The magic casket
verdict of suicide could be accepted. But if it was the blood of some
other person, that fact would point to murder. The question, he said,
would have to be settled, if possible, and his advice to me, if I
believed Robert to be innocent--which, from my knowledge of him, I
certainly did--was this: Get a couple of small, clean, labelled
bottles from a chemist and--with the inspector’s consent--put in one a
little of the blood from the hall and in the other some of the blood
of the deceased. Seal them both in the inspector’s presence and mine
and take them up to Dr. Thorndyke. If it is possible to answer the
question, Are they or are they not from the same person? he will
answer it.
“Well, the inspector made no objection, so I did what he advised. And
here are the specimens. I trust they may tell us what we want to
know.”
Here Mr. Foxley took from his attaché-case a small cardboard box, and
opening it, displayed two little wide-mouthed bottles carefully packed
in cotton wool. Lifting them out tenderly, he placed them on the table
before Thorndyke. They were both neatly corked, sealed--with
Brodribb’s seal, as I noticed--and labelled; the one inscribed “Blood
of Joseph Riggs,” and the other “Blood of unknown origin,” and both
signed “Arthur Foxley” and dated. At the bottom of each was a small
mass of gelatinous blood-clot.
Thorndyke looked a little dubiously at the two bottles, and addressing
the clergyman, said:
“I am afraid Mr. Brodribb has rather overestimated our resources.
There is no known method by which the blood of one person can be
distinguished with certainty from that of another.”
“Dear, dear!” exclaimed Mr. Foxley. “How disappointing! Then these
specimens are useless, after all?”
“I won’t say that; but it is in the highest degree improbable that
they will yield any information. You must build no expectations on
them.”
“But you will examine them and see if anything is to be gleaned,” the
parson urged, persuasively.
“Yes, I will examine them. But you realize that if they should yield
any evidence, that evidence might be unfavourable?”
“Yes; Mr. Brodribb pointed that out, but we are willing to take the
risk, and so, I may say, is Robert Fletcher, to whom I put the
question.”
“Then you have seen Mr. Fletcher since the discovery?”
“Yes, I saw him at the police station after his arrest. It was then
that he gave me--and also the police--the particulars that I have
repeated to you. He had to make a statement, as the dead man’s watch
and the bonds were found in his possession.”
“With regard to the pistol. Has it been identified?”
“No. It is an old-fashioned derringer which no one has ever seen
before, so there is no evidence as to whose property it was.”
“And as to those share certificates which you spoke of as lying on the
desk. Do you happen to remember what they were?”
“Yes, they were West African mining shares; Abusum Pa-pa was the name,
I think.”
“Then,” said Thorndyke,” Mr. Riggs had been losing money. The Abusum
Pa-pa Company has just gone into liquidation. Do you know if anything
had been taken from the safe?”
“It is impossible to say, but apparently not, as there was a good deal
of money in the cash-box, which we unlocked and inspected. But we
shall hear more to-morrow at the inquest, and I trust we shall hear
something there from you. But in any case I hope you will attend to
watch the proceedings on behalf of poor Fletcher. And if possible, to
be present at the autopsy at eleven o’clock. Can you manage that?”
“Yes. And I shall come down early enough to make an inspection of the
premises if the police will give the necessary facilities.”
Mr. Foxley thanked him effusively, and when the details as to the
trains had been arranged, our clients rose to depart. Thorndyke shook
their hands cordially, and as he bade farewell to Miss Markham he
murmured a few words of encouragement. She looked up at him gratefully
and appealingly as she naïvely held his hand.
“You will try to help us, Dr. Thorndyke, won’t you?” she urged. “And
you will examine that blood very, very carefully. Promise that you
will. Remember that poor Robert’s life may hang upon what you can tell
about it.”
“I realize that, Miss Markham,” he replied gently, “and I promise you
that the specimens shall be most thoroughly examined; and further,
that no stone shall be left unturned in my endeavours to bring the
truth to light.”
At his answer, spoken with infinite kindliness and sympathy, her eyes
filled and she turned away with a few broken words of thanks, and the
good clergyman--himself not unmoved by the little episode--took her
arm and led her to the door.
“Well,” I remarked as their retreating footsteps died away, “old
Brodribb’s enthusiasm seems to have let you in for a queer sort of
task; and I notice that you appear to have accepted Fletcher’s
statement.”
“Without prejudice,” he replied. “I don’t know Fletcher, but the
balance of probabilities is in his favour. Still, that blood-track in
the hall is a curious feature. It certainly requires explanation.”
“It does, indeed!” I exclaimed, “and you have got to find the
explanation! Well, I wish you joy of the job. I suppose you will carry
out the farce to the bitter end as you have promised?”
“Certainly,” he replied. “But it is hardly a farce. I should have
looked the specimens over in any case. One never knows what
illuminating fact a chance observation may bring into view.”
I smiled sceptically.
“The fact that you are asked to ascertain is that these two samples of
blood came from the same person. If there are any means of proving
that, they are unknown to me. I should have said it was an
impossibility.”
