The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack: 27 Mystery Tales of Dr. Thorndyke & Others

by R. Austin Freeman

  Thorndyke gave a low whistle.

  “My wife knows I didn’t do it,” continued Belfield, “because I was at home all the evening and night; but what use is a man’s wife to prove an alibi?”

  “Not much, I fear,” Thorndyke admitted; “and you have no other witness?”

  “Not a soul. We were alone all the evening.”

  “However,” said Thorndyke, “if you are innocent—as I am assuming—the evidence against you must be entirely circumstantial and your alibi may be quite sufficient. Have you any idea of the grounds of suspicion against you?”

  “Not the faintest. The papers said that the police had an excellent clue, but they did not say what it was. Probably some one has given false information for the—?”

  A sharp rapping at the outer door cut short the explanation, and our visitor rose, trembling and aghast, with beads of sweat standing upon his livid face.

  “You had better go into the office, Belfield, while we see who it is,” said Thorndyke. “The key is on the inside.”

  The fugitive wanted no second bidding, but hurried into the empty apartment, and, as the door closed, we heard the key turn in the lock.

  As Thorndyke threw open the outer door, he cast a meaning glance at me over his shoulder which I understood when the newcomer entered the room; for it was none other than Superintendent Miller of Scotland Yard.

  “I have just dropped in,” said the superintendent, in his brisk, cheerful way, “to ask you to do me a favour. Good-evening, Dr. Jervis. I hear you are reading for the bar; learned counsel soon, sir, hey? Medico-legal expert. Dr. Thorndyke’s mantle going to fall on you, sir?”

  “I hope Dr. Thorndyke’s mantle will continue to drape his own majestic form for many a long year yet,” I answered; “though he is good enough to spare me a corner—but what on earth have you got there?” For during this dialogue the superintendent had been deftly unfastening a brown-paper parcel, from which he now drew a linen shirt, once white, but now of an unsavoury grey.

  “I want to know what this is,” said Miller, exhibiting a brownish-red stain on one sleeve. “Just look at that, sir, and tell me if it is blood, and, if so, is it human blood?”

  “Really, Miller,” said Thorndyke, with a smile, “you flatter me; but I am not like the wise woman of Bagdad who could tell you how many stairs the patient had tumbled down by merely looking at his tongue. I must examine this very thoroughly. When do you want to know?”

  “I should like to know tonight,” replied the detective.

  “Can I cut a piece out to put under the microscope?”

  “I would rather you did not,” was the reply.

  “Very well; you shall have the information in about an hour.”

  “It’s very good of you, doctor,” said the detective; and he was taking up his hat preparatory to departing, when Thorndyke said suddenly—“By the way, there is a little matter that I was going to speak to you about. It refers to this Camberwell murder case. I understand you have a clue to the identity of the murderer?”

  “Clue!” exclaimed the superintendent contemptuously. “We have spotted our man all right, if we could only lay hands on him; but he has given us the slip for the moment.”

  “Who is the man?” asked Thorndyke.

  The detective looked doubtfully at Thorndyke for some seconds and then said, with evident reluctance: “I suppose there is no harm in telling you—especially as you probably know already”—this with a sly grin; “it’s an old crook named Belfield.”

  “And what is the evidence against him?”

  Again the superintendent looked doubtful and again relented.

  “Why, the case is as clear as—as cold Scotch,” he said (here Thorndyke in illustration of this figure of speech produced a decanter, a syphon and a tumbler, which he pushed towards the officer). “You see, sir, the silly fool went and stuck his sweaty hand on the window; and there we found the marks—four fingers and a thumb, as beautiful prints as you could wish to see. Of course we cut out the piece of glass and took it up to the Finger-print Department; they turned up their files and out came Mr. Belfield’s record, with his fingerprints and photograph all complete.”

  “And the fingerprints on the window-pane were identical with those on the prison form?”

  “Identical.”

