The magic casket
ascertained--commanded a clear view of the street from end to end. It
was a rather shabby, neglected little house, as might have been
expected, and our examination of it yielded, so far as I could see,
only a single fact of any significance: which was that there appeared
to be no connexion whatever between the blood-stain on the study floor
and the train of large spots from the middle of the hall to the street
door. And on this piece of evidence--definitely unfavourable from our
point of view--Thorndyke concentrated his attention when he had made a
preliminary survey.
Closely followed by the watchful inspector, he browsed round the
little room, studying every inch of the floor between the blood-stain
and the door. The latter he examined minutely from top to bottom,
especially as to the handle, the jambs, and the lintel. Then he went
out into the hall, scrutinizing the floor inch by inch, poring over
the walls and even looking behind the framed prints that hung on them.
A reflector lamp suspended by a nail on the wall received minute and
prolonged attention, as did also a massive lamp-hook screwed into one
of the beams of the low ceiling, of which Thorndyke remarked as he
stooped to pass under it, that it must have been fixed there by a
dwarf.
“Yes,” the inspector agreed, “and a fool. A swinging lamp hung on that
hook would have blocked the whole fairway. There isn’t too much room
as it is. What a pity we weren’t a bit more careful about footprints
in this place. There are plenty of tracks of wet feet here on this
oil-cloth; faint, but you could have made them out all right if they
hadn’t been all on top of one another. There’s Mr. Foxley’s, the
girl’s, mine, and the men who carried out the body, but I’m hanged if
I can tell which is which. It’s a regular mix up.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “it is all very confused. But I notice one rather odd
thing. There are several faint traces of a large right foot, but I
can’t see any sign of the corresponding left foot. Can you?”
“Perhaps this is it,” said Thorndyke, pointing to a large, vague oval
mark. “I have noticed that it seems to occur in some sort of connexion
with the big right foot; but I must admit that it is not a very
obvious footprint.”
“I shouldn’t have taken it for a footprint at all, or at any rate, not
a human footprint. It is more like the spoor of some big animal.”
“It is,” Thorndyke agreed; “but whatever it is, it seems to have been
here before any of the others arrived. You notice that wherever it
occurs, it seems to have been trodden on by some of the others.”
“Yes, I had noticed that, and the same is true of the big right foot,
so it seems probable that they are connected, as you say. But I am
hanged if I can make anything of it. Can you, inspector?”
The inspector shook his head. He could not recognize the mark as a
footprint, but he could see very plainly that he had been a fool not
to have taken more care to protect the floor.
When the examination of the hall was finished, Thorndyke opened the
door and looked at the big, flat doorstep.
“What was the weather like, here, on Wednesday evening?” he asked.
“Showery,” the inspector replied; “and there were one or two heavy
showers during the night. You were noticing that there are no
blood-tracks on the doorstep. But there wouldn’t be in any case; for
if a man had come out of this door dropping blood, the blood would
have dropped on wet stone and got washed away at once.”
Thorndyke admitted the truth of this; and so another item of
favourable evidence was extinguished. The overwhelming probability
that the blood in the hall was that of some person other than the
deceased remained undisturbed; and I could not see that a single fact
had been elicited by our inspection of the house that was in any way
helpful to our client. Indeed, it appeared to me that there was
absolutely no case for the defence, and I even asked myself whether we
were not, in fact, merely trying to fudge up a defence for an
obviously guilty man. It was not like Thorndyke to do that. But how
did the case stand? There was a suggestion of suicide, but a clear
possibility of homicide. There was strong evidence that a second
person had been in the house, and that person appeared to have
received a wound. But a wound suggested a struggle; and the servant’s
evidence was to the effect that when she left the house a violent
altercation was in progress. The deceased was never again seen alive;
and the other party to the quarrel had been found with property of the
dead man in his possession. Moreover, there was a clear motive for the
crime, stupid as that crime was. For the dead man had threatened to
revoke his will; but as he had presumably not done so, his death left
the will still operative. In short, everything pointed to the guilt of
our client, Robert Fletcher.
I had just reached this not very gratifying conclusion when a
statement of Thorndyke’s shattered my elaborate summing up into
impalpable fragments.
“I suppose, sir,” said the inspector, “there isn’t anything that you
would care to tell us, as you are for the defence. But we are not
hostile to Fletcher. In fact, he hasn’t been charged. He is only being
detained in custody until we have heard what turns up at the inquest.
I know you have examined that blood that Mr. Foxley took, and
Fletcher’s blood, too, and you’ve seen the premises. We have given all
the facilities that we could, and if you could give us any sort of
hint that might be useful--well, I should be very much obliged.”
Thorndyke reflected for a few moments. Then he replied:
“There is no reason for secrecy in regard to you, inspector, who have
been so helpful and friendly, so I will be quite frank. I have
examined both samples of blood and Fletcher’s, and I have inspected
the premises, and what I am able to say definitely is this: the blood
in the hall is not the blood of the deceased----”
“Ah!” exclaimed the inspector, “I was afraid it wasn’t.”
