A silent witness
been strained by a violent effort to rotate from right to left some
hard, metallic body, three quarters of an inch wide, with sharp
corners and apparently square in section; some body, in fact, that in
shape, in size and apparently in material, was identical with the
square of the cock on one of the liquid gas bottles; which appeared to
have been connected with a screw thread and had clearly required great
force to turn it with this inadequate appliance.
“The evidence collected from the loft, suggesting that a large case
had been moved in and out and that a gas cylinder had been opened, you
will say was of the flimsiest. And so it was. But the effects of
evidence are cumulative. To estimate the value of these observations
made in the loft, you must add them to the facts just obtained
concerning the artist himself, the position of his house and the date
on which he vacated it; and these coincidences and agreements must be
added to--or, more strictly, multiplied into--the body of coincidences
and agreements which I have already described.
“But the evidence collected at the house was the least important part
of the day’s ‘catch.’ On returning to Jardine’s rooms I ventured to
borrow the sketch and took it home with me; and when I compared the
thumb-print on it with the photograph of the thumb-print on the
letter--employing the excellent method of comparison that is in use at
Scotland Yard--there could be no possible doubt (disregarding for the
moment, the chances of forgery) that they were the prints of one and
the same thumb.
“Here, then, at last I had stepped out of the region of mere
hypothesis. Here was an item of positive evidence, and one, moreover,
of high probative value. It proved, beyond any reasonable doubt, the
existence of some connection between the house on the Heath and the
factory in Norton Street; and it established a strong presumption that
the artist and the man at the factory were the same person; the weak
point in this being the absence of proof that the thumb-print on the
painting was made by the artist.
“And here, Jardine, I would draw your attention to the interesting way
in which, when a long train of hypothetical reasoning has at length
elicited an actual, demonstrable truth, that truth instantly reacts on
the hypothesis, lifting it as a whole on to an entirely different
plane of probability. I may compare the effect to that of a crystal,
dropped into a super-saturated solution of a salt, such as sodium
sulphate. So long as it is at rest, the solution remains a clear
liquid; but drop into it the minutest crystal of its own salt, and, in
a few moments the entire liquid has solidified into a mass of
crystals.
“So it was in the present case. In the instant when it became an
established fact that the house at Hampstead and the factory in Norton
Street had been occupied by the same person, the entire sequence of
events which I had hypothetically constructed, sprang from the plane
of mere conceivability to that of actual probability. It was now more
likely than unlikely that the unknown cleric had been murdered, that
his body had been conveyed to the artist’s house, that it had there
been frozen, transferred to the factory, preserved there for some
weeks, passed over the wall to the Samways’ house, and finally
cremated under the name of Septimus Maddock.
“All that now remained to be done was the verification and
identification of the body. As to the first, I examined the will at
Somerset House and found it, as the American detectives suspected, a
mere notification to the New York authorities that Septimus Maddock
was dead. I wrote to the detective agency and in due course came
O’Donnell with the answers to my questions; from which we learned for
certain that the artist was Septimus Maddock and that the assumed
peculiarity of the hands consisted of brachydactylia. And then came
the good Father Humperdinck to enable us to give a name to the body
and to furnish us with that unlooked for means of identification.
Henceforward, all was plain sailing with only one possible source of
failure; the possibility that the bullet might have been subsequently
extracted. But this was highly improbable. We knew that the wound had
healed completely, and it was pretty certain that the bullet was lying
quietly encysted or embedded in the bone. Still, I will confess that I
have never in my life been more relieved than I was when my eyes
lighted on that dent in the ilium with the stain of lead oxide round
it.”
“So I can imagine,” said Jervis. “It was a triumph; and you deserved
it. I have never known even my revered senior to work out the theory
of a crime more neatly or with less positive matter to work from. And
I suppose you have a pretty clear and connected idea of the actual
sequence of events.”
“I think so,” replied Thorndyke, “although much of it is necessarily
conjectural. I take it that Maddock, while hiding in Bruges under the
name of Burton, made the acquaintance of Reinhardt, and saw in the
rich, friendless, eccentric bachelor a suitable subject for a crime
which he had probably already considered in general terms. I should
think that they were probably somewhat alike in appearance and that
the idea of personation was first suggested by the circumstance that
they both wore gloves habitually. Maddock will have learned of
Reinhardt’s intended visit to England and immediately begun his
preparations. His scheme--and a most ingenious one it was, I must
confess--was clearly to cause Reinhardt to disappear in one locality
and produce his body after a considerable interval in another at some
distance; and the house on the Heath was apparently taken with this
object and to be near Reinhardt’s haunts. I take it, that on the night
of the murder, Reinhardt had an appointment to visit him at that
house, but that, having learned at Miss Vyne’s of the sudden illness
of Brother Bartholomew, he suddenly altered his plans and refused to
go. Then Maddock--who had probably waited for him on the road--seeing
his scheme on the point of being wrecked, walked with him as he was
going home and took the risk of killing him in Millfield Lane. The
risk was not great, considering the time of night and the solitary
character of the place, and the distance from the house was not too
great for a strong man, as Maddock seems to have been, to carry the
body.
