Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus Vol 7

by R. Austin Freeman

  "I see we are to have the pleasure of a visit from Miller," I remarked.

  He glanced at the little table and then asked with a smile:

  "Is that information received or observation and inference?"

  "Both," I replied, "but the inference first. It was the awl that clinched the diagnosis."

  "Yes," Thorndyke chuckled, "it is wonderful how Polton remembers all the likes and dislikes of our visitors. He would have made a perfect innkeeper. How do you do it, Polton?"

  "Well, sir," he replied with a gratified crinkle, "the proper study of mankind is man, and that includes Mr. Miller—and by the same token, here he is."

  The crescendo of approaching footsteps culminated in the characteristic knock, and, as Polton threw the door open, the superintendent entered and saluted us with a comprehensive smile, which took in the three easy-chairs and the small table.

  "It’s nice to see you all again," said he, when the preliminary greetings and hand-shakings—which included Polton—had been disposed of. "Quite a long time since I was here. Don’t get many excuses to come now that I am kept bottled up in the office."

  We chatted inconsequently for a minute or two and then adjourned to the chairs, when Thorndyke and I lit our pipes while Miller carefully selected a cigar and Polton poured out the whisky.

  "Well, Doctor," said the superintendent, thoughtfully operating with the awl on the proximal end of the cigar, "I’ve managed your little business. Rare job it was, too. Had to get the Assistant Commissioner’s permission, of course, and he wasn’t at all ready to give it. But I showed him your letter and coaxed him a bit and at last he gave way. But he wouldn’t have done it for anyone else, and no more would I for that matter; and he stipulated that the information was to be considered strictly confidential and personal to you."

  "You know that you can depend on my discretion, Miller. But supposing it were required to be used in evidence? May I take it that he would consent?"

  "That you would have to settle with him. You weren’t proposing to challenge the conviction, I suppose?"

  "No. The conviction, whether good or bad, is no affair of mine."

  "I wonder what is your affair—and so did the A.C., especially what you wanted the finger-prints for. However, I suppose we shall know in due course, as you seem to hint that you may need our collaboration later. At any rate," he concluded, producing a bulky, sealed envelope from his pocket, "here is the dossier of the worthy Louisa Saunders, if that was her name—apparently it was, as it agreed with the initials on her clothing—all complete; personal particulars, finger-prints, prison portraits, summary of the police-court proceedings, everything that you asked for; and you notice that the envelope is sealed with wax and marked ‘Secret documents’."

  He delivered the package to Thorndyke, with a malicious leer in my direction, and, when my colleague had thanked him very warmly for his friendly offices, the transaction was concluded and the conversation drifted into other channels, mostly connected with the work of the Criminal Investigation Department. But though the superintendent’s "shop" talk was highly interesting to listen to, it does not belong to this history. Nor was I very attentive to it; for my mind was occupied with the questions, Who the deuce was Louisa Saunders, what concern was she of ours, and what could Thorndyke possibly want with her finger-prints?

  These questions, and the mystery surrounding the dossier, gave me abundant material for thought during the next few days; as, apparently, in a different way, they did to Thorndyke. For, once more, to Polton’s exasperation, he locked himself in his laboratory and resumed his mysterious doings; and as these appeared, from Polton’s reports, to be mainly of a photographic nature, I surmised that he was making reproductions of the "secret documents," but for what purpose I could not even guess.

  Thus the time ran on, the Long Vacation ran out, and the day fixed for the hearing drew nearer. Once or twice we had communications from Mr. Penfield, chiefly relating to Thorndyke’s request that certain witnesses should be summoned to appear in court for cross-examination on their affidavits; and once I observed among the letters delivered by the first post a large, well-filled envelope addressed to Thorndyke which looked to me like a report from Mr. Snuper. But that was only a guess, though Snuper’s handwriting was a good deal more distinctive than his person.

  Otherwise Thorndyke’s preparations seemed to be complete, so far as I could judge with no knowledge whatever as to their nature; and I looked forward eagerly to the approaching date of the hearing, when, as I hoped, the obscurities in which I groped vainly should be made clear.