“Of course,” he rejoined, “you are quite right, speaking academically
and in general terms. No method of identifying the blood of individual
persons has hitherto been discovered. But yet I can imagine the
possibility, in particular and exceptional cases, of an actual,
personal identification by means of blood. What does my learned friend
think?”
“He thinks that his imagination is not equal to the required effort,”
I answered; and with that I picked up my brief bag and went forth to
my duties at the courts.
That Thorndyke would keep his promise to poor Lilian Markham was a
foregone conclusion, preposterous as the examination seemed. But even
my long experience of my colleague’s scrupulous conscientiousness had
not prepared me for the spectacle which met my eyes when I returned to
our chambers. On the table stood the microscope, flanked by three
slide-boxes. Each box held six trays, and each tray held six slides--a
hundred and eight slides in all!
But why three boxes? I opened one. The slides--carefully mounted
blood-films--were labelled “Joseph Riggs.” Those in the second box
were labelled, “Blood from hall floor.” But when I opened the third
box, I beheld a collection of empty slides labelled “Robert Fletcher”!
I chuckled aloud. Prodigious! Thorndyke was going even one better than
his promise. He was not only going to examine--probably had
examined--the two samples produced; he was actually going to collect a
third sample for himself!
I picked out one of Mr. Riggs’s slides and laid it on the stage of the
microscope. Thorndyke seemed to have been using a low-power
objective--the inch-and-a-half. After a glance through this, I swung
round the nose-piece to the high power. And then I got a further
surprise. The brightly-coloured “white” corpuscles showed that
Thorndyke had actually been to the trouble of staining the films with
eosin! Again I murmured, “Prodigious!” and put the slide back in its
box. For, of course, it showed just what one expected: blood--or
rather, broken-up blood-clot. From its appearance, I could not even
have sworn that it was human blood.
I had just closed the box when Thorndyke entered the room. His quick
eye at once noted the changed objective and he remarked:
“I see you have been having a look at the specimens.”
“A specimen,” I corrected. “Enough is as good as a feast.”
“Blessed are they who are easily satisfied,” he retorted; and then he
added: “I have altered my arrangements, though I needn’t interfere
with yours. I shall go down to Southaven to-night; in fact, I am
starting in a few minutes.”
“Why?” I asked.
“For several reasons. I want to make sure of the post-mortem to-morrow
morning, I want to pick up any further facts that are available, and
finally, I want to prepare a set of blood-films from Robert Fletcher.
We may as well make the series complete,” he added with a smile, to
which I replied by a broad grin.
“Really, Thorndyke,” I protested, “I’m surprised at you, at your age,
too. She is a nice girl, but she isn’t so beautiful as to justify a
hundred and eight blood-films.”
I accompanied him to the taxi, followed by Polton, who carried his
modest luggage, and then returned to speculate on his probable plan of
campaign. For, of course, he had one. His purposive, resolute manner
told me that he had seen farther into this case than I had. I accepted
that as natural and inevitable. Indeed, I may admit that my
disrespectful badinage covered a belief in his powers hardly second
even to old Brodribb’s. I was, in fact, almost prepared to discover
that those preposterous blood-films had, after all, yielded some
“illuminating fact” which had sent him hurrying down to Southaven in
search of corroboration.
When I alighted from the train on the following day at a little past
noon, I found him waiting on the platform, ready to conduct me to his
hotel for an early lunch.
“All goes well, so far,” he reported. “I attended the post-mortem, and
examined the wound thoroughly. The pistol was held in the right hand
not more than two inches from the head; probably quite close, for the
skin is scorched and heavily tattooed with black powder grains. I find
that Riggs was right-handed. So the prima facie probabilities are in
favour of suicide; and the recent loss of money suggests a reasonable
motive.”
“But what about that blood in the hall?”
“Oh, we have disposed of that. I completed the blood-film series last
night.”
I looked at him quickly to see if he was serious or only playing a
facetious return-shot. But his face was as a face of wood.
“You are an exasperating old devil, Thorndyke!” I exclaimed with
conviction. Then, knowing that cross-examination would be futile, I
asked:
“What are we going to do after lunch?”
“The inspector is going to show us over ‘the scene of the tragedy,’ as
the newspapers would express it.”
I noted gratefully that he had reserved this item for me, and
dismissed professional topics for the time being, concentrating my
attention on the old-world, amphibious streets through which we were
walking. There is always something interesting in the aspect of a
sea-port town, even if it is only a small one like Southaven.
The inspector arrived with such punctuality that he found us still at
the table and was easily induced to join us with a cup of coffee and
to accept a cigar--administered by Thorndyke, as I suspected, with the
object of hindering conversation. I could see that his interest in my
colleague was intense and not unmingled with awe, a fact which, in
conjunction with the cigar, restrained him from any undue
manifestations of curiosity, but not from continuous, though furtive,
observation of my friend. Indeed, when we arrived at the late Mr.
Riggs’s house, I was secretly amused by the close watch that he kept
on Thorndyke’s movements, unsensational as the inspection turned out
to be.
The house, itself, presented very little of interest excepting its
picturesque, old-world exterior, which fronted on a quiet by-street
and was furnished with a deep bay-window, which--as Thorndyke