by Otto Penzler
“When a dental mechanic shapes the tiny artificial porcelain bodies of teeth that are to fit against the gum-contours of a human mouth, he grinds those bodies on a small carborundum wheel; rotated at high speed. His fingers and their nails cannot help but suffer—they get ground as well.… Greenwood’s nails and fingers had been malformed in such fashion. When I examined them, they showed signs of regaining their normal shape; a month or so of growth, I guessed. They were badly stunted; their recovery will be slow.
“Keep so much in mind—now for the tiny blobs of dirty grey stuff, like minute ‘marbles,’ that are, as you can see, dotted all over these trousers’ legs.… Those are made of plaster-of-Paris. In mechanical dentistry that material is used in quantities, every hour. And these are old spottings: they have gone to the hardness of common pottery. None is new.” Sir Richard picked up one of the man’s broken shoes. “Then, look at this; see how it’s also marked and marred? Absolutely ingrained with plaster; rotted by the stuff. And what else strikes you as noteworthy about these lines of rot?”
The gaping Inspector did not answer. I murmured that they seemed to have been repeatedly blackened and polished over.
“Exactly, Passingford … exactly!” Brantyngham was childishly exultant. “No fresh markings of plaster made on the shoe. Those that are, repeatedly concealed. I’m getting to my final point.… I told you that the man was out of work, didn’t I?”
We agreed.
“No recent grindings of the nails; no recent sullying of clothes and footgear by plaster … no recent work, at his craft.”
The Inspector graciously approved.
“Then, Sir Richard, I’ll have inquiries made, at once, to ascertain the name of his old employer. The fact that his pawn-tickets are in his correct name seems to indicate that the fellow has not gone under an alias—and Theobalds Road district is the address on all of ’em.”
“That’s the way, Templeton; do that, and we’ll get on like a house a-fire.… And by the way, just to narrow down your search, Greenwood worked for a very second-rate man; probably some recently registered, but actually semi-qualified, man. I saw the abnormal development of his right leg. The thigh and calf muscles were enormously bunched, but going flabby because not used for a while. Those muscles were developed by reason of his having been used to a foot-treadle; a grinding and polishing lathe … which he had worked himself. Most flourishing dentists can afford electric power for those jobs; moreover a dentist who does not have mains’ supply, and has to use the old-time foot power, usually delegates such work to an apprentice. You can argue from such statements, Inspector, that Greenwood’s employer is in quite a small way—could only afford one man to do everything.… Now you get the Yard at work; it will be interesting to discover how near I am getting at truths.…”
Before midnight it was found that Harry Greenwood was a dental mechanic who had worked for a Mr. Eric Pinnersby, registered dentist, of Theobalds Road—a man who had closed down because of lack of trade. He shut up shop exactly five weeks before that tragic night in Bellington Square!
Inspector Templeton became, at that news, Sir Richard Thorreston Brantyngham’s most devoted ally.
IV
“Ever heard that yarn, Passingford,”—Sir Richard was studying a heap of gold; those heavy coins that had fallen out of Greenwood’s hat when it fell at Arnott’s feet—“about the doctor who stopped before the statue of the ‘Dying Alexander’ in the Uffizi Galleries of Florence, and, ‘That chap died of cerebro-spinal meningitis,’ ” said he.… The medical eye and the artist’s eye in the sculptor had each seen straightly across the centuries; each found accordance. “Rather neat—what?”
I told him that I had never heard the yarn before, although I had been in the Galleries.
“I—I thought you had!” Brantyngham glanced up and smiled, ever so gently; I grew cold. Here was some test. “I thought you had, Passingford … d’you remember the gold room?”
“By Jove!” I looked with a more avid interest at the coins. “I do! … Here, let me have another look at that largest piece.” Brantyngham gave it to me. “Yes; I’ve seen that before—”
“—In the gold room; precisely!” He was still gently smiling. “The only existing medallion-of-homage known to modern history … struck by the Emperor Diocletian; portraying his full body, supported by rather abandoned goddesses, soaring above the cluster of ancient Rome. The only specimen … and that found in the hatband of one Harry Greenwood, out-of-work!” He coughed and laughed together; his peculiar betrayal of violent interest in a problem. “And here we also have, at least to my poor knowledge, another thousand-pounds’ worth of coins. Rare as the devil’s bath-nights—eh? Look at ’em—Rose Nobles and Ducats; an Armada token in soft gold and a Henry piece that has a double ‘Lady’ … Roman, Assyrian, Babylonian, and mediæval.… How, in the name of wonder, do they connect up with that poverty-stricken beggar—?”
