The magic casket
Miller as he drew the elephant’s tail out of a drawer in the dressing
chest.
“This--er--article,” said Miller, “belonged to Mr. Herrington, and was
stolen from his premises on the night of the murder.”
Essien shook his head emphatically.
“No,” he replied. “You are wrong. I stole nothing, and I did not
murder Mr. Herrington. Listen to me and I will tell you all about it.”
Miller administered the usual caution and the prisoner continued:
“This elephant-brush is one of many things stolen, years ago, from the
king of Bekwè. Some of those things--most of them--have been
restored, but this could not be traced for a long time. At last it
became known to me that Mr. Herrington had it, and I wrote to him
asking him to give it up and telling him who I was--I am the eldest
living son of the king’s sister, and therefore, according to our law,
the heir to the kingdom. But he would not give it up or even sell it.
Then, as I am a student of the Inn, I took these chambers above his,
intending, when I had an opportunity, to go in and take possession of
my uncle’s property. The opportunity came that night that you have
spoken of. I was coming up the stairs to my chambers when, as I passed
his door, I heard loud voices inside as of people quarrelling. I had
just reached my own door and opened it when I heard his door open, and
then a great uproar and the sound of a struggle. I ran down a little
way and looked over the banisters, and then I saw him thrusting a man
across the landing and down the lower stairs. As they disappeared, I
ran down, and finding his door ajar, I went in to recover my property.
It took me a little time to find it, and I had just taken it from the
nail and was going out with it when, at the door, I met Mr. Herrington
coming in. He was very excited already, and when he saw me he seemed
to go mad. I tried to get past him, but he seized me and dragged me
back into the room, wrenching the thing out of my hand. He was very
violent. I thought he wanted to kill me, and I had to struggle for my
life. Suddenly he let go his hold of me, staggered back a few paces,
and then fell on the floor. I stooped over him, thinking that he was
taken ill, and wondering what I had better do. But soon I saw that he
was not ill; he was dead. Then I was very frightened. I picked up the
elephant-brush and put it back into its case, and I went out very
quietly, shut the door, and ran up to my rooms. That is what happened.
There was no robbery and murder.”
“Well,” said Miller, as the prisoner and his escort disappeared
towards the gate, “I suppose, in a technical sense, it is murder, but
they are hardly likely to press the charge.”
“I don’t think it is even technically,” said Thorndyke. “My feeling is
that he will be acquitted if he is sent for trial. Meanwhile, I take
it that my client, Godfrey Herrington, will be released from custody
at once.”
“Yes, doctor,” replied Miller, “I will see to that now. He has had
better luck than he deserved, I suspect, in having his case looked
after by you. I don’t fancy he would have got an acquittal if he had
gone for trial.”
Thorndyke’s forecast was nearly correct, but there was no acquittal,
since there was no trial. The case against Kwaku Essien never got
farther than the Grand Jury.
VIII.
THE PATHOLOGIST TO THE RESCUE
“I hope,” said I, as I looked anxiously out of our window up King’s
Bench Walk, “that our friend, Foxley, will turn up to time, or I shall
lose the chance of hearing his story. I must be in court by half-past
eleven. The telegram said that he was a parson, didn’t it?”
“Yes,” replied Thorndyke. “The Reverend Arthur Foxley.”
“Then perhaps this may be he. There is a parson crossing from the Row
in this direction, only he has a girl with him. He didn’t say anything
about a girl, did he?”
“No. He merely asked for the appointment. However,” he added, as he
joined me at the window and watched the couple approaching with their
eyes apparently fixed on the number above our portico, “this is
evidently our client, and punctual to the minute.”
In response to the old-fashioned flourish on our little knocker, he
opened the inner door and invited the clergyman and his companion to
enter; and while the mutual introductions were in progress, I looked
critically at our new clients. Mr. Foxley was a typical and favourable
specimen of his class: a handsome, refined, elderly gentleman, prim as
to his speech, suave and courteous in bearing, with a certain engaging
simplicity of manner which impressed me very favourably. His companion
I judged to be a parishioner, for she was what ladies are apt to
describe as “not quite”; that is to say, her social level appeared to
appertain to the lower strata of the middle-class. But she was a fine,
strapping girl, very sweet-faced and winsome, quiet and gentle in
manner and obviously in deep trouble, for her clear grey eyes--fixed
earnestly, almost devouringly, on Thorndyke--were reddened and
swimming with unshed tears.
“We have sought your aid, Dr. Thorndyke,” the clergyman began, “on the
advice of my friend, Mr. Brodribb, who happened to call on me on some
legal business. He assured me that you would be able to solve our
difficulties if it were humanly possible, so I have come to lay those
difficulties before you. I pray to God that you may be able to help
us, for my poor young friend here, Miss Markham, is in a most terrible
position, as you will understand when I tell you that her future
husband, a most admirable young man named Robert Fletcher, is in the
custody of the police, charged with robbery and murder.”