  “H’m!” Thorndyke reflected for a while, and the superintendent watched him foxily over the edge of his tumbler.

  “I guess you are retained to defend Belfield,” the latter observed presently.

  “To look into the case generally,” replied Thorndyke.

  “And I expect you know where the beggar is hiding,” continued the detective.

  “Belfield’s address has not yet been communicated to me,” said Thorndyke. “I am merely to investigate the case—and there is no reason, Miller, why you and I should be at cross purposes. We are both working at the case; you want to get a conviction and you want to convict the right man.”

  “That’s so—and Belfield’s the right man—but what do you want of us, doctor?”

  “I should like to see the piece of glass with the fingerprints on it, and the prison form, and take a photograph of each. And I should like to examine the room in which the murder took place—you have it locked up, I suppose?”

  “Yes, we have the keys. Well, it’s all rather irregular, letting you see the things. Still, you’ve always played the game fairly with us, so we might stretch a point. Yes, I will. I’ll come back in an hour for your report and bring the glass and the form. I can’t let them go out of my custody, you know. I’ll be off now—no, thank you, not another drop.”

  The superintendent caught up his hat and strode away, the personification of mental alertness and bodily vigour.

  No sooner had the door closed behind him than Thorndyke’s stolid calm changed instantaneously into feverish energy. Darting to the electric bell that rang into the laboratories above, he pressed the button while he gave me my directions.

  “Have a look at that blood-stain, Jervis, while I am finishing with Belfield. Don’t wet it; scrape it into a drop of warm normal saline solution.”

  I hastened to reach down the microscope and set out on the table the necessary apparatus and reagents, and, as I was thus occupied, a latch-key turned in the outer door and our invaluable helpmate, Polton, entered the room in his habitual silent, unobtrusive fashion.

  “Let me have the fingerprint apparatus, please, Polton,” said Thorndyke; “and have the copying camera ready by nine o’clock. I am expecting Mr. Miller with some documents.”

  As his laboratory assistant departed, Thorndyke rapped at the office door.

  “It’s all clear, Belfield,” he called; “you can come out.”

  The key turned and the prisoner emerged, looking ludicrously woebegone in his ridiculous wig and beard.

  “I am going to take your fingerprints, to compare with some that the police found on the window.”

  “Finger-prints!” exclaimed Belfield, in a tone of dismay. “They don’t say they’re my fingerprints, do they, sir?”

  “They do indeed,” replied Thorndyke, eyeing the man narrowly. “They have compared them with those taken when you were at Holloway, and they say that they are identical.”

  “Good God!” murmured Belfield, collapsing into a chair, faint and trembling. “They must have made some awful mistake. But are mistakes possible with fingerprints?”

  “Now look here, Belfield,” said Thorndyke. “Were you in that house that night, or were you not? It is of no use for you to tell me any lies.”

  “I was not there, sir; I swear to God I was not.”

  “Then they cannot be your fingerprints, that is obvious.” Here he stepped to the door to intercept Polton, from whom he received a substantial box, which he brought in and placed on the table.

  “Tell me all you know about this case,” he continued, as he set out the contents of the box on the table.

  “I know nothing about it whatever,” replied Belfield;
“nothing, at least, except—?”

  “Except what?” demanded Thorndyke, looking up sharply as he squeezed a drop from a tube of fingerprint ink onto a smooth copper plate.

  “Except that the murdered man, Caldwell, was a retired fence.”

  “A fence, was he?” said Thorndyke in a tone of interest.

  “Yes; and I suspect he was a ‘nark’ too. He knew more than was wholesome for a good many.”

  “Did he know anything about you?”

  “Yes; but nothing that the police don’t know.”

  With a small roller Thorndyke spread the ink upon the plate into a thin film. Then he laid on the edge of the table a smooth white card and, taking Belfield’s right hand, pressed the forefinger firmly but quickly, first on the inked plate and then on the card, leaving on the latter a clear print of the fingertip. This process he repeated with the other fingers and thumb, and then took several additional prints of each.

