be the man. I loved to hear him speak enthusiastically of the Brotherhood of Man—I, who knew the brotherhood of man was to the ape, the serpent, and the tiger—and he seemed to find a pleasure in stealing a moment’s chat with me from his engrossing self-appointed duties. It is a pity humanity should have been robbed of so valuable a life. But it had to be. At a quarter to ten on the night of December 3d he came to me. Naturally I said nothing about this visit at the inquest or the trial. His object was to consult me mysteriously about some girl. He said he had privately lent her money—which she was to repay at her convenience. What the money was for he did not know, except that it was somehow connected with an act of abnegation in which he had vaguely encouraged her. The girl had since disappeared, and he was in distress about her. He would not tell me who it was—of course now, sir, you know as well as I it was Jessie Dymond—but asked for advice as to how to set about finding her. He mentioned that Mortlake was leaving for Devonport by the first train on the next day. Of old I should have connected these two facts and sought the thread; now, as he spoke, all my thoughts were dyed red. He was suffering perceptibly from toothache, and in answer to my sympathetic inquiries told me it had been allowing him very little sleep. Everything combined to invite the trial of one of my favorite theories. I spoke to him in a fatherly way, and when I had tendered some vague advice about the girl, and made him promise to secure a night’s rest (before he faced the arduous tram-men’s meeting in the morning) by taking a sleeping-draught, I gave him some sulfonal in a phial. It is a new drug, which produces protracted sleep without disturbing the digestion, and which I use myself. He promised faithfully to take the draught; and I also exhorted him earnestly to bolt and bar and lock himself in so as to stop up every chink or aperture by which the cold air of the winter’s night might creep into the room. I remonstrated with him on the careless manner he treated his body, and he laughed in his good-humored, gentle way, and promised to obey me in all things. And he did. That Mrs. Drabdump, failing to rouse him, would cry ‘Murder!’ I took for certain. She is built that way. As even Sir Charles Brown-Harland remarked, she habitually takes her prepossessions for facts, her inferences for observations. She forecasts the future in gray. Most women of Mrs. Drabdump’s class would have behaved as she did. She happened to be a peculiarly favorable specimen for working on by ‘suggestion,’ but I would have undertaken to produce the same effect on almost any woman under similar conditions. The only uncertain link in the chain was: Would Mrs. Drabdump rush across to get me to break open the door? Women always rush for a man. I was well-nigh the nearest, and certainly the most authoritative man in the street, and I took it for granted she would.”
“But suppose she hadn’t?” the Home Secretary could not help asking.
“Then the murder wouldn’t have happened, that’s all. In due course Arthur Constant would have awoke, or somebody else breaking open the door would have found him sleeping; no harm done, nobody any the wiser. I could hardly sleep myself that night. The thought of the extraordinary crime I was about to commit—a burning curiosity to know whether Wimp would detect the modus operandi—the prospect of sharing the feelings of murderers with whom I had been in contact all my life without being in touch with the terrible joys of their inner life—the fear lest I should be too fast asleep to hear Mrs. Drabdump’s knock—these things agitated me and disturbed my rest. I lay tossing on my bed, planning every detail of poor Constant’s end. The hours dragged slowly and wretchedly on toward the misty dawn. I was racked with suspense. Was I to be disappointed after all? At last the welcome sound came—the rat-tat-tat of murder. The echoes of that knock are yet in my ear. ‘Come over and kill him!’ I put my night-capped head out of the window and told her to wait for me. I dressed hurriedly, took my razor, and went across to 11 Glover Street. As I broke open the door of the bedroom in which Arthur Constant lay sleeping, his head resting on his hands, I cried, ‘My God!’ as if I saw some awful vision. A mist as of blood swam before Mrs. Drabdump’s eyes. She cowered back, for an instant (I divined rather than saw the action) she shut off the dreaded sight with her hands. In that instant I had made my cut—precisely, scientifically—made so deep a cut and drew out the weapon so sharply that there was scarce a drop of blood on it; then there came from the throat a jet of blood which Mrs. Drabdump, conscious only of the horrid gash, saw but vaguely. I covered up the face quickly with a handkerchief to hide any convulsive distortion. But as the medical evidence (in this detail accurate) testified, death was instantaneous. I pocketed the razor and the empty sulfonal phial. With a woman like Mrs. Drabdump to watch me, I could do anything I pleased. I got her to draw my attention to the fact that both the windows were fastened. Some fool, by the by, thought there was a discrepancy in the evidence because the police found only one window fastened, forgetting that, in my innocence, I took care not to fasten the window I had opened to call for aid. Naturally I did not call for aid before a considerable time had elapsed. There was Mrs. Drabdump to quiet, and the excuse of making notes—as an old hand. My object was to gain time. I wanted the body to be fairly cold and stiff before being discovered, though there was not much danger here; for, as you saw by the medical evidence, there is no telling the time of death to an hour or two. The frank way in which I said the death was very recent disarmed all suspicion, and even Dr. Robinson was unconsciously worked upon, in adjudging the time of death, by the knowledge (query here, Mr. Templeton) that it had preceded my advent on the scene.
