Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus Vol 7

by R. Austin Freeman

  "Only a single line of footprints, you see," he remarked. "Not a sign of the woman, though, if she had come this way, her heels at least would have shown plainly. What do you think of these prints? Do they strike you as specially deep?"

  "I was just wondering," the sergeant replied. "They ought to be if he was carrying a woman who might have been nearly as heavy as himself. But it’s rather hard to judge."

  "It is," Blandy agreed; "and when you have judged, it’s only an opinion. What we want is an actual measurement. I wonder if Mr. Polton has brought his plaster outfit."

  "If he hasn’t, we have," said the sergeant, who slightly resented the presence of the unofficial interloper; "and we are quite competent to do the job."

  "Of course we are," said Blandy, tactfully using the first person, "but Polton isn’t only competent, he is a first-class expert. We must see if he has brought his kit."

  There was no difficulty in finding out, for Polton, thrilled by the discovery of the "signs of a struggle," had been unobtrusively following the inspector with a gloating eye fixed on the tell-tale markings. When the inspector broached the subject to him, his eyes glistened.

  "Yes, sir," he replied eagerly. "I’ve got a good supply of the best sculptor’s plaster and enough water to start with. As you want the moulds for measurement, it will be necessary to include the surface of the ground immediately surrounding the footprint."

  "Exactly," replied Blandy; "that’s the idea. Give us an edge that can be measured."

  "And as to a control, sir? When I have made a mould of one of these prints, would you like me to do one of those where the two parties were walking together?"

  "Certainly, if you will be so good. We must have the means of comparison to ascertain whether these prints are deeper than the others."

  With these instructions, Polton hastened away to the entrance to the camp, where he had deposited his kit, and returned carrying a heavy suitcase and a three-pint can of water. The inspector selected a sample footprint, Mr. Elmhurst marked its position on his copy of the chart, with a distinguishing letter, and Polton opened his case and fell to work. Meanwhile, the explorers, still following the tracks, had uncovered another fifty yards, along which the solitary walker could be traced, now with difficulty where he had apparently tramped over the thick coating of leaves, now quite easily where he had trodden on the bare earth. But for the moment the inspector let them work unheeded while he and the sergeant and Mr. Elmhurst stood by and watched Polton’s rapid and skilful manipulation of the plaster.

  "Don’t you usually spray some varnish into the footprint before pouring the plaster?" the inspector asked.

  "Not in clay, sir," Polton replied. "Clay—moist clay like this—takes the plaster quite kindly and gives a beautifully sharp mould. Besides, sir, there are the measurements. They will be very delicate, and even a thin film of varnish might affect them.

  "Very true, Mr. Polton," Blandy agreed. "We must be correct to a hair’s breadth."

  Accordingly the moulder proceeded with his task, and having poured the plaster and put in the iron wire reinforcements was watching the surface as it solidified when one of the explorers approached hurriedly, holding some object daintily between his finger and thumb.

  "We found this, Inspector, among the leaves just at the foot of the bank," he announced as he delivered the object—a painted wooden button—to Blandy. "I thought I had better bring it along at once."

  "You are extremely kind," said Blandy, taking the button from him and regarding it with mild interest. "Then you have actually reached the bank?"

  "Yes; and there are footmarks on it—rather indistinct but quite unmistakable—and there is a broken branch which seems to have given way when the man caught hold of it climbing up the slope."

  "And the footmarks? Any trace of the woman?"

  "No; unless that button belonged to her, which seems rather probable."

  "It does," said Blandy, "but probability isn’t much good." He looked at the button reflectively and then held it out towards Polton, who took it from him and, having examined it minutely, handed it back.

  "I can’t identify it, sir," he announced regretfully; "but then I shouldn’t be likely to, having seen so little of the lady. But Mr. Pedley might. He used to see her pretty often—and there he is, coming up the track at this very moment."

  As Tom approached rather wearily along the uncleared border of the track, the inspector hailed him and held out the button; whereupon Tom quickened his pace.

