The blue scarab
been deciphered only a few years previously. After a time he resumed
communication with his wife, but never made any statement as to the
mystery of his brother’s disappearance. A few months before his death
he visited his home in disguise and he then handed to his wife a
little sealed packet which was to be delivered to his only son,
William, on his attaining the age of twenty-one. That packet contained
the scarab and the letter which you have taken from the envelope.”
“Am I to read it?” asked Thorndyke.
“Certainly, if you think it worth while,” was the reply.
Thorndyke opened the yellow sheet of paper and, glancing through the
brown and faded writing, read aloud:
_Cairo_, 4_th March_, 1833.
_My dear Son,_
_I am sending you, as my last gift, a valuable scarab, and a few words
of counsel on which I would bid you meditate. Believe me, there is
much wisdom in the lore of Old Egypt. Make it your own. Treasure the
scarab as a precious inheritance. Handle it often but show it to none.
Give your Uncle Reuben Christian burial. It is your duty, and you will
have your reward. He robbed your father, but he shall make
restitution._
_Farewell!_
_Your affectionate father,
Silas Blowgrave._
As Thorndyke laid down the letter he looked inquiringly at our client.
“Well,” he said, “here are some plain instructions. How have they been
carried out?”
“They haven’t been carried out at all,” replied Mr. Blowgrave. “As to
his son William, my grandfather, he was not disposed to meddle in the
matter. This seemed to be a frank admission that Silas killed his
brother and concealed the body, and William didn’t choose to reopen
the scandal. Besides, the instructions are not so very plain. It is
all very well to say, ‘Give your Uncle Reuben Christian burial,’ but
where the deuce is Uncle Reuben?”
“It is plainly hinted,” said Thorndyke, “that whoever gives the body
Christian burial will stand to benefit, and the word ‘restitution’
seems to suggest a clue to the whereabouts of the jewels. Has no one
thought it worth while to find out where the body is deposited?”
“But how could they?” demanded Blowgrave. “He doesn’t give the
faintest clue. He talks as if his son knew where the body was. And
then, you know, even supposing Silas did not take the jewels with him,
there was the question, whose property were they? To begin with, they
were pretty certainly stolen property, though no one knows where they
came from. Then Reuben apparently got them from Silas by fraud, and
Silas got them back by robbery and murder. If William had discovered
them he would have had to give them up to Reuben’s sons, and yet they
weren’t strictly Reuben’s property. No one had an undeniable claim to
them, even if they could have found them.”
“But that is not the case now,” said Miss Blowgrave.
“No,” said Mr. Blowgrave, in answer to Thorndyke’s look of inquiry.
“The position is quite clear now. Reuben’s grandson, my cousin Arthur,
has died recently, and as he had no children, he has dispersed his
property. The old farm-house and the bulk of his estate he has left to
a nephew, but he made a small bequest to my daughter and named her as
the residuary legatee. So that whatever rights Reuben had to the
jewels are now vested in her, and on my death she will be Silas’s
heir, too. As a matter of fact,” Mr. Blowgrave continued, “we were
discussing this very question on the night of the robbery. I may as
well tell you that my girl will be left pretty poorly off when I go,
for there is a heavy mortgage on our property and mighty little
capital. Uncle Reuben’s jewels would have made the old home secure for
her if we could have laid our hands on them. However, I mustn’t take
up your time with our domestic affairs.”
“Your domestic affairs are not entirely irrelevant,” said Thorndyke.
“But what is it that you want me to do in the matter?”
“Well,” said Blowgrave, “my house has been robbed and my premises set
fire to. The police can apparently do nothing. They say there is no
clue at all unless the robbery was committed by somebody in the house,
which is absurd, seeing that the servants were all engaged in putting
out the fire. But I want the robber traced and punished, and I want to
get the scarab back. It may be intrinsically valueless, as M. Fouquet
said, but Silas’s testamentary letter seems to indicate that it had
some value. At any rate, it is an heirloom, and I am loath to lose it.
It seems a presumptuous thing to ask you to investigate a trumpery
robbery, but I should take it as a great kindness if you would look
into the matter.”
“Cases of robbery pure and simple,” replied Thorndyke, “are rather
alien to my ordinary practice, but in this one there are certain
curious features that seem to make an investigation worth while. Yes,
Mr. Blowgrave, I will look into the case, and I have some hope that we
may be able to lay our hands on the robber, in spite of the apparent
absence of clues. I will ask you to leave both these letters for me to
examine more minutely, and I shall probably want to make an inspection
of the premises--perhaps to-morrow.”
“Whenever you like,” said Blowgrave. “I am delighted that you are
willing to undertake the inquiry. I have heard so much about you from
my friend Stalker, of the Griffin Life Assurance Company, for whom you
have acted on several occasions.”
“Before you go,” said Thorndyke, “there is one point that we must
clear up. Who is there besides yourselves that knows of the existence
of the scarab and this letter and the history attaching to them?”
“I really can’t say,” replied Blowgrave. “No one has seen them but my
cousin Arthur. I once showed them to him, and he may have talked about
them in the family. I didn’t treat the matter as a secret.”
