by Graeme Davis
Then the murderer quietly returned to his luxurious home at Edbrooke Castle unsuspected. No one had thought of mentioning his name in connexion with that of Mary Nicholls. In the days when he used to come down to Ash Court he was Mr. Lydgate, and, when he became a peer, sleepy, out-of-the-way Ninescore ceased to think of him.
Perhaps Mr. Lionel Lydgate knew all about his brother’s association with the village girl. From his attitude at the inquest I should say he did, but of course he would not betray his own brother unless forced to do so. Now, of course, the whole aspect of the case was changed; the veil of mystery had been torn asunder owing to the insight, the marvellous intuition, of a woman who, in my opinion, is the most wonderful psychologist of her time.
You know the sequel. Our fellows at the Yard, aided by the local police, took their lead from Lady Molly, and began their investigations of Lord Edbrooke’s movements on or about the 23rd of January.
Even their preliminary inquiries revealed the fact that his lordship had left Edbrooke Castle on the 21st. He went up to town, saying to his wife and household that he was called away on business, and not even taking his valet with him. He put up at the Langham Hotel.
But here police investigations came to an abrupt ending. Lord Edbrooke evidently got wind of them. Anyway, the day after Lady Molly so cleverly enticed Mary Nicholls out of her hiding-place, and surprised her into an admission of the truth, the unfortunate man threw himself in front of the express train at Grantham railway station, and was instantly killed. Human justice cannot reach him now!
But don’t tell me that a man would have thought of that bogus paragraph, or of the taunt which stung the motherly pride of the village girl to the quick, and thus wrung from her an admission which no amount of male ingenuity would ever have obtained.
* The British monarch’s official birthday is a traditional time for awarding titles and honours.
† About (archaic).
‡ £571,141.40 (US $ 765,433.23) in 2018, according to online sources.
§ Local cross-country races.
¶ A kind of large, sweet bun or teacake.
THE SCIENTIFIC CRACKSMAN
by Arthur B. Reeve
1910
While Holmes is an amateur scientist and a professional detective, Professor Craig Kennedy—one of many claimants to the title of “the American Sherlock Holmes”—is an amateur detective and a professional scientist. Based at Columbia University, he applies his extensive knowledge of chemistry and psychology to the mysteries that come his way, and he can also call upon an array of cutting-edge devices such as lie detectors and portable seismographs. Like Augustus S. F. X. van Dusen, who appeared earlier in this collection, he has a resourceful journalist sidekick in the Watson role, although like van Dusen, his exploits are recounted in the omniscient third person rather than Watson’s first-person accounts of Holmes.
“The Scientific Cracksman” was first published as “The Case of Helen Bond” in the December 1910 issue of Cosmopolitan—then a literary magazine. Its title was changed in the 1912 collection The Silent Bullet. Kennedy made eighty-two appearances in Cosmopolitan, the last in August 1918. Numerous collections and novels were published, and fresh stories were printed in a number of other magazines.
As the 1920s gave way to the 1930s, Kennedy morphed into a more typical pulp detective, but these later tales seem to have been ghost-written; like Holmes, Kennedy became a brand and moved beyond his creator’s control. The character appeared in movie serials in 1919 and 1936, and starred in a television series, Craig Kennedy, Criminologist, which ran for twenty-six episodes from 1951 to 1953.
Kennedy’s creator, Arthur B. Reeve, graduated from Princeton and attended New York Law School, working as an editor and journalist until 1911, when Craig Kennedy made his name. He also wrote screenplays, including three episodes of a serial starring Harry Houdini, but he stayed in the east rather than going to Hollywood and his film career petered out. He also covered high-profile criminal cases for several newspapers, including the still-unsolved murder of Hollywood director William Desmond Taylor and the trial of the Lindbergh baby kidnapper, Bruno Hauptmann.
