“That is very important,” said the coroner. “But does this disease affect any particular class of persons?”
“Yes,” Thorndyke replied. “As the disease is con fined to tropical countries, the sufferers are naturally residents of the tropics, and nearly always natives. In West Africa, for instance, it is common among the negroes but practically unknown among the white residents.”
“Should you say that there is a distinct probability that this unknown person was a negro?”
“Yes. But apart from the filaria there is direct evidence that he was. Searching for some cause of the bleeding, I noticed a lamp-hook screwed into the ceiling, and low enough to strike a tall man’s head. I examined it closely, and observed on it a dark, shiny mark, like a blood-smear, and one or two short coiled hairs which I recognised as the scalp-hairs of a negro. I have no doubt that the unknown man is a negro, and that he has a wound of the scalp.”
“Does filarial disease produce any effects that can be recognised?
“Frequently it does. One of the commonest effects produced by Filaria nocturna, especially among negroes, is the condition known as elephantiasis. This consists of an enormous swelling of the extremities, most usually of one leg, including the foot; whence the name. The leg and foot look like those of an elephant. As a matter of fact, the negro who was in the hall suffered from elephantiasis of the left leg. I observed prints of the characteristically deformed foot on the oil-cloth covering the floor.”
Thorndyke’s evidence was listened to with intense interest by everyone present, including myself. Indeed, so spell-bound was his audience that one could have heard a pin drop; and the breathless silence continued for some seconds after he had ceased speaking. Then, in the midst of the stillness, I heard the door creak softly behind me.
There was nothing particularly significant in the sound. But its effects were amazing. Glancing at the inspector, who faced the door, I saw his eyes open and his jaw drop until his face was a very mask of astonishment. And as this expression was reflected on the faces of the jurymen, the coroner and everyone present, excepting Thorndyke, whose back was towards the door, I turned to see what had happened. And then I was as astonished as the others.
The door had been pushed open a few inches and a head thrust in—a negro’s head, covered with a soiled and blood rag forming a rough bandage. As I gazed at the black, shiny, inquisitive face, the man pushed the door farther open and shuffled into the room; and instantly there arose on all sides a soft rustle and an inarticulate murmur followed by breathless silence, while every eye was riveted on the man’s left leg.
It certainly was a strange, repulsive—looking member, its monstrous bulk exposed to view through the slit trouser and its great shapeless foot—shoeless, since no shoe could have contained it—rough and horny like the foot of an elephant. But it was tragic and pitiable, too for the man, apart from this horrible excrescence, was a fine, big, athletic-looking fellow.
The coroner was the first to recover. Addressing Thorndyke, but keeping an eye on the negro, he said: “Your evidence, then, amounts to this: On the night of Joseph Riggs’ death, there was a stranger in the house. That stranger was a negro, who seems to have wounded his head and who, you say, had a swelled left leg.”
“Yes,” Thorndyke admitted, “that is the substance of my evidence.”
Once more a hush fell on the room. The negro stood near the door, rolling his eyes to and fro over the assembly as if uneasily conscious that everyone was looking at him. Suddenly, he shuffled up to the foot of the table and addressed the coroner in deep, buzzing, resonant tones. “You tink I kill dat ole man! I no kill um. He kill himself. I look um.”
Having made this statement, he rolled his eyes defiantly round the court, and then turned his face expectantly towards the coroner, who said: “You say you know that Mr. Riggs killed himself?”
“Yas. I look um. He shoot himself. You tink I shoot urn. I tell you I no shoot um. Why I fit kill this man? I no sabby um.”
“Then,” said the coroner, “if you know that he killed himself, you must tell us all that you know; and you must swear to tell us the truth.”
“Yas,” the negro agreed, “I tell you eberyting one time. I tell you de troof. Dat ole man kill himself.”
When the coroner had explained to him that he was not bound to make any statement that would incriminate him, as he still elected to give evidence, he was sworn and proceeded to make his statement with curious fluency and self-possession.