* * * * * * *
When our visitors had gone we discussed the bearings of the case.
“It is quite a romantic story,” said I, “and the robbery has its
points of interest, but I am rather inclined to agree with the
police--there is mighty little to go on.”
“There would have been less,” said Thorndyke, “if our sporting friend
hadn’t been so pleased with himself. That typewritten letter was a
piece of gratuitous impudence. Our gentleman overrated his security
and crowed too loud.”
“I don’t see that there is much to be gleaned from the letter, all the
same,” said I.
“I am sorry to hear you say that, Jervis,” he exclaimed, “because I
was proposing to hand the letter over to you to examine and report
on.”
“I was only referring to the superficial appearances,” I said hastily.
“No doubt a detailed examination will bring something more distinctive
into view.”
“I have no doubt it will,” he said, “and as there are reasons for
pushing on the investigation as quickly as possible, I suggest that
you get to work at once. I shall occupy myself with the old letter and
the envelope.”
On this I began my examination without delay, and as a preliminary I
proceeded to take a facsimile photograph of the letter by putting it
in a large printing-frame with a sensitive plate and a plate of clear
glass. The resulting negative showed not only the typewritten
lettering, but also the watermark and wire lines of the paper, and a
faint grease spot. Next I turned my attention to the lettering itself,
and here I soon began to accumulate quite a number of identifiable
peculiarities. The machine was apparently a Corona, fitted with the
small “Elite” type, and the alignment was markedly defective. The
“lower case”--or small--“a” was well below the line, although the
capital “A” appeared to be correctly placed; the “u” was slightly
above the line, and the small “m” was partly clogged with dirt.
Up to this point I had been careful to manipulate the letter with
forceps (although it had been handled by at least three persons, to my
knowledge), and I now proceeded to examine it for finger-prints. As I
could detect none by mere inspection, I dusted the back of the paper
with finely-powdered fuchsin, and distributed the powder by tapping
the paper lightly. This brought into view quite a number of
finger-prints, especially round the edges of the letter, and though
most of them were very faint and shadowy, it was possible to make out
the ridge pattern well enough for our purpose. Having blown off the
excess of powder, I took the letter to the room where the large
copying camera was set up, to photograph it before developing the
finger-prints on the front. But here I found our laboratory assistant,
Polton, in possession, with the sealed envelope fixed to the copying
easel.
“I shan’t be a minute, sir,” said he. “The doctor wants an enlarged
photograph of this seal. I’ve got the plate in.”
I waited while he made his exposure and then proceeded to take the
photograph of the letter, or rather of the finger-prints on the back
of it. When I had developed the negative I powdered the front of the
letter and brought out several more finger-prints--mostly thumbs this
time. They were a little difficult to see where they were imposed on
the lettering, but, as the latter was bright blue and the fuchsin
powder was red, this confusion disappeared in the photograph, in which
the lettering was almost invisible while the finger-prints were more
distinct than they had appeared to the eye. This completed my
examination, and when I had verified the make of typewriter by
reference to our album of specimens of typewriting, I left the
negatives for Polton to dry and print and went down to the
sitting-room to draw up my little report. I had just finished this and
was speculating on what had become of Thorndyke, when I heard his
quick step on the stair and a few moments later he entered with a roll
of paper in his hand. This he unrolled on the table, fixing it open
with one or two lead paper-weights, and I came round to inspect it,
when I found it to be a sheet of the Ordnance map on the scale of
twenty-five inches to the mile.
“Here is the Blowgraves’ place,” said Thorndyke, “nearly in the middle
of the sheet. This is his house--Shawstead Manor--and that will
probably be the outbuilding that was on fire. I take it that the house
marked Dingle Farm is the one that Uncle Reuben occupied.”
“Probably,” I agreed. “But I don’t see why you wanted this map if you
are going down to the place itself to-morrow.”
“The advantage of a map,” said Thorndyke, “is that you can see all
over it at once and get the lie of the land well into your mind; and
you can measure all distances accurately and quickly with a scale and
a pair of dividers. When we go down to-morrow, we shall know our way
about as well as Blowgrave himself.”
“And what use will that be?” I asked. “Where does the topography come
into the case?”
“Well, Jervis,” he replied, “there is the robber, for instance; he
came from somewhere and he went somewhere. A study of the map may give
us a hint as to his movements. But here comes Polton ‘with the
documents,’ as poor Miss Flite would say. What have you got for us,
Polton?”
“They aren’t quite dry, sir,” said Polton, laying four large bromide
prints on the table. “There’s the
image: img_017
caption:
Thorndyke’s tracing of the impression of the Scarab
enlargement of the seal--ten by eight, mounted--and three unmounted
prints of Dr. Jervis’s.”
Thorndyke looked at my photographs critically. “They’re excellent,
Jervis,” said he. “The finger-prints are perfectly legible, though
faint. I only hope some of them are the right ones. That is my left
thumb. I don’t see yours. The small one is presumably Miss
Blowgrave’s. We must take her finger-prints to-morrow, and her
father’s, too. Then we shall know if we have got any of the robber’s.”