I’m willing to wager you a box of cigars that you don’t know the most fascinating story in your own paper to-night,” remarked Kennedy, as I came in one evening with the four or five newspapers I was in the habit of reading to see whether they had beaten the Star in getting any news of importance.
“I’ll bet I do,” I said, “or I was one of about a dozen who worked it up. It’s the Shaw murder trial. There isn’t another that’s even a bad second.”
“I am afraid the cigars will be on you, Walter. Crowded over on the second page by a lot of stale sensation that everyone has read for the fiftieth time, now, you will find what promises to be a real sensation, a curious half-column account of the sudden death of John G. Fletcher.”
I laughed. “Craig,” I said, “when you put up a simple death from apoplexy against a murder trial, and such a murder trial; well, you disappoint me—that’s all.”
“Is it a simple case of apoplexy?” he asked, pacing up and down the room, while I wondered why he should grow excited over what seemed a very ordinary news item, after all. Then he picked up the paper and read the account slowly aloud.
JOHN G. FLETCHER, STEEL MAGNATE, DIES SUDDENLY SAFE OPEN BUT LARGE SUM OF CASH UNTOUCHED
John Graham Fletcher, the aged philanthropist and steelmaker, was found dead in his library this morning at his home at Fletcherwood, Great Neck, Long Island. Strangely, the safe in the library in which he kept his papers and a large sum of cash was found opened, but as far as could be learned nothing is missing.
It had always been Mr. Fletcher’s custom to rise at seven o’clock. This morning his housekeeper became alarmed when he had not appeared by nine o’clock. Listening at the door, she heard no sound. It was not locked, and on entering she found the former steel-magnate lying lifeless on the floor between his bedroom and the library adjoining. His personal physician, Dr. W. C. Bryant, was immediately notified.
Close examination of the body revealed that his face was slightly discoloured, and the cause of death was given by the physician as apoplexy. He had evidently been dead about eight or nine hours when discovered.
Mr. Fletcher is survived by a nephew, John G. Fletcher, II., who is the Blake professor of bacteriology at the University, and by a grandniece, Miss Helen Bond. Professor Fletcher was informed of the sad occurrence shortly after leaving a class this morning and hurried out to Fletcherwood. He would make no statement other than that he was inexpressibly shocked. Miss Bond, who has for several years resided with relatives, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Greene of Little Neck, is prostrated by the shock.
“Walter,” added Kennedy, as he laid down the paper and, without any more sparring, came directly to the point, “there was something missing from that safe.”
I had no need to express the interest I now really felt, and Kennedy hastened to take advantage of it.
“Just before you came in,” he continued, “Jack Fletcher called me up from Great Neck. You probably don’t know it, but it has been privately reported in the inner circle of the University that old Fletcher was to leave the bulk of his fortune to found a great school of preventive medicine, and that the only proviso was that his nephew should be dean of the school. The professor told me over the wire that the will was missing from the safe, and that it was the only thing missing. From his excitement I judge that there is more to the story than he cared to tell over the ’phone. He said his car was on the way to the city, and he asked if I wouldn’t come and help him—he wouldn’t say how. Now, I know him pretty well, and I’m going to ask you to come along, Walter, for the express purpose of keeping this thing out of the newspapers, understand?—until we get to the bottom of it.”
A few minutes later the telephone rang and the hall-boy announced that the car was waiting. We hurried down to it; the chauffeur lounged down carelessly into his seat and we were off across the city and
river and out on the road to Great Neck with amazing speed.
Already I began to feel something of Kennedy’s zest for the adventure. I found myself half a dozen times on the point of hazarding a suspicion, only to relapse again into silence at the inscrutable look on Kennedy’s face. What was the mystery that awaited us in the great lonely house on Long Island?
We found Fletcherwood a splendid estate directly on the bay, with a long driveway leading up to the door. Professor Fletcher met us at the porte cochere,* and I was glad to note that, far from taking me as an intruder, he seemed rather relieved that someone who understood the ways of the newspapers could stand between him and any reporters who might possibly drop in.
