by E.
The fat man told over the telephone to Doctor Manson the story of the headless man.
That was the instruction of the Assistant Commissioner (Crime) of Scotland Yard. All corpses were taken to Dr. Manson. He was a doctor, not of medicine, but of science; he was also the head of the Yard’s laboratory of crime, and the Force’s scientific investigator and adviser. He had, in fact, founded the laboratory, equipped and established it as the greatest scientific criminal investigation institution in the world.
At first the doctor was called in only when actual violence had been used on a body. Until the day when lack of appreciation of a piece of scientific evidence had pretty nearly resulted in a murderer getting away without a hanging.
The Assistant Commissioner had promptly ruled that all cases of death reported to the Yard, whether they appeared to be due to natural causes, or whether violence was actually suspected should be handed over to the scientific and logical mind of Dr. Manson to investigate and express an opinion.
The doctor listened to the story of Canley to the end. He became plaintive.
“That’s all very interesting, Old Fat Man,” he said. “But why unload the man on to me? Thames Pagnall is in the Surrey country, isn’t it? Let them set loose their police dogs to worry it.”
“Can’t!” The super chuckled gleefully. “There’s a row—Everybody—Surrey—Force happy—gent wandered line—” he staccatoed, “walked—train—half-sozzled—”
“What! The train?” asked the startled scientist.
“No—man.” The super never saw a joke until long afterwards.
Mitheration still held the doctor. He invited enlightenment. “Well, what do you want me to do, Old Fat Man—certify that the chap was drunk? If everyone’s happy, why make my breakfast miserable.”
The super burst out again. “Railway doctor—won’t have bloomin’ train—says—s’matter—compensation—see? Line not fenced—ought to—relatives—bring action—damages.”
“Have they said so?” Manson was beginning to see the trend of the conversation.
“No—doctor says—might.”
“I see, Old Fat Man. And because the railway headquarters are in London, they’ve come to us. Is that it?”
“S’right, Doctor. Insisted on Yard being called in—Corpse—all—yours.”
“All right, Jones. Get hold of Merry and tell him to get things ready. I’ll come round and pick him up. I’d better have Kenway, too. Let them know at Thames Pagnall.”
“Right you are, Doctor.” A sudden crackle of laughter roared over the wire. Manson recoiled as though swept by blast. “What the deuce is the matter now?” he demanded.
“Joke, Doctor.” Another roar followed.
“Joke?” Doctor Manson deprecated uneasily. “I don’t see any joke in the corpse. It was no joke for him.”
“Not man—train, Doctor—sozzled.” Manson groaned. The thing was getting beyond him. “It sounds as though you are,” he began—Enlightenment suddenly dawned. “Oh, I see. You don’t mean to say that you’ve assimilated that joke already, Old Fat Man.” He chuckled with delight. “It must be a record for you.”
“Not that one, Doctor. Ho! Ho!” Another frenzied burst swept over the scientist. “Train must have been sozzled after all. All trains—well oiled!”
The line went dead. Manson hung up with a chuckle.
Inspector Mackenzie greeted the London party on the permanent way with neither enthusiasm nor disappointment. It was, he soliloquized, all one to him whether the Surrey police or Scotland Yard delved into the proclivities of the corpse on the railway. The effect would be the same as far as he was concerned; he would have to ‘carry the can’ of routine inquiries and searches.
Mackenzie was, in fact, a little bored with the whole thing. He saw no reason to doubt that the man had been knocked down by the train on a dark night such as the previous night had been. Lots of people crossed the line there and the only marvel was that nobody had been killed there before.
What the celebrated Doctor Manson could deduce other than that from the evidence which he, Mackenzie, had collected he was unable to conjecture. But he was prepared to learn from the big noise. He advanced to the five arrivals.
“Dr. Manson?” he inquired. His eyes passed from one to another of the company; Inspector Kenway grinned as they stayed on his face. The scientist acknowledged himself.
“I am Inspector Mackenzie, sir,” was the reply. He made the necessary introductions.
The scientist glanced round. “I take it that this is the spot where the body was found?”
“It is that,” replied the inspector. He stepped towards the bank, invitingly. “The man came—” Doctor Manson waved the sentence into silence.
“Just a moment, Inspector,” he urged. “Let me have a look round before you talk.” He walked a few paces up the line. “I like to start with a clear mind,” he flung back.
A watery sun had appeared low in the sky. It caught the mirror of gleaming steel of the rails and ricocheted on the faces of the little crowd waiting near the body of Canley. From the centre of the down-track Doctor Manson gazed along the line. The station was apparent a few hundred yards ahead; Manson measured the distance with his eye. About the same distance in the opposite direction the lines disappeared round a curve.
“He’d have heard it, Harry,” said Merry who had followed him.
The doctor turned, startled. “Psychic, Jim?” he asked the deputy scientist.
“No. Just following your line of reasoning.” Merry slinked in the riposte slyly. “Your thoughts were easy to translate. You were obviously looking for anything that might have obstructed the sight of the train from anyone crossing the line. All there is is the curve round which the train would not be visible until it entered the straight. You measured the distance mentally, and frowned, and I then said that the man even if he could not see the approaching train would have heard it at that distance. It’s elementary, my dear Watson.”
