by E.
The man nodded.
“Well, I shall want your help. I want all this ash carefully sifted and weighed. Sergeant Merry, the deputy scientist, will take charge of the operation. Anything which is not definitely ash, but, say, fabric or thread, must be placed on one side, and preserved for examination. But Sergeant Merry will attend to that. What I want from you is a couple of reliable men to do the sifting and the weighing. Meanwhile, there are one or two things to which I will attend myself.”
As the salvage officer left in search of his two men, the scientist opened out the Box of Tricks which Merry had fetched from the police car. From it he extracted a number of white envelopes made from druggists’ surfaced paper, a sharp knife, and a medical scalpel.
With a hogs-hair brush, also taken from the Box of Tricks, he swept clear of debris a portion of the floor near where it had burnt through at what seemed to be the origin of the fire. From the edges he cut a number of slivers of the charred wood, placing them in one of the envelopes, which he at once sealed and labelled, obtaining the signature of Mr. Redwood as to the contents and the place from which they had been cut.
He then moved to another portion of the floor, where the same procedure was enacted, the slivers going into a separate envelope, also labelled and initialled. Finally, with the scalpel he scraped a quantity of the soot from the beams of the ceiling immediately above the burned floor, and a further quantity from each of the four corners of the shop. These exhibits, too, were sealed in the envelopes and a record made of their location.
He placed the envelopes in the Box of Tricks and was about to close the case when a thought apparently occurred to him. Taking a larger envelope he filled it with a quantity of ash from the floor. A pair of letter scales on which he weighed the package showed that it contained three ounces of ash.
“That can be added on to the weight of the bulk,” he told Merry; and putting the envelope with the others, closed the case and carried it to the car.
Detective-Inspector Makepeace, who had watched these operations with no little interest, turned at a touch on his shoulder to find a police-constable waiting. The man whispered to him, and the inspector, with a word to the scientist, hurried away. He returned in a few minutes. Doctor Manson looked inquiringly. The inspector nodded.
“He made a call, Doctor,” he announced. “Royalty 07765. He said, ‘there has been an accident’. I’ll get the subscriber from Royalty exchange, shall I?”
Doctor Manson nodded.
“There was one curious circumstance, however,” the inspector added, “I don’t know whether it has any significance. When he first answered the call for the number wanted, he said ‘Royalty 05545’. Told there was no reply he said he was sorry, he’d made a mistake, and the number was Royalty 07765. That was where he gave the message.”
Doctor Manson looked up with marked interest. “It may very well have a significance, Inspector,’’ he said. “It looks as though Mr. Oppenheimer might have made a slip.”
The scientist waited only long enough to see Merry and Wilkins begin their task of sifting the ashes, before leaving with Mr. Redwood and the inspector for the return to Scotland Yard.
Arrived at headquarters the inspector proceeded at once to contact the Royalty exchange. Royalty 07765 was, he was told, down in the telephone directory in the name of Mr. Raoul da Costa, who had a flat in Cumberland Court, South Kensington. The number Royalty 05545 was not connected.
“Then,” said Doctor Manson, “it seems a good move, Inspector, to find out all we can about Mr. da Costa. Where is the flat now vacant situated?”
“Between Kensington and Knightsbridge.”
“Perhaps we had better have a look at that place, too, and ascertain if Mr. da Costa was there at any time, and why he left.”
CHAPTER XIV
SIX POINTS OF A RIDDLE
Doctor Manson entered his laboratory. He placed the Box of Tricks on the table which was his own special part of the large main room. He took off his jacket and donned the long white coat which he usually wore when making a chemical analysis, a microscopic examination, or a forensic toxological experiment.
After a glance round the room—a satisfied glance as he saw the great laboratory which he had himself built up—he sat down to consider the problem with which the morning’s work in Shepherd’s Bush had provided him.
The scientist was a puzzled man.
For the space of a quarter of an hour he lay slouched back in his armchair, his eyes closed and his fingers beating a tattoo on the arms. They had not ceased their drumming when he pulled himself to an upright position, and, lifting a sheet of paper from a drawer, proceeded to tabulate his problem. That, in itself, showed the mental concern of the scientist, for he possessed an extraordinarily tidy mind, which grasped and retained in correct order of importance and sequence the points of any investigation upon which he was engaged. Rarely, indeed, had he recourse to any notes. Now, however, he proceeded to write a series of questions to which an answer had to be found:
(1) Was the fire at Shepherd’s Bush accidental, or incendiary?
(2) Were the seven fires into which he had already inquired accidental or incendiary?
(3) Was there any connection between these fires in six widely-spread towns?
(4) What was the implication, at the Shepherd’s Bush fire, of the telephoned message, ‘There has been an accident’?
(5) What was the connection of Mr. da Costa with the Shepherd’s Bush fire?
(6) What was the connection, if any, of the fires with Miss Norma de Grey, the pantomime star found murdered?
After considering his list Doctor Manson decided to scrap for the moment problem one, and start with numbers two and three.
Were seven fires accidental or incendiary and was there any connection between the fires in six widely separated towns?
