A Silent Witness

by R. Austin Freeman

  She took the knife from me and looked at it inquisitively. “No,” she replied, “it isn’t mine, but I think I know whose it is. I suspect it belongs to an artist who has been doing a good deal of work about the Heath. You may have seen him.”

  “I have seen several artists working about here during the summer. What was this one like?”

  “Well,” she answered with a smile, “he was like an artist. Very much like. Quite the orthodox get up. Wide brimmed hat, rather long hair and a ragged beard. And he wore sketching-spectacles—half-moon-shaped things, you know—and kid gloves—which were not quite so orthodox.”

  “Very inconvenient, I should think.”

  “Not so very. I work in gloves myself in the cold weather or if the midges are very troublesome. You soon get used to the feel of them; and the man I am speaking of wouldn’t find them in the way at all because he works almost entirely with painting-knives. That is what made me think that this knife was probably his. He had several, I know, and very skilfully he used them, too.”

  “You have seen his work, then?”

  “Well,” she admitted, “I’m afraid I descended once or twice to play the ‘snooper’. You see, his method of handling interested me.”

  “May I ask what a ‘snooper’ is?” I enquired.

  “Don’t you know? It’s a student’s slang name for the kind of person who makes some transparent pretext for coming off the path and passing behind you to get a look at your picture by false pretences.”

  For an instant there flashed into my mind the suspicion that she was administering a quiet “backhander”, and I rejoined hastily: “I hope you are not including me in the genus ‘snooper’.”

  She laughed softly. “It did sound rather like it. But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt in consideration of your finding the knife—which you had better keep in trust for the owner.”

  “Won’t you keep it? You know the probable owner by sight and I don’t; and meanwhile you might experiment with it yourself.”

  “Very well,” she replied, dropping it into her brush-tray, “I’ll keep it for the present at any rate.”

  There was a brief pause, and then I ventured to remark, “That looks a very promising sketch of yours. And how well the subject comes.”

  “I’m glad you like it,” she replied, quite simply, viewing her work with her head on one side. “I want it to turn out well, because it’s a commission, and commissions for small-oil paintings are rare and precious.”

  “Do you find small oil pictures very difficult to dispose of?” I asked.

  “Not difficult. Impossible, as a rule. But I don’t try now. I copy my oil sketches in water-colour, with modifications to suit the market.”

  Again there was a pause; and, as her brush wandered towards the palette, it occurred to me that I had stayed as long as good manners permitted. Accordingly, I raised my cap, and, having expressed the hope that I had not greatly hindered her, prepared to move away. “Oh, not at all,” she answered; “and thank you for the knife, though it isn’t mine—or, at any rate, wasn’t. Good-morning.”

  With this and a pleasant smile and a little nod, she dismissed me; and once more I went my idle and meditative way.

  It had been quite a pleasant little adventure. There is always something rather interesting in making the acquaintance of a person whom one has known some time by sight but who is otherwise an unknown quantity. The voice, the manner, and the little revelations of character, which confirm or contradict previous impressions, are watched with interest as they develop themselves and fill in, one by one, the blank spaces of the total personality. I had, as I have said, often met this industrious maiden in my walks and had formed the opinion that she looked a rather nice girl; an opinion that was probably influenced by her unusual good looks and graceful carriage. And a rather nice girl she had turned out to be; very dignified and self-possessed, but quite simple and frank—though, to be sure, her gracious reception of me had probably been due to my sketch-book; she had taken me for a kindred spirit. She had a pleasant voice and a faultless accent, with just a hint of the fine lady in her manner; but I liked her none the less for that. And her name was a pretty name, too, if I had guessed it correctly; for, on the inside of the lid of her box, which was partly uncovered by the upright panel, I had read the letters “Syl”. The panel hid the rest, but the name could hardly be other than Sylvia; and what more charming and appropriate name could be bestowed upon a comely young lady who spent her days amidst the woods and fields of my beloved Hampstead?