“My name Robert Bruce. Dat my English name. My country name Kwaku Mensah. I live for Winnebah on de Gold Coast. Dis time I cook’s mate for dat steamer Leckie. On Wednesday night I lay in my bunk. I no fit sleep. My leg he chook me. I look out of de porthole. Plenty moon live. In my country when de moon big, peoples walk about. So I get up. I go ashore to walk about de town. Den de rain come. Plenty rain. Rain no good for my sickness. So I try for open house doors. No fit. All doors locked. Den I come to dis ole man’s house. I turn de handle. De door open. I go in. I look in one room. All dark. Nobody live. Den I look annudder room. De door open a little. Light live inside. I no like dat I tink, spose somebody come out and see me, be link I come for teef someting. So I tink I go away.
“Den someting make ‘Ping!’ same like gun. I hear someting faIl down in dat room. I go to de door and I sing out, ‘Who live in dere?’ Nobody say nutting. So I open de door and look in. De room full ob smoke. I look dat ale man on de floor. I look dat pistol. I sabby dat ole man kill himself. Den I frighten too much. I run out. D place all dark. Someting knock my head. He make blood come plenty. I go back for ship. I no say nutting to nobody. Dis day I hear peoples talk ’bout dis inquess to find out who kill dat ole man. So I come to hear what peoples say. I hear dat gentleman say I kill dat ole man. So I tell you eberyting. I tell you de troof. Finish.”
“Do you know what time it was when you came ashore?” the coroner asked.
“Yas. When I come down de ladder I hear eight bells ring. I get back to de ship jus’ before dey ring two bells in de middle watch.”
“Then you came ashore at midnight and got back just before one o’clock?”
“Yas. Dat is what I say.”
A few more questions put by the coroner having elicited nothing fresh, the case was put briefly to the jury.
“You have heard the evidence, gentlemen, and most remarkable evidence it was. Like myself, you must have been deeply impressed by the amazing skill with which Dr. Thorndyke reconstructed the personality of the unknown visitor to that house, and even indicated correctly the very time of the visit, from an examination of a mere chance blood-stain. As to the statement of Kwaku Mensab, I can only say that I see no reason to doubt its truth. You will note that it is in complete agreement with Dr. Thorndyke’s evidence, and it presents no inconsistencies or improbabilities. Possibly the police may wish to make some further inquiries, but for our purposes it is the evidence of an eyewitness, and as such must be given full weight. With these remarks, I leave you to consider your verdict.”
The jury took but a minute or two to deliberate. Indeed, only one verdict was possible if the evidence was to be accepted, and that was agreed on unanimously—suicide whilst temporarily insane. As soon as it was announced, the inspector, formally and with congratulations, released Fletcher from custody, and presently retired in company with the negro to make a few inquiries on board the ship.
The rising of the court was the signal for a wild demonstration of enthusiasm and gratitude to Thorndyke. To play his part efficiently in that scene he would have needed to be furnished, like certain repulsive Indian deities, with an unlimited outfit of arms. For everyone wanted to shake his hand, and two of them—Mr. Foxley and Miss Markham—did so with such pertinacity as entirely to exclude the other candidates.
“I can never thank you enough,” Miss Markham exclaimed, with swimming eyes, “if I should live to be a hundred. But I shall think of you with gratitude every day of my life. Whenever I look at Robert, I shall re
member that his liberty, and even his life, are your gifts.”
Here she was so overcome by grateful emotion that she again seized and pressed his hand. I think she was within an ace of kissing him; but being, perhaps, doubtful how he would take it, compromised by kissing Robert instead. And, no doubt, it was just as well.
GLEANINGS FROM THE WRECKAGE (1927)
There was a time, and not so very long ago, when even the main streets of London, after midnight, were as silent as—not the grave; that is an unpleasant simile. Besides, who has any experience of conditions in the grave? But they were nearly as silent as the streets of a village. Then the nocturnal pedestrian could go his way encompassed and soothed by quiet, which was hardly disturbed by the rumble of a country wagon wending to market or the musical tinkle of the little bells on the collar of the hansom-cab horse sedately drawing some late reveller homeward.
