When he had been sworn and had given the usual particulars, his counsel directed him to describe his movements after his escape from the prison, which he did with picturesque conciseness.
“As soon as I was clear of the prison, I scooted round a corner into a by-street, and there I saw a motor wagon piled up with empty baskets. The driver was cranking up the engine, and, as there was nobody in sight, I climbed up behind and laid down on the floor among the baskets. Then the driver got up and off she went. When we got out somewhere between Headcorn and Biddenden the wagon turned down a by-lane, and as I thought that we might be getting near the farm that we seemed to be bound for, I decided to hop off. So I did. But she was going faster than I thought, and I came down a cropper and broke my leg. I laid there in the road for about a quarter of an hour, and then the doctor came along and picked me up, and took me off to the hospital. And there I stayed until I was discharged on the first of October.”
“When did you first go up to your London flat?”
“I only went once. That was when I had been at home just over a week—on the eighth of October. The detectives came and collared me just as I was picking the lock to let myself in.”
“Why did you have to pick the lock?”
“Because I hadn’t got my key. They took all the things out of my pockets at Maidstone police-station. But I had forgotten that I hadn’t got my key until I was close to the Buildings, so I had to pop into an ironmonger’s shop and get a piece of wire. And I was picking the lock with that piece of wire when the cops nabbed me.”
“You have heard about the burglars’ tools and the stolen property that the police found in your room. Can you tell us anything about them?”
“No, I don’t know anything about them. They were not mine, and I didn’t put them there. Somebody must have got into the rooms and planted them there while I was in the hospital.”
“Have you any idea who might have planted those things, and for what purpose?”
“I should think anyone could see what they were planted for. It was to put this murder on to me. But, as to who planted them, if the police didn’t—and I suppose they didn’t, though they do seem to have been working the oracle a bit—it must have been the person who did the murder, seeing that he had got the paper that was taken from the murdered man.”
“Do you swear that you never went to the flat after leaving the hospital until the eighth of October?”
“I do. I shouldn’t have gone there a second time with a bit of wire to let myself in. I should have got a key.”
This was Mr. Lyon’s final question, and, as he sat down, Mr. Barnes rose to cross-examine, but with no great show of enthusiasm. He began by pressing the witness for a clearer explanation of the purpose for which he kept the rooms in London. But at this point the foreman of the jury again intervened with a protest that the jury were not interested in the prisoner’s occupation, and that they did not want to hear any more evidence; whereupon Mr. Barnes sat down with no appearance of reluctance, and the judge enquired of Mr. Lyon if he desired to address the jury.
“If the gentlemen of the jury have come to a decision,” was the reply, “it would be useless for me to occupy the time of the court with an address.”
Accordingly, the prisoner was led back to the dock, and the judge proceeded to make a few observations.
“I do not pretend to understand this case,” said he. “We have been told that it is an impossibility for two different persons to have identically similar fingerprints. Yet, here, the impossible seems to have happened. Finger-prints which have been identified as those of the prisoner were made in a house in London on the second of August; at which time the prisoner appears to have been lying, with a broken leg, in a hospital some forty miles away. It would seem that there is some person whose fingerprints are identical with those of the prisoner; and, unfortunately for the prisoner, that person appears to be a house-breaker. However, there is no use in trying to resolve this puzzle, for, after all, the question is not relevant to the issue that you are trying. What you have to decide is whether you are prepared to accept as true the evidence of the matron of the hospital and Dr. Wale. If their evidence is true, it is physically impossible that the prisoner could have committed the murder with which he is charged. That is for you to decide, and I do not think that I need say anything more.”
When the judge had finished speaking, the grey-wigged clerk of the court rose and put the formal question:
“Are you all agreed upon your verdict, gentlemen?”
To which the foreman replied, promptly: “We are.”
“What do you say, gentlemen? Is the prisoner guilty or not guilty?”
“Not guilty,” was the reply, delivered with noticeable emphasis.
