“Those,” said Mr. Wampole, indicating the older persons, “are Mr. Osmond’s parents, both, I regret to say, deceased. The younger lady is Mrs. Hepburn, Mr. Osmond’s sister, and those little boys are her sons. Mr. Osmond was very devoted to them, as I believe they were to him.”
Thorndyke nodded. “They are fine little fellows,” he remarked. “Indeed it is a good-looking family. I gather from your description that Mr. Osmond must have taken rather strongly after his mother.”
“You are quite right, sir,” replied Mr. Wampole. “From that portrait of his mother you would recognize Mr. Osmond without the slightest difficulty. The likeness is quite remarkable.”
Thorndyke nodded again as he considered long and earnestly the striking face that looked out of the frame so keenly under its bold, straight brows. Strength, courage, determination, were written in every line of it; and as he stood with his eyes bent upon those of the portrait and thought of this woman’s son—of the mean, avaricious crime, so slyly and craftily carried out, of the hasty, pusillanimous flight, unjustified by any hint of danger—he was sensible of a discrepancy between personality and conduct to which his experience furnished no parallel. A vast amount of nonsense has been talked and believed on the subject of physiognomy; but within this body of error there lies a soul of truth. ‘Character reading’ in the Lavater manner is largely pure quackery; but there is a certain general congruity between a man’s essential character and his bodily ‘make-up,’ including his facial type. Here, however, was a profound incongruity. Thorndyke found it difficult to identify the sly, cowardly knave whom he was seeking with the actual man who appeared to be coming into view.
But his doubts did not affect his actions. He had come here to collect evidence; and that purpose he proceeded to execute with a perfectly open mind. He pointed out to Polton the most likely spots to work for characteristic dust; he examined minutely every piece of furniture and woodwork in both the rooms; he made careful notes of every fact observed by himself or communicated by Wampole that could throw any light on the habits or occupations of the absent man. Even the secretly-amused onlooker was impressed by the thoroughness of the investigation, for, as Polton finally packed his apparatus, he remarked: “Well, sir, I have told you what I think—that you are following a will-o’-the-wisp. But if you fail to run him to earth, it certainly won’t be for lack of painstaking effort. You deserve to succeed.”
Thorndyke thanked him for the compliment and retired slowly down the stairs while the rooms were being locked up. They called in at the office to collect Thorndyke’s green canvas-covered case and then made their adieux.
“I must thank you most warmly, Mr. Wampole,” said Thorndyke, “for the kind interest that you have taken in our investigations. You have given us every possible help.”
Mr. Wampole bowed. “It is very good of you to say so. But it has really been a great pleasure and a most novel and interesting experience.” He held the door open for them to pass out, and as they were crossing the threshold he added: “You won’t forget about that button-wallet, sir, if the opportunity should arrive.”
“I certainly will not,” was the reply. “I will secure an option—or better still, the wallet itself and send it to you. By the way, should it be sent here or to your private address?”
Mr. Wampole reflected for a few moments. Then he drew from his pocket a much-worn letter-case from which he extracted a printed visiting-card.
“I think, sir, it would be best to send it to my private address. One doesn’t want it opened by the wrong hands. This is my address; and let me thank you in advance, even if only for the kind intention. Good evening, sir. Good evening, Mr. Polton. I trust that your little dusty souvenirs will prove highly illuminating.”
He stood on the threshold and gravely watched his two visitors as they retired down the street. At length, when they turned a corner, he re-entered, shutting and locking the outer door. Then in an instant his gravity relaxed, and flinging himself into a chair, he roused the echoes with peal after peal of joyous laughter.
CHAPTER XVI
WHICH TREATS OF LAW AND BUTTONS
“This seems highly irregular,” said Mr. Penfield, settling himself comfortably in the easy-chair and smilingly regarding a small table on which were a decanter and glasses. “I don’t treat my professional visitors in this hospitable fashion. And you don’t even ask what has brought me here.”
“No,” replied Thorndyke, as he filled a couple of glasses; “I accept the gifts of Fortune and ask no questions.”
Mr. Penfield bowed. “You were good enough to say that I might call out of business hours, which is a great convenience, so here I am, with a twofold purpose; first, to seek information from you; and second to give you certain news of my own. Perhaps I may take them in that order and begin by asking one or two questions?”
“Do so, by all means,” replied Thorndyke.
“I have heard,” pursued Mr. Penfield, “from our friends Hollis and Woodstock, and perhaps you will not be surprised to learn that you have made yourself somewhat unpopular with them. They have even applied disrespectful epithets to you.”
“Such as mountebank, impostor, quack, and so forth,” suggested Thorndyke.
Mr. Penfield chuckled as he sipped his wine. “Your insight is remarkable,” said he. “You have quoted the very words. They complain that, after making a serious appointment with them and occupying their time, you merely asked a number of foolish and irrelevant questions, and then proceeded to sweep the floor. Is that an exaggeration, or did you really sweep the floor?”
“I collected a few samples of dust from the floor and elsewhere.”
Mr. Penfield consumed a luxurious pinch of snuff and regarded Thorndyke with delighted amusement.
