“Now, this put Bendelow out of it as the principal suspect, because the description didn’t fit him at all,” (here I caught Thorndyke’s eye for an instant and was warned afresh, and not unnecessarily, to make no comment); “but,” continued the superintendent, “it didn’t put him out altogether. For the man whom the description did fit—and it fitted him to a T—was a fellow named Crile—Jonathan Crile—who was a pal of Bendelow’s and was known to have worked with him as a confederate in the receiving business and had been in prison once or twice. So the police started to make inquiries about Crile, and before long they were able to run him to earth. But that didn’t do them much good, for it turned out that Crile wasn’t in New York at all. He was in Philadelphia; and it was clearly proved that he had been there on the day of the murder, on the day before and the day after. So they seemed to have drawn a blank; but they were still a bit suspicious of Mr. Crile, who seems to have been as downy a bird as his friend Bendelow, and of the other chappie, too. But they hadn’t a crumb of evidence against either.
“So there the matter stands. A complete deadlock. There was nothing to be done; for you can’t arrest a man on mere suspicion with not a single fact to support it. But the police kept their eye on both gents, so far as they could, and presently they got a chance. Bendelow made a slip—or at any rate they said he did. It was a little trumpery affair, something in the receiving line, and of no importance at all. Probably a faked charge, too. But they thought that if they could get him arrested they might be able to squeeze something out of him—the police in America can do things that we aren’t allowed to. So they tried to pounce on him. But Mr. Bendelow was a slippery customer and he got wind of their intentions just in time. When they got into his rooms they found that he had left—in a deuce of a hurry, too, and only a few minutes before they arrived. They searched the place, but found nothing incriminating, and they tried to get on Bendelow’s track, but they didn’t succeed. He had managed to get dear away, and Crile seemed to have disappeared, too.
“Well, that seemed to be the end of the affair. Both of these crooks had made off without leaving a trace, and the police—having no evidence—didn’t worry any more about them. And so things went on for about a year, until the Van Zellen case had been given up and nearly forgotten. Then something happened quite recently that gave the police a fresh start.
“It appears that there was a fire in the house in which Bendelow’s rooms were and a good deal of damage was done, so that they had to do some rebuilding; and in the course of the repairs the builder’s men found, hidden under the floor-boards, a small parcel containing part of the Van Zellen swag. There was nothing of real value; just coins and medals and seal-rings and truck of that kind. But the things were all identified by means of Van Zellen’s catalogue, and, of course, the finding of them in what had been Bendelow’s rooms put the murder pretty clearly on to him.
“On this, as you can guess, the police and the detective agencies got busy. They searched high and low for the missing man, but for a long time they could pick up no traces of him. At last they discovered that he and Crile had taken a passage, nearly a year ago, on a tramp-steamer bound for England. Thereupon they sent a very smart, experienced detective over to work at the case in conjunction with our own detective department.
“But we didn’t have much to do with it. The American—Wilson was his name—had all the particulars, with the prison photographs and fingerprints of both the men, and he made most of the inquiries himself. However, there were two things that we did for him. We handed over to him the Van Zellen guinea and the particulars of the D’Arblay murder; and we were able to inform him that his friend Bendelow was dead.”
“How did you find that out?” Thorndyke asked.
“Oh, quite by chance. One of our men happened to be at Somerset House looking up some details of a will when in the list of wills he came across the name of Simon Bendelow, which he had heard from Wilson himself. He at once got out the will, copied out the address of the executrix and the names and addresses of the witnesses and handed them over to Wilson, who was mightily taken aback, as you may suppose. However, he wasn’t taking anything for granted. He set off instantly to look up the executrix—a Mrs. Morris. But there he got another disappointment; for the Morrises had gone away and no one knew where they had gone.”
“I take it,” said Thorndyke, “that probate of the will had been granted.”