Quietly the scientist reviewed the information gleaned during his visits to the towns, and the statements made by the officers of the police forces and fire brigades. It was, of course, true that the majority of the places had been burned completely out. That is what had attracted his suspicions even before he had seen any of the buildings. But that, in itself, was not proof that incendiarism was involved. The stock in all the shops was of a peculiarly inflammable nature. If a collection of silk dresses became involved in a fire, they would not only burn right out very quickly, but would feed the flames with combustible fuel. The same thing applied to a shop full of gowns.
Against this, the scientist put the example of the Sheffield fire which destroyed the premises and the stock of a drapers and outfitters. Now, included in the loss were a number of bales of cloth—dress lengths. These, the scientist was assured, were a charred mass. It was, he argued, a particularly efficient conflagration that could burn through wrapped bales of cloth; as efficient as one which could burn through rolls of paper. The exclusion of air from between the layers would have the effect of extinguishing the flames attacking the rolls; the first half-dozen of the layers might be badly scorched or charred, but not the complete bale. If, however, the bales had first been soaked in some combustible liquid—then there would be a different story to tell.
The doctor, however, had no evidence on which to go, since no examination had been made of the remains of the fire. The next suspicious aspect was the position of the buildings, and the fact that in each case the conditions of locality and the shuttering made it fairly certain that the fires in each case could not have been discovered from the outside until the flames had gained such a hold that there was little chance of them being extinguished, in view of the highly combustible nature of the contents.
Was this chance—or design? Imitation could not be left out of the reckoning, supposing that the fires were incendiary. None knew better than Chief Detective-Inspector Doctor Manson, that a successful crime of a particular nature, reported in the newspapers, will be copied up and down the country by other miscreants. And even if a fire is an accidental one, revelations of its success und
er certain conditions are invariably copied by someone who wants a successful fire.
Were these just copy fires, or were they deliberately planned as a scheme to take huge sums of money from the insurance companies? If so, were they to go on?
The scientist realized that such a conclusion necessitated the theory that there was some mastermind at work with a gang, for the fires not only needed clever organizing, but considerable capital to purchase businesses and stock. All the businesses which had been under investigation had changed hands quite recently—that is, recently in relation to the time of the fire.
That was one of the most suspicious circumstances in connection with the fires—that although the businesses had in the main been in existence for a number of years without any fire claim against the insurance companies, save in the case of one of them, within a few weeks of their changing proprietors there was not only a claim but a claim for total loss. It seemed straining coincidence to its limit to assume them as all of accidental origin.
The only other real point of suspicion he possessed was one which linked up with Miss de Grey, and that brought the scientist to the sixth point he had tabulated: What was the connection, if any, of the fires with Miss Norma de Grey?
Articles from two of the fires, and on which insurance had been paid, were in the possession of the pantomime star. One of the articles was of such value as made it virtually impossible for her to have purchased it from her earnings on the stage. Who had given it to her? How had he obtained it? Was he someone who had an active interest in the fires, and had contrived to obtain the fur coat before the fire in the knowledge that insurance would be paid out on its loss?
Doctor Manson, turning these questions over in his mind, came to the conclusion that they could not be answered until he had Inspector Kenway’s report on the life story of Miss de Grey. He turned, accordingly, to points four and five: The telephoned message, ‘There has been an accident’, and the name of the man to whom the message was presumably sent—Mr. da Costa, who was the tenant of the telephone over which the message had been received.
At this stage of the proceedings, however, nothing could be gained by speculating on the mysterious message or stranger until something more was known about both of them. The scientist waited for the inspector’s report on the flat in Cumberland Court, South Kensington, and into the strange request of Mr. Oppenheimer for another number—in a flat unoccupied.
That left only one of his tabulated points—the first one: Was the fire at Shepherd’s Bush accidental or incendiary? At this stage Doctor Manson, for the first time, showed something like animation. Here, he said to himself, was something tangible. Up to now he had been, if not theorizing, at least doing something very near to it. All he had to judge from the other fires were ex parte statements; in Shepherd’s Bush he had something more solid upon which to go. He turned to the solid now.
From the Box of Tricks he took out one of the envelopes which contained the slivers of wood cut from the floor of the shop in the Bush. Two of the pieces he slipped into a wide-mouthed flask. Corking the flask he put it into a container, and covered it with water. The container was then placed over a Bunsen burner, the flame of which was lighted.
Leaving the water to heat in the Bunsen flame, Doctor Manson next extracted from the Box of Tricks one of the envelopes containing the soot scraped from the blackened walls of the premises. He scattered a little on to a porcelain tile, and examined it under a lens. The inspection seemed to afford him no little interest, for presently he dipped a finger into the edge of the soot, and rubbed a fraction between finger and thumb, afterwards examining the stains on his finger.
It was at this stage that Sergeant Merry returned from Shepherd’s Bush and his job of supervising the sifting of the ash contents of the burned-out premises. He carried over an arm the dozen or so frocks which had been left in the window. Bedraggled they were, and scorched, but not destroyed. The scientist eyed them, and nodded assentingly.
“I see you’ve got the idea, Jim,” he remarked.
