‘I want,’ he said to the salesman who came forward, ‘to buy a second-hand machine. Can you let me see some?’
‘Certainly, monsieur. Will you step this way?’
They went to a room at the back of the building where were stored a vast assemblage of typewriters of all sizes and in all states of repair. La Touche, inquiring as to prices and models, moved slowly about, running his quick eye over the machines, looking always for one with a twisted S-key. But, search as he would, he could not find what he wanted. Nor could he find any No. 7’s. These machines were all more modern.
He turned at last to the shopman.
‘These are all rather expensive for me. I should explain that I am the principal of a commercial school, and I merely want a machine on which beginners could learn the keys. Any old thing would do, if I could get it cheap. Have you any older machines?’
‘Certainly, monsieur, we have several quite good No. 7’s and a few No. 5’s. Come this way, please.’
They went to a room devoted to more antiquated specimens. Here La Touche continued his investigations, searching always for the twisted S.
At last he saw it. Not only was the letter turned to the right, but on the side plate were the three scratches mentioned by Mlle Lambert.
‘I think that one would suit,’ he said. ‘Could you get it down and let me have a look at it?’
He went through the pretence of examining it with care.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘this will do if it works all right. I should like to try it.’
He put in a sheet of paper and typed a few words. Then, drawing out his work, he examined the letters and alignment.
As he looked at it even his long experience scarcely prevented him giving a cry of triumph. For, to the best of his belief, this was the machine on which the Le Gautier letter had been typed!
He turned again to the shopman.
‘That seems all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the machine, please.’
He paid for it and obtained a receipt. Then he asked to see the manager.
‘I’m going to ask you, monsieur,’ he said, when he had drawn that gentleman aside, ‘to do me a rather unusual favour. I have just bought this machine, and I want you to see it before I take it away, and, if you will be so kind, to give me some information about it. I shall tell you in confidence why I ask. I am a detective, employed on behalf of a man charged with a serious crime, but who I believe is innocent. A certain letter, on the authorship of which his guilt largely depends, was written, if I am not mistaken, on this machine. You will forgive me if I do not go into all the particulars. An adequate identification of the typewriter is obviously essential. I would therefore ask you if you would be kind enough to put a private mark on it. Also, if you would tell me how it came into your possession, I should be more than obliged.’
‘I shall do what you ask with pleasure, monsieur,’ returned the manager, ‘but I trust I shall not be required to give evidence.’
‘I do not think so, monsieur. I feel sure the identity of the machine will not be questioned. I make my request simply as a matter of precaution.’
The manager, with a small centre punch, put a few ‘spots’ on the main frame, noting the machine’s number at the same time.
‘Now you want to know where we got it,’ he went on to La Touche. ‘Excuse me a moment.’
He disappeared to his office, returning in a few minutes with a slip of paper in his hand.
‘The machine was received from the Avrotte Pump Construction office’—he referred to the paper—‘on 2nd April last. It was supplied to the firm several years earlier, and on the date mentioned they exchanged it for a more up-to-date machine, a No. 10.’
‘I am extremely obliged, monsieur. You may trust me to keep you out of the business if at all possible.’
Calling a taxi, La Touche took the machine to his hotel in the rue de La Fayette. There he typed another sample, and, using a powerful lens, compared the letters with the photographic enlargements he had obtained of the Le Gautier type. He was satisfied. The machine before him was that for which he had been in search.
He was delighted at his success. The more he thought of it, the more certain he felt that Boirac’s fault-finding was merely an excuse to get rid of the typewriter. And the manufacturer had dismissed Mlle Lambert simply because she knew too much. If inquiries were made in the office, he would be safer with her out of the way.
And as to Boirac’s deeper object? So far as the detective could see, there could be only one explanation. Boirac knew the Le Gautier letter was done on that machine. And if he knew, did it not follow that he had sent the letter to Felix? And if he had sent the letter, must he not be guilty? To La Touche it began to look like it.
Then a further point struck him. If Boirac were guilty, what about the alibi? The alibi seemed so conclusive. And yet, if he were innocent, what about the typewriter? There seemed to be no escape from the dilemma, and La Touche was horribly puzzled.
But as he thought over the matter he began to see that the discovery of the typewriter did not so greatly help his client after all. Though at first sight it had seemed to indicate Boirac’s guilt, second thoughts showed him that the manufacturer could make a very good case for himself. He could stick to the story told by Mlle Lambert—that the type was in point of fact not good enough for his work. He could say plausibly enough that for some time he had wanted a machine with a tabulator, and that the bad alignment had only brought the matter to a head. Then, with regard to the typist. Though the girl seemed quiet and truthful, goodness only knew what she might not be holding back. On her own showing she had had exchanges of opinion with her employer, and she might have been very impertinent. At all events, Boirac could give his own version of what took place and no one would know the truth. Further, he could account for his testimonial by saying that while he disliked the girl and wished to be rid of her, he did not want to injure her permanently. He might even admit falsely telling the girl he was going to reorganise his office in order to smooth over her leaving.
