Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus Vol 7

by R. Austin Freeman

  "Yes," Thorndyke agreed, "Small's description corresponds exactly with Weech's. But you are quite right, Jervis. These new facts do not fit our theory in its original form. We shall have to modify it. But you notice that our new discoveries, so far from exonerating Gillum, tend to confirm our suspicion that he was responsible for Webb's death. What we shall have to reconsider is the possible motive for the murder. We assumed that Webb was a blackmailer. We may have been right, but these two meetings, as you say, do not fit comfortably into the group of events that we assumed. We must have another try. But what will be much better than speculating on the possible alternatives, will be the collection of some further data. There are still some unexplored territories in which we may possibly make new discoveries."

  "Yes," I agreed; "there is, for instance, Dr. Peck. He might be able to give us some useful information. But the question is: where is he? He may be in the middle of the Pacific."

  "True," Thorndyke admitted; "but, on the other hand, he may not. I think that your question has to be answered, and I propose that we seek the answer without delay."

  XII. THE PURSUIT OF DR. PECK

  Thorndyke's decision that an immediate answer must be found to my question, "Where is Dr. Peck?" was given effect on the very following morning; when, as our engagements permitted, we set forth together for the pleasant old precinct of Staple Inn. As our business was with the porter, and he was most likely to be found in his lodge by the main gate, we took our way up Fetter Lane and along Holborn until we reached the arched entrance in the ancient timber houses through which the wayfarer in the busy street can get a glimpse of the quiet, secluded quadrangle. And here, passing under the archway, we found the lodge door open and the porter plainly visible within.

  Observing that we had halted with an air of business, he came to the door and asked, civilly, what he could do for us.

  "I want," said Thorndyke, "to get into communication with one of your tenants; a certain Dr. Peck."

  "Ah!" the official replied, "then you have made a bull's eye at the first shot; though he is not one of our tenants now. But I can give you his address."

  This he proceeded to do, writing it down on a slip of paper which my colleague offered for the purpose. And, with this, it seemed to me that our business had come to an unexpectedly swift conclusion, and that we might forthwith go about "getting into communication" with our quarry. But this was evidently not Thorndyke's view, for having put the slip of paper in his pocket-book, he developed an unmistakeable tendency to open a conversation and to start the porter talking. From which I inferred that he hoped to gather up a few unconsidered trifles of a biographical nature which might be dropped in the course of a properly directed gossip.

  "I came here," said he, "because this was given as his address in the Medical Directory; though I hadn't much hope of finding him, as he spends most of his time at sea."

  "No," replied the porter, "and if you had come a little earlier you wouldn't have found him or got any news of him either. He seems to have been all over the world this last trip, not on an ordinary voyage out and home, but changing about from one ship to another and going into all sorts of unheard-of places."

  "But I suppose," said Thorndyke, "he kept in touch with you so that you could send on his letters?"

  "Not a bit," was the reply. "He couldn't. He never knew where he was going to next, and he never stayed long in any place. He meant this to be his last trip at sea, and he was determined to see as much of the world as he could before he settled down ashore. And he did. It must have been a regular Captain Cook's voyage."

  "And he never gave you any place to send his letters to all the time that he was away? There must have been a pretty considerable accumulation when he came home."

  "I expect there was. But I never collected them from his chambers as I had no place to send them to. In fact, he told me to leave them where they dropped through the letter slit."

  "I suppose you heard from him from time to time, when the rent became due, for instance?"

  "No, he never wrote. There was nothing to write about. He had always left an order with his banker to pay his rent as it became due, when he was away at sea, and he did the same this time."

  "It seems a wasteful arrangement," said Thorndyke, "to have kept a set of chambers empty, month after month, while the tenant was wandering about the earth. Don't you think so?"

  "I do, and I told him so. But he said that a doctor has to have a permanent address to keep his name on the register; and he liked to have a place to come to when he returned from a voyage. But this last trip did really seem to me out of all reason. He was away close upon two years; and all that time there were the chambers lying empty and the rent going on just the same as if he had been living in them. It happened to be a low rent, because he was an old tenant. He came here years ago when he was a medical student. We used to have a lot of students in those days, mostly from Barts, and when one qualified and gave up his chambers, he was allowed to hand them on to a new student. So Dr. Peck had been living here more years than I can remember, and I suppose he didn't like the idea of giving up his old chambers. But still, as you said, two years' rent for unoccupied chambers does seem a wicked waste."

  "Perhaps," Thorndyke suggested, "he didn't expect to be away so long."

  "Oh yes, he did. He told me that he might be away for as much as a couple of years. He meant to go overland to Marseilles and there pick up some kind of foreign tramp and go with her wherever she might be going, and after a time, change over to another ship and make a voyage somewhere else And he made mighty preparations so that he should be as comfortable as possible. He got a brand new cabin trunk, in addition to his old ones, and he had a couple of portable bookcases made so that he could have his library with him."

  "He must have reckoned that those tramps would have pretty liberal cabin space," I remarked. "You couldn't get many bookcases into an ordinary tramp's cabin, so far as my experience goes."

