The wearer of the hat was tall and wan and spare in frame—that bleak and shabby young man who kissed Mary Sugden good night at the top of the area steps of Number 24, Bellington Square, W.i. He kissed her in a resounding fashion that brought a laugh from a nearing policeman, unheard of approach on his rubber-soled boots.
The young man looked up, and Mary Sugden gasped: “Oh, lor’!”
“A nasty raw night,” the constable remarked.
“Er—yes, it is that,” mumbled the swain.
“Doesn’t know whether to snow again or thaw.”
“No, it doesn’t,” agreed the young man. “Pretty rotten, underfoot.”
The constable glanced at the man’s cracked shoes, nodded benignantly, smiled, and sauntered on. The man tried to grip at Mary’s hand, but she giggled and scuttled three steps downward, to her kitchen.
“Then t’morrow night, same time,” she hoarsely ordered.
“Maybe,” grunted the young man.
“What d’y’ mean—mebbe?”
“I’m sick of messing about. I’m going in to see him.” The young man nodded at the golden windows of the dining-room above his head.
“I thought so—now I just thought so! Well, Harry Greenwood, y’ve precious little respec’ for me—as you’ve asked to be y’r wife—if y’ can’t be guided by me; you have! I’ve warned y’—he doesn’t bother his head about the likes of us. I’ve told you over an’ over again; but y’re that pig-headed, y’ are … Shut up an’ don’t be so soft!”
“Well, my argument is, you never know—”
“All right then, have y’r own silly way. Go on in an’ see him—an’ get chucked out! Do it … an’ it’s the last you ever see of me, Harry! He knows you by sight; seen you callin’ here … get me the blinkin’ sack you would! … An’ a fat lot you’d care—” And here, a gulping and a break to tears.
The constable had halted to pat his hands together in the cold night. Out of sidelong eyes he was watching. He had little else to do, for the relief was already five minutes late and he was at the defined end of his beat. Very soon now the sergeant from Harford Street Police Station would appear with a file of fifteen constables—cutting through Bellington Square, relieving duty-men all the way, eventually to post the last man out in Edgware Road. The sudden little quarrel he regarded whimsically, as men at their ease always regard the unease of others.
A second five-minutes’ period passed. The constable lost his complacency. Hang the relief! He took three or four slow steps toward the still quarrelsome twain. He saw, quite distinctly, for all that a swift whirry of snow sailed into the square, that Mary Sugden’s eyes were shining wide with tears. He heard her sobbing; but then he saw the tall man stoop quickly and kiss those tears away … fondle her with some fierce gentility of passion: heard him murmuring earnestly as he threw aside all his forces that had made for discord. And the constable, smiling again, retraced those three steps.
A second good-night call; a sweeter reply; a treading of feet and the closing of a heavy door. The constable turned to see the tall lover striding away across the narrow roadway to the high railings that bounded the private central gardens of the square. Mary Sugden had vanished. Save for the constable and the lover the great quadrangle was deserted … The time was twelve minutes past ten o’clock.
… The terrible scream and the crash as of a shot came within the ensuing twenty seconds.
P.C. Pentony was a man of decision and a good runner. He whistled double calls and sped to the fallen Harry Greenwood. He only had to traverse thirty-seven snowy yards … to reach the silent huddle beneath the lamp, beside the railings.
Doors were opening on all sides and windows glared as their hangings were drawn aside by alarmed residents. Bellington Square, W.i., wherein the only usual sounds were the far-away drone of traffic in Oxford Street and the solemn snoring of that in Edgware Road, became as the court-yard of Babel. The relief sergeant with his file of officers rushed up at the double, and a second constable, unrelieved, who had been on duty at the top end of the square—on the far side of the railed-in central gardens—ran around and joined the busy group.
Greenwood lay in the snow that covered the concrete pathway which was a bound outside the railings, with his knees bent under him as though he had slumped asleep at prayer. He was hatless and the shoulder of his jacket (he had no overcoat) was torn. His pitiful face was a livid mask, and frozen, so it seemed. One feeble and fluttering hand tried to claw the red slush in which he lay. But then this twitched and was awfully still. Constable Pentony turned him over and looked.
“Shot through the head, poor bloke!” he muttered.
A second policeman smoothed him out and covered him with a cape. “Stand back there—keep back, will you!” snapped a third to the ever clustering crowd, and out of the plenitude of men he had, the sergeant drew a cordon.
“Pentony, where’s the fellow’s hat; seen it?”
“No, Sergeant, I haven’t.”
“Ugh!—How far away were you when the shot was heard?”
“Not forty yards … just across the road, as a matter of fact.”
“What?” The sergeant started and grew red in the face. “And—and you didn’t see anyone?”
“Not a soul!”
The sergeant glanced around and took survey of all the close vicinity. Then he cocked one eye and regarded P.C. Pentony as one regards a puling child: tolerantly, yet pitying.
“And you never noticed—”
“Sergeant Arnott, I saw this chap fall; saw him fall, I tell you”—Pentony’s voice was shrill—“but there wasn’t anyone about.”
“You—you poor fish!” Sergeant Arnott was icily violent. “Didn’t it dawn on your mind—hadn’t you the hoss-sense to realise—that the fellow was shot from inside these railings?” He snorted now. “Here, get a move on: you’ve got a key … half-a-dozen of you men … light up, and search these gardens. It’s an eight-feet-high barrier; take some getting over—might be just possible that the fellow who did the job is still inside!”
Seven electric hand-lamps flashed white arcs on the snow, and P.C. Pentony, trembling now, clumsily opened a resident’s gate in the tall railings. The searchers sidled through into the snowy waste, and very slowly began to scour the ground; methodically to scour. They were trained men. They missed little, as they moved about with those brilliant fans of light poured on the clear snow.
… The time was nineteen minutes past ten o’clock.
Sergeant Arnott had sent an officer back to Harford Street Station to report and to summon an ambulance and a doctor. This man found that an inspector of the C.I.D. was in the charge-room. He had listened and had taken matters in hand; he covered the hundred-and-eighty yards between the station and the scene of the crime at a rush. Sergeant Arnott sighed in relief as the inspector pushed through the cordon and hurriedly he recounted all he had done, and had learned … Into the top of the square, from Edgware Road, a clanging ambulance-car, from St. Asaph’s Hospital, Paddington, turned.