“—Who wore ten-guinea silken underwear,” I reminded him.
“Oh, I’m not letting that fact escape me, Passingford! Not for a moment!” He stopped his noisy laughing and lit a cigar.… The clock chimed out that the hour was three of the morning. “As you know, that maid, Mary Sugden, has stated that she met Greenwood first of all when he came down to her kitchen making guarded inquiries: he had heard I was in the way of being some weird kind of a private detective—he sought my aid, as he had some mysterious trouble that could not be dealt with at police hands. I submit, in theory, that this trouble also was connected with these coins. Well, Mary Sugden assured him that I wouldn’t touch his affairs … but asked him to call again. The result was a wooing; that pair are engaged to be married.
“Now, here’s something that you do not know”—he passed a heavy gold ring across to me—“that ring signified the betrothal; Sugden never wore it in the house, but gave it to me when she told me her private relations with the fellow. And that ring, my puzzled Passingford, drops us further into the mire! Undoubtedly it is ancient Egyptian … a salt-ring: a circlet denoting that its one-time owner was a vendor of salt, at that time rare and precious stuff in Egypt, to people with money enough to buy. And that ring, Passingford, I dare wager, has come from some other great numismatic and olden goldworks’ collection.
“Assuming that all these mysterious pieces of gold formed the subject of Greenwood’s trouble, why the dickens did he carry them about with him so negligently? Assuming that he was worn down by poverty—why didn’t he melt the lot down and sell the result, bit by bit, as scrap gold? Being a dental mechanic he could have got away with it, easily—such men always consider scrap-metal as perquisites, and sell quite openly. For all that the buyer could tell, the melted result might have once formed gold plates of artificial teeth, and—”
He stopped; gasped, went quite grey … Then, musing:
“By the Lord Harry—I see it! A—a track at last! Passingford—a track I tell you—a track … Now we might be able to correlate the apparently irreconcilable parts of this astounding whole! Thanks for reminding me about that silken underwear.… A man who has such tastes usually goes the whole hog; but there may be men who have such tastes and have to conceal them.”
“Force of circumstances, you mean?”
“Oh, there are various kinds of force.” Brantyngham was airily vague; an attitude that told me he had truly struck a light in mental darkness. “Let’s ring up the hospital and find out how Greenwood’s progressing.”
… Doctor Fletchley said: “As well as can be expected. He’s unconscious. It is a fractured base. He keeps on muttering two words—‘lorry’ and ‘queer’; ‘lorry-queer,’ in succession, like that.”
“Interesting,” muttered Brantyngham, “but not enlightening.… Who’s that?” He put down the receiver and looked up at his sleepy butler who had entered. “Who?—Oh, Inspector Templeton; very good, I’ll see him.”
Templeton’s face was one vast smile. He carried himself stiffly and with pride. Sir Richard gave him a drink and we liste
ned to what he had to tell.
It appeared that he had acquitted himself with remarkable skill. It had already been ascertained that Harry Greenwood had lodged near to his old employer’s place and had not moved, although out of work. For all his apparent poverty he had not claimed the “dole,” and for all that he went about almost in rags the sum of eight-hundred and forty pounds, in pound and ten-shilling notes, had been found concealed under a loose board in his bedroom. Further, a search of his rooms had shown the police that he was possessed of a valuable set of gold and ivory toilet requisites, although the brush and comb and shaving-brush he habitually used had not cost five shillings all told. The expensive set was also hidden beneath the floor. Behind a door hung an overcoat that had cost every penny of fifteen guineas, and between mattress and springings of his bed two suits of perfect cut and finish were discovered.