“And it is not the blood of Robert Fletcher.”
“Isn’t it now! Well, I am glad to hear that.”
“Moreover,” continued Thorndyke, “it was shed well after nine o’clock
at night, probably not earlier than midnight.”
“There, now!” the inspector exclaimed, with an admiring glance at
Thorndyke, “just think of that. See what it is to be a man of science!
I suppose, sir, you couldn’t give us any sort of description of the
person who dropped that blood in the hall?”
Staggered as I had been by Thorndyke’s astonishing statements, I could
not repress a grin at the inspector’s artless question. But the grin
faded rather abruptly as Thorndyke replied in matter-of-fact tones:
“A detailed description is, of course, impossible. I can only sketch
out the probabilities. But if you should happen to meet with a
negro--a tall negro with a bandaged head or a contused wound of the
scalp and a swollen leg--you had better keep your eye on him. The leg
which is swollen is probably the left.”
The inspector was thrilled; and so was I, for that matter. The thing
was incredible; but yet I knew that Thorndyke’s amazing deductions
were the products of perfectly orthodox scientific methods. Only I
could form no sort of guess as to how they had been arrived at. A
negro’s blood is no different from any other person’s, and certainly
affords no clue to his height or the condition of his legs. I could
make nothing of it; and as the dialogue and the inspector’s
note-takings brought us to the little town hall in which the inquest
was to be held, I dismissed the puzzle until such time as Thorndyke
chose to solve it.
When we entered the town hall we found everything in readiness for the
opening of the proceedings. The jury were already in their places and
the coroner was just about to take his seat at the head of the long
table. We accordingly slipped on to the two chairs that were found for
us by the inspector, and the latter took his place behind the jury and
facing us. Near to him Mr. Foxley and Miss Markham were seated, and
evidently hailed our arrival with profound relief, each of them
smiling us a silent greeting. A professional-looking man sitting next
to Thorndyke I assumed to be the medical witness, and a rather
good-looking young man who sat apart with a police constable I
identified as Robert Fletcher.
The evidence of the “common” witnesses who deposed to the general
facts, told us nothing that we did not already know, excepting that it
was made clear that Fletcher had left his uncle’s house not later than
seven o’clock and that thereafter until the following morning his
whereabouts were known. The medical witness was cautious, and kept an
uneasy eye on Thorndyke. The wound which caused the death of deceased
might have been inflicted by himself or by some other person. He had
originally given the probable time of death as six or seven o’clock on
Wednesday evening. He now admitted--in reply to a question from
Thorndyke--that he had not taken the temperature of the body, and that
the rigidity and other conditions were not absolutely inconsistent
with a considerably later time of death. Death might even have
occurred after midnight.
In spite of this admission, however, the sum of the evidence tended
strongly to implicate Fletcher, and one or two questions from jurymen
suggested a growing belief in his guilt. I had no doubt whatever that
if the case had been put to the jury at this stage, a unanimous
verdict of “wilful murder” would have been the result. But, as the
medical witness returned to his seat, the coroner fixed an inquisitive
eye on Thorndyke.
“You have not been summoned as a witness, Dr. Thorndyke,” said he,
“but I understand that you have made certain investigations in this
case. Are you able to throw any fresh light on the circumstances of
the death of the deceased, Joseph Riggs?”
“Yes,” Thorndyke replied. “I am in a position to give important and
material evidence.”
Thereupon he was sworn, and the coroner, still watching him curiously,
said:
“I am informed that you have examined samples of the blood of deceased
and the blood which was found in the hall of deceased’s house. Did you
examine them, and if so, what was the object of the examination?”
“I examined both samples and also samples of the blood of Robert
Fletcher. The object was to ascertain whether the blood on the hall
floor was the blood of the deceased or of Robert Fletcher.”
The coroner glanced at the medical witness, and a faint smile appeared
on the face of each.
“And did you,” the former asked in a slightly ironical tone, “form any
opinion on the subject?”
“I ascertained definitely that the blood in the hall was neither that
of the deceased nor that of Robert Fletcher.”
The coroner’s eyebrows went up, and once more he glanced significantly
at the doctor.
“But,” he demanded incredulously, “is it possible to distinguish the
blood of one person from that of another?”
“Usually it is not, but in certain exceptional cases it is. This
happened to be an exceptional case.”
“In what respect?”
“It happened,” Thorndyke replied, “that the person whose blood was
found in the hall suffered from the parasitic disease known as
filariasis. His blood was infested with swarms of a minute worm named
_Filaria nocturna_. I have here,” he continued, taking out of his
research-case the two bottles and the three boxes, “thirty-six mounted
specimens of this blood, and in every one of them one or more of the
parasites is to be seen. I have also thirty-six mounted specimens each
of the blood of the deceased and the blood of Robert Fletcher. In not
one of these specimens is a single parasite to be found. Moreover, I
have examined Robert Fletcher and the body of the deceased, and can
testify that no sign of filarial disease was to be discovered in