With a hideous yell Pratt turned and grappled with his assailant. A powerful man and a competent wrestler, too, he was far more than a match for Pembury unarmed, and, in a moment, he had him by the throat. But Pembury clung to him tightly, and, as they trampled to and fro and round and round, he stabbed again and again with the viciousness of a Scorpion, while Pratt’s cries grew more gurgling and husky. Then they fell heavily to the ground, Pembury underneath. But the struggle was over. With a last bubbling groan, Pratt relaxed his hold and in a moment grew limp and inert. Pembury pushed him off and rose, trembling and breathing heavily.
But he wasted no time. There had been more noise than he had bargained for. Quickly stepping up to the hornbeam, he reached up for the tongs. His fingers slid into the looped handles; the tongs grasped the knife, and he lifted it out from its hiding-place and carried it to where the corpse lay, depositing it on the ground a few feet from the body. Then he went back to the tree and carefully pushed the tongs over into the hollow of the crown.
At this moment a woman’s voice sounded shrilly from the top of the avenue.
“Is that you, Mr. Pratt?” it called.
Pembury started and then stepped back quickly, on tiptoe, to the body. For there was the duplicate knife. He must take that away at all costs.
The corpse was lying on its back. The knife was underneath it, driven in to the very haft. He had to use both hands to lift the body, and even then he had some difficulty in disengaging the weapon. And, meanwhile, the voice, repeating its question, drew nearer.
At length he succeeded in drawing out the knife and thrust it into his breast-pocket. The corpse fell back, and he stood up gasping.
“Mr. Pratt! Are you there?” The nearness of the voice startled Pembury, and, turning sharply, he saw a light twinkling between the trees. And then the gates creaked loudly and he heard the crunch of a horse’s hoofs on the gravel.
He stood for an instant bewildered—utterly taken by surprise. He had not reckoned on a horse. His intended flight across the meadows towards Thorpe was now impracticable. If he were overtaken he was lost, for he knew there was blood on his clothes and his hands were wet and slippery—to say nothing of the knife in his pocket.
But his confusion lasted only for an instant. He remembered the oak tree; and, turning out of the avenue, he ran to it, and, touching it as little as he could with his bloody hands, climbed quickly up into the crown. The great horizontal limb was nearly three feet in diameter, and, as he lay out on it, gathering his coat closely round him, he was quite invisible from below.
He had hardly settled himself when the light which he had seen came into full view, revealing a woman advancing with a stable lantern in her hand. And, almost at the same moment, a streak of brighter light burst from the opposite direction. The horseman was accompanied by a man on a bicycle.
The two men came on apace, and the horseman, sighting the woman, called out: “Anything the matter, Mrs. Parton?” But, at that moment, the light of the bicycle lamp fell full on the prostrate corpse. The two men uttered a simultaneous cry of horror; the woman shrieked aloud: and then the horseman sprang from the saddle and ran forward to the body.
“Why,” he exclaimed, stooping over it, “it’s Pratt;” and, as the cyclist came up and the glare of his lamp shone on a great pool of blood, he added: “There’s been foul play here, Hanford.”
Hanford flashed his lamp around the body, lighting up the ground for several yards.
“What is that behind you, O’Gorman?” he said suddenly; “isn’t it a knife?” He was moving quickly towards it when O’Gorman held up his hand.
“Don’t touch it!” he exclaimed. “We’ll put the hounds onto it. They’ll soon track the scoundrel, whoever he is. By God! Hanford, this fellow has fairly delivered himself into our hands.” He stood for a few moments looking down at the knife with something uncommonly like exultation, and then, turning quickly to his friend, said: “Look here, Hanford; you ride off to the police station as hard as you can pelt. It is only three-quarters of a mile; you’ll do it in five minutes. Send or bring an officer and I’ll scour the meadows meanwhile. If I haven’t got the scoundrel when you come back, we’ll put the hounds onto this knife and run the beggar down.”
“Right,” replied Hanford, and without another word he wheeled his machine about, mounted and rode away into the darkness.
“Mrs. Parton,” said O’Gorman, “watch that knife. See that nobody touches it while I go and examine the meadows.”
“Is Mr. Pratt dead, sir?” whimpered Mrs. Parton.
“Gad! I hadn’t thought of that,” said the general. “You’d better have a look at him; but mind! nobody is to touch that knife or they will confuse the scent.”
He scrambled into the saddle and galloped away across the meadows in the direction of Thorpe; and, as Pembury listened to the diminuendo of the horse’s hoofs, he was glad that he had not attempted to escape; for that was the direction in which he had meant to go, and he would surely have been overtaken.
As soon as the general was gone, Mrs. Parton, with many a terror-stricken glance over her shoulder, approached the corpse and held the lantern close to the dead face. Suddenly she stood up, trembling violently, for footsteps were audible coming down the avenue. A familiar voice reassured her.
“Is anything wrong, Mrs. Parton?” The question proceeded from one of the maids who had come in search of the elder woman, escorted by a young man, and the pair now came out into the circle of light.
“Good God!” ejaculated the man. “Who’s that?”
“It’s Mr. Pratt,” replied Mrs. Parton. “He’s been murdered.”
The girl screamed, and then the two domestics approached on tiptoe, staring at the corpse with the fascination of horror.
“Don’t touch that knife,” said Mrs. Parton, for the man was about to pick it up. “The general’s going to put the bloodhounds onto it.”
“Is the general here, then?” asked the man; and, as he spoke, the drumming of hoofs, growing momentarily louder, answered him from the meadow.
O’Gorman reined in his horse as he perceived the group of servants gathered about the corpse. “Is he dead, Mrs. Parton?” he asked.
“I am afraid so, sir,” was the reply.
“Ha! Somebody ought to go for the doctor; but not you, Bailey. I want you to get the hounds ready and wait with them at the top of the avenue until I call you.”
He was off again into the Baysford meadows, and Bailey hurried away, leaving the two women staring at the body and talking in whispers.
Pembury’s position was cramped and uncomfortable. He dared not move, hardly dared to breathe, for the women below him were not a dozen yards away; and it was with mingled feelings of relief and apprehension that he presently saw from his elevated station a group of lights approaching rapidly along the road from Baysford. Presently they were hidden by the trees, and then, after a brief interval, the whirr of wheels sounded on the drive and streaks of light on the tree-trunks announced the new arrivals. There were three bicycles, ridden respectively by Mr. Hanford, a police inspector and a sergeant; and, as they drew up, the general came thundering back into the avenue.
“Is Ellis with you?” he asked, as he pulled up.
“No, sir,” was the reply. “He hadn’t come in from Thorpe when we left. He’s rather late to-night.”
“Have you sent for a doctor?”
“Yes, sir, I’ve sent for Dr. Hills,” said the inspector, resting his bicycle against the oak. Pembury could smell the reek of the lamp as he crouched. “Is Pratt dead?”
“Seems to be,” replied O’Gorman, “but we’d better leave that to the doctor. There’s the murderer’s knife. Nobody has touched it. I’m going to fetch the bloodhounds now.”
“Ah! that’s the thing,” said the inspector. “The man can’t be far away.” He rubbed his hands with a satisfied air as O’Gorman cantered away up the avenue.