With regard to the Le Gautier letter, Boirac could simply deny knowledge, and La Touche did not see how he could be contradicted. It could even be argued that Felix might have bribed a clerk to copy the letter for him on that machine so as to throw suspicion on Boirac. If Felix were guilty, it would be a likely enough move.
At last La Touche came to the definite conclusion that he had not enough evidence either to convict Boirac or clear Felix. He must do better. He must break the alibi and find the carter.
CHAPTER XXVII
LA TOUCHE’S DILEMMA
THAT night La Touche could not sleep. The atmosphere was sultry and tense. Great masses of blue-black clouds climbing the south-western sky seemed to promise a storm. The detective tossed from side to side, his body restless, his mind intently awake and active. And then an idea suddenly occurred to him.
He had been mentally reviewing the wording of the various advertisements Lefarge had inserted for the carter. These, he recollected, were all to the effect that a reward would be paid for information as to the identity of the carter who had delivered the cask at the rue Cardinet goods station. Who, he thought, in the nature of things could answer that? Only, so far as he could see, two people—the carter himself and the man who engaged him. No one else would know anything about the matter. Of these, obviously the latter was not going to give the affair away. Nor would the carter if the other paid him well or had some hold over him. This, thought La Touche, may be why these advertisements have all failed.
So far he had got when his illuminating idea struck him. The fault of these advertisements was that they had appealed to the wrong people. Instead of appealing to the carter, could his associates not be approached? Or rather his employer, for it was obvious that neither Boirac nor Felix could be his employer, except in the case of this one job. He jumped out of bed, turned on the light, and began to draft a circular letter.
‘DEAR SIR,’ he wrote, ‘An innocent man is i
n danger of conviction on a murder charge for want of certain evidence. This could be supplied by a carter—a clean-shaven, sharp-featured man with white hair. If you have (or had last March) such a man in your employment, or know of such, I most earnestly beg you to advise me. I am a private detective, working on behalf of the accused man. I guarantee no harm to the carter. On the contrary, I am willing to pay all men who answer the description five francs if they will call on me here any evening between 8.00 and 10.00, as well as 500 francs to the man who can give me the information I require.’
Repeating the manoeuvre he had employed in the case of the advertisement for Mlle Lambert, La Touche did not add his own name and address. He signed the note Charles Epée, and headed it Hôtel d’Arles, rue de Lyon.
Next morning he took his draft to a manufactory of office supplies and arranged for copies to be made and posted to the managers of all the carting establishments in Paris, the envelopes being marked ‘confidential.’ Then he went on to the rue de Lyon, and, in the name of Charles Épée, engaged a room at the Hôtel d’Arles.
Taking the Metro at the Place de la Bastille, he returned to the goods station in the rue Cardinet. There, after a considerable delay he found his two friends, the porters who had unloaded the cask on that Thursday nearly two months before. Explaining that he expected the carter he was in search of to call at his hotel on some evening in the early future, he offered them five francs a day to sit in his room between 8 and 10 p.m. to identify the man, should he arrive. To this the porters willingly agreed. That evening they had their first meeting, but without success. No clean-shaven, white-haired, sharp-featured carters turned up.
When La Touche returned to his rue de La Fayette hotel he found a letter from Clifford. The police had made two discoveries. The first La Touche had realised they were bound to make sooner or later. They had learnt of Felix’s identity with the art school student who had been in love with the late Mme. Boirac, and of the short-lived engagement between the two. All the assistance which these facts gave the prosecution was therefore now at the disposal of the authorities.
The second piece of information was that Inspector Burnley had found the carter who had taken the cask from Waterloo on the Wednesday morning of the fateful week and delivered it at Charing Cross next morning, for, it seemed, both these jobs had been done by the same man.
It appeared that about 7.30 on the Tuesday evening of that week a dark, foreign-looking man with a pointed black beard had called at the office of Messrs Johnson, the large carting agents in Waterloo Road, and had hired a dray and man for the two following days, as well as the use of an empty shed for the same period. He had instructed the carter to meet him. at Waterloo Station at 10.00 next morning, Wednesday. There, on the arrival of the Southampton boat train, he had claimed the cask and had it loaded up on the dray, as was already known. The vehicle had been taken to the shed, where it had been left, the horse having been sent back to the stable. The black-bearded man had told the driver he might take the remainder of the day as a holiday, but that he wanted him to return on the following morning, Thursday, take the cask to Charing Cross, and there book it to Paris. He had handed him the amount of the freight as well as ten shillings for himself. Upon the man asking where in Paris the cask was to be sent, the other had told him he would leave it properly addressed. This he had done, for next morning the cask had a new label, bearing the name of Jaques de Belleville, Cloakroom, Gare du Nord. The carter had then left the black-bearded man in the shed with the cart and cask. Next morning he had booked the latter to Paris.
Asked if he could identify the black-bearded man, the carter said he believed he could. But he failed to do so. On being taken to see Felix, he stated the artist was like the dark foreigner, but he would not swear he was the same man.
