“Now, see here. I want this affair kept dark if it possibly can be. I want Giles to feel that the title and estates that he asked Jenny to share with him are his own by right, and not by anyone’s favour. But that would be all spoiled if he got to know about this damned lead. For then he might reasonably suspect that I had voluntarily surrendered this claim for his benefit when I could, if I had pleased, have carried it to a successful issue. Of course, I couldn’t have done anything of the kind. But that is what he might think. And he mustn’t. There must be no fly in his ointment; and I look to you all to keep it out.”
It is needless to say that we all listened with the greatest sympathy to Mr. Pippet’s explanation, and we promised, so far as was possible, to suppress the fact that the coffin had been opened; which we were able to do with a clear conscience, since that fact was neither material nor even relevant to the charge of fraud against Gimbler.
“Naturally,” said Mr. Pippet, when he had thanked us, “you will say that I ought to have thought of all this before I asked to have the coffin opened, but I am not so long-sighted as the Doctor. If you would like to call me a fool I shan’t contradict you.”
“Thank you,” laughed Thorndyke; “but I don’t think I will avail myself of the permission. Still, I will remark that you allowed yourself to entertain a complete fallacy. You have spoken of my having knocked the bottom out of your case by my exposure of Gimbler’s fraud. But that was not the position at all. The coffin which Gimbler produced as Josiah’s coffin was not Josiah’s coffin. Therefore it had no relevance to the issue. It proved nothing, one way or the other, as to the condition of the real coffin. The effect of my evidence was purely negative. It simply rebutted Gimbler’s evidence and thus restored the status quo ante. The judge, if you remember, drew your attention to this fact when he reminded you that Josiah’s coffin had not been examined, and that the bogus funeral had been neither proved nor disproved.”
“Well,” said Mr. Pippet, “it has been proved now; and what I should like to know, just as a matter of curiosity, is what it really and truly means. Is it possible that the whole story was true, or was this just one of Josiah’s little jokes?”
“I am afraid you will never know now,” said Thorndyke.
“No,” Pippet agreed. “Josiah has got us guessing. Of course, it doesn’t matter now whether he was an earl or an inn-keeper, but if you have any opinion on the subject, I should like to hear it.”
“Mere speculative opinions,” said Thorndyke, “formed in the absence of real evidence, are not of much value. I really have nothing that one could call an opinion. All I can say is that, though the balance of probabilities for and against the truth of the story is nearly even, there seems to be a slight preponderance against, since, added to the general improbability of the story, is the very striking coincidence of Nathaniel Pippet of The Castle at Winsborough. But I am afraid we shall have to return an open verdict.”
“And keep it to ourselves,” added Pippet. “And now the practical question arises, what are we to do with this coffin?”
“I suggest,” said Thorndyke, “that Polton closes it up as neatly as possible and that we then put it, with Gimbler’s masterpiece, in the vault to which it properly belongs. We may hope that it may not be necessary to disturb that vault again; in which case no one need ever know that the coffin has been opened.”
This suggestion being generally approved, was duly carried out. The two coffins were placed, side by side, on the shelf, and then Miller locked the door and dropped the key into his pocket. This done, the procession moved out of the burial ground; and the incident was formally closed when Miller slammed the outer gate and turned the key in the rusty lock.
We went back in the same order as that in which we had come. Mr. Pippet and Brodribb travelled in the former’s car, and the rest of us occupied the roomy police car, Polton, at his own request, occupying the seat next to the driver where he could observe the mechanical arrangements and the operator’s methods.
XX. THORNDYKE RESOLVES A MYSTERY
Modern transport appliances have certain undeniable advantages, particularly to those who are principally concerned with rapidity of transit. But these advantages, like most of the gifts of “progress,” have to be purchased by the sacrifice of certain other advantages. The Superintendent’s car was, in respect of speed, incomparably superior to a horse carriage; but in the opportunity that it afforded for sustained conversation it compared very unfavourably with that obsolete type of vehicle. Thorndyke, however, not yet, perhaps, emancipated from the hansom cab habit, chose to disregard the inevitable interruption, and, as the car trundled smoothly westward, remarked to Miller:
“The subject of coffins, with which our minds are at present occupied, suggests, by an obvious analogy, that of a head in a box. I promised, a little while ago, to pass on to you any facts that I might unearth respecting the history of that head. I have looked into the matter and I think I now have all the material facts; and I may say that the affair turns out to be, in effect, what I had, almost from the first, supposed it to be.”
“I didn’t know,” said Miller, “that you supposed it to be anything. I thought you were quite uninterested in the incident.”
“Then,” said Thorndyke, “you were mistaken. I watched the developments with the keenest interest. At first, when the head was discovered in the cloak room, I naturally assumed, as everyone did, that it was a case of murder and mutilation. But when I read the account of the inquest I began to suspect strongly that it was something quite different, and when I saw that photograph that you were so kind as to send me, I had very little doubt of it. You remember that photograph, Jervis?”