In less than a minute there came out from the darkness the deep baying of a hound followed by quick footsteps on the gravel. Then into the circle of light emerged three sinister shapes, loose-limbed and gaunt, and two men advancing at a shambling trot.
“Here, inspector,” shouted the general, “you take one; I can’t hold ‘em both.”
The inspector ran forward and seized one of the leashes, and the general led his hound up to the knife, as it lay on the ground. Pembury, peering cautiously round the bough, watched the great brute with almost impersonal curiosity; noted its high poll, its wrinkled forehead and melancholy face as it stooped to snuff suspiciously at the prostrate knife.
For some moments the hound stood motionless, sniffing at the knife; then it turned away and walked to and fro with its muzzle to the ground. Suddenly it lifted its head, bayed loudly, lowered its muzzle and started forward between the oak and the elm, dragging the general after it at a run.
The inspector next brought his hound to the knife, and was soon bounding away to the tug of the leash in the general’s wake.
“They don’t make no mistakes, they don’t,” said Bailey, addressing the gratified sergeant, as he brought forward the third hound; “you’ll see—” But his remark was cut short by a violent jerk of the leash, and the next moment he was flying after the others, followed by Mr. Hanford.
The sergeant daintily picked the knife up by its ring, wrapped it in his handkerchief and bestowed it in his pocket. Then he ran off after the hounds.
Pembury smiled grimly. His scheme was working out admirably in spite of the unforeseen difficulties. If those confounded women would only go away, he could come down and take himself off while the course was clear. He listened to the baying of the hounds, gradually growing fainter in the increasing distance, and cursed the dilatoriness of the doctor. Confound the fellow! Didn’t he realize that this was a case of life or death?
Suddenly his ear caught the tinkle of a bicycle bell; a fresh light appeared coming up the avenue and then a bicycle swept up swiftly to the scene of the tragedy, and a small elderly man jumped down by the side of the body. Giving his machine to Mrs. Parton, he stooped over the dead man, felt the wrist, pushed back an eyelid, held a match to the eye and then rose. “This is a shocking affair, Mrs. Parton,” said he. “The poor fellow is quite dead. You had better help me to carry him to the house. If you two take the feet I will take the shoulders.”
Pembury watched them raise the body and stagger away with it up the avenue. He heard their shuffling steps die away and the door of the house shut. And still he listened. From far away in the meadows came, at intervals, the baying of the hounds. Other sounds there was none. Presently the doctor would come back for his bicycle, but, for the moment, the coast was clear. Pembury rose stiffly. His hands had stuck to the tree where they had pressed against it, and they were still sticky and damp. Quickly he let himself down to the ground, listened again for a moment, and then, making a small circuit to avoid the lamplight, softly crossed the avenue and stole away across the Thorpe meadows.
The night was intensely dark, and not a soul was stirring in the meadows. He strode forward quickly, peering into the darkness and stopping now and again to listen; but no sound came to his ears, save the now faint baying of the distant hounds. Not far from his house, he remembered, was a deep ditch spanned by a wooden bridge, and towards this he now made his way; for he knew that his appearance was such as to convict him at a glance. Arrived at the ditch, he stooped to wash his hands and wrists; and, as he bent forward, the knife fell from his breast-pocket into the shallow water at the margin. He groped for it, and, having found it, drove it deep into the mud as far out as he could reach. Then he wiped his hands on some water-weed, crossed the bridge and started homewards.
He approached his house from the rear, satisfied himself that his housekeeper was in the kitchen, and, letting himself in very quietly with his key, went quickly up to his bedroom. Here he washed thoroughly—in the bath, so that he could get rid of the discoloured water—changed his clothes and packed those that he took off in a portmanteau.
By the time he had done this the gong sounded for supper. As he took his seat at the table, spruce and fresh in appearance, quietly cheerful in manner, he addressed his house keeper. “I wasn’t able to finish my business in London,” he said. “I shall have to go up again tomorrow.”
“Shall you come home the same day?” asked the housekeeper.
“Perhaps,” was the reply, “and perhaps not. It will depend on circumstances.”
He did not say what the circumstances might be, nor did the housekeeper ask. Mr. Pembury was not addicted to confidences. He was an eminently discreet man: and discreet men say little.
RIVAL SLEUTH-HOUNDS
(Related by Christopher Jervis, M.D.)
Thehalf-hour that follows breakfast, when the fire has, so to speak, got into its stride, and the morning pipe throws up its clouds of incense, is, perhaps, the most agreeable in the whole day. Especially so when a sombre sky, brooding over the town, hints at streets pervaded by the chilly morning air, and hoots from protesting tugs upon the river tell of lingering mists, the legacy of the lately-vanished night.
The autumn morning was raw: the fire burned jovially. I thrust my slippered feet towards the blaze and meditated, on nothing in particular, with catlike enjoyment. Presently a disapproving grunt from Thorndyke attracted my attention, and I looked round lazily. He was extracting, with a pair of office shears, the readable portions of the morning paper, and had paused with a small cutting between his finger and thumb. “Bloodhounds again,” said he. “We shall be hearing presently of the revival of the ordeal by fire.”
“And a deuced comfortable ordeal, too, on a morning like this,” I said, stroking my legs ecstatically. “What is the case?”
He was about to reply when a sharp rat-tat from the little brass knocker announced a disturber of our peace. Thorndyke stepped over to the door and admitted a police inspector in uniform, and I stood up, and, presenting my dorsal aspect to the fire, prepared to combine bodily comfort with attention to business.
“I believe I am speaking to Dr. Thorndyke,” said the officer, and, as Thorndyke nodded, he went on: “My name, sir, is Fox, Inspector Fox of the Baysford Police. Perhaps you’ve seen the morning paper?”
Thorndyke held up the cutting, and, placing a chair by the fire, asked the inspector if he had breakfasted.
“Thank you, sir, I have,” replied Inspector Fox. “I came up to town by the late train last night so as to be here early, and stayed at an hotel. You see, from the paper, that we have had to arrest one of our own men. That’s rather awkward, you know, sir.”
“Very,” agreed Thorndyke.
“Yes; it’s bad for the force and bad for the public too. But we had to do it. There was no way out that we could see. Still, we should like the accused to have every chance, both for our sake and his own, so the chief constable thought he’d like to have your opinion on the case, and he thought that, perhaps, you might be willing to act for the defence.”
“Let us have the particulars,” said Thorndyke, taking a writing-pad from a drawer and dropping into his armchair. “Begin at the beginning,” he added, “and tell us all you know.”
“Well,” said the inspector, after a preliminary cough, “to begin with the murdered man: his name is Pratt. He was a retired prison warder, and was employed as steward by General O’Gorman, who is a retired prison governor—you may have heard of him in connection with his pack of blood hounds. Well, Pratt came down from London yesterday evening by a train arriving at Baysford at six-thirty. He was seen by the guard, the ticket collector and the outside porter. The porter saw him leave the station at six-thirty-seven. General O’Gorman’s house is about half-a-mile from the station. At five minutes to seven the general and a gentleman named Hanford and the general’s housekeeper, a Mrs. Parton, found Pratt lying dead in the avenue that leads up to the house. He had apparently been stabbed, for there was a lot of blood about, and a knife—a Norwegian knife—was lying on the ground near the body. Mrs. Parton had thought she heard some one in the avenue calling out for help, and, as Pratt was just due, she came out with a lantern. She met the general and Mr. Hanford, and all three seem to have caught sight of the body at the same moment. Mr. Hanford cycled down to us, at once, with the news; we sent for a doctor, and I went back with Mr. Hanford and took a sergeant with me. We arrived at twelve minutes past seven, and then the general, who had galloped his horse over the meadows each side of the avenue without having seen anybody, fetched out his bloodhounds and led them up to the knife. All three hounds took up the scent at once—I held the leash of one of them—and they took us across the meadows without a pause or a falter, over stiles and fences, along a lane, out into the town, and then, one after the other, they crossed the road in a bee-line to the police station, bolted in at the door, which stood open, and made straight for the desk, where a supernumerary officer, named Ellis, was writing. They made a rare to-do, struggling to get at him, and it was as much as we could manage to hold them back. As for Ellis, he turned as pale as a ghost.”