… The time was twenty-two minutes past ten o’clock.
“Good evening, Inspector Templeton—good evening, Sergeant Arnott”—this was a very steady voice—“What’s the trouble?”
The two officers saluted. Each recognised the newcomer; each with differing emotions. To the sergeant, the advent of Sir Richard Thorreston Brantyngham, from his stately house—Number 24, Bellington Square, W.i.—was almost as the advent of doom to his career. P.C. Pentony had been on special detail … had been guarding the residence of this officer of State, as always it was guarded; by day and by night. And a man who had talked to a maid in that house had been murdered—almost on the doorstep and actually within sight of the warden.
On the contrary, the C.I.D. man welcomed Brantyngham. Inspector Templeton knew Sir Richard, not alone as a Third Service Chief, but as a clever doctor and one who had power to advance by his influence what years of careful service, otherwise, could not move. He felt that here, at last, was his chance to display himself, to the finest advantage.…
“Man, at present unknown, Sir Richard, shot through the head—dead, Sir Richard.”
Sir Richard Brantyngham examined the man under the clustered coverings of many capes and the glowing of electric lamps.
“I’ll have him taken into my house, Inspector,” Sir Richard quietly remarked. “He is not dead, nor has he been shot. There’s not the slightest chance for him if he’s taken off in the ambulance; a single jolt will end him.… Tell the ambulance orderlies to bring a stretcher.… Ah—good; here’s a doctor. I shall need help.”
“Very good, sir!” The Inspector spoke to Sergeant Arnott and this man gave his orders. The heavy mass of curiosity was pressed back, not gently, and the supine body of Harry Greenwood was delicately lifted and borne up the steps to the house. The hospital doctor, conferring with Sir Richard, whom he knew, followed.
The door of 24, Bellington Square was widely opened, and as the stretcher-bearers passed into the large hall, Sir Richard halted for a moment to scan the railed-in garden, in which the bobbing lines of light made by the police searchers still moved—away at the farthermost end, nearest, now, to Edgware Road.
Looking so … he saw the black thing … flying.
Fully a hundred feet above the ground, high above the tallest of the magnificent plane trees that dotted the enclosure—dim in the sailing snow—it sped along; it seemed a ball of blackness, madly sportive. The air in the square was very still, yet a movement of currents was indicated at that height usurped by the flying thing. For it bounced aloft in a mighty arc; lofting strangely, too—as though it had impetus from more cause than the little high-crying wind above the house-tops—cutting aerial angles and graceful curves and gyratory figures, all admirably … Until it swerved, lost power, and made a sudden swoop downward, until it fell below the level of the highest eaves, where no wind was. Then it shot away in an oblique line—to scrape across the upper twigs of a tree—to be deflected, and so to fall … into the roadway almost at the feet of Sergeant Arnott, as he stood at the tail-board of the ambulance.
It was a hat; a simple bowler hat—the one that Harry Greenwood had worn, and that which P.C. Pentony could not find—a bowler hat … yet it battered into the slushy snow with the sounding weight of a hammer blow. It crashed heavily, and its brim broke off … and a long rain of golden discs rolled from its ruin.
Sir Richard Brantyngham took the wrecked thing, and the golden discs, from the sergeant. He beckoned, and Arnott followed him indoors. The door of Number 24, Bellington Square closed on a hundred gaping faces.
… The time was twenty-six minutes past ten o’clock.
Sir Richard Brantyngham took up one of the three champagne goblets he had ordered to be brought him. He poured in it a few drops of pure alcohol which he obtained from Doctor Fletchley’s case of drugs and instruments. He ignited the spirit and watched it flare within the thin glass hemisphere … and allowed the newly sterilised vessel to cool.
He next took a pair of sterile forceps and went over to the chair on which Greenwood’s jacket lay. From the bloodstained left shoulder he carefully plucked five pieces of ice, none larger than a pea.
He let these fragments tinkle into the prepared vessel and instantly covered them.
Only now did he manifest interest in Doctor Fletchley’s final work on Greenwood’s moaning body. He watched the swift stitches that the surgeon was making in the left shoulder. His own turn had already been served: he had worried like a delicately determined dog to help Fletchley in his major operation of setting to rights the back of the poor skull and the alleviation of danger from the injured throat.
“Miraculous escape the artery had—what?”
Doctor Fletchley nodded without looking up.
“About the nearest thing I’ve ever seen,” he agreed.
“D’you think he’ll make it, Fletchley?”
“Don’t see why he shouldn’t; you gave him the only chance. Not a bad physique for a youngster. Yes, I think he’ll get over this—it’s that damned base I’m fearing.”
“So am I.” Brantyngham was very grave. “I’m far from satisfied … believe you’ll find a smash, under X-rays.”
“Aye—before that!” Greenwood began to stir. “Look at him; he’s showing up … very like it!”
“Poor devil! He’d better be taken away as soon as you’ve tied that lot, don’t you agree?”
“Certainly! I’ll only be a minute or so longer. Then, if I can use your phone, I’ll prepare ’em up at St. Asaph’s for what’s coming.”
“The whole thing’s absolutely beyond me,” Fletchley continued. “Simply can’t make head or tail of it. How the devil a man can suffer a cracked cranium from a stab, I’m at a loss to determine! Jove!—if he snuffs it, my evidence at the inquest’ll put a new point into medical—‘ju’ … I’m baffled!”
“Oh, I shouldn’t let it worry, Fletchley,” Sir Richard drawled. “I realise your quandry, but take advice from an old hand in such relation—never allow surprise at the phenomenal to fester into concern, else your peace of mind will suffer beyond all remedy. Admittedly the whole affair is a maddening riddle, but just let it rest at that; what sense is there in fraying nerves about it?” He mused; smiled obliquely at the eager-looking inspector and said, softly: “Look at Templeton here—he’s all but springing at your neck, to throttle out of you what you mean by stating that Greenwood was stabbed, when he’s already as sure as light that the fellow was shot.”
