The magic casket
a few moments later, to glance out of the window, I saw him walking
slowly across the court, apparently conferring with the laundress and
the porter.
As soon as we were alone, Badger assumed a friendly and confidential
manner and proceeded to give advice.
“I gather that Mr. Bidwell wants you to investigate this case, but I
don’t fancy it is in your line at all. It is just a matter of tracing
that stranger and getting hold of him. Then we shall have to find out
what property there was on these premises. The laundress says that
there is nothing missing, but of course no one supposes that the man
came here to take the furniture. It is most probable that the motive
was robbery of some kind. There’s no sign of anything broken open; but
then, there wouldn’t be, as the keys were available.”
Nevertheless he prowled round the room, examining every receptacle
that had a lock and trying the drawers of the writing table and of
what looked like a file cabinet.
“You will have your work cut out,” I remarked, “to trace that man. The
porter’s description was pretty vague.”
“Yes,” he replied; “there isn’t much to go on. That’s where you come
in,” he added with a grin, “with your microscopes and air-pumps and
things. Now if Dr. Thorndyke was here he would just sweep a bit of
dust from the floor and collect any stray oddments and have a good
look at them through his magnifier, and then we should know all about
it. Can’t you do a bit in that line? There’s plenty of dust on the
floor. And here’s a pin. Wonderful significant thing is a pin. And
here’s a wax vesta; now, that ought to tell you quite a lot. And here
is the end of a leather boot-lace--at least, that is what it looks
like. That must have come out of somebody’s boot. Have a look at it,
doctor, and see if you can tell me what kind of boot it came out of
and whose boot it was.”
He laid the fragment, and the match, and the pin, on the table and
grinned at me somewhat offensively. Inwardly I resented his
impertinence--perhaps the more so since I realized that Thorndyke
would probably not have been so completely gravelled as I undoubtedly
was. But I considered it politic to take his clumsy irony in good
part, and even to carry on his elephantine joke. Accordingly, I picked
up the three “clues,” one after the other, and examined them gravely,
noting that the supposed boot-lace appeared to be composed of
whalebone or vulcanite.
“Well, inspector,” I said, “I can’t give you the answer off-hand.
There’s no microscope here. But I will examine these objects at my
leisure and let you have the information in due course.”
With that I wrapped them with ostentatious care in a piece of
note-paper and bestowed them in my pocket, a proceeding which the
inspector watched with a sour smile.
“I’m afraid you’ll be too late,” said he. “Our men will probably pick
up the tracks while you are doing the microscope stunt. However, I
mustn’t stay here any longer. We can’t do anything until we know what
valuables there were on the premises; and I must have the body removed
and examined by the police surgeon.”
He moved towards the door, and as I had no further business in the
rooms, I followed, and leaving him to lock up, I took my way back to
our chambers.
When Thorndyke returned to town a couple of days later, I mentioned
the case to him. But what Badger had said appeared to be true. It was
a case of ascertaining the identity of the stranger who had visited
the dead man on that fatal night, and this seemed to be a matter for
the police rather than for us. So the case remained in abeyance until
the evening following the inquest, when Mr. Bidwell called on us,
accompanied by a Mr. Carston, whom he introduced as an old friend of
his and of Herrington’s family.
“I have called,” he said, “to bring you a full report of the evidence
at the inquest. I had a shorthand writer there, and this is a typed
transcript of his notes. Nothing fresh transpired beyond what Dr.
Jervis knows and has probably told you, but I thought you had better
have all the information in writing.”
“There is no clue as to who the suspicious visitor was, I suppose?”
said Thorndyke.
“Not the slightest,” replied Bidwell. “The porter’s description is all
they have to go on, and of course it would apply to hundreds of
persons. But, in connexion with that, there is a question on which I
should like to take your opinion. Poor Herrington once mentioned to me
that he was subjected to a good deal of annoyance by a certain person
who from time to time applied to him for financial help. I gathered
that some sort of claim was advanced, and that the demands for money
were more or less of the nature of blackmail. Giles didn’t say who the
person was, but I got the impression that he was a relative. Now, my
friend Carston, who attended the inquest with me, noticed that the
porter’s description of the stranger would apply fairly well to a
nephew of Giles’s, whom he knows slightly and who is a somewhat shady
character; and the question that Carston and I have been debating is
whether these facts ought to be communicated to the police. It is a
serious matter to put a man under suspicion on such very slender data;
and yet----”
“And yet,” said Carston, “the facts certainly fit the circumstances.
This fellow--his name is Godfrey Herrington--is a typical
ne’er-do-weel. Nobody knows how he lives. He doesn’t appear to do any
work. And then there is the personality of the deceased. I didn’t know
Giles Herrington very well, but I knew his brother, Sir Gilbert,
pretty intimately, and if Giles was at all like him, a catastrophe
might easily have occurred.”
“What was Sir Gilbert’s special characteristic?” Thorndyke asked.
“Unamiability,” was the reply. “He was a most cantankerous,
overbearing man, and violent at times. I knew him when I was at the
Colonial Office with him, and one of his official acts will show the
sort of man he was. You may remember it, Bidwell--the Bekwè affair.
