The Vanishing Man

by R. Austin Freeman

  CHAPTER XI

  THE EVIDENCE REVIEWED

  "So the game has opened," observed Thorndyke, as he struck a match. "Theplay has begun with a cautious lead off by the other side. Verycautious, and not very confident."

  "Why do you say 'not very confident'?" I asked.

  "Well, it is evident that Hurst--and, I fancy, Jellicoe too--is anxiousto buy off Bellingham's opposition, and at a pretty long price, underthe circumstances. And when we consider how very little Bellingham hasto offer against the presumption of his brother's death, it looks as ifHurst hadn't much to say on his side."

  "No," said Jervis, "he can't hold many trumps or he wouldn't be willingto pay four hundred a year for his opponent's chance; and that is justas well, for it seems to me that our own hand is a pretty poor one."

  "We must look through our hand and see what we do hold," said Thorndyke."Our trump card at present--a rather small one, I am afraid--is theobvious intention of the testator that the bulk of the property shouldgo to his brother."

  "I suppose you will begin your inquiries now," said I.

  "We began them some time ago--the day after you brought us the will, infact. Jervis has been through the registers and has ascertained that nointerment under the name of John Bellingham has taken place since thedisappearance; which was just what we expected. He has also discoveredthat some other person has been making similar inquiries; which, again,is what we expected."

  "And your own investigations?"

  "Have given negative results for the most part. I found Doctor Norbury,at the British Museum, very friendly and helpful; so friendly, in fact,that I am thinking whether I may not be able to enlist his help incertain private researches of my own, with reference to the changeseffected by time in the physical properties of certain substances."

  "Oh; you haven't told me about that," said Jervis.

  "No: I haven't really commenced to plan my experiments yet, and theywill probably lead to nothing when I do. It occurred to me that,possibly, in the course of time, certain molecular changes might takeplace in substances such as wood, bone, pottery, stucco, and othercommon materials, and that these changes might alter their power ofconducting or transmitting molecular vibrations. Now, if this shouldturn out to be the case, it would be a fact of considerable importance,medico-legal and otherwise; for it would be possible to determineapproximately the age of any object of known composition by testing itsreactions to electricity, heat, light and other molecular vibrations. Ithought of seeking Doctor Norbury's assistance because he can furnish mewith materials for experiment of such great age that the reactions, ifany, should be extremely easy to demonstrate. But to return to our case.I learned from him that John Bellingham had certain friends inParis--collectors and museum officials--whom he was in the habit ofvisiting for the purpose of study and exchange of specimens. I havemade inquiries of all of these, and none of them had seen him during hislast visit. In fact, I have not yet discovered anyone who had seenBellingham in Paris on this occasion. So his visit there remains amystery for the present."

  "It doesn't seem to be of much importance, since he undoubtedly cameback," I remarked; but to this Thorndyke demurred.

  "It is impossible to estimate the importance of the unknown," said he.

  "Well, how does the matter stand," asked Jervis, "on the evidence thatwe have? John Bellingham disappeared on a certain date. Is thereanything to show what was the manner of his disappearance?"

  "The facts in our possession," said Thorndyke, "which are mainly thoseset forth in the newspaper report, suggest several alternativepossibilities; and in view of the coming inquiry--for they will, nodoubt, have to be gone into in Court, to some extent--it may be worthwhile to consider them. There are five conceivable hypotheses"--hereThorndyke checked them on his fingers as he proceeded--"First, he maystill be alive. Second, he may have died and been buried withoutidentification. Third, he may have been murdered by some unknown person.Fourth, he may have been murdered by Hurst and his body concealed.Fifth, he may have been murdered by his brother. Let us examine thesepossibilities seriatim.

  "First, he may still be alive. If he is, he must either have disappearedvoluntarily, have lost his memory suddenly and not been identified, orhave been imprisoned--on a false charge or otherwise. Let us take thefirst case--that of voluntary disappearance. Obviously, itsimprobability is extreme."

  "Jellicoe doesn't think so," said I. "He thinks it quite on the cardsthat John Bellingham is alive. He says that it is not a very unusualthing for a man to disappear for a time."

  "Then why is he applying for a presumption of death?"

  "Just what I asked him. He says that it is the correct thing to do; thatthe entire responsibility rests on the Court."

  "That is all nonsense," said Thorndyke. "Jellicoe is the trustee for hisabsent client, and, if he thinks that client is alive, it is his duty tokeep the estate intact; and he knows that perfectly well. We may take itthat Jellicoe is of the same opinion as I am: that John Bellingham isdead."

  "Still," I urged, "men do disappear from time to time, and turn up againafter years of absence."

