A silent witness
inspector asked: “We’re nearly there, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” I replied: “the body is lying in the bend just ahead.”
I peered into the darkness in search of the foot that had first
attracted my notice, but was not yet able to distinguish it. Nor, to
my surprise, could I make it out as we approached more nearly; and
when we reached the corner, I stopped short in utter amazement.
The body had vanished!
“What’s the matter?” asked the inspector. “I thought this was the
place you meant.”
“So it is,” I answered. “This is the place where the body was lying;
here, across the path, with one foot projecting round the corner.
Someone must have carried it away.”
The inspector looked at me sharply for a moment. “Well, it isn’t here
now,” said he, “and if it has been taken away, it must have been taken
along towards Hampstead Lane. We’d better go and see.” Without waiting
for a reply, he started off along the lane at a smart double and I
followed.
We pursued the windings of the lane until we emerged into the road by
the lodge gates, without discovering any traces of the missing corpse
or meeting any person, and then we turned back and retraced our steps;
and as we, once more, approached the crook in the lane where I had
seen the body, we heard a quick, measured tramp.
“Here comes the sergeant with the stretcher,” observed the inspector;
“and he might have saved himself the trouble.” Once more the officer
glanced at me sharply, and this time with unmistakable suspicion.
“There’s no body here, Robson,” he said, as the sergeant came up,
accompanied by two constables carrying a stretcher. “It seems to have
disappeared.”
“Disappeared!” exclaimed the sergeant, bestowing on me a look of
extreme disfavour; “that’s a rum go, sir. How could it have
disappeared?”
“Ah! that’s the question!” said the inspector. “And another question
is, was it ever here? Are you prepared to make a sworn statement on
the subject, sir?”
“Certainly I am,” I replied.
“Then,” said the inspector, “we will take it that there was a body
here. Put down that stretcher. There is a gap in the fence farther
along. We will get through there and search the meadow.”
The bearers stood the stretcher up against a tree and we all proceeded
up the lane to the place where the observant inspector had noticed the
opening in the fence. The gravel, though sodden with the wet, took but
the faintest impressions of the feet that trod it, and, though the
sergeant and the two constables threw the combined light of their
lanterns on the ground, we were only able to make out very faintly the
occasional traces of our own footsteps.
We scrutinized the break in the fence and the earth around with the
utmost minuteness, but could detect no sign of anyone having passed
through. The short turf of the meadow, on which I had seen sheep
grazing in the daytime, was not calculated to yield traces of anyone
passing over it, and no traces of any kind were discoverable. When we
had searched the meadow thoroughly and without result, we came back
into the lane and followed its devious course to the “kissing-gate” at
the Hampstead Lane entrance. And still there was no sign of anything
unusual. True, there were obscure footprints in the soft gravel by the
turnstile, but they told us nothing; we could not even be sure that
they had not been made by ourselves on our previous visit. In short,
the net result of our investigations was that the body had vanished
and left no trace.
“It’s a very extraordinary affair,” said the inspector, in a tone of
deep discontent, as we walked back. “The body of a full-grown man
isn’t the sort of thing you can put in your pocket and stroll off with
without being noticed, even at midnight. Are you perfectly sure the
man was really dead and not in a faint?”
“I feel no doubt whatever that he was dead,” I replied.
“With all respect to you, sir,” said the sergeant, “I think you must
be mistaken. I think the man must have been in a dead faint, and after
you came away, the rain must have revived him so that he was able to
get up and walk away.”
“I don’t think so,” said I, though with less conviction; for, after
all it was not absolutely impossible that I should have been mistaken,
since I had discovered no mortal injury, and the sergeant’s suggestion
was an eminently reasonable one.
“What sized man was he?” the inspector asked.
“That I couldn’t say,” I answered. “It is not easy to judge the height
of a man when he is lying down and the light was excessively dim. But
I should say he was not a tall man and rather slight in build.”
“Could you give us any description of him?”
“He was an elderly man, about sixty, I should think, and he appeared
to be a clergyman or a priest, for he wore a Roman collar with a
narrow, dark stripe up the front. He was clean shaven, and, I think,
wore a clerical suit of black. A tall hat was lying on the ground
close by and a walking-stick which looked like a malacca, but I
couldn’t see it very well as he had fallen on it and most of it was
hidden.”
“And you saw all this by the light of one wax match,” said the
inspector. “You made pretty good use of your eyes, sir.”
“A man isn’t much use in my profession if he doesn’t,” I replied,
rather stiffly.
“No, that’s true,” the inspector agreed. “Well, I must ask you to give
us the full particulars at the station, and we shall see if anything
fresh turns up. I’m sorry to keep you hanging about in the wet, but it
can’t be helped.”
“Of course it can’t,” said I, and we trudged on in silence until we
reached the station, which looked quite cheerful and homelike despite
the grim blue lamp above the doorway.
