He shook hands again, and having lit the new cigar, bustled away. And as his footsteps receded down the stairs, we heard him apparently trying to whistle and smoke at same time.
XVII. A SYMPOSIUM
The instinctive sense of simple hospitality which was the gift alike of Thorndyke and his devoted follower Polton, tended to impart a pleasant informality to what were essentially professional conferences. I noted it, not for the first time, when, on the evening following Miller's visit, we gathered round a cheerful fire to "hearken to the evidence" that my colleague had promised to expound to us. To an onlooker we should have seemed more like a party of cronies who had assembled for gossip and the exchange of "yarns" than a gathering of lawyers and police concerned with the detection and punishment of a capital crime.
Nevertheless, the attention of us all was concentrated on the business of the evening; and when Polton had provided for the comforts of all the guests, and, having placed on the table three wooden objects, one resembling an elongated brush-box and two shorter, upright boxes, had retired to the adjoining office (leaving the communicating door ajar) and the social preliminaries appeared to be getting unduly prolonged, Miller interposed with the blunt suggestion that Thorndyke "had better get on with it"; whereupon my colleague began his exposition without further preamble.
"I have considered," said he, "the most suitable way in which to present the scheme of evidence in this case and it has seemed to me that the best plan will be to follow the line of my own investigation; to produce to you the items of evidence in the order in which they became apparent to me. Do you agree to that, Anstey?"
"Undoubtedly I do," replied Anstey, "as that will be the order in which they will be best presented to the jury in the opening address."
"Very well," said Thorndyke, "then I will proceed on those lines. You have all read the report of the inquest on John Gillum's body and Mortimer's narrative of his relations with Gillum, and as those documents contain all the facts with which I started, I can refer to those facts as matters known to you all.
"The original inquiry was concerned with the identity of the persons who had blackmailed Gillum. That was the problem that Benson submitted to me. But though he did not contest the suicide—which seemed to have been conclusively proved—I could see that, at the back of his mind, there was a feeling that things were not as they appeared; that, behind the apparent facts of the case, there was something that had never come to light.
"Now, as soon as I began to look into the case, I had precisely the same feeling. The whole affair had a curiously abnormal appearance; so much so that it at once suggested to me the question whether the ostensible facts might not cover something of an entirely different nature. There were unexplained discrepancies. For instance, of the large sum of money that had been thrown away, no less than three thousand pounds had been money saved by Gillum in the course of his business in Australia. One naturally asked oneself how such a man ever came to have any savings at all. The result of these reflections was that I postponed the blackmailing problem and proceeded to a critical consideration of the case as a whole.
"Now, the outstanding fact of the case was that a sum of about thirteen thousand pounds had disappeared in less than two years. It had been drawn out of the bank in cash—in currency notes and, by special request, in notes which had been circulated and of which the serial numbers were unrecorded, and which it was, therefore, impossible to trace. The explanation offered for this procedure was that this untraceable money was to be used for payments to blackmailers and for discharging gambling debts.
"So far as the blackmail was concerned, this explanation was reasonable enough; but not in connection with gambling. Why should a man take such elaborate precautions to make it impossible to trace the money with which he had paid his gambling debts? There was no reason at all. Gambling debts can be, and usually are, paid by cheque. Why not? Such payments are not unlawful and there is no valid reason for secrecy. Therefore I decided that the explanation offered was not adequate. It was really no explanation at all. But if one rejected the explanation, the original problem re-emerged. Thirteen thousand pounds had disappeared, leaving no trace. Of that sum, about two thousand could be accounted for by blackmail. But what of the remaining ten or eleven thousand? Had it really been gambled away, or was it possible that the gambling was a mere pretext, covering the disposal of the money in some other way? Having regard to the inadequacy of the explanation, I was disposed to suspect that this might be the case; and this suspicion was strengthened by the fact that Mortimer—the only witness as to the gambling—had no first-hand knowledge of the matter at all. His belief on the subject was based on what Gillum had told him; and in reading his narrative I could not but be struck by the way in which Gillum had posed as a reckless and desperate gambler and the pains that he had taken to impress that view of himself on Mortimer.