  Regaling myself with this somewhat small beer, I sauntered on along the grassy lane, between hedgerows that in the summer had been spangled with wild roses and that were now gay with the big, oval berries, sleek and glossy and scarlet, like overgrown beads of red coral; away, across the fields to Golder’s Green and thence by Millfield Lane, back to my lodgings at Gospel Oak, and to my landlady, Mrs. Blunt, who had a few plaintive words to say respecting the disastrous effects of unpunctuality—and the resulting prolonged heat—on mutton cutlets and fried potatoes.

  It had been an idle morning and apparently void of significant events; but yet, when I look back on it, I see a definite thread of causation running through its simple happenings, and I realize that, all unthinking, I had strung on one more bead to the chaplet of my destiny.

  * * *

  IV — SEPTIMUS MADDOCK, DECEASED

  IT was getting well on into November when I strolled one afternoon into the hospital museum, not with any specific object but rather vaguely in search of something to do. During the last few days I had developed a slight revival of industry—which had coincided, oddly enough, with a marked deterioration of the weather—and, pathology being my weakest point, the museum had seemed to call me (though not very loudly, I fear) to browse amongst its multitudinous jars and dry preparations.

  There was only one person in the great room; but he was a very important person; being none other than our lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence, Dr. John Thorndyke. He was seated at a small table whereon was set out a collection of jars and a number of large photographs, of which he appeared to be making a catalogue; but intent as he was on his occupation, he looked up as I entered and greeted me with a genial smile. “What do you think of my little collection, Jardine?” he asked, as I approached deferentially. Before replying, I ran a vaguely enquiring eye over the group of objects on the table and was mighty little enlightened thereby. It was certainly a queer collection. There was a flat jar which contained a series of five differently-coloured mice, another with a similar series of three rats, a human foot, a hand—manifestly deformed—a series of four fowls’ heads and a number of photographs of plants. “It looks,” I replied, at length, “like what the auctioneers would call a miscellaneous lot.”

  “Yes,” Dr. Thorndyke agreed, “it is a miscellaneous collection in a sense. But there is a connecting idea. It illustrates certain phenomena of inheritance which were discovered and described by Mendel.”

  “Mendel!” I exclaimed. “Who is he? I never heard of him.”

  “I daresay not.” said Thorndyke, “though he published his results before you were born. But the importance of his discoveries is only now beginning to be appreciated.”

  “I suppose,” said I, “the subject is too large and complex for a short explanation to be possible.”

  “The subject is a large one, of course,” he replied; “but, put in a nutshell, Mendel’s great discovery amounts to this; that, whereas certain characters are inherited only partially and fade off gradually in successive generations, certain other characters are inherited completely and pass unchanged from generation to generation. To take a couple of illustrative cases: If a negro marries a European, the offspring are mulattoes—forms intermediate between the negro and the European. If a mulatto marries a European, the offspring are quadroons—another intermediate form; and the next generation gives us the octoroon—intermediate again between the quadroon and the European. And so, from generation t
o generation, the negro character gradually fades away and finally disappears. But there are other characters which are inherited entire or not at all, and such characters appear in pairs which are positive or negative to one another. Sex is a case in point. A male marries a female and the offspring are either male or female, never intermediate. The sex-character of only one parent is inherited, and it is inherited completely. The characters of maleness or femaleness pass down unchanged through the ages with no tendency to diminish or to shade off into one another. That is a case of Mendelian inheritance.”

  I ran my eyes over the collection and they presently lighted on the rather abnormal-looking foot, hanging, white and shrivelled in the clear spirit. I lifted the jar from the table and then, noticing for the first time, that the foot had a supernumerary toe, I enquired what point the specimen illustrated. “That six-toed foot,” Thorndyke replied, “is an example of a deformity that is transmitted unchanged for an indefinite number of generations. This brachydactylous hand is another instance. The brachydactyly reappears in the offspring either completely or not at all. There are no intermediate conditions.”