  XIV. THE PROBATE COURT

  The morning of the day appointed for the hearing found us with all preparations completed and—speaking for myself and Polton—all agog for the opening of the play. As the Law Courts were close at hand Thorndyke and I put on our wigs and gowns before starting, and, thus figged out and accompanied by Polton carrying a small suitcase, we set forth betimes, crossing the Temple by way of Crown Office Row and Fountain Court and finally emerging from Devereux Court into the Strand opposite to the main entrance of the Royal Courts of Justice, and, crossing the road, entered those august premises and made our way to the court in which the hearing was to take place.

  With the exception of the usher and Mr. Turner, Penfield’s managing clerk, we were the first arrivals; but shortly after us came Mr. Longford, the applicant’s solicitor, escorting his client, Miss Dalton, and a gentleman whom I correctly diagnosed as Mr. Carl Schiller. As we knew Mr. Longford slightly, we exchanged a few words of greeting, and he then introduced us to his two companions; and as we were making polite, but not too topical, conversation, we accompanied it by a mutual inspection.

  Miss Dalton, "the applicant," was a decidedly good looking woman of about thirty-five; but I was not much interested in her, my attention being more attracted by Mr. Schiller, whom I took the opportunity to examine as closely as good manners permitted. Not that he was a particularly striking personality, but he was (or had been) the husband of the mysterious Lotta, and he had the added interest of being present to learn whether he was a presumptive widower or only a mere husband. So I looked him over as we talked (as also, I noticed, did Thorndyke) and listened critically to his speech, in which I detected a faint German accent which seemed to agree with his rather Teutonic appearance. He was a smallish man, about five feet seven, spare and slight in figure, long-necked and bottle-shouldered, blond in complexion, with a rather scanty moustache and beard of a delicate ginger tint and eyes of a peculiar greenish hazel. His eyebrows were considerably darker than his beard, rather broad, and set in an almost straight horizontal line. As to his hair, it was probably of a similar colour to his beard or perhaps lighter, but as he had greased it with grease in order to comb it smoothly back over the crown of his head, I was unable to judge. On the whole, I considered him a fairly good-looking man, and our brief contact left me with a rather favourable impression.

  During our short talk there had been other arrivals. Mr. Lorimer, the applicant’s counsel, had entered in wig and gown and was now in close conference with Mr. Longford at the solicitor’s table. Mr. Pedley had slipped in and quietly seated himself on a back bench where, presently, he was joined by Inspector Blandy and by two middle-aged women who arrived together and who, having espied Pedley, at once seated themselves beside him. But the most interesting arrival to me was a rustic-looking gentleman who drifted in by the swing door, and, having gazed about him vaguely, wandered slowly up the court towards the solicitor’s table; for in him, with my usual start of surprise, I suddenly recognized the inscrutable Mr. Snuper.

  He certainly enacted the part of a country cousin to a finish. The mixture of curiosity and boredom with which he stared about him was absolutely convincing, and the dropsical watch which he drew from his pocket and solemnly compared with the clock might have been an heirloom from some ancestral yeoman. But what was he doing here, masquerading under our very noses? Unable to imagine what his function could possibly be
, I determined to keep an eye on him and try to solve this mystery for myself. But now the clock on the gallery announced the near approach to the hour and bade us take our seats, which we accordingly did; Miss Dalton was given a chair at the solicitor’s table; Mr. Schiller selected a front bench with a restfully high back; Snuper shuffled into a seat behind him, and Mr. Lorimer joined us at the counsels’ bench; and hardly had we taken our places when the usher threw open the door beside the bench and the judge bustled in and took his seat.

  I looked at him with a good deal of interest since, as there was no jury, the decision of the case lay with him. But apart from this, I was attracted and interested by his personality; which was in several respects of an unusual type. He had none of that monumental repose that one associates with the occupants of the judicial bench. In fact he was the liveliest judge that I have ever met. He bobbed up and down in his chair, he turned to confront each speaker whether witness or counsel and leaned out sideways to address them with a curiously friendly and confidential air in keeping with his general conduct of the proceedings, which was that of carrying on a sort of family consultation.