  "Yes, but for a definite reason. Either they are irresponsible vagabondswho take this way of shuffling off their responsibilities, or they aremen who have been caught in a net of distasteful circumstances. Forinstance, a civil servant or a solicitor or a tradesman finds himselfbound for life to a locality and an occupation of intolerable monotony.Perhaps he has an ill-tempered wife, who, after the amiable fashion of acertain type of woman, thinking that her husband is pinned down withouta chance of escape, gives a free rein to her temper. The man puts upwith it for years, but at last it becomes unbearable. Then he suddenlydisappears; and small blame to him. But this was not Bellingham's case.He was a wealthy bachelor with an engrossing interest in life, free togo whither he would and to do whatsoever he wished. Why should hedisappear? The thing is incredible.

  "As to his having lost his memory and remained unidentified, that, also,is incredible in the case of a man who had visiting-cards and letters inhis pocket, whose linen was marked, and who was being inquired foreverywhere by the police. As to his being in prison, we may dismiss thatpossibility, inasmuch as a prisoner, both before and after conviction,would have full opportunity of communicating with his friends.

  "The second possibility, that he may have died suddenly and been buriedwithout identification, is highly improbable; but, as it is conceivablethat the body might have been robbed and the means of identificationthus lost, it remains as a possibility that has to be considered, remoteas it is.

  "The third hypothesis, that he may have been murdered by some unknownperson, is, under the circumstances, not wildly improbable; but, as thepolice were on the look out and a detailed description of the missingman's person was published in the papers, it would involve the completeconcealment of the body. But this would exclude the most probable formof the crime--the casual robbery with violence. It is thereforepossible, but highly improbable.

  "The fourth hypothesis is that Bellingham was murdered by Hurst. Now theone fact which militates against this view is that Hurst apparently hadno motive for committing the murder. We are assured by Jellicoe that noone but himself knew the contents of the will, and if this is so--but,mind, we have no evidence that it is so--Hurst would have no reason tosuppose that he had anything material to gain by his cousin's death.Otherwise the hypothesis presents no inherent improbabilities. The manwas last seen alive at Hurst's house. He was seen to enter it and he wasnever seen to leave it--we are still taking the facts as stated in thenewspapers, remember--and it now appears that he stands to benefitenormously by that man's death."

  "But," I objected, "you are forgetting that, directly the man wasmissed, Hurst and the servants together searched the entire house."

  "Yes. What did they search for?"

  "Why, for Mr. Bellingham, of course."

  "Exactly; for Mr. Bellingham. That is, for a living man. Now how do yousearch a house for a living man? You look in all the
rooms. When youlook in a room, if he is there, you see him; if you do not see him, youassume that he is not there. You don't look under the sofa or behind thepiano, you don't pull out large drawers or open cupboards. You just lookinto the rooms. That is what these people seem to have done. And theydid not see Mr. Bellingham. But Mr. Bellingham's corpse might have beenstowed away out of sight in any one of the rooms that they looked into."

  "That is a grim thought," said Jervis; "But it is perfectly true. Thereis no evidence that the man was not lying dead in the house at the verytime of the search."

  "But even so," said I, "there was the body to be disposed of somehow.Now how could he possibly have got rid of the body without beingobserved?"

  "Ah!" said Thorndyke, "now we are touching on a point of crucialimportance. If anyone should ever write a treatise on the art ofmurder--not an exhibition of literary fireworks like De Quincey's, but agenuine working treatise--he might leave all other technical details totake care of themselves if he could describe some really practicableplan for disposing of the body. That is, and always has been, the greatstumbling-block to the murderer: to get rid of the body. The humanbody," he continued, thoughtfully regarding his pipe, just as, in thedays of my pupilage, he was wont to regard the black-board chalk, "is avery remarkable object. It presents a combination of properties thatmakes it singularly difficult to conceal permanently. It is bulky and ofan awkward shape, it is heavy, it is completely incombustible, it ischemically unstable, and its decomposition yields great volumes ofhighly odorous gases, and it nevertheless contains identifiablestructures of the highest degree of permanence. It is extremelydifficult to preserve unchanged, and it is still more difficultcompletely to destroy. The essential permanence of the human body iswell shown in the classical case of Eugene Aram; but a still morestriking instance is that of Seqenen-Ra the Third, one of the last kingsof the seventeenth Egyptian dynasty. Here, after a lapse of some fourthousand years, it has been possible to determine, not only the cause ofdeath and the manner of its occurrence, but the way in which the kingfell, the nature of the weapon with which the fatal wound was inflicted,and even the position of the assailant. And the permanence of the bodyunder other conditions is admirably shown in the case of Doctor Parkman,of Boston, U.S.A., in which identification was actually effected bymeans of remains collected from the ashes of a furnace."