  He picked up the jar, and, having wiped the glass with a duster, exhibited the hand which was suspended within; and a strange-looking hand it was; broad and stumpy, like the hand of a mole. “There seem to be only two joints to each finger,” I said. “Yes. The fingers are all thumbs, and the thumb is only a demi-thumb. A joint is suppressed in each digit.”

  “It must make the hand very clumsy and useless,” I remarked.

  “So one would think. It isn’t exactly the type of hand for a Liszt or a Paganini. And yet we mustn’t assume too much. I once saw an armless man copying pictures in the Luxembourg, and copying them very well, too. He held his brush with his toes; and he was so handy with his feet that he not only painted really dextrously, but managed to take his hat off to a lady with quite a fine flourish. So you see, Jardine, it is not the hand that matters, but rather the brain that actuates it. A very indifferent hand will serve if the motor centres are of the right sort.”

  He replaced the jar on the table, and then, after a short pause, turning quickly to me, he asked: “What are you doing at present, Jardine?”

  “Principally idling, sir,” I replied.

  “And not a bad thing to do either,” he rejoined with a smile, “if you do it thoroughly and don’t keep it up too long. How would you like to take charge of a practice for a week or so?”

  “I don’t know that I should particularly care to, sir,” I answered.

  “Why not? It would be a useful experience and would bring you useful knowledge; knowledge that you have got to acquire sooner or later. Hospital conditions, you know, are not normal conditions.

  “General practice is normal medical practice, and the sooner you get to know the conditions of the great world the better for you. If you stick to the wards too long you will get to be like the nurses; who seem to think that,

  “‘All the world’s a hospital, And men and women only patients.’”

  I reflected for a few moments. It was perfectly true. I was a qualified medical man, and yet of the ordinary routine of private practice I had not the faintest knowledge. To me, all sick people were either in-patients or out-patients. “Had you any particular practice in your mind, sir?” I asked.

  “Yes. I met one of our old students just now. He is at his wit’s end to find a locum tenens. He has to go away to-night or to-morrow morning, but he can’t get anyone to look after his work. Won’t you go to his relief? It’s an easy practice, I believe.”

  I turned the question over in my mind and finally decided to try the venture. “That’s right,” said Dr. Thorndyke. “You’ll help a professional brother, at any rate, and pick up a little experience. Our friend’s name is Batson, and he lives in Jacob Street, Hampstead Road. I’ll write it down.”

  He handed me a slip of paper with the address on it and wished me success; and I started at once from the hospital, already quite elated, as is the way of the youthful, at the prospect of a new experience.

  Dr. Batson’s establishment in Jacob Street was modest to the verge of dinginess. But Jacob Street, itself, was dingy, and so was the immediate neighbourhood; a district of tall, grimy houses that might easily have seen better days. However, Dr. Batson himself was spruce enough and in excellent spirits at my arrival, as was evident when he bounced into the room with a jovial greeting, bringing in with him a faint aroma of sherry. “Delighted to see you, Doctor!” he exclaimed in his large brisk voice (that “doctor” was a diplomatic hit on his part. They don’t call newly-qualified men “doctor” at the hospital.) “I met Thorndyke this morning and told him of my predicament. A busy man is the Great Unraveller, but never too busy to do a kindness to his friends. Can you take over to-night?”

  “I could,” said I.

  “Then do. I want particularly to be off by the eight-thirty from Liverpool Street. Drop in and have some grub about six-thirty; I shall have polished off the day’s work by then and you’ll just come in for the evening consultations.”

  “Are there any cases that you will want me to see with you?” I asked.

  “Oh, no,” Batson replied, rather airily I thought. “They’re all plain sailing. There’s a typhoid, he’s doing well—fourth week; and there’s a tonsilitis and a psoas abscess—that’s rather tedious, but still, it’s improving—and an old woman with a liver. You won’t have any difficulty with them. There’s only one queer case; a heart.”

  “Valvular?” I asked.