“He—he was shot!” declared the Inspector. “Not much doubt about that, I should say.”
Doctor Fletchley raised his shaggy, sandy head and glared over the curves of his pince-nez.
“I said that this man was stabbed! You C.I.D. fellows are just too confoundedly omnipotent, on occasion—for all that, I’ve yet to find one of you capable of teaching me my own business, sir! This man was stabbed—was seriously injured, if you like that better—by a blow from some sharp and triangular instrument that was driven downwards with tremendous force; a blow that cracked the left base of the skull first—that tore the neck and the left shoulder last. Nothing more certain than that, Inspector!” He rounded on Sir Richard. “You substantiate that?”
“Without qualification, Fletchley.”
So buffeted, Inspector Templeton became dogged.
“With all respects to you, Sir Richard—”
“Here, Templeton—pull up! You’re in charge of this case; it’s essentially a police affair … up to now. Don’t you fret your soul about undue respects. Say what you like—don’t mind me!”
“Thank you, Sir Richard. I mayn’t be able to teach you your job, Doctor, but the same salt’s on your bird: I know mine. And, knowing it, Doctor, I’ll take a dickens of a lot of convincing that those wounds were caused by stabbing. What about the scream and the sound of the shot? How d’you get over those? So far as I can go, at present, what’s more feasible than that the fellow was shot at from a distance—the bullet striking his shoulder first, glancing up to cut the side of his neck and then glancing again—to smash him on the lower bulge of his head, so fracturing the skull?”
“I—I tell you, once and for all, Inspector, this was a downwards driven blow!”
“Then the bullet could have been fired, say, from an upper window in this square; that would yield you the point and still fit in with known facts.”
“Really? Then will you tell me something else that my poor talents cannot grapple with—where’s the bullet? You saw that wound in the shoulder; it had no point of exit … And do you think I’m such a fool as to imperil my career by stitching up a cavity without being certain beyond all shadow of doubt that no foreign body lay embedded in it?” Doctor Fletchley snorted. “No, Inspector, you’ll have to try again; that cat won’t fight—this—is—not—a—bullet—wound … it’s purely and simply a stab!”
“I’m very much afraid, Inspector Templeton,” Sir Richard Brantyngham quietly said, “that you’ll have to drop your bullet theory. Eliminate it altogether, now! You’ll never get anywhere otherwise. Doctor Fletchley is absolutely sure, and so am I, that this ragged wound, despite the complication of the fractured base, is in every way compatible with a theorising about there being a downwards driven blow, akin to a stabbing, delivered on this man’s upper body.”
“You—you told me that you heard the scream and the sound of the shot, and—”
“Inspector Templeton—please! I told you nothing of the kind, sir! When you first questioned me, I most deliberately referred to: ‘a shrill and scream-like sound, succeeded by a detonation, as that one might attribute to the discharge of a fire-arm’ … Come, get your wits to work—were those, or were they not, my actual words?”
“They were your actual words, Sir Richard. But I cannot see, save that they are guarded, they are any different from the making of a definite statement to the effect that you heard this man scream out in fear and then you heard the shot that knocked him out.”
Sir Richard Brantyngham sighed and turned to Sergeant Arnott. “Would you mind, Sergeant? … Ring up the Senior United Forces’ Club—ask if Lord Passingford is present, and, if he is—tell him to come to this house as fast as he can.”
The sergeant saluted and went off to the telephone. Sir Richard left the group in the hall and entered his study. A safe door clanged and he returned … to place in Inspector Templeton’s hands a warrant, given under the twin seals of two of His Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State for Home and Foreign Affairs …
“As this man never uttered a scream and as a shot was not fired in this square to-night, Inspector Templeton, and, as you will not rid your mind of a prejudicial theory of ‘shooting,’ that annuls all your efforts from the outset … I shall take charge of this case from now. From now you act only under my orders!”
… The foregoing I have edited and accurately transcribed from Sir Richard Thorreston Brantyngham’s minutely elaborate notes on the case of “The Flying Hat,” entered in his journals. On my arrival at 24, Bellington Square I found that Greenwood had been removed to St. Asaph’s Hospital, and that Sir Richard had received a report from P.C. Pentony, on the result of the search of the central gardens of the square. Essentially, now, does my task begin:
For all that every inch of the snow-covered surface had been scoured—time after time—not a trace of a footstep was to be found in those gardens. The police searchers left long black lines in the grass wherever they moved; lines that cut down through the lightly-lain snow, betraying all well. Naught save these remained … attention alone had been centred on three small holes, not far from the scene of the crime, which marked the snow as points of an isosceles triangle, four-feet long in the base and six-feet seven inches from basal points to apex. Since no other similar markings were seen, these the police were inclined to treat perfunctorily. Brantyngham smiled on hearing of them.
P.C. Pentony, eager no doubt to wipe off the black patch on his service, indicated in Sergeant Arnott’s earlier attitude toward him—and, strangely enough, appointed control-officer of the squad of searchers by reason, also, of that attitude—made some very fine points. He had every vertical railing examined: none was loose in its socket; none was bent; not one had in any way been started. Now, beneath the rather savage-looking ornamental spikes, topping these eight-feet-high rails, is a flat horizontal rail. Pentony, brilliant fellow, had the snow that lay on top of this flat rail carefully inspected. In no place was its unbroken surface marred. Apparently then no one had got out of that inner plot by way of clambering over the railings … and of the residents’ gates … all save the one that Pentony had opened with his private key, were not only locked, but chained and re-padlocked.