Thorndyke nodded gravely, and the clergyman continued:
“I had better tell you exactly what has happened. The dead man is one
Joseph Riggs, a maternal uncle of Fletcher’s, a strange, eccentric
man, solitary, miserly, and of a violent, implacable temper. He was
quite well-to-do, though penurious and haunted constantly by an absurd
fear of poverty. His nephew, Robert, was apparently his only known
relative, and, under his will, was his sole heir. Recently, however,
Robert has become engaged to my friend, Miss Lilian, and this
engagement was violently opposed by his uncle, who had repeatedly
urged him to make, what he called a profitable marriage. For Miss
Lilian is a dowerless maiden--dowerless save for those endowments with
which God has been pleased to enrich her, and which her future husband
has properly prized above mere material wealth. However, Riggs
declared, in his brutal way, that he was not going to leave his
property to the husband of a shop-woman, and that Robert might look
out for a wife with money or be struck out of his will.
“The climax was reached yesterday when Robert, in response to a
peremptory summons, went to see his uncle. Mr. Riggs was in a very
intractable mood. He demanded that Robert should break off his
engagement unconditionally and at once, and when Robert bluntly
insisted on his right to choose his own wife the old man worked
himself up into a furious rage, shouting, cursing, using the most
offensive language and even uttering threats of personal violence.
Finally, he drew his gold watch from his pocket and laid it with its
chain on the table; then, opening a drawer, he took out a bundle of
bearer bonds and threw them down by the watch.
“‘There, my friend,’ said he, ‘that is your inheritance. That is all
you will get from me, living or dead. Take it and go, and don’t let me
ever set eyes on you again.’
“At first Robert refused to accept the gift, but his uncle became so
violent that eventually, for peace’ sake, he took the watch and the
bonds, intending to return them later, and went away. He left at
half-past five, leaving his uncle alone in the house.”
“How was that?” Thorndyke asked. “Was there no servant?”
“Mr. Riggs kept no resident servant. The young woman who did his
housework came at half-past eight in the morning and left at half-past
four. Yesterday she waited until five to get tea ready, but then, as
the uproar in the sitting-room was still unabated, she thought it best
to go. She was afraid to go in to lay the tea-things.
“This morning, when she arrived at the house, she found the front door
unlocked, as it always was during the day. On entering, her attention
was at once attracted by two or three little pools of blood on the
floor of the hall, or passage. Somewhat alarmed by this, she looked
into the sitting-room, and finding no one there, and being impressed
by the silence in the house, she went along the passage to a back
room--a sort of study or office, which was usually kept locked when
Mr. Riggs was not in it. Now, however, it was unlocked and the door
was ajar; so having first knocked and receiving no answer, she pushed
open the door and looked in; and there, to her horror, she saw her
employer lying on the floor, apparently dead, with a wound on the side
of his head and a pistol on the floor by his side.
“Instantly she turned and rushed out of the house, and she was running
up the street in search of a policeman when she encountered me at a
corner and burst out with her dreadful tidings. I walked with her to
the police station, and as we went she told me what had happened on
the previous afternoon. Naturally, I was profoundly shocked and also
alarmed, for I saw that--rightly or wrongly--suspicion must
immediately fall on Robert Fletcher. The servant, Rose Turnmill, took
it for granted that he had murdered her master; and when we found the
station inspector and Rose had repeated her statement to him, it was
evident that he took the same view.
“With him and a sergeant, we went back to the house; but on the way we
met Mr. Brodribb, who was staying at the ‘White Lion’ and had just
come out for a walk. I told him, rapidly, what had occurred and begged
him to come with us, which, with the inspector’s consent, he did; and
as we walked I explained to him the awful position that Robert
Fletcher might be placed in, and asked him to advise me what to do.
But, of course, there was nothing to be said or done until we had seen
the body and knew whether any suspicion rested on Robert.
“We found the man Riggs lying, as Rose had said. He was quite dead,
cold and stiff. There was a pistol wound on the right temple, and a
pistol lay on the floor at his right side. A little blood--but not
much--had trickled from the wound and lay in a small pool on the
oil-cloth. The door of an iron safe was open and a bunch of keys hung
from the lock; and on a desk one or two share certificates were spread
out. On searching the dead man’s pockets it was found that the gold
watch which the servant told us he usually carried was missing, and
when Rose went to the bedroom to see if it was there, it was nowhere
to be found.
“Apart from the watch, however, the appearances suggested that the man
had taken his own life. But against this view was the blood on the
hall floor. The dead man appeared to have fallen at once from the
effects of the shot, and there had been very little bleeding. Then how
came the blood in the hall? The inspector decided that it could not
have been the blood of the deceased; and when we examined it and saw
that there were several little pools and that they seemed to form a
track towards the street door, he was convinced that the blood had
fallen from some person who had been wounded and was escaping from the
house. And, under the circumstances, he was bound to assume that that
person was Robert Fletcher; and on that assumption, he despatched the
sergeant forthwith to arrest Robert.
“On this I held a consultation with Mr. Brodribb, who pointed out that
the case turned principally on the blood in the hall. If it was the
blood of deceased, and the absence of the watch could be explained, a