“You’re right, of course.” Manson nodded. “So long as the speed of the train was not excessive he should have had warning enough. We’ll have to get that from the driver.”
The two men returned to the waiting group which opened out for them. The doctor let his eyes stray over the immediate vicinity. A dark rusty-coloured stain showed up on a section of the rail and on the white flints in the ballast way.
“Blood?” Manson looked at Inspector Mackenzie.
“Yes, sir. The man was decapitated.”
Manson nodded, and walked a few yards up the line. He was looking intently along each side of the ballast and between the rails.
“Is the driver of the train here?” he asked. A man in railway uniform stepped forward.
“I was driving.” He spoke pugnaciously.
“What speed would you have been travelling past here last night?”
“Just under twenty miles, sir. That was the usual speed.”
The doctor brooded over the point. He walked again up the line and made a more meticulous examination. He made no comment on his journey on his return, but produced a circular object from a pocket and pressed a button on it.
A shining tongue of polished steel tape shot past the constable standing nearby. He jumped an inch in the air. Manson, mildly surprised, looked at him. “A tape measure.” He explained the obvious.
With Sergeant Merry writing down figures in a notebook the scientist measured the area of the bloodstains. They extended eighteen inches one way and about two feet the other way. The extent seemed to worry him, for his brow furrowed, and crinkles appeared in the corners of his eyes, the stormy petrels of his detection. He said nothing, however; but crossed to the edge of the embankment and looked down into the lane below. A single trail of footsteps showed plainly on the path. They were pointing towards the railway line, and were plainly marked.
It was for this that Mackenzie had been waiting. He patted himself on the back. “They were made by the dead man, sir, walking up to the line. I compared
them with his shoe measurements, and you’ll notice a patch on the sole of one of the shoes is reproduced. I also fitted a shoe into one of the prints—” he indicated a smudged outline—“and it fitted perfectly.” He exuded self-satisfaction.
Doctor Manson nodded. “Most commendable,” he said, absently, and crossed to the other side of the line. The path was clear of prints. He returned to the group.
“The body now,” he said.
The mortal remains of James Canley lay in the ballast way. He had been lifted by the two plate-layers after the doctors had concluded their examination before the quarrel between them which had led to the call to Scotland Yard. A tarpaulin had been placed over them. This the plate-layers now removed, and displayed to the gaze of the Yard men the grim spectacle underneath.
Canley had been left as he had been found, even to his overcoat, still buttoned round him. The head, however, had been wrapped in a separate covering.
“Just as he was found,” Mackenzie announced. Doctor Manson looked up quickly.
“Do you mean that literally, Inspector?” he asked. “That he was lying as he is now—on his back?”
“Yes, sir. I took particular notice of that. The body itself was flat in the space between the lines of metals.”
“That’s right, Mister.” A voice came from the group. Doctor Manson sought the owner. He looked inquiringly at the Surrey police chief.
“One of the men who moved him, sir. The other’s here, too. He’s got to be moved again when you have finished with him.” The inspector shuddered slightly.
The plate-layer stepped in front of the group. “Flat on his back he was, Mr. Policeman.” Manson eyed the body.
“And straight out, just as he is now?” he asked.
“Yes.”
The doctor turned away and started on an examination of the body. He began with the shoes, paying particular attention to the soles. Merry brought up a suitcase, placed it on the ground and opened the lid. Inspector Mackenzie peeped into its interior.
“This is where the doctor starts the ball rolling,” Inspector Kenway whispered in his ear. The Surrey man sought enlightenment.
“That’s what we call the Box of Tricks,” explained Kenway. “We used to laugh at it when the doctor first brought it round.” He left no doubt in the mind of Mackenzie that there was no matter for jesting now.
The Box of Tricks was the name given to a portable laboratory which Dr. Manson carried with him on his investigations. It was a laboratory in miniature, all the contents, even a microscope, being equal to the full-sized instruments, except in size. Ridicule, which greeted its appearance in the earlier investigations of Doctor Manson, was quickly silenced after the success attending scientific examinations on the actual scene of the crime.
From the box Merry lifted a packet of small white envelopes of the kind usually used by seedsmen for the packaging of their wares. He laid them with his fountain pen on top of the case. Manson continued with his examination of the shoes; he had taken from a pocket a small lens through which he was scrutinizing closely the welts. The operation seemed to tickle Inspector Mackenzie’s sense of humour.
“Wonder he didn’t bring a telescope,” he whispered to his constable. “Shouldn’t have thought he wanted a magnifying glass to see them. They’re big enough, aren’t they?”
The doctor smiled; he was blessed with acute hearing. But he made no reply. With a pair of tweezers taken from the box of tricks he plucked a tiny length of thread from a crick between the upper and lower sole of the right foot.
Merry and he examined it together, heads bent closely over it. The pair then moved to the shoe of the other foot, which they inspected without a glass this time.
After Manson had drawn attention to some aspect of the inspection, Merry slipped the thread into one of the seed envelopes. He sealed it, and wrote on the outside a description of the article, and the circumstances of its finding. The doctor looked up at Mackenzie.