“Did you indeed? Well, I am not surprised at their attitude. But a year or so ago it would have been my own. It must have looked like sheer wizardry. But tell me, have your investigations and floor-sweepings yielded any tangible facts?
“Yes,” replied Thorndyke, “they have; and those facts I will lay before you on the strict understanding that you communicate them to nobody. As to certain further inferences of a more speculative character, I should prefer to make no statement at present. They may be entirely erroneous.”
“Exactly, exactly. Let us keep scrupulously to definite facts which are susceptible of proof. Now, what have you discovered?”
“My positive results amount to this: in the first place I have ascertained beyond the possibility of any reasonable doubt that those boxes had been opened by some person other than Mr. Hollis. In the second place it is virtually certain that the person who opened them was in some way connected with Mr. Woodstock’s office.”
“Do you say that the boxes were actually opened in his office?
“No. The evidence goes to prove that they were taken from the office and opened elsewhere.”
“But surely they would have been missed from the strong-room?”
“That, I think was provided for. I infer that only one box was taken at a time and that its place was filled by a dummy.”
“Astonishing!” exclaimed Mr. Penfield. “It seems incredible that you should have been able to discover this—or, indeed, that it should be true. The seals seem to me to offer an insuperable difficulty.”
“On the contrary,” replied Thorndyke, “it was the seals that furnished the evidence. They were manifest forgeries.”
“Were they really! The robber had actually had a counterfeit seal engraved?”
“No. The false seal was not engraved. It was an electrotype made from one of the wax impressions; a much simpler and easier proceeding, and one that the robber could carry out himself and so avoid the danger of employing a seal engraver.”
“No doubt it would be the safer plan, and probably you are right in assuming that he adopted it; but—”
“I am not assuming,” said Thorndyke. “There is direct evidence that the seal used to make the false impressions was an electrotype.”
“Now, what would be the nature of that evidence—or is it, perhaps, too technical for an ignorant person like me to follow?”
“There is nothing very technical about it,” replied Thorndyke. “You know how an electrotype is made? Well, to put it briefly, the process would be this: one of the wax impressions from a box would be carefully coated with black lead or some other conducting material and attached to one of the terminals of an electric battery; and to the other terminal a piece of copper would be attached. The black-leaded wax impression and the piece of copper would be suspended from the wires of the battery, close together but not touching, in a solution of sulphate of copper. Then, as the electric current passed, the copper would dissolve in the solution and a film of metallic copper would become deposited on the black-leaded wax and would gradually thicken until it became a solid shell of copper. When this shell was picked off the wax it would be, in effect, a copper seal which would give impressions on wax just like the original seal. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly. But what is the evidence that this was actually done?”
“It is really very simple,” replied Thorndyke. “Let us consider what would happen in the two alternative cases. Take first that of the seal engraver. He has handed to him one or more of the wax impressions from the boxes and is asked to engrave a seal which shall be an exact copy of the seal which made the impressions. What does he do? If the wax impression were absolutely perfect, he would simply copy it in intaglio. But a seal impression never is perfect unless it is made with quite extraordinary care. But the wax impressions on the boxes were just ordinary impressions, hastily made with no attempt at precision, and almost certainly not a perfect one among them. The engraver, then, would not rigorously copy a particular impression, but, eliminating its individual and accidental imperfections, he would aim at producing a seal which should be a faithful copy of the original seal, without any imperfections at all.
“Now take the case of the electrotype. This is a mechanical reproduction of a particular impression. Whatever accidental marks or imperfections there may be in that impression will be faithfully reproduced. In short, an engraved seal would be a copy of the original seal; an electrotype would be a copy of a particular impression of that seal.”
Mr. Penfield nodded approvingly. “An excellent point and very clearly argued. But what is its bearing on the case?”
“It is this: since an electrotype seal is a mechanical copy of a particular wax impression, including any accidental marks or imperfections in it, it follows that every impression made on wax with such a seal will exhibit the accidental marks or imperfections of the original wax impression, in addition to any defects of its own. So that, if a series of such impressions were examined, although each would probably have its own distinctive peculiarities, yet all of them would be found to agree in displaying the accidental marks or imperfections of the original impression.”
“Yes, I see that,” said Mr. Penfield with a slightly interrogative inflexion.
“Well, that is what I have found in the series of seal-impressions from Mr. Hollis’s boxes. They are of all degrees of badness, but in every one of the series two particular defects occur; which, as the series consists of over thirty impressions, is utterly outside the limits of probability.”
“Might those imperfections not have been in the seal itself?
“No. I took, with the most elaborate care, two impressions from the original seal, and those impressions are, I think, as perfect as is possible. At any rate, they are free from these, or any other visible defects. I will show them to you.”
He took from a drawer a portfolio and an envelope. From the latter he produced one of the two impressions that he had made with Mr. Hollis’s seal and from the former a half-plate photograph.