Further than all this, P.C. Pentony took it upon himself to carry out certain other tests. He ran from the scene of the crime to each of the boundary rails in turn; allowed two minutes—in mind—for that time necessary for an agile man to clamber over the railings and then assessed that, at the very lowest estimate, a running and athletic man could not hope to escape from the inner garden, via the railings, in a time under four minutes. And, so bonded by seconds and moments is the chronology of this case, such a period would have certainly admitted the possibility of that man’s capture.… Let it be recalled that the square was fully aroused within two minutes, and the police were already in the central gardens, searching, within five minutes of the detonation (I shall not call it “shot”). Surely anyone decamping from the scene would have been noticed.…
Eliminated, the possibility of a shot from some upper window of the square; admitted, a stabbing … necessitated therefore: some human agency that was in very close proximity to the victim. Then—how had that human being escaped? How had it consummated the crime? Trackless and invisible, that agent—entity—being, call it what you will; how had it struck and felled and gone from all men’s knowing, within a few short minutes; out of a well-lighted quadrangle, alive with police officers and stirring people? Such was the riddle Brantyngham set himself to solve!
He began to work in earnest when he looked over the “property” found in Greenwood’s pockets; when he carefully examined the man’s clothing—his shoes, stocking-feet pulled over holed socks; his miserable rag of a dirty shirt; his greasy waistcoat; his blood-stained jacket … and his exquisitely woven silk underwear—that which was labelled by a Bond Street name, that only uncared price purchases …
“Funny kit for an out-of-work dental mechanic, worth two-and-threepence-’a-penny and fourteen pawn-tickets—eh?” grunted Brantyngham, looking at that labelled name.
“Damned funny,” I agreed.
“Beg your pardon, Sir Richard,” said the massive Inspector Templeton, “but I’ve been able to get a bit of news out of that hysterical kitchen-maid of yours—this fellow Greenwood was a waiter, not a dental mechanic!”
Sir Richard calmly looked up and smoothed his mane of iron-grey hair. A smile was twitching around his lean mouth that seemed a preface to a laugh, but one I knew—from long and sorry knowledge—to be a disguise.
“I shouldn’t question the point, Inspector Templeton.” I laughed. “Rather shall we ask him to prove it …”
“Proof—proof, you ask?” Brantyngham was started from his mood, like a terrier started at a sudden rat; I was wary enough not to smile! “What proof d’you want more than this?” And he pointed to the front of the waistcoat. “Apart from the physical peculiarities of the man—sorry you didn’t get here in time to scan ’em, Passingford; rather interesting—this waistcoat tells me as much as is necessary to know.”
“His waistcoat—?”
“Yes; d’you see these?” Brantyngham pointed to a clutter of waxen spottings about the middle button of the garment. Greasy, pink, brown and reddish were they … and long veinings of rusty-looking dust adhered to the wax and so deeply entered the very fabric of the thing as to obliterate its rough texture of warp and weft. “Those marks were made by dental wax, dropped on the serge in a molten state, and the rusty dust is that of finely pulverised—or, shall I say, milled—vulcanite. I don’t know whether you are aware of the fact, Inspector, but a dental mechanic in making false dentures first of all arranges artificial teeth on waxen plates, these being formed upon plaster-of-Paris models of the human mouth into which the finished product has to go.… Very well then … Wax and plaster and vulcanite—this last being the material of which false denture-plates are usually fashioned.
“Here, on this waistcoat are distinct traces of two of these materials; especially about a horizontal patch which coincides with the wearer’s level of body, when seated, at a work-bench. And a dental mechanic’s bench is usually shaped like that of a working jeweller—a table-like structure with a bay in it, in which to press the round of the upper abdomen. Here are markings at that level, as I have said … they betray as much as they help to prove.
“Then again, had you taken perfect note of his physical peculiarities, you would have found a curious malformation of Greenwood’s right index finger, and another of the inner curve of his right thumb.… Flat and shining surfaces, these … and the nails were bevelled cross-wise, deeper than the most exquisitely manicured Viennese beauty dare allow herself to go, in pursuit of V-contours.… Those nails had been ground away to their quicks on the inner rounds of each digit.
“When a dental mechanic shapes the tiny artificial porcelain bodies of teeth that are to fit against the gum-contours of a human mouth, he grinds those bodies on a small carborundum wheel; rotated at high speed. His fingers and their nails cannot help but suffer—they get ground as well.… Greenwood’s nails and fingers had been malformed in such fashion. When I examined them, they showed signs of regaining their normal shape; a month or so of growth, I guessed. They were badly stunted; their recovery will be slow.
“Keep so much in mind—now for the tiny blobs of dirty grey stuff, like minute ‘marbles,’ that are, as you can see, dotted all over these trousers’ legs.… Those are made of plaster-of-Paris. In mechanical dentistry that material is used in quantities, every hour. And these are old spottings: they have gone to the hardness of common pottery. None is new.” Sir Richard picked up one of the man’s broken shoes. “Then, look at this; see how it’s also marked and marred? Absolutely ingrained with plaster; rotted by the stuff. And what else strikes you as noteworthy about these lines of rot?”
The gaping Inspector did not answer. I murmured that they seemed to have been repeatedly blackened and polished over.
“Exactly, Passingford … exactly!” Brantyngham was childishly exultant. “No fresh markings of plaster made on the shoe. Those that are, repeatedly concealed. I’m getting to my final point.… I told you that the man was out of work, didn’t I?”
We agreed.
“No recent grindings of the nails; no recent sullying of clothes and footgear by plaster … no recent work, at his craft.”
The Inspector graciously approved.
“Then, Sir Richard, I’ll have inquiries made, at once, to ascertain the name of his old employer. The fact that his pawn-tickets are in his correct name seems to indicate that the fellow has not gone under an alias—and Theobalds Road district is the address on all of ’em.”
“That’s the way, Templeton; do that, and we’ll get on like a house a-fire.… And by the way, just to narrow down your search, Greenwood worked for a very second-rate man; probably some recently registered, but actually semi-qualified, man. I saw the abnormal development of his right leg. The thigh and calf muscles were enormously bunched, but going flabby because not used for a while. Those muscles were developed by reason of his having been used to a foot-treadle; a grinding and polishing lathe … which he had worked himself. Most flourishing dentists can afford electric power for those jobs; moreover a dentist who does not have mains’ supply, and has to use the old-time foot power, usually delegates such work to an apprentice. You can argue from such statements, Inspector, that Greenwood’s employer is in quite a small way—could only afford one man to do everything.… Now you get the Yard at work; it will be interesting to discover how near I am getting at truths.…”
Before midnight it was found that Harry Greenwood was a dental mechanic who had worked for a Mr. Eric Pinnersby, registered dentist, of Theobalds Road—a man who had closed down because of lack of trade. He shut up shop exactly five weeks before that tragic night in Bellington Square!