“Was any one else in the room?” asked Thorndyke.
“Oh, yes. There were two constables and a messenger. We led the hounds up to them, but the brutes wouldn’t take any notice of them. They wanted Ellis.”
“And what did you do?”
“Why, we arrested Ellis, of course. Couldn’t do anything else—especially with the general there.”
“What had the general to do with it?” asked Thorndyke.
“He’s a J.P. and a late governor of Dartmoor, and it was his hounds that had run the man down. But we must have arrested Ellis in any case.”
“Is there anything against the accused man?”
“Yes, there is. He and Pratt were on distinctly unfriendly terms. They were old comrades, for Ellis was in the Civil Guard at Portland when Pratt was warder there—he was pensioned off from the service because he got his left forefinger chopped off—but lately they had had some unpleasantness about a woman, a parlourmaid of the general’s. It seems that Ellis, who is a married man, paid the girl too much attention—or Pratt thought he did—and Pratt warned Ellis off the premises. Since then they had not been on speaking terms.”
“And what sort of a man is Ellis?”
“A remarkably decent fellow he always seemed; quiet, steady, good-natured; I should have said he wouldn’t have hurt a fly. We all liked him—better than we liked Pratt, in fact; poor Pratt was what you’d call an old soldier—sly, you know, sir—and a bit of a sneak.”
“You searched and examined Ellis, of course?”
“Yes. There was nothing suspicious about him except that he had two purses. But he says he picked up one of them—a small, pigskin pouch—on the footpath of the Thorpe road yesterday afternoon; and there’s no reason to disbelieve him. At any rate, the purse was not Pratt’s.”
Thorndyke made a note on his pad, and then asked: “There were no bloodstains or marks on his clothing?”
“No. His clothing was not marked or disarranged in any way.”
“Any cuts, scratches or bruises on his person?”
“None whatever,” replied the inspector.
“At what time did you arrest Ellis?”
“Half-past seven exactly.”
“Have you ascertained what his movements were? Had he been near the scene of the murder?”
“Yes; he had been to Thorpe and would pass the gates of the avenue on his way back. And he was later than usual in returning, though not later than he has often been before.”
“And now, as to the murdered man: has the body been examined?”
“Yes; I had Dr. Hills’s report before I left. There were no less than seven deep knife-wounds, all on the left side of the back. There was a great deal of blood on the ground, and Dr. Hills thinks Pratt must have bled to death in a minute or two.”
“Do the wounds correspond with the knife that was found?”
“I asked the doctor that, and he said ‘Yes,’ though he wasn’t going to swear to any particular knife. However, that point isn’t of much importance. The knife was covered with blood, and it was found close to the body.”
“What has been done with it, by the way?” asked Thorndyke.
“The sergeant who was with me picked it up and rolled it in his handkerchief to carry in his pocket. I took it from him, just as it was, and locked it in a dispatch-box.”
“Has the knife been recognized as Ellis’s property?”
“No, sir, it has not.”
“Were there any recognizable footprints or marks of a struggle?” Thorndyke asked.
The inspector grinned sheepishly. “I haven’t examined the spot, of course, sir,” said he, “but, after the general’s horse and the bloodhounds and the general on foot and me and the gardener and the sergeant and Mr. Hanford had been over it twice, going and returning, why, you see, sir——
“Exactly, exactly,” said Thorndyke. “Well, inspector, I shall be pleased to act for the defence; it seems to me that the case against Ellis is in some respects rather inconclusive.”
The inspector was frankly amazed. “It certainly hadn’t struck me in that light, sir,” he said.
“No? Well, that is my view; and I think the best plan will be for me to come down with you and investigate matters on the spot.”
The inspector assented cheerfully, and, when we had provided him with a newspaper, we withdrew to the laboratory to consult time-tables and prepare for the expedition.
“You are coming, I suppose, Jervis?” said Thorndyke.
“If I shall be of any use,” I replied.
“Of course you will,” said he. “Two heads are better than one, and, by the look of things, I should say that ours will be the only ones with any sense in them. We will take the research case, of course, and we may as well have a camera with us. I see there is a train from Charing Cross in twenty minutes.”
For the first half-hour of the journey Thorndyke sat in his corner, alternately conning over his notes and gazing with thoughtful eyes out of the window. I could see that the case pleased him, and was careful not to break in upon his train of thought. Presently, however, he put away his notes and began to fill his pipe with a more companionable air, and then the inspector, who had been wriggling with impatience, opened fire.
“So you think, sir, that you see a way out for Ellis?”
“I think there is a case for the defence,” replied Thorndyke. “In fact, I call the evidence against him rather flimsy.”
The inspector gasped. “But the knife, sir? What about the knife?”
“Well,” said Thorndyke, “what about the knife? Whose knife was it? You don’t know. It was covered with blood. Whose blood? You don’t know. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that it was the murderer’s knife. Then the blood on it was Pratt’s blood. But if it was Pratt’s blood, when the hounds had smelt it they should have led you to Pratt’s body, for blood gives a very strong scent. But they did not. They ignored the body. The inference seems to be that the blood on the knife was not Pratt’s blood.”
The inspector took off his cap and gently scratched the back of his head. “You’re perfectly right, sir,” he said. “I’d never thought of that. None of us had.”
“Then,” pursued Thorndyke, “let us assume that the knife was Pratt’s. If so, it would seem to have been used in self-defence. But this was a Norwegian knife, a clumsy tool—not a weapon at all—which takes an appreciable time to open and requires the use of two free hands. Now, had Pratt both hands free? Certainly not after the attack had commenced. There were seven wounds, all on the left side of the back; which indicates that he held the murderer locked in his arms and that the murderer’s arms were around him. Also, incidentally, that the murderer is right-handed. But, still, let us assume that the knife was Pratt’s. Then the blood on it was that of the murderer. Then the murderer must have been wounded. But Ellis was not wounded. Then Ellis is not the murderer. The knife doesn’t help us at all.”
The inspector puffed out his cheeks and blew softly. “This is getting out of my depth,” he said. “Still, sir, you can’t get over the bloodhounds. They tell us distinctly that the knife is Ellis’s knife and I don’t see any answer to that.”
“There is no answer because there has been no statement. The bloodhounds have told you nothing. You have drawn certain inferences from their actions, but those inferences may be totally wrong and they are certainly not evidence.”
“You don’t seem to have much opinion of bloodhounds,” the inspector remarked.
