The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  “Yes,” Hepburn admitted, with a frown of perplexity. “I am. I am wondering what on earth can have induced him to go off in that extraordinary manner and at that particular time.”

  “So am I,” said Thorndyke.

  “Well, I’m afraid we shall never learn now,” said Woodstock.

  “Apparently not,” Thorndyke agreed; “and yet—who knows?”

  CHAPTER XIX

  Thorndyke Connects the Links

  Early in the afternoon—at forty minutes past twelve, to be exact—of a sunny day in late spring, a tall, hatchet-faced man, accompanied by a small, sprightly lady, strolled at a leisurely pace through Pump Court and presently emerged into the cloisters, where he and his companion halted and looked about them.

  “What a lovely old place it is!” the latter exclaimed, letting her eyes travel appreciatively from the porch of the Temple Church to the façade of Lamb Buildings. “Wouldn’t you like to live here, Jack?”

  “I should,” he replied. “It is delightful to look at whichever way you turn; and there is such a delicious atmosphere of peace and quiet.”

  She laughed merrily. “Peace and quiet!” she repeated. “Peace, perfect peace. That has always been the desire of your heart, hasn’t it? Oh, you old hum bug! Before you had been here a month you would be howling for the sea and someone to fight.” Here her glance lighted on the little wig shop, tucked away in its shady corner, and she drew him eagerly towards it “Let us have a look at these wigs,” said she. “I love wigs. It is a pity they have gone out of fashion for general use. They were such a let-off for bald-headed men. Which one do you like best, Jack? I rather fancy that big one—full-bottomed, I think, is its proper description. It would suit you to a T. It looks a little vacant with no face inside it, but it would have a grand appearance with your old nose sticking out in front. You’d look like the Great Sphinx before they knocked his nose off. Don’t you think you’d look rather well in it?”

  “I don’t know that I am particularly keen on wigs,” he replied.

  “Unless they are on the green,” she suggested with a roguish smile.

  He smiled at her in return, with a surprising softening of the rather rugged face, and then glanced at his watch.

  “We mustn’t loiter here staring at these ridiculous wigs,” said he; “or we shall be late. Come along, you little babbler.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” she responded; “come along, it is,” and they resumed their leisurely progress eastward across the court.

  “I wonder,” he said, reflectively, “what sort of fellow Thorndyke is. Moderately human, I hope, be cause I want him to understand what I feel about all that he has done for us.”

  “I shall want to kiss him,” said she.

  “You had better not,” he said, threateningly. “Still, short of that, I shall look to you to let him know how grateful, beyond all words, we are to him.”

  “You can trust me, Jack, darling,” she replied, “to make it as clear as I can. When I think of it, I feel like crying. We owe him everything. He is our fairy-godmother.”

  “I don’t think, Betty, dear,” said Osmond with a faint grin, “that I should put it to him in exactly those words.”

  “I wasn’t going to, you old guffin!” she exclaimed, indignantly. “But it is what I feel. He is a magician. A touch of his magic wand changed us in a moment from a pair of miserable, hopeless wretches into the pet children of Fortune, rich in everything we desired, and with the whole world of happiness at our feet. Oh, the wonder of it! Just think, darling! While you, with that ridiculous bee in your silly old bonnet, were doing everything that you could to make yourself—and me—miserable for life, here was this dry old lawyer, whose very existence we were unaware of, quietly, methodically working away to dig us out of our own entanglements. We can never even thank him properly.”

  “No. That’s a fact,” Osmond agreed. “And, in spite of Penfield’s explanations, I can’t in the least understand how he did it.”

  “Mr. Penfield admits that he has only a glimmering of an idea himself; but as he has promised to extract a full explanation today, we can afford to bottle up our curiosity a little longer. This seems to be the house; yes, here we are: ‘1st Pair, Dr. John Thorndyke.’”

  She tripped up the stairs, followed by Osmond, and on the landing was confronted by the open ‘oak’ and a closed inner door, adorned by a small but brilliantly burnished brass knocker.