Very different is the state of those streets nowadays. Long after the hour when the electric trams have ceased from troubling and the motor omnibuses are at rest, the heavy road transport from the country thunders through the streets; the air is rent by the howls of the electric hooter, and belated motor-cyclists fly past, stuttering explosively like perambulant Lewis guns with an in exhaustible charge.
“Let us get into the by-streets,” said Thorndyke, as a car sped past us uttering sounds suggestive of a dyspeptic dinosaur. “We don’t want our conversation seasoned with mechanical objurgations. In the back-streets it is still possible to hear oneself speak and forget the march of progress.”
We turned into a narrow by-way with the confidence of the born and bred Londoner in the impossibility of losing our direction, and began to thread the intricate web of streets in the neighbourhood of a canal.
“It is a remarkable thing,” Thorndyke resumed anon, “that every new application of science seems to be designed to render the environment of civilised man more and more disagreeable. If the process goes much farther, as it undoubtedly will, we shall presently find ourselves looking back wistfully at the Stone-age as the golden age of human comfort.”
At this point his moralising was cut short by a loud, sharp explosion. We both stopped and looked about from the parapet of the bridge that we were crossing.
“Quite like old times,” Thorndyke remarked. “Carries one back to 1915, when friend Fritz used to call on us. Ah! There is the place; the top story of that tail building across the canal.” He pointed as he spoke to a factory-like structure, from the upper windows of which a lurid light shone and rapidly grew brighter.
“It must be down the next turning,” said I, quickening my pace.
But he restrained me, remarking: “There is no hurry. That was the sound of high explosive, and those flames suggest nitro compounds burning. Festina lente. There may be some other packets of high explosives.”
He had hardly finished speaking when a flash of dazzling violet light burst from the burning building. The windows flew out bodily, the roof opened in places, and almost at the same moment the clang of a violent explosion shook the ground under our feet, a puff of wind stirred our hair, and then came a clatter of falling glass and slates.
We made our way at a leisurely pace towards the scene of the explosion, through streets lighted up by the ruddy glare from the burning factory. But others were less cautious. In a few minutes the street was filled by one of those crowds which, in London, seem mysteriously to spring up in an instant where but a moment before not a person was to be seen. Before we had reached the building, a fire-engine had rumbled past us, and already a sprinkling of policemen had appeared as if, like the traditional frogs, they had dropped from the clouds.
In spite of the ferocity of its outbreak, the fire seemed to be no great matter, for even as we looked and before the fire-hose was fully run out, the flames began to die down. Evidently, they had been dealt with by means of extinguishers within the building, and the services of the engine would not be required after all. Noting this flat ending to what had seemed so promising a start, we were about to move off and resume our homeward journey when I observed a uniformed inspector who was known to us, and who, observing us at the same instant, made his way towards us through the crowd.
“You remind me, sir,” said be, when he had wished us good-evening,” of the stories of the vultures that make their a in the sky from nowhere when a camel drops dead in the desert. I don’t mean anything uncomplimentary,” he hastened to add. “I was only thinking of the wonderful instinct that has brought you to this very spot at this identical moment, as if you had smelt a case afar off.”
“Then your imagination has misled you,” said Thorndyke, “for I haven’t smelt a case, and I don’t smell one now. Fires are not in my province.”
“No, sir,” replied the inspector, “but bodies are, and the fireman tells me that there is a dead man up there—or at least the remains of one. I am going up to inspect. Do you care to come up with me?”
Thorndyke considered for a moment, but I knew what his answer would be, and I was not mistaken.
“As a matter of professional interest, I should,” he replied, “but I don’t want to be summoned as a witness at the inquest.”
“Of course you don’t, sir,” the inspector agreed, “and I will see that you are not summoned, unless an expert witness is wanted. I need not mention that you have been here; but I should be glad of your opinion for my own guidance in investigating the case.”