“Yes; everything in that way had been finished up. Well, on this, Wilson set off in search of the witnesses, and he had better luck this time. They were two elderly spinsters who lived together in a house in Turnpike Lane, Hornsey. They didn’t know much about Bendelow, for they had only made his acquaintance after he had taken to his bed. They were introduced to him by his friend and landlady, Mrs. Morris, who used to take them up to his room to talk to him and cheer him up a bit. However, they knew all about his death, for they had seen him in his coffin and they followed him to the Ilford Crematorium.”
“Ha!” said Thorndyke. “So he was cremated.”
“Yes,” chuckled the superintendent with a sly look at Thorndyke. “I thought that would make you prick up your ears, Doctor. Yes, there were no half-measures for Mr. Bendelow. He had gone literally to ashes. But it was all right, you know. There couldn’t have been any hanky-panky. These two ladies had not only seen him in his coffin; they actually had a last look at him through a little celluloid window in the coffin-lid, just before the coffin was passed through into the cremation furnace.”
“And there was no doubt as to his identity?”
“None whatever. Wilson showed the old ladies his photograph and they recognized him instantly; picked his photograph out of a dozen others.”
“Where was Bendelow living when they made his acquaintance?”
“Not far from their house: in Abbey Road, Hornsey. But the Morrises moved afterwards to Market Street, Hoxton, and that is where he died and where the will was signed.”
“I suppose Wilson ascertained the cause of death?”
“Oh, yes. The old ladies told him that. But he went to Somerset House and got a copy of the death-certificate. I haven’t got that, as he took it back with him; but the cause of death was cancer of the pylorus—that’s some part of the gizzard, I believe, but you’ll know all about it. At any rate, there was no doubt on the subject, as the two doctors made a post-mortem before they signed the death-certificate. It was all perfectly plain and straightforward.
“Well, so much for Mr. Bendelow. When Wilson had done with him, he turned his attention to Crile. And then he really did get a proper shake-up. When he was at Somerset House, looking up Bendelow’s death-certificate, it occurred to him just to run his eye down the list and make sure that Crile was still in the land of the living. And there, to his astonishment, he found Crile’s name. He was dead, too! And not only was he dead: he, also, had died of cancer—it was the pancreas this time, another part of the gizzard—and he had died at Hoxton, too, and he had died just four days before Bendelow. The thing was ridiculous. It looked like a conspiracy. But here again everything was plain and above-board. Wilson got a copy of the certificate and called on the doctor who had signed it, a man named Usher. Of course, Dr. Usher remembered all about the case as it had occurred quite recently. There was not a shadow of doubt that Crile was dead. Usher had helped to put him in his coffin and had attended at his funeral; and he, too, had no difficulty in picking out Crile’s photograph, and he had no doubt at all as to what Crile died of. So there it was. Queer as it was, there was no denying the plain facts. Those two crooks had slipped through the fingers of the law, so far as it was possible to see.
“But I must admit that I was not quite satisfied; the circumstances were so remarkably odd. I told Wilson so, and I advised him to look further into the matter. I reminded him of the D’Arblay murder and the finding of that guinea, but he said that the murder was our affair; that the men he had come to look for were dead and that was all that concerned him. So back he
went to New York, taking with him the death-certificates and the two photographs with the certificates of recognition on the backs of them. But he left the notes of the case with me, on the chance that they might be useful to me, and the two sets of fingerprints, which certainly don’t seem likely to be of much use under the circumstances.”
“You never know,” said Thorndyke, with an enigmatical smile.
The superintendent gave him a quick, inquisitive look and agreed. “No, you don’t; especially when you are dealing with Dr. John Thorndyke.” He pulled out his watch and, staring at it anxiously, exclaimed: “What a confounded nuisance! I’ve got an appointment at the Law Courts in five minutes. It is quite a small matter. Won’t take me more than half an hour. May I come back when I have finished? I should like to hear what you think of this extraordinary story.”
“Come back, by all means,” said Thorndyke, “and I will turn over the facts in my mind while you are gone. Probably some suggestion may present itself in the interval.”
