A silent witness
size of a chassepôt bullet has been partly embedded. The chemical
composition of that foreign body is plainly indicated by a stain which
surrounds the cavity; which stain is evidently due to oxide of lead.
Clearly the foreign body was composed of lead, which will have melted
in the cremation furnace and run away, but left a small portion in the
cavity, which small portion, becoming oxidized, the oxide will have
liquefied and become soaked up by the absorbent bone-ash, thus
producing the stain.
“Finally, we find by assay, that this foreign body actually was
composed of lead and that its weight was--within a negligible amount
of error--three hundred and eighty-six grains, which is the weight of
a chassepôt bullet.
“I say that the evidence, from the ashes alone, is conclusive. But
this is only corroborative of conclusions that I had already formed on
a quite considerable body of evidence. Are you satisfied, Marchmont? I
mean, of course, only in respect of a _prima facie_ case.”
“Perfectly satisfied,” replied Marchmont. “And now I understand why
you insisted on my being present at this investigation and bringing
Father Humperdinck; which, I must admit, has been puzzling me the
whole day. By the way, I rather infer, from what you said, that there
has been foul play. Is that so?”
“I think,” replied Thorndyke, “there can hardly be a doubt that
Reinhardt was murdered by Septimus Maddock.”
Father Humperdinck’s face suddenly turned purple.
“And zis man Maddock,” he exclaimed fiercely, “zis murderer of my poor
friendt Vitalis, vere is he?”
“He is being sought by the police at this moment,” replied Thorndyke.
“He must be caught!” Father Humperdinck shouted in a furious voice,
“and ven he is caught he must be bunished as he deserves. I shall not
vun moment rest until he is hanged as high as Haman.” Here I caught a
quick glance from Marchmont’s eyes and seemed to hear a faint murmur
which framed the words “Vengeance is mine.” “But,” the Jesuit
continued, after a momentary pause, in the same loud, angry tone: “zis
villain has a double grime gommitted; he has murdered a goot, a
chenerous, a bious man; and he has robbed ze boor, ze suffering and ze
unfortunate.”
“How has he done that?” asked Marchmont.
“By murdering ze benefactor of our zoziety,” was the answer.
“Yes, to be sure,” agreed the solicitor. “I hadn’t thought of that. Of
course, the original will in favour of Miss Vyne probably stands
without modification.”
At this point Superintendent Miller interposed.
“You were saying, sir, that the man Maddock is now being sought by the
police. Do you mean under that name?”
“No,” answered Thorndyke. “I mean under the name of Samway. Septimus
Maddock, alias Isaac Van Damme, is written off as deceased. But
Samway, alias Maddock, alias Burton of Bruges, alias Gill, is his
reincarnation, and, as such, I commend him to your attention; and I
hope, Miller, you will be able to produce him shortly, in the flesh.
The evidence, as you see, is now ready, and all that is lacking is the
prisoner.”
“He shan’t be lacking long, sir, if any efforts of mine can bring him
to light. I see a case here that will pay for all the work that we can
put into it; and now, with your permission, doctor, I will take
possession of this urn and get off, to see that everything necessary
is being done.”
The Superintendent, as so often happens with departing guests,
infected our other two visitors with a sudden desire to be gone.
Father Humperdinck, especially, seemed unwilling to lose sight of the
police officer--who was correspondingly anxious to escape--and, having
wished us a very hasty adieu, hurried down the stairs in his wake,
followed, at a greater interval, by his legal adviser.
CHAPTER XXII.
THORNDYKE REVIEWS THE CASE
When Professor Woodfield, having deliberately packed his bag and--to
my great relief and Jervis’s--declined Thorndyke’s invitation to stay
and take tea with us, presently took his departure, we descended to
the sitting-room, whither Polton followed us almost immediately with a
tea-tray, having, apparently, boiled the kettle in the adjacent
workshop while the final act of the analysis was in progress. He
placed the tray on a small table by Thorndyke’s chair, and, evidently,
anticipating the inevitable discussion on the results of the analysis,
made up the fire on a liberal scale and retired with unconcealed
reluctance.
As soon as we were alone, Jervis opened the subject by voicing his and
my joint desire for “more light.”
“This has been a great surprise to me, Thorndyke,” said he.
“A complete surprise?” Thorndyke asked.
“No, I can’t say that. The solution of the problem was one that I had
proposed to myself, but I had rejected it as impossible; and it looks
impossible still, though I now know it to be the true solution.”
“I quite appreciate your difficulty,” said Thorndyke, “and I see that
if you did not happen to light on the answer to it, the difficulty was
insuperable. That was the really brilliant feature in Maddock’s plan.
But for a single fact which was almost certain to be overlooked, the
real explanation of the circumstances would appear utterly incredible.
Even if suspicion had been aroused later and the true explanation
suggested, there seemed to be one fact with which it was absolutely
irreconcilable.”
“Yes,” agreed Jervis; “that is what I have felt.”