“As agents for the detection of crime,” replied Thorndyke, “I regard them as useless. You cannot put a bloodhound in the witness-box. You can get no intelligible statement from it. If it possesses any knowledge, it has no means of communicating it. The fact is,” he continued, “that the entire system of using bloodhounds for criminal detection is based on a fallacy. In the American plantations these animals were used with great success for tracking runaway slaves. But the slave was a known individual. All that was required was to ascertain his whereabouts. That is not the problem that is presented in the detection of a crime. The detective is not concerned in establishing the whereabouts of a known individual, but in discovering the identity of an unknown individual. And for this purpose bloodhounds are useless. They may discover such identity, but they cannot communicate their knowledge. If the criminal is unknown they cannot identify him: if he is known, the police have no need of the bloodhound.
“To return to our present case,” Thorndyke resumed, after a pause; “we have employed certain agents—the hounds—with whom we are noten rapport, as the spiritualists would say; and we have no ‘medium.’ The hound possesses a special sense—the olfactory—which in man is quite rudimentary. He thinks, so to speak, in terms of smell, and his thoughts are untranslatable to beings in whom the sense of smell is undeveloped. We have presented to the hound a knife, and he discovers in it certain odorous properties; he discovers similar or related odorous properties in a tract of land and a human individual—Ellis. We cannot verify his discoveries or ascertain their nature. What remains? All that we can say is that there appears to exist some odorous relation between the knife and the man Ellis. But until we can ascertain the nature of that relation, we cannot estimate its evidential value or bearing. All the other ‘evidence’ is the product of your imagination and that of the general. There is, at present, no case against Ellis.”
“He must have been pretty close to the place when the murder happened,” said the inspector.
“So, probably, were many other people,” answered Thorndyke; “but had he time to wash and change? Because he would have needed it.”
“I suppose he would,” the inspector agreed dubiously.
“Undoubtedly. There were seven wounds which would have taken some time to inflict. Now we can’t suppose that Pratt stood passively while the other man stabbed him—indeed, as I have said, the position of the wounds shows that he did not. There was a struggle. The two men were locked together. One of the murderer’s hands was against Pratt’s back; probably both hands were, one clasping and the other stabbing. There must have been blood on one hand and probably on both. But you say there was no blood on Ellis, and there doesn’t seem to have been time or opportunity for him to wash.”
“Well, it’s a mysterious affair,” said the inspector; “but I don’t see how you are going to get over the bloodhounds.”
Thorndyke shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “The bloodhounds are an obsession,” he said. “The whole problem really centres around the knife. The questions are, Whose knife was it? and what was the connection between it and Ellis? There is a problem, Jervis,” he continued, turning to me, “that I submit for your consideration. Some of the possible solutions are exceedingly curious.”
As we set out from Baysford station, Thorndyke looked at his watch and noted the time. “You will take us the way that Pratt went,” he said.
“As to that,” said the inspector, “he may have gone by the road or by the footpath; but there’s very little difference in the distance.”
Turning away from Baysford, we walked along the road westward, towards the village of Thorpe, and presently passed on our right a stile at the entrance to a footpath.
“That path,” said the inspector, “crosses the avenue about half-way up. But we’d better keep to the road.” A quarter of a mile further on we came to a pair of rusty iron gates one of which stood open, and, entering, we found ourselves in a broad drive bordered by two rows of trees, between the trunks of which a long stretch of pasture meadows could be seen on either hand. It was a fine avenue, and, late in the year as it was, the yellowing foliage clustered thickly overhead.
When we had walked about a hundred and fifty yards from the gates, the inspector halted.
“This is the place,” he said; and Thorndyke again noted the time.
“Nine minutes exactly,” said he. “Then Pratt arrived here about fourteen minutes to seven, and his body was found at five minutes to seven—nine minutes after his arrival. The murderer couldn’t have been far away then.”
“No, it was a pretty fresh scent,” replied the inspector. “You’d like to see the body first, I think you said, sir?”
“Yes; and the knife, if you please.”
“I shall have to send down to the station for that. It’s locked up in the office.”
He entered the house, and, having dispatched a messenger to the police station, came out and conducted us to the outbuilding where the corpse had been deposited. Thorndyke made a rapid examination of the wounds and the holes in the clothing, neither of which presented anything particularly suggestive. The weapon used had evidently been a thick-backed, single-edged knife similar to the one described, and the discolouration around the wounds indicated that the weapon had a definite shoulder like that of a Norwegian knife, and that it had been driven in with savage violence.
“Do you find anything that throws any light on the case?” the inspector asked, when the examination was concluded.
“That is impossible to say until we have seen the knife,” replied Thorndyke; “but while we are waiting for it, we may as well go and look at the scene of the tragedy. These are Pratt’s boots, I think?” He lifted a pair of stout laced boots from the table and turned them up to inspect the soles.
“Yes, those are his boots,” replied Fox, “and pretty easy they’d have been to track, if the case had been the other way about. Those Blakey’s protectors are as good as a trademark.”
“We’ll take them, at any rate,” said Thorndyke; and, the inspector having taken the boots from him, we went out and retraced our steps down the avenue.
The place where the murder had occurred was easily identified by a large dark stain on the gravel at one side of the drive, half-way between two trees—an ancient pollard hornbeam and an elm. Next to the elm was a pollard oak with a squat, warty bole about seven feet high, and three enormous limbs, of which one slanted half-way across the avenue; and between these two trees the ground was covered with the tracks of men and hounds superimposed upon the hoof-prints of a horse.
“Where was the knife found?” Thorndyke asked.
The inspector indicated a spot near the middle of the drive, almost opposite the hornbeam and Thorndyke, picking up a large stone, laid it on the spot. Then he surveyed the Scene thoughtfully, looking up and down the drive and at the trees that bordered it, and, finally, walked slowly to the space between the elm and the oak, scanning the ground as he went. “There is no dearth of footprints,” he remarked grimly, as he looked down at the trampled earth.
“No, but the question is, whose are they?” said the inspector.
“Yes, that is the question,” agreed Thorndyke; “and we will begin the solution by identifying those of Pratt.”
“I don’t see how that will help us,” said the inspector. “We know he was here.”
Thorndyke looked at him in surprise, and I must confess that the foolish remark astonished me too, accustomed as I was to the quick-witted officers from Scotland Yard.
“The hue and cry procession,” remarked Thorndyke, “seems to have passed out between the elm and the oak; elsewhere the ground seems pretty clear.” He walked round the elm, still looking earnestly at the ground, and presently continued: “Now here, in the soft earth bordering the turf, are the prints of a pair of smallish feet wearing pointed boots; a rather short man, evidently, by the size of foot and length of stride, and he doesn’t seem to have belonged to the procession. But I don’t see any of Pratt’s; he doesn’t seem to have come off the hard gravel.” He continued to walk slowly towards the hornbeam with his eyes fixed on the ground. Suddenly he halted and stooped with an eager look at the earth; and, as Fox and I approached, he stood up and pointed. “Pratt’s footprints—faint and fragmentary, but unmistakable. And now, inspector, you see their importance. They furnish the time factor in respect of the other foot prints. Look at this one and then look at that.” He pointed from one to another of the faint impressions of the dead man’s foot.
“You mean that there are signs of a struggle?” said Fox.