“Indeed I do,” I replied. “A most extraordinary and abnormal mug that fellow had. There seemed to me to be a suggestion of acromegaly.”
“A suggestion!” Thorndyke exclaimed. “It was a perfect type. That photograph might have been used as the frontispiece of a monograph of acromegaly. Its appearance, together with the physical and anatomical facts disclosed at the inquest, seemed to me quite distinctive. I came to the conclusion that this head was no relic of a crime, but simply a museum specimen which had gone astray.”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed Miller, gazing at Thorndyke in amazement. I did not share his surprise, but merely felt an urgent desire to kick myself. For the thing was so ridiculously obvious—as soon as it was stated. But that was always the way with Thorndyke. He had the uncanny gift of seeing all the obvious things that everyone else overlooked.
“But,” Miller continued, after a pause, “you might have given us the tip.”
“My dear Miller,” Thorndyke protested, “I had no tip to give. It was merely an opinion, and it might have been a wrong opinion. However, as I said, I watched developments most attentively, for there were at least two possibilities which might be foreseen; one by no means unlikely, the other almost fantastically improbable. The first was that some person might be accused of a murder which had never been committed; the other was that some real murderer might take advantage of the extraordinary opportunity that the circumstances offered. Curiously enough, it was the wildly improbable possibility that was actually realized.”
“What was the opportunity that was offered?” Miller asked.
“It was the opportunity to commit a murder with almost perfect security from detection; with a whole set of false clues ready made; with the equivalent in time of a nearly watertight alibi.”
“A murderer’s chief difficulty,” said Miller, “is usually in getting rid of the body. I don’t see that the circumstances helped him in that.”
“They helped him to the extent that he had no need to get rid of the body,” Thorndyke replied. “Why does a murderer have to conceal the body? Because if it is found it will be recognized as the body of a particular person. Then the relations of the murderer to that person will be examined, with possibly fatal results. But supposing that a murderer could render the body of his victim totally unrecognizable. Then it wo
uld be the body of an unknown person; and all the persons related to it would be equally unknown. If he could go a step further and not only render the body unrecognizable but give it a false identity, he would be absolutely secure; for the body would now be related to a set of circumstances with which he had no connexion.
“This is the kind of opportunity that was offered by the discovery of this head. Let us study the conditions in the light of what actually happened. On a certain day in August, Wicks deposited in the cloak room a human head. Now, obviously, since it was brought there by Wicks, it could not be Wicks’s head. Equally obviously, it must have been the head of some person who had died while Wicks was still alive. Thus the death of that person was clearly dated in one direction; and since the head had been treated with preservatives, the date of death must have been some time anterior to that of its deposition in the cloak room. Again, obviously, there must be somewhere a headless body corresponding to this body-less head.
“Now, Bassett evidently intended to murder Wicks, for, as we saw, the murder was clearly premeditated. See, then, what a perfect opportunity was presented to him. If he could contrive to murder Wicks, to strip and decapitate the body and deposit it in a place where it would probably remain undiscovered for some time; when it was discovered, it would, quite naturally, be assumed to be the body belonging to the embalmed head. In other words, it would be assumed to be the body of some person who could not possibly be Wicks, and who had been murdered at some time when he, Bassett, was on the high seas. No slightest breath of suspicion could possibly fall on Bassett.
“But, as so constantly happens in the case of carefully planned crimes, one little point had been overlooked, or, rather, was unknown to the intending murderer. Strangely enough, it seems also to have been overlooked by everyone else, with the result that Bassett’s scheme was within a hair’s-breadth of working out exactly according to plan.”
“As he was at the bottom of the dene-hole,” remarked Miller, “it didn’t matter much to him whether it did or not.”
“Very true,” Thorndyke agreed. “But we are considering the plan of the crime. Now, when I read the report of the finding of the headless body, I realized that the fantastic possibility that I had hardly ventured to entertain had actually come to pass.”
“You assumed that the headless body was a fake,” said Miller, “and not the body belonging to the cloak room head. Now, I wonder why you assumed that.”
“I did not,” replied Thorndyke. “There was no assumption. The excellent newspaper report made it perfectly clear that the body found by the Watling Street could not possibly be the body belonging to the embalmed head. That head, let me remind you, was the head of a person who suffered from acromegaly. The body of that person would have been distinguished by atrophied muscles and enormous, mis-shapen hands and feet. But our admirable reporter specially noted that the body was that of a muscular man with strong, well-shaped hands. Then he certainly was not suffering from acromegaly.
“You see what followed from this. If this body did not belong to the cloak room head, it must belong to some other head. And that head was probably not far away. For, as no one suspected its existence, there was no need for any elaborate measures to hide it. As I happened to be aware of the existence of a number of dene-holes in the immediate neighbourhood, it occurred to me that one of them probably contained the head and the clothes. Accordingly, I examined the six-inch map of the district, on which the dene-holes are shown, and there I found that one of them was within four hundred yards of the place where the body was discovered. To that dene-hole I paid a visit after attending the inquest, having provided myself with a compass, a suitable lamp and a pair of night-glasses. I was not able to see very much, but I saw enough to justify our expedition. You know the rest of that story.”