  “What a dinkie little knocker!” she exclaimed; and forthwith executed upon it a most impressive flourish. Almost instantly the door was opened by a tall, dignified man who greeted the visitors with a smile of quiet geniality.

  “I have no need to ask who you are,” he said, as, having saluted the lady, he shook hands with Osmond. “Your resemblance to your mother is quite remarkable.”

  “Yes,” replied Osmond, a little mystified, nevertheless. “I was always considered to be very like her. I should like to think that the likeness is not only a superficial one.”

  Here he became aware of Mr. Penfield, who had risen from an arm-chair and was advancing, snuff-box in hand, to greet them.

  “It is very delightful to meet you both in these chambers,” said he, with an old bow. “A most interesting and significant meeting. Your husband’s name has often been spoken here, Mrs. Osmond, in the days when he was, to us, a mere abstraction of mystery.”

  “I’ve no doubt it has,” said Betty, regarding the old lawyer with a mischievous smile, “and I don’t suppose it was spoken of in very complimentary terms. But we are both absolutely bursting with gratitude and we don’t know how to put our feelings into words.”

  “There is no occasion for gratitude,” said Thorndyke. “It has been a mutual change of benefits. Your husband has provided us with a problem of the most thrilling interest, which we have had the satisfaction of solving, with the added pleasure of being of some service to you. We are really your debtors.”

  “Very kind of you to put it in that way,” said Osmond, with a faint grin. “I seem to have played a sort of Falstaffian part. My deficiency of wit has been the occasion of wit in others.”

  “Well, Mr. Osmond,” Thorndyke rejoined, with an appreciative side-glance at the smiling Betty, “you seem to have had wit enough to bring your affairs to a very happy conclusion. But let us draw up to the table. I understand that there are to be mutual explanations presently, so we had better fortify ourselves with nourishment.”

  He pressed an electric bell, and, as his guests took their places at the table, the door opened silently and Polton entered with demure gravity to post himself behind Thorndyke’s chair and generally to supervise the proceedings.

  Conversation was at first somewhat spasmodic and covered a good deal of mutual and curious inspection. Betty was frankly interested in her surroundings, in the homely simplicity of this queer bachelor household, in which everything seemed to be done so quietly, so smoothly, and so efficiently. But especially was she interested in her host. Of his great intellect and learning she had been readily enough convinced by Mr. Penfield’s enthusiastic accounts of him; but his personality, his distinguished appearance, and his genial, pleasant manners were quite beyond her expectations. It was a pleasure to her to look at him and to reflect that the affectionate gratitude that she must have felt for him, whatever he had been like, had at least been worthily bestowed.

  “My husband and I were speaking as we came along,” she said, “of the revolution in our prospects that you created, in an instant, as it seemed, in the twinkling of an eye. One moment our affairs were at a perfectly hopeless deadlock; the next, all our difficulties were smoothed out, the tangle was unravelled, and an assured and happy future lay before us. It looked like nothing short of magic; for, you see, John had done everything that he possibly could to convince all the world that he was guilty.”

  “Yes,” said Thorndyke, “that is how it appeared; and that is one of the mysteries which has to be cleared up presently.”

  “It shall be,” Osmon
d promised, “if utterly idiotic, wrong-headed conduct can be made intelligible to reasonable men. But still, I agree with my wife. There is something quite uncanny in the way in which you unravelled this extraordinary tangle. I am a lawyer myself—a pretty poor lawyer, I admit—and I have heard Mr. Penfield’s account of the investigation, but even that has not enlightened me.”

  “For a very good reason,” said Mr. Penfield. “I am not enlightened myself. I am, I believe, in possession of most of the material facts. But I have not the special knowledge that is necessary to interpret them. I am still unable to trace the connection between the evidence and the conclusion. Dr. Thorndyke’s methods are, to me, a source of endless wonder.”

  “And yet,” said Thorndyke, “they are perfectly normal and simple. They differ from the methods of an orthodox lawyer merely in this: that whereas the issues that I have to try are usually legal issues, the means which I employ are those proper to scientific research.”

