The blue scarab
I handed him the pistol and made my way out into Fetter Lane and so
down to Fleet Street, where at the post office my urgent message was
sent off to Scotland Yard immediately. In a few minutes the reply came
that Superintendent Miller had not yet left and that he was starting
immediately for Clifford’s Inn. A quarter of an hour later he drove up
in a hansom to the Fetter Lane gate and I conducted him up to the
second floor, where Thorndyke introduced him to his prisoner and
witnessed the official arrest.
“You don’t see how I arrived at it,” said Thorndyke as we walked
homeward after returning the key. “Well, I am not surprised. The
initial evidence was of the weakest; it acquired significance only by
cumulative effect. Let us reconstruct it as it developed.
“The derelict hat was, of course, the starting point. Now the first
thing one noticed was that it appeared to have had more than one
owner. No man would buy a new hat that fitted so badly as to need all
that packing; and the arrangement of the packing suggested a
long-headed man wearing a hat that had belonged to a man with a short
head. Then there were the suggestions offered by the slips of paper.
The fragmentary address referred to a place the name of which ended in
‘n’ and the remainder was evidently ‘London, W.C.’ Now what West
Central place names end in ‘n’? It was not a street, a square or a
court, and Barbican is not in the W.C. district. It was almost
certainly one of the half-dozen surviving Inns of Court or Chancery.
But, of course, it was not necessarily the address of the owner of the
hat.
“The other slip of paper bore the end of a word ending in ‘el,’ and
another word ending in ‘eep,’ and connected with these were quantities
stated in ounces and pennyweights troy weight. But the only persons
who use troy weight are those who deal in precious metals. I inferred
therefore that the ‘el’ was part of ‘lemel,’ and that the ‘eep’ was
part of ‘floor-sweep,’ an inference that was supported by the
respective quantities, three ounces five pennyweights of lemel and
nine and a half ounces of floor-sweep.”
“What is lemel?” I asked.
“It is the trade name for the gold or silver filings that collect in
the ‘skin’ of a jeweller’s bench. Floor-sweep is, of course, the dust
swept up on the floor of a jeweller’s or goldsmith’s workshop. The
lemel is actual metal, though not of uniform fineness, but the ‘sweep’
is a mixture of dirt and metal. Both are saved and sent to the
refiners to have the gold and silver extracted.
“This paper, then, was connected either with a goldsmith or a gold
refiner--who might call himself an assayist or a metallurgist. The
connection was supported by the leaf of a price list of gas stoves. A
metallurgist would be kept well supplied with lists of gas stoves and
furnaces. The traces of lead in the dust from the hat gave us another
straw blowing in the same direction, for gold assayed by the dry
process is fused in the cupel furnace with lead; and as the lead
oxidizes and the oxide is volatile, traces of lead would tend to
appear in the dust deposited in the laboratory.
“The next thing to do was to consult the directory; and when I did so,
I found that there were no goldsmiths in any of the Inns and only one
assayist--Mr. Highley, of Clifford’s Inn. The probabilities,
therefore, slender as they were, pointed to some connection between
this stray hat and Mr. Highley. And this was positively all the
information that we had when we came out this afternoon.
“As soon as we got to Clifford’s Inn, however, the evidence began to
grow like a rolling snowball. First there was Larkin’s contribution;
and then there was the discovery of the missing hat. Now, as soon as I
saw that hat my suspicions fell upon the man upstairs. I felt a
conviction that the hat had been left there purposely and that the
letter to Larkin was just a red herring to create a false trail.
Nevertheless, the presence of that hat completely confirmed the other
evidence. It showed that the apparent connection was a real
connection.”
“But,” I asked, “what made you suspect the man upstairs?”
“My dear Jervis!” he exclaimed. “Consider the facts. That hat was
enough to hang the man who left it there. Can you imagine this astute,
wary villain making such an idiot’s mistake--going away and leaving
the means of his conviction for any one to find? But you are
forgetting that whereas the missing hat was found on the first floor,
the murderer’s hat was connected with the second floor. The evidence
suggested that it was Highley’s hat. And now, before we go on to the
next stage, let me remind you of those finger-prints. Miller thought
that their rough appearance was due to the surface on which they had
been made. But it was not. They were the prints of a person who was
suffering from ichthyosis, palmar psoriasis or some dry dermatitis.
“There is one other point. The man we were looking for was a murderer.
His life was already forfeit. To such a man another murder more or
less is of no consequence. If this man, having laid the false trail,
had determined to take sanctuary in Highley’s rooms, it was probable
that he had already got rid of Highley. And remember that a
metallurgist has unrivalled means of disposing of a body; for not only
is each of his muffle furnaces a miniature crematorium, but the very
residue of a cremated body--bone-ash--is one of the materials of his
trade.
“When we went upstairs, I first took the reading of the gas meter and
ascertained that a large amount of gas had been used recently. Then,
when we entered I took the opportunity to shake hands with Mr.