"From this it appeared that there was really no evidence that any gambling—on a considerable scale—had ever occurred; and there was a reasonable suspicion that it was a myth invented and maintained to cover some other kind of activity. But what kind of activity? The entertainment of that suspicion raised a new problem. What reason—apart from blackmail—could a man have for drawing large sums of money out of his bank in such a form that it could never be traced? I turned this question over in my mind and I could think of only one case in which a man might behave in this way. It was that of a man who had got temporary control of another man's banking account. Such a man—obviously a dishonest man—would naturally seek to get permanent possession of the money under his temporary control. But how could he do this? He could not simply draw cheques in his own favour and pay them into another bank, for those cheques could be traced and the money recovered. And the same would be true of bank notes of which the serial numbers were known. The only plan possible to him would be that adopted by Gillum. He would have to draw the money out in untraceable cash. That cash he could pay into another bank or store for future disposal.
"That was the only alternative that I could think of to the gambling theory, and it appeared to be totally inapplicable to the present case. For the banking account was Gillum's own banking account and the money in the bank was his own money which he had himself paid in. What object could he have had in transferring that money to another bank, or hoarding it? I could imagine none.
"Nevertheless, I did not immediately abandon the idea, for the alternative—the gambling theory—was almost as difficult to accept; and there was a general queerness and abnormality about the case that disposed one to consider unlikely explanations. There was the suicide, for instance. Apparently it was a genuine suicide, but there had been no positive proof that it was. Actually, it was possible that it might have been a skilfully arranged murder. Accordingly, I decided to consider this imaginary case in detail and see whether it was as completely inapplicable as it seemed.
"First, I asked myself the question, how would it be possible for a man to get control of another person's banking account? Apparently, the only possible method would be that of personating the real owner. The case, then, which I had imagined involved, necessarily, the idea of personation. Accordingly, I set up the working hypothesis of personation and proceeded to apply it to the case of John Gillum to see how it fitted and whither it led.
"Now, when one sets up a hypothesis and proceeds to test it and deduce consequences from it, if the hypothesis is untrue it very soon comes into conflict with known facts and leads to manifestly false conclusions. But when I began to apply the personation hypothesis to the Gillum case, instead of conflicting with known facts it developed unexpected agreements with them; instead of evoking fresh difficulties, it tended to dispose of the difficulties that had at first appeared.
"The theory of personation involved the idea of two separate individuals; the personator and the personated. It was thus necessary, for the purposes of the argument, to decompose the person, John Gillum, into two hypothetical individuals: John Gillum of Australi
a and John Gillum, the tenant of Clifford's Inn. They had been assumed to be one and the same person. We had now to see what evidence there was to support that assumption.
"But the first glance showed that there was no evidence at all. The identification had been illusory. In effect, there had been no identification. Benson had identified the body as that of Gillum of Australia—whom we will call simply Gillum—but he had not identified it as that of the tenant of the Inn—hereinafter called the Tenant. And Weech and Mortimer and Bateman gave evidence referring to the Tenant, but their evidence furnished no proof that the body was the Tenant's body. There were really two sets of witnesses. There was Benson, who knew Gillum but had never seen the Tenant; and there were Weech, Mortimer, Bateman and Penfield, who knew the Tenant but had never seen Gillum.
"Thus the personation hypothesis did not conflict with the known facts. No evidence had been produced to prove that Gillum of Australia and Gillum the Tenant were one and the same person. Therefore, it was possible that they were different persons. But as soon as this possibility was established, two rather striking agreements with it came into view. Let us consider them.