“I mean more than that,” replied Thorndyke. “Here is one of Pratt’s footprints treading into the print of a small, pointed foot; and there at the edge of the gravel is another of Pratt’s nearly obliterated by the tread of a pointed foot. Obviously the first pointed footprint was made before Pratt’s, and the second one after his; and the necessary inference is that the owner of the pointed foot was here at the same time as Pratt.”
“Then he must have been the murderer!” exclaimed Fox.
“Presumably,” answered Thorndyke; “but let us see whither he went. You notice, in the first place, that the man stood close to this tree”—he indicated the hornbeam—“and that he went towards the elm. Let us follow him. He passes the elm, you see, and you will observe that these tracks form a regular series leading from the hornbeam and not mixed up with the marks of the struggle. They were, therefore, probably made after the murder had been perpetrated. You will also notice that they pass along the backs of the trees—outside the avenue, that is; what does that suggest to you?”
“It suggests to me,” I said, when the inspector had shaken his head hopelessly, “that there was possibly some one in the avenue when the man was stealing off.”
“Precisely,” said Thorndyke. “The body was found not more than nine minutes after Pratt arrived here. But the murder must have taken some time. Then the housekeeper thought she heard some one calling and came out with a lantern, and, at the same time, the general and Mr. Hanford came up the drive. The suggestion is that the man sneaked along outside the trees to avoid being seen. However, let us follow the tracks. They pass the elm and they pass on behind the next tree; but wait! There is something odd here.” He passed behind the great pollard oak and looked down at the soft earth by its roots. “Here is a pair of impressions much deeper than the rest, and they are not a part of the track since their toes point towards the tree. What do you make of that?” Without waiting for an answer he began closely to scan the bole of the tree and especially a large, warty protuberance about three feet from the ground. On the bark above this was a vertical mark, as if something had scraped down the tree, and from the wart itself a dead twig had been newly broken off and lay upon the ground. Pointing to these marks Thorndyke set his foot on the protuberance, and, springing up, brought his eye above the level of the crown, whence the great boughs branched off.
“Ah!” he exclaimed. “Here is something much more definite.” With the aid of another projection, he scrambled up into the crown of the tree, and, having glanced quickly round, beckoned to us. I stepped up on the projecting lump and, as my eyes rose above the crown, I perceived the brown, shiny impression of a hand on the edge. Climbing into the crown, I was quickly followed by the inspector, and we both stood up by Thorndyke between the three boughs. From where we stood we looked on the upper side of the great limb that swept out across the avenue; and there on its lichen-covered surface, we saw the imprints in reddish-brown of a pair of open hands.
“You notice,” said Thorndyke, leaning out upon the bough, “that he is a short man; I cannot conveniently place my hands so low. You also note that he has both forefingers intact, and so is certainly not Ellis.”
“If you mean to say, sir, that these marks were made by the murderer,” said Fox, “I say it’s impossible. Why, that would mean that he was here looking down at us when we were searching for him with the hounds. The presence of the hounds proves that this man could not have been the murderer.”
“On the contrary,” said Thorndyke, “the presence of this man with bloody hands confirms the other evidence, which all indicates that the hounds were never on the murderer’s trail at all. Come now, inspector, I put it to you: Here is a murdered man; the murderer has almost certainly blood upon his hands; and here is a man with bloody hands, lurking in a tree within a few feet of the corpse and within a few minutes of its discovery (as is shown by the footprints); what are the reasonable probabilities?”
“But you are forgetting the bloodhounds, sir, and the murderer’s knife,” urged the inspector.
“Tut, tut, man!” exclaimed Thorndyke; “those blood hounds are a positive obsession. But I see a sergeant coming up the drive, with the knife, I hope. Perhaps that will solve the riddle for us.”
The sergeant, who carried a small dispatch-box, halted opposite the tree in some surprise while we descended, when he came forward with a military salute and handed the box to the inspector, who forthwith unlocked it, and, opening the lid, displayed an object wrapped in a pocket-handkerchief.
“There is the knife, sir,” said he, “just as I received it. The handkerchief is the sergeant’s.”
Thorndyke unrolled the handkerchief and took from it a large-sized Norwegian knife, which he looked at critically and then handed to me. While I was inspecting the blade, he, shook out the handkerchief and, having looked it over on both sides, turned to the sergeant.
“At what time did you pick up this knife?” he asked.
“About seven-fifteen, sir; directly after the hounds had started. I was careful to pick it up by the ring, and I wrapped it in the handkerchief at once.”
“Seven-fifteen,” said Thorndyke. “Less than half-an-hour after the murder. That is very singular. Do you observe the state of this handkerchief? There is not a mark on it. Not a trace of any bloodstain; which proves that when the knife was picked up, the blood on it was already dry. But things dry slowly, if they dry at all, in the saturated air of an autumn evening. The appearances seem to suggest that the blood on the knife was dry when it was thrown down. By the way, sergeant, what do you scent your handkerchief with?’”
“Scent, sir!” exclaimed the astonished officer in indignant accents; “me scent my handkerchief! No, sir, certainly not. Never used scent in my life, sir.”
Thorndyke held out the handkerchief, and the sergeant Sniffed at it incredulously. “It certainly does seem to smell of scent,” he admitted, “but it must be the knife.” The same idea having occurred to me, I applied the handle of the knife to my nose and instantly detected the sickly-sweet odour of musk.
“The question is,” said the inspector, when the two articles had been tested by us all, “was it the knife that scented the handkerchief or the handkerchief that scented the knife?”
“You heard what the sergeant said,” replied Thorndyke. “There was no scent on the handkerchief when the knife was wrapped in it. Do you know, inspector, this scent seems to me to offer a very curious suggestion. Consider the facts of the case: the distinct trail leading straight to Ellis, who is, nevertheless, found to be without a scratch or a spot of blood; the inconsistencies in the case that I pointed out in the train, and now this knife, apparently dropped with dried blood on it and scented with musk. To me it suggests a carefully-planned, coolly-premeditated crime. The murderer knew about the general’s bloodhounds and made use of them as a blind. He planted this knife, smeared with blood and tainted with musk, to furnish a scent. No doubt some object, also scented with musk, would be drawn over the ground to give the trail. It is only a suggestion, of course, but it is worth considering.”
“But, sir,” the inspector objected eagerly, “if the murderer had handled the knife, it would have scented him too.”
“Exactly; so, as we are assuming that the man is not a fool, we may assume that he did not handle it. He will have left it here in readiness, hidden in some place whence he could knock it down, say, with a stick, without touching it.”
“Perhaps in this very tree, sir,” suggested the sergeant, pointing to the oak.
“No,” said Thorndyke, “he would hardly have hidden in the tree where the knife had been. The hounds might have scented the place instead of following the trail at once. The most likely hiding-place for the knife is the one nearest the spot where it was found.” He walked over to the stone that marked the spot, and looking round, continued: “You see, that hornbeam is much the nearest, and its flat crown would be very convenient for the purpose—easily reached even by a short man, as he appears to be. Let us see if there are any traces of it. Perhaps you will give me a ‘back up,’ sergeant, as we haven’t a ladder.”
The sergeant assented with a faint grin, and stooping beside the tree in an attitude suggesting the game of leap frog, placed his hands firmly on his knees. Grasping a stout branch, Thorndyke swung himself up on the Sergeant’s broad back, whence he looked down into the crown of the tree. Then, parting the branches, he stepped onto the ledge and disappeared into the central hollow.