“Death was almost certainly produced by a stab in the back; and
Maddock was probably just about to carry the body away when destiny,
in the form of Jardine, appeared. Then Maddock must have lurked,
probably behind the fence which had the large hole in it, until
Jardine went away, when he must instantly have picked up the body,
carried it down the lane, pushed it over the fence--detaching the
reliquary as he did so--carried it away to the house, stripped it and
proceeded at once to freeze it, having provided a bottle of the gas in
readiness.
“The next morning he will have gone to Marchmont’s office--probably
dressed in Reinhardt’s clothes, from thence to Charing Cross, and,
with Reinhardt’s luggage, gone straight on to Paris, leaving the body
packed in an abundance of the carbonic acid snow. At Paris he will
have made his arrangements with Desiré and then disappeared,
returning in disguise to England to carry out the rest of the plan.
And a wonderfully clever plan it was, and most ingeniously and
resolutely executed. If it had succeeded--and it was within a hair’s
breath of succeeding--the hunted criminal, Maddock, would have been
beyond the reach of Justice for ever, and the fictitious Reinhardt
might have lived out his life in luxury and absolute security.”
As Thorndyke concluded, he rose from his chair, and, stepping over to
a cabinet, drew from some inner recess a cigar of melanotic complexion
and repulsive aspect.
Jervis looked at it and chuckled.
“Thorndyke’s one dissipation,” said he. “At the close of every
successful case he proceeds, as a sort of thanksgiving ceremony, to
funk us out of these chambers with the smoke of a Trichinopoly
cheroot. But listen! Don’t light it yet, Thorndyke. Here comes some
harmless and inoffensive stranger.”
Thorndyke paused with the cigar in his fingers. A quick step ascended
the stairs and then came a sharp, official rat-tat from the little
brass knocker. Thorndyke laid the cigar on the mantelpiece and strode
over to the door. I saw him take in a telegram, open it, glance at the
paper and dismiss the messenger. Then, closing the door, he came back
to the fireside with the “flimsy” in his hand.
“There, Jardine,” said he, laying it on my knee; “there is your order
of release.”
I picked up the paper and read aloud its curt message.
“Maddock arrested Folkestone now in custody Bow Street.
“Miller.”
“That means to say,” said Thorndyke, “that the halter is already
around his neck. I think I may light my Trichinopoly now.”
And he did so.
There is little more to tell. This has been a history of coincidences
and one more coincidence brings it to a close. The very day on which
my formal engagement to Sylvia was made public, chanced to be the day
on which the execution of Septimus Maddock was described in the
papers. On that day, too, the portrait of poor Letitia, painted by
that skilful and murderous hand, was placed in the handsome ebony
frame that I had caused to be made for it. As I write these closing
words, it hangs before me, flanked on either side by the little jar of
violets that are renewed religiously from day to day by my wife or me.
The pale, inscrutable eyes look out on me, her friend whom she loved
so faithfully and who so little merited her love; but as I look into
them, the picture fades and shows me the same face glorified, waxen,
pallid, drowsy-eyed, peaceful and sweet--the dead face of the woman
who gave her heart’s blood as the price of my ransom, and who was
fated then to pass--out of my life indeed, but out of my heart’s
shrine and my most loving remembrance, never.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. footstep/foot-step, hair’s
breadth/hairs-breadth, inadmissable/inadmissible, runaway/run-away,
etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Punctuation: fix some quotation mark pairings/nestings, some missing
periods and commas, etc.
Change five instances of “the Samway’s house” to “the Samways’ house.”
[Chapter I]
(“Which way were you going when you came on the body.”) change the
period to a question mark.
[Chapter III]
Change “Quite the orthodox _get up_.” to _get-up_.
[Chapter IV]
(“No facial signs? Nothing unusual in his _color_ or expression?”) to
_colour_.
(“By _jove_!” exclaimed Batson, “this business has upset) to _Jove_.
[Chapter V]
“Camden Town is not a very attractive _neighborhood_” to
_neighbourhood_.
“her appearance suggested was strength--sheer, muscular, strength”
delete the last comma.
[Chapter VI]
(“I suppose I can do the surgery work?” said I.) change the question
mark to a comma.
“and a man named _O’Conner_ confirmed his certificate after examining”
to _O’Connor_.
“and bring in a crowd of beastly _reports_ humming about the place” to
_reporters_.
[Chapter VII]
(“The worthy Gill,” said _Jarvis_, “seems to have been) to _Jervis_.
[Chapter VIII]
“letting one’s fancy furnish them with one’s own household _gods_” to
_goods_.
“shut in by these high fences. I heard quick footsteps behind me”
change the period to a comma.
“I can tell you much about this man excepting _the_ he was” to _that_.
[Chapter IX]
“The next question is, how was the body taken away.” change the period
to a question mark.
[Chapter X]
“scope of the acquaintance; on which, Miss Vyne remarked that” delete
the comma.