  "Then we may take it," said Jervis, "that the world has not yet seenthe last of John Bellingham."

  "I think we may regard that as almost a certainty," replied Thorndyke."The only question--and a very important one--is as to when thereappearance may take place. It may be to-morrow or it may be centurieshence, when all the issues involved have been forgotten."

  "Assuming," said I, "for the sake of argument, that Hurst did murder himand that the body was concealed in the study at the time the search wasmade. How could it have been disposed of? If you had been in Hurst'splace, how would you have gone to work?"

  Thorndyke smiled at the bluntness of my question.

  "You are asking me for an incriminating statement," said he, "deliveredin the presence of a witness too. But, as a matter of fact, there is nouse in speculating _a priori_; we should have to reconstruct a purelyimaginary situation, the circumstances of which are unknown to us, andwe should almost certainly reconstruct it wrong. What we may fairlyassume is that no reasonable person, no matter how immoral, would findhimself in the position that you suggest. Murder is usually a crime ofimpulse, and the murderer a person of feeble self-control. Such personsare most unlikely to make elaborate and ingenious arrangements for thedisposal of the bodies of their victims. Even the cold-bloodedperpetrators of the most carefully planned murders appear, as I havesaid, to break down at this point. The almost insuperable difficulty ofgetting rid of a human body is not appreciated until the murderersuddenly finds himself face to face with it.

  "In the case that you are suggesting, the choice would seem to liebetween burial on the premises or dismemberment and dispersal of thefragments; and either method would be pretty certain to lead todiscovery."

  "As illustrated by the remains of which you were speaking to Mr.Bellingham," Jervis remarked.

  "Exactly," Thorndyke answered, "though we could hardly imagine areasonably intelligent criminal adopting a watercress-bed as ahiding-place."

  "No. That was certainly an error of judgment. By the way, I thought itbest to say nothing while you were talking to Bellingham, but I noticedthat, in discussing the possibility of those being the bones of hisbrother, you made no comment on the absence of the third finger of theleft hand. I am sure you didn't overlook it, but isn't it a point ofsome importance?"

  "As to identification? Under the present circumstances, I think not. Ifthere were a man missing who had lost that finger it would, of course,be an important fact. But I have not heard of any such man. Or, again,if there were any evidence that the finger had been removed beforedeath, it would be highly important. But there is no such evidence. Itmay have been cut off after death, and there is where the realsignificance of its absence lies."

  "I don't quite see what you mean," said Jervis.

  "I mean that, if there is no report of any missing man who had lost thatparticular finger, the probability is that the finger was removed afterdeath. And then arises the interesting question of motive. Why should ithave been removed? It could hardly have become detached accidentally.What do you suggest?"

  "Well," said Jervis, "it might have been a peculiar finger; a finger,for instance, with some characteristic deformity, such as an ankylosedjoint, which would be easy to identify."

  "Yes; but that explanation introduces the same difficulty. No personwith a deformed or ankylosed finger has been reported as missing."

  Jervis puckered up his brows and looked at me.

  "I'm hanged if I see any other explanation," he said. "Do you,Berkeley?"

  I shook my head.

  "Don't forget which finger it is that is missing," said Thorndyke. "Thethird finger on the left hand."

  "Oh, I see!" said Jervis. "The ring-finger. You mean it may have beenremoved for the sake of a ring that wouldn't come off."

  "Yes. It would not be the first instance of the kind. Fingers have beensevered from dead hands--and even from living ones--for the sake ofrings that were too tight to be drawn off. And the fact that it is theleft hand supports this suggestion; for a ring that was inconvenientlytight would be worn by preference on the left hand, as that is usuallyslightly smaller than the right. What is the matter, Berkeley?"

  A sudden light had burst upon me, and I suppose my countenance betrayedthe fact.

  "I am a confounded fool!" I exclaimed.

  "Oh, don't say that," said Jervis. "Give your friends a chance."

  "I ought to have seen this long ago and told you about it. JohnBellingham did wear a ring, and it was so tight that, when once he hadgot it on, he could never get it off again."

  "Do you happen to know on which hand he wore it?" Thorndyke asked.

  "Yes. It was the left hand; because Miss Bellingham, who told me aboutit, said that he would never have been able to get the ring on at allbut for the fact that his left hand was slightly smaller than hisright."

  "There it is, then," said Thorndyke. "With this new fact in ourpossession, the absence of this finger furnishes the starting-point ofsome very curious speculations."

  "As, for instance?" said Jervis.