Brantyngham smiled as he listened to all this. He smiled as gently and as happily as when he tested me on the point concerning the Uffizi Galleries. “I am beginning to admire this fellow Greenwood,” he murmured. “Behold the struggle indicated in and by all this; must have a backbone! I wish to heavens that little Mary Sugden had not prevented him from seeing me! I’d have helped …”
Greenwood’s landlady stated that she had another boarder until recently, a man with whom Greenwood had been friendly, yet one whom he seemed to fear. A fortnight ago the landlady heard high words passing between her two tenants, and the sound of a blow. That night Zweiterbach, the Jewish boarder, left her house. He went away in a violent rage and had a black eye. Another friend of Greenwood’s was a tall Frenchman—a man whose name she said was Lorrequier—who was a student and was always travelling abroad. She knew this because the fellow had rather fascinated her eldest daughter … he was forever sending her post-cards from foreign parts—Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Rome and Florence.
Brantyngham whistled a little stave; a bird-note that was full of glee. “Behold the unholy trinity.” He chuckled. “Lorrequier—‘lorry-queer’… the force that was not of circumstances and the victim of something that may have been because Greenwood was above circumstances—for the force, read ‘the Jew’ … Go on, Inspector, you’ve done remarkably well!”
The Jew, Zweiterbach, was a small and ill-favoured fellow. He was described as having a black beard and stubby hands, loose teeth—mis-shapen and prominent; a shuffle in his gait and reddish-rimmed eyes; the pupils a brilliant brown, the landlady said. Lorrequier was a fair-haired fellow with merry blue eyes—and “as open as the day.” His hands were lean and long fingered and his mien, usually one of laughing insouciance.
One more fact elicited: both the Jew and Greenwood were often in receipt of buff envelopes stamped “O.H.M.S.,” and, according to their printed superscription, emanating from the Patents Office.
Sir Richard Brantyngham got to his feet and stretched himself.
“Inspector, I congratulate you. You haven’t let much slip past you!”
Templeton also got up, awkwardly. “There’s one last point, Sir Richard,” he said. “I set afoot inquiries among all the taxi-drivers round about here, describing the Jew. You see, I remembered the quarrel and the black eye and thought of possible motive and revenge. And sure enough, one Jerry Butterworth, a driver, tells me that he took up a fare from the corner of Edgware Road, at eleven o’clock, who answered to our descriptions. He drove him into Hyde Park, and there the man rapped at the window and stopped the cab. He got out and disappeared along a side-path.”
“Butterworth seems to have taken a lot of notice of his fare, Inspector!”
“Yes, I thought of that point—but it appears that the Jew was trembling and cursing like some madman; not only that, he paid over a ten-bob note for that drive and didn’t stop for change.… More than this, he was carrying a small brass fire-extinguisher and a heavy metal tripod; a collapsible affair such as wandering photographers use, only much stouter—”
“Yes, I thought he would have something like that,” was Brantyngham’s superbly indifferent statement. “And of course the cabby would also notice that his beard and clothing was all ice—not snow—ice!”
The Inspector goggled and stepped back a pace. He looked at Sir Richard, as a man looks at menacing death.
“B’gad—beg pardon, sir—but—but that’s exactly right! He was coated with ice, about the head and shoulders and the right arm: ‘Looked as ’ow ’e’d bin in a hice-’ouse, ’e did,’ said Butterworth.”
“As a matter of fact he had, in a way—only it wasn’t ice, you see, Inspector; no more than there was a scream and a shot!” He twitted, but his eyes were kindly. “No human scream and no sound of a fire-arm’s discharge; yet a simulation of each. A man coated with ice—yet not. Remember, Inspector, that this Jew didn’t get into the taxi until eleven o’clock, long after the wounding.… Had that been ice, for all the snow was falling in a cold night, it would have melted; alternately, he could have cracked it off his clothing … ice, yet not ice … damned funny business altogether—eh?” He laughed. “Here, have another drink, Templeton, you’ll have apoplexy if you don’t! This is rather a pretty little mystery and—”
Again the telephone-bell began to ring.
“Hello! … Yes, speaking … You’ve analysed it all? … Yes—now let’s get that right: the contents of glasses B and C are simply neutral … London grime and simple H-two-O … Yes? … And that in glass A, rich in mineral salts and evidently taken from over magnesium limestone … Yes … Deposits showing that galena-ore excretions also present … Yes … A fragmentary, almost microscopical, frond of moss … Identified as sphagnum … Yes … That all? … Very well, thank you very much; sorry I had to dig you out of bed, but it was vitally urgent … Oh, if you don’t mind—I don’t.… Good-night …”
Brantyngham gave that little coughing laugh again.