  “But surely,” Betty interposed, “the purposes of legal and scientific research are essentially the same. Both aim at arrive at the truth.”

  “Certainly,” he replied. “The purposes are identical. But the procedure is totally different. In legal practice the issues have to be decided by persons who have no first-hand knowledge of the facts—by the judge and jury. To them the facts are furnished by other persons—the witnesses—who have such first-hand knowledge and who are sworn to give it truly and completely. And on such sworn testimony the judges form their decision. The verdict has to be ‘according to the evidence,’ and its truth is necessarily subject to the truth of the testimony and the competence of the witnesses.

  “But in scientific research there is no such division of function. The investigator is at once judge, jury, and witness. His knowledge is first-hand, and hence he knows the exact value of his evidence. He can hold a suspended judgment. He can form alternative opinions and act upon both alternatives. He can construct hypotheses and try them out. He is hampered by no rules but those of his own making. Above all, he is able to interrogate things as well as persons.”

  “Yes,” agreed Mr. Penfield, “that is what has impressed me. You are independent of witnesses. Instead of having to seek somebody who can give evidence in respect of certain facts, you obtain the facts yourself and become your own witness. No doubt this will become evident in your exposition of this case, to which I—and our friends too, I am sure—are looking forward with eager interest.”

  “You are paying me a great compliment,” said Thorndyke; “and as I hear Polton approaching with the coffee, I need not keep you waiting any longer. By the way, how much may I assume that our friends know?”

  “They know all that I know,” replied Mr. Penfield. “We have had a long talk and I have told them everything I have learned and that you have told me.”

  “Then I shall assume that they have all the main facts, and they must stop me if I assume too much.” He paused while Polton poured out the coffee and partially disencumbered the table. Then as his familiar retired, he continued: “I think that the clearest and most interesting way for me to present the case will be by recounting the investigation as it actually occurred, giving the facts observed and the inferences from them in their actual order of occurrence.”

  “That will certainly be the easiest plan for us to follow,” said Osmond, “if it will not be too wearisome for you.”

  “On the contrary,” replied Thorndyke, “it will be quite interesting to me to reconstitute the case as a whole; and the best way will be to treat it in the successive stages into which the inquiry naturally fell. I will begin with the information which was given to me when the case was placed in my hands.

  “A number of sealed boxes had been deposited by Mr. Hollis in the custody of Mr. Woodstock, who placed them in his strong-room. These boxes were stated by Hollis to contain a number of valuable gems, but the nature of the contents was actually known only to Hollis, who had packed the boxes himself. After an interval the boxes were returned to Hollis; and it was agreed by all the parties, including Hollis, that all the seals were then intact. Nevertheless, on opening the boxes, Hollis found that most of the gems had been abstracted and replaced by counterfeits. Thereupon he declared that a robbery had been committed while the boxes were reposing in the strong room; and this view was, strange to say, accepted by Mr. Woodstock.

  “Now, it was perfectly obvious that these statements of alleged fact were mutually irreconcilable. They could not possibly be all true. The question was, Which of them was untrue? If the stones were in the boxes when they were handed to Woodstock and were not there when he returned them to Hollis, then the boxes must have been opened in the interval. But in that case the seals must have been broken. On the other hand, if the seals were really intact, the boxes could not have been opened while they were in Woodstock’s custody. Woodstock’s position—which was also that of Hollis—was a manifest absurdity. What they alleged to have happened was a physical impossibility.

  “So far, however, the legal position was quite simple, if Woodstock had accepted it. The seals were admitted to be intact. Therefore no robbery could have occurred in Woodstock’s office. But Woodstock accepted the impossible; and thereupon a certain Mr. John Osmond proceeded very deliberately to tip the fat into the fire.”

  “Yes, didn’t he?” agreed Betty with a delighted gurgle. “You were an old guffin, Jack! Still, it was all for the best, wasn’t it?”

  “It was, indeed,” assented Osmond. “Best stroke of work I ever did. You see, I knew that there is a Providence that watches over fools. But we mustn’t interrupt the exposition.”