When he reappeared he held in his hands two very singular objects: a pair of iron crucible-tongs and an artist’s brush-case of black-japanned tin. The former article he handed down to me, but the brush-case he held carefully by its wire handle as he dropped to the ground.
“The significance of these things is, I think, obvious,” he said. “The tongs were used to handle the knife with and the case to carry it in, so that it should not scent his clothes or bag. It was very carefully planned.”
“If that is so,” said the inspector, “the inside of the case ought to smell of musk.”
“No doubt,” said Thorndyke; “but before we open it, there is a rather important matter to be attended to. Will you give me the Vitogen powder, Jervis?”
I opened the canvas-covered “research case” and took from it an object like a diminutive pepper-caster—an iodoform dredger in fact—and handed it to him. Grasping the brush-case by its wire handle, he sprinkled the pale yellow powder from the dredger freely all round the pulloff lid, tapping the top with his knuckles to make the fine particles spread. Then he blew off the superfluous powder, and the two police officers gave a simultaneous gasp of joy; for now, on the black background, there stood out plainly a number of finger-prints, so clear and distinct that the ridge-pattern could be made out with perfect ease.
“These will probably be his right hand,” said Thorndyke.
“Now for the left.” He treated the body of the case in the same way, and, when he had blown off the powder, the entire surface was spotted with yellow, oval impressions. “Now, Jervis,” said he, “if you will put on a glove and pull off the lid, we can test the inside.”
There was no difficulty in getting the lid off, for the shoulder of the case had been smeared with vaseline—apparently to produce an airtight joint—and, as it separated with a hollow sound, a faint, musky odour exhaled from its interior.
“The remainder of the inquiry,” said Thorndyke, when I pushed the lid on again, “will be best conducted at the police station, where, also, we can photograph these finger prints.”
“The shortest way will be across the meadows,” said Fox; “the way the hounds went.”
By this route we accordingly travelled, Thorndyke carrying the brush-case tenderly by its handle.
“I don’t quite see where Ellis comes in in this job,” said the inspector, as we walked along, “if the fellow had a grudge against Pratt. They weren’t chums.”
“I think I do,” said Thorndyke. “You say that both men were prison officers at Portland at the same time. Now doesn’t it seem likely that this is the work of some old convict who had been identified—and perhaps blackmailed—by Pratt, and possibly by Ellis too? That is where the value of the finger-prints comes in. If he is an old ‘lag’ his prints will be at Scotland Yard. Otherwise they are not of much value as a clue.”
“That’s true, sir,” said the inspector. “I suppose you want to see Ellis.”
“I want to see that purse that you spoke of, first,” replied Thorndyke. “That is probably the other end of the clue.”
As soon as we arrived at the station, the inspector unlocked a safe and brought out a parcel. “These are Ellis’s things,” said he, as he unfastened it, “and that is the purse.”
He handed Thorndyke a small pigskin pouch, which my colleague opened, and having smelt the inside, passed to me. The odour of musk was plainly perceptible, especially in the small compartment at the back.
“It has probably tainted the other contents of the parcel,” said Thorndyke, sniffing at each article in turn, “but my sense of smell is not keen enough to detect any scent. They all seem odourless to me, whereas the purse smells quite distinctly. Shall we have Ellis in now?”
The sergeant took a key from a locked drawer and de parted for the cells, whence he presently reappeared accompanied by the prisoner—a stout, burly man, in the last stage of dejection.
“Come, cheer up, Ellis,” said the inspector. “Here’s Dr. Thorndyke come down to help us and he wants to ask you one or two questions.”
Ellis looked piteously at Thorndyke, and exclaimed: “I know nothing whatever about this affair, sir, I swear to God I don’t.”
“I never supposed you did,” said Thorndyke. “But there are one or two things that I want you to tell me. To begin with, that purse: where did you find it?”
“On the Thorpe road, sir. It was lying in the middle of the footway.”
“Had any one else passed the spot lately? Did you meet or pass any one?”
“Yes, sir, I met a labourer about a minute before I saw the purse. I can’t imagine why he didn’t see it.”
“Probably because it wasn’t there,” said Thorndyke. “Is there a hedge there?”
“Yes, sir; a hedge on a low bank.”
“Ha! Well, now, tell me: is there any one about here whom you knew when you and Pratt were together at Portland? Any old lag—to put it bluntly—whom you and Pratt have been putting the screw on.”
“No, sir, I swear there isn’t. But I wouldn’t answer for Pratt. He had a rare memory for faces.”
Thorndyke reflected. “Were there any escapes from Portland in your time?” he asked.
“Only one—a man named Dobbs. He made off to the Sea in a sudden fog and he was supposed to be drowned. His clothes washed up on the Bill, but not his body. At any rate, he was never heard of again.”
“Thank you, Ellis. Do you mind my taking your finger prints?”
“Certainly, not, sir,” was the almost eager reply; and the office inking-pad being requisitioned, a rough set of finger-prints was produced; and when Thorndyke had compared them with those on the brush-case and found no resemblance, Ellis returned to his cell in quite buoyant spirits.
Having made several photographs of the strange finger-prints, we returned to town that evening, taking the negatives with us; and while we waited for our train, Thorndyke gave a few parting injunctions to the inspector. “Remember,” he said, “that the man must have washed his hands before he could appear in public. Search the banks of every pond, ditch and stream in the neighbourhood for footprints like those in the avenue; and, if you find any, search the bottom of the water thoroughly, for he is quite likely to have dropped the knife into the mud.”
The photographs, which we handed in at Scotland Yard that same night, enabled the experts to identify the finger prints as those of Francis Dobbs, an escaped convict. The two photographs—profile and full-face—which were attached to his record, were sent down to Baysford with a description of the man, and were, in due course, identified with a somewhat mysterious individual, who passed by the name of Rufus Pembury and who had lived in the neighbourhood as a private gentleman for some two years. But Rufus Pembury was not to be found either at his genteel house or elsewhere. All that was known was, that on the day after the murder, he had converted his entire “personalty” into “bearer securities,” and then vanished from mortal ken. Nor has he ever been heard of to this day.
“And, between ourselves,” said Thorndyke, when we were discussing the case some time after, “he deserved to escape. It was clearly a case of blackmail, and to kill a blackmailer—when you have no other defence against him—is hardly murder. As to Ellis, he could never have been convicted, and Dobbs, or Pembury, must have known it. But he would have been committed to the Assizes, and that would have given time for all traces to disappear. No, Dobbs was a man of courage, ingenuity and resource; and, above all, he knocked the bottom out of the great bloodhound superstition.”
DEATH ON THE GIRDLER
Popularbelief ascribes to infants and the lower animals certain occult powers of divining character denied to the reasoning faculties of the human adult; and is apt to accept their judgment as finally overriding the pronouncements of mere experience.
Whether this belief rests upon any foundation other than the universal love of paradox it is unnecessary to inquire. It is very generally entertained, especially by ladies of a certain social status; and by Mrs. Thomas Solly it was loyally maintained as an article of faith.
“Yes,” she moralized, “it’s surprisin’ how they know, the little children and the dumb animals. But they do. There’s no deceivin’them. They can tell the gold from the dross in a moment, they can, and they reads the human heart like a book. Wonderful, I call it. I suppose it’s instinct.”
