A silent witness
will be still more remarkable. I certainly thought that a body that
had been cremated was beyond the reach of any possible inquiry.”
“I am afraid that is so, as a rule,” Thorndyke admitted. “But I hope
to find an exception in this case. Shall we go upstairs and commence
the examination?”
Woodfield having agreed with gruff emphasis, Miller picked up the
casket and we all proceeded to the laboratory, where Polton, like a
presiding analytical demon, was discovered amidst his beloved
apparatus. The casket was placed on a table, the seals broken and the
cover removed by Woodfield, whereupon we all, with one accord, craned
forward to peer in at what looked like a mass of fragments of snowy
madrepore coral.
“Ach!” exclaimed Father Humperdinck, “bot it is a solemn zought zat
zese boor ashes vas vunce a living man chust like ourselves.”
“Yes,” said Marchmont, “it is, and I suppose we shall all be pretty
much alike by the time we reach this stage. Cremation is a leveller,
with a vengeance. Still, I will say this much, these remains are
perfectly unobjectionable in every way, in fact they are almost
agreeable in appearance; whereas, an ordinary disinterment after this
lapse of time would have been a most horrid business.”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Thorndyke; “I have had to make a good many
examinations of exhumed bodies, and, as you say, they were very
different from this. If I were not a practitioner of legal
medicine--in which exhumation often furnishes crucial evidence--I
should say that this cleanly and decent method of disposing of the
dead was incomparably superior to any other. Unfortunately it has
serious medico-legal drawbacks. I think, Woodfield, that we will turn
the ashes out on that sheet of paper on the bench, and then, with your
permission, I will pick out the recognizable fragments and examine
them while you are working on the small, powdery portions.”
He took up the urn--which was an oblong, terracotta vessel some
fourteen inches in length--and very carefully inverted it over the
large sheet of clean white paper. Then, from the dazzling, snowy heap,
he picked out daintily the larger fragments, handling them with the
utmost tenderness--for, of course, they were excessively fragile--and
finally transferring them, one by one, to another sheet of paper at
the other end of the bench.
The appearance of the remains was not quite as I had expected. Among
the powdery debris was a quite considerable number of larger
fragments, most of which were easily recognizable by the anatomical
eye, while some of the larger long bones almost gave the impression of
having been broken to enable them to be placed in the urn, and
suggested that a partial reconstitution, for the purpose of
determining the stature or other peculiarities of the skeleton was by
no means as impossible as I had supposed. But, large and small alike,
the pieces were strangely light and attenuated, like the ghosts of
bones or artificial counterfeits in porous, spongy coral.
When Thorndyke had picked out such of the fragments as he wished to
examine, Professor Woodfield glanced casually over the collection, but
suddenly he paused and, stooping over a large piece of the right
innominate bone, narrowly inspected a somewhat shiny yellow stain on
its inner surface.
“Looks as if you were right, Thorndyke,” he said in his laconic way,
“qualitatively, at any rate. We shall see what the quantitative test
says.”
I pored over that dull yellow stain--as did Jervis also--but could
make no guess at its nature or conceive any explanation of its
presence. What interested me more was a small depression or cavity in
the bone at the centre of the stain. That it was not the result of
cremation was obvious from the fact that it was surrounded by a small
area of sclerosed or hardened bone, which was quite plainly
distinguishable on the spongy background, and which clearly pointed to
some inflammatory change that had occurred during life. But of its
cause, as of that of the stain itself, I could think of no
intelligible explanation.
“Have you enough of the small fragments to go on with for the present,
Woodfield?” Thorndyke asked.
“Plenty,” replied Woodfield.
“Then,” said Thorndyke, “I will get on with my side of the inquiry. I
shall want the whole-plate camera first, Polton.”
While his assistant was preparing the camera, he laid several of the
fragments on a baize-covered board and secured them in position by
threads attached to wooden-headed pins like diminutive brad-awls. When
the fragments were fixed immovably, he placed the board in a vertical
position on a stand in a good light, by which time Polton was ready to
make the exposure.
Meanwhile, Professor Woodfield was proceeding--under the horrified
supervision of Father Humperdinck,--with his part of the
investigation. He was a matter-of-fact man, a chemist to the backbone,
and to him it was evident that the late Septimus Maddock was simply
many pounds of animal phosphates. Quite composedly he shovelled up a
scoopful of the ashes, which he emptied into the pan of a
spring-balance, and, having weighed out a pound and a quarter, shot
the contents of the pan into a large mortar and forthwith began to
grind the fragments to a fine powder, humming a cheerful stave to the
ring of the pestle. But his next proceeding scandalized the worthy
Jesuit still more deeply. Having weighed out certain quantities of
charcoal, sodium carbonate and borax, he pulverized each in a second
mortar, mixed the whole together and shot the mixture into the first
mortar, which contained the ash, stirring the entire contents up into
a repulsive-looking grey powder.
“But, my dear sir!” exclaimed Father Humperdinck. “You are destroying
ze remains!”
Woodfield looked at him from under his beetling brows, but went on
stirring.
“Matter is indestructible,” he replied stolidly; and with this he
tipped the contents of the mortar on to a sheet of paper and
transferred them to a large fireclay crucible.