  "This button has just been picked up, Mr. Pedley," said Blandy. "Can you tell us anything about it?"

  Tom took it from him, and after one brief glance, replied,

  "Yes. It is a button from Mrs. Schiller’s jacket."

  "You speak quite positively," said Blandy. "Do you mean that she had buttons of this kind on her jacket or that you can definitely identify this button? To me, it looks like an ordinary trade button such as you can see at Woolworth’s."

  "That is what it was, originally," replied Tom; "just a plain wooden button covered with a pink cellulose glaze. But she had a fancy for decorating the set with a painted design, and she consulted me about the method of doing it. I recommended her to use ordinary oil paint varnished with copal; and when she had painted them, as she hadn’t any copal varnish, she brought them to me and I put a coat of varnish over them. This is certainly one of those buttons. I recognized it at a glance by the material, the technique, and the design, which I think represents some sort of flower."

  "Then," said Blandy, "you could swear, positively, in a court of law, that this button was actually on Mrs. Schiller’s jacket?"

  "Certainly I could," Tom replied. "I saw the buttons on the jacket—which, by the way, was a green jacket; and here is a thread of green silk still sticking in the eye of the button."

  "Yes," said the inspector, verifying the fact as Tom returned the button, "very complete, very conclusive. I wish some of the other evidence was as good."

  He carefully wrapped the button in an envelope from his wallet, and having bestowed it in an inner pocket, turned to the volunteer who had brought it.

  "I will come back with you and get you to show me exactly where you found this button. Have they completed the clearance of the bank?"

  "No, Inspector. They had only begun; but we could see the footmarks on the slope as the leaves hadn’t settled there very thickly."

  "Then perhaps there may be something more to see by this time," said Blandy; and with that he started off along the edge of the track, accompanied by his informant and followed by the sergeant and Mr. Elmhurst, but not by Polton, who dared not leave his half-made mould.

  When the party arrived at the bank, the inspector’s hopeful surmise was justified. The footmarks on the steep slope, indistinctive as they were, told their story plainly enough. The unknown man had climbed the bank more than once, apparently helping himself by the lower branches of a pollard beech, one of which had broken under his weight. In one place, an elongated mark showed where he had slipped, and in another, deep heel-marks furnished evidence that he had descended the bank into the camp at least once.

  "Looks as if he had gone to the top of the bank to see if all was clear on the other side," the sergeant remarked, "and then come back to fetch something; and we can guess what that something was."

  "There is no need to guess," said Blandy. "Look at this."

  Standing on the swept-up leaves at the side, he pointed to two small and faint impressions on the cleared ground, each of which was accompanied by a little sharp-edged dent.

  "You’re right, sir," agreed the sergeant, craning forward eagerly. "Those are the prints of the back parts of a pair of feet, and those little sharp-edged marks show that they were a woman’s feet. No man’s heel would make a mark like that."

  At this moment Polton came bustling up with his suitcase and water-can. Setting the former down on the leaves, he opened it and took out a bundle of lint, from which he extracted the newly made mould, and of
fered it for inspection.

  The sergeant looked at it and chuckled. "It’s quite uncanny," said he; "looks just like the sole of a white shoe, and for purposes of comparison it is as good as the shoe itself. How would it be, sir, for Mr. Polton to make a plaster mould of these two impressions?"

  "Just what I was thinking, sergeant. What do you say, Mr. Polton? Have you got a fair supply of plaster?"

  "I’ve got enough for three or four more moulds if I’m careful," Polton replied; "and these little shallow impressions wouldn’t take much. I should have plenty for those other prints that have to be done."

  "Thank you," said Blandy. "It’s rather important, as the moulds will probably show the forms of the heels more clearly."

