R. Austin Freeman

“ Morris, Cropper and I looked in through the celluloid window. The yellow, shrunken face of the dead man, surmounted by the skull cap which he had always worn, looked so little changed that he might still have been in the drowsy, torpid state in which I had been accustomed to see him. He had always looked so like a dead man that the final transition was hardly noticeable.
“I suppose,” said Morris, “you would like to have the coffin-lid taken off?”
“God bless my soul, yes!” exclaimed Cropper. “What are we here for? We shall want him out of the coffin, too.” ”

“ As I made this declaration—to an accompaniment of approving growls from Miss Boler—Marion D’Arblay gave me one quick glance and then looked down; and once more, her eyes filled. For a few moments she made no reply; and when, at length, she spoke, her voice trembled.
“You leave me nothing to say,” she murmured, “but to thank you from my heart. But you little know what it means to us, who felt so helpless, to know that we have a friend so much wiser and stronger than ourselves.” ”

“ Naturally, then, when I observed this connexion of a criminal with a wax-work artist, I asked myself whether the motive of the murder was not to be sought in that artist’s unique powers. Could it be that an attempt had been made to employ the deceased on some work designed for a fraudulent purpose? If such an attempt had been made, whether it had or had not been successful, the deceased would be in possession of knowledge which would be highly dangerous to the criminal; but especially if a work had actually been executed and used as an instrument of fraud. ”

“ But it is a dreadful thing in any case to be bereft in a moment of the one whom one loves best in all the world. The circumstances of the loss cannot make very much difference. It is the loss itself that matters. The worst moment was when the blow fell—when we found him. This inquiry and the funeral are just the drab accompaniments that bring home the reality of what has happened.”
“Has the inspector called on you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “He had to, to get the particulars; and he was so kind and delicate that I am not in the least afraid of the examination by the coroner. ”

“ Isn’t it a very pretty puzzle for a medical jurist?”
“It is a hopeless tangle to me,” I replied. “My brain is in a whirl. You can’t dispute the facts, and yet you can’t believe them. I don’t know what to make of the affair.”
“You note the fact that, whoever may be dead, there is somebody alive—very much alive, and that that somebody is the murderer of Julius D’Arblay.”
“Yes, I realize that. But obviously he can’t be either Crile or Bendelow. The question is: Who is he?”
“You note the link between him and the Van Zellen murder; I mean the electrotype guinea?” ”

“ Miss D’Arblay shook her head. “Nothing,” she replied. “As it is an ancient coin, the man may be a collector or a dealer⸺”
“Or a forger,” interposed Miss Boler.
“Or a forger. But no such person is known to us. And even that is mere guesswork.”
“Your father was not interested in coins, then?”
“As a sculptor, yes, and more especially in medals and plaquettes. But not as a collector. He had no desire to possess; only to create. And so far as I know, he was not acquainted with any collectors. So this discovery of the inspector’s, so far from solving the mystery, only adds a fresh problem.” ”

“ Thorndyke replied.
“How mysterious!” exclaimed Miss Bonington, in a hushed voice. “How dreadful! Some poor creature who has been found dead, I suppose? I hope it won’t be very—er—you know what I mean, sir—when the coffin is opened.”
“There will be no need to open the coffin,” Thorndyke reassured her. “There is an inspection window in the coffin-lid through which you can see the face. All you have to do is to look through the window and tell us if the face that you see is the face of any one who is known to you. Are you ready, Polton?” ”

“ It is possible, for instance, though very improbable, that D’Arblay may have been murdered in error by a perfect stranger; that he may have walked into an ambush prepared for some one else. Again, the coin may not have belonged to the murderer at all, though that is also most improbable. But there are numerous possibilities of error; and we can eliminate them only by following up each suggested clue and seeking verification or disproof. Every new fact that we learn is a multiple gain. For as money makes money, so knowledge begets knowledge. ”

“ On this we rose, and Miller and I followed Polton out on to the landing, where he turned and began to ascend the stairs at a slow and solemn pace, as if he were conducting a funeral. The Superintendent walked at my side and muttered as he went, being evidently in a state of bewilderment fully equal to my own.
“Now, what the blazes,” he growled, “can the Doctor be up to now? I never saw such a man for springing surprises on one. But who the deuce can he have up there?” ”

“ The revelation was very characteristic of Thorndyke’s methods and principles. It illustrated in a most striking manner the truth which he was never tired of insisting on: that it is never safe to accept obvious appearances, and that every case, no matter how apparently simple and commonplace, should be approached with suspicion and scepticism and subjected to the most rigorous scrutiny. That was precisely what had been done in this case; and thereby an obvious suicide had been resolved into a cunningly planned and skilfully executed murder. ”

“ If we consider that of all the millions of persons in this island alone each one has a face which is different from any other, and yet that all those faces are made up of the same anatomical parts, we realize that the differences which distinguish one face from another must be excessively subtle and minute.”
“We do,” agreed Marion, “especially when we are modelling a portrait bust and the likeness won’t come although every part appears to be correct and all the measurements seem to agree. A true likeness is an extraordinarily subtle and exact piece of work.” ”