  “That was a nasty injury to your forefinger, Belfield,” said Thorndyke, holding the finger to the light and examining the tip carefully. “How did you do it?”

  “Stuck a tin-opener into it—a dirty one, too. It was bad for weeks; in fact, Dr. Sampson thought at one time that he would have to amputate the finger.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Oh, nearly a year ago, sir.”

  Thorndyke wrote the date of the injury by the side of the fingerprint and then, having rolled up the inking plate afresh, laid on the table several larger cards. “I am now going to take the prints of the four fingers and the thumb all at once,” he said.

  “They only took the four fingers at once at the prison,” said Belfield. “They took the thumb separately.”

  “I know,” replied Thorndyke; “but I am going to take the impression just as it would appear on the window glass.”

  He took several impressions thus, and then, having looked at his watch, he began to repack the apparatus in its box. While doing this, he glanced, from time to time, in meditative fashion, at the suspected man who sat, the living picture of misery and terror, wiping the greasy ink from his trembling fingers with his handkerchief.

  “Belfield,” he said at length, “you have sworn to me that you are an innocent man and are trying to live an honest life. I believe you; but in a few minutes I shall know for certain.”

  “Thank God for that, sir,” exclaimed Belfield, brightening up wonderfully.

  “And now,” said Thorndyke, “you had better go back into the office, for I am expecting Superintendent Miller, and he may be here at any moment.”

  Belfield hastily slunk back into the office, locking the door after him, and Thorndyke, having returned the box to the laboratory and deposited the cards bearing the fingerprints in a drawer, came round to inspect my work. I had managed to detach a tiny fragment of dried clot from the blood-stained garment, and this, in a drop of normal saline solution, I now had under the microscope.

  “What do you make out, Jervis?” my colleague asked.

  “Oval corpuscles with distinct nuclei,” I answered.

  “Ah,” said Thorndyke, “that will be good hearing for some poor devil. Have you measured them?”

  “Yes. Long diameter one twenty-one hundredth of an inch; short diameter about one thirty-four hundredth of an inch.”

  Thorndyke reached down an indexed notebook from a shelf of reference volumes and consulted a table of histological measurements.

  “That would seem to be the blood of a pheasant, then, or it might, more probably, be that of a common fowl.” He applied his eye to the microscope and, fitting in the eyepiece micrometer, verified my measurements. He was thus employed when a sharp tap was heard on the outer door, and rising to open it he admitted the superintendent.

  “I see you are at work on my little problem, doctor,” said the latter, glancing at the microscope. “What do you make of that stain?”

  “It is the blood of a bird—probably a pheasant, or perhaps a common fowl.”

  The superintendent slapped his thigh. “Well, I’m hanged!” he exclaimed. “You’re a regular wizard, doctor, that’s what you are. The fellow said he got that stain through handling a wounded pheasant and here are you able to tell us yes or no without a hint from us to help you. Well, you’ve done my little job for me, sir, and I’m much obliged to you; now I’ll carry out my part of the bargain.” He opened a hand-bag and drew forth a wooden frame and a blue foolscap envelope and laid them with extreme care on the table.

  “There you are, sir,” said he, pointing to the frame; “you will find Mr. Belfield’s trade-mark very neatly executed, and in the envelope is the fingerprint sheet for comparison.”

  Thorndyke took up the frame and examined it. It enclosed two sheets of glass, one being the portion of the window-pane and the other a cover-glass to protect the fingerprints. Laying a sheet of white paper on the table, where the light was strongest, Thorndyke held the frame over it and gazed at the glass in silence, but with that faint lighting up of his impassive face which I knew so well and which meant so much to me. I walked round, and looking over his shoulder saw upon the glass the beautifully distinct imprints of four fingers and a thumb—the fingertips, in fact, of an open hand.