  "Oh, but these were quite small things," the porter explained. "Only about three foot high by a couple of foot wide. And uncommonly cleverly they were planned, too, at least, so I thought. You see, they were intended to travel with the books in them. They had moveable fronts fixed on with a dozen long screws, well greased so that they would come out easily, and lying flush so that there was nothing projecting to catch when they were travelling. And when you had got them into your cabin, all you had to do was to take out the screws and the front was free. You could just take it off and slip it behind the case out of the way, and there was your bookcase with all your books properly arranged and ready for use. I thought it a mighty neat idea."

  "So it was," Thorndyke agreed. "Extremely convenient, not only for use on board ship, but for travelling on land. Did you see the cases?"

  "Yes," was the reply, "I saw them in Mr. Crow's workshop just before he delivered them, and I complimented him on having made such a good job of them. He had got them stained and varnished so that they looked quite smart, although they were only made of deal, you understand."

  "Mr. Crow, I take it," said Thorndyke, "is a local craftsman."

  "Yes, he lives close by in Baldwin's Gardens, so we give him all the jobs that we want done about the Inn. And a real good tradesman he is. I always recommend him whenever I can. It's a kindness to him and to the customer, too."

  "It is, indeed," said Thorndyke, "especially to the customer. Really skilful and dependable tradesmen are getting scarce, and it is no small advantage to know where one can find such a man on occasion. I shall make a note of Mr. Crow's address, and perhaps call on him. I am quite impressed by your description of those bookcases."

  "Well, I think you would find them handy if you travel much," said the porter, apparently much gratified by the impression he had made. "Dr. Peck did, as he told me; and they took the fancy of the captain of his last ship to such an extent that when the doctor left the ship at Marseilles to come home overland, the skipper insisted on buying the cases, books and all."<
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  "Then you have seen Dr. Peck since he came home?"

  "Lord, yes," the porter chuckled, "and I didn't recognise him at first. You see, he had shaved off his beard; and when a beaver does a clean shave, the results are apt to be surprising. But he was quite right. A beard is the thing on board ship, where shaving isn't very convenient and not at all necessary, but, as he said very truly, when a man is in practice as a doctor, he doesn't want a bunch of hair on his chin to stick in his patient's face. Yes, he came here to give notice and settle up, and to move his things out of the chambers."

  "When did he arrive in England?"

  "Ah!" was the reply, "that I can't say, exactly. I didn't know that he was back until he turned up here, as I have told you. That was about three weeks ago. But he must have been in England some time before that, seeing that he had taken a house, and perhaps a doctor's business as well."

  "Then he never came back here to live?"

  "No. Which makes the waste of money seem worse than ever. He appears to have taken his new premises, furniture and all, and settled there at once. So I understood."

  "And he is now engaged in medical practice at the address you gave me just now?"

  "Well," the porter replied with a faint grin, "That's as may be. If he bought a going concern, I suppose he is. But if he just took the premises without any goodwill, he is probably squatting there and waiting for business to turn up. However, in either case, he has got a brass plate at the address I gave you: and there you'll find him, and he will able to give you the particulars about himself better than I am."

  I seemed to detect in the final sentence a subtle hint that our friend thought that he had asked enough questions, and so, apparently, did Thorndyke, for he accepted the hint—the more readily, I suspect, because he had no further questions to ask—and brought the interview to an end by thanking our friend for the address and wishing him good morning.

  As this dialogue had proceeded, I had become and more puzzled. For I had supposed our mission had the simple purpose of finding out, if possible, the whereabouts of Dr. Peck; and I had imagined that our business with Peck was to elicit from him whatever he might be able to tell us about the incidents of the voyage from Australia as affecting John Gillum. But it seemed that neither of these suppositions was true. Thorndyke was not interested only in what Peck might be able and willing to tell us; he was interested in Peck, himself. The apparently trivial conversation to which I had listened was, I felt sure, a carefully conducted examination designed to elicit certain facts. But what facts? I had listened attentively and even curiously; but not a single fact of any apparent significance seemed to have transpired. Yet something had transpired, unperceived by me. Thorndyke's behaviour had convinced me of that. The way in which he had, almost abruptly, closed the conversation, told me that, whatever might be the item of information which he had been seeking, that item was now in his possession. But I could not form the vaguest guess as to what it could be.

  My confusion of thought was rather increased by Thorndyke's conduct when we emerged from the Inn; for, halting at the edge of the pavement and looking across the road, he said, meditatively:

  "Baldwin's Gardens. I think that turns out of the Gray's Inn Road a little, way down on the right, doesn't it?"

  "Yes," I replied. "About the third turning. Were you thinking of paying a visit to the ingenious Mr. Crow?"

  "Why not?" said he. "We may as well look him up now, as we are so near."

  "But," I protested, "why look him up at all? Those bookcases were very ingenious and handy for the purpose for which they were made, but you have no use for such things. You don't make sea voyages or even prolonged journeys away from home; and if you did, you would hardly want to take your library with you."

  "But they would be useful for carrying other things besides books," he replied; "apparatus and reagents, for instance. At any rate, I should like to get particulars of construction and dimensions."