“ Well, we knew that he was the murderer of Van Zellen, for whom the American police were searching, and he might be in more danger than we knew. At any rate, a death certificate would make him absolutely secure—on one condition—that the body was cremated. Mere burial would not be enough; for an exhumation would discover the fraud. But perfect security could be secured only by destruction of all evidence of the fraud. Julius D’Arblay held such evidence. Therefore Julius D’Arblay must be got rid of. Here, then, was an amply sufficient motive for the murder. ”

“ When I finally bestowed the “Baby,” fully loaded, in my hip-pocket, and rose to go, Thorndyke sped me on my way with a few words of warning and advice.
“Be constantly on your guard, Gray. You are going to make a bitter enemy of a man who knows no scruples; indeed, you have done so already, and something tells me that he is aware of it. Avoid all solitary or unfrequented places. Keep to main thoroughfares and well-lighted streets, and maintain a diligent look-out for any suspicious appearances. You have said truly that we carry Miss D’Arblay’s life in our hands. ”

“ It was less than a week after the interview that I have recorded when I received a note from Thorndyke asking me to join him and Miller at King’s Bench-walk on the following morning at the unholy hour of half-past six. He offered to put me up for the night at his chambers, but I declined this hospitality, not wishing to trouble him unnecessarily; and after a perfunctory breakfast by gaslight, a ride on an early tram, and a walk through the dim, lamp-lit streets, I entered the Temple just as the subdued notes of an invisible clock bell announced a quarter past six. ”

“ Marion D’Arblay at Home
Most of us have, I imagine, been conscious at times of certain misgivings as to whether the Progress of which we hear so much has done for us all that it is assumed to have done; whether the undoubted gain of advancing knowledge has not a somewhat heavy counterpoise of loss. We moderns are accustomed to look upon a world filled with objects that would have made our forefathers gasp with admiring astonishment ”

“ We go into a house of mourning, and are almost scandalized by its cheerfulness, forgetting that whereas to us the bereavement is the one salient fact, to the bereaved there is the necessity of taking up afresh the threads of their lives. Food must be prepared even while the corpse lies under the roof, and the common daily round of duty stands still for no human affliction. ”

“ Utterly unprepared for this awful apparition, I was so overcome by astonishment and horror that I remained stooping, with motion arrested, as if petrified, staring at the thing in silence and hardly breathing. The face was that of a man of about fifty or a little more: a handsome, refined, rather intellectual face, with a moustache and Vandyke beard, and surmounted by a thickish growth of iron-grey hair. Of the rest of the body little was to be seen, for the duckweed and water-crowfoot had drifted over it, and I had no inclination to disturb them. ”

“ He is an inveterate murderer, to whom a human life does not count at all. And this type of man continually grows more and more dangerous for two reasons: first, the murder habit becomes more confirmed with each crime; second, there is virtually no penalty for the succeeding murders, for the first one entails the death sentence, and fifty murders can involve no more. This man killed Van Zellen as a mere incident of a robbery. Then he appears to have killed D’Arblay to secure his own safety, and he is now attempting to kill Miss D’Arblay, apparently for the same reason. ”

“ All other possibilities should be explored before suicide is accepted. But our difficulty in this case is that we have hardly any of the relevant facts. The evidence at the inquest may make everything clear. On the other hand it may leave things obscure. But what is your concern with the case? You are merely a witness to the finding of the body. The parties are all strangers to you, are they not?”
“They were,” I replied. “But I feel that some one ought to keep an eye on things for Miss D’Arblay’s sake, and circumstances seem to have put the duty on me. ”

“ I had considered applying to Inspector Follett, and we may have to later; but for the present it will be better for us to keep our own counsel and play our own hand. We have two objects in view. First—and paramount—is the necessity of securing Miss D’Arblay’s safety. But, second, we want to lay our hands on this man, not to frighten him away, as we might do if we put the police on his track. When once we have him, her safety is secured for ever, whereas if he were merely scared away he would be an abiding menace. ”

“ Here is a man who commits a murder and who, at the time of committing it appears to have been in possession of a coin, which is not a current coin, but a collector’s piece; and behold! the murdered man is a sculptor—a man who, presumably, was capable of making a coin, or at least the working model.”
“There is no evidence,” I objected, “that D’Arblay was capable of cutting a die. He was not a die sinker.”
“There was no need for him to be,” Thorndyke rejoined. “Formerly, the medallist who designed the coin cut the die himself. But that is not the modern practice. ”

“ When they had gone, Miller stepped across to the coffin and cast a curious glance in at the window.
“So that is Mr. Bendelow,” said he. “I don’t think much of him, and I don’t see how he is going to help us. But you have given those two old girls a rare shake-up, and I don’t wonder. Of course, this can’t be a dead body that you have got in this coffin, but it is a most lifelike representation of one, and it took in those poor old Judies properly. What have you got to tell us about this affair, Doctor? I can see that your scheme, whatever it was, has come off. They always do. ”