He led us through the crowd to the door of the building, where we were joined by a fireman—whose helmet I should have liked to borrow—by whom we were piloted up the stairs. Half up we met the night-watchman, carrying an exhausted extinguisher and a big electric lantern, and he joined our procession, giving us the news as we ascended.
“It’s all safe up above,” said he, “excepting the roof; and that isn’t so very much damaged. The big windows saved it. They blew out and let off the force of the explosion. The floor isn’t damaged at all. It’s girder and concrete. But poor Mr. Manford caught it properly. He was fairly blown to bits.”
“Do you know how it happened?” the inspector asked.
“I don’t,” was the reply. “When I came on duty Mr. Manford was up there in his private laboratory. Soon afterwards a friend of his—a foreign gentleman of the name of Bilsky—came to see him. I took him up, and then Mr. Manford said he had some business to do, and after that he had got a longish job to do and would be working late. So he said I might turn in and he would let me know when he had finished. And he did let me know with a vengeance, poor chap I lay down in my clothes, and I hadn’t been asleep above a couple of hours when some noise woke me up. Then there came a most almighty bang. I rushed for an extinguisher and ran upstairs, and there I found the big laboratory all ablaze, the windows blown out and the ceiling down. But it wasn’t so bad as it looked. There wasn’t very much stuff up there; only the experimental stuff, and that burned out almost at once. I got the rest of the fire out in a few minutes.”
“What stuff is it that you are speaking of?” the inspector asked.
“Celluloid, mostly, I think,” replied the watchman. “They make films and other celluloid goods in the works. But Mr. Manford used to do experiments in the material up in his laboratory. This time he was working with alloys, melting them on the gas furnace. Dangerous thing to do with all that inflammable stuff about. I don’t know what there was up there, exactly. Some of it was celluloid, I could see by the way it burned, but the Lord knows what it was that exploded. Some of the raw stuff, perhaps.”
At this point we reached the top floor, where a door blown off its hinges and a litter of charred wood fragments filled the landing. Passing through the yawning doorway, we entered the laboratory and looked on a hideous scene of devastation. The windows were mere holes, the ceiling a gaping space fringed with black and ragged lathing, through which the damaged roof was visible by the light of the watchman’s powerful lantern. The floor was covered with the fallen plaster and fragments of blackened woodwork, but its
own boards were only slightly burnt in places, owing, no doubt, to their being fastened directly to the concrete which formed the actual floor.
“You spoke of some human remains,” said the inspector.
“Ah!” said the watchman, “you may well say ‘remains.’ Just come here.” He led the way over the rubbish to a corner of the laboratory, where he halted and threw the light of his lantern down on a brownish, dusty, globular object that lay on the floor half buried in plaster. “That’s all that’s left of poor Mr. Manford; that and a few other odd pieces. I saw a hand over the other side.”
Thorndyke picked up the head and placed it on the blackened remnant of a bench, where, with the aid of the watchman’s lantern and the inspection lamp which I produced from our research-case, he examined it curiously. It was extremely, but unequally, scorched. One ear was completely shrivelled, and most of the face was charred to the bone. But the other ear was almost intact; and though most of the hair was burned away to the scalp, a tuft above the less damaged ear was only singed, so that it was possible to see that the hair had been black, with here and there a stray white hair.
Thorndyke made no comments, but I noticed that he examined the gruesome object minutely, taking nothing for granted. The inspector noticed this, too; and when the examination was finished, looked at him inquiringly.
“Anything abnormal, sir?” he asked.
“No,” replied Thorndyke; “nothing that is not accounted for by fire and the explosion. I see he had no natural teeth, so he must have worn a complete set of false teeth. That should help in the formal identification, if the plates are not completely destroyed.”
“There isn’t much need for identification,” said the watchman, “seeing that there was nobody in the building but him and me. His friend went away about half-past twelve. I heard Mr. Manford let him out.”
“The doctor means at the inquest,” the inspector explained. “Somebody has got to recognise the body if possible.”
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 23