Inspector Templeton became, at that news, Sir Richard Thorreston Brantyngham’s most devoted ally.
“Ever heard that yarn, Passingford,”—Sir Richard was studying a heap of gold; those heavy coins that had fallen out of Greenwood’s hat when it fell at Arnott’s feet—“about the doctor who stopped before the statue of the ‘Dying Alexander’ in the Uffizi Galleries of Florence, and, ‘That chap died of cerebro-spinal meningitis,’ ” said he.… The medical eye and the artist’s eye in the sculptor had each seen straightly across the centuries; each found accordance. “Rather neat—what?”
I told him that I had never heard the yarn before, although I had been in the Galleries.
“I—I thought you had!” Brantyngham glanced up and smiled, ever so gently; I grew cold. Here was some test. “I thought you had, Passingford … d’you remember the gold room?”
“By Jove!” I looked with a more avid interest at the coins. “I do! … Here, let me have another look at that largest piece.” Brantyngham gave it to me. “Yes; I’ve seen that before—”
“—In the gold room; precisely!” He was still gently smiling. “The only existing medallion-of-homage known to modern history … struck by the Emperor Diocletian; portraying his full body, supported by rather abandoned goddesses, soaring above the cluster of ancient Rome. The only specimen … and that found in the hatband of one Harry Greenwood, out-of-work!” He coughed and laughed together; his peculiar betrayal of violent interest in a problem. “And here we also have, at least to my poor knowledge, another thousand-pounds’ worth of coins. Rare as the devil’s bath-nights—eh? Look at ’em—Rose Nobles and Ducats; an Armada token in soft gold and a Henry piece that has a double ‘Lady’ … Roman, Assyrian, Babylonian, and mediæval.… How, in the name of wonder, do they connect up with that poverty-stricken beggar—?”
“—Who wore ten-guinea silken underwear,” I reminded him.
“Oh, I’m not letting that fact escape me, Passingford! Not for a moment!” He stopped his noisy laughing and lit a cigar.… The clock chimed out that the hour was three of the morning. “As you know, that maid, Mary Sugden, has stated that she met Greenwood first of all when he came down to her kitchen making guarded inquiries: he had heard I was in the way of being some weird kind of a private detective—he sought my aid, as he had some mysterious trouble that could not be dealt with at police hands. I submit, in theory, that this trouble also was connected with these coins. Well, Mary Sugden assured him that I wouldn’t touch his affairs … but asked him to call again. The result was a wooing; that pair are engaged to be married.
“Now, here’s something that you do not know”—he passed a heavy gold ring across to me—“that ring signified the betrothal; Sugden never wore it in the house, but gave it to me when she told me her private relations with the fellow. And that ring, my puzzled Passingford, drops us further into the mire! Undoubtedly it is ancient Egyptian … a salt-ring: a circlet denoting that its one-time owner was a vendor of salt, at that time rare and precious stuff in Egypt, to people with money enough to buy. And that ring, Passingford, I dare wager, has come from some other great numismatic and olden goldworks’ collection.
“Assuming that all these mysterious pieces of gold formed the subject of Greenwood’s trouble, why the dickens did he carry them about with him so negligently? Assuming that he was worn down by poverty—why didn’t he melt the lot down and sell the result, bit by bit, as scrap gold? Being a dental mechanic he could have got away with it, easily—such men always consider scrap-metal as perquisites, and sell quite openly. For all that the buyer could tell, the melted result might have once formed gold plates of artificial teeth, and—”
He stopped; gasped, went quite grey … Then, musing:
“By the Lord Harry—I see it! A—a track at last! Passingford—a track I tell you—a track … Now we might be able to correlate the apparently irreconcilable parts of this astounding whole! Thanks for reminding me about that silken underwear.… A man who has such tastes usually goes the whole hog; but there may be men who have such tastes and have to conceal them.”
“Force of circumstances, you mean?”
“Oh, there are various kinds of force.” Brantyngham was airily vague; an attitude that told me he had truly struck a light in mental darkness. “Let’s ring up the hospital and find out how Greenwood’s progressing.”
… Doctor Fletchley said: “As well as can be expected. He’s unconscious. It is a fractured base. He keeps on muttering two words—‘lorry’ and ‘queer’; ‘lorry-queer,’ in succession, like that.”
“Interesting,” muttered Brantyngham, “but not enlightening.… Who’s that?” He put down the receiver and looked up at his sleepy butler who had entered. “Who?—Oh, Inspector Templeton; very good, I’ll see him.”
Templeton’s face was one vast smile. He carried himself stiffly and with pride. Sir Richard gave him a drink and we listened to what he had to tell.
It appeared that he had acquitted himself with remarkable skill. It had already been ascertained that Harry Greenwood had lodged near to his old employer’s place and had not moved, although out of work. For all his apparent poverty he had not claimed the “dole,” and for all that he went about almost in rags the sum of eight-hundred and forty pounds, in pound and ten-shilling notes, had been found concealed under a loose board in his bedroom. Further, a search of his rooms had shown the police that he was possessed of a valuable set of gold and ivory toilet requisites, although the brush and comb and shaving-brush he habitually used had not cost five shillings all told. The expensive set was also hidden beneath the floor. Behind a door hung an overcoat that had cost every penny of fifteen guineas, and between mattress and springings of his bed two suits of perfect cut and finish were discovered.