  Nor was his vivacity only bodily. He was very much alive mentally and seemed to follow every stage of the proceedings with intense, almost eager interest, watching the speaker and dropping in occasional comments in a quick emphatic manner entirely free from judicial solemnity. But he was an excellent judge, attentive, helpful and friendly, and as informal as was permissible in the circumstances.

  When his Lordship had settled himself in his chair and had taken a rapid survey of the court, he turned expectantly towards Mr. Lorimer, the applicant’s counsel, who thereupon rose to open his case.

  "Is the application opposed?" the judge asked, when Mr. Lorimer had set forth the nature of the case.

  "I am not quite clear, my Lord, as to the extent of the opposition. No affidavits have been filed in answer, and there have been no pleadings."

  The judge glanced inquiringly at Thorndyke, who thereupon rose to explain: "The position, my Lord, is this: the executor of Lotta Schiller’s will is also her solicitor and man of affairs, and, as the legal presumption at present is that she is alive, he has thought it necessary to safeguard her interests by ensuring that all facts adverse to the presumption of death are brought to the notice of the court."

  "But you have filed no affidavits?"

  "No, my Lord; but, if, in the course of the hearing, it should seem to be necessary, I shall ask for an adjournment to enable me to file affidavits in answer or to call witnesses."

  The judge smiled pleasantly. "I see. The good old principle of not leaping before you come to the stile. Very well."

  He nodded to Mr. Lorimer, who continued: "As this is an application to presume death, the facts in issue are those relating to the probability of death; but it seems to me desirable that I should, very briefly, explain the circumstances which have made this application necessary.

  "About five years ago—on the 16th August 1928, to be exact—Lotta Schiller executed a will leaving the whole of her very small property, about £300 in all, to her friend, Barbara Dalton; or, if Barbara should die before her, to Barbara’s younger sister Linda. At about the same time, Barbara made a will in similar terms with the difference that she gave her chattels, excepting her violin, to Linda. The violin, with the residue of her estate, about £250, was left to Lotta. Thus, at the time, these two wills were quite unimportant. But on the 28th of May 1930, a certain Mr. Charles Montagu died, and it then appeared that by his will a sum of £20,000 was left to Barbara Dalton and a similar sum to Linda. These bequests seem to have been quite unexpected by the beneficiaries, and it may have been that Barbara might have made some modification of her will if there had been time. But there was not. For some reason, a considerable delay occurred in the probate of Mr. Montagu’s will, and in the meantime Barbara died. Then, since Lotta Schiller was the residuary legatee under Barbara’s will, the further sum of £20,000 accrued to her.

  "But now a new difficulty arose. When it came to distributing Mr. Montagu’s estate, the whereabouts of Lotta could not be discovered. The usual advertisements were issued but there was no response. So, for a time, the matter remained in abeyance; it was not certain that she was alive and there was the added difficulty that, not only could the money not be paid to her, but no evidence existed that she was entitled to it, since it could not even be proved that she had been alive at the time of Barbara’s death.

  "Then came an announcement in the papers of Lotta’s sensational disappearance and the suspicion that she had been murdered; and the astonishing fact transpired that, all this time, she had been living in lodgings at 39 Jacob Street, Hampstead Road. Either she had never seen the advertisements or—which seems incredible—had ignored them. But, however that may have been, as soon as Barbara’s executor became aware that Lotta either was, or had recently been, alive, he endeavoured to get into touch with her, but without success. Nor have his efforts, repeated from time to time, had any better results; and now, after the lapse of two years, since it appears nearly certain that Lotta Schiller is dead, Miss Linda Dalton, the surviving beneficiary under Lotta’s will, acting on the advice of her solicitor, is applying to the court for permission to presume the death of the testatrix in order that the will may be proved. As the facts on which we rely in support of the application are principally those connected with the disappearance of the testatrix, I shall now proceed to a more detailed account of that incident.