He let the officer out, and when the hurried footsteps had died away on the stairs, he dosed the door and turned to me with a smile.
“Well, Gray,” he said, “what do you think of that? Isn’t it a very pretty puzzle for a medical jurist?”
“It is a hopeless tangle to me,” I replied. “My brain is in a whirl. You can’t dispute the facts and yet you can’t believe them. I don’t know what to make of the affair.”
“You note the fact that, whoever may be dead, there is somebody alive—very much alive; and that that somebody is the murderer of Julius D’Arblay.”
“Yes, I realize that. But obviously he can’t be either Crile or Bendelow. The question is, who is he?”
“You note the link between him and the Van Zellen murder—I mean the electrotype guinea?”
“Yes; there is evidently some connexion, but I can’t imagine what it can be. By the way, you noticed that the American police had got muddled about the personal appearance of these two men. The description of that man who was seen coming away from Van Zellen’s house, and who was said to be quite unlike Bendelow, actually fitted him perfectly. They had evidently made a mistake of some kind.”
“Yes, I noticed that. But the description may have fitted Crile better. We must get into touch with this man Usher. I wonder if he will be the Usher who used to attend at St. Margaret’s.”
“He is; and I am in touch with him already. In fact, he was telling me about this very patient, Jonathan Crile.”
“Indeed! Can you remember the substance of what he told you?”
“I think so. It wasn’t very thrilling;” and here I gave him, as well as I could remember them, the details with which Usher had entertained me of his attendance on the late Jonathan Crile, his dealings with the landlady, Mrs. Pepper, and the incidents of the funeral, including Usher’s triumphant return in the mourning-coach. It seemed a dull and trivial story, but Thorndyke listened to it with the keenest interest, and when I had finished, he asked:
“He didn’t happen to mention where Crile lived, I suppose?”
“Yes, curiously enough, he did. The address, I remember, was 52 Field Street, Hoxton.”
“Ha!” said Thorndyke. “You are a mine of information, Gray.”
He rose, and taking down from the bookshelves Philip’s Atlas of London, opened it and pored over one of the maps. Then, replacing the atlas, he go out his notes of the D’Arblay case and searched for a particular entry. It was evidently quite a short one, for when he had found it he gave it but a single glance and closed the portfolio. Then, returning to the bookshelves, he took out the Post Office Directory and opened it at the ‘Streets’ section. Here, also, his search was but a short one, though it appeared to be concerned with two separate items; for having examined one, he turned to a different part of the section to find the other. Finally he closed the unwieldy volume, and having replaced it on the shelf, turned and once more looked at me inquiringly.
“Reflecting on what Miller has told us,” he said, “does anything suggest itself to you? Any sort of hypothesis as to what the real facts may be?”
“Nothing whatever,” I replied. “The confusion that was already in my mind is only the worse confounded. But that is not your case, I take it?”
“Not entirely,” he admitted. “The fact is that I had already formed a hypothesis as to the motives and circumstances which lay behind the murder of Julius D’Arblay and I find this new matter not inconsistent with it. But that hypothesis may, nevertheless, turn out to be quite wrong when we put it to the test of further investigation.”
“You have some further investigation in view, then?”
“Yes. I am going to make a proposal to Superintendent Miller—and here he comes, before his time; by which I judge that he, also, is keen on the solution of this puzzle.”
Thorndyke’s opinion seemed to be justified, for the superintendent entered all agog and opened the subject at once.
“Well, Doctor, I suppose you have been thinking over Wilson’s story? How does it strike you? Have you come to any conclusion?”
“Yes,” replied Thorndyke. “I have come to the conclusion that I can’t accept that story at its face-value as representing the actual facts.”
Miller laughed with an air of mingled amusement and vexation. “That is just my position,” said he. “The story seems incredible, but yet you can’t raise any objection. The evidence in support of it is absolutely conclusive at every point. There isn’t a single weak spot in it—at least I haven’t found one. Perhaps you have?” And here he looked at Thorndyke with eager inquiry in his eyes.
