X. Jones—Of Scotland Yard

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  What happened then is interpretable more or less by the known fact that Marceau rose—wheeled desperately, frantically, about backward in a narrow circle (G-H)—the so-called counter-clockwise Trail III!—stumbled backward, as his knees from swiftly growing weakness crumpled beneath him—and died of strangulation upon his back. Knees presumably drawn, during part of this gruesome procedure, to belly. (Position where his body was found is delineated at H-I.) The while the maker of the strange. footprints, as it appears from a study of the trails, “stood tight”—(at F)—armed to shoot Marceau down, in case the wire garrote, which ultimately was to leave its vicious mark on Marceau’s throat, slipped—since flight, for one so small as to have made such footprints, would be futile, if pursued; “stood tight,” moreover, in a position as convenient for subsequently removing the garrote from the prone dead man, as it had been for looping it over the head of the kneeling man.

  After which, following these small footprints as they bent sharply around, and interpreting them as one has to do with such things, their maker stepped forward (to I), removed the garrote, turned, and proceeded out across the lawn (via I-J) in a slightly curved northeasterly direction for approximately 30 feet—the curve, though slight, being just definite enough to indicate an attempt on the part of a person proceeding straight east to make contact with something that, well up ahead of him, persisted in drifting slowly from right to left across his path—and finally, and quite suddenly, as evidenced by the complete termination of the trail, the maker of the small prints left the lawn completely. Though not in any jump to the nearest edge—a flagstone walk—since that lay a full 30 feet further east!

  Thus, the footprints—all of which had, naturally, to be fully interpreted in conjunction with other subsequently ascertained facts.

  Such as—for instance:

  Marceau, interested in aviation, had marked the roof of his house with a great 15-foot red-neon-lighted arrow, pointing towards London. (And backward, so it was also said, directly to Calais.) This neon-lighted arrow was turned on every night at dusk by one or the other of the two maids in the house: Jane Trotter, or Mattie Tullivant. And served admirably, as a guide, to any plane which might have wanted to search out the Marceau grounds. For it was, it seems, lighted this night.

  A Knepp-Chandley autogiro—one which, incidentally, had been freshly charged with gas and oil the night previous to Marceau’s death—was stolen at dusk on the night of his death from Runnymede Field, a private airfield outside of the town of Lymewich, near Liverpool; and by its distinctive underfuselage lights—plus certain observations of competent plane observers across England—was found to have pursued a bee line southeast at such speed that it would have been above Little Ivington at about 8:45 o’clock, the approximate hour of Marceau’s murder. One witness in the Marceau home, moreover, peering through a high but small window, established the identity of an aircraft which had hovered close to the house—and low—for the fraction of a minute around the time of Marceau’s murder, as being this autogiro; even more, this witness established the fact that a presumed “second” plane or giro which arrived in the region about 15 minutes after the first craft had left it, again obviously hovering briefly close to the house, as well as actually circling the house defiantly in one last audible volution, directing its pivoted underfuselage light so that the beam pierced in turn all the windows of the outlying rooms, as the “first” craft itself, returned. In short, this witness established conclusively not the mere fact of what was generally known to those within Marceau Manor: namely, that two autogiros had hovered close by the house that night, but that both were one and the same machine—and the one, incidentally, that had been sighted flying straight across England. This witness was Una Meggs, a domestic from the town of St. Swithin, 50 miles to the north—incidentally a comely blonde girl and a local beauty prize winner, too!—who happened to be visiting the butler, Tedro Grimes, that evening, and was in Grimes’ room while he was serving dinner to the previously mentioned week-end house guest, Inspector Claude Sheringham of Scotland Yard. (The abstractor desires to add herewith, on his own behalf, that an old newspaper dated several days after the date of Marceau’s murder, which paper he is utilizing here to check completely certain points, sets forth that no less than seven witnesses about the countryside subsequently corroborated Miss Meggs’ story as to the common identities of both aircraft: but the others did so only after the resultant newspaper publicity had set forth the pattern of the distinctive underfuselage lights on the machine. Miss Meggs’ specific description—and identification of the two craft as being one and the same—was made before the investigators themselves knew about the stolen Lymewich autogiro, or the description of its underfuselage lights.)