“The truth is,” said Thorndyke, “that this crime was planned with the
most diabolical cleverness and subtlety. We realize that when we
consider by what an infinitely narrow margin it failed. Indeed, we can
hardly say that it did fail. As far as we can see, it succeeded
completely, and if the criminal could only have accepted its success,
there seems to be no reason why any discovery should ever have taken
place. Looking back on the case, we see that our experience has been
the same as O’Donnell’s; we had no clue whatever excepting the one
that was furnished by the criminal himself in his unnecessary efforts
to obtain even greater security. Suppose Maddock, having carried out
his plan successfully, had been content to leave it at that, who would
have known, or even suspected, that a crime had been committed? Not a
soul, I believe. But instead of that he must needs do what the
criminal almost invariably does; he must tinker at the crime when all
is going well and surround himself by a number of needless safeguards
by which, in the end, attention is attracted to his doings. He knows,
or believes he knows, that Jardine has in his possession certain
knowledge of a highly dangerous character; he does not ask himself
whether Jardine is aware that he possesses such knowledge, but,
appraising that knowledge at what he, himself, knows to be its value,
he decides to get rid of Jardine as the one element of danger. And
that was where he failed. If he had left Jardine alone, the whole
affair would have passed off as perfectly normal and its details would
soon have been lost sight of and forgotten. Even as it was, he missed
complete success only by a hair’s breadth. But for the most trivial
coincidence, Jardine’s body might be lying undiscovered in that cellar
at this very moment.”
“That’s a comfortable thought for you, Jardine,” my younger colleague
remarked.
“Very,” I agreed, with a slight shudder at the recollection of that
horrible death-trap. “But what was the coincidence? I never understood
how you came to be in that most unlikely place at that very opportune
moment.”
“It was the merest chance,” replied Thorndyke. “I happened to have
called in at the hospital that evening, and, having an hour to spare,
it occurred to me to look in at Batson’s and see if you were getting
on quite happily in your new command. As I had induced you to take
charge, I felt some sort of responsibility in the matter.”
“It was exceedingly kind of you, sir,” said I.
“Not in the least,” said Thorndyke. “It was just the ordinary
solicitude of the teacher for a promising pupil. Well, when I arrived
at the house, I found that excellent girl, Maggie, standing on the
doorstep, looking anxiously up and down the street. It seemed that, on
reflection, she was still convinced that the works were untenanted,
and the oddity of the whole set of circumstances had made her somewhat
uneasy. I waited a few minutes and disposed of one or two patients,
and then, as you did not return, after what seemed an unaccountably
long absence, I very easily induced her to show me where the place
was; and when we arrived there, the deserted aspect of the building
and the notice board over the gate seemed rather to justify her
anxiety.
“I rang the bell loudly, as I daresay you know, but I did not wait
very long. When I failed to get any response, I too, became
suspicious, and proceeded without delay to pick the lock of the
wicket--and it is most fortunate that the wicket was unprovided with a
bolt, which would have delayed me very considerably. You know the
rest. When I shouted your name you must have tried to answer, for I
caught a kind of muffled groan and the sound of tapping, which guided
me and Maggie to your prison. But it was a near thing; for, when I
opened the cellar door, you fell out quite unconscious and accompanied
by a gush of carbon dioxide that was absolutely stifling.”
“Yes,” said I, “it was touch and go. A few minutes more and it would
have been all up with me. I realized that as soon as I recovered
consciousness. But I couldn’t, for the life of me understand why
anybody should want to murder me, and I am not so very clear on the
subject now. I really knew nothing about Maddock.”
“You knew more than anyone else knew, and he thought you knew more
than you did. But perhaps it would be instructive to review the case
in detail.”
“It would be very instructive to me,” said Jervis, “for I don’t, even
now, see how you managed to bridge over those gaps that stopped me in
my attempts to make a hypothesis that covered all the circumstances.”
“Very well,” said Thorndyke, “then we will begin at the beginning; and
the beginning, for me, was the finding of Jardine, as I have described
it. Here was a pretty plain case of attempted murder, evidently
premeditated and apparently committed by some person who had access to
these works; evidently, also, conceived and planned with considerable
knowledge, skill and foresight, though with how much foresight I did
not realize until I had heard Jardine’s story. When I had Jardine’s
account of the affair, I saw that the crime had been planned with
quite remarkable ingenuity and judgment; in fact, the circumstances
had been so carefully considered, and contingencies so well provided
for that, but for a single tactical error the plan would have
succeeded. That error was in making the pretended emergency a surgical
injury. If the letter to Jardine had stated that a man was in a fit,
instead of suffering from a wound, our friend would have had no need
to call at the surgery for appliances but would have gone straight to
the works. And there, in all probability, his body would still be
lying, for no one would have known whither he had gone; and even if
his body had been accidentally discovered, all traces of the means by
which he had been killed would probably have been removed. There would
have been nothing to show that he had not strayed into the deserted
factory and turned on the gas himself; indeed, it is pretty certain
that matters would have been so arranged as to convey that impression
to the persons who made the discovery.”
“There was the letter,” said I. “That would have given things away to
some extent.”
“But you would have had it in your pocket, from which he would, of
course, have removed it. We may be sure that he had not overlooked the
letter. It was the need for surgical appliances that he had