  “No, not valvular; I can tell you that much. I know what it isn’t, but I’m hanged if I know what it is. Chappie complains of pain, shortness of breath, faintness and so on, but I can’t find anything to account for it. Heart-sounds all right, pulse quite good, no dropsy, no nothing. Seems like malingering, but I don’t see why he should malinger. I think I’ll get you to drop in this evening and have a look at him.”

  “Are you keeping him in bed?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Batson, “I am now; not that his general condition seems to demand it. But he has had one or two fainting attacks, and yesterday he must needs fall down flop in his bedroom when there was nobody there, and, by way of making things more comfortable, he drops his medicine bottle and falls on the fragments. He might have killed himself, you know,” Batson added in an aggrieved tone; “as it was, a long splinter from the bottom of the bottle stuck into his back and made quite a deep little wound. So I’ve kept him in bed since, out of harm’s way; and there he is, deuced sorry for himself but, as far as I can make out, without a single tangible symptom.”

  “No facial signs? Nothing unusual in his colour or expression.”

  Batson laughed and tapped his gold-rimmed spectacles. “Ah! There you are! When you’ve got minus five D and some irregular astigmatism and a pair of glasses that don’t correct it, all human beings look pretty much alike; a trifle sketchy, don’t you know. I didn’t see anything unusual in his face, but you might. Time will show. Now you cut along and fetch your traps, and I’ll skip round and polish off the sufferers.”

  He launched me into the outer greyness of Jacob Street and bounced off in the direction of Cumberland Market, leaving me to pursue my way to my lodgings at Gospel Oak.

  As I threaded the teeming streets of Camden Town I meditated on the new experience that was opening to me, and, with youthful egotism, I already saw myself making a brilliant diagnosis of an obscure heart case. Also I reflected with some surprise on the calm view that Batson took of his defective eyesight. A certain type of painter, as I had observed, finds in semi-blindness a valuable gift which helps him to eliminate trivial detail and to impart a noble breadth of effect to his pictures; but to a doctor no such self-delusion would seem possible. Visual acuteness is the most precious item in his equipment.

  I crammed into a large Gladstone bag the bare necessaries for a week’s stay, together with a few indispensable instruments, and then mounted the jingling horse-tram of those pre-electric days
, which, in due course, deposited me at the end of Jacob Street, Hampstead Road. Dr. Batson had not returned from his round when I arrived, but a few minutes later he burst into the surgery humming an air from the Mikado. “Ha! Here you are then! Punctual to the minute!” He hung his hat on a peg, laid his visiting-list on the desk of the dispensing counter and began to compound medicine with the speed of a prestidigitateur, talking volubly all the time. “That’s for the old woman with the liver, Mrs. Mudge, Cumberland Market, you’ll see her prescription in the day book. S’pose you don’t know how to wrap up a bottle of medicine. Better watch me. This is the way.” He slapped the bottle down on a square of cut paper, gave a few dextrous twiddles of his fingers and held out for my inspection a little white parcel like the mummy-case of a deceased medicine bottle. “It’s quite easy when you’ve had a little practice,” he said, deftly sticking the ends down with sealing-wax, “but you’ll make a frightful mucker of it at first.” Which prophecy was duly fulfilled that very evening.

  “What time had I better see that heart case?” said I.

  “Oh, you won’t have to see it at ail. Man’s dead. Message left half an hour go. Pity, isn’t it? I should have liked to hear what you thought of him. Must have been fatty heart. I’ll write out the certificate while I think of it. Maggie! Where’s that note that Mrs. Samway left?”

  The question was roared out vaguely through the open door to a servant of unknown whereabouts, and resulted in the appearance of a somewhat scraggy housemaid bearing an opened note. “Here we are,” said Batson, snatching the note out of its envelope and opening the book of certificate forms; “Septimus Maddock was the chappie’s name, age fifty-one, address 23, Gayton Street, cause of death—that’s just what I should like to know—primary cause, secondary causes—I wish these infernal government clerks had got something better to do than fill printed forms with silly connundrums. I shall put “Morbus Cordis”; that ought to be enough for them. Mrs. Samway—that’s his landlady, you know—will probably call for the certificate during the evening.”