  With respect to this stolen autogiro, two boys, coming out of a small woods on the edge of Runnymede Field, at around dusk, saw what appeared to be an infant seated at the control wheel of this autogiro. An infant with, they said, a very wizened old face, yet clad in dress and lace-trimmed bonnet. They knew the autogiro quite well, for it belonged to a retired sportsman named Gondersby in Lymewich, who flew it each afternoon, brought it down about dusk, and then sent his servant, one Jelkins, from his home, a half mile away, to park it in its hangar for the night. By the time the two boys had run across the huge field to the old local fieldmaster, and come back with him, the stolen machine had taxied off, risen sharply above their heads, and departed for parts unknown.

  A few minutes after the first visit of the stolen autogiro to the region of the Marceau grounds, and its departure, an old Dutchman, one Piet Van ’T Veer, the open window of whose shack on the rear part of the lot adjoining Marceau’s lawn stood but about 150 feet from where Marceau was working, heard Marceau distinctly say—and in a most terror-stricken voice: “Oh—my God! It’s the Babe—from Hell!” After which Marceau started immediately to call for help. Which call, however, became completely cut off. In a panic—for the old Dutchman was a blind man—the panic devolving about a hypothesis on his part based on a false presumption, and into which there is no need to go here, the witness stumbled forth into the night and lost himself, hearing nothing further.

  The morning after Marceau’s death, a small pocket-size diary—or journal—was found amongst his possessions—a memo-book which evidently comprised his first venture into diary-keeping, and which covered just the year of 1935, from New Year’s Day up to about the time of his death. In this journal he had made two separate—and peculiar—entries: one, an entry of somewhere around the end of January, in which he had stated that he had seen, while out that day in snow-covered Wormwood Scrubbs, London, “that horrible baby again”; the second entry, of mid-March, stated that while out on Hampstead Heath that day, looking for an early wood violet, he had seen a number of nurses and their charges, including “The Babe from Hell again”—which mere statement he had elaborated with several additional words consisting of “God help me.” It is to be emphasized that the old blind dutchman, Piet Van ’T Veer, specifically described Marceau’s desperate and terror-stricken words at least 12 hours before Marceau’s hidden journal, with the precise written words described above, was found.

  It was also furthermore found, 24 hours or so after Marceau’s murder, that 25 years before, he had had published, in the readers’ column of the London Times, a letter advocating death for all minikins, regardless of whether they were true dwarfs or true midgets; and, moreover, advocating strangling. This letter bore his name and old London address.

  With this damning concatenation of interlocking facts, all England—not to omit mention of any and all adjacent countries on the Continent—was searched for midgets and dwarfs; such professional or one-time-professional ones known yet to be alive were located and were, on general principles, made to account for their whereabouts on the night of May 10; the same with other Lilliputians, known locally, but not professionally; all adults who were known to have consorted with such, professionally or otherwise, were also taken up and questioned in detail
; in particular—at least in England!—were examined “odorifically”; that is to say, were well “sniffed” by the various town constables who took them up, for the smell of fresh fish. This was because, since Marceau’s murder occurred on a Friday, the customary two whitefish had come down to Marceau Manor from London; he had inspected them critically in the kitchen after the cook, an Ada Banbury, unwrapped them for him, but had wiped his hands thereafter only more or less lightly on a dry towel; and later, deciding not to eat any dinner himself, and because his houseguest did not like fish, he had ordered them sidetracked till next night in the electric refrigerator, when this houseguest would be across country. It was the smell of fish on Marceau’s ascot tie, found in his side coat pocket, which showed so perfectly that he had removed his own tie. It was hoped that with his fishy hands he had at least momentarily touched his tiny slayer, who in turn might have transferred the odor to a full-sized accomplice. However, such suspects, little or big, as were subsequently questioned, carried no trace of fish-smell. The known professional midgets and dwarfs in England—as well as the non-professional ones—and, likewise, all of such in other adjacent countries—were able to prove perfect alibis. The autogiro itself was never found.