  "Ah, under the circumstances, I must leave you to pursue thosespeculations independently. I am now acting for Mr. Bellingham."

  Jervis grinned and was silent for a while, refilling his pipethoughtfully; but when he had got it alight he resumed.

  "To return to the question of the disappearance; you don't consider ithighly improbable that Bellingham might have been murdered by Hurst?"

  "Oh, don't imagine that I am making an accusation. I am considering thevarious probabilities merely in the abstract. The same reasoning appliesto the Bellinghams. As to whether any of them did commit the murder,that is a questi
on of personal character. I certainly do not suspect theBellinghams after having seen them, and with regard to Hurst, I knownothing, or at least very little, to his disadvantage."

  "Do you know anything?" asked Jervis.

  "Well," Thorndyke said, with some hesitation, "it seems a thought unkindto rake up the little details of a man's past, and yet it has to bedone. I have, of course, made the usual routine inquiries concerningthe parties to this affair, and this is what they have brought tolight:

  "Hurst, as you know, is a stockbroker--a man of good position andreputation; but, about ten years ago, he seems to have committed anindiscretion, to put it mildly, which nearly got him into rather seriousdifficulties. He appears to have speculated rather heavily andconsiderably beyond his means, for when a sudden spasm of the marketupset his calculations, it turned out that he had been employing hisclients' capital and securities. For a time it looked as if there wasgoing to be serious trouble; then, quite unexpectedly, he managed toraise the necessary amount in some way and settle all claims. Whence hegot the money has never been discovered to this day, which is a curiouscircumstance, seeing that the deficiency was rather over five thousandpounds; but the important fact is that he did get it and that he paid upall that he owed. So that he was only a potential defaulter, so tospeak; and, discreditable as the affair undoubtedly was, it does notseem to have any direct bearing on this present case."

  "No," Jervis agreed, "though it makes one consider his position withmore attention than one would otherwise."

  "Undoubtedly," said Thorndyke. "A reckless gambler is a man whoseconduct cannot be relied on. He is subject to sudden vicissitudes offortune which may force him into other kinds of wrongdoing. Many anembezzlement has been preceded by an unlucky plunge on the turf."

  "Assuming the responsibility for this disappearance to lie between Hurstand--and the Bellinghams," said I, with an uncomfortable gulp as Imentioned the name of my friends, "to which side does the balance ofprobability incline?"

  "To the side of Hurst, I should say, without doubt," replied Thorndyke."The case stands thus--on the facts presented to us: Hurst appears tohave had no motive for killing the deceased (as we will call him); butthe man was seen to enter his house, was never seen to leave it, and wasnever again seen alive. Bellingham, on the other hand, had a motive, ashe believed himself to be the principal beneficiary under the will. Butthe deceased was not seen at his house, and there is no evidence that hewent to the house or to the neighbourhood of the house, excepting thescarab that was found there. But the evidence of the scarab is vitiatedby the fact that Hurst was present when it was picked up, and that itwas found on a spot over which Hurst had passed only a few minutespreviously. Until Hurst is cleared, it seems to me that the presence ofthe scarab proves nothing against the Bellinghams."

  "Then your opinions on the case," said I, "are based entirely on thefacts that have been made public."

  "Yes, mainly. I do not necessarily accept those facts just as they arepresented, and I may have certain views of my own on the case. But if Ihave, I do not feel in a position to discuss them. For the present,discussion has to be limited to the facts and inferences offered by theparties concerned."

  "There!" exclaimed Jervis, rising to knock out his pipe, "that is whereThorndyke has you. He lets you think you're in the very thick of the'know' until one fine morning you wake up and discover that you haveonly been a gaping outsider; and then you are mightily astonished--andso are the other side, too, for that matter. But we must really be offnow, mustn't we, reverend senior?"

  "I suppose we must," replied Thorndyke; and, as he drew on his gloves,he asked: "Have you heard from Barnard lately?"

  "Oh, yes," I answered. "I wrote to him at Smyrna to say that thepractice was flourishing and that I was quite happy and contented, andthat he might stay away as long as he liked. He writes by return that hewill prolong his holiday if an opportunity offers, but will let me knowlater."

  "Gad," said Jervis, "it was a stroke of luck for Barnard that Bellinghamhappened to have such a magnificent daughter--there! don't mind me, oldman. You go in and win--she's worth it, isn't she, Thorndyke?"

  "Miss Bellingham is a very charming young lady," replied Thorndyke. "Iam most favourably impressed by both the father and the daughter, and Ionly trust that we may be able to be of some service to them." With thissedate little speech Thorndyke shook my hand, and I watched my twofriends go on their way until their fading shapes were swallowed up inthe darkness of Fetter Lane.