“ But she had hardly finished when he fell to work with a quiet, unhurried facility that filled me with envy. He seemed to know where to find everything. He discovered the waste-paper with which to cover the model to prevent the clay from sticking to it, he pounced on the clay bin at the first shot, and when he had built up the shape for the case, found the plaster-bin, mixing-bowl, and spoon as if he had been born and bred in the workshop, stopping only for a moment to test the condition of the gelatine in the bucket. ”

“ Cornish’s practice—indeed, Cornish had returned on the previous evening—that my unsatisfactory attendance on Mr. Simon Bendelow came to an end. It had been a wearisome affair. In medical practice, perhaps even more than in most human activities, continuous effort calls for the sustenance of achievement. A patient who cannot be cured or even substantially relieved is of all patients the most depressing. ”

“ Mr. Bendelow was a most remarkable-looking man. Probably he had always been somewhat peculiar in appearance; but now the frightful emaciation (which strongly confirmed Cropper’s diagnosis) had so accentuated his original peculiarities that he had the appearance of some dreadful, mirthless caricature. Under the influence of the remorseless disease, every structure which was capable of shrinking had shrunk to the vanishing-point, leaving the unshrinkable skeleton jutting out with a most horrible and grotesque effect. ”

“ Thorndyke smiled at him indulgently. “Now, Miller,” said he, “don’t pretend to be foolish, because you are not. The man whom you are to arrest is a live man, and what is more, he is easily accessible whenever you choose to lay your hands on him.”
“Do you know where to find him?”
“Yes,” Thorndyke replied. “I, myself, will conduct you to his house, which is in Abbey-road, Hornsey, nearly opposite Miss D’Arblay’s studio.” ”

“ That motive must have had some background, some connexion with circumstances of which somebody has knowledge. Sooner or later those circumstances will almost certainly come to light, and then the motive for the murder will come into view. But once the motive is known, it should not be difficult to discover who could be influenced by such a motive. Let us, for the present, be patient and see how events shape, but let us also keep a constant watch for any glimmer of light, for any fact that may bear on either the motive or the person. ”

“ At this gruesome object Miller and I gazed in speechless astonishment, but, apart from Polton’s injunction, there was no opportunity for an exchange of sentiments; for we had hardly taken our seats when we heard the sound of ascending footsteps mingled with Thorndyke’s bland and persuasive accents. A few moments later the party reached the door; and as the two ladies came in sight of the coffin, both started back with a cry of alarm.
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Miss Dewsnep, “it’s a dead person! Who is it, sir? Is it any one we know?” ”

“ An ordinary work of sculpture, no matter how realistic, is frankly an object of metal, stone, or pottery. Its realism is restricted to truth of form. No deception is aimed at but, on the contrary, is expressly avoided. But the aim of wax-work is complete deception; and its perfection is measured by the completeness of the deception achieved. How complete that may be can be judged by incidents that have occurred at Madame Tussaud’s. When that exhibition was at the old Baker-street Bazaar, the snuff-taker—whose arms, head, and eyes were moved by clock-work—used to be seated on an open bench ”

“ Inspector Follett’s Discovery
To a man whose mind is working actively, walking is a more acceptable mode of progression than riding in a vehicle. There is a sort of reciprocity between the muscles and the brain—possibly due to the close association of the motor and psychical centres—whereby the activity of the one appears to act as a stimulus to the other. A sharp walk sets the mind working, and, conversely, a state of lively reflection begets an impulse to bodily movement.
Hence, when I had emerged from Market-street and set my face homewards, I let the omnibuses rumble past unheeded. ”

“ But if the Criminal Investigation Department doesn’t investigate crime, what the deuce is the good of it?”
“That is hardly a fair way of putting it,” he protested. “The people at Scotland Yard have got their hands pretty full, and they can’t spend their time in speculating about cases in which there is no evidence. They can’t create evidence; and you can see for yourself that there isn’t the ghost of a clue to the identity of the man who committed this murder. ”

“ Polton appeared on the threshold. Observing me, he crinkled benevolently, and then, in answer to Thorndyke’s inquiring glance, said: “I thought I had better remind you, sir, that you have not had any supper.”
“Dear me, Polton!” Thorndyke exclaimed, “now you mention it, I believe you are right. And I suspect that Dr. Gray is in the same case. So we place ourselves in your hands. Supper and pistols are what we want.”
“Pistols, sir!” exclaimed Polton, opening his eyes to an unusual extent and looking at us suspiciously.
“Don’t be alarmed, Polton,” Thorndyke chuckled. “It isn’t a duel. ”

“ Passing along this kerb-side market and reflecting (like Diogenes, in similar circumstances) how many things there were in the world that I did not want, I walked slowly up the street looking for Number 23—my patient’s number—and the canal which I had seen on the map. I located them both at the same instant, for Number 23 turned out to be the last house on the opposite side, and a few yards beyond it the street was barred by a low wall, over which, as I looked, the mast of a sailing-barge came into view and slowly crept past. ”