  No witnesses were available in the Marceau home—outside of the visiting Meggs girl from St. Swithin—due to its kitchen opening on the side driveway, and the great lawn being at the rear of the house and visible only from a closed and seldom used room. A perfect illumination, however, for a study of the entire terrain by Scotland Yard inspectors, was available thanks to the existence of a pivoted electric floodlight on a balcony above the lawn, installed originally for illumination of a farther meadow in case planes should give evidences of being in trouble. As to witnesses in the Marceau house, the Meggs girl was at best able to testify only as to the underfuselage lights of the autogiro when, on both visits, it cut across a corner of the small high-up window in the room where she waited for the butler.

  No eye-witnesses, furthermore, were available from the one and only other residential-house in the vicinity—the adjoining one—for it was rented to one George T. McNulty, an American, an agent in England for American sporting goods, and at the time of Marceau’s murder McNulty’s entire ménage, consisting of himself, his British servant Ellen Watson, and his three motherless children Robert, Tad, and Betty, were in Drury Lane Theatre, London, preparatory to the children and the nurse sailing at midnight for Philadelphia. They had all left Little Ivington in the McNulty car, with the hand luggage, at around 4 in the afternoon. It has been interestingly postulated that had only McNulty not been away—and had, perhaps, the murder occurred a little later—he would have been a witness to the entire killing, if not, indeed, actually aborting it—since the point where the Lilliputian garroter hopped from autogiro to lawn, and the point where the latter subsequently ascended to autogiro again, are both visible from a second floor rear room which McNulty at the time utilized as a bedroom, not being cut off therefrom by the Marceau house as is much of the eastern part of that lawn. But, on the other hand, it is also interestingly postulated that the complete darkness of all the windows of the McNulty house that night was one of the factors which dictated landing the murderer upon the lawn instead of, as was probably the original idea, upon the huge windowbox comprising the sill of the window of Marceau’s sleeping room.

  Marceau had not, so far as is known, made any enemies outside the world of Lilliputia. It is hypothesized that he hated and detested Chinese people, not only because not one of many curios in a collection of such which had been garnered together by him was Chinese, but because he even once went to the extreme lengths of having some translations of Chinese jokes cut—by the publisher thereof—from an international humor magazine to which he subscribed. The cause for such possible hatred of Chinese—or things Chinese!—on his part is not known. Nor do the Chinese people themselves—as this abstractor can well testify to!—know anything concerning it.

  Thus, condensed—and also carefully checked with newspaper accounts of that day—is the entire picture of the Marceau Murder. Which condensed picture is submitted herewith as a tangible evidence that the abstractor of the facts contained in it is justified in proclaiming himself to be a skilled and qualified artisan in journalistic re-writing.

  And to which is appended herewith—as the abstractor’s mid-semester exercise in Deductive Theory, Course Criminology-B—a semi-solution of this murder. Based upon all the foregoing facts, and also upon new facts elicited solely by—and known only to—this abstractor, and upon deduction therefrom. As follows:

  Marceau was not—in the humble estimation of this deductionist!—garroted by the Lilliputian, but by the pilot of that autogiro, who let down a long wire slip-noose from the cockpit, hovering above Marceau, drew it tight—and let go! The Lilliputian himself was, in all probability, but a degenerate half-wit monstrosity of some sort—monstrous enough to have frightened Marceau all right, in the two or so seconds that Marceau saw it peering down at him from the cockpit—and taught how to cut or otherwise detach such a wire slip-noose from a human neck. And it was for that task alone that he was deposited upon the lawn. For did he not walk, straight as an arrow, to Marceau’s prone body? The adult-sized pilot may, therefore, be said to be the murderer. However, for the real and true murderer in the Marceau Case, it is necessary to name the man who induced—or forced—this pilot to do what he did.