“Now, Polton,” said he, “is the furnace ready?”
Polton disengaged himself for a moment from the camera, and took up a
position by the side of the big fireclay drum with his hand on the gas
cock. Then Woodfield, having dropped three or four large iron nails
into the crucible, carried the latter over to the furnace and lowered
it into the central cavity. The cock was turned on by Polton and a
match applied, whereupon a great purplish flame shot up with a roar
from the mouth of the furnace; and even when this had been confined by
the dropping on of the massive cover, the iron-cased cylinder
continued to emit a muffled, sullen growl.
While the crucible was heating, I transferred my attention to
Thorndyke. The photographic operations were now concluded and the
moulding wax had just been produced from a warmed incubator. Polton’s
curiosity--and mine--was about to be satisfied.
Thorndyke began by laying a thick slab of the warm and pliable wax on
the middle of a smooth plate of varnished plaster, at each corner of
which was a small, hemispherical pit, and dusting powdered French
chalk sparingly over the level surface of the wax. Then he took the
large fragment of bone, which bore the mysterious yellow stain, and
laid it on the wax with the stained side uppermost, pressing it very
gently until it gradually sank into the soft, pasty mass. Next, he
took a somewhat smaller slab of wax and, having dusted its surface
with French chalk, laid it on the fragment of bone, pressing it on
gently but firmly, especially in the neighbourhood of the stain.
Having squeezed some irregular-shaped lumps of wax on the back of the
top slab, he fastened a strip of india-rubber round the edge of the
plaster plate, so that it formed an upright rim and turned to Polton.
“Now mix a bowl of plaster--and mix it extra stiff, so that it will
set quickly and hard.”
With a soft brush he painted a thin coat of oil on the exposed portion
of the plaster plate, up to the edges of the wax, and including the
little circular hollows. By the time he had done this, Polton
reappeared from the workshop with a basin of liquid plaster, which he
was beating up with a spoon as if preparing a custard or batter
pudding. As soon as the plaster began to thicken, he poured it on the
wax and the oiled slab until it formed a level mass, nearly flush with
the top of the india-rubber rim. In a surprisingly short time, the
smooth, creamy liquid solidified into a substance having the
appearance of icing-sugar, and when Polton had stripped away the
india-rubber rim, exposing the edge of the new plaster slab, this part
of the process was finished.
“We will put this mould aside for the plaster to harden while we make
the other mould,” said Thorndyke.
“Aren’t you going to make moulds of all the fragments?” asked Jervis.
“No,” Thorndyke answered; “the photographs of the rest will be
sufficient, and I don’t think we shall want even those; in fact, what
I am doing now is merely by way of extra precaution. We are obliged to
destroy the fragments in order to make the analysis, so I am just
putting their appearance on record. You never know what an ingenious
defending counsel may spring on you.”
As Polton produced a second plate of varnished plaster and Thorndyke
began to prepare the wax for the next mould, I turned my attention
once more to Professor Woodfield. He had now deserted the mortar--in
which he had been preparing a further supply of “the stuff”--and taken
up a position by the furnace, with a long pair of crucible tongs in
his hand. On the bench, hard by, was an iron plate, and on this an
oblong block of iron in which were six conical hollows.
Presently Woodfield glanced at his watch, turned off the gas-cock,
removed the cover of the furnace with his tongs, and, reaching down
into the glowing interior, lifted out the nearly white-hot crucible.
Instantly Marchmont, Humperdinck and Jervis gathered round to watch,
and even Thorndyke left his mould to come and see the result of the
first trial.
Having stood the crucible on the iron plate while he picked out the
large nails, one by one, Woodfield lifted it and steadily poured its
molten contents into the first hollow in the iron block, which they
soon filled, and overflowing ran along the iron plate in glowing
streams that soon grew dull from contact with the cold surface. I
noticed that, as the crucible was slowly tilted, Thorndyke kept his
eyes fixed on its interior, as also did Jervis and Woodfield; and,
watching closely, I saw just as the vessel was nearly empty, what
looked somewhat like a red-hot oil-globule floating in the last of the
glowing liquid. This passed out as the crucible was tilted further,
and disappeared into the iron mould; when Woodfield, having exchanged
a quick, significant glance with Thorndyke, proceeded forthwith, in
his matter-of-fact way to fill up the still red-hot vessel with
another pound and a quarter of the late Septimus Maddock.
“I suppose,” said Marchmont, “it is premature to ask you what is the
final object of these very interesting operations?”
“It’s no use asking me,” replied Woodfield, “because I don’t know. I
am searching for traces of a particular substance, but what may be the
significance of its presence, I haven’t the slightest idea. You’d
better ask Dr. Thorndyke--and he won’t tell you.”
“No, I know,” said Marchmont. “Thorndyke will never tell you anything
until he can tell you everything. By the way, will the remains be
completely destroyed or will it be possible to recover them?”
“They are not destroyed at all,” replied Woodfield. “They are all in
the slag that came out of the crucible. We shall simply put the slag
in the urn. There is a little charcoal, soda and borax added, but
nothing is taken away.”