The blue scarab
been conducted in a very casual manner. And just look at those
signatures! Never twice alike. The banks hate that sort of thing,
naturally. When a customer signs in the signature book he has given a
specimen for reference and he ought to keep to it strictly. A man who
varies his signature is asking for trouble.”
“He is,” Thorndyke agreed, as he rapidly entered a few particulars of
the cheques in his note-book; “particularly in the case of a firm with
a staff of clerks.”
He stood up, and having pocketed his notebook, held out his hand.
“I am very much obliged to you, Superintendent,” he said.
“Seen all that you wanted to see?” Miller asked.
“Thank you, yes,” Thorndyke replied.
“I should very much like to know what you _have_ seen,” Miller
rejoined; to which my colleague replied by waving his hand towards the
cheques, as he turned to go.
“I don’t quite see the bearing of those cheques on our inquiry,” I
said, as we took our way homeward along Cheapside.
“It is not very direct,” Thorndyke replied; “but the cheques help us
to understand the characters of these two men and their relations with
one another; which may be very necessary when we come to the inquest.”
During the following day I saw very little of Thorndyke, for our
excursion to Dartford had put our work somewhat in arrear and we had
to secure a free day for the inquest on the morrow. We met at dinner
after the day’s work, but, beyond settling the programme for the next
day, nothing of importance passed with reference to the “Rick Case.”
The opening phases of the inquest, though of thrilling interest to the
numerous spectators and Press men, did not particularly concern us.
The evidence of the rural constable, the farmer and the police
inspector--with whom Thorndyke had a little confidential talk and
apparently surprised the officer considerably--merely amplified what
we knew already. Of more interest was that of a local dentist who
testified to having examined the dental plate and to having compared
it with the skull of the dead man. “The plate and the jaw of
deceased,” he said, “agree completely. The jaw contains five natural
teeth in two groups, and the plate has two spaces which exactly
correspond to those two groups of teeth. I have tried the plate on the
jaw and have no doubt whatever that it belonged to deceased.”
“That is a very important fact,” Thorndyke remarked to me as the
witness retired. “It is the indispensable link in the chain.”
“But surely it was obvious?” said I.
“No doubt,” he replied. “But now it is proved and in evidence.”
I was somewhat puzzled by Thorndyke’s remark, but the appearance of a
new witness forbade discussion. Mr. Arthur Gerrard was an
alert-looking, rather tall man, with bushy, Mephistophelian eyebrows
and a small, dark moustache, who wore a pair of large bifocal
spectacles, and to whom a small mole at the corner of the mouth
imparted the effect of a permanent one-sided smile.
“It was on your information,” said the coroner, “that the identity of
the deceased was established.”
“Yes,” replied the witness, who spoke with a slight, but perceptible,
Irish accent. “I saw the description in the papers of the things that
had been found in the rick and at once recognized them as Reed’s. I
knew deceased intimately and had often noticed his peculiar
watch-chain and the little china mascot and seen him smoking the clay
pipe with his initials scratched on it; and I knew that he wore false
teeth.”
“Did you meet him frequently?”
“Oh, yes. For more than a year he was my partner in business, and we
remained friends after I had dissolved the partnership.”
“Why did you dissolve the partnership?”
“I had to. Reed was impossible in a business sense. He gambled
incessantly in stocks and I had to pay his losses. I lent him, for
this purpose, at one time and another, over two thousand pounds. He
gave me bills for the loans, but he was never able to meet them, and
in the end, when we dissolved, I got him to insure his life for three
thousand pounds and to draw up a document making his debt to me the
first charge on his estate in the event of his death.”
“Had you ever any reason to suppose that he contemplated suicide?”
“None whatever. After he left me, he entered into partnership with a
Mr. Walter Jarman, and whenever I met him, he seemed to be quite happy
and contented, though I gathered that he was still gambling a good
deal. I saw him a week ago to-day and he then told me that he proposed
to take a short yachting holiday with his partner, who owned a small
cutter. That was the last time that I saw him alive.”
As the witness was about to retire, Thorndyke rose, and having
obtained the coroner’s permission to cross-examine, asked:
“You have spoken of a yacht. Do you know what her name is and where
she has been kept lately?”
“Her name is the _Moonbeam_, and I believe Jarman kept her somewhere
in the Thames, but I don’t know where.”
“And as to Jarman himself: what do you know about him, as to his
character, for instance?”
“I knew him very slightly. He appeared to be rather a dissipated man.
Drank a good deal, I should say, and I think he was a bit of a
gambler.”
“Do you know if he was a heavy smoker?”
“He didn’t smoke at all, but he was an inveterate snuff-taker.”
At this point the foreman of the jury interposed with the audible
remark that “he didn’t see what this had to do with the inquiry,” and
the coroner looked dubiously at Thorndyke; but as my colleague sat
down, the objection was not pursued.
The next witness was the caretaker of the building in which Reed and
Jarman’s office was situated. His evidence was to the effect that on
the previous Monday evening at about eight o’clock, he saw Mr. Jarman
let himself into the office with his key. “I don’t know how long he
stayed there,” he continued, in reply to the coroner’s question. “I
had finished my work and was going up to my rooms at the top of the
building. I didn’t see him again.”