"First there was the time of Benson's arrival in England. He arrived immediately after the suicide; or, to put it the other way round, the suicide occurred immediately before his arrival. But not only was it known that he was coming; the actual date on which he would arrive was known. Now, on the personation theory, the Tenant of the Inn was some unknown stranger who was falsely personating John Gillum. He could not possibly have confronted Benson, for the fraud would then have been instantly detected. He would have had to clear out. But if he had simply disappeared, suspicion would have been aroused, whereas the presence of the body and the apparent suicide continued the illusion of the personation. Indeed, it did much more. For when Benson had identified the body as that of John Gillum, and that body had been accepted by Mortimer and Weech as that of the Tenant of the Inn, the personation seemed to be covered up for ever beyond any possibility of discovery.
"The second striking agreement is the state of the Tenant's finances. At the inquest it transpired that deceased was absolutely penniless and that he had no expectations whatever. The last payment of the purchase money for the sheep farm had been paid into the bank and drawn out. All the money was gone and there was no more to come.
"Now see how perfectly this agrees with the personation theory. What could have been the object of the personation? Obviously, to obtain possession of the ten thousand pounds paid for the sheep farm and the three thousand forming Gillum's savings. Well, at the time of the suicide this had been done. The whole sum of thirteen thousand pounds had been drawn out. There was not a penny left in the bank and there were no more payments to come. Then the personator's object had been achieved and there was no occasion to continue the personation any longer. It was time for the personator to disappear; and disappear he did. Benson's arrival simply accelerated matters and fixed the date of the disappearance.
"So far, then, the results seemed to be positive. The more the personation theory was examined, the more did it appear to agree with the known facts. But there were other difficulties; and the most formidable of them was the body. If there had been personation, it must have begun immediately on Gillum's arrival in England and it had been maintained for nearly two years. But where was Gillum all this time? He could hardly have been alive; but if he was dead his body must have been preserved and kept somewhere ready to be produced at the psychological moment. For the pretended suicide must be assumed to have been an essential feature of the scheme.
"Of course, there was no physical difficulty. It is quite easy to preserve a dead body indefinitely, given the suitable means and appliances. The problem was how it could have been done in the circumstances of this particular case. But even while I was puzzling over this difficulty I received sudden enlightenment from Mortimer's narrative. You will remember that, on the occasion of his first visit to Clifford's Inn, he had a very remarkable seizure. From his admirable description it is evident that his symptoms were exactly those of rather acute carbonic acid poisoning; and he notes that the room—the larder, or storeroom—in which the attack occurred was noticeably cold. Further, he mentions that, just before the attack, he had been shovelling up coal from a bin which he describes as occupying the whole of one side of the room.
"Now this combination of low temperature with a considerable concentration of carbonic acid gas was very impressive. It immediately suggested the presence, somewhere in the room, of a substantial quantity of solid carbonic acid; and as the gas appeared to issue from the coal-bin, it seemed probable that the solid acid was contained in the bin. But if that bin was of the size that Mortimer's description conveyed, it would be easily large enough to contain a dead body."
"But Mortimer says that it was full of coal," Anstey objected.
"It appeared to be," Thorndyke corrected. "But there might be room for a false bottom under the coal, and still room for the body under that. A false bottom would be a necessary feature of the arrangement."
"I think," said Anstey, "that we had better be clear about this solid carbonic acid. You know all about it, but we don't. Could you just give us a few particulars as to what it is like and what is its bearing on the case?"
"A very few particulars will be enough for our purposes," replied Thorndyke. "I need not go into the method of production. The substance, itself, is a white solid, rather like block table salt. It is simply frozen carbonic acid, just as ice is frozen water. And as ice has a maximum temperature of 0 degrees Centigrade—commonly known as freezing point—and becomes a liquid if it is raised above that temperature, so solid carbonic acid—sometimes called carbonic acid snow, from its resemblance to ordinary snow—has a temperature of minus 79 degrees Centigrade, that is, 79 degrees Centigrade below the freezing point of water. But unlike ice, it doesn't melt into liquid when its temperature is raised. It changes directly into gas, intensely cold gas, which hangs round it and protects it from contact with warm air. If we were to place a block of it on the table, it would simply dwindle in size until it disappeared altogether, but it would not leave the slightest trace of moisture. And it would dwindle remarkably slowly; for the gas into which the solid snow changes is a very heavy gas and a specially bad conductor of heat."
