The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  “We shall have to wait for some new facts,” he rejoined, “and remember that the force of evidence is cumulative. At present, as you say, the whole case is in the air. But I have a strong feeling that we have not heard the last of Mr. Frederick Smith. Now that his fingerprints and description are extant, I think we may look for him to make another appearance; and when he does, I suspect that we shall make a step forward.”

  At the moment, I did not quite perceive the bearing or significance of this statement; but, later, as had so often happened, I looked back on this conversation and marvelled at my obtuseness.

  CHAPTER IX

  Thorndyke discourses on Finger-prints

  Thorndyke’s prediction was verified with a promptitude that neither of us expected, for little more than fortnight had elapsed after our conversation on the subject when the elusive figure of Mr. Frederick Smith once more flitted across our field of vision. It was but a fleeting and spectral appearance and disappearance—at least that was what we gathered from the news paper. Indeed, we might have missed it altogether had not Thorndyke’s eye been attracted by the heading of the small and inconspicuous paragraph:

  ESCAPED PRISONER BREAKS INTO HOUSE

  “What, already!” he exclaimed; and as I looked up enquiringly he proceeded to read out the brief account.

  “A daring robbery—or rather, attempted robbery—was committed yesterday in broad daylight by a man who escaped a short time ago from Maidstone Gaol. The scene of the attempt was a detached house in Sudbury Park, N.W., which had been left unoccupied owing to the owners having gone out for a day’s motoring. Apparently the man was disturbed, for he was seen making off hurriedly; but, though he was immediately pursued, he disappeared and succeeded in making good his escape. However, he was seen distinctly by at least two persons, and the description that they were able to give to the police enabled the latter to identify him as the escaped prisoner.”

  As he laid down the paper, Thorndyke looked at me with a faint smile.

  “Well,” he said, “what does that announcement convey to my learned friend?”

  “Not very much,” I replied, “excepting a red head with a red nose affixed to it. Obviously, the observers noted his trade-marks.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “And you observe that he elected to do this job in broad daylight. He must be a conceited fellow. He seems to be unduly proud of that nose and those auburn locks.”

  “Still,” said I, “he had to enter the house when it was unoccupied, and that happened to be in the day time, when the owners were out in their car. Only, what strikes me is that the identification is not very satisfactory, even allowing for the rarity of red hair in combination with a red nose.”

  “Wait until you have heard Miller’s account of the affair,” he rejoined. “I am prepared to hear that the identification was more complete than one would gather from the paper. But we shall see.”

  We did see, a few days later, and, as usual, Thorndyke was right. When, about eight o’clock at night, the Superintendent’s well-known knock sounded on the door, I rose expectantly to admit him; and, as he strode into the room, something of satisfaction and complacency in his manner suggested that he was the bearer of news that he was going to enjoy imparting to us. Accordingly, I hastened to dispose of the preliminaries—the whisky decanter, the siphon, and the inevitable box of cigars—and when he was comfortably settled in the arm-chair, I gave him the necessary “lead off.”

  “I am sorry to see that our friend, Freddy, has been naughty again.”

  He looked at me for a moment enquiringly, and then, as the vulgar phrase has it, he “rumbled” me.

  “Ah,” said he, “you mean Frederick Smith of Maidstone. Saw the paragraph in the evening paper, I suppose?”

  “Yes. And we thought it uncommonly smart of your people to spot Mr. Frederick Smith from the casual description of one or two persons who caught a glimpse of him as he was making off.”

  Miller evidently felt himself to be in a position to ignore the hardly veiled sarcasm, for, without noticing it, he replied:

  “Ah, but it was a good deal more than that. Of course, when we heard the description, we pricked up our ears. But we soon got some clues that made us independent of the description. I’ve come in to tell you about it, since you are really interested parties.