  Accordingly, Polton set to work at once while the inspector resumed his examination of the bank, climbing to the top and scrutinizing the ground narrowly. Here he found obscure traces of something having been dragged across the top, and, what was more significant, a tiny thread of green silk caught on the ragged end of a broken twig. This he put in the envelope with the button and wrote on the outside a short descriptive note. Then he descended the outer slope of the bank and anxiously surveyed the ground at its base. But here the appearances were unpromising in the extreme, for he was now on the green ride, the ancient and well-trodden turf of which yielded no impressions what ever, as he ascertained by walking a few paces and noting the total absence of any resulting footprints.

  "Well," he said gloomily to Mr. Elmhurst, who, with the sergeant, had followed him down, "this looks like the end of the trail. Can you see which way he went?"

  Elmhurst shook his head. "Nothing lighter than a horse would leave visible traces on this turf. We shall have to try to pick up the tracks farther afield, if he really carried the body out of the camp. It isn’t certain that he did. We haven’t finished clearing the surface yet, and until the whole of the camp has been examined we can’t be sure that the body is not concealed in it, after all."

  But the inspector was not comforted by this faint encouragement.

  "No," he admitted, "but we’ve followed the tracks to the top of the bank and it’s pretty clear that he came out that way. Still, you are quite right. We mustn’t leave any possibility untested."

  The pursuit was accordingly suspended for the moment. Elmhurst went back to the explorers and resumed the systematic examination of the camp; Polton, having finished the small moulds (which showed clearly the backs of a woman’s high-heeled shoes) returned along the tracks and made a "control" mould of the man’s footprints, where he was walking with his companion, one of the woman’s at the same place, and one of the two feet of the prostrate figure near the tree; and in all these cases he photographed the impressions before making the moulds.

  All this, with necessary adjournments for refreshment, took time, and the daylight was already failing when Mr. Elmhurst sought out the inspector to make his report.

  "Well, Inspector," said he, "she isn’t here. Every inch of the camp has been examined, and there is no trace whatever of any disturbance of the surface. Of course, this elaborate procedure was hardly necessary, but it is all to the good. It settles the question beyond any possible doubt."

  "It does," Blandy agreed gloomily. "But it is a disappointing result."

  "I am afraid it is," Elmhurst admitted. "Still, it is conclusive, and it doesn’t close the inquiry. If she isn’t here, she must be somewhere else; and," he added encouragingly, "you’ve got all the rest of the forest, with the ponds and lakes, as a possibility."

  Blandy smiled, less benevolently than usual. "The idea of a man," said he, "strolling about the forest, even at night, carrying the body of a good-sized woman, doesn’t appeal to me. However, I suppose we shall have to consider the possibility."

  Thus, unsatisfactorily, ended the exploration which had seemed in the morning so promising. It was not the end of the search. On succeeding days, the police, aided by the foresters and local members of the field club, roamed through glades and thickets, now carpeted with fallen leaves, seeking in vain some trace of the missing woman. The ponds at the Cuckoo Pits and various other sheets of water were dragged, the margins of streams searched for footprints, but nothing came of it. When all was done, and the search was at last abandoned, Inspector Blandy’s verdict was justified. The marks on the summit of the rampart were "the end of the trail." There Lotta Schiller, dead or alive, had vanished; whither or in what state no man could tell. She had gone, taking with her the secret (if it had been known to her) of the mysterious death of Emma Robey and of the name of her murderer.

  Doubtless the police kept her in mind and continued their inquiries; but if so, no faintest whisper of any discovery ever transpired. To Mr. Polton with his dossier of newspaper cuttings, now tidily put away its appropriate shelf, the failure was a deep disappointment which he hoped was not final. To Tom Pedley it was something of a relief; and as the weeks passed into months and the months into years, the memory of those tragic incidents faded by degrees until it was almost too dim to be painful.

  PART II—THE UNKNOWN FACTOR.

  NARRATED BY CHRISTOPHER JERVIS, M.D.