  "With a view," said I, "to pinching Mr. Crow's copyright and having a pirated edition turned out by Polton."

  "Not at all," he retorted. "If I decided to have one, or a pair, made, I should certainly commission Mr. Crow to make them."

  As he had evidently got some kind of unreasonable fancy for those bookcases, I said no more. We crossed the road and in two or three minutes found ourselves at the corner of Baldwin's Gardens, whence we began a perambulation of the street. It was some time before we were able to locate Mr. Crow's premises, but eventually we discovered, at the corner of a side passage, a painted board inscribed with the name of "William Crow, Carpenter and Joiner" and the intimation that his workshop would be found on the right up the passage. We accordingly followed the direction and, coming to a door on which the description was repeated, pushed it open and entered a spacious, well-lighted workshop in which a tall, elderly man was engaged in planing up the edge of a board. At the sound of our entry, he turned and looked at us over the tops of his spectacles, and then, laying his plane down on the bench, enquired politely what be could do for us.

  Thorndyke briefly stated the purpose of our visit, whereupon Mr. Crow took off his spectacles to get a better view of us and appeared to meditate on what my colleague had said.

  "A pair of bookcases, you say, sir, made for a gentleman in Staple Inn of the name of Peck. Yes, I seem to remember a-making of them, but I can't rightly recollect exactly what they were like. Small cases, I think you said?"

  "Yes; about three feet by two."

  "Well, sir," said Mr. Crow—very reasonably, I thought—"if you will tell me just what you want, I can take down the particulars and make the articles without troubling about those other ones."

  But this simple plan apparently did not commend itself to Thorndyke, for he objected: "I am not sure that I have got the full particulars and I rather wanted to see the construction and dimensions of those that you made for Dr. Peck. Don't you keep an account in your books of work that you have in hand?"

  "Oh, yes," replied Crow, "I've got the particulars all right if I only knew where to look for them. But you see, it's a longish time ago and my memory ain't what it was. I suppose, now, you couldn't tell me about when those cases were made?"

  "I can't give you the exact date," said Thorndyke, "but I should say that it would have been some time in September, 1928, probably the early part of the month. Or it might have been the latter part of August. What do you say, Jervis?"

  "I expect you are right," I replied, "though I don't quite see how you arrived at the date."

  But however he had arrived at it, the date turned out to be correct; for when Mr. Crow, having resumed his spectacles, had picked out from a row of trade books a shabby-looking folio volume and opened it on the bench, the required entry came into view almost at once.

  "Ah!" said Crow, "here we are. Twenty-eighth of August, 1928. I see the order is marked 'urgent.' Things wanted as soon as possible. They usually are. So I treated it as urgent and delivered the goods at the Inn on the thirty-first, in the evening, as soon as I had got them finished."

  "That was a fairly quick piece of work," I remarked.

  "Yes," he replied, "I got a move on with 'em. But there was not a lot of work in 'em, as you can see by the drawings. No dovetails and no gluing up except for the backs. They were just screwed together and stained and brush-varnished. It wasn't a job to take up much time. I have written the dimensions on the drawings, so you can see exactly what the cases were like."

  We looked over the drawings, which were quite neatly executed, though rapidly sketched in, with the dimensions marked on them in clear legible figures notwithstanding which, Mr. Crow proceeded to expound them and the details of construction.

  "The cases," said he, "were of yellow deal, stained and varnished; three foot three high by twenty inches wide and fourteen inches deep, all outside measurements; and as the stuff was full one-inch board, the inside measurements would be two inches less in height and width and one inch less in depth. There were three shelves in e
ach case, equal distances apart, so you have got four spaces of a little under nine inches each, as the shelves were only half-inch stuff. All the parts were fastened together with screws, excepting the shelves, and they slid freely in grooves. The fronts were the same size as the backs, and they were just laid on and fixed in position by twelve two-and-a-half-inch number eight screws, which had to be well greased with tallow so that they would come out easily. It was quite a handy arrangement for, you see, you just filled the case up with books and then you put on the front and ran in the screws and you'd got a thoroughly secure packing-case with no hinges or other projections to get in the way when it was being stowed. Then, when you had got it in the place where it was to be, such as the cabin, all you had got to do was to draw out the screws, take off the front, and slip it behind the case, and there you were with all your books ready to hand."

  "Wouldn't it have been stronger," I suggested, "if the top and bottom had been dovetailed to the sides?"

  "Yes, it would," he agreed, "and that is what I wanted to do. But he wouldn't have it. He said that all the parts were to be screwed together with greased screws so that it could be taken to pieces if necessary for stowage or storing."

  "I don't see much utility in that," I remarked.

  "There isn't," he agreed, "excepting that, if the cases should be out of use at any time, they could be taken apart, and then the pieces would lie flat and take up less room than the assembled cases."

  "I certainly think it a good method of construction," said Thorndyke. "The case would be strongly bound together by the back and front when it was travelling, and when it was not travelling, the extra strength would not be wanted."

  "Then," said Crow, "you'd like yours made the same way, I suppose. Did you wish me to make one case or two?"