“The point was highly significant. Anyone can recognize a hair. Most men can recognize a moustache hair. A detective certainly could. If these boxes had been opened by the police, as Hollis had originally intended, these hairs would almost certainly have been seen and eagerly fastened on as giving what would amount to a description of the thief. They would have been put in evidence at the trial and would have been perfectly convincing to the jury.
“The more I reflected on the matter the more did I suspect those hairs. If one assumed that they had been planted deliberately, say by a clean-shaved or dark-haired criminal, their regular occurrence in every box would be quite understandable. It would be a necessary precaution against their being overlooked. Otherwise it was unaccountable. Still, the fact of their presence had to be noted and the individual from whom they came identified, if possible.
“The second discovery that I made was, perhaps, even more odd. In every one of the boxes I found particles of the fine dust which falls out of the holes in worm-eaten wood; sometimes only a few grains, sometimes quite a large number of grains, and in the aggregate a really considerable quantity.”
“But how astonishing,” exclaimed Betty, “that you should be able to tell at once that these tiny grains came from worm-eaten wood.”
“I make it my business,” he replied, “to be able to recognize the microscopical appearances of the different forms of dust. But your remark indicates a very significant point. I imagine that there will be very few persons in the world who could identify these particles in a collection of miscellaneous dust. And therein lay the value of this discovery; for if the significance of the hairs was open to doubt, that of the wood certainly was not. There was no question of its having been purposely planted. It had certainly found its way into the boxes accidentally, and the person who had unconsciously introduced it was pretty certainly unaware of its presence. It was undoubtedly a genuine clue.
“The discovery of this characteristic dust raised several questions. In the first place, how came it into the boxes? Dust from worm-eaten furniture falls on the floor and remains there. It is too coarse and heavy to float in the air like the finer kinds of dust. In a room in which there is worm-eaten furniture, you will find the particles of dust all over the floor; but you will not find any on the tables or chair-rails or mantelpiece. But these boxes must have stood on a table or bench when they were being packed and when the dust got into them. Then the dust must have been on the table or bench. But how could it have got there? It was possible that the bench, itself, might have been worm-eaten. But that was not a probable explanation, for the dust tends to fall, not to rise. It would have fallen, for the most part, from the under surface on to the floor. The most likely explanation emerged from a consideration of the next question; which was, how could one account for the large quantity that was found?
“The quantity was extraordinarily large. From the whole set of boxes we collected something approaching a quarter of a thimbleful; which seems an enormous amount if you consider that it must all have got into the boxes during the short time that they were open for packing. What could be the explanation?
“There were two factors which had to be considered: the nature of the wood and the nature of the object which had been fashioned from it; and both were important for purposes of identification. Let us consider the first factor—material. Now, these wood-boring insects do not bore through wood as the bookworm bores through paper, to get at something else. They actually feed upon the wood. Naturally, then, they tend to select the kind of wood which contains the most nourishment and which, incidentally, is usually the softest. But of all woods those of the fruit trees are richest in gum and sap and are most subject to the attacks of the worm. Walnut, pear, apple, plum, and cherry all have this drawback, and of these cherry is so inveterately ‘wormy’ that it has usually been shunned by the cabinet-maker. Now, the quantity of the wood-dust pointed to some excessively worm-eaten object and suggested one of the fruit woods as the probable material, and the balance of probability was in favour of cherry; and this was supported by the pinkish colour of the dust. But, of course, this inference was purely hypothetical. It represented the general probabilities and nothing more.
“And now we come to the second factor. What was the nature of this wooden object? A piece of ordinary furniture we could dismiss for two reasons: first, the dust from such a piece will ordinarily fall upon the floor, from whence it could hardly have got into the boxes; and, second, no matter how badly wormed a piece of furniture may be, the quantity of dust which falls from it is relatively small and accumulates quite slowly, being practically confined to that which is pushed out of the holes by the movements of the insects within. This process would not account for the great quantity indicated by these samples of ours. My feeling was that this worm-eaten object was an appliance of some sort, subject to frequent and violent disturbance. Let us take an imaginary case as an illustration. Let us imagine a mallet with an excessively worm-eaten head. Whenever that mallet is used, the shock of the impact will send a shower of wood-dust flying out on the bench, where it will rapidly accumulate.