  After regarding the frame attentively for some time, Thorndyke produced from his pocket a little wash-leather bag, from which he extracted a powerful doublet lens, and with the aid of this he again explored the fingerprints, dwelling especially upon the print of the forefinger.

  “I don’t think you will find much amiss with those fingerprints, doctor,” said the superintendent, “they are as clear as if he made them on purpose.”

  “They are indeed,” replied Thorndyke, with an inscrutable smile, “exactly as if he had made them on purpose. And how beautifully clean the glass is—as if he had polished it before making the impression.”

  The superintendent glanced at Thorndyke with quick suspicion; but the smile had faded and given place to a wooden immobility from which nothing could be gleaned.

  When he had examined the glass exhaustively, Thorndyke drew the fingerprint form from its envelope and scanned it quickly, glancing repeatedly from the paper to the glass and from the glass to the paper. At length he laid them both on the table, and turning to the detective looked him steadily in the face.

  “I think, Miller,” said he, “that I can give you a hint.”

  “Indeed, sir? And what might that be?”

  “It is this: you are after the wrong man.”

  The superintendent snorted—not a loud snort, for that would have been rude, and no officer could be more polite than Superintendent Miller. But it conveyed a protest which he speedily followed up in words.

  “You don’t mean to say that the prints on that glass are not the fingerprints of Frank Belfield?”

  “I say that those prints were not made by Frank Belfield,” Thorndyke replied firmly.

  “Do you admit, sir, that the fingerprints on the official form were made by him?”

  “I have no doubt that they were.”

  “Well, sir, Mr. Singleton, of the Finger-print Department, has compared the prints on the glass with those on the form and he says they are identical; and I have examined them and I say they are identical.”

  “Exactly,” said Thorndyke; “and I have examined them and I say they are identical—and that therefore those on the glass cannot have been made by Belfield.”

  The superintendent snorted again—somewhat louder this time—and gazed at Thorndyke with wrinkled brows.

  “You are not pulling my leg, I suppose, sir?” he asked, a little sourly.

  “I should as soon think of tickling a porcupine,” Thorndyke answered, with a suave smile.

  “Well,” rejoined the bewildered detective, “if I didn’t know you, sir, I should say you were talking confounded nonsense. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind explaining what you mean.”

  “Supposing,” said Thorndyke, “I make it clear to you that those prints on the window-pane were not made
by Belfield. Would you still execute the warrant?”

  “What do you think?” exclaimed Miller. “Do you suppose we should go into court to have you come and knock the bottom out of our case, like you did in that Hornby affair? By the way, that was a fingerprint case too, now I come to think of it,” and the superintendent suddenly became thoughtful.

  “You have often complained,” pursued Thorndyke, “that I have withheld information from you and sprung unexpected evidence on you at the trial. Now I am going to take you into my confidence, and when I have proved to you that this clue of yours is a false one, I shall expect you to let this poor devil Belfield go his way in peace.”

  The superintendent grunted—a form of utterance that committed him to nothing.

  “These prints,” continued Thorndyke, taking up the frame once more, “present several features of interest, one of which, at least, ought not to have escaped you and Mr. Singleton, as it seems to have done. Just look at that thumb.”

  The superintendent did so, and then pored over the official paper.

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t see anything the matter with it. It’s exactly like the print on the paper.”

  “Of course it is,” rejoined Thorndyke, “and that is just the point. It ought not to be. The print of the thumb on the paper was taken separately from the fingers. And why? Because it was impossible to take it at the same time. The thumb is in a different plane from the fingers; when the hand is laid flat on any surface—as this window-pane, for instance—the palmar surfaces of the fingers touch it, whereas it is the side of the thumb which comes in contact and not the palmar surface. But in this”—he tapped the framed glass with his finger—the prints show the palmar surfaces of all the five digits in contact at once, which is an impossibility. Just try to put your own thumb in that position and you will see that it is so.”

  The detective spread out his hand on the table and immediately perceived the truth of my colleague’s statement.