Having delivered herself of this priceless gem of philosophic thought, she thrust her arms elbow-deep into the foaming wash-tub and glanced admiringly at her lodger as he sat in the doorway, supporting on one knee an obese infant of eighteen months and on the other a fine tabby cat.
James Brown was an elderly seafaring man, small and slight in build and in manner suave, insinuating and perhaps a trifle sly. But he had all the sailor’s love of children and animals, and the sailor’s knack of making himself acceptable to them, for, as he sat with an empty pipe wobbling in the grasp of his toothless gums, the baby beamed with humid smiles, and the cat, rolled into a fluffy ball and purring like a stocking-loom, worked its fingers ecstatically as if it were trying on a new pair of gloves.
“It must be mortal lonely out at the lighthouse,” Mrs. Solly resumed. “Only three men and never a neighbour to speak to; and, Lord! what a muddle they must be in with no woman to look after them and keep ’em tidy. But you won’t be overworked, Mr. Brown, in these long days; day light till past nine o’clock. I don’t know what you’ll do to pass the time.”
“Oh, I shall find plenty to do, I expect,” said Brown, “what with cleanin’ the lamps and glasses and paintin’ up the ironwork. And that reminds me,” he added, looking round at the clock, “that time’s getting on. High water at half-past ten, and here it’s gone eight o’clock.”
Mrs. Solly, acting on the hint, began rapidly to fish out the washed garments and wring them out into the form of short ropes. Then, having dried her hands on her apron, she relieved Brown of the protesting baby.
“Your room will be ready for you, Mr. Brown,” said she, “when your turn comes for a spell ashore; and main glad me and Tom will be to see you back.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Solly, ma’am,” answered Brown, tenderly placing the cat on the floor; “you won’t be more glad than what I will.” He shook hands warmly with his land lady, kissed the baby, chucked the cat under the chin, and, picking up his little chest by its becket, swung it onto his shoulder and strode out of the cottage.
His way lay across the marshes, and, like the ships in the offing, he shaped his course by the twin towers of Reculver that stood up grotesquely on the rim of the land; and as he trod the springy turf, Tom Solly’s fleecy charges looked up at him with vacant stares and valedictory bleatings. Once, at a dyke-gate, he paused to look back at the fair Kentish landscape: at the grey tower of St. Nicholas-at-Wade peeping above the trees and the faraway mill at Sarre, whirling slowly in the summer breeze; and, above all, at the solitary cottage where, for a brief spell in his stormy life, he had known the homely joys of domesticity and peace. Well, that was over for the present, and the lighthouse loomed ahead. With a half-sigh he passed through the gate and walked on towards Reculver.
Outside the whitewashed cottages with their official black chimneys a petty-officer of the coast-guard was adjusting the halyards of the flagstaff. He looked round as Brown approached, and hailed him cheerily.
“Here you are, then,” said he, “all figged out in your new togs, too. But we’re in a bit of a difficulty, d’ye see. We’ve got to pull up to Whitstable this morning, so I can’t send a man out with you and I can’t spare a boat.”
“Have I got to swim out, then?” asked Brown.
The coast-guard grinned. “Not in them new clothes, mate,” he answered. “No, but there’s old Willett’s boat; he isn’t using her to-day; he’s going over to Minster to see his daughter, and he’ll let us have the loan of the boat. But there’s no one to go with you, and I’m responsible to Willett.”
“Well, what about it?” asked Brown, with the deep-sea sailor’s (usually misplaced) confidence in his power to handle a sailing-boat. “D’ye think I can’t manage a tub of a boat? Me what’s used the sea since I was a kid of ten?”
“Yes,” said the coast-guard; “but who’s to bring her back?”
“Why, the man that I’m going to relieve,” answered Brown. “He don’t want to swim no more than what I do.”
The coast-guard reflected with his telescope pointed at a passing barge. “Well, I suppose it’ll be all right,” he concluded; “but it’s a pity they couldn’t send the tender round. However, if you undertake to send the boat back, we’ll get her afloat. It’s time you were off.”
He strolled away to the back of the cottages, whence he presently returned with two of his mates, and the four men proceeded along the shore to where Willett’s boat lay just above high-water mark.
TheEmilywas a beamy craft of the type locally known as a “half-share skiff,” solidly built of oak, with varnished planking and fitted with main and mizzen lugs. She was a good handful for four men, and, as she slid over the soft chalk rocks with a hollow rumble, the coast-guards debated the advisability of lifting out the bags of shingle with which she was ballasted. However, she was at length dragged down, ballast and all, to the water’s edge, and then, while Brown stepped the mainmast, the petty-officer gave him his directions. “What you’ve got to do,” said he, “is to make use of the flood-tide. Keep her nose nor’-east, and with this trickle of nor’-westerly breeze you ought to make the lighthouse in one board. Anyhow don’t let her get east of the lighthouse, or, when the ebb sets in, you’ll be in a fix.”
To these admonitions Brown listened with jaunty indifference as he hoisted the sails and watched the incoming tide creep over the level shore. Then the boat lifted on the gentle swell. Putting out an oar, he gave a vigorous shove off that sent the boat, with a final scrape, clear of the beach, and then, having dropped the rudder onto its pintles, he seated himself and calmly belayed the main-sheet.
“There he goes,” growled the coast-guard; “makin’ fast his sheet. Theywilldo it” (he invariably did it himself), “and that’s how accidents happen. I hope old Willett ’ll see his boat back all right.”
He stood for some time watching the dwindling boat as it sidled across the smooth water; then he turned and followed his mates towards the station.
Out on the south-western edge of the Girdler Sand, just inside the two-fathom line, the spindle-shanked lighthouse stood a-straddle on its long screw-piles like some uncouth red-bodied wading bird. It was now nearly half flood tide. The highest shoals were long since covered, and the lighthouse rose above the smooth sea as solitary as a slaver becalmed in the “middle passage.”
On the gallery outside the lantern were two men, the entire staff of the building, of whom one sat huddled in a chair with his left leg propped up with pillows on another, while his companion rested a telescope on the rail and peered at the faint grey line of the distant land and the two tiny points that marked the twin spires of Reculver.
“I don’t see any signs of the boat, Harry,” said he.
The other man groaned. “I shall lose the tide,” he complained, “and then there’s another day gone.”
“They can pull you down to Birchington and put you in the train,” said the first man.
“I don’t want no trains,” growled the invalid. “The boat ’ll be bad enough. I suppose there’s nothing coming our way, Tom?”
Tom turned his face eastward and shaded his eyes. “There’s a brig coming across the tide from the north,” he said. “Looks like a collier.” He pointed his telescope at the approaching vessel, and added: “She’s got two new cloths in her upper fore top-sail, one on each leech.”
The other man sat up eagerly. “What’s her trysail like, Tom?” he asked.
“Can’t see it,” replied Tom. “Yes, I can, now: it’s tanned. Why, that’ll be the oldUtopia, Harry; she’s the only brig I know that’s got a tanned trysail.”
“Look here, Tom,” exclaimed the other, “If that’s theUtopia, she’s going to my home and I’m going aboard of her. Captain Mockett ’ll give me a passage, I know.”
“You oughtn’t to go until you’re relieved, you know, Barnett,” said Tom doubtfully; “it’s against regulations to leave your station.”