“But, of course, this object of ours could not be a mallet for the reason that mallets are always made of hard wood; and jewellers’ mallets are usually made of box-wood, lignum vitae or horn, none of which is subject to ‘the worm.’ Thinking over the various appliances used by jewellers—since it was with a jeweller we were dealing—I suddenly bethought me of one which seemed to fulfil the conditions exactly. Jewellers and goldsmiths, as you probably know, use a variety of miniature anvils, known as stakes, bec irons, sparrowhawks, etc. Now, these little anvils are usually stuck in a block of wood, just as a smith’s anvil is planted on a tree-stump. These blocks are not usually hard wood; indeed, soft wood is preferable as it absorbs the shock better. A favourite plan is to get a little log of wood and set the spike of the stake or sparrow-hawk in a hole bored in the end grain; and the most abundant source of these little logs—at least in the country—is the pile of trimmings from old fruit trees. Such a log would tend very soon to become worm-eaten; and if it did, every time it was used a ring of wood-dust would form around its base and would soon spread all over the bench, sticking to everything on it and straying on to the hands, arms, and clothing of the workman.
“This inference, you will observe, was, like the previous one, purely hypothetical. But it agreed perfectly with the observed facts and accounted for them in a reasonable way; and as I could think of no other that did, I adopted it with the necessary reservations. But, in fact, the correctness or incorrectness of this hypothesis was at present of no great importance. Apart from any question as to its exact origin, the wood-dust was an invaluable clue. We now knew that the unknown robber was a person whose clothing was more or less impregnated with wood-dust; that any places that he had frequented would yield traces of wood-dust from the floors, and that the place where the boxes had been packed abounded in wood-dust and contained a badly worm-eaten wooden object of some kind.
“The next proceeding was obvious. It was to find the places which had been frequented by that unknown person, to seek for the worm-eaten object, and, if possible, to identify the individual who appeared to be connected with it. The suspected places were two: Mr. Hollis’s house and Mr. Woodstock’s office. I did not, myself, suspect Hollis; but nevertheless I determined to examine his house as narrowly as the other. Accordingly I asked Mr. Penfield to obtain facilities for me to visit both places to make inquiries on the spot; which he did.
“Perhaps, before I describe that voyage of exploration, it may be as well to pause and consider what knowledge I now possessed and what I was going to look for. There was the wood-dust, of course. That was the visible trail that I hoped to pick up. But there were other matters. I knew that there was a man, in some way connected with the robbery, who had a short, fair moustache. I had to find out who he was. Also if there was any source from which some other person might collect specimen hairs from that moustache—a h
air-brush, for instance—and if such source existed, who had access to it.
“Then there was the personality of the thief. One knew a good deal about him by this time. He was an ingenious man; a fairly good workman, at any rate, with metal-worker’s tools, but not a skilled jeweller. He must have been able to make a key from a wax squeeze—unless he were Woodstock himself, which he pretty certainly was not; for none of the others had sufficiently free access to the strong-room to do what had been done. Then he must have had at least a simple working knowledge of electric batteries, since we could be fairly certain that he made the electrotypes himself; he would never have run the risk of putting the forgery out to the trade. He was clearly a secretive, self-contained man. The only fallacy that I had to guard against was the possibility of a confederate outside the office, who might have done the actual work; but this possibility seemed to be negatived by the whole character of the robbery and especially by one very odd feature in it, which was this: Professor Eccles had noticed with surprise that many of the stones which were taken were of quite trifling intrinsic value, so trifling that, if they had been sold, they would hardly have realized enough to pay the cost of replacing them with the specially-made counterfeits. Indeed, in one case, at least, the thief must have lost money on the transaction, for he had taken a fine moonstone and replaced it with an inferior one of the same dimensions. But the value of the original was only about ten shillings, and he must have spent more than that on the replacement. The professor was greatly puzzled by this, having assumed, of course, that the gems were stolen to sell. But to me, this rather anomalous feature of the robbery offered a very curious suggestion; which was that no sale of the booty had ever been contemplated. It looked like a collector’s robbery; and if there had been a collector in any way connected with the parties, I should have given him my very close attention. But, so far as I knew, there was none. Nevertheless, this peculiarity of the robbery had to be borne in mind when I came to make my investigations on the spot.