  “I dare say you know this place, Sudbury Park. It is one of the queer old London survivals—a row of detached houses, each standing in its own grounds, with gardens backing on the Regent’s Canal, and little lanes here and there running up from the tow-path between the gardens to the road on which the houses front. The grounds that surround them are mostly pretty thickly wooded—sort of shrubberies—and they are enclosed by fairly high walls, the tops of which are guarded in the old-fashioned way by broken bottles and bits of glass set in cement.

  “Now, it seems that our friend first drew attention to himself by breaking one of the back windows and making a good deal of noise in doing it. Then a couple of women, attracted by the noise, saw him trying to get in at the window. They were at a back window of one of the houses on the opposite side of the Canal. Naturally as soon as they saw what he was up to, they raised a philalloo and ran down to the garden to watch him over the wall. Their squawking brought a party of bargees along the tow-path, and when the bargees had been ‘put wise’ about the house-breaker, off they started, full gallop, towards a bridge that crosses the Canal two or three hundred yards farther down.

  “Meanwhile, our honest tradesman, hearing the hullabaloo, concluded that the game was up, and came tumbling out through the window like a harlequin, and was in such a hurry that he left his cap inside, and so displayed his beautiful auburn hair to the best advantage. He had been working in his shirt-sleeves, and, when he started to run, the reason was obvious. He wanted his coat—which he carried on his arm—to lay on the broken bottles on the top of the wall so that he could climb over without tearing his trousers. And that is what he did. He laid the coat over the party wall, and over he went into the next shrubbery. But, unfortunately for him, as he dropped down on the farther side, the coat slipped off the wall and dropped down into the garden that he had left. For a moment he seemed disposed to go back for it. But by that time the bargees were running across the bridge, bellowing like bulls of Bashan. So our friend thought better of it, and bolted away into the shrubbery and was lost to sight.”

  “Was he not seen by the occupants of that house?” Thorndyke asked.

  “No—because there weren’t any. It was an empty house. So all he had to do was to slip up by the side way and go out by the tradesmen’s entrance. But it is odd that no one saw him in the road. You would think that a red-headed man in his shirt-sleeves, legging it up a quiet road, would attract some attention. But, apparently, no one saw him, so he got clear away—for the present, at any rate.

  “But we shall have him, sooner or later. Sooner, I fancy. For, I tell you we mean to have him. And the traces that he left will make him a valuable catch when we do get him. A capture will mean a conviction to a dead certainty.”

  “That is putting it rather strongly,” I remarked.

  “Not too strongly,” he replied, confidently. “Let me tell you what we found. First there was the broken glass. We went through that carefully, and on one of the pieces we found a most beautiful impression of Mr. Frederick Smith’s right thumb. And thereby hangs a tale which I will tell you presently. Then there was the coat. That looked hopeful. But what it actually yielded was beyond our wildest hopes. Most of the contents of the pockets were of no particular interest. But there was one treasure of inestimable value—an empty envelope that had apparently been used to carry some hard object, for there were some sharp, rubbed marks on it. But they did not interest us. What set us all agog was the address—Mr. Charles Dobey, 103 Barnard’s Buildings, Southwark.

  “I need not tell you that we went off like record-breaking lamplighters to Barnard’s Buildings. There, at the office, we learned that the tenant of number 1
03, Mr. Dobey, was a gentleman with a red head and a nose to match. So up we went to number 103. We had provided ourselves with a search warrant, and the officer who went with me took with him a little battery of skeleton keys. So we soon had the door open.”

  “What kind of key opened it?” asked Thorndyke.

  “Oh, just a common pipe key with the bit filed away. The sort you generally use, I expect,” Miller added with a grin. “It was only a common builder’s latch. Well, when we got inside we had a look round, but at first there didn’t seem to be much to see. It was just common, squalid sort of room with hardly any furniture in it. Looked as if it was not regularly lived in; which agreed with what the man in the office said—that he didn’t very often see Mr. Dobey. However, presently we discovered, hidden under the bed, a good-sized oak box. It had a quite good lever lock which gave my colleague no end of trouble to open. But it was worth the trouble. When, at last, he got it open, we saw that we had struck it rich. It was a regular treasury of evidence.