Sherwood, and immediately I became aware that he suffered from a
rather extreme form of ichthyosis. That was the first point of
verification. Then we discovered that he actually could not
distinguish between iron pyrites and auriferous quartz. He was not a
metallurgist at all. He was a masquerader. Then the bone-ash in the
tub was mixed with fragments of calcined bone, and the cupels all
showed similar fragments. In one of them I could see part of the crown
of a tooth. That was pure luck. But observe that by that time I had
enough evidence to justify an arrest. The tooth served only to bring
the affair to a crisis; and his response to my unspoken accusation
saved us the trouble of further search for confirmatory evidence.”
“What is not quite clear to me,” said I, “is when and why he made away
with Highley. As the body has been completely reduced to bone-ash,
Highley must have been dead at least some days.”
“Undoubtedly,” Thorndyke agreed. “I take it that the course of events
was somewhat like this: The police have been searching eagerly for
this man, and every new crime must have made his position more
unsafe--for a criminal can never be sure that he has not dropped some
clue. It began to be necessary for him to make some arrangements for
leaving the country and meanwhile to have a retreat in case his
whereabouts should chance to be discovered. Highley’s chambers were
admirable for both purposes. Here was a solitary man who seldom had a
visitor, and who would probably not be missed for some considerable
time; and in those chambers were the means of rapidly and completely
disposing of the body. The mere murder would be a negligible detail to
this ruffian.
“I imagine that Highley was done to death at least a week ago, and
that the murderer did not take up his new tenancy until the body was
reduced to ash. With that large furnace in addition to the small ones,
this would not take long. When the new premises were ready, he could
make a sham disappearance to cover his actual flight later; and you
must see how perfectly misleading that sham disappearance was. If the
police had discovered that hat in the empty room only a week later,
they would have been certain that he had escaped to one of the Baltic
ports; and while they were following his supposed tracks, he could
have gone off comfortably via Folkestone or Southampton.”
“Then you think he had only just moved into Highley’s rooms?”
“I should say he moved in last night. The murder of Byramji was
probably planned on some information that the murderer had picked up,
and as soon as it was accomplished he began forthwith to lay down the
false tracks. When he reached his rooms yesterday afternoon, he must
have written the letter to Larkin and gone off at once to the East End
to post it. Then he probably had his bushy hair cut short and shaved
off his beard and moustache--which would render him quite
unrecognizable by Larkin--and moved into Highley’s chambers, from
which he would have quietly sallied forth in a few days’ time to take
his passage to the Continent. It was quite a good plan and but for the
accident of taking the wrong hat, would almost certainly have
succeeded.”
Once every year, on the second of August, there is delivered with
unfailing regularity at No. 5a, King’s Bench Walk, a large box of
carved sandal-wood filled with the choicest Trichinopoly cheroots and
accompanied by an affectionate letter from our late client, Mr.
Byramji. For the second of August is the anniversary of the death (in
the execution shed at Newgate) of Cornelius Barnett, otherwise known
as the “New Jersey Sphinx.”
IV.
THE TOUCHSTONE
It happened not uncommonly that the exigencies of practice committed
my friend Thorndyke to investigations that lay more properly within
the province of the police. For problems that had arisen as secondary
consequences of a criminal act could usually not be solved until the
circumstances of that act were fully elucidated, and, incidentally,
the identity of the actor established. Such a problem was that of the
disappearance of James Harewood’s will, a problem that was propounded
to us by our old friend, Mr. Marchmont, when he called on us, by
appointment, with the client of whom he had spoken in his note.
It was just four o’clock when the solicitor arrived at our chambers,
and as I admitted him he ushered in a gentlemanly-looking man of about
thirty-five, whom he introduced as Mr. William Crowhurst.
“I will just stay,” said he, with an approving glance at the
tea-service on the table, “and have a cup of tea with you, and give
you an outline of the case. Then I must run away and leave Mr.
Crowhurst to fill in the details.”
He seated himself in an easy chair within comfortable reach of the
table, and as Thorndyke poured out the tea, he glanced over a few
notes scribbled on a sheet of paper.
“I may say,” he began, stirring his tea thoughtfully, “that this is a
forlorn hope. I have brought the case to you, but I have not the
slightest expectation that you will be able to help us.”
“A very wholesome frame of mind,” Thorndyke commented with a smile. “I
hope it is that of your client also.”
“It is indeed,” said Mr. Crowhurst; “in fact, it seems to me a waste
of your time to go into the matter. Probably you will think so too,
when you have heard the particulars.”
“Well, let us hear the particulars,” said Thorndyke. “A forlorn hope
has, at least, the stimulating quality of difficulty. Let us have your
outline sketch, Marchmont.”
The solicitor, having emptied his cup and pushed it towards the tray
for replenishment, glanced at his notes and began:
“The simplest way in which to present the problem is to give a brief
recital of the events that have given rise to it, which are these: The
day before yesterday--that is last Monday--at a quarter to two in the
afternoon, Mr. James Harewood executed a will at his house at
Merbridge, which is about two miles from Welsbury. There were present
four persons: two of his servants, who signed as witnesses, and the
two principal beneficiaries--Mr. Arthur Baxfield, a nephew of the
testator, and our friend here, Mr. William Crowhurst. The will was a