Brantyngham smiled as he listened to all this. He smiled as gently and as happily as when he tested me on the point concerning the Uffizi Galleries. “I am beginning to admire this fellow Greenwood,” he murmured. “Behold the struggle indicated in and by all this; must have a backbone! I wish to heavens that little Mary Sugden had not prevented him from seeing me! I’d have helped …”
Greenwood’s landlady stated that she had another boarder until recently, a man with whom Greenwood had been friendly, yet one whom he seemed to fear. A fortnight ago the landlady heard high words passing between her two tenants, and the sound of a blow. That night Zweiterbach, the Jewish boarder, left her house. He went away in a violent rage and had a black eye. Another friend of Greenwood’s was a tall Frenchman—a man whose name she said was Lorrequier—who was a student and was always travelling abroad. She knew this because the fellow had rather fascinated her eldest daughter … he was forever sending her post-cards from foreign parts—Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Rome and Florence.
Brantyngham whistled a little stave; a bird-note that was full of glee. “Behold the unholy trinity.” He chuckled. “Lorrequier—‘lorry-queer’… the force that was not of circumstances and the victim of something that may have been because Greenwood was above circumstances—for the force, read ‘the Jew’ … Go on, Inspector, you’ve done remarkably well!”
The Jew, Zweiterbach, was a small and ill-favoured fellow. He was described as having a black beard and stubby hands, loose teeth—mis-shapen and prominent; a shuffle in his gait and reddish-rimmed eyes; the pupils a brilliant brown, the landlady said. Lorrequier was a fair-haired fellow with merry blue eyes—and “as open as the day.” His hands were lean and long fingered and his mien, usually one of laughing insouciance.
One more fact elicited: both the Jew and Greenwood were often in receipt of buff envelopes stamped “O.H.M.S.,” and, according to their printed superscription, emanating from the Patents Office.
Sir Richard Brantyngham got to his feet and stretched himself.
“Inspector, I congratulate you. You haven’t let much slip past you!”
Templeton also got up, awkwardly. “There’s one last point, Sir Richard,” he said. “I set afoot inquiries among all the taxi-drivers round about here, describing the Jew. You see, I remembered the quarrel and the black eye and thought of possible motive and revenge. And sure enough, one Jerry Butterworth, a driver, tells me that he took up a fare from the corner of Edgware Road, at eleven o’clock, who answered to our descriptions. He drove him into Hyde Park, and there the man rapped at the window and stopped the cab. He got out and disappeared along a side-path.”
“Butterworth seems to have taken a lot of notice of his fare, Inspector!”
“Yes, I thought of that point—but it appears that the Jew was trembling and cursing like some madman; not only that, he paid over a ten-bob note for that drive and didn’t stop for change.… More than this, he was carrying a small brass fire-extinguisher and a heavy metal tripod; a collapsible affair such as wandering photographers use, only much stouter—”
“Yes, I thought he would have something like that,” was Brantyngham’s superbly indifferent statement. “And of course the cabby would also notice that his beard and clothing was all ice—not snow—ice!”
The Inspector goggled and stepped back a pace. He looked at Sir Richard, as a man looks at menacing death.
“B’gad—beg pardon, sir—but—but that’s exactly right! He was coated with ice, about the head and shoulders and the right arm: ‘Looked as ’ow ’e’d bin in a hice-’ouse, ’e did,’ said Butterworth.”
“As a matter of fact he had, in a way—only it wasn’t ice, you see, Inspector; no more than there was a scream and a shot!” He twitted, but his eyes were kindly. “No human scream and no sound of a fire-arm’s discharge; yet a simulation of each. A man coated with ice—yet not. Remember, Inspector, that this Jew didn’t get into the taxi until eleven o’clock, long after the wounding.… Had that been ice, for all the snow was falling in a cold night, it would have melted; alternately, he could have cracked it off his clothing … ice, yet not ice … damned funny business altogether—eh?” He laughed. “Here, have another drink, Templeton, you’ll have apoplexy if you don’t! This is rather a pretty little mystery and—”
Again the telephone-bell began to ring.
“Hello! … Yes, speaking … You’ve analysed it all? … Yes—now let’s get that right: the contents of glasses B and C are simply neutral … London grime and simple H-two-O … Yes? … And that in glass A, rich in mineral salts and evidently taken from over magnesium limestone … Yes … Deposits showing that galena-ore excretions also present … Yes … A fragmentary, almost microscopical, frond of moss … Identified as sphagnum … Yes … That all? … Very well, thank you very much; sorry I had to dig you out of bed, but it was vitally urgent … Oh, if you don’t mind—I don’t.… Good-night …”
Brantyngham gave that little coughing laugh again.
“That’s the result of the analysis of ice-water taken from Greenwood’s shoulder and two separate specimens of snowwater taken from the square. Rather neat—what? Taught me a lot.… No wonder people get goitre, is it? ‘Derbyshire neck,’ as it’s commonly called.…” With which cryptic observation he stopped.
He glanced at the clock and yawned.
“But look here, we’ll have to be getting off to bed; it’s late—or rather, early! What about staying the night here, Passingford? I’d like you to … I’m off for a little trip to the Peak district, in the morning; nothing like a change of air.”
I said, eagerly, that I’d stay. He turned, then, to Inspector Templeton. “As for you, Inspector, try to dream over a gentle little drama of a stabbing done without a blow being struck; by a man who wasn’t there; by a trackless and invisible something that became a Jew coated with ice that wasn’t ice … who carried a fire-extinguisher that wasn’t one and a tripod that also was not; that Jew who missed his mark—the one who flung that bowler hat in the air—because he’d got, or hadn’t got, what he wanted out of it … that Jew who was in Bellington Square all the time your fellows were searching—yet, actually, was nowhere near. And also try by the morning to tell me how water frozen in Derbyshire should come to be on the shoulder of a man injured in the middle of London.” He laughed and laughed again. “Oh, yes—all that lot—told you it was a pretty little problem, didn’t I?”
Gustav Lorrequier entered the gates of Danton Lodge and locked them after him. He re-pocketed the wallet that held that key and sauntered along the snow-covered drive toward the great secret house that lay like a squat beast behind the tall guardian walls that bounded the little park.
Now it was that he died.
Only fifty yards on his way between the gates and the lodge, a happy and care-free man … now he was a twitching thing of death; killed by some unknown force that had taken him between the eyes and crumpled him up like a burst balloon. And as he died so suddenly he could never have heard that swift scream and that stunning sound as of a shot, heralding the end. Then something also laughed—high in the air; and laughing and laughing, it went away.