The judge briefly expressed his entire concurrence, and then proceeded:
“I understand that the prisoner, having escaped from prison while awaiting his trial, is still in custody, on the original charge. Have you any instructions on the subject?
“Yes, my lord,” replied Mr. Barnes. “It appears that the bill was presented to the Grand Jury at Maidstone on the day on which the prisoner absconded. There would seem to have been some error in presenting the bill; but, at any rate, the Grand Jury threw it out.”
“I am glad to hear that,” said the judge. Then, addressing the prisoner, he continued: “Charles Dobey, you have been tried for the crime on which you were indicted, and have been found not guilty—very properly, as I think—and, as the bill in respect of the original offence has been thrown out by the Grand Jury at Maidstone, there is now no charge against you, and you are accordingly discharged.”
He accompanied the rather dry statement with a smile and a kindly nod, which Dobey acknowledged with a low bow, and, as the gate of the dock was now thrown open, he descended to meet, with a somewhat stolid grin, the effusive greetings of his wife and the congratulations of his friends from the hospital.
“Well,” I said, as we rose to depart, “I hope you find the result of the trial satisfactory.”
“I do,” Thorndyke replied, “but I don’t think Miller does. He looks most uncommonly glum. But I do not feel sympathetic. The police—if they instructed the prosecution—have been hoist with their own petard. They insisted on dragging in these fingerprints and those two women, whose evidence was quite irrelevant and was intended merely to discredit the prisoner, and behold the result. From this time forward, Dobey is practically immune from fingerprint evidence and evidence of personal identification. He can prove, from the records of this trial, that there is some person, who is engaged in the practice of house breaking, who is in appearance his exact double, and whose fingerprints are identically similar to his. He can actually quote the judge to that effect.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “Dobey need not trouble to wear gloves now, if he really is a cracksman, as I have no doubt he is. One cannot help admiring the masterly strategy of the defence in egging on the prosecution to play their trump cards and prove those very facts. But, even now, I don’t see how you came to be so certain of Dobey’s innocence. You knew nothing about the alibi. And, apart from that, there was a case against him. Yet, apparently, you never entertained the possibility of his being guilty.”
“I don’t think I did,” he admitted; “and, if you will reconsider the case in general terms and in detail, I think you will see why. Let me recommend you to do this now, as the completion of the case devolves on us. I must stay and have a few words with Miller; and I suggest that you go on ahead and spend half an hour in going over the case with an open mind. You know where to find our notes of the case. Get them out and look them through. Note all the facts that are known to us, consider them separately and as a whole, and see if there does not emerge a perfectly coherent theory of the crime. The evidence that you have heard today, inasmuch as it is in agreement with that theory, ought to be helpful to you.”
“When you speak of a theory of the crime,” said I, “do you mean a general theory, or one capable
of a particular application?”
“Our function,” he replied, “is to discover the identity of the person who murdered Inspector Badger; and the theory that I refer to is one which is capable of leading us to that discovery.”
With this he stepped out into the body of the court to go in search of the Superintendent, and I made my way to the robing-room to divest myself of wig and gown before issuing forth into places of public resort.
CHAPTER XIV
A Startling Discovery
On my way westward from the Old Bailey to the Temple, I turned over in my mind Thorndyke’s last statement. Its exact meaning was not perfectly clear to me; but what I did gather was that he had enough knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Badger’s death to make the belief in Dobey’s guilt untenable. That implied some positive knowledge pointing to the guilt of some other person; but as to whether that other person was an actual individual to whom a name could be given, or a mere abstraction whom we had yet to convert into a reality, I was unable to decide. What did, however, emerge clearly from his statement was that whatever facts were known to him were also known to me. My problem, therefore, was to examine the facts that I already knew, and try to extract their significance, which I had apparently missed up to the present.