“I won’t say that,” Thorndyke replied. “But I put it to you, Miller, that the alleged facts that are offered are too abnormal to be entertained. We cannot accept that string of coincidences. It must be obvious to you that there is a fallacy somewhere and that the actual facts are not what they seem.”
“Yes, I feel that myself,” rejoined Miller. “But what are we to do? How are we to find the flaw in the evidence, if there is one? Can you see where to look for it? I believe you can.”
“I think there is one point which ought to be verified,” said Thorndyke. “The identification of Crile doesn’t strike me as perfectly convincing.”
“How does his case differ from Bendelow’s?” Miller demanded.
“In two respects,” was the reply. “First, Bendelow was identified by two persons who had known him well for some time and who gave a circumstantial account of his illness, his death and the disposal of his body; and second, Bendelow’s remains have been cremated and are therefore, presumably, beyond our reach for purposes of identification.”
“Well,” Miller objected, “Crile isn’t so very accessible, being some few feet under ground.”
“Still, he is there; and he has been buried only a few weeks. It would be possible to exhume the body and settle the question of his identity once for all.”
“Then you are not satisfied with Dr. Usher’s identification?”
“No. Usher saw him only after a long, wasting illness, which must have altered his appearance very greatly; whereas the photograph was taken when Crile was in his normal health. It couldn’t have been so very like Usher’s patient.”
“That’s true,” said Miller; “and I remember that Usher wasn’t so very positive, according to Wilson. But he agreed that it seemed to be the same man, and all the other facts seemed to point to the certainty that it was really Crile. Still, you are not satisfied? It’s a pity Wilson took the photograph back with him.”
“The photograph is of no consequence,” said Thorndyke. “You have the fingerprints—properly authenticated fingerprints, actually taken from the man in the presence of witnesses. After this short time it will be possible to get perfectly recognizable fingerprints from the body, and those fingerprints will settle the identity of Usher’s patient beyond any possible doubt.”
The superintendent scratched his chin thoughtfully. “It’s a bit of a job to get an exhumation orde
r,” said he. “Before I raise the question with the Commissioner, I should like to have a rather more definite opinion from you. Do you seriously doubt that the man in that coffin is Jonathan Crile?”
“It is my opinion,” replied Thorndyke—“of course, I may be wrong, but it is my considered opinion that the Crile who is in that coffin is not the Crile whose fingerprints are in your possession.”
“Very well. Doctor,” said Miller, rising and picking up his hat, “that is good enough for me. I won’t ask you for your reasons, because I know you won’t give them. But I have known you long enough to feel sure that you wouldn’t give a definite opinion like that unless you had got something pretty solid to go on. And I don’t think we shall have any difficulty about the exhumation order after what you have said.”
With this the superintendent took his leave, and very shortly afterwards Thorndyke carried me off to lunch at his club before dismissing me to take up my duties at the studio.
CHAPTER XVI
A Surprise for the Superintendent
It appeared that Thorndyke was correct in his estimate of the superintendent’s state of mind, for that officer managed to dispose in a very short time of the formalities necessary for the obtaining of an exhumation licence from the Home Office. It was less than a week after the interview that I have recorded when I received a note from Thorndyke asking me to join him and Miller at King’s Bench Walk on the following morning at the unholy hour of half past six. He offered to put me up for the night at his chambers, but I declined this hospitality, not wishing to trouble him unnecessarily; and after a perfunctory breakfast by gaslight, a ride on an early tram and a walk through the dim, lamplit streets, I entered the Temple just as the subdued notes of an invisible clock-bell announced a quarter past six. On my arrival at Thorndyke’s chambers, I observed a roomy hired carriage drawn up at the entry, and ascending the stairs, found the Doctor and Miller ready to start, each provided with a good-sized handbag.
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