There was some trouble in Bekwè, which is one of the minor kingdoms
bordering on Ashanti, and Sir Gilbert was sent out as a special
commissioner to settle it. And settle it he did with a vengeance. He
took up an armed force, deposed the king of Bekwè, seized the royal
stool, message stick, state sword, drums, and the other insignia of
royalty, and brought them away with him. And what made it worse was
that he treated these important things as mere loot: kept some of them
himself and gave away others as presents to his friends.
“It was an intolerably high-handed proceeding, and it caused a rare
outcry. Even the Colonial Governor protested, and in the end the
Secretary of State directed the Governor to reinstate the king and
restore the stolen insignia, as these things went with the royal title
and were necessary for the ceremonies of re-instatement or the
accession of a new king.”
“And were they restored?” asked Bidwell.
“Most of them were. But just about this time Gilbert died, and as the
whereabouts of one or two of them were unknown, it was impossible to
collect them then. I don’t know if they have been found since.”
Here Thorndyke led Mr. Carston back to the point from which he had
digressed.
“You are suggesting that certain peculiarities of temper and
temperament on the part of the deceased might have some bearing on the
circumstances of his death.”
“Yes,” said Carston. “If Giles Herrington was at all like his
brother--I don’t know whether he was----” here he looked inquiringly
at Bidwell, who nodded emphatically.
“I should say he was, undoubtedly,” said he. “He was my friend, and I
was greatly attached to him; but to others, I must admit, he must have
appeared a decidedly morose, cantankerous, and irascible man.”
“Very well,” resumed Carston. “If you imagine this cadging,
blackmailing wastrel calling on him and trying to squeeze him, and
then you imagine Herrington refusing to be squeezed and becoming
abusive and even violent, you have a fair set of antecedents for--for
what, in fact, did happen.”
“By the way,” said Thorndyke, “what exactly did happen, according to
the evidence?”
“The medical evidence,” replied Bidwell, “showed that the immediate
cause of death was heart failure. There were marks of fingers on the
throat, as you know, and various other bruises. It was evident that
deceased had been violently assaulted, but death was not directly due
to the injuries.”
“And the finding of the jury?” asked Thorndyke.
“Wilful murder, committed by some person unknown.”
“It doesn’t appear to me,” said I, “that Mr. Carston’s suggestion has
much present bearing on the case. It is really a point for the
defence. But we are concerned with the identity of the unknown man.”
“I am inclined to agree with Dr. Jervis,” said Bidwell. “We have got
to catch the hare before we go into culinary details.”
“My point is,” said Carston, “that Herrington’s peculiar temper
suggests a set of circumstances that would render it probable that his
visitor was his nephew Godfrey.”
“There is some truth in that,” Thorndyke agreed. “It is highly
speculative, but a reasonable speculation cannot be disregarded when
the known facts are so few. My feeling is that the police ought to be
informed of the existence of this man and his possible relations with
the deceased. As to whether he is or is not the suspected stranger,
that could be settled at once if he were confronted with the night
porter.”
“Yes, that is true,” said Bidwell. “I think Carston and I had better
call at Scotland Yard and give the Assistant Commissioner a hint on
the subject. It will have to be a very guarded hint, of course.”
“Was the question of motive raised?” Thorndyke asked. “As to robbery,
for instance.”
“There is no evidence of robbery,” replied Bidwell. “I have been
through all the receptacles in the chambers, and everything seems
intact. The keys were in poor Giles’s pocket and nothing seems to have
been disturbed; indeed, it doesn’t appear that there was any portable
property of value on the premises.”
“Well,” said Thorndyke, “the first thing that has to be done is to
establish the identity of the nocturnal visitor. That is the business
of the police. And if you call and tell them what you have told us,
they will, at least, have something to investigate. They should have
no difficulty in proving either that he is or is not the man whom the
porter let in at the gate; and until they have settled that question,
there is no need for us to take any action.”
“Exactly,” said Bidwell, rising and taking up his hat. “If the police
can complete the case, there is nothing for us to do. However, I will
leave you the report of the inquest to look over at your leisure, and
will keep you informed as to how the case progresses.”
When our two friends had gone, Thorndyke sat for some time turning
over the sheets of the report and glancing through the depositions of
the witnesses. Presently he remarked:
“If it turns out that this man, Godfrey Herrington, is not the man
whom the porter let in, the police will be left in the air. Apart from
Bidwell’s purely speculative suggestion, there seems to be no clue
whatever to the visitor’s identity.”
“Badger would like to hear you say that,” said I. “He was very
sarcastic respecting our methods of research,” and here I gave him an
account of my interview with the inspector, including the “clues” with
which he had presented me.
“It was like his impudence,” Thorndyke commented smilingly, “to pull
the leg of my learned junior. Still, there was a germ of sense in what
he said. A collection of dust from the floor of that room, in which
two men had engaged in a violent struggle, would certainly yield
traces of both of them.”
“Mixed up with the traces of a good many others,” I remarked.