“Yes,” replied Miller, “and a very interesting story it is. And now I should like to hear about these new facts that you have unearthed.”
“You shall have them all,” said Thorndyke, “though it is only a case of filling in details. I have told you what I decided—correctly, as it turns out—as to the nature of the mysterious head; that it was simply a pathological specimen illustrating the rare disease known as acromegaly, which had got into the wrong hands.
“Now, when one thinks of acromegaly, the name of Septimus Bernstein almost inevitably comes into one’s mind. Dr. Bernstein is a world-famous authority on giantism, dwarfism, acromegaly and other affections and anomalies of growth connected with disorder of the pituitary body. He is an enthusiast in his subject and gives his whole time and energy to its study. But what was still more important to me was the fact that he has a private museum devoted to the illustration of these diseases and anomalies. I have seen that museum, and a very remarkable collection it is; but, when I visited it, although it contained several gigantic and acromegalous skulls, there was no specimen of a head in its complete state.
“Naturally, then, I was disposed to suspect some connexion between this stray specimen and Dr. Bernstein. But this was pure hypothesis until I heard Bunter’s statement. That brought my hypothesis concerning the head into the region of fact. For Bunter’s description of the passenger on the yacht was a fairly exact description of Dr. Bernstein; and, on the strength of it I was in a position to take the necessary measures to clear the matter up.
“Accordingly I called on Bernstein. I did not, in the first place, ask him any questions. I simply informed him that a preserved human head which he had imported, apparently from Holland, had been causing the police a good deal of trouble, and that it was for him to give a full and candid explanation of all the circumstances connected with it. The alternative was for the police to charge him with being in unlawful possession of certain human remains.
“My statement seemed to give him a severe shock—he is a nervous and rather timid man—but, though greatly alarmed, he seemed, in a way, relieved to have an opportunity to explain matters. Evidently, the affair had kept him in a state of constant apprehension and expectation of some new and horrible development, and he consented almost eagerly to make a full statement as to what had really happened. This is what his story amounts to:
“He had for years been trying to get possession of the head of some person who had suffered from acromegaly; partly for the purpose of studying the pituitary body more thoroughly and partly for the enrichment of his museum with a specimen which completely illustrated the effects of the disease. What he especially wanted to do was to remove the pituitary body without injuring the head and mount it in a specimen jar to accompany the jar containing the head, so that the abnormal condition of the pituitary and its effects on the structure of the face could be studied together.”
“By the way,” Miller asked, “what is the pituitary body?”
“It is a small body,” Thorndyke explained, “situated at the base of the brain and lodged in a cavity in the base of the skull. Its interest—for our present purpose—lies in the fact that it is one of the so-called ductless glands and produces certain internal secretions which contain substances called hormones which are absorbed into the blood and seem to control the processes of growth. If the pituitary—or, at least, its anterior part—becomes overgrown, it appears that it produces an excess of secretion, with the result that either the whole body becomes overgrown and the sufferer develops into a giant, or certain parts only of the body, particularly the face and the extremities, become gigantic while the rest of the body remains of its normal size. That is a very rough account of it, just enough to make the matter intelligible.”
“I think I have taken in the idea,” said Miller, “and I’m glad you explained it. Now, I am able to feel a bit more sympathetic towards Dr. Bernstein. He isn’t such an unmitigated cannibal as I thought he was. But let us hear the rest of the story.”
“Well,” Thorndyke resumed, “a short time ago, Bernstein heard from a Dutch doctor of a set of specimens, the very description of which made his mouth water. It appeared that an unclaimed body had
been delivered for dissection at a medical school in a certain town in Holland. Bernstein asked to be excused from giving the name of the town, and I did not press him. But, of course, if it is essential, he is prepared to disclose the further particulars. On examining this body, it was found to present the typical characters of acromegaly; whereupon the pathologist decided to annex the head and extremities for the hospital museum and return the remainder in the coffin. At the time when the information reached Bernstein, the specimens had not been put in the museum but were in the curator’s laboratory in course of preparation.
“Thereupon, Bernstein started off, hot-foot, to see if he could persuade the pathologist to let him have the head. And his mission was obviously successful. What methods of persuasion he used, and what was the nature of the deal, he preferred not to say; and I did not insist, as it is no particular concern of ours. It would seem as if it must have been slightly irregular. However, he obtained the head, and, having got it, embarked on the series of foolish proceedings about which Bunter told us. A bolder and more self-confident man would probably have had no serious difficulty. He would have travelled by an ordinary passenger ship and simply declared the head at the Customs as a pathological specimen. The Customs people might have communicated with the police, and there might have been some inquiries. But if there had been no secrecy there would have been no trouble.”
“No,” Miller agreed. “Secrecy was the stupidest thing possible under the circumstances, Why the deuce didn’t he notify us, when the thing was found in the cloak room? It would have saved us a world of trouble”
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