When I arrived at our chambers, I became aware, by certain familiar signs, that Polton had returned from his expedition to Hartsden, and was engaged in some kind of photographic work in the laboratory. Presumably, he was developing the films from the “automatic watcher,” and I was tempted to go up and see what luck he had had. But I restrained my curiosity, and, having drawn a chair up to the table and procured a note-block and pencil, I went to the cabinet in which the portfolios of current cases were kept and unlocked it. The one labelled “Inspector Badger, deceased,” was uppermost, with the fingerprint measuring-glass lying on its cover. I lifted them out together, and, laying the glass on the table, opened the portfolio and began to glance through its contents, laying the papers out in their order as to the dates.
The first that I picked up I put aside, as it did not appear to belong to the series. It was a rough copy of the entry that Thorndyke had made in his notebook when we were experimenting on the Thumbograph, and had apparently been put in the portfolio out of the way—though it was extremely unlike Thorndyke to put anything in its wrong place. Then I began to go through the various notes, seriatim, trying to refresh my memory as to the order of the events and the way in which the case had developed. But as I turned over the notes, I was aware of a growing sense of disappointment. There was nothing new; nothing that I did not remember quite clearly without their aid. I glanced through the brief notes of our expedition to Greenhithe. It was all fresh in my memory. The description of the body, the examination of the tunnel, the finding of the cigar; then the analysis of the cigar, the report of the inquest, and the evidence of the witnesses. I knew it all, and it conveyed nothing to me but a mysterious crime of which we held not a single clue to guide us to the identity of the perpetrator. There was a brief summary of Miller’s account of the house-breaking incident, which did now, after the event, point pretty definitely to a personation and the making of false fingerprints. But there was no suggestion as to the identity of the personator. To me, the whole case remained in the air.
At the end of the portfolio was a separate folder labelled “fingerprints,” which I took out, doggedly, but with a sense of deep discouragement. Nothing could be much less illuminating than a collection of unidentified fingerprints. Nevertheless, I opened the folder and began to look through the collection. There were Badger’s prints, devoid of any meaning to me, and the photograph of Dobey’s, taken from the official paper that Miller had shown us, which told me nothing at all. Then I opened a smaller folder, labelled “Prints from cigar.” There were two sets of photographs, one the natural size and the other enlarged to about four diameters. Discarding the smaller photographs, I examined the enlargements, and read the inscriptions written below them, with as much attention as I could muster; for, little as they conveyed to me, I realized that they constituted evidence of the highest importance, if only the opportunity should ever come to apply it.
The first was Inspector Badger’s left thumb, remarkably clear for a developed print. But, though it was, in effect, an indictment of murder, it gave me no help, since I knew already that poor Badger had been murdered. I laid it down and took up the next. “Right thumb of person unknown.” Having read the inscription, I glanced at the print. This one, too, was admirably clear and distinct. The experts should have no difficulty in identifying it if they could get a known print with which to compare it. Not only was the general pattern—a very distinctive one—perfectly plain, but all the minor “characteristics” were easily legible.
I sat with the print in my hand and my eyes fixed on it musingly, reflecting on all that it meant and all that it did not mean. This thumb-print had been made by the man who had given the poisoned cigar to poor Badger—who had almost certainly murdered him; who had personated Dobey at the sham house-breaking, and who had entered Dobey’s flat and there planted the stolen document. It was capable of giving infallible proof of that villain’s identity; and yet it offered not the faintest hint as to what manner of man that villain might be. In spite of our possession of this infallible touchstone we might pass this murderer in the street a hundred times without the faintest glimmer of suspicion as to who he was. A fingerprint is a poor instrument with which to start the search for an unknown criminal.
As I sat thus, with my eyes fixed only half-consciously on the print, I became aware of a dim sense of familiarity. A fingerprint is, to an accustomed eye, much more easy to remember than might be supposed; and, as my eye rested on this print, I began to have the feeling that I had seen it before. At first the feeling was not more than vaguely reminiscent; but yet it was enough to arouse my attention. I looked, now, with a critical and purposeful scrutiny and a definite effort of memory. And then, suddenly, in a flash, the revelation came and left me gazing open-mouthed.