  “Well,” continued Thorndyke, “the disappearance of Mr. Osmond settled the matter so far as Mr. Woodstock was concerned. He swore an information forthwith, and must have grossly misled the police, for they immediately obtained a warrant, which they certainly would not have done if they had known the real facts. Then Woodstock, distrusting his own abilities—very justly, but too late—consulted Mr. Penfield. But Mr. Penfield took the perfectly sound legal view of the case. The seals were admittedly unbroken. Therefore the boxes had been returned intact and there had been no robbery in the office. But if there had been no robbery, the disappearance of Osmond had no bearing on the case. Of course, neither Woodstock nor Hollis would agree to this view, and Mr. Penfield then recommended that the case should be put in my hands.

  “Now it was obvious that the whole case turned on the seals. They had been accepted as intact—without any kind of inquiry or examination. But were they really intact? If they were, the case was against Hollis; and I could see that my friend Professor Eccles suspected him of having engineered a sham robbery to evade a bequest to the nation. But this seemed to me a wild and unfair suspicion, and for my own part I strongly suspected the seals. Accordingly, I examined a whole series of them, minutely and exhaustively, with the result that they proved to be impressions, not of the matrix in Mr. Hollis’s ring, but of an electrotype matrix made from a wax impression.

  “This new fact brought the inquiry to the next stage. It proved that the boxes had been opened and that they had been opened in Woodstock’s office. For when they came there they were sealed with Hollis’s seal, but when they left the office they were sealed with the forged seal. Things began to look rather black as regards Osmond; but, although I was retained ostensibly to work up a case against him, I kept an open mind and proceeded with the investigation as if he did not exist.

  “The second stage, then, started with the establishment of these facts: a robbery had really occurred; it had occurred in Woodstock’s office; and, since the boxes had been kept in the strong-room, it was from thence that they had been abstracted. The next question was, By whom had the robbery been committed? Now, since the property had been taken from the strong-room, and since the strong-room had not been broken into, it followed that the thief must have had, or obtained, access to it. Now, there were three persons who had easy access to it: Woodstock who possessed the key, Hepbur
n and Osmond, both of whom occasionally had the key in their custody: There might be others, but if so, they were at present unknown to me. But of the three who were known, one, Osmond, had apparently absconded as soon as the robbery was discovered and connected with the office. Moreover, the commencement of the robberies apparently coincided in time with the date on which he joined the staff.

  “Evidently, then, everything that was known pointed to Osmond as the delinquent. But there was no positive case against him, and I decided to proceed as if nothing at all were known and seek for fresh data. And my first proceeding was to make an exhaustive examination of the boxes, the wrapping-paper, and the inside packing. As to the paper, I may say that I developed up a large number of fingerprints—on the outside surface only—I never examined, as the occasion did not arise. The investigation really concerned itself with the dust from the insides of the boxes and from the packing material. Of this I collected every particle that I could extract and put it aside in pill-boxes numbered in accordance with the boxes from which it was obtained. When I came to examine systematically the contents of the pill-boxes, I made two very curious discoveries.

  “First, every pill-box—representing, you will remember, one of the gem-boxes—contained one or more hairs; usually one only and never more than three. They were all alike. Each was a hair from a moustache of a light-brown colour and cut quite short, and there could be no doubt that they were all from the same individual. Consequently they could not be chance hairs which had blown in accidentally. The gem-boxes had been packed at various times, and hence the uniformity of the hairs connected them definitely with the person who packed the boxes. In short, it seemed at first sight practically certain that they were the hairs of the actual robber; in which case we could say that the robber was a man with a short light-brown moustache.

  “But when I came to reflect on the facts observed I was struck by their singularity. Moustache hairs are shed very freely, but they do not drop out at regular intervals. One, two, or more hairs in any one box would not have been surprising. A man who was in the habit of pulling at or stroking his moustache might dislodge two or three at once. The surprising thing was the regularity with which these hairs occurred; one, and usually one only, in each box, and no complete box in which there was none. It was totally opposed to the laws of probability.