“Well, Doctor,” said the inspector, when he had read over my statement
and I had affixed my signature, “if anything turns up, you’ll hear
from us. But I doubt if we shall hear anything more of this. Dead or
alive, the man seems to have vanished completely. Perhaps the
sergeant’s right after all, and your dead man is at this moment
comfortably tucked up in bed. Good-night, Doctor, and thank you for
all the trouble you have taken.”
By the time that I reached my lodgings I was tired out and miserably
cold; so cold that I was fain to brew myself a jorum of hot grog in my
shaving pot. As a natural result, I fell fast asleep as soon as I got
to bed and slept on until the autumn sunshine poured in through the
slats of the Venetian blind.
CHAPTER II.
THE FINDING OF THE RELIQUARY
I awoke on the following morning to a dim consciousness of something
unusual, and, as my wits returned with the rapidity that is natural to
the young and healthy, the surprising events of the previous night
reconstituted themselves and once more set a-going the train of
speculation. Vividly I saw with my mind’s eye the motionless figure
lying limp and inert with the pitiless rain beating down on it; the
fixed pupils, the insensitive eyeballs, the pulseless wrist and the
sprawling posture. And again I saw the streaming path, void of its
dreadful burden, the suspicious inspector, the incredulous sergeant;
and the unanswerable questions formulated themselves anew.
Had I, after all, mistaken a living man for a dead body? It was in the
highest degree improbable, and yet it was not impossible. Or had the
body been spirited away without leaving a trace? That also was highly
improbable and yet, not absolutely impossible. The two contending
improbabilities cancelled one another. Each was as unlikely as the
other.
I turned the problem over again and again as I shaved and took my
bath. I pondered upon it over a late and leisurely breakfast. But no
conclusion emerged from these reflections. The man, living or dead,
had been lying motionless in the lane all the time that I was
sheltering, and probably for some time before. In the interval of my
absence he had vanished. These were actual facts despite the open
incredulity of the police. How he had come there, what had occasioned
his death or insensibility, how he had disappeared and whither he had
gone; were questions to which no answer seemed possible.
The fatigues of the previous night had left me somewhat indolent.
There was no occasion for me to go to the hospital to-day. It was
vacation time; the school was closed; the teaching staff were mostly
away, and there was little doing in the wards. I decided to take a
holiday and spend a quiet day rambling about the Heath, and, having
formed this resolution, I filled my pipe, slipped a sketch-book into
my pocket, and set forth.
Automatically my feet turned towards Millfield Lane. It was, as I have
said, my usual walk, and on this morning, with last night’s
recollections fresh in my mind, it was natural that I should take my
way thither.
Very different was the aspect of the lane this morning from that which
I had last looked upon. The gloom and desolation of the night had
given place to the golden sunshine of a lovely autumn day. The elms,
clothed already in the sober livery of the waning year, sighed with
pensive reminiscence of the summer that was gone; the ponds repeated
the warm blue of the sky; and the lane itself was a vista of
flickering sunlight and cool, reposeful shadow.
The narrow continuation beyond the posts was wrapped as always, in a
sombre shade, save where a gleam of yellow light streamed through a
chink between the boards of the fence. I made my way straight to the
spot where the body had lain and stooped over it, examining each
pebble with the closest scrutiny. But not a trace remained. The hard,
gravelly soil retained no impress either of the body or even of our
footsteps; and as for the stain of blood, if there had ever been any,
it would have been immediately removed by the falling rain, for the
ground here had a quite appreciable slope and must have been covered
last night by a considerable flowing stream.
I went on to the break in the fence--it was on the right-hand side of
the path--and was at once discouraged by the aspect of the ground; for
even our rough tramplings had left hardly a trace behind. After an
aimless walk across the meadow, now occupied by a flock of sheep, I
returned to the lane and walked slowly back past the place where I had
sheltered from the rain. And then it was that I discovered the first
hint of any clue to the mystery. I had retraced my steps some little
distance past the spot where I had seen the body, when my eye was
attracted by a darkish streak on the upper part of the high fence. It
was quite faint and not at all noticeable on the weather-stained oak,
but it chanced to catch my eye and I stopped to examine it. The fence
which bore it was the opposite one to that in which the break
occurred, and, since I had sheltered under it, the side of it which
looked towards the lane must have been the lee side and thus less
exposed to the rain.
I looked at the stain attentively. It extended from the top of the
fence--which was about seven feet high--half-way to the ground, fading
away gradually in all directions. The colour was a dull brown, and the
appearance very much that of blood which had run down a wet surface.
The board which bore the stain was traversed by a vertical crack near
one edge, so that I was able to break off a small piece without much
difficulty; and on examining that portion of the detached piece which
had formed the side of the crack, I found it covered with a
brownish-red, shiny substance, which I felt little doubt was dried
blood, here protected by the crack and so less altered by contact with
water.
Naturally, my next proceeding was to scrutinize very carefully the
ground immediately beneath the stain. At the foot of the fence, a few
tussocks of grass and clumps of undergrown weeds struggled for life in
the deep shade. The latter certainly had, on close examination, the