It was amazing, incredible; so incredible that I sought instantly for corroboration or disproof. Snatching up the measuring-glass, and picking out the natural-sized print, I placed the central dot of the scale of circles on the summit of the central character of the core and wrote down on the note-block the measurements shown. The pattern was intermediate between a whorl and a twinned loop; but, remembering Thorndyke’s rule, I treated it as a whorl. Then, as it was a left-handed, or anti-clockwise, whorl, and as the “core-character” lay entirely within the centre circle (“Space A”), the whorl was of the type A3. I wrote this down, and then measured the distance to the right delta. The latter was intersected by the circle, C, and therefore, by the rule, lay in the space, D. The ridge tracing was clearly outside the delta, and I therefore wrote down O. The left delta was outside the print, and therefore could not be located. The number of ridges between the centre of the core and the right delta was twelve, while the left ridge-count—since the left delta was outside the print—was unascertainable.
When I had finished, I set out my results in the regular formula, so far as I remembered the method, thus:
Right thumb—Unknown. W (? T.L.).
Core, A3, ?, O, D, ?, 12.
Then I turned back through the portfolio until I found the slip of paper on which Thorndyke had copied the entry in his notebook. The first eager glance at it I showed me that my memory had not deceived me.
The entry ran:
Walter Hornby. Right thumb. W (? T.L.).
Core, A3, ?, O, D, ?, 12.
In addition to the formula, Thorndyke had written down a few of the “ridge characteristics” with their ridge-counts from the centre of the core, and a direction-arrow to show their position.
With intense excitement, I proceeded to verify these characters, not a little surprised at the ease with which they could be recognized and located. Taking first the right direction-arrow, and counting the ridges from the centre of the core, I
found in the third ridge one of those little loops, or eyes, known, technically, as “lakes.” The fifth ridge divided into a fork, or bifurcation; the eighth ridge terminated abruptly in a free end, and the tenth showed another bifurcation. Then, following the left direction-arrow, the seventh ridge showed a small lake, the ninth a bifurcation, and the eleventh a larger lake. The agreement was complete in every detail.
I laid down the print and reflected on this amazing discovery, still hardly able to credit the evidence of my eyes. For the thing seemed beyond belief. The murderous wretch whose tracks we had been following was none other than Walter Hornby. After all these years, during which I had almost forgotten his very existence, he had suddenly swum into the field of our vision like some strange and horrible apparition. Yet my astonishment was hardly justified; for no detail of his recent villainy was in any way out of character with his past, as it was known to me.
Presently my thoughts took another turn. By what means had Thorndyke been able to identify Badger’s murderer as Walter Hornby? It had been no chance shot. The discovery of Hornby’s thumb-print in the Thumbograph had been no mere accident. It was now evident to me that Thorndyke had come to our house with the express purpose of seeking that thumb-print, if it was in existence, as was manifest from the fact that he had come equipped with the measuring-glass, and from the anxiety that he had shown as to the fate of the Thumbograph. Clearly, that was the final verification of a theory that was already complete in his mind. Indeed, he had, in effect, said as much this very day in court. He had spoken of “a coherent theory of the crime,” an expression that would have been quite inapplicable to the chance discovery of a fingerprint. Now, how, from the information that we possessed, had he arrived at this astonishing conclusion?
It is proverbially easy to be wise after the event. “Jobbing back,” as this mental exercise is named on the Stock Exchange, is considerably simpler than jobbing forward. So I found it on the present occasion. Now that the conclusion was known to me, I was in a favourable position to consider the processes of reasoning which had led to it. And when I did so, and when I recalled the hints that Thorndyke had dropped from time to time, I was surprised that no inkling of the truth had ever dawned on me. For what Thorndyke had said was perfectly true. When all the facts were considered, separately and as a whole, a consistent theory of the crime emerged, and inevitably brought the figure of Walter Hornby into the picture.
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 129