“Regulations be blowed!” exclaimed Barnett. “My leg’s more to me than the regulations. I don’t want to be a cripple all my life. Besides, I’m no good here, and this new chap, Brown, will be coming out presently. You run up the signal, Tom, like a good comrade, and hail the brig.”
“Well, it’s your look-out,” said Tom, “and I don’t mind saying that if I was in your place I should cut off home and see a doctor, if I got the chance.” He sauntered off to the flag-locker, and, selecting the two code-flags, deliberately toggled them onto the halyards. Then, as the brig swept up within range, he hoisted the little balls of bunting to the flagstaff-head and jerked the halyards, when the two flags blew out making the signal “Need assistance.”
Promptly a coal-soiled answering pennant soared to the brig’s main-truck; less promptly the collier went about, and, turning her nose down stream, slowly drifted stern-forwards towards the lighthouse. Then a boat slid out through her gangway, and a couple of men plied the oars vigorously.
“Lighthouse ahoy!” roared one of them, as the boat came within hail. “What’s amiss?”
“Harry Barnett has broke his leg,” shouted the lighthouse keeper, “and he wants to know if Captain Mockett will give him a passage to Whitstable.”
The boat turned back to the brig, and after a brief and bellowed consultation, once more pulled towards the lighthouse.
“Skipper says yus,” roared the sailor, when he was within ear-shot, “and he says look alive, ’cause he don’t want to miss his tide.”
The injured man heaved a sigh of relief. “That’s good news,” said he, “though, how the blazes I’m going to get down the ladder is more than I can tell. What do you say, Jeffreys?”
“I say you’d better let me lower you with the tackle,” replied Jeffreys. “You can sit in the bight of a rope and I’ll give you a line to steady yourself with.”
“Ah, that’ll do, Tom,” said Barnett; “but, for the Lord’s sake, pay out the fall-rope gently.”
The arrangements were made so quickly that by the time the boat was fast alongside everything was in readiness, and a minute later the injured man, dangling like a gigantic spider from the end of the tackle, slowly descended, cursing volubly to the accompaniment of the creaking of the blocks. His chest and kit-bag followed, and, as soon as these were unhooked from the tackle, the boat pulled off to the brig, which was now slowly creeping stern-foremost past the lighthouse. The sick man was hoisted up the side, his chest handed up after him, and then the brig was put on her course due South across the Kentish Flats.
Jeffreys stood on the gallery watching the receding vessel and listening to the voices of her crew as they grew small and weak in the increasing distance. Now that his gruff companion was gone, a strange loneliness had fallen on the lighthouse. The last of the homeward-bound ships had long since passed up the Princes Channel and left the calm sea desolate and blank. The distant buoys, showing as tiny black dots on the glassy surface, and the spindly shapes of the beacons which stood up from invisible shoals, but emphasized the solitude of the empty sea, and the tolling of the bell buoy on the Shivering Sand, stealing faintly down the wind, sounded weird and mournful. The day’s work was already done. The lenses were polished, the lamps had been trimmed, and the little motor that worked the fog horn had been cleaned and oiled. There were several odd jobs, it is true, waiting to be done, as there always are in a lighthouse; but, just now, Jeffreys was not in a working humour. A new comrade was coming into his life to-day, a stranger with whom he was to be shut up alone, night and day, for a month on end, and whose temper and tastes and habits might mean for him pleasant companionship or jangling and discord without end. Who was this man Brown? What had he been? and what was he like? These were the questions that passed, naturally enough, through the lighthouse keeper’s mind and distracted him from his usual thoughts and occupations.
Presently a speck on the landward horizon caught his eye. He snatched up the telescope eagerly to inspect it. Yes, it was a boat; but not the coast-guard’s cutter, for which he was looking. Evidently a fisherman’s boat and with only one man in it. He laid down the telescope with a sigh of disappointment, and, filling his pipe, leaned on the rail with a dreamy eye bent on the faint grey line of the land.
Three long years had he spent in this dreary solitude, so repugnant to his active, restless nature: three blank, interminable years, with nothing to look back on but the endless succession of summer calms, stormy nights and the chilly fogs of winter, when the unseen steamers hooted from the void and the fog-horn bellowed its hoarse warning.
Why had he come to this God-forsaken spot? and why did he stay, when the wide world called to him? And then memory painted him a picture on which his mind’s eye had often looked before and which once again arose before him, shutting out the vision of the calm sea and the distant land. It was a brightly-coloured picture. It showed a cloudless sky brooding over the deep blue tropic sea: and in the middle of the picture, see-sawing gently on the quiet swell, a white-painted barque.
Her sails were clewed up untidily, her swinging yards jerked at the slack braces and her untended wheel revolved to and fro to the oscillations of the rudder.
She was not a derelict, for more than a dozen men were on her deck; but the men were all drunk and mostly asleep, and there was never an officer among them.
Then he saw the interior of one of her cabins. The chart rack, the tell-tale compass and the chronometers marked it as the captain’s cabin. In it were four men, and two of them lay dead on the deck. Of the other two, one was a small, cunning-faced man, who was, at the moment, kneeling be side one of the corpses to wipe a knife upon its coat. The fourth man was himself.
Again, he saw the two murderers stealing off in a quarter boat, as the barque with her drunken crew drifted towards the spouting surf of a river-bar. He saw the ship melt away in the surf like an icicle in the sunshine; and, later, two shipwrecked mariners, picked up in an open boat and set ashore at an American port.
That was why he was here. Because he was a murderer. The other scoundrel, Amos Todd, had turned Queen’s Evidence and denounced him, and he had barely managed to escape. Since then he had hidden himself from the great world, and here he must continue to hide, not from the law—for his person was unknown now that his shipmates were dead—but from the partner of his crime. It was the fear of Todd that had changed him from Jeffrey Rorke to Tom Jeffreys and had sent him to the Girdler, a prisoner for life. Todd might die—might even now be dead—but he would never hear of it: would never hear the news of his release.
He roused himself and once more pointed his telescope at the distant boat. She was considerably nearer now and seemed to be heading out towards the lighthouse. Perhaps the man in her was bringing a message; at any rate, there was no sign of the coast-guard’s cutter.
He went in, and, betaking himself to the kitchen, busied himself with a few simple preparations for dinner. But there was nothing to cook, for there remained the cold meat from yesterday’s cooking, which he would make sufficient, with some biscuit in place of potatoes. He felt restless and unstrung; the solitude irked him, and the everlasting wash of the water among the piles jarred on his nerves.
When he went out again into the gallery the ebb-tide had set in strongly and the boat was little more than a mile distant; and now, through the glass, he could see that the man in her wore the uniform cap of the Trinity House. Then the man must be his future comrade, Brown; but this was very extraordinary. What were they to do with the boat? There was no one to take her back.
The breeze was dying away. As he watched the boat, he saw the man lower the sail and take to his oars; and something of hurry in the way the man pulled over the gathering tide, caused Jeffreys to look round the horizon. And then, for the first time, he noticed a bank of fog creeping up from the east and already so near that the beacon on the East Girdler had faded out of sight. He hastened in to start the little motor that compressed the air for the fog-horn and waited awhile to see that the mechanism was running properly. Then, as the deck vibrated to the roar of the horn, he went out once more into the gallery.