“Let me now briefly describe those investigations. Their main object was to ascertain whether there were any traces of wood-dust in the premises of either Hollis or Woodstock, and the method was this: in each case, a rough ground-plan of the premises was made; then small areas of the floors were cleaned thoroughly with a specially constructed vacuum cleaner and the dust from each area put into an envelope marked with a number, which number was also marked in the plan on the spot from which the dust had been collected. The collection was carried out by my laboratory assistant, Mr. Polton, whom you have seen, leaving me free to make inquiries and to inspect the premises. Of course, the samples of dust had to be brought home to be examined in the laboratory, so we were hampered by the circumstance that we did not know at the time whether any wood-dust had or had not been obtained. But this proved to be of no importance.
“We operated first at Mr. Hollis’s house, regardless of his scornful protests. Then we went on to Mr. Woodstock’s office; and there I had a rather remarkable experiences As I entered with Mr. Woodstock, I saw an elderly man engaged in repairing an electric bell; and a glance at his hands and the way in which he manipulated his tools showed the unmistakable facility and handiness of the skilled workman. It was a little startling; for here were two of the characteristics of the unknown person I was endeavouring to identify. This man had evident skill in the use of metal-worker’s tools and he clearly knew a good deal about electric batteries. And when I learned that this Mr. Wampole was the office-keeper and that he evidently had a key of the premises, I was still further impressed. I began to revise my opinion as to there being no confederate; for the fact remained that Osmond had absconded and that his disappearance—until it was otherwise explained—undeniably connected him with the robbery. I began to think it possible that there had been a partnership and that he had been used as a cat’s paw. Meanwhile, I had to find out as much as I could about him, and to this end I sat down by Wampole, as he worked at refitting the batteries, and questioned him on the subject of Osmond’s appearance, habits, temperament, and circumstances. It is only fair to him to say that he scouted the idea of Osmond’s having committed the robbery and gave excellent reasons for rejecting it. On the other hand, his description of Osmond made it clear that the hairs which I had found in the boxes were Osmond’s hairs; and when I expressed a wish to inspect Osmond’s desk, he took me to it readily enough, and as it was unlocked, he threw up the lid and showed me the interior. The most interesting thing in it, from my point of view, was a pair of hair-brushes; from which I was able to extract several moustache hairs which appeared—and subsequently turned out to be—identically similar to those found in the boxes.
“The examination of Osmond’s desk suggested a similar examination of all the other desks in the office, finishing up with that belonging to Mr. Wampole. And it was in examining that desk that I did really receive somewhat of a shock. For when we came to turn out its contents, I found that these included, in addition to a number of metal-worker’s tools, a work man’s linen apron and some battery terminals and insulated wire, a stamp-album, a tray of military buttons and badges and old civilian buttons, and another tray of old coins.
“The coincidence was too striking to be ignored. Here was a man who had free access to these premises night and day, and who corresponded in every particular with the unknown robber. We had already seen that he had the skill and special knowledge that were postulated; now this stamp-album, these buttons, badges, and coins, wrote him down an inveterate collector. If I had looked on Mr. Wampole with interest before, I now regarded him with very definite suspicion. Whatever significance the hairs had seemed to have was now entirely against him; for there were the brushes, easily available, and he knew it.