“Here,” he said, handing them to Mr. Penfield, “is one of the seal impressions taken by me, and here is a magnified photograph of it. You can see that every part of the design is perfectly clear and distinct and the background quite free from indentations. Keep that photograph for comparison with these others, which show a series of thirty-two impressions from the boxes, magnified four diameters. In every one of them you will find two defects. First the projecting fore-legs of the left-hand horse are blurred and faint; second, there is, just in front of the chariot and above the back of the near horse, a minute pit in the back ground. It is hardly visible to the naked eye in the wax impressions, but the photographs show it plainly. It was probably produced by a tiny bubble of air between the seal and the wax.
“Now, neither of these defects is to be seen in Mr. Hollis’s seal. Either of them might have occurred accidentally in one or two impressions. But since they both occur in every case, whether the impressions are relatively good or bad, it is practically certain that they existed in the matrix or seal with which the impressions were made. And this conclusion is confirmed by the fact that, in some cases, the defect in the horse’s fore legs is inconsistent with other defects in the same impression.”
“How inconsistent?” Mr. Penfield demanded.
“I mean that the faint impression of the horse’s legs is due to insufficient pressure of the left side of the seal; the seal has not been put down quite vertically. But here—in number 23, for instance—the impression of the chariot and driver on the right-hand side is quite faint and shallow. In that case, the left-hand side of the impression should have been deep and distinct. But both sides are faint, whereas the middle is deep.”
“Might not the seal have been rocked from side to side?”
“No, that would not explain the appearances; for if the seal were rocked from side to side, both sides would be deep, though the middle might be shallow. It is impossible to imagine any kind of pressure which would give an impression shallow on both sides and deep in the middle. The only possible explanation is that the matrix, itself, was shallow on one side.”
Mr. Penfield reflected, helping his cogitations with a pinch of snuff.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Incredible as the thing appears, I think you have made out your case. But doesn’t it strike you as rather odd that this ingenious rascal should not have taken more care to secure a good impression from which to make his false seal?”
“I imagine that he had no choice,” replied Thorndyke. “On each box were six seals; three on the paper wrapping, two in the recesses by the keyhole, and one on the knot of the string. Now, as the paper had to be preserved, the seals could not be torn or cut from that. It would be impossible to get them out of the recesses. There remained only the seals on the knots. These were, of course, much the least perfect, though the string was little more than thread and the knots quite small. But they were the only ones that it was possible to remove, and our friend was lucky to have got as good an impression as he did.”
Mr. Penfield nodded. “Yes,” said he, “you have an answer to every objection. By the way, if the paper had to be preserved so carefully, how do you suppose he got the parcels open? He would have had to break the seals.”
“I think not. I assume that he melted the seals by holding a hot iron close to them and then gently opened the packets while the wax was soft.”
Mr. Penfield chuckled. “Yes,” he admitted, “it is all very complete and consistent. And now to go on to the next point. You say that there is evidence that these boxes were opened by some person other than Hollis himself; a person connected in some way with Woodstock’s office. Further that they were opened, not in the office itself, but in some other place to which they had been taken. I should like to hear that evidence; especially if it should happen to be connected with those mysterious floor-sweepings.”
“As a matter of fact, it is,” Thorndyke replied, with a smile. “But the floor-sweeping was not the first stage. The investigation began with Mr. Hollis’s boxes, from which I extracted every particle of dust that I could obtain; and this dust I examined minutely and exhaustively. The results were unexpectedly illuminating. For instance, from every one of the untouched boxes I
obtained one or more moustache hairs.”
“Really! But isn’t that very remarkable?”
“Perhaps it is. But moustache hairs are shed very freely. If you look at the dust from a desk used by a man with a moustache, you will usually see in it quite a number of moustache hairs.”
“I have not noticed that,” said Mr. Penfield, “having no moustache myself. And what else did you obtain by your curious researches?”
“The other result was really very remarkable indeed. From every one of the boxes I obtained particles—in some cases only one or two, in others quite a number—of the very characteristic dust which is shed by worm-eaten furniture.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Mr. Penfield. “And you were actually able to identify it! Astonishing! Now, I suppose—you must excuse me,” he interpolated with an apologetic smile, “but I am walking in an enchanted land and am ready to expect and believe in any marvels—I suppose you were not able to infer the character of the piece of furniture?
“Not with anything approaching certainty,” replied Thorndyke. “I formed certain opinions; but they are necessarily speculative, and we are dealing with evidence.”
“Quite so, quite so,” said Mr. Penfield. “Let us avoid speculation. But I now begin to see the inwardness of the floor-sweeping. You were tracing this mysterious dust to its place of origin.”
“Exactly. And, naturally, I began with Mr. Hollis’s premises—though the forgery of the seals seemed to put him outside the field of inquiry.”
“Yes; he would hardly have needed to forge his own seal.”
“No. But I examined his premises thoroughly, with an entirely negative result. There was no one on them with a moustache of any kind; the dust from his floors showed not a particle of the wood-dust, and I could find no piece of furniture in his house which could have yielded such dust.
“I then proceeded to Woodstock’s office, and there I obtained abundant samples both of hairs and wood-dust. I found Osmond’s hair-brushes in his desk, and from them obtained a number of moustache hairs which, on careful comparison, appear to be identically similar to those found in the boxes.”
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 46