He ushered us directly into the library and closed the door. It seemed as if he could scarcely wait to tell his story.
“Kennedy,” he began, almost trembling with excitement, “look at that safe door.”
We looked. It had been drilled through in such a way as to break the combination. It was a heavy door, closely fitting, and it was the best kind of small safe that the state of the art had produced. Yet clearly it had been tampered with, and successfully. Who was this scientific cracksman who had apparently accomplished the impossible? It was no ordinary hand and brain which had executed this “job.”
Fletcher swung the door wide, and pointed to a little compartment inside, whose steel door had been jimmied open. Then out of it he carefully lifted a steel box and deposited it on the library table.
“I suppose everybody has been handling that box?” asked Craig quickly.
A smile flitted across Fletcher’s features. “I thought of that, Kennedy,” he said. “I remembered what you once told me about finger-prints. Only myself has touched it, and I was careful to take hold of it only on the sides. The will was placed in this box, and the key to the box was usually in the lock. Well, the will is gone. That’s all; nothing else was touched. But for the life of me I can’t find a mark on the box, not a finger-mark. Now on a hot and humid summer night like last night I should say it was pretty likely that anyone touching this metal box would have left finger-marks. Shouldn’t you think so, Kennedy?”
Kennedy nodded and continued to examine the place where the compartment had been jimmied. A low whistle aroused us: coming over to the table, Craig tore a white sheet of paper off a pad lying there and deposited a couple of small particles on it.
“I found them sticking on the jagged edges of the steel where it had been forced,” he said. Then he whipped out a pocket magnifying-glass. “Not from a rubber glove,” he commented half to himself. “By Jove, one side of them shows lines that look as if they were the lines on a person’s fingers, and the other side is perfectly smooth. There’s not a chance of using them as a clue, except—well, I didn’t know criminals in America knew that stunt.”
“What stunt?”
“Why, you know how keen the new detectives are on the finger-print system?† Well, the first thing some of the up-to-date criminals in Europe did was to wear rubber gloves so that they would leave no prints. But you can’t work very well with rubber gloves. Last fall in Paris I heard of a fellow who had given the police a lot of trouble. He never left a mark, or at least it was no good if he did. He painted his hands lightly with a liquid rubber which he had invented himself. It did all that rubber gloves would do and yet left him the free use of his fingers with practically the same keenness of touch. Fletcher, whatever is at the bottom of this affair, I feel sure right now that you have to deal with no ordinary criminal.”
“Do you suppose there are any relatives besides those we know of?” I asked Kennedy when Fletcher had left to summon the servants.
“No,” he replied, “I think not. Fletcher and Helen Bond, his second cousin, to whom he is engaged, are the only two.”
Kennedy continued to study the library. He walked in and out of the doors and examined the windows and viewed the safe from all angles.
“The old gentleman’s bedroom is here,” he said, indicating a door. “Now a good smart noise or perhaps even a light shining through the transom from the library might arouse him. Suppose he woke up suddenly and entered by this door. He would see the thief at work on the safe. Yes, that part of reconstructing the story is simple. But who was the intruder?”
Just then Fletcher returned with the servants. The questioning was long and tedious, and developed nothing except that the butler admitted that he was uncertain whether the windows in the library were locked. The gardener was very obtuse, but finally contributed one possibly important fact. He had noted in the morning that the back gate, leading into a disused road closer to the bay than the main highway in front of the house, was open. It was rarely used, and was kept closed only by an ordinary hook. Whoever had opened it had evidently forgotten to hook it. He had thought it strange that it was unhooked, and in closing it he had noticed in the mud of the roadway marks that seemed to indicate that an automobile had stood there.
After the servants had gone, Fletcher asked us to excuse him for a while, as he wished to run over to the Greenes, who lived across the bay. Miss Bond was completely prostrated by the death of her uncle, he said, and was in an extremely nervous condition. Meanwhile if we found any need of a machine we might use his uncle’s, or in fact anything around the place.