Sir Richard Brantyngham and myself were on the scene of the killing within three hours. We came over from Buxton, where we had been staying for four days. The local superintendent of police welcomed us at the gates of the lodge.
“Hope I’ve done right, Sir Richard, but it’s a general order from the Yard that instant information has to be sent to you if anyone is discovered in the possession of ancient foreign or British coins. The dead man’s trousers’ pockets were full of ’em!”
“You certainly did right, Superintendent. The Yard phoned me and I got here as quickly as possible. Hope the snow’s not been roughed and trampled about.”
“No, sir, we’ve been very careful, but of course my men have had to do a bit of moving. The body’s been taken to the mortuary, sir—shot in the centre of the forehead.”
“Instantly killed?”
“So the doctors say, sir. But a very funny thing arises, they also tell—although the bullet did not leave the skull—it not having force enough, they say—it’s nowhere to be found! The body has not been tampered with, and certain it is that the shot went in … but, where is it now? Queer, ain’t it?”
“Very, Superintendent. Now, what about tracks in all this snow? Couldn’t find any—eh? Not a mark, I expect.”
“Not a mark,” the officer repeated, looking curiously from one to the other of us, “not the hide or hair of one, anywhere!”
“No, there wouldn’t be feet impresses. But, tell me, did you not by any chance discover three hollows in the snow anywhere? Three holes set in the form of an isosceles triangle?”
“Now—now that’s funny and all, sir! We did come across such a lot of marks, but we didn’t think anything on ’em like. I—I believe they’re not touched, any. If I can find ’em again, should you like to see ’em?”
“Most decidedly!”
The awe-stricken Superintendent muttered in his throat (I verily believe he thought Brantyngham an intimate of the Devil!) and led us across the snow to a point some twelve yards distanced from the roughened and blood-stained patch that betrayed where the body had fallen and lain. Under the light of his lamp we saw … points as those of a triangle: exactly similar to those found in the inner garden of Bellington Square.
“Ah—here’s where the hell-hound lurked—eh? Cover those marks over very carefully,” Brantyngham ordered; “I want them to hang a man—or a beast—I really cannot tell which.”
… The Superintendent now began to tell us that the police theory was that the unfortunate Lorrequier had been shot at from behind the gates—from the road.
“What? Shot at from the road, in the dark? A hell of an expert marksman would be required. And how is a man facing that house to be shot in the forehead by another, hidden fifty yards away behind his back? Use your commonsense, please!”
Then I saw Brantyngham put his head in the air and sniff, as a hound does. His mood changed; his voice softened and his eyes opened wider. Quite quietly and gently he asked:
“You have rather extensive moors hereabouts, have you not? There’s a smell of peat and ling in the air.”
“Can’t say that I notice it much,” growled the officer; “got something else to do but sniff at wind.”
Brantyngham chuckled. “But you see, Superintendent, I am also doing things. For instance, I’m helping to hang that man I was telling you about—partly by that smelling of air! Tell me, there are moors near at hand, and mines and quarries, are there not?”
He was told that he judged rightly.
“And I gather that your water supply comes off those moors?”
“It does—worse luck; gives people ‘Derbyshire neck,’ they do say.”
My heart leapt; here was a connection indeed! Here was that place for which Sir Richard had sought. Here was the reason for our mysterious advent into the Peak district.
“Sphagnum moss … plenty of that; can smell iodine in the air.”
“Aye—that’s t’main cause, they say—that and water that runs from the galena-ore in the limestone.”
“And now you can give me details of all found on Lorrequier’s person … and tell me all that you know of the tenant of that house.”
The Superintendent did as he was bade … told us about the wallet of keys and the coins; then, referring to the tenant:
“He calls himself Charles Dixon now. Once we had him registered as an alien: a Hungarian, and he was named Zickel—Pether Zickel. He’s naturalised and as wealthy as needs be. Retired broker, I’m told, with a turn for inventing things. Anyway he has a laboratory, as he calls it, into which he never allows anyone to set foot—all his servants are local folk; they talk, y’know. Makes a lot of trips to London, he does. Up to some six weeks ago he stayed in Town for weeks.”
“And he’s a shuffling fellow with red-rimmed eyes and prominent teeth—broken and yellow teeth; dark eyes; Jewish looking?”
“Aye—that’s right,” the officer agreed. “B’gow, but y’ve got him to a ‘T’ … and he is a Jew—a Hungarian Jew, now you mention it!”
“Thank you—we’ll go up to the house and have a talk with him.”
We entered the warm wide hall of Danton Lodge. “Dixon” invited us from it to a room, but Brantyngham curtly refused. He would stay in the hall, he said; and stay he did—his careful eyes taking note of all therein.
“The dead man, Lorrequier—he was a friend of yours?”
“Vell, not vat you would call ein vriend.”
“Surely not an enemy?”
“Dixon” twitched and drew back.
“Ach nein! … Vell, then, ein vriend.”
“Did you expect his visit to you to-night?”
“No, he was callin’ all on his owns.”
“A regular habit with him—eh?”
“Ach, no! No ’abit at all—nein.”
“Not a great friend of yours, nor yet an enemy?”
“So!”
“An acquaintance, unexpected?”
“Right; an ackvaintance—ja!”
“Do you usually allow your acquaintances to carry on their persons a private key to your well-locked and walled demesne, Mr. Dixon?”
The man shrank a little, but laughed, easily.
“If this Lorrequier ’ad ein key ’e gotten it vrom som’vher I not know.”
“Um—but that lock on your gate is very subtle in its wards, Mr. Dixon. I really think you must be forgetting—yes, forgetting. Hardly anyone could make a duplicate for such a piece of work, or get hold of one without the knowledge of the man who brought that lock.” He yawned. “However, let that pass, Mr. Dixon … not your right name, by the way?”
“My right nom—Yes! Why not it? I am ein natralised Englishman, sir!”
“A Jewish Hungarian, I believe—from Central Hungary?”
“Vas—why you damn’ vell ask?”