This news interested La Touche greatly, and he sat smoking into the small hours seeing how far he could work these new facts into the theories of the crime which he and Clifford had discussed. If the prosecution were correct, Felix must have been the man who called at the cartage establishment at 7.30 on Tuesday evening. He would therefore have had undisputed possession of the cask from about 11 a.m. on the Wednesday until, say, 7.00 on the following morning, and there were two obvious ways in which he could have put in the body. Either he could have procured another horse and taken the cask to St Malo, where, in the privacy of the walled yard, he could have removed the statue and substituted the body, returning the cask to the shed by the same means, or he could have hidden the body in his two-seater and run it to the shed, making the exchange there. Unfortunately, La Touche saw, the facts he had just learnt would fit in only too well with the theory of Felix’s guilt.
On the other hand they supplied another period for which an alibi might be found for the artist—7.30 on the Tuesday night. But, remembering his own and Clifford’s researches into the manner in which Felix spent that week, La Touche was not hopeful of help here.
The detective then turned his thoughts to Clifford’s theory of Boirac’s guilt. And immediately he saw how the news crystallised the issue of the alibi. Up to the present the alibi had been considered as a whole, the portions which had been tested and those which had not, alike included. Generally speaking, it had been argued that if Boirac was in Paris and in Belgium during the fateful days, he could not have been in London. But now here was a direct issue between definite hours. At 7.30 on the Tuesday evening the bearded man was at Johnson’s in the Waterloo Road. At 2.30 that same day Boirac was at Charenton. La Touche looked up his Continental Bradshaw. A train arrived at Victoria at 7.10, which would just enable a traveller from Paris to reach the carting contractor’s at the hour named. But that train left Paris at 12 noon. Therefore it was utterly and absolutely out of the question that Boirac could be the man. But then there was the typewriter …
La Touche was back on the horns of the old dilemma. If Boirac was guilty, how did he work the alibi? if innocent, why did he get rid of the typewriter? He almost writhed in his exasperation. But it only made him more determined than ever to reach a solution, cost him what it might of labour and trouble.
The next evening he set off to the Hôtel d’Arles in the rue de Lyon, to await with the goods yard porters the coming of sharp-featured carters with white hair.
A number of replies to his circular had come in. Some were merely negative, the recipients having written to say that no carter answering to the description was known to them. Others stated they knew men of the type required, mentioning names and addresses. La Touche made lists of these, determining to call on any who did not come to see him at the hotel.
While he was engaged in this work his first visitor was announced. This man was clean-shaven and white-haired, but the sharpness of his features was not much in evidence. The porters immediately gave the prearranged sign that this was not the man, and La Touche, handing him his five francs, bowed him out, at the same time noting him ‘Seen’ on his list.
After he left came another and another, till before ten o’clock they had interviewed no less than fourteen men. All these more or less completely answered the description, but all the porters instantly negatived. The following evening eleven men called and the next four, with the same result.
On the third day there was another letter from Clifford. The lawyer wrote that he had been greatly struck by the intelligence of the carter who had carried about the cask in London. Surprised at so superior a man holding such a position, he had brought him to his house in the hope of learning his history. And there he had made a discovery of the highest importance, and which, he thought, would lead them direct to the end of their quest. The carter, John Hill, had been quite ready to tell his story, which was as follows : Until four years previously Hill had been a constable in the Metropolitan police. He had a good record, and, he had believed, a future. Then he had had an unfortunate difference with his superior officer. Hill did not give the particulars, but Clifford understood it was a private matter and concerned a girl. But it led to a row durin
g hours of duty, in which Hill admitted having entirely forgotten himself. He had been dismissed, and, after a long and weary search, could find no better job than that he now held.
‘But,’ wrote Clifford, ‘it’s an ill wind, etc. This curious history of Hill’s is the thing that will settle our case. He has been trained in observation, and he observed something about the man with the cask that will definitely settle his identity. When he was paying him he noticed on the back of the first joint of his right forefinger, a small scar as if from a burn. He says he is sure of this mark and could swear to it. I asked him had he told the police. He said not, that he didn’t love the police, and that he had answered what he had been asked and nothing more. When he understood I was acting against the police he volunteered the information, and I could see that he would be glad to give evidence that would upset their conclusions.’
Clifford had then done the obvious thing. He had gone to inspect Felix’s finger, and he had found there was no mark on it.
At first to La Touche this seemed the end of the case. This man’s evidence definitely proved Felix innocent. His next business would be to examine Boirac’s hand, and, if the mark was there, the matter was at an end.
But as he thought over it he saw that this was indeed far from being the fact. There was still the alibi. As long as that stood, a clever counsel would insist on Boirac’s innocence. To a jury the thing would be conclusive. And this ex-policeman’s evidence could be discredited. In fact, the very thing that had enabled them to get hold of it—the man’s dislike of the official force—would minimise its value. It would be argued that Hill had invented the scar to upset the police case. By itself, a jury might not accept this suggestion, but the alibi would give it weight, in fact, would make it the only acceptable theory.
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