“Walter,” said Craig, when Fletcher had gone, “I want to run back to town to-night, and I have something I’d like to have you do, too.”
We were soon speeding back along the splendid road to Long Island City, while he laid out our programme.
“You go down to the Star office,” he said, “and look through all the clippings on the whole Fletcher family. Get a complete story of the life of Helen Bond, too—what she has done in society, with whom she has been seen mostly, whether she has made any trips abroad, and whether she has ever been engaged—you know, anything likely to be significant. I’m going up to the apartment to get my camera and then to the laboratory to get some rather bulky paraphernalia I want to take out to Fletcherwood. Meet me at the Columbus Circle station at, say half-past-ten.”
So we separated. My search revealed the fact that Miss Bond had always been intimate with the ultra-fashionable set, had spent last summer in Europe, a good part of the time in Switzerland and Paris with the Greenes. As far as I could find out she had never been reported engaged, but plenty of fortunes as well as foreign titles had been flitting about the ward of the steel-magnate.
Craig and I met at the appointed time. He had a lot of paraphernalia with him, and it did not add to our comfort as we sped back, but it wasn’t much over half an hour before we again found ourselves nearing Great Neck.
Instead of going directly back to Fletcherwood, however, Craig had told the chauffeur to stop at the plant of the local electric light and power company, where he asked if he might see the record of the amount of current used the night before.
The curve sprawled across the ruled surface of the sheet by the automatic registering-needle was irregular, showing the ups and downs of the current, rising sharply from sundown and gradually declining after nine o’clock, as the lights went out. Somewhere between eleven and twelve o’clock, however, the irregular fall of the curve was broken by a quite noticeable upward twist.
Craig asked the men if that usually happened. They were quite sure that the curve as a rule went gradually down until twelve o’clock, when the power was shut off. But they did not see anything remarkable in it. “Oh, I suppose some of the big houses had guests,” volunteered the foreman, “and just to show off the place perhaps they turned on all the lights. I don’t know, sir, what it was, but it couldn’t have been a heavy drain, or we would have noticed it at the time, and the lights would all have been dim.”
“Well,” said Craig, “just watch and see if it occurs again to-night about the same time.”
“All right, sir.”
“And when you close down the plant for the night, will you bring the record card up to Fletcherwood?” asked Craig, slipping a bill i
nto the pocket of the foreman’s shirt.
“I will, and thank you, sir.”
It was nearly half-past eleven when Craig had got his apparatus set up in the library at Fletcherwood. Then he unscrewed all the bulbs from the chandelier in the library and attached in their places connections with the usual green silk-covered flexible wire rope. These were then joined up to a little instrument which to me looked like a drill. Next he muffed the drill with a wad of felt and applied it to the safe door.
I could hear the dull tat-tat of the drill. Going into the bedroom and closing the door, I found that it was still audible to me, but an old man, inclined to deafness and asleep, would scarcely have been awakened by it. In about ten minutes Craig displayed a neat little hole in the safe door opposite the one made by the cracksman in the combination.
“I’m glad you’re honest,” I said, “or else we might be afraid of you—perhaps even make you prove an alibi for last night’s job!”
He ignored my bantering and said in a tone such as he might have used before a class of students in the gentle art of scientific safe-cracking: “Now if the power company’s curve is just the same to-night as last night, that will show how the thing was done. I wanted to be sure of it, so I thought I’d try this apparatus which I smuggled in from Paris last year. I believe the old man happened to be wakeful and heard it.”
Then he pried off the door of the interior compartment which had been jimmied open. “Perhaps we may learn something by looking at this door and studying the marks left by the jimmy, by means of this new instrument of mine,” he said.
On the library table he fastened an arrangement with two upright posts supporting a dial which he called a “dynamometer.” The uprights were braced in the back, and the whole thing reminded me of a miniature guillotine.