“Did you notice anything unusual in his appearance?” asked Thorndyke,
rising to cross-examine. “Was his face at all flushed, for instance?”
“I couldn’t say. I was going up the stairs and I just looked back over
my shoulder when I heard him. His face was turned away from me.”
“But you had no difficulty in recognizing him?”
“No: I should have known him a mile off. He had his overcoat on, and
it is a very peculiar overcoat--light brown with a sort of greenish
check. You couldn’t possibly mistake it.”
“What should you say was Mr. Jarman’s height?”
“About five feet nine or ten, I should say.”
Here the foreman of the jury again interposed. “Aren’t we wasting
time, sir?” he inquired impatiently. “These details about Jarman may
be very important to the police, but they don’t concern us. We are
inquiring into the death of Mr. Reginald Reed.”
The coroner looked deprecatingly at Thorndyke and remarked: “There is
some truth in what the foreman says.”
“I submit, sir,” replied Thorndyke, “that there is no truth in it at
all. We are not inquiring into the death of Reginald Reed, but into
that of a man whose remains were found in a burned rick.”
“But the body has been identified as that of Reginald Reed.”
“Then,” said Thorndyke, “I submit that it has been wrongly identified.
I suggest that the body is that of Walter Jarman and I am prepared to
produce witnesses who will prove that it is.”
“But,” exclaimed the coroner, “we have just heard the evidence of a
witness who states that he saw Jarman alive eighteen hours after the
rick was fired.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Thorndyke. “We have heard the witness
say that he saw Jarman’s overcoat. He expressly stated that he did not
see the man’s face.”
The coroner hastily conferred with the jury--who openly scoffed at
Thorndyke’s suggestion--and then said: “I find what you say perfectly
incredible and so do the jury. It is utterly irreconcilable with the
facts. You had better call your witnesses and let us dispose of this
extraordinary suggestion.”
Thorndyke bowed to the coroner and called Mr. Andrew Darton; whereupon
a middle-aged man of markedly professional aspect came forward and,
having been sworn, gave evidence as follows:
“I am a dental surgeon. A little over two years ago, Mr. Walter Jarman
was under my care. I extracted some loose teeth from both jaws and
made him two plates--an upper and a lower.”
“Could you identify those plates?”
“Yes. I have with me the plaster model on which those plates were
made.” He opened a bag and produced a plaster cast of a pair of jaws
fitted with a brass hinge so that the jaws could be opened and shut.
On the upper jaw were two groups of teeth separated by a space of bare
gums, while the lower jaw bore a single group of four front teeth.
“This model,” the witness explained, “is an exact replica of the
patient’s jaws, and the two plates were actually moulded on it.” He
picked up the dental plate from the table, and amidst a hush of
breathless expectancy, opened the mouth of the model and applied the
plate to the upper jaw. At a glance, it was obvious that it fitted
perfectly. The two groups of the plaster teeth slipped exactly into
the spaces on the plate, making a complete row of teeth. Then the
witness covered the lower gums with strips of plastic wax and taking
the loose teeth from the table, attached them to the wax; and again
the correspondence was evident. The teeth thus applied exactly filled
the vacant spaces.
“Can you now identify that plate?” Thorndyke asked.
“Yes,” was the reply. “I am quite certain that this is the plate I
made for Mr. Jarman and that those loose teeth are from his lower
plate.”
Thorndyke looked at the coroner, who nodded emphatically. “This
evidence seems perfectly conclusive,” he admitted. “What do you say,
gentlemen?” he added, turning to the jury.
There was no doubt as to their sentiments. With one voice they
declared their complete conviction. Had they not seen the
demonstration with their own eyes?
“And now, sir,” said the coroner, “as you appear to know more than any
one else about this case, and as it is perfectly incomprehensible to
me, and probably also to the jury, I suggest that you give us an
explanation. And you had better make it a sworn statement, so that it
can go into the depositions.”
“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed, “especially as I have some evidence to give.”
He was accordingly sworn and then proceeded to make the following
statement:
“The first thing that struck me on reading the report of this case,
was the very remarkable character of the objects found in the ashes of
the rick. They included objects composed of platinum, of pipe-clay, of
iron and of porcelain--all substances practically indestructible by
fire. And these imperishable objects were all highly distinctive and
easily identifiable, and two of them actually bore the initials of
their owner. There was almost a suggestion of the body having been
prepared for identification after burning. This mere suggestion,
however, gave place to definite suspicion when I saw the dental plate.
That plate presented a most striking discrepancy. Here it is, sir, and
you see that it is a clean polished plate of red vulcanite, with not a
trace of stain or discoloration. But associated with that plate were
two clay pipes. Now the man who smokes a clay pipe is not only--as a
rule--a heavy smoker, but he smokes strong and dark-coloured tobacco.
And if he wears a dental plate, that plate becomes encrusted with a
black deposit which is very difficult to remove. There is, as you see,
no trace of any such deposit or of any tobacco stain in the
interstices of the teeth. It appeared to be almost certainly the plate
of a non-smoker. But if that were so, it could not be Reed’s. But it