“That’s the result of the analysis of ice-water taken from Greenwood’s shoulder and two separate specimens of snowwater taken from the square. Rather neat—what? Taught me a lot.… No wonder people get goitre, is it? ‘Derbyshire neck,’ as it’s commonly called.…” With which cryptic observation he stopped.
He glanced at the clock and yawned.
“But look here, we’ll have to be getting off to bed; it’s late—or rather, early! What about staying the night here, Passingford? I’d like you to … I’m off for a little trip to the Peak district, in the morning; nothing like a change of air.”
I said, eagerly, that I’d stay. He turned, then, to Inspector Templeton. “As for you, Inspector, try to dream over a gentle little drama of a stabbing done without a blow being struck; by a man who wasn’t there; by a trackless and invisible something that became a Jew coated with ice that wasn’t ice … who carried a fire-extinguisher that wasn’t one and a tripod that also was not; that Jew who missed his mark—the one who flung that bowler hat in the air—because he’d got, or hadn’t got, what he wanted out of it … that Jew who was in Bellington Square all the time your fellows were searching—yet, actually, was nowhere near. And also try by the morning to tell me how water frozen in Derbyshire should come to be on the shoulder of a man injured in the middle of London.” He laughed and laughed again. “Oh, yes—all that lot—told you it was a pretty little problem, didn’t I?”
V
Gustav Lorrequier entered the gates of Danton Lodge and locked them after him. He re-pocketed the wallet that held that key and sauntered along the snow-covered drive toward the great secret house that lay like a squat beast behind the tall guardian walls that bounded the little park.
Now it was that he died.
Only fifty yards on his way between the gates and the lodge, a happy and care-free man … now he was a twitching thing of death; killed by some unknown force that had taken him between the eyes and crumpled him up like a burst balloon. And as he died so suddenly he could never have heard that swift scream and that stunning sound as of a shot, heralding the end. Then something also laughed—high in the air; and laughing and lau
ghing, it went away.
Sir Richard Brantyngham and myself were on the scene of the killing within three hours. We came over from Buxton, where we had been staying for four days. The local superintendent of police welcomed us at the gates of the lodge.
“Hope I’ve done right, Sir Richard, but it’s a general order from the Yard that instant information has to be sent to you if anyone is discovered in the possession of ancient foreign or British coins. The dead man’s trousers’ pockets were full of ’em!”
“You certainly did right, Superintendent. The Yard phoned me and I got here as quickly as possible. Hope the snow’s not been roughed and trampled about.”
“No, sir, we’ve been very careful, but of course my men have had to do a bit of moving. The body’s been taken to the mortuary, sir—shot in the centre of the forehead.”
“Instantly killed?”
“So the doctors say, sir. But a very funny thing arises, they also tell—although the bullet did not leave the skull—it not having force enough, they say—it’s nowhere to be found! The body has not been tampered with, and certain it is that the shot went in … but, where is it now? Queer, ain’t it?”
“Very, Superintendent. Now, what about tracks in all this snow? Couldn’t find any—eh? Not a mark, I expect.”
“Not a mark,” the officer repeated, looking curiously from one to the other of us, “not the hide or hair of one, anywhere!”
“No, there wouldn’t be feet impresses. But, tell me, did you not by any chance discover three hollows in the snow anywhere? Three holes set in the form of an isosceles triangle?”
“Now—now that’s funny and all, sir! We did come across such a lot of marks, but we didn’t think anything on ’em like. I—I believe they’re not touched, any. If I can find ’em again, should you like to see ’em?”
“Most decidedly!”
The awe-stricken Superintendent muttered in his throat (I verily believe he thought Brantyngham an intimate of the Devil!) and led us across the snow to a point some twelve yards distanced from the roughened and blood-stained patch that betrayed where the body had fallen and lain. Under the light of his lamp we saw … points as those of a triangle: exactly similar to those found in the inner garden of Bellington Square.