  "On the 16th of July 1930, Lotta Schiller engaged furnished rooms at 39 Jacob Street, Hampstead Road. She gave no references but paid a month’s rent in advance; and that payment and all subsequent payments were made in cash although she had a banking account, which suggests that, for some reason unknown to us, she did not wish to disclose her whereabouts to any of her friends. This suggestion is supported by the fact that during the whole of her residence in Jacob Street she made no local acquaintances excepting Mr. Pedley, an artist who lived next door, and Mr. Polton and Mr. Vanderpuye, both of whom were introduced to her by Mr. Pedley.

  "During this time she seems to have made a pretence of practising as an artist. But this must have been a mere pose, as we have evidence that her work was quite incompetent, which is not surprising, seeing that she had never previously been known to paint or even to draw. However, it enabled her to strike up an acquaintanceship with Mr. Pedley which soon grew into definite friendship, and thereafter she used frequently to visit his studio. In this way she presently made the acquaintance of Mr. William Vanderpuye, a barrister of the Inner Temple, who came to the studio to have his portrait painted by Mr. Pedley. This new acquaintance soon ripened into a quite intimate friendship, accompanied on her side by unabashed flirtation and on his, perhaps, by real affection."

  I need not report the rest of Mr. Lorimer’s opening, since it dealt with matters with which we are familiar and which have already been recorded. In close and conscientious detail he described all the circumstances connected with Lotta Schiller’s disappearance, including the murder of the ill-fated Emma Robey and the search by the police for Lotta, the discovery of the relics, and, finally and at considerable length, the exploration of the ancient British camp and the various efforts which had been made during the last two years to get into communication with Lotta.

  Meanwhile, since I was not much concerned with the speech, I entertained myself by observing what was going on in the court; watching the judge, who was listening with an air of intense concentration to the counsel’s recital, the one or two strangers who drifted in by the swing door and soon drifted out again, and especially Mr. Snuper. Not that he offered much entertainment. At first he had seated himself directly behind Mr. Schiller, but had gradually worked his way along the bench, apparently to get nearer to the speaker, and there he sat listening open-mouthed, seeming to be as much engrossed with Lorimer’s recital as the judge himself. As to Mr. Schiller, after the opening statement, he appeared to take little interest in the procee
dings, having, no doubt, heard it all before. Most of the time he sat with his eyes closed, his head reposing restfully against the high back of the seat as if he were asleep; though, from time to time, he opened his eyes and even raised his head to look about him, but subsided almost immediately into his former semi-somnolent state.

  It was during one of these temporary awakenings that a very odd thing happened. Mr. Lorimer had come to the end of his narrative and was just beginning his argument, when Mr. Schiller opened his eyes and looked drowsily at the counsel. Then, suddenly, his eyes opened wide and a most strange expression of dismay appeared on his face. I looked at him in astonishment. He seemed to be making an effort to move, but his head remained fixed as if it were attached to the back of the seat. Almost immediately his predicament was observed by Mr. Snuper, who hastily slid along the seat towards him, at the same time fumbling in his pocket. I heard him murmur, "Don’t move, sir," and some other words which I could not make out, and, as he spoke, I saw him quickly open a pair of folding pocket scissors. Then, with these in his hand, he leaned over the back of the seat, and the next moment the prisoner was free, smiling a little wrily, tenderly feeling the back of his head, and looking round curiously at the spot on the bench-back which Snuper was now carefully scraping with a pocket knife.

  What he was scraping I could not see, but there must have been some foreign matter on the bench-back, for I saw him hold up the knife for Mr. Schiller’s inspection and then wipe it on an envelope which he produced from his pocket and returned there after having folded it. But even then he was not satisfied, for he continued his scraping, wiping the knife on another piece of paper, and finally, having felt the surface with his hand, gave it a vigorous rub with his handkerchief. Meanwhile, Mr. Schiller, having acknowledged Snuper’s services with a smile, moved along the bench, and, taking the precaution to examine the surface by sweeping his hand over it, leaned back and once more closed his eyes.