“Before leaving Mrs. Drabdump there is just one point I should like to say a word about. You have listened so patiently, sir, to my lectures on the science of sciences that you will not refuse to hear the last. A good deal of importance has been attached to Mrs. Drabdump’s oversleeping herself by half an hour. It happens that this (like the innocent fog which has also been made responsible for much) is a purely accidental and irrelevant circumstance. In all works on inductive logic it is thoroughly recognized that only some of the circumstances of a phenomenon are of its essence and causally interconnected; there is always a certain proportion of heterogeneous accompaniments which have no intimate relation whatever with the phenomenon. Yet so crude is as yet the comprehension of the science of evidence, that every feature of the phenomenon under investigation is made equally important, and sought to be linked with the chain of evidence. To attempt to explain everything is always the mark of the tyro. The fog and Mrs. Drabdump’s oversleeping herself were mere accidents. There are always these irrelevant accompaniments, and the true scientist allows for this element of (so to speak) chemically unrelated detail. Even I never counted on the unfortunate series of accidental phenomena which have led to Mortlake’s implication in a network of suspicion. On the other hand, the fact that my servant Jane, who usually goes about ten, left a few minutes earlier on the night of December 3d, so that she didn’t know of Constant’s visit, was a relevant accident. In fact, just as the art of the artist or the editor consists largely in knowing what to leave out, so does the art of the scientific detector of crime consist in knowing what details to ignore. In short, to explain everything is to explain too much. And too much is worse than too little. To return to my experiment. My success exceeded my wildest dreams. None had an inkling of the truth. The insolubility of the Big Bow Mystery teased the acutest minds in Europe and the civilized world. That a man could have been murdered in a thoroughly inaccessible room savored of the ages of magic. The redoubtable Wimp, who had been blazoned as my successor, fell back on the theory of suicide. The mystery would have slept till my death, but—I fear—for my own ingenuity. I tried to stand outside myself, and to look at the crime with the eyes of another, or of my old self. I found the
work of art so perfect as to leave only one sublimely simple solution. The very terms of the problem were so inconceivable that, had I not been the murderer, I should have suspected myself, in conjunction of course with Mrs. Drabdump. The first persons to enter the room would have seemed to me guilty. I wrote at once (in a disguised hand and over the signature of ‘One Who Looks Through His Own Spectacles’) to the ‘Pell Mell Press’ to suggest this. By associating myself thus with Mrs. Drabdump I made it difficult for people to dissociate the two who entered the room together. To dash a half-truth in the world’s eyes is the surest way of blinding it altogether. This letter of mine I contradicted myself (in my own name) the next day, and in the course of the long letter which I was tempted to write I adduced fresh evidence against the theory of suicide. I was disgusted with the open verdict, and wanted men to be up and doing and trying to find me out. I enjoyed the hunt more. Unfortunately, Wimp, set on the chase again by my own letter, by dint of persistent blundering, blundered into a track which—by a devilish tissue of coincidences I had neither foreseen nor dreamt of—seemed to the world the true. Mortlake was arrested and condemned. Wimp had apparently crowned his reputation. This was too much. I had taken all this trouble merely to put a feather in Wimp’s cap, whereas I had expected to shake his reputation by it. It was bad enough that an innocent man should suffer; but that Wimp should achieve a reputation he did not deserve, and overshadow all his predecessors by dint of a colossal mistake, this seemed to me intolerable. I have moved heaven and earth to get the verdict set aside and to save the prisoner; I have exposed the weakness of the evidence; I have had the world searched for the missing girl; I have petitioned and agitated. In vain. I have failed. Now I play my last card. As the overweening Wimp could not be allowed to go down to posterity as the solver of this terrible mystery, I decided that the condemned man might just as well profit by his exposure. That is the reason I make the exposure tonight, before it is too late to save Mortlake.”
“So that is the reason?” said the Home Secretary with a suspicion of mockery in his tones.
“The sole reason.”
Even as he spoke a deeper roar than ever penetrated the study. The crowd had again started cheering. Impatient as the watchers were, they felt that no news was good news. The longer the interview accorded by the Home Secretary to the chairman of the Defense Committee, the greater the hope his obduracy was melting. The idol of the people would be saved, and “Grodman” and “Tom Mortlake” were mingled in the exultant plaudits.
“Templeton,” said the Minister, “have you got down every word of Mr. Grodman’s confession?”
“Every word, sir.”