  “First there was a full outfit of good-class burglar’s tools, and there were one or two little packets of jewellery which we have since been able to identify from our lists as part of the swag from a burglary at a jeweller’s shop. Well, that was all to the good. But the real prize was at the bottom of the box. I wonder if you can guess what it was?”

  He looked a little anxiously at Thorndyke, and did not seem particularly gratified when the latter suggested:

  “It did not chance to be a document?”

  “That is just what it did chance to be,” Miller admitted, adding: “You are a devil at guessing, Doctor. But you are quite right. It was the paper that was taken from poor Badger’s pocket in that infernal tunnel at Greenhithe. So now we have got conclusive evidence as to who murdered Badger. Of course, we shall have to look into the meaning of that cigar of yours. But we shan’t want to produce it in evidence or rely on it in any way for the purposes of the prosecution; which is as well, for it wouldn’t have been particularly convincing to the jury. But there is one more point which makes this find extraordinarily complete. It is in connection with this finger-, or rather, thumb-print. You probably know that we started, some time ago, a special collection of fingerprints—mostly single impressions—known as the ‘Scene of the Crime Series.’ They are either originals or photographs of prints that have been found at places where a crime has been committed, but where the criminal has got away without being recognized. Most of them are, naturally, the prints of known men. But there are a few prints that we cannot associate with any known criminal. We can’t put a name to them.

  “Now, in this collection we had three sets of prints which had been found on premises that had been broke into, evidently by a burglar of rather exceptional skill and ingenuity, who seemed to have worked alone, and whose technique we thought we recognized in several other jobs in which no fingerprints were found. For some reason, when we got Smith’s fingerprints from Maidstone and found that they were not in the general collection, the officer in charge omitted to try them with the ‘Scene of the Crime Series.’ But, since then he has made the comparison, and it turns out that those three sets of prints are undoubtedly Mr. Charles Dobey’s. So, now, we are able to identify him as that peculiarly talented burglar.”

  “Is there any special advantage in being able to do so?” Thorndyke asked. “I take it that you will proceed on the murder charge.”

  “Certainly we shall,” Miller replied. “But there is the question of identification. We have got to make it quite clear that the man who got into the train at Strood was this same Charles Dobey. And then there is the question of motive. Badger was the only officer who knew Dobey by sight. He went down to Maidstone that very day for the express purpose of identifying him.”

  “You are not forgetting that you cannot produce any evidence that he ever did identify him?”

  “No, I am not forgetting that. But he went down, having judged from the description that Frederick Smith was the man who had committed those various burglaries. And it now turns out that he was right. These fingerprints prove that Dobey was the man.”

  “It seems to me,” said I, “that the fact that the stolen paper was found in his possession will be sufficient, unless it can be rebutted, to establish the case for the prosecution, without referring to the burglaries at all. You can’t include them in the indictment—not in an indictment for murder—and if you attempt to introduce them, and if the court allows you to, you will have to prove them, which will complicate the issues.”

  The Superintendent admitted the truth of this, but said that he was not going to take any chances.

  “And, at any rate,” he concluded, “you must agree that we have got a remarkably complete case.”

  Thorndyke did agree, and with so much emphasis that, once more, Miller looked at him with a shade of anxiety.

  “I know what you are thinking, Doctor,” said he. “You are thinking that it is too good to be true.”

  “Not at all,” Thorndyke disclaimed with a smile, “though you must admit, Miller, that he has made things as easy for you as he could.”

  “He certainly behaved rather like a fool,” Miller conceded; “that is often enough the way with crooks. You don’t see any snags, do you?”

  “No,” replied Thorndyke. “It looks all perfectly plain sailing. All you have to do now is to catch your hare; and he doesn’t seem to be a particularly easy hare to catch.”