  XI. MR. PENFIELD OPENS THE BALL

  The mountain that was in labour and brought forth a mouse is familiar to us all; but none of us, I suspect, and certainly not I, have ever heard of a mouse that was in labour and brought forth a mountain. Yet, since we are dealing with impossibilities, the one metaphor seems as good as the other. But I shall not argue the question. The second metaphor occurs to me only as illustrating the truth that trivial actions of unimportant persons may generate disproportionately momentous results; a proposition that is obvious enough to be grasped without any metaphor at all. And as to its application to the strange and tragic story that I have to tell, perhaps I had better leave that to develop in due course, merely remarking that the name of the super-prolific mouse was Nathaniel Polton, and that he happened to be our laboratory assistant and Dr. Thorndyke’s devoted henchman.

  Our direct contact with the case occurred quite casually. The occasion was a visit of our old friend, Mr. Joseph Penfield, of George Yard, Lombard Street, to our chambers at 5A King’s Bench Walk. Ostensibly, it was a professional consultation, but conducted with Thorndyke’s habitual informality; an informality which at once scandalized and delighted our legal friends.

  At the moment, Mr. Penfield was seated cosily in an easy-chair drawn up before the fire, with his toes on the kerb and his silver snuff-box and a glass of sherry on a small table by his side.

  "Well," he said, "that seems to dispose of all my difficulties. Now I know all about it, or think I do, thanks to your learned and lucid exposition. I suppose that a solicitor of nearly forty years standing and experience ought not to have required it, but somehow, when I come here to discuss points of law with you, I feel like a mere schoolboy."

  "It is a very misleading feeling," said Thorndyke. "The fact is that you usually consult us on problems that are outside your own special province and inside ours. On questions of property law or conveyancing you could probably make us feel like schoolboys, whereas on subjects such as survivorship or presumption of death, in which medical or scientific knowledge is helpful, the advantage is with us."

  "That is true," Mr. Penfield agreed, with more emphasis than the rather obvious explanation seemed to merit. "Very true."

  He paused with a reflective air, looking steadily at the fire. Then, having refreshed himself with a delicate pinch of snuff and an infinitesimal sip of sherry, he continued:

  "I am glad you mentioned the subject of presumption of death, because it happens to be one in which I am somewhat interested at the moment."

  "Are you proposing to make an application?" Thorndyke asked.

  "No," replied Penfield. "On the contrary, I am considering the expediency of contesting one. I have not quite made up my mind, but, as I am executor and trustee for the person whose death it is sought to presume, the onus seems to rest on me to contest the application. My duty is obvi
ously to consider the interests of my client; and, since the presumption of death is not the same thing as the fact of death, there is always the possibility that the person who is presumed dead may be in fact alive. It would be exceedingly unpleasant if, when death had been presumed and the estate distributed, the client should turn up alive and demand an account of my stewardship. I should feel very unhappy if I had acquiesced passively in the application."

  "I suppose," Thorndyke suggested, "there are substantial grounds for believing the person to be dead?"

  "There must be. The case for the application is that there is good reason to believe that the person was murdered; and, though there is no direct evidence of the murder and the body was never found, the person has never been seen or heard of since the date of the presumed crime. As that date is so recent—only about two years ago—a substantial body of circumstantial evidence must be available to render the application possible. But I have not gone into that question."

  "And as to the collateral circumstances; I suppose you know all about them?"

  "Indeed I don’t; and I am not much interested in them, since they can hardly be material to the issue. The question is whether this woman is or is not presumably dead. That is all that the court has to decide, and that is all that interests me."

  "So," I remarked, "your client is, or was, a woman."

  "Yes; a Mrs. Schiller."

  "Not Lotta Schiller!" I exclaimed.

  "Ah. Then you know the name, and perhaps some of the circumstances?"

  "We do, indeed. Polton was acquainted with the lady, and he took an almost morbid interest in the circumstances of her disappearance. He has collected every scrap of information bearing on it and he was actually present at the search for the body, making moulds and photographs of the footprints. He probably has the photographs still."

  "Ha," said Mr. Penfield, "very interesting; though a footprint seems rather to connote a living person. However, what you tell me puts an end to my hesitation, I shall contest the application if I can secure your support. What do you say?"