  This man, being therefore the brains back of the murder, must of necessity have been some individual—like, for instance, any of Marceau’s servants, or his gardener who came daily from town—who knew enough of Marceau’s life and movements to lay out the particular plan that was used. Such individual, moreover, to have been able to acquire a pilot who could or would perform such a job for him, would, again, have to be a man who had at some time past, in some past place, had much contact with criminals, i.e., been in a line of work where he would have met many criminals.

  This man, however, did not himself hate Marceau. No! Whom he hated was Lilliputia—all of it!—and his murder of Marceau was to make all the world hate and anathematize Lilliputians. This man, I dogmatically maintain and aver, in reading up on the curious tribe whom he hated, came across, in some index of newspaper articles, nothing less than an entry of Marceau’s long letter to the London Times, written years ago. And forthwith went to the Times office, and read the entire letter in the back files. And thereupon formed his bizarre scheme. And in case official detectivedom smiles at the naïve hypothesis of a mere Chinaman, and points out that “Poole’s Index” and “Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature” do not index such things as letters, I would like to say that the volume hypothesized by me actually exists, and is, moreover, in the possession of one, Samuel Sing, Jr.! It is Volume No. 1910 of the little-known “Seegray’s Digest of American and British Newspaper Articles” an entire set of which is owned by the said Samuel Sing, Jr. That letter is listed upon page 235 of the volume in question, under “Exterminate Lilliputians, Urges Britisher.”

  Whom this individual, set forth here as having caused Marceau to be murdered, hired to steal and operate that autogiro—and where his pawn acquired the midget monstrosity actually acquired—will almost certainly never be known. Unless, perhaps, the former individual confesses. For—in the humble estimation of this writer—the master-brain undoubtedly secretly placed a clockwork bomb in some valise or satchel, scheduled to be transported in that autogiro. And which bomb, by chance, or otherwise, blew up somewhere over the English Channel—and neither occupants nor machine were ever seen again.

  But is there an individual—with or without an ironclad alibi, for, under the circumstances, it does not matter—who conforms to every one of the conditions listed a few lines back?

  There is! His name appears in the 1925—1930 “Digest of New York City Personal Damage Suits Dismissed Because of Settlement out of Court.” Samuel Sing, Jr., possesses, in his library of criminological data, a file of this Digest—including this volume�
�should official detectivedom deign to desire to survey it. A small entry, alphabetically listed, locates this man as living—at least at the time of the entry—at 2532 University Avenue, Bronx, New York; and states him to have settled out of court—on October 6, 1928—for a putative $10,000—with a Brooklyn Negro Lilliputian named Moses Tugg, for the latter’s right hand which was blown off by a defective machine gun which this man illicitly sold this Negro midget whilst engaged in private firearms business.

  The man’s name is George McNulty—no middle initial given.

  Signed... Samuel Sing, Jr.

  DOCUMENT XXIV

  Cablegram, of date November 13, 1936, from the Editor of “Criminology,” published in the Railway Express Building, St. Louis, Missouri, to Harold DeLay, American artist staying at the Hyde Park Hotel, 66 Knightsbridge S.W., London, England.

  Dear Harold:

  Please make immediate pen-and-ink portrait Xenius Jones of Scotland Yard, and forward same with bill by first transoceanic mail plane “Atlantic Eagle” scheduled leave London November 15. We are holding space for portrait in boiled-down version we are running in our next issue of a certain syndicated story appearing in St. Louis Times this morning under copyright A-A News Service. If at all possible, Harold, please dig up some kind of a wire model of a four-dimensional cube from some maker of university supplies, and show Jones actually demonstrating his 4-dimensional crime theory upon it. Don’t miss plane, as we close for press November 17.

  Jim McMourke, Editor.

  DOCUMENT XXV

  Cablegram, of date November 14, 1936, from Harold DeLay, Hyde Park Hotel, 66 Knightsbridge S.W., London, England, to J. McMourke, Railway Express Building, St. Louis, Missouri.