  “I don’t think we shall have very much difficulty about that,” said Miller. “He is an easy man to describe, and we shall circulate his description all over the country; in fact, we have done so already.”

  “Yes,” said Thorndyke, “that was what I meant. You had him placarded at all the police-stations throughout the land, and then you find him engaged in breaking and entering in the very heart of London.”

  Yet again, Miller glanced with a trace of uneasiness at Thorndyke; but he made no comment on what sounded a little like a rather cryptic hint, and shortly afterwards rose and took his departure.

  When he had gone, I was disposed to continue the discussion, but my colleague showed no enthusiasm. Yet I could see that he was reflecting profoundly on what the Superintendent had told us; which encouraged me to make a last effort.

  “After all,” I said, “we can’t ignore plain fact. This story of Miller’s is difficult to reconcile with we know—with regard to that cigar, for instance—but it is a consistent body of evidence, each item of which can be proved beyond question. And the discovery of that paper in the man’s possession seems conclusive as it is possible for evidence to be. In view of your very convincing argument, it does really appear as if the solution of your problem is, x = Charles Dobey. Or is there some fallacy in Miller’s case?

  “There is no obvious fallacy,” Thorndyke replied. “The case presents, as you say, a perfectly consistent body of evidence. Taken at its face value, Miller’s case is conclusive. The real question is whether the completeness and consistency are the results of unaided chance or of an ingeniously devised plan. It is a question we are, at present, unable to decide. Perhaps, when Dobey is brought to trial, he may be able to produce some new facts that may help us to come to a conclusion.”

  As this seemed to close the discussion, I knocked out my pipe and glanced at my watch.

  “Time for me to be moving on,” said I, “if I am to get home within the permitted hours. I told Juliet that I should be home tonight. And, by the way, I have a message for you. I am instructed to remind you that it is quite a long time since you paid your last visit.”

  “So it is,” he admitted. “But we have not had many spare afternoons lately. However, tomorrow afternoon is free. Do you think it would be convenient to Juliet if I were to call and pay my respects then?”

  “I happen to know that it will, as I took the precaution to ask what afternoons were unengaged. Then I will tell her to expect you, and you had better turn tip as early as you can. She always looks for a long pow-wow when you come.”
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  “Yes,” he replied, “she is very patient of my garrulousness. Then I will come as early as possible, and prepare myself for a special conversational effort. But it is really very gracious of her to care for the friendship of an old curmudgeon like me.”

  “It is,” I agreed. “Odd, too. I can’t imagine why she does.”

  With this Parthian shot, and without waiting for a rejoinder, I took myself off en route for the Temple station.

  Here, perhaps, since my records of Thorndyke’s practice have contained so little reference to my own personal affairs, I should say a few words concerning my domestic habits. As the circumstances of our practice often made it desirable for me to stay late at our chambers, I had retained there the bedroom that I had occupied before my marriage; and, as these circumstances could not always be foreseen, I had arranged with my wife the simple rule that the house closed at eleven o’clock. If I was unable to get home by that time, it was to be understood that I was staying at the Temple. It may sound like a rather undomestic arrangement, but it worked quite smoothly, and it was not without its advantages. For the brief absence gave to my homecomings a certain festive quality, and helped to keep alive the romantic element in my married life. It is possible for the most devoted husbands and wives to see too much of one another.

  Thorndyke redeemed his promise handsomely on the following afternoon, for he arrived shortly after three o’clock, having, I suspect, taken an early lunch to that end; for it presently transpired that he had come straight from Scotland Yard, where he had been conferring with the experts of the Finger-print Bureau.

  “Was your pow-wow concerned with any particular case that we have in hand?” I ventured to enquire.

  “No,” he replied. “I went there to get some further information respecting the new system of dealing with single fingerprints that was devised by Chief Inspector Battley. I have been studying his book on his method of classification and making a few tentative trials. But I wanted to make sure that my application of the method yielded the same results as were obtained by the experts. So I went to Scotland Yard and asked them to check my results.”