Merry smiled—and looked at the flask. “Any result from that?” he asked.
Doctor Manson slipped a clinical thermometer into the water, and examined the markings. It registered just over 70 degrees Centigrade. He lifted out the flask with a pair of wooden holders, and grasping it between the folds of an asbestos cloth, gently eased the stopper from the neck, and sniffed.
There was a faint, oily smell.
“Paraffiny?” suggested Merry.
Doctor Manson nodded. He marked the result of the experiment on the outside of the envelope containing the remaining slivers of wood, and then placed the envelope in his drawer in the laboratory table.
The second stage in the tracing of suspicions on the Shepherd’s Bush fire began with the remains of soot which the scientist had already examined under his lens. A portion was now dropped into a small test tube and to it was added a quantity of distilled water, the mixture being shaken. The two scientists peered closely for a moment at the result. After a conference the tube was placed slightly above the light of a gas jet and gently heated, after which it was again shaken.
Satisfied at the result, Doctor Manson next filtered the mixture through a piece of pure filter paper into a second tube. Wilkins, the Laboratory assistant, who had now entered the room, stood with questioning glance at the test tube. Doctor Manson, looking up, caught the glance.
“Soot, which you saw me take from the walls of the premises, Wilkins,” he explained. “We are testing it for what it can tell us.”
“And what do you expect it to tell, Doctor?” was the query.
The scientist laid the tube aside, and turned to his assistant.
“It may tell quite a lot, Wilkins,” he replied. “Certain substances—we won’t specify for the moment what substances—contain various ingredients such as metals, gases, or other properties which chemistry can analyse. Now, when those substances are burnt, the properties in them are never destroyed—there is very little of anything that is entirely consumed by fire leaving no trace, which is what most criminals do not, thank goodness, know. Soot, for instance, can contain various elements which were in the substance the burning of which caused the soot to accumulate in the form of carbon on the walls. Soot left by the flame of a candle, for instance, will contain paraffin.
“Now this”—he held up the filtered mixture—“is a small quantity of the soot from Shepherd’s Bush boiled up with water. I am about to divide it into three parts”—he did so—“and to one part I shall add a few drops of this hydrochloric acid. Watch it carefully to see what happens . . . well?”
“There is a small precipitate at the bottom,” announced the assistant.
“So? Then the precipitate from this experiment must contain either one or more of three metals—lead, silver, or mercury. We must, therefore, identify it more exactly.”
“How are we to do that, Doctor?”
For reply, the scientist poured off the liquid, leaving the precipitate, and then added a drop or two more of hydrochloric acid, shaking the mixture, and again dividing it from the precipitate.
“Now,” he explained, “I shall shake the contents with ammonia, and one of three things is likely to happen—either the precipitate dissolves, in which case it is composed of silver chloride, or it blackens, indicating the presence of mercury, or it remains unchanged . . .” He shook the tube . . .
“Which it does,” he added, and turned a serious face towards Sergeant Merry.
“And that means?” asked Wilkins.
“That the precipitate is in all probability lead,” was the reply.
Wilkins looked inquiry, and Doctor Manson smiled, grimly.
“The point we have proved, Wilkins,” he emphasized, “is that there is lead in the soot. Now, the only substance I can recall which would produce lead-laden soot is—”
“Petrol,” put in Merry. “Because petrol contains in these days Tetra-Ethyl, and there is lead in that.”
“Phew!�
� whistled Wilkins. “Then since this was a dress shop the petrol could only have been introduced for an ulterior motive.”
“It looks that way, I agree,” said Doctor Manson. “But it doesn’t altogether follow. Mr. Oppenheimer might say, for instance, that he kept petrol for cleaning fabrics which became soiled, and that might well be a reasonable explanation. Perhaps we may know a little more about the petrol when you and Sergeant Merry have carried out similar tests of the ash debris we brought back with us. Try ash from the various parts of the building, Merry,” he requested.
While the sergeant and Wilkins went to work on the debris, the doctor turned his attention to the day book and the stock sheets left by Mr. Redwood. He scrutinized the writing through a lens, taking entries from various pages. Not satisfied, he examined various of the entries through his microscope. Neither, apparently, did this bring any satisfactory explanation to his mind.
His next move was to take a pipette and, loading it with a solution of dipyridyl, he let a drop fall on one of the ink strokes of the writing at the beginning of the book. Allowing about a minute to elapse, he then recovered the reagent with a piece of filter paper. The filter paper he next placed on the stage of an Osborn comparison microscope, which was then fitted with Lovibond’s tintometer glasses. Through this combination the doctor examined closely the filtered drop.
He repeated the experiment with filterings from various other parts of the day book and sheets, until he had made notes of some thirty entries. These he proceeded to tabulate on a sheet of foolscap paper.
It was at this stage that Sergeant Merry called him over to the small laboratory table, on which he and Wilkins had been carrying out the experiments with the ash debris. The table was littered with test tubes, all labelled and marked with the results of various tests. The sergeant stood regarding them with puzzled eyes. Doctor Manson regarded the furrowed brows of his deputy.
“Something wrong, Merry?” he asked.