“I would like these shoes handled carefully and kept, Inspector,” he said.
“Very good, sir.” Mackenzie hesitated, and then added: “I should say, sir, that we have compared the soil on the soles of the shoes with the soil of the path, and it seems to correspond, if that is what you are thinking of.”
“It was in my mind,” Manson admitted. “Together with another point of interest.”
“That being?” The inspector put the query with some anxiety at the thought that he might have missed something of importance.
Doctor Manson did not reply. He was feeling the overcoat on the body of Canley. He looked up and caught the glance of the inspector.
“Not very wet,” he remarked. “Just damp. Do I gather that it was not a wet night here last night? I recall that it rained fairly heavily in London.”
“Not exactly wet, sir, if you mean was it raining.” Mackenzie pondered a moment. “There was no rain after about half past ten o’clock, but there was a nasty November mist. That would account for the dampness of the coat. The body must have been here since 11.35.”
“Quite so.” The doctor gave the coat a comprehensive glance. “It seems, by the way, to be undamaged.”
The inspector agreed. “I work out,” he explained, “that the train hit him and threw him clear of the lines, except for his head and neck, which fell across the nearside rail. The trunk was clear of the metals when we found him. That would account for the coat not being torn.”
“But—” The doctor clipped off his sentence with a wave of a hand. It seemed a gesture of resignation. He eyed the inspector morosely. “I see,” he said. “That is your observation and deduction.”
The driver of the train had been manifesting considerable nervous objections to this exposition on the part of the inspector. He hopped from one foot to the other, and shook his head in violent objection. Dr. Manson now turned towards him.
“I gather you are not altogether at one with the police officer,” he insinuated. “What I cannot understand is how you did not see the man walking or standing, even though it was a dark night. It seems to me looking towards the station from here that you have a certain amount of skyline which would give you a reflection from the lights of the station. Is that not so?”
“That’s what I’m getting at, sir.” A grimace lent expression to the driver’s assent. “I always keep a good look-out after I pass over the bridge, because I have to watch for the station signal and my distance for braking.”
“And you saw no sign of the man?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you feel a bump at all?”
“Not a thing, sir.”
The doctor eyed him reflectively.
“Suppose the man had been standing in the shade cast by the trees at the edge of the bank, and as you were nearly level with him, ran in front of the train. Would you, do you think, have seen him?”
The man looked doubtful. “It’s a bit hard to say, sir. It would be only a matter of a few yards. If I was looking up for the station signal, I might have missed him, especially if he was bending. But—” The doctor eyed him keenly.
“Yes?” he invited. “But what?”
“Well, sir, I’ve been driving a good few years, and mostly of nights. We get a kind of sixth sense, especially in the dark. I think that I might not have seen him to recognize that it was a person, but I think I would have sensed a movement in front or at the side of me with that sixth sense. It’s happened like that before with a dog, sir.”
Doctor Manson nodded his satisfaction. “That, driver,” he said, “is just what I was trying to get from you without putting the direct question. And you can recall no such feeling on that night?”
The man shook his head.
“I regard the point as of some importance.” The doctor addressed the company at large. “But,” he added, “it helps only in an indirect way at the moment. There is no doubt, of course, that the man was decapitated by a train—”
He broke off suddenly. The significance of the phrasing he had au
tomatically used struck him with some force. He turned to Mackenzie.
“Has the train of this particular driver been examined. Inspector?” he asked. He put the question sharply.
“Yes, sir. We made sure of that. There are bloodstains on the wheels of the second bogie of the leading coach.” He put in an addendum. “That is the coach containing the driving cabin.”
“Ah! Then that disposes of that point,” said the doctor. “And blood, of course, on the undercarriage,” he added, with conviction.
“No, sir.”
Doctor Manson had bent over Canley again. But at the inspector’s remark, he jerked suddenly upright. He stared at the Surrey officer. “Say that again, Inspector,” he invited. Mackenzie obliged.
“There was blood on the bogie wheels, sir, but none on the undercarriage.” He was stubbornly convincing. “But you can see for yourself if you doubt it. We have had the coach run into the goods shed, and the station-master has sent out one of the reserve driving coaches in its place.”
“I am not doubting your facts at all, Inspector. The circumstances seem a little odd, that is all,” said Doctor Manson.
The inspector shifted uneasily. It appeared to him that the scientist was sorrowing over him. If he was, he showed no further sign of it. He was, in fact, busy with the tweezers picking particles of what appeared to be sodden fluff from the back of the dead man’s overcoat. They had been brought to light when the doctor and Merry had turned the body, having finished their examination of the front. The pair bent over the particles in a close scrutiny.
“Possibly from a scarf, or something like that, Doctor,” suggested Merry. “They would cling to this rough-surfaced material.”
“I should have thought they were more fibrous than woollen, Merry. That would not fit any kind of scarf of my acquaintance. Still, we’ll know better after we have had them under the microscope. Into an envelope with them.”
The doctor turned again to the coat. “Here are a few more, Merry,” he called out. He indicated them to the deputy scientist. “They form an interesting corollary to our discussion, I think. Note their position.”