“Then bring in the cable you received just as Mr. Grodman entered the house.”
Templeton went back into the outer room and brought back the cablegram that had been lying on the Minister’s writing-table when Grodman came in. The Home Secretary silently handed it to his visitor. It was from the Chief of Police of Melbourne, announcing that Jessie Dymond had just arrived in that city in a sailing vessel, ignorant of all that had occurred, and had been immediately dispatched back to England, having made a statement entirely corroborating the theory of the defense.
“Pending further inquiries into this,” said the Home Secretary, not without appreciation of the grim humor of the situation as he glanced at Grodman’s ashen cheeks, “I have reprieved the prisoner. Mr. Templeton was about to dispatch the messenger to the governor of Newgate as you entered this room. Mr. Wimp’s card-castle would have tumbled to pieces without your assistance. Your still undiscoverable crime would have shaken his reputation as you intended.”
A sudden explosion shook the room and blent with the cheers of the populace. Grodman had shot himself—very scientifically—in the heart. He fell at the Home Secretary’s feet, stone dead.
Some of the workingmen who had been standing waiting by the shafts of the hansom helped to bear the stretcher.
THE BURGLAR’S STORY, by W.S. Gilbert
When I became eighteen years of age, my father, a distinguished begging-letter impostor, said to me, “Reginald, I think it is time that you began to think about choosing a profession.”
These were ominous words. Since I left Eton, nearly a year before, I had spent my time very pleasantly, and very idly, and I was sorry to see my long holiday drawing to a close. My father had hoped to have sent me to Cambridge (Cambridge was a tradition in our family), but business had been very depressed of late, and a sentence of six months’ hard labour had considerably straitened my poor father’s resources. It was necessary —highly necessary —that I should choose a calling. With a sigh of resignation, I admitted as much.
“If you like,” said my father, “I will take you in hand, and teach you my profession, and, in a few years perhaps, I may take you into partnership. But, to be candid with you, I doubt whether it is a satisfactory calling for an athletic young fellow like you.”
“I don’t seem to care about it, particularly,” said I.
“I’m glad to hear it,” said my father; “it’s a poor calling for a young man of spirit. Besides, you have to grow grey in the service before people will listen to you. It’s all very well as a refuge in old age; but a young fellow is likely to make but a poor hand at it. Now, I should like to consult your own tastes on so important a matter as the choice of a profession. What do you say? The Army?”
No, I didn’t care for the army.
“Forgery? The Bar? Cornish Wrecking?”
“Father,” said I, “ I should like to be a forger, but I write such an infernal hand.”
“A regular Eton hand,” said he. “Not plastic enough for forgery; but you could have a writing-master.”
“It’s as much as I can do to forge my own name. I don’t believe I should ever be able to forge anybody else’s.”
“Anybody’s else, you should say, not ‘anybody else’s.’ It’s a dreadful barbarism. Eton English.”
“No,” said I, “I should never make a fortune at it. As to wrecking —why you know how sea-sick I am.”
“You might get over that. Besides, you would deal with wrecks ashore, not wrecks at sea.”
“Most of it done in small boats, I’m told. A deal of small boat work. No, I won’t be a wrecker. I think I should like to be a burglar.”
“Yes,” said my father, considering the subject. “Yes, it’s a fine manly profession; but it’s dangerous; it’s highly dangerous.”
“Just dangerous enough to be exciting, no more.”
“Well,” said my father, “if you’ve a distinct taste for burglary, I’ll see what can be done.”
* * * *
My dear father was always prompt with pen and ink. That evening he wrote to his old friend Ferdinand Stoneleigh, a burglar of the very highest professional standing, and in a week I was duly and formally articled to him, with a view to ultimate partnership.
I had to work hard under Mr. Stoneleigh.
“Burglary is a jealous mistress,” said he. “She will tolerate no rivals. She exacts the undivided devotion of her worshippers.”
And so I found it. Every morning at ten o’clock I had to present myself at Stoneleigh’s chambers in New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, and until twelve I assisted his clerk with the correspondence. At twelve I had to go out prospecting with Stoneleigh, and from two to four I had to devote to finding out all particulars necessary to a scientific burglar in any given house. At first I did this merely for practice, and with no view to an actual attempt. He would tell me off to a house of which he knew all the particulars, and order me to ascertain all about the house and its inmates —their coming and going, the number of their servants, whether any of them were men, and, if so, whether they slept on the basement or not, and other details necessary to be known before a burglary could be safely attempted. Then he would compare my information with his own facts, and compliment or blame me, as I might deserve. He was a strict master, but always kind, just, and courteous, as became a highly polished gentleman of the
old school. He was one of the last men who habitually wore hessians.
The Victorian Mystery Megapack: 27 Classic Mystery Tales Page 31