"Thank you," said Anstey. "That is quite clear. There is only one other question. Is carbonic acid snow obtainable without any great difficulty?"
"It is quite easy to obtain," replied Thorndyke. "The snow is now manufactured on a considerable scale, as it is used for a variety of purposes. It is sold in two forms; the standard twenty-five-pound blocks, which are the most commonly used, and smaller, four-pound blocks, made principally for use in ice-cream tricycles to keep the cream frozen. You can buy the blocks, retail, without any difficulty, and they will probably be delivered in packages enclosed in insulating material such as silicate wool, or slag-wool. Is that clear?"
"Perfectly clear," replied Anstey. "Now we can return to the argument."
"Well," Thorndyke resumed, "you will now see the significance of the presence in this very cold room of free carbonic acid gas in conjunction with a very large coal-bin. It suggested a perfectly simple and efficient method of preserving a dead body for a practically unlimited time, and it thus disposed of what had been my principal difficulty. I was so much impressed by this new agreement that I abandoned the rather academic attitude in which I had considered the personation theory. For that theory was no longer a merely tenable hypothesis. It agreed with the facts much more closely than did the gambling theory. Indeed, it offered a perfectly reasonable explanation of those facts, which the gambling theory did not; and I began to feel that it was probably the true explanation of those facts.
"But there were still some difficulties; not very formidable ones, but still they had to be disposed of before the personation theory could be definitely accepted. There was, for instance, the question of resemblance and disguise. How far was it necessa
ry for the personator to resemble John Gillum, and what amount and kind of disguise would be required to secure the resemblance? Now, it is important to realise that no very exact likeness was necessary. However much the personator had been like the personated and however skilfully he had been disguised, it would have been impossible for him to deceive any person who had really known John Gillum. On the other hand, in the case of persons like Penfield, Mortimer and Weech, who had never seen John Gillum, no resemblance at all was necessary.
"Yet, for other reasons, the personator would have had to bear a general likeness to the man whom he personated. The production of the body, for instance, must have been an essential part of the scheme; and its production involved the idea of its identification as the body of the Tenant. Therefore, the Tenant must have been so far like John Gillum that the body of the one could be mistaken for the body of the other. But for this purpose it would be sufficient for the two men to be alike in their salient characteristics.
"Now what were the salient characteristics of John Gillum? He was a tallish man—about five feet ten—with blue eyes, black hair and beard and upper front teeth which were very conspicuously filled with gold. He also, apparently, spoke with a slight Scotch accent. In all these respects, as we know from Mortimer's narrative, the Tenant resembled John Gillum; and as the body presented the salient physical features common to the two men, it was naturally recognised by Mortimer and Weech as the Tenant's body in the single hasty glance that they took.
"But how many of those characteristics must have been natural to the personator? Evidently, the stature and the eye-colour must have been real. The personator would have to be a rather tall man with blue eyes. But the other characteristics could have been produced artificially. Whatever might have been the natural colour of the hair and beard, they could easily have been dyed black. The only real difficulty would have been the teeth. But, even in their case, there would be no physical difficulty. It would be perfectly easy for the personator to have his front teeth filled with gold, or, preferably, covered with a removable gold plating; while, if he should happen to have false teeth, there would be no difficulty at all. He would simply have a duplicate plate made with gold-filled teeth in front. But either of these methods would require the services of a skilled dentist; and that was the fatal objection to them. They would involve an accomplice. But, since the personation would not only be a serious crime in itself, but would seem inevitably to involve a previous murder, the existence of an accomplice would constitute an appalling danger.
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