“I must confess that I was greatly puzzled. Every new fact that I observed seemed more and more to confuse the issues. With the exception of the hairs—which were, at least, doubtful evidence—I had found nothing whatever to incriminate Osmond; whereas Wampole presented a highly suspicious appearance. But Osmond had absconded; which seemed to put Wampole outside the inquiry, excepting as a confederate. And when I went with Wampole to Osmond’s rooms, my inspection of them only left me more puzzled; for the personality that they reflected was the very opposite of that indicated by the nature and method of the robbery. Instead of the avarice and cunning that characterized the robber, the qualities suggested were those of a hardy, adventurous, open-air man, simple to austerity in his tastes and concerned with any thing rather than wealth and worldly possessions. The very photographs on the mantelpiece proclaimed the incongruity, especially that of his mother, whom Wampole informed me he strongly resembled; which showed the face of a dignified, strong, resolute, courageous looking lady, whose son I found it hard to picture, first as a thief, and then as a panicky fugitive. Yet the fact remained that Osmond had absconded.
“However, when we got home and proceeded to question the samples of dust in the laboratory, they gave an answer that was unmistakable. The results were roughly thus: the samples from Hollis’s house contained no wood-dust; those from Osmond’s rooms contained none; that from the inside of his desk contained none and that from his office floor barely a trace. Those from the floor of the clerks’ office yielded a very small quantity, but that from the floor by Wampole’s desk contained quite a large amount, while the dust extracted from the interior of his desk was full of the castings—derived, no doubt, to a large extent from the apron which he had kept in it. So the murder was out. The man who had packed those boxes was Mr. Wampole, and the hairs which I found in them had come from Osmond’s brushes.
“One thing only remained to be done: the final verification. The wood-dust had to be traced to its ultimate source in Wampole’s lair. This invaluable service was carried out by my assistant, Polton, who, with extraordinary tact and skill, contrived to get a glimpse into the workshop during Wampole’s absence; and when he peeped in, the first object that met his eye was a sparrowhawk, planted in a little log of cherry-wood tha
t was absolutely riddled by the worm. That concluded the inquiry so far as I was concerned, though some further work had to be done to enable the police to act. But no doubt Mr. Penfield has told you about the lapidary and the police raid which resulted in Wampole’s death and the discovery of the gems in his possession.”
“Yes,” Osmond replied, “I think we have had full details of the final stages. Indeed, Mr. Penfield had given us most of the facts that you have mentioned, but neither he nor we were able to connect them completely. It seemed to us as if you had made one or two very fortunate guesses; but now that I have heard your reasoned exposition I can see that there was no element of guessing at all.”
“Exactly,” agreed Mr. Penfield; “every stage of the argument rests securely on the preceding stages. I am beginning to suspect that we lawyers habitually underestimate the man of science.”
“Yes,” said Osmond, “I am afraid that is so. It is pretty certain that no lawyer could have solved this mystery.”
“I have to remind you,” Thorndyke remarked, “that the man of science was not able to solve it. He was able only to solve a part of it. The thief was identified and the stolen property traced to its hiding-place. But one question remained and still remains unanswered. Why did John Osmond disappear?”
Osmond and Betty both smiled, and the latter asked: “Did you never form any guess on the subject?”
“Oh, yes,” replied Thorndyke, “I made plenty of guesses. But that was mere speculation which led to nothing. It occurred to me, for instance, that he was perhaps drawing a red-herring across the trail—that he was shielding the real criminal. But I could find no support for the idea. I could see no reason why he should shield Wampole—unless he was a confederate, which I did not believe. If the criminal had been Hepburn, it would have been at least imaginable. But there was never the shadow of a suspicion in regard to Hepburn. No, I never had even a hypothesis; and I haven’t now.”
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 51