“Oh, I was just taking an interest in these beautiful rams’ horns and these fleeces—wonderful things—you use as ornaments and rugs in this hall.” He negligently waved around. “Rather out-of-the-way specimens—what? D’you know the Hungarian sheep is by way of being almost a noble animal! Semi-wild, too.”
“Ach so; verry ’ard to control.… But, hell, ya not gome to me to talk about sheeps—hein?”
“And of course the wolves, that are always nosing about the flocks on the Hungarian plains, take pretty hefty toll of their numbers—eh?”
“Ja, d’ volves do—ja!”
“And that fact necessitates the shepherds taking strange precautions”—I saw a sudden film come over the man’s brilliant eyes, like the veiling of the orbs of a fowl, and there was a change in his face, as though slowly-pouring mud was silting down behind his yellowish skin—“to guard their flocks. I suppose they have eyes like eagles, yet even so they must find it very difficult to penetrate the rising clouds of dust that the sheep set up.… Again, for all the flatness of the plains, and the keenness of their keepers’ vision—it would be almost impossible to tell over an enormous flock without the shepherds used—Ah, grab him there—Get the devil—!”
They shackled Pether Zickel, alias Dixon, alias Zweiterbach, and formally charged him on the dual points of murder and attempted murder: of Lorrequier and of Greenwood.
Then: “By the way, Zickel”—Brantyngham slurred the cruel words—“you didn’t let me finish my little chat about telling over the flocks of Hungarian sheep; impossible, without overlooking them, above the dust-clouds they raise—impossible, without the shepherds use … stilts!”
Two days after Pether Zickel was hanged I went around to Bellington Square to see Brantyngham. Harry Greenwood was making slow progress and his account of the affair was all in the Third Service Chief’s possession. From it I can knit together the remainder to be told.
It appears that Greenwood met Zickel at the Patents Office when the first-named was registering the designs of a gold-casting machine for dental work, and the Hungarian was protecting a new kind of refrigerating plant. Dentists, Greenwood told Zickel, have always needed a machine to cast molten gold into the form of plates to cover the human palate—so perfectly cast as to reproduce every tiniest line and contour of the palate … from wax impressions. Several casting machines were already on the market; but Greenwood swore that his would oust them. It would cast a hair in gold—a butterfly’s wing; a flower petal. And he proved it by exhibiting specimens of such casting.
The evil brain of Zickel saw certain possibilities. He mentioned them, and Greenwood unfortunately fell in with the scheme. Now enters Lorrequier, a marvellous artist and an expert numismatist. He had a “students’ permit” allowing him, in certain foreign museums and so on, to handle, examine and take detailed notes and drawings of the world’s richest treasures in ancient gold-work. From the time of Zickel’s employment of him he no longer took drawn copies and notes—he took waxen impressions. These Greenwood cast in his machine … and when next Lorrequier visited a museum to examine pieces, he substituted the miraculously exact fraud for the real treasure.
But after a while, when half the European centres had been so denuded of their priceless pieces, Greenwood’s conscience began to prick. Zickel would not allow him to indulge his expensive tastes lest suspicion should be aroused, and here again was cause for disorder. And as Zickel took the lion’s share of all monies accruing from the secret sale of the stolen pieces, in the United States, there arose more cause.
By some means Greenwood heard of Sir Richard Brantyngham, and evidently got it into his head that here was some kind of a private detective—instead of knowing he was wishing to deal with the head of a Department of State Intelligence. He determined on consulting Sir Richard, and fell in love with the little Sugden girl. But Zickel, getting wind of his plan, was forever on the watch. Each night he was there in the gardens of Bellington Square watching from his collapsible stilts, high among the branches of the plane trees. And those stilts functioned for him as do the stilts of the Hungarian sheep-watchers—they not only supported his legs, but also had a third stilt that could be used as a shooting stick is used. High in the air, comfortably seated, as a shepherd sits all day out on the Hungarian plains, he watched and waited … not wanting to kill Greenwood unless there was grim cause. Greenwood’s telling Mary Sugden that he was no longer going to take her advice and intended to see Sir Richard—overheard by the sinister Zickel, lurking just across the narrow road—meant death to him.
Zickel grabbed Greenwood’s hat, in which the plans of the casting machine were always concealed, struck his death-dealing blow … pulled his stilts up after him into the tree, and sat there, grinning, no doubt, at the futility of the police searchers. But overhearing and overseeing all that went on, he realised that Greenwood would have a chance to recover; hence his cursing and his shivering as he made off in the taxi, long after all had quieted down … after he had flung away the hat.
And now Lorrequier, returning to England with more waxen models, would surely hear of the crime—put two and two together and condemn. Lorrequier had also to die … and he did. The second time, Zickel made no mistake. He straddled there above the dark and snow-covered road and just shot down on the walker’s head.…
Sir Richard had argued stilts, from the beginning, after thinking about that isosceles triangle in the garden. The ice nodules directed him to look for a place where mining and moors ran together; recognised in the analysis the composition of minerals and salts that give rise to “Derbyshire neck,” and acted accordingly. Then the ice on Zickel’s clothing, that night … as it had not melted, he assumed that it was not frozen water—but frozen air, an intensely colder matter.
Zickel had intended his patent refrigerating plant to make use of this principle. He killed with it instead. All was done simply: he contrived a brazen cylinder, like a fire-extinguisher or a miniature pneumatic drill, such as they employ to break up concrete, and instead of a charge of air—compressed and hot—he charged up with compressed liquid air—compressed and intensely cold. He had a barrel in this thing: as the true barrel in a machine-gun’s outer coil. In that barrel was a spicule of frozen water, an icicle like a barb.
Discharging the novel weapon, he flashed down that frozen bolt on his victims. The contact of the liquid air with ordinary air produced the simulation of a human scream; the “shot” sound was the mark of its sudden release—as of fulminated gun-powder bursting to gas. And the mist of frozen air plated the very cloth he wore, and his beard, with ice that would not melt for hours, so cold was it … frozen air.
All things considered, my old chief did not make to Inspector Templeton any statement that over-rode subsequent fact; and all things told, I do not think he enjoyed a problem more.
